Pondering the Priorities of AntiSemitism and Israel

 I have been thinking about the role of Israel in Jewish identity thing for a few years now, perhaps stirred by my trip to Israel in 2019 and definitely energized by the violence since October 2023.  And then I saw a piece about how the Anti-Defamation League essentially gave Musk a pass on being an antisemite (although there may be some regret, real or feigned) because he was "pro-Israel."  That really yanked my chain, so I am about to spew about this stuff, and it will probably piss a lot of people off, but so be it.  

As always, my caveat on this stuff: I have often said that my parents are Jewish, suggesting that I am not since I don't believe and never believed.  However, as Charlottesville reminded me, the antisemites don't care about belief, and I would be sent to the camps/gas chambers/ovens along with the devout.  The key here is that I really have never thought that hard about Israel in Jewish identity, and this will be where I do that thinking based not on a thorough examination of the Torah, the Talmud, or religious scholarship but based on my background as a scholar of ethnic (yes, to me, religion is one kind of ethnic identity) conflict.   So, some of my thoughts here may be wildly ignorant or sound stupid.

First, we have to say this as clearly as possible: being pro- or anti- Israel does not really tell us that much about whether one is pro-Jew or antisemite (I don't use "philosemite" for reasons I have explained earlier.)  Evangelicals who are pro-Israel also want to wipe out Jewish identity by converting all Jews to their version of Christianity or watch them burn after the Rapture (seeing Jews as a means to an end is inherently antisemitic).  The Musk-ness of it all is a reminder: he is supposedly pro-Israel, but he is also pro-Great Replacement Theory, which puts Jews at the heart of the conspiracy to replace white people in the US and elsewhere with non-white people.  And there is that Nazi salute and his very antisemitic AI and all the rest.  Likewise, you can have people who are pro-Jew who are critical of Israel--there are numerous left-leaning Jewish groups in the US and Canada who have been protesting the policies of Israel even before the utterly corrupt Netanyahu (friend of antisemites) took power and before the violence reached the levels of the past two years. 

So, the 2x2 of Israel-support and pro/antiSemitism illustrates the reality that while there might be a relationship, each box is filled enough that we have to add other variables to get anywhere (note that the ultra-Orthodox Jews would be pro-Jewish but oppose a Jewish state until the biblical requirements are met--the Messiah comes, thanks to a friend for pointing this out).

It makes clear that one's stance towards Israel does not actually say much on its own about one's stance towards Jews. 

Second, Israel is clearly central to Jewish identity, but I have to ask what we mean by "Israel?"  Do we mean the land, the people, or the state?  So much of the ancient history of that place is central to Judaism.  The centrality of the story of Moses in Judaism is a good illustration--this big hunk of doctrine/belief/whatever is focused on getting Jews back to the lands that God gave them (note, the Torah and other texts depict that whole getting that land from God as, well, quite violent--the land was hardly empty even way back).*  In the various prayers and songs and services, Jerusalem and the land of Israel feature quite prominently.  During the last set of services I went to, I was so very struck by the Israeli flag being on the bima (the podium)--which refers to the state of Israel but can be conflated with government (note that the Canadian flag these days means many different things thanks to the convoy assholes and other false patriots).  It is so much so that it is taken for granted, and I didn't really think that much about it until recent years.  That makes me a lousy Zionist, another way I could disappoint my father.  

But as I think about it now, I wonder about the conflation of land and government.  Yes, the Jews got their safe harbor after World War II and the Holocaust in the land they long identified with.  And once you control a land, you develop a state and a government.  So, Jews could identify with the state of Israel, but do they have to identify with the Israeli government?  This is the key point that has been gnawing at me.  All governments are flawed and are thus deserving of criticism. But a holy place in a religion is probably not supposed to be criticized--the Vatican, Mecca, and the like--and are beyond reproach.  So, maybe folks get a bit upset about the criticism of Israel because it is holy to Jews?  

Of course, there is the whole "should a Jewish state exist?" question, whether Zionism is legitimate or not, hangs over all of this, but I am going to put it to the side for now (I will get to it some day, really).  Right now, I am just teasing out what it means to care as much or more about Israel than about the plight of Jews.  Because the fundamental assertion here is that they are not the same thing especially if one is thinking of Israel as government as opposed to Israel as holy place.

Third, now I have arrived at the stuff that is partly responsible for my state of anger and frustration: the contradictions between the imperatives of antisemitism and of being pro-Israel.  The ADL article makes it pretty clear that the latter has taken over the former, and that is certainly the case in American politics as well--that the concern about antisemitism, a real thing, on American campuses is mostly a concern about people being hostile to the government of Israel (again, some of them may be hostile to the state of Israel or to the Jewish people, but Trump, the GOP, and others are not focused on those ideas/identifications).  The article inspiring my post clearly shows how the ADL and others are now identifying Jews who are critical of Israel as being antisemitic--Jew-hating Jews.  While there are such people in the world, to protest genocide, to want a non-far right Israeli government, to want an Israeli government to be led by non-corrupt autocrat wannabees, to question the wisdom or legitimacy of a theocracy does not make one antisemitic.  

In the piece, accusing Israel of genocide is called blood libel, which shows how far this has gone. Blood libel refers to the accusations/conspiracy theories about the Jews killing Christian babies so they can drink their blood, a truly awful set of ideas that have around forever.  That is not the same thing as looking at Israel's deployment of violence against the Palestinians and raising questions about whether there is an effort to eliminate in whole or in part the Palestinian people.  Have I committed blood libel in my recent post?  That is not only stretching a concept so much that it becomes utterly meaningless, but it essentially defines criticism of the Israeli government as akin to the worst forms of antisemitism, and by no accident at all, aims to silence all criticism of Israel.  

I have note that we live in a moment where truly vile antisemitic people are taking pro-Israel and supposedly anti-antisemitic stances to attack universities, to attack free speech, to disrupt the Democrats, to dazzle the media with bullshit, and to distract from other stuff.  The living embodiment of this is Stephen Miller, who, yes, is Jewish, but has betrayed every lesson from the Holocaust and has become essentially the Heydrich or Himmler of our time.

Fourth, I will make a particularly provocative claim: the job and priority of the ADL and other organizations as well as the first priority of Jews in North America should be ... the safety of Jews in North America and not the government of Israel (and not even the state or people of Israel).  It is the job of AIPAC and other lobbying organizations to be focused on policy towards Israel, but if antisemitism is a great threat (and I agree that it is), the focus should be on protecting Jews.  Of course, Israeli Jews will say that the safety of Jews depends on the safety and independence of Israel.  They will say that if Jews want to be safe, don't focus on improving their safety in the US or Canada, but move to Israel.  Indeed, my trip to Israel six years ago gave me the impression that Israeli Jews are not so fussed about the plight of American or Canadian Jews.  

Ethnic conflict digression: Thinking about it now reminds me of my work on Greater Hungary in the irredentism book I wrote with Bill Ayres--that the Hungary's Hungarians of the 2000s identify somewhat with the Hungarians outside of Hungary but not completely so.  That the outsiders may share the same language but they haven't experienced post-1956 Hungary, so they aren't quite the same.  I am positive that Israeli Jews identify somewhat with North American Jews, but these outsiders are not the same as, even lesser than because they have not committed fully--they haven't moved to Israel--and by not sharing the same experiences of being under rocket attacks, have not fought in the various wars, haven't been subject to terrorism, etc.

