Why I Will NEVER Vote for Ron Paul

Today's New Hampshire Union Leader has an op-ed piece from Representative Ron Paul (R-TX 14) in which he responds to a previously written editorial criticizing Paul's foreign policy proposal as isolationist. Paul responds:

If I understand the editors' concerns, I have not been accused of deviating from the Founders' logic; if anything I have been accused of adhering to it too strictly. The question, therefore, before readers -- and soon voters -- is the same question I have asked for almost 20 years in Congress: by what superior wisdom have we now declared Jefferson, Washington, and Madison to be "unrealistic and dangerous"? Why do we insist on throwing away their most considered warnings?

A non-interventionist foreign policy is not an isolationist foreign policy. It is quite the opposite. Under a Paul administration, the United States would trade freely with any nation that seeks to engage with us. American citizens would be encouraged to visit other countries and interact with other peoples rather than be told by their own government that certain countries are off limits to them.

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It is not we non-interventionists who are isolationsists. The real isolationists are those who impose sanctions and embargoes on countries and peoples across the globe because they disagree with the internal and foreign policies of their leaders. The real isolationists are those who choose to use force overseas to promote democracy, rather than seek change through diplomacy, engagement, and by setting a positive example.

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A Paul administration would see Americans engaged overseas like never before, in business and cultural activities. But a Paul administration would never attempt to export democracy or other values at the barrel of a gun, as we have seen over and over again that this is a counterproductive approach that actually leads the United States to be resented and more isolated in the world.

While I am often sympathetic to libertarian-type policies, Paul's understanding of US foreign policy -- both present-day and historial -- is woefully naive and dangerous.

First, his understanding of the Founders' approach to foreign policy is overly simplistic and inaccurate. It's true that George Washington, in his farewell address, warned the new nation against "the insidious wiles of foreign influence" and "excessive partiality for one foreign nation and excessive dislike of another". Washington went on to make a Paul-like recommendation:

The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible. So far as we have already formed engagements, let them be fulfilled with perfect good faith. Here let us stop. Europe has a set of primary interests which to us have none; or a very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies, the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns. Hence, therefore, it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves by artificial ties in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics, or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her friendships or enmities.

Yes, this warning was less a deep-seated belief in impartiality than a response to America's fledgling status and under-developed power. As Robert Kagan makes clear in his magisterial work Dangerous Nation, such fears of entangling alliances were situationally determined. Where the US was weak, so was its desire to take sides or develop an activist foreign policy, and as American power would grow, so would its foreign policy, even in the hands of the Founders Paul is so convinced were opposed to such expansion. Washington provided some explanation for his apparent preference for neutrality, saying its point was "to endeavor to gain time for our country to settle and mature its yet recent institutions, and to progress without interruption to that degree of strength and consistency which is necessary to give it, humanly speaking, the command of its fortunes." Even one as opposed to growth of federal power sought to tie the US to revolutionary France against Great Britain and was instrumental in developing the peace-time navy.

Paul's understanding of present-day foreign policy is just as flawed as his grasp of history. Implicit in his argument is that claim that American foreign policy is dangerous to both the US and to the rest of the world. In this op-ed, he focuses on the exportation of democracy "at the barrel of a gun," but his presidential campaign website voices his opposition to American membership in the WTO, NAFTA and all other free trade deals (not to mention his paranoid fear of the mythical NAFTA Mexico-to-Canada superhighway), the UN, humanitarian intervention, and all uses of force not expressly authorized by Congress.

Not only would such policies undermine the entire liberal economic order established by the US that is so vital for ensuring American and international prosperity, but it would undermine what little international political order there is, as such order largely depends on American hegemony. As Niall Ferguson wrote in his Foreign Policy article "A World Without Power," "anyone who dislikes US hegemony should bear in mind that, rather than a multipolar world of competing great powers, a world with no hegemon at all may be the real alternative to US primacy." The world wars were both products of international political systems lacking hegemonic control. Absent US security guarantees, the EU would be hard pressed to sustain itself, restraints on Iranian, North Korean, and even Chinese aggression would disappear, and the relative levels of cooperation and comity that currently exist in international politics would collapse.

Paul may try to disguise his policies in the cloak of the political philosophies and foreign policies of the Founders. But don't be fooled. George Washington wouldn't vote for Paul. Nor would Thomas Jefferson.

One Laptop Per Child

Following on my post several weeks back about Kiva comes another opportunity for people to get personally involved with international development. The oft-discussed $100 laptop is about to be released. The idea was to create a laptop that could be afforded even in the poorest parts of the world. According to the One Laptop Per Child organization:

Extensively field-tested and validated among some of the poorest and most remote populations on earth, constructionism emphasizes what Papert calls “learning learning” as the fundamental educational experience. A computer uniquely fosters learning learning by allowing children to “think about thinking”, in ways that are otherwise impossible. Using the XO as both their window on the world, as well as a highly programmable tool for exploring it, children in emerging nations will be opened to both illimitable knowledge and to their own creative and problem-solving potential.

People in the developed world can donate a laptop or, starting November 11, participate in the "Buy 1, Give 1" program, in which $400 buys a laptop for you and one to be sent to a needy child in the developing world (they never succeeded in getting the price down to the mythical $100, but $200 still ain't bad).

So, what kind of laptop do you get for $200? According to David Pogue, the technology/computer guy for the New York Times, a pretty damn good one:

[It's] spillproof, rainproof, dustproof and drop-proof. It’s fanless, it’s silent and it weighs 3.2 pounds. One battery charge will power six hours of heavy activity, or 24 hours of reading. The laptop has a built-in video camera, microphone, memory-card slot, graphics tablet, game-pad controllers and a screen that rotates into a tablet configuration.

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[One Laptop Per Child] does worry that people might compare the XO with $1,000 Windows or Mac laptops. They might blog about their disappointment, thereby imperiling O.L.P.C.’s continuing talks with third world governments.

It’s easy to see how that might happen. There’s no CD/DVD drive at all, no hard drive and only a 7.5-inch screen. The Linux operating system doesn’t run Microsoft Office, Photoshop or any other standard Mac or Windows programs. The membrane-sealed, spillproof keyboard is too small for touch-typing by an adult.

And then there’s the look of this thing. It’s made of shiny green and white plastic, like a Fisher-Price toy, complete with a handle. With its two earlike antennas raised, it could be Shrek’s little robot friend.

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The truth is, the XO laptop, now in final testing, is absolutely amazing, and in my limited tests, a total kid magnet. Both the hardware and the software exhibit breakthrough after breakthrough — some of them not available on any other laptop, for $400 or $4,000.

In the places where the XO will be used, power is often scarce. So the laptop uses a new battery chemistry, called lithium ferro-phosphate. It runs at one-tenth the temperature of a standard laptop battery, costs $10 to replace, and is good for 2,000 charges — versus 500 on a regular laptop battery.

The laptop consumes an average of 2 watts, compared with 60 or more on a typical business laptop. That’s one reason it gets such great battery life. A small yo-yo-like pull-cord charger is available (one minute of pulling provides 10 minutes of power); so is a $12 solar panel that, although only one foot square, provides enough power to recharge or power the machine.

Speaking of bright sunshine: the XO’s color screen is bright and, at 200 dots an inch, razor sharp (1,200 by 900 pixels). But it has a secret identity: in bright sun, you can turn off the backlight altogether. The resulting display, black on light gray, is so clear and readable, it’s almost like paper. Then, of course, the battery lasts even longer.

The XO offers both regular wireless Internet connections and something called mesh networking, which means that all the laptops see each other, instantly, without any setup — even when there’s no Internet connection.

With one press of a button, you see a map. Individual XO logos — color-coded to differentiate them — represent other laptops in the area; you connect with one click. (You never double-click in the XO’s visual, super-simple operating system. You either point with the mouse or click once.)

This feature has some astonishing utility. If only one laptop has an Internet connection, for example, the others can get online, too, thanks to the mesh network. And when O.L.P.C. releases software upgrades, one laptop can broadcast them to other nearby laptops.

Power users will snort at the specs of this machine. It has only one gigabyte of storage — all flash memory — with 20 percent of that occupied by the XO’s system software. And the processor is feeble by conventional standards. Starting up takes two minutes, and switching between programs is poky.

Once in a program, though, the speed is fine; it turns out that a light processor is plenty if the software is written compactly and smartly. (O.L.P.C. points out that despite gigantic leaps in processing power, today’s business laptops don’t feel any faster than they did a few years ago. The operating systems and programs have added so much bloat that they absorb the speed gains.)

