On 25 May, 1961, President John F. Kennedy told Congress that “this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth.” The speech was prompted by Yuri Gagarin’s momentous feat, the previous month, in becoming the first human in space, thus casting doubt on American technological supremacy. Five days later came the Bay of Pigs fiasco, when a CIA-backed invasion of Cuba catastrophically failed. In response to this double blow, Kennedy promised the Moon.  

His speech was stirring but in retrospect rather hollow. Kennedy struggled to explain why a lunar mission was so important. In private, he confessed that “I’m not that interested in space.” On another occasion, he said: “Don’t you think I would rather spend these billions on programs here at home, such as health and education and welfare?”  But, he lamented, the country has no choice: American prestige “is too heavily involved.” 

That same vagueness is evident today. As NASA now puts it: “We’re going back to the Moon for scientific discovery, economic benefits, and inspiration for a new generation of explorers.” Similar promises were made back in the Sixties; giant leaps would be made for mankind. The rhetoric disguised the fact that the lunar mission was simply a Cold War pissing contest.  

After Gene Cernan left the lunar surface on 14 December, 1972, America abandoned the Moon. NASA wanted to launch a Mars program, but Richard Nixon vetoed the idea. The race with the Soviets had been won, American prestige restored, and so further missions seemed pointless.  There was nothing left to gain, no riches to harvest.  

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Though Nasa loves to compare itself to the 16th-century explorers, in truth the comparison is facile. Space travel isn’t remotely like what Magellan once achieved. Those explorers brought back treasure: gold, silver, tobacco, potatoes. The barren nature of the Moon is the best explanation for why humans have not returned. There are no potatoes there.

Artemis, just like Apollo, is being justified in terms of man’s innate need to explore. The eventual plan is to land near the lunar South Pole, where there might be frozen water. Nearby is the Aitken Basin, the largest impact crater in the solar system, which penetrates deep into the Moon’s crust, thus providing a graphic representation of its formation. Meanwhile, back on Earth, Americans are exploring how to live without affordable healthcare.

During one of the many debates on Nasa budget in the Seventies, Congressman Edward Koch, the future mayor of New York, confessed: “I just can’t for the life of me justify voting for monies to find out whether or not there is some microbe on Mars, when in fact I know that there are rats in Harlem apartments.” Senator Walter Mondale made a similar point, arguing that “it would be unconscionable to embark on a project of such staggering cost when many of our citizens are malnourished.”

Every president since Nixon agreed, arguing that there were too many pressing problems on Earth to justify massive expenditure in space. But then along came Donald Trump. He’s hopelessly attracted to shiny objects, and there are few things shinier than manned space travel. He probably expects that the great patriotic pride once generated by the 1969 Moon landing can be replicated. That seems unlikely, given the current fractious state of America.  At the very least, he perhaps thinks that Artemis might provide a distraction from his myriad problems.

Throughout most of its life, Nasa has been seen as a highly respected public agency, an image carefully cultivated but never fully deserved. A huge proportion of its budget has gone toward public relations. The agency’s reputation has depended heavily upon artifice. Projects like the Moon landing itself were shaped not by scientific curiosity but rather by a cynical aim to impress those who controlled the purse strings. NASA, really, is a giant machine for spending money. Huge risks were taken, as the Apollo 1 fire and the Shuttle disasters demonstrated, in order to please a public addicted to adventure. Impatience and ambition led directly to the three horrific disasters which killed 17 astronauts.   

There’s great similarity between Apollo and Artemis, but also important differences. Kennedy intentionally created a mood of consensus behind the lunar project. Lucrative contracts were distributed among the 50 states, encouraging the feeling that everyone was involved in this great lunar venture. That’s not the case today, since Trump has a habit of rewarding his cronies and cares nothing for consensus. Kennedy also enjoyed a healthy economy, with money to spend on big public works projects. The national debt in 1961 was just $289 billion; it’s over $37 trillion today. One also suspects that, with Congress emasculated, Artemis won’t be subjected to the rigid oversight that once applied to Apollo. That’s frightening, given Nasa’s habit of cutting corners on safety.

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This entire enterprise reeks of Musk. The latest Artemis mission will involve a Nasa rocket, but, as the program proceeds, the involvement of Elon Musk’s SpaceX Starship will steadily increase. The details of Musk’s deal with Trump are shrouded in mystery, but it’s safe to suspect that some quid pro quo is involved. Trump’s enthusiasm might have something to do with the $250 million that Musk donated to his 2024 presidential campaign. While we’re encouraged to believe that today’s adventures in space are privately funded, in truth SpaceX has so far received $17 billion in government funding, with future payouts expected to exceed $56 billion.  

Musk wants to settle a million people on Mars by 2050, with the first colonists arriving by 2030. He has outlined plans to “terraform” the planet, turning it into an Earth-like environment by exploding nuclear bombs in the polar regions to release the carbon dioxide held there. A weather system, breathable air, oceans, lakes, flora and fauna are all promised.  

The big question, though, is: “What’s the point?” Why build a colony on Mars if Earth’s environmental problems could be fixed for a fraction of the cost? Musk counters that humans need to become interplanetary in order to survive as a species. “There’s always some chance that something could go wrong on Earth,” he said. “Dinosaurs are not around anymore!’ When Musk talks about space he sounds like a 13-year-old addicted to video games.  

The space industry has two faces. The great achievements that have transformed our lives have occurred in near space thanks to boring, unmanned satellites. Advances in communications, weather forecasting, intelligence gathering, have all brought enormous benefit. But there’s still this obsession with astronauts, this insistence that space must have a face. Nasa still believes that attracting funding depends heavily on producing heroes.  

“A rat done bit my sister Nell”, the African-American poet Gil Scott-Heron wrote in 1970. “But Whitey’s on the moon.” Apollo was never as popular as Nasa pretended. Opinion polls showed great support for the individual missions, but, when the public was asked about increasing the NASA budget, support was consistently below 50%. White males loved Apollo, but women, people of color and the poor questioned its obscene cost. I doubt that a president who taxes the poor to pay the rich and cuts basic services will be able to inspire enthusiastic support for Artemis. Americans have grown tired of these absurd expressions of vanity, these futile pursuits of prestige.  

The survey found that 5% of the 2,000 participants are actively investigating emigration, while 2% have started the formal process. Just to put this in perspective, 2% of the American population is about seven million people. The effects of this exodus are already apparent in the UK, where over 6,100 Americans applied for British citizenship last year, the most since records began and 26% more than the previous year. The increase is even higher in Ireland, where applications rose by 46% over one year.

Back in September, my niece was shot at while traveling on Interstate 5 near Seattle. Two family members were hit, though both have recovered, physically at least. The assailant was suffering from severe paranoia, convinced that drivers on the highway were chasing him. He fired at five other cars, causing serious injuries. The day before, he had sought help from police and social services, but was turned away. Frustrated, he got a gun, as one does in America.

Since the shooting, the spectre of that masked gunman continues to torment. With life suddenly precarious, my niece and her husband are musing about moving to a safer country, like Canada or the UK. I doubt that it will come to anything, but it’s nevertheless significant that a quintessentially American family is even thinking about upping roots. As that survey suggests, they’re not alone.

I’m not interested in discussing America’s obsession with guns. That will never change. The core issue instead is the American quality of life — the point at which things become intolerable for some people, for any number of reasons. In the past, when Americans grew concerned about employment or housing or crime, they moved to another state. Now, they have run out of boltholes in America, and are talking seriously about leaving the country. What does this mean for the ethos of America, a place that was once Eden for the hungry, huddled masses?

According to the poll, 65% described American society as “toxic”. A similar number complained about “divisiveness”. More specific concerns related to healthcare, education, job opportunities, the cost of living, and the work-life balance. Stated simply, these people feel that they’re having to work too hard for fewer real rewards. The threat of bankruptcy is ever present, even for those in good jobs. More than 100 million Americans are currently carrying medical debt, with over 40% of cancer patients filing for bankruptcy within two years of diagnosis.

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The poll also found that discontent seems to be deep-seated and is not simply a knee-jerk reaction to a second Trump presidency. A sense of alienation has instead been building for some time, perhaps compounded by the failure of the Biden administration to address the core concerns of the discontented. Perhaps not surprisingly, dissatisfaction is highest among Millennials, with 25% of that group expressing a desire to emigrate. This can probably be explained by the fact that crippling student debt renders it difficult for this generation to replicate the standard of living enjoyed by their parents.

That said, Trump’s victory in November exacerbated the discontent felt by those already unhappy. Previously, the loss of an election was tolerated like a bad winter or a leaky roof. Time, it was assumed, would bring relief. In contrast, this election seems existential to many Americans, something that strikes at the very core of how they perceive themselves and their country. One senses a feeling of hopelessness, an inability to do anything to resist Trump’s malicious power, bolstered as he is by a sympathetic Congress and a cabinet of sycophants.

In the days after the election, Google searches on topics relating to emigrating were 15 times higher than before November 5. Traffic on sites providing information on moving to New Zealand, the most popular destination, was 76 times higher. Bureaucracy.es, a firm that provides advice on the visa process in Spain, found that three times as many people were booking consultations as before the election. Marco Permunian of Italian Citizenship Assistance asked his staff to arrive early on the day after the election. The phones in his office started ringing at 6AM and didn’t stop.

