Chicago Boyz

I got an email from my friend the hot-shot lawyer in Paris, whom I shall refer to as ParisLawyerPundit. He’s an American, but grew up all over the place in Europe, so he is a genuinely trans-Atlantic guy. PLP is also a product of the University of Chicago Econ Dept., so he is some kind of honorary ChicagoBoy, too. PLP described how an American pundit of his acquaintance was on French TV last night:

… [H]e tried to convince French politicians and pundits that just because the US is outraged over 9/11 et seq. the unilateral decision to station 200,000 troops on the border at circa. $100 million / day is cause sufficient to stop waiting, forget international law, and Just Do-It, and unilaterally regime-change a despicable dictatorship. I think Zbig Brzezezeinski is right on the money when he says, the “global legitimacy of American leadership” has been “progressively undermined in the course of the past 6 or 7 months”, the “world has moved from surprise at the unilateral raising of the Iraq issue, to concern at a solitary war to general uneasiness at the priorities of the Bush administration”. As he says, “the US needs to face up to the fact that the Middle East’s political problems have proven to be the springboard for Middle East terrorists.

This seems to capture the most sensible possible Francophone position I have seen yet – agree with Zbig that Dubya is way off the ranch. I responded with less than cool rationality as follows (with minor editing):

Wow, I wish I’d had the chance to make that pitch to the French! It would have been fun.

But punditry doesn’t matter at this point. The French think we’re crazy. They have their reasons. In fact, they are kinda right. The US got smacked on 9/11 and it has its blood up. Bush is leading us one of the USA’s intermittent crusades. The rest of the world wets its knickers when this happens because there’s no saying how it is all going to come out. But Bush’s logic is simple. The Muslims live in shitty countries and blame us, so they hate us and want to kill us. We have to knock out Saddam anyway, the crazy bastard, since he’s gonna get a nuke. And the US Gov. really does believe this and fear it, as do I. So, Iraq gets to be the petri dish where we’re gonna try to grow something like an Arab-speaking democracy, where we will undo the root causes of terrorism by changing the whole region, starting with Iraq. We have to do this because the long-term alternative is more and more and worse and worse terrorism, culminating in the USA treating the whole Arab world as if they were the Apaches, which would be a catastrophe for them, physically, and for us morally. So, Bush, who is nothing if not a high-stakes gambler, is putting all his chips on this Fukayama-esque root-causes scenario. As a great Chicagoan said: “Make no small plans”.

If the foregoing does not convince you, then we are left with the argument many American’s find even more compelling: “fuck it, let’s roll”.

If it works, it is the wonder of the age. If it fails, the Donks get to clean up the mess after their blowout victory in 2004.

I can see why some other people in the world of a less sunny and optimistic bent might say, “uh, wait a minute … .” Or, if they are cynical, saying, “the USA cannot possibly mean this, what is their deep, dark, REAL reason … .” But it is just what Bush says it is. I watched his speech the other night. He means it. He radiated a visionary sense of messianic purpose. We are going to bring freedom to Iraq. Look out world.

Oddly, for a Hobbesian-derived U of C product like me, trained in the systemic-determinist school of thought by Prof. Mearsheimer, and the heartless logic of Hirschliefer’s microeconomics text, I think we have a pretty decent chance of achieving something spectacular in Iraq.

Anyway, at this point, everybody wins, except Saddam, who dies. Bush gets his war. The Iraqis get rid of Saddam and his torture chambers and get American chow, medicine, roads, etc. for a while. The French get to enjoy their temporary role as “the other superpower” by being the rallying point for anti-Americanism worldwide, which no doubt provides them with delectable, near-orgasmic thrills. The Arab “street” will get to enjoy a period of sullen calm since it respects and fears force and despises and attacks weakness — so they get a little break.

What’s not to like?

One thing, at least, Brzrzenzxnski is wrong about: “solitary war”? Mais non! Every inconsequential country is on our side, something like 40 of ’em. Plus, Britain is a player, and they are in this. Blair survived that big vote the other day. He aint goin’ anywhere. So it is the perfidious Anglo-Saxons shoulder to shoulder in a return performance fighting jointly against tyranny. I am whistling ”British Grenadiers” as I type this. Bully and pip pip!

