I don’t know enough about Pakistan to have an educated opinion on Musharraf’s decision to toss out the supreme court justices. Maybe this is an awful selfish decision that puts Musharraf’s interests above that of Pakistan. Maybe it is tough choice based on the realization that too much democracy would take the country in the wrong direction. I have no real clue. Frankly I’m sorta surprised that a government that seized power in a coup has allowed as many independent institutions as it has.

However, I find the assumption made by every US media source and public speaker that lack of democracy is ipso facto a violation of human rights or at least a bad thing to be totally fallacious. A quick look at the history of democracy will show that democracies have inflicted a great many injustices and often failed to bring about the improvements in individual welfare and protection from violence that we desire. In fact the economist magazine actually had a plausible analysis suggesting that democratic elections in Africa actually correlated with poor outcomes.

Democratic (or more accurately republican) government requires a great many prerequisites to successfully function. Not only does there need to be a strong civil service tradition in place to allow the government to function properly without strong top down control (including resisting attempts to corrupt future elections) but also a populace that is sufficiently educated to make reasonable decisions. Whether or not these conditions have been sufficiently met in any particular place to make democracy preferable to the other options is a very complex question that shouldn’t just be brushed under the rug with ra ra democracy rhetoric.

I find it interesting that the standard position among most arms control advocates (and Berkeley liberals) to support both the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (bans anti-ballistic missiles) and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). For instance the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), an outspoken proponent for the CTBT says this about the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) withdrawal by president Bush. I’ve long been unconvinced by the (non)arguments for the CTBT but it just occurred to me the effect of the two treaties is essentially the same. It seems to me that the traditional support of arms control advocates for the ABM treaty is inconsistent with support for the CTBT and certainly with the idea that a nuclear weapon free world is a worthwhile goal in the current global order (the supremacy of the nation-state, ultimately I hope that the UN will be trusted to maintain the only legal deterrent arsenal).

ABM facilities increase the perception that your opponents are unlikely to be able to mount a successful attack. This is the basis for most of the arguments against ABM installations. The critics argue that when faced with a potential nuclear adversary protected by an ABM countries will react by building many more nuclear weapons, presumably to maintain the deterrent effect of their arsenal (nuclear weapons aren’t good for anything but deterrence). Already one can see the stress between this position and the argument that individuals like Mohamed Elbaradei make for disarmament. If countries will inexorably build up their arsenals whenever faced with a potential decline in their deterrent capability we surely can’t expect that they would really disarm or that vague moral pressure would keep them from rearming during times of crisis. Surely their is a greater moral pressure on countries not to increase their arsenals than there is to voluntarily shrink those arsenals and by reducing the effectiveness of nuclear weapons an ABM would effectively constitute an arms reduction that bypasses the entrenched resistance to these kinds of changes. Furthermore, on top of just reducing the effective firepower of their opponents a (well funded) ABM defense also increases the cost effectiveness of their future nuclear weapons. It doesn’t matter if these effects of ABM systems exist only in perception it is exactly this perception that would help to convince the world that nuclear weapons and nuclear deterrence were old fashion, ineffective and better forgotten.

The critics would likely respond by arguing that having an increased absolute number of nuclear weapons would itself be a danger. For instance the UCS worries that an increase in Russian nuclear weapons kept on alert as the rest of a US ABM system would increase the risk of accidental launch. Obviously there is some chance that any given nuclear weapon could be launched on its own but I would suggest that the risk of an errant nuclear missile launch is so small compared to the risk of a mistaken volley being fired (as we have just barely avoided on several occasions) that it will be swamped by other factors in this analysis. However, if there really is a substantial danger of an errant (singular) missile launch this is itself a strong argument for an ABM system. The primary technical criticism of ABM has always been that a coordinated strike of many MIRV (splits up into many bombs) equipped rockets would overwhelm any ABM system but no one seems to doubt that we could construct an ABM system that provides significant protection against lone ICBMs. Furthermore, as these same critics themselves note the acquisition of nuclear devices by terrorist organizations is a serious looming threat. Given that an ABM treaty would probably not spur Russian to build new warheads but just move old ones into active duty it could plausibly reduce the likelihood the terrorists could get their hands on a weapon (it could increase it too but I was guessing it is harder to steal when it is loaded into launch-prepped missile).

