Coping with Post-Democracy

One of the classics of European political science of the last decade or so. Colin Crouch came out with Coping with Post-Democracy before he turned it into a book of the - almost - same title a few later. I read the original essay not, mainly because the Commission library for some reason only had this version, not the book (honi soit qui mal y pense). It was a great - short - read. Crouch argues that democracy has decreased quality-wise from the 50-60s (an argument that one could beg to differ with, I agree, not like those years of stability, economic growth and subdued women was such an ideal world either...) and that we live today in a not anti- but at least post-democratic environment, where civil society often times only goes through the notions and voting (if that) is the sole active part most citizens play in democratic decision-making. 

He really makes a lucid and worrisome argument for this that I can only recommend you to read if these kind of questions interest you. And maybe I'll find a copy of the actual book also one of these days...

Der Erfolgreiche Abstieg Europas

Eberhard Sandschneider ist Professor an der FU Berlin in Internationale Beziehungen, er leitet desweiteren die Deutschen Gesellschaft für Auswärtige Politik. Eine gestandene Persönlichkeit in der - ja angeblich kleinen - deutschen internationalen Beziehungsgemeinde. Sein Buch Der Erfolgreiche Abstieg Europas war nichtsdestotrotz eine Enttäuschung. Ich vermute - oder befürchte, - daß Sandschneider Publikumserfolge wie Fareed Zakarias Post-American World kopieren will und dementsprechend schreibt er auch. Sein Buch ist voll von Allgemeinplätzen, Plattitüden, Wiederholungen und einer elendigen Aneinanderreihung von Sprichworten. Wie er es selber so schön ausdrückt:

"Der Wettbewerb um Begriffe dreht sich sicher auch um Einfluss, Eitelkeit und Geld. Wer es schafft, provozierend zu formulieren, kann sicher sein, von der Presse zitiert und auf Konferenzen und in Talkshows eingeladen zu werden. Zugegeben: Nichts anderes tue auch ich in diesem Buch. Ich versuche pointiert, manchmal vielleicht sogar überspitzt zu formulieren, um Dinge, die mir wichtig sind, deutlich zu machen."

Problem erkannt und voll in die Falle reinmarschiert. Er hat wahrscheinlich Recht in dem was er sagt - "die Welt des 21. Jahrhundert besteht eben nicht aus Nullsummenspielen" - oder zumindest teile ich seine Meinung, aber gelernt habe ich von diesem Buch wenig. Die deutsche Führungsrolle, die er gegen Ende einfordert ist inzwischen auch ein Gemeinplatz und bleibt dennoch eine fast schon erstaunlich unrealistische Option für ein Land in welchem weder Syrien noch Europa im gerade vergangenen Wahlkampf eine große Rolle gespielt haben - geschweige denn das Debakel der vorherigen Regierung in Bezug auf Libyen.

No, we cannot predict the future

Craig Willy wrote an interesting piece a while ago arguing that "we can predict the future" that I finally got around to reading. More specifically, he believes "intelligent, free-thinking people really do have the ability, not to tell divinely-inspired prophecies, but to clearly identify the trends that will influence the future." He goes on to cite "Andrei Amalrik’s 1970 Will the Soviet Union Survive Until 1984? or Emmanuel Todd’s 1976 The Final Fall: An Essay on the Decomposition of the Soviet Sphere" as examples of "brilliant free-thinkers using the information they had" to predict what came to pass.

I disagree. 

Obviously, spirited minds writing against the mainstream of their time and being proven right by history are intellectually imposing characters. For me personally Keynes' The Economic Consequences of the Peace written following the Treaty of Versailles is the most impressive one of these. Yet, the problem is that for every single one of these free-thinking (or mainstream really) writers who get it right there are at least as many who are completely off. To look in retrospective for those few people who did manage to foresee the future is a fun intellectual exercise of course, but how is there any objective way of knowing who those outliers are today?

Jean-François Revel wrote Comment les démocraties finissent in 1983, predicting the end of democracy and the victory of the superior Soviet model [disclaimer: I haven't actually read this, but know of it]. Francis Fukuyama announced the End of History in 1992 and that liberal democracy had won. The list goes on.

Having worked for a global intelligence company once I know far too well that predicting the future for the most part is simply an extrapolation of current trends. Check out George Friedman's The Coming War with Japan for a chuckle, but keep in mind that this was probably more or less considered common sense at the time. Look at Why Middle East Studies Missed the Arab Spring. Read Krugman's Cautionary Fable on the menace the "rapidly growing Eastern economies [...] of the Soviet Union and its satellite nations" posed to "not only [...] Western power but [...] Western ideology." Paul Samuelson's text book on economics contained a section (in 19732) where the author expressed the view that "the Soviet Union’s per capita income would continue to grow, and would probably match that of the USA by 1990 and overtake it by 2010!" (h/t to this guy)

Maybe most importantly, success in predicting the future is not an indicator of repeating said performance. Goetzmann, Ibbotson and Brown find this in a study on hedge fund managers. Roubini of course called the financial crisis (even if he did so repeatedly and continously until it finally became true) but he also said in 2010 that "in a few days time, there might not be a Eurozone for us to discuss" (and I guess he could still be proven true, but...).

