On Macho In Foreign Relations

This will be a very quick post; I hope to flesh out these ideas in more detail later.

I see a lot of strutting and puffing that President Obama has "lost" to President Putin. That perhaps makes sense to those who are fully preoccupied with winning and losing in their own lives, but it makes much less sense in diplomacy.

An ideal diplomatic solution serves the needs of all parties. That's usually not possible, and yes, nations jockey to get the best for themselves. But "winning" and "losing", short of unconditional surrender, are a great oversimplification that blinds those obsessed with it to large areas of strategy.

I also see that the strutting and puffing is coming from men. I can't think of a single woman I would put in this category - possibly Susan Rice and Samantha Power, judging from their tweet streams before the Lavrov-Kerry framework came out, but they have been silent on the subject since.

The age of that kind of diplomacy is over, guys. President Obama said it well this morning in his interview with George Stephanopolous: he wants to get the substance of policy right, not the style. So he is not strutting and puffing. Let Vladimir Putin do that.

A foreign policy in which the American President calls all the shots and dictates to lesser countries (all of them, according to the strutters and puffers) is, at most, a feature of the fifties, even more a feature of the strutters and puffers' dreams. That's how a manly man would act.

George Bush put on that facade, and it got us Iraq. President Obama has learned from that, and he's been responding to opportunity, as a good strategist should. We don't know how this will turn out; Russia and Syria may not be playing in good faith.

It's white guys who want the strutting and puffing. My experience is that women often have to take what others may see as humiliation and make the best of it. Fortunately, I had mentors who showed me how to turn that into a strength. I suspect that Barack Obama has experienced that sort of thing and is using his experience. I think he's doing the right thing.

And oh yes, strutters and puffers: exactly how would you have handled the past few weeks and not gone to war? Or do you think another war would be a good thing?

A Strike Against Syria?

President Obama says he believes there should be a strike on the Syrian regime’s military assets in retaliation for the regime’s use of chemical weapons against civilians in Ghouta. He has asked Congress to vote on it.

In internal US considerations, the Congressional vote is the big news. Presidents have not always felt they needed the approval of Congress for military operations. Congress is constitutionally charged with the power to make war, but Bill Clinton felt that a one-off cruise missile strike against a suspected al-Qaeda target in Sudan didn’t rise to the level of war. Nor did Jimmy Carter ask Congress to approve an incursion into Iran to rescue the hostages from the US embassy in 1980.

More egregiously, Lyndon Johnson cited an incident in the Gulf of Tonkin to immediately raise troop levels in Vietnam and then to get a resolution limiting Congress’s power to intervene in war plans. After the 9/11 attack on the United States, George W. Bush got an authorization for the use of military force from Congress to invade Iraq on the pretext of weapons of mass destruction, nuclear weapons in particular. Both the Gulf of Tonkin incident and Iraqi nuclear weapons later turned out to be lies.

President Obama inherited the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with the intent of winding them down, and he has been doing that. However, at the same time, he has been ramping up the use of drones to target people believed to be associated with terrorist organizations. That use has raised questions about the executive branch of government’s role in war. The American people are tired of wars and wary of excessive executive privilege.

So it makes sense that Obama, a constitutional law scholar, would have second thoughts about his advisors’ urgent program of a quick strike on Syria to enforce international law against the use of chemical weapons. The vote in the UK Parliament against participating in a strike undoubtedly also played a part. We shall now see whether Congress is capable of meeting the challenge.

The reasons Secretary of State John Kerry gave for a potential attack are maintaining the norms and treaties against chemical weapons use both in Syria and in other nations that may be looking on, the security of our allies in the area (Israel, Jordan, Turkey, Lebanon), the security of the United States, and some words that may be alternatives to the shorthand “US credibility.”

The first three are real concerns: it is important to maintain treaties and norms, and the security of nations is indeed threatened both by Syria’s chemical weapons and by the civil war there. The credibility argument is often advanced as a reason for military action, hardly ever for diplomacy.

Norms and Dangers

Although those arguments are real, they raise many questions. Amateur and professional lawyers are hard at work distilling points from the 1925 Geneva Protocol (“Protocol for the Prohibition of the Use in War of Asphyxiating, Poisonous or Other Gases, and of Bacteriological Methods of Warfare”) and the Chemical Weapons Convention.  Syria is a signatory to the first, not to the second. A great deal of water has gone under the bridge since 1925. It is not clear that either prohibits the use of chemical weapons within a country. And enforcement would be through the United Nations, not by a single country or group of countries that decide on their own. That’s my simple non-lawyer summary. Arguments are in progress on each of those points.

