With the troubling situations in both North Korea and Somalia, many people are thinking about how to handle these situations. The answer must be the old adage "go big, or go home".
After the successful rescue of a captured American ship captain, Somali pirates have vowed to step up their efforts and get revenge upon western vessels for the loss of their kinsmen. Just today, we've already seen an escalation in hijackings including the first night-time raid and another attack on a US ship. At the same time, North Korea has yet again abandoned the 6-party talks, kicked out IAEA inspectors, restarted it's nuclear programs and swore that it would start production of another nuclear bomb.
So, what is to be done about all of this? Some have come up with a variety of possible ways forward, including several task forces in the Department of Defense. The problem, in the end, boils down to a repeat of similar problems in the past. Are we willing to sacrifice what it takes to fix the problem in order to fix the problem? Is our policy going to be based on what we want, or by what we're willing to pay?
If we rewind the clock 10 to 15 years, we can clearly see that we've had this problem before. Somalia had collapsed and was threatening both US interests and a vague sense of moral indignation at mass slaughter. At the time, the Clinton policy was driven not by a strategy that looked at the end goal (fixing things) and deciding how to take the steps necessary to that end. Instead, it was driven by the amount of political capital, money, and American blood that the president was willing to spend. The strategists had to do the best with what they had, rather than getting what they needed to do the job. In the end, the plan unsurprisingly fixed nothing AND shed much more political capital AND American blood than was allowed for at the outset.
The second big situation of the 90's, of course, was Iraq. Iraq, for a time, was developing nuclear weapons (until their facilities were turned into blasted heaps of rubble by the Israelis). Likewise, Saddam endlessly threatened his neighbors and the US. The diplomatic confrontation went on and on. Year after year, the US would provide support for Iraq, only to have it's chain yanked. Oil for food turned into money for Saddam. A tightly-controlled, autocratic regime knew how to play America to get what it wanted, every time, and make Clinton look like an ass, every time. A political cartoon that ran in my local paper showing Saddam with a paddleball with the ball replaced by the head of Bill Clinton was tragically appropriate.
So what happened in the end? With Iraq, people were so fed up with Saddam (especially in the government) that the president fabricated and embellished a case for war against our enemy that we were just frankly sick of having to deal with (so much so that the government nearly unanimously approved of war). Because we were jerked around so much for so long, we eventually snapped and were willing to put the resources on the line to fix the situation (by ousting Saddam). Likewise, when we failed to do anything about the situation in Somalia, the situation in Somalia continued. The piracy we're dealing with is a direct result of having failed to deal with the situation in the first place.
Thus, it can be clearly seen that by caring about a situation, but taking action based on cost, not results, leads us inevitably to a situation where we're going to pay the cost anyway (if not moreso) in the end. Thus, no matter how uncomfortable things are, we need to be willing to "go big". If we really care about North Korea's nuclear weapons program, we've got to be willing to destroy the government of North Korea. If we really care about Somali pirates, then we're going to have to put the proper amount of resources on the line to actually do the nation-building required to get the job done. Otherwise, we're just going to have to do this later, at greater cost.
Of course, there is one out to this all. That is, of course, that we could stop caring. If we simply forbid American vessles to travel through the Suez canal, or simply handed complete worry and responsibility of a nuclear North Korea (or Iran for that matter) to local powers and totally washed our hands of it, then we wouldn't need to spend any resources at all. Sure, the problems wouldn't be fixed (as if they would through a tempered response), but they wouldn't be our problems any more. This is the "go home" option, where we solve our problems by simply refusing to care about them. Of course, this option would throw away any moral obligatiojavascript:void(0)n to any human being outside of the borders of the United States.
Otherwise, to take a middle road means cost for no results. It means a tragic reliving of the Clinton years of foreign policy that will ultimately end with a president like Bush who will actually act to try and solve problems rather than letting them fester. If Obama decides to break from the Bush way of thinking and adopt the Clinton, he's just setting himself up to be replaced by another Bush. Hopefully we can have the clear-sightedness to actually cut losses where they should be cut, and do the proper actions to fix things, rather than just more unpopular, or unproductive squandering of American blood, treasure, credibility, and respect.
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Thursday, April 9, 2009
A Victory for Piracy (the good kind)
With a few key pieces of internet legislation that have come up recently, mankind has shown of its awesome ability to keep doing what it wants to do, even if a segment of it thinks they shouldn't.
It can not be stated enough on this blog that coersion doesn't work. When one person tells another person to stop doing what they're doing, it doesn't matter how big of an institution the first person makes, or how much power they can pump into it, that person will always fail in the end. A vast majority of the time, failure starts the instant direct coersion is let up. Check out this article from cracked.com for some great examples.
One of the things that people want is to have access to things that entertain them, and they want it now, and they want it to be priced at the most on-the-house level possible. Of course, industry giants that became industry giants specifically because they offered people just enough of what they want, but not enough to stop making fistfuls of cash from them, hate this part of human nature. If only it happened to be true that what we all wanted was to be entertained and to give away as much of our GDP as we could in the process. The solution, of course, has been to offer their services, but then to tell people what they can and cannot do.
This, generally speaking, always fails. What intellectual-property-mongers of all media tried to do when people ignored them and started downloading songs and movies was, of course, to use coercion. Did suing teenagers for embarrassingly large piles of cash get people to do what they want? Does anyone wonder how effective coercion is?
Of course, futility has a frustrating inability to convince irrational people to stop doing that which has no utility. Unfortunately, it's this very same group of people who happen to have money and power. Take Sweden, for example. The statehouse there recently enacted tough new anti-internet-piracy laws. Because the police can now take down your computer's IP address, naturally all forms of internet piracy were going to come crashing to a halt. Because states can use coercion to get their way, remember?
