Monday, December 31, 2018

Overrating Generals, a 2018 Spew Theme

The good news of the Trump Attrition of 2018 is that, unless Trump appoints another senior retired or active officer to replace those who have left, I will be posting less about overrated officers.  In 2018, H.R. McMaster retired, James Mattis resigned in protest and had his term ended two months shorter than planned, and John Kelly is on his way out.

Last night, a retired Canadian general asked if there were any generals I liked:
My first response was: selection effect.  That is, that those who were most prominent lately were those elevated into key positions by Donald Trump. And since everything Trump touches turns to shit and since he would likely pick officers who might look good in a uniform but not be well equipped for their positions, the outcomes would not be great.  Mattis comes off the best because he had a vibrant cult of personality before going into this position, because SecDef was far closer to his expertise than National Security Adviser was to Flynn or McMaster or Chief of Staff was to Kelly, and because Mattis was the least bad.  We can believe that he held the line against even worse things from happening, but that is mostly wishful thinking.  Until we get solid evidence that any of these generals did that, I will be skeptical. 
McMaster?  I had heard from friends inside the national security community that he was one to scrub analyses until he got the conclusions he wanted.  He had very little DC experience, and, damn it, he was still a serving officer when he was sent out to justify Trump's policies--not a great look at all. 
Kelly?  A xenophobe through and through, now seeking to distance himself from kids in cages and all that.  He was awful as DHS Secretary, and he did not manage the White House well either.  One can blame Trump for being impossible to discipline, sure, but Kelly might have been chief of staff of various military units, but no experience for this most political office. 
Oh, and Flynn.... was no longer NSA, but he was a pivotal former general for much of 2018.

My second response is that there might be something broken in the US military's promotion systems when folks like Kelly and Flynn rise to the top.  Maybe folks are rewarded for kissing up and kicking down (Tommy Franks?). 

My third response was to consider distance a bit. Those senior officers that I have met have mostly been impressive--which means I am a fan of many Canadian senior officers including most of the Chiefs of Defence Staff I have met (especially Vance and Natynzyck), those who ran Canadian Expeditionary Forces Command/Joint Operations Command, and those who did time in Afghanistan (Thompson, Leslie, Devlin, Noonan, Lacroix, Grant, Hainse, LaRoche, Lessard, Milner).  Perhaps meeting these folks caused me to be less critical?  Well, maybe not since I am omitting from this list other senior officers I met who did not impress me much.  Also, Vance knows to expect "pejorative" questions from me when he speaks at various events.

My fourth response was to list senior American officers who mostly impress me: past Chairmans Dempsey and Mulllen, past SACEURs Stavridis, Craddock; ones who I served under while on the Joint Staff such as Cuculo. Formica, and Abizaid.

To be clear, I tend to be most critical of the automatic veneration of folks who have stars on their shoulders.  Yes, they attained high rank, which might mean that they are great leaders, but it also might mean they happened to survive a process that can be gamed.  We need to evaluate people based not on their status, whether it is four-star general or endowed professor, but on what they say and what they do.  I try never to pull rank in an argument--that I am a full professor so respect what I say--and I don't think that those who have attained high rank should go uncriticized or should be automatically considered to be smart or wise.  We have seen too many crappy people at the highest levels of militaries, academia, business and elsewhere to be uncritical just because someone has achieve some status.

I fully expect my 2019 to be a highly critical one--Trump and his people are awful and will do much that is worthy of criticism.  Fewer of those people will be those who were generals or admirals, and that is a good thing.  That they will be replaced with people who are worse is almost assured, but at least they will not be automatically adored due to the uniform they used to wear.

Saturday, December 29, 2018

DC Winterfest

As usual, my daughter and I ventured to the Mall during winterfest.  It used to be all about the Natural History Museum.  Over time, her interests changed, so various art museums and some history museums became more of our focus.  This year, we hit the Hirshorn contemporary art museum and the National Museum of the American Indian.  Oh, and we walked up to the capitol. 

The Hirshorn had some funky stuff, including an entire exhibit dedicated to absence.  It involved a bunch of stuff they had in their collection that they could display at once to suggest how one thinks and feels about absence.

Standing Rock display
I had never been to the National Museum of the American Indian.  I was curious about how it covered stuff because, well, the history is pretty damned ugly.  My daughter was struck by the paradox that this building is an institution that is run, more or less, by the same government that continues to oppress Native Americans (see the pipeline stuff). 

The building was beautiful.  The displays did convey much of the horror and betrayal that is the history of Native Americans encountering the Europeans and then the United States.  Was it sufficiently critical of the US?  Something my daughter and I discussed.  We agreed that having the gift shop next to the Trail of Tears display was off-putting.

We did get a chance to celebrate the diversity of the US via food trucks:
 Twas a South American sandwich of corn pancakes with chicken in between. Yum.

And then we got up close to the capitol:

As always, whenever visiting places like this, I marvel at the diversity of the crowds.  Obviously, the tourists include folks from abroad, but it is a nice reminder that the US is a diverse place, that the people's house represents all of us.  Even if there are white supremacists inside this building and the one just off the Mall.

I hope you had a great winterfest.  I certainly did, as I got a heap of time with my daughter and my wife's family.  I hope that 2019 is a very happy new year for you and yours.

Monday, December 24, 2018

Into the Spider-verse? Yes, Please

I just came back from seeing the new Spidey movie for the second time, first time in 3D and second time in 2D.  The funny thing is that I stopped collecting comic books because Marvel decided that each story had to be told in multiple comic books, so one would have to buy five different series to follow one character.  This spider-verse thing was part of that disease--how do you follow Spidey?  Buy 3-7 books a month.  Yuck. 

But now? Here's the spoiler-free review: it may be the best Spidey movie yet.  Yeah, I liked the original 2 movies by Sam Raimi with Tobey Maguire, and I loved Tom Holland's Homecoming, but, well, damn.

Sunday, December 23, 2018

Winterfest Explainer

Every year, my family indulges in winterfest.  No, not festivus, the Seinfeld holiday where people have feats of strength and whining.  Winterfest, for us, is the enjoyment of the various traditions of whatever holidays that happen to be coinciding in wintertime.  We do not believe in any of the religions, but do enjoy candy canes, hanging ornaments, occasionally burning 1-8 candles, giving and, yes, receiving gifts.

This fits into our larger tradition of spending a week or so celebrating major events--that birthday-fest or anniversary-fest gives us an excuse to spend heaps of money on eating out and eating/drinking too much.

So, no, when I mention winterfest, I am not referring to that other thing that involves venting and all that.  Sure, we vent, but that is a 365 day a year phenomenon.  For this week-ish (it is as long as we want or can afford) holiday, we do what we want with a bit less guilt and with a lot more calories and spending.  Because we spend most of the year in Canada, we tend to rejoice in those things we can't get in Canada, like chains that don't exist up there (Great Harvest Bread Company, Trader Joe's) or decent Mexican food.  We occasionally did rock climbing with the nieces or bowling or what not.  It is a tradition if we want to to and not if we don't.  That is what winterfest is to us--a time to have fun together, stealing some of the fun stuff from various traditions and none of the guilt or responsibilities.

I hope you and yours enjoy your break for the ordinary.  Happy winterfest and happy new year to those who visit the Semi-Spew!  Let's hope that 2019 is a more just year.

Friday, December 21, 2018

Mattis and Then What?

I have been criticizing the choice of Jim Mattis for SecDef since he was chosen.  I thought it was bad for civilian control of the military to have someone so recently retired from the armed forces to serve as primary overseer of the US military, especially with Congress doing a lousy job of late doing its job in this area.  Yes, he was more of an adult than anyone else, but that is why I called it the tyranny of low expectations--that with all the rest of Trump's choices sucking so very much, folks were enthused to accept a choice that, while bad for civilian control, would be better than what could have been.  And now we will see how right these folks may have been, sigh, as Tom Cotton or someone equally awful will now get the second most important position in the chain of command.

