Two Years of Anger and Frustration: Happy Anniversary!

 Yesterday was the cotton anniversary of the pandemic in Canada.  I missed marking it as I was busy conferencing.  That and I am exhausted.  I look at last year's posts on the high's and low's of the first year, the lessons learned, and the feelings, and I marvel that I could write three separate posts on this.  I just don't have the energy this year to discuss this stuff all the time.  So, instead, let me just consider those three posts and what has changed, and then rank the years of the pandemic, because ranking is an old Spew theme.

I learned a lot in the first year of the pandemic.  Did I learn more in year two? Not really.... it was mostly more of the same.  Either that or I don't have the energy to figure this out (a recurring theme).

I charted the high's and lows after year 1.  Year two did have more highs and less lows, although it may not have felt like it:

• 
  More losses in poli sci (three big figures from my time at UCSD plus a few gods of IR), but no close friends or family this year.  We did lose Bob, our cat, who became super friendly in his last months with us. 
  
  
  
• More covid in the family--all the nieces and nephews have had one bout, I believe.  My daughter has dodged it entirely--her discipline and enthusiasm for testing are marvels to behold.  One niece has had a series of injuries on the mountains--bike and ski--which absolutely sucks, but no serious cases of covid.
• Vaxxed--everyone in my family is vaxxed, and only one side of the family is short of boosters.
• 
  Last year, I missed most not seeing my daughter.  I got to see her at the summer vacation, Thanksgiving, and Winterfest this year.  Much, much better.  And I got to see the rest of my family multiple times.  My sister crashed the 30th anniversary celebration as she joined me on the slopes of Whistler! Definitely a highlight.
  
• Did I mention I got to ski Lake Louise, Whistler, and Fernie in the same winter?  I was definitely willing to fork out a heap of $ to make this work after a year of denial.  
• Most regretted pandemic decision of the second year: probably the VR headset as I, well, suck at VR games too and haven't made the time to play.  
• 
  Furthest I traveled: Copenhagen.  For a civil-military relations conference that pissed off the Danish military.  It was a great trip--I learned a lot, got to hangout with some civ-mil scholars who are sharp and silly, meet new people, and enjoy a terrific city (I even dared to bike!)
• Average pants-wearing: went up a bit as I started teach in person a few weeks ago, but probably only 1.3 days a week as I stayed home most of the time, except for grocery shopping.  My wife was shocked to see me wear my pj's as I would go get the mail at the community mailbox.  
• Until classes started, I had gone to campus only three or four times--to deliver baked products to thank the Dean for travel permission, to get a shot, to swap out books for the new terms.  Only in the past few weeks have I been on campus for more than a few minutes at a time.
  
• Ultimate!  I played last summer until my body said nay, nay.  And then I started again this winter and have been able to stay on the field!
• The fave recipes remains mostly the same although the NYT gnocchi/cheese/burst tomatoes recipe rocks mightily and is super easy.  I did make another batch of CCCPD's to celebrate the pandemic anniversary.
  
• Not much snowshoeing or cross country skiing this year--it was often too cold and then travel (downhill skiing!) got in the way.  
• Favorite mask is now the Costco KN-95.... so much for style as the focus is now on efficiency.
• Less re-watching this year as we got a heap of great new stuff with the faves being Hawkeye, Free Guy, Invincible, Mitchells vs the Machines, We Are Lady Parts, Only Murders in the Building, Yellow Jackets, and now the Adam Project.
  
  
• Movies in the theater: Shang-Shi and No Way Home!!  Black Widow was fun, too.  The Batman was ok. 
• Podcast of the year: Dead Eyes, about an actor who got fired by Tom Hanks from a small role in Band of Brothers.  It finished beautifully.
• Biggest Surprise: that 2022 would be worse than 2021.
• and the highlight of the year was the silliest poker game at Chez Saideman
  

Are the feelings the same at the end of year two as in year one?  I think I am even more angry.  That the availability of vaccines should have made things much better, but we had people and parties push back hard against something that could have saved even more lives.  The wasted lives, the wasted time, the unnecessarily stressed health care workers, the fucking idiots who occupied Ottawa, all of this is so enraging.  That everyone is reopening now even though rates of vaccines in the US and boosters in Canada are below where they should be, that there will be a new wave even without a new variant simply because governments are opening too soon does indeed trigger this lib.  Frustration? Hell yeah for the same reasons. The learning curves seem to be so flat.  The ups and downs can be most frustrating--that we thought last summer that we had this thing beat and the Delta kicked our ass and then things got better and then Omicron was all over the place. The second year was less lonely as we did start to go out and do things again.  I had an awesome poker game at my house in between waves (just barely).  I have traveled a bit to go to a Copenhagen conference that might have done damage to their civil-military relations, to three, yes, three ski trips to hang out with friends and family and celebrate 30 years of Mr. and Mrs. Spew! So, year two was less lonely, although not as good as pre-pandemic life certainly.  Fear?  Having three shots has mostly reduced the fears.  Relatives and friends have gotten very mild bouts of covid, but travel still is a bit unnerving with the need for tests and the concern of being a vector. Grief?  Jeez, the casualties from this thing have mounted--that year 2 was far more deadly than year 1 and mostly unnecessarily so.  Still lucky that no immediate kin or friends paid the highest price for this, but I am mourning the loss of yet another year in the life of younger folks and older folks, for which one year is such a big thing.  Relief? Damn, I don't know any more.  Things are better, but I worry about more waves and less willingness by people and politicians to do the right thing.  Which means, yes, the second year did diminish my hope.  Vaccines had so much promise and yet here we are.  The treatments are better, the promise of even better vaccines is around the corner, and all that, but, damn, so many people seem determined to value their political identity more than their health, their families, their friends, or their communities.  So, perhaps less acceptance than last year?  Definitely more exhaustion even though I am baking less.  Maybe I need to bake more?

2020 seemed to be the worst year of this thing because of the uncertainty and the change in how we lived our lives.  But more people died in 2021, and year 2 of the pandemic had more toxic politics even if Trump was no longer in power.  That we have vaccines is great, that many folks aren't getting them because their political identity gets in the way or because they are in parts of the world that we have failed is awful.  So, I'd have to rank the second year of the pandemic as being worse than the first even though I got to see more of my family in the second year. Year three starts with a tragic war in Europe, so.... yeah.

Best of luck to you and yours as we keep working our way through this thing.

Conferencing on Ottawa Defence and Security

So great to be in quiet downtown at Hogwarts.

Today, I watched and participated in the Ottawa Conference on Security and Defence, a 90 year tradition run by the Conference of Defence Associations Institute (the think tank associated with the various veterans associations).  I have attended regularly in the past and appeared once or twice before.  CDAI is a CDSN partner, so we try to support them in this and their other efforts.  This big show is THE Canadian defence conference of the year, with the Minister of National Defence, the Chief of the Defence Staff, and other bigwigs from here and elsewhere giving talks.  There have been US 4 star officers regularly on the program and even, once, an ex-defence minister/plagiarist from Germany. In the past, I have live tweeted and summarized the conference.  Today, I did a little bit of the former, and here's my attempt at the latter.

To start, I missed the virtual first day and the in-person second day due to competing commitments.  I missed the big speech by the Chief of the Defence Staff yesterday alas.  This morning kicked off with Dr. Cynthia Watson of the US National War College having a conversation with Richard Fadden, the former National Security/Intell Adviser (the closest thing Canada has to a National Security Adviser), focusing on China.  It was very interesting.  The focus at the start was on what does the Ukraine situation mean for Taiwan, with the possibility that it might change the timeline but not alter the CCP's stance--that Taiwan can't become independent and that it might just be invaded someday.  One thing I hadn't thought of--the war in Ukraine has important implications for China's food security since it gets much grain from Ukraine and Russia. 
Because she had to go after about 25 minutes, Fadden shared his thoughts, and he was quite sharp and coherent despite his assertions to the contrary.  The big question: now that there is pressure to increase the defence budget, who much and to what end?  He argued that while the developing countries support the sanctions against Russia, they will blame the west for the higher food prices that will harm them. He then asked whether the government is thinking beyond the short term--what is our strategy down the road?