While traffic on piracy sites did decline for about a day, they shot back up when piracy organizations offered a new service. Now, you can keep on doing exactly what you wanted to do, but your IP will be scrambled, and your actions will be untraceable. Not only was this an easy thing for pirating organizations to do (heck, I could set up a VPN if I wanted to), and not only did they likely have this new service up BEFORE the resolution actually got signed into law, but the best part is that the organizations are charging a nominal fee for their service. The end result of attempting to legislate morality? People are doing exactly what they were doing before, but now the people facilitating the same (now illegal) activity are making more money than ever before.
Sound familiar? There are countless examples from Prohibition to the Drug war. In fact, the state of Mexico is so devoted to legislating out drug use and trafficking that the state has nearly gone bankrupt and collapsed in on itself in an attempt to use a failed strategy for an end that they will never be able to achieve. If it takes the ultimate destruction of Mexico to prove that coercion has no utility, than I guess it will be worth it, but I have this sneaking suspicion that all lessons would immediately be lost.
Thankfully, SOMEONE has taken notice of this. Recently, France's parliament passed a law that said that if recording industry people broke into your computer and found at least three pieces of pirated anything they could permanently ban you, personally, from the internet. Somehow, a majority of French legislators actually thought that this would work. Thankfully, nearly 2 in 3 of people in the French National Assembly realized how absolutely retarded this idea was (not to mention the eggregious trampling on civil liberties), and voted it down.
Tragically, France's president has forced the legislative bodies to vote on it again after their spring break. I suppose the only ally of idiocy is persistence.
It can not be stated enough on this blog that coersion doesn't work. When one person tells another person to stop doing what they're doing, it doesn't matter how big of an institution the first person makes, or how much power they can pump into it, that person will always fail in the end. A vast majority of the time, failure starts the instant direct coersion is let up. Check out this article from cracked.com for some great examples.
One of the things that people want is to have access to things that entertain them, and they want it now, and they want it to be priced at the most on-the-house level possible. Of course, industry giants that became industry giants specifically because they offered people just enough of what they want, but not enough to stop making fistfuls of cash from them, hate this part of human nature. If only it happened to be true that what we all wanted was to be entertained and to give away as much of our GDP as we could in the process. The solution, of course, has been to offer their services, but then to tell people what they can and cannot do.
This, generally speaking, always fails. What intellectual-property-mongers of all media tried to do when people ignored them and started downloading songs and movies was, of course, to use coercion. Did suing teenagers for embarrassingly large piles of cash get people to do what they want? Does anyone wonder how effective coercion is?
Of course, futility has a frustrating inability to convince irrational people to stop doing that which has no utility. Unfortunately, it's this very same group of people who happen to have money and power. Take Sweden, for example. The statehouse there recently enacted tough new anti-internet-piracy laws. Because the police can now take down your computer's IP address, naturally all forms of internet piracy were going to come crashing to a halt. Because states can use coercion to get their way, remember?
While traffic on piracy sites did decline for about a day, they shot back up when piracy organizations offered a new service. Now, you can keep on doing exactly what you wanted to do, but your IP will be scrambled, and your actions will be untraceable. Not only was this an easy thing for pirating organizations to do (heck, I could set up a VPN if I wanted to), and not only did they likely have this new service up BEFORE the resolution actually got signed into law, but the best part is that the organizations are charging a nominal fee for their service. The end result of attempting to legislate morality? People are doing exactly what they were doing before, but now the people facilitating the same (now illegal) activity are making more money than ever before.
Sound familiar? There are countless examples from Prohibition to the Drug war. In fact, the state of Mexico is so devoted to legislating out drug use and trafficking that the state has nearly gone bankrupt and collapsed in on itself in an attempt to use a failed strategy for an end that they will never be able to achieve. If it takes the ultimate destruction of Mexico to prove that coercion has no utility, than I guess it will be worth it, but I have this sneaking suspicion that all lessons would immediately be lost.
Thankfully, SOMEONE has taken notice of this. Recently, France's parliament passed a law that said that if recording industry people broke into your computer and found at least three pieces of pirated anything they could permanently ban you, personally, from the internet. Somehow, a majority of French legislators actually thought that this would work. Thankfully, nearly 2 in 3 of people in the French National Assembly realized how absolutely retarded this idea was (not to mention the eggregious trampling on civil liberties), and voted it down.
Tragically, France's president has forced the legislative bodies to vote on it again after their spring break. I suppose the only ally of idiocy is persistence.
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
A Failure of What?
As Somali pirates continue to hijack more and more vessels, fingers are being pointed, but who's really to blame?
Piracy off of the horn of Africa has been rife over the past few months, but with the capture of an American vessel and the first of many British warships entering the area, the issue is once again heating up. While the temporary solution to the problem seems to be clear, the causes and thus the long-term solutions seem to be muddled and unknown.
When I was driving home today, I heard a guest on "The World" give what must surely be the most western version of the story. Namely, Somalia is chugging out pirates because it has a failed state. Because there is no overarching coercive force to force the law on desperate Somalis, they are behaving so reprehensibly. Notwithstanding that coercion doesn't work, the feeling is that if the Somalian state is unable to beat it's own citizens into doing what's right, other states will send their navies in to beat up Somalian citizens into doing what's right (we insist).
