All government services provide various levels of benefit to the public, from essentials like police protection and national defense down to museums on the history of condiment and bridges to nowhere. At the same time they distort, to a greater or lesser degree the private sphere. Sometimes this is a net good (police departments distorting the private gang system) and other times it’s not so good (we’ve yet to recover from disruptive urban renewal bulldozing of black neighborhoods in the 20th century). All these activities have to be funded by some sort of tax or fee and the taxes too have various levels of pain and benefit associated with them. The taxes also distort the private sphere (sales taxes suppress consumption, inheritance taxes suppress thrift, luxury taxes shift buying yachts to Canada).

It’s perfectly possible for any individual and for our society in general to list out taxes and spending, from least justifiable to most in two lists. Politicians occasionally do this and try to reign in various forms of government stupidity. The Washington Monument Syndrome consists of bureaucrats taking threatened spending cuts and applying the cuts to the wrong end of the list at key moments before there is a popular consensus on cutting spending, disrupting spending control plans.

The solution to this syndrome is simple, ban it. Remove civil service protection from government workers who engage in the practice. Follow through by getting these blackmailers out of government service when they try their tricks anyway.

We need to change the sequence of events so that the consensus of what’s most valuable is arrived at first. Then when stark economic reality shows up and revenues aren’t there to cover expenses, we already know where all the cuts would land. Bureaucrats who significantly deviate off the list and purposefully pick painful targets for cuts will be exposed for what they have always been: saboteurs of the will of the people, emotional blackmail artists holding popular programs hostage.

Ideally you would develop the cut lists in good times as an exercise in civic responsibility and first execute the list in bad times so spending cuts do the least harm and tax cuts the most good. As a political reality, things are never that neat. Good and bad times are never universal. Probably the best time to do it is in the honeymoon phase of our next Democrat president, when the media’s in the tank and blowing kisses at the new administration. It gives the opposition something to do and answers the charge of “how to pay for” tax cuts. The people decide what they want and the government organizes and gives voice to their sometimes contradictory desires.

It also puts the shoe on the other foot in terms of government economic analysis. Static analysis of tax cuts, inaccurately taking into account their growth effects, would lead to steeper cuts in spending than necessary. Besides being economically illiterate (which it always was), that sort of analysis would become a politically perilous thing to do because it would lead to more people losing services.

Another follow on effect is an opportunity for privatization. Certain services will lose their secure funding, and become episodic. We’ll fund them in good times but they’ll repeatedly face the chopping block in bad times. Private philanthropy could step in and ensure steady funding through an endowment so the job gets done without this government spending yo-yo. This splits the actual “bleeding heart liberals” off the socialist coalition as it becomes clear that sometimes shrinking government is a better way to actually get something done for the poor and the powerless.

I will only respond to one point in his comment. SE stated, inter alia that “…I find that most of my peers (junior Marine officers) don’t spend nearly enough time in study. The Marine capstone doctrinal publication, MCDP-1: Warfighting, implores officers to spend at least as much time in study as they do on physical fitness. That is a lot of time, and almost all of my peers fall far short.”

This reminded me of something from a long time ago … .

I was a military history buff from as far back as I can remember. As a young lad I was the happy recipient of a box of my uncle’s West Point textbooks from the 1950s, which he was going to pitch when he moved. My mother saw someone else’s trashpile coming into the house. I saw a treasure trove. One favorite was Napoleon as a General, by the Late Count Yorck Von Wartenburg, Colonel of the General Staff of the Prussian Army. I had (and still have) volume 1 (I never got Vol. II) and the incredibly good atlas that came with it.

I did not know then that by 1955, when my uncle read it, Von Wartenburg’s 19th Century tome was already outdated. The fact that it was assigned reading that late shows intellectual stagnation at West Point in the mid-1950s. But as a kid I did not know this troubling fact.

The book was part of a series named after Field Marshall Viscount Garnet Wolseley, who fought all over the world for Queen Victoria. At the front of the book is a beautiful letter from Wolseley graciously allowing the series to be named after him. Through the miracle of Google Books I was able to find it online. Note in particular the bolded passages.

Gibraltar, April 9th, 1897
 
Dear Captain James:
 I have read with interest the list you have sent me of the military works to be published as “The Wolseley Series.” The subjects are wisely chosen, and the authors will be generally accepted as soldiers who are competent to express valuable opinions upon them.
 
I am much flattered by having my name associated with an undertaking that is designed to improve the professional knowledge of our officers, and I rejoice to feel that under your able editorship its success is assured. In some instances I see you are not only editor but also translator, for which duty, if you will allow me to say so, your intimate knowledge of the German idiom eminently qualifies you.
 
I hope the officers of her Majesty’s army may never degenerate into bookworms. There is happily at present no tendency in that direction, for I am glad to say that this generation is as fond of danger, adventure, and all manly out-of-door sports as its forefathers were. At the same time, all now recognize that the officer who has not studied war as an applied science, and who is ignorant of modern military history, is of little use beyond the rank of Captain. The principle of selection, pure and simple, is gradually being applied to the promotion of all officers, especially in the higher grades. As years go on this system will be more and more rigidly enforced.
 
It is gratifying to know that a large proportion of our young officers are ambitious, and without doubt there is now many a subaltern who hopes to be a Field-Marshal or to be shot in the attempt. Experience enables me to warn all these determined men of how small their chance is of ever reaching any great position in the army unless they devote many of their spare hours every week to a close study of tactics and strategy as dealt with in the best books upon recent wars. In this series of military works from the pens of first-class writers, the military student will find ample material to assist him in fitting himself for high command, and in the interest of the Empire and of the army I earnestly hope he will avail himself of it.
 
I know how truly this work is undertaken as a labour of love by you as editor and by all who are helping you. But I also know that you and they will feel amply repaid if it assists the young officer to learn the science of his profession and, in doing this, to improve the fighting value of the service, to the true interests of which we are one and all sincerely devoted.
 
Believe me to be,
Very truly yours,
WOLSELEY.

Wolseley’s admonition to study is as timely now as it was when the Widow at Windsor owned ‘alf of creation.

The need for military officers to study military history is something that has long been known. Napoleon said as much. (See, e.g. Maxim LXXVIII)

Two specific examples stand out: George Patton and Arthur Wellesley, later known as the Duke of Wellington.

Neither were “bookworms”, a contemptible species rightly condemned by Lord Wolseley. Both men were physically fit, both were excellent horsemen, and Patton at least was devoted to sport, being an excellent polo player, and Olympic pentathlete. Nonetheless, both men were readers and even scholars in their professional field.

Patton’s devotion to study stands out very clearly in another favorite book, The Patton Papers, particularly the first volume. Carlo D’Este’s biography is also good on this point. (A book, which I have not yet read, is devoted specifically to Patton’s intellectual formation, The Patton Mind: the Professional Development of an Extraordinary Leader. If anyone has read it, let me know if it is good.)

I am currently reading Assaye 1803: Wellington’s First and “Bloodiest” Victory. The author tells us:

Arthur Wellesley was a very fit, lean, and bright-eyed officer; unusually for the period he drank and ate in moderation and frequently took exercise to keep himself in good shape. He was at home in the saddle and accustomed to riding over all sorts of terrain and thought nothing of riding upwards of 45 miles a day. Like any good commander he was also inquisitive about the country he was operating in and the enemy he would be fighting. Before sailing to India he added 28 books on the country to his library and on the voyage out he studied every day; this approach enabled him to have a store of information about what had been done in similar situations in the past and this would enable him to act accordingly. On campaign his books and papers were carried in a cart for reference when required.

