Chile: no amnesty for you

Following up on previous posts about requests from the Catholic Church and the Chilean military to use the bicentennial to amnesty some members of the military convicted of human rights abuses:

Sebastián Piñera says he won't do it.

He also uses a fascinating rationale, namely that it would reopen the wounds of the past.  That is particularly interesting because it is precisely the argument the military uses in favor of an amnesty.  For amnesty supporters, a country moves forward by halting trials and ending jail time.  That Piñera uses it in the opposite direction is a really novel and positive step.

He also uses the argument that an amnesty creates a slippery slope, which could then jeopardize convictions in other areas, such as narcotrafficking.  Given that the dictatorship is such a specific and historical context, I find this argument unconvincing.  Yet the fact that he used it anyway seems to show a commitment to using every possible argument to nix the overall idea.

Following the argument of my book on the topic from years ago, this is very good for civilian supremacy over the armed forces.  Finding no formal channels open to favorably address highly salient issues, retired military and other amnesty supporters went through less formal and more public contacts as a way to exert pressure.  Forced to react, the president--and one from the right no less--rebuffed them.  The fact that this is not a Concertación president is important too, because now there is no opposition to turn to (an issue my book did not address, since the right had been in opposition the entire time).

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Fun conspiracy theories

Eva Golinger writes about how Hugo Chávez "read from a secret memo he had been sent from an unnamed source inside the United States" with all sorts of vague but juicy information about some guy code-named Mauricio and how Costa Rica would help overthrow Chávez.

Pure comic conspiracy genius.  It is Mary Anastasia O'Grady in reverse.

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My member of Congress Part 2

On July 15, I wrote about how my member of Congress, Sue Myrick, believes that terrorists learn Spanish in Venezuela then enter the U.S. illegally through Mexico.  I didn't comment beyond that, given that the argument is, to put it mildly, nuts.

Then yesterday I received a form letter from the Congresswoman, dated July 22, which begins "Thank you for contacting me regarding illegal immigration and Arizona's new immigration law."  As I did not contact her, I can only assume it stemmed from the blog post.  The letter itself is bland and discusses her support for Arizona in fighting its "threat."

I am glad someone in her office checks in on my blog.  I would hope, however, that doing so would dispel some of the ridiculous conspiracy theories and lead to more focus on facts.  We can disagree on Arizona, but let's do so on empirical grounds.

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Colombia and Venezuela

Sara Miller Llana at the Christian Science Monitor looks at the Colombia-Venezuela dispute, and particularly at how it might affect President-elect Juan Manuel Santos:

President-elect Santos has indicated a willingness to forge a warmer relationship with Chávez, but this latest rift will set back those aspirations, says Carlos Romero, a political analyst at the Central University of Venezuela in Caracas. “The real loser here is Santos,” he says.

Mr. Romero agrees with Shifter that with Uribe out of office, there is hope of a stronger relationship. Even Chávez on Thursday indicated some willingness to put tensions behind. "Hopefully [Santos will] understand that leftist and right-wing governments can live together," Chávez was quoted saying.

“Colombia and Venezuela have different allies, but they are neighbors,” Mr. Romero says. “Unfortunately, Santos faces more obstacles now.”

I must say I disagree.  A more plausible argument is that Alvaro Uribe is doing this on purpose right before he leaves office, thus leaving Santos in the position of making nice with Hugo Chávez from a position of strength. Santos has already made a point of talking diplomatically, and thus far seems much less antagonistic than Uribe with regard to Venezuela.  Uribe will take all the heat, and Santos can calm things down.

Update: My idea is so good that Boz wrote about it a week ago.

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Bishops and human rights

The Chilean Conference of Bishops is asking the government to pardon members of the military who show repentance for human rights crimes during the dictatorship.

In their letter to Chilean President Sebastian Pinera, the bishops said that not all of those convicted of committing crimes under the rule of Gen Pinochet shared equal responsibility.

"In our view, a general pardon is as much out of the question as a blanket refusal to pardon any former member of the armed forces convicted," they wrote in their statement.

I don't really follow that logic.  Some committed worse crimes than others, but that means their punishments vary as well, not that some are pardoned and some are not.

More from the Catholic News Agency:

“We are simply presenting to the country’s leaders the painful reality experienced by many persons deprived of freedom who have been convicted and have completed most of their sentences,” they said.  “It is for them that we request, in this bicentennial, a gesture of clemency, as we have done in the past with other situations of great human suffering.”

The bishops said female prisoners with children, elderly prisoners, and terminally ill prisoners, should be among those considered in their request, with some having their sentences reduced, and others being freed if they no longer constitute a danger to society and have shown good behavior in prison.

This is not the first time the bicentennial has been brought up in this way--last month retired officers asked Sebastián Piñera to provide a blanket amnesty on that date.

I would mostly repeat what I wrote then, which is that Piñera has little to gain and much to lose from doing so, and likely little interest.  If he does, it will be an indication of the continued strong influence of both the Catholic Church and the military.

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13 Bankers

I read Simon Johnson and James Kwak's 13 Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown, which is a very good, albeit repetitive (in the sense that they repeat certain points over and over), overview of the 2008 economic crash, focusing on the problem of having a small number of financial institutions that are "too big to fail."  It is not a fun read, particularly since the recently passed financial reform addresses the problem only at the margins.  It is well-footnoted and also clearly written, with succinct definitions of very complicated topics (like synthetic collateralized debt obligations, which I am not sure I yet fully understand--in fact, another theme is that Wall Street viewed complexity as a virtue, so that if you are not an insider, you should accept everything at face value).  It is highly critical of the way in which the crisis was handled--Johnson, a professor at MIT's Sloan School, takes particular aim at Democrats who talk about reform and then buckle under.

A core issue the book examines is the fact that in recent years large financial institutions have developed extremely complex products that are too often intended to obscure their dubious origin.  The interests of the customer are ignored.  This is not particularly new, but the sheer size and scope of these institutions is much greater than in the past.  Thus, moral hazard is a severe problem, because these institutions feel emboldened by the idea that the government will bail them out.  Indeed, the bailout (and likely the financial reform as well) has only made the problem worse: "we can see now that the largest, most powerful banks came out of the crisis even larger and more powerful."  In 2009, an executive from Goldman Sachs argued that "The injunction of Jesus to love others as ourselves is a recognition of self-interest...We have to tolerate the inequality as a way to achieve greater prosperity and opportunity for all."  In other words, being too big to fail was good for everyone.

But what to do?  Their argument is to ensure that no institution becomes that big in the first place.  Breaking them up and creating caps are the central policy prescriptions.  Left intact, they will take on even more risk than in the past, create new products that elude regulations (and regulators who care little about enforcement anyway, sometimes refusing to do anything, or whose budgets rely on those same financial institutions--the current reform only asks regulators to make some new rules in the future) and thereby inevitably create a future crisis.  You can close a barn door, or at least partially close it, but there are always new barn doors.  It is, as the authors say, the "doom loop."

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Latin America and immigration

Seven Latin American countries are joining Mexico in its amicus curiae for the Arizona immigration law:

Bolivia, Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Paraguay and Peru filed separate, nearly identical motions to join Mexico's legal brief supporting the lawsuit filed by U.S. civil rights and other advocacy groups.

A federal judge formally accepted Mexico's filing July 1 but did not immediately rule on the latest motions filed late last week.

One of the less examined aspects of recent debates over immigration is the activism of Latin American governments, which transcends ideology.  Mexico is the most obvious case, and I've written about Felipe Calderón's statements before, but it is evident across the region.  It may well be one of the few things that governments as disparate as Bolivia and Colombia can agree upon.  It should be a topic of conversation for regional organizations.

