Freaky Data Mining

I know I haven't been updating my blog much lately, but this one I just had to scream about. The New York Times has published an article describing a project funded by the Department of Homeland Security that aims to develop software capable of interpreting the attitude of a newspaper article towards the United States. The headline is somewhat misleading as legally the program couldn't be used within the USA at all, but the mere existence of such software would frighten me...I'm not real big on the datamining capabilities our government has as it is.

Politics: Israel & Hezbollah Fuck up the Middle East even more

Everybody should have heard by now that Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers and killed several more several days ago; Hezbollah attempted to trade the soldiers for a number of prisoners, a number of them women and children. Since then, Israel has bombed Lebanon's airport and other targets, killing ~80 civilians. Israel has commenced a campaign against Syria. Hezbollah has fired more rockets into Israel, killing an unknown number of civilians. See Google News (specifically this) for up-to-the-minute info.

Recent News

• Aljazeera.net-"Gaza Braces for Drastic Shortages"
  Gas and electricity have become very scarce in the Gaza Strip, thanks to Israel's isolating it as they work on getting a kidnapped soldier back. The UN Relief & Works Agency (UNRWA) is worried about getting supplies if logisitical lines don't open soon.
• The New York Times-"Detainees May Test Reach of Guantanamo Ruling"
  The Supreme Court has extended the coverage terrorist suspects at Guantanamo receive under the Geneva Conventions. Different people speculate on the impact this will have on other prisons, torture, and higher-level suspects.
• The Los Angeles Times-"4 Soldiers Accused of Iraq Rape, Killings"
  Yet more disturbing news from Iraq. It's a war zone, after all; what do people expect? We'll be able to leave someday...
• Reuters UK-Bin Laden warns U.S.
  A tape (probably from Bin Laden) warns Shi'ites not to attack Sunnis in Iraq, and tells the USA to stay out of Somalia.
• Bloomberg.com-"Venezuelan President Chavez Urges Africa to Boost Oil Taxes"
  I know Chavez isn't very popular in the States, but I've got to admit I like this. Africa's been screwed enough as it is.
• Forbes.com, courtesy The AP-"Budget Impasse Shuts Down N.J. Government"
  The state governor wants a sales tax increase, and the Democrats in the legislature don't. From what I've seen, shame on all of them for taking it this far. Especial shame to the casinos for trying to get state casino monitors declared "essential employees" so they can stay open.
• ScrippsNews-"Church official strives to find common ground"
  The Archbishop of Canterbury is trying to maintain the unity of the Anglican/Episcopal church (remember the debate over homosexuality and the tensions between the American and global church)...and it looks like the only way he's found to do it is to split it apart.
• Space.com-"Hubble's Main Camera Successfully Switched to Backup Power"
  A temporarily offline camera is operating again. I love our space program.

Technorati Tags: [Politics] [Space] [Palestine] [Israel] [Geneva Conventions] [Guantanamo] [Iraq] [Osama Bin Laden] [Chavez] [New Jersey] [Government shutdown] [Episcopal Church]

Politics: Flag-burning

There's been another attempt to ban the burning of the American flag; presumably by Republicans trying to mobilize voters. It passed the House a year ago, and was a vote short (66-34) in the Senate yesterday. Disgusting.
Granting some small bit of, er, "hope" to those of us who take our rights seriously, Time magazine says that as many as a dozen supporting senators would have voted "nay" if they thought the bill was going to pass.
Being from Michigan, I'm particularly disappointed in Senator Stabenow, who voted for it. And don't let Hillary Clinton's "nay" vote sway you -- she (again) tried to straddle both sides of the fence by proposing a bill that would ban flag-burning by law rather than Constitutionally.
Check the Senate rollcall here and the House rollcall from last year here.
Thanks to The Tech Report's Religion & Politics forum for this issue and links. Technorati Tags: [Politics] [Flag] [Amendment] [Constitution]

Greg's 42 will come back, I promise

I've been getting reports* that people have been checking here and becoming frustrated when they didn't see any updates. So I offer an apology and explanation: Since ~May 15th, I've been in my college's "Summer Math" program. One takes all of sophomore math (6 units) in 6 weeks. It's intense. Intense to the point that one of my professors told us point-blank that 10 hours of homework/night sounded about right (that's on top of the three hours of class).

So I've been doing lots of schoolwork, and have been tired a lot. I won't say that I haven't had the time to make posts...but I have been far too tired to research or write anything worth learning about. And the time it takes to write posts about my life is currently better spent actually having a little bit of a life.

Nonetheless, the last test is on June 23rd. So look for the return of Greg's 42 sometime around that day!
(*): My mother told me.

Politics: Raising the minimum wage

Starting in 1989, the US Congress has recieved automatic pay increases that match with the inflation-adjusted cost of living (though they have also turned down that raise a few times). The federal minimum wage hasn't changed since 1997.
Does this strike anybody else as wrong?

Apparently Hillary Clinton agrees; on April 20 she announced a bill to tie the minimum wage to the same increases that Congress recieve, and apparently (I'm having trouble finding details on the web) immediately raises the minimum wage to $6.25.

I think I agree with this bill; certainly the minimum wage needs at least a raise (preferably some overhauling); as Clinton's site details, two adults working forty-hour weeks at minimum wage earn $21,424 combined. The impact on the economy could be troublesome, but I'd be willing to live with that risk for the immediate benefits to the workforce. Technorati Tags: [Politics] [Hillary Clinton] [Minimum Wage] [Economics]

Personal/International: 5k/Genocide in Sudan

Sunday I started my running back up again after a ~2 week break by running a semi-competitive 5k with a bunch of other guys on the cross team. They all beat me, but I ran rather faster than I expected (19:18, somehow or other. Man did it hurt though).

Rather more interesting than my race was the purpose of the event, though: to raise money to stop the genocide in Sudan (through the Genocide Intervention Network). You should want to stop the genocide too, and tomorrow I'll be giving you some history on the conflict and reasons to try and stop it.
Meanwhile, the Genocide Intervention Network, Save Darfur Coalition, and Human Rights Watch are excellent resources.

Technorati Tags: [Politics] [Darfur] [Sudan] [Genocide]

Personal: Lazy & finals

It's been a long while since my last update; mostly because last week was "Dead Week" at my college and somehow all the time I spent gaming meant by the time I thought about blogging I was falling asleep. Then I actually started thinking about finals and studying. So, no blog posts. I do, however, have a lot of great ideas for blog posts and things I want to learn about. One of them I'm going to start on now.
Also, I took my chem final today. It was torture, but not as bad as I thought it would be. Plus, I'M DONE WITH FORMAL CHEMISTRY FOR LIFE! (Apologies to my chemist grandfather. ;))

Media Bias in Action

Apparently, an Australian soldier died in Iraq (possibly while cleaning his gun). This ABC Melbourne (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) article describes his wife, who still supports the War in Iraq. This (later) article from NineMSN (part of Microsoft's MSN Network) describes how angry his cousin and mother are about the government (very sadly) bringing the wrong body home. It doesn't mention his wife's existence. ABC Melbourne doesn't yet have an article on the mixup.
Technorati Tags: [Politics] [Kovco] [Australia] [Iraq War]

Personal: So, so tired

My D3 track team had its conference championship meet Monday and yesterday. I didn't sleep enough over the weekend and raced badly, but still had a great time cheering for the people who did better than myself. Unfortunately it kept me out pretty late, and unable to sleep well regardless. It also completely removed two afternoons worth of homework time, and I'm now exhausted and pretty well loaded with work. It's not going well. Next week, however, is dead week. So far the only thing I have to do for the entire week is a sports physical. I've been brewing up thoughts on what would make some good posts and should have some doozies for you then.

