Worshipping Chicken

I never really felt comfortable eating at Chik-fil-A.  I guess I was put off by the company's legitimate but still a bit in your face "we are closed on Sundays to worship our favorite God" stance.  So, not terribly surprised by the stance on gays (which may or may not be changing).

So, I enjoyed this instead:

Kroll Show: Chick Fil-A vs. Chikk Klub - watch more funny videos     

Hardball, Part 2

Attack the candidates and the campaign?  Sure.  Going after nominees because they sent their kids to summer camps that were once founded by left-wing Jews? Please. 

As a veteran of many summers at a Jewish camp, I can say that politics/ideology was never on the daily schedule nor did it make much of an appearance besides the token pro-Israel moment or two.  What did we learn from the Israeli counselors (there were Brits as well)?  Mostly that Israelis drive pretty aggressively: "what is this thing you call the break?"

What did we do all summer? Play sports, think about the girls at the girls camp, make a few crafts (rarely did our stuff approach art), prep for meeting the girls from the girls camp, hike nearby (including near Camp David), chase the girls from the girls camp, go on a few trips to do some white water rafting or rock climbing, ponder why the chase failed, swim during the hot Maryland summer, think more about the girls at the girls camp, maybe participate in a play (especially if it meant interacting with the girls from the girls camp), play capture the flag (maybe that is where some politics was smuggled in), and go to bed.  Occasionally, bedtime would be delayed if folks wanted to play Star Wars with their flashlights.

So, in sum, this kind of attack is just silly and possibly anti-semitic, as tying Jews to Communism is an old, old trick.  Yes, some Commies were Jews, and some Jews were commies, but the circles do not exactly overlap. 

As they say at camp: oy.

Dems Playing Hardball?

I have always been frustrated as a Democrat that the Republicans would always be much tougher, attacking harder while the Democrats would just suck it up and rarely attack the Republicans.  This year, well, Obama and his campaign seem to understand: (a) the stakes; (b) that restraint does not actually get much in the way of rewards; and (c) how to put it together.



This is such a negative ad, but Romney's best chance is to make the economy the issue.  The problem for him is that these ads make it look like Romney and his ilk are the reason the economy sucks--that the top folks get raises and fire the people doing the work.  So, what Santorum said about Obamacare may apply as well to the economy--that Romney is really poorly suited to running against Obama on these issues.  Hard to attack Obamacare since Romney did a similar program in Massachusetts.  Hard to attack Obama on the economy since Romney is similar to the folks who got the nasty bailouts.

Of course, it is worse for Romney since he cannot seem to get his act together.  The next video is damning because the tax return issue is not new at all.  The other candidates in the GOP attacked him on it, and yet Romney still has no good answer.



The irony of all of this is that this is the second campaign in a row where the GOP focused on a candidate who appeared to be the most electable despite the fact that, well, they had significant weaknesses as campaigners.  McCain was better than the nuts, but that was not saying much.  Now Romney was better than the nuts, but he ain't that good.

Of course, I am still fearful of something bad happening in the world that might tilt things to Romney (Euro collapse, etc).  And I may be falling victim to wishful thinking, but if the GOP folks are attacking Romney, then Obama is not in as bad shape as one might think given the state of the economy.

UN as Daddy Day Care

Romney apparently said today "we've been 'turning to the United Nations' to 'raise our kids.'"

Romney says we've been "turning to the United Nations" to "raise our kids." Wha?
— Sara Libby (@SaraLibby) July 18, 2012

I don't know if this is true, but it raises a variety of questions/thoughts:

• Does the UN have stock in ink?  Kids today seem to like tattoos. 
• What is the curriculum include at UN Day Care?
• Learning How to Circumvent Your Parents' Vetoes?
• Membership 101: You can join any club you want as long as your name is ok (Taiwan, Macedonia) even if you fall short of standards (Human Rights Commission).
• The Golden Rule As Applied to Combat: Fire only if fired upon.
• What is the UN Day Care hours and penalties for late pick up?
• Do they have local franchises like Kindercare?  Is Kindercare really the UN's franchise?
• What do they serve for lunch?  Caviar and lobster (for those who ponder UN waste), Chinese every day (for those who fear the yellow peril's insidious influence through an organization it does not really like), etc?
• Do the kids get to ride on the black helicopters?

Breaking Bad Help!

The really important question of the week is not really Syria (joking, of course) but what was the meaning of the opening?  In an interview in Entertainment Weekly, Bryan Cranston says: "There are five distinct changes that the audience will be wondering about, and yet it will all pay off." I consider the possibilities below the break but need your help:

Who Is Out of Touch? Israel or Me?

Israeli politicians make a big deal about Jonathan Pollard, the American who spied for Israel.  They think that the US ought to release Pollard despite his conviction.*  Thus far, American Presidents have not entertained this at all.  Israeli pundits think that American Jews care about Pollard and that this will shape their votes.  It may be the case that some/many American Jews will vote against Obama for not being sufficiently pro-Israel, but that will have nothing to do with Pollard.

*  I have been corrected.  I said he was convinced of treason.  No, he signed a plea deal agreeing to a charge of espionage.  This deal was two-sided.  It aimed to get his wife a deal and for the government to get info from him about what damage he did.  Still, in my mind, he is convicted and a traitor (for money, not just for his affinity to Israel), but perhaps not a convicted traitor.

Who are these American Jews who support a traitor?  Do we see them marching?  Lobbying?  I think there are bigger fish to fry in US-Israel relations: stances on settlements, on negotiations, on Arab Spring.  Indeed, that Obama supported some regime change--Egypt--is perhaps the most distance he has really had of consequence with Israel.  Sure, Obama wanted a settlement freeze, but didn't get one for long.  Sure, Obama wanted sincere negotiations, but they went nowhere as they usually do.

If Israelis are sincerely surprised that Hillary Clinton would not entertain the possibility of seeking a release of Pollard, they don't understand Americans and American politics at all.  We take spying especially by "friends" very seriously.  There is no question of Pollard's guilt (only whether he slipped info to countries other than Israel).  Indeed, the Israelis should be thankful, he could have been charged with treason.  The US could have executed him. No pardon unless an American president wants to be seen as weak on treason.

So, there really is no point in raising and re-raising this except to score points at home (Israel, that is) to show that one is sufficiently independent from the US and sufficiently pro-treason.

