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No. $6.95 4 The Scientific Imagination “Professor Ayala has written In 1760, José Celestino an important book—a Mutis embarked on a lucid account of evolu- 48-year exploration of the tionary theory and related natural world of South topics, which reviews the America. As two-time overwhelming evidence Pulitzer Prize–winner that establishes evolution Edward O. Wilson and as an incontrovertible fact, Spanish natural history and which then goes on scholar José M. Gómez to offer some convincing Durán reveal, one reasons why people of of Mutis’s most mag- faith need not regard the nificent accomplishments theory of evolution as an involved ants. Drawing enemy or an obstacle to on new translations of his their religious beliefs.” nearly forgotten writings, —Harry Frankfurt, author this fascinating story of On Bullshit and On of scientific adventure Truth retrieves Mutis’s contribu- $12.95 hardcover tions from obscurity. $24.95 hardcover The JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY PRESS 1-800-537-5487 • press.jhu.edu

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Autumn 2010 volume xxxiv, number 4 The Wilson Quarterly Published by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars FEATURES www.wilsonquarterly.com

COVER STORY 22 The Web’s Random Logic 51 WHAT IF CHINA FAILS? By Jeff Porter | A simple Google query leads a It seems almost inconceivable that Asia’s Web wanderer to discover an unexpected narra- rising giant could stumble badly, but to many tive in the Internet’s cascades of information. China specialists that appears to be an ever present prospect. Should we cheer if indeed 30 Gandhi’s Invisible Hands China falters? By Ian Desai | Behind the rise of Mahatma Gandhi was a little-recognized team of followers The Case for Selective Failure | he carefully recruited. By Ross Terrill We’d Better Hope It Doesn’t! | 38 The Global Budget Race By David M. Lampton By Douglas J. Besharov and Douglas M. Call | Like many other countries, the United States is buried under a pile of mounting debt. Tunneling out will mean making some tough choices that 18 Last Chance on Death Row can’t be put off much longer. By William Baude | What if a man who is

sentenced to die claims to have evidence of his ON THE COVER: Photograph by Robert Croma, design by Michelle Fur- innocence? Common sense cries out for the man. Vehicles burn in the aftermath of the Tiananmen Square demon- strations, June 1989. case to be tried again, but important legal The views expressed herein are not necessarily those of the Woodrow principles say otherwise. Wilson International Center for Scholars.

2 Wilson Quarterly ■ Autumn 2010 DEPARTMENTS

4 EDITOR’S COMMENT 79 SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY 100 Broke, USA: Is Science Finished? from Prospect From Pawnshops to Poverty, Inc.— How the Working Poor Became 5 LETTERS The Frozen Past, from GriffithREVIEW Big Business. By Gary Rivlin Cloning the Neanderthals, from 8 AT THE CENTER Reviewed by Jeremy Lott Archaeology In With the New, from Conservation 101 The Disappearing Center: 14 FINDINGS Engaged Citizens, Polarization, 82 ARTS & LETTERS and American Democracy. Barnes Storm, from The Weekly By Alan I. Abramowitz Standard IN ESSENCE Reviewed by Ethan Porter our survey of notable Potemkin Translators, from articles from other Commentary The Last Utopia: journals and magazines 102 Forgotten Bauhaus, from The New Human Rights in History. 67 ECONOMICS, LABOR & BUSINESS York Review of Books By Samuel Moyn Maximizing the Multiplier, from Welty’s Southern Discomfort, from Reviewed by Michelle Sieff National Affairs The Oxford American 103 The Passport in America: Theory-Free Foreign Aid, from The History of a Document. and 86 OTHER NATIONS Bloomberg Businessweek The By Craig Robertson Journal of Economic Perspectives Separate and Unequal in Eastern Europe, from The Columbia Reviewed by Sarah E. Igo How Nations Get Ahead, from Law Review American Economic Journal: 105 Grant Wood: Macroeconomics Asia’s Dying Death Penalty, from The Journal of Asian Studies A Life. By R. Tripp Evans 69 POLITICS & GOVERNMENT South Africa’s Staying Power, from Throw Away the Political Resumés, World Affairs Reviewed by Steven Biel from PS: Political Science and Invasion of the Politics 106 Mind Snatchers: Liberalism’s Two Camps, from Television’s Conquest of The Point 67 CURRENT BOOKS America in the 1950s. Fixing the Presidential Primaries, 89 The Gun. By Eric Burns from Political Science Quarterly By C. J. Chivers Reviewed by James Morris Reviewed by Andrew Exum 71 FOREIGN POLICY & DEFENSE 108 The Concise Dictionary of Decentering Kabul, from 92 The Shallows: Dress. Foreign Affairs What the Internet Is By Judith Clark and Adam The Limits of Intelligence, from Doing to Our Brains. Phillips, with photographs by Political Science Quarterly By Nicholas Carr Norbert Schoerner Cognitive Surplus: Reviewed by Andrew Starner 74 SOCIETY Creativity and Generosity in a Imported Doctors, from Connected Age. 109 Kosher Nation: Health Affairs By Clay Shirky Why More and More of America’s Food Answers to a Welfare’s New Tune, from Reviewed by Edward Tenner American Sociological Review Higher Authority. 95 A Global Life: By Sue Fishkoff 75 HISTORY My Journey Among Rich and Poor, Reviewed by Rebecca J. Rosen Triumph of the Toughs, from From Sydney to Wall Street to the Intelligent Life World Bank. 110 Voyager: The Real Justice Taney, from By James D. Wolfensohn Seeking Newer Worlds in the Third Great Age of Discovery. The Journal of American History Reviewed by Georgia Levenson By Stephen J. Pyne Keohane 77 RELIGION & PHILOSOPHY Reviewed by Eric Hand How Religious Toleration Came 98 Washington Rules: to America, from Church History America’s Path to Permanent War. Two Presidents and Their God, from By Andrew J. Bacevich 112 PORTRAIT Theology Today Reviewed by Thomas Rid California Unmoored

