Maia blogged on the curious situation in Russia. Despite Putin's and United Russia's overwhelming popularity, the government seems intent on ensuring an even more crushing victory for the party. Now Luke Harding and Tom Parfitt of The Guardian report on major "fraud, intimidation, and bribery" in the run up to the election.
They also offer some possible answers as to why the Russian government seems intent on manipulating an election that United Russia should be assured of winning.
1. Putin's popularity may be smoke and mirrors:The president's personal popularity remains high. But support for United Russia is less solid. Independent experts say the party's true ratings are around 35% - well below the 55% figure suggested by state-controlled opinion polls.
Of course, even if Putin "true approval" is at 35%, the opposition is so disorganized that, even without suppression and manipulation, they could hardly be expected to mount much of a challenge to United Russia. Thus:
In a leak to Russian media this week, one senior election official said that regional governors had been told to deliver at least 65% of the vote for Putin's party, an "unrealistically high" total that could be achieved only through electoral fraud and by compelling people to vote.
"The elections are going to be falsified," said Mikhail Delyagin, an economist and the director of Moscow's Institute on Globalisation Problems. "The elections that took place in the Soviet Union were less falsified than this one."
2. The writers endorse the theory that the government wants to ratchet up the numbers to justify establishing Putin as leader-for-life:Analysts say the pressure is designed to ensure a resounding win for the United Russia party and for Putin, who heads its party list. The victory would give him a public mandate to maintain ultimate power in the country as "National Leader" despite being unable to stand for a third term as president in March. [...]
This last point is analytically interesting. Political analysts have paid increasing attention to so-called "electoral authoritarianism" over the years. And there's good reason to believe that the Russian Government, like many quasi-democratic regimes, has been adapting to the recent failures of similar regimes.
The Kremlin has cast Sunday's State Duma vote as a referendum on Putin. Although Putin is obliged to step down as president next May, a landslide victory may be used to legitimise his return to power, possibly as early as the summer. [...]
Putin's decision to associate himself with United Russia's election campaign - and to stand as a candidate at the top of the party's federal list - has contributed to the scale of the fraud, analysts said.
"The scale of pressure is due to nervousness within the Kremlin administration since it announced that this is no longer a parliamentary election but a referendum on Putin," Fyodor Lukyanov, editor-in-chief of the journal Russia in Global Affairs, said. Lukyanov said he believed the amount of fraud on polling day would be small. "This is normal in contemporary advanced authoritarian systems. They are smart enough to organise the vote in quite a proper and correct way," he said.
In other words, making things difficult for poll workers, and harassing the opposition, represents a perfectly rational strategy for avoiding any risk of what's been going on around Russia's periphery in countries like Ukraine and Georgia.
Mark Beissinger, by the way, has a great article (behind pay wall) on this in Perspectives on Politics: "Structure and Example in Modular Political Phenomena: The Diffusion of Bulldozer/Rose/Orange/Tulip Revolutions."
Now, the Russian Federation is, by my estimate, at zero danger of falling prey to a "colored revolution" in the immediate future. But why take any chances, particularly if the regime aims to produce such an overwhelming mandate that it can "democratically" justify alterations in its de jure or de facto constitutional structure?
Friday, November 30, 2007
Guardian: poll fraud underway in Russia
Thursday, November 29, 2007
Reasoning with "Barbarians"
Daniel Howden's piece in The Independent yesterday describes the ongoing furor over the sentencing of a gang-rape victim in Saudi Arabia to 200 lashes for speaking out about the crime. The 19-year old victim was originally sentenced to 90 lashes for being with a non-related male; the sentence was increased because she spoke out to the Saudi media during her appeal.
The fact that the Saudi government is now reviewing the case is a testament to the “boomerang effect” described in Keck and Sikkink's classic book Activists Beyond Borders.
However, Howden writes:
“The Western world has expressed outrage – which has, in turn, provoked anger among the Saudi establishment… Prince Saud al-Faisal was forced, much to his annoyance, to answer hostile questions about her case at the Middle East peace talks in Annapolis this week. 'What is outraging about this case is that it is being used against the Saudi government and people,' he told reporters.”There is a slight but important mischaracterization here: there is no one monolithic “Saudi establishment.” In fact, while elements within the Justice Ministry are engaged in a defamation campaign against the victim, the Foreign Ministry has distanced itself from the ruling. Prince al-Faisal’s remarks in Annapolis were not meant to suggest that international outrage is misplaced per se (he is also outraged, it seems), but that the West is mistakenly targeting all of Saudi law and culture, rather than (appropriately) calling out a specific failure of justice.
(Responses to Howden’s article posted on the Agonist frankly bear out Faisal’s point. Says one blogger: "I say... invade Saudi Arabia!"; another: "mysogynistic and gynophobic barbarian scum.")
The difference Faisal speaks of may make little sense in the big picture, but it matters enormously in this particular case: how one appeals for victims of abuse can be as important as whether one does.
If the point is not simply to be right, but to be effective, citizens who wish to protect this woman should call the Saudi embassy and speak respectfully to the government’s interests and values rather than denigrating Islamic law and Saudi tradition per se. For more on how to pitch such appeals effectively, see these suggestions by Diodotus on Elected Swineherd.
Romeny on immigration: "don't ask, don't tell"
A quick note on the CNN/YouTube Debate.
Although the point is rather obvious, I think it is worth reflecting on how whe exchange between Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney about illegal immigration encapsulates fundamental tensions in this country, and within the Republican party, on the issue.
Recall that Romnney attacked Giuliani for running a "sanctuary city." Giuliani rejected the the label but also went on the offensive:It's unfortunate, but Mitt generally criticizes people in a situation in which he's had far the -- worst record.
Romney denied that he employed illegal immigrants, but also responded:
For example, in his case, there were six sanctuary cities. He did nothing about them.
There was even a sanctuary mansion. At his own home, illegal immigrants were being employed, not being turned into anybody or by anyone. And then when he deputized the police, he did it two weeks before he was going to leave office, and they never even seemed to catch the illegal immigrants that were working at his mansion. So I would say he had sanctuary mansion, not just sanctuary city.Are you suggesting, Mr. Mayor -- because I think it is really kind of offensive actually to suggest, to say look, you know what, if you are a homeowner and you hire a company to come provide a service at your home -- paint the home, put on the roof. If you hear someone that is working out there, not that you have employed, but that the company has.
