Random Observation of the Day

Although I don’t share the neo-isolationist/uber realist perspective of Christopher Layne, he should be getting way more mainstream attention. After all, he’s one of the leading IR scholars opposed to US hegemony and has written some of the best popular books and articles about US foreign policy. And say what you will about his arch-realist views, he’s certainly as qualified to be there as Max Boot or Michael Gerson. Layne certainly looks more prescient considering the events of the last few years.

But What Happens to the Drones?

The Times has a cool story discussing the secret CIA base in Pakistan where they launched the Predator drone that killed an Al Qaeda bigwig about a month ago. The problem is, of course, with Musharraf now a lame duck and a large source of his unpopularity being his close ties to the United States, the CIA is worried that they might not be able to hold on to their super-sweet base in Pakistan, and even if they do, they won’t be able to launch attacks so easily.

I hate to say it, but I have to sympathize with the CIA here. Disrupting Al Qaeda’s organizational capacity with targeted killings seems to prevent more terrorist attacks than the accompanying blowblack would invited, and obviously, its better if we can have the Predators be in the same place as the terrorists.

But, at the same time, this is just another outgrowth of our serially stupid Pakistan policy. Musharraf was unpopular for a lot of reasons, and while his closeness to the US was certainly one of them, a lot of his unpopularity had nothing to do with us; instead it was his heavy handedness, his coming to power in a coup, his sacking of the Chief Justice. So while we may have been supporting Musharraf because of his willingness to cooperate in killing terrorists (and even here he wasn’t perfect), the US becomes associated with all the other, tangentially related bad stuff that Musharraf did. Now, with Musharraf as a functional lame duck, we have to work with new people who don’t want to be tainted by working so closely with the US, which is now associated in the Pakistani public with military dictatorship and disgust for democracy.

This is why, in general, erring on the side of democracy, and against meddling, is a good foreign policy idea. Because our influence over far away states we barely understand is limited, and in the words of John Judis, “natives eventually grow restless,” investing a ton of support in a leader whose position is precarious and then refusing to lead him away from actively sabotaging his position is never going to end up well in the long term. Just look at the Shah in Iran, we supported this brutal unpopular dictator well past his expiration date and when he was inevitably removed from power, we had no influence over the new leaders because they saw the Shah and America as one in the same.

The case of Pakistan is particularly distressing because our interests really are convergent. Pakistan gains nothing from Al Qaeda and the Taliban having a sanctuary within its borders and the people who are now empowered aren’t super-duper hostile to West and America (though Sharif is close to outright hostility towards America, and with good reason, we didn’t particularly care when Musharraf removed him in a coup and then lavished favors on him) so we’ll probably be able to get something resembeling a workable agreement about anti-terrorism operations within Pakistan. But by supporting Musharraf, and even worse, by so blatantly standing by him as he was dismantling the few remaining democratic institutions left in Pakistan, we’ve made securing our interests - in both the long and short terms - much more difficult.

21st vs 19th centuries

One of the weirdest ticks of hawkish types that extoll the virtues of American hegemony is the disdian they have for the European approach to geopolitics.  To them, it’s downright shameful that Europe — after having tens of millions killed in decades of massive war — has largely departed from high military expenditures and gaining influence through their military might in favor of economic cooperation.  To them, it’s a sign of Europe’s weakness and, even worse, hypocricy, as they free-ride of American military might.

What’s odd about this argument is that American hegemony — which they favor — is supposed to bring about this state of affairs.  The entire point of a unipolar system to provide two things, which are really the same, stability and a set of public goods that benefit everyone (they are, after all, public).  One of these public goods is protection against the rise of revisionist powers that want to screw the global order.  The idea is that the US’ security umbrella will allow Europe to de-militarize, thus neutralizing the threat of a resurgent Germany, or even more hypothetically, a resurgent Russia.  This isn’t Europe being weak, or America being particularly strong - it’s just the way it’s supposed to work. So it shouldn’t be the neoconservatives and the hegemonists (I really try to use that term in a value neutral way) that get all high and mighty when extolling America’s willingness to allow Europe, instead, they should point to European welfare-states and stability with pride.

