Foreign Policy Watch

A Couple of Brief Thoughts on DSK

2011-07-01T09:07:00.003-04:00

Well... damn. There's some news for you.

Assuming latest reports are true (and given the twists and turns of this affair, that's an important hedge) it looks as though the DSK case may collapse shortly. Current reporting is sketchy, and it's unclear how much evidence about Monsieur Strauss-Kahn's accuser simply undermines her general credibility as a witness and how much undermines the veracity of her specific story (as an aside, seriously, who doesn't know they're being recorded when talking on prison phones? I was empaneled on a felony trial once and the stupidly-incriminating stuff people say in such circumstances is mind-boggling), but it looks like DSK might not be quite the sociopath he initially appeared to be. Might still be (evidence of a sexual encounter is apparently "unambiguous," the notion of it being consensual still seems a bit off to me, and the accumulated evidence that he treats women terribly in general seems beyond contest), but might not. I only mention this because I wrote at the time that Strauss-Kahn was "entitled to legal presumption of innocence and a public that's willing, within reason, to reserve final judgment." So this is me doing that. If he really didn't rape this woman, well, that's awful and he's owed an apology. Also sucks for the French Left, but therein lies the danger of putting all one's eggs in the same basket.

As far as I'm concerned, though, the main point of my post - that Bernard-Henri Levi was being a rape apologist asshat and should have been ashamed of himself - doesn't change one iota. Levi was working off the same public reports as everyone else, and his reaction was to hysterically search for reasons why this was everyone's fault but DSK's. That's an attitude that needs to be challenged, and I remain happy to have joined the chorus of people justly calling him out.

Brief Update: To the question of whether any of these new revelations are actually relevant to the incident in question, rather than just the Jury-friendliness of the accuser, the answer seems to be "sort of." This is the letter from the DA outlining some of the problems. The fact that she cleaned a couple of rooms after the incident, rather than immediately reporting it as originally claimed, raises some plausibility issues; but again, given that sexual contact is basically uncontested, these should be weighed against the plausibility of a hotel maid walking into a room, seeing a sixty-something paunchy stranger in a towel, and saying to herself, "hey, you know what I'm just dying to do right now?..."

In any case, barring more twists it seems likely that DSK will be on his way back to France a free man before too long. I hope at a public level their remains some pressure to explain and account for his behavior. I'm not terribly optimistic. And Bernard-Henri Levi is still a dick.

Jerusalem and Israeli Sovereignty

2011-06-22T21:37:00.002-04:00

Picking up on a thread of conversation in the comments section from Matt's last post, I want to briefly address the issue of Israel's capital. Matt correctly noted that it is Tel Aviv. This is not under much debate. Israel, of course, still claims that its capital is Jerusalem. But virtually no other country recognizes this claim. As far as I am aware, every single embassy is located in Tel Aviv -- not in Jerusalem. One commenter, objecting to Matt's reference to Tel Aviv, argues that under international law, each sovereign country has the right to "designate its own capital." Okay, sure. But a country's sovereignty is determined by international recognition and Israel's sovereignty -- according to, well, basically everyone -- is not recognized to include exclusive control over Jerusalem. Instead, the territory is contested, considered corpus separatum. So, in other words, a country has the power under international law to name its capital city within its legally recognized borders. But if Jerusalem is not considered to be Israel's exclusive sovereign territory, as it almost universally is not, then it can't claim legitimacy under international law in attempting to establish its capital there.

Wanting Foreign Governments to Have Different Preferences is Not a Strategy

2011-06-13T11:57:00.005-04:00

For those who missed them, check out Andrew Sullivan's piece this morning on the bind into which the eventual UN vote on a Palestinian state has put U.S. foreign policy, as well as Josh Foust's post on the inanity of accepting further Friedman unit extensions to the war in Afghanistan. Stepping back a bit from the specifics of each situation, it's notable just how much crucial American policymaking seems to be based on asking/hoping/praying that foreign governments realign their policy preferences to better sync with U.S. interests. Not their policies, their preferences.

In the case of Israel, it's been obvious for decades that unconditional American support for Tel Aviv complicates U.S. policy in the rest of the Middle East, and that some kind of deal on Palestinian statehood is a practical means of dulling the contradiction inherent in America's approach to the situation. In order for that to happen, the Israeli government needs to stop caring about colonizing the West Bank and abandon Greater Israel as a national ideology. And to a certain American liberal point of view, this seems like the only rational course for Israelis who care about preserving the Jewish state. Permanent apartheid is immoral and unsustainable, ethnic cleansing is unthinkable, and granting political rights to everyone between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean would end the Zionist dream. By this logic, American and Israeli preferences ought to align fairly well. The problem is, they don't. For better or worse, Israeli governments of recent decades have made it eminently clear that they prefer to exercise continued control over the West Bank and Gaza. This has been as true for governments of the left as it has been for those of the right (though Labor did flirt with a more sensible policy in the late 1990s). It's clear that Israeli and American preferences just don't align, and hoping for that to suddenly change is not a coherent policy.

Likewise with Pakistan. America would like Pakistan to stop caring about the threat posed by India, be less concerned with gaining "strategic depth" in Afghanistan, abandon its quixotic fits over the status of Kashmir, and thus be less inclined to openly and tacitly support Islamic militant groups that complicate American policy. From a certain American liberal point of view, Pakistan isn't going to credibly compete with India for much longer anyway, and Kashmir is a nationalist hobbyhorse that the Pakistanis should stop riding. But, obviously, those in Pakistan's government have different preferences and priorities. And hoping for that to change isn't a strategy.

Israel and Pakistan are hardly the only examples of this phenomenon, but at the moment they're the most consequential and illustrative. Not everyone sees the world through American eyes, and not everyone agrees with the American assessment of their strategic and political situation. American policymakers ought to try to understand the preferences of foreign governments and then shape their own policy accordingly (either by using carrots and sticks to encourage other states to reprioritize their goals, or by realigning American relationships). Hoping for others to see the light just won't cut it.

Foreign Policy Pinned

2011-06-07T11:53:00.002-04:00

I'm not a very good chess player. Charitably, I'll assume it's because I haven't spent enough time in front of a chess board to develop the spatial reasoning and analytical skills necessary to "see" the right move in the manner of more experienced players. That said, I couldn't help but think of the game as I read Dan Murphy's op-ed in the CSM about the Saudi response to the Arab Spring.

In chess, a pin is "a situation brought on by an attacking piece in which a defending piece cannot move without exposing a more valuable defending piece on its other side to capture by the attacking piece." Having a major piece pinned isn't fun. A well-executed pin can dramatically reduce flexibility, cripple offensive capacity and create all kinds of headaches. So it's worth observing that, through deft use of its petroleum reserves, Saudi Arabia has effectively pinned American foreign policy in the Middle East.

The American response to the Arab Spring has been, to use Murphy's term, "conflicted," with protests in different countries perceived and treated differently depending on how crucial their stability is to the architecture of American power and prosperity. The Saudis, who have thusfar forestalled serious domestic challenges to their rule, know their own centrality to American concerns in the Gulf. The American economy is highly dependent on Gulf oil. The colossal trade deficit America has run for much of the last decade is closely related to that dependence. America's short-run economic health is exceedingly vulnerable to oil price shocks. Unsurprisingly then, American policymakers have labored for decades to ensure that no single power gains sufficient control over Gulf oil to dictate the terms of continued economic prosperity. One can make a very persuasive case that American Middle Eastern policy as a whole has been misguided; that the U.S. overestimated the importance of allied regimes in places like Egypt and Yemen. When it comes to the Gulf, though, the United States really does have an interest in political "stability" that's difficult to just wave away, even for someone like me who'd really like to. If you disagree, recall the kind of crazy electoral outcomes that economic volatility, moving from an already miserable baseline, can produce ("I, Michelle Marie Bachmann, do solemnly swear...").

So we're left with a situation in which our response to the Arab Spring looks, at best, opportunistic and hypocritical - a means of "managing" regional unrest while still keeping our basic faustian bargains in tact rather than forging sustainable relationships with populations undergoing profound political change. Maybe this is all inevitable, but here's the thing: this pin isn't new. Our strategic vulnerability here has been obvious since the Nixon era. We've had three and a half decades to reconfigure our energy economy and render the Saudi pin irrelevant. Instead, we've left it in place, deciding to manage the problem through expensive military engagement and convoluted political maneuvering that's left the U.S. as strategically vulnerable as ever while sapping it of flexibility and moral legitimacy.

I suppose I'm not the only one who's bad at chess.

Quick Hit: German Civil War Reenactors

2011-06-03T16:49:00.002-04:00

No, I'm not talking about reenacting a German civil war (not sure what that would be - the Thirty Years War maybe?) but about Germans reenacting the American Civil War. Via Coates and Appelbaum, it's apparently a thing. Now, in the American context, I'm always a bit ambivalent about Civil War reenacting. I have no problem with the practice per se. You get Revolutionary War reenactors in Massachusetts from time to time, and it seems to be a relatively harmless and fun way of engaging with history. That said, in the context of the Civil War, reenacting is hard to separate from Confederate nostalgia, Lost Cause ideological posturing, and a cultural geist with which I'm... uncomfortable to say the least.

The PRI article reports/speculates that reenacting has an appeal in Germany because of the post-WWII discomfort with other types of war fantasy. Again, that's fine as far as it goes. But if war fantasy is culturally verboten because of Germany's legacy of fighting destructive wars in the name of morally outrageous, racist ideologies, it's a bit unsettling that they seem to mostly want to play the Confederates. Just sayin'.

An Immodest Proposal for Better Primaries

2011-06-02T11:14:00.003-04:00

As long as we're in a period of semi-dormancy here at FPW, allow me to veer off topic and into domestic politics a bit. With the coming of yet another presidential election cycle, we're starting to get a smattering of commenters pointing out the absurdity of America's primary election system. This kind of critique went into overdrive during the 2008 campaign, when the Clinton-Obama clash let to an unusually long and intense primary season, but it doesn't take an expert in electoral systems to realize that making Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina the main arbiters of presidential viability is strange and perverse. Also, as Gail Collins did yeoman's work pointing out on several occasions, caucuses are stupid, their aesthetic charm notwithstanding. And the primary season is incomprehensibly long. Especially when one considers that the actual contest is generally decided by Super Tuesday. Except when it isn't. Then it drags on through June. Bottom line: the current system disenfranchises a sizable chunk of the country, under-represents urban areas, creates weird incentives for candidates, and generally doesn't make a lick of sense.

Substantially reforming it, obviously, would take considerable political muscle. And were somebody inclined to put organizational resources into reforming our electoral institutions, I'd prefer they focus on more important things, like eliminating the Senate. That said, as a thought experiment, it's worth considering what a rational primary system would look like within America's current representative architecture (as an aside, I like Matt Yglesias's idea of moving the New Hampshire primary to Massachusetts, but that's because my ideal form of government would be a global empire with Boston at its epicenter, not because it would be fair). To my mind, it ought to be possible to integrate the advantages of the current primary schedule into a system that mitigates many of its flaws. The short version: start small, get progressively bigger.

Imagine that instead of different states' primaries/caucuses being spread out in arbitrary clusters across a five-month period, there were regular primary elections every two weeks, starting with the smallest states and moving to the largest. For argument's sake, break the fifty states up into five groups of ten, with the ten smallest voting first, the next ten voting two weeks later, then the next ten two weeks after that, etc.* The basic structure could be tweaked, but you get the idea. Start with the small states where lesser-known candidates could still engage in retail politics and plausibly compete with their better-funded rivals (this, by the way, is the only legitimate advantage I can discern in the current system), then progressively move to the larger states where money/organization/media coverage matter more and more. Early victories by dark horse entrants would give them a chance to exploit increased funding and media coverage as the race rolls on, but without prematurely crowning a winner after only a few contests. Furthermore, because the largest ten states make up a combined 53.3% of the U.S. population, the overall race probably wouldn't be decided until the final votes, meaning that everyone's vote would matter. Along the way, you'd get a reasonably decent spread of rural and urban states voting at the same time, though the early primaries would skew more rural than the later ones. And the whole thing would be over in two or three months, not five or six, and we could all move on to the general election.

Finally, I'm reasonably sure this could be implemented via an inter-state agreement along the lines of the one being considered for a national popular presidential vote. Heck, it might even be politically possible, since basically every state that isn't Iowa, New Hampshire or South Carolina would see their electoral influence increase. And we'd end up with a system that gave voters meaningful choice while conferring greater democratic legitimacy on the eventual nominee.
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*Yes, I realize there are other entities that also vote in primaries, including my once and future home. This is a thought experiment. Just go with it.

Housekeeping

2011-06-02T08:25:00.002-04:00

As a quick note, we're currently doing the legwork of getting the new site up and running. It will be amazing and stupendous and surpass everything you ever thought FPW could be. But it also means that time we would usually spend blogging is now being spent revamping the site. So posting will continue to be sporadic at best for a week or so.

Quick Hit: Maybe I Was Too Cynical

2011-05-25T10:22:00.002-04:00

Back in January, in response to some of the initial unrest in Tunisia, I wrote that formal prosecutions of Middle Eastern autocrats struck me as unlikely. Reasoning from recent international and domestic precedents, the necessarily incomplete nature of most revolutions, the complicity of key state institutions in pre-revolutionary regimes, and the self-preservation instinct among nations' elites, I guessed that we wouldn't see much in the way of formal legal proceedings. Show trials/assassinations maybe, but not legal action. Well, the Egyptians have exposed me as too cynical. Not only is Mubarak being prosecuted, but he's being prosecuted by the very people he put into office. Rule of law and all that. Nice when the world offers up a pleasant surprise for a change.

Stuxnet as an Act of War?

2011-05-24T10:48:00.003-04:00

Eric Martin has a quick piece over at the Progressive Realist arguing that, by the standards of America's own cyber doctrine, the Stuxnet attack on Iran's Natanz facility was an act of war. While the internationally-accepted legal definition of "acts of war" remains murky, Martin seems basically correct here. This was a premeditated attack against a piece of physical Iranian infrastructure. If the shoe were on the other foot, I'd certainly think a military response from the United States would be worth considering. It's also worth reiterating, though, that states commit "acts of war" against each other all the time, usually without leading to open armed conflict. Much of what states' intelligence apparatuses do on a regular basis constitute acts of war. During the 1950s the U.S. regularly violated Soviet airspace with U2 spy planes. During the 1980s the CIA used a logic bomb to sabotage a Soviet gas pipeline (though admittedly the Soviets were stealing the technology in the first place). American submarines violate the territorial waters of other nations for espionage purposes. Heck, the American Congress openly debates giving money to insurgent groups that have the express intent of overthrowing internationally recognized regimes. I'm reasonably sure any of the above scenarios could plausibly be labeled acts of war. Never mind the Bin Laden raid.

None of this implies that such behavior should be taken lightly. Certainly American leaders should be careful about the international norms they unwittingly establish. And Martin's got a point that "perhaps government officials should be more circumspect and less glib about implying official involvement." Still, this seems to be one of those areas where sovereignty inevitably bends to the realities of power. Stuxnet may have been an act of war, but it's one with a long pedigree.

Update: For a more thorough exposition of some of the issues with conventional retaliation to a cyber attack, check out Jason Healey's latest at New Atlanticist.

Poor Thought Process Mr. Huntsman

2011-05-21T10:34:00.003-04:00

I'm still not entirely sure what path John Huntsman sees to the Republican nomination. After spending two years as the Obama-appointed ambassador to China, he'll have to be pretty radioactive to most of the Republican base. That said, politics is strange, so why not? The Times has a short piece this morning profiling his initial run through New Hampshire. Huntsman does indeed project as an "adult," which is nice, and he's clearly aware that the deficit is going to be the issue to flog this election cycle. Still, this seems fairly bassackwards:

He rarely mentioned Mr. Obama’s name — and issued a call for civility — but he offered criticism of the president’s decision to intervene in Libya, saying that future military engagements should be carefully weighed based on their financial cost.

"It’s an affordability issue," Mr. Huntsman said. "With all of our deployments and all of our engagements abroad, we need to ask a fundamental question: Can we afford to do this? That should be driven by the second point, which is whether or not it’s in our national security interest."

No. Wrong. The first question you ask is whether a war is in our national security interest. Cost falls somewhere in that calculation, but myopic focus on cost is a terrible way to make foreign policy. Also, for what it's worth, the Libya war hasn't appeared to be much of a financial drain, especially since we're sensibly allowing other NATO members to do some real heavy lifting. There's plenty to criticize about Libya, but cost is pretty far down the list.

Identity Matters: Thoughts on Quebec Nationalism

2011-05-19T11:13:00.003-04:00

I don't have many regrets from my undergraduate days. Would've been nice to go skiing a bit more often. Kind of wish I'd spent some time in Quebec City. And the fact that I couldn't pen a decent response in the McGill Daily to this piece of vapid intellectual masturbation still sticks in my craw. All told, though, a very satisfying experience. That said, the fact that I made it through seven semesters studying IR and Comparative Politics without once taking a course with Stephen Saideman is just inexcusable. Luckily for both my sense of nostalgia and future intellectual development, he has a blog. Read it. It's quite good.

Today he points out a few instances of Quebec nationalist political practice that move into pretty nasty territory. The initial salvo was evidently fired by a (presumably non-sovereigntist) group protesting Bill 101. The organizing poster referred to Pauline Marois (head of the sovereigntist Parti Quebecois, not to be confused with the Bloc Quebecois that just got eviscerated in national elections) as "Kebekistan's White Mugabe," shows a picture of a noose, and just for good measure says "Hang Pauline Marois for humanity's sake!" Some people really don't like looking at French websites. In response, a representative from the Michigan-militia-esque Patriotic Militia of Quebec allegedly threatened one of the protest organizers with death. In other words, everyone involved is comporting themselves with dignity and class.

As Saideman notes, this is noteworthy precisely because, apart from a few unpleasant incidents in the 1960s, the movement for Quebec sovereignty has been remarkably free of violence. The FLQ was pretty tepid as far as violent revolutionary groups go (not to discount the very real suffering caused by some of their tactics), and as passionate as some Quebecois remain over the issue of sovereignty, the overall movement seems to have steadily lost momentum since its mid-nineties apex. To me, this raises a few thoughts and questions. First, the trajectory of Quebec nationalist politics would seem (at least superficially) to support the idea that sub-state national movements are essentially reactive responses to modern state building, wherein the construction of robust state apparatuses threatens to rob a minority group of its own means of cultural reproduction, and sovereignty is demanded as a remedy. What makes the Quebec case so interesting is how pliable the Canadian state was willing to be to placate nationalist demands (hence Bill 101 and its sundry accompaniments). This strategy appears to have paid off in cooling the intensity of sovereigntist demands.

The second, somewhat more worrying question is whether there might be an uptick in Quebec nationalist violence (or at least violent, confrontational rhetoric) in the coming decades, as it becomes clear to the remaining hardcore sovereigntist population that their demands won't be realized through Parliament or the ballot box. Those being left behind by history are seldom quiet about it. More food for thought.

Readings on Civil-Military Relations

2011-05-18T14:15:00.003-04:00

If anyone has been missing Disunion, the New York Times' ongoing series chronicling the breakup of the Union on the eve of the Civil War, they should stop missing it. It's a fantastic reminder that the road from Dredd Scott to Bull Run was more complicated than "Lincoln's elected - lock and load!" (though come to think of it that's a remarkably accurate account of some quarters' response to a more recent presidential contest). In any case, today's installment addresses the state of civil-military relations in the decades leading up to the war, noting that, owing partly to the Founding Fathers' distaste for a professional standing army, the American military of the early nineteenth century was, well, less professional. Its commanders were overtly politicized, willing to play fast and loose with mandates from civilian officials, and not especially respectful of what most Americans would now recognize as the proper limits to military authority.

It's an interesting piece to read in conjunction with Jonathan Stevenson's piece (paywall) from May's Harpers worrying that the military has slowly expanded its portfolio to include America's overall strategic posture, traditionally the province of civilians. Michael Cohen and Richard Kohn's responses to Andrew Milburn's JFQ Article "Breaking Ranks: Dissent and the Military Professional" are also worth a look. I don't agree with everything Cohen and Kohn write. In particular, I think Cohen's concerns about a military coup are overblown, even over the long term. All evidence is that the American military continues to inculcate an ethic of Constitutional constraint and civilian control. Stevenson's concerns about a coup d'esprit seem closer to the mark.

