Communitarian Letter #20
Issued by
The Communitarian Network
2130 H Street Suite 703 N.W, Washington D.C 20052
202-994-8194,
In this issue:
1. Question
2. Hillary: 1 - McCain: 0
3. Plan Z: A Community-Based Security Plan for Iraq
4. Small Lies, Big Lies and the Israel Lobby
5. We read:
a. Democratization chastened
b. City Calls for 10.000 men to combat violence
c. Are New Technologies the Enemy of Privacy?
6. Announcements
7. New Books
8. Feedback from Communitarian Letter #19
1. Question about the obligation to reconstruct Iraq
What is the scope of the duty to reconstruct? Even those who opposed the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan hold that once the US and its allies invaded a country, they owe it “reconstruction”. What does this entail? Restoring the nation to the condition it was before the war? To a point it can stand on its own? Continue to develop it politically or economically? Or…?
What say you? Send responses to . We’ll email the responses—or excerpts from them—in the following days under the heading feedback.
2. Hillary: 1 - McCain: 0
Hillary Clinton and John McCain unfurled their foreign policy agendas in the November/December issue of Foreign Affairs. Hillary used her essay to move her position further away than ever from the Neo Cons' "democratize the world by Monday" position. McCain, instead, showed that he forgot nothing and learned less. (Other candidates have preceded them or will follow. For a discussion of the position taken by Barack Obama in his Foreign Affairs article, click here).
Senator McCain's new essay could have been written by a Neo Con in 1995, 2000, or maybe even late as 2003. But even in those days, it would have taken an extremely untutored politician to hold that nations can be democratized in short order, especially where the sociological conditions are not well prepared. The title of McCain's essay says it all: "An Enduring Peace Built on Freedom." As he sees it, "the protection and promotion of the democratic ideal, at home and abroad, will be the surest source of security and peace for the century that lies before us."
To read more, go to: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/amitai-etzioni/hillary-1-mccain-0_b_70391.html
3. Plan Z: A Community-based Security Plan for Iraq
To be published in National Interest, Issue 92, Nov/Dec 2007
A Communitarian, Sociological Approach
The Baker-Hamilton Commission dismisses an effective, communitarian way to deal with the crisis in Iraq, namely, introducing a High Devolution State (HDS). This would entail granting a high level of autonomy to the 18 provinces that make up Iraq (including in matters concerning security). Most likely, several provinces would combine to form regional governments united by ethnicity or confessional links. (There are differences within each community as to the preferred combinations, especially among the Shia, which need not concern us here, because we hold that each community should be left to work out these combinations on its own.) This approach would seek to tailor state institutions to fit the sociological reality on the ground, rather than to try to force the sociological reality of Iraq to suit an imported, alien national state model.
Granted, an HDS is far from an ideal institutional format and moving in its direction entails some risks. However under the given conditions it is the best option, and possibly the only viable one. Above all, it allows for a rapid drawdown of foreign troops, as each community, whether ethnic or confessional, would be solely in charge of securing its own order and laws, for its members—rather than being expected to submit to a national pattern. The United States and its allies’ primary remaining role would be to help secure the regional and national borders.
Underlying the following discussion is one key point: most discussions about Iraq (and other newly liberated states such as Afghanistan and Kosovo) start with what outsiders consider a preferred end state. For instance, for these countries the ideal end state is often viewed as a multiethnic, united, democratic, rights-respecting nation-state. The question then is asked: how can the United States and its allies bring about these desiderata in the subject states? Often, despite considerable human and economic costs caused by such overly ambitious designs, the foreign powers persist in the pursuit of their utopian goals.
A key example of this highly unrealistic approach is the continuous attempt to convert the militias (in Iraq) and warlord armies (in Afghanistan) into single national forces. This is highlighted by the folly of deliberately positioning Shia militias as security units in Sunni areas and vice versa—ostensibly to build up their national identification and loyalty. The fact, though, is that the first and foremost loyalty of most Iraqis (as well as Afghans, Kosovars, and many others), is to their ethno-religious community, and not to their nation. (In effect, there is a global trend towards shifting loyalties from nation-states to member communities, and towards responding to this shift by granting more autonomy and devolving more authority to the member communities. This is the case even in well established nations such as Canada and the United Kingdom. Nations that resist this trend—such as Spain and Sri Lanka—face ethnic based terrorism, civil war, and bloodshed.)