Paper: How To Lose (or Win) the War on Terror

I just got my grade back for my research paper in Hum2 (another 'A'! Oh yeah!); that makes it posting time. This one discusses the many reasons the War on Terror cannot be won the way we're currently fighting it. Because like it or not, we are losing.

How To Lose (or Win) the War On Terror

Introduction

After the nation-changing events of September 11th, 2001, the Bush Administration rolled out an ambitious new anti-terrorism plan. While some changes came quickly and others followed slowly, the country today is engaging in an unprecedented War On Terror that has created or changed policy and priorities in every part of the federal government (Hendrickson 2006). It has mobilized the nation’s war-making capability and portions of it have divided us as a nation, but almost everybody has agreed that the War on Terror must be won. Sadly, the War as it is practiced today can never be won in the fashion that people expect.

The War on Terror today consists of a variety of policies and operations, summarized in President Bush’s October speech to The National Endowment for Democracy (White House 2005):
1)“We are preventing terrorist attacks before they occur” by “destroy[ing] the terrorist networks and incapacitat[ing] their leaders.”
2)“We are denying weapons of mass destruction to outlaw regimes and their terrorist allies.”
3)“We are determined to deny radical groups the support and sanctuary of outlaw regimes” because “state sponsors” “deserve no patience from the victims of terror;” “the United States makes no distinction between [terrorists] and those who support and harbor terrorists.”
4)“We are fighting to deny the militants control of any nation” in Afghanistan and Iraq.
5)“We are denying the militants future recruits by advancing democracy and hope across the broader Middle East.” It is difficult to oppose any of these 5 bullet points in principal, but the implementation of each may be lacking. Looking at current practices, techniques used in fulfilling each goal principally include the use of military force to overthrow state sponsors of terrorism, the use of covert operatives and special forces to kill or arrest terrorists, and the new doctrines of preemption and unilateralism.

The victory conditions are sadly less well-defined. The closest a senior administration official has come to defining victory was on September 24th, 2001. Defense Secretary Rumsfeld said that victory would be when “we can prevent people from adversely affecting our way of life” and “the kind of environment where we can, in fact, fulfill...freedoms” (CNN 2001). Yet today, the speeches and policies given and described by the administration seem to indicate that the War on Terrorism will be won only when terrorists have been eradicated the world over — when terrorism ceases to exist in any form. The second definition seems to be the current modus operandi, and so this paper will focus on debunking first the possibility of such a victory. It will then continue in light of that impossible definition and demonstrate that the Administration currently implements the wrong tactical and strategic choices . Concluding is a discussion on what can be done.

a. The Terrorists Cannot All be Killed
First comes the apparent assumption — implied by prolonged imprisonment of terror suspects in such places as Guantanamo Bay, by our use of Predator drones to assassinate al Qaeda leaders,1 and by such language as “incapacitat[ing] their leaders” (White House 2005) — that it is possible to defeat the terrorists by killing them all. This idea is nothing more than a pipe dream, and is shown as such by histories of those regions where it has been put into practice.

Consider Israel. In September of 2000, the Palestinians began an intifada, putting Israel into a situation similar in some ways to that of the United States today. They decided to more openly and aggressively employ “targeted killings” to remove Palestinians on their terrorist lists in an attempt to make Israel a safer nation (David 2003). Based on terrorist attacks since the practice began, it has failed miserably: the last two months of 2001 saw 6 terrorist attacks against Israel; the same period in 2002 witnessed 11 (Anti-Defamation League 2006). More recently such attacks have slowed again, but this slowdown seems at least as attributable to such outside forces as the death of Yasir Arafat, the fence, and typical cycles as to any effect of targeted killings. Yet even if the attacks were successful — Yael Stein labels their effectiveness “controversial” — they would need to end, because the collateral damage ratio is too staggeringly high. In December 2002 the Israelis had killed 86 targets at a cost of at least 40 innocent civilians (Stein 2003). The ratios for the United States’ actions are less clear but, given the recent failed attack targeting Ayman al-Zawahiri — killing some 18 people believed to be civilians — the ratio seems to be at least as bad.2

Similarly, Iraq has been under some form of occupation by US troops since April 2003, and has been primarily responsible for maintaining order throughout much of that time. Groups such as the Iraq Body Count have little difficulty demonstrating the number of Iraqis that have been killed due to the war — a minimum of 34,030 as of April 12, 2005 — and Iraq’s status as a front in the War on Terror (as well as the normal Abu Graibh prison practices) make it clear that in Iraq, too, standard policy is the elimination of all terrorists. Yet suicide bombings have steadily increased since the invasion. There were 23 attacks by 27 people from August-December 2003, 40 attacks by 44 people from June-October 2004, and 112 attacks by 170 people in the six months from April-September 2005 (a rate of 93 attacks in 5 months) (Schweitzer & Ferber 2005).

b. The Sponsor States Cannot All be Overthrown
The current administration has repeatedly insisted that state sponsors of terrorism are at no better level (in a moral or legal sense) than terrorists themselves (see CNN 2001, White House 2005). The administration reserves the right to deal with them much as it deals with terrorists: by forcible regime change, demonstrated in Afghanistan and Iraq. Indeed, the administration seems to promise this change if given enough time. But the policy, while powerful in a speech, leaves much to be desired in the real world. It is ill-defined, expensive to implement, and unhelpful in combating many kinds of terrorism.

Problems of Definition
While the State Department maintains a list of official state sponsors of terrorism, it is not a complete look at their actions. Two states on the list “took significant steps to cooperate in the global war on terrorism,” but the other four (Cuba, Iran, North Korea, and Syria) “continue to embrace terrorism as an instrument of policy.” A pseudo-state like the Palestinian Authority does not qualify to be on the list, despite its strong terrorist connections — but we provided aid to this terrorist shelter “state” until Hamas won the elections.3 Other states, while not technically sponsors, have strong terrorist ties — Saudi Arabia, for instance, has provided money to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers.4 15 of the 19September 11th suicide bombers were Saudi;5 do these facts qualify them as a terrorist sponsor state, and what makes them different from the countries on the State Department’s list?

Problems of Implementation
Even assuming the difficulties in definition could be overcome, there are the problems with expense. The Iraq War has cost us some $250 billion (Congressional Research 2005) and there are 6 states on the terrorist sponsor list. Even if we spent only as much on each terrorist sponsor state as was spent on Afghanistan ($82 billion (Congressional Research 2005)) we would need to produce $480 billion dollars, in addition to the billions already owed from the Iraq War. Two terrorist sponsor states (Iran and North Korea) either have, or are presumed to be acquiring, nuclear weapons.6 We would have to invade them before their weapons could be brought to bear. Given that President Bush recently admitted we would not be leaving Iraq during his term7 it is an expensive proposition. There is simply no way to pay for the wars, nor do we have the manpower to commit to all of them at once.

