Why does total war (by which I mean the intention to totally debilitate the enemy and possibly force an unconditional surrender) seem to be the norm in military conflicts these days? Most prominently, there is the Israeli siege on Gaza, where all economic development is effectively prohibited out of fear that someone might make a weapon. Throughout the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, the Israeli state effectively demands unconditional surrender -- insisting that Palestinians cease all attacks before the Israeli state lifts martial law or considers negotiations. On the flip side, many Palestinians and their allied states refuse to recognize Israel at all until all disputes are resolved.

We might be tempted to think that the Zionist conflict is a special case, but the attitude of total war seems to permeate the American approach to war also. It's was the strategy of the Civil War and both World Wars (with the CW and WWII involving unconditional surrender). The Cold War was infused with the mentality that we would always be fighting the USSR, even if there was never a  direct confrontation between the two armies.

For a while we may have drifted from that policy -- for instance, the first war between the US and Iraq ended with the Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait and a cease-fire agreement. However, over time it developed into a drive for regime change, culminating in an invasion with an unconditional surrender. The invasion of Afghanistan seemed to rest on a similar premise--that we could not be safe as long as the Taliban had any power. Even if the USA did not have to dedicate all resources to these wars, many people spoke as though it would be appropriate to do so if that were required to defeat the enemy.

 Why do we embrace total war so readily? I can only offer speculation (I'd bet that Robot.Economist would have some insight on this). Is it a common trait of humans to seek the absolute destruction of their enemies? Do wars simply escalate until they become total wars? Is it an intentional propaganda technique of war leaders trying to create widespread support for the war ("we must destroy them or they will destroy us!") Is it a strategy to intimidate would-be opponents and maintain hegemony? Is it inevitable in ideological conflicts? Is total war a new attitude that has seeped into American culture? Is it reinforced by nuclear weapons and international terrorism?

The idea that our enemies must be absolutely debilitated probably causes wars to drag on longer than they might otherwise, and end with much greater destruction. The demand for Japan's unconditional surrender left Truman with only two choices -- nuke their cities or invade the mainland. This mentality also seems to be the foundation of Bush's doctrine of preventive war-- that any ability to harm the USA is an unacceptable threat.

Within the framework of total war, there is no such thing as a proportional response to a threat or an injury. As such, I can only see two stable outcomes arising from this strategy; either total dominance of one state or mutual annihilation. There may be an opening for a balance of Mutually Assured Destruction, but that seems possible only in a fundamentally conservative and unchanging political order, which does not seem possible.

I hope that we can find some way to de-escalate the conflicts around the world. I hope that Americans pay more heed to Benjamin Franklin's virtue of moderation: "Avoid extremes; forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve.".

 

 

 

 

Many upper-middle class drug warriors like to believe that illegal drug use is one of the dirty habits of the poor -- perhaps treating it as a convenient explanation for why they are poor. Consistent with such prejudices, American prisons are full of people from low SES backgrounds, convicted on drug charges. However, the National Survey on Drug Use does not show any clear correlation between drug use and the components of SES measures (e.g. formal education).

This implies that many people are able to live pretty normal lives despite illegal drug use -- both past and ongoing. By personally disproving the slanderous propaganda put out by drug warriors (that drug users are shiftless troublemakers), these drug users may believe that they are immune to the risks associated with drug use.

Clinton B. McCracken has expounded on this attitude in his recent essay/memoir called "Intellectualization of drug abuse". The original essay requires a subscription to JAMA, but some of the core points are covered by the NY Times.

McCracken, an addiction researcher, first provides some background -- health care professionals use illegal drugs at rates that are at least as high as the general population. He then reports on his own experience with using illegal drugs. He smoked pot daily, even cultivating a little for personal use. He and his wife occasionally injected opiates that they acquired through international pharmacies. Everything seemed to be going fine until his wife died from injecting a contaminated preparation of opiates.

Following her death, the cops searched McCracken's house, discovering his plants and arresting him on felony drug charges. He was able to avoid substantial jail time, but being a Canadian citizen, he faces deportation from the USA, and future restrictions on international travel. If this weren't enough to destroy his career, many employers will hesitate before hiring someone with a felony criminal record.

Anyone familiar with the political rehabilitation process for busted drug users will recognize this essay as one of those mea culpas that tend to win some forgiveness from the authorities. Throughout the entire essay, McCracken emphasizes the dangers of illegal drug use (particularly, the dangers of injecting drugs), and his own blindness to those dangers. If this essay helps any individual adjust his drug use to avoid the loss that McCracken has suffered, then it is a noble endeavor.