Fifth, why is there more antisemitism in the US and Canada these days? There is clearly more violence aimed at Jews lately yet the overall count is inflated by folks calling criticism of Israel as examples of antisemitism:

"There had been more than 3,000 antisemitic incidents in the three months after October 7, he said, a 360 percent jump over the same period a year before. But in January 2024, the organization’s researchers conceded to the Forward that the increase was in part derived from a change in methodology. “Anti-Zionist chants and slogans” now accounted for more than 40 percent of the total incidents"" From here.

 However, there clearly has been a significant increase in violence aimed at North American Jews (I am guessing there is more Islamophobic violence as well, but that, too, is a post for another day).  Obviously, the rise of far right parties and actors within the political systems and within the media goes a long way.  Trump and his team have been amplifying all kinds of hate since his first campaign started, and a core part of that has been hate aimed at Jews.  The elevation of Great Replacement Theorists, the Republican focus on George Soros as the boogeyman of our time, not unlike the centrality of the Rothchilds in European anti-semitism of yore, Musk amplifying Nazis on twitter--this is all really bad for TeamJew in North America (and Europe). The right wing antisemites also have permission to deploy violence given the appearance of antisemities like Nick Fuentes at Mar Lago and the White House, and I am sure they think they have greater impunity given Trump's abuse of the pardon power and the far right take over of the Department of Justice.**

Antizionist groups and speakers are not all pro-Israel or pro-Jew, of course.  There are plenty of actors out there that conflate hate of Israel with hate of Jews, and they are deserving of condemnation and criticism.  Are they new or are they a constant?  Again, if we have more of something, we can't explain that with a constant, so what has changed?  I don't want to go too far because everyone has agency, but if left-wing/progressive antisemitism has always been burning, what tossed gasoline to inflame that some?  I can't help but think that actions of the government of Israel have some responsibility for the increase in antisemitic violence in North America.  People are angrier now because Israel is laying waste to Gaza and so antisemites are now more energized to direct their hate towards Jews.  I am not justifying the increase in violence--I am opposed to all collective punishment, whether it is punishing Jews for what Israel is doing or punishing Palestinians for what Hamas has done.

Finally, the Intelligencer piece also includes info about how the ADL dropped a lot of its civil rights stuff of late. That after Trump was elected for a second time, poof, ADL's stuff on transgender, LGBTQ+, voting rights, racial justice, and the like had disappeared from the website.  That the lesson of Never Again was being narrowed--not Never Again shall a people face the threat of genocide or similar violence, but that Never Again will Jews be threatened.  I was taught the former definition, and it will be the one I stick with.  The various horsemen of hate ride together almost always. Being opposed to racism, homophobia, misogyny, transphobia, xenophobia, and the like is not a distraction from fighting antisemitism--it is the same damned fight.  That the ADL is selling all of that out to appeal to Trump and to appeal to the right as they focus on anti-Zionism as antisemitism is not only an incredible betrayal but quite self-destructive. 

Well, that's a lot.  I included way too many digressions but also dodged some obvious stuff.  What is my point?  That it is fucked up that organizations and actors that supposedly exist to fight antisemites are giving antisemites cover because of their pro-Israel stances.  That focusing so much on protecting Israel from criticism is doing lots of people a tremendous disservice and not just the Palestinians.  That there are great threats in the US to Jews, and we need to think about how to reduce those threats and giving Israel carte blanche may not be helpful in that endeavor.  That declaring any government to be immune from criticism is just wrong.

 

 *  One thing I learned when I visited Israel in 2019 is that so much of the land is, well, crappy.  Lots of rocks, especially around Jerusalem.  Sure, the beaches in Tel Aviv are nice, but the idealization of this land, well, always pokes at me.

** While all antisemitism is bad, I seem to be taking the opposite view of Israeli Jews and of Netanyahu in particular.  I think that right-wing antisemites are worse because they threaten far more violence (and they admire those who killed six million Jews) than left-wing antisemites. Netanyahu and his ilk don't mind so much the right-wing antisemites but deplore the left-wing ones, perhaps because they care more about their anti-Israel stances than they do about the threats to Jews in the west.   

 

The Fall of the Afghan Government: The Big Questions

 There already has been and already will be much discussion of what all of this means.  Since I rode my bike yesterday and the podcast ran out, I have thoughts.  It is, of course, premature, but this is the place for half-baked ideas--the semi in the spew.  

The first question is: did social science waste its time and money?  Stathis Kalyvas asked this question today

Can’t help but wonder about the implications of the Afghan debacle for the social science of counterinsurgency: dozens of generously funded studies in Afghanistan, tens of cutting-edge articles using Afghan data published in top journals, amounting exactly to what?

— Stathis Kalyvas (@SKalyvas) August 14, 2021

I responded to him by noting several things

• Failure was overdetermined so even if there was good social science that caused someone (the US govt?) to do stuff better, it might not have made a difference
• that what we learn here could work better elsewhere
• that folks may have learned stuff, developed policy implications, but that those implications did not produce policies that politicians wanted to follow.  When some economists said austerity was good for economic growth, that hit a group of pols in the sweet spot--hey, let's spend less on the poors.  But academics often recommend policies that are costly in the short run and the benefits only accrue in the long run (climate change!), and politicians live in the short term.

There is an irony here--that Kalyvas led a movement in the comparative politics of civil war, arguing that the local dynamics and the national dynamics were different, that the master narrative was often deceptive.  Well, the social science stuff done on the war may have been good at grasping elements of the local dynamics, but it turned out the master narrative mattered, too.  That the Taliban was able to take the local stuff--fights over property, groups being left out of the spoils, etc--and use that to undermine a weakly institutionalized and very divided Afghan govt and society.  A recurring theme--easier to break than to build. 

The next question is: was it worth it?  Depends on the it one is referring to.  The goal was a self-sustaining Afghan government, and, that effort clearly failed.  If the it was more about meeting alliance obligations, which is why most of the non-American countries showed up and which is how I define the "it" in my book on Canada's experience, then it is a matter of what were the benefits of meeting an alliance obligation versus the costs of opting out.  Opting out of Afghanistan would have been costlier than opting out of Iraq, but were those costs worth over 160 Canadian lives lost and many more wounded?  

A different way to think about "worth it" is did the effort make either a significant difference in the 20 years that it was worth it or if there is stuff that will endure beyond the Taliban's victory today?  There is no doubt that life got better for Afghans after the Taliban was ejected--the measures in terms of infant mortality and women surviving childbirth are clear.  The folks who were immunized due to a polio vaccination campaign will not get polio, so that is perhaps the most enduring contribution by the outsiders.  So, there is a generation of Afghans who live now thanks to the intervention.  But is that worth the 3500 lives lost by the allies and the tens of thousands of lives lost by Afghans who got caught in the middle?  How many would the Taliban have capriciously killed in the past 20 years if they still governed?

Is Afghanistan better off today than Libya or Syria?  Those are places where the US intervention was more modest.  I am not sure--part of this depends on what happens next.  But, ultimately, given that Afghanistan in 2022 is probably going to look a lot like Afghanistan 2000, it is really hard to say it was worth it. Maybe Rumsfeld was right in his original intention--that breaking the Taliban and then running would have been better, although, again, Libya suggests maybe not.  

