Bush is only creating more terrorists

The difference between official American and European perceptions of terrorism has serious practical consequences for trans-Atlantic cooperation. At the police and intelligence level, all goes reasonably well, or did until the public uproar in Europe about alleged official cooperation with the CIA's secret "rendition" and interrogation operations. On the other hand, last Monday, France blocked a proposed NATO-European Union meeting on terrorism because NATO "was not intended to be the world's gendarme." It is a military defense alliance of equal partners. A French diplomat said, "we do not wish to have NATO involved in everything, or imposing its agenda on the EU." This is part of France's consistent opposition to equally consistent American efforts to turn NATO into an agent of U.S. policy, and to convince the EU's members that NATO should be the exclusive security organization of the Western alliance, and that Europe should abandon its embryonic independent security policy and European rapid reaction force. There is nothing new in this this trans-Atlantic disagreement, but it does point to a serious terrorism issue: how the threat is to be defined, which in turn implies how it should be met. The Bush administration is firmly committed to the notion that Al Qaeda presents a military problem that requires a military solution. It has to stick to this story or else it has no explanation for the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. So President George W. Bush keeps making speeches about Al Qaeda's supposed conviction that it could go from success in Iraq to mobilizing all of Islam, restoring the Grand Caliphate of the eighth and ninth centuries, and conquering the world. That's a military problem. The Europeans, in general, think otherwise. Rik Coolsaet, of Ghent University and the Belgian Royal Institute for International Relations, notes that while some European analysts agree with Washington's position, most see terrorism in Europe as "a patchwork of self-radicalizing cells with international contacts," lacking central direction. Addressing The Transatlantic Dialogue on Terrorism at The Hague in December, Coolsaet said that at most European terrorism is described as an affair of "concentric circles around a still lethal Al Qaeda core." The first circle is composed of "more or less structured" organizations, surrounded by a loose and informal third circle of freelance militants. International counterterrorism is said to have been successful in "degrading Al Qaeda as an organization and in decreasing its ability to conduct massive attacks." What survives is "a patchwork of homegrown networks and 'lone wolves,' where almost everyone can be linked, at least indirectly, to almost everyone else," but in casual and nonoperational ways. Thus the phenomenon of Muslim extremism in Europe is largely back to what it was before 9/11 and the panicked international reaction that followed, "unduly exaggerating the importance of Al Qaeda." Coolsaet notes that European security agencies have reported "a growing tendency of self-radicalization and self-recruitment." The latter is now thought to be more important in producing jihad candidates "than any organized international network," possibly excepting the networks recruiting for Iraq. This radicalization of young Muslim militants in Europe is superficially religious, but usually takes place outside mosques and "more often than not involves individuals with college education." The sources of extremism are social and political alienation, exclusion (and unemployment) among the offspring of immigrant communities, but the international drama mobilizes them. Coolsaet says that when Bush declares that America is fighting jihadists in Iraq so as not to fight them at home, most European counterterrorism officials find that just the opposite is true: The more the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan intensifies, the more the number of would-be terrorists in Europe increases. He has a reassuring comment, however, on the trajectory of terrorism. To reidentify himself as a jihadist, the recruit must dissociate himself from his own society, politicize his views and look for groups with a similar radicalized worldview. "Groupthink gradually eliminates alternative views, simplifies reality," and causes the candidate-terrorist to "dehumanize" all who disagree - especially his fellow-Muslims. "Ultimately, this strategy is self-defeating and will signify these groups' defeat, as was the case with Europe's left-wing terrorist groups in the 1970s, and the anarchist terrorists in the 1890s." It isolates them from the community on whose behalf they think they are acting.

86 THE VALIUM

Here is a nice little bit of scientific analysis to ponder.

GOT some public speaking to do? Here is a tip to keep stress at bay: have sex beforehand. But make sure it's penetrative sex - the magic vanishes if you pursue other forms of sexual gratification.
Stuart Brody, a psychologist at the University of Paisley, UK, compared the impact of different sexual activities on blood pressure when a person later experiences acute stress. For a fortnight, 24 women and 22 men kept diaries of how often they engaged in penile-vaginal intercourse (PVI), masturbation or partnered sexual activity excluding intercourse. After, the volunteers underwent a stress test involving public speaking and mental arithmetic out loud.
Volunteers who'd had PVI but none of the other kinds of sex were least stressed, and their blood pressure returned to normal faster than those who'd only masturbated or had non-coital sex. Those who abstained had the highest blood-pressure response to stress (Biological Psychology, vol 71, p 214).
Brody also made psychological measurements of neuroticism and anxiety in the volunteers, as well as work stress and partnership satisfaction. Even taking these factors into account, differences in sexual behaviour provided the best explanation for the range of stress responses. "The effects are not attributable simply to the short-term relief afforded by orgasm, but rather, endure for at least a week," says Brody. He speculates that release of the "pair-bonding" hormone oxytocin between partners might account for the calming effect.

INDIA

New Statesman


A new sort of superpower

Introduction - India's dream of national strength and wealth is now a reality: its superpower status is indisputable. Yet it is rejecting cultural uniformity, writes Pankaj Mishra. It will be a long time before it is fully modern - and this may be a very good thing.

In recent weeks in India, a senior police officer appeared at a court hearing wearing anklets, a nose-ring and a dupatta, and claiming that he was Radha, the romantic consort of the Hindu god Krishna. Accused of "breaching the police dress code and service rules", he was forced to take voluntary retirement. In another incident, airport security prevented a spiritual guru from boarding a flight with his silver-coated staff. His incensed supporters staged a protest, provoking a brutal police response. Both events occasioned some scorn and breast-beating in the English-language Indian media. "What," many people asked, "do we do with such irresponsible fools?" The larger burden of complaint seemed to be: why do we remain so backward? Why can't we behave like a modern, rational country? This reaction was predictable. Much of the English-language media expresses the Indian middle-class dream of wealth and national strength. It upholds free-market capitalism, a secular state and a nuclear-armed army. It sees India as the paramount power of the 21st century; it tends to be embarrassed by anything that makes Indians seem a chaotic, superstitious lot. Many middle-class Indians are enamoured of authoritarian nation states such as Singapore, Malaysia and China, which they believe have achieved a high degree of discipline and efficiency. These Indians, who tend to vote for the Hindu nationalist BJP, believe that democracy causes chaos, disunity and waste in India, and prevents the country from assuming its rightful place in the elite of modern, developed nations. The historical lessons these Indians draw from Europe and east Asia are at least partly based on fact. Most countries have become modern nation states by breaking with their ethnically and culturally diverse pasts and imposing, usually undemocratically, a certain sameness of behaviour and manner on their citizens. The fundamental idea that shapes modern bourgeois societies is that human beings are rational individuals, pursuing the dream of the good life made possible by ample possessions and leisure: an ambition that government and business should help fulfil. Such an exclusively materialist world-view is the implicit ideology of the middle class in most western countries; it underpins the political, economic and legal arrangements of modern societies in general. Supported by corporate capitalism, it also gives western societies their relatively uniform character: a limited variety of public roles, modes of dress, food and entertainment. This materialist ideology becomes especially widespread as societies grow affluent and more people come to enjoy the amenities of the middle class. It also helps create political consensus around important issues, especially during times of war when enemies, real or imaginary, seem to threaten the good life. It partly explains why political parties once deeply and bitterly divided increasingly sound alike, or why David Cameron resembles Tony Blair, and the Democrats in the United States repeatedly fail to distinguish themselves from the Republicans. But the middle class in India is still small, outnumbered by peasants, the working class and the destitute. Its self-legitimising ideology of modernisation and secularisation, though institutionalised by the state and upheld by major political parties, has to compete with older, apparently irrational, traditions of asceticism, hedonism and devout religiosity. India is crucially different in this respect from China, where powerful modernisers, both communist and non-communist, have systematically destroyed older traditions in the past hundred years, and helped the country become a more eager imitator than India of western patterns of work and consumption. Many different worlds coexist in India, and together they keep centralising and homogenising influences in check. Nothing demonstrates this more clearly than Indian politics, an extremely crowded and changeable realm of many parties, groups and affiliations. In recent years, strong regional and caste-based parties managed to restrain the wilder ambitions of the Hindu nationalists. The communist parties, irrelevant elsewhere in the world, are an important presence in India today. They work as an important pressure group within the Indian parliament, challenging, and often diluting, the pro-rich policies of the government. This diversity extends to the economic realm. Much publicity has been given recently in both the domestic and international press to information technology and call-centres in India, making them appear the engine of the new Indian economy. But such west-oriented businesses comprise a very small fraction of the overall Indian GDP, which is produced largely by people engaged in appeasing the demands of hundreds of millions of Indian consumers. Foreign brand names count for relatively little here. Hollywood movies have never amounted to more than 5 per cent of the Indian film business; jeans and skirts are as far as ever from replacing the sari or the shalwar kameez as the preferred garment of Indian women. McDonald's and Pizza Hut may represent glamour to the Indian elite but have failed to supplant the fast food that has been available in India for centuries - the samosa, or the southern Indian idli; and Indians prefer paneer over mozzarella on their pizza. Anyone, Indian or foreign, trying to run a successful business in India has to acknowledge the great diversity of Indian tastes in food, clothing and entertainment, rather than impose on Indians a standardised, international version. Much of the business news the Indian media provide is written for, and from the perspective of, big businessmen and shareholders. You wouldn't learn much about the work of India's numerous unions and small industries from them. But the power of corporate capitalism and brand advertising, so palpable in the UK high street, is largely confined to the five biggest cities. The small entrepreneur, the locally made and ecologically sound product and traditional arts and crafts still flourish to a remarkable degree. And almost every day the newspapers carry signs of individual resistance to a homogenising modernity. The police officer donning the robes of Radha is not only self-consciously harking back to Wajid Ali Shah, the last great ruler of Awadh, who also dressed up as Radha and whom the British denounced as effeminate before deposing him. In his androgynous dress, he is also rejecting the role required of him by a hard, hyper-rational world. The spiritual guru refusing to part with his holy staff is claiming his right to individual dignity of a higher order than that provided by a national security state which spouts endless nonsense about "terrorism" and requires its citizens to live with constant paranoia and fear. India today is full of such "irresponsible fools". They hint why the country will not be fully modern for a long time, and why this may be a very good thing.

