Geoff Robinson

Teaching about the World Wars makes me think about Iraq. Some conclusions:

1. we should judge the war pragmatically. I don’t believe in absolute territorial sovereignty. But the international law rules against violating sovereignty are ultimately pragmatically based: that in the long run human welfare is better advanced by upholding territorial sovereignty. It may be attractive to violate fixed rules in an individual extreme case but in the long run everybody will be worse off. it’s a conservative case but it has a lot of sense.

2. it seems indisputable that the argument was Iraq represented a threat to the US was fantasy. The recent revelations about document forging seem to place us in the political zone that used to be inhabited by the Soviet bloc purveyors of information. The leaders of the US knew that the American people would not support their real case for the war.

3. The American drive to war is reminiscent of Germany and Austria-Hungary in 1914 when both countries believed that to back down would place at risk their great-power status. If war is politics by other means the Iraq war was less directed towards a specific verifiable end than a general enhancement of American power and status. An equivalent of the moon missions.
Read the rest of this entry »

An interesting article by Fareed Zakaria on the changing approaches of the Bush administration in foreign policy. He argues;

The foreign policies that aroused the greatest anger and opposition were mostly pursued in Bush’s first term: the invasion of Iraq, the rejection of treaties, diplomacy and multilateralism. In the past few years, many of these policies have been modified, abandoned or reversed. This has happened without acknowledgment—which is partly what drives critics crazy—and it’s often been done surreptitiously. It doesn’t reflect a change of heart so much as an admission of failure; the old way simply wasn’t working. But for whatever reasons and through whichever path, the foreign policies in place now are more sensible, moderate and mainstream. In many cases the next president should follow rather than reverse them.

There is something to be said for this. Much recent conservative rhetoric on foreign policy seems to ignore the fact that ‘their’ government is in power, it is unclear whom their calls for action against Russia are directed to . This type of shift has occurred in Australia: Howard’s reversals during 2001 and 2004 are an example. In both cases Labor found itself fighting the wrong election, Labor’s strategy was formed in retrospect. McCain’s perceived distance from the Bush legacy has favoured him, and I suspect that base conservative voters will be motivated to turn out by anti-Obama sentiment, they are the group targeted by anti-Obama smears. McCain would benefit by recruiting a perceived centrist for VP, such as Lieberman, and the base will wear this. The Republican Convention will be tailored to appeal to the centre, the hard right will be kept in the shadows. Bush himself and the Congressional Republicans are being judged in retrospect but is McCain being judged in prospect?

Teaching three units and writing a fourth leaves little time to post. But the state of WA politics is interesting. In recent years across Australia the conservative rural National Party has been challenged by the emergence of rural independents, two sit in the national parliament with a third widely tipped to win up an upcoming by-election whilst the Nationals have lost ground in urbanised regions to Labor and the Liberals. Within sections of the National Party this decline has revived suggestions that the Nationals should redefine themselves as a centre party willing to deal with either side of politics. This approach had some support in the 1920s (and into the 1930s in Victoria) as described by B. D. Graham. In Sweden the Agrarian Party after World war II responded to the declining farm lation by redefining itself as a centre party. In the run-up to the upcoming Western Australian elections the state nationals had flirted with a centre appeal, in response to an electoral reform that threatens to reduce them to a tiny rump. It now combines a new found social liberalism, supporting gay civil unions, with a rural particularistic appeal to redirect infrastructure expenditure away from Perth. But after initial threats the Nationals have decided to preference to the Liberals. To continue the Swedish analogy the Centre Party, although it was once willing to ally itself with the Social Democrats, is now firmly committed to the cause of conservative coalition.

Next week I am lecturing on the vexed topic of ‘Aboriginal self-determination’. As I point out the rapid colonisation of Australia and the suitability of the Australian landscape to European agriculture meant that the indigenous population was largely wiped out after 1788 due to disease, deliberate killing and associated social collapse. Northern Australia is a partial exception as the climate was much less favourable to European-style farming, also by the time European settlers arrived successive disease waves had left the indigenous population more immune. Indigenous populations remained a majority across  of northern Australia for decades after federation. They were however excluded from the Commonwealth franchise. Canada’s climate meant that the north was much more inhispitable to Europeans and First nations have remained the majority across much of the north. In 1999 Nunavut an indigenous majority territory was created. Labor’s Northern Territory election setback now means that a majority of the governing Labor caucus now represent rural electorates with indigenous majorities even if indigenous MPs remain a minority in caucus. How assertive will indigenous MPs be? Will the Territory eventually have an indigenous majority?