But, of course, the whole point of a state is not to force it's population into a certain set of behavior patterns through force. It is unsurprising that those states who have held such to be their mandate have all invariably failed. Put otherwise, it is the attempt to mete out law at all costs that causes states to fail, rather than the failure of a state that causes lawlessness. After all, there are many communities in the world that don't have direct, external, state-sponsored law that do just fine (like the Amish, for example), and to think that men are naturally savage and require strong governance over them to prevent rampant anarchy and death may be surprised to know that their philosophical roots were already cut out nearly 400 years ago...
The particular guest then went on to say that another reason for Somali piracy is the desperate condition of Somalis. Specifically, because they have a failed state, they don't have education, roads, or welfare. Simply put, without government giving you what you need, you are left in a world of squalor. Of course, this idea is actually absurd. People have gotten on well enough without states providing infrastructure or medical bill reimbursement or factory-produced government schools for millennia. If this hyper-statist point of view were accurate, then the entire world, pre-westphalia, would have been nothing more than barbarity and mass butchery: something we know to be patently false.
We know as fact that people can take care of themselves without a government handing them everything without immediately resorting to things like piracy. The overbearingly western idea that the failure of the state has transitively caused the problems is clearly confused. Thea idea that Somalis are risking their lives for $10 million in one go when they otherwise might make $10 over their entire lifetime seems much more at heart in this issue. We could just lump this all into a category of mass greed if it weren't for the fact that Somalis do suffer SO much and are in SUCH a state of destitution. Such want undoubtedly would drive people to float rafts hundreds of miles away from shore just for a chance at relief.
This brings us to another thing that this particular guest noted. Somalis are in a very desperate state, and we know this because almost everyone there is reliant on food aid. Once again, there is reason to believe that this line of thinking has been turned on its head. It is assuming that the Somalis are desperate (perhaps due to lack of an overbearing government), that they are required to take food aid in order just to get out of the worst of their deprivation. In fact, it may be that the opposite is true: food aid is CAUSING the worst of the deprivation.
Foreign aid is often channeled into the hands of governments who simply divert the funds for themselves. Somalia was no exception to this in the early 1990's. Those resources that DO manage to make it down to regular people undermine the fledgling ability for the people to provide for themselves. After all, what Somali farmer or pastor can possibly compete against free food from the rest of the world? What you wind up with is with a bunch of out of work farmers swelling the need for more aid, while no longer being able to help free their country from their need of it. Add to that interest payments on loans, and we can begin to see a fundamental factor for the worsening of the situation in Africa since we've started giving out aid.
So, in the end, if it's not a matter of a failure of state or a failure of aid that's causing the conditions which breeds piracy, then the question is, "this is a failure of what?" Firstly, and most clearly, this is a failure of Somalians to provide well enough for themselves. If they grew enough food, and desired political unity and economic stability (rather than the tribalism and looter-take-all attitude which has been rife in Somalia for the past few thousand years) enough, they would be able to MAKE an environment in which piracy was no longer such a good-seeming option. While a state may very well be helpful, all states rest on the consent of the governed (they are made for the people BY the people), and the governed seem to have no will to make a state. It requires little imagination to consider what would happen were a state forced on them from outside...
While the Somalis should take a lion's share of the blame (but if they don't feel guilty, then what good will it ultimately do?), the outside world certainly hasn't helped. Rather than encouraging entreprenurialism, or civil society, it encourages dependency (which, in the end is really another word for slavery), and attacks civic institutions as harbingers of terrorism. We want Somalia to step in line, and do things our way. After all, there's a profit to be had.
If we want to have any hope to change this situation, there seems to be only two real options. The first is to swarm the Gulf of Aden with warships and murder anyone caught in a boat, while at the same time colonizing Somalia and giving (forcing on) them a state which they were unable to make themselves. Extreme order through extreme coercion. Welcome to the 1800's. The second, of course, is to stop half-assedly engaging with Somalia in a system which is ultimately propagating the problem. By this, I mean that we need to wean Somalia off of its dependency that is ultimately its ruin, and we need to stop behaving like we can control a Somali state (or even that we know what it should look like), and let Somalia grow up into a strong, independent nation. Stiflement begets destitution begets retribution, now as in the past, and to simply state that Somalia has "failed" to make a state in our image that follows our laws and norms is simply continuing the problem to the indefinite future.
Piracy off of the horn of Africa has been rife over the past few months, but with the capture of an American vessel and the first of many British warships entering the area, the issue is once again heating up. While the temporary solution to the problem seems to be clear, the causes and thus the long-term solutions seem to be muddled and unknown.
When I was driving home today, I heard a guest on "The World" give what must surely be the most western version of the story. Namely, Somalia is chugging out pirates because it has a failed state. Because there is no overarching coercive force to force the law on desperate Somalis, they are behaving so reprehensibly. Notwithstanding that coercion doesn't work, the feeling is that if the Somalian state is unable to beat it's own citizens into doing what's right, other states will send their navies in to beat up Somalian citizens into doing what's right (we insist).
But, of course, the whole point of a state is not to force it's population into a certain set of behavior patterns through force. It is unsurprising that those states who have held such to be their mandate have all invariably failed. Put otherwise, it is the attempt to mete out law at all costs that causes states to fail, rather than the failure of a state that causes lawlessness. After all, there are many communities in the world that don't have direct, external, state-sponsored law that do just fine (like the Amish, for example), and to think that men are naturally savage and require strong governance over them to prevent rampant anarchy and death may be surprised to know that their philosophical roots were already cut out nearly 400 years ago...
The particular guest then went on to say that another reason for Somali piracy is the desperate condition of Somalis. Specifically, because they have a failed state, they don't have education, roads, or welfare. Simply put, without government giving you what you need, you are left in a world of squalor. Of course, this idea is actually absurd. People have gotten on well enough without states providing infrastructure or medical bill reimbursement or factory-produced government schools for millennia. If this hyper-statist point of view were accurate, then the entire world, pre-westphalia, would have been nothing more than barbarity and mass butchery: something we know to be patently false.