At this point the critics would likely point out that most of the supposed protection of ABM devices is mostly illusionary and that it’s effectiveness would be overrated by both the deploying nation and its adversaries. I don’t really have any way to evaluate this claim but it seems plausible. Thus, the argument would go, the increase in weapons on high alert would actually increase past what was necessary to maintain the same level of deterrence meaning the expected harm would actually rise. However, any nuclear country with the resources to overcompensate likely has more than enough weapons to to totally annihilated their foe meaning the harm resulting from an actual nuclear exchange wouldn’t increase much if they did overcompensate and as I argued above the unlikely scenario where the risk of accidental launch was even close to linear in the number of active weapons would separately justify an ABM system. Finally excessive confidence even offers benefits. Most of the world’s close brushes with nuclear war (except the wargames type scenario) were mistaken identification of non-hostile objects as an incoming missile. The greater the confidence of the man behind the button that a real incoming missile would be shot down the better, whether it is justified or not.

The most plausible argument against ABM installations is that the overconfidence they engender may encourage leaders to ignore the risks of nuclear reprisal, play dangerous games of brinkmanship or even launch a pre-emptive strike counting on your ABM system to protect you from reprisal (tacit deterrence again). I think this argument is compelling when applied to major nuclear powers like China, Russia and the US but I’m less sure whether something like the North Korean threat would justify building an ABM system. Of course even if ABM installations would be a good idea this didn’t justify pulling out of the ABM treaty before we had a production quality nonallowed defense ready. In any case research on an ABM system is always necessary at some level just to make sure that technical advances don’t allow another country to surprise us by deploying one out of the blue.

But wherever you come down on the ABM treaty (I was always vaguely in favor of it but I’m rethinking this now) you should agree that if the ABM treaty is harmful then so is the CTBT. Just like knowing your opponent has a ABM installation knowing that your bombs have never been tested should reduce your confidence in their likely effectiveness. If countries will respond to uncertainty in the penetration of their warheads by building more warheads we should expect countries to respond to uncertainty in their weapons designs by making more designs and warheads to boost their certainty in achieving a certain effect. Worse, by forcing many designs, such a situation results in increased systemic error (someone screwed up the safety features on design 3A4) which is much more worrying than the deployment of more of the same sort of missiles. Furthermore by hiding both sides real nuclear capability (even from themselves) the CTBT manages to encourage both the overconfidence (they don’t have nukes) that leads to accidental wars and the under-confidence (we might not have nukes) that leads to more warheads. Unlike an ABM installation the CTBT manages to do this without even resulting in the slightest reduction in risk from rogue missiles.

The CTBT doesn’t even lead to an improvement of our attitudes to nuclear weapons. Much like tough anti-drug stances the CTBT only serves to drive the activity underground where it is more difficult to monitor. The nice thing about the NPT agreement was that it had everyone put their cards on the table but the CTBT is undermining that principle.

My last post touches on an issue that never fails to drive me nuts: the lack of concern American’s show for foreigners. The total US deaths in Iraq are now about 3,000 while many estimates put the total civilian deaths in Iraq up in the hundreds of thousands. Should Iraq degrade into a civil war millions of Iraqis would probably die while even more would suffer gravely yet our responsibility to the Iraqis seems to barely register compared to the worries about our troops or strategic interest.

In particular the reason I don’t find myself convinced by the many policy wonks who recommend troop withdrawals is that I doubt they are properly weighing the harms to the Iraqis. Even if Bush’s troop surge only decreases the chances of an Iraqi civil war by 1% and it will cost an additional 1000 American lives it is surely justified (1% of 1 million is 10,000 so it has a highly positive expectation even ignoring the indirect harms of a civil war). Perhaps I’m just not informed and there is a compelling analysis which suggests a troop withdrawal is actually the best thing for the Iraqis but until I see it I won’t be convinced.

