The Blog Without A Name
Much hay is often made of the fact that oil is usually,
a fortiori with the current administration, foremost in the minds of the people formulating American foreign policy. It's usually forgotten to what an extent this is also the case with other western countries, though. Take France and Great Britain: they don't really buy Iran's claims that its (unprofitable) nuclear energy program is solely for the purpose of civilian energy. But France and Great Britain also like oil, and they can get it cheaply from Iran. So, why the difference with American policy? America has immense political clout (read: long-term military installations) sitting in most of its clients in the Gulf region, whereas France and Great Britain have no such influence, and thus cannot lean on major suppliers of oil and natural gas to stabilize the flow of needed resources at a favorable price.
Given the fairly superficial coverage given to the latest twist in the
redistricting battle in the Texas statehouse, I think I ought to pipe up to provide some context. Over ten years ago, after the 1990 Census, the Democrats who controlled the Texas legislature, like Democrats and Republicans in every state, engineered a districting plan for federal representatives in Congress that produced gross disparities between the party affiliation of the citizens of the state and the kinds of representatives that actually got into Congress. After the 2000 Census, due to gridlock in a divided legislature, essentially the status quo ante was preserved -- that is, a grossly inadequate distribution of districts. Now, something like 55% of the population self-affiliates with the Republican Party, even though the current districting plan is designed to make about 45% of the representation in Congress Republican. Now, what's going on now is the Republicans have decided this was "unfair", which it is, and so have decided to put forward an equally grotesque plan designed to make the representation in Congress disproportionately Republican.
Somehow, for some reason, I have yet to become jaded to
The Guardian's armchair attitude to analyzing foreign cultures, most of all America's. It never ceases to amaze me the kinds of wide-ranging, uncritical, generalizations they make about its culture, people, government, economy, policies and so on. Take
this article (which originally appeared there) about America and religion. Not only does America have a self-righteous notion of its importance in the destiny of mankind; not only are notions of patriotism wrapped up in quasi-Calvinistic images of the Elect; America has in fact supplanted
God Himself. Yes, you read right! He says it without adornment or qualification: "The US no longer needs to call upon God; it is God, and those who go abroad to spread the light do so in the name of a celestial domain". The oft-spoken of "secular religion" is in the mind of this author a
real religion, though manifested in ways unlike traditional religions.
All of this sounds very good to those whose preconceptions dispose them to think in such superficial, indiscriminating ways. (And it makes money, right?) But the reality of course is much more complicated. Yes, Americans of today often use rhetoric laced with religious or quasi-religious notions of fidelity and destiny and justice. Yes, Americans of today often think their rise to preeminence is not an accident of history. The problem is that such are actually characteristics of all, or virtually all, human societies and the human notions of power that arise in them. Virtually every society in history has found divine sanction for its behavior. China had its Mandate of Heaven to rule 'All-Under-Heaven'; the Holy Roman Empire under Spanish tutelage had its analogies between a Universal Church and a putative Universal Monarchy; the British had their "Protestant Wind"; Mayan kings were "Holy Lords", literally the descendents of gods and goddesses, whose heritage provided license for untold crimes against human liberty. (Dare I be so brash as to suggest that Europeans are willingly erecting a secular religion exactly along American lines?) These things are nothing new under the sun, and there is no particular reason we should expect such behavior to stop as long as human beings find self-interest attractive.
The problem is not the rhetoric that Great Powers use; the problem is what Great Powers do with that rhetoric. If America goes about seeking to force foreign nations to burn incense, like Rome of old, to the deified goddess America, or some modern correlate like forcing other nations to use pro-American textbooks in their schools and say the Pledge of Allegiance, this would be one thing. But America does not do these things, nor do I think the honest skeptic would accept such a claim.
One might point out: what about Iraq? Isn't America forcing itself on Iraq? Indeed it is. But the claim being made here by this author from
The Guardian is about America's whole pattern of behavior, the entire context of its acts. If Iraq is just a new colonial adventure justified by God, then why not Cuba after the Cold War? Why not North Korea, or Libya, or any number of other of weak (and thus easy to target), oil rich (and thus desirable) Middle Eastern or African regimes? America could have in principle colonized any number of nations after the collapse of the Soviet Union removed the last major restriction on its room for movement, and yet it has not. Thus, without substantive evidence to the contrary, that America is actually trying to forcibly throw the rest of the world under the American yoke, the author stands guilty of a tautology: that America behaves like a historical human society.
