You Can't Always Get What You Want

Sometimes I wonder if understanding basic math is an entry requirement for universities. Students at McGill recently protested corporate involvement with the academic world. While there are some real concerns to raise about such interactions, there is a big problem here.

The students want to keep tuition low, they want smaller classes and better facilities, and they don't want corporations funding research (and infrastructure). The only way to square that circle is to have someone else fund universities at a time where endowments are in steep declines. In the case of public institutions, such as McGill (many people thing McGill is private, but it most certainly is not, and its modest endowment is now tanking), students can hope that governments will step in the gap.

That would be great, but it is not going to happen, especially now that states and provinces are strapped for cash. I saw this clearly in the early 90's and it still true--politicians face many competing demands, and even though $$ going to universities are great investments and economic multipliers, other "demanders" have more access, more votes and more power.

Again, I would love to see government step up here, especially if there is some stimulus cash to be spent. But I just don't see that happening. I don't know how colleges and universities are in the US are going to manage the challenges ahead of parents with broken savings, limited capacities for banks to take on new loans, and severely underfunded states.

So, if a corporation wants to sponsor an endowed chair, a grant program or a department or building, I will look for strings, but if I don't see any, I will take the cash. Of course, I have taken cash from the Canadian military and will do so again, so these students probably would consider me to be severely tainted.

It is always easy to be idealistic as a student. Harder when one is facing significant tradeoffs and constraints.

Nostalgia for Bush?

Just to continue the rant from the previous post, why is it that anyone would look at the Bush Administration's way of doing things, and ponder why Obama would deviate from that? While the ditching of Rumsfeld in 2006 was a significant improvement, the Bush Foreign Policy process was flawed in a great many ways and was not known for producing superb foreign policies.

Obama was elected on a campaign of change, and part of the change he promised was in how things were going to be done. While I find some of the decisions made to be problematic (and way too dependent on some of the folks who were on the wrong side of the financial crisis), it is clear that Obama is handling his team of foreign policy experts far better than Bush. Powell was marginalized, Rice failed utterly in the role of National Security Adviser, Cheney was Cheney, and so forth. Obama, relatively inexperienced in foreign policy (like Bush), has assembled a team of pro's, including Gates, former SACEUR and current National Security Adviser Jones, Hilary Clinton and others, and these folks all seem to have roles to play, giving the President a diverse set of opinions.

The role for the military in these circles is represented by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Stuff--Admiral Mullen. Under Rummy, the JS was marginalized. Under Bush post-Rummy, the Chairman was a marginal factor. But under Obama, Mullen seems to be a credible player, interacting with the others. Therefore, McChrystal and Patreaus don't need to be talking to Obama every day or every week. That is the job of Mullen and of Gates. People have apparently forgotten that the Chairman is the guy to provide military advice to the president. I guess you cannot blame people for that, given Rumsfeld's best efforts to make that role invisible and the willingness of Generals Myers and Pace to go along with that.

Proper Role for Smart General

Interesting piece about where Gen. Petraeus now occupies in the Obama Administration. Not in the front row, apparently. And not that visible either. Given that Obama and Gates have hired his guy for Afghanistan (and the first major replacement of a US general since MacArthur), it would be silly to argue that Petraeus is irrelevant or out of the loop.

Instead, he seems to be playing a normal role, compared to his outsized, out-in-front situation when Bush was president.

To be clear, the job of Petraeus is to give the best military advice and then let the civilians decide. He clearly overstepped his role earlier, and we (ok, I) did not mind because the Bush decision-making process was so very dysfunctional. Now that we have a President who thinks a few steps ahead, a SecDef who is not blinded by his own arrogance, and a strong National Security Adviser, the military guys have to take their situation as a mixed change--less influence but less micromanagement. I think that is a deal they can buy into pretty easily.

Axe-Grinding or Truth Telling?

Probably a bit of both with Peter Galbraith, the recently fired #2 UN official--he lost his post over differences about how to deal the electoral fraud in Afghanistan. An interesting read to say the least.

Once again, very difficult choices--how to you build institutions if the folks running them don't believe in them?

This is the problem that Obama is facing--40,000 troops are not going to solve this one. In my interviews with senior Canadian military officers, it was abundantly clear that little progress had been made on the governance side. And that was before the election.

Where is Vegas When We Need It?

In the NY Times today, there are ten "Steps to Victory," with each one written by a different expert/pundit. I wish Vegas had a pundit book akin to their sports book, so that I could bet on what a pundit would write. Perhaps even (thanks Sports Guy) set up a two pundit tease: Kagans to urge doubling down with Kilcullen focused on governance. And if I had known that Pape would be writing, then perhaps a three pundit tease with suicide terrorism.

Then, we could come up with over/unders on such topics like: how many outlets will a particular pundit appear? How many outlets will accuse Obama of being too slow after criticizing Bush for not being thoughtful enough?

Of course, the over/under in Obama's mind is: how many months before the military comes back with a request for more troops? I think Vegas, if it was doing its job right, would set that at eleven months, and, if that were the case, I would probably bet the under.

Perhaps I just should stick with poker?

Zombie Kill of the Week

Zombieland. It kills. I am not going to post any spoilers here. But do go see it as it has a, ahem, killer cameo and you don't want that spoiled. Some great pop culture references as well.


And if you want to make a Zombie picture of yourself, just go to the zombieland website, and you can make one just like I did.

Just don't expect any reviews of any Twilight movies from me. I like vampire movies just fine, but the trailer for Twilight interests me not.

Civil-Military Relations and the New Surge

Good post at Salon, responding to the criticisms of Obama for daring to think first before agreeing to McChrystal's recommendations. Besides the argument there about the proper role of civilians in the chain of command--the Constitution makes the President Commander-in-Chief, there is also another, often under-stated aspect here. The war in Afghanistan, as all wars are, is a political one, but especially so as counterinsurgency requires deft political efforts to build a legitimate alternative to the insurgents. So, who is the best judge of whether the outsiders can do this? McChrystal, a smart military guy, or Obama, a smart political animal?

War is too important to be left to the generals, even if Rumsfeld made civilian control of the military to look like a bad idea. Micro-management is often bad (including blunt caveats and strict force caps or ceilings) , but civilians must make the call on larger, strategic concerns, including balancing Afghanistan versus other demands. The problem is that Petraeus was so much smarter and thoughtful than the civilians around Bush that it made it appear to be the case that the military should have the say.

One other thing--this episode reminds this impatient scholar how impatient the media is. We can take a month or two to figure this out. As someone reported in recent days, it took Bush far longer to decide about the surge (took him forever to get rid of Rummy). It reminds me of how impatient people were after two or three days of bombing Kosovo and after a few days of invading Iraq. We are still trying to figure out the big question of how to produce some kind of legitimate governance in the aftermath of the election fraud that is Karzai.

Give Obama the time to do some due diligence.

Obama's Process

Good short item on how Obama is making the decision on Afghanistan and the recommendations made by Gen. McChrystal. While good process does not always lead to good decisions (or least worst decisions), bad process does usually lead to bad decisions. So, once again, I have to like how Obama is approaching this decision. My guess is that he will agree to send more troops, but will make it clear (perhaps not credibly) that another request in one year's time is not going to get as sympathetic a hearing.

Obama seems quite focused on the real problem in Afghanistan--the Afghan government. While more effort needs to be made to create security so that the rest of the nation/govt/state-building process can develop, the security situation relies on a semi-legitimate government. And it is not clear whether one exists now or will in one year's time. See Kaplan for his take.

Nuke Clarity

Great post at Salon on how inspectors can tell good nuclear from bad nuclear projects (power vs. bombs).

The explainer column in Salon is consistently, well, clarifying.

When Biden is Rumsfeld

Gen. McChrystal is getting ahead of the DC debate, overstepping his bounds, as he gave the President and the SecDef his "best military advice." He should now wait for the folks back there to decide and be careful about answering questions too bluntly in London.