The overall point one gleans from these accounts, though, is that civil-military relations are never static, and are driven by a complex interaction of norms, institutional strength and political circumstance. The comparatively unprofessional military of the early nineteenth century wasn't the cancer on the Republic that it might otherwise have been because the U.S. at the time wasn't an especially militarized society (though certainly one interested in conquest). Armies were raised on a situational basis, and there were limits to the military's institutional clout in Washington, its economic weight, and thus its overall political power. Today, we have a highly professional military, but one kept permanently in place, robustly funded, globally deployed, and usually fighting. And it's been that way for six decades. And probably will be for several more. In this context, I'd be surprised if the political neutrality of the military didn't begin to degrade, just as a matter of institutional math.

Again, the concern here isn't that some latter-day Caesar will cross the Rubicon and topple the Republic. Neither such malice nor such drama are necessary. The concern is that a defense establishment acting as a de-facto fourth branch of government will achieve practical control over the basic structure of American foreign policy, relegating to civilian authorities only its most superficial and theatrical elements. Food for thought.

Quick Hit: Stay Classy Gainesville Times

2011-05-18T10:38:00.003-04:00

I must say, if I were the editor of a local news organization and some wingnut wrote me a letter advocating ethnic cleansing in the United States, I'd probably decline to publish said letter. The good people at the Gainesville Times evidently have different standards.

Bernard-Henri Levy Should be Ashamed of Himself

2011-05-17T10:45:00.002-04:00

Look, I get that when someone you know/admire/respect comes under public fire, there's a natural instinct to take their side, to look for exculpatory evidence, to give credence to conspiratorial imaginings and to look for someone else to blame. I saw plenty of this during the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, and (less forgivably) during the more recent dustups over Roman Polanski and Julian Assange. There's a bit of "say it ain't so Joe" in all of us, no doubt magnified when the political consequences of a scandal have measurable effects on the lives of millions of actual people. It's part of being human and imperfect and having connections and affinities with other people who are human and imperfect.

So I've attempted to read Bernard-Henri Levy's reaction to the arrest of Dominique Strauss-Kahn with a measure of charity and understanding. Mr. Levy makes that exceedingly difficult. He engages in damn near every victim-blaming, rape apologist trope that he can find. Presumption of innocence! What was this woman doing cleaning a hotel room by herself? The American justice system is barbaric! They were allowed to take his picture looking like that; the poor man. Mr. Strauss-Kahn has indeed been "thrown to the dogs." Think of his wife and her exposure to the "slime of a public opinion drunk on salacious gossip and driven by who knows what obscure vengeance." And this other woman who "pretends to have been the victim of the same kind of attempted rape" is clearly just piling on the lies. Most of all, he's a good man. He just wouldn't do this! It's simply "absurd."

I'm sorry, but no. Mr. Strauss-Kahn is entitled to legal presumption of innocence and a public that's willing, within reason, to reserve final judgment. False accusations of sexual assault do happen. Ask anyone who plays Lacrosse for Duke. Mr. Strauss-Kahn, though, has been credibly accused of a very serious crime. The fact that he's a big deal in France (and in the U.S. for that matter) doesn't entitle him to sexually assault people without consequence. It doesn't entitle him to be spared the indignities of a perp walk like any other criminal (and for what it's worth, as Matt Yglesias points out on twitter, accused criminals actually have more robust rights in the United States than they do in France). Commentators are free to lament the political consequences of the situation. They're free to request that people reserve judgment. They're free to point out that, in other aspects of his life, Mr. Strauss-Kahn maybe isn't such a bad guy.

They ought not, though, diminish the severity of the crime of which he's accused. They ought not search for some reason why maybe it's the victim's fault. They ought not dismiss previous accusations as outright lies without reason. They ought not hold up Mr. Strauss-Kahn's wife as a trophy to demonstrate that, really, they care about women. They ought not reach for conspiracies or try to deflect blame or unreasonably defame law enforcement for doing their jobs. They ought not, in other words, join the still-too-large, still-too-loud chorus of people who reflexively diminish the horrific realities of sexual assault in the name of protecting its perpetrators. Mr. Levy counted himself among that chorus today, and he ought to be ashamed.

Housekeeping: Blogger is Awful

2011-05-13T12:58:00.002-04:00

Blogger, it would seem, senses that FP Watch will soon be moving to a hosting service and content management system that doesn't suck at life. Out of spite, it decided to shut down for more than a day and take the last couple of posts with it. Apologies to anyone following broken links in the meantime . Believe me, you're not half as annoyed about the interruption as we are.

Quick Hit: Abuminah on PADICO

2011-05-12T11:45:00.000-04:00

I don't share Ali Abuminah's reflexive skepticism toward the very concept of a Palestinian state, nor do I generally share his perspective on the evils of "neoliberal" economics (I hate the imprecision of that term in particular). I'm also willing to grant that state-building means concentrating capital and, historically speaking, that tends to be an elite-driven process, not a democratic one. That said, his criticisms of the Palestinian Development and Investment Company, and the lack of transparency, potential for cronyism, and inherent conflicts of interest therein, are worth a read.

Does the U.S. Need a Peer Competitor?

2011-05-11T13:47:00.001-04:00

Because of Blogger is bad at basically everything, this post was inexplicably deleted. I have no desire to rewrite it, but you can find it over at the Progressive Realist.

Sometimes you Can't Revert to Neutral Principles

2011-05-10T14:00:00.004-04:00

Stanley Fish had a piece yesterday addressing the CUNY-Kushner controversy. As seems to be his wont, Fish argues that, contrary to some claims, CUNY's denial of an honorary degree to Kushner doesn't violate academic freedom or the spirit of open intellectual inquiry or any other duty of the University or its board, and that the balance of the controversy has been "beside the point." I actually agree with a large amount of what Fish writes in the piece, but in his never-ending quest to perfectly circumscribe and separate professional, social and political duty and discourse, Fish misses something important; namely, that sometimes circumstances allow for no other course but to actually take a position on the issue at hand.

To get at what I mean, I'll spell out a few areas in which Fish's analysis is right on. First, "academic freedom" is not really relevant to the debate. Kushner's not CUNY faculty, and nobody's contemplating firing him from anywhere because of anything he's written or published in an academic context. Second, the CUNY board is perfectly within its rights (indeed, I'd argue, within its duties) to take into account the totality of Kushner's public statements and persona before bestowing upon him an honor that is entirely the university's privilege to grant. It's the specific nature of and reasoning behind the decision it made that now has CUNY looking, in Prof. Fish's words, "small-minded, biased and stupid." Finally, the issue has very little to do with free speech as a larger principle. I doubt even the most ardent free speech absolutists would argue that nobody should ever face any negative social or economic consequences for making public statements about controversial issues.

Here, though, is where I part company with Professor Fish. CUNY, along with a host of other academic and cultural institutions, does play a role in setting the proper boundaries of public discourse. By denying Mr. Kushner an honorary degree because of Kushner's political statements, CUNY has implicitly declared those statements to be beyond the bounds of acceptability. There's nothing wrong with doing that in principle. If someone were to propose giving David Duke an honorary degree because, in some parallel universe, he'd made contributions to theoretical physics or something, I would hope that honor would be denied because Duke's public activism around race is beyond the plane of moral acceptability. No self-respecting institution ought to associate itself with the man. And it's precisely through such actions that the moral arc of the universe bends. Ideas move from being commonplace to controversial to repellent when there are social costs imposed for expressing them.

The problem here isn't that CUNY did or didn't step outside its mandate. The problem is that its board made a poor decision about specific statements made on a specific issue. That's not to say that granting Kushner the degree would have given his ideas the University's seal of approval. It is entirely reasonable to disagree with someone while recognizing that their ideas fall within the bounds of reasonable discourse. Put bluntly, discomfort with Zionism is reasonable. It's not always correct, at least not in my view, but it's reasonable. For an institution like CUNY to implicitly declare otherwise does violence to healthy public debate. Making such declarations falls entirely within the social role that major universities play. CUNY ought to play that role better, and Stanley Fish ought not pretend that it's all no big deal.

Housekeeping

2011-05-10T08:32:00.002-04:00

A couple of notes. First off, the new site, bigger and better and upgraded in every way, will be up soon. Really. We promise. Meanwhile, I've surrendered the last vestiges of my soul to the digital world and am now on Twitter. Those inclined can follow me @MattEckel. I now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.

Yeah, it's the Question that's Offensive

2011-05-06T09:55:00.002-04:00

Some readers have no doubt heard about the dustup caused when CUNY declined to give a planned honorary degree to playwright Tony Kushner based on the objections of board member Jeffrey Weisenfeld. Mr. Weisenfeld evidently objected to some of Kushner's comments about Israeli policy, none of which (or at least none that I've run across) step outside the bounds of reasonable debate. Here's Walt on the issue, and here's Jeffrey Goldberg. Well, Jim Dwyer has a brief interview with Weisenfeld in this morning's New York Times. I'll let the text speak for itself:

I tried to ask a question about the damage done by a short, one-sided discussion of vigorously debated aspects of Middle East politics, like the survival of Israel and the rights of the Palestinians, and which side was more callous toward human life, and who was most protective of it.

But Mr. Wiesenfeld interrupted and said the question was offensive because “the comparison sets up a moral equivalence.”

Equivalence between what and what? “Between the Palestinians and Israelis,” he said. “People who worship death for their children are not human.”

Did he mean the Palestinians were not human? “They have developed a culture which is unprecedented in human history,” he said.

"Dehumanization" usually refers to a subtle process by which people's humanity is implicitly degraded and erased. Nothing subtle here though.

Quick Hit: Othering the President Abroad

2011-05-05T10:55:00.002-04:00

Noam Sheizaf notes that elements of the Israeli media have picked up on a long-standing American conservative tactic to rhetorically delegitimize President Obama.

Alma Mater, er, Canadian Election News

2011-05-03T18:59:00.002-04:00

So, in addition to royal nuptuals and dead terrorists, the big news of the past few days has been the Canadian election. The most significant part of this story is that my alma mater, McGill, won.

The second takeaway is that Steven Harper's Conservatives now have a Parliamentary majority, which no party has held in Canada for seven years. This has some Canadians going a bit ballistic, as though Pat Buchanan's twin was suddenly granted sole imperium over all provinces and territories. Much as I've never been a fan of Harper, my guess is that the actual results will be considerably milder than some of the worst progressive predictions. That, for what it's worth, is pretty much what Harper is saying as well.

The third takeaway, for anyone who still needs to be convinced of this, is that single-member district plurality voting is a really terrible, outdated way of aggregating electoral preferences. The Conservatives picked up a fairly significant parliamentary majority with just shy of 40% of the total vote. The two parties to Harper's left - the Liberals and the New Democrats - grabbed most of the rest, with the NDP surging in Quebec and basically eliminating the Bloc Quebecois from Federal contention, at least for now. Because plurality rules, though, plenty of seats went to the Conservatives in ridings where the median voter's ideological profile is more liberal/leftist. This wouldn't have happened if all Canadian voters displayed perfect riding-by-riding strategic rationality, but that's not a reasonable thing to expect of any populace, so democratic reformers ought to look seriously at implementing some other kind of system. I haven't thought hard enough about this to suggest what that ought to be (I'm also not Canadian, and Lord knows here in the 'States we have our own absurd electoral architecture that's groaning for burial), but at first blush some kind of proportional representation system aggregated by province, or perhaps some kind of Condorcet method within ridings, would seem appropriate.

But back to what's important. Go McGill!

Will Bin Laden's Death Erase the "Weak Democrats" Stereotype? Don't Bet on it

2011-05-03T13:43:00.004-04:00

Peter Beinart is brimming with confidence that the killing of Osama Bin Laden "has greater potential to change the Democratic Party’s reputation on national security than any single event since Vietnam," arguing that Obama's decision to strike Bin Laden's compound "erases the enduring stereotype of Democrats as weak politicians who won't use force."

Count me skeptical.

As Beinart himself points out, the key pillars of this narrative are largely baseless in any case. Democratic Presidents since Vietnam (or, actually, since the Red Scare of the 1950s, when the "Democrats are soft on national security" trope first reared its head) have not been especially reluctant to use force, nor have they been notably more or less successful than their Republican counterparts in deploying it (Iran under Carter and Somalia under Clinton were indeed SNAFUS, but Clinton's interventions in Haiti and Balkans ended reasonably well for the U.S., and I struggle to think of a military debacle that could top Bush's invasion of Iraq). The stereotype of Democrats as "weak" isn't rooted in empirical reality. It's rooted in post-Vietnam conservative identity politics, and is accepted as axiomatic. Because Democrats stand for the dilution of the value system on which American strength rests, they're "weak" by definition. When they employ force, it's either for "humanitarian" reasons unworthy of our fighting men and women, or it's unduly hobbled and constrained by half-baked liberal notions of multilateralism and respect for international institutions. Either way, Democrats are wusses.

That this narrative doesn't mesh well with reality isn't relevant. It's unifying, powerful, and can explain away variation without demanding that its adherents reexamine their core beliefs and prejudices. Bin Laden's killing might - might - briefly reduce this narrative's rhetorical power outside of conservative circles, but I wouldn't count on it being eclipsed. It's burrowed far too deeply into America's political consciousness.

Response Fail

2011-05-02T11:23:00.002-04:00

I'm sure Hamas's public reaction to Bin Laden's death is being driven primarily by domestic considerations, particularly given the flak it's taken from some quarters for cutting a deal with Fatah, but if the group was hoping to gain tacit American acceptance of said deal, this is a really terrible way of doing so.

Quick Hit: The Political Economy of the Empire

2011-04-28T10:18:00.002-04:00

If any unreformed Star Wars geeks out there haven't seen this yet, well, they should.

Quick Hit: Head in Hands

2011-04-28T08:41:00.002-04:00

When I first saw the news yesterday of the Fatah-Hamas agreement my first reaction, sadly, was to wonder how long it would take for American leaders to respond in a stupid, counterproductive, shortsighted way. Apparently the answer is less than 24 hours.

A Few Thoughts on NATO

2011-04-27T13:04:00.003-04:00

Sarwar Kashmeri has a worthwhile post hinting at anecdotal evidence of a generational divide within Western militaries about the continuing importance of NATO. It actually dovetails quite nicely with this post from Steve Walt a while back about how his students view the alliance. Obviously, for people who are really, really invested in the notion of a common Western foreign policy, NATO's slow slide into irrelevance is quite worrying, hence the last fifteen years of hand-wringing and frantic searching for some new strategic framework or organizational innovation that will revitalize the group. Personally, I've never entirely understood why people get so exorcised about the whole issue.

NATO was originally formed as a means to keep Soviet armor from pouring through the Fulda Gap. In that, it succeeded. Spectacularly. The upshot now, though, is that there just isn't the same strategic imperative for all of Europe and the United States to always act in military concert. The unifying threat isn't there. And that's a good thing. So we really shouldn't be all that concerned that NATO has trouble acting as a unified organizational umbrella for various and sundry expeditionary tasks. We're talking about a lot of countries, all of which have different interests and histories and ideological tendencies and domestic constituencies that are going to make consistent unified military action tough. That's just the world we live in.

To the extent that NATO still matters, it's as an organizational expression of what remains of Western geopolitical coherence. The existence of NATO probably makes it marginally less likely that European states will start serious intra-continental squabbles. It keeps Western militaries talking to one another and performing joint exercises and such. It gives countries with broadly similar geopolitical interests a forum for negotiation. And all that's quite valuable, so NATO should stick around. Members should keep sending people to the Alliance's summits and providing basic levels of funding and doing whatever's necessary to keep the organization technically afloat, because as Kashmeri points out, it might be useful from time to time. NATO's coherence as a robust expeditionary alliance, though, just isn't all that important for its member states anymore. The structure of the international system is changing, and instead of looking for monsters for NATO to slay, leaders should allow the Alliance to be useful where it's useful without getting caught up in strategic nostalgia.

Spending Priorities

2011-04-22T08:30:00.000-04:00

Glenn Greenwald has a characteristically blistering critique of this WaPo editorial on defense spending. Greenwald is right to point out the breathtaking hypocrisy of a paper that has claimed such consistent concern with the deficit being unwilling to consider serious defense cuts, but there are times when Glen takes an overly credulous tone:

The Post Editors and their corporate bosses are people who have used their influence as much as possible not only to start multiple wars but to vehemently argue against their end. Those wars have not, of course, been fought by Post Editors; that's why they've so blithely cheered them on and demanded their continuation: because it isn't their lives endangered by them. Their pro-war advocacy has instead imposed extreme burdens on a tiny portion of the population -- members of the military and their families -- and yet when it comes time to cut the military budget, they refuse to consider limiting the number of new wars they might want to start. Instead, they demand that the people they send off to fight their wars and their families be forced to pay more for their health care.

Well, yeah, I guess. To someone less cynically inured to the rhetorical strategies by which imperial assertiveness is disguised as national necessity, I suppose pointing all this out might cause some outrage. Frankly, I admire Glenn's ability to keep up the indignation, particularly since he's been at this a lot longer than I have. Still, it's fairly obvious, at least to me, that for a large percentage of American elites, maintaining American military dominance, upon which (by some lines of logic) its geostrategic and geoeconomic position rests, is an end in itself. It's not something needs to be curtailed in order to reduce the deficit; it's a reason for deficit reduction. Military spending must not be crowded out by "unsustainable" entitlements. Yes, this is perverse, but it really shouldn't be surprising at this point. Here's Sullivan and Yglesias on the same topic.

I guess all I'd say as someone who does support a fairly assertive American foreign policy (albeit not of the neo-con city-on-a-hill-plus-weapons-and-crack variety) is that the issue isn't so much about what we can afford but rather what we choose to, and for people who are really, really invested in American empire, slashing social services at home is colossally stupid and reveals a profound ignorance of political economy as it is likely to play out over time. If you want an empire that lasts, for better or worse, you have to pay for it in a politically sustainable way.

Canadian Election Musings

2011-04-21T13:11:00.003-04:00

I ran across some interesting news this morning indicating that a new poll puts Canada's National Democratic Party ahead of the Bloc Quebecois in the province of Quebec. Now, the poll's sample was not randomized, which makes me a bit confused as to how anyone in the press is drawing any conclusions from it at all, but I haven't been able to get a hold of the methodological details, so there may be some mitigating factors that preserve its validity. Anecdotal evidence seems to support its broad conclusions in any case. From a Canadian perspective, this is significant, both in its indication that the Bloc has lost appeal to all but hardcore sovereigntists and in the emergence of the NDP as more than just an annoying fly buzzing in the Liberals' ears.

From a more general perspective, it'll be interesting to see if the Liberals, NDP, Bloc Quebecois and Conservatives can exist together holding meaningful power in a stable party system for any length of time. Canada has been flouting Duverger's law for some time, but until now that had a relatively straightforward, regionalist explanation (Canadian Federalism, coupled with one-time popularity of the Bloc in Quebec mitigated against the usual two-party system that SMDP voting encourages). I could see the continued popularity of the Bloc among some allowing the NDP and the Liberals to continue existing as stable parties. I could also see one essentially folding into the other sometime over the next decade. Interesting for party system wonks in any case, and quite consequential to the political future of Canada.

Quick Hit: Game Theory and Drug Violence

2011-04-18T10:17:00.003-04:00

As a budding social scientist with a bent toward comparative historical and interpretive methodologies, I have a healthy skepticism of work that relies too heavily on game theory. That said, this idea based on this paper seems pretty solid (also reminds me of some musings from my early blogging days). Yglesias sensibly points out that some of the state capacity problems in Mexico that have allowed drug violence to get so far out of control in the first place would make implementation difficult.

Identity Matters: Italian Crucifixes

2011-03-29T08:47:00.002-04:00

On March 18, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the placement of crucifixes in Italian classrooms does not violate the human rights of Italian students. I wrote about this a while back, when a lower European court came to the opposite conclusion. Not being a legal scholar, my own sense that the final decision's logic is slipshod may not carry much weight, so I'll let Stanley Fish do the heavy lifting (just a note: my high school had a crucifix at the head of every classroom, and while I personally don't feel worse for wear because of it, the statement such symbols make - remember who's in charge here - is not lost on students). At a glance, Fish's critique seems pretty well aimed, at least at the level of logic.

What I find interesting is what this decision says about the political position of the E.C.J., and E.U. institutions in general these days. I have to wonder whether the court would have been bolder in circumscribing the prerogatives of the Italian state had European unity not taken such a public beating lately. At first glance, this seems like a tactical retreat away from Marbury, with the E.C.J. worried about the political consequences of intervening so forcefully at one of the main state-run sites of identity creation and reproduction. The problem with the law, though, is that precedents get set and actually kind of matter. Tactical retreats can quickly morph into full-scale strategic withdrawals.