Point being that social sciences are incapable of predicting systems as complex as human societies. Maybe - at best - we can detect tendencies as Craig says, yet even those Nassim Taleb [disclaimer: another book I will read soon, but haven't yet] would argue can be thrown off track by black swans (known unknowns Donald Rumsfeld would probably call these) and thus become irrelevant. 

I would go even further in arguing that the models we rely on to determine what the future will be like are too simplistic to be more than an educated guess of what will actually happen. The world we live in is simply too complex and there are far too many factors to be taken into account to allow us to properly understand where we are going. 

As uncomfortable as that may be and as little as that should stop us from trying.

The Breaking of Nations

Robert Cooper is the elder statesman of European (EU) diplomacy. He is one of the very few - relatively - widely known EU administrators around. His book The Breaking of Nations - Order and Chaos in the Twenty-First Century is a essentially a recapitulation of his previous argument of a world separated into modern, post-modern and pre-moder countries. It as such provides the reader with nothing much additional new aside from well-known problems that even pre-modern states may post to modern/post-modern states. 

It still provides an interesting read with regard to the Eurocris and accompanying debates about sovereignty and the such. Most interestingly in this regard might be his (unintended) response to simplifying public debate figures such as Emmanuel Todd in France or Bernd Lucke in Germany but even national governments in general:

"Interests mean something different for the modern state and for its postmodern successor. The interests ... were essentially security interests ... with the EU [they] are essentially matters of policy preference and burden-sharing. There is no fundamental reason why in trade negotiations France should be ready to sacrifice the interests of its sofware companies in favour of its farmers; France’s ‘interests’ are defined by the political process."

Go here for a short version of effectively the same argument he lays out in his book.

Lords of Finance

For many years people believed [...] that an economic cataclysm of the magnitude of the Great Depression could only have been the result of mysterious and inexorable tectonic forces that governments were somehow powerless to resist. Contemporaries frequently described the Depression as an economic earthquake, blizzard, maelstrom, deluge. All these metaphors suggested a world confronting a natural disaster for which no single individual or group could be blamed. To the contrary, in this book I maintain that the Great Depression was not some act of God or the result of some deep-rooted contradictions of capitalism but the direct result of a series of misjudgments by economic policy makers, some made back in the 1920s, others after the first crises set in - by any measure the most dramatic sequence of collective blunders ever made by financial officials.

Liaquat Ahamed tells the story of 1929, the Great Depression, and the bankers who broke the world in his Lords of Finance. He focuses extensively on the main financial protagonists of the time (most importantly: Hjalmar Schacht, Benjamin Strong, Montagu Norman, Émile Moreau) as well as their antagonists (mainly: Keynes) in order to recount the policy failures that led from the Paris peace conference in 1919 to German hyperinflation in the 1920s and ultimately to the bust of 1929 and the ensuing global depression. His book is a gripping piece of personalized historical writing.

Most eerily and pertinent for today are undoubtedly the many similarities of the situation in Europe at the moment with what happened at the time. While policy makers clearly have drawn some lessons from the past and the kind of complete societal and economic breakdown of the 1930s has not repeated itself, there are enough worrisome comparisons that still apply. Whereas today the PIIGS owe more than they will be able to pay, at the time it was Germany stuck in the same situation. And while back then it was the strict adherence to the gold standard that worsened the economic situation in the UK, US, and Germany, it is today the Euro, which forces Spain and others through a deflationary, low growth (even recessionary), high unemployment period.

Of course superficially comparable situations will not necessarily result in the same horrifying course of events, but a study of the past makes one also painfully aware of how much of déjà vû the structural monetary and financial problems of the European debt crisis really is.

Why Nations Fail

One of the most recently hyped books on the political economy, Why Nations Fail - The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty by Daron Acemoğlu and James Robinson tries to explain why some nations grow rich while others fail their citizens. Reviews abound (Dan Drezner, William Easterly, Martin Wolf), my addition to these luminaries weighing in would hardly seem to matter at the margins even.

I will try but little then. Robinson and Acemoglu put forward a very interesting argument showcasing how institutions - political and economic ones - determine long-term growth and in that sense are to belie the performance of nations/states. Neither culture, nor religion, nor even geography matter to the same extent and with the same durability and importance as to the authors. It's a very convincing argument devoid of the old cultural, xenophobic, racist, or even geopolitical prejudices. In order to generate and most importantly sustain long-term economic growth countries were in need of inclusive institutions, which the authors juxtapose with the extractive institutions present in far too many African or even Asian or South American states.