Since the election, fears have been realized; many Americans are experiencing genuine harm to their quality of life because of the flurry of budget cuts and executive orders. The DOGE raids on federal government agencies have resulted in thousands of professionals suddenly finding themselves out of work. Despite Trump’s campaign promises, the price of food has not come down, and costs are likely to rise even higher as a result of recently imposed tariffs. Robert Kennedy’s erratic behavior at the Department of Health and Human Services represents a clear threat to American well-being, as do the drastic cuts to the budget of the National Institute of Health, where cutting-edge cancer research takes place.

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One unexpected effect of the Trump presidency is the sense of shame that many Americans now feel. The cuts to USAID, the agency responsible for administering aid to poor countries, seem cruel and niggardly. That sense of shame was compounded exponentially by the recent treatment of Ukraine and Trump’s alarming friendship with Putin. Across social media, a lament echoes: “I’ve never been so ashamed to be an American.”

Disgruntled Americans seem to think that they’ll be welcomed wherever they want to go, an attitude that perhaps reflects their sense of entitlement. In fact, all countries limit immigration, just like the US does. Some, however, are recognizing the advantages of offering residence permits to highly trained Americans — just the sort that the US can ill afford to lose. A Spanish scheme is directed at the self-employed, particularly in tech industries, who can easily move their business to Spain. Portugal has a Golden Visa program open to those willing to invest €500,000 immediately, or donate €250,000 to a Portuguese charity. The scheme advertises heavily on social media, highlighting Portugal’s great food, pleasant weather, low crime rate and absence of guns.

It’s easy to dismiss this interest in emigration as the typical whining of disgruntled liberals; they’re derided as snowflakes accustomed to getting their own way. In any case, there’s a big difference between talking about leaving and actually doing it. Despite what that poll suggests, I doubt that seven million Americans will actually leave in the near future. The complexities of pulling up roots, leaving family behind, negotiating the intricate visa process and actually finding a new home will undoubtedly cause a good number to abandon the idea and instead just wallow in discontent.

The important point, however, is not that people will actually leave the US but rather that they’re seriously talking about doing so. That’s what’s unprecedented. There’s been a lot of coverage of this trend in the mainstream media of late, but nearly every writer misses a crucial point: America is not supposed to be a place that people want to leave. It has built its reputation on being the promised land, the apogee of ambition.

When I was growing up in southern California, I was taught that America was the best country on earth. It was the land of the free, as if freedom didn’t really exist elsewhere. That’s what everyone is still taught; it’s the American Gospel. The myth is reinforced by the fact that most Americans don’t travel outside the US and those who do often fail to immerse themselves in different cultures. Comfortable in a cocoon of imagined exceptionalism, they find it difficult to recognize that freedom and prosperity might exist elsewhere.

When Americans spend an extended time abroad, however, a transformation often takes place. I witnessed that when I taught at the University of St Andrews, where around 20% of my students were American. They arrived as quintessential Yanks — self-righteous and confident — but their certainties were gradually undermined. At the end of their four-year degree they’d come to a realization that America was not uniquely perfect. Every year, some would ask for advice about how to stay in Britain. I was supposed to be an authority, having traveled the same path decades before, when it was, however, much easier.

My mother, after arriving in America from the Netherlands in 1950, had the quintessential immigrant experience: she worked long hours, put her five kids through university, brought a house. She believed that America had been good to her. Then, late in life, she visited her birthplace and found that her old friends enjoyed a better quality of life. They didn’t have to worry about retirement, or crippling medical debt, or getting shot. She began to wonder whether she’d made a big mistake. Perhaps fortunately, dementia kept her from witnessing her entire net worth disappear down the healthcare sinkhole.

Over the last few decades, Americans have experienced some illuminating failures — in healthcare, gun violence, education, housing and the quality of life. The open-minded among them are exploring better options elsewhere. That, I suppose, is to be expected of a people who believe in their unalienable right to be happy. Supremely confident, Trump has told the discontented that if they’re not happy, they should just leave. Stay tuned, Mr President, they might just do so. For some people, realizing the American dream might require leaving America.

I’m a space sceptic — rockets don’t move me. Back in 2006, I explored the seedier side of America’s lunar mission in my book, Dark Side of the Moon. It sparked outrage among those space enthusiasts who still cling desperately to Nasa’s glorious myths. And so I concluded that the world is roughly divided into two groups: there are those who care passionately about space and those who don’t give a fig. Men are prominent in the first group, women in the second. Go figure.

Being a space sceptic is a niche profession. This means that my phone rings whenever something important happens in space. Thanks to Musk, it’s been ringing a lot lately. And with the sixth launch of his Starship rocket yesterday, it’ll continue to do so. I care about space — in the sense that I believe that the dangerous fantasies of space moguls need to be exposed. And I still adore the old astronauts like John Glenn, Yuri Gagarin and Neil Armstrong, all enormously brave men. But I recognise that they were mere pawns in a pointless political battle.

The recent exploits of Musk and Bezos fit into a longer story about celestial utopia. In 1869, Edward Hale published The Brick Moon, a short novel about a massive brick spaceship that is conceived as a navigational aid for those on earth. But a harmonious community, distinct from anything earthbound, quickly evolves within. Gravity was a cruel tyrant that prevented man from achieving true spiritual enlightenment.

President Ulysses Grant called the Brick Moon “the biggest thing since Creation, save for the invention of Bourbon whiskey and the Havana Cigar”. He was probably joking. Exactly 100 years later, President Richard Nixon described the Apollo 11 mission as “the greatest week in the history of the world since the Creation”. He wasn’t joking. Mature, otherwise intelligent men genuinely believed that Armstrong’s small step was a “giant leap for mankind”. Armstrong himself expressed surprise that the lunar landing didn’t immediately bring the Vietnam War to an end.

According to this gospel of space, if man escaped Earth’s surly clutch, his soul would likewise soar. Earth was, some said, a “lousy planet”, a drag on human fulfilment. The idea was eventually taken up by physicist Gerard O’Neill who in 1981 predicted that a giant community orbiting in space would usher in an age of “perpetual plenty”, eradicating war, famine and poverty. Nasa paid him a large amount of money just to dream of utopia.

This brings us back to Bezos and Musk. Wearing a t-shirt with the slogan “Occupy Mars”, Musk is a man who has everything but now wants a planet. It’s not yet clear what deal he has made with Donald Trump in exchange for support during the election — yet my guess is that it involves rockets.

Musk first set out his vision in an article in New Space in 2017. Rather than a serious discussion of interplanetary migration as Musk intended, it reads like a comic book. If you’re seeking profundity, look away now. “It would be quite fun to be on Mars,” he writes, “because you would have gravity that is about 37% of that of Earth, so you would be able to lift heavy things and bound around.” He admits that Mars “is a little cold”, (it has a median temperature of -65°C), “but we can warm it up”. And don’t worry about those windstorms that can last for months and which have the abrasive effect of shaving with a power sander. He’s going to fix all that. Musk aspires to be both a 19th-century imperialist and a god. “On the fifth day, Elon created an atmosphere. And it was good.”

Bezos thinks Musk is crazy — for the Amazon founder, turning Mars into a liveable planet is pie in the sky. He prefers instead an expanded version of O’Neill’s vision, with thousands of people living in an “Orbital Reef”. This would eventually expand into a vast conglomeration of connected tubes where trillions of people would live, creating the statistical probability of “1,000 Mozarts and 1,000 Einsteins”. When it comes to dreaming, these guys don’t mess around.

All this might seem exciting to space nuts, but life would have all the romance of a transcontinental flight, except with no destination and no ETA. Reality would be much more mundane than the paradise promised by Musk and Bezos. Residents would breathe recycled air, drink recycled urine and live in perpetual fear of a catastrophic decompression caused by a collision with space debris. Featureless aluminium walls would drip with condensation and the air would smell of Dettol.

Bezos has gone a bit quiet of late, or rather Musk’s exploits with SpaceX have hogged the limelight. And with the latter’s proximity to Trump, we should probably concentrate on what he has in mind. He’s promised to resettle a million people on Mars by 2050, with the first settlers arriving by 2030. Since Mars and Earth are in close synchronisation only once every 26 months, that means that there are only 10 windows of opportunity between 2030 and 2050. He claims that his Starship reusable rocket will be able to transport 100 people or 100 tons of cargo at a time. That suggests 10,000 flights in 10 months, just for the human passengers. Added to that would be an equal number of cargo flights necessary to construct a city on Mars. So, we’re talking roughly 20,000 flights over about 300 days.

