Thank you for your suggestion I refer to Mr Tan Kin Lian’s blog post, ‘Suggestions are not welcomed‘ (TOC, 18 Jun 2008). He makes some good points and reflects a common frustration among many people. As an ex-civil servant, I oso have a few thoughts and suggestions on how to improve one’s chances of a suggestion getting through: It helps to be clear. It is really helpful if a suggestion includes specific details like date / time / place, reference numbers, names. For example, if an insurance company gets a suggestion/complaint that ‘Your waiting time very long. You should not make me wait so long’, it’s not entirely clear if the person is referring to the time it takes to approve a policy, acknowledge a claim application or pay out on a claim. You email back to ask for clarification but he either neber read or then it get caught in his spam folder. Then you both think that you both never reply. Haiz. Please be accurate in your facts. This is a corollary of the above but it is very very important especially if you are going to take the Straits Times route advocated by Mr Tan. Like that gentleman who wrote to the Forum after he got fined because he didn’t tell MDA he didn’t have a TV anymore. He said that he wasn’t told he needed to inform MDA he got no more TV and they should do so. MDA replied saying: ‘We got tell you what‘ - he had been sent not one but two letters to inform him so and explaining why. Who ends up looking silly? My favourite is one from a few years back when a lady wrote to the Forum to comprain that the police had detained her boyfriend overnight and had refused to let him answer her worried phone calls simply because he was a Chinese national. The police replied to say that actually hor her boyfriend was picked up because causing a public disturbance and that he was so drunk that he konked off so they put him in a cell to sleep it off but no charges will be pressed. Oh and BTW he was with another woman. Thank you for your letter. The medium is important too. Phone calls are good for giving information about ‘IA, IA’ type of situations e.g. something is on fire, there is a vehicle blocking the road, the counter staff are MIA. They are rather less good for more complicated and long-term issues like procedural or policy change; emails or letters are better for the latter. The written medium also helps your clarity and factual accuracy instead of having to ‘Aiyah, what was my policy number har? *flip papers* I have it here somewhere… *drops files and papers* Aiyoh! Errr… Can you people check right now with just my NRIC number? Aah, nabeh! *chase paper blowing away*’ As highlighted above, emails can get caught in spam filters. And not just on one side. The reply to your suggestion may have been caught your spam filter. Please keep records. One big reason phone calls are less ideal for more complex issues is that they don’t leave a paper trail like the way an email or a dead-tree letter does. Such records help to lubricate civil service processes and keeps the issue alive as long as the suggester keeps their records too. (E.g. ‘I refer to my letter dated…’ vs. ‘You know har last time I said dunno what dunno when…’) Phone calls depend on memory, interpretation and one person’s word against another. (E.g. ‘On such a such a date, such a such a time, I spoke to Mr So and So about This and That’ vs. ‘I got tell you what!’) You have a much stronger case when you have the records to back you up. See, for example, NMP Mr Siew Kum Hong being meticulous and, as a result, how he looks relatively much more convincing than the PMO reply. Please send suggestions to the appropriate level. Mr Tan notes that ‘approaching the top people’ had gotten him results but I’m not an ex-CEO of a big important company so I’m not sure if that’s applicable to me too. Besides sending suggestions about counter staff procedures to the Minister and sending suggestions about national policy to the manager of the service counter staff is probably not the fastest way to work through the levels of management and the lines of responsibility. Please understand that procedures and policies are there for a reason. A procedure or policy may seem time-consuming or troublesome but it is often there for a fairly good reason. For example, someone write in: ‘Last time I claim car accident from NTUC Income, I must sign accident statement, other party must also sign. But that’s clearly unrealistic as, often - like in my case- the other party dowan to sign. I had a lot of ding dong chang before I had my claim processed. Therefore your procedure is stupid. Please change your procedure to reflect reality.’ Imagine you are a service quality centre personnel and you’re thinking: ‘Wah lao, but this is company policy.’ So you send the suggester back: ‘The Accident Statement helps us to establish the basic facts of the accident. It is not an admission of liability.’ The suggester then thinks: ‘Wah lao, non-reply. Suggestions are not welcomed.’ Please be civil. Believe or not, civil servants are people too. And they will more inclined to treat a suggestion more seriously if it is not filled with #@%^&*, sarcasm or innuendo. You may have a good reason to be angry with the organization and its policies but taking it out on individuals who have to read your suggestions won’t help you or your case. It’s kind of like those kungfu movies where the good guy and bad guy trash talk each other before their final big duel. Notice how the bad guy always lose his temper first and then goes on to lose the fight? In conclusion, please do your homework. It may sound leh cheh but spending civil servant time to answer your suggestion is also spending your tax money and it is not the best use of your tax money if civil servant got to scratch their head trying to figure out what you are trying to say or you are asking her to do Minister or Perm Sec change when she does not have Minister or Perm Sec pay or authority or you are scolding his father, mother and eighteen generations of ancestors. It helps the receiving side, it helps you and improves the working of a useful feedback mechanism for everyone. Absent with apologies Organizing largish social gatherings can be quite a pain in the arse. Which is why the frequency of such gatherings decrease dramatically as people work, marry and sprog (often in that order of magnitude in effect too). At least for arranging work meetings for the higher-ups, secretaries and personal assistants are a godsend. Not just for their bosses, but also for those (usually the meeting secretary or recording secretary) trying to arrange the meetings. One of the biggest problems in organizing gatherings is getting RSVPs. This has a huge logistical implications, e.g. the number of seats to book at a restaurant or the amount of food/drink to prepare for a home-hosted meal. A quick reply of ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ (the latter aka as the ‘absent with apologies’ category when recording minutes of meeting) is always greatly appreciated by an organizer. Even a ‘Maybe+’ (i.e. describing the probability and when to expect an update on Yes/No reply) helps. Getting no RSVP is hugely unhelpful. Sometimes they didn’t get the email or SMS. Some people are forgetful. Others are indecisive. A small minority cannot be bothered. That’s where the reminder comes in. And for fuck’s sake, I really hate it when people ask: ‘Who else is coming?’ as a factor in their yes/no decision-making. If everyone’s decision depended on everyone else’s decision, then nothing would ever get organized. More often than not, the most infuriating friends are the ones who never do any organizing themselves. Only as a last resort will I call to check. I don’t know about others but my civil service experience has accultured me to view phone calls as a rather bad thing. You only make or receive calls when there’s a matter at hand that can’t be safely communicated via email (which allows the receipent to respond more flexibly); it’s often not good news when the phone rings. What’s an organizer to do with non-repliers? Part of the process starts with the first instance of invitation in the first place. I suspect people tend to be less likely to reply to mass-mail-type invites with a lot of receipents - so many people, doesn’t make a difference if I reply or not. Does not compute, says I. Though, I suppose, the passing of time and group dynamics also create a self-selecting effect that reduces the size of a sample population anyway. Part of this selection process can winnow out persistent non-repliers since it takes too much energy to chase after these people all for the result of getting a non-reply or non-commital one. These type of kuan, in minutes of meetings, we used to record as ‘absent without apologies’. Bouquet of academic barbs Lucy Kellaway hits the nail on the head again with her piece on deadly office bouquets. A clear indication that academia isn’t as unworldly, as it is often depicted in the press, is the way the use of such euphemisms has spread insidiously across universities. Rare is the professor, even one with tenure, who will roar: ‘Where’s the beef?’ after a research student has presented a paper. I’ve heard stories about how Ken Booth used to do that but I’m never actually heard a firsthand account so it’s porbably apocryphal. Instead it’s much more common to hear things, in no particular order of ‘Oh-no-ness’, like: ‘Thank you for your presentation. It was really interesting.’ Other than how this precedes an inevitable BUT, in a British context, ‘really interesting’ usually means ‘completely barmy’. But, more often than not, if the comments are just based on your presentation (Are there really any faculty members who actually deign to read student papers circulated before seminars or conference panels?), then it’s probably more a issue of brushing up presentation skills. ‘You’re obviously more knowledgeable about the theoretical/methodological approach you’ve chosen.’ This tends to precede an attack on your theoretical framing or methodological approach. Or a criticism that the piece needs to be completely re-written to incorporate a case study or other empirical work. ‘This is an impressible amount of empirical work you’ve done…’ Often precedes an attack on either the theoretical framing (or lack of an explicit one). Or worse a fundamental challenge to the legitimacy of your sources (’Can you really take those interviews or achives at face value?’) or methods of inference (’How it is possible to prove this was what was really happening based on this?’). ‘I love your multidisciplinary approach to the subject matter…’ Often precedes the Tina Turner question: ‘What’s (insert academic discipline/department name) got to do, got to do, got to do with it?’ We all love multidisciplinary so long as our discipline remains the imperial one. ‘I’m sorry that this might sound obvious to you but could you help me clarify what your research question is?’ This basically means ‘I don’t think you know what you’re doing.’ This is the type of question that often reinforces the process of existential crisis that many grad students encounter - What do you mean? What do I mean? What does it mean? What does it really mean? Why I am here? What IS I it that I do? Of course this isn’t much of a list but you’re more than welcome to contribute your own examples of praise that ‘Look like the innocent flower, but be the serpent under’t.’ And this is not to say that the above comments can’t be useful or constructive. After all, at least those peers, colleagues and superiors do, at least, bother to turn up. Even if it is to say that they are ’somewhat concerned about the direction of the research project.’ Duplicitious duplexity I used to photocopy single-side (mainly book chapters) because the cost of photocopying double-sided was the same and was rather annoyed when one of my classmates intervened once to change my setting to double-sided. Bah, blonde Norwegian girls and their environmental fanaticism. X_x Another rationale was for single sided photocopying was that the blank side to scribble notes, comments, cross-referencing. But after shifting that to a much more searchable (and back-upable) electronic format, I’ve converted to default duplex mode. Mainly because the enormous stacks of paper are so weighty. Especially when you have to pack them into the luggage for a flight. Thank goodness for journal articles in PDF! Anti-freeriding collegiality One of the FT articles about Professor Andrew Hamilton’s appointment as Oxford’s Vice Chancellor was entitled ‘The very definition of collegiality‘. Not entirely sure if the journo defines collegiality as ‘cooperative interaction among colleagues’; the article mainly described how Hamilton was good at bringing people together, having a unifying vision - that’s leadership, not collegiality in my book. He’s praised for still doing cutting edge research. That’s professionalism, not collegiality. And it’s noted that he keeps a lean personal staff. Again, that’s good management, not collegiality. The article’s title did remind me of one of our grad student seminar groups which is chaired by an extremely formidable and sharp-tongued professor. Like any seminar group, attendance would tail off sharply after the first introductory meeting due to work commitments or sheer can’t-be-arsedness. Those with any remaining shred of collegiality would at least show up for the meeting before the one where they’re presenting and for the one afterwards. Big plus points for actually reading other’s papers and giving constructive feedback. When the above-mentioned minimum standards weren’t met, our prof didn’t hesitate to ask, in an almost incredulous tone of voice, the offending grad student: ‘And who might you be?’ Another student, who indignantly replied that she had to work during this time slot, got the comeback: ‘Well, you’re still a freerider.’ Ah, professorial meting out of justice is sweet indeed. Disabusing PKO Coverage from the BBC, Guardian and Economist have been balanced despite the sordid and sensational nature of the issue but a few important points still didn’t seem to be able to make it through the journalists or their editors. First, based on what I heard at the 5th RUSI annual conference on peacekeeping, Save The Children were at pains to emphasize that they were not tarnishing the image of peacekeepers by campaigning on this issue and said, quite rightly, that the abusers were the ones who were damaging the good work done by the majority of peacekeepers. This was a pretty good line against the standard ‘defence’ that abuse should be hushed up to reduce reputational risk and how it may deter countries from contributing troops. Second, as pointed out by Professor Francoise Hampson, it is true that military peacekeepers have complete immunity from local jurisdiction BUT this is because they are operating under their own national laws and that national authorities retain full jurisdiction over their own troops - most peacekeepers are, thus, operating under stricter laws than those of the local jurisdiction. Thus it is mainly a question of enforcement, not jurisdiction! Third, as raised by Major General (Ret) Patrick Cammaert (who also regaled us with stories from his experience commanding the military component of MONUC), it’s largely a question of leadership and command emphasis. If commanders show that they seriously mean zero tolerance of abuse, the officers and troops will adhere accordingly. He also argued that it is not unlikely that commanders who are lax about abuse will also be lax about getting their main jobs, defined by their humanitarian mandates, done. Much nodding of heads by the military attaches in the audience. Mistaken identity Years ago, I really did have an exam question like this: ‘Football is a continuation of war by other means.’ Discuss. Think it was for the nationalism course but the mishap at the Saudi-Lebanon game really takes the cake. Seems that all’s fair in love and football. Chinese frustration Listened to the first installment of the 2008 Reith Lectures by Prof Jonathan Spence yesterday morning on BBC4. See also an accompanying article. Podcast available via a frustratingly configured BBC webpage (some login/password thingamajig). It was a bit too short but I suppose I’m used to lectures lasting at least 45 mins. -_-;; The Q&A was mainly confined to the great and the good in the audience, including Paddy Ashdown, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor and Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams. I really felt for Spence as he tried his best to convey the subtleties of Confucian thought and its possible applicability (or not) in the present; he had a really difficult task as it seemed to me that quite a lot of the audience (1) knew very little about Chinese history and (2) were fixated on China as autocratic blah blah. While the BBC chair/moderator was skilled at drawing out implications behind questions so that Spence could address those more directly, she then nullified the positive impact of her interventions by cutting Spence short. No wonder many academics find journalists so frustrating to work with. It didn’t quite descend into China-bashing or even CCP-bashing but I just found myself thinking about how we were discussing many similar issues during an undergrad class. After the Alistair Iain Johnston-centric presentation about whether China was a revisionist or status quo power had finished, I invited the PRC girl in the group, normally a very quiet student, to be the discussant and she stunned everyone in the classroom by launching into a tirade about how she felt that the West was unfair in its depiction of China in the international system (’we’re not the ones running around invading or bombing other people’), international political economy (’you want our cheap goods but then you say it’s unfair trade practice’), civil and political rights (’Communist Party is not perfect but you also have Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, extraordinary rendition, detention without trial etc.’), economic and social rights (’We used to be so poor, we just want to have a better life, now we’ve followed Western development, you say we are driving up oil price, food price’). The words just kept tumbling out until her English vocabulary ran out and I had to start translating for her. Eventually she took a deep breath and stopped herself right on the 10 minute dot - which was the time limit I had imposed for discussants at the beginning of term. We’re still collating I was sent the following link, by a professor in our department, to an Onion article, ‘Beaver Overthinking Dam‘, after presenting a very drafty chapter at a seminar last term. =_=;; In a similar vein, our head of department recounted a scene from the movie Alien to the grad students during one of those departmental drinkies. Ripley goes to see Ash after the xenomorph has cut a swathe through the crew and they have the following exchange: Ripley: Ash. Any suggestions from you or Mother? Ash: No, we’re still collating. Ripley: [Laughing in disbelief] You’re what? You’re still collating? I find that hard to believe. Ash: What would you like me to do? Ripley: Just what you’ve been doing, Ash, nothing. The moral of the story from this prof was: ‘Write the damned thesis already before the monster gets you!!’ An American professor, from another department, summed it up best, during a case study methodology lecture: ‘The best thesis is a done thesis.’ Second preferences at the ballot box and the Great British Menu I was extolling the virtues of second preference voting to one of my seniors over lunch last week. Voters could mark down a first choice and a different second choice candidate. Second preference voting, as explained in the London Mayoral election leaflet, is: ‘If a candidate gets more than half of all first choice votes, he or she is the winner and is elected… If no candidate gets more than half the first choice voices, the two candidates with the most first choices into a second round and all other candidates are eliminated. The eliminated candidates’ ballot papers are reviewed and any second choice votes for the top two candidates are added to their scores. The candidate with the highest number of second first and second choice voices is the winner.’ This was marvelous because one could still vote for a candidate on principle, even if the candidate had no realistic chance of winning (countering prospect theory?). Better representation allowing less dominant parties and supporters to do better than they would otherwise might under a pure first past the post system. But there’s also insurance built into the system as the second choice could be exercised as a protest vote or used tactically against one of the top two candidates that you really *don’t* want. Interesting innovation in this year’s Great British Menu. Previously, the public could only choose from the top three (out of seven) picked by the judges. So, a bit like Singapore’s presidential pre-selection (except without the walkover). For this year, the judges’ power was diluted - their vote would account for 50% and the public vote would account for the other 50% in deciding the outcome. All seven thus had a chance even though the odds were heavily stacked against those who had fared poorly in the judges’ rankings. And the eventual results showed that the public vote didn’t change the eventual result that much. The judges’ first choices for the fish course (useful tie breaker for the joint first though), main course and desserts were all reaffirmed by public acclamation. The only change was for the starter where the public vote pushed the second choice, Jason Atherton’s BLT thingie, into first place, triumphing over Chris Horridge’s health food on a slate. And I was infinitely pleased with that. And I agreed heartily. I thought Jason Atherton’s dish was so much more humorous, creative, interesting, British etc etc. But also because I was also roundly put off by Chris Horridge’s sanctimonious preaching of his pretentious sounding ‘three dimensional cooking’, his constant negativity when commenting about his fellow chefs’ food (see the stark contrast with how the other chefs were all cheering Glynn Purnell on for the dessert course or Steven Terry’s genuine delight that Jason Atherton had beaten him for the main course because Steven sincerely felt that Jason had the better dish) and, most of all, the horrible sneering condescending attitude he had towards Elijah Carter during the South-West heat. A great triumph, in service of a second preference, of the power of heart and voice from the voting public. Just as how one should not shoot the messenger because of the message and the proof of the pudding is in the eating but I’m not a rational robot and rather not support a chef who was silly enough to be obnoxious on camera. (I’m not a Gordon Ramsay fan either even though I do respect his prefessional skill, drive, business acumen and his brutal honesty that he wouldn’t give a toss about what I think anyway since I’m not a paying customer, or even a potential one, of his.) Do ministers dream of electric road pricing? It’s common knowledge that a lack of sleep adversely affects our work performance and/or behaviour. But a Duke-NUS paper (via the BBC) warns us that a person adversely affected by sleep deprivation can appear normal. What makes this even more dangerous is that this sense of normality gives ‘a false sense of competency and security.’ [...] Harvard is evil and must be destroyed Not the university (though I wouldn’t mind a mysterious accident that magically disappears the KSG) or even the price gouging university press but the citation system. I really hate having to flipping to the back of a journal article and back again to continue reading (I really dislike endnotes too); it’s even more incongruous when a journal that uses the Harvard citation system then also incorporates footnotes. It’s even worse for book chapters in edited volumes that consolidate their entire, usually massive (does anyone seriously read all of the references they cite in their papers, articles or books? - this is the third bracket already, see how annoying and flow-disrupting it is??) bibliography right the end - big problem when trying to photocopy chapters. In short, I agree completely with Fred Halliday - the Harvard citation style is the work of the Devil and must be purged from Academialand for great justice. Long live Chicago! Michael Mann on American military and economic imperialisms Surprisingly, no podcast of this lecture, by the very famous Prof Michael Mann and chaired by the Fred Himself, on 2008-03-06. Main points of his lecture were laid out in his PPT slides (in the photos that follow, click to enlarge). Empire Defined. Pretty standard definition esp for those familiar with Wallerstein’s world systems theory or dependecia theory; significantly Mann doesn’t shy away from coercion - consequently not much of a sense of the Gramscian view of hegemony which is probably the most subtle. Types of Empire. I’ve been converted to ‘research with adjectives’ so it only seems appropriate to disaggregate a concept as big and nebulous as ‘empire’. Though slightly problematic when you try to distinguish between direct and indirect imperial rule. And if hegemony is a better word for indirect empire, why bother to use the word empire with all its classical connotations of direct rule with military force? US economic imperialism. You’ll get no argument from me about the structural power of the US in the economic sector (regardless of its declining relative power cf. Susan Strange) and its links with finance capital. Though I tend to wonder if ‘neo-liberal’ is the best description - though it involves regulatory liberalization (or dismemberment depending on your POV), it also seems deeply politically conservative rather than liberal or libertarian. US military imperialism. The triumph of bureaucratic (in the pejorative sense) politics? Or the triumph of politicos overcoming the institutional memory and safeguards of a Weberian ideal-type legal-rational bureaucracy (in the non-pejorative sense)? Iraq and Oil. IMHO Luttwak was closer to the mark on this though. US Bases 1991-2003. Good point that bases are often taken to be springboards for power projection but they may not be in the wrong places for the places that are the biggest flashpoints, also a cause of insecurity by their very presence (nb: notes on Kent Calder IISS seminar on Embattled Garrisons akan datang) and even a tempting target in of themselves. Not to forgot Kennedyesque imperial overstretch too. US Economic and Military Imperialisms. Concluded that the economic works quite well but not the military; furthermore, the two conflict with each other. Interesting conclusion though not the best lecture I’ve heard. Felt a bit going off the rails when he started talking about a cabal which seemed to ignore how the checks and balances of the US system with the armed services, intel services, Supreme Court, both Houses of Congress steadily pushing back against the neo-cons especially since Nov 2006. Didn’t stay for the Q&A but heard from another attendee that I didn’t miss much. Paul Kennedy on the Nuts and Bolts of Empire Podcast is fine and all but hard to refer to specific points without a transcript. Some late laaate notes, for my own future reference, of Prof Kennedy’s 26 Feb 2008 talk, slide numbers with reference to the PPT (in PDF). Humorous introduction, as expected, by Chris Coker. Mostly about the Roman, Spanish and British empires with some comments about possible US over-stretch. Systems of support – grow organically or planned from early on? When they failed – old age, metal fatigue, over-stretch exhaustion – lack of energy, too many rivals? Slide 4 – Pax Romana lines of communications [SLOC] Intelligent wiring system – how legion, corn and grain and wheat moved from N Afr, olives and oranges from Spain, moved along safe lines, not extreme distances Slide 5 – Where are the legions? Commercial and transport map – where the legions were (parts of the frontier with the greatest threats – Rhine Valley Germanic threats; Danube – Dacia; E Med – Persians) White house not the only institution to have problems with the Iranians LOL none were more than nine marching days away from the next, if attack by Ger at Koln, hold – imperial messenger system, fresh horses, reinforcement network; society far better organized than any other – other societies aghast, how to imitate, catch up? Slide 6 – Trajan’s column Here’s the guys who made it happened, who built the roads, bridges, roads. Fully professional roman legionaires – hack the timber, carrying the logs, masons to get the stone in order, build own log sys cuz don’t trust anyone else, want roads and bridges to last a long time – for sons and grandsons in the legions. Slide 7 Why did Rome fall? Running out of internal energy. Vs barbarian, demographic fall-off. Luttwak – harbinger – mid 3th C – attacks on many fronts, managed to beat them off – hard to sustain – log as underpinnings – why it lasted so long. Slide 8 Imperial spain 16-17th C (paper 5 for A-level history) Revolt of the Netherlands – taxation 80 years war – Portugal send via English channel but En and Dutch navies too dangerous Army from Castile, trained in Madrid, to Barcelona, Genoa, Milan, down the Rhine Geoffrey Parker; John Elliott – how was it possible for Sp to ss along this road for year after year, 80 years; Parker applied for a travel grant and set off, walked to Barcelona – to Amsterdam. Learn all the relevant languages to study this. A superb system. Slide 9 Not just European based, but also international trading network. Items of trade: slaves, spice, silver Hung together very well, well-trained army, good comms sys, large inflow of funds, can keep yourself going, what could stop you? Making too many enemies – not a good trick. Because of relg wars, need to defend its trade, constant threat from the Turks