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Headline of the day: Venezuela

From the Seattle PI: Despite Chavez, Venezuela Economy Not Socialist

Since 2007, Chavez has nationalized and expropriated companies in sectors he deems strategic, including the oil industry, cement, telecommunications, electricity, steel and food. But economists note that those businesses make up a relatively modest share of the economy.

And the balance between public and private sectors remains nearly identical to when Chavez took office in part because the private sector grew faster than the government between 2003 and 2006, when the economy was booming.

Last year the private sector accounted for 70 percent of gross domestic product, including 11 percent in taxes paid on products, according to Central Bank estimates. The public sector was 30 percent, a slightly smaller share than when Chavez was elected in 2008.

By international standards, Venezuela has long had a large public sector because it includes the oil industry. By comparison, the public sector in Sweden accounts for 25 percent of GDP, and in United States less than 14 percent.

The whole thing is worth the read.

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Evangelicals and immigration

This very interesting NYT article about evangelicals and immigration has more angles than you can shake a stick at, and therefore all sorts of unanswered but fascinating questions as well.  Such as:

1.  How much will support from evangelical leaders translate into congressional votes?

2.  How deep is the connection between Latino and Anglo evangelical churches?

3.  Can evangelicals forge political connections with pro-immigration reform business leaders?

4.  How will opponents of immigration reform frame their rebuttal to evangelicals?

5.  How much has evangelical support for immigration reform changed in the past, say, four years?

Not likely anything happening this year, but stay tuned.

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Border crossing deaths

A few days ago, I wrote about how economic recovery was increasing the number of border crossings.  Now (via Border Wall in the News) the number of border crossing deaths may hit a record high this month (the record of 68 was set in July 2005).

Apprehensions in the Border Patrol's Tucson Sector have decreased each of the past five years; remittances to Mexico have declined and anecdotal reports show the economic recession has slowed illegal immigration. Yet more people are dying than ever.

Border-county law enforcement, Mexican consular officials, Tohono O'odham tribal officials and humanitarian groups say the buildup of border fencing, technology and agents has caused illegal border crossers to walk longer distances in more treacherous terrain, increasing the likelihood that people will get hurt or fatigued and left behind to die.

The Border Patrol disagrees that it's pushing illegal immigrants into more hazardous terrain and points to its rescue efforts as evidence that its presence prevents deaths rather than causes them.

The Border Patrol certainly does not want people to die, and rescues those it can, but border enforcement pushes people to seek ever more dangerous routes.  Study after study has shown the number of deaths increasing as border security was tightened.  The essential point is that people will come illegally if there is no legal route, and take greater risks if they need to.

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Hugo Chávez and Simón Bolívar's corpse

Hugo Chávez has exhumed Simón Bolívar's remains, with the stated goal of determining whether he died of tuberculosis.  This event was so momentous that Chávez announced it through some tweets.

Doing weird things with corpses and body parts has a long and distinguished history in Latin America.  Lyman Johnson, a colleague of mine in History at UNC Charlotte, edited a book a few years ago entitled Death, Dismemberment, and Memory: Body Politics in Latin America.  It's amazing how relevant dead bodies can be for contemporary politics.  Not quite zombies, but close.

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This is my member of Congress

From Peter Krupa at Lat/Am Daily, I give you Rep. Sue Myrick (R-NC):

Here we are with a porous border, not really paying attention to who’s coming over, what’s happening with Iran and Hugo Chávez and Venezuela. We know that there are people going to Venezuela, learning Spanish, and then coming up through Mexico with fake documents, trying to cross the border. If they’re stopped they say, I’m Mexican. You know. Or Spanish. The point is, a border agent who really knows the difference in their language can tell that they aren’t Mexican, and so it’s very difficult if those agents aren’t really trained in linguistics to know that. And they get across.

I don't even need to comment, but I think I could use a drink.

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Immigration and crime in Arizona

Interesting chart from America's Voice Online about crime in Arizona, suggesting that local-level immigration crackdowns increase crime, while crime is down elsewhere.

It is a back of the envelope type of thing that does not take any other variables into consideration (past crime rates, socio-economic status of different jurisdictions, etc.).  Regardless, it is another example of how crime cannot be used as a justification for tougher enforcement.  There is already abundant evidence that crime overall is down, and this represents even more anecdotal support.

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Immigration and backfire

Check out this NPR story on research showing how people hold inaccurate beliefs even more strongly when presented with contrary evidence.  The phenomenon is called "backfire."  There is an interview with Prof. Brendan Nyhan, who published on the topic.

The transcript includes discussion by Neal Conan and Dana Milbank about Arizona Governor Jan Brewer, who has been saying all sorts of outlandish and untrue things about immigration and violence.

CONAN: And on Sunday, the Post published a piece you wrote that started with Arizona Governor Jan Brewer's claim that law enforcement agencies found bodies in the desert, either buried or just lying out there, that had been beheaded.

Mr. MILBANK: Yes, I think Governor Brewer lost her head on that one in particular. Now, there's a huge problem with violence on the border, but virtually all of it happens to be on the Mexican side. And what happened in the case of this claim is a news organization out there called the Arizona Guardian called all the coroner's office, the medical examiners in those border counties, and they could not think of a single instance of an immigration-related beheading.

I called the governor's office to see if they could give me some of this decapitation information, and they didn't so much as return an email or a phone call. So I suspect if they had evidence of that, they would have furnished it.

CONAN: And no updates since publication.

Mr. MILBANK: There is no reply still. 

I'm pretty sure there never will be.

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The U.S., Cuba and leverage

José Cárdenas at Shadow Government argues that the prisoner release in Cuba should not prompt a change in U.S. policy.  He ends with a rhetorical flourish, but one that is--as often is the case with embargo supporters--devoid of critical detail:

Rewarding the regime for a self-serving tactical maneuver that could be reversed at any time would be counterproductive and a waste of the leverage the United States does possess to push for fundamental reforms in the best interests of all 11,000,000 Cuban political prisoners.

What is this mysterious leverage we have?  The embargo laws and all their corollaries are supposed to exert the necessary pressure "to push for fundamental reforms," but they clearly have not done so.  If anything, they have benefited and continue to benefit the Castro regime greatly, because they offer an indefinite excuse for anything that goes wrong with the economy, and they are a global PR bonanza for the Cuban government.

Let's stop pretending about leverage, because we don't have any.  Fidel Castro has played embargo supporters like a fiddle for a very long time.

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China ousts Venezuela

As Colombia's second largest trading partner, anyway.  The antagonisms, especially Hugo Chávez freezing relations and threatening to cut trade as well, have led to a 68.9% drop of exports to Venezuela in May, following a general trend since the 2008 bombing of Ecuador.

The net result has been more access for China to Colombia's commodities.  However, Colombian exports of manufactured goods (like machinery and spare parts) have dropped 4.5%, due in part to Venezuela's sagging economy.

Who would have thought that a trade dispute between Venezuela and Colombia would ultimately benefit China the most?

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Weeks Population blog

If you are interested in demographic issues, then you might check out my dad's new blog Weeks Population.  Its main purpose is to be an added resource for his textbook on the topic, which was first published over 30 years ago and will soon be out in a new 11th edition.

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Economic recovery and border crossings

If you are surprised at the following, then you may have your head in the sand or perhaps you are Jan Brewer:  as the U.S. economy slowly improves, the number of border crossings between San Diego and Mexico has started to hold steady or increase after several years of decline.

