Maybe you guys have used google earth before. If you have'nt, go here and download it immediately. If you have, why didn't you tell me about it? This is frakking amazing.
I'll describe it as if you were unaware of its glory. It blends a 3-d globe with satellite images, and google place data to form a seemless explorable planet. Its like having one of those godlike CIA systems from the movies (except you can't keep enhancing any image indefinitely, unfortunately). I will never be lost again. Have you ever been baffled by obscure geographical refences in adventure novels? Not anymore. You'll know exactly what block they're on, and what the roof of the restaurant they're eating at looks like. Joe & Ceci, you live at 38° 2'51.29"N x 78°30'41.49"W and and an altitude of 564 ft (and your apartment is 0.5 arcseconds long from front to back). I could have just searched for your address, but I actually found you by hand, cruising around Charlottesville in my satellite (since I did'nt know your address off hand and this was way more fun anyhow). I'll let you guys explore it for yourselves. If you're not impressed you can go to hell.
Sunday, March 25, 2007
The Commanding Heights
I watched The Commanding Heights (TCH) earlier this week and I figured that, per Joe's request, I would post a comment. It was great. I was actually teary eyed more than once while watching it. I don't suspect that anyone would be too surprised by my evaluation. It did support many my preexisting beliefs. I found the perspective on post-communist Russia to be particularly interesting and informative.
I think we could use a lot more of this sort of media. Although TCH portrays a world in which the ideas of liberal economics have triumphed, I feel that that triumph is more practical than political. That is, I believe that many governments were forced into accepting more market oriented policies because command economies had been such a debacle. But I'm not so sure that liberal economics has gained any sort of ascendancy amongst the minds of the ordinary people of the world.
I fear that should the economic winds change, people are as ready as they have ever been to embrace socialistic policies. Not to put too fine a point on it, TCH paints a picture of a grand cycle going from the economically liberal beginning of the twentieth century, through an period of government dominance, and back to the modern era of world markets, and I suspect we might well repeat the same errors in the coming century that we did in the last. This would, of course, be tragic.
Really, as an American on the ground, do you see the weight of public opinion as being in favor of free market policies? In particular, amongst the free market sentiment that you do see, is it there for the right reasons? It seems to me that socialism is still far stronger than liberalism in terms of underlying public support. It is simply a far more intuitive system. Though I may sound like some sort of conservative crank, I think that we have to acknowledge that the overwhelming majority of educators and educational institutions in the U.S. still guide students toward a preference for socialism and planning over markets and individual freedom. We must simply face the fact that organization and government intervention are the products of genuine popular movements, and that laissez faire economics has probably never had widespread support.
Just look at the labor and (largely equivalent) anti-globalization movements portrayed in TCH. Do we, at any time in history see any similar movements in favor of liberalism? No, not really. I guess the American Revolution is about as close as you get. Socialism just makes for way better slogans. People want to hear that their problems are caused by the greed and evil of the rich and powerful, not that scarcity is an inevitable phenomenon and that economic limitations hold with the force of natural law. I have argued before that the drive towards communism is likely maintained by the same forces that first inspired worship of the Gods. As human beings we have a built-in tendency to interpret events in terms of purposeful action. This facility is essential to our functioning as members of complex human societies. But it also causes us to anthropomorphize and personify natural forces. Because the natural forces of scarcity manifest themselves through the market, it makes perfect sense that we blame our problems on the human faces of corporate leaders and government officials. Though such scapegoating is satisfying, it is dangerously counterproductive. We have to recognize that when oil prices, for instance, become unpleasantly high, it is not because oil producers are greedy, it is because the relationship between supply and demand has changed. We can try to deny this fact by imposing government controls, but such a lie hurts no one more than ourselves.
All right, I'll stop jabbering about free markets. If you've watched TCH you probably already have a pretty clear idea of what I'm talking about. But I do still want to comment on instabilities in the modern financial system. This is a very significant aspect of the third part of TCH. These are a very challenging problem. The solution is not at all clear. My opinion is that what we need is, in fact, a greater degree of deregulation. This is totally opposed to what most economists would suggest. But I'll say it nonetheless.
I think that governments go way to far in guaranteeing stability in their banking systems, and that we need to make it much easier for banks to fail. You see, I believe that the operation of central banks brings about a system of risk pooling in which the possibility of failure is aggregated. There is no doubt that it is possible to do away with the risk of individual bank failures by creating a centralized guarantor, but to me it seems equally clear that such a system does not eliminate risk. It merely spreads it. But this spreading means that risk is externalized, so it is entered into far more often. It means that risk goes unrecognized, so it is underpriced. And it means that the realization of risk is quickly contained, so systemic purges of risk are much less frequent. Overall, the result is that the economy ends up containing way more risk than it could have ever supported prior to bank cartelization. In a way this is good. It allows much more lending to take place, and so we have lower interest rates, and hence more development and entrepreneurship. But it is bad in the sense that the economy builds up huge amounts of risk.
Just as the containment of moderately sized forest fires allows the buildup of large amounts of fuel mass, thus increasing the possibility of huge uncontrollable blazes, so the containment of moderately sized failures in the credit system makes much more dangerous failures more likely, if not inevitable. So what I'm saying is that we need to do away with the belief that we can control risk. We need to accept the fact that risk is an inherent result of our inability to foresee the outcomes of economic decisions. Given that recognition, the best solution is to break economies into smaller cells capable of failing individually and thus making failure more common, more recognizable, and more contained.
I think that today there is more unrecognized risk in the world economy than most people could possibly imagine, and that a systemic world economic collapse is more likely than most would like to think. It is in this risk that I see the possibility that the recent trend toward economic liberalization will be undone. If we do see a global economic catastrophe, few will choose to blame it on governments doing too much to safeguard economic stability, and many more will interpret it as a predictable failure of under-regulated markets.
