Post-Blog Week 8: The exercise of public authority by international institutions

I was interested in exploring the topic of public authority and international institutions, since we worked on ideas for our video yesterday and this was our main topic. We agreed that these days the idea of law-making is no longer the exclusive preserve of states. Even though debates on a world government and world legislation go back to probably the beginning of the twentieth century, the development of norm-creating functions of international organizations is a new debate. International organizations and informal international regimes and networks are inherently engaged in normative processes that have an impact on states and even on individuals and businesses. Nowadays, decisions of international organizations are increasingly considered a source of international law, and it is quite common to regard them in terms of international regulation or legislation. In addition, and apart from regular international organizations, an increasing number of other networks have been recognized to play a role in international or transnational normative processes. The question is though how much authority do those organizations really have and to what extent these different forms of international norm-setting can be seen as legislative power?  Basically how many international rules are really binding? 

Nuclear non-proliferation: Divergent views on the same goal

          I know this is post-class, but I wanted to deal with the two articles relating to nuclear non-proliferation, Bruce Blair’s Increasing Warning and Decision Time (‘De-Alerting’) and Hugh Gusterson’s Nuclear Weapons and the Other in the Western Imagination, which we didn’t get to discuss today. Both discuss the concept of nuclear proliferation/non-proliferation but do so from incredibly divergent points of view.
          Blair’s article is a pragmatic approach to how nuclear-armed powers, all nuclear-armed powers, could over time move to nuclear-free status. He acknowledges that the steps required would not be easy to achieve and that steps might take years if they ever came fruition. He also highlighted instances where luck more than technical controls prevented horrible nuclear accidents, was critical of the US’ reliance on technical means of detection, and highlighted the almost non-existent margins for error when determining if a nuclear state has launched an attack.  It is clear he sees nuclear weapons in a negative light and wants to see a world where they no longer play a role in security. He is also realistic in the extraordinary efforts that will be required to achieve this goal and to have given a great deal of consideration to ways to achieve this end.

          I contrast this article with Gusterson’s, which I took a strong dislike to. First, he is writing in a journal of cultural anthropology and not in a journal dedicated to nuclear issues, security issues, or international relations. While he writes in what I assume is the language of his field, I took what was written to be his personal views presented with the imprimatur of academic rigor. My complaints are numerous. First and overall, he is critical of nuclear non-proliferation efforts by the West at the time of the article, but advances no alternatives, coping out with the claim he is “broadly antinuclear” (p. 116) and that he is only criticizing what he sees as a nuclear double standard.  For me, it does no good to point out problems if you aren’t also willing to at least grapple with the issues involved in advocating a course of action, especially when dealing with an issue as charged as nuclear weapons. Your solution may not be ideal and there may be flaws, but at least offering or attempting to offer a counter provides a way to have a discussion. Gusterson seems to see no reason to do so. He wants to be a part of the conversation but only on his terms.
            My second complaint is that his analysis in certain areas lacks the rigor required to validate the point he is making. He frequently refers to American (and to a lesser extent, British) press statements from legislators, members of the executive branch, and security intelligentsia regarding why Third World countries should not be nuclear armed. I agree that the language is condescending and some of the ideas advanced spurious. But he fails to explore how these “rogue” nuclear states themselves discuss either their efforts to acquire nuclear weapons or their justification for their continued possession while not signing global treaties. By not looking at the Third World countries themselves and their use of rhetoric, it gives the appearance that he is only looking at one side of the issue, possibly because to analyze the other would invalidate his ideas.

            This leads to my third complaint, incomplete or inaccurate information. Relating to press reporting, Gusterson rails against Western bias against Indian and Pakistani weapon names, claiming that Westerners were either exaggerating or wrong about the nature of the system names. Specifically mentioned is the Indian Agni system, which Gusterson claims is only the Hindi word for “fire” and not a god of the same name. (p. 126) This is technically true, but either ignores or failed to discover that Agni is also the Sanskrit word for fire and the Vedic god of fire. It’s unlikely the Indians naming their missile didn’t know this, and even simply calling a nuclear weapon “fire” is implying the weapon’s destructive power and nature. Gusterson is seemingly omitting this information and I can only speculate as to why. But for me it calls into question his motives.