However, if we read between the lines with a mind to public policy, we can quickly realize that all of McCracken's suffering can be traced to the drug war. His wife died because of contaminated drugs -- the risk of such contamination greatly increases when the government prevents the free flow of information in a market. The rest of his troubles are the direct result state action. Consequently, I don't place the blame on McCracken any more than I blame the victim of a mugging for taking a walk on a quiet street at night. The blame for ruining these two lives falls squarely on the drug warriors.

Many conservatives are fretting about the upcoming vote to remove the prohibition on military service for people openly involved in homosexual relationships. They are calling this elimination of the ban "social engineering".This strikes me as odd, because I interpret the current motion to be the elimination of social engineering.

By my definition, "engineering" is a conscious and active attempt to shape something. Social engineering would be an attempt to shape society. I also distinguish it from social activism by the fact that the "engineer" stands in a position where they can influence all of society (often using blunt force), whereas the activist stands inside of the society and influences just that portion that he has access to using persuasion rather than force.

So how do the conservatives arrive at the conclusion that lifting a ban is social engineering? Aside from the opportunistic and thoughtless use of inflammatory rhetoric, here are some reasons that they may be using the term:

1. They view any change in social policy as "engineering".
2. They view the military as an independent institution that should be free to do as it wishes without interference from Congress (I'm assuming that the prohibition of gays in the military came from within the military) .

In contrast, I view the military as an intrinsic part of the state, and I view the removal/simplification of regulations to be the opposite of "engineering".

The American markets in guns and drugs are putting a strain on the fragile governments of our less wealthy neighbors. The basic dynamic works like this: American consumers of marijuana, cocaine, and opiates cannot buy them legally, so they turn to criminals. Cocaine and opiates basically cannot be produced within the USA, so the dealers turn to international suppliers, with a lot of coke from South America being transported through countries like Mexico or Jamaica. These criminals get wealthy, and buy a lot of guns on America's rather liberal gun market, taking them home where the guns are used against anyone who opposes the drug cartels...whether competing dealers or the local government.

This situation has reached a head in Jamaica and Mexico. The governments of those countries can often live in peace with the drug dealers, but US pressure (and domestic politics) sometimes pushes them to confront the drug cartels, and then the situation explodes.

There is mounting pressure from these countries for the USA to restrict the sale of guns that could be exported by criminals. Whenever a sympathetic administration comes to power, this pressure will only provide fuel for their drive to restrict access to guns. Of course, we're the big ole US of A, so we don't have to listen to them...as long as we don't mind being viewed as a bunch of spoiled brats who export our own problems to less powerful countries.

We should also be comfortable with the idea of a Narco-state on our border.

I doubt that the status quo can last for long. I see a few possible responses.

1. Ban guns. I doubt that this would work any better than banning drugs, but that won't stop the control freaks from giving it a shot.
2. Close the border. I'm sure that many NRA supporters would love this, but businessmen would hate to be cut off from the Latin American markets, as would the cultural adventurists. Also, smugglers would still get some drugs and guns across the border. At least someone would win from this decision: I'm sure that the Chinese would be happy to fill that cultural and economic opening.
3. Provide for the lawful production and distribution of drugs in the USA. Decriminalize pot immediately (reducing the cartels' revenues by a little) and  start figuring out how to decriminalize the other drugs in an orderly fashion.

I know that the idea of people having access to both guns and drugs is not appealing, but the reality is that a good many people already do have access to both (and I'm not even including alcohol). The sporadic and ineffective violence of the whacked out drug user is nothing compared to the violence unleashed by greedy criminal cartels or power-hungry politicians.

Lexington at the Economist passes on an Institute For Justice report about the use of "grassroots lobbyist" regulations to suppress grassroots activism:

If she prints some fliers, calls some meetings and urges her neighbours to write to their state representative demanding change, she has to register as a “grassroots lobbyist”. This rule applies to any group that spends more than $500 in any given month trying to influence the legislature. That sum includes not only cash but also anything else of value, including voluntary labour, the use of office space and so forth. In other words, it could cover nearly any grassroots group.

To comply with the law, Mrs Murakami must provide details such as the name, address and employer of everyone who helps organise her campaign or who contributes more than $25 in cash or kind to it. All this information is then made public on the internet. 