Autumn 2010 ■ Wilson Quarterly 3 The WILSON QUARTERLY EDITOR’S COMMENT

Farewell, Sir! EDITOR Steven Lagerfeld

MANAGING EDITOR James H. Carman For the WQ and its parent institution, the Woodrow Wilson Center, this LITERARY EDITOR Sarah L. Courteau ASSOCIATE EDITOR Rebecca J. Rosen autumn brings a landmark event. President and director Lee Hamilton ASSISTANT EDITOR Megan Buskey is stepping down after 12 years at the Center’s helm to return to Indiana, RESEARCHER Lindsey Strang whose Ninth District he represented in Congress for 34 years. Lee EDITORS AT LARGE Ann Hulbert, James Morris, departs with the profound respect and affection of all those who had the Jay Tolson COPY EDITOR Vincent Ercolano privilege of serving with him at the Center and sharing in its growing CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Daniel Akst, achievements and recognition under his leadership. Stephen Bates, Martha Bayles, Max Byrd, Linda Colley, Denis Donoghue, Max Holland, At a time when Americans’ confidence in public life is at low ebb, Walter Reich, Alan Ryan, Amy E. Schwartz, Edward Tenner, Charles Townshend, Alan Wolfe, there are larger lessons in Lee’s exemplary life in public service. His Bertram Wyatt-Brown career has taken him from the chairmanship of such important House BOARD OF EDITORIAL ADVISERS K. Anthony Appiah, Cynthia Arnson, Amy Chua, committees as Foreign Affairs and Intelligence to many other public Tyler Cowen, Harry Harding, Robert Hathaway, Elizabeth Johns, Jackson Lears, Robert Litwak, duties, including vice chairmanship of the 9/11 Commission. But while Wilfred M. McClay, Blair Ruble, Peter Skerry, S. Frederick Starr, Martin Walker, Samuel Wells he is universally considered one of Washington’s “wise men,” Lee is also FOUNDING EDITOR Peter Braestrup (1929–1997) to his bones a small “d” democrat, as apt to pull up a chair in the Center’s BUSINESS DIRECTOR Suzanne Napper lunchroom with a table full of interns as with the Center’s scholars. A liv- CIRCULATION Laura Vail, ProCirc, Miami, Fla. ing symbol of bipartisanship in a city where that quality is exceedingly The Wilson Quarterly (ISSN-0363-3276) is published in January (Winter), April (Spring), July (Summer), and rare, he has shown that being in the middle is not a matter of being October (Autumn) by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars at One Woodrow Wilson Plaza, 1300 wishy-washy. A proud Democrat with strong views, Lee nevertheless Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C. regularly met privately during George W. Bush’s presidency with high 20004–3027. Complete article index available online at www.wilsonquarterly.com. Subscriptions: one year, $24; administration officials who sought his perspective. two years, $43. Air mail outside U.S.: one year, $39; two years, $73. Single issues and selected back issues Once, during one of those always educational sessions in the Center’s mailed upon request: $9; outside U.S. and posses- sions, $12. Periodical postage paid at Washington, lunchroom, Lee explained that one of the biggest divides among politi- D.C., and additional mailing offices. All unsolicited cians is simply between those who are willing to listen to others and manuscripts should be accompanied by a self- addressed stamped envelope. those who are not. For Lee, listening is not just a matter of tempera- MEMBERS: Send changes of address and all subscrip- tion correspondence with The Wilson Quarterly ment; it is a philosophical tenet. He doesn’t think he has a monopoly on mailing label to: truth. That belief is one of the qualities that made him an ideal leader for The Wilson Quarterly P.O. Box 16898 the Center, with its commitment to wide-ranging inquiry and the North Hollywood, CA 91615 pursuit of knowledge in the public service. SUBSCRIBER HOT LINE: 1-800-829-5108 Retirement is not a word Lee Hamilton utters. A man who custom- POSTMASTER: Send all address changes to arily arrived at the office at an hour when farmers were out milking their The Wilson Quarterly, P.O. Box 16898, North Hollywood, CA 91615. cows, he will continue to direct Indiana University’s Center on Congress Microfilm copies are available from Bell & Howell Infor- mation and Learning, 300 N. Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, MI and serve the nation on a variety of public commissions and boards. All 48106. U.S. newsstand distribution through CMG, of us at the WQ and the Center salute him. Princeton, N.J. For more information contact Tom Prior, Marketing Manager (609) 524-1704 or [email protected]. ADVERTISING: Brett Goldfine, Leonard Media Group. Tel.: (215) 675-9133, Ext. 226 Fax: (215) 675-9376 —Steven Lagerfeld E-mail: [email protected].

4 Wilson Quarterly ■ Autumn 2010 LETTERS

ISRAEL ASUNDER by force in 1948 and continue to country that contributes more than The very elegant and con- dominate. I respect Reich’s opinion any other per capita to global knowl- cise cluster devoted to Israel [“Inside but would have loved to see an oppos- edge, that is finding cures for cancer Israel,” Summer ’10] begins with the ing point of view. and numerous other diseases, be con- famous quote of Israel’s first prime Ilan Pappe sidered to be in despair? Israelis— minister, David Ben-Gurion, that the Director, European Center for Palestine Studies with the exception of the lunatic left making of Israel, and indeed its exis- University of Exeter fringe—are for the most part happy tence, is a miracle. This is true. But Exeter, United Kingdom with life in Israel, and numerous the existence of Israel is also a night- studies and surveys bear this out. mare for the Palestinians, and I wish As an Israeli, I take excep- Instead of pontificating on the basis that such a distinguished publication tion to Walter Reich’s diagnosis of of the sad comments of his academic as The Wilson Quarterly had not despair. The only people in despair in friend, Reich should go out into the ignored this disquieting aspect of the Israel, the only ones who want their street and speak to real people. Zionist project. children to emigrate rather than live Ruchie Avital One sees this in “The Despair of in the greatest national miracle the Ofra, Israel Zion,” by Walter Reich, in which dis- world has ever seen, are members of Posted on wilsonquarterly.com cussion of the victims of Zionism and the starry-eyed Left, who have Israel is absent. The Israeli mood and believed the Palestinians’ rhetoric As a social and developmental attitudes toward peace with the Pales- about peace, who have refused to lis- psychologist who has lived in Israel since tinians as described by Reich are not ten to what the Palestinians have

HISTORY THAT READS LIKE A NOVEL… familiar to me as someone who was been saying to one another and, most

born in Israel and has lived there all his important, teaching their children, The Prisoner of Durazzo life. I am not suggesting that the Pales- who have been blind to the reality by Robert A. Lanier tinians or their tactics should be ideal- that every single Israeli concession— ized. But to describe Jewish Israel in without fail—has led to further terror

2010 as a peace-loving nation is a dis- and bloodshed. Those who insist on tortion of the truth. For the most part, seeing reality as it is never expected

Jewish Israel is a society intolerant of the so-called peace efforts to bring

Arabs at best and openly racist toward anything but failure, and ergo, are As relevant as today’s headlines about Palestinians at worst. not disappointed or in despair. Kosovo, and as quaint as an old-fashioned Ruritanian romance novel, here is the true After more than 60 years of exis- We Israelis know that we are here story of early 20th Century conflict in the tence, Israel is an ethnocentric soci- to stay, and only when the Palestini- Balkans, Great Power nation building, the search for a fairytale prince, ety whose military and political ans realize this will we be able to and the tragicomic outcome of it all. To avoid the First World War, leaders—regardless of political coexist peacefully. As for despair— Europe held its breath for a year… affiliation—have no interest in peace how can a developed country with A quality hardbound book of 471 pages, incl. photographs, notes, bibliography & index or desire for reconciliation with the one of the world’s highest birthrates $29.95 plus $2.77 Sales Tax (TN residents) and $5 postage and handling in the U.S. Palestinians whom they dispossessed and fastest-growing economies, a Available from Amazon.com, www.ThePrisonerofDurazzo.com, LETTERS may be mailed to The Wilson Quarterly, 1300 Pennsylvania Avenue N.W., Washington, D.C. participating booksellers, and 20004–3027, or sent via facsimile, to (202) 691-4036, or e-mail, to [email protected]. The writer’s ZENDA PRESS P.O. Box 41156 telephone number and postal address should be included. For reasons of space, letters are usually edited for Memphis, TN 38174 publication. Some letters are received in response to the editors’ requests for comment.