Pankaj Mishra's most recent book is An End to Suffering: the Buddha in the world (Picador). Temptations of the West will be published this spring

The great divide by Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad

Cinema, literature and other aspects of western culture are increasingly open to Asian influence. Not so western philosophy, which remains almost entirely sealed off from eastern traditions. Why? Institutionalised parochialism on the part of western philosophers and a loss of nerve among Asian thinkersChakravarthi Ram-PrasadChakravarthi Ram-Prasad is a senior lecturer in the department of religious studies at Lancaster University and author of "Eastern Philosophy" (Weidenfeld)
Kumarila claims that something that is called an "I" exists, established by the fact that an I is constantly present in thinking. Sankara, however, argues that this only shows that there is subjectivity —the presence of consciousness—not that there is an object named "I." The apparent existence of an objective self is an illusion, created by the logic of the grammatical use of "I" in language.
Strange names, certainly. Strange thoughts? Anybody who has read philosophy in the west will not think so—provided that Kumarila (7th century) is replaced with Descartes (17th) and Sankara (8th) with Kant (18th). The point is not the polemical one about whether it was Indians or Europeans who had these thoughts first (the ancient Greeks and early Islamic thinkers are also in the running). The point is not that the Indians deserve study because they thought like Europeans. The point is simply that, for many reasons, the Indian thinkers are unknown to contemporary western philosophy, and are likely to remain so. The same is true of Chinese thinkers.
Even a very brief survey of Indian and Chinese thought shows that these traditions address a wide range of issues which, whether or not they overlap with those asked in western philosophy, are of interest to anyone concerned with the large questions of human existence. But the very idea of "eastern philosophy" is beset with problems.
First, eastern philosophy lacks the simple advantage, enjoyed by western philosophy, of having arisen from its own tradition of intellectual practice. Questions about the unity and identity of western philosophy have often been asked, but those who questioned were generally considered to come from within the tradition itself. The unity of the discipline—and its westernness—remains intact in popular introductions and in most university departments, even if some of the most fundamental concerns of the Greek philosophers are utterly different from that of western philosophy of the past 500 years.
Though departments of religious studies, literature, geography, political science and others in the humanities increasingly recognise that the world is not the west, in philosophy the rest of the world does not yet exist. Asian traditions tend to be confined to religious studies or area studies, where philosophy competes with anthropological, political and historical approaches to the study of Asian traditions—and this despite a shift in how philosophy itself is taught, away from canonical writers towards key concepts.
For much of the 20th century, Asian thinkers simply accepted this reality. Instead of carrying out original thinking, many Indian intellectuals indulged in endless discussions about what they could identify in Indian thought that mapped on to western philosophy. Was it darsana (a view), the traditional name given to the different groups of thinkers and texts associated with some common tenets? Or was it anviksiki (another visual metaphor, special seeing), a term used by some thinkers to describe analytic exploration of general questions? Indian philosophy had the acute existential crisis of asking whether it even existed. Chinese thought, too, struggled to reconceive its existence, especially as the madness of Mao threatened to sweep away all memory of Chinese philosophy in its homeland.
It is only in the past decade or two in these countries that there has been any real attempt to "do" eastern philosophy on its own terms and, sometimes, with the purpose of engaging with issues made important in western thought. But if eastern philosophy is philosophy at all, it is not so in any way directly comparable to that discipline in the west. The Greek tradition, recovered in Christian Europe after the rupture of the dark ages, combined with the Judeo-Christian tradition to form the western philosophical inheritance. (Medieval Islamic thought sustained the Greek inheritance, but the turning away from Greek categories to concentrate on the Koran is part of the reason it would now be strange to consider Islamic philosophy part of the western tradition.) Even when, with the proliferation of philosophical thinking in the modern west, mutual incomprehension occurs between different styles and systems—especially across the great 20th-century divide between analytic and continental philosophy—there is still a solid foundation of commonality. Western philosophy of many different stripes focuses on the same canonical texts, from Plato to Kant.
By contrast, there is mutual ignorance between the Indian and Chinese thought-worlds. By "India" I mean that broad region now encompassed by the term "south Asia," with a heartland in the Indo-Gangetic plain, extending east to what is now Bengal and west to Afghanistan. Indian philosophy is the thought of the culture pre-dating and standing outside Indian Islam: the traditions now identified within the religious categories of Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism. China is a less problematic category, although modern China includes many ethnicities that do not have a common past with the demographically and politically dominant Han people. Chinese philosophy is the heritage of the Han.
The interpreters of Confucius and the Hindu sacred texts, the Upanishads, know as little about each other as they do about Plato. In fact, there is evidence that there might have been historical contact between ancient Indian and Greek thinkers. The many independent similarities between Greek and Indian thought has led some people, especially Sinological scholars, to think that the great distinction is actually between Chinese and Indo-European philosophical cultures. Certainly, the common linguistic inheritance of Greek and Sanskrit suggests the Greek and Indian traditions share a common language in a way that Chinese does not. In any case, the fundamental concerns, conceptual frameworks and goals of the Indian and Chinese traditions are utterly different.
What then is Indian and Chinese philosophy, and what reason is there for studying it? The origins of philosophy in India and China lie in figures who were primarily interested in offering solutions to problems of existence. In India, the Upanishads sought to liberate human consciousness from its limitations and fragility. The Buddha and Mahavira, founders of Buddhism and Jainism respectively, diagnosed life as consisting in an intrinsic state of suffering, and offered therapeutic methods for coming to terms with and eventually mastering the root causes of that suffering. But none of these teachings was generally considered to constitute an assurance about an eventual state of religious grace. People had to ponder their meaning and significance—a state of inquiry that is philosophical, in that it seeks to analyse various puzzles about the ultimate nature of the world and offers a narrative to take us through it. In China, the baseline is Confucius, who sought to teach people the norms of civilised conduct through the observance of morally relevant rituals drawn from different cultural sources, at a time when China was still politically fragmented. All subsequent Chinese thinkers accept the need to understand and follow proper conduct, but they vary hugely on what that conduct is: among the Daoists, Laotze sees proper conduct as lying not in social ceremony, but in a life lived in coherence with natural forces and flows, while Zhuangzi suggests that there can be no account of proper conduct, merely lives of spontaneous and equipoised action. The determination of the way (Dao)—the path itself as well as the manner of walking it—orients Chinese philosophy.
The issues in Indian philosophy are much more like those of classical and early modern western thought: they see a world and set out to give persuasive accounts of the entities and processes that underlie its appearance. Indian philosophy is profoundly metaphysical. It follows a framing, teleological narrative that shares features with some thinkers of the western tradition, both Christian and secular. Indian philosophers agree that our ordinary life is defective; our experience is marked by suffering, our understanding is marked by severe limits to knowledge, our conduct falls short of its ethical requirements, and we live in fear of our mortality. We therefore need to inquire into the conditions of existence in order to realise how things really are, and in doing so, our cognitive life is transformed, enabling us eventually to attain some ultimate state of freedom. By contrast, Chinese philosophy is ametaphysical, concerned with the world as it is encountered, and neutral to the relationship between reality and appearance.
Moreover, despite the formal commitment to some ultimate end, there is a good deal of Indian philosophy which is purely technical and given over to intellectual puzzles and challenges, whereas Chinese philosophers almost always appear to be working only for the purpose of improving human behaviour.
In Indian philosophy, as in western philosophy, there are many competing accounts of ontology—the division of the world into its conceptually basic components. There is also a long and sophisticated history of philosophy of language (having its origins in the formalisation of Sanskrit grammar in the 4th century BC) concerning the capacity of linguistic units to convey meaning, the relationship between language and sound and so on. Although logic did not develop a symbolism in Indian philosophy as it did in western thought in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it had, especially in the Nyaya system, a rigorous and fully developed linguistic formalism by the 15th century—an achievement still waiting to be used effectively in contemporary western philosophy.
Chinese thinkers were capable of using sophisticated logical moves in their arguments, but apart from some elements in the school of Mohism and during a brief period of early Chinese Buddhism, the study of logic itself was thought frivolous. And Chinese theories of language are not about representation but function: how can the proper use of titles relate to how people behave according to them? How, if at all, can terms for ethical and political behaviour be standardised across time? Since the person who was most influential in guiding proper conduct was the king, the understanding and following of his way (Dao) was considered important by many thinkers, giving practical political philosophy a central place in Chinese civilisation. Consider one example of this pragmatism: while western and Indian sceptics express doubt over whether we can ever systematically grasp the way things really are, the Chinese (especially Zhuangzi) ask whether we can ever affirm or discard one way of acting over another. Scepticism is directed at the determination of action rather than the justification of claims.
There are a few areas where Indian philosophy does have more in common with China than with the west. Sharp analysis of the nature and foundations of conduct have characterised the history of western thought. By contrast, Indian ethical philosophy is like Chinese in probing our intuitions through storytelling—whether in small anecdotes or in epic compositions—rather than argument; this is particularly striking given the analytic debates that mark other areas of Indian philosophy.
There is also an interesting divide between western and eastern ideas on the nature of the self. Because the idea of an identifiable yet immaterial soul had such a strong grip on western thought for many centuries, the questioning of it from David Hume onwards resulted in radical notions of the constructed nature of personhood: Hume's "bundle theory" had it that a person (say me, Ram-Prasad) is not some non-physical entity located in the body but the contingent result of birth, psychological traits, environmental influences, social duties and so on. But this idea was accepted by Indian philosophy from very early on. Hindu thinkers never thought that "Ram-Prasad" was essentially a metaphysical being with a physical garb (this is how much of the western tradition would have understood Ram-Prasad—as a soul in a body). Rather, they thought that the core nature was an impersonal consciousness which, while giving life and continuity to this person called Ram-Prasad, was ultimately not that person at all; it could and would have other lives, as other persons (or even non-persons, if animating a cow or other creature). When the Buddha denied the need for an atman (the self), he was saying that there was no need to appeal to the idea of such an impersonal, conscious being in order to explain the apparent unity and continuity of constructed persons. The modern western debate over whether personhood—the integrity of particular individuals—is metaphysically given or constructed through the life-course is therefore beside the point in classical Indian debates. The question of selfhood is enriched by Chinese traditions too. Here, there is no interest in what lies behind the human being. Rather, the concern is how potential humanness is fully realised, leading to a long history of discussion over the role of biography, historical antecedents and narrative authority in the formation of identity—discussions that are at the forefront of some western debates today.
The east/west divide on the self extends to political individualism. In different ways, both the major eastern traditions conceive of the individual in very particular terms. The responsibilities, entitlements and authority of individuals depend on their specific natures: people are not interchangeable in their rights and duties. If asked whether an individual either can or should do something, the classical Chinese or Indian would answer that it depended on that particular person's nature. X might be heard in the royal court on account of his birth, personality and status, while Y, in the same official position, would not be accorded the same power. This particularity of the individual contrasts with that great modern western idea, "generic" individualism. Under this notion, individuals are interchangeable; it does not matter who one is in biographical and psychologically specific terms. It is the general idea of the individual that is important, not the particularities of specific people. The rule of law, the formality of political institutions and the claim to universal rights have flown from this paradoxical idea of generic individualism, in which each person is equally like every other. In both classical Chinese and Indian thought, there is a contrasting "microindividualism": each individual in a sociopolitical collective has specific burdens and freedoms. In China, this led to an organic communitarianism in which each individual, by doing exactly what was specific to themselves, contributed in his or her own special way to a larger entity—the Middle Kingdom. The particularity of each individual was significant to the extent they contributed to the polity as a whole, and therefore each individual was insignificant apart from that whole. In different ways, Confucian and Daoist thinkers subscribed to this idea, and it may help to explain why economic success has not prompted major demands for democracy in modern China. In India, this microindividualism, based on dharma—the nature and duty of each person—was supposed to lead to a social order in which there was clear differentiation of labour and functional expertise. The actual result was an explosion of multiple values evident in Indian democracy today. The implication in Indian and Chinese thought is of an infinite diversity of individualisms, a situation which generates many problems of equality and universality, but also suggests possibilities for political theories on how to live with fundamental difference.
Why has western philosophy—with the partial exception of Schopenhauer—been so uninterested in all this? Partly because the idea of an eastern philosophy lay in the framing of it as the Other of western rationality. But a significant role has been played by Asians themselves, looking for self-expression in a Europeanised world. The leading eastern philosophers of the early to mid-20th century were men like S Radhakrishnan and DT Suzuki who, confronted with the powerful association of western philosophy with colonial dominance, argued that their cultures possessed unique insights absent in the west. In their different ways, Radhakrishnan with the Indian system of Advaita Vedanta and Suzuki with Zen Buddhism, argued that it was the greatness of the Asian philosophies that they went beyond the rationality of western philosophy. Eastern thought was not to be defined by its lack of what western philosophy had, but rather by its transcendence of it. Eastern philosophy was based on experience that mere reason could not capture; its insights came of practices like meditation, and pointed to what lay beyond language and thought. Radhakrishnan, in particular, was quite sophisticated in his knowledge of both Indian and western texts, but as the first Indian to hold a professorship (in eastern religions and ethics) at Oxford, he had to find some way of asserting the importance and originality of Indian philosophy that did not challenge the master narrative of western philosophy. Suzuki had the additional aim of justifying Japanese nationalism in ways that nevertheless took note of the power of the west. In the decades that followed, lesser figures, east and west, tended to recycle this view of the east as the place where philosophy was the west's anti-philosophy. When the 1960s counterculture emphasised this trend—Allen Ginsberg, for example, exhaling "om" and "shiva" in public performance of his poetry—it is small wonder that western philosophers, willing to take only such time as unscholarly books demanded, settled on the conclusion that eastern philosophy was just so much irrational twaddle.
Unfortunately, into this pas de deux of misrepresentation entered a third party: the modernising intellectual elites of China, India and Japan. In their different ways, these elites confronted a break with the past. Their interpretations of significant questions had been culturally broken: in China by the decline of the empire and the subsequent revolution; in India by colonialism and its aftermath (and, some would argue, by the earlier political dominance of Islam); and in Japan by the catastrophic failure of military hypernationalism. In all these cultures, the past became a treacherous place. In China, communism attempted to wipe out all memory of Old China. In India, postcolonial theorists saw in the classical past only patterns of elite hegemony that had been reinterpreted by the British. And in Japan, there was reluctance to return to the thinkers who had been potently invoked so recently by a brutal, expansionist military-imperial regime.
Many Asian scholars em-erging on the international scene therefore tended to be wary of applying their intellectual skills to the philosophy of their tradition. This wariness has been compounded by the culturally loaded interpretations offered by new nationalistic ideologues: here Sankara is attached to a hegemonic exercise in the conception of a Hindu nation, there Confucius is named as the originator of a profoundly undemocratic nation state.
Questioning the nature and identity of western philosophy is, of course, part of philosophy—from conceptual challenges by Nietzsche, Heidegger and Wittgenstein to political ones by students wanting courses not dominated by the canon of Dead White European Males. Such challenges simply get assimilated into a tradition that has had the political benefit of historical continuity. The disquiet of academic elites in Asia about the nature of their philosophical inheritance goes much deeper.
Other challenges remain to the proper redevelopment of Asian philosophies. In India, the Sanskrit-language work of the traditionally trained pandits is dying for lack of prestige and funding. In China, the wild excesses of the cultural revolution destroyed texts and killed thinkers, and the government is still cautious about philosophy. But it should not need arguing that there is value in these traditions, and that they presuppose intellectual rigour in the pursuit of problems they consider to be of such value. In any case, circumstances are changing as China and India find their own cultural spaces for creative yet traditional philosophy. India has had the better time of it politically, as intellectual freedom has allowed new ways of reimagining culture and tradition. But that very freedom has also brought challenges, as polemically extreme formulations from left and right crowd out more rigorous efforts at reinterpreting classical thought. Despite its edgy relationship with free thought, the Chinese state has benefited from the consequences of economic progress; in China and abroad, funds are found to support the unremunerative but time-consuming task of doing original philosophy.
Asian traditions of thought do not form a coherent historical tradition and Asian elites are ambivalent about their nature and worth. But for all the failures of Indians, Chinese and others to take up the study of their own philosophical past, it is perhaps odd that western philosophy, despite its own problems, has rarely sought to renew itself by looking to the east. Aesthetic dimensions of life—art, architecture, music, cinema—seem to flow more readily across cultures than philosophical ones. Once notions of racial and cultural superiority waned, many fusions took place between western and other cultures: consider Hollywood cinema since the early 1990s, English literature since Rushdie, Seth and others, the recent breakthrough of modern Indian art on to western markets. Philosophical thought remains the exception. Why? It may be that there is something in the very nature of such intellectual activity that makes it difficult for cross-cultural communication. Unless there is agreement on what the issues are and that these issues are to be tackled using mutually intelligible methods, perhaps philosophical cultures do not fuse.
It is an inescapable fact that contemporary globalisation took off at a time peculiarly marked by the domination of the place called the west. We cannot wish away that predominance. When the intellectual traditions of India, China or elsewhere come to take their place in an emerging global tradition of thought, they must start with the only global terms of discourse available to them: those of western philosophy. So I have had to use the categories of western philosophy in presenting Indian and Chinese thought; but as with the English language, use does not in itself indicate subordination. It may be that terms from non-western traditions will also become keys of analysis in a future global tradition of thought, but those of western philosophy, their uses conceived in many novel ways, will continue to be used, as they are bequeathed to a global successor. But to give thus, western philosophy must first also receive, even if on its own terms. Parochialism and fear of the unknown on the part of western philosophers, and a loss of nerve on the part of Asian thinkers, stand in the way of that reception.