Moreover, if Iraq is any indication, overthrowing a state sponsor of terrorism is not a sure way to reduce terrorism. Bringing the fight so dramatically and completely to their “home turf” provides terrorists with a great deal of local legitimacy, merely hurting our cause. Pefia states that “the Islamist terrorist threat is relatively undeterred by the U.S. military presence abroad, and U.S. forces abroad, particularly those deployed in Muslim countries, may do more to exacerbate than to diminish the threat “ (Pefia 2006). This is born out by the available evidence: the terrorist attack rate in Iraq has not ceased to increase since the invasion (Schweitzer & Ferber 2005), and while it is largely confined to Iraq right now, six public relations, economic, and military messes on the scale of Iraq would be costly by any metric.

c. Current Tactics Decrease Worldwide Support Due to the ephemeral nature of terrorists and their organizations, international cooperation is essential to combating terrorism effectively. But the new doctrines of preemption and unilateralism threaten that cooperation at a dangerously deep level. They make friendly states less likely to grant us favors, neutral states more likely to refuse us deals, and grant unfriendly states more legitimacy when they oppose us. China is worried by preemption and unilateralism, Muslim publics that are becoming less supportive of terrorism still oppose the United States, and Europe has become decidedly cooler towards us.

China China’s attitude towards the United States has changed significantly as a result of some of these new policies. While very cooperative in the War on Terror, Beijing “has realized that the war on terrorism has unleashed a number of potentially threatening developments that can checkmate China's strategic moves and cast doubts about predictions on its inevitable rise as the next superpower“ and knows that “China could be the biggest loser in the U.S. war on international terrorism because of its competitive relationship with Washington” {Castro 2005). Moreover, China has complained about the Bush administration’s unilateralism and reminds the United States that such unilateralism defies the “idealism or liberalism” of past Presidents; in order to counter the United States’ new policies China has strengthened trade with the European Union and will likely try to assemble a coalition of East Asian states based on common security needs (Castro 2005).

Muslims The Muslim nations that we so desperately need cooperation from are not being drawn closer by our actions. Pew’s Trends 2005 surveyed four predominantly Muslim countries with previous polling histories (Turkey, Pakistan, Jordan, and Morocco) — none of these four nations gave the United States higher favorability ratings in 2004 than they had given in initial polling (either 1999, 2000, or 2002). In fact, in both Turkey and Jordan our favorability rating declined by roughly 20% — in Morocco it fell an even more devastating 50%. Worse than favorability ratings, though, are opinions on our motives: belief in our sincerity about the War on Terror is less than 20% in all these nations, and the Iraq War made solid majorities of each country less confident that the United States wants to promote democracy. All these drops in support somehow occurred alongside growing concerns in each country about terrorism and Islamic extremism (Pew Global 2005); we must tap these concerns and ally ourselves with them if we ever hope to win an extended conflict of ideology.

Europeans The picture painted by Pew’s survey is just as grim in Europe. The only country surveyed that experienced a net gain in US favorability over the survey period (1999/2000 to 2004) was Russia. Our favorability in Spain went down 15%, Italy 16%, Britain and France 25%, and Germany 30%. Each of these nations (except Britain) believes, by a sizable majority, that US and British leaders lied about Iraq’s possession of weapons of mass destruction. Only Britain believes (by 51% to 41%) that the War on Terror is a sincere effort simply to reduce terrorism, and each nation — again excepting Britain, which agrees with 50% — believes it would be a good thing if the European Union were as powerful as the United States. This in spite of the fact that only France believes the world would be safer if another nation could balance the United States.

In other words,

[Anti-Americanism] is most acute in the Muslim world, but it spans the globe — from Europe to Asia, from South America to Africa. And while much of the animus is aimed directly at President Bush and his policies, especially the war in Iraq, this new global hardening of attitudes amounts to something larger than a thumbs down on the current occupant of the White House. Simply put, the rest of the world both fears and resents the unrivaled power that the United States has amassed since the Cold War ended. In the eyes of others, the U.S. is a worrisome colossus: It is too quick to act unilaterally, it doesn’t do a good job of addressing the world’s problems, and it widens the global gulf between rich and poor. (GLOBAL)

Unilateral action and the war in Iraq are both tactical components of the War on Terror. Concentrating our effort on waging the Iraq War reduces our ability to deal with other problems, and the Afghanistan and Iraqi wars have both taken an already downtrodden people and made them worse. It is of course impossible to blame all the issues on the War on Terror, but it is possible to partly rectify some of them, and we should act to do: We cannot deny the terrorists “control of any nation” or “future recruits” if no nation in the world agrees with our strategy. Our current tactics are shedding friends far more quickly than we are making new ones, and if “They are either with us or against us” we must work hard to convince the governments and publics of the world to be with us.

d. Global Anti-Terrorist Measures Require Cooperation
Having established that the current tactics employed in the War on Terror has a negative affect abroad, it is necessary to establish that the negative effect matters. It is a simple argument: in fighting the War on Terror, there are certain goals we wish to accomplish. Many of these goals depend on international cooperation; that cooperation is not always guaranteed. Therefore we wish to have a good international image. In particular, the nuclear Non-Proliferation treaty fulfills a direct stratagem of the War on Terror and intelligence-sharing is critical to fighting an organization that crosses many borders. Additionally, it is necessary to undergo nation-building exercises at the conclusion of each regime-change war (like those in Afghanistan or Iraq), and there are some treaties we would like all parties to hold to (the Geneva Convention, among others). There is a clear case that decreasing international involvement or increasing a sense of alienation will negatively affect all these items.

Non-proliferation & Intelligence Sharing
G. John Ikenberry sums up the need for multilateralism to fight WMD proliferation in his article “America’s Imperial Ambition:”

The specific doctrine of preemptive action poses a related problem: once the United States feels it can take such a course, nothing will stop other countries from doing the same. ... Moreover, and quite paradoxically, overwhelming American conventional military might, combined with a policy of preemptive strikes, could lead hostile states to accelerate programs to acquire their only possible deterrent to the United States: WMD. This is another version of the security dilemma, but one made worse by a neoimperial grand strategy.

Intelligence sharing is critical for its own reasons. International terrorist plots are planned in multiple countries, and no one nation’s intelligence services have the size or reach to keep track of all known terrorists (if one did, Osama bin Laden would not still be at large). Thus nations must share information of interest or applicability to each other in order to disrupt plots and communication.