While there has often been much suspicion about American Jews having divided loyalties, the Pollard issue seems to demonstrate pretty clearly that selling out the US is one place where the line is drawn quite clearly.

Of course, I may be out of touch as I am not a member of any Jewish community.  I just happen to be related to folks who are.  The arguments about Israel never, ever approach Pollard.  He is a non-issue.  I am pretty sure from my narrow sample but also from the behavior of mainstream Jewish groups in the US that Pollard is mostly an issue in Israel.  If the Israelis want to burn political capital with the US on an issue that they will never see resolved in their favor, they are welcome to it. 

Deja Vu Separatist Style

If I lived in Canada in 1995, I would say that I am experiencing deja vu as the stories emanate out of Scotland.  But I was starting teaching in West Texas, so I was not all that attentive.  Still, Canadians must be watching this all like Scotland is re-booting the Quebec drama with slightly different accents (kind of like the Amazing Spiderman but less likely to turn a profit).

The story of the day is that the Scottish National Party, as the campaign for the referendum continues, is backing away from its anti-NATO stance.  This is hardly surprising.  To get more than 50% plus 1 or whatever the standard will be, the SNP has to be vague about anything that would alienate potential supporters and soften the impact of independence.  Becoming independent for Scotland or Quebec would be costly.  Lots of difficult questions and complexities that might give one pause about the utopia that would be an independent Scotland or Quebec.  In the last referendum in Quebec, advocates of independence tried to make the jarring transition appear to be smooth--no, we can keep Canadian passports and the Canadian dollar. 

The ardent independenistas are going to vote for an independent Scotland regardless of the NATO stance and regardless of the costs of transition.  To win enough votes of the softer (dare I say squishier) nationalists, the SNP, like the Quebec sovereigntists, need to apply some denial sauce to any of the potential qualms that folks of mixed views might have.  So, thus the new stance. 

Do not be surprised if we see more "hey, this really will not be that radical a change" statements even if they kind of contradict the big message that a big change needs to be made. 

And the Canadians will just shake their heads and sigh.  Except for those who make money leveraging their expertise on separatism (on either side).  And no, I have no money on this. 

Yes, I Cited Rummy Approvingly

In my latest CIC piece, I build on latest week's theme at CIC on deception in IR.  I had fun with it, as I basically used Rummy's classic quote of known knowns to show that uncertainty and lying can co-exist.  That Rummy was pointing out something important, that there is much we don't know, but he was doing it mendaciously.  Anyhow, take a look at the post (I even sneaked in a link to a robot chicken bit on "A Certain Point of View").  I did not link to this classic Sam Jackson/Boomtown clip.  Have to draw the line at NSFW although some would argue that Rummy is NSFW.

Saideman Spews The Obvious

See my latest TV appearance (via phone) on the Red Cross saying the Syrian Civil War is, well, a Civil War.  I do love that the ad before it is of a Canadian celebration of the War of 1812.

Anyway, my basic take has been that it has long been a civil war and that the outsiders have few good options. And, no, the ICRC is not going make Assad re-think.

Back to working on my new garage.

Update: As a result of tweeting this set of attitudes, I got interviewed by an Associated Press reporter via email.  My one paragraph about this not affecting Assad or the various rebels is now syndicated across the planet.  Pretty cool.  Of course, they focused on the part I know least--Syria--rather than the part I know best--the unlikelihood that this will move the US and its allies into doing anything.

Voter Fraud Fraud

When did the risk of denying someone the right to vote become less important than the risk of voter fraud?  How does the GOP get away with its efforts to deny the franchise in ways that are pretty clearly aimed at reducing the voting pool for the Democrats?  Rolling Stone has a great piece here about the actual occurrence of voter fraud.  It basically does not happen.  Few elections turn on a few votes so the incentives, with criminal penalties at stake, mean that it is very irrational to engage in voter fraud.  However, there seems not to be much in the way of penalties to deny people the right to vote. 

The funny thing is that the risk equation here--the risk of denying someone the most fundamental right in this or any democracy vs. the unlikelihood that someone is committing fraud--reminds me of the Texas logic that seems to apply--that it is better to execute an innocent person than to let one guilty person spend a lot of time in jail.

The history of vote denial is pretty clear.  Literacy tests, poll taxes, and the rest were all designed to appear to be fair while aiming to disenfranchise Blacks.  Now we have voter fraud as an "issue" because the Republicans see the writing on the wall.  With an increasingly diverse country and with recent and not so recent stances antagonizing Blacks and Hispanics, the GOP realizes that it needs to game the system in order to win elections.  Rather than developing appeals beyond whites, the GOP is trying to make sure that those that they have demonized and antagonized cannot vote.  The reality is that the ID-less are not randomly distributed among the ethnic groups in the US but concentrated among those groups least likely to vote for the Republicans--the very poor and minorities.

So, we should not be surprised that the voter fraud fight gets louder as whites slip into plurality rather than majority status in places like ... Texas.

Again, it comes down to this: if we are going to make a mistake (and we always do as no system is perfect), is it better to deny the right to vote to a person who is a legitimate voter or is it better to let a fraudulent voter vote?  Isn't the presumption of innocence also something that we ought be keeping in mind as well?  Isn't that also basic to our democracy?  Even if there were a voter fraud problem, which there is not, care should still be taken not to disenfranchise those that are legitimate voters.  These laws do not take such care.

See the new piece by Nate Silvers that has good links to existing work and also puts the debate into some perspective on the effects of this stuff.  He argues that the effects are likely to be small at the national level, but I wonder if such efforts matter more at the local level--elections for state representatives and for the House of Representatives.  These elections matter, too, of course, so it might not swing the Presidency, but the injustice here might impact who writes legislation.  Even if the effect is small, the effort here is still utterly reprehensible and fundamentally un-American (even it accords with historical practices such as poll taxes).

Update from today's NYT:

Corruption of the University

I have long been annoyed and frustrated by the role big sports play at American universities.  This is one area where Canadian schools are clearly superior--the athletic tail does not wag the academic dog up here as it does in the US.

So, the unsurprising news is that people at Penn State valued their program's reputation above the kids who came into contact with Sandusky.  When faced with potential trouble, these folks covered up, letting the kids be exposed to a pedophile and face a lifetime of scars from the experience.  Bigtime college sports creates a culture of entitlement.  Paterno, in the various reports, made it clear that he thought it was his job and no one else's to police the behavior of his athletes.  Student-athletes who violated the code of conduct were to be judged by Paterno and not by the procedures that governed the rest of the student body.  He expected this to be the case from all accounts, and was upset when anyone "poached" on "his terrain." 

