Libertarianism and Paternalism

It is clear to me that there is much involved in a system of torts. I do not claim that the many systematic and idiosyncratic determinations that must be made under such a system are easily made or have obvious outcomes. I acknowledge that the very existence of a system of legal protection requires a great deal of value-laden judgment. Of course the rights of both parties are at stake in a tort judgment. I only mentioned those of the victim because I was highlighting the injustice of that particular situation, where the tortfeasor seems secure in his rights.

As far as Nozick's ideas go, they do sound odd. I will say a thing or two based upon my limited understanding of them, let me know if I'm off the mark.

It seems very odd to suggest that a liberal state is the natural outcome of anarchy. I have often said that either anarchy does not exist or we are living in it right now. People are so accustomed to living under a large impersonal state that they are unaccustomed to think of what government fundamentally is. As I have said before, and as you are surely already aware, government is merely superiority of force. If gangsters have the run of a city and the official authorities are powerless to contradict their decrees, then the 'authorities' are no longer sovereign, and the gangsters are a government unto themselves. Advocates of anarchy, in suggesting the abolition of government, either fail to understand what, fundamentally, government is, or are making the absurd assertion that it is possible to do away with the physical inequality of parties and the resulting power differential. Anyplace where there are two people there is government. The point of this is that anarchy is either an insubstantial philosophical construct or it is universal. Assuming the former, Nozick's assertion is merely a theoretical exercise; assuming the latter, Nozick's assertion is disproved by the repeated evidence of history. Why on earth would power groups, in the absence of formal government, restrict themselves to selling their protection, when they could quite easily force defenseless parties into a state of clientage and then extract whatever portion of the client's production they desired? They wouldn't. The evidence of history shows quite clearly that they haven't. As for such power groups being rights protecting… lol. There is certainly no guarantee that governments will be good.

As far as using defaults in existing programs. I'm all for it. I may doubt that a program is the most effective way to achieve the ends aimed at, but so long as we're going to do it we ought to do it as well as we know how in order to minimize the loss we incur by not following the optimal path. I do think that, in the context of the programs he mentioned, Sunstein's defaults would cause them to realize their ends more effectively. If you sell defaults as a way of making intervention more effective I won't argue. It is only when they are sold as a way of making intervention not intervention that I object.

When I said that "[determining a rational set of defaults] through the auspices of modern democratic government virtually guarantees that we will botch the process", I was speaking in very broad terms. I was talking about culture as a default. It is definitely the government's role to create defaults within the proper sphere of government. I am only talking about government setting defaults in private decision making. When it does this, I call it 'intervention', and I think it a mistake.

Your next point is very important: "a state will always be subject to pressures (of varying intensities) to do non-libertarian things. The state will always have the power to do those things; it is inherent in being a state. That power cannot be ignored, and there is no structural way to make it go away". Absolutely (my discussion of the constitution was not suggesting that a constitution could protect an ideal of government; I was just noting that the idea of defaults provides an interesting insight into why constitutions have any effect at all). One might say that good government is not a state of law and institutional organization, but rather a state of culture. No set of laws can cause a culturally destitute people to govern themselves well and no rule can be so detrimental as to prevent a culturally rich people from doing so. This is why I have lost interest in practical politics. What is the point of struggling for changes in laws when what really matters in not the virtues of government but the virtues of the people? This idea is highlighted in the ridiculous programs of 'democratization'. There are groups of people who are culturally democratic, and with such groups no power can hold them back from democracy. There are other groups who lack the cultural prerequisites for democracy and who will not become properly democratic no matter how hard you shove the institutions of democracy down their throats. This goes back to the recognition that government is power. We tend to confuse government with institutions, but if the institutions do not have the support of the people they do not have power and thus have nothing to do with government.

That idea is at the heart of my political philosophy. Good government is the product of a strong culture. It is a recursive model of societal improvement:

The ancients who wished to illustrate illustrious virtue throughout the kingdom, first ordered well their own states. Wishing to order well their states, they first regulated their families. Wishing to regulate their families, they first cultivated their persons. Wishing to cultivate their persons, they first rectified their hearts. Wishing to rectify their hearts, they first sought to be sincere in their thoughts. Wishing to be sincere in their thoughts, they first extended to the utmost their knowledge. Such extension of knowledge lay in the investigation of things.

Things being investigated, knowledge became complete. Their knowledge being complete, their thoughts were sincere. Their thoughts being sincere, their hearts were then rectified. Their hearts being rectified, their persons were cultivated. Their persons being cultivated, their families were regulated. Their families being regulated, their states were rightly governed. Their states being rightly governed, the whole kingdom was made tranquil and happy.

Confucius, The Great Learning

This is why my own investigations focus not on how to impose change on people externally but rather on what culture is and how it is transmitted. This, I think, is the road to improvement. If we can understand why some groups of people spontaneously generate wealth, creativity, and good governance, while others seem trapped in a state of degradation, then we might actively promote the welfare of mankind.

Finally, I do not agree that such policies as redistributive taxation and financial regulation reduce people's clamoring for more intervention. In fact I think such policies lead to more regulation. I believe that these policies result in outcomes that are the opposite of their intended aims. So if redistributive taxation makes people poorer and financial regulation makes markets more dangerous, then obviously you enter into an unstable feedback loop. One might call it a slippery slope. The more you intervene, the worse the problem becomes, and the more people demand intervention. I think this sums up the story of twentieth century governance nicely. Take the war on drugs as an example. The more effort they put into fighting the drug trade the more valuable drugs become. The more valuable drugs become, the stronger become those who traffic in drugs and the more difficult it becomes to stop them. So the harder you fight the problem the more virulent it becomes (and the harder you try to fight it, ad infinitum). An argument that supplements this perfectly sufficient point is that interventionist concessions create a norm. Interventions give people a sense of entitlement and this begets greater expectations of future paternalism.

