I've been studying politics a long time now, and there are still lots of things about it that at some level I just don't get. I'm not saying that I have no idea why these things occur or suggesting that they are totally inexplicable. I'm just saying that I still find them a bit baffling.

So I made a list, and thought I'd share a few of them. Maybe some of you will share my confusion.

1. I've never really understood why plenty of smart people think the United States still needs thousands of nuclear weapons (or ever did). I'm familiar with the abstract theology of nuclear weapons policy and I don't favor total nuclear disarmament, but the case for an arsenal of more than a few hundred weapons eludes me. See here or here for convincing arguments to this effect.

2. I'm still puzzled by why Americans are so willing to spend money on ambitious overseas adventures, and yet so reluctant to pay taxes for roads, bridges, better schools, and health care here in the United States. My fellow Americans, where's your sense of entitlement? And frankly, I’m also surprised that the U.S. armed forces haven't put up more resistance to the seemingly open-ended missions they keep getting handed by ambitious politicians. I can think of various reasons why they remain willing to make these sacrifices (it's a volunteer force, there’s a long tradition of civilian authority, our soldiers, sailors and airman are dedicated patriots, the top brass are often chosen for their political malleability, etc.), but it still surprises me.

3. I don't understand why many people think invoking God is a compelling justification for their particular policy preferences, and why they assume that this move is a trump card that ends all discussion. The idea that Jehovah, Jesus, Allah, Odin, or Whomever gave some people permanent title to some patch of land, dictated how men and women should relate to each other for all eternity, or provided the incontestable answer to ANY public policy question is simply beyond me. Yet it remains a common feature of political discourse at home and abroad. Weird.

4. I'm equally baffled by when someone invokes "history" to justify a territorial claim and assumes that this basis is unchallengeable. This view assumes that sovereignty over some area is infinitely inheritable (no matter what has happened in the interim), ignores the fact the borders have changed a lot over time, and further assumes that there's only one version of history that matters. I understand why Serbs invoke the Battle of Kosovo in 1389 to justify their current claims to control that region, why Israelis and Palestinians invoke different readings of history to justify their positions on Jerusalem, or why certain Asian states invoke different historical claims to assorted rocks in the South China Sea -- they are all looking for some way to persuade others to let them have what they want. What's odd is that people who make such claims tend to think their view is simply incontestable and other equally valid historical claims aren’t worth paying attention to. You're entitled to your version of history, I suppose, but why do you assume that anyone is going to be persuaded by it?

5. I do not understand why Americans are so susceptible to the self-interested testimony of foreigners who want to embroil us in conflicts with some foreign government that they happen to dislike. A case in point would be Iraqi exile Ahmad Chalabi, who sold a lot of fairy tales to the Bush administration prior to the 2003 invasion. As Machiavelli (himself an exile) warned in The Discourses: "How vain the faith and promises of men who are exiles from their own country. .. Such is their extreme desire to return to their homes that they naturally believe many things that are not true, and add many others on purpose; so that with what they really believe and what they say they believe, they will fill you with hopes to that degree that if you attempt to act on them, you will incur a fruitless expense, or engage in an undertaking that will involve you in ruin."  This sort of thing goes back to the Peloponnesian Wars (at least), and you’d think we’d have learned to be more skeptical by now.

6. I certainly don't get the business model that informs the content of the Wall Street Journal's op-ed page. The rest of the newspaper is an excellent news source, with reportage that is often of very high quality. The editorial page, by contrast, is often a parody of right-wing lunacy: the last refuge of discredited neoconservatives, supply-siders, and other extremists. Do the Journal's editors really think democracy is best served by offering the public such a one-sided diet of opinion? Do they feel no responsibility to offer a wider range of views to their readers, as the rival Financial Times does? More importantly, wouldn't their market share (and profits) be increased if they offered a more diverse range of views? I'm equally puzzled by the op-ed page of the Washington Post: what's the business model that says cornering the market on tired neoconservative pundits is the best way to attract new readers? (FP is now owned by the Post corporation too, I might add, but anyone who follows this Web site knows that there isn't any discernible party line here.)

7. A related point: I can't figure out why newspapers aren't hiring more bloggers to write columns for them on a regular basis. I started reading blogs because the stuff I read on the web tends to be smarter, funnier, better researched, and more entertainingly written than the pablum that appears on the op-ed pages of most newspapers. A lot of bloggers seem to produce more material too; frankly, doing a column twice a week sounds almost leisurely compared to what some bloggers pound out. There are dull bloggers and some excellent mainstream print pundits, of course, but I'm amazed that more bloggers aren't breaking into the so-called big-time mainstream media. Probably another good reason why newspapers are dying.
 
8. In an era where the United States is facing BIG problems at home or abroad, it is both puzzling and disheartening to observe the amount of ink and airspace devoted to the Skip Gates arrest, Michael Jackson's demise, or the "birther" controversy. But then I didn't get the Princess Di phenomenon or the whole reality-TV thing either.

9. I don't understand why academics defend the institution of tenure so energetically, and then so rarely use it for its intended purpose (i.e., to permit them to tackle big and/or controversial subjects without worrying about losing their jobs) When it comes to politics at least, the Ivory Tower seems increasingly populated by methodologically sophisticated sheep.