This is, of course, a perversion of the academic enterprise.  When sports become the most important thing at a university, then we should expect standards of behavior to be tossed away and for the athletes and their mentors to be entitled.  Entitled to a free pass no matter what crimes they commit.  Sexually assaulting a child is pretty much as bad as it gets, but since Sandusky was associated with the football program, he got to walk and commit more crimes.  Awful, awful, awful.  With great power comes great responsibility.  But if there is no accountability, how can we expect power to be exercised responsibly.  Each bigtime coach gets to behave as he or she wants.  Bobby Knight gets to assault students.  Others get to betray the students on a regular basis by committing the students to a university and then walking out the door for some more money. 

Is Penn State the first school to hush up the crimes of people involved in their programs?  Certainly not.  Will this one event change the culture of American universities so that sports programs are held to account?  I doubt it.  I do hope that this event will cause some folks in some positions of power to draw some lessons that some accountability is increased in some places.  That is not much of a hope, but that is what we've got when coaches are given far more money and power than anyone else on campus.

The Road to Hell

The old saw that the road to hell is paved with good intentions could be altered to suggest that the road is paved or at least signed with rhetoric.  I have been having a Twitter DM chat with someone about the drone war and pondering how it is distinct from Assad's massacres.  It started with a joke about the massacres being defined away if Assad made it clear that all of the targets were males of military age, referring to the Obama standards for the drone campaign.

My responses to this were: oy! um! yuck.  I have had a bunch of drone conversations in the past few days.  My basic take is that I see drones like any weapon system as a tool that can be handy but is not useful for everything.  I am not opposed to using force to kill people who are seeking to kill Americans and allies of Americans.  But I do think we need to think about the consequences.  Drones should not be used nor air strikes from F-15s or whatever for ordinary targets in sovereign countries (different rules for operating in a war).  The strange thing about the American drone wars in Yemen and Afghanistan is that we seem to be either finding a heap of top level folks, given the number of strikes, or we are targeting mid-level folks.  And mid-level folks are not that hard to replace, so it is not clear what such strikes accomplish given that the costs, especially the side effects down the road or beyond the event are hard to calculate.  So, I basically favor a very limited, very discriminate drone campaign, and I don't exclude hitting Americans who are based abroad if they are major players in terrorism against the US.

Back to the original question, how does the US distinguish itself from Syria these days?  My twitter answer was: intent and scale.  I do think intent matters, and I do think that trying to attack only those who are planning to use violence against you is superior to attacking civilians who are protesting your regime.  I also think that scale matters: that drone strikes, even with civilian casualties, cause far less harm than Assad's assaults.  On the other hand, the US did a heap of damage to Iraq's civilians through its bungled war and its bungled occupation.  There is much controversy over the exact numbers--tens of thousands versus hundreds of thousands--but no doubt that the US did a heap of harm there.  Of course, people can say that Saddam Hussein did worse and would have done more, but that does not address the reality that the US could have done far better if it had executed the bad decisions well.

Anyhow, it is a gray world out there, but some folks very much wear black hats while the folks who think they are wearing the white hats need to be far more careful and judicious in how they deploy the use of force.  The Bin Laden mission, aside from the unfortunate Polio doctor escapade, was pretty close to perfect in terms of the discriminate use of force.  If only we were as careful the rest of the time.

Summer Squirrel on the BBQ

Kyle Saunders tweeted this tonight:

Whatever it is, #Condistrategy is brilliant media play/distraction/game changer, even if at the end of the day it's really just "Squirrel!"
— Kyle Saunders (@KyleLSaunders) July 12, 2012

And I cannot disagree.  If the Bain stories are getting bad press, why not propose an awful, awful, awful possible running mate to distract the media?  Condi Rice, as I have repeatedly noted, was the worst National Security Adviser in American history (not that hard since the position was created post-WWII).

Plus it gives me an excuse to post this:


And this is why my Distraction Sauce© has a hint of squirrel taste.

Bosnia in Rearview Mirror

I was on CTV News Channel discussing the anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre.  Take a look if you want.  I tended to push back--not deep hatreds but political institutions.  Not my best stuff but not too embarrassing (except for my answers on the legal stuff).

Could I Be Any More Cynical?

Imagine if Mathew Perry was saying the title: Could I BE Any More Cynical?  Hmm, check out this post at CIC on my take on corruption and see if I could BE any more cynical.

The Mutant Model of the Cuban Missile Crisis

Last night, one of the people I follow on twitter, Robert Farley, who works at the other Patterson School, watched the X-Men: First Class movie and said this:

Watching X Men: First Class.Graham Allison weeps.
— Robert Farley (@drfarls) July 11, 2012

Why? Because Graham Allison wrote THE academic book on the Cuban Missile Crisis.  No, his aim was not really to provide the definitive account, but to illustrate three ways of thinking about policy, especially defense/foreign policy:

1. One could look at governments as rational actors, making decisions that aim to advance the national interest.  This was the conventional approach at the time and is still quite prevalent.
2. One could study organizations to see how they function as machines more or less, processing information as an input and processing policy as an output.  That how organizations function shapes what they do via standard operating procedures and the like.  
3. One could take the second model further and focus not on organizations as processors but as actors in politics.  That politics takes place within governments as individuals and agencies fight to push policies that benefit themselves, more or less.  He called this government politics but became known as bureaucratic politics.  

The important question of the day is this: how does the new history of the Cuban Missile Crisis, with the important roles played by Mutants--especially Magneto and Professor X--shape what we know about Allison's three models.  The answer is this: it reminds us that there is a fourth set of folks who matter in politics: individuals.  The perceptions, passions, aspirations,affinities, ambitions and anxieties of the various Mutants determined the outcome on that day. 

With great power comes ... great power.  The X-Men had no institutions at that time to constrain their decisions.  Intra-group politics certainly mattered as the love triangle involving Mystique mattered.  But the events turned on the decisions of Professor X and Magneto, who combated each other despite their love for each other because of their conflicting visions of humankind.  So, when empowered individuals have the chance to impact the course of events, it is their personalities, their backgrounds, their proclivities that matter.  And that sucks.  Why? Because it is hard to theorize about individuals, and it is hard to code individuals without some circular reasoning.  We political scientists prefer to stick mostly to groups of individuals--parties, interest groups, countries, social movements, states, international organizations, alliances, etc.

