Overall, has US security policy in the past few decades been characterized by continuity or change? Both? Some combination of the two?
I remember a conversation I had with my friend in 7th grade, who had recently immigrated from Australia. We were discussing our (middle school) understanding of politics when he asked me what it was like to be at war my entire life. I was confused, and he clarified he meant the "wars" in Iraq and Afghanistan. I realized that despite following news about these conflicts, watching helmet-cam videos of soldiers fighting the Taliban across barren valleys, and listening eagerly to the speeches of my politicians, I had never felt like my country was at war. I believe this illustrates an element of security that has changed since the days of the cold war: Let me start by pointing out what has stayed the same. As discussed in the Wolfers reading, there are two ways to respond to a threat of attack, either by making intimidating the opponent by making it seem like attacks cannot succeed or "rob[ing] him of future incentives to renew his attack" (491). Essentially, you can make yourself more secure through force or reconciliation. Yes as the Krebs and Lobasz reading identifies in US rhetoric surrounding 9/11, it is possible to portray the enemy as "evil" which justifies an apocalyptic struggle against them. Moreover, evil enemies exist independent of human rationality, and they cannot be understood. I believe that this rhetoric has been employed by the US government against its enemies throughout the last few decades, and it represents a point of continuity. Certainly, the Soviets, Russians, North Koreans, Iraqis, Iranians, Chinese, and terrorists were all portrayed chiefly as wholly evil entities bent on the destruction of the US world order. Yet the means used to confront these enemies have changed. While both Soviet missiles and al-Qaeda bombs can strike at any moment, one required fallout shelters in every school, while the other required metal detectors at the airport. One was a small-scale inconvenience, the other a constant reminder that the US faced an enemy that could wipe every building in the country off the face of the earth. Both are instances of securitization by the government, but one leads a young child to conclude their country is at war, while the other disappears into the background of every day life. I am not the most knowledgeable about the cold war, but the other examples of securitization I can think of seem similar in how they differ from today. McCarthyism meant public trials and a visible government hand in Hollywood, NSA surveillance was invisible for many years. On the other hand, many examples (take secretive US action in Cambodia as compared to relatively obscure bombings the US undertakes in Libya or Somalia today, or perhaps Yemen) seem similar in terms of the government footprint security required. Perhaps it is harder to know you are at war given US security policy today, and the enemy has remained relatively the same, but the strategies the government pursues are more obscure. What do you all think?
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In this post I would like to consider the "Love Army for Somalia" campaign, as an example of the pros and cons of celebrity activism. I agree with Hannah's reflection post (which distinguished informed, effective activism from pandering, self-absorbed publicity stunts) that celebrities who educate themselves and partner with established organizations can make a positive difference, by using their social capital to direct support towards important causes. However, even causes that are well thought out face an inescapable absurdity when they try and connect incommensurable human experiences.
First, on the campaign itself. Several large "stars" (pictured below) made YouTube videos promoting a campaign called Love Army for Somalia, raising millions in aid. The campaign partnered with the American Refugee Committee, and eventually delivered 1300 tons of food to Somalis in need. When I saw the campaign, I was immediately struck by the disparity between the seriousness of the famine and the blitheness of the internet celebrities promoting it. Somalia has had 2 other famines in the last 25 years, neither of which was responded to adequately by the international community, and while the exact casualties are not known, I have seen estimates that 300,000 people died in each event. This time around, the UN was able to raise the billions it required to prevent famine (although famine is only the most extreme point on a sliding scale, and the consequences of food insecurity are catastrophic long before the threshold for famine is reached) as well as access to the hardest-hit parts of Somalia, and many lives were undoubtedly saved. While a few million dollars in personal donations should not be disregarded, and the campaigners deftly employed social media fame to raise the profile of an otherwise obscure problem, the amount given pales in comparison to what was required. Moreover, the gravity of the event was never conveyed, beyond the notion that famines are bad and should be prevented. I am still morally conflicted by the campaign, because the celebrities involved did many things right and made a material difference people's lives, but they also transformed an almost apocalyptic concern into one that could be easily incorporated into everyday life. At the same time, I know it is impossible for us to understand famine if we haven't experienced it, and whatever grim approximation could have been conveyed wouldn't have generated nearly as much interest. The entire event speaks to how unequal the world is. Some people are dying of preventable disease and starvation while others read about their misfortune on the organic-LED displays of this year's phone, guided by AI-curated news feeds processed in cloud computing server banks across the globe. How are experiences supposed to be communicated across this divide? The prospect borders on absurd, and celebrities certainly cannot be blamed for trying. If I was forced, on the spot, to decide how to change domestic content rules, I would say they should be loosened, but gradually over time and not by an overly large amount.
