Politics is Distribution So Why Not Discuss the Distribution of Women?

The classic definition of politics is decision-making about the distribution of stuff or decision-making about how to make decisions about the distribution of stuff.  Who decides health care?  Markets? Insurance companies?  The government?

Well, we are finally addressing the most important question:

Daily Wire host goes on strange sexist rant: “The central purpose of every society is to figure out the distribution of women ... Women cannot take care of themselves” www.mediamatters.org/daily-wire/d...

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— Media Matters for America (@mmfa.bsky.social) Jul 29, 2024 at 10:20 a.m.

My first thought is: well, in fantasy sports leagues, you have to figure out whether you have a draft or an auction.  In a draft, "owners" of teams are allotted draft positions (due to past performance or randomly--tis another political decision) and then one owner at a time selects a player in that sport--football, basketball, whatever, to fill a specific need or to get the best athlete available, thus imitating most major sports leagues.  The alternative is an auction, where each owner gets the same budget to start and then they bid on various players with the best players and those in the areas with the least depth commanding the higher bids.  

So, should American society go to an auction style model to allocate its women?  Or should it go to a draft?  Of course, this require a lot of data gathering so that the "owners" could figure out which women they want to draft. Like in sports, in this, the various bidders/drafters would have different preferences for what "fills a need" or count as the "best available athlete."

Or am I missing the point?  Most public policy debates tend to degenerate into two extremes: the private sector allocates (tis a political decision to let markets decide) or the public sector.  So, should a government agency allocate women?  If so, is this a state level thing or should the responsibility belong to the federal government?  The GOP is always so contradictory on this, depending on what outcomes they prefer.  States' rights on abortion, federal rights when Colorado thinks Trump is an insurrectionist.  Anyhow, the GOP tends to oppose government allocation as "socialist."  So, I guess this speaker would want society to agree that markets should decide the distribution of women.  

Isn't that how it works now?  Men and women meet in a variety of fora, online and in real life, they end up coupling temporarily or permanently (the GOP prefers the latter, given their hostility to divorce and casual sex--which, um, means stricter government regulation?).  Hmmm, sounds like the market, except, well, the status quo gives women too much agency.  Obviously, we can't let them distribute themselves--that would make women people and not property.  Remember, the MAGA slogan is all about regression to a "better" time, and that better time in this particular policy realm is where women had few rights and were seen as property.  Tim Walz, potential VP candidate, has been calling the GOP the "He-man woman hater's club" and that really does get at things.

The good news here is that the various folks within the Trump universe are outing themselves in a variety of ways including making their misogyny so very clear.  The bad news is that they might have a great deal more power to inflict their views next year (and forever, given Trump's recent speech). 

So, um, yeah, the GOP is going to have a hard time removing the weird label, because, yes, this is just frickin weird to think women are property, something that most of us got over a while ago.  Hence this exercise in satire.  They are weird because the mainstream of American life has moved one way, and they have moved another, back into a partly imagined past. 

Explaining My Current 2% Skepticism

 While I have long been critical of the 2% metric for whether one is a good NATO ally or not--that is, does a country spend at least the equivalent of 2% of its GDP on defense--the current skepticism is about whether Canada can reach that target by 2032 as the Trudeau government hastily promised.  Let me listicle the reasons why Canada will fall short:

1. The decision was made hastily without a plan, just months after a long-awaited defence policy update made no commitments to get to 2% and the commitment to get to 1.76% was probably unrealistic.  
2. The most obvious obstacle would not be a lack of sincerity by the Liberals (they did dramatically increase defense spending since they came into office, but the growth of the denominator and lags in procurement have meant that they made some progress towards 2% but not as much as hoped), but a new Conservative government.  Pierre Poilevre cares far more about deficits, so his only words about this are aspirational, akin to Harper who helped inject the aspirational language into the 2014 Wales Summit declaration--that countries would work towards getting to 2% ... and then Harper cut defence spending.
3. The Treasury Board is still compelling the CAF and DND to cut spending by $1b as part of all agencies cutting spending.  The best way to start getting to two percent is, um, not to cut spending, but yet that hasn't happened.
4. The personnel crisis.  You can't spend money on salary, benefits, food, training, etc. for those soldiers/sailors/aviators who don't exist.  The CAF is down something like 15% or more (I keep learning the many different ways that recruitment is broken, and I feel bad for LGen Lise Bourgon as she inherited a clusterfuck that seems impossible to uncluster), so that is money that will be unspent.  
5. The subs are not a magic bullet for getting to 2% because procurement takes time.  Unless the government decides to sole source, the competition will take time. They will have to specify the requirements (the one emphasized to me was range under water, the various competitors (South Korea, Germany/Norway, Spain?, Japan, etc) will have to launch bids, the bids will have to be evaluated, etc).  This all is very time-consuming, so there may be a decision to buy a specific set of subs in the next eight years, it is highly unlikely that the navy will receive a single one, let along 12!* by 2032.  If Vegas set the over/under at one sub by 2032, I would bet the under.  Unless Canada pre-pays for the subs (which is not how things work here), the money for the subs simply will not be spent by 2032.
   
