Russia in NATO? (free trade & elite populists)

 Is NATO membership for Russia now inevitable with the rise of China?

The idea of Russia becoming a NATO member has at different times been floated by both Western and Russian leaders, as well as by some experts.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia%E2%80%93NATO_relations#Suggestions_of_Russia_joining_NATO

During a series of interviews with filmmaker Oliver Stone, President Vladimir Putin told him that he floated the possibility of Russia joining NATO to Bill Clinton when he visited Moscow in 2000. Putin stated: “During the meeting I said, ‘Let’s consider an option that Russia might join NATO. Mr. Clinton said ‘Why not?’ But the U.S. delegation got very nervous.”^[4] According to former Secretary General of NATO Anders Fogh Rasmussen, in the early days of his presidency around 2000–2001, Putin made many statements that indicated he was very favorable to the idea of Russia joining NATO. When Rasmussen first met President Putin in 2002, the Russian leader seemed to him as very “pro-Western.”

Initially, it was the Americans who did not want Russia to join NATO.

It seems that NATO is pretty much all about defense against Russia.

In 1990, while negotiating German reunification at the end of the Cold War with United States Secretary of State James Baker, Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev said that “You say that NATO is not directed against us, that it is simply a security structure that is adapting to new realities … therefore, we propose to join NATO.” However, Baker dismissed the possibility as a “dream”.

Because the Soviet Union no longer exists, this American discomfort with the idea of a democratic Russia joining NATO can seem puzzling.

This can be explained by distinguishing between idealism and realism in foreign policy.

Idealists tend to perceive the world in terms of a clash of ideologies, for example, democracy versus communism.

Idealists would then advance the notion that people need to become more educated and then join together to “overcome their differences”.

One sees this in the Black Lives Matter protests.

Idealists perceive the problem to be a stubborn ideology of “hatred”, namely “racism”.

A realist perspective would emphasize that groups and individuals are in a permanent state of competition for resources, both material and ideal (status).

Ideological conflict tends to be superficial and merely an excuse for competition over resources.

Ideology serves the purpose of hiding the corruption and hypocrisy of all parties engaged in conflict with one another.

Indeed, the idealistic BLM protesters tend to be mostly white and college educated.

They have absolutely no intention of altering American housing policies or any other policies that privilege themselves over historically abused minorities.

From a realist perspective, NATO exists to contain Russia, and not just squashing Soviet-sponsored revolution and deterring the military might of the Eastern bloc.

Peace can only be achieved by attaining a balance of power.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balance_of_power_(international_relations)

The balance of power theory in international relations suggests that states may secure their survival by preventing any one state from gaining enough military power to dominate all others.^[1] If one state becomes much stronger, the theory predicts it will take advantage of its weaker neighbors, thereby driving them to unite in a defensive coalition. Some realists maintain that a balance-of-power system is more stable than one with a dominant state, as aggression is unprofitable when there is equilibrium of power between rival coalitions.

One can see advocacy for a realignment in a balance of power in the efforts of former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn.

For whatever reason, Flynn became increasingly pro-Russian, much to the alarm of his colleagues in the national security apparatus.

Flynn also became vehemently opposed to the Islamic State around this time, a policy position which was also considered peculiar by the military.

The Islamic State is a criminal enterprise pretending to be fanatically religious, and is not an existential threat to the USA.

Flynn’s idea was that the USA could join forces with Russia and the Assad regime of Syria to counter the Islamic State.

Flynn’s idea is bizarre, but it does help to illustrate the general framework of how balance of power works in international relations.

In a nutshell, my enemy’s enemy is my friend.

Again, Flynn’s view might reflect the logic of realism in a credible way.

But Flynn’s estimation of the capabilities and intentions of the various players is eccentric.

The Islamic State is a regional challenge.

But Russia is a challenge on a global scale.

If anything, a realist would ally themselves with the smaller power against the greater mutual threat.

Russia is not the smaller power compared to the supposed threat posed by political Islam.

But there is an elephant in the room that Flynn totally neglects.

That is China.

Russia may be a great power.

But Russia is not a rising power.

In fact, economically, Russia might be set up to be a declining power.

China might not only be a rising power, but an eventual global superpower.

So one would expect Russia to be a likely ally with the West and others against China.

Not creating a balance of power against China would lead to war.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thucydides_Trap

The Thucydides Trap, also referred to as Thucydides’s Trap, is a term coined by American political scientist Graham T. Allison to describe an apparent tendency towards war when an emerging power threatens to displace an existing great power as the international hegemon.^[1] It was coined and is primarily used to describe a potential conflict between the United States and the People’s Republic of China.^[2]

The term is based on a quote by ancient Athenian historian and military general Thucydides, which posits that the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta had been inevitable because of Spartan fear of the growth of Athenian power.

The USA would also have to reign itself in to prevent war, for example, by avoiding a trade war that can escalate into real war.

The term is primarily used and was coined in relation to a potential military conflict between the United States and the People’s Republic of China.^[2]Xi Jinping, the paramount leader of China, has himself referenced the term, cautioning that “We all need to work together to avoid the Thucydides trap”.^[13] The term gained further influence in 2018 as a result of a surge in US-Chinese tensions after US President Donald Trump imposed tariffs on almost half of China’s exports to the US, leading to a tit-for-tat series of economic escalations.

There is one major precedent for engaging with Russia in order to contain China.

The Nixon administration in the 1970s engaged in one of the greatest coup of the Cold War when Nixon unexpectedly visited China and normalized relations.

IIRC, turning a third power against its former ally is known to realists as “triangulation”.

It is akin to turning a foreign spy into a double agent working for oneself.

That tilt toward Moscow cannot happen now because Putin has become too hostile to the West.

When Putin finally pass from the scene, it might be conceivable that NATO and Russia will form some sort of accord against China.

That would be a geopolitically formidable arrangement against China.

This does not mean that Russia would be a formal member of NATO.

For example, France withdrew from NATO in 1966, although it was readmitted in 2009.

During that period, France was nevertheless integrated with NATO forces.

Economically, however, all Western countries would comprise a free trade area with the Eurasian Economic Union.

The EEU seems to be modeled after the EU.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurasian_Economic_Union

The Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU)^{[note 1]} is an economic union of states located in Eastern Europe, Western Asia, and Central Asia.

The Eurasian Economic Union has an integrated single market of 180 million people and a gross domestic product of over Int$5 trillion.^[8] The EAEU encourages the free movement of goods and services, and provides for common policies in the macroeconomic sphere, transport, industry and agriculture, energy, foreign trade and investment, customs, technical regulation, competition and antitrust regulation. Provisions for a single currency and greater integration are envisioned for the future.^[9][10][11] The union operates through supranational and intergovernmental institutions. The Supreme Eurasian Economic Council is the supreme body of the Union, consisting of the Heads of the Member States. The second level of intergovernmental institutions is represented by the Eurasian Intergovernmental Council (consisting of the Heads of the governments of member states). The day-to-day work of the EAEU is done through the Eurasian Economic Commission, the executive body of the Union. There is also a judicial body – the Court of the EAEU.

