Harming America: Corporate Crime in a Context of Deregulation

ABSTRACT

Like many Republican presidential candidates before him, Donald J. Trump campaigned on a pro-business, anti-regulation platform, and since his election in November 2016, he has directed his administration to move forward with deregulation in many arenas, including consumer financial protections, environmental controls, and workplace safety among others. Past efforts to roll back regulations governing certain industries, such as the savings and loan and the mortgage industries, have had harmful consequences for the general public or for specific interest groups. In this study, we review what the Trump administration has accomplished with regard to deregulation to date. Then, based on past deregulatory fiascos, we theorize the harmful collateral consequences that may result from this most recent swing of the regulatory-deregulatory pendulum.     

Defenders of Freedom or Perpetrators and Facilitators of Crimes? Beyond Progressive Retreatism in the Trump Era

ABSTRACT

Heavily influenced by broad definitions of crime developed by a few pioneering critical criminologists, the main objective of this article is to provide evidence showing that the current Trump administration is a regime that commits crimes of the powerful and facilitates some types of interpersonal violence in private places. Special attention is devoted to direct and in-direct state-perpetrated violent crimes against women.     

“拒绝衰落”与美国“要塞化”：特朗普的大战略

美国是大战略理论与实践的重镇。冷战结束后，“自由霸权主义”构成了美国大战略的基本内涵。在相对权势有所衰落的背景下，特朗普政府于2017年12月提出的新版《美国国家安全战略》体现出美国大战略转型的端倪。该战略是对“自由霸权主义”的颠覆：除在战略目标(追求或巩固世界霸权地位)大体一致外，该战略极力强调美国安全环境的恶化和外部挑战的大幅增强，在战略路径上主张单方面强化美国的经济与军事实力，放弃多边主义，撤回对国际机制的支持，以期在未来的大国竞争中取胜。特朗普的战略存在内在的缺陷，效果亦存在颇多不确定性，与国际政治经济发展趋势明显相悖，对中国国家安全环境产生了较为直接的影响。     

特朗普安全战略的调整与限度

随着特朗普政府陆续出台一系列战略文件，相关安全政策付诸实施，其安全战略的基本态势逐渐清晰。特朗普的安全观和政策举措，共同构成执政初期安全战略的主体。特朗普的安全观建立在其自身对世界“霍布斯主义”认知的基础上，同时融合了共和党现实主义安全观的基本主张，反映了军工企业及军人群体等背后主要利益集团的核心诉求。特朗普的安全政策仍处于成型中，在军事战略、新空间战略和地区安全战略三个层面举措较多，相关布局较为系统，集中折射了其安全理念。在军事安全层面，在重塑美军优势的核心目标下，扩张性的态势表现明显；在新空间战略层面，进攻性、军事化的特征尤为突出；在地区安全战略层面虽然在手段上有所变化，但总体延续了防御性战略。特朗普的安全战略调整未来仍将面临诸多限度，包括财政制约、同时应对两个大国难以兼顾、建制派的牵制等。特朗普的安全战略将加剧中美在安全领域的对抗态势，两国在军事战略、新空间战略稳定以及南海问题上的对冲和深层矛盾或进一步发酵。安全关系的上述变化将给中美“竞争”增添新变数。     

America First? Trump,Crime, and Justice Internationally

ABSTRACT

“America First,” as presented by President Trump, argues for an international strategy that persistently places America’s interests above those of anyone or anything else. Consequently, Trump has reshaped the international perceptions of the United States and has created more difficulties for the U.S. in coordinating of global leaders in resolving complex issues in the world. This essay reflects on how Trump and the United States are viewed internationally, the impacts of Trump’s anti-immigrant and pro-White nationalist rhetoric, Trump’s responses to humanitarian crises around the globe, and the potential impact of Trump’s stance on global climate change. Given these considerations, it is questionable whether “America First” policy has made “America Great Again” in the eyes of the world.     

One measure cannot trump it all: lessons from NATO’s early burden-sharing debates

This paper calls for a qualitative turn in discussing NATO burden-sharing. The paper takes issue with the numerical burden-sharing narrative in NATO and identifies its two main problems. Despite being simple, the 2% defence spending pledge lacks other basic attributes of any contributory system: fairness and effectiveness. Drawing from concepts of distributive justice, the paper analyses NATO’s first burden-sharing debates and demonstrates that due to their qualitatively different capabilities, the allies agreed on an egalitarian ability-to-pay distributive justice. Furthermore, it shows that the allies refrained from implementing fairness in terms of a one-size-fits-all formula, since this simple numerical approach could not produce fair and effective burden-sharing at the same time. Rather, they developed a dynamic framework for optimal sharing. These formative burden-sharing debates provide valuable lessons learned for the current build-up of NATO’s posture: less focused on formal sharing, more concerned with strategic outputs.     

Trump the antisemantic,and the boundaries of populism

ABSTRACT

In this article I consider Donald Trump as an “antisemantic” president, and link antisemanticism to broader forms of populism. Drawing on Stuart Hall’s analysis of Thatcherism, I explore the political and discursive domains as intrinsically linked in the Trumpian moment. Second, I turn to a theory of the antisemantic, showing its difference from the Orwellian universe. Where the Orwellian model depends on the inversion of meanings, the Trumpian paradigm (“Truth isn’t truth”) attacks the foundations of meaning itself. In the Trumpian age the internet also acts as a dark multiplier, thinning out meaning through its distortions and profusion. As counterpart to these patterns, I show how the antisemantic rests on certain symbolic fixities, especially around boundaries and the “uber” symbol of the wall. I end with some notes on how to reconstruct a sense of accountability in meaning, and to think of boundaries that are transitive and generative rather than singular and walled.     

Asbestos populism in David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest

ABSTRACT

This essay considers the changing relationship between asbestos and populism, as both terms travel across different semantic contexts. It argues that this dynamic relationship can help to outline a populist ecology, through which resource actors such as asbestos play a more significant role than either populist leaders or their people anticipate. Drawing on David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest as a site for examining the implications of this asbestos-inflected populist ecology, the essay suggests new ways of linking the recent populism of Donald Trump to an older, more articulate populism, exemplified by Pierre Trudeau.     

Turning Back the Clock? Violence against Women and the Trump Administration

ABSTRACT

The Trump Administration has engaged in a systematic rolling back of protections, regulations, and a host of other social safety net programs for vulnerable people, leaving over half of the population in dismay while others celebrate archaic triumphs. In this context, our focus is limited to the Trump Administration’s efforts—through law and words—to turn back the clock for women. We examine the reinforcement of overt forms of inequality rooted in patriarchy through domestic law as well as Trump’s misogynistic attitude and language toward women. Given that his words hold a greater significance now that he is President of the United States, he has a “gold-plated” pulpit to share and spread his misogynistic hostile rhetoric and propaganda: anti-women objectification, devaluing, and demonization through hegemonic “wordfare” while feeding and fueling sexism across the country. We conclude by suggesting that Trump’s rhetoric and that of other leading political figures are contributing to a darker time for those not in the white elite heteronormative order with short and long term implications and harm. We caution that the current dangers posed by these attacks are entering us into an endemic misogynist normal: retroactively moving the Country back in time at a dangerous speed.