All of this is a long way of saying that Robert Kagan’s Post Op-Ed chiding Europe for practicing “postmodern” global politics while Russia plays bare-knuckle power politics very unconvincing.  He points to Russia playing nasty with its “near abroad” — getting testy with Georgia, attacking Estonia’s cyber infrastructure, exercising influence by refusing to sell gas — as a sign that Europe’s politics, which involve inviting people into a club that guarantees access to large markets and economic growth and stability, are not working.  I guess all I  can say is that Kagan is clearly incorrect.  Since 1991, Russia was shedding influence and power, while the EU literally had countries begging to join it.  They’ve been so successful at integrating so many former Russia-sphere countries so quickly that it is now taken as a sign of failure or weakness that they appear to be drawing a line (temporarily) at a large, poor, Muslim country (Turkey).

Kagan asks, after unconvincingly trying to tell us that Russia is somehow competing with Europe - despite the massive corruption and depopulation — “Can [Europe] bring a knife to a knife fight?” This is an incredibly shortsighted and misleading question.  If you look at the major trends, you have two political systems, the EU and Russia.  One has sporadic, oddly distributed and highly corrupt resource-driven growth, the other has sustained, roughly egalitarian growth based on technological innovation and productivity increases.  One attracts hundreds of thousands of migrants, has decent fertility and has managed to massively expand — peacefully — for more than a decade, the other is facing depopulation and has been shrinking geopolitically and demographically since the early 1990s.  Sure, with high gas prices, Russia is able to throw its weight around in its super near abroad (Georgia, Moldova) while what was once it’s true near-abroad (Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, the Baltic states) have firmly decided that they want to be part of Europe.

So the reason Europe isn’t bringing a “knife to a knife fight” is that there is no fight, or at least not one worth fighting.

The Public Goods Providing Empire

Thoreau of UO argues that the provision of “empire”, by which she means military and strategic dominance of the globe, is a huge drain on the economy, the pocketbooks of Americans and a huge misallocation of government resources. I think Thoreau and I agree on a lot: namely that the Iraq War is bad and that we spend too much on defense. But like many libertarians, he sees two options: the current mix of tax cuts, massive increases in defense spending and preventive war or withdrawing from empire. But there’s an alternative — the basic liberal internationalist one.

In this world, which Obama and Clinton both basically envision, we still spend the most on defense and maintain military predominance on the globe. But we will also recognize that our time on top is finite and so we try to strengthen international institutions to takeover the good parts of empire. Thoreau, like many empire-opponents, has a mechanistic view of how US hegemony operates. To many, the Iraq war was the inevitable by-product of our imperial stance. But this is decidedly untrue; Al Gore, for instance, believes in the two-party basics of US hegemony, but it’s certainly doubtful whether he would have invaded Iraq. There were many in the foreign policy community who managed to think: hegemony good, unilateral preventive war bad.

But even if dominance doesn’t necessarily result in horrible boondoggles like Iraq, why is it still a good thing? Thoreau is right that the costs of carrier fleets, submarines, marine divisions, airplanes etc etc are quite high. So what are we buying? Michael Mandelbaum, in his book The Case for Goliath, makes the argument that the US is like a world government. What he means by “word government” is that the US, because of its economic and military strength, can provide public goods to the world that would be too expensive for any other country or group of countries to provide on their own. The most important of these public goods is the safe passage for shipping and the general reassurance we provide to actors in the international system.Mandelbaum explains:

The American role in supplying the necessary service of enforcement for the international economic order is similar to the American provision of reassurance in security affairs. Both roles arise from the global deployment of American military forces, the original mission of which was neither economic enforcement nor reassurance but rather the deterrence of the Soviet Union and other Communist countries. The United States Navy patrolled the world’s two greatest oceans principally to keep the sea lanes of communication open in case of war: The protection this afforded commercial ship-ping came as a by-product of that mission.

The parallel between reassurance and enforcement goes even further. The purpose of each is to foster confidence, the confidence that normal, desirable political and economic activity will proceed uninterrupted. Because they guarantee what is normal and therefore not usually considered worthy of note, the two roles are not visible and for that reason not appreciated. They are taken for granted. They are being successfully carried out if and when nothing noteworthy happens.