I'm not sure that disaggregation is possible from where we now stand. Risks that have been taken cannot be undone, and disaggregation would almost certainly bring about immediate painful realization of this fact. And even if the central banks of the world were to cast risk back upon subunits of their economies, it would not undo the recent creation of a world derivatives market, which is essentially a privatization of the role of risk aggregation. This market may truly be a market failure: a making of poor decisions that could not be subjected to the strictures of market forces until it had become to big to stop without immeasurable harm being done. But it is too late to do anything about it.
In summary, TCH is very encouraging, and made me feel very warm and fuzzy. But I for one am afraid that the trend that it illustrates might be short lived. I may be wrong. I certainly hope that I am. But if I'm not, the tragedies of the twentieth century could well be revisited in the twenty-first.
I think we could use a lot more of this sort of media. Although TCH portrays a world in which the ideas of liberal economics have triumphed, I feel that that triumph is more practical than political. That is, I believe that many governments were forced into accepting more market oriented policies because command economies had been such a debacle. But I'm not so sure that liberal economics has gained any sort of ascendancy amongst the minds of the ordinary people of the world.
I fear that should the economic winds change, people are as ready as they have ever been to embrace socialistic policies. Not to put too fine a point on it, TCH paints a picture of a grand cycle going from the economically liberal beginning of the twentieth century, through an period of government dominance, and back to the modern era of world markets, and I suspect we might well repeat the same errors in the coming century that we did in the last. This would, of course, be tragic.
Really, as an American on the ground, do you see the weight of public opinion as being in favor of free market policies? In particular, amongst the free market sentiment that you do see, is it there for the right reasons? It seems to me that socialism is still far stronger than liberalism in terms of underlying public support. It is simply a far more intuitive system. Though I may sound like some sort of conservative crank, I think that we have to acknowledge that the overwhelming majority of educators and educational institutions in the U.S. still guide students toward a preference for socialism and planning over markets and individual freedom. We must simply face the fact that organization and government intervention are the products of genuine popular movements, and that laissez faire economics has probably never had widespread support.
Just look at the labor and (largely equivalent) anti-globalization movements portrayed in TCH. Do we, at any time in history see any similar movements in favor of liberalism? No, not really. I guess the American Revolution is about as close as you get. Socialism just makes for way better slogans. People want to hear that their problems are caused by the greed and evil of the rich and powerful, not that scarcity is an inevitable phenomenon and that economic limitations hold with the force of natural law. I have argued before that the drive towards communism is likely maintained by the same forces that first inspired worship of the Gods. As human beings we have a built-in tendency to interpret events in terms of purposeful action. This facility is essential to our functioning as members of complex human societies. But it also causes us to anthropomorphize and personify natural forces. Because the natural forces of scarcity manifest themselves through the market, it makes perfect sense that we blame our problems on the human faces of corporate leaders and government officials. Though such scapegoating is satisfying, it is dangerously counterproductive. We have to recognize that when oil prices, for instance, become unpleasantly high, it is not because oil producers are greedy, it is because the relationship between supply and demand has changed. We can try to deny this fact by imposing government controls, but such a lie hurts no one more than ourselves.
All right, I'll stop jabbering about free markets. If you've watched TCH you probably already have a pretty clear idea of what I'm talking about. But I do still want to comment on instabilities in the modern financial system. This is a very significant aspect of the third part of TCH. These are a very challenging problem. The solution is not at all clear. My opinion is that what we need is, in fact, a greater degree of deregulation. This is totally opposed to what most economists would suggest. But I'll say it nonetheless.
I think that governments go way to far in guaranteeing stability in their banking systems, and that we need to make it much easier for banks to fail. You see, I believe that the operation of central banks brings about a system of risk pooling in which the possibility of failure is aggregated. There is no doubt that it is possible to do away with the risk of individual bank failures by creating a centralized guarantor, but to me it seems equally clear that such a system does not eliminate risk. It merely spreads it. But this spreading means that risk is externalized, so it is entered into far more often. It means that risk goes unrecognized, so it is underpriced. And it means that the realization of risk is quickly contained, so systemic purges of risk are much less frequent. Overall, the result is that the economy ends up containing way more risk than it could have ever supported prior to bank cartelization. In a way this is good. It allows much more lending to take place, and so we have lower interest rates, and hence more development and entrepreneurship. But it is bad in the sense that the economy builds up huge amounts of risk.
Just as the containment of moderately sized forest fires allows the buildup of large amounts of fuel mass, thus increasing the possibility of huge uncontrollable blazes, so the containment of moderately sized failures in the credit system makes much more dangerous failures more likely, if not inevitable. So what I'm saying is that we need to do away with the belief that we can control risk. We need to accept the fact that risk is an inherent result of our inability to foresee the outcomes of economic decisions. Given that recognition, the best solution is to break economies into smaller cells capable of failing individually and thus making failure more common, more recognizable, and more contained.
I think that today there is more unrecognized risk in the world economy than most people could possibly imagine, and that a systemic world economic collapse is more likely than most would like to think. It is in this risk that I see the possibility that the recent trend toward economic liberalization will be undone. If we do see a global economic catastrophe, few will choose to blame it on governments doing too much to safeguard economic stability, and many more will interpret it as a predictable failure of under-regulated markets.
I'm not sure that disaggregation is possible from where we now stand. Risks that have been taken cannot be undone, and disaggregation would almost certainly bring about immediate painful realization of this fact. And even if the central banks of the world were to cast risk back upon subunits of their economies, it would not undo the recent creation of a world derivatives market, which is essentially a privatization of the role of risk aggregation. This market may truly be a market failure: a making of poor decisions that could not be subjected to the strictures of market forces until it had become to big to stop without immeasurable harm being done. But it is too late to do anything about it.
In summary, TCH is very encouraging, and made me feel very warm and fuzzy. But I for one am afraid that the trend that it illustrates might be short lived. I may be wrong. I certainly hope that I am. But if I'm not, the tragedies of the twentieth century could well be revisited in the twenty-first.