            What we have are two academics approaching the same issue of nuclear non-proliferation but doing do in widely divergent methods and for me, levels of effectiveness. One offers a non-biased, rational way forward while the other seems to me more interesting in railing against the system.

El Chapo Captured- Crime and States

Lots of news this weekend about the capture of El Chapo (Joaquin Guzman) in Mexico.  El Chapo was responsible for a $3 billion in revenue, 40% of illicit drugs in the US, and 80% of the illicit drugs in Chicago.  The Williams article on the "transnational organized crime and the the state" would seem to apply in this case.

There are a number of interesting transnational issues in this case.

1.  El Chapo's home state Mexico was unable to capture or hold him in the past.  The US is worried that though he is now in custody he might once again escape or be allowed to escape as he has before.

2.  The U.S. was clearly the market state for much of El Chapo's product.  However, to get to Chicago required transit through several other U.S. states.  Obviously not the kind of states that Williams is referring to, but nevertheless requires similar transit routes and evasion of authority.

3.  El Chapo used both Cayman and Swiss bank accounts as service states launder his billions.

But this article from two week ago focuses more on the structural problems of weak states like Columbia or Mexico.  http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/14/opinion/mexicos-illusory-cure.html?ref=drugtrafficking

Williams doesn't really address the issue in his article, but in both Columbia and Mexico the central government has ceded authority to vigilante groups that attempt to enforce laws and protect the community from the drug cartels.

                        "This is what we learned in Colombia: When the state is not present, it is local tyrants
                          who take power and brutally impose their rules, which are nothing more than the 
                         defense of their privileges. The old Hobbesian concept, that the natural state of 
                         mankind is that man is a wolf to man, seems confirmed in these involuntary Latin 
                         American anarchist experiments. The strongest and richest wolf 
                         (from trafficking drugs or illegal mining) dominates the other wolves." (NYT 2/14)

Another interesting facet to this case is the role that U.S. played in helping Mexico capture El Chapo.  The DEA provided numerous wiretaps between Mexico and the US and significant intelligence and operational expertise in Mexico that was used to help capture El Chapo.  What does US/Mexican cooperation in capturing Guzman tell us about Hard-Shelled Autonomy?

The Debate Aftermath

It was not altogether clear that rules and social theory exist as integral parts to international relations and formal institutions. Yet, Tuesday’s discussion was expressed with particular attention to indicators of fundamental change and how each group defined anarchy. The questioned posed to us was, "Can there be a fundamental change in the international environment?” The breakdown of each argument focused on agency between two international actors provided that socially acceptable consequences would arise from a cooperative act. So, we were able to take in to account the prearranged conditions to world politics and the conditions as a result of sovereign bodies engaging in cooperative means, or in the likeness of bilateral support.

Team 1 referenced Wendt’s assertion that "anarchy is what the states make of it" Wendt 1992, 395), but I sensed that there wasn’t enough unpacking of that line. Wendt describes how the logic of anarchy plays into cooperative structures that engage in international competition. Team 1 might have combined Wendt’s constructivist roots and critical realist position into one identity, because it wasn’t clear what argument was evaluated to better understand what drives anarchy.

For team 2, I’d say that the downside of the argument was in that our rhetoric assumed that in order to fundamentally remake the international environment an actor would have to assert a dominant role over other actors or that the rug would have to be pulled out from under all authoritative figures because of a disaster. Instead of pointing to a catastrophic change in the world to force change, we could have focused on how power dynamics are transactional in practice. That idea is reflective of ‘U.S. hegemony’ where the autonomous actors such United States has the means to ‘give up some control in order to achieve global buy-in’ (Team 2). This focuses on the practical aspect of professor Jackson’s typologies: state actors can make decisions based on hard and soft boundaries without being limited to just one category within the structure agency debate.

The theoretical assumptions of constructivism, realism and liberalism became more apparent after the closing statements were delivered. Rather, I’d say that the explanations became more refined. For realists, there is the assumption that human nature depends on ones expectations of which preclude fundamental change, which translates to competition drawing from the eradication of cooperative measures. Liberalist perspective seeks to create ways to overcome anarchy with the premise of maintaining goals that are similar between international actors. Constructivism, I would argue, is based on the premise of relationally, where is not assumption of top-down or bottom-up interpretations of institutional power. Fundamental change is instantiated in the environment: people make society, and society makes people. The social constructivist discusses fundamental change through social arrangements, memberships, and associations. Each position refers to certain ontological expectations an emphasis on continuous relations as opposed to a divine separation of reason.