But, of course, many of those concerned about illegal immigration--the very constituency Romney's targeting in his attacks on Giuliani--want the government to engage in behavior that Romney labels "racist": conduct sweeps of hispanic laborers, and hispanics in general, because of their accents and appearances.
If you hear someone with a funny accent, you, as a homeowner, are supposed to go out there and say, "I want to see your papers."
Is that what you're suggesting?
Indeed, Romney's implicit claim, that individuals have no positive obligation to comply with immigration laws, highlights some broader inconsistencies in the current political environment. Romney, I imagine, employed the company in question because it offered to do the job he wanted at a competitive price. How did it get its prices sufficiently low to secure a contract with Romney? Presumably because it employed low-wage illegal immigrants.
Romney made the same choice that, I'd wager, at least tens of thousands of Americans make every day: to adopt a "don't ask, don't tell" policy when it comes to accepting cheap goods and services made possible by, at least as the employment market currently works, illegal immigrants.
Romney's position may be particularly hypocritical because, after all, he seeks to exploit the current wave of anti-illegal immigrant sentiment even as he may have directly gained in material terms from illegal immigration. And unlike Fred Thompson, he doesn't even express some regret from possibly having done so. But like not a few other Americans, Romney wants to have it both ways: to take a strong stand against illegal immigration without assuming the kind of personal responsibility that would reduce the size of his bank account.
Romney's inconsistency reflects a more abstract dilemma. Most political elites support free trade on the grounds that the open flow of capital, goods, and services contributes to economic efficiency and aggregate economic growth. But many of these same elites draw the line at labor. If we should import other production factors, such as rubber, from wherever they are cheapest, why shouldn't we enjoy the unrestricted ability to import cheap labor as well? The answer involves, ultimately, distributional and cultural politics. But similar considerations also apply in the context of debates over "free trade." So those who want to restrict the flow of cheap labor to this country but not of other production factors, let alone finished goods, have some explaining to do.
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
CNN Suppresses Diversity, Polar Bears
Greetings, all. Though I think Daniel hoped my early posts would concern mass killing (or, perhaps, the conquest of the Alpha Quadrant), I couldn’t help but comment on CNN’s Republican YouTube debate for my inaugural post.
Mainly, I wonder how different the debate would have been if the 35 questions aired had been chosen based on YouTube page views and comments, rather than selected by the media elite to fit the issues the candidates were prepared to discuss.
Demographics, for example. Out of the 35 videos selected for the debate, I counted only 6 featuring women. Only 2 featured people of color. And the debate of the “family values” party features no questions from minors, although many of the nearly 5,000 entries were from youth.
Too, the subject matter seemed peculiarly out of touch with the concerns of many voters. Few questions about foreign policy (Darfur, anyone?). Nothing about climate change (maybe because kids were under-represented as stakeholders - ever since polar bears became the poster children for global warming I know mine have been up in arms). And not a word about how the candidates would differentiate themselves from the policies of the Bush Administration.
But then again, perhaps I assume too much about the total population of entries. Could the digital divide simply result in a massive over-representation of gun-toting white males among the population of those submitting YouTube videos?
A fascinating qualitative analysis could and should be done on the total dataset of video entries to measure the gap between the population of entries and the sample that was used tonight to represent "the public agenda." The findings would have important implications for our assessment of the YouTube debates as a genuine populist shift in electoral politics, rather than an attempt of the media barons to co-opt the emerging power of Web 2.0.
Iraqi International Initiative
Today, I received an email asking me to endorse the Iraqi International Initiative for Refugees. Basically, the sponsors want to convince the UN to mandate that Iraqi oil revenues be shared with the 4.5 million refugees and displaced persons dispersed throughout the Middle East and the world. Many are living in poverty in neighboring states.
Here is their argument in a nutshell:
The international community, the occupation powers, and the government in Iraq are legally required to support and protect Iraqi refugeesThe proposal is footnoted with references primarily to UN documents and NGO statements of various types.
Iraqi refugees are Iraqi citizens who have a full right to live in dignity, a right to benefit equally from national resources, and a right to return to their homes
The UN Security Council, as the highest body of the UN, has the power and legal duty to ensure that the needs of Iraqi refugees are met by passing a resolution to require that the Iraqi state allocate proportionate revenue to responsible agencies and hosting countries
These are their most important signatories to date:
Hans von Sponeck, UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq (1998-2000), Germany.I'm not sure those are sufficiently heavy hitters to garner the campaign the attention they seek.
Denis Halliday, UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq (1997-1998), Ireland.
Perhaps Charli has something to say about this transnational advocacy campaign? As this report by the Women's Commission for Refugee Women and Children makes clear, "In any refugee crisis,the vast majority of the displaced are women and children;they are also the most vulnerable."
In any case, between 15 to 20% of the population is living abroad or displaced, so this would be a significant policy. As I've previously noted, distribution of oil revenues is one of the sticky points that precludes Iraqi political reconciliation.
Resistance is futile
I wanted to announce the birth of a new Duck. R. Charli Carpenter, an Assistant Professor at the University of Pittsburgh, is joining our ranks for a poorly defined, and perhaps indefinite, guest stint. Professor Carpenter is a specialist in, among other things, transnational advocacy networks, particularly those involved in war crimes and human rights.
She is the author of Innocent Women And Children: Gender, Norms And the Protection of Civilians
Please extend her a warm welcome!
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
MEPP take 2
A US President, needing a signature policy victory, faced with a hostile Congress controlled by the opposing party, nearing the end of his term, seeks ensure his legacy and make a major foreign affairs statement by brokering a peace agreement between the Israelis and Palestinians. He brings them together for a big meeting here in the US, hoping to put together the structure of a deal to bring peace to the region.
Sounds familiar. It could be George Bush, presiding over the Mid East Peace conference in Annapolis that starts today. Or, it could be Bill Clinton, making one last push for peace at Camp David back in 2000. You could even argue that it might apply to the senior George Bush and his Madrid conference in 1991. In short, we've seen this show before, and I'm not convinced that the current production will have an ending that is in any way markedly different.
