Ron Paul and the Republican Schism

In one of the final episodes of "The West Wing," Alan Alda's Republican candidate character says to one of his aides that "in Europe, the Republican party would be two parties." I think is an important enough point to bear some consideration.

As I see it, the Republican party is the result of a strange and unhappy sythesis between two entirely differing schools of political thought. On the one hand, there is the old-school libertarian Republican worldview, with its strong belief in small government, the power of the unregulated and unrestrained free market, and traditional isolationist realism in foreign policy. This is arguably the oldest American political tradition, and its famous proponents need hardly be listed here.
The second school of thought does have old American roots, but they are based in American idealist and exceptionalism; the belief that America is special and has a special (usually God-given) destiny. These are the modern neoconservatives, the Religious Right, the Angry White Man which came to power with Reagan and again in the 1994 Republican Revolution and which have more or less dominated American politics for the last quarter-century.
What is particularly interesting is just how mutually exclusive so many of the ideas of these two groups are. The neoconservatives have built the biggest, most intrusive government in United States history and presided over some of the biggest economic blunders since Herbert Hoover. They seem to not only believe that the government can and should be in people's business, but also in their bedrooms and their uteruses. They have racked up a mind-boggling national deficit, budget deficit, and trade deficit and refuse to participate in any of the international regimes which are designed to foster trade.
And yet here on the other hand are the libertarian conservatives, always concerned about the possible tyranny of the majority, always ready in the traditional European-conservative sense to protect the well-being of the few against the transitory demands and whims of the many.

So it's become a strange balance. One group tends to be against foreign entanglements and is all for peace and stability above all, because that is good for business and the rule of law. The other group seems to think the United States can and should impose its will by force on any other country in the world. One side believes foreign internal politics are no business of anyone but the people in the country in question, the other side believes in regime change. One side is cautious, careful, and believes in long-term risk evaluation, the other is genuinely convinced Armageddon is at hand. One side, essentially, is swayed by reason and logic and statistics; the other is swayed by fears and emotions and language of "freedom".

Intriguingly enough, I see two current Republican presidential candidates who perfectly embody the two opposing viewpoints. The other eleven or so are essentially toeing the same all-rhetoric, no-policy, appeal-to-the-widest-base-possible sort of Washington game we all know and loathe so well. But I've marked these two as my dark horses for the race, and they're the ones I'll be keeping an eye and my money on.

The first is Ron Paul, 10th-term Congressman from Texas. He's known as "Dr. No" on the Hill for his constant stance on voting against anything not specifically mentioned in the Constitution. He voted against the PATRIOT Act, against the Iraq War (the only Republican candidate to do so), has never voted to raise taxes or congressional pay, and has been saying pretty much the same thing for twenty years. I read two polls after the first Republican debate that showed him winning by a landslide--he took thirty to forty percent in both polls, whereas the next highest (Giuliani both times) pulled about nine percent. His policies are a bit looney--for instance, he claims in his first week in office he would abolish income tax. That kind of thing.
Of course, the media has ignored him entirely, possibly because he's somewhat notorious for not playing their game. He still (apparently) gets web traffic than any of the other leading candidates, and I think the media will come around when and if the Big Three destroy themselves and one another.

The other guy is Mike Huckabee, who I saw announce his candidacy on Meet the Press some months ago and who I immediately thought would be the next president, if he didn't have such a goofy name. He's a former preacher, a governor of Arkansas, and genuinely believes that God created the world in a week about six thousand years ago--that is, three thousand years after the Babylonians invented beer. I saw that guy, and I tell you, I have never seen frothing fanatacism stated in such a calm, clear, rational, sincere way. Here is a guy who I think honest-to-God believes the madness that comes out of his mouth, and he knows how to work a crowd. He's good in an interview, even when he's shovelling pure shit, and I think the hundred-million strong evangelical Christian Right will love him far more than Giuliani-the-often-married-big-city-quasi-liberal, Romney-the-Mormon-cultist, or McCain-who-may-have-a-black-baby.

Also, this may not be the height of my abilities in political analysis, but I think Huckabee totally looks like Richard Nixon, and Ron Paul looks like the dad on "Frasier." I'm just saying.

Anyway, I'm more and more of the opinion lately that the Big Three on each side will not survive the primary process. They'll savage each other too much and they just have too much time in the media spotlight, where every misstep and verbal gaffe becomes a constant weekly story. I think people will be tired of them, and I think they'll either self-destruct or destroy each other. I think that second tier is where the candidates are going to come from, at least on the Republican side (I have no doubt that the Democrats are fully capable of running a battle-scarred, media-tarnished liability...since that's what they almost always do) but it's got to be someone these two schizophrenic halves of the party can agree on. Maybe they'll pick one extreme as President and the other as VP, I dunno. Honestly, I'd kind of like to see Paul as president, but with a Democratic Congress, to keep him from doing any lunatic things. I think it'd be interesting, but after four years, I think the hard libertarian view would be so discredited that we wouldn't have to deal with it again for at least a couple decades. Sorry, Len.

Whatever the case, I think the Republican party is in crisis right now, and I think it's a crucial opportunity for the Democrats, who of course will blunder on right past it. The 2006 elections showed that the worst possible thing that can happen to the neoconservatives is to have success, because their ideas and policies are stupid and don't actually work. I think the old-school Republicans are tired of these frothing religious zealots hijacking their party and running it, America's standing on the world stage, and the economy into the ground. I think they mortgaged themselves to these zealots in a sort of exchange whereby they gave up prestige and privacy and freedom for short-term financial gain, and I think they just might be starting to consider jumping ship. I think they recognize that if anything, they got off damn easy in 2006, and if Iraq keeps getting worse for another two years (and it will) and if scandals keep piling on scandals in Congressional hearings (and they will), then 2008 could crush the Republican party and their own chances for power for decades.

Now consider for a moment the Democrats, if you have the stomach for it. They are a party without policy, without identity, without message, and without vision. Their best attempt at connecting to the American people is to try to out-Republican the Republicans, which of course does nothing but further alienate their already-disgusted base. Should they choose to redefine themselves, they have nothing to write over...they are policy-wise a blank slate. They exist only in negation, they stand for only half-hearted disagreement with the current Administration.