This does not, however, mean that they are unimportant. To the contrary, to the extent that reassurance keeps at bay the kind of political conflict that produced the two world wars of the twentieth century, and enforcement permits the international economy to flourish, nothing the United States does in the world is more important. In this way the Goliath of the twenty-first century serves to soothe the nerves and ease the everyday lives of the inhabitants of weaker countries, rather than terrifying them as the original Goliath did.

The United States provides some order to the international system that, while imperfect, seems to be better than most alternatives.  Of course, we should try to distribute some of these burdens through institutions, and not squander treasure and goodwill by engaging in unilateral preventive war.   It’s just that many of the benefits of empire/hegemony/predominance are hard to discern and often taken for granted, while the negative sides - like Iraq - are all too visible.

“Our Guy”

One of the recurring tropes of neoconservatives and their liberal sympathizers is the idea that they are somehow the “internationalist” wing of the foreign policy community, while we anti-war folk are isolationist McGovernites.   This argument is pretty silly in light of neoconservatives love of unilateralism and hate for international organizations, but a deeper reason why neoconservatism as practiced isn’t internationalist is the continual support for individual leaders or figures in foreign countries, as opposed to movements or groups of people.  I’ve discussed this before, but it’s worth noting that supporters of the Bush foreign policy have constantly invested their hopes in individual leaders who could be “our guy” in some confusing Muslim country.  First it was Ahmed Chalabi in Iraq and than Ayad Allawi.  Neither of them represented real constituencies in Iraq and were largely (not incorrectly) seen as American stooges.  Then came Bhutto; even though she left Pakistan due to her massive corruption, she managed to charm the Washington establishment into thinking she was Pakistan’s savior.

The point of all of this (despite the fact I’ve already basically written this post  a week ago) is to emphasize how even though Bush promised a different type of foreign policy with freedom, democracy and pretty flowers, just how deeply ingrained the “Western educated foreign leader ingratiates himself (or herself) with Washington establishment and convinces them that despite a lack of credibility and support in his home country, he (or her) should be the US’s guy” pattern is.  Here’s a passage from David Halberstam’s last book, The Coldest Winter - America and the Korean War about Korean president Syngman Rhee, who was friends with Woodrow Wilson, Dean Acheson and John Foster Dulles and had a PhD from Princeton. He was “our guy” during the Korean War:

 The Americans, it seemed, had their man — or perhaps more accurately their man had them.  Roger Makins, a senior British diplomat friendly to the United States, believed that the Americans in that period, reflecting an isolationist nation being pulled ever so reluctantly into a new role as a world power, always showed a propensity to go for an individual - someone they felt comfortable with.  Choosing Rhee, Makin believed, reflected the fact “Americans have always liked the idea of dealing with a foreign leader who can be identiifed and perceived as ‘their man.’  They are much less comfortable with movements.”… General John Hodge, the unusually rough and undiplomatic commander of American troops in South Korea, despised Rhee.  He considered him…”devious, emotionally unstable, brutal, corrupt, and wildly unpredictable [emphasis added]

The strategy of supporting “our guy” in countries isn’t a poor one just because it often leads to the US being manipulated by sundry characters to pursue their own corrupt ends, it also encourages us to look at countries as places where individual leaders vie for power, and movements become invisible.  If a Pakistani were to look at American politics as a battle between George Bush, the Clintons and Barack Obama, they’d be superficially correct — all four are very important in America — but that would a vastly incomplete picture of how American politics actually works.  There’s no reason to think that most countries work in a basically similar way. While a place like Pakistan or Iraq might not have as well developed democratic institutions as the US, they still have popular movements, constituencies and power-bases that are more than the leaders that represent them.  For example, the Shia that al-Sadr represents aren’t a powerful force because al-Sadr is their leader, on the contrary, al-Sadr is powerful in Iraq because he represents a large and cohesive faction in Iraqi politics.

