How soft can power be?

Last summer, I noted the significance of the Pentagon's creation of an Africa Command in the unified command plan. My conclusion then was:

By creating such a high-profile position for Africa, the bureaucracy of the Pentagon and the US Government as a whole, will see Africa in a whole new light.

On Monday, the Washington Post ran an article based on analysis of a CRS Report on the new command (You can read the entire CRS Report here).

There are two broad issues here that I think merit discussion and reflect more than just the basic reorganization of boxes on the Pentagon's Org chart.

First is the concern over the militarization of US policy toward Africa.

The creation of the Defense Department Africa Command, with responsibilities to promote security and government stability in the region, has heightened concerns among African countries and in the U.S. government over the militarization of U.S. foreign policy, according to a newly released study by the Congressional Research Service.

AFRICOM would have traditional responsibilities of a combat command "to facilitate or lead [U.S.] military operations" on the continent, but would also include "a broader 'soft power' mandate aimed at preemptively reducing conflict and would incorporate a larger civilian component to address those challenges," according to the CRS study.

Fear that it could represent a first step toward more U.S. troops in Africa led [Ryan Henry, principal deputy undersecretary of defense for policy] to assure African leaders that the "principal mission will be in the area of security cooperation and building partnership capability. It will not be in warfighting."

As has been discussed often on this blog, usually by Dan, the US role as hegemon with a global order / empire to manage has required a number of US policy and grand strategy shifts in recent years. The US has become more involved militarily in more corners of the globe, not only fighting terrorism, but also enforcing and maintaining the current global order. Africa, long ignored in this process, now gets its own military command, allowing the Pentagon to further extend US military interests in Africa. Given the power of the Pentagon in the current Administration, its highly likely that under the new Command, the Pentagon's priorities for Africa will come to dominate the US Government's priorities and policies toward Africa, thereby increasing the militarization of US Foreign Policy.

However, the interesting line above is:

also include "a broader 'soft power' mandate aimed at preemptively reducing conflict and would incorporate a larger civilian component to address those challenges,"

How soft can power be? Nye's idea of soft power rests on getting people to want what you want so that one can achieve outcomes without having to resort to military or economic force. Unresolved in Nye's definition, I think, is the very question raised by AFRICOM--can the military employ 'soft power?' Is soft power defined by the tools used to realize it, making it a cultural/media/internet type phenomenon, or is soft power defined by the way one exercises power over another--in this case, allowing for the possibility that the military might be the organization that is best able to convey values and ideas to other actors.

The US Military has a very mixed record on this front. On the one hand, military engagement programs have been very very effective in helping to transform former communist countries into Western-European, NATO allied market democracies. These engagement programs have been all run out of EUCOM, so creating an AFRICOM might similarly duplicate this success in Africa. Moreover, the military may in fact be one of the most powerful social institutions (for good or ill) in many African countries, so using soft power to spread certain ideas through the military could be a good way to reach more (and more important) people than working through some other social network. On the other hand, the military does like to see and solve military problems, and its hard to see how a special forces A-team or IMET money will make serious progress in sustainable agriculture, clean water, or combating HIV-AIDS.

Second is the change in US bureaucratic politics:

A State Department civilian official is to be one of the two deputy commanders of AFRICOM, though that official would not be in the chain of command on military operations, according to the CRS report. In addition, more than one-third of AFRICOM headquarters personnel would be from outside the Pentagon. Defense officials told CRS that "the new command will seek greater interagency coordination with the State Department, USAID and other government agencies," according to the report.

Now this is very interesting. In my earlier piece on AFRICOM, I noted that having a high-profile, well funded bureaucratic organization within the government to generate knowledge, raise and define issues, advocate for positions, and implement programs would change the way the US government sees Africa. Now, there already is one person who ostensibly does this: Jendayi E. Frazer, Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs. I never heard of her either until I looked up that link. Compare her stature and resources to those of the eventual three or four star flag officer who will assume command of AFRICOM, and under Goldwater-Nichols report directly to the National Command Authority--The President and Secretary of Defense. Add, on top of that, the rise of the Unified Command Combatant Commanders in recent years and the rise of the Pentagon within the national security bureaucracy under the current administration, and you have a very strong new player on African Issues who will probably come to dominate the agenda (leading to the worries of militarization above).

But, notice how 'inter-agency' the new command is supposed to be. Having a State Department official as a Deputy Commander will create a new role in the diplomatic corps and give State and other civilian agencies a huge say in the Command's activities. Having one third of staff from non-military agencies, including USAID, suggests that AFRICOM may very well start to champion inter-agency cooperation on African issues and perhaps might even be able to raise the profile of key development issues on the continent. Of course, there is the price of securitizing development, AIDS, and the like, but the lesson in Washington is that this is how things get done these days. Perhaps the new, inter-agency make up of the Command will lead to a 'softer' military presence, and engagement in non-military or partially military development and capacity building activities.

Do you think it would make a difference if a 4-star general in full uniform heads up to the Hill to testify on behalf of an increase in the 150 account (the foreign aid budget) for development in Africa?

If this model works, it could very well serve as a model for future government reforms, where inter-agency cooperation and coordination is a key need. Look no farther than Iraq where DoD, State, and everyone else couldn't get along and it turned into a colossal disaster (as Dan just pointed out). Key agencies worked at cross-purposes to the detriment of the government's policy agenda. Worse, they failed to learn from each other, ignoring key bits of knowledge, expertise, and insight that could have prevented many of the worst elements of the post-invasion occupation from happening. Granted--the failings of the inter-agency process in Iraq were as much the result of fighting among principles, not line-workers, but having some more State Dept and AID folks on Frank's staff might have helped them just a bit when the "planned" the invasion.

So, I think the creation of this new Command and the way in which its being done will have far-reaching affects--on how the US sees the world, develops policy, and goes about its business as a national security state.

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Uncomfortable facts

I spent about ten minutes on WHRU (Hofstra University Radio) this morning discussing Iran, the Middle East, American Empire.

One of the first things the hosts asked me was to explain the broader significance of the first direct talks between the US and Iran in 29 years. I responded, more or less, that they suggest "that Iraq has turned into such a colossal disaster that the Bush administration will even talk to a member of the 'Axis of Evil' if there’s any chance that will help."

One of the hosts, when moving on to the next question, remarked "ideology aside...."

