The Politics Reader

Front Page: WaPo Win

2012-01-24T09:23:00.001-08:00

I know it’s been cropping up in a few places, but I thought I’d share this with everyone who reads, without comment (does it really need one?):

Romney Follows in Perry’s Footsteps, with his own “Oops” Moment…

2012-01-22T03:27:00.001-08:00

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The clip really speaks for itself, so doesn’t need much from me. One thing for sure, though, is that Rachel Maddow is absolutely right – the Democrats’ ads for the general election are being written for them by the Republicans, and definitely if Romney wins the nomination (although, there are plenty of moments for a Gingrich nomination as well). This scenario further reinforces my belief that Romney is somewhat disconnected from reality, to go alongside with his absolute political tone-deafness.

Huntsman Bows Out, Endorses… Romney…?

2012-01-17T07:44:00.001-08:00

“Today I am suspending my campaign and supporting the candidate who is best-equipped to defeat the president and return conservative leadership to the White House: Governor Mitt Romney.” – Jon Huntsman

Ok, I know American political primaries always end up doing something along these lines, but… This disappointed me a little. President Obama did the same thing – during the Democratic primary, he, Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden went after each other with gusto (themselves, or through proxies, as is the way), and yet Senator Biden became Vice President Biden, and Senator Clinton became Secretary of State Clinton (especially confusing after then-candidate Obama went after Clinton on foreign policy…).

I like Governor Huntsman, I really do (I remember writing about him in January 2009, actually, thinking he’d be a great candidate for 2016…). A good friend worked for his campaign in the North East, too, but I’ve only just recently spoken to him about it. But I think the way the Republican Party is right now is anathema to his type of politics, temperament and so forth. He could never win in this political environment, even though he is the type of politician we need in America – regardless of what you think of his politics, his demeanour and comportment is exactly that of a statesman. As Paul Waldman put it in an American Prospect online editorial,

“In order for Huntsman ’16 to have any chance, the party is going to have to move to the center between now and then or at least be open to somebody who is neither a fire-breather like this year’s other also-rans, nor the kind of panderer who will gladly don an entirely new set of ideological robes if that's what the base seems to want, as Romney has done.”

Anyway, here’s a clip from Rachel Maddow’s show last night about Huntsman’s bowing out and endorsement of Romney:

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Here’s Lawrence O’Donnell’s take on Huntsman’s Romney endorsement (only the first half is specifically about Huntsman, before the story moves on to Santorum and Gingrich):

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While I’m on the subject of Huntsman, here’s his interview with Stephen Colbert, from the October 24th episode of Colbert Report:

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I watched this with Alyssa, and both of us were confused. Is it me, or does Governor Huntsman seem to forget that he’s a Republican? He sounds almost like a Democrat…

Photo Credit: Eric Thayer/Reuters

“SOPA” – Stop Online Piracy Act

2012-01-15T10:33:00.001-08:00

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“Up! with Chris Hayes” segment on SOPA

I must admit, I’m still not entirely clear on what the issue is over this legislation, or why there’s so much push-back from a really diverse swathe of the American political and celebrity ranks. It is this push-back that’s of particular interest to me..

If what Rick Cotton says is correct – if this legislation targets only those foreign (i.e. non-US) websites who are “wholesale” devoted to peddling IPR-infringed content (for example, Pirate Bay) – then how is this a bad idea?

Cotton is very clear about who the legislation is targeted against, which leads me to suggest that there’s a little bit of shrill exaggeration coming from people who oppose the bill (born from the “any attempt to legislate anything on the internet is evil” reaction), and maybe also opposition bred from the fact that Rupert Murdoch is pro-SOPA. It seems very strange that there’s so much push-back for a bill that does, apparently, explicitly state that it’s only targeting foreign websites wholesale-devoted to the distribution of copyright-infringed data.

What have I missed?

Rolling Stone, the Generals, “The Operators”…

2012-01-13T06:53:00.001-08:00

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First off, I should state that I do really want to read The Operators – it’s a book I’ve been waiting for ever since I read the Rolling Stone article it grew out of (it was inevitable). It was an interesting and very well-written article, and certainly useful for my US foreign policy PhD. That being said, I think the reaction to the article was completely overblown. Mainly because the storm of fallout started to swirl in the US media before the general public was actually able to read the article in question. When I finally managed to get hold of the article… Well, ok, so the generals were frustrated by the execution of the war and the role of civilians in the military and armchair quarterbacking – how is this news? Even the supposed slurs against Vice President Biden, while ill-advised, were not even close to being the worst I’ve read/heard. Maybe I’m missing something, I don’t know. Regardless, it’s an interesting story, and I’m looking forward to sinking my teeth into the book.

What’s interesting is the apparent difficulty in getting this book published – I could be wrong, but I’ve seen a number of publishers attached, before seeing it change or be listed as “out of print” on Amazon. I’ll do my best to get this reviewed ASAP.

The Operators is available now from Blue Rider Press (a division of Penguin).

Thomas Frank on Maddow, GOP Economic Policy, etc.

2012-01-06T06:56:00.001-08:00

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I have just bought Thomas Frank’s new book, Pity the Billionaire, so I’ll try to get it read and reviewed as soon as possible. I’ve liked his previous books (What’s the Matter With Kansas and The Wrecking Crew), so I’m confident I’ll like his latest as well.

* * *

Update: More from Thomas Frank, this time on UP! With Chris Hayes

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I still think Chris Hayes has a way to go before he settles down into the role of host – like Melissa Harris Perry, he has a tendency to try to emulate Rachel Maddow’s style (both have stood in for Maddow in the past) – but the show’s getting better and usually features some good content.

Pure Genius from The ONION

2011-12-16T14:12:00.001-08:00

The Onion News Network – Always On, Slighty Off…

Book Signing: President Clinton, “Back To Work” in New York

2011-11-08T19:40:00.001-08:00

Just wanted to share this photo – this is one of the best book acquisitions of the year, certainly. I’m a big fan of President Clinton – reading his books, and also about his time in office. His was the first presidency that registered with me: I was only nine years old when he was elected in 1992. When I was in Los Angeles, I volunteered for his Global Initiative anniversary concert at the Hollywood Bowl (perhaps the best night of the trip out West), and today I was able to properly meet the former President – albeit, as part of a considerable queue of people in New York who lined up to buy a signed edition of his new book, Back To Work.

It’s unfortunate he didn’t have time to personalise any of the signatures, but this is still pretty awesome for me – someone who is fascinated by the presidency and the men who have held that office. Not only that, I wrote quite a bit about his presidency and foreign policy in my recently-completed thesis. In fact, as part of my conclusion, I suggest that a couple of the criticisms (from Richard Haass) of his foreign policy may, in fact, be the best way for America to approach its relations with the rest of the world: “case-by-case-ism” and “a la carte” foreign policy – it’s tied into my arguments for a more pluralistic approach to international relations.

This was well worth the two-hour wait in a line that wrapped around two sides of the block. I’ll read and review the book as soon as I get a chance, so watch this space.

In the Oeuvre of Stephen Colbert…?

2011-11-07T19:44:00.001-08:00

Sorry, yet another clip from the Rachel Maddow Show, but this one was fascinating. Rachel has been thinking about Herman Cain’s candidacy, and has come to the conclusion that it is a piece of performance art. She comes up with a compelling and amusing case, indeed, and lays it out in full:

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Now, where there’s a problem with this, is that his campaign is funded by the Koch Brothers, staffed by AFP staffers (Koch Bros-created/financed institution), and many other links betwixt the two. I just have difficulty believing that the Koch brother, who have been extremely activist when it comes to financing campaigns that ~~will give them whatever they want~~ voices agendas in line with their own, would spend so much time and money on a joke. What would be their motivation? It points to the absurdity of American politics brilliantly, so I don’t see why or how the Koch Brothers or any of Cain’s other backers would benefit from this exercise.

I do, however, think it would be fantastic if this were some kind of Republican attempt to emulate Stephen Colbert’s character-driven comedy. Frightening, but perhaps a little bit genius?

It’s not just Big Book Fantasy…

2011-11-05T16:32:00.001-07:00

… that suffers epic waits between volumes.

I came across this snippet in the latest issue of TIME magazine, and it made me chuckle enough that I thought I’d share it here (and on my other book blog). So, if you thought George R.R. Martin or Robert Jordan were taking their time, take a gander:

Romney “as consistent as a human being can be”? Seriously…?

2011-11-04T15:39:00.001-07:00

Another startling example of Romney’s inability to grasp the nature of modern technology and its ability to drag up evidence of your flip-floppery. Does he really believe this stuff, or is he just so disconnected from reality, living in a bubble of yes-men and sycophants? Or, perhaps worse, does he have memory problems?

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It’s a long clip, but the first half is about Romney, the rest is about Perry and Cain (every time I type that, I almost at a “Mc-” at the beginning). Romney’s continued disconnection from reality is troubling, seeing as he is going to be the Republican nominee (probably), and his naked ambition and willingness to sell-out on every issue to court the supposed-important, utterly nutty party base… well, I don’t think anyone should want someone who exhibits no courage of any convictions that are perceived as politically unsafe.

America does not need a president who only has the courage of his ambitions.

* * * * *

Update: Here’s another clip about Romney’s flip-flopping and anything but consistency on important conservative/political issues – this time from Lawrence O’Donnell’s Last Word, from last night’s show (Thursday 3rd):

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“You can’t wait for your freshman microeconomics textbook to come true…”

2011-11-01T09:28:00.001-07:00

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Another great one from Rachel Maddow’s October 31st show: It’s a long clip, but the first half was very good. So was the second half, but it changed the topic slightly.

This is really weird…

2011-11-01T08:59:00.001-07:00

Watching this clip on the Rachel Maddow Show, I can’t help wondering what the hell is wrong with Rick Perry during this speech:

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As Rachel says, “it is hard to talk about Perry’s campaign” after watching this. It made me think of Matthew McConaughey acting like a stoned politician. Very bizarre.

Maddow on Romney’s Foreign Policy team

2011-10-08T14:51:00.001-07:00

Just thought this was a very good clip, so I shall leave it to Rachel Maddow to enlighten you…

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Weekly Standard… What?

2011-10-08T13:19:00.001-07:00

I wanted to share a pull-quote from the latest issue of The Weekly Standard, because it has left me utterly confused, and maybe someone can explain it to me. The quote is from Matt Labash’s cover story of this issue, about the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Before I get to the quote, however, this is the cover image presenting an oh-so-balanced characterisation of the Occupy Wall Street movement:

(Thousands of people there, but of course this is the true face of the Occupy Wall Street movement, not the eloquent guy they didn’t let on Fox... See below for that.)

Right, to get to the point. Here’s the pull-quote that has made me wonder if my education has missed something rather fundamental:

The Canadians are responsible for “most trouble in the world”, eh? Seriously? Canadians?!

Labash seems to think that the power of a Canadian anticonsumerist magazine, Adbusters, is so great that it can spur such protests across the United States. He then goes on to say that the movement, apparently started by Adbusters (this is the first time I’ve ever heard of this magazine), “for the most part organically mushroomed”, which to everyone else would suggest that it had strong resonance with the people taking part in the protests.

However, this is not the worst part of the article. The worst part of this feature is that Labash admits to doing something that would lead me to fail any of my undergraduate students for doing: citing Wikipedia. On the second page of the article (page 24 of the magazine), he says that he drew on Wikipedia sources. For anyone writing for The Weekly Standard or any major newsweekly, this is disappointing and frankly unacceptable.

I wonder why this didn’t air on FOX…

2011-10-05T12:29:00.001-07:00

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Not the best video ever, but the guy makes some good points. MSNBC was a little too gleeful (bit too over the top), but the protester had something worth saying and listening to. Pity Fox didn’t air it, might have generated some proper debate.

Amusing American Prospect Cover

2011-09-19T18:00:00.001-07:00

Just thought I’d share the lefty American Prospect magazine’s amusing October cover:

It’s the little “oops” that grabbed my attention. I used to subscribe to the American Prospect when I was writing my PhD (chapter on the media, it was handy and they offered a PDF edition which was doubly useful). This issue might actually be interesting, so I’ll try to pick it up – if I ever find a decent newsstand – and if the article’s any good, I’ll scribble down a few thoughts and throw them up on here.

“In My Time” by Dick Cheney (Simon & Schuster)

2011-09-18T19:46:00.001-07:00

An interesting look at the life and career of one of America’s most polarising politicians and powerful Vice Presidents

Dick Cheney’s memoir has received a huge amount of attention in the US media. The majority of the attention has been in addressing the chapters about the post-9/11 George W. Bush administration. How, then, can anyone offer something new in a review, that doesn’t just go over what has already been analysed and picked apart by intellectuals, news personalities and also those mentioned in the memoir’s pages? Well, there’s a lot more to the book than just the post-9/11 age, so this review will focus a little more on what else is in the book.

Cheney starts off with his early life, which is actually written very well. This holds for the whole book, actually: Dick and his daughter Liz have written a very accessible, well-paced and fluid book. In My Time avoids the dry prose that often characterise political memoirs (there are very few that are gripping reads, in my admittedly limited experience). Some of this breeziness is a result of the lack of details – Cheney often doesn’t go into the detail readers will want or expect. Whether this is a decision based on style or disinterest, I can’t say.

Cheney should be commended for writing almost as much about other people as about himself – a real rarity for a politician. Over the course of his life he’s known some pretty interesting and colourful people – especially those he worked with before he enrolled at the University of Wyoming, when working around Tennessee. His attendance at University of Wyoming was actually his second attempt at university, after flunking out of Yale and utterly wasting a full-ride scholarship there. He quite clearly describes a young man who didn’t care about his studies and fell in with “some kindred souls, young men like me, who were not adjusting very well and shared my opinion that beer was one of the essentials of life.”

When writing about his early years in Washington, D.C. (which seem to have sprung on him suddenly and unwittingly, after a successful internship took him away from his PhD), he paints a picture of a somewhat star-struck youth, in awe of the people he was around and what he heard, witnessed, and was a part of. It was also interesting to see how much Rumsfeld was responsible for Cheney’s political career – from their rocky, uninspiring first meeting (Rumsfeld: “this isn’t going to work out”), to their time in Ford’s administration and beyond, it’s amazing how closely they worked together and how intertwined their political careers became.

Of his time working as part of the Ford administration, Cheney writes, “The disappointment I felt in the winter of 1977 has long since given way to sheer gratitude for one of the greatest and happiest experiences in my life.” He puts much of the blame for Ford’s failure to win re-election on the Nixon pardon. Although, when he recounts the 1976 election contest (primaries), he does show how Reagan “kept us on our toes all year”. It’s interesting that Reagan’s ‘don’t speak ill of fellow Republicans’ did not seem to apply to him at this point in his career, and while Cheney doesn’t say this explicitly, one gets the sense that Reagan really didn’t pull his weight to help Ford win the general (this is an impression I’ve taken from a number of books on Ford and/or Reagan).

The 1976 Republican Convention was an interesting event for Cheney. When discussion turned to the party platform and the “Morality in Foreign Policy” plank that was tabled, it caused quite a bit of a stir, and here’s what Cheney says about it:

“It was a thing of beauty, in its own way, a ringing affirmation of all that was good and pure in American foreign policy, mixed in with expressions of disdain for those connivers and compromisers who had given us detente. The draft language didn’t mention anyone by name, but everyone knew who the target was. Naturally, Kissinger was livid.”

The consensus among Ford’s people was to just “let it go”, which didn’t please Kissinger at all.

The section dealing with Cheney’s Congressional career is informative, but also highly detailed. Political junkies will get a lot from it, but otherwise a general skim through would be enough – mainly, it’s an account of the various people and bills he worked on. Many of them are obscure or not as widely known as his later years’ career and colleagues. He writes warmly of Wyoming, too.

In My Time is presented in a very conversational style. This was pretty surprising, considering the overall impression most people have of his demeanour. It is very well written, even if the content (particularly the George W. Bush administration-era chapters) is enough to make “heads explode” (a bit of an exaggeration, really) and news services to devote hours and pages to its deconstruction. This is a better book than President Bush’s Decision Points, but it is just as flawed – in terms of its intent and also interpretation of events and selected omissions. It’s written in a very fluid style, so it never felt like a slog to get through (certainly not the pre-GWB chapters). This, actually, is another thing the Cheneys should be commended for – they have produced a book that is very readable. It’s just a pity that it wasn’t written with the same care and attention to facts and honesty as style.

Moments that would be endearing if written by anyone else are swallowed up by his later actions, statements and politics. For example, there’s a rather amusing recollection of his first day as Secretary of Defense, when he gets stuck in the Pentagon basement because the Secretary’s private lift can’t be called from down there, therefore forcing him to trudge up to the waiting motorcade and arriving late to his first meeting with the President. The image of Cheney wandering around, lost and looking for a way out was pretty amusing. (The elevator can only be called from the Secretary’s office, as a security precaution.) Also, the image of him, Rumsfeld and another official on camels in Egypt is almost made-for-Daily Show satirising, too.

Despite the condescending and less-than-praiseworthy sections about Powell (and Condoleezza Rice) later in the book, Cheney actually writes positively of the man he chose as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs: “I knew we would have important work to do together. I believed we would be a good team. And for out time together at the Pentagon, we were.” One wonders if this was an attempt to give the later passages more punch, or to offer a more stark change in Cheney’s impression of and respect for Powell. He offers a long, detailed account of the lead-up to Desert Storm, as well as the offensive itself, and Powell is portrayed very positively and there’s the impression of a solid working relationship.

On the subject of the media and its relationship with governing and foreign policy (an academic interest of mine), Cheney mentions a couple of things, in relation to the Gulf War. First off, the general view of the media at the Pentagon (where Cheney served as Secretary of Defense):

“Many at the Pentagon had a deep distrust of the media that was in part left over from Vietnam. There was a view – which I shared – that unduly negative reporting had soured public opinion on that war.”

And also Cheney’s preferred approach to dealing with the media:

“When it came to Desert Storm, I would try to be sure that we had maximum opportunity to communicate directly with the American people – without going through the filter of the press.”

Given that he was a government official during some of the major moments of America’s relationship with China, he writes very little about his his and the US’s dealings with the Chinese. He was Secretary of Defense during the Tiananmen Square incident, so I was a little disappointed that he didn’t discuss it at all. He was in government during the Normalisation process, but nothing. Even the big China events of the George W Bush presidency were ignored (the Belgrade bombing, the Olympics, the focus on China as the next great competitor in the administration’s initial conception of US Foreign Policy and Grand Strategy). Instead, we get a little over a page of observation about how the Chinese government doesn’t like its officials to have unscripted and unsupervised meetings with officials from other countries. From handlers barging into an attempted private sit down with Hu Jintao before he became Chinese Premiere; to another apparently private sit-down that was bugged by Hu’s entourage, Cheney has nothing else to say about the second of the two most important countries in the world.

Just as Cheney was both personally and professionally fulfilled when working for Ford, he was equally satisfied and happy to have worked for the senior President Bush. At the end of that administration, Cheney made this statement (included in the chapter):

“George [H.W.] Bush had been a tremendous leader. His wisdom had seen us through changes more significant than any of us could have imagined we would see in our lifetimes. Serving as his Secretary of Defense was one of the highest honors of my life.”

There are a few interesting observations that can be made from the book. For example, considering Cheney’s love of the outdoors and fishing, his decision to gut the EPA as Vice President (or, more accurately, give it to the chemical and polluting companies), to roll back environmental regulations, just goes to suggest he’s totally beholden to his political ambitions – otherwise, why would he want to put at risk the environment he professes to find breath-taking and part of what makes America so great? It seems to be something anti-EPA crusaders do: rail against environmental protections, attempt to lift dumping regulations and so forth, but also wax lyrical on the beauty of America’s wilderness. In many instances (though by no means all), the policies they promote will likely ruin some of America’s peerless geographic beauty. Maybe it’s just because the areas they love aren’t at risk, so they don’t care about other states?

On the subject of his heart condition, he writes about how, when he was younger and before he was married to Lynne, medical bills devastated his savings. And yet, he still has no sympathy for others in the same situation, or intent to help others avoid such a fate (which would be worse today, as medical bills skyrocket).

For me, one of the most bizarre events of the George W. Bush years was the incident involving Cheney shooting his friend, Harry Whittington, in the face. I still find it astonishing that Whittington, ended up apologising to Cheney for the trouble the incident caused the Vice President! “My family and I are deeply sorry for all that Vice-President Cheney and his family have had to go through this past week,” Whittington said a week after the accident.

On discussing George W. Bush’s Vice-Presidential choices: “Two people not on our list were Colin Powell and John McCain. Both had made it clear that they weren’t interested. One candidate who spent a short time on the real list was Don Rumsfeld.” Rumsfeld didn’t stay on it long, however, because of lingering beliefs in the Bush camp that Rumsfeld had been instrumental in manoeuvring George H.W. Bush into the CIA top job, as a way to take him out of politics and the running for Ford’s VP choice (which would have been an interesting ticket, actually).

Of the final choice of Cheney as Bush Jnr.’s running mate, he writes:

“To the extent that this created a unique arrangement in our history, with a vice president playing a significant role in the key policy issues of the day, it was George Bush’s arrangement.”

Given Cheney’s far more considerable political experience and pull, many people at the time (and throughout the administration’s eight years) believed Cheney would be running the show. Indeed, in 2006, a reporter for American Prospect referred to Cheney as the “magic man” behind everything. Cheney says this was not the case: “From the transition onward, there were media stories that I was somehow in charge. They weren’t true, and stepping out too publicly would only have fed them.”

There are moments of self-deprecating humour, but they are contrasted by the astonishing arrogance and hubris on display as well. It makes for a very strange read, one that makes the reader question which is the genuine Cheney. Is he just shooting for shock-value in certain parts, or is he shooting for endearing in others?

The American press were never going to like this book (probably something Cheney knew and relished). Some commentators have said the book will have no value for historians and scholars in the future. I disagree. It offers an insight into the long political career of one of America’s most momentous politicians, in his own words. Sure, it’s sanitised and often only skims the surface. He burned bridges and fired off some broadsides at those he had worked with for so long. The book won’t change your mind about Cheney. It won’t redeem him in anyone’s eyes.

Love him or hate him, Cheney has been involved in and at the centre of some of the most momentous events in American political history of the past half decade and more. In My Time is a well-written book, and should share a space with President Bush’s Decision Points. I do, however, think it should not be read without Barton Gellman’s Angler and also Bob Woodward’s series of books on the Bush Presidency. They will offer a balanced opposing view and fill in the blanks and address some inconsistencies.

Dick Cheney’s Upcoming Memoir

2011-08-26T04:12:00.001-07:00

Here’s the segment from MSNBC’s Last Word:

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I’m hoping to get my hands on a copy of the book at some point. Expect a review soon-ish.

Henry Kissinger’s “On China” (Allen Lane) – Some Thoughts…

2011-08-08T16:03:00.001-07:00

An American Statesman’s Love Letter to China(’s Leadership)

For more than twenty years after the Communist Revolution in 1949, China and most of the western world had no diplomats in each others’ capitals and no direct way to communicate. Then, in July 1971, Henry Kissinger arrived secretly in Beijing on a mission which quickly led to the reopening of relations between China and the West and changed the course of post-war history.
For the past forty years, Kissinger has maintained close relations with successive generations of Chinese leaders, and has probably been more intimately connected with China at the highest level than any other western figure. This book distils his unique experience and long study of the ‘Middle Kingdom’, examining China’s history from the classical era to the present day, and explaining why it has taken the extraordinary course that it has.
The book concentrates on the decades since 1949, presenting portraits of Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, Deng Xiaoping and other Chinese leaders, and reproducing verbatim Kissinger’s conversations with each of them. But Kissinger’s eye rarely leaves the long continuum of Chinese history: he describes the essence of China’s approach to diplomacy, strategy and negotiation, and the ways in which Communist-era statesmen have drawn on methods honed over millennia. At the end of the book, Kissinger reflects on these attitudes for our own era of economic interdependence and an uncertain future.

I had difficulty with Kissinger’s latest ode to China. There is perhaps no better author or statesman to turn to on the subject of the Middle Kingdom. And yet, with On China, we get a book that is ultimately quite disappointing. Yes, Kissinger writes extremely well, and the broad sweep of China’s history is detailed and interesting. Indeed, there may be no more accessible or engaging recent book on Chinese history and its contact with the United States. (I still think that Warren I. Cohen’s America’s Response to China remains the best volume available for US-China history.) However, there are nevertheless a couple of very important problems with the book that cannot go unmentioned. This, therefore, is not strictly speaking a review, but rather a reaction, if you will, to some of what I’ve read in and taken away from reading the book.

