Rational Philosophy

(24 little hours…)

Kevin Rudd, just sworn in as Australia’s new prime minister, wasted no time in further isolating the United States position on global warming and the Kyoto agreement, reversing in the space of one day twelve years of steadfast opposition to Kyoto by his conservative predecessor John Howard.

Yesterday a National Intelligence Estimate (who coined that marvellous name?) tentatively declared that Iran’s nuclear weapons program (if it had one) was brought to a halt in 2003, immediately creating a new set of political parameters for the election year.  The looming hawk of military action against Iran seemed to have been suddenly caught in a downdraft.

Apart from being good news for the world in general, I’m not yet sure who this favors politically. The Democrats seem to be the winners initially, by being able to point to the administration’s overzealousness. But in the longer run, it may favor the Repulblican candidates since they won’t get drawn in to making unpopular commitments to counter the threat in Iran with force as we did in Iraq.

And the vote that upset Hugo Chavez’s plans for a socialist Venezuela led by himself for an indefinite period of time (the Castro-model) surely shifted Venezuela’s political and social course in ways almost too dramatic to imagine. The referendum was, officially at least, quite close — 49% for, 51% against. If the numbers had come out just a little more in favor, the course toward a socialist dictatorship would have been set.

With such large scale political shifts the world itself becomes a different place from one day to the next. But if we think about our own lives, we too can experience dramatic shifts from one day to the next.

My wife commented recently that the concept that everyone else has a life and experience as rich as one’s own, as important to them as our own life is to us, is a continuously amazing thought. (We were on our way for a sonogram, a check up on the progress of our baby (21 weeks). What more fitting example of a life-changing event? One day you’re not pregnant, the next day you are, and your life will never be the same again.)

Our perception of the world around us, if we choose to think of it like this, creates that world. So, as a thought or impulse becomes action, we change the world. Some actions produce unremarkable results, others have a profound and lasting impact.

There is a connection here between the personal and the public, what matters to us and what matters globally. If Rudd as a person didn’t act to sign on to the Kyoto agreement, the Australia would remain a non-signatory. If Chavez’s opposers in Venezuela didn’t personally go to the polling booths to vote, his referendum wouldn’t have been defeated.

And if the Iranian leadership had acted differently, or if the members of the 16 U.S. intelligence organizations that reviewed the intelligence had assessed it differently, the NIE issued yesterday may have been less optimistic about the past and future impact of international pressure and sanctions on Iran’s nuclear capability. The current administration and a possible future Republican administration may have been headed toward another invasion like the invasion of Iraq, an invasion orchestrated by individuals with the leverage of another NIE, and with the cummulative support of fearful and fight-happy citizens across the country.

The importance of hindsight, of course, is to use it to avoid making the same mistake again. But first one has to acknowledge that one made a mistake. And we all know who that one is…

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News of Hugo Chavez’s narrow referendum defeat brought a decidedly unexpected relief. His proposals, in line with his former policies and stated goals, would have moved the Chavez administration toward a Castro-style dictatorship. But whereas Castro possesses an enduring charm, even if warped and spoiled by time and power, Chavez has all of the charm of a pit bull. At the conclusion of CNN’s story on the referendum result, the reporter offers a fascinating financial footnote: Venezuela’s oil-fueled prosperity, which has helped enrich Chavez’s popularity and solidify his power (the country’s wealth allows him to fund his social programs) accounts for as much as 90% of the country’s export economy. Two guesses as to who buys most of venezuela’s oil… Us. Apparently, the United States is one of the few countries that can refine Venezuela’s low-grade crude and we pick up about a million barrels per day. So, America then, Chavez’s nemesis, has been funding his regime.

A so-called National Intelligence Estimate issued today — a consensus view of “all 16 American spy agencies” (but who’s counting?) — concludes that Iran quite probably stopped its weapons program (if it had one) back in 2003, and that as of the middle of this year had probably not resumed that program (if it ever existed). Although couched in all kinds of provisos and qualifications, perhaps the most striking conclusion of the NIE is the estimate that sanctions and international pressure probably caused Iran to halt its program (if it did and if it had one). Of course, the White House has been quick to point out that this makes the President right again in seeking to maintain and increase pressure on Iran, rather than being wrong to pressage military action, since military action would have been not his error but someone else’s error for issuing a National Intelligence Estimate like the one that got us into the Iraq war. (Not that that was a mistake, but if it had been a mistake it would have been someone else’s mistake, too.) In any case, money seems to have been a key factor in making bringing to a halt the Iranian weapons grade fuel enrichment centrifuges (if they weren’t just nuclear energy centrifuges).