10. I'm both amused and annoyed by the highly intrusive security procedures that now exist at airports, which are almost certainly not cost-effective. The key to preventing another 9/11 wasn’t to have us all removing our shoes or carrying shampoo in a plastic bag; the key to preventing another 9/11-style attack was to put locks on the cockpit doors, so terrorists couldn't gain control of the airplane and turn it into a weapon. (A smarter Middle East policy wouldn't hurt either). I'll concede that additional screening is probably preventing a few additional incidents, but I question whether the extra expense and inconvenience is ultimately worth it. Alas, nobody is going to relax those procedures now, because they’d worry about being blamed the next time someone managed to blow up an airliner. I understand the CYA impetus that will keep these procedures in place from now until doomsday, but the irrationality of it all annoys me every time I fly.  

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I'm a bit puzzled by the flap over revelations that the Bush administration approved a secret CIA program to send assassination teams overseas to kill suspected al Qaeda leaders. I understand the concerns about the absence of Congressional oversight, but three aspects of the case strike me as odd.

First, although the Bush administration should be criticized for not informing Congress, this is one case where key officials seem to have realized that the proposed program wasn't really feasible and decided not to implement it. Because examples of competent national security decision-making by the Bush team were few and far-between, shouldn’t we give them a smidge of credit for NOT sending some unfortunate Jack Bauer on a foolish mission?

Second, for those who are outraged to learn that the United States was planning to assassinate suspected terrorists leader, please explain to me the difference between sending in an assassination team to kill a suspected al Qaeda member, and sending a Predator or Reaper drone into some remote area to do the same thing? The target is just as dead no matter what instrument is used, and as we have already seen on several occasions, the risk to innocent civilians and the danger of various forms of blowback is probably greater when the U.S. uses unmanned drones. Moreover, both responses are essentially extra-judicial executions: the potential targets are suspected of being "enemy combatants" but that hasn't been proven and U.S. intelligence has mis-identified a number of alleged "terrorists" in the past. And then ask yourself how Americans would react if some other country were doing the same thing on U.S. soil.   

So if you're troubled by the idea that the United States was preparing to send hit squads into some foreign country, you ought to be equally troubled by our current policy of taking terrorist suspects out from the air. But I don’t get the impression that the latter program bothers very many people here in the United States, and certainly not the leadership in either party.  As Senator Christopher Bond (R-MO) remarked following the recent revelations, "The Predator strikes have been successful, and I was pleased to see the Obama administration continue them ... This [covert assassination program] was another effort that was trying to accomplish the same objective."

Thucydides had it right: "the strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must." The strong also try to convince everyone that they are also more virtuous, even when the evidence for the latter claim is dubious. And on that note, the Times today also has a piece on U.S. air tactics in Afghanistan that reads like a press release straight from CentCom HQ. It reports that the United States is now conducting a "kinder, gentler" air cover policy, in order to avoid civilian casualties. I hope that's true, but I also hope someone remembers this piece the next time we hit a village by mistake.

One last point: the fact that the CIA concluded that the assassination program was unworkable suggests that there is a very large gap between the image of covert action portrayed in American pop culture and the reality on the ground. If you watch 24, Mission Impossible, the various Bourne movies, or even lighter fare like Ocean's 11, they depict a world where smart and exceedingly well-trained experts, equipped with a lot of cool high-tech gadgetry, can perform extraordinary feats of derring-do in far-flung locations. They also portray a world where the U.S. government has enormous real-time surveillance capabilities, vast and swift analytical capacities, and a well-trained set of agents ready to send virtually anywhere to go after virtually anyone (even if someone like Jason Bourne keeps outwitting them).  

If you watched enough of these movies, and didn’t have any other sources of information, it would be easy to believe all sorts of crazy ideas about black helicopters and other loony conspiracies. And it makes me wonder: do such productions lead viewers in the U.S. and abroad to exaggerate what the United States is actually capable of doing? If so, then Americans may expect too much from their national security apparatus, and foreign populations may be too inclined to blame events on nefarious American interference.  

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President Obama announced today that the federal government would extend benefits (though not full health care coverage) to same-sex partners of all federal employees.

Except, of course, for the roughly 2.2 million Americans now serving in the regular military, National Guard, or reserves. If any of them have a same-sex partner, applying for benefits would violate "don't ask don't tell." Instead of benefits, they'd be discharged. 

I've opined on this issue before, but I'd just add that excluding gays from the uniformed military constrains their political options in another way.  Military service is still highly respected in the United States, and it can be a valuable asset for someone running for public office. As the 2008 presidential election showed, prior military service is no guarantee of electoral success. But there are plenty of American politicians (Eisenhower, Powell, Kerry, Inouye, McCain, Sestak, etc.) who owe their political careers to their prior military service, and that route is presently denied to gay Americans. And I'd say an openly gay former Navy SEAL running for public office would dispel a lot of stereotypes.

"Empathy" has been in the news lately, mostly in the context of President Obama's Supreme Court nominee. It's a quality that's often in short supply in the conduct of foreign policy, where leaders (and sometimes whole nations) often have a fixed view of certain events and find it hard to believe that anyone might legitimately see things differently. As Condi Rice commented when some European governments didn't support the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, "I'll just put it very bluntly. We simply didn’t understand it."

One reason for this absence of empathy is the human tendency to filter current situations through the prism of the past. One of the more enduring findings in political psychology is that people place more weight on their own experiences than on the experiences of others, even when their own experiences are in fact atypical. According to Robert Jervis's classic Perception and Misperception in International Politics: "if people do not learn enough from what happens to others, they learn too much from what happens to themselves." The salience of first-hand experience in shaping subsequent beliefs is increased if the event happens early in one’s life or career, and if it has important consequences for the individual (or the nation). In other words, we overlearn from big and important events, especially when they happen to us early.

