HPR Blog

New Online Only Articles

Jonathan Yip — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 19:50:00 +0000

We have a new batch of web exclusive articles from the HPR: a review of books from Cass Sunstein and Tyler Cowen, a search for our generation's protest music, a new perspective on European conservatives and the financial crisis, and a historical look at presidents and peace prizes. Take a look!

This is basically another Munich situation right here.

Alex Copulsky — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 13:41:00 +0000

Iran has backed down from a nuclear deal that would have significantly eased American tension with them. The deal was to send Iranian low-enriched uranium abroad to be enriched up to reactor-grade. While this first seems odd, the crucial point is that currently their uranium is in the form of uranium hexaflouride, a gas that can be endlessly enriched up to bomb-level purity. The uranium enriched abroad would be returned in the form of metal fuel rods, and impractically difficult for the Iranians to turn into bomb-grade material. Darn...it sounded like a good idea.

It seems as though there's little that can practically done to stop the Iranians from getting the Bomb if they want it badly enough. But for them to agree and then back out of this deal makes no sense, unless they just needed two weeks to put together a weapon. Which isn't the case, obviously, it seems like a stall for time that didn't put them in a stronger negotiating position and needlessly antagonized the Americans. So that was kind of bizarre. Bizarre or not, however, the Iranians are still rational and there seems to be no actual reason that Iranians with the Bomb couldn't be deterred just like the Soviets. Their principal adversary is a regional power with nuclear submarines and in all probability more nuclear weapons than China.

Given all that, I'm pretty sure the actual aggressor in the U.S.-Iran relationship is not the Iranians. They clearly don't like us, sure. But in Iran, I'm fairly sure that political discourse does not revolve around near-daily discussion of how and when to best attack the U.S. If I were the Iranian government, I'd damn well want a bomb, if only because it seems like America is willing to invade anywhere that looks as them funny, if they don't have nukes. And give actual nuclear states a wide berth.

What's in a Peace Prize

Alexander Sherbany — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 04:00:00 +0000

The prizefare theory, as enunciated by David Frum, says pacifist manipulation:

That Nobel was not a gesture of Obama-worship by left-leaning Norwegians. It was the very opposite: It was a pre-emptive strike against Obama, an attempt to neutralize him. How can a Peace Nobelist strike Iranian nuclear plants? Or wage a protracted war in Afghanistan? Or tell the Palestinians, “Sorry, that’s the best offer, take it or leave it”? The hope of course is that he cannot.

RealClearWorld's Kevin Sullivan dissents :

While that may have been the committee's intention, I don't know that their track record validates such a strategy. To my recollection, the 1906 award didn't alter President Roosevelt's strong-arm policy toward Nicaragua regarding the Panama Canal. Same goes for President Wilson.

Did the Nobel Prize change Kissinger? Not really. How about that champion of peace, Yasser Arafat? Enough said.

Really? A Kissinger or an Arafat may be immune to the Nobel's charms, but it's hard to imagine a committed liberal internationalist like Obama not feeling some obligation to "earn" the prize that he claimed he didn't deserve in his acceptance speech.

Update: Conservatives still grinning about it at the end of the day.

As funny as all the goofs today are, I feel some sympathy for him insofar as he didn’t campaign for this the way he did for the Olympics...The Nobel is more like a flaming bag of sh*t left on his doorstep: He didn’t ask for it but now he has to deal with it, and no matter what he does he ends up a bit soiled.

Yep, there is no way this could have helped him.

Except, of course, if he'd rejected it.

Barack Obama Wins Nobel Peace Prize

Alex Copulsky — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 12:18:00 +0000

I wasn't aware they graded on effort.

