From Michael Jabbra, a former and unusually talented undergrad at UCSB, the following brief set of queries arrived. They are reproduced here, along with the buggy replies
Prof Bug
I was wondering if you could comment on the similarities between the U.S. and the E.U. with regard to economic problems. What will the national debt ($7 trillion, according to the Bureau of the Public Debt website) and the devaluation of the dollar do to US economic strength? Isn't the refusal of both parties to address the growing debt and dollar devaluation a sign of bureaucratic or legislative inertia?
THE BUGGY REPLY
Good questions, Michael --- which I will try to deal with in greater detail later on. Note that they were delved into at length last summer in several articles, about 8 or 9, on the US economy; even so, I'm happy to take them up again, both now and later.
THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT DEFICIT: TO WORRY OR NOT?
1) Briefly, we went through a very similar period of worry back in the 1980s about rising federal government deficits, a swelling trade deficit, and a falling dollar (after 1985). The federal deficit reached 6.0% of GDP at one point (this year, it will be about 4.2%). What happened? Any noticeable harm?
2) Not, far from it. In the end, faster economic growth and to an extent the Clinton tax-rises of 1993 not only ended the rising government deficit, but reversed it by the late 1990s. It took a decade or so for the new economic dynamism to kick in, based on clear rises in productivity (by two- to three-fold). Thanks to those rises, the US enjoyed the longest boom in its history --- 10 years in all. There was another benefit. As unemployment fell to near-historic lows in the last four years of the boom, 1996-2000, the income of the bottom 20% income earners actually rose faster than that of the top 20%.
So . . let's wait and see what happens again. The highly regarded, non-partisan Congressional Budget Office noted the new fiscal stimulus --- which has been essential to get us out of slow growth after 2000 (the US generating 95% or more of all world economic growth since 1996, according to international studies) --- would bring in more revenue in the future, plus contain automatic reversals of the tax-cuts in some areas. [As we'll see, the soaring trade deficit reversed itself after 1985 --- thanks to a negotiated decline of the skyrocketing $US in exchange markets by then --- and by 1991 was in a slight surplus.]
Added remark, January 27, 2004: The CBO's latest projections --- taking into account new spending commitments in health of around $700 billion over the next decade and some technical adjustments --- are less optimistic. They do estimate that the high-peak deficit this year of around 4.2% will fall to around 3.4% or so next year --- and will, given certain assumptions about spending and taxes that don't seem politically realistic, fall to 1.8% of GDP by 2008 --- but the CBO is worried about the long-term commitments being undertaken in health and social security . . . the revenue for which will fall increasingly short if the tax cuts are made permanent.
All the more pressure will likely follow, then, to pare spending somewhere; or alternatively reject the proposal to make the tax cuts permanent: some of all of them. Or, as another option, some combination of permanent cuts and reduced government spending.
Note that total national debt as a percentage of GDP will be around 64% by the end of the current fiscal year (September 30) --- still below its high points in the mid-1990s. Total debt here includes unfunded social security commitments, which have to be covered by current tax revenue. See the chart, including projections.
3) In technical terms, our economy badly needed a big fiscal stimulus in 2003 --- or earlier --- what with the slow job-creation that followed the recovery from the 2001 recession. It's technical because we rediscovered the Keynesian view --- embraced by Gregory Mankiw, Bush's Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers the last year, and one of the world's leading neo-Keynesians --- that low interest rates and monetary stimuli won't by themselves necessarily kick-start fast economic growth in the recovery phase of the business cycle . . . especially if nominal interest rates are very low anyway and there's no problem of inflation. See the article on this by Martin Feldstein of Harvard, likely to be Alan Greenspan's successor at the Fed one day: Fiscal Activism.
4) Another technical, easy-to-follow point: you have to distinguish between cyclical and structural deficits. When the economy falls into recession, the federal budget should decline and turn red: the automatic recessionary stabilizers --- tax receipts down, unemployment benefits up --- help keep up aggregate demand and offset some or most of the recessionary impact. If the economy, however, continues to run deficits once a recovery is under way and GDP growth is near its sustainable non-inflationary rate --- potential output, set by supply side inputs of capital investment, labor-force growth and quality, technological progress, and trends in productivity growth --- then we have a structural deficit.
Where are we now? Well, it took about 15 months after the 1991 recession for the economy to return to sustainable growth, with unemployment coming down (from a much higher level --- over 7.0% in those days compared to 6.3% at the peak last May). Right now, we're in the 29th month of the recovery, and job-creation has been dismal. Whatever the causes --- and some of them are statistical (the Bureau of Labor's survey of business payrolls is higher than its monthly surveys of households, a problem that also emerged in the early 1990s) --- we need to have a big fiscal boost. With the US contributing to an astonishing 96% or so of world economic growth since 1996 --- a mind-boggling statistic! --- the global economy would be in depression, not just recession, without strong American economic growth.
Saturday, January 24, 2004
EXCHANGE ON THE US ECONOMY, A FOLLOW-UP TO THE PREVIOUS ARTICLE
Posted by Michael Gordon @ 04:18 PM PST [ continue ]
THE EU COMMISSION ADMITS IT: THE ECONOMIC AND TECHNOLOGICAL GAP WITH THE US WILL AGGRAVATE BY 2010
The EU Commission --- 20 members currently, who are appointed for long terms by the 15 member-governments (Italy, Germany, France, and Britain get a second appointment and then there's the 20th, who is the President of the Commission) --- puts out unusually good comparative studies of the EU economies a couple of times each year, with the US the major foil, though Japan plays a role too. The most thorough and informative studies are the EU Competitiveness Reports, which appear annually in the fall. Recently, the Commission --- which of course has a huge statistical and economics bureaucracy (among others) --- published its annual report that assesses the progress of the EU countries in meeting their ambitious commitments undertaken at Lisbon, Portugal, in the late 1990s.
The main commitment? To overhaul their national economies in order for the EU itself, as an integrated regional economy, to overtake the US and become the world's most advanced and competitive economy in the world. The deadline for achieving this goal was set a decade into the future, 2010. The EU's just published report on the progress toward that goal --- or lack of it --- is nicely summarized in the EU-Observer
WAS THAT GOAL EVER OBTAINBLE?
From the outset, the seemed an impossible goal. The recent report, just published, is summarized in the EU-Observer's own readable prose. It shows that the EU countries, far from closing the productivity, job, and technological gaps with the US, are falling behind . . . the crucial gaps with the US in technological progress, investment, productivity advances, and job-creation accentuating over time, not narrowing.
Nothing surprising really, except many for the EU media types and talkheads. Historically, the industrial revolution is now about 220 years old. For more than half that time --- since the 1880s --- the US has been the richest country in per capita income. Viewed differently, of the five eras of lead-technologies that have broken over the capitalist world in clustered waves every 50 years or so --- revolutionizing production, life-styles, and the distribution of income and related power across countries --- the US has been the pioneer in the three latest. (Textiles and iron the first wave started in the 1770s; railways and steam-powered ships began in the 1830s and 1840s, plus the telegraph)
Essentially, in each of these latter three waves since the 1880s, the major follower countries --- Northwest Europe originally, joined around the start of the 20th century by Mediterranean Europe and Japan, the only non-European culture to industrialize noticeably before WWII --- benefited for several decades from what's called convergence catch-up growth: they will eventually grow faster than the rich technological and productivity lead country because
1) they had more investment opportunities compared to the lead US economy after a while, thanks to the onset of diminishing returns to cumulative American investments in the new technologies --- at any rate, once the innovations slowed down and production of them became standardized.;
2) they could then further benefit from acquiring the costly innovations because US multinationals or licensing of the technology would diffuse it to countries with lower wage costs;
3) they could copy and adapt American production techniques and management styles and then often produce higher-quality goods: think of Japanese cars and TVs.
4) and they could further benefit, as they assimilated the technologies and reduced the costs of the resulting manufactured goods (or services), from exporting massively back into the rich US economy, largely indifferent --- unlike Europe, Japan, or the rest of Pacific Asia --- to trade deficits.
The main commitment? To overhaul their national economies in order for the EU itself, as an integrated regional economy, to overtake the US and become the world's most advanced and competitive economy in the world. The deadline for achieving this goal was set a decade into the future, 2010. The EU's just published report on the progress toward that goal --- or lack of it --- is nicely summarized in the EU-Observer
WAS THAT GOAL EVER OBTAINBLE?
From the outset, the seemed an impossible goal. The recent report, just published, is summarized in the EU-Observer's own readable prose. It shows that the EU countries, far from closing the productivity, job, and technological gaps with the US, are falling behind . . . the crucial gaps with the US in technological progress, investment, productivity advances, and job-creation accentuating over time, not narrowing.
Nothing surprising really, except many for the EU media types and talkheads. Historically, the industrial revolution is now about 220 years old. For more than half that time --- since the 1880s --- the US has been the richest country in per capita income. Viewed differently, of the five eras of lead-technologies that have broken over the capitalist world in clustered waves every 50 years or so --- revolutionizing production, life-styles, and the distribution of income and related power across countries --- the US has been the pioneer in the three latest. (Textiles and iron the first wave started in the 1770s; railways and steam-powered ships began in the 1830s and 1840s, plus the telegraph)
- the wave that started around 1880 and lasted until WWII, with electrification and the internal cumbustion engines and telephones, plus standardized mass production and new credit facilities for purchases of housing and durables;
- the era from 1940 or so until the 1980s, where the radically transforming technologies were in aviation, long-distance trucking, sythentic materials, mass tourism, and consumer electronics (radio, TV, VCRs, faxes);
- and the era since then, generating one wave of breakthrough innovations after another, centered on telecommunications, information technologies, biotech, the Internet, wireless technologies, and what have you . . . with revolutionary nanotech and new high-tech fuels just adding their momentum.