This was not a manel as the French MoD
speaker was zoomed in

The next panel was on the Indo-Pacific with a mix of Canadian naval officers, retired American admiral (who spent way too much time talking about his background), French defense civilian, and Aussie attaché.  I found it interesting, but I took poor notes.  

 

 

I cleaned up
for this event

The next panel was the one where I chatted with Darren Bricker, who has written much on Canadian politics and works for the polling firm IPSOS.  He once wrote a book about the Laurentian elite, so he took my question about the Ottawa bubble and ran with it.  He discussed how it is not really inflation that is upsetting Canadians but the high price of housing--that the young folks are upset that they may not be able to buy a house.  We discussed public opinion and the Canadian Armed Forces--that the scandals have had an impact on how the public views the CAF.  

Most people were waiting for Minister of National Defence Anita Anand's talk, and the number of folks with multiple leafs on their shoulders increased by quite a bit.  I don't think they were disappointed.  She didn't say anything very controversial, but she was far more dynamic, interesting, and engaging than her predecessor.  She made prof jokes while also doing a nice prof job of outlining her talk--focusing on Ukraine first, the wider international picture, and then the CAF.  Her talking points were similar to other NATO leaders--that we would defend "every inch of NATO territory" which does not make Ukraine or Moldova or Georgia feel great, but, well, these various lines do matter quite a bit. She emphasized that the weapons and other equipment we promised to Ukraine have been delivered, which is remarkable for a government that decides slowly and procures even more slowly (except for vaccines). 
She emphasized the focus on NORAD/northern warning modernization--that it is in her mandate letter--with $250m allocated and that is just the start.  This was very much in line with the new consensus in town--that defence budget cuts are not going to happen anytime

soon thanks to Putin/Russia.  In the Q&A, she was asked about whether we would go farther on NORAD stuff--to join the US anti-ballistic missile efforts.  This is where she got the most careful in her wording--that we would be working very closely with the Americans.  The ABM stuff is controversial because Canada didn't opt in way back when Bush was president since he was tossing out a key international agreement, and the Liberals are huge fans of the rules-based order.  I think at this point, the ABM treaty is dead, so resisting is moot (that the US still can't reliably shoot down ballistic missiles is an issue, of course), but this seems to be a Liberal bugaboo. 
Regarding the efforts to reassure the Baltics and deter the Russians, Canada is now indefinitely extending (which makes much sense and here's the episode of #BattleRhythm with a former commander of the battlegroup), surging a bit, and committing to another rotation of air policing in Romania (see this episode of #BattleRhythm for my interview with the officer who commanded the previous rotation).  She noted that having more than 3k troops on alert is straining the force.
In the last part of her planned comments, she talked about the CAF.  Much of her discussion was rah-rah--that the troops are doing amazing things in a very difficult time.  And this makes sense--she needs their buy-in for the reforms she will be pushing AND the troops have been doing great things.  However, resistance is already building to the culture change and other stuff that needs to be done as the past year has been a bit of a reckoning for the CAF--that the abuse of power scandal has revealed much about the CAF, and we need more clarity of what is being changed to inflict civilian control upon the military.  She discussed procurement, committing to the 15 ships (of course) and to making a decision about the fighter replacement (seemed like she committed to this happening this year, but I may have heard wrong).
In the Q&A, Anand pushed back against having a new defence review, arguing that she is moving now to change stuff, and does not want to wait for a review.  I would argue that Canada needs to have regular reviews, like other countries, so that we have a regular set of benchmarks that get evaluated and revised, that we adapt in a more regular fashion.  She brought up the domestic operations (floods, fires, pandemic) in the Q&A, but I would have liked to have seen her discuss that as part of her comments.  We need to move from domestic ops as an afterthought or as a fourth priority towards making that aspect of the CAF's work as important as expeditionary operations/alliance support.
Anand noted that she does not know how long she will be in this position as they have a minority government, so her focus is on doing what she can every day.  Anand did a far better job yesterday answering a question I asked Vance when he was CDS in 2018: how do you make sure this stuff lasts beyond you?  She talked about institutionalizing the reforms, so that these things will continue after her party loses an election (or if she gets elevated to another post). I didn't ask her any questions as I will have an opportunity to do that in the near future.

Dan does NPSIA proud.

The last thing I'd like to note is that in the one day I was present, I'd say the majority of audience questions were asked by NPSIA MA students who did us proud.  They asked sharp, interesting, relevant questions of the various speakers.  Well done!

The view from the stage

Russian Irredentism: Killing the Kin to Save Them

Watching recent events (and inspired by this tweet about Latvia's PM's take on this), I am reminded of the misquoted from the American war in Vietnam: we had to destroy the village in order to save it.  Seems like Putin's Russia is killing the kin in order to save them.  That the attacks on the Russian-speaking parts of Ukraine are hurting those that Russia is supposedly trying to help.  This speaks to a variety of aspects here that I want to address.

First, when a country tries to reclaim supposedly lost territory, the ethnic kin in the lost territory don't have to demand this effort but it does help legitimate (or at least soften the illegitimacy) of the cause. It also might impact the domestic politics of the redeeming country.  In our book, Bill and I found that irredentist foreign policies did not seem to be related to how endangered the kin are (see middle column of the table to the right), but, of course, we didn't consider whether the danger came from the irredentist state.

Second, the plight of the kin (real or imagined) can operate in at least two ways: putting pressure via domestic politics on the leadership of the kin state to do something about it or providing an opportunity for the leadership to focus the domestic audience on this threat to the nation (which includes those outside the country).  That is, it can be a bottom-up or top-down dynamic.  In this case, it is pretty clear it is top-down--that Putin was under little or no pressure to do something about the plight of Russians in the Ukraine.  Instead, among his motives may have been a desire to strengthen Russian nationalism at home by emphasizing the us-ness of Russian speakers within and outside of Russia at the expense potentially of other conceptions of the Russian nation.  But I can't imagine that killing Russian speakers in Ukraine helps the building of domestic support within Russia or to define the Russian nation in ways that abet Putin's desires to stay in power.

This reinforces my conclusion (and my bias) that irredentism does not have to be sincere, and that Russia's irredentism towards Ukraine, besides maybe Crimea*, is entirely insincere.  I never thought that the separatist groups in the Donbass were genuine efforts at greater self-determination but rather created by Russia.  Putin's speech to kick off the war was very much an irredentist appeal--that Ukraine never really existed and has always been Russian, etc.  Despite this speech, I am not so sure he is all that sincere--that he would have been happy in 2013 with a pro-Russia Ukraine, he would have been happy in 2021 with a pro-Russia Crimea-less Ukraine.  I don't think Putin is really motivated to create a Greater Russia despite his apparently longing for the good old Soviet days.  I do think he wants domination--that dominating Ukraine and Belarus and other parts of the former Soviet space would have been sufficient.  

The threat to that domination was never NATO but the European Union.  That is, an alternative, west-leaning model has been a threat to Putin's domination of Russia and much of the former Soviet space.  Again, the timing here is suggestive--2014 when Ukraine starts looking to the EU; 2022 when Ukraine keeps looking westward.

And here is an irony and a stupidity: that Putin, by absorbing Crimea and by taking the eastern regions of Ukraine out of Ukraine's political system, altered the balance of political power in Ukraine.  He removed the most Russia-leaning components, which meant that even if the rest of Ukraine wasn't pissed off, the balance of voters shifted by subtraction, making it more likely to have pro-western leaders.  Putin improved Zelenskyy's chances of getting elected.  When folks talk about California seceding, I push back, saying that would alter the balance of power in the US, making it impossible for the Dems to win at the national level.  Well, Putin did this--he made it far harder for a pro-Russian Ukrainian politician to win just on the numbers, not to mention antagonizing many Ukrainians via his bullying.