Having said that, I find what he said to be largely true. That the go small option and just to counter-terrorism option as apparently espoused by VP Biden is not a promising way ahead. Indeed, isn't this what Rumsfeld was doing from 2002-2006? Indeed, in the Dave and Steve project on Afghanistan, we (Dave) learned that Rumsfeld only got interested in Afghanistan in 2004-ish when the US general was doing more than CT but COIN, and Rummy pulled him back. The current talk about just doing counter-terrorism and let Afghanistan rot (not quite what they say) is quite problematic for a variety of reasons, with most obvious one that CT requires intel, and that comes from the locals.

Meanwhile, Marc Lynch suggests muddling through might be the answer. That might not a politically sustainable stance, but it is pretty realistic. The challenge to Obama is that if he does give the additional 40,000 troops or whatever is not so much that decision, bu the next one when he is asked for another set of reinforcements. I think the hesitation and deliberation now is mostly about anticipating that next request. And doing due diligence.

No good choices. So a very interesting moment in time. I do think that McChystral's emphasis on the next year is interesting. As I have said here before, the current level of violence might be partly election-produced and partly an effect of the surge of Americans into the south--more targets and more operations. So, if it were up to me, I would wait the end of next summer to make any irrevocable decisions. Sending 40k troops now might not be a bad bridge to the next decision point. Not a great one either.

Russia vs Georgia Review

The EU has published the findings of its fact-finding mission. Some highlights and my thoughts:

1. "The issue of self-determination of South Ossetians and Abkhaz as well as their right to unilateral secession from Georgia are two legal issues related to the conflict. Both South Ossetians and Abkhaz consider their right to self-determination as the legal basis for their quest for sovereignty and independence of the respective territories. However, international law does not recognise a right to unilaterally create a new state based on the principle of self-determination outside the colonial context and apartheid. An extraordinary acceptance to secede under extreme conditions such as genocide has so far not found general acceptance." And the report then says genocide didn't occur. Not surprising. And, thus, Russian behavior is then contrary to international law. Not clear yet how the EU squares that with Kosovo (unless Serbia was viewed as genocidal) .
2. The report is critical of Russian "passportization"--giving folks passports in the former Soviet territory outside of Russia. Such citizenship can only be confirmed with the consent of the other country. "The mass conferral of Russian citizenship to Georgian nationals and the provision of passports on a massive scale on Georgian territory, including its breakaway provinces, without the consent of the Georgian Government runsagainst the principles of good neighbourliness and constitutes an open challenge to Georgian sovereignty and an interference in the internal affairs of Georgia." Indeed, Russian behavior here makes Hungary's famous "Status Law" look entirely trivial by comparison. This finding is quite reasonable and does not require any kind of revisionist view of Kosovo.
3. "Open hostilities began with a large-scale Georgian military operation against the
   town of Tskhinvali and the surrounding areas, launched in the night of 7 to 8 August 2008." The report does not find conclusive evidence of large-scale Russian incursions prior to this attack, but does suggest that Russia was sending equipment and volunteers into South Ossetia prior to the outbreak of large-scale violence. So, this one goes for Russia and against Georgia.
4. But the report does not buy the Russian justification for its disproportionate response--that there was no genocide or threat of it.
5. And the report is critical of Russian aggression after the Georgians try to have a ceasefire.
6. "There is the question of whether the use of force by Georgia in South Ossetia,
   beginning with the shelling of Tskhinvali during the night of 7/8 August 2008, was
   justifiable under international law. It was not." Well, EU gets pretty definitive. Yikes. South Ossetians could defend themselves, but they went beyond that, the report finds.
7. Russia was ok in defending the peacekeepers once the Georgians started the attack, but: "Although it should be admitted that it is not easy to decide where the line must be drawn, it seems, however, that much of the Russian military action went far beyond the reasonable limits of defence." Thus, "In a matter of a very few days, the pattern of legitimate and illegitimate military action had thus turned around between the two main actors Georgia and Russia." Now, Georgia was right in defending itself against Russian aggression.
8. The EU then hoists Russia on its own petard: "Among major powers, Russia in particular has consistently and persistently objected to any justification of the NATO Kosovo intervention as a humanitarian intervention. It can therefore not rely on this putative title to justify its own intervention on Georgian territory."
9. Russia's use of force in support of the Abhkaz at this time also is ruled as out of bounds.
10. "Allegations of genocide committedby the Georgian side in the context of the August 2008 conflict and its aftermath are neither founded in law nor substantiated by factual evidence." Thus, most of Russia's behavior is illegitimate.
11. "several elements suggest the conclusion that ethnic cleansing was indeed practised against ethnic Georgians in South Ossetia both during and after the August 2008 conflict." So, South Ossetians/Russians are, ahem, bad guys.
12. Georgia clearly used weapons indiscriminately in areas with civilian concentrations (multiple rocket launchers, cluster munitions), Russia probably did as well.
13. Could this be avoided: "one of weaknesses of the peace processes in South Ossetia and Abkhazia in 1992 - 2006 seemed to be the fact that the Georgian, Abkhaz and South Ossetian sides concentrated heavily on external aspects and players without paying sufficient attention to building mutual trust and promoting reconciliation." Kind of sounds like International Relations causing a civil war.
14. "As a power with traditionally strong links to the region and understandably enough,
    important political, economic and security interests there, Russia was given the role of
    facilitator in the Georgian-Abkhaz and the Georgian-Ossetian negotiation processes, and
    that of a provider of peacekeeping forces. This formula, while seemingly in line with the
    rules of Realpolitik, seriously affected the existing political equilibrium in the region." So, Russia was going to play a role--that is just the power politics of it, but it was not going to be a stabilizing one.
    
15. "The lack of timely and sufficiently determined action by the international community, and to some degree the non-innovative approach to the peace process adopted by international organisations, contributed to the unfolding crisis. Thus a series of mistakes, misperceptions and missed opportunities on all sides accumulated up to a point where the danger of an explosion of violence became real." EU blames NATO and rightly so, not so much for the Kosovo recognition, but for starting admissions process for Georgia, which encouraged Georgia and annoyed Russia. And did not guarantee anyone's security.
16. "While it is possible to identify the authorship of some important events and decisions marking its course, there is no way to assign overall responsibility for the conflict to one side alone." Cop out? Or recognition of a complex reality? Somewhere in between I guess. Georgia behaved badly, but had been provoked again and again by Russia directly and indirectly. I think a tie goes to the weaker actor. Russia could have refrained entirely, Georgia was embedded in a difficult situation.
17. "Finally, it must be noted that there are no winners in this conflict." Um. It would be nice to think so, but so wrong. Arms dealers always win. The Abkhaz won as they faced few costs and now Georgia is handcuffed. The South Ossetians probably win, since Georgia cannot doing anything. Russia wins because Georgia lost. NATO did lose some credibility here, but might win in the long run if it slows the pace of dubious membership (Ukraine, Georgia, etc.) And the criminals win, since South Ossetia has become a haven for organized crime.
18. Under observations: "It has also become apparent that the effectiveness of monitoring, peacekeeping and other stabilising institutions and arrangements depends to a large extent on the trust and confidence in which they are being held by the parties to the conflict. This is in most cases directly related to the impartiality which the parties attribute to them, and this in turn is immediately linked to their country of origin or to the country thought to be in control." Duh!
    

The Obama Team Gets Interesting, Danger Ahead

American civilians in war zones are now getting as much or more press than the military guys. One might consider this to be a good thing--that governance and development are becoming priorities. Except that the news is not that good.

Peter Galbraith, a diplomat with a long record of, ahem, being true to his beliefs, just got canned as deputy to the UN Special Representative in Kabul. Jonathan Western at Duck of Minerva has a good post that raises heaps of questions about the impact of Galbraith's dissent. He did not last nearly as long as the previous one, Canada's Christopher Alexander (the tall blond guy in the picture), who is now seeking to be a member of the CA parliament. Galbraith was making a big stink about the fraud in the election, and he was critical of how close the UN mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) was/is to Karzai.