Still, even if it isn’t right it is certainly understandable that we would care far more about American soldiers than faceless Muslim foreigners. However, whenever I debate someone about globalization I’m appalled to see that people actually take up the mantle of moral righteousness while demanding that jobs go to rich Americans rather than poor individuals in the third world.

Now we can argue all day about whether the US government has a responsibility to selfishly benefit Americans even at great cost to foreigners. However, there is no possible justification for the moral outrage we see at companies that move tech jobs overseas to places like India. With tech jobs there is no way to make the (suspisciously self serving) arguments about the harm of working in third world factories and it is blatantly obvious that having a tech job in their country makes far more difference to people in China and India than it makes to us in the US. Even if you think the US government ought to selfishly try to protect US jobs you should at least be able to recognize that the CEO who moves tech jobs to India is doing the morally right thing.

If you want to be selfish, fine. However, I am getting more and more disillusioned with liberals in the US as I constantly see them advocating selfish policies with the rhetoric of fairness and helping the worse off. Now I’m all for taxes and other government programs to cushion those who lose their jobs but listening to ‘liberals’ claim to be championing the poor while trying to give jobs to (relatively) rich Americans at the cost of the world’s poor is just too disgusting to bear.

Yes, I realize this is no different than a hundred other selfish things we all do every day. Sure every time I purchase a candy bar rather than donating my money to third world development I’m being selfish. However, there is something particularly nauseating about defending that selfishness with moral righteousness. Also it’s particularly depressing to realize that people don’t even seem to be able to comprehend the argument that it might not be morally right to stop offshoring.

Surely somewhere there have to be American liberals who don’t put American interests (so far) above those of the third world. Why don’t I ever seem to hear about them?

I wanted to make it clear that if we had a uniform legal and procedural framework to try dictators for crimes against humanity I would probably support trying Saddam under that framework. Failing to try Saddam under such a framework would not be unfair, we know he is guilty, but the precedential value of following the rules might help avoid future unfairness. The problem is that no such legal framework exists. In fact I was wrong in assuming that the ICJ will ever be able to take jurisdiction over these sort of incidents, they only have jurisdiction over states.

For instance the war crimes in the Bosnian conflict are being prosecuted by an ad hoc court. Interestingly despite being set up in the Hague with international jurists Milosevic was not allowed to cross examine General Clark about the NATO involvement. In any case the point is no matter what a new court with new rules was necessary to try Saddam for his crimes. Thus there is no getting around the fact that Saddam was going to be tried using procedures handpicked for this situation.

But what is it that makes the procedural rules of a court fair or unfair? As I argued previously the rules of a court are fair when they guarantee that trials are likely to result in the correct outcome. Given that Saddam and his compatriots are the only ones who will be tried using these procedures they are fair just if they give the right result for Saddam and his companions. So the rules for Saddam’s trial could have just explicitly stated he was guilty and the trial would have been no less fair.

In other words once you are handpicking the procedure of a trial for a specific defendant the only sense in which they are fair or not is whether they give the right result for that individual.

So human rights groups have been alleging that Saddam’s trial was unfair. Apparently they allege several types of procedural errors made the trial unfair and as a result Saddam shouldn’t be put to death.

This seems to be totally backwards. A trial is not fair because it implements some arbitrary list of procedures. During Jim Crow a white man on trial for killing a black man could have (though probably wasn’t) a trial that dotted every legal i and crossed every t but it would still be unfair if he had a prejudiced mostly white jury, even if they properly represent the district. On the other side in the absence of formalized legal authority it would be fair to prosecute wrongdoers before informal juries using whatever procedures seemed most likely to give the correct result. What makes a trial fair or not is whether it is likely to get the correct result, perhaps with the additional requirement that there be an articulable individualized justification for guilty verdicts.