Which puzzles me. There's nothing "ideological," in my view, about characterizing Iraq as a "colossal disaster." We've realized none of the promised benefits of the invasion, life is now worse for many Iraqis then it was under Hussein, the country is a jihadist training camp, and there's no question that the US will fail, for the foreseeable future, to commit the kind of resources necessary to ensure even basic security in the country.

Only the most partisan hack would insist otherwise.

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Patrick Jackson on Memorial Day

By almost any standard, the B-1 bomber is a pretty impressive piece of engineering. A ceiling of over 30,000 feet, maximum speed of about 950 miles per hour (somewhere around mach 1.25), capable of carrying a variety of conventional and nuclear bombs and delivering them quite precisely -- not to mention a maximum range of 7,456 miles. All of this machinery, from advanced avionics to variable geometry wings (which are pulled back at an angle to achieve maximum speeds, as shown here), is propelled along by four massive jet engines generating 14,600 lbf each, a number which jumps to over 30,000 per engine when the afterburners are engaged.

Weapons porn aside, I want to emphasize two things about the B-1 bomber, a plane which even though not the most advanced aircraft in the U.S. bombing arsenal is in fact still in service:

1) this is an incredibly sophisticated piece of machinery designed for killing large numbers of people very quickly by quite literally raining destruction down on their heads.
2) when the afterburners are engaged, especially when the plane is racing by at a couple of hundred feet and then goes into a very steep climb to demonstrate what it is capable of doing, it's extremely loud.

This second point was driven home to me yesterday at the New York Air Show at Jones Beach. Something of a Memorial Day tradition on Long Island, the air show -- as is traditional for most air shows in the United States -- featured a variety of military aircraft and their pilots and crews performing tricks and stunts, demonstrating formation flying, and just generally showing off their capacities and capabilities. I was there with my kids, hoping that the SPF-45 sunblock was sufficient to avoid a sunburn (and for the most part, it was -- just forgot to spray the backs of my knees . . . ), watching the U.S. Army Golden Knights parachute team and the GEICO Skytypers (an impressive bunch, precision-flying vintage 1940 Navy fighter planes in order to scrawl out their airborne messages), when the announcer excitedly reported that the next act would involve a B-1 bomber -- something of a rarity, since B-1s do not usually do airshows. In fact, this was their first appearance at this particular airshow. And the announcer sounded very thrilled, very anxious -- and then we couldn't hear hm, even though his voice was amplified by a pretty good sound system. The only thing that anyone along that beach could hear was the incessant roaring of the B-1's engines as it whizzed by. Everyone had their hands clapped to their ears, and everyone was marveling at this immense feat of engineering as it passed us by and then came around for a second flyby, this time with its wings pulled back and its afterburners engaged so that it could climb rapidly away from us after its simulated "payload delivery."

Now we could hear the announcer again. What he said at this point was striking: "Listen to that! That's the sound of freedom right there! The sound of freedom!" And everyone cheered.

What the announcer was referring to, as I have said, was the noise produced by the engines as they fired their afterburners to make a rapid getaway. This is where point #1 becomes important to keep in mind: the main reason that an airplane has to make that kind of rapid ascent is to get out of the area where it has just dropped a bomb, either because a) the area is a combat zone and the plane is in danger of being shot down if it remains at low altitude for too long, or because b) the bomb in question is a nuclear bomb and the crew would prefer not to be irradiated in the blast. Or, of course, c) both. But in any event, the noise -- the "sound of freedom" -- is inextricably interwoven with the aircraft's main function, which as I have said is to kill large numbers of people with great efficiency. This is what the crowds were cheering; this is what was primarily on display at the airshow: destructive capacity.

There are a lot of things I could say about this episode. Like Carol Cohn (JSTOR link), I could spend some time detailing the ways that the euphemistic language of "payload" and "operational range" works to conceal, or at least obscure, the fact that the object in question is a supremely effective killing machine. I could explore the naturalizing function performed by such displays -- much like the patriotic rituals associated with major sporting events in the U.S. (especially with baseball, the "national pastime" -- and try to trace the ways that their repetition serves to shore up a notion of the nation that is perpetually in need of such re-assertion and stabilization precisely because it lacks any kind of stable national center (shades here of Rogers Brubaker and David Campbell). These are both worthy exercises, but for the moment I am going to leave them to interested readers, or to those of my Ph.D. students working on similar themes and cases.

Instead, I want to comment briefly on the linkage of 'freedom' and the sound of the B-1 bomber, which seems to me to be among the most disquieting parts of the whole episode. "Disquieting" not because of the terrible pun in referring to four roaring afterburners as "disquiet," but because of the blanket of legitimation that the use of the commonplace 'freedom' in this context throws over the military equipment and any of the missions for which it might be utilized. Note the shift in orthography here; by using single-qutation marks around the term 'freedom' I want to signal that I amo not so much referring to the word as to the concept, with the understanding that the concept in question is not some subjective property of mind as much as it is an intersubjective cultural resource that exusts for various speakers to utilize in various situations. We -- at least, we Americans -- have a vague idea what 'freedom' means and that it is both important and somehow intrinsically American, or at least that America intrinsically stands for 'freedom', although the consensus ends as soon as anyone tries to be any more specific about precisely which 'freedoms' are entailed in any given situation. In this way, 'freedom' is one of those rhetorical trump-cards available to Americans, a fact perhaps most bluntly demonstrated in President Bush's first Empire Day speech (20 September 2001) when he answered the question "why do they [the terrorists] hate us?" by claiming simply that "they hate our freedoms." End of discussion, as it were: 'freedom' has been invoked, so rational discussion ceases and we simply have to go out and kick some ass.

Bush cannot claim credit for this rhetorical maneuver, however: it's far older than his administration. FDR, famously, spoke of the "Four Freedoms" that the United States sought to establish throughout the world; Norman Rockwell then painted four paintings to illustrate these four freedoms, and to encourage Americans to buy war bonds in order to fund military operations intended to secure those freedoms for Americans and even extend those freedoms to others. (Note that Roosevelt's list included things like "freedom from want" and "freedom from fear" which do not seem to make Bush's list -- not surprising, given that the power of 'freedom' is as a commonplace, and not as a fully-fleshed-out doctrine or ideology.) And this in turn drew on older articulations of 'freedom' as in some sense representing the essential substance of America, such as the variant of 'freedom' deployed against the institution of slavery by the abolitionist movement, and the variant of 'freedom' (often conjoined with 'liberty') deployed by the colonial revolutionaries against the British parliament. Despite the contextual differences, the basic gesture is the same every time: invoke 'freedom', raise the stakes of the argument, quell dissent and disagreement because no one wants to even be portrayed as an enemy of 'freedom'.

