Glenn Greenwald and justified extremism.

I’ve written before about how sensible rhetoric can sound extreme under extreme conditions, and the necessity of making such arguments anyway. This may come as totally redundant to many of my readers, but I tend to forget that there is hardly a better example of this than Glenn Greenwald’s writing for Slate. About issues regarding which we should accept no compromise, Greenwald has been positively uncompromising, week after week, year after year, with wit and poise and total devotion. In the past week, he has highlighted an unusual New York Times editorial hammering President Obama for taking ownership of some of the Bush administration’s practices on executive secrecy, detainee rights, wiretapping and other issues. He has also gone after the Washington Post’s editorial staff (headed by Fred Hiatt, whose respect among people I trust declines by the week) for defending its support of a never-ending global counterinsurgency campaign to secure foreign populations while thinking of health security at home as a luxury. This, among reams of other essential writing.

In times that feel increasingly normal and balanced, Greenwald forces us to remember the perversity, hypocrisy, and harm that we tolerate simply because the arc of the moral universe tends to bend in the right direction.

a.j.m.

Filed under: Practicing Politics , greenwald, justified extremism

Features of progressivism in the Obama era.

The conventional wisdom around town is that President Obama’s approval ratings are dropping and he is facing resistance because he “hasn’t done anything” with his presidency so far. This statement belies the fact that enormous amounts of progress have been made on what were historically very large issues; because this progress happened not to have ticker-tape legislation attached to it, it’s often overlooked. The occasion for these reflections is the recent extension of federal hate crime protections to gays and lesbians. While the Violent Crime Control and Enforcement Act of 1994 granted hate crime protections to victims of crime targeted at race, religion, and sex, sexual orientation was omitted until Thursday when it was attached as a rider to a defense appropriations bill. Of course, this is not how the Shepard Act should have passed, but pass it did. Those who remember the battles over hate crimes and thought crimes in Congress in the early nineties know that this is no marginal step. Jim DeMint knows it too, in his perverse way, saying “the bill was a ‘dangerous step’ toward thought crimes. He asked whether the bill would ’serve as a warning to people not to speak out too loudly about their religious views.’”

The broader point is that hate crimes legislation is sneaking in largely under the radar. This White House has proven extraordinarily deft at directing attention toward certain efforts, allowing them to pursue deep changes in areas that would otherwise have been controversial. Here’s a doozy: despite being the major cleavage during two years of campaigning for the Presidency (to say nothing of the campaign four years prior), withdrawal from Iraq is proceeding with hardly a hitch. American society is not engulfed by caustic battles over its efficacy or the future of Iraq or Middle East stability or a democracy agenda. Here are a couple more: the FCC has moved to codify net neutrality regulations (which Jon McCain is currently trying to roll back); the EPA has classified a broad range of carbon emissions as harmful pollutants, on the way to pursuing to stricter regulations on greenhouse gases; SCHIP was renewed; tough steps have been taken to end the use of torture by America’s armed services; new ethics regulations for White House employees were put in in place, as were new standards on transparency and the release of Presidential documents; the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act expanded funding for promising forms of alternative energy; and he has taken steps to roll back subsidies to large agribusiness firms. As always, PolitiFact.com maintains a list of Obama’s kept promises and failures, for those anxious for a deeper look.

But I think the broader point stands: a great deal has been done, and very quickly. So why does the perception of inactivity persist? I actually think it has less to do with direction and misdirection of the public’s attention and more to do with the fact that many of these were the right steps and so have become unobjectionable, even obvious, fairly quickly. This is an enduring feature of progressivism: while most progressive initiatives are controversial when proposed, and mistaken initiatives rightly provoke backlash, well-conceived progressivism tends to become part of the fabric of our identity relatively quickly and thoroughgoing dissent fails to materialize. (Notice that it is not only progressivism that has this feature, but also some fiscal measures like tax cuts or subsidies; expansions of human rights, like hate crimes protections, are particularly felicitous examples.) This is not to say that Obama does not have tough fights ahead; what it does mean is that he has sequenced things in such a way that he could continue to progress on a number of fronts while fighting one top line progressive battle at a time. That’s just good politics, it’s good for the country, and it’s good for the world.

a.j.m.

