Motivating Good Health Care Research?

Here is an area about which I know very little, but this article raises some very useful questions.

Race for the prize

Joseph Stiglitz

March 17, 2007 3:00 PM

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/joseph_stiglitz/2007/03/prizes_not_patents.html

Part of modern medicine's success is built on new drugs, in which pharmaceutical companies invest billions of dollars on research. The companies can recover their expenses thanks to patents, which give them a temporary monopoly and thus allow them to charge prices well above the cost of producing the drugs. We cannot expect innovation without paying for it. But are the incentives provided by the patent system appropriate, so that all this money is well spent and contributes to treatments for diseases of the greatest concern? Sadly, the answer is a resounding "no."

The fundamental problem with the patent system is simple: it is based on restricting the use of knowledge. Because there is no extra cost associated with an additional individual enjoying the benefits of any piece of knowledge, restricting knowledge is inefficient. But the patent system not only restricts the use of knowledge; by granting (temporary) monopoly power, it often makes medications unaffordable for people who don't have insurance. In developing countries, this can be a matter of life and death for people who cannot afford new brand-name drugs but might be able to afford generics. For example, generic drugs for first-line Aids defences have brought down the cost of treatment by almost 99% since 2000 alone, from $10,000 to $130.

But, despite the high price they pay, developing countries get little in return. Drug companies spend far more money on advertising and marketing than they do on research, far more on research for lifestyle drugs (for conditions like impotence and hair loss) than for lifesaving drugs, and almost no money on diseases that afflict hundreds of millions of poor people, such as malaria. It is a matter of simple economics: companies direct their research where the money is, regardless of the relative value to society. The poor can't pay for drugs, so there is little research on their diseases, no matter what the overall costs.

A "me-too" drug, for example, which nets its manufacturer some portion of the income that otherwise accrues only to the company that dominates a niche, may be highly profitable, even if its value to society is quite limited. Similarly, companies raced to beat the human genome project in order to patent genes such as that associated with breast cancer. The value of these efforts was minimal: the knowledge was produced just a little sooner than it would have been otherwise. But the cost to society was enormous: the high price that Myriad, the patent holder, places on genetic tests (between $3,000 and $4,000) may well mean that thousands of women who would otherwise have been tested, discovered that they were at risk, and taken appropriate remediation, will die instead.

There is an alternative way of financing and incentivising research that, at least in some instances, could do a far better job than patents, both in directing innovation and ensuring that the benefits of that knowledge are enjoyed as widely as possible: a medical prize fund that would reward those who discover cures and vaccines. Since governments already pay the cost of much drug research directly or indirectly, through prescription benefits, they could finance the prize fund, which would award the biggest prizes for developers of treatments or preventions for costly diseases affecting hundreds of millions of people.

Especially when it comes to diseases in developing countries, it would make sense for some of the prize money to come from foreign assistance budgets, as few contributions could do more to improve the quality of life, and even productivity, than attacking the debilitating diseases that are so prevalent in many developing countries. A scientific panel could establish a set of priorities by assessing the number of people affected and the impact on mortality, morbidity, and productivity. Once the discovery is made, it would be licensed.

Of course, the patent system is itself a prize system, albeit a peculiar one: the prize is temporary monopoly power, implying high prices and restricted access to the benefits that can be derived from the new knowledge. By contrast, the type of prize system I have in mind would rely on competitive markets to lower prices and make the fruits of the knowledge available as widely as possible. With better-directed incentives (more research dollars spent on more important diseases, less money spent on wasteful and distorted marketing), we could have better health at lower cost.

That said, the prize fund would not replace patents. It would be part of the portfolio of methods for encouraging and supporting research. A prize fund would work well in areas in which needs are well known - the case for many diseases afflicting the poor - allowing clear goals to be set in advance. For innovations that solve problems or meet needs that have not previously been widely recognised, the patent system would still play a role.

The market economy and the profit motive have led to extremely high living standards in many places. But the health care market is not an ordinary market. Most people do not pay for what they consume; they rely on others to judge what they should consume, and prices do not influence these judgments as they do with conventional commodities. The market is thus rife with distortions. It is accordingly not surprising that in the area of health, the patent system, with all of its distortions, has failed in so many ways. A medical prize fund would not provide a panacea, but it would be a step in the right direction, redirecting our scarce research resources toward more efficient uses and ensuring that the benefits of that research reach the many people who are currently denied them.

American Islam

I have recently finished reading "American Islam: The Struggle for the Soul of a Religion" by Paul M. Barrett and recommend it most highly. Through a series of sketches of American Muslims he describes the diverse counter-currents of that religion as it is practiced in the United States. For me, this diversity of thought and action was an eye opener. Along the way, the author shows the reactions of non-Muslim Americans to their new or old Muslim neighbors, not always edifying on both sides.

Here is a list of the profiles:

• The Publisher (Osama Siblani, publisher of The Arab American News in Dearborn, MI)
• The Scolar (Kaled Abou El Fadl, a liberal Muslim who seemed interesting enough to drive me to buy several of his books)
• The Imam (Siraj Wahhaj, of a mosque in Brooklyn and much in demand as a preacher in other parts of the country)
• The Feminist (Asra Normani, of Morgantown, WVa)
• The Mystics (focusing on American Sufis)
• The Webmaster (Sami Omar al-Hussayen formerly of Moscow, Idaho, but since deported after being found not guilty of terrorism charges)
• The Activist (Mustafa Saied who has rejected Wahhabism for a much more tolerant Islamic belief).

Read this book. It reads relatively quickly and is well-worth the investment in time. I can recommend the following review in The Washington Post on the book by Reza Aslam (whose book on Islam I recommended some time ago):

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/15/AR2007021501527.html

An online discussion with the author in The Washington Post also is interesting:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2007/02/16/DI2007021601412.html

Press Source Confidentiality?

I have been watching the PBS series on the press with much interest. One of the issues raised is whether reporters should have immunity from naming sources. Much more subtle that I had realized.

In today's New York Times, there is an excellent column on the subject. Read the entire column by clicking on the post title. Here are a few excerpts.

Not All Sources Are Equal

By ANTHONY LEWIS

Published: March 7, 2007, New York Times

Boston

THE conviction yesterday of I. Lewis Libby Jr. on perjury and other charges, after a trial with a parade of press witnesses, leaves a legacy of intensified concern about legal proceedings that force journalists to disclose confidential sources. It is a legitimate and urgent concern. Without the ability to promise confidentiality, the press would have been unable to report notorious abuses of government power from Watergate through the Bush administration’s violations of fundamental rights in the “war on terror.”

But it is much easier to see the danger than to agree on a way to stop it. That is because there are compelling interests on both sides of the problem, as many in the press are loath to admit.

....

THOSE are some of the conflicting interests at stake on the issue of a testimonial privilege for the press. Can Congress figure them all out in a qualified privilege statute specifying in detail when journalists should have a privilege? I doubt it. I think a statute will have to leave the balancing of interests to be done by judges, case by case.

One respected judge, David Tatel of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, has made a wise proposal. It is that the courts use their power to define privileges — a power affirmed by statute — to give a qualified privilege to journalists.

Judge Tatel’s proposal is aimed at the typical leak case: when a federal prosecutor is trying to find the source of a leak and subpoenas journalists. Judge Tatel suggests that a judge in this situation should weigh the public interest in the leaked material against the damage alleged by the government. If the leak were, say, the fact of the government’s lawless wiretapping, it is easy for me to see that the public interest should prevail.

Judges are not always wise. But in our system they are the ones we trust to weigh acutely conflicting interests. In the wake of the Libby case, Congress should pass legislation that makes clear the public interest in journalists’ confidentiality but leaves it to judges to weigh that against other social necessities.