The main thing is that Bush is taking a huge risk with his eyes open. That’s the kind of guy he is. This post from National Review Online linked to this story, which nicely captures this aspect of Dubya’s leadership:

The downside for Bush is that he’s the undisputed father of any future failure. If the war doesn’t go well, if post-Saddam Iraq erupts in chaos, if other Middle East governments fall, if there’s an upsurge in terrorism, if the economy continues to flatline, there’s no one else to blame. Bush has so personalized these battles that the outcome will determine the fate of his presidency.

Bush isn’t afraid of any of this. He decides what he wants to do and does it. He looks at risks, looks at the potential rewards, and throws the dice. This must be terribly frustrating for the people who disagree with him. But, so far, I like it.

Drunken crowds in the middle of the day. Oh joy.

It’s un-PC to say these things, but what the Hell, what’s a blog for? Anyway, it should be no embarrassment to say that political behavior is most frequently dominated by ethnic, cultural and religious factors – identity issues are the main drivers of political life, much more than economic ones. This has been the lesson learned and taught by Michael Barone, Kevin Phillips, Thomas Sowell, Walter Russell Mead, David Hackett Fischer and everyone else who pays attention to the underlying factors in political life without ideological blinders.

I’m not sure quite what to make of this piece by Bat Ye’or, entitled, “European Fears of the Gathering Jihad”. She asserts that the growing Muslim population in Europe is the result of some conscious government policy with the purpose of

establishing permanently in Europe a massive Arab-Muslim presence by the immigration and settlement of millions of Muslims with equal rights for all, native-born and migrants alike. This policy endeavored to integrate Europe and the Arab-Muslim world into one political and economic bloc, by mixing populations (multiculturalism) while weakening the Atlantic solidarity and isolating America.

I’m more inclined to believe that Muslims moved to Europe because it was close by and promised a better material life as well as more safety and freedom than their homelands. That’s simpler, and consistent with thousands of years of immigration behavior, and does not require any conspiracy theory.

Nonetheless, this demographic development has and will continue to have real consequences. The ability of the European nations to act in opposition to any Muslim nation is limited by their huge Muslim populations, who vote and naturally enough are sympathetic to their co-religionists. This will be true even where, as is mostly true, their Muslim populations peacefully assimilate themselves. Unfortunately, there is also the threat of terrorism on their own soil which European governments are trying to appease. Both of these trends will be ongoing. European hostility to Israel, for example, will continue and increase. European sympathy for Islamic terrorism, particularly if it is directed against the United States rather than them, is likely to increase.

This much cited article from the Economist points out that Europe is in a state of decline in terms of population. This review from the Times Literary Supplement makes the same point. Europeans have stopped having babies. Their Muslim neighbors, who are now “Europeans” of several generations standing in many cases, have not. So, the territory we think of as “Europe” is going to increasingly cease to be part of the “West” in cultural and political terms. Whether the Cathedral of Chartres will be a mosque in our lifetime remains to be seen. Whether you think this is a good, bad or neutral development it is certainly one which will have very significant implications in international politics.

On the other hand, as the Economist article points out, the population of the United States is growing and will continue to grow. The relative power of the United States is likely to continue to grow as a result. A large, young, energetic population bodes well for the ongoing dynamism of the American economy. The United States is going to be confronted by a weaker, older, and increasingly hostile Europe in the decades ahead, at the same time that the American population is increasingly one which is not derived from European ancestors. The two “poles ” of the West, Europe and North America, are going to continue to move farther apart.

On a related point, in the current issue of Foreign Affairs, Yuval Elizur has an essay “Israel Banks on a Fence” (excerpt here) He writes:

A growing number of Israelis now realize that demographic imperatives, and not just basic justice, dictate a two-state solution. The drastic decline in Jewish immigration to Israel in recent years — as well as the very high birthrate among Palestinians — has led population experts to predict that by 2020 or shortly thereafter, there will be an Arab majority in all the territory between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River. At that point, the land will cease to be “Jewish.”

Much as the French were impelled to withdraw from Algeria, marooning and betraying a large and loyal community, the Israelis are going to find themselves doing the same by withdrawing from the West Bank settlements. The Israelis will buy their survival at the cost of handing an apparent victory to their enemies, who will gloat over what has been abandoned to them, or by annihilating those few who refuse to leave. This apparent defeat will embolden Israel’s enemies and encourage further attacks. And the Israelis, like the French will suffer from the presence of a large and embittered refugee community in their midst as a permanent complicating factor in their political life. Nonetheless, as with France’s withdrawal across the Mediterranean, Israel’s withdrawal behind a wall is probably the lesser of two very ugly evils.