I bring this up not because I am opposed to the idea of freedom; other things being equal, I rather prefer more freedom to less freedom, in fact. I'm also not bringing this up simply to illustrate the deeply, deeply ironic character of a justification for action based on 'freedom' which, in point of fact, involves a massive restriction of freedom for a) the military pilots and crews involved; b) the public that supports those military pilots and crews both financially and by tolerating a restriction on the public's right to know operational details that might compromise "national security"; and finally c) the people on the ground whose very lives, not to mention any 'freedom' they might have had, are annihilated by basically any successful B-1 mission. (But yes, this is deeply, deeply ironic.) I am bringing this up to illustrate something much narrower: 'freedom' is basically a religious symbol in the United States, serving to sanctify courses of action as surely as if they had been blessed by someone speaking ex cathedra. As such, we ought to be very, very cautious whenever we hear it, because it so often signifies the end of anything like rational discussion.

"The sound of freedom" -- to me that's an ominous phrase, especially when repeated by an announcer at a formally "civilian" event, and ranks in my book right up there with the (absurd, if you ask me) notion of a "just war" or a "sanctioned murder." Killing people -- and in all of these cases we are talking about killing people, let's be perfectly clear about that -- is not, in my opinion, something that we ought to be sanctifying or blessing or pretending that we can justify in such a way that the action is right. Instead, we're dealing with tragic necessities: things that sometimes have to be done, but not things that we should be proud of doing. Ignoring this, and imagining that we can actually sanctify such acts, leads us deeper into Max Weber's Dilemma: here's my absolute moral code, and here are all of the manifest violations of that code that I can justify in order to preserve the code itself, or at least the temporal power of those seeking to establish and defend the code. Thus we get killing in the name of peace, fighting wars in the name of ending war, committing evil in order to eliminate evil, and all of the other pathologies of the ethic of absolute ends.

This is something that we Americans particularly need to keep in mind on Memorial Day. As we go out to honor those soldiers who have died, let's not fall prey to the all-too-easy temptation to simply nod our heads when someone says that those soldiers "died for our freedoms" (or offers the platitude that "freedom isn't free" as a way of making sense of their sacrifices, whether or not they actually died while on active duty). It's a lot more complicated than that. It may be tricky to honor soldiers while mourning the condition of a world that needs soldiers, but perhaps only doing something paradoxical like that can prevent us from stepping off the deep end into a realm of perpetual war without end -- war in the name of 'freedom'.

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China Launches a Bid (for hegemony)?

China is in the Satellite business.

The NYT reports that China is launching a communications satellite for Nigeria (pictured right).

The lead says it all:

For years, China has chafed at efforts by the United States to exclude it from full membership in the world’s elite space club. So lately China seems to have hit on a solution: create a new club.

Beijing is trying to position itself as a space benefactor to the developing world — the same countries, in some cases, whose natural resources China covets here on earth. The latest and most prominent example came last week when China launched a communications satellite for Nigeria, a major oil producer, in a project that serves as a tidy case study of how space has become another arena where China is trying to exert its soft power.

This past semester, in my Hegemony and US Foreign Policy class, we talked about China often--usually in terms of a 'hegemonic challenger.' One of the point that we often noted, however, was that a hegemonic challenger must do two things: 1) overthrow the old hegemonic order, in this case, knock the US off its block as teh global #1, and 2) replace it with a new hegemonic order. In most of our discussions, we concluded China not really keen on either--instead treating the US as a rival (as opposed to an enemy) and looking to improve its own position within the system, as China now benefits tremendously from certain aspects of the current US order--especially in areas such as trade.

The key line in the lead is "form its own club." Space has long been seen as a global commons, one where the US can provide certain public goods (such as satellite communication and navigation) and exercise its Command of the Commons as a foundational aspect of US Hegemony. Here you have not just China challenging that US order, but starting its own club for other states with similar interests.

You also see the invocation of "Soft Power." I must admit, we read a lot of Nye in the class (probably second only to Ikenberry on the syllabus) and his work was popular with the students. The notion of Soft Power as a tool for hegemonic management is the heart of Nye's work--get them to like you and want what you want so you don't have to force them to do what you need them to do--and here you have the NYT reading China in that light.

The second interesting thing is the impetus toward the move into space. What I found notable was that the NYT managed, in the span of 3 brief paragraphs, provide ample evidence for Constructivist, Liberal, and Realist explanations of this launch:

For China, the strategy is a blend of self-interest, broader diplomacy and, from a business standpoint, an effective way to break into the satellite market. Satellites have become status symbols and technological necessities for many countries that want an ownership stake in the digital world dominated by the West, analysts say....

China’s more grandiose space goals, which include building a Mars probe and, eventually, putting an astronaut on the moon, are based on an American blueprint in which space exploration enhances national prestige and advances technological development. But Beijing also is focused on competing in the $100 billion commercial satellite industry....

Satellites also are becoming vital to Beijing’s domestic development plans. In the next several years, China could launch as many as 100 satellites to help deliver television to rural areas, create a digital navigational network, facilitate scientific research and improve mapping and weather monitoring. Research centers on microsatellites have opened in Beijing, Shanghai and Harbin, and a new launching center is under construction in Hainan Province....

But China’s focus on satellites has also brought suspicions, particularly from the United States, since most satellites are “dual use” technologies, capable of civilian and military applications. Currently, China is overhauling its military in a modernization drive focused, in part, on developing the capacity to fight a “high tech” war.

Constructivism: Prestige, status, and identity: having a Satellite shows you're one of the cool kids.
Liberalism: Maximize gains: satellites as income generating, development promoting devices with a key focus on domestic political factors.
Realism: Enhances military power relative to the USA.

All that from one fun picture.

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What's at Stake in the American Empire Debate

Not long ago I mentioned my embarrassment over missing a relevant citation for a piece that I'd written.