These are official counts of legal crossings, but there can be no doubt that illegal crossings are rising in parallel, regardless of state laws, real or virtual, fences, or unmanned drones.

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Why the governors are wrong on immigration

The New York Times has an article about how Democratic Governors are complaining about the government's lawsuit against Arizona.  A few thoughts:

First, I am not convinced that voters will think much about the Arizona lawsuit when voting in November midterm elections.  The governors' argument rests on the assumption that the lawsuit will somehow tip people who otherwise would have stayed at home or who would have voted Democrat.  I have yet to see any evidence of that.

Second, as I've written countless times, people's views on immigration policy are never as simple as generally portrayed.  Kudos to the reporter (Abby Goodnough) for this perceptive paragraph:

The lawsuit contends that controlling immigration is a federal responsibility, but polls suggest that a majority of Americans support the Arizona law, or at least the concept of a state having a strong role in immigration enforcement.

Exactly.  People do want a functional system with a working enforcement component.  However, that does not necessarily translate into punishing Democrats because of the lawsuit.

Third, the main problem is a general sense of inaction, not the lawsuit per se.  Outgoing Washington Governor Christine Gregoire makes the following point:

“They described for me a list of things that they are doing to try and help on that border,” Ms. Gregoire said of the White House officials at the closed-door meeting. “And I said, ‘The public doesn’t know that.’ ”

She added, “We’ve got a message void, and the only thing we’re hearing is that they’re filing a lawsuit.”

I disagree that people are paying such close attention to the lawsuit, but the administration is doing a poor job of convincing anyone that it is committed to anything except nice words and more enforcement for PR purposes, and so it is criticized by all sides.

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Threats everywhere

Every so often you see an editorial that wraps up multiple conspiracy theories into a single, bizarre ball.  The NY Daily News argues that Hezbollah is in Tijuana, which apparently moved because they claim it is right across the border from Texas, and that will eventually help the FARC.  Or at least that is what someone in Kuwait says.

Who says the MSM is dead?

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Immigration and made-up stuff

There are all sorts of myths about the negative effects of immigration.  Now the discussion about Arizona has moved from myths to consistent lying.  I already wrote about how Jan Brewer says all sorts of things that simply are not true, and Matthew Yglesias points to more examples: "The upshot of all this is to create a toxic cycle of misinformation."

This may well be the most exasperating part of debating immigration, because the issue is complex enough without high-level elected officials lying about it (or being so ignorant as to spread untruths because they do not know the truth and cannot be bothered with it).

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Correa and UNITAS

Rafael Correa continues to confound easy ideological labeling.  He is going to participate in UNITAS with countries that according to conventional media wisdom are supposed to be his mortal enemies, such as the United States, Peru. Colombia, Mexico, and Chile.  This comes on the heels of having nice words with Hillary Clinton, expressing concern about how Latin American culture focuses on lying, and slowly warming relations with Colombia.  This serves the dual purpose of improving relations and keeping his own military happy.

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Videla's argument

Página 12 (in Spanish) has a lengthy discussion of the latest declarations by former Argentine dictator Jorge Rafael Videla, as well as a succinct history of his case.  His argument is identical to that put forth by Augusto Pinochet and his supporters in Chile.  Marxist terrorists controlled by foreigners needed to be exterminated, and now these same Marxists were orchestrating the trials of patriotic members of the military.  Life is therefore unfair.

The nice difference is that Videla has spent 12 years in prison, whereas Pinochet spent none.

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Warren St. John's Outcasts United

A feel good story about refugees coming together while playing soccer sounds trite, but in Outcasts United Warren St. John manages to show enough of everyone's rough edges to bring out a great story.*  A Jordanian woman, Luma Mufleh, came to Clarkston, Georgia and created soccer teams for boys composed of the rapidly growing refugee population there in the small town South.  The story avoids sappiness or oversimplification.

There is no climax per se, but rather a constant fight against poverty, exclusion, and fear.  Insert your "against all odds" cliche here.  Nonetheless, it is very well-written and avoids black-and-white descriptions of the reactions to the refugees.  St. John talks to everyone, and many of the people (some of the local politicians, community leaders, parents from other soccer teams, etc.) are more sympathetic than you might first think.

From a policy perspective, the book raises the point that immigration agencies do not bother coordinating with local government.  They find communities with available cheap housing and ready public transportation access to metro areas (in this case Atlanta).  They then bring in large numbers of people and say nothing to local officials, who find themselves in a sink or swim situation that raises tensions.  When St. John attended the single meeting set up between local elected officials and immigration agencies, he actually portrayed the latter in a negative light, as they became defensive and implied everyone was discriminatory.

One point St. John does not explore is the question of soccer itself.  Clarkston's mayor kept rejecting requests to play on a city field, saying that only baseball could be played there.  An undertone of the first part of the book is the idea that soccer is foreign.  Yet the second half of the book gives all sorts of examples of how wealthy Americans love soccer and support it.  Do people dislike soccer, or just immigrants playing soccer?  If a group of Spanish-speaking kids wanted to play baseball, would baseball also be banned?  This is relevant in the context of the World Cup--media commentators discuss how foreign soccer is, it is slow, we're not used to ties, etc., yet millions of kids play it all the time, even in the deep South.


*Almost exactly a year ago I reviewed Paul Cuadros' A Home on the Field, which deals with Latino immigrants playing soccer in North Carolina.

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Venezuela aid

The Miami Herald notes Venezuela's aid to Haiti, and twists itself into a pretzel to portray it as bad.  However, if you remove "Venezuela" and insert "United States" then you could make U.S. aid look equally bad.  The article directly or indirectly makes three main points:

First, countries with domestic economic problems should be criticized for provided aid to other countries instead of giving it to their own citizens.  Under this logic, all U.S. aid programs should be ended immediately and indefinitely.  In fact, very few countries on earth should currently give aid.

Second, countries should be criticized if there are perceived political objectives associated with aid.  OK, though no country provides large amounts of aid without a political goal.

Third, countries should be criticized if they make huge promises of aid that they are unlikely to provide.  I agree with this, but Venezuela is hardly alone.

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Fidel's latest offering

If you would like a definition of incoherent and rambling, check out Fidel Castro's latest column.  It is a hazy mix of World Cup and how the Iraqi government under Saddam Hussein was a good friend to Cuba, with some references to Iran sprinkled in.  Oh, and we're going to have nuclear war.  Signed, Fidel.

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Michael Lewis' The Big Short

I read Michael Lewis' The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine (by the way, what kind of terrible subtitle is that?) and highly recommend it as a perversely entertaining and straightforward narrative of how subprime mortgages were bundled into bonds few people understood, given too-high ratings, and then traded for enormous sums of money on the assumption that the booming housing market would go on forever.  The book focuses on the handful of people who realized it was all bogus and absolutely could not last.  As I read it, I kept thinking about Kurt Eichenwald's Conspiracy of Fools, another good book that tells the story of the bizarre and complex pyramid schemes dreamed up by Enron executives.  Everyone thinks they can make money by creating nothing, and indeed even having companies sell their own bad investments to themselves.

And the bonds that had been most ineptly rated were the bonds that Wall Street firms had tricked the ratings agencies into rating most ineptly.  "I cannot fucking believe this is allowed," said Eisman.  "I must have said that one thousand times" (p. 101).

Indeed, it was the bundling that helps accounts for the disaster.  Good mortgages were bundled with bad, and then sold as if they were all good.  Further, even different types of bad mortgages could be made to look good.