6. Canada has learned a lot of lessons from the Russian re-invasion of Ukraine, so there is a long shopping list of stuff that the CAF needs, that if bought, would get Canada closer to 2%--drones, anti-drone technology, advanced artillery, etc.  The problem is that everyone is learning these lessons, and the producers of these things are not really able to produce at scale.  Which means that Canada will be on the waiting list for HIMARS, for example.  Which again means not being able to spend the money allocated for such stuff.
7. Speaking of procurement, one important element of the Defence Policy Update was to hire more defence procurement folks.  That takes time, as those folks don't grow on trees (they do grow at NPSIA).  So, it will take awhile to recruit and train those folks.  

I think Canada will continue to move towards 2% as everything is more expensive, as the previous procurement decisions finally kick in (hey, we finally started building one of the surface combatant ships), and as the personnel crisis gets remediated-ish.   But 2%?  Nope, not gonna do it, as a hasty promise will meet the harsh realities of messed up procurement, broken recruitment, defence contractor collective action problems (will Davie stick a spoke in the sub wheel by trying to get domestic production of subs which would be so expensive and so time-consuming that the subs would take  many decades?) and, yes, politics.

*Re the sub personnel thing, I mentioned on the Hilltimes podcast my skepticism that the Navy could staff 12 subs.  I got push back from a senior naval officer about this, as they argued why they could start training enough submariners (squids) once they have a few operational subs (the navy has ... one) to staff 12 subs.  But that missed my point which was not the training but the recruiting.  This led to a conversation in which the officer gave a number of examples of how broken recruiting is, so, no, in my humble and semi-informed opinion, the navy won't be able to staff 12 subs.  

 

 

A Semi-Spew Tradition: Being Wrong About American Politics

 Sure, I have also been wrong about international relations, but my wrongy wrongness is much stronger and more immediate when I voyage away from my expertise and spew about American politics.  I didn't take any American politics classes in grad school, so what I learned I largely I gained through osmosis and through the methods classes that mostly had American politics stuff.  And I also translate what I learned from comparative politics which often applies quite well, like the ethnic outbidding stuff which continues to make sense of the larger patterns.

Of course, I was so very wrong in 2016 and had excellent company.  And then last week, I wrote that it was a bad idea to replace Biden.  It turns out it was a great idea.... oy.  Why was I so wrong?  I had no idea that the party would consolidate so quickly around Harris.  Several of my top 11 reasons are pretty much addressed by Kamala's rapid rise: this move does not alienate a core part of the Dem constituency, the convention will not be contested, it turns out there was one magical candidate standing on front of us the whole time, this could be pitched as going along with the will of the voters since Harris was part of the ticket essentially during the primaries, it still pisses off the donor class (woot!), and it turns out there was a plan--that Harris had been organizing so that she could take Joe's announcement and run with it.  

I just didn't expect it to go so well so quickly.  Of course, I should not jinx it as there will be bumps in the road, but:

1. All of the major potential candidates endorsed quickly.
2. Most key orgs--unions--signed on immediately.
   
3. Her first speech was short, snappy, on target, and featured Beyonce, which means that Kamala has a better organization than folks remember from her early VP days.
4. The flow of money has been incredible--there is huge enthusiasm from many sectors of the party.
5. The obnoxious donors are still pissed, so fuck 'em.
6. Biden shifted the money to her quickly although the GOP-led Fed Elections Commission may have something to say about it (but I thought regulators were killed by SCOTUS?).
7. The crop of VP candidates is strong although the anti-Shapiro movement is on and, yes, makes sense.
8. I have learned not to underestimate Pelosi. Damn.
9. In her first rally, Kamala Harris made clear she is going to be a strong campaigner with a strong message--freedom, not going back, clear on abortion (which Joe could never be).  
10. Trump still is trying to defeat Biden.  This reminds me of 2015--when Harper kept saying Trudeau wasn't ready and then Trudeau did well at the foreign policy debate, it took away their one play.  Trump was so focused on Biden being old, he has lost his main line of attack.  All that merch wasted. So sad.
    
11. The rest of the GOP is flummoxed.  How racist and misogynist should they be?  Hard to set the dial on that.  
12. The contrast between Kamala and Vance is so stark, she is pretty damned likable (and, yes, hot), and Vance is easy to hate.  The tweets about Vance not being from here--that he washes his cast-iron pans, that he buys his moonshine in a store--have been wonderful.  Here's a strong, successful woman and Trump doubled down by picking perhaps the most misogynist Republican senator (yeah, that is a tough contest).
13. Lots of stuff now out there that refute some of the stuff thrown at her in 2020--that she is actually quite good on trans rights, for instance.  That she has been critical of Netanyahu and will not attend his speech (what a shitty idea to give Bibi a platform in the US).
14. Perhaps most of all for the Dems--the end of uncertainty.  They now have a candidate they can believe in.  Sure, she is running against misogyny and racism, but both Hillary Clinton and Barak Obama won more votes than their opponents.  The trick, of course, is getting those votes in the right places.
    

I don't think anyone could have guessed a late change in candidates would go this well. The hard part now is figuring out which Kamala merch to buy.

Top Ten Reasons Replacing Biden Is a Bad Idea

 I have been so annoyed by all of this stuff about replacing Biden.  AOC made the best arguments, but let me listicle:

1. Alienate Black Americans who have been a foundation of the Dems for my entire lifetime (I am old).  
2. Give the crazed Court yet more reasons to mess with the election.
3. The polls are not that bad FFS.
4. When was the last time the Dems had a contested convention.... did it go well?
5. Who are these other magical candidates?  
   