Nation-building Nation-building is of necessity a vast and expensive undertaking which cannot be undertaken by one nation even if it is willing to take on the entire budget itself. Such thoughts are nice but ultimately incorrect, because a nation is only as stable as its borders, and the borders of a nation like Afghanistan are very much unstable (Goodhand 2004). Goodhand says that Afghanistan has developed three mostly separate economies: a combat economy dedicated to war, a shadow economy in the shadows, and a coping economy consisting of those just managing to get by — poppy farmers, for instance. Goodhand also says that

Afghanistan's political economy has significant international dimensions. It includes drug dealers in London and Moscow and Islamic radicals in Chechnya and the Philippines. It has also been shaped by international policies, from the "sticks" of sanctions and drug eradication programs to the "carrots" of humanitarian and development assistance.

And, separately

The transition from war to peace in Afghanistan depends upon transforming the war economy into a peace economy This is unlikely to happen quickly. It is also unlikely to happen unless there is sustained international support and investment in the region. And it will definitely not come about as a result of externally imposed models of economic liberalization and liberal democracy. Greater attention needs to be paid to the real economics and the real politics of Afghanistan. This might lead to an approach that focuses less on containing the war economy than engaging with it, in order to harness the energies of war and build sustainable peace.

Thus, the combat economy cannot end until the demand for that economy ceases moving through Afghanistan. Such a coordinated removal of demand requires other countries to cooperate in order to be successful, and is very necessary to peace in the region.

International Humanitarian Law
Dan Belz, in his article “Is International Humanitarian Law Lapsing into Irrelevance in the War on International Terror?” argues convincingly that international agreements on humanitarian conduct during war are on the way to being marginalized and ignored during the War on Terror. He claims that much of the rationale for following treaties is a simple cost-benefit analysis, but that when your opponent refuses to participate by the same set of humanitarian rules it is no longer worth it for you to do so either. He concludes that

International terror poses an increasing challenge to global security and stability. The effectiveness of instruments currently regulating the conduct of states engaged in the war against it, and their ability to establish an optimal level of global security in reply, requires reappraisal. The features specific to this war, the problems of collective action, and the emergence of a tripolar system hindering unequivocal support for humanitarian law, lessen the ability of this law to serve as a central device to attain these goals.

Despite the drop in benefits of humanitarian law, we must show by example that it is still a necessary law to follow, because there will eventually be a day when we are at war with another nation-state and the rules will hold true as they once did. Moreover, Belz also argues that

The presence of a long term threat against the international status quo increases economic and political interdependence, turning global stability and security into a public good in an even purer sense. A good of this type satisfies two attributes: "non-exclusivity," meaning that its producers cannot prevent others from enjoying it, and "non-rivalry," meaning that consuming this good does not detract from the ability of others to do so. Since global stability benefits most states, it can be considered a public good almost in the purest sense of the term.

There are clear and pressing needs to reduce our reliance on unilateralism if we wish to win the War on Terror, promote non-proliferation, successfully build democracies as we say we desire, and keep all the humanitarian advances bought by a century’s worth of war crimes.

e. Stopping Local Terrorism Would Require Unconstitutional Measures
Even killing all the terrorists and replacing all the terrorist-sponsor states would not be enough to win the War on Terror. Many kinds of terrorism are homegrown and local. Prior to 9/11 the most famous terrorist in the United States was Timothy McVeigh — a US citizen. The London bombing planners were natives of England, and the Department of State itself says that during 2004 “the most deadly [terrorist attacks] were committed by local groups” (State 2005). Removing all the state sponsors of terrorism is simply not enough to eradicate terrorism altogether.

Local terrorism in the West has generally occurred either “spontaneously” (without an outside organization) or out of sympathy for political causes and groups they are not directly connected with, as shown by Timothy McVeigh and the two sets of London Bombers (.8 It is difficult to imagine providing any additional local security against such people without violating Constitutional rights to privacy. The London July 7th bombers are believed to have planned their entire operation over the Internet 8 — how do you defend against people who, in the legal record, look like ordinary citizens? Certainly preventing another Timothy McVeigh from setting off a bomb would require an Orwellian level of watchfulness and suspicion. Given that — other than the September 11th attacks — the Oklahoma City Bombing was the most deadly terror attack inside the United States, preventing such an attack would seem to be crucial to winning a War on Terror as apparently defined by the Bush administration.

f. We Cannot Become Invincible
We cannot constitutionally make it impossible to be a local terrorist. But it is theoretically possible to at least protect ourselves from international terror by guaranteeing they couldn’t get into the country. By physically closing our borders so that nobody can cross them without our knowledge, by expanding our searches of incoming material to check every container in every port, and by developing a missile defense system capable of countering the missiles that would be available to terrorists, we could guarantee that our nation could be attacked nowhere but its ports. If we required every ship to be checked before it left a different port to come to the United States, placed an observer on board every ship, and shot down any undocumented ship attempting to enter our waters, we could reduce even that risk.

But this safety is not a real option either, because the United States of America would have to change its economy overnight and become isolationist and protectionist. We are left, then, to either redefine the problem or admit utter defeat.

Redefining Victory
We cannot ever kill all the terrorists, we cannot replace all the state sponsors of terrorism, we could not find and identify all terrorists before they’d committed their crimes, and we cannot become invincible. Either the terrorists will win or we must change our problem statements and victory conditions. The second option seems to be the only reasonable choice: redefine victory. Because terrorists are those who use fear in an attempt to make themselves more influential, there seems to be a natural benchmark for victory: the War on Terror will be won when people in the United States (and any other countries we choose to include) no longer fear terrorists and are correct not to fear them.

Perhaps most interesting about this definition is that it says as much about the people of the United States as it does about the actual number of terrorists in the world. It says, instead, that the War on Terror will be won when terrorists cannot impact the lives of United States citizens in a more significant way than any other horrible person can.

So how much should a United States citizen fear terrorism? Based solely on the deaths caused by terrorists, not very much: from 1995 to 2000, international terrorism killed an average of 13 people each year (Ingram 2001). This is less than the 93 people killed each year by lightning (Fact Monster 2003). The apparently anomalous September 11th killed 2,986 people. Averaged out from when al Qaeda first turned their attention to bombing the United States — with the Twin Towers in 1993 — up until this year, that is roughly 250 people yearly. That’s a terrible number, but not so large compared to the roughly 16,000 people murdered “normally” each year within our country (FBI 2003). These numbers make it appear that terrorism is not really that great a threat. And in many ways, it is not and people are wrong to fear dying through terrorism. We could win the War if only people could be convinced of this fact.

That is not to say, however, that we should end the War on Terrorism by convincing people that they have very little to fear from terrorists. The view is true today, but there are rational fears that in the future it will cease to be so. The potential for terrorists to acquire a “dirty bomb” or other nuclear device at some point is too high to be ignored completely. This danger should be guarded against with diplomatic efforts to continue non-proliferation efforts. Likewise, if we know where specific terrorist leaders are and have the opportunity to arrest them, we should do so (killing them is still a mess under international law). But military action such as was taken in Iraq is absolutely indefensible as an action taken against terrorism. Charles Pefia recognizes this, and his article “A Smaller Military to Fight the War on Terror” argues that we should reduce the military budgets because the classic nation-state threats are changing in form, and a large military presence overseas has done at least as much harm as good in combating terrorism.

