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V. Yadav at the Duck notes that Obama is planning a trip to Myanmar/Burma and adds:
Meanwhile, Burmese Nobel Laureate and opposition leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, has supported the idea of sending more government troops to Rakhine state
to quell the violence between Buddhists and the Rohingya Muslim
minority population — increasing the correlation between winning the
Nobel peace prize and supporting a “troop surge” to two.
The situation of the persecuted Rohingyas is an underreported story in the U.S. and something I've been meaning to mention for a while. Vikash beat me to it. It is probably connected, in probably complicated ways, to recent tensions and violence between Muslims and Buddhists in Bangladesh (h/t HC). (Might help to be a specialist on the region fully to untangle these threads.)
This is my last post before I take a break from posting (which will also entail something of a break from my perusal of the blogosphere in general). [So this is also your last chance to comment before the break.]
From the opening of Walter Russell Mead's review-essay "Peace Out," in the current issue of Foreign Affairs:
The modern peace movement is almost 200 years old; its origins can be traced to the period that followed the devastating wars of the Napoleonic era in Europe. In those two centuries, peace movements have had little discernible impact on world events, and what effect they have had has often been bad: the European peace and disarmament movement of the 1930s, for example, greatly facilitated Hitler's plans for a war of revenge. For all the good they have done, those well-intentioned souls who have sought to achieve world peace through the organization of committees, the signing of petitions, the holding of rallies, and the promotion of international treaties might just as well have stayed home.
Mead may be half-right about the peace movement of the 1930s, but overall this passage is wrong. Modern peace movements obviously failed to prevent the twentieth century's world wars but they have nonetheless had a long-term positive impact: see e.g. here.
Then in the next paragraph Mead refers to "the argument of the economist and British parliamentarian Sir Norman Angell that war's economic irrationality would prevent twentieth-century wars...." In fact that is not what Angell argued, as I've had occasion to point out before.
That's two strikes, and let's give Mead a third strike for writing and publishing this at all. So Mead strikes out.
There's been some blogospheric gnashing of teeth on the question of Nate Silver's accuracy vs. the innumerate pundits' stupidity. That's right, as far as it goes, but it overlooks the point that a relentless focus on prediction (however accurate) does contribute to the draining of substance from a political atmosphere already struggling to keep a small amount of substance in the discourse (sorry, mixed metaphor).
As Bob Somerby says here (h/t), that's not Silver's fault, and good predictions are to be preferred to stupid predictions; nonetheless, it does happen to be the case that the more focus there is on prediction the less time there will be to focus on other things. Michael Gerson tried, I think, to make this point in a column quoted by Somerby in the linked post, but Gerson made the mistake of taking some overly broad swipes at political science in general, thereby earning a rebuke from Prof. John Sides.
P.s. Speaking of substance, I am very aware that I have not bestirred myself to say much of substance about the election results. I will be linking to something else soon by way of partial remedy. [added later]: Actually I won't be. Changed my mind.
If you're in the vicinity of Georgetown U. this evening, might want to know that the documentary "Michael Harrington and Today's Other America" is being shown at 7 p.m., followed by a panel discussion. (This year marks the 50th anniversary of Harrington's The Other America.) I gather the film was made in the late '90s (could be wrong about that) but I've never seen it. Details about the location of the event etc. can be found here.
It's over.
How's that for sophisticated analysis?
By the way, I turned on my computer this morning to see the final results and the Wash. Post, which comes up as my home page, had a headline "a second term." I read some of the accompanying story, which said Obama had passed the 270 electoral vote threshold even though Fla. remains too close to call. I then clicked on the map that went with the piece, the banner (or headline) of which showed Obama with 249 electoral votes, not 270. WaPo hadn't bothered apparently to update the banner on the map. Typical of WaPo's coverage of the returns, which I thought was deficient, to put it very politely.
Update: WaPo has now fixed the map.
"Speaking French also means speaking about human rights, because the rights of man were written in French."
François Hollande in the Dem. Rep. Congo, on the occasion of the summit of the Int'l Org. of La Francophonie, as quoted in Newsweek, Oct. 29, 2012, p.8.
Here and the comment thread.
Just discovered (thanks to this post) that M. Mann has published the third volume of The Sources of Social Power and the fourth volume will be coming out in Jan. 2013. Meanwhile, I. Wallerstein published the fourth volume of The Modern World-System in 2011.