So I tell you what I would do if I were in charge of the Democratic party. I would compose a synthesis of what few ideological principles still remain to the left and a libertarian worldview. I would say to the libertarians that yes, I agree, government should stay out of people's business. Yes, I agree, small government is good government and the biggest threat to freedom and privacy is government. Yes, I agree we should reduce our military committments abroad and adopt a foreign policy we can afford and balance the budget and reduce our trade deficit before the Chinese decide to call in our $2.7 trillion tab. We certainly should reduce our $9 trillion public debt. We know we have a reputation for being tax-and-spend liberals, but look, we're all for fiscal responsibility before things get out of hand. Obviously the current Republican leadership has no intention of doing that, so we're going to take up the standard. We are now the small government, fiscal responsibility party.
Yes, we want to have social programs, but we want them to be part of the overall market. We want them to be competitive, and to increase competition among free enterprise firms offering the same services--after all, you say yourself that more competition is better for the consumer. We aren't going to put anyone out of business, all we're really going to do is get capitalism working right again, by weeding out the fat, corrupt, complacent corporations which are coasting by and don't have to actually engage in fair, competitive business practices.
There is a place for you in our party, I would say to them. We are willing to compromise and when you help us get in power, there will be seats for you at the table--and this is more than your own party is offering you.
In fact, tell you what. Once we've been in power for a while and these lunatics are well and discredited, there's no reason you can't pick up the reigns of the Republican party and rebuild it in your own image. But these guys are a threat to both of us, and as realists you understand that the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

So in other words, I would do my damndest to split the Republican party right in half, the way it would be in Europe. I would frame and shape every issue and every debate along the lines of contention I've outlined above, and would constantly be on the attack, pitting one half of the Republican party against the other. If nothing else, it would aid in the process of them eating each other, something Democrats have always been better at than Republicans.

Course, that's only one of many steps in what would have to be a much larger, more orchestrated realignment and rehabilitation of the left and wholesale destruction of the right, and the Democrats are not nearly capable of that. So in the meantime, all we can do is watch the sad, sordid little drama of American politics play out, run nice betting pools on our favorite dark horse candidates, brace for an enternity of wealthy-white-middle-of-the-road leadership, and work very hard to live permanently in Europe.

On the Allure of the Right, and the Problems of "Real" History

One of the most persistent bothers of being of politically leftist leanings is the constant necessity of proving your leftist credentials to other leftists. The left, at least as far back as the French Revolution, is a fractious, unforgiving group which is endlessly ready to retract membership or split into bitter sub-groups at the slightest provocation. It is an interesting phenomenon.

Before I get too far into this, I think it is important to note that I am referring here to "left" and "right," "liberal" and "conservative" in the classical E.H. Carr sense: a general gestalt view of the global predilections of individuals and groups in relative positions on an undefined scale. I am not referring at all to the left and right in American politics--in most cases, American politics is an unequivocal exception to what I'm talking about. You do not need a lecture on the bankruptcy of American political thought, though, and I have no need to write such a thing, so let us dismiss Washington entirely and be done with it.

I have noticed a somewhat troubling shift in my intellectual paradigm over the past six or seven months. It comes out most clearly when speaking with intelligent confirmed leftists, people who I would previously enjoy talking with, since we would be in agreement on most things, and it is almost always pleasant to spend time discussing important matters with like-minded people. But lately, I find more and more a sense of disappointment in them, of dissatisfaction, of impatience, and indeed of downright disagreement. I noticed it most prominently in Bristol, talking to a highly educated old-school Marxist who stood several times for MP as some sort of socialist candidate, then again with the hard left, rabidly anti-American Iranian who I travelled Poland with, and yet again most recently with my new Bolivian-Indian, Havana-educated professor. My criticisms of their views and the way in which they express them are many, but I think I can sum them up in one general complaint: a lack of nuance.

I will provide an example. My professor was discussing yesterday the historical origins of dependency theory and using Sweden and Latvia as an example. (This was, incidentally, more than a little amusing to me, since I had just returned from Latvia about three hours before.) He said that the "Center" (his term for what is variously called "the West" or "the First World") maintains its dominance through monopoly of technology, which ensures that the "Periphery" is forced to continue producing only raw materials, which the Center buys at unfairly low prices and uses to produce its own opulence. He gave evidence of Sweden outsourcing its textile production to Latvia, but keeping its high technology production at home.

And, just as always lately, my reaction was, "Well, I'm afraid that's not entirely accurate." Latvia produces textiles because it has a comparative advantage in textile production, and does not produce high technology goods because it lacks the industrial base and skilled workforce. The Center does indeed produce many more technological innovations than the Periphery, but largely because of far better educational opportunities, greater incentives for innovation, and brain-drain pulling educated, skilled individuals out of poorer countries. But none of those things are the fault of the Center--someone who invents something profitable in Germany holds the patent not out of a malicious desire to keep poor Angolans in their place, but because he was the one who invented it and he ought to get the benefits. In the case of Latvia, if the government wants to grow its economy and eventually produce expensive technological goods, it should use the revenue generated by Swedish textile investment to build infrastructure, a sustainable agricultural base, and reputable educational facilities. It should guarantee good governance and the rule of law to encourage futher investmentand should continue to produce whatever lower-skilled goods it has a comparative advantage in until it has a skilled workforce and a solid industrial base to have a comparative advantage in more complex goods. None of those things is Sweden's responsibility.
Furthermore, the Center does not arbitrarily set global commodity prices--in fact, sometimes quite the opposite, as OPEC can easily prove. And if several poor countries do produce a given raw material and feel the Center is underpaying for it, they should follow OPEC's example and organize. Their failure to do so, and their failure to manage their output (low prices on raw materials with inelastic demand indicate overproduction, which is nobody's fault but the producers') are nobody's fault but their own.
And lastly, the Center exports quite a lot to the Periphery, and not just manufactured consumer goods. Let us not forget that Europe and the United States are net food exporters, and that a great deal of manufactured goods come from underpaid labor in the Third World. Neither could exist without the other, and to think otherwise is foolish.

Perhaps you are reeling in horror. Perhaps you are gripping the arms of your chair with white, shivering knuckles, sweat on your brow, thinking, "Herregud, who is this person and what have they done with Trevor? Has he gone to the dark side?"

I have conversations of this sort all the time and am forever receiving notes from the Official Leftist Registration Bureau revoking my card-carrying status. They hint ominously that I may be a spy, a mole, or a libertarian.

"Well," I find myself having to say, "I'm afraid that's not entirely accurate." I don't much like the economic system I've briefly described above, and the things I've said the Latvian government should do are just the recommendations I'd make if they want to build a modern Western economy. They aren't necessarily what I would do if I were named Grand High Mufti of Latvia tomorrow, nor do I think they would bring about a utopia for all Latvians immediately. There must be degrees of nuance.

And this is what I find the Left so often seems to lack. The Left is so uncompromising, so committed to their personal view of utopia that anyone who does not share their vision and their passion for it is a threat to it--and since utopia is the goal, anyone threatening it is a perfidious, misanthropic, inhuman beast indeed.

Uncompromising utopianism brings with it yet another problem: reality. I encounter this a lot when talking about the hegemony of the United States. Certainly I think the United States does terrible things and has done terrible things throughout its history, and many of the aspects of its hegemony are regrettable, unfortunate, and objectionable. I agree with many leftists on this, then ask what they would do to fix the problem. Those of them who have answers (and they are few) tend to say things along the lines of "Well, America should get out of Iraq/Afghanistan/everywhere." Their solution to the problems of American hegemony is that America should just stop being the hegemon.

