Politics

Theory of Representation

“Representation means the making present of something that is nevertheless not literally present.” (Pitkin, 1967) In a representative democracy, which, minimally construed, involves a mediating assembly for political decision making, representation, as defined by Hanna Pitkin, implies then an attempt to find the ‘people’ in assembly’s political decision making.

But what exactly do we mean by that? Should we look for people’s values, thoughts, (current or stable, weak or strong) opinions (‘phantom’ – as Philip Converse puts it – though they may be?) in governance, and where exactly should we look – should it be policy, or institutional design, or process, or in the race and gender of ‘representatives’? Not to say that all of this rests upon the idea that these things (say opinions) can be coherently expressed by people (in aggregate), and ‘cognizable’ in institutions, policy outcomes, etc. Other than these seemingly intractable questions of measurement, we also have substantive questions – who is represented, and to what degree, and why? And we must struggle with some normative questions that lie adjacent to the empirically posed question above – who/what should be represented, and in what degree?

Origins of our thinking about representation

There are two intersecting facets of how representation is understood, and perhaps should be – one is highlighting the cultural construction of concern with ‘representation’, and the other is historical understanding of representation.

Partly, idealized notions of representation are built against the inequalities manifest in the economic processes. The need for political equality/representation is a necessary counterpart to the society that has salient economic inequalities built of mythology of everything is possible for everyone.

Some of our understanding of representatives and control by people, constrained as they are by social norms of the Congress or bargaining between President and Congress, ought to be shaped by historical and normative conception. Historical foundations of current form of representation (in US) can be traced to at least Madison. As is commonly surmised, elite deliberation as a model for representation, was developed against the fear of the mob. True, but there was much positive thought guiding Madison’s idea of a modern democracy, and representation. It wasn’t just that unconstrained mass democracy is unsuitable, or the larger logistics based argument that mass democracies are untenable, Madison’s claim was that a desired effect of (elite) political representation is ‘to refine and enlarge the public views, by passing them through the medium of a chosen body of citizens, whose wisdom may best discern the true interest of their country’. Of course to what degree he succeeded in that ideal is open to conjecture, if not open derision.

Partly we also get an understanding of what is to be represented by the prominent instruments that key institutions provide people to express or control their representatives. If representation implies the extent to which political leader acts in accordance with wants and need and demands on public, then we ought to look into how public can express its needs, and how those are funneled in the political process. Lets take for example, vote. We know for a fact that vote itself is a poor instrument for expressing multifaceted preferences. Vote is binary, or at best trichotomous. So typically the role of a citizen was conceived to be relatively minimal, at least on a per capita basis.

But by constraining ourselves to discussion about voting, arguably the single most potent symbol of democracy, we fail to fully understand the ability and opportunity provided by democratic governance systems.

More simply, not all representation is via ‘representatives’. Democratic governance systems provide multiple ways to shape the public’s agenda, shape public opinion on the agenda, and how it is fed into governance. It provides multiple modes (lobbying, media, etc.), multiple institutional entry points (courts, legislature, public hearings of executive branches etc.), multiple temporal entry points (at the crafting of law, or as its failings are exposed, or in restricting its application –prerogative of the executive branch etc.), through communication of dissent, and consent, and hence allows for representation in many different ways within the many different institutional frameworks.

Measurement: Who is represented?

One way to assess who is represented is to merely track the economic well being of various groups over time. Another would be to correlate opinion/policy of representatives with that of the opinion of the constituency. Given politicians often actively shape opinion, and the problems with using correlation (as highlighted by Christopher Achen), the measure is largely doomed. In addition – any such measure ought to incorporate – the agendas of people (problematic to measure), and their opinion on those agenda items. In other words, we ought to measure two things – are issues considered important by people/constituents considered similarly important by the representatives, and the ‘correlation’ in opinion on those issues. In absence of similar agenda priorities, the question about agenda would be hard to measure. And certainly concerns about strategic/manipulative agenda setting by politicians (Page and Shapiro recently came out with a book – Politicians don’t pander that gives this worry some legs) would be of import here as well.

What should be represented?

The answer to the question is murky. Clearly multiple things need to be represented. For example: say a policy has a disproportional negative impact on a small group of people – their concerns perhaps ought to be represented. It is inarguable that the representation structure somehow constrains what is to be represented, depending on how widespread the cognition of its impact is – and to what salience. Part of our answer to what ought to be represented depends on our conception of democracy. So if governance is at heart about allocation of meager resources, and it is certainly at least about that, then does ‘representation’ of one’s interests (hard to define) at the bargaining table as ‘interest groups’ (or mobilized segments of society) present their cases the ideal?

If we minimally understand people’s wants as interest in ‘better’ outcomes, and assuming that ‘better outcomes’ emerge from good information, we can perhaps then focus on representation of (all) information – be it differential impact of certain policies, or some innovative technique.

Role of a representative

Heinz Eulau et al. present two models of thinking about the role of a representative – Who is being represented (district/state) – this needs to be further disinterred; and how (?) (trustee, delegate, politico or hybrid). These axes are a small but essential kernel of a theory of a representative. Yet it would do us disservice if we think that representatives do one or the other, on any of the dimensions. To a very significant degree, the institutional mechanisms have evolved to dole out the pork (district) and deal with say national issues as well, and many a times getting the former accomplished seamlessly as part of the latter. Alternately phrased – it does us disservice to think of district and state orientation as polar opposites of a continuum. A broad set of policies accommodate both. Similarly, trusteeship needn’t automatically contradict the role of a delegate. The theorization of the role of a representative ought to take into account the ‘fact’ that given that over a large set of policy issues, population has minimal (if not ‘phantom’) opinions, what is his/her role and responsibilities? Is it ‘opinion leadership’ or manipulation (again the reference to Page and Shapiro – Politicians don’t pander)? The Page and Shapiro version is considerably closer to the dystopic version outlined by Pitkin – mass democracy inevitably fades into “fascist” manipulation. The argument, differently expressed elsewhere, goes like this – representation in a democracy is best understood not in terms of accurate correspondence between pre-existing citizen preferences and subsequent government decision but rather as a “constructive” (if ideally working) process that shapes the very same preferences and perspectives that are represented.

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Hanna Pitkin. The Concept of Representation. (1967)
Heinz Eulau et al. The Role of the Representative: Some Empirical Observations on the Theory of Edmund Burke. (1959)
Christopher Achen. Measuring Representation. (1978)

McCain share of white vote by state, and by region; Source: Exit Poll Data by Edison Mitofsky

Obama's vote share among people with a postgraduate degree by state

More:

“Here in Alabama, where Mr. McCain won 60.4 percent of the vote in his best Southern showing, he had the support of nearly 9 in 10 whites, according to exit polls, a figure comparable to other Southern states.”

“Mr. Obama won in only 44 counties in the Appalachian belt, a stretch of 410 counties that runs from New York to Mississippi.”

“Southern counties that voted more heavily Republican this year than in 2004 tended to be poorer, less educated and whiter, a statistical analysis by The New York Times shows.”

New York Times

Andrew Gelman’s take on the 2008 results-

“As with previous Republican candidates, McCain did better among the rich than the poor,.. but the pattern has changed among the highest-income categories…”

November 10, 2007: One of the first scandals to break out during the campaign was about planted questions in Hillary’s townhall meetings. “They asked me if I would ask the senator a question. I said, ‘Sure, you know,’” Gallo-Chasanoff told CNN. “He showed me in his binder, he had a piece of paper that had typed out questions on it. And the top one was planned specifically for a college student. It said ‘college student.’” ‘A video on MSNBC shows Gallo-Chasanoff reading the question word for word, and then winking when she was done.’ ABC News

November 10, 2007: “I love my wife and my five sons and their five wives. Wait a second. Let me clarify that. They each have one.” Mitt Romney (Economist gave this quip the title – Best Freudian slip; ABCNews.com)

December 12, 2007: In kindergarten, Senator Obama wrote an essay titled ‘I Want to Become President.’ “Iis Darmawan, 63, Senator Obama’s kindergarten teacher, remembers him as an exceptionally tall and curly haired child who quickly picked up the local language and had sharp math skills. He wrote an essay titled, ‘I Want To Become President,’ the teacher said.”
From: Clinton campaign’s press-release.

December 13, 2007: “It’ll be, ‘When was the last time? Did you ever give drugs to anyone? Did you sell them to anyone?’” Shaheen on Obama
Bill Shaheen (husband of NH Senator-elect Jeanne Shaheen; national co-chairman of Clinton’s campaign at that point)

February 24, 2008: Bill Clinton speaking about Hillary’s inability to win caucus states – “the caucuses aren’t good for her. They disproportionately favor upper-income voters who, who, don’t really need a president but feel like they need a change.” Audacity of Hopelessness by Frank Rich

March 8, 2008: “She is a monster, too – that is off the record – she is stooping to anything,” Samantha Power; Obama’s foreign policy adviser.

March 10, 2008: Hillary Clinton chief spokesman Howard Wolfson declared Monday that Clinton does not consider Obama qualified to be vice president.

March 11, 2008: “I will not be discriminated against because I’m white. Geraldine Ferraro

“If we can’t trust Mitt Romney on Ronald Reagan, how can we trust him to lead America?”
From John McCain’s attack ad on Romney

“The Clintons will be there when they need you,” said a Carter friend. (Maureen Dowd, NY Times)

May 3, 2008: When asked, at the Republican presidential primary debate at Simi Valley, whether any of the candidates did not believe in evolution , three candidates – Tancredo, Brownback, and Huckabee – raised their hands.

May 9, 2008: “Senator Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again.” (Hillary Clinton, Interview with USA Today)

Google News Archives timeline graph of citations of 'Clinton Accuses Obama' between August 2007 and August 2008

August 21, 2008: “I think – I’ll have my staff get to you. It’s condominiums where – I’ll have them get to you.” (John McCain unsure about the number of houses he owns.)

A special tribute to Palin:

September 24, 2008: “As Putin rears his head and comes into the air space of the United States of America, where– where do they go? It’s Alaska. It’s just right over the border. (Interview with Katie Couric, CBS News)

In defense of Palin, she never said that she could see Russia from her house. (Time)

September 25, 2008: Couric: And when it comes to establishing your worldview, I was curious, what newspapers and magazines did you regularly read before you were tapped for this to stay informed and to understand the world?
Palin: I’ve read most of them, again with a great appreciation for the press, for the media.
Couric: What, specifically?
Palin: Um, all of them, any of them that have been in front of me all these years.
Couric: Can you name a few?
Palin: I have a vast variety of sources where we get our news, too.
CBS News

October 1, 2008: “Well, let’s see. There’s — of course — in the great history of America rulings there have been rulings.” Sarah Palin (When asked by Couric to name a Supreme Court decision, other than Roe vs. Wade, that she disagreed with; CBS News)

Presidential debates occupy a unique place in the American political process. Debates trace their meritorious ancestry to Lincoln –Douglas debates of 1858, which were actually between Senators, and focused mostly on the issue of slavery. The Lincoln-Douglas debates were long, often boring, and if voting returns from Illinois counties, where debates were held, are anything to go by – Douglass won, by a rather significant margin. Douglass won the Senate race as well. (Senators were elected by state legislatures at that point of time, and the decision of Lincoln and Douglas to publicly debate, controversial.)

The era of televised debates started with Senator Kennedy debating Vice-President Nixon in 1960. The debates came about at the suggestion of Adlai Stevenson – whose influential column in ‘The Week’ first proposed the idea. The debates made history, with footage of Nixon, wiping sweat of this brow, looking unshaven and snappish, firmly embedded in the presidential campaign folklore. But the televised debates of 1960 almost didn’t come off.

In 1959, FCC received a complaint from the colorful perennial candidate Lar Daly who was running against the powerful mayor, Richard Daley. Lars complained that television was covering Richard Daley on issues unrelated to campaign –if there’s such a thing, and argued, as the law – Section 315(a) of Communications Act of 1934 – mandated then, ‘equal time’. FCC decline Lars’ request, but also asked Congress to take action. To address such issues, Congress created four exemptions to equal time law. It ruled that ‘Bona fide candidates’ may appear in Bona fide newscasts, Bona fide news interviews, Bona fide news documentaries, and “on the spot coverage of bona fide news events”. However the exemptions made weren’t thought to allow for coverage of presidential debate. Hence, to allow for the presidential debates, Congress suspended the Equal time law for just 1960, and only for candidates running for president, allowing for the 1960 debates to happen.

In 1964, Lyndon Johnson’s reluctance to debate Barry Goldwater meant that the Democrats in Congress shelved the bill to suspend equal time law for the year. 1968 and 1972 had Nixon running for president, and given his prior experience against Kennedy, it meant a summary no to presidential debates. But the history of televised presidential debates is as much a history of politics as telecommunication law intersecting with politics. So let me make a brief detour to talk a little more about Communication law- In 1971, amendment to the Communications Act required stations make a reasonable amount of time available to federal candidates. Once time is made available under this provision, the equal time requirements of Section 315 did apply. The 1971 amendments also addressed the rates which stations can charge candidates for air time. Before 1971, Congress only required that the rates charged candidates be comparable to those offered to commercial advertisers. Now, Section 315 commands that as the election approaches, stations must offer candidates the rate it offers its most favored advertiser. Thus, if a station gives a discount to a commercial sponsor because it buys a great deal of air time, the station must offer the same discount to any candidate regardless of how much time he or she purchases.

