Foundation for Analysis of US Involvement in the Middle East: The West vs. the Non-West.

In Somalia the big problem is changing climate and lack of water. What we have is population bomb meets resource restrictions. The response from the West should be huge subsidies to Doctors Without Borders and other massive relief efforts. Negotiated migration may be necessary if the prospects for climactic improvement do not improve. It is not a simple matter of ethnic cleansing. How would you react if a dusty stream of hungry refugees showed up on your doorstep? Pray that we all don't have the opportunity to plumb the depths of our giving souls in the coming decades.

It would be a mistake to subsidize people who are living in an area that has no local resources that will allow them to continue to live there without help. By doing so we only create more people dependent on our help. It increases the need for our help, and it increases the desperation and anger of the people being helped. It is one of the greatest examples of the law of unintended consequences in the world. Instead, what needs to happen is that their government needs to get off their back and stop crushing them. Couple that with micro-loans and other financial instruments that allow locals to build up something that will support life and hope and a future, in a place like Sudan where everything good has been beaten down by a perverse leadership for hundreds of years.

In the mid-19th century Palestine was a forsaken hellhole. There were no farms. There were no orchards. There were some beaten-down Jews, but no Arabs lived there. It was too awful for them to want to be there. Then some Jews with money from Europe bought most of the land from the Ottoman overlords using their savings and the area became the focus of the Zionist movement. Since then the area has grown and become a lush, verdant area in the center of the middle east.

The Jews beat back the desert in Israel. Darfur can beat back the desert too. All it takes is will and some level of technology and a government that allows it to happen, and perhaps even lends a hand. That is not what Darfur has or ever had, even when Britain was holding the cards. What Darfur has is a Black Muslim population that is being warred upon by Khartoum-sponsored Arab Muslim tribes. There is nothing that can be done to rescue Darfur without taking care of Khartoum first. Even military attempts to force a secession would require Khartoum to be crushed first.

excuse me... but the cities that are in israel/palisine have been there for centuries... to claim that nothing was there and no one lived there is a lie.

1. What about gerrymandered districts to guarantee perpetual incumbency?

2. I hang out at a very blue collar bar, and I can tell you that outside of the rarefied atmosphere of the blogosphere, people do indeed harbor a great deal of resentment toward the "other" in Iraq. Perhaps it is because their friends and relatives are actually on the front lines facing IEDs and suicide attacks, but hardly a week goes by where I do not endure a lecture about the "sand-******s" or "towelheads" and how we need to ignore our other problems until we have wiped them out, or at least showed them who is boss.

You are talking about differences in degree here and trying to turn them into differences of kind

If you are unaware of how legislatures have redistricted their Congressional districts I would direct you to Google. Both parties do this (the Governator tried to take it on in California and failed recently, for example).

If these people are willing to vote for those who promise "victory" over the other, despite it being against their best interests, then yes the population is being controlled, albeit indirectly.

My original point was semi-sarcastic. I was calling your criteria for "western" and "non-western" to be less cut and dry than you wished it to be. You haven't really done anything to convince me otherwise. Note that this does not mean that I believe that no such line may be drawn, just that I think you are drawing it in an arbitrary and less than useful place. Furthermore, I think you really are ignoring how more and more we are becoming that which we seek to destroy.

nikitab: I'll throw in my observances, as well. Adipic's bar seems pretty indicative of the US as a whole, to me, because I've experienced the same things; not only with regard to people I meet casually, but within my extended family, as well. What they give up is political traction on problems that cause them demonstrable problems at home. For instance, high gas prices, increasing inflation, hundreds of billions of dollars in taxes spent on things other than domestic infrastructure and services-- these things have direct impact on americans' quality of life. In addition, consider the willingness with which many people have seemingly dispensed with any willingness to fight to retain what are ostensibly inalienable rights. "Give me liberty, or give me death" has been replaced with "if you aren't doing anything wrong, you don't have anything to worry about." We've cast doubts on the 1st Amendment ("People should be very careful about what they say"- Ari Fleischer & Donald Rumsfeld; "You are either with us or against us"- George W. Bush; etc.), the 4th (PATRIOT Act provisions for secret searches, information gathering, warrantless wiretaps, etc.), the 5th (indefinite detainment and stripping of american citizens and others of due process rights), and so forth. Again, these are definitely things that we've given up in return for illusory "security".