Well, I sigh, I'm afraid that's not entirely feasible. Someone has to be the hegemon. If not America, perhaps you would prefer China or Russia? And what do you suppose would happen if American dollars pulled out of the global economy, American firms stopped investing in foreign countries, American ships and planes stopped policing the seas, and American troops stopped sitting on every potential trouble spot in the world? Empires, you see, can only be assessed in a comparative sense: against each other and against anarchy. I have read history and I have concluded that their presence is greater than their absence, and their absence is not tenable because it means only "the state of fighting over who will be the hegemon" and with modern miltiary capability, this is no longer a viable option. It is the character of the empire that matters, and of all the empires that have ever existed in the world, the American, for all its faults (and indeed they are many), is easily the most benign. Can it improve? Of course, and it should. And indeed, in my view, it must if it is to keep its place.

Of course there is more nuance here. If I were the leader of, say, Ecuador, I would do everything I could to assert and ensure my country's independence. But I would recognize the simple fact of American power and use it to the best of my abilities. I am not arguing necessarily that American hegemony is good or bad, just that it is and will continue to be, and for change to take place this must be recognized. All-or-nothing utopianism is foolishness. At its best it is ineffectual, at its worst, it is dangerous.

Unfortunately, as Carr rightly pointed out, the Left seems to suffer from a preponderance of intellect, but a paucity of judgment and compromise. The Left is very, very smart--unfortunately, that intellect seems to produce more small mildly-skilled leaders than followers, and instead of one person with a vision and ten thousand people following him (as on the Right), you have ten thousand people with ten thousand visions, all of them unwilling to compromise and all of them believing the others are traitors and enemy collaborators. This, I would suggest, is even true in the United States, to the extent that we have a Left at all, and is certainly true among the myriad tiny parties of the far Left (yes, I'm looking at YOU, Socialist International).

Beyond the problem of judgment, though, is a flaw in the great edifice of the Leftist Intellect, and that is the flaw of what I will call the problem of "real" history. This is the pernicious, persistent habit to believe that "what you read in history books" is nothing but a collection of lies designed to serve the Establishment (or the bourgeoisie, or the Center, or whoever) and that you have to find accounts of "what really happened" because "history is always written by the winners."

Sigh. Well, I'm afraid that's not entirely accurate. Certainly the First World has produced by far the majority of the world's scholarship--not just in history, but in all areas. It has also produced by far the majority of the world's literature, art, music, film, architecture, technology, and philosophy. But it is absurd to believe that every historian everywhere in the First World writes with the same viewpoint towards the same ends. Name virtually any history book in existence and there will almost certainly be another which attacks its thesis and posits a different one, and yet another which builds on one or the other, and then many years later one more which is based on new information and indicates that everybody was half right and half wrong the whole time. There is very little consensus among historians on much of anything except the hard, proven, indisputable facts. "What you read in history books" can be anything, depending on which ones you read. I tend to read several disagreeing accounts and consequently tend to think I have a pretty good grasp of a given subject.

Secondly, the fact that a theory or analysis emerges from the West doesn't make it wrong, nor does the fact that a theory emerges from the Third World mean that it is right. My professor lauded the dependency theory at some length because it was the first to originate in the Periphery...which means nothing as to its accuracy. A claim made in London is no more or less valid than one made in Havana based solely on its geographical position, any more than a claim made in Ouagadougou is more valid than one made in Chittagong. They both carry the same burden of proof.

Thirdly, the idea that "history is always written by the winners" is preposterous. The classic historic example of this phenomenon is the Roman annihilation of Carthage in 146 BC and the eradication of all Carthaginian sources. This would seem to be the perfect example of history being written by the winners. Yet we know all about the destruction of Carthage, we know about the Punic Wars, and virtually all modern accounts indicate Hannibal as a great and courageous leader, the Carthaginians as a strong challenger to Roman dominance, and the Roman response as atrocious and cruel.
This claim also tends to be met by an oddly contradictory one: that despite the idea that "history is always written by the winners," we can never trust what the winners actually say, but must instead look for the "real" (usually "economic") reason for historical events (usually "wars"). I intend to write a lengthy critique of the purely economic interpretation of history eventually, but now is not the time. Suffice it to say that if there were purely economic reasons for, say, the war in the Sudan in 1898, one would think that even if British government documents indicate that it was but one of many concerns (to be expected, you see, as part of the conspiracy to hide the true intent) that such motivations would show up in private letters or diaries which were never meant to be published. Instead, economics consistently shows up as but one of several strategic considerations, quite subordinate to geostrategy. If I see official records, private letters, diaries, newspaper articles, memoirs, and history books indicating one thing, I am willing to admit that there may be another, deeper explanation, but the burden of proof for that explanation will be high indeed.

Regarding the problem of victors writing history, I am often countered with the claim that "there could be all sorts of genocides and massacres and wars that we never hear about because the winners successfully eliminated all records." Yeah, maybe. I know about a whole lot of genocides and massacres and wars--enough to make it quite clear that every country and nation in the world has had blood on its hands at one time or another. And anyway, that simply is not an intellectually tenable position--it's a Donald Rumsfeld argument: "the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence." I mean, I have no evidence that there is a giant planet full of hyper-intelligent purple cows who ride pogo-sticks made of chocolate and control the minds of all the world's leaders and it would be quite silly of me to proceed on the assumption that all astronomy is nonsense because it fails to mention such a planet.

There is an even greater danger here, I think. The undercurrent to this argument is the idea that somehow there is nothing to be learned from reading history. It is all lies, all propaganda, all designed to serve the Powers That Be, none of it "real." This is rank stupidity. Those seeking to change the world must first understand it--and understand it accurately--
and this is done through reading history. Every great leftist thinker has read a hell of a lot of history, and we should all know and appreciate the fates of those who did not. And even if these books and analyses were all lies, is the Left so fragile that it cannot survive contact with opposing viewpoints? Is it so easily persuaded that it will be immediately corrupted? I cannot imagine that this is so, because if it is, the Left is nothing but uncompromising utopian dogma chaotically reeling from one Thermidor to another as they blunder into power through the momentary incompetence of the Right. This cannot be so.

The Left, above all, must know history. The revolutionary must know history, and through his study of history, the revolutionary must know the value and utility of conservatism. After all, the most successful revolutionaries have been conservatives: I point to Bismarck as the penultimate example. The revolutionary must appreciate the constant, inevitable danger of Thermidor, because his revolution will reach it eventually, as certainly as history repeats itself. I ascribe the vast, chronic failure of revolutions to actually deliver the utopias they promise to their leaders' failure to properly read and understand history. We cannot afford to continue to make that mistake. We must take the virtues of the Right and be willing to put them into place the instant we are in power. Revolution alone is too dangerous, too mindless, to unpredictable, and the idea of perpetuating it any longer than necessary is folly and has been the death of many an uncompromising revolutionary. A revolution should be as short, bloodless, and controlled as possible and should exist only to bring the revolutionary to power, to there carry out his vision through the slower, measured, nuanced machinery of conservatism. Distasteful? Certainly, but preferable to Stalin, Mao, the Reign of Terror, and the wild excesses which lead to civil war and counterrevolution. It is only through the proper application of conservatism that revolution can be successful.