Friedman Column Well-Worth Reading

I found this column especially enlightening - and challenging. To read all of it, click on the post title above. Through it, I discovered the site of MEMRI which I think will be most useful in learning about the Muslim world: http://memri.org/aboutus.html

March 2, 2007

Op-Ed Columnist, New York Times

The Silence That Kills

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

On Feb. 20, The A.P. reported from Afghanistan that a suicide attacker disguised as a health worker blew himself up near “a crowd of about 150 people who had gathered for a ribbon-cutting ceremony to open an emergency ward at the main government hospital in the city of Khost.” A few days later, at a Baghdad college, a female Sunni suicide bomber blew herself up amid students who were ready to sit for exams, killing 40 people.

Stop and think for a moment how sick this is. Then stop for another moment and listen to the silence. The Bush team is mute. It says nothing, because it has no moral authority. No one would listen. Mr. Bush is losing a P.R. war to people who blow up emergency wards. Europeans are mute, lost in their delusion that this is all George Bush’s and Tony Blair’s fault.

But worst of all, Muslims, the very people whose future is being killed, are also mute. No surge can work in Iraq unless we have a “moral surge,” a counternihilism strategy that delegitimizes suicide bombers. The most important restraints are cultural, societal and religious. It takes a village — but the Arab-Muslim village today is largely silent. The best are indifferent or intimidated; the worst quietly applaud the Sunnis who kill Shiites.

....

The world worries about highly enriched uranium, but “the real danger is highly enriched Islam,” Mr. Fandy added. That is, “highly enriched Sunnism” and “highly enriched Shiism” that eats away at the Muslim state, the way Hezbollah is trying to do in Lebanon or the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt or Al Qaeda everywhere.

....

“The battleground in the Arab world today is not in Palestine or Lebanon, but in the classrooms and newsrooms,” Mr. Fandy concluded. That’s where “the software programmers” reside who create symbolic images and language glorifying suicide bombers and make their depraved acts look legitimate. Only other Arab-Muslim programmers can defeat them.

Occasionally an honest voice rises, giving you a glimmer of hope that others will stand up. The MEMRI translation Web site (memri.org) just posted a poem called “When,” from a Saudi author, Wajeha al-Huwaider, that was posted on Arab reform sites like www.aafaq.org.

....

Anti-Semitism?

If you are interested in this subject, the entire article (click on post title) is well-worth reading.

The New Anti-Anti-Semites.

Split Personality

by John B. Judis
Only at TNR Online
Post date: 02.08.07

s there a growing trend among American intellectuals (and former presidents) toward anti-Semitism? That is what a number of recent articles, essays, and speeches--the latest on "The Poisoning of America" from Malcolm Hoenlein, the executive director of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations at the Herzilya conference--would suggest. Some of these statements stop short of saying that Tony Judt, Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer, Tony Kushner, and Jimmy Carter (to name some of the best-known targets) are anti-Semites. Instead, they say that what they have written is anti-Semitic or encourages anti-Semitism. In The Wall Street Journal last year, Bret Stephens, a member of the editorial board, suggested that Walt and Mearsheimer's essay on the Israel lobby "may not be anti-Semitic in intent [but] may yet be anti-Semitic in effect."

What these charges are meant to do is to raise the warning flag of anti-Semitism over certain opinions, placing them beyond argument--in a realm consigned to social pathologies. Who would argue, for instance, over the "history" contained within The Protocols of the Elders of Zion? In "Progressive Jewish Thought and the New Anti-Semitism," a paper published by the American Jewish Committee, Alvin H. Rosenfeld writes of the critics of Israel interviewed for Radicals, Rabbis and Peacemakers: Conversations with Jewish Critics of Israel, "[They are] not driven by anything remotely like reasoned historical analysis, but rather by a complex range of psychological as well as political motives that subvert reason and replace it with something akin to hysteria."

My intention in broaching this controversy is not to argue on behalf of Walt, Mearsheimer, or Judt. I think Walt and Mearsheimer do exaggerate the influence of the Israel lobby and define the lobby in such an inclusive way as to beg the question of its influence. I also don't share Judt's hopes for a secular democratic state on what is now Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza. But I think that, in characterizing these views as anti-Semitic, or as contributing to anti-Semitism, Rosenfeld and other critics are attempting to suppress an important debate on American foreign policy toward Israel and the Middle East. And they have also fallen prey to a contradiction within their own thinking.

....

These controversies over anti-Semitism come, too, at a predictable and particularly unfortunate time in the discussion of U.S. foreign policy. The last time a similar brouhaha arose was in the 1970s, when Jewish peace organizations in the United States challenged Israel's occupation of Gaza and the West Bank. At the urging of the Israeli government, organizations like Breira were run out of town by their traditional, and more subservient, brethren. Partly as a result, the United States acquiesced in Israeli policies that, in the long run, have benefited neither the United States nor Israel. The same thing could happen again. A debate has already begun over U.S. policy toward Iran in which AIPAC and the Israeli government have expressed interest in the United States stopping at nothing to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Fears of a new Holocaust--made more plausible by the very real anti-Semitism of Iran's president--have been sounded. What policies are in the interest of the United States? And of Israel? These are difficult questions, but they are not made easier to answer when critics of Israel and of the Israel lobby in the United States are charged with anti-Semitism.

John B. Judis is a senior editor at The New Republic and a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

A Point Very Well Taken

January 27, 2007, New York Times

Op-Ed Contributor

At Ease, Mr. President

By GARRY WILLS

Evanston, Ill.

WE hear constantly now about “our commander in chief.” The word has become a synonym for “president.” It is said that we “elect a commander in chief.” It is asked whether this or that candidate is “worthy to be our commander in chief.”

But the president is not our commander in chief. He certainly is not mine. I am not in the Army.

I first cringed at the misuse in 1973, during the “Saturday Night Massacre” (as it was called). President Richard Nixon, angered at the Watergate inquiry being conducted by the special prosecutor Archibald Cox, dispatched his chief of staff, Al Haig, to arrange for Mr. Cox’s firing. Mr. Haig told the attorney general, Elliot Richardson, to dismiss Mr. Cox. Mr. Richardson refused, and resigned. Then Mr. Haig told the second in line at the Justice Department, William Ruckelshaus, to fire Cox. Mr. Ruckelshaus refused, and accepted his dismissal. The third in line, Robert Bork, finally did the deed.

What struck me was what Mr. Haig told Mr. Ruckelshaus, “You know what it means when an order comes down from the commander in chief and a member of his team cannot execute it.” This was as great a constitutional faux pas as Mr. Haig’s later claim, when President Reagan was wounded, that “Constitutionally ... I’m in control.”

President Nixon was not Mr. Ruckelshaus’s commander in chief. The president is not the commander in chief of civilians. He is not even commander in chief of National Guard troops unless and until they are federalized. The Constitution is clear on this: “The president shall be commander in chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the militia of the several states, when called into the actual service of the United States.”

When Abraham Lincoln took actions based on military considerations, he gave himself the proper title, “commander in chief of the Army and Navy of the United States.” That title is rarely — more like never — heard today. It is just “commander in chief,” or even “commander in chief of the United States.” This reflects the increasing militarization of our politics. The citizenry at large is now thought of as under military discipline. In wartime, it is true, people submit to the national leadership more than in peacetime. The executive branch takes actions in secret, unaccountable to the electorate, to hide its moves from the enemy and protect national secrets. Constitutional shortcuts are taken “for the duration.” But those impositions are removed when normal life returns.

But we have not seen normal life in 66 years. The wartime discipline imposed in 1941 has never been lifted, and “the duration” has become the norm. World War II melded into the cold war, with greater secrecy than ever — more classified information, tougher security clearances. And now the cold war has modulated into the war on terrorism.

There has never been an executive branch more fetishistic about secrecy than the Bush-Cheney one. The secrecy has been used to throw a veil over detentions, “renditions,” suspension of the Geneva Conventions and of habeas corpus, torture and warrantless wiretaps. We hear again the refrain so common in the other wars — If you knew what we know, you would see how justified all our actions are.

But we can never know what they know. We do not have sufficient clearance.

