100 Treatises

Why Profiling Won’t Work

You got a better idea?

The recent failed bombing attempt by an agent of Al Qaeda has predictably resurrected the old profiling debate. The thrust of the conservative position on this issue has typically been that we should not worry about people’s feelings when people’s lives are at stake. The liberals, meanwhile, typically say that profiling violates people’s civil liberties and is immoral generally.

I would like to introduce a new argument against profiling that I have not heard discussed by the talking heads. It’s not about feelings, and it’s not about liberties. It’s about the most important question of all: will it actually work? Because, after all, if it just doesn’t work, then any discussion about its effect on people’s feelings, or its conformity with constitutional rights is meaningless.

What is profiling and will it work?

The basic idea behind profiling is that we should, during airport screenings, separate out and pay special attention to individuals who fit the profile of the kind of people who are out to kill us: young Arab Muslim extremist men. The question arises, how can we tell who is a young Arab Muslim man and who is not? Well, naturally, the response comes, it is through things like their skin and hair color, name, religion, and even clothing. Let’s see if profiling on any of these bases can actually work, over the long term.

Skin color: Arab people generally have brown skin. But so do millions of people of Latin American, African, South Asian, Southeast Asian and European origin. How do we distinguish who’s an Arab and who’s a Brazilian? It’s impossible, based on skin color or hair color (all of these people have dark hair, as well).

Name: there are certain names like Abdul, Muhammad or Abdullah that are Arab in origin, and are also taken by many non-Arab Muslims. But there are two problems here: (1) many non-Muslim (Arab Christians) and non-Arab people (Muhammad Ali, the boxer) have these kinds of names; many Muslim people do not have names of this type, and (2) it is safe to say that a terrorist intent on harm will have zero compunction to legally changing his name, but an average harmless person will not—therefore this policy, over time, will inevitably divert security’s attention away from the real threat, and toward the innocent.

Religion: the threat comes from people who are Muslim. Fair enough, but the overwhelming vast majority of people who travel, and who are Muslim, pose no threat. More to the point, how the hell are we supposed to tell who is a Muslim and who is not? Are security officials to ask for “passport and denomination, please” to every traveler? Even if such an absurd policy were to be implemented, can we not depend on the real terrorists to lie, and the innocent Muslim people to tell the truth, again diverting security away from the guilty and toward the innocent?

Clothing: many Muslims wear certain kinds of characteristic clothing. And there is nothing to stop a terrorist from dressing like a westerner, right? Consider, for example, Mohammed Atta:

I’m no fashion designer, but it looks like average western attire to me.

Facial features: now we are really digging. But let’s say we entertain the idea that Arab people have certain characteristic facial features (the structure of the face, the shape of the brow or nose, etc). Problems: (1) in the absence of highly-paid experts in this field stationed at countless airports, this is necessarily very subjective and basically impossible to exploit, (2) huge numbers of Arab people do not share “typical” facial features, indeed they may look like an average European person to the untrained eye (and even the “trained” eye), (3) the most recent terrorist attempt reminds us that our threat is a multiracial and multiethnic one—the guy was a black African, (4) any facial features that could be identified are unquestionably shared by people who are not Arab (consider Jews, Greeks or Italians, whose genetic stock have similar roots in the greater Mediterranean region).

Profiling will not help us

So we see there is no effective, reliable way to weed out the innocent from the guilty. Feelings be damned. If there were a reliable way for airport security personnel to make innocent civilians safer through profiling, I would say “the hell with political correctness—let’s get our priorities in order.” But I have demonstrated that there simply is not, given the nature of this threat. Profiling of this type, if implemented, may help for a little while. But over time, it will have at least two major negative consequences that will overwhelm any potential meagre gains: (1) it will further antagonize average, innocent Muslims and Arabs, thereby stoking violent extremism, and (2) it will lull us into a false sense of security, from which we will be jarringly awoken when one day a blue-eyed Polish-American man blows up an airplane in the name of Allah.

Indeed, we already have many examples of white or western people joining or trying to join Al Qaeda or similar groups. And yet we still have people suggesting that profiling people at airports will be effective. It is abundantly obvious that these terrorists will do whatever it takes to accomplish their mission. If we were to explicitly adopt some profiling regime of the type described above, we can rest assured that the dedicated Islamic militants will dye their hair, change their name, bleach their skin (they’re committing suicide, remember) and put on a different set of clothes. And since they are committing suicide, what’s a little plastic surgery to alter facial features, if they choose to go that far? Add some large sunglasses to further mask their face, a nice shave and some cologne and, voila, a modern white western man is just minding his own business going through airport security.

