Every weekend (almost) I share five articles/essays/reports with you. I select these over the course of the week because they are either insightful, informative, interesting, important, or a combination of the above.

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“The Balkans produces more history than it can consume” is a line incorrectly attributed to Winston Churchill. In actuality, he was referring to Crete, but this misappropriation has taken on a life of its own ever since.

I recall watching a documentary on the 60s in the USA a long time ago, and a similar line was mentioned in it: “the USA swallowed too much history in 1968”. It was the year of the assassinations of both MLK and RFK, and of the riots during the Democratic Convention in Chicago. Race riots continued to engulf cities across the country, all while the US participation in the war in Vietnam was at its peak. The lawlessness that seemed to have gripped large parts of the country fueled Richard Nixon’s electoral victory, one which was based on the platform of “restoring law and order”.

In the western social contract, we the people consent to be governed. One of the things that we demand in return as non-negotiable is our collective physical security. If this agreement is violated, the regime loses the authority to govern on our behalf. A lawless country is not a safe country, nor is it an attractive country to do business in either. Without stability, security, and predictability, investment in the future is rendered impossible.

We are bombarded daily with news of mass/random shootings, subway stabbings, and so on. Many of the perpetrators of these violent acts are repeat offenders who for some reason or another (politics) are allowed to roam the streets and attack innocent bystanders. The effect of these lax policies on law and order is the condition known as ‘anarcho-tyranny’ i.e. where the state permits random acts of violence while offering/permitting no solution/resolution…..until it has no option but to try and do so.

In NYC, the National Guard is now patrolling the subway. This is a band-aid solution for a problem that was largely fixed already via the policy known as “stop and frisk”. This policy was deemed “racist”, so it had to end. The price of ending this successful policy was a bit of the ol’ anarcho-tyranny. The conflict between rights and law and order continues unabated for the foreseeable future, at least in the USA.

El Salvador has taken a different approach. Since taking office, President Bukele has arrested some 77,000 gang members, locking them up in prisons throughout the country. In one fell swoop, its notoriously high homicide rate has collapsed. Bukele’s law and order policy has resolved El Salvador’s internal security issue……but at what cost? Western media and human rights NGOs insist that the cost has been El Salvador’s democracy:

Under President Nayib Bukele, El Salvador has experienced one of the most spectacular declines in violent crime in recent memory, anywhere in the world. Despite ranking among the most dangerous countries on the planet a mere decade ago, the Central American state today boasts a homicide rate of only 2.4 per 100,000 people—the lowest of any country in the Western Hemisphere other than Canada.

El Salvador owes much of its dramatic drop in crime to Bukele’s crackdown on street gangs and criminal organizations, including MS-13 and Barrio 18. Although homicide rates were trending downward before Bukele took office in 2019, violent crime declined sharply after March 2022, when his government declared a state of emergency following a spike in murders, allowing the government to suspend basic civil liberties and mobilize the armed forces to carry out mass arrests. This state of exception granted Bukele’s administration a blank check to fight gangs and detain suspects without consideration for transparency, due process, or human rights.

Bukele is wildly popular at home, and his policy is now gaining currency elsewhere in Latin America:

Bukele’s iron-fist measures and their apparent results have not only made him wildly popular in his country—earning him a landslide reelection in February 2024—but also captured the imagination of politicians elsewhere grappling with rapidly deteriorating public safety. Members of the political elite in other states are now toying with the so-called Bukele model. In Ecuador, for instance, President Daniel Noboa has unabashedly followed in Bukele’s footsteps in response to prison riots and a major surge in homicides, declaring a state of emergency in January that gave the armed forces free rein to detain suspects and to take over control of the country’s prisons. The Bukele-style security measures appear to be succeeding there, as well: a little over a month into the crackdown, the government reported that the daily average of homicides had fallen from 28 to six. The fact that militarized public safety campaigns are proving effective outside El Salvador has only enhanced the model’s growing appeal across Latin America, which has long suffered the highest rate of violence of any region in the world.

Here’s the part where the author lodges his protest, and suggests alternative models:

But as appealing as a Bukele-style crackdown might seem, these punitive campaigns against organized crime come at a serious cost to democracy and human rights. These measures concentrate power in the hands of the executive, chipping away at other democratic institutions, such as Congress and the judiciary, that are critical bulwarks against governmental abuse. They also fail to solve the underlying problems, such as corruption and impunity, that generate such violence and instability in the first place.

There are alternatives to the Bukele model for reducing crime. In cities in Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico, politicians have managed to decrease homicides without eroding civil and human rights by making sustained investments in democratic policing, which emphasizes transparency, accountability, and civil liberties. These measures may not work as quickly, and they may not be as conspicuous. But they do not sacrifice democracy on the altar of public safety. Militarized states of emergency are no silver bullet: for any public safety measures to permanently succeed, they must not come at the expense of the democratic institutions that protect civilians from abuse at the hands of the government.

El Salvador has traded off some civil liberties for public safety, but to suggest examples from Brazil, Colombia, and especially Mexico as workable alternatives boggles the mind. This isn’t the first essay written about El Salvador that laments its “loss of democracy”….The Economist keeps pumping out this same argument over and over again. What these articles do tell us is that for many, democracy is indeed a god, and being a god, it is infallible. Not only can the openness of liberal democratic societies not be at fault for some of the crime that has plagued these countries, but Bukele’s heavy-handed approach is doomed to failure in the long run because it is not based on democratic principles. These democratic critics of Bukele are engaging faith-based reasoning, because their god cannot fail.

