Mid-Monthly 1:8

Reviews of Import:
The Case for Goliath, by Michael Mandelbaum

I promised you reader(s) that I would read it, and I did. The thesis of the work is what attracted me: it is summarized in the subtitle, “How America Acts as the World’s Government in the 21st Century”. I hadn’t heard this expressed in just that way before, though the basic idea is quite straightforward. Generally, the author (whose day job is reporting on foreign affairs for Newsday) supports it well, though I would quarrel with the tense of the verb and the time period described—I’d say rather that he demonstrates “How America Acted as the Closest Thing to the World’s Government, Especially Right after the Cold War”.

A government needs to provide certain public benefits to the governed, and Mandelbaum covers a range of them and demonstrates that there’s value to the rest of the world (ROTW) in what America has done, in its own interest, in the areas of military security, diplomacy, trade, and financial guarantees. The arguments come from the bipartisan, internationalist, realist school of foreign affairs which has predominated in America since World War II; they’re well supported by references to similarly-inclined scholars and analysts, and they stick pretty close to well-established facts. To be sure, Mandelbaum’s world that we govern is limited to the community of democratic (or, at least, non-Communist), free-trading nations, but since the Cold War ended, that has included the majority of nations and people.

OK, so far so good. Mandelbaum’s argument breaks down in three areas: the legitimacy of the USA as the world’s government, the other functions of government which the USA does not do for the ROTW, and finally, the expectation he tries to build that what has been recently, will continue.

Mandelbaum’s section on the political science notion of legitimacy doesn’t even try to make the argument that the USA’s governance is legitimate beyond its borders. He does make reference to traditional concepts of legitimacy, as with the Chinese Emperor of ages past, where the fact of predominance is its own justification, but he chooses instead to posit legitimacy in the modern world in a democratic, legalistic notion. In that sense, it’s the U.N. which is the legitimate organization, but of course it has no power beyond what the national governments and its limiting Charter allow it. Basically, in USA Rule there’s no taxation, and no representation (if there were, it wouldn’t be Dubya in the White House, that’s for sure). The real argument for the legitimacy of USA Rule comes later, in which Mandelbaum implies clearly that there’s a tacit consent among the leadership of many nations to let the Americans handle some of these difficult issues, though they would never admit to it and reserve every right to criticize.

There are a number of areas in which modern governments are heavily involved from which the USA’s world governance is conspicuously absent: housing, welfare for the poor and elderly, labor relations, transportation, regulation of corporate activities, and the broad categories of public health and safety—these don’t come up at all in the argument. All right, it’s a libertarian kind of governance, and, like many governments, there are some no-go zones where its power is not felt so keenly. More surprising is that Mandelbaum does not go more deeply into one area in which America exerts its power in the affairs of other nations, that being justice. In the sense of enforcing its view of who exactly are terrorist organizations, what drugs are illegal, and bringing fugitives under lock and key, America is indeed “the world’s policeman”.

The major inconsistencies and the great weakness of the thesis center around Mandelbaum’s lack of a transformational vision for America’s role in the future. He seems to think things will go along as they have, subject only to the willingness of the American people to foot the bill.

The first part of the argument is that there are no other likely candidates to take on the role that the USA has taken on. He specifically focuses on debunking any notion of a genuine world government coming into being or that Europe has anything to contribute in dealing with these global issues. We can agree that it is difficult to imagine the political circumstances which would lead the national governments to yield their sovereignty, but it is not hard to come up with major issues for which they have proved totally inadequate to address without one: AIDS, poverty, nuclear energy and nuclear weapons, global warming, fossil fuel depletion, demographic whiplash, etc. Most of these are glossed over, with the exception of the nuclear one which he features in his argument of Goliath’s benign rule, and that is one I would argue specifically is failing dramatically before our eyes in these days: we kept the slingshots out of many would-be David’s hands for a long time, but we’ve got to come up with a new deal here or someone’s going to take it between the eyes. The simple fact is that we can only intimidate nations from taking up nukes until they defy us and do so, then we have to switch our strategy to deterrence.

Mandelbaum states that “a world government would, by definition, have responsibility for establishing order everywhere,” but how much does the USA, which “acts as the world’s government” do that? We can all see the deficiencies of the United Nations under its current, post WWII Charter, but Mandelbaum exercises no effort trying to imagine improvements to it, or a pact among the more powerful nations to bring about a more democratic international body. As for Europe, no one is looking for a restoration of the imperial rule of the ROTW by Europeans, but I would argue they are taking on the heavy lifting of solving problems of bringing together many nations with different cultures, languages, economic status under a single governmental roof (even if a cacophonous one), particularly as they take on the tasks of expansion to Eastern Europe and consider the possibility of including Turkey.