Oh, heavens

I really am going to post something thoughtful and enlightening here quite soon, just as soon as I finish this book I'm reading. But I didn't want the three of you who read this to believe I've abandoned posting here, so I shall offer up this sad little tidbit for your consideration. This is an actual letter to the editors of a paper in Arkansas:

You may have noticed that March of this year was particularly hot. As a matter of fact, I understand that it was the hottest March since the beginning of the last century. All of the trees were fully leafed out and legions of bugs and snakes were crawling around during a time in Arkansas when, on a normal year, we might see a snowflake or two. This should come as no surprise to any reasonable person. As you know, Daylight Saving Time started almost a month early this year. You would think that members of Congress would have considered the warming effect that an extra hour of daylight would have on our climate. Or did they ? Perhaps this is another plot by a liberal Congress to make us believe that global warming is a real threat. Perhaps next time there should be serious studies performed before Congress passes laws with such far-reaching effects.
CONNIE M. MESKIMEN / Hot Springs

The link:
http://www.nwanews.com/adg/Editorial/187608

Good game, Western Civilization. Good game.

Obscure History Part I

While there is quite a bit going on in the world right now, I don't really feel much like writing about any of it. I didn't want to let this blog sit around and moulder any longer than it already has, though, so instead, here's a whole bunch of obscure pieces of history that I personally find interesting, entertaining, illuminating, intriguing, or otherwise useful to drop on pretentious people at parties. Doubtless when I hit another dry spot with this blog, I'll do this again.

Pepin the Short was the great-grandfather of Charles the Bald.

Immediately before the Battle of Chancellorsville, a cannonball took out the wooden post Fighting Joe Hooker (commander of the Union army) was leaning against. He was knocked senseless and was so shaken by the experience he was never an effective general again.

Alexander the Great founded at least 70 cities named “Alexandria.” The last was Alexandria Eschate (“Alexandria the Farthest”) in modern-day Tajikistan. The group of retired veterans and wounded he left there (as well as their descendants) defended the outpost as part of the Greco-Bactrian kingdom for almost two hundred years. Their expeditions ranged as far as Xinjiang in China and their children were known as the Ta-Yuan to the Chinese, and it was they who opened the Silk Road to the west.

Alexander also had a giant glass cylinder built because he was curious what things looked like at the bottom of the ocean.

The term “assassin” is a corruption of the name of the Hashshashin sect of Ismaili Muslims who terrorized the ruling Abbasid elite from the 8^th to the 14^th centuries. Their name derived from the use of hashish in their training and indoctrination rituals, and they were known for taking enormous doses before setting off to murder prominent Abbasids in public. Their founder, Hasan-i-Sabbah built them a mountaintop fortress and was thereafter known as “The Old Man in the Mountain.” Among their more prominent victims was Conrad of Montferrat, Patriarch of Jerusalem, and Genghis Khan’s second son, Jagatai.

There was a woman named Alys who lived from 1160-1220. She was the daughter of Louis VII of France and his second wife, and was betrothed to Richard I of England (Richard the Lionheart), who was the son of Eleanor of Aquitaine—Louis VII’s first wife. She was mistress to Henry II, Richard’s father, and was imprisoned by Eleanor as a result. Her half-brother, Philip II (Augustus) betrothed her to John, Richard’s younger brother (after Richard terminated his engagement to her on the grounds that she had been impregnated by his father), but when John was deposed by Richard, she was married to a fairly minor French count. She was daughter of a king, betrothed to two kings, mistress of another king, and brother of yet another king. All of them related.

Israel Beer Josaphat, also known as Joseph Josephat, also known as Paul Julius Reuter, and known finally as Paul Julius Baron von Reuter, founder of the Reuters news agency purchased the rights to all Iranian oil from Nasser al-Din Shah of the dying Qajar dynasty in the late 1890’s before reports of the discovery of oil in Iran had even been confirmed. He paid roughly thirty thousand dollars.

Caligula, Emperor of Rome from 12-41 AD opened a brothel in his palace, had incestuous relationships with all three of his sisters (and later disemboweled one in order to see the baby he had fathered), made his horse Incitatus a consul, made it illegal not to leave him everything in a will, and declared war on both the ocean (because the tide refused to go out) and the sun (because it refused to rise when ordered).

The country of Liberia was founded by the American Colonization Society as a place to send freed African slaves. At their insistence, the citizens of Liberia were recognized by the local Africans and British colonial authorities in Sierra Leone as Americans. The ACS, incidentally, was founded following reports of planned slave uprisings and was based on the belief that freed African slaves would bring about widespread chaos and anarchy in civilized society.

In 1826, the Ottoman sultan Mahmoud II, when faced with the janissary corps as an intractable obstacle to military modernization, invited every officer in the corps to his palace on the shores of the Bosphorus for a birthday celebration. When they had all arrived, he had the doors blocked behind them and destroyed the palace with artillery fire, killing them to the last man. This is known in history as “The Auspicious Event.”

In order to raise revenue after the Thirty Years War, the Swedish monarchy decided to seize 10% of the land of every noble family. The nobles would have the option to buy back the land if they chose (since that would fill the royal treasury) or it would be used to farm and raise money for the government. The figure was initially meant to be 25%, but the nobles threatened revolt, so it was lowered to 10% in compromise—but with the restriction that the crown could choose which 10%. Thus, the crown selected the land that the nobles’ castles happened to be standing on, giving them the option to either buy the land back at exorbitant prices or become homeless.

The most prized relic of the French Foreign Legion is the severed, preserved arm of a lieutenant who was killed at the Battle of Cameron in 1863 in Mexico, where a patrol of 65 legionnaires held off over two thousand Mexican soldiers for over twelve hours until, their ammunition exhausted, the last five survivors fixed bayonets and charged. Two legionnaires were taken alive and refused to surrender unless given safe passage home, and an escort for their flag and the body of their commander.

The first English colony in North American was founded on Roanoke Island in North Carolina in 1584. When the English ships returned two years later with supplies and more colonists, they found the colony deserted with no signs of struggle or disease. The only clue was the word “Croatoan” carved into a nearby tree. What happened to the colony remains unsolved.

Lee Harvey Oswald’s personal diary, which is on display at the National Archives in Washington D.C. contains the name and home telephone number of George Bush Senior, who was on the payroll of the Central Intelligence Agency at the time.