This tendency might explain why different generations tend to have very different views on how the world works. For Americans born and raised during the Cold War (i.e., like me) images of conflict are also accompanied by a certain sense of stability and order. The Cold War begins in the late 1940s, the United States forms a set of alliances to wage it, and then bipolar stability kicks in. There are crises and confrontations and even some peripheral wars in Korea, Indochina, the Middle East, and Afghanistan, but the central strategic balance doesn't change very much and the Soviet Union eventually expires rather quietly. The period 1950-1990 is a monument to the virtues of deterrence, containment, and multilateralism, and a timely warning about the dangers of getting involved in costly quagmires. It is perhaps no accident that people like me tend to see the world as a competitive but ultimately fairly stable and predictable place.

But what if you were born in the early 20th century, and came of age in the turbulent decades after World War I? You would have seen a world where a nation’s fortunes could shift in a matter of weeks or months, and sometimes with swift and terrible effect. You might have seen the Roaring Twenties, followed by the Crash of 1929 and the ensuing Great Depression. You would have seen a prostrate and disarmed Germany rearm itself in less than a decade, defeat France in a few weeks in 1940, and then conquer almost all of Europe and drive deep inside Russia, only to witness this seemingly unstoppable juggernaut be occupied and divided in half a mere three years later. You would also have seen Imperial Japan sweep across the Pacific, only to be occupied and disarmed by 1945. And having watched the Iron Curtain descend and seen Mao's triumph in China, you'd have a healthy respect for how quickly fortunes could shift and you’d be less inclined to take a complacent view of anything. Had I lived through the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, I might have been much more hawkish than I turned out to be.

The problem with this sort of generational interpretation is that it can’t account for differences between people who lived through the same events, although it might lead us to ask whether their own personal experiences with key events were different. But even there I suspect there's more to it than just personal experience.

But the real lesson is that the same "events" look very different to different people and to different countries. The U.S-backed contra war in Nicaragua killed some 35,000 Nicaraguans (about 1 percent of the population) but hardly any Americans; is it any wonder Nicaraguans remember it differently than Americans do? Similarly, 9/11 means one thing to U.S. citizens, but something different to Europeans, Central Asians, or people in different parts of the Middle East. The current war in Afghanistan and Pakistan is experienced differently by an Al Qaeda leader facing a Predator attack, by the CIA "pilot" operating the drone from a remote location, by a Pakistani or Afghan civilian who is attacked by mistake, by refugees now fleeing the fighting in the Swat Valley, and by the politicians in the United States, Afghanistan, or Pakistan who have to deal with the consequences.  And not only do different individuals and different societies experience the same events in radically different ways, they then conduct their own discourse about these events (occasionally fertilized by ideas and commentary from outside) and eventually generate unique narratives about them.  

Understanding how things look to others doesn't necessarily eliminate conflict -- especially when basic interests are fundamentally at odds -- but it makes us much less likely to misinterpret another's position and makes spirals of exaggerated or mistaken hostility less likely.  

To take an obvious example, many Americans think of Iran as an aggressive, unpredictable country led by a set of aggressive, fanatically religious clerics. That tendency probably increases if you watch a lot of FOX News or listen to talk radio. From this perspective, Iran's nuclear program and its support for extremist groups like Hamas or Hezbollah is evidence of aggressive ambitions, perhaps of the very worst sort. 

But ask yourself how this situation might look to an ordinary Iranian, or even to a member of its ruling elite. To many Iranians, their interest in nuclear technology (and possibly nuclear weapons) is entirely rational and essentially defensive: they have two nuclear neighbors (India and Pakistan), a third nuclear weapons state nearby (Israel), and the world’s most powerful country (the United States) has troops on either side of Iran and has been seeking to overthrow the Iranian government for a number of years now. Plus, various American politicians keep saying that "all options ought to be on the table," and Obama's special envoy to Iran, Dennis Ross, participated in a study group last year that advocated a hardline approach.  It doesn't take a lot of imagination or empathy to figure out why Iran might want a nuclear deterrent: wouldn’t we want the same thing if we were in their position? Similarly, supporting radicals elsewhere in the Middle East keeps the U.S. off-balance and complicates efforts to unite various Arab states against Iran itself. A bit of empathy won't resolve these issues, of course, but it might help us reject the fervent threat-mongering that drove us to launch a foolish war in Iraq and has led others to favor a similar approach to Iran.

So can we train ourselves to “see things as others do?” Here the internet and the blogosphere are potentially transformative tools: you don't have to rely on the New York Times or the Washington Post or your own local newspaper (even if your "local paper" is Le Monde, Die Zeit, or the Daily Star). I can sit here in my office and read the English edition of Ha’aretz, the Pakistani newspaper Dawn, and the online edition of the Yomiuri Shimbun. Or I can read the Guardian, Asia Times, or the Jerusalem Post, and then go to the online Reuters.com and BBC News websites too.  (And don’t forget http://foreignpolicy.com, of course).  Americans would be well served to spend part of each week perusing WatchingAmerica.com, a website that collects and translates media reports from around the world and a variety of political perspectives. When you travel, don’t just watch CNN -- check out the BBC or Al Jazeera, too. Spend some time reading knowledgeable non-Americans like Ahmed Rashid, C. Raja Mohan, Kishore Mahbbubani, or Therese Delpeche. Don't rely just on reports from inside-the-Beltway think tanks in the United States; take a look at the websites of the International Institute of Strategic Studies, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the International Crisis Group, or the growing number of think tanks in the developing world.

