THE LEFT SIDE of the American political spectrum has undergone an extraordinary transformation over the past dozen years. Perhaps because it remains a work in progress, the extent of this transformation has gone largely unremarked and seems underappreciated even among those who have been carrying it out. Forty years after the forces of the managed to deliver the Democratic presidential nomination to their preferred candidate, George McGovern, only to see him lose the general election to Richard Nixon in a 49-state landslide, the United States is home to a newer Left. Its political hopes repose not in a man able to muster less than 40 percent of the vote nationwide, but in the convincingly reelected president of the United States, Barack Obama. This newer Left is confident in itself, united both in its description of the problems the country faces and in how to go about addressing them. This Left is conscious of itself as a movement, and believes it is on the rise. It has already managed to reshape American politics, and its successes so far have hardly exhausted its promise. Policies are changing under its influence. And its opponents do not seem to have found an effective way to counter it politically. It's beyond my purpose here to explore the history of the Left in American and its relation to American electoral politics. One story is its ideological evolution, from the socialists and anarchists of the early twentieth century, through the battles of the communist and anti-communist Left of mid-century, on to the birth of the New Left in the turbulent 1960s, through the quiescence of the Left during the period of neoliberal (i.e., conservative) dominance for the generation following the election of Ronald Reagan. Or one could tell the story in terms of the progressive movement at the end of the nineteenth century, through FDR'S New Deal, to LBJ'S Great Society, on through the primary challenge Sen. Ted Kennedy launched against Jimmy Carter, its failure, and Bill Clinton's emergence as a Democrat distinct from the old liberal partisans of an expansive role for the federal government. Both stories, however, come together with the emergence of the newer Left--call it Left 3.0, tracing the ideological progression from old Left to New Left to today's newer Left. Left 3.0 is not only an ideological movement, but also effectively controls (or rather guides) a political party fully competitive at the national level. Left 3.0 is an entity whose internal divisions are minuscule in comparison to the shared convictions that hold it together. Left 3.0 is a creature of its times, well-organized and fully synced to the digital culture out of which it emerged. And Left 3.0 has come into its own at a time, not coincidentally, when its political rival, the GOP electoral coalition, already under strain because of shifting demographics, is deeply divided over vexing social issues on which Left 3.0 offers clear answers. Continuities BEFORE WE TAKE a serious look at what is new with Left 3.0, we should first have a look at its continuities with the Left (or Lefts) of the past. The most important of these, surely, is that its animating passion remains equality--the defining principle of modern democracy, in Tocqueville's judgment. If classical liberalism emerged in part as a rebellion against hereditary privilege, modern American liberalism is foremost a rebellion against the privileges of wealth. The most important innovation of the Left, a principle held fast from the time of the French Revolution onward, has been its insistence that political rights could only be meaningful if accompanied by a degree of economic equality that systems based on political rights alone would not automatically create or protect. Thus, the Left finds the most important element on its agenda: the achievement of a greater degree of economic equality by means of politics. It's an agenda that has proven adaptable over time to various levels of intensity in the passion for equality. …
THE LIKELIHOOD THAT the current efforts to prevent Iran from acquiring a military nuclear capability may fail has raised debate in academic and communities regarding the implications of a Middle East, which may include after Iran states such as Saudi Arabia (under the current or a future more-jihadi-oriented regime), Turkey, Egypt (under the Muslim Brotherhood regime), Syria (or a successor state/states thereof), Iraq (or successor states) and Libya. Some respected theorists regard the Cold War experience as highly relevant to such a scenario and point at the fears that permeated the western military establishments of a nuclear China and the fact that a nuclear Indian subcontinent did not result in nuclear war, despite mutual hostility and frequent outbreaks of crisis. Kenneth Waltz even suggests that the very possession of nuclear tempers military adventurism and inculcates a degree of responsibility commensurate with the grave consequences that would result from nuclear conflict. (1) However, two decades after the Cold War, it is clear that it was not only deterrence based on mutually assured destruction (MAD) that prevented outbreak of nuclear war between the two superpowers, but also the stringent procedures of command and control over the nuclear arsenals that reduced the risks of their use in escalation scenarios or unauthorized use. Furthermore, it is clearer today than during the Cold War that the of command and control differed considerably in the different nuclear countries and was influenced by military structure, political culture, and levels of confidence of the political leadership in the military. (2) Therefore, even if we assume that the leaderships of the region will normally wish to avoid nuclear confrontation, it behooves us to explore the command, control, communication (C3) and Intelligence (C31) capabilities that may be applied in these countries. There are no indications that any Middle Eastern Muslim country--with the possible exception of Iran--has begun to develop a doctrine for use and command and control of such weapons. In the veteran nuclear