So I don't really have a good answer.

What can we learn? 

•  Much humility about the use of force.  We could not kill our way to victory.  Despite 20 years and a lot of resources, the effort failed.  It is simply much harder to build governance than it is to break a regime.  Obama learned that lesson and thus was reluctant to intervene in Libya, but was pushed into it by France and UK.  He tried to stay out of Syria, and well, that showed doing little or nothing is problematic, too.
• I read a pretty persuasive thread about the US military maybe not preparing for the end because they wanted to force Biden's hand.  Obama was very concerned about the military boxing him in, and, I think Biden learned that lesson.  The end here was very, very fast, but there seems to have been no plan.  Isn't the military supposed to be planning contingencies all the time?  The two wars revealed that civilian control of the US military is not what it should be.  Part of this is that militaries are trained to be can-do outfits, and they are often relentlessly optimistic, which then creates credibility gaps. 
• To stop using the graveyard of empires.  Afghanistan will not sink the American empire.  The greatest threats to American power are domestic.  Some will argue that the forever wars led to Trump and that may be true to a degree, but the polarization of American politics and the rise of the bad faith crowd in the GOP preceded 9/11.  But that is an argument for a different day. 
• Our allies will learn ... what they want to learn.  No, our allies will not think the US is unreliable for leaving after 20 years.  After all, most of them were there and left before the US (hey, Canada!).  Just like our allies didn't give up on NATO and other allies after Vietnam, they won't after this.  Partly because there is no other game in town and partly because they all know that they are not Afghanistan.  Indeed, the lesson from Vietnam was: hey, if the US is willing fight for more than a decade, lose thousands of soldiers, and spend billions of dollars for a place it does not really care about, then we are ok. And that same less applies here since the US stuck around in a place that it really didn't care about for 20 years, trillion dollars, a couple thousand lives, and so on.
  

Who is responsible?  Everyone.  The US made big mistakes at the outset---relying on warlords, having too small of a footprint, sponsoring a constitution that was a very bad fit, distracted by Iraq--and other mistakes along the way--cycling generals and strategies, for example.  Obama made mistakes, Trump didn't help.  Biden's team has handled this endgame poorly. The allies could have done better (see our book for some reasons why they didn't).  Pakistan did so much to undermine the effort, and Iran and eventually Russia did some damage. The Afghans were served poorly by their own politicians.  

It is a land of bad policy alternatives, so I have a hard time articulating what should have been done in 2001-2002.  It is easy to note what should not have been done.  I think the key thing to remember is that the enemy has a vote, as they say, that the Taliban had agency.  So, one cannot read into the current dynamics too much about US mistakes without considering how the Taliban would have changed its behavior.  Again, it is easier to destroy than to create--we demonstrated that in 2001, the Taliban has demonstrated that ever since.  I don't know if the Taliban will manage to control the entire country, but they did succeed in denying control by the Afghan government and its allies.  What's next?  More heartbreak.

I am very sad for the Afghan people, who were poorly governed by their own, and let down by the international community.  I also feel bad for those in the various militaries and governments who sacrificed much and who continue to pay a price for what they tried to do, as they watch twenty years of effort reversed in a few weeks.  

 

 

The New Bipolarity: Where Does Canada Fit Into US-China Rivalry

 Yesterday, one of our two Undergraduate Excellence Scholars, Safia Hafid, led a one-day conference on the changing realities in Asia-Pacific.  She applied for and received a Young MINDS grant which enabled her to bring together seven speakers from a variety of perspectives and backgrounds.  Our CDSN team helped her along the way, but this was her show and she performed wonderfully.  She not only found seven great speakers, but she did a great job of introducing the day, placing the larger question into context, managing the speakers, and moderating the question and answer sessions.  The day flowed smoothly, and I learned a great deal.  I live tweeted the afternoon so you can check out the thread here.  I will summarize some of the major points below (I will post Safia's report once she completes it).  You can watch it in English or French.

Panel 1.
Elizabeth Larus of U of Mary Washington led off by asserting that the US has not declined so much and China has probably peaked.  There was a far amount of consensus on the latter point.  I had heard the "China is going to get old before it gets rich" argument, but hadn't realized how bad their clean water problem is.
Rob Murray of McDonald-Laurier Institute discussed how Canada had spent much effort to develop a somewhat independent path from the US during the Cold War but largely stopped doing so in the US's unipolar moment.  He joined the chorus of folks seeking a strategic foreign policy review... which is not going to happen.
Thomas Christensen of Columbia University argued that the US is still far more powerful than China, but that the key flashpoints are far closer to China, mitigating some American advantages.  With the possibility of a blockade by China's navy and air force, Taiwan has to get what it needs before the fighting starts as resupply is going to be really hard.
In the Q&A, Larus explained why covid is such a threat to Xi: Xi has put much of his rep on zero covid. They vaccinated their young, not their elderly, their shots may not be as good, not as much health infrastructure, so risks of massive waves of deaths if covid breaks out. Christensen had one of the best lines of the day when talking about some far right American voices demanding MOAR: "you can't deter a war by starting one, \"referring to Pompeo's and Bolton's stances who would "love Taiwan to death."

Panel 2.
David Welch of U of Waterloo presented on China's tactics in its various territorial and maritime disputes (NPSIA has a PhD student working on this topic).  One of his most interesting findings is that China seems to be obeying the ruling about South China Seas non-islands.  We just can't say it aloud much.  He reinforced the consensus that Taiwan's term-limited president, Tsai Ing-wen, is handling this all very, very well.
Next was Lynette Ong of U of Toronto.  She argued that Xi Jinping's use of nationalism is now biting him as he is now constrained by ultranationalist forces.  She discussed the pattern of centralization and repression that is going to be challenging to ride.

Panel 3.
Stephanie Carvin, my colleague at NPSIA, discussed the absence of Canada in DC--a short flight but apparently not taken all that often, whereas the Aussies are everywhere.  We need a strategic foreign policy review (yep, she said it, too), more specifics and less vague statements, and a tech policy that is more than Huawei/notHuawei.
Last but not least was journalist Don Newman, who pointed out that the de facto ban on Huawei is less than clear to our allies.  He argued that AUKUS should not be Canada's focus but NORAD modernization. 
For the q&a, I asked whether Canada has ever been a rule maker and not a rule taker.  I was thinking in hard security, but Steph pushed peacekeeping (a long time ago), R2P (um, did that ever lead to anything), and land mine ban (which did).  In response to a question, Don argued that Canadian foreign policy got paralyzed by the two Michaels.  But I wonder if this government would have done anything on foreign policy anyhow--another consensus--this govt does not care about foreign policy.

I learned a lot, and I didn't have to do anything as Safia did all of the heavy lifting with some help from the CDSN staff.  We have another Young MINDS-sponsored event next week, organized by our other 2021-2022 Undergraduate Excellence Scholar--Alexander Rizkallah.  It will be a wildly ambitious hackathon with day one at NDHQ (Carling campus) and day two at Carleton.  

I hope y'all can join us on hackathon pitch day! 

The Point of No Return?

Today was a bad day for the Trump campaign and a bad day for democracy as Donnie joked/or not about the NRA fans (Second Amendment people) dealing with Hillary Clinton and/or her judges after she wins (because Donnie knows he is going to lose?).  Yep, Presidential candidate incited violence again.  So, is this the point of no return?

