Surprised by Realism

Unlike Jamie Kirchick, I don’t think realists gaining influence within the Democratic policy establishment should be any cause for concern, even if you’re a hard-core liberal interventionist. The two Democratic frontrunners, Clinton and Obama, have advisors and support that either directly from the former internationalist Clinton administration, or are proponents of an active and potentially interventionist foreign policy (Samantha Power). But post-Iraq, we should expect some limitations on American power, considering the popular mood of the country and the resources we’ve already committed in Afghanistan and Iraq.

A realist camp withing the policy establishment is complimnetary, and quite predictable. Kirchick cites an Observer article detailing the rise of the realists:

The piece profiled former Clinton administration Defense official Michèle Flournoy, president of a new think tank called the Center for a New American Security, which hopes to staff the next Democratic presidential administration. According to the article, she and “her colleagues think the war in Iraq and the country’s plummeting reputation abroad changes the equation, and that the next president may have to reign in his or her ambitions when it comes to the projection of American power.”

Flournoy’s comment is a pretty sensible assessment of the foreign policy challenge a Democratic (or Republican, for that matter) president would face. Like balancing the budget during the Clinton administration, deficits run up during the Regan years restrained spending on social programs in order to maintain a strong economy. In a similar fashion, Clinton or Obama can’t simply run their ideal foreign policy, because they’ll have some cleaning up and restructuring to do after a failed Bush presidency. I know Kirchick wants to use this to suggest the Democrats are thinking of hiding out in the garage of the West Wing for the next several years, but the realists are just articulating the obvious.

Adventures in the Academy

Brad DeLong had an exciting first week class experience over at Berkeley:

“The 210a students are waiting for you.”

“What?”

“Economics 210a. The students. They are waiting for you. In Evans 608-7.”

“But 210a is in the spring!”

“There are seventeen 210a students waiting for you in Evans 608-7 right now.”

It turns out that when we in the Economics Department moved 210a from the fall to the spring semester, we never told the registrar. So students who relied on the schedule of classes rather than the Economics Department gossip vine thought 210a starts today.

And one of Prof. Delong’s reader’s shares this story:

In my youth, at a certain midwestern university . . .

The building maintenance people had, weirdly, put a number on every single door in the new physical science building, not merely the classrooms . . .

The registrar’s office didn’t quite grasp what building maintenance had done . . .

And that’s how my Calculus I class came to be scheduled to meet in the men’s bathroom . . .

(Insert scatological and mathematically themed quip here.)

 

What is the Optimal Rate of Liberalization?

Two articles in the latest issue of Foreign Policy–one by Robert Reich on capitalism and democracy (subscription only), and the other by Moisés Naím on the paradox of free-trade–got me thinking about what the optimal rate of liberalization might be and what sort of research had be done on the subject. As Reich points out:

But though free markets have brought unprecedented prosperity to many, they have been accompanied by widening inequalities of income and wealth, heightened job insecurity, and environmental hazards such as global warming.

This is one of the essential challenges of globalization: making sure that prosperity is broadly shared enough so that economic development isn’t derailed by the political process. If people start to get freaked out by the new private companies moving in down the street, or feel that their wages or security are threatened by a new trade deal, they’ll (rationally) seek redress through their political representatives. After that, it’s tariffs and protectionism, which might benefit some sectors of an economy but make the macroeconomy worse off. So how do you open markets without scaring the crap out of the electorate?

An admittedly limited search found only one article from 1997 that explicitly addressed the optimal rate of liberalization (in this case, trade liberalization) and it did so in the context of firm restructuring (PDF). It concludes that gradual liberalization may be better for a country with long-term development goals, while a faster, “big-bang” approach might be useful for short-term economic goals (because gradualism in an already competitive sector only encourages inefficient firms to hang around longer, reducing profits and souring people on the new reforms).

I’m sure that this sort of thing is hard to quantify or calculate; any optimal rate would depend upon factors like existing level of economic development, political openness, the sorts of political and civil institutions in country, and the available capital (natural and human). Those are a lot of factors to model. The answer might just be to liberalize as fast as the electorate can bear, with some of the “New Deal for Globalization” measures (from a July/August Foreign Affairs article) thrown in to alleviate anxieties and spread some of the costs around. These policy suggestions from Dan Drezner also seem like a way to avoid a mass of bandanna-clad protesters from marching on the capitol building and decrying the latest round of trade negotiations (and though the tear gas industry may be elated, it doesn’t do so much for the political process).