Wellesley and Patton were both the kind of men Wolseley was talking about who were “fond of danger and adventure” and who “who hoped to be a Field-Marshal or to be shot in the attempt.” And both were devoted to study, and both achieved their professional ambitions.

Extra credit questions for our dear readers: Assume Tommy Franks did not read 28 books about Iraq before he commanded the army that conquered it. Would it have prevented what subsequently happened if he had done so? Would book-derived knowledge have led to a better outcome? Would it have prevented the campaign being waged in the first place? Would it have led to a different approach to the conquest and occupation of Iraq?

Addendum: I found yet another military reading list, the 1994-5 Armor School Reading List. There are a lot of good books listed on here. I hope our tankers have read some of these between hitting the weight room and maintaining and operating their armored monsters.

The article argues:

However, one thing that I did notice when I was doing a little google-fu on the issue is that there appears to be approximately 20 to 50 billion dollars spent by the federal government per year on direct subsidies (as opposed to tax breaks) given to the oil industry each year.

I am all for yanking corporate subsidies but the author or his sources clearly pulled the $20-$50 billion number out thin air. It’s at least an order of magnitude off.

The entire discretionary budget runs only something like $730 billion a year, so the numbers given would come to roughly 3%-6% of the entire discretionary budget! Even Washington’s notoriously bad accounting couldn’t miss checks that big every year. I think that (1) somebody moved a decimal point and that (2) “direct subsidy” is used in the loosest possible sense.

Why couldn’t the numbers be accurate? Several reasons. First, mathematically the wide range given is implausibly inaccurate. The range really boils down to $35 billion plus or minus $15 billion. That’s like saying, “I think I spent $100 but it might have been $55, $145 or somewhere in between.” A sigma that big is just silly.

Second, the number implies an improbable behavior on the part of non-oil companies. How likely does it seem that the oil industry could get 5% of all discretionary spending without every other major industry getting just as big a slice? Why would other corporations support handouts to oil companies which the non-oil companies would have to pay for? (This is always the fatal flaw in conspiracy theories about oil companies. Oil companies may be huge but the aggregate size of all the companies that consume oil is many, many times larger.)

Most budgetary arguments revolve around this kind of nonsensical claim. Somebody fires off a number and others swallow it because they lack any sense of scale for the phenomenon under discussion. It would help if we could develop a standard for reporting government spending in some set ratios such as percentage of GNP. Otherwise, most discussions of government spending mean nothing.

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — India is reportedly considering a ban on futures trading in food commodities, as the government struggles to curb soaring inflation and the rising cost of food has become a major international concern.
 
India’s finance minister Palaniappan Chidambaram said Monday that he was considering a blanket ban on trading in food futures, according to a report in The Financial Times.
 
Chidambaram said that governments across Asia share his worries over speculation in the commodities markets, the FT reported.
 
India is “facing a very grave crisis on the food front,” the minister said on the sidelines of the Asian Development Bank’s annual meeting in Madrid, according to the FT.
 
India has already banned futures trading in rice and wheat. The latest remarks from India’s finance minister come as his government confronts growing pressure at home to curb rising inflation.
 
On Friday, official data showed that India’s inflation hit a 42-month high of 7.57% in the week ending April 19.
 
“It’s indicative of the fact that there’s a real issue here and governments are scrambling to find some kind of solution,” said Cameron Brandt, global markets analyst at EPFR Global, about India’s idea to ban trading in food futures.
 
“I don’t think it’s a great idea especially given that their food futures market is fairly modest,” Brandt said. “If you take that away, you lose pretty important market signals. One thing the food futures market is telling us is plant more food.”
 
[...]

There’s not much to say about this except that India still has a ways to go to become a first-rate country.

Also, the ignorance about basic economics of many of the commenters on economics and finance websites never ceases to surprise me.

A study found that when the letters are analyzed for clarity versus jargon, shares of bottom-ranked companies lost more than 18 percent of their value in a two-year period ending in 2002, compared with a 12.7 percent drop for the top-ranked companies. More recently, another Rittenhouse study focused on newly-appointed CEOs and their content scores versus those of their predecessors. For the group with the highest gains in content scores, stock prices increased an average of of 28.4% (in the year after the new CEOs were named) versus an average decline of 10.5% for the ground with the greatest declines in content scores.

The usual cautions about cause and effect analysis–correlation is not causation, the direction in which the arrow of causality is pointing is not always obvious–of course apply. Nevertheless, this is interesting.

Here’s a presentation which provides a little bit of detail on the Rittenhouse analysis method. Ms Rittenhouse quotes Orwell:

If thought can corrupt language, then language can corrupt thought

…and offers her own version:

If language determines actions and results, then corrupt language will lead to debilitating actions and unsatisfactory results.

See also The Edifice Clue, The Harvard Indicator, and Readin’, Writin’, and the Business Shtick.

See also this comparing writing at J P Morgan in 1933 and in 2006. (Although I thought Jamie Dimon’s letter in the recent annual report was pretty good–not sure what the Rittenhouse analysis process would have to say about it.)

In the first place, it is worth examining what the position entails, where it is derived from and what controls there are on it. Until 2000 there was no Mayor of London. The reference one comes across in history and literature, particularly Shakespeare’s Chronicles, to the powerful individual, who owes that power to the fractious and difficult citizens of London, is to the Lord Mayor of the City of London, who still exists, still owes his (there has not been a woman so far) power to those who elect him and who managed to see off the upstart Mayor, Ken Livingstone, in short order.

We used to have a Greater London Council (GLC) that had taken over from the London County Council (LCC) but these were government-created political bodies, the aim being to ensure that Labour controlled London. This did not always work out and the whole scheme collapsed in the eighties, when Ken Livingstone, at the height of his “red” career, first engineered a coup against the leader of the victorious Labour group after the local election of 1981, then proceeded to defy Thatcher’s government in various ways, not least in support for the IRA and other like-minded states and organizations. The upshot of his swagger was almost inevitable – the GLC was abolished to a few people’s grief and to many others’ relief in 1986. Astonishingly enough, London prospered without that overweening organization. Livingstone spent some time pretending to be a journalist as he was given various columns by left-wing publications like the Independent on the basis of his celebrity. One of these was a restaurant column.

In 1987 he was elected to Parliament for the constituency of Brent East but found, as so many before him, that he was no longer a celebrity but a back-bench MP. Being highly unpopular with his party (nobody who knows Ken likes him, according to Neil Kinnock) he got nowhere and was undoubtedly wondering what he was going to do next when Tony Blair, newly elected in 1997, came to his rescue.

For various reasons, some to do with promises he had made to constituencies within the Labour Party before the election, some to do with his supposedly Europeanized thinking (he regretted that within a year) and some with what must have been a genuine belief in the beauty of modernization, Blair started introducing various forms of devolution, otherwise known as new layers of government. Once again we began to hear about London needing a government of its own, as it is a world city and world cities must have a bureaucracy to run them. The person who emerged immediately as the probably new Mayor was Our Ken, the Labour leadership’s least favourite of politicians, thus they were anxious to control what power he might acquire.

To cut a long story very short, the Greater London Authority Act, the longest piece of legislation since the mid-thirties, was passed in 1999 after a poorly attended referendum on the subject in London returned a “yes” result. The Mayor was given quite extensive powers, though not as extensive as Livingstone would have liked, the Assembly was given no powers at all, and the various quangos around those two bodies grabbed as much as they could. In the first election Livingstone stood as an independent, having fallen out with the leadership and having promised that he would not go against the Labour candidate. To be fair, the man had been a liar all his life. He won on a turn-out of just over 30 per cent, despite predictions of a much higher vote by numerous pundits, not one of whom apologized.