In more detail:

Extractive institutions ... have a powerful logic: they can generate some limited prosperity ... while distributing it into the hands of a small elite. For this growth to happen, there must be political centralization. ... The growth generated by extractive institutions is very different in nature from growth created under inclusive institutions ...most important, it is not sustainable. By their very nature extractive institutions do not foster creative destruction and generate at est only a limited amount of technological progress ... [also] strong incentives for others to fight to replace the current elite. Infighting and instability are thus inherent features of extractive institutions. The fear of creative destruction is the main reason why there was no sustained increase in living standards.

The Geopolitics of Emotion

Dominique Moïsi proposes a new theory of international relations in his book The Geopolitics of Emotion  - How Cultures of Fear, Humiliation, and Hope are Reshaping the World. Ok, it's not really a developed new theory and I also did not find it convincing overall nor even as a coherent argument, but that it is a theory is the idea behind it.

Moïsi starts out from a commonplace perspective that I - but not Realists - very much agree with: "This book is formed on a [...] conviction [...] one cannot fully understand the world in which we live without trying to integrate and understand its emotions." From there he essentially argues that three broad strains of emotions govern whole world regions (hope: Asia; humiliation: the Arab world; and fear: the West).

The simplicity of the argument is almost stunning. It first of all is almost necessarily inductive, broad political developments are retrospectively grouped under one fitting emotion while contrary changes or motivating emotions are being ignored. It second of all groups a variety of countries together that is confounding. Sure, both Dubai and Yemen are Arabic countries, but are both 'humiliated'? Thirdly, complex human reasoning is broken down to one determining emotional factor. To ignore that al-Qaeda has a deep ideological foundation and even had an explicit strategic plan to draw the United States into battle in a Muslim country is incredibly reductive, yet it is what Moïsi does when ascribing the attacks of 9/11 to Arabs' humiliation on the hands of the West.

Let me end with one citation, which showcases well why I find it extremely difficult to take the whole argument serious:

It can be argued that the first Asian economic miracle in the 1980s was at least in part a triumphant response to national feelings of humiliation. Countries such as South Korea and even Taiwan wanted to prove to Japan, their former occupying power, that they too could perform well on the global economic stage. An initial feeling of defiance has also been one of the motors of the current Chinese renaissance. Thus the humiliation inflicted by the Japanese on the rest of Asia has constituted and energizing drug for the entire region.

Really?

The Post-American World

In one of the more hyped books of the political science literature, Fareed Zakaria, explains The Post-American World, which were to follow the United States unipolar moment during the late 20th/early 21st century. For Zakaria this is not so much due to "the decline of America but rather about the rise of the everyone else." The economic success and increasing geopolitical importance of "the rest," the non-Western world, has been "most visible in Asia but it is no longer confined to it" with the rest of the BRICs but also large parts of Africa having made tremendous progress.

Zakaria goes then on to detail to some extent the rise of China and India contrasting their respective economic and political (dis)advantages - democratic governance vs efficient decision-making to sum it up really concisely. His final chapter then deals with the US again and effectively proposes policy but also cultural or societal changes that would help the country, which for the coming decades undoubtedly will remain the major player in a multipolarizing world, adapt to its relative decline in a constructive manner as the UK did in the early 20th century.

While I am very much in agreement with most of what Zakaria puts forward in his book, which I am wary to truly consider part of the political science canon, his argument feels slightly redundant or rather commonplace in today's world. He wrote it in 2007/2008, so maybe he was more of an outlier at the time, yet arguably his stance and book has only become such a modern, classic of political commentary literature because of the American insularity that he decries himself. Essentially, knowledge of other languages, other cultures, other political system, other economic success stories in the US remains astonishingly limited - or is belittled in any case. Movements in the tectonic plates of global power politics are noticed slower than in the US as they are in culturally more internationally aware and open societies. The Post-American World provides little added-value to the politically- and economically-informed reader of news and - non-scientific - analysis.

Vie et Mort du bloc soviétique

La Vie et Mort du bloc soviétique de Georges Mink est un court ouvrage moyennant récent qui se concentre surtout sur l'histoire de l'Europe central - Pologne, Tchécoslovaquie, Hongrie, Bulgarie et Roumanie mais aussi à un moindre degré l’Albanie et Yougoslavie.

L'auteur discerne deux grandes lignes dans l'histoire post-guerre de cette région la soviétisation - ce qui est la transplantation du modèle soviétique dans sa zone d'influence - de 1947 jusqu'aux milieu des années 1950 et la désoviétisation à partir de ce moment jusqu'à la fin de l'empire soviétique.

Après-guerre la plupart des pays libéré par l'Armée rouge - comme en France vraiment - ont été gouverné par une vaste coalition des partis politiques divers. Ce dualisme des politiques est remplacé par une soviétisation de la politique et par une prise de pouvoir des partis communistes (voire commune socialiste et communiste) par différents moyens - semi-révolution, semi-coup de d'Etat en Tchécoslovaquie, des élections faussées en Pologne.