Autumn 2010 ■ Wilson Quarterly 5 LETTERS

1963, I suggest that we look for a Both Yoram Peri [“Israel at for an evacuation of the West Bank process in Reich’s article that the 62,” Summer ’10] and Dan Senor could somehow emerge in the near American social psychologist Leon and Saul Singer [“What Next for future, the army would be able to Festinger called dissonance reduc- the Start-Up Nation?,” Summer carry out the job. tion, and that psychoanalysts call ’10] refer to the brisk growth of Eyal Press rationalization: rejecting opinions Israel’s economy and the country’s Schwartz Fellow or facts that conflict with one’s self- emergence as an innovation leader. New America Foundation understanding and understanding There is no denying this, but the New York, N.Y. of the world. According to Reich’s picture is incomplete. As docu- article, for example, on the maps mented in a recent report by In your excellent “Inside used by Palestinian students, Israel Jerusalem’s Taub Center for Social Israel” cluster, Walter Reich relates how does not appear. At the same time, Policy Research, Israel also fed up we Israelis are with the inability on the Israeli road maps I use to get has poverty and inequality rates of the Middle East to come to terms around Israel, there is no Green that are among the highest in with us. Then Yoram Peri explains the Line separating Israel from the the Western world. While better- ways in which Israelis, and especially Palestinian territories—in fact, there educated citizens are launching our political system, are to blame for the is no mention of the Palestinian ter- start-ups, 65 percent of men in diplomatic standstill. Both authors ritories at all. The driver is directed the ultra-Orthodox community allude to, but fail to focus on, what is seamlessly from Netanya in Israel don’t participate in the labor force. perhaps the most dramatic reality that to Tulkarm in the West Bank with- Rates of non-participation are also Israel confronts in the 21st century, out any indication that he is crossing extremely high among Arab namely the shifting security paradigm. through areas where different cul- Israelis, thanks largely to discrim- Broadly speaking, Israel’s active tures and legal systems exist. Within ination and inequality in the edu- enemies are no longer its Arab-state Israel itself, destroyed Arab villages cation system. The problems are neighbors. Rather, they are nonstate appear as the Israeli villages or kib- “severe and existential,” in the view actors, mostly militant Islamists— butzim that have replaced them. So, of David Ben-David, author of the Hamas, Hezbollah, even (in areas of who is delegitimizing whom? What report, not least since the ultra- international legal and public relations psychological ends are being served? Orthodox and Arab communities confrontations) the Palestine Libera- Israelis, says Reich, feel that their are among the fastest-growing in tion Organization—as well as a non- concessions will never be seen as the country. Arab state, Islamist Iran. The Arab enough. But the most meaningful The growing ranks of religious states have basically come to terms with concessions Israelis could make, Jews, noted by Peri, have also Israel’s existence, but they are weak and such as stopping construction in the transformed the institution that in disarray. Islamist actors, on the other West Bank and accepting the Saudi would be responsible for imple- hand, are determined as ever to call pan-Arab proposal for peace, have menting a large-scale withdrawal Israel’s existence into question. been rejected. To think that one side from the West Bank should a set- Neither Israel nor the West has fig- has made generous concessions and tlement with the Palestinians ever ured out how to defeat or contain the other side has made none is be reached—namely, the Israeli Islamist actors militarily or politically. another way to reduce dissonance. military. An estimated 50 percent Yet two developments in the Arab Perhaps if both sides rid themselves of soldiers in officer training world that could conceivably offer some of the processes that blind them, courses today are religious. Mem- relief are ignored by both Reich and they could find a way to peace. bers of the national-religious camp Peri. One is Syrian president Bashar Charles Greenbaum increasingly dominate the Israel Assad’s consistent offers to renew peace Professor Emeritus of Psychology Defense Forces’ combat units and talks with Israel. This possibility has Hebrew University of Jerusalem upper ranks, raising the question of been embraced by Israel’s security Jerusalem, Israel whether, even if political backing establishment [ Continued on page 10 ]

6 Wilson Quarterly ■ Autumn 2010 NEW VERSION. MORE IMMERSION.

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SUMMER SCHOOL—FOR TEACHERS

The Woodrow Wilson Center is known as tions, because “I wanted to choose an area where I a friendly haven for the leading lights of academia, but thought I was weakest with my teaching.” For Wag- two programs recently hosted people that mold stu- ner, the seminar turned out to be not just an oppor- dents before they ever set foot in a college classroom: tunity to acquire more book knowledge but also a school teachers. unique chance to learn from her peers. One morning in late July saw Warren Cohen, a history professor emeritus at the University of haring experience was the motive of another Maryland and a senior scholar with the Center’s Steacher-oriented gathering this summer. For Asia Program, shuffling papers at the podium in two days, the upper floors of the Center buzzed one of the Center’s meeting rooms. At the long with the energy of more than 80 current and former oval table in front of him, 31 high school history Albert Einstein Distinguished Educator Fellows— teachers were settling into their seats, nursing hot exemplary teachers of math and science selected in coffees and chatting about their trip to the Taipei a nationwide competition to spend a year working Economic and Cultural Representative Office on education policy in Washington. The high scheduled for later that day. The teachers were in achievers had convened to celebrate the fellow- Washington at the joint invitation of the Woodrow ship’s 20th anniversary with the first-ever Einstein Wilson Center and the Gilder Lehrman Institute of summit, dubbed E20. “The Einstein fellows really American History, a nonprofit that seeks to fit the Wilsonian mold,” said the director of the enhance the knowledge of history teachers in part Center’s Program on America and the Global Econ- by organizing 39 free one-week summer seminars omy, Kent Hughes, in his opening remarks, refer- at educational institutions across the country. ring to President Woodrow Wilson’s trademark Cohen cleared his throat and launched into the marrying of policy and academia. Begun in 1990 day’s first lecture, on the political significance of Tai- with a cohort of four, the program, which is funded wan. His talk was supplemented with remarks from by the U.S. Department of Energy, supported 24 fel- Nancy Bernkopf Tucker, a Georgetown University lows in the 2009–10 academic year. Fellows are professor and Wilson Center senior scholar. Acade- placed in congressional offices or at federal agencies mics from Princeton, Johns Hopkins, and George such as the Department of Energy, NASA, and the Washington University visited the Center during the National Science Foundation, but also serve as at- course of the week to share their expertise with the large education experts for institutions such as the group. “Most graduate students in the country Wilson Center. wouldn’t get this opportunity,” marveled Christian At E20, the fellows put their policy experience Ostermann, the director of the Center’s Cold War to good use by developing a set of guidelines for sci- International History Project and its longtime liaison ence, technology, engineering, and math education. to the Gilder Lehrman Institute. Some of the fellows hand-delivered their recom- Judging by the teachers’ attentiveness as they mendations to House and Senate offices the next scribbled notes during Cohen’s talk, they were not day. The fellowship’s namesake, Albert Einstein, taking the occasion for granted. “The lectures have once said of education, “The aim must be the train- been amazing,” gushed Laura Wagner, 25, who ing of independently acting and thinking individu- teaches advanced placement U.S. history in Min- als who, however, can see in the service to the com- neapolis. Wagner said she applied to the Center’s munity their highest life achievement.” In the summer seminar, which covered U.S.-China rela- Einstein fellows, his vision is alive.