At first he tried to keep his seat in Parliament as well, together with the two salaries and the handsome expenses but in 2001 was forced to resign. Within a couple of years he made his peace with the Labour Party and in 2004 he stood as their candidate, having told the Select Committee that had looked into the legislation in 1997-8 that he would not consider more than one term as anything else led to corruption. What was that I said above? A slightly higher turn-out brought Our Ken back as Mayor, largely because the London Conservatives stupidly chose the same candidate who had lost in 2000, Steve Norris, a man seen as sleazy and unsavoury.

The reason for this slightly extended background, which is probably not well known to non-British readers is the need to understand that the Mayor of London derives his power exclusively from national legislation. On the other hand, within the power he is given he has no control over his behaviour as the Assembly is nothing but a talking-shop with no role to play. (An expensive talking-shop, of course, but that is all.) The 2007 Greater London Authority Act, which amended the previous one gave the Mayor slightly more powers but not to the Assembly. Presumably, it was reckoned that the Conservatives would once again mess up on the Mayoral contest, Ken will get back, the Labour government will stay in power but the Assembly may well fall further into Conservative control. A child of five would have seen the faults in that chain of argument but they could not find a child of five to ask.

The situation has now changed and we can expect some money squeeze for the next two years. This could be a good opportunity for the new Mayor to raise the subject of the London deficit.

At the last count the gap between what London was paying into the Exchequer and what it was getting out of it was between £15 billion and £20 billion, a large variation but a tidy sum, whichever way you look at it. In other words, London is subsidizing heavily other parts of the country and paying large sums into the EU budget. This would not matter so much if we did not then have to beg both the EU and the government for hand-outs for various purposes. There is no particular reason why the transport – as it is not privately owned and run – and policing in London, where it is used by many millions of non-Londoners, should not be financed by the rest of the country, especially as much of that money comes from London as well. But there are other problems. Apparently, some of the poor boroughs are the poorest in the whole country and require endless subsidies from central funds. Livingstone was praised for securing that funding through the rather drastic method of getting the 2012 Olympics. In actual fact, the Olympics will not secure anything and the money will not go anywhere even remotely useful.

Apart from raising the subject of the London deficit forcibly, Mayor Johnson might like to set up a proper study (perhaps a heavily truncated London Development Agency could be used for that) into those poorest boroughs. Why are they the poorest? Is it because immigrants come in, stay poor, make money, move out, next lot comes in and the cycle repeats itself? In that case the only problem is numbers. Or is it, as seems to be the case at least in Tower Hamlets, that one or two groups of immigrants get stuck and stay on welfare, in social housing, in relative poverty for generations? That requires something more than money thrown at it.

I fear that little can be expected on that score from the new Mayor. My heart sank when I read that one of the contributions to the campaign made by his wife, Marina Wheeler, was to alert him or to bring to his attention forcibly the disparities in wealth and income in London. As a successful and, one assumes, wealthy lawyer, daughter of a successful and, one assumes, well-off journalist she would know all about it. The last thing London needs is a paternalistic socialist-Tory solution to its undoubted problems but I fear that may be what we shall see.

When it comes to introducing new regulations, the Mayor of London’s powers are severely curtailed. He has a good deal of say over transport, some say over public housing and a very little say over policing. He has to produce plans and policies on various matters as it is required by law. He cannot dissolve the organizations that have either been set up by the legislation or have been confirmed by it, even when they are useless money sucking ones like the London Development Agency. Though Livingstone found that one quite useful as a kind of a piggy-bank, as its money came directly from the Treasury and not from the GLA precept levied on the people of the capital. Furthermore, much that the previous Mayor wanted to control is actually done by the boroughs, who guard their rights and privileges jealously. There were many set-tos between the Conservative run boroughs and the Mayor when, allegedly, their intentions contravened his plans. Usually the rows went on for a long time, with nothing being achieved and Livingstone spending a great deal of money on legal challenges.

Then there is the biggest control of all: the European Union. A great deal of what falls into the remit of both the local boroughs and the GLA are EU competence. This applies to environmental rules, which includes waste management; to health and safety rules; to work practice rules; to public procurement and other, smaller, matters. All the Mayor can do is implement EU directives and regulations possibly in the form that they appear after going through parliamentary secondary legislation.

In other words, the scope for Boris Johnson, the new Mayor, to introduce that new dawn that people are hymning, is very small. He can certainly control the staffing at the GLA and word is that Livingstone’s aides are being fired. On Saturday, there were boxes stacked up in the basement of City Hall a.k.a. the Great Glass Egg, waiting to be collected, with the names of those closest aides on them. They must have seen the writing on the wall some time on Friday and got busy.

We all hope that Mayor Johnson will put an end to the Livingstonian fantasy of London’s foreign relations, which involved opening highly expensive offices in Caracas, Beijing, Shanghai and one or two other places. All questions as to what these offices might do that other organizations cannot were swatted aside. The office in Brussels will have to stay but, perhaps, Mayor Johnson who once reported from the heart of the EU Empire for the Daily Telegraph will reorganize that useless bunch that gulps down around three quarters of a million pounds every year without ever producing any information about forthcoming legislation or lobbying on London’s behalf. When challenged once, they replied that their role was to put the Mayor’s policy into place.

Mayor Johnson can certainly stop the endless fights with local boroughs over their housing policies and the endless legal cases; he can acknowledge that boroughs often know better what is required by way of housing than the Mayor, whatever his plans are. Come to think of it, he can stop producing quite such grandiose and unachievable plans because these cost money in organizations, committees and forced implementations, however unsuccessful.

He can certainly stop handing out money to any and every “community group” that feels it has something to say or to perform but is not prepared to pay for it; and he can stop those endless “culture” festivals that turn Trafalgar Square into impenetrable mazes of tents, shrieking loudspeakers, huge screens, barriers and portaloos every week-end. We can start having idiotic political meetings there, which are preferable by far to the meaningless festivals. Perhaps, Mayor Johnson will put a stop to the hideous and inappropriate pieces of rubbish that masquerade as public art on the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square and initiate a competition as to which heroic figure should be represented there, instead.

He is, however, stuck with many of the white elephants, the chief of which is the 2012 London Olympics, the cost of which is rocketing and the benefits of which are still undemonstrated. He can, possibly, call a halt and announce that no more will be spent and the various Olympic authorities must manage with what has already been allocated. They could start by forming one organization and cutting the bureaucracy.

He and we are stuck with most of the congestion charge. The western extension into largely residential and small business boroughs can be abolished relatively easily – it was only a piece of ill-thought out, badly argued spite against people who refuse to vote for Ken Livingstone. But the congestion charge in the central areas of London is locked into a contract that will take a long time to disentangle. Besides, Boris has indicated that he would like to keep the congestion charge, though it has been a useless and badly managed way of trying to control traffic. He could, conceivably, if he was imaginative enough, come up with a suggestion or two as to that control of traffic in central London, which was not built for the number of cars there are now and the number of people who want to get through.

Public transport in London is an appalling mess and, so far, we have heard no suggestions from the new Mayor as to how he will ensure its efficiency and speed, neither of which has been seen for many years. At least, he is unlikely to be nice to the unions, whose leaders were Ken’s best friends. He might even back the management when they are trying to stare the unions down. But he still needs a plan for the improvement of public transport. At present, all we have heard is his plan to ban alcohol from London Tube. Presumably, that means drinking rather than carrying. Attractive though that sounds, given the social and environmental problems we face when travelling on the underground, its implementation might present certain problems.