A Response on Libertarian Paternalism

First off, I have to admit to not watching the video, although I believe I listened to an audio file of the same lecture (or a similar one by Sunstein) some time ago. Henry's post hits pretty close to some stuff my political theory course has been covering (particularly Robert Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopia), and that I discussed briefly with V recently (hopefully he'll chime in). I'm going to respond in chunks, hopefully it won't fragment the discussion too badly.

In the case of the car accident loss being left where it fell, the government is clearly failing to protect the rights of the victim. The goal of the government (under the aforementioned philosophy) is to secure individual's rights to life, liberty, and property. It would be ludicrous to suppose that this could be accomplished without torts (or likewise without the use of police power to try to prevent wrongful conduct)

Even accepting that a tort system is a necessity, this still leaves a huge range of determinations to be made with respect to process and defaults. Default legal burdens of proof and persuasion, burden-shifting rules, rules of evidence and courtroom procedures, etc. And to suggest that only the victim's rights are implicated neglects the fact that the tortfeasor's property rights are equally implicated. A faulty or unfair process could easily result in an unjust invasion of his rights. Protecting everyone's rights is a complicated business, packed with value-laden judgments.

In fact, one of my (many) objection's to Nozick's theory is that he imagines there will be numerous regimes of justice developed by individuals and associations in the state of nature, and he is indifferent to which one prevails (which would occur through economic competition of the associations). Any rights-protecting regime is apparently as good as any other in his view. But process can be slanted heavily to favor particular groups and actions, and it seems to me fairly important that there be a conscious and rational effort to create the "best" system, rather than the one most appealing to those with the greatest economic power.

I sincerely believe that the principle is merely a backdoor approach to regulation, and that his use of the word libertarianism is a usurpation of the term (this is the slippery-slope argument that Sunstein says is silly). Many of his examples involve at least some components which are involuntary and do not allow for choice. My second point along this line is a much more interesting one. Can such policies really be implemented (meaningfully) without imposing upon the liberty of the parties involved?

Sunstein's argument is fairly limited in this regard. I don't think he wants to get into the argument about whether or not programs like the 401k program should exist, but rather given that it already does exist wouldn't it be smarter to set the defaults in a manner that will produce the socially optimal result? We can get into the topic of what optimality means (and I will below), but let's assume Congress created the 401k program for some purpose and that purpose can be furthered by adjusting the default as Sunstein suggests. It would be a paternalistic change to an existing regime that creates no additional burden with respect to interfering in anyone's rights and that produces a better outcome. That seems fairly unobjectionable.

So it makes sense that we would be better off providing people with a rationally determined set of defaults to prevent their credulity mechanism from accepting a bunch of random crap. But this is harder than it sounds. I mean the 'determining a rational set of defaults' part. It can be done, but it requires a great deal of thoughtfulness, trepidation, and investigation. From my point of view, doing so through the auspices of modern democratic government virtually guarantees that we will botch the process.

Modern American government warrants a healthy dose of cynicism, but this is more like nihilism. Our institutional system is a bit of mess, and in my view needs some significant reform. But that stands entirely aside from the discussion of libertarianism as far as I can tell. Even the classic night watchman government requires a structure of governance. And if that system of governance sucks, you kiss your night watchman government goodbye in short order.

This, in fact, has always been my biggest objection to libertarian theory. I simply cannot see how a libertarian government could ever remain so for any appreciable length of time. The initial structure of the government will not bind it in libertarian form, even if you had a constitution without amendment procedures. It was not a constitutional amendment that allowed the development of the administrative state in the US, but judicial interpretation. And it wasn't just uppity judges responsible for that (although I'm not sure it would be significant to my argument even if it were), but intense political pressure placed on them by political branches motivated by quite serious concerns about social stability and unrest (and rising socialist sentiment). Whether it's a Great Depression and populist outrage or rent-seeking businesses and other economically powerful interests, a state will always be subject to pressures (of varying intensities) to do non-libertarian things. The state will always have the power to do those things; it is inherent in being a state. That power cannot be ignored, and there is no structural way to make it go away. It just sits there begging to be used.

I have a strong suspicion that some of the policies necessary to keep those pressures at bay (to the greatest degree possible) are themselves non-libertarian (e.g. some level of redistributive tax policy and regulation political speech financing, etc.). In the end, I tend to believe that our rights (which may or may not be limited only to life, liberty, and property) are likely best protected by a state that overtly recognizes the threat of instability and subversion of state power and is structured to best address that threat, even if that structure is not a strictly libertarian one. The state may need to be more powerful and far reaching than a night watchman state in order to be a stable, free-standing system. What good is the night watchman if it ends up being overthrown by communists or turning into a plutocracy?

Defaults and "Libertarian Paternalism"

I just watched a lecture by Cass Sunstein titled 'Libertarian Paternalism is Not an Oxymoron'. I'm not so sure. It seems to me that there is something important in the idea of libertarianism that is anti-meddling. It also seems that there is something fishy about Cass's idea of Libertarian Paternalism.

Sunstein says that there must be some default in any government decision. I guess that's true, but he reads a lot more into this than I think is warranted. First he mentions the notion that a no fault law regarding an auto accident is not an instance of government non-intervention, but rather an instance of the government granting privilege. The driver who caused the accident is not forced to compensate the innocent driver, yet the innocent driver is restrained from demanding compensation on his own. Sunstein later compares this to the presumption that an employer can fire an employee when and as they wish unless the specific employment contract states otherwise. He specifically says that this is not an instance of government non-intervention, but rather an entitlement granted to the employer by the government. Since what here appears to be non-action by the government is really a form of pro-business action, the question of whether or not the government should intervene is nonsensical. It is a 'mystification', as Sunstein notes in the Q&A. Since inaction is really a form of covert intervention the question of whether or not to intervene is trivial. We can only argue how we ought to intervene.