We know as fact that people can take care of themselves without a government handing them everything without immediately resorting to things like piracy. The overbearingly western idea that the failure of the state has transitively caused the problems is clearly confused. Thea idea that Somalis are risking their lives for $10 million in one go when they otherwise might make $10 over their entire lifetime seems much more at heart in this issue. We could just lump this all into a category of mass greed if it weren't for the fact that Somalis do suffer SO much and are in SUCH a state of destitution. Such want undoubtedly would drive people to float rafts hundreds of miles away from shore just for a chance at relief.
This brings us to another thing that this particular guest noted. Somalis are in a very desperate state, and we know this because almost everyone there is reliant on food aid. Once again, there is reason to believe that this line of thinking has been turned on its head. It is assuming that the Somalis are desperate (perhaps due to lack of an overbearing government), that they are required to take food aid in order just to get out of the worst of their deprivation. In fact, it may be that the opposite is true: food aid is CAUSING the worst of the deprivation.
Foreign aid is often channeled into the hands of governments who simply divert the funds for themselves. Somalia was no exception to this in the early 1990's. Those resources that DO manage to make it down to regular people undermine the fledgling ability for the people to provide for themselves. After all, what Somali farmer or pastor can possibly compete against free food from the rest of the world? What you wind up with is with a bunch of out of work farmers swelling the need for more aid, while no longer being able to help free their country from their need of it. Add to that interest payments on loans, and we can begin to see a fundamental factor for the worsening of the situation in Africa since we've started giving out aid.
So, in the end, if it's not a matter of a failure of state or a failure of aid that's causing the conditions which breeds piracy, then the question is, "this is a failure of what?" Firstly, and most clearly, this is a failure of Somalians to provide well enough for themselves. If they grew enough food, and desired political unity and economic stability (rather than the tribalism and looter-take-all attitude which has been rife in Somalia for the past few thousand years) enough, they would be able to MAKE an environment in which piracy was no longer such a good-seeming option. While a state may very well be helpful, all states rest on the consent of the governed (they are made for the people BY the people), and the governed seem to have no will to make a state. It requires little imagination to consider what would happen were a state forced on them from outside...
While the Somalis should take a lion's share of the blame (but if they don't feel guilty, then what good will it ultimately do?), the outside world certainly hasn't helped. Rather than encouraging entreprenurialism, or civil society, it encourages dependency (which, in the end is really another word for slavery), and attacks civic institutions as harbingers of terrorism. We want Somalia to step in line, and do things our way. After all, there's a profit to be had.
If we want to have any hope to change this situation, there seems to be only two real options. The first is to swarm the Gulf of Aden with warships and murder anyone caught in a boat, while at the same time colonizing Somalia and giving (forcing on) them a state which they were unable to make themselves. Extreme order through extreme coercion. Welcome to the 1800's. The second, of course, is to stop half-assedly engaging with Somalia in a system which is ultimately propagating the problem. By this, I mean that we need to wean Somalia off of its dependency that is ultimately its ruin, and we need to stop behaving like we can control a Somali state (or even that we know what it should look like), and let Somalia grow up into a strong, independent nation. Stiflement begets destitution begets retribution, now as in the past, and to simply state that Somalia has "failed" to make a state in our image that follows our laws and norms is simply continuing the problem to the indefinite future.
Monday, April 6, 2009
Marching to a New Tune
With the events of the past few days, it appears that there has been a real change in the way the United States handles it's defense policy. What direction is our military taking into the future?
Only a few hours ago, the Secretary of Defense Robert Gates announced a new direction forward for the Pentagon. In it was not simply a change of rhetoric, but a change in direction. Because the change came from a bureaucrat, it is possible that much more of the change will actually be implemented, which means that we might very much see some real changes to the U.S. military in the next few decades.
The change is moving things forward in a few different ways. The biggest is that it is reversing the long-standing trend of cuts to active-duty military personnel. No longer is the path toward eventually phasing out the human aspect entirely, but rather it is realizing the extensive needs of the human element in the irregular wars we've been fighting (after all, drones can't go house to house and ask residents to give out names of terrorists like real people can). As well, there's a focus of moving towards increasing special ops, as well as more translators, and social studies majors embedded in military units.
But what's more important than what's put in is what's left out. The highlight of the chopping block was the Future Combat Systems program. Basically, for the first time since the New Model Army, a major military was being redesigned from the ground up in a cohesive way. One protocol for networking vehicles together, one protocol for weapon specs and military doctrine to use them. Rather than being hodge-podge upgrades, this was going to be a clean-sweep, followed by a set-piece American army.
The problem, other than it's massive budged overruns and startling lack of progress, was what it was designed to do. Specifically, it was designed to fight a major war with contemporary major powers.
The problem, of course, is that none of the other major powers have made any real strides in their military capabilities in over 20 years. The U.S. ended the Cold War 2 or 3 steps ahead of everyone else, and, due to research over the past 20 years, are now more like 10 or 12. In short, the U.S. already HAS the ability to crush any possible combination of major powers in a conventional war, and that would only happen in the first place once it somehow became okay to engage in such a war in the age of nuclear weapons.
There is still, however, the vague threat of developing industrialized powers. Iran, for example, could be persuasively argued to be trying to make a nuclear weapon while North Korea just attempted another ballistic missile test.