Quick Hit: Canadian Government Falls

2011-03-25T15:04:00.005-04:00

I imagine most people focused on geopolitics are currently focused on the various socio-political-humanitarian catastrophes around the world, which make for interesting if consistently horrific reading. I'll just point out, then, that the Conservative-led governing coalition* in Canada lost a no-confidence vote today, setting the stage for new elections. The AP analysis predicts an election leading to basically the same parliamentary coalition, slightly re-jiggered, though notes the possibility that a coalition government led by the opposition could also emerge, even if the Conservatives retain a plurality of the national vote.

The article also notes that Harper is "counting on the economy to help him win re-election." The recent economic crisis hit Canada far less seriously than the rest of the OECD, and as any political scientist will tell you, a growing economy/falling unemployment rate helps incumbents. What's interesting is that the recent crisis was weathered comparatively well precisely because Canada's Liberals avoided the deregulatory orgy in which the rest of the Anglo-Saxon world enthusiastically participated during the '80s and '90s. Now it's helping the Conservatives retain power. Politics, it seems, brooks neither consistency nor justice.

__________

*Update: It's been pointed out that this is badly put. The Conservatives have been leading a minority government that until now has enjoyed the confidence of the Commons, not a formal parliamentary coalition.

Quick Hit: Leading Europe is a Challenge

2011-03-22T10:06:00.002-04:00

Luis Simón's post at European Geostrategy about the rifts the Libyan crisis has exposed in the London-Paris-Berlin axis is worth a read. The takeaway point for me is that establishing a long-term, unified foreign policy among a concert of states is really quite difficult. Money quote:

Any attempt to preserve regional stability in Europe and Europeans’ ability to exercise their power globally in the twenty-first century, must lean on a strong Franco-British-German triumvirate around the European Union. Anything else will lead to a dangerous mixture of inter-European balancing and external penetration that could put in jeopardy the regional stability that Europeans have so carefully crafted over the last decades, let alone European global power aspirations.

Seems on the mark. Worth remembering, though, that triumvirates make for really, really unstable ruling arrangements. The two most famous examples of the system led to this and this. In any case, European coherence does not seem to be weathering recent events well.

Is Syria Next?

2011-03-22T00:59:00.011-04:00

I've been watching the protests in Syria over the past few days with a cautious feeling of hope. But I maintain a deep-seated skepticism that Syria is primed for revolution like Tunisia and Egypt were. Much has already been written about the viability of a Syrian revolution, and most of it, needless to say, has been highly pessimistic. Syria is too religiously and socially stratified, it is too politically repressed, it has no civil society, its army is too loyal, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. Nonetheless, the country has slowly started to come alive as some Syrians seem eager to emulate the example of their Arab neighbors. And, just as in Tunisia, where a revolution was kindled in the small town of Sidi Bouzid, in Syria it is the quiet southern town of Duraa that has served as the catalyst for broader unrest.

Why Duraa has become the epicenter of the protests in Syria is something of a mystery. Unlike Hama, long a center of Islamist activity in Syria, Duraa -- as far as I am aware -- has no recent history of political activism. Perhaps the small-town nature of Duraa has helped to bring people out into the streets. Remember that the initial spark was the arrest of fifteen local children who scrawled revolutionary slogans around town in commemoration of events in Tunisia and Egypt. I would imagine that in a small town like Duraa, many people probably knew those children, or they knew their parents. It's not hard to see why they might have felt particularly connected to, or offended by, the arrests. Syria observers I've talked with have also speculated to me that because Duraa is so far from Damascus -- the center of Syria's much feared security apparatus -- there was a much more limited security presence in the town, which almost certainly allowed the protests to gain some initial steam.

Whatever the case, it is important to point out that most Arabic TV networks -- particularly Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya, the most widely watched in the region -- have been scant in their coverage of events in Syria. Al Jazeera's attention has been focused on Libya and, to a lesser extent, Yemen (on a side note, the station is almost completely ignoring the dramatic events in Bahrain, an indication that regional Gulf political considerations are playing a role in their decisions regarding news coverage.) Al Arabiya, for its part, has also been focused primarily on Libya. Both networks have run occasional stories on Syria and done several infrequent interviews. The lack of attention to the Syrian protests is certainly not helping the cause of the revolutionaries. Without the type of publicity that Tunisian and Egyptian revolutionaries received, Syrian dissidents have relied on Facebook in order to spread the word and to organize additional protests.

As of now, the primary Facebook page that appears to be covering these protests, issuing appeals for reform, and calling for additional demonstrations is this one [Arabic]. It is updated virtually every half hour. There are a few odd things about the page, however. As a Syrian friend pointed out, the Arabic is at times strange. Certain phrases that are used are highly uncommon, making us wonder whether the author of this particular page is either not himself a Syrian or is a Syrian ex-pat who has lived abroad so long that his Arabic is no longer up to par. The other Facebook page that is becoming increasingly important is that of Shabakat Sham, a news site covering the demonstrations. It seems to be a counterpart to Shabakat Rasd, which was an extremely important source for news during the Egyptian revolution.

Looking at it from an outsider's perspective, what worries me about this protest movement is that there has so far yet to emerge any clear leadership amongst the demonstrators. Moreover, their demands remain scattered. The latter issue is probably of greater concern; the Syrian demonstrators appear to not have united around a common message. Whereas the leading Facebook organizing page is calling this a revolution "against Bashar al Assad," few demonstrators are following that line of attack. Some are calling for a release of political prisoners, others for an end to corruption, others for a vaguely defined notion of freedom. But what are the unifying demands around which this budding protest movement is united? Is it democracy? If so, the discussion of democracy by Syrian activists online -- from what I have seen, which is admittedly limited -- appears not to be very developed. So what is it that unites these protesters? Only a call for change. But the protest movement has thus far failed to unify around a clear definition of exactly what kind of change they're looking for.

Okay, okay. It is probably unreasonable of me to think that Syrians, less than a week into this protest movement, would already have established a common vision for change. But I worry that without visionary leadership that this movement will either quickly be crushed (a distinct possibility) or that it will take an increasingly sectarian path. A Syrian protest movement needs to offer clear reasons why theirs is a national movement -- not a Sunni one. Allawis and Syrian Shiites in general -- not to mention Syrian Christians, who generally tend to say when asked that they've "had it pretty good under Bashar" -- have less incentive to revolt. Sunnis, in contrast, "the majority that does not rule," have a bigger bone to pick. So I worry that this will become a Sunni movement, a movement to reclaim the rights of the Sunni majority. Some of the talk on Syrian internet forums seems to indicate that some Syrians see it as such.

If this movement is going to be successful, it needs to be broad-based and non-sectarian. And it needs to be united around common and clearly defined principles and goals. The arguably sectarian nature of the Bahraini uprising, I would argue, has played a significant role in undercutting the movement's viability. In contrast, where revolutionary movements in the region have united disparate social and religious groupings around a clearly defined common cause (Egypt, Tunisia), they have been more likely to succeed. Syria must learn the lessons of its neighbors.

Libya, Liberalism and Legitimacy

2011-03-21T12:23:00.004-04:00

I'll start off by saying that, like many, I view the ongoing Western intervention in Libya with a lot of ambivalence. The international track record for such actions isn't fantastic, the aims and goals of the U.N. mission seem murky and render the whole exercise extremely vulnerable to mission creep (Is the purpose just to provide a no-fly zone/bit of air support and then let the chips fall where they may? Is the purpose to overthrow Qaddafi? Does anyone have any idea who'd be taking his place should the former policy lead to the latter result? If, instead, a stalemate emerges, what happens then? How far are Western militaries willing to go to stop Qaddafi's forces from achieving victory? How long are they going to stay involved?). I agree with Judah Grunstein (who's written several excellent posts on Libya in recent days) that the whole operation would have had a better chance of achieving a decisive result a couple of weeks ago before battle lines had hardened, but that the international legitimacy gained by waiting is important.

That said, I really do think the international community as a whole needs to develop a coherent means of responding to discrete man-made humanitarian catastrophes. Qaddafi is hardly alone among autocrats in treating his subjects with extreme cruelty. There is, however, a difference in degree between ruling a repressive state with all its quotidian (though horrific) injustices and waging war on one's own people through indiscriminate massacres. Where the latter is happening, and where the international community can muster some kind of institutionally-mediated consensus for intervention, I think intervention ought to happen. Libya seems almost archetypal in this regard, which is why in the end I give military action there my highly qualified and nervous support.

I did want to point out Michael Lind's piece in Salon with the straightforward title "The Libyan War: Unconstitutional and Illegitimate." To the first point - that the Libyan war is unconstitutional - Lind strikes me as right. The founders really did vest power over questions of war and peace with Congress, and Obama (admittedly following at least a half-century's accepted practice, if not his own constitutional thought) has given Congress no opportunity to weigh in on Libyan intervention, never mind allowing it to take the lead.

I guess all I'd say here is that, for better or worse, the practical consensus in the United States has shifted to give the executive branch near-unilateral control over military affairs, and I'm skeptical that attempts to constitutionally circumscribe that control will be effective as long as the U.S. plays a globally-dominant military role. Giving Congress the power to declare war works when "declaring war" means mobilizing national resources, raising troops, and moving the country to a war footing. It works less well when "declaring war" means ordering an already-constructed and globally-deployed military apparatus into battle someplace. In addition, frankly, my trust in the capacity of Congress to debate military action maturely, never mind arrive at an intelligent policy, is non-existent. Doesn't speak well for the health of the Republic, but that's a whole different can of worms.

When it comes to assessing the international legitimacy of intervention, Lind is on shakier ground. He veers between different standards of legitimacy, at times preferring a democratic standard (countries comprising most of the world's population support something), at times a Westphalian one (a large aggregate amount of states support something), and at times a kind of great-power-concert test (most or all of the world's "great powers," however defined, support something). Lind never fully commits to one standard, which means he never fully articulates the circumstances under which a Libyan intervention would be legitimate. Furthermore, his analysis of the recent U.N. vote seems unduly negative. The five key abstentions from the UNSC vote that Lind cites - Brazil, Russia, India, China and Germany - are indeed major powers. It's worth noting, though, that they abstained. They didn't vote against the resolution. Best I can tell they didn't even campaign against it. The two states with veto power - Russia and China - didn't exercise it. They just didn't cheer it on. Frankly, that's about as close to a great power consensus as you're gonna get, at least on an issue of any controversy. If Lind's standard for "legitimate" global intervention is the enthusiastic, active and institutionally-expressed support of every great power on earth, then he's set a bar that will never be cleared, with all the ensuing consequences for nascent institutions of global governance. Put another way, if intervention in Libya doesn't pass muster as legitimate, then we might as well abandon the concept.

I'll close with a link to Steve Walt, who takes the opportunity to ride his favorite "liberal-internationalists-and-neo-cons-are-really-the-same" hobbyhorse. Walt's not wrong, but I sometimes wonder if he doesn't give liberals enough credit. Yes, both liberal internationalists and neo-conservatives counsel very active foreign policies, but the liberal insistence that such policies be mediated through international institutions is more significant than Walt's willing to grant. The longue durée institutionalist project is to bind states to institutions and rules and norms that will allow an eventual transcendence Westphalian anarchy. For realists who think that's a pipe dream - mere intellectual window dressing to make imperialism more palatable to liberal sensibilities - I can see why there's not much distinction to draw. If one takes such ideas seriously, though, the current intervention in Libya is what they look like in practice.

Happiness

2011-03-13T14:09:00.003-04:00

I was a bit surprised that Roger Cohen's column today on "happynomics" and David Cameron's muddied attempt to measure Britons' overall wellbeing didn't mention the concept of "Gross National Happiness" pioneered by King Wangchuck of Bhutan several decades ago. Jeb actually posted on this a while back. Nice to know the concept's catching on, even if people aren't giving credit where it's due.

Apologies and Recriminations

2011-03-11T13:12:00.003-05:00

Judah Grunstein has had a number of decent posts lately musing about Western options in Libya. I'm not sure where I come down on some of the questions he raises, but I understand the extreme ambivalence with which he looks at, well, pretty much every option available (including doing nothing). Toward the conclusion of this post on the necessity of recalibrating not only the Western relationship with the Middle East, but the vigilance with which Western nations guard the health of their own democratic institutions, Judah fires off the following:

So at the same time that the West is developing all of its military options with regard to Libya, it should also be developing a new social contract with the Arab world, one that defines a code of conduct to support political institution-building, civil society, exchange programs for young leaders and, most importantly, a greater level of transparency in our dealings with local governments. These should be framed and publicly presented not as lessons given by the West, but rather as an effort to make up for past historical wrongs. [Emphasis added]

Judah's prescriptions here are vague, but it strikes me that framing an international issue - any international issue - as "an effort to make up for past historical wrongs" is a fantastic way to ensure stasis. Obama is frequently excoriated as someone who "hates America" and is part of the "blame America first crowd" because he's at times insufficiently bombastic about American power and might and willingness-to-kill-lots-of-people-without-caring-about-it-much. The idea of pitching a major American foreign policy initiative as a corrective to historical abuses opens up a massive can of nationalist worms to no good benefit. Reading Judah's post I was reminded of this Natasha Chart piece begging Naomi Klein to stop using the word "reparations" when discussing climate issues, simply because the word vaguely evokes an acrimonious debate in the United States about historical responsibility for enslaving millions of people. That's how jittery people get when issues of blame and reparation emerge. And it's not just an American thing. Pretty sure the Algerians are still waiting on an apology from France for the whole colonization thing. Also pretty sure they're not going to get one.

Anyway, it's a peripheral question, but unless there's a very compelling practical reason otherwise, I'm generally of the opinion that international problems should be approached as dilemmas to be solved, not as means of achieving some historically-contingent notion of justice. Not because justice isn't important, but because it ought not be the enemy of decent policy.

Quick Hit: Prisoners and Patriot Missiles

2011-03-08T13:04:00.003-05:00

Noah Shachtman points out a link between prison labor and military production in the United States. In recent years, it's become fashionable to refer to the "prison industrial complex." I always thought it was a bit of a misnomer as there didn't seem to be much "industry" involved in caging an absurdly large proportion of the American population, just threats to the general welfare and a colossal waste of resources. Turns out I was wrong.

Really, in a hundred years people will look at these arrangements the way we now look at the Bloody Code and Imperial British penal colonies.

Libya and Missed Opportunities for Europe

2011-03-07T14:56:00.003-05:00

Donald Snow has a post up arguing that robust intervention in Libya ought properly be the province of Europe, not the United States. Snow makes an excellent practical and ethical case, which he then sensibly concludes with the following caveat:

The case for European, not American, leadership in dealing with Libya is, in my judgment, overwhelming. That does not mean that European NATO will step up to the plate and accept that responsibility, simply that they should. If they do not (as they well may not), Libyan blood will be much more on their hands than ours.

To me, it seems clear at this point that there won't be a particularly robust or coherent European response to events in Libya, and that once again the U.S., for better and for worse, will end up leading whatever international response materializes to the violent spasms of Qaddafi's embattled regime. Reading Snow's post in conjunction with James Rogers' lament over the inability of E.U. foreign policy elites to even rhetorically articulate a coherent international posture seems useful here. This situation - a discreet humanitarian crisis with significant strategic implications for Europe - strikes me as precisely the kind of opportunity that institutional innovators can seize to expand their institution's power, coherence and relevance. E.U. elites seem determined - whether out of preference or structural necessity - to let the opportunity pass them by. For Europhiles, it's a bit depressing.

Shifting the Taken for Granted

2011-03-07T13:37:00.004-05:00

I've attempted to use the limited time and energy I devote to blogging lately to pursue more intellectually engaging projects than critiquing the usual neo-con suspects' predictably asinine columns. It's been a challenge. Krauthammer in particular has had a couple of doozys lately. Via Sullivan, though, I noticed this gem from Bill Kristol, criticizing Bob Gates's February 25th speech at West Point. Andrew's points all apply. The following paragraph, though, represents only an especially vociferous version of what still passes, in far too many American circles, for conventional wisdom:

As for the “realism” of his prescription: The United States has sent 100,000 or more troops to Asia and the Middle East five times in the last six decades. Does he really think we may never be called upon to do so again?

The notion of America as the reluctant imperial power, as the state that would really prefer, all things being equal, to disengage from the world and get a chance to visit the Grand Canyon more often, is a frequent rhetorical device deployed by those who advocate for hyper-muscular foreign policy. Liberal internationalists (closer cousins to the neoconservatives than they'd generally care to admit) often make similar arguments. This is one area, though, in which I think the general tenor of discourse has measurable material effects. If the taken-for-granted assumption among American elites is that, once every decade or so, we're going to "be called upon" to send a massive land army into some part of Asia for some reason or other, then America's diplomatic and military posture will remain focused on performing that task, creating the danger of self-fulfilling prophecies and distracting from other geopolitical priorities.

Of the five instances Kristol cites (presumably Korea, Vietnam, Gulf War I, Afghanistan and Gulf War II), two were unquestionably wars of choice, and three were wars of debatable necessity. The outcomes ranged from abject failures to heavily qualified 'successes' (even the first Gulf War left the United States in an awkward strategic position). The thousands of American lives and billions of American dollars expended on those campaigns have been, generally speaking, poor strategic investments. To look at that history and conclude that the United States is bound to be "called upon" to intervene at a similar rate in the coming decades, without even questioning whether the posture that precipitates such interventions actually makes sense, is an immensely destructive form of intellectual auto-pilot.

For what it's worth, Secretary Gates seems alive to the necessity of shifting the assumptions that several generations of American elites have failed to seriously question. Kristol is a likely-irredeemable intellectual casualty of his own doctrine. American policymakers more generally, though, ought to work harder to escape its confines.

Friday, a Day of Protest, and Other Reflections

2011-03-05T13:25:00.016-05:00

Friday, the traditional Muslim day of prayer, is quickly becoming significant in the Arab world as a day of protest. Tens of thousands of people poured out into the streets again yesterday throughout the Middle East to call for better government and an end to authoritarian rule. Protesters showed up in huge numbers in Tahrir Square in Egypt, demonstrating the muscle of the people's movement and calling on the military to move faster in paving the way for democratic rule. In Bahrain, Yemen, Iraq, Jordan, and in Libya -- where brave protesters let their voices be heard even in cities under brutal military rule, like Tripoli -- the streets were alive with calls for reform and change.

Here are some of my latest thoughts and observations on the events in the Middle East, ordered haphazardly in numbered form (since they don't follow one clear narrative.)

1.) It's interesting to note how Jordanians are using much more careful rhetoric than protesters in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Yemen, etc., but are still essentially calling for the same type of revolutionary change. Since direct criticism of the king is likely to land them in jail, Jordanians, when protests first broke out a few weeks ago, called for the ousting of the prime minister. The king's name was not mentioned. Now, with the prime minister out of the picture (he was sacked a few weeks ago by a nervous King Abdullah), Jordanian protesters are cautiously calling on the monarchy to take it a step further. The chant most commonly heard in the streets is: "The people want reform of the regime." (الشعب يريد اصلاح النظام) In Egypt and Tunisia, the slogan -- which has become the rallying cry for change in the region -- was much more direct: "The people want the fall of the regime." (الشعب يريد اسقاط النظام) But the Jordanian opposition, while getting more bold in their calls for political reforms, has yet to go that far -- i.e. to cross that red line and demand an end to the monarch himself.

2.) Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, one of the Arab world's most influential Sunni sheiks, recently declared a fatwa in favor of the killing of Libya's Muammar Qaddafi during a recent Al Jazeera appearance. (Al Jazeera, I noticed, originally headlined the story and ran an article about the fatwa on its website. More recently, it has changed the headline of the article to something more innocuous.) Qaradawi's opinion carries some weight in parts of the Muslim world and, given that his fatwa was specifically directed towards members of the Libyan army, it's interesting to speculate about what role the fatwa may have played in the recent defection of some key Libyan military officials to the opposition.

3.) Egypt's prime minister, Ahmed Shafiq, resigned last week. His resignation had been a demand of Egyptian protesters, who saw Shafiq as another nasty relic of the Mubarak era. It was his appearance last week on an Egyptian television talk show, and his poor performance in the face of an unprecedented level of debate, that some analysts say was enough to do him in. The following juicy account makes me wish I could find the footage...