This raises all kinds of issues, but really cuts to the heart of the challenge in Afghanistan and how it differ from the experiences in the Balkans. In Bosnia, the Office of the High Representative (OHR) had the power to remove Bosnian politicians from office if they were too obstructionist, and the international community via the OHR coordinated with the military side (NATO's Stabilization Force--SFOR). Of course, even with that power, the OHR could not force people to vote for less nationalist parties.
In Afghanistan, the UN and the Special Rep have far less power (and resources), and have to work through the Afghan government, not around or over it. So, improving governance--improving the capability and legitimacy of the Afghan government is really quite hard, even if one had significant influence and power. I am not sure Galbraith is right or wrong--there might have been an opportunity for the UN to intervene to clean up the election, at least just a bit.

While this is blowing up on the frontpages, Thomas Ricks has been documenting a significant rift between the US military and Christopher Hill, the US Ambassador to Iraq. This is in sharp contrast to the positive relationship between Gen. Petraeus and Amb. Crocker, but reminds folks of the bad old days between LtGen Sanchez and Jerry Bremer. Hill has no Iraq expertise and seems to resist taking advice from the guys in uniforms to influence the Iraqis. On the other hand, the process of building Iraq capacity means letting them make thing own mistakes--as the Petraeus playbook and all COIN manuals suggest. Just as in Afghanistan, the course ahead is hardly clear and the folks on the ground face daunting challenges and difficult tradeoffs.

While it is hard, the focus must be on institutions and not people, even as we need to influence people to make the right choices. The problematic election in Afghanistan is bad for many reasons, including undermining the institutions that the outsiders are trying to build AND increasing dependence on the individual in the office, even as he gets increasingly unreliable or decreasingly reliable. Likewise, in Iraq, the unraveling that Ricks continues to document is all about how the institutions are not really binding behavior--that the government is being used by one side to dominate the other.

The future is going to be bumpy, to say the least.

A Gray Victory is Just as Sweet

When I posted the other day about the Grandmaster Tourney in Montreal, I didn't have any pics. Now I do:


I discovered that beer drunk out of a big silver cup tastes better:

Arise Germany?

Roger Cohen has a wonderfully pithy op-ed this morning about the new Germany (is Germany new every five years or so?). He argues that Germany is shaking off its constraints, more or less, and seeing more of an independent role between the US and Russia in the years ahead.

Germany, these days, feels it has no choice but to pursue its self-interest. It is through with self-denial.

I am not so sure about that. Its military is quite constrained, although admittedly some of the caveats are loosening, so that limits to German power exist. They may be imposed by domestic political forces, such as pacifism, but they exist nonetheless.

The more striking and more enduring hunk of knowledge dropped by Cohen is that the current round of EU deepening is almost certainly the last:

The German Constitutional Court recently approved the Lisbon Treaty, which could give the E.U. essential new leadership if the Irish say yes in a re-run referendum this week and the Czechs check in. But the German approval was laced with warnings that no further erosion of German sovereignty was acceptable.

“The court built a concrete wall five centimeters from here saying not a step further in eroding the German national state,” said Reinhard Bütikofer, a leading Green politician. “That’s the flavor of our new nationalism.”

That is a more robust and lasting reality. The fall of the SPD might be a bit more temporary, despite Cohen's assertions, as elections can be harbingers of great change or much less than that. I am no expert on Germany despite spending a week in Berlin this summer, so I cannot say anything for sure about the future of Germany's political parties. But it may be too quick to judge whether the SPD is doomed.

End of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" In Sight?

A Colonel who is now serving in Secretary of Defense Robert Gates's office (OSD for short) has published a piece in Joint Force Quarterly, arguing against the policy that was Clinton's dodge of the issue--whether gays and lesbians could serve openly in the US Armed Forces. Not only is Col. Om Prakash serving in OSD, not only did the paper win the Defense National Security Essay competition, but the publication of JFQ is vetted by the big guy himself--the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen.

The big quotes in the piece (as summarized by the NY Times):

“after a careful examination, there is no scientific evidence to support the claim that unit cohesion will be negatively affected if homosexuals serve openly.”

Colonel Prakash concludes that “it is not time for the administration to re-examine the issue.” Instead, he writes, “it is time for the administration to examine how to implement the repeal of the ban.”

“In an attempt to allow homosexual servicemembers to serve quietly, a law was created that forces a compromise in integrity, conflicts with the American creed of ‘equality for all,’ places commanders in difficult moral dilemmas, and is ultimately more damaging to the unit cohesion its stated purpose is to preserve,” Colonel Prakash writes.

It is about time that reality is applied to this issue. So, good to see that a reasonable argument is being made, one that seems to have imprimatur of both the Secretary of Defense (a Republican) and the Chairman of the JCS (probably a Republican). Obama's plate is already over-full, and he has to be careful how to deal with this issue, given the other balls in play (health care, cap and trade, etc.), but there may be a way for him to stop enforcement via executive order and then let Congress debate the issue later. He can make some kind of announcement about the needs of national security with two wars going on require all hands on deck, and so forth.

We live in interesting times.

Pax Americana--Wither, Whether, Whatever?

Michael Lind posted an extremely annoying piece in Salon on "The End of Pax Americana," suggesting that Obama may finally return the US to its core values. It is annoying for many reasons, so let me just take his assertions and quibble with them. The basic thesis is that after World War II (Lind, like the usual lefties, blames Truman, it seems, as if FDR was an idealist), the US abandoned a concert-of-power security system and instead focused on containment and unilateral free trade. An interesting move as it allows him to blast the US for being too hawkish on foreign policy and too soft on defending the economy.

• First, the idea that there was a working concert to be abandoned is kind of strange--were Stalin and Mao going to be partners in maintaining peace and protecting the status quo in the world? Depends on whose peace/piece and whose status quo one is considering. While there is much fault to be laid at the US door for various activities during the Cold War, it does take at least two to tango. The Neo-realists have it right that a bipolar system is inevitably going to have a significant amount of confrontation as the two superpowers focus all of their attention on the other.
• Once you pile on to that basic structural antagonism the conflicting ideologies, the very different political systems (democracy vs. totalitarian), the personalities (again, Stalin and Mao, please), it is hard to imagine a concert of the US, USSR and the PRC managing the world.
• Second, the piece contains a very strange assertion--that the US bought its alliance partners off with unilateral free trade--serving as an open market but letting the Germans, Japanese and others to protect their own. This twists the tale, I think, as it was not so much bribery as seeking trading partners who had a significant postwar disadvantage--having been utterly destroyed. Yes, these patterns continued, but it also overplays the generosity of the US as it developed (both as a country and the collection of firms) strategies that maximized profit and influence in the world. And again, this ignores other structural dynamics.
  

1. While hegemonic stability theory has its problems, the idea that international cooperation involves all kinds of collective action problems where free riding is endemic and one needs either one collective action provider or a small group of them is not that hard to swallow. So, Lind is right that there was toleration of free riding, but that was going to happen if the US wanted a stable international capitalist economy.
2. Moreover, Kurth would talk about the product cycle (one of my favorite pieces of all-time): that the dynamics of international investment, including the movement of jobs overseas, is a natural part of how things are produced.

• Third, that with the end of the Cold War, the US could have dumped its old behaviors and returned to a FDR-Keynes world order. Again, this is puzzling since the idea of setting up rules to manage liberal international economic and political systems was quite Keynesian (see Ruggie, Embedded Liberalism). It also ignores that the world is quite path dependent--that the choices we make structure the choices that folks will make in the future. Just as Obama has to face what to do with two unpleasant wars, leaders cannot ignore what they inherit.
  
