Justus For All

Huffington Post interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski

Zbigniew Brzezinski: Fundamentally at stake is what kind of role Russia will play in the new international system. Unfortunately, Putin is putting Russia on a course that is ominously similar to Stalins and Hitlers in the late 1930s. Swedish foreign minister Carl Bildt has correctly drawn an analogy between Putins “justification” for dismembering Georgia — because of the Russians in South Ossetia — to Hitlers tactics vis a vis Czechoslovakia to “free” the Sudeten Deutsch.

Even more ominous is the analogy of what Putin is doing vis-a-vis Georgia to what Stalin did vis-a-vis Finland: subverting by use of force the sovereignty of a small democratic neighbor. In effect, morally and strategically, Georgia is the Finland of our day

I think that the historical analogies are pretty appropriate here. This is an act of aggression from a major power that will probably have a huge effect on the world in years to come. If confronted successfully and stopped, it probably won’t be a very big deal in history, but I suspect that if Russia’s attack on Georgia is allowed to succeed it will be one of the historical spots that people look back to and question how we could be so stupid.

Of course, looking back is generally easier then looking forward. Certainly America should continue to condemn this action and we should enlist allies and build up as strong a coalition as possible. And, as long as we are simply going for some condemnation and perhaps minor economic sanctions I am sure we will have plenty of allies on this. Should that level of effort succeed, everything will be fine.

In all honestly though, it is likely that that won’t succeed. If it comes to really tough economic putative measures, or (and especially) active military involvement, I suspect we will find that the numbers who are willing to support us are far fewer. This is of course especially true if our allies are uncertain as to how willing we will be to actually carry through with whatever actions we prepose. The simple fact, one I’m sure Russia didn’t ignore when contempating this action, is that the upcoming U.S. Presidential elections severly hampers our ability to make a strong response.

Even if President Bush wishes to move ahead strongly, knowing he has less then six months to remain in office, any allies he wishes to enlist in the cause will have to wonder how long they can trust America’s policy to remain the same. Many of our signifigant allies are pretty dependant on Russian energy supplies and they won’t want to risk an action that will just piss Russia off without achieving its goals. This election year worry can be exaggerated by actions of the two candidates. United front strongly condemning this action, and signaling support of signifigant retaliation will minimize this.

This does give us a very interesting chance to judge how both Obama and McCain will react to crisis. So far, McCain’s response has been stronger and I think much better. Ironically, it might also end up being George Bush’s abiding legacy. Terrorism and Iraq have of course been very major events, but the return of an aggressive, expansionist imperial Russia has the potential to completely overshadow them.

CNN.com

Georgia’s president said Friday that his country is under attack by Russian tanks and warplanes, and he accused Russia of targeting civilians as tensions over the breakaway Georgian region of South Ossetia appeared to boil over into full-blown conflict.
Georgian troops fire rockets at seperatist South Ossetian troops from an unnamed location not far from Tskhinvali.

“All day today, they’ve been bombing Georgia from numerous warplanes and specifically targeting (the) civilian population, and we have scores of wounded and dead among (the) civilian population all around the country,” President Mikhail Saakashvili told CNN in an exclusive interview.

“This is the worst nightmare one can encounter,” he said.

Natan Sharansky and Bassem Eid write about Palestine peace in the Wall Street Journal

Oslo proponents believed a strong Arafat, unconstrained by the inherent checks of democratic rule, would be able to fight Hamas and forge a final peace with Israel. A weak Palestinian democracy, the logic went, actually served the interest of peace by creating a stronger peace partner.
…
If Israelis and Palestinians are to pave a path toward peace, they must pursue a radically different course. The peace process must be linked to building and strengthening Palestinian civil society. In June 2002, President Bush boldly declared a vision based on such a course and took some steps to implement it — such as refusing to deal with corrupt leaders (Arafat), and meeting Palestinian democratic dissidents. But in the final analysis, his administration did not fundamentally change direction. It is now pursuing a course that essentially resuscitates the failed policies of the past.

It is high time that Palestinian civil society be fully recognized by the international community as a prerequisite to peace, not as an obstacle to it. If Palestinian civil society is not empowered, the Fatah-controlled West Bank may soon be ruled by Hamas, and Fatah leaders there may find themselves one day having to rely on Israel’s Supreme Court to save them.

I agree with this, the best guarantee, perhaps the only guarantee, of peace between Israel and Palestine, is a democratic palestine. The real question though, is how do we get there from here.

The first thing to remember is that democracy doesn’t mean that the most popular totalitarian gets to be in charge. It means rule of law and guarantees of individual rights and freedoms just as much as it means using elections to determine leadership and policy. Focusing on the latter, in the hopes that it will bring us the former has had some pretty mixed results, the current problems in Palestine being a prime example.

We seem to have better success when we focus as much, or even more, on developing the civil institutions such as courts and police along with basic constitutional guarantees then when we just think about getting people to a voting booth. I don’t think we really know how to ‘make’ a democracy yet, or even how one naturally occurs. There are a whole lot of varibles involved.