Eventually, this pan-Eurasian free trade area would merge with other free-trade areas — with the exception of China.

There is one problem with this vision of a global free trade zone.

The problem is the USA.

It seems that the USA is the only country in the world that is turning its back on trade with other countries.

In fact, China is signing free trade pacts with other countries, including America’s closest allies.

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-54899254

Asian leaders have signed a mammoth trade deal that has been nearly a decade in the making.

It includes the 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean), plus China, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand.

The members make up nearly a third of the world’s population and account for 29% of global gross domestic product.

The new free trade zone will be bigger than both the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement and the European Union.

There are products that countries should be able to produce themselves to a certain extent.

There is a need to have a significant internal source of domestically produced food, medicine, high tech equipment and weaponry in case of a disaster that would disrupt the supply chain.

But those sources are comparatively small, and serves merely as a cushion in an emergency.

Prosperity and growth, in contrast, are based on trade.

Turning away from trade is economic suicide.

It’s not a good idea to take North Korea’s policy of total self-reliance (juche) as an economic inspiration.

It has become a cliche that in the past couple of generations two-thirds of humanity has been lifted out of poverty not by socialism but through trade.

In terms of national security, however, even a mild socialism would have its benefits compared to a nationalistic populism hostile to trade.

Again, the cliche is that socialism provides a safety net but not a ladder.

That safety net would be crucial in a catastrophic crisis, and thus would have value in terms of national security.

For example, envision an entire population of a country that had access to basic healthcare, if not comprehensive healthcare.

That is, the cost of a visit to the doctor and tests would be covered by the state for all citizens, although treatment and medication might not be covered.

This would be crucial in a pandemic, for example, in order to get patients into hospitals in order to gauge infections and unfamiliar symptoms in the population.

Again, the point would be that a minimal level of health care would be an imperative for national security.

Notably, there has been no movement in that direction in the USA during a pandemic and under the leadership of a supposedly populist administration.

This reveals something remarkable about the nature of nationalist authoritarian populism.

At one time, the dominant theory was that populism is triggered by the fear of change and the fear of obsolescence.

It has been pointed out that conservatives fear change and they stoically hunker down as they face it.

In contrast to conservatives, populists don’t so much fear change as they loath outsiders and scapegoat foreigners.

Moreover, also in contrast to conservatives, the populist does not hold back in the expression of their emotions.

Recently, this line of thought has been refined even further.

It is not those who are under economic pressure who turn toward populism.

Indeed, those who are suffering quietly hunker down and wait for the storm to pass.

Rather, those who turn toward populism are usually doing quite well.

However, they perceive themselves as potentially under threat by outsiders.

But even this does not capture the true spirit of populism.

Here it is important to emphasize that populism is better understood as an ethos or mentality.

That is, populism is a frame of mind more than an articulated ideology or philosophy.

Liberals and conservatives place a primacy on moral considerations.

Progressives and libertarians value rationality above all else (enlightenment and enlightened self-interest, respectively).

For populists, the guiding principal of their lives is wilfulness.

The primary motive of populism might not be fear but rather the desire for uninhibited self-aggrandizement as a cure-all.

The populist tends to believe that if society is stripped of any and all forms of moral, societal or governmental inhibitions, then they will thrive.

The populist mentality can be summarized as “Do whatever you feel like doing” — especially if what you feel like doing is aggressive.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thelema

In moral terms, this is the opposite of conservatism.

Populism resembles a perverse sociopathic version of romanticism, which advocates liberation from restraint as the essence of justice.

Moreover, this impulsive populism is not a coolly rationalistic libertarianism.

Exhibit A is the infamous speech of 1987’s “Wall Street” in which the character Gordon Gekko explained that “Greed is good.”

Notably, greed is not self-interest, much less enlightened self-interest.

Greed is when people become irrational, imprudent and get carried away.

(“Wall Street”, 1987, greed is good speech)

https://youtu.be/VVxYOQS6ggk

That’s also the theme of 1990s “Pretty Woman”, which is Exhibit B.

The old-fashioned industrial capitalist is presented in the movie as a stately gentleman who proudly aspires to build up an actual industry.

In contrast, the finance capitalist of the 1980s values aggression for the sake of aggression in his desire to tear down companies.

It could be that the current spirit of populism in the USA finds its origins in the upper classes, and trickled down slowly.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/05/11/how-greenwich-republicans-learned-to-love-trump

Populism is not identical with fascism.

But insofar that there are claims that they are both appropriated by or even originate from the upper classes is instructive.

IIRC, at least one Marxist critique of fascism claims that fascism originates in the upper-middle classes and drifted upward into the ruling elites.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitions_of_fascism#By_Marxists

Marxists argue that fascism represents the last attempt of a ruling class (specifically, the capitalist bourgeoisie) to preserve its grip on power in the face of an imminent proletarian revolution. Fascist movements are not necessarily created by the ruling class, but they can only gain political power with the help of that class and with funding from big business. Once in power, the fascists serve the interests of their benefactors.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/fascism/Intellectual-origins

Social bases of fascist movements

Despite their long history in European thought, fascist ideas prospered politically only when perceived economic threats increased their appeal to members of certain social groups. In 1928, before the onset of the Great Depression in Germany, Hitler received less than 3 percent of the vote; after 1930, however, far more voters—many of them middle and lower-middle class individuals fearful of “proletarianization”—gave him their support. The economic anxiety underlying the success of Nazism was reflected to some extent in party membership, which was drawn disproportionately from economic elites and other high-status groups—especially for leadership positions. These posts also contained large numbers of university professors, high school teachers, higher civil servants, former military officers, doctors, lawyers, businessmen, and landed aristocrats. In the lower ranks of the party, white-collar workers were overrepresented and blue-collar workers were underrepresented. Similarly, in Italy, as historian Charles Maier has shown, fascism originally received most of its support from large and small landowners who felt beleaguered by landless farm workers and from businessmen and white-collar workers who felt a similar threat from industrial workers. In 1927, 75 percent of the membership of Mussolini’s party came from the middle and lower-middle classes and only 15 percent from the working class. Nearly 10 percent came from Italy’s economic elites, who represented a much smaller portion of the general population.

Again, populist anger in contemporary America is not primarily based on economic hardship.

It is based on temperament.

• A segment of the population scattered throughout the ideological spectrum has an underlying ethos of uninhibited aggression, greed, emotionalism, tribalism.
• They believe that a stripping away of all inhibitions is the path to personal profit.
• In normal times, this segment of society disguises its inclinations as every sort of political ideology, even to itself (they identify as liberal, libertarian, conservative, etc.).
• They to be
  • lucky in their privileged social origins,
  • underwhelming in their mediocrity, and
  • awesomely overconfident.
• During a period of diminished prospects, this segment of society begins to advocate for this new philosophy of self-indulgence as a cure-all.
• They react with explosive hostility against those who insist on imposing rules.

