The World on Fire

We just watched the first season of Masterpiece Theater’s production of “The World on Fire”. Masterpiece Theater remains the best of the best. The list of outstanding shows is long but at the top of my list is “The Jewel in the Crown.” I have watched its 18 hours of the very best of drama three times, once in an all day party. My love of Masterpiece Theater started in 1981 with “Brideshead Revisited.”  The only American show that tops them is “The Wire.”

Part of what I like about “The World on Fire” is that the horror and tragedy of war is shown as it impacts individual people and families. While I know that the little old ladies on the street thanking solders for their service have their hearts in the right place, their good wishes to the young men and women to go off and die for our country sickens me. Aside from Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 and al-Qaeda’s attack on New York and the Pentagon on 9/11, we have fought our many more recent wars (of choice) in far off places most of you have never been to.

I was never in the military nor fought in any war, but I have worked in many post conflict countries (Bosnia, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Kosovo) and lost colleagues to assassinations while there. We need to understand what war is really like, and the thousands upon thousands of individuals and their families who suffer losses of limbs or lives and property and ways of life for what very often could have and should have been avoided. Why do we encourage Ukraine to fight to the last Ukrainian rather than agree to terms with Russia that could have prevented the invasion in the first place? There are those who profit from these far off wars but many more who suffer greatly. Unfortunately, the former buy more influence than the latter. Movies like “The World on Fire,” can help us better understand the ugly horror of generally unnecessary wars.  https://wcoats.blog/2014/06/19/war-bosnia-kosovo-afghanistan-iraq-libya/    https://wcoats.blog/2021/07/05/the-iraq-war/  https://wcoats.blog/2009/09/03/iraq-kidnapping-update/ 

Monopolies

A company that produces a really attractive product or service and does so efficiently and thus at lower cost than can potential competitors, will grow and potentially dominate and even monopolize that market. It is tempting for such very successful companies to seek laws and regulations that protect their dominance by making it harder for potential competitors to enter those markets with lower costs. But as a company enjoys its increasingly protected monopoly, it tends to lose the edge that put it on top in the first place. Its drive to innovate is reduced. It tends to become lazy and even corrupt in the defense of its monopoly position. While economist differ on what policies are best when dealing with a monopolist, there is generally consensus that monopolies are bad in the long run.

The same is true of countries that grow to international dominance. With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the resulting unipolar dominance of the United States, the U.S. increasingly behaves like a bully and disregards the rules of international commerce and diplomacy that it helped establish and demands that others follow.

The United States was founded on an extremely well-conceived set of principles designed to protect its individual citizens to lead their own lives and pursue their own flourishing as they each saw fit. The American constitution limited what the government may do to enumerated powers and provided checks and balances on the actions of each branch of government. For the most part these restrictions have held, and our government has provided the defense, protection, and framework needed for our individual flourishing.

But as we gained strength and dominance and especial during our brief period of unipolarity, we increasingly violated the rules we demanded that others follow. For example, we joined others to sponsor the World Trade Organization to establish the rules of fair trade in order to maximize the benefits of higher incomes for everyone made possible by trade.  We properly challenged China for dumping its excess steel on the market as a violation of WTO rules. But President Trump’s tariffs on Canadian, European, as well as Chinese steel in the name of national defense violated WTO rules as well as common sense. And how do President Biden’s multibillion dollar subsidies for domestic semiconductor chip production differ from “China’s state-led, non-market approach to the economy and trade” we object to?

Though the U.S. won most of the cases it brought to the WTO Appellate Body, the WTO’s dispute resolution body, that Body has not been able to function since December 2019 because the US has blocked the appoint of new judges.

But it gets worse. We have rightly condemned Russia for violating the sovereignty of Ukraine by invading it, while overlooking our equally illegal violations or attempted violations of the sovereignty of Cuba, Iraq, and Libya among others.  

But it gets worse still. In reaction to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s accusation that the government of India was responsible for the assassination of Canadian Sikh activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar on Canadian soil, Adrienne Watson, the White House National Security Council spokesperson, said “targeting dissidents in other countries is absolutely unacceptable and we will keep taking steps to push back on this practice.” Had she forgotten the dozens of such assassinations carried out by the U.S. on foreign soil? Of the more recent was the drone attack in Yemen that killed Anwar al-Awlaki and his young grandson on September 30, 2011. Al-Awlaki was an Islamic scholar and lecturing living here in Arlington Va.  Our assassination of Qasem Soleimani in Baghdad on January 3, 2020, again with a drone attack, raised considerable international criticism. Soleimani was the Commander of the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. We were not at war with either Iran or (at that time) Iraq.

