Category Archives: Politics

Economics, Essays, Politics, Society, Technology

The Peril Of Perfection: Why Utopian Cities Fail

By Michael Cummins, Editor, August 7, 2025

Throughout human history, the idea of a perfect city—a harmonious, orderly, and just society—has been a powerful and enduring dream. From the philosophical blueprints of antiquity to the grand, state-sponsored projects of the modern era, the desire to create a flawless urban space has driven thinkers and leaders alike. This millennia-long aspiration, rooted in a fundamental human longing for order and a rejection of present-day flaws, finds its most recent and monumental expression in China’s Xiongan New Area, a project highlighted in an August 7, 2025, Economist article titled “Xi Jinping’s city of the future is coming to life.” Xiongan is both a marvel of technological and urban design and a testament to the persistent—and potentially perilous—quest for an idealized city.

By examining the historical precedents of utopian thought, we can understand Xiongan not merely as a contemporary infrastructure project but as the latest chapter in a timeless and often fraught human ambition to build paradise on earth. This essay will trace the evolution of the utopian ideal from ancient philosophy to modern practice, arguing that while Xiongan embodies the most technologically advanced and politically ambitious vision to date, its top-down, state-driven nature and astronomical costs raise critical questions about its long-term viability and ability to succeed where countless others have failed.

The Philosophical and Historical Roots

The earliest and most iconic examples of this utopian desire were theoretical and philosophical, serving as intellectual critiques rather than practical blueprints. Plato’s mythological city of Atlantis, described in his dialogues Timaeus and Critias, was not just a lost city but a complex philosophical thought experiment. Plato detailed a powerful, technologically advanced, and ethically pure island society, governed by a wise and noble lineage. The city itself was a masterpiece of urban planning, with concentric circles of land and water, advanced canals, and stunning architecture.

However, its perfection was ultimately undone by human greed and moral decay. As the Atlanteans became corrupted by hubris and ambition, their city was swallowed by the sea. This myth is foundational to all subsequent utopian thought, serving as a powerful and enduring cautionary tale that even the most perfect physical and social structure is fragile and susceptible to corruption from within. It suggests that a utopian society cannot simply be built; its sustainability is dependent on the moral fortitude of its citizens.

Centuries later, in 1516, Thomas More gave the concept its very name with his book Utopia. More’s work was a masterful social and political satire, a searing critique of the harsh realities of 16th-century England. He described a fictional island society where there was no private property, and all goods were shared. The citizens worked only six hours a day, with the rest of their time dedicated to education and leisure. The society was governed by reason and justice, and there were no social classes, greed, or poverty. More’s Utopia was not about a perfect physical city, but a perfect social structure.

“For where pride is predominant, there all these good laws and policies that are designed to establish equity are wholly ineffectual, because this monster is a greater enemy to justice than avarice, anger, envy, or any other of that kind; and it is a very great one in every man, though he have never so much of a saint about him.” – Utopia by Thomas More

It was an intellectual framework for political philosophy, designed to expose the flaws of a European society plagued by poverty, inequality, and the injustices of land enclosure. Like Atlantis, it existed as an ideal, a counterpoint to the flawed present, but it established a powerful cultural archetype.

The city as a reflection of societal ideals. — Intellicurean

Following this, Francis Bacon’s unfinished novel New Atlantis (1627) offered a different, more prophetic vision of perfection. His mythical island, Bensalem, was home to a society dedicated not to social or political equality, but to the pursuit of knowledge. The core of their society was “Salomon’s House,” a research institution where scientists worked together to discover and apply knowledge for the benefit of humanity. Bacon’s vision was a direct reflection of his advocacy for the scientific method and empirical reasoning.

In his view, a perfect society was one that systematically harnessed technological innovation to improve human life. Bacon’s utopia was a testament to the power of collective knowledge, a vision that, unlike More’s, would resonate profoundly with the coming age of scientific and industrial revolution. These intellectual exercises established a powerful cultural archetype: the city as a reflection of societal ideals.

From Theory to Practice: Real-World Experiments

As these ideas took root, the dream of a perfect society moved from the page to the physical world, often with mixed results. The Georgia Colony, founded in 1732 by James Oglethorpe, was conceived with powerful utopian ideals, aiming to be a fresh start for England’s “worthy poor” and debtors. Oglethorpe envisioned a society without the class divisions that plagued England, and to that end, his trustees prohibited slavery and large landholdings. The colony was meant to be a place of virtue, hard work, and abundance. Yet, the ideals were not fully realized. The prohibition on slavery hampered economic growth compared to neighboring colonies, and the trustees’ rules were eventually overturned. The colony ultimately evolved into a more typical slave-holding, plantation-based society, demonstrating how external pressures and economic realities can erode even the most virtuous of founding principles.

In the 19th century, with the rise of industrialization, several communities were established to combat the ills of the new urban landscape. The Shakers, a religious community founded in the 18th century, are one of America’s most enduring utopian experiments. They built successful communities based on communal living, pacifism, gender equality, and celibacy. Their belief in simplicity and hard work led to a reputation for craftsmanship, particularly in furniture making. At their peak in the mid-19th century, there were over a dozen Shaker communities, and their economic success demonstrated the viability of communal living. However, their practice of celibacy meant they relied on converts and orphans to sustain their numbers, a demographic fragility that ultimately led to their decline. The Shaker experience proved that a society’s success depends not only on its economic and social structure but also on its ability to sustain itself demographically.

These real-world attempts demonstrate the immense difficulty of sustaining a perfect society against the realities of human nature and economic pressures. — Intellicurean

The Transcendentalist experiment at Brook Farm (1841-1847) attempted to blend intellectual and manual labor, blurring the lines between thinkers and workers. Its members, who included prominent figures like Nathaniel Hawthorne, believed that a more wholesome and simple life could be achieved in a cooperative community. However, the community struggled from the beginning with financial mismanagement and the impracticality of their ideals. The final blow was a disastrous fire that destroyed a major building, and the community was dissolved. Brook Farm’s failure illustrates a central truth of many utopian experiments: idealism can falter in the face of economic pressures and simple bad luck.

A more enduring but equally radical experiment, the Oneida Community (1848-1881), achieved economic success through manufacturing, particularly silverware, under the leadership of John Humphrey Noyes. Based on his concept of “Bible Communism,” they practiced communal living and a system of “complex marriage.” Despite its radical social structure, the community thrived economically, but internal disputes and external pressures ultimately led to its dissolution. These real-world attempts demonstrate the immense difficulty of sustaining a perfect society against the realities of human nature and economic pressures.

Xiongan: The Modern Utopia?

Xiongan is the natural, and perhaps ultimate, successor to these modern visions. It represents a confluence of historical utopian ideals with a uniquely contemporary, state-driven model of urban development. Touted as a “city of the future,” Xiongan promises short, park-filled commutes and a high-tech, digitally-integrated existence. It seeks to be a model of ecological civilization, where 70% of the city is dedicated to green space and water, an explicit rejection of the “urban maladies” of pollution and congestion that plague other major Chinese cities.

Its design principles are an homage to the urban planners of the past, with a “15-minute lifecycle” for residents, ensuring all essential amenities are within a short walk. The city’s digital infrastructure is also a modern marvel, with digital roads equipped with smart lampposts and a supercomputing center designed to manage the city’s traffic and services. In this sense, Xiongan is a direct heir to Francis Bacon’s vision of a society built on scientific and technological progress.

Unlike the organic, market-driven growth of a city like Shenzhen, Xiongan is an authoritarian experiment in building a perfect city from scratch. — The Economist

This vision, however, is a top-down creation. As a “personal initiative” of President Xi, its success is a matter of political will, with the central government pouring billions into its construction. The project is a key part of the “Jing-Jin-Ji” (Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei) coordinated development plan, meant to relieve the pressure on the capital. Unlike the organic, market-driven growth of a city like Shenzhen, Xiongan is an authoritarian experiment in building a perfect city from scratch. Shenzhen, for example, was an SEZ (Special Economic Zone) that grew from the bottom up, driven by market forces and a flexible policy environment. It was a chaotic, rapid, and often unplanned explosion of economic activity. Xiongan, in stark contrast, is a meticulously planned project from its very inception, with a precise ideological purpose to showcase a new kind of “socialist” urbanism.