The populist opposes free trade, and that is a problem economically.

But it is also a problem in terms of national security and the effort to contain China by creating trade areas that exclude China.

It’s also a moral problem.

The populist complains that the game is rigged.

But historically, the system was rigged in their favor.

They want to rig the game again for their own benefit by eliminating competition by banning trade and immigration.

Handshake alternatives? (Fascist yoga & "pizza effect")

 Anthony Fauci has stated that the handshake is an epidemiologist’s worst nightmare.

Fauci wishes that the custom of the handshake would disappear.

https://www.npr.org/2020/04/16/836424330/dr-fauci-says-no-more-handshakes-some-never-liked-them-to-begin-with

What could replace the handshake as a custom of greeting?

In the time of the novel coronavirus, the elbow bump has at times served as a surrogate for the handshake.

But the elbow bump seems like it is done largely for fun, as a kind of parody that just happens to be a useful replacement for the handshake.

Indeed, the elbow bump originated as a parody of the fist bump, which is itself one step away from the handshake.

People generally do not like to diverge too far from custom.

The elbow bump is thus unlikely to become established as a replacement for the handshake.

Here, the assumption is being made that innovation in social norms tends to happen in unique historical conditions:

• during a profound, prolonged crisis (say, a pandemic);
• along the lines of established customs (say, borrowing from the pledge of allegiance);
• in a period of changing technology (say, online meetings).

The time may be ripe for diversifying away from the handshake without totally abandoning it.

Again, what would take its place?

Interestingly, the handshake was itself originally not an established custom in American history.

For example, George Washington preferred bowing.

It was the Quakers who popularized handshaking because of its egalitarian and communal flavor.

So there might be hope for further innovation in American greetings.

This might be especially true because online conferencing is now a permanent facet of life.

You cannot shake hands over the internet.

What greeting gesture would be telegenic and prevent the spread of disease?

The South Asian namaste greeting might be especially appealing.

This is done by placing the two palms of the hands together and placing it near your heart and bowing the head slightly.

With namaste,

• the mouth remains closed and
• distance is maintained.

The latter precaution is lacking with the elbow bump.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Namaste

Namaste is a dignified gesture, and diplomats who must remain maskless and silent during photo shoots have recently adopted it.

Indeed, namaste may become a permanent part of the diplomat’s etiquette.

It may appeal to some ordinary people.

It is more egalitarian and less formal than a stiff bow.

It also resembles the Christian act of prayer.

But, again, Americans are unlikely to adopt a self-consciously foreign custom.

Namaste might be just too gosh darn exotic for Americans.

One might look back into American history to find an alternative to the handshake.

One prospect might be the Bellamy salute.

The Bellamy salute was introduced along with the Pledge of Allegiance into American schools after 1892.

Raising one’s right arm is an American custom in oath taking.

For example, it is what witnesses do when they are sworn in during a trial.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bellamy_salute

One obvious problem with the Bellamy salute is that it resembled the fascist salute.

Thus, the Bellamy salute was retired in 1942 and replaced with the hand on the heart.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-37208404

As relatively recent as it is, the hand on the heart might just make a pretty good American greeting.

American school kids put their hands on their hearts once a day in school for the flag ceremony.

By the time they have graduated high school, they have performed that gesture over two thousand times.

That is many more times than they have shaken hands.

That is an ingrained and established custom.

It also might make a good greeting gesture for online meetings.

https://www.nbcnews.com/nightly-news/video/4-year-old-inspires-with-daily-pledge-of-allegiance-video-call-amid-coronavirus-pandemic-82631749922

One emerging custom is to wave to everyone as a video-conference comes to an end.

It is a decisive way to end a Zoom meeting, much more than a verbal goodbye.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/23/tech/waving-video-calls/index.html

There would therefore be the two new customs that would replace the handshake and provide etiquette for video-conferencing:

• the right hand on the heart would be the new greeting, and
• a light wave would be the new goodbye.

Interestingly, the customs of placing one’s hand on one’s heart and raising that hand are connected in Western history.

They are associated with the so-called “Roman salute”.

A myth developed that the Romans would salute by placing their hands on their hearts and then raising that hand to the sky.

On the one hand, some fascists prefer the stiff hand-over-heart salute — the first sequence in the supposed Roman salute.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zogist_salute

On the other hand, other fascists lean more toward the arm-in-the-air salute — the second motion in the reconstructed “Roman salute”.

Unfortunately, there is little historical evidence of how the Roman’s saluted one another.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_salute

The modern gesture consists of stiffly extending the right arm frontally and raising it roughly 135 degrees from the body’s vertical axis, with the palm of the hand facing down and the fingers stretched out and touching each other.^[1] According to common perceptions, this salute was based on an ancient Roman custom.^[1] However, this description is unknown in Roman literature and is never mentioned by ancient historians of Rome.^[1] Not a single Roman work of art displays a salute of this kind.^[1] The gesture of the raised right arm or hand in Roman and other ancient cultures that does exist in surviving literature and art generally had a significantly different function and is never identical with the modern straight-arm salute.

The Romans were known to raise their hands not for salutes, but for greetings, pledges and oaths — similar to Americans.

Men in authority would also raise their right arm when their speaking to a crowd, which some politicians still do.

The raised arm in oath taking became a convention in French painting since the time of the French Revolution.

(“The Oath of the Horatii”, J-L David)

(“The Tennis Court Oath”, J-L David)

In the early 20th-century Western cinema, the raised arm as a salute became a staple in the portrayal of Roman and antique Mediterranean custom.

(“Cabiria”, 1914)

https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Gn3XZNrORyw/WoBAfnrcICI/AAAAAAAAMQo/OpES9lV2bwwAwMnCt9dgHdJCIe1uYVKPACLcBGAs/s1600/Screenshot%2B%2528303%2529.png

(“Ben Hur”, 1959, imperial triumph scene)

https://youtu.be/4zGxi-7xDDw?t=68

https://www.businessinsider.com/origins-of-us-military-salute-2017-12

If you’ve ever seen any of the Roman movies, the Romans would sometimes slap their chest and put their arm up in the air as a matter of salute. And they say that that salute had an origin to show allegiance from your heart and then to show that you didn’t have a weapon in your fighting hand — that your hand was open and that you’re a friend. That’s one of the very early origin stories.

This was later adopted by Italian Fascists and German Nazis and their kindred spirits (e.g., the current ruling party of India).

So the so-called “Roman salute” was created and propagated by Hollywood and later adopted by Italian fascists who assumed it was a historical artifact.

This is an example of the “pizza effect”.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pizza_effect

In religious studies and sociology, the pizza effect is the phenomenon of elements of a nation or people’s culture being transformed or at least more fully embraced elsewhere, then re-imported to their culture of origin,^[1] or the way in which a community’s self-understanding is influenced by (or imposed by, or imported from) foreign sources.^[2]

Related phrases include “hermeneutical feedback loop”, “re-enculturation”, and “self-orientalization”. The term “pizza effect” was coined by the Austrian-born Hindu monk and professor of Anthropology at Syracuse University, Agehananda Bharati^[2][3] in 1970,^[4] based on his understanding of the history of pizza.^[4]:273

Bharati writes of how pizza was in Italy originally simple flat bread.