As far as gerrymandering, Adipic is probably referring to Texas. Nor would he be off the mark if he claimed, in addition, that the governing elite (whose incumbency was already largely secure) owed more to and catered more to well-heeled donors than to the interests of the people it purports to represent-- for example, allowing the oil industry to largely write America's energy policy, or throwing the weight of government office behind pro-religious or anti-intellectual minorities (such as the anti-evolution movement).

In addition, you make some assumptions in your list that aren't perhaps warranted.

3) you neglect the phrase "at home". These Western "democracies" also require social and economic instability abroad, for the purpose of opening up resource rich areas for exploitation by their own interests (for example, no one would deny that France, Germany and Russia exploited the instability of post-1991 Iraq, or that the US fuels instability and anti-democratic governments in Central and South America for the benefit of american companies.)

4) ignores non-Western governments that, while fomenting anti-americanism among the populace, rely on America to help cement their own hold on power. Saudi Arabia forms a useful illustration, for example...

rendering 5) simply wrong. China is also illustrative, here.

6) I may be mistaken here, but I imagine quite a few non-Western countries tie their economies to the dollar. Can anyone offer enlightenment on this?

7) While trumpetted loudly by the media, simply doesn't appear to be true. In the first place, while the cost of "WMD" has come down, it certainly couldn't be said to be cheap. The versions which are easily portable are not reliably destructive. The versions which are largely destructive are not really portable. More damage is done/is possible by using conventional weapons than by outre weapons usually requiring the backing of a state to create and deploy. If we take the most successful terrorist gropu to deploy "WMD", Aum Shin Rikyo, we can see that the track record of destruction by "WMD" deployed by terrorists is dismal.

8) the faulty assumptions made in 4, 5, 6, and 7 render the conclusion reached in 8 a bit spurious, IMO. It does not follow that the anonymous deployment of WMD MUST happen. Likewise, the directives that you derive from this conclusion suffer from similar flaws, and are not particularly convincing:

9) doesn't necessarily follow, given that 8 is flawed, but even if 8) were a given, you don't show any particular proof that 9) constitutes "the only" way in which to prevent 8).

10) Likewise, it doesn't necessarily follow that 10) is "the only" way to prevent 9).

12) is problematic, overall. In the first place, I don't think you've actually shown that decentralization and integration with the West are or necessarily need to be the same thing. Secondly, there are many Middle Eastern nations that are moving in the direction of direct participation by their respective populaces: Jordan, Egypt, Kuwait, or Iran each represent to some degree such movement.

13) Direct participation of the populace in self-government cannot be imposed by outside force. For instance, once the US occupation withdraws from Iraq, what are we to do if the Iraqi people revert to some non-democratic form of government? None of the infrastructure necessary to democracy has really been fostered in that country-- although it may be too early to announce the failure of the "Bush doctrine" of exporting democracy, our track record in the traffic of this "export" isn't particularly encouraging.

Failure to acknowledge these realities led to the faulty conclusion of 14).

And to your corollaries A) and B): Regarding A), this holds as true for America as for France and Russia. It merely comes back to the question of how we view a democracy which hasn't the same aims as we do. Again, a close look at american responses to the democracies of Central and South America are illustrative.

Regarding B), pull the other one, please. We have the most efficient distribution of information in the history of the world, ever, period. Efficiency isn't what's lacking, honesty and analysis are. And while I agree that there are gross distortions that propagate due to economic and political reasons, we part ways on your parentheticals-- the media is right-centrist, regardless of the left-centrist bias of individual journalists, because editorial policy is not set by journalists, but by the folks who pay for the media: advertisers. And America-bashing is just one of many political biases that are publicly espoused by vocal groups. (Can we agree that one such bias is to conflate America-bashing with thoughtful criticism of american actions, in order to render the latter powerless?)

The most important of your points that deserves discussion, IMO, is the assertion that democracy can be forcefully imposed on an unwilling or unready populace. Much hinges on the answer to that question.

"economic stability" can be a euphemism if you're not familiar with the end results of that "stability".