What does that mean?  That Trump cannot pivot back?  No, he has no discipline and not much of a learning curve, so that was never in the cards.  I think people are saying essentially that this is too far, that this is beyond the pale, that this is unacceptable.  Once you cross this line, there is no returning to decency, to a candidacy that decent people can support.  Indeed, folks are wondering if this is the point at which Paul Ryan can walk away.  No answer yet as he has mastered the five D's of dodgeball to avoid the many questions today.

But I think people are missing something--Trump crossed the point of no return last year when he announced his candidacy, when he said that Mexicans were rapists.  Ok, sure, one could say even before that since his birther fixation made Trump a racist and a conspiracy theorist and a panderer to white supremacists.  But, if we want to date the time at which his Presidential campaign became so tainted by his utterances, by his policy stances, by his awful Trump-ness, then, well, his announcement will do since it attacked Mexicans and the rest of the Hispanic community by extension.  Oh, and for the GOP, that first move also may help to kill your party for a generation since you embraced it.

That Trump kept then saying stuff and taking stances that seemed to be "new points of no return" kind of misses the point--it is not that these were now the new standards of alienating folks, but that he just went past the point of no return and then just kept going deeper into the land of awful stances, including:

• POWs are not worthy of much respect since they get caught (Hey, McCain, how could you possibly endorse this guy?)
• Megyn Kelly and the first early but inevitable misogynist outburst.
• Telling his supporters to beat up the protestors. 
• Suggesting that Cruz's dad killed Kennedy (so much for democratic discourse).
• Yada, yada, yada 
• Questioning whether a Hispanic judge could fairly adjudicate the case involving the fraudulent Trump University.
• Attacking NATO, making it seem like US should run its foreign policy like a protection racket
• Calling Elizabeth Warren Pocohantas
• Inviting Russia to release more hacked materials.
• The convention speech
• Insulting a Gold Star family--the Khans.
• Inciting violence against the opponent and/or the judges she chooses if when she wins.

I had to illustrate it thusly:

 The whole idea of the point of no return is that once you pass that point, you don't return, right?  Well, Trump passed the point of being minimally acceptable last summer and kept on going further and further down the road of hate/fear/indecency/inciting violence.  He ain't coming back.  Once one appeals to white supremacists, that should be it.  Everyone should have run away from him and never looked back.  Yet folks keep needing a new line to be drawn, a new pivot back that .... never happened.  I wonder tomorrow how the craven folks will justify sticking with Trump now that he has passed the latest point of no return.

Thinking About Israel and Palestine: Headaches and Insomnia

 I am not sure that the past month's headaches and insomnia are due to the challenges of thinking about the Israel-Palestine conflict, but I am going to use that as my intro to this effort to think through this stuff.

Usual caveats apply: I am not a political theorist or moral philosopher, I am not an expert on the conflict itself.  Oh, and I was raised Jewish and the education I got at Hebrew school did not adequately present the realities of the past.  I did take one Mideast politics course in college, and I did spend one week on an amazing and amazingly depressing tour of Israel and Palestine with a bunch of other academics four years ago.

Do More? Do More What?

I got into a twitter conversation with a frustrated friend of mine who is appalled by the loss of life in Syria.  He is frustrated that we are not doing more to stop the bleeding.  My response: tell me what we could do.  I have long argued here that the Mideast is the land of lousy policy alternatives and that the key lesson from the past 15 years of war there is of humility.  That the locals have far stronger incentives and any solution that is lasting requires the local folks do all the heavy lifting--governing, providing security, etc. 

Anyhow, I thought to reply today in two ways: consider my war record and then consider what can be done now. 

• Iraq 2003: I was against the war.  Knew the folks behind it were bad at their jobs, saw it as a distraction from Afghanistan, thought it was just a bad idea.
• Iraq 2007 surge: I think I was ambivalent because I bought the COIN logic but distrusted the Bush administration.
• Afghanistan surge 2010: I was weakly for it, as it seemed like we owed it to ourselves and to Afghanistan to try to do it right--commit the resources that it needed and give it a chance.  Much ambivalence because Karzai and Pakistan were doing best to undermine the effort.
• Libya: I was for it, since there seemed to be a viable actor on the ground to whom we could give air support.  Ooops.
• Iran: folks in Bush administration kept leaking plans for bombing, and I kept being opposed.
• Syria: largely opposed because I just didn't see a way through that didn't require a 10-20 year commitment that was simply not in the cards.  Also, remember, it blew up as the US was still heavily committed/exhausted by Afghanistan and had just left Iraq.

So, what can we do in Syria now?  Any real intervention that would stop Assad from killing people and stop ISIS from killing people would require the US to kill a lot of people.  Yes, the US because no one else has enough deployable troops to make a difference except for ... Turkey (which seems to be intent on killing Kurds more than anything else).  Invading Syria would be hard work, but might be do-able.  But keeping it at peace?  That would require a large occupation force for how long?  And how many casualties would the American people tolerate? 

Syria would be a very complicated peace-enforcing/state-building mission that would be very, very expensive and very, very violent.  Would the outcome be better than the current one?  I am not so sure.  So, we could get a high level of violence, perhaps more in the form of car bombs and IEDs and sniping than barrel bombs, but with outsiders paying a far higher price.

As always, it comes down to politics, and I just don't see a political settlement at the moment and little that outsiders can do to foster one given that Assad is fighting for his life with the help of Iran and Russia and that ISIS is not going to go away very easily.

Outsiders can do more to relieve the suffering of those who flee.  But what else can we do?

• No Fly Zone?  Right now the air campaign against ISIS in Syria is facilitated by Assad's willingness to let this happen.  If we want to shoot down Syrian planes and helicopters, the airspace gets more dangerous.  That is ok if you acknowledge the tradeoff, but it is a cost to doing business differently.
• Safe havens?  Would require some conquest to establish "safe" places, and we learned from Bosnia that save havens become targets and resolve very little.
• Attack Assad?  We could launch strikes and perhaps land troops to get rid of the Assad regime, as Assad is the best recruiter ISIS has.  But then what?  ISIS takes over since our moderate opposition folks have not really amounted to anything there.
• Conquer and occupy?  Thanks but no thanks.

So, the problem is not that there are lousy policy alternatives but that the various choices are awful, awful, awful.  And none are attractive enough that leaders can build domestic and international coalitions to sustain such efforts.

There are limits to power.  It is time we acknowledge that.

The Kurdish Complications

Now that Canada has decided to continue to train and support the Kurds in Iraq along with the Iraqi government, the question of the future of the Kurds is being questioned.  Indeed, yesterday, I received a phone call from a magazine in Kurdistan asking me about referendums and why some secessionist movements get to become states and others do not.  My short answer: "fair ain't got nothing to do with it" which could probably use a bit of nuance.  This is not just a Canadian issue but one for all of the countries intervening (or not intervening) in Iraq and Syria.

The one thing I do know and am very confident about is this: vulnerability to secession does not deter other countries from recognizing an independent Kurdish state.  Sorry, I know this is the conventional wisdom (as presented in this piece), but the conventional wisdom has always been wrong and always will be wrong.  How do I know that?  Well, see my first book, see this article, and this one, too.  Perhaps notice which countries recognized Kosovo (hint: Canada).  Oh, and check out Russia's foreign policy, given that it is vulnerable to secession yet have been sponsoring separatists frequently and enthusiastically.  And yes, countries can be irredentist even as they face separatist movements at home.