powers, such doctrines and command and control systems developed over the years through constant processes of design, planning and exercises, and involvement of the academic community. In the types of regimes that exist in the Middle East, on the other hand, it is reasonable to assume that such methodical planning will not take place and doctrine will evolve through discussions between the leadership and a small circle of trusted advisors. The chosen paradigms of command and control will, however, be influenced by the cultural, political, and organizational features of these regimes, such as: * Personalized or religiously motivated leaderships. * Islamic views regarding the nature and role of nuclear and the moral permissibility of using nuclear weapons. * Existing C3 of existing strategic weapons (chemical, biological, SSM) and existing C3 in conventional situations--levels of centralization, culture of delegation of authority, levels of trust in the regular military as opposed to special regime guards forces. * Willingness to incur civilian casualties by deployment of in highly populated areas. Nuclear aspirations in the Middle East have been motivated by a variety of considerations: deterrence, a need for a weapon of compellence, honor, regional and international stature, and others. The motivation to acquire nuclear and the circumstances through which the state achieves nuclear will influence the development of C3 and the considerations that will guide the operational concept. Some (such as Iran) may see nuclear as a means to undermine the balance of power in the region. Others may see them as necessary in order to counterbalance the former. In any case, the environment of a poly-nuclear Middle East will be exceedingly dynamic and even volatile. …
0N NOVEMBER 16, 2012, Russian President Vladimir Putin and German Chancellor Angela Merkel met reluctantly in Moscow for the annual German-Russian summit. It was widely reported that the summit, which had already been abbreviated to a few hours, did not go well. In reality, the summit succeeded in contradicting itself. Merkel infuriated Putin by suggesting that the imprisonment of the members of punk rock band Pussy Riot might be a human rights violation. This caused Putin to cite Pussy Riot as a case of illegal anti-Semitism which, he suggested, would be something Germany should understand. Despite the apparent political antagonism, the Summit concluded with German industrial giant Siemens signing a 2.5 billion euro deal with the Russian state railway for 675 railroad engines. What is so remarkable about the outcome--Merkel playing to idealism, Putin pandering to nationalism, and both agreeing on trade--is that the November summit was the product of a hard-fought strategic review in Berlin pitting human rights romantics against economic pragmatists. Neither side won nor altered the uncomfortable status quo in any recognizable way. Several weeks earlier, long-awaited parliamentary elections in Ukraine also produced a nonresult. Both Washington and Brussels had been waiting for at least a year for the conduct of the elections to reveal whether or not the Ukrainian authorities heard and understood the criticism of Kyiv's atrocious political manners, including the selective prosecution of opposition figures. In the event, the elections were mostly free and fair but also imperfect and inconclusive. Yulia Timoshenko, the object of Western affection, remained in jail; and President Yanukovych, the object of our annoyance, remained in power. In retrospect, it is clear that sometime during the summer of 2008, between the failed NATO Summit in the spring and the outbreak of the Russo-Georgian War that August, consensus among Western leaders about what do with the post-Soviet world disappeared. Since then, Western policy towards the post-Soviet world and the Eastern Partners of the European Union has been characterized by the universal dissatisfaction of the West with its own policy. The dispiriting and inconclusive stasis of this year's German-Russian summit and the October elections in Ukraine are grudgingly accepted as both metaphor for our times and confirmation that we are going nowhere. How we came to this slough of geopolitical despond and the twists and turns of how policy failed is an interesting story. The first chapter might well be entitled Irrational Exuberance, referring to the initial period of enthusiasm for the nascent post-Soviet democracies beginning with the Rose Revolution in 2004. In that year, American politicians rushed to praise the impetuous President Misha Saakashvili and Georgian democracy with the urgency and decorum of shoppers in Walmart the day after Thanksgiving. When the Orange Revolution came along a year later, not to be outdone, Prime Minister Tony Blair offered EU membership to Ukraine days after the inauguration of President Yushchenko. By 2007, however, the bloom was already off the rose, at least in Georgia. Despite President Bush's uplifting rhetoric on the inevitability of democratic transformation, his speech in Tbilisi's Freedom Square had a fin de siecle quality. The president did not look up from his text when someone threw an old Soviet grenade at the stage during his speech, which due to its age and shoddy manufacture did not explode, but bounced around unnoticed in the crowd until a security guard tossed it into the derelict Soviet-era subway. The poorly-fused grenade clattering into the darkness of a forgotten Soviet subway in the Caucasus is as good a metaphor for the new period of disappointment as there is readily to hand. President Bush's propensity to overstate his case, particularly on the transformative powers of the American model of democracy, ended up highlighting the fragmentation that was occurring in the policies of the West towards the post-Soviet world. …