6. The GOP is the party of discounting votes, not the Dems.  The Dems had primaries, only lame folks ran, Biden won.  How about respecting elections?
7. As always, one indicator of things is who is in favor of this?  Oh, the donor class?  Fuck them.  
8. And fuck George Clooney.  If he was so powerful, the world would have intervened in Darfur.  
9. Does anyone actually have a plan for how this would work?
10. Notice how little the GOP has said about this, they are following Napoleon's "don't interrupt your adversary when they are making a mistake."  Or the Bill Simmons dictum: what does your enemy want?
11. BONUS: It is also really bad politics to competitively leak stuff--it makes your party look incompetent and incoherent.
    

Oh, and all this noise about Biden has crowded out how much of a horrible person JD Vance is, how lame Trump's convention speech was, and all other news that might sway votes/turnout towards the Dems.

 

 Can we just fucking move on with the candidates we got?!!!  Yes, there is some risk, but the risks of the other approach (what approach? wild ideas) are far greater.  

Change is the Only Constant, CAF edition*

 I was invited to go to the Change of Command Ceremony for the new Chief of Defence Staff General Jennie Carignan (see here for my take on the decision)  It was a much bigger deal than I was expected (I don't know why I had lower expectations), as I had never been to one before.  So, yeah, the Prime Minister and Governor General (the latter is considered to be the commander in chief, but... you know) were there to be part of it.  A huge crowd was packed into the War Museum in front of a lot of tanks (one officer indicated that pretty much every Leopard II variant was there and I suggested that they could be sent to Ukraine).  

PMJT

I have had a number of chats with both the outgoing CDS Wayne Eyre (was on our podcast long ago) and the incoming CDS Jennie Carignan (who was also on our podcast longer ago, our second episode appropriately named Feminist Futures).  So, it was pretty cool to be there and see Eyre give his final words as CDS and Carignan to start her tour.  Eyre's speech started with a heap of civ-mil fun, reporting that Trudeau had told me that he was giving Eyre a turd sandwich, getting command of the CAF amid a series of severe scandals, and Eyre replied that he got the sandwich sans bread.  This was part of his discussion of the unequal dialogue that Eyre is fond of citing as he gives Eliot Cohen's Supreme Command book to ministers of defense.  The basic gist of the book is that the two sides of the relationship should be open and honest with each other although ultimately it is the civilians' job to decide and the military's job to advise and implement, and, yes, the civilians can and sometimes should reject the military's advice.  The book uses examples from Lincoln, Clemenceau, Churchill, and Ben-Gurion (the author has been busy disgracing himself with pieces dismissing the Trump threat).  Anyhow, I wish I recorded the event as he had different things to say about each of the three Ministers of Defence he worked with as he thanked them.  

I tended to be a fan of Eyre for a few reasons.  He was willing to learn and admit when he was wrong; he was more than willing to reach out and talk to shaggy academics (always a plus), he makes Star Wars references, he took seriously civilian control of the military rather than contesting it like a couple of his predecessors, and he took seriously the need for culture change.  In his speech, he not only cited Roland Paris's recent op-ed on the threat we face, but he also argued that the tradeoff between culture change and military effectiveness is a false one, something that I have argued.  He stood strong for culture change, which, of course, is very much identified with his successor.

Carignan is not just the first women to be chief of defence of a G7or G20 military (Slovenia is the first NATO country to do so), but also the former head of the command that was created in response to the scandals of 2021: Chief Professional Conduct and Culture.  Appointing Carignan identifies the 3 star position of heading CPCC as a real one, an important one, as a stepping stone to the top.  It is hard to evaluate the work of CPCC--how do you know the culture is improving--but it has been clear from my interactions with the folks at CPCC that they take their work very seriously, they have tried to learn from all kinds of places, and they have made a variety of productive changes.  It may not be enough to overcome the legacies of a century, but it seems to me things are moving in the right direction.  Of course, there is a backlash brewing.  

I got to chat briefly with the face of that backlash, retired LtG Michel Maisonneuve, and meet his wife.  I was tempted to say "I guess you are not that cancelled" as he did get invited, but I imagine he bristled at the comments made by most of the speakers and especially Eyre's.  Carignan is going to have a harder time than Eyre did for a few reasons:

1. Eyre took command after his two predecessors were disgraced, and it was clear something had to be done.  And as Peter Gourevitch argued long ago, crises break old coalitions and give leaders a chance to create new ones. The energy from that crisis is now dissipating, so Carignan won't be able to use it to push things forward.
2. Four years ago, most folks were shy about lining up to support the disgraced GOFO's.  Now that some have been acquitted (not exonerated, McDonald, that is something different), there are folks who are willing to stand up for regression.  
3. Carignan is a woman (duh, Steve), so she will face an enraged misogyny that Eyre simply did not have to deal with.
4. The Conservative Party of Canada is plagiarizing from the GOP and arguing that they are anti-woke, and they need to refocus the military way from inclusivity and more towards effectiveness (that is a false choice, of course, as I mentioned earlier).  If the CPC wins the election, Carignan may find herself either replaced or forced to compromise on what she has stood for.  

But enough of being a downer. It was a great event--the military does recognition better than any other organization.  I enjoyed both the event and the reception as I got to chat with a member of a CDSN Summer Institute cohort, some media folks, some academics, some officers I have bumped into before, and my favorite former Defence Minister--I got to meet Anita Anand in person for the first time although she appeared in my class twice. And I met some new folks, so it was a terrific morning.  