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In addition to miners and rocket scientists there would be doctors, lawyers, accountants, sewage workers and pizza chefs. There would also be criminals, since that’s statistically inevitable. Musk figures that a ticket to Mars would initially cost around $500,000, decreasing to $100,000 over time. This could be paid for with a loan underwritten by SpaceX and paid back by working on the Red Planet. In other words, Musk wants something similar to the 19th-century American company town. His version of utopia consists of a million people in a state of perpetual indentured servitude, paying him for the houses they live in, the air they breathe and the water they drink. I’m reminded of the song “Sixteen Tons” by Tennessee Ernie Ford:

You load 16 tons, what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt
St. Peter, don’t you call me ’cause I can’t go
I owe my soul to the company store.

One wonders what type of person would want to sacrifice Earth’s rich bounty for a life on desolate Mars. The idea would probably attract people either hopelessly deluded or bitterly unhappy. Neither seems like the raw material of a stable community.

At first, these Martian residents would only be able to venture outside their enclosed shelters in spacesuits. Musk plans to fix that, however, by “terraforming” Mars, that is, turning it into an Earth-like environment. By using nuclear explosions, he’ll release the carbon dioxide frozen in the polar regions and, hey presto, there’ll be a weather system, breathable air, oceans, lakes, flora and fauna. Technically, the task might be feasible, but solving climate change on Earth would be a doddle compared to terraforming Mars.

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The big question, it seems, is: what’s the point? Why build a colony on Mars if Earth’s environmental problems could be fixed for a fraction of the cost? Musk claims that humans need to become interplanetary in order to survive as a species. “I think this is an incredibly important thing for the future of life itself… there’s always some chance that something could go wrong on Earth. Dinosaurs are not around anymore!” That’s certainly true, but I’m sure there are deeper, more personal motives. One senses that Musk shares that mistaken belief that gravity is a tyrant, that a different world will produce a different human.

That vision seemed preposterous, but rather harmless, when described by Hale. Expressed by Bezos and Musk it seems downright frightening. We know them; we’re familiar with their rapacious labour practices. Tesla and Amazon are not good blueprints for utopia. What these billionaires seem to have in mind is an idiosyncratic paradise free from the laws that constrain them on Earth. They want King Leopold’s Congo, but in space.

When I was a boy, astronauts were my heroes. Their exploits carried me through a difficult decade of riots and war. My dad contributed to the space adventure by making components for the Saturn rocket that took Armstrong to the moon. But then he died an early death, killed by the carcinogenic chemicals he’d once handled. After I became a historian I discovered just how cynical the space race was, how good people were exploited to win a Cold War pissing contest.

Space travel has always been an ego trip; but at least back then there were real heroes who made it fun. Nowadays billionaires, not nations, are at the helm. The once heavenly realm has become an arena of greed and power. The lustre is lost. Musk’s version of utopia is not just cloud cuckoo land. It’s also a nightmare.

The subject arose at a meeting of national security officials on 15 May after the administration accused both Russia and China of conducting low-level nuclear tests. Those accusations have not been verified by independent nuclear watchdogs like the Federation of Atomic Scientists. Both China and Russia deny testing.

Drew Walter, the acting deputy assistant secretary of defense for nuclear matters, insisted that there’s been “no policy change” within the Trump administration regarding the issue, though he did admit that “a very quick test with limited diagnostics” could occur “within months” if ordered by the president. “I think it would happen relatively rapidly.”

The most important phrase in Walter’s statement is “limited diagnostics”. That’s effectively an admission that the rationale is politics, not technology. In an event hosted by the Mitchell Institute on 26 May, Walter revealed that the time necessary to prepare for “a fully diagnostic” test that provides “lots of data, all the bells and whistles … might be measured in years”. The US, however, is in a hurry.

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Nuclear tests are almost always motivated by political purposes. Physicists know their stuff; they have a good idea whether a device will work and what the yield will be. The very first device exploded over Hiroshima in 1945 was, for instance, not actually tested beforehand because Manhattan Project scientists knew it would work. The second bomb, exploded over Nagasaki, was tested a few weeks earlier at Alamogordo, New Mexico, only because it involved more complicated implosion technology.

That Alamogordo test was arguably the only one in history free of propaganda motive. Every subsequent one has carried with it an element of sabre rattling. During the Cold War, tests became a method of waging war by other means, a way of saying: ‘Beware’. When the US conducted a series of tests in July 1946 at Bikini Atoll, they invited 170 journalists from around the world. A floating press office made sure the news got out.

In 1961, the Soviets exploded the largest ever device, a 57 megaton bomb, over Novaya Zemlya in the Arctic. Nicknamed Tsar Bomba, it was far too large to be used in war, since it could not be carried by plane or missile. Its sole purpose was to intimidate. Nowadays, when Kim Jong Un explodes a bomb, he knows beforehand that it will work; his purpose is merely to unnerve the United States. Nuclear testing is, and has always been, a pissing contest.

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Computer modelling enables atomic engineers to calculate whether a device will work and what its yield will be. Since 1945, modelling has become more sophisticated and reliable. Granted, mistakes have occasionally been made. For instance, when the US exploded its first hydrogen bomb in November 1952, the yield exceeded the most optimistic predictions. When physicists ran their equations again, they realised they’d overlooked a crucial element in the chain reaction that produced extra neutrons leading to a greater yield.

Errors like that, however, are immaterial to nuclear politics. These bombs are not, in truth, weapons: they’re instruments of diplomacy — devices designed to ensure security through deterrence. Their importance lies in their existence, not in their use. If they’re used, that means they’ve failed in their sole purpose to prevent nuclear war.

But paranoia is always appropriate when the issue is nuclear annihilation. In 1962, the US was deterred from nuclear war by a handful of medium range Soviet missiles in Cuba. At the time, the US arsenal was perhaps 14 times larger than the Soviet Union’s, but, as Defense Secretary Robert McNamara later admitted, it wasn’t worth losing Chicago in order to destroy the USSR. Likewise, since 1962, China has achieved deterrence with a relatively small arsenal compared to other nuclear powers.

Tests upset this fragile balance. Deterrence depends upon the predictability of nuclear nations and their leaders; tests inject a worrying element of uncertainty. We’ve seen that with Kim and, earlier, with the secrecy surrounding Saddam Hussein’s nuclear intentions. It’s important to reiterate a simple point: nuclear tests are always political.

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The fear aroused by the Cuban Missile Crisis led John Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev to negotiate the Partial Test Ban Treaty (PTBT) in August 1963. It prohibited tests in the atmosphere, on the seabed and in outer space. The treaty did not end testing; in fact, the frequency actually increased, but all tests were conducted underground. That agreement is nevertheless immensely important as a symbolic gesture. The nuclear adversaries had agreed on a common purpose. In my view, the PTBT was more important to international harmony than any of the later SALT or START agreements, which did little to limit nuclear proliferation.

The same could be said of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) of 1996, adhered to by 184 nations. The US has not formally ratified the treaty (the Senate rejected it in 1999), but it has followed the spirit of the agreement by not testing.  The CTBT is important because it set a standard of behaviour accepted by almost all countries on Earth. That in turn makes possible the censure of rogue nations like Iran and North Korea.

In his 2018 Nuclear Posture Review, Trump indicated that he would not seek ratification of the CTBT.  He also recently indicated that he wants to rescind the Treaty on Open Skies, a 2002 agreement designed to reduce the chances of accidental war by allowing mutual reconnaissance flights. These actions, when combined with recent talk of resuming testing, have suddenly made the world a more dangerous place. The US is now unpredictable and predictability is essential to nuclear harmony.

An American test will be like firing a starter’s pistol in a new arms race. “It would be an invitation for other nuclear-armed countries to follow suit”, argues Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association. “You would also disrupt the negotiations with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, who may no longer feel compelled to honor his moratorium on nuclear testing.’”

It’s possible that rumblings about testing are just a diversion designed to distract attention from Trump’s failures on the Covid-19 front. But I don’t think so. I think this was always on the cards. Trump has already indicated that he holds no respect for the age-old rules of international diplomacy — he thinks he knows a better way to run the world. And that’s frightening. Deterrence has always depended on international leaders understanding the intricacies of nuclear diplomacy and the simple fact that these weapons should never be used. It has worked because leaders were always rational: they could be trusted to stop short of nuclear annihilation.

Donald Trump is not a rational man. He has already shown that he does not understand nuclear diplomacy. A resumption of testing would be the biggest mistake of his already chaotic presidency.

When the coronavirus hit higher education, it encountered an institution with serious pre-existing conditions. Many universities were teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. A lingering dispute over pensions had corroded morale. The over-emphasis on research, imposed largely by the government, had warped priorities, leading to a decline in teaching quality everywhere. Mounting student debt led many young people to question whether the ‘ivory tower experience’ is worth the investment.

The virus is ruthless: it exposes and punishes those weaknesses. Over the long term, some institutions might be forced to close, while others will have to radically transform the product they offer.

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In the short term, universities responded impressively to the lockdown. Fortunately, the crisis struck around the term break, giving lecturers time to adjust to teaching online. I heard the usual grumbling among former colleagues but they improvised remarkably well.

The challenges were immense. Take my son, who’s currently in his third year of a drama course at the University of the Highlands and Islands. At first, it seemed impossible to do acting online from home. He, however, dutifully showed up to Zoom classes, performing movement and voice in front of his Apple Mac. An assignment in a directing module was completed with his mother in the starring role.