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
Obama's Track Record
Thanks to Andrew Sullivan for digging up this slightly dated (October of last year) account of how Barack Obama kept himself busy during his two years in the Senate. Keep it in mind while you're being battered by the talking point about Obama having not done anything. The basic summary:
...I do follow legislation, at least on some issues, and I have been surprised by how often Senator Obama turns up, sponsoring or co-sponsoring really good legislation on some topic that isn't wildly sexy, but does matter. His bills tend to have the following features: they are good and thoughtful bills that try to solve real problems; they are in general not terribly flashy; and they tend to focus on achieving solutions acceptable to all concerned, not by compromising on principle, but by genuinely trying to craft a solution that everyone can get behind.Also, a follow-up on prosecutorgate, Lincoln Caplan has an informative column on Slate on the proper role for politics in the justice system. He handily rebuts the oft-repeated canard about Clinton replacing the US attorneys when he took over by noting that in the past 25 years the number of US attorneys forced out mid-term for reasons other than misconduct is somewhere between two and five.
Thursday, March 15, 2007
Mistakes Were (Not) Made
I've been holding off posting on prosecutorgate so far mostly because I've been waiting with bated breath for it to explode. This is the big one. After a nearly endless series of blunders, scams, and scandals in the Bush administration, some big, some small, this is the one that I think will go down in the history books as the defining Bush administration scandal. And I've been too intently observing it unfold to say anything. I've finally been moved, however, to respond to the line of defense being offered by Gonzalez and the White House. That line: mistakes have been made. Namely, the DOJ was not fully honest about why the prosecutors were fired. End of story. They hope, by acknowledging and focusing on this particular aspect of the problem, to obscure what lies behind it. On the Newshour last night, the Republican operative (I don't recall who it was) was quite exercised about how awful it was that the DOJ misled the Senate on this count. He was also adamant that nothing else had been done wrong and that there was nothing actually improper about the firings themselves. Bush and Gonzalez have made similar remarks.
Not so fast. The bullshit about firing these prosecutors for performance issues is the least of the problem. Even the firings themselves are not the whole of the problem. This scandal is about the politicization of enforcement of justice in the US. So far Scott Horton at Balkinization has said it best:
Not so fast. The bullshit about firing these prosecutors for performance issues is the least of the problem. Even the firings themselves are not the whole of the problem. This scandal is about the politicization of enforcement of justice in the US. So far Scott Horton at Balkinization has said it best:
What is at stake here? The issue is enormous. It is whether the criminal justice system will be turned into a partisan political tool. Bush's Administration is already widely called a "hackocracy" because of his tendency to fill slots with unqualified and incompetent partisan hacks. But the crisis at DOJ goes far beyond that. Even civil service positions - which have been protected from this sort of partisan corruption since the Hatch Act of 1939 - are being politicized. The Boston Globe, for instance, has closely documented the process of weeding out qualified career attorneys from the Civil Rights Division at DOJ and their replacement with political retainers - and the same process has continued throughout the Department. But at the heart of the DOJ scandal lies political intrusion into the exercise of prosecutorial discretion - one of the areas which a democratic society most needs to shield from partisan intrusion. There is now clear evidence that Gonzales and Bush directed political prosecutions and attempted to deflect prosecutions of Republicans for political purposes. A state that criminalizes political adversaries and that cloaks the criminal conduct of its retainers is by definition a tyranny.A study by Donald Shields and John Cragan (not yet released) shows that under Bush seven times more Democratic officials have been investigated by the DOJ than Republican officials. Match that up with the Boston Globe findings. Combine it with all of the DOJ/White House emails released by the Senate showing the overtly political nature of the firing decisions, and how they tied into politicized prosecutions. There were no mistakes made. Nothing accidental occurred here. These people knew exactly what they were doing. They created one law for Democrats and another for Republicans. The Bush administration has made a concerted effort to reduce our nation to a banana republic. Gonzalez will have to go, but this scandal ought not end there. This administration and its DOJ is rotten to the core. For the sake of our nation and our system of government the Democratic Congress needs to climb onto this scandal and ride it as far as it can take them. This sort of misconduct needs to be punished to the fullest extent possible.
Monday, March 12, 2007
From the Wacky World of Legal Compensation
Dahlia Lithwick on Supreme Court clerkship signing bonuses. Sure they're silly, what about big firm pay scales isn't?
Saturday, February 24, 2007
Bushbabies, Yum!!
I was also browsing the foreign policy blog, I find this more "politically" interesting. To see pictures of bushbabies, click here, now I am off cooking some dinner
Commanding Heights
I wanted to point out a fantastic documentary we've been watching called Commanding Heights: the Battle for the World Economy. It's a 3-part, 6 hour show created by PBS in 2002 based on a book of the same title by Daniel Yergin and Joseph Stanislaw. You can actually watch the entire thing from that web page (although we netflixed it). It is tremendously educational about the economics of the second half of the 20th century (the entire first episode is devoted to the competition between the ideas of John Maynard Keynes and Friedrich von Hayek). It pulled together a lot of previously unconnected pieces for me. I recommend it highly, and I would be very curious to hear Henry's thoughts about it.
Also, unrelated, I believe this might be the greatest news report of all time (and it happened in Oconomowoc).
Also, unrelated, I believe this might be the greatest news report of all time (and it happened in Oconomowoc).
Friday, February 23, 2007
It's Not the Culture, Stupid
The Foreign Policy Magazine blog (a good blog to keep tabs on, by the way) noted a theme in their recent coverage invoking Samuel Huntington's clash of civilizations idea. Part of it, an essay by David Frum, is subscriber only (and I've never found Frum to be much worth reading anyway), but this column about Iraq by W. Patrick Lang is interesting. The conflict in Iraq is likely to drag out in some form or another for a very long time, but in a general sense the post-mortem is already well underway. No doubt we will see a great deal of debate over the narrative to take away from Iraq and what it means for our future.