To be clear, Mattis's impact was always overrated.  Trump could and did ignore his advice and overruled him repeatedly.  People put a lot of weight on Mattis having much influence but only because of wishful thinking.  When Mattis would travel to Europe to reassure the folks there that the US would show up in a crisis, they should not have believed him since Trump is the key actor in whether the US supports or blocks the invoking of Article V of the NATO treaty--an attack upon one equals an attack upon is not automatic.

Trump decided to pull out troops out of Syria over Mattis's objections.  His next moves in Afghanistan were likely over Mattis's objections. Which means that Mattis objecting is not a huge impediment.  Mattis also didn't stop Trump from to kicking out/keeping out immigrants and trans people out of the armed forces.  The courts have played a much greater role.

As a SecDef, he was a general.  He didn't do many briefings, and the Pentagon restricted info.  So much so that when folks wondered this week what was achieved in Syria, there was little  news to build upon--keeping things quiet also meant keeping things confusing.  While I am a fan of the Joint Staff since they socialized me so very well in 2001-2002, ceding heaps of policy influence to them was probably not a great thing.  Which wars has the US de-escalated? Which wars have escalated?  Hint: most did the latter with more bombs dropped on Afghanistan the past two years and more civilian casualties.  While the Niger mess could have happened under any government, it does seem that delegating down has created a permissive environment for folks to push the limits and do more than they were supposed to, creating significant risks.

Yet Mattis will be missed by the example he set.  At the cabinet meeting where all of the secretaries offered up their compliments/sucking up to Trump, Mattis stood out by not doing so.  That did matter.  His resignation letter was quite clear on that score as well as on valuing allies, so he sent a clear message.

Will we miss Mattis?  Sure, but he was overrated.  I thought the Europeans lost their wishful thinking about his role last summer at the NATO summit.  Now, Americans and others are losing their illusions about his ability to restrain Trump.  What this really signals is that Trump is more willing than ever to rely on his "gut" than on the experts.  It was always thus, but more so now.  And that is not good, since Trump's instincts are always, always awful.  I did argue that leaving Syria was not entirely bad--that forever wars have to end and declaring defeat (calling it victory) is necessary.  Mattis was never going to stop Trump from doing something truly awful--he was only going to be resigning in protest.  And now we are here.

Folks have floated a bunch of names to replace Mattis, and they are all very bad.  The only hope we have is, alas, shirking.  DoD is the hardest agency to run, and the military is very good at slow rolling and doing other things to avoid doing what the civilians want.  We will see more of that, and we will see a sharper civ-mil divide if the new SecDef and the new people brought into the Office of Secretary of Defense try to impose their will on the US armed forces.  Which means we will be rooting for the military to avoid or deny civilian control--which is really bad.

So, the tyranny of low expectations has become more tyrannical.  And inevitable given that Mattis could not stop Trump from being Trump. 

Thursday, December 20, 2018

Year in Review, part 2: What Got More Attention?

I don't write posts or tweets to maximize hits.  For instance, I had no idea that my tweet yesterday would get more than 1k likes.   I have very little strategy besides express what I think.  But I used to be a narcissist until Trump tainted that as well, so I like to look back and see what played more broadly.  Not to change how I blog, but just curious.

So, here's the top ten posts of 2018 according to google analytics with some commentary:
  1. McGill's Shame Continues.  This post from 2016 keeps getting hits, partly because I keep linking to it in other sexual harassment stories.  That was, in some ways, one of the riskiest posts I have written, but I did so because I wanted to warn folks about a serial sexual harasser.  That people will not convey who is the bad guy to avoid, and so someone new will have their career damaged.  That this post serves as continuing warning is a good thing.  Of course, the real test is after this generation of grad students moves on.
  2. ISA Sexual Harassment In The News.  The story about Richard Ned Lebow's elevator joke and the subsequent reactions got heaps of play at the Semi-Spew as well as elsewhere.  It only seems that whenever I write about the ISA, it is bad news.  I was worried at the time that this particular event would trivialize claims about sexual harassment. 
  3. Reflections on L'Affaire Lebow.  A very rare guest post, this one by Tanisha Fazal, put Lebow into context.  Tanisha did a great job of explaining her experience with the professor at the heart of the controversy.  By the way, notice a theme here?
  4. Advice for the First Year Professor.  Finally, a non-sexual harassment post.  In August, folks on twitter were pondering what they would say to someone starting out, so I tried to remember and offered my take.  Be chill might be the shorthand--do what you can, but don't set goals/expectations too high.
  5. Institutional Sexism.  Yes, the post that led to the one at the top of the charts.  A brief venting of how institutions protect themselves more than their students via covering everything in confidentiality sauce.
  6. The Last Father's Day.  What started out as acknowledging that my daughter is now fully out of the nest became something else as my father died on father's day.  I very much appreciate the support and kindnesses that the readers of my blog as well as twitter followers and facebook friends.
  7. How to Explain the Academic Job Market to Non-Academics. We academics compete in a strange market that is hard for outsiders to explain.  I came up with a bunch of handy rules that illustrate some of the complexities and challenges.
  8. Social Media Etiquette From Me?  This recent post might be the most hypocritical thing I have written, as I am not so restrained except in comparison to those who are completely unconstrained.
  9. Appalling, Not Shocking, Academic Edition.  I address the Jorge Dominguez story at Harvard--of decades of getting away with sexual harassment.
  10. Comparative Xenophobia, part I.  And oldie from 2013, which probably continues to get hits thanks to being featured on the old Max Fisher WashPo page.   The only post on this top ten list that actually is focused on what I have studied.  My old work on ethnic conflict is hip again thanks to both catastrophic separatist referenda (Brexit) and the rise of xenophobia.  This piece focused on a newspaper report about academic work, and I used it to discuss how identity is complex.
Should I be troubled that few of my posts on my areas of research--civ-mil relations, alliances, and ethnic conflict--get heaps of hits?  Maybe. While I think that stuff is important, it is clear that those issues resonate locally.  That sexual harassment got half of the top spots?  Probably not as #metoo and all that remains quite important and resonates broadly.  My advice to academics, especially younger ones, tends to get more play.  Whether it is good advice or gets heeded?  No idea.

The honorable mentions do include more of a mix: Trump Rules, Finding Co-Authors, Don't Get a Phd, Rules for Writing One's CV, Why Do We Care about Ethnic Outbidding, Civil-Mil Relations and Trump's Ego, Canada Should Look East?

As I said, I will not change what I do in light of this--I will still write about civ-mil often since that is my research focus and US foreign policy as that is what I am teaching this winter/spring.  Will I write less about sexual harassment?  Probably not, as it is not going away, alas. Will I write less about Trump?  Maybe, as it is exhausting and I am exhausted.

Thanks again for reading my musings, half-baked as they are. And, yes, full of typos. 

Wednesday, December 19, 2018

US and Syria: WTF?

So, Trump is now pulling US troops out of Syria.  Yeah, the US had something like 2k troops there.  To do what?  Ah, there's the rub.  I will explain below as I respond to those who responded to my hottake:

Before responding to those who responded to this, why this take?  For several reasons, but most importantly, for the US to stay in some spot, there should be, like, an argument for that.  That is, the default should not be "stay" but go.  There should be a positive reason--that the troops are doing something that is important.  Even if they are not making progress, it might be ok to stay--holding the line, keeping an important commitment, etc can be reasonable reasons to stay.  I am not thrilled with the Afghanistan forever war, but it is easier to make claims about the virtues of sticking around.  The government there is one that the US and its friends have built and supported, that the government's policies may not be perfect but are better than what they would be without an American presence, that it gives the US some influence over the terms of the eventual negotiated settlement (that the presence of US troops makes far more likely).

