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Aug

27

Thoughts on “The Fog of War” DVD 10 principles set out by Robert MacNamara

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I saw the DVD a couple of nights ago and in the special features, MacNamara says that the eleven principles in the movies were not his, they were written by someone else. He gives his own ten principles. They are more geared towards today’s controversies than the past controversies discussed in the film. Here is a condensed version of them with some commentary.

1. There’s no way to eliminate war in this century, but the level of killing due to war can be reduced by the principles of “Just War”, in particular the principle of “proportionality”. I.e., the destructive measures taken against an enemy should be “proportional” to the objective. MacNamara illustrates this by mulling over the level of destruction the Allied troops did to Japan in WWII.

2.The indefinite combination of human fallibility and nuclear weapons will lead to the destruction of nations.

3. The US is the most powerful country in the world, but it is not omniscient. If we can not persuade other nations with similar interests and values of the proposed use of power, we should not proceed unilaterally except in the unlikely case of self-defense.

4. The major goal of all gov’ts foreign policies should be to avoid the carnage of 160 million dead in the 21st Ctry as was caused by conflict in the 20th Ctry.

5. The US has failed in our responsibility to our own poor and to the disadvantaged across the world to help advance their welfare in the most fundamental terms of nutrition, literacy, health and employment.

6. Corporate executives must recognize they have responsibility to their employees, their customers and to society as a whole.

7. President Kennedy believed that “the” primary responsibility of a president is to keep the nation out of war, if at all possible.

8. War is a blunt instrument by which to settle disputes between or within nations, and economic sanctions are rarely effective. Therefore, we should build a system of jurisprudence based on the International Court -that the US has refused to support- which would hold individuals responsible for crimes against humanity.

9. To deal effectively with terrorists across the globe, we must develop a sense of empathy -not sympathy- but understanding to counter their attacks on us and the Western World.

10. One of the greatest dangers we face today is the risk that terrorists will obtain access to WMDs as a result of the breakdown of the Non-Proliferation Regime. We in the US are contributing to that breakdown.

Commentary:
1. Proportionality seems muddied a bit by the inherent uncertainty in war. It also leaves unspecified the process by which the proper objectives are to be determined.

2. MacNamara apparently doesn’t accept the rationality assumption ladened in Mutually Assured Destruction(MAD), whereby if both sides are able to destroy each other with nuclear weapons, both can be relied upon not to do so. The logic of MAD may also have increased the pressure on other nations to get nuclear weapons, since if their enemies have them, they will need to get them, as well.

3. No. 3 should refer to the need to reform the UN so that its arcane Cold-War rule of unamity for the security council doesn’t result in perpetual paralysis. MacArthur’s language is kind of vague: similar interests, values. One could too easily spin this to have it fit whatever support has been procured, such as the coalition of the willing.

4. His exertion of gov’ts to avoid causing as much death this century would benefit from some of the insights of Thorstein Veblen’s “The Nature of Peace“. Veblen considers the combination of economic and political factors that make gov’ts go to war and what are some of the ways that the predatory state can be made less likely to go to war. Needless to say, this requires democratic reforms( since the economic gains of going to war are concentrated while their economic and personal costs are widespread, any decentralization of political governance will serve as a bulwark against the country going to war.) , mutually-beneficial trading arrangements and alterations in the nationalistic, patriotic ardor of nations.

5. The US should levy a very modest tax on all advertisements with the funds going to subsidize commercial ads by NGOs that help the poor in the US and the under-developed world. We need to be reminded by our media to care more about others rather than just encouraged to buy more stuff for ourselves.

6. Corporations are recipients of much economic support from the gov’t. They do benefit from their size due to economies of scale and commonly receive some economic/monopoly profits. They should be pressured into bearing more responsibility for their actions. However, the concept of society is a social construct. There will always be conflicting interest groups with different ideas about what should be supported or construed as in the public interest. But these differences can be worked out in a manner that will help benefit more members of “society” than otherwise would be the case.

7. A president should be pressured to keep a country out of war. And if a president does lead his country into war, they should be held accountable for the manner in which they led the country into war.

However, there still is the issue of the US playing a leadership role in int’l governance. With increasing interactions across national borders, there is an increasing need for int’l gov’t of some sort to resolve these conflicts. What makes gov’t, gov’t is the right to the valid use of force. As such, there is a need for int’l leadership to be willing and able to use force if a serious violation of int’l law is taking place. Since the US has a natural int’l leadership position, the president may need to lead the US and the world into action. Iraq seeking Weapons of Mass Destruction Related Capabilities was a serious violation of int’l law and merited action to be taken against Iraq. However, there were other options besides pressing for immediate regime-change and the lack of serious intelligence on them currently having stock-piles of WMDs mad this option, unnecessary. One could easily have sought to focus more attention on Iraqi finances, since there would have to have been leakages of some sort in the sanctions put on Iraq for Iraq to pursue WMD-related capabilities. Or, at least, better intelligence could have been gathered on Iraq as inspections were continued and debate on potential regime-change in Iraq fostered at the int’l level.