Granted, there are a few thing new about Bush's current conference that make it substantively different than previous peace process attempts. The first is that this is Bush's first real foray into personal diplomacy for Israeli-Palestinian peace. Entering office in 2001, the administration disengaged from the Mid-East Peace Process that the Clinton Administration was so heavily invested in. Instead, the Bush Administration offered its 'Roadmap' for peace, largely removing the US from the daily push for peace talks. The current summit marks the most significant US foray into the issue in over 7 years. A lot has happened in that time.
First and foremost, there is different leadership leading different nations. Yassir Arafat, long the face of the Palestinians, has passed from the scene. His successor, Mahmoud Abbas, presides over half a quasi-state, significantly weaker than his predecessor, having essentially lost Gaza to Hamas. Ehud Olmert comes from a secular, pragmatic centrist coalition that broke from the right and picked up some of the left, having up-ended Israeli politics and reduced the influence of certain right-wing religious factions.
Then, there's the small matter of the Us invasion of Iraq. On the one hand, this makes the US a much bigger player in the Middle East, as it occupies an enormous country in the middle of the map, with hundreds of thousands of troops in the region engaged in active combat. On the other hand, it has significantly weakened and skewed US policy in the region, as everything has been filtered through the lens of Iraq, leaving the core Israeli-Palestinian issues on the sidelines until now. It has also reshaped the role and identity of the US in the region, providing new burdens to public legitimation of any US-brokered deal.
And, there's the shift in regional power to Iran. Iran's rise and growing influence (aided in part by the US invasion of Iraq) has troubled both the Israelis as well as some Arab states suspicious of Iran's bid for regional hegemony. Shi'ia Iran's ability to appeal to Islamisist groups potentially threatens the secular and Sunni regimes such as Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia.
Finally, there are another 7 years of fighting between Israeli and Palestinian forces and people. Its been a long 7 years, with many on both sides tired of the fighting and eager for some sort of settlement.
So, you might think that these changes would make the conditions ripe for a peace agreement. Perhaps. But, I remain skeptical that this summit and the Bush Administration's current push will achieve any significant and tangibile results (other than the obligatory joint statement and promise of future negotiations).
Part of the problem lies with the Bush Administration itself. To date, it hasn't shown itself to be all that concerned with policy implementation and follow-through. It, has succumbed to the classic liberal fallacy that once compromises are made, interests satisfied, and an agreement is reached, the deal is done. The fallacy is that such agreements don't implement themselves--someone has to take a compromise and legitimize the new set of interests it represents to the group required to make the deal work. The Administration thought that if it simply removed Saddam that the Iraqis would suddenly emerge from their shells, a civil society and market economy would spring up from the people, and everyone would realize that they are all better off in a democracy. Except that it didn't happen that way--the removal of Saddam's government removed what little order there was in Iraq, and with no alternative legitimate social order, chaos followed. The terms of the deal that Olmert and Abbas will strike are rather obvious to anyone who has followed this issue over the years. They, and their advisers know what that eventual compromise is. The issue isn't reaching that compromise, the issue is politically legitimating that compromise to the respective societies in a way that both Olmert and Abbas can be seen as having achieved a victory and not having sold out their people. I haven't seen any of that rhetorical groundwork in any major form. For such a deal to work, the Administration will need to sell it, legitimize it, and implement it with a concerted Presidential effort far more strenuous than that which was given to either Iraq or Afghanistan. Someone will need to take ownership of this process, in the way Chris Hill has taken responsibility for sheparding the North Korean nuclear deal to fruition.
And, part of the problem lies with the participants. As I mentioned above, the real key to any peace deal is the legitimation of a compromise to both societies. Each group has, over the years, incorporated into its national identity indivisible items that must be cut up in any deal. Israelis hold Jerusalem as the center of the Jewish state in which they live. Palestinians hold as central the right to return to their former homes. In practice, both must be compromised to reach a deal. But woe is the leader who sells out his people's core identity. What Palestinian leader can go back to his people, having sold out the right to return? What Israeli leader can go back to his people having given away half of Jerusalem? Under the current conditions, its a political death sentence, and why there will be no real progress on a peace deal. (And not just these 2 issues--there are clearly more, but those serve to illustrate the point sufficiently).
What is needed is a reshaping of the rhetorical-identity topography. Someone, perhaps a US president (though perhaps not), needs to offer the Israelis a vision of an Israeli identity with a shared Jerusalem. Someone needs to offer the Palestinians a vision of a Palestinian identity without a right of return. Someone on each side needs to enact such an identity, producing the interests that support a peace deal. Then, and only then, is the potential for compromise possible.
Monday, November 26, 2007
Darkness ahead
Next Sunday, Russians are expected to go to the polls and overwhelmingly endorse the candidates of the pro-Putin party, Edinaya Rossiya.* What I find surprising is the level to which the government feels it needs to engage in electoral hanky-panky: all signs suggest that Edinaya Rossiya would receive a comfortable majority, even without the blatant manipulation of the system. Kommersant reports that a recent poll shows that it is very likely that no party besides Edinaya Rossiya will clear the 7% threshold for Duma representation--in that case, a "loyal opposition" may actually need to be manufactured to preserve the pretense of a multiparty system. Is this a dictator's fear that his popularity is merely illusory? Or is it based in a belief that greater legitimacy is derived from a manipulated landslide than a clean victory? It's hard to tell from the outside.
Whatever the cause, the Russian state has thrown its considerable resources behind Edinaya Rossiya. Riot police break up the pathetically small opposition demonstrations and arrest the participants for creating "public disturbances". Opposition parties find it next-to-impossible to register their candidates. One of the primary opposition parties, the Union of Right Forces, had millions of copies of their campaign literature seized around the country on pathetically flimsy justifications. The government announced that it would restrict the number of OSCE election observers to 70 (compared to over 400 in the last Duma elections), then dragged their feet for so long on issuing visas to the observers that the OSCE simply cancelled the mission. In recent weeks, there have been "spontaneous" demonstrations around Russia by an organization calling itself "Za Putina" (For Putin), which is apparently dominated by Edinaya Rossiya members.
The rhetoric of the campaign is also notable for its strong flavor of Russian nationalism, the theme of the restoration of Russian greatness, and a focus on the person of Vladimir Putin that borders on a personality cult, with Putin cast as a father-figure reminiscent of the Little Father Tsar or Papa Joe Stalin. Edinaya Rossiya has adopted the slogan "Putin's Plan is Russia's Victory," though few Russian voters admit to having any concrete idea as to what Putin's mysterious plan might actually be. At campaign rallies, Putin has claimed that opposition groups are treacherous and unpatriotic--receiving their marching order from "foreign powers" who want Russia to be "a weak and feeble state". Today, he accused the United States of meddling in the Russian election by pressuring the OSCE to drop plans for election-monitoring (those same monitors who couldn't get their visas) in order to delegitimize the election.