The article, co-authored with Thomas Wright and entitled "What's at Stake in the American Empire Debate," appeared a few days ago in the American Political Science Review. Tom and I argue that:

Scholars of world politics enjoy well-developed theories of the consequences of unipolarity or hegemony, but have little to say about what happens when a state’s foreign relations take on imperial properties. Empires, we argue, are characterized by rule through intermediaries and the existence of distinctive contractual relations between cores and their peripheries. These features endow them with a distinctive network-structure from those associated with unipolar and hegemonic orders.

The existence of imperial relations alters the dynamics of international politics: processes of divide and rule supplant the balance-of-power mechanism; the major axis of relations shift from interstate to those among imperial authorities, local intermediaries, and other peripheral actors; and preeminent powers face special problems of legitimating their bargains across heterogeneous audiences. We conclude with some observations about the American empire debate, including that the United States is, overall, less of an imperial power than it was during the Cold War.

If you have access to the APSR, you can download the article here.

If not, I believe that I am allowed to make copies available on my personal website; those without access can, for the time being, download a copy here.

I should warn readers that this is not an easy article to read. We assume a working knowledge of international-relations jargon and introduce concepts and terminology unfamiliar to most international-relations scholars. The article also covers a lot of ground. I hope, at some point, that either one of us or both of us has the opportunity to publish a more accessible version.

Nonetheless, I think long-time readers will find it interesting that many of the arguments made in the article first appeared on the Duck of Minerva. I really should have thanked you all in the acknowledgments for your comments and feedback over the last few years.

In other news, I sent a draft of my book manuscript off to some presses for review a little over a week ago, so once I recover from post-writing burnout I intend to cease my long-time neglect of providing substantive posts on the Duck.

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Condi's dream and "the second surge"

Is Condi's dream about to become a reality?

The Guardian has a story today with this headline: "Bush may turn to UN in search for Iraq solution." It is filled with quotes from "a former senior administration official...who is familiar with administration thinking." A "senior US diplomat" also chips in anonymously as well.

So, what's the forthcoming plan -- apparently to be outlined this September when the UN meets in NY?

· Expanded UN involvement in overseeing Iraq's full transition to a "normal" democratic state, including an enhanced role for UN humanitarian agencies, the creation of a UN command, and possibly a Muslim-led peacekeeping force

· Increased involvement in Iraq policymaking of UN security council permanent members, Japan and EU countries - in particular, the new conservative government of French president Nicolas Sarkozy

· A bigger support role for regional countries, notably Sunni Arab Gulf states such as Saudi Arabia, and international institutions such as the World Bank and IMF

· Renewed efforts to promote Iraqi government self-reliance, including attainment of national reconciliation "benchmarks"

· The accelerated removal of US troops from frontline combat duties as the handover to Iraqi security forces, backed by an increased number of US advisers, proceeds.

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf recently "proposed the creation of a UN-flagged peacekeeping force for Iraq to be drawn from Muslim nations."

Would it be bad form to note that Juan Cole fleshed out something like this in July 2004 -- and referred to it as "the Kerry plan."?

In any case, call me skeptical about Bush's prospects at the UN. The very same Guardian piece details the simultaneous escalation of the counter-insurgency effort in Iraq. Via some manipulation of troops deployments, the US is planning a "second surge" to increase forces in Iraq from 160,000 to 200,000 by the end of the year.

Europeans and Muslim states are unlikely to be enthused about peacekeeping in the context of escalating war.

And, of course, the entire policy is framed cynically as a method for Republicans to avoid electoral disaster in 2008.

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A new duckling...

Addison Mary Petti was born on Sunday, May 20th at 3:43am after what amounted to 19 hours of labor. My wife Kate was remarkable to say the least--she is my hero. Addison is 7lbs 10oz and comes in at a lanky 21 inches. Daddy is already thinking of buying her a pony.

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Weekend News Round-up

It wasn't quite one of my best-laid plans, but it did go awry this weekend. I had intended to blog about 3 or 4 interesting stories I've been following over the weekend, but between feeding the new kid, searching for child care (if this were one of those so-called 'mommyblogs,' oh the stories i could post. but its not, so i won't...) and of course the fantastic Taste of Wheaton today, time flew by and here it is, Sunday night watching the Mets - Yankees game (and I share Rodger's view on this) and this is all that there is time to do. So, here goes:

Event I really really really really wanted to go to this weekend but couldn't: The annual Joint Services Open House. The Security Studies Bombs and Rockets geek in me loves it. In fact, one might say that the annual Dayton Air Show at Wright Pat is partially responsible for my current career. Probably not a good place to take a 2-month old, maybe next year. We did see an F-117 flying over the Taste of Wheaton though, so I guess that counts for something.

From the Korean Peninsula--a big shift in North-South relations. The train tracks across the DMZ linking the DPRK and ROK finally opened, with the first train traveling between the two countries since the war. Is mostly symbolic, but holds promise for serious integration between the two countries at some point. Interesting point: My Freshman World Politics class in Fall 2005 predicted this. In their settlement to the 6 party talks, they had a special railroad deal that would link Korea to Europe via Russia. Lo and Behold, that's what Korea wants out of this long term.

I was there two summers ago, and saw those train tracks. Its quite an amazing thing, to have a passageway across the DMZ.

Paul Wolfowitz resigned from the World Bank Presidency. My two observations on this: 1) It was bound to happen. Despite what everyone will publicly say, it was never just about the girlfriend, it was much more about the rest of the world, angry about Iraq and US Hegemony, finally finding a way to vent at the Bush Administration. 2) that said, it was not inevitable--Wolfowitz walked smack into this one. It not just the girlfriend issue, but the way he never fit into the Bank Culture. Part of the problem is that he's an academic, a theorist, not an administrator. He's got his theories about how to solve the world's problems, and, in what has been one of the central flaws in decades of "development," had the I know what's good for you, do as I say and not as I do, don't question my methods because I'm just a soul who's intentions are good, oh lord, pleas don't let me be misunderstood... He never figured out how to actually run an institution--not DoD, not Iraq, and not the World Bank. And he got his comeuppances.