It therefore seems clear that in order to win the War on Terror, we must reduce our fear by realizing that terrorists are still a very small force in the world, we must combat the terrorists in the same way we would combat other international crime rings, and we must work with other nations to make them less tolerant of terrorism in any form.

Sources:

• Anti-Defamation League. 2006. Major Terrorist Attacks in Israel. http://www.adl.org/Israel/israel_attacks.asp. Accessed 17 April 2006.
• Belz, Dan. 2006. Is International Humanitarian Law Lapsing into Irrelevance in the War on International Terror? Theoretical Inquiries in Law 7 (1):97-129.
• Castro, Renato Cruz de. 2005. U.S. War on Terror in East Asia: The Perils of Preemptive Defense in Waging a War of the Third Kind. Asian Affairs 31 (4):212-31.
• CNN. 2001. America’s New War: Defense Secretary Rumsfeld Addresses Press. Transcript of televised comments. http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0109/24/se.24.html. Accessed 17 April 2006.
• Congressional Research Service. 2005. The Cost of Iraq, Afghanistan and Enhanced Base Security Since 9/11. Amy Belasco.
• David, Steven R. 2003. Israel’s Policy of Targeted Killing. Ethics and International Affairs 17 (1):111-26.
• Fact Monster. 2003. Lightning Dangers. http://www.factmonster.com/ipka/A0882938.html. Citing the National Weather Service “Storm Data." Accessed 17 April 2006.
• Department of Justice FBI. 2003. Crime in the United States 2002. http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius_02/html/web/offreported/02-nmurder03.html. Accessed 17 April 2006.
• Goodhand, Jonathan. 2004. From War Economy to Peace Economy? Reconstruction and State Building in Afghanistan. Journal of International Affairs 58 (1):155-74.
• Hendrickson, David C. 2006. Preemption, Unilateralism, and Hegemony: The American Tradition? Orbis 50 (2):273-87.
• Ikenberry, G. John. 2002. America’s Imperial Ambition. Foreign Affairs 81 (5):44-60.
• Ingram, Dexter. 2001. The Heritage Foundation. Facts and Figures About Terrorism. http://www.heritage.org/Research/NationalSecurity/WM36.cfm. Accessed 17 April 2006.
• Pefia, Charles V. 2006. A Smaller Military to Fight the War on Terror. Orbis 50 (2):289-306.
• Pew Global Attitudes Project. 2005. Islamic Extremism: Common Concern for Muslim and Western Publics. http://pewglobal.org/reports/pdf/248.pdf. Accessed 17 April 2006.
• Pew Research Center. 2005. Global Opinion: The Spread of Anti-Americanism. http://pewglobal.org/commentary/pdf/104.pdf. Accessed 17 April 2006.
• Schweitzer, Yoram and Ferber, Sari Goldstein. 2005. Al-Qaeda and the Internationalization of Suicide Terrorism. Tel Aviv University-Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies. http://www.e-prism.org/images/memo78.pdf. Accessed 17 April 2006.
• Stein, Yael. 2003. Response to Israel’s Policy of Targeted Killing: By Any Name Illegal and Immoral. Ethics and International Affairs 17 (1):127-37.
• U.S. Department of State. 2005. Country Reports on Terrorism. 25 April 2005. http://www.state.gov/s/ct/rls/crt/45321.htm. Accessed 17 April 2006.
• White House Office of the Press Secretary. 2005. Fact Sheet: President Bush Remarks on the War on Terror. http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/10/20051006-2.html. Accessed 17 April 2006.

Technorati Tags: [Politics]

Recent News

1. The Nepalese riots are getting worse
2. Video: War games targeting Iran; Bush hasn't ruled out nukes
3. Iraq has a full government! Bush delights in it.
4. The Iran-Russia enrichment deal to go through.
5. Italy's government goes on
6. Army suicides up
7. Junior officers blame generals, not just Rumsfeld.
8. The Falun Gong protester may get six months?!
9. Crackdown on hiring illegal workers.

1. The Nepalese police are still violent, and the protesters aren't slowing down as the political party leaders said the King's offer wasn't good enough. I pray for no more bloodshed.
2. War games I understand, on the chance that Iran actually has a decent military nuke program running. But why can't we rule out using nuclear weapons ourselves? That'd be a great legacy to leave for our nation: "First country to use nuclear weapons offensively!"
3. al-Maliki's acceptance by all the major parties has paved the way for the filling of all high-level government posts; everybody spoke out against at least some violence. Sectarian lines are still highly visible, though, and likely to continue causing trouble. Meanwhile, Bush is hoping to emphasize this good news to justify the invasion.
4. Iran is correct; assuming they aren't conducting military nuclear research they do have the legal right to nuclear power under the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Better in Russia than Iran itself.
5. Conservative Berlusconi still refuses to concede while the victorious leftist coalition is fighting over who gets what. It almost makes the 2000 US elections look tame!
6. It's not actually certain the military suicide rate is related to Iraq because it tracks closely with civilian rates in that age group. Veterans groups are using it as an opportunity to speak out on post-traumatic stress disorder.
7. This New York Times piece says debate has sprung up after several retired generals called for Rumsfeld's resignation. There's no clearly dominant viewpoint among the junior officers interviewed: some extend the blame to the generals, others want to put it as high as President Bush. Very few are actually arguing for resignation, though.
   Personally, this whole episode is very interesting for the questions it raises about civilian control of the military and how much the military can talk back. I think I'm okay with the military calling for resignation as long as it doesn't start naming preferred replacements.
8. According to the Washington Post, Wenyi Wang, the Falun Gong practitioner who interrupted Chinese President Hu Jintao's White House speech, may get 6 months of jail time. That's disgusting.
9. The Homeland Security Deparment has dedicated 171 agents to work against employers who hire illegal immigrants. It's not nearly enough to be effective; opponents wonder if they're just trying to blunt conservative criticism. It's the first time in 20 years these employment laws have been enforced at all.

Recent News

120,000 Nepalese protesters
CIA leaker fired
USA wants arms embargo on Iran; Russia equivocates
More messes in Palestine
California is paying the Army to repair levees?
Iraq has a new Prime Minister candidate
Underage sex doesn't have to be reported

• 120,000 Nepalese protesters seem to have made a great deal of progress (though they claim it's a sham), as the king has promised to return the government to the structure it held before his seizing dictatorial powers. Even given all the violence, I'm glad to see this happening.
• A CIA officer has been fired over leaks. So far, I agree with the CIA's steps. She's a known leaker and a security risk at some level. If she gets prosecuted for leaking, I'll be less happy about it.
• The Bush Administration called for an international arms embargo against Iran -- especially Russia, which is selling Iran some Tor missiles. I'm surprised the administration hadn't already done this; Russia says there's not yet any proof Iran is working on weapons.
• I just don't know what to say about Palestine. I suppose Hamas is reacting as one would expect, but I wish they'd show more of their charitable side now that they're in government. Still, at least they're spending the money they do have on services instead of the military (bottom of the Fox article).
• President Bush has granted Governor Schwarzenneger a waiver allowing California to pay the Army Corps of Engineers to repair some levees, though California may be expecting the money back. I didn't know California had any levees, though, so my question is where they are.
• In light of the new nominee, it looks like Iraq may have a working government soon. Yay! Unfortunately, the nominee is an exile, and has been since 1980.
• A judge rules that healthcare providers aren't required to report all underage sex if they don't believe it was a case of abuse. I've not thought enough about this one to have an opinion yet, other than to say that underage (or, indeed, premarital) sex is a Bad Thing.

