Smarties

Jonathan Alter's book, The Promise, about the first year of Barack Obama's presidency, is due out this week and Aaron Wiener has a bit of a preview of it ("Out of the Bailout Bedlam, Obama Emerged on Top," The Washington Independent, 4 May 2010). At the height of the financial crisis in 2008, both Senators McCain and Obama returned to Washington for a joint White House-Congressional leadership briefing, Senator McCain famously staging the publicity stunt of "suspending" his campaign over developments. Mr. Alter has Senator Obama saying as he left the meeting,

Guys, what I just saw in there made me realize, we have got to win. It was crazy in there. Maybe I shouldn't be president, but he [McCain] definitely shouldn't be.

This is admittedly an off-the-cuff remark, probably not representative of an explicit, deeply held political philosophy, but nevertheless I want to highlight it as a fundamentally conservative attitude toward politics and positions of great responsibility. The objective in selecting officers for high office is not to achieve perfection or optimum outcomes, but merely to avoid catastrophe.

What this most reminds me of is the story of the meeting between President-elect John Kennedy and Robert McNamara. Kennedy had offered McNamara the position of Secretary of Defense, but McNamara protested, "Mr. President, it's absurd; I’m not qualified," to which Kennedy responded, "Look, Bob, I don’t think there's any school for presidents, either." Both represent a recognition of the limits of human judgment and the capabilities of normal people elevated to high office (contrast this with the belief of President Bush that he was carrying out the will of God).

This is of a piece with what Robert Capps, writing for Wired called "the good enough revolution" ("The Good Enough Revolution: When Cheap and Simple Is Just Fine," vol. 17, no. 9, August 2009, pp. 110-118) or John Maynard Keynes's bit of wisdom that it’s better to be conventionally wrong than unconventionally right (The General Theory of Employment Interest and Money [1935]).

It's also worth pointing out that in the great (mostly right wing) debate of democracy versus its contenders — aristocracy, oligarchy, dictatorship, hereditary monarchy — it is in this high-consequences area of avoiding the worst outcomes where democracy most outperforms the alternatives. And it is in avoiding the occasional catastrophic rather than excelling at the upper end that the game is decided.

I have been saying that the fastest growing religion in the United States is not the non-denominational, evangelical mega-churches, or Mormonism or any other such easily identifiable thing, but the hazy category of "spiritual but not religious." Today the front page of USA Today brings more grist for the mill (Grossman, Cathy Lynn, "Survey: 72% of Millennials 'More Spiritual Than Religious'," 27 April 2010):

Most young adults today don't pray, don't worship and don't read the Bible, a major survey by a Christian research firm shows.

If the trends continue, "the Millennial generation will see churches closing as quickly as GM dealerships," says Thom Rainer, president of LifeWay Christian Resources. In the group's survey of 1,200 18- to 29-year-olds, 72% say they're "really more spiritual than religious."

Among the 65% who call themselves Christian, "many are either mushy Christians or Christians in name only," Rainer says. "Most are just indifferent. The more precisely you try to measure their Christianity, the fewer you find committed to the faith."

The line about seeing churches closing as quickly as GM dealerships was a nice gag, but more evocative for me would be to say that if the trend continues, we will soon start to see churches in the U.S. closing as quickly as they are today in Europe. Declining religious sentiment is an aspect of modernization and what's amazing is that religion has managed to persist with such strength so long into the age of scientific reason.

In addition to the point about "spiritual but not religious", this survey also makes Daniel Dennett's point that belief in belief is far more widespread than actual belief. There are a significant number of people who self-identify as "Christian" when asked, but don't attend church, don't ever pray, don't read the Bible, don't think "what would Jesus do", or "God's watching" in their moral considerations, don't take religious identity into consideration in forming their interpersonal associations and don't talk about god to other people.

Some sociologists need to get on this "spiritual but not religious" category. What do people who so identify believe? I have no idea. I imagine that being so ill-defined it's a bewildering hodge-podge of belief.