BEGINNING WITH THE 1778 Treaty with the Delawares, the United States engaged in some 375 treaties with Native Americans. While many were concluded hopefully, even earnestly, none ended well for Indian tribes. From George Washington forward, presidents were confronted with the problem of Americans coveting and taking Indian land. Moreover, from the time of the French and Indian War in 1754, what would become the army was fighting Indians. Subjugating those Indians was a challenge of enormous magnitude: Only 5,000 soldiers patrolled a million square miles that was home to 200,000 to 300,000 Indians. And the Indians were generally more proficient at warfare. Soldiers fighting successive tribes of Indians as white settlers moved south and west to occupy the continent were mostly militia, with little prior experience of warfare. By contrast, most Indian tribes fought as their profession. As S. C. Gwynne emphasizes in Empire of the Summer Moon, American Indians were warlike by nature, and they were warlike for centuries before Columbus stumbled upon them. Yet the United States had innumerable advantages it could bring to bear against the Indians: wealth, numbers, technology, industrial organization. Why did it take so long--over a hundred years--to do so? The answer is a complicated story, interweaving policy and military failures, failures of understanding and execution, and throughout it all an obdurate unwillingness of Americans on the frontier to uphold their government's policy. The Indian Wars were finally won with the combination of simplified objectives, ruthless prosecution by both military and economic means, and international cooperation to preclude sanctuaries from which tribes could operate. But the lessons, and especially the military lessons, were there from the start. These lessons are immediately relevant to the war we are fighting in Afghanistan. Nor are the lessons of the Indian Wars solely applicable to countering insurgencies. When asked by George Marshall in 1942 how the Army should train for pivoting from the war in Europe to the Pacific, the commander of the Marines on Guadalcanal answered go back to the tactics of the French and Indian days ... study their tactics and fit in our modem weapons, and you have a solution. Many would now prefer to consider this kind of war a narrow subset of the spectrum of conflict; the Defense Department's 2012 strategic guidance concludes the United States will no longer engage in large-scale counterinsurgencies. Yet the impediments to winning the Indian Wars will be impediments to winning any kind of war. They have to do with an unwillingness by political leaders to acknowledge the scope and contradictory nature of their strategic objectives; an enormous gap between the campaign's objectives and the resources political leaders are willing to put toward the effort; dramatic overestimation of the capacity of our government to effectively carry out a sophisticated policy with political, economic, and military elements; corruption delegitimizing the idealistic components of the policy designed to win support of reconcileables; military gains far outpacing civilian agencies' ability to capitalize on them; existence of safe havens because of our inability to bring border states into cooperation; insularity in Washington against the consequences of the policy's failures, which are principally borne by others; a military hesitant to credit their adversaries with superior tactics and even strategy; a cost-exchange ratio significantly favoring the enemy and therefore making our strategy episodically followed and their strategy more sustainable over time; ideological unwillingness to adjust the strategy to one more in line with conditions and resources. In fact, these are the same impediments preventing us winning the Afghan war. In the beginning WASHINGTON AND HIS Virginians were beaten back from Ft. …
THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT expends vast amounts of money on of innumerable kinds. Many of these expenditures are unwise and unwarranted, falling into the category of pork or overlapping with work that would otherwise be performed by private-sector entities. Public funding for scientific research should largely be limited to basic scientific discoveries or proof-of-principle experiments--which would reasonably be defined as public goods--rather than efforts to extend science into marketable technologies or products. From an economic perspective, one can justify government funding for public goods because they are far enough removed from fencing through intellectual property rights that no individual or company has sufficient economic incentive to pay for the research. If an entity cannot capture at least part of the financial gains from the research investment, the research, in effect, supplies information on which anyone can capitalize. No one ought to be able to monopolize basic scientific principles or natural phenomena, and our intellectual property regime does, in fact, attempt to prevent that. (The recent Supreme Court decision in Mayo v. Prometheus reiterates that point.) However, there is a far less persuasive rationale for government funding of research that can be fenced sufficiently to provide a return on investment, and there are other critical determinants--in the sense of limitations--of what research should legitimately be federally funded. It should a) follow recognized experimental methodologies, b) be in the national interest, and c) focus on nontrivial questions or problems. As discussed below, these spare and seemingly obvious criteria are often controverted. And although such exceptions to sound principles represent a small percentage of overall federal research funding, in a time of belt-tightening at the nation's premier research organizations the dollar amounts could make a real difference to legitimate, high-quality research. Moreover, the fact that certain organizations are systematic and serial offenders cries out for reform. fleece vs. golden goose FROM 1975 TO 1987, Democratic Senator William Proxmire presented monthly Golden Fleece Awards to identify what he viewed as wasteful government spending. Since then, many politicians and other critics of federal spending have blasted various government-funded research projects. Some of these criticisms clearly have been wrong-headed. An