Lang's take is that we underestimated the cultural differences between Americans and Iraqis. He and Frum (as excerpted in the blog post) believe that the neocons were fundamentally wrong in thinking that most people are basically like us. Lang points to the failure of democracy in Iraq, where voters cast their ballots based on tribe or sect rather than political policies. He notes that Nuri al-Maliki is not interested in serving the nation's best interests, but in promoting the interests of Shiite Arabs.
Lang's criticisms of the naiveté of neocon policymakers is on target, but I think his underlying analysis is off. Moreover, I think the idea that there are deep and permanent (or semi-permanent) cultural rifts between Western culture and the rest of the world is a dangerous one.
Maybe Tom Friedman does, as Lang charges, take the flatness of the world too far, but I think Friedman is more right than he is wrong. I look at my experience at Motorola where on a given day I would be working (on site or remotely) with people from China, India, Australia, Japan, Pakistan, Singapore, Taiwan, Israel, Russia, and Spain. Not many Arabs there, granted, but we had a tremendous diversity of cultures and no conflicts that I was ever aware of. People interacted with one another with virtually no regard for national, cultural, religious, or ethnic backgrounds.
The difference between that situation and Iraq is not, I think that the cultures are any less different, but that these were people in stable political and economic situations. It's not the culture that we failed to understand in Iraq, but the basic situation on the ground. Lang is right to assert that cultural identity now lies at the bottom of the conflict in Iraq, but the point is not that there is something characteristic about the Shiite, Kurd or Sunni cultures that is the problem, but that people are choosing tribal and sectarian identities over national identities (or Friedman's internationalist identity). When that happens the results appear to be the same whether the particular cultural identity is Sunni or Shiite or Serbian or Croatian or Pashtun or Tajik or Hutu or Tutsi. Looking specifically at the cultures is digging one level too deep -- the question is how do we keep people from going tribal in the first place?
What we failed to recognize in Iraq (despite strong warnings from many quarters) was the basic lack of national cohesion and the incredibly polarizing effect of US occupation (particularly without a UN mandate and a truly international coalition). The only particular significance of the culture in Iraq was the highly antagonistic approach of the US towards Arab and Muslim populations since 9/11. The BBC poll cited in the FP Mag blog post shows a broad international agreement that the differences between Islam and the West are political rather than cultural (and this Zogby/Gallup poll also highlights the political factors driving ever-sinking Arab opinions of the US). I've also pointed out on several occasions analysis to the effect that the US is at considerably less risk of home-grown terrorism (as compared to European nations) because Arabs integrate far more effectively here than in Europe. This should also illustrate that there is no inherent or fundamental incompatibility between Western and Arab culture.
I agree with Lang that we would benefit from learning more about foreign cultures. Lack of cultural understanding has been a problem in Iraq, particularly with respect to the winning of hearts and minds and understanding how Iraqis view American actions and policies. But I think we stand to make far greater gains by understanding foreign political and social situations. There's no reason why we can't do both, but if the take-away from Iraq is to throw up our hands and declare Islamic culture completely incompatible with Western government, economics, and values we'll be making a very serious mistake.
Lang's take is that we underestimated the cultural differences between Americans and Iraqis. He and Frum (as excerpted in the blog post) believe that the neocons were fundamentally wrong in thinking that most people are basically like us. Lang points to the failure of democracy in Iraq, where voters cast their ballots based on tribe or sect rather than political policies. He notes that Nuri al-Maliki is not interested in serving the nation's best interests, but in promoting the interests of Shiite Arabs.
Lang's criticisms of the naiveté of neocon policymakers is on target, but I think his underlying analysis is off. Moreover, I think the idea that there are deep and permanent (or semi-permanent) cultural rifts between Western culture and the rest of the world is a dangerous one.
Maybe Tom Friedman does, as Lang charges, take the flatness of the world too far, but I think Friedman is more right than he is wrong. I look at my experience at Motorola where on a given day I would be working (on site or remotely) with people from China, India, Australia, Japan, Pakistan, Singapore, Taiwan, Israel, Russia, and Spain. Not many Arabs there, granted, but we had a tremendous diversity of cultures and no conflicts that I was ever aware of. People interacted with one another with virtually no regard for national, cultural, religious, or ethnic backgrounds.
The difference between that situation and Iraq is not, I think that the cultures are any less different, but that these were people in stable political and economic situations. It's not the culture that we failed to understand in Iraq, but the basic situation on the ground. Lang is right to assert that cultural identity now lies at the bottom of the conflict in Iraq, but the point is not that there is something characteristic about the Shiite, Kurd or Sunni cultures that is the problem, but that people are choosing tribal and sectarian identities over national identities (or Friedman's internationalist identity). When that happens the results appear to be the same whether the particular cultural identity is Sunni or Shiite or Serbian or Croatian or Pashtun or Tajik or Hutu or Tutsi. Looking specifically at the cultures is digging one level too deep -- the question is how do we keep people from going tribal in the first place?
What we failed to recognize in Iraq (despite strong warnings from many quarters) was the basic lack of national cohesion and the incredibly polarizing effect of US occupation (particularly without a UN mandate and a truly international coalition). The only particular significance of the culture in Iraq was the highly antagonistic approach of the US towards Arab and Muslim populations since 9/11. The BBC poll cited in the FP Mag blog post shows a broad international agreement that the differences between Islam and the West are political rather than cultural (and this Zogby/Gallup poll also highlights the political factors driving ever-sinking Arab opinions of the US). I've also pointed out on several occasions analysis to the effect that the US is at considerably less risk of home-grown terrorism (as compared to European nations) because Arabs integrate far more effectively here than in Europe. This should also illustrate that there is no inherent or fundamental incompatibility between Western and Arab culture.
I agree with Lang that we would benefit from learning more about foreign cultures. Lack of cultural understanding has been a problem in Iraq, particularly with respect to the winning of hearts and minds and understanding how Iraqis view American actions and policies. But I think we stand to make far greater gains by understanding foreign political and social situations. There's no reason why we can't do both, but if the take-away from Iraq is to throw up our hands and declare Islamic culture completely incompatible with Western government, economics, and values we'll be making a very serious mistake.
