Professional Documents
Culture Documents
THE MISMEASURE OF INEQUALITY KIP HAGOPIAN & LEE E. OHANIAN OBAMA AND ROMNEY: THE PATH TO THE PRESIDENCY JON DECKER THE FOLLY OF FORGETTING THE WEST SIMON SERFATY THE ENVIRONMENTALISTS DILEMMA STEVE STEIN ALSO: ESSAYS AND REVIEWS BY JOHN ROSENTHAL, A. LAWRENCE CHICKERING & ANJULA TYAGI, PETER BERKOWITZ, WILLIAM ANTHONY HAY, HENRIK BERING
A P u b l i c at i o n o f t h e H o ov e r I n s t i t u t i o n
s ta n f o r d u n i v e rs i t y
POLICY Review
AUGUST & S EPTEMBER 2012, No. 174
Features
3 THE MISMEASURE OF INEQUALITY Focus on equal opportunity, not outcomes Kip Hagopian & Lee E. Ohanian 21 OBAMA AND ROMNEY: THE PATH TO THE PRESIDENCY What each candidate must do to win in November Jon Decker 35 THE FOLLY OF FORGETTING THE WEST What the talk about American and European decline misses Simon Serfaty 49 THE ENVIRONMENTALISTS DILEMMA Making the perfect the enemy of the good Steve Stein 63 AMERICA, GERMANY, AND THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD The contested history of a mosque in Munich John Rosenthal 79 THE GLOBAL SCHOOLGIRL How empowerment can build up society A. Lawrence Chickering & Anjula Tyagi
Books
95 THE CONSTITUTION AND GLOBALIZATION Peter Berkowitz on Taming Globalization: International Law, the U.S. Constitution, and the New World Order by Julian Ku and John Yoo 100 THE GREAT WARS ECONOMIC FRONT William Anthony Hay on Planning Armageddon: British Economic Warfare and the First World War by Nicholas A. Lambert 105 WAR PAINT Henrik Bering on The Artist and the Warrior: Military History through the Eyes of the Masters by Theodore K. Rabb
A P u b l i c at i o n o f t h e H o ov e r I n s t i t u t i o n
s ta n f o r d u n i v e rs i t y
POLI CY Review
Au g u s t & S e p t e m b e r 2 0 1 2 , N o . 1 7 4
Subscription information: For new orders, call or write the subscriptions department at Policy Review, Subscription Fulfillment, P.O. Box 37005, Chicago, il 60637. Order by phone Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Central Time, by calling (773) 7533347, or toll-free in the U.S. and Canada by calling (877) 705-1878. For questions about existing orders please call 1-800-935-2882. Single back issues may be purchased at the cover price of $6 by calling 1-800-935-2882. Subscription rates: $36 per year. Add $10 per year for foreign delivery. Copyright 2012 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University.
E d i t o r i a l a n d b u s i n e s s o f f i c e s : Policy Review, 21 Dupont Circle nw, Suite 310, Washington, dc 20036. Telephone: 202-466-3121. Email: polrev@hoover.stanford.edu. Website: www.policyreview.org.
n october 2011, the Congressional Budget Office published a report, Trends in the Distribution of Household Income between 1979 and 2007, showing that, during the period studied, aggregate income (as defined by the cbo) in the highest income quintiles grew more rapidly than income in the lower quintiles. This was particularly true for the top one percent of earners. This cbo study has been cited by the media and politicians as confirmation that income inequality has increased substantially during the period studied, and has been used to support President Obamas claim that income inequality is a serious and growing problem in the United States that must be addressed by raising taxes on the highest income earners. We will show that much of what has been reported about income inequality is misleading, factually incorrect, or of little or no consequence to our economic well-being. We will also show that middle-class incomes are not stagnating; in fact, middle-class incomes have risen significantly over the 29 years covered by the cbo study. Lastly, we will address assertions that the rich are not paying their fair share of taxes.
Kip Hagopian was a co-founder of Brentwood Associates, a California-based venture capital and private equity firm. Lee E. Ohanian is professor of economics and director of the Ettinger Family Program in Macroeconomic Research at ucla , where he has taught since 1999 . He is also a senior fellow at Stanfords Hoover Institution.
August & September 2012 3 Policy Review
Income inequality
erhaps the most important question left out of almost every discussion about income inequality is, Why should we care about it? Many of those who worry about high income inequality argue that it is an indicator of social injustice that must be remedied through redistribution of income (or wealth). Unfortunately, those who make this claim have not provided any generally accepted criteria for determining when an economic system is unjust. Nor have they provided a convincing argument that such injustice is widespread in the U.S. (In considering this issue, it is worth noting that Greece, Spain, and Italy all have substantially lower income inequality than the U.S. The same is true for Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Bangladesh.) Measuring inequality using the Gini coefficient. There are at least five methodologies used to measure income inequality. The most commonly used is the Gini coefficient (also called the Gini index) developed by Italian statistician Corrado Gini. The Gini coefficient is a method of measuring the statistical dispersion of (among other things) income, consumption, and wealth. The figure of merit for the Gini coefficient for income inequality ranges from zero to 1.0, where zero represents total equality (all persons have identical incomes) and 1.0 represents total inequality (one person has all of the income). By this measure, the U.S. has substantially higher income inequality than almost all other industrialized nations. In 2010, the Census Bureau reported that the U.S. Gini coefficient was .469, while the average Gini coefficient for the 27 European Union nations was .31.1 The U.S. Gini coefficient cited here comes from an annual report of the Census Bureau, which uses what it calls money income in its measurement of income inequality.2 Money income, which is the definition of income typi1. Gini coefficients cited here come from the Census Bureau report Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2010, The cia World Factbook 2010, and Eurostat, the official statistical office of the European Union. 2. Money income is the first of fifteen definitions of income used by the Census Bureau. .
Policy Review
5. For more, see http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/data/historical/measures/rdi5.html and http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/cpstables/032010/rdcall/1_000.htm (these and subsequent weblinks accessed July 2, 2012).
4. The ten percent rise in income inequality is an estimate that excludes a 4.8 percent off-trend jump in the Gini coefficient between 1992 and 1993, caused primarily by a change in the way data were collected. This change in methodology biased the Gini calculation upward, leading the Census Bureau to warn that the periods before and after 1993 should not be compared.
Policy Review
The headline news from the cbo report was that the income of the top one percent of earners grew 278 percent, and that income in the higherincome quintiles grew more than income in the lower quintiles. But the study also showed that during the period reviewed, aggregate income grew 62 percent; income in the middle three quintiles grew just under 40 percent; income in the middle quintile grew 35 percent; and even the lowest quintile grew 18 percent. In our view, these growth rates are worst-case, inasmuch as we believe the cbos figures have understated real income growth during the period. Note that these data are inflation adjusted using the Consumer Price IndexUrban-Research Series (cpi-u-rs) methodology, which many economists believe overstates inflation. For two major reasons, we along with many economists consider the Personal Consumption Expenditure Deflator (pce) a more accurate measure of inflation.8 First, the cpi is based on the pricing over time of a fixed market basket of goods. It does not account for the fact that households routinely substitute out goods when their prices rise relative to other goods of comparable utility. For example, a consumer may substitute apples for bananas when the price of bananas rises relative to the price of apples. In this example, the cpi would overstate inflation because it would assume that consumers would still buy the same number of bananas at the higher price. In contrast, the pce takes these substitution effects into account. Second, the cpi measures only prices paid by urban consumers, while the pce measures the prices of all consumption goods, wherever they are purchased. Since lower-income households tend to live disproportionately in non-urban areas, the exclusion of their purchases by the cpi further biases the index toward overstating inflation and, in this case, understating income growth. Income growth using the pce is presented below along with the cbo data.
7. The CBO defines income for the October 2011 report as market income (labor income, business income, capital gains and other capital income, and retirement income received from past service), plus transfer payments, less taxes.
8.The cpi-u-rs is constructed by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, while the pce is constructed by the Bureau of Economic Analysis and is used to measure gross domestic product. Both price indices are widely used to deflate consumption expenditures for the purpose of measuring real income (see http://www.minneapolisfed.org/publications_papers/pub_display.cfm?id=4049). We note that the Federal Reserve seems to have shifted focus from the cpi to the pce for some of the same reasons we identify (see http://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/hh/2000/February/FullReport.htm).
If we are right that the pce is the more accurate measure of inflation, then real income growth during the period was significantly higher than reported by the cbo. When inflation is adjusted using the pce, real income growth in the first quintile was 40 percent higher, growth in the middle quintile was 24 percent higher, and growth in the fifth quintile was 8.6 percent higher. Thus, the cpi has not only understated real income growth but has overstated the rise in the level of income inequality. The impact of globalization on income inequality. It is noteworthy that the income growth in the U.S. during 1979 to 2007 was achieved in a time of rapid globalization and technological change in the world economy. Globalization, which effectively is a breaking down of trade barriers, has put upward pressure on income inequality in most of the industrialized nations as the production of goods and services has migrated to countries with lower labor costs. While this process has raised living standards in developing countries, it has reduced jobs or suppressed wages in many developed countries. As a result, many of these nations have experienced an increase in income inequality. A 2011 study from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development reported that from the mid-1980s to the late 2000s, income inequality increased in seventeen of the 22 oecd countries for which longterm data series are available.9 Seven of the most advanced oecd economies Canada, Finland, Germany, Israel, Luxembourg, New Zealand, and Sweden experienced greater increases in inequality than the U.S.
Policy Review
11. Data on U.S. gdp growth are from the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Data on g-7 (ex-U.S.) growth are from oecd.stat.
here does not appear to be a clear consensus among economists as to why inequality in the U.S. is higher than in other industrialized nations. There are many factors that contribute to income inequality, at least two of which are common to all countries and are unalterable. They are: differences in individual ability and preferences (defined as the capacity and desire to earn) and differences in age (this latter factor is currently in evidence in the U.S., as 80 million aging baby-boomers are passing through their peak earnings years). As discussed above, a third influence on inequality in almost all countries during the last 30 to 40 years has been globalization. In addition to these common factors, we believe there are several factors specific to America that have put upward pressure on income inequality. Some have enabled certain segments of the population to earn extraordinary incomes, and some have caused certain segments to lag behind Extraordinary incomes at the top. The most influential factors enabling the growth in incomes in the U.S. appear to be:
Greater economic freedom: Despite increasing infringements on U.S. economic freedom in recent years, Americas lower aggregate taxes, less stringent regulation, and more business-friendly economic environment have made the U.S. the most productive nation in the world and a place where more people can become rich, or even super rich, than in other countries. A highly developed entrepreneurial culture: During the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, huge waves of self-selected individualists braved enormous perils to come to America for a better life. It can be argued that entrepreneurship, if not actually in the dna of most Americans, is at a minimum a strong component of the nations cultural heritage. The electronics revolution: We believe that the invention of the integrated circuit by Robert Noyce and Jack Kilby in 1958 ignited a modern version of the 19 th century Industrial Revolution, which has been unparalleled in history. This revolution, which has given us first the microprocessor and ultimately the Internet, along with thousands of other remarkable technological advances and offshoots, has raised living standards and quality of life for much of the world population.
12 Policy Review
Yes, these factors have combined to produce massive wealth for a few but have also contributed to raising incomes for most. Suppression of incomes at the low end. In addition to globalization and technology, another important factor putting downward pressure on incomes in the U.S. has been the substantial influx of low-skilled, lowincome immigrants into the U.S. workforce over the past 30 years. But as noted at the beginning of this essay, we and others believe that an even more important cause of lagging incomes in America is inequality of opportunity. There is considerable debate over what impedes equality of opportunity. Many assert that institutional racism and sexism is a major factor; others argue that the political system is rigged in favor of corporations and the rich. These explanations seem to have as many detractors as they have advocates. But one cause of lagging incomes on which there is broad agreement is Americas substandard k-12 education system. We believe that a solution to this problem would do more to reduce income inequality and increase prosperity than any other public policy fix. Have tax cuts increased inequality? A common claim is that the rate cuts for capital gains and dividends under President Clinton together with President George W. Bushs cuts in marginal rates and further cuts in capital gains and dividend rates raised income inequality. But the evidence does not support that claim, inasmuch as the Gini coefficient for comprehensive income during the period 19932009 (the period in which almost all of the Bush and Clinton tax cuts took effect) did not change. A plausible explanation for this is that the Bush tax cuts reduced taxes on people with lower incomes more than it did on people with higher incomes. For example, under Bush, the lowest marginal rate, 15 percent, was lowered to 10 percent (a 33 percent reduction), while the highest marginal rate, 39.6 percent, was lowered to 35 percent (a 12 percent reduction). In addition, under Bush, the child credit doubled and the earned-income-tax credit increased significantly, further reducing the tax obligations of lower-income earners.12 This has almost certainly contributed to the increase in workers who pay no federal income tax, which now totals about 47 percent of tax filers. Is the increase in the ranks of the super rich a problem? Much of the
12. The eitc is now the largest cash transfer program for lower-income workers. See Hilary Hoynes, The Earned Income Tax Credit, Welfare Reform, and the Employment of Low-Skilled Single Mothers (University of California Davis, 2008 ).
13
13. See Kip Hagopian, The Inequity of the Progressive Income Tax, Policy Review 166 (April-May 2011). An unabridged version is available at www.kiphagopian.com.
14
Policy Review
The U.S. income tax system is, by any measure, quite progressive. In fact, according to a study released in 2008 by the oecd, the U.S. federal income tax system is the most progressive of any of the 24 countries in the oecd24, which includes Canada, Japan, Australia, and all of the richest European nations: Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland, Luxembourg, and Sweden. In fact, the U.S. progressivity index is 22 percent higher than the average for the 24 countries.15 Are payroll taxes regressive? Many of those who assert that the rich dont pay their fair share contend that both the Social Security and Medicare tax systems are regressive, and that the regressiveness of these systems substantially or wholly offsets the progressiveness of the federal income tax system. But studies show that both systems are themselves progressive. Payroll taxes are collected for the express purpose of providing income supplements and medical care during retirement. In the case of Social Security, income is taxed proportionately up to a cap that is currently set at $110,100. Those who assert that the tax is regressive argue that the cap results in a decline in taxes paid as a percentage of income as income rises above the cap. But this argument omits two relevant facts: the amount of each beneficiarys Social Security income at retirement is also capped; and higher-income workers get less back as a percentage of their contributions than lower-income workers do. Moreover, Social Security income is subject
14. The data on shares of income and taxes are from Summary of Latest Federal Individual Income Tax Data (The Tax Foundation, October 2011). 15. Growing Unequal? Income Distribution and Poverty in oecd Countries (oecd, 2008), 106.