Essentially, in each of these latter three waves since the 1880s, the major follower countries --- Northwest Europe originally, joined around the start of the 20th century by Mediterranean Europe and Japan, the only non-European culture to industrialize noticeably before WWII --- benefited for several decades from what's called convergence catch-up growth: they will eventually grow faster than the rich technological and productivity lead country because
1) they had more investment opportunities compared to the lead US economy after a while, thanks to the onset of diminishing returns to cumulative American investments in the new technologies --- at any rate, once the innovations slowed down and production of them became standardized.;
2) they could then further benefit from acquiring the costly innovations because US multinationals or licensing of the technology would diffuse it to countries with lower wage costs;
3) they could copy and adapt American production techniques and management styles and then often produce higher-quality goods: think of Japanese cars and TVs.
4) and they could further benefit, as they assimilated the technologies and reduced the costs of the resulting manufactured goods (or services), from exporting massively back into the rich US economy, largely indifferent --- unlike Europe, Japan, or the rest of Pacific Asia --- to trade deficits.
Posted by Michael Gordon @ 01:22 PM PST [ continue ]
Friday, January 23, 2004
A Remarkably Astute and Readable Account of Life in Saudi Arabia: A New Yorker Article
The article in question, Kingdom of Silence, appeared in The New Yorker on January 4th and is now available online at the journalist's own website: Lawrence Wright.
The kingdom? Saudi Arabia, 20 million in number, a country governed by 4000 royals . . . especially an inner mobster-gang now falling out in a frazzle of backbiting ways, a few dozen privileged silk-stocking types at most, to see who will replace the ailing king while killing off the less fortunate rivals. A bomb here, a bomb there: then blame it on the terrorists, who, come to think of it, are active there anyway. So much for buying off the suicidal Ker-boomers with protection moola. To prepare the article, Wright spent several months last year in the kingdom as a journalistic consultant for a Saudi newspaper, itself something unique . . . particularly in what is one of the most secretive, rabidly censored societies in the world, full of pervasive secret-police and paranoid Wahhabi extremists, including the dreaded Vice-and-Virtue-Promoting police-thugs, many of them former criminals, out to flog women and heretics while living on lavish corruption.
Some Introductory Background:
An ultra-fundamentalist offshoot of Sunni mainstream Islam, Wahhabism --- for those of you who know little or nothing about it --- harks back to the 18th century and became the official state-religion when the Saudi state was created arbitrarily by the British after WWI. It is full of hostility to the modern world; treats women essentially as the property of men; is full of Jew-hating propaganda; and persecutes other Islamic sects, especially Shiites. Antagonistic to an open society, to the West, and to democratic conceptions of religious tolerance, secularism, and individual rights, it has been used by the Mafioso-clique running Saudi Arabia --- which has squandered trillions of dollars worth of oil-revenue on their luxurious life-styles, leaving the country with a per capita income one-third of its 1980 level and an unemployment rate among men of 25-30% --- as a way of trying to endow its 4000 royal members with an aura of religious legitimacy.
In the process, they have been exporting their hate-filled brand of Islam all around the world, including the US . . . especially in rivalry with the extremist versions of Shiite Islam that the clerical-fascist Iranian government began pushing everywhere after 1979 with their own oil revenue. [On Wahhabi Islam and the Saudi double-dealing role in the war on terrorism, including financial support to Al Qaeda, see the Frontpage symposium last summer. See too the views of a convert to moderate Sufi Islam by Stephen Schwartz. He knows Wahhabi Islam well and doesn't mince his words, calling the combination of Saudi autocracy, oil-wealth, racism, and the Wahhabi death cult "naked Islamofascism" at its worst. ]
And The Magazine
Then there's the The New Yorker where Wright's article appeared . . . one of the two great weeklies in the English-speaking world: The Economist of London, a far different sort of magazine --- strictly political, economic, and business analysis of the highest quality, plus a brief book-and-art section at the end --- is the other. Both have been around for decades or longer.
The New Yorker ranges far more ambitiously. It specializes in investigative journalism of a lengthy sort --- like Lawrence Wright's --- often published in a multi-week series, also shorter reportage of a more instant sort, unusually good quality short-stories and poems (some of the best around), and very vigorously written reviews of music, art, books, cinema, and sports. Some of the greatest novelists and critics in the English-speaking world have appeared there on a regular basis. It also has a retinue of uncommonly talented cartoonists and graphics specialists, and I myself am a proud owner of a large volume of its reproduced cover-artistry.
To put it bluntly, careful investigative journalism of this sort hardly exists outside the English-speaking world. And nothing exists anywhere in Europe, even Britain, to match The New Yorker's verve, range, and talent.
WHAT THE ARTICLE MANAGES TO DO
No, as I told my students in political science 129 a few moments ago, this stunning, insight-crammed article by Lawrence Wright, isn't required for the course: the US in the War on Terrorism. Still, if they or you are for questing after keen, factual insights into Arab life --- especially in the oil-rich gangster state of Saudi Arabia, with its pervasive secret-police and muttawa (the dreaded vice police that hunt down wayward women --- wayward meaning even wrong dress ---- and flog them publicly or in dungeons) --- then Kingdom of Silence by Lawrence Wright is just what you need. And should read.
The article brings out a lot of things that are hard for foreigners ever to make sense of, especially in the closed secret-police ruled world of the 20 million Saudis:
the pervasive sense of depression and humiliation about their backwardness,
their fear of the despots who run their lives,
the extraordinary lack of access to female company on the part of single men way into their 30s,
the head-spinning seculsion and stigmatizing of women that animate Wahhabi extremist Islam in that country,
their envy and fears of the US,
and the paranoid conspiratorial outlook on the world --- especially the US, Israel, and Jews, all seen as in some furtive cabal to destroy Islam.
Wright also details the lives of a handful of his young fellow Saudi journalists, generally likeable men who would prefer to be real journalists, not just tools of the censors and untouchable corrupt leaders. When he was in Saudi Arabia in the spring of 2003, he tried to get more information about the notorious fire-incident at a girl's school the year before: local residents tried to rush in, apparently, to help the girls being engulfed by fire, but were turned away by the Vice-Police because the girls weren't wearing their headdress and veils. Later on, to the extent he can talk to others freely, he probes the views of the Saudis about the US and the outside world.
The kingdom? Saudi Arabia, 20 million in number, a country governed by 4000 royals . . . especially an inner mobster-gang now falling out in a frazzle of backbiting ways, a few dozen privileged silk-stocking types at most, to see who will replace the ailing king while killing off the less fortunate rivals. A bomb here, a bomb there: then blame it on the terrorists, who, come to think of it, are active there anyway. So much for buying off the suicidal Ker-boomers with protection moola. To prepare the article, Wright spent several months last year in the kingdom as a journalistic consultant for a Saudi newspaper, itself something unique . . . particularly in what is one of the most secretive, rabidly censored societies in the world, full of pervasive secret-police and paranoid Wahhabi extremists, including the dreaded Vice-and-Virtue-Promoting police-thugs, many of them former criminals, out to flog women and heretics while living on lavish corruption.
Some Introductory Background:
An ultra-fundamentalist offshoot of Sunni mainstream Islam, Wahhabism --- for those of you who know little or nothing about it --- harks back to the 18th century and became the official state-religion when the Saudi state was created arbitrarily by the British after WWI. It is full of hostility to the modern world; treats women essentially as the property of men; is full of Jew-hating propaganda; and persecutes other Islamic sects, especially Shiites. Antagonistic to an open society, to the West, and to democratic conceptions of religious tolerance, secularism, and individual rights, it has been used by the Mafioso-clique running Saudi Arabia --- which has squandered trillions of dollars worth of oil-revenue on their luxurious life-styles, leaving the country with a per capita income one-third of its 1980 level and an unemployment rate among men of 25-30% --- as a way of trying to endow its 4000 royal members with an aura of religious legitimacy.
In the process, they have been exporting their hate-filled brand of Islam all around the world, including the US . . . especially in rivalry with the extremist versions of Shiite Islam that the clerical-fascist Iranian government began pushing everywhere after 1979 with their own oil revenue. [On Wahhabi Islam and the Saudi double-dealing role in the war on terrorism, including financial support to Al Qaeda, see the Frontpage symposium last summer. See too the views of a convert to moderate Sufi Islam by Stephen Schwartz. He knows Wahhabi Islam well and doesn't mince his words, calling the combination of Saudi autocracy, oil-wealth, racism, and the Wahhabi death cult "naked Islamofascism" at its worst. ]
And The Magazine
Then there's the The New Yorker where Wright's article appeared . . . one of the two great weeklies in the English-speaking world: The Economist of London, a far different sort of magazine --- strictly political, economic, and business analysis of the highest quality, plus a brief book-and-art section at the end --- is the other. Both have been around for decades or longer.
The New Yorker ranges far more ambitiously. It specializes in investigative journalism of a lengthy sort --- like Lawrence Wright's --- often published in a multi-week series, also shorter reportage of a more instant sort, unusually good quality short-stories and poems (some of the best around), and very vigorously written reviews of music, art, books, cinema, and sports. Some of the greatest novelists and critics in the English-speaking world have appeared there on a regular basis. It also has a retinue of uncommonly talented cartoonists and graphics specialists, and I myself am a proud owner of a large volume of its reproduced cover-artistry.
To put it bluntly, careful investigative journalism of this sort hardly exists outside the English-speaking world. And nothing exists anywhere in Europe, even Britain, to match The New Yorker's verve, range, and talent.
WHAT THE ARTICLE MANAGES TO DO
No, as I told my students in political science 129 a few moments ago, this stunning, insight-crammed article by Lawrence Wright, isn't required for the course: the US in the War on Terrorism. Still, if they or you are for questing after keen, factual insights into Arab life --- especially in the oil-rich gangster state of Saudi Arabia, with its pervasive secret-police and muttawa (the dreaded vice police that hunt down wayward women --- wayward meaning even wrong dress ---- and flog them publicly or in dungeons) --- then Kingdom of Silence by Lawrence Wright is just what you need. And should read.
The article brings out a lot of things that are hard for foreigners ever to make sense of, especially in the closed secret-police ruled world of the 20 million Saudis:
the pervasive sense of depression and humiliation about their backwardness,
their fear of the despots who run their lives,
the extraordinary lack of access to female company on the part of single men way into their 30s,
the head-spinning seculsion and stigmatizing of women that animate Wahhabi extremist Islam in that country,
their envy and fears of the US,
and the paranoid conspiratorial outlook on the world --- especially the US, Israel, and Jews, all seen as in some furtive cabal to destroy Islam.