The built-in programs are equally clever. There’s a word processor, Web browser, calculator, PDF textbook reader, some games (clones of Tetris and Connect 4), three music programs, a painting application, a chat program and so on. The camera module permits teachers, for the first time, to send messages home to illiterate parents.

There are also three programming environments of different degrees of sophistication. Incredibly, one keystroke reveals the underlying code of almost any XO program or any Web page. Students can not only study how their favorite programs have been written, but even experiment by making changes. (If they make a mess of things, they can restore the original.)

What a fantastic idea. If you're looking to buy a computer for your child, why not consider the "Buy 1, Give 1" program? For $400, your kid will get a pretty good machine, and you'll change the life of a child in the developing world. Or, just donate one. Another opportunity for all of us to get directly involved in international development.

International politics is ultimately about making the world a better place. Groups like Kiva and One Laptop Per Child make it easier for us to do so, one person at a time.

The Secret Torture Memo?

The New York Times is reporting that, in spite of congressional legislation passed in December 2005 banning the use of "cruel, inhuman, or degrading" treatment of all prisoners in US custody, the Justice Department had, in February 2005 issued a secret memo providing the CIA witjh "explicit authorization to barrage terror suspects with a combination of painful physical and psychological tactics, including head-slapping, simulated drowning and frigid temperatures." Even after the passage of the Detainee Treatment Act in December 2005, the Justice Department memo remained in force and was reinforced by a second secret memo stating that the CIA's methods did not constitute "cruel, inhuman, or degrading" treatment. Such policies would have been in conflict with a public memo released by the Justice Department in December 2004 which declared torture to be an "abhorrent" practice, and broadened its definition.

The Bush Administration is denying this report, claiming that, in the words of White House spokeswoman Dana Perino, "This country does not torture. It is a policy of the United States that we do not torture and we do not." Furthermore:

Asked about the story Thursday, Perino confirmed existence of the Feb. 5, 2005, classified opinion but would not comment on whether it authorized specific practices, such as head-slapping and simulated drowning. She said the 2005 opinion did not reinterpret the law.

Additionally, Justice Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said the 2004 opinion remains in effect and that ''neither Attorney General Gonzales nor anyone else within the department modified or withdrew that opinion.''

I am on record as being open to the possibility that torture, or coercive interrogation, is something that must be considered in very specific circumstances and under very specific conditions to protect the US, and that I am skeptical of the claims that the use of torture/coercive interrogation is counter-productive. But this is essentially a different question.

The president is not allowed to legislate, especially when Congress has enacted a law governing a situation or circumstance. When Congress passes a law forbidding the use of coercive interrogation, the president must obey that law. I have written numerous times about this argument of war powers: in the absence of a declaration of war, the president is still bound to follow existing law. In the absence of a specific congressional act, the president does have some latitude to interpret or implement policies. But when Congress speaks, as it did by passing the Detainee Treatment Act in December 2005, the Constitution demands that the president comply with the law. It may be that the president and the Justice Department were able to make a semantic argument that allowed them to define certain tactics as "not torture" but at least on the face of it, such an interpretation would seem to be a flagrant violation of the spirit of the DTA, especially in light of the December 2004 memo.

If the report by the Times is true, this is likely a serious violation of both international and domestic law. The practices at issue -- "a combination of painful physical and psychological tactics, including head-slapping, simulated drowning and frigid temperatures" -- are almost certainly violations of Common Article 3 of the Geneva Convention, which the Supreme Court ruled in June 2006 the US was bound to apply to all US-held detainees. The Military Commissions Act of November 2006 gave the president the power to establish specific permissible interrogation techniques, which President Bush did in July 2007, but with the caveat that the techniques would not violate the rules of the Geneva Convention.

The president must follow the law. Nothing can justify an unconstitutional action. As I have written many times before, if the president believes he needs broader powers to act without congressional authorization, he can ask for a declaration of war. Without one, the law remains.

UPDATE: Over at the Chronicle for Higher Education, it's noted that:

This affair might have played out differently, however, had Congress spelled out exactly which techniques it considers cruel, inhuman, and degrading. Many of the scholars involved in the recent debate over the American Psychological Association’s policy on interrogations expressed concerns about the vagueness of federal and international prohibitions on torture. U.S. laws and international treaties, they said, should more emphatically define and ban so-called soft torture techniques, such as long-term isolation and sensory deprivation.

Who's The Problem In Darfur?

Yesterday, hundreds of Darfur rebels poured out of the desert and assaulted a camp of peacekeeping troops from the African Union. When the attack was over, 10 peacekeepers were dead, dozens more were missing, possibly kidnapped, and lots of supplies, including heavy weapons, had been stolen. According to the New York Times:

Relief officials said that as those groups splintered, their new factions needed matériel, and that the attack on the peacekeepers might have been intended to seize quality weapons. “It’s indicative of the complete insecurity,” said Alun McDonald, a spokesman for the Oxfam aid organization in Sudan. “These groups are attacking anybody and everybody with total impunity.”

He added that armed groups were “increasingly targeting aid workers to steal their vehicles, radios and logistical stuff.” He said the attack on the peacekeepers “sounds quite similar to that, just on a much larger scale.”

Mr. McDonald's explanation is, however, unsatisfactory. Attacking the peacekeepers is very likely to result in the withdrawal of the AU force, and perhaps even a delay or cancellation of the UN-AU hybrid force that has been authorized to replace the existing AU force. Already Senegal, one of the largest contributors to the AU force, has announced that it is considering withdrawing its troops from the force. So, unless the rebels wanted the peacekeepers out of Darfur, attacking them doesn't make sense.

But it's altogether likely that the rebels do, in fact, want the peacekeepers out. The rebels are those Darfuri who have decided to take up arms against the Sudanese government in hopes of achieving greater political autonomy and protection, if not independence, for Darfur. The presence of peacekeepers, while perhaps sufficing to minimize or prevent the attacks against civilians that has killed hundreds of thousands and displaced millions more, will not serve to advance the larger political goal. If anything, the peacekeepers will serve to entrench the status quo by freezing the battlelines and political demands in place. They certainly will make it more difficult for the rebels to attain their larger political goals.

Of course, if the UN was capable of disregarding concerns for sovereign equality and actually taking sides in ethnic conflicts like this, the rebels might have a little more faith that their concerns would be addressed by the international community. But history has likely given them little confidence that the presence of UN peacekeepers will do anything but perpetuate the existing situation, and might, in a worst case, prevent the Darfuri from defending themselves against Sudanese predation.

This attack will likely go a long way to convincing states that sending soldiers to Darfur is not realyl in their national interest. And while that might benefit the rebels, it will do little to ease the suffering of the average Darfuri. Whatever forces end up on the ground in Darfur must be capable of defending themselves against government or rebel forces, and must not be unwilling to use force to enforce the peace.

Why I May Have To Vote For Ron Paul

A Battle of Wills in Burma

Things are coming to a head in Myanmar (formerly known as Burma). The military government that seized power in 1989 has responded to massive political protests with force. So far, at least 9 people have been killed as security forces fired into pro-democracy crowds, and government forces have raided monasteries in an attempt to break the monk-led protests. The protests, involving tens of thousands of people, are the largest pro-democracy rallies since the 1989.

How will this end? Governments hold power through a combination of two elements: legitimacy and force. Few governments rely solely on force; North Korea is truly the only one I can think of. Even for governments as oppressive and reliant on force as Iraq under Hussein, the USSR, China, or Zimbabwe require the acquiescence of the people, and even democratic governments are ultimately underpinned by the monopoly of force. But it is the balance of force and legitimacy that is critical.

When a government is faced with massive systemic and existential protest, as is Myanmar now or as China was in 1989, it must decide how to deal with that protest. Sometimes, the government cannot bring itself to use the amount of force that would be required to maintain control of society; this is ultimately what happened in Eastern Europe during the Velvet Revolution. The governments had lost so much legitimacy that maintaining control would have required such a massive use of force that the government was unwilling to do so. Sometimes, as in Tiananmen Square, the government is willing to use sufficient force to crush the dissent. In these case, the government hopes that the will of the people is insufficiently strong to withstand a strong display of force and that the protest will collapse. Once force is used, there will be enough legitimacy left that people will prefer to continue with the government rather than maintain their protest.

