Edward Snowden: Hero or Criminal?

I deliberately chose a bad title for this post because I think it gets to the heart of the matter while missing the point. Hero or criminal? Are the terms mutually exclusive? Of course not. And it's not just that "one man's hero is another man's criminal." To me, Snowden is both.

What is a hero? Someone who takes great risks to do something they believe is right in order to help others. Critically, I think others have to appreciate this in order for the act to be heroic. The Oklahoma City Bomber may well have thought he was doing the country a favor by blowing up a building and killing loads of people. I think nearly everyone can agree we don't need that kind of "help." So the term is subjective, but does have clear elements. Notice there is nothing about "the law" in the definition.

We all know what a criminal is: someone who breaks the law. We might even expand the definition to include social norms that aren't laws (many consider bank chiefs criminals, even though it seems we can't pin any actual offenses on them). Note that breaking the law is not subjective, nor do we generally allow for "good reasons." (For example, a woman who murders her husband because he abused her, while perhaps gaining some sympathy, is still a murderer and will rightly go to prison.)

Snowden? Is he a hero? He definitely took a risk to do something he believed was right. Is he self-righteous? Perhaps, but many heroes probably are, so I don't think that matters. The big question here is: Do the people he thinks he's helping appreciate the help? I think the answer is "yes." Apparently, Americans are fairly divided (despite the blog title, which suggests Americans are heavily opposed) on the issue of NSA data collection and there are a lot of Snowden supporters out there, to be sure. Also, I suspect that even many people who approve of the NSA's activities are secretly also happy that they know more about them now.

I personally knew of the NSA's metadata collection long before Snowden leaked it. It was public information. The extent to which the NSA was doing it was not clear, however, nor was some of the information about monitoring of emails, websites, and social media. I am against this level of surveillance, but I also am not aware that the US Government has broken any laws or done anything necessarily unconstitutional. The laws just allow too much.

I'm happy the information Snowden released has come to light. I'm also clear that his releasing it, especially his hacking into areas he was not legally granted access, was illegal. He is a criminal, but his flight around the world definitely has a strongly heroic vibe, which is why he as a person (the hero being pursued by the long arm of a global super power) has perhaps more potential to damage the US's reputation than the coming to light of US surveillance activities.

America Should Support Democracy... Right?

Obama has good reasons for going against America's principles in favor of cynical pragmatism. That doesn't mean it's the right decision.

The situation in Egypt provides a great example of the ethical conundrums that await any leader when dealing with foreign policy. What just happened in Egypt can only reasonably be called a military coup. US law requires the US to cut off aid to any country in which a democratically elected leader is overthrown by undemocratic means. In Egypt, the military issued an ultimatum--a military giving order to an elected government (the opposite of how things ought to work). When the government didn't fulfill the military's demands, it seized the president and appointed a caretaker government of its choosing. It also shut down media outlets sympathetic to the elected government, trampling on an essential ingredient for a successful democracy: a free press. Legally, then, the case for cutting off the US's annual aid of $1.3 billion to the Egyptian military is pretty clear-cut. So far, Obama has shied away from declaring that the coup was, in fact, a coup, in order to keep his options open.

Beyond the legality of US aid to the Egyptian military, moreover, there are also myriad moral issues at stake. How can the US honestly claim to support democracy when it only does so if it likes the regime that was overthrown? Not cutting off aid makes the US look like a complete hypocrite and undermines its moral authority when trying to push for democracy elsewhere. This is particularly true in the Middle East, where Islam-inspired political parties may now conclude that democracy won't work and that the only way to get to power is to seize power and shut down all opposition. The Middle East's experiment with democracy could be over before it starts.

So why hasn't the US cut off aid? This is where it gets complicated. It started paying aid to Egypt in 1979 as part of its support of the peace treaty between Egypt and Israel. Egypt agreed to sign the treaty and demilitarize the Sinai Peninsula, thereby fulfilling Israel's security needs. This was the right thing to do, as it supported peace, even though it was aid to the military of a dictatorship. It also helped shift Egypt out of the Soviet orbit during the Cold War. Over the years since, the US military has fostered close ties to its counterpart in Egypt. This is the strongest connection between the US and Egypt. During last year's uprising that brought down Mubarak, the US is said to have used the good relationship between the two countries' militaries to encourage, and to push for, democratic elections in Egypt. All good stuff, then.

The reasons for not cutting the aid are all related to this. Egypt has all the leverage with the aid. The aid is related to Egypt's peace treaty with Israel. It it's cut, Egypt might retaliate by abrogating the treaty. This doesn't necessarily mean war with Israel or even re-militarization of Sinai, but it could be the first step in rising instability between the two of them. The aid lies at the root of the cooperation between the militaries of the US and Egypt, and that cooperation is the greatest source of influence between the two. Canceling the aid would thus most likely end the cooperation and thus the US's last source of influence in Egypt. That would mean the US would have less ability to encourage a return to democracy or peace with Israel. This is why it's so tricky to stay involved and to stay "morally" clean in this case.

There are no easy answers, but I think I have to side with John McCain on this one: Suspend aid. Suspend, not terminate. It should be known that aid will be restored as soon as free and fair elections have been held and providing Egypt sticks to the peace treaty with Israel. When aid is restored, back payments should also be made, so Egypt suffers no loss in the long term.

It's a risky strategy, admittedly. Egypt has enough difficulties at home that it would make no sense to start problems with Israel. This oft-cited fact is little comfort, however. It is precisely during times of great internal turmoil that rulers do unexpected, illogical, and dangerous things. After all, what better way to unite the Egyptian people behind the government than by ditching an unpopular treaty with Israel and possibly making aggressive noises towards it? Israel can definitely defend itself, but an escalation of that kind would still be dangerous for Israel, Egypt, and the whole region. If Obama seems indecisive about whether to stick to America's principles or go with cynical pragmatism, this is why.

Conspiracyphilia and Vigilantism: Dangerous American Obsessions

I noticed two related features of American society when I was last home: a love of conspiracy theories and an approval of vigilante justice. I was appalled to see a "documentary" on the History (or Discovery?) Channel in which there were two explanations put forward for the loss of a squadron of air force planes: 1. The leader got cocky and led his partners astray, as evidenced by the strange things he said, confusion, and disagreement about what to do heard on the radio; or 2. That crystals from the lost city of Atlantis screwed up their navigation instruments and possibly inverted the horizon in order to lead the men astray. There was no conclusion and both stories were represented as equally plausible. This is despite the fact that such crystals have never been found nor is there any real evidence for anything like this. The fact that the second version sounds absurd should demand evidence (though it should not rule it out outright), but this was not given. No doubt most viewers are not fooled... but some may be. The two "theories" are NOT equally plausible to anyone with any sense.

Another example is continued skepticism about the moon landings. Read this for more details on the facts. Here's a quick summary of the most compelling stuff: Signals from the Apollo missions were received all over earth and triangulated by various scientists. One documentary I watched interviewed German scientists who did this. Triangulation allowed them to find out exactly where the craft was in three dimensions and follow its course. It is not possible to fake this. Another great one is some sort of radio array they set up on the moon which can be seen from earth. Setting up is a complex task that back then could only be done by humans. The technology required to send robots to the moon to set it up and do everything else required to pull off the hoax would have been more formidable than actually going there in person (which is what really happened). There's much more, but I won't get into it here. Suffice it to say that I was skeptical of the moon landing until I compared the conspiracy theories with the evidence and found the evidence to be overwhelming. The 9/11 conspiracy theories follow a similar pattern.

The second alarming trend is a desire for vigilante justice (going out and bringing "justice" to someone yourself). My own father went on a rant at one point about how the courts had let some guy off who had murdered two people. He said someone should just go and kill the murderer. Vigilante justice is also a common theme in American movies (where the hero "takes the law into his own hands"). My father, or anyone else not involved in the trial, is significantly less well-informed than the judges and jury at the trial. The idea that someone should be found guilty in the press "because everyone knows he did it" and then executed by some vigilante is frightening. It is also undemocratic, unlawful, and sure to cause more injustice than it fights, as innocent people get killed and emotions rather than reason determine punishments. This is mob rule and it is what exists in a completely barbaric society. Luckily, the fact that you'd be punished yourself for doing it, or perhaps some deeply held norms against it, have so far prevented vigilantism from getting out of control. These two ideas combined are dangerous, however.

America was founded on anti-establishment ideals. We are supposed to question those in power. This is undoubtedly a good thing to question authority. But it is bad when questioning is replace with an assumption that authority is incorrect as soon as one person claims it is, no matter how dubious the claims.