The Jamaican government has attempted to arrest alleged gang/community leader Christopher Michael Coke. This man has been called "the most influential man in Jamaica" and is said to have ties to one of the major political parties (the other party is associated with other drug gangs). This attempt at arresting Coke is in response to an American extradition request, which the Prime Minister has been opposing for months. Something made him change his mind.

However, the Jamaican government has been driven out of the Kingston Neighborhood where Coke leads the community. See the video below.

I don't know what sort of pressure the USA would apply to countries that scoff at the drug war (definitely suspension of foreign aid, perhaps even an embargo?). However, what are the chances of seeing US troops in Jamaica if the current government doesn't get the situation under control quickly?

Given the recent discussions that touch on of how conservatism relates to libertarianism, it seems like a good time to address the big question: What good is conservatism?

In its basic, common-sense form, conservatism is a check on over-zealous reform. It embodies the attitude of "if it ain't broke, don't change it", and recognizes that America has a number of good institutions whose benefits should not be taken for granted. However, as a political movement, conservatism is a parody of those common-sense attitudes. The hesitancy to modify a working institution turns into a denial that there are any problems with our traditional institutions. The recognition that America has some pretty good institutions turns into a denial that we have anything to learn from other countries. Even worse, it builds an expectation that we can and should force other counties to establish institutions like our own.

The absurdities of this mentality can be exaggerated when it is combined with libertarian rationalizations. The idea of individualism is used to brush away any concern with the legacy of racist injustice, ignoring how many Americans continue to benefit from the material and cultural wealth that was acquired by the perpetrators of that injustice (often directly connected to the injustice), even as the victims of the racist system still suffer the deprivations of that injustice, which ended only a generation ago.

Conservative ideology understandably idealizes the Constitution, as it places limits on political change in response to a changing world.  However, many libertarians seem to have also picked up this exaggerated attention to this document, hoping that they can somehow use it to recover a lost age of liberty. Many conservative-influenced libertarians move on to disgrace the movement with advocacy of "state's rights", apparently disregarding the fundamental concern with individual rights.

The self-interested (and self-aggrandizing) impulses behind much of the modern conservative movement will seek any excuse with which to legitimize traditional power structures. It will always favor the haves over the have-nots, and will never lack resources with which to wage this struggle for political power. Libertarians should be wary of letting their attention be directed by the concerns of this movement. Even when the conservative propaganda machine appears to be supporting the libertarian message, it will distort that message and ultimately discredit the message.

An alliance with the conservative movement is an unwise choice for libertarians. Almost by definition, conservatives are fighting yesterday's battles, which have already been lost. At the current moment, it has clearly separated itself from the demographic shifts that will define the future of America.

While many conservatives will have insights on a range of issues, and some intellectuals will offer constructive analysis of deeper issues, there is no value in the modern conservative movement as such.

With the recent hub-bub over Rand Paul's dislike for laws against discrimination in employment, I thought it would be good to lay out the issues from a libertarian perspective. I think that Paul's description of the issues has been pretty weak, so I want to dig into those issues a little more. (Update: Additional commentary at the Liberty Papers)

Proponents of anti-discrimination laws appeal to two benefits of the laws:

1. Creation of economic opportunities for excluded groups.
2. Normalization of interactions between the dominant group and excluded groups.

My own libertarian attitudes prompt a few questions to evaluate the justice of anti-discrimination laws:

1. Is the law burdensome?
2. Is the law effective?
3. Is the law necessary?

The answers to these questions are in large part a matter of fact. I have not gathered the relevant facts here (that job is much too big for a blog); instead, I am just going to discuss which facts would be relevant to the case.

 Is the law burdensome? This is what I see as the crux of the libertarian critique. If a law imposes no costs on anyone, then it is irrelevant. Obviously, anti-discrimination laws will be seen as costly by those who wish to discriminate. Let's just assume that they are worthless people anyway, and ignore this cost. Do the laws place burdens on people who would not discriminate on their own? The people to ask are probably business owners, who are the ones who face discrimination lawsuits. How often are they sued, and how often are accusations dismissed as unfounded? What do businesses pay to retain legal counsel? How do they change their practices to avoid lawsuits. As an anecdote, a small-business owner once told me that she had been the target of discrimination lawsuits from a few disgruntled employees, and consequently limited her job advertisements to locations where "protected" workers would be unlikely to see them. I cannot vouch for the legitimacy of this anecdote, or how generalizable it is, but it does suggest a way that the law may place a burden on businesses. I can also speculate that businesses may try to shield themselves from lawsuits by using affirmative action in promotions or investing in "sensitivity" training. Rather than being a dead-weight loss of compliance, these may amount to transfers from the business to the excluded group.