This conflict is an intersection of many things: irredentism and other elements of ethnic politics (see the Ukrainian diaspora mobilize), civil-military relations, alliance politics, sanctions, coercive diplomacy, nuclear strategy (stability-instability paradox), and more.  From most perspectives, Putin has screwed up bigtime, including the third classic error of thinking regime change will be easy (don't wager with a Silician when death is on the line is the second).  Which, of course, is not reassuring because there is plenty of room for Putin to get into deeper and deeper trouble, hurting more and more people and risking a wider and wider war. 

* The referendum was a sham, but there did seem to be a fair amount of Crimean Russians who wanted to be in a Greater Russia.

The Disease of MOAR

 Pat Reilly, the NBA coach and then general manager, apparently would talk about the disease of me or of more--that after winning a championship, repeating becomes hard because players focus more on themselves and less on the team.  This is not what I am discussing today, but this is where the phrase came from.

 Today, the disease of MOAR is the nearly constant demand for leaders to do more than are currently doing.  The status quo can never be quite good enough--leaders must do more. The media often ask: there is this thing you are doing, why aren't you doing more?  The opposition, if they like a policy, can argue that it is insufficient and demand MOAR.  The two, the opposition and the media, feed off each other as they demand more.

Why am I thinking about this now?  Because folks are demanding that the US, Canada, and NATO do MOAR to help Ukraine.  Let's see...they have cooperating more than we thought possible two weeks ago to levy and enforce very painful sanctions.  They have almost competed with each other to arm the Ukrainians.  They have reinforced the defenses of neighboring countries.  They have engaged in much diplomacy both to build the cooperation on this side and to try to get Russia/Putin to relent.  They have given Ukrainian President Zelenskyy heaps of platforms.

BUT WE NEED TO DO MOAR!!!  We need to do a no fly zone, we need to intervene directly.  I have written about the NFZ and memed as well [here's my very blunt tv hit on this]. I won't get into it now except to say that it is quite normal for Ukrainians to demand that the west does more including getting involved quite directly via a NFZ that would lead to Americans and Canadians and Germans and Brits and French and others killing Russians in Ukraine and in Russia.  This certainly would be MOAR, but given that Ukraine is facing horrific assaults, these folks can demand MOAR.

The media?  Probably not. They should be aware that certain steps on the escalation ladder are more risky than others.  We have spent nearly 80 years trying not to engage in wars with nuclear power states because we don't know that they will stop at the conventional level.   In this crisis, we are very close the threshold where MOAR means a real risk of nuclear war.  Which means that asking for MOAR is pretty damned irresponsible (unless you are Ukrainian).  

But it is so easy and tempting to ask for MOAR because it puts the government on the defensive, having to explain that having the technical ability to do MOAR does not mean that MOAR is a good idea.  The good news is that in this case, MOAR is so very bad that it isn't going to happen.  Biden won't do it, and he won't be pushed by Trudeau and others to do it.  

I just wish folks would take seriously that MOAR is not always better and be critical of those who demand MOAR.

Why No No Fly Zone?

 I made this a few days ago and it appears to be still required

Why?

Because a retired general in Canada (as well as some elsewhere) have been calling for NATO to enforce a No Fly Zone over Ukraine.  People seem not to be too concerned about the risk of, well, global thermonuclear war.  So, let's play it out, shall we, with a general X and a Minister of National Defence A:

MND A: So, what do you recommend for us to do?
General X: We should declare a No Fly Zone over Ukraine so that the Russians can't bomb civilian targets.
MND A: What about missiles and artillery?
General X: Oh, the Russians have plenty of those and use them to devastate Ukraine.
MND A: So, why enforce a No Fly Zone?
General X: It is the least we can do, we need to do MOAR!
MND A: Ok, so if we do the NFZ, that means we fly over Ukrainian air space and shoot down Russian planes and helicopters and drones, right?
General X: Well, sure, but we would also want to shoot them down while we are flying in allied airspace to take advantage of how far our weapons can fly and reduce the risks to our pilots from their fighter aircraft.
MND A: Oh, so we would be attacking from allied airspace, but keeping our attacks focused only on planes in Ukrainian airspace.
General X: oh, and anti-aircraft batteries.
MND A: In Ukraine?
General X: well, the Russians have built up anti-aircraft systems nearby--on Russian territory including Kaliningrad. 
MND A:  So, we'd leave those alone, right?  We wouldn't want to attack anything in Russian territory, right?
General X: We'd have to take them out.  To enforce a No Fly Zone, the first step is to take out the anti-aircraft systems of the adversary so that our planes could fly safely.
MND A: So, if we attack Russian weapon systems in Russian territory, what would stop them from doing the same--attacking our weapon systems in allied territory?
General X:  Well, if they did that, they would be escalating and risking a war with NATO as it would potentially lead to the invoking of Article V.
MND A: Let me get this straight, we would attack Russian units in Ukraine and probably Russia, but we would expect them to be restrained?
General X: Sure, because they wouldn't want to start World War III.
MND A: Wouldn't we be starting with our attacks on Russian military units, something that everyone has tried to avoid for about 70 years?
General X: I don't think it would raise the risk of nuclear war by that much.
MND A:  So, it would raise the risk of nuclear war.
General X: Sure, but only by ... say ... 10%. 
MND A: So we have gone from nuclear war being improbable to being possible but not likely?
General X: Well, yeah, but, see, we would be doing something more than what we are doing now.
MND A: And we would only be risking a smidge of nuclear war... General, you are fired.

End scene

 To be fair, Hillier is retired, and retired generals can spout reckless stuff all they want.  The nuclear era is a dangerous place, and one of the rules to avoid nuclear war has long been not to shoot at countries that have nuclear weapons.  Sure, we had some pilots from various opponents engage each other over the skies of Korea and Vietnam, but there was heaps of plausible deniability and no risk of allied/enemy territory being hit.  In this case, the NFZ would be most public--no deniability--and NATO/Russian territory would be implicated.

 

Putin and Ukraine: Irredentism 101

 Irredentism is refers to efforts by groups or countries to reunify lost territories with a homeland.  I wrote a book with Bill Ayres about the irredentism that did and did not occur in the 1990s: Greater Armenia, Greater Croatia, Greater Serbia vs Hungary, Romania, and Russia not pursuing such efforts.  We got to release a paperback edition with a new preface in 2015 thanks to .... Putin's irredentist move where Russia seized Crimea.  Here's what I know about irredentism from my previous work and from other people's work in this area and how these basic rules apply here.

1. Irredentism is always costly for the country engaging in the effort--it generally requires war since countries do not part with their territory without a fight (well, almost always).
2. What is bad for the country may or may not be good for the leader.  Irredentism is a nationalist effort that can tie folks together towards a common identity.  Politicians may use irredentist appeals (whether they follow through on it or not) to refocus the country's nationalism on this cause rather than other aspects (see Hungary and Viktor Orban where Hungary was optimally obnoxious to the neighbors--enough to get support domestically, not enough to risk war).
3. #2 suggests a third rule--Realists have a hard time explaining irredentist efforts because they do not help the country become more secure or even gain more power.  They just gain perhaps some territory and some new citizens.  In the 21st century, this does not help Russia become more powerful or more secure.  Maybe it will make Putin more secure, but that ain't the same thing, is it?
4. Irredentism is driven by domestic political dynamics more than international.  Some would argue that countries engage in irredentism when there is a good opportunity, but I can summon examples where countries not only jump through open windows but also attempt to jump through brick walls.  Somalia engaged in irredentism both when it was relatively stronger than its neighbors and when it was weaker.  Croatia engaged in irredentism even as it was being taken apart by an irredentist war thanks to Serbia.
5. What about these domestic political dynamics?  It is not just pure nationalism since nationalisms are around all the time--it takes a political entrepreneur to push for "reunion" and one has to figure out their game.  And that is where I am mostly stumped since I don't know contemporary Russian politics these days.  All I can say for certain is that the domestic game matters quite a bit.  
6. One thing that enables Putin is that Russia is already a multiethnic country dominated by one group.  This war doesn't change that, and irredentism is easier/more desirable for countries in this position.  In our book, we found that fear or hate of others, xenophobia, can actually inhibit irredentism since a successful irredentist foreign policy is the equivalent of a giant wave of immigration--adding many new others to one's country.  But Russia is not so xenophobic so it can do this without the nationalist backlash (unlike, say, Hungary).   

