Four Horsemen

Tonight, my wife and I went to a great concert put on by some terrific Americana singer-songwriters: Guy Clark, Joe Ely, John Hiatt and Lyle Lovett. This was the first time we'd seen Clark and Hiatt, though we've been fans (particularly of Hiatt) for a long time. I bought "Bring the Family" back in 1987 and was quite pleased that "Memphis in the Meantime" was in the setlist (and "Have a Little Faith in Me"). He changed the country singer reference in the original lyric: "I dont think Ronnie Milsap's* gonna ever Record this song." Milsap was replaced with Kenny Chesney.

We previously saw Ely in Chicago at the Lounge Axe back in about 1989. That was a lone guy with a guitar show, and I remember being a little disappointed that he didn't have a loud band. Tonight, he played a terrific version of "Honky Tonk Masquerade," which is an old favorite, but he didn't play "My Baby Thinks She's French." I look forward to his promised song about Dick Cheney.

Lovett we've seen a couple of times previously, including in the same venue with his Large Band. It was great to see that he's a terrific entertainer even when stripped down to a simple guitar (with occasional assistance from the other Horsemen, including a fine set of guitar riffs from Hiatt). I think the highlight of Lovett's night was "L.A. County," though every song he played was very good. On a couple of songs about relationships with women, I kept thinking "this guy was once married to Julia Roberts."

I'm not sure that Clark played any tunes that were familiar to me, though I own a couple of his CDs. Unfortunately, he also forgot his lyrics a few times during the set (once because of a distracting noise from the audience). His lyrics tell memorable stories and the long-time fan Lovett covered what was ostensibly Clark's first song.

It was a great show. Check them out if they play near you.


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Hot flashback: Iraq, January 2003

It looks like a number of left-leaning bloggers are referencing particularly prescient pieces about the potential Iraq war, written before March 19, 2003.

My blog did not begin until September 2003, but I was trying to find an op-ed home for my thoughts. I'm virtually certain that the following -- dated January 10, 2003, in my file list -- is the document I sent to the PR person at Louisville in advance of the war:

If evidence of Iraqi wmd emerges, then the United Nations Security Council might well authorize the use of force against Iraq. It would depend upon the size of the arsenal and Iraq's willingness to destroy the weapons.

Absent documented evidence, however, much of the world is going to be reluctant to begin a new war. It is difficult to believe that the Security Council would act.

Even Britain, America's closest ally, has recently called for the US to listen to the world if the US wants the world to listen to its concerns.

If the US goes to war against Iraq without explicit authorization from the UN, it will be an unpopular move globally. Much of the world would view such an attack as a violation of the UN Charter, which prohibits the use of force except in self defense. Under international law, preemptive attacks are legal only if threats are imminent.

Germany, one of America's closest allies, is adamantly against war. Virtually no Persian Gulf states have publicly agreed to serve as a base for war absent UN authorization -- and Turkey is also quite reluctant.

The US needs these allies. In the Persian Gulf War, most of the funding came from Japan, Germany, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Most of the ground troops were deployed in states surrounding Iraq.

Thus, it seems clear that the US should only go to war after Iraqi wmd have been documented and the UN Security Council acts. In that case, the US would likely lead a large coalition of willing partners.

The alternative would have much higher economic, political and military costs.

What do I win?

Ultimately, this press release did lead to a number of interviews about Iraq in 2003. My favorite headline was dated April 10, 2003, soon after Saddam's statue fell: "Iraq war not over, experts say."

"Going into the middle of Baghdad and toppling a statue doesn't constitute the end of the war," said Rodger Payne, an expert on international relations and professor of political science at the University of Louisville....

But the conflict will continue even as troops leave and peacekeepers enter, Payne said.

Even if U.S. or U.N. peacekeepers are in place, fighting likely will occur because dissidents will be opposed to new types of authority.

But no one is sure whether those peacekeeping troops will be predominantly from the United Nations or the United States.

Leaders of many European countries have said the United Nations should play a large role in peacekeeping, Payne said, but U.S. leaders think differently. "The actor that envisions the least amount of U.N. involvement is the U.S."

