Safety in Numbers?

John Isaacs and Travis Sharp of the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation have produced a side-by-side comparison of the military capacities of American and Iranian forces, which illustrates the staggering disparity between the two countries. America will spend almost 100 times as much on defense as Iran does in FY09 ($711b vs. $7.2b). We have almost 35 times more armored infantry fighting vehicles and over 17 times more helicopters than the Iranians do. We have 170 long-range bombers and 53 airborne early-warning aircraft; the Iranians have none of either.

Isaacs and Sharp, along with Matt Yglesias, cite these numbers as proof that Iran doesn't pose the "existential threat" that some in Washington have been saying it does. And that is true. But I think that saying so fundamentally misses the point. Haven't we learned anything from Iraq? If we had done the same side-by-side comparison in February 2003, the Iraqi military would have looked about as pathetic as the Iranian one does today. And, true to the predictions, the Iraqi military did fall without much resistance when the Americans rolled in.

Unfortunately, though, it's no longer that simple. The report mentions (but only in the fine print at the bottom) that estimates of the number of paramilitary forces available in wartime range from 450,000 to 12.6 million, the latter figure being the Iranian government's (probably overstated) estimate. If we assume that we send a force into Iran that is roughly comparable in size to the one we sent into Iraq (which would be tactically questionable but probably all that the military could get politically), we'd be outnumbered anywhere from 2.5-to-1 all the way up to 63-to-1, assuming an American invasion force of 200,000. And this is in addition to the 900,000-strong Iranian Army - remember that while that number is substantially smaller than the size of the American Army, the Iranians would be able to bring a hefty percentage of their total forces to bear in the defense of their homeland.

So Yglesias, Isaacs, and Sharp make the right point, but for the wrong reason. We should not invade Iran, partially because they are unthreatening, but mostly because it would be counterproductive. In the old days of warfare, technology and manpower dictated the outcome. But these aren't the old days, a fact which the Iraq debacle should have indelibly stamped into our collective consciousness. The road to Tehran, should we make the colossal mistake of invading, will look much like the road to Baghdad: littered with IEDs, car bombs, and all of the other fiendishly clever and frighteningly effective cards up the insurgents' sleeves. It happened to the British and Russians in Afghanistan, it happened to us in Iraq, and it would happen to us again in Iran, APC counts be damned.

The Dislocation of Relocation

(Cross-posted from the Breakthrough Generation blog)

Much as I love my fellow leftists, we have the habit of continually making some pretty crippling oversights in our political views. For example, we very often underestimate the importance of community and social connections. Nowhere is this more evident than in proposals, such as the 1994 “Moving to Opportunity” initiative in Chicago to move massive numbers of families out of poor urban neighborhoods and disperse them into the suburbs: proposals that are not nearly as uniformly beneficial as many leftists would like to think they are.

Such ideas are fundamentally flawed insofar as they fail to take into account the non-material impacts of picking a family up and moving them to a new subdivision, neighborhood, or town. Moving, particularly when it involves crossing racial and/or socioeconomic lines, is a difficult thing to do. You arrive in your new “home” as a stranger in a strange land, a de facto outsider even in the most welcoming of communities.

But community is not just a network of acquaintances: it is a set of practices, customs, and shared understandings that can only be fully grasped over time. Rather than being something that simply exists, every community is actively created, and then sustained, by its constituents. The practices can be as weighty as voting, as mundane as putting out the recycling for pickup on the correct day, or as ingrained as using the correct local slang words. But they are all essential to the character of a particular community. To do them, and do them correctly, is to be included; to fail to do them, even if you tried your best, is to be marked as outside the shared experience of the locals (epitomized by that most exclusionary of questions – “you’re not from around here, are you?”).

Relocating people out of urban ghettos and into the suburbs flies in the face of this notion of community. The newly-settled often find themselves unmistakably differentiated from their new neighbors, be it by skin color, preferred style of clothing, accent, or any number of other characteristics. After all, the whole point of these programs is to bring people out of the cities and into areas with a “healthier” culture, which must necessarily be different from that of the urban areas in at least a few important ways.

It is likely that at least some of the values, support systems, and norms of suburban communities are indeed healthy ones, ones that we would like to see develop in all groups of people. But relocating people to the suburbs fails to highlight these contrasts, or if it does, it highlights them in a way that serves to alienate and discomfit the new arrivals. The poor may end up making more money after moving to the suburbs, but the act of moving tears them from the fabric of their community and then clumsily tries to incorporate them into a fully-developed suburban social scene. The aftereffects of this often mitigate the quality-of-life improvements stemming from increased income.