The blind spots that “our guy” politics causes are apparent all over the Muslim world.  The primordial example was our dead-end support for the Shah.  Because he hated communists and could mingle with foreign policy elites in Washington well, it was inconceivable that so many Iranians could oppose him.  In Pakistan, we tried to marry two deeply flawed leaders to each other in a bizarre bit of meddling alchemy that had little chance of ever actually working.   While the proximate cause of the embrace of “our guy” politics is a lack of understanding of the countries like Pakistan or Iraq or Iran, the deeper cause seems to be that many in America really are hostile to treating other nations as legitimate agents with purposes and goals that aren’t directly related to whatever short term conception of the US national interest we have at the time.

China’s Stake

Gordon Chang’s post discussing China’s foreign policy stance in the coming year is a great example of the green lantern theory of geopolitics; Chang thinks that it’s not only desirable, but possible, for the US to prevent China from taking a “commanding role in shaping the global order.”  Chang sees it as a weakness that on issues of proliferation, Iran, Sudan and most other global problems which China — because it is the world’s largest country with the fourth largest GDP and the world’s manufacturer — necessarily has a role to play, the US has been trying to enlist their assistance on a non-confrontational basis.  Chang seems to be deluded into thinking that China isn’t a major player on the world scene, and we can just ignore them.  Of course, their aforementioned economic heft and veto spot on the security council make that vision impossible.  The other alternative between covering up our eyes and pretending China isn’t there is pursuing a policy of petty confrontation that Chang supports.  He seems to think that at every possible moment we should be sticking our finger in China’s eye, always exaggerating their threat to world order and the US, and always painting their actions in the most nefarious way possible. Why couldn’t Commentary just stick to the Middle East?

Desperately Seeking Someone Who Knows Something About IR Theory

I’m at best a dabbler in IR theory, so anyone who knows more than I do should probably just read Charli Carpenter’s post discussing an article claiming that “neo-realism is actually most consistent with classical liberalism” and make their own conclusions.

My impression is that Daniel Deudney, in his book Bounding Power, made the argument that realism and liberalism aren’t as opposed as certain scholars make them seem.  Instead, Deudney talked about “Republican Security Theory” which is supposed to cover up the shortcomings of both realism and liberalism.  His notion, as described by the book’s website is that “The main ideas of realism and liberalism are but fragments of republican security theory, whose primary claim is that security entails the simultaneous avoidance of the extremes of anarchy and hierarchy, and that the size of the space within which this is necessary has expanded due to technological change.”

Anyway, if you want to know more about Duedney and his work, his bloggingheads with Michael Lind is a good place to start.

PS - Ten points for the first person to explain the connection between Bounding Power and Non-Zero…

The WTO Is Great: Constraining Unilateralism Edition

Dani Rodrik makes a very important point about the WTO — it is the only international organization that can meaningfully constrain and direct US unilateral action.  This Financial Times reports that “The US must do more to eliminate billions of dollars in illegal subsidies to its cotton farmers, a World Trade Organization.”  And usually when the WTO says the US must do something, after much heeing and hawing, the US ultimately complies.

Since Woodrow Wilson, liberals and progressives have been searching for meaningful international organizations that can institutionalize cooperation among nations in a positive sum way.  So far, the UN has not been able to restrict or constrain US unilateralism largely because the US can afford to ignore UN dictates or simply use their security council veto to prevent the possibility of conflict with UN dictates.  The WTO, on the other hand, can use “sticks” of punitive tariffs and restrictions to force the US to comply with its dictates.  It’s the liberal internationalist in me who thinks that the world and individual nations benefit both from collective security and collective trade.  So why so often are those who criticize US unilateralism in other spheres the most WTO-phobic?