So, Spider-Man teaches us to use power responsibly.  The X-Man, at least in the First Class edition, teaches us that Allison missed the fourth model of politics--understanding individuals as key actors.  If only he knew how empowered some actors are by their mutations....

When the Movie is Different from the Book

I have to agree with a Bill Simmons rant last week on his podcast--saying the book and the movie are different is just lame, as they are two different media.  You cannot be in the heads of folks in the movies unless you get endless narration.  Etc.

But this is still fun:










H/t To Buzz feed: http://www.buzzfeed.com/keenan/harry-potter-characters-in-the-books-vs-the-mov

Game of Thrones Illustrated

Finding myself uninspired to blog, mostly due to moving exhaustion and then driving to my daughter's camp and back exhaustion.  So, let me just insert this wonderful video here:


Perhaps I will use Breaking Bad next week as inspiration to develop a Breaking Bad theory of international conflict.  Or not. 

The Joy of Quebec Infrastructure

Today, I had to drive to and from the Laurentian mountains north of Montreal since that is where my kid goes to summer camp and today is visiting day.  Since we moved to Ottawa, we had to take a different route, one that illustrated the mess that is public planning in Quebec.  We drove on Autoroute 50 (mess #1) and went past Mirabel airport (mess #2).

Autoroute 50 is not complete, so one has to get off and take ordinary roads through towns and rural areas before getting back on.  But an unfinished highway is hardly unique to Quebec (although this province does seem to take far longer than most).  No, it is the design I want to whine about.  An autoroute has a blue shield not unlike a US Interstate:

One would then expect a divided highway with two lanes on either side.  But nay, that is not the case.  It seemed like it averaged three lanes, with each direction taking turns having a passing lane.  This makes sense if one remembers that roads in Quebec cost 30% more to build due to, well, corruption.  30% would be, well, the fourth lane, right?  So, instead of having smooth flow, we had to wait for the short passing lanes to hustle past the trucks and other vehicles that moved much slower.  Why build a big highway but not provide the minimum number of lanes to provide for smooth flow and less hurried passing?

It is fitting that A-50 goes by perhaps the most obvious mistake in the history of Quebec infrastructure: Mirabel airport.  Driving past it today, we were struck by how beautiful the terminal appeared to be (it starred in at least one movie [The Terminal with Tom Hanks and Catherine Zeta Jones] and perhaps others) and by the flora growing through the parking lot of the hotel.  The latter reminds me of the previews for Revolution, the new TV show in the fall that will take place 15 years after all the power goes out.  The airport is a significant distance from Montreal but was built to replace Dorval Airport (Trudeau airport) which was seen as too small, hemmed in by the western suburbs.  It was supposed to be THE montreal airport for international travel, but there were never any links, other than highways, built to move people back and forth.  So, it essentially died, to be used only for cargo, for Bombardier airplane manufacturing, and general aviation.  In other words, a colossal waste of money and effort.

I knew of the Mirabel story before today, but this was the first time I drove past the "facility" and marveled at the site.

Sure, we had some great crepes near my daughter's camp, but this trip reminded us of one of the reasons we are pretty happy to have moved west.  Quebec has historically been mighty messed up when it comes to planning, building and maintaining infrastructure.  Given how much stuff needs to be torn down and rebuilt between where I lived and where I worked and played (ultimate and skiing), I could not have any confidence that any of that construction would work out well.  They still haven't figured out how to connect the airport that is near downtown with downtown.  Oy.

The Taco Theory of International Intervention

Will McCants, who defeated me in our round of twitterfightclub months ago, reminded me today that I owed him an explanation:

@will_mccants "Intervention is like a taco ...."
— Stephen Saideman (@smsaideman) June 8, 2012

So, how is intervention like a taco?  If I remember what I was thinking a month ago, I think the answer is: messy.  But that is too easy.  Let's think of the ingredients that go into a taco and the obvious or less than obvious parallels in an intervention:

1. Let's start with the main filling: it can be beef (ground or not), pork (carnitas are a personal favorite), chicken, fish (very popular in some areas but never to me), shrimp, turkey, fake-meat, whatever.  In an intervention, the key question is who joins?  Is it mostly a US effort, which makes for a more robust, filling taco but one that could cause bloating (too much intervention can be a problem)?  Is it a bunch of European countries?  This would make for a blander taco (chicken--skipping the obvious joke and focusing more on the meh quality) that would perhaps be less likely to upset a delicate digestive system.  It could be a mixture of lesser militaries from countries that prefer to export their armies rather than have them hang out at home, which would be the tofu filling.  Not quite the real thing, not likely to upset a stomach, but not really what people have in mind when they think intervention.
2. The next decision is about what kind of beans to include: black or refried.  Often it is the case that an intervention builds on a previous one.  IFOR supplanted UNPROFOR, for instance.  That would be a case of refried beans.  The choice here is mostly determined by path dependence--what have you got at the point you are making the taco/intervention?  Building on a previous one?  That is often the case.
3. What vegetables to include? For a good taco, you need a good balance of meat and veggies.  For a good intervention, you need a good balance of military and civilian efforts.  The only problem with this analogy is that a good intervention might have a civilian dominate the effort, such as the High Rep in Bosnia, but, in personal opinion, the veggies should never dominate the meat in a taco.  Oh well, there are limits to any analogy.  A good mix of lettuce, onions and peppers works for me.  The UN would be the lettuce here, providing some structure and glue.  The EU would be the peppers (not hot peppers, just red/yellow/green ones) to provide critical fiber and flavor (reconstruction).  The non-government organizations would be the onions, as they are all over the place--often too much in one spot, too little in others, not really coordinated with anything.
4. Next: you have the guac and sour cream.  In moderation, these can provide some flavor and bind the ingredients together.  Too much, and not only do they overwhelm the rest of the ingredients, but they cause the taco to fall apart quickly and most messily.  So, what is the appropriate analogy here?  Hmm, how about the media?  You need to have them involved to spotlight the situation, to drive up awareness and foster oversight and accountability.  But too much or too misdirected can mean that secrets that need to be secret get blown, like negotiations or attack plans.  
5. Penultimately, you have the salsa.  It can be mild, medium, hot or muy caliente.  These refer, obviously, to the rules of engagement and the resolve behind them.  An intervention with heaps of caveats and limited rules means that it will not make much of an impact.  A taco with mild salsa is not likely to create much of a reaction.  
6. What wraps all this up?*  A soft tortilla or a hard shell?  The reality is that either will break upon eating.   This is really a trick question: the hard shell is akin to a UN effort.  If eaten forcefully, the shell will crumble quickly, making an utter mess.  However, if eating slowly, carefully, it can last a while.  On the other hand, NATO interventions are soft tortillas: surprisingly strong in containing a mixture of ingredients, but must be consumed quickly before the liquid-y materials soak through.  Kosovo and Libya were the NATO tacos par excellence: despite all of the ingredients almost bursting out, the tacos could be consumed without making too much of a mess.  Afghanistan, on the other hand, was simply too long, so that the various pieces of the NATO effort began to spill out.  The Dutch ingredients, followed by the Canadian, and then French.  Soon, the consumer just had bits and pieces of American and British meat dangling from the soaked tortilla.