SCOTLAND

For the Scots lovers amongst us.

Telegraph Opinion The Celtic canary in the UK's coal mine

The Celtic canary in the UK's coal mineBy Mark Steyn(Filed: 24/01/2006)
I am tempted to use that failed bottlenose rescue as a metaphor for poor old Britain. By "bottlenose", I don't mean Charles Kennedy, although the Liberal Democrats' leadership race is not without its forlorn symbolism, too. Rather, like that whale, Britain is a magnificent creature, but looking ever more beached by the tides of history and floundering for a way back into safe waters.
For example, consider the following headline from the Scotsman the other week: "Teaching jobs in doubt as pensioners set to outnumber pupils by 2009."
This was a story by Peter MacMahon, the paper's "Scottish Government Editor", and it begins thus: "Scotland's demographic time bomb will explode in three years, when the number of pensioners north of the Border overtakes the number of children in school, the Executive has been warned."
Seems straightforward enough: the country's demographic death spiral is accelerating faster than expected. And, as far as the Scotsman is concerned, the alarming thing about this development is that it could put cushy state teaching jobs "in doubt".
For crying out loud, man, get a grip. It puts every job "in doubt". It puts the continued existence of your country "in doubt". And it means the Scottish National Party is going through the motions: nobody needs a Scottish nation if there are no more Scottish nationals. See you, Jimmeh? Not for much longer.
Indeed, the remarkable feature of contemporary Scottish nationalism is that it has achieved all the features of a failed nation state without achieving the status of a nation state. "Teaching jobs" are the least of it. And doubtless the unions will see to it that, even when there is only one wee scrawny bairn left in the whole of Scotland, platoons of teachers will still be manning abandoned elementary schools across the kingdom. The jobs-for-life public-sector employee stood on the burning deck whence all the boys had fled.
With half the annual births it had in the 1950s and a population on the brink of falling below five million, Scotland has become a minor member of the axis of extinction: Germany, Japan, Russia - once great nations now recording net population loss. In its general approach to economic reality, not to mention the physical health of its population, Scotland is closer to the Russian end of the picture than to the German-Japanese end.
How did this happen? Almost everywhere you go on the planet, the great institutions of this world were built by Scots, from the Canadian Pacific Railway to the Hong Kong & Shanghai Bank. Where is the spirit of Mel McGibson in Braveheart?
"Aye, fight and you may die. Run and you'll live…at least for a while. And dying in your beds, many years from now, would you be willin' to trade all the days, from this day to that, for one chance, just one chance, to come back here and tell our enemies that they may take our lives, but they'll never take…OUR FREEDOM!"
But it is all more complicated than that. The modern Scot is prepared to fight - or, at any rate, strike - but only for the right to die in his bed on a government pension. In fact, one of the small signs of the country's woes is the byline of Peter MacMahon's Scotsman story. It is apparently possible to make a career in Scottish journalism as a "Scottish Government Editor", which in itself tells you something about the Scottish state.
What can be done to save Scotland? The Scottish Executive would like Scotland to have control of its own immigration, as the province of Quebec does. Quebec's collapsed birth rate has also cost it its dreams of nationhood and, like Scotland, it looked to immigration to save it, since when it has attracted a lively range of jihadist cells for whom Montreal offers the advantage of being a terrorist-indulgent neighbourhood only a stone's throw - or a bomb's - from the Great Satan's border. As the estate agents say, it is location, location, location. Glasgow has no such unique selling point.
Where are the immigrants going to come from? The birth rate is falling everywhere but the pre-modern world, ie, Africa and large swaths of Islam. Assuming that a talented Indian wished to leave his own land, which has the fastest-growing middle class in the world, why would he eschew America or Australia in order to go to Aberdeen and spend his working life supporting the elderly unsackable hordes of superfluous primary-school teachers?
The Muslims do their bit to keep the classrooms full. Abu Hamza, one notes, has seven children, all British subjects, although none inclined to go north, young man. But, in a world running out of emigrants, that is where any policy based on immigration leads: a future in which Scotland achieves nationhood as North Yemen.
Scotland is the canary in the United Kingdom's coal mine, but, given that three of the four component parts of the realm are mired in the same bloated, dead-end dependency culture, it would be foolish for the English to assume they won't get stuck with the bill for a Celtic fringe decaying into a long-term geriatric hospice. I doubt any Scot with an eye to electoral viability would want to run on anything that smacked of American conservatism, but surely they could at least learn something from Ireland, where, you will recall, Braveheart was filmed. They could have shot it in Scotland, but the Scots are too busy shooting themselves.
The other day Esko Aho - oh, come on, you remember, the former Finnish prime minister - presented a report to the European Commission that, in essence, read like a three-year-old Steyn column with an expenses budget: successful companies are abandoning the EU because it is becoming an irrelevant, sclerotic, statist backwater, etc.
Europe, says Mr Aho, is "living a moderately comfortable life on slowly declining capital. This society, averse to risk and reluctant to change, is in itself alarming, but it is also unsustainable in the face of rising competition from other parts of the world. For many citizens without work or in less-favoured regions, even the claim to comfort is untrue."
That is the point. On the present course, everywhere will wind up like Scotland. Mrs Thatcher liked to say that "the facts of life are conservative". Having declined to endorse that proposition in the Eighties, the Scots will be learning it far more painfully in the years ahead.

Iran: an irrational war of words

Iran: an irrational war of wordsThe spat between the West and Iran highlights the dangers of making up foreign policy as you go along.