Wright also details the lives of a handful of his young fellow Saudi journalists, generally likeable men who would prefer to be real journalists, not just tools of the censors and untouchable corrupt leaders. When he was in Saudi Arabia in the spring of 2003, he tried to get more information about the notorious fire-incident at a girl's school the year before: local residents tried to rush in, apparently, to help the girls being engulfed by fire, but were turned away by the Vice-Police because the girls weren't wearing their headdress and veils. Later on, to the extent he can talk to others freely, he probes the views of the Saudis about the US and the outside world.
Posted by Michael Gordon @ 09:54 PM PST [ continue ]
Thursday, January 22, 2004
A Former Student Asks For Buggy Views of the Democratic Contenders
Matthew Mishory, a very good student with a flair for web-site development --- he's already a professional without having finished his undergrad studies --- has asked for some buggy views of the contenders vying for the Democratic Party nomination. The buggy prof himself, remember --- despite his support of President Bush's foreign policy revolution --- is a Democrat who didn't vote for Bush in 2000. Though leaning that way this time, his final choice when it comes to the ballot-box will hinge on three things:
THE BUGGY REPLY
Matthew:
Many thanks for the query. A confession: a big problem of illuminating the Democratic primary contest now unfolding is getting hard, down-to-earth information to generalize about. As things stand, almost all the candidates have dealt in slashing negativism or hey don't-ask-for-more generalities . . . Howard Dean, in some ways an admirable man who rose above his plutocratic background and ski-bum days, then became an MD, then a good moderate governor, probably self-imploding because of his attack-dog style and endless torrents of criticism aimed at President Bush. Democratic anger, it turns out, has its limits . . . all to the good.
As a general thing, I'd say that no candidate --- Democrat or Republican --- who doesn't tell us which programs he will expand or create and which ones he will cut back or end, and how much they will cost or save, is doing anything but waffling. Bush is no exception.
The Candidates
Joe Lieberman is the only candidate who hasn't hemmed-and-hawed on supporting the war with Iraq or the Bush foreign policy, despite some concrete and probably sound criticisms of the way it's been administered. He's a known Clinton moderate in domestic policy, also a man of moral force. See the informative L.A. Times story, full of details, about his rebuke to Clinton on the Senate Floor that earned his colleagues' respect. The trouble is, he has little or no chance to get the nomination. General Clark did offer a concrete detailed plan for tax changes, though without any estimate of how they might bring the budget deficits down other than saying he'd tax the wealthy and well-to-do more. Loose talk about consulting our allies more is so vague as to defy any description.
So, I suspect, we need to learn a lot more about Senator John Kerry.
A Kerry-Edwards ticket could be attractive, above all since no Democrat since Kennedy has ever won the presidency without winning several southern states. McGovern, come to that, couldn't win any state except Massachusetts --- Mondale scarcely doing better in 1984, or Dukakis winning any southern state in 1988. Kerry does need to be more concrete. On the war to destroy Saddamite Iraq and transform it --- part of a larger effort to prod big changes in the despotic corrupt Arab countries, all essentially badly governed and economic basket-cases --- he's had one leg up and one leg down, trimming here and there, rather than tell us concretely what he would do differently.
- the state of our economy then, especially whether it's creating lots of employment and looks like being able to sustain high-level growth for years;
- the transforming revolution in Iraq, and US fortunes in the wider war on terrorism;
- and the Democratic nominee and his own concrete plans for dealing with the first two challenges just mentioned.
THE BUGGY REPLY
Matthew:
Many thanks for the query. A confession: a big problem of illuminating the Democratic primary contest now unfolding is getting hard, down-to-earth information to generalize about. As things stand, almost all the candidates have dealt in slashing negativism or hey don't-ask-for-more generalities . . . Howard Dean, in some ways an admirable man who rose above his plutocratic background and ski-bum days, then became an MD, then a good moderate governor, probably self-imploding because of his attack-dog style and endless torrents of criticism aimed at President Bush. Democratic anger, it turns out, has its limits . . . all to the good.
As a general thing, I'd say that no candidate --- Democrat or Republican --- who doesn't tell us which programs he will expand or create and which ones he will cut back or end, and how much they will cost or save, is doing anything but waffling. Bush is no exception.
The Candidates
Joe Lieberman is the only candidate who hasn't hemmed-and-hawed on supporting the war with Iraq or the Bush foreign policy, despite some concrete and probably sound criticisms of the way it's been administered. He's a known Clinton moderate in domestic policy, also a man of moral force. See the informative L.A. Times story, full of details, about his rebuke to Clinton on the Senate Floor that earned his colleagues' respect. The trouble is, he has little or no chance to get the nomination. General Clark did offer a concrete detailed plan for tax changes, though without any estimate of how they might bring the budget deficits down other than saying he'd tax the wealthy and well-to-do more. Loose talk about consulting our allies more is so vague as to defy any description.
So, I suspect, we need to learn a lot more about Senator John Kerry.
A Kerry-Edwards ticket could be attractive, above all since no Democrat since Kennedy has ever won the presidency without winning several southern states. McGovern, come to that, couldn't win any state except Massachusetts --- Mondale scarcely doing better in 1984, or Dukakis winning any southern state in 1988. Kerry does need to be more concrete. On the war to destroy Saddamite Iraq and transform it --- part of a larger effort to prod big changes in the despotic corrupt Arab countries, all essentially badly governed and economic basket-cases --- he's had one leg up and one leg down, trimming here and there, rather than tell us concretely what he would do differently.
Posted by Michael Gordon @ 07:48 PM PST [ continue ]
An Exchange with a Visitor on US Volunteerism and EU Statism, Plus Immigration to the US and Europe
The following exchange was prompted by some pithy comments left by Steve Shea, who lives back East and is involved in a variety of intellectual discussion groups back there. As you'll see, the lengthy buggy replies deal with
From Steve Shea:
Prof Bug:
(i.) Check out the following report of a Brit volunteering in Dean's campaign. It's in line with your views that set out a contrast between EU statism and top-down-authority vs. American voluneerism, limited government, populist politics, and bottom-up-authority.
(ii.) Could it be that the people in Europe with bottom up DNA are just destined to leave and that is how the USA got a start.
(iii.) Speaking of coming from another country , my limited experience with non European French is quite positive. Last year my wife and I took the last metro from Paris to Charles De Gaulle . It was midnight and the platform was packed. We were a minority of two. My wife was the only woman. Everyone else was from Africa and Indonesia. The question was , which train to take. When we asked the guy next to us he couldn't have been more helpful. And when the PA system changed the trains platform, the same guy came back to us to make sure we understood the message. And it didn't stop there . On board, headed towards De Gaulle people wanted to make sure we knew what stop to get off and how to find the hotel.
If the minority keeps growing in France maybe there will be some positive side effects along with the well known problems.
THE BUGGY REPLY:
Steve:
Many thanks for your comments, the personal ones about your experience in the Paris metro last summer especially informative. The others, as you'll see, are good prods to some general remarks about the different historical trajectories in Europe as opposed to the US. As you'll see, four differences are singled out:
- the growing conflicts between Muslim fundamentalists in the EU, increasingly supported by the young, European-born Muslims, and European secularists . . . plus some support, especially in France, from moderate older Muslims;
- the historical backdrop here, the protracted struggle after the 1870s in Europe between clerical and anti-clerical forces in the Latin and East European countries, which were entangled in the wider struggle between modernity and democracy on one side and the forces of the old order on the other. Eventually, that reinforced the violent, mass-murdering ideological conflicts of the interwar period, 1918 to 1939 --- plus WWII --- between the extreme left and the extreme right all over the Continent.
- immigrant waves to the US, from Europe and elsewhere.
- the implications of these immigrant waves for American voluneerism
From Steve Shea:
Prof Bug:
(i.) Check out the following report of a Brit volunteering in Dean's campaign. It's in line with your views that set out a contrast between EU statism and top-down-authority vs. American voluneerism, limited government, populist politics, and bottom-up-authority.
(ii.) Could it be that the people in Europe with bottom up DNA are just destined to leave and that is how the USA got a start.
(iii.) Speaking of coming from another country , my limited experience with non European French is quite positive. Last year my wife and I took the last metro from Paris to Charles De Gaulle . It was midnight and the platform was packed. We were a minority of two. My wife was the only woman. Everyone else was from Africa and Indonesia. The question was , which train to take. When we asked the guy next to us he couldn't have been more helpful. And when the PA system changed the trains platform, the same guy came back to us to make sure we understood the message. And it didn't stop there . On board, headed towards De Gaulle people wanted to make sure we knew what stop to get off and how to find the hotel.
If the minority keeps growing in France maybe there will be some positive side effects along with the well known problems.
THE BUGGY REPLY:
Steve:
Many thanks for your comments, the personal ones about your experience in the Paris metro last summer especially informative. The others, as you'll see, are good prods to some general remarks about the different historical trajectories in Europe as opposed to the US. As you'll see, four differences are singled out:
- The different impact of religion on politics in Europe, caught up in the struggles between democratic and anti-democratic forces in the 19th and 20th centuries there, and later between socialism and capitalism, as opposed to American secularism . . . a strict separation between religion and public life.
- The contrasting impact of immigration, whether out of Europe to the US, and then more recently out of North Africa, Africa, and the Middle East --- plus parts of Asia --- to West Europe since WWII. Since 1990 or so, the presence of large numbers of non-European immigrants is a major driving force between new, politically charged social and cultural conflicts.
- In the US, contary to exaggerated claims that come out of certain left-wing academic circles, the immigrant waves led to assimilation around a common citizenship, with a reinforcing impact on communal voluntarism. There were always some frictions and conflicts, but they were resolved generally over time and in non-violent ways. The US Civil War was the big exception, involving a large involuntary immigrant group initially of African slaves.