Many might respond saying “what about profiling based on nationality, background, past suspicious activity, etc.” News flash: we’re already doing that. If one says that we need to improve that whole system (the system that Idiocy Department Chief Janet Napolitano said “worked”), then that is a totally different issue, and I could not agree more.

But, the opponent might say, I have left out one very important trait: gender. The terrorists are overwhelmingly men. Surely there is room here for the diehard profiling lobbyist to snatch victory from the jaws of argumentative defeat, right? The answer: a resounding… maybe.

Ignoring the fact that the hypothetical and innovative terrorist can (1) get a sex change, (2) change his name and/or use a fake passport along with female clothing (which we have seen these kinds of characters do, and which alone seem to negate any long-term effectiveness of gender profiling), this approach might work. If we subject all males to stricter security precautions than females, we could reduce costs and save time without, potentially, reducing security. But that’s just it. The advantages seem to be in cutting costs, rather than increasing benefits. There are female Islamic militants, and the male ones could smuggle bombs or explosive devices into innocent women’s luggage in one way or another.

Conclusions

So it turns out that profiling just doesn’t work. Conservatives just love to paint liberals as pie-in-the-sky idealists with no appreciation for real threats, who play politics with security in the name of “theory” over practicality. Well, it looks like it is the conservatives who are enamored with theory to the detriment of practical logistics on this one.

We are met with two basic realities. First, with few exceptions, basically everybody is going to have to go through the security system the same. Picking out people who fit a certain “profile” might make security officials feel like they’re being smart and cunning, but, as the events of Christmas demonstrate, it just doesn’t work if the overall global security regime is garbage to begin with.

Second, we are reminded of the most important lesson of all: you don’t neutralize threats of this nature with more and more layers of security. At some point, the choice we are met with is to either shut down the entire global system of travel and commerce, or address the real, root causes that feed the animosity and hatred which leads to a transnational militant religious movement. It comes down to economic development and social and political advancement in Muslim and Arab regions, but that’s a topic for another day.

Economics: The Dismal Profession

Arvind Subramanian writes recently in the FT that the field of economics has “made amends” for failing to predict the economic crisis by producing effective solutions for managing it. The fact that a depression was avoided indicates that, for all its flaws, economics has contributed positively.

For sure, we have not learnt all the lessons; we may even have learnt some wrong ones. It is also probable that we are setting the stage for future crises, not least because we are still groping for ways to tame finance. So, economics is bound to fail again. But the avoidance of the Greatest Depression that could so easily have happened in 2009 is an outcome the world owes to economics; at the least, it is the discipline’s atonement for allowing the crisis of 2008 to unfold.

So in other words, economics has been harmful, except it has been beneficial. Only an economist (or, maybe better, an academic) could make illogic seem so logical. It is, after all, “probable that we are setting the stage for future crises,” but hey, “the avoidance of the Greatest Depression… is an outcome the world owes to economics.”

I am reminded of the line that many have used to criticize Ben Bernanke’s recent elevation in stature: the arsonist is rewarded for putting out his own fire. Just replace Bernanke with the entire economics profession over the last 40 years, and you can’t tell the difference. To be sure, there are many brilliant economists who have enhanced knowledge to various degrees in recent decades. And not all economists have subscribed to the neoliberal, neoclassical orthodoxy that laid the foundation for this crisis. But enough did that we can characterize the overall field as deeply flawed.

As I have said, this field has thus far demonstrated little to no propensity to change its tone. We see no meaningful shift in the debate between left-of-center and right-of-center economists; so far, they are debating the same old issues they’ve been debating for years. Large figures like Paul Krugman have, as expected, begun to ask the hard questions and think outside of the box. But where are the rest of them?

In a way, this lack of sufficient self-reflection is understandable in any academic field that is dominated by pride, tenure, seniority and elitism. Despite this, one would expect a massive, intellectually unavoidable disruption to the status quo and the established “models” to prompt some real, solid soul-searching in any such discipline.