When Adm. William Crowe, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, criticized the gulf war under the first President Bush, Secretary of State James Baker said that the admiral was not qualified to speak on the matter since he no longer had the clearance to read classified reports. If he is not qualified, then no ordinary citizen is. We must simply trust our lords and obey the commander in chief.

The glorification of the president as a war leader is registered in numerous and substantial executive aggrandizements; but it is symbolized in other ways that, while small in themselves, dispose the citizenry to accept those aggrandizements. We are reminded, for instance, of the expanded commander in chief status every time a modern president gets off the White House helicopter and returns the salute of marines.

That is an innovation that was begun by Ronald Reagan. Dwight Eisenhower, a real general, knew that the salute is for the uniform, and as president he was not wearing one. An exchange of salutes was out of order. (George Bush came as close as he could to wearing a uniform while president when he landed on the telegenic aircraft carrier in an Air Force flight jacket).

We used to take pride in civilian leadership of the military under the Constitution, a principle that George Washington embraced when he avoided military symbols at Mount Vernon. We are not led — or were not in the past — by caudillos.

Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s prescient last book, “Secrecy,” traced the ever-faster-growing secrecy of our government and said that it strikes at the very essence of democracy — accountability of representatives to the people. How can the people hold their representatives to account if they are denied knowledge of what they are doing? Wartime and war analogies are embraced because these justify the secrecy. The representative is accountable to citizens. Soldiers are accountable to their officer. The dynamics are different, and to blend them is to undermine the basic principles of our Constitution.

Garry Wills, a professor emeritus of history at Northwestern, is the author, most recently, of “What Paul Meant.”

American Islam

A fascinating dialogue. I have bought "American Islam" and will probably report on it when I finish reading it. Don't hold your breath: I am way behind in my reading.


the book club
American Islam
Why Americans fear Muslims.
By Reza Aslan and Daniel Benjamin, Slate Magazine
Updated Tuesday, Jan. 23, 2007, at 2:05 PM ET

---

From: Daniel Benjamin
To: Reza Aslan
Subject: Will Islamic Radicalism Gain a Foothold in America?
Posted Tuesday, Jan. 23, 2007, at 10:35 AM ET
Reza—

One of the striking things about mainstream journalism in post-9/11 America has been the scant attention paid to the nation's Muslim community. There were, of course, plenty of stories on the many immigrants taken into detention after the terrorist attacks and on the questioning of large numbers of Muslims by law enforcement officials. But compared with the enormous amount of copy that newspapers devoted to the pederast priest scandals, the coverage of American Muslims has been seriously inadequate. Given the size and importance of the community—it's no understatement to say that it is the first line of defense against jihadist attack—the lack of reporting has been a dramatic failing of the American media.

There were a few exceptions, and one was a series of Page One stories that Paul M. Barrett wrote for the Wall Street Journal in 2003. Those articles provided the basis for American Islam: The Struggle for the Soul of a Religion, a book that fills a real need and does so remarkably well. (Full disclosure: Paul Barrett is an old friend and former colleague.) American Islam does not give us the entire picture of what is going on among believers of the nation's fastest-growing religion. Nothing could. But through a group of seven profiles, it delivers a set of powerful insights about Muslim life in the United States and the tensions that are shaping the community—or, more accurately, communities, since there is a fractious diversity of Muslims in the United States.

As you might imagine, American Islam is a study of people caught in the crosscurrents. Some are trying to navigate between the roles of dexterous insider and outraged outsider. Others are trying to push their fellow Muslims to adopt changes that are at odds with hundreds of years of tradition. Others still are re-litigating ancient struggles—such as between mysticism and orthodoxy—in a New World setting. Several are trying to champion a tolerant, ecumenical version of Islam against one that seems increasingly insular and xenophobic.

In that sense, the book poses the question that really is the central one not only for Muslims but all Americans: Is radicalism going to gain a real foothold here?

Barrett's carefully crafted approach is a smart one because of the paucity of sociological data on Islam in the United States. We don't even know how many Muslims there are in the country; the Census Bureau doesn't ask about religious affiliation. Estimates by Muslim groups put the number at 6 million or higher, but these are truly rough guesses; as Barrett notes, the best guess is between 3 and 6 million. The number of mosques is also a matter of dispute, as is the degree of religious observance within communities. Trying to get a sense of the relative strength of different strains of thought among American Muslims is maddeningly difficult.

So, instead of giving us unsubstantiated generalizations, Barrett looks closely at the micro-environments of his seven subjects. Among them are a colorful newspaper publisher of Lebanese Shiite origins who is a power broker in Michigan's large and politically influential Muslim community, and noted Kuwaiti-born scholar Khaled Abou el Fadl, who challenged fellow Muslims to speak out against the attacks of 9/11, becoming something of a pariah. A chapter on Siraj Wahhaj, a radical-leaning imam in Brooklyn, traces the complicated story of African-American Islam, whose adherents compose a fifth of the country's Muslim population but who have tense relations with Muslims of foreign ancestry, as well as attachments to figures such as Malcolm X and Louis Farrakhan that are shared by no other Muslims.

In telling these stories, Barrett exercises great restraint, avoiding the temptation to generalize on the basis of individual experiences. The book—which I thought was a great read—does not overinterpret, letting the reader instead, for example, hear the unadorned story of Abdul Kabir Krambo, an American-born hippie-turned-Sufi whose faith gave him an anchor in life but not quite enough equanimity to deal with the foreign-born Muslims (he was " 'the token white guy' " on the board of his mosque) who don't always approve of his native ways. Krambo's mosque was destroyed by arson in 1994. The mystery of whether the attack was carried out by non-Muslim Americans or anti-Sufi Muslims provides a perfect example of the complex tensions that plague Barrett's characters.

Among scholars of terrorism these days, the accepted wisdom is that a major reason no second catastrophic attack on the United States has occurred is that the foot soldiers of jihad are not here—at least not in great numbers. Many Muslims in this country may be angry about U.S. foreign policy, but they are not alienated from American society or values. They are also more educated than the national norm, earn more than the norm, and are not ghettoized, as the Muslims of Europe are. ("American Muslims have bought into the American dream," my friend Marc Sageman, the author of Understanding Terror Networks, likes to say. "What is the European dream?")

But will it stay that way? One of the most moving chapters hints that it will. "The Activist" describes the trajectory of Mustafa Saied, an Indian-born Muslim who gravitates to the Muslim Brotherhood while in college and spends his time at rallies where the chant was "Idhbaahal Yahood" ("Slaughter the Jews"). He later renounces his extremism after intense conversation with other Muslims, one of whom persuades him that " 'the basic foundations of American values are very Islamic—freedom of religion, freedom of speech, toleration.' "

However, that there are some extremists afoot is clear from a chapter on Sami Omar al-Hussayen, the Saudi graduate student at the University of Idaho who was unsuccessfully prosecuted under the Patriot Act for giving material support to terrorists through his role as a Web master for a legal student group. The members of al-Hussayen's Islamic Assembly of North America are, at the very least, addicted to some deeply anti-American rhetoric, such as the writings of the "Awakening Sheikhs" of Saudi Arabia, Safar al-Hawali and Salman bin Fahd al-Awda.

I'm persuaded that America's culture of immigration has made a huge difference in shaping the attitudes of Muslims here. But other elements in the culture—rising Islamophobia, especially from the Christian right, and ham-handed law enforcement efforts, of the kind Barrett explores in his chapter on al-Hussayen—appear to be eroding some Muslims' sense of belonging. And, of course, there is our presence in Iraq, which appalls most American Muslims, including the Iraqi expats who once supported the invasion. Which way do you think the wind is blowing?