Suivi la tactique du salami qui consistait dans l'élimination de l'opposition politique commençant par l’extrême droite - souvent les collaborateurs avec des Allemands - et passant par le centre jusqu'aux politiciens de gauche trop social-démocrates voire indépendants vu leur engagement individuel au sein par exemple de la guerre civile en Espagne. Ces purges aurait été nécessaire pour réaliser une soviétisation parfaite, condition sine qua non de l'homogénéité du bloc.

Les nouveaux régimes profitaient d'une certaine légitime politique voire soutien populaire basée sur ceux qui profitaient du nouveau système. Effectivement la situation d'économies sous-développées [...] encore sous-industrialisés, à dominante agricole, avec une population habitant majoritairement les zones rurales, employés dans une agriculture d'autosubsistance se prêtait aisément à un "capital-based" développement de l'industrie lourde, technologiquement peu avancé. Ce soutien s'est basé alors à la fois sur les nouvelles élites ayant remplacées celles victimes de la purge et les anciens paysans devenu travailleur.

Mais, la soviétisation [...] provoque la naissance de [...] la désoviétisation à cause de sa nature trop rigide et doctrinaire. La désoviétisation décrit un ensemble de mécanismes [...] qui permettent au régime communiste de perdurer.
 

Surtout au niveau économique se présentait des problèmes à cause d'une croissance économique extensive - c'est à dire basée sur une augmentation d'"input" (travailleurs et capital) - qui fallait être remplacée par une croissance intensive - c'est à dire basée sur une augmentation de la productivité. Un besoin économique voire financière qui n'était augmenté par le mal du bloc soviétique de maintenir leurs dépenses militaires élèves.

Suite vient la tentative de sauvetage du bloc par sa modernisation et sa relégitimation [qui finalement] échouera. Cet effet Gorbachev consiste en partie de l'idée de faire de la Pologne (et de la Hongrie) un modèle réformateur mais pas de faire du table rond - pour juste citer un exemple - un modèle de la sortie du communisme pour le pays de l'Europe central en grande partie à cause du fait que la certitude que les moyens de coercition internes étaient hors d'image devait être confortée par la preuve que le centre de l'empire ne réagissait pas non plus.

Ce qui nous laisse avec une réfolution (contraction des mots évolution et reforme) en Europe central qui menait à une passation du pouvoir - à l'exception de la Roumanie - négociée.

How to Run the World

Parag Khanna's How to Run the World - Charting a Course to the Next Renaissance was hyped as one of the major international relations books of 2011 last year. Khanna puts forward today's world as a neo-medieval one, where no single nation state can anymore rely on itself to police the world, let alone run its own diplomacy. He proposes instead a reliance on increased private-public partnerships even individual contributions in what he calls mega-diplomacy. While I agree with most of his ideas - notably on the dépassement of the nation state and the relevance of new private actors - whether they be NGOs or multinational corporations - I thought his charted course lacked in depth. He at times embraces too singlemindedly and enthusiastically examples of successful private-public partnerships and initiatives. I understand his emphasis of these developments in an American context where the - theoretical - belief in the power of the state - in foreign policy only ironically - is still far too prevalent. Robert Cooper's differentiation of the world into pre-modern, modern, and post-modern spheres come to mind here. Yet, I am far from convinced that his individual examples are necessarily relevant models for the whole world or whether they don't remain far to rare and to some extent based on individual or corporate goodwill. It seems obvious though that this will to do good is not always present or might make no economic sense at times and what then?

His is a great book for those still convinced of a 20th - or even 19th century - view of the nation state as the sole seat of power and authority, yet I felt disappointed in its outlook towards the future that the painted far too rosy and without taking into account potentially disastrous consequences of the continuously growing power of non-state actors.

Der Judenstaat

Theodor Herzls Der Judenstaat ist wohl einer der großen Klassiker der Ideengeschichte, einer der ideellen Gründungstexte des Zionismus. Es ist auch ein sehr kurzes und überraschend konkretes Büchleich, was sich schnell und leicht lesen lässt. 

Herzl legt darin aus warum er für die Gründung eines Judenstaates plädiert. Einersteis weil Antisemitismus letztlich unüberwindbar ist und dann weiterhin aus jüdisch-nationalistischen Gründen, er greift in seiner Argumentation so gut wie gar nicht auf Religion zurück. Diese Religionsferne bedingt auch, dass er als potentielles Zielland für seinen Judenstaat nicht nur Palästina sonder auch Argentinien in Betracht zieht. Auch wenn ich Shlomo Sand immer noch nicht gelesen habe, bezweifele ich ja persönlich die Existenz eines jüdischen Volkes aber Herzl hat hier eine letztlich schwer zu widerlegende Antwort darauf: Wir sind ein Volk - der Freind macht uns ohne unseren Willen dazu.