The fact that there has been no such soul-searching is troubling, to say the least. These are, after all, the same people who are spinning the intellectual yarn from which an extremely fundamental component of our social order is made, and will continue to be made.

The global economic system came to the brink of collapse. And yet, the same, tired old rightist and leftist politicians are having essentially the same, tired old debates they were having 1 or 2 years ago about state involvement and welfare checks. Surprise, surprise, they are prescribing the same, tired old policies (Lower taxes! No, more regulation!). Meanwhile, the supposed intellectual keepers of the system are asleep at the wheel.

So the economic system came close to collapse. And Jimmy cracked corn, and they don’t seem to care. Subramanian’s pride in his field is misplaced. It is far from clear that the crisis is really “over.” If he really wants to help avoid the next crisis, and do something good for the world, he would do better by getting out his pen and paper and reconsidering the Theory of Consumer Choice, rather than writing opinion pieces about how great his failed profession is.

The Melting Pot Gets a Dose of Brown Sugar

In the most recent mayoral election in New York City, the New York Times reports, for the first time, the majority of voters were non-white. This is of course a sign of things to come in New York and the US overall, as many have been projecting for a while that by the middle of this century the majority of people in that country will not be white.

Now, this would not necessarily be a problem if we could be confident that the vast majority of people in the US would not define, distinguish and separate themselves to a significant degree on racial, ethnic and cultural lines. But we can’t. And that alone is cause for concern.

Of course, the problem is not the overall color tone of the country. The problem is the implications it spells for social and political stability in a society where such large portions of the population take race as such a profoundly essential aspect of their identity. And the primary danger, as I see it, stems not from the minority racial/ ethnic/ cultural groups—African Americans, Hispanic Americans, East Asian Americans, etc—for they have understood themselves as “minorities” for a long time, and that reality is by now well established in their conceptions of themselves vis-a-vis the rest of society. Instead, the danger, and the real fascinating historical development to come, lies with the European American ethnocultural group.

That’s because that group has enjoyed total, uninterrupted cultural and social dominance over the country from the very beginning. Now, that chapter is coming to a close. What will become of America’s whites? How will they define themselves in a society where, for the first time ever, they are no longer the majority of the population? What does it mean? Or does it mean anything at all? Is the US in store for years of fresh ethnocultural civil strife? Or will the racial changing of the guard go off without a hitch?

Of course, the non-white components of America’s population present issues, as well. Insofar as blacks, hispanics and others continue to identify themselves according to their skin color or genetic heritage (rightly or wrongly, for whatever reason), they necessarily see others as meaningfully “different” in some way or another. And insofar as this is the case, there is the ever-present potential for tension, mistrust, hate or violence. Despite the abundant and obvious progress that has been made in race relations over the last half-century, it is also obvious that race remains an important line of demarcation in American society. An argument could be made that the election of the first black president has even made matters worse.

But wait, there’s more. Because race and ethnicity is not the only dimension of identity in the US. We also have language, religion, class and ideology to deal with. In large parts of the country (areas of the Southwest, south Florida and the major metropolitan areas come to mind), Spanish is the de facto language of communication. A person today can be born, grow up, live and die in the US, as a full citizen, without ever speaking a word of English. In one respect, this is a beautiful thing, but in another, it presents strong potential for division. Witness, for example, Belgium, where language serves to divide the population in two.

Much more could be said on the crisscrossing dividing lines in religion (note the rise in Islamophobia and the aggressive posture of right-wing Christianity in recent years), ideology (red states and blue states, and the cultural implications thereof), and class (widening income inequality in recent decades). I will leave those issues for another post.

What are readers’ thoughts on this issue? Will America find unity in its increasing diversity? Or will the melting pot overheat to the breaking point? Thoughts?

Obama’s Leadership, or Lack Thereof

Drew Westen gets at the heart of what independents like myself are concerned with vis-a-vis Obama. The title of his piece is “Leadership, Obama Style, and the Looming Losses in 2010: Pretty Speeches, Compromised Values, and the Quest for the Lowest Common Denominator.” Ouch. And a quote:

Consider the president’s leadership style, which has now become clear: deliver a moving speech, move on, and when push comes to shove, leave it to others to decide what to do if there’s a conflict, because if there’s a conflict, he doesn’t want to be anywhere near it.

Ouch again.