Filed under: Domestic, Liberalism , hate crimes, human rights, progressivism

A primer on nuclear de-alert.

Hans Kristensen on the FAS Strategic Security Blog points at an excellent report by the EastWest Institute on Reframing Nuclear De-Alert. The occasion for Kristensen’s post is a diplomatic effort by the Obama administration to prevent a UN General Assembly Resolution urging de-alert from coming to the floor. The resolution has been passed before, but evidently Obama is angling to delay the vote until the end of the ongoing Nuclear Posture Review so as to keep from abstaining, or voting against.

What’s the story with nuclear de-alert? Currently, the United States keeps roughly 900 warheads at sufficiently high levels of alert that the half atop ICBMs could be launched within four minutes and the half aboard submarines within twelve minutes. Narrower margins are thought to provide stronger deterrent effects—margins this thin allow the United States to adhere to a policy called Launch Under Attack (that is, before incoming missiles find their targets) as well as Launch On Warning (when the threat of an imminent attack is confirmed). But, as the EW report points out,

Even during the Cold War, alert levels were not static and moved up or down depending on the security environments. But alert levels since then (after some degree of de-alerting, especially of bomber forces, in the early post-Cold War period) have remained immune to major changes in the later post-Cold War era.

Nuclear de-alert involves taking physical but reversible steps to widen these margins artificially in order to provide policymakers with more time to consider the situation. It also has the effect of lowering the possibility accidental launch (however small this already is). In short, it seems like an appropriate doctrine for the status of nuclear forces after the end of the cold war. Possible steps include covering the silos with earth, removing the nose cones of missiles, removing tritium bottles from thermonuclear weapons, and, lastly, storing warheads and delivery systems separately. These and other scenarios mean that a reasonable measure of granularity is possible in selecting just which steps to take.

The EastWest Institute also makes this helpful point—

There are no fundamental obstacles to many useful measures of decreasing operational readiness of nuclear weapons, provided the issue is not framed narrowly. De-alert has to be seen not only as a technical fix but also as a strategic step in deemphasizing the military role of nuclear weapons, in other words, moving to retaliatory strike postures and doctrines instead of legacy preemptive or “launch on warning” postures.

—namely because the problem de-alert would attempt to solve is better addressed through permissive action links and other safeguard mechanisms. Rather, the question of de-alert can’t be decoupled from broader questions of nuclear doctrine; de-alert is only a viable option if we are willing to shift away from LOW and LUA to a doctrine based on a more delayed retaliation.

But all this goes to show what a strange place nuclear disarmament is in more generally. There is no good justification for maintaing high levels of alert after the end of the cold war. Sophisticated set-piece counterforce retaliation plans are obsolete in the absence of a U.S.-Russia exchange—if retaliation could ever be contemplated under any scenario at all. Our divorce from the harried times of the Cold War means that cooler heads are likely to insert political and moral calculations into any crisis more readily than thirty years ago. In the post-Cold War world, no nuclear power gains any appreciable advantage from a nuclear doctrine that maintains forces on high alert. It is expensive, more dangerous, and less useful in crisis situations, given that the re-alerting of nuclear warheads could constitute a useful bellicose signal in crisis bargaining. Given this, there is ample reason for a country to give up its nuclear alert doctrine simply as a matter of course—but why do it unilaterally when you can elicit reciprocal behavior from other nuclear weapon states? As a result of this sort of logic, nuclear disarmament is caught in this odd position where rational behavior for any one state is not seen as such if taken unilaterally. The funny thing is that this is true regardless of the security effects. De-alerting nuclear forces would not make either Russia nor the United States less secure vis-a-vis one another, because the possibility of any retaliation should be sufficient to deter any attack, regardless of whether this occurs in four minutes, twelve minutes, an hour, a day, or a week. This calculus does not change. But for reasons explicable but nevertheless passing understanding, either the United States or Russia would be unwilling to take this step without promises of reciprocity.