Worse if you really believe that it is procedure that makes a trial fair or not you have to decide which procedure is the fair one. Every western country has different procedures, some use an adversarial process, in others you have no adversarial representation and everyone participates in an impartial attempt to arrive at the truth. Surely this doesn’t mean that only one of these sets of procedures counts as fair. Yet many of the complaints about the Saddam trial are not really beyond this sort of national variation. Sure, statements from witnesses were read into the record without Saddam having the opportunity to confront them but different countries have different standards as to when you have a right to confront the witnesses. Many countries allow underage victims of child abuse to submit evidence without having to confront the accused. Why not give supposed victims of genocide the same privilege, especially in situations where they have very real fears of reprisal. The idea that a written transcript is essential to a fair trial is just laughable (fair trials were impossible before written language?) and many of the other worries seem equally trivial.

Ultimately though the procedure is totally irrelevant in this case. We demand certain procedures as guards against unfair trials not because the procedures are essential to fairness themselves. We then insist that these procedures be applied uniformly to prevent abuses, rejecting trials that don’t conform even when they obviously get the right results to make sure the rules will be followed in the future. However, these concerns are totally irrelevant to the Saddam trial. There is no persistent institution that has formal authority to try Saddam (his crimes happened before ICJ was constituted). No one else will ever be tried under the procedures that are set out for Saddam. He is being tried on the same grounds that the Nazis were tried. Namely that they did something so bad that they need to be punished regardless of any laws on the books or treaties their country has signed.

Really the entire notion of giving Saddam a trial, rather than just convicting him and trotting out the evidence is a joke. We know he committed genocide we are punishing him to send a message to other dictators who might do the same. Even Saddam thinks having a trial is a joke saying everyone knew who was in charge. No trial convicting Saddam could ever be unfair as we already know he is guilty and since his trial is unique it doesn’t really make sense to ask if these rules generally lead to fair trials. Even if a ‘procedurally correct’ trial would set Saddam free we should execute him anyway. The harm done by unfair trials of deposed dictators is never going to be as large as the benefit of deterring genocide.

I’m getting more and more annoyed at the confusion between law and morality that seems to be endemic among international human rights groups.

So a few days ago I posted about the Church of England’s decision to boycott companies profiting from the Israeli occupation. In that post I criticized the constant rhetoric characterizing the Israeli occupation as illegal. Apart from having unclear truth it is just irrelevant. There just isn’t enough confidence or uniform enforcement of international law to give it any presumption of correctness. If the law is wrong Israel should of course ignore the law. A position which Israel’s Palestinian critics hypocritically adopt whenever they violate Israeli law even in Israel proper or violate international law by failing to meet their security obligations (stopping terrorism) but seem to forget when they talk about the Israeli occupation.

Anyway I thought this post over on the Volokh Conspiracy provided some interesting additional detail. It makes a pretty compelling case (though not expert legal opinion) that in fact all the Israeli settlements on the west bank are in fact perfectly legal under international law as well as the barrier. The most significant point is the following:

Jordan’s renunciation of the West Bank necessarily included a renunciation of all claim to West Bank land which had been owned by the Jordanian government. The renunciation therefore perfected Israel’s legal ownership of the former Jordanian government lands in the West Bank.

Sure there is an International Court of Justice ruling to the contrary but glancing through the ruling I have to say that I am terribly unimpressed. In particular rather than the precise technical rulings that characterize true judiciary bodies like the supreme court, this opinion seems to give the appearance of legal precision through its long list of events and facts but nowhere did I see it dealing with the hard legal arguments. In particular it seemed to be as much of a policy decision as it did a legal opinion. For instance it takes the Israeli governments decision to recognize the PLO as the representative of the Palestinian people to be sufficient to make them a ‘people’ deserving of self-determination. Does the court really take itself to be adopting a precedent which would demand Spain to allow the Basque to secede if it ever recognized the elected leaders from that region as representatives of the Basque people and they favored cessation?

In principle I am very much in favor of a regime of international law. However, I am becoming more and more convinced that what currently passes for international law is simply not appropriate. Such a system should start with precise statutes with explicit automatic penalties for violation and build up slowly. Issuing advisory opinions like this one undermines the entire point of international law as a commonly agreed framework independent of international politics or policy. It’s very unfortunate because international law is such a promising tool but I think the ICJ and its proponents aren’t willing to let international law develop slowly only as consensus builds around clear statutes.

