Why Wikileaks Matters

The initial release of a mere 291 out of 251,287 diplomatic cables has generated a predictable buzz on the blogosphere and established media outlets. Pundits have quickly maneuvered into standard structural roles in relation to the content of the leaked documents: the ho-hum nothing-to-see-here-move-it-along dismisser, the passionate defender, the morally outraged diplomat, etc. What seems to be missing is an analysis of this phenomenon as a form of global politics.

In order to understand why Wikileaks is significant, it is important to realize that the organization is not particularly concerned about specific current issues like the war in Afghanistan or Iraq, much less the tense standoff in Korea. Hence the content of the diplomatic cables or military reports is only instrumental. Assange diagnoses a broader "problem" with complex organizations than current events -- namely authoritarian tendencies and hypocrisy -- and formulates a (Rooseveltian?) strategy for attacking them. The most intelligent analysis of Assange's thinking is offered in a blog post by Zunguzungu (I would recommend reading that article before proceeding with this one). Briefly stated: The circulation of relatively unsecured diplomatic cables or field reports is the way in which the state as a complex organization is able to think. The aim of Wikileaks is precisely to force the state to tighten the circulation of information as a mechanism to retard the operation of the (authoritarian or nominally liberal) state. The US and all other states are likely to react in precisely the way that Assange's organization hopes they will. So the goal is not just about the US although the US is a powerful instrument to effect the type of "regime change" that Assange champions.

2011 Grawemeyer winner

Kevin Bales, President of Free the Slaves, has won the 2011 Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order. The prize is worth $100,000 this year.

The press release describes the award-winning ideas from Ending Slavery, the most recent book published by Bales with University of California Press:

In the book, Bales outlines steps to end the enslavement of some 27 million people worldwide. Slavery and human trafficking are tightly interwoven into the modern global economy, so new political and economic policies must be enacted to suppress them, he says.

Slavery, illegal in every country but still widely practiced, can be stopped within 30 years at a cost of less than $20 billion, a much cheaper price tag than most other social problems, he argues...

"Bales lays out an urgent human challenge, offers ways to make a difference and challenges the reader to become part of the solution," award jurors said.

Since 2001, Bales' group has liberated thousands of slaves in India, Nepal, Haiti, Ghana, Brazil, Ivory Coast and Bangladesh.

The Chronicle of Higher Education covered the story, as did the local Louisville Courier Journal and other news outlets. This is from the local paper:

American Foreign Policy research and Wikileaks

There may not be a whole lot of diplomatic shockers in Sunday's release, but this really has the potential to be a game changer for American foreign policy research over the next several years. I’m still not convinced we’ll actually see the full set of 250,000+ documents, but if we do, it will be big.

Most of American foreign policy scholarship evolves in subsequent waves over the course of 30 years or so. The first wave usually relies on press accounts, initial interviews with decision makers and other participants, and the quick turn-around journalistic books -- on Iraq for example, we relied heavily on the books from Bob Woodward, Dana Priest, George Packer, Steve Coll, Seymour Hersch, etc.... All things being equal we are able to develop a pretty coherent factual basis in this initial wave.

Riverdance your way through through the Irish Bailout in two minutes: Taiwan animation style!

From NMA – those who brought you the Tiger Woods Video, and the USA-China Currency Crisis Rap Battle video comes the Ireland Bailout video (which I can't make fit in the frame! Edit: Fixed!)

As an IR blogger with an interest in econ, you might be interested in this animated take on Ireland's current state of financial distress. I can't vouch that a leprechaun really charged into Biffo's office as he was taking in a Guiness, but we tried our hardest to condense the situation in less than two minutes.

Please watch it if only for the signs the protesters are holding at the end.

Despite the email, I don’t pride myself on a knowledge of economic issues. (My bank account can attest to this. Pension-shmention, I want shoes!) However, as this is the internet, I will add my uninformed £0.02.

Feminist IR 101, Post #2....vocabularies for talking about sex/gender hierarchies

In the last post, I discussed gender as a system of symbolic meanings. People understood to be "men" are often expected to be "masculine" and associated with masculinity/ies; while people understood to be "women" are expected to be feminine, and associated with femininity/ies. Traits associated with masculinities and femininities are often also transposed onto ideas, concepts, and things, in everyday life and in global politics. Masculinities and femininities are often salient in political, economic, and social life.

But, like all good political "scientists," you ask the "so what?" question - what does that matter? What does it tell us about how the world works? Most of the answer to that question will be in another post, but, to get there, you'll need the punchline of the answer: because global politics (at the individual level, at the state level, and at the systemic level) is gender-hierarchical. To discuss that meaningfully, though, we'll need to know a few more gender-words, and have a vocabulary for talking about gender hierarchy.