The presence of chemical weapons in a country racked by civil war is indeed dangerous to the surrounding countries. Some of the many factions fighting the Syrian government are also opposed to governments in surrounding countries, Europe, and the US. If they obtain chemical weapons, they may use them elsewhere. The war itself is likely to increase the numbers of jihadis who may learn skills that will help them to strike elsewhere, but this is not the primary focus of the US argument.

Responsibility to Protect

Underlying these arguments for some of Obama’s advisors is the responsibility to protect (R2P), a United Nations initiative in response to genocidal atrocities in the Balkans, Rwanda, and elsewhere. It is not formalized in treaties. Susan Rice, Obama’s National Security Advisor; Samantha Power, US Ambassador to the UN, and Anne-Marie Slaughter, former Director of Policy Planning at the State Department, are all strong advocates of R2P. The first two directly advise Obama.

R2P says that states may intervene in another state if that state is mistreating or looks like it may mistreat its people. This seems like a good idea, but the implementation is daunting. The Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 was in response to states intervening in other states on behalf of co-religionists. It ended a long string of wars in Europe. We are now living in a world in which Westphalian sovereignty is the norm, so it is easy to ignore its benefits. The criteria for intervention must be drawn very clearly and narrowly, and that has not yet been done. Additionally, it must require UN approval. R2P as it currently exists would rely on the subjective judgment of states or a lengthy discussion within the UN. Consider the possibility of Russia bringing up human rights violations against minority voters in the US. Charli Carpenter works through the issues.

The two advisors who favor R2P have been very vocal in supporting an attack on Syria. Anne-Marie Slaughter has been more restrained recently on the subject.

Balancing the Concerns

For both the arguments of chemical weapons norms and R2P, I believe the proponents have not been realistic in their balancing of civilian deaths against their greater goals. As we read the news, our focus constantly shifts: photos of injured civilians give way to discussions of maintaining international treaties. The first is more freighted with emotion, but deaths and injuries will be real, and limiting civilian deaths is one of those abstract/not-abstract goods that international norms and treaties address. We need to look at the whole picture.

Attacks, no matter how closely targeted, will result in civilian deaths. Assad is reported to be moving his equipment closer to civilian areas and prisoners to military sites. Some missiles may be poorly targeted or go off course. Does the good of rebuking Assad for his use of chemical weapons balance those deaths? I don’t know the answer to that. My sense is that a limited cruise-missile attack, targeted as tightly as possible, may be justified. Whether it is wise is another question.

Shall We Consider Diplomacy?

As Obama said on August 31, the attack is not time-limited. It would be wise to open up as much diplomacy as possible while Congress is making its way back into session. Iran, in particular, has shown some interesting possibilities recently.

The new Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani (@HassanRouhani) has been tweeting his disapproval of the use of chemical weapons in Syria, although he has not indicate which side he believes used them. Former Iranian President Hashemi Rafsanjani may have blamed the regime, although that statement has now been removed. Reuters seems to think it was real, and an audio recording apparently has him saying it – this story is developing as I write. The Supreme Leader continues with tweets warning against foreign intervention.

Iran is Syria’s patron. But Iranians also carry the memory of Saddam Hussein’s use of nerve agents against them in the 1980s. They have proposed a peace conference for Syria, and Rouhani seems open to working with the US. A week or so ago, Undersecretary-General for Political Affairs Jeffrey Feltman spent two days in Iran, talking with high officials including the foreign minister. Feltman was previously in the US State Department and would be an excellent conduit for messages from the US government.

Trying to split the Iranian government on this issue would be a bad idea, but there may be ways in which Iran and the US could work together to move the factions in Syria toward an accommodation.

Reaching out to Russia might also be a good idea, although relations are very stressed. In any case, such diplomacy would be very quiet at this point, so we wouldn’t be hearing about it. The G20 meeting comes later this week, which will provide opportunities for talks. They won’t be between the leaders; the most productive talks will be at lower levels. Both Obama and Rouhani will address the United Nations General Assembly a week or so later.

Aid to the refugees and the countries receiving them would also be a positive step.

Finally, we come to the “confidence in America” argument. I hope to write more about this later. I think that this argument is losing its effectiveness with the American people, and some of our allies (UK, for one) don’t give it a lot of credence. Perhaps Assad does. It’s a slippery argument, with a lot of the speaker’s subjectivity thrown in. When Israel says that US credibility will be damaged if it doesn’t attack Syria now, we may take that as self-interested. On the other hand, Assad’s future actions may depend on how dangerous to his cause he perceives the US to be.