As with any conference, but even more in this case because I was there only briefly, there were a number of papers I would have liked to hear but didn't.
A very small sampling: Andrew Yeo (Catholic U.), "Realism, Critical Theory, and the Politics of Peace"; Tomohito Baji (Cambridge), "Global Governance and IR in History: Alfred Zimmern's Political Thought from the mid-1930s"; Eric Blanchard (Columbia), "International Lying: A Constructivist Response to Mearsheimer"; Sherrill Stroschein (University College London), "Institutional Change and Identity Shift: The Case of Scotland"; Giovanni Mantilla (Minnesota), "The Political Origins of the International Rules for Internal Conflicts."
Yesterday afternoon I drove to Baltimore and went to a couple of sessions at the ISA-NE conference (the program is here [pdf]). One of the sessions I attended was a roundtable on Nicholas Onuf's work.
At the roundtable Onuf made a reference or two to "heteronomous" orders. I couldn't recall how he used the word in his recently reissued 1989 book World of Our Making (it had been a long time since I'd looked at it), so earlier today I pulled my copy off the shelf and briefly perused ch.6, where the idea is discussed. To simplify, for Onuf "heteronomy" is a form (or "category") of rule (the other two being hierarchy and hegemony) in which exploitative social relations are disguised under a mantle of formal equality and the ruled (including workers dependent on the sale of their labor-power) in effect participate in their own oppression, under the illusion that they are exercising some sort of self-determination. Though the word "heteronomy" is taken from Kant, Onuf's description of a 'heteronomous' order (or form of rule) owes a good deal to Marx, as he acknowledges.
As far as I'm aware, however, Onuf's use of 'heteronomy' has not been adopted, even by those who might agree with his analysis. Nor did the papers or subsequent discussion at the roundtable directly address this aspect of World of Our Making. Onuf sees exploitation as inevitable, as he makes clear at the end of the book, so perhaps it's not too surprising that, embedded as it is in a quite pessimistic worldview, the word 'heteronomy' as he uses it has not (again, as far I'm aware) caught on with those who might have been its natural constituency, namely Marxists (of one sort or another) and critical theorists. I stand open to correction in comments, as I'm not an expert on critical IR theory (or all the strands of constructivism, etc.).
P.s. I was not at the conference today, where there was a follow-on session "Whither Constructivism?" I hear that the debate was lively and I understand that ProfPTJ will be posting a recording of the session, which I will link to when it's available.
Update: PTJ has now posted the audio here. I'm planning to listen to it soon.
Pressman on whether the U.S. and Israel continue to share values.
D.C. Exile on sovereignty and drone strikes.
[added later] More on Israel: The Fall 2012 issue of Dissent, which I just bought in a bkstore, contains an exchange on Israel between James Rule and Michael Walzer, as well as a review-essay "Zionism and Its Discontents." Haven't read either one yet.
"Lebanon's Sunnis at risk of radicalization," blares this WaPo headline. But the opening graphs of the story have quotes from young Sunnis in the Beirut neighborhood in question saying they are not aligned with any group. But -- wait -- they're flying a black flag "inscribed with the Islamic creed" that is "often associated with the global al-Qaeda franchise." Oooh, the black flag. Cue the headline writers. "At risk of radicalization."
Continuing with the RFK theme (see here), a passage from Rick Perlstein's
Nixonland,
pp. 270-71, describing the 1968 Democratic primary campaign in Oregon. The passage can function as a little quiz: how many of the celebrity names do you recognize?
[Eugene] McCarthy prevailed in Pennsylvania and Massachusetts. RFK won in Nebraska and South Dakota. It came down to Oregon on May 28 and California on June 5: the insurgent still standing would take on the Humphrey Machine. The drama was inescapable. The tousle-haired First Brother, traveling through Oregon in JFK's old bomber jacket with his brood of photogenic children and their cocker spaniel, Freckles, scampering down the jet gangway ahead of Bobby and whatever local pol was by his side; the intense former college professor, the "man the people found" and the "Clean for Gene" hordes that followed him, a piercing wind of idealism in a low-down and dirty age. Shirley MacLaine, Sammy Davis, Bobby Darin, Peter Lawford, Sonny and Cher, superstar Olympic decathlete Rafer Johnson, and football star Rosey Grier traveled with Kennedy. McCarthy campaigned with Elaine May, Tony Randall, Eli Wallach, and Robert Ryan -- and as a reproach to Kennedy, who, McCarthy fan Mary McGrory wrote, "thinks the American youth belongs to him as the bequest of his brother," Dustin Hoffman, star of the anti-grown-up hit The Graduate.