Until a few weeks ago, it was impossible to imagine watching a prime minister speaking on television in the presence of other guests, let alone opponents who would criticize him. Before January 25, when the uprising against Mubarak erupted, even private channels had to worry about state censorship. Shafiq had to respond to attacks about his performance as prime minister, his relationship to Mubarak, the state of lawlessness in the country, and the failure to release many political prisoners. His answers were often vague, failing to satisfy the other guests.
While he was also humble, taking notes and speaking at length to defend himself, analysts said he lacked the political skill to dig his way out when cornered. Novelist and government critic Alaa al-Aswany landed the heaviest hits, telling Shafiq he had to go because he represented Mubarak's administration and his presence was an attempt to "manipulate the revolution." "Your talk is rejected," said Shafiq. "You are the one that is rejected," replied Aswany.
...
"This interview was unprecedented and I think it may have even brought Shafiq down," Naila Hamdy, professor of journalism at the American University in Cairo (AUC), said. "We have never seen a prime minister have to respond to something like this." "That particular interview for me marks the beginning of a new era for media freedom," she said. "Egypt has changed. Media is destined for more than just a shake-up, but rather a media revolution and it has already started." (Reuters)

4.) I believe that what we're witnessing in the Arab world right now is the rebirth of pan-Arabism. But it's not the pan-Arabism that was built on the 60's-era slogans of socialism and anti-colonialism that was popularized by Nasser. Instead, it's a pan-Arabism built on a common hunger for political reform and democracy. Across the Middle East, protests have sprung up in nearly every authoritarian country. These protest movements have been inspired by the events in Tunisia, and each one proclaims a similar demand for an end to the daily humiliations of dictatorial rule. This inspiring call for change, of a restoration of human dignity through democracy and the establishment of civil rights, has proven to be a much more salient and compelling pan-Arabism than that of the 60's. (Commentator Lamis Andoni makes a similar argument, albeit in greater length. Her article can be found here.)

Clinton on Al Jazeera

2011-03-04T16:08:00.004-05:00

It's nice to see Hillary Clinton acknowledging --in an appearance before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee -- the central role that Al Jazeera has played as an opinion-maker in the Middle East. She's absolutely right, of course, and she's doubly right in her condemnation of the poor state of America's advertisement-dominated, sensationalist, angry cable news networks. No wonder so many Americans are tuning in to Al Jazeera English, Clinton argues. Exactly. (Glenn Beck, however, always quick to outdo himself in opining on subjects he literally knows nothing about, lambasted her comments by calling Al Jazeera the "propaganda arm of the Middle East...and Islamic extremism." Err, say what, Glenn?)

Politics, Science and Free Trade

2011-03-01T12:03:00.002-05:00

Via Sullivan, Will at The League of Ordinary Gentlemen has an interesting post up wondering why, given their alleged propensity to accept the specialist-generated consensus on issues like global warming, many on the left remain so skeptical about the benefits of free trade, an issue about which there is substantial consensus within the discipline of economics:

I’m willing to accept the consensus view of specialists in most fields (to preempt the inevitable, I don’t think the infamous “Climate-gate” memos demonstrate systematic bias). So here’s my question, prompted by what sounded like a shot at free trade in E. D.’s latest post: Why don’t we accord the same level of deference to economists? Shouldn’t the pro-free trade consensus within the field of economics be as bullet-proof as belief in global warming?

It’s not a partisan issue – in my opinion, the best introduction to the benefits of international trade was written by Paul Krugman. And the strength of the pro-free trade consensus in economics is at least as robust as the consensus view among climatologists. There are a few high profile dissenters, but those exist in every field, including climatology.

If an overwhelming number of trained specialists in a particular field agree on one issue, shouldn’t we just take their word for it? And if not, why not?

It's a good point, and for what it's worth, my response is two-fold. 1) I agree, sort of. My general rule for forming opinions about subjects with which I'm not intimately acquainted is to look to the consensus among specialists, and where no such consensus exists, look to those specialists whose work seems best compatible with my understanding of related subjects. I don't believe anthropogenic global warming is happening because I've built and run my own climate models. I believe it because damn near every qualified person who has built and run such models has reached a similar conclusion. Likewise, my (slightly qualified) support of a global free trade regime is based on a similar consensus among economists of multiple ideological stripes. The tendency of some in the anti-globalization crowd to pooh-pooh the accumulated knowledge of a two-century-old discipline is one of the reasons I don't count myself among its ranks. That said, there are intellectually coherent reasons for being skeptical of "free trade" as it is currently practiced that don't require willful scientific ignorance, which brings me to my second point.

2) Intelligent people who are against free trade probably don't disagree with the economics, they disagree with the political economics. Will, in his post, notes that accepting the validity of climate science doesn't lead to an immediately obvious course of practical action. The most direct response - immediate cessation of all carbon emissions - is socially, politically, and economically implausible. Thus, scientific insight must be translated into practical action through political means (a carbon tax, a cap-and-trade regime, increased EPA regulation) that from a purely scientific standpoint will probably be sub-optimal. Likewise with free trade. It's entirely possible to accept that, in an ideal world, unfettered global exchange will produce the maximum economic benefit for everyone, while at the same time believing that the political means through which such a regime has in fact been implemented in recent decades has produced more dislocation, misery, inequality and crony capitalism than its benefits justify. That's a contestable proposition. Indeed, it's one I'd contest personally. But it's not ignorant of the consensus for free trade among economists, and its not equivalent to denying that climate change is happening.

The Art of Memoranda

2011-02-24T12:37:00.004-05:00

Old news I know, but I can't help giving at least passing notice to this Donald Rumsfeld memo from 2003 (h/t Sullivan via Tom O'Hare). Now, I've recently made a few brief forays into local electoral politics, and I'll admit that I've written memos that look a bit like this - to-do lists that make sure everyone's on the same page, things aren't falling off peoples' radars, and the trains are generally running on time. In such communication, one doesn't always spell out the nuances and complexities of given tasks. So, I'm trying to be a bit charitable. I'm sure (I hope) there's missing context. Still, bullets that say things like "make sure the printer is getting our palmcards printed" or "get that latest Chicago Tribune article up on the Web site" really aren't in the same league as "We also need to solve the Pakistan problem" or "Korea doesn't seem to be going well." Even in a quick status memo, those seem like points that merit a bit of explanatory verbiage - maybe even their very own whole document.

That said, the diplomacy-as-haiku really isn't the part of this document that disturbs me. The fact that Doug "dumbest-fucking-guy-on-the-planet" Feith was being told to just "[come] up with proposals for [Rumsfeld] to send around" regarding several of America's most complex and vexing international problems is pretty disconcerting. Is this really how policy gets made?

Qaddafi's Hama Moment

2011-02-22T23:23:00.021-05:00

Life has interrupted my writing habit recently, so I haven't had time to comment much on events in Libya, but I wanted to take a few moments now to jot down some notes on what is happening there.

With the indiscriminate slaughter of protesters that has occurred over the past few days, Libya's eccentric leader appears to be trying to do what Hafez al-Assad did successfully in the Syrian town of Hama in 1982.* The extent of the massacres in Libya has not been played up enough in the Western press, but it certainly has in Arab media outlets. Al Jazeera, which continues to blow all other news channels out of the water in terms of its coverage, has been running regular accounts of the strafing of protesters from the air, the alleged use of African mercenaries to slaughter demonstrators, and the indiscriminate use of lethal force by local Libyan forces. Qaddafi, in no uncertain terms, is trying to wipe out the massive anti-government movement that has emerged in opposition to his regime.

Sayf Al Qaddafi, his charmless and arrogant son, threatened as much in his televised appearance the other day. In a long, rambling statement broadcast on Libyan TV, the haughty and out-of-touch Qaddafi raised the specter of Algeria (which experienced a devastating civil war in the 1990s) in an attempt to discourage additional anti-government protests. He made quite clear that his father's regime was going nowhere and that Libyan forces would not tolerate any group who attempted to disrupt the country's "public order." The speech was highly threatening and, as I see it, amounted to an ultimatum to anti-government demonstrators: either stop what you're doing, or we'll wipe you out. (There's some irony here in the younger Qaddafi's position, given his rather lofty-sounding graduate thesis on civil society and democratization that he wrote as a student at LSE.)

His father, who followed up his son today with about 70 minutes of incoherent ramblings, proved once again that he is a chief contender for #1 most batshit crazy world leader. Drawing on language like "cleans[ing] Libya house by house," Qaddafi vowed defiantly to fight until the last ("I will die a martyr," he said). Nor did he back away from calling for a massacre of the Libyan opposition movement. "You men and women who love Gaddafi...get out of your homes and fill the streets," he said. "Leave your homes and attack them in their lairs...starting tomorrow the cordons will be lifted, go out and fight them." [GlobalPost's translation] Libya's deputy U.N. ambassador, Ibrahim Dabbashi, who has broken from the government and called for Qaddafi to resign, characterized the Libyan leader's speech as genocidal. "I think the genocide has started now in Libya," he said. "The Gaddafi statement was just code for his collaborators to start the genocide against the Libyan people. It just started a few hours ago. I hope the information I get is not accurate but if it is, it will be a real genocide."

The Obama administration, as well as the West more broadly, continues to be impotent in the face of the Libyan government's brutality. Rather than work to head off what has the potential to be a horrible series of massacres, or even the sparks for a Libyan civil war, the West has contented itself with a fairly tepid series of rebukes of the Libyan regime. How cowardly. President Obama himself, despite his high-minded rhetoric in Cairo back in 2009, continues to follow the confused, spineless, cold-hearted realist politics of his predecessors.

Yet Qaddafi, it seems to me, is not likely to get away with his "Hama moment" in the same way that Hafez al-Assad did. Times have changed. Whereas Assad remained the leader of Syria for another eighteen years, such a scenario is virtually impossible to imagine in Libya. The Syrian government instituted an effective media blackout of what it did in Hama (most Syrians, to this day, know nothing about it); Libyan authorities, in contrast, cannot hide the truth of what is going on. Regardless of the fact that foreign journalists have been kicked out of the country -- not even Al Jazeera has any reporters on the ground -- the truth is getting out. Protesters are using cell phones and cameras to transmit videos to YouTube and Facebook of the massacres and demonstrations that are occurring.

With a team of staff working overtime to track down this latest footage, Al Jazeera is able to rely on this type of "eyewitness" reporting to provide updates on events as they occur (other news networks, following their lead, are now doing the same). Consequently, despite the suppression of independent journalists, Qaddafi -- unlike Assad in the 1980s -- cannot easily cover up his crimes. And even if he does manage to hold on to power, his reputation will be permanently tarnished and his government fatally weakened. Cell phones and digital cameras have made history the notion of a media blackout. Which makes it that much harder for tyrants like Qaddafi to get away with their crimes.

There's much more to be said about what's going on in Libya, and I'll have more in the next day or two.

*There is no similarity with Hama in terms of the scale of the killings, of course. The comparison I draw here is in these leaders' brutal, indiscriminate, and uncompromising approach towards their anti-government oppositions.

Waiting for Mubarak to Go

2011-02-14T23:56:00.002-05:00

An Egyptian protester (who clearly hadn't left Tahrir Square in days) holds a sign that says: "Go already! I miss my wife. Married 20 days ago."

Off Message vs. Off the Rails

2011-02-12T16:42:00.004-05:00

Today's article in the Times about the Obama Administration's internal deliberations on Egypt is worth a read. It relies almost entirely on anonymous sources, which is annoying, and means the narrative that the article lays out should be taken with more than a few pinches of salt. Now that Mubarak is gone, I could easily see Obama directing some strategic leaking to make it look as if his waffling was actually a result of staff disagreements rather than his own indecision. That said, assuming one takes the story at face value, there are a few points to make.

First, back during the '08 campaign, my principal reason for supporting Obama was that he seemed willing to break through the hardened carapace of American foreign policy thinking, which in so many ways remains mired in the Cold War and the strategic logic of that period. That's why I was a bit put off when Obama named Clinton Secretary of State (why not just make her Vice President?), and why I've been generally disappointed at the status quo bias of the Obama Administration's foreign policy. That said, if this article reflects reality, it looks as though Obama himself still retains some of his campaign-era instincts. I hope he nurtures them.

Second, it's one thing to be "off message." It's another thing to have different people from the same organization saying really substantively different things. If Obama had decided that the United States was no longer supporting Mubarak, and was sufficiently willing to own that decision to call for a regime transition "now," then he should have been much clearer with his subordinates about the thrust of American policy. Clinton and Biden shouldn't have been saying nice, conciliatory things about Mubarak after it had been decided that his regime no longer enjoyed American support. That's not a question of tone, but of substance. The President and the Secretary of State really shouldn't be publicly articulating two different versions of U.S. foreign policy.

Finally, this whole incident just goes to show how dated the traditional government-to-government model of international relations is. Obama and some of his less establishment-oriented staff seem to understand that playing the long game in modern geopolitics is far more about relating to foreign societies than it is to foreign governments. It would be nice if the rest of the U.S. foreign policy establishment got that message.

Americans Want Real News

2011-02-08T12:37:00.005-05:00

Al Jazeera English's jump in viewers over the past few weeks is a pretty good indication that there's a market in this country for intelligent international news coverage. While blonde-girl-gets-kidnapped-in-small-town-America stories might sell to a certain demographic of viewers, there is little doubt that there exists a large pool of disgruntled Americans who don't currently watch cable TV because they feel as though it's trivial and highly sensationalized. The media critic Jeff Jarvis, in a speech I attended awhile back, made the argument that although the gradual sensationalization of cable news coverage has been justified on economic grounds ('we just can't make a profit if we run serious news stories; that's not what Americans want,' the TV execs say), there is a market for in-depth, thoughtful, comprehensive TV news coverage of international issues in this country. It's just not being tapped into.

While CNN, FOX, and MSNBC have mostly bumbled through the coverage of the uprising in Egypt, Al Jazeera English has been busy making a name for itself here in the United States. Since the channel was launched in 2006, Al Jazeera English has been heavily marginalized in the US market. With the exception of a few minor cable companies, the station has not been offered by any of the major American cable/satellite providers. In recent weeks, however, particularly as the Egypt protests have unfolded, the channel's English-language website has received an astounding 2000% increase in hits, of which 60% have come from the United States. Many of these visitors have been logging on in order to watch Al Jazeera English's live feed, which can be viewed directly from their website.

Now, it looks like Al Jazeera English is trying to build on this momentum to finally force its way into the American market.

...Mr. Anstey, the managing director, said in an interview that renewed talks with the major distributors were now under way. “There’s a growing call for Al Jazeera. That’s clear,” he said. Al Jazeera English has contacted Comcast, for instance, and a meeting has been scheduled for later this month. In an indication that perceptions of Al Jazeera may be changing, one of its correspondents in Washington reported on Thursday that people there “are all of a sudden very welcoming” to the network. “We’re on TVs all across the city.”

Frank Rich, writing in the New York Times the other day, notes how "ravenous" American viewers are for sophisticated news coverage of the Egypt uprising.

Unable to watch Al Jazeera English, and ravenous for comprehensive and sophisticated 24/7 television coverage of the Middle East otherwise unavailable on television, millions of Americans last week tracked down the network’s Internet stream on their computers. Such was the work-around required by the censorship practiced by America’s corporate gatekeepers. You’d almost think these news-starved Americans were Iron Curtain citizens clandestinely trying to pull in the jammed Voice of America signal in the 1950s — or Egyptians desperately seeking Al Jazeera after Mubarak disrupted its signal last week.

Having Al Jazeera English as a provider of news on cable networks in the United States could do a world of good. The station's detailed coverage of international news stories might encourage the lazy news execs at CNN and FOX to actually do their job as journalists: provide rigorous coverage of national and international news stories, and to spend a little less time on small town murder intrigue. In the Middle East, Al Jazeera's Arabic channel has had a similar effect: other Arab news networks have been forced to either provide more serious news coverage or risk losing their market share to Al Jazeera.

Here's to hoping that Al Jazeera English is successful.

The Al Jazeera Spotlight

2011-02-01T19:44:00.026-05:00

Al Jazeera's coverage of the events in Egypt has been electrifying, intense, and at times highly dramatic. When Hosni Mubarak stepped down from the podium last night -- at the end of a speech in which he deceived himself into thinking that he could continue to hang on to his throne -- Al Jazeera cut immediately to the protesters in Tahrir Square in Cairo. Instead of going back to its studios to get the snap analyses of guest political analysts (as other Arab networks were busy doing), Al Jazeera let the street protesters themselves respond to Mubarak's words. The network's cameras panned over the vast crowds in the Square and, accompanied by total silence from its news anchors, Al Jazeera broadcast directly the chants of the protesters for nearly ten uninterrupted minutes. As the crowds yelled in defiance, rejecting Mubarak's concessions and calling for an immediate end to his regime, Al Jazeera just let the cameras roll. It was a dramatic few minutes.

Broadly speaking, much of what's being said about Al Jazeera's pivotal role is correct. The network has galvanized the Arab street, given life to the demonstrations, and undoubtedly helped bring the uprising in Tunisia to the streets of Cairo, Alexandria, and beyond. Its coverage has given voice to the Egyptian protesters, and provided virtually 24-hour non-stop reporting of events as they unfold. That said, some Western commentators are taking their enthusiasm for Al Jazeera a bit far in assuming that the network will play a similarly positive role if protests in the region continue to spread. It's far from clear that Al Jazeera will be so gung-ho in its coverage of anti-government protests if the location were, say, Syria or Saudi Arabia. Or Qatar, for that matter, where the network is based. Al Jazeera blatantly refrains from criticism of a number of regimes and is quick to provide critical reporting of others. Egypt has long been the subject of some of the network's most critical coverage, so it's no surprise that Al Jazeera has embraced this story of anti-government ire. But Syria, on the other hand, were the protests to spread there, might find that Al Jazeera's coverage was much less sympathetic towards any type of protest movement.

There are various reasons why Al Jazeera is lopsided and selective in its coverage. Some of it has to do with the Qatari monarchy's own diplomatic interests. A decade ago, Al Jazeera used to annoy the Saudi regime fairly regularly, for example, until Riyadh starting making trouble with the Qatari government. Needless to say, after the local Qatari authorities stepped in, the TV network softened the nature of its reporting towards Saudi Arabia. Its selectively critical coverage is also linked to its own editorial bias: Al Jazeera is generally hesitant to shine a critical spotlight on states and political organizations that it views as a part of the Islamist "resistance" against Israel. This explains its sympathetic reporting towards Syria, Hamas, and Hezbollah. It also provides some insight into why its coverage of the PA, Fatah, Egypt, and other Western-leaning states tends to be so hostile.

Again, though, the point is the following: that despite the extremely important role that Al Jazeera has played in Tunisia and Egypt, it is not a given that the network will continue to be at the forefront of propelling future protest movements in the region. Al Jazeera has its own editorial line, and it is also restricted by its Qatari patrons. The network was very late in covering the initial demonstrations in Egypt, for example, which some analysts speculate may have been because Mubarak's government cut some sort of deal with Qatari authorities. Or perhaps it was because the Qatari monarchy was worried about its own skin -- that another burgeoning protest movement, so soon after Tunisia, might eventually encourage an uprising back at home. Whatever the case, this is not to say that Al Jazeera won't cover additional uprisings in the Arab world -- the network most certainly will, or it risks losing credibility (not to mention market share.) But it is quite possible that, in countries like Syria or Saudi Arabia, about which the network has historically tended to give more favorable coverage, that its reporting will be much less sympathetic towards the ambitions of the protesters.

Time to Stop Hedging

2011-01-31T12:12:00.003-05:00

Yesterday I said that I'd been more or less satisfied with the Obama Administration's rhetorical reaction to the events in Egypt. I'm starting to think, though, that it's time to become more forceful about calling for Mubarak to step down.

Thus far, the American response to the protests in Egypt has been one of hedging - offering general rhetorical support for Egyptian self-determination, warning against a crackdown, but not officially calling for any particular outcome. That's seemed to be the right course to this point. Particularly during the first few days of protest, when it was unclear whether this was just a flare-up that the Mubarak regime would weather, I think there was rightful wariness of staking out a strong position. As I noted, it's not as though we have much leverage here in the first place, and if the challenge to the Mubarak regime had quickly petered out, an overly hasty public abandonment of Mubarak would hurt the American relationship with Egypt, make the Administration look inept, and add more fodder to the narrative of an out-of-touch, bullying America throwing its weight around the Middle East and imperiously pronouncing who does and doesn't get to rule the states therein. As with events in Iran in 2009-2010, the danger that American rhetorical support might be a poisoned chalice for the protesters' cause was (and is) quite real.