An anchor man from a local TV station appeared in my office the day the statue fell. He was so excited and seemed quite unhappy when I told him the war was not nearly over.


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Checkpoints

How many innocent Iraqis are killed directly by the American military?

This is an important question, perhaps critical to the ongoing prosecution of the wider war on terror. I write that because winning hearts and minds of Muslims around the world arguably matters more than "winning" on the ground -- and al Jazeera broadcasts images of the often brutal deaths throughout the Muslim world. Unfortunately, the available information does not show any kind of casualty breakdown -- but the effects seem clear.

A sliver of information was recently revealed in an article explaining how the military is trying to train its soldiers in the difficulties they will face in Iraq. The past outcomes were not great:

Marines are also under orders to shoot to kill if a vehicle crosses the "trigger line," the inside edge of the last of four security zones between the outside world and a fortification. So, a coyote [slang for Marine instructor] asked the grunts, why would an Iraqi cross that line? "Maybe his wife's pregnant. He's trying to get her to the hospital. That happens all the time. Maybe he's just a fucking retard." The instructor offered up another example culled from experience: "Marines grab an Arabic sign. They throw it out at the blockingposition thinking, 'That's a stop sign,' when in actuality it says, 'Coalition Checkpoint, Proceed With Caution.' What do you think the Iraqis do? They fucking proceed with caution, and they proceed to get lit up."

Two different instructors backed up this scenario with a stunning statistic: "Over the last 12 months or so we killed about 1,000 Iraqis at blocking positions and checkpoints," the first coyote told the grunts. "About 60—six-zero—we could demonstrate that, yeah, he was a bad guy, he was an insurgent. Six-zero out of about 1,000. So if we don't communicate what we want them to do, all we're doing is creating more enemies." The second instructor later offered up the same figures, concluding: "So obviously, 900-something innocent Iraqis have been killed. That's pretty shitty numbers, right?"

This marine instructor estimate of more than 900 innocent Iraqis killed at checkpoints is not far off the Central Command's numbers:

According to CENTCOM's records, as of July, two Iraqi civilians were killed by Coalition troops at checkpoints or by convoys each week, down from an average of seven per week a year earlier. A total of 668 civilians were killed or injured in "escalation of force incidents" over the 12-month period from July 2005 to June 2006.

Each of those tragic deaths likely spawns anger -- and perhaps reprisals against American troops.


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Grayson Capps

Last night, my wife and I ventured out to see a musician that our neighbor (part-time DJ Michael Young) has been promoting on his radio program and to his friends: Grayson Capps.

Mike was right! Capps puts on a terrific show and his songs (and storytelling) are very entertaining. Capps quite obviously won the crowd quite early and I'm happy to report that Mike hopes to lure the musician back to Louisville for an outdoor Waterfront Wednesday show. We bought the latest Capps CD on the way out the door.

Catherine Irwin of Freakwater was the solo warmup act and she was very good too. If you are interested, I recommend her band's excellent "Springtime," which I've enjoyed for years.


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Reaction to Bush Iraq speech

The chattering classes are calling last night's speech on Iraq the most important of his presidency.

Today, I've written a long analysis of its meaning at the Duck of Minerva: The price of failure in Iraq: my 2 cents.



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History lesson: Algiers Accord of 1981

This is point 1 in the agreement from January 1981, which settled the Iran hostage crisis:

The United States pledges that it is and from now on will be the policy of the United States not to intervene, directly or indirectly, politically or militarily, in Iran's internal affairs.

The overwhelming majority of the agreement concerned financial affairs, as the US had frozen Iranian assets after the hostages were taken.

Despite a November promise, I haven't recently blogged about the prospect of war with Iran. However, readers should be aware that despite all the current talk about the surge against Iraq, neo-cons still have their eye on what they see as a bigger prize. Michael Ledeen wrote this today for the NRO:

As luck would have it, this is the ideal moment to go after the Iranians, since their supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, is either dead or dying, and a vicious internal power struggle is under way in Tehran. We should propose a better solution to the Iranian people: revolution, leading to their freedom. That would require the president and the secretary of State to call for regime change in Iran and Syria, something from which they have always retreated in the past.