I know most of these names but would have to consult Wikipedia for Robert Ryan.
Nothing like an ambiguous title for a post, is there?
I've been blogging since May '08 (with occasional breaks to recharge, figuratively, the batteries, etc.). Periodically I ask myself why I am doing it, and as we approach the end of another calendar year, and as I'm planning to take another of my breaks once the dust from the election settles (from around Nov. 12, say, through Dec. 31 at least), it seems to be a good time to pose the question again. Except usually I pose it just to myself, not to anyone who happens to be reading.
The question, unfortunately, doesn't have a very satisfactory answer. My closest relatives don't usually read this blog and nor, with a couple of highly valued exceptions, do my friends (I mean my non-virtual, non-online friends, not that there is a huge number of them but I do have some, friends from the past and whatnot). So I'm not blogging for my relatives and friends. I'm also not blogging to keep the functional equivalent of a personal diary or journal: to me that implies a degree of privacy, and even though very few people may read a post here, in theory anyone with an internet connection can. I'm not blogging to disseminate or promote my own academic or scholarly work (which is, at the moment, nonexistent), which is an honorable motive for some other blogs, or to push a particular political agenda (though I'm not shy about expressing my political views). So why does a low-traffic blog with no clear, precisely focused mission or purpose keep going? Why have I done this for more than four years now? I suppose I must find something slightly intoxicating, for lack of a better word, about having a platform (and this is essentially the only one I have: I'm not on Twitter or Facebook or Tumblr). Every time I think about stopping, I find myself not stopping. Sometimes I say posting is going to be light and it turns out not to be. What gives? As I say, I don't have a very good answer.
As far as I can tell, there are roughly three groups of people who find their way here. This is not an exhaustive categorization but it will do. First, there is a very small group of regular or semi-regular readers, most of whom I don't know and most of whom never leave comments, so I don't even know for sure why they are regular readers (btw, it's very easy, technically, to comment here, I've even considered disabling the captcha but haven't taken the time to figure out how to do it). [clarification: I'm glad to have these readers, I'd just like a better sense of what's attracting them to the blog and perhaps what they'd like to see more or less of.] Second, there are people who end up at a particular post as a result of typing something into Google or another search engine (or, occasionally, who come via Blogger). Third, there are people who come here, or follow a link here, when I post something having to do with academic debates or discussions in IR. (And I suppose there is some overlap among the three groups.) A solid average weekday at this blog sees maybe 15 'unique' visitors, a good day might see 25 or so, and anything much above that, although it does happen from time to time, counts as a red-letter day (do people still use that expression?).
So I'm obviously not blogging to keep satisfying the demand of a large, established readership for material, since there is no large readership here. So again: what am I doing here? I'm not really sure. But, for the moment, I'm still here.
P.s. As I said in comments on an earlier post, my thoughts now are with those in New York, New Jersey and elsewhere coping with power outages (I have a friend in New Jersey in that situation) and worse. Luckily and contrary to my expectations, the power stayed on where I am, for which the local utility (Pepco) must be given some credit.
This, I think, is right on the mark.
Readers of this blog will know that I have not been an uncritical booster of Obama, though I am definitely supporting him for re-election. But Richard Cohen's WaPo column comparing Obama unfavorably to Robert Kennedy strikes me as somewhat unfair.
Cohen writes:
Kennedy had huge causes. End poverty. End the war. He challenged a
sitting president over Vietnam. It could have cost him his career. It
did cost him his life. The draft is long gone, and with it indignation
about senseless wars. Poverty persists, but now it is mostly blamed on
the poor. When it comes to the underclass, we are out of ideas . . .
or patience. Or both. Pity Obama in this regard. It’s hard to summon us
for a crusade that has already been fought and lost. We made war on
poverty. Poverty hardly noticed.