Bangladesh was formerly part of Pakistan, despite it being separated by (and surrounded by) roughly a thousand miles of India. It seceded in 1971 following the bloody Bangladesh Liberation War.

In 1190, Frederick Barbarossa, Holy Roman Emperor, fell into a river in Asia Minor and died, aged 70. His 100,000-man army, which he was leading to what is now known as the Third Crusade evaporated. Had he reached the Levant, it is extremely likely the Crusaders would have retaken Jerusalem and the course of eight hundred years of European/Islamic relations would have been radically different.

The city of Montevideo was besieged by the forces of Argentine dictator Juan Manuel de Rosas for nine years, beginning in 1838. This “New Troy,” as it was called in the European press, was at that time home of Italian revolutionary Guiseppe Garibaldi, who formed an Italian Legion and fought against the Argentines.

Iran’s first, last, and only democratically elected prime minister, Mohammed Mossadegh, who was overthrown by the CIA in 1953, conducted virtually all state business from his bed.

Field Marshal Viscount William Slim took command of scattered and defeated British colonial forces in Southeast Asia in 1942, conducted a retreat all the way to India, where he reformed and reorganized and led an offensive against the Japanese during a monsoon: this was the only instance of a successful Allied land campaign against Japan during the entire war.

The War of Jenkin’s Ear took place between Great Britain and Spain from 1739-48 mainly in the Caribbean, was profoundly indecisive, and eventually became part of the larger War of the Austrian Succession. The one and only major engagement was at the silver exporting town of Puerto Bello, which is where the name of Portobello Road in Notting Hill comes from.

A Swedish Viking named Ingvar the Far-Travelled led a raid against Persia circa 1042 and fought in a battle in a civil war in what is now the country of Georgia. A runestone left on the shores of the Caspian Sea mark the furthest extent of Viking travels. It is also noteworthy that at about the same time, Vikings proved to be such a problem in the city of Constantinople that a law was enacted which limited the number of Vikings in the city at any one time to fifty.

Covering a Lot of Ground

I've been meaning to put another post up here for quite some time; consequently, I have about five topics I want to address, which means this will be a very lengthy post. My apologies in advance, and I'll try to clearly label the sections for the ease of the reader.

Elaboration on Last Post

I watched the BBC documentary "The Power of Nightmares" recently and while I thought most of its reasoning was somewhat simplistic and it's presentation overly conspiratorial in a rather juvenile manner, it raised a provocative argument which would explain the topic of my last post. The essential claim of the film is that modern politicians have shifted from presenting utopian visions of the future to be worked towards to instead describing nightmarish dangers in the present from which the populace must be saved. "Modern" is tricky here, since this is a technique at least as old as Alcibiades, but the point is that we have been presented with an image of al-Qaeda as a massive, monolithic global organization with tentacles extending even into the most innocuous parts of middle America, supported by a network of subservient Islamist terrorist groups, and financed by intelligence agencies, unfriendly governments, and Arab billionaires, all of whom work as cogs in a vast machine led by Osama bin Laden which labors tirelessly to destroy America, Christianity, freedom, and democracy.
Unfortunately, (or perhaps, quite fortunately) this all appears to be entirely incorrect. According to this documentary (and what I've read in books by Steve Coll and whoever wrote Imperial Hubris) the vast majority of what we know about al-Qaeda comes from a single source: a man named Jamal al-Fadl, who was on the run from bin Laden due to an outstanding debt. The problem that most actual facts seem to contradict his stories has received very little attention.

For instance, we are told that Osama bin Laden is the leader and mastermind of al-Qaeda and its activities. But the fact is that it has been proven that the attacks of September 11 were planned by Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, who seems to have an unflattering view of bin Laden as a simple, easily-manipulated man with money to burn.
We are told that al-Qaeda has been around for quite some time, meticulously plotting attacks well in advance. But the fact is that alleged members of al-Qaeda never referred to it or gave any indication of its existence until after September 11.
We are told that al-Qaeda has massive, elaborate bunkers in the mountains of Afghanistan, although none have actually been found. We are told that Afghanistan and northern Pakistan are crawling with their operatives, although the leader of the international force in Afghanistan reported that he had captured or killed exactly zero members of al-Qaeda by early 2006. We are told that al-Qaeda maintains sleeper cells in the United States, but the two alleged "sleeper cells" discovered turned out to be entirely fabricated with no actual evidence whatsoever, and their alleged members have been quietly acquitted.

The argument of the documentary is that the reason al-Qaeda has not been found (and likewise, the reason there have not been any further spectacular attacks, despite apparent means and motive) is because it simply does not exist beyond a handful of (probably dead) members surrounding bin Laden and Zawahiri.

Of course, there is a further problem here. The film goes on to argue that the real danger is the thousands of angry, disaffected, impoverished, threatened Muslim youths who see a Crusade from the West against their culture and a large-scale theft of their natural resources. If there were not enormous numbers of America-hating terrorists before, we have certainly created them. Back to square one.

Prospects for the 2008 Presidential Election

What I find most interesting about the current field of candidates is that there are excellent reasons for all of them to fail miserably. Consider: Giuliani should fail to mobilize the Religious Right base because he's pro-choice, pro-gun control, pro-gay marriage, and has himself been married several times. McCain should fail because the "black baby" slur from the 2000 race has never really gone away in the Deep South, and his stubborn pro-war stance has alienated him from the moderates which used to love him. Romney should fail because he's a Mormon. Obama should fail because he's black, inexperienced, and his middle name is "Hussein." Hillary should fail because she's one of the best Republicans the Democrats ever elected, she was for the war (among other right-wing initiatives), and is tied to Bill Clinton and all the virulent Clinton-hate which still exists in so much of the country.
Every one of these candidates has both huge liabilities in the primaries and in the general election, and even in terms of Electoral College strategy, the board is a nightmare. Running Giuliani in an effort to take New York would be a Republican dream...unless it cost them Florida and a couple of the other swing states. And of course it would necessitate running Hillary against him (because the Democrats can't afford to lose New York), which in turn could lose all sorts of votes across the board and bring out those anti-Clintonites who otherwise wouldn't show up to vote for a gun-stealin, baby-killin, gay-lovin New Yorker.

The biggest factor (in the primaries, at least) is the phenomenon of Keynes' Beauty Contest: not that people will vote for who they think is best, but instead for who they think most other people will think is best. In Keynes' words, "we devote our intelligences to anticipating what average opinion expects average opinion to be." This will be a problem when people decide not to vote for Barack Obama (for instance) not because he's black and they have a problem with that, but because they expect most other people will have a problem with it. Same goes for any of the other liabilities listed above.

But, as every pundit quite rightly keeps saying, it's still a year and a half early. A lot can (and will) happen. The numbers in six months will look nothing like what they do now. But America is quite clearly ready for a change, and the public is already following this race quite closely. It'll be interesting to watch, and I think it has the potential to be seen as a historic turning point.