• Fourth, Lind mistakes Hegemonic Stability Theory. It was not so much about guns and lives, but about providing markets of last resort, helping out during exchange crises, providing a stable currency. The security stuff was not really part of HST at all. And as a result, Lind conflates those who observe that leadership in the international economy is necessary with the neo-cons who wanted to maintain American military dominance. Oops.
• Fifth, he argues that the vision of the world with the threat of World War III is extremely pessimistic. It might be hard to remember now, but in the aftermath of World War II, optimism about international relations was quite scarce, that the war and the Great Depression killed post-WWI idealism. The early days of the Cold War seemed to justify a darker view of International Relations. A recent trip to Berlin and its documentation of the division of the city remind me of the dark days of the Cold War.
  
• Sixth, Lind asserts that the Pax Am strategy requires exaggerating the power and malevolence of Russia, China, and Iran. I wonder if he would say the same if he had been living in Eastern Europe last year when the Russians shut off the natural gas and killed more than a few people with this demonstration of its leverage. I do not disagree that these threats are overplayed, but threats they are--you have worry about what countries can do, not what they promise. And the best way to manage such threats might be containment (not rollback a la Bush).
  
• Seventh, one can support American leadership in the world, militarily and/or economically, and consider the invasion of Iraq to be a bad idea from the get-go.
• Eighth, Lind seems wildly optimistic about the ability of countries to cooperate. Check out how well NATO is doing these days in Afgahnistan.

Yes, this kind of piece brings out my inner Neo-Realist--that the structure of international relations shapes outcomes--that competition and conflict are natural, that cooperation is quite hard. Domestic politics also matters, so Lind also underplays how constrained Obama or any leader might be, by domestic interest groups (defense contractors, ethnic lobbies, other concerned parties). And invoking Machiavelli's quote on reform is appropriate here as well--that change is quite difficult as it is risky. And invoking today's lecture, who can focus on the long term when a politician's power rests on short term outcomes?

Lind argues that the American public would not support the provision of public goods, such as peace and economic stability. True, they don't necessarily support paying for such things domestically, either--health care, taxes for education, etc. Part of representative democracy, when it works, is to find ways to do things that are collectively optimal even if they are individually sub-optimal. I think.

Finally, Lind points to various Obama decisions as moves away from Pax Americana. Maybe, or maybe his various policy decisions are driven by a desire to do American leadership more intelligently than his predecessor.

Foreclosure Aftermaths: Today's Theme

Fascinating piece in today's Salon: A "repo" woman whose job it is to go into a foreclosed house and clean it up for the bank so that it can be re-sold. This hits close to home as I have a relative who is currently facing foreclosure, and so this repo woman or someone like her may have to clean up my relative's stuff. The most disturbing line is actually not so much about what people leave behind but how they behave while they are in the house:

"Don't you feel bad for the people?" everyone always asks. The short answer to that is, "No." But I do feel bad for the kids, the kids whose parents left behind their toys and their artwork, the kids whose school pictures I have tossed into a garbage bag. And for all the kids whose bedroom doors had locks on the outside.

I can imagine that might happen once or twice--teenager out of control or whatever--but "all the kids" suggests a behavior that is not as deviant as I would like to think.

Zombie Housing?

CNN has a story about the housing crisis, referring to the developments where only a few houses are built as Zombie subdivisions.

This might be stretching term too far, although the crisis perhaps has destroyed many brains along the way.

Return of the Living Dead Blog Post

With Zombieland coming out this weekend, Zombies are back in the news. Ok, they never left, as those shambling monsters seem pretty hard to kill. So, yet another Spew about Zombies (see here, here and here for previous ones).

Mike Munger, a political scientist out of Duke, has a post with a strong opinion about what counts as a Zombie and thus what is and is not a Zombie movie: the zombies must be slow (28 Days Later does not count), only motivated by hunger for human flesh, only kills by tearing apart (no weapons to be used by the Z), and so forth.

Simon Pegg of Shaun of the Dead concurs:

After three films spanning three decades, and much imitation from film-makers such as Lucio Fulci and Dan O'Bannon, the credibility of the zombie was dealt a cruel blow by the king of pop. Michael Jackson's Thriller video, directed by John Landis, was entertaining but made it rather difficult for us to take zombies seriously, having witnessed them body-popping.

Munger includes some good reading suggestions. I do think he might find Zombieland problematic since the trailers have Z's that seem to vary in speed. I am a bit less conservative in my coding of Zombies and the other elements of Zombie-ness seem to be in play. In other words, I am looking forward to this movie very much. And, after finally seeing a Zombie classic (Shaun of the Dead), my daughter is super-pumped to see the movie as well.

In other zombie news, physicists have argued that mall are the best places to hide in case of a Zack outbreak. They developed a model suggesting that complex locations with lots of hallways and rooms are good places to avoid an entity that is simply moving around and will only attack if it makes contact, more or less (I have not read the article, just the summary of it). I seem to remember that the Zombie Survival Guide warns against malls because they are probably already Z-infested.

On the other hand, the video below from a Zombie blog suggests that a Costco would be a good place to hide out--plenty of rations of all kinds, few entrances, tall shelving (Zombies cannot climb), etc.



It seems strange that many of the Zombie blogs seem to be, well, dead. That is, that their recent posts may be years old. What happened to these intrepid documenters of Zombie defenses? Did they lose the fight or have they gone in hiding as they await the spread of Z? More research is required.

College News of Note

In Canada, they say university, not college. But I cannot shake the habit.

Anyhow, two stories today that are intriguing and one could wonder how they might be related.

• First, the numbers of Americans going to school in Canada is increasing. This should not be surprising since Canadian schools are far cheaper than American ones, even with the CA$ near the US$. With Americans losing much of their savings to the market crashes of the past few years, the choices are either go to American public schools or Canadian ones as US private colleges and universities are pricing themselves out of the market.
• Second, Tufts has found it necessary to make the following rule: do not have sex with your roommate in the room (assuming that the roommate is not your partner, I guess). Apparently, they have had more complaints the past few years by students that their roommates are, well, rude. It used to be the case that a person would signal to their roommate that the room was occupied for extracurricular activities. Sounds like a coordination problem to me, and not one where a rule is really required. What happens to those who break the rule? Enforcement will be interesting--police patrol or fire alarm? Hmm, perhaps not the place for metaphors from the principal-agency literature. The more I learn about the lives of undergrads these days, the less I want to know, I think.
  

Perhaps would be Tufts students will come to Canada instead since Canadians have a rep for being polite, and/or Montreal has a rep for being a city with few inhibitions. So, we might see both the student who is upset at the rudeness of their roommate and the randy roommate both moving north, and repeating the dynamic here. Perhaps the rule should be that Americans have to room with Canadians? Hmmmm.

German Elections and Afghanistan

Salon has a good analysis of the recent German election (disclaimer: at least good as in readable--I am not an expert on Germany so they could have gotten stuff wrong). It is pithy as is typical at Salon:

The nationalist and anti-Islamic Christian Middle - for a Germany according to GOD's commandments flew across the finish line on a wing and a prayer and held fast with a solid 0.0%.

I am particularly interested in this election since I was in Berlin in June, talking to members of Parliament (among other folks) about Afghanistan, and perhaps it is not surprising that my follow up question via email this summer did not get a response as the election was approaching.

Do I expect to see less restrictions on German forces in Afghanistan now that a more center-right coalition has replaced the grand coalition of Conservatives and Social Democrats? I would say probably not much for two reasons:

1. The annual mandate process where the Bundestag has to approve the mission and specify some of the key limitations (but not all) is likely to produce similar outcomes as the Ministry of Defense and other elements of the government will seek wide support for the mandate, rather than just crawling over the 50% line. Moreover, divisions exist within the Conservatives over Afghanistan, so it is unlikely that the party will push for significant changes in how Germany operates on the ground.
2. The move from a Grand Coalition to a center-right actually raises the risks of the Afghan mission for the government now that the Social Democrats are no longer tied to it. They can oppose it and join the stronger Greens and Left in pushing for tighter caveats or at least push against looser ones.