By assuming that one pile of subprime mortgage loans wasn't exposed to the same forces as another--that a subprime mortgage bond with loans heavily concentrated in Florida wasn't very much like a subprime mortgage bond more concentrated in California--the engineers created the illusion of security (p. 74).

We all know the outcome, and the story of greed and stupidity is not exactly uplifting.

With its personality-driven style, the book only touches on the broader structural issue of how regulation and deregulation created the environment in the first place, though it does not claim to do so.  What it also does not delve into is the fact that the "heroes" of the story, that is, the Steve Eismans of Wall Street who spoke out about how it was all a lie, made money only because of massive collapse.  Yes, Lewis does bring it up, but there is a broader point to be made about how in many ways these guys aren't heroes at all.  They were very smart, but they got rich only because many Americans got screwed.  At least Lewis does make the point that nothing has really changed.  Once the economy picks up again, something like this will definitely reoccur.

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Ecuador and Colombia, continued

I mentioned last week the possibility that the phone tapping allegations against Colombia were intended to halt the slowly improving relations between Colombia and Ecuador.  It appears that both Rafael Correa and Alvaro Uribe agree.  That agreement is hopefully a good sign, as the two countries need to move closer if they have any hope of attacking the FARC along their shared border.  Really, no good can come out of an indefinite break of diplomatic relations.  It will certainly make Colombia less secure.

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Call for papers: women and defense

Mick Andersen, who is editor of Security and Defense Review (the journal of the Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies) has issued a call for papers for a special issue on "Women in Defense and Security."


Among the issues we hope to address in the Fall/Winter edition are the following:

• Questions of gender in a variety of different contexts, including global; regional; military, police, and peacekeeping; and security and defense institution building;
• An examination of what currently exists in terms of career paths for women in security and defense; what has worked and what more needs to be done to help ensure gender equity, including analyses of what countries have already done (or could do), both in terms of political appointments and in the civil service, to ensure both paths are open to women;
• Potential opportunities for women as a result of both the expansion of, and changes in, the roles and missions of security and defense forces, where relevant;
• Country-specific examples from the Western Hemisphere of where measures have been taken to ensure equitable education and training opportunities for women.
• Role of women in science, technology, education, and math (hard skill sets) in supporting national security institutions.
• The roles of women in security and defense in comparative perspective, with emphasis on region, but also in comparison with other regions.

Among the questions we hope these and other topics help answer are the following:

• How does gender inclusion and mainstreaming contribute to effective security and defense institution building?
• How do considerations of gender inform action plans, directives and operations in the military, police and peacekeeping context?
• What is being done and what is missing for implementation and education?'
• What is the role of the media in Perception and Reality vis-à-vis women in defense and security?

We are asking for two types of submissions for consideration for publication.
The first category will  be comprised of standard academic papers of between 5,000-12,000 words in length examining these and other related issues. Those interested in offering these kinds of contributions are encouraged to take a look at the most recent issue of the Security and Defense Studies Review so as to keep papers submitted as close as possible to standard SDSR format.
The second type of contributions we seek are 500-1,000 word contributions by women security and defense professionals about their own experiences. Of particular interest are those stories which address obstacles faced; personal strategies used to contribute to individual advancement, professional education and training, and institutional awareness; the roles of mentors; continued challenges, and new opportunities. (Please note: We do not wish to publish contributions heavy with rhetorical flourishes or unseemly generalizations; we do want frank, sincere, insightful and refreshing looks at critical issues women face, in their own words, based on their own experiences.) 


We also welcome a smaller number of pieces of the same length written by men that help promote understanding and dialogue about critical issues facing women professionals in defense and security. These, too, should avoid rhetorical and time-worn devices, and focus on insights based on personal experience and observation.


The deadline for submission of both types of contributions is September 17th, after which we will select no more than 10 articles from the first category and 15 from the second for publication. We hope to publish this dedicated volume before the end of this year.

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Another presidential immigration speech

President Obama has again made a speech calling for immigration reform.  This is now problematic, because the political calculations behind these speeches are so transparent that they no longer have any impact--does anyone believe Obama will push hard for reform this year?  In fact, they may well have the opposite effect--the Latino voters he wants to reach are being told over and over that the Democratic Party wants their vote, yet it becomes more and more clear that speeches alone are supposed to hold those votes indefinitely.

Obama is hoping to minimize the damage that afflicts the president's party in Congress in midterm elections.  Fair enough.  But we're moving gradually toward a crying wolf situation in which people--including Republicans he claims to want to court--simply stop believing he will really take action.

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Media persecution in Cuba

Reading Amnesty International's press release about intimidation of journalists raises two interesting questions.

First, this alone isn't news, and is worded as if the state "has created" a climate of fear somehow in recent years, as opposed to having constructed one since 1959.

Second, the fact that independent journalists exist in Cuba is newsworthy, even if it is to highlight how they are persecuted.  But it points to the need for an analysis (and maybe one already exists) of independent journalism in Cuba.  Who is their audience?  To what degree does the average Cuban have access to their work, or even know that they exist?  Are they entirely online?

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Arturo Pérez-Reverte's Captain Alatriste

I have to give a quick shout out to Arturo Pérez-Reverte, even though his books focus on Spain and not Latin America.  To like these books, you must enjoy good writing, with a rich social class texture of Madrid under the reign of Philip IV (they take place in the 1620s) but also a male-oriented swashbuckling theme with sometimes thin plots (fyi, he does also write contemporary mysteries that take place in Spain).  I just read Captain Alatriste, which is actually the third I've read, but perhaps the best of the three.

Aside from just fun reading, what I always enjoy about the books is their richly detailed examination of the severe decline of the Spanish Empire, political, economically, and culturally, with a view from the bottom run of society.  Pérez-Reverte is absolutely unsparing:

Aragonese and Catalans were shielded by their laws; Portugal was patched together; commerce was in the hands of foreigners; finances were the purview of Genoese bankers; and no one worked except the wretched, exploited by the tax collectors of the aristocracy and the king.  And in the midst of this all that corruption and madness, moving against the course of history, like a beautiful, terrifying animal that still slashed and clawed yet at the heart was eaten by a malignant tumor, our poor Spain was worm-eaten inside, condemned to an inexorable decadence that did not escape the clear eyes of don Francisco de Quevedo (p. 60).

You see a Spain in full-fledged political and economic decline.  The court is corrupt, the priests of the Inquisition have seemingly unlimited power, and industry is disparaged, yet even the mercenaries view themselves in nationalist terms.

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We got computers, we're tappin' phone lines

There are no concrete sources, but an "unidentified Colombian intelligence officer" says that Colombia has been tapping the phone of Rafael Correa and others in Ecuador.  Given everything that the DAS does, it is entirely plausible.  It all started after the Colombian attack on the FARC over the border in Ecuador, presumably in the belief that Correa knew about and perhaps even was complicit with the FARC.

I would take this also to mean, though, that if they've tapping phones for two years and have said nothing, they have found no such link.

It is also plausible that someone in Colombia wants to help scuttle the slowly thawing relationship between Ecuador and Colombia by angering Correa.  Even if not, what accounts for the timing of the revelation?

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Congress and immigration

A few days ago, eight Republican senators sent a letter to President Obama in the face of rumors that he would issue an executive order stopping (at least temporarily) the deportation of undocumented immigrants with no criminal convictions.  I found the following particularly absurd:

`We understand that there's a push for your administration to develop a plan to unilaterally extend either deferred action or parole to millions of illegal aliens in the United States,'' the letter reads. ``While deferred action and parole are Executive Branch authorities, they should not be used to circumvent Congress' constitutional authority to legislate immigration policy, particularly as it relates to the illegal population in the United States.''