Problems of Democratisation in Yugoslavia and a Model for Iraq

I have a class on democratisation and ethnic violence in the former Yugoslavia, and its essential argument is that anywhere a transition is made from a dictatorship to democracy in a multiethnic state, ethnic violence results. The reasons for this are numerous, but primarily it is because most people identify themselves along ethnic lines (rather than, say, class) which results in nationalist ethnic political parties. A victory or advantage for one party is seen as a threat to the other ethnic groups, who in turn try to increase their security and in doing so, seem threatening to the first group, and so on. It's the classic security dilemma, but with ethnic groups rather than nation-states as the primary actors.
Eventually, it becomes clear that all ethnic groups cannot govern equally (and don't want to, for that matter) and that even if they could, it is very difficult to determine the territorial extent of each group, which leads to differing groups laying claim to the same territory, each feeling threatened and persecuted by the other, and conflict results.

Setting aside for a moment the numerous objections to this explanation which result from an economic view of history, it seems to me the basic problem here is one of identity. Take Bosnia-Herzegovina for instance. At present, the state is made up of three ethnic groups: the Croats, the Serbs, and the Bosnian Muslims (or "Bosniaks," henceforth). They cannot agree on anything (to the point where the national anthem has no words, because they couldn't decide on which language to have it in) and each has carried out brutal campaigns of ethnic cleansing against all of the others. There is an international military force keeping the peace, and an international governing body (the Office of High Responsibility, or OHR) which has the power to review and repeal any acts of the national government. This has led to the removal of numerous politicans, up to and including Prime Ministers, as well as the dissollution of governments, the repeal of laws, and so forth. The OHR is viewed with a great deal of hostility by all three ethnic groups, each of which feel it is both a tool of the others and an outside occupier.
According to the firsthand research my professor has done, virtually nobody in the state of Bosnia-Herzegovina indentifies themselves by that fact. Their citizenship, in other words, is meaningless to them: they identify themselves based on their ethnic group, and as long as this continues, unity is impossible and the instant the international force leaves, war will break out again.
This actually seems a bit ludicrous to me. The chief criteria of identity is the belief that you are more like other people in your group than you are like members of a different group. I identify myself as American only by accident--the fact that I am American will allow you to predict virtually nothing accurately about me, and I have very, very little in common with most people who are Americans. The idea of bothering to kill large groups of people over this issue seems the height of human stupidity to me, but nevertheless, it is apparently a rather popular thing to do.
Anyhow. So the problem is how to shift identity away from ethnic groups to that of the national level (of course, that then creates the problem of aggressive states, but never mind--one thing at a time) without the transition being threatening to the groups which are essentially being subverted or at least made subservient. Can this be done? Is it something that has to happen with time? Is it particular to certian sets of circumstances? That would explain why India, with its 23 official languages did not collapse into a mass of ethnic extermination in 1950. Perhaps the economic explanation comes into play here: if all ethnic groups are equally wealthy or equally poor, perhaps democratisation and unity are possible? Perhaps rural economies are necessary, because only then is there a perpetual shortage of labor, which precludes mass violence as an effective tool for economic redistribution--whereas in industrial economies, with a perpetual and necessary labor surplus, there are literally extra people and it is far easier to make them a target of rhetoric.
Quite frankly, there doesn't seem to be an answer. There is, however, a suggestion.

I've referred to it before as the theory of my Bavarian monarchist friend, but it turns out there's actually a book which puts it forward: At War's End, by Roland Paris. The idea is essentially that there needs to be a transition phase between dictatorship and democracy: a benevolent dictator sort of government should be installed and should set up the institutions of liberal democracy, while still restricting their use and alloting their benefits and resources evenly. Rule of law and constitutionality should be established, and ideally moderate political parties should arise. Only after many years of this should the autocratic regime be replaced by actual democracy.
Obviously there are a litany of problems with the practicalities of this, and I look forward to reading the book to see if and how he deals with them. I'll leave the criticisms of this theory for then. In the meantime, if we accept this as a better alternative to the disastrous policy of crash democracy building, consider how these Bosnian lessons can be applied to the current problem of Iraq.

The states have some striking similarities: three overlapping ethnic groups, unequal geographic distribution of resources among them, a past of dictatorship in which one group was dominant, extreme nationalist ethnic political parties, and so forth. Even if an international solution can be met and some sort of equitable power-sharing arrangement worked out in terms of national politics, (not to mention an end to what looks increasingly like widespread ethnic cleansing) this ethnic security dilemma will still exist, and it is highly unlikely that there will be any sort of government of moderate political parties. Add to this the problems of Iranian, Saudi, and Syrian meddling and the resentment of European and American interference, and the idea that a pluralistic liberal democracy will exist in Iraq any time soon becomes nothing more than sadly laughable.
Regarding that last point: I think a great deal could be learned from Lord Salisbury's 1878 diplomacy with Austria, Germany, Turkey, and Russia before the Congress of Berlin following the Russo-Turkish war of that same year. There was a similar problem: a multiethnic and strategically significant territory which had just been "liberated" from its former autocratic overlords (Bulgaria in this case), on which every neighboring party had designs. What Salisbury did was reach interlocking, complementary bilateral agreements with each party separately before going to the summit, so that it became clear to each party that it was in their interests to have a stable, neutral, relatively weak Bulgaria rather than endemic internal conflict, the possibility of regional war, dissatisfaction of other parties leading to further Great Power conflict, or an essentially "failed state."

The charge is often levelled against intellectuals that they make a living by making criticism and have no actual practical suggestions to anything. I think this is mostly fair (and is the majority of my problem with Chomsky, among many others) so in an effort to avert that criticism, I think I've reached the point where I can safely say what I would do if I were put in charge of all American diplomacy in Iraq:

I would set up negotiations with Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey and other negotiations with representatives of the Sunnis, the Shiites, and the Kurds. To the latter group, I would do what Holbrooke did at the Dayton negotiations: declare that they are responsible for the actions of the extremist groups of their constituencies, and if they cannot control these groups, they will be left out of any settlement reached.
I would then appeal to NATO to set up something similar to the Office of High Responsibility, bankrolled by the United States (since it's our mess, after all) but with non-American troops. The purpose of this office would be to distribute the resources and benefits of the society evenly among all three ethnic groups and to ensure that no group achieves dominance over the others.
I would conduct individual bilateral negotiations with each of the aforementioned neighboring countries to the effect that it is in their interest to have a stable, prosperous Iraq as a neighbor--and to make it clear that the alternative is not an Iraq governed by their pet group, but an Iraq governed by a group hostile to them. In other words, I would tell the Iranians that if they do not invest in a stable, neutral Iraq, then America will ensure that Iraq becomes a bastion of Sunni strength. And so on to each group, to indicate that it is in their interests to play along, if nothing else, to avert a civil war which would doubtless spread over their borders.
I would then invest massively in a front organization (some sort of Islamic charity, preferably, full of brown Arabic speakers) and perhaps set up contracts with absurdly wealthy Saudi construction magnates like the Bin Laden Group to rebuild Iraq. Get the lights on, get the water running, get some infrastructure going. Hopefully the fact that the construction is being done by Muslims for Muslims will lessen the degree to which this newly constructed infrastructure is a target.
I would then have the international summit to solidify the already-agreed neutrality (and hopefully participation) from the neighboring countries.
Lastly, I would have the official national summit, to show that the plan has support of Turks, Arabs, Iranians, and the international community. This would hopefully give the OHR clone some degree of legitimacy and would force the national parties to abide by their promises to the foreign powers which back them.