*Yes, at any burrito shop, the tortilla is the first choice but it made sense to conclude with it here.

You can tell that I am somewhat biased in what I like in my taco and what I like in an intervention.  I prefer a mixture of meats for more flavor and a mixture of countries for a portfolio of capabilities and backgrounds.  I prefer black beans--that an intervention is the first one rather than refried--a repeated effort with heaps of failed international efforts to proceed the latest taco/round.  I prefer a few strong vegetables rather than too many kinds and fewer but stronger civilian efforts so that they can be coordianted.  I prefer a modicum of guac and sour cream to hold things together.  The media is a vital part, but should not be the show.  Restraint is required so that people are not endangered, that risks can be taken--such as bargaining.  I prefer hot salsa rather than muy caliente--too much discretion to the troops on the ground can be a dangerous thing.  Caveats are a blunt way to influence behavior on the ground.  Again, moderation is the key.  Finally, I prefer soft shells to hard--they are less likely to break.

So, there you have it, the Taco Theory of Intervention.

Political Science Vs. Conservative Folks

One of the reactions to my post on how negatively viewed politicalscience is these days focused on party identification or ideology—that political science is negatively viewed by conservatives because political science ridicules conservatives.

And then I ridiculed conservatives.  Damn.  Let me try to do two things here:

1) Explain my view of contemporary “conservatives” and why I find it hard not to be very critical of them.

2) Explain why political science is inherently neutral but also inherently controversial.*

* I have loved the word inherent since facing it on my first Intro to IR paper.  Pardon me if I over-use it.

In my tweeted reaction, I basically suggested that conservatives should not have a problem with political science if they were the folks I remember from the 1980s rather than the contemporary conservatives.  Why is that?  Today, that label has lost a heap of its meaning in my less than humble opinion.  When the folks who were seen as right wing two decades ago (Bob Dole) are now seen as on the left fringe of the party, that raises questions.  If people calling themselves conservatives today cannot recognize the rightward shift of the Republican Party and of the standard bearers of the conservative movement, then we may have an unbridgeable gap in perceptions.

Vehemence and refusal to compromise are not Conservative values even if they are required to be considered conservative today.  I have always thought of Conservative as meaning preservation of the status quo and/or a desire to return to some previous status quo that was seen as being better, say the 1950s.  Today’s loudest but perhaps not most representative conservatives do not really harken back to a post-World War II time that might be felt as better than the present day.  Instead, they seek to move things much further backwards to a reality that either existed in the late 1800’s or not at all.  As a result, I have a hard time arguing with these folks or taking them seriously if they are represented by Perry, Bachman, Palin, Paul, or Gingrich.  When folks argued that they would rather see Obama fail than have him and the country succeed, well, that is Radical, not Conservative. 

So, there is my bias.  But that is separate, I think, from my views of how political science can be, more or less, ideology neutral.  I do think that people’s ideologies shape the kinds of questions they ask.  For instance, one can consider the threat of failed states to human security or one can ask whether state failure facilitates terrorism.  Ideology might shape one’s disposition towards focusing on the former or the latter.  Which set of theories one finds most attractive will also be shaped by one’s political outlook.  Chances are that Marxist type theories will appeal more to those on the left,** for example, and public choice ones might appeal to those on the right.  The real key is this: no matter what your biases are, if one is doing political science as it is ordinarily conceived in the US (and parts of Canada and less consistently in the rest of the world—that is a positivist approach), one is compelled by the evidence.  That is, you can have whatever theory you want, but if it does not hold up against the evidence (experiments, surveys, quantitative analyses, simulations, case studies), then you are going to have to address that.

** However, one of my favorite books, Gilpin's War and Change, was very much Marxist in the way it juxtaposed the distribution of power (akin to the class structures) with the rules of the game/institutions (the superstructure), creating tensions that inevitably lead to ... war and change.  Gilpin was hardly a Marxist ... or was he?

When it comes to International Relations, things get surprisingly clearer because the theories themselves (with some exceptions) do not line up with the Conservative/Liberal, Right/Left split.  Are Realists Conservatives?  Well, the most prominent ones (Walt, Mearsheimer) are most frustrated by and opposed to Neo-Conservativism.  However, Realists often take stances that traditional Conservatives would like—that the pursuit of national interest should be unfettered by humanitarian impulse.  The left hated Kissinger who was the most avowedly Realist scholar/policy-maker (of course, the far right hated him as well).  Likewise, Liberalism may seem to be most compatible with the Liberal end of the American political spectrum, but that is not necessarily the case.  Liberal IR theory focuses on the competition among groups within countries to define interests and then the effort by countries to pursue such interests when they conflict or overlap with others.  The interests involved may or may not be those that folks on the left-wing would find appealing.  The content of those interests that win may make American conservatives weep or sing.  Until recently, most constructivism was pretty much driven by left of center impulses--to understand how not to use nuclear weapons, to understand where environmental movements come from, to figure out when humanitarian norms matter.  But as constructivism became more mainstream, I think that political outlook mattered much less.

Much of IR is none of these but “non-paradigmatic” or mid-range theory, focused on addressing puzzles.  Again, these puzzles may be of interest due to the scholar’s ideological dispositions or due to where the grant money is buried, but the answers they get are those that are the product of the analyses.  We may want to find x, but the data may tell us y.  If we are doing “science”, then we are stuck with the results we find.  Yes, we can lie with statistics, but most of us worry about being found out and most of us have some integrity, so most of the time, the results will tell the tale. 