We are at that phase in Myanmar. Have the monks and the other pro-democracy protesters lost enough of their sense of legitimacy in the government that they will be willing to stand in the face of brutality and violence? Will the government be willing to use enough force? Will the soldiers be willing to carry out their orders? The answers to these questions will determine whether the government or the protesters fold.

But the outcome is not entirely in the hands of the domestic protagonists. International pressure on the regime can affect its willingness to trade legitimacy for force and how it perceives the benefits of maintaining control over the country. Sadly, China has blocked the UN Security Council from taking action, claiming that "these problems now at this stage (do) not constitute a threat to international and regional peace and stability."

But I wouldn't have trusted the UN to do much anyway. Instead, the US, the EU, Japan, and the other liberal democracies should immediately impose massive and near-total sanctions on Myanmar and begin putting diplomatic pressure on the leaders. In particular, offers of safe havens and amnesty in exchange for stepping down would be especially useful.

It is always particularly inspiring to see people willing to take such massive risks for democracy. I hope that the will of the Burmese people is stronger than that of their repressive government.

Ahmadinejad At Columbia

As Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad arrives in the US, there is much ado about whether he should be allowed to visit "Ground Zero" (Julian Ku over at Opinio Juris has an excellent post about whether Ahmadinejad can be legally barred from visiting) and whether he should be invited to speak at Columbia University. It's the latter question that I want to address.

I'm not a fan of banning political discourse, no matter how distasteful it may be. I was, for example, opposed to the political outcry that emerged over Iran's Holocaust-denying cartoon contest and I disagree with European bans on Holocaust denial. There is no better antidote to conspiracy-theories and close-mindedness than the light of debate, and preventing such debate merely feeds the belief that the claims are being suppressed by the political establishment. So, I don't really have any problem with Ahmadinejad speaking in public, even in the US.

But I do have a problem with him speaking at Columbia. Well, not Columbia in particular, but at a university. It is true that universities are bastions of free speech and intellectual openness is essential to the existence of universities and to the project of education in general. But universities are also devoted to intellectual honesty and truth. Yes, truth.

Truth is not determined by the content of an argument, but rather by the structure and form of an argument. As I blogged about a few days ago, methodology is critical. The reason Holocaust denial, 9/11 conspiracy theorists, and their ilk are so dangerous is not that they spout idiocy, but rather that they lack any scientific method, so rebutting the argument becomes proof of their point. This is not scientific, it is not academic, it is not intellectual. It is opinion and nothing more.

Of course, there is a place for opinion, even on a university's campus. Student groups, lecture series, and other such fora exist to allow people to speak their minds. But a university should not recognize, invite, and honor people who deny the truth, be they Holocaust-deniers, 9/11 conspiracy theorists, anti-Copernicans, or anyone else who simply spouts opinion that flies in the face of fact. A university must be willing to defend moder Galileos, who rely on science and method in the face of dogmatic opinion. And the university must be willing to denounce that very same dogmatic opinion.

Ahmadinejad should not be allowed to speak at Columbia. Not because his regime might be involved in the deaths of US soldiers in Iraq and not because he rejects the right of Israel to exist. Rather, he should not be invited to speak at Columbia because he stands in defiance of the very principle of academic openness and honesty.

For Whom Hell Is Too Good

UN security forces from the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia for the Prosecution of Crimes Committed During the Period of Democratic Kampuchea have arrested Nuon Chea, otherwise known as "Brother No. 2." Nuon Chea, who has been charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity, is the highest ranking surviving member of the Khmer Rouge, was Prime Minister of the Central Committee, and served as Pol Pot's second-in-command.

The Khmer Rouge began its insurgency against the Cambodian government in 1968, and seized control of the government in 1975. It then attempted to remake Cambodia into an classless, agrarian workers' paradise, by relocating the entire urban population into the agricultural communes in the countryside, abolishing money, religion, and property, and executing any groups seen as dangerous to the new regime, including the intelligentsia (identifiable in some cases by those who wore glasses or anyone with a formal education). By the time the Khmer Rouge was ejected from Cambodia by Vietnamese troops in 1979, an estimated one-quarter of Cambodia's population -- 2 million out of 8 million -- had died from torture, execution, overwork, disease, and starvation.

While Pol Pot died before being brought to justice, in 1997 Cambodia established, in cooperation with the UN, a tribunal to try any surviving members of Khmer Rouge. Due to financial difficulties, the court has had a difficult time in making progress, but in May 2006, 30 judges were approved to hear cases. Trials are expected to begin in August 2008.

Normally, I'm not a fan of international tribunals. They waste too much money, take too long, and have too difficult a time proving their cases. But, in this case, there don't seem to be too many alternatives.

Let's hope Nuon Chea lives long enough to stand trial and to be condemned for his actions. A lifetime of eternal torment in hell is far too good for this man.

Dallaire On Darfur

Romeo Dallaire, now a senator in the Canadian parliament, was the commander of the UN peacekeeping force on the ground at the onset of the Rwandan genocide. He has been haunted by his inability to do anything about the slaughter, and has written extensively about his failure, the failure of the UN, and of the international community.

Yesterday, Dallaire published an open letter to General Martin Agwai, the commander-designate of the UN force that will, someday, be deployed into Darfur. The letter is worth reading in its entirety:

An open letter from the former force commander of the ill-fated Unamir mission to Rwanda, to General Martin Agwai, the newly appointed force commander designate for the UN mission in Darfur.

Dear General Agwai

Congratulations on your recent appointment as Joint United Nations/African Union force commander for the hybrid UN/AU Mission in Darfur, formalised by resolution 1769 as Unamid. After over four years of massive killing and displacement in Darfur, a conflict that has not only destabilised Sudan but the entire Eastern Sahel region, Unamid under the leadership of Mr Adada, joint special representative for Darfur, and the force under your command will have the historic opportunity to end slaughter, bring peace, [and] allow humanitarian aid. In the longer term, Unamid has the potential to facilitate the return of Darfur's people to their homes, enhance Sudan's sovereignty and territorial integrity and stabilise the region.

This is a daunting mandate, and you enter into this mission facing long odds. The intentions of the regime in Khartoum toward an effective, impartial implementation of the Unamid mandate are deeply uncertain. The Sudanese government has blocked and whittled international efforts, through the AU and UN, to end the killing and facilitate a durable peace through fair and transparent internal negotiations. Even since the enactment of Resolution 1769, we have seen ample indications that the Sudanese government will at every turn seek to impose a minimalist reading of the Unamid mandate. The government has already signalled that it will try to restrict the non-African role in the mission as much as it can and prolong the internal divisions and growing chaos which undermine efforts to end the fighting and provide humanitarian aid to all in need.

The challenges you will face in dealing with the rebel movements will also be substantial. In the absence of a viable political settlement process, and exacerbated by the Abuja settlement which many saw as imposed and unbalanced, the groups have fragmented and many elements have degenerated into criminal activity and focus on fighting each other. The same holds true of many "Arab" elements, some of which previously fought alongside government troops. The recent efforts of special envoys Salim and Eliasson have given some hope that this deterioration can be reversed with support from rebel movement leaders and field commanders themselves. But as you know, not all leaders are cooperating and conflict has certainly not diminished on the ground since the recent Arusha meeting. The threat to sustaining humanitarian operations as well as to nurturing the AU/UN-sponsored political talks is obvious and severe.

Finally, assembling, sustaining and directing such a large force in this most remote and inhospitable area will tax you, as it will test the will and capacity of both sponsoring organisations. The Unamid hybrid is conceptually novel, with many practical and legal issues that will impact your work yet to be discovered, let alone resolved. Funding, command and control, reporting and provisioning are all areas where both the location and force size will be taxing, and where the novel character of Unamid will add a difficult layer of challenge for you and the SRSG.

In wishing you well, as a fellow force commander, in your important mission, I would like to take the opportunity to offer a few broad thoughts that I hope may assist you in your preparation and implementation of the mission in the field.

First: I urge you to insist both to New York and to Addis Ababa that they clarify, in the most practical terms and as fast as possible, the chain of command and reporting for the mission. Resolution 1769 is vague on command and control. It did not precisely resolve the well-known disagreement between Khartoum, which insists on essentially AU command, and many other member states, that demand UN command and control as the only guarantor of effectiveness.

For my part, I would press hard for New York to be the headquarters you look to for ongoing guidance and authority to implement the mandate. In practical terms, DPKO has the mechanisms to give you guidance and respond to your urgent requirements at any time, whereas the AU headquarters does not, and DPKO also has long and hard-won experience in supporting missions in the field. At the same time, you will want to ensure that Unamid and DPKO itself integrate the AU secretariat into that process, so that its views and interests are dynamically engaged in your support. Above all, you and SRSG Adada will need to demand from both the UN and AU that they reject undue Sudanese government interference in the implementation of Resolution 1769 regarding command and control, and indeed in your operations.