Papers up

I've now finished putting up all of my old humanities papers. They're not exactly entertaining reading, but even the badly-written one (or two?) are at least informative. They were all written before I started blogging, so I've placed them as posts dated to when each paper was finished.

Creation

I've just created Greg's 42. Why? Because in last night's sleep-induced haze it seemed like fun, and a blog is a good excuse to pay more attention to the news. Of course, it's only a good excuse if people actually read it, so if I've managed to con you into checking this out, you should keep reading it--the information will be good for you, and your readership is good for me!
So, welcome to Greg's 42 -- if you're one of the 2 blog readers who hasn't read Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, it translates to "Greg's answer to everything" -- in which I will discuss (in roughly this order) politics & news, science, my life, and random books or games I've lately experienced.
Also going up will be the papers I write for my humanities classes (at my college, "humanities" means "not natural science," though because I'm also going for a government major in cooperation with another nearby school most of them will be political in nature), many of which are interesting or provocative enough to be interesting.

Paper: Capitalism & Freedom

Milton Friedman is a genius. This I don't doubt. I do think he got it pretty wrong in Capitalism & Freedom, though. This paper I wrote (the second in my "Political Analysis" class) explains why.

The Fallacy of Capitalism And Freedom
A Response to Milton Friedman

Since the beginning of the Cold War, communism has been anathema to the people of the United States. The free market is worshiped as the God all free nations must follow; despite the popularity of such programs as Social Security, a policy accused of being socialist is barely more likely to pass than one legalizing murder. In the beginning chapters of Capitalism And Freedom, Milton Friedman promotes the basis for this position. Unfortunately, while his individual arguments are well-founded, as a whole they are misapplied and neglect to engage other valid world views that oppose them on their very foundational assumptions. Throughout this essay I discuss the foundational reasons his arguments might be considered void, the inconsistencies within the arguments themselves, and why modern socialism is exempt from many of his arguments against it.

I. Errors in Foundation
Central to Friedman’s argument is the nebulously defined “freedom.” From Friedman’s writings, he seems to define freedom as the ability to do as one pleases until one interferes with another’s freedom. He at several points refers to freedoms to spend money as you see fit and seems to regard this as critical. While he holds a valid view of the world, he neglects the equally valid view that a person has the freedom to earn a living wage and that sometimes person A’s freedom to spend money as he likes interferes with person B’s freedom to earn a living wage. This fundamental conflict of ideas seems to never occur to Friedman, and so anybody who believes in B’s freedom to earn a living wage must necessarily view Friedman’s arguments with deep suspicion on immutable moral grounds. His lack of engagement on this subject is particularly confusing since this moral view of the world is the chief argument for a socialist or communist system, which Friedman works hard to dismantle.

In another sin of non-engagement, Friedman dismisses all government’s possibilities for good by noting that it has equal power to do harm. And while this is true, he neglects the essential feature that makes democracy work: the people. People, even if they aren’t kind enough to want to help others (and many are), at least have the desire to give themselves every advantage they can. And while governments may use their power in good and evil ways, any evil use of power within a democracy is a good way to get removed from power. Friedman simply ignores the potential benefits by noting the potential harms without categorizing the likeliness of either. Those who believe a population may more easily control a democratic government than control a multitude of corporations are left to their own devices in deciding if decreased governmental regulation is worth the added difficulty of making other powerful organizations (in this case, corporations) behave.

Friedman’s last major foundational error is the assumption that any good idea can flourish inside of capitalism because any good idea can be sold. He provides a counterargument to this himself while trying to debunk socialism. He says that in order to advocate a position one must have, at a minimum, the money to pay for it, the paper to print on, and the transportation to move on; he argues access to all these are impossible under socialism if you are advocating for something the government does not like. This is not a problem in capitalism (so the argument goes) because in capitalism people and corporations will do what is profitable, and even if they do not agree with you it may be profitable to support you. Certainly an organization will do what is most profitable for itself; the error in this argument is the assumption that taking your money is always the most profitable course; then the assumption that any good idea will be implemented if enough people hear it. The history of slavery in the United States would disagree: abolition was unprofitable in the extreme and could not have survived if it were to be sustained on purely capitalistic forces; nearly the entire country was economically dependent on slavery. It was abolished because many people convinced the government it should be abolished and the government decided it was in the interests of winning the Civil War. Governmental interests and power are often necessary to allow good ideas to come to pass.

II. Inconsistencies and Illogicalities
It is Friedman’s thesis throughout his book that economic freedom and a laissez-faire government are necessary to political freedom. He holds that every increase in governmental power is an immediate decrease in personal freedoms, because government is bad at allowing people to practice a variety of positions and forces conformity with each law it passes. Tariffs on imports and fair-trade laws restrict the freedom of individuals to spend their money as they like. This is all very true. And he also holds (implicitly) that consumers, if they so wish, are capable of providing the same protections to the local economy as tariffs and fair trade laws because “The consumer is protected from coercion by the seller because of the presence of other sellers with whom he can deal. The seller is protected from coercion by the consumer because of other consumers... The employee is protected from coercion by the employer because of other employers...”

But in a logical turnaround from proclaiming strong laissez-faire, Friedman does recognize a few cases in which government action may increase freedom. Because he feels that consumers must have freedom of choice, and monopolies deny that freedom, he feels that it is sometimes justifiable for the government to interfere to prevent monopolies. While the democratic socialist would certainly agree with this idea, it conflicts with other of Friedman’s arguments beyond protective tariffs: most directly, his opposition of fair trade laws that help to prevent the formation of monopolies, but also his opposition of the minimum wage.

Friedman’s claim that the employee is inherently protected from the employer because other employers exist holds true only when there are more jobs than employees. Yet this condition has never been met in the modern day, and the most obvious replacement protection (similar to allowing the government to break monopolies) would seem to be the minimum wage. It prevents wage exploitation and provides a small part of the benefits that would be available if employers had to compete for employees. Friedman illogically supports only the monopoly-breaking, despite its seeming position as analogue to the minimum wage in his statement about mutual protections from exploitation.

Yet even accepting that the power to break up monopolies and the power to set a minimum wage are not somehow analogues, Friedman must deal with the pesky fact that he has now admitted there is a line at which the government does a better job of insuring freedom than the free market. Having admitted that the line exists, it seems in many respects that his argument, largely based on the absolute idea that any government power is an unbearable infringement of freedom, begins to crumble. Why is the government allowed to break up monopolies once they form, but not to pass antitrust laws to prevent their formation?

III. Socialism & The Free Market
Milton Friedman’s last great flaw is perhaps one of time rather than knowledge or logic: the concept of socialism today is considerably different than when he wrote Capitalism And Freedom. But because he ignores any distinctions between socialism and communism―and lumps a welfare state (today’s socialism) in the same category—it seems necessary to discuss the expired and mis- applications of principle.