America also has self-reliance as a core ideal. This is also a good thing and is liberating for those who succeed in it. It can also be bad when it leads to an unwillingness to accept the outcomes of a democratic system, including its judiciary.

The result of these two ideas is, for one, a damaging gullibility. Most of the people who believe various conspiracies do so with no further research and no investigation of the other side of the (usually fake) debate. Meanwhile, anti-establishment sentiment, so integral to American culture, leads to an assumption that any large organization (the federal government being the largest of all) is bad until proven otherwise, while smaller organizations and individuals are good until proven otherwise.  

Again, true skepticism would be a good thing. But this is a fake skepticism composed of gullibility about random claims from smaller groups assumed to be innocent victims and an insurmountable skepticism towards larger organizations assumed to be bad. The result is a lot of people all too willing to believe utter nonsense and to justify this by the fact that big, visible organizations are corrupt and have done bad things (while the bad things and corruption of smaller, less visible organizations is ignored or not seen). When strong positive feelings about self-reliance are combined with a natural predisposition toward believing anything someone says that is bad about the government, for example, the solution may seem logical: Take the law into your own hands, question the government's legitimacy, and withdraw from political participation along normal lines (like calling your senator or voting). This perpetuates the cycle by leading to further disengagement and ignorance of the facts.

Mercifully, vigilante justice has not been very common, but it may be only a matter of time. The reason there is due process for criminals and that certain types of evidence, or evidence obtained in certain ways, is excluded in courts is precisely because the judiciary must check executive power. Otherwise, it would be too easy for the police to jail anyone they wanted to (or that they were ordered to). The whole idea behind innocent until proven guilty is that it is better, on the whole, to let a guilty person go free than to lock up (or execute!) an innocent. One highly public case (per year or perhaps even more often) of a man assumed guilty going free is therefore not, by itself, evidence that the courts are not working, and certainly not that they are corrupt. Quite the opposite: If accused people were always convicted, that would be a sign of a corrupt court system!

The shock people expressed about the NSA spying “scandal” highlighted for me how people generally fail to inform themselves about the actions of their government. The extent of information gathering was a surprise, but the fact that it was going on was not—for anyone paying attention. Conspiracy theories contribute to this problem by clouding up debates with nonsense. If people were a bit less gullible and spent less time debating nonsensical conspiracy theories (by “sharing” items without further reading on Facebook, for example), people might be more aware of the real scandals going on around them and be more involved in shaping the government and the world they live in for the better. This is not a gossipy reality TV show. This is just “plain” reality, which is full of real scandals and excitement—again: for anyone paying attention.

What is terrorism?

The murder of a British soldier was terrorism. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, viewed as a whole, are not. The Western coalition may have used acts of terror in specific incidents in those wars, however.

The brutal murder of a British soldier in broad daylight in London a few weeks ago has sent shock waves through the United Kingdom and the world. The Prime Minister, David Cameron, was quick to call the sickening attack a "terrorist incident," while the Times (London) called it "the first terrorist murder in mainland Britain since 2005." At the same time, a writer for the Guardian (also London) questioned whether this could be called an act of terrorism or not and, if it was, how we could then not call the Western coalition's actions in Iraq and Afghanistan terrorism.

It's a fair question, though a reading of the Guardian article is likely to make many people angry (I found his quoting of Michael Moore particularly unfortunate). The reason for that is that the term terrorism has negative connotations in itself. The assumption is that it is an unacceptable form of violence (as opposed to the more "honorable" form of meeting your enemy on the battlefield or defending yourself in your own home, for example). Defining terrorism is extremely difficult. Trust me. If you don't want to, I suggest you read Richard English's Terrorism: How to Respond or Smith and Neumann's The Strategy of Terrorism: How It Works and Why It Fails.

I'll sum up a difficult topic with the best answer I can muster (though one that is not immune to further debate, as I agree with English that coming up with a perfect definition of terrorism probably isn't possible). Terrorism is the use or threat of violence against mainly symbolic targets for political ends (this is a paraphrase of Smith and Neumann's definition). Notice the absence of a definition of targets as "civilian." This is because of the difficulty of defining who is a civilian and the questionable logic behind that restriction. (Why wouldn't a politically-motivated attack on a bunch of unsuspecting soldiers at a base in America be considered terrorism, for example? Is a terrorist attack with mixed victims only terrorism for those among them who are civilians? There are many more issues as well.) A further issue is that it contributes to the normative connotation terrorism brings with it (i.e. it is wrong), which will ALWAYS be subjective, making terrorism impossible to define. If terrorism is always considered "wrong" or "illegitimate," the tendency will be for the side that disliked the attack to call it terrorism and for the side supporting the attack to view it as something else more "honorable."

All violence is scary, which is why I left out the "causing terror" part of the definition, which is still important (after all, it forms the root of the word!). The most important aspect left is the target type. When is a target "mostly symbolic"? When striking it serves little or no "strategic" purpose. The WTC attack is a good example: the US could not be brought down by that one attack, and there would have been better targets for strategic purposes (power stations, airports, military bases, arms contractors, etc.). The main point for the Twin Towers was their powerful symbolism.

So how about the London attack?

• It was certainly an act of violence
• It was for political reasons (the perpetrators were quoted as saying " The only reason we've done this is because Muslims are dying by British soldiers every day. ... You people will never be safe, remove your Government, they don't care about you."
• The target was not strategically significant, but was highly symbolic: a British soldier wearing a "Help for Heroes" shirt.

Put together, these points mean that we are very justified in labeling this a terrorist attack using a strategic definition.

How about the Guardian author's other question: Are the operations in Iraq and Afghanistan terrorism? Viewed as a whole, they are not. They are military operations in which targets are selected primarily for their strategic value in weakening the other side. Because terrorism is a tactic, however, that means that individual acts can be terrorism even if it cannot be said that the entire war in Iraq or Afghanistan is. The author mentions "Shock and Awe," the attack on Baghdad during the Second Iraq War. This was indeed meant to impress the Iraqi public and encourage them to help overthrow their leaders. It was a form of propaganda (often cited as an important secondary aspect of terrorism). Nevertheless, the operation's targets were not, I believe, primarily symbolic, so while there are some grounds for labeling this some sort of act of terror, I do not believe, on balance, that this was the case. Other incidents during the war, however, may very well fall under a label of terrorism by this definition. Each attack would have to be evaluated on its own.

A New Landed Class?

In the bad old days in Western societies, a land-owning elite controlled everything. There was no way for those less privileged to gain enough money to buy land. Early capitalism began to change this with the emergence of a "middle class," one that grew wealthy from trade, production, finance, etc., sometimes in "free cities," rather than through land ownership. This shift away from agriculture freed people from servitude to the land and the lords that owned it. A slow decline set in among the aristocracy.

Or did it? There is a new land-owning class that has become good at keeping itself up and preventing others from joining its ranks

When we look at modern-day New York, London, or San Francisco, we see playgrounds for the rich. Housing is so pricey in these desirable places that few "normal" people can afford to live there. It doesn't stop in those world cities, either. Housing prices throughout much of England are so ridiculously high that even families with slightly above-average incomes find it difficult to buy a home. In many of the wealthier, liberal areas of the US and the UK, at the very least, housing costs an arm and a leg.

Why?

The free-market answer is: "Because more people want to live there than there is housing for them to live in, so housing goes to those who are willing and able to pay a premium for it."

So far, so good, but it doesn't really answer the question. Lots of people are moving into Houston, Texas, but housing there is still affordable. The reason is not so much on the demand side (people wanting to move in) as it is on the supply side (there aren't enough homes). The main culprit? Zoning (UK: planning) rules. Minimum lot sizes in the countryside, maximum building heights in the cities, land usage restrictions, and historical designations all serve to restrict the space available to newcomers.

There are good reasons for many of these rules, from ensuring ample ground water and septic capacity to protecting historic buildings that are worth saving. But as Edward Glaeser, in particular, has argued (check out his book Triumph of the City), many of these rules and protections seem to be excessive. They also cause hidden harm: the rise in property prices is a nice thing for those who own property, but the mechanism by which this happens is unclear to many, meaning few protest against zoning rules because of the high housing costs they create.