The first point I would consider is the nature of putting more cars into the world. To the best of my knowledge, personal transportation vehicles make up a significant percent of world oil use and world greenhouse emission. Strengthening domestic content rules would lead to an increase in car prices, reducing the number of new cars entering the road each year, and perhaps reducing some amount of carbon emissions from these vehicles. This prospect is appealing, yet at the same time it is important to remember the value cars can contribute to people's lives. If domestic content rules were loosened and new cars dropped in price drastically, people who otherwise would have spent hundreds of collective hours walking or taking the bus will be able to buy a car, freeing up otherwise wasted time too be invested in the economy or themselves. This goes without mentioning the increased safety of newer vehicles, and the inevitable loss of life that would result if purchasing a car became prohibitively expensive. Cars may hurt all of us on a global scale by adding to climate change, but they remain crucially important for people of all backgrounds to make a living. The pure technical sophistication required to produce a commercially viable car should not be overlooked. Doors are stamped out entirely by machines in a matter of seconds, and cars go from nonexistence to functioning vehicles in less than 24 hours as they proceed along the factory line. These feats of modern engineering should not be taken for granted, because they may not have happened without fierce competition between Japanese, European and American auto manufacturers in the past 4 decades. I believe this sort of competition not only makes industrial processes more efficient, but the resulting products safer and more in line with what consumers want. If the domestic content rules were gradually reduced, it would give American companies time to look for the innovations that would maintain their competitive advantage, without greatly hurting their sales or their long term growth. I'm not sure these comments point to any particular decision, but overall I feel like the personal benefit of cheaper cars and innovation in the industry outweighs the environmental downsides and the strain placed on American companies. (Also I've driven a Subaru Forester for the past 3 years and it has been great so maybe I'm biased) I have followed far-right internet forums online for most of the last 10 years. One trend I have witnessed that I was reminded of in class this week is what I would call the "internationalization" of radical conservative discourse, by which I mean the formation of a global sphere of far-right consciousness, along with a unitary narrative that could explain transnational problems in a way that was consistent with, and a direct extension of, the American political experience. In class, I was reminded of this phenomenon by the Lake and Reynolds reading, when the authors talked about the paradoxical nature of a movement that was "at once transnational in its inspiration and identifications but nationalist in its methods and goals." (4) I think this exact description can be used to describe the populist movements sweeping around the world today. Whether in the United States, Britain, or Italy, a common thread is a sense that one's country needs to put its own interests first, and protect its own people even at the expense of others. A few assorted points on this topic:
The supreme court of my home state, Washington, ended the death penalty this week, citing racial bias in its application. One study found that Black defendants were more than four times as likely to be handed a death sentence, when compared to Whites in similar legal positions. (1)www.npr.org/2018/10/11/656570464/washington-state-strikes-down-death-penalty-citing-racial-bias
Importantly, the racial discrepancies cited by the state didn’t emerge from the conduct of prosecutors, who sought the death penalty equally across races, but rather from the decisions of juries, who approved the death penalty for Black people far more than White people. African Americans, as individuals in the judicial system, were supposed to be afforded equitable, impartial justice in front of a jury of their peers. Yet they were denied this position, treated unfairly because of the stereotypes they were ascribed by their supposed “peers.” Not only is this horribly reminiscent of the farcical White juries that sentenced Black people to death in the Jim Crow South, it exemplifies the impossible state of existence that leads to double consciousness. Consider the family members of the people unfairly sentenced to death. They are expected to respect the justice system as law-abiding Americans and allow whatever verdict is handed down to be carried out. At the same time, they know that four times out of five the person they love is being killed because of their race. They are forced to put their faith in the justice system while knowing they cannot truly access it, creating double consciousness. While ending the death penalty does not end double consciousness or unjust sentencing of African Americans, I believe the court made a good decision, and I hope that the racial dimensions of other laws will be subject to similar scrutiny going forward. In class Thursday we discussed the overlap between realist and constructivist thought. We focused on Machiavelli's idea that leaders should appear to have whatever virtues are necessary to maintain power.
The first component of Machiavelli's idea I would like to discuss is what it means to appear to have a virtue. I believe many interpretations of this term would create problems for Machiavelli's argument. For example, imagine Xi Jinping wanted to appear to be a non-revisionist, dutiful participant of the liberal world order. He might use multilateral institutions like the World Trade Organization to settle disputes, or allow the US to be present in certain discussion forums regarding the South China Sea. Yet these steps represent real contributions to the liberal world order, even if they were conceived as a way to create a desired image. Professional staff in the Chinese bureaucracy would learn the ins-and-outs of these various multilateral institutions, and might even partially buy into the norms they represent. Maintaining the appearance of the named virtues would involve constant examination of the way that China was situated within the liberal world order, as well as how other participants of the order conceived of China. An idea that was conceived from the perspective of realism might, in the end, involve a significant amount of constructivist thought and outcomes. Question
To explain why I agree with Shotter’s understanding of knowledge (from which the argument for persuasion follows without much difficulty), I would like to test it on the case of social science research. I am currently reading a book on the design of case studies in the social sciences. What has struck me so far is that the way experts should go about producing new knowledge — something I had assumed was self evident — is actually far from certain. Moreover, the way scholars decide which method to employ seems like any other social tradition. Graduate schools teach the practices that have been handed down from previous generations, students learn to make their own, independent contributions, and the surrounding landscape of thought is replicated with a new set of members taking their positions within it. What I had considered an impersonal category of knowledge appears to be partially ontological in nature. While this revelation makes social science research fertile ground for testing Shotter’s arguments, is it fair to apply his critique of the “Cartesian style of thought” (Shotter 166) to all scholarly work on the subject? What about research that isn’t neopositivist? I would contend that regardless of the design of a piece of research, it is necessarily conceived as a definite step forward in academic thought. The logic of identifying a “void” (or at least a point of interest) in the literature, aspiring to fill it, and then cataloging and producing the subsequent attempt at understanding displays the exact linear, instrumental conception of knowledge that Shotter disagrees with. If his argument is applicable, let us test some of the claims Shotter makes regarding his alternative explanation of knowledge on social science research.
Because this post is long already, I will spare you similar analysis of the other four points. After examining them myself, I found them all similarly sound as the two above. Thus, most forms of political science research, a prime example of knowledge that is commonly perceived to be objective and impartial, can be said to include the socio-ontological elements that Shotter predicts. I find this a compelling example, and a reason to agree with his argument. References: John Shotter, "Rhetoric and the Recovery of Civil Society" Book I mention - Alexander L. George and Andrew Bennett, Case Studies and Theory Development in the Social Sciences |
AuthorAmerican University Class of 2021. Interested in state-building and economic governance. Archives
December 2018
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