I have never believed that Vladimir Putin was a committed democrat. I have long taken the view that he has authoritarian tendencies that have steered Russia in a non-democratic direction. Never before, though, have I felt so pessimistic about Russia's political future. With this election, it is quite possible that we will see the consolidation of true authoritarianism in Russia. The rhetoric of confrontation with the West is rising, and US officials seem completely at a loss as to how to effectively reduce tensions. Sixteen years ago, we breathed a sigh of relief when the Soviet Union collapsed, ending the Cold War, and then turned our attention elsewhere. We've hardly turned it back since, and it shows.
* Edinaya Rossiya is usually translated as United Russia; I noticed the other day, though, that Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty translates it as Unified Russia, which I like because it carries a slightly different nuance that better reflects the orientation of the party. "United" in English has the connotation of joining and coming together, but this is represented by altogether different words in Russian (soedinyonniy is used for "United States", while "obedinyonniy" is used for "United Nations"). Ediniy, on the other hand, has alternate meanings of "indivisible" and "common" (as in "shared").
Friday, November 23, 2007
OPEC and Iraq
Was the Iraq war designed to break up OPEC?
Do OPEC states now have a perverse incentive to favor continued instability in Iraq?
I explore these questions today on my blog: "Oil: the third rail of the Iraq debate."
Sorry, I probably just should have posted it here.
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
The decline in Iraqi violence
Dan Drezner calls this piece in today's New York Times "the story that will occupy the blogosphere for today -- Baghdad is safer."
Then, Dan excerpts a bit of the story by Damien Cave and Alissa J. Rubin that makes a point I've been stressing since General Petraeus made his optimistic report in September. Fewer Iraqis are dying because they fled the war zone:
About 20,000 Iraqis have gone back to their Baghdad homes, a fraction of the more than 4 million who fled nationwide, and the 1.4 million people in Baghdad who are still internally displaced, according to a recent Iraqi Red Crescent Society survey.The last figures I saw suggested that 60 to 100,000 Iraqis are fleeing Baghdad per month -- the return of 20,000 is background noise in that context.
Incidentally, though this story (like much of the right blogosphere) credits "the surge" with the reduction of violence in Iraq, two other credible theories are floating about:
First, in Iraq's second largest city of Basra, violence may be down precisely because British troops have withdrawn. The AP, November 15:
Attacks against British and Iraqi forces have plunged by 90 percent in southern Iraq since London withdrew its troops from the main city of Basra, the commander of British forces there said Thursday.That's a polar opposite explanation than the one offered by the US.
The presence of British forces in downtown Basra, Iraq's second-largest city, was the single largest instigator of violence, Maj. Gen. Graham Binns told reporters Thursday on a visit to Baghdad's Green Zone.
"We thought, 'If 90 percent of the violence is directed at us, what would happen if we stepped back?'" Binns said.
Britain's 5,000 troops moved out of a former Saddam Hussein palace at Basra's heart in early September, setting up a garrison at an airport on the city's edge. Since that pullback, there's been a "remarkable and dramatic drop in attacks," Binns said.
"The motivation for attacking us was gone, because we're no longer patrolling the streets," he said.
Second, Iran has been a moderating force in Iraq. This is from another Rubin story in The New York Times November 18:
The Iraqi government on Saturday credited Iran with helping to rein in Shiite militias and stemming the flow of weapons into Iraq, helping to improve the security situation noticeably.Dabbagh explicitly credited Iraqi diplomacy for this development, not "the surge." Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki visited Iran in August and met with Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
The Iraqi government’s spokesman, Ali al-Dabbagh...said that that government had helped to persuade the Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr to ask his Mahdi militia to halt attacks. Mr. Sadr ordered his militia to stop using weapons in early September, and officials say that the militia’s relative restraint has helped improve stability. They say it also seems to have helped decrease the frequency of attacks with explosively formed penetrators, a powerful type of bomb that can pierce heavy armor.
Mr. Dabbagh’s comments echoed those of the American military here, who in recent days have gone out of their way to publicly acknowledge Iran’s role in helping to slow the flow of weapons into the country.
Sunday, November 18, 2007
Uses of theory
There have been some interesting replies to my post a couple of weeks ago about the relationship between policymaking and scholarship. Well, when it started out it was a post about the idea that teaching IR ought to be about more than certifying the idealism of our students, but as it went on it morphed into a set of complaints about the very idea of a terminal MA degree in IR. And then a discussion ensued: Rob Farley weighed in, as did Dan Drezner, I replied (some of my replies were gathered here, others are in the comments on Rob's and Dan's posts), and now both Rob and Dan have replied again. So here's #7 in this ongoing series of posts, in which I reply both to Rob and to Dan, as well as to some of the commentators who posted on their sites.
I'm not going to reply to each point individually, though. That would be pretty tedious, and open the possibility of missing the overall point amidst my counterpoint to, say, Dan's misreading of my argument about sabremetrics (my point wasn't that sabremetrics wasn't important to the Red Sox's World Series victories; my point was that sabremetrics wasn't any kind of a grounding for the actual baseball operations of the Red Sox, and in a similar way IR theory ought not to be thought of as a grounding for the actual policy operations of any government or think-tank policy intellectual). See, even in that little digression, my overall point is already getting lost. So instead I am going to build a three-fold case that will hopefully flesh out my position a bit and, in so doing, respond to the various people who have raised critical comments. Since I am in fact writing on this topic at the moment, I am very grateful for the opportunity to do this!
With apologies for the fact this this is going to be more of an essay than a blog post, my basic argument unfolds in three steps: 1) there are different practical orientations towards politics; 2) those different orientations towards politics imply different meanings for and uses of "theory"; and 3) the issues I have with the terminal MA in IR, as well as some of my interlocutors' arguments about the relationship between the university and policy worlds, derive from those differences in practical orientation and the different meanings of "theory" that they entail.