In Malawi two seasons of good crops have helped prevent famine. After the country’s most recent miserable crop failure in 2005, the president of Malawi, Bingu wa Mutharika, decided to ignore the financial strings attached to foreign subsidies and to subsidize himself the use of fertilizer and good seed. The U.S., Britain, and the World Bank have disfavored fertilizer and seed subsidies in countries such as Malawi because… wait for it… “foreign-aid fashions in Washington [and elsewhere] featured a faith in private markets and an antipathy to government intervention.” Let me get this straight, while the U.S. government subsidizes fertilizer purchases for our own farmers it’s been preaching and practising free-market ‘no subsidy’ religious policies overseas that have effectively been starving millions of people in Africa and elsewhere. The shamefulness of such self-righteous arrogance seems reprehenisble.

(There’s also a good op-ed piece about Goldman Sachs along similar lines, but I don’t have space to write about that.)

Money, money, money… But what about principles, what about good sense, what about logic and reason, why does money seem to lurk behind everything like a pesky accountant with an irrevocable pen poised to fall?

Allow me a quick detour into energy and matter. When Einstein equated mass with energy he unlocked a mysterious secret about the universe. The question: What is this stuff that things are made of? Einstein’s answer: Call it what you will, but you may as well call it energy.

A similar, humbler equation exists of course between money and power. Money and power are two ways of thinking about the same thing. You can convert one into the other and vice versa.

(My wife and I, for another instance, were discussing the presidential race and my wife pointed out to me the reason Mike Bloomberg could still run for president having skipped the abrasion of the primaries: He doesn’t need the money.)

Rather than just throw up my hands at this point, I’m struck by the question of what we as observers of the machinations of money and power can we do to make a difference? It seems to me that armed with the awareness that money churns away like a sump pump in the basement of every important political edifice, we’ll always be better able to judge things for what they are if we pop our head down the stairs and take a sniff. “Follow the money,” as Deep Throat apparently said, and we’ll be richer for it.

And if we doubt that paying attention to this will be enough to make a difference, we can be heartened by another discovery of science, famously encapsulated by the thought experiment of Schrodinger’s cat, that observation by itself is enough to change the outcome of a process.

Humility, ironically, arises out of an enforced awareness that one isn’t all one’s cracked up to be. Young children have a supreme sense of power and entitlement. My son needs constantly to be reminded to append the word ‘please’ to his commands. For a three year old he’s not unusual in this regard. He hasn’t yet learned that supreme power is never as supreme as it seems.

(As a parent, on the other hand, I am assured a constant supply of humility as I grapple with the need to balance my needs and desires with those of my children. Suffering a “Maisy” DVD, for instance, not to keep my son quiet (or not primarily so) but because that’s what he wants to watch and who am I to tell him that it isn’t compelling viewing?)

Pervez Musharraf has announced that he will step down from his position as head of Pakistan’s military on Thursday. He’s promised this before and reneged, but this time the circumstances would lead me to think that he will follow through. Musharraf has been served a dose of humility by Saudi Arabia. He’d gone there to ask King Abdullah to keep ex-leader Nawaz Sharif in exile until after the elections. The king demurred, saying he didn’t want to get in the middle of Pakistan’s politics. Musharraf’s hold on power apparently wasn’t as clear to the king as it once had been. As Sharif returns to Pakistan with a flourish, it’s likely that Musharraf will forgo his military position in the hopes of holding onto his political position.

It’s unclear whether President Bush has been experiencing humility or not. Having lost control of Congress and hoping to stay relevant, Bush has turned or has been turned toward political strategies that his administration had derided. He has been signing executive orders to outlaw the fishing of endangered species in Federal waters (a practice that’s already banned), clearing airspace for holiday flight schedules, and setting up a bilateral middle east peace summit (something he had poo-pooed in the past). Across the globe in Australia, the ousting of Prime Minister Howard removes another Bush crony from world politics. The new Labor PM, a speaker of Mandarin, will likely remove Australian combat troops from Iraq and may stop the sale of Uranium to India, since India hasn’t signed the international nuclear non-proliferation treaty. Although Bush undoubtedly can find it in himself to confess his love for Mandarinians, his loss off a staunch ally in Howard surely should make him feel even more isolated. But although the signs would indicate that Bush should be feeling humbled, it’s not a certainty that he does; one of Bush’s defining traits seems to be self-confidence in the face of his own incompetence.

And the GOP, faced with a shortfall in donations for campaign financing, has been targeting wealthy potential candidates in the hopes that they will fund their own campaigns. This is a turnaround. Usually it’s the Democrats who find themselves strapped for cash. Does the GOP feel humbled? Well, for now perhaps, but in the long run I doubt it.