Update:  7.  Irredentism need not be consistent.  The actor may not claim all disputed/historical territory.  The key is what is digestible--who lives where, how easy are they to rule, what do they do to the domestic political balance of the irredentist state.  In this case, that means maybe Eastern Ukraine gets absorbed formally or informally but perhaps not all of Ukraine.  

Russian irredentism here is more than just imagined since the territory in question used to be part of Russia and there are Russian speakers who may identify with Russia and want to be part of Russia (#notallUkranians or even residents of Eastern Ukraine).  Saddam Hussein's moves against Kuwait were not really irredentism since there was not really a people or land to be be redeemed.

This does not make Russia's moves legitimate at all.  But it does give this a bit more heft within Russia than Poland or Bulgaria.  The Baltics?  Oh my.  The history gives Putin something to play with and he seems to have his own grievances at stake in all of this--resenting the breakup of the Soviet Union.  International law, such as it is, is not on his side.   Conquest is not hip as the Kenyan rep at the UN made clear.  And while the US has committed many awful acts including a pretty illegitimate war in 2003, it has not engaged in conquest lately.  Who has?  Um, China with Tibet and perhaps Taiwan in the near future.  So, rule 6: don't expect the UN to stop this.  

This is a bad move for Russia and the Russian people and much worse for Ukraine.  Whether it pays off politically for Putin is not clear.  Many irredentist efforts are gambles that do not pay off very well.   And, yeah, there was not much anyone could do to deter Putin and Russia in this.  As long as the US/NATO weren't willing to risk WWIII over a non-ally, we had few cards to play.  

In sum, irredentism means war, and it is not easy to deter or prevent.  Ukraine is screwed, and there is not much we can do about it but make it costly.

Rooting for the Cops? Well, Yeah

Some say yesterday was a sad day in Ottawa, but I was pretty elated.  After two years of watching cops repress Black Lives Matter protestors, I am now rooting for cops as they arrest far right extremists that have occupied downtown Ottawa.  Does that make me and mine hypocrites?  No, for a couple of reasons focusing on both the conduct of the protests and the content.

First, I don't remember BLM protesters using kids as shields.  I don't remember BLM groups trying to use arson as a tool of mass murder (yes, some BLM protests had fires, but no attempts to lock down and then burn an apartment building).  BLM groups did not harass and assault health care workers, the media, or passersby who were masks.  This has not been a peaceful protest despite the hot tubs and singing.  The far right extremists in town have been bullying storeowners and threatening the residents.  

Second, the content also matters.  BLM protesters were protesting police brutality, and the police kept on providing more evidence that the BLM cause was just.  The far right extremists in Ottawa were opposing ... heaps of stuff as their crazed conspiracy shit metastasized.  They oppose vaccine mandates and mask restrictions at a time where these are two of the best ways to mitigate a pandemic.  Their MOU (a memorandum of understanding because a manifesto would have sounded too commie?) called for the elected government of Canada to be tossed out by those who don't have the power to do so (the Governor General and the Senate).  They are really upset that Trudeau is in power--but that is because the parties they favor and that pander to them lost.  The election was partly over mandates with the Conservatives pandering to the far right and the far right party focusing very much on this.  And they lost.  60% of Canada voted against these two parties.  Yes, Trudeau only got a third of the vote, but the pro-vax mandate, pro-mask restrictions parties won bigly.  Oh, and most of the restrictions are actually set at the provincial level.  

For three weeks, Ottawans were not upset at the cops for being too brutal, but that they didn't do anything at all except seemingly empower the worst of the worst.  We sincerely worried about white supremacists within the police force.  So, when we finally saw the police carefully, slowly, methodically push back and use much less force than the police forces of the US at the various BLM protests, we were and are elated and relieved.  The behavior of these cops has been quite restrained--so far, no one has been beaten.  Yes, windows were broken when folks refused to get out of their vehicles.  But they had been repeatedly warned.  I do wonder if any kids were taken into protective custody, but that is on the parents, who were repeatedly warned.  

While the far right media are trying to make this thing a colder version of Tianamen square, we have to remember that (a) the protesters in China were pro-democracy while those in Ottawa are anti-democracy; and (b) we have no idea how many were killed that day in China, and we know how many were killed in Ottawa (zero).  

Ultimately, it comes down to this: we want the cops to protect and serve the public, not themselves and not far right extremists.  Yesterday and again today, the police in Ottawa are serving the public.  

And, yes, there might be a hint of bias in all of this because:

 

Why Does Canada Need the Feds to Intervene?

 Yesterday, Justin Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act, which significantly escalates the role of the federal government in dealing with the far right extremist occupations of Ottawa and various border spots.  Will this make a difference?  Well, the various tools that were brandished yesterday suggest so.  The threat of anti-terrorism financial tools potentially destroying the organizers' ability to, well, function in the economy could make a big difference.  Indeed, this is quite a hammer... but is it necessary?

The challenge that many are leveling against Trudeau and the federal government (after two weeks of so many folks asking for leadership and MOAR!) is that there are plenty of tools at the provincial level.  The provinces could have yanked the certifications of the trucks, their licenses, and all that kind of stuff to greatly increase the costs of participating in this stuff.  But they chose not to do so.  

The big difference between the federal level and several of the provinces is not the legal stuff but the political stuff.  Trudeau does not have to worry about alienating his right flank with these decisions.  Doug Ford (Ontario), Jason Kenney (Alberta), and Scott Moe (Saskatchewan) all are Conservative party folks (in Canada, the provincial parties have more distance from the national ones) who have to worry about alienating the far right folks in their party, not unlike how those in the GOP have had to worry about their far right folks.  Ford has had plenty of opportunity to do more to clear out Ottawa of these extremists, but has chosen not to do so.  He only get some semi-serious about the Windsor blockade since it threatened to choke off much of the car industry in Ontario.  But Ottawa, he does not really care that much about--he resides in Toronto and his base is in Toronto.  

Not only have these Conservatives refused to penalize the extremists but they have sought to appease them by reducing restrictions as quickly as possible.  (Here's my poll re the biggest appeasers in Canada).  To be fair to Ford, his pattern has always been to tighten restrictions late and reduce them too soon.  Testing has completely fallen apart, so it is not clear what data is being used to justify the elimination of vax requirements.  Certainly not whether the hospitals are under stress or not (hint: they are still under great stress). 

Anyhow, I am not sure that the crisis meets the threshold for the Emegencies Act (I don't play a lawyer on TV), but I can easily understand why the feds could drop the hammer more so than the provincial leaders.  But then the hammer is likely to be much heavier with more consequences (good and bad).  We shall see if this leads to better police coordination given that the city and provincial police authorities have utterly failed Ottawa.  It will certainly lead to the organizers of this thing will pay a higher price than they might have expected a week ago.  Their ability to get car loans, mortgages, credit cards, bank accounts, and the like may have disappeared overnight.  And, no, I don't have much sympathy for the far right.  So, sucks to be them right now.  

What happens next?  We shall see if the feds can deliver, something that has been a mixed bag over the past six years.

Policiing is Always Political

 One of the most misunderstood quotes in all of civil-military relations is that war is politics by other means.  I was reminded of it as folks were tweeting today about the current mess in Ottawa having political and policing dynamics as if policing is not inherently political.