Of course this says nothing about how good an idea west bank settlements are/were. I think they are obviously morally deplorable. There is no real Israeli need for them and they clearly cause suffering among the Palestinians. Though at this point whether withdrawing from them is a plausible option or even a good idea is much more murky.

So recently the Church of England voted through a non-binding resolution calling for divestment from companies profiting from the ‘illegal occupation’ of palestine, i.e., caterpillar because their bulldozers are used to knock down palestinian houses. This resolution has naturally come under fire with criticism coming from jewish groups and Tory MPs amoung others. In response the archbishop seems to be backpedaling though not totally disavowing the statement. While major figures aren’t explicitly saying the act is anti-Semitic some commentators on the radio are making this claim and the suggestion seems to be in the air. While the church’s resolution is poorly thought out and wrong headed it is not anti-Semetic.

The ‘illegal occupation’ language is just silly. To the extent that there is something called international law the legal status of the occupied territories is highly debatable. However, even if we grant some notion of international law which makes the occupation illegal it is just a red herring. The only relevant question is whether the occupation is morally right. If international law is wrong it ought to be ignored (this isn’t arguable it is by definition).

The reason these arguments from international law sound convincing is because they draw on our (correct) presumption in everyday life that abiding by the law is generally the right thing to do. However, this presumption only exists because we live in situations where we have a strong and relatively fair system of law enforcement. Engaging in vigilante killings, deterrent murders or other illegal behavior to protect ourselves is a bad thing because we have a police force we can generally trust to enforce reasonably fair laws without letting tit-for-tat violence spiral out of hand. If one lived in the old west and one could gun down a violent gang who you had good reason to believe would kill many others not only should you not avoid doing so because of some distant unenforceable law against murder but you would actually be morally required to do so. When the UN starts putting police on the streets in the west bank and really enforcing prohibitions on arms/militant groups the ‘illegal occupation’ argument will make sense but until then the situation is a great deal like the old west.

Ultimately the question is whether Israel’s actions with regard to the west bank are morally reprehensible. While on first glance ones intuition might say that punishing ‘innocent’ (they may have been tacitly encouraging the anti-israeli bombs) palestinians for the actions of a few (bulldozing houses, curfews, fences etc..) is clearly wrong it is really no different than plenty of actions the church tolerates. Sanctions against misbehaving regimes punish innocent citizens to encourage compliance, WWII killed many innocent germans (conscripts or just civilians) to stop the nazis, and in general any sticks in international relations are guaranteed to hurt some innocent people. The relevant question is whether the harm caused is more or less than the benefit achieved. However, this is obviously a very complex question about policy and delicate psychological predictions and reasonable people all adhering to the core values of the anglican communion can reasonably disagree. There are plenty of issues right on the Church of England’s doorstep where christian values cry out against the way people are behaving and they should concentrate on those issues.

However, while it is undoubtedly true that the church and people in the first world generally criticize Israel more for their debatable actions than they do places like sudan for clearly egregious actions it just isn’t anti-semitism. Actually just the opposite. The sense is that Israel is part of the western world and answerable to the same standards and expectations as other first world countries. Churches, protest groups, and other organizations don’t concentrate on North Korea, Sudan or other misbehaving countries as much because these countries are just outside the sphere of rational discourse. Unlike Israel which is a democracy and can be reasoned with people treat these countries as outside the sphere of reasonable discourse and thus don’t bother to critique them. Crying foul because Israel comes in for more criticism than Sudan makes about as much sense as getting upset because liberals in the US spend more time criticizing Bush for violating human rights than they do Hu Jintao (Chinese leader). Far from anti-semitism the extra criticism is actually a sort of backhanded compliment. Israel is considered a part of the responsible first world in a way the palestinians just aren’t. Though of course none of this is to say their aren’t some people who critique israel for anti-Semitic reasons but I hardly think the Church of England or other mainstream organizations are amoung them.