The real reason for the heavy-handed implementation of well-meaning rules on who-can-build-what-where, I would argue, is that they benefit a new land-owning class. It not as conspiratorial as it might sound. Here's how it works: Once people in an area have purchased housing, they no longer have an interest in affordable housing, since they are no longer looking to buy. In fact, the more expensive housing gets, the richer they feel (and this is regardless of whether they're still paying off a mortgage). If housing prices rise elsewhere and they might eventually want to move, no matter, as long as their housing rises in price at least as fast.

One way to make sure of this is to keep a place attractive to newcomers. This, on its own, is a good thing. Another way, though, is to restrict the overall amount of housing available so that only wealthier residents can move in. The two "ways" go hand-in-hand, actually: One way to keep things nice is to keep them rural. Once wealthier people move in and land values rise, tax revenues for the town rise, meaning more money to spend on better schools, nice parks, etc., making the place more attractive and raising housing prices further. This is a "virtuous cycle" for those who already own housing. It is not so virtuous for those who don't as they become "priced out" of the market.

Things can be kept "nice" without restricting building, however. This is particularly true in cities, where the argument for keeping low densities is weaker. It's important to have public green spaces like parks. But this is actually all the more reason why built-up areas should house as many people as efficiently possible: higher density in built-up areas means fewer people elsewhere. The result? Less sprawl and better conservation of nature and rural character elsewhere. A further result is that more people can afford to live where they'd like to (like Manhattan) and closer to work, meaning less commuting, traffic congestion, and air pollution, as well as less wasted time, meaning more free time and higher productivity. All this would save workers, consumers, and employers money, which would mean increased economic output per hour worked and dollar spent, and thus a higher standard of living for all.

These are massive benefits, but they are dispersed and difficult to see. That is why, so far, the new landed classes (they have "captured" the political system in rich areas as they form the bulk of an area's voters) have succeeded in giving themselves goodies at the expense of the real estate-less. It's time for some serious thought and sensible changes.

Syria: Prepare for Intervention

I have argued against US intervention in Syria since the beginning of the conflict, although not here in this blog. Unfortunately, things have now changed and I am being forced to rethink.

Reports have been coming in lately that the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad has used chemical weapons in Syria. Starting last August, President Barack Obama has stated that the use of chemical weapons, or their transfer to terrorist groups, would “change the equation” for Barack Obama and be a "grave mistake” for the Syrian regime. At the time the president first made these statements, the Syrian regime replied to them with its own deterrent demand, saying that it would never use chemical weapons unless Syria were invaded from the outside. Until now, that status quo seemed to be holding. Regardless of all the discussion over where the “red lines” actually lie, President Obama needs to give signs that the United States is actually serious about its threat not to allow the use of chemical weapons in Syria.

Promises are important. This is because following through on past promises allows a person, state, or government to build a reputation for credibility. This, in turn, allows it to avoid, in this case, military action, and the death and destruction that come with it, in the future by simply being able to threaten action rather than constantly having to carry through with it.

The importance of promises can be overstated, however. There is evidence that, during the Cold War, the United States worried too much about its credibility and that this led it to act in an overly aggressive manner, leading to unnecessary escalation. Evidence from Soviet archives that opened up in the 1990s indicates that the Soviets actually rarely questioned US resolve when it came to core US interests (the safety of US territory, for example).

Some promises are important, however. When it comes to US interests in far-off places that are not vital to the US economy and do not host US bases, for example, the will of the United States to intervene is indeed questionable. Furthermore, this particular promise is also especially important. The US is interested in using deterrence in areas far away from its core areas of interest. The most important and salient example of this in current politics is Iran's pursuit of a nuclear bomb. The US has warned several countries against getting a bomb in the past, and yet states like Pakistan and North Korea have obtained nuclear weapons without suffering any US military intervention to stop them. Barack Obama would like Iran to think that this time is different. If the US is unwilling to stand up to a regime terrorizing its citizens with chemical weapons, however, this makes Barack Obama’s alleged commitment to stopping Iran from getting the bomb appear more questionable.

The promise is also important in a narrower way. There is an overriding moral interest in condemning the use of chemical weapons, preventing their use over time, and thus establishing self-maintaining norms against their use. The less the use of chemical, biological, nuclear, and other destructive weapons is permitted, the greater the taboo against their use becomes. As one of the few states in the world with the ability to attempt to enforce such global norms, there is a strong moral argument for the US to act.

So what must be done? The first step is publicly to prepare to intervene. Barack Obama should begin working on plans for military action in Syria, possibly shifting resources towards the eastern Mediterranean in preparation. This will send the right message to the Syrian regime. In the meantime, the US administration should continue to gather evidence that chemical weapons have been used by the Syrian regime, but it must be satisfied with clear and convincing evidence rather than evidence that goes "beyond a reasonable doubt,” as this may not be forthcoming. In addition, Obama should inform the rebel leadership that intervention will come only if it agrees to an international tribunal for war crimes, helping to set up institutions and the rule of law afterwards. All this must be more than posturing, however. If this does not bring peace, or at least the cessation of the use of chemical weapons (I leave it to the US Government to decide on these goals, though once intervention has begun, the goal must be an end to the conflict and this should be publicly stated) the US should impose a no-fly zone, while continuing to issue warnings of escalation coupled with a way out for the regime, perhaps in the form of an amnesty for those who abandon it. Such an amnesty must now exclude Assad, however, for he has crossed the line and mustn't be let off.

Failure to surrender plus attacks on US planes will mean greater military involvement, at first with targeted bombings of regime military targets where possible (missile launchers are often located in heavily populated areas). The next step would be to increase the bombing, warning residents by dropping leaflets to evacuate areas targeted for attacks. All this should give the rebels the upper hand. If this fails to turn the tide, a ground operation, preferably with the support of other countries like Turkey, would then be necessary (Britain and France have also encouraged action and should be included).

With any luck, the above steps will not all be necessary. We must accept that they may be, however. There is much at stake in keeping to this promise and so it must be done. Allowing chemical weapons to be used offensively once again with impunity sends the wrong message to the world. And allowing aggressive regimes to cross red lines set by the US without suffering any consequences also sends the wrong message to the US’s adversaries and allies alike. There are many countries in the world that have refrained from building their militaries because of their faith in the US’s ability and willingness to protect them from external aggression. If those countries were to lose that faith, the world would become a much more unstable and dangerous place.

North Korea: Keeping the Peace

Deterring the wretched regime requires clear, tough, automatic, and non-negotiable sticks, but also clear, automatic, and somewhat negotiable carrots. Most of all, however, it needs a promise not to act against the regime as long as it does not endanger anyone else.

You might be forgiven for thinking the North Korean regime was stark-raving mad. After all, why does it keep acting so belligerently when things could be so much better for North Korea? No one can be entirely sure, but fear of losing control of the country it's kept so well under its thumb for decades is one strong possibility. The regime clearly doesn't care much about the survival or lot of its people, so this suggests it cares mostly about itself.

This is why there need to be clear, automatic, and non-negotiable sanctions levied against it for nasty behavior. The problem is, though, there's not much more that can be done to the country without using force. This, perhaps, is the reason for the rush to nukes and missiles, and it's perhaps the regime's biggest fear.

That, in turn, is why there must be clear rewards. It is impossible to take more away, so positive reinforcement looks more promising. In addition, giving rewards creates a stake in keeping them--there would be something to take away later.

North Korea has made use of this before, making promises in exchange for aid, only to renege on those promises as soon as the aid was received. This is why any rewards given ought to affect the regime directly and ought to be designed so as they can be taken away automatically. Strategists are not stupid, and this has already been tried and will be again. But it almost doesn't matter: The door should always be left open, with it up to North Korea whether it wishes to walk through or to leave again. This can allow North Korea to trust the US over time.

A final ingredient is a promise--the FINAL promise: Not to invade or otherwise attempt to effect regime change in North Korea as long as it does not attack the South, Japan, Taiwan, China, or US bases or the mainland, etc. If fear of losing control is the big driving factor, which I am guessing it is, this is an important ingredient. All this gives North Korea the security to decide to come around. It can also quietly climb down from its war horse, saving face. The US, China, and all those who wish the North to remain peaceful are strong and credible enough to make "concessions" from that strength. If Kim Jong-Un thinks the US wishes to topple him regardless of what he does, he will have no incentive to be moderate. This is the missing piece of the puzzle. It should be put in place. John Kerry's professed willingness to talk to North Korea directly is thus to be applauded, if done right.

(Cold) War with China Inevitable?

There is much debate in the world of political science about whether war with China, cold or otherwise, is inevitable. Must we fear the future?