Three thoughts come to mind:

First, this is coming from senators who adamantly refuse to exert their constitutional authority on the matter.

Second, they did not write a letter complaining about states like Arizona circumventing their constitutional authority.

Third, this sort of thing helps you understand why Congress is so abysmally unpopular.

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Larry McMurtry on Arizona

The novelist Larry McMurtry has a take on Arizona in the New York Review of Books that is worth a look.

But the sadness I feel at the border is not because of the violence: it’s the eternal struggle of poverty with plenty, a struggle that humiliates and degrades both parties. The only winners are the franchises of McDonald’s and Taco Bell in Douglas or Nogales, Arizona. If we capture those poor people—as we do by the thousands—it’s mandated that we have to feed them, before we send them back across the border.

I don’t see this changing. The ridiculous fences won’t change it. As former Arizona governor Janet Napolitano crisply remarked: “Show me a forty-nine-foot fence and I’ll show you a fifty-foot ladder.” True. The Arizona legislature is basically spinning its wheels. Observe the increasingly Hispanic midwest, where more and more middle-class Latinos are now bringing in their poor cousins to care for their gardens and milk their dairy cows. And the Anglos can’t stop it with laws. For every Mexican deported two or three more will make it through. The numerical edge is with the “brown ones” from the south.

Tucson has always felt like an easygoing Sonoran city, which is one reason I like it. Phoenix has become a portal for just about anything bad. Senate Bill 1070 fails to deal with problems that have been there since the 1850s, when John Russell Bartlett, the New Englander who was responsible for establishing a border between the US and Mexico, drew a line in the desert where, for numberless centuries no line had been. Confusing to the native people, it has led us, inexorably, to the tragic place where we are now.

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Brewer and immigration

I can't help but comment on Arizona Governor Jan Brewer's following statement:

I believe today, under the circumstances that we're facing, that the majority of the illegal trespassers that are coming into the state of Arizona are under the direction and control of organized drug cartels and they are bringing drugs in," Brewer said.

Her argument is ignorant, fact-free, and irresponsible.  There is no, and I mean no, evidence to support it.  We do know that as immigration has gone up, crime has gone down.  We also know that recent immigrants are less likely to commit crimes.  In sum, the opposite of what she claims.

This leads me to wonder, does she really believe it?  If so, it shows an alarming lack of interest in understanding immigration.  If not, it is potentially a) a political bone for her base; and b) a message to the Obama administration that it needs to help her politically with enforcement.  A letter she sent to Obama at least suggests the possibility of the second option:

I want to assure you that I am looking to develop a solution, not a standoff with you and the federal government.

Feigned ignorance is not good, but slightly better than the real thing.

For more on this, see also Steven Taylor at OTB.

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Toledo on US-Latin American Relations

Former Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo has some remarks about Barack Obama's Latin America policy, which really left me scratching my head.  He notes the huge problem of discontent with the status quo as being a major issue the U.S. must acknowledge: "one can hear the sound of 200 million poor and excluded women and men who were unable to taste the economic fruits of prosperity prior to the global financial meltdown."


Pot, meet kettle. David Scott Palmer, who has done research on Peru for years, writes the following:

Amidst violence and property damage, promises were made and not kept, decisions reached and reversed, and new programs announced  but not funded.  The president's disorganization, his libertine personal life, his assertive if talented Belgian wife, and the controversial personal advisors and family members who surrounded him all contributed to growing popular disillusionment with his administration.  Toledo's popularity declined to single digits for much of his five-year mandate, even in the context of renewed and sustained economic growth, and rumors were rife of an early resignation.*

So what we have is a former Latin American president unwittingly criticizing Obama for things he himself already badly failed at.  I come back to the Dunning-Kruger Effect.  There is research to be done there somehow.

*David Scott Palmer. "Peru: Authoritarian Traditions, Troubled Democracy."  In Howard J. Wiarda and Harvey F. Kline (eds.). Latin American Politics and Development, 6th Edition (Boulder: Westview Press, 2007): 234-267.

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UN World Drug Report 2010

If you want a sense of how difficult the "drug war" is, take a look at the UN's World Drug Report 2010.  It makes a game effort at optimism, but the numbers are a vivid reminder of how high demand is and how high potential profits are.  For example:

Since the 1960s, and in a context of rapid and deep socioeconomic changes throughout the world, the international drug control system has succeeded in containing the spread of annual illicit drug use to around 200 million people, or 5% of the world population aged 15-64.

Can this really be considered a "glass half full" situation?  That only 200 million people use drugs?  As the report also notes, this amounts to a global $88 billion industry (that just deserves to be in bold).  And profit prompts innovation:

According to the scientific studies conducted by the DEA, in the last decade, there has been an increase in the efficiency of the clandestine laboratories employed in the three Andean countries, which has resulted in different conversion factors from leaves to cocaine. These changes are mainly due to the higher percentage of traffickers using more efficient methods to extract the cocaine.

I like optimism as much as anyone, but I don't see much to celebrate in this report.

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Piñera's (dis)approval

A new poll from CERC has Sebastián Piñera's approval at 54%.  CERC's director, the political scientist Carlos Huneeus, emphasized to the press that this was the lowest initial approval for any postauthoritarian president.  He also argued that the low approval was largely due to the fact that RN and UDI don't have the same mobilization capacity as the parties of the Concertación.  That set off a brief firestorm of comments from members of different parties interpreting it in a way favorable to them.  Patricio Navia argues that each president has started with lower numbers than his/her predecessor, simply reflecting a population becoming more critical about their presidents.

In the short term, though, I would argue that starting numbers mean little and so should not be over-analyzed.  Michelle Bachelet started fairly high, then plummeted (and then recovered).  There is still a lot of room for movement in either direction.

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More on Calderón and Arizona

Now this is wading into new waters--the Mexican government has filed a challenge to Arizona's immigration law, saying it is unconstitutional:

Citing "grave concerns," Mexico said its interest in having predictable, consistent relations with the United States shouldn't be frustrated by one U.S. state.

Mexico also said it has a legitimate interest in defending its citizens' rights and that the law would lead to racial profiling, hinder trade and tourism, and strain the countries' work on combatting drug trafficking and related violence.

"Mexican citizens will be afraid to visit Arizona for work or pleasure out of concern that they will be subject to unlawful police scrutiny and detention," the brief said.

It will be to a U.S. District Court judge to decide whether to accept the brief along with similar ones submitted by various U.S. organizations.

Governor Jan Brewer is mad and without providing specific examples argues that Mexico has expressed "false assertions and factual inaccuracies."  Her main point seems to be that there will be no racial profiling so the Mexican government is lying.

This is an amicus curiae brief, so although the word "challenge" is being used, it is not a lawsuit.  Instead, the Mexican government is just making sure that its side is legally heard, and ensuring it gets some press.  That decision should be viewed primarily in terms of Mexican domestic politics.  President Calderón can score a lot of points at home by standing up to the United States, and that is useful at time when the media is focused on the government's failures in the war against cartels.  There will be a certain amount of backlash, as there was when he addressed the U.S. Congress last month.  However, Calderón may figure there is not much more to lose--restrictionists can't really get any more mad.