Second: To succeed in the task given you, it is evident that you must exercise, and insist on, the broadest reading of the mandate given in resolution 1769 (especially operative paragraph 15) concerning your chapter VII authority. We are already seeing efforts by the Sudanese government and its friends to argue that the chapter VII authority extends only to force protection situations and support for the execution of the Darfur peace agreement. But the plain text of the resolution and the intent of the security council clearly are that Unamid should play an active role not only in maintaining peace, but also in protecting the vulnerable civilian population.

The security council's intent flows from those aspects of the Darfur conflict which have set it apart as an international concern of special priority - notably, the massive, purposeful death and displacement at the hands of government forces and their janjaweed militia creation. Those attacks burdened the African Union Mission (Amis) and cast in stark relief its lack of mandate and practical inability to intervene against even the most egregious and predictable attacks on civilians. The Sudanese government has indicated that it does not want Unamid to exercise its chapter VII authority to protect civilians. That cannot be accepted. It would render Unamid a nullity regarding the most fundamental reason for its creation.

Third: All are agreed that Unamid will benefit from having "a predominantly African character," but you must insist that member states with sophisticated capacities provide quickly, and with no political obstruction from Khartoum, what you need to make your force mobile and capable of extending its reach throughout Darfur. So far, a number of African countries have made significant and encouraging commitments. It is beyond dispute, however, that African states themselves simply cannot provide nearly 20,000 qualified troops (nor enough police). Unamid needs attack helicopters, engineers, big cargo lorries, communications and other capabilities that African states also cannot provide.

So far, the UN member states that can provide such capabilities have been slow to do so. I therefore encourage you to reject assertions that the AU has already committed, or could provide, all the needed military forces. Equally, you should bring great pressure, working with the senior UN and AU leadership, to pressure more resource-rich member states to provide the specialised capacities you need. And if Khartoum seeks to discourage meaningful non-African contributions, I urge you to take active exception in the interest of succeeding in your difficult task.

Fourth: Press for progressive deployment of the force, as elements are recruited and prepared. Resolution 1769 sets ambitious target dates for establishing Unamid's operations headquarters, for taking command of the support packages and support for Amis, and for assumption of command authority from Amis. Ranged against those targets are the real challenges of rapid mobilisation and deployment of national troop contributions to Unamid.

The thrust of the resolution is correct in practical as well as policy terms, but the period from now until full Unamid deployment will be a testing one and in many ways the determining period for the mission's success or failure. Previous Amis commanders have made clear their assessment that getting more troops on the ground will shift the balance of authority toward the peacekeepers and away from the spoilers. With a progressive deployment, Unamid can foster a gradual shift in the balance of power in Darfur, which will enhance the longer-term prospects for its effectiveness. In this regard, you will want to maintain pressure on both the UN and AU headquarters to build your needed camp and other logistical facilities as fast as possible, and to monitor Sudanese government interaction with Unamid and the camp construction contractors to ensure that any delaying manoeuvres are quickly identified, reported to New York and Addis Ababa and made a priority for diplomatic intervention.

Fifth: Be vigorous and frank, both in your official reporting to New York and Addis Ababa, and in your public commentary, concerning your achievements and the challenges and obstacles you encounter. It is important that your official reporting, in describing progress on mandate implementation, should highlight obstacles you face that require action by the two headquarters, or by member states. You can anticipate being let down by everyone on whom you depend for support, be that troops, funding, logistics or political engagement. Only by shining a spotlight on those failures in every possible way can you mobilise the attention necessary to get the action you need. Bear in mind that whoever fails you will, in the end, be the most active in blaming you for whatever goes wrong.

Permit me to conclude, general, by wishing you every success in this most challenging and important assignment.

Sincerely,

Senator/Lt General Roméo Dallaire

An excellent letter. Unfortunately, if I was a betting man, I would wager that Dallaire's advice will not be followed, and that the situation in Darfur is far from improving.

Why Methodology Is So Important

What is it that separates political science from political opinion? It's the science. Political opinion is about expressing one's thoughts and ideas; political science involves testing one's thoughts and ideas by developing hypotheses and collecting evidence to determine when those hypotheses hold up. Methodology is critical for identifying variables and predicting how those variables will change in response to certain inputs.

Which brings me to an op-ed from yesterday's New York Times. In a piece entitled "What They're Saying in Anbar Province," Gary Langer, the director of polling for ABC News, challenges the claims by President Bush and General Petraeus that the recent developments in Anbar province represent progress. Specifically, Bush and Petraeus pointed to Anbar, where Sunni chiefs have turned against al Qaeda and have begun cooperating with US and Iraqi troops against al Qaeda forces, as a hopeful predictor of the future. Langer challenges that claim, asking:

Do United States military alliances with Sunni tribal leaders truly reflect a turning of hearts and minds away from Anbar’s bitter anti-Americanism?

The data from our latest Iraq poll suggest not.

Al Qaeda, it should be said, is overwhelmingly — almost unanimously — unpopular in Anbar, as it is in the rest of Iraq. But our enemies’ enemies are not necessarily our friends. The United States, it turns out, is equally unpopular there.

In a survey conducted Aug. 17-24 for ABC News, the BBC and NHK, the Japanese broadcaster, among a random national sample of 2,212 Iraqis, 72 percent in Anbar expressed no confidence whatsoever in United States forces. Seventy-six percent said the United States should withdraw now — up from 49 percent when we polled there in March, and far above the national average.

Withdrawal timetable aside, every Anbar respondent in our survey opposed the presence of American forces in Iraq — 69 percent “strongly” so. Every Anbar respondent called attacks on coalition forces “acceptable,” far more than anywhere else in the country. All called the United States-led invasion wrong, including 68 percent who called it “absolutely wrong.” No wonder: Anbar, in western Iraq, is almost entirely populated by Sunni Arabs, long protected by Saddam Hussein and dispossessed by his overthrow.

But here is why methodology is so important. The question Langer is asking -- Do you oppose the American presence in Iraq -- is not linked to the events he's trying to explain. Bush and Petraeus are claiming that, as a result of the surge making it more difficult for al Qaeda to attack US or Iraqi government targets, al Qaeda has turned to attacking softer targets, which has turned Sunni chiefs, who had been previously cooperating or at least tolerating al Qaeda's present, against the foreign insurgents. Petraeus' report to Congress claimed that monthly attacks in Anbar have dropped from 1,350 in October 2006 to 200 in August 2007, and that thousands of Sunnis have signed up for the Iraqi army and police force. This change in attitude from the Sunnis, if it could spread to other areas of Iraq, could help create both the breathing space necessary for political progress as well as develop some sense of national unity. So what does the attitude of the Sunnis towards the US have to do with these developments?

Nothing that Langer tell us. Langer notes that while 38% of respondents rated local security positively -- up from 0% in March -- and that Anbar Iraqis have demonstrated "remarkable advances in confidence in the Iraqi Army and police", "nobody surveyed in Anbar last month gave the United States any credit." But so what? Why does it matter what they think of the US? What matters according to Bush and Petraeus is how the Sunnis in Anbar relate to the Iraqi government. So why does Langer think these data matter? He doesn't really tell us; there's no methodology here. No connection between his data and his hypothesis. Sunnis in Anbar don't like the US; thus, the claims of progress in Iraq can't be true.

Langer's point seems to be that the Sunnis have suspect motives for their cooperation: "Anbar’s tribal leaders may have any number of motivations for their alliance with the United States. It’s been reported that the United States government has provided them arms, matériel and money, as well as undertaking more than $700 million in reconstruction projects in the province." Again, so what?

The only thing approaching a relevant point is when Langer notes that "Just 23 percent in Anbar expressed confidence in their “local leaders”; 77 percent had little or none. That’s better than it was in March — but still nearly the lowest level of confidence in local leaders we measured anywhere in Iraq." But that echoes the claims of Bush and Petraeus. Things had been dismal in the Sunni provinces, but now they're getting better. But Langer offers no way to judge the progress so we only know that it's improving.

It's hard to know what Langer's point is. It seems to be that he's simply trying to rebut the claims of Bush and Petraeus but his argument is not only totally unconvincing, it doesn't even support his own claim.