Sex hierarchy: the explicit or implicit valuing of people (or things, concepts, ideas, etc.) differently on the basis of their (perceived) sex difference(s).

Gender hierarchy:  the explicit or implicit valuing of people (or things, concepts, ideas, etc.) differently on the basis of their (perceived) gender difference(s), usually the valuing of masculinity/ies over femininity/ies. Any give gender hierarchy is not absolute or universal, sometimes gendered hierarchies value different gender-related characteristics differently in different times and different places. Still, the existence of gender hierarchy/ies is/are universal. Patriarchal gender hierarchies (or gender hierarchies dominated by (hegemonic) masculinity/ies are often described in terms of "gender oppression," or "gender subordination," indicating the devaluing of non-idealized masculinity/ies and femininity/ies as compared to dominant/hegemonic (Weberian) ideal-typical notion of what "a woman" or "the feminine" should be and what "a man" or "the masculine" should be. Different feminism(s) refer to deconstructing gender hierarchy differently, using those words, or "ending gender subordination" or "gender emancipation." Note that none of these terms are explicitly about or exclusively for "women" (to be discussed in a later post).

Other terms describe important complexities, including ...

Wikileaks and the global public interest

A couple of observations on the Wikileaks diplomatic info-dump as seen from London. First, European governments have been unanimous in their condemnation of Wikileaks, disgraceful undermining of diplomacy etc etc.  But what do they really think? I’m sure they will be philosophical about the content of the US cables. These are the sort of assessments that every diplomat makes, and is supposed to make; I would bet a year’s salary that the sort of things American diplomats said about David Cameron would pale into insignificance beside the sort of things British diplomats said about George W. Bush – indeed I’d bet a month’s salary that they were barely more complimentary about Barack Obama in the early days of his run for the Democratic nomination. There used to be a custom that British Ambassadors when they finally left a posting would write a long, frank valediction – Matthew Parris has just published a collection of these Parting Shots and very amusing (and occasionally xenophobic) they are, and certainly not the kind of text that the locals would have been allowed to see at the time. That’s the nature of diplomacy – as is the allegedly horrifying proposition that diplomats were requested to collect information on their opposite numbers; the State Department added the rider, ‘if possible’ to this general request, and I image US diplomats at the UN and elsewhere will have immediately assessed that e.g. collecting Ban Ki Moon’s credit card numbers wasn’t going to be possible and will have binned the memo.

"Diplomatic Shockers"

Wow. Iran's neighbors are threatened by its rise! Many governments think Pakistan may not be able to secure its nuclear arsenal! The US attempts to use its leverage with its allies to achieve its political objectives! China has engaged in a cyber-campaign against Google and other American companies! Yemen approves of US' targeted killings on its soil (but claims otherwise to quell domestic opposition)! Also, governments routinely spy on United Nations officials!

Who knew all this stuff, eh? Thank the stars for Wikileaks.

[cross-posted at Lawyers, Guns and Money]

P.S. Want to know what I did learn from this that I wouldn't have assumed? The US State Department talks among itself far more about human rights than it does about terrorism.

Feminist IR 101, Post #1 ... definitions of sex and gender

(disclaimer: this is my attempt to define/illustrate; mistakes are mine, not to be assigned to feminist IR as a whole)

sex (noun?): traditionally used to refer to the biological characteristics of bodies based on their internal and external sex organs, where persons with "female" organs are "women," and people with "male" organs are men. It can also be divided on the basis of chromosomal characteristics, where people with "XX" are "women," and people with "xy" are men. In actuality, substantially more complicated than that, where there are more than a dozen chromosomal combinations on the "sex" chromosome, and more than 20 different combinations of sex organs that people are born with regularly enough to be documented (they total between half of one percent and one percent of the population, and include people labelled 'trans,' 'intersex,''hermaphroditic' (which is generally looked at as a pejorative description). Usually, babies born with 'abnormal' sex organ configurations are 'corrected' into a particular sex at birth, and their parents told that they just needed cosmetic surgery to make them appear the 'sex' they 'really are.' Many of these babies never find out what happened to them, while others struggle with their sex identity for most of their lives. To the extent that 'sex' is a valid category @ all, there are more than two 'sexes.' Still, the idea that the human species can be neatly divided into two 'sexes' by clear and recognizable criteria permeates almost every aspect of our daily lives. (see Anne Fausto-Sterling's work)

to sex (infinitive)/sexing (gerund): to impute/(imputing) sex to a body, or some other object, and, in so doing, assume particular characteristics (see "gender" below), or distribute advantages or disadvantages, privileges or punishments, etc. (see, for example, Deirdre McCloskey's memoirs for an illustrative treatment, and Anne Fausto-Sterling's work cited above for a theoretical one)

sexed (adjective): a body or some other object which has (or has been assigned or imputed) a 'sex' (n.). About bodies, see Annie Potts's the Science/Fiction of Sex; about an object, see the recent book Sexed Pistols, edited by Vanessa Farr, Henri Myrttinen, and Albrecht Schnabel.