15
16
Policy Review
In its report, the cbo makes the standard assumption that the incidence of each federal tax is entirely borne by the individual or organization reporting the income. Aconceptually superiorapproach would be to estimate how the incidence of these various federal taxes indirectly impacts different income earners beyond the direct effect reported by the cbo. For example,our view is that only about 50 percent of the corporate tax is borne bycapital, and the rest is borne by labor, consumers,and other stakeholders through lower wages and cash flows.Since there are no generally accepted estimates of tax incidence across these taxes, this adjustment is beyond the scope of this essay.Suffice it to say, we believe that the cbos basic conclusion is correct: Higher-income earners pay higher rates of tax when all federal taxes are taken into account. Taxing income from capital is both economically inefficient and inequitable. The current discussion about the Buffett Rule highlights the
August & September 2012 17
e are unaware of persuasive evidence that reducing income inequality will increase economic well-being for the majority of citizens; in fact, Americas superior standard of living and economic growth relative to other advanced economies is evidence to the contrary. For arguably the most commonly used measure of inequality and for the Census Bureaus most comprehensive definition of income, inequality has not risen since 1993. Moreover, the rise in income inequality that occurred before that year appears to have been, at least in part, a byproduct of the remarkable success of a group of entrepreneurs who in the past few decades created countless jobs and contributed substantially to the higher living standards we all currently enjoy. Increasing taxes on Americas most productive earners those who create most of the jobs in our economy will depress economic growth and reduce opportunities for the less fortunate. Rather than focusing on income
18 Policy Review
Equality of opportunity
19
ts certain to be the most expensive presidential race on record and its shaping up to be one of the closest as well. With less than three months until Election Day, the campaigns of President Barack Obama and his Republican challenger, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, are each figuring out which path will lead them to 270 electoral votes and the keys to the White House. For Team Obama, the strategy for these last remaining months of campaigning remains unchanged: convince undecided voters that the administrations policies have helped the country make progress while simultaneously painting Mitt Romney as an out-of-touch Wall Street fat cat who will return the country to the economic policies of President George W. Bush. Unlike the Obama/McCain race four years ago, in which then-Senator Obama could run a largely positive campaign on a message of hope and change, this
Jon Decker, a media fellow at the Hoover Institution, covers the White House for Siriusxm s potus Channel. He has been a member of the White House Press Corps since 1 9 9 5 and serves as an adjunct professor of journalism at Georgetown University.
August & September 2012 21 Policy Review
Jon Decker
campaign has been overwhelmingly negative. As a senior Obama campaign advisor told Politico in August of last year, Unless things change and Obama can run on accomplishments, he will have to kill Romney. Mitt Romneys strategy to get to 270 essentially boils down to the very effective line that Ronald Reagan used against President Jimmy Carter in the 1980 presidential campaign: Are you better off now than you were four years ago? As a senior Romney strategist told me in mid-June, This is an election about the state of the U.S. economy. Were focused on issues relating to job creation and deficit reduction. We feel were in a strong position to make this election a referendum on the economy and how President Obama has managed it. Although there are stark differences in the way each side views the state of the U.S. economy, there are two key things that both campaigns readily acknowledge: President Obama is unlikely to expand the electoral map the way he did in 2008; and this campaign, unlike the Obama/McCain race, is going to be close and very competitive.
Jon Decker
tion. The model for Team Obama is President Ronald Reagans reelection campaign in 1984. Like President Obama, Reagan also dealt with an economic recession and high unemployment early in his first term. But there are some major differences between the economic playing fields for both presidents. In November of 1984 the U.S. unemployment rate stood at 7.2 percent. But leading up to Election Day, voters had the sense that the economy was improving, as the jobless rate steadily fell from 10.8 percent in December 1992 and eight percent in January 1984. Additionally, in June of 1984, President Reagans approval ratings according to Gallup stood at 54 percent. Thats much higher than the 45 percent that Gallup has for President Obama at this writing. Perhaps recognizing that the economy is not the issue that is their strong suit heading into Perhaps seeing November, the White House has tried to change the that the economy subject. In a clever move that immediately put foris not a winning mer Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney on the defensive and knocked him off-message, President issue, the White Obama in early June issued an executive order that allows around 800,000 illegal immigrants those House has under the age of 30 who came to the United States done its best as children, if they meet certain conditions to to change the remain in the country without fear of deportation. The temporary order also allows them to work. The subject. president in a Rose Garden address said the changes would make immigration policy more fair, more efficient and more just. But coming less than five months before the presidential election, the action reeks of politics. Not only does the temporary order reverse President Obamas previous position that he lacked the authority to effectively do a dream Act end-run around Congress, but the move was clearly aimed at consolidating Latino support in such battleground electoral states as Florida, Nevada, Colorado, Virginia, and New Mexico. Beyond the battleground states, the executive order should also help the presidents standing with the nearly 22 million Hispanics who are eligible to vote in 2012. It may also help increase Obamas share of the Hispanic vote from the 67 percent that he received in 2008. Prior to the announcement, President Obama had been criticized by Hispanic-American leaders for an overall increase in deportations of illegal aliens in recent years. But the benefits that President Obama may receive from his sudden reversal on his illegal immigration policy are likely to be short-lived. Governor Romney, in a mid-June speech to naleo, a group of Hispanic elected and appointed officials, pledged to build his own long-term solution that will replace and supersede the presidents temporary measure on illegal immigration. Further undercutting the presidents political advantage, unemployment among Hispanics is eleven percent higher than the national average.
24 Policy Review
hile numerous polls indicate that the race for the White House appears very close nationally, a close examination is necessary of the electoral college, which is where a presidential race is actually decided. The 2012 electoral map is likely to be very different from the one that won President Obama the keys to the White House. Thanks to victories in Indiana, North Carolina, Florida, and traditionally Republican Virginia, President Obama turned the 2008 Electoral Map into a sea of blue. The Obama/Biden ticket handily defeated McCain/Palin 365 173. Not only was it an Electoral College landslide, it was the best performance by a Democrat in a presidential election in decades. Unlike 2008, the 2012 election will likely be highly competitive. With unemployment nationally stuck above eight percent, consumer confidence continuing to decline, and the economic recovery slowed, President Obamas re-election path is much more difficult than his route four years ago. Although much can change over the next few months, its already possible to begin filling in the electoral map based on recent polls for each state, discussions with campaign advisors and state party leaders, and historical trends including how the state voted in 2008. Advisors to both campaigns have described to me the multiple pathways they see to get to the magic number of 270. Not surprisingly, Team Obama and Team Romney see the map very differently when it comes to the socalled battleground states and also as it relates to a few states that most Democratic strategists would call reliably blue. What both sides do agree on is that President Obama is unlikely to win any state that Senator John McCain won in 2008. In addition, Obama is unlikely to win again the lone congressional district in Nebraska that he added to his electoral total four years ago. Finally, because of the 2010 census numbers, states carried by President Obama in 2008 will lose a net total of six electoral votes, thus adding six votes to the McCain 2008 column. Recent polls and discussions with state party leaders also indicate that President Obama is unlikely to keep Indiana and North Carolina in his column in November. All of this
August & September 2012 25
Jon Decker
means that Mitt Romney begins his quest for the White House with 206 electoral votes. For President Obama, his reelection battle plan starts with 201 electoral votes. But from there, getting to 270 (and beyond) appears easier than Mitt Romneys path. Still, there are 10 states representing 131 electoral votes that both sides see in the toss-up category. Both campaigns will devote a vast amount of resources to these states. What follows is an analysis of each of these battleground states, with a forecast of the likely outcome in November. Colorados nine electoral votes were firmly in Barack Obamas column four years ago, as the senator from Illinois won the state by a comfortable nine-point margin. This election cycle, President Obama will not have it so easy. As of this writing, Over the past Obama leads the former Massachusetts governor by decade, the three points according to the RealClearPolitics.com average. Although surrounded by red (except for demographics New Mexico to the south), both campaigns consider of Colorado Colorado a swing state. Since 1992, Colorado has voted for Clinton, Dole, George W. Bush twice, and have changed Barack Obama in 2008. But over the past decade dramatically. the states demographics have changed dramatically. 20.7 percent of According to 2010 Census figures, the Hispanic or Latino population in Colorado now makes up 20.7 the state is percent of the population. In addition, Colorado has Hispanic/Latino. gained almost half a million independent voters just since the 2008 elections. Because it is such a pivotal swing state, both Mitt Romney and President Obama have lavished much attention on Colorado with campaign visits and plenty of campaign ads. Although unemployment climbed to 8.1 percent in May, Obama continues to maintain a sizeable lead among Hispanics, women, independents, and young voters. So despite the fact Romney is making the state much more competitive, Obamas a favorite to win the state again in November. For Mitt Romney, Florida is critical to his path to victory. Unlike Obama, who can actually afford to lose the Sunshine State and still get to 270, Romneys path to 270 must include Florida. With its 29 electoral votes, Florida is seen by both campaigns as a pivotal battleground state. President Obama won the state in 2004 by just 2.5 percent over John McCain. But much has changed in four years: Florida has a Republican governor, a newly-elected Republican senator (who is on the short-list as Romneys vice presidential pick), and Republicans retain control of the state House and Senate. But this is by no means a solid red state. President Obama has worked assiduously over the last four years to increase his hold on Florida. His recent executive order easing U.S. deportation policy was aimed in part at widening his sizeable lead over Romney among Floridas Latino population. Still, most polls indicate this state will be a toss-up. According to a
26 Policy Review
Jon Decker
Michigan hasnt voted for a Republican in a presidential election since 1988. Four years ago, John McCain effectively ceded the state to Barack Obama, who won by a comfortable 16.5 percent margin. Surprisingly, given President Obamas bailout of General Motors and Chrysler, recent polls show a very tight race between President Obama and Romney, who grew up in the Detroit suburb of Bloomfield Hills as the son of a former governor. One reason for the virtual dead heat an 8.5 percent unemployment rate and a sputtering economy. Another reason is that many independent Michigan voters who enthusiastically supported Barack Obama four years ago have soured on him. Its this group of independents who helped propel Republican Rick Snyder to victory in his run for governor just two years ago. For Team Obama, winning Michigan and its sixteen electoral votes is critical in their path to 270. Turn on the tv For Mitt Romney, its a state that the campaign views as part of a second tier of battleground states in Nevada and that even senior advisors privately acknowledge youd think would be difficult to win. Still, by campaigning in the presidential Michigan it forces President Obama and his Democratic supporters to spend valuable resources election was that they would prefer to use elsewhere. While the in three days, polls may be close in May and June, this is a state not three months. that President Obama will likely win in November. Turn on the tv in Nevada and youd think the presidential election was in three days, not three months. Nevada on the surface looks like a perfect state for the Romney campaign to turn from blue to red. With an unemployment rate of 11.6 percent in May, the nations highest home foreclosure rate, and the highest bankruptcy rate, President Obama clearly has his work cut out for him. But Team Obama is counting on support from the same impressive Democratic machine that registered 100,000 new voters in 2008 to help Obama win Nevada by 12.5 percent. That same organization also helped Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid win reelection comfortably in 2010 a year when Republicans had impressive gains across the rest of the country, including Nevadas governorship. More problematic for the Romney campaign is that the state has continued to trend blue since George W. Bush won it in both 2000 and 2004. According to the Nevada secretary of states office, registered Democrats outnumber registered Republicans 41 percent to 37 percent. Also helpful to President Obamas reelection efforts is the increasing role that Latino voters play in the state. According to the Pew Research Center, there are 224,000 eligible Hispanic voters in Nevada, comprising 13.5 percent of the electorate the sixth highest percentage in the country. This demographic more than any other was critical to helping reelect Harry Reid to the U.S. Senate in 2010 and tipping the state in favor of Barack Obama in 2008. One wildcard in the battle to win Nevadas six electoral votes is the unanimous decision in mid-July by the House Ethics
28 Policy Review
Jon Decker
part of the state, and Mr. Romney had been to the state nine times, including his own bus trip to Brunswick, Troy, and Newark in June. Obama campaign aides are calling Ohio a toss-up acknowledging that the states 7.3 percent unemployment rate in May has made the presidents reelection message a tough sell. The close nature of the race in Ohio is one reason that Rob Portman, the states junior U.S. senator, is often mentioned as a possible running-mate to Romney. Portmans status as the most popular statewide elected official in Ohio could help tip the balance to Romney. Even without Portman on his ticket, Romneys message as an economic Mr. Fix-it should play well in this rust-belt state. Blue-collar white voters predominate in the state, and President Obama has struggled to win them over. In addition, President Obamas public approval rating dipped to 44 percent in Ohio in July according to Public Policy For Obama, Polling, a weak showing for an incumbent president getting to 270 hoping to keep Ohio blue. For President Obama, getting to 270 almost almost requires requires a win in Pennsylvania, a state he carried by a win in a comfortable 10.3 percent margin in 2008. This election cycle, Pennsylvania, which holds twenty Pennsylvania, electoral votes, will almost certainly be a lot closer. which holds Although Republicans call the Keystone State a tosstwenty electoral up, no Republican presidential candidate has won the state since 1988. However, with a Republican votes. governor and control of both the state House and Senate, the Romney campaign believes that Pennsylvania is a true swing state in 2012. The hard numbers tell a different story. Mr. Obamas lead over Mitt Romney was nearly eight percent in Pennsylvania in mid-July, according to a RealClearPolitics.com average of presidential polls in the commonwealth. A primary reason for that is Mr. Obamas sizable 12-point advantage among women voters. Mr. Romney has made numerous trips to Pennsylvania including a bus trip to the state in June. But perhaps recognizing that winning the state will be an uphill battle if not a stretch, the Romney campaign as of mid-July had not yet begun advertising in the state. While there is no great love for President Obama (his approval rating, according to a late June Quinnipiac poll, was at 45 percent), the numbers are even worse for Mitt Romney. Pennsylvania, despite a 7.3 percent June unemployment rate, will likely remain blue in November. In 2008, Barack Obama did what no Democratic Presidential candidate had done since 1964 win the Commonwealth of Virginia. His victory over John McCain by 6.3 percent was built on a coalition of college-educated whites, youth voters, Hispanics, and African Americans. That coalition, the Obama campaign concedes, has frayed a bit over the past four years. And as a result, recent polls indicate that the election in Virginia in November will be a tight one. In mid-July, President Obama led Mitt Romney in a RealClearPolitics.com average of presidential polls in Virginia
30 Policy Review
Jon Decker
either state puts him over the top. Should Mr. Romney go two for two in these battleground states, hed eke out a 272-266 victory, which would be one of the closest elections in U.S. history.
33
he idea of decline is in fashion so much so that a socalled geopolitics of emotions proposes to map the world around each regions expectations about its own future: helpless and resigned in the West but hopeful and domineering in the East, and resentful and even vengeful in the South. Yet, it should be clear that the emergence of new powers, which is real, need not be construed as the fall of others. Admittedly, a state no longer needs a Western identity to exert global influence and even seek primacy: That alone represents a compelling change. It suggests that for the first time in quite a while the West is no longer decisive and can no longer remain exclusive. But still, entering this new era, the West stays ahead of the rest because the rest cannot afford to be without the West.
Simon Serfaty is professor of U.S. foreign policy at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia. The Zbigniew Brzezinski chair (emeritus) in Global Security and Geopolitics at the Center for Strategic & International Studies, he also serves as senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund in Washington, D.C. Some of his most recent books include Vital Partnership (2005 ) and Architects of Delusion (2008). His next book is A World Recast (2012 ).