by Brendan O'Neill

Some scary words are being used to describe the spat between the West and Iran. Some are predicting 'World War III'. There is talk of another Holocaust against the Jews, following Iranian president Mahmoud Admadinejad's inflammatory remarks about wanting to wipe Israel off the map and his expressions of Holocaust denial. Others think there might be a 'nuclear stand-off' between an already nuked-up USA and an Iran that is keen (allegedly) to build the Bomb. On the anti-war side, the big word is 'Empire': it's argued that President George W Bush's administration is plotting a war on Iran in order to control its oil reserves (1).
What all of this doom-laden bluster overlooks is that Iran was, until quite recently, a supporter of America's war on terror, and was pretty much turned into a pariah by an American foreign policy initiative thought up on the hoof and scribbled down on a sheet of paper. Up to 2002 Iran had been making increasingly friendly gestures towards the West until it was labelled part of an 'axis of evil' by Bush as part of a new foreign policy conjured up in a smoky backroom with little consideration given to the consequences. Nuclear World Wars with Holocausts attached are not normally made of such stuff.
America and the Islamic Republic of Iran have not exactly been the best of friends since 1979. US hawks never forgave the Islamists for overthrowing 'our bastard', the Shah. Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was installed as ruler of Iran in 1953 in a coup backed by the CIA and MI6 which deposed of the democratically elected prime minister, Dr Mohammad Mossadeq. From 1953 to 1979 the Shah was a loyal US ally in the Middle East. In the words of US foreign policy officials he maintained an 'island of stability' (2). Iran during that time was America's main customer for high-tech military hardware and its second-largest provider of fairly inexpensive oil; it was also, which seems strange now, Israel's most valuable ally in a hostile Muslim world. As notorious US secretary of state Henry Kissinger said in the Seventies, the Shah supported the US on 'virtually every major foreign policy issue', and in return the US gave him 'everything he wanted' (3).
So America's response to the Islamic revolution led by Ayatollah Khomeini that got shot of the Shah was swift and unforgiving. Draconian economic sanctions were imposed, and Iran was denounced by Carter, Reagan, Bush Senior and Clinton as a 'rogue' or 'terrorist state'. The Iranian hostage crisis, during which Iran held captive 66 American diplomats and citizens for 44 days between late 1979 and 1981, was especially humiliating for US officials, and is said to have contributed to President Jimmy Carter's loss of the presidential election in 1981.
Yet behind America's harsh public denunciations of Iran various US presidents sought to improve relations. America had an ambivalent relationship with Iran, motivated by outrage over the Islamic revolution and memories of the hostage crisis but also by a desire to influence events there. Even President Ronald Reagan, in the Iran-Contra affair in the mid-1980s, okayed the selling of arms to the Iranian mullahs. During the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-1988, America gave the green light to Saddam Hussein to attack Iran but also armed and supported, at different times, the Iranian side too.
In the Nineties, under President Bill Clinton's administration, these various private attempts to build bridges with the mullahs became more public. Clinton stopped labelling Iran a rogue state and publicly admitted, for the first time, that the US 'orchestrated the overthrow of Iran's popular prime minister' in 1953 and that this had been a 'setback' for Iran (4). He relaxed economic sanctions. Iran assured Britain that it had 'no intention to threaten [Salman Rushdie]' - against whom Khomeini had issued a fatwa for his novel The Satanic Verses in 1989 - for which Britain repaid Iran by restoring full diplomatic relations. After 9/11 Iran publicly showed its willingness to do business with the US: it denounced the 'terrorist Taliban' and urged the Northern Alliance (whom it had armed) fully to cooperate with the Americans. As one Iranian official said, '[The Afghan war] provided the two countries a perfect opportunity for improved relations' (5).
What went wrong? How has Iran gone from being a supporter of America's war on terror in 2001 to an apparently grave threat to America and Israel today, and the potential author of a new World War? It wasn't Iran that changed, where, if anything, there have been liberalising reforms in recent years and the growth of a student movement for more democracy; Iran is ruled by reformers and conservatives, and the reformers had been making headway since the Nineties. Rather, Iran was catapulted into its current pariah status by a Bush administration seeking some kind of enemy against which it could posture - not by a US determined to 'do another Shah', but by a US which decided, virtually out of the blue, to label Iran as 'evil' to demonstrate that it still has some clout and purpose in the world.
In 2002, Bush gave his now famous (or perhaps infamous) State of the Union address in which he denounced Iran, North Korea and Syria as an 'axis of evil'. Far from being the product of a carefully thought-out plan to rattle and threaten Iran, the axis of evil thesis seems to have been made up on the hoof. As Ervand Abrahamian points out in his very good book Inventing the Axis of Evil: The Truth About North Korea, Iran and Syria, this sudden demonisation of Iran will have come as a 'bolt out of the blue sky…for the average Iranian', who had seen 'relations between Iran and America gradually but markedly improve in the course of the previous five years' (6).
Even leading US officials were taken aback by Bush's speech. As Abrahamian notes, 'Colin Powell [then secretary of state] and the State Department had not been consulted about the speech, neither about its general thrust nor about the inclusion of Iran'. State Department officials privately complained that the speech would 'undermine their long-standing policy of rapprochement with Iranian reformers' (7).
Bush's speech demonstrated the extent to which US foreign policy is made on the hoof these days. It was reportedly written at the last minute, and it would seem that little thought was given to the consequences of labelling three states as evil opponents. The fact that leading Bushies did not know about the content of the speech shows how little overarching coherence there is to US foreign policy. The creation of the axis of evil was not guided by a clear vision or strategy, but rather by stalemate within the war on terror. The Americans had been fighting in Afghanistan for four months at the time of Bush's speech and though the Taliban had been easily toppled, the main targets of the war - Osama bin Laden and Taliban leader Mullah Omar - had proved infuriatingly elusive. America had gone to Afghanistan not only in search of bin Laden, but also in search of itself, of a mission that could define what America is for and against today. When that didn't come off, it conjured up three new evil spectres against which it might define itself, most likely in some meeting room in the Pentagon.
America's support for the Shah for close to 30 years was driven by realpolitik, by a clear sense of America's interests in the Middle East. The consequence was a denial of democracy for Iranians. Its covert arming of Iran at various times in the 1980s was motivated by a desire to have some influence on the mullahs. The consequence was a drawn-out and bloody war between Iran and Iraq.
America's kneejerk denunciation of Iran in 2002 was motivated by the absence of a clear sense of America's interests or mission; it was a quickly thought-up pose which, it was hoped, would make the US appear serious and impressive at a time when its war on terror was faltering. The consequence has been an increasingly tense situation, as both US and Iranian officials have upped the rhetoric between 2002 and today: US officials in order to take the heat off their disastrous wars on terror and Iraq, and Iranian officials in an attempt to appease and appear committed to the Iranian masses.
It was rhetoric, not realpolitik, that stoked the stand-off between the West and Iran. The tensions are not the result of design, whether of an American elite hell-bent on taking over Iran or of Iranian leaders who have decided politically to oppose the USA; they are the product of a US foreign policy that is driven more by emotional kneejerk reactions than by a coherent strategy. It is the irrationalism of US foreign policy today, rather than its cunning or ambition, that heightened tensions with Iran. This episode shows, not so much that America is greedily pursuing its own interests in foreign fields (which would be nothing new), but that its foreign policy is now so changeable and opportunistic that it can easily act against its own interests in its various foreign ventures.
It demonstrates that moral posturing in international affairs can sometimes be as dangerous as an old-style military mission. It is highly unlikely to lead to a new World War. But it has made international affairs a volatile and unpredictable realm.
Visit Brendan O'Neill's website here.
(1) Oil, geopolitics and the coming war with Iran, Global Policy Forum, 11 April 2005(2) Inventing the Axis of Evil: The Truth About North Korea, Iran and Syria, Ervand Abrahamian et al, The New Press, 2004(3) Inventing the Axis of Evil: The Truth About North Korea, Iran and Syria, Ervand Abrahamian et al, The New Press, 2004(4) Inventing the Axis of Evil: The Truth About North Korea, Iran and Syria, Ervand Abrahamian et al, The New Press, 2004(5) Inventing the Axis of Evil: The Truth About North Korea, Iran and Syria, Ervand Abrahamian et al, The New Press, 2004(6) Inventing the Axis of Evil: The Truth About North Korea, Iran and Syria, Ervand Abrahamian et al, The New Press, 2004(7) Inventing the Axis of Evil: The Truth About North Korea, Iran and Syria, Ervand Abrahamian et al, The New Press, 2004