First things first. What I mean by a "practical orientation" is not the same thing as a substantive position; we're not talking liberal versus conservative here. Rather, wht I have in mind is something more fundamental: how one comports oneself towards politics and the public sphere in general. Anyone who has talked to me for longer than about five minutes about this quickly discovers that I think that Weber is the appropriate place to begin thinking this through -- especially Weber's distinction between "scientific" and "political" orientations towards politics. The scientific orientation is about systematically producing knowledge about politics, while the political orientation is about entering politics and trying to do something concrete within that sphere of activity.
What Weber is getting at here, I think, actually goes far beyond politics. In just about every field of human endeavor we can find a split between generating knowledge about the field and doing something in the field. In material science this is physics versus engineering; in the economy this is economics versus business; in literature this is criticism versus creative writing. This split is not about people as much as it is about roles; actual people can oscillate back and forth, whereas the orientations themselves remain pretty clear and unambiguous. And both orientations are "practical" -- it's just that they are different practices, set up to produce very different products.
If we call these two orientations "contemplating" and "enacting," this will hopefully clarify the distinction between them. To contemplate, to be a scientist and to incline towards "wissenschaft" in Weber's sense, is to be dedicated to producing knowledge. To enact, to be a politician and to incline towards "politik" in Weber's sense, is to be dedicated to producing results. The contemplative orientation is concerned with rigor, consistency, and elegance; the enactive orientation is concerned with outcomes, effects, and impact.
As a further wrinkle, consider the fact that these orientations manifest themselves relatively rather than absolutely. Contemplation looks contemplative only when contrasted to enacting, and vice versa. In this way, it makes little sense to talk about either contemplating or enacting in isolation as clearly defined practical categories; instead, it makes sense to talk about orientations as more or less contemplative or enactive in comparison to others. By the same token, there are more contemplative enactors and more enactive contemplators, even though the distinction itself remains logically pure and unambiguous.
I find it helpful to talk about splits like this replicating over time, an idea I borrow from Andrew Abbott: first we have a basic split between the two camps, and then each camp splits internally over the same issue. This presents us with a diagram of the contemplating/enacting distinction that looks like this:
We therefore have four ideal-typical positions combining contemplating and enacting in various ways. Pure contemplators -- "scholars" -- are only concerned with the production of systematic knowledge, while pure enactors -- "professionals" -- are only concerned with producing outcomes. The intermediate positions combine a primary orientation towards knowledge-production or results-production with a secondary gesture in the opposite direction, producing "experts" who are contemplators seeking to apply the results of their investigations to get things done, and "scholar-activists" who are reflective practitioners seeking to generate knowledge based very closely on their experiences in the political world.
It stands to reason that these four positions -- and let me reiterate once again that these are ideal-typical rather than descriptive, which means primarily that actual people and organizations are probably going to be some combination of them; the point of ideal-typical analysis of this sort is not to describe, but to clarify the characteristic tensions and challenges that concrete individuals standing in concrete places will have to face -- entail different ways of thinking about and using "theory." To a "scholar," theory means systematic, disciplinary knowledge, generally pretty abstract and focused on broad principles rather than on specific cases (even if theory might be constructed and refined through the analysis of specific cases). To an "expert," on the other hand, theory means a set of relatively firm precepts the primary purpose of which is to answer specific questions about particular situations. "Experts" primarily use theory rather than primarily creating it, while for "scholars" it's the other way around. But both "scholars" and "experts" are contemplators first, so they both are interested in theory from the outset.
Not so the other two positions, which as enactors first are more interested in results and understand theory as a tool or instrument for achieving those results. "Professionals" aren't very interested in theory unless it can immediately point to some outcomes, and generally don't see the value in excessive theorizing (and are probably the most likely position to say things like "that might be fine in theory but it won't work in practice," which is the kind of thing that drives "scholars" to distraction -- especially if they've read Kant on the subject). "Scholar-activists" are more receptive to theorizing, but for them theory is more on the level of strategic advice and worldly wisdom, since it derives from and remains very close to their experiences of trying to get things done.
Note a couple of things here. First, "scholars" and "scholar-activists" have a relatively similar take on theory, at least in contrast to their local enactors: both are interested in systematizing experience, albeit for different purposes. Similarly, "experts" and "professionals" have a relatively similar take on theory in contrast to their local contemplators, since they both are interested in using theory to ground or inform their pursuit of particular goals. This means that these two groupings can talk to one another pretty easily. Second, "scholars" and "experts" are both comtemplators first, which gives them something to debate: "scholars" taking "experts" to task for not being nuanced enough, "experts" pressing "scholars" to get out of the realm of the abstract and into the realm of concrete implications. But as compared to "scholar-activists" and "professionals," both "scholars" and "experts" are tremendously abstract and general -- which gives them something to discuss. Ditto, but in the other direction, for "scholar-activists" and "professionals," both of whom start from a rejection of any value to what the other two positions would call "theory" and "theorizing" for its own sake.
I want to be clear here: even though I myself am something of a self-caricature of a "scholar" in my own position, and as such may quite unintentionally be coming across as dismissive of the other positions, I am trying very hard not so. The bottom line for me is that these are different positions, not that one is better than the others. Of course, from each position that position looks to be the best one, and the others look more or less appealing on various grounds according to the positional alliance-patterns I have just sketched out. And I doubt that anyone but a scholar would have spent as much time as I have in fleshing this whole schema out; I've been using it in my IR theory courses for several years now, and it forms the foundation of a couple of other things I'm working on at the moment (so you'll see that diagram showing up in print soon, I hope). But I do not want anyone to get the idea that I think that everyone ought to be a "scholar" or that only what scholars do is valuable, whether in IR or in other fields of human endeavor.
But I do think that thinking about things in this way helps both to clarify my debate with Dan and Rob, and to clarify my original stance about terminal MA programs in IR. Although somewhat wary of characterizing other people without a more detailed knowledge of their work, I would tentatively say that Dan and Rob are "experts" while I am a "scholar," since they are interested in using theory to ground practice while I am interested in knowledge-construction pretty much for its own sake -- but all three of us are considerably more open to theory and theorizing than the other two positions would be (after all, we're all employed in academic positions where publication in peer-reviewed disciplinary journals is necessary for tenure and promotion). So the debate we're having takes place in the left-hand-side of my diagram. Not so the comments on the various posts, some of which come from "professionals" and some of which come from "scholar-activists" (the clue here is the skepticism expressed some comments about the value of theory per se). Obviously I'm going to disagree with Dan and Rob about what theory is and what it can and should be used for, since I'm primarily interested in constructing knowledge regardless of its short-term use-value while they're interested in using knowledge and refining it so as to make it into a better basis for action in a pretty tight time-frame. So that's what's going on there.