Politics is a term to describe pretty much anything where the decisions are being made that affect the public.  Sure, politicians do politics all the time as they try to make decisions that will allocate, redistribute, regulate, etc.  But other actors also do politics, and, of the various actors in any place, the police are among the most political.

There is no private space for policing--everything they do involves the public.  And there is a heap of decision-making because they have finite resources, time, and energy, so they are constantly having to make decisions about which laws to enforce, what constitutes a sufficiently egregious violation to warrant attention, whom to watch, whom to stop, etc.  As someone who speeds much of the time, I am very well aware that the cops don't enforce the speed limit at exactly one mile or kilometer/hr over the speed limit.  We tend not to think that much about the politics of speed limits except when photo radar gets proposed that would reduce the discretion of the speed-trap monitor.  But when photo radar is brought up, the politics does not end since the question remains--where to install it?

Of course, I can speed because I am a white dude.  I don't fear a traffic stop like people of color do, as my death or beating is not a likely outcome of such an encounter.  This gets us to the deeply political nature of policing as police don't treat every person the same.  There is much politics involved in who gets policed.  Stop and frisk everyone?  Nope, mostly people of color.  The current crisis in Canada, which has angered heaps of white folks, shows that policing is political as the white supremacists, far right extremists have faced far less policing than the average Indigenous demonstration.  There have been plenty of pictures and videos showing cops being pretty damned friendly with those holding Ottawa hostage. So, who gets policed is up to the discretion of the cops, and they have used this discretion in ways that have deeply challenged public order.

For the past few years, it has been abundantly clear that the cops in North America have been out of control--that they have used their discretion as they see fit, treating far right folks with kid gloves and brutally beating those people who have the temerity to protest police brutality.  When mayors and city councils have tried to regulate them, when authorities have required mask and vax mandates, police unions have pushed back, just as they push back against any accountability for police brutality.  If that were not problematic enough, the way things seem to work in Canada is that the politicians don't think that they have the power to direct the police.  So, the cops are even more autonomous, even as they make decisions with bigger and bigger political consequences.  The Mayor of Ottawa talked about the failures of policing using the passive voice today, as if he didn't have any role in this.  

I see people of color online noting that the white folks seem to be surprised that the cops are out of control, that they police selectively, and their selectivity often seems to favor white supremacists.  They know it has always been thus, but that white folks didn't really understand it in Ottawa, anyway, until now.  So, no, this is not really news.  I have long assumed that the cops here were out of control--what I did not know is that the politicians thought that this was normal and acceptable.  

Maybe that will change now.  Or maybe the citizens will have to do what the cops refuse to do.  I am writing this as my colleagues and friends have joined counter-protests that are keeping the extremists from reinforcing downtown with yet more assholes.  When told by the cops to move aside, that the cops will handle it, the crowds scoffed and remained in place.  Because, of course, they have no reason to believe the cops.  

There are several unanswered questions but two come to mind:

1. Will any politicians pay a price in the next election for screwing this up?
2. Will the police pay a price for their refusal to do their job?  

If those who have failed us don't experience consequences, any chance to learn from this, to do better next time, evaporate.  And that, too, will be political.

Anger and the Academic

 We academics are accused of two things: that we are too dispassionate and that we tend to suck all the emotion out of our theories.  Well, not all of us, but folks like me, who are either soft rational choice types or more strict rational choice types.  The occupation of parts of Ottawa by far right extremists has caused me to think about this a bit.

First, I am about as angry as I have ever been about political stuff.  I hit some peaks during the Trump Administration especially when we saw pictures of little Muslims kids in handcuffs.  And during some of the violence aimed by police at those protesting police brutality.  Am I angry because these assholes have pissed on the war memorial?  Because they defaced the Terry Fox statue?  Because they burned a Canadian flag?  Because they have been carrying swastikas?  No, that stuff is annoying and offensive, but it does not cause me to have a semi-blinding rage.  Perhaps it is the combination of how incredibly stupid these folks seem to be (no, the Governor General and the Senate don't have these powers and most of the covid regs are provincial) and how craven the Ottawa cops have been.  That these folks are not only getting away with bullying the city and its residents but that they are being taught by the police that they can keep doing it and even do it in other parts of the city.  

Second, regarding how we political scientists often treat this stuff, we tend to assume that folks are acting rationally and go on from there, assuming away often the emotional stuff.  A friend, Stuart Kaufman, sought to correct this with his book Modern Hatreds.  While ancient hatreds is a bad way to explain stuff, frequently becoming a rather racist account, modern hatreds blends the psychology of emotions with more structural stuff.  That security and insecurity are emotional dynamics. In this case, the deplorables are people who are angry and resentful (mostly because white folks are seeing that non-white folks are doing well and that makes them feel like they are losing their status) and that mobilizes enough of them to hang out here.  They can do so because of a few structures: the ease with which outside trolls can fund this stuff so that the assholes here can get gas and such; the right-wing party politics I have discussed before; the principal-agent problems within local and provincial law enforcement (who's in charge and who knows what the officers on the ground are doing--providing aid and comfort to the occupiers?); etc.  So, it is not just raw emotion at work, but the blinding stupidity of the claims and demands have much to do with emotion.  

Indeed, one of the strange dynamics of the past ten years is how much the right is motivated by the desire to trigger the Libs.  In the US, this has ultimately been suicidal as refusing to wear masks, refusing to get vaxxed is more about pissing off the center/left as it is about any principled position about "freedom."  It may be emotionally satisfying to piss off your opponents, but if doing so risks the lives of oneself, one's friends, and one's family, well, that is pretty dumb.  But hey, if some grifters can make money off of it, then why not?

Perhaps my takes here are biased by my anger.  But so far, the behavior of these folks seem to justify my anger quite a bit.  And, yes, they win because I have been triggered.  Woot for them, I suppose.  Pretty sure that will be a Pyrrhic victory for them.  And since they are idiots, they won't understand that, so the last laugh will be mine, I suppose. 

Outbidding Comes to Canada

 I don't know the deep history of Canadian politics as I only started paying attention once I moved here and not even then for a while as I was too busy adjusting to Quebec and to the cold and to the big move.  So, I can't speak to how right-wing politics worked way back when.  What I was going to say before news broke out that Erin O'Toole is facing a leadership fight is that outbidding is really hard for even strong, united parties.  And now?  Oy.  

I have been blasting the CPC lately because a number of its members, including its deputy leader, have been giving full-throated support for the far right extremists who are blockading a hunk of downtown Ottawa.  This reddit page lists not only the events but also the politicians who have stood with the supposed truckers' convoy.  O'Toole tried to have it both ways--meeting with some of those in the convoy before it hit Ottawa and then condemning those within the group that danced on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, defaced the Terry Fox statue, and used swastikas and the like.  This did not go over well with the fanatics and opportunists in his party, so he could be done.

In the recent election, O'Toole had a difficult problem--there is a new far right-wing party--the People's Party--led by a former Conservative, and so he faced pressures to play to the far right folks who remained in his party now that they have an exit option.  The problem is that the votes needed to get the party into power are not on the right but in the center.  So, O'Toole could pander to the far right and probably lose or play to the middle but risk breaking his party in half.  He chose to do both.  His stance that vaccines are good but mandates are bad did not play well, and helped him lose the election.  

In the winter, O'Toole faced another challenge--a bill to ban gay conversion therapy.  The public overwhelmingly supported this bill as did the other parties, but not the social conservatives in his party.  So, he tried to just get unanimous consent so that way he wouldn't have a significant chunk of negative votes that the opposition could run on.  Well, apparently that pissed off these folks.  

There is probably other stuff going on as well. But the key to O'Toole's dilemma is that he faces outbidding both outside his party and within it.  He didn't go full far right nutso, but he also tried to keep those folks on board.  His successors are likely to be further to the right, which will consign the party into the wilderness at the national level.  They can't win national elections by moving further to the right.  They don't have the power to suppress votes or redraw lines like their American friends have.