*  The title of this post came from a conversation I had with a senior officer.

NATO Summit, Day 2: Should We Believe Trudeau?

Last panel had Heather Conley, Pres of German
Marshall Fund of the US talk to the Chair of
NATO's Military Committee

 The second day of the summit was mostly anti-climatic.  Unlike most summits, they released the communique after the first day, so we already knew what they had decided.  The second day was dedicated to a meeting of the North Atlantic Council (heads of state version--the key decision-making body of NATO) and Ukraine and a separate meeting of the NAC with Japan, South Korea, Australia (the PM blew it off?!) and NZ).  

So before getting parochial, what did NATO decide?  After all, as I keep saying, summits are like academic conferences--they force folks to do the work. For academics, a conference makes us write the paper.  For NATO, it means coming up with decisions/deliverables:

• NATO will replace the US as a coordination center for aid going to Ukraine.
• NATO will set up a command that will also help Ukraine make progress on getting closer to membership.  The key phrase is that there is a short, well-lit, irreversible bridge for Ukrainian membership.  This is not satisfying to Ukraine, but no way will NATO get consensus to add a country that is at war.
• Lots of agreement that China is using "dual-use" loopholes to help Russia stay in the war, to build new tanks and other weapons, and people are miffed.  And the penalty for that?  None so far.
• Momentum but no decision to move the standard for how much members should spend of their GDP on defense from 2% to 2.5% or 3%.

  

  The Ukrainian rep was mostly annoyed by the
  fact that the questioner didn't quite get that
  his country is at war and NATO countries are not.
  

  
  

NSA Jake Sullivan had
nothing interesting to
say.

 

 Canada finally succumbed to the pressure to hit 2%. Trudeau had pushed off that decision again and again.  I guess they thought they could wear the pressure.  That the Canadian military was also pushing in public for more money made it harder to resist?  So, at the very last moment, after suffering multiple rounds of embarrassing attacks from all kinds of folks (even Mike Johnson, although I kept telling the media that maybe they ought not pay attention to a Christian nationalist who showboated near Trump's NY trial to proclaim Trump's innocence), the Canadian government announced a heap of spending and a commitment to get to 2% by 2032, three years after the 1.76% target in the Defence Update.  

The big news is a fleet of subs.  12?  Noooooo.  They say up to 12 but that is the most bullshit of bullshit.  The Royal Canadian Navy has a hard time staffing the ships they have, and they have only four mostly broken subs.  So, maybe they can get enough personnel together to fill six boats, but 12?  No way.  The letter the Minister of Defence sent out also mentions more, more snow vehicles, more helos for our ships, more missile defence stuff (have they announced they are going along with US ABM stuff since that has been a no-no for two decades?), more air defenses, more arty, better/upgraded tanks and LAVs, more drones of al kinds, and .....

A deal with the US and Finland to build more icebreakers.  Will that count as defence stuff?  I guess.

So far, the people I have talked to have scoffed, that there is no money for this, no ability to actually make the transactions, and so forth.  Yes, buying subs would add a heap of spending to get us closer to 2%.  But by 2032?  How long will it take to actually decide which subs to buy and then to acquire them?  How long will it take for Bombardier to turn their vaporware AWACS planes into real planes? [They apparently exist, my bad]  Tis far easier to dump a bunch of money on recruitment/retention efforts (and I am pretty sure they will do that).  Far harder to actually buy stuff.  One of the big problems is that a lot of this stuff--drones, arty, anti-aircraft, counter-drone--is in high demand since Ukraine has taught all of us how much this stuff is needed.  So, we may be on the wait list for much of this stuff, which means the money doesn't get spent.  Which means falling short of 2%.  

The alternative view is not that the Liberals can't do it, but won't do it.  That they have no intention of keeping these promises.  I don't buy that--they have mostly kept their word on buying stuff--the 2017 Defence Review did lead to their acquiring a heap of stuff.  Canada partly fails to meet 2% because of the denominator--that the economy has been growing, so more spending does not always mean progress on 2%.  Anyhow, this is a trap as the Conservatives will surely cut defence spending since they care mostly about deficits (see Stephen Harper).  Now they will be cutting more? 

It should also be noted that the icebreaker and the AWACS planes would both be partly made in .... Quebec.  So, is this a cynical ploy to get votes?  I don't think so, or else they would have made these decisions much earlier.

Anyhow, these new commitments need to get much attention as it seemed like a half-assed announcement at the last minute so that people would stop yelling at Trudeau.  I read one news story that indicated that the media never got the chance to scrum with Trudeau, the Defence Minister, or the Foreign Minister (or me!) as the three were being kept away from yet more 2% questions.  

And no, it is not a NATO summit unless Stefanie and I can hang and exchange takes on the happenings.

The 75th Anniversary NATO Summit: Big Names, Some News

 I am here in DC at the NATO Summit Public Forum (used to be expert forum, but I guess that was too elite?), and it is hot.  Hot as in DC heat and humidity and in terms of the "action" such as it can be at one of these things.  Like Warsaw in 2016 and Brussels in 2019, the leaders meet in one place and we academics, think tankers, policy advocates, and other NATO nerds (a term used by many including the US Secretary of State) meet close by.  In my prior two experiences, we met in tents in parking lots.  This time, we meet in the conference space of a major DC hotel, next to the convention center where the summit is happening. They grab leaders and their staffers and bring them over to have short sessions--friendly roundtable Q&a, speeches, panels.