8 Wilson Quarterly ■ Autumn 2010 Lee H. Hamilton, Director NEW FACES AROUND THE CENTER BOARD OF TRUSTEES Joseph B. Gildenhorn, Chair Sander R. Gerber, Vice Chair As the average temperature in Henry Farrell, a George Washington EX OFFICIO MEMBERS: James H. Billington, Librarian of Congress, Washington began its merciful descent University political science professor, Hillary R. Clinton, Secretary of State, G. Wayne Clough, Secretary, around Labor Day, the Woodrow Wilson normally teaches, and a comfortable Smithsonian Institution, Arne Duncan, Secretary of Education, David Ferriero, Center showed signs of its annual autum- drive for Gilbert Rozman, the Musgrave Archivist of the United States, James nal transformation, with a new crop of fel- Professor of Sociology at Princeton, who Leach, Chair, National Endowment for the Humanities, Kathleen Sebelius, lows and scholars arriving to brighten its will be examining Sino-Russian national Secretary of Health and Human Services. Designated Appointee of the corridors. identity. But Boris Lanin, a philology President from Within the Federal Government: Vacant Twenty-four stars from the worlds professor from Moscow, and Patricio PRIVATE CITIZEN MEMBERS: Charles E. of academia, journalism, policy, and busi- Abinales, a Southeast Asian studies spe- Cobb, Jr., Robin B. Cook, Charles L. Glazer, Carlos M. Gutierrez, Susan Hutchison, Barry ness will sink their teeth into book-length cialist on the faculty of Kyoto University, S. Jackson, Ignacio E. Sanchez research projects during the 2010–11 have made longer treks to tackle their

THE WILSON COUNCIL academic year thanks to the support of projects, on education policy and U.S. Sam Donaldson, President the Wilson Center. Many of the new fel- assistance to the southern Philippines, Elias Aburdene, Weston Adams, Cyrus Ansary, David Bass, Lawrence Bathgate, Theresa Behrendt, Stuart lows are scholars of history, political sci- respectively. Fellows from Egypt, Ire- Bernstein, James Bindenagel, Rudy Boschwitz, Melva ence, or international relations, and the land, the United Kingdom, and Uru- Bucksbaum, Amelia Caiola-Ross, Joseph Cari, Carol Cartwright, Mark Chandler, Holly Clubok, Melvin group will probe a variety of subjects. guay round out the cohort. Cohen, William Coleman, Elizabeth Dubin, Charles Dubroff, Ruth Dugan, F. Samuel Eberts, Mark Epstein, Matthew Nelson, a lecturer in politics The fellows are joined by a revolving Melvyn Estrin, A. Huda Farouki, Joseph Flom, Barbara at the School of Oriental and African group of colleagues, the Wilson Center Hackman Franklin, Norman Freidkin, Morton Funger, Donald Garcia, Bruce Gelb, Alma Gildenhorn, Michael Studies in London, plans to study reli- public policy scholars, who are at work on Glosserman, Margaret Goodman, Raymond Guenter, Robert Hall, Edward Hardin, Marilyn Harris, F. Wal- gious education in Pakistan, while Mar- shorter research projects, and senior lace Hays, Claudia and Thomas Henteleff, Laurence jorie Spruill, a history professor at the scholars, who have long-standing affilia- Hirsch, Osagie Imasogie, Pamela Johnson, Maha Kad- doura, Nuhad Karaki, Stafford Kelly, Christopher Ken- University of South Carolina, will look at tions with the Center as well as appoint- nan, Joan Kirkpatrick, Mrs. David Knott, Willem how the women’s rights movement of ments elsewhere. The public policy schol- Kooyker, Markos Kounalakis, Richard Kramer, Mus- lim Lakhani, Daniel Lamaute, Raymond Learsy, the 1970s spurred political polarization ars are explicitly focused on—you guessed Harold Levy, Genevieve Lynch, Frederic and Marlene Malek, B. Thomas Mansbach, Daniel Martin, Anne in America. Longtime New York Times it—public policy, and traditionally spend McCarthy, Thomas McLarty, Donald McLellan, Maria medical correspondent Lawrence Alt- three months at the Center. The unifor- Emma and Vanda McMurtry, John Kenneth Menges, Linda and Tobia Mercuro, Jamie Merisotis, Robert man is researching how journalists mity, however, ends there. During the Morris, Kathryn Mosbacher Wheeler, Stuart New- berger, Paul Hae Park, Jeanne Phillips, Renate Rennie, report on the health of presidents and 2010–11 year, public policy scholars will Edwin Robbins, Wayne Rogers, Nina Rosenwald, B. other significant political figures. study everything from U.S.-French rela- Francis Saul, Steven Schmidt, William Seanor, George Shultz, Raja Sidawi, David Slack, William Slaughter, The diversity of the fellows doesn’t tions in the lead-up to the Iraq war (Sor- Diana Davis Spencer, Juan Suarez, Mrs. Alexander J. end with their research interests; it’s bonne professor Frederic Bozo) to cyber- Tachmindji, Norma Kline Tiefel, Anthony Viscogliosi, Michael Waldorf, Christine Warnke, Pete Wilson, Deb- reflected in the geographical range of the security (Cisco Systems managing orah Wince-Smith, Herbert Winokur, Richard Ziman, Nancy Zirkin class, too. The Center is just a stone’s attorney Matt Fussa) to Botswana’s throw from where incoming fellow response to HIV/AIDS (former Botswana The Wilson Center is the nation’s living president Festus Mogae). Wilson Center memorial to Woodrow Wilson, president of the United States from 1913 to 1921. It is located programs such as the Kennan Institute at One Woodrow Wilson Plaza, 1300 Penn- sylvania Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C. for Advanced Russian Studies also wel- 20004–3027. Created by law in 1968, the The Official and Exclusive Center is Washington’s only independent, comed short-term scholars. wide-ranging institute for advanced study Airline Sponsor of the Look for the work of this talented where vital cultural issues and their deep his- Woodrow Wilson Awards and torical background are explored through group in periodicals around the world— research and dialogue. Visit the Center at the Woodrow Wilson Center http://www.wilsoncenter.org. and in future issues of the WQ.

Autumn 2010 ■ Wilson Quarterly 9 LETTERS

[ Continued from page 6 ] because it presents has done its best to achieve peace with Development Party (AKP) is not an a possible diplomatic strategy for blunt- the Palestinians (though it has built Islamist group, but a pragmatic coali- ing Iran’s penetration into the Levant. hundreds of settlements in the West tion whose most often proclaimed goal Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netan- Bank); and that Israel recognizes Pales- is to make Turkey one of the world’s 10 yahu has unfortunately rejected Assad’s tinian history (though mentioning the biggest economies. (It now ranks 16th.) overtures. Nakba—the Palestinian catastrophe of Nor is Turkish society becoming more A second development is Palestinian 1948—is not permitted in Israeli religious. What has happened is that prime minister Salam Fayyad’s relatively schools). If the reader knew nothing fuller democracy has allowed Turks to successful unilateral state-building proj- about contemporary history, he or she express the religious beliefs that past ect in the West Bank. His efforts are might be led by Reich’s article to believe generations held but were discouraged designed to culminate in a diplomatic that the United States is a veteran sup- from expressing. endgame a year from now, when inter- porter of the Palestinians and grants Finally, Turkey’s new activism in national recognition of a Palestinian them billions of dollars every year while regional and global affairs does not state could provide a first step toward ignoring Israeli needs. undermine Western interests. The resolving the Israeli-Palestinian con- Reich believes that the Obama Turkish model is the one the United flict—precisely because that conflict administration should be sensitive to States should promote in the Middle would no longer pit Israel against a non- Israeli needs and fears. I agree, but sug- East. Anything that increases Turkey’s state liberation movement. The Obama gest that the U.S. government approach influence and helps it promote its suc- administration could make a big con- the situation as Vromen does: by look- cessful capitalist democracy—whether tribution by successfully mediating these ing at the world from more than one by electing a government of pious developments. perspective. believers or differing with the United Yossi Alpher Hillel Cohen States on policy toward Iran and Coeditor, http://www.Bitterlemons.org Author, Good Arabs: The Israeli Security Agencies Israel—is good for the West. Ramat HaSharon, Israel and the Israeli Arabs 1948–1967 (2010) The United States is in desperate Department of Islam and Middle Eastern Studies need of a new approach to the Middle The decision to publish Ga- Hebrew University of Jerusalem East. We need strong partners there, lina Vromen’s and Walter Reich’s arti- Jerusalem, Israel countries whose advice we would heed. cles on Israel side by side was a smart Turkey is the best choice. one, since it exposes readers to two dis- Stephen Kinzer tinctive versions of contemporary Zion- TWO VIEWS ON Author, Reset: Iran, Turkey, ism. In the Reich piece, the reader sees TURKEY’S FUTURE and America’s Future (2010) the Zionist discourse that focuses on Michael Thumann presents Truro, Mass. blaming the other, ignoring Israel’s a lucid account of the extraordinary faults, and feeling victimized, while the changes that are transforming Turkey Michael Thumann highlights Vromen piece [“Israel Through Other [“Turkey’s Role Reversals,” Summer some very important trends in Turkish Eyes,” Summer ’10] shows a Zionism ’10]. At a moment when some in Wash- society and politics. I would like to that is aware of the price paid by the ington are pressing the panic button expand on some of the issues he Palestinians, and tries to build bridges and demanding to know who lost addresses from the perspective of the to the Arab world without giving up its Turkey, this article points out that secular middle class. Zionist beliefs. Turkey is in no way “lost” to the cause of At a personal level, secular Turks A person who had read only Reich’s freedom. are disturbed by the monopoly that article might believe that Palestinians The presence of religion in the lives conservatives have established over live safely while Israel is under constant of Turks is now more visible than it Islam. Many secular Turks grew up in attack (though the number of Pales- used to be, and secularists no longer religious families and practice Islam tinians killed since 2000 is six times the monopolize public discourse. But, as without enacting their faith in the pub- number of Israelis killed); that Israel Thumann writes, the ruling Justice and lic sphere. Conservatives who present

