An Alternate History of Post-Cold War British Defense Policy?

Amid renewed talk of breakdown of the "trans-Atlantic relationship" and a decline in optimism among the Western commentariat about the likely outcome of the war in Ukraine and its implications, those in Europe eternally banging the drum for bigger defense budgets and what they buy have been more than usually audible and strident. (Rather than the 2.5 percent of Gross Domestic Product so many British politicians have talked about these past few years the Ministry of Defence now claims that at least an extra percentage point beyond that is a necessary minimum in the current security environment.) Exemplary of the way these things tend to run is the piece in the Financial Times by Chatham House director and regular contributor to that paper, Bronwen Maddox.

Smarmily titled "Defence is the Greatest Public Benefit of All" (next to which the author brushes off "sickness benefits, pensions and healthcare" in the tone of a Roman patrician sneering about the bill for panem et circenses) Ms. Maddox pushes the old narrative that voter-fearing governments have been forsaking defense for the sake of goodies for a piggish public in a way no longer tenable. (Citing an unnamed "senior European minister" the way Thomas Friedman cites unnamed cab drivers, she passes on somebody's quip that "'For 30 years, we have been taking money out of defence budgets and putting it into health and welfare . . . Now, we will have to reverse that,'" with Ms. Maddox, speaking in her own voice, clarifying that this means that "politicians will have to persuade voters to surrender some of their benefits to pay for defense . . . the essential public benefit above all" (emphasis added).)

Reading the piece one would never know that European governments, Britain's included, started paring down their defense budgets (certainly in percentage-of-GDP terms) way before the past three decades--precisely because before those past three decades one did not see "normal," peacetime, spending levels, but the quasi-permanent war emergency levels of a near half-century Cold War. Those levels were in fact such as to be increasingly untenable as economies stagnated, debt piled up, and fiscal space began shrinking in the wake of the post-war boom's end, with, one should add, politicians often highly resistant to the process, and indeed consistently refusing to make the full cuts that fiscal, monetary and economic stability demanded, as Britain's case demonstrates. The end of that Cold War so exhausting for the West as well as the Soviets removed whatever justification there had been for Cold War defense levels that only went on getting less supportable given that the economic performance of Britain, Europe, and just about everybody else in the post-Cold War period was so lousy, all as politicians' resistance to such cuts again factored into the matter, along with the taking on of commitments far more costly than they realized. Thus, for example, did the era-defining 1998 review put forth by Tony Blair's government both reflect the (self-deluded?) economic overoptimism of the New Economy-dot-com-bubble-heyday-of-globalization period then just peaking--while the deployments of British troops in the twenty-first century, not least in the invasion of Iraq, showed no conception of the realities of such operations whatsoever on the part of that Prime Minister who promised that his government would be "wise spenders, not big spenders," with all that this meant for what the government got for its defense outlays.

Reading the piece one would also never know that the post-Cold War period, and even the decades before, were not periods of profligacy with domestic spending by vote-chasing politicians, but (however much this may have been occluded by the endurance of large fiscal states) extreme penuriousness with such spending as neoliberal governments privatized basic services and chipped away relentlessly at social safety nets, all as deindustrialization and financialization, and the destruction of labor's position by deregulation and union suppression, left most working harder for less. In Britain, after all, these were the years of Thatcher, and Blair, with the essential trend continuing through the years of austerity. And if perhaps confused by the extreme emergency of a (still ongoing) pandemic in which, whatever a lying buffoon would have us believe about who exactly said what words, the actions that spoke far louder rather than words said "let the bodies pile high in their thousands," what British voters got with the next round of Labour government, certainly by the time of the party Manifesto's release was Tony Blair, Part II, as his government's chancellor made clear that, from the standpoint of the party base, even worse was coming.

Admittedly the cuts might have been worse still were the governments in question more determined to maintain the defense spending levels of an earlier era. But that is a far cry from "taking money out of defence budgets and putting it into health and welfare," while it has also been plenty to leave the British public as a whole in something other than the coddled and pampered condition Ms. Maddox implies. Moreover, as the policymakers in question took that very different course it is worth remembering that, far from cowering before angry voters as they went about it, they implemented their extremely unpopular programs while displaying the kind of open contempt for the voting public that brought on the poll tax riots in Britain.