The Attack on Petraeus

Yesterday, the day that Army General David Petraeus tesitifed before Congress on the results of the surge of US forces in Iraq, MoveOn ran a full-page ad in the New York Times. Today, Peter Feaver from Duke University (full disclosure: I took many classes from Feaver while at Duke, TAed for him once, and he served on my dissertation committee) has a blistering response to MoveOn in the Boston Globe. I'll let Feaver speak for himself:

The MoveOn.org ad is vicious, and would garner comment even if it were merely one more primal scream in the coarse blogosphere debate over Iraq. But it is not an angry e-mail or blog entry. It is a deliberate attack on the senior Army commander, in a major daily newspaper, with the intention of destroying as much of his credibility as possible so that his military advice could be more easily rejected by antiwar members of Congress.

The attack was part of an elaborate effort to undermine public support for the Iraq war, and was foreshadowed by an unnamed Democratic senator who told a reporter, "No one wants to call [Petraeus] a liar on national TV . . . The expectation is that the outside groups will do this for us." The effort is funded by powerful special interests, and has all the trappings of a major political campaign.

Precisely because it is so vicious, so public, and so deliberate, the attack on Petraeus cannot be ignored by either side in the Iraq debate. Supporters of the war are duty-bound, like Joseph Welch, to rise and ask of war opponents, "Have you left no sense of decency?" Antiwar members of Congress, like Senator McCarthy's allies, are obliged to answer.

Let us be clear. It is legitimate to grill Petraeus on his testimony and to ask him tough questions about the strategy he has been pursuing. It is legitimate to disagree with him, or to conclude that an alternative course of action has a better chance of advancing US interests in the region. Healthy civil-military relations do not depend on accepting uncritically anything a senior military officer says. Quite the opposite, they depend on a full and frank exchange of views.

It is not legitimate, however, and it is exceedingly corrosive of healthy civil-military relations to question the general's patriotism when his views differ from yours and are inconvenient for one's political agenda.

This is a defining moment for the antiwar faction. They can continue on the path on to which they have veered, repeating some of the worst mistakes in American history. Or they can make a clean break with the past, police their own ranks, and promote a healthy, critical, public debate about the best way forward in Iraq.

MoveOn's website now has an annotated version of the ad, in which documentation is provided for each of the claims. But MoveOn's response is far from convincing. MoveOn claims that "every independent report on the ground situation in Iraq shows that the surge strategy has failed," and links are provided to the recent reports from the GAO, NIE, and CSIS. But these reports do not conclude that the surge has failed. Rather, they detail how much progress has been made, and what areas are still lagging behind. But such detail does not in and of itself constitute failure. Failure is a political question, a conclusion arrived at by setting goals, judging progress towards those goals, and determining whether further and increased effort will help advance towards those goals.

For example, the GAO report concludes that the Iraqi government has met 3, partially met 4, and has not meet 11 of the 18 benchmarks established. It also concludes that the surge is partially responsible for those results. Does that constitute success or not? The GAO report does not, as it should not, tell us. That is for Congress to decide.

MoveOn continues by claiming "the General claims a reduction in violence. That’s because, according to the New York Times, the Pentagon has adopted a bizarre formula for keeping tabs on violence. For example, deaths by car bombs don’t count." But the New York Times didn't make that claim. Paul Krugman did. True, he did so in the pages of the Times. But that claim does not come from the reporting of the Times. We don't know where Krugman got his information. We don't know what confirmation he has for his claims. An op-ed writer making a claim in his column does represent the efforts of the newspaper as a whole.

Finally, the crux of MoveOn's argument: "Most importantly, General Petraeus will not admit what everyone knows; Iraq is mired in an unwinnable religious civil war. " Here MoveOn reveals itself as Feaver correctly understands. MoveOn believes that Iraq is lost; therefore anyone who disagrees with that opinion is not only wrong but willfully ignorant of the oh-so-obvious truth.

Disagreeing with Petraeus is, as Feaver notes, healthy and legitimate. But MoveOn is anything but. If Congress concludes that the surge is not working, it can act within its constitutional powers to bring the troops home. But slandering and insulting Petraeus is not the way to achieve that end.

A New Intifada?

The West-Bank based and western-backed leaders of Fatah have announced the beginning of a new intifada. However this time the target is not Israel, but rather Hamas. When members of Fatah assembled for open-air prayers in Gaza, an act banned by Hamas, security forces of Hamas attacked the praying men, beating them with clubs, hurling stun grenades, and firing into the air. According to the Fatah-affiliated Palestinian Information Minister Reyad al-Maliki, "What we saw in Gaza today was the beginning of a third Intifada, against the Hamas occupation."

Since the defeat of Fatah by Hamas back in June and Fatah's exile to the West Bank, things have been relatively quiet between the rival Palestinian groups, an quiet that I have previously argued is not beneficial to the Palestinian people. Perhaps this signals the beginning of a confrontation between Fatah and Hamas, one that if allowed to play itself out might result in a unified Palestinian leadership that is better able to improve the lives of its people.

TV: Bad For Your Kids, Good For Indian Women

A study by Emily Oster, an economist at the University of Chicago, reports that introducing cable television into the homes of rural women in India results in:

women [being] less likely to report that domestic violence towards women is acceptable. They also report increased autonomy (for example, the ability to go out without permission and to participate in household decision-making). Women are less likely to report son preference (the desire to give birth to a boy rather than a girl). Turning to behaviors, we find increases in school enrollment for girls (but not boys), and decreases in fertility (which is often linked to female autonomy).

Furthermore:

The effect is also large relative to, for example, the effect of education on these attitudes and behaviors: introducing cable television is equivalent to roughly five years of female education in the cross section. These effects happen very quickly; the average village has cable for only 6-7 months before being surveyed again, which implies a rapid change in attitudes.

Oster surmises, although she admits it's difficult to identify the actual causal relationship, that it exposure to attitudes and experiences different from their own that makes the difference. At root, this is the basic logic behind globalization and more specifically the policy of engagement that the US has adopted towards China. By exposing people to the values and lifestyle of western modernity, they will, in turn, become more like us, especially in their attitudes towards liberal policies.

Who knew that crappy TV could be such a powerful force for good?

Mario Cuomo's Straw Man

On Monday, Mario Cuomo, the former governor of New York from 1983 to 1995, had an op-ed entitled "What the Constitution Says About Iraq" in the Los Angeles Times that, to put it bluntly, was an embarrassment. If one didn't know better, reading his opinions on congressional-executive war powers would lead one to believe that Cuomo knows nothing about constitutional law or national security law. Since I'm willing to give Cuomo the benefit of the doubt, we can only assume that he's creating straw man arguments purposively to score cheap political points.

Cuomo's argument is that:

the [Iraq] war happened because when Bush first indicated his intention to go to war against Iraq, Congress refused to insist on enforcement of Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution. For more than 200 years, this article has spelled out that Congress -- not the president -- shall have "the power to declare war."

To Cuomo, this was a disastrous decision by Congress, and in the future:

We must do everything we can to end the war in Iraq and avoid a new tragedy abroad [in Iran] by recommitting to strict adherence to the rule of law and to the Constitution by the president, Congress and the courts -- especially with respect to war powers.

While it's true that the Constitution gives Congress the power to declare war, Congress has only done so five times in history: the War of 1812, the Mexican-American War, the Spanish-American War, World War I, and World War II. And yet the US has used force well over 200 times without a formal declaration of war.

For Cuomo, this precedent has no relevance:

Because the Constitution cannot be amended by persistent evasion, this constitutional mandate was not erased by the actions of timid Congresses since World War II that allowed eager presidents to start wars in Vietnam and elsewhere without a "declaration" by Congress.

This is the first of Cuomo's pathetic straw man arguments. It is of course true that the Constitution cannot be amended by patterns of behavior. But it is equally obvious that Constitutional interpretation does change according to the behavior of government. This is made evident in the famous "Steel Seizure" case (Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer), in which Justice Jackson and Justice Frankfurter argued that the interaction between the president and Congress can and should be used to interpret the Constitution. For Frankfurter:

a systematic, unbroken, executive practice, long pursued to the knowledge of Congress and never before questioned, engaged in by Presidents who have also sworn to uphold the Constitution, making as it were such exercise of power part of the structure of our government, may be treated as a gloss on "executive Power" vested in the President by Section 1 of Art. II.