Canada, as the story linked above indicates, that despite arming and training Iraq's Kurds, wants these Kurds to stay in Iraq.  Why?  Two primary reasons: a) Turkey is an ally, and Turkey fears that an independent Kurdistan in Iraq and/or Syria would strengthen the Kurdish separatists in Turkey;* b) most solutions to the Iraq political problems need the Kurds.  Sure, there are folks who advocate partition of Iraq into three hunks of territory, but partition is never as easy or as beneficial as the advocates argue.   Having the Kurds in along with the Sunnis to balance the Shiites might just be key ingredients in some shot of power-sharing deal.  Of course, that is hard when the Shiites have been pretty committed to crushing the Sunnis (which is why the Sunnis have chosen the less bad alternative of ISIS).  But in the long run, Iraq will need a political solution that is not just handing over the largest part of it to Iran to the Shiites.

*  While I am a committed skeptic about how contagious ethnic conflict can be, one of the few ways that ethnic conflict travels is among ethnic kin who are separatist.  See also this.

So, Canada is aiding a group but not promoting its eventual aims.  Not that new, but definitely tricky.  The article from the National Post makes clear that Canada has been clear to all sides about its stance.  Which is the same stance as the rest of the coalition.

Of course, there is another Kurdish problem: we are sinking resources into training the Kurds, but their aims (other than independence) are quite limited.  They don't want to fight to win territory that they cannot keep.  And the downside of being the most reliable force in the region is that they have won most of the territory they claim.  It is not clear that they can do much more to push ISIS back into Syria.  Oops.

But that is why I keep calling this region the land of lousy policy alternatives.  As for the Kurds, I do feel for them in a big way.  They have been betrayed many times before.  This time, we are being honest and using them for what we see as the greater good.  And they are using us for their interests.  As always, the hard part in these interventions is figuring out how to align the interests of those who live there with those of the interveners.

The 2019 Mandate Letter to Minister of Defence: Some Reactions

The mandate letters were released this week, so I thought I would take a look at the Defence letter.  These letters are from the Prime Minister to the rest of cabinet, and, in parlance of principal-agency theory, are the instructions and discretion given by the principal to the agents.  It starts with stuff that applies to all ministers with references to a plan for the middle class and a reference to working within "the minority parliament."  Which ain't easy, of course.  References to dealing with provinces and Indigenous Peoples are part of the generic instructions.  For DND, provincial challenges exist but are not central.  Regarding Indigenous Peoples, they are quite relevant to two obvious areas and perhaps one less obvious area: the Canadian Rangers as the primary Canadian defence force in the north, the desire to recruit a more diverse force, and ... maybe land claims regarding where the CAF bases and exercises.  That last is just a guess, as I don't recall any recent stories. 

The document calls for transparency, which would be a chance for DND, according to those who deal with it.  I remember long ago a parliamentary staffer saying that when they wanted to know what DND was up to, they would call the Pentagon as the Americans would share information more freely. 

The part of the document that is specific to Defence starts with reference to Strong, Secure, Engaged--the product of the 2017 Defence Review.  Given that this was only two years ago and presented a fully costed (or so they say) assessment of the defence picture, it makes sense to stick with it rather have it serve as a baseline.  Indeed, in my interactions with DND/CAF people, it is quite clear this document remains the focal point of thinking and planning for pretty much everyone.

Onto the specifics:

US and Syria: WTF?

So, Trump is now pulling US troops out of Syria.  Yeah, the US had something like 2k troops there.  To do what?  Ah, there's the rub.  I will explain below as I respond to those who responded to my hottake:

My basic stance on Syria:
a) not all wars should be forever, so pulling troops out can be ok
b) I am squeamish about any Trump decision because he is an idiot
c) doing stuff that pleases Turkey and Russia is almost never good
d) but damn it, A.

1/2

— Steve Saideman (@smsaideman) December 19, 2018

Before responding to those who responded to this, why this take?  For several reasons, but most importantly, for the US to stay in some spot, there should be, like, an argument for that.  That is, the default should not be "stay" but go.  There should be a positive reason--that the troops are doing something that is important.  Even if they are not making progress, it might be ok to stay--holding the line, keeping an important commitment, etc can be reasonable reasons to stay.  I am not thrilled with the Afghanistan forever war, but it is easier to make claims about the virtues of sticking around.  The government there is one that the US and its friends have built and supported, that the government's policies may not be perfect but are better than what they would be without an American presence, that it gives the US some influence over the terms of the eventual negotiated settlement (that the presence of US troops makes far more likely).

In this US, we get the blob, the DC consensus, arguing folks need to stay (and do more, whatever more is) because they have intellectual investments in US intervention or they want to avoid being blamed when shit goes badly after we left (see Obama).  In Canada, I am convinced that it still has troops in Iraq mostly to defend the Liberals from the opposition accusing the Liberals of cutting and running (which is rich, given the Conservatives pulled Canada out of Kandahar three years before everyone else pulled out).  Again, the forever war machine is all about fear--of being blamed.

Ok, onto the questions/criticisms:

I agree that we need to assess what we are doing in Syria, but pulling out and letting Russia "win" seems very problematic to me.

— Sara Mitchell (@sbmitche) December 19, 2018

Sara is a pal and is super-smart, so I wade into twitter argument with her warily.  But, um, haven't the Russians already won?  That is, if their goal was to keep Assad in place, they have won.  If the joint goal is to reduce ISIS to an insurgency rather than a quasi-state, haven't we all won?

Exactly. I hear so much talk about how we care about the broader Iranian threat. But pulling out of Syria & withdrawing support from Yemen is not sending signals about credible US resolve in the Middle East. T's policies in the region are a joke/mess.

— Sara Mitchell (@sbmitche) December 19, 2018

My response:

A) The Iranian threat is overplayed
B) The Iranian threat is overplayed
C) What about the Saudi threat?
D) Having a reputation for resolve may be overrated.
E) If we have no strategy, the troops should be home where they are cheaper/safer.
F) The Iranian threat is overplayed.

— Steve Saideman (@smsaideman) December 19, 2018

Iran matters, Saudi Arabia matters, but what does withdrawal from Syria do to all of this?  My basic answer is not much.

Onto another smart scholar, one who I have never met but has become a regular twitter correspondent over the course of 2018:

Questions to ask re @smsaideman multiple choice:

Can doing the correct thing for the wrong reasons end well?

Which carries more weight in international relations, action or "message"? https://t.co/2s2kz3kBdc

— Dr. J. Sargent Russell (@jsargentr) December 19, 2018

Regarding the first question, sure, why not?  If it is an independent action--that it does not teach the doer to repeat doing similar things for the wrong reasons.  If the action does good or if it does not do much harm.  I am tempted to summon the evil god of Equifinality--that there are multiple causal pathways to an action--and what matters most is the outcome.

Which gets to the second question--what matters more--actions or messages?  Well, since I tend to drink from the waters of confirmation bias, I would argue that messages will always be read by the reader in ways that confirm their previous views, so the precedent set by the US leaving a place because the President is an ignoramus will be minimal.  Actions?  They matter although they get read in ways that confirm people's biases as well, but they have budgetary impacts (troops based in US are cheaper than in Syria) and impacts on people's lives (the soldiers will not be in harm's way at home).  What impact do the troops have in Syria?  Let me know what that is before suggesting that they stick around.