In other words, whatever changes might happen, they will not be large or important for a long time. Those would happen only if by some miracle we managed to get rid of that incubus, “the government of London” and started concentrating on what mattered: transport, policing and easing of tax and regulation.

Something needs to be said about the new Mayor, the Tories’ winning candidate. In general, the Tories have not done as well in London as they had expected, losing one first-past-the-post seat in the Assembly and not managing to win another, marginal one. Thanks to the complicated voting system that few people can understand, they did acquire three top-up seats and now have 11 members with Labour having 8 (two top-up members), Lib-Dems 3, down from 5, the Greens 2 and the BNP, a sort of a neo-fascist and highly corporatist socialist party, 1.

But it is only the Mayor who really matters. Contrary to what the media keeps saying, Boris Johnson is neither a fool nor a buffoon, though his clowning has stood him in good stead. Consider his career, a far more admirable one than Ken Livingstone’s. Much is made of his membership of a drinking club and, possibly, taking drugs when he was at Oxford (shock, horror) but, in fact, he got a respectable degree in Classics, not the all-purpose PPE and was involved in the Oxford Union. Since then he has been a journalist and columnist of many years standing, successful editor of the Spectator, MP since 2001 and front bench spokesman on higher education. He has written several books, including a novel, and published three or four collections of journalism. Apart from the famous appearances on “Have I got news for you”, which just about everyone, including Livingstone, did, Johnson also put together a serious programme about the Roman Empire and the EU. In other words, when needs be, he can put aside his fooleries and focus on what he is doing. He is intelligent and fiercely ambitious. He did not really want this job, as it is something of a dead end so we can surmise that some kind of a bribe was offered. I am sure that he will claim his “payment” in due course and Cameron will have to give it.

His supposed gaffes are not considered to be that by most people. When he said something about sacking Jamie Oliver, the all-purpose TV chef and campaigner about school food, and letting people eat what they want, we all cheered. The loudest cheer came from parents who had found that their children were now demanding packed lunches because the schools were experimenting with Oliver’s suggestions. Johnson’s subsequent comment that what he really meant to say was that Jamie Oliver was a national saint does not imply an ‘umble and a contrite heart.

Ken Livingstone did not make the mistake of considering Boris Johnson to be an insignificant buffoon. As soon as it became obvious that the man might be a contender, he launched a vicious personal campaign against him, which in the end backfired.

Too many journalists have pointed out that it was the Australian Lynton Crosbie who made Boris Johnson into a serious campaigner for the Mayor and wondered what would happen now that Mr Crosbie is going back to Oz. Nothing, I would guess. Johnson is quite capable of being serious if he wants to be but many of us are hoping that he will not be. A serious Mayor of London will have visions, plans, initiatives, committees, commissions, quangos and will be very little different from Livingstone. Whereas, what would be good is a Mayor who understand London’s history and leaves well alone. One can dream.

On the whole, I am looking forward to the Johnson mayoralty. Unlike Livingstone, he is unpredictable. I fear wet Toryism, as that is what seems to have been his political views but, then again, Johnson has shown a robust dislike of the accepted consensus in politics.

One thing a Mayor does have and this may give the Boy-King of the Conservative Party a few uneasy moments: a power base that is completely outside the leader’s control. Livingstone, whose political career was well and truly over, used it to promote and enrich his friends and tighten his control on various organizations for no other purpose but to be re-elected. (If there was anything else there, we might find out reasonably soon. The Metropolitan Police has undoubtedly noted the change in leadership.) Boris Johnson is an ambitious politician with places to go. He might use his political base for very different purposes.

Looked at from the perspective of what the academics are doing, it sure looks bleak. But that is only part of the picture. I believe it is an increasingly irrelevant part of the picture. In fact, I don’t know how much good it would do to have the current population of academia teaching this history. They may well do more harm than good. I got a kick out of the story of the history professor who knew only two things about the American role in World War II: The internment of the Japanese and the atomic bombings, both of course presented as American crimes. That would be funny if it were not nausea-inducing, and if my tax money weren’t paying for it. With friends like that, who needs enemies? Of course, academics are supposed to be a very superior breed of person, capable of appreciating subtlety and nuance and complexity and the tangled ambiguity of the world that poor stupid conservatives like me cannot grasp, yadda yadda — unless it is an opportunity to make the USA the villain of the drama. Then a boneheaded bit of simplistic propaganda will do the trick. Cutting a few factual corners to make sure the students get the proper indoctrination is all to the good in that universe.

But let us turn our backs on this sorry scene, and look to two specific areas that seem far more hopeful.

First, as Prof. Citino noted, military history is very popular with the public. The late Stephen Ambrose’s books fall into this category, to pick one obvious example. While not necessarily saturated profound new insights, his books are decent and may lead readers to more challenging works. Moreover, there are a huge number of high quality books of military history being published all the time. Clearly, someone is reading this stuff.

To get an idea of the volume and quality of this river of reading material, check out just the books the military itself reviews.

I always look at the book review sections of the various military publications, such as Parameters, Military Review, Joint Forces Quarterly , Air and Space Power Journal, Naval War College Review, Pointer: Journal of the Singapore Armed Forces, Canadian Military Journal, Australian Defense Journal, and various others.

There is a deluge of high-quality military history being produced, and the professional journal reviewers are only scratching the surface. The “books received” sections are always far, far longer than the books reviewed.

The reviewers in these journals are selecting books that will have relevance and value for a demanding, professional audience. A good review in one of these sources is a solid sign that the book is worth reading.

So, despite the academic opposition, these books are being produced, in quantity, and are at least reaching a military audience.

Similarly, if you look at any issue of The Journal of Military History there is a huge number of book reviews in each issue. (It is worth joining the Society of Military History just to get the four journals published annually, primarily for the book reviews.)

Several publishers specialize in producing very good works of military history. I will mention only one here, since I have so many books from them: The University Press of Kansas. which publishes, inter alia books by Col. David M. Glantz, the foremost expert on the Soviet war effort in World War II..

There is nothing wrong with the supply side.

Furthermore, the military has recommended reading lists composed of high quality books. The U.S. Army Chief of Staff’s Professional Reading List, The U.S. Marine Corps Professional Reading Program, U.S. Air force Professional Reading Program, U.S. Navy Professional Reading Program. The Australian Chief of the Army has a very interesting list (the official link is not working). There is also the unofficial list on the
Small Wars Journal site.

The point here is that the real, warfighting military takes professional reading seriously, and most of it is composed of military history. The current academic pose may be that “lessons from history” are illusory. People who have to go in harms way know better. Sometimes the only way to see through the fog of war is to know what happened in the past under similar circumstances. It is a Hell of a lot better than nothing.

Furthermore, the web is saturated with military history sites for interested non-professionals, i.e. neither soldiers nor academics. One example of this is the excellent World War One site of the Western Front Association, which has a very good book review section. There are many more like this, covering all possible areas of military history. Many of them are very well done.

The state of military history, thankfully, does not rest exclusively or even primarily on the academic community. The demand for high-quality military history from the professional military community, and interested civilians, is so great that it can survive with only the grudging interest that the academic community currently gives it. Given the state of the academy in this year of grace 2008, this area of study is probably better off keeping some distance from the intellectual corruption which is unfortunately so pervasive. Military history is too important to be wholly taken over entirely by the current crop of academics.

The downside is that students don’t get exposed to it in a classroom setting.

But anyone with any interest in these issues whatsoever has a treasure trove of material easily available.

In other words, things aren’t so bad, really.