It makes you respect the China’s and the Great Britain’s of the world who don’t allow themselves to be caught up in this kind of paranoid nonsense. How long will it take for us to get over the Cold War?

a.j.m.

Filed under: Arms Control , de-alert

What more do you need to know?

Of course, tax policy is impossibly complex; the relationship between tax federal taxes and economic growth is difficult to pin down and subject to much debate. But even the most cursory look is enough to show that this is one of those impossible problems that actually has a simple cause and a simple solution. Compare the following.

The Times, 16 October—

At 10 percent of the gross domestic product, the 2009 deficit is the highest since the end of World War II, when it was 21.5 percent. At that level, it already has become a bigger economic and a political issue than any time since the late 1980s.

Leonhardt in the Times, 6 October—

[Bruce Bartlett's] conservatism starts with the idea that high taxes are no longer the problem, even if complaining about them still makes for good politics. This year, federal taxes are on pace to equal just 15 percent of gross domestic product. It is the lowest share since 1950.

What more do you need to know?

a.j.m.

Filed under: Domestic, Economics , Club Wagner, deficit, taxes

TII gone dark.

Apologies— comprehensive exams are right around the corner, so normal transmission will return on Saturday.

Jonathan Cohn and others at TNR’s The Treatment have been very productive as we come down to the wire for health care in the Senate, including the news today that Snowe expects to vote yes to move Baucus’ bill out of finance.

Work has also picked up at the Federation of American Scientists’ Strategic Security Blog, which is always welcome.

Drew Conway also has new posts on networks and insurgency.

Thankfully, their output means that readers will come out far ahead in TII’s absence. Hope all are well.

a.j.m.

Filed under: Housekeeping

Two more fortunate truths about health care.

First, David Leonhardt points out that collective bargaining has created a class of exorbitant health care plans that do not make those who hold them appreciably healthier, but do contribute to the spiraling proportion of our gross domestic product that we spend on health care. Because the government does not tax the proportion of salaries that goes to employer-provided health care, the United States essentially subsidizes these very expensive plans. Leonhardt explains:

If an employer pays a worker an extra $100 in income, the worker may keep only $75 of it, while the government will get $25 in taxes. But if the employer puts that $100 toward health insurance, the worker will get all of it.

This tax break causes us to buy more health insurance than we would if the playing field for taxes were level, much as the tax breaks for housing helped inflate the real estate bubble. In effect, the tax-free treatment is a subsidy for health insurers, doctors and hospitals. It encourages wasteful spending — the extra M.R.I., the brand-name drug that’s no better than a generic, the cardiac-stent procedure that has no evidence of extending life (but does have some risk).

Because these plans often eliminate co-pays, it would re-incentivize doctors and individuals to take more responsibility for patents’ health rather than simply firing off needless tests and treatments. Lastly, a tax on expensive plans would transition people out of them, raising their wages because employers will spend less overall on those expensive plans. There is even good evidence that individuals don’t particularly feel like they need these plans, making the issue fully positive-sum for everyone except lobbyists who orchestrate the collective bargaining. (That’s win win win win, for those of you keeping track at home.)

Second, NPR has a really cool story about Safeway’s popular and successful plan to discount health care for healthy employees—that is, those who are not obese and don’t smoke. This incentivizes good lifestyle choices and internalizes the externalities of poor choices. Why the latter?

“In our particular case, when we have an elevated premium for a smoker, that premium goes into our health care fund with the ability to take care of that employee 10 to 15 years down the road, should they develop lung cancer.”

And did I mention the plan is popular?—to the tune of 78 percent of employees. (& be sure not to miss the elbow NPR throws at the end.)