It seems like it'd be difficult for right actions for the wrong reasons to end well, as the actions would be divorced from the "right" end state.

— Herr Redlegmeister (@MikeTheRedleg) December 19, 2018

Again, what is the right end state?  A democratic Syria?  Two thousand troops are not going to get us there.  Assad gone?  Again, nope.  Save the Kurds from the Turks?  Hmmm, maybe, but not really an endstate.  Deny Russia an ally in the region?  See Assad sticking around.

Some other dynamics here that haven't been brought up:

• This is something Trump has wanted to do for some time, but he got slow-rolled by the Pentagon which now has to develop quickly policies to figure this out.  Folks have cheered this on, but, well, that sucks for civilian control of the military.  Many have been rooting for lots of shirking lately, and that ain't great.  So, back to Dr. J: which matters more--stopping a US departure or respecting the chain of command?
• Holy holes in government, Batman!!!  Apparently, there was a State Department press release about the long term US commitment to Syria.  Ooops.

Anyhow, these are tough questions and Syria is the land of bad policy options.  But sticking around to avoid making hard decisions is just a way to waste money and risk the lives of American troops unless there is a good reason to stick around.

Predictions for 2012

What the heck!  No one will check at the end of the year to see if I was right about any of my predictions.  So, what do I expect in 2012 for myself, for poli sci, for civil-military dynamics, for civil war and ethnic conflict, for tv and movies?  Hmmm, tall order.

Personal predictions:

• I will blog less in 2012 than in 2011.  Preparing to and then actually moving is going to take a lot of time.  Plus I am already over-committed for the first several months of the new year.
• I will whine a lot less about Quebec after the summer.  I will no longer subscribe to the Montreal Gazette, so the only Quebec-based news will be filtered through Ottawa and Canadian outlets.  Plus I will no longer be driving on roads that are similar to Vimy Ridge.
• The Dave and Steve book on NATO and Afghanistan will be submitted by the spring (but probably not published until 2013).  As long as NATO does not start another intervention, this should be feasible.
• I will travel less than the past couple of years.  Transition to Carleton, the end of research for the book, new projects that require less fieldwork all will mean less time on airplanes and in hotels.  It was a good run but I fell just short of the next status level of frequently flyer.  Oh, but one big exception--taking the family to Harry Potter land (Orlando) to compensate them for all of the cool trips they missed.
• I will struggle in my teaching at Carleton initially since I have not taught a class smaller than 80 in a few years and will also need to figure out how to teach more policy-oriented stuff to MA students looking to move into the policy world.  Oh, and the pop culture and other razzle dazzle will not be as useful.
  

Thinking about Strong, Secure, Engaged

Today, I had the chance along with Stephanie Carvin (my NPSIA partner in crime), Col (retired) Charles Davies, and Matthew Overton of CDAI to discuss the Canadian Defence Review--forever known now as the SSE (see the cover page to the right)--and where things stand now.  The audience was the Canadian Military Engineers Association, mostly active and retired army folks, which allowed me to snark at the Navy and at the Infantry. 


I entitled my talk "A Cranky Academic's View" although, to be fair, the SSE is not a bad document. I talked about how the review process involved far more consultation than I had expected, although it is not clear that the consultations changed the document that much.  I don't really know how much was pre-baked before the consultations except for the emphasis on more academic engagement--that was clearly a product of lots of folks chiming in. 

I did point out that a common complaint was that the Defence Review process happened before the new government could do a foreign policy or grand strategy review.  If the Defence stuff is supposed to fit into a larger plan about Canada's role in the world, doing a review without a clear concept of Canada's role is a problem.  We were asked in the Q&A about how the Canadian Armed Forces plays with other government agencies, so I said not well.  That the efforts to build "whole of government" are resisted mightily by all government agencies, so perhaps even if there were a big plan for Canada's grand strategy, the CAF and DND might resist. 

Instead, the SSE emphasized deployable units--that air/sea/land units should be considered essentially as different sets of packages for different missions and that each should have a number of packages for a number of possibilities.  This has actually played out in reality as the army has one package in Latvia doing tripwire/alliance stuff, one doing training in Iraq, one doing training in Ukraine, a helo package in Mali, etc.

What annoyed me about the SSE:

That there were no hard choices made and it seems like the Liberals saw procurement as jobs programs rather than defence programs.  One thing I didn't raise in the talk, because I forgot, is that the Saudi stuff should remind us that if we want a defence industry in Canada, it then leads to difficult choices like who to export arms to? Because Canada can't buy enough to sustain an arms industry.... Anyhow, back to the ships, I blamed industry as they crap over a program when they don't win (see today's news that the government can't make decisions on the ships until a court case is resolved).

I did also discuss the personnel part of the SSE--that it was put first and this was properly symbolic given that personnel are 50% of the budget AND recruiting/retaining folks is really hard.  If demographics say that there will be fewer white men from areas that traditionally supply the recuits to the CAF, then, hells yeah, we need a diverse force--women are 50% of the population, non-white folks are an increasing chunk of Canada. If those folks are really part of the recruiting pool, the pool is deeper, which means one can be more selective and get more quality. Oh, and yeah, we need to deal with misogyny and white supremacy within the ranks if we want a deeper pool of recruits and retain talented, trained people.

I concluded by saying that progress would be hard to measure, that any party will be held hostage by Halifax and Vancouver so the ship building program will continue, and that we really have no idea what the next Liberal government will do after 2019, but that since they don't seem to care that much about deficits, the programs in the SSE are unlikely to get cut.  Yeah, I am already counting out the Conservatives (a blogpost for another day).

Chuck Davies did a great job of putting the SSE into context--juxtaposing it with French, American, British and Australian reviews of late.  He spoke mostly favorably about it, but also raised a big issue which is becoming a theme for my civ-mil stuff--the more complexity one adds to the decision-making process, the more different oversight actors that are brought in, the harder it will be to make decisions and hold folks accountable. 

Stephanie Carvin talked mostly about technology and the SSE--that there is a risk of magical thinking that tech will fix things, but much tech raises difficult problems and that tech will not solve the fog of war.  She pushed back against the idea that Canada can't do much since it is more than just a middle power--it has a big GDP (compared to most places), a large tracts of land (sorry, my interpretation), and heaps of other stuff that should allow it to make a difference.  While I tend to scoff, she's right that Canada can do more if it has focus and an agenda.  The challenge now is what to do when all of the assumptions (US as reliable partner) are up for grabs?

The last question was on the public--that Canada's public doesn't care and is ill-informed about defence stuff.  I indicated that this is not very different from our allies, contradicting the questioner, as few voted on Brexit or for Trump based on defence policy.  Stephanie argued better that than I could that the public could be better informed and should be. She is working on some initiatives with CDAI and I am working via the CDSN to address this stuff.

Overall, it was an interesting morning, as I learned a lot from both Steph and Chuck as well as a conversation with Matthew that preceded the event.  As always, I love my job, and I love being in Ottawa where so much of this stuff gets analyzed, discussed, and, dare I say it, disseminated.