August & September 2012 35 Policy Review
Simon Serfaty
This essay is, therefore, a case against the case against the West: Somewhere in the shadow of Francis Fukuyamas much-maligned forecast of the endpoint of mankinds ideological evolution there stands a Western world restored.1
Farewell to yesteryear
ntering the second decade of the 20th century one hundred years ago there were 50 countries at most; few of them were dubbed great powers, and those that qualified as world powers were mostly European states. This was a Western world whose dominance had deepened while India and China far in the East, and Turkey at the margin of the West, fell steadily behind. This was a belle poque a time when, as Simon Schama wrote, Rudyard Kiplings fantasy was potent magic that helped conquer empires in the morning and gather home for tea in the afternoon. This also looked like a good time to be alive until the summer of 1914 when a horrific and unnecessary war that was to last over three decades made it a good time to die. We were born at the beginning of the First World War, wrote Albert Camus of his generation. As adolescents we had the crisis of 1929; at twenty, Hitler. Then came the Ethiopian war, the civil war in Spain and Munich . . . Born and bred in such a world, what did we believe in? Nothing. This, feared (or hoped) the French humanist, was humanitys zero hour. That the West stayed on top nonetheless, amidst the ruins of the entire European state system, was owed to a massive investment of American power and leadership that inaugurated a post-European world around a triumphant America with the consent of its new charges. Thus told, and without imperial intent from the United States, the history of the 20th century grows out of the rise of American power but also, and especially, the collapse of everybody else. Entering the second decade of the 21st century the past looks very distant like a millennium away. It seems hard to remember, but in the previous epoch, the nation-state ruled and military force prevailed, leaving the weak at the mercy of the strong. This was an epoch of state coercion and national submission, of conquests and empires; this was an epoch, too, when time took its time, and territorial space kept its distance. In the new era, there is little time for a timeout from a world that brings ever more quickly the over there of yesteryear over here. Nation-states are fading, and institutions occasionally matter more than their members. Territorial overlaps impose additional measures of state cooperation but they also facilitate a global awakening to the better things available elsewhere and, there1. Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (Free Press, 1992). This essay draws on some of the themes developed in the authors A World Recast (Rowman & Littlefield, forthcoming in 2012).
36
Policy Review
2. Robert A. Pastor, ed., A Centurys Journey: How the Great Powers Shape the World (Basic Books, 1999), 333334. 3. As quoted by Dean Acheson in Fragments of my Fleece (W.W. Norton & Company, 1971), 82.
37
Simon Serfaty
although not a crossroads since there is no other way: To deny the unfolding reconfiguration of power and insist that there is no power to cede and no influence to share would soon lead to a sure historical dead end. At the crossing, the point of maximum pressure is not external but internal. The trip into a new, post-Western order will be more chaotic if the West loses its assurance and cohesion. On both sides of the Atlantic, such a risk is discernible and even growing. Too much doubt among Europeans about the United States, as well as about each other; and too much doubt among Americans about themselves, but also about the states of Europe, is an invitation to seek alternatives elsewhere for the United States outside Europe, and for the states of Europe beyond their union. That would be repeating in the 21st century the fatal mistake that Europe made after 1919 when it attempted to keep going on its Forget about own and without its newly rediscovered partner the so-called New across the Atlantic. Admittedly, after several decades World and bury of renewed intimacy Americans and Europeans are getting tired of each other. But alternatives to their the allegedly Old union would be worse far too demanding, much Europe: At last less rewarding, and certainly less comfortable. America can be more of a trans-Pacific power withthese clichs out turning into less of a transatlantic partner, and Europe can engage Russia or renew its Asian vocahave run their tion without turning its back on the Atlantic. course. Forget about the so-called New World, then, and bury the allegedly Old Europe: At last these clichs have run their course. In truth, America has been young for too long and a new Europe has been growing older long enough. By now, both are at the same advanced age when sulking turns into a bad habit and bonding looks like a bad instinct, when slowing down ceases to be a choice and memory lapses reflect a lack of interest and a shortage of attention when a resignation to relative decline is explained as overdue maturity and can even pass for serenity. But they have not reached retirement age, and giving up is not an option. Rather, as Americans and Europeans look back, the historical reality they uncover is that the time behind has been used well and is a powerful motivation for moving forward together. In the 2010s, the disassociation of the Euro-Atlantic alliance or the disintegration of the eu would hurt each state on both sides of the Atlantic, and would help no other state elsewhere: If not the United States with the states of Europe, with whom; if not the states of Europe as a union, how? Cynicism, wrote George Santayana, is the chastity of the intellect, and it is shameful to surrender it too soon or to the first comer. At the risk of being cynical, so it is with primacy: Save it while you can until losing it when you must. The good news is that it is under conditions of existential crisis that Western societies are most capable to find the will to resist and change. Thus, the West produced all kinds of leaders during the past century. In
38 Policy Review
Simon Serfaty
cal comedy litalienne but without the dolce vita, and India, increasingly dysfunctional, meanders as a heavy economic elephant moving on the delicate political legs of a panda. This is not a moment when leaders find it easy to do better; but this is a moment when citizens find it difficult to not do worse. While the West is said to be racing to the bottom, races to the top are run by the rest at the expense of the many at the bottom. In China, hundreds of millions of people have been taken out of poverty. For the most part, however, this means that they can eat now, and they can even read, write, and count some, and preferably also speak a few words of English. But they cannot grow out of their few-dollars-a-day factory jobs, which they enter at age fifteen, as a life sentence from which there will be no parole for most of them until they get too old or too sick, whichever comes first. As an aggregate, the Chinese economy is the worlds second largest with the worlds biggest consumption of Western luxury goods; for its citizens it does not rank among the top 100, with a gdp per capita about a fifth that of Greece and behind Albania still a long way from Western luxury. For India, catching up with China seems beyond reach from life expectancy and infant mortality to education and health. But for most of these basic societal indicators, how to explain Indias difficulties in keeping up with Bangladesh? Meantime, Russia is astray: historically defeated, politically recast, and geographically reconfigured since the Cold War, it is showing the dna of a failing state. This is a demandeur state, admittedly too close to be ignored and too big to be offended as a power in Europe (though not a European power), but too distinctive and insufficiently capable to be effective as a power in the world (let alone a world power).
Simon Serfaty
dismiss Indias capacity to live up to its potential while relying on Pakistans potential to weaken Indias capacity further. The Indians like to be taken seriously, and President Clinton may have been the first Western leader to fully understand that need and act accordingly. The Chinese are less worried and would prefer to not be bothered so long as their trading routes remain opened and their identity respected including a territorial integrity about which they are likely to remain most intransigent. In short, keep on watching, there and elsewhere. No verdict can be expected for a while the jury is still out, and many hung juries are likely to be heard before any final judgment can be rendered on the final form of a post-Western world. This is what Dean Acheson used to call a Scottish verdict Not proven yet.
Simon Serfaty
done now, when? If the baton of Western leadership has not been passed on yet, the way it was handed to the United States by the states of Europe several lifetimes ago, it is because no one is ready to take it. The 20th century was not only, or even primarily, about the rise of the United States and its power, but also, and arguably mainly, about the collapse of all others. Over the period, moving the power count down from many to one and now zero, has meant that even the more powerful states find it necessary to share the burdens of global responsibilities with others, preferably like-minded but most of all capable and also relevant. In a zeropolar moment there is too much to do for any state or institution to do it alone, however powerful it might be, and there is nothing that can be done alone which could not be done more effectively and at a lesser cost with others, however irresistible the temptation of unilateral action may be. The imperial use of a national we has ceased to be practical. But even the definition of what a collective we might be is questioned for its restrictions on whom is to be included: Everywhere the need for enlargement is compelling: Why include Russia in a quartet for the Middle East and not Turkey?; why single out India for a permanent seat in the Security Council of the United Nations and not Brazil?; why is there so much of Europe in the governing body of the International Monetary Fund and so little China? For all emerging powers and new influentials, exclusion is no longer acceptable.
A Sarajevo moment
hile awaiting the new multipolarity it is time for the rest of the world to get serious about America and the West, just as it is equally time for the West to get serious about the rest of the world. In this decisive period of strategic uncertainties, economic austerity, and political foolishness, that seriousness is not always apparent. The geopolitics of power may have given the West too much time for imperial control, but the geopolitics of emotions is giving the rest too much premature satisfaction. Hear one of Asias leading strategists, Kishore Mahbubani, declaring the Western era over a few years ago: Ironically, the death sentence was carried out in Libya for the intellectual smugness of the West, which, he wrote, had spent several decades working to bring down Qaddafi before coming to terms with him.4 Well, with Qaddafi gone, with a un-mandated, Western-managed, and nato-enforced send-off, who looks smug now? It is when dealing with China that the timidity of the Western powers is most troubling and comes to the edge of mendacity. Our advocacy of human rights, Vice President Biden told his Chinese hosts in the spring of 2011, or what we [Americans] refer to as human rights is at best an
4. Kishore Mahbubani, The New Asian Hemisphere: The Irresistible Shift of Global Power to the East (PublicAffairs, 2008), 111.
44
Policy Review
Simon Serfaty
for its rehabilitation as a power in the world must now learn anew how to speak European if it is to be heard as a world power. Predictably, that will demand an institutional finality without which Europe will be too weak to follow, let alone to lead, and in the absence of which the United States would have to recast the West in some other ways, outside nato and without the eu, or with other partners that might not be equally appealing and compatible. That would not be the fairytale ending that can give the post-Western world the stability it needs for the global order it seeks. Entering the 21st century, do not sell, therefore, the West short. It has adapted before from city-states to nation-states and now to member states and it can adapt some more. Adaptive capability, wrote political scientist John P. Lowell four decades ago, mean[s] those natural, material, human, and institutional The West has resources of the nation-state that comprise its potenadapted before: tial over an extended period of time for coping with from city-states present and foreseeable demands from the geopolitical environment, and for exerting a measure of conto nation-states trol over it. That is another attribute that defines the completeness of American power and the continto member ued preponderance of Western power. What is states, and it found among the emerging powers looks more like an adoptive capability, meaning the ability to adopt can adapt what is being done elsewhere. The label made in some more. China says it all, and Chinese President Hu Jintaos promise to change the label to created by China remains an empty boast. And so does, for that matter, Chinese resiliency, should the past 30 years of growing prosperity fail to be sustained or should current inequities fail to be reduced. By comparison, or for inspiration, consider Japan. As this country struggles to recover from its most devastating shock since August 1945, it is useful to remember the 1929 Kyoto earthquake, which caused a 29 percent loss of Japans nominal gdp. Less than fifteen years later this presumably crippled country invaded Manchuria and prepared for a devastating surprise attack on the United States and a war that caused a reported 86 percent level of damage, according to the Bank of Japan; yet, a generation later the new remade-in-the-usa Japan was challenging Americas economic supremacy. The capacity to adapt is also what characterizes Europe and its union. Selling it short would be a mistake as well, for this union is what emerged after all hopes had died, as we ought to remember, too. End the eu, and there will be nothing left to take its place which is why such an end, repeatedly announced as imminent, could never materialize. Over 40 years ago, in Europe: An Emerging Nation?, the German-born American political scientist Carl Friedrich was already dismissing an excess of clever talk about the end of European integration, about dead alleys, crises, and impending collapse. The story line of the skeptics tale has evolved over
46 Policy Review
Simon Serfaty
pacified, states were recast, and people were pampered. That goes for much of Europe but also for most of Central and South America, Africa whose states gained sovereign independence if not, or not yet, affluence and dignity, and Asia where hundreds of millions of people are waking up from their Western-induced long sleep into a changed world that the Western powers helped free and which they in turn will hopefully help make whole. Were Woodrow Wilson to come back to life and cast an eye on what has become of the world since he brought America back into it, he would be on the whole rather satisfied. The tedious climb that leads to the final uplands is taking more than the one generation or two forecast by Wilson, but early in the 21st century we stand closer to those great heights where there shines unobstructed the light of the justice of God than he envisioned one century, one millennium, one epoch ago. That the uphill climb ahead will still prove Sisyphean cannot be ruled out. For a bit of the world at least, there is a temptation to return to the old ways of history to be heard or prevail. That is what makes the current moment urgent, as well as pivotal. The collapse from euphoria to hysteria, between 1911 and 1914, did not take long. Unbeknownst to all, the long peace enjoyed for 99 years since 1815 had little time left. In a sense, after another long peace, lived in anguish during the Cold War, there is also little time left for another timeout as a post-Western world is remodeled and refurbished with Western help.
48
Policy Review
bout 40 miles southwest of Las Vegas, drivers on Interstate 15 reach a section of the Mojave desert called the Ivanpah Valley. For most travelers, the valley is a nondescript landscape of creosote bushes, cactus, and sand; but devotees of the desert sometimes leave the main road to see much more. The uninterrupted views of the surrounding mountains are especially crystalline on early spring mornings when unusual plant species like the Mojave Milkweed and the Desert Pincushion are in bloom. Several birds that nest in the valley, including the burrowing owl and the loggerhead shrike, have protected status under federal law, as does a reptile called gopherus agassizii, or desert tortoise. BrightSource Energy, a firm that plans to develop a 390-megawatt solar complex in the valley, has been counting the tortoises it would have to relocate in order to proceed with the project, and BrightSources census takers are finding far more than they, or anyone else, expected. Since the history of successfully relocating this tortoise is not encouraging, and since the small
Steve Stein is a writer and financial adviser in Marin County, California. He has written several articles on energy and trade policy for Policy Review.
August & September 2012 49 Policy Review
Steve Stein
reptile has an ever-growing cohort of protectors, BrightSource is no longer as sure as it once was that this project, at the scale proposed, will be feasible. Currently, the Bureau of Land Management has about twenty solar, wind, and geothermal projects under various stages of development review in the desert Southwest Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, and California and two more wind projects in Oregon. All of these face varying degrees of opposition from environmental groups. Some are also being contested by Native American tribes, whose objections are both environmental and cultural, in that some of the lands are considered sacred burial grounds. For environmental advocates of renewable and sustainable energy, their colleagues objections can be both nettlesome and embarrassing. The Mojave is ideally situated for solar development; Environmental these desert lands are bombarded with more of the suns rays than almost any place on earth, and that advocates of sunshine conveniently arrives at the perfect time to renewable and be converted to electricity to meet the peak power requirements of large nearby population centers: sustainable Las Vegas, Phoenix, San Diego, and the megalopolis energy can find that combines Riverside, Orange, and Los Angeles their colleagues counties. Since more than one million acres of the Mojave have already been excluded from such objections development by a law sponsored by U.S. Senator nettlesome and Diane Feinstein in 2009, projects like BrightSources become an even more important element in fulfilling embarrassing. Californias ambitious plan to obtain at least 30 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2020. Feinsteins original proposal was to exclude over 2.5 million acres, but that was scaled back in the face of opposition from unions who foresaw an enormous loss of construction jobs. But the same groups that encouraged the set-aside in 2009 organizations like the Nature Conservancy and the Audubon Society continue to push for further restriction of energy development on any public lands that come close to being in pristine condition. There is some irony in the fact that the main reason such lands are pristine is that they were unsuitable for any other kind of development. Except for their mostly newly discovered environmental sanctity, these desert areas would have been the cheapest land upon which to develop solar resources. In some locations, wind power can compete in the marketplace even without production tax credits, but solar still heavily relies on subsidies or renewable energy mandates to compete with fossil fuel. So, until renewables have become fully competitive in the marketplace, does the outcome of these struggles between environmental supporters and opponents of utility-scale projects really matter? The answer is surely yes. Geothermal, like wind power, is already competitive in many locations; meanwhile, solar energys costs are decreasingly fairly rapidly. The price of silicon the primary raw material in solar has
50 Policy Review
Steve Stein
hatever their misgivings, almost every major environmental organization is on record in support of almost all forms of renewable energy. The Friends of the Earth holds itself out as a particularly strong advocate of solar energy. Recently, the foe even threatened to sue the British government over planned reductions in its subsidies for rooftop solar panels. Then theres the Environmental Defense Fund, which reported with approval a 2008 Scientific American article that lays out a detailed plan for a massive switch to solar power, and notes that at least 250,000 square miles of land in the southwestern United States are suitable for solar power plants. Equally enthusiastic is the Natural Resources Defense Council, whose website says:
Massive concentrating solar-power plants will be built in the Southwest, providing clean electricity for millions of homes and businesses in the region. Californias Blythe Solar Power plant, the worlds largest, is expected to go online by 2013. According to Sandia National Labs, costs are expected to fall to about 5 cents per kilowatt-hour by 2020, a price competitive with those at new coal- or gas-fired power plants.