I'd also like your thoughts on one of the central themes of the book—that Islam, or at least one stream of it, is being remade by its encounter with America. This notion appears in several of Barrett's chapters, including the one on Asra Nomani, the former Journal reporter, single mother, and author of Standing Alone in Mecca, who confronted her hometown mosque in West Virginia with a determined campaign for equal treatment for women. In your superb book No god but God, you discuss the "Islamic Reformation" and mention, for example, European thinker Tariq Ramadan's contention that the synthesis of Islam and Western democratic ideals is driving the faith in that direction. Does Barrett's reportage suggest something similar is happening in the United States?

In any case, the changes that Barrett describes are encouraging. But as I think he would agree, it is impossible to say whether the stories he relates are indicative or isolated. What's your take?

Bests,
Dan

---

From: Reza Aslan
To: Daniel Benjamin
Subject: Assimilation and the Creation of a Uniquely American Faith
Posted Tuesday, Jan. 23, 2007, at 2:05 PM ET

Dan,

As I was reading American Islam, I was reminded of an incident that occurred last November in Washington, D.C., and got a lot of play in the American Muslim community. Jerry Klein, a popular radio host at WMAL-AM 630, suggested during one of his shows that Muslims in the United States should be forced to wear "identifying markers," specifically "a crescent moon arm band, or … a crescent moon tattoo." As one would expect, his phone lines were immediately jammed with listeners. Only they were not calling to excoriate Klein, but to agree wholeheartedly with him. One caller argued that American Muslims should not only be tattooed "in the middle of their foreheads," but that they should then be "rounded up and shipped out of the country." A Maryland caller concurred. "You have to set up encampments like they did during World War II," he said, "like with the Japanese and Germans."

Of course, what the callers did not realize was that Klein was joking. To his credit, he was horrified by his listeners' reactions, and said so on air. But perhaps Klein should not have been so surprised. According to recent polls, 39 percent of Americans want Muslims living in the United States to carry "special identification," and nearly half think their civil liberties should be curtailed in the name of national security. Roughly a third of those polled are convinced that the sympathies of America's Muslim community lies with al-Qaida, while a full 60 percent say they do not know any Muslims.

As a Muslim, I am obviously disturbed by these figures. But what I find particularly remarkable about these polls is that if the person being polled actually knows a Muslim, they are less likely to have negative perceptions of Islam. (By the way, I think that Barrett's estimate of how many Muslims currently live in America is low; more realistic, I suspect, are estimates of 6 million to 10 million.) It follows, then, that the best way to educate Americans about Islam is to introduce them to living, breathing American Muslims. That is precisely what makes Barrett's book such an engaging and important read. To my mind, this intimate group portrait of American Muslims is far more revealing than any of the half-dozen or so academic tomes that have been written on the subject over the last few years.

You are right to point out that the American Muslim community has, for the most part, managed to avoid many of the problems of identity and integration that plague Muslim communities in Europe. Barrett, like many social scientists, argues that this is partly due to economic factors. After all, the majority of European Muslims come from impoverished immigrant families, while the majority of Muslims in the United States are either middle-class converts or educated immigrants. Sixty percent of Muslims in the United States own their own homes. Believe it or not, the median income for a Muslim household in America is greater than it is for a non-Muslim household.

But as I read the individual profiles in American Islam, it became clear to me that it is more than mere economic factors that have allowed Muslims to so thoroughly assimilate into American society. (By the way, maybe it is this assimilation that explains why so many Americans think they have never met a Muslim. Perhaps they assume all look and dress like Osama bin Laden.)

Although Barrett does not press the point, I truly believe the ease with which Muslims have assimilated into American culture has less to do with economics than it does with America's long and storied history of assimilating different cultures and ethnicities under a single shared political and cultural ideal—an ideal we can label simply as Americanism. The Muslims who settled in Europe formed insulated ethnic enclaves cut off from the rest of European society. But American Muslims have seamlessly integrated into almost every level of American society. Indeed, they represent the most powerful argument against the prevailing "Clash of Civilizations" mentality that pits Islam against the West.

Finally, as a Muslim who lives in the United States and who has spent a great deal of time among Muslims in Europe, I can tell you that, more than anything else, it is the core American belief that faith has a role to play in the public realm that has allowed American Muslims to so seamlessly reconcile their faiths, cultures, and traditions with the realities of American life. Say what you will, this is not, nor has it ever been, a "secular" country. It is, in fact, the most religiously diverse and religiously tolerant nation in the world. In no other country—and certainly no Islamic country—can Muslims pursue their faith and practice in whatever way they see fit than in the United States. It is, in short, America itself that has made American Muslims so much more resistant to the pull of jihadism than their European counterparts.

This brings me to your excellent question regarding one of the central themes of Barrett's book. Is the Muslim encounter with the United States creating a new, American brand of Islam, much the way this country gave rise to new forms of Judaism and Catholicism? The short answer is yes. Just look at the Zaytuna Institute in Hayward, Calif., established by Sheikh Hamza Yusuf, an American convert and one of the world's most respected authorities on Islamic law. Tired of Muslims in the United States being forced to import their imams from countries like Pakistan and Saudi Arabia—countries whose values and traditions are far removed from ours—Sheikh Hamza has created America's first Muslim seminary, to train American imams who can relate to the unique cultural and religious needs of American Muslims. But that's just part of the story. America also gives Muslims the freedom to explore issues like Islamic feminism (as demonstrated in Barrett's wonderful profile of my friend Asra Nomani, a journalist and author), Islamic pluralism, Islamic democracy, and even Islamic homosexuality, all of which has allowed Islam in America to flower into an independent and uniquely American faith.

The real question, which you touch upon, is how the U.S. government, whose image in the Muslim world is at an all-time low, can tap into the American Muslims community and take advantage of what you rightly note may be America's greatest weapon against jihadism. I mean, if what you say is true—if the American Muslim community is the "first line of defense against jihadist attack" —then why have they seemingly been sidelined by the US government in this "great ideological battle for civilization"?

Reza

Reza Aslan is a research associate at the University of Southern California Center on Public Diplomacy and the author of No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam.
Daniel Benjamin is a senior fellow in foreign policy studies at the Brookings Institution and co-author of The Next Attack: The Failure of the War on Terror and a Strategy for Getting It Right.

Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2158114/

Being Jewish

As an independent Jew (one that does not give knee-jerk support to Israel) I found the following "Leader" from this week's Economist particularly interesting. To read more on the subject from farther back in this week's Economist, click on the post title above.

On a somewhat related issue, you might want to see the following article from this week's New York Times Magazine:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/14/magazine/14foxman.t.html?_r=1&oref=slogin



Israel and the Jews

Diaspora blues

Jan 11th 2007
From The Economist print edition

Jews around the world should join the debate about Israel, not just defend whatever it does

Polaris

WHAT is a Jewish state for, and what should it be like? Jews have been debating that for 200 years. Even today, with Israel already 58 years old and taken for granted by most of the rest of the world, they still cannot agree.

The early settlers came for a variety of reasons. Some wanted to escape the stifling constraints of religious dogma and east European village communities; others thought it would hasten the coming of the Messiah. As European anti-Semitism grew, the idea took hold that Jews needed their own land as a safe haven. After the Holocaust, saving Jewish lives became the fledgling state's first priority. Soon, it acquired another role: being a potential Israeli citizen became one of the anchor points of what it meant to be a Jew.

Since then, Jews have continued debating and reshaping their own relationships to the country. In Israel secular Jews found Israeliness a handy substitute for religious observance. Some religious Jews, for their part, revived the previously fringe creed of messianic Zionism, holding that to settle in all the biblical land—including the lands Israel captured after 1967—is a God-given duty. To others, the ultra-Orthodox, a Jewish state should spend as much as possible on subsidising Jewish learning and maintaining piety. And of these groups there are countless splinters and crossbreeds.

Meanwhile, diaspora Jews have developed an even more eclectic mix of Jewish culture and attitudes to Zionism (see article). And that is partly because, as the threat of genocide or of Israel's destruction has receded, a growing number of diaspora Jews neither feel comfortable with always standing up for Israel, nor feel a need to invoke Israel in defining what makes them Jewish.