Isn't this a good thing?  That the right is breaking apart?  Um, not so much.  Democracies require competition and accountability to work.  The Liberal Party, which tends to be smug and arrogant, leading to stupid, unnecessary shit (WE scandal, SNC-Lavalin, etc), needs to be penalized when they do that stuff.  The New Democratic Party can't do that on its own for a variety of reasons.  Partly because they can only criticize the Liberals for not being sufficiently left wing, partly because they have their own divides.  Canadian politics would be better off if there was a solid, reasonable center-right party that centrists could vote for, that could challenge the Liberals to perform better.

That is now what Canada has, and, soon, it will have something worse than that: a right-wing party that not only caters to extremists but is led by them.  We have seen this play out in the UK and in the US, and neither political system is better off for it. 

When Far Right Extremism Show Up On Your Doorstep

 This weekend has been a very angering one here in Canada and especially in Ottawa.  A mass of protesters, upset at vaccine and mask mandates, have clogged downtown, honked endlessly disturbing residential neighborhoods, and have threatened (but not committed thus far) violence.  

These folks have done their best to identify who they really are and to antagonize almost all Canadians.  They have carried swastikas, they have carried signs and worn shirts calling for the Prime Minister to be hung, they have bullied restaurants, hotels, and the one mall as they sought to violate the mask mandates, they parked and later danced on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, and they temporarily defaced a statue of Terry Fox.  

The claim is that these are patriotic truckers who can't cross the border now as the government is enforcing a vaccine mandate.  Their demands are, well, ignorant and crazed as they have called for the governor general and the Senate (?) to remove the current government and all mask and vax mandates.  The Canadian Truckers Association has disassociated itself with these people.  Most Canadians, and, yes, most truckers are vaccinated.  The organizers are mostly associated with far right groups, and there are legitimate questions about how much of this is an attempt to grift. A significant percentage of Canadian truckers are not white, but the protesters were very white.  So, yeah, there is more than a smidge of white supremacy at work (swatiskas and confederate flags tell the tale).  

I asked twitter which was more offensive--parking on the War Memorial (this was before people danced on it), hanging signs and upside down flag on Terry Fox (a national hero who walked across Canada to raise money for cancer as it was killing him), or the swastikas.

Which is more offensive to Canadians? #cdnpoli

— Steve Saideman (@smsaideman) January 29, 2022

The swastikas trumped the other two, but I saw many people on twitter appalled at the other two.  

Indeed, the day's events led to a bit of a question about Canadian civil-military relations.  The head of the Canadian armed forces, General Wayne Eyre, tweeted his shock and horror regarding the dancing on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier:

I am sickened to see protesters dance on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and desecrate the National War Memorial. Generations of Canadians have fought and died for our rights, including free speech, but not this. Those involved should hang their heads in shame.

— General / Général Wayne Eyre (@CDS_Canada_CEMD) January 29, 2022

Is it appropriate for Eyre to speak about a political protest?  Depends on where you fit on various debates in civil-military relations.  Some think that the military should always stay out of politics, others think that the military is inherently a political actor that should stay out of partisan fights.  I am with the latter.  Given that the Tomb and the National War Memorial are very much focused on the military and its history, it is not surprising that Eyre was offended and wanted to share his offense.  The question may depend on whether one sees the protesters as legitimate partisans in ordinary Canadian politics.

And that is where the Conservative Party of Canada fits in--providing cover and legitimacy for these far right extremists.  The CPC leader, Erin O'Toole, met with the truckers as they headed to Ottawa, as he has tried to balance between appealing to mainstream Canada while not offending the far right folks who might flee to the People's Party.  In the last election, not that long ago, O'Toole tried to take the stance that it was good to get vaccinated, but that people should not be compelled by public policy to do so--no vax mandates.  And his party lost, perhaps partly because of this stance.  79% of the country is fully vaccinated, 85% has had one dose, and a significant chunk of the remaining are kids (no shots for those younger than 5 and the 5-11 vaccinations are still pretty new).  So, most of Canada is not that peeved about vax mandates (some fully vaxxed say they are bothered by it, but not sure they amount to many folks).  So, not a winning political position.  

Yet, we see pandering to the far right.  Not just O'Toole.  One CPC member of parliament was stupid enough to be speaking in support of the protest when a person holding a defaced Canadian flag complete with swastika was standing behind him.  A politician, Pierre Poilievre, from the riding (district) next to mine and on my summer bike route was tweeting his support for the convey.  O'Toole issued a series of tweets many hours after the events at the War Memorial issuing his condemnation.  Of course, he had been warned and criticized in the lead up to this event, but now he has some shame.  We shall see how long that lasts. The guy in this picture has issued a statement saying he had no idea this flag was behind him.  So, political malpractice or just not so plausible deniability?  You make the call. Poilievre hasn't deleted his tweets as he wants to be on the far right of his party.  I doubt he will reach the level of temporary and weak regret that Ted Cruz did last year.

Speaking of the far right, it is notable that there were no arrests, that the cops of Ottawa were able to navigate this event without arresting anyone.  Impressive policing or biased enforcement?  The police of Canada have shown far less ability to de-escalate when the protesters are Indigenous.  

I live far from downtown (Barrhaven is often called Farhaven for being 25 minutes from the city core), but I have friends who live downtown.  I worried about them, but they seem to be ok despite the thugs that were in the streets all day and into the night.  

You can tell a lot about a group by what they say, what they do, and who their allies are (Trump?).  Anyone claiming this was anything but a far right group seeking to shake things up is fooling themselves.  Yes, these assholes have a right to protest, but they violated more than a few laws along the way while inciting hate and violence.  No, there was not much violence yesterday, but this is not over.  And politicians bending over to them and trying to avoid offending the fringes of their base will just encourage this assholes.  

Canada has an extremism problem, not a polarization problem, as it is on one side of the spectrum.  The sooner the Conservatives realize that these folks are poison, the sooner their party will find their way out of the wilderness and into power.  As it stands now, this weekend just reminded Canadians that the Conservatives are not a viable option for the middle of the political spectrum. 

 

 

 

 VdDiO_t-Bf_EjVXSoHs_Qttps://twitter.com/PierrePoilievre/status/1487546518085197825?s=20&t=RVdDiO_t-Bf_EjVXSoHs_Q

When Transparency Meets Partisanship, Transparency Dies?

 This tweet touched a nerve apparently.

Damn it. Mr. O'toole. This committee was a good innovation to deal with a thorny problem.

Instead, MPs get no information and we undermine the one way to review intel stuff.

Well done, sir. Way to keep parliament ignorant and useless.

— Steve Saideman (@smsaideman) January 20, 2022

The tl:dr of this whole thing is that there is a real problem that democracies face--how to have transparency and accountability while keeping bad guys (foreign and domestic enemies) from knowing stuff that they should not know--that Canada is poorly armed to handle this challenge, and that the primary reform that managed to finesse some of this is now being crapped on by the Conservatives because ... it is better to score points than to help the country be both democratic and accountable.  

What is the longer version of this?  When I was interviewing politicians about the mission in Afghanistan in 2007, I was stunned to learn that members of the House of Commons Defence Committee lacked security clearances.  I said "how can you do oversight if you don't have access to the secret stuff?"  The response: "we don't do oversight,* we hold the Minister to account."  How can they do that if the Minister (in this case of Defence) has all the info and the members of parliament (MPs) have none?  "We get leaks," and their primary concern was agenda control of the committee, not info.  Why?  Mostly because they would prefer to talk aloud about stuff that they don't know much about than know more via security clearances but not be able to use that stuff in question period or other public fora.  As I framed it, better to be an ignorant critic than informed overseer.  The editor of the journal where Phil and I published the piece softened the title.  