10 Wilson Quarterly ■ Autumn 2010 LETTERS

themselves as true Muslims and use their faith for political purposes are dis- concerting to secular Turks. If Woodrow WilWilsWilsonon The secular middle class is also uncomfortable with the fact that “the were alive today,ooday, he’dhe’d bebe devout bourgeoisie” has expanded sub- stantially during the AKP’s tenure. The blogging forr tthehe WQWQ. municipalities controlled by the AKP have favored the conservative middle wilsonquarterly.comarterly.com class with construction bids and other patronage, as a series of corruption Our blog, podcasts, and more accusations in recent years has revealed. Finally, the secular middle class is suspicious of the democratic creden- tials of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has exhibited authori- tarian tendencies. Skeptics also view the ongoing Ergenekon trials as a violation of legal norms and individual rights as well as an attempt by Erdogan to sup- press the opposition. For many secular- V minded Turks, Erdogan is an aspiring Follow us on Facebookook. sultan rather than a democratic leader. The tension between the secular and devout middle classes will persist in the current wave of anti-Latino immi- lower crime rates than U.S. natives. Turkey as long as power remains con- grant bashing is but the latest varia- Since 1990, the number of deporta- centrated in the center and Erdogan tion on a very old American theme. tions has increased 13-fold to reach resists improving the system of checks The current wave is different from a record of nearly 390,000 per year. and balances. In such an environment, the one she describes in two ways: the Meanwhile, the immigrant deten- the political initiatives taken by the AKP undocumented status of so many tion system has ballooned by a mul- government, including the September immigrants and the degree of repres- tiple of five in order to process referendum on constitutional reforms, sive force directed against them. At 360,000 people per year. At the will only generate polarization, not plu- present, some 11 million immigrants same time, the size of the Border ralization, in Turkish society. And in a are unauthorized, constituting one- Patrol has quintupled and its budget polarized society, the first casualty is third of all foreigners in the country. has increased more than 20 times, always democracy. But among Mexicans the proportion even though net undocumented Sebnem Gumuscu Orhan is more than half, and among Central migration fell to zero in 2008 and Research Fellow Americans it is even larger. Never since then has been negative. Hardly Yale University before has the United States housed any undocumented immigrants are New Haven, Conn. such a large population of people out- coming in and some are trickling side the law. out, yet ever more resources con- The presence of so many “ille- tinue to be directed to internal and IMMIGRATION TODAY gals” contributes to the stereotyp- border enforcement. Katherine Benton-Cohen’s ing of Latinos as criminals and I agree with Benton-Cohen that article [“The Rude Birth of Immigra- serves to justify ever more repressive what we need is to see today’s immi- tion Reform,” Summer ’10] shows that policies, though immigrants have grants not as an invasion of barbar-

Autumn 2010 ■ Wilson Quarterly 11 Dear Readers,

You may not realize that The Wilson Quar- terly is a nonprofit magazine. That status frees us to deliver the magazine many of you treasure. It also means that we rely on the generosity of supporters. Do you think that there’s more than one side to today’s complex issues? Do you hunger for an eclectic mix of serious ideas and information free of spin and jargon? Do you value the conversations that the WQ makes you a part of, year after year? Then please make a contribution to this unique magazine, and take a stand for intelligent debate in public life. Sincerely, The Editors

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ChecksChecks and and credit credit cards cards accepted. accepted. Make Make checks checks payable payable to to The TheWilson Wilson Quarterly Quarterly. If .using If using a credit a credit card card (Visa, (Visa, MasterCard, MasterCard, or orAmerican American Express), Express), please please indicate indicate name name on on card, card, account number, accountand expiration number, date. and expiration Fax: (202) date.691-4036. Fax: (202) 691-4036.

Questions?Questions? Contact Contact the the editor, Editor, Steven Steven Lagerfeld, Lagerfeld, at at (202) (202) 691-4019, 691-4019, oror s testevev.lage.lagerferfeld@[email protected]. . ians, but as Americans in the making. while friendships harder to form and are pulling us from one another, what The place to start is with a legalization maintain today. This is quite different are drawing us together, and how are program for people who have peace- from thinking that we’re all making do they doing this? What phenomena, ably lived and worked in the United with “friendship-lite.” such as Facebook, are doing both at States, and their children who have Emily White the same time? We should look at grown up here. The longer we put off Author, Lonely: A Memoir (2010) our relationships and our loneliness this regularization, the worse it will St. John’s, Newfoundland, Canada both historically and contextually to be for all of us. see ourselves aright and to address Douglas S. Massey Daniel Akst paints a grim the particular loneliness that afflicts Henry G. Bryant Professor of Sociology portrait of Americans’ interpersonal us now. and Public Affairs relationships. I do not doubt that Todd May Princeton University we are plagued by loneliness, but I Class of 1941 Memorial Professor Princeton, N.J. wonder how different or unique of the Humanities things today really are. Historians Clemson University tell us that friendship in the modern Clemson, S.C. LONELINESS UNDER sense is a recent development, a THE MICROSCOPE legacy of the capitalism that under- Having written a book on mined the strict relational order- ART, SCHMART! long-term loneliness, I took great ings of earlier times. But even in a Your item on the Santa Mon- interest in Daniel Akst’s “America: relatively recent period, the 1950s, ica annual art sale by artists identified Land of Loners?” [Summer ’10]. I people (especially women) were only after purchase [“But Is It Art?,” agree with Akst that friendship is in a encouraged to remain close to their Findings, Summer ’10] reports the glee perilous state in America today, but I families at the expense of outside with which Will Kopelman purchased don’t agree, as he suggests, that we friendships. Although families were Ed Ruscha’s sketch Cup of Coffee. The “overlook” friendship or take it “far not as threatened as they are by the article concludes, “It was, after all, the too lightly.” geographical mobility that is the scrawled signature [on the back of the I hear quite often from people for norm today, friendships were less drawing] that made Cup of Coffee ... whom friendship is extremely impor- valued than would become standard certifiable art.” I would hope so. From tant. There’s a thesis out there—which during the upheavals of the 1960s. the reproduction of the sketch that ran Akst repeats—that friendship peaked It seems more likely that our in the WQ, the Ruscha is something in the 18th and 19th centuries, and contemporary expectations are col- that could have been drawn by any tal- that we’ve been dismissive of it ever ored by the golden age of friend- ented high school art student. In fact, if since. But to talk to lonely people is to ship, in the ancient Greece of Aris- 20 such students were asked to do such understand the opposite. Rather than totle. Then, it was not families—at a drawing, how sure would Kopelman get by on what Akst calls “mere famil- least traditional families—that were be that he’d select the Ruscha? If the iarity,” isolated people long for friend- valued as the source of meaningful bidders were buying a signature, why ship more than ever. relationships. Peers and the fami- not have Ruscha sign the back of every People do not need to be reminded lies formed from communities of one of the museum’s selections and of how crucial friendship is, as Akst peers were what offered the promise make all the winners richer? suggests. They know it’s crucial. They of intimacy and solidarity. Just putting your name on some- know that friends may extend life If this is right, then the urgent thing doesn’t make it “art,” any more spans and make the time between question facing us today is less one of than having won a Pulitzer makes birth and death infinitely richer. Peo- how lonely we are than of how we are everything you write a masterpiece. No ple who lack friends talk about being lonely. How are today’s relationships matter what the critics say! denied something critical in life. Cul- different from those of the 1960s, the Fred E. Hahn tural factors are what make worth- ’50s, or even the ’80s? What forces Golden Valley, Minn.