So how do we address the very real problems of life in urban ghettos without destroying communities? To me, the solution is to go directly to the urban areas themselves. Fix up inner-city schools rather than busing kids out to the suburbs. Invest in after-school programs and other extracurricular activities. Rebuild dilapidated buildings, creating jobs in construction as well as in whatever companies end up occupying the new spaces. Yes, any sort of intervention will inevitably force some aspects of an existing community to change, and as such, these types of efforts are not entirely free from the destructive effects I described above. But by allowing people to stay in the same homes and social networks, we would preserve quite a lot of what made that particular community what it was, something that is far more important than most leftists are willing to admit.

Ceci N'est Pas Un Choice: Musings on Paternalism

Paternalism. These days, the word has taken on an almost entirely negative connotation. And yet, paternalism is everywhere, whether we realize it or not. By manipulating subtle things like the order in which food is presented in a buffet line, or the particular type of voting procedure used in an election, authority figures can steer us toward making a particular decision without our ever being consciously aware that they are doing so.

Sometimes this is a good thing: in the buffet line example, putting dessert at the end of the line makes people less likely to eat it, which in the long run probably rebounds to their benefit. On the other hand, many people derive great pleasure and enjoyment from things that paternalistic worldviews would advocate abolishing, such as gambling, smoking, and other risky endeavors.

We do not encounter paternalism solely on a personal scale, though. Much of international relations, such as attempts to spread democracy into the developing world, can be conceptualized as paternalism writ large. Even if it is true that Country X would be better served as a democracy than as whatever it currently is, as soon as another country does anything more than talk to them about it, they have crossed the line.

Most discussions about paternalism get bogged down here, as they attempt to decide whether paternalism qua paternalism is a good or a bad thing. I don’t want to do that. Paternalism is inevitable. We are human beings, and one of the things that human beings do, particularly in politics, is try to win other human beings over to their side of an argument. Clearly there should be some limits on what sorts of persuasive tactics are acceptable: rational discourse is OK, Russian roulette is not. But paternalism, or at least all but the most heinously coercive forms thereof, must fall within the acceptable realm. How would you outlaw it without simultaneously preventing experts from using their knowledge to improve people’s lives?

I am of course willing to acknowledge that at times, paternalism may impinge on an individual’s “freedom of choice.” But there are also instances when it is unarguably better for the person in question to make one decision or the other. It is impossible to eliminate bias and outside influence from any human decision, and to rail indiscriminately against paternalism is to attempt to do so. Furthermore, to say that paternalism is unequivocally bad is to commit the very offense that is being condemned: attempting to impose your view of what is best for people upon them.

So what can we do? Tell people about ways in which sleazy salesmen might try to scam them; make psychological research commonly available; refuse to use military force if another country wants to continue to do things its own way. All of these are productive ways to combat malicious forms of paternalism. But don’t crusade against paternalism per se in the name of Choice.

How Neighborly of Them

As if it weren't already obvious enough that John McCain is quite a different animal from most of his compatriots in the Republican Party, to say nothing of the rest of the country, consider these numbers from Gallup, courtesy of Matthew Yglesias. 79% of Democrats and 70% of Independents favor negotiations with "enemy" leaders, as do a surprising 48% of Republicans. This, of course, begs the question of how exactly such negotiations go against "what America stands for," as McCain has alleged previously.

In other news, the Obama campaign had it exactly right when they said recently that the Iraq War "has done more to dramatically strengthen and embolden Iran than anything in a generation," and that McCain's argument that withdrawal from Iraq would be a boon for Iran should therefore be taken with a vein of salt. Indeed, just about the only thing the Iraq War has accomplished is giving the Iranians confidence and object lessons in how to stand up to the Iranian military, much as Israel's disastrous invasion of Lebanon in 2006 did wonders for Hizbullah's popularity and influence.

Furthermore, it's not exactly like the American presence in Iraq is preventing the Iranians from doing much of anything. The centrifuges at Natanz and Bushehr are still spinning away, and while Ahmadinejad's recent showing in the parliamentary elections may not be a vote of confidence for him in particular, the radicals show no signs of closing up shop in the Majlis. We would be leaving Iraq in a state of disarray, and the Iranians couldn't exactly waltz right through it on the way to Israel - even ignoring all of the IEDs and roadside bombs, the large Sunni population in Iraq probably doesn't have particularly high opinions of Iran (both because of Iran's Shi'ite tendencies and because of grudges from the brutal Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s). And don't talk to me about how we can't let the Middle East descend into general chaos: America, not Iran, is far and away the most destabilizing presence in the reason.

Beware the Reductio ad Hitlerum

President Bush's "appeasement" comments really annoy me. The rhetoric itself is bad enough - yes, I know he didn't refer explicitly to Senator Obama, but really, did anyone out there think for a second that he was talking about anyone else?