Higher education has changed more in four weeks than it did during the four decades I taught. When I asked friends how they’ve coped, they described nuisances familiar to almost anyone who has been working at home. One friend told about trying to conduct an online seminar while a neighbour next door was noisily building a shed. Cats walked over keyboards, dogs barked and kids made demands. Most common of all were the challenges of dealing with new technology and dodgy wifi. “One of the biggest learning curves I’ve found”, a colleague wrote, “is embracing change as a set of new perspectives rather than a series of threats.”

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The problems staff have encountered are mere nuisances; those students have had to endure are more serious, and will become more so, if the crisis continues into a new academic year. The virus, far from being a great leveller, brutally exposed inequalities among students. Some have to share laptops with family members; others don’t have a reliable internet connection, or even a simple desk. One student worked from an ironing board. They nevertheless adjusted quickly and with resilience. Courses were completed without too much loss of content.

But let’s not get complacent. One reason online teaching worked better than expected is because it happened in the middle of the semester, when classes had already met face-to-face and formed personal bonds. A bunker spirit arose, fortified by an assumption that the crisis would be temporary. Creating a group dynamic with students who have never met one another and who have endured months of lockdown and uncertainty is a much greater challenge. And that’s what lies ahead.

Universities are flying blind. Among my friends, anxiety is high; there’s a repeated refrain of “the worst is yet to come”. Colleagues are frantically planning for scenarios they can’t predict. When will the lockdown be lifted? When will social distancing no longer apply? Will travel restrictions prevent the arrival of international students who contribute massively to income? Universities have responded by anticipating every contingency. They are offering teaching both in person and online, with students allowed to choose which is best for them.

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Is it safe to reopen schools?

By Tom Chivers

This seems a sensible solution, but uncertainties proliferate. It’s not clear whether in-person and online classes can take place simultaneously. If not, the workload for lecturers will immediately double. Students opting for the online version will inevitably suffer a qualitative difference in provision that might be reflected in performance. As for those who opt for in-person teaching, will it be safe by September to pack 300 students into a lecture hall or squeeze eight of them into a small office for a tutorial? Yesterday, Cambridge announced that there will be no face-to-face lectures in the coming academic year and in person small group teaching will be conducted only where social distancing allows. Other universities will certainly follow. And what of all the other aspects of campus life – dances, sports, societies, carousing and casual sex?  There’s great risk of universities becoming hotspots in the second wave of the virus.

Now look at that scenario from the student’s perspective. Some will inevitably decide that it’s not worth spending £9,000 in fees for an experience diminished both educationally and socially. Many prospective first years will opt instead to defer their place. Some students in mid-course will decide to take a year off; some may never return. My son is seriously considering whether doing drama in the age of self-isolation is really worth the effort. He’s not sure he’ll go back. Universities have promised to be flexible when it comes to those choosing to defer, but this will inevitably lead to a massive logjam at the clearing stage in the summer of 2021.

I’m certain that universities will respond well to these uncertainties, just as they have so far done.  My former colleagues, for the most part, take pride in what they do; they don’t want the quality of higher education to suffer. Most of them will therefore spend the summer improving the online versions of their classes, by looking creatively at how best to exploit the existing technology. One thing is certain: online classes will be much better come September than they were back in April.

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Who gains from the great university scam?

By Mary Harrington

That, however, raises another problem, one which brings to mind turkeys voting for an early Christmas. The preferred method of teaching at universities hasn’t changed much since Plato gathered acolytes together under the Grecian sun. Seminars and tutorials teach students more than English or Philosophy or History: they foster the development of life skills like reasoning, listening, discourse and argument that are applicable to any subsequent profession.

The individual develops and matures in the hothouse of the seminar room in ways that go beyond the mere imparting of knowledge. For this reason, academics have long argued that the computer can never replace the classroom. Successful examples of distance learning, like the Open University, are still seen as second-best alternatives.

If my former colleagues work hard to make the coming academic year a success, the effect might be to undermine that cherished assumption that in-person contact is essential to learning. In other words, there’s great danger in doing the job well. Universities have always sold a life-changing experience — the degree represents a level of expertise but also a rich journey in attaining it. In the post-Covid environment of austerity, that experience might look even more like a middle-class indulgence than it already does.

The ancient universities will undoubtedly continue to do what they’ve always done and will find students willing to pay for the full ivory tower experience.  They will, however, suffer in the short term.  The University of Edinburgh announced last week that its annual income will drop by £150 million due to the Coronavirus, in particular because students from outside Europe, who pay high fees, are likely to stay away.  That will be a common problem among the elite institutions.

It is, however, the less-prestigious institutions that face a really bleak future. They can’t rely on idyllic surroundings or a distinguished reputation to attract undergraduates. These institutions depend upon their ability to pack students in to large lecture courses, taught by low paid, often adjunct, lecturers.  The competition for applicants among them was already fierce and some were in dire financial trouble.  In the post-Covid future, some might decide that survival lies in developing cheap distance-learning degrees.  Cash-strapped students might opt pragmatically for that alternative — a degree without the frills delivered online and without the expense of living on campus.

Higher education has always been sold as a great leveller — a ladder of social mobility. Intelligent youths from underprivileged backgrounds, it was thought, would develop their full potential through the experience of going away to university. That ideal was already undermined by the introduction of fees in 1998 and their crippling increase in 2010. It would be weakened further if online courses proliferate.

Higher education would be divided into two unequal sectors which would reflect the characteristics of the cohort they attract. The ancient universities would continue to offer the in-person tutorial experience, with the important personal and social development that goes with it. The other sector would offer online degrees without frills — an option attractive to those whose low income necessitates a utilitarian approach to education. The latter would learn a subject, but would miss out on the personal growth. Out would go that ideal of levelling; instead of erasing class differences, universities would magnify them.

While Americans everywhere are eager to pretend that the virus is under control, the situation in Wisconsin is getting precarious. According to the state’s Department of Health Services, a total of 920 people in Brown County — where Green Bay is located — have tested positive for Covid-19, up 603 from a week ago. The infection rate in the county is 3.54 cases per 1,000 residents — the highest in the state. By point of comparison, in Dane County, where the capital city of Madison is located, the rate is just .79 per 1,000.

The explanation for that disparity is simple: Dane County is, for the most part, a middle-class region.  Residents work predominantly for the state government, its legal apparatus, the huge University of Wisconsin and the technology sector. Brown County, in contrast, is working class, with the meat packing industry a big employer. As we’ve already seen (if we’ve been paying attention) this virus is particularly cruel to the working class.

Americans are huge consumers of meat. They eat 124 kilos per person per year, which puts them near the top of the league table of carnivores. Among major countries, only Denmark and New Zealand consume more.  Americans aren’t about to let a pandemic get in the way of their meat consumption — especially not with the barbecue season heating up. That demand for meat has placed a great strain on the processing industry — and particularly its workers.

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How Trump is fixing the vote

By Justin Webb

Earlier this month, one of the largest pork-producing plants in the US — Tyson Foods of Sioux Falls, South Dakota — closed indefinitely because nearly 300 of its employees had tested positive for Coronavirus. That was the first real hint of worrisome trend. Last week Smithfields, a huge pork processor, temporarily closed two plants because of the virus. At one plant, which employs nearly 4,000 largely Hispanic workers, almost 900 people were infected.

The spike in Brown County has been linked to JBS Packerland, a meat industry plant in Green Bay. Infectious disease experts have found that meat processing plants have become hot spots because employees have to work in close quarters, making social distancing impossible. Wet animal carcasses are passed from person to person along the production line, acting as conduits for the disease. The workforce at these plants is made up largely of recently arrived Hispanic immigrants who live in crowded housing. Throw in the language barrier, and it’s easy to see why controlling the spread of the virus within the packing industry is extremely difficult.

So far, 22 packing plants in the US have closed. Some 3,300 workers have been diagnosed with the virus, and 20 have died, but those figures are rising with every passing day. Plant closures were motivated by the need to protect the lives of workers, a noble principle. But the consequence has been a severe drop in the supply of meat — up to one quarter in the case of pork. There’s talk of having to euthanise millions of animals because of the lack of processing capacity in the industry at the moment.

Last Sunday, John Tyson, chairman of Tyson Foods, took out full-page ads in the Washington Post and New York Times warning that “as pork, beef and chicken plants are being forced to close … millions of pounds of meat will disappear from the supply chain”. In an intentionally apocalyptic tone, Tyson warned: “the nation’s food supply is breaking”. That’s not strictly true, since, for the moment, it’s mainly the meat industry that’s in peril, not the entire food supply. But, given the American fondness for meat, Tyson’s scaremongering hit home.

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Why doesn't Britain value its farmers?

By James Rebanks

Tyson is a long-time friend of Sonny Perdue, Trump’s Agriculture Secretary. Both made their fortunes in the chicken industry. Tyson and Perdue appear to have had a word in Donald Trump’s ear. On Tuesday, the President invoked the Defense Production Act (DPA) mandating that meat is a vital commodity and ruling that packing plants must remain open.