This centralized approach, while capable of achieving rapid and impressive infrastructure development, runs the risk of failing to create the one thing a true city needs: a vibrant, organic, and self-sustaining culture. The criticisms of Xiongan echo the failures of past utopian ventures; despite the massive investment, the city’s streets remain “largely empty,” and it has struggled to attract the talent and businesses needed to become a bustling metropolis. The absence of a natural community and the reliance on forced relocations have created a city that is technically perfect but socially barren.

The Peril of Perfection

The juxtaposition of Xiongan with its utopian predecessors highlights the central tension of the modern planned city. The ancient dream of Atlantis was a philosophical ideal, a perfect society whose downfall served as a moral warning against hubris. The real-world communities of the 19th century demonstrated that idealism could falter in the face of economic and social pressures, proving that a perfect society is not a fixed state but a dynamic, and often fragile, process. The modern reality of Xiongan is a physical, political, and economic gamble—a concrete manifestation of a leader’s will to solve a nation’s problems through grand design. It is a bold attempt to correct the mistakes of the past and a testament to the immense power of a centralized state. Yet, the question remains whether it can escape the fate of its predecessors.

The ultimate verdict on Xiongan will not be about the beauty of its architecture or the efficiency of its smart infrastructure alone, but whether it can successfully transcend its origins as a state project. — The Economist

The ultimate verdict on Xiongan will not be about the beauty of its architecture or the efficiency of its smart infrastructure alone, but whether it can successfully transcend its origins as a state project to become a truly livable, desirable, and thriving city. Only then can it stand as a true heir to the timeless dream of a perfect urban space, rather than just another cautionary tale. Whether a perfect city can be engineered from the top down, or if it must be a messy, organic creation, is the fundamental question that Xiongan, and by extension, the modern world, is attempting to answer.

THIS ESSAY WAS WRITTEN AND EDITED UTILIZING AI

Analysis, Economics, Essays, Government, Politics, Reviews

The Fiscal Fantasies Of A “For-Profit” Government

BY INTELLICUREAN, JULY 21, 2025:

In the summer of 2025, former President Donald Trump and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick unveiled a bold proposal: the creation of an External Revenue Service (ERS), a federal agency designed to collect tariffs, fees, and other payments from foreign entities. Framed as a patriotic pivot toward self-sufficiency, the ERS would transform the U.S. government from a tax-funded service provider into a revenue-generating enterprise, capable of offsetting domestic tax burdens through external extraction. The idea, while politically magnetic, raises profound questions: Can the U.S. federal government become a “for-profit” entity? And if so, can the ERS be a legitimate mechanism for such a transformation?

This essay argues that while the concept of external revenue generation is not unprecedented, the rebranding of the U.S. government as a profit-seeking enterprise risks undermining its foundational principles. The ERS proposal conflates revenue with legitimacy, and profit with power, leading to a fundamental misunderstanding of the government’s role in society. We explore the constitutional, economic, and geopolitical dimensions of the ERS proposal, drawing on recent analyses from the Peterson Institute for International Economics, The Diplomat, and The New Yorker, to assess its fiscal viability, strategic risks, and national security implications.

Constitutional Foundations: Can a Republic Seek Profit?

The U.S. Constitution grants Congress the power to “lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises” and to “regulate Commerce with foreign Nations” (Article I, Section 8). These provisions clearly authorize the federal government to generate revenue through tariffs and fees. Historically, tariffs served as a primary source of federal income, funding everything from infrastructure to military expansion during the 19th century.

However, the Constitution does not envision the government as a profit-maximizing entity. Its purpose, as articulated in the Preamble, is to “establish Justice, ensure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, [and] promote the general Welfare.” These are public goods, not commercial outputs. The government’s legitimacy is grounded in its service to the people—not in its ability to generate surplus revenue.

The Federal Reserve offers a useful analogy here. While not a for-profit institution, the Fed earns more than it spends through its monetary operations—primarily interest on government securities—and remits excess income to the Treasury. Between 2011 and 2021, these remittances totaled over $920 billion. But this is not “profit” in the corporate sense. The Fed’s primary mandate is macroeconomic stability, not shareholder returns. Even during economic stress (as seen in 2022–2025), the Fed may run negative remittances, underscoring its non-commercial orientation.

In contrast, the ERS is framed as a profit center—an entity designed to extract wealth from foreign actors to reduce domestic tax burdens. This shift raises critical questions: Who are the “customers” of the ERS? What are the “products” it offers? And what happens when profit motives collide with diplomatic or humanitarian priorities?

Economic Modeling: Revenue vs. Net Gain

A rigorous analysis of Trump’s proposed tariffs comes from Chad P. Bown and Melina Kolb at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. In their April 2025 briefing, they use a global economic model to estimate the gross and net revenue generated by tariffs of 10%, 15%, and 20% on all imported goods.

Their findings are sobering:

  • A 15% universal tariff could generate $3.9 trillion in gross revenue over a decade (2025–2034), assuming no foreign retaliation.
  • However, after accounting for slower growth, reduced investment, and lower tax receipts from households and businesses, the net gain drops to $3.2 trillion.
  • If foreign countries retaliate with reciprocal tariffs, the net gain falls further to $1.5 trillion.
  • A 20% tariff results in the lowest net gain ($791 billion), due to intensified economic drag and retaliation.

These findings underscore a crucial distinction: tariffs are not free money. They impose costs on consumers, disrupt supply chains, and invite countermeasures. The ERS may collect billions, but its net contribution to fiscal health is far more modest—and potentially negative if retaliation escalates.

Additionally, tariff revenue is volatile and politically contingent. Tariffs can be reversed by executive order, invalidated by courts, or rendered moot by trade realignment. In short, the ERS lacks the predictability and stability necessary for a legitimate fiscal foundation. Tariffs are a risky and politically charged mechanism for revenue generation—making them an unreliable cornerstone for the country’s fiscal health.

Strategic Blowback: Reverse Friendshoring and Supply Chain Drift

Beyond economics, the ERS proposal carries significant geopolitical risks. In The Diplomat, Thiago de Aragao warns of a phenomenon he calls reverse friendshoring—where companies, instead of relocating supply chains away from China, move closer to it in response to U.S. tariffs.

The logic is simple: If exporting to the U.S. becomes prohibitively expensive, firms may pivot to serving Asian markets, leveraging China’s mature infrastructure and consumer base. This could undermine the strategic goal of decoupling from Chinese influence, potentially strengthening Beijing’s economic hand.

Examples abound:

  • A firm that invested in Mexico to reduce exposure to China redirected its exports to Latin America after Mexico was hit with new tariffs.
  • Another company shifted operations to Canada to avoid compounded U.S. duties—only to face new levies there as well.

This unpredictability erodes trust in U.S. trade policy and incentivizes supply chain diversification away from the U.S. As Aragao notes, “Protectionism may offer a temporary illusion of control, but in the long run, it risks pushing businesses away.”

The ERS, by monetizing tariffs, could accelerate this trend. If foreign firms perceive the U.S. as a hostile or unstable market, they will seek alternatives. And if allies are treated as adversaries, the strategic architecture of friendshoring collapses, leaving the U.S. economically isolated and diplomatically weakened.

National Security Costs: Alienating Allies

Perhaps the most damning critique of the ERS comes from Cullen Hendrix at the Peterson Institute, who argues that imposing tariffs on U.S. allies undermines national security. The U.S. alliance network spans over 60 countries, accounting for 38% of global GDP. These partnerships enhance deterrence, enable forward basing, and create markets for U.S. defense exports.

Tariffs—especially those framed as revenue tools—erode alliance cohesion. They signal that economic extraction trumps strategic cooperation. Hendrix warns that “treating alliance partners like trade adversaries will further increase intra-alliance frictions, weaken collective deterrence, and invite potential adversaries—none better positioned than China—to exploit these divisions.”