Consequently, political scientists tend to be pains in everyone’s rears because we report what we find, and what we find may not be what people want to hear. 

I do think political scientists as a breed are more annoying to contemporary Conservatives since our work is reality-based.  We deal with the world as it is, not as we wish it to be.  When political scientists speculate about the future without basing it on the real world, we produce stuff that might be wildly popular but shaky at best, such as the Clash of Civilizations.  And we call that “Bad social science.”

Afghanistan as Best Buds?

The US just declared Afghanistan to be a Major Non-NATO Ally.  What does that mean?  Whatever you want it to mean, really.  It does not obligate the US to defend Afghanistan, as it is not a treaty subject to ratification by Congress.  NATO is a treaty that obligates the US (well, sort of) to defend its members, so that it is why I am so upset about relatively thoughtless enlargement to include countries that the US may not defend (Georgia). 

To make it abundantly clear that this status has dubious meaning, apparently the last country to be declared a major non-nato ally was: Pakistan.  How is that going now?  Well, the US violates Pakistan's sovereignty on a daily basis with drone attacks and dramatically with a raid now and then.  Pakistan returns the favor by supporting terrorism in Afghanistan (and India), helping to cause the deaths of American soldiers and those from NATO members and partners. 

So, the context here really matters a great deal--that the US is trying to reassure Afghanistan and send messages to the neighborhood that it will care after 2014 when most of the foreign troops are supposed to be gone.  This is not 1989 again--that the world will not forget about Afghanistan this time like it did when the Soviets withdrew.

"We see this as a powerful commitment to Afghanistan's future," she [Secretary of State Clinton] said at a news conference in the grand courtyard of Kabul's Presidential Palace. "We are not even imagining abandoning Afghanistan."

That's ok.  Everyone else is imagining it for her. The reality of the designation is that it will mean that Afghanistan can and will get:

"access to U.S. defense supplies and training and cooperation... The declaration allows for streamlined defense cooperation, including expedited purchasing ability of American equipment and easier export control regulations. Afghanistan's military, which is heavily dependent on American and foreign assistance, already enjoys many of these benefits. The non-NATO ally status guarantees it will continue to do so."

That is, until the US no longer feels like doing so.

US troops in smaller and more secret form will stick around past 2014 as will American airpower based in or near Afghanistan.  This is hardly a very credible commitment on its own, but the good news for Afghanistan is that American Presidents current and future will not want to be blamed for "losing" Afghanistan.*  This will the US a continuing incentive to stick around in some form, one that is a bit more enduring and meaningful than the label of the night/week/month.

*  Of course, people can accuse any President of losing a country at any time.

We've Got Here is a Failure to Communicate

Political science, alas, has been facing much hostility as of late.  Selected out by a Republican for de-funding, attacked by one of our own in a highly publicized and reputed piece, it is time that we wielded our tools to figure out what is going on.  Thankfully, Huber, Dowling and Hill have done some social science: surveys with some random selection to assess how people feel about Political Science compared to Psychology and Computer Science.  They find that people in general support NSF funding for political science less than for the other two with independents and Republicans far more negative to political science (although Republicans are not that fond of NSF funding of any of these dark arts) and psychology is only slightly preferred.

The scholars asked a batch of questions with these findings about what kinds of stuff people will support, broken down by party id:

Support for Different Purposes of NSF Funding
	Overall	Democrats	Independents	Republicans
To develop new technologies, products, and therapies	0.70	0.82	0.74	0.60
To improve basic understanding in the natural sciences	0.68	0.77	0.73	0.56
To train students	0.67	0.76	0.71	0.55
To improve basic understanding of human behavior	0.64	0.77	0.66	0.52
To support faculty and student research	0.63	0.73	0.67	0.52
Note: Cell entries are mean scale scores (weighted), where 1=Strongly support, .75=Somewhat support, .5=Neither support nor oppose, .25=Somewhat oppoes, 0=Strongly oppose

What we see here is an 7-8% preference for new technologies over faculty/student research or improve understanding of human behavior.  The authors conclude:

In the abstract, however, Independents are more supportive of understanding human behavior than they are of Political Science funding in particular, suggesting political scientists would do well to highlight their contributions in that area. Likewise, training students and supporting faculty and student research are reasonably popular among Independents. Perhaps the more general point is that it is hard to know what the mass public thinks Political Science funding supports, nor what elements of that work it finds objectionable. These results suggest, however, that the public, even Republicans, are more supportive of NSF funding of academic research than opposed, especially when evaluating the abstract goals that the NSF pursues. More effort highlighting these contributions, perhaps related to new technologies and the training of students, might be a fruitful way to foster support for continuing NSF funding for academic research in the social and behavioral sciences.

Interesting stuff.  I do think that political science is very much misunderstood, which may have something to do with this.  That is, we study politics, and politics is seen as dirty and unpopular.  In my experience, when I tell someone I study politics, their responses are usually focused on my ambition to be a politician or my interest in being a lawyer.  Given how much disrepute those two professions are in, it should not be surprising that we are not held in the highest esteem. 

To be clear, I think our discipline has been targeted by Republicans of late because of two basic realities--we are low-hanging fruit, and we end up presenting inconvenient truths.  First, because of the existing PR problem that people don't know what we do, we are easy to attack.  A politician hostile to any government funding of research finds it easiest to attack political scientists because we do not provide patents and other obvious markers of benefits to humankind.  I would not be surprised if Flake and others did some polling before they proposed attacking NSF funding of political science--that it plays better than cutting cancer research, for instance.  Second, we ask some damned inconvenient questions like: do politicians actually represent their constituents? what is the impact of foreign aid on repression? Why do people have political opinions that are counter to their interests? 

Aside from making fun of lawyers, what can we do?  In the short run, not a whole hell of a lot.  Everything we have borrowed/stolen from the cognitive and social psychologists tell us that it is awfully hard to persuade people to change their minds.  In the long run?  Well, we are all dead, or so the economists tell us.  In the medium run, we can perhaps do a better job of connecting our research to the problems in the world.  The whole academia/policy gap that we make much noise about--the more we bridge that gap and bridge it visibly, perhaps our added value can be more apparent. 