Bush Appointed a 3-Star General to be the "War Czar" (or is it War Tsar?). Good luck General Lute. Its a job no one wanted, and so, in a trend noted by William Arkin, you have yet another Military Man taking what ought to be a Civilian Job. Because, of course, no civilian wanted it. Like all Czars, its a high profile job to solve an intractable problem that is probably doomed to fail. Like this 3-Star can really get 2 or 3 superiors in the Chain of Command (say Fallon, Petraeus, Gates) not to mention the Sec State or the National Security Adviser to sing from the same sheet of music. Like the DNI, its more bureaucracy in order to cut through the problems of bureaucracy. More to the point, it shows that no one in the Administration is actually doing their job, which is to avoid getting into situations that make such a job necessary in the first place. Besides, we already have a War Czar with all the appropriate authority and ability to cut through the bureaucracy, get the inter-agency process to cooperate and work, and keep everyone on the same page. Its called the President. Or at a minimum, his NSA....

And, from the we're doomed in Iraq file, well, we're... (can you tell its getting late, as my typing gets a bit faster and the language a bit looser?) Harpers recently published an article by Edward Luttwak on how there is no way the US can win in Iraq (hat tip to RNN on this one). He reviews the new Counter Insurgency manual that the top Army and Marine Generals developed based on successful in-country experience and are now attempting to apply in Iraq. Fundamental issue: its a ground war. (and, check out this from Intel Dump on how the Air Force is struggling to remain relevant in Iraq) More to the point--its a political ground war. The US Army is great at fighting ground wars against other armies. It doesn't do politics, and all of its best abilities are useless unless it can solve the fundamental political problem that a) the people don't believe that US forces are actually helping them, rather they are an occupying army intent on corrupting their way of life and b) without the political support of the local population, you can't defeat an insurgency.

His conclusion: The US must either become something that it is not (or at least doesn't claim to be)--a severely repressive occupying power that strictly and directly controls conquered territory OR face certain political failure in Iraq.

What I worry about is that, in the name of 'victory for the forces of democracy' those non-democratic impulses make inroads into US Foreign policy, fundamentally altering the identity of this nation in a very dangerous way. Its the danger of the Wolfowitz / Bush Administration way of doing business--if my intentions are good, don't question the motive. But, bring in a little Ido Oren and John Ruggie and you can see not only how this threatens the fundamental underpinnings of US Hegemony, but threatens the very nature of the US itself (the quasi-cites make sense to me at least...).

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MSF's Foreign Policy

It is a time of political transition in Europe. While Tony Blair is not leaving his post as the UK's PM until next month, Jacques Chirac has already been replaced as French President by Nicolas Sarkozy.

A few weeks ago, Sarkozy'z UMP party of the center-right beat Socialist candidate Ségolène Royal 53% to 47%. However, Sarkozy has just named Socialist Bernard Kouchner as his Foreign Minister.

What will this mean for French foreign policy -- and perhaps US-French relations?

The former is perhaps easier to predict. Kouchner is best known as a founder (1971) of Medecins sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders), the Nobel-winning transnational medical organization. Most of the cofounders had worked for the Red Cross in Biafra in the late 1960s and were critical of the agency for being too deferential to international law, political neutrality and state sovereignty.

That history provides a huge hint as to Kouchner's priorities and ideas. In 1987, he published a book with a title that also strongly signals his priorities: The duty to intervene. He declares simply, "mankind's suffering belongs to all men."

As a politician, Kouchner has continue to be both a humanitarian and an interventionist. He served as French Minister of Health during the 1990s and Minister of State for Humanitarian Action 1988-1991. From 1994, he was a Member of the European Parliament and President of its Committee on Development and Cooperation.

Over the years, these posts provided Kouchner frequent opportunities to advocate western intervention in humanitarian crises around the world. In Somalia in 1992, the AP reports, Kouchner "fumed about 'rich people everywhere ... who do nothing' in the face of misery." Later, he headed the post-war UN Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) from 15 July 1999 through 12 January 2001.

Experts guess that Kouchner is likely to make Darfur his top foreign policy priority.

As for French-US relations, Kouchner apparently speaks English very well, worked with the US in the Balkans in the 1990s, and like President Bush, has declared his personal and political opposition to tyranny and dictatorships everywhere.

In advance of the Iraq war, the AP says that Kouchner told interviewer Charlie Rose: "I’m really, clearly, strongly in favor of getting rid of Saddam Hussein, because of the suffering of the Iraqi people." Though he hoped that conflict could be avoided, he criticized Chirac for linking French foreign policy to German pacifism, threatening to veto a second Iraq resolution at the UN Security Council and thereby undermining ties with the US.

Let me offer two possible futures.

First, Condi Rice's dream: If the US can somehow successfully reframe the Iraq war as a humanitarian operation, which would likely require ending the counter-insurgency campaign, then perhaps Foreign Minister Kouchner will be able to convince the UN and his fellow European ministers to help the US solve its Iraq problem.

Second, Kouchner's more likely dream: He pushes for the west and the UN to intervene in Darfur, urging the US to put its material might behind its political rhetoric.

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The British gift for understatement

From the Guardian:

The new EU member states of Poland and Lithuania have been arguing this week for the summit to be called off, and criticising the German preparations. For historical reasons, the east Europeans are highly sensitive to any sign of Germany cutting deals with Russia over their heads.

Yes, I imagine they would be.

Image source: http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/triumph/pact-sign.jpg

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Beisbol has been very very good to me

-- Sammy Sosa

The fun thing about this blog is that we're IR scholars and baseball fans, and sometimes those two issues overlap in very interesting ways. The globalization of Major League Baseball has been all the rage in the past few years. A wealth of international players--now a full 29% of MLB opening day rosters in 2007--has brought an influx of tremendous talent into the game. MLB is actively promoting the game globally, paying games outside the USA and helping to set up baseball leagues in other countries (most recently in Israel-- notice how the Israel Baseball League website looks alot like the main MLB.com page--you can even play fantasy Israel Baseball...). And, lets not forget the World Baseball Classic, won by Japan (indeed, featuring an entirely non-US semifinal round).

Unfortunately, there has been an ugly underbelly to growth of baseball's quest for global talent. While US players coming out of high school and college are regulated by strict eligibility rules and must go through the draft, all non-US players are free agents and can be signed very young-- as early as 16.5 years old. All MLB teams now operate academies in Latin America, particularly the Dominican Republic the number one source for Major League talent outside the USA. There has been criticism of these academies exploiting young kids hoping to realize the Sammy Sosa dream only to fail and be condemned to a life of poverty.