Herzl entwickelt eine ziemlich positiv anmutende Utopie eines sprachlich föderalen Staates (Wir können doch nicht Hebräisch miteinander reden. Wer von uns weiß genug Hebräisch, um in dieser Sprache ein Bahnbillet zu verlangen.), welcher durch harte Arbeit und Investitionen den Antisemitismus nicht nur in diesem zu schaffenden Land, sondern auch in den Herkunftsländern, abschaffen würde. Wie Utopien es so an sich haben ist seine Sichtweise letzten Endes leicht naiv. Der Antisemitismus des frühen 21. Jahrhundert ist sicherlich - in Europa - schwächer entwickelt als sein Äquivalent zu Anfang des 20. Jahrhunderts, es gibt ihn aber nicht nur immer noch, er wurde in anderen Weltregionen (die arabische Welt!) sogar noch um einiges verstärkt und zwar genau wegen der Schaffung dieses Staates, Israel, und der Entwurzelung bzw Vertreibung der vorherigen, muslimischen, Bewohner des Gebietes. Letztlich hat sich Israel ironischerweise - gerade in den letzten Jahren - von der säkularen, nationalistischen Utopie Herzls zu einer viel stärker religiös ausgerichteten Gesellschaft entwickelt.

Abschließend bleibt nur meiner Verwunderung über Herzls unglaublich detailliertes kapitalistisches Modell der Entstehung dieses Staates auszudrücken, auf der Gründung einer Firma, welche die Reichtümer der emigrierenden Juden verwaltet und in neue Länder bzw Häuser im gelobten Land anlegt, aufbauend. In gewisser Weise eine seltsame Kombination kommunistischer und kapitalistischer Prinzipien.

Macht und Gewalt

Mein zweites Buch von Hannah Arendt nach Eichman in Jerusalem, welches mich sehr beeindruckt hatte, Macht und Gewalt hatte leider nicht die gleiche rhetorische Kraft und intellektuelle Brillanz, wie das erstgenannte. Nichtsdestrotz unterscheidet Arendt hier sehr interessant zwischen Gewalt und Macht, wobei sie erstere fast als Zeichen von Machtlosigkeit ansieht. Ihre Diskussion bleibt aber zu oft sehr in ihrer Zeit verwurzelt, der Studentendemonstrationen der 60er und 70er Jahre. Nur noch ein schoenes von ihr benutztes Chomsky Zitat - im Gedenken an Griechenland und Italien:

Welche Gründe sprechen denn überhaupt für die Annahme, dass diejenigen, die auf Grund ihrer Kenntnisse und technischen Fähigkeiten Macht für sich beanspruchen, segensreicheren Gebrauch von ihr machen werden als diejenigen, deren Anspruch sich auf Reichtum oder aristokratische Herkunft gründet?

The Privatization of Force and its Consequences

Some food for thought on the commodification of security, from The Privatization of Force and its Consequences - Unintended but not Unpredictable by Jörg Friedrichs:

There is a problem with asymmetrical access to security as a commodity. There is an increased risk that the people most in need of security are systematically excluded, with fatal consequences. This is supported by economic theory. As long as the provision of security is in the public domain, it is either a ‘public good’ or a ‘club good’ (Krahmann 2008). In a democratic society, security is a public good. Nobody is systematically excluded from its enjoyment, and nobody’s enjoyment is reduced by somebody else’s enjoyment. In a less democratic society, security may be a ‘club good’ for a privileged class while others are excluded. When security is provided by the market, however, it can never be a public good. Instead, it is either a ‘club good’ or a ‘private good’. For example, it is a ‘club good’ in the case of gated communities. In the case of a burglar alarm, it is a ‘private good’ which is consumed exclusively
and cannot be enjoyed by outsiders at the same time.

There is [also] a problem with the inherently expansive logic of the market. The provision of security by the market risks being driven by supply rather than need. This may be a problem even when security is publicly provided, for example when there is a military-industrial complex. However, the problem is exacerbated when security is provided by the market, because on the market supply tends to create its own demand. As other market actors, private security providers are set to engage in marketing, lobbying, and public relations to increase the demand for their products. The expansive dynamics of the market may contribute to the further de-legitimization and atrophy of the public sector where it is already at its weakest, e.g. in Africa (Leander 2005). In more developed parts of the world, where the commercial supply of security and force is matched by a consumer culture, the commodification of force is likely to lead to an endless spiralling of private supply and demand (Loader 1999).

[...]

In the United States and Britain, the ‘private police’ reached rough numerical equality with the public forces of order by the late 1960s and 1970s, respectively (Spitzer and Scull 1977: 18; Draper 1978: 23).11 In 2007, there were 625,880 public police officers and 1,032,260 million private security guards in the US (with security guards defined as those who ‘guard, patrol or monitor premises to prevent theft, violence or infractions of rule’).

De la démocratie en Amérique I

De la démocratie en Amérique de Tocqueville est sans doute parmi le plus grand (et plus connu) œuvre de la littérature sur la politique. Étant, en sort, un spécialiste des États-Unis, vivant en France, il paraissait évident de le lire et, même si je n'ai que lu le premier livre de deux, l'exercice a valu son coût déjà. Je ne me permettrai pas ni la vanité ni le temps ici d'analyser ou critiquer un tel classique de 600 pages, mais je voudrais bien faire quelques commentaires.