Details of the crackdown:

Bukele’s suspension of civil liberties has streamlined his crackdown on gangs, allowing the military to detain suspects without hindrance, circumvent the corruption that pervades the judicial process, and sever the links between imprisoned gang leaders and their acolytes in the outside world. The emergency decree’s suspension of rights, including due process, has made it much easier to arrest suspected gang members, given that probable cause or arrest warrants are not needed and excessive use of force is not a concern. Bukele also used emergency powers to introduce indefinite pretrial detention, which means that the state does not need to present convincing evidence in court before locking a suspect up for extended periods and preempts the possibility that a corrupt judge would release the suspect. The emergency mandate also bars inmates from establishing any contact with individuals outside the prison, including lawyers, relatives, or associates, thereby preventing kingpins from continuing to run their groups from behind bars. The outcome, according to Amnesty International, has been the imprisonment of some 77,000 people, many of whom have also been subjected to systematic torture and other mistreatment.

Yes, this is heavy-handed. Bukele and his supporters will argue that this heavy-hand was necessary, as the alternatives could not be as effective.

Check out this concession:

Public safety has improved dramatically as a result. Although human rights organizations have pointed to significant underreporting of homicides and questioned the reliability of government statistics, the testimonies of Salvadoran citizens make clear that there has been a significant reduction of extortions among business owners and a newfound freedom to enjoy public spaces. Tellingly, the number of encounters that U.S. authorities had with Salvadoran migrants dropped from 97,000 in 2022 to 61,515 in 2023, signaling that violent crime as a push factor for migration may be receding.

This is called a ‘win-win’. Okay, gang members end up getting the short stick here, but that is the trade off that has been made.

And now comes the most important concession:

Despite these high costs, public safety has become such an overriding concern for so many Salvadorans that civil liberties and human rights have been sidelined. As Bukele’s enduring popularity demonstrates, if violent crime is severe enough people are willing to relinquish protections against government abuse in exchange for improved public safety.

The result is a paradox of punitive populism, in which democratically elected leaders with broad anticrime mandates undermine liberal democracy by adopting iron-fist policies that are not only popular but can also be effective. Iron-fist policies are widely appealing to publics accustomed to living in fear for their safety; such is the case for generations of Latin Americans, many of whom have not known a reality other than widespread extortions, kidnappings, and murders.

For the critics of Bukele’s crackdown, his policy cannot work in the long run because it violates democratic norms.

Let that sink in for a bit.

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Prior to the outbreak of war in Ukraine, the French were pushing for their concept of “strategic autonomy” for Europe i.e. a state of affairs where Europe acts in concert, but not at the beck and call of the USA.

The French have always had an independent streak when it comes to post-war Europe, going so far as to pull out of NATO’s integrated command structure in 1966 (only to return to it later on). It only makes sense; every state seeks to maximize their own autonomy. Despite its efforts to pursue strategic autonomy, the French had a tough time selling many European states on the idea. A French ex-diplomat once told me that many European countries prefer the US umbrella because they view it as more reliable than any other alternative, and especially because the Americans bear the brunt of the costs for it. Europe wasn’t buying what the French were selling.

I held out some small hope that the French would be able to cobble something together to use as a starting point for a long process in which the continent would finally be able to stand up on its own two feet. My hopes were dashed when Russia invaded Ukraine, and European leaders fell over themselves to do everything that they possibly could to placate US regional ambitions, going so far as to trash their own economies like Germany has done these past two years. This isn’t news to any of you reading this, but Europe has relegated itself to the status of a collection of American satrapies since February 24, 2022. As Kurt Vonnegut liked to say: “so it goes”.

At present, the White House is trying to do two things regarding Ukraine:

1. prevent a collapse of the UAF


2. pass the responsibility for the war onto the Europeans so that it can focus on China

The Americans have disciplined the Europeans to the point where the French and British in particular are becoming worryingly belligerent towards Russia. It seems that transatlantic unity has never been stronger than it is right now. Despite this present state of affairs, Dominick Sansone does notice some cracks appearing in this unity:

The first major schism can be found in the relationship between the United States and its European allies. It is possible to make the argument—albeit in a rather cynical manner—that forcing Ukraine to keep fighting instead of agreeing to limited concessions at the beginning of the war served to achieve advantageous returns for Washington.

The cut-off of Russian oil and gas to Europe has directly benefited the US energy industry through the subsequent demand for US LNG, helping it to become the world’s largest LNG exporter in 2023, with Europe as the primary destination.

This past year also set new records for US crude oil exports; Europe once again led the way as the top export destination (1.8 million barrels/day, compared to 1.7 million to Asia and Oceania). This was all undergirded by one of the most major inter-alliance developments in the post-Cold War period: the sabotage and destruction of both Nord Stream pipelines.

At the same time, the increased price of energy alongside supply chain challenges in Europe has increased the relative competitiveness of the US economy as production costs soared on the continent. Germany – Europe’s industrial powerhouse with an economy that is heavily reliant on the export of manufactured products – has precipitously fallen to become the worst-performing major developed economy in the world.

This will sound very familiar to long-time readers of this Substack