For the first few panels, SRO

This year is different not just in our better accommodations (the tents were fine, very blue, but hotel conference facility is better) and more intense security (lots of secret service folks, their dogs, lots of fencing), but also it is higher level. In the past, we got the 3rd string Americans, 2nd string West Europeans, and so forth.  This time, our first several sessions featured the US Secretary of State, Secretary of Defence, SACEUR (US general that is the head of NATO), and the outgoing SecGen. Many of the other sessions featured Prime Ministers and Presidents from much of Europe (although no Germans, French, or Italians of note).  

SecState

Of the first batch of folks, the most interesting to me was General Cavoli--SACEUR.  Blinken, SecState, was dynamic and engaging but was such a cheerleader for NATO, he really didn't say much that made me think except now NATO has 1 billion people.  Really?  Oh, and the big news--that the F-16s the Dutch and Danes pledged to send to Ukraine are on their way and they will be flying this summer.  Since it is July, that means soon.  He mostly dodged the "Hungary sucks, what to do about it" question that Heather Conley, head of German Marshall Fund, asked.  

General Cavoli

Cavoli was next, and he was asked about readiness and ability to defend against Russia, and he felt pretty good about that.  Most interesting to me, he was asked about his authorities--could he act without getting permission from the North Atlantic Council, NATO's decision-making body.  Yes, up to yellow, but not red.  Hmmmm.  He is definitely working on improving NATO readiness but kept referring to how much is up to each member nation.  I appreciated the argument that given how the Russians treated the people in the territories they occupied, NATO must defend every inch of allied territory.  

outgoing SecGen

Austin didn't make much of an impression since he just read a speech.  Stolenberg was quite clear about stuff, specifying the new NATO command in Poland aimed at coordinating the support for Ukraine and preparing Ukraine for membership.  The continued language regarding the latter is that membership was a well-lit, short bridge.  No, Ukraine, you are not going to be a member until the war stops, as we don't want to invoke Article V and be at war with Russia. Much focus by the SecGen and others on China's support of Russia--that China needs pay a price for prolonging the war.

The next panel featured a number of PMs and Presidents from Eastern Europe.  Most striking was how the Estonian president was quite clear--there is no such thing as an attack on Estonia as any strike in its direction is an attack on NATO.  The whole "an attack on one is an attack on all" was repeated a lot, maybe aimed at Trump?  Denmark gave all of its artillery to Ukraine since it would be better used there.  Maybe they will do the same with air defense.  That panel also had Senator Risch, a Republican who denied that things would be that different under Trump.

In a subsequent panel, the most interesting speaker was the new British State Secretary of Defence, who started right after the election.  He immediately went to Ukraine to assure them that the Brits would maintain their support.  That NATO is the highest priority for the UK in its defence planning.  The Latvian MinDef said that they  have been attacked by Russia for decades, that it is not so much about Putin's Russia, but Russia's Putin--that it is not the regime but the country we have to worry about.  Ben Hodges, the retired US general, reminded me why retired generals should mostly fade away, as he blasted Biden for delays in support for Ukraine when a) the 8 month delay was due to Republicans, and b) it is legit to worry about what escalation might do.  Easy to say now that the increases in support for Ukraine didn't lead to war with Russia.  I am guessing he was one of the no fly zone advocates that wanted Americans killing Russians.  A major theme--the defense of the UK or another European country starts with Ukraine.

The Nordic panel was fun not just because I have just been to Finland and Sweden, but because the Canadian MinDef, Bill Blair, was on it.  It was my first time being at one of his appearances.  He did fine, and made news: that despite my hate for the 2% nagging and standard--that Canada was one of the most visibile "laggards" in spending enough on defense--it mattered as Canada is announcing a plan today to get to 2%.  Of course, this is late as NATO is going to raise the bar, but still this is significant.  Of course, the questions are: how and really?  How involves at least subs and the really .... is yet to be addressed.   Blair also used his time to blast China for undermining public institutions and election interference.  

The Spanish PM had a Q&A, and it was the first time Gaza really came up.  He talked about Spain recognizing Palestine, and that if we want to defend Ukraine in part because of the need to defend the rules based order, we need to support that same order elsewhere.  Wow and indeed.

Over the course of the day, I got to chat with all kinds of folks, including NATO nerds I had met at previous summits, new folks from all over the place, and the outgoing Canadian Chief of Defence Staff who retires next week.  The day ended with a nice, but very crowded reception at the French ambassador's residence, as one of the hosts of the public forum is the NATO SACT--the unit responsible for "transformation" and usually led by a French admiral or general.  The good was good, a speech by an astronaut was great (she really does not like gravity), and more chatting with sharp people.  

I will write another post focusing on the second day (today) probably tomorrow.

NATO Summit Eve and I am the most pessimistic?

I didn't realize that the Foreign Affairs insta poll of "experts" about NATO's future would be published the day before the NATO Summit.  It is a bit embarassing for me, as, well, I got asked whether NATO could survive another Trump administration, and I was alone holding down the extreme end: hells no.

The story is here.  Note that a bunch of people on the positive side basically say that it would be on paper only.  Which actually puts them with me.  