example is this dismissal of a supposedly unworthy research project by former Alaska Governor and vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin: Sometimes these dollars go to projects that have little or nothing to do with the public good. Things like fruit fly research in Paris, France. I kid you not. The problem is that Palin didn't know what she didn't know. A century of studies on the genetics of Drosophila melanogaster, the fruit fly, an organism that shares about half of its genes with humans, has yielded information critical to understanding the process of aging and how genes work. In order to call attention to this sort of misapprehension, several congressmen from both sides of the aisle have gotten together with various research advocacy organizations to create the Golden Goose Awards to highlight the often unexpected or serendipitous nature of basic scientific research by honoring federally funded researchers whose work may once have been viewed as unusual, odd or obscure, but has produced important discoveries benefitting society in significant ways. Jim Cooper, the congressman behind the idea, clarified the award's intention: We've all seen reports that ridicule odd-sounding research projects as examples of government waste. The Goose Award does the opposite. It recognizes that a valuable federally funded research project may sound funny, but its purpose is no laughing matter. Cooper and Alan Leshner, who heads the American Association for the Advancement of Science, penned a precious little op-ed in the Washington Post to describe the rationale for the award and to announce this year's winners. …
HAS AMERICA'S ALLIANCE with Taiwan, one of its oldest in Asia, become a strategic liability, a relic of a bygone era that no longer advances American interests? The obvious answer would seem to be no. First, there is legacy of relationship. American and free Chinese forces fought together in World War II. Taiwan was America's unsinkable aircraft carrier during Cold War. More recently, democratic Taiwan has become a model of political liberalization in a Chinese society. It boasts a high-tech economy that is intimately intertwined with those of America and its Asian partners; United States is largest foreign investor there. Taiwan is a key strongpoint in United States' offshore network of allies in maritime Asia. And not insignificantly, Taiwan is a reliable friend to America at a time when President Obama's pivot to Asia is a reminder of Chinese challenge to U.S. primacy--and imperative of maintaining in Asia a balance of power that favors freedom. It is surprising, then, that an active debate is now underway in Washington over whether Taiwan is a spoiler, rather than a partner, in U.S. strategy towards world's emerging center of wealth and power. The core of this argument assumes that relations between United States and mainland China will define 21st century--and that they should not be held hostage to legacy of civil war between Chinese nationalists and communists in 1940s. Why should Washington risk its relationship with rising superpower of 1.3 billion people over its ties to a small island nation of only 23 million given high military and economic stakes for United States of a conflicted relationship with Beijing? These arguments assume that Taiwan, as a senior U.S. military official once indelicately phrased it, is the turd in punchbowl of U.S.-China relations. (1) But arguments to let Taiwan get strategy backwards. First, cutting off an old U.S. ally at a time of rising tensions with an assertive China might do less to appease Beijing than to encourage its hopes to bully United States into a further retreat from its commitments in East Asia. Second, it would transform calculus of vital American allies like Japan and South Korea, who might plausibly wonder whether U.S. commitment to their security was equally flexible. Third, it would upend calculations of new U.S. partners like India and Vietnam, whose leaders have made a bet on U.S. staying power and associated benefits of strengthening relations with America as a hedge against China. Fourth, such preemptive surrender would reinforce what remains more a psychological than a material reality of China emerging as a global superpower of America's standing--which it is not and may never be. Finally, it would resurrect ghosts of Munich and Yalta, where great powers decided fate of lesser nations without reference to those nations' interests--or human consequences of offering them up to satisfy appetites of predatory great powers. Canary in coal mine PROPONENTS OF LETTING Taiwan go seem to assume that everything else would remain unchanged in U.S. Asia strategy. America's alliance system would remain robust, its military would continue to expand its access to regional ports and basing facilities, and non-Chinese Asia would continue to underwrite American leadership. In fact, abandoning Taiwan--say, by ending military sales (it is top recipient of American arms worldwide)--would create a cascade of strategic consequences that would upend U.S.-led regional order. The first thing to erode would be U.S.-Japan alliance, without which American leadership in East Asia in its present form would be impossible. Japan, Washington's most important ally in Asia, may have few viable strategic options to maintain an independent foreign policy without a free Taiwan. As China's military power casts a growing shadow over its neighbors, Japan's capacity to retain strategic choice may hinge on Taiwan's ability to maintain autonomy from mainland--in ways that preclude a hostile China from projecting military power from Taiwan into sea lanes that are Japanese economy's lifeline. …
