Category Archives: Foreign Affairs

Heroism

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The other day Paul Krugman wrote,

“If you didn’t see something heroic about [Hillary Clinton’s] performance in the Benghazi hearing, you’re missing something essential.”

There was nothing heroic about Clinton’s performance at those hearings. She demonstrated she’s tough as nails and I’m glad she stood up to the panel of reactionary mouth breathers* who grilled her, but it was not a heroic act. Why not? Because she had nothing to lose by standing up to them.  You want an example of heroism in the face of Congressional inquisitors? Look at the people who got called before HUAC and told them to go pound sand rather than smear friends and former colleagues who’d done nothing wrong. People who told HUAC to go pound sand lost their livelihoods. In order to qualify as a hero you need to put your neck on the line. Clinton did right but she risked nothing doing what she did.

* Their buffoonery is actually beside the point.   They disgust me because they put on a show trial.  I don’t believe for an instant that any of Clinton’s inquisitors gave a shit about preventing another Benghazi-like incident.

In the event you were under the impression that Russia gives a rat’s ass about Syrians

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From today’s New York Times:

Some Russian analysts say the Kremlin is using the conflict in Syria to test a new generation of weaponry from a major procurement program that military officials began in 2010 after years of oil-boom profits.

“There are radars and all sorts of new control systems, and of course we need a firing range,” Konstantin V. Remchukov, the editor of Nezavisimaya Gazeta, told the Echo of Moscow radio station this week.

“We carried out a lot of exercises,” Mr. Remchukov said. “But a firing range like that opening before us in Syria, with these bombing sorties, with drones and other objects of the new generation, this is, of course, a favorable place for fine-tuning all our new weaponry.”

Greece

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Last updated 7/6/2015.

Paul Krugman’s commentaries on Greece have been consistently sensible.   From his latest, Ending Greece’s Bleeding:

Imagine, for a moment, that Greece had never adopted the euro, that it had merely fixed the value of the drachma in terms of euros. What would basic economic analysis say it should do now? The answer, overwhelmingly, would be that it should devalue — let the drachma’s value drop, both to encourage exports and to break out of the cycle of deflation.

Yup. It worked for Iceland in 2008-9.  It might have worked for Greece too but, as they don’t control their own currency, going the devaluation route wasn’t an option for them.

It makes no sense to be locked in to a currency if you lack political authority to control it, e.g., to print more when the situation demands it, issue bonds when appropriate, etc.  It makes no sense to agree to debt payment terms if there is no rational basis for believing they can be met.  Given those things, “No.” was the right choice in Greece’s referendum today.  Vote to reject the raw deal.

Joseph Stiglitz called out the anti-democratic nature of the “troika’s” demands the other day in Europe’s Attack on Greek Democracy.

In an interview on NPR Brown Univ. economist Mark Blyth calls bullshit on the suggestion that the Greeks have profligate spenders or are just lazy, The (Perceived) Tragedy of Greece.

(If you’re only going to read or listen to one piece, listen to Blyth.)

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Dishonest mistakes

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The understanding is supposed to be that the troops serve on whatever mission is ordered, and the government doesn’t order them to risk their lives for a political folly.

– Unknown

On May 11 Paul Waldman had a piece in The American Prospect, Should We Relitigate the Iraq War in the 2016 Campaign? You Bet We Should.   In it he offered a list of questions for 2016 presidential candidates.  I noted it at the time.  Waldman’s questions force the issue of how the candidate would act on what they do know and how they would deal with uncertainty.   His questions are forward-looking – and that should be a good thing.  Unfortunately, we don’t appear to be ready for it.  If we were then statements to the effect of “knowing what we know now…” re Iraq would be immediately called out as bullshit by everyone within earshot.  They are not.  Today James Fallows summed up concisely why saying “knowing what we know now…” is bullshit:

  • The “knowing what we know” question presumes that the Bush Administration and the U.S. public were in the role of impartial jurors, or good-faith strategic decision-makers, who while carefully weighing the evidence were (unfortunately) pushed toward a decision to invade, because the best-available information at the time indicated that there was an imminent WMD threat.
  • That view is entirely false.
  • The war was going to happen. The WMD claims were the result of the need to find a case for the war, rather than the other way around.

He then gets into the details at length.

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Looking back on the Iraq War: Questions for 2016 presidential candidates

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Paul Waldman poses questions for 2016 presidential candidates:

  1. How do [you] view the extraordinary propaganda campaign the Bush administration launched to convince Americans to get behind the war?
  2. Does that make [you] want to be careful about how [your administration would] argue for [its] policy choices?
  3. Did Iraq change [your] perspective on American military action, particularly in the Middle East?
  4. What light [do the lessons learned from the war] shed on the reception the American military is likely to get the next time we invade someplace?
  5. What does it teach us about power vacuums and the challenges of nation-building?
  6. How [do the lessons learned from the war] inform [your] thinking on the prospect of military action in Syria and Iran specifically?
  7. Given the boatload of unintended consequences Iraq unleashed, how would [you], as president, go about making decisions on complex issues that are freighted with uncertainty?

Number 7 is of particular interest to me.   “If I knew then what I know now…” is all well and good but how will the candidate approach complex issues where there’s inherent uncertainty?  Do they acknowledge downside risk?  If so then how do they try to get a handle on it?

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The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) – “Kill it with fire.”

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Updated 10/17/2015.

Current status of the TPP:  The agreement has been negotiated. Now it goes to Congress for an up or down vote.  It cannot be amended.  In theory, it could get voted down.  In practice, I’m not holding my breath.

News and posts:

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Change comes to Greece

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Syriza, the left-wing anti-austerity party, appears to have won a big plurality in the Greek general election.   From the BBC:

Polls suggested Syriza took between 35.5% and 39.5% of total votes. The ruling New Democracy party came a distant second with 23%-27% of the total vote.  It is unclear whether Syriza has enough votes to govern the country alone.  Syriza’s Alexis Tsipras has pledged to renegotiate Greece’s debt arrangement with international creditors.  He has also vowed to reverse many of the austerity measures adopted by Greece since a series of bailouts began in 2010.  The result is being closely watched outside Greece, where it is believed a Syriza victory could encourage radical leftist parties across Europe.

We’ll see how that shakes up the Euro zone.

Newsflash: Boko Haram Struggles To Find Victims People Give A Shit About

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From Duffle Blog:

BORNO, Nigeria — According to insider reports obtained by Duffel Blog, leaders for the terrorist group Boko Haram have called an emergency meeting to determine how many more murders, rapes and kidnappings it will take before anyone in the international community will start giving a shit.

“It’s frustrating,” complained Boko Haram Commander Abubakar Shekau. “We work extremely hard, and all we get from the rest of the world is phlegmatic indifference. I mean, what’s a warlord supposed to do?”

During a month in which the group has attacked hard targets in Cameroon, as well as orchestrated the slaughter of up to 2,000 civilians, international media outlets have largely focused on recent terror attacks in Paris. The carnage wrought by Boko Haram in the Belgium-sized swath of territory it now controls in the northeastern states of oil-rich Nigeria was designed to get attention.

Much to Shekau’s dismay, however, it hasn’t been enough.

“I’m turning this country into a fucking Lars Von Trier film,” Shekau told Duffel Blog via Facebook chat. “I’ve literally stolen hundreds of kids from their parents and sold them into slavery, and all I got was a Twitter hashtag from Michelle Obama.”

Read more: http://www.duffelblog.com/2015/01/boko-haram/#ixzz3P72Mo344