Although I lean broadly left on most issues (but I disagree with much of officially “progressive” or liberal politics), I did not vote for Obama. I, for one, was not bamboozled like a starry-eyed teenage girl at a boy band concert, like most of the left-wing people I knew. And I’m damn proud of it. I did not hear almost anything from Obama during the campaign that spoke to an authentically new, 21st century left-of-center ideological vision, and in the year since, I’m still waiting. Instead, during the campaign I heard the Democratic party basically pick up where they left off in 1980.

Never mind the massive changes that have occurred in America and the world since then (you know, stuff like the collapse of the Soviet Union, the internet and 9/11). It looked like the Democrats thought the same old tired ideological nonsense was still very much relevant. Much of that can be explained, of course, by the Democrat candidates’, shall we say, advanced age (and the seeming inability I have discovered of anyone who grew up during the Cold War to deeply grasp the true nature of the post-Soviet world order). But Obama, being younger, offered (hate this word) hope.

Well, so much for that. It turns out that Obama is basically a politician like any other. Little vision, lots of rhetoric and mountains of political strategy. With such a thin resume, so much of his appeal and attractiveness stemmed from his personality and charisma. Is anyone reminded of a certain right-wing political star? And now we see the result, as Westen points out so eloquently.

Silly liberals, when will they realize that the Republicans and Democrats are simply two sides of the same coin?

How Many Afghans Does it Take to Build a State? Part 4

From the western perspective, looking on a map, Afghanistan looks like a discrete political unit, comparable to any other sovereign country like France, Canada, Mexico or Japan. Therefore, westerners often assume that the kinds of social and political institutions present in those other countries can also be built in Afghanistan, with due regard for the local culture and particularities. Polling stations, finance ministries, public education, national parliament, government health clinics, security apparatuses—all of these things can be built, if we just do it right. So the thinking goes.

Such thinking is so disconnected from reality it is almost disturbing. Nowhere is the question asked, “how did those other countries come to develop such institutions and infrastructure?” or “is the social and cultural and economic framework of Afghanistan amenable to such developments?”

Does anyone recall that, once upon a time, such “modern” nations as England, France, Japan or Sweden were in a state of political, economic and social backwardness equivalent to Afghanistan’s today? Did their modern democratic and post-industrial capitalist systems spring up overnight? Or did they take many centuries of development and progress?

Does anyone care to pay heed to the fact that Afghanistan is riven with division and disparateness ethnically, tribally, linguistically, religiously and ideologically? Does anyone see an asymmetry in assuming the sociopolitical structures built and designed in extraordinarily homogeneous societies (in Europe and East Asia, for example) will work in an extraordinarily heterogeneous one?

Given the abject ignorance of the history of the modern nation-state and the nature of its development, it is no surprise that the history of Afghanistan as a “graveyard of empires” is also completely lost on western policy makers. Add to that the fact that centralization has only ever succeeded with the assent of the regional and tribal and local authorities, and we can begin to see why the US and its allies are doomed to fail.

A reading of history and of common sense spells out the proper path in Afghanistan: to partition the country into sovereign polities that are based on the actual identities of the people, probably within the framework of a federal system, where the central government will have authority over a few functions like coining money or foreign policy, and little else. The vast majority of powers and authority will be reserved for the smaller-scale political entities, where the vast majority of the identity and loyalty and legitimacy lies.

In some of these new political entities, popular rule will be able to be pursued almost immediately. In others, the social and economic structure will simply not be ready. In some places women will enjoy the freedom of full participation in public life. In others, they will not be seen, much less heard. In some places a secular, modern education will be had by many children. In others, the rigid backwardness of Islamic indoctrination will be the norm—and for boys only. As unfortunate as all of these outcomes may be, I would ask objectors a simple question: are you willing to pay for the alternative? Are you willing to send your children to fight against history?

If the “federal” system being proposed here sounds familiar, it should. It just so happens that another, somewhat successful society began as a loose federation of sovereign states, each enjoying greater identity with the people than the collective whole, and with a very weak central government. You may have heard of it—the United States of America. But again, that’s history.

Finally, a dose of pragmatism. The more moderate elements of the Taliban (such as they are) will need to be negotiated with and included in the new order. This stems from the fact that they have the power to purvey violence. In such an anarchical situation, little else needs to be said. No matter how repulsive the Taliban may be to the west, or to any basic, secular human decency, the fact remains that they have power because they have guns and the willingness to use them. For all my secularism, I prefer a woman in a burka to a woman in the ground.