The Saturday election in the Northern Territory saw a substantial swing against the incumbent Labor party which seems to have returned with a one-seat majority. The party returned to the level of support it had enjoyed in 2001 when it first won government in the Territory. In 2005 it had a landslide victory. The closeness of the result surprised most observers who expected a comfortable Labor victory. Some observations:

1. There were no available opinion polls. Betting market odds overwhelmingly favoured Labor. The result undercuts the argument of those who argue that betting markets have an independent predictive power rather than just being dependent on opinion polls.

2. The Territory is unique among the Australian states in its large indigenous population, around 30%. Despite the fact that indigenous Australians usually strongly support the ALP (although occasionally they can be swayed by personality appeals) the Territory was a Labor graveyard until 2001 the conservative Country Liberal Party (CLP) won eight elections in a row. Territory politics was racialised and as in the US South the non-minority population recorded high levels of conservative support, even although the Territory non-indigenous population is ethnically diverse and is largely dependent on government employment which would have usually inclined them to Labor. Has this racial element declined? Labor’s 2004 landslide might suggest this but what about 2008? Interesting that the smallest swing against Labor was in Nhulunbuy where the CLP candidate was indigenous, and this was an electorate where the retiring Labor MP had held the seat since 1990 and where commentatorspredicted a likely swing against Labor.

3. The theory that the small size of NT electorates creates an incumbency advantage seems to have been refuted by the turnover of seats at the last three elections.

4. In many remote areas of Australia the indigenous population is rapidly increasing. Could this eventually have an impact in remote electorates? Doubtful if the NT example is anything to go by indeed the social crisis in many rural indigenous communities is closely linked to race politics, for a great perspective on this which shows what anthropology has to contribute see Cowlishaw’s Blackfellas.

A good article by Gregory Scoblete on the ‘energy independence’ fantasy (for a representative outline see here). He argues:

By promising energy independence, both campaigns have engaged in a sideshow. An intellectually honest debate on energy would take as a given the impossibility of independence and instead focus on realistic measures that would improve America’s overall energy security while debating what cost, if any, should be imposed on carbon-emitting energy sources. Addressing the twin concerns of energy cost and environmental impact can be done without recourse to fantasy.

I would add how racist this fantasy is, beneath all the demagogy about OPEC is the argument that Americans should make themselves worse off, by not purchasing foreign oil, so that they can make the population of oil-producing countries worse off. This isn’t a zero-sum game its a negative sum game. If the US economy is being damaged by expensive oil produced by the evil OPEC how is the economy to be assisted by consuming even more expensive domestic energy sources, unless one accepts the the crudest neo-mercantilism? Does the dependence of the US on foreign energy somehow constrain American foreign policy? Palestinians would disagree. How is the battle against terrorism going to be advanced by making Arab countries poorer? Dumb and dumber.

Well, I didn’t have a vote anyway, but…the above picture of Obama takes up an appeal directed before the last Australian election to Kevin Rudd then opposition leader before the last Australian election.  Thankfully Kevin didn’t. But there are signs of concern about Obama’s campaign. The tightening apparent in national polls is being reflected at the state level. Nate Silver has argued that the strong lead of the Democrats in generic voter preference is misleading:

But neither McCain nor Obama can be considered a generic candidate, because both enjoy strong appeal among independent voters. This is particularly the case for McCain, who has largely managed to avoid the stigma attached to the tarnished Republican brand. How has McCain done it? It has mostly to do with his reputation as a moderate. In that same NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, only 21% of voters said they viewed McCain as “very conservative,” while 34% pegged him as a moderate. As long as he maintains his moderate brand, McCain will seem acceptable to some large number of independent voters and some smaller number of Democrats.
…This is predicted by something known as the “median voter theorem,” which essentially holds that as the electorate shifts ideologically — that is, to the right or left — the candidates will tend to shift along with it to narrow their ideological differences with the average voter. Over the last several years, the electorate has shifted leftward — and the two parties have responded accordingly in this year’s presidential race. The GOP will nominate a candidate who is widely perceived as being to the left of the party’s conservative base, whereas the Democratic Party will again pick a standard-bearer more authentically liberal than centrist.