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U.S.-Colombian relations

A Washington Post editorial keeps up the long-standing argument that Latin American governments are either friends or enemies.  The overall argument is to pass an FTA with Colombia as a way to show Juan Manuel Santos that we like him and to counter Hugo Chávez, even using the word "friends," "ememy," "scorn," and "disdain" to paint a black and white picture of U.S.-Colombian relations.  It also suggests that we could show our friendship by increasing military aid.

There are many valid arguments about ratifying the free trade agreement, though editorials tend not to explore them.  An FTA with Colombia will have little or no effect on Venezuela or other countries in the region, and so should be evaluated by other criteria.

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Dunning-Kruger Effect in U.S. policy

There is an article in the NYT about the Dunning-Kruger Effect, which refers to the idea that incompetent people are too incompetent to know they're incompetent.

Dunning and Kruger argued in their paper, “When people are incompetent in the strategies they adopt to achieve success and satisfaction, they suffer a dual burden: Not only do they reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the ability to realize it.  Instead, like Mr. Wheeler, they are left with the erroneous impression they are doing just fine.”

This is crying out for application to U.S. policy toward Latin America, which is loaded historically with unintended consequences, blowback, and persistent application of policies despite their obvious failure.  Most of the people making key decisions know little or nothing about Latin America, and in fact know so little that they are unaware of how little they know.

Explanations of the Cuba embargo, for example, often focus on how visceral hatred of Fidel Castro along with domestic constituencies cloud rational thinking (along these lines, see Morley and McGillion book Unfinished Business).  What if we added the hypothesis that many policy makers continued to believe the embargo would work, and their own incompetence precluded awareness not only that they weren't working, but that they couldn't?

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Santos, Piñera and García

Juan Manuel Santos says he feels close to Alan García and Sebastián Piñera.  Does this mean he feels unpopular and rich?

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Nicaraguan land mines

A mere twenty years and over a thousand victims later, the last land mine in Nicaragua has reportedly been removed.  The Contra war was a gift that just keeps on giving.

Here is a good, brief video on the topic.

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R. Dwayne Betts' A Question of Freedom

R. Dwayne Betts' A Question of Freedom: A Memoir of Learning, Survival, and Coming of Age in Prison (2009) is a compelling and often poetic (he is in fact a published poet) memoir of a very young African American man who was put in prison for carjacking in Virginia in the mid-1990s.  He was 16 at the time and served nine years.

It is a scattered book, and it moves back and forth chronologically.  He plead guilty, was guilty, but dances around it:

The old head wanted to blame it on rap music, and often we wanted to blame it on racism, on the society that birthed us or on the streets that gave us the language of violence.  The blame didn't work (p. 60).

But when talking about his own specific crime, he never examines the moment, why he was there, and exactly what happened:

"Talking to him gave me the chance to realize that there are people willing to judge me by who I have become, and not by a moment of insanity" (p. 236).

This may be petty, because he suffered tremendously and for no particular purpose.  He never denies the guilt, only the disproportionate nature of the punishment.

The main message of the book is that prisons are set up in a way that creates failure.  Redemption is hard, and over the years Betts--a very smart guy--has to work diligently to achieve it.  Prisons make virtually no effort at rehabilitation, or even describe what that might look like.  Betts goes through excruciating years of trying to figure himself out, and to improve himself in spite of the obstacles prisons put in front of him.  It is so difficult to rehabilitate yourself that the vast majority of prisoners simply never will.

But, at least, he did.  And how he did so is worth reading about.

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Isolation of Cuba hardliners

Via The Havana Note: if you want a sense of how hardliners in Miami are increasingly isolating themselves, then check out their response to a letter from Cuban dissidents.  That letter, signed by such prominent opposition leaders as Yoani Sánchez, supports the right of Americans to travel to Cuba.

This prompted one Miami talk show host to actually call one Cuban dissident currently on hunger strike on the air to harangue him, telling him that he did not understand what he was doing.

This is an excellent opportunity for a policy shift, as this type of incidence demonstrates that there is support for it even amongst those within Cuba who oppose the Castro regime.  The logic of either ignoring them or telling them they're wrong entirely escapes me.

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Immigration: WWRD?

Peter Robinson, a former speech writer for Ronald Reagan, asks "What Would Reagan Do?" on immigration in the Wall Street Journal.  This is a silly question, because we already know what Reagan did, namely push for and sign the Immigration Reform and Control Act in 1986, then announce the problem was solved.  The amnesty part of the bill made good sense, and he deserves credit for that.  Yet he also supported provisions that let businesses off the hook and thereby created a massive black market for fraudulent documents.  The net effect of IRCA was just to punt and let future administrations try to deal with the issue.

Most of the article is pretty vapid.  Reagan loved people and would done good things.  Nonetheless, it is a reminder to those who consistently invoke Reagan that he was a strong advocate of immigration reform.

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Elections and horse races in Latin America

There has been a lot of talk in the political science corner of the blogosphere about how the media wants to portray elections as horse races, whereas political scientists show how short term swings matter little to the ultimate outcome--see The Monkey Cage, Christopher Beam, Daniel Drezner, Matthew Yglesias).

This is also relevant for Latin America.  Check out Andres Oppenheimer's really bad article on how the World Cup will affect presidential elections in Colombia, Brazil, Argentina, and Mexico.  

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More on why Bush was unpopular in Latin America

At the Weekly Standard, Jaime Daremblum from the Hudson Institute provides a conservative critique of Obama's Latin America policy.  There are two main parts.  First, the definition of a "coherent" strategy is one that pushes hard for free trade:

Unfortunately, the Obama administration still lacks a coherent strategy for the region. Each of the four U.S. presidents who immediately preceded Obama launched at least one major initiative in the Western Hemisphere. Under George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush, trade liberalization became the lodestar of U.S. policy, resulting in NAFTA, an expansion of the Caribbean Basin Initiative trade programs, CAFTA, and several bilateral free-trade pacts, including agreements with Chile, Peru, Colombia, and Panama. 

There are, apparently, no other possible coherent policies.


Second, Obama needs to hate Hugo Chávez, and he currently does not hate him sufficiently.  Daremblum offers exactly zero specific ways in which Obama should change his current policies, but in general he should "be standing up" and "confront."  What those would entail is left to our imaginations.  Daremblum basically argues that Chávez is destabilizing Venezuela, so we need to destabilize the country further in order to stabilize it.


I think it is fair to sum it up as "keep doing what George W. Bush was doing and expect different results."  In other words, yet again we get Einstein's definition of insanity.

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Why Chávez loves what he hates

In an interview, Hugo Chávez blames Venezuela's recession on "rampant, irresponsible capitalism" and asks President Obama to "forget his country's imperial pretensions," without acknowledging that the very high oil prices Chávez depends upon are the direct result of global capitalism and U.S. imperial pretensions.

As Erasure puts it so succinctly, "I love to hate you."  Love and hate, what a beautiful combination.

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The latest on Venezuela and Mercosur

Venezuela has been waiting four years to be approved for entry into Mercosur.  After considerable delay, Brazil approved it in December 2009 and is now lobbying Paraguay, which is the last remaining holdout.  Mercopress has an interview with the leader of the Senate, who compares Hugo Chávez to Alfredo Stroessner:

“It is very difficult to dissociate Venezuela from Hugo Chavez. It makes us remember our own dictatorship: indefinite re-election, parental authority over children in the hands of the state, elections that are won with 90% of the vote. It all sounds too similar...”

Interestingly, President Fernando Lugo says he will not push the legislature:

The Paraguayan president said he would not lobby for such an initiative since “that is up to Congress and the people, but I have also stated and I told Senator Carrizosa that Paraguay must seriously address the issue of Venezuela’s Mercosur incorporation”.