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4

How Many Afghans Does it Take to Build a State? Part 3

Continued from yesterday’s post…

Conclusions and Recommendations

American policymakers would be wise to heed the lessons of history. Although Muhammad Zahir Shah reigned over a stable central Afghan state for 40 years, the period was marked by limited progress for the country as a whole, and the central government depended so heavily on the support and cooperation of the regions that as soon as they became disenchanted with the liberalizing reforms of the 1970s, they withdrew support and allowed the central state to fall.

Above all, the concept of a single Afghan identity was never fully embraced by the vast majority of people. The US currently is seeking to build a state without a nation underlying it. This strategy of course worked for the original European states in the early modern period, given their wide discretion in the areas of violence, propaganda and culture (essential for cultivating a national identity) and economic capital. Today the Afghanistan government has little to no power over these areas of society, and can barely even project its authority to the regions, much less use that authority.

The proper approach for the US and its allies in Afghanistan is to work to build state structures on the regional level where they are likely to be most effective and enjoy greatest legitimacy and support from the people. The regional and tribal entities have demonstrated for over 200 years their status as the ultimate political authorities in Afghanistan, and have shown a superior ability to make good on the claim to monopolize violence and win the legitimacy and loyalty of their people. They have shown that they are the ultimate source of autonomy and sovereignty, not a contrived and distant government dependent on a foreign sugar daddy. Finally, they have enjoyed and continue to enjoy integration with the larger society, derived as they are from the local social and cultural system.

The United States must work to strengthen, modernize, formalize, depersonalize and bureaucratize these smaller-scale political entities—perhaps within the context of a weak federal system that has limited authority over economic and foreign policy matters—and move them in the direction of popular rule. Such a project will not be easy, but in any case it will be inordinately easier and cheaper than the current strategy. That is because the hardest part, in many ways—gaining sustainable legitimacy and loyalty from a community of people who have a common identity—is already done.

The US can either try to force a new identity to the fore, or just work with the ones already in place. The choice, it would seem, has been made for us. Did Obama get the memo?

Sources

Poggi, Gianfranco. The State: Its Nature, Development and Prospects. Stanford University Press, 1990.

Rubin, Barnett R. The Fragmentation of Afghanistan. 2nd ed. Yale University Press, 2002.

Tilly, Charles. “War Making and State Making as Organized Crime.”

***

This ends the main portion of the article, adapted from a paper I wrote earlier this year. Tomorrow I will post some final thoughts.

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4

How Many Afghans Does it Take to Build a State? Part 2

Continuing from yesterday’s post…

Afghanistan: A Tough Nut to Crack

However, there are deeper structural impediments standing in the way of a modern Afghan state. From the rulers of the 18th century to the Taliban in the 1990s, certain characteristics of Afghanistan have continually thwarted the efforts of centralizing forces. Like Europe, whose rivers, mountain ranges and peninsulas ensured that small regional political entities came to dominate in their respective areas, Afghanistan’s physical terrain has proven a massive impediment to the rise of a single, centralized state capable of projecting its power across the entire land. In geographical terms, Afghanistan is divided up by mountain ranges and rivers rendering it difficult to traverse (and therefore difficult to bring under a central authority structure), and facilitating the development of regional identities and local particularities.

Afghanistan today has between 25 and 40 ethnic groups (depending on what is counted), each with their own language and cultural niceties. By contrast, the typical modern state in the developed world (that is, those that have become most successful in terms of security and prosperity) contains at most two or three major languages and one dominant ethnic group and one culture. It is this high degree of homogeneity—even greater in earlier periods in those countries—that facilitates the development of a strong single national identity, which in turn becomes vital to the long term legitimacy and sustainability of the state. Thus, the geography of Afghanistan, like that of Europe itself, deters the development of a single national identity as well as the development of a single central state authority.

While most in the international community would think it unwise to try to build a single state to rule all of Western Europe, for example, it deems it acceptable to do so in Afghanistan with an identity of equivalent salience to “Western European.” The relatively large number of ethnic and cultural groups in Afghanistan, rather than being thought of as “subnational” identities, must be seen as the true “nations” of that place. Given that these identities—Pashtun, Tajik, Hazar, Uzbek, Kyrgyz, and others—are more salient, and enjoy primacy over the “Afghan” identity for so many people, whatever the traditional western perspective is, they must be seen as the actual national identities for the inhabitants. Understanding the true nature of identity in Afghanistan elucidates a major reason why state-builders have consistently failed to construct a single long-lasting Afghanistan state over the last 200 years.