Milton Friedman’s strongest argument against socialism is that it reduces political freedom by punishing those who speak out against the government. While admitting that the government might deny itself this abuse, he finds it likely that anybody speaking out would find themselves jobless and without an income. He correctly believes the free market supplies a remedy by providing jobs that the government cannot remove. He is incorrect on the chance of losing a job for a few reasons. In order for this practice to occur, a society once capable of implementing democratic socialism would have to deteriorate to the point that its citizens could tolerate people being fired from their job for holding differing views. This seems unlikely. Second, any socialist government that strips somebody of their job simply adds a non-worker to the supply of people needing resources. This is counterproductive and against the state interests. Lastly, in democratic socialist states today there is a free market system available that provides the same “job security” as do capitalist democracies.

Friedman’s second great argument against socialism is that it makes the spread of new or controversial ideas impossible. Because classical socialism eliminates the wealth gaps present in capitalist societies today, there are no vastly wealthy individuals to act as patrons in support of a cause; nor are there investors who can be convinced to give support for an eventual payback later. But in modern socialism, this is of course not an issue. Countries like Germany and France have their share of billionaires and the socialist nature of the state means only that the wealth gap is smaller than in a pure capitalist system. Since the rise of the Internet, even classical socialism does not suffer so dramatically from this problem of information flow. The Internet has made mass communications easy, cheap, and very difficult to censor; there are political campaigns waged exclusively or largely online (witness MoveOn.Org and Howard Dean’s 2004 Presidential run). Both the problem of wealth and physical material have been nearly neutralized by the advent of cyberspace.

Friedman also argues that no socialist system has or will ever succeed. While the merits of classical socialism or communism are debatable, modern democratic socialism has some very shining examples. Both Norway and Sweden have been strong democratic socialists for years, and while their tax rates are high, so is their standard of living. Norway’s per capita GDP is higher than that of the United States; both states are experiencing growth comparable to that of the United States, and their unemployment rates are at similar levels. Democratic socialism may not work well in all countries, but there is no question left that it can and does work in the proper setting.

Friedman’s last argument (and the only one applicable to socialism today) is that socialist programs like Social Security are an unforgivable affront to freedom. But his argument is weak. Social Security grants the government very little power because it gets no say in how the money is spent; Social Security is simply a program that passes money from one person to another. He argues against forced participation in a government retirement program, but in today’s world a retirement program of some kind is a necessity. Providing a uniform policy that everybody is guaranteed participation in spreads a great deal of freedom to the elderly poor; Friedman provides no counter to arguments of this sort.

IV. Conclusion
There can be no doubt that the free market has its place in insuring freedoms today. But neither can there be doubt that it also denies freedoms and there are some topics to which the government is better suited to respond. Milton Friedman has drawn his line remarkably close to unadulterated laissez-faire capitalism, but it is possible to reject his arguments on moral grounds as cruel and unfeeling; on logical grounds as self-conflicted, and on relevancy grounds as they ignore today’s democratic socialism. His approach has shown itself to be unnecessary—perhaps even counterproductive—in guaranteeing freedoms in today’s world.
Sources

• CIA World Factbook. http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/
• Friedman, Milton. Capitalism and Freedom. 40th Anniversary Edition. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2002.
• Goldman, Lea & Krull, Luisa. “The World’s Billionaires.” Forbes.com. http://www.forbes.com/billionaires/

Paper: Multilateralism's Role in the War on Terror

I'll be honest: to conservatives, I'm pretty much a first-class America-hater. Not that I actually hate the United States of America (I'm really grateful to have been born here), but I have this strange tendency to think of the rest of the world too, and I've never been convinced that what is good for America is good for the world.
However, I'm occassionally capable of arguing them on their own turf, and that's partly what this paper is: An attempt to advance multilateralism based on concrete benefits rather than liberal concepts like moral responsibility (as a society rather than individuals) or world peace.
It's not completely a bow to (preemptive, unilateral-loving) conservatives, though, as I also say that the United States shouldn't employ unilateral force except to stop a terrorist attack in progress. (This was my first paper in my second-semester "Political Analysis" class, by the way.)

Multilateralism in Anti-terrorism

The world changed on September 11th, 2001. The nature of our enemies and the nature by which we must oppose them changed. The Bush Administration and commentators such as Charles Krauthammer have argued that the nature of terrorism justifies — even requires — unilateral military action. But this belief is shortsighted and ignores significant benefits of multilateral work. In fact, unilateral military action should never be utilized in the War on Terror unless needed to stop an attack in progress. This viewpoint holds under both surgical missile or commando strikes and under prolonged military campaigns; it is supported by moral, political, and financial arguments.

In order to discuss this argument, definitions of key terms are needed. Unilateral action here means military action undertaken without support from the majority of governments (weighted by size, strategic alliances, and proximity to the operation) reasonably expected to desire long-term peace in a targeted region. Under this definition, the war against the Taliban, while fought exclusively by the United States, was a multilateral action; the Iraq War, even with its “Coalition of the Willing” is not multilateral because of opposition from key states such as Germany, France, and Russia, all of whom desire long-term Mideast stability. International terrorism is defined as terrorist activity whose perpetrators, actions, or victims cross international borders. Embassy bombings are international; the London subway bombings were not because the perpetrators were British, conducted their terrorist attack on British soil, and targeted British citizens.

Multilateral action is clearly morally superior to unilateral action. Because combating terrorists militarily is almost by nature a preemptive activity, justifiability and legitimacy are more important in the War on Terror than ever before. Unfortunately, unilateral preemptive action is provocative and crosses a dangerous line towards assassination — a line even more dangerous because targeted terrorists are often prominent businesspeople or local leaders within a friendly government, thereby protected by U.S. bans on assassination. Performing a strike unilaterally is thus a bad idea. Even worse, unilateral strikes violate national sovereignty, provoke strong outcries at many levels, inflame the Islamic nations we must befriend and moderate, and lack international legitimacy.

Consider the recent CIA strike at Ayman al-Zawahiri, supposedly hiding within a Pakistani village. According to a January 15th Associated Press/Washington Post report (Pakistan), the strike utilized a missile launched from an unmanned Predator drone and killed at least 17 people. In response, “[t]housands of tribesmen staged protests and a mob set fire to the office of a U.S.-backed aid agency.” “Local authorities” claimed that no foreigners were located in the village, the Pakistani government filed a formal protest, and the Pakistani Information Minister called the strike “highly condemnable” and promised such strikes would not be allowed again. Meanwhile, our own intelligence services were not even sure the strike had killed al-Zawahiri.

Asking Pakistan to assist with or complete the operation would have resulted in a vastly different outcome, as the operation would then have been a local police action rather than a foreign assault. A future multilateral approach could save the United States the resources of a cruise missile or strike force, prevent local resentment of Western troops, and foster relationships required to promote peace and discourage support of terrorists. Domestic police actions foster an aura of legitimacy, an important issue no matter how much commentators scoff: it if difficult to accuse the Americans of violating Muslim lands if the Muslims lead each strike. Previous Pakistani operations suggest multilateral approaches might even increase our success rate over missile strikes.