To quote Wiki:

cumulative cuts in health funding totaled 60% between 1973 and 1988. The cuts indirectly caused a significant rise in many preventable diseases and mental health problems. These included rises in typhoid (121%,) viral hepatitis, and an increase in the frequency and seriousness of mental ailments among the unemployed. [Contreras, 1986]. Exchange rate depreciations and cutbacks in government spending produced a depression. Industrial and agricultural production declined. Massive unemployment, estimated at 25% in 1977 (it was only 3% in 1972), and inflation eroded the living standard of workers and many members of the middle class to subsistence levels. The underemployed informal sector also mushroomed in size. The long-term goal of reducing inflation was achieved in spite of the aforementioned costs.

...The economic policies espoused by the Chicago Boys and implemented by the junta initially caused severe damage to the poorest sectors of Chilean society. Between 1970 and 1989 there were large cuts to incomes and social services. Wages decreased by 8%. Family allowances in 1989 were 28% of what they had been in 1970 and the budgets for education, health and housing had dropped by over 20% on average [Sznajder, 1996]. The massive increases in military spending and cuts in funding to public services coincided with falling wages and steady rises in unemployment, which averaged 26% in the years 1982–1985 [Petras and Vieux, 1990] and eventually peaked at 30%.

The economy grew rapidly from 1976 to 1981, fueled by the influx of private foreign loans until the debt crisis of the early 1980s. But despite high growth in the late 1970s, income distribution became more regressive. While the upper 5% of the population received 25% of the total national income in 1972, it received 50% in 1975. Wage and salary earners got 64% of the national income in 1972 but only 38% at the beginning of 1977. Malnutrition affected half of the nation's children, and 60% of the population could not afford the minimum protein and food energy per day. Infant mortality increased sharply. Beggars flooded the streets.

The junta's economics also ruined the Chilean small business class. Decreased demand, lack of credit, and monopolies engendered by the regime pushed many small and medium size enterprises into bankruptcy. The curtailment of government expenditures created widespread white-collar and professional unemployment. The middle class began to rue its early support of the junta but appeared reluctant to join the working class in resistance to the regime.

The junta relied on the army, the police, the oligarchy, huge foreign corporations, and foreign loans to maintain itself. As a whole, the armed services received large salary increases and new equipment. The oligarchy recovered most of its lost industrial and agricultural holdings, for the junta sold to private buyers most of the industries expropriated by Allende's Popular Unity government. This period saw the expansion of monopolies and widespread speculation.

Financial conglomerates became major beneficiaries of the liberalized economy and the flood of foreign bank loans. Large foreign banks received large sums in repayments of interest and principal from the junta; in return, they lent the government millions more. International lending organizations such as the World Bank, the IMF, and the Inter-American Development Bank lent vast sums. Foreign multinational corporations such as International Telephone and Telegraph (ITT), Dow Chemical, and Firestone, all expropriated by Allende, returned to Chile...

Pinochet's policies led to substantial GDP growth, in contrast to the negative growth seen in the final year of the Allende administation. The upper 20% of income earners ultimately benefitted the most from such growth, receiving 85% of the increase [Schatan, 1990]. Foreign debt also grew substantially under Pinochet, rising 300% between 1974 and 1988.

Pinochet's policies were lauded internationally for transforming the Chilean economy and bringing about an "economic miracle". British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher credited him with bringing about a thriving, free-enterprise economy, while at the same time downplaying the junta's human rights record, condemning an "organised international Left who are bent on revenge." Pinochet certainly did achieve macroeconomic success with his reforms, hindered somewhat by recession in the early '80s. GDP growth remained steady, and Chile began a process of integration into the international economy. However, there is debate to this day over whether these sweeping economic changes could have been made without the hugely negative impact they had on poorer members of Chilean society. Moreover, economic science has yet to take into account the economic cost to Chile of the political suppression of the left-wing part of the population (let alone its unestimable human cost). A possible future of Chile has been annihilated by what some dub a "politicide".

I don't think "mid to long term improvements" compensated for the results of Pinochet's policies, regardless whether GDP rose. The end result was not stability for the middle and lower class, but its opposite.

As I said, you're gaging "stability" from, perhaps, the point of view of US investors, but certainly not from the viewpoint of the citizens of those regimes that we're claiming are "stable." Yes, they're stable enough to attract foreign investors, but any wealth created is not shared by the vast majority of the citizens. Western democracies like third world instability for precisely these reasons; instability allows us to exploit their resources while simultaneously thwarting or retarding their ability to organize in their own self-interests.