The thing we have to remember, though, is that the U.S. as far as military technology is concerned, is where it is due to 50 YEARS of cold war defense spending as the most productive nation on the planet. North Korea, on the other hand, is using a way smaller resource base, and has spent much less time. The U.S., for example, was able to put a satellite into orbit after 10 years of trying. North Korea, on the other hand, has spent the past 10 years since their first disastrous taepodong test (that blew up less than a mile off the launchpad) reworking the rocket into one that can unreliably fail and discharge its payload somewhere in the Pacific Ocean.
This new move by the pentagon shows that someone down there understands that we already have the ability to crush everyone, and the most threatening states (conventionally speaking), are ones that are so far behind our current capabilities that if we stopped now, it would take centuries for them to catch up.
But what does this all mean? Firstly, it means that the Department of Defense is FINALLY coming to the realization that, even though we've had a long time since our last major war, the next major war is still an impossibly long way into the future. As well, it signals a turning away from the idea that technology wins wars to the idea that technique wins wars. It's going to be the trained counter-insurgent, not the trained F-22 Raptor pilot that will really be winning our wars in the future.
As such, with a change in doctrine, capabilities, and funding, the U.S. will be much better handled to win wars like Iraq and Afghanistan in the future. Of course, in theory, it also gives everyone else a chance to catch up to us, military-technology-wise. Once a relative single, overarching hegemon in the field of global power is gone, conflict among major powers is not only possible, but likely. This conflict, however, would still be deterred by the threat of nuclear weapons (unless people have actually gotten rid of them in the far future). As such, major war will only be possible if several major actors catch up AND technology neutralizes nuclear weapons.
Given the fact the the U.S. is the only country seriously attempting to neutralize nukes (through it's variety of anti-missile systems), and it's joining the rest of the developed world that isn't really making conventional weapons upgrades, a move in the direction that the Pentagon is currently taking seems more than prudent.
For further reading, click here or here.
Only a few hours ago, the Secretary of Defense Robert Gates announced a new direction forward for the Pentagon. In it was not simply a change of rhetoric, but a change in direction. Because the change came from a bureaucrat, it is possible that much more of the change will actually be implemented, which means that we might very much see some real changes to the U.S. military in the next few decades.
The change is moving things forward in a few different ways. The biggest is that it is reversing the long-standing trend of cuts to active-duty military personnel. No longer is the path toward eventually phasing out the human aspect entirely, but rather it is realizing the extensive needs of the human element in the irregular wars we've been fighting (after all, drones can't go house to house and ask residents to give out names of terrorists like real people can). As well, there's a focus of moving towards increasing special ops, as well as more translators, and social studies majors embedded in military units.
But what's more important than what's put in is what's left out. The highlight of the chopping block was the Future Combat Systems program. Basically, for the first time since the New Model Army, a major military was being redesigned from the ground up in a cohesive way. One protocol for networking vehicles together, one protocol for weapon specs and military doctrine to use them. Rather than being hodge-podge upgrades, this was going to be a clean-sweep, followed by a set-piece American army.
The problem, other than it's massive budged overruns and startling lack of progress, was what it was designed to do. Specifically, it was designed to fight a major war with contemporary major powers.
The problem, of course, is that none of the other major powers have made any real strides in their military capabilities in over 20 years. The U.S. ended the Cold War 2 or 3 steps ahead of everyone else, and, due to research over the past 20 years, are now more like 10 or 12. In short, the U.S. already HAS the ability to crush any possible combination of major powers in a conventional war, and that would only happen in the first place once it somehow became okay to engage in such a war in the age of nuclear weapons.
There is still, however, the vague threat of developing industrialized powers. Iran, for example, could be persuasively argued to be trying to make a nuclear weapon while North Korea just attempted another ballistic missile test.
The thing we have to remember, though, is that the U.S. as far as military technology is concerned, is where it is due to 50 YEARS of cold war defense spending as the most productive nation on the planet. North Korea, on the other hand, is using a way smaller resource base, and has spent much less time. The U.S., for example, was able to put a satellite into orbit after 10 years of trying. North Korea, on the other hand, has spent the past 10 years since their first disastrous taepodong test (that blew up less than a mile off the launchpad) reworking the rocket into one that can unreliably fail and discharge its payload somewhere in the Pacific Ocean.
This new move by the pentagon shows that someone down there understands that we already have the ability to crush everyone, and the most threatening states (conventionally speaking), are ones that are so far behind our current capabilities that if we stopped now, it would take centuries for them to catch up.
But what does this all mean? Firstly, it means that the Department of Defense is FINALLY coming to the realization that, even though we've had a long time since our last major war, the next major war is still an impossibly long way into the future. As well, it signals a turning away from the idea that technology wins wars to the idea that technique wins wars. It's going to be the trained counter-insurgent, not the trained F-22 Raptor pilot that will really be winning our wars in the future.
As such, with a change in doctrine, capabilities, and funding, the U.S. will be much better handled to win wars like Iraq and Afghanistan in the future. Of course, in theory, it also gives everyone else a chance to catch up to us, military-technology-wise. Once a relative single, overarching hegemon in the field of global power is gone, conflict among major powers is not only possible, but likely. This conflict, however, would still be deterred by the threat of nuclear weapons (unless people have actually gotten rid of them in the far future). As such, major war will only be possible if several major actors catch up AND technology neutralizes nuclear weapons.
Given the fact the the U.S. is the only country seriously attempting to neutralize nukes (through it's variety of anti-missile systems), and it's joining the rest of the developed world that isn't really making conventional weapons upgrades, a move in the direction that the Pentagon is currently taking seems more than prudent.
For further reading, click here or here.