The protests, though, haven't petered out. Indeed, by all reports, they're starting to gain organizational coherence and something resembling an affirmative program. What's more, Mohammad ElBaradei, who (if one believes recent reports) is beginning to emerge as something of a movement leader, has actually asked the United States to take a more assertive stance against Mubarak. We seem to be reaching the point where hedging is no longer smart policy. As Steve Walt points out, Mubarak is 83. Even if he somehow manages to weather this crisis, he represents Egypt's past, not its future.

At this point, I think a pretty good case can be made for getting out ahead of events and calling for Mubarak to step down. It would better position the United States to work within whatever political equilibrium emerges out of these protests. Oh, and for what it's worth, it would also be the right thing to do.

Very Limited Leverage

2011-01-30T12:23:00.002-05:00

I've generally remained mum on the events in Tunisia and Egypt, not because I don't have thoughts on the subject, but because I'm not confident that they're especially innovative. Martin Indyk's comments this morning to the Chicago Tribune, though, deserve a mention:

Obama's remarks late Friday, seen as supportive of the anti-Mubarak uprising, were "the right thing to do," Indyk said.

"But it's a very risky strategy because the end result could be that an ally that we depended on to protect American interests and stability in this volatile region will be toppled, and that a very unstable situation in Egypt will then spread across the region, and that can do great damage to our interests."

At the same time, "clinging to Mubarak, when it's clear that he's lost his legitimacy among the Egyptian people and ends up using force and a great deal of bloodshed to retain his power, could produce the very instability we're trying to avoid," said Indyk...

The events in Egypt certainly pose a number of risks for American policy, and so far the Obama Administration seems to be doing a reasonably good job with its rhetoric. I'm not convinced, though, that it's "a very risky strategy because the end result could be that an ally that we depend on to protect American interests and stability in this volatile region will be toppled." It's not that this outcome isn't possible -it is - just that it won't hinge on how strongly the Obama Administration does or doesn't express its support for Mubarak or the Egyptian military or the Egyptian protesters or anyone else. The United States can do a bit - a bit - to put itself on the right side of events, but U.S. actions aren't going to determine outcomes here. America just doesn't have that kind of leverage, and it's unsettling that its foreign policy elite still casually talks as though it does.

Prosecuting Leaders

2011-01-17T12:15:00.005-05:00

Jeb's post yesterday on the anti-government demonstrations in Tunisia got me musing on how incredibly difficult it remains to punish leaders for crimes they committed while in office. As an aside, I wonder whether the Saudis' penchant for harboring overthrown dictators (in connection with Adam Hochschild's op-ed on the assassination of Patrice Lumumba today, it's worth remembering that Joseph Mobutu died in ~~Saudi Arabia~~ Morocco* in very comfortable exile) is an attempt to build some kind of autocrats' karmic chips that the house of Saud can cash in when it comes time to hit the tarmac. Anyway, for all the platitudes one frequently hears about rule of law, and all the tut-tutting from Western officials over free Serbian war criminals and such, punishment of political leaders through due legal process remains exceedingly rare.

Anyone living in the United States for the past decade or so, though, ought to have some inkling as to why. State crimes - things like denials of human rights, unauthorized surveillance, indefinite detention without due process, torture, rendition and assassination - require the initiative of a few, but the complicity of many. Prosecuting those "at the top" who initiated criminal actions amounts to the indictment of more than just a few leaders. It amounts to the indictment of the entire regime they headed up. To the extent that people complicit in the old regime remain powerful, they will have both the incentive and the capability to quash legal reprisal. Only in the rare cases of true revolutions, wherein the entirety of a state's political class is ejected from power, will there be space opened up for legal redress of grievances. And even then, once a society has reached the point of complete political bouleversement, there is an understandable tendency to handle the old regime with show trials and firing squads, not credible legal inquiry.

True revolutions are rare in any case. What most states get most of the time is more akin to a managed coup, wherein certain elements of the old political system coexist uneasily with insurgent upstarts, working out a balance of power that, with any luck, is an improvement on the previous regime, but not a complete reversal of it. That's not the kind of environment conducive to prosecuting ex-leaders who, while out of power, remain influential if only because so many of the people complicit in their earlier rule remain in place.

I recently picked up John Nichols' The Genius of Impeachment, a short treatise arguing for less reticence in impeaching sitting executives. I don't find his argument especially convincing - removing a sitting president might be satisfying and just, but it won't affect a meaningful transfer of power - but I am left wondering whether the Obama Administration would have been quite as willing to institutionalize so many Bush-era executive abuses if there was a genuine legal/political downside of doing so. Of course, any impeachment proceedings against Bush would have damaged the electoral and political fortunes of his Republican supporters in Congress, and the converse is now true for Congressional Democrats. Part of this simply reflects the fact that a checks-and-balances system is a poor means of placing liberal constraints on state behavior. Much of it, though, reflects the broader complicity of American political leaders in actions that violate the U.S. Constitution and the principles of governance it sets out.

Anyway, for the sake of the Tunisian people, I hope Ben Ali is brought to legal account. Precedent, though, is not on their side.
______________________

*Correction: I've rather embarrassingly mixed up my dictators here. Mobutu died in Morocco. Idi Amin died in Saudi Arabia. The point stands.

Tunisia: The Day After

2011-01-15T14:50:00.015-05:00

The word being used today on Al Jazeera is muhasaba, or 'holding to account.' With Tunisia's former dictator now in Saudi Arabia, the subject has turned to how the Tunisian people can find justice, and hold Ben Ali responsible for the crimes that he has committed. Arab TV networks are abuzz with discussion of whether or not to bring Tunisia's strongman to trial. Ben Ali's family is thought to have stolen large sums from the state, and there are reports that France is attempting to prevent "suspicious movement" of his assets. BBC has some good coverage of recent events here.

As for the goings-on of the former dictator, a Saudi guest on Al Jazeera notes that while Ben Ali has been allowed into Saudi Arabia, he is essentially under house arrest. He is not being allowed to speak publicly, nor to communicate by phone with his associates. Perhaps hoping to defer criticisms that they are sheltering an unsavory autocrat, Saudi officials announced publicly today that they "stand behind the Tunisian people." Meanwhile, there were other interesting developments under way this morning. Rachid Ghannouchi, the head of the banned Islamist Renaissance Party, proclaimed on Al Jazeera today that he and other party leaders are planning on returning to Tunisia to participate in the formation of a new government. Ghannouchi had previously been living in exile, and his Al Nahda Party has been banned since the early 1990s.

It is clear that the Tunisians have set quite a precedent, sending a clear message that the Arab public need not settle for autocrats any longer. But it is also true that they haven't yet finished the job. How -- or if -- they bring Ben Ali to account for his crimes is a key question. Or will he be allowed to get away with what he has done? Trying an Arab dictator in a court of law would send a powerful message to other regimes. And there is the other burning question of who takes over from here, and what kind of government emerges in the subsequent period. It is one thing to bring down a dictator, and another thing to usher in a representative, democratic system. Hopefully Tunisia will not go the way of Ukraine. Or Lebanon, for that matter, whose democratic uprising in 2005 resulted in governmental paralysis and sectarian conflict that continues to this day.

Here's to hoping that the Tunisians can finish the job they started.

The Tunisian Revolution

2011-01-14T14:45:00.013-05:00

Events in Tunisia are unfolding extremely fast. President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali is on his way out of the country in response to days of protests that have brought the country to a virtual standstill. Arabic media outlets are now reporting that Ben Ali is either on a plane, or preparing to leave immediately. His prime minister, Mohamed Ghannouchi, has taken over as head of government and promised early elections, as well as political reforms. Al Jazeera has indicated that members of Ben Ali's family may have been arrested, and there are rumors that his relatives have not been allowed to board his plane out of the country.

I've been watching Arabic TV outlets this morning -- Al Jazeera, Al Arabiya, and BBC Arabic, primarily -- to get a better sense about what's going on in Tunisia, and the reactions of the Tunisian Street in response to the departure of Ben Ali. Not surprisingly, his departure is being seen as a tremendous victory for the Tunisian people, which it certainly is. This broad-based movement appears to have no clear leadership but has spread rapidly throughout Tunisia by way of Facebook, Twitter, and mobile phones. The government has proven totally unable to deal with this huge wave of opposition that has emerged in recent days. While the protests appear to have started as a result of economic concerns -- the government has failed to provide the jobs and economic opportunities that people want, a familiar story in the Arab world -- the demonstrations have expanded their focus to include denunciations of the government's corruption and the lack of political freedoms that it allows.

The big question now is whether or not Prime Minister Mohamed Ghannouchi will be able to calm the country, now that the president has left. (No one yet knows where he is going, although Al Jazeera is reporting that either the Gulf or Saudi Arabia may be his destination of choice, and that France has refused to let him land in Paris.) Signs indicate that the the uprising is not over. Although Ghannouchi has pledged reform, a number of Tunisian analysts and protestors who I heard interviewed this morning pegged Ghannouchi as a part of the problem -- i.e. another member of the government elite who is likely to bring more of the same. As I write this, Al Jazeera is reporting that more protests are springing up in the streets as people call for a completely new government. Ghannouchi does not yet appear to have been accepted by the protestors as a viable alternative to Ben Ali.

The coverage of these protests -- and of police brutality against the demonstrators -- is being broadcast throughout the Arab world, and we can imagine what kind of effect this might be having on the Arab public. Tunisian analysts and demonstrators are talking about freedom, human rights, government corruption. It is clear that Tunisia has set a powerful precedent for the region: that corrupt governments that deny their people human rights and basic decency can and will be held accountable. That these protests can be populist, and homegrown. And that they do not need the support of outside powers. There can be little doubt that authoritarian leaders across the region, watching the development rights now, are quaking in their boots.

What is evident is that Tunisia will never be the same. The government has been disgraced. An Arab reporter I heard this morning noted that no Tunisian parliamentarian had protested the use of live fire against the demonstrators. The next government, if it hopes to avoid this type of public ire, will have to either engage in massive co-optation and repression, or institute a series of political reforms in order to pacify the Tunisian masses. Given the decentralized nature of the protests, it doesn't seem to me as though the co-optation of the opposition (as has been so successful in places like Jordan and Egypt) is likely to have the same effect in Tunisia. Nor does overwhelming repression seem likely, given the size of these protests and the increasing involvement of international actors (who would surely protest if broad-scale repression were to occur.) Some type of political reform program by the government seems to me to be the most likely future outcome of the Tunisian revolution.

Another interesting point is the role of Wikileaks. According to the New York Times:

Some demonstrators also cited the evidence of cables from the United States Embassy in Tunisia that were released by the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks providing vividly detailed accounts of the first family’s self-enrichment and opulent lifestyle.

Contracting Thugs

2011-01-12T15:42:00.009-05:00

You have to wonder who thought this would be a good idea. A company closely linked to Blackwater has just landed a one-year, $84 million contract from the State Department to provide security for American officials in the West Bank. Many of the employees of International Development Solutions (IDS), which scored the contract, once worked with the now disgraced Blackwater. IDS has the opportunity to extend the contract yearly for up to five years.

The American press hasn't really picked up on this story (there was a brief mention of it in the Post earlier this week), but the Arab press definitely has. Al Jazeera dedicated a recent episode of its evening news program (not yet posted online, so I can't link), Ma Wara Al Khabr, to the news that Blackwater employees -- notorious for their reckless and unaccountable behavior in Iraq -- will now be operating in the Palestinian Territories. As the reaction in the Arab press has made clear, the decision will have a few obvious consequences: first, it's likely to further inflame public opinion against the United States. Blackwater is a known quantity in the Arab world as the perpetrator of numerous acts of violence against Iraqi civilians. If these private security contractors engage in their usual civilian target practice, the blame is likely to be directed not merely at the company itself but at the hand that feeds it.

Second, by granting a former Blackwater affiliate the contract to oversee America's private security in the West Bank, the State Department has -- again -- undermined the credibility of the Palestinian Authority which comes off looking like a puppet government, not to mention a poor representative of the interests of the Palestinian people. Speaking on Ma Wara Al Khabr the other night, the spokesman for Hamas, Fawze Barhoom, made an argument that is likely to be viewed sympathetically by many Arab viewers: "This decision," he said, "confirms that who rules the occupied West Bank is not the Palestinian Authority, but a multinational authority whose goal is to protect the occupation and wipe out those who defend the Palestinian cause." (my translation) Barhoom also said: "This new scandal has come about through the collaboration of the Fatah authority, the American intelligence agency, and Zionist occupation (authorities) in order to suppress our people in the West Bank."

The incident is reminiscent of the Goldstone Report, when the Obama administration disgraced its partners in the Palestinian Authority by urging them to downplay the findings of a UN panel charged with investigating war crimes in the 2009 Gaza conflict. Abbas, ostensibly trusting Obama's intuitions, went along with the edicts of Washington and agreed to defer discussion of the report at the UN -- with catastrophic results. Torn apart by Arab media outlets and Hamas officials for "capitulation," Abbas's popularity and that of his Fatah party took a nose dive. Once again, we see officials in Washington making decisions that, depending on the type of play they receive in the Arab press, have the potential to further weaken the already emaciated Fatah leadership.

Quick Hit: Neo-Nazis in Germany

2011-01-05T14:37:00.002-05:00

A German village where neo-Nazis have all but taken complete control.

Taking Down the Income Divide

2011-01-05T05:26:00.006-05:00

Tina Rosenberg has written a fascinating column for the NYT on an anti-poverty program that she argues is dramatically reducing the income gap in many places in the developing world. Using Brazil as an example, a country notorious for the glaring divide between its shanty towns and its ritzy high-rise commercial buildings, she points to the statistics: that in less than a decade, poor Brazilians have increased their income at a rate seven times that of rich Brazilians. Overall, poverty has dropped to 7%, down from 22% less than a decade earlier. Rosenberg credits a single program, Bolsa Familia, with having played a significant role. It's a program that has been duplicated in other parts of the developing world, including in Mexico.

These "conditional cash transfer" (CCT) programs, as they're called in econ parlance, provide poor families with financial incentives -- in the form of a regular check from the local government -- in exchange for such requirements as keeping their kids in school, attending workshops on health and nutrition, and making regular visits to the doctor's office. The aim of these programs is to break the generational cycle of poverty, to give poor families incentives to invest in themselves and in their kids. Rosenberg credits CCT with having had a significant impact on changing the lives of the poor in a number of developing countries.

I was heartened to see that she points to several studies -- and more than just anecdotal evidence -- to support her claims, as many poverty reduction programs in the developing world seem to be poorly evaluated. (Take microfinance, the hottest new tool of poverty-reduction. A little research indicates that shockingly few microfinance orgs do social impact analysis. Instead, most microlenders seem to quantify their success by trumpeting a low default rate and "the number of clients served," figures that say nothing about the ways in which their clients are helped -- or hurt, in some cases -- by small loans.) The data that exists on CCT programs looks promising, and it'll be exciting to see what happens as this poverty reduction strategy is implemented more widely in the developing world.

Mubarak Jokes

2011-01-05T04:07:00.005-05:00

Foreign Policy has published some great Hosni Mubarak jokes. Check them out. This one is an old classic (and, yes, it's official: you know you're a Middle East nerd if you've heard it before.)

The Democracy Bandwagon

2010-12-30T17:51:00.009-05:00

During Putin's second term, an adviser to the Russian government coined the phrase "sovereign democracy" to describe the country's top-down style of governance. The slogan, which quickly caught on, provided an easy way to explain the country's authoritarian excesses; sovereign democracy was defined in contrast to Western democracy, and therefore need not follow its rules. Russian democracy would be built on its own terms, not as dictated by Western powers or defined by Western governmental institutions.

Not everyone was enchanted by the term, however. Dmitry Medvedev, then the First Deputy Prime Minister, didn't like it. As Oxford Analytica notes, "Medvedev disagreed with the fusion of two seemingly incompatible concepts (‘sovereignty’ and ‘democracy’) and appeared to resist the implication that the DNA of democracy in Russia was somehow different from elsewhere." Now, as president, Medvedev appears to be trying to phase out the use of the term.

Charles Recknagel, writing at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, points out that the use of the phrase "sovereign democracy" has been downplayed under the Medvedev administration. The Russian president has made clear that Russia is a democracy like any other - with no qualifiers needed. In a speech earlier this fall, for example, Medvedev said: "I strongly oppose those who think that there is no democracy in Russia and that authoritarian tendencies prevail here. It is not so. Russia is undoubtedly a democracy. It is young, it is immature, it is imperfect, not experienced, but it is a democracy nonetheless."

Russia, of course, is anything but a democracy. Its government more closely represents the type of rubber-stamp parliamentary system that many Middle Eastern autocrats have put in place to quell Western complaints that they are not sufficiently democratic. But what is interesting about Medvedev's opposition to the phrase "sovereign democracy," and his stubborn use of the word "democracy" (even when the reality is so different), is that it indicates how completely democracy has come to represent the only legitimate system of government in the international system. Autocrats, from the Middle East to Asia to Africa, are now forced to either use the term to characterize their existing system of government or to describe the direction in which they are allegedly moving their country.

Looks like Medvedev, too, is jumping unambiguously on the democracy bandwagon.

Neo-Medieval Century?

2010-12-30T12:43:00.004-05:00

Charli Carpenter points out a piece (paywall) in the Financial Times by Parag Khanna arguing that the early twenty-first century political order will resemble, in many ways, the global political configuration of the high middle ages. "In fact," writes Khanna, "the world we are moving into in 2011 is one not just with many more prominent nations, but one with numerous centres of power in other ways. It is, in short, a neo-medieval world. The 21st century will resemble nothing more than the 12th century." Khanna presents this as a contrast to standard predictions of nineteenth-century style multipolarity on a global scale.

The article raises some interesting points, as does Carpenter. I find Parag Khanna's work engaging, but I wonder whether he isn't ignoring a couple of very crucial points. First, the world of the twelfth century wasn't really "multipolar," because different centers of global power didn't interact as a system except through fairly attenuated economic and informational networks. Medieval China and Medieval Europe, for example, didn't compete for power and resources. Second, communication between major power centers was slow, and there was nothing like the level of global informational exchange prevalent even a century ago, never mind today. I don't mean to nitpick, but these two factors have pretty major structural implications for the shape of twenty-first century politics.

Where I think the Medieval analogy is apt is in the multiple layers of political, economic, and ideological authority that were prevalent at the time. In Europe especially, the chaotic mix of ecclesiastical power, feudal networks of obligation, the authority (or not) of the Holy Roman Empire, independent city leagues (etc.) has arguable parallels today. International governing bodies of varying influence (UN, IMF, WTO) attempt to impose order on a system of sovereign and semi-sovereign states, but states which can no longer meaningfully encompass the totality of economic and ideological networks to which their citizens belong.

The question, then, turns to the implications of that analogy for national and global governance.

Quick Hit: Shifting Discourse

2010-12-30T12:00:00.002-05:00

This is a couple of days old now, but I'd be remiss if I didn't point out Jeffrey Goldberg's post from Monday on the possibility of Israelis making a more-or-less active decision to abandon meaningful democracy in favor of some version of Greater Israel. Nothing in the piece is especially new in the sense of not having been said before, by countless people, myself included. Its authorship, though, is quite notable, and a further sign of how the discourse around the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is shifting among America's political class. It would be nice, and logically consistent, to see Goldberg acknowledge the American role in enabling some of Israel's more self-destructive behavior. Still, I doubt he'd have posted this two years ago.

Tactical Nukes and the Strategic Balance

2010-12-24T19:28:00.002-05:00

The Times reports that, with the recent ratification of the New Start treaty (as an aside, it was nice to see that American leaders retain a modicum of sanity and maturity, even if it isn't always manifest), the Obama Administration will next seek a deal with the Russians to reduce tactical nuclear weapons. Russia has a significant numerical advantage in this category of weapons, and there is concern that such negotiations will be DOA without imperiling either American missile defense, or at the very least requiring inequitable nuclear reductions on America's part. The article paraphrases the Heritage Foundation's Baker Spring regarding the problem:

In the end, Mr. Spring said, Russia would probably force each side to withdraw all tactical nuclear weapons to its own national territory in exchange for any reductions. Russia, and its weapons, would still be near NATO allies, while the United States would have to withdraw its small force from Europe. “What’s not for Russia to like?”

The article also notes that one reason the Russians retain superiority in tactical nukes is because they're central to Russian strategic doctrine in the event of a large-scale conventional war with NATO or China. Ours are somewhat more superfluous, so we don't have the same leverage we do when discussing strategic nukes.