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
Is Experience the New Electability?
In 2004 John Kerry became the Democratic nominee because of a consensus that he was electable. In other words nobody voted for him because they wanted to vote him, they voted for him because they thought other people would want to vote for him. Turns out they were wrong. Electability never had any real meaning in substance, although there were certain traits that people assumed defined it: a long political record, national exposure, lots of money, military service, a boring enough personality to stay out of trouble. But the reality is that no one really knew how any of these traits related to a candidate's general election prospects (and we ultimately found that they relate very poorly). Despite the utter lack of a rational basis for the electability theory, however, there was an overpowering consensus among talking heads and political wags that electability existed and had the basic form described above. I found it infuriating at the time, and still do.
A considerable amount of ink has been spilled in the past few weeks on Barack Obama's prospects as a candidate, and I'm concerned that I'm starting to feel a new, and equally unfounded (and equally pervasive), consensus forming on the matter of experience. Take, for example, this Slate column by John Dickerson. Dickerson's experience discussion is focused on Vladimir Putin's provocative remarks at the recent Munich security conference.
(As an aside I'd like to mention how remarkably refreshing it was to see Bob Gates respond to Putin in a responsible and helpful fashion. It's taken six years, but the Bush administration finally found someone who can talk foreign policy without sounding like a petulant child.)
Dickerson compares Obama to John McCain, who in Dickerson's view clearly has the requisite foreign policy experience to be a good candidate. Obama, he suggests, doesn't have the experience to "sit across from blunt and tough leaders like Vladimir Putin". But the fact is very few Americans do have experience dealing with foreign leaders. Some of them have already been president, most of the others were cabinet secretaries (who for whatever reason rarely run for the presidency), and maybe you count a few senators like McCain (and longstanding senators have hardly distinguished themselves as successful presidential candidates). In general the vast majority of presidential candidates have been in the exact same position Obama finds himself today. Why is his experience level being singled out?
Dickerson gives Obama a backhanded compliment saying that at least he has more experience than Bush did in 2000. But rather than compare Obama to the worst foreign policy president in recent memory (maybe ever), why not compare him to some of the better ones. How much foreign policy experience did Bill Clinton have when he took office (or, if you're so inclined, Ronald Reagan)? It wasn't experience that made Clinton successful, it was his intelligence, diligence, compassion, and empathy. He learned about foreign nations, analyzed problems, and was able to connect with foreign leaders and people.
And how has experience helped John McCain? Dickerson's example of McCain's response to Putin shows that at least he has some judgment, but what about Iraq? McCain has been monumentally wrong for the past four years about the biggest American foreign policy blunder in decades. How has his experience helped him there? McCain, maybe more than any other politician I'm aware of, demonstrates the danger of too much experience in Washington. He's been burned too badly and too many times and is simply not the man he was six or eight years ago. His long exposure to the viciousness of national politics has consumed him.
Obama shares all of the traits that made Clinton one of the most internationally popular presidents in US history. He is phenomenally intelligent, broadly educated and well-read, intellectually curious, and intuitively able to connect with audiences and convey important ideas so that they can be understood by everyone. And his mixed national, ethnic, and racial heritage gives him, as Dickerson acknowledges, a leg up on the competition in terms of foreign perception of him, and, by extension, the US.
As Obama gets further into the process and has to formulate more of a foreign policy agenda, I will certainly be open to substantive criticisms of his positions and plans, but can we please not discount him based on this specious conception of the need for foreign policy experience? At this point he looks at least as good as anyone else in the race on foreign policy, maybe better. Let's just wait and see what he has to say before riding him too hard.
A considerable amount of ink has been spilled in the past few weeks on Barack Obama's prospects as a candidate, and I'm concerned that I'm starting to feel a new, and equally unfounded (and equally pervasive), consensus forming on the matter of experience. Take, for example, this Slate column by John Dickerson. Dickerson's experience discussion is focused on Vladimir Putin's provocative remarks at the recent Munich security conference.
(As an aside I'd like to mention how remarkably refreshing it was to see Bob Gates respond to Putin in a responsible and helpful fashion. It's taken six years, but the Bush administration finally found someone who can talk foreign policy without sounding like a petulant child.)
Dickerson compares Obama to John McCain, who in Dickerson's view clearly has the requisite foreign policy experience to be a good candidate. Obama, he suggests, doesn't have the experience to "sit across from blunt and tough leaders like Vladimir Putin". But the fact is very few Americans do have experience dealing with foreign leaders. Some of them have already been president, most of the others were cabinet secretaries (who for whatever reason rarely run for the presidency), and maybe you count a few senators like McCain (and longstanding senators have hardly distinguished themselves as successful presidential candidates). In general the vast majority of presidential candidates have been in the exact same position Obama finds himself today. Why is his experience level being singled out?
Dickerson gives Obama a backhanded compliment saying that at least he has more experience than Bush did in 2000. But rather than compare Obama to the worst foreign policy president in recent memory (maybe ever), why not compare him to some of the better ones. How much foreign policy experience did Bill Clinton have when he took office (or, if you're so inclined, Ronald Reagan)? It wasn't experience that made Clinton successful, it was his intelligence, diligence, compassion, and empathy. He learned about foreign nations, analyzed problems, and was able to connect with foreign leaders and people.
And how has experience helped John McCain? Dickerson's example of McCain's response to Putin shows that at least he has some judgment, but what about Iraq? McCain has been monumentally wrong for the past four years about the biggest American foreign policy blunder in decades. How has his experience helped him there? McCain, maybe more than any other politician I'm aware of, demonstrates the danger of too much experience in Washington. He's been burned too badly and too many times and is simply not the man he was six or eight years ago. His long exposure to the viciousness of national politics has consumed him.
Obama shares all of the traits that made Clinton one of the most internationally popular presidents in US history. He is phenomenally intelligent, broadly educated and well-read, intellectually curious, and intuitively able to connect with audiences and convey important ideas so that they can be understood by everyone. And his mixed national, ethnic, and racial heritage gives him, as Dickerson acknowledges, a leg up on the competition in terms of foreign perception of him, and, by extension, the US.
