Henry

Stephen Walt argues _contra_ Michael Gerson that Henry Kissinger’s remarks on the Soviet Union, Jews and gas chambers have nothing to do with foreign policy ‘realism.’ While I’m all for kicking Michael Gerson at every possible opportunity, I think that he’s closer to the truth on this specific question than Walt is.

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Below the fold, a short list of the books I really liked in 2010. Readers are invited to submit their own favorites in comments.
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Paul McAuley on sf and society today

bq. … something similar should have happened to science fiction, shouldn’t it? After all, catastrophes and sudden shifts in perception are part of its stock in trade. But instead of confronting Reality A, the genre has, in the first decade of the 21st century, too often turned to its own comforting version of Reality B: retreating into pleasant little pulpish daydreams in which starships still effortlessly span a galaxy where a guy can turn a profit, or where technology is as controllable as clockwork and the actions of individuals can still make a mark on history. …

bq. I prefer the point of view of William Gibson, who has pointed out that the only way to tackle the place we’re in now is to use the science-fiction toolkit – the tropes, images and metaphor developed from the crude flint hammers of pulp by decades of cooperative effort and argument. If other writers are using the science-fiction toolkit to evolve new kinds of stories in the present’s different air, that’s exactly what we should be doing, too. Forget the past. Especially the pasts of all those great glorious science-fiction futures, lost when it all changed. Look again at the future. Embrace change. Let go. If only. If only.

And Cosma Shalizi riffs on Ernest Gellner

bq. It was pretty plain by, oh, 1848 at the latest that the kind of scientific knowledge we have now, and the technological power that goes with it, radically alters, and even more radically expands, the kind of societies are possible, lets us live our lives in ways profoundly different from our ancestors. (For instance, we can have affluence and liberty.) How then should we live? becomes a question of real concern, because we have, in fact, the power to change ourselves, and are steadily accruing more of it.

bq. This, I think, is the question at the heart of science fiction at its best. (This meshes with Jo Walton’s apt observation that one of the key aesthetic experiences of reading SF is having a new world unfold in one’s mind.) Now it is clear that the vast majority of it is rehashing familiar themes and properties, and transparently projecting the social situation of its authors. I like reading that anyway, even when I can see how it would be generated algorithmically (or even by a finite-state machine). … But sometimes, SF can break beyond that, to approach the question What should we make of our ourselves? with the imagination, and vertigo, it deserves.

Discuss – but try not to get bogged down in the finer nuances of the etymology of ‘reticent’ please …

I’ve written a long review essay looking at Benedict Anderson’s _Under Three Flags_ and James Scott’s _The Art of Not Being Governed_ which has just gone up at _The American Interest._ In an ideal world, I’d have preferred to have written a bit more on Scott (whose book is a classic, and beautifully written to boot), and a bit less on Anderson (whose book has much of interest, but is not a new Imagined Communities), but the Anderson book fit better with the purpose of the review, which was to think about the prospects for anarchism in the modern world. I’m grateful to Scott McLemee for reading an early draft, and rescuing me from error on a few key points (Scott is absolved from any further responsibility though, and likely does not agree with everything I have to say).

bq. On August 8, 1897, Michele Angiolillo, an Italian anarchist, shot Antonio Cánovas del Castillo, the Prime Minister of Spain. Cánovas had dominated Spanish politics for decades, even during periods when he was nominally out of office, helping shore up Spain’s tottering monarchy and its possession of Cuba and the Philippines through torture and wide-scale military repression. Spanish imperialism in the Americas died with him: Cuba and the Philippines soon drifted out of Spain’s sphere of control and into that of the United States. A bullet from an anarchist’s pistol had changed global politics.

The US response to Wikileaks has been an interesting illustration of both the limits and extent of state power in an age of transnational information flows. The problem for the US has been quite straightforward. The Internet makes it more difficult for states (even powerful ones such as the US) to control information flows across their own borders and others. It is much easier than it used to be for actors to hop jurisdictions by e.g. moving a particular Internet based service from one country to another, while still making it possible for people across many countries to access the service. This makes it much harder for the US and other actors to use the traditional tools of statecraft – their jurisdiction does not extend far enough to stop the actors who they would like to stop.