Specifically, my issues revolve around the chapter on Tiananmen Square (something I am currently writing a chapter on, myself, so it jumped out at me most). The book claims to be an in-depth look at the broad sweep of Chinese political history and, effectively, political thought – China’s approach to diplomacy, strategy and negotiation in particular, and that Chinese statesmen since 1949 have drawn on “methods honed over millennia”. On China is meant to be a detailed history of China’s foreign policy, and what has informed China’s engagement with the world. And yet, when writing on Tiananmen, Kissinger makes some strange choices, and draws some rather odd impressions. The Tiananmen Square demonstrations and the PRC’s extreme response to them are extremely important – some might say the most post-Cold War event – to any understanding of, among others, the US-China bilateral relationship: it had considerable impact on China’s foreign policy in the aftermath, and continues to inform, at least, America’s approach to China, and also domestic American impressions of the PRC.

And yet, Kissinger writes dismissively of the causes:

“This is not the place to examine the events that led to the tragedy at Tiananmen Square; each side has different perceptions depending on the various, often conflicting, origins of their participation in the crisis. The student unrest started as a demand for remedies to specific grievances. But the occupation of the main square of a country’s capital, even when completely peaceful, is also a tactic to demonstrate the impotence of the government, to weaken it, and to tempt it into rash acts, putting it at a disadvantage.” (411)

I have two things to write about this paragraph. First, given the premise of the book, this is exactly the place to examine the agendas and motivations behind the democracy movement in China. To ignore them leaves the whole event adrift and unmoored to reality, and feels like a calculated omission. Secondly, Kissinger has basically said “they brought it on themselves” about the peacefully protesting students and others who were involved. This, frankly, is absurd and callous. I do not for a second believe that the students protested in Tiananmen because they wanted the Communist Party leaders to send in the tanks and potentially kill many of them. Protesting in an open, visible and important area of the capital was intended to make the Chinese leadership take notice, which would likely not have happened anywhere else in the city or perhaps anywhere else in China. The students – whether protesting for democratic reforms or other grievances (according to Communist Party Chief Zhao Ziyang, “there was a lot of dissatisfaction with corruption” at the time in China, following the “incorruptible” regime of the well-liked Hu Yaobang) – had legitimate reasons for concern and disappointment in their government.

“The interpretation of history expresses the memory of a nation. And for this generation of China’s leaders, the traumatic event of China’s history was the collapse of central authority in China in the nineteenth century, which tempted the outside world into invasion, quasi-colonialism, or colonial competition and produced genocidal levels of casualties in civil wars, as in the Taiping Rebellion.” (423)

Here, too, I take issue with Kissinger’s argument. First of all, one of the key elements of Chinese history is that corrupt and aloof governments indifferent to the plight and concerns of its people have uniformly been toppled by popular protest and, at times, civil war. To equate the CCP’s heavy-handed, excessive response to the demonstrators as anything other than leaders worried about losing power is disingenuous – just as American politicians appealing to historic ideals of the Founding Fathers is nothing but attempts to hold on to power, the CCP’s crackdown in Tiananmen was nothing but authoritarian enforcement of control. Kissinger mentions in passing that Zhao Ziyang was “dismissed”, the assumption being that the massacre was the cause for his dismissal. It was not – he opposed sending in the troops, and was in North Korea when the trouble started (something Kissinger does not mention). As documented in his memoir, Prisoner of the State, sending in the PLA was the will of the hard-line conservative faction of the CCP, as opposed to Zhao’s more liberal, relatively open-to-political-developments faction. “If a political party has no check on its power, its officials easily become corrupt,” wrote Zhao. This is, in large part, what the demonstrators were protesting, as well as a general desire for greater democracy in China.

On China is, basically, a love letter to Chinese international realism. As Kissinger is one of the best-known practitioners of realpolitick, it is little wonder that he admires China’s ability to see the world through a lens of national interest – “The Chinese have been shrewd practitioners of Realpolitick and students of a strategic doctrine distinctly different from the strategy and diplomacy that found favor in the West.” (22) Kissinger compares America’s impression of the world – to compartmentalise issues; finding agreement in some areas, while also disagreement in others – to China’s tendency to see the world in all-or-nothing terms (relations are either warm or cold, in their entirety). Kissinger clearly does not approve of America’s liberal, “missionary” foreign policies, and seems to be lamenting, in part, the inability of American leaders to steer the US towards a more Chinese-style foreign policy. In some ways, Kissinger’s conception of China’s foreign policy is close to a purely realist Grand Strategy, while America’s “case-by-case” approach prohibits such a conceptual approach to foreign policy appears impossible. His discussion is almost wistful, seemingly disappointed that his own country cannot follow such a strategy all the time (the United States has undoubtedly followed realist strategies in the past, and there are times when a realist foreign policy is the best option, but international relations are too complex to follow a single strategy or theoretical ideology all the time). To be clear, Kissinger is right to identify the flaws in American foreign policy, but it would have been a lot better if he’d been as critical of China’s foreign policy as well.

On China, as I’ve mentioned, is a very well-written book, and there is invaluable content in the form of Kissinger’s verbatim recollections of talks with Chinese leaders (from extensive notes taken at the time), and the facts included are detailed and well-presented. However, it is the exclusions and analysis that weaken the book.

Well-written, but flawed and unconvincing in the argument that the United States should yield the world stage to China because, essentially, they can draw on a longer history? Kissinger does not include enough analysis of China’s material abilities to actually take on the role that the United States has been called on time and again to perform (and China’s material abilities lag far behind that of the US, despite America’s recent difficulties). Kissinger’s call for a new policy – involving a vague creation, a Pacific Community body (a beefed-up ASEAN, but also inspired by post-World War II plans for an Atlantic Community). This would see the powers in the region club together to work towards “peaceful development”, together – is disappointing as well in its vagueness and lack of recognition of the realities and rivalries inherent among the Asian powers. That a confrontation between the US and China must be avoided at all costs is obvious, but Kissinger doesn’t develop this fact any further than innumerable other writers have already done.

Read for his recollections of the US-China rapprochement and normalisation of relations, which are always good. His treatment of Chinese history is elegant and eloquent, and it is refreshing to read histories like this, where the author is eager to share and enthusiastic about his topic. However, given who Kissinger is, that he whitewashes certain aspects of Chinese recent history is very disappointing. A cynic might suggest that this was written, in part, with the Chinese leadership as an intended audience – Kissinger Associates have a lot of business connections and interests in China. I am only half a cynic...

Also try: Warren I. Cohen, America’s Response to China; George H.W. Bush & Jeffrey A. Engel (ed), The China Diary of George H.W. Bush; Zhao Ziyang, Prisoner of the State; James Mann, The China Fantasy; Aaron Friedberg, A Contest for Supremacy (forthcoming, 2011)

“Third World America” by Arianna Huffington (Collins)

2011-08-05T12:16:00.001-07:00

How our politicians are abandoning the ordinary citizen

Arianna Huffington, Editor-in-Chief of the Huffington Post, unflinchingly tracks the gradual demise of the American nation as an industrial, political and economic leader.

Arianna argues that the American Dream of a secure, comfortable standard of living has become out-dated and is under threat, and that the US is in danger of becoming a Third World nation. In the vein of her bestseller Pigs at the Trough, Third World America details who and what is killing the American Dream. With over 120,000 Americans filing for bankruptcy every month, Huffington suggests what needs to be done to stop the free fall.

The state of America’s Middle Class is fast in decline, and in Third World America, Huffington eloquently and passionately argues that the situation is getting worse, as more and more people drop out of it with little-to-no chance of making their way back. Despite a couple of weaknesses, Third World America is a well-written book; one with plenty of interesting and thought-provoking content, presented in an engaging and quick-paced manner.

“It’s not an exaggeration to say that middle-class Americans are an endangered species and that the American Dream of a secure, comfortable standard of living has become as outdated as an Edsel with an eight-track player. That the United States of America is in danger of becoming a third world nation.”

What’s in the book? Third World America is split into five parts, each dealing with elements and causes of the troubles facing America today: job destruction, Wall Street vs. Main Street, the stimulus and infrastructure, lobbyists, and the Republican Party. The author closes the book with a chapter of suggestions of things liberals should pursue to help halt and reverse the decline in the vital American middle class.

“Despite the fact that many banks, car companies, and so on would be defunct without government intervention, the free-market fundamentalists continue to live in denial, trying to convince the world that if only left alone, free markets would right themselves.”

The evidence is all around, Huffington writes: America’s industrial base is vanishing, taking with it the jobs that formed the backbone of the US economy for more than a century. The American education system is in “shambles”, making it harder for tomorrow’s workforce to acquire the information and training it needs to land good twenty-first century jobs. American infrastructure (roads, bridges, sewage and water, transportation and electrical systems) is crumbling – sometimes with lethal results. The economic system, Huffington argues, has been reduced to “recurring episodes of Corporations Gone Wild”. The US political system is broken, Washington is “corrupt, cynical, and unmoored from reality”, with politicians in thrall to a small financial elite’s selfish agenda. And America’s middle class, the driver of so much of America’s economic success and political stability, is rapidly disappearing,

“forcing us to confront the fear that we are slipping as a nation – that our children and grandchildren will enjoy fewer opportunities and face a lower standard of living than we did. It’s the dark flipside of the American Dream – an American Nightmare of our own making.”

The strength of Third World America comes from Huffington’s writing style: it’s extremely accessible and streamlined. For the main, the level of detail for the national situation is excellent, and the author presents a solid, compelling liberal analysis of the state of America’s middle class. Huffington addresses the usual bogeymen and issues, to good effect. For example, corporate tax-dodging:

“According to the White House, in 2004... U.S. multinational corporations paid roughly $16 billion in taxes on $700 billion in foreign active earnings – putting their tax rate at around 2.3 percent. Know any middle-class Americans getting off that easy at tax time?”

The cost of health care in America: Huffington explains that, in 2009, a Harvard-Ohio University study found that 62% of all personal bankruptcies in 2007 had their root cause in healthcare problems. Not only that, of these people, 78% had health insurance at the time, if just wasn't enough to cover the cost.

“If we don’t come to our senses and get our deeply misguided priorities back in order, America could find itself a superpower turned Third World nation – dead from our own hand.”

So, what are the weaknesses I mentioned in the opening paragraph? Well, they are two fold, and both are significant. First off, I felt like I’d read a lot of this book before. Now, I’ll admit, I tend to read a lot of political journalism from the left (as well as the right), and there has been no shortage of reporting on the decline of the American middle class. But, nonetheless, a lot of what’s contained in this book isn’t new; and, in my opinion, Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi and Senator Al Franken (when he was still writing such books) did a better job covering these issues. Third World America is perhaps too breezy – in length and style – to have as much impact as Taibbi et al.

Secondly, Huffington seems oddly averse to including statistical detail in her case studies – I’m not talking about national statistics and so forth (there is a near-perfect balance, actually, when she discusses the national situation), but rather I mean when she turns her attention to individuals or individual families. These case studies are often first-person accounts by people effected by the downturn, mortgage crisis, and so forth. Because of the lack of details, these case studies feel a little sensationalist, meant to tap into a reader’s empathy, rather than analytical brain. For example, one family went from being secure, owning two cars (a weird bit of evidence to focus on, given the lack of any other), but within two months the family was destitute. In another case study, we know that a father had to sell his son’s PS3, Nintendo Wii and electric guitar. But in neither instance do we know how much they were earning, how much their mortgages were, or any other information that might explain their precipitous decline. This will make some readers inclined to see them as profligate, rather than real victims, which can’t have been Huffington’s intent. So, the individual, human-interest case studies fail by not providing enough information, and actually degrade the impact of the rest of the book, which is so much better. The case studies are effecting, certainly, but the persuasiveness is reduced by not creating a proper, full picture. That’s a more negative note than I wanted to finish on, but the weakness of the case studies did bother me quite a bit. Some simple numbers would have helped them deliver far more impact.

Ultimately, this is a well-written, liberal call to arms. It lacks the punch of more argumentative, in-depth volumes – therefore I can’t imagine this book converting staunch Republicans/Conservatives at all – but it will reinforce a liberal’s belief that the US is, at least in part, on the wrong track. Third World America would serve as a good introduction to the problems facing middle class Americans today, and a good jumping-off point before delving into the more meaty texts on the same topic.

I’d recommended if you want a quick, interesting book on issues facing America today from a liberal perspective.

Also try: Matt Taibbi, The Great Derangement (2008) & Griftopia (2010); Al Franken, The Truth: With Jokes (2006); Eric Alterman, Kabuki Democracy (2010); Charles I. Pierce, Idiot America (2009); Justin Webb, Have a Nice Day (2009); Paul Krugman, The Conscience of a Liberal (2009); Matt Frei, Only in America (2008)

* * *

Bonus: Arianna Huffington on The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

“Winners & Losers of Debt Deal”

2011-08-02T17:12:00.001-07:00

The Last Word and the debt ceiling deal. The montage of Obama at the beginning about his preference for a “balanced” approach? What the hell happened?

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

It’s a bit of a long segment, but the main bit is the montage at the start.

Where are the Democrats? (Or, “WTF?”)

2011-07-31T07:17:00.001-07:00

[This piece has been Updated Twice]

So it looks like debt ceiling deal will be $3 trillion in spending cuts, but no new taxes or revenues. Not even the loop holes for stuff government shouldn’t be subsidising are going to be closed, it seems. What?! I thought President Obama was a Democrat! And what are the Senate Democrats doing? Why are they caving totally to Tea Party/Republican demands? Why are they presenting a deal that matches the Republican position of no new taxes or we kill the country? After Obama and Boehner negotiated a balanced deal, and they were mostly on the same page, only to be skewered by the idiots, and lots of back-and-forth B.S. from both sides, we’re actually at a point where the Republicans will be getting more than they originally asked for? And for what? Acting like petulant kindergarteners? Seriously?!

Or, in a more measured manner, as Michael Tomasky put it: “it appears Obama is meeting the Republicans – on their terms.”

Tomasky continues:

“When Mitch McConnell said—around 4 Saturday afternoon—that he had been talking with Obama and Joe Biden and the country will not default, he was really saying: We’ve cut the deal. Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi were at the White House at the time, with Obama. Were the three of them—or the four of them, with Biden—figuring out their next counter-move, as one might expect? Maybe. But it appears more likely that Reid and Pelosi were getting their marching orders and being read the terms of surrender.”

Obviously, it’s still too early to know all of the details of the bill, but early mutterings do not sound good at all for anyone who thought a more balanced approach is sensible, fair, and proper. Felicia Sonmez of Washington Post has reported how McConnell described the deal being negotiated:

“On Sunday morning, McConnell sketched the outlines of a $3 trillion, debt framework that would pair an immediate increase in the federal borrowing limit with immediate spending cuts. The proposal would also include caps on spending over the next decade and would mandate that a bipartisan committee of lawmakers recommend further cuts and potential changes to entitlement programs by the fall, with a ‘trigger’ mechanism to ensure that action is taken to reduce the debt if the committee reaches a stalemate.”

Yes, spending cuts are needed. But so are revenue increases – and closing loopholes would be the best and easiest way to keep things a little more even. I know it’s become a trope to mention the subsidies for corporate and private jets, but these should be targets of the Tea Party as well, but they’re not. Yet more evidence that these guys really don’t know what they’re doing or talking about.

Dick Durbin, according to Sonmez (in the same article), has said that leaving talk of taxes and revenues out of the deal is “bad policy”, that “Keeping revenues off the table I think is a serious mistake.” Meanwhile, Durbin’s Republican counterpart has been equally candid about his opinion of the deal: “Republican principles will be significantly advanced by the proposed agreement.” Let’s just not discuss whether or not ‘Republican principles’, in this instance, are sensible, reasonable, or in the nation’s interest.

Major Garrett of The Atlantic has posted this run down of the deal (more recent than Sonmez’s article:

$2.8 trillion in deficit reduction with $1 trillion locked in through discretionary spending caps over 10 years and the remainder determined by a so-called “Super Committee”
The Super Committee must report precise deficit-reduction proposals by Thanksgiving
The Super Committee would have to propose $1.8 trillion in spending cuts to achieve that amount of deficit reduction over 10 years
If the Super Committee fails, Congress must send a balanced-budget amendment to the states for ratification. If that doesn’t happen, across-the-board spending cuts would go into effect and could touch Medicare and defense spending.
No net new tax revenue would be part of the special committee’s deliberations.

One very simple thing they should do? Cut Congress and Senate salaries. That’ll save some money. Both sides have shown they are mostly incapable of doing anything until the last minute, and only after wasting an awful lot of everybody’s time and money.

Mostly, this is a huge disappointment for anyone who voted for President Obama (or, in my case, would have voted for him if I’d been allowed to). He’s caved. Again. Tomasky again:

“Both parties engaged in the usual posturing but had always agreed that a simple majority could raise the ceiling. Until Saturday. This tells us just what extremists these Republicans are. But McConnell knew he could get away with it, because few Americans even know what cloture is—and, more important, because he predicted, apparently accurately, that this president would roll over. And so the GOP will have won, and won big. Obama can call this victory if he likes, and insofar as default will be avoided, sure. But if he thinks this is what his voters sent him to the White House to do, he needs a serious reality check.”

I bet President Obama extends all the Bush Tax Cuts next year, too... I don’t understand why Democrats are so willing to cave to Republicans all the damned time. Once again, they exhibit a total lack of spine or courage of their convictions.

I’m sure I’ll complain after the final deal is announced, too. I’ll make sure I include some more details, though. A disappointing month for American politicians. Why is it that Alec Baldwin, and not an academic or politician, has written the best article about this?

Al Franken's Floor Speech on Debt Ceiling

2011-07-26T16:37:00.001-07:00

He seems to be getting into the swing of making longer Senate speeches (I think it was Matt Taibbi who wrote about the experience of listening to Senate Floor Speeches being one of the most soul destroying and boring things ever...). Unlike many of his colleagues, however, Franken shows in his speeches the same attention to detail and intelligence that he included in his books (especially in The Truth: With Jokes).*

He makes some very good, backed-up-by-evidence-and-statistics points about the deficit, Republican tax cut fetishism, the GOP professed desire to cut the deficit to save America's children (but at the same time, cutting most of the programs that benefit children), and many of the other issues that have swirled around the debt ceiling debate. A very good speech.

* I still hold that Franken is so much better at politics and commentary than he is at "satire", which often falls rather flat.

A Cheeky Ad on The Nation

2011-07-26T16:18:00.001-07:00

Saw this just now, and thought it was delightfully cheeky:

Now, if only The Nation was lucky enough to have a larger readership... (They are quite left, it's true, but they also have some excellent long articles and media criticism. Their best articles have been about Special Interests and the Media in politics. Always good, for as long as I've been reading it.)

A Great Cartoon from The Weekly Standard…

2011-07-23T11:02:00.001-07:00

… which I think is quite apt, in some instances:

One of the things I like about The Weekly Standard is the cartoonist or illustrator they get to work on their articles. He/She has a very cool, distinctive style, and I don’t think he’s ever done a graphic I didn’t like. Unfortunately, I can’t find any mention in the magazine of his/her name. Anybody know?

As for the article it’s connected to I have mixed thoughts about, but Fred Barnes, who wrote it, brings up some good points.

The article starts off by explaining that “trade treaties with South Korea, Colombia, and Panama” were on track to being ratified in the House and Senate: “Obama would supply Democratic votes. Republicans were already on board, President Bush having put together the treaties in the first place. It had the look of a done deal. It wasn’t.” The deal was killed in May, Barnes tells us, because the White House “suddenly insisted the treaties be accompanied by roughly $1 billion in Trade Adjustment Assistance”, which would set aside funds to help workers whose jobs will be cut or outsourced as a result of these deals. Given the quite obvious need for more jobs in the US, provisions to ensure the unemployment rates don’t go up further and also measures to help those who are effective by deals that will increase unemployment is not exactly a bad thing. After all, as Barnes himself points out:

“A mark of a strong president is the capability to act decisively in his own behalf, especially when his political interest coincides with the country’s.”

Saving jobs, or looking after those who are screwed by international trade deals is often considered by many Americans as in the country’s interest. The American people’s insistence that job creation be at the forefront of the government’s agenda seems to be ignored by the House GOP leadership who have, as Rachel Maddow has repeatedly illustrated on her nightly MSNBC show, spent more time trying just to quash everything Obama agrees with. I remember when she showed the GOP jobs plan on her show – it was basically one and a half pages of text, and a bunch of images and graphic to make the document look longer. The House GOP majority has, instead, spent far more time playing politics and proposing more bills related to the Culture War issues than ever before (including on State-level) that should be diminishing in importance during this economic recession.

In light of President Obama’s deficit ceiling deal that was offered and originally accepted by Speaker of the House John Boehner, Barnes’s assertion that, “More often than not, [Obama]’s indecisive, particularly when liberal special interests exert pressure on him” seems to only apply to liberal trade interests (not dissimilar to President Bill Clinton, then). Obama’s proposed plan included highly-unpopular-on-the-left cuts and changes to the social safety net. In fact, it matched almost exactly the Republican proposed plan, only Obama’s plan suggested 2% more in revenue increases than the Republican plan. The social safety net is, of course, sacred to liberals in government and also the left-leaning population of America (I include myself in this group, I should say).

Barnes points out another area that sees Obama apparently kowtowing to special interests; the environmental lobby. The writer mentions the new pipeline that many want built linking the US and Canada, but says it’s been put in jeaopardy by Obama’s insistence on meeting demands of liberal groups, who criticised his EPA’s initial environmental impact study. The administration caved, did another study, but still the environmental lobbies were unhappy. [It is becoming increasingly clear that no matter who’s in the White House, the EPA will forever be the whipping boy of the environmental lobbies, as they simply cannot ever win…] Unfortunately, Barnes doesn’t offer any of the environmental lobbies’ criticisms of the reports, so we can’t get a deeper picture of what, exactly, they were disappointed with or opposed to. In addition, it’s interesting that Barnes complains that Obama is listening to Democratic/liberal interest groups, when George W. Bush’s administration all but invited conservative/business interests to take over a good swathe of governing responsibilities (which some liberal presidents have done, too – it’s endemic in US politics – my point is that it’s hypocritical to complain about one but not the other party doing it).

The pipeline deal looks like a winner on pure economic terms, too, benefiting the American economy and also American labour unions (the ultimate Democratic voting bloc, after all):

“Besides oil, the Keystone project would create 20,000 jobs directly and 118,000 “spin off ” jobs, according to TransCanada, and invest $20 billion in the American economy. Even if those projections are exaggerated, it’s clear the pipeline would be an economic boon. TransCanada has also signed building contracts with four labor unions.”

Back to the trade treaties. Barnes reports that

“The U.S. Chamber of Commerce estimates the treaties would produce 380,000 American jobs. The Obama administration puts the figure at 250,000. It’s unclear whether any jobs at all would be lost. Yet the President balked.”

If this is accurate, then President Obama needs to make sure he’s getting all the information. If the deals are projected to create 250,000 jobs, and no jobs will definitely be lost, then I don’t see why this isn’t a go across the board. By including TAA, however, the president is just covering the eventuality of jobs being lost – given that people clearly don’t think any will be, I don’t see how Republicans can oppose the inclusion of this provision, as it will likely not cost anything, or very little at the most.

It’s unfortunate that the article’s not longer, or at least doesn’t go deeper into attempting to understand or highlight specifics of why President Obama and his team are rejecting these two deals. The role of special interests in US politics is of particular interest to me (one of the two main theories that informed my PhD thesis was pluralism, after all), and this article could have done with being a longer exploration of the role of special interests in the Obama administration. Without the depth, it reads like a typical conservative/Republican criticism of a Democratic president, and therefore nothing we haven’t heard before, which in turn means it will only preach to the choir, rather than persuade non-choir-members.

For the sort of in-depth article I’m talking about, check out The Nation’s recent expose about the role of ALEC in American politics. [Which does, it has to be accepted, comes from a very lefty place.]

Debt-Ceiling Increases by Administration

2011-07-22T16:22:00.001-07:00

Just interesting and speaks volumes, really, about much of the debate that currently is swirling in Washington, D.C.:

So it’s the Democratic presidents who have had to raise it the least often during their administrations. But now it’s become a problem for the Republicans, whose presidents have raised it quite merrily over the past 30 years? Right.

The Congressional Revolving Door

2011-07-13T04:07:00.001-07:00

Saw this on OpenSecrets.org, thought I’d share it.