To repeat: developing a greater capacity for empathy won't eliminate conflicts of interest between states, and won't always make it possible to resolve the differences that will inevitably arise. But an inability to understand an adversary's perspective (or an ally's, for that matter) is a crippling liability, and there's less excuse for it in our increasingly interconnected age.

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In my last post, I argued that the U.S. policy of "don't ask don't tell" is contrary to a realist view of world politics, because it excludes qualified people from military service and thus makes it harder for the United States to field the most effective forces in a competitive international environment. I think there are other objections to the policy as well, but I was primarily concerned in that post with the strategic implications. The policy obviously doesn't prevent the United States from producing highly capable fighting forces, but restricting the talent pool in this way means our forces will cost more than they have to and/or be less effective than they could be.

This got me thinking: might a similar logic be at work at a more global level? Specifically, does the competitive nature of international politics give some states an advantage because their political systems and social values make it relatively easy to attract and assimilate talented citizens from other countries, thereby enabling them to draw more-or-less selectively on the entire global talent pool? If so, then these states will be able to improve their relative position over time, and to the extent that globalization now facilitates people moving from place to place, that tendency should be increasing. By contrast, states that make assimilation difficult or that discriminate on other areas will tend to be less attractive destinations for highly educated and/or entrepreneurial individuals, and these states will for the most part have to work with the citizenry they've got or pay a very high premium to attract talent from abroad.

One can see this dynamic by comparing Japan and the United States. Japan is an ethnically homogeneous society, with small minority populations who remain objects of discrimination. It is possible for foreigners to become naturalized citizens after five years of continuous residence, but this practice is not widespread. Japan also has a rapidly aging and declining population, which will have significant long-term effects on its power and influence. Yet given Japan's current policies discourage talented foreigners from immigrating and assimilating, thereby making it harder for Japan to attract the best and brightest from around the world and reverse its demographic slide.

The United States, by contrast, is the very model of a melting-pot society. People automatically qualify for citizenship if either parent is a citizen or if they are born on American soil, and naturalization is quite common (about one million people became naturalized citizens last year). Although support for immigration has waxed and waned throughout U.S. history and remains a contested issue today (mostly due to issues pertaining to illegal immigration), the United States has had remarkable success attracting and assimilating some of the best and brightest from all over the world. All I have to do is look at my colleagues, whose ranks include an impressive number of scholars born outside the United States. Each of them was hired as a result of a global talent search, and we'd have a less distinguished faculty if we had looked only at U.S. citizens. Some of my colleagues eventually returned to their countries of origin (such as Andres Velasco, currently Minister of Finance in Chile), but others are likely to spend most if not all of their careers here in the United States.

The success of the American melting pot, as many scholars have commented, is due partly to good fortune (North America was rich in natural resources, arable land, etc.) but also to the particular nature of American civic nationalism (or what Anatol Lieven calls the American Creed): faith in liberty, constitutionalism, democracy, the rule of law, individualism, and political and cultural (but not economic) egalitarianism. Although the United States has hardly been free of racial or ethnic conflicts during its history, these features have made it possible for every new group to integrate itself as full citizens. The United States is an attractive destination not just because it is a wealthy society, but also because many different groups and individuals can become integral parts of that society instead of facing permanent second-class status.

If I'm right, then the pressures of international competition give an advantage to any society that can "cream" some of the smartest and/or hardest working people from all over the world. How? By making that society an attractive place to live and work, mostly by creating an atmosphere of equality and toleration. By contrast, societies that limit their de facto talent pool by defining citizenship narrowly, by treating minorities badly, by discriminating on the basis of race, religion, or other characteristics are placing themselves at a competitive disadvantage vis-à-vis the rest of the world.

Over time, therefore, we should expect a growing gap between "cosmopolitan" societies that develop institutions and cultures in which diversity and tolerance are prized and where potential conflicts between them are managed well, and more restrictive societies that are either attractive only to a fixed population of particular ethnic identity, or who are face recurring internal conflicts between various contending groups. My bet would be that, other things being equal, the former do better over time.

And note that this argument isn't just about ethnic assimilation. In effect, what I'm suggesting is that from a realist perspective, there is a strong case for "small-l" liberal toleration. All else equal, societies that establish strong norms and institutions that protect individual rights and freedoms (including those governing sexual preference, I might add) will become attractive destinations for a wider array of potential citizens than societies that try to maintain a high degree of uniformity. And when you can choose from a bigger talent pool, over time you're going to do better.

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Last summer, the Israeli government announced a new effort to "rebrand" the country in the eyes of the world, and it hired a prominent British public relations firm to help out. In addition to various forms of cultural outreach designed to highlight Israel's achievements, this effort included having a men’s magazine publish a photo spread of several women from the IDF (including the former Miss Israel) in various fetching poses, a decision that didn't go over all that well back in Israel itself. You can read all about it here, here, or here.  

The Gaza operation, the sham peace process, and the recent election of the Netanyahu/Lieberman government aren’t making the "rebranding" effort any easier, of course. And if you want to know why this new hasbara campaign isn’t likely to work, start by reading English journalist and military historian Max Hastings's sobering account, published last week in the Guardian. Drawn from an appearance in Balliol College's Leonard Stein lecture series, Hastings recounts his own evolution from an enthusiastic cheerleader for Israel to a disillusioned critic who strongly supports Israel’s existence but openly opposes many of its present policies. Where once he "loved those people, and boundlessly admired their achievement," he now describes himself as "one of those foreigners who progressively fell out of love with Israel." I know the feeling.