However, there is a set of tools that states _can_ use to greater effect. The Internet and other networks provide some private actors with a great deal of effective transnational power. Banks that operate across multiple jurisdictions can shape financial flows between these jurisdictions. Information companies may be able to reshape flows of information in ways that advantage or disadvantage particular actors. These private actors are often large, relatively immobile, and partially dependent on state approval for their actions. They thus provide a crucial resource for states. Even if states cannot _directly_ regulate small agile actors outside their jurisdiction, they can _indirectly_ regulate them by pressganging big private actors with cross-jurisdictional reach. A few years ago, the US found itself unable to regulate Internet gambling firms which were based in Antigua and selling their services to US customers. But the US _was_ able to tell its banks that they would suffer legal and political consequences if they allowed transactions between US customers and Antiguan gambling firms, helping to drive the latter out of existence.

This is the topic of my least cited article evah (PDF), where I argue that:

bq. states are not limited to direct regulation; they can use indirect means, pressing Internet service providers (ISPs) or other actors to implement state policy. For example, states might require ISPs to block their users from having access to a particular site, or to take down sites with certain kinds of content. More generally … a small group of privileged private actors can become “points of control”–states can use them to exert control over a much broader group of other private actors. This is because the former private actors control chokepoints in the information infrastructure or in other key networks of resources. They can block or control flows of data or of other valuable resources among a wide variety of other private actors. Thus, it is not always necessary for a state to exercise direct control over all the relevant private actors in a given issue area in order to be a successful regulator.

And this is exactly what the US is doing in response to Wikileaks. I have no doubt that it was US political pressure which caused Amazon to stop hosting Wikileaks, EveryDNS to break Wikileaks.org’s domain name, eBay/Paypal to stop facilitating financial transactions, Swiss Post to freeze a Wikileaks bank account (in perhaps the first instance in recorded history of a Swiss bank taking residency requirements seriously), and Mastercard and Visa to cease relations with it. This is unlikely to affect the availability of the information that Wikileaks has already leaked. But it may plausibly affect the medium and long run viability of Wikileaks as an organization. This will be a very interesting battle to watch.

Crossposted (with very slightly different text) from The Monkey Cage.

I’ve been wanting to jump back into the steampunk wars and Patrick Nielsen Hayden on Cosma Shalizi on Felix Gilman (to whom many intellectual roads are beginning to lead …) gives me the opening that I was looking for. Cosma’s thesis is that we have already had a singularity.

The Singularity has happened; we call it “the industrial revolution” or “the long nineteenth century”. It was over by the close of 1918.

and says why. To which PNH adds

I hope Shalizi will forgive my quoting his entire post, but it seems to me to have resonance with certain recent arguments over steampunk. It might even hint at why SF (and fantasy!) keep returning to the “long nineteenth century” like a dog to its bone.

Which leads me to the following speculations (below the fold).
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This post is uniformly excellent, but this is _especially_ good and pithy.

bq. The openness question is always contingent, and to phrase political questions in terms of data is sidestepping the big issue. Your answer to “what data should the government make public?” depends not so much on what you think about data, but what you think about the government. Everyone is in favour of other people’s openness.

Live at Eurointelligence. An extract.

bq. The reaction to the news that Irish taxpayers are to be squeezed while foreign bondholders escape scot-free has been one of outraged disbelief and anger. At the start of last week, it was possible to make the argument that ‘burning the bondholders’ was irresponsible, since it would inevitably lead to contagion, and the spread of the crisis to Iberia. That argument has at this stage lost all validity, since contagion has happened anyway. Besides, the correct response to the possibility of contagion was never to engage in make-believe, but to extend taxpayer protection to other Eurozone members as required. Swapping debt for equity in a coordinated fashion across Europe would show ordinary people that Europe is on their side; but like the PLO of old, the European Union never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity. It could have provided a means of kick-starting a new post-crisis growth strategy based on investment in the infrastructures we will need in the future; instead it has transformed itself into a mechanism for forcing pro-cyclical adjustment onto countries that are already sinking. It could have led the way in reining in an out-of-control financial sector; instead it now embodies the discredited principle that banks must never, ever, default on their creditors, no matter how insolvent they may be.