Week 5 - Rhetorical Coercion Practices vs. Coercion

In our departure from a discussion of the Cold war era our breakout group briefly described emerging patterns between different actors and ways in which ideas or interests were conceived. During that time period Scott suggested that missions were driven by ideas based actions and that individual actors made interest based maneuvers.  We also discussed how interests and ideas were operationally defined across the following respective cases: The United States Dollar dispensing with the formalities of the gold standard, the Atomic Bomb in Hiroshima, the Apollo Soyuz Missions, and the Construction of the Aswan Dam. Kim speculated that the general goal for the US economy during the transition from the gold exchange standard might have been a combination of the two. Within the realms of the Bretton Woods Conference and the establishment of the International Monetary Fund, many leading countries at the conference sought to define currency value, maintain monetary control, and to curb deflation. From an ideological standpoint the US economy might have been catalyzed by ideas based decisions to maintain confidence by preventing the federal reserves from restricting domestic markets. Thus, America had effectively constructed a new ideology based on the challenges that stemmed from a damaged economy: The Great Depression. Certainly there were repercussions from an interest-based perspective, but I would argue that those factors designated certain outcomes that were influenced by interest-based decisions. The outcomes and predetermined social circumstances dictated our decision making process in each of these cases whereby the general goal of major actors were based on an amalgam of power negotiations and rhetorical coercion practices.

We struggled with the concepts. In some cases, interests seemed to outweigh ideas and in others the individual actors were driven by ideas. In each of the cases implicitly demonstrated that certain patterns materialized out of idea-value orientations. When we considered the different configurations of actors and each one's tendency toward conceiving thins as ideas or interest it was decided that these factors contributed to hard boundary negotiations: Time, evidence of Competition (or collaboration), and evidence of a failing regime.  The idea was that there had to be some parameter or a movement that existed before these events were carried out in order to accommodate newer conditions.

Propogating a Self Help World

This week we had a first look at three approaches to realism: liberalism, critical liberalism, and constructivism. The Wendt article critiques social constructivism and the possibility of change is addressed from the standpoint of institutional transformation. I wanted to use this blog post to look into the question: does constructivism mean that all things are constantly changing and unstable? Does change suggest unsteady role identities? Wendt comments on the power politics behind constructivism being, “ socially constructed [boundaries] that do not guarantee malleability.” The reason for its perceived inflexibility seems to be that systematic change ‘reinforces certain behaviors and discourages others within self-help systems’ (Wendt 411). That being said, I don’t see exactly how socially constituted preferences can be seen as an unpredictable approach to the realist position because there is a focus on relationships and role play when one eliminates a top-down approach to international development. Agents reproduce identities based on association: socially informed modes of personhood beget community involvement. To me, this could be a position of atheism, Confucianism, or any front against dualistic worldviews.

Week 6 - PostBlog - I am still lost

I initially was against the idea that the international environment can be fundamentally remade. I especially thought about the term “fundamental”. I thought about my soccer analogy in that sense and the structure and rules. After reading Wendt I recalled that according to him the fundamental structures of international politics are social rather than strictly material and that these structures shape actors identities and interests, rather than just their behavior (social structure). Hence, ideas and beliefs are socially derived and shape how we view the world in its entirety. And then again with no existing interaction between actors in our international system all the things we’ve talked about, like anarchy, self-help and security dilemma have no context whatsoever. Hence, the history and experience of interaction matters as well. In a constructivist point of view, our perceptions and ideas are the fundamental forces, which drive international relations. Further, the values systems or perceptions of states and their people drive state behavior and are driving social interaction. When Wendt notes that anarchy is what states make of it, he talks about this perception. A state is driven by the perception we see our interactions, enemies, etc. In order to contrast our perceptions and to change them, we need to understand our and the others identities and redefine the ways our systems are built. Because of all these reasons and the “flexibility” at hand, the international environment could be adjusted. However, in order to remake it, that would mean that all parties concur and I personally think that is impossible.