As Obama gets further into the process and has to formulate more of a foreign policy agenda, I will certainly be open to substantive criticisms of his positions and plans, but can we please not discount him based on this specious conception of the need for foreign policy experience? At this point he looks at least as good as anyone else in the race on foreign policy, maybe better. Let's just wait and see what he has to say before riding him too hard.
Saturday, February 10, 2007
Covering the Important News
This made me laugh. What would we do without cable news channels?
Update: And watch this to see CNN's version of the Harris/Sullivan dialogue. It's the proverbial car wreck you can't stop watching... As one of the comments suggests, replace the word atheist with black or Jew, then imagine how this clip plays.
Update: And watch this to see CNN's version of the Harris/Sullivan dialogue. It's the proverbial car wreck you can't stop watching... As one of the comments suggests, replace the word atheist with black or Jew, then imagine how this clip plays.
A Dialogue On Faith
I've been meaning to point out a wonderful dialogue taking place on faith and atheism between Sam Harris and Andrew Sullivan. It started several weeks ago and is still ongoing. Harris has, I think, done a bang-up job. It's an enjoyable read.
Thursday, February 08, 2007
And Here We Are Again...
So I was recently poking around wikipedia trying to find a quote from the documentary Fog of War, and, on the Fog of War wiki page, I came across a list of 11 lessons that appeared in Bob McNamara's book In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam. These lessons are different from the ones that appeared in the film (that list was actually developed by the filmmaker, Errol Morris, over McNamara's objection). Reading this list I was quite stunned at how accurately and completely they sum up our current disaster. It's eerie. Keep in mind that the book was written in 1996, seven years before we embarked on our Iraq adventure. Here they are:
1. We misjudged then — and we have since — the geopolitical intentions of our adversaries … and we exaggerated the dangers to the United States of their actions.
2. We viewed the people and leaders of South Vietnam in terms of our own experience … We totally misjudged the political forces within the country.
3. We underestimated the power of nationalism to motivate a people to fight and die for their beliefs and values.
4. Our judgments of friend and foe alike reflected our profound ignorance of the history, culture, and politics of the people in the area, and the personalities and habits of their leaders.
5. We failed then — and have since — to recognize the limitations of modern, high-technology military equipment, forces and doctrine…
6. We failed as well to adapt our military tactics to the task of winning the hearts and minds of people from a totally different culture.
7. We failed to draw Congress and the American people into a full and frank discussion and debate of the pros and cons of a large-scale military involvement … before we initiated the action.
8. After the action got under way and unanticipated events forced us off our planned course … we did not fully explain what was happening and why we were doing what we did.
9. We did not recognize that neither our people nor our leaders are omniscient. Our judgment of what is in another people's or country's best interest should be put to the test of open discussion in international forums. We do not have the God-given right to shape every nation in our image or as we choose.
10. We did not hold to the principle that U.S. military action … should be carried out only in conjunction with multinational forces supported fully (and not merely cosmetically) by the international community.
11. We failed to recognize that in international affairs, as in other aspects of life, there may be problems for which there are no immediate solutions … At times, we may have to live with an imperfect, untidy world.
1. We misjudged then — and we have since — the geopolitical intentions of our adversaries … and we exaggerated the dangers to the United States of their actions.
2. We viewed the people and leaders of South Vietnam in terms of our own experience … We totally misjudged the political forces within the country.
3. We underestimated the power of nationalism to motivate a people to fight and die for their beliefs and values.
4. Our judgments of friend and foe alike reflected our profound ignorance of the history, culture, and politics of the people in the area, and the personalities and habits of their leaders.
5. We failed then — and have since — to recognize the limitations of modern, high-technology military equipment, forces and doctrine…
6. We failed as well to adapt our military tactics to the task of winning the hearts and minds of people from a totally different culture.
7. We failed to draw Congress and the American people into a full and frank discussion and debate of the pros and cons of a large-scale military involvement … before we initiated the action.
8. After the action got under way and unanticipated events forced us off our planned course … we did not fully explain what was happening and why we were doing what we did.
9. We did not recognize that neither our people nor our leaders are omniscient. Our judgment of what is in another people's or country's best interest should be put to the test of open discussion in international forums. We do not have the God-given right to shape every nation in our image or as we choose.
10. We did not hold to the principle that U.S. military action … should be carried out only in conjunction with multinational forces supported fully (and not merely cosmetically) by the international community.
11. We failed to recognize that in international affairs, as in other aspects of life, there may be problems for which there are no immediate solutions … At times, we may have to live with an imperfect, untidy world.
Score One for Edwards
After Russ Feingold dropped out of the '08 sweepstakes I was a little bit surprised how quickly liberal bloggers (the Kossacks in particular) hitched themselves to John Edwards's wagon. I didn't care terribly for Edwards in '04, and I'm not that excited about his candidacy this time either. However, Edwards scored points with me when he made waves recently by stating that he would raise taxes to support his universal health care plan. I haven't seen much critical discussion of his plan, and the details I've seen reported are fairly vague. In other words, I don't know if his numbers are realistic or if the plan is a good one. But the mere fact that the man is willing to admit that it will cost money, and that those costs will have to be offset with higher taxes speaks highly to me of Edwards. We've been hearing about health coverage as a major issue for many election cycles at this point, but nothing has been accomplished (nor we have even come close to making progress), because delivering on health care promises will be expensive and painful, and while voters have expressed their desire for health care reform, they've never ratified any willingness to make sacrifices (in terms of taxes or other spending cuts) in order to make it happen. Of course, voters have never had a chance to do so, because politicians (on both sides of the aisle) are content to promise reform while pretending no sacrifice will be necessary. If real progress is to be made, we need to have a serious and frank discussion about what it will cost and how to pay for it. Edwards is the first candidate I've seen who seems to be willing to take part in that discussion. Kudos to him. I'm a long way from jumping on the Edwards bandwagon, but I'm now willing to start taking him seriously.