What’s the point of all this? Easy: Americans do respond well to reasonable incentives to improve the quality of their health care, and enjoy doing it. Of course, they also respond to incentives to spend money and make themselves less healthy. Put together, this is an argument for transitioning health care away from a model in which politicians spend time trying to mirror weakly-held and uninformed opinions, and more time doing what’s best for the country and for the health of American citizens.

a.j.m.

Filed under: Health , positive sum

Jack Levy is a badass.

In 1995, Jim Fearon published an article in International Organization called “Rationalist explanations for war,” which, for my money, is one of the very best articles of modern international theory. In it, he argues that prevailing realist explanations for war—anarchy, expected utility, and preventive war—and two other rationalist explanations are either underspecified or are logically reducible. A major reason for this is that states should have incentives to make agreements on the side to resolve a dispute rather than incur the costs and risk inherent in war. This perspective generates a number of clear and novel propositions, but for our purposes here, the second explanation is key. Fearon demonstrated that one reason states go to war is because, as the power of two great powers approaches an inflection point, the rising state is unable to commit not to exploit the gains from any side agreement to the further detriment of the declining state’s security or status.

This wasn’t inconceivable stuff prior to Fearon’s argument; the incentives surrounding preventive war had been the subject of much hand-wringing. But Fearon’s expression of the ideas, his connection of preventive war to the bargaining range, the incentive to conclude side agreements, a challenger’s incentive to transfer away power to prevent an attack—all of this was novel and earth-shaking. Or so I thought.

Jack Levy nailed that argument in 1987, in “Declining Power and the Preventive Motivation for War.” He writes that a bargaining perspective is not good enough to capture the logic of preventive war:

“The issue is not a conflict of concrete interests in which each party can easily calculate its gains and losses from different levels of concessions and negotiate accordingly, but a question of future influence over a range of diverse and partly unpredictable issues that cannot be calculated with any degree of precision and that are not easily amenable to negotiation.” This is because perceptions of the stakes vary between the parties, because “the kind of concessions most acceptable to the declining state would be those that impeded the further increase in the military power of the rising adversary,” which are precisely those that cannot be transferred away. Lastly, making that kind of deal would relegate a rising state to a permanently inferior status, making status concerns relevant. Because of this, “it is extremely unlikely that any level of concessions exists that would be both sufficient for the preventer and reasonable for the challenger. The very fact that the declining state knows that the rising adversary will probably be able to regain any concession later makes the former less likely to accept those concessions.” (96)

Incredible commitments are in there, but also some much more nuanced stuff. Don’t eff with Jack Levy. The guy’s graduate syllabus on the causes of war is 96 pages long and luminous.

a.j.m.

Filed under: Theory, War , fearon, levy, preventive war

Iran’s two-level game.

Abbas Milani has an interesting piece in The New Republic today about Iranian reformers trying to buy Western support by selling out the leadership on the nuclear issue. A democratic Iran, Milani says, is the only one that will resolve the nuclear standoff. Though I’m sure this point has not escaped those in White House, it’s hard to think that Milani or Karoubi, who made the speech, should hold out hope. For American policy to tilt in that direction would be ever-so-dangerous. It just goes to show you what a delicate balance Khamenei has on his hands, and how many very long levers the United States has arrayed in front of it. These are two-level games at their best.

a.j.m.

Filed under: Arms Control, Middle East , Iran, Karoubi, Milani

How many planets are out there?

You guys have to see this.

I didn’t know there was such a thing as the Kepler Mission happening. The Kepler satellite is part of NASA Discovery Mission #10, which aims to collect systematic data on the prevalence and size of planets orbiting other stars in the Milky Way. Kepler is equipped with a powerful telescope that has a very wide range of vision, which is pointed constantly at a particular range of space for four years. In that time, Kepler can monitor the spectral signatures of 100,000 and measure the deviation in brightness to detect the transit of a planet around the star. With such a large sample, the handlers expect to find something on the order of 50 planets, if most are the size of earth and perhaps 640 if planets tend to be much larger. Put simply, Kepler doesn’t just look for planets; it’s looking for data on the prevalence of planets.