Will China's rise be peaceful? Should the US and the world seek to accommodate China, or "contain" it, as was its policy against the Soviet Union? Is some sort of confrontation inevitable? If some sort of conflict is inevitable, then the only choice the rest of the world (lead by the US as its largest power) has is whether, to what extent, and how it can shape the type of conflict that emerges. Can it just be a situation of occasional "tensions," must and can we rely on our old Cold War friend deterrence to prevent WWIII, or is WWIII even inevitable?

 The idea that war may loom because there is a shift in what is called the global "balance of power" stems from an analysis of previous shifts among powers in Europe. A prime example is WWI. In the 19th century, the UK was the world's predominant power, particularly at sea. It used this power to "balance" threats, which then all originated on the European continent. It did this by shifting alliances so that no one power or group of powers could threaten it. There was a consensus among leaders at the time that an overall balance could prevent war by ensuring that no one leader saw a big advantage in waging it. They actively rebalanced in order to keep this. This is part of the reason why the UK, France, and, to some extent, Russia constantly divided and redivided the world among themselves (the UK and Russia for a while kept Afghanistan as a neutral buffer, for example).

It seems this worked until Germany rose in power and built up its navy. The Kaiser foolishly abandoned previous efforts to prevent France and Russia from formally allying against him. When they did so, Germany saw itself surrounded. Balance meant that the powers were indeed pretty well matched, so the war dragged on for years until the US helped to put an end to it. A similar thing happened in WWII, adding a rising Japan to the mix. Between the two world wars, there was no predominant power able to keep the peace. Many blame America for not taking on that role, a lesson it learned in WWII and thereafter, when it decided not to return to isolation but instead to actively manage world affairs in a bid to maintain relative peace and stability.

The big challenge, as the West saw it, after WWII was the increasing power and influence of the USSR. With both the US and USSR armed to the teeth with nuclear weapons, a special type of deterrence thinking was devised. It was known as "Mutual Assured Destruction" (MAD). The idea was that if one side attacked the other, there was no way to be certain of destroying all the latter's nukes. Both sides promised to retaliate with nuclear weapons if this happened, so neither could gain by using nukes for offensive purposes. In addition, it was thought that nukes would prevent conventional wars between the two sides, too, since neither would wish to risk escalation that might make one side or the other desperate enough to move to nuclear responses. War between the US and USSR did not happen, though a number of "proxy" wars did (Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, as well as seeking influence by propping up each side's own dictators throughout the world).

 All this assumes that war would have broken out between the US and the USSR had it not been for deterrence. Not everyone agrees with this. There are a few reasons: The countries were far apart, vast, and had no direct territorial disputes. The first two features meant that it was difficult for either to mount a conventional attack on the other and even harder for one to overcome the other. Geography favored defense and the status quo, so the US and USSR had little to gain from attacking each other and thus nothing to fear. Nuclear weapons, of course, changed this. A few nuclear weapons could wipe out either country, bringing the prospect of successful offense nearer and giving both countries something to fear again. MAD provided the answer by removing any prospect for either party to attain victory by using nukes first.

On the face of it, then, neither side had anything to gain from attacking the other and virtually everything to lose, so there ought to have been little tension. But there was. The same scholars, like Ned Lebow and Janice Gross Stein, who made the above points, also argued that deterrence was to blame for tension. By assuming that small commitments would tell opponents something about big commitments, both sides took tough stances, fearing that to give ground anywhere, even where few interests were at stake, would risk giving ground everywhere. The problem was that both sides often saw themselves as the defenders of these commitments, and thus wished to stand firm against the irrational "attackers" on the other side. This led to tough stances, tough talk, and escalations (like the Cuban Missile Crisis). Nuclear deterrence thus solved the problem of nuclear weapons, but using deterrence logic for every decision at every level caused unnecessary tensions and may have prolonged the Cold War.

So what about China? Is China more like Germany in the early 20th century or more like the USSR in the mid 20th century? On most counts, it is more like the latter. The US and China are vast, far apart, have no common claims to territory, no interest in a war that would inevitably be catastrophic, and both have nuclear weapons. The real question then becomes "Is the US doomed to wage a 'cold' war against China?" There are promising signs. China and the US trade with each other, whereas the US and USSR did not. This means there's more to lose by fighting and more to gain by cooperating. It also means there are many contacts between the countries. This was also the case between European countries before WWI, however, and wasn't sufficient to prevent a war that nobody wanted then, either.

The big risk now is Taiwan. China desires its formal incorporation into China as soon as possible. Taiwan resists this. The US has agreed that Taiwan is a part of China, but the two countries made an agreement not to alter the status quo unilaterally. This means the US is theoretically obligated to fight for Taiwan should China decide to incorporate it by force. The risk is not so much that either side would choose a course that would bring such a confrontation, but that they might blunder towards it through a series of more minor events. US allies in the region are already asking the US for reassurances. Reassuring its allies in the region looks to China a lot like an attempt to contain and deter it--something aggressive. This has potential to slowly escalate into gridlock between the two countries.

One of the main conclusions from analysis of Cold War deterrence is that all commitments are not linked. In other words, China could be accommodated on certain issues without concluding the US is weak, giving it an opportunity to challenge it. It is also important to note this time that China is larger than the US in population and will soon have a larger economy. That means that, over time, the US is unlikely to be able to keep up with Chinese military spending should the latter decide to challenge it. The US is overextended throughout the world and very close to China's own shores. A new Cold War might end differently. The US and the world would do well to prevent one from reoccurring.

Why America is everywhere

When cynicism is used as an excuse not to believe anything anyone says who disagrees with you, it is destructive.

This post has been a long time coming. It's been brewing because of things I've heard people say or write lately. They run along a similar vein to things I actually grew up believing, namely that the United States' involvement in world affairs was because it wished to do business everywhere, secure its oil supplies, and dominate the rest of the world in a "neo-imperial" sort of way. It's a common view in many places in the world on the left, and within the US in the northeast at least (and I assume elsewhere). It is based on Marxist economic and political theory. It is also wrong.

Marxist theory attempts to explain political phenomena with economics, which is a bit like trying to explain what people like to do in their leisure time according to what job they have: The amount of money they make and the free time they have may have some influence, but it won't explain the core reason of why they like what they like. Politics and economics influence each other, but it is not possible to explain one wholly based on the other. But let's put that aside for a moment and pretend you can anyway (and don't worry, I will move away from theory to reality later, I always do).

Karl Marx believed capitalism led to imperialism. He looked at countries like Great Britain, the world's largest colonial (and capitalist) power at the time to draw this conclusion. Capitalism, as he noted, was very good at dividing labor and churning out more and more "stuff" per worker, getting ever more efficient. He reasoned that this expansion in production produced a surplus that the low-wage workers of a country could not consume. In order to keep selling their stuff and keep their businesses running and the cash flowing, capitalists would constantly have to expand their markets and find new consumers. This is a sort of Ponzi scheme, because when there were no new consumers, everything would come crashing down. Marx reasoned that capitalism would eventually destroy itself once it had developed the entire world and there were no more untapped markets. All the cash would build up on top among the rich, there would be no one left to buy goods, and everything would collapse with mass unemployment.

Sound familiar? It also sounds pretty plausible. After all, British colonialism often did begin with business forays abroad, like the East India Company's adventures in South Asia. The trouble is, Marx did not look back far enough and his theory also became a hostage to fortune as things later happened that his theory did not anticipate. On the first point, he ignored the fact that imperialism had existed for a very long time, long before capitalism emerged. That needn't be the death of the theory, of course: maybe capitalism always leads to imperialism, but imperialism can exist without capitalism. Fair enough, but then new things happened in the 20th century. One of them was that rich countries like the United States sometimes ran trade deficits! They bought the world's goods, rather than selling them to the world. The other thing that happened is that some big surplus countries, like Germany, were not imperial powers after WWII. Marx's economic insights were keen and many of them still apply today (though his theory has been twisted over time), but his political assertions were dead wrong. Things just did not happen the way he said they did. The main reason is that his two assumptions were wrong: Developed countries did not always run surpluses and, even if they did, they did not necessarily become imperialist. What to do with surpluses, if they arose, was a political decision not an inevitable economic one.

Some people refused to give up, however, and decided to modify the theory instead. OK, the West might not LOOK like an empire, but it was, through "trade dependency." The West was using its marketing and military power to suppress the development of poor countries and take advantage of cheap goods, which could also explain their imports of all those goods. Basically, then, if a country was rich and powerful, it was imperialist, even if it didn't look it according to old definitions. This sort of circular thinking is not terribly logical, but again it seemed to fit the times, as South America, Africa, and Asia failed to develop. But then Asia began to develop rapidly (think Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, and, later, China), while Africa and South America did not. The difference was in their own policies. It wasn't that the West "let" certain countries develop and not others. Theory wrong again.