According to the executive order, closures “threaten the continued functioning of the national meat and poultry supply chain, undermining critical infrastructure during the national emergency”. The order designates that meatpacking plants are part of the critical infrastructure of the nation. Cynics might notice how quickly Trump invoked the DPA with respect to the meat supply, compared with his much slower response in the case of test kits, PPE and ventilators.

Along with that executive order came a “hold harmless” decree which stipulates that the plants cannot be held liable for the spread of the illness among employees. Occupational Safety and Health Administration guidelines designed to protect the worker in these factories have been temporarily relaxed in order to address the threat of meat shortages. Nowhere has there been mention, by the President or his assistants, that now might be a good time to cut back on consumption.

The United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW), the largest US meatpacking union, has demanded that the Trump administration compel meat companies to provide proper protective equipment and frequent coronavirus testing for slaughterhouse workers. That demand, however, is likely to fall on deaf ears. The unions, already weak in the US, are powerless against a determined President who loves his hamburgers, and who seems to take delight in using this crisis to assert his power. It’s easy for him to argue that desperate times require desperate measures.

The workers in those packing plants are the innocent lambs led helplessly to slaughter. They’re faced with a stark choice: they can go back to work and risk their health, or they can protect their health and lose their jobs. With unemployment approaching 20%, the employers hold all the cards. Finding replacement workers at the slaughterhouses shouldn’t prove too difficult, even if the job has suddenly become deadly.

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Will Covid bankrupt Donald Trump?

By Justin Webb

In 1906, Upton Sinclair published The Jungle, his novel about the harsh conditions of immigrant workers in America’s meatpacking industry. Ironically, most middle-class readers of the book ended up more concerned about the insanitary processing of meat than about the welfare of those workers. “I aimed at the public’s heart,” wrote Sinclair, “and by accident I hit it in the stomach.”

Things haven’t really changed much since that book was published. Americans have always been more concerned about the meat they consume than about the unfortunate people who process it. No one really wants to think about what goes on in a slaughterhouse.

America has been hit in the stomach again. What we’re seeing is a particularly stark example of a phenomenon that will become painfully apparent in the weeks to come. And let us not pretend that this is an exclusively American story. Powerful people desperately want a return to normal. Normality, however, will be restored by the underclass – the low-paid, powerless workers who face the choice of protecting their health or protecting their livelihood.

In truth, it’s not a choice at all; those workers have no alternative but to become martyrs in this battle for meat. Middle-class habits will always trump working-class well-being.

The epidemic of 1918 first appeared in the spring and seemed mild; most people quickly recovered. But then a second, more deadly, wave arrived in the autumn. Some died within hours of contracting the disease, suffocating as their lungs filled with fluid. A third phase in the spring of 1919 was less deadly, but still lethal. We’re now in phase one of Covid-19. Will there be subsequent, more deadly, phases? No one knows for sure.

Some 500 million people contracted the Spanish flu, roughly one-third of the world’s population. By the time the epidemic ran its course, 50 million were dead, maybe twice that number. Doctors and hospitals were overwhelmed, as were mortuaries. Some families were forced to bury their own dead. In the United States, where perhaps 750,000 people died, the disease lowered the average life expectancy by 12 years.

There was, though, nothing particularly Spanish about the Spanish flu. The epidemic came to be identified with Spain because of censorship during the Great War, when governments in belligerent countries, fearing mass panic, suppressed news reports. Since Spain was neutral, no controls existed, and so the first reports came from Spain. Then, as now, governments seized the opportunity to blame the pandemic on a foreign power; Americans, struck by the perplexing peculiarity of this strain, were inclined to blame those mysterious Chinese.

In fact, this flu probably originated at Camp Funston in Kansas where an army cook named Albert Gritchell fell ill on 4 March 1918. Within hours, the infirmary was packed with over one hundred similarly afflicted soldiers. In truth, however, it hardly matters where the disease began, since its distinguishing feature was ubiquity, not specificity. As we’ve seen recently, however, blaming others is an effective way of distracting attention from government incompetence.

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When did empathy become so dangerous?

By Gerard DeGroot

Politicians respond to epidemics in a similar manner to the classic five stages of grief, starting with denial and eventually moving to acceptance. Donald Trump at first insisted that the virus would mysteriously disappear when the weather warmed; Boris Johnson boasted about shaking hands with sufferers.

A century ago, President Wilson, keen to avoid an economic slump, urged factory workers to keep working even if they felt ill. Some died on the assembly line, but not before spreading the virus to their workmates. The second wave of the disease coincided with victory celebrations, which officials everywhere were reluctant to cancel (where they did, as in St Louis, the effects were dramatic). Politicians gave blithe assurances based on nothing but reckless hunches; for instance, a Boston health commissioner claimed that brief exposure to the sun would kill the disease (which sounds familiar), but even the United States Surgeon General said to avoid tight shoes.

But are we that much smarter now? Over the last few weeks, I’ve come across a plethora of wacky cures and avoidance strategies. These include drinking water every 15 minutes, swabbing the nostrils with saline, bathing with chlorine, using a hairdryer all over the body and — this from an Iranian cleric — rubbing the anus with violet leaf oil. Quack remedies are blooming quicker than the daffodils in my garden, so much so that health authorities have set up websites to refute the myths.

On YouTube, a young Ghanaian evangelist named Addai argues, on the basis of “extensive research”, that frequent sex helps prevent the coronavirus. He’s thinking not just every day, but for hours every day. He cites a report on CNN that sex strengthens the body’s immune system, but I couldn’t find that report. Of course there might be some logic to Addai’s advice, since staying in bed constantly copulating will reduce exposure to the public.

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Will coronavirus change the world?

By Ed West

On that sex issue, behaviour has perhaps changed over the last century. In 1918, Spanish priests in Zamora told their flocks that the flu was God’s punishment for licentiousness. Parishioners were told to seek redemption by lining up to kiss the relics of Rocco, the patron saint of pestilence. (I probably don’t need to finish this story.)

In the early 1900s, people everywhere were in thrall to science, which presaged a brave new world. Einstein and Darwin had offered brilliant solutions to perplexing mysteries. H. G. Wells converted complex scientific discovery into entertaining plot lines. Religion was in decline. But, then came the epidemic, and because established medicine was helpless to cure victims or limit the spread, the reputation of science suffered. That partially explains the popularity of quack cures, such as quinine, arsenic, camphor, digitalis, strychnine and castor oil.

That sudden suspicion of science inspired a minor religious revival. Churches became packed, with inevitable consequences for contagion. Nowadays, the situation is significantly different, because a virulent wave of scepticism toward science preceded the coronavirus.

In the present climate, it will be interesting to see how societies react. Will the virus inspire renewed respect for science, or the opposite? How, for instance, will the powerful anti-vax movement react to an eventual Covid-19 vaccination? My guess is that we’re in for even greater scepticism toward science and maybe a new religious revival.

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How coronavirus exposes our fragility

By James Kirkup

The thing about viruses is that they don’t lend support to scientific thinking. Yes, 2% might die, but 98% will not. Survivors will seize upon easy explanations for their good fortune – that saline up the nose, that oil up the butt.

In recent weeks, experts have tried to reassure us that “coronavirus is not the Spanish flu”. That’s true, but also dangerously misleading. The 1918 flu was much more lethal than Covid-19 appears to be, but that’s partially because the 1918 population, recently ravaged by war, was much less healthy than we are today, and did not have access to the quality healthcare most of us enjoy.

It bears stressing that we’re a more mobile population today, which is why the current epidemic is spreading much more quickly than in 1918. Back then, women were less susceptible than men because they were more home-bound. In any case, a virus today does not need to be as lethal to be nearly as destructive as in 1918. If today’s virus has a fatality rate of just 1%, but affects the same percentage of the population as in 1918, it will kill around 27 million people.

That would still make it less of a disaster than a century ago, but one thing is certain: the economic effect of this virus will be catastrophic compared to 1918. The Spanish flu occurred at the end of the Great War when austerity was already the norm. Economies everywhere were geared toward high government intervention and low personal consumption.

The opposite is the case today. We’re doubly cursed in that we’re accustomed to lavish consumption and the infrastructure for massive government intervention does not exist. At the moment, world leaders are frightened by the plummeting stock market, but very shortly mass unemployment will take centre-stage. We’re soon going to find that, like loo paper, the lifestyle we’ve come to expect is out of stock. Fasten your seatbelts, this could be a rougher ride than 1918.

Make no mistake, Weinstein is a sexual predator who deserves a long spell behind bars. Biden, however, is something different. He seems to be a man who punctuates his emotions with physical contact. He probably needs to rein it in, and he definitely needs to apologise to those who found his gestures unwelcome. But I doubt there’s anything inherently evil in his behaviour. I suspect Biden is a victim of his own empathy.

“Joe has a deep desire to share in the lives of others – their grief, pain, and joy” the former Missouri Senator Jean Carnahan recently tweeted. She had experienced the therapeutic power of Biden’s empathy after she lost her husband and son in a plane crash. “He reaches out… to connect and express … feelings. … it’s part of who he is. Like everything else about his big, Irish personality, he expresses those feelings with exuberance and sincerity.”