Gordon Chang and The Japanese Vassals

One could very well start an entire blog documenting Gordon Chang’s extreme Sinophobia, specifically his penchant to interpret all slightly odd actions China takes as a sign that they’re trying to conquer East Asia. His most recent burst of rabid Sinonoia concerns China altering a joint diplomatic press communiqué with Japan.  China and Japan had prepared this joint document, and then when China released it, they had deleted two agreed upon points.  While this is certainly odd behavior that Japan has rightfully taken exception to, is it a really a sign of, as Chang claims, “[the]Communist Party’s belief that others must accept its version of reality” or that China “wishes Japan to become a vassal to the great and glorious Chinese state”  Chang, in this very post, points to Japan and China, despite political rockiness (which is partially, though certainly not entirely, Japan’s fault), expanding military ties and increasing financial assistance.  There is also, of course, some $200 billion in bilateral trade and $6.5 billion in Japanese foreign direct investment.  Not to mention the extreme economic and defense imbalances between Japan and China — China is much, much poorer than we previously thought.  Oh yeah, and the US defense umbrella we provide to Japan. So it’s unclear what China has to gain from hawkishness, compared to what they could lose.

So why does Gordon Chang chose to interpret a minor diplomatic oddity as a sign of China’s intents to conquer East Asia and make Japan a vassal state?   It seems like this all comes down to interpretation. If you’re like Chang and are convinced that China’s intentions are expansionist and malevolent, you’ll then interpret everything China does as just another sign of their ill intentions.  If you, on the other hand, think that China is a “poor, vulnerable country that’s done pretty well by relying on the delicate latticework of international trade, but that could go up in smoke very quickly” which always has more to gain from cooperation than from brinksmanship or expansionism, then you won’t freak out over incidents like this one.

Georgia Cracks Down

As we all know, today is official Bash Contentions Day.  There hasn’t been a lot of movement as far as Contentions bashing goes, but the day is still young.  A few days ago, Max Boot wrote this gushing post about how awesome the Mikheil Saakashvili administration is, and more broadly, why Georgia is a shining hill of democracy compared to that stinking hole of authoritarianism to the north:

Saakashvili didn’t call out an army of riot police to bust up the protests. The police presence was limited to a few lightly armed officers who, for the most part, got along well with the crowds. Contrast that with Russia, where far smaller anti-government rallies have been broken up by club-wielding riot police who have assaulted some protesters and arrested others, including the former chess champ Garry Kasparov.

This is clearly a tale of two former Soviet republics going in different directions: Georgia toward liberal democracy, Russia toward autocracy. Whatever his mistakes, Saakashvili deserves credit for his efforts to create greater freedom, including the freedom to protest against the government.

The New York Times reports today, “Riot police officers used tear gas and a water cannon today to clear thousands of demonstrators from the streets of Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, employing extensive force in the face of protests against the country’s pro-Western government.”   So maybe just because the leader of a country with can speak english and went to Columbia, that doesn’t necssarily make him the Savior of the Caucuses.

What Should We Do, Robert Kagan?

Robert Kagan eulogizes the belief that economic growth makes liberal transition inevitable(sidenote - Kagan is clearly referencing Fukuyama’s book, and even puts the word “recognition” in quotes — recognition, of course, being a key part of Fukuyama’s Hegel-by-way-of Kojeve synthesis — but can’t actually say the words “End of History” or “Fukuyama”…weird) by pointing out that autocracies in China, Russia and Venezuela are increasingly stable.

This analysis is specious for a few reasons. The first is that the “backslide” in Russia and Venezuela (neither of which were ever outposts of liberalism and democracy) can mostly be explained by two factors, both of which aren’t in any way structural: high oil prices and charismatic, savvy leaders. Neither of these can explain why the general thesis of Fukuyama — that as countries get richer and develop a prosperous middle class, they will eventually transition to a more liberal democratic system — is wrong.

The second problem is that he refuses to lay out any solid policy proposal in keeping with his thesis that democracy must precede development and institution building (it’s also worth pointing out that he criticizes Fareed Zakaria’s notion that “liberal autocrats” are a stepping stone to liberal democracy, but refuses to actually say his name). He makes vague allusions to policies that entail we “confront autocracies and demand that they hold free and fair elections.” But what does that mean, in practice? Does Kagan suggest we refuse to trade with China until they democratize? He seems to imply that we should fault the Chinese for not both lifting hundreds of millions of people out of desperate poverty AND democratizing all at the same time. What about Russia, how do we “confront” them while at the same time extract cooperation over Iran? Kagan can’t tell us. The only policies we know that he favors to “confront” autocracy are the misguided Concert of Democracies and invading Iraq. So maybe he shouldn’t elaborate any policy options, considering how bad his track record is.