And, aargh! The Pirate Party did pretty well but fell short of the threshold needed to get into the Bundestag:

The Pirate Party came in at 2% nationwide, a thoroughly respectable result for a brand-new party and about what its youthful members expected. The Pirates won 3.35% of the vote in Berlin alone, polling 6% in the trendy Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg district. Since an overall minimum of 5% is needed to receive a mandate, this means they will not be boarding the Bundestag any time soon.

When Networking is Not Working

So, Facebook has now become the medium not just for announcing improved relationships, but also can the place to watch the slow motion train wreck of divorce. It is actually surprising that de-friending was not one of the first steps.....

The internet does not, I think, really change the dynamics of relationships--that technology does not cause divorce. However, it does allow people to broadcast faster and wider than ever before. Sometimes a good thing, sometimes not so much. I know that I have been a bit less discrete about the various ups and downs in my life on FB than I have here on my blog with the vain hope that only my friends see the former and not the latter.

There is no doubt that the internet and sites like facebook allow information to travel far faster than before. During the Grandmaster Ultimate tournament, I told the other old folks (who started playing later than I did) about how strategies and tactics took time to travel to Ohio from NYC back in the old days. Now, if a team in Germany develops a particularly advantageous strategy, it spreads across the world very quickly.

The question is really then about velocity and about the width of the audience, as other technologies (the phone, the radio) allowed information to spread, just not as quickly or as widely. People found out about affairs and divorces in the old days (in days of Mad Men) by slower forms of gossip and indiscretion. So, does the velocity and breadth change how the actors behave?

This is something I just started pondering in class on Monday and have to continue with, as the speed of commerce and the speed/breadth of destruction probably have changed how countries behavior in International Relations. I am just not so clear whether the internet has really changed how people behave--does it make personal conflict or cooperation more or less likely? It is probably a wash in the end as it facilitates people of similar interest to meet, but it also creates more points of tension as well (the news that there was a facebook group about whether Obama should be killed!?).

Soviet vs NATO in Afghanistan

An interesting comparison of Soviet and NATO experiences in Afghanistan--a good, informed one for a change. Steve Coll compares how the late Soviet strategy is similar to McChrystal's new strategy.

The revival of an urban-dominated “ink spot” strategy for the defense of a weak Afghan state may be the best of a series of bad military choices. Certainly the past U.S. military approaches since 2001—a concentration on counterterrorism raids initially, followed by a poorly resourced counterinsurgency approach that also made a dubious priority of rural Helmand Province—have not stanched the Taliban’s revival.

Those are a lot of ifs. The uncertainties point, like so many other factors in this conflict, to the central importance of politics in Kabul and Islamabad.

Smarter than your average bear in terms of comparing past and present--that the USSR tried an inkspot strategy focused on cities and that seems to be the McChrystal strategy as well.

I still need to hear more about what Gen. McChrystal wants to do to have an opinion, but this article does raise some important questions.

As always, in counter-insugency, success is pretty hard to measure.

Seven Sins of the Academy [Updated]

The Times Higher Education has a piece on the seven sins of the academy [note the focus here is on the British universites but enough commonalities for me to blog about] and I thought it would be fun to see how I have witnessed or engaged these sins (and others) in my career.

First, I must disagree with the decision to omit sloth from the list. I have seen plenty of laziness amongst academics especially when it comes to service to the department/university/profession/community. While there are procedures and incentives to keep profs working hard (and most do work plenty hard, even/especially during our summers "off"), the system does not always work and the reliable are forced to provide more of the collective goods than the unreliable.

Ok, onto the sins listed by the article:

• Sartorial Inelegance: This is not nearly has bad as it used to be. Much less polyester at the annual Poli Sci conferences. And it varies by climate--one could expect to see shorts at UCSD--even by the profs. Still, most of us would not be confused with fashionistas. I would not blame income for this as the choice of attire is not so much constrained by the various costs but by the lack of thought involved. It goes with the social skills problem that is not really addressed in the piece (more on that below)
• Procrastination: I want to say something here, but don't really feel like it. Maybe later.
• Snobbery: Certainly, there are all kinds of intra-academic clubs where one tries to improve one's self-esteem by putting down the work of those in other groups--research institutions vs. liberal arts colleges; rational choice or not; formal modeling or not; quantitative vs. qualitative; post-modernist or not; one subfield versus another, top ten or not; etc. When I was at Texas Tech, I had the distinct feeling that I was, like Rudolph, left out of the reindeer games. Not so much now that I am at McGill. But that might have been just as much my insecurity as it was the reality that Lubbock was never near any inner or outer circle.
• Lust: The piece has this line: "why do universities pullulate with transgressive intercourse?" Since that is too confusing, perhaps it can be better illustrated in Raiders of the Lost Ark, where the oblivious professor is surprised by a student who has written a message on her eyelashes. The better quote from the article is this: "On an English campus, academics can be heroes." Hmmm. But this contribution to the article (written by Terence Kealey) has made big news around the world by suggesting that the "flaunting of curves" by undergrads towards the male profs is a "perk" of the job. So, let's run far away from this questionable (to say the least) assertion (supposedly comedic) while we can.
• Arrogance: The article focuses on the excesses of the British Academics in their arrogance, compared to the American ones:
• "American academics attend conferences in best bib and tucker, they are on time, they ask intelligent questions, they are polite, they have beautiful teeth and they are disappointingly sober. Now, all this could be construed as professionalism - particularly when compared with the drunken, late-night antics of the flip-flop-wearing, unshaven and almost always sunburnt Limeys whose most pressing questions are "where's the bar?" and "does anyone remember my room number?" - but, I assure you, it is arrogance. Make no mistake: their reverence for the subject, thoroughgoing knowledge of its intricacies, prolific capacities to produce research of the highest standard ... what unspeakable arrogance!"
• This contribution is more amusing than the previous one. To be clear, in my mind, arrogance refers to when one acts as being better than others without necessarily being based in reality. One is not necessarily arrogant if one actually has the merit to back up the perception or claims of superiority--then one is tactless and perhaps obnoxious. I have mentioned institutional arrogance before--the sense that one's institution is special and therefore its strange and deviant ways do not need justification or defense. I do think this form of arrogance is particularly crippling as reform does not occur, bad decisions of the past serve as justifications for bad decisions of the present and future, etc.
• Complacency: The essay here takes on a distinct angle that might not be widely shared in terms of what complacency means: "I mean the attitude that one's undoubted distinction in one's own subject entitles one to pontificate about any other; and conversely, that their ignorance of one's own subject disqualifies everyone else from having a worthwhile opinion on anything at all." To me, that speaks more of arrogance and perhaps my institutional arrogance is really about complacency. The article goes on to suggest that complacency is the antonym of curiosity, so I guess I would find there to be very little of it in the academy with which I am familiar--most academics are quite curious people.

Still, I have to say I enjoyed the quote from this piece:

"Of course, some would say I have too little experience to hold these opinions".
My own rejoinder of "Oh no, X, you have exactly the right amount of experience
to hold those opinions" was one of my more satisfactory moments on the High
Table, which I fear is why I remember it.

• Pedantry: "there's the rub of pedantry - it's the scholarly moment when someone else wants to shout: "What's the difference?! - who cares?!"" This essay suggests that we academics are in love with details. Perhaps, but I am not a detail kind of guy, but I have seen pedants at work. Not that much fun to see them at play either.

I alluded to social skills deficit syndrome (we are standing by the phones if you want to donate as we are searching for a cure to this widespread academic disease) earlier but that really should not count as a sin. So, what sins are omitted?

I should not be so arrogant or pedantic to assume that this list covers the major academic sins, nor should I be so complacent as to accept this list without further inquiry, but I have put off writing a few letters of recommendation where I assert that our students are far better than those elsewhere.