Posted by Michael Gordon @ 05:44 PM PST [ continue ]
Tuesday, January 20, 2004
US Voluntarism vs. EU Continental Statism II: EU Challenges, Conflicts, Pessimism, and Violence
An article published last Friday, January 16, 2004, resumed our lengthy series on US Exceptionalism for good or bad . . . always viewed in comparative perspective, especially with the EU industrial democratic countries, though once in a while, recall, with a smaller group of English-speaking ones that draw on historical British legacies: Britain itself, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the US. That article elicited a query from a legal specialist on voluntary associations and volunteer work in America as compared with the more statist countries in the EU. That legal specialist, I should have added, spent a couple of internships for a year working in the German parliament and knows Germany and Austria especially well.
Earlier today, a second visitor, Richard Heddleson, sent some stimulating comments in reply to the exchange with the legal theorist. They set the buggy mind to thinking, and so you'll find two things here:
A heartfelt thanks to Richard and the legal specialist for their stimulus to some deeper thinking here.
From Richard Heddleson
Prof Bug:
A lot of your remarks about voluntarism seem to deal with the question of how political authority and power in a society are organized: from-the-top-down or the bottom-up. France seems to be a classic top-down country, heavily statist and bureaucratized, while the U. S. is a classic bottom-up country. It is hard to imagine 75,000 people (the number proportionate to the number who died in France last summer) being allowed to die from the heat in the U. S. and poorly organized social services. Too many people would do something for those near and in need without waiting for direction from a central authority in a statist bureaucracy or ministry. And if direction did come from a central authority, many would ignore it if it didn't make sense in their specific circumstances. The French seemed to have an "It's the government's responsibility" attitude about the disaster.
Voluntarism is a natural manifestation of your buggy points about Limited Welfare State, Cultural Values and Mistrust of Big Government. These derive from an axiomatic position on Responsibility. In the U. S. it lies with the individual, in France with the State. History seems clear which position is more durable. Would Weber be surprised?
THE BUGGY REPLY:
Thank you Richard: these are stimulating comments. They set me to thinking, always a danger for the buggy prof.
In the upshot, I fleshed out the previous article's argument with several added paragraphs . . . starting with the views of Tocqueville about American voluntary associations, which he found to be unique in those days. Later on, a section was added that compared crime rates in the EU and the US. How did this fit into the wider argument about voluntary associations and bottom-up authority as opposed to statist top-down societies? Simply said, the US deals with crime differently from the EU, Britain included: for good or bad, to be blunt, we rely on self-help and community voluntarism, plus of course good policing, something always essential, as opposed to a reliance on the police and government in statist societies. Note that the issue of crime and crime rates in the US and Europe (or elsewhere) is complex, full of ramifications and controversy. Some future articles in this mini-series on American exceptionalism will delve at length into that issue and the related controversies. A promise. Among other things, we'd like to know whether it's desirable or undesirable
As a final fleshing-out touch, some anecdotal observations about French life were added to the last article and put in theoretical perspective. For that latter purpose, the stimulating work of a French sociologist trained at the University of Chicago --- on its faculty for decades before he returned to France: Michel Crozier --- turned out to be highly relevant.
The French Health Catastrophe Last August
Oops, almost forgot to add, Richard: not only is your supposition about American social and medical services compared to the French sound, the French deuxieme chaine --- the television network beamed internationally every day --- specifically interviewed American authorities in New York and reported that a catastrophe on that level would be unthinkable here.
Earlier today, a second visitor, Richard Heddleson, sent some stimulating comments in reply to the exchange with the legal theorist. They set the buggy mind to thinking, and so you'll find two things here:
- A fairly brief series of replies to Richard's helpful commentary.
- An observation that urges you to re-read that previous article, which is fleshed out in a variety of empirical and theoretical ways.
A heartfelt thanks to Richard and the legal specialist for their stimulus to some deeper thinking here.
From Richard Heddleson
Prof Bug:
A lot of your remarks about voluntarism seem to deal with the question of how political authority and power in a society are organized: from-the-top-down or the bottom-up. France seems to be a classic top-down country, heavily statist and bureaucratized, while the U. S. is a classic bottom-up country. It is hard to imagine 75,000 people (the number proportionate to the number who died in France last summer) being allowed to die from the heat in the U. S. and poorly organized social services. Too many people would do something for those near and in need without waiting for direction from a central authority in a statist bureaucracy or ministry. And if direction did come from a central authority, many would ignore it if it didn't make sense in their specific circumstances. The French seemed to have an "It's the government's responsibility" attitude about the disaster.
Voluntarism is a natural manifestation of your buggy points about Limited Welfare State, Cultural Values and Mistrust of Big Government. These derive from an axiomatic position on Responsibility. In the U. S. it lies with the individual, in France with the State. History seems clear which position is more durable. Would Weber be surprised?
THE BUGGY REPLY:
Thank you Richard: these are stimulating comments. They set me to thinking, always a danger for the buggy prof.
In the upshot, I fleshed out the previous article's argument with several added paragraphs . . . starting with the views of Tocqueville about American voluntary associations, which he found to be unique in those days. Later on, a section was added that compared crime rates in the EU and the US. How did this fit into the wider argument about voluntary associations and bottom-up authority as opposed to statist top-down societies? Simply said, the US deals with crime differently from the EU, Britain included: for good or bad, to be blunt, we rely on self-help and community voluntarism, plus of course good policing, something always essential, as opposed to a reliance on the police and government in statist societies. Note that the issue of crime and crime rates in the US and Europe (or elsewhere) is complex, full of ramifications and controversy. Some future articles in this mini-series on American exceptionalism will delve at length into that issue and the related controversies. A promise. Among other things, we'd like to know whether it's desirable or undesirable
- that the US permits extensive gun ownership, the EU and Japan don't;
- or that we are the only country that elects all district attorneys and judges, directly at the local and state-levels, indirectly for federal posts;
- or that we have a death penalty in most states;
- or why it is that Americans, of all the industrial peoples surveyed every four years by the UN, show the most confidence in our police and the least worries about going out into public spaces.
As a final fleshing-out touch, some anecdotal observations about French life were added to the last article and put in theoretical perspective. For that latter purpose, the stimulating work of a French sociologist trained at the University of Chicago --- on its faculty for decades before he returned to France: Michel Crozier --- turned out to be highly relevant.
The French Health Catastrophe Last August
Oops, almost forgot to add, Richard: not only is your supposition about American social and medical services compared to the French sound, the French deuxieme chaine --- the television network beamed internationally every day --- specifically interviewed American authorities in New York and reported that a catastrophe on that level would be unthinkable here.
Posted by Michael Gordon @ 05:06 PM PST [ continue ]
Monday, January 19, 2004
Exchange with a visitor: Volunteer Work in the US, Comparatively Viewed
A frequent visitor, John --- a legal specialist --- posted a brief comment at the end of the previous buggy article on US Exceptionalism, "The Mini-series Resumes", that deserves to be singled out here and a brief reply.
From John
Prof Bug:
On the social spending/welfare front, while you touch on a strong American preference for charitable spending compared to Europe --- [roughly $650 per American, compared to 1/10th that in the EU, buggy clarification] --- you don't directly address American volunteerism, which contributes huge economic value, even if not in dollar terms, to social welfare here. And from what I've read, the level of volunteerism here just isn't comparable to any where else (and amazing considering how much Americans work).
The Buggy Reply
US Volunteer Work: 63 Million
Many thanks for the query, John. Yes, it is impressive --- about 63 million Americans doing volunteer work of one sort of another last year: about 29% of the population above 16 years in age. The definition of such activity is unpaid work for an organization that helps others for non-profit. That could be anything from leading a Boy Scout or Brownie group or volunteering to help a charity or helping a group that brings food to sick people or that takes older people to clinics or shopping. Young people often work with school or church-related groups to help other young people, especially disadvantaged ones. Helping at the Humane Society or an animal shelter is another example, as is organizing a neighborhood Community Chess drive or working a half day at a boy's or girl's club.
Civil Society and Voluntary Associations
vs. The Top-Down Authority of Statist Systems
Keep in mind that as far back as the mid-1830s, Alexis de Toqueville was struck by the large numbers of voluntary associations that he found flourishing all over the US during his travels: in cities, small towns, and villages. Despite his worries as a European aristocrat visiting the first society in the world with a strong democratic government, egalitarian tendencies (which would eventually lead to the civil war and the destruction of slavery), and powerful individualism that could, if excessive, atomize the sort of more organic society he was accustomed to, he believed that the ease with which Americans of all stripes could create these voluntary groups for common ends would offset the worst of these tendencies. In particular, he found that there were groups to fight alcoholism, to aid immigrants, to help orphan kids, to fight against slavery, to push for civic reform, and so on. "Americans
of all ages, all stations of life, and all types of dispositions are forever forming associations," he observed. " . . . Nothing strikes a European traveler in the United States more than the absence of what we would call government or administration. ... There is nothing centralized or hierarchic in the constitution of American administrative power."
There was, it's only fair to add, a clear didactic lesson for Europe and especially France, which was witnessing radical revolutionary tendencies once more --- starting in the upheavals of 1830 --- that was Tocqueville's major fear. As the bloody excesses of the French Revolution in the 1790s had shown, radicalism at the grass roots would, sooner or later, merge with the top-heavy bureaucratic statism of the ancien regime and create, as with Napoleonic France, an aggressive, militarized society that threw Europe into two decades of total warfare (Napoleon praised lavishly by hs latest fawning admirer, the French Foreign Minister de Villepin). For Toqueville the antidote lay in the barely developed nature of decentralized state like that in the US: a small, constitutionally limited central government, strong federalism, strong local government, and a vast network of socially based voluntary associations.