(see below the fold for "gender")

DPRK's attention-deficit disorder (updated)

Pyongyang's "pay attention to me! right! now!" routines seem calculated to convince the United States, South Korea, and Japan of one thing: that military force is the only effective long-term solution to North Korean intransigence. Which means, naturally enough, that Pyongyang's recent rounds of "WTF" are most likely driven entirely by domestic DPRK politics.

World history is flush with with examples of more prosperous states repeatedly buying off uncouth and belligerent barbarians. But one has to wonder how far Pyongyang can push the South Koreans. Will there come a point when Seoul decides to risk war rather than see the DPRK's retrograde regime become even more awash in "Sampson Option" capabilities? I assume that the South Korean policy toward North Korea is rooted in a belief that, if Seoul waits long enough, the regime will implode. But what if that calculation changes?

How George Mitchell relaxes on his days off

Will no one think of the bacon?



Hat tip to Robert Farley

A (not so) open letter to a journal editor (or five): Part II

Dear Dr. Journal Editor,

As I mentioned in "Part I" of this letter, I "lost" this battle, and it matters to me.

Why? Because it's not just "work" to me that happens to be on a particular topic because it is an interesting question. I believe all knowledge has a politics, acknowledged or not, and I acknowledge mine.

I do feminist work because I'm interested in deconstructing gender hierarchies in IR as a discipline and in global politics more generally. I think that such a move would benefit everyone in IR/global politics, not just women (a category I'm not particularly fond of).

I don't want all IR the sort of work that I do, but I want (and need) it to be open to the sort of work that I do, because the world (both the real one and ours) is worse off when it isn't, both normatively and in terms of our empirical/theoretical knowledge about the world.

In an unpublished paper a couple of years ago, I argued that the relationship between feminist IR and IR generally was an impossible one, where feminist work would always (and only) be included when it mimics IR, which robs it of its (intellectual) identity - a paradox to say the least.

I might believe that, but I've acted differently - attempting to mainstream feminist work at every opportunity, even when just publishing in "our" journals and talking to "our" audience would be both intellectually more interesting and substantially easier. And a lot of times that has been a great learning experience for both "sides" with an excellent result, (thanks, for example, to Security Studies), but, more often than not, like it was last week, it is an exercise where futility meets ridiculousness.

Why do I say ridiculousness? And, "so what"?

BMD and NATO not quite BFD, but a step in the right direction

NATO agrees to missile-defense mission. Somewhat paradoxically, this is true even if you're lukewarm on ballistic missile defenses (BMD) in general, or the Phased Adaptive Approach in particular. Why? The more NATO presents a united front, the more likely the Russians are to cooperate on BMD and BMD-related issues, which not only reduces an irritant in relations but mitigates against some of the potentially destabilizing implications of BMD deployment.

Afterthought: might also help with New START ratification. Harder to argue that Obama is selling out BMD when he's accomplished something no Republican ever did: convince NATO to make it part of its mission.

The Transition

In discussing the planned handover of security responsibilities to the Afghan National Army, Vice President Joe Biden stated:

"Daddy is going to start to take the training wheels off in October -- I mean in next July -- so you'd better practice riding," he said of the plan that will be outlined at the NATO summit in Lisbon.  (ABC News Radio)

The undiluted mix of imperialism and paternalism, while embarrassing from a public relations standpoint, is a good guide to how the US plans to spin the transition.  The US and ISAF will seek to shift responsibility and hence the blame for a precarious and faltering security situation onto the Afghan National Army.  Of course, no amount of paternalism will mask the fact that US and ISAF failed to properly resource and prioritize training a robust ANA and police force until last year.

The current strategy is reliant on a process of accelerated training, in order to swell the ranks.  It is a strategy that clearly emphasizes quantity over quality.  Whether such a strategy will lead to a competent force is highly debatable.  As a CSIS Report on the Afghan National Security Forces recently commented:

"Trying to expand Afghan forces too quickly, creating forces with inadequate force quality, and decoupling Afghan force development from efforts to deal with the broad weakness in Afghan governance and the Afghan justice system will lose the war. America’s politicians, policymakers, and military leaders must accept this reality—and persuade the Afghan government and our allies to act accordingly—or the mission in Afghanistan cannot succeed."