But if we want to win, that’s the first step. Anybody ready?

Ledeen blogged something similar on January 7.

According to the January 1 Boston Globe, the Bush administration may already be violating the Algiers Accord:

the Iran Syria Policy and Operations Group, or ISOG, is also coordinating a host of other actions, which include covert assistance to Iranian dissidents and building international outrage toward Iran by publicizing its alleged role in a 1994 terrorist attack in Argentina, according to interviews with half a dozen White House, Pentagon, and State Department officials who are involved in the group's work.

Remember Michael Doran? He is apparently one of the frequent members of ISOG.

I should note that many people see the 2006 Iran Freedom and Support Act as a precursor to war with Iran. The LA Times provided this detail back on October 29:

Democrats who voted for the measure were at pains to distinguish it from the Iraq Liberation Act, noting, for example, that the legislation specifically rejected military aid to opponents of Iran's current government, and that it calls for Iran's "democratic transformation," not regime change.

"Nudge Nudge, know what I mean, know what I mean!"

Say no more.


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2007, so far

The new Congress took office this week and the Democrats are back in charge. That fact should make most 2006 voters happy -- but I've read a couple of recent pieces suggesting that the election was just as flawed as the 2000 and 2004 ones seemed to be.

Simply put, the 2006 exit poll results did not come close to matching the 2006 election results:

When we compare the results of this national exit poll with the total vote count for all House races we find that once again, as in the 2004 Election (“E2004”), there is a very significant exit poll-vote count discrepancy. The exit poll indicates a Democratic victory margin nearly 4%, or 3 million votes, greater than the margin actually recorded by the vote counting machinery. This is far outside the margin of error of the poll and has less than a one in 10,000 likelihood of occurring as a matter of chance.

Hmmm, it sounds "stranger than fiction," eh?

Maybe that's why my wife and I spotted our new representative at that terrific film (great script) earlier this week.

Perhaps John Yarmuth was doing homework: is the Bush administration a (perhaps now dated and not particularly humorous) comedy -- or a tragedy?

Meanwhile, the Bush administration has been busy this week -- "rearranging the deck chairs on the Hindenberg."

And finally, while the information about the election and Bush foreign policy team has been bubbling around in my head for a couple of days, I have discovered that there is one less voice I can turn to for reliable and interesting analysis of the news: Billmon seems to have closed his Whiskey Bar blog.

This is disappointing, to be sure. Needless to say, I hope he continues to write -- perhaps a book -- and that he finds all the time he needs and deserves for his family.


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Victory in Iraq

Over the past five days, most of my blogging has been in comments here, at the Duck of Minerva, or on Red Stater's blog (follow this link).

Red argues that I favor defeat in Iraq, simply because I do not think that the US should continue to prosecute war there.

My argument is that war is merely a means to achieve the national security interests of the US. In Iraq, it is currently a poor means because of the civil war now raging. The pre-war goals have also been completed (overlooking the fact that many threats did not exist). Iraq is not pursuing WMD, it is not a state sponsor of terror and the Saddam Hussein regime is gone. It would be great if the government became a stable democracy and sectarian violence ended, but neither of those goals is best attained with US military force. Nation-building is a different problem.

Apparently, General Tommy Franks agrees. See this piece in the December 2006 "The National Interest," which is a conservative journal:

Now, without a doubt, there has always been this desire to create within Afghanistan and within Iraq conditions where the people in those countries have a representative form of government, and where this government is integrated into the international community of nations. This is a worthy goal. But we have to ask ourselves, “What was it that moved us into Afghanistan in the first place? And what moved us into Iraq in the first place?” The answer is clear: to ensure the security of the people of the United States of America.

So the first question we need to ask, then, is not whether Afghanistan and Iraq are flourishing democracies, but, since 9/11, how are we doing vis-à-vis the protection of the people of the United States?

Franks reminds everyone that the primary goal in both Afghanistan and Iraq was to assure that those states are not safe havens for terrorists.