I'm not sure why you would see the Cuban Missile Crisis as having any relevance to this situation, given that it was a response to the US placement of nuclear missiles in the UK, Italy, and Turkey. They were supposed to respond to that provocation in what way? And how does this serve as a defense of US intervention in Pan-American politics?

Some would say that Central and South American nations would never have turned to the Soviet Union had not the United States so obviously mounted assaults against governments that were interested in the welfare of their own people. It requires quite a mental twist to view those interventions in their internal politics as "the US responding to Soviet aggression."

I get the feeling that you subscribe to the popular notion of the Soviet Union as the obverse of the US, with like powers, rather than to the more realistic view that acknowledges the quite firm limits to their influence that were caused by their difficulties in industrializing, and their general poverty. They may have been widely used as a bugbear throughout the decades leading up to the fall of the Soviet Union, but certainly US planners had little thought that the USSR would or could dominate the world in any appreciable fashion; certainly not by the 70s, when internal estimates of Soviet influence saw it drastically on the wane.

nikitab: if memory serves me right, except for a relatively minor recession that happened about a decade after Pinochet came to power, there was clear economic progress.

It's no surprise that your memory serves you wrong, since the Big Lie of the Chilean Miracle has been promoted so heavily by neoclassical economists. The Chilean economy crashed heavily after Milton Friedman's disciples, Chicago Boys, were put in charge, and while it did recover eventually(it's not hard to post strong growth after your economy has tanked), it never came on a par with its neighbors until the Chicago Boys were kicked out. As this article points out, the "miracle" is purely an artifact of carefully cherry-picking dates: instead of looking at Chile during Pinochet's entire regime, the Big Liars look only at its performance after it was driven into the ground by the Chicago Boys.

It's a telling demonstration of the religious nature of monetarism. The Friedmanites were given a whole country to experiment with, and when the results didn't match their theory, instead of throwing out the theory, they threw out the data.

I love it how you not-quite-subtly implied that US seeked out governments that were interested more in their own people than in money and mounted an assault. It's good that you love it, because it's called 'history'. You can check it out for yourself simply by reviewing US actions in Latin American countries. Democratically elected governments that implemented any remotely socialist reforms that involved increasing health care, increasing education, redistribution of wages of any sort, or any kind of land reforms were attacked as "communist" and/or overthrown. Meanwhile, countries that decimated their own populations, instituted "reforms" that opened the country up to exploitation by foreign corporations, and generally enacted very anti-democratic laws or policies (see El Salvador, for example) were hailed as "fledgling democracies". The record speaks for itself. (and the word is "sought", not "seeked".)

Moreover, when you privatize industry, of course short-term effects are, undoubtebly, bad. Now it's MY turn to love something. In this case, I love how you sweep all the problems brought about by Pinochet-- death squads, impoverishment of the middle and lower classes, ruination of the small business class, crushing unemployment, and massive increases in the rates of preventable diseases-- under the euphemistic rug of the phrases "bad" and "short-term effect." Yes, those things are "bad" in the way that someone who someone who has liver cancer is "sick" or that a serial-killer is "disturbed." And I"m really curious as to what would constitute "long-term" for you, given that you see the 16 year period of Pinochet's rule as "short-term".

However, its economy underwent stable growth and, more importantly, it made a transition to a stable democracy. It's only been since the downfall of Pinochet and the restoration of democracy that Chile's economy can be said to have prospered from the point of view of Chilean citizens. So I think my point holds, regardless.

I need to do a little bit of reading before responding on the Cuban Missile crisis. The idea that US has somehow acted as a provocator, from what I know thus far, seems... well... crazy. Fair enough. Get back to me on this, if you feel like it. I can see where, since the advent of movies such as "Thirteen Days" which portray the US as perpetual victim, it might be difficult to see the actual historical context of the Cuban missile crisis. Briefly though, you should consider whether for Cuba multiple assassination attempts, US-sponsored terrorism, sabotage of Cuban factories, and open talk of invasion served as provocation. And from the point of view of the Soviet Union, it's important to consider whether the Kennedy Administration had convince the USSR that it was planning a first-strike by rapidly building up its strategic forces in close proximity to them. And before you swallow the myth that the USSR represented some co-equal in power nemesis to the US, consider that the Soviets had fewer than fifty bombers and missiles that could hit the US, while the US had more than five hundred capable of striking the Soviet Union. If you want to understand the issue, you could do worse than start online at the George Washington University's National Security Archive entries for "Cuban Missile Crisis".