The second big quarrel has to do with the domestic support needed for America’s role abroad. Mandelbaum clearly sees America’s foreign policy as “unitary”—something the nation does, united, bipartisan. He says that it’s not so hard for other nations’ representatives to buttonhole someone in a responsible position for American foreign affairs and to influence them. At the same time, though, he states (and I agree) that these policies are driven by an elite—of politicians, academics, and military and economic professional analysts—with the mass of the American public largely uninterested but supportive when it affects it directly. He has little to say, really, about the costs or the benefits to this mass, and the last thing he seems to want is for the public to actually take notice and get involved in these stratospheric affairs. For example, he is quite ready to acknowledge that foreign governments and foreign peoples had very legitimate concerns about the Iraq invasion from the beginning (expressed both through private diplomatic channels and through public demonstrations), but he never once acknowledges that there was also very significant opposition to the policy at home at the time, as well.

I am not one who believes that these matters should be left to the “experts”, who make the policies we all then get to rally behind. In particular, it is this lack of vision which is their blind spot: I would argue that American strategic policy in the 1990’s was so weak because it was entirely based on improvisation: our experts had utterly failed to envision the collapse of the Soviet Union, so there had been no thinking about what the world might be like without the Cold War; thus, the opportunity that was present then was largely squandered, until 9/11/01 which gave us something more pressing to think about.

I think that, unreasonable as it is to expect other nations’ peoples to permit gladly the USA’s government to govern them, even at no charge, it is even more unreasonable to expect the American people to continue to foot the bill (using today’s catchphrase, with their “blood and treasure”) without telling them more of the truth and giving them a clearer understanding of what is to be accomplished, how, why, and for how much. Finally, I would expect Mandelbaum, or any advocate for continuing the general line of America’s internationalist, free-trading, realist school, to bring a stronger argument that the American people’s long-term interest lies in getting involved and becoming more knowledgeable about the world, its problems, and possible approaches to solving them.

Singularity Sky, by Charles Stoss

Changing pace dramatically here, this science fiction novel came strongly recommended, and I, in turn, have to recommend it strongly as well. It's been accurately categorized as "space opera", but is also a well-crafted story of political and social intrigue with its share of satire (my personal favorite genre). I found it included a lot of the most recent notions about Einsteinian physics, theoretical spacecraft (and star war) engineering, nanotechnology applications, etc. It combines some of the best features of Dune and of cyberpunk, notably a human Diaspora, people much like us dealing inadequately with future shocks and alien civilization, and a preference for anarchistic modes of self-governance as the best way of accommodating our accelerating technology, without a clear idea of how to get there. Personally, I would prefer to have some of our futurist thinkers consider how we can accelerate our social development so as to be able to handle our expanded powers, but....

Two Almost Post-Fidel Movies
Fidel is almost gone, though it doesn't seem as though that will be very momentous with Raul still around to enforce Stalinism. I saw two recent movies, though, that I thought worthy of some comment that have some connection with Cuba.
The Lost City was Andy Garcia's dream project. He doesn't explain it in terms of family connection, but it would seem to be the story that he has always heard at the family dinner table, adapted for Hollywood. He directed, produced, and starred in it--amazingly enough, he's not credited with the screenplay.
I hope he wasn't responsible for the sound on this--it was awful, at least in the cinema where we saw it (an art house). Muddy, with lots of mumbling. Visually, it was quite nice: filmed in the Dominican Republic, I think.

As a piece of history, I'm not qualified to comment, though I think it captured accurately the spirit of a segment of population before the revolution: liberal, white, urban. It was a state of mind that aspired to make the country better, inevitably terribly disillusioning living within the Batista dictatorship. I liked the segments when his brother went off and joined with the revolution, and the portrayal of Che Guevara. There was an interesting notion which might interest the survivors, post-Fidel/Raul: a couple of references to the liberal constitution of 1940, to which Batista paid occasional lip service but never observed, while Fidel claimed he would restore it (before he got into power, of course). Perhaps it could be revived.

I have to admit that I liked Miami Vice, the TV series, more than it deserved. Yes, the plots were totally formulaic, but there was a stolid earnestness about it (particularly Edward James Olmos) that felt real, and its use of rock music to help set the scene was a milestone, much-copied in latter days. Michael Mann proved he still had the chops with Collateral, so I was pretty keen to see this movie.

I can give it only a mixed review. Jamie Foxx was good as Rico--no surprise there, though he changed the role considerably. Gong Li was, of course, gorgeous, but also interesting as a Cuban/Asian (?) who had the smarts to be the consigliere of the drug runners, but somehow wasn't smart enough to see her doom approaching. The idea of her character going over to Cuba with Sonny in a fastboat for a couple days' of mojitos and partying was a good one, timely and provocative (also filmed in the D.R.?) The use of computer technology as a key tool for the drug runners was a good update to the standard package. Plenty of good action sequences.

The plot was no more than the usual formula, I'm afraid. And I miss the old Gina (her role, as usual, was next to nothing)--why couldn't they get Saundra Santiago back? I'm sure she's still in form; I see she was in The Sopranos, in the revival of Nine, etc.