Yet the big Jewish diaspora institutions have not caught up. Their relationship with Israel is still based mainly around supporting it in times of crisis and defending it from critics. This is true of the big umbrella groups for Jewish communities, but especially so of the pro-Israel lobby groups in America, formed to influence American foreign policy in Israel's favour. Often these lobbies have ended up representing not Israel but its right-wing political establishment, with American defenders of Israel accusing critics of being “anti-Semitic” for saying things that are commonplace in Israel's own internal debate.

My country, but not right or wrong

Their attitude persists partly because Israel was indeed much more vulnerable when the lobbies were founded; partly because the lazy way to defend Israel is to suggest that its critics, even legitimate ones, are anti-Semites; and partly because the pro-Israel lobbies have formed an unholy alliance with evangelical Christian groups who believe, like the religious Zionists, that the ingathering of the Jewish exiles will bring forward Judgment Day. In their fervour, these evangelical Christians are more uncompromisingly Zionist than most Jews. That they also believe that Judgment Day will entail the destruction of Israel and the deaths of a great many Jews does not seem to bother the Jewish lobbies; that, after all, is the theology of the future, and their job is the politics of today.

This knee-jerk defensiveness of Israel does not help the Jewish diaspora, at least in terms of keeping young Jews from leaving the faith. Some find the uncritical attitude to Israel distasteful; others simply find Israel irrelevant. Some strike out on their own, finding new and creative ways to explore their Judaism. But many are simply drifting away.

The tendency to stand by Israel right or wrong brings a second problem. It locks diaspora Jews out of the fateful and often bitter debates that rage inside Israel itself. Israel is an increasingly divided society. Secular and religious Jews used to have more beliefs in common, albeit for different reasons (eg, holding on to the occupied territories, whether for security or for religious redemption), but for decades their interests have been diverging. They disagree on the most basic questions: borders, who is a Jew, the role of religion, the status of non-Jews. Lately the traditional political boundaries have been melting down too. Israeli Jews swim in a sea of conflicting ideas about who they should be. Unless they agree on that, they cannot ultimately resolve their relationship with the Palestinians, including the Palestinians who are Israeli citizens.

Helping Israel should no longer mean defending it uncritically. Israel is strong enough to cope with harsh words from its friends. So diaspora institutions should, for example, feel free to criticise Israeli politicians who preach racism and intolerance, such as a recently appointed cabinet minister, Avigdor Lieberman. They should encourage lively debate about Israeli policies. Perhaps more will then add their voices to those of the millions of Israelis who believe in leaving the occupied territories so that Palestinians can have a state of their own, allowing an Israel at peace to return to its original vocation of providing a safe and democratic haven for the world's Jews.

How Globalization Went Bad

This is a really worthwhile article, even if the title is not really right for the content. In my mind, a better title would have been: "The Risks of a Unipolar World". To read the whole article and see what I mean, click on the post title above.

How Globalization Went Bad

By Steven Weber, Naazneen Barma, Matthew Kroenig, Ely Ratner Page 1 of 4

January/February 2007, Foreign Policy

From terrorism to global warming, the evils of globalization are more dangerous than ever before. What went wrong? The world became dependent on a single superpower. Only by correcting this imbalance can the world become a safer place. The world today is more dangerous and less orderly than it was supposed to be. Ten or 15 years ago, the naive expectations were that the “end of history” was near. The reality has been the opposite. The world has more international terrorism and more nuclear proliferation today than it did in 1990. International institutions are weaker. The threats of pandemic disease and climate change are stronger. Cleavages of religious and cultural ideology are more intense. The global financial system is more unbalanced and precarious. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. The end of the Cold War was supposed to make global politics and economics easier to manage, not harder. What went wrong? The bad news of the 21st century is that globalization has a significant dark side. The container ships that carry manufactured Chinese goods to and from the United States also carry drugs. The airplanes that fly passengers nonstop from New York to Singapore also transport infectious diseases. And the Internet has proved just as adept at spreading deadly, extremist ideologies as it has e-commerce....

Entitled Selfishness

Despite being a pre-boomer who probably would probably be adversely affected by what Samuelson proposes, I must agree with his argument. Senior entitlements should be tempered by realities. Higher income seniors can - must - afford some modification of benefits. I (and, I am sure, many others) do care about my children and grand-children, as well as the nation as a whole.


Entitled Selfishness
Boomer Generation Is in a State of Denial

By Robert J. Samuelson
Wednesday, January 10, 2007; A13, Washington Post

As someone born in late 1945, I say this to the 76 million or so subsequent baby boomers and particularly to Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, our generation's leading politicians: Shame on us. We are trying to rob our children and grandchildren, putting the country's future at risk in the process. On one of the great issues of our time, the social and economic costs of our retirement, we have adopted a policy of selfish silence.

As Congress reconvenes, pledges of "fiscal responsibility" abound. Let me boldly predict: On retirement spending, this Congress will do nothing, just as previous Congresses have done nothing. Nancy Pelosi promises to "build a better future for all of America's children." If she were serious, she would back cuts in Social Security and Medicare. President Bush calls "entitlement spending" the central budget problem. If he were serious, he, too, would propose cuts in Social Security and Medicare.

They are not serious, because few Americans -- particularly prospective baby-boom retirees -- want them to be. There is a consensus against candor, because there is no constituency for candor. It's no secret that the 65-and-over population will double by 2030 (to almost 72 million, or 20 percent of the total population), but hardly anyone wants to face the implications:

? By comparison, other budget issues, including the notorious earmarks, are trivial. In 2005, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid (the main programs for the elderly) cost $1.034 trillion, twice the amount of defense spending and more than two-fifths of the total federal budget. These programs are projected to equal about three-quarters of the budget by 2030, if it remains constant as a share of national income.

? Preserving present retirement benefits automatically imposes huge costs on the young -- costs that are economically unsound and socially unjust. The tax increases required by 2030 could hit 50 percent, if other spending is maintained as a share of national income. Or much of the rest of government (from defense to national parks) would have to be shut down or crippled. Or budget deficits would balloon to quadruple today's level.

? Social Security and Medicare benefits must be cut to keep down overall costs. Yes, some taxes will be raised and some other spending cut. But much of the adjustment should come from increasing eligibility ages (ultimately to 70) and curbing payments to wealthier retirees. Americans live longer and are healthier. They can work longer and save more for retirement....

... Opportunities for gradual change have been squandered. These public failings are also mirrored privately. I know many bright, politically engaged boomers who can summon vast concern or outrage about global warming, corporate corruption, foreign policy, budget deficits and much more -- but somehow, their own Social Security and Medicare benefits rarely come up for discussion or criticism. Older boomers (say, those born by 1955) are the most cynical, hoping their benefits will be grandfathered in when inevitable cuts occur in the future.

Our children will not be so blind to this hypocrisy. We have managed to take successful programs -- Social Security and Medicare -- and turn them into huge problems by our self-centered inattention. Baby boomers seem eager to "reinvent retirement" in all ways except those that might threaten their pocketbooks.

Military Transformation and Forward-Looking Strategy

Yesterday I read the book review cited below (and accessible in full by clicking on the post title above) and found part of it particularly interesting, give my background as a proponent of developing robust strategies in business. The part of the review, at this stage focusing on Kagan's book can be summarized by the following paragraphs:

"Kagan points out that all of these improvements in ground and air capabilities have been useful mostly for taking on traditional armed forces in conventional combat -- not for war in its full political context, nor for the kinds of missions the United States finds itself engaged in today. Absent a compelling threat, defense thinkers and planners focused narrowly on the destructive power of emerging military capabilities and failed to remember what war really is: a political act aimed at producing a positive political outcome. Nowhere was this narrow focus more evident and tragic than in the Bush administration's failure to plan adequately for postcombat operations in Afghanistan or Iraq, or even to understand that the combat phase would inevitably affect the political circumstances after it.