8. MacNamara doesn’t specify the form of int’l governance that would be the power behind the throne of such an Int’l Court. Apparently, for such int’l governance to be made more transparent might be embarrasing for the de-facto influences that prevail currently in our increasing inter-connected world.

9. Terrorists need to be given other forms of voice besides violence. Ensuring that USMuslims have more say-so in the US gov’t would be one step to increasing US empathy for the muslim world. It would also illustrate how democracy can work for Muslims, encouraging advances toward democracy in Muslim countries. Reform of the UN will also enable more countries in the South or under-developed world more voice in int’l governance. If instead of trying to get the World Bank to cancel Highly-Indebted-Poor-Countries’ (HIPCs) debt, activists sought to get HIPCs and NGOs working with HIPCs credited as principals of the World-Bank then this would ensure them more voice in the determination of the World Bank’s policies so it will be more World and less Bank.

10. If anyone knows how the US is contributing to the breakdown of the Non-Proliferation Regime, please post a comment with a link. This is of critical importance and should be brought more so into public debate.

dlw

Aug

23

Christian Pragmatic Progressive Party Platform

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I wrote the first draft of this platform over two years ago after the 2002 election ended with my candidate for governor of MN, Tim Penny of the Minnesota Independence Party, was not elected due to the cultural wars and the more successful politicization by the Republicans of how the Democrats “politicized” Sen. Paul Wellstone’s funeral.   

The Christian Progressive Pragmatic Party(CPPP) will be based on the premise that an active involvement in politics can be glorifying to God if done in an ethical manner that is not dogmatic and seeks to widen the range of interests that can be served by the government. It will generally view political parties as pragmatic institutions that seek to sustain their own viability and which, while necessary, can choke the access to the control of Government. The CPPP endorses a Stephen Carter-style view of the relationship between the Church and State, as described in “The Culture of Disbelief.” The separation of Church and State implies, not that their spheres are separate, but their autonomy from each other. The separation requires that all parties agree to accept the importance of democracy and compromise in the determination of laws.

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Aug

22

The world is watching the US.

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How we go about our politics in the next two months is going to be observed by many people in and outside the US.

If “evangelicals” decide their votes based on abortion and homosexuality, it will be observed by others and harm their witness to others, since there are so many other issues that are of importance and deserve to be prominent in our nat’l debate during this coming election.

It is of paramount importance that more leaders like the NAE encourage a wider dissemination of habits of political deliberation and more issues being of importance in our political activism. And that we be wiser in what political strategies that we adopt. Working toward a detente in the cultural wars is of paramount importance to the future viability of Christianity in the US.

Here are some changes that I think are needed.

1. Political parties need to allow voters to vote for more than one candidate during primaries. The current system is too easily manipulated by the media-circus that gets behind one candidate with too many voters voting for the lead pony so they back a winner. Kerry has been disappointing as a candidate and owes his nomination in part to the media boost he was given after the Iowa primary.

2. The Campaign Finance Reform laws need to be revamped so as to acknowledge that the democracy of the dollar plays an important role in political decision-making and should be reduced, not removed. The better way to do this would be to tax both soft and hard-money contributions, not ban soft-money contribution or make them find other channels for money to be raised. Taxing money-contributions will reduce the ability of moneyed-interests to buy influence.

3. The system should be set up so as to foster third-party upstarts that can get a sizeable portion of the vote. One way to do this would be to credit a percentage of the money raised in an election to the losing parties for the next election. One could ensure that the amount credited to each losing party would be proportional to what percentage of the vote they take as a way of rewarding popular third parties and making elections not winner-take-all games. One can make it so that there is a cut-off value below which party-upstarts would not receive any funding, like say a half of a percentage of the total vote. Historically, third parties have played an important role in making the main two parties more dynamic, taking on new issues in their platforms so as to protect their duopoly of control over the US gov’t.

I wish some of the people like Sean Puffy Combs who are trying to get out the vote among not-so-likely voters could hear about my ideas as I think it would empower groups that are disillusioned with US politics and help make our democracy work better without having to radically transition to a representative voting system, which gives too much power to minorities, as the state of Israel shows.

dlw