The story contained some explanation/elaboration from some folks but not me.  My email apparently my email with the Foreign Affairs staffer wasn't that interesting.  So, let me explain why I think NATO can't survive another Trump Administration, focusing on three aspects: deterrence/credible commitment, logistics and mass, and European politics.

Before getting into it, let's just postulate a few things about a second Trump administration and about Trump:

1. Trump thinks that any deal he does not make is exploitative since he projects from his own behavior and outlook--that he wants to rip off any one he makes a deal with.  NATO, thus, is a ripoff since he didn't make it.  Sure, we could imagine a new bargain, a new organization with a new name that does not really change things much like how NAFTA is now USMCA at least to the US.  To Canadians, it is either NAFTA 2.0 or just NAFTA.  
2. Trump will not have many fans of NATO in his administration.  One of the iron laws of his last administration is that he did actually learn some stuff.  He didn't learn that 2% standard of NATO is not about tithes or protection money, but he almost always replace someone he fired with someone worse.  As the project 2025 stuff indicates, the next Trump crew would be more awful, and in this case, more unilateral, more opposed to NATO, etc.
3. The GOP will not restrain him since the GOP is now thoroughly his party, and they are craven.

Ok, let's get to NATO:

• 
  The most important thing the US brings to NATO is the credibility that it is willing to risk its own destruction to deter attacks on allies inside the alliance.  There is one reason why Putin has not dared attack any NATO member.  The US spent much of the cold war trying to convince everyone that this promise would be kept.  Trump doesn't keep promises, and has already said that Putin can attack those who don't pay 2%--so much for an attack upon one equals an attack upon all.  This, the heart of nato, would beat no longer.  Why not? Can't the Europeans do it?  Nope.  More on that below.
  
• While many countries provide heaps of capabilities when NATO operates, NATO has very little of its own stuff.   And when it comes to logistics and high tech and the stuff needed to support modern war, the US has a heap of that stuff, and the allies don't have much.  So, the actual capacity to fight would be much, much less if the US either pulled out of Europe or simply stood aside when a crisis develops.  Trump doesn't have to act, he can just not act.  
• How about the Europeans take over NATO and supplant the US?  Um, sure.  Who is going to do that?  France?  Its ambivalent relationship goes back decades, and the French would prefer for the EU to take over.  Maybe that urge would decline with the end of the US involvement in NATO, but maybe not.  One thing for sure: the French have long said that their nuclear force is not for extending to deter attacks on others.  How about the UK?  While they have a new government, they have much work to do to build bridges with the rest of Europe.  Yes, they have nukes, but would the Poles count on the Brits to deter an attack or respond to one?  They still remember 1939.  Germany? Ha.  Sure, there was a lot of talk of zeitenwende--embracing the watershed moment and revising the outlook and strategy, but that met a brick wall--a law limiting deficit spending.  So, don't count on the Germans to invest so much in their armed forces that they could replace the missing Americans.  Thus far, European attempts to manage their own security have largely failed.  The EU tried to stop the wars in the Balkans, but that required the US and NATO.  

So, no, if Trump becomes president the heart and nervous system of NATO will largely be ripped out with no immediate replacement.  Maybe the EU would eventually develop its defence effort into something capable, but it would not have the strength of NATO.

Repeat after me: a second Trump administration would be catastrophic.  Not just at home but abroad.  

I would love to be wrong about this.  Of course, I would love even more if this argument is never tested.

Sweden is More Than Meatballs and Vikings: There's Mead As Well

 Last week, I attended the European Research Group on Armed Forces and Society biannual conference in Stockholm.   ERGOMAS is a sharp, interdisciplinary group working on civil-military relations and related topics.  ERGOMAS is a partner of the CDSN, but we haven't done that much together thanks to the pandemic.  I had only been to it once before, in Lisbon, five years ago (part of that magic summer trip--Lisbon-Barcelona-Paris-Normandy-Paris).*  That meeting was hosted by Helena Carreiras, who later became the Minister of Defense of Portugal.  So, an academic who studies civ-mil then did it.  I hope to have her on the podcast later this year.  Anyhow, ERGOMAS was in Stockholm, and I haven't been there since 1990, the summer I had an IGCC travel fellowship to work on what was my dissertation topic at the time--arms transfers.  While there, I had many epiphanies--that I didn't want to do arms transfers, that the international relations of ethnic conflict would be far more interesting (a realization that played out well for me), that Stockholm is super-expensive, and California budget shenanigans were a pain as I didn't get my funding until I got home.

Anyhow, I didn't have that many memories of enjoying Stockholm, so I was eager to try out the place again.  I didn't return to the Vasa Museum, which will always be a tribute to crappy defense procurement--the 1600's (I think) ship sank just after it was launched--it
was too heavy with too many cannons.  They found it and got it out of the water, refurbished it, and now there is a museum dedicated to it.  Instead, I went to the open air museum that was part zoo, part Williamsburg or Upper Village Canada.  I enjoyed the zoo part more as I was basically an arms length away from an entire reindeer family and just on the other side of the glass from two very playoff baby bears.  I went to a silly viking museum which taught me that the vikings didn't just head west to England, Greenland, and North America but in the other direction as well.  The Abba museum had too long of a line, so I went to a Spirit Museum, where I learned that Sweden had prohibition too, less severe as it was more about rationing than banning, but led to the same criminal dynamics.  I also went to the Nobel prize museum, which was small but quite interesting.  Hollywood Spew recommended the Modern Art museum, which had some great displays.  So, heaps of museums.