With our near monopoly of political power in the world, the ability of our defense industry to protect and promote its profitable supply of weapons is strong. We can be thankful of their capacity to produce the weapons that defend us. But our military industrial complex that President Eisenhower warned us of profits however and by whom ever its products are used. Its profits are strengthened and sustained by our forever wars and those we supply. Ike knew of what he spoke.

Of the 2023 FY budget (ending next week) of $1.7 trillion in discretionary spending (yes trillions if you can swallow that), $860 billion (or 50.6%) was for defense. Half of that was paid to the defense industry. Most of that is for weapons. But they provide other services as well. When I was living in Baghdad as part of the Coalition Provisional Authority in 2004, Halliburton (the company Dick Chaney had been Chairman and CEO of) provided our meals in the Embassy mess hall (Saddam Hussein’s Presidential Palace). Lockheed alone gets more of its annual revenue from the federal government than the annual GDP of all but the top 81 countries (about half) in the world.

While our constitution’s checks and balances go a long way to protect our government from capture by the defense and other industries, the honestly of our elected representatives (devotion to the interests of their constituents and our country rather than to the size of their corporate contributions) still matters. It is hard to understand otherwise why we send our sons and daughters off to fight and die in foreign lands or encourage Ukraine to fight to the last Ukrainian.

Our government and foreign policy have been corrupted by our unipolar dominance. But our very arrogance—abide by our rules while we do what we want—has and will increasingly weaken our global influence. There are faint signs that we are being to recognize this new reality and tempering our behavior. The demise of our monopoly behavior and our return to fair and proper competition should be encouraged.

It makes sense to restrict trade of important military products. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan was right to claim that we should aim for a “small yard with a high fence” to protect military supplies while otherwise maximizing beneficial trade. But the profit motive of our defense industries to expand the size of that yard as much as possible is strong and has been and will be hard to resist.

Free to Speak

I disagree with many of the claims and proposals made by Critical Race Theorists. But the best way to challenge it are with public debt. Hiding it away violates our constitutional protection of free speech and will not be successful in exposing its errors. I remember being surprised and enlightened by reading “Black Like Me” years ago. It recounts the experiences of a white man who had turned his skin black traveling in the South as a black man (or as a negro as polite people said in those days). Did the shock harm me? Hardly. The lack of challenges to our ideas turns us to mush. https://wapo.st/3sYWltz

Happily, some, like FIRE, are fighting back. One excellent presentation of the value and importance of free speech and of civilly speaking up to defend what we believe and to listening to what others believe by the producers of earlier “Free to Choose” series, can be seen on PBS starting Oct 1.   “Free to Speak”  I urge you to watch it.

The Iran Deal

I have yet to understand how the US withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action with Iran (the Iran Deal) was supposed to prevent Iran’s development of atomic weapons better than would the Iran Deal itself. But hopefully today’s deal with Iran is a step toward reentering the JCPOA.

Quoting the Crisis Group:

“The Biden administration has just completed implementing… agreement that secures the freedom of five American hostages in Iran in return for the release of an equivalent number of Iranian prisoners in the United States.

“In parallel, the Biden administration has also agreed to unfreeze nearly $6 billion worth of Iranian oil revenue stuck for years in South Korean banks that Tehran can use to purchase food and medicine. “

To Kill a Mockingbird

Earlier this week, Ito and I attended a performance at the Kennedy Center of the play version of this moving and powerful novel by Harper Lee. It was a well-staged production, faithful to the movie as best I can remember it from 50 years ago. Beyond its laudable, powerful attack on racism, it champions a moral position I have trouble with.

The play centers on the story’s hero attorney, Atticus Finch, who defends a black man falsely accused of raping a white woman. The alleged rape victim, Mayella Ewell, was actually beaten by her father, Bob Ewell, because she had kissed the accused black man, Tom Robinson. Despite the valent efforts of Atticus to defend Tom, who could not have beaten the white girl on both sides of her head because of his unusable left arm from an earlier accident, the all while jury convicts him anyway.

The play opens with Atticus’s daughter, Scout, addressing the audience about the local newspaper’s report of the death of Bob Ewell by falling on his knife. No one can fall on their own knife, says Scout. What is going on here?

Near the end of the play the mysterious, reclusive neighbor, Boo Radley, who Scout and her older brother Jen have never actually seen before, carries an unconscious Jen to his home for treatment. Jen and Scout had been attacked in the night by their white trash neighbor Bob Ewell. When the sheriff finds the dead body of Bob Ewell, Atticus fears that his daughter has killed him during his attack on her and Jen. But the sheriff concludes it was Boo Radley who plunged the knife into Bob Ewell to protect the children.