But this feels like policy afterthought rather than an actual plan for smoother liberalization. Suggestions?

Your (Weekly?) Poetry Fix

Buy the latest issue of Denver Quarterly¹ and check out Danika Stegeman (and Tomaz Salamun, while you’re at it).

¹ Again, I’m recommending a poem in a small, university run literary journal, so you’ll have to check your local university library for copies. In fact, just take it–it’s not like anyone will notice.

The Turkey Question

Viewed through the lens of national self-interest, I’ve always thought of Turkey joining the EU as a general good, irrespective of what what it meant for Europeans. To some extent, I think fears about a changing European character or an immigration onslaught aren’t part of the US calculus for support, to say nothing of these fears being overblown. Having a moderate Muslim country as part of a Western transnational legal and trade framework is a boon to the world superpower. Of course, it’s the Europeans (or at least their elected representatives) and not the United States who will decide, so what’s best for America is somewhat besides the point.

With that in mind, I’m not sure how to think about a Turkey with a Muslim president (via Yellow is the Color). A president with strong religious credentials seems like a great partner for a Turkish EU induction. I often find European (and in this case, Turkish) secularization too aggressive, but much of that comes from living in a country where candidates openly profess their belief in God and no one tries to lead a coup. I accept that different concepts of secularization will be optimal for different countries.

Additionally, without narratives of long-term immigration and citizenship to fall back on, many Europeans are hostile to Muslim immigrants, and see their open displays of faith as an affront to European culture (witness France and their ban of the hijab). But Turkey bans the headscarf in government offices and schools too, and the Turkish military is hyper-vigilant on the secularization front.  A Muslim president might upset powerful secularists within Turkey, causing internal turmoil that impedes integration, or spark a backlash against the country from right-wingers in Europe, making an invitation to join the EU even less likely.  Turkey in the EU might be great for the US, but it seems increasingly harder to convince either Europeans or the Turkish that it’s also in their interests.

Nobody Likes the “R-Word”

Mark Thoma makes some sense:

We don’t need a recession. If the Fed determines an interest rate cut is needed to keep the economy moving toward full employment, then it shouldn’t hesitate to implement the policy because it believes it would send the wrong signal to financial market participants. I hope we don’t get so caught up in our zeal to make sure people learn the right lessons from all of this that we allow “bad investments in the past” to bring about “the unemployment of good workers in the present.”

I encourage you to read the whole thing.  There are two things to consider when arguing that the Fed can’t cut rates because of “moral hazard.” First, to what extent are market corrections (like the bubbles before them) driven by psychological cues? (i.e. Aren’t overly cautious investors likely to assume too much risk and over-correct on the way down as they did on the way up?). And second, haven’t the worst of the lenders been driven out of the financial market already?  (Larry Summers made this last point on This Week while cautioning that the crisis isn’t over yet).

The Perfect Car, Made in America

I know that by “perfect American car,” Garance Franke-Ruta meant one that was designed and manufactured by GM, Ford, or Chrysler, but really, how can you beat being one of Car and Driver‘s 10 Best for more than a decade? Not only is the Honda Accord really made in America, but with 244 horsepower and i-VTEC (and some of the best handling in the industry) you can hose kids in the standard Mustang while toting a gaggle of toddlers in the back seat. It’s not all about burning people off the line; anyone can be a hero in the straightaway. I love globalization.

The Real Problem With The New Republic

Although I agree with some of the recent discussion about The New Republic enabling conservative nonsense, I’d also like to draw attention to some of TNR‘s less acknowledged, but nonetheless egregious mistakes.

When the magazine has turned its contrarian attention towards popular culture, the results can be spectacular–train wreck spectacular. There was the post calling for Comedy Central to ax the Colbert Report after just two weeks, written by the otherwise sensible Noam Scheiber. The best part is when Scheiber begins to speculate as to where the blame should fall, citing rumors that Jon Stewart was too preoccupied with fallout from his Crossfire appearance to “mind his own ship.” Because having your secretary field calls about what it was like to call Tucker Carlson a “douche bag” really takes away from writing that handful of dick jokes before lunch.