D'abord il faut dire que la deuxième partie de ce premier livre a été infiniment plus intéressante et pertinent que la première. Cela à cause du fait que Tocqueville dans sa première partie donne surtout une description du système politique américain, vu ma connaissance importante (si je peux me permettre ce mot), ayant lu la constitution américaine plusieurs fois et les Federalist Papers en détail, il y avait peu d'aspects nouveaux dans cette partie pour moi.

La deuxième partie où Tocqueville interprète plus, analyse des mœurs, devient sociologue au contraire est une lecture fascinante même presque 200 ans après ce texte a été écrit. Ses analyses de la situation des trois ethnies américaines (blanc, noir et indiens), ses prévisions et croyances sur l'avenir et la présence des États-Unis reste pertinents aujourd'hui toujours. Cela même s'il se trompe assez brutalement dans certains cas - la législative gagnant du pouvoir face à l'exécutive, l'état face au gouvernement fédéral, la démocratie comme dictature de la majorité (voire des pauvres).

Et sans quelques citations - parfois tout simplement justes, parfois ironiques et fausses.:

Il n'y a, en général, que les conceptions simples qui s'emparent de l'esprit du peuple. Une idée fausse, mais claire et précise, aura toujours plus de puissance dans le monde qu'une idée vraie mais complexe.

Aux États-Unis {...] le pauvre [la majorité] gouverne. - Cruellement faux aujourd'hui évidemment.

Comment nier l'incroyable influence qu'exerce la gloire militaire sur L'esprit du peuple? Le général Jackson, que les Américains ont choisi deux fois pour le placer à leur tête, est un homme d'un caractère violent et d'une capacité moyenne.

N'amenez pas l'Américain à parler de l'Europe, il montrera d'ordinaire une grande présomption et un asez sot orgueil. Il se contentera de ces idées générales et indéfinis qui, dans tous les pays, sont d'un si grand secours aux ignorants. - Il faut admettre que l'inverse est vrai pour les Européens et les États-Unis.

Le negre n'a point de famille, il ne saurait voir dans la femme autre chose que la campagne passagère de ses plaisirs, et, en naissant ses fils sont ses égaux. - Tocqueville dans la piège raciste.

Ou je me trompe étrangement, ou le gouvernement fédéral des États-Unis tend chaque jour à s'affaiblir. - Oui, il s'est fortement trompé.

Eichmann in Jerusalem

Alleine bei meinen Eltern zu Hause letzten Sonntag entschied ich mich dafür den Abend vorm Fernseher zu verbringen. Da ich sonst keinen Fernseher besitze und dementsprechend selten vor einem solchen sitze, ist dies immer eine Art soziologische Erfahrung für mich. Letzten Sonntag guckte ich also erst einen vergnüglichen Tatort, gefolgt von einer verstörenden RTL-Berichterstattung über das Duisburger Love Parade Unglück, schließlich blieb ich an einem dieser modernen Dokumentarfilme, welche viel mit nachgestellten und neugefilmten jedoch angeblich originalgetreuen Szenen arbeiten, hängen. In diesem Fall ging es um Eichmann und seine Entführung - mangels eines besseren, weniger verurteilenden, Wortes - nach Israel. Die Doku-Soap, ihrer Natur entsprechend, konzentrierte sich natürlich auf die aufregende Jagd nach dieser Personifizierung des Bösen, auf den Beitrag der guten - beides übrigens Juden - Deutschen, Fritz Bauer und Lothar Hermann, sowie den Beitrag von Hermanns Tochter, welche ein Verhältnis mit Eichmanns ältestem Sohn hatte und zur Identifizierung des Vaters entscheidend beitrug.

Lange Rede, kurzer Sinn. Ich hatte seit langem Hannah Arendts Eichmann in Jerusalem lesen wollen und als ich zwei Tage später in die USA zurückflog nahm ich es mir aus meines Vaters Bücherregal. Im Flugzeug, auf dem Flughafen in New York, Hotel in Memphis und schließlich am Mittwochabend in einem Café in Austin verschlang ich das Buch. Ich habe lange kein Sachbuch mehr gelesen, welches mich in diesem Maße beanspruchte, so sehr interessierte ja faszinierte.

Die Banalität des Bösen. Eichmann, der mittelmäßig begabte Bürokrat, welcher nicht einmal mehr als fanatisch antisemitisch erscheint, sondern einfach, wie er später auch zu seiner Verteidigung erklärte, durch seinen - blinden? - Gehorsam ins Verderben geführt wird. Eichmann, der zu denken scheint, seine Arbeit hätte daraus bestanden in Kooperation mit seinen Opfern für einen geregelten Ablauf der doch notwendigen, da angeordneten, Deportation zu sorgen.