I always joke that "spiritual but not religious" means you like green tea and yoga. But maybe there's no accident in these two tropes. The future belongs to Asia and "spiritual but not religious" might be an early manifestation of Asian culture beginning to exert the kind of global influence that Western culture used to enjoy.

Is "spiritual but not religious" a sort of scientific illiteracy? There are all these people for whom religion has no practical consequence in their life, but find the alternative unpalatable? I've known a number of people who believe in what I call a "prime mover" god: the whole big bang story sounds too implausible so they invoke god to get the story rolling, but then he drops out as a narratively compelling actor.

I know plenty of people who are essentially atheists but owing to the stigma of the label, simply won't take the final step of self-identification as such.

Is it a bad faith version of Pascal's wager, where people think of non-declaration as a hedge: If I don't say anything, god won't know and I may still be eligible for the afterlife should I turn out to have been wrong.

Do the "spiritual but not religious" respond to religion in politics? I imagine that to be "spiritual but not religious" means rejection of religion as ideology and dogma in favor of religious sentiment. Political invocations of religion tend to be religion as ideology and dogma at its most strident. But many of these people continue to identify as Christians. Is their identification sufficiently deep for them to respond to the identity group politics of religion?

Steve Clemons in his summation of President Obama's winning streak on nuclear issues invokes the notion of "strategic depth" ("Obama's Nuclear Wizardry and the Iran Factor", Politico, 13 April 2010). It's not an uncommon term, but one rarely given much by way of explication. Fortunately Mr. Clemons isn't just breaking it out to conceptually pad his article, in that he calls out an element of this week's accomplishments that serves as an excellent illustration of the idea:

In a quick succession of deals focused on pre-empting a 21st-century nuclear nightmare, Obama has mended the foundation and infrastructure of a global nonproliferation regime that United Nations Ambassador John Bolton, Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), Vice President Dick Cheney and others of the pugnacious nationalist wing of the last administration worked hard to tear down.

And, by bringing together 47 key leaders, Obama is signaling to all stakeholders that a nuclear crisis with Iran and other potential breakout states would undermine the global commons.

Yet he is not vilifying Iran or its leaders. He is not making the same "axis of evil" mistake President George W. Bush did.

Instead, Obama is showing the benign and constructive side of U.S. power to other great states like India, China, Brazil and Russia. He is also inviting Iran to get in compliance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and get back into a club that matters — where Iran could be respected for adopting a sensible course.

The Obama administration is restoring the non-proliferation norm to "a club that matters." For the previous administration, either a state wanted to adopt a certain policy, or they didn't; there was no context in which they may have preferred to do one thing over another, so there was no need to apply the nation's diplomatic energies to construction any particular sort of international régime.

That was a strategically thin diplomacy. If it appears that the future of the international system is the gradual breakdown of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, if the system is lowly regarded, treated with apathy and abandonment on the part of the great powers, if declining compliance and the emergence of a number of new nuclear powers seems the likely future, then there is little to recommend compliance or membership. What incentive is there to join a system one anticipates failing in the near future?

But if the NPT seems the way of the future, if great energies are devoted to shoring up and extending the non-proliferation framework, compliance is the norm among the respectable states, if the nuclear powers are making headway toward their Article VI obligations, if the possibility of new nuclear powers seems increasingly remote, then that's a strategic context in which an entirely different set of decisions will seem the best means to a country's objectives of security, prestige, diplomatic latitude and so on.

Further, broadening the circle of compliance and advocacy takes some of the lime light off of the United States. This makes it much more palatable to recalcitrant elements. In the case of Iran, if faced with knuckling under to the hated United States, the answer will certainly be no. If asked to cow to a group of flunkeys subordinate to the United States, the prospects won't be much improved. But joining the global consensus among nations is something they might do. It allows them to save face among their citizens and their international constituents should they chose to back away from their nuclear program.