Without getting into the specifics of where tactical nuclear weapons are deployed, or the minutae of their operation, I'd simply point out that, for all the well-intentioned efforts to depict nuclear war as its own ballgame with its own rules, war is war. People are killed just as dead by conventional weapons as by nuclear ones. Thus, the balance of conventional forces needs to be considered when assessing the wisdom of a given nuclear deal. In other words, NATO presumably relies less on tactical nukes than the Russians because NATO's conventional forces are more capable than those of Russia. Even if a deal with Russia allowed Russian tactical nukes to be more readily deployable than American ones, that would not ipso facto give Russia an overall strategic advantage. It may be that, even with Russian tactical nukes more easily deployed, NATO forces would still prevail in a ground war. And in the meantime, there would be far fewer tactical nukes overall, reducing the (far more plausible) likelihood of theft or unauthorized use.

Obviously the wisdom of all this would depend heavily on the specifics of a deal, which at the moment is nothing more than a twinkle in the President's eye. Still, it's worth thinking about nuclear negotiations in a broad strategic context.

Moderation, Pragmatism, and the Iraqi Sadrists

2010-12-24T18:23:00.007-05:00

An article in Monday's New York Times made me wonder about the effect of political inclusion on the views and attitudes of Iraq's Sadrists. Political scientists often talk about the idea that radical groups, when included in the political process, tend to moderate (I've heard this referred to as the "inclusion-moderation hypothesis.") Probably the most widely accepted reasoning behind this phenomenon is that participation in the electoral and legislative processes encourages these groups to take more moderate viewpoints in order to, a., compete for votes, and, b., effectively work with other political parties in a democratic system. Bolstering this theory, it seems, is Monday's article, which talks about how the Sadrists have often adopted a less overtly Islamist tone in order to win political support.

Mr. Sadr's followers are pushing for control of the governor's seat here in Maysan Province again, one of several positions they hope to gain as rewards for joining the political coalition that will keep their onetime enemy, Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, in office after the months of wrangling that followed March's inconclusive elections.

That the party, still Iraq's most fiercely populist and anti-American bloc, has come this far is a reflection of the Sadrists' efforts in recent years to recast themselves as maturing politicians who can actually govern and deliver badly needed services. "We want to show the world we are a modern people, an intellectual people," said Fathal Namaa, the group's political direction in Maysan. "We don't want to be radical Islamists. I tell my supporters, don't dress all in black or carry weapons."

In some regions, in other words, the party appears to be publicly downplaying its more stridently Islamist face in order to appeal to a broader electorate. It's interesting to note, however, that the Sadrists do not appear to be toning down their anti-American rhetoric; that's a type of political speak that remains popular in Iraq. On issues of sectarianism, however, the party -- at least according to this article -- is also beginning to ratchet down some of its more exclusionary rhetoric and is instead opting to portray itself as more of a professional, mainstream political force.

The Sadrists are now embracing -- at least in public -- the sunny tones of national unity and partnership, referring to Sunni and Kurdish lawmakers as brothers, not foes. After dozens of Christians were massacred at a Baghdad church on Oct. 31, members of Mr. Sadr's group visited the priests to show the party's solidarity.

They send out daily news releases to announce street-cleaning projects, new orphanages and community centers. And at Mr. Sadr's behest, party leaders said that some newly elected lawmakers had been sent to Lebanon and Turkey to attend classes in public speaking and political etiquette. The party's newest lawmakers include appellate lawyers, engineers and accountants, as well as candidates with less technocratic backgrounds. (New York Times)

Whether or not this slight moderation in rhetoric and in public image will affect how the Sadrists actually govern, however, is of course not clear. During 2004-5, when the Sadrists had control of key government ministries like that of the Ministry of Health, the party's administration was known for its corruption, brutality, and overt sectarianism. But will the Sadrists repeat these same mistakes? They certainly have far fewer incentives to do so. As the Sadrists have increased their involvement in politics, investing more time and energy into Iraq's democratic game (and less into their private militia, which remains publicly disbanded), they've clearly started to come to grips with what it means to be a political party in a democratic system: that sectarianism, poor administration, and corruption doesn't always sell in winning votes or gaining political support from other parties. That's at least what this article implies, and there are other reports that seem to suggest a similar trend towards pragmatism.

Broadly speaking, it is evident that the organization is becoming increasingly savvy in its political maneuverings. As Sean Kane notes over at Foreign Policy, the Sadrists recently started "holding primaries to ensure that they fielded locally popular candidates in the 2010 elections and engaging in the [']give and take of politics['] to secure unparalleled influence in the new government through the surprise endorsement of their erstwhile ally -- but more recently sworn enemy -- Nouri al-Maliki for the Premiership." That said, it is still an "open question as to whether this evolution is limited to the mastery of the electoral mechanics necessary to gain access to power or whether it represents the beginnings of a commitment to the broader aspects of a democratic system," he writes.

As of now, I doubt that the Sadrists' move towards greater political pragmatism (I hesitate to use the word "moderation") indicates anything more than a strategic attempt to gain political support and position themselves favorably in the new Maliki government. The Sadrists have yet to fully embrace the trappings of a democratic system, as evidenced by their ambiguous policy towards using violence to achieve their political goals. (The Mahdi Army only disbanded when, in 2008, they were forced to -- not out of a genuine ideological transformation in favor of democratic norms.) Nonetheless, this move towards greater political pragmatism on the part of the Sadrists is still fascinating, and worth watching. We may see, as the party continues to participate actively in Iraqi politics, that in order to build coalitions with other parties and to appeal to new voters, that they'll gradually adopt more moderate views. There certainly seems to be some very initial signs that this is occurring.

Evolution of the Southern Strategy

2010-12-17T10:42:00.005-05:00

So, the blogging trend of the week seems to be messing with Google's Ngram Viewer. I plugged in "deterrence" from 1950 to 2008 and got a nice little graph of Cold War nuclear tensions, peaking at about 1985 or so. That's kind of a boring one though. For those who know a bit about American politics, check out the evolution of the "Southern strategy" and racial tension in the U.S. with the phrase "states' rights" since 1900:

Quick Hit: Cote D'Ivoire

2010-12-16T13:05:00.002-05:00

Mark Goldberg over at UN Disptach notes that the refusal of Cote D'Ivoire's president Gbango to step down after losing an internationally-monitored election appears to be moving the country down a path to civil war. The last time this happened (back in the misty past of 2002), it led to prolonged, vicious fighting that ravaged the country and killed several thousand people. Here's hoping things can be pulled back from the brink.

Quick Hit: Assassination

2010-12-13T13:31:00.002-05:00

Justin Elliot points out this, er, interesting opener by Jennifer Rubin on U.S. Iran policy. I don't have the energy to dissect the whole piece. I sometimes wonder if in thirty years there will be a collected volume of turn-of-the-century neoconservative Washington Post commentary that people will buy as morbid coffee table books. Elliot notes, though, that Rubin rather casually endorses the indiscriminate killing of Iranian scientists as a matter of policy. Put the dubious wisdom of this aside and do a little Kantian exercise. The United States has, without question, the most vast military research industry on the planet, employing thousands upon thousands of scientists from virtually every field of intellectual inquiry. Do we really want to help develop an international norm that, during peacetime, indiscriminate killing of other states' defense researchers, for no other reason than their going to work, is an acceptable policy option?

Brief Thoughts

2010-12-13T12:32:00.002-05:00

First off, I'll echo Jeb's apologies for the silence lately. A combination of changed professional circumstances and a few new things in the works here at FPW is likely to keep posting light through the holidays. We'll be back and better than ever before long.

In the meantime, I thought a couple of pieces this morning were worth highlighting side by side. The first, via Sullivan, is a transcript of Glenn Greenwald's interview with Nir Rosen. The second is a letter from Abdulla Abu Rahmah, a prisoner in Israel. Regardless of one's view on any of the conflicts mentioned, the daily indignities and fears that come inevitably with foreign occupation need to be acknowledged. Both prudence and justice demand it.

Dialogue is Irrelevant When You Know You're Right

2010-12-09T15:48:00.001-05:00

This article is absurd.

Public Sector Equilibria and Inequality

2010-12-03T13:53:00.002-05:00

Yglesias notes that part of the reason that countries like Germany and Sweden have had an easier time than the U.S. implementing Keynesian solutions to the ever-unfolding economic crisis (continuing to call this a "crisis" after two years always brings this to mind) is that they enjoy a much greater level of political consensus about the overall size of the public sector. The right wing in those countries, then, is less likely to view temporary increases in government spending as thin wedges for a more state-centric "new normal." Likewise, the left is less likely to view the trimming of public outlays during heady times as simply an excuse to permanently gut government services. In the U.S. such suspicions run high on both sides because, well, they're entirely justified. There is very little consensus here on the appropriate size of the American welfare state (and the taxation regimes necessary to support it), and both sides do look to use crisis situations to try to move toward more ideologically favorable equilibria.

I think this is actually worth unpacking a bit further. One of the best pieces of work to come out of American Political Science in recent years is McCarty, Poole and Rosenthal's Polarized America, which uses sophisticated statistical analysis to document political polarization in the United States over the course of the past century. Their argument is complex and involves a number of factors, but boils down to one major one: inequality. Politics polarize along with income levels, as it becomes necessary to engage in ever-more-divisive tactics to hold together a coalition that, on the basis of pure economic interests, would be politically unsustainable. Interrupting this dynamic is quite difficult. The one period in which it was arrested over the past century - the mid-century period that Krugman calls the "great leveling" - took a decade-long depression combined with a populist assault against the upper classes, followed by a half-decade of total war that made complaining about taxation politically unpalatable. The following quarter century of "liberal consensus" in which most of the American right wing grudgingly accepted the reforms of the New Deal, created an environment in which things like Keynesian economic stimulus could be enacted without becoming caught up in larger ideological disputes about the size, nature and responsibilities of the state.

The point is that the development of the kind of "consensus" that Yglesias envies requires actual material changes in the socio-economic conditions of society. In the United States, it's unlikely to happen until the interest of the upper classes in maintaining levels of inequality with little historical precedent has been rendered less acute. Of course, that likely can't happen without government intervention in the first place, and Rahm Emmanuel's dictum aside, it appears that the initial crisis that could have launched such reforms has indeed been wasted. Under the circumstances, I think we'll just have to admit that Keynesian economics can't operate properly in the United States, and look toward mitigating the adverse consequences.

Wikileaks and Diplomatic Secrecy

2010-11-30T12:35:00.005-05:00

I'm not sure I have any special insight to offer about the latest from Wikileaks. Certainly it makes journalism's claim to be "the first draft of history" ring truer than usual, now that there's selective real-time access to archives and information that usually takes decades to get released. Steve Walt, though, raises an interesting question in a couple of posts he's written on the subject, namely, how much damage would it really do if all this diplomatic back-and-forth were just public information as a matter of course? He notes that it would certainly cut both ways. There have been times in history when diplomatic secrecy was useful (the Cuban Missile Crisis, perhaps the 1972 US-Chinese rapprochement). There have also been times when it was immensely pernicious (Molotov-Ribbentrop, Sykes-Picot, the London Pact and Bush-Sharon come immediately to mind). For the most part, though, Walt seems to think that there would be little real change in the nature of international relations, except by making it marginally more difficult for governments to pursue policies manifestly contrary to the wishes of their people. Walt perfectly captures my sentiments with the following couple of sentences:

I'm sure that most diplomats would prefer to minimize democratic scrutiny of their activities, as it would surely be annoying if Congress or the media or (God forbid!) ordinary citizens were to peer over their shoulders while they are trying to line up foreign support. But given that I am less and less convinced that our elites know what they are doing, I'm also less inclined to want to let them operate outside public view.

I guess all I'd add to some of these musings is that, to the extent that there's a beneficial role for secrecy in international affairs (and there is), it's almost always over a fairly short time horizon. So, for example, it was good that the Kennedy Administration was able to keep the Jupiter Missile deal with the Soviets under wraps while the deal was being made, as well as in the immediate aftermath of the crisis. It allowed for prudent diplomacy insulated (to an extent) from jingoistic and uncompromising political currents in the United States that would have made it difficult to avoid war. Still, I'm not sure there was any imperative that news of the deal not be released for decades. Likewise with the Nixon-era rapprochement with China, there was certainly benefit derived from secrecy during the phase of initial diplomatic overtures, but it's not as though either the American or Chinese publics recoiled at the sight of Nixon's plane touching down in the Middle Kingdom.

On the flipside, routine public disclosure of diplomatic communications would make it more difficult for governments to pursue duplicitous policy over the long term. That, though, is almost certainly a good thing, even if it gives occasional headaches to leaders-of-the-moment. It's the difference between obscuring the sausage-making process (something that is at times justified on the grounds of political expediency and risk mitigation) and obscuring the actual sausage. My sense is that a future in which diplomatic cables are more likely to leak won't really affect the nuts and bolts of sensitive negotiations, assuming leaders aren't so incompetent that they can't prevent immediate leaks. It will, however, constrain the ability of states to pursue policies over the long term that are manifestly contrary to the wishes of their people, or that leaders would prefer to simply not have discussed.

I'm sure the Kissinger school of diplomacy, taking as its heroes grand authoritarian diplomatic architects like Bismarck and Metternich, would be appalled by such a situation. To me, though, it seems like a net positive.

Life Intervenes

2010-11-28T12:07:00.003-05:00

We apologize about the slow posting. FPW is in a period of transition (and so are its writers.) We'll be back soon, bigger and badder. Expect occasional posts for the next few weeks.

Jordan's Elections Fail to Excite

2010-11-04T16:57:00.009-04:00

The Economist discusses the upcoming non-event on November 9th that is Jordan's parliamentary elections. While the campaign for seats in the 120-member lower house has been relatively active, most Jordanians seem -- not surprisingly -- relatively unplussed about the vote. As I mentioned the other day, Jordan's main opposition party, the Islamic Action Front (a Muslim Brotherhood spin-off), is boycotting the event as a meaningless political charade, hoping to undercut the election's legitimacy with their lack of participation. There is little doubt that the election is likely to be quite similar to what they describe it to be. Jordan's redistricting efforts in 1993, a reaction to a strong Islamist showing in the 1989 elections, involved a type of gerrymandering the likes of which are even "unknown in the West." The redistricting campaign made the votes in monarchy-supportive areas like Ma'an carry greater weight than those in cities like Amman that have large (and more Islamist-supporting) Palestinian populations.

A new election law, passed in May of this year, has changed little. Jordan's electoral system remains heavily gerrymandered, and its government is still top-heavy. The 40-member upper house of parliament is entirely appointed by the king, and the king himself retains the power to dissolve parliament, dismiss the prime minister, and veto any legislation. Kind of negates the point of an elected legislature, no?

The lack of genuine democracy makes me wonder about the actions of the US taxpayer-funded National Democratic Institute, which has been pouring resources into a get-out-the-vote campaign and holding voter registration events. What's the point of promoting democratic participation in a country in which the elections are fraudulent and irrelevant? Does the NDI's GOTV campaign not just serve to legitimize these meaningless upcoming elections? Adding to our confused policy towards Jordan is the clumsy position of the American Congress, which seems to care little about democratic reform in the Middle East these days. Back in 2007, after the last round of parliamentary elections, the House passed a resolution commending Jordan for its "continued commitment to holding elections and broadening political participation."

Err, say what?

What We're Reading - 11/1/10

2010-11-01T02:53:00.005-04:00

1.) Shadi Hamid notes correctly that Arab regimes are getting better at running meaningless elections. While outright vote-stuffing and opposition intimidation seems to have fallen slightly in countries like Bahrain and Jordan, he argues, Arab governments have become more proficient at stacking "democratic" processes in such a way -- either by gerrymandering the electoral districts or limiting the power of an elected legislature -- as to make any election a complete sham. To the Bush administration's credit, for a period of time they did push Arab regimes to liberalize and open their political processes to opposition groups (with some limited success). The Obama administration has not continued on this path, and funding for democracy promotion in the region has stalled. This is a shame.

2.) Over at Syria Comment, a guest writer highlights an interesting question: why did Netanyahu choose Lieberman as his foreign minister? The writer argues that there are five main reasons why he choose Lieberman, and why he keeps his sharp-tongued foreign minister around today. First, Lieberman gives the prime minister political cover from the extreme right; second, "Foreign Minister does not mean foreign policy." (In other words, Netanyahu has used Lieberman for political purposes rather than relied on him for foreign policy decisions.) Read the other reasons here.

3.) 'Tis the season of fraudulent Arab elections, and Jordan's is fast approaching. (The date is set for November 9th). Carnegie's Arab Reform Bulletin is running a piece that talks about how Jordan's Islamist opposition party, the Islamic Action Front, is boycotting the upcoming elections -- and what this means for the party. In 2007, a fraudulent election in Jordan that resulted in a poor electoral outcome for the IAF resulted in some serious soul-searching in the organization -- and the rise of a more hawkish wing. I fear that if the Jordanian government does not revitalize its legislative branch, the country's Islamist opposition might decide that working within the system -- peacefully and democratically, that is -- is just no longer worth it.

Identity Matters: Transnational Elites

2010-10-28T13:51:00.004-04:00

Charles Murray's piece the other day on the emergence of a "new elite" in the United States makes some interesting if well-worn points. In my view the article has some pretty serious blind spots. I'm not sure how one can analyze the current American "aristocracy of merit" without looking at the intersection of skyrocketing inequality and the decline of institutions that promote class mobility. In general, the focus on the "new elite's" cultural and educational capital without seriously examining its economic position misses a colossal part of the picture, and ends up implying that structural shifts in the American socio-economic fabric are driven by quirks of cultural evolution and university admission policies, rather than by political economy. Also, readers can get a much more intelligent and nuanced (if less accessible) picture of some of the phenomena Murray identifies by reading Distinction. Just sayin'.

Referencing Murray's piece, Mark Kirkorian earned a Malkin nomination with the following paragraph:

...much of the New Elite does not, in fact, love America and is, in Murray’s phrasing, defective in its patriotism. Today’s elites — not just here, but in Europe as well — are increasingly post national. Murray writes that “the New Elite clusters in a comparatively small number of cities and in selected neighborhoods in those cities,” which is correct, but he doesn’t seem to get (or at least didn’t write) that these “comparatively small number of cities and in selected neighborhoods in those cities” are increasingly part of a distinct transnational community.

First off, the notion that there is any significant segment of the American elite that "does not, in fact, love America" is an absurd caricature. My own background is pretty close to Murray's description of the sheltered, isolated new elite. I'm white, from the northeast, grew up middle class, was educated at private schools, have left-wing-ish politics, no experience of poverty beyond grad school (which, as Murray notes, doesn't really count), and spend most of my time with people from basically similar backgrounds. I and pretty much every American I know, though, still manage to love this country very much. This left-wing-latte-sipping-commie-liberal-elite patriotism is necessarily informed by reflection on America's failings as well as its successes and its promise. It's different from the flag-waving, jingoist tribalism that some on the American right confuse for genuine patriotism; but, the argument that the majority of America's cultural elite have somehow transcended nationalism should sound ridiculous to anyone who actually spends time among this group.

The emergence of a "trans-national elite," though, is something worth thinking about in the longer term, especially in the European context. Benedict Anderson, author of one of the definitive studies of modern nationalism, emphasized the importance of the new communicative spheres brought on by print capitalism in the development of national communities during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Subsequent case studies have noted the importance of the initial emergence of a literate, self-referential elite within proto-national communities. The coalescing of such groups was often a prerequisite to the eventual spread of nationalist feeling among populations at large. Recent years have seen a communications revolution of comparable significance to print capitalism (look no further than the comments section in Jeb's recent piece on Siberian nationalism for evidence of this), and it's not inconceivable that, in the context of nascent political integration, a multi-lingual, supra-national elite could eventually emerge on the European continent. Even in Europe, though, this hasn't yet happened. National identity remains an extraordinarily important part of most people's self-image, and I see no evidence that it will be meaningfully eclipsed, even among elites, except over a very long period of time.

Again, if one takes an immensely caricatured version of what "patriotism" means, imagining it as an all-consuming, totalizing, un-critical attachment to one's country and government, then Kirkorian has a point. Under the circumstances, though, Kirkorian's argument reveals more about his own political psychology than it does about the subjects of his critique.

Krauthammer and "Scientific" Political Analysis

2010-10-22T12:06:00.004-04:00

Charles Krauthammer earned his undergraduate degree in political science and economics at my alma mater, McGill. If his column today is any indication, he must not remember his time there very well.