Iraq clearly is not. There are nationalist insurgents trying to kick the US out of Iraq, there are a small number of foreign fighters attracted to Iraq for the opportunity to fight the USA, and there are growing sectarian militias trying to gain control of Iraq. If the US leaves Iraq, the first two forces lose their reason for fighting and most will put down their arms and/or leave Iraq. Some will join up with the sectarian forces and escalate the civil war.

Since Iraq serves as an al Qaeda recruiting tool, there's no evidence suggesting that the US can find and eliminate active foreign (or Iraqi) members or partners faster than they can find and recruit still more, motivated by US occupation of Iraq.

It is not at all certain that the US wants a clearcut Shia victory, even though al Qaeda is a Sunni operation. The US wants Iraq to recognize minority rights, but the Sunni minority is petrified that they will be left out of the governance of Iraq. Many Shia militia members want revenge for years of oppression under Saddam.

Those grievances are not much related to the primary US purpose for being in Iraq. I'm in favor of employing conflict resolution and/or management techniques, for bringing highly motivated neighbors into the discussion, and for stepping up nation-building efforts. Lots of strategies alternative to war could and should be explored (remember, it is supposed to be a last resort). I'd even support linking withdrawal to achievement of specific benchmarks related to non-violence, rather than immediate removal of all troops.

But the US troops are a major part of the problem in Iraq and must come home soon.



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Books of 2006

Last year, I posted a complete list of books I read in 2005. I'm not sure the post was revisited much, but I decided to make a 2006 list too.

Note that I do not intend to list books that I reviewed, unless those reviews were published. In my academic job, I chair a committee that awards $200,000 annually to the best "ideas for improving world order." Most of our nominees have written books and I read my share of the nominations.

Of course, since I'm an academic, I read multiple chapters and large sections of lots of books related to my research and teaching. However, I'm not going to list them here unless I read them cover-to-cover. Save for the books I use in class or read for review, I often skim over some portions even of outstanding books. It's a time/efficiency issue.

Finally, I'm also excluding the books I read aloud to my youngest daughter, even though some of them are fairly substantial.

So, what did I read this year, mostly for pleasure?

Non-fiction

The Purpose of Intervention, by Martha Finnemore.

Blood and Oil, by Michael T. Klare.

Boiling Point: How Politicians, Big Oil and Coal, Journalists, and Activists Have Fueled the Climate Crisis and What We Can Do to Avert Disaster by Ross Gelbspan.

The European Dream, by Jeremy Rifkin

Fever Pitch, by Nick Hornby.

The Juice: The Real Story of Baseball's Drug Problems, by Will Carroll.

Game Time: A Baseball Companion, by Roger Angell.

I also read just about every word in Baseball Prospectus 2006, but not in cover-to-cover fashion. It was edited by Steven Goldman and Christina Kahrl.

Of these, all were worth reading, though this was not Angell's best book. Carroll's writing is rough around the edges, but I learned from his look at steroids in my favorite sport. Rifkin's work is overlong, but parts of it would be great for an American student audience. Klare and Gelbspan were used in class last spring.

Fiction

A Long Way Down, by Nick Hornby.

The Quiet American, by Graham Greene.

The Secret Agent, by Joseph Conrad.

The Hot Kid, by Elmore Leonard.

Hombre, by Elmore Leonard.

The Simple Art of Murder, by Raymond Chandler.

Trouble is My Business by Raymond Chandler.

Deep Blue Good-by, by John D. Macdonald.

Nightmare in Pink, by John D. Macdonald.

A Purple Place for Dying, John D. Macdonald.

Meet Me at the Morgue, by Ross Macdonald

Baseball and Benevolence, by Mark Valenza

The Seventh Babe, by Jerome Charyn.

Double Play, by Robert B. Parker

Spanking Watson, by Kinky Friedman

Saving Faith, by David Baldacci

Of these, I put the best first, then the genre fiction, and then the worst. I really like Nick Hornby's work and this book was very entertaining. John D. Macdonald's Travis McGee stories are a pleasant diversion, but the Pink one is kind of dated -- and none of them were as good as Leonard's latest paperback.