What, exactly, does the Bush administration think it is accomplishing by ignoring the sensitivities of foreign states? I sometimes wonder. Take the most recent case of the
dispute with Iceland. Iceland is a small, almost defenseless country in the north Atlantic that has since the end of the Second World War been dependent on the American military to secure its independence. Now, the US wants to remove its last remnants of air-defenses from the island, and has made the decision entirely without consulting the local government. Fine, you might say: the Icelanders do not need air-defenses any longer, as there is no Evil Empire threatening hegemony over Europe.
The problem is that the Icelanders don't see it that way. Whether right or wrong, the Icelanders want more than just promises that if Iceland were to come under some kind of attack, the US would rush to its defense. That is a fact over which the Bush administration has little or no control. The Bush administration knows full well that there are those within the European Union eager to make the EU into a hegemon to rival the US in might, dominion, and influence, and so what does it do? It does precisely those things which are most likely to drive unalligned members into the hands of the Europeans. Isolationists in the US might welcome this, but it is short-sighted, and actually directly harms long-term American interests in the north Atlantic. The Iraq war showed us that political institutions in Europe can be harnessed to try to thwart American power for less than idealistic ends, for the naked acquisition of power. Must we now reinforce these trends that can only bode ill for American-European relations?
As a staunch advocate of human liberty, I am always wary of knee-jerk responses favoring government intervention, especially when it involves the possible loss of human life. But I am also not a moral or ethical absolutist. Sometimes, the values that we hold dearly, like the right to life and the right to security, come into conflict because not all human beings have upright Kantian consciences. Thus, when some human beings are bent on oppressing other human beings, governmental intervention can be justified even if such action is not taken.
Such, I feel, is and was the case in Iraq. Almost uniquely in the world today, the state apparatus in Saddam Hussein's regime was sadistically abusive of Iraqis' rights as human beings to live without fear of constant gratuitous threats to their existence. Iraq's secret police made otherwise oppressive regimes, like Egypt or Syria or Saudi Arabia, look positively enlightened in contrast. The more we learn about the behavior of
Saddam's two sons, Uday and Qusay -- who were not above literally throwing innocents to hungry lions, or beheading pregnant women -- only confirms this contention.
In light of the threat of terrorism, a certain added restraint in admitting foreign nationals to the US is probably warranted. But we must never forget the
practical effects they have on our economy. Not only do such foreign workers enrich our culture, they enrich our economy as well.
One wonders to what extent other Europeans have been engaging in their own
subterfuge of the ICC. To be sure, France's behavior seems every bit as self-serving as that of the US -- indeed, perhaps more so, given the kind of hardline ideological stance it took during the Iraq war debate. At that time, its rhetoric consisted almost entirely of support for "international law". And now it appears that international law is important only when it is in one's self-interest. Should we be surprised? Not in the least.
This is well worth a perusal. It reports on relative economic openness and freedom throughout the world, which are often leading indicators of a country's potential for per capita growth, for life-expectancy, and a variety of other sociological variables. It goes into some detail on a country-by-country basis after the actual ranking about the particular economic phenomena motivating that ranking. Not surprisingly, the United States comes behind only the micro-states of Hong Kong and Singapore, and most those that immediately follow are also Anglophone in culture. Interestingly, there seems to be little correlation between income distribution and economic freedom, at least with respect to the poorest of the poor.
This is the wrong policy at the wrong time. Tariffs are never good -- they just screw the poor over -- but tariffs reflexively enacted to "punish" evil-doers typically only fall on the people most likely to pose resistence to those evil doers, and thus are actually counterproductive. What's more, cutting off sources of trade only deepens the recession, albeit in this case not terribly much. If they really want to get Aung San Suu Kyii out of prison, smart sanctions, targeted solely at the bank accounts of the junta ruling Myanmar, are far more likely to do something positive for the democracy movement there. As it is, this is just protectionism and corporate welfare through the backdoor.