A rushed transition designed to suit US domestic political priorities and national interests may jeopardize the prospects for a stable Afghanistan.  If the relationship between the US/ISAF and the ANA is that of parent to child as the Vice President asserts, then the parent seems to be guilty of criminal neglect and reckless endangerment.

A (not so) open letter to a journal editor (or five): Part I

(a letter I've thought about writing a dozen times over the last decade of being a feminist researcher)

Dear Dr. Journal Editor,

I submitted an article to your (big) journal in my (general) field. I don't know if it was of the quality to be published in your (spiffy) journal or not, but, to be honest, I was trusting you to figure that out. You betrayed my trust, and in spades.

Your journal presents a pluralistic face, and lets in the occasional article that transgresses the norms of traditional social science. In fact, I do a lot of reviews for your journal and many journals like it ... I'm the person that you send stuff you don't really understand to, and you often trust me to vet it.

I'm worthy of that trust. I will tell you if research in my "ism" or "paradigm" or epistemological approach is great and pathbreaking, or if it downright stinks. I don't write better reviews for feminist poststructuralist work (which I like) than for the next positivist democratic peace article (which makes my epistemological instincts cringe) - I judge them each on their own terms (or at the very least on the terms of their particular approach to international studies)...because that's what a good reviewer does, and, I think, what a good journal editor does.

So why doesn't your journal give (my) feminist work that courtesy?

Latest Data on Drone Casualties

A study published in the Jamestown Foundations' Terrorism Monitor a few days ago claims it sheds "New Light on the Accuracy of the CIA's Predator Drone Campaign in Pakistan." (Never mind the fact that as civilians, CIA agents are not entitled to wage war and would have to be considered 'unlawful combatants' if brought to justice.)

The question addressed here is a simple but very important one from a jus in bello perspective: what is the proportion of civilian deaths to combatant deaths in such strikes? No one is actually keeping track, but the authors aim to develop a good estimate by extrapolating from both Western and Pakistani news sources. On this basis they conclude:

Widely-cited reports of the inaccuracy and disproportionality of civilian to militant deaths in the CIA’s ongoing Predator drone campaign against the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Pakistan are grossly misleading. The most detailed database compiled to date, assembled by the authors of this article, indicates (among other important findings) that the strikes have not only been impressively accurate, but have achieved and maintained a greater proportionality than either ground operations in the area or targeting campaigns elsewhere

Now, I haven't studied their coding closely enough to understand how it enabled them to arrive at such wildly different conclusion than this study last year, which used a similar methodology; however simply by reading over the article itself I can already see three problems:

BBC spy miniseries upsets China, but how real is it? Let’s play Spooks bingo!

The BBC has offended the Chinese government because its primetime show Spooks (Mi5 in North America) has depicted Chinese intelligence agents in an unflattering light, reported here and here in the last few days. The plot saw MI5 trying to prevent an ‘ethnic weapon’ falling into Chinese hands, with much chasing around London and a few sinister and, perhaps, stereotypically Chinese baddies (judge for yourself in the Guardian screenshot here). 

As somebody who has written about Spooks and the war on terror (Chapter 7 of this), only to meet gentle mockery from my students, colleagues and indeed co-author, I can only say thank you to the Chinese government for suggesting Spooks is significant; that representations of international politics make a difference to international politics; enough of a difference to kick up a diplomatic rumpus.

MarkZism Redux: "Tyranny or Transcendence?"

Some colleagues suggested my earlier blialogue with my husband about the socio-political implications of Facebook's ever-changing architecture would be more entertaining in video format. Also, I was further galvanized to speak out about the perils of MarkZism when I learned that someone I love has apparently committed a Facebook suicide. So, I played around with Xtranormal this weekend. Enjoy.

(Head of) State Secrets

As I've already noted, former President George W. Bush is apparently settling some scores in his new memoir. In Europe, his passages about former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder are attracting a good deal of attention.

According to press reports, Bush says Schroder was for the Iraq war before it was against it. Because of his own electoral problems, Bush implies, Schroeder flip-flopped.

The former president writes that when he said he was considering the use of force in Iraq, Schroder said, "'What is true of Afghanistan is true of Iraq. Nations that sponsor terror must face consequences. If you make it fast and make it decisive, I will be with you.'"

Mr. Bush writes that he "took that as a statement of support. But when the German election arrived later that year, Schroder had a different take. He denounced the possibility of force against Iraq."

...Mr. Bush writes in "Decision Points" that though he continued to work with the German leader on some issues, "as someone who valued personal diplomacy, I put a high premium on trust. Once that trust was violated, it was hard to have a constructive relationship again."

