Transparent banking

In The Nation July 13, economist Joseph Stiglitz notes that greater banking transparency could help fight corruption in the developing world.

Developing nations are often criticized for corruption, but secret bank accounts wherever they may be facilitate corruption, providing safe haven for stolen funds. Developing countries want this money returned and want access to information that will allow them to detect secret accounts.

Stiglitz is critical of recent congressional legislation for failing to go far enough to solve this problem.

Paul Collier makes a similar argument in The Bottom Billion and calls explicitly for new international norms -- such as budget transparency -- to make this kind of corruption far more difficult.

Collier also calls for transparency initiatives in natural resources.

The U.S. spent much of the 1990s arguing for a "strategy of openness" -- seeking open markets, especially. However, as Andrew Bacevich outlined, the Clinton administration sweepingly sought to remove "barriers to the movement of goods, capital, people, and ideas."

Perhaps the Obama administration can devote some attention to a slightly different form of openness. The President certainly seems to understand the critique offered by Stiglitz and Collier.


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Summer Duck

Today, at the Duck of Minerva group IR blog, I posted "Is America cool again?" The piece looks at results from the latest Pew Global Attitudes Project, which finds some big improvements in the U.S. image around the world -- apparently attributable to the Obama administration.

On Monday, July 6, I posted "RIP: Robert McNamara." I saw the former Secretary of Defense speak a couple of times and dined with him once.

On Friday, July 3, I blogged "Oops" about an unfortunate mistake concerning a book ad (since corrected) at the Barnes and Noble website.


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High noon high

Watching "Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince" wasn't as difficult as trying to sit through Gus Van Sant's "Elephant" (which I failed to do), but the former certainly reminded me of the latter. Guess which film this reviewer is describing?

[The] film is a highly stylized, dreamlike tone poem that defies linear conventions and is almost surreal in its approach. Using flashbacks and recurring images from different points of view, the film captures the mood and tone of its adolescent world: its perceptions, its self-absorption, and ultimately its darkest instincts.

The camera is a detached observer, and the strength of the film lies in its acute power of observation and detail....[The director] shows us all the surface rituals

In the end, both feature a troubling school massacre.

That review describes scenes of cheerleading rather than quidditch, but the meaning for the larger story is similar.

There is an important difference between these films. In the more recent one, the protagonist vows revenge -- foreshadowed by both prior books and films and the fact that Harry Potter has tasted a bit of evil in this film (the inevitable ring -- and of the course the subtitle character's potion book).

Perhaps the final episode will be "Harry Potter at High Noon."


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No future

Clearly, I have no future as a foreign policy wonk. I've violated many of Stephen Walt's "Ten Commandments for Ambitious Policy Wonks." The list describes “taboo” subjects in contemporary foreign policy discourse. Interestingly, his list doesn't include this taboo.

While I've often implied arguments against many of the commandments, on this blog I've fairly directly challenged #3. Thou Shalt Not Question the Need for a Nuclear Deterrent.

and #5: Thou Shalt Not Call For an Accommodation with Cuba (or North Korea, or Iran, or….).

And #9: Thou Shalt Not Question the Right of the United States to Intervene in Other Countries.

Read the entire list.


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Threatdown: The Heat is on China

China recently passed the US and became the world's top emitter of greenhouse gases. According to US Energy Secretary Steven Chu, Chinese emissions are poised to explode.

If China’s emissions of global warming gases keep growing at the pace of the last 30 years, the country will emit more such gases in the next three decades than the United States has in its entire history, said Mr. Chu, a Nobel laureate in physics.

Chu was speaking at Tsinghua University, apparently viewed as China’s top science university.

On US soil, US officials seem even more worried about China's long-term role, implying that the world may view China as a threat to ecological security:

Commerce Secretary Gary Locke said in a speech to the American Chamber of Commerce that China shared a special responsibility with the United States to address global warming. China passed the United States two years ago as the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases, and the two countries together account for 42 percent of humanity’s emissions of these gases.