Currently, I'm about halfway through James Ellroy's oddly written The Cold Six Thousand, which I think one reviewer said was narrated by a hopped-up Dr. Seuss, hungry for violence. Also well underway is Richard Ned Lebow's The Tragic Vision of Politics: Ethics, Interests and Orders, which figures into my latest writing project. More on that soon.



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Movies of 2006

I'm a fan of film. This past fall, I taught "Global Politics Through Film" and I joined one of those on-line rental DVD companies, which delivers movies by mail. It is safe to say that I watch a lot of movies.

So, what were the best movies of 2006?

Well, many of the best films I saw this year were 2005 flicks that I missed in the theaters. Some were even older.

To make a 2006 list, I scanned the top 150 grossing movies of 2006, as well as IMDB's most popular titles for 2006 (and their most popular by average vote list), and these were the only ones I saw this year. Pictures marked with asterisks were viewed in a theater:

Thank You for Smoking **
Casino Royale **
V for Vendetta
Little Miss Sunshine **
Inside Man **
An Inconvenient Truth
A Prairie Home Companion **
Wordplay
Glory Road
The Break-Up
Superman Returns
X Men: The Last Stand
Mission Impossible III **
Nacho Libre
Monster House
Happy Feet **
Cars **
Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby

And here's the annual list of movies I intend to see in the near future (but probably in 2007): Babel, Blood Diamond, Bobby, Borat, Children of Men, The Departed, The Fountain, The Good Shepherd, The Illusionist, Kenny, The Last King of Scotland, The Prestige, The Queen, The Road to Guantanamo, A Scanner Darkly, Scoop, Stranger Than Fiction, and Who Killed the Electric Car?

I'll probably also end up watching United 93 and World Trade Center, though I cannot bring myself to rent either one when I'm at the video store.



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Victory challenge

The Oklahoma blogger Red Stater has issued a "victory challenge" to "liberal" bloggers. He wants bloggers on the left to declare that the US cannot leave Iraq because that means defeat. He recently left this challenge in a comment on one of my recent posts.

Oh, and he thinks I'm in denial about Iraq.

Recently, he left a comment on my December 4, 2005 post "Failed state?"

So you can't determine (or guess) if US troops supporting Iraq's Democracy is a stablizing factor or not...yet you already determined that removing US troops would be destablizing.

Therefore, if removing US troops is bad then keeping US troops in Iraq is good.
(for democracy)

Your hatred for Bush is obviously affecting your ability to draw correct conclusions from your own findings.
(bias)
-redstater

I tried to leave the following reply, but there were too many links for haloscan:

You are commenting on a December 2005 post -- written nearly 13 months ago. The circumstances have drastically changed.

For one thing, the new October 2006 evidence suggests that innocent Iraqis are dying at a much higher rate than anyone knew at that time. The US is not there specifically to kill them, but they are dying as a direct and indirect cause of the US-backed war. On your blog, you attribute a strawman argument to me.

For another thing, the old post pre-dates the February 2006 mosque bombing that made the conflict much more of a sectarian civil war.

More-and-more, Iraq already looks like a failed state. The US troops seem to be irrelevant to that fact.

However, there is very little chance that this makes Iraq like Afghanistan in the 1990s. Al Qaeda is Sunni and the dominant Shia in Iraq simply will not tolerate a Sunni-based terrorist training site.

Civil war will be bad for many Iraqis, but there's very little reason for the USA to participate.

The US couldn't defeat the Vietnamese insurgency with nearly 185,000 troops in 1965. It didn't fare a lot better in 1966 with 200,000 more, nor a lot better in 1967 with another 100,000...nor better in 1968 with another 50,000.

The US currently has no real prospect of putting anywhere near those troop levels in Iraq. Even the US generals say peace has to be achieved politically; this will not be a military victory.

Note: Professor Juan Cole has a thorough answer to many of the myths about Iraq promulgated by bloggers like Red Stater.


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Holiday cheer: feedback requested

In case you didn't notice, operations have been slow here at the blog for some time.

I had quite a bit of grading in December, then normal holiday commitments. Expect more writing and posting after the new year. Meanwhile, I certainly hope all my readers are enjoying the normal slowdown that many people enjoy this time of year.