In 1976, debate coverage was allowed under the ‘Aspen decision’, which interpreted presidential debates as following under “on the spot coverage of bona fide news event” exception legislated by Congress in 1959– if the debates were organized someone other than the media, and broadcast live, and in their entirety. This was obviously highly disingenuous but repeated cases in Supreme Court failed to reverse the decision. With the decision in place, people scampered to find an organization willing to organize the debate. League of Women Voters finally accepted the responsibility, and organized the 76 debate. The debates were held under their sponsorship till 84, and after 88 under Commission on Presidential debates. The debates until of recently were focus of extensive lobbying by the candidates – and negotiation on format (town hall/single moderator or panel of journalists/etc.), podium height, temperature in the hall, whether candidates could use notes or not, among other things – was intense and common. Only now, CPD has been able to leverage its power to limit the list of negotiable items. However bigger problems remain – constant questions about the utility of debates, and the rather arbitrary criteria for allowing for a third-party candidate to debate.

How does one ‘democratically’ govern a heterogeneous population with immense plurality of interests – perceived or real? In fact, how does one keep pressures stemming from economic, ethnic, racial, religious, regional, identities back? How does one avoid centrifugal forces from building up, and cleaving? We build an institutional system that only rewards broad coalitions. There is a nice corollary to the system that demands ‘broad coalitions’ for governance –one that opens up the opportunity for ‘change’: As the coalitions becomes broader, and more unwieldy, the opportunity beckons for the smaller party(ies) to expand their base by appealing to under served segments of that coalition, and perhaps win enough over to get a chance to govern.

Then – if it was the threat of ‘factions’ that led to the institutional design of American democracy, we have succeeded, almost entirely. The American political system has become a stable duopoly, with ‘factions’ –even troublesome ones like 1968 McCarthy supporters – now residing largely within the parties, mostly quietly.

But to discuss success of institutional systems that reward ‘broad coalitions’ in American context is to not fully discuss them at all. While it is true that in the American context, the ‘first past the post’ electoral system (if indeed the kind of electoral system ‘predicts’ the number of parties) has produced a largely stable two-party system (with occasional bouts of third-parties, the latest being Ross Perot in 1992; and the longest lasting being the ‘left-wing’ parties in the Teddy Roosevelt era), the system has had much less success in India, which boasts of thirty plus parties, with each ploughing its own furrow.

So clearly, there are limits to what institutional design can achieve. A closer inspection may reveal that some of the fault lines are visible even in US. One may argue that the term ‘broad coalitions’ is a misnomer– especially in the American context – where a significant number don’t vote, and where you can win an election by appealing to the ‘median evangelist’ or ‘median racist’, in Republican Party’s case. Similarly, one must question why significant ‘third parties’ like the Socialist party came to be important players, given the ‘logic’ of wasted votes. But overall, the system has worked well.

Party on

Democracy is perhaps best understood as a Schumpeterian ideal of mass public choosing from competing elites. Parties emerge as natural coalitional vehicles in a democracy to allow elites to stand on ideas, and not as elites. They allow provide the more ambitious members of the public to gain power, in exchange of co-option, partial indoctrination, and work. And furthermore, they allow for only people who aver by the dogma to rise to the top. But reality impedes. More so now, when media have made possible for politicians to come to the fore with only limited help from the party machinery.

Stable Coalitions

If factionalized political systems amplify every segment’s sane and insane demands, political systems that demand ‘broad coalitions’ are, by design, tethered to broad dysfunctions within a society.

At the heart of it – there is nothing seemingly ‘stable’ or even vaguely comprehensible about the ‘broad coalition’ that the Republican Party commands – it is a coalition of the rich, and the poor, the ‘fiscal conservatives’, and the taxation-averse (sometimes both), the social conservatives who elect Larry Craig, the libertarians who want government to legislate marriage (and more), etc. The subtext of this coalition, its glue, is of course race.

To keep ‘broad coalitions’ from heeding to their worst instincts, one needs an informed, civic and liberal minded citizenry. Failing which, while democracy with a relatively free press may prevent famines, it may not always prevent slavery or foreign occupation, if that is a ‘broad coalition’ supports it.

Jennifer Hochschild, professor of Political Science at Harvard, begins her 1981 book, ‘What’s Fair: American Beliefs about Distributive Justice’, with an excerpt from Arthur Conan Doyle’s story, Silver Blaze, featuring the popular fictional detective Sherlock Holmes. In that excerpt, Holmes remarks on the ‘curious’ fact that the dog didn’t bark even when the ‘evidence suggested that it should have’. Dr. Hochschild uses this analogy to remark on the ‘curious’ fact about the American polity that it has steadfastly shied away from socialism (even socialist rhetoric) despite rising inequality and the large pool of likely beneficiaries of socialist policies. Politics has also been largely absent of demands of more income redistribution. I carry Dr. Hochschild’s analogy further – to rather disastrous extremes – all in service of conveying something simple. After all, all is fair in love, war, and blogging. Even dogs.

Before we investigate, ‘why the dog doesn’t bark’, it is incumbent upon us to identify who the dog is, why it should bark, and when, and how loudly? And does it bite? And we must investigate whether the implicit and naïve assumption – that barking will result in anything – is actually correct. Only after we answer these, will we tackle some version of Hochschild’s question.

The Dog

The definition of the ‘dog’ depends heavily on the counterfactual that we want to use. For example, is it the bottom 95% of the income earners, or the lowest two quintiles of the income distribution, or the group below median income, or the minority of the federally defined ‘poor’? All of these ‘groups’ can in sense coalesce together to demand more redistribution of income taxes, certainly a ‘progressive’ income tax with substantially higher marginal tax on incomes above their own. But theoretical counterfactuals base their premise of group formation on automatic group formation on basis of economic interests. Such counterfactuals ignore things like extant cross-cutting social cleavages (for example race – disingenuously captured as ‘South/Non-South Dummy’, the Baptist/Southern Baptist dummy etc. in Political Science literature) that come in way of ‘class consciousness’, atomistic drives of the new labor and consumption regimes, apathy, ‘political culture’, historical narratives, and the near absolute dispersion of legitimizing discourses of inequality offered by the ‘society’. These reasons damn the existence of a dog to only those instances when political entrepreneurship meets economic realities powerfully enough to overcome the centrifugal forces mentioned above. So perhaps then the problem really is that the dog doesn’t bark because mostly there is no dog.
However, political coalitions around class do form, and if evidence presented by scholars is anything to go by – they are most salient and most persistent among the rich end of the spectrum. Larry Bartels has recently shown that policy choices reflect elite opinion much more so than mass opinion. “In almost every instance, senators appear to be considerably more responsive to the opinions of affluent constituents than to the opinions of middle-class constituents, while the opinions of constituents in the bottom third of the income distribution have no apparent statistical effect on their senators’ roll call votes. Disparities in representation are especially pronounced for Republican senators, who were more than twice as responsive as Democratic senators to the ideological views of affluent constituents.” (Bartels, 2005 – Economic Inequality and Political Representation).

Hochschild, relying on census data from 1929 to 1977, puts forth the fact that while the shares received by poorest two quintiles has changed little between these years, the largest change has been transfer of money from the richest quintile to the third and fourth quintile. Hoschschild’s story is about the ‘Director’s law’ (after economist Aaron Director), which goes something like this –‘Government has coercive power, which allows it to engage in acts (above all, the taking of resources) which could not be performed by voluntary agreement of the members of a society. Any portion of the society which can secure control of the state’s machinery will employ the machinery to improve its own position. Under a set of conditions to be discussed below, this dominant group will be the middle income classes.’ (George Stigler’s summary).

So perhaps there is a dog – a rich and a middle class dog, just not a ‘poor dog’. And that is in itself a ‘mystery’.

To bark or not to bark? And when to bark?

Should it on ‘perceiving’ the narrowing of the opportunities to move to the next class bracket? Or should it be on coming in contact with ‘increased’ inequality between ‘class peers’, as is so nicely documented in a recent series of articles in New York Times –the chronicler of the anxieties of the rich – that show that inequality is the greatest (and gallingly so) in the top 1% with top .001% earning far more than the .01%, which in turn earns substantially less than the next .1%. Or should it be the expansion of difference between the 25th percentile and the 75th percentile? Or having dramatically lower income than say our parents? A lot depends on how we define the dog, and what the dog sees. Both the dog and dog’s vision, if it wasn’t clear from the discussion above, is as much politically constructed as socially (if the two can be pried apart). Perhaps the answer is best approached via historical examples – times when we can be reasonably sure the dog did something or it looked like the dog did something.

If we go back to 1870s, the era of ‘Robber Barons’ and the original ‘gilded age’, the post-reconstruction era of lavish wealth, and even more gratuitous displays, we are at a point of history with indisputable and egregious inequalities. This era with its early stages of thuggish capitalists bought not only the rise of labor but also the trust busting presidency of Teddy Roosevelt. Perhaps there the dog did whimper. Similarly, there is a period again starting 1933 when there is a precipitous climb in the marginal income tax rate, partly brought upon by the war, and by FDR. The top marginal rates as recently as Eisenhower era were over 90%, and now top off at a miserly 35%. It is relatively unclear –except perhaps for rise of communist parties in US and a response to the depression, why we saw such a rise in redistribution of income. But it seems that that was the last time the dog whimpered.

Data from Piketty and Saez, among others, suggests the oncoming of a new gilded age. For example, according to census data, in 1967, households at 95th percentile had six times more income than ones at 25th percentile, the ratio in 2005 had grown to 8.6. It may yet be that the dog rises again, albeit slowly and feebly. And it may gnaw at immigrants, when it rises, before it gnaws at ‘greedy’ Wall Street guys. Oh, it’s already happening.

The Curious Incident: Why the dog doesn’t bark sooner, or bite?

Sven Steinmo, the clear eyed analyst attributes it to the ‘Political culture’ – the pull yourself up the bootstraps entrepreneurial anti-statist immigrant culture, constitution – the deliberately ‘anti-democratic’ (in words of American historian Gordon Wood) fragmentary government structure, weak parties, weak labor, weak government, and the fact that elites play a critical role in shaping people’s preferences. For Hochschild it is the lack of feudal history, the rapid rise of petit bourgeoisie, people being better off than their parents – at least much of the 19th and 20th century as the vast natural resources of US were exploited to carve out wealth, the fact that people have ‘chosen’ Capitalism (gain) over distributive ideas, deliberate fragmented structure of the government, the fact that poor limit their dreams, the fact that poor don’t demand absence of difference but just end of ‘unjust’ differences, and that the fact that people just want an ‘equal opportunity to be unequal’. For Gunnar Myrdal, the Swedish political scientist and economist and Nobel Prize Laureate and most significantly author of the Carnegie (who wanted someone from outside US for objectivity) funded ‘An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy’, it is the ‘American creed’. And perhaps because things haven’t been that bad, mostly. We never ask if things can be better for democracy isn’t about that. It is just mostly avoiding famines. (Amartya Sen)

Politics begets cynicism, especially during the campaigning season when each politician tries to outdo the other in spouting disingenuous and sometimes patently false statements. Cynicism in turn becomes the aegis with which we defend our apathy. (“It’s all the same”, “Why bother when nothing changes.”) But are our peregrinations into indifference, well founded? I gather not for things do change – like they have over the past eight years under Bush. There exist not only a strong imperatives to prevent the ‘worse’ choice from getting elected – for cost of such misadventures is often great (at least $4 trillion has been added to the deficit in the past 8 years to pay for tax cuts for the rich, and Iraq War), but more optimistically the rewards of having someone sensible (when the off chance arrives as it has with Barack Obama’s candidacy) in a leadership position are often as large as the costs of electing an imbecile. Here below, I briefly document the policy achievements of two leaders (Kevin Rudd and Zapatero), to corroborate the claim made above.

Kevin Rudd, leader of the Australian Labor Party, was elected to the Prime Minister’s office about five months ago, on 3rd December, 2007. His first ‘official act’ on taking office was to sign the Kyoto Protocol, and mandate Australia – the largest per capita polluter in the world – to deal with the biggest crisis in the world today. With that signature, Rudd not only wiped clean the Howard era moral bankruptcy, but also put Australia firmly on the path of enacting a progressive climate policy. A few days later, Rudd de facto scrapped “Pacific Solution”, the ignominious Howard era policy that sent all asylum seekers arriving by boat to remote islands for ‘assessment’. Rudd’s policy agenda has been far more ambitious than merely rolling back the perverse policies of Howard regime. Rudd committed his government to tackling homelessness, a growing and salient problem in Australia. In February, Rudd offered a short but unambiguously worded apology on behalf of the government and the Australian parliament for the shameful the treatment of the aborigines.
[Read more at BBC News]

Zapatero’s achievements as head of Spain may have been slower in coming than Rudd’s whirlwind pace, but they have been no less momentous. In his four years at the helm, he “legalized gay marriage, brought in fast-track divorces and laws to promote gender equality and tackle domestic violence. He also introduced an amnesty for undocumented workers.” (BBC. He has introduced “targeted measures to raise the female employment rate (which is still comparatively low in Spain)”, “established the legal right to paternity leave”. Under Zapatero’s capable finance minister, Pedro Solbes, Spain “declared a budget surplus for a third consecutive year, topping 2 per cent of gross domestic product for 2007.” Policy Network

The impact of electing someone like Obama would be similarly momentous for the US, and the penalties for electing McCain (running for the third term of Bush), or Clinton (who is planning to “obliterate” Iran) severe.

Kevin Rudd – White paper on first 100 days (pdf)

The military regularly ranks as the most trusted institution on public opinion surveys. Veterans are regularly deified by politicians of every stripe as heroes rendering extraordinary service to the country. Even when politicians are articulating their dissent for the Iraq War, they frequently find time to issue a short sermon praising the heroes, and reiterating America’s commitment to its veterans.