Indeed, the fundamentals of Ms. Maddox's narrative are so remote from reality as to be describable not as giving us the history of the relation of defense spending to social spending in Europe, and certainly Britain, but an alternate history of events--plain and simple science fiction, if of a low quality to judge by its lack of the quality of verisimilitude. Yet it is passed off and respected as if it were the real thing, endlessly promoted in the "respectable" organs of the press solely because of the functionaries of that press' eternal readiness to platform those desirous of rallying a public round the flag in that way enabling them to gloss over societal problems and divisions with demands for "unity" ("We're all in this together!" they say cynically, in contrast with the misguided but well-intentioned celebrities who caught so much more flak for an ill-timed "Imagine" cover just a few years later) and give them a freer hand against dissenters, the better to let them gut social programs and replace human welfare with the corporate kind, and implement the right-wing social engineering of conscription to the gratification of youth-haters and misandrists eager to see the young brutalized in basic training if not on the battlefield as they supply cannon fodder for elites skilllessly playing their game of Risk with real human lives.

The 2025 Academy Awards: Some Words on the Best Picture Nominees

As those who care to know are likely to already be aware, the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences held its 97th annual awards ceremony Sunday night.

At least where the conventionally higher-profile nominees were concerned there were not many surprises--certainly going by the way I have seen these things play out, year in, year out.

I am unsurprised that Anora won, given its buzz (helped by the backlash against the record thirteen prize-nominated Emilia Perez)--and only slightly less unsurprised by its having had a "near-sweep" (emphasis on "near") of the most prestigious prizes. Best Picture and Best Director go together more often than not, while it is more likely than not that the Best Picture winner will also get at least one of the acting prizes, and one of the writing prizes too. (Of the last ten Best Picture winners, six landed Best Director, seven landed at least one acting award, and seven a screenplay Oscar--while every single one of the Best Picture winners chalked up at least one win in the directing, acting or writing categories, and eight of them at least two wins, making for an average of 2.2, leaving Anora just a bit above average with three wins here.)

I am also unsurprised that, as it was a year where no movie was quite the overwhelming presence we see in some years (while we certainly did not see the kind of furor we had last year as the partisans of Greta Gerwig and Christopher Nolan demanded recognition for each of their films), the rest of the prizes were very widely dispersed, with Anora getting just one more prize, and that in a technical category (Film Editing), as the other four acting and writing prizes (Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor, Best Supporting Actress, Best Adapted Screenplay) were spread out among three other Best Picture contenders, namely The Brutalist, Emilia Perez, and Conclave (and A Real Pain with them)--the "spread the wealth" dynamic fairly in evidence here, with the additional recognition accorded them in the technical categories consistent with that. (Brutalist and Emilia Perez each got a second award for their music--the former for original score, the latter for the song "El Mal"--while The Substance, if missing out on the Best Actress prize for which Demi Moore was supposedly a lock, got only a hair and makeup award.)

At the same time I am unsurprised that Part Two of Dune was limited to the technical categories, and that Dune and Part One of Wicked each picked up a mere two prizes (especially as Wicked's being a faithful, no-additional-songs adaptation of the Broadway original ruled it out of the more musically-oriented categories, and especially as Wicked is just a "Part One" and so unlike the other contenders will have a chance at greater recognition in the 2026 ceremony, should the second half of the film be well-received, an expectation for which there is some precedent).

I am also not surprised that, if no movie claimed a really big share of the prizes, the result was still that the makers of two Best Picture nominees, including A Complete Unknown (which, a natural for an Oscar as a biopic of a famed singer, had among its eight nominations one for Timothée "Are You Sick of Hearing About Him Yet?" Chalamet), walked away from the ceremony without a single statue--for simple mathematics makes clear how hard it is to give everyone something when ten Best Picture nominees are now the norm, and there are only seventeen prizes to go around for any U.S.-made live-action feature film (the rest recognizing animated, short, documentary and foreign work), as a result of which their backers will have to settle for promoting their movies as "Oscar nominees" rather than "Oscar winners" (while Best Picture nominee I'm Still Here had its sole win the International Feature Film category).