Having stated all of that though, I don’t believe any team really won. I don’t think there is a perfect answer just yet. Because of that reason we can philosophy back and forth. It all depends on definitions. I do believe however, that we shifted more towards cooperation in order to benefit from the mutual good. That comes along with the sophistication of our society though. But most of it is our perception. If we perceive there is structure than there is. 

Space Station vs. Switzerland

Post-Debate Blog- Portland was snowed in Thrusday-Saturday and I spent much of that time researching and writing the paper for 767 and meeting with Group 1 to write this debate so my head was filled with IR.

As the snow melted enough for me to take my kids to the movies on Sunday, the universe gave me two contradictory examples of our debate.  The first was the story on NPR about the new law in Switzerland that just passed that would limit immigration.  During the debate, I was on the pro-side and suggested that the EU is a great example of how things can be altered.  The EU has created multiple structures to move states away from nearly constant warfare to almost 70 years of peace.  Amazing when you consider the wars that had happened in almost any 70 year period in Western Europe.
But along comes the right-wing Swiss who decide that they don't like immigration on EU terms.  Especially if it lets in immigrants that they don't like due to religious or ethnic differences.  The EU has clear expectations about immigration and open borders.  Switzerland is saying they will break the convention.  This seems like a great example of sovereignty winning out.  Cooperation was fine for Switzerland when it was easy, but they want control of their own boarders.  So what is the EU going to do about it?  Maybe it is all about Sovereignty or anarchy,

I park the car and take the kids into the movies and while watching the commercials that I just paid $22 to see, this add for Coca-Cola comes on.

    http://www.marketmenot.com/coca-cola-soda-in-space-commercial/

Can an Astronaut and a Cosmonaut in the International Space Station sharing a coke and saving their environment, even while watching a competitive hockey game, give us hope that things can change?  I hope so.  Embracing the status quo has never been my strong suit.

What IS fundamental? What IS Change?

So here we are at week 6, having just (sort of) debated if the international environment can be fundamentally changed. I’m reminded of a Monty Python skit where Michael Palin pays John Cleese a sum of money for a timed argument, at which point John Cleese begins to automatically say “No, it isn’t” to everything Michael Palin says, leading into a disagreement of what an argument actually is at which point the time runs out.

I say sort of because in my opinion, Group One didn’t really make an argument until Group Two defined what their argument was, at which point Group One said “No, not that. It’s really this and here’s why.” Their opening statement, dealing with “growing, adapting, changing and reacting” spoke in the passive-aggressive, soft squishy way that people so often do when they don’t want to be wrong. In debate (rules of the game, right?), you have to take a side and do so by defining what exists in your universe (the ontology) but also by explaining how (epistemology) and why (analysis). To my mind, Group One was initially much less definitive in the how or the analysis, essentially saying, “change is a thing that exists (ontologically), ergo, the international environment can change fundamentally” and they never attempted to articulate what fundamental change is, how it differs (if at all) from “normal” change and how it comes into existence and why.

That is, until Group Two took a pretty hard realist and structural stance, at which point Group One said, “cooperation” is what matters and can overcome the realist argument of competition being the driving factor in the international environment. During class, they seemed to take it as a point of pride that they weren’t the first to make an argument. The phrase “I don’t know what I’m for, but I damn sure know what I’m against” pops in to my head. During class, Blake made the argument that by chopping down a tree, you have fundamentally altered what is. But the counter is no, despite it not being in a tree form, it’s still wood on a molecular level, and so no, it’s not fundamentally different, because what makes it wood, the chemical structure, still exists. As we pointed out, the only to truly change is to destroy it, via heat from a fire or some other method that fundamentally changes its chemical make-up. The molecular bonds that made it wood no longer exist.

But this is where debate and reality bang up against each other. I am much less in the camp of the “hard/impermeable”. I know that existence is primarily gradations of gray, rather than the hard shades of black or white (although those do exist). I know that interests matter, that humans compete for resources, that cooperation can both achieve incredible results and also fail miserably, and that people place great stock in ideas. There are ideas that have extraordinary staying power and which people are willing to die for so that other people can continue to believe in them, be they political, national, religious, economic or some combination. The phrase “I’m willing to die for what’s right”, is both vague and definitive. Death is a pretty definitive but how do you know what’s “right”?  If you aren’t getting those ideas from somewhere and those ideas are in contrast to something else, where do they come from and why?