“Fifty years from now, we do not want the world to lay the blame for environmental catastrophe at the feet of China,” Mr. Locke said.

In 2007, by the way, European officials annoyed American diplomats by reminding the world that US emissions had increased 60% over 1990 Kyoto baseline levels. As recently as 2005, China claimed that it was reducing its greenhouse gas emissions.


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Obama on Climate at G-8

Last week, President Obama told the other G-8 leaders that the U.S. plans to make some rather remarkable changes in terms of climate change policy. After dismissing all doubts about the science and calling for developing countries to make reductions in future emissions, the President said:

We also agree that developed countries -- like my own -- have a historic responsibility to take the lead. We have the much larger carbon footprint per capita, and I know that in the past, the United States has sometimes fallen short of meeting our responsibilities. So, let me be clear: Those days are over. One of my highest priorities as President is to drive a clean energy transformation of our economy, and over the past six months, the United States has taken steps towards this goal.

We've made historic investments in the billions of dollars in developing clean energy technologies...

We've also for the first time created a national policy raising our fuel-efficiency standards that will result in savings of 1.8 billion barrels of oil over the lifetime of vehicles sold in the next five years alone. And we just passed in our House of Representatives the first climate change legislation that would cut carbon pollution by more than 80 percent by 2050.

These are very significant steps in the United States.

It is far too early to rejoice, but these are important initiatives.

Indeed, it is relatively easy for politicians to make big promises about policy changes due over the course of four decades. Needless to say, they won't be around to assure followup. By contrast, it is far tougher to make costly investments in the short-term that have measurable benefits.

Rhetorically, it is also interesting that Obama used the same sort of unifying language globally that he employed in his 2008 political campaign:

It is no small task for 17 leaders to bridge their differences on an issue like climate change. We each have our national priorities and politics to contend with...

It's even more difficult in the context of a global recession, which I think adds to the fears that somehow addressing this issue will contradict the possibilities of robust global economic growth.

But ultimately, we have a choice. We can either shape our future, or we can let events shape it for us. We can fall back on the stale debates and old divisions, or we can decide to move forward and meet this challenge together. I think it's clear from our progress today which path is preferable and which path we have chosen. We know that the problems we face are made by human beings. That means it's within our capacity to solve them. The question is whether we will have the will to do so, whether we'll summon the courage and exercise the leadership to chart a new course. That's the responsibility of our generation, that must be our legacy for generations to come, and I am looking forward to being a strong partner in this effort.

At this July 2009 G-8 meeting, it sounded as if the U.S. under new management was trying to reclaim leadership on an important global issue and heal the so-called "transatlantic rift" that marked the Bush years (especially during his first term).

Especially given that the alleged U.S.-European divide never came close to full separation, it will be a lot easier for Obama to accomplish this political task than to take the kind of policy action necessary to stave off global climate chage.


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Newsweek's 50 Books for Our Times

Newsweek recently posted a list of "Fifty Books for Our Times." It is laden with contemporary works of non-fiction, in stark contrast to the novel-heavy "meta-list" of the "Top 100 Books" compiled from other top booklists: "Modern Library, the New York Public Library, St. John's College reading list, Oprah's, and more." This is their justification for wanting a new list to supplement the classics:

which books—new or old, fiction or nonfiction—open a window on the times we live in, whether they deal directly with the issues of today or simply help us see ourselves in new and surprising ways.

Fair enough.

In scanning through the 50 books, I discovered that I haven't read very many of them. In the first 20, I've read only Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick. Many others look interesting (some were already on my "to-read" wishlist) and I plan to read them eventually.

As for the remainder of the list, I've read some Mark Twain (three books are compiled as "The Mississippi Books"), Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi, and Underworld by Don DeLillo. That's it, five of fifty. Nearly all are novels.