Peace would be fragile. There would still be extremists which are difficult to control. Al-Qaeda in Iraq would still be active, provoking ethnic violence. There would be resentment against the OHR office. But I think it's the best plan for peace I've ever heard of, and it'd get the Americans out without an immediate collapse into civil war...as well as not abandoning any group to the mercies of the others or to the predatory states which encircle them.

So, if you're reading this, Condi? I just solved all your problems. You'll understand if I insist on cash rather than a personal check, right?

On the Absence of Terrorist Attacks

It seems to me in the wake of two failed wars, wholesale legislative failure, Nixon-level approval ratings, an economy in cyclical recession, unprecedented depreciation of prestige and influence in the world community, and the loss of control of both Houses of Congress, that the only “success” the current administration can point to is the simple fact that there have been no terrorist attacks on United States soil since September 11. And, considering the facts, I have to wonder how this is possible.

It seems to me that a single attack by a single individual on a single target on United States soil—even something along the lines of one man with a gun shooting a handful of people at a shopping mall—would strike a powerful blow for an Islamist terrorist organization, far more so than the destruction of any number of tanks or helicopters or oil refineries in Iraq. It would be an invaluable recruiting tool, to show that even after the increased security measures, even with America “at war” and on her guard, terrorists can strike anywhere and any time at will. It seems to me that this would be the first priority of any terrorist group, and the time, attention, and material devoted to it would far outstrip those dedicated to fighting American troops abroad or stirring up sectarian civil wars, as simple geography dictates that those two operations could be conducted with a lower-intensity, longer-term approach.

And clearly the leaders of al-Qaeda at least are aware of this. Clearly they learned that attacks on embassies or military units matter very little to America as a whole, and that only attacks against civilians and economic infrastructure can really make an impact. The Madrid and London bombings indicate that this is still part of their overall strategy, that they still possess to some degree the capacity, and that they are capable of conducting such operations concurrent with their activities elsewhere.

So why haven’t there been other attacks on the United States? There are several possible explanations.

The first is that the administration has simply just been perfectly successful in detecting and preventing terrorist attacks. Perhaps the increased security measures have genuinely helped. Perhaps the new Department of Homeland Security has created a formidable anti-terrorist network. Perhaps Osama bin Laden is dead, either of kidney failure in Pakistan, or in a cave in Tora Bora or of any of the innumerable ways a globally hunted terrorist leader can die. Perhaps al-Qaeda’s structure and operations are greatly disrupted, their leadership killed or in hiding, and America is simply “winning the war on terror.”

This seems spectacularly unlikely, though. The Department of Homeland Security is astonishingly ineffective and corrupt—the Government Accountability Office has estimated that the DHS had wasted some $2 billion within the first year of its existence, mostly due to the unsupervised use of government issued credit cards. By August 2006, after British authorities discovered the liquid explosive plot, it was discovered that the DHS has used none of its funding for research and development on new airport screening methods. To this day, some 90-odd percent of the seven million cargo containers coming through American ports annually go unscreened. We have thousands of miles of borders which simply cannot be guarded, and due to budget shortfalls, local law enforcement has been cut back all over the country. The recommendations of the 9/11 Commission have not been implemented. We all saw how effectively the DHS responded to Hurricane Katrina.

There is simply no way America’s borders are any more secure today than they were on September 10, 2001.

Moreover, the Department of Defense has estimated that that in 2001, al-Qaeda numbered some 198 members. Today it’s estimated at over 18,000. And that’s just al-Qaeda, not any of the other several dozen Islamist terrorist organizations in the world. It is inconceivable that a ninety-fold increase in the number of one’s enemies correlates to one becoming in any way safer.

Likewise, there is little evidence that al-Qaeda’s global operations have been disrupted. The Madrid and London bombings indicate that they still possess a wide reach and have members who are native of many countries. The $30 million per year that al-Qaeda requires to carry out its activities seems to continue to flow unchecked. Osama bin Laden has not, to anyone’s knowledge, been captured or killed. If the numbers of new recruits are in any way accurate, then it stands to reason that rather than being disrupted, al-Qaeda’s operation capacity has expanded by a factor of almost one hundred times.

Furthermore, I personally find it very difficult to believe that an administration which has proved itself incompetent in literally every other aspect should somehow have achieved a perfect track record in this one. The same administration which has mismanaged two wars, the economy, the government, the education system, and essentially everything down to the fact that only six of the one thousands employees of the Baghdad embassy speak Arabic, or the fact that the name chosen for the new Iraqi army means “fuck” in Arabic. There is simply no way that the same administration which sent the money for reconstruction in bricks of hundred dollar bills loaded by forklifts onto freight aircraft and entrusted it to a 23-year old and his frat brothers could have somehow detected and thwarted absolutely every terrorist attack attempted against the United States in the past six years. This argument is akin to asking us to believe that our government are a massive collection of spectacularly lucky idiot savants.

There is another explanation, once favored by many on the bad-tempered left, which posits that the Bush government was involved in, or at least knew about September 11 and at the very least allowed it to happen. This line of reasoning then suggests that there exists some sort of agreement between al-Qaeda and the Bush administration, since there are numerous ties between the two groups both in terms of business with the bin Laden family and via the Saudi Royal Family, and in regards to the American support for the Afghan jihad against the Soviets. This agreement would recognize that the current state of affairs is advantageous to both parties, since it gives each a convenient enemy and a perpetual raison d'être.

The logical conclusion is that there will therefore be no further terrorist attacks until it is necessary for both sides, namely when it appears the current administration will fall from power.

I will admit there was a time when this made a certain degree of sense. They are very easy dots to connect, and while it appeals to that old Holmes dictum of “when you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth”, it falls apart under the weight of actual events. The 2004 election would have been an excellent time to produce a terrorist attack, for instance.

Well, (the proponents of this theory argue) perhaps the administration already knew they would win that election. Perhaps it wasn’t necessary. Perhaps it would have been too obvious and would have happened at too divisive a moment.

But if that were the case, why not some time in the intervening two years or before last November’s electoral defeat? If neither of those are good occasions, when exactly is?