Thursday, April 2, 2009
A Victory for Science (Part 3)
While the recent Texas evolution fight made a loser out of both Creationists and Evolutionists, thankfully science came out the winner.
A Victory for Science (Part 1)
A Victory for Science (Part 2)
Recently, the state of Texas underwent a periodic review of it's biology curriculum textbook. At primary issue was a debate over how evolution should be taught. The results were mixed. For the last part of this three-part blog, I'm going to look at the real winner of this battle of wits: science.
The entire point of science, as I see it, is to make the most accurate generalizations about the universe. In order to do this, it tries to be objective as it can, demanding rigor through repeatable experimentation, falsifiability, and open disclosure of methods, along with debate of conclusions in peer-reviewed journals. Subjectivity can produce accuracy, but not consistently, and it's much more difficult to dislodge subjective falsehoods than objectively-created ones.
As such, in order to avoid the pitfalls of subjectivity, science has to constantly be critical and skeptical. It has to be constantly on the lookout for doctrine and dogma. Otherwise, people could make up their own worldviews using some data generated by the scientific method and then call their worldview "science", and that everyone else is a subjective moron for not believing in it. It is these worldviews, no matter the data that is in them, that becomes dogmatic.
Tragically, huge swaths of what the theory of evolution has created is, in fact, worldview. Long ago, people like Huxley made up their own religion using some real science that Darwin had done. This worldview hijacked the objective system of science to create a subjective ideology, and then branded anyone who didn't believe in evolution to not believe in science. Refusal to believe in ANY subjective system, no matter who came up with the data does NOT mean that you disbelieve in objective systems, like science.
But tragically, this hasn't been apparent to so many scientists over time. As such, many believe that in order to believe in the objective system of science, you need to believe in the subjective parts that snuck in.
Thankfully, however, at least in the state of Texas, this tragedy is under siege. Now high schoolers are being taught that they need to approach theories critically and conclusions with skepticism. They are learning that real science involves real debate, not simply accepting what more senior scientists, or a simple majority of the science community says is so. They are learning that disagreeing with conclusions does not mean that you are an unscientific heretic to rational thought and reasonable disposition.
Not only will students have a more mature understanding of how the scientific process works, but it also emphasizes the power that real science has. As mentioned before, students who are able to critically handle data and debate conclusions are less likely to fall for non-science like creationism while they're busy disbelieving non-science like evolutionism. As well, it embeds the principle that conclusions from authority should be questioned and tested, whether the truth comes from the lips of high-ranking priests, or high-ranking scientists. Noocracy averted, democracy is still safe for the future.
Hopefully these kinds of people will go on to enter scientific professions so that they can help clean out future subjective messes, and the scientific body will be better off for it. If we are forced to have non-scientific groups propounding real science to clean out the non-science from scientific groups, then so be it. Texas definitely made the right call.
For further reading, click here.
A Victory for Science (Part 1)
A Victory for Science (Part 2)
Recently, the state of Texas underwent a periodic review of it's biology curriculum textbook. At primary issue was a debate over how evolution should be taught. The results were mixed. For the last part of this three-part blog, I'm going to look at the real winner of this battle of wits: science.
The entire point of science, as I see it, is to make the most accurate generalizations about the universe. In order to do this, it tries to be objective as it can, demanding rigor through repeatable experimentation, falsifiability, and open disclosure of methods, along with debate of conclusions in peer-reviewed journals. Subjectivity can produce accuracy, but not consistently, and it's much more difficult to dislodge subjective falsehoods than objectively-created ones.
As such, in order to avoid the pitfalls of subjectivity, science has to constantly be critical and skeptical. It has to be constantly on the lookout for doctrine and dogma. Otherwise, people could make up their own worldviews using some data generated by the scientific method and then call their worldview "science", and that everyone else is a subjective moron for not believing in it. It is these worldviews, no matter the data that is in them, that becomes dogmatic.
Tragically, huge swaths of what the theory of evolution has created is, in fact, worldview. Long ago, people like Huxley made up their own religion using some real science that Darwin had done. This worldview hijacked the objective system of science to create a subjective ideology, and then branded anyone who didn't believe in evolution to not believe in science. Refusal to believe in ANY subjective system, no matter who came up with the data does NOT mean that you disbelieve in objective systems, like science.
But tragically, this hasn't been apparent to so many scientists over time. As such, many believe that in order to believe in the objective system of science, you need to believe in the subjective parts that snuck in.
Thankfully, however, at least in the state of Texas, this tragedy is under siege. Now high schoolers are being taught that they need to approach theories critically and conclusions with skepticism. They are learning that real science involves real debate, not simply accepting what more senior scientists, or a simple majority of the science community says is so. They are learning that disagreeing with conclusions does not mean that you are an unscientific heretic to rational thought and reasonable disposition.
Not only will students have a more mature understanding of how the scientific process works, but it also emphasizes the power that real science has. As mentioned before, students who are able to critically handle data and debate conclusions are less likely to fall for non-science like creationism while they're busy disbelieving non-science like evolutionism. As well, it embeds the principle that conclusions from authority should be questioned and tested, whether the truth comes from the lips of high-ranking priests, or high-ranking scientists. Noocracy averted, democracy is still safe for the future.
Hopefully these kinds of people will go on to enter scientific professions so that they can help clean out future subjective messes, and the scientific body will be better off for it. If we are forced to have non-scientific groups propounding real science to clean out the non-science from scientific groups, then so be it. Texas definitely made the right call.
For further reading, click here.
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
A Victory for Science (Part 2)
While the recent Texas evolution fight made a loser out of both Creationists and Evolutionists, thankfully science came out the winner.