Arendt stellte sich in Eichmann in Jerusalem in klarer Opposition zu den israelischen Behörden einerseits, zu der Wahrnehmung der ermordeten Juden bzw eher noch der Judenräte als reine Opfer andererseits.

"Während des Verfahrens stellte sich heraus, daß seine Schuld zwar einwandfrei feststand, daß man sich aber von seiner Rolle bei dem Zustande kommen der 'Endlösung' eine phantastisch übertriebene Vorstellung gemacht hatte."

Die israelische Staatsanwaltschaft versuchte letzten Endes zu beweisen, daß Eichmann mehr war als ein ausführender Befehlsempfänger bzw Befehlsweitergeber, Befehlsträger wie die Nazis dies wohl nannten (siehe 279f). Dies konnte ihnen aber schwerlich gelingen, Eichmann war verdammenswürdig genug als das, war er war, aber seine Abwesenheit hätte letztlich einen geringen Unterschied im Ablauf der Shoah zur Folge gehabt.

Das Verstörende am Holocaust war ja eben "die eigentümlich Diffusität [...] unter der sich einzigartige Verbrechen wie die Endlösung vollziehen konnten, ohne auf nennenswerten Widerstand zu stoßen." Oder, anders ausgedrückt, der Nationalsozialismus als solcher war letzten Endes eine kopflose Bewegung. Hitler war "lediglich eine höchst notwendige Funktion der Bewegung" und die "Diktatur keineswegs von der dämonischen Willenskraft Hitlers geprägt [...], [vielmehr entsprang] die typische Eskalation der Ziele und der Gewaltanwendung aus der inneren Gewalt [...] die Bewegungsstruktur um jeden Preis aufrechtzuerhalten zu müssen."

Desweiteren (ich finde hier das Zitat nicht mehr) sorgte die Konkurrenzhaltung bzw der Wettbewerb der (bzw zwischen den) verschiedenen administrativen Pfeilern des Naziregimes zur grausamen Gründlichkeit der Endlösung, ohne daß einzelne Figuren hierüber notwendigerweise eine entscheidende Kontrolle ausübten. Abschließend war Eichmann auch einfach nichts mehr als ein subalterner Bürokrat, in einem strategisch wichtigen Büro platziert, aber an Relevanz vielen (Himmler, Heydrich und Müller um nur drei zu nennen) nachgeordnet.

Ich maße mir hier nicht an, Arendts Kritik der Judenräte zu bewerten, will diese aber wenigstens kurz kommentieren. Zusammengefasst war Arendt der Meinung, daß der Holocaust in dem Maße in welchem er stattfand nicht möglich gewesen wäre ohne die Kollaboration der Judenräte, welche es den Nazis erlaubten mit einem minimalen Einsatz an Leuten eine maximale Anzahl an Menschen zu ermorden. Sie führt als hierzu einige positive sowie negative Beispiele an, so die Verhandlungen Kasztners mit den Nazis, welche im Prinzip einen geregelten Ablauf der Deportationen aus Ungarn gegen die Rettung einer exklusiven Gruppe von weniger als 2.000 Juden regelten, im Gegensatz zum Widerstand des organisierten Judentums in Dänemark (zugegebenermaßen von der dänischen Regierung sowie der Bevölkerung unterstützt), welche zur Rettung der großen Mehrheit der dänischen Juden führte.

Das zusammenfassende gerade in seiner Allgemeingültigkeit grauenerregende Urteil Arendts dürft wohl in der

"Totalität des moralischen Zusammenbruches [...] den die Nazis in fast allen vor allem auch den höheren Schichten der Gesellschaft in ganz Europa verursacht haben - nicht allein in Deutschland, sondern in fast allen Ländern, nicht allein unter den Verfolgern, sondern auch unter den Verfolgten"

liegen. Arendt beantwortet in dieser Hinsicht auch die Frage nach der französischen Kollaboration (siehe meine Diskussion derselben hier), welche in diesem Sinne keine Ausnahme, sondern die Norm war. Die Ausnahmen waren vielmehr frühe Streiks gegen Deportationen in den Niederlanden sowie die allgemeine Situation in Bulgarien und Dänemark, welche wohl die einzigen positiven nationalen Geschichte im besetzten Europa des Zweiten Weltkrieges aufzuweisen haben.

Als Antwort hierauf gilt es also sich zum "Rebellentum" zu bekennen, "zur ethnisch begründeten Verweigerung des Individuums" (Anton Schmid ist ein von Arendt zitiertes positives Beispiel hier) bzw, für diejenigen, welche diesen Schritt hin zum Widerstand nicht wagen, die "wirkliche innere Emigration", welche ja nur "'Nichtteilnahme' sein [kann], fröstelnd und wie ausgestoßen aus dem eigenen Volk inmitten blindgläubiger, diesen Mann als einen unfehlbaren vergötternden Massen." Die, wie Arendt auch zugab, unmöglich zu beantwortende Frage, welche sich jeder selber stellen muß, ist, ob man die Kraft gehabt hätte, einen dieser beiden Wege zu gehen.