Limitations and Victory

Last month, I blogged about limitations--that one has to know one's own limitations especially in a team environment to be successful. Well, this became quite relevant this weekend, as I played in a Grandmaster Tournament--an annual event late each September for the past several years in Montreal with teams from Baltimore/NY, Philly, Vermont, Massachusetts, Ottawa and Toronto. It is an ultimate tournament for guys over 40. I didn't play last year because the team was incredibly careless a couple of years ago, and I didn't enjoy either getting thwacked or having to chase lots of people as they took advantage of our turnovers.

Well, this year the team was a bit different, with three new players--incredibly experienced and talented players who just turned forty. I didn't realize how much experience they had until after the last game of the second day, when they exchanged stories of all of the world tourneys at which they played. Most impressive. Indeed, I agreed to play this year because the lineup looked good. I was not expecting us to dominate, but that the quality of the games would be much better. And I was more right than that, as we did dominate. Winning the first game, 11-0 with only three turnovers the entire game, winning all five games the first day, all fairly comfortably. Today, we won the semifinals quite handily and then the finals was a bit more competitive, but we started with a 4-0 lead, which closed to 4-2, and then we went ahead 7-2 and on from there to 13-8 or so.

But my role on this team was quite different. Usually, I am best handler on the team or close to it, as I have strong throws (backhand, forehand/flick, with and without curves) and usually make good decisions. But on this team, out of eleven players, I was somewhere between fifth and seventh best handler. Which meant that when we had seven players on the line (ultimate is usually a game of seven against seven), there were at least three better handlers, so I spent most of the tourney playing the role of cutter--trying to get open for the handler to throw to me.

Unfortunately, I have had little practice as a cutter, as that has not been my primary role since, ahem, 1986 or so. Knowing this and also my lack of speed, I had to focus most of my efforts on trying to create space for my much faster teammates. And that is something this team did quite well--create space on the field so that the handlers could throw into the open spaces and ahead of their teammate so that only the teammate can get the disk. It really was quite a clinic in how to play the game properly.

It was the first tournament I can remember where I didn't throw it long (no hucks) at least once (and I usually throw it deep more than that). I did manage to receive a few throws in the endzone, which has been rare these days as I mostly am throwing it into the endzone these days.

In sum, I learned a great deal while having a fantastic time. It is ironic that I have gone my entire career without winning a tourney until last year--when I joined my daughter's junior team along with one of the best players in town and we managed to win the C/D (the middle level) end of the summer season tourney. And now, my second winning tourney with a very old team.

[pics from the tourney to be added when I get them]

Speech Night?

Ok, so two posts in one post-ultimate tourney night on speeches. I guess I did not do much talking today as I was much more junior on this team than usual. Not in age, but in big tourney experience. Several of the other guys had played in not just Canadian national tourney finals but at various World tourneys. So, I kept my mouth shut (very out of character and not my strength) and followed the plays as drawn by the more experienced guys.

So, Foreign Policy has a fun list of wackiest speeches at the UN.

Probably the strangest one of all:

Chavez Sniffs out a Sinner

Year: 2006

Quote: "The devil came here yesterday, and it smells of sulfur still."

Tell All of the Week

So, the former Bush speechwriter who has made big news with his new book, Matt Latimer, was interviewed by Salon. He turns out to be a Rumsfeld buddy. Yuck! So, now I have to take everything he says with a bigger hunk of salt.

The rest of the piece is an interesting take on speech-writing, but I have such complete and total contempt for Rumsfeld that it is hard to see past that. Other than killing the Crusader artillery system, I have a hard time thinking of one decision that Rummy made that didn't suck.

Gender Differences: Book I Have Not Read of the Week

Salon has an interesting interview with a woman who has written how small differences in gender for kids lead to very different adult gender identities/behavior.

After starting school, girls quickly surpass boys when it comes to reading and writing skills. Why do these academic differences so quickly reveal themselves?

Girls, there's no question, talk more to each other even in preschool and toddler years. There are more words exchanged than between two boys. Magnify that over a couple years and you have more girls going to school with more verbal skills. With boys, you see the same thing with spatial skills, throwing things, building things and playing video games. Being aware of these different cognitive domains can help us as parents and teachers provide each child with more of a rounded experience early in life. It's important to not give preschool children too much choice about what activity they do, because then you have kids separating by gender and only reinforcing their strengths.

Good thing ultimate is coed, I guess.

Political Science Applied to Political Scientists

I was chatting with a great friend the other day, and he was puzzled by one of his colleagues who seemed to be upset when he got a great publication. Why was this friend not helping him enjoy his success? As part of a larger pattern, it made complete sense to me.

The logic of invidious comparisons not only explains ethnic conflict (thanks to Donald Horowitz) but also those with self-esteem issues in the profession. The basic idea comes from social psychology--that one's self-esteem depends on how the group with which one identifies is perceived. The better one's own group, the better one feels. And the group's status depends on how it compares to other groups, so individuals will put down out-groups as part of making in-groups look better, which, in turn, makes the individuals feel better about themselves. This dynamic explains sports fans so well and ethnic conflict, too.

As it turns out, the individual in this friend's department was already in the habit of putting down work that did not fit into his category of good work (his kind), so my friend's success challenged his views. Not all colleagues are this un-collegial. In fact, most are: genuinely happy for the success of the colleague; glad that the department will look better as a whole (and thus themselves too); and/or so self-absorbed as not even notice.

Wise Words

"The perpetual plea for U.S. foreign policy to “do something” needs to be changed; we would be better served by adopting the physicians creed: “First, do no harm.”"

--Gary Sick, a member of the National Security Council under three Presidents and expert on Iran.

But, of course, what is wise is not necessary what works in domestic politics. The piece is very interesting in how it shows the continued expectation of Iranian nuclear weapons that never seems to quite happen. Sick also is quite clear that we need to be careful since many of the potential steps lead to war, something that the US cannot really start right now, nor is ever an attractive option (think back to the Sicilian's warning about land wars in Asia).

Canadian Politics Can Be Fun

PM Stephen Harper walked out during the UN speech by Iran's el Presidente for life Ahmadinejad, straight to a Tim Horton's--a Canadian institution with apparently at least one outlet in Manhattan. Not to mention the one in Kandahar------->


Now that Tim is returning to Canadian ownership and Canada may be facing yet another election, appearing at a Tim Horton's is good politics, not just good snacking (although their donuts are not as good as either DD or KK).

Brutally On Target Post Du Jour

Check out Thomas Rick's post today on Judith Miller, who embarrassed the NY Times and modern journalism by being the Bush Administration's dupe.

The key quote:

In the past, Brits in her situation would go to work in African leper colonies. Americans, I think, simply lit out for the frontier. But then, Fox is kind of the news equivalent of a leper colony.

So, I perhaps am not the cattiest blogger in the sphere.

Darwin-mania

Great post at Salon on the effort by Kirk Cameron (uber-Christian) to give out free copies of Darwin's Origin of the Species with a 50 page insert that is supposed to undermine the rest of the book. The Salon post includes a link to a youtube video with a Romanian woman who does a great job demolishing Kirk and his claims.

See below for said video:

Civil Wars? Whose Job Is It Anyway?

The ways academics divide the world may be as surprising to outsiders. For instance, different people study ethnic conflict, nationalism, and contentious politics, and we rarely talk to each other. But the strangeness of the moment is Civil War. When I sought to teach a course on Civil War last year at the graduate level, a couple of my colleagues resisted, arguing that Civil War is a topic for Comparative Politics, not for scholars of International Relations. So, it raises the question: whose job is it to study Civil War anyway?