 

 

But this trip was more than just tourism.  I presented two papers: the Phil/Steve/Ora defence agency project and the JC/Charlotte/Lynne/Steve diversity and public attitudes about the CAF paper.  We got very helpful comments for both.  The first is still in the early stages, so that the feedback was super useful for figuring out where to take the project.  This is the one that has me traveling to places all over the world (so far South Korea, Finland, and Germany) to ponder the role of departments/ministries of defense.  The second paper considers whether stories of discrimination in the military reduce trust in the armed forces, reduce support for defense spending, or reduce support for folks joining the military.  And, yeah, we find that it does, but that Canadians discriminate in their discrimination--some groups (women, Francophones) produce stronger results than others (Indigenous, LGBTQ2S+).  This paper is nearly ready to be submitted, so the comments were helpful in the final steps of framing and developing implications, too late to shape the survey.  

ERGOMAS was also a handy place and time to bring together potential partners and members of the next iteration of the CDSN. The CDSN is now in its 6th year, which means we need to find funding to keep it going past the 7th year of the big grant.  We are going back to the SSHRC Partnership Grant program, which does not have a renewal process but 2.0's have to be bigger but more focused.  So, we are going to use the heart of the CDSN to build an international research network on civil-military relations (still trying to figure out a new name).  We want to do a better job of involving our international partners, so we consulted with them, and we got a lot of great ideas.

 

If I remember, |
this is David Kuehn's slide.

Speaking of great ideas, I did go to a lot of panels (most conferences, I ditch most panels to make new connections and renew existing ones), and I learned a lot about a lot.  The best part was the democratic backsliding panel--not because I am a fan of democratic backsliding but because the panel was a sharp group doing great work AND Risa Brooks, who was one of the presenters, will be leading one of the research teams in CDSN 2.0--the one on the role of militaries when democracies face the threat of backsliding.  That was the last piece of the research part of the puzzle, and now I have a good idea of how it fits in.  

Conferences generally get me energized, and this one was no exception--I am pretty jazzed about where the CDSN is headed, I have a clearer idea of where we are going with the defense agencies project, and I got to drink mead and eat a heap of cinnamon rolls.  Woot all around! 

*  Despite not much history with the group, I was nominated for President, and managed to finish second (of three candidates). 

All The Non-News That's Not Fit to Print

 Last night, I ended one of the very longest relationships in my life: I unsubscribed from the NY Times.  My family will gasp while progressives will wonder why it took me so long.  The short answer to that: recipes and identity.  I will explain why it took a while and then I will explain why and why now.

Lately, I have been mostly using my NYT subscription to check out new recipes and find old ones that worked well for me.  

More importantly, the NYT has been a part of my life since I was a little kid.  My parents, as New Yorkers, subscribed wherever they lived, and getting the paper each morning and especially the mammoth Sunday paper was just a part of our lives. When we moved away from my parents, their visits to us, especially in Lubbock, involved quests for the NYT.  It simply must reading.  I read the news, the op-eds, the minimal sports, entertainment, and mostly skipped the business stuff.  When my mother died recently, my family was quite intent on getting her obituary in the NYT, where you can also found marriage announcements and my uncle's obituary as well.  My sister Ellen had several letters to the editor published there, and, yes, just one time, I got quoted there.  I am pretty sure my family was thrilled more by that than any other media appearance. 

Why drop my subscription and why be so loud about it?  Because this paper, the newspaper of record, with the credo "All the News That's Fit to Print" has thoroughly betrayed itself.  My displeasure started with so much false equivalence that I made a meme about it, treating in 2016 Hillary Clinton's flaws as equivalent to Trump's.  I got into the habit of ranting on twitter when I saw a tweeted headline that was problematic.

Worse, the imbalance in much of the coverage. They didn't pursue his obvious and thorough corruption pre-presidency because it was too easy?  Instead, it was all about her emails.  And then it was the trend for its reporters to hold onto key bits of news for their books years after the news was relevant--so not all the news that was fit to print made it into print in the paper until it was promoting Maggie Haberman's book or my freshman year roomie's (Peter Baker) book.  But I kept on subscribing.

Then the paper became obsessed with trans people, repeatedly amping up a moral panic about what be happening to those kids who transition too soon.  Given how vulnerable the trans folks are, especially the kids, one might think that caution would be in order.  Instead, it was really punching down.  Why?  Damned if I know, but it certainly was not "fit to print," at least at the volume and tilt of the stories.  

I stopped reading its op-ed page as they ended up using not just "conservatives" but truly awful people to put out disinformation.  Yes, the NYT became a vector of disinformation, which I am pretty sure is the opposite of its mission.  

Its coverage of the current presidential race is maddening where it has been essentially pro-Trump, so focused on Biden's flaws and not spending that much page space on Trump's criminality.  It is replay of 2016 but with personal animus: the publisher is miffed that Biden didn't do an interview with the NYT.