The problem, as Hastings makes clear, is the reality of the occupation and the brutal treatment of the Palestinians that goes hand-in-hand with it. This situation can't be disguised by more energetic public relations efforts.  There are too many video cameras and human rights groups documenting Israel's actions -- including Israeli groups like B’tselem. There are too many bloggers willing to write about the conflict from varying perspectives, and too many scholars and journalists like Hastings -- plus a growing number in the United States -- who no longer accept the outdated image of Israel as a plucky and virtuous David facing a looming and bloodthirsty Arab Goliath.  That image was easy to sell in 1948, perhaps, and it remained fairly convincing after the Arab states offered the infamous "Three Nos" at the 1967 Khartoum summit. But it's a much tougher sell after Lebanon in 1982 and 2006, after Gaza in 2008-2009, and after the Saudi and Arab League peace proposals in 2002 and 2007 don't even elicit an official response from Jerusalem.  

Israel's achievements over the past sixty-one years are undeniable, and the officials responsible for the rebranding campaign won't have any trouble finding artists, athletes, scientists and entrepreneurs to write feel-good stories about. But the dark side of the story won’t go away -- 40-plus years of an increasingly brutal occupation, the construction of the apartheid wall (or if you prefer,"separation fence"), much of outside the 1967 borders, thousands of dead Palestinian civilians, a series of failed wars since 1982, and the repeated squandering of genuine opportunities to make peace. And every year the number of settlers grows. I don't hold Israel solely responsible for this tragedy, but they are neither powerless nor blameless.

As Hastings observes, more in sadness than in anger, these policies have also had a deeply corrosive effect on Israeli society itself. In his words, "Morally, if not militarily, [the IDF] is a shadow of the force which fought in 1948, 1956, 1967, or 1973." Not to mention rising political corruption, the polarization of the body politic, once-impressive universities in decline, and a worrisome tendency for younger Israelis to seek careers abroad.  In an era when information flows freely and where anyone with an internet link can read Ha'aretz, the Jerusalem Post, the Daily Star, the Guardian, etc., the Israeli Foreign Ministry is not going to control the story.

In fact, trying to "rebrand" Israel through a one-sided PR campaign could be counterproductive, because offering a uniformly sunny image that leaves out much of the story just undermines the credibility of the messenger. My sense is that few Israelis believe Shimon Peres anymore, and I doubt many of them think Benjamin Netanyahu means it when he says he’s interested in a genuine peace. It's like when Bush and Cheney declared that United States doesn't torture, Bill Clinton told us that he "didn’t have sex with that woman," or Richard Nixon said "I am not a crook." After awhile, smart listeners learn not to accept anything they're told without double-checking it themselves. Even worse, when they hear one thing, they start to assume that the opposite is probably true.

Some readers may think that Hastings is employing a double-standard, or that he is "singling Israel out" for criticism. They could point out that Israel's adversaries have often lied or prevaricated too, and that they have done plenty of brutal things themselves. They could also remind us that Israel's neighbors are hardly models of tolerance or open discourse and that there is a far more open debate about these issues within Israel than there is in Jordan or Saudi Arabia or Syria. I agree, and the willingness of some Israelis to confront the past honestly and to question its present policies remains an admirable feature of Israeli society.  

But there is no double-standard at work here, and comparisons with states whose behavior may be worse miss the point. Israel's actions are not being judged against the conduct of a Sudan or Burma, but by the standards that people in the West apply to all democracies. It is the standard Americans expect of allies who want to have a "special relationship" with us. It is the standard Israel imposes on itself when it tells everyone it is "the only democracy in the Middle East." Israel is being expected to behave like Britain or Canada or France or Japan and not like some one-party military dictatorship, and it is certainly expected not to deny full political and civil rights to millions of Palestinians who now live under its constant control.  These other democracies eventually gave up their colonial enterprises; Israel is still trying to consolidate its own. 

As Americans have learned in recent years, whenever any country fails to live up to its own professed values, it is going to lose friends and admirers around the world. Barack Obama understood that he couldn’t restore America’s image in the wake of Abu Ghraib and the Bush torture regime by trying to change the subject or by talking about some cool or virtuous things Americans had done. ("OK, we tortured some people and invaded Iraq on false pretences, but weren’t the Founding Fathers great, aren't Tiger Woods and Kelly Clarkson amazing, and have you seen that new Star Trek movie?"). The way a country regains the world’s admiration in the aftermath of  misconduct is to stop doing it, admit it was wrong, express regret, and make it clear that it won't happen again. Restoring Israel's image in the West isn't a matter of spin or PR or "rebranding;" it's a matter of abandoning the policies that have cost it the sympathy it once enjoyed. It's really just about that simple.

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Here's an IR theory puzzle: Why do some seemingly powerful states exert relatively little influence on world politics, while other states with more modest capabilities cast a bigger shadow than one would expect? Although there is no consensus on how national power should be defined or measured, most IR scholars would probably agree that there is a substantial but not perfect correlation between national power and international influence. Indeed, one could imagine a simple regression, with "power" on the X-axis and "influence" on the Y-axis, and a diagonal line bisecting that space. I'd expect most states to array themselves pretty close to that line: as their power increased (measured in terms of GDP, population, military capability, resource endowments, etc.) one would expect to see a corresponding increase in their global influence.

But what about the outliers -- either the "overachievers" who swing a bigger bat than one would expect or the "underachievers" who wield less influence than their overall capabilities might provide? Here's my personal, decidedly un-scientific top five list in each category, followed by some thoughts on what might explain why some states punch above their weight and some potentially major powers cast a comparatively small shadow.