This seems to advocate a point of view that I find abhorrent. It suggests that life, liberty, and property are not fundamental rights to be protected but privileges to be granted at the pleasure of government. I would much prefer a philosophy of government in which the fundamental goal of governance is to secure these rights as firmly as possible. Under this assumption there is a default response to each of the situations mentioned in that last paragraph which is obvious and, I think, optimal. In the case of the car accident loss being left where it fell, the government is clearly failing to protect the rights of the victim. The goal of the government (under the aforementioned philosophy) is to secure individual's rights to life, liberty, and property. It would be ludicrous to suppose that this could be accomplished without torts (or likewise without the use of police power to try to prevent wrongful conduct). But in the latter case (that of job security), it is clearly in the interest of the liberty rights of both parties (and very likely the property right of the employer) that they be allowed to structure their contract as they see fit. Within the bounds of this minimalist framework we can do away with the absurd (or so it seems to me) nullification of the concept of non-intervention. Non-intervention would be to adhere to the principle of maximizing individual enjoyment of the rights to life, liberty, and property.

Rather than carry on in this line I will discuss the obvious objection to my discussion thus far. Sunstein is not proposing that we remove people's contract rights, but rather that we impose default contract structures that can then be negotiated away from. First I will say that this is at times quite fuzzy (e.g. the job security argument i.e. I thought that defaults weren't entitlements) in his expression. I sincerely believe that the principle is merely a backdoor approach to regulation, and that his use of the word libertarianism is a usurpation of the term (this is the slippery-slope argument that Sunstein says is silly). Many of his examples involve at least some components which are involuntary and do not allow for choice. My second point along this line is a much more interesting one. Can such policies really be implemented (meaningfully) without imposing upon the liberty of the parties involved? What if I own a business that has never had any sort of structured savings plan? If the government mandates that employees be defaulted into a certain sort of plan, would I not be obligated to set up such a plan? If not, is the program really being meaningfully implemented? Or, say that the government requires that the default employment contract include a provision supplying job security. What does this mean? Either the employer's liberty is unaffected, meaning that they have just as much right to opt out of the default as the employee does, or, only the employee has this right (i.e. the employee has the right to demand a contract with job security) and the 'default' infringes upon rights the employer previously enjoyed. If the employer can just opt out of the default, then nothing is changed and the default is not meaningful.

I also think that Cass glosses over the argument that the 'science' of what makes a good decision is controversial. The sciences (mostly social sciences ) from which these recommendations come, tend to be consensus sciences in which group think is common and people with an agenda can easily push the herd toward a predetermined position. Sunstein thinks that it will be easy to tell when personal interests are involved or when the science is fuzzy. I doubt this.

I don't think that the underlying idea of defaults is bad. There is no doubt that people do tend to stick with defaults. I think that the phenomenon originates in the inherent credulity of cultural animals. The evolution of culture is, or rather was during the course of human evolution (i.e. several thousand years ago and earlier), an ongoing numerical optimization (by randomized search) of a highly chaotic system with regard to the contents of behavioral instruction. The powers of this computational process dwarf those of the human mind. So it would be shocking if the human mind did not possess mechanisms to keep it from rejecting the output of that process: received culture (i.e. defaults). It is also perfectly reasonable to suggest that, given that we no longer live in a culture shaped by the evolutionary process, these mechanisms are defunct. So it makes sense that we would be better off providing people with a rationally determined set of defaults to prevent their credulity mechanism from accepting a bunch of random crap. But this is harder than it sounds. I mean the 'determining a rational set of defaults' part. It can be done, but it requires a great deal of thoughtfulness, trepidation, and investigation. From my point of view, doing so through the auspices of modern democratic government virtually guarantees that we will botch the process.

I think a great example of rational default setting is the creation and adoption of the U.S. Constitution. It's hard to figure out what it is that makes a Constitution distinct from the body of ordinary law if it contains a provision for its own amendment. The real distinction of the Constitution is that it is the supreme default of the land. It has all of the power of social proof behind it. I have said before that I think it is very much a rationally conceived document. So it's a rational default. The tragedy is what the Supreme Court has done to the constitution. They have dismembered our glorious default. It is far easier for a small group of highly educated individuals to overcome their preference for the default than for a great big congress and a huge unruly populace to do the same. So whenever a significant proportion of the population want to change the Constitution, it almost always ends up being easier to have the court skew its interpretation than to get congress to change the actual wording. This path of least resistance is the weakness that undermines the constitutional fortress. The justices have been smart enough to overcome the default but not wise enough to understand why they shouldn't.

Some Nifty Essays

I told Joe recently that I have been making an effort to learn to program in a language called Lisp. This sort of autodidactic project requires a lot of scouring the infosphere for material. Tonight I happened upon some essays by Paul Graham that I have found extremely diverting. I'm sure you're all very busy but if you happen to have some time for pleasure reading you might enqueue an essay or two.

Pakistan: Democracy Strikes Again!

Here, apparently, is the answer to my Musharraf question. Pervez Musharraf, "President" of Pakistan, who took power in a coup and has never faced a real election will be up for a vote in 2007. Musharraf is broadly unpopular, and appears to be throwing in his lot with Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam, a major Islamic party, in a bid to have a realistic shot at reelection. This is why he essentially signed a peace treaty with the Taliban (who JUI helped create). Likely it is also why he brought out the stone age story, to explain that his cooperation with the Americans was coerced. He doesn't have to worry about undercutting support for anti-Taliban action, because he has already bailed on it himself.

The truly surreal part of this story is the lack of reaction from the US. Pakistan announces a truce with the Taliban and says they won't bother Osama Bin Laden if he doesn't bother them (and according to the Telegraph one of the key negotiators for the truce was none other than the infamous Mullah Omar). What does the White House say? That Musharraf and Bush are "on the hunt together". Only slightly less surreal was having a meeting between two heads of state where one, when asked about a high profile diplomatic tiff between the two nations, responded to the questions by stating that his book deal prohibited him from answering. That has to be a first. On the topic of the truce Bush says that he looked into Musharraf's eyes (I am serious!) when Musharraf told him he didn't cave to the Taliban and was convinced. No comment on Mullah Omar or the general who said they weren't going after Bin Laden anymore.