Afghanistan’s History of Attempts at State Building

Since the 18th century, when the idea emerged of an independent and centralized Afghanistan united under a single leader, the country has seesawed between centralization and decentralization, between statist and chiefdom and tribal forms of political organization, and between depersonalized bureaucracy and personalistic power.

The first major attempt at state building that had any measure of success was that of Abdul Rahman, the “Iron Emir,” in the late 19th century, under whom the first Afghani military and system of taxation were created. His plan to unite the tribes through personal ties and subsequently create a formal bureaucracy and institutional structure died with him, because it was largely his personal presence that underlay the entire system. The elites in the new proto-state structure did develop a sense of a common Afghan identity, but this failed to trickle down to the average people.

Afghanistan’s next major leader, Muhammad Zahir Shah (reigned 1933-1973), also made attempts at modernization, including in social areas such as education, healthcare and women’s rights. Ultimately, though, like Abdul Rahman, Muhammad Zahir successfully ruled only with the approval of the regional and tribal authorities on the one side, and with a foreign power supplying money and arms on the other (Abdul had the British Empire, Muhammad, the Soviet Union). The state therefore had a quick death upon Muhammad’s overthrow, with regional powers seizing infrastructure and other resources, and withdrawing support from the central government, prompting the Soviet invasion in 1979.

To be continued…

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4

How Many Afghans Does it Take to Build a State? Part 1

For the next few days, I will write an extended article on the proper way forward in Afghanistan, and the historical and sociopolitical reasoning behind it. It is adapted from a paper I wrote earlier this year, and will come in the form of several posts. It is a bit academic, and some basic knowledge of Afghan and European history will help the reader, but rest assured it is very accessible. Following is Part 1, dealing with the basic features of the thing we call “the state,” its history and what it means for Afghanistan. Let’s get started.

State Building in Afghanistan

The United States is attempting to build a sustainable modern state in a country that has never known one, and that has frustrated repeated attempts thereof. In order to understand why the current effort in Afghanistan is wrongheaded and doomed to fail, as well as the proper approach the US should be taking, it is necessary to appreciate the key elements of successful modern state building and the history of attempts at state building in that country.

The history of the state in general, and of Afghanistan in particular, indicate that any effort to build a fully-functional state would require vast amounts of material and human resources above and beyond the current American commitment. There is, however, an easier and cheaper way to cultivate stability and peace, one that builds legitimate authority from already established regional and tribal political systems. But it requires a fundamental overhaul of the American and western mindset vis-à-vis Afghanistan.

Key elements of a sustainable state

According to Weber, a state is an organization that (1) is the ultimate political authority in a given area, (2) has authority over a bounded territory with defined borders, (3) makes a claim to monopolize the use of violence on that territory, and (4) that claim is legitimate for the people of that territory. Poggi identifies four further characteristics: differentiation from other organizations; autonomy or sovereignty; centralization; and formal coordination among its divisions.

In addition to these features, three processes that have characterized the development of the modern state are: (a) the depersonalization of political power, (b) the formalization of the exercise of political power, and (c) the integration of political power into a greater social whole.

The state requires both despotic (or decision-making) power and infrastructural (or decision-implementing) power in order to function, and to realize its exclusive claim to the legitimate use of violence. These forms of power, in turn, rest upon concentrated sovereignty and centralized territory, respectively.

The Birth of the Modern State

Accordingly, in the late middle ages and early modern era, those European governments that succeeded in centralizing sovereignty and territory were those that led the way in state-building. By the end of the Thirty Years’ War in 1648, the secular state had triumphed over the church in terms of the legitimacy for rule, thereby uniting political and moral authority in the single institution of the state. In addition, the territorially contiguous political community with centralized sovereignty arose as the best option for organizing, increasing and managing both capital and coercion (i.e. wealth and violence).

With their new and expanding despotic and infrastructural power, European states over the next several hundred years consolidated their monopoly on physical violence, along with legitimacy in the eyes of subjects. Legitimacy was consolidated indefinitely with the cultivation of a national identity and the merging of the state with the nation in the nation-state.