"OVER-ACHIEVERS" (in no particular order)

1.  Sweden.

With a population of only 9 million, one wouldn’t expect Sweden to cast much of a shadow, despite its advanced industrial economy. Yet for its size and population, Sweden has been a significant international player. Its welfare state and other social policies have been widely-studied and a model for others, and diplomats such as Dag Hammarskjold, Folke Bernadotte, and Olof Palme were all important international voices. Sweden still devotes a higher percentage of its GDP to foreign aid than any other country, and institutions such as the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute have amplified Sweden's visibility on major issues of arms control and disarmament. Awarding the Nobel Prizes probably doesn't hurt either.

2. North Korea.

With a small population (22 million), an obsolete military machine, a bankrupt ideology, and an economy that exposes its citizens to periodic famine, one wouldn’t expect North Korea to get much attention at all. Indeed, on most measures North Korea is an under-achiever (especially when compared with its neighbor to the south). But Pyongyang's leaders are past masters at commanding international attention, usually by threatening to do something undesirable (and then sometimes going ahead and doing it). North Korea is hardly an inspiring model for anyone, but it shows how sheer cussedness can enable a country to punch well above their weight.

3. Canada.

America’s northern neighbor has the world's second largest land mass but a relatively small population (only 32 million) and only modest military assets.  Yet Canada has been a consistent proponent of multilateralism, ranks ninth in the world as a provider of foreign aid, and has been an enthusiastic participant in international peacekeeping missions. Indeed, Canada has lost 117 soldiers fighting in Afghanistan, the highest per capita figure of any ISAF participant.

4. Israel.

For a country whose total population is less than that of New York City, Israel generates a lot more attention than one would expect. To be sure, some of this reflects Israel’s economic success (which includes advanced hi-tech sector and a significant arms industry) not to mention its nuclear arsenal and overall military power. And then there's the occupation and the violence that it has produced over the years. Regardless of one's views on that thorny subject, it's hard to argue that Israel doesn't exert a lot of influence on the global agenda, especially given its very modest size.

5. Singapore.

For a city-state with a population of only 4.4 million, which gained independence only in 1965, Singapore's international prominence marks it as an obvious outlier, even when one allows for its advanced economy and high per capita income. In addition to its economic achievements, Singapore has been a major force behind regional cooperation in Southeast Asia, an energetic promoter of institutions such as ASEAN, and its leaders have rarely been bashful about offering their views on major international issues.   

"UNDERACHIEVERS" (also in no particular order)

1. Japan.

Despite having the world's 2nd largest economy and the world's sixth largest defense budget, Japan performs a remarkably modest international role. As Richard Samuels of MIT recently pointed out in Newsweek, Japan sent warships to help defend against tSomali pirates only after China announced it was going to do so, and it has only 38 soldiers participating in UN peacekeeping missions. Increasingly, its leadership both at home and abroad seems paralyzed. Moreover, with a declining and rapidly aging population, Japan seems likely to become even less influential over time, despite its economic size and considerable national wealth.

2. India.

It is the world's most populous democracy, the dominant state in south Asia, the home country of a sizeable and successful global diaspora, and a nuclear power. Past Indian leaders such as Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, and Indira Gandhi were major international figures. While far from being inconsequential, India has yet to exercise a global leadership role, or even to exert far-sighted and constructive influence over its immediate neighborhood. Moreover, a recent article in The Hindu deplores the deteriorating state of international studies in India, at precisely the same period when a rising China is taking the study of international relations very seriously.  

3. Germany.

Now reunified, with the world's 14th largest population and either the 3rd or fifth largest economy (depending on whether one uses straight GDP figures or purchasing power parity estimates). Germany is also the world's third largest exporter. While not entirely absent on the world stage, it is hardly exercising an influence commensurate with its latent capabilities. Even when Germany does get more actively involved (as they have in Afghanistan), they operate under highly restrictive rules of engagement that substantially undercut their effectiveness. A far cry from the Germany of Otto von Bismarck, or even the creative leadership of Konrad Adenauer and Willy Brandt.

4. Russia.

At first, I thought about putting Russia in the other category -- a large but relatively weak state that managed to exert more influence than its overall capabilities might suggest. But on reflection, I think Russia belongs here. Despite its geographic size, oil and gas resources, and relatively well-educated work force, as well as the inherited assets of permanent Security Council membership and a large nuclear arsenal, Russia today exerts less influence on the agenda of world politics than its overall capabilities might provide. Its political system is not a model for anyone; its culture is not a magnet, and its leaders are either unable or unwilling to play a constructive role in addressing the major problems that confront the world today. Instead, Moscow mostly plays a spoiler role, which is what former great power do when they cannot find a way to lead.

5. Brazil.

Yes, I've read about the BRICS, and how countries like Brazil are going to reshape the global balance of power in the 21st century. But the world's tenth largest economy (and fifth largest population) has yet to achieve an international role of similar stature. Brazil clearly wants a more prominent international position, as exemplified by its current efforts to win a permanent seat on the UN Security Council, its extensive diplomatic presence and active participation in existing international organizations.  President Lula da Silva has very high approval ratings (including the highest ratings in all of Latin America). But so far, these ambitions and capabilities have not been translated into as much direct influence as I'd expect.