This is all very interesting in the geopolitical sense (i.e. Musharraf has gotten away with murder these past five years, and nothing seems to touch him), but I think really comes back to another of the major contradictions of the Bush administration: they have put an immense focus on global democratization while at the same time disdaining efforts to win over foreign voters. Their approach to foreign policy is entirely limited to trying to browbeat foreign leaders (many of them unelected) into cooperation while steadfastly refusing to engage the concerns and complaints of common people throughout the Middle East and South Asia. That can work, to some extent, for a while. But if you succeed in democratization you will learn that those opinions matter a great deal. We saw Hamas elected in Palestine, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Muqtada al-Sadr's party in Iraq, Amadinejad in Iran, and now we're seeing Musharraf cater to Islamists in Pakistan. If there were elections in Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and elsewhere in the Middle East, I expect we'd see exactly the same results. We are pushing for democracy at the same time that we advance policies that could not be better designed to inflame opinion against us. I begin to wonder if these guys understand what democracy means...

I tend to support the idea of democratization simply because it will have the impact of forcing our hand in dealing with these issues. For now we can find pliant leaders and ignore the issues of the Islamic street. But I doubt there will be any serious progress in the war on terror until those issues are dealt with, and by having governments elected that will advance these issues more forcefully the US will have little choice but to address them. Funny, but I doubt that was what the neocons had in mind...

What Is Musharraf Up To?

So Pervez Musharraf claims that Dick Armitage told a Pakistani general that the US would bomb Pakistan back to the stone age if they didn't cooperate in the war on terror. Armitage now denies it, George Bush say if it happened it was Colin Powell's fault. My question is: why on earth is Musharraf disclosing this? As the story linked above notes, it hurts him badly on the domestic front. It is impossible for him to claim to be helping the US on a principled basis now. And while capitulating to US threats might have been a wise policy choice it is politically indefensible. The Islamic extremists in Pakistan have already tried to assassinate Musharraf (more than once). It is hard to imagine him wanting to pour more fuel on that fire.

I can only come up with two possible explanations: a) he is selling his book or b) looking for an excuse to resist cooperating with the US. Certainly he has succeeded at moving copies of his book with this claim, but I don't buy that as a real explanation. I look at this in conjunction with the news clip I posted a couple weeks ago about Pakistan bailing on the hunt for Al Qaeda as possibly representing a major repositioning for Musharraf and Pakistan. When the US comes and starts leaning on Musharraf to buck up and kill some terrorists he will now respond, "well hey guys, I'd love to cooperate, but I'm so unpopular now (and so by the way are you Americans) because of this 'stone age' thing I really can't afford to help. But have fun storming the castle!" Maybe that's not it, but there's something going on here. Musharraf is not so stupid as to not realize political price he would pay for going public on this. Somewhere there's a payoff for him...

'Decline and Fall of the American Empire' Watch

I'm sure Henry will appreciate this excerpt from a CSM story on US troop commitments in Iraq:

About 500,000 soldiers are currently in the Army. Plans call for it to increase to about 512,000 in the foreseeable future. But even reaching that level may take time. Growing beyond that, if authorized, would take even longer. And the need is pressing now, note experts.

Short of obligatory national service, moves such as opening the US military to foreigners with no US ties, but who wish to move toward US residence or citizenship, might be necessary for the Army to grow in a reasonable amount of time.

Bring on the barbarian mercenaries!

A Healthy Immigration Dialogue?

I find immigration to be an exceedingly difficult topic to discuss. It's an important topic in America, and even more so in Europe, and one that critically needs to be addressed. Yet it tends to morph economic and cultural insecurity into ethnic and racial prejudice such that it can become difficult to sort real policy concerns out from the age-old appeal of virulent immigrant-bashing. America has a singular record with respect to immigration, having been built on the back of waves of European immigration, yet even here hatred and discrimination against immigrants has a long and deep history.

We all need to be concerned with the problem of integration, as discussed in this CSM column today. As my Fallows post noted below this relates, among other things, to security issues. In Europe, awash in Muslim immigrants while the white population declines, it also calls national identities and the basic social fabric into question. So here's the challenge: we need to start to identify what constitutes healthy integration, and what factors influence it, and how to promote it, without descending into irrational discrimination, and hopefully without creating an overly adversarial relationship with our immigrant populations. And America needs to lead the way and create an example for Europe. As hot a topic as immigration is here, it is far worse in Europe, and that difference will only be exacerbated as time goes on.

Right now I have little faith in the people driving the dialogue in the US. The people with passion on immigration today (think Sensenbrenner) tend to walk a fine line with respect to anti-immigrant prejudice, generally not displaying it openly, but pandering to it in their supporters. I would very much like to see a counterpoint, acknowledging the seriousness of the issue, willing to act on it, even if some of the steps are difficult, but promoting an inclusive dialogue that respects the interests of immigrants and the unique cultures and viewpoints they can contribute to society.

A Government That Doesn't Believe In Government

One of the defining contradictions of the Bush administration and the current Republican Congress is that they have tried to accomplish so much through government while simultaneously not believing in the efficacy of government (a rhetorical holdover from the party's former libertarian streak). How else can the immense patronage system that they've assembled over the past 8 years be explained? Michael Brown, the K Street Project, and now this remarkable story of the Iraq reconstruction team. I don't know that the reconstruction could have worked under any circumstances, but it certainly doesn't help to staff key positions with young party apparatchiks with no experience or education in the subject areas they are managing. Instead of creating stability and law and order and a functional constitutional structure they were busy instituting a flat tax, privatizing government assets, running an anti-smoking campaign, and modernizing Iraq's stock exchange. They turned the Green Zone into a luxury resort while the country went to hell around them. This whole mess is going to go down as a disaster of epic proportions...