A Victory for Science (Part 1)
Recently, the state of Texas underwent a periodic review of it's biology curriculum textbook. At primary issue was a debate over how evolution should be taught. The results were mixed. For the second part of this three-part blog, I'm going to look at one of the losers to this battle of wits: creationists.
Creationists just plain old don't like a lot of the conclusions that the theory of evolution implies. I don't know of any who disbelieve in the science of genetics, but I also don't know any that believe that non-life begets life, and that organisms in one kingdom, given enough time, can turn into organisms that belong to another kingdom. The thing is, for hardcore creationists, it's NOT a simple matter of being skeptical of a scientific theory, it is the purposeful rejection of an ideology because it is in conflict with theirs. It's not that evolution untenably corroborates disassociated data, it's that if you believe in it, you go to hell.
While it would be easy to claim that creationism has somehow won in this whole affair, the ultimate result is the opposite. The current Texas decision has set a precedent that will ultimately HURT the creationist standpoint.
This is because the tactic that creationists have used is a tactic of "don't just believe what you're told, or what's popular". Of course, Christianity isn't well-known for it's skeptical disbelief in that which cannot be empirically verified. No, the real point of this type of argument is two-fold. The first is that it presents a legitimate window through which one can scientifically doubt the "scientific" principles of evolution. With their foot in the door, creationism is allowed to wedge it's own "science" in: intelligent design.
Intelligent design is not science. It is an ideologically-driven train wreck between philosophy and data (just like evolution). It makes sense to create a new pseudo-science that has positive ramifications on your ideology to counter a pseudo-science that has negative ramifications. The problem, of course, is the method that creationists are using to get their blend of garbage to replace the existing blend.
The method, remember, is to question everything. Be critical. Be skeptical. The reason, of course, is that this spirit (the spirit that drives real science) has a tendency to wash away non-science mumbo jumbo. The error, though, is to assume that once people use critical reasoning against evolution, they won't then turn the very same against creationism. There is no way that creationism, as a science, can survive against critical thinking.
At best, it's a wash for creationism. Yes, the kids may not believe in evolution, but they're not going to believe in intelligent design either. But here's the dangerous part: you've taught your kids to be skeptical. It's not going to take long before those same little 9th grade critical thinkers to point their aim at Christianity. Remember, Christianity, at least the parts that attempt to describe history and universal fact, does not hold up well against science. If you don't believe me, just ask the Catholic Church.
In the end, critically thinking teens will start looking at Christianity and coming to conclusions like "Christianity is the belief that a cosmic Jewish Zombie who was his own father can make you live forever if you symbolically eat his flesh and telepathically tell him you accept him as your master, so he can remove an evil force from your soul that is present in humanity because a rib-woman was convinced by a talking snake to eat from a magical tree..."
Thus critical reasoning destroys the religion of evolution, thus it destroys the religion of Christ. As such, by using this tactic, creationists are ultimately destroying themselves, which is why this recent decision in Texas makes them a loser too.
A Victory for Science (Part 1)
Recently, the state of Texas underwent a periodic review of it's biology curriculum textbook. At primary issue was a debate over how evolution should be taught. The results were mixed. For the second part of this three-part blog, I'm going to look at one of the losers to this battle of wits: creationists.
Creationists just plain old don't like a lot of the conclusions that the theory of evolution implies. I don't know of any who disbelieve in the science of genetics, but I also don't know any that believe that non-life begets life, and that organisms in one kingdom, given enough time, can turn into organisms that belong to another kingdom. The thing is, for hardcore creationists, it's NOT a simple matter of being skeptical of a scientific theory, it is the purposeful rejection of an ideology because it is in conflict with theirs. It's not that evolution untenably corroborates disassociated data, it's that if you believe in it, you go to hell.
While it would be easy to claim that creationism has somehow won in this whole affair, the ultimate result is the opposite. The current Texas decision has set a precedent that will ultimately HURT the creationist standpoint.
This is because the tactic that creationists have used is a tactic of "don't just believe what you're told, or what's popular". Of course, Christianity isn't well-known for it's skeptical disbelief in that which cannot be empirically verified. No, the real point of this type of argument is two-fold. The first is that it presents a legitimate window through which one can scientifically doubt the "scientific" principles of evolution. With their foot in the door, creationism is allowed to wedge it's own "science" in: intelligent design.
Intelligent design is not science. It is an ideologically-driven train wreck between philosophy and data (just like evolution). It makes sense to create a new pseudo-science that has positive ramifications on your ideology to counter a pseudo-science that has negative ramifications. The problem, of course, is the method that creationists are using to get their blend of garbage to replace the existing blend.
The method, remember, is to question everything. Be critical. Be skeptical. The reason, of course, is that this spirit (the spirit that drives real science) has a tendency to wash away non-science mumbo jumbo. The error, though, is to assume that once people use critical reasoning against evolution, they won't then turn the very same against creationism. There is no way that creationism, as a science, can survive against critical thinking.
At best, it's a wash for creationism. Yes, the kids may not believe in evolution, but they're not going to believe in intelligent design either. But here's the dangerous part: you've taught your kids to be skeptical. It's not going to take long before those same little 9th grade critical thinkers to point their aim at Christianity. Remember, Christianity, at least the parts that attempt to describe history and universal fact, does not hold up well against science. If you don't believe me, just ask the Catholic Church.
In the end, critically thinking teens will start looking at Christianity and coming to conclusions like "Christianity is the belief that a cosmic Jewish Zombie who was his own father can make you live forever if you symbolically eat his flesh and telepathically tell him you accept him as your master, so he can remove an evil force from your soul that is present in humanity because a rib-woman was convinced by a talking snake to eat from a magical tree..."