Given that force has been used hundreds of times without Congressional approval or protest but with Congressional knowledge, such a gloss is quite clear. Furthermore, Jackson, in setting out his famous three categories for understanding the scope of presidential power, argued that:

When the President acts in absence of either a congressional grant or denial of authority, he can only rely on his own independent powers, but there is a zone of twilight in which he and Congress may have concurrent authority, on in which its distribution is uncertain. Therefore, congressional inertia, indifference, or quiescence may sometimes, at least as a practical matter, enable, if not invite, measures on independent presidential responsibility. In this area, any actual test of power is likely to depend on the imperatives of events and contemporary imponderables rather than on abstract theories of law.

Congress has not spoken (note, congressmen speaking do not equal Congress speaking. More on this below) against the war in Iraq, nor has Congress ever tried to restrain a presidential deployment of US troops. Such silence can only be read as creating a gloss or as Congress allowing the president to rely on his own independent powers.

But Cuomo is ready with another straw man argument to challenge this claim. It wouldn't matter, he says, if Congress did try to restrain the president:

Even if Congress were able to pass a veto-proof bill with respect to withdrawal, the president would resist enforcement of the bill, insisting that as commander in chief, he is immune from Congress' decision. That would raise a constitutional issue for the courts.

But judging by the courts' history concerning constitutional war powers, including decisions involving the Iraq war in the U.S. 1st Circuit Court of Appeals in Massachusetts, the judiciary would, in all probability, choose not to intervene, claiming that the disagreement between the president and Congress is a political question.

This is an absurd misrepresentation of the concept of a political question. A political question, in which the Supreme Court typically refuses to involve itself in a dispute between the legislative and executive branch, most often arises when Congress fails to speak with one voice to assert its Constitutional power. For example, in Goldwater v. Carter, Senator Barry Goldwater and several other members of Congress challenged the right of President Carter to nullify a treaty with Taiwan in order to establish relations with China, claiming that Senate's constitutional power of advice and consent meant that the Senate needed to vote on the nullification. The Court refused to hear the case, determining that it involved a political question. But what made the question political was not the challenge, but rather the fact that it was not the Senate as a body that was challenging the president, but rather a group of individual senators. Thus, the question of whether the president had the power to act unilaterally was not really being raised, as Congress was not asserting a different interpretation of the Constitution. Justice Powell's concurrence made it clear that if the Senate had, in fact, passed a resolution formally opposing the action by Carter, the Supreme Court very well might have heard the case, settling the question.

If Congress had ever tried to stop a presidential deployment of force by, for example, passing a joint resolution claiming its power to declare war governs all deployments of force (as Cuomo argues it does) or by cutting off funding for the troops, and if the president refused to obey such an action, the Supreme Court would almost certainly have to resolve the issue (although it's possible that the Court would try to defer action while the troops were in the field). Such an dispute would be a constitutional question of the highest order, and if there was a formal clash between the president and Congress, the question would have to be settled.

Cuomo goes on to say that "the sad truth is that the current conservative-dominated Supreme Court would probably support our current conservative president. As a practical matter, that means only the president can end this war or change our strategy in Iraq."

Another ridiculous claim, unless by "as a practical matter" Cuomo means without making the Democratically-controlled Congress take responsibility for ending the war. It is a clear, unambiguous, and well-established fact that Congress could cut off the funding for the troops if it truly wanted to end the war. No one, not even President Bush, disputes this. However, as was made clear during the last round of appropriations hearings, Congress refuses to do this. Of course it would be politically dangerous...but if the congressmen so fear being punished by their constituents, doesn't that give the lie to their claims in the first place?

It is ridiculous and absurd for Cuomo to try to blame the Court for this situation, when the fault truly lies with a Congress that refuses to act according to the principles it so vocally expresses. Cuomo's op-ed is little more than a political screed that ignores fact and constitutional law. It is an embarrassment, as is he.

Progress In Lebanon

Yesterday, the Lebanese Army took control of a refugee camp in northern Lebanon that had become a haven for Fatah al Islam, a radical Sunni group loosely affiliated with al Qaeda. The stand-off, which began in May, forced most of the camp's 30,000 residents to flee and cost the lives of 157 Lebanese soldiers and at least 42 civilians. Approximately 120 militants were killed as well.

The pacification of the camp is important in and of itself, as eliminating a locus of radical insurgents is always a move in the right direction. But the action by the Lebanese Army could serve as a stepping stone for greater political progress in Lebanon as well. As I wrote about last summer during the Israeli-Hezbollah war, the Lebanese Army and government were faced with a monumental challenge in trying to enforce the cease-fire and restrain Hezbollah. It was the inability of the Lebanese government to maintain a monopoly of violence in the first place that permitted Hezbollah to grow so strong and to initiate the war with Israel that proved so damaging to Lebanon.

Now, as a result of the operation against Fatah al Islam, the Lebanese Army is developing a sense of confidence and capability that it has not had in the past. As the New York Times notes:

“The army is emerging as the guardian of the state of Lebanon,” said Hilal Khashan, a political science professor at the American University of Beirut. “Politicians have failed, therefore the army is the only institution capable of shoring the country toward peace.”

Such a development is vital for Lebanon. The political process, important as it may be, cannot function when rival groups both possess significant military capabilities. Only if the Army is trusted and seen as the guarantor of peace and order can the political process develop as well.

But that won't be enough, in and of itself. So long as Hezbollah is quiet, it's easy to ignore it. But, if and when Hezbollah becomes active again, the Army must be willing and able to challenge the militia. Hezbollah cannot be allowed to drag Lebanon into another devastating war with Israel; nor can Hezbollah be allowed to undermine the government and civil society by threatening the political process.

Hopefully, the victory in the Nahr al Bared refugee camp will produce a confident and capable Lebanese Army; one that is up to the task of defending the people of Lebanon.

How A League of Democracies Could Work

Matt over at Foreign Policy Watch has an excellent post challenging the recently-popular concept of a League or Concert of Democracies. Such a league, which I've been writing about for sometime now (here, here, and here), has been championed by Republican presidential candidates John McCain and Rudolph Giuliani, the Princeton Project on National Security, and Ivo Daalder and Robert Kagan. So what doesn't Matt like about the idea?

...this concept is a fundamental misunderstanding of how the world really works and is based on three false premises: that democracies are somehow more inclined to act in the name of the common goodwill; that democracies will agree not only on what is broken, but what needs to be done to fix it, and; that alliances are forged from common values, and not shared interests.

1. Democracies are more inclined to act... There is no reason to suspect that the creation of the League of Democracies will prompt increased attention to a situation such as, say, Darfur....In the case of Darfur, the international community has - to put it crudely - simply been too busy elsewhere. The ongoing conflict there has been only of peripheral interest to the US - it scarcely has the time or human resources at its disposal to provide the type of attention a challenge like Darfur requires. A nation acts when it is in its interest to do so and, most importantly, is actually available to do so. If anything, the competing priorities on the US foreign policy agenda (I'm looking at you, Iraq) prevent Washington from taking the sort of action on the ground in Darfur that would be necessary to end the bloodshed.

2. Collectively, democracies will do what needs to be done... To solve the litany of problems plaguing the international community today requires that states involved in the effort not only agree on what the threat is, but define its nature and agree on the steps needed to resolve the problem. By what objective standards are democracies more capable of this than other states?

In the end, the world's leading democracies already enjoy perhaps some of the closest and most interlinked alliances in all of history, yet are split on numerous foreign policy decisions - from Iraq and Iran to missile defense and arms sales to China. How would codifying their relationships into a formal "League of Democracies" make their ability to face today's threats to international security or their ability to agree any differently?

3. Alliances are built on shared values... This is the largest conceptual flaw behind the push for creating a League of Democracies, mistaking alliances among states for a nod that the two are in agreement for how the world should look both within and among states. Alliances are forged when interests between one or more states converge and a cooperative relationship between two states becomes the most realistic means of achieving shared goals. This is why the US has a closer relationship with Saudi Arabia than it does with, say, Belgium. (Pervez Musharaff and a few other Central Asian autocrats have often made quite useful partners in recent years, one might add.)

All of Matt's critiques are excellent, and right on the money. But the sum of his arguments don't add up to the total of his conclusions. He's right on all of his points: Democracies aren't necessarily any more likely to act on issues of low national interest, democracies aren't necessarily any more capable of coming to consensus, and shared values aren't always the strongest or best metric of mutual alliance.

But, to take the critiques in turn, the whole point of the league is to create a mechanism that will be more effective at spurring these countries into action. When Daalder and Kagan speak of creating a "formal mechanism" they presumably are thinking of some kind of enforcement mechanism as exists in the WTO that would bind states to their institutional commitments. The impetus behind finding a institution to replace the UN is to find one that works: That punishes states that break the rules and that forces its members to act when those rules have been broken.