A 9/11 Post

I'm reposting this from a forum where I wrote it in response to a posting of this NPR essay by Frank Miller:

Sadly I think Miller had the right of it before the attacks. It is about the ideas. Strip the United States of the ideas of Madison, Jefferson, Franklin, and Adams, and I will have no attachment to the flag. To the extent I currently have some attachment to it, it is because I believe that it still represents those ideas. I don't believe that lines on a map convey some magic value, or that there is some genetic reason why Americans are more valuable than anyone else. What binds us together and gives us value is our shared belief in concepts about justice, liberty, and equality, government and social institutions; the Enlightenment ideals of Locke, Jefferson, and Madison. When those concepts take a back seat to the flag and patriotism, we have lost something important, and become less than we were.

A nation is the wrong scope in which to view Franklin's hang together/hang separately quote. Our world has gone global. There is no country that can close off the world or effectively protect itself from what happens outside it. It was not a nation state that attacked us, nor will a lone nation state protect us. Globalized business, fueled by multinational corporations, modern transportation, and electronic communications, has limited the role of the nation state in trade and economics, and terrorism has done the same for security and violence. For there is now no border and no army that can stop violence. Violence and instability can spread by interpersonal networks, and even by the simple conveyance of ideas and ideals.

For better or worse, Mankind is in this together, and together we will succeed or together we will fail. We can choose between global brotherhood and global chaos. The more borders we erect, the more boundaries we create, the more sides we choose and groups we vilify, the more separate we see ourselves from others in our minds and in reality, the less the secure our civilization will be. Because our civilization is those ideas of Madison, Jefferson, Adams, and Franklin, and we will not spread them by building walls, and they will not take hold at the point of a gun, nor can we even protect those ideals in our own nation when we put that nation before them.

Our ideals are our civilization and also its most powerful weapons. The shrinking of the world, its growing interdependence and interconnectedness grants us an overpowering advantage. When given a fair chance those ideals will triumph (and always have) because they represent the best products of Mankind's unique ability to rationally reflect upon his own place in the world. They are not the result of a particular culture or historical heritage, but of the essence of what divides Man from the beasts. And when they spread to another people or another corner of the globe, we have won the most decisive victory possible, because they are now us.

Patriotism to a nation state will not spread our ideals, but it can blind us to our kinship and our shared interests and shared fate with those outside our border. When we choose to cheer for our team rather than our ideals we not only fail to spread those ideals, but we make them unpalatable to anyone on another team. Even the most appealing ideals can be poisonous when packaged in arrogance, pride, and inequity.

There is yet a place for nations and for force of arms. There are threats to be countered, villains to be neutralized. But the state must be an instrument of our ideals, and not the reverse. The state serves our will, and, if our civilization is to endure, we must serve our shared ideals. There is indeed something precious in our civilization, and indeed something perishable. It is not vulnerable to bombs and missiles, but it is vulnerable to our own disloyalty. Terrorism is not a threat to us because it sheds our blood, but because it can cause us to forget who we are and what we hold dear.

Well No Fucking Shit

I have to admit that I thought there was good reason to believe that Iraq had WMD's in 2002 (although I was fairly certain the US had no good evidence to establish that fact). But as far as I was aware there was not a single respectable expert who believed that Saddam was in cahoots with Al Qaeda. That line of BS was constructed from whole cloth. But now we have a CIA report to tell us what we already should have known. Surprise, surprise, Saddam and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi were not bosom buddies. At what point does this entire house of cards simply collapse?

And in other news, a US military officer reports that Anbar province has been lost. Col. Pete Devlin came to the unremarkable conclusion that the conflict is fundamentally political, and on the political front we have been soundly outflanked. The same story also reports that Afghanistan is spinning out of control, and that a WaPo column notes that Islamic extremists are running strategic circles around the West. At this point our failure and our futility could hardly be made more complete. I can only wonder what, if anything, the United States had learned from all of this...

Pakistan Waves the White Flag

I just wanted to put a link up here after discussing this topic with V over the weekend. Pakistan signs peace deal with pro-Taliban militants. Some choice excerpts:

In a move that some say appears 'a total capitulation' to pro-Taliban forces, Pakistan signed a peace deal with tribal leaders in the North Waziristan region of Pakistan Tuesday, and is withdrawing military forces in exchange for promises that militant tribal groups there will not engage in terrorist activities.
...

The New York Times reports that the deal "is widely viewed as a face-saving retreat for the Pakistani Army, which has taken a heavy battering at the hands of the mountain tribesmen and militants, who are allied with the Taliban and Al Qaeda."
...

Although Mr. bin Laden is thought to be in the area, Pakistani officials have given mixed signals as to whether he would still be considered a target by government forces. In his blog for ABC News, Brian Ross reports that Pakistani Major General Shaukat Sultan said in an interview that bin Laden "would not be taken into custody, as long as [he] is being like a peaceful citizen."

Unbelievable, isn't it?

Security Narratives: Fallows to the Rescue

I went on vacation last week, and when I arrived at the airport I (as has become an air travel ritual for me) bought the latest issue of the Atlantic. As we here and liberals elsewhere struggle to find an answer to the neocon security narrative, it seems James Fallows has already come up with the solution. The article, Declaring Victory, is subscriber only, so I'll summarize it here (but you can read Fallows's post-London arrests addendum online). I apologize in advance for the length of this, but it is a blockbuster of an article and I want to do it justice.

Fallows argues that the war on global terror networks is over. Al Qaeda, as a functional organization, has been destroyed. The threat of terrorism has not ended (and might never end), but the threat from a cohesive international organization with operational capacity has passed. What we face now, those inspired by the movement, is a fundamentally different challenge that requires a different approach. We won. So let us celebrate our victory, publicize the thoroughness of the destruction of Al Qaeda, and open a new chapter in our approach to security.