In contemporary terms, we would call this "civil society" --- a precondition of an effective democratic country, political activism and authority organized upward from a powerful social base, as opposed to a more dubious, state-dominated electoral democracy . . . almost always organized in a top-down manner as in much of Pacific Asia these days, including even a long-standing democracy like Japan. Russia and Ukraine are perhaps the best examples of electoral democracies
Definitional Ambiguites
Note that the definition of volunteerism set out a few moments ago says nothing about helping individually, outside an organization, and for non-family members. For instance, Nancy --- my wife, who works for a visiting nursing association as a paid professional on the weekends --- regularly and on her own visits the rest of the week an elderly single woman and an elderly couple who live on our dead-in street, to see how they're doing. Alternatively, a single lady at the end of the street regularly organizes meetings for the neighbors --- with the local police representative present --- to talk about common problems that the neighborhood faces. Her help is unpaid, of course, and yet it contributes to neighborly interchange and a common commitment to look after one another in certain areas, such as noise and burglarly and landscaping.
And the stats are for those 16 and older. There are millions more no doubt of youth under 16 who do volunteer work of various sorts too. I regularly see them, for instance, in front of stores seeking contributions for some school-related organization. Every Saturday, a couple of dozen wash cars in front of the Boy's Club across the street from the High School in order to raise money for its activities. Several times a year, members of various High School and Junior High School athletic teams can be found sweeping the streets around their schools.
For that matter, at the local high school in Santa Barbara, all students have to take at least one course in unpaid public service. Is this unique? It would be surprising if that were the case.
One other complication. Another site that tracks volunteer work mentions over 80 million Americans doing unpaid volunteer work. Specifically:
* These organizations are becoming Americas management leaders because of their strat- egy and effectiveness of their boards. These organizations are practicing, what most American businesses only preach. In the motivation they are giving to their volunteers and in the productivity of knowledge workers they "produce", they are practicing what businesses will have to learn.
* Statistically the nonprofit sector is Americas largest employer. Over 80 million people work as a volunteer. They work in average nearly five hours each week in one or more nonprofit organizations. This is equal to 10 million full-time jobs and if this where paid volunteers they would earn $150 billion.
From John
Prof Bug:
On the social spending/welfare front, while you touch on a strong American preference for charitable spending compared to Europe --- [roughly $650 per American, compared to 1/10th that in the EU, buggy clarification] --- you don't directly address American volunteerism, which contributes huge economic value, even if not in dollar terms, to social welfare here. And from what I've read, the level of volunteerism here just isn't comparable to any where else (and amazing considering how much Americans work).
The Buggy Reply
US Volunteer Work: 63 Million
Many thanks for the query, John. Yes, it is impressive --- about 63 million Americans doing volunteer work of one sort of another last year: about 29% of the population above 16 years in age. The definition of such activity is unpaid work for an organization that helps others for non-profit. That could be anything from leading a Boy Scout or Brownie group or volunteering to help a charity or helping a group that brings food to sick people or that takes older people to clinics or shopping. Young people often work with school or church-related groups to help other young people, especially disadvantaged ones. Helping at the Humane Society or an animal shelter is another example, as is organizing a neighborhood Community Chess drive or working a half day at a boy's or girl's club.
Civil Society and Voluntary Associations
vs. The Top-Down Authority of Statist Systems
Keep in mind that as far back as the mid-1830s, Alexis de Toqueville was struck by the large numbers of voluntary associations that he found flourishing all over the US during his travels: in cities, small towns, and villages. Despite his worries as a European aristocrat visiting the first society in the world with a strong democratic government, egalitarian tendencies (which would eventually lead to the civil war and the destruction of slavery), and powerful individualism that could, if excessive, atomize the sort of more organic society he was accustomed to, he believed that the ease with which Americans of all stripes could create these voluntary groups for common ends would offset the worst of these tendencies. In particular, he found that there were groups to fight alcoholism, to aid immigrants, to help orphan kids, to fight against slavery, to push for civic reform, and so on. "Americans
of all ages, all stations of life, and all types of dispositions are forever forming associations," he observed. " . . . Nothing strikes a European traveler in the United States more than the absence of what we would call government or administration. ... There is nothing centralized or hierarchic in the constitution of American administrative power."
There was, it's only fair to add, a clear didactic lesson for Europe and especially France, which was witnessing radical revolutionary tendencies once more --- starting in the upheavals of 1830 --- that was Tocqueville's major fear. As the bloody excesses of the French Revolution in the 1790s had shown, radicalism at the grass roots would, sooner or later, merge with the top-heavy bureaucratic statism of the ancien regime and create, as with Napoleonic France, an aggressive, militarized society that threw Europe into two decades of total warfare (Napoleon praised lavishly by hs latest fawning admirer, the French Foreign Minister de Villepin). For Toqueville the antidote lay in the barely developed nature of decentralized state like that in the US: a small, constitutionally limited central government, strong federalism, strong local government, and a vast network of socially based voluntary associations.
In contemporary terms, we would call this "civil society" --- a precondition of an effective democratic country, political activism and authority organized upward from a powerful social base, as opposed to a more dubious, state-dominated electoral democracy . . . almost always organized in a top-down manner as in much of Pacific Asia these days, including even a long-standing democracy like Japan. Russia and Ukraine are perhaps the best examples of electoral democracies
Definitional Ambiguites
Note that the definition of volunteerism set out a few moments ago says nothing about helping individually, outside an organization, and for non-family members. For instance, Nancy --- my wife, who works for a visiting nursing association as a paid professional on the weekends --- regularly and on her own visits the rest of the week an elderly single woman and an elderly couple who live on our dead-in street, to see how they're doing. Alternatively, a single lady at the end of the street regularly organizes meetings for the neighbors --- with the local police representative present --- to talk about common problems that the neighborhood faces. Her help is unpaid, of course, and yet it contributes to neighborly interchange and a common commitment to look after one another in certain areas, such as noise and burglarly and landscaping.
And the stats are for those 16 and older. There are millions more no doubt of youth under 16 who do volunteer work of various sorts too. I regularly see them, for instance, in front of stores seeking contributions for some school-related organization. Every Saturday, a couple of dozen wash cars in front of the Boy's Club across the street from the High School in order to raise money for its activities. Several times a year, members of various High School and Junior High School athletic teams can be found sweeping the streets around their schools.
For that matter, at the local high school in Santa Barbara, all students have to take at least one course in unpaid public service. Is this unique? It would be surprising if that were the case.
One other complication. Another site that tracks volunteer work mentions over 80 million Americans doing unpaid volunteer work. Specifically:
* These organizations are becoming Americas management leaders because of their strat- egy and effectiveness of their boards. These organizations are practicing, what most American businesses only preach. In the motivation they are giving to their volunteers and in the productivity of knowledge workers they "produce", they are practicing what businesses will have to learn.
* Statistically the nonprofit sector is Americas largest employer. Over 80 million people work as a volunteer. They work in average nearly five hours each week in one or more nonprofit organizations. This is equal to 10 million full-time jobs and if this where paid volunteers they would earn $150 billion.
Posted by Michael Gordon @ 05:00 PM PST [ continue ]
Friday, January 16, 2004
AMERICAN POWER PREDOMINANCE: The Series on US Exceptionalism Resumes
With this article, the buggy professor resumes a lengthy series on American Exceptionalism that stretches back in time to November of last year . . . even though, late at night when insomnia afflicts the buggy mind and it strains to focus blurry eyes on the computer monitor in front, the series seems to stretch back much farther than that, maybe to the start of the US civil war or possibly the War of 1812. Am I kidding? Not entirely. Time's always relative, no? To know that, you don't have to be Proust or Joyce probing a stream of consciousness . . . a turbulent onrush of memories, fantasies, longings, and fears, all jumbled and going bump, bump, bump as they collide against one another, your brain spinning away in confusion. Viewed from the whirligig of our mind at 3:00 in the morning, What's real, What's not? For that matter, amid one tipping self-illusion after another, are we much better at discerning the differences at 3:00 the next afternoon?
That fount of wisdom, Baghdad Bob, put it more simply: "In saying that, you're now too far from reality."
What Do We Mean By American Exceptionalism?
Essentially, this: how and why the US differs from other advanced industrial democracies on key indicators, especially the EU, political, cultural, and economic . . . for good or bad. In the first couple of articles in the series, to be more concrete, six traits that single out the US as noticeably different from the EU countries --- or for that matter, to an extent even from the other English-speaking federal countries, Canada and Australia --- were set out as our comparative guides. Given all the intervening buggy articles, they are trotted out for view in this article again, mainly to pick up the thread of the overall analysis. Several more articles will follow before the series reaches the home stretch and spots the final post ahead, never mind galloping past it once and for all.
Believe it or not, we are still spelling out the implications of the first trait --- a general mistrust of concentrated political power --- that has no equivalent elsewhere, for good or bad . . . and it isn't always for the good.
What, Still The First Trait In Play?
Yes, no help for it . . . or so it seems. Connoisseurs might remember why. As it turned out, the first two articles that spelled out the US's exceptional traits, then started to probe first one --- noticeable differences in political institutions : a strong federalism without parallel, a separation of powers at the center, judicial oversight of Executive and Congressional actions --- prompted several lengthy exchanges with buggy visitors, both Americans and non-Americans. A separate article was devoted to each of those exchanges, some in line with buggy views, others not: if you want to look at them, they are catalogued in the buggy archives on the side-bar to the left (click on American Politics and Economics, then scroll down to November and December 2003.)
Another thing then intervened in early and mid-December. Specifically, a long three-part series on the New Anti-Semitism in the EU was uncoiled . . . followed by a couple of articles (really, a response to a professor abroad unhappy with some earlier buggy views) on social constructivism as both an ideology and a social science methodology for making sense of human societies. Those two articles can be found in the philosophy section of the archives. As you can see by letting your gaze drift downward on this buggy home page, there have also been some articles on American foreign policy in the Bush era.
What Follows
The series now resumes, not that it won't likely be interrupted again by other articles . . . all depending on what's going on in the world, or what the buggy prof hears from others who visit our site . . . usually, as it happens, in direct email communication, or what swirls up out of the colliding thoughts and whirling confusion of the buggy mind at 3:00 in the morning. What follows first are some general stats about the US compared with the EU, China, and Japan . . . the potential power-rivals to the sole super-power status that the country now enjoys. Lots of other stats will figure in future articles, such as the relatively low governmental spending on social programs in the US . . . or for that matter, low spending of any sorts save on defense and education, two areas where the US turns out to be the high-roller among countries.