UPDATE: this is the working link for the Australian Army reading list. It is a long document, with commentary. Very interesting list, as well as comments.

UPDATE II: Further thoughts here.

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Related posts:
Chicagoboyz Wildlife Series II

I like this Zakaria piece because he seems to be in broad agreement with me. Ha. We all like it when that happens. Also, his little capsule summary of the British Empire as our predecessor is nicely done. However, as I have complained to anyone who will listen, even Zakaria fails to understand how different the British Empire was from all its land-based predecessors. The one current writer to who “gets it” on this issue is Walter Russell Mead. Mead, in his excellent recent book God and Gold: Britain, America and the Making of the Modern World discusses the “maritime order” founded in recent centuries by the Dutch, then handed off to the British, then the Trident was passed to the USA. This is exactly correct.

Incidentally, I am currently reading a truly ancient book An Experiment in World Order, by Paul McGuire, published in 1948. It was referenced by Jerry Pournelle in response to the Zakaria article. It is the best explanation I have yet read of what the British Empire was and how it actually worked. (I notice that Amazon has no used copies anymore. Mr. Pournelle’s post seems to have led to the few copies being snapped-up. There are still some available from Bookfinder.)

My main objection to Zakaria is his conclusion in this chapter. He expresses a wrongheaded belief that the USA’s main problem is its outdated and ramshackle political framework (so he says) which prevents the policy consensus of all the smart people from being expeditiously enacted into law.

The problem today is that the U.S. political system seems to have lost its ability to fix its ailments. …. Different policies could quickly and relatively easily move the United States onto a far more stable footing. A set of sensible reforms could be enacted tomorrow to trim wasteful spending and subsidies, increase savings, expand training in science and technology, secure pensions, create a workable immigration process, and achieve significant efficiencies in the use of energy. Policy experts do not have wide disagreements on most of these issues, and none of the proposed measures would require sacrifices reminiscent of wartime hardship, only modest adjustments of existing arrangements. And yet, because of politics, they appear impossible. The U.S. political system has lost the ability to accept some pain now for great gain later on.

….

As it enters the twenty-first century, the United States is not fundamentally a weak economy or a decadent society. But it has developed a highly dysfunctional politics. What was an antiquated and overly rigid political system to begin with (now about 225 years old) has been captured by money, special interests, a sensationalist media, and ideological attack groups. The result is ceaseless, virulent debate about trivia — politics as theater — and very little substance, compromise, or action. A can-do country is now saddled with a do-nothing political process, designed for partisan battle rather than problem solving.
…
Progress on any major problem — health care, Social Security, tax reform — will require compromise from both sides. It requires a longer-term perspective. And that has become politically deadly. Those who advocate sensible solutions and compromise legislation find themselves being marginalized by their party’s leadership, losing funds from special-interest groups, and being constantly attacked by their “side” on television and radio. The system provides greater incentives to stand firm and go back and tell your team that you refused to bow to the enemy. It is great for fundraising, but it is terrible for governing.

(Emphasis added.) I disagree utterly.

The words “no f***ing way, Mr. Zakaria” come to mind, or even “where is my musket?”

Absolutely the last thing we need is for all the politicians to get together, come to an agreement, stop fighting and start “governing” in the fashion that “policy experts” have agreed on. This is the kind of the thing the Founders wanted to prevent, and they have had 225 years of pretty good success.

Our 18th century Constitution is not the problem, it is the solution. It is the only thing between us and bureaucratic tyranny, which is what Zakaria is advocating, though he probably does not think he is. Adam Smith said to be wary when two businessmen got together, they are conspiring against the public interest. He was right, too. How much worse when the political parties, that are supposed to be fighting each other, get together and decide they will cooperate in dividing the carcass that used to be known as the free citizenry of the United States. Sorry, no way. I don’t want them all to hold hands, sing Kumbaya, and agree to despoil us all of what little liberty and money we have left.

The thing we need to do to solve our many problems is not to let a bunch of experts tell a bunch of cooperative politicians how to tell the citizens of America, even more than they do now, how to run their affairs. A committee of experts is the last thing that should be running a country. William F. Buckley, God bless him, had it right. Far better to be governed by a random four hundred names in the Boston telephone directory than by the faculty of Harvard.

The solution to any of our problems is 180 degrees from what Zakaria is suggesting.

The solution is to get the Government the Hell out of the way, get its leprous fingers out of our wallets. The solution is to flail the damnable thing back into the corner where it belongs, make it do the things it is supposed to do and nothing else. National defense, law enforcement and a few other functions are more than it can do well as it is.

The solution is to get Uncle Sam the Hell out of the way, make him puke out the money he currently sucks out of the economy, and stand back and let the Billion-Footed Beast which is the American people get going with millions of work-arounds and clever solutions and nutty schemes which no one can even dream of from a desk in Washington, or Brussels, or Davos, or even Cambridge, Massachusetts.

On the enduring value of our Constitution, and the need to build on it and away from the mess we have created in its place, the only guy who I find myself agreeing with lately is Ron Paul.

Ron Paul cannot be the guy who leads into the land of Canaan. He is too idiosyncratic. And his supporters are too hostile to politics. They want a glorious defeat and ideological purity. But I am hoping Ron Paul may be a Barry Goldwater-figure for the growth of a revived small-l libertarian faction within the GOP. I disagree with him on a very important point: I believe in a more expansive use of American military power to preserve the global economic order we rely on for our economic wellbeing. Globalization does not occur spontaneously. It happens when there is a dominant navy, the Royal Navy, the the US Navy. I actually believe my view on this is in line with the Founders intentions more than Mr. Paul’s, but that is an argument for another day.

On most other things he sounds a lot like the Buckley-Goldwater-Kemp-Reagan conservatism I grew up with. We need more of that, and less of the Bush family Yankee patrician noblesse oblige (with or without a Texas accent) which goes in the guise of “compassionate conservatism” and a neo-Wilsonian view of international affairs. Ecrasez l’infame.

Time to reconfigure for Conservatism 2.0. Buckley’s conservatism, founded in 1955, has run its course. It’s peak was Reagan’s 49 state landslide in 1984, and its Indian Summer was the 1994 GOP takeover of the House. It’s greatest achievement was victory in the Cold War. It was a great run.

We will create the new conservatism for the 21st century by realizing and returning to the roots of our success, not by rejecting or cutting them off.

UPDATE: I am struck by the degree of hostility the mere mention of Ron Paul provokes. I have not paid much attention to him until reading his book, which is mostly very sound. So I have missed out on all the ruckus about him until now. I will have to post on the book, if possible. Maybe I will compare it to Barry Goldwater’s 1964 book The Conscience of a Conservative, which is kicking around here somewhere … .

Our runner up is Ozmo, whose wife, using a combination of newspaper coupons and a loyalty card purchased food and toiletries for a total of $50, but in the end with the coupons and loyalty bonuses $13 was paid to HER.

But our clear winner reminded me of myself back in my college days, where free food was my main draw. I will let John say it as he did in the comments:

Margarita Mondays at Acapulcos. Go into the Cantina during happy hour and for $1 you get a margarita (cheap tequila, but it still works) and all you can eat buffet. I swear, for a while there in college that was the only fresh vegetables I was getting. They also had these great little taquitos. You just had to make sure to get out before the karaoke started (or if you had at least $5 you could be drunk enough to last through it).

For this Eatin’ Cheap submission John, you are the man!

*Special thanks to Jonathan for making this certificate, which will entitle John to great respect wherever he goes, as well as the best tables at America’s finest restaurants.