Wars among countries are the classic focus for IR scholarship, but that which happens within a country usually is seen as belonging to the Comparativists. BUT there are a few problems with this. A) The tools for understanding war among countries might just be handy for understanding wars within countries--that there may be some, ahem, comparative advantage for IR scholars to go there. B) Comparativists may have avoided the topic because they see war as too IR-ish (although the past few years have seen some really cool work). C) Most importantly, civil wars are not self-contained (just like other key dynamics these days), so that the causes, processes, and consequences of civil wars may involve stuff outside the country, like changes in commodity prices, involvement of ethnic kin (diasporas), the flow of refugees (as both cause and consequence of civil war), neighboring countries (irredentist or not), international organizations, non-governmental organizations, etc.

Which of these civil wars had little international importance/irrelevant transnational dynamics? (list from wikipedia, but largely overlaps with the usual lists)

* Afghan Civil War, 1978–present
* Algerian Civil War, 1991–2002, conflicts persist
* Angolan Civil War, 1974–1989, 1995–1997, 1998–2002
* Bosnian War, 1992-1995
* Burundi Civil War, 1988–1991, 1993–2005
* Cabindan Civil War, Angola, 1975–2006
* Cambodia, 1978–1993, 1997–1998
* Casamance Conflict, Senegal, 1990–present
* Chechen Wars, separatist conflicts against Russian federal government, 1994-6; 1999 to date
* Civil war in Chad
* Colombian armed conflict, 1964–present
* Congo Civil War, 1996–1997, 1998–2003
* Côte d'Ivoire Civil War, 1999–2000, 2002–present
* Darfur Conflict, Sudan, 2003–present
* East Timor/Indonesia, 1975–1999
* First Eritrean Civil War, 2008-ongoing
* ETA separatist insurgency against the Spanish government, 1968? to present
* Georgian Civil War, Abkhazia, South Ossetia in Georgia, 1988–present
* Guatemalan Civil War, 1960–1996
* Guinea-Bissau Civil War, 1998–1999
* Internal conflict in Peru, 1981-present (once extremely violent communist insurgency, which has largely wound down since 2000).
* Iraq War, 2003-present
* Israeli-Palestinian conflict 1948-present
* Islamic insurgency in the Philippines, 1969-present
* Kashmir Conflict, 1989–present
* Kurdish Civil War, 1994–1997
* Liberian Civil War, 1989–1996, 1999–2003
* Nepalese Civil War, 1996–2006
* Communist insurgency of the New People's Army in the Philippines, 1969-present
* Northern Irish civil war, 1969–1998 (Considered ongoing by extremist minority groups)
* Palestinian Civil War, 2006–present; fighting ended in June 2007
* Rwandan Civil War, 1990–1994
* Sierra Leone Civil War, 1991–2002
* Sri Lankan Civil War, 1983-2009
* Somali Civil War, 1991–present
* Sudanese Civil War, 1955–1972, 1983–2005
* Tajikistan Civil War, 1992–1997
* Ugandan Civil War, 1987–present
* Yemen Civil War, 1979–1989, 1994, 2000s
* Albanian Civil War 1997
* Kosovo War 1996–1999

I dare my readers to argue which one or ones of these conflicts have practically no international implications--that is that neither the civil war affects the neighbors/beyond nor the outside affects the civil war. Are there other recent civil wars omitted from this list because they have no external causes/processes/effects?

Crappy Canadian TV Feed Du Jour

It has been hard to follow the ESPN broadcasts of this summer's World Series of Poker because they are not broadcast by TSN (the Canadian equivalent/brother of ESPN) at the same time as ESPN's. So, I was pretty happy to see that there would be two hours of the WSOP tonight--covering the Main Event. After an enjoyable first hour, the second hour is .... the first hour again!??? Huh?? I didn't stick around to see if they fixed it, but having a Canadian satellite dish has been a mixed blessing.

• We get the lousy Canadian commercials (smaller market, fewer companies paying for ads) repeated endlessly it seems (including back to back to back), and this is particularly annoying during the Super Bowl.
  
• We get the US shows on "US" channels but they often mess up the feed so that the show starts twice--first for 30 seconds to two minutes and then starts again or ends like that.
  
• We often do not get the tease for next week (which is so frustrating when it comes to Lost).
  

The only bright side is that we have Canadian channels for the stations in most of the time zones, which has two positive side effects--we can often watch shows that would compete with each other in the US in the same time period at different times; and we tend to get a better selection of NFL games as each Canadian station across the country tends to get the US games closest to them, so we get NE, Buffalo, Chicago, Green Bay, Minnesota, Seattle, in addition to the main games that each American network broadcasts.

So, it could be a wash, except that much of the Canadian minuses are so very annoying, like the messed up feed tonight.

Best Star Wars satire of Environmental Politics ever of the week

This is a pretty damning view of environmental activism and a very funny one. It starts slow but gets better and better (hat tip to Mrs. Spew).

Profs on TV

Ok, so professors are never accurately or semi-accurately played on TV. They are usually lechs. This week, on How I Met Your Mother, one of my favorites, Ted is starting as a new architect prof at Columbia. I felt immense pain as he screwed up his first twenty minutes or so of his first day. But then, it didn't matter because he was in the wrong room, so he could start fresh with his real class.

Nope, I never lectured to the wrong group of students. However, on my very first day of teaching, at the U of Vermont where I was a visiting professor (one year deal that became a two year deal), I forgot to bring my syllabi to the first class. And then I repeated the mistake later that day when I was teaching my second course (same topic, Intro to IR). And I did it again (or not did it again) when I was teaching my third class that day (Intro to IR--same topic to three different sets of students).

So, I was an idiot my first day. I think a more realistic one than portrayed this week, though.


The painful lecture is about 2:30 into the video below:

Hometown Racism Case continued

During the summer, I posted about the pool near my old hometown that had kicked out an African-American day camp which with it had arranged days at the pool. Well, the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission has fined the pool, noting that neither this year nor last year were there any African-American members and that the ad campaigns seemed aimed only at whites.

Anyway, that is where things now stand.

Irony Graphically Depicted

[Red more sinful, yellowish saintly]

Wired has a set of graphs for the seven deadly sins, and, surprise, surprise, surprise, shazam, where one would expect to see a particular set of values ascendant (evangelical Christianity), you tend to see more sin. So, are people developing devout beliefs because they see more sin around them? Or are they just incredibly hypocritical? Given the activities of the representatives of these folks as exemplified by Mark Sanford and the Palin clan suggest, I vote for the latter.

And yes, Southern California and NY are devilish, too--just less hypocritically so. It reminds why I am fond for the past of the Republican party--midwestern values.

Best Health Care Reform Ad

Those silly folks at Funny or Die have given us a new ad for Health Care Reform--do think of the endangered Health Insurance company in this time of crisis, please. Sob.

Protect Insurance Companies PSA from Will Ferrell

Relevant Research--More on A-Stan

Um, where has McChrystal been for the past few years?

Apparently, he was surprised when he arrived in Afghanistan:

Senior officers who work with General McChrystal say he was surprised by the dire condition of the Afghan mission when he assumed command in June.

His concerns went beyond the strength and resilience of the insurgency. General McChrystal was surprised by the lack of efficient military organization at the NATO headquarters and that a significant percentage of the troops were not positioned to carry out effective counterinsurgency operations. (here)

Even hanging out in Iraq as he had been, McChrystal should have had a decent grasp of the limits of NATO at war. The caveat problem that I am working on with David Auerswald is not new in Afghanistan or elsewhere. Indeed, limits on alliance partners also mattered in Iraq. In Afghanistan, over the past several years, key partners asserted that they were not doing COIN but peace-keeping. While this was partly for domestic consumption, it did mean that many of the troops in the field did not have the same flexibility or doctrine as other contingents. And, to be clear, as Tom Ricks proved in his series on the Wanat battle, American adherence to the Petraeus playbook is uneven at best.

So, the lesson, as always, need to my work out faster.


and one last great quote:

“We haven’t been fighting in Afghanistan for eight years,” said one officer. “We’ve been fighting in Afghanistan for one year, eight times in a row.”