WHY ANGLOS LEAD

The National Interest Article Why Anglos Lead

By Lawrence Mead


OVER THE last few years, due to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, many commentators have discerned the emergence of a new American empire. Some critics blame the Bush Administration, arguing that, but for Bush, there would be no crisis over American "unilateralism" or "hegemony." Others blame the end of the Cold War for "unleashing" America on the world.
Actually, American pre-eminence extends much further back--to World War II or before. It really continues a British primacy that dated back at least to 1815. During the 20th century, Germany, Japan and Soviet Russia challenged the Anglo ascendancy, but they were turned back. So today the world order bears a remarkable resemblance to the late Victorian era. Now as then, the world is globalizing, and English is its lingua franca. The United States has merely supplanted Britain as the leading power.
American primacy is not an accident of this or that administration. It reflects the special capacity of English-speaking countries to lead the world order. These "Anglo nations", or the "Anglos" as I will call them, include Britain and the chief territories that were settled initially from Britain--pre-eminently the United States but also Australia, Canada and New Zealand. What makes a country Anglo is that its original settler population came mainly from Britain. So even though a minority of Americans today have British roots, they inherit a political culture initially formed by the British. Some other countries that Britain ruled, such as India or South Africa, are not Anglo in this sense because British settlers never formed the bulk of their populations. They may be English-speaking, and their public institutions have British roots, but British culture did not form the society as it did in the Anglo countries.
The Anglo nations--singly or in concert--have taken a special responsibility for the world order. Somehow, they are available to deal with chaos and aggression abroad, as other countries usually are not. One or another of the Anglos has led all the major military operations of the last fifteen years. Besides the current Afghanistan and Iraq conflicts, instances include the 1991 Gulf War, the ensuing no-fly zones over Iraq, military operations in Bosnia in 1995 and Kosovo in 1999, and humanitarian interventions in Somalia, Haiti, Sierra Leone and East Timor.
What explains Anglo primacy? One immediate cause is that other rich countries that might show leadership have abdicated. Following the devastating wars of the 20th century, the continental nations and Japan sought to banish war by subordinating themselves and other states to international institutions--the United Nations, NATO and the European Union. Germany and Japan even adopted legal curbs on the use of their militaries abroad or for offensive purposes. The ethos of most of the developed world now runs strongly against war, even for a good cause. Thus, in moments of military crisis, America seems "bound to lead" because no other country can do so.
But beyond this, the Anglo nations also possess, to an unusual degree, the resources needed for war--wealth, a capacity to project force, confidence in war and the deference of other countries. Other commentators have noted these assets. What I add is chiefly the argument that all these resources ultimately stem from the Anglos' political achievements: Good government at home is the ultimate reason for Anglo leadership abroad.
Wealth and Law
BRITAIN AND America came to primacy in part simply because they were the richest countries of their day. They had the wealth and the technology to build dominant militaries and sustain them. The British built a bigger and better navy than rival European powers. The United States has overwhelmed its major opponents by both quantity and quality of arms. Washington funds high-tech weapons development on a scale that no other country can approach. The Anglos also buy influence abroad. The British financed alliances against their European rivals. They exported capital overseas just as they did colonists. The United States lavishes economic and military aid on its clients.
But why are the Anglos so rich? Principally because they are comfortable with capitalism. A special propensity to "truck, barter and exchange" appeared in England even in medieval times. The English became rich by developing a larger and freer internal market than rival countries. They also had an aristocracy more open to enterprise than continental rivals, and other entrepreneurs arose outside the landed elite. Due to these assets, the Industrial Revolution appeared first in Britain. The resulting wealth largely explains Britain's hegemony during the 19th century. It took Britain's European rivals most of a century to catch it.
The United States, lacking any premodern social order, built its culture and institutions even more fully around the market economy. And where Britain was an island, the United States was a continent. The American combination of confident capitalism with massive scale is equaled nowhere else. So the United States became a powerhouse of wealth and innovation with which it seems no other country can compete.
In recent decades, it did seem that Anglo economies were losing ground to eager rivals in Europe or Asia, pre-eminently Japan. But over the last quarter-century, the Anglos have trimmed taxes and subsidies, deregulated markets, curbed trade unions, cut welfare benefits and exposed their private sectors to ruthless restructuring. The end result is that the United States remains the world's richest country, while the British have the most dynamic large economy in Europe. At the end of the 20th century, the five Anglo countries led the world in overall economic policy. Not by accident, they also rank high in military expenditure.
Most other countries, in contrast, are a lot less comfortable with the marketplace. In Europe, continental governments try to shield citizens and companies from competitive pressures, leading to higher taxes and more social spending. In Asia, capitalism is even more compromised. Japan and its imitators used skilled workforces, strong technology and exports to the West to advance themselves. But in the 1990s Japan and other Asian countries suffered financial reverses. That showed that they still lacked the internal institutions and practices needed to rival the West. And while China may generate the wealth needed to finance a military juggernaut, it is much weaker in all the other attributes of world leadership.
The success of the market in Anglo countries did not occur in a vacuum. It reflects good governance. As early as the twelfth century, independent royal courts gained authority over all of England. The rule of law protected property and contract against force and fraud, and that was critical to the country's early economic dynamism. A broader tradition developed that government should be impartial. It should publicly explain its policies, and functionaries should be honest.
Impartial governance worked over time to liberate enterprise. The medieval economy, in Britain as elsewhere, was riddled with monopolies, guilds and other restrictions. But over the centuries these came to be seen as corrupt. In a regime where policies had to be explained, special privileges could not ultimately be justified. So mercantilism was ended, monopolies abolished and financial markets developed. Adam Smith proved the superiority of the free market, and in the 19th century Britain became the first country to adopt free trade.
The British passed the rule of law, like capitalism, on to their colonies, and it was the most precious of their gifts. In America, political and economic competition can look like a free-for-all, but it is undergirded by a formidable legal order. Enterprise is free yet regulated to limit collusion and other abuses. Most people pay their taxes and obey the law. A civic ethos suffuses the regime. Abuses and corruption occur, but they are exposed and redressed, as in the recent Enron scandal. American judges and juries are not for sale, which is why drug kingpins fear extradition to the United States. Equal opportunity, based on an elaborate education system, is generous. The whole system rests on a commitment to public impartiality that America imbibed, like mother's milk, from its British forebears.
In the Third World, in contrast, lack of the rule of law is a worse hindrance to development than any economic problem. Regimes are systematically corrupt. While nearly all economies today are formally capitalist, few are fully competitive. Officials often shield favored firms from answering to the law or the consumer. Without an ethos of impartiality, democratization achieves little. Elections merely change which politicians have their feet in the trough.
Thus, nurtured by the rule of law, the Anglos' economies became a golden river, pouring forth the wealth needed to sustain their ascendancy around the world. No country without an equal trust in markets and in law is likely to challenge them.
The Projection of Force
WEALTH AND law, however, cannot fully explain Anglo primacy. By the end of the 20th century, Britain was no longer the richest country in Europe. Germany is larger and potentially more powerful. The affluent European Union might potentially outspend even the United States on arms. But neither Germany nor the EU has made any serious attempt to challenge the Anglos' military leadership.
It is true that in NATO and UN peacekeeping operations, non-Anglo nations often participate. But they usually contribute only token forces, or their forces are untested in battle and thus of limited value. In Africa, local peacekeeping forces have sometimes created more disorder than they solved. The sole recent case of non-Anglo intervention by a single country is France's expeditions to its former colonies in West Africa.
Many countries, of course, mobilize military force within their own borders. But in the capacity to prevail militarily far from home, the Anglos are pre-eminent. For one thing, they invest in the naval and airlift capacity needed to operate overseas. France is their only conceivable rival. Other major powers have no such capacity. Russia once could project force, as it did in Afghanistan, but its ability has degraded sharply since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
In part, the Anglos' capacity reflects habit. They have been sending armies overseas for centuries. The British built their empire that way. The United States has eschewed a formal empire, but it has intervened regularly in Latin America and the Caribbean.
A deeper reason, however, is again good government. Just as a capable regime made Anglo countries rich at home, so it helped them project power abroad. To an unusual degree, Anglo governments combine strong executive leadership with legislative consent. Both features make for effective warfighting overseas.
Among European states, England was unified unusually early. Following the Norman Conquest, it developed the strongest monarchy in Europe. But the idea arose almost as early that government should be by consent. The Magna Carta codified the principle that the king could not change the law or raise taxes without the consent of the realm. Kings created Parliament to obtain taxes, conceding "redress of grievances" in return. As a result, British politics treated executive and legislative power as complementary, not opposed.
Both dimensions made the government effective abroad. The king had clear authority to govern, but he needed parliamentary consent to fund his enterprises. While this limited his personal power, it also allowed him to build greater political and financial support for foreign policy than in other states. Armed with these resources, English kings controlled much of France for centuries. In contrast, most continental rulers downgraded their parliaments and sought to rule on a personal basis. Such regimes were perpetually underfunded and politically insecure, as was proven by the French and Russian revolutions.
In Britain, Parliament pre-empted the power of the monarch rather than the other way around, but without compromising the authority of the regime. Still today, the essence of British government is a strong executive that requires parliamentary consent to govern. The American Constitution creates added checks and balances within the regime, but in foreign policy the arrangement is still British. The president has undoubted power to initiate policy, including war, but Congress must provide support and funding. Actions approved by both branches are highly likely to succeed abroad.
Deploying these institutions, Anglo regimes routinely out-mobilize their adversaries. The combination of unusual wealth with a unique capacity to tax and borrow allowed Britain to defeat France in the wars of the 17th and 18th centuries, even though France was then a much larger country. British military and trade pressure finally drove the Bourbon regime into bankruptcy and revolution. In much the same way, American arms and economic pressure forced the Soviet dictatorship to open up politics to get broader support, whereupon it, too, collapsed. The paradox was that the country most committed to the state was far worse governed than the capitalist one, and this was its undoing.