Hired Guns to Hired Hands

National Review Praises Canada in Most Surprising Way

2011-06-26T09:56:00.001-07:00

Reading the latest issue of National Review, I was surprised to find an article that actually praised Canada’s governmental system. I wonder if Hell has frozen over, or if air-traffic controllers will be writing reports of flying pigs anytime soon…?

Sure, the author Kevin D Williamson starts off with quite an offensive (by now totally cliché) paragraph about Canada, so it’s not like conservatives have totally changed their stripes:

“Canada is a weird cold semisocialist backwater pockmarked with Francophonic hostility and saddled with a ridiculous monarchy, a national wheat monopoly, and the pinko health-care system that Barack Obama really, really wants deep down inside. It’s basically a sprawling, low ambition Sweden with a miniature France growing like an udder out of its soft underbelly.” (p.18)

Williamson points out that Canada has effectively cut its national debt in half over the course of the past 15 years, and the government has run surpluses between 1998 and 2008. Unemployment peaked at 8.7% in the current recession, but it’s on the move downwards (7.4% in May).

“Our guys, our crazy right-wing free enterprise limited-government bootstraps Republican guys, don’t give us surpluses—they give us deficits. If you run a deficit, the question isn’t how much you tax, but how much you spend—because, as I am confident the ghost of John Calvin has finally hammered into the ghost of Jack Kemp, all debts eventually must be paid. Hu Jintao is going to get paid. And there’s where the U.S.-Canada thing gets a little counterintuitive: We’re basically the same on the spending front.” (p.19)

So why are things so different? Is it just a matter of different characteristics and national political desires of the countries’ citizens? After all, whenever something “pinko” is brought into the United States, people seem to rather like it – see Medicare, Massachusetts’s healthcare system, and so on. (Williamson says this is a typical Anglo-Protestant thing, the will and desire to sponge off the government.)

“Canada has a very big national government and relatively small provincial and municipal governments… The United States has a morbidly obese Leviathan spilling its federal muffin-top over the borders of the District of Columbia into three other states, and ravenous state and local governments, too. It about equals out, in terms of spending.”

“This is where your annoying Euro-lefty friend says: And at least the Canadians get something for it. And, as much as it hurts to write this, Moonbeam has a point. Canada has honest government (more honest than ours, Heritage finds) and transparent institutions that work. As welfare states go, Canada’s is pretty well run. (It does not follow that similar institutions would work well in the United States.)” (p.19)

It’s an interesting comparison, but what really strikes me is the part of the second paragraph that I’ve added emphasis to. Effectively, the author is saying that the Canadians are able to run government institutions efficiently and transparently, whereas the United States is incapable of doing the same. This is quite the indictment of his own country – admittedly backed up by a fair amount of evidence from both Republican and Democratic administrations – but instead of taking a more critical look at how it is that Canadians are able to be efficient, honest and, you know, do their jobs when it comes to government-provided services, Williamson moves quickly on. This, I thought, was an opportunity lost to be properly critical of the inherent corruption and stupidity that exists in Washington, DC.

I must be becoming incredibly cynical about the US conservative press. I initially thought Williamson’s next argument was another example of the argument that it is because of freeloading off US defence spending that Canada’s nanny-state is so successful (let’s ignore the fact that in Massachusetts, where a “pinko”-style healthcare system is in place, covering pretty much everyone and they’re all rather happy with it, thank you very much). But the author doesn’t conclude this argument in the typical way:

“No sense in our being bitter about all that: It’s not like Justin Bieber talked us into fighting wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, and Yemen at the same time… in the main, Canada has thrived in the past 15 years or so mostly because it has been disciplined and thrifty.” (p.20)

Williamson then goes on to write some more things I never expected to read in the National Review:

“it was the center-left that balanced the budget, not the Conservatives. It wasn’t because they wanted to—as the debt piled up, interest rates went thermonuclear. Nobody loved them for balancing the budget… If all it takes is a left-wing government and a fiscal crisis, maybe there’s hope for us still.” (p.20)

Williamson makes an interesting point, but fails to mention something else: in the United States, the only president for decades to bring government spending under control was a Democrat (Bill Clinton), and the Republican administrations of Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush made a habit of spending an absolute ton of money (especially Reagan and Bush Jnr.).

Apart from the typical “jokes” and snide remarks about Canada and Canadians – which, given the economic security of Canada and the fiscal mess that is the United States, looks ever-more like a big brother pissed off that the little brother’s doing so much better than him – Williamson appears to be arguing for leftist politics. He picks up on the level of Canadian taxes (32.2% of GDP, compared to US 26.9% of GDP), but doesn’t attempt to turn this into an argument against high taxes (how could he, really?), but equally doesn’t attempt to suggest that maybe raising taxes just a little in the United States might help with America’s current situation. Oh no, that would be conservative blasphemy of the highest order.

A surprising article from a conservative magazine, one that brings to mind William Buckley’s more reasoned approach to politics. That being said, the author’s unwillingness to consider how these observations might be applied to American politics is disappointing. He seems to be saying that the US and Canadian governments are just so different that there’s no point in trying to compare their policies – which seems more an excuse not to consider the potential benefit of liberal principles (i.e. raising taxes to reduce the deficit) to the United States and its government.

(The article also exhibits the sad fact that, when it comes to discussing other countries, the US is seriously in need of more jokes. The same goes for the UK – come on, America, at least try to write some new material about the rest of the English-speaking world, and stop peddling the same, tired stuff that I suspect even Americans don’t find particularly funny anymore. Even your best comedians, who write great stuff about America, politics and observational comedy, just churn out the same guff about the UK and Canada. What happened to innovation? Admittedly, I’m disappointed in many British comedians, too, for being equally boring when it comes to commenting on the US.)

“Millard Fillmore” by Paul Finkelman (Times)

2011-06-19T08:43:00.001-07:00

Unlucky 13

The oddly-named president whose short-sightedness and stubbornness fractured the nation and sowed the seeds of civil war.
In the summer of 1850, America was at a terrible crossroads. Congress was in an uproar over slavery, and it was not clear if a compromise could be found. In the midst of the debate, President Zachary Taylor suddenly took ill and died. The presidency, and the crisis, now fell to the little-known vice president from upstate New York.
In this biography, legal scholar and historian Paul Finkelman reveals how Millard Fillmore’s response to the crisis he inherited set the country on a dangerous path that led to the Civil War. Fillmore stubbornly catered to the South, alienating his fellow Northerners and creating a fatal rift in the Whig Party, which would soon disappear from American politics — as would Fillmore himself, after failing to regain the White House under the banner of the anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic “Know Nothing” Party.
Though Fillmore did have an eye toward the future, dispatching Commodore Matthew Perry on the famous voyage that opened Japan to the West, on the central issues of the age his myopic vision led to the destruction of his presidency, his party, and ultimately, the Union itself.

In this short biography of the largely forgotten thirteenth president of the United States, historian Finkelman provides a superb history of the time, but after finishing, Fillmore himself remains somewhat elusive and incidental.

We get a brief personal history of Fillmore, which outlines his very difficult childhood and early life. He was born in poverty, poorly educated, and “utterly unsophisticated”. He had a largely unimpressive tenure as a Congressman from Buffalo, before being selected as Zachary Taylor’s vice president. As is frequently the case, this early-life backgrounds was quite interesting, although all-too short. This cannot be blamed on Finkelman, for in truth Millard Fillmore was not much of a writer and therefore left very little in the way of personal letters or documents for future historians. While he wasn’t much of a writer, he was a voracious reader, always self-conscious of his poor education, and filled with a burning desire to better himself and be able to stand among the educated, more elite strata of society.

Despite this rather noble desire for self-betterment, Fillmore was an odd politician. He was “drawn to oddball political movements, conspiracy theories, and ethnic hatred”, which made him toxic to many members of his own party, and resulted in his expulsion from the Whig Party, and his evolution into a standard bearer for the anti-Catholic, racist Know-Nothing Party in 1856.

He was not all bad, however, and his “legacy includes some visionary ideas that he could not accomplish”. He pushed for a transcontinental railway system, which would eventually be accomplished under Abraham Lincoln. Fillmore’s interest in foreign lands led to his sanctioning of Commodore Perry’s trip to open up Japan, which would be completed by Franklin Pierce. He helped maintain America’s dominant presence in Hawaii, which allowed William McKinley to annex the islands. Fillmore also began the push for a South American canal, which would be shepherded to completion by Theodore Roosevelt.

There’s probably more in this book about William H. Seward than there is about Fillmore. An awful lot of (good) background and setting-of-the-scene, but Fillmore himself features disappointingly little in the pre-Presidential chapters. Even the sections about his vice-presidency are largely devoid of the man, too. While, yes, it is clear that there is not exactly a wealth of sources to draw upon when writing about or studying Fillmore, it gives a sense that the inclusion of Fillmore into the narrative and history is somewhat an afterthought: Multiple pages of history and detail are often followed by a single, short paragraph on Fillmore’s involvement (or lack thereof) in the given issue, fixed at the end.

In a time when Vice Presidents weren’t included in anything, really, “Fillmore, however, seems to have been particularly wounded by Taylor’s failure to include him” in decision-making and governing. Finkelman argues that Fillmore’s “inexperience and his lifelong sense of insecurity no doubt made it especially hard for him to be a vice president with no role to play in the administration.” This would have major consequences for his presidency, during which he “acted impulsively”:

“The usually careful, plodding Fillmore reverted to the petulant teenager who stormed off from his first legal apprenticeship. Angry that the cabinet members had not included him in their deliberations, he fired the entire cabinet.”

Showing a distinct lack of awareness for his situation, he was then surprised and further hurt when the stunned, now-former cabinet members understandably refused to accede to the new president’s request that they remain to help his new administration get off the ground. Sadly for both Fillmore and by extension America, the new president bungled his re-staffing and most of the governing he was required to do for the rest of his term.

Despite the positive legacy mentioned above, “on the central issues of the age his vision was myopic and his legacy worse.” Like so many presidents of this era, Fillmore’s presidency would be defined by the ever-critical slavery debate. Despite being from New York, Fillmore was consistently on the wrong side of history on the issue, and there can be little doubt that this cost him any chance of re-election or, in truth, success. He opened the West to slavery, and “destroyed the Missouri Compromise line”, and his “total appeasement” of the Southern slave interests only meant they pushed for ever-more concessions and territory open to the institution of slavery.

Finkelman offers a devastating indictment of Fillmore’s apparent lack of awareness and understanding of what the job of the Executive Office and Congress actually was (specifically, with regards to Texas and New Mexico’s addition to the Union). In particular, Finkelman takes Fillmore to task for his utter fecklessness and dispassionate approach to the implementation and ratification of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 (which was thoroughly unconstitutional and so blatantly bias towards Southern interests – Fillmore, rather clearly, didn’t understand the Constitution). Indeed, in Finkelman’s words, Fillmore “aggressively – indeed fanatically – implemented the Fugitive Slave Act… arguably the most oppressive law in American history.”

Fillmore would run as the presidential candidate on the Know-Nothing ticket that “openly attacked foreigners, immigrants, and Catholics”. After his electoral failures, he would continue to favour bizarre and objectionable policies and platforms – he was against emancipation, and during the Civil War campaigned for a peace that would have left millions of African Americans in chains. His fellow Buffalo and New York natives branded him a traitor during the Civil War (although, he would remain in Buffalo for the rest of his life).

“In the end, Fillmore was always on the wrong side of the great moral and political issues of the age: immigration, religious toleration, equality, and, most of all, slavery.”

Overall, I would say this is not among the better volumes in the series, which is a pity, as the volumes on the lesser-known presidents have often been the better books (Martin Van Buren, James Buchanan in particular stand out). Despite Finkelman’s solid and fluid prose, this one failed to ignite my interest in the first half, and never truly got off the ground, improving only towards the end. That being said, it is a very good short history of the period and its issues. However, this does not make up for its failures as a biography, which is what it is meant to be. By the time I finished reading, I still considered it a better introductory-history of the time than a presidential biography, but it did get better by the time we get to Fillmore’s presidency.

Recommended for an introduction to the age, and a very brief introduction to the thirteenth President.

Post-Submission, Not What You Want to Read…

2011-05-19T07:36:00.001-07:00

Since submitting my PhD thesis to the university, I’ve been catching up on the reading I’ve missed while finishing and making the final edits and so on. Via an article by Dan Drezner, I came across a mass-review in The Nation of twelve recently-published books about higher education, written by William Deresiewicz, a former professor at Yale (the review also appeared in the print-version of The Nation May 23rd 2011, pp.27-34).

On the very first page of the review, I came across the following:

“At Yale, we were overjoyed if half our graduating [PhD] students found positions. That’s right—half. Imagine running a medical school on that basis… that’s the kind of unemployment rate you’d expect to find among inner-city high school dropouts. And this was before the financial collapse.” (p.27)

Wonderful. To say this ruined my day is to make an understatement. Deresiewicz goes on to discuss “the Somme-like conditions they’re sending out their newly minted PhDs to face”. Bear in mind that this is a statistic from Yale, one of the great universities of the United States if not, indeed, the world. I did not go to Yale.

I bring this up because I’m currently looking for jobs while also preparing for my viva (thesis defence), which I at least now have a date for. Looking at the job market, it’s slim pickin’s. Partly, this is because of my chosen subject – US Domestic Politics, Foreign Policy & China – which is not as sexy as Middle Eastern Studies, which we see daily in the news (not to mention being the preferred, now-tired meme for Hollywood and thriller authors).

Most of the postdoctoral positions I’ve found prefer specialisations in the Middle East, gender issues (sometimes both), and there’s also plenty of Native American programs on offer. These are all well and good, and certainly worthy of study (at one point, I not-entirely-seriously considered taking a feminist approach to US-China relations), but I find it rather surprising how little opportunity there is to study US-China relations. In everyday conversations with other postgraduates and non-postgrads, people are shocked by the lack of US-China studies opportunities – in fairness, there are many ‘open’ postdoctoral positions that do not specify what subject has to be researched.

Maybe the lack of positions has to do with ‘accepted wisdom’ about the US-China relationship – by which I mean that people accept what they read in the newspapers and see on the news, and therefore do not believe any more needs said or done. I do, however, find this a less-than-compelling argument. More likely, in my humble opinion, is that finding funding Middle Eastern Studies is just easier – be it because the US is currently engaged in 2.5 wars in the Middle East, and not at war with China (despite being inextricably linked to the Middle Kingdom in almost every way, certainly financially).

“Andrew Johnson” by Annette Gordon-Reed (Times/Henry Holt)

2011-04-25T07:22:00.001-07:00

The Unwanted 17th President

A Pulitzer Prize-winning historian recounts the tale of the unwanted president who ran afoul of Congress over Reconstruction and was nearly removed from office.
Andrew Johnson never expected to be president. But just six weeks after becoming Abraham Lincoln's vice president, the events at Ford's Theatre thrust him into the nation's highest office.
Johnson faced a nearly impossible task—to succeed America's greatest chief executive, to bind the nation's wounds after the Civil War, and to work with a Congress controlled by the so-called Radical Republicans. Annette Gordon-Reed, one of America's leading historians of slavery, shows how ill-suited Johnson was for this daunting task. His vision of reconciliation abandoned the millions of former slaves (for whom he felt undisguised contempt) and antagonized congressional leaders, who tried to limit his powers and eventually impeached him.
The climax of Johnson's presidency was his trial in the Senate and his acquittal by a single vote, which Gordon-Reed recounts with drama and palpable tension. Despite his victory, Johnson's term in office was a crucial missed opportunity; he failed the country at a pivotal moment, leaving America with problems that we are still trying to solve.

Andrew Johnson inherited the presidency after Lincoln’s assassination, at a most difficult time in United States history. That they were so different from each other, with such different mindsets and skills, proved a disappointment for those who had supported Lincoln’s vision, and a tragedy for those Lincoln had sought to serve most. In this slim volume, Annette Gordon-Reed gives a quick-paced account of the life of America’s 17th President.

Johnson was “a near polar opposite of Lincoln in his leadership style and temperament”. Unsurprisingly, Reed often compares the two presidents, stating that “America went from the best to the worst in one presidential term.” The author explains how both had similar origins in “hardscrabble” early lives, but where Lincoln learned and bloomed through his experiences, Johnson was “wounded” by his struggle to reach respectable society, and Reed suggests it was Johnson’s inability to let go of his early trials that “crippled him inside” and laid the foundations for his ultimate presidential failure. Johnson carried with him a life-long self consciousness of his roots, seemingly afraid of being ‘found out’ and spurned for it.

“Books, a familiar vehicle of escape, were like a drug to him. He read voraciously as if he were trying to fill his head with all the things he had missed in his impoverished childhood.”

One could argue that, in some matters of character, Johnson was George W Bush’s predecessor. I’m not suggesting Bush was a racist, but rather in certain areas of decision-making and character, the two were remarkably similar. Specifically, as the author explains, “when [Johnson] took a position, with seeming pride, he stuck to it no matter how catastrophic.” In all his political offices, Johnson “offered his stubbornness as evidence that he was a man of principle when, in fact, he was simply afraid to be wrong. Or, at least, he was afraid to be seen being wrong.”

Throughout his life, Johnson had a peculiar relationship with the Southern Planter class. He was both jealous and resentful of it, born in poverty, downtrodden by the wealthy, but oh-so-eager to enter into its ranks. “As his actions during his presidency suggest, Johnson’s much-vaunted hatred of the southern planter class was born of deep envy and a form of unrequited admiration. It was the burning hatred of a lover spurned and scorned.” For example, President Johnson’s “vindictive” treatment of disgraced Confederate grandees, making a great show of forcing them to come to him in order to effectively “beg” for re-admittance into the United States – after this show of obeisance, Johnson acted with “great alacrity”, his psychological need sated.

Johnson’s reconstruction proposals and preferences were bizarre and contradictory for a man who had despised the Southern Planter class/aristocracy, but also in line with his inherent racism and belief in the inferiority of blacks. He clearly still saw the US as having a “white man’s government”, and was totally supportive of that. His opposition to black suffrage was at odds with the Republican Party’s platform, who saw that the only way for blacks to guarantee their freedom was by allowing them to become part of the governmental process (also, they offered a potentially massive increase in voters likely to support those who gave them the vote – i.e. the Republican Party).

“Observers were stunned that the man who had evinced such a lifelong hostility toward the southern gentry, who he called traitors, should suddenly want to put men who had taken up arms against the United States back in control of the South. Thousands upon thousands of northern soldiers had died trying to remove this class of men from power, and Johnson rushed to put them back in place.”

His treatment of the Southern Planter class in the wake of the Civil War was not a unique occurrence. Johnson’s style could be quite brash and combative, and he “did not always know when to bring his inner attack dog to heel. Instead of disarming people, he began to offend as much as impress with his verbal assaults.”

Johnson’s inherent racism was particularly evident in his mixed support for cheap land for the poor. As a congressman, and through the Homestead Bill, he supported making newly opened land cheap for poor white labourers, in the hope of giving them more freedom and security (not to mention access to credit). However, as president he was decidedly opposed to similar measures that would have benefited newly-freed, poor blacks. Specifically, in 1865, Johnson rushed to prevent successful implementation of proposed land reform, which would have given newly freed blacks the same opportunities offered to poor whites in Johnson’s own proposed (but ultimately whittled-down and pared-back) Homestead Bill. “Land ownership meant independence.”

“The killing off of land reform ensured that the vast majority of southern blacks would be unable to achieve personal independence and would have to work for their former masters, now back in the saddle courtesy of Johnson.”

While Johnson remained a supporter of slavery in theory, Gordon-Reed suggests that his rhetorical turn-around was more to do with politics than any personal enlightenment; also, Johnson's genuine love for the Union and his desire to keep it intact may also have driven his policy-switch, as he saw slavery as a guarantee for disunion.

“Throughout the entirety of his political career he did everything he could to make sure blacks would never become equal citizens in the United States of America. Tragically, he was able to bring the full force and prestige of the American presidency to the effort.”

The author gives an interesting account of Johnson’s unfortunate inauguration as Lincoln’s second vice-president; his “imbecilic” comportment (he was drunk), and the possible reasons behind it. This was certainly interesting. The author seems to get a lot of satisfaction tearing Johnson down for what was, admittedly, the appalling state of the man now a heart-beat away from the presidency. But, I felt this (and the occasional other passage) took a little too much relish is knocking him down. In a series that has, on the whole, attempted a scholarly detachment towards its subjects if a favourable approach is not possible, this volume has a distinctly different tone, and for that reason struck a bit of a disappointing chord with me. There are many other presidents who have condoned or even perpetrated reprehensible policies or actions – they haven’t been brushed under the rug in any of the volumes thus far released as part of the series, but neither do they sit back and take pot shots at the president in question.

It’s refreshing that the author hasn’t glossed over the more negative aspects of Johnson’s life and presidency (it would have been impossible to do so for the latter), but the author’s justified disgust at Johnson's actions as president unfairly colour the treatment of his earlier career and life. Much of what he did was courageous (even if it did turn out to be a political ploy, as it did yield some positive results) – such as being a Southern Senator so at openly and vocally at odds with the secessionist sentiment in the South. One cannot doubt or argue that his professional and political rise was highly impressive and the stuff of American political myth and dreams – truly, he was a by-the-bootstraps success, which was far harder in those days than in many decades since (some would argue that social mobility has once again ground to a halt). His presidential record is abysmal, but a lighter touch might have been welcome for his earlier life. Gordon-Reed does make reference to the existing prejudices of the day, and it is clear that Johnson had a particularly ingrained racist streak, but the explanation is perfunctory and dismissive. Too much attention is paid to the ‘gossip’ aspect of his life – which is somewhat understandable, given the dearth of Johnson’s own writing (he just didn’t really leave anything – much of the writing and correspondence we have of Johnson’s life is comprised of letters ‘To’ Johnson, rather than ‘From’ the man).

Overall, this is an interesting and very well-written volume. It had none of the dry passages one finds in some of the other books in the series, and the author’s prose is lively and accessible. Johnson is a president I didn’t know that much about, and the author has managed to include an excellent amount of detail in such a short biography. If you are either a fan of the series, or have an interest in the president, this is a very good place to start.

Despite the sometimes odd tone (if I’m honest, I still can’t quite place what it was that I sometimes didn’t like), I would definitely recommend this book. This book should also work as an introduction to Annette Gordon-Reed’s writing (which is very good, and it’s not at all difficult to see how she won a Pulitzer Prize) – a starting point before diving into her more substantial works, such as The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family (2008).

January’s US-China Summit

2011-03-07T03:20:00.001-08:00

The US print media and US-China relations, during President Hu’s State Visit

With Chinese President Hu Jintao’s state visit to Washington, the relationship between America and China has been the subject of intense media scrutiny. This flurry of coverage provides an ideal opportunity to examine this relationship, and also to explore the concerns and conflicts in the media’s continued impression of China. It would appear that the American media have yet to move beyond the events of Tiananmen. This is partly the result of Congressional long-memories (making China a surprising anomaly in Congressional discourse), but also because many of the same issues resonate throughout US-China relations: China’s approach to human rights remains inimical to America’s professed values, economic relations are increasing every year, trade disputes remain, and security concerns – whether Taiwan-related or concerning the implications of China’s military build-up – are growing.

There remains a distrust of Beijing’s policies and motives. Hannah Beech has described Chinese diplomacy as showing two faces to the world: one is “suave and cosmopolitan”, while the other is “assertive and even arrogant, demanding global respect while bridling at any international criticism with the petulance of a teenager.”^[1] It is with this in mind, and the common-place complaints about China’s mercantilist trade practices, and human rights abuses, that Obama and his team had to operate during the State visit.

The week leading up to the visit saw three prominent Obama administration officials publicly criticise China with regards to their various bureaucratic ‘turfs’: defence, economics, and human rights – the three cornerstone issues in the US-China relationship. Last week in Beijing, Defence Secretary Robert Gates pledged to increase US military investment in the Pacific and procurement of weapons, jet fighters and other weapons technology, in response to China's growing military power and arms build-up. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner delivered a speech in Washington in which he called on China to open its domestic market to American products and to let the yuan appreciate. And finally, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton criticised China on its human rights record (something she has done before) and also the continued incarceration of Liu Xiaobo, who was awarded the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize. These three statements apparently signalled the administration’s intention to confront China on the issues that are most important to the relationship. However, in all likelihood these statements made President Hu resistant to substantive negotiation or concessions on these issues. To have three Cabinet Secretaries blast China on three sensitive and important issues is unlikely to have had much of an affect; it is merely a continuation of the pageantry of contemporary US-China relations. For this summit, Obama “had to get concrete concessions from Hu to register a success, while all Hu had to do was smile without giving in and make sure that mutual relations didn’t deteriorate,” writes Leslie Gelb for the Daily Beast. Obama was not able to get any concrete concessions from Hu, and this will not surprise or quieten Americans who think Obama is soft on foreign dictators.