Analogy of the Week, II (or Man Crush part deux)

Not only am I a big fan of Obama, but SecDef Gates is such an improvement over Rumsfeld that I cannot help but gush, even when I don't agree entirely with the decisions. So, I was quite pleased to see this quote:

In his new memoir, Matt Latimer, a Pentagon speechwriter under Mr. Gates’s predecessor, Donald H. Rumsfeld, compares Mr. Gates to the Harvey Keitel character in “Pulp Fiction” — the one who shows up after the grisly killing to wipe away all traces of blood. (from NYT piece)

My students often wonder if I am a realist or a liberal (in IR theory terms), and the real answer, when it comes to policy-making is that I am a pragmatist. So, when I see the SecDef being legitimately lauded as one, I am thrilled.

Man Crush continues

I didn't watch Obama on Letterman--past my bedtime, but the first clip out this morning deepens my respect and affection for the First Guest. When Dave asked him about the hostility at town halls and Jimmy Carter's suggestion that racism is in play, Obama handled it deftly, saying he was black before the election, so that the people knowingly chose a black person. This along with a subsequent comment about politicians know that people will attack him show how self-possessed this guy is. I know I am not that even-tempered (duh!), so I have got to admire Obama in these circumstances.

On a similar note, Obama now faces criticism from the Coalition for a Realistic Foreign Policy, a bunch of scholars who want a serious re-evaluation of the Afghanistan strategy. Which is funny because this is what Obama is doing--not jumping in without thinking, but taking Gen. McChrystal's recommendations seriously. This coalition is building on a previous effort--Security Scholars for a Sensible Foreign Policy, which published an open letter signed in 2004 by much of the academic community who study security (and profs who don't study that stuff too), suggesting that the Bush team was out of whack precisely because it did not do the due diligence that is the hallmark of Obama. I signed the earlier letter, but only heard about the subsequent one after the fact. And that is fine, since despite misgivings and doubt registered here about Afghanistan, I think Obama does not need our pre-emptive criticism on this one. He has not made a decision yet because he is evaluating all of the bad options he faces.

The problem as I have blogged about the past month is the absent of good choices. The frustrating thing about the leaks about the review is that they all focus on numbers of troops and not on the supposedly new strategy. That is really the key for whether the additional troops make sense, despite the politics being all about the troop levels. What is McChrystal's plan to save the show in one year? Especially since there is always a delay in the troops getting there and then having an impact? If the idea is to essentially replace the NATO troops so that unity of command is provided and that is necessary for success, then, ok, that makes some sense.

Before rushing to judgment, I want to see more details on the strategy.

China Plays By Its Rules

Very interesting piece about China's foreign assistance policy. First, the (dare I say it?) money quote:

We know more about China’s military expenditures than we do about its foreign aid,” said David Shambaugh, an author and China scholar at George Washington University. “Foreign aid really is a glaring contradiction to the broader trend of China’s adherence to international norms. It is so strikingly opaque it really makes one wonder what they are trying to hide.”

The piece talks about how much of China's foreign aid is tied to the purchase of Chinese goods (so far it sounds like anybody else's aid) from companies owned or tied to China's politicians (oops!). Learning from the Bush Administration (Haliburton and Iraq), the Chinese refuse to let third world countries set up competitive bidding processes. Plus there seems to be a systematic effort to hide everything about these programs, raising red (oops) flags.

The question I ask is: how much of this is really that different from Western practices or at least Western practices of 10/20/30 years ago? Is this really different than how the US facilitated the penetration of multinational corporations into the third world? Maybe, but perhaps more of degree rather than magnitude. I am no expert on foreign direct investment, so I await Dan Drezner's take on this. Or any of my readers....

Afghanistan and Leaked Strategic Review

I don't need to blog about it as Marc Lynch has already done so.

Steve is Occasionally Right: All Is Not Swell in the Larger EU

One of the key claims in Kin and Country is that the conditions imposed by the European Union to ensure the good behavior of the applicants are not as imposing or lasting as others averred. Is it wrong for me to be glad to see events that support our claims even though these events are, well, bad?

On 21 August 2009 the Slovak government declared the Hungarian head of state persona non grata and denied him entry to the territory of Slovakia. This step marked the height of renewed acrimony between Hungary and Slovakia since the passage of the amended Slovak State Language Law in June. Such level of tensions between two Schengen zone EU states is without precedent and grows beyond the framework of bilateral relations. With this decision the Fico government wanted to bring a resolute response to Hungarian manifestations of dissent concerning the language law and made it clear that backing away from its policy is not an option before parliamentary elections.

As a result of the 2006 parliamentary elections the radical nationalist Slovak National Party (SNS) became member of the governing coalition, and periodically made offensive statements against Hungary and the Hungarian minority in Slovakia. The self-styled Social Democratic party, Smer (Direction) led by Prime Minister Fico has not kept extremist anti-Hungarian sentiments from gaining ground but has instead allowed them to become part of mainstream politics. www.budapestanalyses.hu, an admittedly biased observer, but the facts are, as they say, the facts)

Yep, the Slovaks passed a language law that dramatically reduces the rights of Hungarians to use their native tongue in Slovakia, despite being a significant minority--and this law ran counter to what they had previously promised and what the EU had expected. Now, Slovakia has stopped the Hungarian president from participating in a ceremony to dedicate a statue of Saint Stephen (my favorite saint) who founded the Kingdom of Hungary [Thanks to Zsuzsa Csergo for the link--see her book on language politics]

It just goes to show that keeping someone out of a club is a lot harder than shaping the behavior of members.

And while we are on the theme of "Steve is occasionally right," Brigadier General McMaster (author of a key book on the Joint Staff's role in producing Vietnam), who was an innovator in Counter-insurgency in Iraq and adviser to Gen. Petraeus, is now arguing:

there was "a failure to recognize" that the security problem in Iraq had shifted from insurgency to a communal struggle for power. .... What looked to some like a government, he explained, was instead a situation where different people had captured parts of the government structure. "So in effect our strategy in 2006 was a rush to failure," and even was intensifying Iraq's problems, he said.

This points to the key problem in many civil wars--that the government or elements of the government are combatants (rather than being merely absent as portrayed in the ethnic security dilemma). So, the question then becomes how to restrain the government (or parts of it) from preying upon the society while simultaneously building its capacity to thwart those who are threats to the citizens and the government? My recent edited volume with MJ Zahar addresses this challenge. Ok, we raise the challenge, but perhaps do not provide clear remedies.

Quote of the Week

“Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.”

Sign outside of Albert Einstein's office at Princeton, cited today at NFL post, a blog that does excellent coverage of football and Mike Lombardi, who writes it, has a leadership fixation.

Wonder how this quote applies to events closer to home?

One False Choice: More ANA Now

Carl Levin, Chairman of the Senate Armed Services committee, is pushing for more Afghan units rather than more American ones as Gen. McChrystal's request for more troops becomes public.

This really is a false choice, because there is no way that we can somehow magically find tens or hundreds of thousands of new Afghan National Army troops to throw into the fray. Sure, having more indigenous forces do the work is always the right idea for counter-insurgency--if they are capable. But insta-training is not going to lead to capable troops, but rather probably more collateral damage, greater distrust between civilians and army units and between ANA and the NATO forces, and wasted effort.

If we send more forces to Afghanistan, some of those will clearly be used to ramp up the training of the ANA further and create more Observer, Mentor, Liaison Teams [OMLT or Omelets]. Training is a priority, but it is not a substitute for folks who can do the difficult work.

Levin would be right in pushing for increases in the force levels planned for the Afghan army, but that is different than asking for more troops now.

And to be clear, training the ANA and the Afghan police is not an easy task, given the wide gulfs in literacy and, ahem, values. The stories coming out about Man Boy Love Thursdays should be taken quite seriously as part of the challenging environment in which NATO is operating.