In this US, we get the blob, the DC consensus, arguing folks need to stay (and do more, whatever more is) because they have intellectual investments in US intervention or they want to avoid being blamed when shit goes badly after we left (see Obama).  In Canada, I am convinced that it still has troops in Iraq mostly to defend the Liberals from the opposition accusing the Liberals of cutting and running (which is rich, given the Conservatives pulled Canada out of Kandahar three years before everyone else pulled out).  Again, the forever war machine is all about fear--of being blamed.

Ok, onto the questions/criticisms:

Sara is a pal and is super-smart, so I wade into twitter argument with her warily.  But, um, haven't the Russians already won?  That is, if their goal was to keep Assad in place, they have won.  If the joint goal is to reduce ISIS to an insurgency rather than a quasi-state, haven't we all won?

My response:
Iran matters, Saudi Arabia matters, but what does withdrawal from Syria do to all of this?  My basic answer is not much.

Onto another smart scholar, one who I have never met but has become a regular twitter correspondent over the course of 2018:

Regarding the first question, sure, why not?  If it is an independent action--that it does not teach the doer to repeat doing similar things for the wrong reasons.  If the action does good or if it does not do much harm.  I am tempted to summon the evil god of Equifinality--that there are multiple causal pathways to an action--and what matters most is the outcome.

Which gets to the second question--what matters more--actions or messages?  Well, since I tend to drink from the waters of confirmation bias, I would argue that messages will always be read by the reader in ways that confirm their previous views, so the precedent set by the US leaving a place because the President is an ignoramus will be minimal.  Actions?  They matter although they get read in ways that confirm people's biases as well, but they have budgetary impacts (troops based in US are cheaper than in Syria) and impacts on people's lives (the soldiers will not be in harm's way at home).  What impact do the troops have in Syria?  Let me know what that is before suggesting that they stick around.

Again, what is the right end state?  A democratic Syria?  Two thousand troops are not going to get us there.  Assad gone?  Again, nope.  Save the Kurds from the Turks?  Hmmm, maybe, but not really an endstate.  Deny Russia an ally in the region?  See Assad sticking around.

Some other dynamics here that haven't been brought up:
  • This is something Trump has wanted to do for some time, but he got slow-rolled by the Pentagon which now has to develop quickly policies to figure this out.  Folks have cheered this on, but, well, that sucks for civilian control of the military.  Many have been rooting for lots of shirking lately, and that ain't great.  So, back to Dr. J: which matters more--stopping a US departure or respecting the chain of command?
  • Holy holes in government, Batman!!!  Apparently, there was a State Department press release about the long term US commitment to Syria.  Ooops.
Anyhow, these are tough questions and Syria is the land of bad policy options.  But sticking around to avoid making hard decisions is just a way to waste money and risk the lives of American troops unless there is a good reason to stick around.

The Year in Semi-Spew, 2018

Every year, either to defer grading or to celebrate the end of grading, I look back at the year and I how blogged it.  This year continues a trend--I have blogged less each year since my second (and first full year) of blogging.  So, have I had much less to say?  No, I think I have about as much to spew as usual.  However, I find myself reposting old spews often since I often repeat myself one way or another.  Plus this year was a very busy one, in mostly good ways, so that cut into blogging time and attention.  I make no promises about next year except to keep on keeping on. 

Tuesday, December 18, 2018

Comparison as the Thief of Joy: Military Spending Edition

The quote "comparison is the thief of joy" is all about envy, right?  Because the comparative method has given much joy to me over the years and much career success.  Plus my students loved my comparing of apples and oranges.

Anyhow, I saw this figure today and I could not help but think comparatively:

Monday, December 17, 2018

Social Media Etiquette from ... Me?

Today reminded me that there is much unstated expectations about how to behave online, and, yes, it may be strange coming from me that there are indeed norms or etiquette.

I once long ago suggested that my behavior is different on twitter vs. facebook, but that more or less converged.  Still, I treat that stuff differenly than I how I do Slack and differently from how I do email.  So, here's a semi-random list of things I have been reminded of the past couple of days and other stuff that comes to mind:
  • When someone asks to connect via email to someone else, ask that someone else first rather than just email the two (or more parties).  I learned this particular rule this week after I violated it--I hadn't realized it was a thing.
  • Don't tag 30 people every time you post on twitter or facebook.  If people follow you, they follow you, and if they don't they don't.  Only tag a bunch of people if you are promoting them.  Yes, I do link to my blog on facebook, but I don't tag anyone unless they inspired the post or I am building on something they said.
  • Don't live tweet an event unless you either ask permission or it is something that is clearly being publicized.  If the organizers promote an event-specific hashtag or if the press are present or it is being televized, I count that as consent.  A job talk?  Nope.
  • Don't DM people on twitter your tweets. Again, if they follow you, they will probably see it.  People tend to consider their DM space like their email space--something for those who are invited. Pretend you are a vampire and only enter if they invite you in and only come bearing that which they expect--not unsolicited tweets.  Which kills this vampire analogy.
  • Don't complain if other people curse.  Indeed, if you don't like someone's twitter style, don't follow them
  • And if you want to debate academics, see this guide by Phil Lagassé
  • Update: I forgot a related rule--it is perfectly reasonable to use twitter's virtual connections to introduce yourself to someone you have not met before.   

I will probably come up with more as other suggest stuff that I missed.  But most of this is just stuff that came up in the past few days.

Sunday, December 16, 2018

It Wouldn't Be A Wonderful Life But It Would Be Better

SNL had a sketch last night that took It's a Wonderful Life and applied it to Trump--that if he had lost the Presidency, everyone would be happier, including a divorced Melania (was that the part that got him to tweet about show?).  With us approaching two years of this stuff and my teaching US Foreign Policy again in a few weeks, it may be time to ponder how things would be different.

Before I start, the first thing to keep in mind is that no one would have this timeline in mind, no one could imagine how incredibly awful it would be, so plenty of folks would be upset at the HRC administration, not realizing the dark path they avoided.  The space-time continuum is like that.

To be clear, much would be the same as the President has only so much agency.  I would think the economy would not be that different, except it would not be overheating due to a giant tax cut--we'd probably have had a shutdown or sequestration--and there would be no tariff wars with allies or China.  So, soybean farmers would be bitter about Trump losing, not realizing what they would have lost.

Let's start there: relations with China would not be that different as HRC would be having the same kind of ongoing tension as Obama did, without China thinking that HRC was as much of a paper tiger as Trump.  There would be no tariff war, and HRC would be trying to get China to help with North Korea and probably failing.

Russia?  That is the one thing that is certain--relations would be much, much worse.  HRC would know what the Russians did, as she would actually read the intel reports.  We might actually have seen a concerted executive effort (but not legislative) to deal with Russian interference in the election.

Saudi Arabia?  Probably not that different--the elites of both parties have been too forgiving of the Saudis.  Certainly no orb petting, and no, the Saudis would not have been given the greenlight to target Qatar.  But the US would have been supporting the war in Yemen, as Obama did.  So, not great, Roberta.

Europe?  While HRC would not be as popular as Obama, there would not be much tension with Merkel, Macron, and even May.  It would mostly be business as usual as HRC tried not to let Brexit damage US relations with the continent.  There would be some fussing about 2% and NATO, but it would not be the obsession of every summit.  It would be the occasional annoyance it always has been.  The G-7s would get much less coverage as there would be much less expected drama.  NATO would not be doing much differently, it would just have more confidence that the US would show up.

Syria?  Damned if I know.  It would still be a mess, and the US would still be involved.  HRC was not going to leave Syria.  