This observation leads Kagan to a different kind of transformation: namely, the need for the U.S. military to change the way it plans for war. "Military operations of any scale must be planned from back to front," he writes. Planners should start with a vision of the political outcome they want to achieve and then work backward, being sure only to apply force in ways that encourage the desired outcome. Had this approach been applied to the invasion of Iraq, the Pentagon would at the very least have called for substantially more ground forces than were used to bring down Saddam Hussein. And the very operation itself might have been called into question."

I have long argued that effective strategy development and deployment (call it transformation, if you like) depends, among other things) on envisioning one or more futures and reasoning backward to the present to see what would have to do to robustly anticipate the future(s). That can then be compared with the current situation to see what actions are required to prepare for uncertain futures. That may seem obvious, but most businesses extrapolate from the present, much as Kagan describes the military doing in the 1990s.



The Real Meaning of Military Transformation: Rethinking the Revolution
Thomas L. McNaugher
From Foreign Affairs, January/February 2007

War Made New: Technology, Warfare, and the Course of History, 1500 to Today.. Max Boot. : Gotham Books, 2006, 640 pp. $35.00

Summary: Rumsfeld's mishandling of the Iraqi occupation has given the "revolution in military affairs" a bad name. But as Max Boot and Frederick Kagan point out in two new books, transformation is vital to any military's success -- and more important now than ever.

Thomas L. McNaugher is a Vice President of the RAND Corporation and Director of its Army Research Division.

			Topics: US policy and politics National security and defense

War Made New: Technology, Warfare, and the Course of History, 1500 to Today. By Max Boot. Gotham Books, 2006, 640 pp. $35.00.

Finding the Target: The Transformation of American Military Policy. By Frederick W. Kagan. Encounter Books, 2006, 432 pp. $29.95.

"No god but God" by Reza Aslam

I recently finished the book cited above and found it both interesting and especially well-written. For more about the author and the book (and other writings) click on the post title above.

There are several good reviews of the book including the following:

http://www.amazon.com/No-god-but-God-Evolution/dp/1400062136

http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/04/25/174945.php

The following link leads you to an interview with the author:

http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/04/08/203604.php

The last paragraph of the book reads as follows:

"It may be too early to know who will write the next chapter of Islam's history, but it is not too early to recognize who will ultimately win the war between reform and counter reform. When fourteen centuries ago Muhammad launched a revolution in Mecca to replace the archaic, rigid, and inequitable strictures of tribal society with a radically new vision of divine morality and social egalitarianism, he tore apart the fabric of traditional Arab society. It took many years of violence and devastation to cleanse the Hijaz of its 'false idols'. It will take many more to cleanse Islam of its new false idols - bigotry and fanaticism - worshipped by those who have replaced Muhammad's original vision of tolerance and unity with their own ideals of hatred and discord. But the cleansing is inevitable, and the tide of reform cannot be stopped. The Islamic Reformation is already here. We are all living it."

I can only hope that we survive what is already looking like a new "hundred years' war" and that the outcome is as the author posits.

Don't Forget Afghanistan

Among all the havoc in the world, Americans all-too-often forget their oblications and interests in Afghanistan. This article does an excellent job of summarizing where we have been, where we are, and what we still have to do.

To read whole, long, article, click on the post title above.

Saving Afghanistan
Barnett R. Rubin
From Foreign Affairs, January/February 2007

Summary: With the Taliban resurgent, reconstruction faltering, and opium poppy cultivation at an all-time high, Afghanistan is at risk of collapsing into chaos. If Washington wants to save the international effort there, it must increase its commitment to the area and rethink its strategy -- especially its approach to Pakistan, which continues to give sanctuary to insurgents on its tribal frontier.

Barnett R. Rubin is Director of Studies and a Senior Fellow at New York University's Center on International Cooperation and the author of The Fragmentation of Afghanistan. He served as an adviser to the Special Representative of the Secretary-General at the UN Talks on Afghanistan in Bonn in 2001.

[continued...]

U.S. policymakers have misjudged Afghanistan, misjudged Pakistan, and, most of all, misjudged their own capacity to carry out major strategic change on the cheap. The Bush administration has sown disorder and strengthened Iran while claiming to create a "new Middle East," but it has failed to transform the region where the global terrorist threat began -- and where the global terrorist threat persists. If the United States wants to succeed in the war on terrorism, it must focus its resources and its attention on securing and stabilizing Afghanistan.

Read It and Weep

The Legal Year in Review

By Andrew Cohen
Special to washingtonpost.com
Friday, December 29, 2006; 12:00 AM

The good news from the world of the law in 2006 is that we did not for once in recent memory have to endure an avalanche of vapid news coverage about a solitary trashy tale of sex and fame and crime. There was no Michael Jackson molestation trial or Kobe Bryant rape trial or Laci Peterson saga to draw our attention away from trials and cases and legal issues of true merit.

The bad news from the world of the law in 2006 is that we didn't take that extra time given to us by divine providence and follow or absorb with any depth or sense of passion or outrage the truly monumental and generally ominous things that were done in the law, in our name, in this fifth-going-on-sixth year of the legal war on terrorism. Tens of millions of Americans know and care about the identity of the latest winner of American Idol. But only a tiny fraction of those know, too, of the manifold pressures currently pushing upon the rule of law. Hey, you didn't really think that Paris and Britney really were going to end up best-friends-forever, did you?

From our government's own documents, for example, we learned in 2006 that hundreds of the terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay, being held now for about half a decade, never took up arms against the United States or were otherwise a part of Al Qaeda when they were captured by U.S. or Coalition forces shortly after we went to war. Our own military has told us this and we have done nothing with it. Those men languish there, in our self-made terror incubation camps, while our legislative- and executive-branch leaders conjure up ways to deprive them of their rights. Can you believe that hot and naughty Miss USA is now in rehab?

We lasted the entire year in 2006 knowing that our executive branch was able and eager to spy upon us, without any warrants or other legal checks or balances upon that invasive power, as part of a domestic surveillance program that many leading legal experts believe is, at best, constitutionally suspect and, at worst, blatantly illegal. We even learned this year that some of that surveillance fell upon anti-war protestors and others who were exercising their constitutionally-protected free speech rights. And we did virtually nothing about it. Do you really think Tom and Katie are married?

Meanwhile, almost all of our federal judges remained silent about the National Security Agency program (and its cousin, the Department of Defense's "Talon" program, whose administrators were caught with data on anti-war activities at churches) except for a brave few. For their part, our national legislators, whom one noted essayist aptly called "corrupt and indifferent," were unable or unwilling, day after day at the so-called "people's house" of Congress, to muster up the courage and force to assure either us or themselves that the White House wasn't permitting or even encouraging widespread constitutional violations. Seriously, what do you think really happened at that stripper party at Duke?

2006 was the year in which the Supreme Court, thanks to the newest Justice, Samuel A. Alito, Jr., declared admissible evidence seized from a home after the police entered via a "no-knock" raid. Writing for a 5-4 majority over a vigorous dissent, Justice Antonin Scalia ruled that the "societal cost" of suppressing evidence obtained as a result of these sorts of raids was greater than the corresponding privacy protections citizens would receive from a continuance of the longstanding "knock and announce" rule of police work. Only the civil libertarians among us cried foul when this case was announced this past June. Everyone else remained silent. Can you believe that Starr Jones took on Barbara Walters on television?

Just when we need strong, independent judges most to thwart the concerted effort by the White House to impose a "unitary" theory of governance, 2006 also happened to be the year in which hundreds of thousands of Americans expressed their scorn for the judiciary by voting for anti-judge initiatives in elections all across the country. The worst of these measures was soundly defeated in South Dakota. But in Colorado a similarly goofy scheme netted nearly 600,000 votes before it went down to defeat. These troublemakers were egged on by cynical politicians who successfully pander to their base by labeling judges as anti-American (or worse) when they issue unpopular rulings. I haven't yet been hit by a mobile phone thrown by supermodel Naomi Campbell, have you?