PART ONE: THE POWER POTENTIAL OF THE US AND POSSIBLE PEER RIVALS IN THE FUTURE
The following table brings out what is startling --- no other word for it --- about the American power lead over all other countries in the world, especially those that might figure one day as peer-rivals . . . whether friendly or not. When Hubert Vedrine, the French Foreign Minister at the time, wrote a book back in the late 1990s with Dominique Moisi, a Harvard-Ph.D. in IR, on France and global power, they referred to the US as a hyper-puissance: a hyper super-power. Strained as the term is, it does capture something unique about the global distribution of power: not since the Roman Empire dominated Europe, the Mediterrranean, North Africa, and the Middle East --- essentially, all it wanted to rule --- has there been a country that has achieved, for good or bad, the position of pre-eminence that the US enjoys.
Note: if anything, the following table understates the power gap. It doesn't set out the enormous intrusion, day-in, day-out --- welcome or unwelcome --- of American culture into the lives of all other peoples around the world.
COMPARATIVE POWER POTENTIAL
GDP and Per Capita Income are all converted to purchasing power parity and involve
estimates through the end of 2003.
Sources: EU, OECD, CIA WorldFactbook, Bureau of Economic Analysis, and World Bank
That fount of wisdom, Baghdad Bob, put it more simply: "In saying that, you're now too far from reality."
What Do We Mean By American Exceptionalism?
Essentially, this: how and why the US differs from other advanced industrial democracies on key indicators, especially the EU, political, cultural, and economic . . . for good or bad. In the first couple of articles in the series, to be more concrete, six traits that single out the US as noticeably different from the EU countries --- or for that matter, to an extent even from the other English-speaking federal countries, Canada and Australia --- were set out as our comparative guides. Given all the intervening buggy articles, they are trotted out for view in this article again, mainly to pick up the thread of the overall analysis. Several more articles will follow before the series reaches the home stretch and spots the final post ahead, never mind galloping past it once and for all.
Believe it or not, we are still spelling out the implications of the first trait --- a general mistrust of concentrated political power --- that has no equivalent elsewhere, for good or bad . . . and it isn't always for the good.
What, Still The First Trait In Play?
Yes, no help for it . . . or so it seems. Connoisseurs might remember why. As it turned out, the first two articles that spelled out the US's exceptional traits, then started to probe first one --- noticeable differences in political institutions : a strong federalism without parallel, a separation of powers at the center, judicial oversight of Executive and Congressional actions --- prompted several lengthy exchanges with buggy visitors, both Americans and non-Americans. A separate article was devoted to each of those exchanges, some in line with buggy views, others not: if you want to look at them, they are catalogued in the buggy archives on the side-bar to the left (click on American Politics and Economics, then scroll down to November and December 2003.)
Another thing then intervened in early and mid-December. Specifically, a long three-part series on the New Anti-Semitism in the EU was uncoiled . . . followed by a couple of articles (really, a response to a professor abroad unhappy with some earlier buggy views) on social constructivism as both an ideology and a social science methodology for making sense of human societies. Those two articles can be found in the philosophy section of the archives. As you can see by letting your gaze drift downward on this buggy home page, there have also been some articles on American foreign policy in the Bush era.
What Follows
The series now resumes, not that it won't likely be interrupted again by other articles . . . all depending on what's going on in the world, or what the buggy prof hears from others who visit our site . . . usually, as it happens, in direct email communication, or what swirls up out of the colliding thoughts and whirling confusion of the buggy mind at 3:00 in the morning. What follows first are some general stats about the US compared with the EU, China, and Japan . . . the potential power-rivals to the sole super-power status that the country now enjoys. Lots of other stats will figure in future articles, such as the relatively low governmental spending on social programs in the US . . . or for that matter, low spending of any sorts save on defense and education, two areas where the US turns out to be the high-roller among countries.
PART ONE: THE POWER POTENTIAL OF THE US AND POSSIBLE PEER RIVALS IN THE FUTURE
The following table brings out what is startling --- no other word for it --- about the American power lead over all other countries in the world, especially those that might figure one day as peer-rivals . . . whether friendly or not. When Hubert Vedrine, the French Foreign Minister at the time, wrote a book back in the late 1990s with Dominique Moisi, a Harvard-Ph.D. in IR, on France and global power, they referred to the US as a hyper-puissance: a hyper super-power. Strained as the term is, it does capture something unique about the global distribution of power: not since the Roman Empire dominated Europe, the Mediterrranean, North Africa, and the Middle East --- essentially, all it wanted to rule --- has there been a country that has achieved, for good or bad, the position of pre-eminence that the US enjoys.
Note: if anything, the following table understates the power gap. It doesn't set out the enormous intrusion, day-in, day-out --- welcome or unwelcome --- of American culture into the lives of all other peoples around the world.
| Population Millions | GDP $ Trillions | Per Capita Income $ | Per Capita As % of US | Military Spending $ Billions | Nuclear Power | |
| USA | 280 | 11.3 | 37,800 | 100.00 | 390.0 | yes |
| EU 15 | 380 | 10.1 | 25,000 | 67.0 | 120.0 | no |
| China | 1300 | 6.4 | 5,500 | 15.0 | 70.0 | yes |
| Japan | 120 | 3.7 | 28,100 | 71.0 | 46.0 | no |
| Germany | 80 | 2.1 | 26,200 | 69.0 | 24.0 | no |
| France | 60 | 1.6 | 26,300 | 69.0 | 35.0 | yes |
| Britain | 60 | 1.6 | 26,000 | 69.0 | 37.0 | yes |
| Italy | 60 | 1.4 | 25,200 | 67.0 | 21.0 | no |
GDP and Per Capita Income are all converted to purchasing power parity and involve
estimates through the end of 2003.
Sources: EU, OECD, CIA WorldFactbook, Bureau of Economic Analysis, and World Bank
Posted by Michael Gordon @ 09:58 PM PST [ continue ]
Tuesday, January 13, 2004
THE BUSH REVOLUTION IN FOREIGN POLICY
The Bush record in foreign policy --- a polarizing force in US politics, as well as in West Europe and elsewhere --- follows a similar course of pushing ahead amid sharp, fully predictable criticisms and backlashes that the other two periods of revolutionary changes in American strategy and diplomacy have provoked since WWII:
When, in the course of those pressures, the Gorbachev-led Soviet Union was then willing to wind down the cold war, Reagan shifted course and helped steer it toward an end . . . even as the forces unleashed in the Soviet empire that Gorbachev couldn't control, very much the contrary, led to its quick self-destruction in 1991: one more brutal totalitarian system that had emerged in the 20th century, the mass murder of tens of millions of people on its bloody hands, buried forever in the trash-can of history.
BUSH FLAYED BY HIS OPPONENTS TOO, AT HOME AND ABROAD
Like Truman and Reagan, who were excoriated personally by their political opponents --- by the right in Truman's case, by the left in Reagan's --- President Bush has been assaulted at home and abroad as a ninny, a menacing loose-cannon, a chronic liar, a demagogue, and a danger to American prestige, influence, and alliances. Red-Ken, the Mayor of London, went so far this last November, when Bush visited the UK, to dub him the single biggest menace to the survival of humankind in all of history. In the EU, especially on the Continent, it's doubtful if that's an idiosyncratic view. In the Arab media, the rhetorical assaults are more abusive still: Bush, we learn, is a tool of a Jewish neo-conservative cabal, he's a play-thing in the hands of the secretive, more menacing World-Jewish Puppet-Masters, and he has dared to challenge Arab taboos . . . including a clear snub to the despotic, corrupt Palestinian Authority, not to mention toppling the worst of the Arab dictators, Saddam Hussein, and instituting a dreaded transformation of post-Saddamite Iraq. [Remember here: all the Arab media are state-controlled save for those satellite channels like Al-Jazeera, and none of the despots in the other 21 Arab countries will voluntarily go out of business in favor of any contagious democratic fall-out from Iraq in the next few years. Just the contrary.]
Being Hated
Has Bush been attacked more viciously than Truman or Reagan --- or for that matter Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1930s? No, that's doubtful.
All three were hated by their opponents at home and abroad, all three were written off as fools or worse, and if there's any difference these days, it's in the kinds of communications open to the haters and opponents in the 21st century: the Internet, cable TV, satellite transmissions, and endless TV commentating . . . some intelligent, most of it simpleminded or uninformed or, in the case of the EU media, simply full of incompetent, blatantly biased reporters save in London and one or two other places in West Europe. Those who think, for instance, that the mass demonstrations in Britain last fall against Bush --- or earlier when he visited Europe in June 2001 --- are unique or even unusual know nothing about either what happened when Reagan visited West Europe in 1983 or Nixon visited Latin America in the late 1950s as Eisenhower's Vice President. For that matter, Eisenhower himself had to cancel a visit to Japan because the government there, faced with millions of hostile demonstrators, couldn't guarantee his safety.
Is this surprising?
Super-powers are never loved. Never. Even among the populations of allies --- especially talky elites --- envy and resentments are bound to be at work, just as they are in the lives of most people everywhere in their relations with others. Not least, especially given the enormous power of the US and the constant intrusions of American culture into the daily lives of billions of people around the world, the self-image of the elites in the EU or elsewhere is at stake. For two thousand years, for good or bad, there's never been such a lopsided distribution of power across countries: economic, technological, military, and cultural. Two thousand years ago? Yes, back to the Roman Empire. Nothing comparable for practically two millenium until the end of the cold war in 1990-1991. Fortunately, governments themselves have more concrete tasks to grapple with in their relations with the US. Specifically,
A Theoretical View
These positive changes --- set out in detail later on --- can be illuminated theoretically. In particular, international relations specialists distinguish three alternative policies for dealing with more powerful countries:
- The Truman era 1945-1952, with its radical series of containment policies, rearmament, stationing of bases abroad, and the creation of NATO, followed by the Korean war and a shift to a nuclear-based strategy of deterrence and war-fighting that was fleshed out by the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations;
- The Reagan era 1981-1989, with its attack on detente with the Soviet Union worked out by the EU and the Carter administration as a cover for American retreat and Soviet advances globally --- plus its fast-paced rearmament, shift to offensives against Communist governments or Soviet allies in Central America, Africa, and Asia, and its determination to push ahead with a space-based anti-missile program --- all with an aim to bringing to a head the weaknesses and other problems that marked clear global overstretch on the part of the Soviet empire.