Moreover, the ERS’s indiscriminate approach—levying duties on both allies and rivals—blurs the line between economic policy and coercive diplomacy. It transforms trade into a zero-sum game, where even friends are fair targets. This undermines the credibility of U.S. commitments and may prompt allies to seek alternative trade and security arrangements.

Lutnick’s Barber Economics: Rhetoric vs. Reality

The ERS proposal is not merely a policy—it’s a performance. Nowhere is this clearer than in Howard Lutnick’s keynote at the Hill and Valley Forum, as reported in The New Yorker on July 21, 2025. Addressing a room of venture capitalists, defense contractors, and policymakers, Lutnick attempted to explain trade deficits using personal analogies: “I have a trade deficit with my barber,” he said. “I have a trade deficit with my grocery store. Right? I just buy stuff from them. That’s ridiculous.”

The crowd, described as “sophisticated tech and finance attendees,” was visibly uncomfortable. Lutnick’s analogies, while populist in tone, misread the room and revealed a deeper disconnect between economic complexity and simplistic transactionalism. As one attendee noted, “It’s obvious why Lutnick’s affect appeals to Trump. But it’s Bessent’s presence in the Administration that reassures us there is someone smart looking out for us.”

This contrast between Lutnick and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is telling. Bessent, who reportedly flew to Mar-a-Lago to urge Trump to pause the tariffs, represents the limits of ideological fervor when confronted with institutional complexity. Lutnick, by contrast, champions the ERS as a populist vessel—a way to turn deficits into dues, relationships into revenue, and governance into a business plan.

The ERS, then, is not just a fiscal experiment—it’s a philosophical battleground. Lutnick’s vision of government as a money-making enterprise may resonate with populist frustration, but it risks trivializing the structural and diplomatic intricacies of global trade. His “barber economics” may play well on cable news, but it falters under scrutiny from economists, allies, and institutional stewards.

Conclusion: Profit Is Not Purpose

The idea of a “for-profit” U.S. government, embodied in the External Revenue Service, is seductive in its simplicity. It promises fiscal relief without domestic taxation, strategic leverage through economic pressure, and a reassertion of American dominance in global trade. But beneath the surface lies a tangle of contradictions.

Constitutionally, the federal government is designed to serve—not to sell. Its legitimacy flows from the consent of the governed, not the extraction of foreign wealth. Economically, tariffs may generate gross revenue, but their net contribution is constrained by retaliation, inflation, and supply chain disruption. Strategically, the ERS risks alienating allies, incentivizing reverse friendshoring, and weakening collective security.

With Howard Lutnick as the plan’s leading voice—offering anecdotes like the barber and grocery store as proxies for international trade—the ERS becomes more than a revenue mechanism; it becomes a prism for reflecting the Administration’s governing style: transactional, simplified, and rhetorically appealing, yet divorced from systemic nuance. His “barber economics” may evoke applause from certain circles, but in the forums that shape long-term policy, it has landed with discomfort and disbelief.

The comparison between Lutnick and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, as reported in The New Yorker, captures this divide. Bessent, attempting to temper Trump’s protectionist instincts, represents the limits of ideological fervor when confronted with institutional complexity. Lutnick, by contrast, champions the ERS as a populist vessel—a way to turn deficits into dues, relationships into revenue, and governance into a business plan.

Yet governance is not a business, and the nation’s global responsibilities cannot be monetized like a corporate balance sheet. If America begins to treat its allies as clients, its rivals as profit centers, and its global footprint as a monetizable asset, it risks transforming foreign policy into a ledger—and leadership into a transaction.

The External Revenue Service, in its current form, fails to reconcile profit with purpose. It monetizes strength but neglects stewardship. It harvests dollars but undermines trust. And in doing so, it invites a broader reckoning—not just about trade and taxation, but about what kind of republic America wishes to be. For now, the ERS remains an emblem of ambition unmoored from architecture, where the dream of profit collides with the duty to govern.

THIS ESSAY WAS WRITTEN AND EDITED BY INTELLICUREAN USING AI

Essays, Foreign Affairs, Politics, Reviews

Palestine: The Case For A Two-State Solution

The Middle East is in crisis, with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict escalating dangerously. Reports of a postponed UN conference on Palestinian statehood, U.S.-involved wars, and intensifying violence in Gaza and the West Bank underscore this perilous reality. Marc Lynch and Shibley Telhami’s analysis, “The Promise and Peril of Recognizing Palestine”, published July 15, 2025 in Foreign Affairs, and Ian Martin’s UN report on UNRWA ( United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East), published on July 7, 2025, offer crucial insights, linking the two-state solution to global stability. This essay argues for Palestinian recognition, highlighting its moral imperative, strategic utility, and the critical dangers of a merely symbolic approach, advocating instead for a robust, conditional framework.

The Shifting Geopolitical Landscape

The current moment is defined by diplomatic paralysis and escalating violence. The postponement of a crucial UN conference on Palestinian statehood, due to regional war and a U.S.-involved conflict, symbolizes international impotence. This broader regional conflagration, impacting global energy and security, makes the Palestinian question a systemic global risk.

Within the Palestinian territories, violence is evolving into a systematic campaign of erasure. Gaza’s civilian infrastructure is being destroyed, its population displaced, and settler violence in the West Bank represents a calculated effort to fragment Palestinian society and undermine future statehood claims. Despite Israel’s current leadership showing no interest in a two-state framework, international momentum for recognition is building. French President Emmanuel Macron has pledged recognition, and Saudi Arabia is reconsidering the Arab Peace Initiative, seeking regional stability through renewed commitment to Palestinian rights. This impatience stems from a dawning realization that the status quo is not only morally indefensible but strategically unsustainable, threatening to unravel global security.

The Imperative for Recognition

Recognition of Palestine serves both profound moral and pragmatic strategic purposes. Morally, it powerfully rebukes Israel’s creeping annexation, characterized by relentless settlement expansion and legal fragmentation. Recognition asserts a competing legal claim, reaffirms international law, and symbolizes enduring global commitment to Palestinian self-determination and human rights. It represents a long-overdue acknowledgment of historical injustices, offering hope and dignity to a stateless people.

Crucially, Lynch and Telhami warn that recognition pursued in a vacuum—without meaningful changes on the ground—risks becoming a hollow, even counterproductive, gesture. If recognition is not tied to robust protections, enforceable sanctions, and transparent international oversight, it risks legitimizing a de facto apartheid. Symbolic recognition, devoid of tangible consequences, could inadvertently embolden hardliners and become a cynical exercise that relieves international moral pressure without altering the grim realities faced by Palestinians daily.

Strategically, recognition moves beyond altruism. Regional stability, a core U.S. and European interest, is increasingly jeopardized by the unresolved conflict. Formal recognition could provide a new framework for de-escalation, offering a diplomatic off-ramp from the cycle of violence. It could also bolster counter-terrorism efforts by addressing root causes of radicalization and enhance international actors’ credibility by aligning policies with international law. The two-state solution remains the only viable framework for a just and lasting peace. Recognition is not an abandonment of this framework, but a critical step in preserving it, reinforcing self-determination and the illegitimacy of territorial acquisition by force.

Arguments for recognition are built upon the harsh realities unfolding daily. Gaza’s destruction is catastrophic: over 70% of its buildings destroyed, displacing nearly 90% of its residents, leading to widespread famine and collapse of essential services. In the West Bank, settler violence has reached alarming levels, systematically displacing communities. The Israeli government appears increasingly untethered from international norms, openly defying UN resolutions and advocating for further annexation. Compounding this bleak picture is the sobering military assessment that Hamas cannot be destroyed solely through military means. If military victory is unattainable, a political solution becomes imperative.

Within this bleak context, the Trump administration’s transactional posture offers a peculiar, perhaps ironic, form of leverage. Trump’s frustration with the financial costs of Israel’s war, combined with concerns over regional instability, has pushed him toward a transactional realignment. Recognition of Palestine, framed not as a moral imperative but as a strategic concession, could become a powerful bargaining chip. It could unlock normalization deals with Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states, offering Israel integration into the region without requiring significant concessions to Palestinians. For Trump, this could be a signature foreign policy achievement, leveraging his unpredictability. This paradox suggests a recognition campaign driven by realpolitik might succeed where decades of traditional diplomacy have failed.