JONATHAN FENBY. The General: Charles de Gaulle and France He Saved. SKYHORSE PUBLISHING. 707 PAGES. $32.50. ONCE, WHEN ASKED for his opinion of Charles de Gaulle, Winston Churchill mused: regard de Gaulle as great man? He is selfish, he is arrogant, he believes he is center of world. He ... You are quite right. He is great man. Churchill knew whereof he spoke: During World War II, it was he who bore brunt of Frenchman's intransigence. Though very different characters, two statesmen had certain points in common: Both had an extraordinary way with words and both saw themselves as men of destiny. Having fled to Britain after collapse of French army, de Gaulle cast himself as embodiment of French nation, modern-day male Joan of Arc, who would lead fight against Germans and their Vichy hirelings and restore France to its rightful place and greatness. In process, he managed to upset great number of people. As French historian Francois Kersody has written, he seemed to be permanently involved in two front war: a public war against Vichy and Germans, and private war against British Admiralty, Air Ministry, War Office, Intelligence Service, Foreign Office, Prime Minister, U.S. State Department, and president of United States. One of his advisers noted the General must constantly be reminded that out main enemy is Germany. If he would follow his own inclination, it would be England. Before departing London to set up headquarters in Algiers in May 1943, de Gaulle said goodbye to Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden, who asked, Do you know you have given us more difficulty than all our European allies? To which de Gaulle answered, I have no doubt of it. France is great power. The Americans, of course, regarded him as suffering from delusions of grandeur. During Casablanca summit, Roosevelt's secret service detail discretely kept Frenchman covered with their Tommy guns. You can never be too careful. Despite--or because of--his obstinacy, de Gaulle managed to place France among victors of World War II. Later, with his comeback in 1958, he gave his countrymen new constitution, he got France out of Algerian mess, and he saved his nation from civil war. Was he great statesman or conjuror on huge scale, true founding father of present day France, with lessons for world, or Wizard of Oz manipulating great machine of illusions? This is central question posed in Jonathan Fenby's fascinating The General: Charles de Gaulle and France He Saved. The book provides vivid and eminently fair assessment of its subject, bringing out essential ambiguities: de Gaulle was both doer and dreamer, an extreme realist remorselessly applying cold logic, and romantic Don Quixote figure, tilting at windmills. DE GAULLE WAS man of North, from city of Lille, colder and sterner industrial region, Fenby notes, than sundrenched French south one normally reads about. His father was monarchist and professor of history and literature. De Gaulle's upbringing emphasized duty and frugality, and gave him solid knowledge of classics, of philosophy, and of French letters. We catch colorful glimpses from his youth: Prompted by his reading about French defeat in 1870-71 Franco-German War, he early decided on military career. Before attending military college as cadet, he spent an obligatory year in an army regiment; he was not promoted to sergeant: As his captain argued, how he could do so to somebody who would only feel at ease as general. At military academy of St Cyr, his evaluations deemed him calm and forceful in command. His physical appearance certainly contributed: Measuring 6'3, with hooded eyes and nose in Cyrano de Bergerac class, he towered over everybody. …
TOM WOLFE. Back to Blood. LITTLE, BROWN. 704 PAGES. $ 30.00. IN 2012, BOTH presidential candidates agreed that America is a divided nation. In private remarks to wealthy donors in May that were secretly taped and released to devastating political effect in September, Mitt Romney declared that 47% of Americans are heavily dependent on government entitlements, pay no income taxes, see themselves as victims, and will never vote for a Republican who calls for personal responsibility. In contrast, no hostile actions designed to cripple his candidacy were necessary to reveal President Obama's view that poisonous divisions disfigure the nation. The president openly, emphatically, and every chance he got proclaimed that America suffers from an ugly and unjust rift between the wealthy and the rest. And unlike the former governor of Massachusetts, whose opinions about what divides us were spoken in private, the president and his team did what was in their power to stoke resentment by spending hundreds of millions of dollars in swing states alone on negative ads that sought to convince women, minorities, the young, low-income earners, and much of the middle class that the rapacious rich and the heartless Republicans who coddle them are the people's enemies. Tom Wolfe, master chronicler of American society and culture for half a century and going strong, also sees America riven by deep divisions. Or so he sees Miami, the seething setting for his entertaining and ambitious new novel about the heroics, travails, and chivalry of young Cuban-American cop Nestor Camacho, and the ill-fated romances of Nestor's beautiful and basically good-hearted ex-girlfriend Magdalena Ortega. Wolfe surrounds the young former lovers with a cast of colorful co-stars, including a smart but sleazy psychiatrist specializing in treating rich and well-connected sufferers from addiction to pornography; a billionaire porn-addicted patsy of a patient; a ruthless Cuban mayor; a formidable African-American chief of police; an enormously rich Russian playboy, philanthropist, and thug; a stuffy, risk-averse newspaper editor; a shy but dogged young reporter; a Haitian-born professor of French literature who seeks to conceal his Haitian origins and flaunt his French roots, manners, and mores; and the professor's beautiful and pure daughter Ghislaine. And with his trademark vividness Wolfe brings to life Miami neighborhoods, from grindingly poor to extravagantly posh; a ludicrously preening art scene; tony restaurants and tawdry strip clubs; and endless sun and endless striving. The citizens and city whose simmering tensions Wolfe evokes tell a local tale while providing a troubling portent for the country's future. Yet the source of the divisions that define Wolfe's Miami in the first decades of the 21st