Notice that when I talked about positional alliances, I did not talk about any kind of easy connection between "scholars" and "professionals." That was deliberate, and I think it really helps to explain my frustration with terminal MA degrees. In my experience, students enrolling in such programs, with very few exceptions, are "professionals." They're looking to improve and refine their professional practice, so as to make them better enactors; as such they can learn most easily from "scholar-activists" who have refined their enacting and come up with some lessons, and from "experts" who have a conceptual basis on which to place professional practice and perhaps to critically improve it. But what can an aspiring "professional," let alone an established "professional" looking to advance in her or his career, learn from a "scholar"? What use to a "professional" is theory in the sense that a "scholar" would deploy it, as opposed to the way that an "expert" or a "scholar-activist" would? I can only think of two such uses:
1) a "professional" might learn from the "scholar" some of the basic vocabulary in which debates about courses of action are conducted. As in most of the social sciences, "professionals" use terms and concepts in their work that were for the most part designed by "scholars" at some point (a point variously made by Mill, Keynes, Dewey, etc.); it's just that "professionals" use them very, very differently. It might be useful for a "professional" to learn some of that language from a member of the community that created it, bearing in mind that they are subsequently going to have to learn how to use it in a rather different fashion. "Scholarly" debate is simply out of place in the world of policymaking. I think of this as the Sam Huntington Problem: I would never, never teach Huntington's civilizations book as a piece of scholarly theory, since it's basically worthless understood in that light (if I were teaching about civilizations, I'd use something else -- something like this, which ought to be out in paperback sometime next year); but by the same token it might be very helpful to teach to "professionals," since there are serious policy debates conduced using the language that Huntington introduces in that book.
2) in addition to language-instruction, I can see only one other use to instructing a "professional" in scholarly theory, and it's the same thing that I use theory for in my undergraduate pedagogy: seeing a perspective spelled out in unworldly logical purity can help to clarify one's stance on that perspective. Weber called this "value-clarification," and the basic point is to say "well, if you hold X, can you help but agree with implications Y, Z, and W?" This gets the student to really ponder what is at stake in her or his holding of X. But notice that what has happened in this pedagogical situation is not that theory has become a basis for action, as "experts" would like to do and as "professionals" would welcome; instead, theory has become an instrument of self-discovery. The result of such a pedagogy is to have students who are better able to articulate and defend a perspective on the world, not to have students who are somehow properly grounded in "the way that the world actually is" since from my perspective that's a meaningless notion. All knowledge is perspectival, I would say, and pedagogy of this sort is about clarifying perspectives, and not about authoritatively selecting between them. (One of the commentators on one of the posts satirized my position by claiming that I was saying that my knowledge was no better than that of a chicken or an infant; in terms of its correspondence with something called "the real world," sure, all knowledge-claims are equal, but that just means that we have to evaluate them on other grounds, like their logical coherence and comprehensiveness. In that case I'm petty sure I can beat both a chicken and an infant.)
Option #1 I could see that MA students might not have gotten in their prior education, and I can see the value in it since speaking the vernacular language is probably directly related to their employability. It's just that I am not particularly interested in language-instruction, myself, especially since it's very frustrating to me to see the concepts and principles that I work with in my way taken out of context and used for quite different purposes. (I know that this might be inevitable, and in the long term probably is, but it pains me to watch it up close.) That's why I tend to take option #2 in my courses open to MA students, since that's the value I think I bring to them. Of course, this raises another problem, since I think that option #2 is the sort of thing that a student ought already to have gotten from a competent undergraduate program. Maybe there's value in re-doing that aspect of undergrad as an MA student, but it does make me wonder.
As for looking for prospective Ph.D. students: well, as a "scholar" it's only natural for me to want to socialize others into my world, and that world is the world of the Ph.D. and academia broadly understood. This either means I find budding "scholars" and help to set them on their way, or I find budding "experts" and try to show them the subtlety of scholarly theory. Either way, those are easier conversations to have than the continual head-butting I find myself doing with "professionals" when I am doing anything other than pressing them to promote value-clarification.
I don't think this analysis definitively answers any questions. But maybe it focuses the disagreement and makes it even more productive.
Almost Completely Insanity
In today's NYT, Fredrick Kagan and Michael O'Hanlon editorialize that:
We need to think — now — about our feasible military options in Pakistan, should it really come to that.Insanity. Near total insanity on almost every level--except one.
Now, granted, they are only talking about a worst case scenario here:
The most likely possible dangers are these: a complete collapse of Pakistani government rule that allows an extreme Islamist movement to fill the vacuum; a total loss of federal control over outlying provinces, which splinter along ethnic and tribal lines; or a struggle within the Pakistani military in which the minority sympathetic to the Taliban and Al Qaeda try to establish Pakistan as a state sponsor of terrorism.Regardless, this is an absolutely insane proposition on nearly level.
1. Pakistan has Nuclear Weapons
2. Did I mention the Nuclear Weapons?
Pakistan is a nuclear state like no other. Capability wise, it lacks a global delivery system, instead relying mainly on aircraft to deliver a nuclear strike. From a US perspective, this is significantly less threatening, as any US air-defense system would have a strong chance to take out such a plane before it could launch on US forces. Pakistan does have short and medium range missiles (modeled on a North Korean model, obtained in exchange for nuclear technology...) but from public sources it remains unclear whether they have been able to outfit a nuclear warhead onto a missile. The uncertainty of this, however, would be a tremendous risk to US forces.
Intervening in a nuclear power is generally not a good idea.
3. Pakistan is huge, and the USA is highly unpopular there.
O'Hanlon and Kagan do admit that a full-scale invasion is off the table. Given Pakistan's size, they note, it would take nearly 1 million troops to secure the country. Clearly not happening. The more likely scenario, they posit, is that the US intervenes to augment a rump Pakistani army against a radical Islamist movement.