The unique status of the veterans and the military in the modern American consciousness can be traced to the revolutionary origins of the United States. The military success in the “War of Independence”, and the “Second War of Independence” (War of 1812), and the heroism of the ‘founders’, is an essential part of America’s collective memory, along with being an essential part of the school history curricula. Tony Judt, in his superb column for The New York Review of Books, writes that one of the reasons militarism continues to persist in US is because -

“Americans, perhaps alone in the world, experienced the twentieth century in a far more positive light. The US was not invaded. It did not lose vast numbers of citizens, or huge swathes of territory, as a result of occupation or dismemberment. Although humiliated in distant neocolonial wars (in Vietnam and now in Iraq), the US has never suffered the full consequences of defeat. [Judt makes a reference here to South's defeat in the Civil War and subsequent reaction as exception that proves the rule] Despite their ambivalence toward its recent undertakings, most Americans still feel that the wars their country has fought were mostly “good wars.” The US was greatly enriched by its role in the two world wars and by their outcome, in which respect it has nothing in common with Britain, the only other major country to emerge unambiguously victorious from those struggles but at the cost of near bankruptcy and the loss of empire. And compared with other major twentieth-century combatants, the US lost relatively few soldiers in battle and suffered hardly any civilian casualties.”

Vinay, a regular contributor here, adds to the above argument, articulating that the other possible reason for this continued ‘heroification’ of military and veterans is because as a country of immigrants, people in US have often found it hard to find things (like common history) to rally around. In absence of those themes, people have opted to rally behind things that exclude no one. That latent tendency has been buttressed by generations of strategic political actors, and mass culture producers.

The other unique fact that brings the above arguments in sharp relief is the disproportionately (as compared to other countries – excepting ones with mandatory military training) large number of veterans in the US. According to the Statistical Abstract of United States for 2004-2005, the country had 24.9 million veterans. The large veteran population is a result of two things – having one of the largest standing armies in the world, and the preponderance of personnel who serve the army only for a few years (generally as a way to have their college tuitions paid.)

Given the factors outlined above, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the American residency has been dominated by men with prior military experience. However the sheer number is still surprising – for 137 of the 219 years the country since its independence, the country has had a veteran as a president. Associatedly 29 of its 43 presidents have been veterans. There are at least three caveats about the numbers provided above– Eight years of George W Bush’s ’service’ in the National Guard have been excluded; the five years of Lincoln presidency have been included (Lincoln participated very briefly in the Black Hawk War of 1832), and Millard Fillmore’s tenure isn’t included as his experience in the military was after he had left his presidency. One can raise questions about inclusion of some other presidents including Madison (whose service was brief again), however, as one can see, such tinkering is unlikely to impact the numbers much.

The longest time American’s went without electing a veteran was the 32 year period starting with Taft in 1913, and ending with Roosevelt’s death in 1945. Incredibly, during this time, the country took part in the two World Wars.

Perhaps the subsequent question we may want to ask is what impact has election of presidents with prior military experience had on the country. The lessons there remain less clear.

US President mil experience summary table[1] – Get more documents

Oregon Supreme Court (1998) defines lobbying as “influencing, or attempting to influence, legislative action through oral or written communication with legislative officials, solicitation of others to influence or attempt to influence legislative action or attempting to obtain the good will of legislative officials.” [see David Fidanque and Janet Arenz, Petitioners on Review, vs. State of Oregon ]

The proponents of lobbying argue that any law curtailing it impinges on two core First Amendment clauses – that Congress shall make no law abridging the right of the people “to petition the Government for a redress of grievances”, or curtailing “freedom of speech”. In return, states have argued that they have substantial interests in preventing actual corruption, and perception of corruption, and given lobbyist’s common perception of being dishonest, and a vast array of empirical evidence as to the actual incidence of corruption, they have interests in placing restrictions on lobbying.

Courts have for long upheld citizen’s rights to petition the government taking note that the idea of democratic government implies in part a right of the citizen to petition. (Capps, 2005) The “right to petition”, as numerous legal scholars have noted, predates the Bill of Rights and hence is sacrosanct. Furthermore, Courts have also for long upheld the idea that lobbying, in essence, is a way of petitioning one’s representatives. In Liberty Lobby, Inc. v. Pearson (390 F.2d 489, 491, 492 (D.C. Cir. 1967)) [For details on case citation], the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit found that people involved in trying to effect congressional action by engaging in lobbying activities were exercising their right to petition.

However the courts have long also recognized that while the right to petition is an essential one, it is also a limited one. (Capps, 2005) Hence, the courts have ruled that there is no absolute right of a citizen to speak in person with public officials. In absence of absolute rights, and citing countervailing interests like state’s interest in preventing corruption given the likelihood that lobbying will “promote the temptation to use improper means to gain success”, and maintaining confidence in the public decision making process, the courts have sided with the government in a host of cases to restrict contingency fee arrangements, impose registration and disclosure requirements on lobbyists, prohibit lobbyists from making political contributions when legislature is in session (N.C. Right to Life, Inc. v. Bartlett, 168 F.3d 705, 717-18 (4th Cir. 1999)), among others. Courts, while ruling in these decisions, have noted that barring such practices do not substantively curtain the right to petition as they don’t impose a significant (or merely unsubstantiated) burden on the petitioning process, and should a law do so, it may be grounds for it being invalid. For example, in the Oregon Supreme Court decision cited above in the definition of lobbying, the Court found that the biennial registration fee imposed by the state on the lobbyists to be in excess of costs of registration itself, and hence invalid.

The underlying strain in these cases has been the need to balance the needs of the citizenry to openly petition its representatives in line with the basic tenets of a representative government, and the needs of the executive and legislative branch to safeguard the system itself from threats of corruption. While deciding on these cases, the courts have always been keenly cognizant that in line with the constitution’s dictum of three equal and separate branches of the government, they have limited rights in imposing the standards of operation within each branch of governance, for as long as they do not violate the freedoms and rights guaranteed in the constitution. Simultaneously, the court has recognized in the past the merit of not only reducing the actual occurrence of corruption, but also reducing the perception of corruption. In both Buckley v. Valeo (424 U.S. 1 (1976)), and McConnell v. FEC (540 U.S. 93 (2003) – brought after the enactment of McCain-Feingold or BCRA/Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act) the Court has recognized the need to mitigate perceptions of corruption and actual incidence of corruption, and congressional authority to pursue legislation towards that purpose. The Court’s arguments, offered on maintaining the sanctity of the election process of legislators, should theoretically apply to the legislative process as well.

The “freedom of speech” arguments for lobbying stand on less firmer grounds. The right to “freedom of speech” is not and should not be seen as a law guaranteeing the “right to be heard”. Similarly, there is no law protecting the right of a citizen to have a private hearing with the legislator, or more broadly speaking, private speech.

The Courts have sided with the government in a significant number of cases where the state has shown a plausible case for restricting lobbying based on corruption concerns, and wherever they have found that the restrictions don’t disadvantage some content over other. However there are legitimate important rationales that undergird the right to lobby (petition) and courts have been cognizant to not support legislation that is overly broad. The law however doesn’t provide guidance on voluntary disavowal of money from lobbyists for campaigning (without the “magic words” that breach express advertising standard), and nor does it restrict lawmakers from running on a platform that upfront states that the said candidate will not accept ‘favors’ (legal ones) from lobbyists, or will not join a lobbying firm if his or her reelection bid fails (close the “revolving door”). Congress and the Executive – both have significant leeway in enacting significant ethics reforms that will likely sharply curtail the power of “special interests”, and a myriad options (including the one chosen by Edwards and Obama) remain open remain for lawmakers to not ‘choose’ to be influenced by ‘lobbyists’. Combating the influence of special interest would however require more widespread measures – especially as public opinion polls become the key determinants of candidate policy positions and as lobbyists’ influence in manipulating opinion through media or ‘astroturfing’ increases. Fewer options exist to combat that except perhaps a more active citizenry.

Last thoughts – “Democratic Senator Max Baucus, the new chair of the tax-writing Senate Finance Committee, is offering special interests a chance to go skiing and snowmobiling with him – $2,000-dollars a head, or $5,000-dollars from a political action committee.” reports ABC 7. (pdf)

Citation –

“Gouging the Government”: Why a Federal Contingency Fee Lobbying Prohibition is Consistent With First Amendment Freedoms”. 58 Vanderbilt Law Review 1885. Meredith A. Capps. (2005)

Chaste, a contributor to the site, has crafted a persuasive argument – with a little help from me – as to why Obama is the better candidate in the Democratic primary. Read more –

Why Obama?
The system of democracy that we have been assigned to only allows us to make comparative judgments between candidates standing for election. We do not get to vote for “ideal” candidates but merely the best among the ones who are running. At this stage, Democratic partisans and independents (in some states) get to choose between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. One of these candidates will eventually represent the Democratic Party in November against a Republican candidate.

The past eight years in this country have been an unmitigated disaster – they have not only been financially ruinous (an average of about $12,000 of debt has been added to the already burdened back of an average American, the dollar has plummeted), they have also proven to be catastrophic for America’s reputation and caused grievous harm on vitally important issues like climate change. All of the major Republican candidates running today – while careful in distancing themselves from Bush – espouse positions that are virtually indistinguishable from that of Bush. There is little doubt in my mind that if we elect another Republican to the White House, we are going to see a rehash of the policies that have proven to be so ruinous. So for all who are concerned about having another Republican in White House come January 2008, it is important to pay attention to electability.

As Frank Rich points out in his column for the NY Times, Republicans are all set to dig up the unending mounds of dirt that emerged from the White House under Clinton Era. The Clinton closet hides more than Lewinsky’s stained blue dress; it also contains sodden episodes like the Whitewater kickbacks, the White House as guest house for donors, pardoning of Marc Rich, the Clinton library donation from the Saudis, among many others. More than that, Hillary is widely seen (justly or unjustly) as a “divisive” candidate unlikely to win any converts among independents. There is now empirical evidence –from the four contests and national opinion polls – that that is indeed true, as Obama has handily won amongst independents in each of the contests and leads amongst independents nation wide.

Let me move next to discussing their stances on the Iraq war –a core issue for a lot of Americans not only for its price tag, estimated at over $2 trillion by Columbia and Harvard professors, but also for the active disinformation campaign by the administration and the complicity of press and “opposition” leaders.

Senator Obama had the judgment and the courage to call the Iraq war correctly from the beginning. This was no happenstance or knee-jerk response. “I am not opposed to all wars. I’m opposed to dumb wars,” he had said in 2002. His argument was based not only on the insultingly egregious evidence presented for going to war but also steeped in pragmatism – he accurately predicted that American troops won’t be greeted with flowers in Iraq. His sound judgment is in part the product of his abiding interest in foreign policy: his major at Columbia was International Relations. It is also due in part to his life experiences: as a boy with a Kenyan father—and later an Indonesian stepfather—who spent four years growing up in Indonesia, and who lived in the multicultural swirl of Hawaii. Fareed Zakaria, a former managing editor of Foreign Affairs Magazine and currently Editor of Newsweek International, said that Senator Obama is the only candidate who knows “what it means not to be an American”, an understanding critical to a successful foreign policy in our time. Senator Obama is an admirer of the foreign policy of President Truman who combined the establishment of NATO with the Marshall Plan, and of President Kennedy who combined a military build up with the establishment of the Peace Corps. He wants to make Foreign Aid a strong component of American foreign policy to establish American military and moral leadership. He is currently the only candidate running for office who is open to talking to Iran without any preconditions.

Senator Obama also has a clear grasp of economic policies. Recently, a Washington Post writer decided to grade all the candidates based on the stimulus packages they proposed to address the recent economic downturn. As the candidates put together these responses relatively quickly, they accurately indicate the quality of the candidates’ understanding of the economy. Senator Obama topped with an A-, Senator Edwards and President Bush had a B-, and Senator Clinton had a C+; the best grade for a Republican candidate was a D+. The article is a very good read so I would recommend that you read it in full.

Senator Obama gives us grounds for trusting his integrity because of his record of putting his money where his mouth is. After graduating from Columbia, he worked for several years as a community organizer on the south side of Chicago, not the regulation one year that most law school applicants work to beef up their resume. After graduating Magna cum Laude from Harvard law, he chose to be a civil rights lawyer rather than making millions as a corporate lawyer.

Senator Obama also has a record of bringing people together to get things done. He has done this at least since his days at Harvard Law when he emerged as the consensus candidate as the president of the Harvard Law Review after bitter acrimony between ideological factions (no mean feat as law students like their own opinions very much, and have nothing to lose from being obdurate). In the U.S. senate, he has worked with respected Republicans like Senator Lugar over the control of conventional weapons like hand-held anti-aircraft missiles and land mines, as well as with Republican ideologues like Senator Coburn over corporate transparency legislation.

Senator Obama’s main opponent, Senator Clinton often offers up her experience as the reason for preferring her. While Senator Clinton was very competent and successful in her long career as a corporate lawyer, her career in public life has unfortunately been marked by incompetence. Her mishandling of Health care reform not only resulted in the Republican landslide of 1994 that swept away strong Democratic majorities in Congress; it put off any serious consideration of Health care reform for more than a decade.