I have become increasingly convinced over the years though that learning how to establish strong democracies is a critical skill that already established democratic nations need to learn.

Spec Bowers emails Glenn Reynolds this point:

Opponents of drilling argue that it will take 5-10 years for that oil to become available. What they ignore is that current prices are affected by the perception of future prices. If sellers of oil begin to think that oil will be priced at say $90 per barrel 5 years from now, they realize that they are better off selling now at $80 instead of leaving the oil in the ground.

That is useful thing to remember, pricing of oil is made with the knowledge of the opportunity cost of selling it now versus selling it later. While there are some pretty big questions about Saudi Arabia’s production capacity and availible reserves, it is certain that the more valuable they believe the oil will be in the future, the less incentive they have to produce more of it now.

In many ways, that is the importance of ANWR. Not how much oil it will produce, but how willing America is to use availible resources in trade for some environmental risks. ANWR is a symbol that we don’t value domestic production highly at all. It is true though that it was the right, at least as much as the left, that chose to make ANWR into this symbol, and I think there might have been better choices.

Act One

My application for the Evil League of Evil is still being processed.

A Baffling Global Economy

Today’s global economy baffles experts — corporate executives, bankers, economists — as much as ordinary people. Countries are growing economically more interdependent and politically more nationalistic. This is a combustible combination. The old global economy had few power centers (the United States, Europe, Japan), was defined mainly by trade and was committed to the dollar as the central currency. Its major countries shared democratic values and alliances. Today’s global economy has many power centers (including China, Saudi Arabia and Russia), is also defined by finance and is exploring alternative currencies to the dollar. Major trading nations now lack common political values and alliances.

I think this is a pretty accurate picture of some of the challenges the economy faces. I expect that a lot of the turmoil we are seeing is based on unanticipated consequences of globalization and technological change. I also expect that since it is likely the technological change will continue to accellerate, we will see a whole lot more unanticipiated consequences from an increasingly inter-related and more complex world.

It is fairly obvious that growth and stability are both desirable, and also inherently antithetical concepts. Generally speaking in human history, their has been a bias towards seeking stability, partially of course because intrenched power structures were obviously the primary beneficially of keeping everything the same, but even more, I expect, was because growth was very difficult to achieve. No one would want to trade stability for a very small amount of growth, and of course it always has been true that if growth leads to too much instability, that growth can easily be whiped out by factors that are not strictly economic (war, revolution etc.).

Recently though, over the past couple hundred years and at an accellerating pace, it seems that the balance has shifted. Dynamic systems produce a lot of growth, and the benefits of growth are large and easily seen. More dynamic political systems, democracies in particular, have been able to take advantage of technological change, although they have also adapted by introducing artificial stability, such as social security/pension systems and in most cases socialized medicine, to combat the uncertainty of an inherently unstable environment.

It is starting to look like the balance has shifted further, with even greater economic growth (and yes, despite recessionary indicators we are still expirience intense growth in the availibity of goods and services, which is what an economy at its most basic is) has come what is perhaps an intolerable degree of instability.

I don’t have any easy answers for this problem. I expect that the old solution of trying to create artificial stability through government redistributive programs will prove insufficient to the speed and scale of technological and hence economic change, quite possibly proving counter productive to stability as well as economic growth. I do think that this is something we need to be deeply considering about.

New York Post

Barack Obama “had nothing to do” with Gen. Wesley Clarks curt dismissal of John McCains military record, the retired Army officer wants everyone to know.

“I dont think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president,” Clark said of McCain on “Face the Nation” - and then repeated it on several nationally broadcast venues.

But Obamas not about to stop using Clark as a campaign surrogate. Nor is the onetime NATO commander about to retract his remarks about the man who spent five years as a prisoner of war.

What a far cry from four years ago - when Wesley Clark was denouncing criticism of John Kerry by groups supporting President Bush.

“In the heat of a political campaign,” wrote Clark in a New York Times op-ed, “attacks come from all directions.

“Although President Bush has not engaged personally in such accusations, he has done nothing to stop others from making them. I believe those who didnt serve . . . should have the decency to respect those who did serve.”

Now, it might be easy to dismiss Clarks comments as a pathetic attempt to stay politically revelant.

But Clark is the eighth prominent Democrat and Obama supporter to throw darts at McCains military service.

It is patently obvious that the Obama campaign has chosen this particular line of attack. That choice can, and should, reflect upon him as a candidate and a potential president. I also think his disavowal of this obviously coordinated line of attack speaks to his character, and is a further display of reluctance to ever except any blame or responsibility.

That being said, I do want to talk about McCain’s military record and other connections to the military, and what it says about him as a person and a candidate.

First off, the obvious thing is that McCain served his country, and sacrificed far more for it them even most military people are called to do. Anyone can say they love their country, but demonstrating it as McCain has done is a rare thing. I don’t like a lot of things about John McCain’s politics, but I honor him as a man and a hero, and I can’t help thinking less of anyone who doesn’t.