The Midnight Genocide Resolution

The Armenian Genocide debate is strange. It is strange that Congress would pass a resolution certifying the Armenian Genocide as such, would it be any less of a genocide if Congress said nothing? It is strange that Turkey cares so much about a purely symbolic resolution concerning actions that their own government didn’t take (as opposed to, say, our activities toward Native Americans). It is strange that the US and Turkey are supposed to be such great allies, and yet the most popular film in Turkey is the reportedly totally awesome yet totally anti-American/anti-Semitic Valley of the Wolves Iraq. It is strange that a large part of the American popular perception of Turkey, the most modernized, secular Muslim state, is based on one movie that was full of lies, distortions and a horribly depraved view of Turkey: Midnight Express.

It’s just weird.

China and Burma

Roger Cohen thinks that the road to Yangon runs through Beijing.  It’s become a common refrain that if only China cared enough about the suffering Buddhist monks, then this entire ugly military dictatorship would be scurrying off into exile. Cohen supports this case with some tenuous “facts”:

The Burmese troubles are troubling to China for several reasons. They are on its doorstep. They come in a country transformed in recent years into a virtual client state, where the Chinese are building roads, burning forests, backing gas projects and dreaming of long-coveted access to the Indian Ocean.

First, let’s point out that China has similar relations with nearly every developing country - just because a China is investing in a country’s infrastructure and natural resources, that doesn’t make it a Chinese “client state.”  Who’s Burma’s biggest trading partner? Thailand.  Who are the two biggest investors in Burmese oil and gas?  Thailand and India.

Kerry Howlely dispelled the myth that we can somehow bully China into dealing with the malicious Burmese government.  I’ll summarize her piece: every Burma expert says that China has very limited leverage on the government which has been doing everything it can in since 1988 to isolate itself from the rest of the world.

Cohen points out that China has been integral in pressuring another hermit state, North Korea, to giving into foreign demands.  Of course, it’s much easier to deal with a problem that threatens the whole of East Asia, as opposed to one that, while awful, is truly a Burmese matter.  Cohen even admits that “I don’t think Olympic boycotts work; nor do I think a breakdown in Chinese-American relations serves anyone.”  Well then, does Cohen think it’s a good idea to try to bully China into doing something that it both does not and can not do?  If he thinks that the most commonly suggested means of pressure aren’t advisable, then why did he write the column in the first place?

What Next in Burma?

John Cain suggests that because the junta has resorted to imprisoning and slaughtering Buddhist monks — the most revered members of Burmese society — that we’ve reached the “point where you have to stop trying to reason with people and start trying to kill them…I hate to say it, but the only way Burma is coming out of this crisis is by the opposition killing the junta and taking the country back by force.”

Why I agree with John that sometimes the best way to solve certain problems is to kill the troublemakers, the prospect for armed revolution in Burma suceeding are very low.  First of all, there has been an armed insurgency in Burma for 57 years by the ethnic minority Karen.  While they’ve managed to keep the army at bay — with varying levels of success– their goals are purely provincial; they don’t want to march into Yangoon, they just want to control their own territory.  At the same time, the Burmese army is exceptionally well equipped and willing to resort to extreme measures to quash any possible insurgency.

Secondly, it’s unclear who would do this fighting.  As  Seth Mydans pointed out, the clergy and the military are about the same size and draw from the same pool of people.  The senior Buddhist monks have been giving approval and spiritual cover to the junta for decades and it is only recently that they have allowed their younger charges to openly protest the regime.  Most importantly, the Buddhist monks have unparalleled respect and authority in Burma, which would make them them the ideal candidates to lead a non-violent revolution.  Seeing as the junta doesn’t care about how spiritually well regarded the monks are, the hope for any change — violent or non violent — is probably fleeting.  The military is showing its willingness to decimate the only institution resembling civil society in Burma, which means that the structure for a revolution — violent or non-violent — has been greatly disrupted.  Burma may be settling into a period of militarized stability.  The one group that could overthrow the government has been repressed, the military is willing to use any means necessary to put down insurgencies and their closest and most important neighbors (China and India) aren’t willing to put the screws on them.  Violent or non-violent, hope for a revolution in Burma may well be fleeting.