century is not views about the role of the federal government or political party affiliation. Indeed, the stuff over which Democrats and Republicans have been battling with increasing resentment and self-righteousness for the last decade is practically invisible in Wolfe's novel. Instead, the divisions flow from blood. Wolfe has in mind blood in more than one sense. Yes, as the critics have been quick to observe, in Wolfe's Miami family, ethnic tradition, and the larger community into which one is born instill a deep-seated distrust of outsiders. But, though the critics have mostly failed to discern it, looming larger in Back to Blood are the oldest human passions coursing through our veins--however much we may purport to have put all that behind us--and still inflaming and embittering, enticing and enthralling our hearts. Indeed, Back to Blood is the story of the mixing of blood in the sense of cultural inheritance and in the sense of the primally human. It is a particularly explosive mixing because in Wolfe's Miami, and not only in Wolfe's Miami, the inherently volatile elements are generally uncooled and unrefined by religious faith, patriotic devotion, and shared standards of justice and duty. …
ANDREW WEDEMAN. Double Paradox: Growth and Rising Corruption in China. CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS. 272. PAGES. $75. ECONOMISTS OCCASIONALLY feel called upon to correct, or at least modify, conclusions reached by political scientists, sociologists, or other members of putatively softer social sciences. Examples of this hubristic role abound. For instance, conventional wisdom among social scientists in bygone days was that pay-as-you-go Social Security would encourage household savings--economists correctly predicted opposite effect. Aid to Families with Dependent Children was enacted with conventional expectation that this entitlement would promote stability in poor families--instead, it had opposite effect, in accord with what economic theory would predict. Also, several decades ago when Soviet Union sought to expand its imperial reach by spreading largesse around world, foreign policy wonks worried about fearful consequences of this effort--economists provided empirical evidence that, instead, effort was costing Soviets more than it was worth. Andrew Wedeman, a political scientist at University of Nebraska, has accomplished a reversal of this pattern. His Double Paradox is a carefully reasoned and empirically grounded analysis of in China, which runs counter to prior, frequently-cited work by economists. The initial motivation, he tells us, for his long immersion in subject of sprang from economists' work in mid-1990s which indicated that exacted a measurable cost in forgone economic growth--in other words, hindered growth. Instead, Wedeman's own substantial experience in China was, to contrary, that and growth thrived together: Corruption worsened as growth prospered. The economists were evidently missing something. The book's title (including its subtitle: Rapid Growth and Rising Corruption) reflects Wedeman's efforts to resolve this puzzle. Wedeman defines simply as the improper use of public authority for private gain or advantage, and book's title represents his attempt to reconcile double paradox of rapid growth and intensifying To keep matters in balance, it's worth pointing out that his attempted reconciliation doesn't exactly refute prior economic work that motivated his study. That prior work--a rigorous, cross-sectional, and time-series analysis by economist Paolo Mauro--found a statistically significant negative relationship between (measured in several different ways) and aggregate investment as a fraction of GDP. Measured across time and across countries, higher levels of were correlated with significantly lower rates of investment. However, direct relationship between and economic growth (as distinct from relation between and investment) was, according to this prior work, not statistically significant. (1) While investment rate surely affects growth (so, if higher lowers investment, growth might be expected to suffer as well), growth and investment are not equivalent. Indeed, later studies suggest that other things--for example, technology, innovation, entrepreneurship, and human capital (as distinct from physical investment)--are at least as important as investment rate in affecting economic growth. If, for example, in post-Maoist, reformist China actually facilitated innovation and entrepreneurship (elements of human capital that were impermissible and indeed prosecutable during Mao's Cultural Revolution of 1960s), expected result might well be higher growth notwithstanding a lower investment rate. Hence, Wedeman's reconciliation between and growth is not fully dispositive of prior work that motivated his own, although he assuredly registers on other side of that divide. The first third of Double Paradox deals with generic distinction between developmental corruption and degenerative corruption. …
PAUL KRUGMAN, End This Depression Now. NORTON. 259 PAGES. $24.95. DAVID WESSEL. Red Ink. CROWN BUSINESS. 2.04 PAGES. $22.00. THE U.S. ECONOMY has been depressed for over four years and Paul Krugman--Nobel laureate, economics professor, and New York Times columnist--is irked that his remedies go unheeded, especially since they're also remedies that John Maynard Keynes laid out over 70 years ago. Keynes would not have been impressed with halfway measures that have been employed to create fiscal stimulus, and neither is Krugman. Federal spending on order of what was done in World War II is in order, even though this is peacetime. Won't this lead to runaway inflation, and eventually to national insolvency? Won't it bring nation into predicament similar to that of Spain or Greece? Nonsense, says Krugman, and in several chapters of his recent book, End This Depression Now, he answers economists and politicians who say otherwise. In an early chapter, tellingly headed Bankers Gone Wild, Krugman elaborates his view on how we got into current mess. He traces path of banking deregulation