Now that might be changing. Slowly, somewhat, but in a positive direction. Sports Illustrated has a fascinating story about how the Cleveland Indians are leading the way adding an educational component to their Dominican Academy.

When the Cleveland Indians signed Dominican prospect Angel Franco, he knew he'd been given the opportunity of a lifetime. He just didn't know that that opportunity would have nothing to do with baseball.

Franco, under a revolutionary program pioneered by the Cleveland Indians, graduated from high school. Yes, a Dominican baseball prospect graduating from high school is revolutionary, and no, I'm not exaggerating. In the Dominican Republic, where $7,000 is the per capita yearly income, eighth grade is when free and compulsory education ends and the chase for a fraction of the $50 million in signing bonuses invested annually begins -- with much of that money doled out to 16 1/2 year-olds, the earliest age a prospect can sign. For a 14-year old boy with even a whiff of arm strength or a hint of foot speed, the idea of continuing his education almost seems economically unwise.

So Major League academies throughout the Dominican Republic fill up with players whose average educational levels fall somewhere between the sixth and ninth grades. The players know full well that only odds smaller than them making the big leagues are the odds that they'll make a sustainable living away from the field. Once cut from a team, they become moped drivers, cement workers or sugar cane cutters. Sometimes they are fruit peddlers and occasionally drug pushers. But under new educational initiatives introduced by the Indians and replicated by the New York Mets and the Boston Red Sox, pursing baseball no longer means abandoning school.

In the spring of 2004, the Cleveland Indians started requiring their Dominican prospects to attend Prepara, an adult education program that teaches players core subjects such as math, geography, and history. Depending on the time of the year and the intensity of the playing schedule, players become students anywhere from three to five times per week with classes lasting 2 1/2 to 3 1/2 hours, with at least a half-dozen completing their high school educations.

But before you start thinking that the Indians are going all Amnesty International on us, make no mistake that the estimated $40,000-$50,000 the team spends annually educating its players is a business decision.

"It heightened our ability to understand and know the players we were evaluating, signing and developing," says Cleveland's Director of Player Development Ross Atkins, who helped implement the team's educational programming. "We wanted them to think analytically. Increasing aptitude is a competitive advantage."

Underscoring his team's emphasis on aptitude rather than altruism is the fact that Atkins can't tell you quite how many players have received high school diplomas as part of Prepara. "The actual graduation is not something were focused on," he says. "It's a nice bonus."

What is interesting here, and, potentially, a model for other globalizing businesses, is that overall education (or what some might call, gasp, liberal arts education) that increases a worker's overall aptitude is a very sound investment. Critical thinking skills are valuable, even to a baseball player.

There are no statistics or studies to show if education translates to winning, but Perez says the Mets have noticed more focused, better behaved baseball players. The benefit of educating young recruits has been one of the central arguments of authors Arturo J. Marcano Guevara and David P. Fidler in their book, Stealing Lives: The Globalization of Baseball and the Tragic Story of Alexis Quiroz. Both compliment the Indians', Mets' and Red Sox's efforts to educate their workforce but question why all 30 Major League Baseball clubs aren't required to offer a core curriculum to their players.

"The fact that a couple of teams are now experimenting with something that has long been policy in North America is not impressive," says Fidler, a law professor at Indiana University.

The main problem in this case stems from what Fidler and Marcano argue is a disparity in the way Major League rules treat players born in Latin countries versus U.S. or Canadian prospects. Major League rules prohibit teams from signing U.S. and Canadian high school players during the years in which they are eligible to play scholastic baseball. Dominican and Venezuelan players need only be 16 years, six months. While the NBA last year enacted an age minimum requiring its players to be at least 19 after mounting concerns about the physical and emotional readiness of its athletes, Major League Baseball has signed the U.S.-equivalent of high school juniors routinely and consistently.

Marcano, a Venezuelan native and sports lawyer in Toronto, has seen hordes of kids cut from the Major League programs with no backup plans and no education. "They are sending this message that baseball is a way out of poverty," he says, "but if they don't make it there's no future for these kids because they are not prepared to reincorporate into society."

Because of the Indians' Prepara program, Franco is not one of them. Educated and later released by the team, he is now enrolled in law school. Perez, too, has seen the changes. One player, he recalls, loved learning so much that he asked to continue his education even though he's shown promise as a major-league prospect. "And," Perez says, "he did it in English."

Now, will this have a major impact that turns around the entire Dominican economy? Probably not, lets not be naive. The lesson, rather, is that these academies are trying to become somewhat less exploitative and leave the people who are their core product better able to handle life after baseball. Not every kid will become a Pedro Martinez or Sammy Sossa, but if they get a decent education for trying, well, that's good for them, good for the Dominican, and good for baseball.

(and yes, I am a Cleveland Indians fan, so yes, I'm very glad to see that they are a leader in this field)

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Chavez's Challenge (or the fatal flaw in his grand plan)

Hugo Chavez is talking a tough game, challenging the USA, and the Bush Administration in particular, all over the globe. He's rallying leaders in Latin America, meeting with 'rogues' world-wide, and even calling Bush the "devil" at the UN.

But he's got a problem. In a fascinating story, The Washington Post reported that:

[A] new study of trade and oil consumption data shows that Venezuela appears ever more dependent on selling its oil to the country Chávez calls "the cruelest, most terrible, most cynical, most murderous empire that has existed." And U.S. government energy trade data show the United States is slightly less dependent on Venezuela, which at one time challenged Canada, Mexico and Saudi Arabia as the No. 1 provider of foreign oil but now tussles with up-and-coming Nigeria for the fourth spot.

Chavez is able to run such a strong Anti-US campaign because he is flush with cash from the high price of Venezuela's exported Oil. But, more and more, the source of that cash is the very enemy he's railing against. Despite his anti-US policies, he's become more dependent on the voracious US appetite for Oil.

Yet the country's once-vaunted oil industry has seen its production and capacity to produce decline over the last decade, according to oil analysts and statistics from the U.S. Energy Department and the International Energy Agency in Paris.

The world's fourth-largest oil exporter a decade ago, Venezuela is now seventh, according to the BP Statistical Review of World Energy. The 1.1 million barrels of crude that Venezuela exports to the United States every day amount to less than 11 percent of American imports, down from 17.3 percent in 1996. By contrast, the No. 1 supplier to the American market, Canada, is now sending more than 1.8 million barrels a day and topped 2 million barrels daily in November.