Syria constitutes a terrible decision for both Obama and Congress. It’s a dangerous situation for the region and beyond as well as a humanitarian catastrophe. Whether outside forces can do much to change that is doubtful.

As events have been developing, I have been collecting some of the better links here. Many are still worth reading.

Photo from Andrew Sullivan.

Cross-posted at Nuclear Diner.

Seamus Heaney, 1939 - 2013

History says, Don’t hope
On this side of the grave.
But then, once in a lifetime
The longed-for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up,
And hope and history rhyme.

A very good obituary at the New York Times.

On Bombing To Bring About Peace

I've posted it before, but it seems relevant now.

The Hacktivist as Self-Actualizing Citizen

One of the things Edward Snowden said in the first video interview the Guardian published was that he wanted the discussion to be about the NSA materials he intended to release, not about him.

But of course that’s not possible. In order to have an intelligent discussion about the NSA, we need to know how materials fit into the larger scheme of what the NSA is doing and how Snowden selected them. Since he chose Bart Gellman, Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras as his media contacts, we also need to know how they and others at the newspapers involved choose from Snowden’s material and why they present it as they do. It might also be useful to know what Wikileaks has to gain from their involvement.

The magician says, “Watch my right hand closely,” so that we won’t see what he’s doing with his left. The material that is left out may be as important as what is revealed.

Edward Snowden is thirty years old, a self-taught hacker who has worked for the US intelligence services, sometimes through contractors. His adult life (let’s say from the age of eighteen) has seen two presidents, Bush II and Obama, with memories of Clinton and possibly Bush I. He would have learned about the Cold War through reading. The economy has been pretty good most of his adult life, until 2008, but his jobs in the intelligence services seem to have smoothed that out for him.

Like many other young men involved with computers, Snowden professes some degree of libertarianism. It may be inferred from his hacking of the NSA and sharing the documents that he shares some of the thinking of the hacktivist movement. He hasn’t said much and is saying a great deal less since he’s left the Sheremetyevo transit zone, so we don’t know what he believes. Ethan Zuckerman has written quite a bit about how young men like Snowden are interacting with the political world.*

We can start here:

Hackers engage in instrumental activism, seeking change by challenging unjust laws. They engage in voice-based activism, articulating their frustration and dissent from systems they either cannot or are not willing to exit…In addition to traditional channels for civic engagement, they can engage by creating code, giving them a more varied repertoire of civic techniques than non-coders have.

How do they know when laws are unjust? And how do they propose to use that code?

Zuckerman quickly trashes the idea of voting by informed citizens, with the help of Michael Schudson.

We may be experiencing a shift in citizenship where the idea of the informed citizen no longer applies well to the contemporary political climate. The entrenched gridlock of Congress, the power of incumbency and the geographic polarization of the US make it difficult to argue that making an informed decision about voting for one’s representative in Congress is the most effective way to have a voice in political dialogs.

There is, however, a difference between having a voice in political dialogs (which? With whom?) and voting for Congressional representatives. Both are important and intertwined, but having a voice has always contained far more than the act of voting.

After a description of what political activists have always done, brought up to date (but “outside traditional political channels”), Zuckerman dubs them “self-actualizing citizens,” referencing a definition:

• Diminished sense of government obligation—higher sense of individual purpose
• Voting is less meaningful than other, more personally defined acts such as consumerism, community volunteering, or transnational activism
• Mistrust of media and politicians is reinforced by negative mass media environment.
• Favors loose networks of community action—often established or sustained through friendships and peer relations and thin social ties maintained by interactive information technologies

And code is the hacker’s path to self-actualization.

At the end of the essay, Zuckerman begins to see possible problems with his model:

But can democracy work if all citizens are effective at promoting and campaigning for their own issues? Have we seen evidence of a society with high, effective engagement and with the other characteristics we expect of a democracy? Should a group like Center for Civic Media be working on thinking through models of effective citizenship or considering the larger question of what a large group of effective, engaged citizens could mean for contemporary visions of democracy?

Is democracy even possible in a world where every citizen pursues his own idea of the perfect society, attacking others (perhaps only with code) at will, making himself judge, jury, and executioner? Isn’t this Hobbes’s all against all?