When, in the course of those pressures, the Gorbachev-led Soviet Union was then willing to wind down the cold war, Reagan shifted course and helped steer it toward an end . . . even as the forces unleashed in the Soviet empire that Gorbachev couldn't control, very much the contrary, led to its quick self-destruction in 1991: one more brutal totalitarian system that had emerged in the 20th century, the mass murder of tens of millions of people on its bloody hands, buried forever in the trash-can of history.
BUSH FLAYED BY HIS OPPONENTS TOO, AT HOME AND ABROAD
Like Truman and Reagan, who were excoriated personally by their political opponents --- by the right in Truman's case, by the left in Reagan's --- President Bush has been assaulted at home and abroad as a ninny, a menacing loose-cannon, a chronic liar, a demagogue, and a danger to American prestige, influence, and alliances. Red-Ken, the Mayor of London, went so far this last November, when Bush visited the UK, to dub him the single biggest menace to the survival of humankind in all of history. In the EU, especially on the Continent, it's doubtful if that's an idiosyncratic view. In the Arab media, the rhetorical assaults are more abusive still: Bush, we learn, is a tool of a Jewish neo-conservative cabal, he's a play-thing in the hands of the secretive, more menacing World-Jewish Puppet-Masters, and he has dared to challenge Arab taboos . . . including a clear snub to the despotic, corrupt Palestinian Authority, not to mention toppling the worst of the Arab dictators, Saddam Hussein, and instituting a dreaded transformation of post-Saddamite Iraq. [Remember here: all the Arab media are state-controlled save for those satellite channels like Al-Jazeera, and none of the despots in the other 21 Arab countries will voluntarily go out of business in favor of any contagious democratic fall-out from Iraq in the next few years. Just the contrary.]
Being Hated
Has Bush been attacked more viciously than Truman or Reagan --- or for that matter Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1930s? No, that's doubtful.
All three were hated by their opponents at home and abroad, all three were written off as fools or worse, and if there's any difference these days, it's in the kinds of communications open to the haters and opponents in the 21st century: the Internet, cable TV, satellite transmissions, and endless TV commentating . . . some intelligent, most of it simpleminded or uninformed or, in the case of the EU media, simply full of incompetent, blatantly biased reporters save in London and one or two other places in West Europe. Those who think, for instance, that the mass demonstrations in Britain last fall against Bush --- or earlier when he visited Europe in June 2001 --- are unique or even unusual know nothing about either what happened when Reagan visited West Europe in 1983 or Nixon visited Latin America in the late 1950s as Eisenhower's Vice President. For that matter, Eisenhower himself had to cancel a visit to Japan because the government there, faced with millions of hostile demonstrators, couldn't guarantee his safety.
Is this surprising?
Super-powers are never loved. Never. Even among the populations of allies --- especially talky elites --- envy and resentments are bound to be at work, just as they are in the lives of most people everywhere in their relations with others. Not least, especially given the enormous power of the US and the constant intrusions of American culture into the daily lives of billions of people around the world, the self-image of the elites in the EU or elsewhere is at stake. For two thousand years, for good or bad, there's never been such a lopsided distribution of power across countries: economic, technological, military, and cultural. Two thousand years ago? Yes, back to the Roman Empire. Nothing comparable for practically two millenium until the end of the cold war in 1990-1991. Fortunately, governments themselves have more concrete tasks to grapple with in their relations with the US. Specifically,
- In friendly countries, the ways these tasks are handled reflect a better appreciation of where there interests lie.
- In hostile countries, above all since the toppling of Iraq's brutal dictatorship, something else is under way, a series of positive changes: bluntly put, they reflect a better grasp in Syria, Iran, Libya, North Korea, and elsewhere --- including the divided Saudi royal leaders, involved in a typical palace-struggle for power and loot --- of what the consequences can be of defying the US too sharply . . . particularly in security matters and when faced with a determined White House.
A Theoretical View
These positive changes --- set out in detail later on --- can be illuminated theoretically. In particular, international relations specialists distinguish three alternative policies for dealing with more powerful countries:
Posted by Michael Gordon @ 05:26 PM PST [ continue ]
Sunday, January 11, 2004
The Beneficial Fall-Out of the Bush Administration's Diplomacy and Military Policies
All the following sources and their links, clarified to one degree of another by some buggy commentary, should help you have a better understanding of the fundamental political and cultural roots of the war on terrorism behind the various kinds of extremist Islamo-fundamentalisms --- whether Shiite or Sunni --- and their bursting hot-wire support for mass-homicidal terrorism of the Al Qaeda, Taliban, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, and Hamas sorts . . . now spreading rapidly in Indonesia and the Philippines as well as parts of Central and South Asia. The latter are areas where Islam has essentially been moderate and accommodating. That's no longer the case. No less worrying, the same surging extremism shows up in the tropical African countries with large Islamic populations like Nigeria, especially in the north: traditionally moderate and tolerant, the population in that country has changed beyond recognition. There and elsewhere, fundamentalist rage and frustrations have become rampant and homicidal on a growing scale, leading, in Nigeria alone, to mass-murder of Christians and others as well as hundreds of firebombings of Christian churches . . . almost all caused by rampant, raging mobs.
The Challenges
When you're finished looking through the commentary and the links to other articles, you'll have something else too: a good working idea of the reasons for the blasting xenophobia, racism, and anti-Western sentiment --- the three hanging together --- that have gripped much of the Arab world, with Nazi-like Jew-hatred now part of popular street culture across the Arab countries. For the latter, see the four buggy articles on this subject ---- complete with documentation and survey data (to the extent it exists) --- discussed again and linked to half way through the comments that follow. By contrast, as the second of Thomas Friedman's NY Times articles linked to in a moment shows, Turkey --- 70 million people, almost all Muslims, who are now governed by a democratic system and the only moderate fundamentalist movement in Islam --- shows none of these paranoid pathologies: no Jew hatred, no antagonism to the West (just the contrary), and considerable sentiment in favor of Turkey's staying in NATO and joining the EU. Turkey is also the only constitutional secular state in all the Middle East
Turkey As A Model
Turkey's success --- the only effective democracy among Islam's 1.3 billion people (Bangladesh is a far more distorted electoral democracy, and Malaysia with 35% of its population Chinese and Indian has been governed by a demagogue in a semi-dictatorial regime for two decades, who just retired), and a country with an economic future --- underscores a major aim as well of the Bush administration: to prod massive transforming changes throughout the 22 Arab countries: all are governed by corrupt, nepotistic despotisms and secret-police rule, all are economic basket-cases (including the oil-rich ones), and all are caught up in the full blast of a menacing population explosion. The exception to despotic tyranny is now post-Saddamite Iraq. Right now, the 22 Arab countries number about 300 million people: 3/4 the total population of the EU. Half are under 15. A quarter or more of all men are unemployed. Illiteracy is the worst in the world . . . worse even than in much poorer tropical Africa. In two decades, they will number 500 million, and without massive change, there will be tens of millions of frustrated, resentful men without jobs or a future who will be easy prey for Islamo-fascist overtures . . . including suicidal terrorism in many instances.
For all the obstacles, will the 22 Arab states and neighboring Iran ever begin a series of transforming changes to deal with these challenges? One side of the answer: on their own, not a chance in the world. The other side: under sustained American pressure, a mixture of carrots and sticks --- plus the fall-out in the Arab world if post-Saddamite Iraq emerges as a stable consensual society with prospects for economic development --- maybe, just maybe.
THE ANSWER ELABORATED, AND BUSH SUCCESSES
Tersely put, the outcome hinges in large part on what happens in occupied Iraq. Already, though, we are seeing some benefits throughout the region and further afield:
The Challenges
When you're finished looking through the commentary and the links to other articles, you'll have something else too: a good working idea of the reasons for the blasting xenophobia, racism, and anti-Western sentiment --- the three hanging together --- that have gripped much of the Arab world, with Nazi-like Jew-hatred now part of popular street culture across the Arab countries. For the latter, see the four buggy articles on this subject ---- complete with documentation and survey data (to the extent it exists) --- discussed again and linked to half way through the comments that follow. By contrast, as the second of Thomas Friedman's NY Times articles linked to in a moment shows, Turkey --- 70 million people, almost all Muslims, who are now governed by a democratic system and the only moderate fundamentalist movement in Islam --- shows none of these paranoid pathologies: no Jew hatred, no antagonism to the West (just the contrary), and considerable sentiment in favor of Turkey's staying in NATO and joining the EU. Turkey is also the only constitutional secular state in all the Middle East
Turkey As A Model
Turkey's success --- the only effective democracy among Islam's 1.3 billion people (Bangladesh is a far more distorted electoral democracy, and Malaysia with 35% of its population Chinese and Indian has been governed by a demagogue in a semi-dictatorial regime for two decades, who just retired), and a country with an economic future --- underscores a major aim as well of the Bush administration: to prod massive transforming changes throughout the 22 Arab countries: all are governed by corrupt, nepotistic despotisms and secret-police rule, all are economic basket-cases (including the oil-rich ones), and all are caught up in the full blast of a menacing population explosion. The exception to despotic tyranny is now post-Saddamite Iraq. Right now, the 22 Arab countries number about 300 million people: 3/4 the total population of the EU. Half are under 15. A quarter or more of all men are unemployed. Illiteracy is the worst in the world . . . worse even than in much poorer tropical Africa. In two decades, they will number 500 million, and without massive change, there will be tens of millions of frustrated, resentful men without jobs or a future who will be easy prey for Islamo-fascist overtures . . . including suicidal terrorism in many instances.