Friday, February 02, 2007
Israel's Right to Exist
Since Palestinian/Israeli negotiations have been hung up for a couple years over the issue of Hamas refusing to acknowledge Israel's right to exist, international lawyer (and Palestinian advisor) John Whitbeck has written a column what the right to exist means to Palestinians. He points out that Israel has never clearly spelled out its own borders, and Israeli texts show all of Palestine as encompassed within Israel. Moreover, it would be an acknowledgment of the moral justification of the initial expulsion of Palestinians from their homes and for all that has followed since then:
To demand that Palestinians recognize "Israel's right to exist" is to demand that a people who have been treated as subhumans unworthy of basic human rights publicly proclaim that they are subhumans. It would imply Palestinians' acceptance that they deserve what has been done and continues to be done to them. Even 19th-century US governments did not require the surviving native Americans to publicly proclaim the "rightness" of their ethnic cleansing by European colonists as a condition precedent to even discussing what sort of land reservation they might receive. Nor did native Americans have to live under economic blockade and threat of starvation until they shed whatever pride they had left and conceded the point.Forcing Palestinians to make this concession, Whitbeck argues, is a tactic in bad faith and a roadblock to progress to peace negotiations.
Thursday, February 01, 2007
A Sane Iran Policy
Jacob Weisberg (with an assist from Ken Pollack) breaks down the US strategic policy towards Iran. Weisberg notes that our aggressive saber-rattling will have the same effect in Iran as it has had in so many other places around the globe: to entrench the very regime we hoped to unseat.
On the other hand, it is difficult for the US to support human rights and democracy advocates, because a) they tend to say a lot of bad things about us and b) the Bush administration is too toxic for any Iranians to want to be associated with it:
Such belligerence seems unlikely to produce the result we desire for a variety of reasons. For one, our bluster is essentially empty. The United States lacks plausible military options for taking out Iran's nuclear program and dealing with the potential reaction, especially now that we are bogged down in Iraq. It is also proving extremely difficult to get the rest of the world to go along with the kind of comprehensive sanctions that would bite. Meanwhile, America's hostility is supplying Ahmadinejad with an external demon for his propaganda and helping him cover over his domestic failures. This American push for futile sanctions follows a familiar pattern, extending from Cuba to Burma to North Korea to pre-invasion Iraq—places where economic isolation and threats have fueled not regime change but regime stabilization.
On the other hand, it is difficult for the US to support human rights and democracy advocates, because a) they tend to say a lot of bad things about us and b) the Bush administration is too toxic for any Iranians to want to be associated with it:
The president, who has managed to make democracy a dirty word in many parts of the world, may by now retain only the ability to taint liberal heroes with guilt by association. Last summer, Iran's other leading dissident, Akbar Ganji, declined to meet White House officials when visiting Washington, saying—with reference to both Iraq and Iran—that "you cannot bring democracy to a country by attacking it."Weisberg believes that, if the US let him, Mohamed ElBaradei could pour cold water on the situation and maneuver the parties to a negotiating table, where the US could simultaneously make progress on the nuclear weapons issue and undercut Amedinejad domestically. It's worth a shot...
Sunday, January 28, 2007
Kerry and Khatami at Davos
Andrew Sullivan linked approvingly to this blog post ripping into John Kerry for making comments critical of the Bush administration at the World Economic Forum in Davos, in the presence of (gasp!) Mohammad Khatami, former president of Iran. That disturbed me, so I sent him this email:
Mr. Sullivan,
I would be interested to read an explanation for your approving link to Hot Air's blog post ripping John Kerry for his comments at Davos. His comments seemed fairly reasonable; we have consistently burned our diplomatic bridges whether the topic was Iraq, global warming, the International Criminal Court, land mines, nuclear weapons, capital punishment, or torture. And we are facing a crisis of confidence and international isolation. We have been, as Kerry said, diplomatically tone deaf, and it has hurt us badly. I think Kerry is hardly wrong in voicing these concerns. For the most part, they don't seem terribly contrary to comments you yourself have made.
Is the crime merely that he voiced these opinions in the presence of Mohammad Khatami (or "the pig" as Hot Air refers to him)? Should our policy discussion be stifled whenever a Muslim might be listening? Should we imagine that none can see our network news, or read our newspapers or (heaven forbid) your blog? Hot Air suggests that "Khatami's masters" will thrill at these comments critical of the Bush administration. I thought you had disowned the idea that dissent gives aid and comfort to our foes. Isn't frank and open discussion part and parcel of deliberative democracy, even when others are listening? It's not as if they didn't hear all of this from Kerry in 2004 (and having heard it, Iran famously endorsed George W. Bush in the general election -- so much for being thrilled by Kerry's rhetoric).
Furthermore, I'm not certain that vilification of Khatami is terribly useful. Many responsible statesmen have suggested that engaging Iran in a regional dialogue would be to our benefit. Who do we think that dialogue will be with? We may not agree with Khatami across a broad array of issues (and certainly I agree his policies on homosexuality were abhorrent), but is Ahmadinejad better? Is Khamenei? Within the spectrum of politics in Iran, we might not do much better than Khatami. He at least pushed in directions we favored on democracy, on foreign relations, on the rule of law. If we wait to find someone who agrees with us on everything before even engaging in dialogue, then we'll wait (as the Bush administration has) for something that will never happen. Iran is not Iowa, and it is not going to become Iowa simply because we refuse to talk to them. If politics is, as Otto Van Bismarck stated, the art of the possible, we should realize that moderates like Khatami and Hashemi Rafsanjani are our most likely allies in Iran. That doesn't mean we have to agree with them or even treat them as friends, but gratuitous demonization is not going to further our dialogue.