In a private conversation between Atticus and the sheriff, it is decided that the Sheriff will claim that Bob Ewell fell on his knife rather than risk the verdict of a bigoted jury. Atticus does not want his children to hear the discussion of the lie. Bob Ewell was a bad guy and no one is very sorry that he is dead. The plan ends with Scout facing the audience and saying, “I guess he fell on his sword.”

The play has many instances in which Scout and Jen defy inappropriate customs and views. I applaud those attacks on bigotry and outmoded customs. We recently watched the British series “Cranford”, which masterfully depicts the power of customs (which fork to use and how to dress), the disruption of progress (the building of the railroad into this quant English town) and the ultimate adjustment to positive changes. I highly recommend it.

The moral dilemma for me is the following. Atticus correctly and bravely defended Tom against the clearly false charges. Both the Judge and the Sheriff were strongly on the side of the truth and the law, but bigotry won out. Thus, the judge and Sheriff set aside the law and lied to protect a good man and his good deed against a bad man. Good wins out but only because in this instance the Sheriff and Judge are on the side of ultimate justice.

Many Filipinos also accepted former President Rodrigo Duterte’s green light to kill drug dealers on the streets of Manila without trail. It may well have been that most of those killed were indeed drug dealers. But if we rely on ignoring the truth and the law to achieve good ends, we open a dangerous door. We can’t always rely on the Sheriff and the Judge to be good people. We need strong and trusted institutions as well.

Corruption and the American Empire

I truly believe that the vast majority of American’s who worked in Afghanistan after the U.S. toppled the Taliban government in December 2001 where genuinely motivated by the desire to help Afghanistan (and thus the U.S.)—myself included. “Warren’s Travels”  But as Ms. Chayes makes clear, we are just bad at it. “Afghanistan’s corruption was made in America”

Pursuing Empire is not what we are about. It is not “The beacon on the hill” that has rightly attracted the best and brightest to our shores. Of late even that beacon is threatening to go out. We should stay home and rebuild the capacity to cooperate where needed to enable us each to flourish in our own ways.

More on constructive competition

In contrasting our treatment of others as competitors or enemies in my blog on “What to do About China”  I am reminded of the 120 days I spent in Baghdad as an advisor to the Central Bank of Iraq paid for by the USAID and supervised by the US Treasury. Our occupation of Iraq included staff from the US Treasury, USAID, Commerce Dept, State Department, and, of course, the Dept. of Defense. Competition by each of them to do a better job than the others would clearly be win-win making our overall occupation more successful. But too often one agency treated the others as enemies diminishing and undermining their efforts rather than supporting them. My biggest fear with my dual association with USAID and Treasury was that each would see me as on the other side, which would have undermined my effectiveness. Luckily the each saw me as on their own side.  “Iraq-An American Tragedy-My Travels to Baghdad”

What to do about China?

“China’s much anticipated post-pandemic recovery appears to have flopped, with signs of a significant slowdown after decades of supercharged growth and data flashing warning signs.” Bloomberg “China’s failing recovery”

“Signs of deflation are becoming more prevalent across China, heaping extra pressure on Beijing to reignite growth or risk falling into an economic trap it could find hard to escape.”

What, if anything, should the U.S. response be? That depends on whether we see China as a competitor or an enemy. That should depend on our assessment of China’s objectives. Does China want to expand its territory one way or another, or to expand its influence in the global order? China’s behavior might support either assessment.

China claims sovereignty over almost the entire South China Sea, including the Paracel and Spratly islands, which are also claimed by Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei, and Taiwan. In 1947 China asserted its claims with a map depicting a U-shaped line covering almost 70 percent of the South China Sea, known as the nine-dash line. In 2016, an Arbitration Tribunal rejected many of China’s maritime claims as lacking a basis in international law.

The UK returned Hong Kong to China July 1, 1997, with the understanding that it would be self-governed independently of the Peoples Republic of China for fifty years. China violated this agreement with its full takeover in 2020.

In 1972 President Richard Nixon confirmed that Taiwan was part of the People’s Republic of China but would continue to govern itself independently until it agreed to merge its government with the mainland’s. In the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979, the U.S. committed to providing defensive weapons to Taiwan to defend itself from invasion (as opposed to the volunteer absorption into the Peoples Republic envisioned in the One China Act). What we provided instead were heavy weapons irrelevant to Taiwan’s defense but prized by America’s defense industries. “Taiwan-China policy assurances military” The U.S. has more recently seemed to even question its commitment to the One China agreement.