By imbuing the present architecture with a sense of a bright future, increasing compliance and broad support, the Obama administration is bringing the weight of a whole international system to bare on Iran. This seems like a program with more potential than just the usual carrots and sticks.

Former Congressman Charlie Wilson died last week (Martin, Douglas, "Charlie Wilson, Texas Congressman Linked to Foreign Intrigue, Dies at 76," The New York Times, 11 February 2010, p. B19). Rep. Wilson came to national attention through George Crile's 2003 book, Charlie Wilson's War and later the film of the same name. Mr. Crile's book is one of the best books I've ever read. It's full of stories that illustrate the hurly-burley of how international politics and foreign policy making really happens. But more to the point, it's one of those "truth is stranger than fiction"-type stories.

My favorite story from the book is Rep. Wilson's response to a reporter, incredulous at Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill's appointment of Rep. Wilson to the House Ethics Committee. Rep. Wilson had already developed a considerable reputation in Washington for boozing and womanizing when he rolled from a minor scandal involving a weekend of jacuzzi hopping at Caesar's Palace involving copious amounts of cocaine and a number of showgirls into his Congressional Ethics responsibilities. Mr. Crile reports thus:

From today's perspective, the image of this philandering hedonist climbing out of his Las Vegas hot tub to render judgments on the conduct of his colleagues seems almost perverse. Even without knowing about the Fantasy Suite, a genuinely puzzled reporter had asked Wilson why he, of all people, had been selected for this sober assignment. Without missing a beat, Wilson had cheerfully replied, "It's because I'm the only one of the committee who likes women and whiskey, and we need to be represented." (p. 81)

In general it would seem that people's personal moral conduct and public policy advocacy are inversely related. It would be good if more of us types demanded our representation.

Between the comments of Senators Webb and Bayh and Representative Frank, the left-wing partisans are shocked right now at how quickly the Democrats are leaping over one another to lie down and play dead.

Josh Marshall calls Representative Frank's statement the,

embodiment of fecklessness, resignation, defeatism and just plan folly.

And concludes, "Amazing. Just amazing." Kevin Drum tweets,

WTF? Has Barney Frank gone nuts? http://bit.ly/6554vK Was it really so pressing to say this? Do Dems *enjoy* rolling over and playing dead?

Even indefatigable partisan Ezra Klein is going Leninist on this, writing,

a Democratic Party that would abandon their central initiative this quickly isn't a Democratic Party that deserves to hold power.

For my part I list Leninist: it would be worth losing some seats, both in the hope of reacquiring it with someone more reliable down the road (I wouldn't mind seeing Harry Reid go one iota), but also to instill some fear in those that remain. And also with regard to healthcare: we won't get the right reform so long as it remains the widespread belief among Americans that U.S. healthcare is the best in the world. Another decade of continued crumbling of the current system are apparently required.

After the underwear bomber incident, all together too many people are talking about how Yemen is now the central front of the war on terrorism and preemptive action is necessary and if Yemen's dysfunctional government can't do what needs to be done then the U.S. should step in and do it for them (as usual, Senator Lieberman can be counted on as the go-to guy for idiotic pronouncements here). To me the events of recent days really show what's wrong with the U.S. reaction being dominated by the notion of a "war on terrorism," and the superiority of the strategy of treating terrorism as an issue of law enforcement as enunciated by, among others, John Kerry throughout 2004.

What we're facing is the classic squeezing a balloon problem: the United States can deploy 112,000 solders to Iraq and another 98,000 to Afghanistan, and thousands more throughout Central and Southeast Asia and in the Pacific Islands and the terrorists just pick up their laptops, sell their Range Rovers and relocate their operation to the Horn of Africa, or the outer reaches of the Arabian Peninsula. Meanwhile the U.S. is stuck for the next decade in whatever country owing to the weight of tens of thousands of soldiers and hundreds of tones of heavy metal.