Mr. Sullivan,
I would be interested to read an explanation for your approving link to Hot Air's blog post ripping John Kerry for his comments at Davos. His comments seemed fairly reasonable; we have consistently burned our diplomatic bridges whether the topic was Iraq, global warming, the International Criminal Court, land mines, nuclear weapons, capital punishment, or torture. And we are facing a crisis of confidence and international isolation. We have been, as Kerry said, diplomatically tone deaf, and it has hurt us badly. I think Kerry is hardly wrong in voicing these concerns. For the most part, they don't seem terribly contrary to comments you yourself have made.
Is the crime merely that he voiced these opinions in the presence of Mohammad Khatami (or "the pig" as Hot Air refers to him)? Should our policy discussion be stifled whenever a Muslim might be listening? Should we imagine that none can see our network news, or read our newspapers or (heaven forbid) your blog? Hot Air suggests that "Khatami's masters" will thrill at these comments critical of the Bush administration. I thought you had disowned the idea that dissent gives aid and comfort to our foes. Isn't frank and open discussion part and parcel of deliberative democracy, even when others are listening? It's not as if they didn't hear all of this from Kerry in 2004 (and having heard it, Iran famously endorsed George W. Bush in the general election -- so much for being thrilled by Kerry's rhetoric).
Furthermore, I'm not certain that vilification of Khatami is terribly useful. Many responsible statesmen have suggested that engaging Iran in a regional dialogue would be to our benefit. Who do we think that dialogue will be with? We may not agree with Khatami across a broad array of issues (and certainly I agree his policies on homosexuality were abhorrent), but is Ahmadinejad better? Is Khamenei? Within the spectrum of politics in Iran, we might not do much better than Khatami. He at least pushed in directions we favored on democracy, on foreign relations, on the rule of law. If we wait to find someone who agrees with us on everything before even engaging in dialogue, then we'll wait (as the Bush administration has) for something that will never happen. Iran is not Iowa, and it is not going to become Iowa simply because we refuse to talk to them. If politics is, as Otto Van Bismarck stated, the art of the possible, we should realize that moderates like Khatami and Hashemi Rafsanjani are our most likely allies in Iran. That doesn't mean we have to agree with them or even treat them as friends, but gratuitous demonization is not going to further our dialogue.
The 'Supporting the Troops' Mantra
Is the fact that all modern politicians feel obligated to preface and conclude any remark on the war with testimony to their deep and profound support for the troops based on a lie? Jerry Lembcke, a sociologist at Holy Cross College, researched and wrote a book on the phenomenon of people spitting on Vietnam veterans. His conclusion? It never happened (see here for a Slate review of the book). And nobody even claimed it did until 5 years after the last Americans came home. Writes Lembcke: "A 1971 Harris poll conducted for the Veterans Administration found over 90 percent of Vietnam veterans reporting a friendly homecoming. Far from spitting on veterans, the antiwar movement welcomed them into its ranks and thousands of veterans joined the opposition to the war." Given how politically powerful the notion of people defiling the troops has become, Lembcke's findings are frankly astounding to me. It makes for quite a study in memes and conventional wisdom. This urban legend has left a deep mark on the way we think and talk about war in America, and I don't doubt in the least, has had an impact on the general lack of resistance to Bush's Iraq policy. And it could very well all be bullshit. Wow!
Saturday, January 27, 2007
Crime Not War
A follow-up to my post from December about the Brits tiring of the "war on terror" meme, CSM reports that Britain's top prosecutor, Ken Macdonald, criticized war-based rhetoric for provoking a fear-driven response and threatening traditional civil rights. Said Macdonald: "London is not a battlefield. Those innocents who were murdered on July 7 2005 were not victims of war. And the men who killed them were not, as in their vanity they claimed on their ludicrous videos, soldiers." Macdonald followed-up: "On the streets of London there is no such thing as a 'war on terror', just as there can be no such thing as a 'war on drugs'." Ouch.
Well, I'm sure Alberto "the Constitution just doesn't say that" Gonzalez will come out with some equally thoughtful and well-considered statements any day now.
Well, I'm sure Alberto "the Constitution just doesn't say that" Gonzalez will come out with some equally thoughtful and well-considered statements any day now.
Scooter and Me
Nick Bromell, an English professor at UMass - Amherst, has written a a brilliant column on his childhood friend L. Scooter Libby, fundamentalism, liberalism, and truth. I can't recommend it highly enough. He gets a bit abstract at points, but his discussion of liberalism and self-doubt and Truth is, I think, dead on the money (and quite Rawlsian at that).
Sunday, January 07, 2007
Behavioralism and Foreign Policy
or: How We Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. Daniel Kahneman and Jonathan Renshon have an interesting article in Foreign Policy Magazine applying behavioral theories to foreign policy. Their finding echoes Cass Sunstein's mortality salience theory (discussed on TBWJ last August). Kahneman and Renshon write:
The "vision problem" discussed in the article strikes me as particularly troubling. The inability or unwillingness to try to understand (often coupled with scorn and derision directed towards those who try to understand) the context around the actions of others and to try to see how our own actions appear from other perspectives seems to underlay a great many of our foreign policy difficulties.
In fact, when we constructed a list of the biases uncovered in 40 years of psychological research, we were startled by what we found: All the biases in our list favor hawks. These psychological impulses—only a few of which we discuss here—incline national leaders to exaggerate the evil intentions of adversaries, to misjudge how adversaries perceive them, to be overly sanguine when hostilities start, and overly reluctant to make necessary concessions in negotiations. In short, these biases have the effect of making wars more likely to begin and more difficult to end.This is hardly a surprising finding to me, and, in fact, this is largely what we discussed back in August. Hawkish foreign policy theories seem to be far more politically attractive than they are meritorious. Kahneman and Renshon discuss a few examples in the article, but it would be interesting to see Renshon's book which goes into greater depth on the topic.
The "vision problem" discussed in the article strikes me as particularly troubling. The inability or unwillingness to try to understand (often coupled with scorn and derision directed towards those who try to understand) the context around the actions of others and to try to see how our own actions appear from other perspectives seems to underlay a great many of our foreign policy difficulties.
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