Thus critical reasoning destroys the religion of evolution, thus it destroys the religion of Christ. As such, by using this tactic, creationists are ultimately destroying themselves, which is why this recent decision in Texas makes them a loser too.
A Victory for Science (Part 1)
While the recent Texas evolution fight made a loser out of both Creationists and Evolutionists, thankfully science came out the winner.
Recently, the state of Texas underwent a periodic review of it's biology curriculum textbook. At primary issue was a debate over how evolution should be taught. The results were mixed. For the first part of this three-part blog, I'm going to look at one of the losers to this battle of wits: evolutionists.
For pro-evolution people (specifically, those who care enough to actually have a vehement opinion on the matter), the result was shocking. To this group, this is nothing short of the state of Texas saying that hard, irrefutable, scientifically-driven, absolute facts of the universe are equal in legitimacy to witchcraft and voodoo. To many in this camp, it is a fundamental debasement of science.
In order to hold this view, you need to have a worldview that tells you that "if the method is good, then the conclusions are good". If you have the proper methodology (say, the scientific method), then the data that you gain from the process is true, and any conclusions that corroborate with are fact. End of story. This is called positivism.
The problem, of course, is that positivists take a warped, inaccurate and, most importantly, limited view of science. Positivism ignores the fact that science has made countless blunders and wildly inaccurate statements over it's long history. Furthermore, it ignores the fact that the data being collected, no matter the methodology, is taken through the lens of human institutions. Which experiments are run in which manner on which hypotheses, and, most importantly, how to subjectively interpret the data into scientific facts is based on human institutions that deal with things like power, money, pride, and all of the other millions of things that make humans subjective. To say that objective truth can be determinately ascertained is flat out silly.
But it's actually more than that. If you take a certain set of data, and, necessarily, introduce human subjectivity to create an ideology, you are doing nothing different than religions do. What you have, in both cases, is not some absolute truth (no matter how much religious figures or positivists would say otherwise), but a primarily faith-based worldview, comprised of a handful of data points and a lot of wishful thinking. In the end, when a positivist looks at evolution: a concept that almost totally defies the ability for the scientific method to even function (ie. science can not prove any given historical event happened), then what the positivist has in evolution is a worldview with a smattering of data and a lot of faith.
As such, what we're seeing here is really people's faith being challenged. As such, it is unsurprising that some evolutionists (like the one linked to above) believe that evolution should not only be taught as absolute truth, but that science classes should prevent students from using critical thinking to examine it. It should be believed, no questions asked.
This is not science. This is religion. It doesn't matter if the particularities of the belief system are different.
But alas, some jerks who have a different religious ideology for how the universe was created and why humans exist have forced the state of Texas to teach children to use objective, skeptical, critical thinking skills on determining the viability of "facts" that are drawn from certain data sets. Unfortunately for evolutionists, they are being beaten by what science actually stands for. Odd that it took another religious group to do what those who have draped themselves in the mantle of science should have been doing this whole time.
Recently, the state of Texas underwent a periodic review of it's biology curriculum textbook. At primary issue was a debate over how evolution should be taught. The results were mixed. For the first part of this three-part blog, I'm going to look at one of the losers to this battle of wits: evolutionists.
For pro-evolution people (specifically, those who care enough to actually have a vehement opinion on the matter), the result was shocking. To this group, this is nothing short of the state of Texas saying that hard, irrefutable, scientifically-driven, absolute facts of the universe are equal in legitimacy to witchcraft and voodoo. To many in this camp, it is a fundamental debasement of science.
In order to hold this view, you need to have a worldview that tells you that "if the method is good, then the conclusions are good". If you have the proper methodology (say, the scientific method), then the data that you gain from the process is true, and any conclusions that corroborate with are fact. End of story. This is called positivism.
The problem, of course, is that positivists take a warped, inaccurate and, most importantly, limited view of science. Positivism ignores the fact that science has made countless blunders and wildly inaccurate statements over it's long history. Furthermore, it ignores the fact that the data being collected, no matter the methodology, is taken through the lens of human institutions. Which experiments are run in which manner on which hypotheses, and, most importantly, how to subjectively interpret the data into scientific facts is based on human institutions that deal with things like power, money, pride, and all of the other millions of things that make humans subjective. To say that objective truth can be determinately ascertained is flat out silly.
But it's actually more than that. If you take a certain set of data, and, necessarily, introduce human subjectivity to create an ideology, you are doing nothing different than religions do. What you have, in both cases, is not some absolute truth (no matter how much religious figures or positivists would say otherwise), but a primarily faith-based worldview, comprised of a handful of data points and a lot of wishful thinking. In the end, when a positivist looks at evolution: a concept that almost totally defies the ability for the scientific method to even function (ie. science can not prove any given historical event happened), then what the positivist has in evolution is a worldview with a smattering of data and a lot of faith.
As such, what we're seeing here is really people's faith being challenged. As such, it is unsurprising that some evolutionists (like the one linked to above) believe that evolution should not only be taught as absolute truth, but that science classes should prevent students from using critical thinking to examine it. It should be believed, no questions asked.
This is not science. This is religion. It doesn't matter if the particularities of the belief system are different.
But alas, some jerks who have a different religious ideology for how the universe was created and why humans exist have forced the state of Texas to teach children to use objective, skeptical, critical thinking skills on determining the viability of "facts" that are drawn from certain data sets. Unfortunately for evolutionists, they are being beaten by what science actually stands for. Odd that it took another religious group to do what those who have draped themselves in the mantle of science should have been doing this whole time.
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