UNRWA: Locus of Crisis and Opportunity

For seventy-five years, the international community has skirted the urgency of Palestinian statehood. UNRWA, established in 1949 as a temporary relief effort, now stands as a permanent proxy for a state not allowed to exist. For generations of Palestinians, UNRWA has been the only semblance of state-like services, underscoring their unique statelessness. Now, as UNRWA teeters on the edge of collapse—under siege by Israeli legislation, military strikes, and a global funding crisis—the question of Palestine can no longer be deferred. Recognition, long symbolic, must become the cornerstone of a new international posture. To fail now is to betray the very possibility of a just peace and to formalize the erasure of Palestinian rights.

UNRWA is not a mere charity; it is, as Ian Martin’s report makes clear, an institutional embodiment of international responsibility. It educates children, provides healthcare, and distributes aid to over three million refugees. Crucially, it preserves the legal and archival framework for the right of return—a foundational principle of international law. The ongoing Israeli campaign—military, legislative, and diplomatic—against UNRWA has reached an unprecedented scale. Since October 7, 2023, Israel’s response has killed over 54,000 Palestinians and devastated UNRWA infrastructure. This military onslaught, paired with legislation seeking to prohibit UNRWA’s operations and strip its personnel of immunities, is a coordinated campaign to dismantle the final institutional framework of Palestinian refugee rights, effectively attempting to erase the refugee issue.

Martin outlines four potential futures for UNRWA: full collapse; partial reduction; governance reform; or gradual transfer of services to the Palestinian Authority while maintaining the rights-based mandate. Each scenario carries immense political weight and profound humanitarian consequences. A full collapse would lead to an unimaginable humanitarian catastrophe, destabilizing host countries and fueling further radicalization. Failure to act decisively will deepen the humanitarian crisis and fuel regional instability.

A Path Forward: Recognition with Enforcement

Recognition of Palestine is a legal and moral imperative rooted in international law. The ICJ has declared Israel’s prolonged occupation unlawful, and the ICC has issued arrest warrants. These represent the slow, grinding machinery of international law, built to uphold justice and prevent impunity. Yet, without enforcement or accompanying political recognition, these legal pronouncements risk irrelevance. Recognition aims to bridge this gap. UNRWA’s potential collapse would not dissolve the legal claims of Palestinians; rather, it would leave them without institutional articulation. Recognition is essential to safeguard the principle that international law applies to all. Furthermore, recognition directly supports the principle of the right of return. Martin affirms this right, guaranteed under customary international law and UNGA Resolution 194. Without a sovereign Palestine or an institutional protector, the right becomes a legal fiction. Recognition reasserts that Israel’s statehood was never meant to negate Palestinian nationhood.

Amid escalating regional conflict, recognition of Palestine may seem both small and dangerously provocative. Yet, paradoxically, it may now serve as a stabilizing wedge. France and Saudi Arabia’s initiative and France’s unequivocal pledge reflect growing international impatience. Israel’s ongoing assault on Gaza, paired with aggressive settlement expansion, has laid bare its disregard for the two-state framework. Even hawkish Israeli leaders concede that Hamas cannot be fully defeated militarily, underscoring the futility of the current military-centric approach. Within this bleak context, the Trump administration’s transactional worldview offers a strange opening. Trump’s frustration with the financial costs of Israel’s war has pushed him toward realignment. Recognition of Palestine, framed as leverage to broker normalization deals or advance a new nuclear agreement, could become a signature foreign policy achievement. It may also be the only mechanism left to create political rupture inside Israel itself, potentially leading to a collapse of Netanyahu’s coalition and the redirection of international aid toward rebuilding Palestinian governance.

A recurring fear is the erasure of Palestine—not only as a state-in-waiting but as a people, a history, a legal subject. The obliteration of Gaza’s civic infrastructure, the delegitimization of its institutions, and the systematic dispossession of Palestinians in the West Bank all point to a deliberate campaign of erasure. Recognition offers an antidote—not a solution, but a stand. It grounds the conversation in international law, reinforces the permanence of Palestinian identity, and reasserts that statelessness is not a permanent condition. In affirming statehood, the world pushes back against the logic that only facts on the ground—not principles—shape sovereignty. Moreover, recognition helps immunize Palestinians from political abandonment. If donors can rally $3 billion annually for Israeli military aid, then the $1.5 billion needed to sustain Palestinian humanitarian systems is not an economic impossibility; it is a matter of moral and political will.

Still, recognition without enforcement is a trap. If the international community recognizes Palestine but does not impose consequences for annexation, does not restrict the transfer of arms to Israel, and does not enforce ICJ and ICC decisions, then recognition will be hollow. Recognition must be tied to concrete commitments—protection of civilians, restrictions on settlement activity, the rebuilding of Gaza, and robust international funding of Palestinian institutions. Otherwise, it becomes a way to relieve global moral pressure without changing the political dynamics on the ground, effectively “washing” the occupation with diplomatic niceties. Worse still, symbolic recognition can be weaponized. To be meaningful, recognition must be embedded in a broader diplomatic strategy. It must be paired with funding for reconstruction, robust support for Palestinian political reform, and new international monitoring bodies capable of enforcing agreements. It must, above all, signal to Israel that indefinite occupation and apartheid will carry real costs, not just rhetorical condemnation.

Conclusion

In this, the analyses by Lynch and Telhami and Ian Martin’s UNRWA report agree: the world is reaching a moment of reckoning. Either it affirms the legitimacy of Palestinian nationhood in action as well as word—or it formalizes their erasure. Recognition alone is not justice, but it is a beginning. The dream of a two-state solution has been steadily undermined. The Israeli state now controls all territory west of the Jordan River. It governs two unequal populations under radically different legal regimes: one with voting rights, passports, and mobility; the other with curfews, checkpoints, and drone surveillance. This is not a temporary security measure; it is the scaffolding of a permanent apartheid. And it will not be dismantled by silence. The recognition of Palestine is not a panacea. But it is the clearest way for the international community to say: we have not given up. That justice is still possible. That erasure will not be the final word. Anything less is complicity. The credibility of international law in the 21st century, and indeed the very prospect of a just and stable Middle East, hinges on this pivotal decision.

THIS ESSAY WAS WRITTEN BY AI AND EDITED BY INTELLICUREAN

Artificial Intelligence, Essays, Politics, Reviews, War

Review: AI, Apathy, and the Arsenal of Democracy

Dexter Filkins is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist and author, known for his extensive reporting on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. He is currently a staff writer for The New Yorker and the author of the book “The Forever War“, which chronicles his experiences reporting from these conflict zones. 

Is the United States truly ready for the seismic shift in modern warfare—a transformation that The New Yorker‘s veteran war correspondent describes not as evolution but as rupture? In “Is the U.S. Ready for the Next War?” (July 14, 2025), Dexter Filkins captures this tectonic realignment through a mosaic of battlefield reportage, strategic insight, and ethical reflection. His central thesis is both urgent and unsettling: that America, long mythologized for its martial supremacy, is culturally and institutionally unprepared for the emerging realities of war. The enemy is no longer just a rival state but also time itself—conflict is being rewritten in code, and the old machines can no longer keep pace.

The piece opens with a gripping image: a Ukrainian drone factory producing a thousand airborne machines daily, each costing just $500. Improvised, nimble, and devastating, these drones have inflicted disproportionate damage on Russian forces. Their success signals a paradigm shift—conflict has moved from regiments to swarms, from steel to software. Yet the deeper concern is not merely technological; it is cultural. The article is less a call to arms than a call to reimagine. Victory in future wars, it suggests, will depend not on weaponry alone, but on judgment, agility, and a conscience fit for the digital age.