Matt wonders why democracies would be any more likely than a mixed body to agree on means. Perhaps. But to discard the notion of an alliance on those grounds would be throwing out the baby with the bathwater. First, NATO, the WTO, and other institutions made of up like-minded states have certainly been more able to design coherent plans of action than has been the UN. Matt points to the problems experienced by the US surrounding the invasion of Iraq, but that seems to work against his argument, as Iraq was conducted outside of the framework of an institution. Iraq was done by the whims of the US, ignoring the advice and warnings of America's allies. A league would create some formal mechanism for planning, akin to NATO's unified command structure. Now, before you mention Kosovo, yes, I'm aware Kosovo was a problem for NATO planners. But it was still better than the UN could have done.

Finally, Matt argues that interests rather than values are the basis for partnerships in international politics, asking why, if the opposite were true, would the US have a closer relationship with Saudi Arabia than it does Belgium. This is a very short-sighted understanding of interest. While it's true that interest plays a role, the American interest in Saudi Arabia is a tactical one; oil. The American interest in Belgium is a much more long-term one; shared values. So while America may need to placate Saudi Arabia in the short-term to get access to oil or to get cooperation in counter-terror efforts on Iraq, the US relationship with Belgium is much stronger and deeper and is ultimately more fundamental to US and global security.

Matt's critiques are trenchant and powerful, but ultimately, unconvincing. Properly constructed (and that is no easy task), a league of democracies could be a powerful and meaningful force in international politics. The WTO has fired the first shot across the bow...will there be more?

A New and Improved France?

Much has been made of the new French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, and his seemingly overt pro-American leanings. He has already vacationed in New England, and his policies seem to be much warmer towards Washington than those of his predecessor. But today, Sarkozy has given us a clear signal that his France will not be the sissified, wishy-washy, knee-jerk anti-American France of Chirac.

In his first major speech on foreign policy, Sarkozy warned that a serious diplomatic effort on Iran's nuclear program is the only alternative to "an Iranian bomb or the bombing of Iran." Sarkozy made it clear that he prefers the diplomatic option, but even the mention of the use of force is a refreshing change coming from France.

I have blogged before about a critical problem in the push for more multilateral action: The unwillingness of the international community -- such as France, Germany, and the UN -- to back their negotiations and threats with military force. There is little chance that the US will trust its international security to multilateral efforts if those efforts won't even consider using force when and where diplomacy fails. It is refreshing to see Sarkozy discuss the use of military force, even if he does so in the context of a bad option to be avoided. But only when France and other countries that lead the drive for multilateral action step up and recognize that sometimes force is a necessary option, and one that is more often needed in the background of diplomacy, can multilateral action be truly successful.

Antigua 1, US Nil

Typically, international politics is an arena dominated by power. In conditions of anarchy, those who can do, and that rule is frequently followed by the US, which uses its hegemonic status to ignore rules that the US finds inimical to its interests.

International institutions are the primary ways in which anarchy is mitigated in international politics, as strong institutions can create norms and rules that states must follow or risk falling afoul of the enforcement mechanism of the institution. The WTO is one of the most significant of these institutions, as it possesses a relatively credible and powerful enforcement mechanism (described here) and has succeeded in forcing states to change their policies and domestic laws.

However, the WTO now faces a difficult situation by virtue of its very strength. The WTO has found that US laws barring American citizens from gambling on-line with off-shore casinos are a violation of free trade and of the US's obligations under the WTO. The ruling, initially made in 2004 and upheld in two appeals, supported Antigua's claim that the US law has unfairly impacted Antigua's trade in Internet gambling (Antigua's second-largest business behind tourism), and the case is now in damage assessment, with Antigua claiming $3.4 billion in damages and asking for the right for reciprocal violations of US intellectual property. If the US wishes to avoid allowing Antigua to violate US IP protections (to the amount determined by the damage assessment hearing), the US will either have to allow Americans to gamble with off-shore casinos on the Internet or ban all forms of domestic on-line gambling, such as the on-line purchase of state lottery tickets, off-track betting on horse-racing, and even fantasy sports leagues in which prize money is awarded.

The problem is, as the New York Times notes, that:

For the W.T.O. itself, the decision is equally fraught with peril. It cannot back down because that would undermine its credibility with the rest of the world. But if it actually carries out the penalties, it risks a political backlash in the United States, the most powerful force for free-flowing global trade and the W.T.O.’s biggest backer.

“Think of this from the W.T.O.’s point of view,” said Charles R. Nesson, a professor at Harvard Law School. “They’re this fledgling organization dominated by a huge monster in the United States. People there must be scared out of their wits at the prospects of enforcing a ruling that would instantly galvanize public opinion in the United States against the W.T.O.”

Over at his blog, Dani Rodrik sees this as a serious problem for the WTO, writing that "this is another example of how existing WTO practices are leading to the narrowing of policy space to the detriment of legitimacy (and economic logic). When the system serves to enforce new restrictions on domestic policy autonomy that would be wildly unpopular at home, it is time to rethink the system."

But I don't see why this example is any different than any other trade dispute for which the WTO has jurisdiction. The point of the WTO is to allow states to tie their own hands. That is, states know that free trade is an overall good, but that they have powerful short-term domestic reasons to opt for protection. Committing to the WTO allows states to avoid the collective actions problems that are so endemic in trade and stick to a free trade policy. There are exceptions, under which states are allowed to impose protectionism, such as protection of domestic morals, national security, public safety, and so on. But states often try to disguise protectionist policies with legitimate rationales, like France's attempt to ban GMOs.

Indeed, the US invoked such language, claiming that the US has the right to ban Americans from on-line gambling "on moral grounds, just as any Muslim country would be within its rights under international trade agreements to ban the import of alcoholic beverages." However, given that the US allows many types of gambling, including on-line wagering, the claim rang hollow, and was rejected by the WTO.

Despite Rodrik's claim, this is exactly the kind of issue that the WTO should be dealing with. The US has no legitimate reasons to ban on-line gambling, given that gambling is obviously legal and quite prevalent in this country. There are entire cities devoted to gambling, states run massive gambling operations, and every local paper prints sports odds on a daily basis. Gambling has long been subject to massive protectionism in this country for no good reason, but the advent of on-line gambling has changed the venue and scope of the country's ability to maintain that protection. As other countries, like Antigua, developed gambling industries, the US's double standards looked more and more like unfair and illegal protectionism.

It is very important that the US comply with the WTO's decision. The WTO is one of the cornerstones of the international order, and is vital for insuring the continued prosperity of this country, and nearly every other country in the world. Furthermore, the US has been trying to get smaller, developing countries to accept American intellectual property rights laws under the WTO. Why would they do so if the US refuses to play by the rules (of course, the American, European, Japanese, and Korean refusals to ease or cease agricultural subsidies are already driving this line of thought, but at least ag policy is not currently covered by the WTO)? Refusing to comply will fundamentally damage US credibility and interests to a degree that not even the invasion of Iraq was able to do. It is vital to the US that other countries commit themselves to the WTO and comply with its obligations; it is equally vital that the US do the same.

A Few Days Off

I'll be taking a few days off...the wife and I are heading out to Yellowstone National Park for several days of hiking and relaxing. We'll definitely be hanging out in the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone (pictured above)....

See you next week!!

The Abomination That Is The Farm Bill

There are few things in the world I hate more than domestic politics, and fewer things still that illustrate why I hate domestic politics so than the US farm bill. In testimony before Congress on July 24, the General Accounting Office revealed that the US Department of Agriculture:

paid $1.1 billion in farm payments in the names of 172,801 deceased individuals. ... 40 percent went to those who had been dead for three or more years, and 19 percent to those dead for seven or more years.

Over $200 million went to farmers who had been dead for more than 7 years. Meanwhile, farmers in Africa are unable to find decent prices for their goods as global prices are suppressed by artificially inflated supply from the US. This year alone, the US farm bill will cost the average American family about $320 in subsidies.

But wait you say...the farm bill preserves the tradition of small farming, a la Willie Nelson's Farm Aid.

Hardly.

As Nicholas Kristof notes in his recent mea culpa revealing that he, a New York Times journalist who writes most often about human rights, is paid $588 a year not to farm the land he owns in Oregon, "the majority of payments go to commercial farmers who earn more than $200,000 annually, while 95% of farmers get little or no benefit from the farm bill." Meanwhile, the Democratic Congress defeated a proposed $200,000 cap on payments, preferring to set the maximum that any single farmer can receive at $1 million (per farmer, so a farming couple can get $2 million).