In Thomas Donnelly’s words, the summit was perfunctory and unimpressive: “The Chinese ‘paramount leader’ agreed to buy a few airplanes, agreed to talk a bit about human rights (with Chinese characteristics), and got some good press back home. All that our China hands could say was that the trip was a welcome punctuation to the declining relations of the past year.”^[2]

However, that Hu’s visit was a non-event is actually “just as well”, as Donnelly believes the post-Cold War policy of ‘engagement’ has “run out of steam”:

“China’s mercantilist trade and financial practices prevent even economic engagement from fulfilling its open-markets promise. Nor has engagement made for more open Chinese politics. Beijing remains repressive. China’s expanding middle class is more often aggressively nationalistic than globally cosmopolitan.”

China has approached Obama’s presidency in a “puzzling manner”, writes Fareed Zakaria in TIME. Despite Obama’s talk of his belief in the “supreme importance” of the US-China economic and strategic relationship, and also his symbolically accommodating trip to China in 2009, Beijing has been “distinctly combative”, over-reacting to almost every utterance and event from the Obama administration – including routine and predictable issues that have arisen in almost every recent administration since Carter (such as arms sales to Taiwan, and meeting with the Dalai Lama).

Economics

The US-China economic relationship is fraught with little-understood issues like currency revaluation, intellectual property rights, and China’s internal market structure and ‘rules’. Despite talking tough on the economy, Obama’s team didn’t exactly manage a win. The negotiating team was only able to extract about $45 billion in new contracts to buy American products and services; for example, more civilian airliners from Boeing (which seems to always result from these summits, unless China feels slighted, at which point Airbus gets some new contracts). While welcome, these types of deals are usually negotiated well before these summits begin, and merely offer a nice economic boost narrative for both nations’ leaders.

Irwin Stelzer of The Weekly Standard sees China’s economic policies as sinister and dangerous: “The Communist regime sees trade policy as merely one strategic weapon in a war aimed at overtaking the United States as the world’s preeminent economic and military power.”^[3] Stelzer continues, arguing that “their vaults... stuffed with an even larger hoard of American IOUs” will be enough to give Beijing an “important influence” over American foreign policy.

In 2010, Secretary Clinton asked then-Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, “How do you deal toughly with your banker?” She was expressing a common concern in American policy circles that China might retaliate to US toughness by dumping its dollar-denominated bonds on the market, driving down their value and raising interest rates. This drastic move, Stelzer warns, “would bring our economic recovery to a screeching halt – or worse. Yes, the value of China’s dollar-denominated assets would decline, but if a broader geopolitical objective were served, that would merely be a cost to include in the military budget.”

Security, The PLA & the “China Threat”

On security issues, such as China’s assertions of sovereignty over regions of the South China Sea (“aggressive claims”, in Beech’s words), “it was Hu who was doing the asking”, and Obama who didn’t budge: “For all China’s increased military spending and technological advances, it remains far behind America in military punch,” writes Leslie Gelb. With regards to the aforementioned arms sales to Taiwan, which Beijing insists must be stopped because Taiwan is part of China, Obama made it clear that Washington will continue to assure Taiwan’s safety and peaceful independence. The military balance still favours the US, but this does not stop China’s military modernisation and build-up from being a popular topic with the news media. At the time of the summit, The Economist painted a bleak picture of US-China relations in this context:

“Recent revelations about its military programmes are the latest Chinese moves to have unsettled the world. Strip the charm from Chinese diplomacy and only the offensive is left. Sino-American relations are at their lowest ebb since a Chinese fighter collided with an American EP-3 spyplane a decade ago.”

Both Fareed Zakaria and Hannah Beech refer to China’s military modernisation in TIME magazine. Both authors imply that the PLA is operating at odds with or without permission and advice from the CCP leadership; and as a result is a growing threat. At the same time, they both ignore similar actions by American institutions. For example, Zakaria writes: “The Chinese military, perhaps because of [increased] budgets but also its ideological and strategic mind-set, seems to consider the U.S. as China’s sworn enemy and to believe that a conflict between Beijing and Washington is inevitable.” However, Zakaria fails to mention that US Quadrennial Defence Reports have frequently pointed to China as the only nation likely to present a threat to US security. Donnelly also attributes hostile motives to PLA strategy, stating that for almost two decades, the PLA has “shifted its focus from repelling a Soviet invasion and controlling domestic unrest to the sole problem of defeating U.S. forces in East Asia. This has been a strategic surprise to which no American administration has appropriately responded.”^[4]

It is in the best interests of both countries to maintain a good working relationship, so anything that looks like it might move the two nations to battle-stations will likely be met will full diplomatic efforts on both sides to ward off conflict. The bilateral relationship is mutually beneficial at present, despite increased concerns over a gradual diversification in China’s basket of foreign currency reserves.

There is another comparison that can be easily drawn between America and China, and that is the rhetoric of generals and other military leaders. A few of China’s generals have been caught on the record giving inflammatory and bellicose statements. But then, so did Donald Rumsfeld. Chinese Minister of Defence Liang Guanglie said, “We may be living in peaceful times... but we can never forget war, never send the horses south or put the bayonets and guns away.”^[5] Is this so different to the ever-increasing-in-size US defence budget, and the QDR references to China?

Of course, the most worrying thing under discussion the weeks surrounding the summit was President Hu’s apparent ignorance of the Chinese air force’s stealth fighter test. This plays into American fears about CCP opacity, and how it is all-too-frequently difficult to ascertain what the Chinese leadership is actually thinking. According to a September 2010 Stockholm International Peace Research Institute report, “Authority over foreign policy is fractured... Foreigners must take into account multiple agencies that have a stake or say in any given decision.” In addition, Beech reports, at the Copenhagen Climate Change summit in 2009, “Foreigners dealing with the Chinese complained they didn’t know who was calling the shots.”^[6]

China’s military modernisation has been ringing alarm bells for years among American defence hawks, and when put in the context of Obama’s and Gates’s calls for reducing waste in the Defence Budget, we naturally see the tone devolve into one favouring a China Threat, with the elimination of weapons programs setting a “worrisome pattern”, when “our biggest foreign competitor, China, is in the midst of a rapid arms build-up that includes fielding a stealth fighter much faster than previously predicted and a new ballistic missile dubbed a ‘carrier killer’ for its ability to target American aircraft carriers.”^[7]

In terms of rhetoric, however, there are other things to take into account; in particular, the intended audience of certain speeches and statements. In light of the globalised media economy and spread of internet access, one could argue that this is irrelevant, and many have done so. However, both Chinese and American media outlets and politicians cater speeches and content for domestic audiences, and sometimes a separate version (with different nuances) for foreign audiences. “With Communism hardly able to serve as a guiding force anymore,” Beech writes, “the party has used nationalism as a tool to rally the Chinese people.” The “jingoistic drumbeat” of China’s official media is not designed nor intended for foreign audiences, “but rather a nationalistic crowd back home.” This is no different to American political practice. Republicans and FOX commentators call for muscular foreign policies, sneer at diplomatic options as weak and the purview of the effete, “mommy” Democratic Party, while MSNBC and liberal media outlets call for harsh sanctions over Chinese human rights record. And yet, both Republican and Democratic presidents present a very different face to Chinese dignitaries and officials, almost conciliatory in their deference.

Conclusions

The ‘two faces of Chinese diplomacy’ have had a mixed response all over the world. Home and overseas audiences want and need different things, and the media provides images of events accordingly, reflecting these different needs. This is no different to US politicians’ tendencies to lambast China for a domestic audience, while at the same time courting them for business opportunities and to convince them to continue buying T-Bills.

When it comes to the economic and security ‘threats’ that many commentators and scholars have written about, Jonah Goldberg offers a way of looking at the gloomy situation in a ‘half-glass-full’ way: “China is certainly less of a military threat to the United States than the Soviet Union was. It’s more of an economic challenger, but that's a good problem to have, right? Currency wars are better than nuclear ones.”^[8]

American media still operates with the same assumptions and biases since normalization, and certainly since Tiananmen. The standard tropes remain – maritime squabbles, North Korea, Taiwan, Tibet, human rights, bilateral trade. If it was any other country, this record would make the country a pariah, but China’s economic clout allows it to be stubborn and immovable. It is certainly difficult for Westerners to separate liberal values from reportage on China (something that shouldn’t be done); the shrillness of some articles can overwhelm contemporary issues, especially when we know that Chinese leaders will become implacable in the face of foreign criticism. This is particularly the case when some journalists hang on to the rhetoric and language of the Reagan era:

“China is still governed by a fundamentally evil system. Hu has blood on his hands — he ordered the slaughter of hundreds of unarmed Tibetan protestors in 1989. But it’s less evil than when it kept a billion people in poverty and killed 65 million of its own citizens. That’s progress.”

This statement, by Goldberg, ticks a number of boxes when it comes to American reporting on China – any excuse to mention Tibet (whether relevant or not), and echoes of Reagan’s “Evil Empire” rhetoric, only transferring the characterisation from the Soviet Union to China. Regardless of what one may or may not think about their system, the simple realities of international relations – and certainly with regards to China’s place in it – are that immediate concerns sometimes supersede long-term problems.

While throwbacks to the Cold War limit conservative commentators and China watchers, Donnelly argues that the “engagement versus containment” framework employed most frequently today “imprisons American policy in a false dichotomy”: “the fact is that a security strategy based upon military deterrence – i.e., an improved U.S. military posture, revitalized alliances, and strategic partnerships – would not detract from diplomacy, trade, or other forms of exchange with China.” This is an important consideration for those who still see US-China relations as zero-sum.

It is perhaps the fault of the West – America and multi-national corporations in particular – who can be blamed for China’s conduct on the international stage. Businesses’ obsession with the China Market, the tactics they pursued to effectively give China anything it asked for – from developing the infrastructure China needed (see Karabell’s Superfusion) to lobbying Congress to ease restrictions and promote what James Mann has dubbed “The China Fantasy” – while simultaneously allowing everything unsavoury about the Chinese regime and its politics (internal and external) to be swept under the rug, it is no wonder that Beijing is acting increasingly assertive: the West has given the Chinese leadership the impression that it will do nothing to China if it rocks the boat. America has mortgaged itself for cheaper Chinese-made products and what was believed to be an eternal line of credit.

China is diversifying its foreign currency holdings, certainly and logically, but this does not spell the imminent demise of America. What does threaten the relationship, however, is the myopic impression that it is only China that needs to change its ways to solve mutual problems. With the American political system operating as it does, we will not hear anything beyond the eternal argument of “engagement or containment” – when each can be applied to different issues simultaneously. With the American media apparently still set on approaching the US-China relationship with a critical eye, it will likely continue to be reported in terms of competition, rather than cooperation and mutual benefit.

[1] Beech, Hannah. “Split Personality” (TIME, January 24^th 2011), p.28

[2] Donnelly, Thomas. “Hu Cares?” (The Weekly Standard, January 31^st 2011), p.9

[3] Stelzer, Irwin M. “Our Broken China Policy” (The Weekly Standard, January 17^th 2011), p.26

[4] Donnelly (Jan.31^st, 2011), p.9

[5] Quoted in Beech (Jan.24^th, 2011), p.31

[6] Beech (Jan.24^th, 2011), p.31

[7] Boot, Max. “A Farewell to Arms” (The Weekly Standard, January 17^th 2011), pp.8-9

[8] Goldberg, Jonah. “China and the US: One Superpower or Two?” (Los Angeles Times, January 18^th 2011)

“Zero-Sum Future” by Gideon Rachman (Simon & Schuster)

2011-03-05T07:45:00.001-08:00

American Power in the an Age of Anxiety

From the chief foreign affairs columnist for the Financial Times comes a stark warning about a gathering global political crisis. Successive presidents have welcomed globalization and the rise of China. But with American unemployment stubbornly high and U.S. power facing new challenges, the stage is set for growing rivalry between America and China. The European Union is also ripping itself apart. The win-win logic of globalization is giving way to a zero-sum logic of political and economic struggle.
The new world we now live in, an age of anxiety, is a less prosperous, less stable world, with old ideas overthrown and new ideologies and powers on the rise. Rachman shows how zero-sum logic is thwarting efforts to deal with global problems from Afghanistan to unemployment, climate change to nuclear proliferation. This timely and important book details why international politics is now more dangerous and volatile—and suggests what can be done to break away from the crippling logic of a zero-sum world.

In Zero-Sum Future Gideon Rachman provides a timely and very well-written volume on the state of the world today, and the dangers inherent in the rise of increased zero-sum thinking in global politics. The book offers good summaries of all the major issues and the major political and economic developments in key regions of the world. Despite the blurb, one of the books strengths is also that it does not solely focus on the US and China, but provides a broad picture of international development and history.

Rachman argues that “the international system has... entered a period of dangerous instability and profound change,” and that it would be a big mistake to believe that it is possible to go back to international business as it was conducted before the crash of 2008.

Zero-sum logic, Rachman writes, has prevented meaningful agreements on a whole host of important global issues, from combating global warming, nuclear proliferation, and also shortages in food, energy, and clean water. The United States, China, the EU, and the major developing economies all hesitate to move first – for fear of crippling their domestic economies, and so boosting the relative power and wealth of rivals. A similar competitive rivalry blocks the world's ability to find cooperative solutions to nuclear proliferation, with the major powers manoeuvring for advantage rather than acting decisively to combat a common threat. Zero-sum logic hovers over other big international challenges, such as shortages of energy, food, and water as the world's biggest powers struggle to secure resources.”

Rachman paints a bleak potential picture of the international system:

“Among the biggest risks is the danger of a major new war in the Middle East, provoked by a failure to rein in Iran’s nuclear program. The debt crisis in Europe or trade wars, triggered by American anger at Chinese mercantilism, could plunge the world economy into a severe new downturn. The inability to stabilize failing states could see countries such as Afghanistan and Pakistan slipping further into violent anarchy, with dangerous consequences for the rest of the world. Over the longer term, a failure to deal with climate change could provoke the most serious international crisis of all – leading to flooding, famine, mass migration, and even war.”

“Crises such as these,” Rachman writes, “threaten the future of the whole world. Yet the world’s major powers are unable to deal with them cooperatively” because “a damaged and dysfunctional world economy and the growth of new international rivalries – in particular between the United States and China – are increasingly trapping the world in zero-sum logic.”

Rachman split his book into three main sections: the “Age of Transformation” – 1978-91 – which saw an embrace of globalisation and the spark of China’s and India’s rises; the “Age of Optimism” – 1991-2008 – which spans from the collapse of the Soviet Union through to financial crisis of 2008; and the the “Age of Anxiety” – 2008 and onwards. After outlining these three ages, Zero-Sum Future “explains why international politics are about to get more dangerous and unstable”, and finishes with a couple of chapters aimed at offering solutions for “what can be done to break away from the dangerous logic of a zero-sum world.”

Age of Transformation

This section effectively deals with the closing decades of the Cold War, and those figures and events who help refashion the world in what was believed then to herald the “end of history” and a shift towards democracy and increased market economics. “Together with Mikhail Gorbachev and Deng Xiaoping, [Margaret] Thatcher and [Ronald] Reagan were the dominant figures of the Age”, and Rachman explains in succinct detail how these four figures effected the development of their own countries and also the world. This was a good, clear section, with chapters on the economic and political revolutions, evolutions, and developments in China, the UK, the USA, Europe, India, South America, Russia, and Eastern Europe, which summarise nicely the key issues and events of this age.

The final chapter in this section explains the importance of the Gulf 1991 War, which would have a considerable impact on the US’s place in the world – “America’s revived willingness to contemplate war was a defining feature of the Age of Optimism.” The “easy victory” of the Gulf War gave American politicians an “intoxicating glimpse” of a new world defined by an “unanswerable combination of American technological, military, economic, ideological, and political power. The unipolar moment had arrived.”

Age of Optimism

The Age of Optimism was a time of democracy promotion and expansion of free markets, led by a confident America and Europe. If Fukuyama’s “end of history” was correct, would this end come about naturally, or did it need a helping hand? It would, of course, fall on the US to provide said help – in some ways, this kind of logic is how the neoconservative movement came about, as they believed the world wasn’t moving quickly enough towards universal democracy and market economics.

“While faith in the universality of democracy was never in fact universal during the Age of Optimism, there were other parts of the liberal internationalist creed that really did seem to have conquered the world in the years between the collapse of the Soviet Union and the financial crisis of 2008. The most important idea of all was the faith in market economics.”

“The whole neoconservative philosophy exemplified by Krauthammer’s speech in 2004 was based on an unexamined assumption of continued American economic supremacy.” It appeared that this was somewhat justified, as the American-led revolution in technology suggested the US would lead the way. Technology, Rachman writes, “turbocharged globalization” and “America’s tech boom was crucial to banishing a fear of national decline that had hovered stubbornly over the 1980s.”

American politicians believed that economic globalization and free markets were a “force for prosperity and peace around the world. But where markets failed to bring peace, prosperity, and stability, the United States was prepared to intervene with military might.” By the end of the Bush presidency, however, America was becoming “much more conscious of the limits of its own power” and its ability to implement change around the world. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan had turned into “long, bloody, and unpopular slogs”, calling into question the validity of a America’s supremacy.

“During the Age of Optimism, globalisation and American power underpinned the international system. Liberal internationalists were confident that the world of prosperity, freedom, and stability was expanding, while the areas of poverty, dictatorship, and anarchy were gradually being rolled back.” The power seemed to lie in the West, with its strengths in economics, technology, and military. This all ended with the 2008 financial crash, and the United States in particular “faces fundamental challenges to its global position.” No longer was there much faith in the ideas of exporting democracy, thanks to the debacles in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also thanks to the growing acceptance of China’s authoritarian model (what Stefan Halper calls the ‘Beijing Consensus’).

Rachman offers good descriptions and explanations of the counter-theories and ideologies of the time – particularly the opposing, Asian perception of power and international political development, as exemplified by the writing and policies of such luminaries as Lee Kuan Yew and Kishore Mahbubani, who suggested that the Western-held beliefs in the spread and benefits of democracy may not apply to China – “An early transition to democracy in China might not be conducive to global peace as Western theorists liked to believe”, and if Chinese authoritarianism helps create a massive Chinese middle class, how can this be considered ‘bad’?

The rise of globalisation in the world also, naturally, gave rise to those who oppose it, particularly in Europe and some elite American circles.

“In the heyday of liberal optimism during the Clinton years, it was easy to point to the most attractive forces driving globalization forward: new technologies, the spread of political freedom, the power of market economics, the creation of common interests between nations, even the wisdom of farsighted politicians. But in the post-9/11 world, the Bush administration decided to reassert and demonstrate the most fundamental force underpinning the international system – American power.”

Age of Anxiety

With the end of the Age of Optimism, four new forces are reshaping international order. First, the emergence of genuine global challenges – climate change, terrorism, and global economic imbalances. The second is the faltering and controversial drive for new forms of global governance to deal with these problems. Third is the growing confidence of the world’s authoritarian powers, especially in Russia and China. And finally, the potential wave of new failed states.

“The emergence of these new forces, combined with the weakening of American power, is replacing the win-win world of the Age of Optimism with a zero-sum world, in which the world’s major powers are increasingly and dangerously at odds with each other.”

The 2008 financial crisis has “undermined what was regarded as the very basis of American power and spread a new sense of American vulnerability”, and also impacted its ability to project power. This sense of vulnerability is exacerbated by other nations’ reduced willingness to bow to American leadership, let alone seek it, on some of the most important issues facing the world today.

In the chapter entitled “A World of Troubles”, Rachman gives us an overview of the great issues facing the global community today – the Great Recession, climate change, resource shortages, poverty and population, failed states, terrorism and nuclear proliferation; and he also writes about the search for global solutions and the impediments to successful negotiations. Specifically, this is the rise in zero-sum thinking in international relations.

US & China

Much of the final quarter of the book looks at the US-China relationship, and how it is changing in the Age of Anxiety (although both, obviously, feature throughout the book). Some readers might bemoan the focus on the relationship, but Rachman is right to do so; as he points out, correctly, the US-China relationship is one between the two most significant and power actors on the international stage – upheaval within or caused by either will have ripple effects across the globe, in every sphere and international arena. Rachman evinces concern about the toughening stance and combative rhetoric emanating from Beijing – a “mixture of pride and defiance, cooperation and confrontation” – that adds more uncertainty to this already volatile international atmosphere; and China’s (and Russia’s) new found alternative source of legitimacy: nationalism. In the wake of the 2008 crash, tensions are heightening in US-China relations, and top officials are openly questioning the relationship. Nationalism is on the rise in both nations, as American workers start to question the promise of the liberalising effect of increased wealth on the Chinese, and Chinese come to view America as stifling China’s growth and development.

“If zero-sum logic strengthens in international relations, the U.S.-Chinese relationship will become much more adversarial,” and as a result, “the most important question hanging over the international system... is the future of China.” Rachman takes the reader through the issues that face China – from democratisation (too soon to write it off, but don’t hold your breath, and when it arrives it might not be what we were hoping for); China’s likely continued growth and development; that China has already become, for all intents and purposes, “the world’s biggest player” by almost every metric (save, most significantly perhaps, military capabilities); and also China’s increased participation in UN peacekeeping missions, relaxing its long-held suspicion of, and opposition to foreign powers interfering in other nations’ internal affairs. “A better Chinese-American relationship might then serve as a foundation for breaking free from the zero-sum logic that is afflicting international relations as a whole.”

Rachman does refer to other key areas and regions in international politics, also, discussing how zero-sum thinking, protectionism, and nationalism are on the rise globally, and not just between the US and China – for example, the author highlights increasing tensions in Europe, and the possibility that fractures in the EU will only grow, putting the communal relationships in severe risk of collapsing.

“Most of my career has been spent reporting on a world where things were steadily improving... It doesn’t feel that way now.”

Overall, I would say this is an accessible, well-written and -structured book on the evolution of international order from the 1970 to the present. Each chapter is clearly defined and succinctly written (there were only a couple of instances when I thought the author skimmed the surface too much, and didn’t delve deep enough). Rachman’s style is excellent, as can be expected from a life-long journalist, and he infuses his discussion with personal reflections from those areas he was stationed to – never making the issue about himself (something many journalists are all-too-prone to do), but instead enriching his analysis with a personal account to illustrate the problem or issue being discussed.

The book is an indictment of the zealous faith in the power of markets to solve the great problems of today and the last half-century, and Rachman does an exemplary job of laying out the evolution of the ideas and problems. “It is increasingly obvious... that there are many dangerous international political and economic problems for which there is no obvious market solution.” It is possible, posits Rachman, that this will lead to greater international cooperation, giving rise to the “world government” idea beloved by some, and despised and feared by others. If the US or some form of global government cannot step up to solve problems, the author is concerned about the possibility of a rise of an “axis of authoritarianism”, with China, Russia, Iran and Venezuela serving as regional centres of power and influence. Rachman’s hope, I believe, is to fire a warning shot against the encroachment of zero-sum thinking that will derail the continued growth and development of the international community. Hard choices have to be made, by all concerned, but there remain considerable (perhaps, in the short-term, insurmountable) hurdles to clear before real progress can be made on the issues that will affect, if they do not already, every person on the planet.

Rachman’s ultimate conclusion is that “Eighty years after the Great Depression, a strong, successful, and confident America remains the best hope for a stable and prosperous world.”

Given how much of the book is dedicated to the past, I found the title a bit misleading, but that is a very minor complaint that shouldn’t be considered an indictment on its content (in the UK, the book is published as Zero-Sum World, by Icon Books, and this is a far better title). If you come to the book with the idea that you’re getting an overall picture, then this will be very satisfying. Rachman’s conclusions are clear, and well explained, and actually suggest some hope, although do not shy away from a pragmatic acceptance that things might get worse before they get better.

The level of depth and analysis might disappoint some academics, but the book would serve as an excellent introduction to the world today and how we got here, and is therefore very highly recommended for anyone interested in acquiring a greater understanding of the forces that have driven international economic and political change for the past half-century.

Recommended.

See Also: Fareed Zakaria, The Post-American World (2009); Zachary Karabell, Superfusion (2009); Joseph S Nye, Jr., The Future of Power (2011)

[UK Edition]

“Theories of International Politics & Zombies” by Daniel W. Drezner (Princeton)

2011-03-01T04:06:00.001-08:00

The Best Book ever written about International Politics?