Keelin McDonell tipped the magazine close to self-parody by writing “The Case Against Sarah Vowell”. That’s right, the case against a woman who appears on This American Life and Late Night With Conan O’Brien.  And who can forget Lee Siegel’s “Letter to Jon Stewart” in which he–in all honesty–wondered if “smelled like ass” was a good thing or bad thing.

The real question you have to be asking yourself isn’t whether TNR has made neocon foreign policy seem sensible, but rather why The Daily Show hasn’t savaged most of the staff yet?

Pennsylvania: Number One!

As a native Pittsburgher, I’m glad to see that Tyler Cowen is on to the many charms of the Keystone State. I’ve always thought of Pennsylvania as a sort-of microcosm of American life: small towns and rural areas mimic the South, with large  post-industrial cities (Philadelphia and Pittsburgh) approximating a lot of the East Coast and urban populations.  Cowen’s summation is also great:

The bottom line: Almost certainly, Pennsylvania is better than your state. If you are a foreigner, and want to understand what made America great, study and visit Pennsylvania.

Take that, Ohio.

Aggravate Your Inner Economist

This sentence made my inner Tyler Cowen‘s head hurt:

Poetry doesn’t need promotion. People need time. A revolutionary way to promote poetry might be to criminalize capitalism’s theft of people’s time.

I have no idea what this means. This is from a post about promoting poetry on the consistently nonsensical Harriet, a poetry blog of the Poetry Foundation. What sort of social system isn’t going to exact an opportunity cost? So you have to have to work to make money, time that could be spent writing sonnets and making sly allusions to Rimbaud. Yeah, it’s rough. On the other hand, in the socialist utopia you have to write verse about the noble workers, and the vanguard, and wear severe looking coats that go past your knees. Tough call.

Against Torture?

I think Megan McArdle needs to define some of her terms in this post questioning the dismissal of torture:

One of the most facile dismissals of torture is that it doesn’t work, so why bother? That’s tempting, but it’s too easy. Torture seems to me very likely to work provided that you can verify the information, which I assume interrogators can in at least some circumstances.

As some of her commenters noted, if you can verify the information, why are you torturing in the first place? The much hypothesized “ticking time-bomb” scenario works on the premise that you won’t be able to verify the information (until, likely, it’s too late) so the “lie-detecting brain scans” McArdle posits are the most probable candidate. Again, though, Asymmetrical Information readers respond:

As for lie detecting brain scans…really, let’s cross that bridge when we come to it. I find it hard to believe that “lying” is actually a category of activity that matches up to a discrete brain pattern; it’s too similar to “telling a story”. My 3-year-old’s lies and fantasies are mixed up with his accurate reporting in a totally indistinguishable fashion, and I’m not sure he even knows which is which.

The greatest problem with going Torquemada on terrorists is that 1) they may totally believe what they say (because of fanatical dogma or operational ignorance) and 2) given a time-sensitive scenario (like an A-bomb in New York set to go off in 24 hours), the same dogmatic extremist wins merely by holding out, not by never giving up information. At this point, verification, or even the effectiveness of torture, becomes a moot point.

The larger moral question (which may be of greater import) isn’t really clarified by the back-and-forth of utilitarian moral calculus. Once again (I’m still in English dept. meetings, so I’m leaning heavily on other people’s work) commenter and Unfogged contributor LizardBreath points us to the crux of the moral quandry:

The real problem with attempting to separate out the moral issues from any practical issues is laid out in Belle Waring’s classic post “By the power of stipulation”. You can get people to agree that they’d do any bad thing at all, say, torturing a three year old child to death, if you can stipulate that something much much worse will happen if they don’t do it. To talk about the question morally, you really do have to talk about the practical issues first.

English Department Meeting Blogging

Brad DeLong freaks me out by noting “Objects in My Calender Are Closer than They Appear…”. How close, you ask? I’m at orientation for teaching George Mason’s composition program right now. Back to school. Get excited.