New Oversight Styling: The Independent Review Panel

This week, the Canadian government announced the "Independent Review Panel for Defence Acquisition." The Terms of Reference specify what the panel is and is not.  The panel is an effort to improve the Canadian defence procurement project, but is only one part of a larger effort.  I am interested in this panel for a few reasons:

1. These days, I am obsessed with oversight as that is the key issue at the core of the big project for the next five years (thanks SSHRC!).
2. I have long been critical of Canadian defence procurement.  But to be fair, all democracies mess this up, so it will be interesting to see how much this panel "fixes" it.
3. My friend and co-author, Philippe Lagassé, is one of the panelists, so I will have much fun teasing him, trying to get him to spill the various beans.

Anyhow, over the past week, I have conversed with a number of people about this to figure out this thing, as it is not entirely clear what it is supposed to do.  Expectations may be set on high, when they should be set on "huh?"  Let me explain.  The basic idea is that this panel will review procurement projects at the beginning, not at the middle or end.  They will assess the gaps that the Canadian Forces identify--we need x capability.  Really?  And then they will assess the options being proposed to deal with that gap.  They will not be looking at defence projects that have already made it through those steps (unless the Minister of Defence or Deputy Minister asks).

The reason why this panel seems to be needed is that there is a credibility gap between the Canadian Forces and the government/parliament/public/media/etc: that the military has previously stated requirements it needs and has done so that has limited the options for procurement.  My guess is that this panel is in part driven by F-35 regret--that perception that the Air Force had a particular outcome in mind and then designed the requirements to lead to that outcome.

This panel is designed to examine and challenge the assessments of the military long before it gets to contracts and the like--is there a real capability gap?  What are the ways to fill it?  Which leads to one of the big problems that this panel cannot fix: that the reigning policy statement that defines the threat environment and the basic missions of the Canadian Forces--the Canada First Defence Strategy [CFDS]--is obsolete.  It has been overcome by events--most importantly the fiscal crisis that reduced funding for the military and the government's desire to fund the military.  Other intervening events include the end of the Afghanistan mission, the new ISIS missions, and, oh yeah, the new Cold War with Russia (you can call it whatever you want, but Russia is not the friendly partner that folks might have been imagining in 2008 but an opportunistic, aggressive country engaged in provocative land grabs).  But the panel's job is not to evaluate the threat environment nor how the government intends to deal with the threat environment but the capabilities and the lack of same in dealing with such threats. [Nor is the Panel revising the implications of the Jenkins report that makes industrial benefits (jobs/votes) a key priority in making decisions]

Back to item #1, I have found the various discussions very interesting and very relevant for the Steve/Phil/Dave project on legislatures and militaries, as this is very much about oversight.  That the government has decided that the agent (the military) needs to be overseen better, given the procurement problems of the past and present.  The innovation here is to have an independent panel (some retired public servants, some folks from industry who have severed any ties that might produce conflicts of interest, and one not so random academic) shine a spotlight on the early stages.  The idea is not just investigate problematic statements of requirements but also to cause the military to anticipate the spotlight and thus compel the military to do a better job of developing their requirements and explaining them in non-military-ese.  It also is somewhat an indictment of the parliament's ability to do oversight (which they often say is not their job).

The good news is also the bad news.  The panel has the ear of the Minister as it is a creature/creation of the minister.  Their reports will be advice to the Minister/Cabinet.  This means they can be blunt.  Which is good.  The bad news?  An effort to build confidence and trust in the procurement process will be entirely behind closed doors.  Advice to ministers is the stuff that Access to Information Requests go to die--that these things do not come to light.  Panelists can refuse to answer the questions of the Defence Committee as they are obligated to report only to the Minister.  The members of parliament can ask the Minister what the panel said, but they cannot ask the panel what they tell the Minister.

So, the only way that the media, the public, and the parliament will develop more trust and confidence in the procurement process is if this panel does such a good job in scrubbing the statements of requirements and the options analyses that Canadian defence procurements stop having heaps of overruns, delays, and the like.   Since the panel is only involved at the very start and much can go wrong even if they do a terrific job, it will be really hard to tell if this process works.  

Still, the idea seems to be a good one, and the people chosen are sharp, responsible folks.  I think it will improve Canadian procurement processes, but I am not sure that we (the public, random academics, etc) will ever be able to discern the impact of this panel given that this is a complex process and one that is still covered in secret sauce that parliamentarians cannot penetrate.

Stress This!

Apparently, academics are in one of the most stressful professions. 

There's evidence that support for academic staff is needed. A 2008 report from the University and College Union (UCU) revealed that most universities were failing to meet the standards for psychosocial working conditions set out by the Health and Safety Executive.
An academic study three years earlier drew similar conclusions. The authors of 'Occupational stress in UK higher education institutions: a comparative study of all staff categories' highlight the main cause of stress to be job insecurity, followed by stress relating to work relationships, control, resources and communication.
And the phenomenon is not restricted to UK HE. The Guardian, the newsletter of CUPE Local 3902, the representative of 7,000 education workers at the University of Toronto and Victoria University, published an article last year about occupational stress in Canada, with women and academics between the ages of 30 and 39 revealed to be the most stressed.

Perhaps we academics are more likely to report being stressed?  I think we talk about it more, whine about it more, but is our job more stressful?  Yes, there is a heap of uncertainty on the academic job market.  The reality is that if you do land a tenure track job (not as many jobs are TT as there used to be), then the stress is modest.  Why?  Because most places give tenure to those who are on the TT track.  While I have complained and complained about my situation at times, I am too well aware that I have had job security and great working conditions.  My chair could say stupid stuff, and I could ignore him.  Often.  Try that in a law firm.  Try that in a corporation.

That we have not much in the way of real hierarchy means that there is only so much that folks can do to us.  The secret is this: most of our stress is, dare I say it, self-imposed.  We worry about our status, about where we publish, about whether we get invited to reindeer games, about how others are doing.  The reality is most of our deadlines are self-imposed, except, of course, the tenure clock.

The hardest part and most stressful part of this business of academia is that it does involve fairly constant rejection: from journals, presses, foundations, other funding sources and so on.  One can opt out of much of this, especially after tenure and many do.

While I have been writing this post, my favorite twitter combatant and I have been arguing about status and how the competition for status causes stress, that it is a zero-sum game.  That there are finite spots in the most prestigious journals and so on.  But this competition is not so straightforward--that there are many ways to play it so that one can get the status one can be satisfied with.  One can publish in quantity even if that means rarely hitting top journals.  One can aim for top journals and have fewer pubs.  One can try to write the most citation-baiting piece they can.  One can focus on policy-oriented outlets.  One can focus more on teaching and service, which might inhibit promotion but provide job satisfaction.  One might decide to teach and do nothing else (good luck to any chair to force that person to do more than that after tenure).  One can do more media stuff to raise one's profile.  One could blog and tweet to gain attention and status.  There are many, many ways to play the game, as the goals are largely self-determined.

I know that I will never be the top guy in my field, that I will never be hired by Stanford or Harvard.  There is always a bigger fish--but I don't need to be the biggest fish to be happy.  I just need to be recognized by my colleagues in my dept and outside of it as someone who does good and interesting work. I need to do work that interests me, and I need students who engage me. 

Even status competition, which does affect getting outside offers, salary and ego, pales in comparison to real competition where one can get fired, where a promotion of someone else can radically change how you do your work from day to day--yes, there are a-holes in our business but there is limited damage they can do.  There is only so much that anyone can tell an academic how to do a job--what to teach, how to teach, what to research, how to research.