But what really gets me is how factually wrong Bush is (although I guess I should have gotten used to this a long time ago). Obama is not calling for appeasement, and never has. Let's take the case of Hamas. Obama has explicitly said that he wants Hamas to renounce terrorism and recognize Israel, but, unlike the administration, he has also said that he will not insist that Hamas must comply before any negotiations can begin. This is not appeasement. Appeasement would involve us trying to figure out a way for Hamas to keep doing whatever they want to do, preferably with as few casualties of our own as possible. Appeasement derives from the verb "to appease," which has a connotation of making the other party content/happy/satisfied. Something tells me that Obama's demands aren't going to leave Hamas happy or satisfied. But in order to get anything from them, we have to be willing to compromise, and compromise happens over a negotiating table, not at gunpoint.

Finally, one thing that Bush said in the article linked above really stood out to me as emblematic of why his administration has failed so spectacularly in the Middle East. In straw-manning Obama's motives for calling for negotiations, Bush derisively said that Obama must have the intention of "persuad[ing] them they have been wrong all along." No, Mr. President, that's not the goal. We're not going to persuade them that they're completely wrong, because no one likes to be told that, and all it does is put people on the defensive and make them more hostile to you. You went into Iraq determined to prove that the Iraqis were wrong about everything, and it blew up in your face. Even though these groups may have methods and/or visions for the future that we don't entirely love, they certainly do some things right, and they also have the support of a lot of people on the ground. We're not going to get a surrender out of Hamas, or Ahmadinejad, or any of them, so we have to try for a compromise. And compromises don't happen without respect or without dialogue. Obama is far more invested in both of these than the current administration ever was. This doesn't make him an appeaser; it makes him a realist.

John McCain: He Was In Favor of Hypocrisy Before...Wait, He Still Is

So the latest piece of news out of the McCain camp is that his choice for RNC Chair spent some time in 2002 working for the military junta in Myanmar. And this wasn't exactly pro bono representation, either: they were paid over $300,000 to lie about the junta's generally reprehensible (mis-)treatment of its citizens.

So basically, John McCain called out Barack Obama because Hamas independently came to the conclusion that they "support" Obama, while at the same time retaining someone who had actively worked for the brutally repressive Myanmar junta. And it's not like he made these accusations at a time when it was unclear that the Myanmar thing would come to light: he made them on Friday, multiple days after the cyclone had hit and the junta's nature had come to light. Can someone--anyone-- explain his logic to me?

Letting sleeping dogs lie

Matthew Yglesias writes that Hizbullah's actions in Lebanon over the past few days demonstrate that it is primarily focused on gaining power within Lebanon, rather than attacking Israel or the West. Of course, such sentiments trigger a flood of "Are you kidding me?????" sentiment, based on Hizbullah's repeated declarations about how much it hates teh Jewz.

But Yglesias is completely correct in his assessment, and here's why: if Hizbullah really were interested in attacking Israel, it would never begin by taking over the government of Lebanon. Israel, for all of its faults (of which it has many), is a very, very powerful military force, one that has proven itself capable of defending itself against, oh, the entire Arab world (cf. the Six-Day War). The IDF is extremely well-equipped, possessing state-of-the-art weaponry on land and in the skies, along with the world's only operational anti-ballistic missile system. On top of that, the Shin Bet (Israel's internal security service) and the Mossad (foreign intelligence) are among the most feared and respected such organizations in the world.

The thing is, though, that Israel has shown itself to have the same problem as America: it's good at conventional warfare, but bad at fighting asymmetrical wars. So, if you were Hizbullah and intended to put yourself in the best position to strike at Israel, why in God's name would you start by taking over the Lebanese government? All that that would do is expose you to being targeted by the IDF! Remember what happened to America in Iraq: we were great at taking down Saddam's regime, but terrible at rooting out the insurgency afterwards. Governments are easy to attack, seeing as how they tend to have very obvious and vulnerable institutions (such as Parliament buildings, courts, and other such things). They have to be visible to their people, and in doing so they make themselves visible to the enemy.

What Israel learned in 2006 was that all Olmert's horses and all Olmert's men couldn't root out a determined, battle-tested, and (most importantly) agile insurgent group. If Hizbullah were to succeed in carrying out a coup d'etat in Lebanon, it would sacrifice a critical piece of that agility. I don't mean to imply that Hizbullah would necessarily be destroyed by Israel if it tried to launch an attack after establishing itself as the ruling party in Lebanon: its bases of support in the countryside are likely too strong, and Israel may prove to be more wary now than it was back in 2006. But Hizbullah would certainly be inviting a serious body blow, and courting disaster is not something that any successful resistance organization wants to do. Hizbullah may want power in Lebanon. It may want to attack Israel. But I seriously doubt that it wants to do them in that order.