Canada?  Trudeau and his team might be wishing that they still had the bromance that was Justin and Barak, but there would have been no USMCA.  There might have been some tweaks to NAFTA, but not much.  The relationship would be fine if not effusive.

There would be few kids in cages and no Muslims bans.  The far right would have been empowered not by Trump's incitement but by his loss and their joint bitterness at HRC governing.

Sessions would not have been AG, nor any of the arsonists.  HRC would have probably picked a few compromised individuals so she would appear to be corrupt compared to Obama's perfect record and not compared to Trump's supremely awful record.  But the agencies would not be burning down.  State would have had good folks filling spots up and down rather than being a carcass.  DoD would have had non-military folks running the place including perhaps Michelle Flournoy as SecDef.   While the HRC administration would be occupied with its war with the GOP, the administration itself would be fairly functional.

People would be talking about crises in US civil-military relations, because HRC might be saying no to some military initiatives, maybe making some hard choices AND no one would know what it would be like under Trump. 

The GOP would have done well in the midterms as the party of the President always suffers, and we would have had two years of constant struggle between Congress and the President.  They probably would have let her have Garland appointed to SCOTUS or someone like Garland, since a permanent ban of Democratic appointees to the court might have been beyond the pale.  But maybe not.  We might have had two years of eight Justices instead.  There would have been no Kavanaugh battle as Kennedy probably would not have retired.

So, while much would have been better, the Democratic Party would probably be worse off.  Sanders and his folks would still be yammering loudly, and there would not have been a mass mobilization of talented folks seeking office at all levels.

Would it be a wonderful life?  No.  The partisan rancor would be intense.  HRC would have faced tough questions about how much to prosecute Trump and his gang, given that she might not want to appear to be punishing her political opponent.  But the US government would be functioning in between shutdowns, and our allies would not be in a permanent state of uncertainty and bitterness.  It would be better than it is, but it would not have been fun.  On the other hand, fewer kids in cages, the White House would not be operated by white supremacists, homophobia would not have the executive branch as an ally, and misogyny would not be the policy of the President.

And, yes, news cycles would be slower, twitter would be less relevant, and we would spend entire days and even maybe weeks not thinking about the President of the US.  And that would be wonderful.

Friday, December 14, 2018

About that Primacy Thing

Given many of my posts, one might think that I am not a Realist.  In some ways, I am and, in many ways, I am not.

I am writing this because I saw a tweet thread about "primacy" that was, um, greatly annoying.

This one thread reminds me how I am and am not a Realist.  Reading Ken Waltz's Theory of International Politics in grad school changed my career because I found his take (and I realized Later John Herz's, etc) on the security dilemma to be compelling.  I didn't need to study arms races because I found this simple idea--that the unilateral effort by a country to improve its security will threaten its neighbors/adversaries who will then respond in kind, leaving the first country worse off.  This idea made so much sense to me.  Yes, lots of folks have revised it, questioned it, developed it, but for my view of IR, Waltz said it and I buy it.

So, the pursuit of primacy is a bad idea because it will antagonize other states, make them redouble their efforts, causing the state pursuing primacy to expend yet more resources and yet find itself being ever more challenged and losing its advantage.

However, structural realism a la Waltz is indeterminate--multipolarity may be worse than bipolarity (I am not so sure) but it isn't always going to be the Germans and Japanese.  Brand includes this tweet:

Um, Japan is not the same country it was in 1936 and Germany is not what it was in 1939.  Domestic political institutions and dynamics matter greatly.  I am not worried about these countries becoming authoritarian regimes that seek to gobble up the neighbors.  I am worried that the US is becoming an authoritarian regime that will ... give up its role as a key stabilizer in international relations.

And, for those fans of Neo-Classical Realism, I am not one of you.  While I see some key Realist logics about the nature of IR, I find myself more persuaded by the roles played by interests and institutions at both levels.  I need to read more NCR, but the stuff I have read thus far makes me think that it is oxymoronic--neither classical nor realist.  That synthesis paves the way to incoherence.  But that is a fight for another day.

Anyhow, when anyone pushes for American primacy, remember that the US got into this position by accident--the collapse of the USSR.  It was fun while it lasted (well, sometimes), but maintaining it requires lots of things to happen that aren't going to happen.  So, rather than pursuing it, the US should get used to the basic realities of International Relations--one can be first among equals, but the quest to dominate ends in horror and tears.

Thursday, December 13, 2018

The Trump Rules

Trump sadly has been president for enough time that we can identify the rules of Trump Dynamics:
  1. Whenever Trump accuses someone of something, it is because this is how he would behave--it is all projection.  He is an awful person so he thinks everyone else is awful, too, and then blames their behavior on what would be motivating him in that position.
  2. Whenever Trump uses a number, it is wrong.  Because you have to read and pay attention to learn the specific value of things.  So, any number, especially ten, is going to be wrong.
  3. If there is money involved, it has been used/distributed/etc in some way, there will be something sketchy involved.  The stories of late about where the Trump inauguration money went inspired this rule, but we should have known this when the Trump Foundation news was reported by David Fahrenthold in the lead up to the election.  
  4. If Trump appoints someone, they will be awful--incompetent, evil, or both.
  5. Trump will not take responsibility--the buck stops somewhere else, always.
  6. The brand is everything--so, anything to erase the brand of others and replace with one related to him.  NAFTA didn't change much, but now it has a new name, USMCA, so Trump erased Obama's brand and replaced it with his own.
  7. If there is an opportunity for Trump to say something inappropriate, he will do so.
  8. And, yes, like the second law of Thermodynamics, everything trends towards entropy.
I am sure there are other rules, but as I started another one, I realized it was a combo of 1 and 4.  What have I forgotten?

Myth-Busting Trends in IR, Finally Published

Other than my books, I think I have blogged about one particular article (open access, pre-publication version here) more than any other: a piece that examines whether the gods of IR are correct that their kind is disappearing.  It finally moved from "First View" or "Early View" to Published, appearing in the December 2018 issue of International Studies Review!

Of all the stuff I have written, this has the clearest origins.  John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt circulated a working paper that argued that increased professionalism via the focus on citation counts had led to the demise of grand theory and the rise of hypothesis testing.  I reacted rather strongly to that piece via blogpost.  The irony is that their piece produced a series of testable hypotheses, which were begging to be tested.  And so I did, with the help of TRIP data about what is published (a dataset on IR articles), about attitudes (their surveys of what people think about the field and teach), and citations.

What did I find?  That grand IR theory, however defined, was never something that lots of scholars did. Rather it has always been something that only a small percentage of the IR professors did, it was only a small percentage of what appeared in the major journals, and that it peaked in the mid-90s.  So, when people think that there has been a decline, there really has mostly been a regression to the mean and that maybe prospect theory applies here--people perceive a loss due to a particular reference point and then, well, overreact to that reference point.* 

*The problem with this hypothesis is that certain of these folks were wildly overreacting to their losses when they were at the peak of their powers.
To be clear, this was not just the misperception of M&W but of the field as surveys of attitudes tended to show that folks think of Realism, Liberalism, and Constructivism dominate the literature even though much of what is written is "non-paradigmatic."

I also busted a related myth.  One could also read their piece as being a screed against quantitative work, but only in recent years are the numbers of quantitative articles starting to exceed (but not erase) the numbers of qualitative pieces in the major journals.

I also addressed the concern raised that the "professionalization" provides disincentives to do grand theory.  In the piece, M&W suggest essentially that to get hired and promoted, one needs more citations (which might be true), as opposed to the past where some other force mattered more (their original paper referred to a lamentation of the end of the Old Boys Network, Ido Oren in his piece more directly laments the days where a phone call to/from Waltz or Keohane was all that mattered--my piece also targets some of his assertions about funding).  The data on citation counts shows that actually grand theory stuff gets more citations, so not so much of a disincentive, eh?