It became a full meal in the USA, topped by cheese, meat, sauce and vegetables.

Italians later adopted this American “pizza” and imagined it to be Italian in origin.

The original pizza was a simple, hot-baked bread without any trimmings, the staple of the Calabrian and Sicilian contadini from whom well over 90% of all Italo-Americans descend. After World War I, a highly elaborated dish, the U.S. pizza of many sizes, flavors, and hues, made its way back to Italy with visiting kinsfolk from America. The term and the object have acquired a new meaning and a new status, as well as many new tastes in the land of its origin, not only in the south, but throughout the length and width of Italy.

Bharati’s original examples of the pizza effect were from India.

However, these examples did not involve the adoption by Indians of foreign innovations wrongly assumed to be authentically Indian.

Rather, they involved the elevation in status in India of Indian cultural products that were celebrated in the West.

• The Apu trilogy films of Satyajit Ray, which were flops in India before they were given prizes in Western countries and re-evaluated as classics of the Indian cinema^[5]
• The popularity in India of movements like those of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and ISKCON based on their popularity in the West^[5]
• The popularity of postural yoga in India, several gurus, and some other Indian systems and teachings following their popularity in the West^[6]
• The exalted status of the Bhagavad Gita in Hinduism, where, although it was always highly regarded, it gained its current prominence only following Western attempts to identify a single canonical “Hindu Bible”^[4]

However, modern yoga is an example of the classic pizza effect involving two-way cultural appropriation.

Yoga as it is known in the West originated in relation to meditation.

It originated as a way to remain comfortable while in a sitting position for long periods of time.

It seems to have been rather limited in scope.

By the end of the 19th century, Hatha yoga was almost extinct in India, practiced by people on the edge of society.

It was despised by Hindus and the British Raj alike.

The marginalization of yoga changed when Yogendra (starting in 1918) and Kuvalayananda (starting in 1924) taught yoga ostensibly as a means of attaining physical wellbeing, and to study its medical effects.

Their real motivation, however, was a nationalistic desire to show the greatness of Indian culture.

Since then, yoga has became very elaborate, diverse and athletic.

Today, yoga is one of the favorite exercises of Western yuppies.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postural_yoga_in_India

Postural yoga began in India as a variant of traditional yoga, which was a mainly meditational practice; it has spread across the world and returned to the Indian subcontinent in different forms. The ancient Yoga Sutras of Patanjali mention yoga postures, asanas, only briefly, as meditation seats. Medieval Haṭha yoga made use of a small number of asanas alongside other techniques such as pranayama, shatkarmas, and mudras, but it was despised and almost extinct by the start of the 20th century. At that time, the revival of postural yoga was at first driven by Indian nationalism. Advocates such as Yogendra and Kuvalayananda made yoga acceptable in the 1920s, treating it as a medical subject. From the 1930s, the “father of modern yoga” Krishnamacharya developed a vigorous postural yoga, influenced by gymnastics, with transitions (vinyasas) that allowed one pose to flow into the next.

However, so much of the familiar yoga repertoire did not originate from India.

They originated from Scandinavian gymnastics in the late 19th century.

Gymnastics became popular during the macho Victorian age of European colonization.

The invention of photography made dissemination of gymnastics possible on a global scale.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-40354525

[M]any of the most well-known asanas and sequences they are used to performing – including “Downward Dog” and Surya Namaskar, or “Sun Salutation” – are not found in ancient texts.

Sun salutations are “now seen as integral to yoga practice” but are not found in any old texts and only started being taught around the 1930s, says Dr Jim Mallinson, a yoga history researcher and senior lecturer at the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS).

Popular yoga styles like Ashtanga, Iyengar and Vinyasa Flow are also modern incarnations. “We find elements of them in older texts and historical sources but also many parts of them are modern innovations in terms of yoga,” he says.

Researchers believe Downward Dog actually corresponds with the Elephant Pose – references to which are first found in 18th Century texts. The posture was also traditionally used as an exercise by Indian wrestlers.

However similar postures can be found in popular physical exercise books that emerged at the beginning of the 20th Century.

Dr Mark Singleton, a senior researcher in the modern history of yoga at SOAS, says Swedish and Danish gymnastic drills were particularly influential on Indian yoga practices.

A widespread “preoccupation with natural fitness” at the turn of the 19th Century coincided with developments in photography, which allowed pictures of poses and exercises to easily spread between India and the West.

“This inevitably meant that European notions of gymnastics and bodybuilding got mixed up with Indian postures and poses along the way,” he writes. “And what many of us know today as yoga is partially a result of this mixing.”

Yoga in India was first practised only by religious ascetics, and clear references to it can be found in texts from 2,500 years ago, Dr Mallinson says. For them, yoga was “totally about steadiness and stillness”, not the dynamic kind of movements found in yoga classes today.

Over time practices evolved, but yoga has undergone a significant shift in the last 100 years as part of globalisation, and physical postures in particular have become more important.

Such holy men performing feats like sitting still for days still exist today in India, he says. But mass participation in yoga by Indians only came in the 20th Century, as in the rest of the world.

In fact, the exposure of Indians to Western gymnastics was very direct and obvious.

At this stage, this was not the pizza effect properly speaking.

It was, rather, the conscious appropriation of Western culture.

The pizza effect happened later when Indians forgot about the Western influence on yoga, especially after it became popular in the West.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/40brQdJ61GQZkwL3CPl3RVP/whats-behind-the-five-popular-yoga-poses-loved-by-the-world

Scandinavian gymnastic keep fit drills were introduced in schools and military training throughout India. European bodybuilders commanded huge audiences when they toured the subcontinent and their techniques were enthusiastically adopted. During the 1920s and ’30s, (a period of growing Indian nationalism) a new generation of Indian fitness enthusiasts began to re-invent yoga as a modern, homegrown system for health and strength which could be practised by ordinary people.

There is a connection between gymnastics and fascism, with their mutual focus on physical vitality and choreography.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leni_Riefenstahl#Africa,_photography,_books_and_final_film

http://marcuse.faculty.history.ucsb.edu/classes/33d/33dTexts/SontagFascinFascism75.htm

The rendering of movement in grandiose and rigid patterns is another element in common, for such choreography rehearses the very unity of the polity. The masses are made to take form, be design. Hence mass athletic demonstrations, a choreographed display of bodies, are a valued activity in all totalitarian countries; and the art of the gymnast, so popular now in Eastern Europe, also evokes recurrent features of fascist aesthetics; the holding in or confining of force; military precision.

That puts the political role of yoga in contemporary India in a different light.

*Prepare a go-bag now — and a “go-drawer”

 You must have a go-bag of stuff already packed.