Unlike Bush's former domestic ally Mitch McConnell, who has remained mum about Bush's similar accusations, Schroeder says Bush is lying:

Bush: McConnell plays politics with national security

In his new memoir, former President George W. Bush says that Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) let electoral politics influence his advice about the Iraq war in 2006. Cincinnati's CityBeat has the exchange from Bush's memoir:

"In September 2006, with the midterm elections approaching, my friend Mitch McConnell came to the Oval Office. The senior senator from Kentucky and Republican whip had asked to see me alone. Mitch has a sharp political nose, and he smelled trouble.

'Mr. President,' he said, 'your unpopularity is going to cost us control of the Congress' ...

'Well, Mitch,' I asked, 'what do you want me to do about it?' 'Mr. President,' he said, 'bring some troops home from Iraq.'"

The Louisville Courier-Journal, November 9 quotes Bush as replying that he would “set troop levels to achieve victory in Iraq, not victory at the polls.”

Ouch.

Currency Rap, or "your IR youtube video du jour"

Drip, drip, drip

I do not own a copy of the George W. Bush memoirs, but I have been following the bits and pieces that appear in my newspaper. I'm going to try to blog about a few of the most important items, especially as they pertain to my past blogging and/or research interests.

For example, the former President confirms that Israel destroyed a Syrian nuclear reactor in September 2002. This has long been a matter of discussion on the Duck.

Even more interesting, Bush says he rejected Israel's request that the US bomb the facility. Given Bush's "preemptive" war policy, Israel may have viewed this as a perfectly reasonable favor. Apparently, however, the CIA "had only 'low confidence' that Syria had a nuclear weapons program," though they had "high confidence" that Syria had built the reactor -- thanks to North Korea.

What this means is that the Bush Doctrine did have limits after all!

Then again, perhaps it is more accurate to say that Israel simply implemented US policy:

"Prime Minister Olmert's execution of the strike made up for the confidence I had lost in the Israelis during the Lebanon war," Bush writes. "The bombing demonstrated Israel's willingness to act alone. Prime Minister Olmert hadn't asked for a green light, and I hadn't given one. He had done what was necessary to protect Israel."

I'll try to examine additional tidbits soon.

The NYT op-ed page remains a fact-free zone

Even if John Bolton's and John Yoo's latest missive against New START ratification had been scrawled in crayon on the back of a cardboard box, it still would have been a waste of precious resources.

Rather than explain why, I'll just outsource to Fred Kaplan.

Undefended Buildings

I have been meaning for a few days to respond to this query on the law of land warfare posted recently at La Riposte:

Article 25 of the Hague Convention on the Law of Land Warfare states “The attack or bombardment, by whatever means, of towns, villages, dwellings, or buildings which are undefended is prohibited” and violation of this article is listed as a War Crime under Article 8 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. Do American drone attacks on family compounds within Afghanistan and Pakistan, believed to be occupied by members of the Taliban violate Article 25?

It is difficult to imagine how such a building, located in a village full of civilians could be construed as being defended, especially against an unmanned aircraft flying 25,000 feet overhead. Adequate defense against such an attacker would have to consist of air-defense artillery or missiles with a sophisticated tracking system to locate and engage the small, quiet drones.

Let's consider a couple of justifications that might possibly be made for what appears, on the surface, to be an egregious violation of the Laws of Land Warfare. First, someone might claim that the building wasn't the target - it was only a particular person or persons inside the building who were the targets, and the nature of the structure they were occupying was immaterial. But using that logic, such persons could be legitimately targeted anywhere, including schools, mosques, hospitals, and any other building.

It’s also possible someone could claim that just because there were people in the house who possessed guns, the building was “defended.” Such an argument rings hollow on several counts. First, inhabitants of Pakistan’s tribal areas are allowed to have weapons, precisely for the defense of their persons and property. Second, simply because the occupant of a building has a weapon, it doesn’t mean they will use it defensively. If approached by military or police forces they may choose to run away, to surrender, or to fight. Only in the latter case would the building become a “defended” position and thus merit bombardment.

I have only two things to add to this analysis, with which I generally concur. The first is that the general prohibition in the original Hague Conventions, reiterated in the Rome Statute, is also given more nuance by Articles 48-57 of the First Additional Protocol to the Geneva Conventions of 1977. Some of the treaty law relevant to this question includes:

Priority check, eh?

First they came for the icebergs...

So let me get this straight - Canada is going to close down 1/5 of its African embassies, but we're worried about terrorism in the Arctic where terrorists might attack our.... igloos? Frozen piles of rocks? Radicalize our polar bears?

Really, I'm all for patrolling the place but I can't think that Tuktoyaktuk is really that high on the al Qaida radar.

Rather, I'm pretty sure that this is the reason why we as a nation can't have nice things.