A good recent piece on this issue which Zen did not link to is Military Histories Old and New: A Reintroduction by the excellent military historian Robert M. Citino. Citino’s essay was published in the American Historical Review, the flagship journal of the American Historical Association, which modestly describes itself as the major historical journal in the United States. Hence, Citino’s article is a case for the defense, made by a very qualified military historian, in the main forum of the profession.

Citino does not make a case for military history that Zen and his commenters made. He does not focus on the utility, in fact necessity, that policy-makers and even informed citizens possess a sound and accurate awareness of military history. That is the kind of argument no academic will be impressed by. Nor does he make the traditional case that military events, followed by major political events, are the key drivers of history. The major questions of our collective lives are and have always been determined by war, the ultimate extension of politics. Whether communities and individuals shall live at all, who shall live where, under what laws, in tyranny or freedom, in peace or in anarchy — war has decided these questions, and in many places it still does, and war, in whatever guise, will certainly continue to do so. But this is distasteful. To “privilege” military, or politico-military history in this way would be unacceptable to the tender souls in America’s history departments. But the founders of their profession, Herodotus and Thucydides, knew better.

Citino takes a somewhat apologetic tone. Instead of referring to the open hostility, or dismissive disdain that exists for his area of expertise, he downplays it: “Military history today is in the same curious position it has been in for decades: extremely popular with the American public at large, and relatively marginalized within professional academic circles.” If you are speaking to the people who have marginalized you, this is a nice way of starting out. Citino says that there are three schools of military history. The more traditional kind, that is history of military organizations and activities. particularly the wars and battles that militaries alone can wage and for which they exist in the first place. Second is the now-old “war and society” approach, where you talk the effect of war, war and economy, war and women, etc. but keeping arms-length from the blood and smoke and shouting, lest you be consider to “like” war. Third is the relatively recent elaboration of “war and memory”. about how these events are remembered, turned into stories or myths or used for political purposes. All of these areas no doubt have their value, at least in principle. I have read and benefited from books in all three categories. But military history without qualification or apology is a field with its own dignity and importance and it is currently out of favor.

Citino makes a ritual sacrifice of the allegedly bad, old-fashioned military history that no one likes any more, when talking about those military historians who actually write history of militaries: “The best of them do so in a fashion that goes well beyond the traditional ‘drum and trumpet’ or ‘good general–bad general’ approach.” I must say, I have read a lot of very old books and you rarely find anyone who was serious who wrote in this alleged fashion. It is a straw man. To pick one example, the Mid-Victorian classic The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo by Edward Creasy was and is a serious work, it was cutting-edge for its day, and it is still an excellent read and mostly correct. Poorly written history is something that afflicts every era. The idea that today’s military historians are a terribly superior bunch is baseless self-congratulation. But I suppose Citino had to throw someone under the bus. I hope Creasy, Fortescue, Clowes, Anglesey, Oman and the rest are having a chuckle over all this in the military historians’ corner of Heaven.

Citino concludes his essay by virtually imploring the rest of the profession:

Despite these problems, which no doubt promise to be contentious, military historians today are doing enough good work, based on exciting and innovative approaches, to re-engage the attention of historians in any number of areas. My final advice to my professional colleagues and friends in the broader discipline? Try something genuinely daring, even countercultural, in terms of today’s academy. Read some military history.

There is something grotesquely wrong when the author of many numerous top-quality works feels he has to grovel before his peers. Unfortunately for him, he has to live and function in a shark-tank of political correctness and ideological hostility. I would not want to work in that environment, and I admire the man’s work. I wish him well.

Citino correctly notes that military history is “extremely popular with the American public at large”.. Amongst academics, this is a serious negative. Opacity is exclusivity is prestige is tenure and a feeling of superiority. If no on can understand your stuff, you can pretend that you are as smart as the physicists across the quad, whose stuff is impenetrable. too. The problem of course is that the physicists’ stuff is hard because it is real, demanding and requires highly trained intellects that most people cannot hope to possess. The other stuff is “hard” because it is jargon-laden groupspeak.

The popularity of military history has a very positive effect, which in part offsets the problem Zen identified expressly, and which Citino’s essay displays implicitly. The amount of very, very good military history which is being published, and reprinted, is staggering. Someone is reading all this stuff. In fact, our military personnel are (apparently) reading all this stuff.

I will have a follow-up post on this subject, soon I hope.

When a person becomes infected with a lethal contagious disease, the disease microbe turns their body into a biological warfare factory churning out billions of weapons which automatically seek out and attack other people. If a person infected themself on purpose and then went about their daily life, we would regard it as a form of lethal violence against everyone they came in contact with. How then should we regard those who fail to take simple, cheap and low-risk steps to prevent such an occurrence by accident?

Before we understood that microbes cause disease and developed techniques to stop them, we regarded infection as an act of God for which no human could be held accountable. Now we do understand how to prevent infections and we do hold people accountable for not doing so. If food or health care providers do not follow basic sanitation procedures to prevent the reproduction and spread of microbes they face civil and criminal penalties. It doesn’t matter if they did not intend to infect people. It only matters that they did not take precautions against it. Why should we hold unvaccinated individuals to a lower standard?

I think we only did so in the past because we lacked the ability to determine if individual A infected individual B. Now we can. It’s only a matter of time before someone seeks legal redress for the preventable death of a loved one based on the premise that a voluntarily unvaccinated individual was negligent.

We might even reach the point where society demands that people who may turn into biological hazards without warning visually distinguish themselves. Why should a parent have to unknowingly expose an unvaccinated infant to an unvaccinated adult in a public setting? An unvaccinated person is hundreds of times more likely to carry a lethal disease than a vaccinated one. Shouldn’t such an individual have to notify others of the risk they pose?

We don’t think about such matters because vaccination has made fatal communicable illnesses rare and freakish events. As more and more people in the developed world shun vaccinations and more people from the unvaccinated developing world arrive here without disease screening, we will see more and more outbreaks. When people see their children die from an easily preventable cause, they will get mad.

It is incomprehensible to me how the WSJ, which usually is a very well written newspaper, occasionally slips in an article so badly written, conceived and executed that I think I am reading People magazine. Isn’t that why they have editors? Let’s take this apart…

The most typical flaw of mainstream journalism in my opinion is 1) “humanizing” a complex problem with a few interviews or out of context “examples” 2) not challenging basic flaws in logic in these “examples” 3) failing to add a knowledgeable and topic-based analysis of the facts at hand based on experience.

Here are the examples in the article:

“Ray and Trish Vangas recently found themselves contending with the indignities of renting. The couple lost their first home… after their adjustable rate mortgage reset and the bill jumped by about $900 a month, to $3300… the couple moved into a rented townhouse… almost immediately, they discovered problems, including a deck that wobbled, dead electrical outlets, missing smoke detectors, and bad plumbing. With the help of the town’s health department they moved out… paying $2250 a month. “I can’t believe I worked so hard for a house, only to lose it.”

The interviewer never takes the Vangas to task for their obvious mistakes. They picked up an adjustable rate mortgage which was scheduled to reset to a level of payments that they could not afford. Why did they do this? And the odd part is that the mortgage didn’t reset very far - it moved from $2400 to $3300, a large but seemingly manageable increase. Were they living that close to the edge? The article doesn’t mention them losing a job or suffering any sort of financial crisis, so that doesn’t seem to be an explanation.

Then the Vangas talk about their rental experience - they were apparently surprised by things that would be OBVIOUS to any renter worth their salt - when you are going to rent an apartment or house, you should walk in, turn lights on and off, check the water pressure and shower, and look for things like a “wobbly” deck and smoke detectors. It isn’t like these items were a surprise or something - I doubt the landlord pulled the smoke detectors and messed up the water pressure after their visit. Did they inspect the house first? The journalist should have asked.