As for me, I'm contemplating the best way to spend a gift card. I've got all the books I currently need from Powell's, so I'm planning to purchase a couple of music CDs.

I'm a fan of Americana and have already looked at the end-of-year "best of 2006" list from No Depression. I also took a look at NPR's choices, the Boston Globe's picks, and Metacritic.

I have all-but decided to purchase my second Neko Case CD.

For the next choice, I'm mulling Rosanne Cash, Cat Power, Grayson Capps, Solomon Burke, Tom Waits, Elvis Costello & Allen Toussaint, Old Crow Medicine Show, Todd Snider, and T Bone Burnett.

Any advice on selections from this group?

Alternatively, what are the indispensable Americana CDs? Maybe I've missed some important work from the past decade or so?

Or, which Drive-By-Truckers CD should I buy, considering I only have one now?

I like Bob Dylan a great deal, of course, but already own much of his artistic output from a very long career. Do I really need another Dylan album?

Readers, I'd like to hear from you on this.


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Just try to duck this

Today, I've written a lengthy post about Iraq on the Duck of Minerva: "Bush 'We're not winning.'"

December 15, I posted "Pakistan on the hot seat, again."

December 10: "Conservative dead pool."

December 7, I blogged a "Friday maxim" regarding the fortune in my Chinese food.

Happy reading.

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Talking Heads: Start Making Sense

Today, on "Face the Nation," former Secretary of State Colin Powell said that the US is losing in Iraq -- and that a surge in troops to protect Baghdad would likely not work. This is life during wartime, December 2006:

"So if it's grave and deteriorating [as the Iraq Survey Group concluded] and we're not winning [as new Defense Secretary Gates said], we are losing...

"I am not persuaded that another surge of troops into Baghdad for the purposes of suppressing this communitarian violence, this civil war, will work,"

Powell did say that he agreed with the ISG and Gates, by the way.

It was a Sunday, so a lot of administration supporters in the audience probably thought that Powell was speaking in tongues. He said that the US is less safe as a a result of Operation Iraqi Freedom:

"I think we are a little less safe, in the sense that we don't have the same force structure available for other problems," Powell said. "I think we have been somewhat constrained in our ability to influence events elsewhere."

Hmmmm.

To prove the politics makes for strange bedfellows, Senate Majority Leader (to be), Harry Reid today said that he would support a temporary surge in troops for Iraq.

True Story: Reid also said that the 2 or 3 month troop surge had to be part of a plan to have the US out by this time next year.


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"War is a continuation of politics by other means"

It appears the the Joint Chiefs of Staff haven't forgotten this admonition by Clausewitz. This is from today's Washington Post:

Pentagon chiefs think that there is no purely military solution for Iraq and that, without major progress on the political and economic fronts, the U.S. intervention is simply buying time, the sources said. They particularly want to see U.S. pressure on the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to offer amnesty to Sunni insurgents, approve constitutional amendments promised to the Sunni minority, pass laws to ensure equitable distribution of oil revenue, and modify the ban on members of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party taking government positions.

Hopefully, this kind of talk will put to rest all the "double down" whispering that has been emanating from the media's talking heads these past few days.

The military has long known that Iraq could not be won as a purely military campaign. Analysts in the US have to stop talking about victory versus defeat and focus instead on the choice between stalemated war versus sustainable peace.

Under the Joint Chiefs plan, what will the military be doing in Iraq? While many thousands of troops would become newly embedded in Iraqi units to serve training purposes, the remaining US forces would stop fighting Iraq's civil war.

Meanwhile, the remaining seven to eight brigades of U.S. combat forces would focus on three core missions: striking al-Qaeda, strengthening security along Iraq's borders, and protecting major highways and other routes to ensure U.S. forces freedom of movement in Iraq.

I'm not confident that this is the pathway out of Iraq, but it does sound better than the status quo. Hopefully, by changing course, fewer American soldiers would be exposed to violent injury and death.