throughout last quarter of 20th century, starting with minor dilutions of 1933 Glass-Steagall Act and ending with that law's complete repeal in 1998. Glass-Steagall, which separated functions of commercial banking and investment banking, was designed to prevent banks from speculating with taxpayer-insured deposits. However, bankers eventually persuaded Congress that rules made it impossible for them to compete with other financial institutions not bound by similar constraints. Krugman agrees that mismanagement by commercial bankers wasn't solely responsible for 2008 financial meltdown, noting that collapse of Lehman Brothers, an investment bank, started a run on shadow banking system. But his approach would have been to regulate shadow banks more, not to regulate commercial banks less. Many economists place as much responsibility for crash of 2008 on government and Federal Reserve as on private bankers. After all, Congress pressured two government sponsored lenders--Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac--to relax lending standards so that lower income borrowers could afford to own homes, while Federal Reserve facilitated this imprudence by holding interest rates far too low from 2002 to 2004. Krugman is having none of that. Interest rates were also low throughout much of world, and housing bubble was an international phenomenon extending well beyond influence of U.S. policy. As for blaming relaxed lending standards on Fannie and Freddie, this Krugman calls the big lie. Most of bad loans were sub-prime and, by definition, outside Fannie and Freddie parameters. He has no use for argument that Fannie Mae's practices weakened mortgage lending criteria throughout industry. Whatever cause of meltdown and recession, Krugman's cure is much heavier dose of Keynesian stimulus. He believes administration's stimulus plan (the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009) was woefully inadequate, and that President Obama should have ignored his opponents' cries of alarm about an out-of-control deficit, since they were motivated by combination of political mischief and ignorance. Acknowledging that Keynesians don't have an intellectual monopoly on economic theory, Krugman takes some time to review competing monetarist view, associated mainly with Milton Friedman and University of Chicago. Both Friedman and Keynes found that increases in money supply can lead to inflation, but Keynes maintained this to be so only when in an economy at or near full employment. Krugman finds data overwhelmingly on Keynesian side and sees controversy matter of pragmatism versus quasi-religious certainty. Despite steady drumbeat of warnings, interest rate on ten-year treasury bond has remained near an all-time low for several years, and core inflation has been contained at about two percent year. …
"America is a power, Europe is an experience" -- Joschka Fischer IN 2002 ROBERT KAGAN, a leading neoconservative intellectual temporarily "exiled" in Brussels, wrote a brilliant essay, "Power and Weakness," arguing that the political personality of European power as we know it today is the product of America's Cold War policies and the universalization of Europe's post-World War II political experience. But more than anything else, it is the product of Europe's current military weakness. In his analysis, post-9/11 America should naturally have cooperated with Europe, but Washington could not rely on the European Union as a strategic partner in managing the world because "on the all-important question of power-- the efficacy of power, the morality of power, the desirability of power-- American and European perspectives are diverging." A decade later American and European perspectives diverge on the all-important question of the decline of Western power. While American elites view the very discussion of "decline" as "pre-emptive superpower suicide," Europeans are busy learning how to live in a world where the EU is not a leading actor and the European continent is not the center of the world but simply the wealthiest province. Could it be that the clash between Washington's denial of the very possibility of America's decline and Europe's excessive readiness to adjust to it can damage the Western alliance more than the controversy over the use of power did? Could it be that at the heart of the current troubles in the transatlantic relationship is a crisis of the political imagination of the West? I want to argue that the paradox of the new world order emerging out of the ongoing recession is that the global spread of democracy and capitalism, instead of signaling "the end of history," marked "the end of the West" as a political actor constructed in the days of the Cold War. In the decades to come the nature of the political regimes will be an unreliable predictor for the geopolitical alliances to emerge; and it is the blurring borders between democracies and authoritarian capitalism, rather than the triumph of democracy or the resurgence of authoritarianism, that defines the global political landscape. Kagan's "Long Telegram IN "POWER AND WEAKNESS" Robert Kagan eschewed political correctness, insisting that after the end of the Cold War Americans and Europeans no longer shared a common view of the world. They no longer shared a common strategic culture. The divergence between America and Europe can be best explained not by differences in "national character" or value systems but by the asymmetry of power. It is Europe's relative military weakness that determines Europeans' rejection of power as an instrument in international relations. And it is America's strength that defines Americans' readiness to use military power. In short, capabilities shape intentions. Forced to choose between increasing their military budgets and becoming second-rate powers, Europeans most likely will choose marginality. Contrary to the opinion of its critics, Kagan's essay was not a dismissal of the eu's relevance in the world. Paradoxically Kagan's dispatch from Brussels was reaffirmation of the importance of the transatlantic alliance. Arguing with the prevailing consensus in Washington at the time, he asserted that it was true that Europe had lost its geostrategic and military significance for the U.S. But Europe had retained its critical ideological relevance for the American foreign policy, he believed, because the split between America and Europe meant the end of the post-Cold War world. And in Kagan's strategic vision it is the post-Cold War world-- a world without Soviet power but defined by the ideological confrontation between free nations and tyrannical regimes-- that best suits American interests. Re-reading Kagan's article a decade later, we face three critical questions. …