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And that worries me. Carnahan’s description of Biden sounds a little bit like me. I’m certainly far more restrained when it comes to physicality, but I do sometimes express emotions with contact – a tap to the forearm for instance. I, too, convey feelings with exuberance and I involve myself in the lives of others.

Let’s make it clear: I’m not talking about touch – the sort of thing that got Biden into trouble. I’m talking about connectedness: I open myself emotionally to people and welcome it when they open themselves to me. Compassion is a two-way street. This, for me, is simple humanity, something devoid of sexual intent and applied equally to men and women.

But I’m worried now. Standards of acceptable behaviour seem suddenly to have shifted. Empathy – with or without that touch on the arm – is hazardous.

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By Gerry de Groot

My worries are compounded by the fact that empathy plays a large part in my profession – or at least it should. I’m a university teacher. I prefer that description to ‘professor’, which connotes an aloofness detrimental to compassion. For many of my colleagues, that aloofness offers a safe haven that doesn’t require emotional commitment to one’s students.

Yet many students seek such commitment from their teachers. They’re alone in a stressful world, away from parents. Yes, they have friends, but sometimes they need someone else – someone older, not necessarily a friend, but a person they can trust.

We’re now officially advised, though, that we should not try to help students with emotional problems, and should instead pass them on to the ‘professionals’ at Student Support. I suppose that’s because the dangers of giving wrong advice are too high. We’re no longer trusted to help, no longer trusted with human compassion.

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By Julie Bindel

Yet, if only professionals are allowed to help, that can institutionalise a problem or give it a stigma with which the student is uncomfortable. It can escalate that problem to a level the student doesn’t want.

So I ignore that advice; I respect the student’s decision to seek out me. Lots of students – of both sexes – end up crying in my office. I’ve had colleagues do the same. For me, it’s part of the job and a reflection of who I am. I’m not formally trained to deal with these problems, but I do have experience – 35 years of it.

I’m painfully aware that my profession carries significant dangers. Students are often emotionally vulnerable. We see them in private with doors closed so that they feel comfortable about being candid. Taken together, these circumstances constitute a ticking time bomb.

Lecturers and professors have enormous power over students; some use that power for sexual favour. Over a long career, I’ve heard plenty of stories of despicable behaviour – many were probably true. Long ago, a colleague was so notoriously predatory that female students avoided going to his office alone. Keen to avoid a scandal, his university quietly encouraged him to take a job elsewhere. Otherwise, nothing was done, no sanctions imposed. Theoretically, gross moral turpitude – having sex with a student – was the only acceptable grounds for firing an academic. Yet in all my years in universities, I’ve never seen anyone fired. Some should have been.

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By Damian Thompson

But they were the predators. Nowadays, I’m worried about the empathisers – people like me, who let students in to pour out their hearts. In the past, I might have expressed compassion for a student with a pat on the shoulder, but I would no longer do so. Some time ago, a young colleague broke down in my office after male students had been unkind to her – something that happens all the time. She was a vulnerable wreck in need of compassion. That situation now frightens me because it carries so many risks.

A prominent female academic, faced with a similar situation, hugged her colleague. She ended up accused of unsolicited sexual contact, leading to a large out-of-court settlement by her university. Have my fears rendered my empathy less effective? Yes, I think so. I’m certainly more careful, more aware of the hazards of empathy. More guarded.

In my profession, suspicion runs deep; compassion now seems to carry unaffordable risk. We’re so afraid of the potential consequences of intimacy that we’re building walls to prevent its occurrence. Trust has disappeared. Safety lies in a cold heart. Some colleagues in America are no longer allowed to consult students in private because their institutions are deathly afraid of litigation. Extrapolating forward, it’s not inconceivable that future consultations will have to take place with student and teacher divided by a glass barrier, as in prison.

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Almost every one of us has had, in our past, a teacher who changed our life, who put us on course toward where we are now. That connection most likely came through empathy, a personal bond that transcended mere conveyance of knowledge. A teacher who took the time to make an emotional connection with my son turned his life around. He’s now at university only because of her. If we remove empathy from education we might as well turn teaching over to computers.

Is this fear of empathy a problem that extends beyond education? I expect so. We’re all victims in this brave new world. We all lose when compassion is seen as risky and openness a danger. I’d like to be able to offer a solution, a path back to sanity and trust. But I don’t know of one.

The future scares me. I’m glad I’m retiring. I’ve got three weeks of teaching left, three weeks to avoid trouble. I once had the best job in the world, but now it’s gone. Goodbye to all that.

That photo juxtaposed two attempts to defeat communism, one futile, the other enormously successful. The US spent billions of dollars and nearly 60,000 lives trying to eradicate communism from Vietnam. They were humiliated and finally withdrew in 1975. Communism was gradually undermined when Coca-Cola, Levis and those condos arrived.

Trump loves condos. He sees Vietnam as a perfect example of what North Korea might become with a little encouragement from the good old USA. Just before the summit, he tweeted:

Vietnam is thriving like few places on earth. North Korea would be the same, and very quickly, if it would denuclearize. The potential is AWESOME, a great opportunity, like almost none other in history, for my friend Kim Jong Un. We will know fairly soon – Very Interesting!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 27, 2019

In another tweet, the President predicted that “Chairman Kim will make a wise decision!” Trump, bless him, clearly cannot understand why anyone would ever reject economic development. To him, it seems inconceivable that beautiful North Korean beaches have no hotels on them.

On Thursday, Kim made a decision, but it was not – by Trump’s standards – wise. He refused to give up his nukes in exchange for the removal of sanctions.  He turned his back on that economic miracle. Most commentators, including Trump himself, have concluded that Kim is too enamoured of his weapons. That’s probably true, but my own guess is that he’s also justifiably frightened of what economic development will mean for his dictatorship.

According to Michael Green, a North Korea expert who advised George W. Bush, Kim “wants cash. He wants the U.S. to agree to lift U.N. … sanctions.” But he wants development that he can control, not the sort that Trump envisages. “He does not want the kind of opening that China or Vietnam did, where foreigners wander around the countryside talking about democracy.” More importantly, he realises that if his people cease to suffer, they will become harder to control. On that point, he’s right.

Back in 1965, President Lyndon Johnson offered Ho Chi Minh, the Vietnamese communist leader, a deal. If Ho would agree to withdraw Viet Cong guerrillas from South Vietnam, Johnson would build a $1 billion dam on the Mekong River.  The dam would facilitate flood control and provide electricity for impoverished villages throughout the South. To Johnson, the offer seemed impossible to refuse. Who could possibly reject the riches that dam would bring?

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The origins of that offer are easy to trace. In 1937, Johnson was a junior Congressman helping to implement Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal in the Hill Country of Texas. That meant bringing electrical power to communities far from the grid.  For the impoverished people of the Hill Country, Johnson was, forever afterwards, “the man who brought the light”. That phrase has a lovely practical and symbolic significance. He literally brought light to their homes, but also brought enlightenment – the kind of liberal awakening that can only come if a people are freed from a hand-to-mouth existence.

Johnson wanted to “bring the light” to Vietnam. “The task”, he boasted, “is nothing less than to enrich the hopes and the existence of more than 100 million people. The vast Mekong River can provide food and water and power on a scale to dwarf even our own Tennessee Valley Authority.” Johnson understood that peaceful economic development could undermine communism much more efficiently than military power ever could. In the wake of electricity would come radios and televisions that would break Ho’s grip on peasant minds. Development would turn those peasants into budding capitalists unwilling to tolerate the privation that communism implied.

Ho fully understood the implications and intentions of Johnson’s cunning plan and therefore rudely rejected the President’s offer. For Ho, privation was essential to the success of the revolution.  In typically cryptic manner, he repeatedly stressed: “A firefly can set a field ablaze. But, for that to happen, the field must be very dry.” What he meant was that a small revolutionary movement can capture the hearts of a people but only if those people are sufficiently ‘dry’ – suitably downtrodden. The greater their misery, the more powerful their commitment to revolution.

The communists did improve the lives of Vietnamese peasants, but only in a very controlled fashion. Peasants were given medical care, sanitation, security and a parcel of land. But they were strictly prevented from rising above a hand-to-mouth existence. Farmers could barter for essentials, but they could not earn enough to buy simple luxuries. Competing sources of political enlightenment – like schoolteachers – were assassinated. Terror remained an important element of control.  Suffering was the fuel that drove the revolution.

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Ho’s revolution was one of the most successful political movements of the 20^thcentury. Through brilliant organisation and indoctrination his followers were able to defeat the French and then the Americans. But suffering was only tolerable as long as there existed an enemy who, according to the propaganda, threatened an even worse existence. After 1975, that external threat disappeared and dedication borne of struggle proved impossible to sustain. Tired of privation, the people demanded progress. Henceforth, their loyalty had to be bought with capitalist trinkets – first Coke, eventually condos. A gradual process of embourgeoisement turned Vietnam into a country that is communist only in name.