If part of the debacle of her Health care effort may be attributed to political inexperience, no such excuse exists for her vote to authorize the war on Iraq in 2002. At the same time, Senator Clinton also voted against the Levin amendment, which would have required Mr. Bush to come to Congress for war authorization if he failed to obtain a U.N. resolution. The two votes combined make it clear that Senator Clinton’s authorization for the war on Iraq was unequivocal, and not conditional on exhaustive diplomacy as she would have us believe. Senator Clinton had access to the entire National Intelligence Estimate. The full report had considerable reservations about the WMD claims spun by the Bush administration. To date, she has consistently refused to say whether she did or did not red the full report, instead maintaining only that she was briefed on the report. Failure to read the report in an important matter like war would suggest incompetence and a lack of seriousness; her vote after reading the report would suggest that she attached more importance to the spin of the Bush administration and TV Pundits than to the assessments of career civil servants even in important matters like war. (NY Times, Hillary on War)

To err may be human, but not to learn from one’s mistakes is incompetence. Senator Clinton has refused to acknowledge that she even made a mistake in her war authorization vote, which suggests a temperament on which experience is wasted. An instance of this was her vote for the Kyl-Lieberman resolution in 2007, which urged the Bush administration to declare Iran’s Revolutionary Guards (numbering about 120,000) a “terrorist” entity. Many saw this resolution as the basis for a possible invasion of Iran in the future. Senator Clinton claimed that her vote would help negotiations with Iran. Yet calling a major state agency “terrorist,” will only make it difficult for the Iranians to compromise, and the “terrorist” label would increase domestic U.S. pressure against meaningful negotiations with Iran. Senator Clinton’s use of such flawed logic as the basis for a possible war creates grave doubts about the quality of her thinking. Fortunately, The Bush administration adopted a much more judicious and restrained approach than that advocated by Senator Clinton, and declared only a small subset of the Revolutionary Guards as a “terrorist” entity. The tension was further defused recently when the National Intelligence Estimate concluded that Iran has had no nuclear weapons program for the past few years. It however very powerfully brings into question Senator Clinton’s judgment.

Senator Clinton has chosen to run a divisive campaign making liberal use of the gender and race cards. She has recruited surrogates including her own husband to launch a vitriolic campaign, which has only divided the Democratic Party. These are the actions of a candidate who is in ONLY to win. Senator Clinton was already a polarizing influence in the nation as a whole (though this is not entirely her fault). Her calculated dividing of the Democratic Party bodes ill for her chances in November if she is the candidate, and for passing her agenda if she becomes President.

The foregoing shows that when it comes to the qualities we seek in a president, such as soundness of judgment, clarity of understanding, quality of thought, and integrity, Senator Obama is by far the better candidate. He has a much clearer understanding of both foreign policy and of the economy. The domestic programs of all three Democratic candidates are substantially comparable. Senator Obama’s proven record of uniting people and working across the isle gives him a much better chance of turning his program into legislation.

For all these reasons, I urge you to vote for Senator Obama in the primary on Feb 5.

Links:

• Barack Obama’s speech on MLK day urging Americans to be more empathetic.
• SF Chronicle
• San Jose Mercury News
• Chicago Tribune
• The Boston Globe
• Michael Chabon – Obama Vs. the Phobocracy in The Washington Post

Get Involved

On February 5th 22 states go head to head in contests that will essentially decide the Democratic candidate. If you support Obama’s candidacy, and would like to get involved, please go to Barackobama.com to learn more about how you can contribute. You can donate towards the campaign by clicking here.

The drive to acquire Nuclear weapons is thought to stem largely from local threat perceptions. The above statement becomes all the more clear when we take stock of the countries where the nuclear weapons activity is limited to.

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) nuclear weapons program initially started as a response to the not-so-veiled nuclear threat from Truman during the Korean War. During a press conference on November 30, 1950, Truman acknowledged that using the nuclear bomb was part of the contingency planning. (Bruce Cummings, Korea’s Place in the Sun: A History, multiple other sources) and during 1951 active hints – moving Mark IV nuclear capsules – were dropped to convey that the usage was imminent. Beyond 1953, US’s continued presence in the Korean peninsula and in the Sea of Japan – is seen as a key reason as to why North Korea assiduously followed its nuclear program. Iran’s drive for acquisition of Nuclear Weapons can be similarly understood as a response to guard against the US threat.

It is however hard to imagine what particular use the smallish stockpile of nuclear weapons would be of to DPRK. Any nuclear escalation by it will surely be met by an ‘overwhelming’ US response. Simply put, there is no deterrent against a super-power. Except perhaps alliance with another superpower. (I will come to this point later.) However nuclear weapons do provide a country with capability to make any assault on it costly for the superpower by attacks on its key allies (Japan and South Korea). (Vinay) So while North Korea is held in check by the incredible US military power, US in turn is held in check (to some degree) through North Korea’s ability to inflict damage on its allies. The same goes for Iran, which feels vulnerable to unprovoked US attack, given its inability to inflict damage on its ally (Israel) in the region.

Strategy towards DPRK until now

The strategy to contain DPRK nuclear weapons program has been consisted of the Agreed Framework signed in 1994, the multilateral ’six-party’ agreement signed in 2007, and multitude of covert “Sun Tzuian” attempts to affect regime change. All these strategies have ended in different levels of failure.

The Agreed Framework, which required the DPRK to “dismantle its nuclear facilities and dispose of all its weapons grade plutonium”, only temporarily interrupted production – the fuel rods, with weapons grade plutonium embedded in them, were stored in a pool awaiting reprocessing, and never removed from North Korea – as DPRK simply re-prioritized its efforts to construction of delivery systems. The efforts culminated in the successful August 1998 Taepo Dong I missile test. DPRK – as AQ Khan confirmed in 2003 – also developed an indigenous uranium enrichment capability in the intervening years. In a three week period in Dec 2002/Jan 2003, Kim Jong Il expelled all international weapons inspectors, restarted the Yongbyon reactor and withdrew from the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Three months later the DPRK acknowledged it had nuclear weapons, and eventually tested one in Oct 2006.

After years of neglect, Six-Party Talks held in February 2007 resulted in an agreement that called for North Korea to shutdown its 5 MW (e) graphite moderated reactor at Yongbyon by 14 April 2007. Almost immediately, North Korea refused to comply with the terms of this agreement and the Yongbyon reactor continued operation for more than two months beyond the mutually agreed upon deadline. On 18 July 2007, the International Atomic Energy Agency finally confirmed that all five nuclear facilities at Yongbyon had been shut down. Since that time, “disablement” has continued. However, more recently on 26 December 2007, Hyon Hak Pong, vice director-general of North Korea’s Foreign Ministry, stated the disablement process will be delayed, in a statement reminiscent of the process of “repeated delays” practices following the signing of the 1994 Agreed Framework.

The 13th February agreement, which was signed on the precondition that US would release the $25 million dollars frozen by Washington at a Macau bank, Banco Delta Asia, which had allegedly helped the DPRK illegally lauder money and pass counterfeit $100 bills, is a much weaker agreement than the 1994 one. The 13th February agreement avoids the term “dismantling”, and uses the more ambiguous terms “abandonment” and “disablement”, which allows the DPRK to essentially leave its entire nuclear infrastructure in tact. Immediately following its signing, the DPRK state-run news agency announced that the offer of aid equivalent to 1M tonnes of fuel oil was made in connection with North Korea’s “temporary suspension of the operation of its nuclear facilities”.

Reasons for failure

While the 13th February agreement holds the six-parties – China, Japan, the ROK, Russia and the U.S. – accountable, each have different motives and capabilities of performing the duty. For instance, while China may admonish DPRK publicly – as it did when DPRK fired ballistic missiles on the 4th of July and then conducted a nuclear test on 09 October – it has little incentive to be a truly accountable. After all, the nuclear threat from NK concerns US much more than it does China. Similarly, Russia has little incentive to police North Korean compliance. Japan and the US have very little leverage with North Korea due to non-existent trade links, that make any possibility of tangible economic threat moot, and South Korea seems disinclined. North Korea on the other hand doesn’t quiet have the security guarantee to comfortably forgo its nuclear program which makes its giving up of nuclear capability unlikely.

Strategy for success

Putting NK’s security needs at the heart of the debate is essential to gain a better understanding of how to craft a more sustainable agreement for North Korea. To gain a better understanding on its security needs, I will briefly survey the threat posed by Japan/US combine.

The US has over the past many years led the most cavalier foreign policy in the world. The policy has led to numerous regime changes, more failed regime changes, countless assassinations, and support of terror groups. In East Asia, US maintains a significant military presence, has bi-lateral security agreements with Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea – and as co-guarantor of their security flexes muscle at each of their expressed security worries – and regularly issues damning rhetoric like ‘axis of evil’. While US’s capability to launch an attack in East Asia has been severely compromised due to ongoing conflagration in Iraq, it nonetheless remains a potent and continuous threat to North Korea.

While Japan has a strictly ‘pacifist’ constitution, it hasn’t stopped it from building a very sophisticated and well armed “self defense force”. Similar kind of ambiguity underpins its nuclear strategy. While Japan under Prime Minister Eisaku Sato, promulgated the “Three Non-Nuclear Principles” on 05 February 1968, and has been a tireless promoter of non-proliferation at a variety of international venues, it also has one of the largest stockpiles of enriched plutonium in the world – estimated at over 46 tons. While the majority of its plutonium is in storage in France and the UK, an estimated 5.7 tones (still enough to build in excess of a thousand of nuclear weapons) exists within Japan. In addition, Japan currently possesses approximately 3 tons of “near” (i.e. roughly 90% Pu-239, 7% Pu-240, 3% Pu-241) Weapons Grade Plutonium (WGPu), and could immediately begin production of larger quantities of WGPu and Weapons Grade Uranium (WGU) for more reliable and higher yielding warheads. It also has potent delivery vehicles in the form of H-2 (ICBM capable of carrying a 4,000 kg payload over 15,000 kms), and M-3SII (IRBM capable of carrying a 500 kg payload approximately 4,000 kms). In addition, Japan possesses a robust Theater Ballistic Missile Defense (TBMD) system which forms the centerpiece of “deterrence by denial” strategy. Since 2002, many high level Japanese officials have openly discussed the possibility of Japan pursuing an indigenousness nuclear capability. Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda and Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara have bluntly called for “revising” the Three Non-Nuclear Principles.

Kim Jong Il is primarily interested in maintaining himself as North Korea’s “Dear Leader”. US rhetoric about democratization, and omnipresent military threat jeopardize that. A “non-use of force” agreement between the US, South Korea and the DPRK would go a long way in ameliorating North Korea’s concerns but still won’t remove all doubts from either side. Minus the trust in such a treaty, all things go back to some version of the status quo. A better idea would be to rope in China and ask it to sign a protection deal with North Korea –styled on US –Taiwan agreements. Of course China’s interest in roping in North Korea is debatable given that a nuclear North Korea is a concern for US and not China. China, however, can be enticed through incentives. This kind of a deal would mean sacrificing some of the military supremacy that US has enjoyed in East Asia but in the longer term it would lead to a safer region for its allies.

Threats from non-state actors and other contingencies

Since “Chicago Pile One” – the first self-sustaining nuclear reaction – in 1942, a total of 9 Nuclear Weapon States (NWS) have emerged. In addition to the 9 current NWS, Japan possesses the capacity to produce nuclear weapons on a quick notice. Two other countries, Libya and South Africa have come forth and disbanded their nuclear weapons programs.

However, the critical nuclear threat is now thought to come from non-state actors. None of the 9 NWS can provide an exact accounting of the amount of Weapons Grade Plutonium (WGPu) or Highly Enriched Uranium (HEU) they possess. In Russia alone, only 64% of the basic Material Protection, Control, and Accounting (MPC&A) “rapid upgrades ” (i.e. bricking over windows, installing detectors at doors) have been completed, and even fewer “comprehensive security and accounting upgrades” specifically designed for securing each facility and its stored material(s), have been completed. More ominously, cases of trafficking of nuclear materials are becoming more commonplace. The most recent case came on 01 February 2006 in the Georgian capital of Tbilisi when North Ossetia resident and Russian citizen, Oleg Khintsagov attempted to sell 100 grams of weapons-grade uranium to a Georgian undercover agent posing as a rich foreign buyer. This uranium was obtained from the nuclear material storage facility in Novosibirsk, Siberia; the same facility suspected to be the source of another 2003 nuclear material trafficking case which involved the seizure of 170 grams of HEU. Also in 2003, a court case in Russia revealed that a Russian businessman had been offering $750,000 for stolen weapon-grade plutonium for sale to an unidentified foreign client.

There is legitimate concern about non-state actors using nuclear weapons but using them would mean such an unacceptable escalation that would surely jeopardize the larger aims of whatever organization. But non-state actors are much less rational than nation states and diffuse organizations may mean that the ability to conclusively hit back at them is limited at best. The other concern is that neutralizing the organization may not neutralize the threat of the ideology that the organization may purport. On the positive side however – non-state actors often times have depended on explicit nation state funding. As long as nuclear material is traceable to its source – something which isotopic analysis can do now – the organization and the state actors funding it can be implicated providing each state actor with powerful incentive to control such activity by the organization they fund or support.

Summarizing

The US must embark on a much saner foreign policy course and tone down its rhetoric so as to ameliorate the security worries that countries feel. The other related action would be to see to it that countries like North Korea get their security guarantees from major powers to which they are close to. Little recourse exists as to dealing with non-state actors except strengthening state actors – including providing help in sealing nuclear materials, and instituting a strengthened security program. It is important to keep in mind that the chance of a nuclear attack is minuscule and expenditure on security should be commensurate to it.