One more reason to vote against George Bush in the next election: the truly obscene
deficits his tax cut has run up. For perspective, consider the fact that the deficit
alone would rank as the world's 12th largest economy, and would be larger than all but a handful or large or rich countries
combined. To be sure, we have to pay for what we get -- the war, the new healthcare benefits Congress has naively voted -- but it's likely the deficit would be nothing like it is today were it not for the tax cuts Bush got Congress to pass last year.
It is certainly true that European politics has
quirks not conceivable in America.
While I don't think people standing in a street begging Americans to intervene, or the fact of genocide and war crimes, are enough in principle to intervene in every country, the case of
Liberia is unusual in that America is largely responsible for its existence. As one of two (2) nations to avoid direct, overt colonization by European powers in the mid-19th century -- the other being Ethiopia -- Liberia owes much of its social makeup to American influence in the country. (To be sure the recent conflict has mostly had more local origins). It might cost some millions of dollars to send a few hundred troops to Liberia, but I think in the end it would be a diplomatic boon to America's image around the world.
A
very insightful assessment of the roots of modern anti-Americanism. What the author fails to point out in sufficient detail is the extent to which such anti-Americanism is self-serving, at all levels. Trying to get elected? Want to sell goods? Anti-Americanism is a good route to take nowadays. Many European elites also have great ambitions to make the EU a hegemon to rival the US, and thus
Realpolitik largely shapes their policy decisions even when, as in Iraq, they have more to gain in a narrow sense by supporting the US.
You gotta admire
a man brazen enough to erect multimeter statues of himself, winged, plated in gold, that rotate to face the sun. Hopefully, something will be worked out so blood need not run in the streets when he leaves office (however that happens).
The change in demeanor (see "
Texas House Rejects Bid for New Effort on Districting") that has occurred in the Texas legislature in the last two years is rather disheartening, but not, I think, ultimately threatening. The Texas constitution is designed to make difficult any one faction's control of all aspects and branches of government. As such, when naked power struggles arise, as they have recently due partly to foreign intervention (i.e., from Republicans in the federal Congress), the status quo will not be overturned, which on the whole is probably a good thing for people. God bless supermajorities!
You could bet good money that
this case will reach the US Supreme Court. Draco would be proud.
The
recent hubbub in Brussels over Silvio Berlusconi's caustic remarks to a German socialist MEP doesn't bode well for the immediate future of the EU. The basic problem is not a personal issue, as many think, though to be sure Berlusconi's flippancy towards fascist persecution didn't help. The basic problem is that Europe has essentially no shared institutional history, the very weight of which makes it difficult for factions to bring about fundamental policy shifts. In any state or organization, factions inevitably emerge as attempts to implement particular policy decisions. When there are no rules implicit in that organization about what is possible and what is not, these factions have nothing left but naked power struggles like what we saw today to accomplish goals. Berlusconi's remarks are the symptom, not the cause, of a lack of legitimacy which can restrain such political agents.
In other news, the number of articles in the American media referring to the reality of 'American Empire' ("
Washington needs a colonial office" "
U.S. may not be imperial, but it does have an empire") are both troubling and reassuring for precisely the same reason: that American foreign policy is currently being driven in large part by the narrow self-interest of elites (in both parties) in the American government. This self-interest tells them that America needs to secure 'Egyptian grain' (oil from the Persian Gulf and the Caspian Sea) and prevent the rise of any real threat to this hegemony. Those on the political left fret constantly about this, not entirely without reason, but there is this reassuring fact: because it involves self-interest, it is predictable and therefore in principle possible for other states to form coherent long-term strategic plans. Although '
The New Age of Imperialism' is wrong (or wrong-headed) in a number of respects, it concisely summarizes this fact about American foreign policy:
"The wider left’s tendency over the last two years to focus on this new imperialist expansion as a neoconservative project involving a small sector of the ruling class not reaching beyond the right wing of the Republican Party... is a dangerous illusion. At present there is no serious split within the U.S. oligarchy or the foreign policy establishment, though these will undoubtedly develop in the future as a result of failures down the road. There is no cabal, but a consensus rooted in ruling class needs and the dynamics of imperialism."