If sectarian violence escalates dramatically after the switch to this strategy, it will become even more politically difficult for hawks to argue that the US should increase its involvement. Though the Pentagon might not identify civil war now, their perspective might be better from a more remote perspective.

Likewise, it will be harder to frame American withdrawal from Iraq as "cut and run." After all, the civil war won't be widely viewed as America's fight.



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Cyber-war: did it already start?

According to The Washington Times, the Naval War College has recently suffered an attack:

Chinese computer hackers penetrated the Naval War College network earlier this month, forcing security authorities to shut down all e-mail and official computer network work at the Navy's school for senior officers.

Navy officials said the computer attack was detected Nov. 15 and two days later the U.S. Strategic Command raised the security alert level for the Pentagon's 12,000 computer networks and 5 million computers.

The story is filled with lots of threat mongering, which I won't repeat. Read it yourself, Times stories tend to endure on their site.

Another data point: several of my emails sent over the past month to a colleague in Newport have bounced. I received one bounce notice just today from an email sent last Wednesday! I am not confident now that any of my emails have been received.

This may not be influencing world politics very significantly, but it makes for slow progress on joint individual projects.

This might be a job for the telephone.


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RIP Jeane Kirkpatrick

Former UN Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick died on December 7. I've linked to The Washington Post obituary, but you won't have to google very long to find others.

At first glance, Kirkpatrick was a political schizophrenic. As a youth, she was a Columbia-educated Marxist who became a fervent anti-communist in Washington. Though it is not a transformation of that magnitude, she also worked for Hubert Humphrey in 1968 and Ronald Reagan in 1981.

By the 1970s, Kirkpatrick was an ardent cold warrior. In 1979, she published her best-known work, a very famous piece about democratization and human rights for Commentary magazine, "Dictatorships & Double Standards." The piece offered a blistering critique of Jimmy Carter's foreign policy -- and an ideological defense of America's cold war alliances with various right-wing autocrats throughout what was then commonly called the "third world."

Though today's neocons supposedly owe Kirkpatrick a huge intellectual debt, and the administration of George W. Bush is often-said to be heavily influenced by her thinking, it seems obvious to me that the neocons and Bush people should go back and read her 1979 article:

Although most governments in the world are, as they always have been, autocracies of one kind or another, no idea holds greater sway in the mind of educated Americans than the belief that it is possible to democratize governments, anytime, anywhere, under any circumstances. This notion is belied by an enormous body of evidence based on the experience of dozens of countries which have attempted with more or less (usually less) success to move from autocratic to democratic government. Many of the wisest political scientists of this and previous centuries agree that democratic institutions are especially difficult to establish and maintain-because they make heavy demands on all portions of a population and because they depend on complex social, cultural, and economic conditions.

...Decades, if not centuries, are normally required for people to acquire the necessary disciplines and habits.

Here's another zinger from that article:

Vietnam presumably taught us that the United States could not serve as the world's policeman; it should also have taught us the dangers of trying to be the world's midwife to democracy when the birth is scheduled to take place under conditions of guerrilla war.

Despite these warnings that resonate in contemporary politics, Kirkpatrick was primarily arguing that some right-wing autocracies had eventually evolved into democracies while there were no examples at that time of a "revolutionary 'socialist' or Communist society being democratized."

This implied (a) that the U.S. could justify its alliances with right-wing autocrats because they were not necessarily permament; and (b) that the U.S. should overtly support these right-wing autocrats because they were vulnerable to pressures applied by Marxist revolutionaries. If the latter came to power, she argued, the new government would be worse than the autocracy it replaced.

In this article, the "Kirkpatrick doctrine" justifying support for right-wing autocrats did not directly begat the "Reagan doctrine," which justified American support for anti-communist insurgencies in places like Nicaragua and Afghanistan. But as the US Permament Representative to the UN for four years, Kirkpatrick certainly supported that policy. And the Commentary piece does criticize the Carter administration for its failure to attempt to undermine any communist states.

Let me note one other prominent Kirkpatrick statement. At the 1984 Republican National Convention in Dallas that re-nominated Ronald Reagan for president, she delivered the famous address that criticized the "San Francisco Democrats" (the party had just had its national convention in that city) that would "Blame America First" for various ills in world affairs.