The paper has embraced the era of bad faith.  The exemplar that finally got me to drop the paper was an op-ed written by a guy trying to discourage people to vote despite the fact that, yes, the shithead votes.  On the Fourth of July?  On that day, how about focusing on an imperial Supreme Court that is gutting not just the Constitution, but the entire revolutionary project?  The end of the rule of law?  How about that?  Nope, instead, they encourage folks not to vote in the most pivotal election in American history.  [I was talking with a smart pal last night, and she helped me realize that the Civil War might have ended the Union if the South had seceded, but it would not have ended American democracy.  This election?  The whole enchilada is at stake]

I have been arguing lately that the paper is pro-Trump despite its long dated reputation as a liberal paper, and the idea of not voting cinches it.  Who is that message for? Biden voters.  So, I am done.  As many folks online pointed out, I can get recipes elsewhere.  And, no, this is not a matter of me retreating into a left wing bubble, as I will not be reading left-wing outlets more.  I will just try to get my news from as many non-disinformation sources as possible.  The NY Times?  Until it revises its current approach, it is dead to me.

Mission Accomplished? Um, Maybe More So than Bush

Today is not only Canada Day, but it is also the first day "back" for folks on sabbatical in many places.  Yes, my penultimate sabbatical ended in rain and cinnamon rolls as I was touristing around Stockholm before the start of the ERGOMAS (European Research Group on Military and Society).  I had a great year as last summer involved two intense months of finishing the book with Dave and Phil on parliamentary oversight over the armed forces (more on that in a second), the fall mean a week in South Korea asking about their civil-military relations, the winter involved awesome skiing in Utah, Japan, and Austria, and then heaps of fieldwork in Germany and Finland and presentations in Germany and Austria, and the spring meant more fieldwork in Germany and some touristing on the roads of central Germany and in northern Italy.  But did I do what I set out to do?

Let's check the plan, remembering that no plan survives contact with the adversary (which probably refers to myself in this case[blue for plan kept, red for plan not kept, purple in between]):

1. With the legislature book project winding down, I am hoping to make progress on the Steve, Phil, and Ora project: comparing defence agencies around the world.  What roles do ministries and departments of defense see for themselves?  How are they viewed by the militaries they interact with?  This project will merge with the aforementioned bureaucracies project--what is the nature of each democracy's policy marketplace? [Turns out the first step in this two step project is more ambitious/harder so I don't think we will complete the second step]
   
1.  This fall, I am probably headed for shorter trips to South Korea and Denmark, but that could change.
2. I do plan to spend much of the winter somewhere, with the contenders right now being Rome, Berlin, and Taipei. 
   
2. I plan to do a better job of keeping my promise re smaller projects.
1. There is the aforementioned policy relevance piece that will have new data soon. [Nope, no data]
   
2. There are a few surveys of the Canadian public I am working on with JC Boucher, and we hope to push out those results this year.
3. Start the work to organize a workshop on the uses and abuses, pro's and con's of using principal-agent theory in Canadian defence/security stuff on Canadian civil-military relations.  I took over editing a volume on CA civ-mil due to expected happenings.  We held the workshop a few weeks ago, and I am very psyched to have it come together with submission in the fall.
   
4. A few other things that are on the edges of my attention right now.  This turned out to mostly be the aforementioned parliamentary oversight book, which did not find much favor from the first press/reviewers.  So, a hunk of this winter was spent revising it and preparing for resubmission elsewhere.  We are now awaiting word of that.
   
3. CDSN-ing!  We have a variety of new and continuing stuff to execute--the Summer Institute, the Year Ahead, the Capstone, the various other opportunities plus a Meeting of the MINDS workshop for the leaders, project directors, and students associated with the nine MINDS networks.  Oh, and I will start prepping the next big grant application to keep us going beyond the first seven years [This involved drafting the very first draft of the main doc and heaps of networking to get individual scholars and partner organizations to share their ideas and to ready themselves for the SSHRC webwork ahead]..
4. 
   
   Read!  This time, I mean it.  I have a stack of great civ-mil books that I want to catch up on.  I am going to try to set aside one day each week just for reading.  Let's see if that is a pie crust promise!  Some progress (awesome books by Feaver, Robinson, Fazal, MacKenzie, a couple of ed volumes and some articles) but the stack is still very tall.
5. What else?  Since I didn't know last July where I was headed, I couldn't say what would be the other stuff I would do wherever I ended up. But ending up in Berlin meant, in addition to doing much of the work on the German case and traveling to at least one other spot in Europe (turned out to be Finland) for another case study, getting a sense of how Germans and other Europeans have been thinking about the twin perils facing them--Russia in the East and Trump in one possible future.  I should have asked more about China, but will rectify that next year when I go back for another three months.

I would have liked to have researched another case study done, but the Humboldt award included a time commitment to hang out in Bamberg and the talk in Vienna was just to talk, not to add Austria to our list of cases. I would have liked to have completely written up the South Korean case study and made progress on the writing of the Finland and Germany cases.  And, damn, I would have loved not to have had to revise the parliamentary oversight book.  But has the song goes, we can't always get what you want, but if you try real hard, you get what you need.

The sabbatical was just what I needed after six years of heaps of grant-writing, administrating, teaching, and researching. I am looking forward to the next one already, which might involve far less research and far more teaching... if I can find a good place to squat.  But those are plans to work on after the current set of plans and the set beyond those.  And, yes, I will be spending three more months in Berlin next winter as part of the Humboldt award, which will probably mean two additional cases--Sweden and perhaps the Netherlands.

Yes, I am lucky, and I love my job. These sabbaticals make it easier to love the job not just because I get a cool year every seven years, but it does help recharge for the years in between.  Woot!