Use of nuclear weapons has been stigmatized in international arena to such a degree that nuclear weapons are weapons of last resort for state actors, and likely for non-state actors too. The chance of usage of nuclear weapons hence remains minuscule and it is debatable whether it is worth focusing large amounts of resources on removing them from regimes with limited capacity to produce or use them. However, nuclear weapons do have strategic consequences (e.g. deterrence) on the ability of US to exercise power. The prominent worry is that with deterrence countries could feel emboldened to support terrorism. In addition, given the predicted cascading effect of nuclear weapons-neighboring countries feel threatened by nuclear neighbors and then their neighbors feel threatened etc. – strategic consequences can be immense. The course of action that I prescribe above focuses on mitigating security threat of countries that are intent on building nuclear weapons. But the strategy comes with consequences. Ameliorating threat perceptions of North Korea may also imply giving up chance of ever really threatening North Korea. And therein lays the bargain and a key dilemma. You can have a nuclear armed country with deterrence that that successfully deter your attacks or be in a treaty with you or another major power which also effectively provides deterrence to it. There are two key advantages to the latter strategy – preventing the cascade effect, and limiting threat of proliferation. The significant downside to both strategies is limiting the ability to mount punitive action. Given that alternative sanctioning mechanisms like levying economic sanctions have proven to be ineffective, very little edge ways space is available to counteract support for hostile entities except perhaps mounting negotiations – which may not quiet work minus the threat of the stick.

It is perhaps best to look at the issue as to how much harder does presence of nuclear weapons make launching of punitive action in face of hostile activities. The fact of the matter is that propensity for mounting war as punitive action – even without nuclear deterrence – remains very low given the political and economic costs of war. So in the small minority of cases – really Iran and North Korea – presence of nuclear weapons may make US attack a little less likely from the already low number but given the overwhelming military superiority that US enjoys – not terribly less likely than non-nuclear scenario.

Seen hence, nuclear weapons possession can be seen as a marginal gain for the countries but nothing which will decisively tilt the power equation.

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Part of the research for this article was done by Cmdr Mark Williamson, Fellow at the Hoover Institution.

The following article has been written by Chaste, an astute commentator who has written for Spincycle before.

Note: The author has used the phrase, “illegal workers” only when the illegality is specifically implicated. Elsewhere, he has used the phrase “foreign workers.”

Discussions about immigration reform have acquired a feverish intensity. Not only is there a pervasive sense of the intractability of the problem, there are wildly differing accounts of the nature and extent of the problem. These are tell-tale signs that the problem is probably overstated, and that there is a simple and straightforward solution – that the problem lies in the public’s attitude to foreign workers and immigration (read race-class nexus in substantial part). Here below, I will try to show that this conjecture is largely true.

Reliable data about the effect of illegal workers on the economy is hard to come by, in part because of basic disagreements about which factors to measure. Therefore, I will rely on analytical reasoning. On its face, the contention that immigrants who come to America in search of work are a burden on the economy seems absurd. The economy supports most native workers through their parasitic (from the economic point of view) phases of childhood and early youth. Americans for instance, consume close to $100,000 in school funding alone by the end of their high school. It is inconceivable that the average foreign worker could consume public services on a scale even remotely close to that. The economy gets a free lunch from foreign workers because it gets the benefit of their productive years without ever supporting them in their parasitic / dependent phase. This is a minor variation on what we know as the “brain drain.” That it goes largely unacknowledged points out the close ties between class and worth in this society.

Other popular arguments such as the burden on public schools also strain credulity. It is unclear that a child who may be here through no choice of its own should be lumped together in the same categories as illegal immigrant workers. In any case, since most of these children will grow up to be Americans, the rational approach to measuring their impact on the economy is within the trajectory of their own lives. Some even lament the supposedly downward pressure on wages. Yet wage levels are not determined merely by the market internals of demand and supply. External checks in forms like foreign competition are significant. The assessments of regulatory agencies like the Federal Reserve regarding the optimal wage pressures in a labor market are particularly important.

The proposed solutions are equally mired in unreal contentions and assumptions. Despite the clamor for walls and tighter border security, there is no evidence that migration patterns are responsive to anything other than economic opportunities for foreign workers. Programs that allow employers to check the immigration status of their employees voluntarily have produced no results. Massive state action in the form of imprisonment against employers, or deportation / imprisonment against foreigners who have been in this country for many years, is probably too controversial to be viable.

For the record, I will quickly lay out the simplest solution, one that is obvious to anyone who has given the issue any serious thought. The solution makes the following basic assumptions:

• The government has an interest in having a stable and competitive labor market. It has the right to use immigration as a tool to address market distortions caused by structural problems (health and legal sectors are dramatically over-compensated relative to other sectors), or by cultural stigma (specific types of casual labor do not attract American workers at a pay rate appropriate to the relative lack of required skills). The government can achieve this with minor modifications to the concept of “prevailing wage rate.” The government currently uses the “prevailing wage rate” to protect American skilled workers from wage cuts due to immigration.
• To the extent that American workers maybe disadvantaged by immigration, this is largely a function of the disparity in rights between citizens and foreign workers. The obvious solution would involve not depriving foreign workers of rights, but rather drowning them in rights. It is important here to distinguish between rights and entitlements: rights simply give privileges within a transaction such as employment without any guarantees that the transaction (employment) will actually happen whereas an entitlement guaranties that the transaction will happen. Currently, the government protects victims of sexual trafficking, and it can similarly protect foreign workers when employers violate their rights (henceforth “violating employers”). Indeed the government should allow the foreign workers to recover substantial financial damages from violating employers.
• The government should use market incentives rather than administrative regulation because it will enable more effective implementation. As mentioned above imposing greater burdens on illegal workers is unhelpful because it is their very lack of rights that makes them attractive employees. Besides, with no rights, even deportation has failed as a deterrent. Imprisonment of violating employers will likely be politically controversial. Very stiff fines against violating employers will target a group, which is particularly sensitive to such incentives, and will have an increased chance of political viability.
• The government should avoid controversy and increase efficiency by delegating implementation to private enterprise. American lawyers have proved themselves gods of enterprise by defying even the most basic laws of economics like the price supply curve: even as the country is drowning in lawyers, they continue to rake in enormous incomes. The government should allow private civil actions in court in which lawyers for successful foreign workers can recover lawyer’s fees from violating employers and get a percentage of the recovered damages.

The broad outline of a solution is clear. The government should determine the minimum wage rate for different professions based on the needs of the economy. Thus, the minimum wage rate can be lower than the prevailing wage rate in over-compensated professions so that those sectors do not become a drag on the economy. Conversely, the minimum wage rate can be higher than the prevailing wage rate for lower skill jobs because the low prevailing wages are often possible only because of indirect government subsidies in the form of social services. The foreign workers should have the right and incentive to sue violating employers. If successful, the foreign workers should get a permanent right to stay, should get their lawyer’s fees paid by their violating employer, and be able to recover substantial damages from violating employers (between $50,000 and $100,000). The prospect of 40% of $50,000 – $100,000 in addition to lawyer fees will motivate lawyers to pursue violating employers aggressively. Once these measures ensure enforcement, the government can throw open employment opportunities to foreigners, and increase labor supply in over-compensated and culturally stigmatized sectors. The minimum wage rate and the threat of legal action will make employers wary of hiring foreign workers in other sectors except in special circumstances.

This simple solution is obvious to anyone who has given the matter serious thought, or to anyone who has a passing familiarity with the legal sector. Yet mainstream media never mentions it. The public eschews practical solutions in favor of posturing in part because as discussed above the alleged problems likely do not exist. The idea that foreign workers should have the rights to sue American employers is anathema to American conservatives. They are unlikely to accept the idea to resolve fictitious problems. Liberals do not see immigration as much of a problem, and are content with the status quo. Americans would dearly love to have the jobs themselves, and have the work done by foreigners, all without the inconvenience of having the foreigners in their midst. Failing this, they have settled for the perks of cheap labor, the comforting disparity in the rights enjoyed by themselves and the largely non-white foreign workers, and the self-indulgence of a self-righteous hysteria centered on law and legitimacy.

‘Public Opinion’ is central to the democratic political process and it has never been more important that today, when ‘Opinion Poll’ numbers are constantly cited in the media to buffet policy choices. It behooves us hence to foremost understand opinions and the process of opinion change, and then to think critically about whether the causal mechanism driving ‘opinion change’ are commensurate with the expressed ideals of ‘democracy’.

What is the value of an ill-considered opinion from a person with limited knowledge of the facts? Close to none, one would expect. But apparently, it is worth much more in a policy debate on the Hill if sound bytes by politicians quoting poll numbers to buffet the validity of their issue positions are anything to go by.

Courtesy significant advances in sampling methodology, communication technology, and computational technology, one can now conduct a nation wide Opinion Poll cheaply (relatively) and quickly. Every major media company, from New York Times to Fox News, now publishes stories about the ‘findings’ from the polls with unerring frequency and drops these numbers casually on near about every policy issue, let alone questions like, ‘What should Paris Hilton eat for breakfast?’

Given the important role that media has in ‘framing’ the issue (Iyengar), and the fecundity of the polls, news media now often cites figures from opinion polls as part of a story on an issue and asks politicians to defend their policy choices (in six seconds or less) given the poll numbers. Correspondingly politicians increasingly cite poll numbers on issues as corroboratory evidence for or against a policy direction.

Where do opinions come from?

In a culture that values ‘individual expression’ above everything else, it isn’t surprising that people offer opinions on issues they know little to nothing about an issue. Funnily, and as has been extensively documented in Political Science literature, people not only offer opinions about what they know nothing about, they also offer opinions about non-existent (phantom) issues. (Lippman, 1993 and others) Krosnick et al. have posited a more benevolent interpretation of ‘phantom opinions’ arguing that these opinions originate from ‘violation of communication norms’. Even if Krosnick is right, there is wide agreement within the field that the general public which makes it to the voting booth and gleefully casts its vote (a behavior strongly based on overall opinion) is deeply ignorant about most issues.

Leaving aisde ‘phantom opinions’, let us try to understand where opinions come from. “Every opinion is a marriage of information and values-information to generate a mental picture of what is at stake and values to make a judgment about it.” (Zaller, 1991) It is important to notice how Zaller uses the term ‘information’ which he describes later in the paper as whatever political information a person consumes via media or other ways. By limiting himself to political information, Zaller mistakenly assumes that political opinion making sits in an isolated bunker – only affected by relevant political information – in people’s minds. Neuman in his book, ‘Common Knowledge’ has persuasively argued on the contrary. Leaving Neuman’s objections aside, it is easy to surmise that information has generally little to do with facts of the case. Secondly, we have yet to tackle how much of the opinion is driven by ‘values’ and how much of it is driven by ‘information’ but it seems intuitive that the mix would vary depending on a variety of factors ranging from the issue at hand (opinion on a value issue like abortion would inarguably have higher percentage of ‘value’ as compared to one on economic policy), need for cognition (people with higher need for cognition would use more ‘information’), cognitive ability, amount of information, etc.

Normative Questions

Since the publication of American Voter (Cambell et al.), and Coverse’s later explications (1964, 1970), which described the average American voter as apathetic, and largely ignorant about major issues, political theorists have grappled with threat that an uninformed voter poses to the claims of normative superiority of democracy. If democracy was to be claimed as a ‘normatively superior system’ in itself, without resorting to claims about its superiority as an instrumental good that provided ‘better governance’, it was important for the political theorists to argue that voters voted their interests – a claim which was no longer possible in lieu of evidence that pointed to widespread ignorance. The more severe threat that the theorists are rightly concerned about, is whether the democratic system can continue to deliver its benefits if the voters ceased to vote ‘their interests’ given a lot of benefits in the system are predicated on that assumption. While the conjecture is open to empirical analysis, we can theoretically analyze the value of an ‘opinion’ in an ideal democratic model.

The value of an expressed opinion in a democracy is directly proportional to its ability to tap into a voter’s ‘real interests’, best understood as ‘interests’ –as understood by the voter – under ‘full knowledge’ condition.

Ideal Opinions, Opinion Aggregation

Value of opinion cannot be pried apart from the system in which it is used. The composition of ‘ideal opinion’ would vary according to the system. Since we are talking about a democracy, let’s analyze its composition here.

The value of an opinion in a discussion is if it reveals a hitherto unknown piece of information. In a poll where you are asked to furnish your ‘considered preferences’ that benefit is lost to some degree. One can argue that there is indeed some knowledge hidden in the choice but since a poll weighs considered choices equally with ill-considered ones, and because we don’t know what led to the final choice, it is impossible to argue whether democratic majorities do bring forth collective knowledge. The only condition in which the scenario would hold is when a majority of the voters vote for the ‘right’ preference.

Let us now assume ‘full-information’ and the only variable as ‘value system’. If there is a ‘common’ universally accepted value system, then there is little value in soliciting opinions from everybody. It is when you start thinking about ‘averaging’ across value systems, a tenuous concept at best, that you need to think about soliciting opinions from others. Polling populace on a fixed choice of politicians is an impoverished way to go about tapping into ‘people’s will’.

Perhaps the way to tackle the problem is by actually breaking this down into a two-step problem – information maximization and ‘averaging’ over values. I believe we have the scientific community to address the former, but I do not have the answer to the latter but perhaps informed deliberation – which involves ‘public exchange of reasons’ – about consequences would be one way to approximate that.

Manipulating Median Voter Theorem

It is a commonly touted finding that partisanship within elites is much more rampant than within the common populace. One would have thought that in accordance with the “median voter theorem”, a simplistic majority voting model for single dimension issue space proposed by Duncan Black and later popularized by Anthony Downs, the elites would be under pressure to have public ideological profiles that appeal to the ‘median voter’.

This seemingly ‘irrational’ behavior of the elites can be explained in a variety of ways – average voter, which includes only the people who do vote, is on average more partisan than an average eligible voter, an average ‘voter’ chooses a candidate based on vague personality and party cues rather than specific issue position cues (to which they are largely unaware), voter’s issue positions are incestuously linked to the positions outlined by the candidates that they ‘like’, and the fact that elites gerrymander the multi-dimensional issue space so that the salient issue(s) on which an average voter votes are ones on which they have positions similar to the ‘median voter’.