I argue but do not really test that other stuff led to some trends and changes--mobilization by specific groups in the discipline to create more journals, more sections of conferences and ultimately more outlets for more different kinds of stuff.  That the discipline of IR is may be more diverse now not because the structure imposed constraints and incentives on the agents, but that the agents (individual scholars organizing collectively) did stuff to change the structure.  Lots of implied irony in this piece.  The funny thing is that Mearsheimer and Walt were participants in one of those efforts--the perestroika movement to diversity the American Political Science Review, which led to a new journal.

Another reason to discuss this piece is that its journey shows that publication ain't easy but tenacity can win the day.  It got desk rejected twice, including at the journal that published the special issue where the original piece appeared.  At ISR, it was R&R'ed four times!  Part of that was my fault for misreading the instructions of the editors, and part of that was just the way the editorial process played out.  But I wanted to note this as I see on twitter people want to know more about survivor bias (which I definitely have).

I used to scoff at time spent navel-gazing at the discipline, but that was mostly efforts to re-rank one's one department.  Now, I do some of this navel-gazing because I do think perceptions matter, and it is better to bust myths to counter arguments about how things were better in the good old days.  I am firmly convinced that the profession of IR is better, stronger, more interesting, more relevant than it once was. But then again, I think diversity is a good thing.  Maybe as some in that special EJIS volume argue we no longer talk to each other as much, that the common conversation has suffered.  I think we can figure out ways to improve the conversation without squelching dissent and without returning to a mythical ideal past.

Wednesday, December 12, 2018

Applying for Phd Programs: The Big Question

I saw this tweet today, and I felt an urge to spew:

Each year, I get emails from random aspiring grad students and so do my peers.  Many think that I/we hold the key to getting admitted to our programs.  Nope, not in most of the US and Canada.  Maybe elsewhere, but for most US/Canadian poli sci/IR programs, there are committees and admissions directors, and most faculty are not on them.  Yet there is a belief that one wants to nail down a supervisor before arriving.  Partly the applications are to blame since they generally ask who would want to work with. 

To be clear, no one should bet their career on a single individual that they aspire to work with before they arrive.  As Paul suggests, supervisors might leave. They may die, they may hate you.  They may... be a lousy supervisor.

Here's the thing--having a big name in the field or even a medium name is mostly not correlated with how good of a supervisor they are.  One makes one's name mostly on the basis of quality and quantity and impact of research, not on how well one's students do.  Eventually, the word may get out for some folks---that their students are well-trained and successful--but unless you are at someplace that is plugged in, you may not learn who those people are.  Also, it is not always clear that even in those cases the supervisor has much of a role in that.  It really depends on stuff that is un-knowable from outside:
  • Does the potential supervisor sexually harass his or her students?
  • Does the potential supervisor let others do most of the supervising and then take credit for the outcomes?
  • Does the potential supervisor give little feedback so that many of his/her students flail and fail but those that succeed make the supervisor look great?  I mean, darwinian processes often produce super adaptations.
  • Does the potential supervisor have great students because the program does a great job of selecting students and then training them well?
The only way to learn who is and who is not a good supervisor is to go to a graduate program and spend time there and talk to other students.  They will not tell you much of the truth in a one day open house. Alas, the best way to learn is to enter the program and keep one's eyes and ears open.  And then select a supervisor that works for your personality.  It is not just about interests and expertise but compatibility.  At least, that's my opinion.  Grad school is too long and too painful to deliberately chose a supervisor that is going to lead to a painful process.  And, in my mind, that relationship is not just for a couple of years but a lifetime contract

One other aspect: one's training takes place both within the confines of the superviser-advisee relationship and beyond.  Classes, training, comps all involve other people.  So, the best way to manage all of this is to go to a program that has the best combo of depth and breadth in one's area of interests (big interests like field, not specific interests like one's research question) so that you can survive and thrive if your adviser leaves or if the one you expect to work with ends up truly sucking.  I am suggesting that one be strategic--figure out as best you can the available choices, and pick the program that offers the least risks and the greatest gains.  Whether you choose to maximize potential gains or minimize risks when there are tradeoffs is up to you.   But being aware of the tradeoffs is key.

And always, always only go to a PhD program in the US or Canada if the program offers you a four or five year deal that provides semi-adequate funding.

Tuesday, December 11, 2018

Happy phd-versary

As I was moving stuff around my home office, I glanced at my PhD, and realized today is my Phd's anniversary:*

*  Yes, Pete Wilson, a Republican who helped turn California into a Blue state due to the failed effort to use xenophobia for political purposes, signed my PhD as governor.  Pretty perfect given my research interests.

I have been Ph-D-ing for 25 years. Looking back, I find that those five years have made such a deep impact on me, in many ways more so than college (other than that finding a life-partner thing).  How I think about the world, how I think about my profession, how I think about comprehensive exams, how I teach graduate students, how I miss San Diego, how I eat Mexican food, how I think about pets since we got my favorite dog there, how I remember bachelor parties (or try to), etc, so much of that comes from those five years.

I have never felt that having a Phd means one is brilliant or smart.*  Just perseverant and, as the degree says, able to do original research.  The hard parts of getting a PhD are: coming up a question that is feasible to answer and that has not been answered satisfactorily before, figuring out one's approach to it, writing it all up (the actual doing of research is not so hard, I think), and responding well to critical feedback.  Our profession tends to assume that if you can do this once, you can do it again and again, which makes the PhD the basic minimum to profess at most places.  While that may not be true, the reverse is: if you can't pull off an original research project in graduate school, where one has a supervisor and hopefully a supportive cohort and role models, you almost certainly can't do it elsewhere, especially if you have other major commitments.
*  And yes, I find it incredibly annoying that the intellectual arms race depicted on superhero shows and elsewhere has the smart person in the room having many more PhDs than anyone else.  More PhDs is not more brilliant, just more unrealistic.  Sorry, Mr. Fantastic, and sorry, Felicity Smoke.
Getting back to that original question thing, I remember it was once very hard to think of an original question.  What I proposed in my application to grad school did not survive impact with grad school classes--something to do with arms races, as Ken Waltz and the security dilemma satisfied my curiosity on that stuff.  I did start thinking really big--about the meaning of sovereignty--what matters more the norms about the inviolability of boundaries or the independence of governments? Is the IR of secession distinct from the IR of revolution?  I ended up focusing on the former since I found the work in that area to be unsatisfying.  I never got back to the big question, although I recently got invited to join a project that might just get me back to that.

Anyhow, once I had that one question, I was able to pursue it, but, at first, I had a hard time thinking what to do next, which was not great for job talks as "what is the next project" is always asked.  Eventually, I started being able to see lots more questions, so many that I have left many of those on the shelf.  Having different experiences, like the year on the Joint Staff, have produced questions in completely different areas.  My dissertation did haunt me for a good fifteen years after grad school, but I never really focused on the same part of the world or on the same issues.  My questions kept taking me further and further away from where I started, leaving me a jack of many trades (and a reviewer of many areas) and a master of none.

I might have been more productive if I had stuck with the same stuff--no need for additional literatures to master and reviewers to persuade--but I have always been driven by my curiosity and not by what was strategically sound for my career.  It has worked out wonderfully for me even though I had no grand plan, no imagination of living in Texas or Canada, no expectation to be working on alliances or civil-military relations.

And, yes, I have survivor bias, as others who were similarly unstrategic may not have survived the Darwinian job markets of the past 25 years.  So, I am not sure I am a great role model for how to build a career.  All I really know is this: I got into this business because I am a very, very curious person, and this profession allows me to pursue my curiosity wherever it goes.  It does not allow me to choose where to live with complete freedom, but it does allow me to study what I want for as long as I want.  And yes, to talk about whatever I want for as long as anyone wants to hear me.