Unfortunately, humility often doesn’t stick.

Sharif has been away long enough that people seem to have forgotten his own frightening ideas and tactics. (Sharif wanted to throw out the Pakistani legal system in favor of a system of law based strictly on the Koran.) Musharraf wasn’t the only one to denounce him as a fascist. Sharif’s own leadership was rocky to say the least. Kicked out of office and exiled for many years one would think that he has had time to reflect and reconsider his egotistical ambitions. Now he returns promising to save the country. Oh, dear.

In politics, while personal humility is rare one feels that it can happen, whereas humility of a party or group seems elusive at best and probably impossible.

Humility, I think, comes in two flavors — expedient humility and true humility. I induce expedient humility in my son when I tell him to say please and thank you if he wishes to continue to get the things he’s asking for. He complies because he understands the risk of non-compliance. So, too, the politician who finds himself in a position of compromised power knows that he must adapt or sink. For a while he swallows his pride and does things that he doesn’t really want to do.

True humility comes about when one acknowledges that one’s own desires and ambitions must be measured and tested against those of others, and that, if we want to avoid oppressing others, we must err on the side of favoring their desires of others over our own. For a political party, or an inveterate politician, true humility is an anathema.

One can only hope that whoever attains power after the shakeout in Pakistan feels enough pressure to induce expedient humility. The same can be said for next year’s election here in the US. For our children, on the other hand, we can hope that repeated reminders of the benefits of humilty will induce the self-reflection and awareness required to inculcate true humility. This way lies the better future of the human race.

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Last week I wrote about the long term risk posed by the Bush administration’s tame response to President Musharraf’s abrupt dismantling of Pakistan’s democratic apparatus. I framed the administration’s reluctance to come down hard on Musharraf in terms of political expediency. But as I read the NY Times recent interview with Musharraf, it occurred to me that Musharraf and Bush perhaps have a lot in common, and that maybe subconsciously (or consciously) Bush doesn’t want to take strong steps against Musharraf because he identifies with him. Not that we should take everything Bush says literally, but he has been quoted as referring to Musharraf as “my buddy and my friend.”

“The emergency is to ensure elections go in an undisturbed manner,” Musharraf says, which reminds me of Bush’s defense of domestic surveillance as necessary to maintain security.

“I know what [the Pakistan people] feel about the emergency when all these suicide bombings were taking place,” Musharraf commented on the increase in suicide bombings, “Their view is, Why have I done it so late.” Which recalls Bush’s insistence that the American people elected him and support his policy of invading Iraq.

The Times also reports that Musharraf defended his dismantling of the Supreme Court because the court had questioned the validity of his re-election. Similarly Bush has attempted, and in some cases
succeeded, in redefining standards for torture, or ignoring international conventions or protocols, because he doesn’t like the restrictions they place on him.

When we identify with someone, psychologically speaking, we connect characteristics they posses with similar characteristics that we attribute favorably to ourselves. Identification has served us well as a species. Identification induces empathy which helps us reach outside ourselves to help others. But identification also presents a particular danger that we need to guard against: With an excess of ego, we can wrongly perceive a characteristic that we possess as good, and, by extension identify and sympathize with that characteristic in others.

Bush seems to believe that his arrogance is justified. He knows better than the courts, he thinks, about what he should do and what is acceptable. He convinces himself that he is right to work outside or to twist the rule of law. If Bush were to condemn Musharraf for similar actions he would create dissonance in his view of himself.

Bush likes to perceive himself as popular and in tune with the people. Musharraf, the same. Outwardly, the trait they believe they possess is a feeling for the people; they like to view themselves as regular guys, men of the people. The true identification seems to be murkier. Perhaps they each recognize a similar weakness in the other, a desire to be liked and understood. It seems that they each feel defensive and inferior, feelings that bring with them a certain bravado (which brings us back to their arrogance).

Referring to the jailed the head of Pakistan’s Human Rights Commission, Asma Jahangir, Musharraf calls her “quite an unbalanced character.”

Interestingly, this comment reminds me of Rudy Giuliani and his now famous rant against the “crazy” owners of ferrets (going back to when he was Mayor of NY City).

Rudy Giuliani has said that he would not urge the Bush administration to cut off financial aid to the Musharraf government. “I would not second-guess any president on that because I think they’re in the middle of a very difficult situation right now,” Giuliani said to The Associated Press.

Perhaps Giuliani’s identifies with Musharraf, too. Something we should keep in mind as we move toward next year’s elections.