Any progress in the study of international security?

Not so much, argues Phil Arena, whose epistemological leanings are likely very far from my own (via John Sides).

I'm inclined to agree; I also remain unclear if any of the other major subfields of International Relations (IR) can point to the existence of significant settled findings, whether correlative or causal.

An Interesting Pattern in the Wikileaks Data

I have recently read a book entitled Inventing Collateral Damage in which the authors argue, among other things, that that concept of collateral damage was created for and in fact serves the purpose of allowing military officials to shrug off or gloss over the civilians they are indifferently killing in high-tech wars.

I found this rather interesting argument poorly substantiated in the book for reasons I will outline at greater length in a forthcoming essay, but this got me to thinking about how you would substantiate or disconfirm such a hypothesis, which would be an example of what scholars of international relations refer to as a "permissive effect" of a norm.

So since the Iraq War Logs allow a user to search the database with keywords, I figured I'd type in "collateral damage" and see for myself what sort of passages in military documents are associated with the term. It's quite remarkable what one finds: contrary to the claim made by Rockel, Halpern and their contributors, the term is generally used to explain why US service-personnel do not fire on otherwise legitimate military targets.


[cross-posted at Lawyers, Guns and Money]

I'm not sure what to say....

A MarkZist Manifesto. Or Not.

Me: “Look, here’s ‘me and Rob Farley’.”

Stu: “Who’s Rob Farley?”

Me: “Dude. My co-blogger; also, he’s coming to dinner next Wednesday after his guest lecture on battleships in my human security class. That’s not the point. Look, look this is ‘our’ Facebook page.”

Stu: “You mean the Lawyers, Guns and Money page? I’ve visited it once or twice.”

Me: “Not the LGM page. See? Look."



Stu: “Whoa. How did you do that?”

Me: “I didn’t do that; Facebook did it automatically.”

Stu: “How did you find out about it?”

Me: “Kid Number One told me. Her friends at high school are all over this.”

Stu: “I bet. Wow, this means you can easily research exactly what every pair of your friends has ever said to one another on Facebook? That's pretty sweet.”

Me: “Sweet, yep. You can find out exactly how strong or weak your ties to your different friends are, relative to your other friends, much more easily now. And you can be sure that everyone else can see that too. I can imagine high-schoolers are going to have new ways to stigmatize each other now.”

Stu: “Oh, you’re always so down on Facebook. I happen to like Mr. Zuckerberg.”

Me: “I worry about cyber-bullying.”

Stu: “But come on, admit this is cool. I wonder what the algorithm is like they use to choose the profile picture they use for your page. Let’s see what we look like.”

Me: “OK, here you go…. Aww. Look at us. It’s Kid Number Two’s birthday party.”



Stu: "I look really bad in that picture. Oh look, it appears we attended the Rally for Sanity together.”

Me: “Looks like FB pledges were a pretty good indicator of the crowd size after all. Huh.”

Stu: “Hey, I want to see what ‘You and your buddy Alex’ look like. Don’t roll your eyes.”

Me: (typing) “That was a twitch, not a roll. Hmm. Now this is interesting. Alex must know some privacy settings I don’t.”

Stu: “Inconceivable.”

Me: (dryly) “I see his and my Lexulous games don’t appear here; that’s good since that’s where all the excitement actually goes on.”

Stu: “Ha, ha.”

Me: “You know, this is really invasive.”

Stu: “Why? Are you saying you have something to hide?”

Me: “No, but it shouldn’t matter. The depth and nature of my relationships with my online friends shouldn’t be easier to find now than they were when I was choosing to present them online.”

Stu: “What difference does that make?”

Guy Fawkes Night: Fireworks, but does torture?

England doesn’t really have a national holiday. Sure there is St. George’s Day – but I would have to actually check Wikipedia to know when it is. The only sign is usually some white flags with a red cross outside of various pubs. It’s a bit of a shame, really, but that’s a post for another time. Fireworks are usually left to 5 November – Guy Fawkes Night (aka Bonfire night… leave it to the English to put a firework night in the middle of rainy, cold November).

The short version is that Guy Fawkes was a Catholic zealot who plotted to blow up Parliament while the King (James I) was visiting in 1605. (Perhaps he’s now best known as the inspiration for the masks worn by the Anonymous movement that likes to harass Scientology from time to time.) This, the famous “Gunpowder Plot” was aimed at assassinating James and replacing them with a Catholic monarch. The plot was discovered, the perpetrators caught and a huge wave of anti-Catholicism gripped the country.

Even though I’m an exceptionally poor Catholic, I’ve never been particularly happy about attending event that seems to be about happily burning Papists. But that isn’t the only thing that leaves me somewhat uncomfortable with the holiday.