Speed and Fragmentation: The Collision of Cultures

At the heart of the analysis lies a confrontation between two worldviews. On one side stands Silicon Valley—fast, improvisational, and software-driven. On the other: the Pentagon—layered, cautious, and locked in Cold War-era processes. One of the central figures is Palmer Luckey, the founder of the defense tech company Anduril, depicted as a symbol of insurgent innovation. Once a video game prodigy, he now leads teams designing autonomous weapons that can be manufactured as quickly as IKEA furniture and deployed without extensive oversight. His world thrives on rapid iteration, where warfare is treated like code—modular, scalable, and adaptive.

This approach clashes with the military’s entrenched bureaucracy. Procurement cycles stretch for years. Communication between service branches remains fractured. Even American ships and planes often operate on incompatible systems. A war simulation over Taiwan underscores this dysfunction: satellites failed to coordinate with aircraft, naval assets couldn’t link with space-based systems, and U.S. forces were paralyzed by their own institutional fragmentation. The problem wasn’t technology—it was organization.

What emerges is a portrait of a defense apparatus unable to act as a coherent whole. The fragmentation stems from a structure built for another era—one that now privileges process over flexibility. In contrast, adversaries operate with fluidity, leveraging technological agility as a force multiplier. Slowness, once a symptom of deliberation, has become a strategic liability.

The tension explored here is more than operational; it is civilizational. Can a democratic state tolerate the speed and autonomy now required in combat? Can institutions built for deliberation respond in milliseconds? These are not just questions of infrastructure, but of governance and identity. In the coming conflicts, latency may be lethal, and fragmentation fatal.

Imagination Under Pressure: Lessons from History

To frame the stakes, the essay draws on powerful historical precedents. Technological transformation has always arisen from moments of existential pressure: Prussia’s use of railways to reimagine logistics, the Gulf War’s precision missiles, and, most profoundly, the Manhattan Project. These were not the products of administrative order but of chaotic urgency, unleashed imagination, and institutional risk-taking.

During the Manhattan Project, multiple experimental paths were pursued simultaneously, protocols were bent, and innovation surged from competition. Today, however, America’s defense culture has shifted toward procedural conservatism. Risk is minimized; innovation is formalized. Bureaucracy may protect against error, but it also stifles the volatility that made American defense dynamic in the past.

This critique extends beyond the military. A broader cultural stagnation is implied: a nation that fears disruption more than defeat. If imagination is outsourced to private startups—entities beyond the reach of democratic accountability—strategic coherence may erode. Tactical agility cannot compensate for an atrophied civic center. The essay doesn’t argue for scrapping government institutions, but for reigniting their creative core. Defense must not only be efficient; it must be intellectually alive.

Machines, Morality, and the Shrinking Space for Judgment

Perhaps the most haunting dimension of the essay lies in its treatment of ethics. As autonomous systems proliferate—from loitering drones to AI-driven targeting software—the space for human judgment begins to vanish. Some militaries, like Israel’s, still preserve a “human-in-the-loop” model where a person retains final authority. But this safeguard is fragile. The march toward autonomy is relentless.

The implications are grave. When decisions to kill are handed to algorithms trained on probability and sensor data, who bears responsibility? Engineers? Programmers? Military officers? The author references DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis, who warns of the ease with which powerful systems can be repurposed for malign ends. Yet the more chilling possibility is not malevolence, but moral atrophy: a world where judgment is no longer expected or practiced.

Combat, if rendered frictionless and remote, may also become civically invisible. Democratic oversight depends on consequence—and when warfare is managed through silent systems and distant screens, that consequence becomes harder to feel. A nation that no longer confronts the human cost of its defense decisions risks sliding into apathy. Autonomy may bring tactical superiority, but also ethical drift.

Throughout, the article avoids hysteria, opting instead for measured reflection. Its central moral question is timeless: Can conscience survive velocity? In wars of machines, will there still be room for the deliberation that defines democratic life?

The Republic in the Mirror: A Final Reflection

The closing argument is not tactical, but philosophical. Readiness, the essay insists, must be measured not just by stockpiles or software, but by the moral posture of a society—its ability to govern the tools it creates. Military power divorced from democratic deliberation is not strength, but fragility. Supremacy must be earned anew, through foresight, imagination, and accountability.

The challenge ahead is not just to match adversaries in drones or data, but to uphold the principles that give those tools meaning. Institutions must be built to respond, but also to reflect. Weapons must be precise—but judgment must be present. The republic’s defense must operate at the speed of code while staying rooted in the values of a self-governing people.

The author leaves us with a final provocation: The future will not wait for consensus—but neither can it be left to systems that have forgotten how to ask questions. In this, his work becomes less a study in strategy than a meditation on civic responsibility. The real arsenal is not material—it is ethical. And readiness begins not in the factories of drones, but in the minds that decide when and why to use them.

THIS ESSAY REVIEW WAS WRITTEN BY AI AND EDITED BY INTELLICUREAN.

Analysis, Essays, Immigration, Law, Politics

Birthright, Borders, And The U.S. Constitution

In the July 11, 2025 episode of Bloomberg Law’s Weekend Law podcast, the spotlight turned to the Supreme Court and one of the most urgent constitutional questions of the present era: can the federal government deny citizenship to children born in the United States based solely on their parents’ immigration status?

At the center of the discussion was a new executive order issued by the Trump administration. The order aims to withhold automatic citizenship from children born to undocumented immigrants. In response, a federal judge in New Hampshire has not only issued a temporary nationwide block on the order but also certified a class-action lawsuit that could have sweeping implications.

This development, as legal analyst and former DOJ official Leon Fresco explained, is not merely procedural—it is strategic. The case, still in its early stages, may force the Supreme Court to revisit the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment’s Citizenship Clause.

Legal Strategy: Class Action as Constitutional Tool

Fresco’s key insight concerned how litigants are adapting to recent changes in judicial thinking. After the Supreme Court expressed skepticism toward broad nationwide injunctions, many believed such tools were effectively dead. But Fresco pointed out that class-action certification remains a viable, and perhaps more precise, alternative.

The New Hampshire judge’s ruling created a nationwide class of plaintiffs: all children born on or after February 20, 2025, to parents who are either unlawfully present or not U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents. The judge carefully excluded parents from the class, narrowing the focus to the children’s citizenship claims. This move strengthens the class’s legal position, emphasizing a uniform constitutional harm.

Fresco characterized this approach as both narrow in structure and expansive in effect. By building the case around a specific constitutional injury—the denial of citizenship by birth—the lawsuit avoids the kinds of inconsistencies that often weaken broader claims.

The Constitutional Question: What Does “Jurisdiction” Mean?

At the heart of the dispute lies the interpretation of the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.”

For over a century, the courts have understood this to include virtually everyone born on U.S. soil, with only narrow exceptions. The Trump administration’s order proposes a reinterpretation—arguing that undocumented immigrants and their children are not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States in the full constitutional sense.

This argument is novel, but not entirely new. Versions of it have circulated in fringe legal circles for years. What is new is the attempt to enforce this interpretation through executive power. If allowed to stand, it would mark a major departure from long-established constitutional norms.

Tactical Delay: The Risk of a Judicial “Stay”

Fresco raised a more immediate concern: that the Supreme Court may avoid ruling on the merits of the case altogether—at least for now. The Court, he warned, might grant a temporary stay that would allow the executive order to take effect while the lawsuit works its way through the lower courts.

This would mirror a pattern seen in other immigration cases, such as those involving Temporary Protected Status and humanitarian parole, where short procedural rulings allowed sweeping policy shifts without a full constitutional review.

The danger of such a stay is not theoretical. If the executive order goes into effect, children born under it would enter legal limbo. Denied citizenship, they would lack basic documents and protections. Challenging their status later could take years—possibly decades. In this way, even a temporary policy can create permanent consequences.

The Role of the Court: Principle or Procedure?

A central theme of the podcast segment was the evolving role of the judiciary in overseeing executive actions. Fresco questioned how the Court could reject a class-action lawsuit like this one without also undermining the logic that allows nationwide relief in other types of cases—such as defective products that cause uniform harm across the country.

If the courts are willing to permit class certification for consumer safety, why would they deny it in a case concerning citizenship—a matter of constitutional identity?