What Motivates the Monks?

Reuters reports that Burma’s junta is starting to crack down on the monks who have been protesting the regime in ever increasing numbers, with reports of 100,000 people taking the streets in Yangoon. While it stirred my heart to see so many bravely — and peacefully — protest such an odious regime, I have to wonder why they did it. Surely everyone in Burma knows that the chance of a large scale uprising getting brutally repressed is very, very high (it’s happened before, and the junta has only gotten worse) and the chances of success are correspondingly low.

Could it be that life under a junta is just so bad, that someone isn’t risking much by joining a protest and risking arrest or death? I doubt this hypothesis — everyday life for most people under an authoritarian regime needn’t be that bad, if you can feed your family and enjoy time with your friends, risking that by engaging in a risky maneuver like protesting seems to be unlikely. What makes authoritarian regimes bad is the inability to organize and voice your political opinions in the public square. Most people aren’t that interested in doing so And even if one is quite idealistic, what’s the possible benefit to being the 95,412 protester? Surely the marginal value of one more protester is quite low especially compared to the risk of reprisal, imprisonment or death — which doesn’t diminish at the same rate as the value of one marginal protester does.

Surely the fact that Buddhist monks were the instigators of these protests is signifigant. Could it be that Buddhist ideas about the self and valuing the present could imply a “personal discount rate” of nearly 100% — or at least one much higher than the average person. The ascetic lifestyle would seem to encourage people to take extreme risks in the name of their beliefs — if one has removed themselves from society and gains most of their social pleasure from other ascetics or from spiritual exercises and practices, what difference does it make to get beaten up by the police?

These are just some quick, preliminary thoughts. I’d be fascinated by what people with more familiarity with the relevant economic, psychological, anthropological and sociological data and models have to say.

Authoritarian Capitalism: Wave of the Future?

Via Chris Hayes, Azar Gat thinks that “authoritarian capitalism” could be a resurgent force in the upcoming years:

Today’s global liberal democratic order faces a significant challenge from the rise of nondemocratic great powers - the West’s old Cold War rivals, China and Russia, now operating under “authoritarian capitalist” rather than Communist regimes.

“Authoritarian Capitalism” has certainly been a common form of government in the 20th century - Pre WWI Germany, Imperial Japan, Pinochet’s Chile, Suharto’s Indonesia, Taiwan etc.  For the most part, these countries are trending to more democracy and openness.  Latin America, besides Venezuela and Cuba, has considerably more liberal and open political systems. Moreover, market authoritarianism did thrive in the Cold War years, mostly because the US was so eager to support any anti-communist regime.

Gat’s thesis, that “Authoritarian Capitalism” is making a comeback, is fundamentally unconvincing.

Most importantly, he only cites TWO examples of emergent market authoritarianism - Russia and China.  Russia has zero liberal or democratic tradition and communist empire just became unsustainable, so that another authoritarian order emerged isn’t all that shocking.  Not to mention massive Western support for moving towards a more open, dynamic, market-oriented economy - an economy so open that it facilitated a state/Western supported highway robbery of resources and wealth by a few.  Putin, who’s gained a lot of popularity by nationalizing industries and going after the oligarchs, could easily slide into authoritarianism, the total lack of civil society (70 years of communist totalitarianism will do that to ya) made this transition easy, and all but inevitable.  The increase in gas and oil prices have also sated the Russian people, easing any calls to a more liberal system.

His other example is China - whose transition from communist totalitarianism to market authoritarianism has been amply documented elsewhere.  Beyond these two examples, Gat can’t really point to an arrow or trend towards market oriented authoritarianism.  The fact that two countries who emerged from the most backward, repressive possible regimes into something that is still repressive is hardly surprising, or noteworthy.

Democracy is hardly inevitable in most countries - but just because of the rather special circumstances in Russia and China hardly means that the liberal order is being “put on the defensive.”