Fallows refers several times to a quote from David Kilcullen, a counter-insurgency expert first for the Australian army, then the Pentagon, and now the State Department:

Does Al Qaeda still constitute an 'existential' threat? I think it does but not for the obvious reasons. ... It is not the people Al Qaeda might kill that is the threat. Our reaction is what can cause the damage. It's Al Qaeda plus our response that creates the existential danger.

So, how did we win? After the US action in Afghanistan Al Qaeda's training camps were dismantled, and their operatives were arrested, detained, and killed by the thousands, including some of top leadership circle. Moreover effective intelligence work by the US monitoring Al Qaeda's communications, travel, and finances has largely closed down the organization's operational capacity. Fallows quotes former DHS official Seth Stodder: "Their command structure is gone, their Afghan sanctuary is gone, their ability to move around and hold meetings is gone, their financial and communications networks have been hit hard." Kilcullen concludes "The Al Qaeda that existed in 2001 simply no longer exists. In 2001 it was a relatively centralized organization, with a planning hub, a propaganda hub, a leadership team, all within a narrow geographic area. All that is gone, because we destroyed it."

With Al Qaeda gone what we have seen instead are attacks by self-starter groups, generally inspired to some degree by Bin Laden and Al Qaeda. But Fallows argues that lacking Al Qaeda's organizational abilities the US is unlikely to face another 9/11-scale attack. This is generally not due to DHS and our increased security focus, which Fallows criticizes (in part on the same principle I raised in this post), but rather due to the structural strengths of American society. Arab and Muslim immigrants to the US assimilate far more effectively and thoroughly than in Europe. While ghettoized European Arabs riot and protest, American Arabs have higher than average incomes, education levels, and business-ownership rates than the American population as a whole. If the primary source of terrorism in the post-Al Qaeda era is indigenous, disaffected Muslims and Arabs, the US can count itself relatively secure. And it is not our paranoia that will protect us--quite the opposite, it is our open and welcoming culture that will provide our security. This, of course, means that we must strive to preserve our openess and welcoming atmosphere, which will necessitate a 180-degree reversal of our current approach to security. We cannot afford to alienate our Arab population through policies like racial profiling. What made sense in a time of organized international terror networks does not make sense now.

Finally, Fallows argues that while the US may have inflamed Muslim opinion against itself, so has Al Qaeda turned off the Muslim public towards them. Even as anti-American sentiment has risen in the Middle East, there has been no corresponding rise in opinion towards Al Qaeda's ideal of Islam. Attacks on Arab civilians by Al Qaeda in Iraq and Jordan soured many Arabs on Al Qaeda. Fallows quotes Shibley Telhami of the University of Maryland: "What we see in the polls is that many people would like Bin Laden and Zarqawi to hurt America. But they do not want Bin Laden to rule their children."

So if Al Qaeda is no longer a threat, what does that mean for our security strategy? First it means (not surprisingly) that Iraq is a complete disaster. Bin Laden no longer has the ability to do real damage to the United States, but, Fallows argues, drawing us into a war in Asia that we couldn't win was central to his strategy (although Bin Laden thought the war would be in Afghanistan rather than Iraq). Bin Laden's plan was to do to the Americans what the mujahideen did to the Soviets. In that respect, even in obscurity he continues to hurt us. We're operating according to his playbook. His plan was to engage us in a war where primitive weapons could destroy our domestic morale, economic strength, military reputation, and moral leadership, and Iraq is accomplishing all of these goals. 9/11 was, in the words of one security analyst, "superpower baiting", and we took the bait.

Fallows does not provide any easy answers on Iraq, but he does argue for a broad-reaching rethinking of security. The wartime approach must go. The state of fear created by the metaphor of global war disserves our security interests in every possible respect. As we've seen time and again, overreaction is the fuel on which terrorists feed. But a wartime approach condones and even promotes overreaction. Additionally it frames our options. In a time of war, diplomacy and soft power are always lower priorities. Wartime creates polarization, and, as we saw in Lebanon, desensitizes the policy-making apparatus to the specific relevant details of the diverse groups who oppose us.

Our mission, according to Fallows, is now comprised of three parts: domestic protection, continued pursuit of the remnants of Al Qaeda, and an "all-fronts diplomatic campaign". On the last point, Fallows quotes Dwight Eisenhower's 1958 State of the Union: "The only answer to a regime that wages total cold war is to wage total peace. This means bringing to bear every asset of our personal and national lives upon the task of building the conditions in which security and peace can grow." The soft power resources at our disposal today, Fallows argues, are far greated than we possessed in 1958. We are more ethnically diverse, wealthier, endowed with stronger universities, charities, and NGO's, and our leading companies are integrated into economies around the globe.

Fallows closes with a hypothetical address to the nation:

My fellow Americans, we have achieved something almost no one thought possible five years ago. The nation did not suffer the quick follow-up attacks so many people feared and expected. Our troops found the people who were responsible for the worst attack ever on our soil. We killed many, we captured more, and we placed their leaders in a position where they could not direct the next despicable attack on our people -- and where the conscience of the world's people, of whatever faith, has turned against them for their barbarism. They have been a shame to their own great faith, and ot all other historic standards of decency.

Achieving this victory does not mean the end of threats. Life is never free of dangers. I wish I could tell you that no American will ever again be killed or wounded by a terrorist -- and that no other person on this earth will be either. But I cannot say that, and you could not believe me if I did. Life brings risk -- especially life in an open society, like the one that people of this land have sacrificed for centuries to create.