What would happen to international politics if the dead rose from the grave and started to eat the living? Daniel Drezner’s ground-breaking book answers the question that other international relations scholars have been too scared to ask. Addressing timely issues with analytical bite, Drezner looks at how well-known IR theories might be applied to a war with zombies. Exploring the plots of popular zombie films, songs, and books, Drezner predicts realistic scenarios for the political stage in the face of a zombie threat and considers how valid – or how rotten – such scenarios might be.

Drezner boldly lurches into the breach and “stress tests” the ways that different approaches to world politics would explain policy responses to the living dead. He examines the most prominent international relations theories – including realism, liberalism, constructivism, neoconservatism, and bureaucratic politics – and decomposes their predictions. He digs into prominent zombie films and novels, such as Night of the Living Dead and World War Z, to see where essential theories hold up and where they would stumble and fall. Drezner argues that by thinking about outside-of-the-box threats we get a cognitive grip on what former U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld famously referred to as the “unknown unknowns” in international security.

Correcting the zombie gap in international relations thinking and addressing the genuine but publicly unacknowledged fear of the dead rising from the grave, Theories of International Politics and Zombies presents political tactics and strategies accessible enough for any zombie to digest. [Back Copy]

In August 2009, Professor Drezner, who blogs for Foreign Policy magazine, wrote a short piece about how international relations theories might apply in the wake of a zombie apocalypse. Not only did Drezner do it very well, and in a manner that should make anyone familiar with IR theory chuckle, but it also opened up the possibility that those who automatically shudder at the word ‘theory’ could actually understand and enjoy what Drezner was writing about, and gain an understanding of IR theory in the process. It was the perfect vehicle to bring a greater understanding of the theories that inform international interactions to a wider audience: it was fun, intelligent and quirky, and therefore likely to stick in one’s mind. [As someone who has taught Intro to IR Theory, I can tell you that this is very important.]

So, why zombies? “Despite the zombie renaissance in popular culture, they are still considered disreputable”, and it’s certainly true that no zombie has the appeal of Harry Potter or the Twilight series. “From a public policy perspective, however, zombies merit greater interest than other paranormal phenomenon,” Drezner writes. For, “in contrast to vampires or demons, scientists and doctors acknowledge that some variation of a zombie could exist in our physical world.” Drezner gives a brief overview of how far and wide zombies have found a place in society, how even some institutions have “mock” plans in place for hypothetical zombie apocalypse, and then defines what a zombie is, for the purposes of this book. It’s clear that Drezner’s not the only person with zombies on his mind, and with the current supernatural pop culture zeitgeist, it makes perfect sense to study some shambling-undead hypotheticals.

The literature review will make the reader both raise an eyebrow as well as snigger or laugh outright – Drezner offers examples of zombie studies from across the scholarly spectrum, from biology, zoology, physics (best way to avoid randomness of zombie-shuffle), mathematics, and even computer sciences (online zombies, or “botnets”). A “brief survey of the zombie literature reveals an immediate and daunting problem.” And yet, social scientists have been noticeably negligent in zombie studies (but have often studied UFOs and vampires). This is particularly problematic:

“If the past decade of military incursions teaches us anything, it is the dangers of conducting foreign policy with only a facile or superficial knowledge about possible enemies.”

Enter Drezner.

In the event of a zombie plague, the existing zombie canon is conspicuously silent on international relations and foreign policy implications, despite it being common sense that such an occurrence would warrant massive governmental intervention. This book is intended to help fill the ‘zombie gap’ in the study and preparation of foreign policy. Dealing with zombies will be very different to dealing with any other potential supernatural or paranormal entity – zombie relations are a more zero-sum endeavour (either we win, or we have our brains eaten). “Zombies crave human flesh, not carrots or sticks”, which makes diplomacy tricky. Not so with vampires and wizards, who can be easily “co-opted into existing power structures” (or high-school cliques), and would possibly be open to various forms of coercion and persuasion practiced by diplomats the world over.

Government responses in general are seriously limited by zombie apocalypses; it’s not just diplomacy that would get thrown out of the window as an option. Nuclear deterrence, a bedrock theory of international relations since the beginning of the Cold War, would also not be applicable during a zombie outbreak: Nuclear deterrence relies on fear of overwhelming, devastating retaliation to prevent or reduce the likelihood of conflict. But zombies don’t know fear... In addition, and here Drezner exhibits superb common sense and appreciation of his chosen adversary:

“If any government was so foolhardy as to launch a first strike, it would create the only thing worse than an army of the living dead: a mutant, radioactive army of the living dead.”

Before delving into specific theories and how they might explain what might happen in the event of a zombie plague, Drezner takes a quick moment to address a couple of key “distractions” that could hinder or complicated this study: specifically, the causal roots of zombie-ism (whether biological, mythical, or some blend of the two; or, perhaps, simply the Evil of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller”); and also whether the zombie outbreak is fast- or slow-spreading. After brief explanations of what these variables might mean, he dismisses them as distractions:

“Because either variety of zombie leads to an international relations problem, we can dismiss the causal importance of speed as a determining factor in global policy responses... neither the origins nor the speed of zombies is of much causal significance.”

Drezner then proceeds to address each of the main theories of international relations and politics, and how their tenets would stack up and apply during a zombie outbreak. This is where the book’s overall value is readily apparent – not only does he use zombies as an amusing and interesting case study, but he provides the best summaries of key theories I’ve ever read. If my students had this book to hand, then I wouldn’t have had anywhere near the trouble getting them to understand the simplest IR concepts. It’s really quite superb.

Drezner does take a moment to explain why he discounts two important international relations theories, Marxism and feminism: “To be blunt, this project is explicitly prohuman, whereas Marxists and feminists would likely sympathize more with the zombies.” To Marxists, “the undead symbolize the oppressed proletariat”, and “unless the zombies were all undead white males”, those in the feminist camp “would likely welcome the posthuman smashing of existing patriarchal structures.” (I don’t mind saying that this had me laughing a great deal, much to the confusion of those sitting near me in the cafe at the time...)

Realism favours ‘selfish’ gain over the transient nature of cooperation and alliances, argues that the ‘anarchic’ nature of the international system forces nations (the primary actors in IR) to focus on power maximisation. Drezner’s summary of realism describes a “dystopic and jaundiced” view of the world, which would suggest that realism would be “perfectly comfortable in the zombie universe” – particularly when used to study of George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead. Ultimately, Drezner argues, realism would argue that international politics would not be noticeably affected, at its core, with the introduction of zombies into the mix, and over the course of the chapter, he breaks it all down, addressing variables and potential events within the framework of realism.

“The failure of humans to cooperate in the presence of reanimated corpses in a common theme that permeates the zombie canon – just as the futility of international cooperation recurs throughout the realist interpretation of history.”

One of Drezner’s more interesting proposals is that the anarchic nature of the international system might, actually, lead to a tacit agreement between zombies and some nations to leave each other in peace. The notion of zombies that can think and strategise is frightening, but as Drezner shows, not absent from the zombie canon (see Land of the Dead).

Liberalism argues that cooperation is possible in an anarchic international system. But, if a zombie’s raison d’être is to eat human brains, surely “Neither cooperation nor coordination is possible with the living dead”? Where liberalism does offer some insight, is into the zombies themselves – who never seem to attack each other. This chapter was not quite as compelling as the Realism chapter, but it offered some interesting considerations to be made (not to mention a tongue-in-cheek section about pro-zombie NGOs that might emerge to stymie international action and cooperation). Ultimately, Drezner concedes that liberalism would predict an “imperfect and vulnerable” paradigm and outcome, and would likely only lead to management and containment policies, rather than rollback.

Neoconservatism, that oh-so controversial school of foreign policy theory, is a melange of liberal and realist themes (pro-democracy, suspicious of international organisations and cooperation, muscular approach to threats, etc.). The neocon tendency to spot threats from miles away (some might say, where they don’t exist), might suggest that neocons would be fore-warned. However, another “concern would be that the initial neoconservative response to a zombie outbreak would be to invade Iraq again out of force of habit.” The zombies, very much like al Qaeda, “hate us for our freedoms”. There is no accommodation or recognition that could – or should – be offered. Instead, an invasion in the very centre of the zombie-affected region would be the best possible approach – fight them there, so we don’t have to fight their spread over here. A war against zombies would offer neocons total justification of their views – it would, after all, be a war against evil itself, thereby adding justification to their Manichaean view of the world, which could very easily be split into the living (good/virtuous) and the undead (bad/evil). A zombie apocalypse would be a win-win for neocons. There is some concern, however, that neoconservatives might conflate the undead with despots, thereby shooting themselves in the foot again.

Social constructivism, the newest of the ‘big’ theories, offers some interesting amusement for this scenario. SC is based on the premise that society is what we make of it, and actors in international relations operate within socially-constructed norms. So, “zombies are what we make of them”. SC also offers some of the only existing IR scholarship on paranormal entities (UFOs). SC is a little ‘wishy-washy’ to some, but Drezner offers some great observations and anecdotes in this chapter. At one point, for example, zombies are put in the same basket as sharks, cannibals, and “very hungry bears” due to their shared interest in the consumption of human flesh. But this is not, according to social constructivists, why zombies are the bigger threat: “Zombies threaten the powerful norm of not devouring each other for sustenance and pleasure – and therefore arouse greater security concerns as a result.” SC does, however, offer some explanation of the likely altruism that would emerge from zombie catastrophe, as borne out by observations of natural disasters, attacks, and so forth.

Zombies “are extremely ecofriendly – they walk everywhere and only eat organic food.”

In his chapters about Domestic Politics and Bureaucratic Politics, Drezner looks below the systemic theories. He suggests the likelihood of “rally round the flag” effect in the wake of a zombie apocalypse, and an enhancement of executive authority to confront this imminent threat. The author also discusses how politicised staffing of institutions (resulting from electoral considerations) could hinder governmental response to zombie crises. “If both domestic political pressures and bureaucratic politics play a role in affecting government policies, their combined effect could be disastrous.”

The psychological impact of zombie outbreaks are covered, also, in a short chapter before the conclusion – that zombies tap into the most powerful negative emotions is unquestioned, and it can have a devastating impact on human behaviour:

“Zombies are often assumed to lack intelligence, but it should be noted that humans frequently respond to new undead situations with confusion and ignorance... There is no shortage of stupid or self-defeating behaviour in zombie films.”

Drezner’s conclusions are brought together in a very concise final chapter that ably demonstrates the similarities, strengths and weaknesses of the theories he’s discussed. He has hoped to show that when zombies walk the earth, it is not the end of humanity, and that international theory can offer a handle with which to approach this shambling threat.

Some of the jokes and references in this book might go a bit over some readers’ heads, or may pass completely unnoticed, but only because the reader may not get the significance of some apparently-mundane phrases that are actually paraphrased ‘jargon’ of the various theories. Despite this, however, there is no doubt that Drezner has written a book that is both fun and also academically sound. I am certain that the world can now breathe easy knowing that global governments might be just that little bit more prepared to deal with any future zombie apocalypse. This slim volume is very well-structured and written, and offers a superb introduction to not only zombie apocalypses, but also international relations theory.

I’ve been a fan of Drezner’s writing ever since he started his blog on Foreign Policy. Reading Theories of International Politics and Zombies has only reinforced my respect for him and his work – he offers light humour to supplement his expert summaries and analysis. This review has only touched on a small fraction of how much the author has managed to cram into such a slim volume.

If you buy only one book about international relations (or zombies), make it this one. Very highly recommended, this is already one of my favourite books. It will change the way you watch zombie movies, and read zombie novels.

Also try: Max Brooks, World War Z (2007) & The Zombie Survival Guide (2004); Mira Grant, Feed (2010) & Deadline (2011); John C. Hulsman & A. Wess Mitchell, The Godfather Doctrine (2009); George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead and Day of the Dead; The Walking Dead (TV & graphic novel); And any other zombie movie/novel you care to think of...

Daniel W. Drezner is professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. His books include All Politics Is Global (Princeton). He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Zombie Research Society.

“O: A Presidential Novel” by Anonymous (Simon & Schuster)

2011-02-25T01:57:00.001-08:00

[Due to the political nature of the novel, and presumed equal interest for readers of this site, I have cross-posted this review from Civilian-Reader.]

A satirical portrait of the people trying to win the presidency in 2012

Among them are: Cal Regan, a rising political star who takes over the president's 2012 re-election campaign after O’s veteran campaign chief is forced to resign because of an affair with a teenage prostitute; Maddy Cohan, a dazzling young journalist whose sharp reports for an upstart website are a frequent source of conversation among the political elite, and whose relationship with one of her sources could complicate her career; Walter LaFontaine, one of O’s earliest Chicago supporters, who despite being left behind when O went to Washington, yearns for a larger role in his hero’s re-election campaign; Tom “Terrific” Morrison, a one-term governor with a military background, who is emerging as the likely nominee and a formidable opponent. Privately derisive of O, Morrison seeks to run a classic change campaign similar to O’s historic march to victory in 2008; Allen Knowles, a wealthy Silicon Valley campaign donor who gives Cal Regan secret information which could be damaging to Morrison’s campaign.

Meanwhile, O is chafing under the demands of the presidency. His senior aides are running him too hard and, to his irritation, have advised him not to play golf on the weekends. To win re-election, he realizes he may have to adopt political methods he had once denounced.

President Obama is fast becoming the most written-about (modern-day) president. Following on in a new sub-genre, we get O: A Presidential Novel (henceforth, O:APN) – an anonymously-penned fictionalisation of Obama’s campaign for re-election in the upcoming 2012 presidential election. Filled with insider detail, and satirical jabs at Washington culture and many familiar faces from the Obama White House (all given different names, of course), O:APN is a novel of mixed strengths and weaknesses.

The author is someone who clearly has a negative opinion of Washington, DC, and its creatures (in itself, not unique or particularly exceptional), and this cynicism for the capital’s culture crops up frequently. Some of the characterisations are a little cliché or heavy on the tropes, but I suppose that can be forgiven. The author drops comments about “Washington’s self-obsessed nature”, the universal arrogance that one’s opinions are fresh and essential and therefore must be shared with a professional campaign staff, the inanity of so many campaign “issues” that arise when journalists have nothing better to write about, and the difference between friends and “Washington friends” – “those utilitarian, affectionless acquaintanceships prevalent in the nation’s capital”. The description of DC and American political culture seems spot-on, from what I’ve read and seen, and the novel certainly benefits from the insider information and experience the author must have had at his fingertips.

The book is written in a rather peculiar style. At times, particularly during scenes of dialogue, it feels natural and brisk; while at other times, it feels disconnected. The lack of a single unifying narrator can sometimes make it a bit difficult to follow – though, in truth, this might be a combined slip of both author and editor for not catching the few chunks that have innumerable uses of “him” and “he”, but few names to indicate which man is being referred to, spoken of, or actually doing something. Sometimes, the story will shift from one camp to another with such suddenness that if you're paying much attention, you might miss it. A minor complaint, perhaps, and one that’s only really a problem near the beginning, but it all added to the rather odd style (I can’t quite put my finger on what was off about Anon’s style).

The first handful of chapters read like a string of Vanity Fair profiles of the key characters we’re going to be following through the novel. There’s also something Woodward-esque about the writing, although not as fluid. Each time a new character is introduced, we get what feels like an entire bio dropped on us. These are interesting, sure, and certainly realistic, but they have a tendency to ruin the flow of the story – especially when you take the lack of clear breaks in chapters. In any other novel, these would be described as “info-dumps” or clunky exposition. They were well written, and read almost exactly like profiles in VF or Newsweek and Time might read, which is fine, but not really the best way of introducing characters in a novel. When the novel finally settles down (after Morrison’s primary victory, which comes about a third into the book), and the campaign starts in earnest – complete with fixers, scandals, and dirty tricks – then the story gets going and the flow picks up and everything starts to feel a little more natural, a little more like the campaign episodes of The West Wing, populated by a more dysfunctional group.

“O” himself, when he actually features in the novel (which is not as frequent as we might think) appears trapped by the presidency. In one article about the book, a journalist complained about the characterisation of “O” was terrible because he complained about not being able to play golf. While it didn’t match the image most people have of Obama (something the fictional “O” mentions), I didn’t mind it so much – I have no difficulty believing that a president would get frustrated by the ‘bubble’ of life in the White House.

The president is portrayed as a rather unhappy man, aloof, but trapped in an “exhausting” system that won’t let him do his job properly, or live even a vaguely normal life, beset by “maddening” intrusions on his privacy – “the promise with which he had begun his administration, that he could elide the polarities of American politics, had vanished in the clashes and concessions of governing.” Morrison, as O’s opponent, paints the president’s travails in a different light:

“He’s incompetent... Maybe he wanted to change Washington. Maybe he wanted to fix our problems. Maybe he wanted to run a smarter government. Maybe he wanted to avoid small-ball politics. But he couldn’t do it. He’s not who we hoped he’d be. He’s not as good a president as he was a candidate. And he’s given up trying.”

After recognising that he’s attempted too much too soon in his first term, “overloading” the system with pushes for meaningful change, “O” considers the reaction to and critics of his presidency, and comes across as increasingly bitter:

“Well fuck them... Let the mouth breathers question my patriotism. Mt patriotism is more demanding than theirs. I don’t use it to inflame people’s prejudices. And fuck the professional Left, too. Let’s see them try to do what I’ve done. Let them try to make the history I’m making.”

There’s a character clearly based on Arianna Huffington, ‘Bianca Stefani’, who runs the Stefani Report:

“the news-aggregating, occasionally muckraking, blogger free-for-all website that became in the last campaign the cybernewspaper of record for leftist activists, intellectuals, and dilettantes from Williamsburg to West Hollywood”

In Stefani’s output, we get a recreation of the liberal disappointment in Obama (as can be found on the opening page of Eric Alterman’s Kabuki Democracy):

“The choice of Caleb Regan to run the president’s reelection campaign is the latest example... of how the progressive candidate elected on a message of hope and change has become another president captive to the reactionary and corrupt culture of Washington.”

The travails of eternally-spurned, yet ever-loyal Walter LaFontaine are quite endearing, amusing, but also sad – Walter has the undying loyalty of a puppy, and about as much awareness of subtext and condescension. Cal Regan’s constant need to respond to Walter’s requests for more responsibility in the campaign and his thoughts on strategy and policy will be familiar to anyone who’s ever had to deal with a subordinate you think little of, but the boss has a soft-spot for.

Perhaps it is because the author makes little-to-no-effort to hide who’s being satirized, that the novel feels awkward. True, the book would have received far less attention, but it might have been a better read if the author wasn’t straight-jacketed by his own gimmick or desire to remain true-to-life. I’m assuming – perhaps unfairly – that the author’s male, because of the way he portrays and writes women, which at times can be lacking in nuance. For example, Maddy Cohan is disappointingly cliché – she ticks every box a cardboard-cut-out, driven female journalist should.

In other instances, the author uses real-life clichés to illustrate how unoriginal, unimaginative, and lacking in ideas Republican attacks on Obama are (for example, Obama’s use of teleprompters, and the joke/belief that he’d be ‘useless’ without them).

The Republican candidate, Tom Morrison, is reminiscent of no current, likely GOP contender for 2012: he’s articulate, intelligent, likeable, sensible, and so forth – basically, everything Democrats see in and love about Obama. This could suggest the novel is a sad indictment of the Republican field, and an author despairing for the fractious buffoonery and love of pageantry, anti-intellectualism and sound-bite idiocy that has come to define ‘mainstream’ Republicanism discourse thanks to the Tea Party.

There was much ballyhoo on the internet a few weeks back when people suspected that Mark Salter was the author of O:APN – sometimes referred to as McCain’s double, the Senator’s frequent co-author of non-fiction work, and long-time political aide and campaign manager, some of the views expressed in the novel would appear to mesh with Salter’s. That being said, they mesh with what I imagine are a lot of Republicans’ private wishes and opinions of certain factions of the Republican political ‘tent’. For example, the religious right:

“Wasn’t it better, many evangelicals argued, to keep their distance from all aspiring Caesars and their own souls free of contamination by the duplicitous bargains that politics always involved? But temporal power, however transitory, is intoxicating even to the virtuous. And every four years, in Iowa’s abstruse and clannish Republican caucuses, evangelicals had power and found hard to resist the elaborate attention they received by exercising it in their exacting scrutiny of the candidates who courted their support.”

The candidate laments that he doesn’t have evangelical support, seeing it as the greatest weakness with which his primary opponents could take him down. Whenever the religious right comes up (which isn’t frequently), one gets a sense that the author is disappointed by the GOP’s religious-Stockholm Syndrome. Morrison also ponders the glee with which Democrats recognise that the “Tea Party’s support for the most controversial and ill prepared candidates in Republican primaries” works in their favour by scaring off independents and the ‘sane’ vote (my phrase), and also how the Tea Party’s pull might lure “the Barracuda” into the race – yet another transparent nod to Sarah Palin, who the author clearly doesn’t like or approve of, as evidenced by Morrison’s own thoughts on this Tea Party darling:

“He would have had to struggle not to patronize or demean her. He would have had to pretend she was a person with serious ideas worth detailed rebuttal no matter how ridiculous they were, no matter how incomprehensible the syntax she used to convey them.”

Ultimately, I think the novel will appeal most to political junkies and Washingtonians. Otherwise, it might come across a little strange and too like political journalism, which means most people would probably prefer to read actual news about Obama, his policies, and his staffers – of which there is plenty (it’s sometimes amazing how many volumes have already been published about Obama and his administration – some might say it’s overwhelming, even excessive). O:APN doesn’t have the style and panache of Primary Colors (the previous most-famous-anonymous-novel based on a real-life president), but it’s still an interesting and well-written novel (after it settles down), with a few amusing and eyebrow-raising moments. As a political junky, I also enjoyed the “who’s who?” element of reading the novel.

And, damn it, I really want to know who wrote it...

A cautious recommendation.

“U.S.-China Relations”, by Robert G. Sutter (Rowman & Littlefield)

2011-02-15T06:14:00.001-08:00

Perilous Past, Pragmatic Present

This comprehensive and lucid assessment of the key historical and contemporary determinants of Sino-American relations explains the conflicted engagement between the two governments. Offering a welcome richness of discussion and analysis, distinguished analyst Robert G. Sutter explores the twists and turns of the relationship over the past two hundred years. The mixed historical record convincingly shows that strong differences and mutual suspicions persist, only partly overridden by a mutual pragmatism that shifts with circumstances. As the only book on the subject that combines a unified assessment of the historical evolution, contemporary status and likely prospects of U.S.-Chinese relations, this balanced and pragmatic study will be an essential resource for all concerned with the globe’s most crucial bilateral partnership. [Back Cover matter]

In this volume, long-time China scholar offers a mixed study of US-China relations. The book is broad, but sadly lacking in detail. For a scholar so well-versed in US-China relations, this was disappointing. The book is not, however, without its uses.

I have a very mixed opinion of Sutter’s latest book. I bought it because the table of contents suggested a structure that would benefit my own research in the subject – specifically, that the book is separated into historical assessments, followed by specific chapters on economic, normative, and security relations is slightly similar to my own study. Also, the statement “the only book on the subject that combines a unified assessment of the historical evolution, contemporary status and likely prospects of U.S.-Chinese relations” is not true – Warren Cohen’s America’s Response to China is superb and highly detailed-yet-accessible.

As the author builds his arguments over targeted chapters, the reader will experience some moments of de ja vu as subjects, themes and issues are revisited in new contexts. However, these instances do not always provide more information and greater understanding. My main argument about the lack of depth to the book can be summed up nicely by looking at one issue: the 1999 NATO (accidental) bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade. Here’s what Sutter writes, in a section describing the “vitriolic” debate during the Clinton administration:

“Heading the list was the U.S. bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, the most important incident in U.S.-China relations after the Tiananmen crackdown. The reaction in China included mobs stoning the U.S. embassy in Beijing and burning U.S. diplomatic property in Chengdu. Both of the governments restored calm and dealt with some of the consequences of the bombing, but China and the United States never came to an agreement on what happened and whether the United States explained its actions appropriately.” (109) (Emphasis mine)

This is, as it turned out, the entirety of Sutter’s discussion of this “most important incident”. There is nothing else to explain why this was the most important incident, there is no discussion or even supposition of why this is the most important incident, or any presumption to understand what longer-term impacts this might have had. Checking the index, I noticed that the bombing was mentioned later in the book, so I checked out these other instances – mere short mentions of the bombing in lists of other security events/crisis that occurred. This was very disappointing. The bombing does not, to be honest, appear to be considered particularly important by almost everyone else, which might explain why so little is mentioned about the event in other texts on US-China relations (in both the Chinese and American media, however, you can find plenty).