I do much better on the classic list of 100: 1984 by George Orwell, The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger, F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, Joseph Heller's Catch-22, John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, Niccolo Machiavelli's The Prince, J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, Harper Lee To Kill a Mockingbird, Twain's Huckleberry Finn, Shelley's Frankenstein, Ernest Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls, Kurt Vonnegut Slaughterhouse-Five, Orwell's Animal Farm, William Golding's Lord of the Flies, Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep, Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, Rabbit, Run by John Updike, Dashiell Hammett's Maltese Falcon, and Phillip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" (actually 3 books).

That's 20 of 100, though I confess that many were read in high school or college English classes.

Plus, I've read memorable portions of many others on the list: Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America, Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Social Capital, Karl Marx's Das Kapital, The Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes, Thucydides's Peloponnesian Wars, A.A. Milne's Winnie the Pooh (I likely read this entire book to my daughters), John Milton's Paradise Lost, various works of Shakespeare, and The Holy Bible.

That's 8 to 10 more, depending upon how many works of Shakespeare I can recall reading (as opposed to simply viewing)

Some more from the top 100 compiled list are on my shelf, just waiting to be read one of these days. Top-listed works by Evelyn Waugh, Ralph Ellison, Conrad, Anthony Burgess, and Robert Penn Warren are literally stacked or shelved nearby in a "to read" collection.

Maybe I should set them aside in favor of books from the contemporary list?

Take a look at that Newsweek list and make a recommendation if something is familiar -- and good.


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Ducking in

Today, at the Duck of Minerva group IR blog, I posted "Cheney: The Most Dangerous Veep Ever?" It concerns the political stunts he pulled -- and lies he told -- to promote war against Iraq.

Thursday, June 25, I posted "Is Obama channeling Bush?" The post is about the latest increase in heated rhetoric from President Obama about events in Iran.


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Global Health

Does foreign aid work? I've mentioned that question previously, but there's new disturbing data recently published in The Lancet, a prestigious medical journal. Here's the AP account of one recent study:

Trying to show health campaigns actually saved lives is "a very difficult scientific dilemma," said Tim Evans, a senior World Health Organization official who worked on one of the papers.

In one paper, WHO researchers examined the impact of various global health initiatives during the last 20 years.

They found some benefits, like increased diagnosis of tuberculosis cases and higher vaccination rates. But they also concluded some U.N. programs hurt health care in Africa by disrupting basic services and leading some countries to slash their health spending.

The other study discussed in the AP story about the journal articles notes that health aid dollars do not necessarily match need. It would appear as if many political factors influence aid decisions:

[University of Washington researcher Chris] Murray and colleagues also found AIDS gets at least 23 cents of every health dollar going to poor countries. Globally, AIDS causes fewer than 4 percent of deaths.

"Funds in global health tend to go to whichever lobby group shouts the loudest, with AIDS being a case in point," said Philip Stevens of International Policy Network, a London think tank.

Somewhat cynically, Philip Stevens of International Policy Network (a British think tank) points out the mixed motives of the aid community:

"The public health community has convinced the public the only way to improve poor health in developing countries is by throwing a ton of money at it," Stevens said. "It is perhaps not coincidental that thousands of highly paid jobs and careers are also dependent on it."

It's fairly disheartening.


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Fall classes: books and films

This past week, I made final book selections for my fall classes.

MWF at noon I'm teaching POLS 335, Global Ecopolitics, a course which is most often called Global Environmental Politics at other schools. However, I did my graduate training at University of Maryland where Dennis Pirages was pioneering the study of "ecopolitics." In addition to extensive discussion of global environmental concerns (with a focus this term on climate change), my course devotes a great deal of attention to both resource politics and global poverty. There are still plenty of seats available in the course. Students do not need prior exposure to either international relations or environment courses.

In the right-hand column of this blog, I've added a link to my textbook selections available on-line at Powell's Bookstore. The list includes books I've used in the past few years, though it begins with books selected for the coming term:

Climate Change: What It Means for Us, Our Children, and Our Grandchildren by Joseph Dimento and Pamela Doughman (MIT 2007).