So what explains why some states punch above their weight and others punch below it? This would be a great topic for a dissertation, but here are a few tentative thoughts. First, individual leadership matters. A leader like Charles De Gaulle, Lester Pearson, or Lee Kwan Yew can elevate a country's profile above its "natural" place, and a series of weak leaders can keep a country from reaching its true potential. Second, history can have a long-term impact on a country's overall influence: Britain and France occupy somewhat enhanced roles today because they were once great powers with extensive global empires and Sweden's tradition of international activism may even be a legacy of its former role as a great power several centuries ago. Third, the examples of Germany and Japan suggest that extreme misconduct in the past can suppress a state's willingness or ability to play a large international role for a very long time. And in these two cases, the legacy of World War II has been reinforced by decades of Cold War free-riding. Fourth, small states can leverage a relationship with a major power like the United States (as both Israel and Singapore have done) in order to maintain positions that would be harder to sustain on their own.  Lastly, relatively weak states may enhance their overall influence by occupying a specialized "niche" in the international environment, as neutral powers like Sweden or Switzerland have done.

I'm sure I missed some other good examples and possible explanations, so I hope readers will contribute suggestions or critiques of their own.

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So when I offered my "top ten" list of favorite books in international relations last week, how many of you noticed that all of the authors were men? I did, and so did my wife. Not only that, but most of the suggestions sent in by commenters referred to books written by men as well. Of course, my interests tend to lie on the security side of the field, which has tended to attract more men than women until fairly recently. And my list leaned toward recognized classics, which biased it towards older works (and thus to eras when women scholars were fewer in number). But I've been in the business long enough to know that subtler forms of bias might be involved too, so I thought I'd put out a list of some of my favorite books by women scholars (plus a few journalists/public intellectuals). It's not hard to come up with ten (and a few more).

1. Roberta Wohlstetter, Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision. To take nothing away from others, this is arguably the most influential book by a woman scholar in the field of security affairs, and it cast a long shadow over subsequent studies of intelligence failure and strategic surprise.

2. Susan Strange, States and Markets. Strange was a pioneering figure in the history of international studies in Britain, and a clear-eyed thinker and writer. Frankly, I enjoyed some of her articles (such as "Cave! Hic Dragone: A Critique of Regime Analysis," in the 1983 International Organization issue on regimes) more than her books, but the overall contribution earns a place on my list.

3. Martha Finnemore, The Purpose of Intervention: Changing Beliefs about the Use of Force. This book helped convince me that constructivist analysis could say something important and tangible about security affairs.  It’s sharply written and persuasive, too. Need I say more?

4. Frances FitzGerald, Fire in the Lake: Vietnamese and Americans in Vietnam. A Pulitzer-prize winning investigation of Vietnamese society and a piercing critique of America's tragic intervention there. Students of missile defense should also read her Way out There in the Blue: Star Wars and the End of the Cold War, a fascinating account of Ronald Reagan's campaign to make nuclear weapons "impotent and obsolete."

5. Kathryn Sikkink and Margaret Keck, Activists beyond Border: Advocacy Networks in International Politics. Both Keck and Sikkink have written other important works, but this is my favorite, as it brought to light an under-studied (and one might argue increasingly important) phenomenon.

6. Samantha Power, "A Problem from Hell": American in the Age of Genocide. Another Pulitzer Prize-winner by (full disclosure) a friend and colleague. Power is no realist, but I think the book’s lessons point in that direction. If great powers like the United States are too self-interested to do very much to save the lives of others (a tendency she deplores), why expect that to change? A wonderful book, full of passion and insight and gripping prose.

7. Elinor Ostrom, Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action. When one considers that issues of the "commons" are now central to much of world politics, and how institutions will be central to any effective solution, this was a remarkably far-sighted book.

8. Theda Skocpol, States and Social Revolutions. Although primarily a work of comparative historical sociology, Skocpol’s path breaking work also emphasizes the role of international pressures in driving great revolutions.  Like its author, a work to be reckoned with.

9. Beth Simmons, Who Adjusts?: Domestic Sources of Foreign Economic Policy during the Interwar Years, 1923-1939. For those of you who thought Charles Kindleberger answered all your questions about the Great Depression. And worth re-reading in light of our current situation.

10. Valerie Hudson and Andrea Den Boer, Bare Branches: The Security Implications of Asia's Surplus Male Population. I mentioned this in my earlier discussion, and can’t resist highlighting it here. The argument is simple but striking and could have far-reaching implications. Short version: if a cultural preference for male offspring leads to too many unattached men in your society, look out.

Like my earlier top ten, this list just scratches the surface of interesting works on different aspects of world politics. Other obvious contenders (i.e., books I've enjoyed and/or learned a lot from) would include Etel Solingen, Nuclear Logics; Jo-Ann Tickner, Gendering World Politics; Elizabeth Kier, Imagining War, Monica Toft, The Geography of Ethnic Violence; Mia Bloom, Dying to Kill; Iris Chang, The Rape of Nanking; Debora Spar, The Cooperative Edge, Margaret MacMillan, Paris 1919, Lynn Eden, Whole World on Fire, and Nina Tannenwald, The Nuclear Taboo.  And yes, I know I'm leaving plenty of deserving scholars out, but I'm confident readers will tell me who I missed. 

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I’m spending some time this month rehearsing for an annual charity show (playing keyboards in the pit band), so my thoughts have turned back to music. Here’s my question: where have all the political songs gone, and especially songs about war and peace? I’m not saying there aren’t any (see below), but this genre doesn’t seem to cast the same shadow it once did.