Fresco’s analogy was sharp: the law allows national class actions over faulty cribs or pharmaceuticals; why not over a birthright denied?

His point revealed the tension between procedural restraint and constitutional responsibility. If the Court is serious about limiting nationwide injunctions, it must offer a consistent, principled rationale for where it draws the line.

The Political Climate: Avoidance Through Silence

Toward the end of the discussion, Fresco referenced former Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, who has speculated that the Supreme Court may simply lack the votes to strike down the executive order directly. That possibility may explain the Court’s hesitancy to take up the issue.

Justice Neil Gorsuch’s past remarks—asking how the Court might “get to the merits fast”—suggest at least some justices recognize the urgency. But urgency does not always lead to clarity. If the Court allows the order to take effect temporarily, and then delays review, it could set in motion changes that are difficult to reverse.

In effect, the Court would be allowing the executive branch to reshape constitutional practice through interim decisions. That prospect, Fresco warned, is not only legally unstable but socially volatile.

The Stakes: Citizenship as Constitutional Reality

Ultimately, what this case asks is not only a legal question but a civic one: Is citizenship a stable constitutional right, or can it be redefined by policy?

The class-action strategy now moving through the courts offers one possible defense: a method of forcing judicial engagement by focusing on clear constitutional harm and avoiding broad, unwieldy claims. It is, in Fresco’s words, an effort to meet the Court on its own procedural terms.

Yet the deeper conflict remains. The very idea of birthright citizenship—once considered legally untouchable—is now on trial. Whether the courts decide quickly or delay, the consequences will be lasting.

Conclusion: The Constitution on the Line

The Bloomberg Law discussion offered more than a legal update. It revealed how quickly constitutional assumptions can be unsettled—and how creative legal strategies are now being used to hold the line.

The New Hampshire ruling, and the class it created, represent a new phase in this fight. Narrow in scope but vast in significance, the lawsuit calls on the judiciary to answer directly: Is a child born on U.S. soil a citizen, or not?

In that answer lies the future of constitutional meaning—and the measure of whether the law remains anchored to principle, or drifts with the political tide.

THIS ESSAY AND REVIEW WAS WRITTEN BY AI AND EDITED BY INTELLICUREAN

Essays, Opinion, Podcasts, Politics, Reviews

Liberal Dissent: “What Happens After Reason?”

The following essay is a review of the “More From Sam” podcast titled: “Democracy, Populism, Wealth Inequality, News-Induced Anxiety, & Rapid Fire Questions”. It was written by AI and edited by Intellicurean.

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“Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.”
—Voltaire

Sam Harris’s More From Sam podcast has long stood out as a calm, reasoned voice in a world increasingly shaped by outrage and misinformation. In his July 8, 2025 episode—“Democracy, Populism, Wealth Inequality, News-Induced Anxiety, & Rapid Fire Questions”—Harris returns to familiar ground, tackling the unraveling of liberal values in an age of emotional politics and tribal division. What he offers isn’t comfort, but clarity.

From the start, the episode takes on the loss of public discernment. Harris points to the obsession with conspiracy theories like the endlessly speculated Epstein “client list” or the Pentagon’s baffling explanation that some UFO sightings were the result of hazing rituals. These aren’t just oddities to Harris—they’re symptoms of a deeper cultural problem: a public so overwhelmed by distraction and distrust that fantasy starts to feel like truth.

Harris approaches these problems methodically. His message is simple but sobering: we’ve become more interested in emotional comfort than in facts, and more drawn to spectacle than to skepticism. That message might remind listeners of Voltaire, who famously fought against dogma with wit and courage. Harris doesn’t use satire—his tone is more restrained—but his purpose is similar: to defend reason when it’s under threat.

One of the episode’s strongest points is its framing of liberal democracy as a system designed not to be perfect, but to fix itself. Harris draws from philosopher Karl Popper’s idea of the “open society”—a society that can learn from its mistakes and adapt. That kind of flexibility, Harris argues, is being lost—not through dictatorship, but through the erosion of reason from within.

One of his main concerns is how some well-meaning liberals end up defending illiberal ideas. He warns that in the name of inclusion or tolerance, we can lose sight of core liberal values like free speech and open debate. This critique often appears in discussions around campus culture or global politics, and while it’s a theme Harris has returned to before, he insists it remains vital. Protecting liberal ideals sometimes means saying no—even when it’s uncomfortable.

When it comes to immigration, Harris raises tough questions. He suggests more rigorous ideological screening—using digital research, even green card revocation in extreme cases—to guard against threats to secular democracy. He draws a striking analogy between admitting Islamists and admitting Nazis, not to provoke, but to highlight what he sees as a dangerous inconsistency. The comparison is sharp and may turn some listeners away, but it reflects Harris’s commitment to intellectual honesty, even when it’s uncomfortable.

The second half of the episode shifts to populism, which Harris sees not just as anger at elites, but as a deeper rejection of standards and truth. He criticizes media personalities like Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens, calling them “outdoor cats” who roam wherever they like without much care for accuracy. In Harris’s view, they aren’t promoting ideas—they’re selling outrage.

There’s a dark humor in how Harris presents some of this—like the absurdity of the Pentagon’s “hazing” theory—but overall, his tone is serious. He’s less interested in jokes than in showing how far off track our public conversations have drifted.

Still, Harris has blind spots. When he discusses economic inequality, he acknowledges the problem but quickly dismisses progressive solutions like public grocery stores or eliminating billionaires as “crazy Marxist things.” That quick rejection may leave listeners wanting more. The frustration behind those ideas is real, and even if the proposals are extreme, they speak to growing inequality that Harris doesn’t fully explore. His alternative—”the best version of capitalism we can achieve”—sounds good, but he offers little detail about how to get there.

In moments like these, Harris can come across as a bit detached. His claim that the modern middle class lives better than aristocrats once did is probably true in terms of data—but it’s not always helpful to people dealing with rent hikes or medical bills. Reason, Harris believes, can guide us through today’s chaos. But reason doesn’t always provide comfort.

That’s the deeper tension at the heart of this episode. Harris is clear-headed and principled, but sometimes emotionally distant. He names the problems, sketches out a framework for thinking, and offers a kind of orientation—but he doesn’t try to offer easy answers or emotional reassurance.

And maybe that’s the point. In a political culture dominated by drama and spectacle, More From Sam feels like a calm lighthouse in a storm. Harris doesn’t pretend to solve every problem. But he helps us name them, sort through them, and hold on to the idea that clear thinking still matters. That might not be everything—but it’s something. And in times like these, it may be one of the few things we can still count on.

Book Reviews, Books, Essays, Politics

“Why Socialism”: Albert Einstein’s Resplendent Impertinence of Genius

Oscar Wilde’s barbed wit and George Bernard Shaw’s moral seriousness, of a review of John Bellamy Foster’s “Albert Einstein’s ‘Why Socialism?’: The Enduring Legacy of His Classic Essay” as it would appear in an esteemed magazine or journal.

In an era where celebrity chatter often drowns out meaningful discourse—ephemeral as the pixels that transmit it—it is both refreshing and necessary to recall that Albert Einstein was not merely a demigod of science, floating above the affairs of humankind. He was a thinker with moral conviction and intellectual courage. John Bellamy Foster’s timely volume, Albert Einstein’s “Why Socialism?”: The Enduring Legacy of His Classic Essay (Monthly Review, July 2025), excavates an overlooked manifesto whose radical clarity remains provocatively undiminished by time.

Unpacking Einstein’s Socialist Vision

More than seventy-five years have passed since Einstein contributed his essay Why Socialism? to the inaugural issue of Monthly Review in May 1949—right in the throes of America’s Red Scare. In that climate of ideological hysteria, even reason itself was suspect. Yet Einstein, with characteristic directness, named capitalism as the source of modern spiritual and economic malaise. “The economic anarchy of capitalist society,” he wrote, “is, in my opinion, the real source of the evil.”