The good news is that we seem to be doing far more outreach now than in the past.  I have lost track on occasion of all the places on the net where I write stuff.  I am not alone--more and more political scientists are blogging, tweeting, and podcasting.  This is all to the good, as the more and more people see what we think, get snippets of research in more digestible forms, and hear our arguments, they can see that we are not aspiring politicians or lawyers but scholars seeking to understand the political world.  That politics is the making of decisions big and small that affect how communities are run (why Montreal's roads are akin to World War I battlefields), that determine that the response to the current economic crisis should be austerity, that shape interventions into Syria and other conflicts or not.

My realization tonight is that my blogging and my media appearances are not just for my own narcissism but are for the good of the profession (as long as I am not too mistaken).  The more the public sees political scientists providing some insight, some perspective, the more we can change the perception of what we are and why our work is worthy of some public support if governments are going to be in the business of supporting research.

Of course, we disagree with each other as much or more than economists disagree with each other.  That noise sometimes makes it hard to appreciate what we bring to the table.  All we can do is convey our perspectives and hope that people see some value in our views.  They don't have to agree.  They certainly will not much of the time.  But the more we step out of the ivory towers, the more we can influence how we are perceived.  Or at least, that is my wishful thinking for this night.

What else can we do to change how political science is viewed?

More Fun with Charts

Apparently, the Romney campaign does not understand Venn diagrams:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Just fun stuff.  Hey, I love charts.  I have frequently borrowed from http://ilovecharts.tumblr.com/.  Perhaps the Romney folks should study that tumblr account for a while to figure out how to do some proper graphics.

Of course, this only matters for humorists, persnickety academics, and folks who already will vote against Romney.  Getting Venn Diagrams wrong is hardly going to cost him votes among the undecided or those already in his camp.  After all, if people are willing to believe that the guy who, um, started Obamacare in the first place as a governor now is the best guy to oppose Obamacare, they are not going to notice his graphic mistakes.

Speaking of Rebels

If only I still lived on the West Coast:

Declaration of American Exceptionalism Meme

Heaps of folks have been writing about the true meaning of Independence Day and whether the US is exceptional.  I wrote on being an American abroad at CIC, but did not take on American exceptionalism.

Stephen Walt largely poo-poos the idea of American exceptionalism, as the US in its behavior in the world does what everyone else does (will need to find the link again).  I largely agree that the US is fairly ordinary in what it does in the world, but perhaps disagree about the why that Walt poses: not just about international pressures but domestic political dynamics.  Each country's politics affects/mediates how it responds to international pressures.  The US is somewhat exceptional in that sense because of its political system.  There used to be far fewer Presidential systems than there are now, but they are still the minority with most democracies being either parliamentary or mixed (having elements of presidential and parliamentary systems).  One could write a book on how such differences affect how the civilians control their militaries especially in multilateral contexts (yes, the book is now out of our hands and under review at a press). 

To be clear, my biggest problems with American exceptionalism are: (a) the refusal to compare and to learn from the experiences of other places; and (b) people using any comparisons as accusations that someone is not sufficiently supportive of the US.  The word un-American is usually used by those who are betraying American ideals (McCarthy most obviously).  To be considered un-American because one dares to think there are things the US can learn from elsewhere, that there are elements of the US that are, dare I say it, inferior, is problematic in the extreme. 

Anyhow, I would to highlight two sharp posts on related topics:

At Inkspots, there is a very good post on why this is not the day to celebrate the military and the veterans.  Instead, Gulliver argues that this is the day to celebrate what the American ideals are, not sacrifices made on behalf of those ideas, especially since most of the wars the US has fought have not been for American freedom, especially lately. 

Dan Drezner does a nice job of focusing on what the Declaration really means and what makes it stand out so:

It was the American desire to allow future Americans to migrate to these shores, and to truck, barter, and exchange with everyone else, that stands out this year when I read the Declaration of Independence.  Which is something to think about when one major party candidate for president demagogues immigration and the other one demagogues trade. 

That the US was founded on not just democratic ideas of consent but on tolerant ideals (yes, with huge caveat about slavery that took four score and then some to correct) makes the US stand out a bit.  There are other countries whose populations are nearly entirely based on past immigration (and repression of the indigenous peoples), but the conscious justification of independence based on freer flows of peoples is something that is easy to overlook but makes the US pretty darned exceptional.   Indeed, I always get more than a bit annoyed when people take anti-immigration stands in the US--these efforts betray not just American history but also American ideals. 

I have made much fun of xenophobia for a while now as I realized that hate can serve as a brake on irredentism, but in all seriousness, fear of foreigners is, despite being quite a tradition in the US, anti-American, given the words in the Declaration. 

It is this tolerance that makes possible the continuation, even in these hard times, of the American dream.  Other countries have their own dreams, of course, but I am pretty fond of the American dream.

Thinking About the American Dream

My latest at CIC: pondering the US from a short distance on Independence Day. 

Let the Game Begin

No, not the Olympics:

[Do not play if you are not caught up on the first four seasons of Breaking Bad]


16 episodes left.  Eight over the rest of this summer and eight next year.  If you think I timed the move to make sure our TV would be working right ahead of BB's season premiere, well, you would be right over-thinking things a bit.

But I cannot wait. Can you?

Size Matters

I am a big fan of Lee Child's Jack Reacher series.  Tom Cruise is going to star in the first adaption of the series. I think Tom would be fine for the intensity, but Jack Reacher is supposed to be big, way big.  And I think his voice is deeper.

Still, this movie looks pretty good anyway:

We shall see if this works out well or not.

Ottawa Rocks!

So far, what have I enjoyed and/or learned about Ottawa in my first five days?