But on next page of that same nrdc website, doubts begin to appear. A section called Renewable Energy Meets Wildland and Wildlife Conservation says that Certain sensitive lands such as parks, monuments, and wildlife conservation areas and ecologically sensitive marine areas are not appropriate for energy development . . . nrdc does not endorse locating energy facilities or transmission lines in such areas. The oldest and possibly the most influential environmental organization is the Sierra Club. Its website also extols the virtues of wind, geothermal, and biomass, and shows particular enthusiasm for solar energy, which it describes as the cleanest, most abundant, renewable energy source available, and the U.S. has an ample and infinite supply of sun . . . Solar is not only clean, it is affordable. However, there is an ongoing dispute within the club; several of Sierras local chapters dont want large solar installations anywhere near them. Skeptical outsiders may see their environmental opposition as nimbyism in formal attire, but within the club its taken seriously. Events last year give a flavor of the controversy. In late 2010 Sierras board issued a memo declaring that After much deliberation, the Board of Directors made a difficult decision this week not to try to block BrightSource Energys Ivanpah solar project in the Mojave Desert. Then, in early 2011 Sierra filed a lawsuit against the nearby Calico Solar project. That suit eventually dismissed claimed that the developer had made insufficient efforts to mitigate damage
52 Policy Review
Sierras former executive director, Carl Pope, had some difficulty navigating the cross currents, even though he steered a careful path on such issues during his seventeen year tenure. Perhaps the Sierra Clubs board thought it could continue to finesse the conflicts between the national policy and local chapters interests by appointing a new executive director, Michael Brune, and naming Pope as chairman. However, Pope eventually resigned the chairmanship as well. Upon departing he observed, If we dont save the planet, there wont be any tortoises left to save. One of the Sierra Clubs most difficult decisions involved not solar power, but wind turbines. The Cape Wind project, off Cape Cod near Marthas Vineyard, divided not only environmental groups, but even families. At the national level, Sierra ultimately followed the Union of Concerned Scientists in supporting Cape Wind; Michael Brune called it a huge victory for clean energy. But that decision left deep scars within the local chapter, where opposition to the project was strong. Similarly, a Pennsylvania Sierra club has bitterly opposed ridge-top wind projects in the Allegheny Mountains. Throughout the country, the Sierra Club, Friends of the Earth, the League of Conservation Voters, and similar groups have members on both sides of particular renewable energy projects. But the ensuing conflicts reach well beyond the organizations, and catch all who seek rational energy solutions in an expensive crossfire. If science were the primary referee, such internal disputes would be mere speed bumps on the road to enlightened energy policy. Unfortunately, something deeper than scientific analysis is driving this process. What is cast as the need to protect the habitat of the desert wildflower or the views of residents of Marthas Vineyard really reflects a fundamental difference in values between two factions. Both put a high priority on the environment, but they do so in very different ways, and science may never resolve their differences. The first group is the preservationists; their godfather is the Sierra Clubs founder, John Muir, who made it his mission to remind his fellow man of the majesty of the wilderness, best exemplified by the Yosemite Valley. Some preservationists trace their roots back even further to Henry David Thoreau, whose retreat to Walden Pond to better appreciate nature in its unspoiled state is embedded in American mythology. When Thoreau emerged from his solitude, he penned lines like, We do not ride on the railroad; it rides upon us. Thoreaus words were amplified by the poetry of Ralph Waldo
August & September 2012 53
Steve Stein
Emerson and the romantic landscapes of the artists of the Hudson River School. The second group is the conservationists. They may share Muirs and Thoreaus appreciation of nature in the wild, but see the role of man differently. Whereas preservationists see science and industry as threats to the environment, conservationists believe that scientific and industrial progress must be the environments savior. Conservationists have their own historical figureheads, chief among them Gifford Pinchot and Theodore Roosevelt. As director of the National Forestry Service, Pinchot convinced the federal government to protect forests from the unsustainable logging practices allowed under lax or nonexistent regulation by the states. As a member of Roosevelts administration, Pinchot strongly influPreservationists enced the presidents decision to radically expand the national park system. see science and Pinchot and Muir were once great admirers of industry as each others work, but controversy flared between them when Muir read that Pinchot favored allowing threats; but sheep to graze in forests. When the two met in a conservationists Seattle hotel lobby in 1897, Muir demanded to know if this was true. When Pinchot confirmed that see progress as it was, Muir told him that he wanted nothing more the environments to do with him. Years later, much worse was to come. Pinchot eventual savior. strongly favored the plan to create a dependable source of drinking water for San Francisco by damming the Tuolomne River and creating a huge reservoir in the Hetch Hetchy Valley. As the scheme gained momentum, Muir was beside himself. The Hetch Hetchy was as beautiful and wondrous as Yosemite, and he thought destroying it by flood was environmental sacrilege. Muir and his Sierra Club allies fought the project for years, but the OShaughnessy Dam (named for the San Francisco engineer who supervised the project) was finally completed in 1923. The Hetch Hetchy controversy continues to this day. Every few years brings a new campaign to dismantle the dam and let the valley return to its natural state. Some, including Sierras Pope, have argued that proposals to remove the dam are often politically motivated attempts to divide the environmental community. It is probably more accurate to say theyre attempts to capitalize on environmental schisms that already exist. The current proposal to restore Hetch Hetchy is spearheaded by California state Senator Dan Lungren, who previously hadnt seemed to have met a dam he didnt like. In any case, environmental groups are getting other dams decommissioned and removed, particularly in Washington, Oregon, and Idaho. Preservationists see dams as major assaults on nature, threatening marine species by changing rivers ecology and threatening the land by changing the rivers flow. Hydroelectric power is still by far the nations leading source of renewable energy, but if the Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense
54 Policy Review
Steve Stein
Well, how about this part: Since the sun doesnt shine and the wind doesnt blow equally throughout the country, doesnt it make more sense to install large facilities where they can optimize natures beneficence? San Diego might some day be able to power itself entirely by solar panels on rooftops and parking lots, but that wont leave much power to export elsewhere. Seattle, meanwhile, wont be well placed to follow San Diegos example; its residents could use some wind power from the Columbia River Gorge. We wouldnt even save on transmission costs by distributing all power generation, since so many new lines are needed anyway especially if the smart networked grids that Lovins so admires are to become a reality. Lovinss views on centralized versus decentralized solar power may be more nuanced than his blog suggests, but he certainly reinforces his bridges to the Sierra Club, the In addition to Natural Resources Defense Council, and other powpreservationists, erful advocates of renewable energy and conservaconservationists, tion whose charters invariably favor small over big. Proposals for distributed energy, including rooftop there is another solar panels, play well to an environmental community for whom the slogan small is beautiful environmental popularized by Ernst Schumachers 1973 book of faction: the the same title still resonates. Schumachers timing was propitious. Reeling no-growth from the Western Worlds first oil shock, many were contingent. especially receptive to Schumachers indictment of capitalist excesses, which he mainly ascribed to the fact that companies, institutions, cities, and systems had grown too big. Schumachers latter-day adherents now see every supposed evil of globalization as associated with capitalistic gigantism, best countered by environmental minimalism. In fact, one group aptly called the Preservation Institute has made Schumachers book the reference point of its charter. This contrasts with prevailing views in the first half of the 20th century, when the surest way to impact policy was to promote big projects. The spirit was captured in a phrase attributed to Chicago architect Daniel Burnham: Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir mens blood. That early 20th-century philosophy was later taken to absurd extremes by the city planner that environmentalists love to hate: New York City Parks Commissioner and power broker Robert Moses. During Mosess tenure, more freeways were built, more urban renewal projects undertaken, and more old neighborhoods demolished in New York City than at anytime before or since. By the 1950s, reaction had already begun. As anti-freeway revolts worked their way into the dna of environmental organizations, projects that disturbed large parts of the built environment drew greater opposition. So large proposals to disturb the unbuilt environment were destined to be even more controversial. Urban sprawl has now become a fighting phrase, and a few
56 Policy Review
n addition to preservationists and minimalists, yet another environmental faction has curbed its enthusiasm for renewable energy. This is the no-growth contingent, who see population growth and resource development as weaknesses of the capitalist system. One surprising name that shows up here is Amory Lovins. He surely wasnt speaking for his corporate clients when he wrote in a 1977 article in Mother Jones:
If you ask me, itd be little short of disastrous for us to discover a source of clean, cheap, abundant energy because of what we would do with it. We ought to be looking for energy sources that are adequate for our
57
Steve Stein
needs, but that wont give us the excesses of concentrated energy with which we could do mischief to the earth or to each other.
Lovins wrote those words only two years after Paul Ehrlich made the point even more harshly: Giving society cheap energy at this point would be equivalent to giving an idiot child a machine gun. Ehrlich, best known as the author of the 1968 book The Population Bomb, had been touring the country heralding the twin dangers of population growth and nuclear energy. While Lovinss views may have moderated somewhat since the 1970s, there is little evidence that Ehrlichs have. Ehrlichs bte noire at the time was nuclear energy, but no source of energy that enabled rapid population expansion was any better. Indeed, he saw mass starvation on the horizon. Today, there are environmentalists for whom Ehrlichs pessimistic predictions havent been proven wrong, only delayed. Richard Heinberg, in a 2011 book, The End of Growth, writes that resumption of conventional economic growth [is] a near-impossibility. This is not a temporary condition; it is essentially permanent (Heinbergs emphasis). He lists the factors that make this so: resource depletion, negative environmental impacts, and continued financial disruptions. In an earlier book, Powerdown, Heinberg explains how this relates to the false promise of cheap energy, renewable or otherwise:
Every time we humans have found a way to harvest a dramatically increased amount of food or fuel from the environment, we have been presented with a quantity of energy that is, if not entirely free, at least cheap and abundant relative to what we had previously. Each time we have responded by increasing our population, and correspondingly, the load on the environmental systems that sustain us. Each time we have ended up degrading the environment and creating the conditions for a crash.
Would environmental organizations that follow the Ehrlich-Heinberg philosophy ever support a Scientific American plan to develop an entirely solarpowered electrical system by 2050? Hardly. The anti-growth contingent is inclined to raise increasingly novel objections to any massive plan for a lasting source of cheap energy. Their goal is less energy, not cheaper; and the way to ensure less energy is by making it more dear.
hen environmental groups oppose large solar- or windenergy projects, they sometimes offer vague suggestions for alternative locations. But since that approach leaves environ58 Policy Review
So when Southern California Edison wanted to construct power lines through Anza-Borrego Desert State Park to bring renewable geothermal power into San Diego, a big part of the local Sierra Club chapters opposition involved calculating the energy San Diego could save through conservation measures. When NextEra, a Florida-based utility company that is currently the nations largest wind-farm developer, proposed a modest installation in Marin County, California, local conservation groups strenuously objected to wind turbines in a sensitive coastal habitat, capping their argument with multiple illustrations of how Marin residents could easily save more energy than would be produced by such a large-scale utility project. Californians do take energy conservation and efficiency seriously. While the nations and Californias per capita energy consumption were nearly the same in 1975, the national average has since risen about 80 percent, while Californias has remained nearly flat. Two factors remove a little luster from that statistic: 1) During those 43 years, California lost most of its energyintensive manufacturing industry, and 2) a greater percentage of the states population has clustered in its most temperate climate zones. Nevertheless, the California legislature and Public Utilities Commission have devised some effective incentives for encouraging energy efficiency. The effectiveness of conservation and efficiency can, however, be exaggerated. Several years ago, Dian Grueneich, a California puc member, said:
Energy conservation has to be the highest priority of all our energy needs . . . The payback is phenomenal. For every dollar that our utilities spend on energy conservation they save two dollars. The other dollar is available to reinvest. We do not need 2,000 new power plants as Dick Cheney called for. Through our investment in energy efficiency we will not need any new power plants. We will just replace old ones as needed.
Not any new power plants? California may take some pride in its per capita energy use, but its total consumption has climbed at quite a rapid rate, as has its population. There are still zero-population-growth advocates, who would like to see immigration, legal or otherwise, slow to a trickle. But few environmental groups are in that camp. In June 2009, the Federation for Immigration Reform surveyed 25 major environmental groups and found
August & September 2012 59
Steve Stein
that only three took a stance on immigration reduction, even though nineteen agreed that population growth was a problem. After bitter debate, the Sierra Club decided to remain among the neutrals. Even if population growth did somehow slow dramatically, the relation between energy efficiency and reduced consumption is problematic. Occasionally the correlation is direct, as in the United States between 1975 and 1980 when the first mandate of automobile fuel-efficiency standards and a general decline in the economy occurred simultaneously. Usually the situation is different. As efficiency helps make energy cheaper in terms of the useful work that it can do, demand rises. This phenomenon was observed as long ago as 1865 by William Jevons, an English economist who studied the effect of coal usage, noting that James Watts engine was so much more efficient that William Newcomens. Did coal consumption decrease? Of course not. Its use spread widely and continued to spread even as further efficiencies were implemented. As Jevons put it, It is a confusion of ideas to suppose that the economical use of fuel is equivalent to diminished consumption. The very contrary is the truth. These days, Jevonss paradox is often referred to as the rebound effect. As efficient methods drive down the price per unit of output, industry after industry, and society after society, have found ever more extensive uses for energy. Some environmental groups who want to believe otherwise still dispute the evidence. A thoughtful article by David Owen in the December 20, 2010, New Yorker magazine, which brought data on the Jevons effect up to date, was met with objection by Amory Lovins and scorn by David Goldstein, a blogger for the Natural Resources Defense Council. Lovins harked back to the success of the fuel standards in the 1970s, and Goldstein used Californias recent history, notwithstanding that Californias energy use continues to expand, and its per capita consumption has ceased to decline. Energy efficiency is an important element of a sound energy policy, but it isnt a substitute for new power plants. Driving up the cost of new solar- and wind-power facilities wont spur energy efficiency; it will reinforce reliance on fossil fuels.