To read more, go to: http://blog.amitaietzioni.org/2007/11/plan-z-a-commun.html#more
4. Small Lies, Big Lies and the Israel Lobby
To those of us for whom the claim that the Israeli lobby is all-powerful is neither a well established truism nor an ugly piece of anti-Semitism, the evidence presented in support of this claim matters a great deal. Surely Washington has more lobbies than a derelict dog has fleas. And, lobbying is a constitutionally protected activity, like the right to free speech and the right to vote. Hence, the pivotal question is whether the Israeli lobby is significantly more powerful than others, and whether it is able to check-mate the usually pro-Arab oil companies, the arms manufacturers, and the other relevant lobbies that affect our foreign policy.
There are quite a few who have taken for granted the veracity of claims that the Israeli lobby is all-powerful on the grounds that a new book making this case has been written by two highly regarded scholars; John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt of the University of Chicago and Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, respectively. In fact, the quantitative data they cite amount to (at best) a very thin reed on which to hang such a mighty claim. Indeed, I will donate my house to anyone who can find a half respectable social science publication that would publish what these two present as evidence.
The authors write:
“In 1997, Fortune magazine asked members of Congress and their staffs to list the most powerful lobbies in Washington. AIPAC was ranked second behind the American Association of Retired People, but ahead of the AFL-CIO and the National Rifle Association. A National Journal study in March of 2005 reached a similar conclusion, placing AIPAC in second place (tied with AARP) in the Washington ‘muscle rankings’.”
In fact, the Fortune survey was not made of Congress members and their staffs, but of 2,165 “Washington insiders” (chosen by two panels whose membership has not been disclosed), a group that includes an unknown number of congressional members and staffers, among an unknown number of others. More importantly, in both surveys roughly six out of every seven persons asked, i.e. most of those asked, did not respond. The authors’ claim that members of Congress and their staffs ranked the Israeli lobby higher than many others is based on 15% of those who were surveyed. No respectable social scientist (and many unrespectable ones) would dare to suggest that they have a sense of what any given group holds on the basis of the responses from such a small minority.
Moreover, social science has numerous procedures to correct for such a deficit of responses. One can return to the same group and elicit more answers, draw another sample, or study the differences between those who did and did not respond—and adjust the conclusions accordingly. None of these methods were employed here.
The number of people who responded is so small that an additional vote or two, or a change of mind by one or two respondents, would have significantly altered the results of the survey. The total number of the National Journal responses—which did survey only law makers—is 73. (Congress, the last time I checked, had 535 members and at least 17,000 staff members). The National Federation of Independent Business was ranked first and the National Rifle Association second—with nine and eight votes, respectively! In third place, ranked as the most powerful by seven members, was the US Chamber of Commerce. The AARP and AIPAC were each given the nod by five members. The oil companies and the arms manufacturers were not on the list of those to be ranked. I wonder if any student at GWU could get away with a term paper that held that such small numbers support a generalization about any given population or the ranking of a set of groups.
Some will say that all of this is nothing other than typical social science hair splitting. But, these data go to the heart of the matter. Is the Israel lobby just one among a whole slew of lobbies, each pulling Washington its own way? Is it one of the more effective ones? Or can it trump all the others? What the data show is surprisingly little. The book stands much more on accusatory anecdotes than, as the authors’ claim, on evidence.