Government is about people in groups. Politics is about people in groups. Individual people have different ideas about the best way to live. But they must work together to assure clean water, build roads, provide schooling for their children, make available medical care and opportunities to participate in commerce, and other benefits believed necessary for modern life. So they have to find ways to work through or ignore those differences. That is the job of politics. Zuckerman has mistaken the beginning – forming one’s views – for the end of changing society. “[D]igital natives largely do not participate in civic affairs out of a sense of duty or obligation but a sense of personal fulfillment.”

This seems to be consistent with Snowden’s approach. Snowden tells us that NSA actions were unacceptable to him, without making clear his criteria for acceptability. That is to be enough and self-evident from the documents. Obviously we will all agree with him.

The material that has been released so far provides no clearer indication of the criteria being used. Some of the material may support his stated concern, that NSA is collecting too much data on American citizens. Much of the material, however, simply shows that the NSA has been listening in on other countries. That is what the signals intelligence agencies of all countries do. The United Nations has always been a particular target. Snowden’s flight to China and Russia, and his release of material appearing to ingratiate him with those governments suggest that he is quite willing to do whatever is necessary to assure his own well-being.

Julian Assange, one of Snowden’s protectors, has enunciated opposition to all secrecy by governments. The broad scope of Snowden’s revelations suggests that he agrees. In Assange, we again see expediency: he is quite willing to use secrecy and power for his own purposes, most recently occasioning a split in Australia’s Wikileaks party by his tactics. This may be very self-actualizing for Assange is doing what he thinks is right, but it undermines the ability to work in politics.

Within the hacktivist world, brother hackers have been turning on each other as their activities come under the scrutiny of the government. It turns out that we have a structure of laws, and that the government feels that it has a monopoly on enforcing them, however self-actualizing it may be for hackers to attack those they feel are evil. In the real world, that is called vigilantism. Over time, humans have found that laws developed by those chosen by that obsolete and unimportant process called voting work better.

But why should it be just young male hacktivists and code? Why not use the laws to put liens against those you perceive as your enemies, namely that government and its law enforcement personnel? Enough to drive them into bankruptcy and destroy that hated government? That’s how the sovereign citizens’ movement is actualizing itself. They want an end to government, and they are taking action. The means is different from what the hacktivists use, but the process is very similar, as the end is likely to be.

When voting becomes unimportant, a voted-in government becomes subject to the manipulations of those who want power. In America today, that would be a variety of commercial interests – the banks, the fossil fuel producers, the large corporations. And they will exercise it to the detriment of the self-actualizing citizens, working up their code. The greatest power individuals with keyboards, even working together, have is negative: stealing and exposing secrets, disrupting communications and commerce. Explain to me how to produce a digital March on Washington.

I think there’s value in testing one’s perceptions of good and evil in discussion with other citizens and coming up with solutions everyone can live with. I prefer the imperfect democracy we’ve got now to individuals making their own decisions and imposing them on the rest of us.

Some of the revelations are of concern and need to be investigated further. But I’d like to know why some were chosen and what we’re not hearing.

________________________________

*Yes, I am writing about young men. Women libertarians and hacktivists exist, but the face of those two movements is almost exclusively young and male. I may write more about this in a future post.

Cross-posted at Nuclear Diner.

Bits and Pieces - July 30, 2013

What people do in the mirror: everyday portraits by Heikki Leis.

Constructing the World’s Largest Self-Anchored Suspension Bridge. That's the Oakland-San Francisco Bay Bridge.

Could new states emerge in Central Asia? Reverberations from the Soviet Union.

What went wrong with arms control? And, I would add, what should be its objectives in the post-Soviet world?

The new president of Iran, Hassan Rouhani, has been involved in the nuclear negotiations. It looks like he may take a more reasonable approach than Mahmoud Ahmadinejad did. Here are three articles expanding on that.

A Directive for Maintaining Positive Atmosphere in Iran-US Relations. This is on a site that represents official Iranian opinion. It's also worth reading to learn how Iranians may view the United States.

Iran’s next foreign minister seen as an olive branch

Velayati on Negotiations

Bits and Pieces and a Few Words About Edward Snowden - July 12, 2013

Edward Snowden has applied for asylum in Russia. This was pretty much predictable, whatever you may believe about his motives. Without a passport, he couldn't travel, and the Latin American countries that offered him asylum weren't willing to send a special envoy for him.

I notice a real split between those of us who have some experience with intelligence-related matters and those who don't. It's very, very hard for me and others to believe that the FSB and others of Russia's secret services are benevolent enough to allow this poor seeker after truth to while away his hours quietly in the transit zone of Sheremetyevo Airport.