Mohamed ElBaradei was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize this year (for merit or to telegraph disapproval of the war?). During his acceptance speech he made the following statements:

The world should work to make nuclear weapons as universally condemned as slavery or genocide.

The hard part is how do we create an environment in which nuclear weapons — like slavery or genocide — are regarded as a taboo and a historical anomaly?

While I’m sure this sounds all great and idealistic total nuclear disarmament would be utterly disastrous. While ElBaradei and other activists for complete nuclear disarmament seem to view deterrence as some kind of evil it is what keeps North Korea from subjugating all of South Korea. Any complete nuclear disarmament would guarantee any rogue nation constructing a nuke would be the sole nuclear power and able to use the threat of a nuclear strike to get whatever it wanted. Even if we make nuclear weapons as “universally condemned as slavery or genocide,” we should expect nuclear rogue states to flair up at least every decade.

I’m all for a reduction in nuclear weapons, and hopefully someday their will be an appropriate world body who can be trusted to be the only nuclear power. However it is just foolishly idealistic to believe that mere moral condemnation is sufficient to stop megalomaniac dictators or ethnic groups who fear genocidal attacks from their more numerous neighbors. Especially when building a nuke would make them the only nuclear power because everyone else has disarmed.

The situation with countries and nukes mirrors that with people and gun use. It may be desirable to reduce or even ban gun ownership by normal individuals (ignoring for the moment the sporting uses) but it would be utterly foolish not to keep some guns around for the police. If criminals knew that the police could not respond with a similar level of force criminals would go out of their way to get guns and use them to commit crimes and fend off the police. Even the most anti-firearm countries recognize this fact and keep guns around for the police and the situation is no less obvious with nuclear arms.

Previously I had been completely behind ElBaradei even when the US tried to oust him from his position as head of the IAEA. However, this revelation makes me worry his judgement is so clouded by peacenik style sentiments he will actually put more people at risk. If he really is foolish enough to believe mere international condemnation will prevent states from acquiring nukes when they would become the sole nuclear power why should I trust his judgments about Iran? Will his faith in the strength of international moral condemnation cause him to downplay or resist any results which might lead to military options for disarmament? Just because the war in Iraq wasn’t needed to prevent nuclear proliferation doesn’t mean going to war is never necessary. Already Bush has severely damaged the effectiveness of the nuclear anti-proliferation by making it political suicide to go to war over WMDs and we don’t want to weaken the anti-proliferation position any further.

Of course ElBaradei could just be cleverly lying to help head off nuclear proliferation. Perhaps by suggesting the ultimate aim of anti-proliferation is to disarm the acknowledged nuclear powers eventually he can make it more palatable to the rest of the world. If this is what he is really doing it is a clever strategy but somehow I get the sense that he isn’t lying.

Unfortunately much of the debate about the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty has focused on weather or not the US needs nuclear tests to maintain its nuclear arsenal or even expand it. This has pushed aside the important question of how the CTBT might increase or decrease risk of a nuclear conflict and replaced it with an ideological battle over whether the US should maintain a muscular military stance backed by nuclear weapons. Others even seem to view the CTBT as some kind of referendum on nuclear weapons. While I fully agree that nuclear weapons are an unfortunate development and that the US should retreat to a much reduced nuclear arsenal (enough to retain deterrence) these political questions should not distract us from the real implications of the CTBT.

In fact far from reducing the risk of nuclear conflict I think the CTBT actually increases this risk. The CTBT does little over the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to further discourage proliferation. What it does do is increase the uncertainty over a countries nuclear arsenal and its effectiveness. As a quick game-theoretic style consideration reveals countries with only a 50/50 chance of having working nuclear weapons may in fact be far more dangerous than those countries with known nuclear capability. While one might think important concerns like this would be addressed by proponents of the CTBT but even relatively reputable advocates seem to have been distracted by the ideological battle. I will walk through the arguments below but ultimately I think it is a very bad idea to risk a greater likelihood of nuclear conflict just to make a statement. (more…)