When the two Presidents Bush sought support from Congress before fighting Iraq, they observed a ritual that English kings initiated in the 13th century. The need for popular consent can delay Anglo acceptance of conflict, as was true in both the United States and Britain before World War II. But what looks like weakness is ultimately a strength. Once support is won, Anglo governments typically fight resolutely. Only if wars go badly for a prolonged period is consent withdrawn, as happened in Vietnam and could happen in Iraq.
Other countries that might rival the Anglos have no such tradition of forming a public will for war. In Anglo elections, two political parties typically dominate, and the use of single-member districts usually generates a majority with a clear mandate to govern. In continental countries and Japan, by contrast, there are more parties or factions, and proportional representation is often used, leading to fragmented parliaments and cautious coalition governments. In China, the regime fears any open debate, by elected representatives or the public. So its capacities to lead and to build support are far more limited.
Confidence in War
A FURTHER asset of the Anglo countries is that they approach war more confidently than their potential rivals. That partly reflects their favorable geopolitical situation. No Anglo country shares a common border with a threatening neighbor. Britain, Australia and New Zealand are islands, while the United States abuts only much weaker Canada and Mexico. So the Anglos often can wait to fight opponents until they are likely to prevail. The same cannot be said of France, Germany or Russia, still less the hapless east European countries sandwiched between Germany and Russia.
A second reason is again rooted in political success. For the past two centuries, Anglos have gone to war to defeat aggressors that threatened not only themselves but the stability of the world order. They are willing to do this in part because such struggles continue their liberal domestic political project. Their history is all about taming political power--schooling rulers to serve society rather than themselves. If they have succeeded in that endeavor at home, they believe they can do so abroad. To battle foreign tyrants is a further venture in the taming of unaccountable power. So they tend to approach war with purpose.
The Anglos think of war as confirming, not threatening, their deepest values. The British regime derived much of its confidence from its victories over Spain, then France, then Germany. That a free country, ruled by law and consent, could defeat dictatorships was Britain's pride. Both Britain and the United States look back on World War II and the Cold War as glorious crusades. Those victories led to the rebuilding of much of Europe under Anglo auspices. The same confidence has led George Bush to attempt the rebuilding of Afghanistan and Iraq, a much tougher challenge. Due to their dread of conflict, the continental nations today could not imagine such an enterprise.
The Anglo taste for war does not reflect militarism. These countries are less in love with soldiers than some of those they have defeated, such as imperial Germany and Japan. Anglo political culture promotes skepticism toward public institutions, including the armed forces. Civilian control of the military is strict. The military's ability to impose itself on politics is far stronger in Latin America, Africa and Asia. Rather, Anglo acceptance of war reflects the confidence of the political class as a whole. Regimes that have governed successfully at home naturally think they can prevail abroad as well.
The Deference of Others
A FINAL resource that promotes the Anglos' primacy is what Joseph Nye has called "soft power"--the uncoerced admiration of other countries. Traditional realists would expect that a nation as dominant as the United States is today should provoke counter-alliances. But Anglo power is used mostly for ends others perceive as disinterested, so it is tolerated. When the Anglos go to war, it is usually against widely recognized threats and in alliance with others. These brave campaigns served Anglo interests, but they also sheltered weaker nations. Relatively rich and secure, the Anglos act most of the time as status quo powers that defend the international order rather than pursuing their own narrow interests. As Charles Krauthammer argued several years ago in these pages, the United States has sustained an international system that provides for open seas, open trade and open societies lightly defended.
Foreign trust is such that most European and Asian countries would rather have the United States organize security for them than do it themselves. The Germans, Japanese or Russians would be far less trusted, because they ravaged large regions within living memory. America is also the financial mainstay of many international bodies. Far from exploiting smaller countries, America is the strong nation that is exploited by the weak.
Of course, the current Bush unilateralism has undermined American legitimacy abroad. The United States also disappointed others by withdrawing from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Russia and by refusing to join several new international agreements, including the Kyoto Protocol on greenhouse gases and the International Criminal Court. In these cases, our leaders judged that international cooperation was too costly for us. However, no other nation or grouping has stepped forward to take up the burdens that America declines. Europe has begun to form a military capacity separate from NATO, but it is as yet nascent. There is still no alternative to Anglo power as a basis for world order.
Again, the Anglos' political successes stand in the background. Other countries accept Anglo foreign policy goals, in part because they arise from a transparent political process that foreigners can understand and even influence. The Anglos also have an unusually long history of governing in accord with individual rights. In politics, they practice what they preach, however imperfectly. That heritage makes it implausible that they could be oppressors abroad. This open and democratic tradition is the real source of Anglo soft power.
As noted above, Anglo foreign policy tends to express domestic values; realpolitik is secondary. Both William Gladstone and Jimmy Carter lectured other countries about human rights. Such language unsettles the realist minds of foreign statesmen, but it also reassures them. It might tempt America to unwonted crusades, but it also announces an identity of ends with other countries. Bismarck, the master of realpolitik, envied Britain's "uncanny gift for provoking the jealousy yet attracting the support of European Powers." Much of the time, if not presently, America does the same.
Some Qualifications
I DO NOT say that the Anglos dominate every aspect of world politics. Japan, Germany and other European countries are major sources of foreign aid. These and other countries contribute to the UN and international development agencies and shape world trade rules. It is only in crises requiring force that the Anglos move inevitably to the fore. However, that capacity is so critical and so costly that it is enough to make them overall world leaders.
I also do not necessarily defend the foreign policy pursued by the Anglo nations, let alone the current Bush unilateralism. Traditionally, Anglo policy has emphasized maintaining law and order abroad, skepticism toward international institutions and free trade. The continental countries would rather emphasize economic relations, international cooperation, generosity to the developing world and restraints on globalization. Yet any world system must cope with aggressors and the breakdown of order. That is where the Anglo capacity for war seems indispensable, and this is what chiefly gives them their primacy.
I also do not assume that the Anglos always agree among themselves. American and British interests have sometimes clashed, most notably over Suez in 1956. New Zealand withdrew from the ANZUS alliance rather than accept American ships carrying nuclear weapons. Canada refused to support the Iraq War. Recently, Britain joined other Europeans in pursuing a negotiated solution to the Iranian nuclear buildup, despite American doubts. It also backs the current world initiative to reduce world poverty through increased foreign aid; America is more skeptical.
Still less do I assume that there is or ought to be any explicit condominium among the Anglos. No "Anglosphere", where English-speaking nations collaborate to run the world, is likely to emerge. 1 If the Anglos so often act in concert, especially in military matters, the reason is their shared histories, geopolitical situations and regimes. Any "special relationship" among their leaders is secondary.
Path Dependence
TO A LONG view, Anglo world leadership is not due to the Bush Administration or any recent event, not even to the crusades of the last century. Rather, the key fact, as Bismarck noted, is that the North Americans speak English. Britain defeated France for the control of the New World. The Battle of Quebec in 1759, which sealed that victory, might be the most decisive of modern times. In Europe, Britain had already proven the peerless capacity of capitalism, law and consent to generate wealth and power. Its conquest of North America ensured that the United States would become, in geopolitical terms, Britain writ large. Just as Britain came to lead Europe, so the United States would come to lead the world, and for similar political reasons.
Anglo primacy will probably persist precisely because its roots lie in good government, which is deeply path dependent. It is hard for any country to become well governed that has not always been so. Somehow, the British formed an effective regime early, and it went from strength to strength. Each advance generated the confidence and the trust needed for the next. The British passed on that legacy to their Anglo heirs, and these countries, too, have had beneficent histories. In terms of political gifts, the richest countries have been English-speaking. Their wealth and power ultimately derive from this great fact.
Most other European countries were less fortunate. Their development was more delayed and uneven. Only since World War II did many of them achieve regimes that were both effective and democratic. Outside the West, political traditions are still less fortunate. Regimes have typically been venal and incompetent. Weakness persists, because past failure undermines the assurance and the cooperation needed to improve. In recent decades, only a handful of non-Western regimes, mainly in Asia, can be said to have crossed the line from bad government to good.
While elected government has recently spread widely, the actual quality of government--its ability to rule legally, effectively and responsively--grows much more slowly. What institutions do exist in third-world countries are often a legacy of imperialism. A return to empire, perhaps under UN auspices, may be the only solution to "failed states." 2 Either good government must be exported to the Third World, or those peoples will immigrate to the West in search of it, which poses its own problems.
Could China become powerful despite a regime that is both corrupt and undemocratic? The jury is still out. While China's recent growth is remarkable, the country is still far below Western levels in per capita wealth and in the resources needed for a leading military. On past precedent, China will need much better government before it can truly challenge the West. While its regime has shown some moves toward legality and popular responsiveness, it has far to go.
For decades, international institutions such as the World Bank largely ignored governmental weakness, but that has changed. Increasingly, development aid is given subject to conditions on the receiving regimes. Aid donors use private organizations to run projects, sidestepping corrupt rulers. The human rights movement seeks to use American courts to indict foreign governments, in effect seeking to project American law, like American military power, beyond our shores. Thus the fortunate West works around the chief tragedy of the non-West, which is its politics.
This increasing focus on institutions, or lack thereof, highlights the real reasons for Anglo primacy. Bismarck was right; the fact that good governance arose first in the English-speaking world and was bequeathed to America is truly the most fundamental fact about world affairs. The great division in today's international system is between countries that are well governed and those that are not. As long as that divide continues, Anglo primacy will endure.
1 See, for example, James C. Bennett, The Anglosphere Challenge (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004).
2 See Vladislav Inozemtsev and Sergei Karagonov, "Imperialism of the Fittest", The National Interest (Summer 2005).
Lawrence M. Mead is professor of politics at New York University, where he teaches public policy and American government. He has written several books about American social policy.