Yale English Dept. Not the Political Powerhouse Yale Law Is

The bizarre contrarian ramblings of Camille Paglia remind me of the old Larry King USA Today columns, if Larry King were on steroids, a powerful psychotropic, and had an English degree from Yale (for a point of reference, this old Onion parody of King is actually pretty close to the real thing). Belle Waring reads her latest column and identifies everything that is awry in just three paragraphs of Paglia’s musings:

How many things have gone wrong in this passage? From listening to Drudge’s radio show, to facile ecstasies about black people and how they’re so authentic and musical, to finding deep meaning in a Kelly Clarkson song, I can only say: damn, Camille, that was some pharmaceutical-grade sh#t right there.

Her survey of the current political landscape, however, is pure up-is-downism:

The thick-headed Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld triad may have grotesquely bungled the Iraq incursion, but Republicans (barring a breakaway third party) will still comfortably retake the White House next year if my fellow Democrats don’t get their act together on the cardinal issue of geopolitics. Terrorism isn’t going to go away if and when we withdraw from Iraq.

They will “comfortably” retake the White House? After two close presidential elections, a fundraising lead for Democrats for the first time in years, and the Democratic takeover of Congress in 2006, what exactly leads Paglia to believe that a victory would be a comfortable one? Gotta love political insight from a woman who’s sure the Democrats are going down but voted for Nader in 2000.

Well, It’s a Mighty Zombie Talking of Some Love and Posterity…

I’m not sure why, but this song has been stuck in my head all day:

Poetry Not Integral to the War on Terror

Dan Chiasson, in his review of Guantánamo detainee poetry, questions how much of a hand the government had in crafting the poems, which were heavily vetted and translated by “linguists with secret-level security clearance”:

Given these constraints, a better subtitle might have been “The Detainees Do Not Speak” or perhaps “The Detainees Are Not Allowed to Speak.” But the best subtitle, I fear, would have been “The Pentagon Speaks.” To be sure, it’s hard to imagine a straightforward propagandistic use for the lines “America sucks, America chills, / While d’ blood of d’ Muslims is forever getting spilled”; but you can’t help suspecting that this entire production is some kind of public relations psych-out, “proof” that dissent thrives even in the cells of Guantánamo. (Does that sound paranoid? Can you think of another good reason the Pentagon would have selected these lines out of thousands for publication?)

Yes, that sounds paranoid. I can also think of another good reason: the Pentagon doesn’t care that much about poetry. I’m reasonably certain they’re also censoring a lot of benign material that could be published without concern for national safety, but what does get through is because 1) dissent, does in fact thrive even in Guantánamo and 2) there are lawyers working hard–and a judicial system that recognizes their right–to defend their clients and publicize their client’s imprisonment. Chiasson, however, definitely sees government handiwork:

You have to be in the mood for some death-defying Orwellian back-flips, then, to read “Poems From Guantánamo.” When Martin Mubanga, an “athletic kickboxer” and a “citizen of both the United Kingdom and Zambia” (the poems come with extensive biographical notes, often more evocative than the poems themselves) refers to “hard-core detainees like you an’ me” — is this a case of the Pentagon’s missing the irony or, more likely, has the Pentagon deemed that analogy so absurd as to reveal a dangerous criminal mind-set? Since the poem, written in an absurd ersatz-gangsta patois, possesses exactly zero literary interest, what is a reader to do besides try to locate the governmental cunning in clearing it for publication?

I’m getting tired of references to Orwell for all things Bush administration related. Look, the detentions at Guantánamo are illiberal, contrary to Constitutional protections, and do little more than besmirch what little reputation the US has left. But every government action is not part of some intricate calculation to serve the whims or impulses of the State. The Pentagon doesn’t miss the irony, it just likely doesn’t care. Releasing the assorted verse of detainees doesn’t affect the Pentagon one iota because there isn’t much that can be said about Guantánamo that hasn’t already been said by numerous legal scholars, Tony Blair, John McCain, and Colin Powell, to name only a few. If no one is surprised that detainees are writing “America sucks” after years of imprisonment without trial, why should the Pentagon want to censor it?

And if one needs any further proof that the military doesn’t care about poetry, defense department spokesman Jeffrey Gordon makes it clear:

As with prisoners within the American justice system, he argues, there are constraints on their first amendment rights. “I don’t think these guys are writing poetry like Morrissey,” he continues.

Morrissey? C’mon, they can’t even identify a poet.