and their allies in Algeria – had to be engaged on many directions Slide 10 - Philip II [OMG, memories of Paper V] 1577 – one year of peace Going to war stronger and stronger towards end of his reign. Struggled on, reinvent themselves under Olivares. Reorg, recruit, fairly sudden falling apart Slide 11 – Spanish collapse On many fronts over a short period of time Trans-oceanic possession but continental Europe Slide 12 – British Empire Mercator proj – China bigger than US ¼ of territorial extent Slide 13 – Imperial cable communication Grew organically, campaign after campaign, another road, another fortification Acquired an empire in a fit of absent-mindedness Committee of Imperial Defence – a lot of coaling ports Singapore 1819, HK 1842 Not particularly random, lots of places that the British gave back after Wanted the strategic control points Maritime supremacy, safe ports for convoys to shelter, naval supplies of canvas, hemp, timber Lines, life blood of an empire, 7 years war Systematizated Coal – steam – a significant advantage Domestic adv – Saudi Arabia of 19th C – South Wales, special anthracite coal – higher kinetic energy than anywhere in the world, by 1875, astonishing system of small colliers, Swansea, Cardiff all over the world, carried trade items as ballast back, fueling globalized trading sys. Open during peacetime, closed off to others in wartime. Made everyone else truly dependent. Blurb on the back cover of Martin Van Creveld’s Supplying War (from who?) about disabusing the notions of arm chair strategists who move armies with a stroke of a pen. Move main fleet to singapore without thinking of how it gets there; Tirpitz – bemoaning – Boxer uprising – 8 battleships, coaled – Dover, Gibraltar, Malta, Aden, Sg, HK – peacetime. War – limitations. Telegraphs bring us all together. By the time of Eastern crisis of 1878, Russian advantage. French cruiser squadrons. Undersea cables adv if have exclusivity. Cable communications sub-committee of the CID. Unreliable countries – extra lines around them. Pacific cable. WWI – announcement – commanders in HK had it British C&W company – greatest sustained communicator to Br Emp for 60-70 years, special privileges, lay cables, repair, can snip. Others try to catch up. Cut D, radio comms – but less secure. Zimmerman telegraph. By end of WWI, US obsessed by dependence on old imperial power. radio, ciphers, long distance Pan-am flight network. [Lots of familiar names with imperial links like Cable and Wireless but now gone...] Slide 14 HMS Hood, HMS Barham Harbour, cables, wireless, air fields in British hands Lasted through Freetown, Aden, Tricomale (Sri Lanka) – but also went pretty fast. Over-stretch. Bankrupted by war. Rise of nationalist sentiment. Sheer incapacity to pay for this war. Slide 15 Halfway or three quarters way through story of the American empire? How to capture cartographically US in its meridian moment? Nuclear propulsion (fuel rods 2 years b4 need replacing) - Aircraft carriers [and their escort fleets] Not as dependent on land ports. Kitty Hawk in Yokosuka, went immediately to Persian Gulf in 6 days after 9/11. Forward landing base for aircraft en route to attack Taliban. World-wide power projection. Not just at sea. Slide 16 Just the US Army. (US Marines – larger than whole British armed forces) Many are small military advisor groups, anti-drug, anti-insurgency but very extensive, highly expensive overseas deployments. With the lessons of Rome, Spain, British… A lot nuts and bolts – hard weapons systems Not in the steel, tungsten, silicon Philip II, IV problem – less to do with recruit troops than becoming fiscally, financially less strong, less supported. Slide 17 Trends that can be reversed, doesn’t have to go downwards only. A trend is a trend is a trend is a trend, when will it end? Slide 18 Not a strong fiscal position that a great world power should have. When laissez faire economists of the Chicago school, Ch Kr Jp will always buy our dollars, no problems. I can’t help you. Philip, we can always keep borrowing from the Genoa, Leon bankers. Borrow without doing anything fiscally. [The only point that I quibble with Kennedy about. Situation is very different from borrowing from Genoa or Leon bankers because of US structural power that defines the rules of the game, stability of the hegemon intimately tied to the fortunes of the others in the system e.g. Chinese dilemma over accumulating US dollar reserves - USD value drop but if switch to EUR would hurt existing holdings.] British 17th C- 1814 can win all its coalition wars e.g. against France x4 ppln, Won because extraordinarily strong and responsible fiscal system. Tax must go through Commons. No forced loans. Scurtiny… which taxes will pay for frigates? Nothing will for free. British fiscal probity that even enemy bankers wanted to loan to the British Treasury, always will get your money back, no chance of getting money back from French and Spanish Bourbons. Excess spending, heavy trade – can be reversed by 10 years of responsible Leaders with some guts and who can explain things. But the world continues to move. Slide 19 BRICs – Brazil, Russia, India, China Long terms shifts in global production balance will have Slide 20 Asymmetric warfare – new challenges Hurt American trade, credit – tourists, airports, wherever they can. Non-state challenge. Difficult to deal with. Slide 21 China –develop weapons systems that drive USN nuts. Asymmetric. 500 mile low skimming missile. Russian fighters pulled apart, improvements put in, out they go. Sovremenny class cruisers. Ultra quiet diesel submarines – get a wrapping around. Can’t hear them, can’t pick them up. If want long innings of roman, Spanish, British empire, think more seriously about financial, logistic underpinnings. No place in the world that is not of interest. Slide 22 US 4.6% of world population, very productive nation since Industrial Revolution 21%, Congress ability to lie back when the Pentagon asks for more money, 49% of global defence spending. How long can it keep this up? Convergence is coming, sooner or later, from the other direction. Let’s meet in about 145 years time and see if I’m right. Questions. Q: Coker – soft power? Useful to prolong the life of these empires? A: Many intangible, less easier to measure. Latin language. [Wherever have the Romans done for us? Life of Bryan.] Legions not just killing machines. Acts of collaboration. Looking for sub-consuls. Collaborators with non-Quisling connotations. People who find beneficial to be in this system, protected in this system. Make empire more appealing than third party. More likely to gain allies, emulation. Cultural impacts of British Empire – language, obsession with cricket. Caution is the assumption that some imperialists, Lord Curzon to Donald Rumsfeld, that this attractiveness would last forever and unquestioned. But when it isn’t earned, when preach one thing, practice another. US language, software but not always count in the US’s favour. Over the past seven years, global opinion polls, significant diminishing of American soft power. Q: Britain – weary titan. Cope with many challenges. Alliances, appease others. Orientate towards D. US – Boer war, Imperial Germany. What are the lessons? A: Not a good comparison – small island versus a continental power. Physicality, size. US has massive resources. Q is can those resources be more cleverly deployed, to keep position at the top. Can be done using tools of diplomacy, alliances? Wonderfully used after WW2 – NATO, Marshall Plan. And not panicking either. ‘The Chinese are coming.’ Thinking about our weaknesses and other strengths but not the other way around. Q: BRICs forecast. A: If others increase GDP and increase share of defence spending. Q: EU an empire? Prospects for survival? A: No. But BRICs – D, Sp, Fr, UK etc. – treated separately. A federation of polities, compromises, different traditions, prosperous if it doesn’t do stupid things, more attractive to countries on its periphery. Significant role in world politics, not traditional empire role. Q: Desirability of continuation of American empire? Welcome its decline? A: Empire or not – leave to theological. Keep the position it has now, Slow steady amicable decline or resist shifts in global weights. Happier with successor empire, most people not happy with the contenders, if a single nation. We can’t just keep electing administrations that are stupid and offensive. Sudden and cataclysmic would not be good, but recognition by Am leaders of statecraft, different arenas for American leaders to Economic and trading levels. Regenerating international institutions. Keep house in order, fiscal position. Would keep it going. Challenge of management of long term relative decline. All the adjectives – management, long term, relative and not jump to decline. Q: Demographic trends? Mass migration? A: When Rome was growing, its population was growing? Ditto Spain, Britain. Productivity to employ population, a productive strength. Military – able to recruit – large numbers of farm boys from Iowa, young aristocrats from Castile. Putin good poker player but loss of the Russian male population [Emmanuel Todd]. Ukraine, Japan, Italy [Singapore?]. Polish plumbers 2 millions. UK, Netherlands. US, Canada, Australia. Most favourable demographic profile and future. Some from emigration. US sheer size makes it absorbable. If a border town in the South, social provision… but in the macro sense, the US’s population projection is one of the strongest elements in this odd mix of weaknesses and strengths. Q: Comparison between soft power and hard? Who possess most soft power? A: Soft power most useful in peaceful circumstances, extent of utility rather shrinks in hostile circumstances. For most people most of the time but not for all people, all of the time. Still a need for defence. Hard power is an insurance policy. 