As I mentioned a few days ago, the best paper I’ve read on Ireland and the economic crisis was this one by Sebastian Dellepiane Avellaneda and Niamh Hardiman. I’m happy to say that Niamh has agreed to do some guest-blogging for us over the next several days on the Irish crisis as it continues to unfold, and its implications for the EU. Niamh is a senior lecturer at University College Dublin’s School of Politics and International Relations. She has written extensively on political economy and public policy in Ireland and the EU. We’re grateful and lucky to have her. Her first post will be up shortly.

I’m a bit surprised not to have seen anyone making this point, but one obvious consequence of the current situation in Ireland is that European integration (to the extent that it is driven by Treaty change) is dead for the foreseeable future. New Treaties – if they are to be passed, not only require unanimity, but have to pass through two veto points.

First, they have to get a majority vote in a referendum in Ireland. This is thanks to a legal ruling (the Crotty ruling) that Treaty texts which have constitutional implications (which any Treaty involving significant further integration obviously _would_ have) require popular assent in a referendum. Given popular anger at the way that the bailout has been structured, I imagine that the chances of Ireland voting ‘yes’ to any new European initiative are close to zero.

Yet even if somehow the Irish people could be persuaded to say yes to some initiative – perhaps because it put in place a more equitable system of fiscal transfers in the case of crisis – it would have to pass through the second veto point – the German Constitutional Court. The Court has made it clear in recent rulings that it is not prepared to countenance major new initiatives that might e.g. shift responsibility for decisions over fiscal policy to the EU level. In other words – any more equitable system of economic governance is likely to be vetoed.

It is extremely hard to envisage Treaty changes that could get a yes vote in Ireland. It is next to impossible to imagine any new Treaty that could _both_ get a yes vote in Ireland, _and_ survive scrutiny in Karlsruhe. Hence – the process of ‘ever closer union’ through Treaty change is effectively dead. One can imagine other mechanisms of change (drift, policy incrementalism, ECJ rulings) coming into play, but they are unlikely to result in any very obvious changes except over the very long run.

One of the problems of a small country like Ireland is that the intelligentsia’s level of economic literacy tends to be pretty low. This column by Stephen Collins (the Irish Times’ political correspondent, and an astute judge of electoral politics) is a good example of the problem.

bq. TAOISEACH BRIAN Cowen insisted last night that the debt burden on Ireland under the terms of the EU/International Monetary Fund bailout would not cripple the country as his political opponents are claiming but would instead put it on the road to recovery.

bq. He pointed out that the assumptions underlying the plan mean that, at its height, the burden of debt will be 102 per cent of gross national product, roughly where it was in 1992/1993 when Ireland was on the cusp of the Celtic Tiger period. Cowen recalled that, back in 1985, the debt burden on the shoulders of the Irish taxpayer was considerably worse than it would be under the EU-IMF programme for Ireland announced last night. Of course, his confident predictions are based on the assumption that the programme will work and that the targets set out in it will be met both in relation to the public finances and to the banks. Ultimately, it will all depend on whether the doom merchants are proved right and the European Union lurches into a crisis from which it will never recover or whether normal economic and political conditions are gradually restored.

bq. Back in 1987, few people believed the Bruton/MacSharry budget introduced at one of the lowest points in Irish history would within a few years have led to the Celtic Tiger economy. Good luck as well as courageous political decision-making underpinned that transformation and both elements will be required if the programme is to work as planned.

bq. … Another issue that did not get serious traction in the talks was the simplistic call to “burn the bondholders” for which German chancellor Angela Merkel has to take a lot of responsibility. The European Central Bank was adamantly opposed to the notion as any such move would threaten the financial stability of Europe. It is ironic that the zealots of the US Tea Party movement and many of those on the left in Ireland share a common belief in “burning bondholders” and damn the consequences. The lesson of the Great Depression of the 1930s was that taking that kind of approach leads to widespread bank failures and national economic collapse which, in turn, threatens the democratic foundations on which our society is built.

The problem is that this argument is based on soothing but quite nonsensical assumptions. It takes as a given that Ireland’s growth rate from the mid 1990’s through 2008 or so reflected “normal economic and political conditions.” They didn’t. Ireland was playing catch-up with the developed industrial democracies – and during catch-up, one can hope for very high growth rates thanks to under-utilized resources. Even if the world’s economic system were magically to restabilize overnight, one could not expect to see a return of the conditions under which Ireland was able to eliminate its earlier debt overhang. And anyone with a smattering of understanding of the basics of economic growth would know this.