If you accept the premise of this passage, then the fault lies more with the times than with Obama. 1968 was a different era. Yet Cohen then proceeds to ignore his own insight. I agree Obama should have been more vocal about climate change, about the plight of young black men many of whom are in prison or unemployed (or underemployed), and about some other matters, too. But Obama is who he is: his 2008 campaign was not an especially marked departure from the center of gravity of the Democratic party, which has shifted rightward since the days of RFK. For that matter, it's shifted rightward even since 1980, when Edward Kennedy gave his unforgettable speech at the Democratic convention of that year ("the dream will never die").
Richard Cohen knows this, which is another reason his column seems unfair. It has attracted a lot of comments on the WaPo site, or so I surmise from the fact that the "loading comments" function there seems to be groaning under the strain. But I haven't read any of the comments there except one or two. A lot of them, no doubt, won't have anything to do with what Cohen wrote.
Added later: I don't agree, by the way, with Cohen's implicit blanket dismissal of the 'war on poverty', which had some real accomplishments. But that's a whole other subject.
I saw the movie Argo recently. It was good (apart from a couple of fairly minor things). In a nice symmetry, the movie is as smart as the fake movie-within-the-movie is silly. Argo is suspenseful and never boring, the prologue properly sets the historical context (noting the CIA-engineered coup against Mossadegh), and it's also hard to complain about a screenplay that includes, toward the end, a reference to the opening of Marx's Eighteenth Brumaire. And the cast, led by Ben Affleck (who also directed), is excellent.
Most people here probably have already seen B. DeLong's brief, eloquent piece on the battle of Stalingrad at 70 (h/t), but if you haven't it's worth reading.
Much else worthy of note in the press and the blogosphere, but I'm afraid there'll be no more linkage right now. (And to those who happen to be on the U.S. east coast: weather the storm and stay safe.)
Note: This (fairly long) post will be of interest mainly to those concerned with the academic literature on borders, conflict, state formation, etc. Others may wish to skip it.
-----
In his book The Territorial Peace, Douglas Gibler argues -- as I understand his argument based on his recent posts at The Monkey Cage -- that the 'democratic peace' is "a subset" of a more encompassing and fundamental phenomenon. He contends that involvement in territorial disputes (especially those involving core 'homeland' territories) leads to authoritarianism and 'centralization' (or pushes in that direction), whereas countries that are not involved in territorial disputes tend to be less authoritarian, more democratic. The reason is that militarized disputes over territory (defined, per the Correlates of War project, as anything from a brief display of force to full-scale war) produce large armies, which subsequently are often used for internal repression and more 'centralization' (measured by the number of 'veto points' in the state apparatus). An absence of territorial disputes has the opposite effect, thus leading to both democracy and peace. Questions can be raised about aspects of this argument (see e.g. the comment thread to this post and also further discussion below), but it seems intuitively somewhat plausible, or at least not completely implausible.
Gibler's work can be seen as part of a recent wave of scholarship which, in different ways and from different perspectives, addresses the effects and causes of an overall decline in armed conflict, especially traditional interstate war. Work on the territorial integrity norm (Zacher 2001 [pdf]) and the rarity of 'state death' after 1945 (Fazal 2007) attributes the reduction in interstate war to norms concerning the inviolability of state boundaries and the unacceptability of conquest. (Arguments about the obsolescence of great-power war, discussed elsewhere on this blog, also focus on norms and their development.)
Not everyone agrees, however, that settled territorial boundaries always lead to less conflict. Boaz Atzili in his book Good Fences, Bad Neighbors argues that (to quote from the abstract of an earlier article of his):
In regions in which most states are
socio-politically strong, fixed territorial ownership is a blessing. It
enhances peace, stability, and cooperation between states. In regions in
which most states are socio-politically weak, however, fixed
territorial ownership is largely a curse. It perpetuates and exacerbates
states' weakness, and contributes to internal conflicts that often
spill over across international borders.
Atzili defines "the sociopolitical strength of the state...as the state's capacity to maintain a monopoly over the legitimate use of force,...rule effectively over its society (including extracting sufficient revenue and providing sufficient public goods), and...maintain a reasonable level of social cohesiveness and identification of its residents with the state as such" (Good Fences, p.33). Thus he treats "the ideational facet of the state" as "just as important, and sometimes more" important than the institutional dimension (p.4).
His basic argument, as the above quote indicates, is that the norm of fixed borders often perpetuates state weakness, which in turn facilitates internal conflict that can spill over boundaries and become a form of interstate conflict, not for the most part "Clausewitzian wars in which two regular armies meet each other in the battlefield" but "transnational conflicts" involving state and non-state actors (p.49). The border-fixity norm thus has different effects depending on the strength or weakness of states.