We have achieved a great victory, and for that we can give thanks -- above all to our troops. We will be at our best if we do not let fear paralyze or obsess us. We will be at our best if we instead optimistically and enthusiastically begin the next chapter in our nation's growth. We will deal with the struggles of our time. These include coping with terrorism, but also recognizing the huge shifts in power and resulting possibilities in Asia, in Latin America, in many other parts of the world. We will recognize the challenges of including the people left behind in the process of global development -- people in the Middle East, in Africa, even in developed countries like our own. The world's scientists have never before had so much to offer, so fast -- and humanity has never needed their discoveries more than we do now, to preserve the environment, ot develop new sources of energy, to improve the quality of people's lives in every corner of the globe, to contain the threats that modern weaponry can put in the hands of individuals or small groups.

The great organizing challenge of our time includes coping with the threat of bombings and with the political extremism that lies behind it. That is one part of this era's duty. But it is not the entirety. History will judge us on our ability to deal with the full range of this era's challenges -- and opportunities. With quiet pride we recognize the victory we have won. And with the determination that has marked us through our nation's history, we continue the pursuit of our American mission, undeterred by the perils that we will face.

Crippled Cell Phones

Here is an absolutely fascinating post I found on the UofC Law Faculty Blog by Professor Randy Picker regarding a new phone that Nokia is introducing that has integrated WiFi/VoIP capability. How awesome would it be to have a phone that can transition seamlessly between the CMRS (Commerical Mobile Retail Services, or cell phone) network and the Internet? Problem is, Nokia is disabling that feature in the US market (or is simply not including it in the phone at all--not clear how Nokia is going to roll this out), presumably because cell phone companies are concerned about the built-in competition it would engender.

Professor Picker asks why the European companies do not have the same concerns about the built-in competition. I would imagine the answer is that, if the companies were left as unregulated as companies in the US, the same thing would happen there.

I wonder whether market discipline will fix this problem. Usually, companies can come up with some bogus paternalistic reason why they have to restrict product choice (like "we are concerned for consumer safety" or "quality would suffer"), but here there is simply no good explanation. Perhaps cell phone companies will raise network security issues or something, but that would be silly.

Anyway, check out the blog post. And the comments are also worth the read.

The Last Word on Lebanon

Gregory Djerejian at The Belgravia Dispatch has offered some of the best Lebanon commentary since the conflict started (I quoted one of his posts at the top of the month). Last week he wrote the definitive summary of the conflict. A teaser:

First, let me stress that no comprehensive, lasting settlement to the Arab-Israeli conflict can be achieved by force of arms. So while Israel certainly has a right to self-defense, it should not labor under the misconception that it can eradicate or totally defang or otherwise defeat her foes militarily in some maximal fashion. This is simply not possible, short of a series of nuclear holocausts, perhaps, and so it was surprising to see so many rabid commentators, both here and in Israel, chanting on about Israel not having the will to win, to win totally, that is. This is claptrap, chimerical, absurd—although it appears to provide varied commentators here in New York City and down in Washington with a frisson of macho-thrill—that is, before they abscond back to their think-tank cubicles feeling manlier about having called for a good, old-fashioned bombs-away Armageddon in the Holy Land.

Let’s be clear. Beating Hezbollah ultimately must rely more on what might be described as counter-insurgency tactics, not some Dresden redux. To beat back Hezbollah one must moderate the 40% of Lebanese who are Shi’a, by over time having them pledge their primary allegiance to a strong central government, one that is sharing the economic fruits of Lebanon’s revival with all ethnic groups, so as to ultimately render the social welfare arm of Hezbollah largely irrelevant. Given this, it is manifestly clear that Israel’s reaction to Hezbollah’s provocation should have always been limited to targets south of the Litani River (save the very exceptional target to the north of truly imperative strategic value). This is so that the greatest pain would have been inflicted solely on the perpetrators of the rocket attacks and kidnapping themselves, rather than Lebanon writ large.

This piece is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand the conflict and what must be done to effectively address the problem of Hezbollah in Lebanon. Is it too much to ask that we have someone like Djerejian running our State Department or the National Security Council? We need grown-ups in DC instead of kids on Big Wheels (Suskind quoting a "senior White House official").

Finally Some Pushback on Earmarks

It's nice to see some happy news for a change. It is particularly nice to see this issue cross partisan lines. It will take a strong bipartisan coalition to make a real difference on the budget. On the other hand, the partisan aspects of the issue are are noteworthy and should be exploited to the fullest in the midterm elections. It's pretty clear from statistics like this from the story:

When Republicans took over the House in 1995, there were five earmarks in the Labor, Health and Human Services bill, amounting to $2.4 million. By FY 2005, the number of earmarks attached to this bill had soared to 3,014 or $1.18 billion.

If Democrats can use this stuff to their advantage it might light a fire under the fiscal conservatives remaining in the Republican party.

Foreign Policy Amateurs

It stuns me that there are people who think Condi Rice is a competent diplomat. Particularly when I see things like this line in a Jerusalem Post story on the conflict in Palestine:

Abbas's aides said he decided to travel to the Gaza Strip after receiving warnings from Israel and the US that he must resolve the case of Shalit as soon as possible or face more sanctions and military operations. According to one aide, Abbas even turned down a request from Washington to dismiss the Hamas government and to reinstall his Fatah party.

The only expertise of our current State Department appears to be in the field of making bad situations worse. Do they honestly expect a political moderate to take on Hamas at a time when Israel is killing Palestinians in droves and has locked up Palestine's democratically elected government? Is this what they view as an opportune time to have their closest ally in Palestine stick his neck out? The JPost story goes on to describe how the Israeli campaign in Palestine, combined with their apparent defeat in Lebanon, has boosted Hamas' standing and forced Abbas to politically realign himself nearer to Hamas. After months of Hamas desperately trying to get Fatah to join a unity government with them in order to create political legitimacy for their government, now Fatah appears to be pushing for a unity government and Hamas is playing coy, not sure that they want to share the limelight. Well done folks, well done.