Party and Partisanship

While the overall impact of parties has waned over the years, the party ‘line’ exercises more control on candidate’s professed positions. In this world of continuous media coverage there is increasing pressure to present a consistent party approved stance. At the other end, there is a strong self-selection process, precedent, and certainly fear of how each ‘off-message’ comments would be interpreted in media, that is driving an assembly line in which generally only candidates who profess abiding faith in party ideology succeed in the primaries.

There is a certainly an increasing gap between the message, the voting record, and the candidate opinion, and a deliberately cultivated one. The partisanship is held together by ‘partisan money’, and custom order research produced by think tanks to justify and corroborate any policy initiative that they are asked to.

Media and Partisanship

Horse Race format of covering policy

The other aspect of media’s impact on partisanship has been driven by how it covers political issues – be it immigration or Iraq. The much decried horse-race coverage, which was once a preserve of election coverage, has now entered the policy domain. A large number of articles in newspapers give an insider view of politicking and impact of a policy decision on the party rather than on say the nation. Now while covering a news story journalists go from politician to politician seeking quotes which they then use to provide worthless hack analysis in words of politicians. Nowhere do journalists stop and question the policy stances independently aside from what the ‘other side’ chose to point out. By doing this, they do two things – they first of all fail to provide substantive useful information to their readers, and secondly by weaving in partisan cues give readers automatic pointers to devalue certain information.

Partisan Identities: Using anger and satire

The rise of humorous “fake” news shows satirizing politics – most prominently “The Daily Show” by John Stewart – over the past decade has been widely seen as an unmitigated positive by a lot of self-identified ‘liberals’. What ‘liberals’, cozy in the success of a liberal comedy show, fail to realize is the pernicious aspect of satire – it delegitimizes opposing view points without proper analysis. It is only time before right-wing ‘news’ channels come up with their liberal baiting satire shows.

The other prominent way to delegitimize opposing opinion is through self-righteous anger. This is of course most prominently done by right wing pundits like Bill O’Reilly and Rush Limbaugh.

While Bill O’Reilly’s “No Spin Zone” is a stylized partisan lynching of the ‘liberal nigger’, Stewart’s satire is the vicious intelligent kind that ridicules the ‘idiots’. The shows use every rhetorical (and editing) trick to not only defeat the opposing party but do so in the most vicious incendiary manner that entertains the partisan viewers.

Both anger and satire are explicit identity building and reaffirmation rituals. What we see when straw man ‘guests’ get grilled on these shows is identify reaffirmation for the viewers – these people in the opposition are actually immoral, corrupt idiots.

Perhaps something of much more concern is the rise of entire partisan news channels. While there wasn’t much ‘news’ on the ‘news channels’ to begin with, and the ‘news’ coverage continues to cede territory to celebrity coverage, whatever shriveled carcass was left is now being preyed upon by explicit partisan coverage. There are no longer undisputed facts – there are now Republican facts, and Democratic facts. And of course both bear little resemblance to actual facts.

“Mr. Bush said Putin’s recent harsh comments toward the West suggests he may be trying to build support for his party in advance of next year’s elections, and the president saw that as positive. He said, quote, “When public opinion influences leadership, it is an indication that there is involvement of the people.”" (Fox Transcript)

The argument that Mr. Bush is making here, in case it is unclear, is that when leaders deliberately pander fear and do war mongering, it is a signal that the country is democratic. Alternatively, deliberate unethical manipulation of public opinion to garner votes is a “positive”.

Listening to Gonzales testify about his role in the firing the US attorney was like listening to sand being grated across metal. Gonzales was so phenomenally incompetent and came across as so thoroughly morally bankrupt that it seemed like one was watching a SNL caricature of a Bush administration official.

Watching the proceedings on television, I repeatedly had the urge to bash my head against the wall, or throw something at the TV – to do anything –except of course turn off the TV- to make his smug doltish cherubic face, and his thin facile voice go away. “Mr. Gonzales came across as a dull-witted apparatchik incapable of running one of the most important departments in the executive branch,” according to the NY Times.

Both Republicans and Democrats picked Gonzales apart till he had nowhere to hide, except in the memory sinkhole. Gonzales used the phrase, “I don’t recall” a record 74 times (Nation pegs it at 64 plus numerous instances of “do-not-remember” and “can’t-quite-recollect” variations). (It is no wonder I suppose then that he can’t recall Habeas Corpus or the Constitution)
The phrase is set to become a “classic”, competing with greats like Nixon’s, “I am not a crook” and Clinton’s, “I did not have sexual relations with that woman.”

Exasperated senators repeatedly expressed disbelief at Gonzales’s problems with remembering details of important events that happened less than six months ago. “He had no trouble remembering complaints from his bosses and Republican lawmakers about federal prosecutors who were not playing ball with the Republican Party’s efforts to drum up election fraud charges against Democratic politicians and Democratic voters. But he had no idea whether any of the 93 United States attorneys working for him — let alone the ones he fired — were doing a good job prosecuting real crimes.” (NY Times)

Senators, smelling blood, jabbed him repeatedly with pointed remarks. Sen. Specter, thoroughly annoyed with Gonzales’s smart aleck responses to his question about whether he was prepared for the press conference in which he stated that he had a ‘limited’ role in the firings, quipped, “I don’t think you’re going to win a debate about your preparation, frankly. But let’s get — let’s get to the facts. I’d like you to win this debate.” The most pointed comment though came from Sen. Lindsey Graham, conservative Republican from South Carolina, who said say, “I don’t believe that you’re involved in a conspiracy to fire somebody because they wouldn’t prosecute a particular enemy of a politician or a friend of a politician. But at the end of the day, you said something that struck me: that sometimes it just came down to these were not the right people at the right time. If I applied that standard to you, what would you say?”

The Ken Lay defense
“Well, again, as — I accept responsibility for everything that happens here within this department. But when you have 110,000 people working in the department obviously there are going to be decisions that I’m not aware of in real time. Many decisions are delegated. We have people who were confirmed by the Senate who, by statute, have been delegated authority to make decisions.”
DOJ transcript

Memory Hole Defense
“Specter: Were you involved in the decision on the removal of Arkansas US Attorney Bud Cummings as Kyle Sampson testified?
Gonzales: Senator, I have no recollection about that, but I presume that is true.”

I don’t recall but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t the right decision
Answering to Sen. Brownback’s question about why he fired Bogden, Gonzales said, “I do not recall what I knew about Mr. Bogden on December 7th. That’s not to say that I wasn’t given a reason; I just don’t recall the reason.”
“In the end, Gonzales explained, even though he did not know why he fired Bogden, “I believe it was still the right decision.”"

The non-strategy

Gonzales’ strategy, to the extent that he has one, was that of equivocation and evasion. As was apparent during the grilling, the strategy didn’t go well. It is a bit surprising why the administration went with this strategy rather than use the partisan card to stifle the debate. The fact is that incompetence looks much worse on television than partisanship. The incompetence strategy left Gonzales exposed on one other key front – it precluded support from even the reliable party hacks like Corbyn and Graham. Gonzales has battled Senate successfully on multiple issues – Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib come to mind – by repeatedly taking out the partisan card. Had the issue been dealt with by Republicans in a way in which they could show that it was assertive defiant partisanship that led to the firings, they would have withstood the assault better.

Further Reading:

• Youtube link to PoliticsTV which has a lot of videos of Gonzales hearing.
• Dana Milbank of WP hopes Maybe Gonzales Won’t Recall His Painful Day on the Hill – somehow I doubt it.
• Transcript of the hearings
• Chris Matthews, untainted by concepts like ethics– much like Gonzales, was quoted as saying that two-thirds of people want Gonzales to stay. And no, its not even remotely true.

After every tragedy like today’s shooting at Virginia Tech. which left 32 (BBC says 33) people dead, calls are made to put curbs on violent media. Almost always the penny-a-dozen talk talk show hosts greatly exaggerate the prevalence and magnitude of these incidents. And then we have politicians in full thrall of panic button policy making. After all full 33 people were killed by a loner psychopath, so it reasons to call for ban on violent media, introduce mandatory psychological testing for foreign students, increase policing and do “whatever is neccessary” to prevent a recurrence of something like this. In effect we now have a policy making model in place where one-time rare events that can’t possibly be avoided are given every whit of attention and spun into events that were long time coming due to the “moral depravity” and associated explanations.

The magnitude of tragedy
Vice Provost of Stanford, Dr. Boardman, sent out a university wide email expressing this thoughts about the “terrible tragedy that occurred on the campus of Virginia Tech yesterday.” Adding, “Such violence is beyond comprehension.” I wonder how much beyond comprehension Iraq, with its 650,000 dead, would be for the meager intellect of Mr. Boardman. It is the insidious hyperbole that creates conditions ripe to sell all and every policy choice. What is indeed the magnitude of this tragedy? Pitifully small, if you ask me. It is small compared to virtually everything a government should possibly deal with and focus its energies on.

‘Werther Effect’ -relation between violent media and crime

Two hundred years after the publication of Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther, which triggered the craze for yellow pants, sociologist David Phillips coined the term “the Werther effect” to describe imitative suicidal behavior transmitted via the mass media in his landmark 1974 paper which linked news stories about suicides to adult suicides. (Other causal models have been posited including increase in sadness on seeing a suicide etc. though mimesis remains the psychological causal model of choice) Research since then has provided ample evidence towards the claim that watching violent features, let alone effect of active interaction in video games, has a tangible increased propensity towards violent behavior. Given that today an average adult today watches about thirty hours of television each week, and given that the content is increasingly violent, one would expect the size to be robust in size except the statistics on violent crime when taken in conjunction with survey of perpetrators of violent crimes point the other way.

What do Cheney and Bush Watch

If indeed these violent behavior is explained by the prevalence of violent media, I do want to know what ours slave owning, genocidal ancestors were watching. It is a facetious argument and I realize it as much; it is merely meant to draw attention to the poorly thought out “solutions” that are in vogue.

Spectacle and healing
Every tragedy not only brings its army of cable pundits but also a stylized healing process. This country heals through candle light vigils and spectacle. Tragedy is carefully touched up and modeled to sell. The sham displays of kids paintings covering walls, empty gestures of flowers, and candles abound. This country heals or pretends to heal through spectacle. (Baudrillard – who more pointedly claimed that all reality is understood through spectacle). There are no real tragedies so the healing must also be appropriately fake.

The cherished childhood

It is jarring to see the media frenzy that school shoot outs generate. Children and young white adults have become the cherished innocents of this country and the only ones that can be reliably summoned to generate moral outrage against the “other”. Young children are cherished everywhere for they are the “future” and the workers who will pay for the retirement benefits for the old, but in US it approaches fetishistic proportions. America at once festishizes its young teenagers as virginal innocents and as hypersexual creatures. It is American puritanism that in its quest to dominate that creates such absurdities. And America deals with it by pricing the child beyond measure – someone mentioned “holocaust” on the radio station by the way – and hence all policy making becomes absurdist for it loses the anchoring of pragmatic pricing.

Paul Wolfowitz, head of World Bank and one of chief architects of US war on Iraq, is struggling to stay afloat amidst revelations that he “personally dictated” a gargantuan pay packet for this domestic partner, Shaha Ali Riza.

It appears now that the Riza angle goes much further back with Daily Mirror alluding to the relationship in March 2005. (Washington Post had a similar report). The Daily Mirror goes on to say that Riza was key in shaping Paul’s (and hence US administration’s) decision to invade Iraq. It is hard to substantiate this claim but there is little doubt in my mind that Riza had a key role in shaping attitudes of Paul Wolfowitz and the administration towards Iraq.

Women like Shaha Riza Ali belong to the select group of Arab women, Ayan Hirsi Ali and Azhar Nafisi are two others that come to my mind, who have risen to the top primarily due to their vocal (and much feted) articulation of female subjugation under Muslim cultures. These women have successfully transformed their personal suffering, both real and imagined, into vendetta against the entire culture through influencing public policy led by racist western hacks (primarily men) only too ready to act on whatever exaggerated personal hateful claims that they dare to make. This sad tradition of public policy making is by no means limited to policy on the Middle East – It in fact is part of a broader pool of policy making directed by racists from minority communities like Michelle Malkin (who has been called a “pathological racist”), Clarence Thomas, Dinesh D’Souza etc. Racist ethnic minorities provide other racist hacks in power to articulate their innermost prejudices without fearing the backlash. This happens equally on television shows and in the realm of policy making, which works through the media.

[This article is under revision. Please come back in a few days to read an updated version]

Identity politics is a phrase that is traditionally reserved for studying politics of third world nations with deep ethnic cleavages like India and Fiji. It is rarely used in the context of American politics yet identity politics is rife in America.

More boldly, I would like to say that in fact all politics is identity politics and the relative success of parties can be solely judged on how successful they have been in peddling robust identities. I use the word “robust” because it is important that identities be “essential”, and fundamental to how one sees himself and hence immune to pressure (or logic) unless of course your identity is based on being data driven. I make this claim because there is a vast literature in political science that lays bare the abysmally low levels of information in general population and it reasons hence that people must make decisions based on identity affiliation, an assertion that largely bears out in the data.