Given that the most important characteristic of the state is its monopoly on violence, the most important element that characterized the rise of the state in Europe was coercion—including everything from war with foreign invaders to police action against petty criminals. Charles Tilly takes the central place of coercion a step further: “to the extent that the threats against which a given government protects its citizens are imaginary or are consequences of its own activities, the government has organized a protection racket.”

Ultimately, if one places all instances of violence somewhere on the same continuum, as Tilly does, then the process of state-making is a process of organized crime in another guise, and the distinction between state violence and other forms of violence is simply that “the personnel of states purveyed violence on a larger scale, more effectively, more efficiently, with wider assent from their subject populations, and with readier collaboration from neighboring authorities than did the personnel of other organizations.” In the same way, it follows that the most successful states have been able to use this power more intelligently and with greater legitimacy from their populations than less successful states.

Structural Problems with Building an Afghan State

A cursory look at modern Afghanistan reveals glaring deficiencies on the aforementioned aspects of state structure. Problems arise with the third and fourth of Weber’s qualities, and with all of Poggi’s three major processes. Regarding Weber’s third factor, the current government makes a claim to monopolize violence, but is clearly incapable of making good on that claim, hence the chaos and violence in so much of the country. On the fourth factor, legitimacy in the eyes of the people, the central government is quite weak. This is of course related to its inability to project its influence and guarantee security, but stems ultimately from the fact that huge segments of the Afghan population simply do not identify with a single Afghanistan-wide identity, nor with a government claiming to act on behalf of such a community.

As for Poggi’s three processes, neither depersonalization, formalization, nor integration characterize the central Afghan “state.” Political power remains strongly tied to personal loyalties and relationships, as it always has in that country. It therefore maintains a largely informal character. (Afghanistan is considered the most corrupt country on the planet.) And political power is certainly integrated into a greater social whole, but only on the regional and tribal level, while the central state occupies a place mostly removed from the lives of Afghans outside of the capital.

The centrality of violence and war in the original process of state-building poses a special problem for the construction of a modern Afghanistan state. As already mentioned, the current government is incapable of enforcing its claim to a monopoly on violence. Perhaps even more importantly, whereas war was a much more “acceptable” option during the late middle ages, and well into the modern era, today it is eschewed and looked upon as a last resort by any government seeking legitimacy and by any serious decision-maker. Regardless of whether this is a positive or negative development overall (I believe it is positive), it is unquestionably negative as far as the consolidation of an Afghanistan state is concerned. Rather than aggressively seeking total control over their populations whatever the human costs, as the earliest European states often did, modern states are much more limited when it comes to the use of force. The prime tool used by the original modern states—war—is basically off the table.

To be continued…

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4

Fruits of Secular Reason

Image from a new infrared telescope. Beat that, “Lord of the Israelites.”

More in Wired magazine.

An Economic Car Crash in Slow Motion

Fareed Zakaria writes recently in Newsweek that maybe the economic situation is not so bad after all. The financial system has calmed down and government intervention has helped with economic stability over the last year.

Severe problems remain, like high unemployment in the West, and we face new problems caused by responses to the crisis—soaring debt and fears of inflation. But overall, things look nothing like they did in the 1930s. The predictions of economic and political collapse have not materialized at all.

This triumphalist tone is easy enough to neutralize. For example, Dan Agin (who is not even an economist—although that is probably a good thing) in the Huffington Post wrote in November that

The reality is that since our Great Recession is only a year old, it may be silly to interpret every upward blip as a sign that it’s almost finished…What was the situation, the mood, and the prognosis in 1930, during the year following the Great Crash? In 1930, the population of the United States was 122 million, and evidently hardly anyone in the country understood the hardships that lay ahead of them. Certainly, American culture and innovation were booming… Early in the year, a minor bull market drove up stock prices of U.S. Steel, General Motors, and General Electric, which led to a wave of optimism among political and business leaders. (Sound familiar?)… The unemployment figure was 4.5 million and slowly rising…

Turns out that “things look [something] like they did in the 1930s,” Fareed. Many people seem incapable of taking a longer-term view of things, of understanding short term, month-to-month developments in the context of the larger, year-to-year processes that are unfolding. This is unfortunate.