L'Afrique dans la discussion allemande.

J'avais oublié de mettre ceci sur la toile quand je l'avais écrit. C'est (comme le titre indique) un bref aperçu de la discussion en allemand (pas en Allemagne, l'Autriche est aussi inclus) sur l'Afrique et l'engagement de l'Europe et des européens là-bas.

The European Union's Strategic Partnerships

In case any of you guys need an update on what the strategic partnerships of the EU are up to. Not the most exciting read of all times maybe, but it was interesting to research and write and even if I'd prefer to do more of my own analysis I felt it was a valuable exercise.

Magisterarbeit

I should have posted this a while ago, but things were kind of busy and I just didn't think of it anymore. Here is my master's thesis, betitled: The ESDP and its Impact on Transatlantic Relations.

I still like the topic. I know it could be better. I would write it very differently if I had to do it over again. It still is the longest piece I've ever written and unlike most people I know I didn't cheat in the bibliography. I actually read all of that.

The War over Iraq

I guess this was my personal goodbye to the Bush administration book. Lawrence Kaplan & William Kristol: The War over Iraq - Saddam's Tyranny and America's Mission. A very short booklet, written on the eve of the American invasion, it does for a very entertaining reading (for a cynic such as myself in any case). The two neocons argue for invasion of Iraq and criticize American foreign policy by Bush (the father) and Clinton along the way. Basically, Bush should have marched into Baghdad during the Gulf War when he had the chance but his realistic convictions (and Powell's reservations as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) prevented from endeavoring this course not directly linked to American's vital interests. Clinton on the other hand out of an exaggerated moralism (and liberalism), the perception that every display of American power is a bad thing as such, refused to become more active in Iraq than with a few missiles here and there, never truly threatening Saddam's hold on power. Bush (the son) on other hand represents a glorious mixture of a hard-handed approach (from the realists' school) and moralism (taken from the liberals), something that the authors call a distinctively American internationalism (aka neoconservatism).

An American invasion of Iraq will end Saddam's tyranny and torture chambers (some of the descriptions eerily resemble the ones about American soldiers in Abu Ghraib, even when in Saddam's case these are the low-intensity ones), will create a liberal democracy to Iraq which will act as an ally to Israel and the US in the region, as a counterweight to Iran and maybe most importantly be a kind of city upon a hill showing that democracy is possible in the Middle East. All this can be achieved with 75.000 soldiers, staying in Iraq at most one or two years and at the cost of $16 billion only. Definitely sounds like a good deal if you ask me.

Some of the more amusing arguments:
- American spending on military capabilities is far too low
- civil war in Iraq cannot erupt because there is no historic precedent for it
- Iraq is a safe haven for international terrorism as the PKK is operating from its territory
- quotes from the Bush administration during the gulf war explaining their decision not to march on Baghdad ('the Lebanonization of Iraq' for example) that are being mocked

The Paradox of American Power

Joseph Nye's The Paradox of American Power deals with the American dilemma in today's world. Too strong to be truly challenged, yet too weak to go at it alone (as a quick glance at Bush's policies and failures confirms). According to Nye this is the case for a variety of reasons, most importantly the fading unipolar world. Remnants still exist, militarily most of all, but Nye separates the world in three chess boards (a military one, an economic one and a transnational one) only one of which features a dominating USA on top (you can guess which). Further eroding American power are transnational developments such as information flow, which lead to states in general being less capable of solving problems on their own.

The only way to preserve American (benign of course) hegemony is a concept Nye introduced in the 1990s called soft power (as opposed to hard military power). Soft power describes one's capability to 'get[...] others to want what you want.' Considering the impressive array of cultural and political appeal that the United States still possesses (apart from the usually cited Hollywood movies, one need only glance at the fuss made of Obama's inauguration outside of the US), Nye sees a distinct possibility that American hegemony can be prolonged significantly in this manner. For me personally, a large part of this argument is wishful thinking, beginning with the benign American hegemony (examples of its far less benign aspects abound I believe) soft power is exactly not what the US owns in abundance currently. In fact the Bush administration has been highly successful in eroding this kind of power and the good-will extended to Obama as of right now will undoubtedly change with the first unpopular decision of his government (say American support of an Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear sites or extended excursions into Waziristan in order to stabilize the situation in Afghanistan).

While I find the concept of soft power and its impact on international relations quite appealing (Zivilmacht Europa) and relevant and agree with Nye's basis of analysis, his criticism of American emphasis on defense over diplomatic budgets (16:1) for example, I cannot share his optimistic view concerning American capabilities to preserve their hegemony. Even assuming that Obama will reclaim some (or all) of the soft power lost under his predecessor, that will not change the fact that a variety of actors have begun to act as regional hegemons (the EU, China, Brazil). The US cannot counter this movement and while it will remain the most important voice on the international scene for a long time to come it cannot allow itself to even try to go at it alone anymore.