As simple history, Sutter offers good, clear summaries of US-China relations since 1789, touching on each and every key issue, crisis and event that has helped shape the bilateral relationship.

Human Rights: China’s well-publicised, mixed record on human rights; frequent arrests and imprisonment of democracy advocates; continued persecution of Falun Gong, Uighers in Xinjiang, and Tibetans; unsavoury family planning policies (forced abortions and sterilisations); use of prison labour for manufacturing products for sale to the US; lack of religious freedom in China; Beijing’s internet censorship policies
Security: China’s military expansion and what it means for American interests in Asia and cross-Strait relations; China’s policy towards Taiwan and US arms sales to same; China’s tendency to sell weapons and nuclear technology to ‘unsavoury’ or ‘rogue’ regimes like Iran and Pakistan; American accusations of Chinese espionage within the USA
Economics: US-China trade deficit; continuing problems with Intellectual Property Rights infringement; US complaints about China’s currency valuation; China’s purchase of US government securities and what this means for the relationship (fear of overreliance)
Taiwan: US arms sales to Taiwan; independence moves and rhetoric; Chinese belligerence and military build-up along Straits

But, even here, they are “summaries” more than anything else. I did not feel that the author really put much of himself into the book, and I would have liked some more discussion and analysis.

Ultimately, I feel this book is best suited to a comprehensive introduction to the broader US-China relations debate, at which it is very successful. The book is The style throughout the book was that of ‘introduction’, and the details I was waiting for never fully revealed themselves. Every key issue is highlighted, but the author fails to deliver in details. It’s unclear to me if this was his intention all along, but ultimately there are far better books available on the subject (see below). Having read plenty of Sutter’s other work, my expectations were somewhat high – however, the lack of depth in his analysis was disappointing, and I don’t believe this is written to the same standard I have come to expect from Sutter. I would probably recommend this to undergraduates, but I think postgraduates and policymakers might require something with a little more depth and detail.

What to read on US-China Relations:

Warren Cohen, America’s Response to China (2010); James Mann, About Face (1999) & The China Fantasy (2007); Patrick Tyler, The Great Wall (2000); Zachary Karabell, Superfusion (2009); Robert Suettinger, Beyond Tiananmen (2003); Jean Garrison, Making China Policy (2005); David Lampton, Same Bed, Different Dreams (2001); Robert G Sutter, US Policy Toward China (1998)

“Kabuki Democracy”, by Eric Alterman (Nation Books)

2011-01-27T09:05:00.001-08:00

The System vs. Barack Obama

In Kabuki Democracy, bestselling author and columnist Eric Alterman asks why President Barack Obama has been unable to deliver on the promise of his 2008 campaign. He argues that while Obama’s compromises have disappointed many of his supporters, his failure is primarily due to a political system that stymies democracy when voters choose progressive change.
Blending political analysis and a clear agenda for change, the book cuts through the clichés of conservative propaganda and lazy Mainstream Media analysis to demonstrate that genuine transformation will come to America only when enough people care enough to challenge the system.

Eric Alterman, a columnist for The Nation analyses and critiques the American political system of today, explaining clearly and convincingly how any progressive – especially a progressive president – is working with an immediate disadvantage in a system that has been corrupted and twisted to suit corporations and the mad scramble for television and radio ratings. The book’s themes will be familiar to the politically conversant (especially liberals, who will likely benefit most from this slim volume), but Alterman manages to breathe some freshness into the subject, and writes in the accessible and fluid style of a gifted journalist.

“Few liberals or progressives would take issue with the argument that, significant accomplishments notwithstanding, the Obama presidency has been a big disappointment.”

Alterman lists the accomplishments of the Obama presidency thusfar – healthcare reform, financial reform, economic stimulus, tobacco regulation, student loan reform, credit card reform, and equal pay – but these accomplishment should not be taken at face value, because,

“when one reads the fine print on these bills, it becomes equally undeniable that Obama voters have been asked to accept some awfully prosaic compromises.”

This is not so much a result of President Obama’s failings, Alterman writes, or even mistakes made by administration officials. Rather, and more important for progressives, is the fact that “The system is rigged, and it is rigged against us.” Alterman paints a gloomy picture:

“presidents can pretty easily pass tax cuts for the wealthy and powerful corporations. They can start whatever wars they wish and wiretap whomever they want without warrants. They can order the torture of terrorist suspects, lie about it, and see that their intelligence services destroy the evidence.”

But, while they can do all this, they cannot pass the “transformative progressive legislation” that Obama promised on the campaign trail, even with supermajorities in both Houses of Congress. In Kabuki Democracy, Alterman intends to explain why.

The book is split into three main themes, each dealt with in exceptional detail by Alterman, who offers a wealth of evidence to support his damning portrayal of the conservative media establishment: Congressional Republicans, lobbyists, and the media. (I should confess at this point that the latter is of greatest interest to me, so will receive a little more attention than the others.)

Congressional Republicans

Alterman starts his book with an examination of Republican tactics in government, and offers a full-blown, detailed critique of GOP obstructionism. This section was reminiscent of a calmer Matt Taibbi, only Alterman was less inclined to include Democratic malfeasance or the Democratic Party’s inability to grow a spine and push back against the shrill Republican opposition. Alterman does, however, include a vast amount of empirical evidence to make his case – and the examples he provides are only the tip of an ever-growing iceberg.

“Obama was and is working with a minority party with no strategic stake whatever in sensible governance… the worse things got for the country, the better they looked for Republican candidates. And given that Republicans can plausibly claim to be ideologically in sync with just about any non-military budget cut no matter what the ultimate effect, what possible incentive do the Republicans have to cooperate with the Democratic majority to pass legislation that will actually improve economic conditions?”

One particularly good example is the Republican Party’s “myopic” obsession with tax cuts for the rich, despite a number of prominent conservative economists who came out and denied the benefit of George W Bush’s tax cuts to the overall US economy in both the long and short term (Alterman includes their exact words). This fetishisation of tax cuts that are unaffordable – from a party equally obsessed with the rhetoric of fiscal restraint – is startling, especially in the face of an abundance of evidence that suggests their version of economics is wrong, facts that they wilfully and gleefully ignore. Tax cuts and economics are not like God: belief in them is not enough. Alterman dissects the rhetoric of fiscal restraint, also, and paints a picture of wilful ignorance and misleading statements, and a clear lack of understanding that their proposals are antithetical.

“what the congressional Republicans lack in seriousness, however, they make up in self-discipline, particularly when compared to the constantly divided (and frequently dispirited) Democrats.”

This discipline, when combined with the “increased radicalization and wilful ignorance of the post-election Republican base” provides another roadblock to systemic cooperation that the Obama administration must overcome in order to get anything done, or any legislation passed.

Alterman does not pull his punches, and is clearly incensed by Republican obstructionism and the use of “anti-majoritarian” tactics (Congressional, anonymous ‘holds’ and ‘rolling holds’ in particular), which the 111^th Congress was, he writes, particularly fond of. The sheer number of appointments that were held up or indefinitely delayed by these tactics is staggering, and provides more fuel for the quip that Republicans are so sure that government cannot work that, when in office, they do their utmost to prove this. The Senate, Alterman writes, is a “drainpipe that can be blocked by the tiniest speck of obstruction”, and the “shamelessness of Obama’s opposition in exploiting the system’s vulnerability... must be an essential component of any sensible analysis of any progressive president’s ability to honor his campaign promises.”

“Any president who is committed to legislating in a bipartisan manner is naturally going to be forced to make compromises that many of his supporters find painful. But a president who is dealing with an opposition party uninterested in compromise and answerable only to a constituency driven by ignorance, animus, and prejudice cannot hope to achieve these aims without at least a recognition of the nature of his opposition.”

That President Obama hasn’t done more to highlight this problem mystifies the author (and your reviewer); although the argument could be made that Obama would be diminished if he were perceived to be making an argument akin to “The Republicans are meanies”.

Lobbies

“Washington operates on a culture of implied bribery no less than the real thing.”

Alterman describes in this first substantial chapter, the lobbyist culture of Washington, D.C., and its repercussions on the political process. Using considerable empirical evidence, the author outlines how the revolving door between government and industry and/or lobbying firms erodes the ‘popular’ aspect of politics and that, given the vast increase in salary that Washington staffers can expect from the move to private sector, the system becomes rigged to suit the agendas of moneyed lobbyist interests.

“Rather than being perceived as pimps or prostitutes, corporate lobbyists are beloved members of the new political establishment where everybody does everybody else’s jobs and no hard and fast lines can be found anywhere – save those between winning and losing.”

Media

“The relentless trivialization of the news”, Alterman writes, has resulted in “ridiculousness” dominating as a rule in even supposedly-serious news reporting. It is when discussing the role of conservative media that Alterman comes into his own – this is, after all, his specialist subject, and forms the topic of his frequent (not to mention excellent) columns for The Nation. (The book’s thesis formed the basis of a recent feature published in the magazine.)

“A key reason the problems with our system go largely undiscussed in the mainstream media is that they are, to a significant degree, mirrored there.”

As can be expected, the target of much of Alterman’s investigation, analysis and ire, is Fox News, whose considerable lead over CNN and MSNBC with regards to ratings and audience is “a matter of considerable political significance” for any potential progressive success, because the “number one cable news network in American... happens to be dedicated to a program of purposeful misinformation rather than honest accounting of the news,” and has an operating procedure of inviting Republican pundits on air to “lie outright about both people and policies and then build on those lies to tell even larger ones.” A result of this, is that Fox pundits “engage in conspiracy theories so lurid and outlandish that one is tempted to turn on old episodes of The Twilight Zone for a reality check”, and “all but ignore Republican scandals and obsess about Democratic ones” – despite the former being considerably more hypocritical, and also never retracting statements that are subsequently (often easily) proven false.

Or, as Jon Stewart described it during an appearance on Bill O’Reilly’s show (and repeated by Alterman):

“a cyclonic, perpetual emotion machine that gins up legitimate political disagreements into a full-fledged panic attack about the next coming of Chairman Mao.”

The case of Fox News is certainly interesting and unique – it is “something new – something for which we do not yet have a word”, Alterman writes, as it “provides almost no actual journalism” and instead operates as ideological guide and whip for supporters, not to mention attack dog aimed at opponents. In fact, Fox – not to mention much of the rest of the Murdoch media empire – “has more in common with the integrated political/judicial/business/media empire that is making a mockery of Italian democracy under... Silvio Berlusconi than it does with any American media organization.” It is “a 24/7 continuous contribution to the conservative cause.”

When examining Fox’s record, Alterman is acerbic, angry, but also highly detailed – he deals with a number of its pundits (Glen Beck’s odious record gets particular attention), not to mention the fact that Fox employs all of the Republican 2012 hopefuls not currently holding an office (“paying the candidates it pretends to cover, and... protects them [from] having to answer questions from any honest or unbiased journalist”).

There is an air of irate incredulity when Alterman examines the output and records of certain conservative pundits that will simultaneously make the reader despair, grimace, but also laugh in shock at the audacious (though reprehensible) approach some of these people have to ‘journalism’. In this, Alterman also looks at conservative print-journalists – particularly (but not exclusively) those at the Wall Street Journal, whose editorial pages he seems to hold in particularly low regard.

“Given the disappearance of so many once serious outlets and the diminution of others, these ravings have assumed a central place in the nation’s political discourse.”

The author also takes the rest of the Mainstream Media to task for its inability to face up to Fox and talk radio – indeed, he paints a picture of true cowardice and fecklessness in the face of loud, brash and obnoxious conservative criticism. When the MSM wholeheartedly accepts – without verifying or conducting any subsequent investigations – stories concocted by ‘characters’ like Glen Beck... this is a sorry state of affairs, and Alterman does not hold back in his criticism of liberal and serious journalists for swallowing and regurgitating Fox- and talk-radio-produced bile in its entirety (the reporting of apparent voter fraud by ACORN during the 2008 Presidential election is effectively used as a case study).

Obama and the liberal MSM often “conspire in [their] own humiliation” and demise, Alterman writes, offering an excellent observation by E.J. Dionne to support his point, that the Obama administration and mainstream media

“cower[ed] before a right wing that has persistently forced its propaganda to be accepted as news by convincing traditional journalists that ‘fairness’ requires treating extremist rants as ‘one side of the story’.”

This is an example of how ludicrous (and perplexing for apparently everyone but themselves) the conservative media’s incessant complaints about alleged liberal media bias is, as they continue to “enjoy kid-glove treatment” in the media’s most influential forums.

“Sensationalism, not substance, is what drives ratings. True, it has ever been thus, but the intensity of this focus has increased enormously in our age of celebrity obsession and the ongoing blurring of news and gossip.”

Alterman’s impression of the healthcare debate coverage is mixed. He concedes that “some coverage was really quite good”, but quality analysis constituted a “tiny percentage” of the total political news coverage of the period – the rest often “focused on town hall meetings featuring an awful lot of people who forgot to take their meds that day.”

The penultimate chapter of Kabuki Democracy offers Alterman’s prescriptions of how the system needs changing – with plenty of recognition of the obstacles in place. While this is a well-written chapter, it is basically a liberal progressive’s wish-list (campaign finance reform, voting reforms, Senate procedural reforms, and so forth), and because Alterman doesn’t go into too much depth, I can’t see him swaying many people – certainly not existing Republicans. It is not, however, surprising that he has included this chapter – the book is proudly progressive, and a clarion call for fellow progressives to get off their collective asses and do something. Indeed, this chapter bemoans the lack of organisation – grassroots or top-down – in the progressive movement, recognising that this is conservatives’ greatest strength in American politics.

“because our system makes it so much easier to obstruct than to construct, conservatives almost always appear to be in the driver’s seat.”

While Kabuki Democracy is a great book in many aspects, there is one weakness that is impossible not to notice. He succumbs to some of the bias he criticises. Democratic failings aren’t dealt with, and this is a very one-sided attack on the conservative establishment. Fine, he actually makes no attempt to suggest otherwise, but at least some proper criticism of Democrats would have gone some way to helping his argument that the rot in the system is widespread and dangerous. Equally, Alterman fails to address in detail the fact that Obama and top employees of his administration in some ways allow the system to perpetuate. Nothing Alterman writes is wrong – the conservative press is loud, obnoxious, and peddles in falsehood like a sociopath – but the author does not address in enough depth the extent to which Obama and Democratic inaction allows for this system to perpetuate itself. Obama came to power with a Democratic super-majority in both Houses of Congress, yet refused to exert Executive muscle when it became clear that the Republican Party was united as the Party of “Hell No!” against any proposal Obama agreed to (including, one should add, some policy proposals that came from conservative legislators).

Overall, I would say this book is essential for liberal and progressives who are frustrated by the conservative domination of contemporary political discourse, and the left’s fear of standing up for their beliefs.

Kabuki Democracy is an accessible, well-researched and well-argued, if one-sided, analysis of present-day politics in the United States.

Recommended.

Further Reading: Matthew Baum, Soft News Goes to War (2005); Robert G Kaiser, So Damn Much Money (2010 – review pending); Lawrence Davidson, Foreign Policy, Inc. (2009); John Judis, The Paradox of American Democracy (2000); Matt Taibbi, Griftopia (2010); Robert Scheer, The Pornography of Power (2009); Stefan Halper & Jonathan Clarke, The Silence of the Rational Center (2006); Thomas Frank, The Wrecking Crew (2008); Glenn Greenwald, Great American Hypocrites (2008); John Avlon, Wingnuts (2009); Charles Pierce, Idiot America (2010); John Amato & David Neiwert, Over the Cliff (2010); Dana Milbank, Tears of a Clown (2010); Paul Krugman, Conscience of a Liberal (2008)

A Recent Stephen Colbert Golden Moment

2011-01-22T15:22:00.001-08:00

Palin-Fatigue…

New Blog Name!

2011-01-22T13:08:00.001-08:00

As some of you might have noticed, I’ve changed the name of the blog. As I hope to include more commentary and articles, to complement the book reviews, it made sense to make the title more appropriate.

For the time being, the URL will remain the same, but I might change it to reflect the new title next week.

The Real Republicans?

2011-01-19T09:57:00.000-08:00

Party characterisation and how they see themselves

While reading James Bennet’s editorial in the January/February issue of The Atlantic, I was reminded of one of my favourite (if that’s the right word) bugbears about the Republican Party in the US. Here’s the quote that made me think of it:

“The party of Roosevelt believes government can and should be a force for good. The party of Reagan thinks that, apart from national defence, government mostly gets in the way.”

Bennet is referring here to the Democrat Party as the party of Franklin Roosevelt. However, in truth, the party that “believes government can and should be a force for good” is actually the party of both Presidents Roosevelt – both FDR and TR believed in the power, possibility and necessity of the federal government. Teddy Roosevelt was very confident about the role that government can and should play, particularly with regards to corporate and economic regulation, and fashioning a world-class social safety-net. Many (perhaps most?) Republicans of today would likely accuse him of being a socialist if he were alive and working – certainly he bears zero resemblance to the clutch of Tea Party candidates of 2010.

I mention this because many Republicans will frequently point to TR or Lincoln as great Republicans of the past to blunt certain criticisms of GOP policy platforms. The Real Republican Majority, for example, has this banner at the top of the organisation’s website:

[I should point out that I am not passing judgement on the RRM’s policy proposals, as some of them are actually quite sensible, but on the clear disregard for historical accuracy.]

That Reagan was directly opposed to most of the policies that TR espoused, championed, and fought tooth-and-nail for, but is still offered as an example of what Republicans should be, is extremely frustrating. Fair enough, both Lincoln and TR were Republicans, but as almost everyone knows, the Republican and Democratic parties of today bear very little resemblance to that of just 50 years ago, let alone that of 100 and 150 years ago. Democrats are just as prone to this amnesia, of course. But to present TR and Reagan as archetypes of what a Republican should aspire to be is oxymoronic. You can’t be a Reagan Republican but follow Teddy’s example – they are, on most important political issues, completely divergent (regulation, environment, social security). Perhaps the only issue they would agree on is national defence (TR effectively invented the modern US Navy, and certainly expanded its size by a considerable degree).

In case you think I’m being unfair, allow me to reproduce a couple of quotes from Aida Donald’s Lion in the White House (Basic Books), which was not only one of my favourite books read in 2010, it’s probably the best short bio of TR available. First of all, on the subject of corporate regulation, which he fought against his entire career, from his time in New York all the way to the White House:

“[TR] sought laws to break monopolies and to oversee accounting reviews to get corporations to pay their taxes. Not incidentally, he thought he made corporations more moral by making them pay their fair share. Roosevelt also knew corporations would now have less money with which to corrupt politics.”
“He had demanded accountability from corporations when he was governor of New York, when they overvalued stock, watered stock, and fooled investors with corrupt practices, and he would take his battle against what he called ‘bad’ trusts to the larger playing field.”

In terms of society, Roosevelt would have been appalled by the pro-corporate position of the modern GOP – the recent Supreme Court ruling that gave corporations the same rights as people likely made him turn in his grave and rampage through heaven to give Reagan an earful. Also, one of the prototypical Republicans (thank you Alyssa for the phrase) was even pro-union, and it is shocking that some in the current Republican Party are using someone likely favoured by even Canadian liberals was pro-Union! See here:

“Within the broad sphere of society and social relations, Roosevelt preferred order, regularity, and balance. This meant curbing the meretricious, laissez-faire tendencies by business that had injured the laboring population. The way to help labor was to empower it to organize and even strike, although Roosevelt would never condone mob violence either by labor or capital. Labor was expected to negotiate wages and conditions.”

Anyway, that’s just my short contribution to the discussion/topic.

I’m sure I’ll have more to write as I work my way through this issue – The Atlantic is easily the best political periodical available from the US, and it appears as though this is an issue where every single article is of interest. I will likely write some comments and a response to Chrystia Freedland’s cover story on the “The Rise of the New Global Elite” and Andrew Bacevich’s article “The Tyranny of the Defence Inc.” in the very near future on this blog.

“War Stories”, by Matthew Baum & Tim J Groeling (Princeton)

2011-01-14T12:00:00.001-08:00

The causes and consequences of public views of war

How does the American public formulate its opinions about U.S. foreign policy and military engagement abroad? War Stories argues that the media systematically distort the information the public vitally needs to determine whether to support such initiatives, for reasons having more to do with journalists’ professional interests than the merits of the policies, and that this has significant consequences for national security. Matthew Baum and Tim Groeling develop a “strategic bias” theory that explains the foreign-policy communication process as a three-way interaction among the press, political elites, and the public, each of which has distinct interests, biases, and incentives.

Do media representations affect public support for the president and faithfully reflect events in times of diplomatic crisis and war? How do new media--especially Internet news and more partisan outlets--shape public opinion, and how will they alter future conflicts? In answering such questions, Baum and Groeling take an in-depth look at media coverage, elite rhetoric, and public opinion during the Iraq war and other U.S. conflicts abroad. They trace how traditional and new media select stories, how elites frame and sometimes even distort events, and how these dynamics shape public opinion over the course of a conflict.

Most of us learn virtually everything we know about foreign policy from media reporting of elite opinions. In War Stories, Baum and Groeling reveal precisely what this means for the future of American foreign policy.

A lot of scholarship has been produced on the ways in which public opinion and the media influence policy, and how governments can and do influence the media (particularly a recent slew of books dealing with the George W Bush administration). But very little has been written about how institutional biases of the media and journalists can affect what news is reported and how this news is reported. In War Stories, Harvard professor Matthew Baum and UCLA professor Tim Groeling take a look at the role of the media in American foreign policy – reporting, information dissemination and also the portrayal of both policies and elite rhetoric. In some ways, this book can be considered a follow-up to Baum’s Soft News Goes to War.

In War Stories, the authors propose a number of hypotheses, and lay out an exhaustive amount of data and research to prove them. The book intends to identify conditions for public support of foreign policy initiatives; when these initiatives prevail; and also to propose implications for the future of American foreign policy.

“The mass media are the key intermediaries between citizens and their leaders, particularly with respect to policies and events being implemented far from American shores.”

American citizens learn “virtually everything they know about foreign policy” from the media and news they consume themselves, or that consumed by those around them. Therefore, discerning any bias in what type of stories are considered newsworthy, not to mention how they are reported, is very important in understanding how public opinion can be shaped and even distorted by a media with a separate set of goals:

“the information on which the public depends in determining whether or not to support a foreign policy initiative may be systematically distorted for reasons having nothing to do with the professional incentives of journalists than with the merits of the policy.”

The authors argue that “news coverage typically does not faithfully reflect the mix of elite rhetoric in Washington,” so public support of a foreign policy initiative is frequently based on “an inaccurate representation of what elites are actually saying about the policies.” A lot of this misrepresentation comes down to the proliferation of New Media outlets and sources.

Journalists are not just reporters of the news, they are also interpreters of events and politics. “Their interpretations regarding the newsworthiness of different pieces of information in turn color the representation of politics to which citizens are ultimately exposed.” This is, basically, the root of differing levels of bias in American news reporting – particularly evident when comparing TV News of Fox and MSNBC, or The Nation and The Weekly Standard in print. The ghettoisation of news into ideological camps has the potential to undermine the purpose of a free press, as “Perceived partisan alignment among news providers challenges the media’s role as neutral arbiter.”

Tying this new research in with Baum’s previous book, Soft News Goes to War, the authors point to the proliferation in news outlets, and the corresponding alteration in corporate or organisational agendas, as the key determinant of how news and foreign policy is now reported.

“The qualities that journalists prefer in news stories result in a strong tendency to overrepresent negative, critical coverage of the president, particularly when it originates within his own party... this overrepresentation stems not from any partisan preferences of the news media but rather from pervasive institutional and professional incentives that shape journalists’ standards of newsworthiness.”

In addition,

“As the media landscape in which America’s partisan battles are fought continues to evolve, this war of words threatens to become ever more divorced from the strategic interests of the country as a whole. Increasing numbers of news outlets – print, broadcast, cable, radio, and internet – are responding to the changing information landscape by seeking loyal niche audiences. Some do so for economic reasons, other for ideological reasons.”

In other words: ‘sensation sells’. Measured debate is side-lined to criticism – the more damning the better, and the source of criticism is just as important. This has a second, potentially more damaging impact on future policy-making. As citizens perceive the media as increasingly partisan, and they self-filter out the news that doesn’t adhere to their own ideological biases, it will become increasingly difficult for any president to reach across the media-aisle to generate support for a given policy. This is particularly problematic, because receiving opposition support for policies is a sure way to make considerable and effective advances in foreign policy. The authors characterise this dilemma as a president’s increased ability to “preach to the choir”, but concurrent difficulty in “converting the flock”.