2.5% GDP spend on defence, equivalent on fire and flood insurance. Don’t need aircraft carriers but useful if something chronic happened. Great powers need hard power. Not much for a new president with skill, nuance to recover high soft power ranking for the republic. However economic trends, asymmetric threat not so easily reversible with sensible soft power policies. Q: National Security Strategy advance democracy, human rights worldwide… US develop international society, international institutions? A: Sounds nice on paper, difficult to accomplish in some parts of the world, not always used correct measures, support for cheery picking, hypocritical. Criticism from the Henry Kissinger folks, unwise to go around with such a statement. Meal, clean water, roads… Looking for steady transformation of societies could become more and more allies, friendly. Venom between realists and neo-cons. Very gratifying. LOL A great talk, very engaging Q&A. Kennedy real charming, arguments nuanced - more so than Rise and Fall of the Great Powers IMHO! American hawk, black hawk, black black hearts Sun Bin has an interesting retortto Kaplan’s piece on intervening in Myanmar (archived copy at Coming Anarchy) which emphasizes the ‘Ok, now what?’ and potential risks of instability after the initial intervention. Not to mention the pottery barn rule. What would William Slim say? Data is reminded of Black Hawk Down by Andrew Sullivan. There just *has* *got* to be someone who has already published on how the BHD narrative plays out in deliberations in American foreign policy making, anyone knows? On twasher’s second post comparing two humanitarianisms, I’d just like to add that while Myanmar has oil, it just doesn’t have enough to warrant the reaction encapsulated by the opening clip of Have I Got News for You. *toothy grin* *thumbs up* Her first post on how the regime survival imperative trumps all else - QED on international security not equal state security not equal regime security not equal individual security. She also points to an interesting puzzle which might be fun to irritate my normative theory colleagues with: killing own citizens with soldiers is a more obvious breach of human rights than failing in opening the country to humanitarian workers - why, then, does the latter feel even more sickening and has prompted the Kaplan-type talk of intervention that we didn’t really see much of when the monks and their supporters got crushed? Induction and attribution To say that my abstract reasoning abilities are poor would be an understatement. Perhaps it has something to do with finding it hard to remember basic definitions such as the difference between deductive analysis (’In empirical social science, the use of theories and hypotheses to make empirical predictions, which are then routinely tested against data.’ Henry E. Brady and David Collier (eds), Rethinking Social Inquiry: Diverse Tools, Shared Standards (2004), 284) and inductive analysis (’A method that employs data about specific cases to research more general conclusions.’ RSI, 291) - incidentally I also have problems distinguishing between left and right and usually have to wiggle the appropriate little finger to confirm it to myself. Generally I find it a lot easier to remember stuff when it’s pegged to a specific example. As such, I’ve been very pleased to have come across the black swan example as a mnemonic for the problem of induction in causal inference which was put across most pithy in Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and Markets and supremacy of Popperian falsification: asserting that all swans are white based on four thousand observations of white swans was falsified by the discovery of the Cygnus atratus in Australia. And middle range theory to the rescue again, research with adjectives FTW - all non-Australian swans are white. ;) While survivorship bias is probably the most important bias Taleb talks about, my favourite is attribution bias (’You attribute your successes to skills, but your failures to randomness.’). This adds an accent to the assertion that humans have an innate need to exercise agency / attribute agency to their own actions / be recognized as rational, responsible agents etc etc. - but that the agency exercised is more often associated with success rather than failure? The main quibble that I have with Fooled By Randomness is that while it is true that it’s quite implausible for the President or the Chairman of the Federal Reserve to claim credit for economic windfalls AND disclaim responsibility for economic woes, I’d hesitate to shift too much from agency to contingency. Just as Copenhagen school securitization theory reminds us, the power of these high office holders’ speech acts can decisively shape outcomes in the social world through their illocutionary force (though I think the perlocutionary aspect is somewhat neglected): the announcement of a new policy (tax refund or interest rate cut) may not directly cause things to turn around but if a sufficient aggregate of persons and organizations buy into the attributions of the President’s or Fed Chairman’s agency (in good and bad results), then the adjustment of their behaviour triggered by that announcement buoyed on that belief could cause a turnaround. The intersubjective element of Keynes’ animal spirits or that mysterious phenomenon known as market sentiment? Charles Tilly interview videos 5-8 New issues in historical sociology: Interesting portrayals of the actuality of grad students being worker bees who add just a small amount to a much much larger collective but that’s ain’t gonna get them motivated about their research - the advisor/supervisor has a role to play in encouraging a sense of ownership and pride in the student (confluence of pastoral and intellectual mentorship imho). Because most grad students are, by their second year at the latest, already painfully aware of the very limited contribution (if any) of their work to the vast sum of human knowledge. Social science ‘paradigm’: Music to the ears of the historical institutionalists on contingency in processes and mechanisms. Social science intervening the subject matters they study by research or speech. ‘The tyranny of the current administration’ LOL Methological localism - another name for typological theory aka middle range theory (George and Bennett)? Individualism and cognitive science: ‘I’d begin with the transaction… the material of social processes is not individual cognitions… we form each other in transactions… frequently we don’t know how the transaction is going to end until we watch the other respond… the individual is the accumulation of the residue of numerous transactions…’ The importance of polemics (and rhetoric?) in communicating research. Big questions: Ontology: What’s the object of study in the social science/world? Epistemology: What’s a good body of representation of the social? ‘The social is people interacting and the products of that interaction… if you’re going to do soc sci, you’ll have to figure out what a person is… what an interaction is… You absolutely have to have a way of observing the interactions… have to be able to specify the persons you’re talking about, that’s not so easy… having specified a set of persons, then you have to be able to observe the interactions, transactions… recurrent features of those transactions and start working on the mechanisms that occur within those transactions.’ Interviewer: ‘This is how to defeat a brainless structuralism.’ LOLOLOL. Enviromental, cognitive and interpersonal transactions. Sociology ‘in some trouble, a little worse right now: We’re still recovering from the onslaught of skepticism that arose from postmodernist thinking and various forms of cultural reductionism… I love philosophical discussions… but I think too much of the debate in sociology today is unconsciousness philosophical disagreement, it’s disagreement about ontology and epistemology rather than about explanation. And I don’t think that’s such a great position to be in.’ Good grief, sounds like IR is in big trouble and has been in big trouble for a while. -_-;; Anyhow really really glad to have listened to the videos. It’s helped to crystallized a lot of the readings and wanderings about metholodogy, historical sociology. Charles Tilly interview videos 1-4 The great and late Charles Tilly (via Duck of Minerva) interviewed and recorded in 8 videos. Well known by many students of IR (who have probably never even read a single book or article by Tilly) for the pithy quote: ‘War makes the state and the state makes war.’ Interview origins, Vendee 1: process itself rather than comparative statics - summing up Emirbayer AJS, Vol.103 No.1, 1997 (PDF) in one sentence? LOL Vendee 2: Regrets over introducing the term ‘political disturbances’. Ah the ‘happy’ problems of the brilliant and the influential. Definite survivorship bias here; lots of academics who actively want to introduce new terms into debates but (thankfully?) don’t succeed. Reminded me how Jack Snyder coming up with and then disowning the term/concept of ’strategic culture’ which has accreted a huge literature around it since his RAND monograph. Causal mechanisms: ‘My first book refuted my doctoral dissertation.’ The third leg of mechanisms in addition to processes, statics; recalling Harrison White on: ‘I’ve never had a good idea that wasn’t already abroad in my network.’ Seek not laws of (insert social phenomena) but recurrent mechanisms e.g. tension between two nodes of coercion in revolutions. Concepts and state formation: It’s been said (Confucius about Yan Hui’s death?) that a great teacher is known by great students he produced: so R Bin Wong, whose China Transformed is a Tillyian! Excellent jibe about how theories of state formation had been formulated and accepted without any basis in the historical record. Definitely something that most IR scholarship can relate to. LOL On teleology in social science, I think the T word has been unfairly used. As I understand it, teleology doesn’t mean that the acorn *must* become an oak tree but that it has the *potential* to grow into an oak tree. Of course humans aren’t acorns that had have predetermined nature but the Weberian ambition, the modern state-building project and the state system seems to have become universalized (largely by co-option of local elites into the core of the core states?) that, at this point, I defer to the sociological institutionalists (John W. Meyer et al). Tough on the BNP, tough on the causes of the BNP Despite the novelty of actually being able to cast a ballot paper here in London (always walkover in Singapore), I wasn’t motivated to vote in the 1st May Mayoral and London Assembly elections. Mainly because I wasn’t keen on either Ken or Boris and Brian Paddick didn’t stand a chance. Bleah. But I duly trooped out to my local polling station in the end at the urging of the ULU Student Union to Stop the BNP. Alas the BNP did manage to cross the 5% threshold and gained a seat allocated under proportional representation. There was talk of shunning the BNP assembly member but this is a classic case of the liberal dilemma, how far should libertarians extend liberal treatment to anti-liberals, especially who have some form of democratic mandate? (Institutional conflict between democratic and liberal principle) The following letter in today’s thelondonpaper (yes yes I know, Murdoch paper but hey it’s free!) summed up the best way forward IMHO: BNP got voted in In response to your story “Angry protests as BNP takes seat at City Hall” (Friday): indeed it is a sad day when the British National Party has a democratically elected representative in the London Assembly. However, anti-fascist activists and the rest of us should direct our anger on this issue towards the three main political parties for their failure to address the issue of mass immigration, which the vast majority of the population is very concerned about, and which is the fundamental reason for the electoral success of the extremist BNP. The repeated protests against Richard Barnbrook, the new BNP member of the London Assembly, are missing the point. Joseph, NW2 Being a foreigner (albeit a Commonwealth one) who pays national insurance and taxes from my miserable TA salary), it puts a whole different perspective to my instinctive agreement to the cry that Singaporeans should be given priority for jobs, housing, medical treatment. And as a member of an ethnic minority here in the UK, I’ve had to rethink my ‘it’s just good business’ thought in response to unhappiness about preference given to Chinese-speakers in job ads. (Conflict between logics of belonging [citizenship] and welcoming [weren't most of our ancestors immigrants too?]) Overcoming Barriers to Welfare Exit FT Weekend article (18 Apr 2007), ‘On Your Bike’ by Richard Tomkins offered a surprisingly nuanced, almost anthropological-thick description look at incapacity benefit; I’ll have to take part all those things that I said about the FT being market fundamentalist and in the pockets of the top hats. First, the increase in people on incapacity benefit was partly due to the drive to reduce the number of unemployment benefits claimants. Classic J.C. Scott type of situation where quantitative targets in one area create problems in another. It remains to see how the drive to reduce claimants on incapacity benefit will blowback in other areas. Second, tightening up the criteria for claiming incapacity benefit actually discouraged people to go off it since it was so hard to get it in the first place: ‘Going back to work introduces uncertainty, especially for people who are afraid of suffering a fresh bout of illness, losing their jobs and having to go through all the hoops to get back on to benefit again.’ (p.20) Applicable to means testing? Corollary: In my own very limited experience with social work in Sg and pastoral duties with my undergrad students here in London, the most serious cases (and the ones who really need the most help) often come in a package all tightly bundled together like a Gordian knot: health (physical and mental), family (abuse, estrangement, divorce, imprisonment), unemployment (skills, experience, the longer the more difficult), sheer bad luck (traffic accident, death in the family, being swindled by a relative/friend) etc etc. Third, there were some good stories about civil society NGOs (supported with state funds) like the Acumen Development Trust that helped a former bank clerk to come off incapacity benefit and set up a bakery business. Or Action Team for Jobs helping a former builder to help other unemployed people as a community engagement officer. There’s an argument for centralization but these stories suggest to me that a devolved model may work better; state agencies can set the parameters and check on VFM/progress but leave the implementation details to the people and organizations on the ground but the crucial element is these civil society NGOs are genuinely independent, existing prior to state schemes rather than the result of them. Differing securitizations of male and female singleness Demography is not destiny but it has a heavy hand in some of the most challenging socio-political problems throughout history such as pensions, health care and even existential security. Amid declining fertility in some states, politicians have warned that if women don’t give birth to enough children, then a nation may shrink or even disappear. This problematization itself can, of course, be problematized. And the levels of analysis (individual versus social/state) can conflict. As can the different dynamics of modern capitalist societies (traditional family versus liberal economics) throw up seemingly intractable incompatibilities. But it’s striking how the ‘problem’ of female singleness is very much grounded in demography and social policy while male singleness (such as China’s gender imbalance) has been seen by some (in the media but not sure about academic writing?) as a precursor or even direct cause of future social instability or even inter-state conflict. Somehow I don’t think so because of atomization often reduces/confines the issue to a personal level and the market analogy encourages a deficit explanation, much like the way liberal economics tends to explain structural unemployment through individual skill deficits. But the differing securitizations still conform to a ‘women as child bearers/carers’ and men as ‘warriors/soldiers’ stereotype. P.S. In any case, it seems both sexes took part in Black Day event, perhaps even together. Stop-loss and resocialized convicts From the Big Issue’s Apr 21-27, 2008 (p.16) review of Kimberly Pierce’s Stop-Loss where the main character, played by Ryan Phillippe, goes AWOL after being stop-lossed: As Pierce was working on a storyline about a ‘band of brothers’ returning the war, she received a message from a soldier in Iraq asking if she had heard of a policy called stop-loss. She hadn’t. He said it was a ‘backdoor draft’, that the government was ‘…involuntarily extending the tours of soldiers who have already fulfilled their contract, and were recycling the guys who should be getting out. He was so pissed off,’ remembers Pierce, ‘because his friend, who he’d been in combat with, was stop-lossed, and should have been getting out, but was going on to a third tour.’ …So this was not a guy who was going to take to the street. He was not a political activist. But the minute you screw his buddy, he’s going to get political. Back in the ancient times when I was a conscript, I asked my CO (I was his runner for the division exercise) if people like me could be seriously expected to go out and kill other people; his reply was that the moment any of my buddies are injured or killed, I’ll be able to do so. Thankfully I’ve never had to find out if he was right. It’ll be interesting to know how many soldiers are stop-lossed; the numbers of fresh recruits (not including National Guardsmen) and the retention percentage among troops not being stop-lossed. (Retention being a perpetual problem in the private sector.) Aside from the numbers, there’s also the qualitative factor that these troops will have combat experience. In addition, how many have gone AWOL or committed offences as a result of being stop-lossed. On a tangential note, the news that 861 waivers were given for convicted felons to serve in the US armed services is certainly sensational even though it’s a small part of total recruitment for Sep 2006-7. It led to wonder if, historically, there were any societies that actively recruited convicted criminals or used military service as a penal sentence? In the realm of game sci-fi/fantasy, the Terran Marines (Firefox hangs on this site for some reason…) of Starcraft spring to mind though that universe has the benefits of advanced neural and chemical manipulation to control memories, attitudes and behaviours. Air Force x French PoMo x COIN = Bad? Matt Matthews’ Combat Studies Institute publication Occasional Paper 26: We Were Caught Unprepared: The 2006 Hezbollah-Israeli War (PDF) (via Dr David Betz at Kings of War) has provided a lot of food for thought. But after mulling over the 100+ pages over the past few days, I’m still having a severe case of indigestion. It’s beautifully written, immaculately researched and seems to make sense, a lot of sense, but I can’t help but have this nagging feeling that some of its implied lessons don’t quite add up. One of my friends told me a story from 4-5 years back, about how he sat down to lunch with two visiting US officers, one from the US Army and another from the USAF, and the topic turned to what they saw as the greatest threat. The two US servicemen glanced at each other and then, in unison, said: ‘The Navy.’ I’ve always had a soft spot for the theory of bureaucratic politics after reading Essence of Decision but I still continue to be surprised by the vehemence of inter-service rivalry in armed forces around the world; it might just be my imagination but Matthews’ paper is seething with it. From the USAF to the IAF to the IDF. Matthews traces how Effects Based Operations (EBO) doctrine (from USAF theorist John A. Warden via Network Centric Warfare - which incidentally orginated from VADM Cebrowski and former USAF officer Garstka) was influenced and was adapted by BG Shimon Naveh (excerpts of Matthews’ interview at the Small Wars Journal) into Strategic Operational Design (SOD - Brits would find this acronym erm unfortunate) and then championed by former IAF and IDF commander, LG Dan Halutz. But apparently LG Halutz never properly understood these concepts. It’d be interesting to see, if we could, the internal documents regarding the incorporation of SOD into IDF doctrine - specifically if there were reservations from the army, navy or Naveh’s OTRI. Matthews does not attack the origins, adaptation or assimilation of the concepts themselves but there seems to be an implication that it was doomed from the start that air force doctrine so heavily influenced joint and army doctrine. Moral of the story: Never let an Air Force man get their hands of writing Army doctrine? Transgressing the boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of War. Matthews argues that: ‘For the IDF, the major problem with SOD was the new terminology and methodology.’ (p.25) And he blames the extensive use of the jargon of French post-modern philosophy that is not suitable for clarity of command but no one would point out that the emperor was naked for fear of appearing to be not intelligent enough to understand it. A flippant rejoinder would be that the jargon of the military is perplexing to many people, including some military personnel. And it is arguable that military culture also has strong strains of pragmatism and anti-intellectualism. Why weren’t these more apparent? Matthews acknowledges that SOD was not supposed to be used at the tactical level; more detailed empirical research (with an anthropological fine tooth comb?) on this unintended consequence could probably be done on how and why this happened nonetheless. Blaming French post-modernist language seems to be a much too easy target; where were the workarounds on the ground that accrete in the wake of the exercise of bureaucratic and legal-rational power that we see from the work of J.C. Scott and Gary Klein? COIN impoverishment. Matthews also points the finger at how concentrating on COIN duties against the Palestinians had diminished the conventional warfighting capabilities of the IDF, particularly the reservist tankees, in terms of training, logistics and spirit. This is a fair point and has very serious implications if the lessons are generalizable to professional soldiering too. If there is a necessary trade off between conventional and COIN, then to maintain capability across the spectrum, you’d probably have to create separate estab/ORBAT for conventional and COIN duties. The finger seems to be pointed at Halutz for not moving beyond the air campaign (ICE BREAKER) into a full scale land campaign (MEY MAROM). But given the above mentioned deficiencies, wouldn’t it have been a bigger disaster if MEY MAROM was activated? The way the report framed it was that COIN reduces conventional warfighting capability through its impact on training, SOPs, doctrine etc. We still need conventional warfighting capability. Therefore COIN is bad. But it doesn’t say anything about COIN also being the main mission in Iraq and Afghanistan, it’s something the US Army needs to do well in. As a result, my own reading of this report sees it as an indication of the continued strength of inter-service rivalry in the US armed forces and the continued resistance against COIN within the US Army itself - something also noted in Dr David Ucko’s ORBIS (V52 N2) piece, ‘Innovation or Inertia: The U.S. Military and the Learning of Counterinsurgency’ (esp pp.297-302). Notes on the War on the Alien Squirrel I often see squirrels running past my window sill; I’ve even seen a pair of them mating on said sill. But they scampered before I could get my camera out. Alsa no squirrel porn for the blog. However they can be a real nuisance when they dig up my potted plants to bury their nuts. My lavender seedlings were decimated by one such happy tree friend. I’m certainly not the only gardener for whom squirrels have caused some grief; the Royal Horticultural Society has advice - not that surprising that no poisons are approved by anti-squirrel use but what was surprising was that it is actually illegal to release a trapped grey squirrel because it is a ‘non-indigenous’ species - they are actually Americans! So at what point does a species make the transition to indigeneity? At least for people in Britain, jus soli takes care of this issue, in terms of citizenship, after a generation. I suppose people wouldn’t be up in arms against the greys if they weren’t seen to be responsible for pushing the reds further and further up north, out-competing the native red squirrel as well as carrying a disease that is deadly to them; the harm principle? Personally I find the reds with their pointy ears and bright coats so much more cuter (or maybe because I’ve only seen them on the telly while I’ve seen the greys up close?) Environmental campaigns are often marketed with the use of cute mascot animal but the case of the red versus the grey seems to have a streak of nativism (though xenophobia is too strong a word) in it. Ditto the campaign against food miles which contradicts the campaign for fair trade. Speaking of political economy, some have tried to harness the power of capitalism against the greys by advocating their use in more recipes. Prof Chris Betram reports that their flavour is, apparently, like a Malbec: ‘Dark, intense, a bit like venison, with hints of chocolate’ I do wonder though - were reds used in pies and stews prior to the 19th C introduction of the greys? In any case, compared to the greys, the black squirrel seems to pose a much greater potential menance. Don’t mess with the Russians! [Add: OH SHI-] Unread books Two thoughts arising from Gideon Rachman’s post on books he hasn’t read - Professor Kishore Mahbubani’s second book and the enabling conditions for the effective use of an anti-library. Firstly, he mentions whether he should read The New Asian Hemisphere; I’m wondering the same thing too. I went to hear Mahbubani at the LSE at the beginning of the month and, if the talk was a good indication of the contents of the book, it seems to reiterate many of the basic points made in his second book, Beyond The Age of Innocence; even some of the anecdotes he used were the same… Mahbubani is definitely a provocative and interesting writer but lots of things grate such as the highly selective use of personal anecdotes to ‘prove’ he is correct in diagnosing broad trends, non-citation of academic work that some of his ideas have parallels with (such Michael O’Hanlon’s idea of the US military’s command of the global commons which he describes as ‘rarely mentioned or recognized’ p.140 or John G. Ikenberry’s ideas on how to manage American power) or worse - ignoring prominent scholarship that contradicts his ideas (e.g. how he dismisses America as an empire on the grounds that an empire must be based on military conquest, pp.10-11, without a single specific citation), complete lack of conceptual clarity in the use of key terms like ‘pragmatism’, no explicit acknowledgment that his ideas are highly political in the way they are aimed at defending the PAP’s style of government. Second, piles of unread books and journals is a familiar problem. And Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s story about Umberto Eco’s anti-library (via zenpundit) is a good lateral way to think about what a library is for. But at the same time, people like Eco and Taleb can effectively use anti-libraries because they are well read in the first place and, thus, can quickly contextualize new material and decide its relevance. My head of department calls this the ability to ‘gut a book’, drawing out the key ideas, the useful bits and its significance to other ideas and arguments. Being well read (knowledge) and well versed in the various reading techniques (e.g. exploratory, dedicated, targeted approaches) is a prerequisite for this. Blue on blue The British military term for friendly fire springs to mind each time the Clinton and Obama camps take a piece out of each other. Another image that comes to mind is this remarkable find in the Florida Everglades. Though I am deeply ambivalent about both of them (and McCain), it is absolutely fascinating to see how many people around me, people who really should have more sense, get carried away by the whole thing. I do confess to being envious at their ability to be inspired and their capacity for hope but, for me, history suggests that primaries and election campaigns are not reliable indicators of what will happen once a candidate in government. There’s domestic pressures that’s the meat and potatoes pol sci. And international pressures a la neoclassical Realism (not structural neorealism - as Waltz repeatedly reminds us, it’s supposed to be a theory of international politics, not a theory of foreign policy). And contingency. As Harold Macmillan said: ‘Events, dear boy, events.’ Or Rumsfeld’s immortal quote: ‘Stuff happens.’ Remember compassionate conservatism? Or ‘If we’re an arrogant nation, they’ll resent us; if we’re a humble nation, but strong, they’ll welcome us.’ Al Qaeda and the media Back in December 2007, it was reported that Al Qaeda was soliciting questions for an ‘open interview‘ and finally Zawahiri has responded. While this wasn’t mediated through the MSM in the first instance, the internet announcement and video were picked up by MSM relatively quickly and, arguably, doing Al Qaeda’s work for it. A vivid demonstration of Benjamin Barber’s less popularized idea of Jihad via MacWorld. Clearly there are some serious fundamental conflicts of institutional logics (in a Friedland and Alford sense) here. Could be simplistically represented as freedom of information versus security implications, the profit motive (competition between MSM channels as well as between MSM and non-MSM channels) versus social responsibility. Though as there are strong incentives in the former (FOI/profit) and lack of sanctions in the latter (security/social). On a related note, The Onion has a brilliant parody video where a US conspiracy theorist claiming the US government ordered the events of 9/11) is rebutted by an Al Qaeda representative who is furious that months of planning, work, ’sleeping on rocks in caves’ and then now having the credit taken away. The serious point that underlies this is how numerous conspiracy theories about how the US.gov/Mossad etc. were really responsible for 9/11 ignores how groups like Al Qaeda and their affiliates have either claimed credit for or celebrate the attacks. Why this parody is so eerily good is that I can’t imagine what an Al Qaeda representative would say differently. [Add: Zawahiri accuses Iran giving the 'credit' for 9/11 to Israel.] Universe Business … was how I initially mistranslated the title of this marvelous free exhibition at the British Museum - Fascination with nature: Birds, flowers and insects in Chinese art (乾坤生意) 富有生命力的气象；生机：白花盛开，百鸟齐鸣，大地上一片蓬勃的生意。 I’ve also learnt that I’ve been reading 盛开 wrongly for years; it should be shengkai rather than chengkai. -_-;; I’ve uploaded a set of photos to FlickR which can be accessed via the widget in the sidebar or through the picture for this post. Enjoyed this so much more than the First Emperor exhibition, especially the Modern Transformations section. My personal preference is the skillful application of traditional Chinese ink technique like Yan Yanping’s Autumn Lotus Pond (I was taught to paint 兰梅菊竹 (orchid, plum, chrysanthemum, bamboo) but I never mastered the control needed to paint 荷 (lotus) with sufficient strength but without breaking the paper) or the ancient calligraphy of Li Luogong’s The indomitable soul, the application of those traditional techniques in a ‘modern’ way like Wu Guanzhong’s Paradise for Small Birds which evokes Jackson Pollock (as well as Heng Bee Eng’s Be Vigiliant in Peace Time for the 26th UOB Painting of the Year exhibtion) or to depict modern social issues like Huang Miaozi’s The gentlemanly scholar. Feet of clay Straight off, I did not enjoy the British Museum’s vaunted The First Emperor (TFE) exhibition with its representations of war and statemaking (Charles Tilly?) type of story. More specific complaints after the jump, parallels between my ungrateful little gripes with both the exhibition and BM Director Neil MacGregor’s FT interview. It’s somewhat ironic that I imbibe more Chinese culture when I’m here in London than when I’m back home in Sg. Two years ago, I was awed by the RAA’s Three Emperors exhibition. In contrast, the TFE seemed much less rich, less varied, less subtle even though I had already seen the BBC documentary about how the BM had painstakingly converted the hallowed Reading Room for the exhibition. The first problem was overcrowding. I queued along the BM fence for half an hour and then another hour to reach the ticket booth (500 a day); the girl handling my transaction fatfingered it and within the ten seconds of remedying the IA, I had been bumped into a slot an hour later. I suppose good things come to those who wait. But when I got in, it was so full that you could hardly see the exhibits. Being a weekday afternoon, it was mainly OAPs/pensioners. While it was rather heartwarming to see lots of elderly working class retirees enjoying foreign culture, most of them took a pretty long time with each exhibit, standing there until their audio phone narration had ended. Fair enough but it also creates a huge backlog. There was so many people inside the darkened reading room that, even with its magnificent high domed ceiling, it was actually very warm and stuffy. The second problem was the relative paucity of artifacts on display. I know I know it’s unprecedented and even if I went to the Xi’an museum, I wouldn’t be able to see them so close up. But the main exhibits were the crouching archer upon entry, the reproduced rubbing of the mountain (Yi?) inscription by Qin Shihuangdi, the terracotta chariot procession, the bronze carriage and… that was about it. Eye candy from the spectacularly shot but terribly narrated Channel 4 documentary projected on the walls near the entrance and the exit. Excerpts from MacGregor’s interview: ‘They are all about the international community of inquiry, the republic of letters. And what goes between people engaged in the pursuit of inquiry is something that is quite separate from government and politics.’ The more delicate the political situation, the more important it is to keep personal contacts going., he adds. ‘It is essential to keep the channels of dialogue open. Government relations change over time.’ Ah, the republic of letters. Peter Haas’ epistemic communities. It’s a powerful ideal and an actually existing phenomenon in various areas like cultural exchange. But for the TFE? I can’t help wonder if the deep involvement of the Chinese government and embassy hadn’t projected a message that was somewhere along the lines of Zhang Yimou’s egregious Hero. That is all very well. But culture can be also used by governments, to project an image that may not necessarily reflect reality. Isn’t there a danger that the excitement engendered by China Now, for example, encourages the casual onlooker to overlook the negative aspects of that country? MacGregor says that there is no easy answer to that conundrum - but that ‘the more difficult political relations are with another country, the more important it is to have a historical understanding of it.’ I’m not sure I got quite a sense of Chinese ambivalence about the First Emperor from the exhibition. Or the ideational conflict between Legalism and Confucianism, particularly with the former’s ascendancy under Li Si but the latter’s predominance in prior and later eras. Not ‘a historical understanding’ but the various historical understandings that are in continual conflict. ‘The issue of political liberty in China is a very good example,’ he says. ‘The First Emperor exhibition is all about the control of the state, and that state’s very sharp sense of its own indivisibility. That idea of oneness, which has persisted against all odds, is a very important and enduring aspect to present as a historical phenomenon to the public. ‘It makes it much easier to understand the terms of the debate from the Chinese point of view - which is not to endorse it.’ … Exhibitions, such as The First Emperor, he says, ’should better equip us to interpret those aspects of Chinese society that we find disturbing, and that are in contradiction with our own values. It asks some acute questions about the cost of stability.’ ‘Man of the World’, FT: Art of our time 17 Mar 2008 supplement, pp.11-12. One of the most striking things, and probably the best thing about the whole experience, about seeing the terracotta warriors so close was to see how distinctive each was. Each really looked and felt like the representation of a distinct individual. How does this fit into the narrative of oneness that MacGregor talks about? And again there’s ‘the Chinese point of view’ represented by the orthodox historiography of the Chinese Communist Party. But there are myriad Chinese points of view. The hundred flowers, so to speak. Besides being more aware about the complexities of Qin China, there’s also the issue of the uses of comparative thinking. There wasn’t much a sense of what was or wasn’t relevant about that period for today; how meaningful are the comparisons, how are they used to build the political narratives and representations of today? I’d argue, not a whole lot. The CCP’s narratives are probably rooted more strongly in more modern history, the century of humiliation. Also, some comparative perspective with other polities of 500 BC would have much more useful - what kind of achievements did they have at that time relative to Qin, did they value and practice statecraft, the status of individual? Often, Western political values are traced in a straight line back to the ancient Greeks without much reference to how these values and practices existed alongside slavery and the status of women. In the end, the thing I enjoyed most about the exhibition was the ‘extra’ outside and free to view. A little army of mini-terracotta warriors made by British children using similar methods and techniques as those of the Qin craftsmen: Nothing for something, clicks for free Recently received an invitation to ‘Support the Monk’s Protest in Tibet’ Facebook group. Which I ignored. Not because I support Chinese state repression; there’s nothing I’d like better than for the involved parties to have a negotiated settlement that protects human dignity and rights for all as well as maintain inter and intra-state stability. The MFA statement is motherhood as usual but it makes sense in terms of Singapore’s state and regime interests; I’m sure it still hurts from the last shafting/cold shouldering the Chinese gave the Singaporean leadership over then-DPM Lee’s visit to Taiwan. It’s just that I find something faintly grotesque about this type of gesture politics that has no real costs, no real commitment - all the absurdity that this Onion parody (Local Motorist Urged To Free Tibet, 18 June 1997) brilliantly articulates even after all these years. Yeah, well, it’s better than doing nothing. But it still feels like a syllogism - We must do something. X is something. Therefore we must do X (where X may be blogging, joining a Facebook group). I suppose it would be more useful such Facebook groups could be effective platforms for harnessing donations to an NGO, volunteering time, writing an angry letter (yes, a snail mail letter the horrors) to your political representative(s) etc., taking part in a demonstration but somehow I suspect not. BTW what about those monks in Myanmar/Burma? Anyone remember them after 4 Oct? The junta is still oppressing them AFAIK.