Another item to note is that when the Vangas, who were foreclosed for a modest increase in their adjustable rate mortgage (duh - did you notice the term “adjustable” next to the word “mortgage”) and then apparently moved into a rental without doing even minimal due diligence, needed to get out of their lease, they contacted the town’s “health department”. What a bunch of jerks! They don’t mention anywhere that there were rats or other items that would be a health scare, or that the landlord didn’t try to make amends. They didn’t like the rental for (mostly) obvious things that they should have known in advance, so they go to the city health department. I hope their next landlord runs a check on their name and this pops up and then he / she will know that these people will run to the government the second things don’t go their way.

The last line also goes without comment - he worked so hard for a house, only to lose it. He lost his house because he couldn’t afford it, and he obviously didn’t work that hard for it, since he didn’t put much down and didn’t take things seriously enough to have any kind of safety net in terms of savings for changes to the mortgage. The journalist should have noted that the real problem wasn’t “losing” the house, it was buying a house that he couldn’t afford in the first place.

The second example is “Michael Ryder, an information technology analyst”. His example is more typical - he used equity in his house to buy a second house and add improvements, and then got divorced, which ruined his finances. He lost his home in foreclosure, and lives in a 2 bedroom apartment which seems crowded when his kids come to visit. “he wants to start building equity again… ‘I want to leave something behind for my kids’ he says”.

The journalist leaves unsaid the fact that buying two houses and remodeling them didn’t work out too well for Mr. Ryder the first time around… and that “building equity” isn’t the only way to leave something behind for his kids - the savings from renting (and not paying mortgage, taxes, and to fix up the property) can be saved and reinvested which will also build wealth. Probably the journalist, too, believes that everyone is best off owning a house, when this clearly isn’t the case (but I am only speculating, because the journalist doesn’t offer opinions or even informed commentary).

The next example is Matthew Cooper, an advertising salesman. His payments started at $2800 for an interest only mortgage and went up to $4500 / month. At least he learned something - “he will insist on a fixed rate loan” the next time he buys. But Mr. Cooper has to end it with the ludicrous statement that ‘Buying is the only way to accumulate wealth’, which the journalist leaves unchallenged. Particularly in Mr. Cooper’s case, he is now paying $1700 / month in rent, so he has at least $1100 - $2800 more in his pocket than he used to (figuring that the tax savings is netted out against increased property taxes and maintenance expenses). If he saved this money, the journalist should have pointed out, he could certainly ‘accumulate wealth’, even in a fixed rate CD.

The final example is a couple (the Fry’s) in Minnesota who are renting for $2000 / month, with an option to buy the house for $441,000 at the end of three years, which is what the owner paid for it. Mr. Fry “figures the house is a bargain”.

Aaarrgh. On what basis does Mr. Fry think the house is a bargain? The current owner can’t sell it for what he paid for it, and assets are only worth what other people are willing to pay for them (unless they generate cash, which a house clearly doesn’t, and you can value the imputed rent which doesn’t add up to a value of $441k).

While renting vs. buying is a complex situation, the continuous statements and implications that buying is always superior to renting and that renting should be a temporary (and un-dignified state) just flat out isn’t true. The analysis is too complicated for those types of pat analysis, and if the journalist has to have their “human interest” story, they should go out and get one, of a renter that avoided over-buying during the boom and accumulated wealth that otherwise would have gone into a house payment.

Cross posted at LITGM

On the same page, FT has another article: EU warned over cut in number of pesticides. Excerpt:

European Union plans to restrict chemical use by farmers in Europe could reduce harvests at a time of global food shortages, farmers, academics, regulators and pesticide makers warned on Wednesday.

Crops such as apples and hops could no longer be grown on the continent if EU draft plans are not amended, they said. Wheat and potato yields could drop by almost a third, according to industry-sponsored research.

and

Research commissioned from Italian consultancy Nomisma forecast drops in yields of about 30 per cent by 2012. The EU would lose its self-sufficiency in wheat, potatoes, wine and cereals.

(Here’s a letter to the editor from someone who strongly disagrees with the thesis that these pesticide controls will be devastating to European agriculture.)

Via the interesting site Gongol, here’s an article about the growing shortage of fertilizer, with comments by Norman Borlaug.

As a counterpoint, both John Hussman and Anatole Kaletsky argue that the current commodities situation has some attributes of a bubble.

I may as well share my dashed-off punditry. I responded pretty much as follows:

In a way, the whole thing is off-point since there never really was American “unipolarity”. That word implies a degree of autonomy and self-sufficiency no power has ever enjoyed. As I recall, the illusory concept of American “unipolarity” was first propounded in 1991 by Charles Krauthammer. He was wrong then in believing there existed a vast, unused capacity of the USA to leverage its military dominance to achieve the ideological ends he wants. Krauthammer was unwittingly the spiritual sibling of the contemptible Madeleine Albright, who famously asked Colin Powell “What’s the point of having this superb military you’re always talking about, if we can’t use it?” Perhaps a visit to Arlington National Cemetary, or the National Armed Forces Rehabilitation Center would help her understand the real gravity of her blasé question.

However, putting aside the bogus and irresponsible notion of “unipolarity”, I suppose it is fair to say, in a taxonomic rather than invidious way, that America is the global hegemon. It is the primary provider of security, it is the primary determiner of the rules of the international game, etc.

So let’s be charitable to Mr. Haass and say that he is really talking about the displacement of the USA as the global hegemon. He does mix up his terms and also refers to the end of U.S. “primacy” – a word he uses incorrectly as if were synonymous with “unipolarity”.

The last global hegemon, Britain, was superseded by a much bigger entity, the good old USA. That transition process was ugly. It involved two world wars and a global depression.

I see no entity that can fill the role of global hegemon in the place of the USA.

The EU cannot do it. China cannot yet do it.

Many players have a stake in the US-led world order, and whatever irritation American primacy may cause, they will prefer the devil they know and will not like to see the uncertainly and risk of a new one replacing it.

International security is best guaranteed by one dominant power, not by a congeries of competing powers. Too many people fail to understand this. The balance of power does not work. It never did. The offshore balancer, Britain vis-a-vis Europe, the USA vis-a-vis the Eurasian world-island, predominates and keeps the peace. Such eras are marked by trade and prosperity. Challenges to the hegemon bring on eras of war.

Nuclear weapons have rendered great power conflict virtually impossible. So that avenue to dislodge us is closed. More importantly, it seems that leaders of major foreign powers realize that a direct military confrontation is foreclosed as a viable means of dislodging the hegemon. Indirect means will be employed, which will probably have the virtue of not killing lots of people in the process.

If we were to move to a truly multipolar world ala 1900-1914, we would see the breakdown of the globalized world economy and a return to 1930s conditions. Mr. Haass is right that such a world is more complicated. However, he seems to downplay that it is also potentially dangerous. War between the lesser powers could happen. More likely, beggar-thy-neighbor trade policies are regrettably likely. He may be right that the USA will consult its allies and trading partners more in the future. But we never really stopped doing that, and it is not clear we will do so more after Mr. Bush leaves town. The Democrat candidates’ enthusiasm to “tear up NAFTA” shows that gratuitously offending neighbors and trading partners is a nonpartisan vice. Moreover, Mr. Bush gets too little credit for his handling of relations with India and China, and too much criticism over the largely illusory rift with Europe.