Strategy and Lord of the Rings

Alex Copulsky — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 19:50:00 +0000

It's a rainy afternoon, and so I'm watching The Two Towers, the second film in the Lord of the Rings series (Ed: I hated the books and didn't even finish, but those movies are great). Tolkien's politics are not my own, not so much because of their noxiousness as simply their anachronism. Regardless, the novels are rich in pretty interesting political implications, such as a close look at the difficulty of coalition-building among even well-intentioned partners. However, what really got me thinking was the battle of Helm's Deep, a supposedly impregnable fortress which is brought down by the placing of a bomb in a culvert, the sole weak point in the wall. The point is that the fortress was really quite well-built for the mission of "resisting swarms of armed orcs" but less well-built for the mission of "resisting explosions".

This is what I'm thinking about in the repeated trope that the U.S. needs to rebuild its military towards being able to win "small wars" like the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. This does make a certain amount of sense; a defeat-the-Soviets-in-the-Fulda-Gap military will be ill-suited towards a secure-the-Hindu-Kush mission. What worries me about an expensive makeover of the U.S. military is that it is premised on one of two assumptions: either Iraq and Afghanistan will last arbitrarily long, or that we will be invading and occupying enough other small Third World nations that we need to be prepared. Both of these are pretty troublesome assumptions.

In 1870, the French had an excellent army. Honed by years of fighting in Algeria, it was a highly professional and experienced counterinsurgency force much like what the U.S. army is envisioning. And when the shooting started on the Prussian frontier, they were absolutely destroyed. The point being that missions you're not prepared for are the devastating ones. It should require a fairly high expectation of future utility in order to totally rebuild the military for such a specialized role...right?

Georgian Reflections

Alex Copulsky — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 14:47:00 +0000

The EU has faulted both sides in the 2008 Russia-Georgia conflict for violations of international law. Russia, unsurprisingly, broke international law by its invasion of Georgia and its attacks on Georgian civilian infrastructure. Though if that's against international law, color me confused as to nations are supposed to fight wars and if any of them have ever done so. The real meat of the report is not, however, what Russia did wrong but the simple fact that was clear a while ago to anyone paying attention: Georgia started the war by its bombardment of Russian forces. Maybe John McCain feels a little silly for proclaiming that, "Today, we are all Georgians"...though probably not. The point here is not that Georgians are "to blame" for the war (although they are), but that the worst instincts of both American political parties were pushing America towards a conflict with Russia over something really, really stupid. And who says there's no such thing as bipartisanship?

Call it a more generalized corollary of the "Foreigners are weird" dictum: Foreigner's security strategies don't necessarily match up with our own. America sees NATO as a stabilizing force, and so is seeking to spread it eastwards. Russia sees NATO expansion as an attempt to intimidate Russia, and so is trying to dissuade the West. Georgia is threatened by Russian backing of internal insurgencies, and so sees American backing not as a failsafe, but a free hand to do whatever they feel like in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Quelling secessionism is certainly Georgia's prerogative, just like the U.S. did in the Civil War, but I fail to see the compelling interest America has in the incorporation of Abkhazia into the Georgian commonwealth. Georgia was on the road to NATO membership, and the main reason the Georgian war was a localized tragedy rather than something much worse is that they hadn't made it yet.

Hopefully this report will convince American politicians that it's not a good idea to extend unconditional security guarantees to states that will not behave responsibly if they receive them. Of course it won't, any more than Matsu and Quemoy taught the same lesson to America 50 years ago. Here's hoping we go another 50 years without anything terrible happening because of it.

Worrying News

Alex Copulsky — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 15:23:00 +0000

The U.S. government is probing the death of Bill Sparkman, a census worker in rural Kentucky. He was found hanged in the woods with the word "FED" scrawled on his chest. I doubt Glenn Beck means to goad his viewers into violence when he tells them the federal government is trying to destroy American democracy, but he probably shouldn't be surprised when people believe him. Nancy Pelosi's fears of right-wing political violence look kind of, um, right. Or that DHS report on rising right-wing extremism that was roundly decried by conservatives. Amping up the anti-government rhetoric is probably a potent rallying force for conservatives*, but ratcheting the stakes over health care reform to life-or-death-freedom-v.-tyranny levels might well have these kinds of consequences.