Considering this is foreign policy, a president is front and center, though I could think of any number of reasons he does not want to stick his neck out.  I went to see what the Paraguayan newspapers had to say, and found the lead story in one (La Nación) was that some opposition governor heard rumors that Lugo was gay.   Not finding that too helpful, I moved on to Ultima Hora, where I found the Venezuelan Ambassador making diplomatic statements in favor of his country:

El embajador Arrúe de Pablo manifestó que fue sumamente positiva la reunión que mantuvo con el vicepresidente de la República Federico Franco, cuya posición personal no está a favor de que Venezuela ingrese al Mercosur porque cuestiona la falta de cumplimiento de las cláusulas democráticas. 

El diplomático fue consultado sobre las críticas que existen contra las medidas tomadas por Chávez, como el cierre de medios de comunicación. Respondió que más allá de los cuestionamientos para conocer a fondo la realidad de su país hay que ir hasta allá. 

"Lo importante es ir a comprobar; no puedo hablar y convencer estando a cuatro o cinco mil kilómetros de una realidad que se vive allá. Les invito a que vayan (a la prensa). El término de realidad es amplio. Yo no digo qué ocurre o qué no ocurre. Lo que quiero decir es que para saber lo que ocurre en Venezuela hay que estar en Venezuela y comprobar; hablar con la gente", insistió. 

I apologize to non-Spanish speakers, as I don't feel like translating all that.  The basic idea is that he met with critics in the Paraguayan legislature and invites them to come to Venezuela and see for themselves.


So this is still developing, with no obvious end in sight.

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U.S.-Brazilian relations

The L.A. Times has an editorial about U.S.-Brazilian relations, which I found a bit curious.  The argument is that we can't let differences over Iran damage the relationship.  OK, good idea, but who really thought that would happen?

What it demonstrates is that over time we've simply become accustomed to foreign policy that punishes countries who do not agree with us 100% of the time (as a matter of fact, I just blogged about how that pervasive that is).  So when we have a disagreement with Brazil, we assume it will blow up everything else.

Maybe one major goal for the Obama administration's policies toward Latin America is to get everyone accustomed to having allies with differences.  From a strictly realist point of view, it will serve U.S. interests far better.

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Latin American Policy

There is a new policy-oriented academic journal called Latin American Policy, published by Wiley Blackwell.  Its editorial team comes from Latin America (particularly Mexico and Brazil).  From its initial editorial:

So, why a new journal, and why on Latina America? More information to the Web? More data and signs into the flow of the hypertextual message? Indeed, the birth of this journal will add more buzz to the information stream, but this time the buzz comes from a region that traditionally has spoken through the language of literature and music. Although Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) countries have articulated a sort of modern discourse in the realm of social sciences, most of this discourse remains fragmented in local or national debates, in spite of the fact that many of these countries share Spanish as a common language. Furthermore, the social sciences debate within LAC countries traditionally has been a dialogue with or a criticism of scientific Western thought but rarely among the LAC community of academics and practitioners. In the informational and global age, it is time for LAC academic and policy communities to talk to the world and among themselves. A lot is being written and debated in this region of the world, but it remains fragmented and confined to local or national debates, in Spanish or Portuguese, with few possibilities for building an interconnected, networked community.

To build that transnational community, the Policy Studies Organization—a society of the American, Midwest, Southern and International Political Sciences Associations and the International Studies Association—joined efforts with the Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey (ITESM)—a leading university in Mexico and Latin America—to launch this new journal: Latin American Policy (LAP): A Journal of Politics and Governance in a Changing Region. Marketed and distributed by the famous editorial house Wiley-Blackwell, its main field of research, discussion, or diffusion will be any crosscutting issue situated in the interface between the policy and political domains concerning or affecting any LAC country or group of countries, but LAP's primary focus is intended to be in the policy arena (any issue or field involving authority, although not necessarily clustered on governments), agency (governmental, from civil society or both), and the pursuit or achievement of convenient or specific outcomes.

Very interesting--it does fill a niche.

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Piñera and the military

Interesting article in El Mostrador about how retired military officers are angry at Sebastián Piñera because he has shown no signs of pushing for an end to arrests and trials related to the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.  They are publicly calling for the Bicentennial later this year to be the appropriate time.  Piñera had indicated in rather vague terms during the campaign that he supported such an idea, and now the officers talk in terms of him being a "traitor."  This is further stoked by the firing of Miguel Otero, now former Ambassador to Argentina, who praised Pinochet and said most people didn't suffer during the dictatorship.

Over time, the military has gone from saying the transition was over in 1990 to saying that the transition will not be over until the trials stop.  They figured Piñera, despite his long-standing distance from the dictatorship, would finally be the one to do it.  But he has strong incentives not to, as there is little to gain and much to lose politically because of the controversy it would spark.  He would find it much harder (at least in the short term) to work with the Concertación.

Nonetheless, he will be pressured, from within his own party and coalition, from the military, and apparently even from the Catholic Church, which has been meeting with the retired officer organizations.  Although the military has not been in power for a long time, and is much less politicized than it used to be, we should not underestimate its influence.

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Colombia interpreter

I recently complained that the State Department needed an interpreter, because no one knew what Rafael Correa had to say.  Apparently they got one for Alvaro Uribe.

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World Cup diplomacy

One of the more unique, and really fun, blogs I read is by Rengaraj Viswanathan.  He is the Indian Ambassador to Argentina, Paraguay, and Uruguay (and he is a former Ambassador to Venezuela and Consul General to Brazil as well).  His most recent offering explains his World Cup dilemma, as all countries want him to root for their team:

In this supercharged atmosphere of no-holds barred rivalry, I found the only way to survive is to practise the old-world diplomacy. In the olden days, much before people got into Twitter troubles, there was a saying, “a diplomat is someone who thinks twice before saying nothing”.

He has another observation that I found especially funny:

World Cup time in South America is low season for work and business. My Argentine colleagues in the embassy are converting the office into a sports bar stocking it with the essential liquid and solid necessities to last for a month.

In all, it's a great post.

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Why foreign policy fails

If you really want to understand why the Bush administration was so unpopular in Latin America, look no further than José Cárdenas at Foreign Policy's Shadow Government blog.

The administration has its work cut out for it in trying to create momentum in the service of the shared interests we still do have with a number of countries in the Americas. But that will not be created in visits to Ecuador, Bolivia, Argentina, and other precincts currently infatuated with the anti-American fad. Instead, it will come with continuing to work with like-minded governments unabashed about identifying with our vision for the hemisphere of prosperity for all through free peoples and free markets. 

The basic idea is this: you should only work with governments that agree with you 100 percent, and any government that is not 100 percent with you should be labeled as "anti-American" and insulted as much as possible.  When that inevitably backfires, blame them.

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Clinton and Correa

Rafael Correa had some nice things to say to Hillary Clinton, and it seems their three hour conversation might be able to demonstrate that there is no reason the U.S. and Ecuador can't have good relations.  I would like to see the full text of Correa's comments, but am disappointed to see the State Department cannot bother hiring an interpreter.  From the State Department's website:

MODERATOR: (In Spanish.)
QUESTION: (In Spanish.)
MODERATOR: (In Spanish.)
QUESTION: (In Spanish.)
MODERATOR: (In Spanish.)
SECRETARY CLINTON: I will certainly take the material and thank you very much for raising these issues.
PRESIDENT CORREA: (In Spanish.)
MODERATOR: (In Spanish.)