After being caught by the authorities, Fawkes refused to talk or give up any details about the plot. Torture, apparently, was somewhat out of practice by then but could be used in what was felt to be extreme circumstances with permission of the King. In order to gain more information of this subversive plot, torture was introduced into the interrogation – going from “gentler” means until eventually the rack was used. Commentators frequently point to the differences in signature to demonstrate just how broken Fawkes likely was by the time he gave his full confession.

Structural explanations are not always sexy or gratifying, but they typically explain a lot

In the days after the US midterm elections cable news outlets, radio programs, political pundits, newspapers, and activists on both sides of the ideological spectrum have exerted a great deal of blood and sweat to explain the nationwide drubbing of the Democrats. Democrats are predictably covering their behinds—conceding voter anger, but cautioning that the country has not lurched to the right in just two years. Republicans are claiming validation of their position and a greater ideological alignment with the American people. Activists and enthusiasts of all stripes are weaving narratives that use the election results to validate their personal political perspective. The question, of course, is whether any of this is correct or meaningful. Was this election a mass repudiation of Democratic policies? Was it a validation of the Republican platform and/or Tea Party-style conservatives?

Elections are like Rorschach bots—everyone sees something different, and often times what they see is what they want to see. Particularly with elections, people like to place causation in the hands of people—agents—whose efforts, words, thoughts, etc, drive the outcome. And to be sure, individual agents can and do wield a great deal of influence on events. But an overemphasis on agents can lead to spurious conclusions about why something happens. You must also look at structural or environmental factors.

Over at the Monkey Cage, John Snides has a great piece precisely along these lines. Snides and his colleagues looked at which factors where the best predictors of voter choice:

If you had one thing, and one thing only, to predict which Democratic House incumbents would lose their seats in 2010, what would you take? The amount of money they raised? Their TARP vote? Their health care vote? Whether they had a Tea Party opponent? A Nazi reenactor opponent?

Not surprisingly, it’s none of those.

The Anglo-French Treaty and the BBC World Service: Hard Power irrelevance and a threat to the Soft Power of the UK and the West.

On Tuesday of this week, amid much pomp and fanfare (and a certain amount of suppressed hilarity) an Anglo-French Treaty was signed, providing for 50 years (no, really, 50 years) of defence co-operation. I’ve posted on this at the LSE blog here and haven’t much to add – basically there is less to this than meets the eye.  Meanwhile, back in the real world, a little noticed policy poses a genuine threat to one of the major sources of British ‘soft’ power, the BBC World Service.  As part of a wider deal on the funding of the BBC, funding for the Service is to be shifted from a grant from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) to the BBC itself.  A Good Thing you might think, escaping from political control to the independent BBC? If so you would be very, very wrong. This is a disaster in the making.

Although obliged to fund it, the FCO exercises no control over the World Service which has operated in practice as a body independent of both the Government and the BBC.  Now it will become part of the latter. Many foreigners think of the BBC as the source of quality news and documentaries, and boring ‘heritage’ costume dramas (sorry, that was editorialising). This is true, but it is also true that the BBC is a ruthlessly competitive organisation, continually searching for ratings success and seeking to sell its programmes abroad. The loss-making elements of the BBC are continually under pressure; domestic loss makers, such as the serious music and culture channel Radio 3, have a certain amount of protection because they have a vociferous and articulate middle-class audience who give the BBC a bad time whenever cuts are threatened.  In spite of the assurances on continued funding that have been given, I doubt very much whether the World Service – and especially its foreign language broadcasts – will, in practice, have the same kind of protection.  They cost money and their audience doesn’t have a vote or much of a voice in Britain.

It is significant that virtually no British politician has expressed concern at the fate of the World Service – but Hillary Clinton has.  She, and the State Department in general, are well aware that the BBC World Service is an important asset not simply for Britain but for the West in general; when Barack Obama wanted to talk directly to the Iranian  people he used the BBC’s Farsi service because of its loyal audience in Iran, based on the reputation for integrity it has earned over the years with the Iranian people. Let’s hope it is still there in five years time.

After Wikileaks; or, the next phase of Diffused War

In Diffused War, Andrew Hoskins and I argued we’ve entered a new paradigm of warfare. The wikileaks stories seem to confirm much of this account. War is mediatized, we wrote, as the institutions of war and those affected by war take a form governed by continual media recording, display and archiving. This creates diffuse causal relations between action and effect, since mediatization can amplify or contain the cognitive and emotional response any action generates in ways not dependent on the initial action itself. Militaries, NGOs, insurgents, journalists – none can predict the outcomes of their actions or the display of their actions. US and UK military practitioners did not envisage their communications going public, but their institutions allowed those records to exist. And as my Duck colleague Charli Carpenter notes, they've started shredding documents. This is to counter the greater uncertainty now faced by those conducting war. While who sees what, when, and where is usually largely controlled (most people still rely on mainstream media), the potential for surprises is permanent and unavoidable, such that the worst case must always be built into decision-making.