Putting aside the usual disingenuous sophistry that's a hallmark of Krauthammer's columns, his piece today seems almost willfully ignorant of the last half-century's work connecting material economic conditions with electoral outcomes. For those who'd like to be spared the whole column, Krauthammer argues that Obama's recent attempt to explain the Democrats' upcoming thumpin' in the midterms reflects an effort to impose a 'liberal psychological narrative' on the American people. Obama, in Krauthammer's view, is excusing his party's losses by constructinng a narrative in which "an entire population is so addled by its economic anxieties as to be neurologically incapable of appreciating the "facts and science" undergirding Obamacare and the other blessings their president has bestowed upon them from on high." Rather than this convoluted bit of psychology, Krauthammer suggests that Obama's problem is that he's "tried to impose a liberal agenda on... a demonstrably center-right country," and is facing the backlash.

Once again I'm left wondering wistfully what the daily news would look like were it covered by political scientists. Anyone having even a passing familiarity with American politics literature (and as someone with more of a comparative/IR focus, my own familiarity is indeed passing) knows there is precisely one reason the Democrats are going to get punished in a couple of weeks: the economy. Incumbents get punished when the economy is bad. The economy right now is really bad, so incumbents are going to get punished especially harshly. That's really the only story here (well, if you read Bartels, it's slightly more complex - it's the direction of the country's economic health that counts). Hans Noel's excellent recent article "Ten Things Political Scientists Know That You Don't" adds some more context. The United States isn't a "center right" nation, because most people aren't particularly ideological one way or another. In addition, for all of Krauthammer's harping about the importance of independents, there's really no such thing. The vast majority of self-identified "independents" lean strongly one way or another, though they might be more inclined than strong partisans to punish the incumbent party for a poor economy.

Obama's "psychological" narrative might be a bit off in the sense that narrative in general just isn't what drives electoral outcomes except at the margins. Krauthammer's self-satisfied platitudes about how America is just a conservative place, though, are equally misguided. As someone with a background in political science, he ought to know better.

Update: Just to be clear, I'm not suggesting that the Obama Administration and the Democrats are just prisoners of circumstance here. Government policy does actually have a measurable effect on economic performance, and if the Administration had taken this to heart, they could have set themselves up for, at the very least, a much less serious defeat. Listening to the people who were telling them to pass a much larger, more employment-focused stimulus back in 2009 would have been a good start. By the time the 2010 campaign season rolled around, though, the basic course of events was locked in. Actual campaigning, and the creation of narratives that stick in the public mind still matters, but it matters at the margins.

Climate Change and Systemic Volatility

2010-10-22T10:33:00.003-04:00

Via Sullivan, this map has been circulating around the blogosphere for a few days now. It estimates the overall vulnerability of certain regions to the effects of climate change. Light green is low risk, dark blue is high risk:
There are a few obvious reactions here. One is to note how many of the worlds major emitters of greenhouse gas (so far) are in the "low risk" zone, proving definitively that mother nature has no sense of justice. Another good point is made by Yglesias, who notes that despite reasonably direct lines of causation (greenhouse emissions cause climate shifts which further immiserate already-desperately-poor farmers in already-desperately-poor parts of the world), "free market" boosters seem willfully blind to the negative externalities of polluting behavior; morally this is very weird.

Good points to be sure. What struck me about this chart, though, is the amount of blue in two of the world's emerging great powers (China and India). The next three to four decades seem likely to witness challenges to the political status quo by at least two rising powers just as those nations are experiencing extreme domestic socio-economic volatility caused by the compounding effects of climate change. To me, this is extremely worrying, because it means that the ruling regimes of those nations will be under intense domestic pressure, leading to potentially volatile and risky foreign policy behavior in order to either preserve domestic unity or seek the resources and geostrategic position to mitigate internal difficulties. Doesn't bode well for those who hope for those states to rise in non-disruptive ways.

Defense Spending, NATO and Europe's Relevance

2010-10-21T14:15:00.000-04:00

The big news from across the pond over the past few days is the drastic cuts in public expenditure, including defense expenditure, being implemented in Britain. Via Yglesias, Richard Norton-Taylor in the Guardian outlines the scope of Britain's defense cuts, noting that they will lead to a measurably reduced expeditionary capacity, and making the kinds of operations we've seen the British launch in Iraq and Afghanistan all but impossible in the future. He also notes that Britain will probably now lack the capacity to lauch a Falklands-style overseas invasion.

In the face of severe fiscal crises, governments across Europe are cutting their defense budgets, but this transformation in particular might actually have a measurable effect on American policy and capabilities. The fact that Britain has maintained a reasonably substantial expeditionary capability in its post-imperial era has been a boon to America's global military architecture, a boon that is now disappearing. Aside from the significance to Britain (as Yglesias notes, the Brits might be better off axing their nuclear deterrent and keeping the ability to project conventional power, but I doubt domestic political concerns would allow such a thing) to me this news puts yet another nail in the coffin of NATO as a relevant military alliance, or indeed a particularly important organization in general.

In the wake of the Cold War, NATO's raison d'être - protecting Europe from a Soviet invasion or nuclear strike - was rendered largely moot. During the 1990s and into the 2000s, many envisioned the alliance becoming more globally assertive, undertaking humanitarian, peacekeeping and more traditionally offensive operations around the world. This probably wasn't ever sustainable, as it was a vision predicated on an absolute and enduring convergence of European and American interests. For what it's worth, I actually think there's far less daylight between those interests than some commonly posit, but at the end of the day it's hard to convince European populations to fork over blood and treasure to assist in what are viewed as fundamentally American projects.

The fact that European nations are now facing a budget squeeze, and that they're reducing what are essentially superfluous defense capabilities, merely serves to quicken the pace of NATO's slide away from strategic relevance. Europe simply isn't a particularly relevant place in military terms, either as an imperial center or as potentially contested strategic ground. This is, it should be remembered, a good thing, even if its consequences make American adventurism marginally more difficult.

The one other conclusion I draw from this is that, if European states want to be relevant across the geopolitical spectrum of the twenty-first century, the continued consolidation of sovereignty and the creation of something like a unified security policy, complete with a strategic vision and a relatively unified military architecture to carry it out, seems quite necessary. It also seems quite hard to create. Only time will tell if the abyss of military-strategic irrelevance will prove to be an effective political adhesive in the manner of the Soviet threat before it. I'm somewhat skeptical, but happy to be proven wrong.

Negotiating with Thugs: Thoughts on Engaging the Taliban

2010-10-19T13:29:00.018-04:00

Helena Cobban makes an interesting observation:

So here are Sec. of State Hillary Clinton and SecDef Bob Gates now saying they support-- and are giving active support to-- the Afghan government's initiative to negotiate with the Taliban. But the U.S. government continues to completely oppose any attempt by any parties, Palestinian or other, to reach out and deal with the Hamas government that, lest we forget, was democratically elected in Palestine in January 2006.

A confusing policy, it's true. Why does the Obama administration support negotiations with those who took power by force and are connected to the 9/11 attacks, but reject negotiations with those who were legitimately elected (in January 2006) and have not attacked the US directly?

I've made this argument here before: I strongly believe that channels for discussion should always be left open, not used as a stick to punish opponents. While dialogue may not always lead to a solution, closing the door on dialogue will almost certainly not produce a better result. Just think of how ineffective the Bush administration's efforts were to isolate Iran, Syria, North Korea, and Venezuela. By failing to engage with them, Washington had little leverage with which to influence their policies, check their involvement in neighboring countries, discourage their nuclear ambitions, etc. In the case of North Korea and Iran, for example, years of non-engagement left both countries with almost free reign to pursue aggressive nuclear programs. And now look where they are today.

In contrast, consider the effect of our increased engagement with Russia. As I've noted before in the context of Georgia, engagement often brings newfound leverage; it can also create new avenues for cooperation. The US is not in such a unipolar position in the world that the mere assertion of our unwillingness to negotiate is a sufficient stick to discourage certain types of behaviors. Of course, engagement doesn't always work and there are plenty of times in history when negotiations have not served our interests because of how poorly they were conducted (Kennedy's meeting with Khrushchev at Vienna in 1961 comes to mind). But that's not an excuse not to talk; negotiations can be done strategically and in a way that bolster, not undermine, our interests.

In the case of the Taliban, channels of dialogue should continue to be opened. That said, I tend to agree with more pessimistic assessments of what these discussions might accomplish. The Taliban is in a position of strength; they have access to the news and know what's happening in Washington. Whereas Obama, day by day, is under increasing pressure to withdraw American forces, the Taliban have the benefit of time. Why should they give concessions to an Afghan government who, in just months from now, will be in a much weaker position?

Max Boot, in an interview published on the website of the Council on Foreign Relations, makes the kind of argument that strikes me as highly dangerous: that if we only commit more troops, hit them harder, show the Taliban we're never going to leave, that Taliban leaders will be more likely to cede ground (bad pun, yes) during negotiations with the Kabul government. This is almost certainly wrong. Even if Obama decided to extend our involvement in Afghanistan past July of next year, the Taliban still understand that our occupation cannot last far beyond that. Indeed, his is the exact same kind of argumentation that prolonged the war in Vietnam. When Kissinger took over as National Security Advisor in 1969, he decided that peace offers from the North Vietnamese were not favorable enough because the US was not in a clear position of strength vis-a-vis Hanoi. The subsequent increase in air strikes, typified by the famous Christmas Day Bombing in late 1972, was designed to put the US back in a position of strength. Well, it didn't work. South Vietnam was still overrun and, in the meantime, tens of thousands of US troops had died.

Like the North Vietnamese, the Taliban can just wait us out. And there is every indication that they are doing just that. But while I am overwhelmingly pessimistic that dialogue with the Taliban will accomplish much, there is little reason not to keep diplomatic avenues open. There's always a chance that something will come of them.

____
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Quick Hit: Currency

2010-10-19T09:52:00.003-04:00

While I agree with Atrios that this statement by Geithner might send a mixed message, it's worth noting that the dollar floats, the renminbi doesn't. Unless my understanding is seriously flawed, the Chinese government has been depressing the value of its currency (at the expense of its citizens' living standards) for some time. What the U.S. wants is for that manipulation to stop, or at least to ease up a bit. So this doesn't seem quite like a case of the pot calling the kettle black.

Quick Hit: Self-Determination

2010-10-18T10:23:00.002-04:00

Jeb's post this weekend on Siberian nationalism highlighted the broader problem of ethnic minorities and the practical issues raised by their purported right to secede from existing states. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has a pretty good summary of the practical and ethical issues involved. Like the author I tend to lean toward a "remedial right only" view of the question, but the international legal questions involved in implementing such a regime remain murky.

Siberian Self-Determination?

2010-10-16T13:38:00.003-04:00

First off, I want to apologize about my MIA status for the last little while. A slew of apps and an unexpected work load has kept me away from this blog. Jumping right back in, the report that grabbed my attention this afternoon is Paul Goble's post on the blooming nationalist aspirations of...the Siberians. Yup, it's true.

Siberian nationalists, encouraged by the response to their call for residents of that enormous region to declare themselves Siberian by nationality in the upcoming Russian Federation census, have now issued an appeal to the broader international community about what they see as the coming of age of the Siberian nation. The 400-word appeal, which was posted online yesterday in both Siberian/Russian and English, argues that the willingness of people there to declare their nationality as Siberian marks “the end of the ripening and forming of Siberian identity” and thus the coming into existence of a Siberian nation...

This story provides another indication about how thorny this issue of ethnic self-determination is becoming. If the right of ethnic groups to self-autonomy is encouraged and legitimatized by international actors (see the recent Kosovo example), then where's it ever to stop? Russia, ethnically diverse as it is, is in a particularly difficult position and one can understand why Moscow has been less than supportive of such movements. If the Siberians want self-determination, then what about all the hundreds of other ethnic groups that live within Russia's borders as well?

Consider the numbers. According to its 2002 census, Russia has over 150 ethnic groups. But we know that these numbers are understated and politicized (as they were historically during the Soviet era), given that there are many more groupings who recognize themselves but remain officially unrecognized by Moscow. One can imagine a scenario in which more and more ethnic groups become disillusioned with the failings of the Russian government, feel marginalized within their own communities, and are inspired by an eloquent leader to assert their own ethnic identities by violently forming autonomous nations of their own. It's a frightening prospect.

As Donald Horowitz famously argued in his piece, The Cracked Foundation of the Right to Secede, "propounding a right to secede... is likely to increase ultimately fruitless secessionist warfare, at the expense of internal efforts at political accommodation and at the cost of increased human suffering." In other words, as long as a principle exists that legitimizes a right of ethnic groups to stake out their own claims to self-determination, there is little end in sight to ethnic conflict. Who, after the Siberians, will be next to demand their own autonomy? I can think of quite a few candidates.

"Strategy" and the E.U.

2010-10-15T15:27:00.005-04:00

Judah Grunstein comments that we shouldn't be too hasty to dismiss the E.U. as a "strategic actor" despite how dysfunctional the organization often seems in areas of international affairs. Judah notes that:

...the EU has begun to wake up... to the fact that, even without hard power in the form of force projection, there are ways of wielding the soft power it does possess in a "harder" way. And if it manages to figure out how to do that in a coherent way, there's no reason why the union can't establish itself as a credible strategic actor whose interests, rather than its moral judgment, need to be taken seriously.

It's a good piece and worth a read. I think there's a link here to Yglesias's observation that the definition of what counts as "strategic" probably needs to change to better reflect a 21st century world. For most of history, "strategic" questions have been military questions. Militaries were necessary to protect and sustain mercantalist economic relationships, and were the principal means that highly-militarized early-modern and modern states projected power.

Now, though, questions of climate change, or of combatting piracy, or of global trade regimes, almost certainly merit the label "strategic," at least in some cases. On security questions, meanwhile, Europe has few major threats to worry about. This probably bodes well for the E.U., since a coherent security policy is one of the last elements of sovereignty that the states constituting the union are likely to relinquish. A world in which E.U. power can be projected in non-military, but still very effective and even "hard" ways is a world in which the E.U. will be able to act with comparative unity and coherence.

Again on Self-Awareness

2010-10-15T14:42:00.004-04:00

I wasn't expecting a great deal of intellectual nuance when I started to read Rupert Murdoch's recent address to the ADL, so I wasn't overly disappointed by the logical inconsistencies, or by his equating of criticism of Israeli policy with the waves of conventional and terrorist violence against Israel that have taken place over the past half-century. For all his overreaching, though, Murdoch did evince a fairly sophisticated understanding of the subtlety with which anti-semitic sentiment still permeates contemporary discourse. He pointed out the following recent remarks made by EU trade commissioner Karel De Gucht:

There is indeed a belief—it’s difficult to describe it otherwise—among most Jews that they are right. And it’s not so much whether these are religious Jews
or not. Lay Jews also share the same belief that they are right. So it is not easy to have, even with moderate Jews, a rational discussion about what is actually happening in the Middle East.

Murdoch goes on to comment:

This minister did not suggest the problem was any specific Israeli policy. The problem, as he defined it, is the nature of the Jews. Adding to the absurdity, this man then responded to his critics this way: Anti-Semitism, he asserted, “has no place in today’s world and is fundamentally against our European values.”

Of course, he has kept his job.

Murdoch is entirely right to point out the poisonous nature of such statements, which project a stubborn unwillingness to reevaluate ideas onto an entire group of people, based just on their religion and ancestry. Clearly, non-Jews are never stubborn and never believe themselves to be right.

This principle doesn't apply solely to anti-semitic discourse, though, and Murdoch oversees a corporate media empire that routinely gives platforms (and in some cases outright support) to some of the worst Islamophobic bigots out there. Most of these people still have their jobs too.

Identity Matters: Recognition of a Jewish State

2010-10-14T11:30:00.003-04:00

Michael Oren has an op-ed in the Times today calling for Palestinian recognition of the Jewish character of the Israeli state. Diplomatic boilerplate for the most part, complete with slipshod logic and sophistic rhetorical flourishes, but worth a read if only as an example of decent PR work. This whole issue seems like no more than another roadblock/blame-shifting strategy by Netanyahu, and I wouldn't expect the Palestinian leadership to take it particularly seriously. Like Yglesias, I think that if Israel were serious about negotiating a settlement with the PA it wouldn't keep hunting for new excuses to avoid brass tacks. Legitimacy is one of the few things that Israel actually wants from the Palestinians, and to expect them to make concessions to that effect as a precondition for talks makes little sense.

That said, it's worth pointing out again that, from the perspective of Israeli nationalists, demanding recognition of Israel's Jewish character from Palestinians external to Green Line Israel is really quite stupid. Regardless of what, if any, accord is ever reached between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, twenty percent of Israeli citizens are of Palestinian ethnicity. Their status in an explicitly Jewish state seems likely to be an issue of serious political contention at some future point, and if I were an Israeli nationalist I wouldn't want to have invited the broader Palestinian community into the debate. It seems clear that more short term considerations are at work at the moment, but in the long run, taking this stance seems like a poor strategic choice.

Institutional Prerogative, Terrorism and the Liberal State

2010-10-08T14:20:00.000-04:00

One of the more interesting debates in the blogosphere in recent days has been between Glenn Greenwald (always provocative) and Andrew Sullivan over the legitimacy of the Obama Administration's program to assassinate American citizens abroad without the protections of due process. As Steve Walt notes in his comments, both authors are civil (if spirited) and present their cases in a fairly intellectually honest way. I don't go quite as far as Walt in admitting that my views "shifted back and forth" as I read the Greenwald and Sullivan pieces - at the end of the day the notion that the President of the United States has the legal right to assassinate American citizens without judicial oversight, or indeed any oversight beyond his own judgment, strikes me as anathama to the very idea of constitutional government. If the executive has the right to kill his fellow citizens at will, then I'm at a loss to think of actions that would be legally beyond his authority. That's the very essence of tyrrany.

Still, to say that Sullivan is wrong on balance is not to suggest that he doesn't make some decent points, and their larger implications actually get to far more basic questions of the future of the liberal state, as well as the compatibility of (domestic) liberal governance with assertive/imperialist behavior abroad. While I'd recommend reading the pieces, they boil down to a fundamental difference of opinion over the duties and limits of the executive, the nature of the threat posed by international terrorism, and the modern applicability of the concepts of war and peace.

For Greenwald, the notion that the executive branch, without submitting to the oversight authority of any other legal body, can simply decide that an American citizen is in a state of war with the United States, and then use that status to kill him irrespective of circumstances (he could be firing a Kalashnikov at American soldiers, or he could be eating dinner with his family), must necessarily invalidate any meaningful restriction on executive actions. In theory, under this doctrine, the executive could decide that I'm at war with the United States, then put me on a hit list and have me killed. No other body would be able to prevent this from happening, neither could one even demand the evidence justifying the killing (state secrets). If three hundred years of work circumscribing the power of the state to create a government of laws and not of men can be tossed aside because of a few militants who wish Americans ill, what does that say about the viability of the liberal project?

For Sullivan, Greenwald and his supporters pay far too little attention to the fact that, to quote his post's title, "yes, we are at war." A confluence of modern communications technology, modern kinetic and explosive technology, and the immense destruction that a fairly small group of people can wreak with a combination of the two, must lead to an expansion of the concept of "war" to include fights with stateless terrorists and militants that have both the desire and the capacity to kill Americans in fairly large numbers. To imagine that wars against such groups, the leaders of which frequently cross borders and base their operations in the midst of civilian communities, can be fought without basically abandoning the concept of a "battlefield" as a geographically-limited space is naive, and would unduly hobble state agents in their pursuit of such people.

Liberal states - and here I'm using "liberal" in the expansive sense - have since their inception faced interrelated challenges from two different directions. One has been external - other states, groups or ideological movements have presented alternatives to the liberal model of governance, at times backed with considerable firepower. The other has been internal - those very same threats create political space for existing state institutions to expand their power, escape meaningful oversight and ignore or downplay individual rights. American history provides numerous examples. The quasi-war with France produced the Alien and Sedition acts, later allowed to expire by those uncomfortable with their overreaching. World War I saw a massive expansion in the coercive power of government, a power that was only selectively curtailed during the inter-war years (the first Red Scares of the 1920s didn't help), only to mushroom to new levels of institutional strength during and after World War II (the second wave of Red Scares during the 1950s didn't help either). The restrictions put on executive power during the post-Nixon years have now in large measure been superseded or circumvented (even Nixon didn't assert a right to unilaterally kill American citizens), and since 9/11 the institutional weight of the American military and intelligence apparatus has become absolutely staggering.