Unfortunately, the more plausible outcome is the one presented by Kevin O'Rourke in which emigration and fiscal burden lead to a vicious cycle.

bq. In the long run, migration sets a floor to Irish wages. It has been thus ever since the Famine of the 1840s, and I don’t believe that the Irish have become less mobile in the last 20 years. Now, a lot of Irish wages are still high by international standards, but eventually as ‘internal devaluation’ proceeds, and as peoples’ living standards are lowered as a result of tax hikes and cuts to public services, it seems inevitable that the ‘migration constraint’ will start to bind again. … If the left hand side of this equation falls too far below the right hand side, people will leave until equilibrium is re-established. … There are fixed costs to running a state, and the debts we are now being saddled with are not population-dependent. You don’t have to be Paul Krugman to see the potential for some pretty nasty feedback loops here.

Update: More on Collins from Kevin O’Rourke.

My small addition to the piles of verbiage on the newest Wikileaks revelations is to suggest that Saki’s classic short story Tobermory tells you most of what you need to know. Tobermory – the story of a cat that learns to talk, is really about how a small group of people deal with the collapse of the polite fictions through which they paper over individual self-interest and mutual dislike. No-one guards what they say in front of a cat, leading to consternation when Tobermory suddenly learns the English language.

“What do you think of human intelligence?” asked Mavis Pellington lamely.

“Of whose intelligence in particular?” asked Tobermory coldly.

“Oh, well, mine for instance,” said Mavis with a feeble laugh.

“You put me in an embarrassing position,” said Tobermory, whose tone and attitude certainly did not suggest a shred of embarrassment. “When your inclusion in this house-party was suggested Sir Wilfrid protested that you were the most brainless woman of his acquaintance, and that there was a wide distinction between hospitality and the care of the feeble-minded. Lady Blemley replied that your lack of brain-power was the precise quality which had earned you your invitation, as you were the only person she could think of who might be idiotic enough to buy their old car. You know, the one they call ‘The Envy of Sisyphus,’ because it goes quite nicely up-hill if you push it.”

Lady Blemley’s protestations would have had greater effect if she had not casually suggested to Mavis only that morning that the car in question would be just the thing for her down at her Devonshire home.

Diplomacy, even more than early twentieth century English house-parties, requires hypocrisy. Both diplomats and leaders pretend respect and even affection for regimes that they dislike and leaders whom they despise. When a source can definitively give the lie to these public remonstrations, it is obviously likely to lead to considerable friction (not necessarily because the target did not know he, she or it was detested – but because _public expression_ of this detestation becomes an insult that cannot easily be discounted or ignored. If a number of prominent states had been hit by these revelations, there might be sufficient collective incentive to sweep the embarrassing bits under the Axminster. But that’s not the case here. I imagine that there are some very interesting conversations happening in State (a few blocks from my regular office) right about now.

While there has been a lot of interesting work by economists on Ireland’s crisis over the last year, there hasn’t been much on the _political economy_ of the crisis. This piece, written this summer by Sebastian Dellepiane Avellaneda and Niamh Hardiman at University College Dublin, is the best that I’ve seen, and is particularly excellent on the interaction between Economic and Monetary Union and domestic decision-making structures. I’ve patched together extracts Brad-De-Long style into a short quasi-narrative below the fold, but if you are interested, you should really download and read the original piece.

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Tyler Cowen links to my post on Ireland, which is somewhat embarrassing, as I was convinced in comments that my basic argument was wrong (short version: _always_ check taxation statistics you think you have a fair idea of before you post opinions regarding their implications). While property taxes played a crucial role in Ireland’s fiscal disaster, corporate taxes were simply not a large enough part of revenue to be worth talking about (and probably would not have been under any plausible alternative regime).

Nonetheless, I still want to make a (weaker and more indirect) argument about the relationship between Ireland’s efforts to attract inward investment (which included, but were not limited to, its taxation regime) and its current state of disaster. The short version: the desires (a) to attract inward investment, and (b) to maintain peaceful industrial relations helped reinforce an unsustainable fiscal strategy. This has implications for the left as well as for the right.

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