Unholy alliances
n their laser-like focus on exotic subspecies and unspoiled vistas, preservationists have provided unintentional aid and comfort to unexpected quarters. Energy sprawl has become a popular term among environmentalists who want to keep the desert and other wilderness areas pristine, but the term has also become useful for proponents of nuclear energy. For example, in 2009 Robert McDonald of the Nature Conservancy published an academic paper measuring the projected land-use requirements of various fuel sources. McDonald compared the number of square kilometers
60 Policy Review
Steve Stein
the issue of carbon emissions, but the Environmental Protection Agency is working hard to create such regulations on its own. As to the price of competing carbonless energy including nuclear, solar, and wind that variable is increasingly in the hands of environmental organizations that can drive up permitting costs and land costs, even as the cost of materials and engineering are coming down. Making low-carbon-emission coal (or nuclear) more economically attractive on a relative basis may not be an outcome the Sierra Club or many other national environmental groups seek, but their search for perfection can lead there. If mainstream environmental groups take on large-scale solar, wind, and geothermal with the same mindset theyve had toward the nuclear industry for the last 40 years, they might achieve a similar result. The countrys last nuclear plant was approved in 1977 and finally built in 1996. There are several plants now in various stage of planning and preliminary construction, but costs have risen so dramatically that it isnt even certain these will ever be built. Meanwhile other newly proposed plants have already been dropped. Since the de facto moratorium on new nuclear development is almost entirely the result of lobbying and litigation by environmental groups, it is ironic that the nuclear industry is now using more recent environmentalist arguments to claw its way back into the game. As for the current contest against large-scale renewable power, the outcome is still in the balance. Solar power is not nuclear power (unless you call the sun a huge nuclear-fusion reactor), and solar certainly doesnt have the huge catastrophic possibilities that nuclear fission has. But if the solar industry has to run a gauntlet of lawsuits over every other acre upon which panels and transmission lines can be laid out, very little solar development will happen, at least in America. At some level, environmental groups understand how much of this issue is in their hands. How will they use their power?
62
Policy Review
he so-called arab Spring has ushered in many surprising changes, not the least of which is an apparent sea change in American foreign policy. The Muslim Brotherhood hitherto regarded as the principal ideological incubator of Islamic extremism and shunned accordingly has been rehabilitated by the present American administration. Long before the Brotherhoods Mohamed Morsi was elected Egyptian president in June, the administration was openly courting the organization. The first sign of the change came in the form of what seemed initially to be a bizarre gaffe. Speaking at congressional hearings in February 2011, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper incongruously described the Brotherhood as largely secular. But the gaffe soon proved to have been a harbinger of policy. Within a year, the American ambassador to Egypt, Anne Patterson, and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee chair, John Kerry, were meeting
John Rosenthal writes on European politics and transatlantic security issues. His e-book The Islamist Plot: The Untold Story of the Libyan Rebellion is forthcoming from Encounter Books. You can follow his work at www.trans-int.com.
August & September 2012 63 Policy Review
John Rosenthal
with Brotherhood officials in Cairo. The contacts, in both Cairo and Washington, have gone on ever since. In this context, it is hardly surprising that many observers and especially those wary of the administration reset with the Brotherhood would regard a recent book by former Wall Street Journal reporter Ian Johnson as, in effect, the book of the hour. Bearing the sensational title A Mosque in Munich: Nazis, the cia, and the Rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in the West (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010), Johnsons volume contains an even more sensational thesis: namely, that the U.S. had already gotten involved with the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1950s and that the Brotherhoods leading representative in Europe at the time, Said Ramadan, was even a cia asset! On Johnsons account, the cia helped Ramadan to seize control of the mosque in Munich of the books title. The claim is all the more sensational inasmuch as the mosque or rather the Islamic association that sponsored its construction would in the aftermath of 9/11 come to be linked to al Qaeda. It is not difficult to understand, then, why Johnsons book has been hailed as a cautionary tale. And this it would be, were it not for the fact that the tale Johnson tells is not supported by the evidence. The whole basis of Johnsons narrative of American collusion as he put it in the Fall 2011 Middle East Quarterly with Ramadan and the Brotherhood is circumstantial evidence and conjecture. Unnervingly, once introduced into the narrative, the conjecture is then elevated to the status of established fact. This procedure allows Johnson, for instance, to refer repeatedly to an American plan to install Ramadan as the head of the Munich mosque project, even though he has offered no proof that such a plan ever existed.
65
John Rosenthal
dence of the Eisenhower administrations Machiavellianism. Eisenhower officials knew what they were doing, he writes,
Central Intelligence Agency analyses of Said Ramadan were quite blunt, calling him a Phalangist and a fascist . . . But the White House went ahead and invited him anyway.
But, as Johnsons own book makes clear, the cia analysts only came to these conclusions at the colloquium, not before. In fact, virtually all of the few and fleeting contacts between Ramadan and American officials that Johnson cites suggest aversion, not attraction. But in Johnsons account, all the manifest disaccord is trumped by a supposed American interest in recruiting Ramadans services in the fight against communism. This motive is, however, simply imputed by Johnson to American authorities. It is nowhere documented. Thus, Johnson notes that in 1956 Ramadan met with American officials in Rabat, pressing home his demand that Jews be expelled from Palestine. These views made it impossible for Ramadan and the United States to cement a formal alliance, Johnson dryly concedes, before quickly adding, But the mutual attraction to fighting communism was obvious. This grammatically slippery affirmation is, however, also a pure non sequitur. Moreover, Johnson himself mentions clearly conflicting evidence. Thus, German foreign office archives contain a report that Ramadan sought financial backing for the mosque project from a Soviet Muslim functionary. Instead of admitting the difficulties that the report poses for his thesis, however, Johnson again merely puts it down to the difficulties of Ramadans personality. German foreign office records cited elsewhere2 suggest that Ramadan had much more contact with the Soviet mufti than Johnson acknowledges. A seemingly more promising overture from Ramadan occurred in March 1960, when he wrote to the editor of a magazine titled the Arabic Review, saying how much he enjoyed the magazine and offering to distribute it throughout the Arab-speaking world. The Arabic Review was published by a Munich-based, anti-Communist organization that was covertly funded by the cia. Johnson describes the organization as a cia front and describes Ramadans letter as evidence of his ideological sympathy with the American position. Whether the letter is really that and not just evidence of a polite effort at networking is not clear. As we discover only in the back matter of Johnsons book, the editor of the magazine was Ali Kantemir: another key player in the Munich mosque project and someone with whom Ramadan would have been in contact in any case. But even assuming Ramadans letter is evidence of his eagerness to cooperate with the cia, its existence in fact poses an obvious problem for Johnsons thesis or rather it poses a problem especially on this assump2. Meining, Eine Moschee in Deutschland, 130. .
66
Policy Review
John Rosenthal
no documents have been released or discovered in the American archives that answer this question. Indeed, given that none of the available American evidence suggests that he was, a possible collaboration might as well have been a nonissue were it not for the worries of a German intelligence operative by the name of Gerhard von Mende.
John Rosenthal
the established world powers. After the war, in those parts of Germany that had been conquered by American troops and placed under occupation, the old Nazis traditional hostility toward America was, needless to say, now combined with a heavy dose of resentment. This was, for instance, clearly the case for von Mende and the German government officials with whom he launched the project of creating an association of Muslim refugees under Namanganis leadership. The German government sponsor of the project was the minister for Expellees and Refugees, Theodor Oberlnder. Oberlnder had been a longtime Nazi Party member and an officer in the Wehrmacht. As an official of the so-called Association of Germans Abroad, he had been a vigorous exponent of pan-Germanic ethnic chauvinism.3 (Contrary to the impression created by Johnson, he was by no means the only nor In the parts of even the most prominent former Nazi in the West Germany German government of the time.) As Meining notes, Oberlnder made little secret of his hostility toward conquered by the victorious Allied powers and his revanchist politAmerican troops, ical agenda. A German government memorandum cited by old hostilities Meining but not mentioned by Johnson makes were now clear that the very founding of the Muslim association was driven by hostility and mistrust toward the combined with American presence in Germany. The memorandum resentment. summarizes the results of an April 1957 meeting at Oberlnders ministry in Bonn. Both von Mende and his protg Namangani took part. Oberlnder was represented by Gerhard Wolfrum, a former officer in the ss. Another Muslim Wehrmacht veteran by the name of Ibrahim Gacaoglu had already founded an Islamic religious community in Munich four years earlier. On Meinings account, Gacaoglu was completely apolitical. He had, however, had contacts with amcomlib. For von Mende and his associates in the German government, there was the rub. The point of sponsoring a new Islamic association under Namanganis leadership was to sideline Gacaoglu and his real or imagined American backers. The April 1957 memorandum states: Herr Namangani has been given the mission of gathering the stateless Muslim foreigners and non-German refugees into a religious community, in order then, in the first place, to eliminate the undesirable American influence, which can become harmful to the Federal Republic . . . . It was this new Muslim association or Spiritual Administration that would give rise to the Munich mosque project. Given the context, it is not surprising that when an outsider, in the person of Said Ramadan, soon
3. The details of Oberlnders career in the Third Reich are documented in W. von Goldendach and H.R. Minow, Deutschtum Erwache! Aus dem Innenleben des staatlichen Pangermanismus (Dietz Verlag, 1994).
70
Policy Review
John Rosenthal
72
Policy Review
John Rosenthal
German officialdom had saved Ramadan. The very fact that German officials were monitoring the proceedings of the commission and could indeed affect them in the way described provides an index of just how thoroughly the mosque project was subjected to German control. It would be interesting to know more about the origins of the odd two-thirds rule. Given that membership of the commission was by design evenly split between Central Asian veterans and Arab students, it essentially meant the former would never be able to oust Ramadan from the chairmanship. The arrangement is all the more curious, given that Ramadan appears to have been appointed to the position without any vote. In early 1962, recognizing their defeat, the war veterans resigned from the commission en masse. Under Ramadans guidance, the organization would thereafter be transformed Might German from a mere building commission into a full-fledged holdovers from Islamic association in its own right. Reflecting this change, in 1 9 6 3 it was renamed the Islamic Himmlers and Community in Southern Germany. In the 1980s, it would become the Islamic Community in Germany al-Husseinis tout court, by which time it enjoyed tax-exempt staNazi-Islamist tus as a charitable organization. As Meining alliance have shows, despite the name, it would remain an excluaided Ramadan? sive organization with highly restricted membership. Might German holdovers from Himmlers and alHusseinis Nazi-Islamist alliance have aided Ramadans transformation of the commission into a vector of political Islam? Meining suggests that there were none around to do so. On the German side, no notable representative of this pan-Islamist strategy survived the War and returned to politics, he writes. Meining alludes to the fact that the Allies had declared the ss as such to be a criminal organization, as if this would have constituted a hindrance. But his observation is overly sanguine. His own account of the Munich mosque project is liberally populated with former ss officers who made political careers in West Germany after the War. Moreover, since the publication of Meinings book, new information has emerged that clearly disproves the claim. In September of last year, it was revealed that no less an ss criminal than Walther Rauff was employed as a bnd agent from 1958 to 1962 as it so happens, the very period in which the main action of the Munich mosque drama was being played out. Rauff is known, above all, for having supervised the development and deployment of the so-called mobile gas chambers: converted vans in which hundreds of thousands of Jews were murdered by the Nazi regime in the early stages of the Holocaust. More to the point, Rauff was also very much a key figure in Himmlers Arab-Islamist strategy. As has been documented by German historians Klaus-Michael Mallmann and Martin Cppers in their book Nazi Palestine,
74 Policy Review
John Rosenthal
under the Freedom of Information Act. As historian Michael Wildt of Berlins Humboldt University has pointed out in criticizing the bnds handling of historical records, there is no German equivalent of the act. In 2008, the German Interior Ministry suspended the application of an administrative order that had aimed to liberalize the declassification of government records more than 30 years old. The move prompted the German Historians Association to accuse the government of falling behind international standards and failing to uphold practices that should be self-evident in a democratic society. The scattered traces of bnd involvement that turn up in Johnsons telling of the Munich mosque story all come from the correspondence contained in von Mendes papers. Meining, however, has been more enterprising. While the bnds archives are closely guarded, the same is not, of course, the case for those of its since-dissolved East German rival, the Ministry for State Security or Stasi. The Stasi, moreover, appears to have been quite adept at obtaining classified West German materials. In the Stasi archives, Meining has discovered evidence that by the early 1980s there indeed existed an alliance between West German intelligence agencies and the Muslim Brotherhood. Meining emphasizes that the evidence in the East German archives needs to be corroborated through consultation of the corresponding West German records. The latter, however, remain classified. Although Meining mentions Afghanistan in this connection, the bulk of the specific information that he cites concerns rather Syria. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the Syrian regime of Hafez al-Assad was facing a Muslim Brotherhood-inspired Islamist insurrection bearing striking similarities to the current insurrection against the rule of his son Bashir. Syrian authorities evidently suspected Syrian exiles in Germany of fomenting the unrest and West German officials of helping them. A captured member of the Syrian branch of the Brotherhood even accused West Germany of financing the organization. The Syrians were particularly concerned about the activities of a certain Issam El-Attar: an Aachen-based political refugee whom Germanys own domestic intelligence identified as the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria. El-Attar was a member of the tightly-knit Islamic Community founded by Said Ramadan. Meining calls the question of possible collaboration between West German intelligence and the Brotherhood explosive. It is all the more so given the remarkable number of major Islamic terror attacks that have been linked to Germany. These include not only the 9/11 attacks, but also the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the 2002 Djerba synagogue bombing, the 2002 Bali bombings, and the 2004 Madrid train bombings.5
5. For relevant details, see John Rosenthal, Kid-Gloves Antiterrorism, Policy Review 156 (AugustSeptember 2009); and John Rosenthal, Germanys War on the War on Terror, Weekly Standard (March 29, 2010).
76
Policy Review
John Rosenthal
to deploy Walther Rauffs Middle East kill squad, the Commando Group Egypt. After the war, Wolff was found guilty by a German court of complicity in the murder of some 300,000 Jews. Despite the conviction, he served barely four years in prison. Meining notes that shortly before his death in 1984, he followed the example of his daughter and converted to Islam. We will undoubtedly not know the full story of the Munich mosque project and the creation of a German base for Islamic extremism until all the relevant German government records are made available, including those of the bnd. But that is not likely to happen anytime soon, if indeed ever.
78
Policy Review
he challenges of poverty and development have long been regarded in terms of transitive relationships, in which the rich help the poor because the poor are not seen as able to help themselves. This view of the poor assumes they have mainly needs and no assets. With so many people believing this view it isnt surprising that the poor themselves share the assumption that they cant play any significant role in improving their own condition. Belief in the powerlessness of the poor cripples not simply the poor, but both the left and the right, with each looking to the mechanistic solutions of government or market. Neither has an active strategy for empowering the poor themselves to play significant roles in promoting change. When viewed in distributional terms the left in terms of equality, the right in terms of mobility justice is impossible, because equality is itself
A. Lawrence Chickering is founder and president of Educate Girls Globally. He is coauthor of Strategic Foreign Assistance: Civil Society in International Security (2006 ) and Voice of the People: The Transpartisan Imperative in American Life (2008 ). Anjula Tyagi is executive director of Educate Girls Globally and directed eggs first project in the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand.