FROM OCTOBER 2007 TO NOVEMBER 2008, I served as the commander of Task Force No Slack, a unit of 1,000 soldiers that operated in and around Samarra, Iraq, a predominantly Sunni city about Go miles north of Baghdad. During this period our forces, in conjunction with Iraqi Security Forces and a local militia called the Sons of Iraq, defeated the insurgency in the area. One clear measure of this was that, when we arrived, the enemy was launching some 13 5 attacks per month; when we departed, monthly attacks were down to fewer than eight. During the course of our deployment we shifted our focus from fighting the insurgency to rebuilding the local government and providing essential services to the roughly a 5 0, 000 Iraqis who lived in our area. As a result of my experiences in Samarra, I gained a profound respect for the laws of war and how they can be powerful in increasing the effectiveness of a counterinsurgent force. First, I need to set the stage. In 2007, Samarra remained one of the most restive and lawless areas in Iraq. The effects of the Surge of 2007 had largely been negative for Samarra. Although the Surge increased security within Baghdad, insurgents and terrorists fled to outlying areas, and Samarra, which had never been fully pacified, was one of their favorite destinations. Thus, in the summer of 2007, the security situation within Samarra disintegrated. The police force was decimated by a car bombing that killed the police chief and cowed all other police officers into remaining at home. An organization called the Islamic State of Iraq (Isi, part of larger al Qaeda in Iraq) controlled more than half of the city and virtually all the surrounding areas. In those areas it established its own style of governance. HI collected taxes, held trials, conducted public executions, and had frequent military parades to demonstrate its power over the people of the region--all this occurring within one mile of a base with zoo U.S. soldiers and many more Iraqi National Police and army units. Despite the often, heroic efforts of those forces, at best they slowed the tide of is Ps expansion, but they were unable to arrest it or roll it back. Yet as I s i became larger and more powerful, it began to act arbitrarily, which hurt its strategy and undermined its support from the people. Its harsh brand of Islam was contrary to what most Iraqis believed. Its strict rules on tobacco--whose use could be punished by ist agents cutting off the smoker's index finger--alienated many. Its public executions, which were held once a week on the same street corner, further repulsed the many Iraqis who saw their friends and neighbors executed based on rumors or hearsay. The most repugnant of all practices, however, was its kidnapping of young girls (fifteen or sixteen), driving them to camps in the desert, and forcibly marrying them to fighters (usually foreigners), which meant that those fighters could then rape the girls under the imprimatur of Sharia law How frequently it occurred is impossible to tell. What I do know is that almost all Samarrans believed it was happening and were seething about it, especially about their inability to stop it. The Samarrans were learning that there was a much worse alternative to their government and the Americans, which was rule by al Qaeda-inspired fundamentalists. The new guys in town NTO THIS COMPIEX, hyper-violent environment we arrived and set about conducting operations. We began by acknowledging that our single most important task was to understand our new environment. We believed this was absolutely critical if we were to succeed. Before we could craft a plan to roll back the insurgency, we first needed to understand both. the insurgency and the entire community within which we operated. As we spent time talking to Iraqis from all walks of life, one surprising theme emerged and remained constant: Iraqis respected the Americans. In an area beset with lawlessness and violence, they viewed us as the only legitimate force. …
This edited volume is an innovative analysis of President Barack Obama’s foreign policy, security and counter-terrorism policy, specifically within the context of ending the now infamous War on Terror. The book adopts a comparative approach, analysing change and continuity in US foreign policy during Obama’s first term in office vis-a-vis the foreign policy of the War on Terror, initiated by George W. Bush following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Despite being heralded as an agent of change, since his election in 2008 Obama has faced criticism that his foreign policy is effectively the same as what went before and that the War on Terror is still alive and well. Far from delivering wholesale change, Obama has been accused of replicating and even reinforcing the approach, language and policies that many anticipated he would reject. With contributions from a range of US foreign policy experts, this volume analyses the extent to which these criticisms of continuity are correct, identifying how the failure to end the War on Terror is manifest and explaining the reasons that have made enacting change in foreign policy so difficult. In addressing these issues, contributions to this volume will discuss continuity and change from a range of perspectives in International Relations and Foreign Policy Analysis. This work will be of great interest to students and scholars of US foreign policy, security studies and American politics.