I am much happier as an academic, even in my darkest days, than I could possibly be if I were in the financial sector, in a law firm, or in a doctor's office.  If one screws up as a doctor, people die.  If I screw up, well, I can edit or revise tomorrow.  That the stakes are actually quite low is a key reason why the stress is minor and largely self-imposed. 

The irony here is that academics are trained and employed to think comparatively yet we forget to do so when we consider our profession.  It can have its stresses, but compared to other professions with higher stakes, with less job security, with less pay, risk of concussions, it really is not that bad.  It really is what we make of it. 

Of course, if one does not have a tenure track job in this profession, your situation will be most stressful (even if no lives [other than one's own]) are at stake.

Japan's New Carriers: Why Am I Concerned?

From the National Interest.

The news of the month, Asia-Pacific-wise, is that Japan has admitted that its escort destroyers (and other names for its helicopter carriers) are going to be converted into aircraft carriers via some modifications and with purchasing the version of the F-35 that can take off from a short deck.  Why?

That is, why is Japan doing this?  I raise that simple question.  Folks think the answers are obvious:
a) China is bad and spending heaps on a larger navy
b) Trump is unreliable so Japan needs carriers more now than before.

And my response to these answers is this: how do carriers solve these problems?  Maybe they do, maybe they don't.  But my study of Japanese civil-military relations suggests that damn few civilians are asking any questions at all.

I have submitted a piece to a journal about Japan and its recent investment in amphibious capability, arguing that this is a way for the Army to continue to get funding but not a good thing for Japan's security (see this draft presented at the EISA).  I am not sure whether I see the carriers in the same light, but am tempted to do so.  That the Navy might want them because it would be good for the Navy's image, autonomy, budgets, etc--basic bureaucratic politics.  But how does it fit into Japan's grand strategy?

Given where Japan sits--close to Korea and within range of China's missiles and all that, what good would the carriers do AND what are the tradeoffs and consequences?  First, the latter: the helo carriers were anti-submarine platforms.  Japan had a nice division of labor, given the restriction on offensive capability (Article 9 of its Constitution has been reinterepreted but not revised), where the Maritime Self-Defence Force could protect the US ships that would be doing the striking.  So, if Japan puts a bunch of planes on the carriers, this means fewer helos on these ships--space is finite.  Second, like the amphibious forces, the development of aircraft carriers scares the neighborhood since the last time Japan had carriers, well, things did not go well for the neighbors.  Sure, that is 80 years ago or so, but memories of WWII have been kept alive and shape perceptions far more in East Asia than in Europe.  So, there are some consequences for having carriers--it is not a cost free thing.  Japan's defense budget is relatively fixed at 1% of GDP, and Japan's economy has been stagnating more or less for a couple of decades.




Ok, what can F35-bearing carriers do for Japan?  Um..... Not sure.  Japan can reach Korea and the seas off of Japan with land based planes.  They can build more air bases on their chain of islands that reach down a far way.  See the typical Japanese map of the region makes it clear that Japan's islands contain China--maybe the better investment is in anti-air and anti-ship missiles?

Would it make sense to send these carriers to the South China Sea?  Um, only if the Japanese want them sunk in a time of war.  The US is already pondering whether its carriers could survive there, and they have a wee bit more capability in both directions--to attack and to defend.  Where else can these carriers go?  Pearl Harbor?  Oops.  Again, the basic question is whether the plan to modify these ships and buy F35Bs fit into Japan's larger grand strategy--what is the master plan for defending itself and where do the carriers fit in?  There may be good answers to this, but I don't know if any one is asking or answering these questions.  I do know from my interview work in Japan over the past few years that it is unlikely that anyone in the Diet (Japan's parliament) is asking these questions, that the Ministry of Defense is far more focused on protecting the Self-Defense Forces from scrutiny, that the Minister of Defense is rarely around long enough to know much about the SDF, and that the only actor who has the access and power to shape the SDF is usually too busy to spend much attention--the Prime Minister.  The media?  Tends not to ask difficult questions.  Think tanks?  Not quite the same vibrant think tank culture in Japan on defense issues as in the US, UK or even Australia.

So, this random academic is just asking: what the hell are these carriers going to do and what are the consequences?  Maybe it is a great idea, but I tend to bet on bureaucratic politics, which might be good for vetting policy (see this paper) but not great for procurement.

Why I Didn't Quit Academia

There have been a spate of posts about why folks have quit academia.... so much so that Dan Drezner issued a challenge:

Has anyone written a "Why I Haven't Quit the Academy" post yet?
— Daniel Drezner (@dandrezner) October 27, 2013

So, I decided to figure out why I did not quit.  Sure, looking backwards from where things stand now, it would have been a mistake to quit.  Things have worked out really well for me, but that was hardly foreseeable and there were a couple of points along the way where quitting might have made sense:

• It took me three years to land a tenure track position, enduring a second  year of VAP-ing (being a visiting assistant professor) at a place where I had lost the competition for the TT position in my first year.  A year of dead man walking was not entirely super.
• I had a TT position in a dysfunctional department in a place I didn't want to live.  I spent several years trying to leave, but did not cash in on the few interviews I was able to get each of my last few years there.
• While on a fellowship in DC, I could have bailed, but I did not look for any policy jobs in the DC area.
• I spent several years trying to get out of Quebec, but did not consider seriously quitting the academy

The reality is that I never really seriously considered quitting, although that would have become a serious consideration had I not gotten the TT job in the middle of my third year on the market.  Why didn't I quit or think about it seriously when things looked bad.?

1. I never had to adjunct.  I can barely imagine how folks can endure adjuncting for any lenght of time.
2. I have a crappy imagination?  In grad school, when I tried to imagine alternative career paths, I came up with no realistic options: I could be a policeman, a firefighter, etc.  I just didn't think I could do anything else.  Turns out that there is nothing else I would rather do.
3. I am risk averse: I'd rather live where I would not want to live and profess and have a certain paycheck than try to do something with far less job security.
4. I really, really like this job.

Yep, even as a VAP in a department containing a few hostiles, I really liked teaching, I really enjoyed researching stuff that I found interesting, and I really liked being in control over what I was doing when I was doing it.  This business has a lot of constraints---well, one big one: you cannot choose where you live.  But you can control pretty much everything else.  

I have endured more bad department chairs than good ones, yet the nature of the job means that they can only do so much damage.  In my previous job, the chair and I had a very hostile relationship, but there was only so much he could do to me.  I could still engage in the research that thrilled me (see theforthcoming  book), I could still teach sharp students and do it in a fun way (no Halloween costumes this year, alas), and I could still do the service stuff for the discipline. 

All along the way, I have depended on smart, sweet people who helped me get through the hard times.  Indeed, I have had a heap of fun along the way, with many lunches, poker games, parties, and other interactions that made the going easier.  I so enjoy going to conferences as these provide opportunities to catch up with the folks who were so very supportive.  

So, why didn't I quit?  The job itself is very sweet if one values the freedom to engage one's curiosity and delights in exchanging ideas with young people (ug, that makes me sound old).  Combine  with the amazing people that I have worked with, drinked with, teased, been teased by, and so on, and it is easier to see why I have not looked to the exit.

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.