Global Environmental Governance: Foundations of Contemporary Environmental Studies by James Gustave Speth and Peter Haas (Island, 2006).






The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done About It by Paul Collier (Oxford, 2008).






I'm also teaching POLS 552, Global Politics Through Film. The class will be viewing films on Monday afternoons at 3 pm (the class ends at 5:15) and will discuss them on Wednesdays from 4 to 5 pm. I've taught the course twice since 2006 -- students can find a list of films used previously here. I changed a couple of selections from fall 2006 to summer 2008 and may again tweak some choices from the original list. Time constraints are a major concern as some interesting films are longer than 150 minutes.

I think it is a fun class for students and I must increase enrollment before late August for it to remain on the schedule. My pitch: students do not have to take any exams, but will write a couple of short analytical or review papers through the term -- culminating in a longer research paper at the end. I provide extensive feedback and typically allow rewrites of papers in classes at the 500 level. All of the paper assignments tie to film texts. Undergraduates worried about taking this course at the 500 level may be able to sign up for a 300 or 400 level course and might be able to arrange for this to count as a Writing Requirement (WR).

No textbooks with substantive international relations content are required; the class will instead read a couple of short IR-related articles each week. The class focuses on substantive issues more than IR theory. The following books is recommended as an aide to writing about film:

A Short Guide To Writing About Film by Timothy J. Corrigan (Longman, 2006).


This is the sixth edition of Corrigan's brief text. Though a new 7th edition is available, I figured that it would be cheaper for students to buy used copies of the slightly older one. I think it would be OK for students to consult any recent edition of the book and it is likely that the new edition will have a better resale value.


Disclosure: The blog receives a 7.5% commission on book sales purchased through links from this website.

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Duck doings

Today, at the Duck of Minerva group IR blog, I posted "Joking Cousins" about the "joking relationships" that operate throughout Africa. Practitioners insult one another without taking offense -- a social tie that is said to promote peaceful order within various societies.

On Wednesday, June 10, I posted "Domestic terror" about the recent shooting inside the Holocaust Museum and the murder of an abortion services provider in Wichita. Do these violent attacks mean that the Department of Homeland Security was correct a few months ago when it warned about the danger of radical right-wing extremism in the US?


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Steroids update: Sosa HR edition

Today, The New York Times is reporting that baseball slugger Sammy Sosa tested positive for steroids in 2003. At that time, Major League Baseball's steroid policy was supposed to assure anonymity for players who tested positive.

As I've noted previously, contemporary players appearing on the all-time home run leader board are widely viewed as tainted. Consider this list of men who played in the 1990s who cracked the top 25 HR:

1. Barry Bonds: lots of evidence, apparently.
5. Ken Griffey Jr.
6. Sammy Sosa: 2009 report of 2003 test failure
8. Mark McGwire: 1998 Androstenedione use plus much other innuendo
10. Rafael Palmeiro: suspended in 2005
12. Alex Rodriguez: in 2009 admitted steroid use from 2001-2003
13. Jim Thome
17. Manny Ramirez: suspended in 2009
18T. Frank Thomas
24. Gary Sheffield: named in Mitchell report concerning 2003 usage
25. Eddie Murray

Does this mean Griffey, Thome and Thomas are the real home run heroes of the steroids era?


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The resource curse

I've just returned from nearly a week in an oil-rich state well-known for its opposition to the American regime. The big story, as has been widely reported, involves thuggish government behavior, which highlights its power. New information technology has played a key role in the backlash -- with lots of people lamenting the lack of government transparency.

No, I didn't go to Iran. For news about the controversial election and the even more contentious aftermath, visit my colleagues at the Duck of Minerva who are doing a great job.

FYI: I just spent about a week near Tulsa, where the local news media focused incessantly on the brutality of a state trooper towards an ambulance driver. The video isn't pretty.


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Sugar

"Sugar" may be the best film about baseball that I've seen. It is a realistic story of a young pitcher from the Dominican Republic who is invited to spring training in the USA and then assigned to a low minor league team in small-town Iowa.