Kim is fully aware of what happened in Vietnam. The wonderful economic miracle that Trump lauds is something he finds frightening. When the two leaders met in Singapore last summer, Trump showed a glitzy four-minute video in which images of war and destruction were juxtaposed with those of gleaming cityscapes and Trumpian towers. For Kim, that video must have seemed like a horror film.

Kim is painfully aware that his country is impoverished. The CIA estimated that North Korea had a gross domestic product of $28 billion in 2013. In contrast, the GDP of South Korea tops $1.5 trillion. But he’s also aware that the economic miracle of his southern neighbour came thanks to massive foreign investment and he’s reluctant to allow that kind of interference in his country. While he’s not against foreign investment, he wants strategically isolated projects that will not pollute the minds of his people. Bringing light to his dark country seems to him dangerous.

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Kim, like Ho, understands that the fields need to be kept dry. Suffering is essential in order to maintain loyalty to his regime. At the moment, as long as Kim controls the narrative, suffering can be blamed on those nasty imperialists in the West. UN sanctions are, in this sense, a convenient symbol of Western perfidy, a focus on which North Koreans can direct their rage.

All of this suggests that Trump has nothing sufficiently attractive to offer Kim. Giving up precious nukes in exchange for a removal of the sanctions seems to him a rather poor deal; their symbolic value is profound. The last thing he wants is a Trump-style economic miracle bringing condos – and all that follows – to the banks of the Taedong River.

In truth, the Statement is one of the most boring manifestos ever published – 65 pages of self-important tosh written by students who knew a lot of big words but had no sense of melody, no clue how to inspire. That first sentence is nevertheless perfect because it describes something universal, namely the unease young people feel about the world their parents have bequeathed them.

The phrase – “looking uncomfortably to the world we inherit” – describes perfectly the anguish felt by activists in Parkland, Florida who turned their grief over the massacre of their fellow students a year ago today into a formidable protest movement. The Parkland student David Hogg titled his recent book #NeverAgain: A New Generation Draws the Line.

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The phrase also encapsulates the unease felt by the 16-year-old climate change campaigner Greta Thunberg, whose solo protest outside the Swedish parliament last September is now a worldwide student strike. It also describes the fermenting discontent with Brexit among British youths. As John Major warned last week, the young “may neither forget nor forgive those responsible”.

‘Why Mummy? Why Daddy? Why?’ Every parent has heard that refrain repeated with the dependability of a dripping tap. Children find their world bewildering and look to parents for explanation. Three-year-olds ask why the sky is blue. Eight-year-olds ask why that man is sleeping on the pavement. Sixteen-year-olds ask why there’s no money for their education, why we’re destroying our planet, why it’s so easy for a lunatic to get a gun. For parents, providing credible answers gets harder as kids get older.

Most children accept their parents’ explanations, however flawed they might be. But some continue to question – and doubt. Their inquisitiveness morphs into righteous anger at groupthink, a refusal to accept the manifold imperfections of this world. We see this virtuous discontent in Hogg and Thunberg, or in 13-year-old Holly Gillibrand, who has spent the last five Fridays on strike outside Lochaber High School in Fort William, protesting inaction on climate change. For these youths, protest is an expression of hope.

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The great strength of student protesters is their youth. They’re still young enough to have dogmatic ideals; their perfect vision of the world has yet to be crushed by the heavy weight of impossibility.

They see politics in its purest form, not as cynical compromise or corruption, but as a righteous tool of reform. They reject the status quo, insisting that there are alternatives. What is so striking about the Port Huron Statement is the confidence of its authors in their unique capacity to reshape the world. It’s easy for jaded adults to dismiss that youthful optimism as hopelessly naïve, but how lovely it would be to have that faith in possibility again.

Yet the great strength of student activists – their youth – is also their greatest weakness. They are naïve. The world is complex; it does not conform to the monochrome sensibilities of youth. Students are also prone to immaturity, to youthful excess and attention-seeking display. “We were f**king obnoxious”, wrote Jerry Rubin, a leading protester against the Vietnam War. “And we dug every moment of it.” A massive anti-war rally in October 1967 is remembered not for its 100,000 earnest protesters, but for the drugged-up antics of Rubin and Abby Hoffman, who tried to levitate the Pentagon.

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An interesting trend was apparent during the Vietnam War: while mainstream support for the war steadily declined from 1965, so, too, did respect for students who protested. Suburban America hated the protesters as much as they hated the war. This was largely because the students had a peculiar talent for thumbing their noses at the masses.

That’s another weakness; students start from the assumption that they’re so much smarter than the hoi polloi. Their arrogance limits their effectiveness. It proves impossible to build a mass movement while shouting insults from the ivory tower.

Being smart makes them an elite. Elites are always a focus of suspicion among the masses. The Parkland protesters are formidable intellects capable of shredding any febrile gun nut’s argument. At Davos, Thunberg delivered a devastating critique of climate change policy – in English, her second language. Yet smart people make the masses uneasy, especially in periods of populist anti-intellectualism like today. The carefully reasoned arguments of Hogg or Thunberg seem suspicious in a world raised on soundbites and angry tweets.

Working people, many of whom have bitter memories of their schooldays, are often contemptuous of student protestors, who, in their eyes, live a comfortable life but still find cause to complain. They’re dismissed as freeloaders, spitting in the faces of the hard-working taxpayers who fund them.

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Ronald Reagan exploited this anti-student feeling to good effect when he launched his political career in California in 1965. He successfully turned the protesters into an out-group worthy of scorn. On one occasion, he told how a protester was carrying a sign that read “Make Love not War”. “The only trouble”, Reagan quipped, “was that he didn’t look capable of doing either. His hair was cut like Tarzan, he acted like Jane and he smelled like Cheetah.” That two-line putdown had considerably more impact than the 65 pages of the Port Huron Statement.

Students aren’t students forever. It’s difficult to sustain activism after graduation, when real life beckons. Protest is safe on campus, but less so out in the real world. Sticking it to the Man doesn’t look very good on one’s CV. Sixties protesters at least had the advantage of a healthy economy with jobs aplenty. It’s so much more difficult for today’s youths, knowing that activism might jeopardise their chances in an already precarious world.

For all these reasons, student protest is seldom successful. The Sixties protesters did not bring the Vietnam War to an end, nor did they realise their utopian visions of peace and love. One year after Parkland, it’s difficult to see much progress on gun control. There’s something awe-inspiring about Thunberg’s speech in the snow at Davos, but inside the warm conference centre it was same old, same old.

Spiro Agnew once dismissed student protesters as “an impudent corps of effete snobs who consider themselves intellectuals”. There’s a lot of truth to that statement, yet it’s still unfair. Students should protest; they have a duty to serve as the nagging conscience of their parents. Yes, they’re idealistic, but every great movement has been founded on ideals.

I’m encouraged by the way young people today are questioning the world they’re forced to inherit, the world their parents have mangled. There’s a yeastiness in the air that I haven’t seen since the 1960s. Hogg, Thunberg and the rest are also a lot more savvy than Rubin and Hoffman ever were. They’re sober, careful, committed and not prone to childish antics. They’re also enormously brave. There’s a rough road ahead for them, but maybe, just maybe, they’ll prove me wrong about the futility of student activism.

I was reminded of RAND’s clever jape when I heard the news last week that the Chinese had landed their Chang’e 4 spacecraft on the far side of the moon.  Their lunar probe is a great deal more sophisticated than a brutish atom bomb, but the political message is basically the same. The Chinese were telling the world: “Look what we can do.” Ever since the 1950s, space spectaculars have figured prominently on the CV of a superpower.   

Chang’e 4 is certain to have annoyed Donald Trump. Americans get rattled when their technological supremacy is threatened. During the Cold War, the Soviets devised the perfect way to undermine American confidence. They took a simple rocket and used it to launch into space a satellite, then a dog, then a man, then a woman, then two men. Each feat suggested technological progression, but was in fact a case of same old, same old. Russian space stunts distracted attention from the fact that the Americans were forging ahead in space, by launching weather, spy and communication satellites. To most people, however, all that technical wizardry paled in comparison to a dog in orbit. 

Space, as the Chinese understand, provides an excellent arena for populist politics. Back in the Cold War, the space pioneer Wernher von Braun was a genius at manipulating public opinion with space gimmicks. He teamed up with Walt Disney in order to stoke public expectations, presenting space as a great adventure rather than sober science. As he was fond of saying, “There’s no bucks without Buck Rogers.” The Apollo mission to the moon, fuelled by Von Braun’s hype, was a political stunt paid for, in part, by severe cutbacks in NASA’s budget for space science and satellite technology.

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The populist Von Braun would have loved the world we live in now, where simplistic soundbites, febrile tweets and outrageous gimmicks have so much impact. He understood that people tend to turn off their critical faculties when judging what happens up there. We’re easily bowled over by the awesome majesty of outer space and, as a result, fail to perceive the politics behind massively expensive projects. Staggering amounts of money are spent on a Mars probe, without any concerted discussion of purpose or benefit. Those white-coated techies at NASA seem like benign scientists, not cynical politicians. We fail to notice the far side of the moon.   