There was Foreign Policy in the election

Dan made some interesting points on the topic, but this angle -- the raw nativism -- is really impressive (also gotta love the role of IR professor). I saw this on CNN about 11pm last night:

Book Review: Codes of the Underworld

I recently finished Diego Gambetta's Codes of the Underworld: How Criminals Communicate.  For those looking for a more academic take on signaling (particularly from a sociological point of view) it's a great find.  As I previously mentioned, Gambetta uses the extreme case of cooperation amongst criminals to tease out more general dynamics of trust, signaling, and communication.  The Mafia can be considered a “hard-case” for theories of signaling trust; given the extreme incentives for criminals to lie and the lack of credibility they wield given the very fact that they are criminals, how is it that criminals manage to coordinate their actions and trust each other at all?  By understanding how trust works in this harsh environment we learn something about how to signal trustworthiness in broader, less restrictive environments.  As Gambetta notes:

Studying criminal communication problems, precisely because they are the magnified extreme versions of problems that we normally solve by means of institutions, can teach us something about how we might communicate, or even should communicate, when we find ourselves in difficult situations, when, say, we desperately want to be believed or keep our messages secret.

The book is a great example of studying deviant cases or outliers, particularly when the area of study is not well worn.  This is a valuable general methodological lesson.  We are typically taught to avoid outliers as they skew analysis.  However, they can be of great value in at least two circumstances: 1) Generating hypotheses in areas that have not been well studied and 2) Testing hypotheses in small-N research designs, where hard cases can establish potential effect and generalizability and easy cases suggest minimal plausibility.

Russia's Return to Afghanistan

The participation of four Russian counter-narcotics agents in a US/ISAF raid on four heroin labs in Afghanistan has left many pundits wondering whether the war in Afghanistan as well as US/NATO/ISAF--Russian relations are entering a new phase.  However, before one can speculate, there are a few misconceptions in news reports that I think should be clarified and corrected in order to place the story into its proper context.

U.S. Midterm Election Prediction Fest 2010

At Gallup, we are officially predicting--regardless of turnout level--at least 40 seats for Republicans.  Based on the numbers and our historical model, Republicans should land about 60+ House seats, easily gaining the majority.

Personally, I'll say 65 just to be (arbitrarily) specific.  I'll also predict that Republicans pick up 7 seats in the Senate, 3 short of a majority in that body.

What do you think? Feel free to leave your own predictions in the comments section.

Election 2010: the Foreign Policy Elephant in the Room (updated)

CBS Nevada reporter Nathan Baca tried to approach [Sharron] Angle during a stroll through the airport and the airport parking lot with questions about her foreign policy views.

After going through several evasive answers, an irritated Angle replied: "I will answer those questions when I'm the senator."

Much of the liberal reaction to Angle's latest evasion of the press has taken the form of "if she can't face reporters, how can she a U.S. Senator?" In light of Angle's general bizarreness, I can understand the comparative lack of attention given to issue areas she refused to address. But, as Dan Drezner's noted, the 2010 elections have been marked by an almost total absence of foreign-policy debate. That's not surprising. The Obama Administration hasn't exactly been "soft on terrorism," the unemployment rate hovers near ten percent, and Republican politicians basically support U.S. involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan. In short, international affairs doesn't provide particularly rich soil for harvesting votes.

However, this election may prove quite consequential for U.S. foreign relations. Even if the the Democrats hold onto a slight majority in the Senate, the legislative branch is about to shift significantly rightward. This is not a terribly comforting thought, given that the current GOP combines an impoverished foreign-policy playbook with a scorched-earth mentality toward the Obama Administration.

Some Good News from Pakistan

Last week, Asma Jahangir was elected to head Pakistan's Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA), the leading professional organization for the country's lawyers. She is a very skilled broker and a committed human rights lawyer (she is United Nations Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief) and will add a much needed counter force to the increasingly politicized judiciary that is destabilizing the current political system.

We don't often hear good news from Pakistan these days and it's easy to forget that there are still some powerful and influential liberal forces in the country. Asma is the real deal and her election is good news. She has a tough (and dangerous) road ahead -- the future and strength of Pakistan's democratic institutions rest on the legitimacy and integrity of its institutional checks and balances and a professional and independent judiciary -- but the lawyers movement that she now leads has shown that it can play a significant role in constraining political excesses. I wish her well....