And as John Stossel notes, the farm bill undercuts American legitimacy on free trade. Why should developing countries join the WTO and comply with US intellectual property laws if the US won't play by the rules on agriculture (it goes without saying that Europe is even worse, but that's no excuse for the US).

The farm bill is shameful. But unfortunately, it is not surprising. As Thomas Paine wrote in Common Sense, "government even in its best state is but a necessary evil, in its worst state an intolerable one."

Amen.

How NOT To Deal With Hamas

The British House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee has released a report criticizing the UK's policy towards Hamas and the Palestinians, stating that the refusal to deal with or talk to Hamas has been counter-productive. The all-party committee concludes that:

that the decision not to speak to Hamas in 2007 following the Mecca agreement has been counterproductive. We further conclude that a national unity Government could and should have been established much earlier than the spring of 2007. We recommend that, in its response to this Report, the Government set out when it began to actively support the establishment of a national unity Government in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

This is exactly the wrong solution. There is no possibility for a successful unity government between Hamas and Fatah, and given the civil war, it's hard to imagine why the committee feels it would have been better to create a unity government earlier (to be fair, the committee also wants the UK to end the political and economic isolation of Hamas, so it may be that it's thinking is that if economic conditions hadn't been so dire, things would have worked out differently).

As I have written on numerous occasions, the problem in the Palestinian territories is that neither side, nor the government in a general sense, possesses a monopoly of violence, which enables each side to undermine the other. There are only two ways to deal with this situation (assuming one wants to eventually reunite the West Bank with Gaza in an independent Palestinian homeland): support Fatah against Hamas, or support Hamas against Fatah. So long as the two groups maintain military/police power outside of the aegis of the government, there will no lasting peace and no political stability. Creating a unity government merely papers over this situation, but only until a divisive problem arises that splits the two parties. I don't have any intrinsic problems with Hamas ruling (although I would prefer it be Fatah); what is critical is that whichever group controls the government do so completely and totally.

The Source of Legitimacy in International Politics

As President Bush has learned as a result of the invasion of Iraq, legitimacy is exceedingly important in international politics. Soft power and interdependence have become such prominent features of the international landscape that acting in opposition to global norms and mores can be very costly.

However, while legitimacy may be important, its sources aren't clear. Most people look to the UN -- the closest thing that exists to a global parliament or legislative body -- for that legitimacy. But ultimately doing so makes no sense. Legitimacy must stem from a collective of shared values; that is, the actors from whom legitimacy is sought must agree on the basic values and rules to be followed that define the legitimacy. But the UN does not represent the kind of values that should define American (or global) legitimacy. The UN stands for sovereignty, nothing more. Every state is treated equally no matter how reprehensible the state, no matter how many of the UN's own rules it violates. Thus, we get states like Zimbabwe, North Korea, and Sudan not just participating, but leading committees and being treated as normal. However, despite this seeming democratic nature, the UN is fundamentally non-democratic, as the UN's institutional structure allows one of five states (the permanent members of the Security Council) to veto any action and block the will of the rest of the international community.

Seeking legitimacy from this institution makes no sense. Why is it acceptable to allow Russia or China to veto international action in Kosovo or Darfur? Why should the US seek approval from an organization that allows Sudan to serve, and chair, on the Human Rights Committee? That allows Zimbabwe to chair the Sustainable Development panel? That repeatedly condemns Israel but makes no mention of the genocides in Darfur, the brutalization in Zimbabwe, or the misery of North Korea? And the UN is, obviously, subjected to the politics of national self-interest which undermines its ability to define legitimacy. As Ivo Daalder and Robert Kagan note in their Washington Post op-ed from Monday:

the U.N. Security Council, no longer suffices [as a source of legitimacy], if it ever did. Under the United Nations Charter, states are prohibited from using force except in cases of self-defense or when explicitly authorized by the Security Council. But this presupposes that the members of the Security Council can agree on the threat and the appropriate response. From Rwanda to Kosovo to Darfur, however, and from Iraq to North Korea to Iran, the Security Council has not been able to agree and has failed to act decisively. Its permanent members are deeply divided by conflicting interests as well as by clashing beliefs about the nature of sovereignty and the right of the international community to intervene in the internal affairs of nations.

If the UN can't provide legitimacy, where should states look? According to Daalder and Kagan, "the answer is the world's democracies, the United States and its democratic partners in Europe and Asia." They continue:

As the war in Kosovo showed, democracies can agree and act effectively even when major non-democracies, such as Russia and China, do not. Because they share a common view of what constitutes a just order within states, they tend to agree on when the international community has an obligation to intervene. Shared principles provide the foundation for legitimacy.

A policy of seeking consensus among the world's great democratic nations can form the basis for a new domestic consensus on the use of force. It would not exclude efforts to win Security Council authorization. Nor would it preclude using force even when some of our democratic friends disagree. But the United States will be on stronger ground to launch and sustain interventions when it makes every effort to seek and win the approval of the democratic world.

Eventually, perhaps, these matters could be addressed and decided in a more formal arrangement, a Concert of Democracies, where the world's democracies could meet and cooperate in dealing with the many global challenges they confront. Until such a formal mechanism has been created, however, future presidents need to recognize that legitimacy matters, and that the most meaningful and potent form of legitimacy for a democracy such as the United States is the kind bestowed by fellow democrats around the world.

I have supported this idea many times in these pages. Back in May, I wrote about John McCain's idea of a league of democracies, arguing that:

that the democratic states of the world need to create, perhaps using the WTO and NATO as foundations, a meta-institution that can spread western values, enforce international laws and norms, maintain peace and security, and bolster the international economic order. The general vision is to connect the various economic and political institutions together, whereby membership in one is predicated on adherence to commitments in the others. Thus, violating the NPT or the genocide convention is met by punishment in the WTO. Such a strategy is based on the logic of engagement which has been working reasonably well in China, where the desire to participate in and receive the benefits of the international economic order (and the fear of the economic damage that would result from being excluded) creates incentives to maintain a status quo posture. Such a network, or meta-institution, could go a long way in dealing with the issues with which the UN is incapable of dealing.

I also claim that its not as important that the members of the group be democratic so long as they are committed to globalization, economic interdependence, and preservation of the status quo.

The UN is simply not capable of dealing with issues of global security, nor should it be seen as a source of legitimacy where such issues are concerned. The UN is invaluable when it comes to peace keeping, nation building, and social initiatives like disease prevention, education, and the like. But it is time to recognize the UN's limits. While the UN dithered getting a weak, watered down resolution in Darfur, more than 200,000 people died and millions more were displaced. If such an parallel institution existed, perhaps the Kosovo model, in which the democratic members of NATO authorized their own intervention contrary to international law, could have applied and countless lives saved.

Making Politics A Little More Real

People often refer to the academic study of politics as if it is somehow not the "real world." Maybe, although most academics would argue that the theoretical issues and policy applications we study are critical for actually making policy.

But the Politics and Government Department here at the University of Puget Sound is doing its best to keep our study of politics connected to the real world. To that end, we have begun working with Kiva. Kiva is a microcredit organization that matches up individual donors with people in the developing world who need small amounts of cash to start their own businesses. Several donors contribute to make up one loan package, typically amounting to around $1000, which the recipients pay back over time on a manageable schedule. The interest charged goes to maintain the program, and the donors get their original seed money back, which can then be reinvested. To date, Kiva boasts a repayment rate of over 99%. My department is currently contributing to Sorn Sophea in Cambodia who got $1000 to open her own tailoring business.

A quick peek at Kiva's business-in-need page reveals an interesting mix: Lots of women, lots of Iraqis...lots of people trying to get up on their own feet and provide for their families. Microcredit is one of the best ideas in development, as evidenced by the last Nobel Peace Prize going to Muhammed Yunis and the Grameen Bank, one of the pioneers in microcredit lending who has probably done more to end poverty and encourage development than all the government organizations combined.

I would encourage any of Security Dilemmas readers to get involved with Kiva. Make a loan, change someone's life!!!

UPDATE: I decided to take it one step farther, and became a Kiva lender on my own. I lent $25 to Dung Truong Thi of Ham Thuan Nam, Viet Nam so she can expand her pig business to care for her family. It looks like Dung is now fully funded, so let's hope her business flourishes!!