There are two caveats to the claim that I am making – one is that very few political identities are infinitely tensile – they eventually brook to contrary evidence. Identities can be resilient and make people delusional but often times they have limits. Secondly, political identity for many is a shifting idea determined by what is sexy (a reference to meaningless radical positions held by students), and by what is appropriate or comfortable or stokes one’s prejudices the right way (for example – people don’t ever explicitly call themselves racist. they just feel that all black people are lazy and deal in drugs. and that is true isn’t it – bill o’reilly certainly thinks so)

A measure of success would involve percentage of partisan media one consumes. Identity politics involves a reshaping of the kind of media one consumes, the kind of messages one gets from it, and how s/he chooses to interpret them and “update” (in a Bayesian way) their thinking.

The law of stable yields

Identity politics is the only that is capable of yielding stable yields and creating a strong unwavering kernel. It is no surprise hence the party in power in US is the one that has had considerably more success in engaging in identity politics. It is no surprise hence that Republicans on average look at less different kinds of media.

The following article is by Chaste, who has contributed before to this blog. The article was written as a response to the following two reviews in the NY Review of Books-

• Three Questions for America
• The Right to Ridicule

Note
I respond to two articles by Ronald Dworkin to illustrate the pitfalls of using lawyerly thinking in our role as citizens. Lawyerly thinking focuses on the controversy as presented, it relies on opinion rather than facts, and it misunderstands the nature of contemporary government and market actions. NYRB published the first a year ago at the time of the Danish cartoons controversy (March); in September, it published a second, which discussed the issue of same sex marriages among others.

Why not to thing like a lawyer

As we remember the Danish cartoons controversy that irrupted a year ago, and as the issue of same sex marriages takes its course, I offer this reflection on the way we often approach marginalization of minorities by markets and by governments. I will frame my reflection as a response to two of Professor Ronald Dworkin’s pieces published in the New York Review of Books. In his March article on the Danish cartoons, he approved the discretion of Anglo-American media, defended the European press’s right to ridicule, and urged an acceptance of the right to ridicule even when constrained by holocaust related exceptions. In the second article published in September, he argues in favor of the legalizing of gay marriages on dignitary and cultural grounds. He declares that these grounds make the issue different from say religious prayer, and make civil unions an inadequate alternative.

I am disturbed by several aspects of Dworkin’s reasoning, which I will characterize as “lawyerly:”

• Dworkin, as in his Danish cartoons piece, is more interested in addressing the problem as offered to him than in framing the problem adequately. This is analogous to the role of an adjudicator who tries to settle only the controversy presented before him. Yet the needs of a fuller understanding and of justice often demand the examination of additional parties and issues.

• Dworkin at times relies more on opinion than on fact. This tends to produce principled rather than well-informed pragmatic choices. Judges and by corollary, lawyers rely on legal principle and opinion. Even common law judges seldom see themselves as making laws to address the facts. Yet making pragmatic choices informed by facts is precisely the function of citizens. Unfortunately, most of Dworkin’s stands are principled rather than pragmatic; even his pragmatic stand on religion in the pledge of allegiances couched as an exception to principled choices. Principled stands are particularly unfortunate in humanitarian matters: given the scale of injustice in the world and our tacit acceptance of those injustices, principled choices are likely to project hypocrisy rather than conviction.
• Dworkin’s solutions are sometimes mal-formed because of an unfortunate understanding of markets and of the government as expressions of common intent. With notable exceptions like antitrust, markets appear before the legal system largely as a series of contracts between consenting parties for securing mutual advantages. Government on the other hand, appears as an instrument of the majority that is capable of imposing constraints on any and all. Such a view prompts a heightened legal scrutiny of government regulations relative to market practices. Yet the consequences of market constraints are no less serious from the market unavailability of abortion facilities to the effects of inane media on the information level of Americans. Therefore, we need to focus on the nature and effect of the constraints themselves, and not overemphasize their source.

Danish Cartoons of the Prophet

Dworkin’s piece on the Danish cartoons shows up the pitfalls of such “lawyerly” thinking. I will begin by laying out the main free speech issues in the order of their priority to the Danish press and government:

1. Holocaust sensitivities: Jyllands-Posten’s cultural editor who commissioned the prophet cartoons was sent on immediate indefinite leave after saying that he might, after review, print Iranian cartoons of the holocaust. The editor-in-chief said that the paper would in no circumstances publish the holocaust cartoons, and the cultural editor recanted with “I am 100% with the newspaper’s line.”
2. Christian / market sensitivities: The editor of the Sunday edition of Jyllands-Posten turned down cartoons about Jesus’ resurrection, saying that readers would not enjoy the drawings because they would “provoke an outcry”.
3. Danish dairy exports: Within five days of the dramatically successful boycott of Danish dairy exports, Jyllands-Posten apologized. The apology preceded most of the violent protests, and was not a response to them.
4. Freedom of expression: Speech affecting the three preceding drew from Jyllands-Posten, suppression and retaliation, suppression, and an apology respectively. Speech affecting the last proved to be no such encumbrance.
5. Muslim sensitivities: Jyllands-Posten made no apology for 3-4 months after Danish Muslims and Muslim nations protested the publication.

Dworkin allows the parties before him to frame the issue rather than framing it himself. The consequence is that he focuses primarily on Muslim sensitivities as a threat to free speech even though it was the only one of the four to be no encumbrance. As for the three that did trump freedom of speech, Dworkin mentions only the one specifically raised by one of the parties, namely, holocaust related sensitivities. This inattention to facts leads Dworkin to the misleading framing of the problem and to the inappropriate principled solution mentioned above.

A fuller attention to facts reveals the problem to be not whether there should be a right to ridicule; rather it is the extent to which large commercial entities can ridicule marginalized groups to seek commercial gain. Recall that Jyllands-Posten was the largest selling Danish newspaper at the time, and had experienced sharper circulation drops in recent years than its competitors. This is not speech that can claim freedom from regulation that it may speak truth to power; such speech is itself an exercise of power. For the minority that constitutes an insignificant market segment, it does not help to know that it is the market and not the government, which has generated the demeaning images swirling around them. There is no good reason why the law should not limit such an exercise of power, much as it limits the actions of other players like the government or of large commercial players in other markets. Such limits on speech would naturally be narrow, and limited to large commercial players. The size requirement will ensure that expression which is not a major exercise of power would stay regulated; the commercial purpose requirement will ensure that such expression is not effectively suppressed by limiting it to minor fringe players. It will safeguard against the abuse of free speech as a commodity to generate profit: a commodity that can evade the usual social cost-benefit analysis based regulations. Dworkin’s tired adherence to a principled position on free speech mixed with calls to marginalized groups to endure unequal legal limits on free speech is as inadequate a solution as his articulation of the problem is misleading. Indeed the only context for which Dworkin’s analysis is appropriate is that of the publication of the cartoons in Muslim countries, a context that he fails to mention.

Same Sex Marriages

Dworkin’s reasoning about same sex marriages in “Three Questions for America” is similarly unfortunate. After a brilliant discussion of the teaching of evolution controversy, he argues on dignitary grounds for a principled position in favor of marriage rights for same sex couples, and for an understanding (not a justification) of the exception of including religion in the pledge of allegiance on materiality grounds.
I will assume civil unions with full rights as the pragmatic alternative to same sex marriages. They are politically viable in several states, yet proponents of same sex marriages like Dworkin dismiss them as inadequate. The assumption also clarifies that Dworkin and other advocates of same sex marriages object to the law’s embodiment of a cultural detriment even when there is no corresponding legal detriment. This is both startling and impractical. It is startling because law is not the best arena for renegotiating cultural detriment or privilege. It is impractical because cultural inequities are generally too embedded even in law for such an effort to be little more than picking favorites. Consider the example of July 4th. Americans undertake legally favored celebrations for an event that was to perpetuate slavery for 30 years after the mother country abolished it. Blacks can justly view such legally favored celebrations as a cultural detriment, but there are few moves afoot to replace July 4th with the day that civil rights became effective.

Dworkin’s habits of view regarding the government and the market prevent him from realizing that in the absence of legal detriment, the different unions on offer resemble cultural products on a market, and hence are more akin to market rather than government constraints. His refusal to view a fuller picture makes him appear oblivious to the fact that his principled position constitutes picking favorites. Indeed civil unions may become a new and more inclusive cultural product: one without the historical advantages/baggage of marriage, but /one capable of adequately competing with it in due course.

Any regulation for mitigating the market constraints imposed by a cultural product should follow the usual social cost benefit analysis. Unlike the inclusion of religion in the pledge, which mandates expression that may be antithetical to a group’s beliefs, marriage laws only deny a cultural product to particular groups. Whereas an unregulated media may inflict countless fresh detriments on insignificant market segments (minorities), marriage laws only preserve an existing cultural detriment. Therefore, it is not clear to me that same sex marriages have a compelling case in the current divided and polarized environment.

Dworkin may argue with some justification that principled positions can be useful in the pedagogical framework that his piece invokes. It is not clear to me that an American high school environment and the stage of maturation it represents is the best arena for forming self-defining opinions. Further, it is likely to exacerbate the American habit of forming opinions without much regard to evidence. When based on evidence of the effect of government recognition of same sex relationships on religious beliefs and practices and on lifestyle choices, there may be some merit to such an experiment since high school is the last structured education environment for many. Yet neither of Dworkin’s suggested readings, for all their eloquence and careful thinking, contain any evidence that addresses the real or imagined fears of same sex marriage opponents.

Voter indifference in US is commonly understood as an effect of things associated with mass media, for example negative advertisements or availability of entertainment that had pushed news programming to a distinct second. While the above view may very well be true, it is unlikely that is either the sole or even the major cause of the dwindling number of voters.

To understand voter disinterest fully, one must try to see it in a “personal” context that takes into account the rationale behind why a person chooses to engage in a democratic process. By doing so, one may understand the downturn in voter interest as an artifact of the spatial (nation or culture specific) and temporal (historical) locality. More specifically, US voter’s indifference towards politics can be seen as a side-effect of living in an era where economic and social conditions are relatively (and in absolute terms when measured as life expectancy etc.) good. Given that an average American voter tends to view government’s role in resolving social and economic issues as rather limited, it is not altogether surprising that a US voter may conclude that s/he have little to gain from voting. The contention is corroborated by the fact that the voter group that does rely upon the government – older adult voters, who need Medicaid and Social security benefits, votes most often in the elections.

The lack of growth in citizen’s level of political knowledge (Delli Carpini & Keeter, 1996), in spite of the increase in amount of information available, can similarly be explained by lack of motivation in voters. Research done by Dr. Robert Luskin identifying interest and intelligence as key variables affecting the level of political sophistication also ties into the above analysis. Luskin states, “Education, too, may be motivational in part. In educated society, the blankest ignorance of politics may be a solecism. We learn about the things we care about.” Education, by making a person more aware of the actual role of government and the services it offers, as opposed to the widely perceived peripheral role of government, can make people more motivated to vote.

Rational self interest or disinterest cannot fully explain voter disinterest in US. There is an argument to be made, that aside from the differences that emanate from different school systems and the perceived differences in importance of government’s role in alleviating social or economic problems, nearly all the other differences can be traced to differences between media environments. One key difference in US media markets and media markets in other countries is the lack of a comparatively large public broadcaster. NPR and PBS fare poorly in terms of budget, viewership and production values when compared to their counterparts in say Britain (BBC) or Canada (CBC) or other developed countries. One may impute from the above that the presence of a large public broadcaster in a media market has an important salutary impact on the way politics is covered.

The effect of a large public broadcaster can be understood in terms of the kind of programming shown by public broadcasters – primarily thematic coverage of news. Thematic coverage of news as opposed to incident oriented coverage of news, the most prominent model on network news, allows citizens to trace the arc of accountability to the government or other social and economic factors, according to Dr. Shanto Iyengar, a professor at Stanford University. This in turn may make a person more motivated to vote

In all, voter disinterest can be more fully understood by analyzing factors influencing voter’s perception of his/her self interest and government’s role in helping achieve their interests, whether it be security or employment.

Social scientists and casual analysts have for long understood the importance of nuclear weapons as a direct correlate to their destructive power. Given that we live in a world where some of the lowest technology weapons take the most number of lives and are the most effective in waging war, and where “low intensity war” is the new buzz word, the exaggerated importance of nuclear weapons and the consequent paranoia of nuclear armed countries rife in literature seems utterly baseless.

I posit that possession of nuclear weapons imbue no special properties to a nation and no special protection against attack and doesn’t protect it from retribution if it is found to have erred. Superiority in conventional and not-so-conventional weapons, including Phosphorus and Depleted Uranium bombs, remains the primary criterion in military supremacy and ability to initiate action and respond to aggravation.

The enormous destructive power of nuclear weapons and the stigma associated with their usage has proven to be their undoing in the “real world” as opposed to the “realist world”. A slew of “realists” have argued that nuclear weapons guarantees peace between states. Aside from the “hot” cold-war era that led to the deaths of millions, the 1999 Kargil War between two nuclear tipped nations, India and Pakistan, provides an easy rebuttal to the argument.

Others have posited that possession of Nuclear weapons by a regime limits the options of other countries in dealing it. “Chaste” in his article presents the 1999 Kargil invasion by Pakistan as an example where Pakistan’s nuclear capability limited India’s options in the field. The scenario that he mentions is not particularly true for India did respond back with a fairly robust counter-attack, successfully repulsing Pakistan’s attack and only held back at the personal assurances of Clinton. Even if we discount this particular example, concerns remain as to whether states will genuinely have fewer options in dealing with a nuclear tipped rogue state. I believe that the answer is no and will try to corroborate my point my examining two possible scenarios– a rogue state conducts a terrorist attack against a much more powerful nation, and an event where it conducts a terrorist attack against say an equally or less powerful nation.