This was not just a theoretical issue for us social scientists (although it did inspire the current book project and trips to many democracies) but also a major political issue.  During the Afghanistan war, one of the major points of contention (the most debated issue in Parliament--my book has handy figures on this) was the plight of Afghans detained by the Canadian Armed Forces--whether they were beaten after being turned over to the Afghan authorities.  The opposition wanted the info on this, the government said they couldn't, but since it was a minority government, the opposition was able to compel the government to produce documents under a very limited process.  The opposition leaders were able to go to a room where the documents were, sans recorders and notepads, and look through the documents, and then ask a judge or judges to declassify stuff. This effectively buried the issue, but it raised questions about how to provide accountability when there is not a minority government or when the opposition does not have consensus about pushing things.

NSICOP--National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians--is an innovation that is about five years old.  The idea here is that there is a committee of parliamentarians and senators who have security clearances and can get access to the secret stuff so that they can access the strengths and weaknesses of Canada's national security stuff.  The focus is mostly on intel agencies, but defence and other stuff gets reviewed as well.  The trick about this committee that causes much controversy is that it is not a parliamentary committee because it reports to the Prime Minister.  Mostly, this has not be a problem as they have issued unclassified reports that have been extensive and informative reviews (my colleagues who do intel stuff track this more closely than I do).  This process does mean that the committee does not serve at the whim of the Parliament, and the PM can limit what is produced.

This became a hot issue this past year as the Conservatives have wanted all the classified documents relating to a biohazard lab in Winnipegs.  They find NSICOP to be insufficiently focused on this, and have undermined it by not sending MPs to join it in the current session.  What do they want?  Damned if I know.  

Erin O'Toole has been grandstanding on this issue in ways that may undermine NSICOP and pour gas on the conspiracy theories out there.  My basic take, having not seen any of the secret stuff, is that the Winnipeg lab thing is an excuse to accuse the government of conspiring to be soft on China.  There is plenty of other stuff out there that can come in handy that way--this particular axis of effort is destructive to that good governance and order Canadians are supposed to care about.  Because O'Toole is killing the one thing parties could agree to that would provide some oversight* over the intel folks in Canada.  

The funny thing is that my tweet above, I think, was the reason I got a call from Mark Holland, the Liberal who is "Leader of the Government in the House of Commons."  He focused on the problem of redactions--that there had been materials that had been declassified but some stuff had been redacted.  The Conservatives think the redactions are problematic and that Parliament should be able to see everything and decide what can be shared with the public.  Holland's alternative is to take the Afghanistan detainee scandal process and make it more of a lasting thing: that some MPs could see the documents in their entirety subject to the usual security clearance laws, and that if they think some stuff should be released unredacted, then a committee of jurists should decide.  This would take the matter out of the hands of the government, and it would also mean that the opposition could not release stuff willy-nilly.  

Again, I am not the expert on this stuff, but this seems like a good compromise that gets at the heart of this--if the opposition cares about the issue itself.  They get access to the info, and then being able to talk about some of it if a panel of judges consent.  I haven't seen yet what O'Toole would say is wrong with this.  It seems quite reasonable.

What is my preference?  That Canada has committees that have security clearances.  This would not be sufficient, of course, because these committees have little heft--they can't change budgets, they have no influence on promotions, etc [the US Congress and German Bundestag are relevant actors not just because their defence committees can get the info but they also have power to use it--to shape budgets].  So, we'd have to innovate to give them a bit more heft so that their increased knowledge would have some relevance.  

But that ain't happening. The MPs don't have an incentive to know more--their incentives all point towards talking more, scoring points, not really focused at all on improving governance. So, this compromise, like NSICOP, is the best we can do. The alternative that O'Toole seems to want--for Parliament to have the power to release whatever it wants--seems problematic especially when at least one party seems to be more focused on spinning up conspiracy theories.  When people say that Canada's politics are immature and its politicians can't be responsible, this is what they (or I) have in mind.

* Oh, and about oversight, this is something where I get into fights with my colleagues.  For some reason, in Canada, oversight in the intel sphere has a different meaning than I have understood it anywhere else.  To me, oversight is about actors getting more information to know what other actors have been doing.  It can be and is usually retrospective (my friends suggest that it is more directive--that oversight is telling the actors what to do--that it is controlling, I think).  Parliamentarians don't need to know what Special Operators are doing right now in the field, but they should know what they did last summer.  Why is this important?  For many reasons, such as democracy requiring transparency (Colaresi has a great book on the contradictions between democracy and secrecy), but for my principal-agent-informed outlook, oversight is important because those who are delegated responsibility for doing something (spying, breaking codes, running special ops missions, whatever) will know more than those who give them those jobs about what actually happens.  One way to insure that those doing the work do the work as they are supposed to do it is make them feel as if they are being watched.  Oversight best works when those who are overseen anticipate that they will be caught if they behave in undesired ways, which then leads them to behave in the desired ways.  

Why can't we just leave this to the government of the day and civilian servants?  Why does civilian control of the military (or of the intel folks) have to involve other elected officials?  Because those in government may be tempted to hide stuff if revelations might hurt them politically.  Civil servants are not accountable to the public, so if you leave it in their hands, things tend to disappear.  There has been talk, for instance, of having the Privy Council Office supervise the various independent agencies that might get responsibility for overseeing the military (Ombudspeople, Inspector General, whatever), but that would be a black hole, not transparency.  

Anyhow, that's a lot for a Saturday morning post explaining a tweet.  Glad I provided the tl;dr up top.

 

 

 

Distressed, Depressed, and Down: Where To From Here?

Despite being relentlessly critical of stuff, I have always tended to focus on the arc of progress--that things will get better even amid the bumps of today.  This weekend?  Damn.  An entire country mostly disappears beneath a volcano (any idea of how the Tongans are doing?), the Supreme Court continues to reveal itself to be not just partisan but enthusiastically so, gutting reasonable policies and putting much of the progress of the past fifty years in doubt, a "good" hostage crisis causing us to experience relief or just more anxiety, Trump amping the white supremacy with insufficient outrage aimed against him, stories of African-American voters unlikely to turnout since Sinema/Manchin have blocked any progress on voting rights, the likelihood that the GOP's bet to ally with the pandemic so that Biden would pay for the continued pandemic will pay off, etc.  

I can go on.  This is definitely the winter of my discontent.  I was hoping pre-omicron that we'd have a bit of return to normalcy--return to classes, in-person events, more skiing, actually going to an ISA conference after missing the last two of those.  And now all we have is uncertainty.  I haven't felt like blogging because I didn't want to just whine and complain, but I also wanted to mark, as I indicated in my first quarantine post way back when, my descent into madness.  And I am just so mad these days.  So much so that I am crapping on the joy to my friends that is wordle.

It is definitely getting in the way of my work as I so easily distracted these days.  I tend not to get depressed, but I kind of feel that way now.  I am one of the lucky ones--I haven't lost any immediate relatives to COVID, my relatives have managed through this economically ok, the next generation is mostly in pretty good shape even though most of them have had covid (LA Spew continues to dodge the disease better than I can dodge a wrench).  And damn, not must my younger relatives but all the folks I meet in my classes and I see out in the world are so impressive.  I hate that we are giving them a shitty present and a very uncertain future, but I have more faith in them, in their tolerance, in their creativity, than I do in those that came before us.  I guess that is the reed upon which I am placing my hope these days.  

That and endless tv/movies streamed to my house help keep me from descending too far.  I hope you can find ways to get through this awful time.  As they say, the only way out is through.

Where's Spenser When We Need Him?

 I have long been a fan of mysteries, especially those featuring snarky detectives.  Robert B. Parker's Spenser will always stand out.  I remember discovering Spenser when friends were reading aloud one of his books during a break during my college years, and the dialogue was so much fun.  Anyhow, ever since then, I would tend to find one or two writers and just read all of their stuff: Sue Grafton (I gave up around M or N), Sara Paretsky, Dianne Mott Davidson (one of my wife's editing clients).  I fell into John Sandford when he was writing under a pseudonym--John Camp.  Lee Child's books were less mysteries and more thrillers, but very addictive.  