We are engaged in a fourth generation-type struggle with an opponent employing the classical tactics of asymmetric warfare. The object for the opponent on the presumptively disadvantaged side of the asymmetry is to adopt a strategy whereby the seeming advantages of the preponderant power are transformed into weaknesses. The war on terrorism is a contest of strategic dexterity and In this case the very weight, size and overwhelming capability of the U.S. military has become its greatest liability.

The game that has been played by Al Quada et al is that of miring the U.S. in regions of declining strategic importance. Terrorists are Lilliputians and the U.S. Gulliver. Only in this story Gulliver ties himself down. The Lilliputians only have to indicate where he should sink the stakes and he applies the lashes to himself.

While I am deeply skeptical of black ops, secret programs, plausible deniability, assassination, et cetera, I generally agree with the idea that the only time counter-terrorist actions should make the news is when something has gone wrong. The Predator drone and special forces operations that are being conducted along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border seems correct in conception, if still problematic in execution, to me. And of course this level of militarization is still awfully high. The FBI is the U.S. government agency with the largest presence abroad after the Pentagon and the State Department. Treasury is quickly following suite. Counter-terrorism should only become subject to special forces means under extreme circumstances. The rest of the time it should be dealt with by the various legal investigative agencies.

Whatever the case, our reaction to terrorism needs to be in kind: nimble, dynamic, human not territory oriented, multifaceted.

A strategic studies acquaintance commented the other day that he can't wait for the reigning generation of the foreign policy establishment to retire, because they are a bunch of Cold War relics, mired in the mindset of a bygone era. The idea of stateless actors is beyond their comprehension. In this regard one of the most seminal moments in the U.S. reaction to mass-casualty terrorism was Paul Wolfowitz's 13 September 2001 press conference, where he said the following (DoD News Briefing, The Pentagon, Arlington, VA):

I think one has to say it's not just simply a matter of capturing people and holding them accountable, but removing the sanctuaries, removing the support systems, ending states who sponsor terrorism. And that's why it has to be a broad and sustained campaign. It's not going to stop if a few criminals are taken care of.

I believe that in some ultimate sense Paul Wolfowitz has been right about Islamic extremism: that it is not our war, that we cannot fight it, that it is not a war that can be won in the realm of strictly materialist forces, but that it is a struggle of ideology, that it can only be settled among those most immediately concerned, that the most the U.S. can do is indirectly effect this outcome through the opening of a space where moderate, modernist, liberal Islam can flourish. This was Secretary Wolfowitz's idea for Iraq: that it would become the Islamic "city on the hill." That he could simultaneously have been so wrong makes Paul Wolfowitz one of the tragic figures of the post-11 September period.

But this idea, that states and territory are what is important, this was the commanding idea of the early Bush administration. But the strategy of militarily occupying every square mile of lawless territory on the Earth and engaging in nation building in every failed state is beyond our capability. It is how the strength of a great power will be sapped.

Rortybomb, like most of blue America, originated in red America and maintains ties there that give him an occasional finger on the pulse. He reports on how many fathoms the fever swamp (Konczal, Mike, "Things I’m Reading, 12/22," Rortybomb, 22 December 2009):

Visiting home for the holidays, it's amazing to me how certain groups of friends, who I mostly considered in the generic Republicans/conservatives camp, have been wading deeper into the Ron Paul territory. "Abolish the Fed" is one thing, but what surprised me the most was when I was at a Christmas party several people mentioned, fairly out of nowhere, how bad FDIC is for the economy. I think they thought that regular depositors could have done a better job vetting financial institutions than major sophisticated shareholders. When I tried to point out how if there wasn't FDIC and millions of savings accounts were getting wiped out in ordinary bank runs we'd almost certainly have a wave of turn-of-the-last-century style violence that is hard for us to even imagine now — think bomb throwing anarchist violence — they seemed to be ok with that.