Snowden disappears for two weeks or so - not seen in the airport, and even Wikileaks and Glenn Greenwald said at times that they were out of touch with him. Then he surfaces to a gathering of "human rights organizations" (which up until now have been harassed by the Russian government) and begs for asylum in a statement that contains many of the earmarks of Russian propaganda. Not to mention that some of those helping out have close connections to the Russian government.

Was he forced into this by the US narrowing his options by revoking his passport? (BTW, not having a passport doesn't make you stateless or not a citizen.) By poor judgment on his and Wikileaks's part? Or was something like this planned all along? Stay tuned.

In other news,

Everyone calm down, there is no “bee-pocalypse”

Looks like this should be a good series on working people in America.

Preliminary findings on the missile defense failure is that the final stage of the interceptor failed to separate. That's pretty bad - didn't even get close to destroying the target.

This is an impressive way to see the effects of a nuclear blast. Wellerstein gave me an advance look at it.

Why studying calculus is important- even if you don’t use it

Bits and Pieces - July 8, 2013

Over the weekend, I saw a couple of good posts from the past.

2008: Traffic jams and what you can do to help eliminate them

May 2011: Peer Review & Changing a Lightbulb: a Historian's View

About the past, but a new book and post: Photos of the Middle East from 1862

And up to date: Nine easy steps to your own audience-flattering ted talk.

The headline on this one isn't quite right: Oregon students will pay for their education, but at a rate they can manage. It's an improvement, but not the commitment to education for all that America has had in the past.

Bill Keller: Sentence First, Strategy Afterwards!

Bill Keller of the New York Times, who advocated the 2003 attack on Iraq and now tells us that Syria is not like Iraq but we should intervene anyway, today crows about how happy Obama's latest announcement has made the Syrian rebels while holding tightly to his credentials as a hard-bitten reporter:

When I set out to meet with Syrian rebel operatives in the wake of Obama’s halfhearted shift, I expected a reaction of rolled eyes, too-little-too-late and thanks-for-nothing. 

What caught my eye was the teaser on the Times's Opinion page:

It reminded me of the trial in Alice in Wonderland:

`No, no!' said the Queen. `Sentence first--verdict afterwards.'

And now we return you to The Travels of Edward Snowden.

Bits and Pieces - June 20, 2013

The solstice is near! I seldom keep track of the silly "Solstice is at 09:23:32 today" announcements, just enjoy the long days and hate to see them start to decrease.

In case you missed it, Cap'n Crunch may have violated the Stolen Valor Act. Another scandal!

150 Years of Misunderstanding the Civil War. Nothing noble about it.

I started out very skeptical of Twitter, but have come around to finding it very helpful in thinking things out. Perhaps that's because, like Thomas Beller, I don't know what I think until I say it.

Russian Space Center in Kazakhstan Counts Down Its Days of Glory. I haven't been to Baikonur, but some of this is familiar from my other travels. Although I can't say the markets I've been in have been plagued by flies - instead very clean and pleasant. And the dried fruits and nuts in Central Asian markets are to die for, not to mention the melons!

Another leaker! In the Manhattan Project.

“We have socialised the risk of innovation but privatised the rewards.” Why not, along with so much else?

William Perry: My Personal Journey at the Nuclear Brink.

Something new for knitters.

Isn't It Time To Change How We Do Primaries? Or Isn't It Time For The Republicans Who Have Some Sense To Stand Up To Their Base?

The reality of the House is that sometimes a majority of House Republicans want a bill to pass even if they don't want to vote for it.

Thanks to Ezra Klein for clearing this up.

Bits and Pieces - June 13, 2013

Godwin's Law or not - the idea that few pregnancies result from rape really does come from the Nazis. And Emily Bazelon raises a good question in that article: why do those male Republican legislators feel it so necessary to keep repeating that?

If you're going to Europe, bring lots of cash. Your credit card probably won't work. Kevin Drum seems to be the only financial columnist that finds this stupid and backward on the part of the US banking industry.

What did Thomas Kuhn really mean by "scientific paradigms"?

Is Edward Snowden trying to make a case for sanctuary in China, or is he trying to sow further distrust between China and the US?

I've been writing about the Snowden affair over at Nuclear Diner. I've contemplated what makes a whistleblower, what Snowden has told us so far (not much), and constructed a timeline for his life and recent actions, which I'm updating as more information comes out.

Snowden's interview with the South China News.

If journalists covered the US the way US journalists cover the world.

Academic freedom and indentured students.

Why right-wing wannabe terrorists use ricin.

Still More Questions Than Answers on Nerve Gas in Syria. One of the better articles on the subject. But it's not gas...