This was no armchair abstraction. It was an act of moral and intellectual defiance in an era of conformity. Rather than tempering his critique to placate the political climate, Einstein diagnosed capitalism as a system that cripples the individual, erodes social cohesion, and mistakes profit for purpose. His socialism, then, was not bureaucratic dogma, but a humane vision: a call for solidarity, responsibility, and human dignity.

Foster’s introduction accomplishes three critical feats. First, it confirms Einstein’s consistent—if unfashionable—commitment to socialist ideals. Second, it situates Why Socialism? within a contemporary moment of deepening ecological and geopolitical crisis, not unlike the postwar anxieties Einstein addressed. Third, and most compellingly, Foster refuses to treat Einstein’s words as nostalgic artifacts. Instead, he reads them as instruments of moral interrogation for the present.

Einstein’s Moral Urgency in a Cynical Age

A powerful moment recounted in Foster’s commentary draws from a recently unearthed interview transcript titled, YES, ALBERT EINSTEIN WAS A SOCIALIST. In it, Einstein recounts a chilling conversation: a friend, contemplating nuclear annihilation, casually asks why Einstein is so concerned about humanity’s extinction. The question is as nihilistic as it is sincere—eerily prefiguring today’s fatalism disguised as realism.

Einstein’s response was telling. He saw this resignation not as philosophical sophistication, but as a symptom of capitalism’s emotional deadening. A world driven by profit, he argued, had alienated people not only from one another but from their very capacity to find joy. “The naive, simple and unsophisticated enjoyment of life,” he mourned, had become a casualty. The resulting solitude, he observed, was not noble introspection but a prison built of egotism and insecurity.

In Why Socialism?, Einstein extends this observation: “Man is, at one and the same time, a solitary being and a social being… As a social being, he seeks to gain the recognition and affection of his fellow human beings… and to improve their conditions of life.” The essay thus offers not just an economic critique, but a portrait of the spiritual crisis induced by capitalism.

A Socialism of Decency, Not Dogma

Einstein did not envision socialism as the rigid apparatus of state control feared by his critics. Instead, he imagined a cultural and moral transformation—one that would replace competition with cooperation, and empty success with meaningful contribution. “In addition to promoting his own innate abilities,” he wrote, “education would attempt to develop in [the individual] a sense of responsibility for his fellow man in place of the glorification of power and success in our present society.”

This human-centered socialism bears more resemblance to George Bernard Shaw’s ethical idealism than to any centralized Leninist command structure. It’s a socialism that asks not only how society is organized, but what kind of people it produces.

Economic Insecurity and the Specter of Waste

Foster’s commentary reaches its most powerful moments when it highlights the relevance of Einstein’s critique in light of today’s contradictions. Technological progress has not delivered leisure or security—it has exacerbated anxiety. “The worker is constantly in fear of losing his job,” Einstein observed. “Technological progress frequently results in more unemployment rather than an easing of the burden of work for all.”

The implications are strikingly modern. The rise of AI, automation, and gig economies has done little to stabilize human life. Meanwhile, the grotesque spectacle of billionaires launching vanity rockets while basic needs go unmet seems to fulfill Einstein’s warning: “Private capital tends to become concentrated in few hands… at the expense of smaller ones.”

Einstein’s insights cut deeper than economics. He warned that unbridled competition produces “a huge waste of labor and… crippling of the social consciousness of individuals.” Foster echoes this, showing how the very mechanisms that promise efficiency often produce alienation and redundancy. In a world where millions remain hungry while supply chains overflow, the diagnosis of “planned chaos” is tragically apt.

The Courage to Imagine a Better World

To Foster’s credit, the book does not shy away from the difficulties of implementing socialism. It acknowledges Einstein’s own candor: that centralized systems can create new forms of domination. “How can the rights of the individual be protected,” he asked, “and therewith a democratic counterweight to the power of bureaucracy be assured?”

Foster does not offer easy answers, nor does he romanticize Einstein’s views. But what he recovers is the philosopher’s refusal to retreat into cynicism. Einstein, like Shaw, understood that history does not advance through comfort or caution. It advances through the courage to propose—and live by—dangerous ideals.

This moral clarity is what makes Why Socialism? enduring. In an era when capitalism insists that no alternatives exist, Einstein reminds us that alternatives are always possible—so long as we preserve the moral imagination to conceive them.

No Middle Ground—And That’s the Point

If one criticism can be leveled at Foster’s approach, it is that he leaves little room for ambiguity. This is no quiet meditation on gradual reform. It is a call to judgment. In a time when readers often seek the past as comfort, Foster compels us to read it as confrontation. The result is not a nostalgic ode to Einstein’s politics but a provocation: What kind of civilization do we want?

Einstein wrote, “I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented towards social goals.” The boldness of that sentence still stings in a society that treats cooperation as utopian and hoarding as genius.

Foster’s restraint is notable throughout—he avoids both hagiography and polemic. He invites the reader to wrestle with Einstein’s ideas, not worship them. The book’s greatest achievement is that it makes us take Einstein seriously—not just as a physicist, but as a moral thinker who challenged the logic of his time and, perhaps, still ours.

Conclusion: A Dangerous Hope

To read Why Socialism? in 2025 is to hear a still-resonant signal from a thinker who refused to let go of the future. Einstein’s socialism was never about bureaucracies—it was about the possibility of decency, of cooperation, of lives lived without fear. And if that vision sounds naive today, then perhaps the problem lies not in the vision, but in the world that has taught us to dismiss it.

As Foster’s book makes clear, the choice remains what it was in 1949: between solidarity and atomization, between a society built on care or one cannibalized by competition. It is, at bottom, a choice between life and extinction.

One imagines Einstein, ever the pragmatist with a poet’s soul, would have approved.

Essays, Politics, Reviews, Social Media

REVIEW: “Donald Trump, Zohran Mamdani, and Posting as Politics”

An AI Review: “Donald Trump, Zohran Mamdani, and Posting as Politics”

In The New Yorker essay “Donald Trump, Zohran Mamdani, and Posting as Politics,” Kyle Chayka explores how social media has become not merely a communication tool for political figures but the primary arena in which politics itself now unfolds. The piece contrasts the digital personas of Donald Trump and Zohran Mamdani to illustrate how posting has evolved into a core exercise of power and a new form of political identity.

Chayka begins by chronicling former President Trump’s frenetic use of Truth Social, the platform he created after leaving Twitter. Trump does not merely announce decisions online; he appears to make them there. For instance, in June 2025, Trump unilaterally declared and publicized a ceasefire between Israel and Iran on Truth Social after having ordered strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities only days earlier. He issued warnings and taunts in the same all-caps style he once used to brag about the size of his nuclear arsenal compared to Kim Jong Un’s. The essay argues that this real-time posting has compressed world-shaking events into casual, ephemeral updates, trivializing violence and policy into the equivalent of viral content.

Yet Trump is not alone in harnessing the power of constant broadcasting. Chayka turns to Zohran Mamdani, a 33-year-old New York State assembly member and Democratic nominee for New York City mayor, who embodies a different approach to digital politics. Where Trump’s style is bombastic and combative, Mamdani’s presence on TikTok and Instagram is more polished and warm. His short-form videos—some produced by the creative agency Melted Solids—blend documentary realism with the aesthetics of viral influencer content. Clips of Mamdani walking through Manhattan or spontaneously greeting his filmmaker mother, Mira Nair, have garnered millions of views. His collaborations with high-profile digital creators like the Kid Mero and Emily Ratajkowski reflect an understanding that modern campaigns are not only about policy but about generating a steady stream of engaging material.

Chayka underscores that both politicians are symptoms of the same phenomenon: social media has swallowed the traditional infrastructure of political communication. No longer is there a clear boundary between a politician’s private musings and official pronouncements. The medium has become the message—and often the entire substance. Even memes have turned into flash points of political conflict. The article recounts how U.S. border officials detained a Norwegian tourist, Mads Mikkelsen, who carried a satirical meme of Vice President J.D. Vance on his phone, suggesting that political images have acquired the power to implicate their holders in ideological battles.