Do Changes in the Global Order Render History Moot?

More importantly, though, Zakaria notes three major changes in the global order today that render analogies between this historical moment and the Great Depression illegitimate:

The first is the spread of great-power peace. Since the end of the Cold War, the world’s major powers have not competed with each other in geomilitary terms. There have been some political tensions, but measured by historical standards the globe today is stunningly free of friction between the mightiest nations.

But the same could be said on the eve of World War I! Obviously, there is no conflict in the world… until there is. The Cold War ended in about 1990. So it has been 20 years. That is a very long time from the standpoint of a single human life, but inconsequential in the scheme of history. First of all, during these 20 years there have been plenty of wars, battles, campaigns and skirmishes, and they have indeed involved the major powers, even if those powers have not engaged each other directly. Second of all, what does Zakaria make of the rising tensions of various kinds involving Iran, Russia, China and the United States? Finally, remember that 20 years was also the stretch of time between the two World Wars. On the eve of World War II, one could have easily made the same exact statement about global stability and great power peace. What else has Zakaria got?

The second force for stability is the victory—after a decades-long struggle—over the cancer of inflation. Thirty-five years ago, much of the world was plagued by high inflation, with deep social and political consequences. Severe inflation can be far more disruptive than a recession, because while recessions rob you of better jobs and wages that you might have had in the future, inflation robs you of what you have now by destroying your savings. In many countries in the 1970s, hyperinflation led to the destruction of the middle class, which was the background condition for many of the political dramas of the era—coups in Latin America, the suspension of democracy in India, the overthrow of the shah in Iran.

Like conflict, inflation was never a problem before… until it was. There is nothing inherently unique about our current historical moment when it comes to inflation. Yes, effective monetary policy has helped keep inflation down. But this is by no means a structural phenomenon that is baked into the economic system, and therefore a change of fiscal or monetary policy, or in macroeconomic conditions, in one or more countries may very well change the behavior of prices over both the short and long term.

Furthermore, recent inflation rates in the US are not meaningfully different from inflation rates decades ago. See the chart below, from Inflationdata.com. Yes, there was an uptick in the 1970s and 1980s, but how does Zakaria’s inflation argument square with the fact that average inflation over the last 20 years is entirely comparable to that during the 1950s and 1960s? One could say that the overall trend in inflation over the last century has been down, but that is only technically true. Who is to say that our current low-inflation environment is simply a matter of historical luck, and that soaring inflation is right around the corner? That argument would be just as legitimate as Zakaria’s, based on the data.

Zakaria’s third and final point is the following:

And the third force that has underpinned the resilience of the global system is technological connectivity. Globalization has always existed in a sense in the modern world, but until recently its contours were mostly limited to trade: countries made goods and sold them abroad. Today the information revolution has created a much more deeply connected global system… This diffusion of knowledge may actually be the most important reason for the stability of the current system. The majority of the world’s nations have learned some basic lessons about political well-being and wealth creation. They have taken advantage of the opportunities provided by peace, low inflation, and technology to plug in to the global system. And they have seen the indisputable results.

The first part of this one is simply incorrect. Technological globalization has been occurring for decades. It was paltry compared to today, of course, but 100 years ago they had the telephone, telegraph and international travel by steamship. The second part relies on the assumption that current neoliberal economic regimes are basically good for developing countries. That is a dubious idea, at best. In addition, he assumes that almost all countries are basically using similar economic regimes. This is manifestly untrue.

The More Things Change…

Yes, in the broadest terms, almost everybody accepts the necessity of property rights, the profit motive, and trade organized by markets. But beyond that, there remain huge differences when it comes to social welfare, the strength of labor unions, government intervention in private industry, state regulation of various sectors, the proper mission of the central bank and currency valuation, just to name a few. Papering over these important differences results in a narrative about as useful as saying “although different countries have different political and economic orders—some communist, some capitalist, some dictatorial, some democratic—everybody agrees on the need for a government.”

Zakaria makes some interesting points, and it is necessary to remember that as bad as things may seem, the total economic system is complex, and we can never know what the future may hold. But it seems that the more salient argument is that fundamental characteristics of the current economic system of countries like the US and the UK—abundant reliance on debt, public fiscal incontinence and mismanagement, excessive deference to consumption over saving and investment, etc—have led and will continue to lead to major problems, unless they are addressed.