NSA, Reporters, Whistleblowers, and Classified Material

I was working on a much longer post having to do with the press, whistleblowers, and classified information when the business about the FBI’s and NSA’s data collection broke. So I will continue to work on that longer piece over the weekend.

Meanwhile, here is some other material.

Some background:

Time: 7 Things to Know About the Government’s Secret Database of Telephone Data

ProPublica: No Warrant, No Problem: How The Government Can Still Get Your Digital Data

I am finding that on this issue, I have a large area of agreement with Joshua Foust, which is not always the case. You can follow him on Twitter @joshuafoust.

Nine Dashed-Off Points on the NSA “Scandal”

We Are To Blame

Stephen Walt has some wise things to say here and here.

I’m thinking that the press is overdoing their insistence on their “right” to access classified information. Information isn’t newsworthy just because it’s classified, and some of what reporters are saying sounds like they want easy disclosures rather than working on hard stories. Whistleblowers are not unambiguously figures of virtue. Some do it for motives like office politics or fame. But does a disclosure that helps the public make those motives purer? And yes, far too much material is classified.

Now to flesh that out.

Cross-posted at Nuclear Diner.

Woman's Place in Iran and Protests in Turkey

Saeed Jalili sounded like Stokely Carmichael the other day:

Based on the interpretations of the supreme leader, the presence of women in society must be combatant and revolutionary in the various fields, and the most important act of cultural resistance for a woman takes place at the home.

Carmichael was a bit cruder on women's place in revolution:

The only place for women in the movement is prone.

And here are a great many photos from the protests in Istanbul.

Bits and Pieces - May 29, 2013

I know, I know, not much posting lately. I've been traveling. Here's a photo of an elephant seal near Cambria, California, to prove it.

I've known a few charming men in my life, but not a lot. Maybe two, in fact. This article considers what charm consists of in men and why men don't want to be charming. The world would be better if they were. And I'm thinking now that some men I know (the word "guys" doesn't fit there) indulge in some elements of charm, sometimes.

Conor Friedersdorf just says it right out: Establishing a no-fly zone in Syria would be an act of war. That phrase rolls so easily off the lips, no need to think about what is needed. If you're in the mood for thinking, though, consider that the no-fly zone was established in Iraq after a major war had destroyed Iraq's military. That's what it takes.

An Act of Congress has made it impossible to sell helium from the US's plentiful reserves once the cost of stockpiling helium is paid off. The act was part of the mid-nineties privatization. I'm wondering if this was just a dumb mistake or if it was another Republican sabotage. The latter doesn't make much sense, but that probably wouldn't be required.

Syria’s chemical weapons pose a decade-long problem for the world

That's the title of another op-ed from me and Aaron Stein at the Globe and Mail.

Bits and Pieces - April 29, 2013

Too much stuff happening.

Jared Bernstein is collecting news stories about the damage being done by the sequester. Here's this week's collection.

Why didn't 2,400 tons of ammonium nitrate at West plant raise concerns?

The blunt logic of Russian power.

Forgiveness and reconciliation need to factor into many more international situations.

Richard Haass: How to build a second American century.

Bits and Pieces - April 28, 2013

Bush and the West explosion: the untold story of deregulating chemical plants

Charlie Stross changes his mind on nuclear disarmament.

What we need to know about Syrian chemical weapons (by me)

Bits and Pieces - April 17, 2013

This is pretty interesting.



Global Military Spending Falls For First Time Since 1998. Except in the United States. Check out this chart showing relative spending by country.

Every war must end.

Just Wondering...Polls on Spending Priorities

I suppose that the pollsters, wanting to think that they are doing something scientific, just want to measure what people think. But time and again, the results they give us are that Americans want to reduce foreign aid, believing that it is something like a quarter of the budget, whereas it is under one percent, reduce taxes, and increase spending on pretty much everything else.

Okay, so we know that.

How about asking questions that begin, "Given that the budget is finite," and go on to pose a choice: defense spending or education. Social Security or defense. Foreign aid or defense. (Sorry, I'm getting repetitive.) Housing aid or education. Scientific research or education. (That's starting to get harder.)

The objection will be, I suspect, that the pairing of the alternatives will influence the answers. Well, that might be interesting. If you set up the pairs correctly, you might get some priorities out of it. Or you might find that the American public prefers spending on education to spending on research to spending on defense to spending on education, a circular and again illogical set of preferences.

But wouldn't it be more helpful to see answers like that?

Inspired by this article.