These same arguments apply more significantly way to operations like the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The grander scale of these conflicts create higher costs of unilateralism and greater benefits of multilateralism. Afghanistan, while utilizing troops exclusively from the United States, was multilateral in many senses of the word thanks to the strong global support for our operations there. The war was legitimized by nearly universal support and anger over the September 11th attacks. Protests throughout the world were almost nonexistent, the Taliban was quickly subdued, and the United States was popular locally thanks to airlifted food and medical supplies. Yet the administration made a critical mistake: for some reason, they deliberately decided to go it alone in Afghanistan. Our NATO allies offered their assistance, and the UN would likely have gone along too. While militarily the challenge was small, the decision meant the United States payed for the whole operation alone; more importantly, it had to undertake the entire task of nation-building nearly alone. That was a mistake for many reasons.

An explicit goal of each war was to remove a terrorist-supporting regime and create a viable, peaceful democracy in its place — in other words, we expected to be nation-building at the conclusion of the war. This doctrine is characterized by Charles Krauthammer as “supporting democracy where it counts.” Democratic nation-building is an intense and expensive activity, often costing more than the war it follows. Recent studies by the RAND Corporation (Dobbins, UN & Dobbins, America) have concluded that successful nation-building requires an absolute minimum five years of support. Unfortunately, a five-year military presence composed of a single nation often looks like an occupation. Occupations provoke resistance from locals and drag up specters of empire; liberal commentator Joseph Nye argues the American people will not accept becoming an empire, and conservative Charles Krauthammer claims the United States doesn’t desire land or colonies. These tendencies toward resistance within the subject nation and withdrawal in the United States combine to provoke dangerously early exits of military force, as demonstrated by the low success rate of United States nation-building exercises (RAND Corp.’s studies found only 1 or 2 successful attempts of 5 since World War II).

The United Nations, on the other hand, has a relatively high success rate in nation-building (6 of 8), generally spends less money on its nation-building than the United States, and can resist the pressure of early withdrawal because it has no direct citizenry and the UN’s international forces are frequently viewed at the local level as true peace keepers rather than an occupying force. The UN has proved itself more capable than the United States at the spread of stable democracies, apparently key to the War on Terror. Moreover, foreign support is gained more easily when the nation-building is led by a group like the UN, and UN support is more easily gained if the original conflict is multilateral. For these reasons alone we should demand multilateralism in any war conducted partially to spread democracy.

Iraq is in many ways the opposite of Afghanistan; while the Bush administration emphasized its “Coalition of the Willing” in Iraq, that war provides many negative lessons encouraging true multilateralism. There are many reasons Iraq was not a truly multilateral activity. First, because key allies (supportive of the War on Terror) like Germany and France vehemently opposed it; second, because no local country besides Kuwait supported the war. Next, because despite the much-flaunted membership of over 30 countries, the United States provided nearly the entire force: 105,000 U.S. troops against 22,700 other in early 2004 (Dobbins, America). The effects of this illegitimately-perceived war are obvious. Consider international reaction to the Gulf War versus this Iraq War and the continuously-dropping popularity of the United States abroad. Politically, the Iraq war drove Iran, which before the war began to moderate itself, back towards extremist positions and production of an atomic bomb. Financially, the United States now spends roughly $6 billion per month in Iraq alone. Those who claim that Iraq is a multilateral affair need only look at Britain to see the fallacy; the greatest ally in Iraq spent a mere 4.9 billion pounds (roughly $8.6 billion) on its entire War on Terror in all of 2004 (Daneshkhu). The U.S. spent more money than that (some $1 billion monthly) on Afghanistan alone (Belasco). Unilateral activities have cost the nation politically and financially; lack of skill at nation-building and the refusal to allow the UN to take over the process have left Iraq a country less stable than ever and less inclined towards freedom. This expensive quagmire is a compelling argument for true multilateralism.

Yet the arguments against multilateralism are many and varied. They range from philosophical to pragmatic, and Charles Krauthammer presented many of them in his 2004 speech at the American Enterprise Institute’s Annual Dinner. He calls liberal internationalism “all very nice...noble [and] crazy.” He claims American power must be grown because American power has saved the world and other countries many times over. American preemption and unilateral retaliation are a necessary aspect of world peace. And America has the responsibility to use its military might to spread democracy “where it counts.” But these arguments are contradictory and based in logical fallacy.

Krauthammer claims liberal internationalism — subjugation of American interests to global ones in hope of a global community that functions as a domestic community — is foolish because it depends on a fundamental shift in human nature. But that required human nature is already found in the proponents of liberal internationalism, and history has shown a tendency toward ever-larger nations that are internally more and more peaceful. Occasionally overgrown empires have collapsed, but today’s United Kingdom is composed of at least 4 previously separate states, each of which once warred internally. Great Britain is friendly with much of the former English Empire (Australia, Canada, the USA, Great Britain, etc.), and Europe has begun to coalesce into a unified power. So the trends of history may in fact support that crazy liberal internationalism.

American power has indeed saved the world many times over, but there was no particular reason for the saving power to be American; the United States was simply the only concentration of power strong enough to do the saving. The UN could wield that same level of power in world-saving and peacekeeping roles. The “land mine between barbarism and civilization” could just as well be the UN or NATO, and preemption does not exclude multilateralism. Our self-interest in and responsibility to spread democracy “where it counts” are shared by every democracy on earth, and so any attempts that truly count will win support, and the UN has already proved itself a far better nation-builder and democracy-creator than the United States, yet even ignoring these arguments a unilaterally imposed democracy often lacks legitimacy and appears to be a puppet government — just look at Afghanistan today.

Multilateralism’s benefits are clear and strong; its downsides include such horrific concepts as inspiring global accountability. Unilateralism has proven itself a failure in some of our key goals for the War on Terror and provided benefits like allowing the United States to pay for entire wars — wars which the administration claims do the entire world good — by itself. The choice is no choice at all.
Sources:

• Congressional Research Service, The Cost of Iraq, Afghanistan and Enhanced Base Security Since 9/11. Amy Belasco.
• Daneshku, Scheherezade. “Conflict in Iraq has cost taxpayers Pounds 3.1bn.” The Financial Times Limited. Sept 13, 2005: 4.
• Dobbins, James et. al. The UN’s Role in Nation-Building. Santa Monica: The RAND Corporation, 2005. http://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/MG304/index.html (accessed January 30, 2006).
• Dobbins, James et. al. America’s Role in Nation-Building. Santa Monica: The RAND Corporation, 2003. http://www.rand.org/pubs/monograph_reports/MR1753/ (accessed January 30, 2006).
• Krauthammer, Charles. Speech to the American Enterprise Institute AEI Annual Dinner, http://www.aei.org, February 10, 2004.
• Nye, Joseph S.”U.S. Power and Strategy After Iraq.” Foreign Affairs. 82.4 (2003): 60.“Pakistan condemns purported CIA airstrike.” Kentucky.com-The Lexington Herald-Leader. Jan 16, 2006 acc Jan 30, 2006