And it is equally unsurprising that in a year in which filmgoing was down even by post-pandemic standards and excitement about the cinematic releases weak, and what eventually proved to be the leading contenders for the bigger prizes got limited attention from the wider audience (even A Complete Unknown grossed a mere $73 million, as the five that claimed eleven of the prizes, including all the more prestigious prizes, picked up much less--Anora, The Brutalist and Emilia Perez grossing just $15 million each, A Real Pain half that, and the whole lot under $90 million) the evidences of the interest of the general public in the ceremony were not very high. If viewership was better than in the (understandably) rock-bottom year of 2021, it fell for the first time in four years.

Indeed, considering these numbers the Julius Streichers over at the New York Times wondered aloud if the numbers did not bespeak the cultural "irrelevance" of the ceremony.

Admittedly I have myself been arguing for the declining "relevance" of the ceremony for years now, but what the NYT offered was not an assessment of the ways in which popular culture and the standing of film in it have evolved, but rather their starting point for an argument that "as the country veered right" the perceived progressive content of the more substantial nominees was out of touch with the sentiment of the folks who live outside "the Hollywood bubble." An exercise in what those schooled in "logical fallacies" call "begging the question," it is entirely clear from the Times' predictably taking that line that they mean for their readers to think so--continuing in their relentlessly pushing the view that the rest of the country has no truck with Hollywood liberalism (remember their part in spinning the story of Twisters' release?), and especially that the outcome of the presidential election of 2024 was not a matter of profound material and especially economic discontents, staggering incompetence (or indifference) on the part of a Democratic Party that, utterly terrified of anything that might press its platform in a progressive direction, put itself in an exceedingly difficult situation through the decisions that led to its changing candidates so late in the race, and the lack of alternatives for the protest-minded that those so committed to forcing a "Hold your nose and vote"-type of politics on the public approve so heartily, but instead an expression of deep shifts in the views of the public that made November 2024 a turning point in der kulturkampf, on the flames of which they stand ever ready to pour gasoline--and point to as justification for their own rightward march.

The Cost of Living: What We Really Pay for Housing

Jedidajah Otte's recent article about the supposed "dream" of home ownership having turned into a nightmare for a great many Americans is worthy of notice for a number of reasons. One is that, in contrast with much of the coverage of this subject, it acknowledges that rather than the "pride of ownership" or the security that is supposed to come with owning the four walls and roof within which they reside, the problems of renters in a time of scarcity and spiking prices (and zero acknowledgment from anyone in a position of authority that humans might have need of affordable rentals) have constituted a significant "push" factor in this direction. Another is that in considering the troubles of homeowners Otte discusses not only the high sale price of homes, but also the high cost of continuing to live in a home even after one owns it "free and clear"--the cost of taxes, insurance and maintenance.

The last in particular is testimony to the fact that not only has housing been made difficult to attain by an economy running on real estate speculation turbo-charged by casinonomics-minded ultra-loose monetary policy, and policymakers' matching their obsequiousness toward all those who benefit from that game with contempt for the public's housing needs (indeed, they invariably hasten to blame "irresponsible" homeowners for any problems they have, the better to deflect any criticism of the Finance-Insurance-Real Estate sector), but the decrepit or obscenely high-maintenance character of the housing built and sold to the public. Making it no accident that your spam box may be full of unsolicited offers regarding the roof you may or may not have, the product, in contrast to the traditional logic and justification of economic growth and the exactions it demands as being for the sake of making necessities cheaper and more abundant, is all too consistent with the now century-old consumer culture designed to force people to consume as much as possible by making meeting basic needs as expensive an affair as possible, turning home ownership into one unending "renovation" of a money pit while glorifying the situation as "choice," and attributing any failure of the product or absence of potential improvement to consumer tastes. (Home buyers, they tell us, go for cheapness rather than solidity in their homes, and then at the same time they tell us that it's the consumer and not the builder who resists price-cutting "manufactured" house-building. Sure, no contradiction there.)

The next time some techno-hyped nitwit gives you the spiel about surging technological change making our lives better every day, remind them of what they are paying for shelter.

And food.

And health care.