The New Media “increasingly allow citizens to self-select into ideologically friendly environments while discounting information they encounter in environments perceived as ideologically hostile” – effectively, a media-related ghetto-isation is allowing for more targeted, less objective and therefore more shallow news dissemination. Naturally, this has a huge impact on perceptions of foreign policies. The “common civic space” that was, in the past, offered by news is being “eroded” by the proliferation of bias news outlets and the ability to filter out that which does not conform to your ideological proclivities.

The authors provide a lot of data and research findings to make their case. Many contemporary examples, from the Bush administration and also from the 2008 presidential campaign, locate their research in the real world, giving weight to their hypotheses and conclusions. The approach to the topic is logical and calm, although the writing style is very dry – this is a book for other academics, and I don’t think it’s written in a manner that would allow for much cross-over appeal. That being said, it’s an invaluable addition to the body of literature available on the changing nature of the media, its impact on politics and, in particular, the impact journalists and New Media can have on the conduct and presentation of American foreign policy.

Some of the conclusions in War Stories may seem common-sense when you read them, but ‘common-sense’ does not always equate to correct. It is for this reason that Baum and Groeling’s conclusions can be valuable for those studying the impact of the media on public perceptions of foreign policy.

If you’re studying American foreign policy, or American media, this is an essential book that will only provide detailed arguments and information backed up by a wealth of evidence. I have no doubt that researchers will also find inspiration for further studies from some of these sections - for example, I thought the section on Historical Context could have been considerably expanded and was rather disappointed it was so short (not to mention its location so late in the book).

The subject of media influence remains something of either the academic world or the journalists’ world, each with intrinsic biases and styles. I am still waiting for the book that approaches the subject in an intelligent-yet-accessible way, one that looks at the issue from both contemporary and historical perspectives, locates it within the foreign policy literature (more than in passing, as War Stories does), and focuses as much on readability as scholastic merit.

That being said, the authors achieve what they set out to do, in that this book “highlight[s] the gap between what elites typically say about foreign policy and what the media say those elites are saying.”

Also try: Matthew Baum, Soft News Goes to War (2005); Joseph R. Hayden, A Dubya in the Headlights (2010)

New Year’s Pledge for 2011

2011-01-03T04:25:00.001-08:00

It’s always dangerous when I start devising plans and strategies for my site – they invariably go right out of the window at the first sign of an unexpected release. But, I’m starting to think this is a problem. When I started writing Civilian-Reader, my aim was to just scribble some thoughts down about books I’ve read and enjoyed or loved, on the off-chance that someone might read my review and decide to check this or that book out for themselves.

As has become clear, however, I’m starting to scribble considerably more than just a few notes and thoughts. My rate of reviewing has dropped quite dramatically, as I spend more time on each book and also as I’ve been ill and slowly recovering for some time, and because I’m focussing on finishing up my PhD.

Anyway, the point of this post was to let you know my proposed Pledge for 2011! I’ve posted another pledge on my fiction site, and that made me think of how I could approach this blog in 2011 and going forward. For fiction (which is much, much easier and quicker to read and review), I was planning to review an ‘old’ novel for every four new or upcoming releases I read and reviewed. This sounded pretty reasonable to me – so I’ve decided to do something similar for non-fiction. For every couple of new releases, I’ll take a look at something ‘older’ – be it a biography (let’s be honest, it’ll be presidential) or history.

This should, in theory, leave me with time to review older stuff that has either…

… been gathering dust on my shelves for a while – for example, Doris Kearns Goodwin’s biography of Lincoln, Team of Rivals;

… is something I stumble across in either a bookstore, charity shop, or was recommended by someone else – for example, Bill Clinton’s My Life;

… is something I want to re-read – in this category will most likely be books by Matt Taibbi and others like that.

For this site, I also pledge to return to a higher read-and-review rate. I’ve been letting my non-fiction reading slide since my health took a dive, which means I have a bit of a backlog of books that publishers have kindly sent me, and it’s time I took a stab at whittling down the ‘to-read’ shelf.

That’s the plan, anyway. But, of course, everybody knows about the best laid plans…

“Soft News Goes to War”, by Matthew Baum (Princeton)

2010-12-08T09:04:00.001-08:00

Public Opinion and American Foreign Policy in the New Media Age

The American public has consistently declared itself less concerned with foreign affairs in the post-Cold War era, even after 9/11, than at any time since World War II. How can it be, then, that public attentiveness to U.S. foreign policy crises has increased? This book represents the first systematic attempt to explain this apparent paradox. Matthew Baum argues that the answer lies in changes to television's presentation of political information. In so doing he develops a compelling “byproduct” theory of information consumption. The information revolution has fundamentally changed the way the mass media, especially television, covers foreign policy. Traditional news has been repackaged into numerous entertainment-oriented news programs and talk shows. By transforming political issues involving scandal or violence (especially attacks against America) into entertainment, the “soft news” media have actually captured more viewers who will now follow news about foreign crises, due to its entertainment value, even if they remain uninterested in foreign policy.

Baum rigorously tests his theory through content analyses of traditional and soft news media coverage of various post-WWII U.S. foreign crises and statistical analyses of public opinion surveys. The results hold key implications for the future of American politics and foreign policy. For instance, watching soft news reinforces isolationism among many inattentive Americans. Scholars, political analysts, and even politicians have tended to ignore the soft news media and politically disengaged citizens. But, as this well-written book cogently demonstrates, soft news viewers represent a largely untapped reservoir of unusually persuadable voters.

Matthew Baum’s Soft News Goes to War is about the considerable changes that have taken place over several decades in how the mass media covers and reports on major political stories. In particular, Baum is interested, as the title suggests, in the impact that “soft news media” have on the public’s attentiveness to, and appreciation and understanding of foreign policy and in particular, crises. For Baum, soft news media are those sources that are not primarily news programs, but because of their nature – variety, comedy, entertainment, and so forth – content can often venture into politics and foreign policy. Examples of such programs would be The Oprah Winfrey Show, The Daily Show and the late night shows.

“Prior to the 1980s, the public learned about politics, particularly foreign policy, primarily from newspapers or the nightly newscasts of the big three broadcast networks.”

Today, the public increasingly draw information from other sources:

“today... political information is available across a far broader array of media outlets and formats, many of which bear only a superficial resemblance to traditional news venues.”

“given the mass media’s – particularly television’s – status as the primary, if not sole, source of political information for the vast majority of the American people, changes in mass media coverage of foreign policy are almost certain to affect how at least some segments of the public understand and evaluate the political world.”

Soft news programs, Baum argues, have democratised the dissemination of political information and knowledge. As some people only notice foreign policy issues when they appear on soft news programs, this is both good (because they notice the issue in the first place) and bad (because there’s no way of controlling the quality of the information they receive). When foreign policy issues cross over into soft news programs, Baum dubs them “water-cooler events”, which will likely be discussed afterwards at length by people who might not always do so. The rise of this

“new class of entertainment-oriented, quasi-news and information programs... has had the unintended effect of increasing the likelihood that... a given foreign policy crisis will become a water-cooler event.”

On why crises are more commonly covered by soft news programs, Baum explains that,

“like celebrity murder trials and sex scandals, foreign crises are easily framed as compelling human dramas.”

Therefore, given the US media’s corporate nature, there have been increased

“market-driven efforts by television broadcasters (and, to a lesser extent, other media outlets) to make certain types of news appealing to viewers who are uninterested in politics.”

Baum argues that, by making political and foreign policy news stories more entertaining, and by including such content in soft news settings, these programs are actually increasing a larger portion of the general public’s understanding of foreign policy. It’s an interesting difference from the plethora of material published bemoaning the rise of soft and opinion journalism.

“By transforming mundane political coverage into entertainment, the soft news media have successfully employed piggybacking and cheap framing strategies in order to capture a substantial segment, or niche, of the television audience. This has the perhaps unintended effect of increasing the likelihood that politically uninterested individuals will be exposed to information about these political issues that cross over from hard to soft news outlets.”

While it is difficult to deny that the depth of discussion is usually lacking and not as useful as that on “hard” news programs, that the soft media is able to make more Americans aware of the issues (whether skewed by bias, submerged in humour, or otherwise delivered) is a useful acceptance of the strengths of the soft news media.

“By altering the cost-benefit calculus for typical individuals, the rise of the soft news media has, without necessarily increasing the public’s overall appetite for political news, nonetheless increased the likelihood that typical individuals will attend to select high-profile issues, primarily those possessing characteristics – such as violence, heroism, scandal, a readily-identified villain, and the like – amenable to framing as dramatic human interest stories.”

Prior to 2000, presidential politics was not much covered in the soft news media. However, because the candidates recognised the wider audience they could connect with through such media outlets, and their willingness to be interviewed on these programs (or even appear in ‘skits’ on Saturday Night Live), presidential politics has become a frequent topic of discussion. Indeed, shows like The Daily Show will devote entire weeks to presidential, congressional and senatorial campaigns, and before the 2010 midterm elections, President Obama came on The Daily Show for an interview. It is becoming increasingly apparent that soft media are influential actors in the media-politics arena – and this has only become more apparent since Baum’s book was published.

“In general, issues that can be readily framed in stark and dramatic terms, thereby priming widely accessible frames, without generating significant cognitive conflict between simultaneously accessible yet contradictory causal narratives, are most likely to be covered by the soft news media. Such issues are thereby most likely to attract the attention of even politically uninterested individuals.”

The proliferation of soft news media outlets has only increased the likelihood that a broader segment of the American population will discover (more) information about any given foreign policy crisis. Taking Vietnam, the Persian Gulf War, Kosovo, Bosnia, the Israel-Lebanon crisis as examples, Baum shows how soft news coverage of events has increased, and also how the coverage may have affected policy and presentation of information.

Using the Monica Lewinsky scandal and the Afghanistan-Sudan missile strikes as examples, Baum also discusses the “wag-the-dog” effect – that is, using foreign policy events and/or crises to deflect from domestic political issues or as means to increase domestic support (in the case of a foreign policy success). Baum calls this the “rally-round-the-flag” principle.

“the rally effect is central to the debate in the scholarly literature and the popular press regarding whether political leaders ever use military force for domestic political reasons – the so-called wag-the-dog scenario, or diversionary use of force.”

Baum does not offer an answer as to how effective this strategy can be, as it appears that rally effects are ephemeral and short-lived. He suggests it requires greater study, and this would certainly help students and scholars of media-political influencing. Certainly, a study of this with regards to the George W Bush administration could potentially be illuminating, as the never-ending War on Terror allowed the administration to continuously utilise rally-round-the-flag tactics to boost the president’s approval ratings and also acceptance of any controversial policy proposal (although, the Bush White House also relied on public fear and jingoism to achieve their political goals).

Baum’s research and the presentation of his results is impeccable, not to mention highly detailed and exhaustive. This is a real boon for scholars and researchers, as there is so much data included in the book. This does have the unfortunate effect of making the book less accessible as something to read, rather than study. Baum’s writing is clear and his structuring is logical and well-presented, but Soft News Goes to War could not exactly be considered a ‘good read’. This is not what it was intended to be, however, so one should not take this into account when considering whether or not to read, buy, or consult this book.

Soft News Goes to War is an excellent, highly-detailed academic study of the impact of certain news outlets on the public’s attentiveness and knowledge of foreign policy issues. It focuses on crises, of course, because these events are best suited to the transition from ‘hard’ to ‘soft’ news. Baum acknowledges that such news outlets do not, in all likelihood, impact the positions and consumption of news of politically-minded and -interested individuals. The greatest impact of these programs can, instead, be seen in the larger portion of the population who is less interested in following or learning about politics and especially foreign policy. The study certainly offers plenty to start and further any debate on the role of the media with regards to foreign policy, and is therefore highly recommended to all students and scholars of foreign policy, American politics, and journalism/media.

[Baum has since written another book on the media and foreign policy, in collaboration with Tim J. Groeling – War Stories: The Causes & Consequences of Public Views of War – which I shall review next for this site.]

“A Dubya in the Headlights”, by Joseph R. Hayden (Lexington Books)

2010-12-07T15:15:00.001-08:00

President George W Bush and the Media

A Dubya in the Headlights trains a critical eye on the curious interaction between America’s forty-third president and the people who write about him, talk about him, photograph him, and draw him. Hayden details a rough, often tense, relationship between George W Bush and media outlets from CBS to the New York Times to The Tonight Show. He also challenges what until recently was the conventional wisdom about Bush’s public relations – the notion that the White House was a masterful manipulator of the media, a Machiavellian puppet-master. According to Hayden, those types of characterisations are not just overly generous; they are distortions and a cop-out for the press. Focusing in particular on the period since Hurricane Katrina, this lively and timely volume details the pattern of mistakes made by the Bush administration in carrying out its communication strategy and offers a clear portrait of a president stumbling from one crisis to another.

In his introduction, Hayden paints a picture of a president hostile to the media and the necessity for a president to deal with them. George W Bush, he writes, “did not understand national news media, he did not like them, he did not want to deal with them.” Because of this dislike, Bush had a “barely existent relationship with the press”, and the limited relations would be “characterized by mistrust and suspicion”. This, of course, would lead to difficulties in conducting the work of the White House, as well as – at times – create a distinctly hostile atmosphere for the president.

There are a number of media-related controversies that occurred during the Bush presidency, all of which are discussed and analysed in this volume – they range from the trivial, such as relying on “faux journalists” in the press corps (including Karen Ryan, Armstrong Miller and Jeff Gannon – who get a good chunk of a chapter late in the book); to the extremely serious (Katrina, Iraq, and so on). In each of the chapters in this book, Hayden takes one theme or issue as its centrepiece and builds a convincing and well-detailed argument. The chapters are introduced well, before the author provides considerable evidence and examples to support his thesis and conclusions.

Hayden starts his analysis of George W Bush’s relationship with the media with a quick look at the 2000 presidential campaign, which laid the groundwork for much of the media’s impression and frequent caricature of Bush for the duration of his presidency.

“[Bush’s] interaction with the media was plagued from the start by chronic problems and liabilities, ones he never solved or conquered. Instead, they came back time and again to damage him politically and expose him to a long-term relationship with journalists that has been extraordinarily dysfunctional.”

During the campaign, Al Gore also made many missteps, of course, but “Bush seldom came across as confident, smooth, or in control.” It was only in carefully controlled or scripted situations when he was able to perform best, otherwise

“he often lurched in awkward and embarrassing fashion. He frequently sounded unprepared. He rarely seemed knowledgeable, engaged or sharp.”

From the campaign onwards, President Bush would give birth to a lucrative sideline in “Bushisms”, as journalists like Jacob Weisberg of Slate.com began to collect Bush’s malapropisms and vocal hiccups – it resulted in a “cottage industry” springing up that benefited from the president’s vocal mannerisms and mistakes. Hayden includes many of these in the chapter devoted to this element of the media during Bush’s presidency.

“Bush... seemed nearly incapable of speaking in public without butchering the English language, without misspeaking, without uttering startling, Yogi Berra-like pronouncements.”

The chapter is quite funny, of course, as it allows the reader to reminisce about the funnier moments of Bush’s presidency. The chapter is not, however, just about the president’s vocal flubs – Hayden also discusses some other authors who have written about George W Bush, be they positive supporters (e.g. Fred Barnes, David Frum) or vocal opponents (e.g. Ron Suskind). He discusses some authors who also tried to be unbiased and objective (e.g. Robert Draper). From his analysis, Hayden finds that the greatest consistency between almost everyone who’s written about Bush, is that they are disappointed by the president’s “remarkable lack of curiosity”, exhibiting a “vacuousness not easily overcome” – although, of course, supporters try to dress this up as folksy charm or a praiseworthy belief in the president’s gut instincts (see what Charles Pierce has to say about that in Idiot America). Detractors certainly have more material to support their case than do Bush’s supporters.

The Silent Treatment

Because of Bush’s dislike and distrust of the media, there were frequent instances at the beginning of his presidency when the media were simply locked out. This was both surprising and also detrimental to Bush’s ability to convey proper messages to the electorate.

“Relations between presidents and the press have always been uneasy and not infrequently tend toward the turbulent. While journalists and politicians may cozy up to one another, they are seldom satisfied with the result.”

Due to the Bush White House’s obsession with (some might say ‘addiction’ to) secrecy,

“the national press corps quickly came to view the entire Bush Administration as squelchors of information – unhelpful, contemptuous, and always adversarial. This toxic relationship would come back to burn the Bush presidency.”

The president also had to contend with a rapidly changing media environment – one that had, since the 1980s, been evolving at a considerable pace, growing more complicated and also revolutionized by the proliferation of online news sources and the rise of opinion journalism. The mushrooming of information technology in the 1990s spawned a huge number of media outlets from which readers and viewers could draw their news and therefore opinions on any given policy. It also makes the White House’s job that much harder:

“The fragmentation renders each individual media organisation correspondingly less important, for it’s one thing for a politician to try to influence three television networks and a handful of national publications, but what do you do about a thousand political blogs? Commanding media space and attention is much more challenging in the twenty-first century.”

To refer back to opinion journalism, here is Hayden’s critique:

“the centrist, neutral, or ‘objective’ approach has been radically challenged by what is sometimes called ‘opinion journalism’, and that species of information operates more on the fringes than in the middle, more with emotion and innuendo than with facts or investigation” [see, for example, Fox & MSNBC]

“the shady art of fulmination has influenced television news profoundly and even affected print journalism to the point that news sometimes seems to have been trumped by views.”

This “fulmination” and preference for views over news can most noticeably be found on the Web, “which is notoriously dominated by ranting viewpoints and righteous denunciation” (I’m sure we can all identify a couple of sources that make our blood boil...).

War on Terror, Iraq

Hayden devotes a handful of good chapters to the War on Terror and Iraq – discussing the run-up to these events and also the fallout afterwards – specifically, the “frequent mistakes and miscalculations” by the Bush team. Hayden does put the Bush years into wider perspective, however:

“Perhaps any American president would have erred in similar ways at the time. But seen as part of a larger pattern of administration practice, these communication lapses show recurring themes in the Bush record: lack of preparation, lack of careful consideration, lack of precise execution.”

According to Hayden, the lead up to the Iraq war is the biggest failure of the American press corps “to do their duty as vigilant watchdogs of the public trust”. If you’ll permit a personal reflection, I remember being rather confused by the speed with which the administration’s attention shifted from Afghanistan to Iraq – this is partly because I was at the time relying on just two news sources (TIME and Newsweek) while studying for a year in Japan (I didn’t have an internet connection at home, either). The seemingly sudden shift in focus was jarring, and it has also meant I’ve been distinctly unimpressed by the conduct of the media on this issue (something I’ve included in my PhD thesis).

“Rather than keep the White House accountable for statements that turned out to be erroneous, misleading, or wholly deceptive, the national press corps largely lay down and kept quiet, when it didn’t actually help the administration get away with various misdeeds. The news media, in this view, were snookered into supporting the rationale for going to war.”

One should not overlook the role of “journalistic enablers” (e.g. Judith Miller) who effectively abdicated their journalistic responsibilities to swallow whole what the administration fed them. Hayden includes in this chapter details of the roles of Ahmed Chalabi, the ‘Cabal’ (or the Office of Special Plans), and the jingoist speeches Bush gave during this time, as a means for painting a doomsday scenario as an outcome if action was not taken against Saddam Hussein’s regime. In a later chapter, Hayden describes the “Troop Tricks” the administration used to pump up support for the troops, the wars, and not coincidentally the administration who instigated the conflicts.

While most political and journalism analysts focus on the failure of the press during this period, Hayden also points out that, ultimately, Bush “paid a heavy price for success in that initial battle. In the overall war for public opinion, he has lost mightily.”

Ultimately, Hayden’s conclusion of the Iraq media war is:

“That meticulous planning went into the communication effort there was no doubt. The September rollout, Powell’s U.N. speech, the Mission Accomplished stunt – all were carefully choreographed and, at times, ably executed. But, as with most other elements in the Bush White House, the overwhelming emphasis was on process, on tactics, on the little pictures that wagered on short-term gain.”

The high stakes and long-term potential for catastrophe were ignored by White House strategists and operatives. The focus on short-term vignettes, of course, has become overwhelmingly characteristic of media and politics in the United States. In the Obama age, it seems almost the only political commentary is short-term, uninterested in long-term consequences or trends.

Re-Reporting Vietnam: Media Wars over Iraq & the White House

Hayden devotes two chapters to the media’s “obsession” with Vietnam, and the saturation-level usage of that war as a comparative study for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as discussing how the Vietnam lexicon is used too often to describe the current conflicts. After offering a brief history of Vietnam and what it has meant for American foreign policy and media, he moves on to the post-9/11 examples and discussion. The Vietnam-obsession “distressed a lot of writers, because, among other things, they feared the past was distracting the country from dealing with the present.” Hayden analyses the importance of Vietnam as a campaign issue in 2004, and how it affected each candidate: for John Kerry, it allowed him to paint himself as a decorated war veteran who had become disillusioned with the war and then came home to help end it. For the Bush team, it was less beneficial, considering the President’s muddled National Guard record – therefore, as all good political operatives would, they chose to tear down the virtuous image Kerry’s team created.

After the Storm

A particularly good and detailed chapter deals with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

After briefly mentioning Cindy Sheehan’s protests against the Iraq War outside Bush’s ranch, and the White House’s ineptitude in dealing with the fallout, the author proceeds to discuss what he sees as the turning point in George W Bush’s relations with the press. “Katrina seems to have jolted American journalists out of their post-9/11 daze”, and “exacted a heavy price on the president.”

Impressions of a “bubble” and “White House indifference” made the press “aggressively” question “the federal government’s response, its effort, its motives, its compassion.” Following the devastation of Katrina, “criticism of other Bush legacies likewise increased”. It was a stark turning point in the reporting of Bush presidency, and “a pattern was becoming evident: government neglect on an epic scale.”

“after Katrina... The media woke up from its 9/11-induced spell to find, to detail, and to proclaim the notion that the Bush administration was basically incompetent; that the president was less like Machiavelli and more like Scaramouche, less a master manipulator than a buffoon; that for years there had been a faltering ignoramus in the White House – a Dubya in the headlights.”

I should take this opportunity to address something in the synopsis, related to the above quotation – that of George W Bush as “Machiavellian puppet master”: I don’t think many people thought the President himself was the brains behind the outfit. Indeed, there was plenty of material published suggesting the strings were being pulled by Cheney, Karl Rove, the president’s “handlers”, or a shadow neoconservative cabal within the administration. I’ve not read many (if any, now that I try to recall) accounts of George W Bush himself being identified as a press manipulator extraordinaire... Hayden does address this impression, as mentioned above, stating instead that the Bush White House was mostly inept, and giving the reader the impression that, when a media strategy succeeded, it was more down to luck and outside forces, rather than any brilliant mastermind within the administration.

After Bush’s re-election, Hayden explains, he attempted to change the media perception of both himself and his administration. He did this by trying to appear more in front of the press, increasing access, and so forth. What did not change, however, was the secrecy and the administration’s “penchant for dishonest tactics”. For the Bush administration, as time progressed,

“the time-honored democratic political strategy of influencing public opinion included recurring bouts of dissembling and distortion. Some of that misinformation was large in scale, some of it small, perhaps little of it directly the original decision of the president himself.”

In the final chapter of the book, Hayden takes a look at the Bush administration’s late-term obsession with Bush’s presidential legacy and what was done to polish past policies and decisions. The author takes a look at the legacy Bush has had on Hollywood, taking a look at a selection of movies about the War on Terror, all of which include commentary on the methods and machinations of the Bush years. Hayden also takes a quick look at the media’s Bush post-mortems.

If I had one criticism of the book, it would be that Hayden focuses too much on just George W. Bush’s administration. The volume would have benefited from a more generalised introduction and conclusion – something that spent more time locating Bush’s presidency within the history of Presidential media relations. While he does mention, from time to time, the presidencies of Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush, I think the reader would benefit from a little more historical context. This book is, in other words, an excellent and extensive case study for a wider piece of research on the American presidents and how they have dealt with the media.

One of the great strengths of the book is Hayden’s level of research, and the convenient presentation of source material after each chapter. His writing style is fluid and accessible, his chapters very well- and logically-structured, and he avoids almost all academic dryness in his descriptions and analysis. This is, as the synopsis proposes, a ‘lively’ volume – helped along in no small part, of course, by the chapter about Bushisms, which lightened a potentially over-serious volume. Hayden maintains a journalist’s objectivity for the most part, but there are times when he cannot help but voice his disappointment – be it with Bush or the media.