I don't see any scenario where this is a good idea. The premise for an intervention is:
a complete collapse of Pakistani government rule that allows an extreme Islamist movement to fill the vacuum; a total loss of federal control over outlying provinces, which splinter along ethnic and tribal lines; or a struggle within the Pakistani military in which the minority sympathetic to the Taliban and Al Qaeda try to establish Pakistan as a state sponsor of terrorism.If this happens, I don't see how any US intervention will do any good. At best, it would only delay the inevitable. Kagan and O'Hanlon posit that US (and allied) forces could join up with what's left of the moderate Pakistani Army and hold the country's center long enough for a new government to come into power and reassert order in the country.
There are two flaws in this argument. First, assistance by US forces is likely to make any rump Pakistani government less popular, ultimately doing more harm than good. As it is now, the US is highly unpopular in Pakistan (only about 15% of the population have a 'favorable' view of the US). US military action to support one element of the Pakistani state would a) end up killing some Pakistanis, making the US more unpopular and b) sap what little legitimacy the rump Pakistani state might have. No legitimacy, no authority, no government. Second, the idea that a new Pakistani government / military would somehow be able to impose order on the rest of the country seems like a heroic assumption. Musharraf, now in total control of the state and military apparatus can't do this now. Why would a successor government, controlling only a rump military, be any more successful?
4. They assume that the US would have allies in this mission: Pro-American moderates within Pakistan and some sort of International Coalition. I don't see this happening. Assuming that there are any significant Pro-American moderates in Pakistan now (and that, on its face, seems a very dubious assumption to make), wouldn't they be the first targeted and taken out by the revolting forces? Or, more likely, sensing the political winds and rightly suspicious of a long term commitment by the USA (we won't even give visas to Iraqis who risk their lives working for the USA in Baghdad), wouldn't it be smart for these people to extract what price they can and switch sides? On the international coalition--again, this seems dubious. About the only nation I can think of who would be eager to send forces into Pakistan is India, and I really don't think that would go well....
5. However, I do think that they have one good point where such a move makes sense: a mission to secure Pakistan's nuclear weapons. The only problem: Pakistan won't tell us where they are, fearing just such a scenario. This option would necessarily require the cooperation of some segment of the Pakistani government to provide the necessary intel and entry. Arriving unannounced and uninvited, I can easily imagine the Pakistani security forces putting up a tremendous fight to protect their weapons. If, however, the US had some sort of invitation / cooperation from some element of the Pakistani government, and if the US saw an imminent threat to the security of these weapons, it would make sense to help protect them. The mission would require, at some point, the evacuation and relocation of the Pakistani weapons--once the opposition forces learned of their whereabouts, it seems highly likely that they would stop at no end--and I mean literally no end--to get them. So, where do you move them to? Best case for the US is, basically, the forced dis-armament of Pakistan, evacuating the weapons to a secure facility in the US (Kagan and O'Hanlon suggest New Mexico). But, as they note, that's not going to happen--the more realistic scenario is to relocate them somewhere within Pakistan, a new secret, secure, and guarded location.
Again, I just don't see the essential parts of this plan as likely, that some sort of moderate, nominally pro-US faction would invite US military forces to protect the Pakistani nuclear deterrent. These so-called moderates are still Pakistani nationalists, secular or not, and any such invitation would be an emasculation of Pakistani standing.
No, this option would more than likely require a US force to assume a hostile Pakistani force protecting the weapons, and another hostile Pakistani force seeking to take the weapons. Not exactly what you'd want to jump in the middle of, but the consequences of not doing so--a loose nuke in the hands of an Al Qaeda ally--are probably worth the risk. But, make no mistake, this would mean dropping a light, mobile force into the remote middle of Pakistan on a moments notice-- no picnic whatsoever.
If it comes to that, we're all in serious trouble.
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
Breathe easier, DC and NYC
This weekend, the AP's Katherine Shrader wrote a fine story about the "myth" of suitcase nuclear bombs.
"The suitcase nuke is an exciting topic that really lends itself to movies," said Vahid Majidi, the assistant director of the FBI's Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate. "No one has been able to truly identify the existence of these devices."Many of the fears about suitcase bombs originated years ago in statements by a couple of Russians who may have had ulterior motives for inflating threats -- including retired General Alexander Lebed who told "60 Minutes" about missing suitcase nukes back in 1997.
Shrader writes that "current and former government officials who have not spoken out publicly on the subject acknowledge that no U.S. officials have seen a Soviet-made suitcase nuke." This might reflect successful Russian efforts to round up and destroy these weapons.
The U.S. developed backback-sized nuclear weapons during the cold war, but apparently got rid of all of them years ago. Even when they existed, it took two men to detonate those backback bombs.
Many scientists doubt that suitcase nukes are possible. The FBI's Majidi, who formerly led the chemistry division of Los Alamos National Lab, is among the most skeptical:
Majidi says it would take about 22 pounds of plutonium or 130 pounds of uranium to create a nuclear detonation. Both would require explosives to set off the blast, but significantly more for the uranium.Representative Curt Weldon, a hawkish member of Congress known for inflating threats, also played a key role in the development of the suitcase nuke myth. In 1997, Weldon's Research And Development Subcommittee (of the House National Security Committee) heard worrisome testimony from Dr. Alexie Yablokov, former Science Advisor to Boris Yeltsin.
Although uranium is considered easier for terrorists to obtain, it would be too heavy for one person to lug around in a suitcase.
Plutonium, he notes, would require the cooperation of a state with a plutonium reprocessing program. It seems highly unlikely that a country would knowingly cooperate with terrorists because the device would bear the chemical fingerprints of that government. "I don't think any nation is willing to participate in this type of activity," Majidi said.
That means the fissile material probably would have to be stolen. "It is very difficult for that much material to walk away," he added.
There is one more wrinkle: Nuclear devices require a lot of maintenance because the material that makes them so deadly also can wreak havoc on their electrical systems.
"The more compact the devices are _ guess what? _ the more frequently they need to be maintained. Everything is compactly designed around that radiation source, which damages everything over a period of time," Majidi said.
Yablokov, I might note, expressed some important reservations in his testimony:
Any nuclear arms, any nuclear warhead, have to be replaced in several years. Fissile material have to be replaced, especially plutonium, after six or seven years ... . It means that during this time, beginning from '70s, this small-sized nuclear weapons have to twice ... be replaced. I doubt that it have happened during -- I don't know -- last ten years, at least.Shrader's story raises this same issue:
Colonel-General Viktor Yesin, former head of the Russian strategic rocket troops, said...that a true suitcase nuke would be too expensive for most countries to produce and would not last more than several months because the nuclear core would decompose so quickly. "Nobody at the present stage seeks to develop such devices," he asserted.Hat tip: Arms Control Wonk's Jeffrey Lewis.