This is in order to evacuate immediately in an emergency.

Here is a checklist:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/19/at-home/evacuation-bag.html

• Have a plan. What you pack depends on where you plan on sheltering (hotel, with family, etc.)
• Everyone needs to have their own bag. It is crucial that special items such as medication are stored in the bag belonging to the one it is for.
• Know you could be gone for a while. Pack minimal essentials for one week.
• Break your packing into categories.
  • Clothing
    • one change of clothes
    • underwear for a week
    • something warm
    • something waterproof (e.g., garbage bag)
  • Important paperwork
    • government issued IDs (passports)
    • medical records
    • insurance policies
    • copy of will and end-of-life directives
    • contact list for kin
    • cash
  • Health essentials
    • list of medications on top of the bag
    • diapers and wipes (in the kid’s bag)
    • basic first aid kit
    • masks, disinfecting wipes, gloves, hand sanitizer
    • food and water
  • Miscellaneous
    • EXTRA PHONE CHARGERS
    • pocketknife
    • radio
    • batteries
    • matches
    • duct tape
    • a few garbage bags

There is just one little problem.

Stuff in the bag has a way of getting used — and not replaced.

Phone battery backup chargers get taken out and used.

Passports are taken from the bag before a trip to a foreign land.

Official papers are withdrawn from the bag and consulted.

Toilet paper ends up in the bathroom.

The multitool finds its way to the garage.

Cash is “borrowed”.

Toothbrushes and dental floss wind up in the medicine cabinet.

None of this is replaced.

Thus, a few helpful suggestions with regard to a go-bag:

• The bag would be an airline carry-on bag. The smallish and very portable size forces one to make tough decisions of what to put in and what to leave out.
• The stuff for the bag would be stored in a dedicated drawer. The items would be organized in the drawer and would be in full view when opening the drawer. In fact, if the bag is collapsible, you can store it in the drawer, as well.
• Keep a list of necessary items in the drawer. The list just might be the most important thing during a crisis. You can reconstitute a go-bag if you have a list (say, on your phone).
• Copies of important documents should already be stored in the cloud, with the originals in a safe place. Free storage can be found with Google Drive, Box, One Drive, Amazon Drive, iCloud, Dropbox, etc. This should be a completely different account or service than the one that is used to store photos or music. The 15-character passphrase with two-factor authentication for this account should be stored on a free password manager like LastPass or Dashlane. Original documents can be kept in a fireproof safe or with a lawyer or another very safe place.

The greatest objective of preparing a go-bag is to sustain peace of mind when there is a crisis.

Fear is the mind killer.

In a crisis, the most precious thing is to maintain a zen state of mind.

Businessmen spend a lot of money on golf in order to attain this higher level of consciousness.

It is essential in the face of high-pressure decision-making.

You will experience the calmness, the confidence and the concentration.

You got all of your affairs in order by creating an estate or writing a last will and testament.

Now you have a go-bag in your drawer.

In the midst of a disaster, a thousand frantic thoughts will hurl themselves through your mind.

You got 99 problems.

But a bag ain’t one.

America’s fascist Hispanic future? (Elites in disguise)

 IIRC, as far back as the 1980s, studies showed that African Americans sympathized with Hispanics as fellow persecuted “persons of color”.

However, this was not reciprocated.

Hispanics perceived themselves as classic upwardly mobile American immigrants.

Here, the distinction between real and relative inequality is germane.

Relative inequality involves people comparing themselves to their socioeconomic superiors or inferiors.

If people compare themselves to Jeff Bezos or Bill Gates, they might feel frustrated or inadequate.

In fact, even if one’s socioeconomic conditions have improved over time, if the wealth of the super-rich has become stratospheric, a feeling of discontent seeps into one’s life.

Real inequality involves actually becoming poorer.

This seems to have been happening in the UK for quite a while.

In contrast, salaries and wages of the middle class in the USA have stagnated for decades, but not fallen.

Moreover, new technology improves quality of life, and the cost of technology keeps falling.

However, since 2020, it seems that much of the population is falling behind in real terms.

Many Americans are now getting poorer.

A consciousness of real inequality often involves contrasting one’s own condition with one’s own ancestors.

Immigrants from poor countries might live in tough working-class neighborhoods.

However, their life is still better than the tough neighborhoods that their parents and grandparents lived in.

Such immigrants and their descendants are very conscious of this, especially if they live in multi-generational households.

Life might be tough in New York City, but grandma will quickly remind you how tough it was in Guatemala.

The Republican Party seems very cognizant of the potential for Hispanics to become upwardly mobile conservatives.

The mantra in the Bush dynasty has long been that Hispanics are the future of the Republican Party.

There might be glimmers of this in the early life and career of Jeb Bush.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeb_Bush

At the age of 17, Bush taught English as a second language and assisted in the building of a school in Ibarrilla, a small village outside of León, Guanajuato, Mexico,^[7] as part of Andover’s student exchange summer program.^[8] While in Mexico, he met his future wife, Columba Garnica Gallo.

Though many in his family had attended Yale University, Bush chose to attend the University of Texas at Austin, beginning in September 1971.^[1] He played on the Texas Longhorns varsity tennis team in 1973.^[1] Bush graduated Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Latin American studies.^[1][12] He completed his coursework in two and a half years.

In 1974, Bush went to work in an entry-level position in the international division of Texas Commerce Bank, which was founded by the family of James Baker.^[14] In November 1977, he was sent to Caracas, the capital of Venezuela, to open a new operation for the bank, where he served as branch manager and vice president.

Following the 1980 presidential election, Bush and his family moved to Miami-Dade County, Florida. He took a job in real estate with Armando Codina, a 32-year-old Cuban immigrant and self-made millionaire. Codina had made a fortune in a computer business, and then formed a new company, The Codina Group, to pursue opportunities in real estate.^[16] During his time with the company, Bush focused on finding tenants for commercial developments.^[17] Codina eventually made Bush his partner in a new development business, which quickly became one of South Florida’s leading real estate development firms. As a partner, Bush received 40% of the firm’s profits.^[18] In 1983, Bush said of his move from Houston to Miami: “On the personal side, my mother-in-law and sister-in-law were already living here.” On the professional side, “I want to be very wealthy, and I’ll be glad to tell you when I’ve accomplished that goal.”

The Bush dynasty are sometimes seen as the final remnants of the American leadership under elite New England WASPs — “White Anglo-Saxon Protestants”.

There is a theory that WASPs maintained a position of benign leadership throughout American history.

According to this theory, the WASPs nobly dismantled their political and economic control in the postwar era.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/how-not-to-mourn-the-aristocracy

Amidst all the current talk about high tech “monopolies”, it is strange not to see through the good qualities of the old WASP elite.

When elites are civically minded and have a sense of duty, it is largely because they own the society.

In that case, public service is akin to good housekeeping.

It’s like taking good care of your home and car.

