Archive for July, 2008

We’ve all seen optical illusions before, but have you ever heard an auditory illusion? Well, here’s your chance…

Play the clip. Then play it again. Then play it again. You will be amazed.

This is called a Shepard tone. From Wikipedia: A Shepard tone, named after Roger Shepard, is a sound consisting of a superposition of sine waves separated by octaves. When played with the base pitch of the tone moving upwards or downwards, it is referred to as the Shepard scale. This creates the auditory illusion of a tone that continually ascends or descends in pitch, yet which ultimately seems to get no higher or lower.

I promised to write some extended thoughts on this response to my post on Obama’s Berlin speech over at friend-of-Urbanagora Josh Xiong’s new-ish blog, so here goes. It seems I left him unconvinced:

Look, it’s not hard to recognize there are a lot of collective action problems in the world and that multilateral institutions require work and cooperation. Nor does it seem clear that Bush or McCain have rejected tackling these collective action problems. Bush has worked with the EU3 and the Six-Party framework to tackle Iranian and North Korean nukes; he has worked with the G8 to increase aid to Africa (more so than any other president before him). McCain has called for a strengthening of our alliance with rising democracies such as Brazil and India; he is for greater multilateral cooperation through a concert of democracies; and he is a staunch defender of free trade, something necessary if you want genuine global cooperation.

With the exception of isolationists, nobody with half an ounce of internationalist in them denies that collective action problems are important. It does not take a lot of courage or acumen to reocognize this point. But doing so does not preclude judgement, prioritization, and selectivity.

It’s true that not everything Bush has done has been anti-internationalist. Josh is right to point out the success of the multilateral approach to North Korea, and to celebrate the increase in aid to Africa. I’d also point out that Bush’s policy toward China has been appropriately constrained, in contrast to McCain’s seeming desire to be increasingly belligerent. But all that demonstrates is that to the extent that Bush has embraced liberal internationalism, his foreign policy has been a success. When he abandoned that approach, the most notable example of course being Iraq, his policy has been a disaster.

More importantly, the only distinction in foreign policy theory that Josh seems to want to recognize is that between isolationists and internationalists. But this is the same kind of muddled thinking that led many liberal hawks (including myself) to support the invasion of Iraq in the first place. It’s true that if you were to exclude isolationists from the equation, some of Obama’s speech would turn into superfluous fluff. But there isn’t just one big school of thought called “internationalism” out there. Rather, there is one group that some like to call “neoconservatives” but who might also be termed “nationalists” or “imperialists,” and another group that I’ll call “liberal internationalists” (both groups could be further divided, and these various schools of thought are obviously not hermetically sealed off from one another, but these divisions provide a useful guide).

Both groups believe the United States should play an active role in the world, but there is a vitally important difference in terms of how each thinks that should be done. Neoconservatives are far more comfortable acting unilaterally. They tend to take the view that the US is in some way exceptional. According to this view, international law and international institutions like the UN are at best not particularly important and are at worst completely meaningless and expendable. Alliances may be helpful, a neoconservative would concede, but the United States is powerful and dominant enough to discard them, particularly when it comes to states that are not democratic (which gives rise to McCain’s wrongheaded embrace of a “League of Democracies,” his profoundly stupid desire to kick Russia out of the G8, his unwillingness to negotiate with Iran, and his above-mentioned hostility toward China).

Liberal internationalists, by contrast, strive as much as possible for a rule-based international order. This means strengthening institutions like the UN and the ICC. It means submitting to imperfect international agreements in the recognition that trading off short-term national interests can reap long-term benefits. It means recognizing the growing influence of smaller states, including those with unsavory governments. Above all else, it means a very strong disinclination toward exempting the United States from the rules of the international order, whether in the form of permitting torture, holding prisoners indefinitely in Guantanamo, or waging aggressive war. (And, yes, it also means a commitment to free trade, and I’m perfectly willing to concede that to the extent a President Obama reneges on free trade agreements, he will be disappointing me, though it seems far more likely that Obama’s anti-free trade rhetoric is political pandering rather than an expression of any genuine intention to, for example, renegotiate NAFTA).

While Obama’s Berlin speech was not as politically groundbreaking as his speech on race, it did reflect, to anybody willing to pay attention, a commitment to liberal internationalism and a condemnation of neoconservatism. And that’s a vitally important distinction between him and John McCain, regardless of whom you support.

So, due to my lack of consistent internet access, I have been unable to put the post on a review of Obama’s economics plan. So instead, I am going to rely on someone to do it for me. This piece by Michael Boskin that ran in the Wall Street Journal seems to be a nice jumping off point for a conversation. The portion that I especially appreciated in this column, and I believe I have mentioned this idea in a comment somewhere, is the apparent dichotomy of Obama’s professed desire to “improve the United States standing in the world” and his stated plan to compel our trading partners to renegotiate international trade standards and treaties. Treaties which the United States, in many cases, were adamant supporters.

(SPECIAL NOTE TO BRIAN: This is how you do a short post that states disagreement with another person’s side and can lead to discussion, without throwing a hissy fit.)

So, due to my lack of consistent internet access, I have been unable to put the post on a review of Obama’s economics plan. So instead, I am going to rely on someone to do it for me. This piece by Michael Boskin that ran in the Wall Street Journal seems to be a nice jumping off point for a conversation. The portion that I especially appreciated in this column, and I believe I have mentioned this idea in a comment somewhere, is the apparent dichotomy of Obama’s professed desire to “improve the United States standing in the world” and his stated plan to compel our trading partners to renegotiate international trade standards and treaties. Treaties which the United States, in many cases, were adamant supporters.

(SPECIAL NOTE TO BRIAN: This is how you do a short post that states disagreement with another person’s side and can lead to discussion, without throwing a hissy fit.)