 Is the law effective? Libertarians often like to point to the unintended consequences of laws. Just because a law says "thou shalt" does not mean that everyone will. In fact, rather than following the spirit of the law, some members of the public will develop behaviors that comply with the letter of the law, or help to evade the law. Sometimes these behaviors can exacerbate the original problem, or prevent the development of alternative solutions to the problem. The anecdote above suggests that anti-discrimination laws could create discrimination in situations where it would not exist. Taking a cue from the opponents of affirmative action, there's a chance that anti-discrimination laws cause members of the dominant group to feel threatened by members of the excluded group, thereby interfering with the normalization of attitudes. I don't believe that there is any way to actually quantify this for long/standing anti-discrimination laws (though I'm sure many people have tried). Perhaps when the law is originally initiated, the expansion of economic opportunity could be measured by looking at the businesses that had openly discriminated prior to the law, and then see how much business they did with the excluded group after the law went into effect.

Is the law necessary Is the situation dire? I think this is where Rand Paul really failed. The principles of libertarian law are not absolute. Human institutions, including the law, exist to serve human needs. To paraphrase one libertarian I know: notions of property rights are worthless to a starving person who sees a loaf of bread cooling on a windowsill. So, given the conditions of 1964, were anti-discrimination laws necessary (assuming that they were effective)? Most definitely, yes. The economic argument for anti-discrimination laws is based on the fact that humans need access to physical materials (often called land and capital) in order to survive, but our property system does not provide such materials to anyone by right. Therefore, many people must ask others for permission to use the materials that they need to survive--they must sell their labor. On top of that, they are sometimes prevented from selling their labor because of anti-competition clauses in contracts.

This may be a tough situation in day-to-day life, but in 1964, the situation had been exacerbated to an intolerable degree. The dominant group (whites) had systematically and violently prevented the excluded group (blacks) from acquiring ownership of the materials that they needed to survive. In the absence of laws prohibiting discrimination in employment, blacks would have been dependent upon whites for their survival, and it was well known that many whites fully intended to discriminate against them. If I had faced what blacks had faced before the Civil Rights Act, I would consider the USA to be absolutely illegitimate, and a CRA without the private anti-discrimination considerations would not be enough to convince me that I would live within that system.

Rand Paul completely overlooks this situation when he compares the anti-discrimination laws to other regulations that may be placed on businesses (e.g. unable to prohibit guns) or to freedom of speech. 

Some libertarians may be uncomfortable with the identity group mentalities that permeate our society, but our ideological opposition to such mentalities does not provide any excuse to ignore their role in real life, and the legacies of injustices done in their name.

The National Research Council (part of the National Academies) has released three new reports as part of the series called America's Climate Choices. The three reports are Advancing the Science of Climate Change,Limiting the Magnitude of Climate Change, and Adapting to the Impacts of Climate Change.

I believe that these should be treated as authoritative resources on this issue. The National Academies are institutions composed of America's most accomplished researchers, with a long history of excellence and political independence (though its members probably do have a leftish bias). I'm much more comfortable with their conclusions than I am with the U.N.'s ad hoc organizations such as theIntergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. While the IPCC basically agrees with the conclusions put forth by other bodies of experts, the fact that it has a narrow charter from the UN makes me doubt its political independence, both in terms of its agenda and its selection of experts. America is fortunate enough to have its own collection of domestic experts who can report on these topics from an American perspective.

Two more reports are in progress, and these above reports are considered "pre-publication" so there is some restrictions on how you can read them. However, short summary reports (PDFs) are freely available, and the full report can be read on the web for free, or downloaded for only $2.50. I expect that it will be free in the future, as other National Academy reports are.

 

 

It's been 50 years since Castro seized oil refineries that were participating the the US government's embargo against the USSR. The USA's embargo against Cuba started almost immediately, being formalized and strengthened two years later (followed a year later by the Bay of Pigs invasion). Fourty-eight years later, Castro's command economy continues to struggle, and the tyrants point to the embargo as the main cause of Cuba's economic dysfunction.

Regardless of what you think about the importance of the embargo, it's purpose is undeniably to limit if not destroy Cuba's economy, so such accusations make sense.

However, the Cuban republic has recently become the mentor of another (semi) tyrannical state. Venezuela has happily followed along the path of Cuba, without any economic embargo. As a result, Chavez has managed to destroy Venezuela's economy all on his own.