McCain faced imprisonment and torture, and he has used that experience to directly inform his opinions on important issues of our time, most particularly how we treat captured illegal combatants. McCain has been a powerful voice against the Bush ‘harsh interrogation techniques’ and that power has been due to his direct experience and hence passionate feelings about torture. I personally am not 100% convinced that McCain’s position is correct, but I certainly have paid attention to what he has said because of the unique value his experience has.

I believe that along with the specific focus on treatment of captives, McCain’s experience as a POW also gave him an important perspective that most of us don’t have on how bad a thuggish regime can be. At the expense of perhaps sounding trite, McCain has directly faced evil. It appears to me that part of the lesson he learned from that experience is that such men must be confronted, not appeased or disregarded.

Certainly it is true that McCain doesn’t have a lot of executive experience. He did serve as the commanding officer of a training squadron after his rehabilitation, and by all accounts did a good job, leading it to a Meritorious Unit Commendation. Beyond that, the general training in leadership that any officer in the military receives has some bearing on the question of experience and leadership ability. That isn’t a whole lot though. He hasn’t lead armies, companies or held an executive position in government (although admittedly, other candidates have even less.) He hasn’t even really worked at all in the private sector, which is a reason for concern on economic issues.

McCain has though as a long time legislator been closely connected with all the issues facing our nation. If he hasn’t made the executive decisions directly, he has been able to closely observe others doing so, and has also certainly played a significant part as a legislator in formulating policy. In particular, he has used his military knowledge and experience on the Senate Armed Services committee.

Another connection to McCain and the military that isn’t talked about a lot is that of other members of his family. Most people know that his father and grandfather were both Admirals, but fewer know about his children. His son Doug was a naval aviator and Jack is at the U.S. Naval Academy working to become a naval aviator as well. Most interesting, his son Jim is a Marine who is currently deployed to Iraq. Obviously John McCain knows the possible cost the policies he endorses can have on soldiers in the battlefield, and it is equally obvious that these effects might land directly on his own family members, as they once landed on him.

I think though that the most significant aspect of McCain’s military service as it relates to his qualifications for the Presidency is how those experiences have helped to form his character. John McCain was tested as a POW. At times, he was tested beyond what he could bear, leading him to participate in making a propaganda confession. Even after that though, he was able to must the will to continue to defy his captors. His story is deeply inspiring. It seems to me that there are two character traits in particular that his POW experience heightened. First, is a terribly strong will. I don’t think that McCain will blink in the face of adversity or let something as insignificant as public polling turn him away from doing what he believes is right. Second, and perhaps even more comforting, is a deep humility. McCain, having been pushed beyond his limits, seems to have really learned about human limitations and frailty. He isn’t perfect, and he knows he isn’t perfect.

In the end, everything a person has been in their life makes them what they are. John McCain has been a lot of things, and these things will affect the kind of President he would be. What McCain has been and how it has made him what he is are some things I respect a whole lot. He is a genuine hero. That doesn’t automatically make him worthy of being President of course, even a hero can be wrong about policy. Even a hero may not have the particular skills needed at this particular time. There are plenty of ways of to legitimately argue that John McCain is not the man for the job.

What I don’t appreciate though is attacking that heroism itself. It displays to me a fundamental lack of respect for heroism itself and the character traits that make this sort of heroism possible. I can’t help but believe that anyone who has so little respect for the sacrifice, courage and commitment that John McCain has displayed must be pretty lacking in these qualities themselves.

CNN.com

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Thursday that a sweeping ban on handguns in the nations capital violated the Second Amendment right to bear arms.
A gun ownership supporter holds a placard in March outside the Supreme Court in Washington.

A gun ownership supporter holds a placard in March outside the Supreme Court in Washington.

The justices voted 5-4 against the ban, with Justice Antonin Scalia writing the opinion for the majority.

The cases lead plaintiff, Dick Heller, applauded the decision, saying, “Im very happy that I am now able to defend myself and my household in my own home.”

I’m pretty happy with this ruling too. From a political perspective though it is probably a benefit to democrats. If the court had ruled against the 2nd ammendment as an individual right, it would have motivated a lot of gun owners.

NYTimes.com

The Chinese government announced on Thursday that North Korea will hand over a declaration of its nuclear program and that, if the information is verified to be accurate, the United States would then remove North Korea from a list of state sponsors of terrorism and end some economic sanctions against it.

Managing the six party talks and having the patience to slowly convince China of the necessity of putting pressure on North Korea has been a triumph of diplomacy and something the Bush administration deserves a whole lot of credit for. This problem hasn’t been completely solved yet of course, but the immense progress that has been made is extremely important and we are safer because of it.

CNN.com

After a review of the “history of the death penalty for this and other nonhomicide crimes, current state statutes and new enactments, and the number of executions since 1964, we conclude there is a national consensus against capital punishment for the crime of child rape,” Anthony Kennedy wrote.

I could be wrong here, but I am pretty sure that if we were to ask the people of the nation, there would be a very strong consensus FOR capital punishment for child rapists. I would expect that most people would rather see someone killed for this, then for murder.