Space is a gigantic sleight-of-hand trick – flashy gimmicks out there mask nefarious objectives down here. Elon Musk understands that dynamic as well as anyone. A year ago, he used his Space-X rocket to launch a cherry-red Tesla roadster toward Mars. It missed its target, but hardly anyone noticed. We’re told that David Bowie was playing on the car’s speakers as it headed for the asteroid belt. How cool is that? Journalists were predictably effusive in their praise, with few inclined to question its real purpose: was this about space exploration, or about selling cars? The uber-confident Musk seemed not only to be exploiting people’s gullibility but making fun of it at the same time.  

The Chinese landed Chang’e 4 on the far side of the moon in part because that had never been done before. Space “firsts” always attract attention even if they don’t have much point. In truth, that feat could have been achieved at any time in the past 50 years. The Chinese stunt has been cleverly wrapped in scientific justification to make it seem less shallow. Apparently, the landing will allow scientists to investigate the solar wind and better understand the first moments of the Big Bang. They’re even going to try to grow plants on the probe. Raise your hand if any of this is going to make your life better. 

Whenever something big happens in space, my phone starts ringing since I’m a dependable space cynic. Apparently, that’s a rare thing, so I get called a lot. Unfortunately, my argument doesn’t lend itself to bullet points and 15-second soundbites, so I’m often misunderstood – labelled a Luddite. A NASA astronaut once suggested that if I’d lived in 1492 I would have opposed Columbus’s voyage.

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I’m not a Luddite. I’m all in favour of sensible space projects, but I have one cardinal rule, namely that whatever happens up there should benefit us down here. When Columbus went to the New World, he brought back things that improved the lives of Europeans. The success of his voyage can be measured by the fact that it was repeated – again and again. Among other things, he paved the way toward the discovery of the potato. Being rather fond of chips, I’m inclined to admire Columbus.   

There’s a simple reason why there’s not been a manned lunar landing since 1972. There are no potatoes on the moon. It’s just a desolate rock – a forbidding place that makes Antarctica seem like paradise. And, yes, I know there’s talk of Helium-3, supposedly the fuel of the future, on the moon. But I suspect there are simpler solutions to our energy problems than establishing a massive mining operation on the moon.

Helium-3 is another one of those juicy carrots NASA dangles in front of the public in order to get funding. In truth, the moon’s main importance is as a platform for political gimmickry. Space projects are undemocratic. Ordinary people – in the US, India, China, Russia or the EU – are seldom consulted about what they actually want from their space agencies. My guess is that, if they were consulted, responses would be rather negative. Most people don’t really care whether microbes exist on Mars.

During the 1960s, Americans enjoyed the feats of the Gemini and Apollo astronauts, but when pollsters asked whether those missions were worth the £35 billion invested, the majority said “no”. Gallup found that most people judged the Vietnam War a better investment than Apollo.   

If asked to name the most important space event in history, almost everyone would say the Apollo 11 lunar landing. Yet they would be wrong. It’s difficult to see how that landing changed lives, besides providing a brief moment of excitement.

The most important event actually occurred on 10 July 1962, when Telstar, the world’s first communication satellite, was launched. Out of that event came global news broadcasts, live television sports, mobile phones, FaceTime, GPS and Tinder. A tiny satellite shaped our modern world. In a contest over impact, Telstar blows Apollo out of the sky. 

Just before he left office, President Dwight Eisenhower vetoed Apollo because he couldn’t see how going to the moon would benefit Americans back on Earth. Eisenhower was wary of NASA’s immense talent for spending taxpayer money on esoteric projects. He wasn’t a Luddite; he simply understood what people really needed from space. We could use a bit of his wisdom today.

“From the crew of Apollo 8”, Borman ended, “we close with good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas, and God bless all of you – all of you on the good earth.” When asked on his return whether the moon was made of green cheese, Anders replied “No, it’s made of American cheese.”

“That was probably the most magical Christmas Eve I’ve ever experienced,” Gene Kranz, the Apollo Flight Director, recalled. “It was literally magic. It made you prickly. You could feel the hairs on your arms rising.”

For Americans, it was a glorious end to a terrible year of assassinations, riots and war. One woman wrote to Nasa: “Thank you for saving 1968.” Time made the three astronauts its Men of the Year. “The voyage of Apollo 8”, wrote the Washington Post in its roundup of the year, “did more than any single event … to restore man’s faith in himself.”

Apollo 8 was originally supposed to test the complete lunar package in earth orbit, but the lunar module was not yet ready. Rather than delay the mission, Nasa decided to send the command and service modules to the moon, to test the worthiness of the craft for the long voyage.

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When the navigation numbers were crunched, it was discovered that the orbit would begin on Christmas Eve. Nasa, always obsessed with publicity, could not believe its luck. Going ahead was nevertheless foolhardy. The veteran astronaut Alan Shepard later claimed that it was “the single greatest gamble in space flight then, and since”. Crucial systems were not remotely ready. “Shit, we didn’t even have the software to fly Apollo in Earth orbit, much less to the Moon”, Deke Slayton, another astronaut, claimed. In the race to the moon, however, risks seemed worthwhile.

Nasa still feared the Soviets might get there first, for good reason. On 8 December, 1968, the Russian cosmonaut Pavel Belyayev was waiting on the launch pad at Tyuratam, in Kazakhstan. His itinerary was to go to the moon, circle it, and come back – just like Apollo 8. Four hours before the scheduled launch, however, he was removed from the Zond 7 capsule when problems developed with the rocket. After a long inspection, Russian officials decided to make the mission unmanned. The rocket blasted off, reached 27 miles and then exploded. NASA enjoyed an early Christmas.

“What is it you want, Mary?”, George Bailey asks his sweetheart in the Christmas classic It’s a Wonderful Life. “You want the moon? Just say the word and I’ll throw a lasso around it … I’ll give you the moon, Mary.”  That bright white orb had always been the stuff of romance. Apollo 8, however, threw a big bucket of cold water over that nonsense. “We don’t know if you can see this on the TV screen,” Anders reported, “but the moon is nothing but a milky waste. Completely void.” Borman then added: “it’s a – a vast, lonely, forbidding expanse of nothing … It makes you realize what you have back there on earth.”

The first manned mission to the moon revealed what everyone already knew, but few were prepared to admit: there’s nothing very special about it. C. S. Lewis, musing on what Apollo would mean, predicted that

“The moon of the myths, the poets, the lovers – will have been taken from us forever. Part of our mind, a huge mass of our emotional wealth, will have gone. … he who first reaches [the moon] steals something from us all.”

The moon’s romance had always been a figment of the imagination, but a rather lovely one. The same could be said for space travel in general. Space is cold, forbidding, rather boring and deadly. Its beauty and attraction are figments of the imagination.

That Christmas flight proved that the Americans would win the race to the moon. But did that race have any meaning? It was not about advancing science, nor was it really about the moon itself. If the moon had real value, there’d have been a war over it by now.

Its importance lay only as an arbitrary symbol of supremacy in the Cold War. John Kennedy, who first announced the moon mission on 25 May 1961, recognised as much. In a brief moment of candour, he once asked: “Don’t you think I would rather spend these billions on programs here at home, such as health and education and welfare? But in this matter we have no choice. The Nation’s prestige is too heavily involved.”

On another occasion, he told his cabinet: “I’m not that interested in space. … We’ve wrecked our budget … and the only justification for it … [is] getting on to the moon ahead of the Russians.”

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The shallowness of the space race rendered it difficult to assign meaning to Apollo 8. Some tried to turn the mission into a defining moment, a watershed in the human story. “This is the last day of the old world,” Arthur C. Clarke remarked. “If there is an ultimate truth to be learned from this historic flight,” President Lyndon Johnson surmised, “it may be this: There are few social or scientific or political problems which cannot be solved by men, if they truly want to solve them together.” At times like this, Americans seem to like tripe.

The poet Archibald Macleish desperately tried to give the event sacred meaning: “To see the Earth as it truly is, small and blue and beautiful in that eternal silence where it floats, is to see ourselves as riders on the Earth together, brothers on that bright loveliness in the eternal cold – brothers who know now that they are truly brothers.”

Meanwhile, back on Earth, those brothers were killing one another with ever increasing ferocity in wars, riots and random murders. Much as astrologists like to think that the moon affects our behaviour, this was one instance when it clearly did not.

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So what did it all mean? The Apollo 8 astronauts travelled to the moon and discovered the earth. “The vast loneliness of the moon … makes you realize just what you have back there on earth,” Lovell remarked. All that effort and money on the space programme had shown that it was actually the earth that was special.

That was the message behind those spectacular pictures of Earthrise taken by the crew. Compared to the desolation of the Moon, the earth was an exquisite pearl floating in vast emptiness. The environmental lobby loved the photos even if it condemned the wasteful industry that had produced them. “Earthrise” was used on countless posters encouraging people to respect their planet. Some ecologists even began to speak of “Spaceship Earth”.

In other words, Apollo 8 qualified as the most expensive trip to a viewpoint ever undertaken. It did not change us. It did not solve our problems. It did not enhance the brotherhood of man. It simply showed us the earth, in all its vulnerable beauty. Shoving aside all the romantic tosh, maybe that’s not a bad thing.