Autumn 2010 ■ Wilson Quarterly 13 FINDINGS brief notes of interest on all topics

Fluid Faith High sacraments

The Volstead Act of 1919 served to bring Americans closer to God, Daniel Okrent reports in Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition (Scribner). The ban on intoxicating liquor included an exemption for religious uses. In Napa Valley, California, the Beaulieu Vineyards netted over $100,000 a year by selling sacra- mental wine to the Catholic Church. Some priests bought 120 gallons at a time, which Okrent figures is enough for 46,000 Communion sips. He suspects Rabbi Meyer Hirsch, leader of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Avenue Shul, stands in front of barrels that quite a few bottles got of sacramental kosher wine that he was allowed to keep during Prohibition. diverted to parishioners. Rabbis diverted, too. Some around them little companies of ranks of the new godly evapor- opened stores selling kosher wine men; they called them congrega- ated a bit. “for sacramental purposes.” A tions; and then, under the law as customer could sign up as a it now exists, they were privi- The Name of the Pose member of the synagogue and leged to purchase and distribute buy a bottle of wine, all in one wine.” Advice to the online lovelorn visit to the store. The rabbi The abuses prompted some Clients of dating Web sites typically might be a new convert himself, embarrassed rabbis to advocate choose screen names, and their according to Okrent. In Detroit, repealing the religious exception choices can be significant, according Rabbi Leo M. Franklin claimed altogether. Congress didn’t act, to British researchers Monica T. to know of at least 150 men who, but in 1926 the Prohibition Whitty and Tom Buchanan. “without the slightest pretense at Bureau began enforcing the rules Whitty and Buchanan first gath- rabbinical training or position,” more rigorously. After that, ship- ered a sample of gender-neutral were claiming to be rabbis in ments of wine for Jewish cere- screen names from a dating site and order to market liquor. Franklin monies dropped by 90 percent in assigned the names to categories. For charged, “They simply gathered some cities. And, presumably, the example, “Greatbody” fell under

14 Wilson Quarterly ■ Autumn 2010 FINDINGS

appearance, “Wellread” under intel- the interim. (They had lect, and “SunnyPorsche” under been told to leave back- wealth. The researchers then con- packs, cell phones, and tacted 404 clients of the same site books elsewhere.) Or and asked how likely they would be to they could take a short get in touch with the users behind walk to another site, particular screen names. turn in the initial part Based partly on evolutionary psy- of the survey there, chology, Whitty and Buchanan receive their chocolate, expected men to favor appearance- and stroll back. related names and women to favor Participants would- wealth-related ones. Their expecta- n’t take the hike if the Are TVs necessary? Depends on whom you ask. tions were only partly borne out, they same kind of chocolate report in the annual International was available at both sites, Hsee and board, the “necessity” numbers Journal of Internet Science (2010). his colleagues report in Psychological declined from 2006. Television sets Men did gravitate toward names that Science (July), but they would if the showed the sharpest drop. Nearly connoted physical attractiveness, but choices differed. The distant choco- two-thirds of Americans called them a women gravitated toward ones that late might be no more appealing, but necessity in 2006. Now that number connoted intellect. Wealth-related it provided a reason to keep busy. In is down to 42 percent—and just 29 names proved off-putting to both addition, the researchers found that percent among 18-to-29-year-olds. sexes. At least for men, a “Sexyrose” by those who took the walk were happier At the same time, perplexingly, any other name might not smell as afterward than those who stayed put. Americans are buying more TVs than sweet. It seems that people will opt for ever, despite predictions that enter- idleness when they’re given no reason tainment delivered on computers, Uptime to be busy, though the choice also smart phones, iPads, and the like may means they’ll be less happy. But give render them obsolete. The number of Busy bodies them a reason for activity, even a spe- TVs in the average American home With people compulsively checking cious one, and they’ll move. The has risen steadily, from 1.57 in 1975 to text messages and tweeting updates authors conclude, “Our research sug- 2.86 in 2009. Ten percent of Ameri- on their whereabouts, idleness seems gests that Sisyphus was better off with cans now deem a flat-screen TV a a thing of the past. Christopher K. his punishment than he would have necessity, up from five percent in Hsee of the University of Chicago and been with a punishment of an eter- 2006. Most new technologies are two coauthors report that in order to nity of doing nothing, and that he favored by the young and the wealthy, avoid dead time, people will go out of might have chosen rolling a rock over but it’s the opposite for flat-screen their way—literally. idleness if he had been given a slight TVs: They’re especially popular with The researchers recruited 98 col- reason for doing it.” Americans over 65 and those earning lege students who they determined less than $30,000 a year. As Pew says, were equally fond of milk chocolate Flat and Flatter the TV picture is fuzzy. and dark chocolate, then adminis- TV’s ups and downs tered a survey to them. Afterward, Hands On, Hands Off participants were told that the survey Bad economic times have a way of had a second part, which wouldn’t be reordering our “wants” and “needs.” In Keyed up ready for around 15 minutes. The stu- May, the Pew Research Center asked The player piano helped democra- dents could turn in what they had Americans whether various house- tize music in the early 20th century, completed, receive a piece of choco- hold electronics and appliances were yet the technology also provoked late, and wait, doing nothing else in necessities or luxuries. Across the some unease. Was the piano just an