If a rogue state were to sponsor a terrorist attack against say US, the US will respond militarily much in the same way as it has done in the past. If the rogue state were to choose a nuclear tipped response at that juncture, it would be annihilated fairly quickly given the overwhelming nuclear superiority of the US. One may reasonably argue from the above that unless a regime is self-destructive, and then there would be repercussions even in a non-nuclear scenario, it would not use any nuclear weapons. And if the regime doesn’t choose to use nuclear weapons then we can take nuclear weapons out of the equation and see the conflagration as a “conventional” war.

Let’s consider now if a “rogue state” were to conduct a terrorist attack against an equally or less powerful nation. This is akin to the example of Pakistan sponsoring terrorist attacks against India. The choices that India has are already limited because, though India has conventional superiority against Pakistan, a conflagration with Pakistan will inevitably cost a lot, cause fair amount of lives and create the threat of communal discord. If Pakistan were to use a nuclear weapon against India, as a response to a conventional attack by India, it would be stigmatized at the world stage and would swiftly result in a host of powers joining hands with India to at least affect a regime change. Here again, given the stigma of using nuclear weapons and given the repercussions of using one, the chances that Pakistani regime will ever use nuclear weapons against India are very limited. Even if India were to pro-actively launch strikes against “terrorist hideouts” in “Azad Kashmir”, there would be little that Pakistan could do to affect it except reply back with conventional firepower or via sponsorship of more terrorism.

Hence, one can safely assume that for most purposes, the possession of nuclear weapons is immaterial. This framework leverages the universal stigma against using nuclear weapons and hence will hold only until the stigma continues to be powerful and the will of the international community to be punish the errant strong.

The following commentary is a close friend who prefers to post under the username, Chaste, and can be seen as a follow-up to my article on the topic. “Chaste”, aside from critiquing some of the arguments that I present, offers entirely new perspectives on the issue of a nuclear North Korea and Iran.

“I agree with most of your points. And I do understand the strategic value of combating naiveté with naiveté. After all, there is no strategic value in calling your opponent out on his underlying reasoning. He will deny the underlying motive and simply brand you a conspiracy theorist. On the other hand, one could argue that your opponent adopts naiveté self-consciously is simply a front, and as a delaying tactic. Once a particular naïve position is exposed, he will adopt another slightly less naïve one, and thus prolong his contention endlessly. For this it may be useful to clearly address all underlying reasons up front. As mentioned, I am unable to evaluate the relative strategic merits of the two positions.

So, with that caveat clearly stated, here is what I believe to be the crux of the issue. I do not think that anyone seriously believes that the leaders of DPR Korea or of Iran will use nuclear weapons against another country. What the west objects to, is precisely the acquisition of deterrents by these target regimes. Such deterrents could embolden these target regimes to engage in non-nuclear anti-western activities. Recall for example that Pakistan started openly funding and training groups dedicated to fomenting violence in Indian Kashmir around the same time that it is thought to have acquired nuclear capability. This surely was no coincidence. Such Pakistani activity in the past was followed by Indian invasions. But with a nuclear Pakistan, India has been forced to accept the deaths of thousands of its security forces, an actual invasion in Kargil, and the deaths and displacement of tens of thousands of Kashmiri civilians with little more than a lot of sound and fury. Thus, what the west worries about is not that Iran may bomb Israel, but that it might be emboldened to be a more active supporter of groups like Hezbollah or Hamas.

What the west worries about is the removal of the threat of overwhelming force as a factor in their dealing with target nations like Iran or DPR Korea, and the possibility of having to rely primarily on diplomacy. Successful diplomatic outcomes generally require either diplomatic pressure which can deliver total victory in a zero sum game, or normal diplomacy which delivers a compromise settlement. Diplomatic pressure requires the building of amulti-national near consensus, which in turn can dramatically alter the stakes consequent on the different choices made by the target nation.

The west faces problems in exerting diplomatic pressure on both counts. The first problem is the building up of a multi-national nearconsensus. No one outside the area cares much about DPR Korea (this may actually make a consensus more possible), and a majority ofnations oppose the western agenda in the middle-east. The secondproblem lies in the difficulty of dramatically altering the stakes for the target nations. This will be inherently difficult in the case ofan isolationist country like DPR Korea. In the case of the broadermiddle-east, this is difficult because of the middle-east’s reserves of precious oil.

The west’s best shot with DPR Korea is that of an aggressiveinvestment in the “sunshine” policy. This will make DPR Korea lessisolationist, and allow multi-national players to dramatically alter the stakes consequent on its different choices. There is no appetitefor such a policy in large part because DPR Korea does not appear to be particularly interested in anything beyond self-preservation. Therefore, the west can substantively ignore DPR Korea’s nucleardeterrent, beyond its opportunities for political posturing.

Iran is a different case since it does have interests beyond mere self-preservation: subversion of Israeli policy at least concerning Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, and its aspirations to being a regional power in an oil-rich region. With the difficulty in forging a multi-national consensus against Iran on these issues, and the difficulty of dramatically altering the stakes for an oil-rich nation, the west will have no choice but to use normal diplomacy, which can only deliver a compromise settlement. But the west has nointerest in compromising either on Israeli policies or in arriving at an agreement that respects Iran’s aspirations to be a regional power. Because of the west’s refusal of any diplomatic compromises and thedifficulty of building up diplomatic pressure, the west is very keen on retaining overwhelming force as a factor in its dealings with Iran. As I have mentioned before, the last option will be neutralized ifIran acquires a nuclear deterrent.”

–Chaste

The testing of a nuclear device by North Korea has drawn the ire of US, South Korea, and Japan, among others. Countless penny-a-quote pundits have come forth with their opinions as to why North Korea developed nuclear weapons, with most “analysis” limited to understanding North Korea’s development of nukes as an act of villainy by the autocratic “thug” ruling the “hermetic” kingdom. That the puerile minds of non-analysts bloated on clichéd Hollywood fare will offer such trash is expected but the relative lack of other explanations is stunning.

Why does North Korea want nuclear weapons? I argue that North Korea wants nuclear weapons for the same reason India and Pakistan wanted them, and that is as a deterrent against hostile action from other states. Walter Pincus, of The Washington Post, traces North Korea’s initial interest in nuclear weapons to the threats made by US presidents Harry S. Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower to use nuclear weapons against North Korea during the Korean War.

"In 1950, when a reporter asked Truman whether he would use atomic bombs at a time when the war was going badly, the president said, "That includes every weapon we have."

Three years later, Eisenhower made a veiled threat, saying he would "remove all restraints in our use of weapons" if the North Korean government did not negotiate in good faith an ending to that bloody war.

In 1957, the United States placed nuclear-tipped Matador missiles in South Korea, to be followed in later years, under both Republican and Democratic administrations, by nuclear artillery, most of which was placed within miles of the demilitarized zone." N. Korean Nuclear Conflict Has Deep Roots (N. Korean Nuclear Conflict Has Deep Roots (WP) )

Aside from the initial nuclear threats, today over forty thousand American troops man the Korean peninsula and another thirty thousand stay on a base in Japan. Stack on to this the fact that Japan is widely acknowledged to have capability to produce nuclear weapons at a short notice, and we can begin to understand North Korea’s motivations for developing nuclear weapons as a response to its threat perception.

One may argue that understanding the motivations behind North Korea’s acquisition of nuclear capability does not fundamentally change anything for either U.S.; South Korea or Japan, all of whom still see a nuclear tipped North Korea as a threat. I believe differently – understanding North Korea’s actions in terms of its threat perception can inform our policy in multiple ways. Firstly, if you look at North Korea’s actions as a primarily defensive measure then one may argue that North Korea will probably only use nuclear weapons if attacked. This posit is most likely to hold true because U.S. owns an arsenal of over 10,000 nukes and any usage of nuclear weapons by North Korea will evoke a swift, debilitating response.

Secondly, the lessons learned should inform US diplomacy in the future – especially towards Iran, Cuba, and Iran. Threats from US will only hasten these countries attempts to develop nuclear arsenal.

Lastly, we all need to adjust to the idea of a nuclear capable world. Nuclear weapons, as recent past has shown, are not particularly hard to develop or acquire – this is I say given three third-world countries, namely Pakistan, India, and North Korea, have been able to develop them. Aside from this, a slew of countries, including Israel and Japan already have nuclear weapons or can easily make them. In short, nuclear weapons technology will continue to proliferate, and there is very little we can do to stop this process.

This brings us to question of the repercussions of such a world. The fact remains that the probability that anyone will use a nuclear weapon is remote given that it will bring universal international castigation and a swift response from other powers. Secondly, given the rapid rise in ability of non-nuclear weapons like say MOAB or cluster bombs to afflict harm and destruction, and the comparatively less vocal condemnation on their use will bias countries towards using these “conventional” weapons. Thirdly, possession of nuclear weapons doesn’t equate to the capacity of reliably delivering them and even if one possesses the technology for delivery, the threat of universal condemnation and a swift response limits the probability of their use to nearly zero.

There are a few legitimate concerns about a nuclear tipped world, and they have been dealt with below. Possession of nuclear weapons by a nation does limit U.S. choices against that nation, but the concern is largely theoretical for any usage of nuclear weapons will result in a very strong response from US. The second concern is about the ability of nuclear weapons to annihilate civilization. This concern stems from our understanding of the severity of the nuclear threat from cold war days when a nuclear war between the U.S. and the Soviet Union could have produced complete annihilation.

The scenario today is a bit different, and war between the U.S. and Russia, the only other power capable of delivering a similar nuclear response, is remote. Of course, conditions can change, but it still seems unlikely that we will reach such a scenario. Another facet that has garnered a lot of attention is the threat of terrorists using dirty nuclear bombs. There are two parts to the issue – one is state-sponsored terrorism which will be dealt in much the same way as response to conventional attack, and the second is threat of terrorists acquiring nuclear weapons from stockpiles of nations. This second threat must be dealt with US trying to provide infrastructure and monetary assistance to countries to help them secure their stockpiles of nuclear material.

In all, we can take two things away from this discussion – the threat emanating from nuclear proliferation is greatly exaggerated, and that clichéd panic button responses of putting blanket sanctions against nations are unlikely to work.

People around the globe have always been mystified by American public’s seeming indifference towards the style of foreign policy that American government conducts. Yes, there are occasional rallies and protests but the overwhelming impression, and correctly so, is that most Americans just don’t care. This brings up the inevitable question – why don’t Americans care?

The answer really is fairly straight forward – Americans don’t need to care. Despite of all that is happening in Iraq and all that happened in Vietnam, America has emerged from it virtually unscathed. American economy is doing well, and life hums on as usual. Yes, the oil prices have shot up and three quarters of all news now is solely about terrorizing tyrannical freedom-hating terrorists, at least until drum beating about wrong arrests in child beauty queen murder fills up every ticking minute of news for days on end. But fundamentally nothing has changed; at least no discernible echo of doubt has survived Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise and Jon Benet. I think the ability of these pop news items to wipe news clean of terrorism is indicative of how much of a concern terrorism is in itself to average Americans.

Color coded terror alerts and the rabble-rousing shenanigans of political pundits on television have reduced the topic of terrorism to nothing more than some form of macabre entertainment. Americans may seem to people around them to be living in this self-proclaimed post-9/11 mindset perennially under collective fear psychosis but doesn’t mean that they will miss a good sale at Macy’s or the latest gossip about Tom Cruise. The fact is that while America may seem to be in grip of the collective memory of past trauma, in the meantime they will also do business and do biotechnology and browbeat countries to get better trade deals. Let me summarize the point that I am trying to make since it is not all that obvious, Americans don’t care about the foreign policy ramifications even their self proclaimed “post-9/11″ world and all the concern is more or less skin deep. The fact that American don’t care that deeply about the perils of terrorism, even though it may look otherwise, shouldn’t come as a surprise because as I mentioned earlier the footprint of terrorism on US has really been a minor one, as compared to other countries. So in a way there really is no cause for alarm since there really never was a fire, well not at least as big as one made out to be.

So in all a lot of pundits may cajole people into thinking that America needs to worry about how the world thinks about us and one must just switch channels. American companies are still selling a lot of goods in Saudi Arabia and Egypt and China (yes –selling) and will continue to do so as long as they stay away from drawing cartoons about Muhammad.

All is hunky dory but still the world is in midst of conflict. It may be the natural state of world, the uncivilized freedom-hating barbarians, or the chaos may have been financed by US; it doesn’t really matter. Except if Americans are willing to answer the moral question. As luck would have it, they have answered that too. Americans will tell you that they have all along been waging a moral war – from Ho-Chi-Minh to Baghdad and if the world doesn’t want to become free – well too bad. Whether Americans have arrived at the right answer is immaterial for whatever the answer, they will continue to thrive.

To USA!

The Register, a British technology news website, conducted a detailed analysis about the feasibility of using liquid explosives on a plane and found it to be near non-existent.

The recent “terror alert” over the alleged terrorist plot of smuggling liquid explosives on to an airplane brings into question why would terrorists choose airplanes over much easier targets like buses, subways, etc. that go relatively unmonitored and where damage and loss of life can be equally great? There doesn’t seem any sane reason as to why a terrorist would attempt to target airliners, where the security is inarguably the greatest among all the mass-transportation modes, forgoing other easier targets.

All in all, it does bring into question if there ever was a plot or all it was was an elaborate facade to distract world’s attention from the events unfolding in Lebanon.

Given the unvarnished bias and wholesale disinformation that have become the norm on US television news, I try to avoid the aggravation and stress inevitably feel after watching news on Television. Fortunately with Youtube and Google Video, I can now watch some of clips worth watching on the Internet. One such piece that fits such criterion is posted below. The video features George Galloway dressing down Rupert Murdoch majority held news company SkyNews’s anchor over its coverage on Lebanon.