We've also just endured a year in which an over-the-top television host was accused in court of contributing (via a nasty, unfair interview) to the suicide of a mother whose child went missing and who thus became natural fodder for that host's popular but grim show that features daily doses of vengeance and prejudgment on its menu. We experienced a collective moment of Zen when we learned that the icon of corporate greed, Enron's Kenneth Lay, dropped dead in his bathroom in the middle of the night, a la Elvis, just months before he was to be sentenced for fleecing billions. And we discovered that the judge in the Terri Schiavo case, who bravely followed the law, still gets hate mail. Wait, please tell me once again why O.J. Simpson can't go to jail if he confesses to killing Nicole and Ron?

2006 was not a good year for the Constitution. It was not remotely a good year for the concept of separation of powers in government or for the idea that our system works best when there are sufficient checks on the excesses of one branch over another. It was not a good year for opponents of an imperial presidency or for supporters of a concerned and compassionate Congress. It was not a year that offers a lot of hope that things will get any better, or even stabilize, in 2007.

So we got out of the law this year what we deserved from it. And hopefully we will come to realize in 2007 and beyond that if we continue to ignore and neglect the most important and weighty issues that confront the Constitution, its power and authority will erode, slowly but surely, until one of the best ideas ever conceived by man is relegated to being just another dusty, historical document.

Andrew Cohen writes Bench Conference and this regular law column for washingtonpost.com. He is also CBS News Chief Legal Analyst. His columns for CBS can be found online here.

Executive Super-Compensation

This is an excellent article on executive compensation and growing income disparity. Click on the post title above to read the rest of the article.

Gilded age: how a corporate elite is leaving middle America behind

By Krishna Guha, Francesco Guerrera and Eoin Callan

Published: December 21 2006 02:00 | Last updated: December 21 2006 02:00, Financial Times

Stephen Schwarzman, chief executive and co-founder of Blackstone Group, one of the world's largest and richest private equity firms, makes for an unlikely champion of the average American.

But minutes before chairing a meeting that will decide how to reward Blackstone's partners for its record profits this year, Mr Schwarzman, whose fortune Forbes has estimated at $2.5bn (£1.3bn, €1.9bn), says he is worried about the increasingly unequal distribution of wealth in the US.

"America is a place where people like to have the American dream, everybody successful," he says in an interview with the Financial Times. "The middle class in the United States hasn't done as well over the last 20 years as people at the high end and I think part of the compact in America is everybody has got to do better."

His concern is that the increasing publicity about the stellar rewards reaped by the relatively few in the financial and corporate world could trigger a political and social backlash....

Murder and Russian Politics

What follows is an excerpt from this week's Economist article of Russia. To read the whole article, which in my opinion is one of the best articles on the state of play in Russian politics, click on the post title above.

The Litvinenko affair

Murder most opaque

Dec 13th 2006 | MOSCOW
From The Economist print edition

What a poisoned Russian agent tells us about the way that Russia is governed

THE flamboyant Russian community in London has until recently been regarded by the city's natives with wry amusement. The tycoons and tax refugees at its centre have boosted the price of high-end property, imported expensive soccer players along with their befurred wives and provided useful fodder for gossip columnists. Then Alexander Litvinenko was poisoned.

Never in his life was Litvinenko as important as he has become in death. He was not really a spy, as he has been described, but worked for domestic units of the FSB, one of the KGB's post-Soviet successors. He has been labelled a defector; but few people took the information he brought out of Russia when he fled to Britain seriously. He had always been a pawn in other people's power struggles, and even as a pawn his utility was declining....

... Another theory mooted in Russia is that the sudden spate of mysterious killings—which has claimed others besides Litvinenko and Politkovskaya—is part of the ongoing power struggle inside the Kremlin, in advance of Mr Putin's putative departure from office in 2008. The aim, it is variously said, is to undermine one or other of his possible successors or somehow to force Mr Putin to stay on, which some who have profited during his presidency would sorely like him to do. Whoever is anointed by Mr Putin as his successor will surely “win” the election in 2008; the real competition, it is argued, is occurring now, between Kremlin factions. This idea sees Litvinenko's murder as a symptom of a basic flaw in Mr Putin's quasi-authoritarian system of government: the transfer of power, as mandated by the constitution, is tricky and perilous....

... During a tsar-like televised phone-in with his people in October, Mr Putin made a little-noticed but revealing remark. He was asked, in a periphrastic way, about a tasteless joke he had made in relation to allegations of rape against Moshe Katsav, Israel's president. It was wrong, Mr Putin said, for the issue of women's rights to be used as a weapon in political squabbles. In other words, he assumed that the allegations had an ulterior motive—as they would have had in Russia. This points to the problem at the bottom of Russia's increasingly bitter ties with the West: the Russians' deep conviction that the rest of the world works as Russia does, and that all politics and diplomacy are as cynical and self-interested as Russia's own.

The row over Mr Berezovsky is another example of this way of thinking. Some Russians simply refuse to believe that in Britain extradition cases are decided by the courts, rather than by the government. Likewise, some in the Kremlin were angry that Litvinenko's deathbed accusations managed to penetrate his police guard to be broadcast: they apparently assumed that protection meant arrest.

Try to be nice to the snoopers

The Russians now have a chance to repair their reputation, reassure the world about the security of their nuclear installations (a nagging worry since the Soviet Union's collapse) and prove that law in Russia is more than a political instrument. Russia's qualms at hosting foreign detectives bent on questioning current and former spooks are understandable; any country would feel much the same. But the Russians could, short of compromising state security, offer total co-operation with the British inquiry. Condoleezza Rice, America's secretary of state, urged them this week to do just that.

Both the British and the Russians are trying to appear conciliatory. Yet the co-operation has been tightly circumscribed from the start. As well as being permitted to question their interviewees only via Russian officers, the Scotland Yard detectives seem unlikely to be given access to any serving FSB men. The Russians, meanwhile, have begun their own investigation into Litvinenko's death and what they say is Mr Kovtun's own poisoning, and want to question people in London. That could in theory bolster the British efforts—or it could result in obfuscation, and be used to advance old grievances.

It would not be fair to conclude from any of this that the Kremlin is guilty as charged. But it all amounts to yet another sign that the hopes entertained in the West about Mr Putin when he first took office—that he actually meant what he then said about democracy, and that under his rule Russia could conceivably become a “normal” country—were misplaced. There have been many such signs, from barbarity in the north Caucasus to harassment of foreign oil firms and meddlesome foreign policy. But perhaps none has publicised the murk and cruelty of life in Russia so effectively as the mysterious death of an unimportant man.

Robert Reich on American Capital Markets

I too have trouble worrying about American capital markets as long as its players are earning so much money. For an example on this latter point, see:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB116614488587050944.html?mod=home_whats_news_us

or

http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2006/11/22/wall-street-and-the-penthouse-effect/?excamp=GGDBwallstreetbonuses



A private-sector group called the Committee on Capital Markets Regulation has just offered up a number of measures to ease up regulatory burdens on companies that list their shares publicly in the US, in order that the US financial market stays competitive internationally. The group has the support of Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, who has also fretted publicly about American stock exchanges becoming uncompetitive because of too much regulation.

But the idea that American capital markets are losing their competitiveness is total nonsense. Returns to the financial sector in the U.S. are higher than in any other sector of the economy, and now higher than ever before. Investment bankers are awash in money. So are hedge fund managers, private-equity managers, the managers of large pension and mutual funds. Year-end bonuses will hit a record.

Uncompetitive? What are they talking about?

It’s true that the percent of big global initial public offerings listed on U S stock exchanges is declining while the percent of IPOs done through financial centers in London, Hong Kong, and elsewhere is rising. This year, the U.S. accounted for 28 percent of all new equity raised in the world’s largest financial markets, down from over 40 percent in 1995.