August & September 2012 79 Policy Review
mpowerment at different times has been prominent in the ideas of both left and right about how to help the poor. In the mid-1960s the Office of Economic Opportunity (oeo), which became the central instrument of the War on Poverty, was the lefts major instrument of empowerment, giving maximum feasible participation to the poor in decision-making of Community Action Programs (caps). For the right, empowerment has emphasized getting government off peoples backs including proposals to give people alternatives to failing government institutions e.g., school vouchers and charter schools. For example, Empower America, an organization led by Jack Kemp and Bill Bennett,
80 Policy Review
mpowerment can be manifest in both public and private spaces. The economist Hernando de Soto has promoted powerful, visible empowerment in private spaces through property rights. Although property rights are widely used in developed countries, many people in developing countries have no property rights. In Egypt, for example, about 90 percent of the people have no formal rights even though they have informal rights recognized by local communities. We are focused on another form of empowerment, in public spaces (government schools). Educate Girls Globally (egg), following csos in other difficult places, is accomplishing extraordinary results by empowering poor, rural communities to take ownership of government schools and reform them in two states of India. It is an issue that has proven difficult to reform. Local csos, mobilizing citizens to promote change, play an important role in eggs model.
he basic model for egg was borrowed and adapted from ngos in the most difficult environments in Upper Egypt and Pakistan. The specific community mobilization model comes from a nonprofit organization called maya, which promotes reform of government schools in the Indian state of Karnataka. Thus was created the most important difference between eggs program and many other community-based education models. Most csos avoid working in government schools, which they believe cannot be reformed. They are also afraid rampant government corruption will contaminate their work. eggs initial work in Uttarakhand experimented with a very light foot83
Focusing on enrollment of girls, the program started to address larger issues of equity and quality, and introduced creative learning in enrollment camps for dropout girls. (The introduction of creative learning in regular primary schools came later, in Rajasthan.) Rajasthan is the most male-dominated, tribal state in India. In September 2005 the state ministry of education signed an agreement with egg to replicate eggs model and develop new strategies for general education reform. Even then, policymakers were aware of the potential for large-scale impacts: If egg could show results, it would be building a model for reform of every school in Rajasthan (78,000 schools serving eight million children). At the time, the government of India was expanding investments in primary education dramatically and exploring ways of improving effectiveness and efficiency by mobilizing communities to work more closely with schools and help hold schools accountable. This larger initiative was an important reason for the Indian governments interest in egg.
ggs program begins with a government endorsement and formal agreement, which incorporates the model into the ministrys formal education program. In every community egg starts working with established leaders, including politically elected village heads, teachers, and religious leaders. Since leadership is an important component, priority is given to looking beyond traditional leaders to natural leaders in a new, entrepreneurial society. In cultures with some social development, such as many in Uttarakhand, these natural leaders will make themselves known and get involved early in the process. When they do, the central part of the program can begin. In Rajasthan, which is much more traditional and tribal, it often takes longer for these leaders to appear up to a year and longer with resulting delays in introducing the central program. Early in the program egg staff conduct community-wide surveys of each school and community, including the name of every girl who has dropped out. egg has learned that real impact does not happen with mere involvement. Real impact occurs with community ownership, followed by action for change. egg serves as a catalyst for empowering communities, helping to build their capacity to assume active roles, promoting change. Establishing community ownership requires that the program is about them rather than about egg. Community surveys often reveal basic problems such as teacher absenteeism, lack of clean water, lack of bathroom facilities for girls, and so on. The surveys provide the background for community-wide meetings, discussing why educating girls is important, empowering the School Management Committees (smcs), planning Action Projects, and creating girls parliaments (bal sabhas), which promote girls as leaders. The girls not only become role models as leaders and achievers for girls who need both, but also powerful change agents through the work they organize. The first community meeting launches the program, when the survey results are used to assess problems and develop solutions. Discussions consider a variety of issues, especially how to return girls to school, as well as action plans for clean drinking water and girls latrines. Action Committees then assume responsibility for implementing projects. The girls parliaments mobilize girls as active agents of change, going house to house, searching for dropout girls and encouraging parents to let them return to school, implementing hygiene and health education pro86 Policy Review
English reading (full paragraphs) increased from 15% to 43% (a 185% gain) Math understanding (up to two digits of addition and subtraction) increased from 26% to 57% (a 119% gain)
The evaluation also addressed enrollment, attendance, and other school improvements; community projects; and life skills, including leadership, conflict management, and psychological strengthening (self-confidence and selfesteem). During the two-year period in 500 schools, the percentage of enrolled girls increased from 90 to 99.5, while the percentage of students who attend class on any given day, a more important figure, increased from 67 to 82. Without any funding from egg (but often with funding from other sources), communities showed extraordinary social entrepreneurship, initiating a variety of projects. Of these, two really stand out: the percentage of schools with clean drinking water increased from 46 to 82; and the percentage of schools with separate toilet facilities increased from 44 to 71. One significant barrier to opportunity for girls is low self-esteem and the reluctance to assert strong opinions or speak up in front of boys. To address this problem, which affects every aspect of girls lives including learning, egg has partnered with unicef and introduced powerful life-skills and leadership training. The evaluation of this program produced the anecdote, noted earlier, about different responses toward objective issues such as having a bath versus statements requiring more subjective and judgmental answers.
88 Policy Review
Larger implications
mpowerment programs such as eggs have great potential significance for policy on issues ranging from education reform and health care to womens rights and counterinsurgency warfare. Robert Hawkinss observation that the poor are consumers (passive) in traditional social services, while they become producers (active) in empowered, self-governing communities has powerful implications for both development and security. Energizing the recipients of social services as co-deliverers of service
August & September 2012 91
94
Policy Review
By Peter Berkowitz
Julian Ku and John Yoo. Taming Globalization: International Law, the U.S. Constitution, and the New World Order. Oxford University Press. 272 Pages. $35.00 ne spectacular achievement of postWorld War II conservatism in America has been to renew the debate about the moral and political significance of enduring constitutional principles. Conservatives did this by recovering the understanding of those principles held by those who enshrined them in the Constitution in the summer of 1787; clarified them in the Federalist and the writings of the
Peter Berkowitz is the Tad and Dianne Taube Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, where he chairs the task force on national security and law. His writings are posted at www.PeterBerkowitz.com.
August & September 2012 95
Anti-Federalists and elsewhere during the ratifying debates of 1787 and 1788; and interpreted their scope and translated them into practice while serving in high office in the early years of the republic. The American political tradition is in part constituted by a continuing debate about constitutional principles. But with the consolidation of the New Deal in the 1940s and 1950s and the entrenchment of left-liberalism in the universities and the press in the 1970s and 1980s, it seemed to many particularly in the universities and in the press that the debate had come to an end. Progressivism had triumphed, and anything in the Constitution contrary to its tenets deserved to be scorned or disregarded. Scorn there still is, but the conservative return to the Constitution including Buckley and National Review, Goldwater and Reagan, the Public Interest and Commentary, the Wall Street Journal opinion pages and scholars of the political thought of the founding, the Federalist Society and the Tea Party, to name a few individuals, publications, and organizations has made it increasingly difficult for progressives to disregard the case for the continuing salience of constitutional principles. To be sure, holdouts, some in high places, remain. Former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi could still respond in October 2009 to a question about specific constitutional authority for enacting an individual mandate to purchase health insurance with an incredulous, Are you serious? Are you serious? And only a few months ago online at the New York Times, University of Texas law professor Sanford Levinson could denounce the
Policy Review
Books
Constitution as imbecilic and blame it rather than, say, reasoned opposition to his policy preferences or failure of his party to form a strong and enduring majority for the failure to enact a more progressive agenda. But increasingly common over the last fifteen years or so is the work of prominent progressive thinkers such as New York University professor of law Ronald Dworkin, Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, and Yale Law School professor Jack Balkin. They seek to show in various ways that the Constitution embodies progressive values, and in hard cases concerning, for example, abortion, affirmative action, same-sex marriage, regulation of political speech, and health care dictates progressive outcomes. In fact, they read much more into the Constitution than they take from it. Yet the obligation they recognize to show that their political and legal doctrines are grounded in the Constitution notwithstanding, or even more so because of, the twisting and stretching, the additions and omissions, the devaluations and revaluations that they are forced to perform is testimony to the success of the conservative countermovement in making fidelity to the Constitution a touchstone of legal and political legitimacy. The impact of the post-World War II conservative countermovement has largely been felt in the realm of domestic affairs. Certainly the scope of presidential power in foreign affairs and war has been an abiding concern for conservatives over the last 60 years. Nevertheless, American conservatives have most effectively invoked constitutional principles particularly the principles of limited government and
96
individual liberty to oppose the steady growth of the welfare and regulatory state. The September 11 attacks compelled conservatives to grapple with the implications of constitutional principles in regard to the interpretation and enforcement of the international laws of war. The detention, interrogation, and prosecution of al Qaeda fighters and affiliates raised novel and difficult legal questions connected to the international laws of war because the terrorists were not lawful combatants entitled to all the protections conferred on pows by the Geneva Conventions; at the same time, unlike criminals, who receive distinctive rights under domestic criminal law, the terrorists had demonstrated the intention and capacity to undertake armed attacks on the United States and inflict massive loss of life and enormous damage to civilian and military infrastructure. Progressives charged that the legal policies for the detention, interrogation, and prosecution of terrorists put in place by the Bush administration violated international law and shredded the Constitution. In fact, both Bush administration legal advisers who argued for extremely broad conceptions of presidential power and conservative critics of the Bush administration who argued for a larger role for Congress in crafting a legal regime to govern terrorist detainees drew on founding-era understandings of fundamental constitutional principles for legal guidance. The continuing controversy over the international laws of war has been a particularly prominent and urgent instance of the host of legal issues generated by globalization, or the process
Policy Review
Books
by which the affairs political, economic, social, and cultural of all states have increasingly become dependent on developments beyond their borders. In their excellent book, Julian Ku, professor of law at Hofstra University School of Law, and John Yoo, professor of law at the University of California-Berkeleys Boalt Hall School of Law, maintain that just as the New Deal nationalization of regulatory and welfare responsibilities created severe tensions with and within constitutional law, so too has the internationalization of power. In the spirit of the conservative countermovement, the authors contend the United States can best respect the claims of democracy and liberty in responding to the variety of daunting challenges to American constitutional government presented by globalization by recurring to fundamental constitutional principles. Ku and Yoo begin from common observations about globalizations reach and impact:
As never before, the U.S. economy depends on international trade, the free flow of capital, and integration into the world financial system. International events affect domestic markets and institutions more than ever. Roughly one-third of all American economic activity is related to either imports or exports. Advances in communications, transportation, and the Internet have brought great benefits to the United States. The attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, however, revealed the negative effects of globalization. Counterterrorism, immigration, the environment, drugs, crime, and even mundane issues such as traffic
August & September 2012 97
And they promptly proceed to an uncommon observation: Despite the abundant interest in globalization among scholars from many different fields and angles, few have examined its impact on the American constitutional order, or given much thought to the guidance that reflection on constitutional principle can yield in dealing with globalizations impact. The authors write neither as critics of nor cheerleaders for globalization, but as sober observers who appreciate its inevitability and the need to design laws to reduce costs and increase benefits from the new forms of international cooperation and global governance that globalization has spawned. They recognize that we are not living through the first revolution in communications and transportation to have made the world smaller and to have knitted the international order together more tightly. But because globalization has to an unprecedented degree accelerated the pace of integration and mutual dependence among states, it demands unprecedented levels of international cooperation and in many areas, including protection of the environment, regulation of the flow of capital, and prevention of the trafficking of drugs and other criminal activities. The intensified demands for international cooperation give rise in the United States to hard constitutional questions about the distribution of political authority among branches of the federal government and between the federal government and the states:
Books
To what extent do international court judgments have force in American law, invalidating otherwise valid judgments by domestic courts? Can the President and the Senate together sign an international treaty that binds the United States to either legalize or criminalize abortion, or are issues of family law reserved as a matter of American law for the states? Should international and foreign laws be used to interpret the U.S. Constitution? May Congress and the President delegate federal authority to international organizations to regulate domestic conduct, for instance, in arms control or carbon emissions?
It is to answering these hard questions that Ku and Yoo devote the bulk of their book. But first they lay out the most pertinent constitutional principles, beginning with the idea of popular sovereignty, which inspired the American Revolution, was resoundingly affirmed in the Declaration of Independence, and was crystalized in the Constitution. It holds that all legitimate political power is derived from the consent of the governed and so views the people as the ultimate sovereign authority. Accordingly, political institutions and office holders in America are agents of the people whose powers are delegated to them by the people through the Constitution. Ku and Yoo also stress two critical structural principles embodied in the Constitution: the separation of powers and federalism. The separation of powers refers to the division of the federal government into the legislative, execu98
tive, and judicial branches and the system of checks and balances that allows the branches to cooperate with and constrain each other. Federalism involves the distribution of power and responsibilities between the federal government and the many state governments. In stressing the importance of respecting popular sovereignty, the separation of powers, and federalism in responding to the opportunities and pressures of globalization, Ku and Yoo oppose the scholarly consensus. The question of how to harmonize international law and foreign affairs with the American political and legal system has largely been neglected by professors of constitutional law, and even more so by professors of political science specializing in American politics. Instead, it has been mainly pursued by international law scholars. The dominant school of international law scholarship is internationalism. Internationalists typically accord great authority to international law and international organizations; believe that treaties (signed by the president and approved by two-thirds of the Senate) are self-executing, or not in need of implementing legislation (passed by Congress and signed into law by the president) to be enforceable in courts; contend that international law, including treaties and the judgments of international courts, may automatically supersede state law in many areas in which states have been traditionally responsible, such as crime, the family, and education; consider domestic courts the sole arbiter of the legal effect of treaties and international institutions; and maintain that domestic courts face no particular obstacles in
Policy Review
Books
incorporating customary international law and the laws of other nations into domestic American law. Transnationalists including the Obama administrations former head of the State Departments Policy Planning Staff, Princeton professor Anne-Marie Slaughter, and the Obama administrations legal adviser to the State Department, Yale Law School professor Harold Koh go further. They maintain that globalization has accelerated the disaggregation of the nationstate, creating informal and independent but legitimate sources of international authority and lawmaking, such as international organizations, networks of ngos, and the worldwide community of judges. Law emanating from these sources, the transnationalists argue, may supersede or determine domestic law. A few revisionists have emerged in recent years including University of Chicago law professor Eric Posner, Northwestern University law professor John McGinnis, and George Mason University law professors Ilya Somin and Jeremy Rabkin. The revisionists argue that the views espoused by the internationalists and the transnationalists warp moral and political problems between states; instead of allowing them to be dealt with by politicians and diplomats, the transnationlists turn them into legal problems to be solved by international lawyers. The revisionists also contend that the internationalists and transnationalists attribute a domestic force to international law that lacks democratic legitimacy and erodes national sovereignty. In significant measure, and by design, Ku and Yoo avoid the controversies in which the revisionists are
August & September 2012 99
enmeshed. Rather than focus on theoretical questions about the status of international law, their inquiry is a practical one that explores how the United States should incorporate into domestic law the international law standards that it chooses to follow. Ku and Yoo, moreover, do not proceed on the so-called originalist grounds that characterize much conservative jurisprudence. That is, they do not contend that the Framers intentions concerning, say, the scope of international law or how treaties should be handled resolve todays controversies. Rather, acknowledging that globalization presents many stubborn dilemmas the Constitutions framers could not have foreseen, the authors maintain that we should be guided today by the whole American constitutional tradition, which accords high importance to constitutional principles but also embraces the development of American politics and law, with careful attention given to Supreme Court decisions. Fidelity to the underlying principles of this tradition, they believe, can tame globalization by rendering the process by which international law and obligations acquire the force of law in the United States more transparent, more responsive to the will of the people, and more consistent with the requirements of individual liberty. The authors offer three doctrines grounded in the idea of popular sovereignty and reflecting the imperatives of the separation of powers and federalism to harmonize the demands of globalization with constitutional law and guide the incorporation of international law into domestic law. First, treaties should be presumed non-self-executing: Once a treaty has been signed by the president
Books
and approved by the Senate, it should require implementing legislation passed by Congress and signed by the president to give it the force of law in domestic affairs. Second, the president rather than the courts should take the lead role in the interpretation of customary international law, or that part of international law that arises through the longstanding practice of states. This division of labor is appropriate because a heavy admixture of policy considerations goes into the determination and application of customary international law, and the executive branch is designed to handle and possesses greater competence in foreign affairs. As a corollary, the authors would require congressional legislation to give any particular aspect of customary international law the force of binding domestic law. And, third, an independent, if limited role, should be carved out for states in matters of international law and foreign affairs that touch on traditional areas of state law, and particularly in trade, culture, and education. This, Ku and Yoo maintain, would better respect state sovereignty and take fuller advantage of state governments knowledge of local conditions. Through detailed examination of a variety of constitutional cases and controversies, the authors show the United States should adopt these three doctrines because they are prudent, making it more likely that the country will benefit from international cooperation, in war and peace, while preserving democratic accountability and individual liberty. Ku and Yoo have written a scholarly book that deserves to be read widely and debated vigorously. In a domain where the Constitution has continued
100
to be scorned and disregarded, they have demonstrated that constitutional principles form a sturdy and flexible framework within which to deal with the challenges of a globalized 21st century world.