Text posted on The Huffington Post on October 4, 2007 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/amitai-etzioni/small-lies-big-lies-and_b_67158.html
For other blog postings to the topic, see:
“Small lies, Big Lies, and the Israel Lobby (Part II)”, available at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/amitai-etzioni/small-lies-big-lies-and_b
Etzioni Wagers His House in Indictment of Waltheimer'sScholarship
Commentary by Evan Goldstein, posted on The Chronicle of Higher Education, October 24, 2007, http://chronicle.com/blogs/footnoted/859/etzioni-wagers-his-house-in-indictment-of-waltheimers-scholarship
The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, the hyper-controversial book by Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer, has been garnering almost exclusively negative reviews in the American press over the past month. When asked about this at a recent event at Columbia University, Mearsheimer dismissed the critical response as completely predictable and further evidence of how the Israel lobby stifles debate about American foreign policy in the Middle East. As proof, he points to the more generous reception the book has received in Europe and, indeed, in Israel itself.
Amitai Etzioni is not of the mind that either the Israel lobby is an all-powerful Washington behemoth or that Mearsheimer and Walt have written an anti-Semitic book. The George Washington University professor is more interested in the data Mearsheimer and Walt use to make their case. And how does the quantitative data hold up to Etzioni's scrutiny? "I will donate my house to anyone who can find a half respectable social science publication that would publish what these two present as evidence"
5.We read
a. Democratization chastened
In an April, 2003 Wall street Journal op-ed, NYU professor Noah Feldman wrote with the blind optimism that characterized all too many of our leaders, journalists and opinion makers in those months:
“Islamic democrats can actually do much to dispel the canard that democracy is an imperialist Western tool, illegitimate because it is imposed from without. Democracy can then emerge for what it is: a flexible, adaptable system of government that can work, with all its glitches and local variations, in places as different as India, Turkey, Brazil, and South Korea. Adding Iraq to that list is about to become the highest priority for U.S. foreign policy. Islam can help make that happen.”
Four years later, it would seem that Feldman’s approach to democratization has been tempered. In a recent article in the New York Times Sunday Magazine, Feldman now argues that “…the expansion of democracy is for us what empire was for the great world powers before us: a rallying cry that makes us proud and keeps us unified – while also serving our interests.” He proposes a readjustment of the ‘democratization doctrine’. He pleads for a ‘chastened’ version, “one that makes no exceptions for friends while also recognizing that building durable institutions may do more good than holding snap elections”, because without strong and functioning institutions, “elections may actually make things worse”. Instead of trying to grow democracy from the ‘barrel of the invader’s gun’, the US should use more realistic methods of democratization, the slow and hard work of “aiding courts, legislatures, political parties and journalists wherever dictators try to suppress them.”
To read “The way we live now - Democratosis” by Noah Feldman, go to: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E02E2DE163EF934A35753C1A9619C8B63
b. City Calls for 10,000 men to combat violence
Communitarian crime-fighting in Philadelphia: The police in Philadelphia tries to fight the city’s growing crime and murder rate in a rather unorthodox way. Together with Black community leaders, it called for 10,000 volunteers, who would patrol the streets un-armed and without uniform. They would not make arrests, but rather function as peacekeepers, Philadelphia Police Commissioner Johnson told Reuters. This initiative, which is built on the idea of ‘neighborhood-watch’, and New York’s “Guardian Angels”, is nevertheless un-precedented in its scale. It also enjoys a broad communal back-up, including Kenny Gamble, a record label owner who initiated the idea; Louis Farrakhan of Nation of Islam; and the group ‘prisoners-for-life’, which brings prisoners in contact with young men to show them the true face of life in jail.
To read “City calls for 10,000 men to combat violence” by John Hurdle, go to:
http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSN1228838920070912
c. Are New Technologies the Enemy of Privacy?
Are new technological developments, such as electronic databases, computerized searches, and new surveillance instruments leading us relentlessly towards the ‘death of privacy’ within the ever intensifying grip of a ‘surveillance society’? In his recent publication with ‘Knowledge, Technology and Policy’ (Springer, 2007, No.20), Amitai Etzioni argues that this simple, semi-Luddite view on progress is far from accurate despite some alarmist’s outcry against E-ZPass, E-ID’s and other advances in communication technology and the storage of information.