This transformation, Chayka argues, has significant consequences. Trump’s unfiltered posts, once viewed as a sideshow, have become a primary instrument of governance, with the potential to inflame conflicts or disrupt alliances. Meanwhile, Mamdani’s refined authenticity—crafted through video diaries and collaborations—illustrates how even progressive candidates must adopt the same always-online posture to cultivate a political following. While Mamdani’s style is less aggressive than Trump’s, it similarly depends on projecting a version of authenticity that is inseparable from performance.

The essay closes by reflecting on the future of American politics in this environment. The Democratic Party has struggled to counter Trump’s cultural dominance, as shown by tone-deaf spectacles like a Pride concert at the Kennedy Center with anti-Trump parodies of Les Misérables. In contrast, Mamdani’s campaign has generated genuine enthusiasm. Yet Chayka raises an open question: can the idealistic energy of this new digital-first politics survive the compromises of actual governance? If online performance has become the main credential for leadership, it is unclear whether any politician—no matter their ideology—can avoid the pressures of perpetual self-promotion.

In the end, Chayka’s essay offers a clear warning: social media has transformed politics into a theater of the immediate, where every post carries the weight of policy and every meme can become an instrument of power. Whether this dynamic can be reconciled with the demands of responsible government remains the central challenge of the digital age.

Strengths of the Essay

  1. Compelling Illustrations of Digital-First Governance
    • The article effectively juxtaposes Trump’s all-caps proclamations with Mamdani’s handheld videos.
    • Vivid examples: Trump’s posts about Iranian bombings feel almost satirical in their triviality—like “food grams”—yet they are deadly serious.
    • The Vance meme incident (Norwegian tourist Mikkelsen denied entry partly over a meme) underscores how digital artifacts can become politically consequential.
  2. Clear Argument
    • Chayka convincingly demonstrates that posting is no longer merely a marketing tactic—it is a form of exercising power.
    • The phrase “influencer-in-chief” encapsulates this new paradigm succinctly.
  3. Timeliness and Relevance
    • The piece captures the unsettling normalcy of this phenomenon—how we now expect statecraft to be conducted via apps.
    • It connects to broader anxieties about the erosion of institutional boundaries between governance and entertainment.
  4. Balanced Comparison
    • The contrast between Trump’s aggression and Mamdani’s optimism avoids simple equivalence.
    • The essay suggests that while style differs, both are beholden to the same dynamics: immediacy, spectacle, and performative authenticity.

Areas For Further Exploration

  1. A Critique of Consequences
    • While Chayka notes the trivialization of serious decisions (e.g., bombings posted like selfies), he stops short of examining the systemic dangers—the erosion of deliberative processes, the collapse of public trust, and the incentivizing of extremism.
    • A deeper dive into why social media rewards such maximalist performances—and how this affects democracy—would have been valuable.
  2. An Exploration of Audience Complicity
    • The essay portrays politicians as the main actors, but it could interrogate how audiences co-produce this environment: what are the incentives to consume, share, and reward this content?
    • Do voters really want “authenticity,” or simply entertainment masquerading as politics?
  3. Further developed Historical Context
    • While the piece references Trump’s first term, it could have drawn richer parallels with earlier media transformations:
      • Roosevelt’s radio “Fireside Chats”
      • Kennedy’s TV charisma
      • Obama’s early social media campaigns
    • This would help readers situate today’s moment within a longer trajectory.

Broader Implications

The essay ultimately raises unsettling questions:

  • If the performance of authenticity is now the primary qualification for political power, how do policy substance and institutional competence survive?
  • Is there any way for governance to reassert seriousness, or will the logic of virality always prevail?
  • What happens when online theater collides with offline consequences—wars, economies, civic life?

These questions feel especially urgent given that the piece suggests this dynamic is not limited to Trump’s right-wing populism but has also infiltrated progressive candidates.

*THIS ESSAY WAS WRITTEN BY CHAT GPT AND EDITED BY INTELLICUREAN.

Essays, Opinion, Politics

‘Populists Are Gaining Power And Keeping It. What Comes Next?’

POLITICO MAGAZINE (April 13, 2025) by Anthony J. Constantini:

In 2017, President Donald Trump was almost the only nationalist populist leader in the West. Liberal democracy — its protection at home and its promotion abroad — was the political default across America and Europe. The United States’ marquee conference for hard-right conservatives, CPAC, featured only one major foreign speaker that year, Britain’s Nigel Farage, who had just resigned as leader of the United Kingdom Independence Party after a successful Brexit campaign.

Eight years later, Trump has been joined on the world stage by a plethora of right-wing populists, and nationalism has gone mainstream. CPAC 2025 was a verifiable international event, with guests ranging from Argentina’s President Javier Milei to Slovakia’s Prime Minister Robert Fico to Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, among many others.

But while it’s clear that nationalism is having a moment, for now it’s just that: a moment.

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Making the West great again will not just aid populists politically. It will do something more important: Inspire Westerners on both sides of the Atlantic for decades to come. Youth throughout America and Europe, instead of being told they are members of a paradisical global society, will be brought up understanding they are part of an ancient and storied civilization. The countries which make up that civilization will have disagreements. But like a family, they will understand that they all share one common, civilizational home.

One worth fighting for.

READ MORE

Anthony J. Constantini writes about foreign policy and international political movements. He is a PhD candidate in American history at the University of Vienna.

Economics, Essays, Foreign Affairs, Politics

Foreign Affairs Essay: ‘Underestimating China’

FOREIGN AFFAIRS MAGAZINE (April 11, 2025):

Success in great-power competition requires rigorous and unsentimental net assessment. Yet the American estimation of China has lurched from one extreme to the other. For decades, Americans registered blistering economic growth, dominance of international trade, and growing geopolitical ambition, and anticipated the day when China might overtake a strategically distracted and politically paralyzed United States; after the 2008 financial crisis, and then especially at the height of the COVID pandemic, many observers believed that day had come. But the pendulum swung to the other extreme only a few years later as China’s abandonment of “zero COVID” failed to restore growth. Beijing was beset by ominous demographics, once unthinkable youth unemployment, and deepening stagnation while the United States was strengthening alliances, boasting breakthroughs in artificial intelligence and other technologies, and enjoying a booming economy with record low unemployment and record high stock markets.

The rise and fall of great powers often begins with flawed self-diagnosis.

A new consensus took hold: that an aging, slowing, and increasingly less nimble China would not overtake an ascendant United States. Washington shifted from pessimism to overconfidence. Yet just as past bouts of defeatism were misguided, so is today’s triumphalism, which risks dangerously underestimating both the latent and actual power of the only competitor in a century whose GDP has surpassed 70 percent of that of the United States. On critical metrics, China has already outmatched the United States. Economically, it boasts twice the manufacturing capacity. Technologically, it dominates everything from electric vehicles to fourth-generation nuclear reactors and now produces more active patents and top-cited scientific publications annually. Militarily, it features the world’s largest navy, bolstered by shipbuilding capacity 200 times as large as that of the United States; vastly greater missile stocks; and the world’s most advanced hypersonic capabilities—all results of the fastest military modernization in history. Even if China’s growth slows and its system falters, it will remain formidable strategically.

Such a commitment is not just a policy, but a signal of the capabilities of the United States, its allies, and partners. The Chinese Communist Party is inordinately focused on perceptions of American power, and a critical input in that equation is its estimation of Washington’s ability to pull in the allies and partners that even Beijing openly admits are the United States’ greatest advantage. Accordingly, the most effective U.S. strategy—the one that has most unsettled Beijing in recent years and can deter its adventurism in the future—is to build new, enduring, and robust capacities with these states. A sustained, bipartisan commitment to an upgraded alliance network, coupled with strategic cooperation in emerging fields, offers the best path forward to finding scale against the most formidable competitor the United States has ever encountered.

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KURT M. CAMPBELL is Chairman and Cofounder of The Asia Group. He served as Deputy Secretary of State and Indo-Pacific Coordinator at the National Security Council during the Biden administration.

RUSH DOSHI is an Assistant Professor at Georgetown University and Director of the China Strategy Initiative at the Council on Foreign Relations. He served as Deputy Senior Director for China and Taiwan Affairs at the National Security Council during the Biden administration.