Could I imagine doing anything else?  Well, in grad school, when I had doubts about doing this stuff, I would ponder being a firefighter or a policeman or some other fantasy from when I was a kid.  Because maybe I knew that there was no other way for me than this way.  Sure feels like that now.  Either that or I have a crappy imagination about what else I could have done.

So, on this 25th anniversary of my PhD, all I can do is be grateful for the badge that allows me to do what I am best suited for and what I enjoy the most--thinking, reading, teaching, talking, and, yes, writing. 

Monday, December 10, 2018

Dumb or Dumberer? Pondering Trump

I was carpooling to a game of ultimate last night, and my teammate asked me whether Trump is really as dumb as he appears to be.  This is before he tweeted about there being no smocking gun.  The example I used to illustrate Trump's, um, intellectual limitations is that he fired his Chief of Staff without having a replacement lined up.

Now people might say, sure, Trump is not a details guy, that he is ignorant about many things, but he is really quite clever.  He did win a presidential election!  He is a billionaire!  He can't be that dim.  I will agree that Trump has some talents:
  • self-promotion--he has always been good about establishing a brand even if, well, it is toxic
  • applause-lines--he figures out what works and hits that applause line again and again.  
  • hiring arsonists--he has an uncanny instinct to hire people who like to burn down their agencies.
  • destruction--he sure has an ability to lay waste.  Using nicknames to diminish his opponents, ripping people off, etc.
I would say that his success says more about the system than the man.  Trump won because of timing, much help (both legit and not so much), and many other factors explored here.  But let's consider  how he has President-ed.
  • Trump has no big achievements despite his party controlling both houses of Congress and with much party discipline (unlike when the Dems have both houses).  
    • His party got to shove through a wildly unpopular tax cut.  Not his idea.
    • He got two SCOTUS seats filled because GOP kept an opening and then another one (GOP) retired.
    • He rebranded a bunch of things that did not change things much but were costly to negotiate (NAFTA 1.07/USMCA).
  • Trump has not expanded his popularity beyond his base.  It is always easy to play to one's base--it takes smarts, effort, and strategery to get support beyond it.  With the help of Fox and heaps of koolaid, Trump doesn't even have to persuade his base since they buy the lies due to a distorted reality.
  • Turmoil in staff might not be a bad sign if it was productive.  But what has multiple chiefs of staff, three National Security Advisers.
I am going to have to re-think my D&D attributes scores for Trump as he may really be dumber than I thought.  No, typos are not built into this calculation as I have many twitter types, even if no covfefes or smocking guns.  Just that he does not think--he just reacts from his gut. Yeah, it says something bad that he has blundered his way to the top, but that is not new for him.  His businesses failed, yet his brand went on.  Mostly, I think, because society needed a crass 1970s moron to make fun of. 

So, is Trump dumb or is he just clever enough to fool folks?  The old SNL skit of Reagan does not apply, I am sorry.

Sunday, December 9, 2018

A General View About Generals

I believe Kori Schake wrote that one benefit of Trump appointing so many retired (and one active) general to key positions in the administration is that it might cause the public to be a bit more critical of American military leadership--that they will no longer idealize military leaders.  Have we gotten there yet?

With John Kelly finally on his way out, maybe, some folks are saying how he and his reputation have been diminished by being a part of the Trump administration.  Because of how much awful stuff has happened since Kelly became Chief of Staff, people are forgetting what an enthusiastic xenophobe he was as head of Department of Homeland Security.  Remember how ICE and CBP behaved when the Muslim ban was originally instituted?  Yeah, that is on Kelly.  When Kelly was appointed, my friends in the national security community who knew of Kelly's reputation as a general were not pleased.  Kelly might have had more opportunities to do awful things as part of a Trump Administration, but he was picked because he was awful.

Flynn?  The Obama Administration got rid of Flynn because he was and is very, very flawed. It is not as if Flynn showed up in Trump world and was corrupted. No, he was corrupt (an agent of two governments) before he was named National Security Adviser.

HR McMaster was more widely respected, although I had heard from folks inside DC that he was not only poorly prepared to operate in the beltway but tended to have such strong beliefs about things that he would word-smith documents that disagreed with his point of view.

Mattis?  People still pour lots of wishful thinking into the SecDef, hoping that he will protect the country and the world from Trump's instincts.  Maybe he has, but he has also acted much less like a SecDef and much more like a Marine General--minimizing press access and delegating way too much power to the commanders.  One example of the latter: the US has dropped more bombs on Afghanistan in the past year apparently than in any other year since 2008 (thanks Bombshell podcast).  One of the truisms about the US military--they don't want to fight any new wars but want to escalate any war they are currently in--seems to be playing out.

People might think that the up-or-out competitive process within the US armed forces leads to the best people becoming generals and admirals.  That depends on whether that competitive process rewards functional or dysfunctional behavior and thinking.  Does kick down, kiss up strategy work?  If so, then you might just get very flawed senior leadership.  I don't think all generals and admirals are awful.  I don't think all generals and admirals are wonderful.  I think most are decent human beings, but indecent ones (Kelly, Flynn) are perhaps not as unique as people think. 

The question now is whether Americans will become more critical of their military leadership. What I mean by critical is to be open-minded and willing to assess the behavior and outcomes, rather than blindly accepting anyone with stars on their shoulders as brilliant and wise.  To be fair, the US military has been asked to do things that they do poorly--build governments and nations.  But the stuff they are supposed to do well--sail without running into other ships, for instance--is not so hot these days.  I can't blame American military leadership for all of the problems associated with the Forever Wars, but they do have some responsibility.  All I ask is that we as citizens take some responsibility, too, by taking seriously what each of these senior officers adds and/or subtracts. 

Why Tariffs Suck Mightily

Once again, I caveat that I don't study International Political Economy, but have opinions and such anyway, partly because I voyaged through some of that stuff as I studied for my PhD comprehensive exams and partly because I taught a smidge of it in my intro to IR classes.

Why do tariffs suck?  My brother asked about this, so I thought I would give it a shot here. 

First, they are a tax.  They artificially raise the price of a good or service (seems mostly on goods since we care more about protest manufacturing jobs) so as to make domestically produced goods more competitive.  Anyone who opposes taxes should oppose tariffs, but, well GOP hypocrisy is nothing new.  The question with any tax, from my point of view, is whether a tax is progressive or regressive--who bears more of the burden: the relatively well off or the relatively less well off.  For tariffs, it depends, I guess, on what the tariff is on and how the costs get passed on (more on that in a second).  Anyhow, first, tariffs are taxes.

Second, as a tax, they make stuff more expensive without changing the value--so they are inflationary.  We have gotten so used to low inflation that we have forgotten that inflation is bad for people with fixed incomes and people with low incomes.  Given that we have not had much wage growth for what? Thirty years?  Not good.

Third, more importantly, tariffs make stuff more expensive, so people have less money for other stuff.  Here's the fun thing: it allows domestic producers to raise their prices to just below the level of the tariff, so they get to capture some profits.  Woot?  Depends on where those profits go.  See aforementioned wage stagnation reference.  The classic stat I remember from long ago was that various protections on steel jobs in the 1980s cost something like $200,000/job saved.  Guess what?  Steel workers were not getting $200k....

Fourth, as Milner reminds us, much of what we buy includes foreign parts, so raising the prices of inputs via tariffs increases the costs of other stuff, making them less competitive on world markets, such as .... cars made in the US these days.  Seems like Trump wants to undo every Obama legacy, including saving the auto industry.  Think about it: a Honda made somewhere else with European or Asian steel will cost less than a Honda made in the US with more expensive steel (either American or foreign with tariffs added).  So, tariffs may help one industry but harm others. 