"Who cares about the theory if the shoe fits?" you might ask. "Look at the US's dominant presence throughout the world and its massive military spending! Look at 'aid for trade' and other initiatives pushed by the US," and on and on. All right, let's drop the theory and look at that, then. Why is the US military everywhere if not out of a desire to dominate the world?

Let's not pretend that people in powerful positions don't enjoy their power. I am not going to argue that the US is an altruistic but misunderstood gentle giant, a grandfatherly figure to a troubled world. The US has indeed abused its dominance, just as Britain and others before it. But it is overly cynical (and historically inaccurate) to suppose that the US and other powers have sinister, greedy motives for everything they do.

There was a relatively long period of peace enforced by Great Britain during the 19th century and up until WWI. Britain did not balance (joining alliances of weaker partners to keep stronger ones from dominating) against all wars, but it did do so in situations where it thought one power winning might pose a threat to it. It also dominated the seas with its powerful navy. WWI changed all this, leaving Britain severely weakened. The country with the greatest potential power was the one with the largest economy: the United States. The US, however, chose to return to its policy of not getting involved after WWI and left the Europeans to their own devices. Over time, Germany recovered and came to be more powerful than any of the other European countries. The United States could have prevented WWII, but it chose not to. It's management of the world economy (the responsibility for which it also refused to take on) was pretty bad, too, particularly its misguided protectionist trade policies that put high tariffs on imports, triggering retaliation and causing world trade to collapse, deepening the Great Depression. But I digress. In the end, WWII  broke out, America did not help till much later, and all of Europe and much of Asia suffered.

America eventually got involved because it came to see risks in a world with powerful German and Japanese empires. There was, of course, also much to dislike in the Germans and Japanese and the atrocities they committed. Surely it was better to prevent them from conquering everyone than to try to deal with them after the war was finished? The US needed a final push to decide to do this: Pearl Harbor. Once attacked, the country could not stand idly by.

After WWII, Europe lay in ruins. Lessons had been learned from WWI. One of these was that people whose lives are destroyed may turn toward extremist ideologies if these promise improvement (as Hitler promised the Germans). Even more important, policy makers learned that, without someone enforcing order, countries could easily begin fighting again, feeling insecure when peering over the border at their neighbor's capabilities (see the "Security Dilemma"). The Soviet Union was a rising power on the eastern edge of Europe and it became apparent that, should its armies, which occupied Eastern Europe after the war, decide to move into Western Europe, no country there could stop them. The US's allies pleaded for the US to stay and protect them. It did, and provided them aid to rebuild their economies and become stronger.

Eventually, the US became locked in what it saw as a battle with an empire with expansionist motives, the Soviet Union, which wished to dominate the world via the spread of communism. There is much to criticize about US policy during the Cold War. It meddled in a lot of countries' affairs and propped up pro-Western dictators while ignoring human rights violations, for example. The Vietnam War was unnecessary and is now usually viewed, rightly, as a costly mistake in terms of lives lost and money spent. The US did these things out of fear bordering on (or perhaps solidly into) paranoia.

However, countries under the US's protective umbrella did not bother worrying about their neighbors attacking. They could instead turn to building their economies, which partly explains why Europe, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan did so well in the second half of the 20th century. South America has had bad policies for a long time. Chile, Brazil, and others are now improving. America didn't help the situation by propping up anti-communist thugs, but it did this because of fear of that the countries there might fall, one by one, to communism and the USSR--NOT so that it could "hold South America back." This is not an excuse for what was sometimes bad behavior on the part of the American government and business there, but it is an explanation.

If you think it's all about oil, by the way, please read my post on the war in Libya.

Americans like to see government and big business conspiracies everywhere. They are right to be suspicious, but I think we need to remember that believing in conspiracies ascribes to governments and business leaders near-divine powers that they clearly do not possess (look how much they screw up). Cynicism is good as long as it steers against naivete and is realistic. When it is instead used as an excuse not to believe anything anyone says who disagrees with you, it is destructive and a block to understanding.

America and Myanmar: Be Realist, but Be Liberal, Too

President Obama just got finished with a trip to Myanmar. This trip is of massive significance, because Myanmar has been a pariah state since the 1990s. The trip is a sort of reward to Myanmar for making positive changes. This is a situation in which sanctions seem to have worked: Myanmar did not like its pariah status, in part because strict Western sanctions meant that it had to rely heavily on China. Myanmar is now looking to diversify its options. This also comes at an opportune time for American policy: America is in the middle of a strategic “pivot” towards Asia. Sanctions have thus been in place for liberal reasons like promoting democracy and human rights and encouraging the release of Aung San Suu Kyi. Removing some of those sanctions is also a way to encourage Myanmar to continue improving. At the same time, however, they also serve a strategic, realist purpose. Has the shift towards good relations with Myanmar been too fast? In other words: Is America getting overly concerned with balancing against China and leaving liberal causes by the wayside?

Myanmar has made some very positive changes towards more openness and democracy. Aung San Suu Kyi has also approved of these changes and the loosening of sanctions against Myanmar in order to support continued change. Myanmar's legislature now includes mostly elected politicians and it seems to have some real influence on governing, which is a welcome change to full-on dictatorship. However, these changes are still limited and, perhaps more importantly, imminently reversible. There are still problems with the repression and mistreatment of ethnic minorities and there are still conservative factions within the army that are opposed to further opening. Myanmar is thus not there yet. Some sanctions, however, are also still in place. They should not be fully removed until the country has arrived at liberal democracy. Are we moving too fast? It seems the most onerous sanctions are already gone. There is also a further danger: Myanmar may see the US “pivot” towards Asia as a reason the United States will want to embrace Myanmar no matter what it does. What's more, the country's leaders would have reason to think this.

In the autumn of last year, the Obama Administration announced a "pivot" towards Asia. The main reason for this strategic shift is that the Administration rightly sees Asia is the future. Specifically, though, it has seen that US allies in the region are increasingly nervous about the rising power of China. Since 1945, with a few glaring exceptions such as the Korean and Vietnam wars (which are not necessarily considered exceptions, but let's leave that for now), the Asia-Pacific region has experienced what is known as the “Pax Americana.” The US presence in the region, including important security guarantees to allies like Japan and South Korea, has meant that countries there have been free to concentrate on economic development and have not needed to worry about the military prowess of their neighbors. Japan has a military that, according to its own constitution, is purely for defensive purposes. It also has no nuclear weapons, though it certainly has the capability to develop them. This stability will be at risk if countries in the region feel that the United States can no longer maintain the status quo there and that they themselves must be able to defend themselves against a rising China.

It does not matter whether or not China or its neighbors actually seek war. What matters is that little bit of fear in the back of leaders' minds that makes them think they had better be prepared – just in case. The result could be a buildup of arms in the region, possibly including Japanese and South Korean nukes. Each build-up would then serve to make each country's immediate neighbors more nervous, encouraging them to build up as well. This conundrum is known as the "security dilemma.” The US presence in East Asia has so far prevented this outcome, and the Obama Administration seems to wish to continue doing so for as long as possible.

This focus on broader strategic goals is good. Over time, of course, the US may not be able to maintain the Pax Americana. But in the short to medium term, it makes sense to try (I won't discuss the pitfalls here). The risk in the case of Myanmar, however, is that the US places realist strategic goals ahead of liberal ones. Generally, if the choice comes down to those two, then I support realism. We do not yet have to choose, however. America can still pivot towards Asia and it doesn't necessarily need Myanmar to do so. What's more, balancing is occurring anyway. China's neighbors are uncomfortable with its power and with its maritime claims in the South China Sea. These countries have been cultivating better relations with each other and with America already. The region's other superpower, India, has also grown much closer to America. America's pivot towards Asia is therefore in many Asian countries' own self interest. America doesn't need to bribe them much (though it should cultivate good relations with them). There is thus no need yet to sacrifice liberal causes on the altar of strategic realism.

America can thus both stick to its principles of support for democracy and human rights while keeping an eye on important strategic goals like stability, security, and, in the end, peace. Hopefully, the Obama Administration and future American Administrations recognize this and will continue to keep the pressure on Myanmar whenever needed in order to keep rewarding it for moving in the right direction. Hopefully, too, both the leaders of the United States and Myanmar realize that the loosening of sanctions is every bit as reversible as Myanmar's own move towards democracy and its promotion of human rights.