If an elite exhibits modesty, humility and self-restraint, that is because it is the etiquette of insiders who frown on the rough manners of their inferiors.

It’s a form of gatekeeping.

Rich outsiders like the Kennedys might find their way in, but — as in the class-riven UK — the system is designed to accommodate new talent that might pose a threat.

The White Anglo-Saxon Protestant elite of New England is quite distinct from ordinary white Protestants.

However, more than others, ordinary Protestants had a way of moving up in the ranks into the elite.

So there has long been a perceived blurring of the borders between the WASPs and regular white Protestants.

(Siskel and Ebert give the WASPs and Protestants two thumbs down)

https://youtu.be/ALFpRJKnK2U

The ordinary white American Protestant might take exception to this equation of themselves with the privilege of the WASP.

https://youtu.be/br-ljup5Bow

The history of the Bush family suggests that reports of the death of the WASP leadership are greatly exaggerated.

What one finds instead is the disguising and rejuvenation of the old elite.

Reputation laundering happens everywhere, but in the USA this process is counter-intuitive.

In India, individuals cannot move up in the caste system, they are assigned to their caste for life.

However, IIRC, an entire caste can have itself reclassified so that it has higher status.

In France under the old monarchy, individuals could buy an aristocratic title and thus move themselves up a notch in the caste system.

In the UK since the Industrial Revolution, the rising business classes have disguised themselves as aristocrats.

They did this by sending their sons to elite boarding schools and by marrying their daughters to aristocrats.

In the USA, the aristocracy takes an inverse trajectory in order to maintain power.

They disguise themselves as ordinary folks.

They move to Texas and take on the aura of self-made oil men, or they move to Florida and implant themselves in the world of self-made Latino real estate moguls.

But in rightly identifying Hispanics as the future of the Republican Party, the Bushes did make one error.

They did not perceive that the Republican Party would become populist rather than remain conservative.

In particular, the Republicans did not see that Hispanics in particular would be drawn to “conservative populism” rather than conservatism.

For example, Marco Rubio has been described as “pathetic” in his pandering toward Trump, who Rubio seems otherwise to despise.

But Rubio has no choice.

His voter base loves populism.

For example, the Proud Boys are held up as paradigmatic neo-fascist, all-male, white supremacist political organization.

Yet since early 2019, Enrique Tarrio, who identifies as Afro-Cuban, has been the chairman of the Proud Boys.

Tarrio is also the Florida state director of the grassroots organization Latinos for Trump.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proud_Boys

In 2016, Latin American commentators pointed out the pervasiveness of nationalist populist authoritarianism in their region.

They stated that it was appalling how authoritarian populism seemed to be openly growing in the USA.

However, it could be that nationalist populist authoritarianism is openly establishing itself in the USA in part because of immigration from Latin America.

They bring the contagion along with themselves.

And so it turns out that the Democrats are not the only party out of touch with the American voter.

Throughout the world since 2016, politicians discovered that there is a mysterious tidal wave of populism sweeping the Earth.

They can surf it, or just get out of the water.

This phenomenon may never come to be properly understood, even as it plays itself out over years, or even over generations.

Euthanasia for Covid in the USA?

 Will the number of Covid hospitalizations in the USA increase to the point that hospitals will not treat high-risk patients?

This was one aspect of Sweden’s policy.

In fact, Swedish hospitals simply euthanized or ignored Covid patients who were either too old or too obese.

This was because resources (ventilators) were supposedly too scarce for them.

To be fair, advanced care for such patients might have been futile anyway.

https://www.wired.co.uk/article/sweden-coronavirus-response-experiment

Even more worrying, evidence has emerged that many sick elderly patients were effectively automatically denied access to treatment, to avoid hospitals being overwhelmed. One March 17 FHM directive to Stockholm hospitals stated any patients over 80 or with a body mass index above 40 should not be admitted to intensive care, because they were less likely to recover. Other reports describe sick care home residents being administered a palliative cocktail of morphine and midazolam, because the homes were not equipped to administer oxygen, something some doctors have described as ‘active euthanasia.’

In fact, non-Covid patients in Sweden who required hospital care were likewise essentially sentenced to death by pain killer.

“People were triaged out of healthcare and given ‘No Hospital’ notes on their journals, before they got sick. And this was not only for patients who were suspected of having Covid-19. A person who got a urinary tract infection and required hospitalisation, for example for IV antibiotics or fluids, would not get that care either. They received palliative medicine instead.”

For these reasons, and because Sweden does not test the dead for Covid, actual deaths may be higher in Sweden than has been recorded.

That is saying something, because deaths in Sweden have been remarkably high.

Is a policy of euthanasia for both Covid and non-Covid patients who require hospitalization the path that the USA is on?

Key to this question is just how different Sweden’s policy was from that of other countries.

On the whole, although there were no official lockdowns, Swedish Covid policy was really not so different from those of other countries.

However, Swedish authorities did discourage mask wearing and kept schools and restaurants open.

This seems to reflect the “herd immunity” strategy, the idea that Covid symptoms for most (young, healthy) people would be mild and flu-like.

The hope was that the disease would pass rapidly through the healthy population, while unhealthy people were sequestered.

Hence, the Swedes use coded language, for example, that they are “running a marathon” whereas the rest of the world is “running a footrace”.

It reflects an overconfident attitude toward a disease that still confounds and mystifies experts.

But again, aside from that, is often overlooked that the Swedes actually did take so many of the standard precautions adopted all over the world.

There is a great difference also between the quality of the healthcare system in Sweden and healthcare in the USA.

Sweden has a first-class healthcare system, arguably the best in the world.

In contrast, in much of rural America, the medical infrastructure often consists of clinics.

Importantly, in rural areas of the USA, it seems that many people are not taking any precautions.

So it is conceivable that euthanasia — officially or not — will be the necessary policy as the US healthcare system comes under unbearable strain.

The direction of an unchecked pandemic is toward exponential growth, and that is now happening in the USA.

Desirable or not, a policy of involuntary euthanasia is an obvious and perhaps inevitable outcome of not taking precautions.

However, just as the Swedes adopted a herd immunity strategy but deny it, the Americans may engage in euthanasia yet pretend that they aren’t.

Notably, in engaging in euthanasia, Americans might not use pain killers for Covid patients.

Americans would perceive this as a waste of money.

Dosing patients with high levels of painkillers that makes them overdose or makes it impossible for them to survive “active euthanasia”.

Not trying to aid dying patients while humanely providing them with palliative care is “passive euthanasia”.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/euthanasia/overview/forms.shtml

Active and passive euthanasia

In active euthanasia a person directly and deliberately causes the patient’s death. In passive euthanasia they don’t directly take the patient’s life, they just allow them to die.

This is a morally unsatisfactory distinction, since even though a person doesn’t ‘actively kill’ the patient, they are aware that the result of their inaction will be the death of the patient.

Active euthanasia is when death is brought about by an act – for example when a person is killed by being given an overdose of pain-killers.