All those (competition, cooperation, ideas) exist and matter to people and to the countries they live in and all interact with each other in various ways. The international is much more messy than any one theory can account for; people aren’t always rational; they aren’t always moved to cooperate; they don’t all share the same ideas. And all those things matter in myriad ways that many people don’t give much thought to, varying based on personal circumstances. That I am able to sit in my house, writing this, analyzing my thoughts and feelings in an intellectual debate about “fundamental” and “change” rather than worrying about how to acquire and maintain shelter and food and possibly safety shows that my interests and the ideas I have are significantly different than a sizable portion of the world’s population. On Maslow’s hierarchy, I’m somewhere near the top.

I’d still argue that what is “fundamental” is the definition Group Two used in the Con Rebuttal One, but that what makes up that universe is complicated and diverse.

Week 5 – Constructivism and Terrorism

I was thinking about suitable topics to blog about during week 5. After all the Waltz and Wendt readings are one of my favorites and I remembered them from my BA. A good topic to flesh out the constructivist theory and at the same time dismiss the traditional realism theory is terrorism. Since the 9/11 attacks, traditional theories like realism struggled to understand the War on Terror, al-Qaeda strategies, or Islamic ideologies. Rationalist approaches such as Realism, or even Liberalism could not explain the 9/11 attacks, which were clearly motivated by religious convictions. Hence, constructivism seems closest in evaluating terrorism.

Even though I lack the ability to summarize enough reasoning for this opinion into this blog post, however, my argument is that the basic nature of terrorism is a social construct. I would argue this, because a social construct also always includes various identities and also culture. The 9/11 attacks showed us, that it is necessary to emphasize the importance of understanding culture, identity, religion, and ideas.

In Alexander Wendts’ article, he emphasizes “the impact of ideas and identities, how they are created, how they evolve and shape the way states respond to a situation” – all those which were overlooked by the Rationalists. Constructivism is often identified through Wendt’s central thought –“anarchy is what states make of it.” Wendt believes that anarchy is socially constructed by individual states, based on their identities and how they create their own security dilemmas. Wendt further claims that a state’s construction of anarchy is based on how it sees “the self and the other” through its shared cultural understandings that “arise out of interactions.”

Even though Wendt’s argument is related to inter-state interactions, I think that the idea can be extended to the interaction between state and terrorist actor as well.

So, why is terrorism constructed? I think it is socially constructed, because it is not something in the real world, something that always has pre-existed.  Further, the definition of terrorism depends on the viewer; what might be a terrorist to one person is a liberator to another.  

Be The Change

Pre-Class Blog  Remaking the International Environment

Working hard to try to make all of these ideas fit together, I was struck by something that Jackson said early in the soliloquy about women still being constrained from certain kind of jobs like Catholic priest. It seems that women have experienced an expanding state of Agency as the factors that previously limited women have fallen into the dustbin of history.  Is it too much to say that the Structure that framed gender roles was recast as an issue of Agency?

The roles of women in post-tribal societies across much of the globe appear to be remarkably similar throughout much of human history.  However, the stable and limited roles that women could expect to play no matter what the society changed relatively quickly once secular norms were adopted.  Even within the religious world we can see the role of women expanding (if not among Catholics than among Protestant denominations).

So this switch from Structure to Agency made me think of Constructivism again.  Isn't religion a construct in which we apply meaning?  "People make society, and society makes people."(Onuf 4) 

While it seemed clear that women would always be limited by their "Nature" we now see almost any societal imposed limit as anachronistic.  The Catholic Church may continue to deny women the priesthood but it might need to redefine it reasons for doing so if it wants to remain relevant.

But what about International Relations?  Can we better understand the motives of another person or culture/state if we better understand their Constructions?  "Even when we do not know what a rule says, we can often guess what it is about by looking at people's practices" (Onuf 4)

I happen to think that peace is possible in the Arab/Palestinian and Israeli conflict, both sides have agency.  Both could choose to do something different to try to create a stable peace.  However, if the Construction of the Catholic Church has made it impossible for the clergy to act to include women, can we expect the Jews or Muslims (this is not all Jews or Muslims) who see land as sacred as really able to compromise territory?  Are their motivations that difficult to understand?  The more challenging question is how to move people from seeing the world as a consequence of Structure and instead get them to understand that they can act to be the change they want to see?