1. Bagels come with bag ties rather than strips of tape, so I can seal them.
2. A bit more selection in the grocery stores (although Ben and Jerry's variety is still woefully limited).  A lot more selection of grocery stores--at least three in the shopping centers nearby, but probably four.
3. My neighborhood is swarming with little kids.  Fun to watch, may have to partake of the zone defense.  Maybe my daughter will have heaps of opportunities to babysit when she returns from summer camp.  It was great watching a father teach his kid to ride a bike as I was moving stuff around in our garage.  The adults have been friendly as well.
4. Tis windy.  Too many politicians in one spot?
5. Partaking of the non-Montreal Island freedom of right turn on red.
6. Everything is pretty close.  Only one bridge to worry about and even that one is not that big of a deal in rush hour (the one on Hunt Club).
7. Ok, just a bit of perverse delight that the French signs are a smidge smaller than the English ones. 
8. The hours for stores are much, much better.  This goes along with the better attitude about customer service, I guess.
9. The ultimate is sweet!  I subbed onto a team tonight that was short players due to Canada Day weekend.  The team was full of fun people with sticky hands (that meant they caught my passes), and they invited me to play with them the rest of the summer. Victory!  We played at the fields the Ottawa league owns. Yes, owns.  19 fields on what must have been a farm.  Just flat, soft fields only a twelve minute drive from my house.  Ideal field in an ideal location.  The funny thing is that as I was leaving, I heard someone call my name.  Almost as strange as hearing someone call my name in Kandahar.  It happened to be one of my former teammates/opponents from the Montreal league.  Looks like I have another game on Wednesday night. 

On the other hand, some things remain the same.  My neighbor showed me the dents made in the street and in his driveway by a city snow removal truck.  Kind of like my car being crushed by a school bus.

Anyhow, we are big fans thus far.

A Quick Musical Education

History of Rock and Roll in 100 guitar riffs:


Of course, this reminds me of my favorite marching band version of a goodbye song:


 Which is always a good lesson: don't plagiarize.

Identity Debates After All These Years

Holidays celebrating the nation tend to bring out all kinds of folks to debate what it means to be x or y.  Canada Day is no exception.  Some of this stuff, of course, is utter crap.  But they still reflect something.  In an essay about the change from Dominion Day to Canada Day, David Warren does two things that drive me crazy: talking about something being lost and trying to insult by tying his bete noire to the U.S.

First, phrasing something as lost implies that it was something someone owned to begin with.  Who lost China?  Who lost Canada?  I don't know enough about Canadian history, but I am not sure that Dominion Day was something that was lost.  It evolved, which is different. Maybe the evolution was progressive, maybe it was not.  But no one misplaced Dominion Day or used it as part of a wager and lost because the cards were bad?

Second, the phrasing in a key piece in this article is incredibly retrograde, I think:

"This is all quite unCanadian, of course. Worse, it is downright American. And I, at least, long for a return to quiet understated monarchist dignity, from the jingo airhead flag-waving to which we have degenerated."

Who should be insulted more? While one could suggest Americans for being worse than being unCanadian (I thought those terms were synonymous), I think, um, monarchists should be for being associated with this crap.  I understand that Canadians have Americans as a focal point/other in their identity.  It is only natural to try to distinguish oneself from the larger group nearby especially when, dare I say it, the differences are narrow.  That is, when two groups are very different, one does not need to find ways to sharpen the distinctions and focus on the other.  But when two groups have much in common, as Americans and Canadians generally do, then there is a temptation to demonize the other to make sure one is certain of one's own identity.

Yes, Americans and Canadians are different, as Quebeckers are from Albertans and Texans are from ... everyone.  But they have much in common, mostly the important stuff.  Democratic, prosperous, humorous, sensible (on average, not everyone, not always), not aristocratic, spacious, rich in resources, generations of immigrants with flawed histories with the folks who were here first, and so on.

I humbly submit that I am the best barometer of US/CA differences, as I have lived in both countries and practice social science on a daily basis.  I have observed that I am far more comfortable in Canada (even in Montreal) than I was in Texas.  I am far less The Other up here than I was down there.  Canadians are not Americans, and Americans are not Canadians, but Canadians have enough good stuff on their own that they do not have make them feel better by denigrating Americans.

One last thought: patriotism with the "jingo airhead flag-waving" is not so wrong.  Pride in country is a good thing if one focuses on what one's country is and is not and what its potential should be.  Flag-waving is fine on one's country's day of celebration.  It is not fine when people compete to wave the biggest flag (unless one is a car dealership) or denigrate folks for not wearing a flag pin.

Canadians have much to be proud about.  I am pretty proud to live in such a fantastic place, even if it has flaws (all countries have flaws).  Too much flag-waving is not one of them.   The right to be incredibly wrong in newspaper columns is not one of them either.

New Job Not The Same As Old Job

I was challenged by folks on twitter to ponder what I am expecting as I move from teaching in a traditional academic department to an IR policy school.  So, this was posted at CIC last week while I was scrambling to find stuff in various boxes.

Oh, Canada!

We did a quick jaunt over to the local Canada Day festivities.  If we had a small child, it would have been a blast.  Our teenager might have enjoyed it since there were a heap of teen folks floating around.  For us, we got our burgers, our funnel cake (and, due to the delayed delivery of said funnel cake, we got a sample of their fried cheesecake), and then skedaddled.  We will watch the fireworks from our house as our cat, already nervous from the move, might flip out alone.

Anyhow, today is a great day to marvel at the joy that is Canada for an immigrant like myself.  The Canada Day festivities here in suburban Ottawa were multicultural with halal food offerings plus the aforementioned semi-dangerous food.  I already feel pretty comfortable in Ottawa, having fun conversations with various strangers, and getting heaps of friendly service at various shops.  A country that has both this semi-English friendliness and the wacky dynamism that is Montreal is very special indeed.

I could enumerate all that Canada has given me over the past ten years (not to mention Michael J. Fox and other entertainers), but I am all listed out.  Perhaps next Canada Day.

Anyhow, mucho thanks and appreciation for a country that is often overlooked because it so very reliable and helpful.

Canada Day in the ROC!

ROC, for those outside of Canada, stands for Rest of Canada in any discussion of Quebec versus the rest.  Well, this is my first Canada Day where I am in the ROC.  Yes, heaps more Canadian flags here than in Montreal.  And, yes, the French signs at IKEA are smaller than the English ones. 

Blogging has remained intermittent both because my internet service has been flaky since late last night and because this unpacking stuff is hard work.  Plus we are shopping when we are not unpacking as we need stuff for this new house--towel racks, food, toilet paper holders, etc. 

Anyhow, I missed the big soccer game, and didn't make it out to Parliament Hill this time for the Canada Day celebrations.  We will squeeze in a sojourn to our local C-Day celebration sponspored by the construction company that built our development. 

Thanks to Canada for being me a great ten years and a new fun place to live.  Learning the ins and outs of operating in the national capital will be fun and challenging. 

I hope you and yours are having a very Canadian Canada Day.  I guess that means waiting politely and patiently in a lineup for some health care ;)