But even if planets are common, who such a big sample size? There are all sorts of really delicious details on the link above, but this one knocked my socks off—

For a planet to transit, as seen from our solar system, the orbit must be lined up edgewise to us. The probability for an orbit to be properly aligned is equal to the diameter of the star divided by the diameter of the orbit. This is 0.5% for a planet in an Earth-like orbit about a solar-like star. (For the giant planets discovered in four-day orbits, the alignment probability is more like 10%.) In order to detect many planets one can not just look at a few stars for transits or even a few hundred. One must look at thousands of stars, even if Earth-like planets are common. If they are rare, then one needs to look at many thousands to find even a few. Kepler looks at 100,000 stars so that if Earths are rare, a null or near null result would still be significant. If Earth-size planets are common then Kepler should detect hundreds of them.

The picture below, from here, shows how sensitive Kepler’s output is relative to ground-based detection systems. The dip is the drop in light intensity as a planet transits a distant star.

a.j.m.

Filed under: Science, Space , kepler

Nuclear progress from Iran!

Never thought you’d see that headline, did you?

In a late and stunning development tonight, Iran agreed to open its newly-discovered Qom facility to the IAEA within two weeks and to ship at least three quarters of its low enriched uranium to France and Russia for conversion to medium enriched uranium for use in Tehran’s medical research reactor. I encourage you to go to the Times or your favorite outlet to read about the details—and I’m sure our nonproliferation expert will have more thoughts soon—but let me just reiterate the importance of this development.

Due in part, surely, to the age old dogma that Republicans are better statesmen than Democrats, Obama’s recent foreign policy announcements have either gotten little coverage, lukewarm coverage, or outright hostile coverage. Tonight’s development is a major one. Iran has not surrendered its right to enrich uranium—and it shouldn’t; the Nonproliferation Treaty explicitly grants it that right, given that it meets some conditions—but it has in essence conceded the inextricable role of the international community in its nuclear program.

Actually, I think the British and French positions—that Iran stop all enrichment by December—is too strict a position. It is a nonstarter with the Iranian leadership which faces large audience costs to dissolving its program unconditionally, especially at a tenuous time; and it’s contrary to international law. But if Iran is to be permitted a rudimentary enrichment capacity, two options were a possibility. First, an international consortium like URENCO could apply the same standard it does to developed countries, and operate a “black-boxed” enrichment facility on Iranian soil with staffing both by Iranian scientists and URENCO multinationals. The second option, which should be only slightly less preferable to the United States, was the one agreed to: Iran ships its uranium to Russia for enrichment and use in safeguarded reactors.

This is a major step towards resolution of the Iranian nuclear question—it effectively pushes back the date by which Iran could produce a weapon by some years—but it does not resolve all issues. Other secret facilities or capacities might still exist. The Iran-Russia relationship could go south. The next step is to go after the existing plants and their hardware to place these under seal. My guess is that this should be possible, given that most of Iran’s fissile material is being shipped out. The work ahead is hard—negotiating the particulars of additional safeguards, and robust verification measures—but it is happy work, on firmer footing.

To reiterate: this is an extraordinary development. This is something that the Bush administration tried to obtain but failed to accomplish with eight years in office and the revelation of a then-secret facility at Natanz in 2002. They simply lacked the diplomatic wherewithall to cut a deal. (Meanwhile, their tough line with North Korea essentially made a nuclear state of that country.) The whole play, adumbrated tentatively below, was masterful. Nothing was conceded; much has been gained, in only one day of talks. If this is spun as anything but a dazzling success for Obama and a vindication of his principles of diplomacy, you have every license to scoff at whomever is running their dumb mouth for a camera.

More soon.

a.j.m.

Filed under: Arms Control , Iran, Qom