Autumn 2010 ■ Wilson Quarterly 15 FINDINGS

oversized music box? Or could an actually touching the keys,” a sign in a published a cartoon showing Indian operator take credit for “playing” it? piano showroom boasted in 1927. treaties being trampled by bidders at In a master’s thesis earlier this “The same strings are vibrating iden- a slave auction. year, MIT graduate Nick Seaver tically as they vibrated when Rach- But common cause between aboli- describes how some piano manufac- maninoff himself controlled them. tionists and Indians proved elusive. turers included “expression lines” on This is not a copy or an imitation or a Starting with the Washington admin- early piano rolls that told operators reproduction, but the actual playing istration, the federal government had when to press the foot pedals to of Rachmaninoff himself.” tried to “civilize” Native Americans by Now, Seaver getting them to adopt the principle of says, self-playing private property—including the own- pianos are mak- ership of African slaves. The Chero- ing something of kee owned 1,277 slaves in the mid- a comeback. 1820s, and the tribe’s newspaper Based in Ral- published advertisements seeking eigh, North Car- runaway slaves, Natalie Joy reports in olina, Zenph Common-Place (July). Studios creates a The abolitionists knew that slav- high-tech equiv- ery was entrenched among the Cher- alent of piano okee, but they tried to look the other rolls through the way. The Liberator claimed that computer analy- “although some of the Cherokees are sis of old, some- owners of slaves, slavery is unknown Baldwin emphasized the nonmechanical aspects of its “Player-Piano.” times scratchy to the constitution and laws of the recordings. Cherokee nation, and is sanctioned adjust the sound and when to use Zenph then stages what it calls a “re- only by custom.” In fact, several provi- hand levers to vary the tempo. The performance,” with an electronically sions of the Cherokee constitution, Aeolian Company, for example, said controlled piano mimicking the origi- written in 1827, expressly derogated of its player piano, “Let no one sup- nal. At the Newport Music Festival in the rights of slaves. pose that the Pianola is an automatic July, Zenph featured Glenn Gould “As part of their support for the instrument, or that it produces ‘mech- “playing” his 1955 recording of Bach’s Cherokee Nation’s fight against anical music.’ It does not play the Goldberg Variations. Re-perform- removal,” Joy writes, “abolitionists piano. You are the one who plays, put- ances of Gould, Rachmaninoff, and found themselves in the unusual posi- ting into music all the soul and ex- Art Tatum are available on CD. tion of acting as apologists for Indian pression you possess.” One writer slaveholding.” observed in 1920 that regular pianos Abolitionist Aberration were mechanical, too: “If a man Media War and Peace wants a really ‘natural’ musical instru- An inconvenient truth? ment . . . he will just have to whistle Before the Civil War, many abolition- Bedside manners with his fingers.” ists championed the cause of Native In his final days, Leo Tolstoy wanted In other instances, though, com- Americans as well as slaves. The solitude, but Russian journalists had panies took pride in fully mechaniz- Cherokee and other tribes should be other plans. Jay Parini told the story ing the experience. A piano roll was permitted to keep their ancestral in his 1990 novel The Last Station, produced from Sergei Rachman- lands, the abolitionists said, and not the basis of a 2009 film. Now William inoff’s performance of one of his prel- be forced to move west. Linking the Nickell has produced a nonfiction udes. “When the Ampico plays, it is two causes, William Lloyd Garrison’s account, The Death of Tolstoy (Cor- just as if the hands of the artist were antislavery newspaper, The Liberator, nell University Press).

16 Wilson Quarterly ■ Autumn 2010 FINDINGS

Even when a company does issue a rebate check, the consumer may fail to cash it. One reason: Checks often arrive in envelopes with no return address or other markings, and get thrown out as junk mail. Poundstone quotes business consultant Paula Rosenblum: For companies, “anything less than 100 percent redemption is free money.”

Dr. Death Cadaver cures A photographer captured Sofia Tolstoy as she gazed in the window of the station agent’s house In one of the more macabre chapters at Astapovo Station. She had traveled there to see her husband, Leo, who lay on his deathbed. in medical history, healers starting in ancient times would instruct the sick The 82-year-old Tolstoy left his “Don’t fill the newspapers with sensa- and infirm to touch a corpse. Not just estate in Yasnaya Polyana, south of tional and vulgar headlines. Tolstoy any corpse, either: It had to be that of Moscow, and his wife, Sofia, in late left in search of peace. Quiet, gentle- an executed criminal, sociologist October 1910. He soon contracted men, quiet!” Ruth Penfold-Mounce writes in Mor- pneumonia and ended up at Asta- Actually, Tolstoy may have been tality (August). povo Station, some 100 miles from the one Russian untouched by the After some public executions, home. As he lay dying in the station frenzy. When he felt well enough, crowds would surge forward to touch agent’s house, the Russian press according to Nickell, he asked to be the corpse and even rub its hand over swarmed to the scene. Tolstoy’s read the day’s newspapers—but not the site of their maladies. As late as daughter Aleksandra wrote of any items about himself. the 1940s, some Britons sought the reporters “catching every word” and touch of an executed criminal as a cameramen “minute by minute get- Rebate Debate remedy for swelling. ting everything they could on film.” Some entrepreneurial execu- Newspapers published all of the Waiting game tioners charged admission, and, of telegrams they received from corres- Ever wondered what’s in it for compa- course, they had the best access to pondents on the scene, even reports nies that offer big rebates rather than the corpses. From the early 17th rendered obsolete by subsequent straightforward discounts? As it turns century to the 19th century, many events. Tolstoy’s son Sergei sent a out, a lot. Customers may never get afflicted Germans went so far as to letter to his wife saying that he around to submitting the rebate consult executioners for medical wouldn’t bother providing medical forms, William Poundstone writes in advice. That may not have been updates; she could learn everything Priceless (Hill & Wang). Or they may such a bad idea, Penfold-Mounce from the press. fill them out wrong. “Minor omissions notes: “The fact that executioners Some journalists took issue with mandate ‘further research,’ requests were experts in torture and death the saturation coverage. “There was a for more paperwork, and transferring meant their knowledge of human desert for Buddha,” one editorialist the case to a ‘special team,’ ” he anatomy and the physical condition chided, “but there is no desert for Tol- explains. “This is defended as neces- was often more advanced than stoy. No matter where he goes, the sary to prevent fraud, but it also has [that of] university-trained doctors telegraph, cinema, and automobile the effect of causing many a con- of the time.” will overtake him.” Another wrote, sumer to give up.” —Stephen Bates

Autumn 2010 ■ Wilson Quarterly 17 THE WILSON QUARTERLY

Last Chance on Death Row

A little-known legal doctrine confounds the most basic understanding of justice—whether it matters if a convicted person is actually innocent.

BY WILLIAM BAUDE

When a federal judge in Georgia an- be confronted with a person who is scheduled for nounced the fate of death row inmate Troy Davis on execution and yet can prove his innocence. August 23, the long-awaited decision was not what Davis or his supporters had prayed for. He’d become a cause célèbre for organizations such as Amnesty avis’s saga began in the early hours of August International and the NAACP, which decried his con- 19, 1989, when a group of African-American viction as baseless and racist and had deployed the D men, including Davis, were seen attacking a usual campaign of online petitions, protests, T-shirts, homeless man near a parking lot in Savannah, Georgia. and pins. Former president Jimmy Carter, Arch- Off-duty police officer Mark MacPhail responded to the bishop Desmond Tutu, and Pope Benedict XVI had altercation and was shot in the chest and head. He died lent their support to the cause. before help arrived. One of the attackers named Davis as But in the end, Davis lost. Sometime in the com- the killer, and other witnesses confirmed that story at ing months, he will be executed by lethal injection, trial. In 1991, a Georgia jury convicted Davis of the mur- though he still claims to be innocent of the charge der, and he was sentenced to die. Since then, he has tried that he killed a police officer two decades ago. How every avenue legally available to him, never wavering many chances should we give to someone to prove his from the claim that he is innocent. innocence? Just one? Five? An infinite number? This Davis was convicted on the basis of the testimony of bedeviling issue—“actual innocence,” in legal par- nine witnesses. No physical evidence conclusively linked lance—remains one of the giant open questions of him to the crime, and no murder weapon was ever modern constitutional law. Davis’s fate may no longer found. Later, Davis claimed that seven of the nine wit- be in the balance, but sooner or later the courts will nesses had recanted or contradicted their prior testi- mony. One, Darrell Collins, who was 16 at the time of the William Baude is a lawyer in Washington, D.C. crime, said that he had been threatened with being