In her public life, Jeane Kirkpatrick was both a skilled politico and a scholar. Not many have bridged those two worlds.

My personal experience confirms both her political skills and intellectual prowess. Ten years ago, I spent significant parts of two working days and a long evening with Kirkpatrick and a few other colleagues. Given the stark differences between her politics and mine, I was not really expecting to like her very much. However, I found her to be a very skilled advocate for her positions. She was also quite charming. And entertaining.

And maybe just a little bit flirty.

One final note: As my Duck of Minerva colleague Bill Petti has pointed out, the latest move by the neoconservative crowd is to "Blame America Last." It is clear from Kirkpatrick's 1979 critique of Carter's foreign policy that she was quite willing to place blame on America when she thought its leaders were doing a poor job and creating instability and new threats.

Thus, I'd like to think she would reject this latest twist.


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Filed as: Jeane Kirkpatrick

Global Politics Through Film, Fall 2006

This post consolidates links to the weekly blog posts I wrote during fall 2006 about POLS 552, Global Politics Through Film. This link should take you to a copy of the course syllabus (pdf version).

Note: the following dates reference the blog postings, not the class periods.

August 14, I announced the "Film class selections." The post includes the Internet Movie Database (IMDB) links to each film, as do the following posts, which were originally written for the Duck of Minerva group IR blog.

August 24, "Film class: week I" about "Casablanca" and sovereign nation-state involvement in the so-called "protection racket." Are states like the mafia and is IR like a series of real or threatened gang wars?

August 31, "Film class -- week 2" on "Twelve O'Clock High." We discussed the critical roles of fear and military power -- and the importance of real or threatened great power war -- in shaping interstate politics.

September 7, "Film class -- week 3." We watched "Saving Private Ryan" and discussed the tragic dimensions of great power politics. Does the structure of the international system force tragic choices on states, or do individuals make tragic choices because of their flaws?

September 15: "Film class -- week 4." We viewed "The Quiet American" and discussed Wilsonian liberal internationalism -- particularly in US foreign policy. We also addressed recent tensions in US and European relations.

September 22: "Film class -- week 5" the class saw "Black Hawk Down" and discussed humanitarian intervention during the 1990s. Can tremendous American military power be used for good?

September 29, "Film class -- week 6." We viewed "Breaker Morant" and discussed whether states (or empires) can promote democracy and other ideals through the application of force, perhaps by using even brutal means.

October 5, "Film class -- week 7" which discussed the viewing of "Red Dawn" and the role of nationalism in global politics. The class, for obvious reasons, considered the Iraqi insurgency.

October 15, "Film class -- week 8" focused on comedian Stephen Colbert's monologue at the 2006 White House Correspondent's Association dinner. It was fall break, so we didn't actually have time to watch a feature. Discussion centered around the role of the court jester -- and I offered a brief description of critical theory and its application to IR.

October 19, "Film class -- week 9." The class viewed Chaplin's "The Great Dictator" and discussed the power of ridicule. Facism, of course, is an easy target, but Chaplin's film does offer a meaningful alternative vision of world politics.

October 27, "Film class -- week 10." We viewed "Wag the Dog" and talked about Clinton's impeachment, the diversionary theory of war, and the Iraq war justifications.

November 3, "Film class -- week 11," about the brilliant dark comedy of the nuclear-age -- "Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb." Is nuclear deterrence a sham? Is it irrational?

November 10, "Film class -- week 12," which discusses the terrific satirical film "Network." This is the first film that places a lot of attention on powerful corporate interests. We also addressed the role of the media in shaping perceptions of threats, including terror risks.

November 17, "Film class -- week 13," was about "Ghandi" and the use of nonviolent political strategies in global politics.

November 26, "Film class -- week 14," which concerns "The Whale Rider." We discussed "warrior citizens" and feminist notions of global politics.

December 1, "Film class -- week 15." We viewed"Hotel Rwanda" and discussed human security and "the responsibility to protect" populations threatened by genocide or crimes against humanity.


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Filed as: IR films