Israel V Hamas: Why Is the Violence Picking Up?

Hamas and Israel are currently duking it out against each other in the Middle East. The number of rockets launched at Israel from the Gaza Strip has risen sharply recently. Rockets so far this year total at least 1,197, with 396 having fallen on Israel since November 14th! What is going on? What explains this sudden uptick in violence?

Hamas seems to have been deterred after the 2008-09 Gaza war. The number of rocket attacks increased throughout the years 2007 and 2008 and then fell off a cliff in early 2009. Things were then quiet through 2010, and even in 2011 during the upheaval of the Arab spring, things still remained relatively quiet. In the past few months, however, this has changed. Why?

The simplest answer is that Hamas perceives its circumstances to have changed. These changes include a great improvement in its own capabilities – it now possesses rockets in greater numbers, including some that are much more advanced, capable of reaching Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. In addition, and perhaps more importantly, there are political changes in the world around the Gaza Strip and Israel. The most obvious of these is the changed situation in neighboring Egypt. The Egyptian government is now headed by Mohammed Morsi, a Muslim Brother. At first, this didn't seem to have made much of a difference. But if anyone thought that things would continue as they were before, they were mistaken. One big sign of this change was the visit to Gaza of Qatar's Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani. This was a huge show of support for Hamas, but it pales in significance when compared with the visit earlier this week by Egypt's Prime Minister Hesham Qandil.

To understand why, picture this: The Egyptian Prime Minister visits Gaza. During this time, Hamas launches rockets at Israel and Israel retaliates. (So far so good: All this happened.) Imagine that, during Israel's retaliation, the Egyptian Prime Minister was injured or killed. The political consequences for Israel would be dire. Egypt would have the pretext to turn wholly against Israel and, perhaps more importantly, Israel's allies might find it more difficult to provide Israel with solid backing. Under the circumstances, Egypt might not care about losing the vast aid that it receives from the United States. If it turned down this aid, that would remove substantial leverage that the United States has on Egypt that it has so far been able to use to moderate Egypt's position regarding Israel and the Palestinian territories.

Of course, none of this happened. Egypt's Prime Minister was in Gaza for only a very short time, no doubt because he had no intention of risking his life for the conflict. Nevertheless, all of this is symbolic of massive changes on the political front in the Middle East. Specifically, it shows Egypt is increasingly willing to throw its weight into the conflict on the side of Hamas. In my view, it is this, combined with the domestic pressures that Hamas faces, that have emboldened it to these unprecedented attacks on Israel, including never-before-seen attacks on Tel Aviv, Israel's main city. The chaos in Syria may also be playing a role: Bashar al-Assad's regime supported Hamas, and Hamas's external leadership long called Damascus its home. Hamas may thus be using a fight with a hated neighbor in order to distract from its involvement with a bloody regime in Syria and rising dissension at home within the Gaza Strip.

Hamas is this now testing the new limits it now perceives. How much can it get away with? How deep is its support within the Arab world? How much influence does the United States continue to have there? Overall: How much have things shifted in its favor? In essence, Hamas is attempting to change the "rules of the game" that were set in 2009 to gain itself more leverage. None of this bodes well for Israel, not only now, but also over the medium to long term.

If Iran Goes Nuclear: Missile Defense vs. Deterrence

There has been a lot of discussion in the media recently about the possibility of Iran obtaining nuclear weapons. I won't dive into the debate about whether or not Israel or the United States should attack Iran's nuclear facilities. Instead, I would like to write about the choices Israel will face if Iran does go nuclear.

Some have argued that the defenses required if Iran goes nuclear would bankrupt Israel's economy. Presumably, this defense refers to missile defenses and things like detectors at ports and border checkpoints. Such measures could indeed put a heavy strain on Israel's economy if implemented. But do they make sense?

Missile defense may be of limited use in a non-nuclear situation, but it is pointless in a nuclear one. Currently, Israel has to deal with regular rockets being launched from the Gaza Strip. Israel's deterrence of the militants launching these rockets is not absolute: They do not launch all the rockets they have or rarely launch full-on assaults of Israel; but there is a steady, low-level stream of rockets. Israel's current missile-defense system makes sense for protecting Israeli citizens against these every day non-nuclear rocket launches. Because Israel's deterrent strategy does not rely on launching rockets for rockets, there is minimal risk of escalation. This does not mean no risk at all: Militants could launch rockets directly at Sderot with a domestic (i.e. Palestinian) audience in mind with the expectation that the rockets will be stopped anyway. Perhaps the goal would be just to cost Israel money by forcing it to launch expensive interceptor rockets. If any Gazan rockets get through, however, an Israeli counterstrike could be imminent. However, this is not really all that different from the situation without the missile-defense shield, as rockets do sometimes hit civilians obliging Israel to hit back. On balance, the shield therefore seems to make sense.

At the same time, however, such a shield could never be expected to provide any real defense against a heavy onslaught. The number of interceptor rockets is limited, interception is not 100% assured, and Israel's interceptor rockets are vastly more expensive than the rockets militant groups launch from the Gaza Strip. A launch of hundreds of rockets from the Gaza Strip could therefore easily overwhelm the system. Such a system is no good at providing 100% security.

This is also the reason why a missile shield against nuclear missiles makes no sense. In a nuclear situation, prevention must be absolute. One nuclear-tipped missile getting through is too many. There are two reasons given why missile defenses don't make sense. The first is that they do not work, the second is that they can lead to instability, undermining deterrence. Both of these propositions cannot be true at the same time. If missile defenses don't work, then there is no reason that they should cause instability. If they cause instability, then they must work somehow or other. Even so, it is possible that both these propositions could be true at different times. This is the reason why it's plausible that politicians might build an expensive and ultimately ineffective missile-defense system.

During an initial phase, Iran might not have very many nuclear missiles. It might therefore seem feasible to stop two, three, or four missiles using a high-tech missile defense shield. It would be expensive, but it would almost seem to make sense. If this shield is seen as solid enough by Iran, it could very well lead to instability via an arms race. Iran would recognize that the way around the missile shield is to build enough nuclear missiles to overwhelm it. If Israel tries to keep up, this would be very expensive indeed. All of this could only occur, however, if both sides focused blindly on missiles. There is always the possibility of smuggling a nuclear bomb into a country by other means and this seems even harder to rule out altogether.

During the second stage, a missile defense system is less likely to cause instability or a further arms race because it will become increasingly clear that it cannot be effective. It would always be possible to overwhelm the system and, because such a system could never be 100% reliable, it would always be possible to make sure that one missile (and that is all that is required) would get through. The level of control required to seal off all of Israel's borders and to provide an ultimately incredible degree of reliability from the missile-defense system would turn Israel into a police state and be staggeringly expensive.

All of this suggests that the best move is to rely on deterrence and not bother with missile-defense for nuclear missiles. To do this, Israel may need to make its presumed nuclear capability explicit and more transparent. Deterrence may also not be 100% safe, but as I have illustrated, missile-defense would not increase that security in the slightest. Given (at best) equal levels of security, it seems obvious to me that leaders should choose deterrence due to its lower cost and the smaller number of restrictions that would have to be placed on Israelis' civil liberties. Neither of these situations may be desirable, and leaders might like to look like they're doing something (whereas deterrence might look like doing nothing). When that something is surely ineffective, expensive, and heavily restricts civil liberties, however, there is not really much of a choice at all.

Pension Ponzi

After I wrote the last post, I wasn't entirely satisfied with it. What it did do was explain why certain types of taxes are essentially the same as borrowing (I'm certainly not the first to point that out). What it didn't do is make this any less abstract. A debt-to-GDP ratio of 400%! Sounds big, but what does it mean? Since countries don't die very often, America could have centuries to pay off that debt. Put that way, it doesn't seem like such a big deal. That assumes that America's creditors would keep rolling over the debt and not want to cash it in, though.

Anyway, all that's abstract, too. So I thought I'd make an extremely simplified model of a pension scheme. We're going to make a pretend company that starts off with 100 workers, none of which are retired, and then see how things progress. Our company could just as easily be an entire economy: It's population can grow, as can its workforce. They can also both shrink. We'll see with examples exactly how birth rates, life expectancy, and retirement ages affect everyone in the system. It requires only a little math, and I'll use easy numbers wherever possible. Oh, and I won't adjust for inflation or anything else. Again, it's not supposed to be reality, just a quick illustration with stick figures, if you like.