Passive euthanasia is when death is brought about by an omission – i.e. when someone lets the person die. This can be by withdrawing or withholding treatment:

Withdrawing treatment: for example, switching off a machine that is keeping a person alive, so that they die of their disease.

Withholding treatment: for example, not carrying out surgery that will extend life for a short time.

Traditionally, passive euthanasia is thought of as less bad than active euthanasia. But some people think active euthanasia is morally better.

Technically, death without palliative care is not euthanasia, it’s “dysthanasia” — “bad death”.

Total neglect and abandonment of a suffering patient would be “passive dysthanasia”.

This is what Americans might end up doing as an unspoken policy.

At this point, they have little choice.

One can imagine how this would work:

Hospitals would have a special room near the ICU where they wheel in patients.

Patients would go in, but they would not come out.

There would be no equipment in that room, and the physicians would never enter it.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/11/14/el-paso-nurse-tells-horrific-conditions-inside-pit-covid-patients/

The coronavirus pandemic might be a turning point in terms of the acceptance of euthanasia in the USA.

Liberals champion euthanasia or “death with dignity” as a matter of personal choice.

Libertarians likewise argue in favor of euthanasia, adding that euthanasia can be in the greater interest of society.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/euthanasia/infavour/infavour_1.shtml#h5

Forbes magazine is reliably conservative and is predictably opposed to euthanasia.

However, Forbes does have a libertarian streak that shows itself now and then in social and cultural issues.

Every now and then there is an editorial in Forbes that argues against futile medical interventions, citing the enormous cost and extended suffering of such a policy.

The proposals range from increasing access to hospice care to legalizing euthanasia in the USA.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelbell/2013/01/10/why-5-of-patients-create-50-of-health-care-costs/?sh=710978d228d7

30% of all Medicare expenditures are attributed to the 5% of beneficiaries that die each year, with 1/3 of that cost occurring in the last month of life.

In the Archives of Internal Medicine, a study asked if a better quality of death takes place when per capital cost rise. In lay terms the study found that the less money spent in this time period, the better the death experience is for the patient.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/peterubel/2020/02/25/the-cost-of-dying-in-the-us-is-exorbitant-behavioral-economics-explains-why/?sh=4487fde267d5

Currently, one percent of patients accounts for more than 20% of US healthcare spending. Despite efforts to provide hospice services to people near the end of life, many people are not admitted to hospice until just days before their death.

One force against palliative care and euthanasia is progress in medical research.

Much of the experimental work on potential new drugs and medical procedures is conducted on patients who are otherwise terminally ill.

It is a utilitarian policy that could appeal to any ideology.

More importantly, palliative care and euthanasia, insofar as they deprive pharmaceutical companies of subjects for human experimentation, would be opposed by an entrenched lobby.

A conservative argument against euthanasia is that it devalues human life despite obviating the inevitable loss of quality of life.

However, many conservatives — and libertarians, and populists — during the coronavirus pandemic have argued that Covid kills old people who are going to die soon enough.

Normally, conservatives would argue that such an of argument would “demoralize” society, and undermine the entire value system.

How would it feel if one was old or diabetic or overweight or asthmatic or had heart disease and everyone was saying that you are going to die soon anyway?

After all, 37% of Americans are supposedly in those high risk groups.

Moreover, how does it affect people to say such ruthless things?

In normal times, almost nobody would say or even think such a thing.

For example, the effects of slavery might last for generations on those whose ancestors were enslaved.

But the ill effects of slavery might even be more dire for the descendants of slave owners.

They would have a certain inherited coldness, arrogance and hauteur.

They would also have a certain laziness and complacency, and they would lack curiosity, imagination or ambition.

These qualities would spread throughout society, so that even the lower classes would manifest a self-righteous sense of entitlement.

Here one thinks of the English and their inability to live in or adopt to the real world after their postwar imperial eclipse.

Inevitably, one should expect change and innovation in social conventions in the aftermath of a pandemic.

After all, it was the HIV-AIDS crisis that brought about same-sex marriage.

HIV-AIDS killed 35 million people, and still kills about three-quarters of a million every year.

Yet HIV-AIDS is no longer a pandemic largely because people altered their behavior.

Importantly, those who did not adopt to the reality of HIV-AIDS simply died.

This divergent behavior and its consequence had a strong “demonstration effect”.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demonstration_effect

Demonstration effects are effects on the behavior of individuals caused by observation of the actions of others and their consequences. The term is particularly used in political science and sociology to describe the fact that developments in one place will often act as a catalyst in another place.

The new behavior became habitual.

People then forgot that they had altered their behavior.

It was proposed during the HIV-AIDS crisis that if gay men could get married and settle down, on the weekends they would stay home and watch TV instead of going out on the town.

To some degree, that is what happened.

Because of the exponential growth of pandemics, small changes have a great effect.

Altering marriage customs might have been one small change that made all of society safer in terms of HIV-AIDS.

But there is amnesia about this history.

On the one hand, liberals imagine that same-sex marriage was motivated by a desire for “marriage equality”.

Isn’t this just like the way liberals imagine the shift to renewable energy is all about fighting global warming?

In 2008, the price of oil rose to $147, and countries reacted by developing renewable resources — for the sake of energy security.

On the other hand, cultural conservatives lament same-sex marriage as a radical abomination.

Yet marriage, like religion, is a conservative institution that buttresses the status quo.

Historically, political radicals and revolutionaries opposed marriage and religion, not as inherently evil but because those conservative institutions make social change less possible.

Isn’t this just like the way conservatives fear immigration?

Eventually, the descendants of immigrants who are culturally conservative and enterprising — like Asians and Hispanics — will eventually become the core of the conservative establishment.

Likewise, euthanasia might become an accepted practice that liberals will celebrate as a victory of personal freedom and dignity.

Indeed, once it is an established custom, perhaps someday conservatives will argue that voluntary euthanasia is a matter of “personal responsibility”.

But the real motive for eventually legalizing euthanasia might be the coming financial strains on the healthcare sector and perhaps stress on the American economy more generally.

Americans screwed up and let the pandemic rage and this undermined the economy and healthcare, and so Americans could no longer afford not to have euthanasia.

But it won’t be remembered that way.

Outsourcing e-IDs to Estonia?

 There is usually a trade-off between efficiency and security.

For example, the military is an wasteful and unproductive institution.

However, there seems to be a widespread sense in every society that the existence of a military is a necessary.

The military is a form of insurance, and insurance is expensive.

Likewise, it might be cheaper to import all of a society’s food and technology, but that flies in the face of security issues.

That can become an issue among conservatives.

For instance, it was asserted in the 1980s by the Reagan administration that trade should be completely unrestricted.

Unrestricted trade would reveal efficiencies in terms of price.

Consequently, markets alone would decide what the economy produced and sold.

The saying within the Reagan administration was that “it does not matter if the country is making potato chips or computer chips”.

This libertarian policy toward unrestricted trade would obviously rankle national security conservatives.