Well, (they invariably say) maybe it’ll be before the 2008 election. He’ll blame it on Iran, declare martial law, suspend elections, institute a draft, invade Iran, and usher in an age of police state and Fourth Reich.

At this point, I simply can’t give the administration that much credit. If they genuinely were carrying out a vast, massive, meticulously planned and orchestrated conspiracy, why not put forth the half-inch of effort at any of the things they do which would make their success so much easier? Why not, for instance, put someone capable in charge of rebuilding Iraq in 2003 to get the water running and electricity on and stifle insurgency before it began? Why not send troops with proper training and equipment? Why not do any of a legion of things which would have saved them years of criticism and dissent?

This argument just seems to me like a frantic desire to assign a monolithic, hopeless quality to what is admittedly a dangerous and incompetent government. It seems to feed on the persecution complexes and sense of hopeless ineffectiveness within so many of us. But I just don’t think it holds weight.

The third explanation considers that eight years passed between September 11 and the previous Islamist terrorist attack on the United States, and posits that the leaders of al-Qaeda are simply biding their time, for reasons of their own. This is an alarming prospect, not the least because of the interesting habit of attacks taking place in the first year of a presidential administration. This explanation also lends itself to the alarming idea that the next attack is intended to be far more destructive than any previous attacks and thus takes longer to prepare.

I have no argument against this, aside from the fact that I have no idea what al-Qaeda’s leadership is waiting for, or why they wouldn’t bother sending one or two individuals with fairly low-scale plans simply for the propaganda and morale effects to both sides. Perhaps they genuinely are more focused on stirring up civil war in Iraq. Perhaps they have found attacks on European allies easier to carry off and more effective in the short run. Whatever the case, this idea is dependent on the simple fact that al-Qaeda is calling the shots and that they attack where and when they wish and our six years of quiet on the homefront is just a lucky prelude to a greater storm.

I have no idea of the explanation, but it seems to me it’s something the people of the United States should be demanding to know. Our government is incompetent and corrupt, yes, but the threat of terrorism cannot be denied, and if they have genuinely managed to prevent further attacks, I am willing to give credit for that. If they have not, we should be demanding to know why not and what has therefore prevented further attacks. This is, in my view, perhaps the most worrisome characteristic of what seems to be a national habit of fighting a "War on Terror" which consists of doing virtually everything except actually bothering about terrorism.

Edit: I just watched a History Channel documentary on the Russian mob, and part of it was about a guy who organized a deal where a Columbian drug lord bought a Soviet submarine, and when this guy called his contact at the Russian government to ask about price, he was asked, "Do you want it with missiles or without?"

Another part of it was about a pair of DEA agents who started out buying drugs from a couple Russian mob guys, then moved up to machine guns (like thousands at a time), then fifty shoulder-mounted missiles, then were asked if they'd like to buy a small nuclear weapon. With these kind of things happening, how are there not massive terrorist attacks all the time? With that kind of supply available, and the obvious existence of motivated people, there's got to be an explanation for their failure.

Mitigation of Climate Change

The purpose of this post is not to debate the evidence for climate change, because climate change is a fact, not a debate. There is absolutely no other conclusion to draw from even the most cursory examination of information on the subject, and the fact that it has been characterized as a debate is, in my estimation, damn near criminal. I am not going to address the revolting campaigns of misinformation which the oil, gas, industrial, and automotive lobbies have conducted, nor will I address the shameful conduct of the media in their coverage of the issue and their spreading of this dangerous misinformation. You see, I don’t think it much matters what you are I think about global warming. I don’t think anything you or I or ten million or a hundred million people like us do, even if we manage to reduce our carbon emissions to zero. I have no intention of constructing an argument to win over people unconvinced by the overwhelming scientific evidence. Instead, I want to argue why immediate, decisive action on the parts of government and industry is good not only for our survival as a species, but for their own interests.

Perhaps you’ve seen Al Gore’s movie, which seems to have done an admirably alarmist job of bringing the issue into the cultural consciousness.

The most persuasive piece of data in Al Gore’s film is the chart of vehicle emissions standards by country, which shows the United States at the absolute bottom and indicates that it is therefore impossible to sell American automobiles in most of the rest of the world.

Now let’s think about that for a minute. Here you have 1.3 billion Chinese people and 1.1 billion Indian people who are industrializing and developing enormous middle classes, and American automakers don’t want to be in a position to sell them cars? Why on earth would any capitalist voluntarily deal themselves out of the two largest emerging markets in the world? Why would they not be tripping all over each other to dominate those markets immediately? Why do they not put two and two together and see that while General Motors has been busy losing money at a truly epic rate, Toyota made $185 billion last year.

This is not good capitalism.

Now, much has been made about the onerous costs that would be incurred in arresting climate change right now. The heaviest estimates rate the cost of stopping global warming at 3.5% of global GDP (the lowest estimate is .2%), and decreases each year as changes become systemic. Of course, the global economy grows by between 2.1 and 3% per year, so it’s more a case of having the economy not grow at all for a year, rather than be heavily reduced.

According to the US Energy Information Administration, just reducing emissions gradually (as in accordance with the National Commission on Energy Policy, which stipulates a 5% reduction by 2015 and 7% by 2025) would cost a whopping .15% of GDP. The costs of just meeting the Kyoto Protocol would be .5% of GDP.

What’s interesting is that two reports have indicated that the benefits of following these measures would add roughly 5% to global GDP, and would scale upwards from there as time went on. This is mainly due to more efficient, longer lasting, more renewable products, resources, and production techniques, all of which seem like good ideas to me.

In order to gain a perspective on just what those numbers mean, the United States’ GDP was about $13 trillion last year. Our GDP growth was 3.4%. If indeed the cost was 3.5% of GDP, and there were no gains whatsoever, we’re talking $455 billion. The Iraq War, as of September 2006, has cost $379 billion in US expenditure. At a rate of an extra $2 billion a week, the Congressional Research Service recently estimated the total expenditure has crossed half a trillion. Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Prize winner in Economics, has predicted the total cost to the American economy will be at least $1 trillion, possibly more depending on its duration. And to think, instead of killing half a million people, we could have solved the greatest crisis we as a species have faced since the invention of the atomic bomb.

I guess what I don’t understand is why any capitalist anywhere thinks this is a bad idea. When has progress ever proven to be bad capitalism in the past? Explain to me how a loss of 3.5% and a gain of 5% is a bad idea? Why, when the price of halting climate change is only going to increase the longer we wait, would we not want to take action now, when we have less to do and less to pay to get it done? I mean, if I were a capitalist and I saw that there will be a massive captive market emerging in the near future, I would want to position myself to dominate that market and bring it into existence as soon as I possibly could.

Of course, there is some evidence that this is already going on. There have been a few articles in The Economist lately alluding to my prediction that green-friendly technologies are going to be the next big boom industry, and that smart investors are getting in now and trying to produce as many effective, efficient environmentally-friendly ideas as they can come up with. As well they should.