During most of Chávez's eight years in office, more than 60 percent of the country's total crude exports have gone to the United States, up from 50 percent throughout much of the 1990s, according to Ramón Espinasa, a former chief economist at PDVSA who is now a consultant in Washington. The trend is due to growing U.S. demand, Venezuela's rising consumption and what oil analysts say is the state's inability to diversify its base of clients to include big consumers.

As Chavez spends money helping his global political pals, he's investing less in his national Oil company. The nasty secret about Venezuela's Oil is that, though bountiful, is really thick, like sludge. Unlike Saudi light sweet crude which is easy to refine anywhere in the world, Venezuelan heavy crude is so heavy that only select refineries dedicated to processing such a heavy grade of Oil, can handle it.

So a country less capable of producing oil, analysts say, is more tied to the United States, where refineries wholly or partly owned by PDVSA refine Venezuela's molasses-like oil. The installations exist nowhere else, which makes some analysts skeptical that Venezuela is exporting as much to China as it claims.

"It's three months by tanker to China, five days to the East Coast of the United States, so the American client is too important for Venezuela."

So, at any point, the US could end Chavez's antics with a simple Oil embargo. He's got no where else to send his product. Would it hurt? Maybe a little (though with gas already over $3.00/gallon, I guess we can tolerate more than most people ever thought we could...), but it would hurt him a heck of a lot worse than it would hurt us.

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A crisis in American generalship?

Is last fall's "revolt of the generals" about to extend to active duty officers?

Lt. Col. Paul Yingling, deputy commander of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, offers a stinging critique of America's military leadership in the May 2007 Armed Forces Journal:

Iraq's grave and deteriorating condition offers diminishing hope for an American victory and portends risk of an even wider and more destructive regional war.

These debacles are not attributable to individual failures, but rather to a crisis in an entire institution: America's general officer corps. America's generals have failed to prepare our armed forces for war and advise civilian authorities on the application of force to achieve the aims of policy....the general officer corps designed to advise policymakers, prepare forces and conduct operations failed to perform its intended functions.

Yingling's article points out that US generals "underestimated the strength of the enemy, overestimated the capabilities of Iraq's government and security forces and failed to provide Congress with an accurate assessment of security conditions in Iraq."

The twin failures of incompetence and unprofessional character have had horrific strategic consequences in Iraq, Yingling notes, but a loss there might merely portend an even more disastrous future.

How will the officer corps react to this critique?

Well, the new Secretary of Defense is apparently open to greater criticism. Together, these factors may create a new "command climate" friendlier to public dissent. Retired Army Maj. Gen. William L. Nash, now of the Council on Foreign Relations told the LA Times

"I suspect the new Defense secretary has told general officers to speak their minds....It's going to be hard for some in the administration — suddenly they're going to feel it from the inside. I think you're going to see more of it."

If he is right, look for increasingly frank -- and dismal -- assessments of the Iraq war.

In fact, the new level of open dissent may have already started snowballing. Consider the latest comments from Army Maj. Gen. Benjamin R. "Randy" Mixon, who is the commander of US forces in Northern Iraq.

According to the LAT, Mixon says bluntly that he needs more troops. What he doesn't say, at least explicitly, is that President Bush's "surge" has meant redeployment of some troops from northern Iraq -- the Diyala province, for instance -- to Baghdad.

Mixon, speaking Friday by teleconference from Camp Speicher, outside Tikrit, to a Pentagon news conference, said that he did not have enough soldiers to provide security in Diyala. The local government is "nonfunctional" and the central government is "ineffective," he said.

"I'm going to need additional forces," he said, "to get that situation to a more acceptable level, so the Iraqi security forces will be able in the future to handle that."

There's more too. Consider the facts on the ground. as Mixon presented them:

There is one U.S. Army brigade, or about 3,500 troops, in the [Diyala] province, compared with 10 brigades in and around Baghdad and four in Al Anbar. Sixty-one U.S. soldiers have been killed in Diyala this year, compared with 20 last year, according to icasualties.org, an independent website that tracks casualties.

Mixon emphasized that he had asked for more troops shortly after arriving in Iraq in September, well before the U.S. troop buildup began in Baghdad...

"The level of violence began to increase before the surge," Mixon said, referring to the Baghdad buildup. "It has increased, of course, during the surge … [because] we are sure that there are elements, both Sunni extremist and Shia extremist, that have moved out of Baghdad."

Under Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, I would have been worried about Mixon's career.

One final note. Yingling says that Congress has a critical role to play in assuring quality generalship:

To reward moral courage in our general officers, Congress must ask hard questions about the means and ways for war as part of its oversight responsibility. Some of the answers will be shocking, which is perhaps why Congress has not asked and the generals have not told.

Yingling claims that Presidents cannot solve this problem because they reward "team players," which creates really perverse incentives in the officer corps.

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Harry Potter analysis: Who will die? Who will survive? ... in publishing

Jeffrey Trachtenberg of the Wall Street Journal investigates the non-fiction bandwagon around the Harry Potter franchise.

When J.K. Rowling's "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" hits bookstores July 21, it will, as virtually everyone knows, mark the end of a 10-year run of seven books that have made publishing history.

But the series has spawned a whole literary ecosystem, with new offshoots expected to spring up as never before during these next few months. Hordes of adventuresome publishers are out there already, and others will be trying to cash in with books that predict what could happen in the final Potter title, provide behind-the-scenes analysis, or just plain ride piggy-back.

At least a dozen new or updated Harry Potter-related titles will likely be published this year, according to Cambridge Information Group Inc.'s R.R. Bowker. These aren't the kind of faux Potter fantasy tales that are posted on the Web, though there are plenty of those.

Trachtenberg called me for the story and faced the unenviable task of trying to extract a "short" sentence from me (I actually apologized repeatedly; it was that difficult). The big question: what will be the fate of Harry Potter fan non-fic as the last book and films get released?

But the likelihood of a short shelf life isn't stopping publishers from moving quickly while interest is still high. "My suspicion is that there will be a rush of books after the series ends," says Daniel Nexon, an assistant professor in the government department at Georgetown University who co-edited "Harry Potter and International Relations"published last year by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers Inc. "Having the final book out will generate a lot of buzz, and they'll look at that frenzy as one last big marketing opportunity."