The film focuses attention on the agents and leagues operating in Latin America, as well as the immigrant experience in America. Indeed, the film would have been perfect for my "Globalization (and Baseball)" course that I taught during fall 2003. After all, I assigned Stealing Lives by Arturo J. Marcano Guevara and David P. Fidler, which tells the story of sweatshop baseball labor throughout Latin America.

Former Cincinnati Reds ace Jose Rijo plays a fairly prominent role in the movie. Apparently, presuming the film is accurate, baseball has upgraded the facilities in the Dominican Republican because Marcano Guevara and Fidler describe players working and living in squalor.

As you might expect, the film gives some attention to steroids. Most importantly, it emphasizes the precarious position of young men in Latin America pursuing an unlikely dream. The movie also shows the advantages granted to the million dollar draftee ("Brad Johnson") from Stanford. He teaches the main character about the life and work of former Latin star Roberto Clemente, who said: "Any time you have an opportunity to make a difference in this world and you don't, then you are wasting your time on Earth."


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Crime in the City is-a Getting Worse

Back in the 1980s, one of my favorite bands was the Beat Farmers -- a cowpunk group from southern California. One of their great songs was called "Gun Sale at the Church" (that's a video link).

Irony is a powerful weapon, right?

Sometimes, reality is even more potent. The Courier-Journal, June 3:

A Valley Station Road church is sponsoring an "Open Carry Church Service" in late June, encouraging people to wear unloaded guns in their holsters, enter a raffle to win a free handgun, hear patriotic music and listen to talks by operators of gun stores and firing ranges.

Pastor Ken Pagano of New Bethel Church said the first-time event is "basically trying to think a little bit outside the box" to promote "responsible gun ownership and 2nd Amendment rights."

The idea is fairly controversial in the local religious community. "Rev. Nancy Jo Kemper of Lexington...said the event 'would nauseate Jesus.'"

Apparently, the event has been planned to help celebrate the 4th of July -- not the latest act of domestic terrorism.


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Discrimination and the Court

Just to be clear, the widely quoted and allegedly "racist" remark from Judge Sonia Sotomayor is from a section of a speech specifically concerning decisions in "race and sex discrimination cases." This is the relevant section from the speech -- with the part you've likely heard marked in red:

...our experiences as women and people of color affect our decisions. The aspiration to impartiality is just that--it's an aspiration because it denies the fact that we are by our experiences making different choices than others. Not all women or people of color, in all or some circumstances or indeed in any particular case or circumstance but enough people of color in enough cases, will make a difference in the process of judging. The Minnesota Supreme Court has given an example of this. As reported by Judge Patricia Wald formerly of the D.C. Circuit Court, three women on the Minnesota Court with two men dissenting agreed to grant a protective order against a father's visitation rights when the father abused his child. The Judicature Journal has at least two excellent studies on how women on the courts of appeal and state supreme courts have tended to vote more often than their male counterpart to uphold women's claims in sex discrimination cases and criminal defendants' claims in search and seizure cases. As recognized by legal scholars, whatever the reason, not one woman or person of color in any one position but as a group we will have an effect on the development of the law and on judging.

In our private conversations, Judge Cedarbaum has pointed out to me that seminal decisions in race and sex discrimination cases have come from Supreme Courts composed exclusively of white males. I agree that this is significant but I also choose to emphasize that the people who argued those cases before the Supreme Court which changed the legal landscape ultimately were largely people of color and women. I recall that Justice Thurgood Marshall, Judge Connie Baker Motley, the first black woman appointed to the federal bench, and others of the NAACP argued Brown v. Board of Education. Similarly, Justice Ginsburg, with other women attorneys, was instrumental in advocating and convincing the Court that equality of work required equality in terms and conditions of employment.