* I don't recall Fox News taking a principled anti-federal stance during the Bush Administration's expansion of federal power, which is weird. I probably just missed it.

On Guard Against Hypothetical Threats

Alex Copulsky — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 02:08:00 +0000

When you're working to govern an entire nation, you can't please everyone. Particularly people with highly particular political preferences; they tend to be the most prickly when disappointed (though you'd think they'd get used to it). So it's a rare joy when a political figure does something that seems eminently sensible and pleasing, and with Obama's announcement on missile defense he has done just that. Since the U.S.'s incredibly expensive white elephant of an anti-ballistic missile defense system is just so cost-effective, the Bush Administration decided to install some in Poland and the Czech Republic to protect Europe from an entirely hypothetical (and completely terrifying, I'm sure) Iranian missile threat. It was going to be very expensive, of dubious effectiveness, and would antagonize the Russians. Obama is replacing it with ship-based anti-missile systems in the Mediterranean.

Now, apparently some conservatives see the irking-Russia thing as a feature rather than a bug. I don't particularly understand this. The Russians are kind of sensitive about American military installations near their borders, and I can understand how they might be more sensitive about it when the main objective seems to actually be spiting Russia. On the other hand, we gained very little advantage from having it, and lose very little by giving it up, since we hadn't spent a dime on the sites yet. Oh, and rather than betraying our allies, the allies in question don't really want it. Finally, it'll probably be more effective. We're switching from very problematic and untested terminal-stage systems which target a missile re-entering the atmosphere at Mach 25 to more proven systems which hit a much slower missile while lifting off. I can't really think of any way in which this is not a good decision.

I'm just curious what the Russians agreed to give us for it. Good work, Obama!

Spontaneous Combustion

Alexander Sherbany — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 03:35:00 +0000

This is the best fodder for late-night comedy I've seen since the last time Michael Steele spoke. It is encouraging that most people seem appalled, but some conservatives appear to have a limitless appetite for self-destruction. The next time Republicans accuse liberals of disrespecting the commander-in-chief, expect eyes to roll.

And as for Mr. Spontaneous himself? If the whole Congress thing doesn't pan out, he may have a career ahead of him as a Democratic fundraiser.

How Iran Stopped Worrying & Learned to Love the Bomb

Alex Copulsky — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 14:46:00 +0000

So unsurprisingly, the Iranians now have enough uranium to make a nuclear bomb. I say unsurprising because, well, the U.S. has been wringing its hands over it for years now. While apparently the 2007 intelligence assessment that they aren't actively designing a bomb was accurate, it's now within their physical capacity to build one if they get that design work started again. The real news in this story is that the Iranians have done the smart thing and basically put their building project on hold such that they can build one if they need one.

The American response to the Iranian nuclear threat has been kind of odd. It's fairly obvious that if they set their mind to it, they would be able to build a bomb. After all, America did it 60 years ago, and the hardest part of doing so was just figuring out whether it could be done. A bright kid with a hundred pounds of enriched uranium and some machine tools could build a nuclear bomb in his garage. The only meaningful barrier to preventing "bad guys" from acquiring nuclear weapons is a non-proliferation regime which makes the consequences of acquiring one nuke worse than the advantage gained from it, and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty is not that.

So, the U.S. (and the rest of the "nuclear club") has, through its tacit toleration of the nuclear programs in South Africa, Pakistan, India, Israel, North Korea, Libya, etc., has decided it would rather lose the non-proliferation regime than either engage in illegal aggression or risk a weapon going off anywhere. This is, let me stress, a pretty sensible position given the lack of enforcement mechanisms in the law as it stands. Especially given that on the one occasion we did decide to intervene, we kind of got egg on our face. Anyway, it's been clear as a result pretty much from the get-go that if the Iranians wanted to develop a bomb the U.S. would have to learn to deal with it. The last decade of people saying that Iran would "under no circumstances acquire a bomb" just makes us look weak and stupid, since that is very obviously an empty threat.