Book retailers are also mindful that nothing drives traffic to their stores like Harry Potter. Borders Group Inc., the nation's second largest book chain, has struck exclusive deals to sell two related Potter books: "The Great Snape Debate" and "The Unauthorized Harry Potter." The first has a gimmick that harks back to the early days of science fiction: the book must be turned upside down in order to read the counter argument regarding Snape's allegiances. The second title offers a broad perspective on various subjects Ms. Rowling has raised in her six published books.

I argued later in the interview that Harry Potter is such a landmark in popular culture and literary fiction that we shouldn't expect that production of Potter analysis to cease in the near future.

Trachtenberg didn't quote me to that effect, but he did quote someone else making a similar point

Still, some caution against underestimating the passion of Harry Potter readers. Mr. Granger, an English teacher at Valley Forge Military Academy in Wayne, Pa., says academics will attempt to fix Ms. Rowling's place in the cultural firmament, much as they continue to do so for such writers as Charles Dickens and Agatha Christie. "I'm fairly certain Potter-mania will not go the way of disco and the hula- hoop," says Mr. Granger, who is currently working on "Harry Meets Hamlet and Scrooge," that will explore Harry's literary antecedents.

So I ask for your thoughts. On a continuum between, say, Krull and Shakespeare, where does the scholarly fate of Harry Potter fall?

... In case the hyperlink above wasn't obvious enough, let me plug the book again. The sales rank is the worst it has been in a while, so now's the time to buy that copy of Harry Potter and International Relationsthat you've always wanted.

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Expensive War

Several stories on the War in Iraq hint at subtle yet significant shifts in the politics of the war.

The war is, beyond a doubt, incredibly expensive. All wars are--its a fact of life, there's just no avoiding it. This war is rapidly becoming the most expensive war the US has ever fought:

Since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Congress has approved more than $609 billion for the wars, a figure likely to stand as lawmakers rework their latest spending bill in response to a Bush veto. Requests for $145 billion more await congressional action and would raise the cost in inflation-adjusted dollars beyond the cost of the wars in Korea and Vietnam.

Where's the outrage? Its muted, and by design. The Administration is funding this war in such a way as to minimize the burden on the American taxpayer. People don't feel a financial pinch from the cost of the war, so its less of a concern to the average American's bottom line each April 15: The Post reports:

But the United States is vastly richer than it was in those days, and the nation's wealth now dwarfs the price of war, economists said. Last year, spending in Iraq amounted to less than 1 percent of the total economy -- about as much as Americans spent shopping online and less than half what they spent at Wal-Mart. Total defense spending is 4 percent of gross domestic product, the figure that measures the nation's economic output. In contrast, defense spending ate up 14 percent of GDP at the height of the Korean War and 9 percent during the Vietnam War.

And this time, the war bill is going directly on the nation's credit card. Unlike his predecessors, Bush is financing a major conflict without raising taxes or making significant cuts in domestic programs. Instead, he has cut taxes and run up the national debt. The result, economists said, is a war that has barely dented the average American's pocketbook and caused few reverberations in the broader economy.

Expensive war, but not expensive for you and me. For now, at least--

Like all debts, however, the bill for Iraq and Afghanistan will eventually come due. While it is unlikely to cause economic upheaval, such as the devastating inflation that followed the Vietnam War, economists foresee substantial increases in government spending to rebuild the nation's exhausted armed forces, care for its disabled veterans and cover rising interest payments.

Joseph E. Stiglitz, a Columbia University professor who was chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Bill Clinton and who was among the winners of the 2001 Nobel prize for economics, [says] "It's actually turning out to be a very expensive war," Stiglitz said. But "it has been designed to be a war the American people don't feel."

As a result, when the cost does appear, it becomes a very political issue. The costs are real, and have tremendous impact on those effected. Instead of shared cost distributed equitably across the entire nation, the costs touch down in middle America with devastating consequences. Take, for instance, the devastation in Kansas wrought by the Tornado last week. A whole town was destroyed. When that happens, the Governor calls out the National Guard to help the people in need in extra-ordinary circumstances. Yet, when Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius called out the Kansas National Guard, the response was slow, and the people of Kansas, in need after a Tornado ripped apart their town, paid a real price. Where was the Kansas Guard (and, more significantly, their trucks)? Most of them were in Iraq. The NYT reports:

“As you travel around Greensburg, you’ll see that city and county trucks have been destroyed,” Ms. Sebelius, a Democrat, said Monday. “The National Guard is one of our first responders. They don’t have the equipment they need to come in, and it just makes it that much slower.”

In Kansas, the National Guard is operating with 40 percent to 50 percent of its vehicles and heavy machinery, local Guard officials said. Ordinarily, the Guard would have about 660 Humvees and more than 30 large trucks to traverse difficult terrain and transport heavy equipment. When the tornado struck, the Guard had about 350 Humvees and 15 large trucks, said Maj. Gen. Tod Bunting, the state’s adjutant general. The Guard would also usually have 170 medium-scale tactical vehicles used to transport people and supplies — but now it has fewer than 30, he said. On the other hand, General Bunting said, it had more cargo trucks than it needed.

Nonetheless, the governor and officials in other states again expressed concern that the problem could occur again as the stretched National Guard system struggled to respond to disasters at home while also fighting overseas.

The issue is not confined to Kansas, and as the summer disaster season starts (tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, and fires) at the same time as the Surge is occupying National Guard units and their equipment, people depending on the government to help them with disaster response will feel the cost of the war.

The difficulty, of course, is that this can quickly become a political fight. As soon as Gov. Sebelius raised the issue of Iraq, the White House immediately fired back, blaming her and the Kansas state government for mismanagement of existing resources--not unlike the dispute between the Administration and Louisiana after Katrina.

The significant political shift is that the moderate Republicans in Congress are starting to feel the heat. A group of them met with the President on Tuesday and told him point blank that his war was hurting the Party (not the country, but the party...), reportedly:

House Republican moderates, in a remarkably blunt White House meeting, warned President Bush this week that his pursuit of the war in Iraq is risking the future of the Republican Party and that he cannot count on GOP support for many more months.

One wonders how many more months...

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