Back in the folk era (for younger readers, that means the late 50s/early-to-mid 60s), songs about war and injustice were staples of popular culture here in the United States. Think of Pete Seeger’s “Where Have All The Flowers Gone?” or Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind,” or Phil Ochs’ “I Ain’t Marching Anymore.” At about the same time, the all-time genius of political musical satire, Tom Lehrer, was writing scathingly funny songs about a range of foreign policy topics, including nuclear proliferation (“Who’s Next?”), NATO’s multilateral force (“The MLF Lullaby”), liberal interventionism (“Send the Marines!”) and even nuclear Armageddon (“So Long, Mom!”). And don’t forget Barry McGuire’s “Eve of Destruction” (written by P.F. Sloan), an apocalyptic jeremiad that hit #1 on the Billboard charts in 1965 and contains references to nuclear war, Red China, the Arab-Israeli conflict, and congressional fecklessness.

By the late 1960s, fueled by Vietnam, songs about war were legion. Off the top of my head, there’s Donovan’s “Universal Soldier,” the Animals' “Sky Pilot,” CSNY’s “Ohio,” and “Wooden Ships,” John Lennon’s “Give Peace a Chance,” and “Imagine,” Edwin Starr’s “War,” and Kenny Rogers’ “Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love to Town.” Even Glenn Campbell’s pop hit “Galveston” (written by Jimmy Webb) has a Vietnam theme. There were a few songs on the other side too, most famously Sgt. Barry Sadler’s “Ballad of the Green Berets.”

My main point is that some of these songs were big hits, selling lots of copies and getting lots of airplay. And satire wasn’t entirely gone either, with Country Joe and the Fish’s “Feelin’ Like I’m Fixin to Die Rag,” and Randy Newman’s brilliant “Political Science,” which dates from the early 1970s but could have been written for George W. Bush. Excerpt:

No one likes us, I don’t know why
We may not be perfect, but heaven knows we try
But all around the world, even our old friends put us down,
Let’s drop the big one, and see what happens…

We give them money, but are they grateful?
No, they’re spiteful, and they’re hateful,
They don’t respect us, so let’s surprise them,
We’ll drop the big one and pulverize them.

I’d be remiss not to mention one of my all-time favorites, Nick Lowe’s “What’s So Funny ‘Bout Peace, Love and Understanding?” (first recorded in the early 1970s but made famous by Elvis Costello and the Attractions in 1979 and later voted 284th best rock song by Rolling Stone). Then in 1985, right on cue, came the pop anthem to globalization (and foreign aid): “We are the World” (written by Michael Jackson and Lionel Ritchie and recorded by an all-star group to raise money for famine relief in Africa).

Given the foreign policy problems we have faced in recent years, including 9/11 and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, it’s somewhat surprising that we haven’t seen a resurgence of popular music exploring these themes. There are some obvious exceptions, to be sure, such as Springsteen’s “Devils and Dust,” Pink’s “Dear Mr. President,” or Neil Young’s album “Living with War,” and alt-country singer/guitarist/songwriter Buddy Miller has a terrific anti-landmines tune on his album Poison Love entitled “100 Million Little Bombs.” (Salon.com has a list of other anti-war songs here, and I found this list of top 10 political rock songs here.) On the pro-war side, you’ve got Toby Keith’s “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue,” and “American Soldier,” among others. But unless I’ve missed something (and that’s perfectly possible, because I’m not nearly as plugged in as I once was), none of these songs is commanding the sort of mass audience that earlier songs about war (or foreign policy, broadly defined) did. Some of them are powerful and evocative and musically sophisticated, but I haven’t heard one that seems likely to become a standard anthem.

Why? My hypothesis: there’s no draft. So long as military service is voluntary, and thus something that young people can opt out of, the costs of war will seem far away to many of them and their attention will tend to focus elsewhere. And when that happens, there won’t be big money in political songs and they’ll stay on the fringes of popular culture. Seems to be true of antiwar movies too.

But as I said, I’m not as plugged in as I used to be, and maybe I've just missed the good stuff. So the floor is open for comments: are there terrific songs about war or foreign policy being recorded these days? If so, are any of them attracting mass interest? If not, why not? The floor is open.

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David Brooks's insight and intellectual integrity have never impressed me much, but his column in today's NY Times is a low mark even for him. After reminding us that he read Edmund Burke in college and used to be a liberal, he announces that the fate of Obama’s programs will be "the big test" between liberal and conservative views of the world. Liberals supposedly believe in human reason and the capacity of government to conduct transformative solutions; conservatives are "epistemologically modest" and skeptical of "top-down" initiatives. Here's the money quote:

We're on the cusp of the biggest political experiment of our lifetimes. If Obama is mostly successful, then the epistemological skepticism natural to conservatives will have been discredited...If they mostly fail, then liberalism will suffer a grievous blow, and conservatives will be called upon to restore order and sanity."

Such shamelessly partisan pseudo-intellectualism is Brooks's stock-in-trade, but where he's been the past eight years? George W. Bush and the GOP conservatives inherited a strong economy and a budget surplus, and a country whose international image was mostly favorable. And then they squandered them all with a thoroughness that almost seems deliberate. There was no "epistemological modesty" involved when Bush placed loyalty above competence and let lobbyists and other special interests loose in Washington, or when he launched a foolish and ill-planned war in an attempt to transform the entire Middle East. And let us not forget that Brooks himself was an enthusiastic supporter of these policies; I guess he forgot his Burke back when his party was in power.

The result of these "conservative" policies, as we all know to our sorrow, is the most serious combination of domestic and foreign policy challenges to face America in decades. But if Obama fails to clean up the mess left by his predecessor, it is "liberalism" that will have failed. Huh?