Good Fences, Bad Neighbors contains a number of case studies. Two of the four main cases -- Brandenburg-Prussia in the 17th and 18th centuries and Argentina in the 19th century -- predate the border-fixity norm, while the other two main cases -- Lebanon 1950-2006 and Congo (DRC) 1960-2006 -- are set in the fixed-borders world. Space and time preclude anything like a proper summary of the cases and of the various dimensions of the argument; however, a glance at the Congo discussion will give a flavor of the approach.
What is now the Dem. Rep. of Congo was "a very weak state at its independence" (p.141) and, with its existence effectively guaranteed by the norm against conquest, it did not face the same structural pressures and incentives to become a stronger state that polities in the 'flexible-borders world' of early modern Europe did. Mobutu's corrupt and kleptocratic rule had much to do with keeping Congo (then Zaire) weak, but Mobutu's successors Laurent Kabila and his son Joseph Kabila did not improve things greatly, because incentives for state-building remained largely absent. When Congo's weakness met the Rwandan genocide of 1994 and its aftermath, which sent large numbers of Hutu perpetrators across the Congo border to form "a state in exile" (p.184), the result was the long war that drew in a number of Congo's neighbors.
The argument about state weakness and border fixity, we are told at the outset, is "probabilistic rather than deterministic" (p.8). And one sees this illustrated, for example, by Tanzania, which, unlike Congo/Zaire, used "forceful policing and efficient sealing of the border by the Tanzanian military" to prevent Rwandan Hutu refugees in western Tanzania from staging attacks into Rwanda (p.184). In other words, Tanzania, existing in the same international normative environment as Congo/Zaire and facing the same structural incentives (i.e., no prospect of 'state death'), became a somewhat stronger state than Zaire. This does not invalidate Atzili's argument, since he acknowledges that outcomes may vary depending on leadership and political culture (p.9). But he maintains that leaders of weak states in a 'fixed-borders world' have a more difficult job of state-building than leaders in a 'flexible-borders world' had: "The task of building strong states in a world of fixed borders is daunting" (p.220).
On p.39 of his book Atzili discusses Gibler's article "Outside-In: The Effects of External Threat on State Centralization" (Journal of Conflict Resolution, 54:4, 2010). Atzili criticizes the article on several grounds (noting, for example, that he uses a "broad and holistic concept of state strength" in contrast to Gibler's focus on centralization), but also says that Gibler's findings support one of his (Atzili's) hypotheses, namely that "a world in which there is no normative prohibition on conquest and annexation (flexible-borders world) is likely to result, over time, in sociopolitically stronger states" (p.36).
Yet it seems to me that Gibler and Atzili approach the whole problem from somewhat different angles not only in terms of their methods (which is clearly the case) but in terms of the causal arrows (causal mechanisms, if you prefer that phrase) that each sees at work. For Gibler, the absence of territorial disputes -- as indicated by, among other things, settled boundaries -- leads to democracy and peace via less 'centralized' states. For Atzili, settled boundaries produce or enhance peace only under certain conditions, namely the presence of 'strong' states, where 'strength' is understood not as 'centralization' but more broadly, i.e. as a state's overall capacity and legitimacy.
In terms of policy recommendations, Atzili would not get rid of the border-fixity (territorial integrity) norm, since in large parts of the world its effects are positive, nor does he advocate returning to the era of territorial wars. He suggests what are, in effect, less drastic steps to put pressure on weak states to engage in state-building, such as the threat of ejection from international organizations for "states that cannot be considered states by any positive measure (such as Somalia and the DRC)" (p.220). He also suggests that "in some cases state building may need to take precedence over democratization" (p.220). I'm not sure what I think about this or indeed about Atzili's general argument: obviously I think it is interesting enough to blog about, but I have certainly not read the book with the care that would be required to reach a considered judgment. (Perhaps I will have some additional thoughts later.)
I'm going to leave it here, without a tidy conclusion. Comments are welcome, including those politely telling me that I'm confused and have got things all mixed up.
Added later: See also R. Dannreuther, "War and Insecurity: Legacies of Northern and Southern State Formation," Review of International Studies 33:2 (April 2007).
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