A Dubya in the Headlights is a highly recommended book on the president’s relations with the media during the George W Bush years, of considerable value to anyone studying the media, George W Bush, the presidency or the early 2000s.

Also try: Matt Latimer, Speech-Less (2009); Julian Zelizer ed., The Presidency of George W Bush (2010); Robert Draper, Dead Certain (2007); George W Bush, Decision Points (2010); Scott McClellan, What Happened? (2009); Mike Loew, Thanks for the Memories, George (2009)

“Lion in the White House”, by Aida D. Donald (Basic Books)

2010-12-01T11:13:00.001-08:00

A Life of Theodore Roosevelt

New York State Assemblyman, Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Governor of New York, Vice President and, at forty-two, the youngest President ever — in his own words, Theodore Roosevelt “rose like a rocket.” He was also a cowboy, a soldier, a historian, an intrepid explorer, and an unsurpassed environmentalist.
Lion in the White House chronicles the life of this first modern president. TR’s accomplishments in office were immense. As President, Roosevelt redesigned the office of Chief Executive and the workings of the Republican Party to meet the challenges of the new industrial economy. Believing that the emerging aristocracy of wealth represented a genuine threat to democracy, TR broke trusts to curb the rapacity of big business. He built the Panama Canal and engaged the country in world affairs, putting a temporary end to American isolationism. And he won the Nobel Peace Prize.
Throughout his public career, TR fought valiantly to steer the GOP back to its noblest ideals as embodied by Abraham Lincoln. Alas, his hopes for his party were quashed by the GOP’s strong rightward turn in the years after he left office. But his vision for America lives on.
In lapidary prose, this concise biography recounts the courageous life of one of the greatest leaders our nation has ever known.

Theodore Roosevelt is one of my favourite US presidents, and I am always on the lookout for new books about his life, presidency and personality. He is one of the more written about presidents (not to mention the most prolific of writers himself, having published almost twenty books over his lifetime).

Donald gives us a spirited and brisk tour through TR’s youth, upbringing, career at Harvard, and also his early political career. The Roosevelt family was almost picture-perfect; the children were doted upon by both their parents, and TR’s father was his idol and the epitome of what he believed a man should be. His childhood was that of a sickly child overcoming his frail body – a hurdle he cleared admirably and with a tenacity that would characterise much of his political style, not to mention his vigorous conduct as colonel during the war for Cuba (for which he raised his famous unit, the Rough Riders – a move that would ultimately catapult him onto the national stage as the most famous politician in America). At Harvard, he performed admirably, making a mixed impression on his professors but receiving good grades throughout his tenure there, and his father encouraged his pursuit of science and authorial impulses. After Harvard, TR enrolled at Columbia Law School, but “he found the law lacking in social justice and only a cover to protect wealth and business.” This would be the beginning of his long disgust at the power of corporations and business interests in the United States. “It was a critical judgement, made early in life, which would soon carry into a turbulent political career.”

In his early forays into politics, we see the roots of his eventual presidential priorities. His focus on doing and seeing for himself, rather than just taking people at their word, would lead him to acquire an increasing wish to ease the suffering of the lower and labouring classes – walking through New York’s slums was particularly eye-opening and, as a member of the Police Commission in New York City, TR would personally take part in patrols and organising arrests of slumlords and tenement closures.

“Roosevelt intuited that a politician must lead the people with an original set of principles, not just mirror those cobbled to the lowest common denominator.”

TR righteously went after the corruption that characterised New York politics at the time. His reformation of the police force as Police Commission President was particularly noteworthy and impressive, as he slowly eroded the power and influence of Tammany Hall. It was an impressive time for TR, save one considerable blunder at the end of his tenure on the commission (namely, making drinking illegal on Sundays, which resulted in huge opposition & consequent political defeats for Republicans).

The author often mentions TR’s reverence for Lincoln, who he frequently drew inspiration from, and how this impacted his political views and approach:

“As a Republican whose ideal was Abraham Lincoln, Roosevelt would always be color-blind and guided by the tenet of equality.”

Throughout his career, he would hold firm in the face of (usually Democratic) opposition to, and complaints about, his application of equality, regardless of the government post he occupied. In only one instance did he cave to popular resentment, and that was with Booker T. Washington, who consulted and met with TR – but only once, after the meeting caused a racist backlash. This is an example of TR’s pragmatic approach to politics overtaking his personal disinterest in anyone’s colour or creed.

As governor of New York, TR took on the large corporations and trusts by seeking to make them report their profits. Through a slew of provisions, he was able to grow the State’s coffers by roughly $11.5million (a vast sum at the time).

“He sought laws to break monopolies and to oversee accounting reviews to get corporations to pay their taxes. Not incidentally, he thought he made corporations more moral by making them pay their fair share. Roosevelt also knew corporations would now have less money with which to corrupt politics.”

In an example of his progressivism, Donald discusses TR’s appreciation of the needs of the labouring class, who had been struggling for too long against the all-powerful corporations and trusts who were wealthy enough to bribe and buy off government officials to do their bidding.

“Within the broad sphere of society and social relations, Roosevelt preferred order, regularity, and balance. This meant curbing the meretricious, laissez-faire tendencies by business that had injured the laboring population. The way to help labor was to empower it to organize and even strike, although Roosevelt would never condone mob violence either by labor or capital. Labor was expected to negotiate wages and conditions.”

TR’s time as governor of New York would have a considerable impact on how he later conducted himself as Assistant Secretary of the Navy and then as President. Over the course of the political battles to reform the corrupt New York civil and police services, he evolved as a politician and political operative. He was not always successful, and was less opposed to compromising than he used to be when he was a member of the state legislature – willing to allow bills to pass that were the best he could hope for, rather than all he wished for.

“He was fast becoming a practical politician and slipping away from the high idealism of reformers. His hard political life seemed to mimic, more and more, the strenuous life he knew in the saddle, and his resilience owed much to his experience with the ebb and flow of the natural world in the West. If Roosevelt rose like a rocket, he governed like he was shot from a gun.”

His interest and passion for Civil Service reform would again surface in the Governor’s mansion and then the White House. In New York City, it was the police force; in Albany, it was the New York State civil service; in the White House it was the nation.

“He had demanded accountability from corporations when he was governor of New York, when they overvalued stock, watered stock, and fooled investors with corrupt practices, and he would take his battle against what he called ‘bad’ trusts to the larger playing field.”

TR’s anti-trust tendencies also led him to make one of his most significant contributions to American politics and society: the appointment of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., to the Supreme Court.

“The high court was antilabor, probusiness, laissez-faire to the extreme, and prohibited most union activity. In doing so, it put private property above individual or community rights, which Roosevelt thought was wrong.”

Holmes promised to give America a more Rooseveltian Supreme Court. Holmes would, however, side against TR in the first major anti-trust case. Holmes would eventually go on to become a progressive high court judge, in tune with many of TR’s policies and preferences.

“Roosevelt was probably too hasty in his judgement of Holmes, whose promise developed slowly. The president’s instinct was true, but his patience was limited.”

Donald provides us with an excellent, broad account of TR’s foreign policy, and his plans to extend McKinley’s more modest policies. From Hawaii, Cuba and the Philippines to his addition of the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, the author provides detailed, well-structured accounts of the policy process. TR’s work on conservation is also detailed and explained, as his continued activity and political and progressive activism post-presidency.

If I have one criticism, it is that more could have been made of TR’s friendship with Henry Cabot Lodge, which (thanks most recently to The War Lovers) we know was an exceptionally close partnership, and one that provided not only a great deal of comfort for both men, but also many political victories. [I should note, at this point, that I am a great fan of Henry Cabot Lodge, and feel he is a man long over-due his own proper biography. Perhaps I should write one...]

The main themes running throughout the book are TR’s progressivism and his character. The former informed all of his political decisions and policies (proposed, rejected and implemented). The latter is what gives the book its great flavour and style – Donald utilises many words and phrases that have a distinctly ‘TR-feel’ to them, matching his brio and eccentricities perfectly. Frequent passages about TR’s devotion to his family, his pastimes and interests help round out a positive portrait of an energetic, charismatic family-man. It is also interesting to note how at odds TR’s policies and wishes are with the contemporary Republican Party – who, it should be pointed out, frequently lay claim to TR, despite their considerable and stark differences in ideology (the same can be said for the GOP’s ownership claim of Abraham Lincoln).

A delight to read, Lion in the White House is both engaging and informative. It kept me awake reading well into the night in two long sittings – something non-fiction works rarely do (Evan Thomas’s The War Lovers – also TR-related – being the only other recent work of history to do this). Donald’s brisk pacing and historian’s authorial skill allows for a quick read that does not skimp on details while avoiding the pitfalls of over-detailing.

Lion in the White House is the best short biography of Theodore Roosevelt I’ve come across. It is insightful, detailed yet not overly so; an enjoyable read, written in a fresh pace and style. If you only read one book on TR, I would strongly recommend it be this one. I thoroughly enjoyed Lion in the White House, and can’t recommend it enough.

Essential.

Also try: Evan Thomas, The War Lovers (2010); Louis Auchincloss, Theodore Roosevelt (2002); H.W. Brands, TR: The Last Romantic (1998) Edmund Morris, The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt (1979), Theodore Rex (2001) & Colonel Roosevelt (2010); Theodore Roosevelt, The Autobiography of Theodore Roosevelt (numerous editions); David McCullough, Mornings on Horseback (1982); Douglas Brinkley, The Wilderness Warrior (2010); Edward Kohn, Hot Time in the Old Town (2010)

“The Presidency of George W. Bush”, edited by Julian E. Zelizer (Princeton)

2010-11-29T10:54:00.001-08:00

A first historical assessment of one of the most controversial presidencies

The Presidency of George W. Bush brings together some of today’s top American historians to offer the first in-depth look at one of the most controversial U.S. presidencies. Emotions surrounding the Bush presidency continue to run high – conservatives steadfastly defend its achievements, liberals call it a disgrace. This book examines the successes as well as the failures, covering every major aspect of Bush’s two terms in office. It puts issues in broad historical context to reveal the forces that shaped and constrained Bush’s presidency – and the ways his presidency reshaped the nation.

The Presidency of George W. Bush features contributions by Mary L. Dudziak, Gary Gerstle, David Greenberg, Meg Jacobs, Michael Kazin, Kevin M. Kruse, Nelson Lichtenstein, Fredrik Logevall, Timothy Naftali, James T. Patterson, and the book’s editor, Julian E. Zelizer. Each chapter tackles some important aspect of Bush’s administration – such as presidential power, law, the war on terror, the Iraq invasion, economic policy, and religion – and helps readers understand why Bush made the decisions he did.

Taking readers behind the headlines of momentous events, the contributors show how the quandaries of the Bush presidency were essentially those of conservatism itself, which was confronted by the hard realities of governance. They demonstrate how in fact Bush frequently disappointed the Right, and how Barack Obama’s 2008 election victory cast the very tenets of conservatism in doubt.

History will be the ultimate judge of Bush's legacy, and the assessment begins with this book.

Editor Julian Zelizer offers a good introduction to the volume, which touches on all the issues to be discussed in the book, before offering a quick historical account of, to borrow the chapter’s title, “How Conservatives Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Presidential Power”. This chapter offers a quick and readable historical account of the evolution of conservative opinions of presidential power – from opposition to, specifically under Nixon, whole-hearted support. “The Bush administration formed in direct conversation with the 1970s”, when many high-ranking members came of professional age during Nixon’s and Ford’s administrations – most notably, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, and Paul Wolfowitz. Zelizer explains the liberal-conservative fight over the scope of presidential power, and how conservatives fought against any and all attempts to limit presidential power – in part spurred by an article by William F Buckley that called for all conservatives to recognise the importance of the presidency to streamline and push policy making. Establishment conservatives clearly accepted his premise, and have rarely (if ever) looked back. During the Clinton years, GOP opposition to presidential power was more ideological and “pragmatic”, simply because they did not have control over the White House (Zelizer points out that much of the opposition to Clinton’s policies were more due to a dislike of the president, rather than the policies themselves).

“The war on terrorism has highlighted the reality that presidential power is integral, rather than aberrational, to modern conservatism. The relationship is more than simply a product of political pragmatism under conditions of divided government.”

Conservative elements of American political landscape have been just as culpable, if not more so, than liberals for the expansion of government power and size: “Since the 1960s, the Right, rather than the Left, has been a much more vociferous champion of an all-powerful White House.”

Mary Dudziak’s chapter takes a look at a broad range of legal issues that the Bush administration was faced with – from the Supreme Court’s involvement in resolving the 2000 election crisis, to Guantanamo Bay and issues of habeus corpus, and also the financial crisis. Each section is clearly laid out and cleanly argued and explained. It’s a good chapter, but not one that particularly fired my interest.

Timothy Naftali’s chapter on the War on Terrorism is interesting, although it suffers from being on a subject that has been written about to almost exhaustion. That being said, he discusses the differences between Bush’s first and second terms in office, after Condoleezza Rice’s move to the Department of State (which saw an “emergence of a more flexible approach” to foreign policy in general). While describing in brief the successes in South East Asia, Naftali also points out that,

“in its zeal to reorder the international system, the Bush administration created a Petri dish for massive amounts of terrorism in Iraq between 2003 and 2007, with immeasurable damage to U.S. soft power in the Muslim world.”

In his second term, Naftali explains, there was a “quiet rebellion” throughout the government, as opponents to a neoconservative/assertive-nationalist foreign policy found their voices and receptive ears. This rebellion also exhibited the US government’s self-corrective nature, as a more realistic foreign policy began to replace the more assertive unilateralism of the first term.

Frederick Logevall tackles the causes of the Iraq invasion. “How the United States got into Iraq is one of the great foreign policy questions of our time,” the author begins. “Iraq was a war of choice, not necessity, and that it was understood as such by top officials in Washington.” Like Naftali’s offering, much of this has appeared or been discussed in innumerable other volumes. Logevall recognises this, and explains how what emerges from the plethora of memoirs and journalistic accounts is “the story of an administration that decided early for military action and then manipulated the truth to make its case.” Aiding this manipulation was the political environment at the time:

“It is also a story about a permissive decision-making environment in which Congress, the press, and the American public were mostly content to go along, unwilling to raise the tough questions that might have halted or slowed the rush to war.”

A good chapter, and one lucidly and clearly written and argued, Logevall finishes on a grim note:

“regardless of the ultimate outcome in Iraq, the damage done by this unnecessary and reckless war has been enormous in terms of lives lost and resources squandered, in terms of America’s standing in the region and the world, in terms of the impact on the broader struggle against terrorism.”

James T. Patterson explains, in a very good chapter, George W. Bush’s tax and stimulus policies. It is clear that Patterson does not approve of Bush’s vehement belief in supply-side economics (which, Patterson argues and shows with plenty of data, were impractical and ultimately completely wrong – in other words, he argues George H.W. Bush’s opinion that it was ‘voodoo economics’).

“Well before George W. Bush left office in 2009, he had succeeded in securing major cuts in federal taxes that contributed over time to mounting deficits and rising income inequality. This dramatic turn in fiscal policy was the most significant domestic legacy of his presidency.”

In addition, in the wake of the 2008 Wall Street collapse, Bush’s stimulus and bailout packages “promised to have large and long-run consequences” for America’s future fiscal health. Bush’s tax policy was assured long before he started running for president – a “tax-cutting zealotry” within the GOP still defined much of the conservative approach to fiscal matters, and in the George W Bush years, “paved the way for passage of legislation that Ronald Reagan would have envied”. In order to ensure Bush didn’t fall foul of his father’s fate (“Read my lips: no new taxes”), the administration was bull-headed about and insistent on internal unity on taxes – “Bush brushed aside serious internal debate over economic matters”, which in some ways explains Paul O’Neill’s quick exit from his post as Treasury Secretary. Patterson acknowledges the long-term structural issues that exacerbated the negative impact of Bush’s policies, and offers a good summary of the various opposition arguments that were levelled at Bush’s policies throughout his term (especially those following the invasion of Iraq, and the president’s ignoring rising unemployment figures to focus on further tax cuts). Patterson finishes with a warning about extending the Bush tax cuts:

“If Congress were to extend or increase the Bush-era tax reductions, it would enshrine a supply-side revolution that had erected the boldest monument of Bush’s domestic agenda.”

Meg Jacobs takes a look at Bush’s energy policy, placing it in an historical perspective, in “Wreaking Havoc from Within”. Jacobs argues that Bush’s priority on the environment was to “reverse thirty years of environmental and energy policy, specifically through deregulation, tax reform, and the opening up of new lands to exploration and drilling” – to do this, he set up the much-criticised National Energy Policy Development Group, which was chaired by Dick Cheney and staffed by energy industry supporters, lobbyists and former-employees. Bush’s policy was nothing new, the author argues, as it adhered to tired and constant conservative opposition to regulation. What was new, however, and therefore what prevented Bush from fulfilling all his goals, was the growth in support for environmentalism in Congress. Jacobs offers an explanation of the roots of conservative energy policy, from the Arab Oil Embargo of 1973-4, through Carter’s and Reagan’s presidency – for example, attempts to reduce the dependence on foreign oil (and the resultant desire to open up ANWR for exploration and drilling).

“Understanding the Bush energy policy is not as simple as saying that this was an administration run by two oilmen, though that certainly matters. Nor can the administration’s policies be explained as crude payback for political backers, though again, energy industry contributions were not insignificant.”

Nelson Lichtenstein’s chapter takes a look at ideology and interest in social policy at home. Put blunty, “Ideology and interest structured the domestic social policy over which George W Bush presided”. Lichtenstein argues that ideology and interests were integral to almost all Bush social policies – consistently conservative in the former, and complex but also considerable in the latter, incorporating many corporate and business interests in decision-making and policy implementation – favouring business interests over labour and worker interests at almost every turn. From Bush’s Social Security and Medicare policies, to the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina (a particularly interesting section), Lichtenstein offers some illuminating treatments of how Bush’s policies conformed to what he calls the “Bush-Cato” social policy approach.

In David Greenberg’s chapter, we get an analysis of the Bush administration’s expertise at navigating an increasingly polarised society and political environment. Specifically, the chapter refers to the difference between Bush administration officials’ contempt for “reality-based” liberals – this refers to a much-cited passage from Ron Suskind’s The Price of Loyalty, when he was told that the US was powerful enough to make its own reality.

“Although the taunts of Bush’s critics frequently descended into glibness, the president’s denigration of independent expertise was real, and it marked one of the more significant and all-encompassing features of his administration.”

The Bush administration made ‘science’ and ‘expertise’ derogatory terms, in an attempt to control the discussion – on everything – to adhere to their own narrow, ideological agenda and world-view.

“As never before, administration officials and their allies in politics and the news media openly disregarded the empirically grounded evidence, open-minded inquiry, and expert authority that had long underpinned governmental policymaking.”

Greenberg explains how conservative control of the White House and both Houses of Congress during much of Bush’s administration helped give rise to this assault on expertise – especially when coupled with the media’s changing role (be it Fox News’ flagrant disregard for facts and balance, or the Mainstream Media’s insistence on giving both sides of an argument attention – be it ridiculous or grounded in something concrete). This disregard for expertise and the denigration of those with “book learning” is, in this reviewer’s humble opinion, the most dangerous legacy of the Bush years – it is a root cause of almost every damaging and dangerous policy that came out of the Bush administration (in both the short- and long-term). Sadly, during the first two years of Obama’s administration, political and media conversations show no evidence of realignment towards sensible, informed decision-making or debate.

President Bush wore his religion and beliefs on his sleeve, so a chapter discussing Religion in Bush’s America was a must. The task is taken up by Kevin Kruse. After a couple of decades in the wilderness, the Religious Right was politically adrift – unable to unseat Clinton, and experiencing few (if any) victories on the Culture War issues that fired up its grassroots followers and organisations, they were struggling to remain relevant. Enter George W. Bush who, on all issues dear to the Religious Right, “dutifully took his place on the right” and fought to bring them victories they had long sort. In some ways, he was successful (stem cells, for example). Kruse offers a quick summary of Bush’s religion and how it played in the election, followed by an explanation of purpose and formation of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. In his memoir, Bush would say his faith-based initiatives were some of his favourite achievements of his administration. Kruse also explains how, with the onset of the War on Terror, Afghanistan and Iraq, faith-based initiatives receded from importance; equally, the author explains how the “old guard” of the religious community have been supplanted by a more moderate generation, which aims to focus on its values, rather than the political issues it opposes. This is a welcome development, and might allow the debate to advance in a more mature manner. Despite his wish to transcend the political partisanship over faith, Bush’s policies were dashed by White House indifference and partisanship on Capitol Hill – his one success was his expansion of AIDS support and aid in Africa (something few will be able to fault or condemn).

Gary Gerstle takes a look at Bush’s success at expanding the multicultural make-up of the GOP’s support-base. Mile removed from Pat Buchanan, Bush offered real possibility for expanding the Republican Tent. Bush appointed more minorities to high government office than any previous administration, and multiculturalism was enshrined in his signature piece of legislation, No Child Left Behind – which required schools across the nation to conform to certain standards in core subjects, which was hoped to level the playing field sooner for minorities. Gerstle offers an interesting comparison with the McKinley administration (a favourite of Karl Rove’s, apparently), which created a thirty-year Republican majority, only to be brought low by nativist, anti-immigration forces within. This weakness is once again raising its ugly head in the wake of the Bush administration, as Tea Party forces gobble up more and more media-time and Republican seats in Congress and the Senate.

In the final chapter of the book, Michael Kazin takes a look at Bush’s relationship with the Conservative Movement. The author offers a summary of its evolution, and charts Bush’s relationship with it and the issues that matter most to it. The first term of Bush’s presidency is considered the best of times by movement conservatives as the new president promised to fulfil their wishes and chart a properly conservative path in office (only on immigration did the president break with his base). Ultimately, Kazin argues, the Bush presidency was a disappointment for movement conservatives, as the president slowly but surely jettisoned the fierce adherence to conservative political issues and tropes, as evidenced in Bush’s expansion of government and also his administration’s part in the massive economic bailouts in 2008 – this is quite a hypocritical about-turn, as many of its leaders were members of Reagan’s administration, which implemented many of the same ‘heresies’ (particularly in terms of government expansion). The conservative movement’s insistence on ‘ideological purity’ has proven self-defeating many times (certainly during Bush’s first term and its hiring policies).

The focus on Bush and his administration’s decision-making processes is very helpful, and makes this volume far more in-depth and revealing than George W. Bush’s own memoir, ostensibly about his decision-making processes. The authors who produced chapters for The Presidency of George W. Bush offer many insights into the inner-workings of the Bush Administration and those who helped steer, implement or influence certain policies.

I only have three minor criticisms of this book. Firstly, there’s not a whole lot of new material included in its pages. This, to be fair, is unavoidable as large portions of official documents will remain classified for years and decades to come (this is something Zelizer admits early on in the book). I can’t help thinking this book should have waited a few more years before publication, but that might have led to a completely different book. Secondly, Zelizer claims that the chapters do not attempt to answer the question about whether or not Bush was a ‘bad’ or ‘good’, or one of the ‘best’ or ‘worst’ president, and yet these chapters (particularly the foreign and economic policy chapters) have an overall negative and critical bias – thankfully backed up by plenty of evidence – but it doesn’t suggest a historians’ detachment. The freshness of the events of Bush’s presidency do, of course, mean that tempers and passions are still excited and inflamed by discussion of his administration, so this was unavoidable. My final criticism is that a couple of these chapters are a little dry, and not as accessible as others.

An excellent, single-volume account of the various aspects of George W. Bush’s presidency, I think this volume is very valuable and useful companion for anyone studying the presidency, US foreign policy, and contemporary issues of American politics, society and foreign policy. Indeed, it may be the most useful single-volume, broad-focus book on George W Bush currently in print, and a perfect starting place for study.

Recommended.

Also try: Julian E. Zelizer, Arsenal of Democracy (2010); James T. Patterson, Restless Giant: The United States from Watergate to Bush v. Gore (2005); Timothy Naftali, George H.W. Bush (2008); Arthur Schlesinger Jr., The Imperial Presidency (2004); Charlie Savage, The Return of the Imperial Presidency (2007); George W. Bush, Decision Points (2010); Ron Suskind, The Price of Loyalty (2004); Matt Taibbi, Griftopia (2010); Lou & Carl M. Cannon, Reagan’s Disciple: George W Bush’s Troubled Quest for a Presidential Legacy (2008); Jacob Weisberg, The Bush Tragedy (2007); David Farber, The Rise and Fall of Modern American Conservatism (2010); Matt Latimer, Speech-Less (2009); Robert Draper, Dead Certain (2007); Scott McClellan, What Happened (2009)