OK, so our company has 100 workers. Let's say they all earn the same amount. We introduce a retirement plan. Those who turn 65 get to retire on 2/3 of their salaries. Everyone else will pay from their own salaries to support them. In the first year, two retire. They are replaced by two new hires. We have 100 people supporting 2 people who only receive 2/3 of a salary. That makes 2*2/3=1.33. That means the workers have to pay 1.33% of their salaries into the pension program. Easy, and not much of a burden. The "old age dependency ratio" (the ratio of workers to old people) is 50 to 1.

In each subsequent year, two people also retire and two are hired to replace them (always 100 workers). The number of retired rises by two per year. So there are 4 the second year. The dependency ratio is now 25 to 1. Each worker now has to pay 2.67% of his or her salary to support the pensioners. Still not much of a burden, but it has doubled.

Let's say the average pensioner lives 20 years. We'll take that average and just pretend that they all live exactly 20 years for simplicity's sake. That means the number of pensioners would rise for 20 years. After that, it would stabilize at 40 pensioners for 100 workers. Each worker would now have to pay an eye-watering 26.67% of his or her salary for the pensioners. The dependency ratio is now 2.5 to 1. Let's not forget that these workers also have to support children, so the overall dependency ratio is even worse. These are hard-pressed workers indeed. This, in a nutshell, is what's happening. But it may be even worse. The reason is that the work force in rich countries is actually set to decrease (or is already), even as the number of pensioners rises (due to baby boomers retiring and increased longevity).

For years, the opposite happened: more people entered the workforce each year than retired. That made it seem like pension promises could be kept. If the workforce shrinks, this gets harder. We now add three per year to the pensioners (e.g. as the baby boomers retire), but maybe only one per year to the workers. After 20 years, there are 80 workers supporting 60 pensioners. This would obviously be impossible: Each worker would have to pay 50% of his or her income to support the pensioners.

Of course, the numbers are not that extreme or round, but that is the gist of what's happening. One solution is to raise the retirement age. Let's see what happens. We'll start again with 40 pensioners and 100 workers (the stable numbers we had before, but with a high pension burden). Here's a year-by-year breakdown if we instantly raised the retirement age to 70 but kept replacing workers at the original rate of 2 per year. This used to keep everything constant. Now, the workforce grows again and the number of retired declines.

Workers    Pensioners     Pension payment (%)
100            40                 26.67
102            38                 24.84
104            36                 23.08
106            34                 21.38
108            32                 19.75
110            30                 18.18
110            30                 18.18

With no further increase in life expectancy (which would increase the number of pensioners), birth rates (which would eventually change the number entering the workforce), or immigration (an increase of which would also increase the number of workers), the system would stabilize at a somewhat more affordable level. Each person would work longer, paying into pensions longer, and also be retired a shorter time, thus drawing less money out of the system.

In the case of most rich countries, this change would be gradual and could thus at most hope to slow the rise of pension premiums rather than slash them. It's still the right move. Health care, by the way, is a much more significant problem than pensions in the US, at least, but pensions are easier to illustrate (this is basically how Social Security works, except that it also does have a trust fund--which is being drained).

What about fairness? If you think back to when the system was implemented, those who retired first got a great deal: they paid nothing in and got 20 years of free pension payments (in reality, people didn't live so long in those days, so it wasn't quite so generous).  The people who worked while the system was ramping up also paid in less than those who came later. Those who are stuck paying the most and forced to pay longer (by working longer) and spend less time retired are clearly getting a raw deal. It's a sort of inter-generational transfer of wealth: The young people of today are shifting money back to the old people of the 1930s. That may seem unfair, but that is EXACTLY what debt is: spend now, pay later. With governments, that means this generation spends now, some later one pays. The bill, my friends, is coming due. The music is stopping, and it looks like we're the ones with no chairs to sit on.

The "informational" part of my post ends here. The rest is a bit of a rant, which you may want to skip if you don't want to get revved up. If you do, though, by all means: read on.

Was it past generations' fault? Surely our parents worked hard? No question mark needed. They DID. Our parents and grandparents did, however, benefit heavily from the schemes put in place. It was innocent enough: With growing populations and workforces, the scheme is sustainable. It's also easy to see why, even as demography began to shift, with old people living longer and the workforce growing more slowly, no one wanted to change. The problem had not become a crisis and no one wanted to be the sucker generation that got stuck paying the bill by finally owning up to the emerging problem and dealing with it.

Do we blame politicians? Sure, but we also have to blame those who voted for them. What about the media, which are supposed to inform the electorate and highlight issues? Yes, they are to blame, too. But: we've been hearing about the problem for ages and have failed to act AND people also only get the news media they deserve. If we'd rather watch newscasts with anchors who read Twitter feeds about Kim Kardashian and chat with each other about how they spent their weekend, then that's what the advertisers will pay for and that's what stations will provide us. In the end, this is not about blame. Blame gets us nowhere even if there's plenty to go around. We need to look forward, not back.

What is the solution here? The best of all worlds would be everyone deciding we needed to get to work and fix this stuff. Everyone decides to demand good news coverage and analysis and holds politicians to account. Everyone realized that we all will have to make further sacrifices and that no one can be spared. We all demand discussions rather than bickering, solutions rather than recriminations, and look to the future as a target place we want to get to proactively, rather than something we are trying to pretend we don't see coming in the hope that we won't have to address any of the problems that have been mounting for decades.

Fantasy. Or is it? As the crisis continues, people are being forced to pay more attention to its causes. Britain in the 1970s looked a lot like America today: a deeply divided country with a bickering, rudderless government. The empire was gone, Britain's world standing had faded, its industries were dying, its debts were high. Britain today has the same problems America has today, too. In fact, its debts are even higher. There's one crucial difference, though: Britons seem to be getting on with the work of tackling the issues. There's still plenty of fighting, but there is an acceptance that something must be done and somewhat of a consensus on approximately what that might be.

Consensus has emerged at crucial times in America, too. The country survived the Civil War (barely) as an incredibly divided place. It went on to do great things. In the depths of the Great Depression, a sort of FDR consensus emerged that lasted decades. A Cold War consensus also eventually emerged. Cue the bla bla about crises and opportunity.

Is this time different? The other disturbing question: how bad does it have to get, and how many false paths do we have to follow, taking us how close to ruin, before a new consensus emerges?

That should be the end of the post, but I have one further thing to say: I increasingly wonder if things like good news coverage need to be subsidized. They benefit more than just the people who watch and read them, making them a public good, something that makes economic sense to subsidize. The problem is always deciding what's "good," though, but I think we need to try. "Infotainment" is the abomination word of my generation, I think. There is no such thing. Reality isn't always entertaining and funny. That doesn't mean we can just change the channel. Whatever channel (or website, or blog) you follow, reality is still there, waiting to bite you in the ass if you ignore it too long.

Why Social Security is debt by another name

There is a lot of debate in America today about the country's long-term fiscal position. Some of the confusion around this debate centers, I think, on what seems like a minor technicality: the definition of what is a tax and what is borrowing. Most people view Social Security payments as a type of tax. Indeed, the payment is even called “Social Security tax.” But it's just as sensible, or perhaps even more sensible, to view Social Security as a form of debt taken on by the US federal government. Here's why.

What's the difference between taxing and borrowing? This seems like a very simple matter, but it's not. This might pass as a sensible definition of a tax: A tax is money charged by the government that it is free to use however it wishes, obviously within the confines of the system of government (laws, citizen approval if it's a democracy, etc.). It does not create a specific liability and does not have to be paid back in a specific way. Sure, we expect our governments to spend the tax money we pay in some fashion that will benefit us in some way, but there isn't a specific liability nor specific need to pay us back in a specific way (and it is usually accepted that more money is taken from some groups than they receive and vice versa).

Borrowing, on the other hand, means there is a specific liability. If someone borrows money from you, the understanding is normally that they will pay it back with interest. The way they pay it back, and how much they pay back, are usually subject to the terms of the borrowing arrangement.

Viewed this way, Social Security is more like borrowing than a tax. You give money to the government in the form of the Social Security tax, but the government is obligated to pay it back to you in the form of a pension. In effect, the government has borrowed this money from you and this has created an obligation. In the private sector, any such arrangement would be counted as a debt and accounting rules would mean that the company would have to show how it planned to pay for the future liabilities it was incurring through this debt. Governments, however, are not required to do this. If the US government were required to list Social Security payments as a tax, US government debt today would already be much much higher than its current official figure. In fact, it would be around $61.6 trillion if Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid (also promises the government makes to pay for care over time that are currently unfunded and thus a form of borrowing). That's a debt-to-GDP ratio of around 411%!!! Put another way, that's over $205,000 of debt per person in the US! That makes my student loans sound like a pittance. Basically, everyone has to pay for an additional mortgage or two before they retire.