More recently, I started reading the Bosch books by Michael Connelly.  Bosch started out as a weary, abrasive detective in the LAPD.  The TV show has been something that all of my siblings and mother watch--our tastes usually don't align so well.  So, I got the latest book, where Bosch and a younger female detective, Renée Ballard, work together after Bosch's retirement from the LAPD.  The book takes place more or less in the present--people are wearing masks (or not) and there is much discussion of the state of LAPD.  A theme that gets repeated several times (and I am not that far into it) is that LAPD is now facing deep budget constraints because the protests have cost so much money that programs are being defunded even if the department is not receiving less money. Oh, and the cops are wary of doing anything because they don't want to face a hostile public. 

Anyhow, mostly because of the way Connelly keeps referring to the position the cops have been put into by the protests, I am offput.  It is distracting and angering because LAPD has behaved awfully before, during, and after the protests.  I would know this even if I didn't have a relative engaged in some of the protests as LAPD and LA Sheriffs have made it abundantly clear that they are above and beyond the law.  I guess in the past I either read books that didn't feature cops or I was able to compartmentalize so that I didn't really think of how bad the cops were in reality when I read about the hero cops in the various books.

Spenser was a fallen cop--he had left because he didn't get along with authority.  Maybe some subtext I might be injecting into the series, he was far more liberal or tolerant or whatever than the cops.  Maybe not.  But now I am thinking that as I give up on Connelly, as I gave up on some other folks whose political leanings got to be too annoying (Tom Clancy is the classic case as his racism completely soured me), I need to find mystery authors whose protagonists are not cops again.  Where is the next Spenser, V.I. Warshawski, Kinsey Millhone, or Goldy Schulz?  The good news is that they are out there.  I just need a detective to help find them for me. 

Quarantine 2: Electric Bugaloo

JC & me, Lake Louise

The Civ-Mil crew in Copenhagen

I stopped doing quarantine reports last summer after Mrs. Spew and I had two shots plus two weeks.  Shortly afterwards, we drove to Philly to see my mother and the rest of my family.  I went to a movie when we got back, and we would occasionally go to restaurants (almost always outdoors).  I went to Copenhagen for a conference, we held a hybrid event (the Year Ahead 2022), I gave a talk in Calgary and, yes, went skiing afterwards, I had a fun poker game with folks who were in town for another conference, and, then we get super anxious about going to see my in-laws over the holidays.

Great Falls park

It was not the usual winterfest, as we only went to one restaurant and very reluctantly so.  Otherwise, it was take-out.  No metro trip to the Mall.  Instead, my daughter (Hollywood Spew) and I went to see a river and a canal.  We worried much about whether we would get our PCR tests back in time for us--before we were to cross the border back to Canada.  And we got them while we were driving back north.  We also worried much about whether my daughter could get back to LA as her first flight was cancelled, but she persevered and got a flight back.  She went back sooner than planned because she was unable to stay over with her besties from college as they were all exposed to covid and some tested positive. 

And then we returned to old habits with modifications.  I only leave the house now for groceries and to rehab my knee (I mentioned above I went skiing, right?).  No dining out.  I did make one exception--I went to see the new Spidey movie just before provincial regulations changed to close the movie theaters.  I haven't started the winter exercise ritual of last year--snowshoeing and cross-country skiing as we don't have enough snow yet (unlike my pals to the south).  

Instead of shopping for funky looking masks, I focus on the monthly Costco trip, hoping they have KN-95s.  And when I went this week, I bought three boxes, which felt very much like hoarding.  But I did so anyway because I have no idea if there will be any next month.  I haven't put away my cloth masks that Omicron has made obsolete.  Maybe the next variant will be less transmissible?

Which gets to the feelings of the moment--exhaustion and frustration.  It may be the most "mild" of variants, but its greater transmissiblity has had a huge impact.  Carleton has pushed the first three weeks (and probably more) online.  Which is not a huge deal to me as I am teaching a course that has online components from last year--so I checked and the material is quite recyclable.  But damn, when I said that online, the parents of kids were most upset that I was not as angry as they were.  I am angry and frustrated, but my stakes are much smaller than theirs.  There is no good way to deal with this new wave for schools as McSweeney's illustrated quite nicely.  One thing that has remained most consistent has been the Ontario government screwing this up.  The plans for the winter are being upended.  The big anniversary trip to Morocco Spain Hawaii Vancouver next month is now in doubt.  The CDSN Capstone Seminar and Civ-Mil Workshop were going to be in Calgary in the beginning of March, but that is now uncertain.  ISA in Nashville at the end of March?  ¯\(°_o)/¯  

Despite being vaxxed and boosted, we are anxious as we quarantine.  I don't worry about getting seriously sick (although Mrs. Spew does), but I do worry about becoming a vector that endangers someone else.  Once again, we thought we saw the light at the end of the tunnel, and then found out that this thing is going on and on.  I think that, along with the fact that we all know far more people with COVID this time around (we are up to four nieces and one nephew since this thing started, with only two nieces and one daughter still dodging covid successfully), has worn us down, frazzled our nerves, and genearted much fear, which ain't good:

We, alas, are not in this together.  As I keep saying, COVID does to societies and political systems what it does to the human body: reveal and exacerbate pre-existing conditions. The politics of this is making all of this costlier, more stressful, and just worse all the way around.  

I am placing a lot of hope on two things: that mild really means mild and that the bending of the curve is going to be fast, like it has been in South Africa.  I know that rebellions are built on hope.  I am hoping that recoveries are, too. 

 

There Is Still Magic

The past few years have been very frustrating, angering, saddening times for many Harry Potter fans as JK Rowling has allied herself with the dark forces in the world (including Johnny Depp).  Her anti-trans attitudes seems to me to be a betrayal of what her books tried to convey.  I have been stewing about this for quite some time, and I haven't re-read or re-watched the HP stuff in a few years, breaking my usual winterfest habits.  I finally sought to express my feelings on this as I watched the 20th anniversary special.  Seeing all the folks who made the movies (well, almost as we have lost several along the way) and seeing the scenes of the making of the movies made very sad but also reminded me of the magic in the books and the movies.*

(* Ok, the first 8.5 movies as the first Fantastic Beasts movie had some magic, the second had much less, especially with Depp playing such a big role).  

To be clear, the books and movies are imperfect.  They do not represent well, they tend to rely on stereotypes (JK's borrowing of Tolkein's take on goblins is still anti-semitic, for instance), that Dumbledore is not explicitly gay in the text, but she retconned that later, and so on.  But the larger themes are of love and tolerance and choice are so central. That the bad guys don't get it--they can't exhibit remorse, they don't have friends, they have contempt for those who love, that they don't really have something to fight for, and the good folks win precisely because they are willing to love, to forgive, to trust.  

Early in the special, the words come across the screen that it is not what family you are born into (although, of course, there are contradictions--the discussion of Draco as a product of Lucius) but what you choose to do that matters.  In the books, this is one of the strongest and consistent themes--that is the choices you make that matter.  And this plays in two ways now--that JK is making the worst choices and she is, of course, judging how others live their lives, that she is judging people who identify as their true selves.   

So, how do I see it now?  Watching the actors and directors talk about the stuff, how much it meant to them (and to the fans), the bonds they have with each other, the themes that they tried to convey helped feed my confirmation bias and my compartmentalization.  That there is such good stuff in the books and the movies that I will focus on that--the magic of friendship, of love, and, yes, of tolerance--and only occasionally grapple with the darkness in the books and in JK.  She has chosen to be awful.  The actors (statements by Radcliffe and Watson) do a nice job of distinguishing her stances from what the books and movies were trying to say.  And I will side with them.  

It is, after all, the choices we make that matter.