William Anthony Hay, a historian at Mississippi State University and author of The Whig Revival, 18081830 (Palgrave, 2005 ), is writing a life of the second Earl of Liverpool, British prime minister from 1812 to 1827 .
Policy Review
Books
might even preclude the need to fight. Blockades long played an important part in war, and sanctions became a common diplomatic tool in the 20th century. Unfortunately, such measures provide a blunt instrument. Or, to vary the metaphor, economic pressure can be a double-edged sword as ready to cut the power wielding it as the opponent at which it is aimed. Can it force an opponent to concede? Does it risk collateral damage, either by injuring the country attempting economic war or by provoking others to intervene? Recent economic sanctions have proven hard to enforce. Governments imposing them face the burden of keeping them in place over time against growing resistance, and countries neighboring target states often demand exemptions to spare their economies the fallout or facilitate evasion. Wartime blockades involved higher stakes and consequently brought greater risk. Although Britain claimed a legal right to interdict trade from the mid-18th century, its efforts during the American War of Independence brought the Dutch Republic into the conflict and prompted other maritime states to form a Russian-led league of armed neutrality. The same pattern during Britains wars against Revolutionary and Napoleonic France expanded the conflict by forcing neutral states to take sides. Napoleon invaded Spain, Portugal, and Russia partly to enforce his own system of trade war against Britain, while the British attacked Denmark to keep it from siding with France. The United States responded to being caught in the middle by first imposing an embargo on exports, which mainly hurt its own citizens, and then fighting the War of
August & September 2012 101
1812 against Britain. Economic warfare during the Napoleonic era gave later strategists a case study even as technology changed the application of sea power. Woodrow Wilson went further in remarking during Americas neutrality early in World War I that the circumstances of the war of 1812 and now run parallel. Yet they diverged enough to prevent another war between the United States and Britain. The story of how tensions during World War I took a different course from the Napoleonic era illuminates economic warfares limitations with broader lessons for what it can and cannot accomplish. In Planning Armageddon, Nicholas Lambert meticulously reconstructs the process by which Britain developed and then implemented plans for economic warfare against Germany. His well-written, though detailed, account provides a revisionist interpretation of British strategy which calls into question received opinion on how the Royal Navy aimed to fight a European war. Studies of war plans before 1914 highlight discussions about bringing the war to Germany by inshore operations and amphibious landings along the coast that fit the Royal Navys traditional strategy and cultural emphasis on the offensive. When geographical constraints and weapons technology precluded such measures, Britain engaged Germanys army alongside its French ally in what became a terrible war of attrition. The navy accordingly took a supportive role convoying men and material to France while denying Germany access to the sea. Documents give credence to this conventional account, which makes sense against the course of World War
Books
I, but Lambert uncovers another set of ideas from the deliberations among naval planners that formed the cornerstone of British grand strategy by 1914. International law and technologies including the mine and torpedo made impractical the kind of blockade the Royal Navy had traditionally employed to interdict enemy trade completely, but an alternative strategy leveraged Britains control over the infrastructure of global trade to coerce Germany. Planners saw that denying Germany access to the shipping, communications, and financial services that Britain dominated would impose unbearable economic costs without interdicting cargoes. Their approach to economic warfare extended beyond a blockade to involve all necessary steps for disrupting an already strained enemy economy. Sufficient disruption would compel Germany to accept peace on British terms as effectively as battlefield victory. British officials, including the Admiralty, always had been preoccupied with the task of protecting the global trading system from serious disruption in wartime for their own defense. Now the impact of disruption offered a potent weapon against Germany, especially if Britain fought as part of a coalition whose assistance would help isolate its economy. Germany depended upon imports to feed its population and sustain industrial production. Losing access to foreign export markets had a further impact by reducing foreign earnings. Blockades imposed such constraints by interdicting maritime commerce, but economic warfare reached further in disrupting trade at various choke points. The fact that British merchant ships carried German trade insured by British com102
panies and financed by British banks pointed to other ways of disrupting vital trade. Germany relied on credit floated in London to handle foreign transactions short-term bills readily sold there offered an easy means of payment and as a source of working capital for enterprises. Neutral countries lacked sufficient merchant tonnage to make up for the denial of British ships. Even without physically interdicting goods, Britain could inflict tremendous damage on a German economy that already would be reeling from the dislocations brought by a panic at the declaration of war. The Admiralty believed pushing Germany into unemployment, distress, and eventually bankruptcy would cripple its war effort while sparking social discord with serious political consequences. Economic warfare played to British strengths, while other possibilities exposed limits. Lambert describes the oft-cited plans for amphibious landings as a secondary option rather than the basis of strategy. Sir John Fisher, head of the British Admiralty, tempered his earlier support for such operations given the risk to capital ships from torpedoes and mines. He took an even stronger line against sending British troops to the continent because that would enable Germany to strike a blow against Britain by focusing overwhelming force against an army that could not be replaced. He thus concluded the best assistance Britain could provide France would be to impose such economic pressure on Germany that it could not continue the war.
Books
particularly the Treasury and the Board of Trade, which had their own agendas. The strategy required an unprecedented degree of government intervention across a range of activities from banking and shipping to censorship of cable communications. A prewar committee on trading with the enemy looked into regulating Britains merchant fleet, imposing controls over the financial services industry, and censoring belligerent communications through the cable networks which ran through Britain. Simply gathering information to deliberate on these points required help from the Foreign Office, War Office, and the Board of Trade, along with civilian experts. Actually setting and implementing policies would mean working together more closely than seemed likely. The Admiralty, Lambert notes, kept back the specifics on its plans for a distant blockade as part of economic warfare, while other departments questioned the practicability of various measures or opposed them outright. Prewar deliberations showed the difficulty of forging a consensus on economic warfare and the measures it involved. Resistance went beyond the bureaucratic politics sparked by departmental rivalries. The emerging strategy gave the British government an unprecedented role in managing trade, which itself raised concerns. Generations after 1914 did not appreciate the prewar commitment to laissez-faire and minimal state economic oversight. Plans to disrupt German trade by withholding access to British merchant shipping, finance, or commercial services forced officials to think beyond the assumptions of the day. Cutting further against the political grain was the idea to delegate
August & September 2012 103
authority before war broke out so that measures could be set in train immediately. Lambert notes that although economic warfare had become the cornerstone of British strategy against Germany, plans for waging it had not been worked out in detail. Key questions thus remained open when war began in August 1914. The drama of the military crisis as fighting escalated overshadows in public memory the economic shockwaves war brought. Admiralty planners had anticipated disruption and their strategy aimed to capitalize on it, but the consequences raised problems which disrupted their plans. Trade dropped amidst uncertainty. The cabinet deliberated in August on how aggressively to prosecute economic war. Restricting neutral trade that gave Germany a windpipe to the global economy divided ministers, and the cabinet retreated from a strict ban. Limiting British and imperial exports also sparked opposition, and the eventual order clarifying policy on economic warfare left great discretion to individual departments. Cabinet unity in early weeks came at the expense of effective policy. The political commitment to economic warfare crumbled, as Lambert writes, over fears about Britains capacity to weather the storm and resistance from interest groups hurt by the crisis. Herbert Asquiths decision to set political considerations first highlights the fragile basis on which prewar decisions rested, and expectations of a short war made it easy to relax controversial measures. The repercussions for neutral powers of Britains economic war were among the many concerns. Geography placed the Netherlands, and to a lesser
Books
degree Scandinavia, on the front lines, but the United States presented a much greater difficulty given the size of its economy and its dependence on exports. The impact of restricting trade brought protests from the start, and attempts to evade British measures became a high-stakes game. Economic disruption at the outbreak of war hit the United States hard. Washington already had exchange rate problems from the August crisis, when European investors liquidated American securities and converted dollars into gold. Trade restrictions precluded the obvious correction of earning foreign currency through exports. The collapse of cotton exports had a cascading effect on the domestic economy in the South, with obvious political consequences. Not only did the United States require export earnings to stabilize its economy, the whole question of blockade aroused memories of the War of 1812. British officials soon faced a choice between quarreling with Washington and keeping Germany from drawing overseas supplies. When the Royal Navy forced German ships into neutral ports, their owners tried to cut their financial losses by selling the ships, and many found American buyers. Congress passed legislation to facilitate the transfer, and American companies hoped to use ships they had acquired to transport their goods to Europe. The United States also took steps to acquire vessels the federal government would own and operate. Doing so knocked a hole in British efforts to block trade with Germany by denying access to shipping. Although international law subjected vessels reflagged during wartime to seizure, the British risked
104
confrontation with Washington and, accordingly, backed away from enforcement. The issue set the British Foreign Office and Admiralty at odds, and contributed to Anglo-American tensions along with conflicts within the government. Betting on a short war, the British first relaxed and then effectively suspended economic warfare by October 1914. When the reality of a protracted war became clear, however, the moment to score a decisive blow by imposing a sudden economic stranglehold on Germany had passed. The British government then improvised a new approach, known as blockade, which promised less effect on Germany while demanding more coordination among government departments to control trade. Unlike a traditional blockade, the system required more than commanding the sea and sought to manage the shipment of strategic materials, which included food. Restricting European demand rather than interdicting overseas trade limited open confrontation with the United States, but it had its own problems: e.g., Dutch and Scandinavian merchants often collaborated with American producers to ship food products to Germany. Britains desire for strategic imports from those smaller neutrals limited the leverage it could apply. Countries demanded return cargoes of British coal for their own shipping. Thus did various little compromises and the difficulty of waging economic war gradually lead the British government to give up its prewar strategy for a less effective system of blockade that created fewer problems. Lambert argues that the British never actually implemented the ecoPolicy Review
Books
nomic warfare of the prewar naval planners. Rather than being tried and found wanting, Asquiths cabinet feared the plan would itself be trying and, accordingly, did not want to pursue the strategy aggressively. Lambert underlines the point by asking whether the strategy could have worked had the British fully implemented it. Would the collapse of Germanys finances have had a decisive political effect? What measures would Germany have taken to counter a more robust economic war? The lack of data makes any effort at answering the questions speculative, and such answers are beyond the scope of Lamberts book. His project analyzes how naval strategists tried to solve a problem based on the economic realities of their day. The story Lambert recounts frames not only the development of British strategy but also the way Britain waged war from 1914. What broader lessons about economic warfare does Lamberts Planning Armageddon offer? The strategy he describes reflects Britains uniquely dominant position in the early-20thcentury global economy as a center of finance, shipping, and communication. Other countries before and since have lacked that degree of leverage one that allows for going beyond simply restricting maritime trade to attempt to disrupt, systematically, an enemys internal economy. A few points, however, seem relevant today. Every nations economy has key choke points whether access to finance, transport, strategic materials, or even vital export markets that offer adversaries leverage. Imposing pressure can inflict significant strain, even if that damage falls short of Armageddon. Any measures to disrupt trade beyond a naval blockade
August & September 2012 105
require a coordinated effort among government agencies and private sector groups, along with their foreign counterparts, which means considerable political friction. Collateral damage to domestic or allied interest groups imposes costs, but the real danger lies in antagonizing neutral parties, whose trade suffers. The hopes among those early-20th-century British planners of inflicting a knockout blow by economic means notwithstanding, the more realistic approach is to apply slow pressure that erodes the enemys capacity to wage war or compels it to abandon an objectionable policy. Costs have to be measured against the benefits. Indeed, economic warfare works most effectively as a supplement to other military or political measures rather than as a substitute for them. Policymakers take note.
Theodore K. Rabb. The Artist and the Warrior: Military History through the Eyes of the Masters. Ya l e University Press. 288 Pages. $45. ar brings out the best and the very worst in man: Heroism, self-sacrifice, and endurance among the virtues; cruelty, cowardice, and treachery among the vices. Add color and spectacle and it is little wonder that war has inspired artists throughout history.