That doesn’t mean Wall Street is becoming uncompetitive. Capital markets are now global. So of course other financial centers are going to gain a larger share of IPOs. Meanwhile, Wall Street is doing deals all over the world. Mergers and acquisitions in Europe, China, Latin America. Hedge funds taking in money from all over the globe.

American capital markets are fully competitive. America is still the world’s largest magnet for foreign capital. Foreign investors held over $2 trillion of US stocks last year, more than the total stock market capitalization of all other markets except the UK and Japan.

In fact, foreign companies that list both on a US and a foreign stock market typically trade at a premium over foreign firms that list only outside the US. Why are investors willing to pay more for listings in the US? Because the US capital market is more stable and transparent, and its tough accounting standards give investors better protection. In other words, because of the very regulations that the Committee on Capital Markets Regulation wants to get rid of.

The Committee has come up with a bad solution to a problem that doesn’t even exist. Hank Paulson should disregard their report. To paraphrase an old saying, if it aint broke, don’t break it.

More on the Mess in Afghanistan

See the rest of the editorial by clicking on the post title.


December 13, 2006, New York Times

Op-Ed Contributor

One War We Can Still Win

By ANTHONY H. CORDESMAN

Washington

NO one can return from visiting the front in Afghanistan without realizing there is a very real risk that the United States and NATO will lose their war with Al Qaeda, the Taliban and the other Islamist movements fighting the Afghan government.

Declassified intelligence made available during my recent trip there showed that major Al Qaeda, Taliban, Haqqani Network and Hezb-i-Islami sanctuaries exist in Pakistan, and that the areas they operate in within Afghanistan have increased fourfold over the last year.

Indeed, a great many unhappy trends have picked up speed lately: United States intelligence experts in Afghanistan report that suicide attacks rose from 18 in the first 11 months of 2005 to 116 in the first 11 months of 2006. Direct fire attacks went up from 1,347 to 3,824 during the same period, improvised explosive devices from 530 to 1,297 and other attacks from 269 to 479. The number of attacks on Afghan forces increased from 713 to 2,892, attacks on coalition forces from 919 to 2,496 and attacks on Afghan government officials are 2.5 times what they were.

Only the extensive use of American precision air power and intelligence assets has allowed the United States to win this year’s battles in the east. In the south, Britain has been unable to prevent a major increase in the Taliban’s presence.

The challenges in Afghanistan, however, are very different from those in Iraq. Popular support for the United States and NATO teams has been strong and can be rebuilt. The teams have created core programs for strengthening governance, the economy and the Afghan military and police forces, and with sufficient resources the programs can succeed. The present United States aid efforts are largely sound and well managed, and they can make immediate and effective use of more money....

Anthony H. Cordesman is a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Russia: Hard or Soft?

The following column, reprinted in the New York Times from the International Herald Tribune, neatly summarizes the state of play of the West vis-a-vis Russia. Still not clear where and how to go from here.

December 12, 2006, New York Times

Politicus

For Russia’s Cooperation, a Harder Line May Be Needed

By JOHN VINOCUR

International Herald Tribune

BRUSSELS

Vladimir Putin does not want to be "reviled and isolated," a close adviser to a European government leader was saying the other day.

Could be. But one problem when it comes to mustering opprobrium and ostracism, even in careful doses, is that President George W. Bush and Europe appear incapable of making Putin believe they have the will or the unity to manage either.

So while newspapers were recounting visions of Russia's return to Cold War tactics - murders in London, harassment of the British ambassador in Moscow, silencing BBC broadcasts in Russian - Putin's people went ahead last week further holding up an already defanged UN Security Council resolution on Iran that, if it passes, would only postpone the question of when the world will sanction the mullahs' nuclear program more seriously.

The resolution's delay, now running toward a fourth month, says something. For an Iran expert talking at a symposium, it signifies Iran's strengthening belief that it can get away with anything in moving toward nuclear weapons - with what for some appears to be tacit Russian complicity.

And that without any apparent downside for the Russians, Iran's major supplier of arms and heavy equipment.

In fact, if Russia were somehow producing a Baker Commission report this week on Putin's fulfillment of major strategic goals since 2003, from the point of view of Moscow's nationalist power politics, he would get straight A's.

Putin has pushed and bullied Ukraine and Georgia away from NATO, established and deepened Europe's dependence on Russian energy sources, and elbowed the European Union into near silence in the face of threatened boycotts and Russia's refusal to sign a charter of good conduct between energy suppliers' and their clients.

Through the Security Council, and Bush's current reliance on it, Putin holds a Russian veto and a gatekeeper's prerogatives in relation to the West's hopes to stop Iran. The war in Chechnya, normally a minus-column entry, escapes serious censure because the allies keep quiet about it. A democracy that's flickered out, a fleeting rule of law? To Putin, they're nonproblems, as disposable as paper hats and tinsel.

Alongside Vice President Dick Cheney's supposedly hard-line speech on Russia in Lithuania last May (it reads like softly-softly stuff now), contrast Putin's current behavior and the Americans' faint reaction to it:

Bush meets twice with Putin in the last 30 days and offers him American approval for membership in the World Trade Organization. This, after years of withholding it out of minimal belief in Russia's reform course.

Amazing. For Europe, here was Bush, whose bark is regarded in the European subconscious as ultimate back-up insurance against Russia, giving away something for nothing without a hint of a quid pro quo.

Less than nothing, actually, in terms of Russian contempt. Pocketing the WTO offer, Putin then thumbed his nose at Bush and NATO through an attempt to set up a private dinner with Jacques Chirac in the margins of the Alliance summit meeting in Latvia two weeks ago.

Some Europeans see Bush as cowed. For the most part, they want him to talk directly to Iran. They don't laugh off one American analysis that argues that in refusing the Baker Commission's call to engage Iran directly, Bush seemed to abandon his best route to bypass Putin's barrier at the Security Council and move ahead with or without European allies who will not talk of an eventual military response to Iranian nukes.

In the view of experts at the symposium, the juxtaposition of American and Russian behavior leaves Iran believing it does not have to fear attack. Beyond that, they say, Iran thinks it holds levers over Russia on a number of strategic regional issues, and may be able to buy Russian support as the Iranian nuclear program evolves.

So what to do? The least dismal part in working toward an answer is that the Russians continue to publicly insist that they don't want Iran to have a military nuclear program, and seek the same goal as the Allies.

One response is for the allies to tell the Russians they must stop being a problem on every front. This involves what may seem more like a wish-list than reality.

The official who believes that Putin does not want contempt or a pariah status - without insisting he thinks the West could make this into Putin's fate - enumerated a series of points that could meld into a common European/American admonition.

It would say to Russia that it must be helpful and consistent on Iran, stop attempting to destabilize Ukraine and Georgia, approve a UN resolution giving Kosovo its independence, and accept the idea that the West wants a constructive relationship.

Investment and technical assistance is the carrot. Intensive development by Europe of alternative energy sources to Russia is the precaution.

But getting Putin to move? The answer there, the official said, would be a more united, more coherent front that does not start qualifying the message "when there's a deal in the wind."

He did not mention Bush.

If the Baker Commission argues that Bush is failing in his prosecution of the war in Iraq, the truth is also that Russia's current view of America as its "primary adversary" (the phrase is that of a senior U.S. official two months ago) serves as an accusation Bush has failed as well in his favorable, accommodating judgment of Putin.

Acknowledging this now and acting to reverse it (or just disregarding it) would become an indelible part of Bush's legacy. In any event, Putin's aggressive Russia commands a decision because it's a big part of an existential problem dogging the president's final 14 months: how not to leave office with Iran on track to become a nuclear threat.

For Putin, his favorable legacy at home already looks assured when his time is up (in theory) in 2008. He's the man who retrieved Russia from humiliation and turned it into a nation that counts again.

His reaction to purely verbal contempt coming from abroad? Hah. The only seemingly certain route to shame in Putin's mind would be for him to retreat or show weakness at those points where he's marked out Russia's hard new lines.