Members of the tea party who are really thinking (that may not be a large proportion) are upset because of figures like these. They are right to be. One group of citizens who are not particularly upset are young people. This must be because of ignorance, since they are the ones who are going to bear the brunt of this massive debt burden, a colossal transfer of wealth from the young and healthy to those who are old and need care.

It's a thorny issue to say the least. These debt obligations are also moral obligations to make good on what the government, and through it the American electorate, have promised. We surely can't cancel old peoples' pensions or simply stop paying for care for the needy and the old. But we do have to take action, and it has become clear that the amount of payments we are currently set to dispense are simply unsustainable. In some way, healthcare costs must be brought down (see my plan), the pension age raised, contributions to Social Security and healthcare programs increased, and, possibly, Social Security payments reduced in some way. This is horrendous, but it is unavoidable. The longer we ignore it, the worse it will become.

Netanyahu is right about "red lines" for Iran

If you follow Iran's nuclear developments or Israeli politics even remotely, you'll have heard about the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's fight with US President Barak Obama over setting "red lines" for Iran's nuclear program. Netanyahu says he won't be able to relax or feel confident that the US will really prevent Iran from developing a bomb unless these "red lines" are drawn firmly by the United States. The US (and not just Barak Obama) refuses to do this.

Red lines are basically lines someone sets that tell an opponent "if you cross this line, X will happen." They're a way of communicating exactly what actions an opponent can expect in order to deter something very specific. In the case of Iran, the red line might be enrichment to a certain level, for example. The reason Netanyahu wants them is twofold: 1. They would make it clear to Iran that it cannot go beyond a certain point of no return or it will suffer consequences; 2. They would force the United States to make a specific commitment to act that would be hard to back down from. Basically, Netanyahu would like the US AND Iran to be backed against a clear wall in order to minimize uncertainty about the future.

This post is not about whether red lines are a good idea. But Netanyahu is right about their effects, which is precisely why the US refuses to set them. Obama does not want to create a situation where the US would be forced to act. He wishes to retain the US's freedom of maneuver. Netanyahu is therefore also right, I think, that the US is not really committed to stopping Iran from getting the bomb no matter what. If it would be too dangerous to stop it, US policymakers may privately be thinking that containment would be less bad than the threat of yet another war in the Middle East, one that would likely only delay Iran's bomb-making (while making Iran more determined to get one). They look around and note that some pretty belligerent foes (think North Korea) have yet to ever use nuclear weapons on their enemies.

As for me, I think Iran having a bomb would bad on several levels. Two examples are an arms race in the region and a more "leaky" anti-proliferation regime, as Iran might help its friends to develop nukes as well. It would also reduce Israel and the US's freedom of maneuver in the region as they would be deterred by Iran's bomb. This, I think, is the number one reason why Israel, above all, fears it. I too, though, am unconvinced that we should to anything and everything to stop Iran from getting the bomb. That doesn't mean I've decided, it just means that other outcomes might actually be worse and attacking Iran needs to be a definite last resort. Netanyahu and Obama, then, must agree to disagree for now. If Romney becomes president, I'm not sure that would change.

Free Speech and Self-Censorship

The recent and ongoing protests (including the killing of the US Ambassador in Benghazi, Libya) in the Muslim world against the US because of an anti-Muslim amateur movie originating in America have brought the topic of free speech back to mind.

Everyone can remember the last time this happened (the cartoons). A few people I know remarked that it was a travesty because we have the freedom of speech and at least one asserted that Western government sshould have rallied around the cartoonists to support their right to free speech.

That sounds laudable. But is that really the issue? It feels bad if we discover that newspapers are self-censoring, not publishing things their readers would like to see. But is self-censorship akin to a loss of the right to free speech?

It certainly does mean people have to watch what they say, which is unfortunate in many ways. Still, you have to watch what you say in polite company and around children, too, or there might be protests in the "society" you find yourself in. Freedom of speech does not mean you will be free from the consequences of that speech. The government may not arrest you for saying something that rubs someone else the wrong way, but that person might very well kick you out of his house--as is surely his right, too.

We need to remain vigilant, of course, but in the US at the very least, free speech is very well protected, and the Supreme Court tends to err on the side of allowing speech when it is debatable. So we're free to say what we want, and we should say what needs to be said when it's important, but we also have to weigh consequences and benefits: Was this video important? Were the cartoons? Are they important enough to countenance violence, outrage, and diplomatic issues? That's a different topic entirely, and it doesn't really have that much to do with free speech.

Hawks are not always the best deterrers

While considering where to look for evidence that Israel is deterred by Hamas, I thought of something that seems totally obvious once it is said: If the reward I offer you for not attacking me is worse than my attacks against you if you do, you will keep attacking me. In other words: Deterrence is not only about threats of punishment, it is also about rewarding "good" behavior. In order for Israel to decide not to attack Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Hamas has to offer something more enticing to Israel in return. If its alternative is "dissolve yourself," Israel is obviously not going to choose to be deterred.

Again, this may seem obvious, but it is an interesting nuance because most people associate policies of deterrence with so-called foreign policy hawks. This is because the main feature of the type of deterrence that has dominated world politics for decades is threats of unacceptable retaliation for attacks (think of the US and Soviet policy of Mutually Assured Destruction when it came to nuclear attacks). Deterrence is certainly not a cuddly, "let's let in the Age of Aquarius" sort of foreign policy stance. But the alternative to attacking the US in the case above was peace, since deterrence was mutual. Peace is a pretty nice alternative to nuclear war, so it stuck. Crucially, destroying the Soviet Union was not a US policy (though many in the US openly wished for it).

The case with the US also illustrates another factor: Further alternatives must be less palatable than accepting deterrence. The main alternative was wiping the US out before it could strike back, thus removing the threat and the constraint of US deterrence on Soviet policymaking. This policy was unrealistic, and the US explicitly made sure of this by ensuring that the Soviet Union could never be certain of wiping out the whole US nuclear arsenal, meaning its own destruction would likely be imminent if it attacked the US. No realistic alternative there.

The main things required to block the alternative route of wiping out an enemy are power and resilience (two things the US nuclear arsenal had and has in abundance). In light of this, Hamas's strengthening in recent years may actually be a blessing in disguise for peace in the Middle East, if not necessarily for Israel's ambitions. Hamas has shown that, with occupation or without it, Israel cannot eliminate the organization without taking measures that it would not consider (like wiping out the entire Gaza Strip). For a while in the early to mid-2000s, with Israeli security stopping the vast majority of suicide bombings by 2005, it looked like Israel might be able to defeat Hamas militarily and thus need not be bound by any Hamas attempts to deter it. Rocket attacks have changed this prospect. Bombers could be stopped from entering Israel, rockets cannot. Even the Iron Dome missile defense system could not stop a concerted effort: A massive number of rockets flying toward Israel would overwhelm the system.

It therefore seems that Israel would be extremely hard-pressed to either eliminate Hamas or deny it the ability to attack Israel. This means that the choice of accepting a sort of truce with Hamas has become more palatable.

Going back to the main point of this post, the "peaceful" alternative has also become more available from Hamas's side as it has moderated its actions (if not much of its rhetoric) over the years to allow for short- to medium-terms cease-fires with Israel. In other words, Hamas needed to become more dovish to stop Israeli attacks.

Will this be a permanent change? Anyone who tries to predict the future in the Middle East is a fool. Hamas's continued grip on the Gaza Strip is not assured, and there are other, less moderate groups, who are too Hawkish to deter Israel. Dovishness on the part of Hamas has also been encouraged by Israel's massive superiority. This differential, too, is not written in stone. Over time, things could change and destabilize the current situation. Finally, since this set-up is based on both sides' perceptions of their and their opponent's power and the credibility of their threats, a change simply in the perception of the situation could spark another round of violence. My guess would be that such a round would eventually return to a tenuous peace, but how peaceful is a situation that repeatedly erupts into violence every few years?

For these reasons, the future is dependent on whether or not Israel and Hamas take further steps towards cementing peace. Everyone knows this, so there is no need to discuss it. My hypothesis, however, is that deterrence may help give the two parties the breathing room they need to move forward--if they are bold enough.