Fifth, reciprocity is a core reality in International Relations for good or ill--countries respond to what one does.  So, other countries put tariffs on American goods, making them less competitive in European and Asian markets.  How are soybean farmers doing these days?  Oh wait, the US government can pay off some of these folks.  Sure, who gets these payments?  Everyone who is harmed or those who are politically relevant to those in power?  Markets may not be perfect (indeed, they need to be regulated to soften shocks), but political payoffs to the losers of tariffs is kind of a dumb way to deal with international trade.  Instead, maybe invest money to train people in industries that are harmed by international trade, and, more importantly these days, automation?

Six, comparative advantage is a thing.  Yes, some countries will out-compete the US because they have cheaper labor, weaker regulations, natural endowments, etc.  We can't expect the US to have tariffs on those areas where the US is at a disadvantage and other countries not do the same.  The comparative advantage logic, if allowed to play out, allows us all to get more stuff for lower prices and higher quality than if we all just relied on our own domestic producers.  Yeah, it causes economic pain to some sectors.  The reality is this: that pain is concentrated in some sectors while the rest of society benefits.  Which is why it is natural politically to have high tariff (and non-tariff barriers): politicians pay more attention to the small groups with much pain than the larger groups where the pain is spread out.  In a democracy, um, that ain't good.  So, again, the question is how to deal with the pain experienced by the small groups.  Tariffs are a crappy way to deal with such pain.  

I have forgotten other dynamics and issues.  It is the case that international trade can lead to races to the bottom--deregulation, low wages--but it probably also has something to do with the fact that there is less absolute poverty in the world now than ever before.  Oh, and folks getting more income to work can ultimately lead to more pressure to improve labor regs and environmental policies.  For instance, the legitimacy of the Chinese government now hinges more than ever on whether people can breathe. 

There are tradeoffs involved, there is no perfect solution, but here's iron law of policy in the 21st century: if Trump is doing it, it is almost certainly dumb and self-destructive.

Wednesday, December 5, 2018

Gender Violence and the CAF

I went to an event today on Gender Violence and the Canadian Armed Forces.  Why?  Because it was co-run by two organizations--Women in International Security Canada and the Conference of Defence Associations Institute--that are key partners in the Canadian Defence and Security Network and because personnel issues are one of five key themes that the CDSN will focus on (if we manage to get funding).  Going to events like this allow me to catch up a bit with the stuff in an area that is relevant but mostly adjacent to my research.  That is, stuff I am interested in, but don't have time to read.  Like the IUS-Canada conference in October (another partner), I am struck by the intelligence of the folks in the room AND the challenge facing the CAF, DND and pretty much everyone else.

I was also struck by how few men were there.  A room of about 30 folks had four men plus one of the organizers.  A male speaker dropped out due to illness.  My tweeting of this led to much conversing online.  Yeah, men tend to see gender as a woman's issue for which they have little time.  However, toxic masculinity is toxic for men, too, as the raw numbers show more men being sexually assaulted in the CAF than women.  That might be an artifact of the percentages--that there are far more men than women in the military--but the reality is that men pay a price for this.  Also, much sexual harassment may be aimed not so much at the immediate target--a woman--but towards the other men, that men prove their manliness to other men by picking on women.

The first speaker was Dr. Manon Leblanc, a scientist at the Director General Military Personnel Research and Analysis (yes, another CDSN partner).  Her focus was on the effort to gather data--what the various surveys caught, what they missed, and the next wave of research.  The findings were largely unsurprising: LGB face more discrimination/assault/harassment (no T in this due to small number of trans gender personnel filling out the surveys).  More work needs to address the behavior of bystanders and more interviews with the targets of abuse.  There was some Q&A and discussion about the best way to describe those who face sexual misconduct--victim, survivor, target, affected personnel.  Which led to a larger conversation of how much of the work talks past each other due to different jargon.  People preferred not to use victim as that is problematic, with target fitting in with military language better.

The next speaker was Lieutenant Commander (retired) Rosemary Park, Director of Servicewomen's Salute. This is perhaps the only organization that represents female veterans as a group in Canada.  She pointed out that we have had repeated crises and not much apparent improvement.  That there has been no little change in the organizational culture.  She did refer to a new documentary coming out next year, Invisible Force, that presents the women who have come out and reported their experiences as targets of sexual assault. (here's the trailer) I will definitely be considering that doc for my Civ-Mil class next fall.

After lunch, which was nicely designed to facilitate some good follow-up discussions/networking, Commodore Rebecca Patterson, Director-General of the CAF Strategic Response Team-Sexual Misconduct discussed her job, her office and her background.  I met her during lunch--she is quite impressive.  She articulated quite well the challenge facing her and what the role of the chain of command is in all of this.  She indicated that they welcomed the Auditor Gener  al's report.  One of the key problems is that there are services for those harmed by se

xual misconduct, but people don't know how to access them--that there are still too many barriers and silos.  She said that the CAF will have a strategic plan in October 2019.  This might seem slow since this stuff got priority after the Deschamps Report in 2015, but she did hit one of my favorite notes--that we need to focus on outcomes, not just outputs. 

The last speaker, Dr. Chantal Ruel of the Sexual Misconduct Response Centre, presented the new efforts--more bilingual staff available 24/7.  Many of the calls they receive are from officers asking how to handle complaints they receive.  The hard part is that attitudes about the CAF haven't changed--that those in the military don't yet trust the CAF chain of command to handle these problems well.  So, that might depress reporting.

There was much expertise in the audience, so the questions and comments were quite good.  I didn't get a chance to ask my question as I had to go: while not all misogynists are racists or homophobes, those folks who self-identify as racists are likely to be misogynists and homophobes.  So, wouldn't getting rid of these people and sending messages that this is not to be tolerated work on multiple problems at once?  I guess what is on my mind has been stories of white supremacists in the CAF being identified but not punished and kicked out.  If that stuff is not driven out of the force, how can anyone expect progress on gender?

I did develop some sympathy with the folks on the panels doing the hard work in and around DND/CAF: that much of the effort started only in 2015.  It is unrealistic to explain cultural change quickly.  In the classic argument between my daughter and myself, the question is whether some progress should make us feel better or should we be impatient and demand more progress faster?  I guess at this point, given what is happening in the US, as long as the trend line is still positive, I can't criticize too much.  Still, the folks today all indicated that outside criticism, feedback, insights are welcome, so join in and tell me and them what the CAF and DND should be doing to make bigger, faster, more enduring improvements.

And if you want a more complete version of the conversation, check out  the live tweeting of the event on the WIIS-Canada feed

Monday, December 3, 2018

Few Fantastic Beasts

This weekend, Mrs. Spew and I saw the latest in the Harry Potter universe: Fantastic Beasts 2: The Crime that is Focusing on Grindelwald.  And I am not a fan.  See below the spoiler break if you care

Sunday, December 2, 2018

The Fundamental Requirement of Democracy

The defining aspect of democracy is that elections matter--that the incumbent party, when losing an election, leaves power.  One of the things going around since George HW Bush died is the note he left Bill Clinton, saying that he was rooting for him.  At the same time, the Republican parties in first North Carolina and now Wisconsin  and Michigan are using their lame duck sessions to gut the powers of the offices the Democrats just won.

That is, the Republicans are not taking defeat gracefully and are shifting power to those institutions that they still hold.  This is, in a word, anti-democratic.  Not just anti-Democratic Party, but hostile to the institution of democracy in the United States.  We have had much speculation over the first two years about whether the Deep State is undermining Trump, and much less attention to the reality that the GOP is undermining democracy.