More On Security Narratives

First a little housekeeping. As I'm sure you've noticed, the blog looks a little different. I've had several requests for a newer look or more readable fonts, so I thought it was about time for a makeover. Henry requested dark fonts on light background, which I didn't do simply because I liked the look of this template. I certainly could go to that format if it is preferred, let me know what you think. Also I modified this template to widen the text space because it seemed awfully narrow and necessitated a lot of scrolling down to read anything. I, however, have a widescreen laptop, so I'm not sure if this will cause problems on standard monitors. Please let me know if any of you are forced to have a side-scroll bar and I can narrow it back down a bit.

On to the topic. Henry and Veritas both had excellent replies to my initial post on this, so I'd like to comment on those, and on the Sunstein blog post V mentioned.

Henry's comments reflected his usual deep pessimism towards the ability of the public to maturely deal with difficult topics combined with a remarkable optimism over the ability to essentially reprogram the public through a more enlightened educational regime. I share much of his skepticism on the former issue, but, while I am guardedly optimistic on the effect of his planned educational makeover, I am also highly pessimistic over the prospects for the implementation of such a regime. As such, I must ask what more pragmatic near-term steps might be available to us. Henry's forecast in that case is fairly bleak, and I don't think he's wrong.

In recognizing the contemporary political strength of the neocon approach, as we both do, we are propelled into the world of paternalism. This is a dangerous place to be, as Henry also acknowledges. It is relatively easy to see when our government is being stupid (particularly when it is monumentally so), but it is nonetheless difficult for an individual or group to justify appointing itself as the overseer of the public good, to maintain its power through deception or manipulation, to exercise it for the good of all. That sounds a lot like tyranny to me. But if tyranny wins elections, what then for democracy?

The upside is I think good narratives sell. We should all recognize by now the immense power of a good story. While it is unfortunate that it doesn't appear to make a big difference whether the story is true, or indeed even coherent, there is no reason why it couldn't be coherent and true. So I think the duty of a committed democrat (small d) in this era is to find ways couch truth and wise policy into a convincing narrative.

The obvious question then is to what degree complexity inherent in truth and good policy can be packaged in a narrative, and, failing that, to what extent it can be boiled away for the sake of storytelling while maintaining fidelity to a democratic ideal. Is it enough to believe in the big picture from which you've constructed your simple myth? Is it possible to avoid the pitfalls of paternalism while telling the public less than the full (tedious) story?

Then, of course, there is still the difficulty of V's comments on Sunstein's mortality salience. While I imagine the issue encompasses a broad sweep of irrationalities of which MS is only a subset, it's a good enough proxy for this discussion. This is, sadly, where the neocons truly shine. Not only have they recognized and embraced the need for paternalism to facilitate the implementation of complex policy, and the need for a simple narrative to sell their paternalism, they have crafted a narrative that appeals to deep emotional needs and responses within the electorate. They take our irrationalities and amplify them back to us. They only needed a violent conflict to tap those emotions and have now created one that will last decades.

As I mentioned in my initial post I am increasingly skeptical about all of this. V asked me in a recent conversation whether I believe we will see an American city nuked in our lifetimes, something he believes (correct me if I'm wrong) will happen. I replied that it is still avoidable. I don't think it will happen in the immediate future, nor do I think events have spun so far out of control that they cannot be reconciled before it's too late. But without any doubt the clock is ticking. And it will take a complete repudiation of everything the neocons have done and everything they believe to avoid a catastrophic global conflict. As much as people are growing frustrated with them, I'm not sure I see that happening. I doubt that we have time to just let things sort themselves out. These are difficult questions and difficult issues, but we need answers sooner rather than later. This country is in dire need leadership. No doubt there are great leaders here, it is only unfortunate that our political system does such a poor job of selecting for them...

The Voight-Kampff Test in Politics

Brilliant!

Constructing a Salable Security Narrative

Israeli activist and negotiator Daniel Levy has an article in Ha'aretz wondering whether and how Israel can extract itself from a "pro-Israel" US foreign policy that appears fixed on using Israel to fight its proxy wars. The neocon foreign policy, he argues, has inflamed opinion against Israel even as it has eliminated any ability for the US to buffer Israel from hostility. As Levy notes:

An America that seeks to reshape the region through an unsophisticated mixture of bombs and ballots, devoid of local contextual understanding, alliance-building or redressing of grievances, ultimately undermines both itself and Israel. The sight this week of Secretary of State Rice homeward bound, unable to touch down in any Arab capital, should have a sobering effect in Washington and Jerusalem.

It should, but will it?

In the end Levy struggles with the same thing I struggle with, and that a post-Lieberman Democratic party is struggling with: how do you create an alternative narrative where peace and security are achieved with negotiations and painstaking diplomacy rather than bombs and missiles? As Levy notes, the neocon vision glosses over the complexities of local politics, the weighty and difficult to deal with matters of context. The neocon narrative is simple, pristine, and, above all, masculine. Like a good Bruckheimer protaganist, the neocon philosophy brooks no bullshit. It kicks ass and takes names. This, as Ron Suskind expertly points out in his talks and writing, is how the Bush political machine sells. The constituency of people tired of the overwhelming complexity of the modern world is vast, and furiously angry. Ultimately, however, policies born of oversimplification are doomed to disaster. Time enough has passed on the neocon experiment for that to begin to show, although the public has not yet begun to grasp the immensity of this disaster. The resulting dissatisfaction may be enough to turn the tide to a small degree, as the Connecticut primary showed. By a very slim margin.

As many Republican partisans have argued (and I think they're right), rejectionism is not enough to build a political movement. There must be an alternative narrative. But how do you sell complexity in a political system built around 10-second soundbites? How do you get a time-starved public with quick-hit media and short attention spans to engage in the labyrinthine terrain of Lebanese politics? I think a lot about this lately, and as yet I am unconvinced that it is possible. Hopefully there is someone out there in the wide world of politics who can prove me wrong.