By Henrik Bering
War Paint
Books
When it comes to heroics, JacquesLouis Davids colossal canvas Bonaparte Crossing the St. Bernard Pass delivers, and then some: In his portrait, which was ordered by the king of Spain, David shows Napoleon as the warrior superhero, astride a rearing stallion, his windswept cloak clinging to his body, and with the names of his predecessors Hannibal and Charlemagne carved in the rock face. Never mind that in reality, Napoleon had to resort to a lowly but surefooted mule for the descent, and, losing patience, at one point even got off to slide on his rear. Early in the year 1800, Napoleons career was in urgent need of repair: As a result of Nelsons destruction of the French fleet, Napoleons expeditionary force was still stuck in the sands of Egypt, where shamefully he had abandoned it. The Austrians were on the move in Italy. But with his surprise move across the Alps, ending in his victory over Baron Melas, the Austrian commander, at Marengo, he was back in business. To celebrate this feat, David was forced to work from a dummy, as Napoleon had proved unwilling to pose, but understandably, when Napoleon saw the finished work, he promptly requested three copies for himself. At the other end of the spectrum we find Francisco Goyas 82 prints, titled Disasters of War, from the Peninsula War: In 1 8 0 7 , the French and the Spaniards had invaded Portugal to eject the Brits, but it did not take long for Napoleon to betray his Spanish allies and become an occupier. His troops were living off the land, which makes sense when you have a huge army to feed, but does not endear you to the
106
locals. The Spaniards responded by waging guerrilla war, little war, the origin of that term. The attacks triggered savage reprisals from the French troops, and Goyas prints show the sufferings of the civilian population. They feature nameless victims, priests being murdered, women being raped, people dying of famine or facing execution. Thus plate 37, This Is Worse, shows a mutilated body, its arms missing, impaled on a tree trunk; the figure brings to mind a classical marble torso and indeed Goya partly relied on a sketch of the Belvedere torso in Rome except this version is flesh and blood. A few prints show French soldiers being hacked to death. The message is that war is hell: Though Goyas sympathy lies with his countrymen, heinous deeds are committed by both sides. The contrasting ways of representing war, as highlighted by the examples above, are examined in Theodore K. Rabbs crisp The Artist and the Warrior: Military History through the Eyes of the Masters. Originally, the two protagonists in the books title coexisted peacefully, with the artist celebrating the deeds of the soldier, but over the centuries the relationship has developed into one of skepticism and even antagonism on the artists part, which Rabb, perhaps a little too readily, accepts as the natural relationship between these two very different occupations. As he makes clear in the foreword, owing to the fluctuating quality of the works that various wars have inspired, he bases his selections on artistic merit and concentrates on the masterpieces, rather than taking his point of departure in the historical event itself. This
Policy Review
Books
means that just because a historical event is important, say Trafalgar or Waterloo, this does not automatically ensure its inclusion, as Napoleon no doubt would be relieved to hear. he roman artists certainly knew how to honor military heroes, including one not their own, Alexander the Great, who defeated the Scythians and the Parthians and went all the way to India, and who all subsequent military men strove to emulate. The Alexander Mosaic, found in Pompeii and now housed in the Museum of Naples, shows Alexander in full attack while a wild-eyed king Darius is in frantic flight looking back over his shoulder. Though parts are missing, with its forward sweep, the mosaic conveys the idea of Alexander as an irresistible force, scything everything in his path. Among emperors of the homegrown variety, Rabb chooses the six-foot marble statue of Augustus found in 1883 in the ruins of his wife Livias villa in Prima Porta, outside Rome, which has Augustus dressed in military garb and with arm outstretched, in the act of addressing his troops. Rabb notes the calm and relaxed pose of the figure: The statue oozes self confidence. Augustuss breast plate features two sphinxes, referring to his victory over Mark Antony in the battle of Actium. His consular baton symbolizes the legitimacy of his power, and his bare feet underscore his divine status: He is the embodiment of the authority of the Rome. The model for all later man-onhorseback statues is also found in Rome: the eleven-foot bronze statue of Marcus Aurelius, most of whose reign
August & September 2012 107
was taken up battling the Germanic tribes. Though not in military garb, his gesture is still that of the conqueror, notes Rabb, and the artist has deliberately made him bigger than his horse proportionally. Quite a lot bigger, actually one step further and the effect would have been comic, like Clint Eastwood on his mule in A Fistful of Dollars. As it is, this is one emperor unlikely ever to be thrown by his horse. Of monuments marking Roman victories, the Titus and Constantine triumphal arches speak for themselves, but the most impressive architectural feat is still Trajans column, constructed from twenty drums of marble, which immortalizes his two wars against the Dacians. What is fascinating about it, notes Rabb, is that it combines celebration with reportage and includes every aspect of the warfare, including the digging of moats and building of fortified encampments, the crossing of the Danube by a bridge constructed by boats, and the performance of religious sacrifices. The emperor himself is shown in a wide variety of situations addressing his troops, interrogating a prisoner, and receiving the severed heads of Dacian warriors while the defeated king Decebalus is about to commit suicide by slitting his throat. It is safe to say that the Romans werent big on compassion: Vanquished barbarian enemies were taken in triumph, sold as slaves, trained as gladiators, or put to work in the mines. That was only their just desserts for having opposed the might of Rome.
rawing on ancient classical models and adding some touches of its own, the
Books
Renaissance produced its share of impressive warrior images, many of them inspired by the wars between the Italian city-states. Of all the equestrian statues in the world, Rabb singles out Andrea del Verrocchios monument to Colleoni as the most impressive in its portrayal of naked power. Colleoni was a soldier of fortune who became captain-general of Venice: The statue, placed outside the church of Santi Giovanni Paolo, shows him tall in the saddle, single-minded and unshakable in his purpose. One almost senses the peasants bowing their heads in submission as he passes. At this point Rabb registers a slight shift, as additional attributes show up in the portrayal of the warrior. The duke of Urbino, Federico da Montefeltro, who in one of his campaigns had been up against Colleoni, certainly had the battle scars to prove his valor, including a lost eye. But Montefeltro was no mere soldier. He had an impressive library and was a patron of the arts. An early Renaissance portrait by Pedro Berruguete shows Montefeltro absorbed in a book while Piero della Francesca, in an altarpiece, shows him deep in prayer. Montefeltro is the scholar- soldier, proving that that guts and brains are perfectly compatible. The same aspects are stressed in Donatellos bronze statue of David in Florence, which turns the Old Testament story into a contemporary comment on the Medicis struggle with the Viscontis of Milan: As Robb notes, the Visconti emblem featured a crown with feathered wings, and Goliaths winged helmet clearly makes him a Visconti warrior. But David is no triumphalist victor thumping his chest.
108
With his foot resting on Goliaths severed head, he is lost in thought, and again conveys the Renaissance ideal of mind and muscle combined. But according to Rabb, the truly revolutionary change occurs in the 16th and 17th centuries, when gunpowder is transforming warfare, making it less a test of individual bravery and skill, and hence a less ennobling affair and one less worthy of the artists admiration. War was becoming impersonal, and death random. Religious wars and civil wars are considered the most ferocious: The Thirty Years War devastated whole regions of Europe, with Germany losing as much as one third of its population, and split apart the long tradition of unstinting praise for the warrior, writes Rabb. From now on, the focus increasingly centers on the inhumanity of war, and on its victims, be they innocent civilians or crippled soldiers. Rabb sees Pieter Breughel as the prophet of this new vision with his painting The Massacre of the Innocents, in which the biblical scene has been transferred to Europe. It shows Spanish troops, tasked with suppressing the Dutch protestant revolt, entering a Flemish village and killing Flemish children with ruthless abandon on a winters day. As Rabb notes, a version of the painting was later bought by Rudolf II, the Habsburg emperor who was Philip IIs nephew and an admirer of Breughel. However, as he found Breughels motif a little too critical of his uncle, he had the children painted out and animals put in instead, turning it into a mere scene of plunder, a kind of Massacre of the Innocents-lite. While Titian would still do his Allegory of the Battle of Lepanto celePolicy Review
Books
brating Philip IIs victory over the Turks, with a chained and sorry looking Turkish prisoner at Philips feet, Diego Velazquez, some 60 years later in his Surrender of Breda, shows himself subtly in tune with the new spirit. His depiction of the Spanish commanderin-chief Ambrogio Spinola presents him accepting the surrender of the Dutch leaders. But significantly, the latter are not treated like the vanquished Roman foes on Trajans column or like the unhappy, hog-tied Turk in Titians painting; rather, they are accorded courtesy and respect. The emphasis here, Rabb notes, is on gentleness and reconciliation. More direct is Horrors of War by Peter Paul Rubens, who in the past had not shown himself averse to portraying martial glory, but here, in a commission by the grand duke of Tuscany, paints Mars ready to go on a rampage as he tears himself loose from the embrace of Venus and is dragged along by Fury. Pestilence and Famine join the party. At the bottom, a terrified mother clutches a child; an architect, compass in hand, has been knocked over; and under Marss feet lies a trampled book, proof that war is the destroyer of art and architecture, of civilization itself, as Rubens carefully explained in a letter. u t as p e r h a p s the most intriguing proponent of the changed view Rabb picks Jacques Callot, the baroque printmaker and draftsman from the independent Duchy of Lorraine, which was invaded by Louis XIIIs troops during the Thirty Years War. At first glance, Callots series of seventeen etchings The Miseries of War, measuring only 8 to 9 centimeters by eighteen to nineteen cenAugust & September 2012 109
timeters, seem rather innocuous in their elegant workmanship. Then you take a closer look. Carrying titles like Pillage of a Cloister and Plunder of a Village, they record the misdeeds of a group of marauders terrorizing the countryside; they engage in an orgy of rape and murder until finally being brought to justice. Number 11, The Hanging, is the most horrific: It shows a tree full of looters strung up for their misdeeds, with the army looking on. On the side, a condemned man is given the final blessing by a monk, on the other side two thieves play dice on a drum to decide who is next for the hangmans rope. Underneath is a text written in French: In the end, these infamous and lost thieves hanging like evil fruit from the tree, prove that the crime, terrible and dark as it is, is also the instrument of shame and revenge, and that it is the destiny of evil men to incur, sooner or later, the justice of the heavens. As art historian Diane Wolfthal has pointed out, it is not so much war as such that Callot opposes but its abuses: In Callots day, looting was deemed acceptable, but in certain cases exceptions could be made: Clergy, travelers, women, and children were not to be harassed and these are the very ones who appear in Callots prints being brutalized by the marauders. By contrast, the virtuous soldiers are shown being rewarded by the king. The shock effect deriving from the contrast between detached style and violent content in Callots prints brings to mind the 2000 installation Hell, by the British Chapman Brothers, consisting of nine model landscapes with some 5,000 miniature toy soldiers. Normally toy soldiers are associated with child-
Books
hood innocence, but here the tableaux formed a swastika and were peopled by Nazi troops torturing and butchering Russian soldiers, operating gas ovens, and crucifying prisoners. When destroyed by warehouse fire in 2004, the installation was reconstructed as F-g Hell, and has by now multiplied into 30,000 tiny creatures of evil. ccording to rabb, in the period 16401800, warfare became more restrained and drill and discipline were stricter signs of the militarys greater integration in the state. We must be most careful to leave the peasants with enough grain not only to live, but to sow their ground for another harvest, particularly if we have reason to think that the next campaign will be waged in the same area, wrote French cavalry Brigadier Turpin de Crisse in 1754, displaying enlightened self-interest. Much energy was spent on what Rabb terms territorial jockeying. During this period painters of course would still paint battles and successful commanders, but in muted form, and often displaying documentary instinct rather than the passion Rabb requires from a masterpiece; they therefore get short shrift. A little too short, perhaps: Whats wrong with Benjamin Wests Death of General Wolfe? But passion returned with a vengeance with Jacques-Louis David and the French Revolution, which saw the emergence of revolutionary nationalism and huge armies. As the chief proponent of revolutionary ardor, David started out by painting ancient Roman and Greek heroes from the days of the republic to serve as the model for the revolution. He became its
110
chief choreographer, creating spectacle and costumes and he backed it in its most virulent form, portraying Marat, the nastiest of its pamphleteers, as a murdered martyr in his bathtub, complete with religious iconography. When the revolution had devoured its own, David switched to glorifying Napoleon, the Hitler of his day, but according to Rabb, his portrait of Bonaparte traversing the Alps represents the final flourish in a long heroic tradition. Not that there havent been plenty of men on horseback since, both paintings and statues, but, says Rabb, they appear tame by comparison. From this point on, the victim takes center stage: The future (at least in the creation of masterpieces) was to belong to the Goyas, not the Davids, Rabb writes. Goya is believed to have based his Disasters of War on Callots Miseries, but, as Wolfthal has noted, they are more direct in their effects, employing as they do fierce clashes of light and darkness, distortion and close-ups. They were not, however, published until the 1860s, more than three decades after his death in 1828, perhaps because Goya did not want to alienate his establishment customers in the Bourbon dynasty. Of Goyas oils, the most revolutionary is The Third of May 1808 , a night scene in which French soldiers by lantern light execute Spanish rebels. The central prisoner, dressed in a white shirt, his arms outstretched, strikes a Christ-like pose, and Rabb sees the painting as representing the the beginning of modern art. Thus Goyas influence is immediately apparent in Manets portrayal of the execution of Emperor Maximilian, where street urchins on top of the wall watch the
Policy Review
Books
scene in amusement like spectators at a puppet theatre, while behind the firing squad, the sergeant in charge fiddles with his rifle, displaying an attitude of massive unconcern. n the 20th century, the horrors on the battlefield reached new heights. During World War I, John Singer Sargent, otherwise known for his elegant society portraits, was asked by the British government to visit the front and record his impressions. Rabb highlights Gassed as the true masterpiece of that war. Recalling Breughels rendering of the biblical parable in his painting The Blind Leading the Blind, Gassed shows a line of nine soldiers, all blinded, each with the hand on the shoulder of the one before him, and guided along by a corporal. In the foreground the wounded are strewn, and to the left another line of blinded soldiers arrives. From the same war, Rapp mentions C.R.W. Nevinsons Paths of Glory the title a reference to Thomas Grays Elegy in a Country Churchyard, where the paths of glory lead but to the grave which shows two lifeless Tommys before the German barbed wire, and which was banned by the censors. On the German side, Rabb selects George Groszs savage caricature The Card Players of maimed veterans at the gambling table with various body parts missing. A fitting memorial to the carnage of World War I is found in Sir Edward Lutyenss austere red brick Memorial to the Missing of the Somme, which has turned the triumphal arch into a monument of sorrow. Rabb ends his book with Picassos Guernica from the Spanish Civil War:
August & September 2012 111
Movies have now taken over as the chief renderer of war, and he singles out Stanley Kubricks Paths of Glory, which centers on the mutiny of French soldiers in 1917 and the execution of three of them, as the cinematic successor to Goyas Disasters of War. nvariably, in any book of this kind, one may quibble with some of the authors omissions. Davids younger contemporary Theodore Gericaults first major effort, The Charging Chasseur, from 1812, comes to mind: The painting features an officer of the Imperial Guards on a wildly rearing gray steed with a magnificent leopard saddle blanket, twisted in the saddle to fend off of some unseen enemy surely the ultimate rendering of the white-hot passion of battle. But Gericault merits only a single sentence in the book, his art dismissed as done in an elegiac mood, lamenting the end of Napoleonic glory. Among the pacifist efforts, one misses Otto Dixs World War I triptych War, with the main panel showing a rotting landscape over which a decomposed body in a shredded uniform hovers like some hideous angel of death, pointing the way to hell. More generally, since Rabb has made plain his approach from the beginning, one cannot blame him for sticking to it. But the flip side of restricting yourself to masterpieces is that the selections become a little too predictable, and, as Rabb himself freely acknowledges, leave out whole swathes of military history. In addition to the 16401800 period mentioned above, there is nothing from the British Empire during the Victorian period, a not unimportant period in world histo-
Books
ry, but unfortunately not one distinguished by great art. But the question one would have liked the book to probe more critically is where the artists by now reflexive concern for victims has led him indeed, how well qualified the artist has shown himself to be when it comes to weighing matters of war and peace. Though routinely ascribed godlike gifts of intuition and insight, there are, after all, plenty of artists whose grasp of reality has been tenuous at best, and who have displayed double standards to an alarming degree. Just as one would hate to take ones political guidance from the heroic efforts produced from David, magnificent though they are, so one would decline to be led by Pablo Picasso, recipient of the Lenin Peace Prize, who passionately condemned fascist crimes in Spain but was perfectly happy to lend his name to the communist cause until his death in 1973. This issue becomes especially important in a democratic age: Surely, there is a difference between the wars of the past, where autocratic rulers fought it out among themselves with little consideration for those paying the price, and todays wars, where democracies take up arms against dictatorships or religious fanatics. Which again leads one to question how natural or appropriate the adversarial relationship between the artist and the warrior really is in our own age. In the post-World War II era, focusing single-mindedly on civilian suffering to the exclusion of every other consideration all too often seems to provide the artist with a convenient excuse for engaging in facile pacifism occasionally to the point of actively supporting the other side out of some misguided sympathy for the underdog. Such mindless pacifism seems a copout, moral cowardice masquerading as high principle. Only a fool would glorify war, but ultimately it is the warrior who guarantees the artists right to paint or sculpt or the filmmakers right make films as he pleases. And in doing so, the warrior still performs acts of courage and self-sacrifice which merit the artists appreciation. The Iwo Jima Memorial proves that it is possible to hit the right note: It does not glorify war, but it portrays the Marines grim determination in the cause of freedom. It is the perfect tribute to the democratic warrior.
112
Policy Review