These aggressive moves by China are better seen as solidifying its borders (much in the same way the US worries about its borders with Cuba) than military expansions. On the other hand, China joining the World Trade Organization, pressing for representation in the IMF and World Bank that is more reflective of its economic size, and its Belt and Road, Asian Infrastructure Bank and BRICS initiatives reflect China’s desire to gain status in the global system comparable to that of the U.S. In short, they reflect the behavior of a rising economic competitor.

We seem to be treating China as an enemy rather than the trade and economic competitor they see themselves as. Among sportsmen, competition takes the form of doing your best—of being the best you are capable of. Within our economy we rightly see competition as good and healthy. With fair competition, both sides benefit. The world is made wealthier. Kneecapping our competition is the approach of bad guys. I explored this more fully in my blog “Competing with China”

But China is not competing fairly either. We would be wiser to use the mechanisms of the global system of rules to push and pull them into compliance. We should end our own tariff—industrial policy violation of these rules as well. We might start by restoring the dispute resolution body of the WTO. While there will be genuine security justifications for trade restrictions, they should be very limited.  They should not include taxing steel purchased from Canada. Trade is win, win.

A recent G-7 statement clarified that: “We are not decoupling or turning inwards. At the same time, we recognize that economic resilience requires de-risking and diversifying.” US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen stressed this message during her recent visit to China. We should facilitate and encourage China’s economic rise as it contributes to our own. The opposite direction—treating China as an enemy—ends in war.

America’s Unipolar period has corrupted us. We demand that others follow rules that we violate ourselves when we don’t find them convenient. We have become a bully. My hope is that we adjust to the fact that we are no longer the world’s sole superpower by strengthening the rules we helped develop and competing fairly under them: “Goodbye unipolar world and good riddance”

Persuasion or Coercion

Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville might be right or wrong about opposing the defense Department’s policy “of providing travel expenses for service women seeking an abortion.” But President Biden is certainly right in claiming that Tuberville’s unilateral “blocking more than 300 military [nominations] with his extreme political agenda” is “jeopardize[ing] the country’s national security.”  “Biden Tuberville military clash”

The DOD must determine the policies that will attract the solders that we need in our All Volunteer Military. Those policies should be open to public debate. But Tuberville has chosen coercion to impose his views rather than persuasion to seek consensus . This is not proper in a free society governed by publicly endorsed laws. It prevents the sort of public debate that will most likely find the best balance between the opposing views of people living in the same space. And it will certainly deepen divides that will diminish rather than enhance civility. In short, it bad for the nation.

But our liberal democracy has survived for two hundred and fifty years because when the pendulum swings too far in one direction, it invariably swings back. Hopefully we are reaching the extreme of the pendulum swing of right-left antagonism. Efforts are growing to rebuild the civil dialog from which we can better live together in liberty. See for example groups like Braver Angles https://braverangels.org/   We should fight to preserve our freedom to live as we choose rather than to restrict the choices of others to live as they choose.

Child labor

How much should the government protect us from things?  What form should government protection take? When does “protection” become top down coercion?

The US Labor Department wants to roll back some of the relaxation of “child labor” restrictions allowed by some States. https://thehill.com/homenews/education/4123821-dol-cracks-down-on-child-labor-while-states-loosen-laws/  What should we (or for minors—our parents) be allowed to decide for ourselves and what should the government be allowed to decide for us?

Back to my childhood in Bakersfield again. I was absolutely thrilled when I was able to earn money delivering the morning newspaper. I can’t remember my age exactly, but I think it was 14 or 15. I got up at 5:00 or 6:00 in the morning when a stack of the morning paper was dropped on our porch. I rolled them up and put them in a backpack, mounted my bicycle, and threw them as close to the porches of the subscribers on my list as possible. Bakersfield being semidesert was pleasantly cool in the summer mornings and very cold –freezing cold—in the winter. It virtually never snowed in Bakersfield because if virtually never rained, but it certainly froze any water around in the winter. The wide swing of temperatures between the night and the day is typical of deserts.

Having this job absolutely thrilled me more than the modest money I earned. Prior to qualifying age wise to deliver newspapers, I made money growing tomatoes in our back yard and selling them to the neighbors door to door. They were thrilled to buy my big red delicious and very fresh from the vine tomatoes. No one minded that I might have been breaking some law or other. When I became 16 and had a driver’s license, I went to work for Fedway Department store as an assistant to the parking lot attendant. The next year I was promoted to a salesclerk inside the store. These were weekend jobs.

The money I made was helpful (75 cent per hour if I recall correctly) but the experience was even more valuable. I loved having these jobs. They were indications of growing up. If for some reason and some how they were bad for me (exploitive?? Ha ha), it was rightly up to my parents to say no. Big Brother is overreaching into our lives again. Helicopter moms are bad enough.