Whether born from experience or inherent physiological or cultural differences, a possibility I abhor less or discount less than my colleague Judge Cedarbaum, our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging. Justice O'Connor has often been cited as saying that a wise old man and wise old woman will reach the same conclusion in deciding cases. I am not so sure Justice O'Connor is the author of that line since Professor Resnik attributes that line to Supreme Court Justice Coyle. I am also not so sure that I agree with the statement. First, as Professor Martha Minnow has noted, there can never be a universal definition of wise. Second, I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life.

A bit earlier in the talk, Sotomayor accepted "the thesis of a law school classmate, Professor Steven Carter of Yale Law School, in his affirmative action book that in any group of human beings there is a diversity of opinion because there is both a diversity of experiences and of thought."


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The judge who saved baseball

Tuesday, several people asked me about Sonia Sotomayor, President Obama's nominee to fill the vacancy on the Supreme Court. I replied that I knew very little -- only that she was the judge who saved baseball in the 1994 labor dispute. Later that day, I saw Obama describe her in exactly those words.

As part of the negotiation for a new labor deal in 1994, the union went out on strike to prevent implementation of a salary cap. Owners had built a large strike fund and refused withdraw this demand. Owners also skipped an August 1 pension payment to the players. The dispute forced the end of the season in August, leading the owners to cancel the playoffs and World Series.

The next spring, owners fielded replacement players and threatened to market inferior baseball. The National Labor Relations Board rejected owners' negotiating strategies. From Doug Grabiner's FAQ:

The NLRB first threatened to issue a complaint that the owners had not negotiated in good faith on February 3, 1995; the owners settled by withdrawing the cap. However, they then responded to the players' ending their signing freeze by initiating their own signing freeze, and unilaterally renewing contracts by changing the language to deny players the right to arbitration and free agency.

On March 15, the NLRB issued a new complaint over this charge. On March 26, it asked Judge Sotomayor to grant an injunction restoring the old work rules. She granted this injunction on March 31, and the MLBPA then terminated the strike. When the owners decided not to lock the players out, spring training began, with Opening Day postponed to April 25.

The owners appealed this decision, and asked for a stay of the injunction. The stay was denied by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals on September 29. This upholds Judge Sotomayor's ruling that the owners may not declare an impasse without her approval. The injunction also restored the old work rules pending a hearing on the full charges. This hearing was postponed at least eleven times as negotiations continued, was never held, and became moot with the new agreement.

The complaint over the August 1, 1994 pension payment was settled on May 19, 1995. The owners agreed to make this payment with interest by June 1, 1995, and agreed to make another payment on August 1, 1995, following the All-Star game.

Conservative columnist George Will apparently distorted this history to portray Sotomayor as an activist judge, but it is easy to find a corrective online. Indeed, even owner lawyers say she issued a fair ruling:

Sotomayor’s ruling restored the terms of the previous labor agreement so the season could go forward. Randy Levine, who became the owners’ chief labor negotiator five months after Sotomayor’s injunction, said her decision “gave both sides an opportunity to take a breath, to take stock of where they were.” Levine, now the Yankees’ president, added, “It led to the good-faith bargaining that produced revenue sharing, the luxury tax and interleague play.”

Sotomayor couldn’t will the owners and players to come to a quick agreement or prevent some old tensions from rising. But an agreement was finally reached more than a year later, in late November 1996. And there have been no work stoppages since.

What kind of red-blooded American could oppose the judge who saved baseball?


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RIP: Jay Bennett

As anyone who saw "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart" knows, Jay Bennett was booted out of Wilco just as they were about to explode into the pop mainstream with "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot."

For my tastes, Bennett was an integral part of two far more entertaining Wilco projects -- "Being There" and "Mermaid Avenue" (in collaboration with Billy Bragg).

Those are two of my favorite recordings of the 1990s.

Jay Bennett, 45, died in his sleep this past weekend. I learned of it while watching the Chicago Cubs versus Pittsburgh Pirates on WGN tonight. To honor Bennett, the team played some Wilco songs between innings.

Sad news, but great tunes.


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