Leaving aside for a moment whether the current institutional architecture of the American counter-terrorism apparatus is equal to the task, the larger question is whether, in the context of a modern, highly intrusive, highly coercive state, liberal restrictions on governance are truly sustainable. Institutional leaders nearly always seek to increase the power, resources and independence of their institutions. The Washington Post estimates that there are currently 1,271 government organizations (and at least as many private ones) involved in counter-terrorism and intelligence activities. At the same time, the fact that they're dealing with an extremely amorphous, secretive and ill-understood (if, as Sullivan reminds us, quite real) threat has the potential to create ever-more political space for those institutions to expand their power and shake off the chains of what little oversight they remain subject to. The current attempt by the executive to almost completely decouple himself from legal or political scrutiny in matters of counter-terrorism (again, if the President can kill American citizens at will...) is in many ways the next logical step in a long-term trend.

All of this is extremely worrying, precisely because it doesn't seem to matter that much who is in power. Some Presidents enthusiastically enable the expansion of executive power, others do so with more subtlety, but the overall trend line seems only to move in one direction, even with a professor of Constitutional law sitting in the Oval Office. It makes me genuinely concerned for the future of law-based governance, here or anyplace else.

Jones's Resignation

2010-10-08T13:16:00.003-04:00

So apparently General James Jones is resigning as National Security Advisor, to be replaced by Deputy NSA Tom Donilon. I have no significant insight into either person, though I did find amusing the immediate clarification to Politico (who else?) that, no, there's no problem between Donilon and Bob Gates, what ever would have given people that idea? Also, how has it become a rule in Washington that Bob Woodward gets to have (manipulated and selective) inside access to every administration for a couple of books per term? Is there some kind of standing agreement with the executive branch?

Anyway, if the court gossip about the reasons for the supposed Gates-Donilon tensions are true, I suppose it would be some cause for concern (shooting off half-cocked opinions isn't a trait I'd want in an NSA). That said, if the Caucus's initial take is actually representative of Donilon's priorities (a lower footprint in the Middle East, less emphasis on Europe, and more attention to the American security position in Asia), then I suppose I welcome the switch. I also think American over-investment in the Middle East is structurally overdetermined, so I'd expect something like a staff shake-up to help only at the margins, if at all. Still, given the comparatively unimaginative way in which the Obama team has conducted foreign and security policy so far, putting some different ideas at the forefront can't hurt.

Clinton-Biden Swap?

2010-10-06T15:19:00.002-04:00

I'm assuming that Bob Woodward's speculation about a Hillary Clinton-Joe Biden role reversal is mostly about Bob Woodward wanting to generate buzz for himself. Possibly it's also a trial baloon being floated by the White House, complete with the requisite denials. I doubt anything will come of it.

For the record, though, I'd be perfectly happy with the switch. I was always a bit puzzled (and not entirely satisfied) with the pick of Hillary Clinton for State, mostly because foreign policy was one of the few areas of substantive disagreement between Clinton and Obama during the campaign, and I liked Obama's approach better. I also like Biden on foreign policy issues - a feeling that was reinforced by press rumors that he opposed the Afghanistan escalation last year (full disclosure, I very briefly interned for Biden while he was in the Senate). All things being equal, then, it's actually a decision I'd support on the merits. Again, I'm assuming this is more flash-in-the-pan rumor than serious possibility, and that were it to happen it would be for domestic electoral reasons, not policy ones, but politics aside it might be a decent idea.

The Military and Renewable Energy

2010-10-05T12:11:00.004-04:00

One of the lead Times stories this morning concerns the efforts of the U.S. military - spurred on by extraordinary logistical difficulties posed by the remote and energy-resource-poor battlefields of Afghanistan - to rapidly integrate renewable energy sources into its operations. Assuming the sea change being talked about here has some reasonable relationship with reality, then this is great. As the article notes, the market power of the Pentagon is staggering, and a rapid increase in military demand for renewable energy technologies could spur the kind of investment in such advances that's been so sorely lacking in this country.

Admittedly, this leaves me somewhat ambivalent. As a general rule, I wish it were easier to engage in major public policy initiatives and invest in important research without having to find some military justification for doing so. The kinds of investments in clean energy that will be necessary to transform the American energy economy could probably be more efficiently made in a civilian context, and a country with a healthy political culture would make them on their own merits. That said, to the extent that the Pentagon is able to induce an end run around energy politics that have become caught up in issues of identity as much as economics (real Americans burn fossil fuels dammit), I suppose I'll take the help from whence it's coming.

Update: When I talk about my discomfort with vesting the military with too much power in what ought to be civilian domains, this is why.

Slapstick Politics

2010-10-05T09:57:00.002-04:00

Bolivian President Evo Morales apparently kneed an opponent in the groin in retaliation for a rough tackle during a soccer match. No comment necessary.

Seulement les Français...

2010-10-04T15:39:00.001-04:00

I'm preparing a much longer post addressing this debate, but I'd just like to point out that only the French would have a color coded terror alert system that separates "reinforced red" from the highest level, "scarlet."

Terrorism is a Banal Threat to Public Safety

2010-10-03T11:37:00.003-04:00

Matt Yglesias posted an interesting thought about counter-terrorism resources yesterday:

According to my calculation, if we were to cut America’s $663.8 billion defense budget by 1%, that would free up enough funds to double the budget of the FBI. Doesn’t it seem like that would probably, on net, reduce the risk of Americans dying in a terrorist attack? And in the meantime we might catch some more bank robbers or other banal threats to public safety.

Decent point to be sure. The last sentence, though, gets to a slight pet peeve of mine when it comes to discourse about terrorism (and this isn't directed at Matt, who I suspect is being at least slightly ironic). Terrorism is a banal threat to public safety. Webster defines "banal" as "lacking in originality, freshness or novelty." Certainly some innovations in the tactics and practice of terrorism have appeared over the years. Suicide terrorism, at least in the modern context, is a reasonably recent phenomenon depending on how one defines one's terms, and certainly there are new groups and causes that have become associated with terrorist activity. It's really worth remembering, though, that societies have been dealing with what we would generally recogninze as terrorism since the beginning of the industrial age. David Rapoport has identified four separate "waves" of modern terrorism stretching back to the nineteenth century.

We expect governments to do what they can, within the limits necessary to afford meaningful freedom to their citizens, to protect those in their jurisdiction from harm. To protect citizens against violent harm is obviously a particular imperative, and political violence tends to get state leaders in a particular tizzy, as it represents the most fundamental challenge to a state's monopoly of violence and of political activity. Still, our politics would almost certainly be healthier if people had an easier time putting the threat of terrorism in some reasonable context, recognizing it's but one threat to public health and safety, and by no means the most serious one.

Cyberwarfare and Sir Francis Drake

2010-10-01T11:46:00.004-04:00

Yesterday, the Times had a story about how the Stuxnet worm, a piece of malware designed to attack a particular kind of industrial control computer used at Iran's nuclear facilities (in addition to those of a number of other countries) might contain a biblical reference to the book of Esther and the pre-emptive foiling of a Persian plot. Nobody said hackers/intelligence types have no sense of humor.

Putting aside questions of authorship for a moment, though, the article got me thinking about potential historical parallels to the emerging phenomenon of cyber attacks like this. There have been a number of instances in recent years in which international tensions have found expression - intentional or not - in campaigns of electronic disruption and harassment. It seems to me that an interesting parallel can be found in the era of New World piracy/privateering in the 16th and 17th centuries. Both phenomena - peacetime cyber attacks and piracy - give states the ability to, in a sense, poke each other with a stick. They can harass, annoy and disrupt a state's operations and slow its attainment of political or economic goals without providing sufficient strategic imperative for a stronger, more direct response from the target state. As today's article underlines, they also leave murky trails of responsibility, and the risk that a particular cyber attack will be definitively traced to a particular government is quite low, especially if intelligence agencies act through private proxies. As the article points out, murky lines of authority make cyber deterrence quite difficult (also like the 'peacetime' piracy/privateering of an earlier era), and I wouldn't be surprised to see this kind of behavior, lying as it does on the borders of state policy, economic opportunism and criminality, increase sharply in the near future.

This is not to deny that this kind of behavior has drawbacks for its perpetrators. Also like early moder piracy, when privateers recruited during war came back to haunt their erstwhile paymasters in peace, I imagine the danger of "blowback" associated with this kind of activity will increase along with its frequency. Putting state resources into the hands of semi-affiliated actors with their own motives and goals is sure to have unintended consequences. It should also be remembered that piracy did on occasion lead to more serious escalations of hostilities (there was that whole Spanish Armada thing), and that an unstable deterrence regime may make state responses to particularly serious cyber threats unpredictable.

Something to keep a weather eye on.

Message to Muslims

2010-09-22T23:56:00.000-04:00

Another gem by Kristof.

Food for Thought

2010-09-22T14:19:00.003-04:00

As someone with a personal interest in the future of American academia, I just thought I'd point out Steve Walt's post on Harvard's handling of the Marty Peretz issue. It's well worth a read. For some context, read it next to the following graf from Sullivan today:

Some want to claim that equating the torture techniques used by the Bush administration with those used by the Nazis is unforgivable hyperbole. Sadly, it isn't. It's indisputable fact. And one man responsible for it, Stanley McChrystal, was rewarded with promotion and now teaches at Yale. And another man who twisted the law to make it happen, John Yoo, teaches at Berkeley.

I'm honestly torn as to where to draw the line, in the academic context, beyond which a person's past professional behavior ought to disqualify them from either honors or appointments. It seems as though there at least ought to be one, though, and that it ought not bend too flexibly to the pressures of power and status.

On Divestment and Headlines

2010-09-17T11:45:00.004-04:00

Jon Haber has an op-ed in the Christian Science Monitor today with the attention-grabbing headline "Campaigns to hurt Israeli economy really hurt Middle East Peace," in which he simultaneously argues that campaigns in the West to divest from Israel have been inconsequential failures, and that they endanger the future of the peace process. He basically argues that most of the material victories of these movements have been small, fleeting or fabricated, and that the divestment movement gets much more media attention than it does political and financial support. He then almost perfunctorily tacks on a few sentences that purport to demonstrate why such campaigns are still harmful:

...keep in mind that the goal of boycott and divestment campaigners is to put Israel in the dock and to give legitimacy to their accusations against Israel by claiming well-known and respected organizations as their supporters.

Because of the potential propaganda payoff of even a temporary success, BDS campaigns are likely to continue this year, regardless of the needless pain that always accompanies dragging the Middle East conflict into a civic institution. In fact, the BDS campaigns may contribute to extending and exacerbating conflict, even during a period when the parties themselves are negotiating peace.

First off, what is this "needless pain" that "always accompanies dragging the Middle East conflict into a civic institution"? Into how many civic institutions has this conflict been dragged, and who precisely has been hurt by it? I'm not being rhetorical, I'm genuinely not sure what Haber is talking about. Second, to the extent that BDS campaigns have any value (I look at them with some ambivalence, and am particularly skeptical of those relating to academia), it is in the look to the future that they provide Israeli leaders.

Such campaigns, and the sentiments they express, remind Israel that there is a limit, in the long term, to the patience of the international community with regard to the occupation. Over the past sixty years Israel has, with considerable success, developed political, strategic and economic relationships with the West that have served its interests and assisted in it becoming a prosperous and reasonably secure society. Right or wrong, though, the mounting impatience of Western populations and even some Western leaders with the moral and strategic hazards of the Israeli-Palestinian status quo will become ever more difficult for Israel to smooth over. Divestment campaigns, even weak, skeletal forms, serve as a reminder of that.

I get the sense from Haber's article, which seeks to dismiss comparisons between Israel and South Africa as "propaganda" - an accurate charge to be sure, but even propaganda can contain truth - that he understands precisely the power of the BDS narrative, and seeks to undermine it by both dismissing its importance and deriding it as dangerous. Unless one believes that Israel is entirely blameless for the dismal course of the multi-decade peace process, though, it seems that the specter raised by the BDS movement - of Israel isolated - might provide precisely the kind of background pressure needed to induce compromise. After all, if Israeli leaders feel peace can always be put off, why would the make the sacrifices necessary to achieve it?

Quick Hit: Joyner on France, the Roma and the EU

2010-09-15T11:40:00.002-04:00

James Joyner does a pretty good job laying out the issues at stake in the brewing confrontation between France and the EU over France's expulsion of hundreds of Roma from its territory. Money graf:

My guess is that both sides find a face-saving way to back way from confrontation over what is at the end of the day a relatively minor issue. But if they don't, we'll soon be either much closer to a powerful Europe or take several steps back towards it being a mere economic cooperative.

This gets back to a couple of posts I've written about the possibility of "Marbury v. Madison" moment(s) for EU institutions, in which confrontations over particular issues clarify previously ambiguous roles and structures of power. This could well end up being one of those.

Peretz's "Apology"

2010-09-15T10:12:00.004-04:00

I was considering posting about this back when Peretz's original post went up and started to cause controversy, but the issue was addressed pretty eloquently by several sources with far higher readership, so I thought I'd let bigoted magazine editors lie and move on to other issues. Yesterday, in response to some of the criticism, Peretz issued what he deems to be an apology. I'll say this for Peretz: he's willing to stick to his guns. His reductionist, bigoted guns.

For those who missed the original dust-up, Peretz's particularly outlandish statements (and that's saying something with his record) were the following two sentences from this September 4 post:

Frankly, Muslim life is cheap, most notably to Muslims... I wonder whether I need honor these people and pretend that they are worthy of the privileges of the First Amendment which I have in my gut the sense that they will abuse.

Peretz's apology addresses the second bit about the denial of First Amendment rights. He says the statement "genuinely embarrasses" him, adding that he does "not think that any group or class of persons in the United States should be denied the protections of the First Amendment, not now, not ever." For what it's worth, I take this statement as fairly genuine, though why such deeply-held respect for the First Amendment (from a magazine editor no less) neither precluded his initial impulse to click "publish" nor gave him impetus to apologize until after Kristof's piece came out is puzzling to me. That said, as a blogger who knows how easy it is to let emotionally-driven half-formed thoughts turn into intemperate rhetoric that can't be un-published, I'll give Peretz the benefit of the doubt.

He goes on, though, to defend his statement that "Muslim life is cheap, most notably to Muslims." Indeed, he bills it as "a statement of fact, not value." He seems to think that Kristof agrees, noting that in a follow-up post, Kristof wrote that "I agree with him that Muslims haven’t said nearly enough about those Muslims who kill other Muslims — in Kurdish areas, in Iraq, in Western Sahara, in Sudan, and so on." Um, if Peretz honestly thinks those two statements are equivalent, then he's a terrible writer and shouldn't go anywhere near a keyboard. He might have read the next sentence from Kristof's post, which notes that "at some point criticisms morph into racist stereotypes and slurs, and the suggestion that Muslims don’t value human life and maybe don’t deserve First Amendment protections is just that, a slur."

Peretz didn't say, "I wish I saw stronger condemnation of internecine Muslim violence from prominent Muslim leaders." He didn't say, "there is violence in many parts of the Muslim world that I wish I saw more Muslims aggressively addressing." He said "Muslim life is cheap, most notably to Muslims." Slightly re-phrased: 'Muslim life isn't valuable, especially to other Muslims.' His evidence, apparently, is that there are a lot of wars going on in Muslim-majority societies and the 1.5 billion Muslims of the world aren't engaging in a massive, coordinated movement to stop them.

Let me close with a small thought experiment. In living memory, societies made up largely of Western Christians engaged in a half-decade of mechanized killing on a scale without historical parallel. Very few people on any side of the conflict objected. Is it legitimate to conclude that "Western life is cheap, most notably to other Westerners?" If not, then we must recognize Peretz's statement for what it is: reductionist bigotry.

Wouldn't it be Nice...

2010-09-14T09:52:00.002-04:00

Thomas de Waal's piece in Foreign Policy on the poverty of the traditional great power approach to the Caucuses is worth a glance. As I was reading it, though, I couldn't help but think about Christopher Beam's piece on what the news would look like if it were written by political scientists. De Waal is a distinguished journalist with a long record of reporting on the Caucuses, making me especially reluctant to tread on comparatively unfamiliar terrain, but experience aside, it seems that de Waal is too prone to viewing fundamentally structural conflicts as mere problems of perception and attitude. He also has a tendency to posit as contradictory ideas or situations which are in fact entirely compatible.

Consider the first of the "dangerous mirages" through which, according to de Waal, the international community gains a skewed picture of the Caucuses:

The first mirage may be the oldest: the notion that the region is a "Great Chessboard" where the big powers push the locals around like pawns to serve their own goals. That is not what actually happens. In actual fact, however the geopolitical weather changes, the locals always manage to manipulate the outside powers at least as much as the other way round.

In the 21st century the Caucasus is still the Caucasus, in all its complexity and variety -- not an assimilated province of Russia, Turkey, or Iran. The peoples of the Caucasus may be too weak to prosper, but they remain strong enough to withstand fading into their bigger neighbors. You could call it a "balance of insecurity." Over the course of history, Armenians, Azerbaijanis, and Georgians, as well as the region's other smaller ethnic groups, have all persistently survived invasion and resisted assimilation. It's true the price of survival has come in the form of Faustian pacts with other Great Powers, in which the Azerbaijanis allied themselves with Turks and British; Georgians with Germans and British; Armenians, Abkhaz and Ossetians with Russians.

So, to recap, it's a mistake for the great powers to view the Caucuses as a chessboard because, in reality, its peoples act like... chess pieces? Saying that local politicians are often able to manipulate their great power patrons doesn't somehow single the Caucuses out as an unsuitable imperial prize. People living on strategic territory the world over have generally been able to play that game (consider the Persian Gulf, the Levant, and South Asia for starters), and intelligent imperialists factor such manipulation into the costs of doing business, for better or worse.

When the discussion turns to energy routes - the principal interest that most non-Russian powers have in the region - de Waal once again treats zero-sum competition as a matter of perception rather than structure. He also has a tendency to switch back and forth between discussing the interests of Caucuses states themselves versus those of their great power patrons without being entirely clear which he's talking about:

In energy terms, the South Caucasus is indeed an important transport corridor for Caspian Sea oil and gas; there were good reasons why Azerbaijan needed pipeline routes independent of Russia and Iran. Oil pumped through the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline has also brought billions of dollars of much-needed revenue to Azerbaijan -- and rather less to Georgia. Caspian Sea gas has lessened the reliance of both countries on Russian gas. But many Western policymakers have incorrectly treated pipeline policy as a zero-sum strategic game [...] And the idea of a "Great Game" comparing the new interest in the South Caucasus with the struggle for influence between tsarist Russia and Great Britain in Central Asia and Afghanistan in the 19th century cast the locals as passive objects and Moscow in the role of a deadly rival. These metaphors unduly raised the hopes of small nations that they were essential to the West, while antagonizing Russia. In retrospect, strategic ambitions to establish a position in the region ran ahead of a more sober assessment of its place on the European energy map and its economic needs.

I'll agree that the West probably let its eyes get bigger than its stomach in the years leading up to the 2008 war in Georgia, and that NATO in particular shouldn't have been writing checks to the Georgians that it wasn't willing to let them cash. It's worth remembering, though, that the energy security of the Caucuses state themselves is likely of little concern to great power policymakers. The Caucuses are strategic in terms of energy because of the opportunity they afford for pumping energy supplies to Europe along routes that aren't controlled, directly or indirectly, by Russia. I see little prospect for that strategic conflict to become less zero-sum, because relative position is the foundational objective of all sides.

Now, to be clear, I think life for people in the Caucuses would almost certainly be better if they didn't have great powers using them as chess pieces all the time. The same would probably be true for residents of the Persian Gulf, the Levant, Latin America and Southeast Asia. If de Waal is making an essentially moral case ('treating the Caucuses like a chessboard is leading to the immiseration of millions of people, so the world should stop doing that'), he should just make the moral case and not try to argue that meddling in the Caucuses is strategically misguided. If he's making a strategic case, then he needs to actually demonstrate why the foundational assumptions that fuel great power conflict in the region are wrong. By trying to do half of each, he ends up accomplishing neither.

Quick Hit: Walt on the Inertia of Great Power Status

2010-09-13T12:39:00.003-04:00

A couple of months ago when I wrote that I hold "a certain fatalism toward America's role as an imperial state/great power," this is what I was talking about.

Quick Hit: Sullivan on Catholicism in Britain

2010-09-13T11:25:00.003-04:00

Though I'm sure plenty of readers have come across it, those who haven't read through Andrew Sullivan's reflections on Catholicism in Britain really should take a minute and do so. I've talked before about the process by which outsiders and "others" can help forge national identities, but Sullivan's bit has a personal flare that I can't match when writing about countries other than my own. Check it out.