PAYBACK IRAN

Telegraph Opinion

Let's give Iran some of its own medicineBy Mark Steyn(Filed: 17/01/2006)

So let me see. On the one hand, we have a regime that is pressing full steam ahead with its nuclear programme and whose president has threatened to wipe another sovereign state off the map.
And, on the other side of the negotiations, we have Her Britannic Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs.
Jack Straw has been at pains to emphasise that no military action against Iran is being contemplated by him or anybody else, but in a sign that he's losing patience with the mullahs Mr Straw's officials have indicated that they're prepared to consider the possibility of possibly considering the preparation of a possible motion on sanctions for the UN Security Council to consider the possibility of considering.
But don't worry, we're not escalating this thing any more than necessary. Initially, the FCO is considering "narrowly targeted sanctions such as a travel ban on Iranian leaders".
That'll show 'em: Iranian missiles may be able to leave Iranian airspace, but the deputy trade minister won't. No more trips to Paris for the spring collections or skiing in Gstaad for the A-list ayatollahs.
Needless to say, the German deputy foreign minister, Gernot Erler, has already cautioned that this may be going too far, and that sanctions could well hurt us more than it hurts the Iranians. Perhaps this is what passes is for a good cop/bad cop routine, with Herr Erler affably suggesting to the punks that they might want to cooperate or he'll have to send his pal Jack in to tear up their tickets for the Michael Moore première at the Cannes Film Festival.
But, if I were President Ahmadinejad or the wackier ayatollahs, I'd be mulling over the kid glove treatment from Jack Straw and Co and figuring: wow, if this is the respect we get before the nukes are fully operational, imagine how they'll be treating us this time next year. Incidentally, the assumption in the European press that the nuclear payload won't be ready to fly for three or four years is laughably optimistic.
So any Western strategy that takes time is in the regime's favour. After all, President Ahmaggedonouttahere's formative experience was his participation in the seizure of the US embassy in Teheran in 1979. I believe it was Andrei Gromyko who remarked that, if the students had pulled the same stunt at the Soviet embassy, Teheran would have been a crater by lunchtime.
So what can be done? Right now, Iran can count on at least two Security Council vetoes against any meaningful action by the "international community". As for the unilaterally inclined, the difficulty for the US and Israel is that there's really no Osirak-type resolution of the problem - a quick surgical strike, in and out. By most counts, there are upwards of a couple of hundred potential sites spread across a wide range of diverse terrain, from remote mountain fastnesses to residential suburbs.
To neutralise them all would require a sustained bombing campaign lasting several weeks, and with the usual collateral damage at schools, hospitals, etc, plastered all over CNN and the BBC. Meanwhile, Iraq's Shia south would turn into another Sunni Triangle for coalition forces. Every challenge to the West begins as a contest of wills - and for the Iranians recent history, from the Shah and the embassy siege to the Iraqi "insurgency" and Mr Straw's soundbites, tells them the West can't muster the strength of will needed to force them to back down.
But, granted the Iranian destabilisation of Iraq and their sponsorship of terror groups in Lebanon and the Palestinian Authority, surely it shouldn't be difficult to give them a taste of their own medicine. Who, after all, likes the Teheran regime? The Russian and Chinese and North Korean governments and the fulsome Mr Straw appear to, but there's less evidence that the Iranian people do.
The majority of Iran's population is younger than the revolution: whether or not they're as "pro-American" as is sometimes claimed, they have no memory of the Shah; all they've ever known is their ramshackle Islamic republic where the unemployment rate is currently 25 per cent. If war breaks out, those surplus young men will be in uniform and defending their homeland.
Why not tap into their excess energy right now? As the foreign terrorists have demonstrated in Iraq, you don't need a lot of local support to give the impression (at least to Tariq Ali and John Pilger) of a popular insurgency. Would it not be feasible to turn the tables and upgrade Iran's somewhat lethargic dissidents into something a little livelier? A Teheran preoccupied by internal suppression will find it harder to pull off its pretensions to regional superpower status.
Who else could we stir up? Well, did you see that story in the Sunday Telegraph? Eight of the regime's border guards have been kidnapped and threatened with decapitation by a fanatical Sunni group in Iranian Baluchistan. I'm of the view that the Shia are a much better long-term bet as reformable Muslims, but given that there are six million Sunni in Iran and that they're a majority in some provinces, would it not be possible to give the regime its own Sunni Triangle?
No option is without risks, though some are overstated, including regional anger at any Western action: I doubt whether many Arab Sunni regimes really wish to live under the nuclear umbrella of a Persian Shia superpower. And, indeed, one further reason (as if you need one) to put the skids under Boy Assad in Damascus is to underline that there's a price to be paid for getting too cosy with Teheran.
But every risk has to be weighed against the certainty that Iran would use its nuclear capacity in the same way it uses its other assets - by supporting terror groups that operate against its enemies.
And Jack Straw's mullah-coddling is particularly unworthy in that, insofar as Iran has a strategy, the president's chief adviser, Hassan Abbassi, has based it on the premise that "Britain is the mother of all evils" - the evils being America, Australia, Israel, the Gulf states and even Canada and New Zealand, all of which are the malign progeny of the British Empire.
"We have established a department that will take care of England," said Mr Abbassi last May. "England's demise is on our agenda." Apropos the ayatollahs, England could at least return the compliment.