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U.S. military aid and Honduras

As reported by El Heraldo, U.S. military aid to Honduras is resuming.  The Deputy Commander of Southcom is visiting to celebrate and discuss future interchanges.  One of them will be, wait for it, human rights.  It would be far more useful for the Obama administration to acknowledge the continued abuses of human rights in Honduras rather than engaging in a debate over whether the country should be readmitted to the OAS.

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Sudhir Venkatesh's Gang Leader for a Day

Sudhir Venkatesh's Gang Leader for a Day (2008) is a thought-provoking and well-written book.  He is a sociology professor at Columbia, and the book chronicles his graduate student experience at the University of Chicago in the late 1980s and early 1990s as he spent an enormous amount of time in the Robert Taylor Homes housing project in Chicago.  He gets very close to a gang leader, J.T., and studying the urban poor there becomes his dissertation.

There are a lot of great angles in this book, once you get past the author's self-proclaimed "rogue" status and his "who me?" stylized naivete.  Part of the problem is that he published the book a full twenty years after the events occurred, so he has to recreate his "non-tenured, non-Harvard-Fellow-non-Columbia-endowed chair" self.  Yet even two decades ago he was 100 percent establishment, which he sometimes acknowledges behind the "rogue" self-label.

Either way, his basic argument is that to understand urban poverty, you must immerse yourself in it.  Periodically, then, the story moves to methodology as he criticizes social scientists who crunch numbers without even seeing the people they're studying.  For Venkatesh it is not merely an academic debate, because he also argues that such studies end up advocating policies that won't work (though it is worth pointing out that he does not really suggest any policies that would work).  Instead, he spends years examining and probing the complex web of relationships in the Robert Taylor Homes.  Residents, gang members, building leaders, prostitutes, mothers, the homeless, the unemployed, the underemployed, not to mention the police, are all interacting in ways that aren't immediately visible.  They are all, as one woman put it, hustling.

All of them also try to rationalize that hustling.  J.T. is insistent that his gang is really a community organization, providing services that otherwise would not exist.  He would go around trying to recruit teenagers to join, telling them they could become "black businessmen."  That many people in the building are addicted to the crack he sells seems not to bother him.  Ms. Bailey, the building president, demands kickbacks for all sorts of things, yet sees herself as the one person who can get things done when the housing authority refuses to act.  All of those relationships were fascinating--they got beyond the stereotypes and highlighted how tightly bound together all of these people were.

The book ends with welfare reform and the demolition of all the buildings.  Given how long ago that was, it left me wondering how much had changed.  The downside of studying one group of people (really, one building in particular) is that we don't know how generalizable the results are.  Venkatesh notes that not all gangs are run like J.T.'s, so are residents of all buildings--of all densely populated urban poor areas--embedded in the same types of relationships?

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Cuban oil

Journalist Anne Louise Bardach, who has written a lot on Cuba, guest blogs at the Washington Post and gets a little carried away.  Here is her chain of thought:

1.  The BP disaster has opened lines of communication regarding oil with Cuba.
2.  There will be oil drilling soon in Cuba
3.  Cuba could become an oil exporter
4.  That could make Cuba more independent of Venezuela
5.  So the U.S. should pursue oil diplomacy with Cuba

This is not a particularly persuasive argument.  Does anyone truly believe Cuban oil will "spew forth" (her phrase) to such a massive extent, and quickly to boot?  Just a cursory Google search comes up with stories like how Petrobras can't decide whether it wants to pursue drilling because profits just aren't assured.

Further, the Venezuela reference seems almost like a non sequitur.  The Castro-Chávez relationship is based on ideology, not oil.  If Cuba no longer needs Venezuelan oil, the relationship won't likely change much.

A more reasonable argument would simply be that oil diplomacy could lead to other types of diplomacy that might be beneficial both to U.S. interests and to the Cuban people.

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Latin American military spending and the U.S.

A few days ago I noted that SIPRI reported increases in military spending in Latin America (7.6 percent from 2008 to 2009) and that in the past decade such spending had increased significantly (72 percent growth since 2000).

Yet in advance of Hillary Clinton's trip to Latin America, Arturo Valenzuela argued the following in a press briefing:

What I said was – the question was – had to do with how we see Latin American in terms – is there an armaments race? And my answer to that was that, in fact, we don’t see this as a problem in Latin America – that, in fact, if you look at the statistics, the data, that there has actually been a significant decline in expenditures on armaments in most of the countries in the region.

This seems patently wrong unless maybe we parse the word "armaments."  Military spending includes many things that aren't weapons, but it is hard to see how a 72 percent increase in that spending can lead to "a significant decline in expenditures on armaments in most of the countries."

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U.S.-centric blog debate

Very interesting coincidence.  First, bloggers in the U.S. discussing whether political scientists can have any impact on journalists, or whether we're irrelevant.

Here are some links for that:

Greg Marx at Columbia Journalism Review says there is an opportunity to get together.

Henry Farrell responds at The Monkey Cage.

Ryan Powers (blogging for Matthew Yglesias) weighs in.

Jonathan Bernstein brings it up.

The coincidence is this.  Just as this American debate goes on, in Chile the new president, Sebastián Piñera, had a lunch meeting that included political scientists who--gasp--also have written many political columns for Chilean newspapers in addition to their academic publications.  It is taken for granted that political scientists should contribute to public debate.

It seems that everyone who blogs about the issue focuses on American politics, and does not consider looking at it in a comparative context.  Why do some other countries not have the politician/political scientist/journalist divide?  Indeed, what are American political scientists doing (or not doing) to make journalists and politicians to feel some measure of disdain?

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Defense spending in Latin America

Via MercoPress: SIPRI put out a press release for its annual report on military expenditures, which will come out next month.

Depressingly, the region is spending more on the military than last year and much more than a decade ago.  It is a recession-proof.  At the same time, the increases are by no means uniform.  For example, Mexico accounts for almost all of the increase in the "Central America and Caribbean" category.

Strangely enough, Uruguay had the highest relative increase in spending from 2008 to 2009 (24 percent).  Brazil had the highest absolute increase ($3.8 billion) and now has the 11th highest defense spending in the world.

Probably the most newsworthy tidbit is that defense spending in Venezuela decreased 25 percent from 2008 to 2009, the biggest drop of any country in Latin America.  Meanwhile, Colombia increased 11 percent, and a Santos victory would suggest that won't be going down.

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Some Latin America blog links

Support Latin Americanist blogger authors by reading Jon Beasley-Murray's new book, Posthegemony: Political Theory and Latin America.

Honduras Culture and Politics on the confusing issue of how Mel Zelaya might return and the legal questions surrounding it.


Luis Ramírez on the sensation of failing your Ph.D. exam and being told you're only going to get an M.Phil.  Yikes! (In Spanish)

Steven Taylor analyzes the Colombian presidential election.

Miguel Centellas looks at pacted democracy in Bolivia.

Sarah Kate Kramer at Feet in 2 Worlds examines how crime has dropped as a result of immigration

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Piñera numbers

New Adimark numbers for Sebastián Piñera have him holding pretty steady with a slight uptick.  His approval is at 53 percent, up two points, while disapproval is at 30 percent, down one point.  Approval of the government as a whole is at 55 percent, up four points.

One thing I found intriguing is the high level of support he receives from the 18-24 year old cohort, in which 64 percent approve of him.  Conventional wisdom has that cohort either voting null or becoming independent.  Perhaps after twenty years of the Concertación, young people simply like the idea of something new.  Let's see if it holds, since Piñera's policies have not yet diverged significantly from the Concertación's.

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