Monday, November 12, 2007
Condi hates on Al Gore and his Inter-Web
Front page article in today's Washington Post on Condi Rice's management style as Secretary of State.
Yeah, all the usual stuff about Blackwater, Baghdad, and Passports, but here's the zinger, as far as I'm concerned:
Condi Rice does not use email.
Seriously? Not at all?
How on earth does she communicate? Is she a Luddite? Is she too busy going hither and yon to sit down at a computer? Or, is she too paranoid that anything she writes emails will one day be subject to a FOIA (or worse)?
How on earth does anyone manage a large, global organization without email these days? I know some senior managers who claim to spend half their day on email. That may be a bit of overkill, but no email whatsoever? That boggles the mind just a bit.
Saturday, November 10, 2007
Is neoconservatism still vibrant?
I'm late in commenting on Joshua Muravchik's long defense of neconservatism in the October issue of Commentary (republished by the Wall Street Journal here).
If you haven't read it, I recommend doing so. Muravchik outlines the basic tenets of neoconservatism, explains why neocons find the war on terror so compelling (he compares it explicitly to the long cold war struggle against an evil empire), and defends the decision to attack Iraq. He also claims -- like many other neocons -- that the US must confront Iran.
Muravchik's punchline certainly attempts to justify all the ink he spills. In regard to the Global War on Terror (GWOT), he asserts that "liberals and realists have no coherent approach to suggest." Therefore, "neoconservatism remains the only game in town."
I begin this examination with a quick summary of the basic tenets of the ideological conflict at the core of his argument:(1) Our struggle is moral, against an evil enemy who revels in the destruction of innocents. Knowing this can help us assess our adversaries correctly and make appropriate strategic choices. Saying it convincingly will strengthen our side and weaken theirs. (2) The conflict is global, and outcomes in one theater will affect those in others. (3) While we should always prefer nonviolent methods, the use of force will continue to be part of the struggle. (4) The spread of democracy offers an important, peaceful way to weaken our foe and reduce the need for force.
On multiple occasions in the piece, the author references George Orwell and 1984, but the neocons who embrace the book seem only to have grasped Orwell's moralism, not his critique of militarism and war.
It's a fairly major flaw considering the stated preference for nonviolent methods. Conservatives like Samuel Huntington have long pointed out the threat militarism poses to American democracy:to influence the political development of other societies would require an enormous expansion of the military power and economic resources of the American government. This in turn would pose dangers to the operation of democratic government within the United States.
Next, the specific foe in the GWOT is unclear. You might think that states potentially overtaken by "jihadists" are of special concern, but Muravchik argues with a straight face that Iraq did not take resources otherwise needed to confront the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan. Moreover, he ignores the fact that Iraq was a secular state under Saddam and that Iran is Shi'a while al Qaeda is Sunni.
Muravchik tries to make out that the neocons consistently support "hard Wilsonian" foreign policy, while too many self-identified liberals have sold out people living in various strategically important states in the name of expediency. Yet, Muravchik dismisses the idea that America's military power could do anything useful in Pakistan to confront al Qaeda forces that have resettled there. At the same time, those forces are supposed to provide the greatest threat.
Indeed, when Muravchik justifies his framing of the "threat," he engages in what many analysts would see as fantastic (and fanatical) threat inflation:The terrorists are the shock troops of the jihadist or radical Islamist movement, a movement whose strength is limited but substantial—far greater than, for example, that of the Communists just after Lenin seized power in Russia. Jihadism has many times more supporters, its reach is more global, it has far more resources, and it has a natural constituency that Communism only pretended to have. Lenin and his band succeeded in fastening their grip on a backward country and used it as a springboard from which their heirs could contest seriously for world domination. Who is to say how powerful a threat radical Islam could become if allowed to metastasize further?
Muravchik praises the Bush administration's "war on terror" for its "strong assertions of America’s righteousness," without acknowledging the possibility that the Bush government might have been headed by corrupt and incompetent leaders. As David Bernstein explains, neocons who focus on domestic policy delight in explaining that "good intentions (as in failed Great Society programs) aren't enough...throwing government resources at problems not only isn't enough, but is often counter-productive."
Muravchik certainly doesn't think his favored policies are self-defeating. Rather, he blames the public's turn against Bush and the Iraq war on various international enemies -- as if American policy choices had nothing to do with the outcomes.
Neocons like Muravchik remain convinced that their own arguments and policy positions were right. You and I might argue that Iraq was a horrible mistake because Saddam ran a secular government that had no ties to al Qaeda and no means of producing nuclear weapons. Moreover, any effort to topple Iraq's government was bound to stir up nasty sectarian violence that could easily erupt into civil war. These latter points are the arguments of George H.W. Bush, Colin Powell and Dick Cheney, circa 1991.
Yet, Muravchik refuses to apologize for the disaster that is Iraq policy:Besides, whatever measure of responsibility may be placed on neoconservatives in this one matter, it pales in comparison to the errors of the realists in the George H.W. Bush administration who in 1991 chose to leave Saddam in power, and of the liberals in the Clinton administration who allowed Saddam’s defiance of his disarmament obligations to swell steadily over eight long years. Together, these failures left the problem of Saddam Hussein festering for George W. Bush to confront in the aftermath of 9/11, when it appeared in a more ominous light.
Finally, consider what I view as my favorite sentence in the entire piece. Muravchik criticizes "the likes of Carl Levin and Edward Kennedy and Nancy Pelosi" for their 30 years of opposition to numerous weapons systems and hard-line policies favored by the neocons:Never once did they acknowledge error or revisit their own mistaken judgments, although in each case the neoconservative critique of those judgments was proved right.
Ha!
Iraq. Iraq. Iraq.
The piece simply never attempts to overcome the many errors of the policies offered by Paul Wolfowitz et al -- nor does it explain precisely what should be done about Iran.
I think we know how to explain these oversights.
Iraq. Iraq. Iraq.
Note: The Project on Defense Alternatives has a set of valuable links on neoconservatism here.