Poor Richard's Redemption

Poor Richard's Redemption - New York Times

Poor Richard's Redemption
By STACY SCHIFF
AMERICAN history is short on 300th birthdays. Which is only one reason to salute Ben Franklin, who had the foresight to have been born three centuries ago today. It was one of many generous acts for his country. He makes us feel we have a history.
As a man of science, Franklin lamented that he had been born too soon. (A beautiful woman 40 years his junior generally elicited the same regret.) But he could not truly quibble with chronology. In America's seminal story, birth order was on his side. He was already a father - and a thriving publisher - when Adams and Washington were in swaddling clothes. He retired from the printing business when Jefferson was 4. He had flown his kite when Madison was an infant; by the time Hamilton was born he had turned to politics, and proposed a first plan for colonial union. He could have been either man's grandfather.
Franklin was, too, the founder who came the furthest. He alone spent six decades as a British subject before embracing the revolutionary cause, to which he applied the zeal of a convert. He neither hailed from an elite nor subscribed to one. The youngest son of a youngest son, he chafed as much against entitled elder siblings as against enthroned upper classes. Until Tom Sawyer displaced him, he ranked as our foremost juvenile delinquent. Franklin's autobiography begins with defying his family and running away from home. "Perhaps I was too saucy and provoking," he reflected afterward, with ample reason. He thought he was writing his own story but was of course writing America's as well.
Neither birth order nor longevity - he signed every document central to America's founding - would alone have established Franklin as the ur-American, however. He was a true egalitarian, which could not be said of Adams. For all his ingenuity he was less a manufacturer of ideas than a purveyor of them; he was no dreamy Jefferson. Alexander Hamilton may well have known everything, but Franklin questioned everything.
His curiosity was matched by the suppleness of his mind, one singularly free of hobgoblins. (His ability to argue either side of an issue with equal vigor drove Adams to distraction.) Nor was there anything orthodox or evangelical about Franklin, who took his Puritanism as he took his Enlightenment ideals: with a splash of water, hold the doctrine. His religion was tolerance, his sect pragmatism.
When did he become so plushly, so comfortably, so voluptuously American? As the features are not aquiline, so the morals are far from impeccable. With equal genius Franklin codified good behavior and defied it. He was an organization man who was not particularly organized, a committee man who worked most effectively through back channels. With equal gusto he preached temperance and wrote drinking songs. He practiced frugality only, he admitted, so long as it was absolutely necessary. Diligence was his middle name, but few have made dilatoriness sound so attractive. A great deal of his famed industry consisted of getting someone else to whitewash the fence.
That Franklin would one day be anointed "the first great American" was far from clear during his lifetime. He was proud of his social sprint, which he merrily advertised. To his mind it made the success all the sweeter. He who had been born to poverty and obscurity had dined with royalty! But social mobility was not something one bragged about in the l8th century. It was Franklin who gave work and bootstraps - among other things - a good name. One easily forgets that "democrat," too, was a dirty word in colonial America.
Born too soon on those counts, Franklin died too soon as well. The United States Senate chose not to mourn him; his official eulogy fell to his avowed enemy, the Reverend William Smith. And the 19th century was not kind to Franklin. Tangled up with his fictional alter ego, the almanac-writing Poor Richard, he was too practical, too rational, too stubbornly middle class. Keats sniffed at his "mean and thrifty maxims." Emerson had little use for him. Thoreau, Melville, Poe had none.
There was something shabby, shambling, shallow about the likeable lowlife, King of Rotarians. No poet has ever sung Franklin's praises. On his 200th birthday this newspaper extended tepid good wishes: "He seems to have been quite without definite ambition, his attitude toward life was mildly cynical, and by inclination he was a manager rather than a leader of men."
It did not help that Franklin stood as the only founder who made an art of levity. Where it is unclear if James Madison even had a personality, Franklin is all pluck and charm. Irony was his natural idiom. He is to Jefferson or Washington as Molière is to Corneille, winking farce and earthy intrigue versus piety and nobility, the satirical versus the sententious. By his own admission Franklin was a rascal, one well pleased with his cunning, the more so when the result of his machinations happened to be the founding of a hospital. He was equal parts Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan and Bugs Bunny.
His role as a public servant was difficult to grasp, long submerged, at times unwelcome. His last public act was to petition Congress against slavery. Weeks before his death he reminded his colleagues that liberty should extend "without distinction of color to all descriptions of people." No one believed so deeply in an unfettered society, in free ideas as fervently as in free markets. Franklin managed to cast a vote for both, opting not to patent his inventions. It was preferable they be available to all.
A materialistic age returns him to his glory, none more so than our overachieving own. His passions are ours: smarts, self-improvement, social welfare and better cellphone reception for all. We have him to thank for the sugar-busting one-minute manager who wins thin-thighed friends and influences highly effective people in 30 days. At the same time he is just the merit-maniac for an age that prefers its presidents from Midland, Tex., rather than from Andover and Yale. In an anti-intellectual climate Franklin's earthy insights feel just right. He was smart enough to keep his learning lite.
America's first autobiographer, he presides over an age of memoirs, to which he comes wreathed in lapses and confessions. He was not above seducing his best friend's girl; he left his fiancée in the lurch; he sired an illegitimate son. Between reason and inclination, he well understood, there is no contest, especially as the reasonable man can find an excuse for anything. (He once justified his divided affections by arguing that a man who was loyal to many women was more loyal than a man loyal only to one.) He evinced a wish to be reborn without his so-called errata; little did he realize that those imperfections were his letters of recommendation to posterity. Washington is all about admiration, Franklin a continual ache of aspiration. He is the forgiving founder. Whatever he was made of, it was not Rushmorean granite.
Like so many eminent characters in our literature, Franklin refused to settle comfortably into a category. He was not only the prince of self-invention, but the king of second acts. He had no great faith in human nature but an abiding one in collective human enterprise. "For when you assemble a number of men to have the advantage of their joint wisdom," he reminded the signers of our Constitution, "you inevitably assemble with those men all their prejudices, their passions, their errors of opinion, their local interests, and their selfish views." But he was also a preternaturally happy man. He truly believed that it was always morning in America.
The most read writer in colonial America, Franklin found that only the Bible outsold his almanacs. (The former, he reasoned, you bought once. The latter had to be purchased annually.) He also pioneered a media role for which he has not been given proper credit. As Hawthorne observed - it was not necessarily a compliment - Franklin was "the counselor and household friend to almost every family in America." He has but one successor today. He was less Ted Turner than Oprah Winfrey, ladling up an expertly seasoned stew of human frailty and triumph, entertainment and inspiration.
BY his 250th birthday, Franklin had survived the slights to be feted across the world. The tributes were appropriate to a man who had always thought globally. He understood that America was not an island; it was at his suggestion that maps of the world graced the walls of the Pennsylvania Assembly. Eloquently he articulated what the War of Independence represented beyond American shores: "We are fighting for the dignity and happiness of human nature. Glorious it is for the Americans to be called by providence to this post of honor," he reminded Congress during a dark winter of the war.
A few years later he offered up what may be the best one-line definition of this country. The New World, he asserted, judged a man not by who he was, but by what he could do. And what Franklin could do was staggering. His legacy is not a political philosophy but a protean existence, act after act of bold curiosity, brash risk-taking, raw ingenuity. Once those constituted a definition of the American character. Today they would more likely be termed "hypomania," a fair diagnosis for any individual who manages single-handedly to found a library, fire company, police force, hospital, university, insurance company, sanitation department and militia.
How much do we value Franklin? Since 1799, Washington has been acknowledged to have been "first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen." For much of the last century Franklin appears to have been first in everything else. He was not one to put theory before practice, however. None but the empirical test will do for Dr. Franklin. How dear is he to us? Well, who would you rather have in your wallet, George Washington or Ben Franklin? He makes us feel rich.
Stacy Schiff is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of "A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France and the Birth of America."