I was actually taking you seriously until the last paragraph Yes, I realize that actual history is often quite the opposite of the common wisdom. It's not surprising that you would balk at facts.

Well... It probably would not have grown as much because there would not have been as much room to grow after the economy collapsed during the first part of the Chicago boy's tenure.

a ridiculous assertion that Chile would have undergone a similar growth without the Chicago boys.

As Behind My Screen points out, that's not what it says at all. It says that the growth that Chile did experience only happened because the policies of the Chicago Boys crashed the economy, and it didn't make up for the damage from their so-called "shock treatment."

When an economy goes into recession, there is a lot of capital equipment sitting idle. As the cost of investment goes down due to economic pressure, entrepreneurs will then put that unused capacity to work, leading to economic growth. Unfortunately, the limit on that growth is the amount of previously constructed equipment, and the evidence from Chile was that there was very little of that until Pinochet stepped down and a democratic government took power.

So all the bust/boom cycle does is redistribute the ownership of pre-existing industrial capacity, it doesn't help the base economy of the country.

Hayekians would argue that the bust acts as a weeding-out of inefficient operations, but the failure of Chile to pas its neighbors after the weeding-out is evidence that the Hayekians are wrong.

popular opinion matters a lot in china. How else can they keep the population appeased?

Sure, Ignorance plays a huge roll in any country looking to keep the population subdued (just look at the ignorance spreading in the US). China does however have to watch public opinion because they need to know how to stay ahead of problems that might threaten those who are in power in that country.... same thing goes in the US.

Nikitab,

it is a difference in degrees of severity. Right now the US does not need to kill people to stay ahead of problems. that odes not mean the motivations for Chinas actions and those that the US takes are not the same.

How so? How can you say that about Mother Theresa and hitler? Give me a rational or else it is just rhetoric used to fluff off my reasoned response.

You are ignoring my original point by changing the subject to methods and governmental structure. I said that China cares as much about the public opinion in its country as much as the US politicians care about US public opinion. That fact remains and your attempts to ignore that fact are not working.

again, you are changing the subject. Have a nice day.

I made the claim that public opinion matters in China as much as in the US. then you began moving away from that point.

the fact is that China needs to see what the public thinks on a topic in order to squash it. Leverage is moot in this frame as I am talking about the extent to which the politicians care about it in both countries, and what their motivations are for giving it such attention (staying in power). their methods and the effects that the public opinion generates in the government are not a concern in this comparison. Both manipulate the public.

That was an actual response. The US and China are different sides of the same coin. So we disagree.

we should be pushing our government for transparency and responsibility in making such decisions so that where they are presented with politics/economics vs. morality, they side with the latter even though it might be a more difficult course.

Couldn't have said it better myself.

Yes I am very concerned that the war is being used as a justification for actions.

Here you will find a list of people containing many former and current Bush Administration officials writing a letter to Clinton asking for invasion of Iraq.
http://www.newamericancentury.org/iraqclintonletter.htm

Browse around on the site for a while, look at the members and notice how many actually are in the administration. Eerily many of these same people got their big in government during the cold war and many cold war claims happen to be exaggerated in a very similar way to the war on terror.

This video starts a bit slow, but it has plenty of live video of especially Rumsfeld saying stuff that could be easily planted in the War on Terror, but during the Cold War.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=881321004838285177

Well I suppose the end of this discussion should be a summary of my views. I suppose I agree with your points, mostly, of why we must be involved in the middle east. The only difference is I believe that also we promote instability in countries that don't directly benefit us. I do not believe this happens all the time, but certainly their are enough cases in history to assume we have done it and will do it again.

How do you feel about that summary? Are their any points of mine that you agree with?

(On a side note, I feel that not enough people on newsvine try to learn, they only try to win arguments. Let NikitaB's and mine show a possibility for learning.)

The benefit short and long term would be to gain tons of money, aka Haliburton who has frauded the government for millions if not billions. Lets not forget that Cheney probably has plenty of friends he is making very happy in his former company.