For all the obstacles, will the 22 Arab states and neighboring Iran ever begin a series of transforming changes to deal with these challenges? One side of the answer: on their own, not a chance in the world. The other side: under sustained American pressure, a mixture of carrots and sticks --- plus the fall-out in the Arab world if post-Saddamite Iraq emerges as a stable consensual society with prospects for economic development --- maybe, just maybe.
THE ANSWER ELABORATED, AND BUSH SUCCESSES
Tersely put, the outcome hinges in large part on what happens in occupied Iraq. Already, though, we are seeing some benefits throughout the region and further afield:
- Afghanistan has a new constitution and a working consensual political system;
- Colonel Khadaffi has given up his weapons of massive destruction and is seeking to end his isolation;
- Iran's clerical fascists --- who steadfastly denied having a nuclear program despite 2 decades of so-called EU engagement --- have recently agreed to international inspections.
- Syria's blood-soaked, bankrupt Baathist party system --- modeled like Baathist Iraq under Saddam on European fascism of the interwar period --- has agreed to direct talks with the Israelis to deal with the problem of the occupied Golan Heights.
- The major European countries except Russia have agreed recently to write off all or most of Iraq's debts
- Meanwhile, the corrupt, nepotistic Palestinian Authority --- Yasser Arafat, a billionaire (not least owing to EU subsidies whose EU Commission in charge admitted last year to the EU Parliament that they have no way of monitoring the billions given to the PA) --- remains isolated and discredited, thanks to the Bush administration's initiatives.
Posted by gordongordomr @ 05:31 PM PST [ continue ]
Wednesday, January 7, 2004
Political Science 129: The US, Europe, and Asia, and the War On Terrorism
Ordinarily, the buggy prof doesn't mix buggy stuff with political science lectures and syllabi, all of them dealing with international relations: theory, security matters, political economy, US foreign policy, and the domestic influences across countries that affect their foreign policies. The main exceptions, fleshed out from the very schematic outlines the buggy prof sketches out and memorizes for classroom pyrotechniques, are those lecture-topics that seem of more general interest . . . at any rate, to the buggy mind. Does this syllabus for a junior-senior class on US-Asian-European Relations in the War on Terrorism fit this category? At first sight, no: far from it. But then, while yanking weeds in his garden with such persistence and force that the blood-flow to the buggy prof's sluggish, slowly deteriorating brain was quickly upped ten-fold, it dawned suddenly on my energized mental powers that all the activated internet links to the readings on the web, in the dozens and possibly over a hundred, might be worth offering to visitors here.
Over a hundred? Who counts, except lackluster students looking desperately for a course with 99 readings . . . even if the lecturer lacks a bugged-out sense of humor?
Political Science 129: THE US, EUROPE, AND ASIA
AND THE WAR ON TERRORISM
Course Aims
This year, our course will focus almost entirely on US foreign policy and the war on terrorism, viewed and studied in a ranging, far-flung manner. In particular, we will grapple with these ambitious and closely related topics:
What underpins the US sole superpower role? Will Others Rival It Soon, say the EU or China?
What is the Bush revolution in US foreign policy since 9/11, and what is the nature of criticisms at home and abroad?
What is American exceptionalism: unrivalled wealth, power, and influence, and how these generate inevitable backlash criticisms?
What is the war on terrorism about: the new Islamo-extremist varieties, the clash of civilizations inside the Arab and wider Muslim worlds, what Islamist fundamentalism amounts to, what the US can or can't do about this, and what the new anti-Semitism in the Arab countries add up to. How does the war to topple Iraq and reconstruct it as a viable consensual society --- the only one in the Arab world (all 21 other Arab countries are despotic tyrannies, run ultimately by the secret police and differing mainly in brutality) --- fit into the wider war on terrorism? Can the US succeed? What are the repercussions for the US in its relations with the EU, NATO, Russia, and others?
How does the war to topple Saddam influence the rest of the Middle East, including the Israeli-Arab conflict, Syria, Iran, and Saudi Arabia?
Course Requirements:
There will be a mid-term at the end of the third week, January 22nd. It will cover the first part of the syllabus on the Bush revolution in US foreign policy --- pros and cons, US and foreign views, partisan reactions at home --- and we will hand out study questions for it next week. A 9-11 page paper will be assigned that same week: it will cover the readings and lectures in Parts II and III and due at the start of the 6th week, February 10th or so. A second mid-term will be held at the end of the 8th week, February 24th or 26th, all depending on where we are in the course then; again, study questions will be handed out in advance. A final exam covering the entire course will also have study questions in advance.
Over a hundred? Who counts, except lackluster students looking desperately for a course with 99 readings . . . even if the lecturer lacks a bugged-out sense of humor?
Political Science 129: THE US, EUROPE, AND ASIA
AND THE WAR ON TERRORISM
Course Aims
This year, our course will focus almost entirely on US foreign policy and the war on terrorism, viewed and studied in a ranging, far-flung manner. In particular, we will grapple with these ambitious and closely related topics:
What underpins the US sole superpower role? Will Others Rival It Soon, say the EU or China?
What is the Bush revolution in US foreign policy since 9/11, and what is the nature of criticisms at home and abroad?
What is American exceptionalism: unrivalled wealth, power, and influence, and how these generate inevitable backlash criticisms?
What is the war on terrorism about: the new Islamo-extremist varieties, the clash of civilizations inside the Arab and wider Muslim worlds, what Islamist fundamentalism amounts to, what the US can or can't do about this, and what the new anti-Semitism in the Arab countries add up to. How does the war to topple Iraq and reconstruct it as a viable consensual society --- the only one in the Arab world (all 21 other Arab countries are despotic tyrannies, run ultimately by the secret police and differing mainly in brutality) --- fit into the wider war on terrorism? Can the US succeed? What are the repercussions for the US in its relations with the EU, NATO, Russia, and others?
How does the war to topple Saddam influence the rest of the Middle East, including the Israeli-Arab conflict, Syria, Iran, and Saudi Arabia?
Course Requirements:
There will be a mid-term at the end of the third week, January 22nd. It will cover the first part of the syllabus on the Bush revolution in US foreign policy --- pros and cons, US and foreign views, partisan reactions at home --- and we will hand out study questions for it next week. A 9-11 page paper will be assigned that same week: it will cover the readings and lectures in Parts II and III and due at the start of the 6th week, February 10th or so. A second mid-term will be held at the end of the 8th week, February 24th or 26th, all depending on where we are in the course then; again, study questions will be handed out in advance. A final exam covering the entire course will also have study questions in advance.
Posted by Michael Gordon @ 07:51 PM PST [ continue ]
Saturday, January 3, 2004
EU Social Conflicts and Violence: Letter Bombs Target Top EU Officials. Just The Beginning
Little did I suspect that within days of finishing a mini-series of three articles on surging anti-Semitism in the EU --- its root causes found, essentially, in a welter of strung-out, highly unwelcome changes in EU economies and welfare spending and in the backlash social conflicts and search-for-scapegoats they're provoking --- that the buggy predictions of growing, politically charged strife and violence would find immediate vindication: specifically, a surge of political assassinations, or attempts at them anyway, directed at three top-tier EU officials. What follows is a brief effort at illuminating the latest politically inspired violence, seen against the backdrop of those three earlier buggy articles.
The violent outbursts in question? Political terrorism. Four letter bombs were sent to Romano Prodi, the President of the executive EU Commission, to the new French head of the Eurobank, and to the head of the EU agency in charge of police co-operation. For Prodi, the latest letter bomb was by now a chronic event. Earlier this week, two other bombs were set off in garbage cans near his house. The terrorist perps? According to the Italian police, the letter bombs came from Bologna, a city notorious for housing wild left-wing ultras . . . some involved, it seems, in organized murderous terrorism of Red-Brigade notoriety back in the 1970s and 1980s. Apparently, too, some neo-fascists seem to prefer life in Bologna as well. Must be the brain-damaging water in the pipes there.
The return to political assassination in West Europe isn't entirely new. Two years ago, a law professor in Rome --- chosen by the new Premier Silvo Berlusconi to draw up legislation to reform the tightly regulated labor markets in the country --- was killed by a terrorist. About the same time, the Dutch populist leader, Pim Fortuyn, was murdered in the midst of an electoral campaign . . . this in a country rightly renowned until then for its tolerance and devotion to human rights. If political murder can occur in Holland, it can break out anywhere in the EU. Come to that, Basque terrorists have been killing people for decades in Spain, and in France, Corsican terrorists have been doing the same for years now. Four years ago, a firebomb of a MacDonald's in Britanny killed a French worker. In Northern Ireland and Britain, IRA-inflicted terrorism --- also decades old --- has fortunately come to an end, and maybe for good.
The violent outbursts in question? Political terrorism. Four letter bombs were sent to Romano Prodi, the President of the executive EU Commission, to the new French head of the Eurobank, and to the head of the EU agency in charge of police co-operation. For Prodi, the latest letter bomb was by now a chronic event. Earlier this week, two other bombs were set off in garbage cans near his house. The terrorist perps? According to the Italian police, the letter bombs came from Bologna, a city notorious for housing wild left-wing ultras . . . some involved, it seems, in organized murderous terrorism of Red-Brigade notoriety back in the 1970s and 1980s. Apparently, too, some neo-fascists seem to prefer life in Bologna as well. Must be the brain-damaging water in the pipes there.
The return to political assassination in West Europe isn't entirely new. Two years ago, a law professor in Rome --- chosen by the new Premier Silvo Berlusconi to draw up legislation to reform the tightly regulated labor markets in the country --- was killed by a terrorist. About the same time, the Dutch populist leader, Pim Fortuyn, was murdered in the midst of an electoral campaign . . . this in a country rightly renowned until then for its tolerance and devotion to human rights. If political murder can occur in Holland, it can break out anywhere in the EU. Come to that, Basque terrorists have been killing people for decades in Spain, and in France, Corsican terrorists have been doing the same for years now. Four years ago, a firebomb of a MacDonald's in Britanny killed a French worker. In Northern Ireland and Britain, IRA-inflicted terrorism --- also decades old --- has fortunately come to an end, and maybe for good.
Posted by Michael Gordon @ 12:45 PM PST [ continue ]