Amid the coronavirus crisis, all sorts of supplies ceased to be available because supply chains in general were breaking down during the crisis.

In particular, it became clear very early that the USA was completely reliant on China for personal protection equipment.

The widely recognized trade-off between security and efficiency raises an interesting question.

Are there any examples of when there is not a trade-off between security and efficiency?

One example of a policy that improves both government efficiency and national security is Estonia’s e-government.

Almost all of Estonia’s governmental functions involving interaction with the public have been put on the internet.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Estonia

e-Estonia refers to a movement by the government of Estonia to facilitate citizen interactions with the state through the use of electronic solutions. E-services created under this initiative include:

• i-Voting,
• e-Tax Board,
• e-Business,
• e-Banking,
• e-Ticket,
• e-School,
• University via internet,
• the e-Governance Academy , as well as
• the release of several mobile applications.

In terms of efficiency, this saves the state 2% of its GDP.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/12/18/estonia-the-digital-republic

Estonia is a Baltic country of 1.3 million people and four million hectares, half of which is forest. Its government presents this digitization as a cost-saving efficiency and an equalizing force. Digitizing processes reportedly saves the state two per cent of its G.D.P. a year in salaries and expenses. Since that’s the same amount it pays to meet the NATO threshold for protection (Estonia—which has a notably vexed relationship with Russia—has a comparatively small military), its former President Toomas Hendrik Ilves liked to joke that the country got its national security for free.

There is the issue of privacy.

Estonia’s e-government allows personal information to be much more readily accessed because it is stored online rather than on paper.

However, records are kept of who has accessed someone’s personal information.

This record keeping of access serves as a deterrent to illegitimate intrusiveness.

This is an improvement over earlier times when institutional insiders could secretly snoop around in file cabinets full of personal paperwork.

https://qz.com/1535549/living-on-the-blockchain-is-a-game-changer-for-estonian-citizens/

Of course, there is no such thing as absolute security. But it is easy to demonstrate that digital technologies offer more security that paper analogs. The digital format provides much more control over personal data than the paper format, provided that the legal space prescribes clear rules on data gathering, storage, and use. The Estonian people know that meddling in public databases cannot go unnoticed because it would be recorded and secured by blockchain-based timestamping, and officials know that it is a criminal offense to nose around. This creates additional trust between citizens, state, and e-services.

But what is even more important is that your personal data does not belong to the Estonian state. Just because it’s in the database doesn’t mean that Estonia owns it—it belongs to you. At any second you have the right to know and control what happens to this data.

This makes the digital world much more transparent then the analog world. Do you have a complete record of everyone who has ever looked through your medical files, for instance? Digital is only as safe as we make it, but its potential is far greater than analog.

The security of Estonian personal information has been enhanced by e-government, and so has national security.

In 2007, Russians engaged in a wave of sophisticated cyber attacks on Estonian websites.

Estonia responded to this attack by upgrading the security of their e-government.

In 2007, Estonia fell prey to a series of cyber attacks, originating largely from Russian IP addresses. In a way this was a wake-up call, because it led us to creating a cybersecurity strategy and facilitated the creation of a permanent NATO unit focused on enhancing cybersecurity.

We decided to increase our security even further. In the summer of 2017, we announced the opening of the world’s first data embassy in Luxembourg to secure government information in the event of a military or cyber attack.  These server racks are in the sovereign territory of Estonia in Luxembourg (as in a case of any embassy), and both the data and the servers belong to Estonia. We chose Luxembourg as the first data-embassy site because of their readiness and flexibility to work on a new concept.

Germany seems on the path to emulating Estonia’s e-government.

The Germans have rolled out an e-ID, which was the first step the Estonians took in the 1990s.

https://www.bsi.bund.de/EN/Topics/ElectrIDDocuments/German-eID/eIDAS-notification/eIDAS_notification_node.html

There are at least three foundational projects that the Germans need to get right to follow in the footsteps of Estonia’s e-government.

https://www.techrepublic.com/article/how-estonia-became-an-e-government-powerhouse/

• Digitize registers held by public bodies to provide the necessary information to support e-services;
• build the X-Road platform that connects the wealth of different systems used in the public and private sector and allows them to share information; and
• give citizens the means to securely access online services by providing digital ID cards and make digital signatures equivalent to handwritten signatures.

Estonia also offers e-residency to foreigners who can prove their identity and who pay a fee.

E-residency is not related to citizenship and does not give the right to physically enter or reside in Estonia.

While the further goal of the project would be to gain millions of e-residents, its purpose was to increase the number of active enterprises in Estonia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Residency_of_Estonia

e-Residency of Estonia (also called virtual residency or E-residency) is a program launched by Estonia on 1 December 2014. The program allows non-Estonians access to Estonian services such as company formation, banking, payment processing, and taxation. The program gives the e-resident a smart card which they can use to sign documents. The program is aimed towards location-independent entrepreneurs such as software developers and writers.

An application for e-residency can be made online by filling in a form, supplying a scan of a national passport and a photograph, and giving the reason for applying (which does not strongly affect the outcome of the application).

Successful applicants would be invited to an interview in Tallinn or an Estonian embassy about three months after applying, and would then, if successful, be issued with their card.^[5] The certificates of the document are valid for five years, up from three years when the program was first announced.^[6] After that period, if a person wishes to continue using e-services, they have to apply for a new document. The application process will be the same as when they first applied. A state fee needs to be paid again when they submit a new application.

Estonia’s enterprising e-residency program raises an intriguing prospect:

Could Estonia or Germany offer an e-identity card to other societies in general?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estonian_identity_card

The Estonian identity card (Estonian: ID-kaart) is a mandatory identity document for citizens of Estonia. In addition to regular identification of a person, an ID-card can also be used for establishing one’s identity in electronic environment and for giving one’s digital signature.

The e-ID card is a platform for the delivery of other services.

The Estonian ID cards are used in health care, electronic banking, signing contracts, public transit, encrypting email and voting. Estonia offers over 600 e-services to citizens and 2400 to businesses.^[4] The card’s chip stores digitized data about the authorized user, most importantly: the user’s full name, gender, national identification number, and cryptographic keys and public key certificates.

An e-ID for non-Estonians could be the first step toward Estonian (or German) e-residency.

Recruiting such e-residents has been a longstanding objective of Estonia, and it is thus in the interest of Estonia to advance such a project.

The e-identity card would be offered to local governments around the world.

Information pertaining to the ID would be kept on Estonia’s computer systems.

As the services related to the card began to expand, localities would develop their own e-ID card system.

Getting an e-ID card should as convenient as possible.

For example, it should be free.

Also, there would be the option of having one’s identity confirmed by a notary public prior to getting the e-ID card for those who do not yet have a passport or other form of ID.

That is, first-time applicants could bypass much of the state ID-card bureaucracy by getting a certificate of identification from a notary public.

IIRC, in American history, the federal system allows governmental innovation to happen first at the local and state levels, and percolate upwards later.

A state e-ID card outsourced to Estonia could be one such innovation.