Heckling to win

I’m sure by now countless parallels have been drawn between Joe Wilson’s outburst, Democrats’ heckling of George Bush, and the institutionalized heckling of British politics in the Commons and elsewhere.

Both the cause of progressivism and American democracy as a whole would benefit from moving toward a Westminster-style political system. But the defense of Wilson’s outburst on the grounds that we should be more like the Brits is, I think, misguided. Obviously, it would be splitting hairs to suggest that Wilson’s outburst was out of line while maintaining that booing the President during the State of Union or hissing during the Prime Minister’s question time are fair game. I agree Newsweek’s John Barry that, on the whole, heckling can be a productive democratic activity. And I share Dana Goldstein’s sentiment that “more frequent, rowdier confrontations between the president and Congress…gives each party a chance to clarify its agenda while subjecting it to the critiques of the other.”

Much like protests and rallies, heckling by the general public pays dividends in visibility and solidarity. Heckling public figures can be a way to air out grievances while demonstrating that support for the speaker is weaker than the presence of a respectful audience might otherwise suggest. The louder the heckling, the less support s/he seems to command. For audiences that aren’t hand-picked and pre-screened, getting booed off the stage can be a powerful symbol.

Not all that hisses heckles. As the Guardian pointed out a few years ago, heckling is in a lot of ways qualitatively different from outright rudeness.

Anger has its place in political discourse, of course…But heckling is something else. At its best, it is almost a conspiracy between the heckler and the heckled, born out of mutual antagonism but mitigated by combative wit; a gamble, too, since neither player can be sure that he—it is usually a testosterone-charged he—will come off best.

Anger—constructive, impassioned, but angry political debate—deserves a greater role in American politics. All too often legitimate grievances get dismissed because they’re proffered by angry people using “angry,” “fiery,” or “shrill” rhetoric. Suffering is political, and it’s often enraging too.

For legislatures, however, heckling is plain and simple political theater. Subject the President to a weekly question-and-answer session with members of congress. That would give each party a means to draw contrasts and battle lines in ways that heckling can’t. As for heckling, I’m all for it. But Wilson’s outburst was just childish, wasn’t wit, wasn’t legitimate or accurate, and it wasn’t a boon for democracy.

—Brian

Filed under: Domestic, Practicing Politics, Symbolism

Thinking creatively about nuclear status

I was at first intrigued by Hugh Gusterson’s latest column for the Bulletin. But then I found myself a little disappointed.

The crux of Gusterson’s argument:

There is more than one way of being nuclear and, in the emergent international system, stealthier and more virtual forms of nuclear weapons ownership are becoming more salient.

He then goes on to suggest a number of schemes that would leave formal control of North Korea’s arsenal in the hands of Kim Jong-Il while supposedly ameliorating the political havoc quasi-recognition would undoubtedly wreak on both the region and the nonproliferation regime.

One obvious problem with this approach is that nuclear weapons are just too dangerous to leave lying around. More to the point, however, is that unless the North Koreans can reap the benefits of nuclear weapons ownership, any kind of creative agreement isn’t likely to be sustainable. And those benefits derive exactly from giving the North the kind of control that poses a threat to the security of the region and the stability of the nonproliferation regime.

It’s all politics

It seems to me like Gusterson is going about solving the problem in reverse. He’s right to point out that there are noticeable political distinctions among states in possession of deployable nuclear warheads (leaving aside the question of how deployable the North’s nukes are). France’s nuclear arsenal, for example, is not the sole lynchpin of its international status; France’s position in the top tier of the international system depends on a number of other factors, including its veto on the Security Council, its economic influence in Europe and the Middle East, its relationship with other Western powers, and to some extent its conventional superiority. On the other hand, U.S. policy toward Pakistan would be very different if it didn’t have nuclear weapons.

Few countries are more aware of this reality than North Korea. Its ongoing pursuit of nuclear weapons is intended to address what are fundamentally political concerns. Nuclear weapons are a way to put their country on the map while staying out of the West’s sights in basic security terms. Achieving these goals depends very little on whether they retain formal custody of a dozen nuclear warheads. What matters is the international recognition that flows to a state that poses a threat to its neighbors, particularly through the control of complex technology. If Kim Jong-Il thought he could provide for the North’s security and influence without investing in an expensive and technically complex weapons program, we wouldn’t be in this mess.

Gusterson is essentially fudging the “thinking creatively” about the politics of the situation in order to maintain a technical status quo that is meaningless without the politics.

To be or not to be nuclear

Still, I think Gusterson makes a key point, namely that the distinction between nuclear haves and have-nots is, to some extent, malleable. If the Iran case tells us anything, it’s that in the space between nuclear and non-nuclear lies a vast expanse of technology and politics. States can walk right up to the nuclear threshold technologically while remaining far behind politically. (The converse is also true, but, well, a lot less threatening.) It would take Japan, for example, very little time to turn its stockpile of plutonium into a nuclear weapon. But the odds of that happening are next to nil because the political climate in Japan remains inimical to weaponization.

The framework for solving a problem like Korea is to find a political outcome that also mitigates the technical threat—to force the technical reality to conform to the desired political one.

In concrete terms, this means developing alternative ways of getting international recognition that do not rely on nuclear weapons, maybe starting with symbolic but materially insignificant gestures, such as visits by and talks with top-level officials in exchange for cooperation on disarmament. In the medium and long term, it is necessary to demonstrate that there are prestige dividends to rejoining and complying the nonproliferation regime. It might also be necessary to satisfy the need to demonstrate technological prowess by cooperating on a number of showy technical projects, particularly nuclear ones.

Obviously, if any of this were easy, we still wouldn’t be talking about this. We’re not talking enough, however, about developing concrete ways to satisfy North Korea’s stated desires. Negotiations involve give and take, and unless there is something to fill the prestige void, any solution the Six Parties stumble upon isn’t likely to be sustainable. Gusterson, I think, would agree.

When we talk about the prestige or status implications of nuclear weapons, we’re talking about a political reality of which the nukes themselves are only a symbol. The problem is that nuclear weapons are too dangerous a charm to keep hanging around.

Brian

Filed under: Arms Control, Symbolism , North Korea