And finally, after years of proclaiming there is a risk of voter fraud (#voterfraudfraud) in an effort to suppress the votes of those likely to vote Democratic (a more typical and enduring Republican effort to subvert democracy), we have a case of massive voter fraud.  In a North Carolina district, we appear to have a Republican candidate taking the absentee ballots of African-Americans and filling them out for the Republican candidate.

This is not just a Trump thing (whose campaign took illegal assistance from foreign powers, paid off women who might accuse Trump of cheating on this wife, etc), but a Republican thing.  And it is getting worse.  For a while, it was mostly just the North Carolina Republicans, but now we have Wisconsin, Michigan and probably others refusing to accept defeat.

I wouldn't worry so much if I could be sure the courts would intervene, but as Trump gets to stock up the judiciary with awful people who are partisan hacks (Kavanaugh is on the most visible example), it is not clear that these efforts to subvert democracy will be blocked.  American democracy is very much at risk, state by state, and it exacerbates the worries people have if Trump loses in 2020 but does not accept defeat.

Sometimes, we hope that lame duck sessions will produce good outcomes because politicians have less to fear. But then again, we must remember that representation is supposed to be the key to the system.  When politicians are accountable, they may do good things, but they are likely to do bad things.  Witness the GOP in Wisconsin and North Carolina.  The GOP is rotten to its core,* and there is not much non-Republicans can do about it except try to push the Republicans out of the offices they currently hold before they do even more damage.

For Democracy to work, we need at least two viable parties that accept the responsibilities that come not just with winning but with losing.  Right now, we only have one. 

* I have been meaning to write a post that provides my hot take that the electoral college is not evil, but each time I think of doing it, the GOP does something anti-democratic.  So, I will piss off people with that post on another day.

Saturday, December 1, 2018

Best Republican President of My Lifetime

George Herbert Walker Bush is the best Republican President of my lifetime.  Is that damning with faint praise?  Almost certainly.*  I would say that Bush is better than Reagan for a few reasons:
  1. Bush raised taxes when needed to address deficits, a brave act that may have cost him re-election.
  2. Bush built a global coalition (except for Jordan and the PLO if I remember correctly) to oust Iraq from Kuwait, helping to codify the norm that countries do not annex other countries until Putin started eating up pieces of Ukraine.  And he stopped there because he knew that doing more than that was a bad idea.
  3. Bush nominated David Souter to the Supreme Court, which kept Roe v Wade around for a while longer.  On the other hand, Bush named Clarence Thomas, so let's not sing too much praise on this score.
  4. Signing the Americans with Disabilities Act 
  5. Stewarding the end of the Cold War.  I am trying to figure out if he gets overrated for this, as it was extremely important, but I am not sure any non-Trump post-WWII president would have screwed it up. 
The downsides?
  1. Pardoning everyone that was responsible for Iran-Contra.  Is it ok to lie to Congress?  "Sure" seems to be the message Bush sent.
  2. Lee Atwater and the use of racism to get into office.
Not bad.  I am certainly forgetting other pro's and con's. I will say that whenever HRC's campaign said that she was the most experienced Presidential candidate in our lifetimes (or whatever), I scoffed because GHWB was clearly the most experienced nominee ever with the possible exception of the early dudes.  I don't think the degree of difficulty was as severe for Bush as it was for Obama--collapsing economy, two forever wars, an implacably hostile opposition party (Bush faced a Democratic Congress, but those guys were not so polarized that cooperation with the President or the GOP was impossible), and a national media outlet aimed to subvert him.  Thomas has had a huge, lasting impact in a direction I don't like.  Getting ADA through was not quite the fight that getting ACA through.  So, when I see folks say that GHWB was the best President of their lifetime, I have to demure.  I am still trying to figure out Obama's Presidency, but, at this time, I would still rate Obama over GHWB.  Oh, and Reagan?  Wildly overrated except for restoring American morale post-Vietnam and accommodating Soviet decline as he pushed the country to the right, making tax increases more politically unpopular, started his campaign with racist appeals, vetoed sanctions against apartheid South Africa, created huge deficits and made the recession worse than it had to be, and on and on. 

*  I am no Presidential scholar, and I haven't done any research.  It is a Saturday morning just before grading season, so I am not doing additional work for this off-the-cuff response.

Friday, November 30, 2018

USMCA: Signing a Bad Deal?

One of my friend's has a birthday and I figured out the cheapest present I could get (even after including tariffs) would be a post on any issue he wanted.  He picked USMCA or NAFTA 1.3.  Why? A) Today is the signing ceremony
B) As he knows I am not an international political economy guy, he wants me to spew on stuff I know not well.

Anyhow, today at the G-20, the leaders of the US, Canada and Mexico are signing the new(?) agreement.  More than a few Canadians are miffed as Trump has not removed the steel and aluminum tariffs that exacerbated US's trade relations with these two countries as well as China, EU, and most of the planet. 

For me, the question is: how miffed should we be? 
Well, USMCA (which makes me want to sing) is not that radical as far as I understand it (keep in mind both the caveat that I don't do IPE and it has been a busy fall so I have not followed the details closely).  Canada opens its dairy market by a very small slice, has implications for drug prices, causes Canada to match US and Europe on copyright extensions, and does not get US to lift Buy America that means Canadian firms have problems competing for procurement contracts.  Oh, and any Canadian deal with China might mean that USMCA could go poof.  The rest of NAFTA is intact including key dispute resolution mechanisms.  Hence, NAFTA 1.3 or whatever--it only has a new name because Trump has a fragile ego.  If NAFTA was mostly good (or not) for Canada before this revision, it is mostly good (or not) now.  So, despite having a mercantilist as President of the US, Canada managed to keep open most markets. Woot, eh?

But Canada didn't get the big steel and aluminum tariffs removed, and those hurt. Did they cause GM to close their factory in Oshawa?  Probably not, but they are part of the Uncertainty Engine creating more uncertainty about trade, which means companies react in a variety of ways, and few of them are good. 

Which leads to the big question: could Canada have done better? I am pretty sure Canada could have done worse.  But better?  Two key factors suggest that Trudeau and Freeland did about as well as one could hope for: asymmetry and crazy POTUS.
  • Basic international relations suggests that the weaker, more dependent actor has to accept what the stronger, less dependent actor demands (insert requisite Thucydides cite).  Asymmetric warfare is hard when you live next to the house you might want to burn down.  Canada was and is in a lousy bargaining position--China can escalate the trade war because it has both more leverage on the US AND its domestic politics give its leaders far more room to accept short term costs.
  • As Thomas Schelling taught us before I was born, the best way to bargain in a chicken game is to portray oneself as being far more willing to accept costs and, well, act crazy--burn bridges, toss the steering wheel out the window, etc.  While the Chinese can bet on Trump being a bluffer, a paper tiger, Canada had to believe that Trump is pretty crazy when it comes to trade.  He is willing to inflict costs on his own supporters as well as other countries as he seems to ignore or not understand the consequences of his actions (or realizes his supporters are cultists and don't mind their soybeans rotting in the field).  This makes him a very challenging adversary in a game of chicken.  
If one combines asymmetry with a trading partner/adversary like Trump, well, Canada was fucked.  Sorry, but there it is.  What options did Canada have? Suck up and give in? That seemed to be what some folks recommended (hey, Stephen Harper, you don't seem so tough now).  Or be tougher and not give in?  Good luck with that.

The real test of the agreement (if the US Congress ratifies, which is no certainty) is whether Trump then pushes further or if he is satisfied with his branding exercise and moves on to other ways to erase Obama's name and legacy.  Since Trump is an Uncertainty Engine, I have no idea, but I would bet on him moving on.  He has a short attention span, loves to declare victory, and can feel good about beating Trudeau even if the deal really does not change much (so Trudeau can declare victory, ssshhh).

There is one big upside in all of this: Stephanie Carvin can make a great cake

That is Jared Kushner waiting to get into a bargaining session.