The USA is relatively weak right now primarily due to the temporary consequences of poor performance by Mr. Bush and his advisors in planning and executing the war and occupation in Iraq. This is not due to any remarkable waxing in the relative strength of other players. China and India are still more potential than actual world powers, though both are growing regional powers and may one day supplant us. We shall see.

The USA will detach itself from the Iraqi tar baby soon enough. Then it will likely play a quieter and less brusque game in the future. This will be all to the good.

I see no dislodgement of the American hegemon by anyone anytime soon.

UPDATE: When I say we will detach ourselves from Iraq, I mean we will reduce our commitment, our troops will stop getting shot and blown up most of the time, the Iraqis will be the ones shooting our people, not our people, and we will forget about Iraq as a symbol of democracy, and we will let it become a pliant autocracy that cooperates with us, and which is capable of imposing order domestically, which is the best we can do in the region.

UPDATE II: Thoughtful and accurate comments in response to this post from Right Wing News.

UPDATE III: The Sun is not Setting: The Sequel

They came across a gang of five guys who were breaking in to a house. The detectives identified themselves as police officers, and attempted to take the criminals into custody. But the perps figured out that the cops were unarmed, and the fight was on!

Two unarmed detectives against five guys who had chains and hammers. Things looked grim, particularly when one of the gang became curious as to what the cops had eaten for breakfast and produced a knife to help him find out.

But then help arrived in the form of a nondescript private citizen wielding a cheap samurai sword. “Leave him alone, he’s a police officer!” he yelled, and charged the gang single-handedly. He fought bravely, if not particularly well, and managed to inflict a minor wound on one of the burglars. Criminals being a cowardly and superstitious lot, the gang broke and ran. The detectives managed to tackle and bag one criminal each, but by the time they had subdued their respective catches the good Samaritan had slipped away.

That guy had balls as big as churchbells, and I don’t just mean that because he went toe-to-toe with a swarm of ne’er-do-wells. While self defense is not illegal in England, or at least it isn’t technically illegal, it is against the law to use anything designed as a weapon to defend yourself. Local Detective Inspector Peter Bent stated “It needs to be said we cannot condone vigilantism or people running around with swords or weapons. It will be up to the Crown Prosecution Service whether they see his actions as justified or going beyond reasonable force.”

He could charge straight at a gang of armed desperados without a moment’s hesitation, but the guy with the sword could see no other option than running and hiding after the dust settled and the cops were back on their feet. I don’t blame him one bit.

The police launched a manhunt to see if they could smoke him out, and I have no idea if they ever managed to find out who had drawn steel to defend their lives on that day. Something tells me that the cops on the street, when told that they had to find an average Joe who had saved two of their own just so he could face the courts, merely went through the motions and really didn’t put too much effort into the search.

I’m telling you this because I was over at Milo’s, who is a British fencing instructor, and he says that unregistered samurai swords are now illegal in England. You have to jump through a bunch of hoops to prove to the state that you have a “legitimate reason” to own one.

Many American gunbloggers have noted that the media and other pro-gun control types become hysterical when discussing firearms. They like to imply that owning a gun is similar to petting a coiled cobra, as both will leap up and kill without warning when you least expect it.

I leave you with this English news article which proves that the British are going through the same thing with knives. Notice how the focus of a newspaper is “preventing youngsters from getting involved in knife culture” by sponsoring a weapon amnesty program. People could turn in their infernal devices to the police without fear of arrest, and someone actually gave them a cheap samurai sword that was sharp!

Judging by the extreme fear they show when confronted by a wall hanger with an edge, the police over there are having trouble recruiting anyone who doesn’t faint away when confronted with the very idea of a sharp piece of steel.

Inspector Peter Knights, of Hartlepool Police, said: “I am delighted to see a weapon of this nature has been surrendered. All too often we see items such as this used and abused by people which leads invariably to serious injury or death.”

Guys, I couldn’t make this stuff up if I tried.

(Cross posted at Hell in a Handbasket.)

The U.S. economy expanded at a 0.6 percent annual pace in the first quarter, reflecting an increase in inventories as consumers retrenched and companies cut investment.

 
The gain in gross domestic product, the sum of all goods and services produced, was more than forecast and matched the rate of the previous three months, the Commerce Department reported today in Washington. …

To get the 0.6 percent growth number, nominal GDP had to be adjusted for inflation (from the same article):

The report’s price index increased at an annual rate of 2.6 percent, lower than forecast, compared with a 2.4 percent gain in the prior quarter.

The Fed’s preferred inflation gauge, which is tied to consumer spending and strips out food and energy costs, rose at a 2.2 percent pace, down from 2.5 percent.

The report´s 2.6 percent rate of inflation is especially interesting in comparison to the 2006 rate reported in January 2007:

Last year, the nation’s inflation rate declined to its lowest level since 2003. But now, economists are wondering if the 2.6 percent rate may be about as low as it’s going to get for a while.

So if the inflation rate in Q1 2008 still is 2.6 percent, it also means that, despite all the increases in the price of crude oil, gas, food and a whole range of other commodities, the rate also still is at its lowest level since 2003! Amazing!

Just for example, the price for potash, a vital fertilizer, rose 29% in Q4 207 alone and it had no impact on inflation at all. Downright eerie!

This is especially welcome news because if inflation had been any higher, GDP growth in Q1 2008 would have actually have been negative. Whew, I am so relieved!

Two of the last five Pulitzer Prizes in history were awarded to books about the American military. Four of the five Oscar nominees for best documentary this year were about warfare. Business, for military historians, is good.Except, strangely enough, in academia. On college campuses, historians who study military institutions and the practice of war are watching their classrooms overflow and their books climb bestseller lists — but many say they are still struggling, as they have been for years, to win the respect of their fellow scholars. John Lynn, a professor of history at the University of Illinois, first described this paradox in a 1997 essay called “The Embattled Future of Academic Military History.”
 
….”While military history dominates the airwaves…its academic footprint continues to shrink, and it has largely vanished from the curriculum of many of our elite universities.”The field that inspired the work of writers from Thucydides to Winston Churchill is, today, only a shell of its former self. The number of high-profile military history experts in the Ivy League can be counted on one hand. Of the more than 150 colleges and universities that offer a Ph.D. in history, only a dozen offer full-fledged military history programs. Most military historians are scattered across a collection of Midwestern and southern schools, from Kansas State to Southern Mississippi.
 
“Each of us is pretty much a one-man shop,” says Carol Reardon, a professor of military history at Penn State University and the current president of the Society for Military History. The vast majority of colleges and universities do not have a trained military historian on staff.
 
….More than a decade ago, the University of Wisconsin received $250,000 to endow a military history chair from none other than Stephen Ambrose, the author of “Band of Brothers” and one of the field’s most popular figures. Ambrose donated another $250,000 before he died in 2002, but the school has yet to fill the position.
 
….And while some believe the profession is being purposefully purged by a generation of new-wave historians of gender, labor and ethnic studies, whose antiwar views blind them to the virtues of military history, most insist that nothing so insidious is happening.“I don’t think there’s been a deliberate policy of killing these positions,” says Wayne Lee, an associate professor of history at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.
 
Instead, most of the historians interviewed by U.S. News believe the study of war, like several other, more traditional historical disciplines such as political and diplomatic history, has simply been de-emphasized as the field has expanded since the 1960s. ”

Read the rest here.

It’s true that military history is not being targeted per se, though the field gets caught up in leftist faculty attitudes toward ROTC, American foreign policy and dead white guys. Economic and diplomatic history programs are faring little better and with history departments being squeezed in general, even labor and social historians are finding tight job markets. No, it’s simply a he