18 Wilson Quarterly ■ Autumn 2010 I Am Troy Davis, by Lavar Munroe charged as an accessory to murder if he did not name should happen when a fair, lawful trial is still alleged to Davis. Another, Kevin McQueen, had originally claimed have led to the wrong result. Under the Constitution, can that Davis confessed to him while the two were doing we legally execute an innocent person? time together in prison. Later, McQueen admitted that The Supreme Court declined to answer that ques- he had been motivated to say this by a prison yard argu- tion when it ordered a new hearing in Davis’s case last ment with Davis. (He had received a reduced sentence summer, but some of the justices wrote separately to for his testimony against Davis.) The federal judge address it. Justice John Paul Stevens argued that a per- decided that several of the recantations Davis presented son “who possesses new evidence conclusively and were not credible, and the remainder did not funda- definitively proving, beyond any scintilla of doubt, mentally undermine the evidence against him. that he is an innocent man” surely could not “be put At the core of Davis’s case is the question of what to death nonetheless.”

Autumn 2010 ■ Wilson Quarterly 19 Actual Innocence

But Justice Antonin Scalia, in a dissent joined by again from the U.S. Supreme Court. In the federal Justice Clarence Thomas, argued that a new hearing courts, he can request an appeal to a federal appeals for Davis was pointless because it no longer mat- court, then seek Supreme Court review yet again. tered whether he had new evidence of his innocence. These challenges can drag on, but eventually they Even assuming that Davis could prove he was inno- come to an end. Yet what if someone goes through every possi- ble procedure and after all WHAT IF SOMEONE GOES through is said and done still claims to be innocent? every possible legal procedure and after all What if another court were to actually find him is said and done still claims to be innocent? innocent? No belated claim of innocence has yet been found so compelling cent, Scalia wrote, “this Court has never held that the as to force the issue. In two previous death-penalty Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted cases (in 1993 and 2006), the Supreme Court heard defendant who has had a full and fair trial but is arguments from prisoners who had exhausted their later able to convince a habeas court that he is ‘actu- appeals, yet claimed to be innocent and asked the ally’ innocent.” Indeed, he wrote, the Court’s prior Court to stop their executions. In both cases, the Court decisions had “expressed considerable doubt that any concluded that there was not enough evidence that the claim based on alleged ‘actual innocence’ is constitu- prisoners were innocent. (One of those prisoners, tionally cognizable.” Leonel Herrera, was executed; the other, Paul House, was later freed after the Court remanded his case to a lower court on other grounds, and the prosecutor t this point, anyone whose common sense has eventually dropped the charges.) The Court also not been deadened by three years of law touched on the question of actual innocence in a 2009 A school might scream: How can it be an open case in which it decided that an Alaska prisoner did question whether it is constitutional to execute the not have the right to circumvent state law that might innocent? But the issue of “actual innocence” is more bar him from testing old evidence for DNA. In that complex than our intuition suggests. case, the Court assumed that an actual innocence At a trial, the government is required to prove right existed for the sake of argument, but said the beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant is question wasn’t relevant to his situation. (DNA evi- guilty. If he is acquitted, that is the end of the matter. dence has exonerated scores of people in recent years, If not, he can appeal to higher courts, and ultimately but these cases did not involve actual innocence pro- ask the U.S. Supreme Court to review his case. If ceedings because governors or prosecutors voluntar- those appeals fail, he can challenge his conviction ily agreed to release prisoners or because there was a again by seeking a writ of habeas corpus (a form of statute allowing them to be freed.) court-ordered release) in both state and federal Congress, for its part, has said that a convict has courts. The defendant can argue that the evidence only a limited number of appeals and opportunities to presented at trial was insufficient to prove guilt, and attack his conviction in federal court, even if he has in some limited circumstances (which vary from state new evidence. (While the rules differ from state to to state and case to case) he can also present new evi- state, many also impose such limits.) dence. If his case is rejected, he can appeal yet again: The question is whether Congress’s prescription is In the state court systems, he can generally appeal to constitutionally permissible. Why shouldn’t we try as one or more higher state courts, then seek review hard as we can to make sure we get it right? Yet per-

20 Wilson Quarterly ■ Autumn 2010 Actual Innocence fect accuracy is not the goal of the criminal justice sys- authority within their jurisdiction. Their rulings can tem. For one thing, there are practical concerns with bind very important people who disagree with them, never-ending review. Jury trials followed by some including the president. Because judicial power is so form of judicial review have long been our traditional great, it must also be circumscribed. By expanding their method of determining guilt or innocence. So what role in “actual innocence” cases beyond what the legis- procedures would we use to retry the trial, and who lature had given them, judges would be straining against would decide whether those new procedures were judicial finality and against the principle that courts accurate? And once a judge was convinced that a con- must not define the scope of their own power. It is intol- victed prisoner was actually innocent, could that erably dangerous to give judges the unreviewable power determination be reviewed again by the prosecution? to decide how powerful they are. Normally these questions are answered by the leg- Such an assertion of authority would be costly in islature that creates the appeal or habeas procedure. other ways. Indeed, the tradition of judicial finality is one But because actual innocence claims are pursued out- of the chief justifications for the courts’ ability to inval- side established procedures, there are no ready idate unconstitutional laws through judicial review. That answers to these questions. And judges cannot simply finality is what forces other branches to obey the courts’ answer them by saying that there is a duty to get it judgments, right or wrong. right, regardless of how many proceedings and how This concern with concepts such as finality, jurisdic- much time it takes, because the judicial system’s tion, and the balance of powers may sound technical, resources are finite. Indeed, some advocates of an lawyerly, and highly abstract. But so is the criminal jus- actual innocence right would not limit it to death tice system. Crimes are messy and the facts are often dis- penalty cases. If such a right meant that courts must puted, but the law must provide simple answers: inno- allow every prisoner to perpetually pursue claims of cence or guilt, freedom or imprisonment, life or death. innocence, it might push an already overburdened It does that through a system of rules animated by judicial system to the brink. abstract principles. Indeed, the reason so much power But these practical problems do not really go to the is given to judges is because they are presumed to be heart of the matter. One could imagine a court invent- expert at technical, lawyerly questions. ing a rough solution to some of these problems, as happened in Davis’s case. There is a deeper, more the- oretical problem with recognizing an “actual inno- his is not to deny the potential for injustice. cence” right. But we should not look to the courts for a T solution. Legislatures create the procedures used to challenge criminal convictions. If our current he principle that courts should seek justice sits ones are inadequate, lawmakers can create more gen- alongside a principle of judicial finality—at some erous rules for presenting new evidence of innocence. T point, legal disputes must be settled. In nearly Indeed, in many states they have done exactly that in every case, whether civil or criminal, the losing side creating new procedures to accommodate DNA test- must eventually accept the authority of the court. In ing. Similar procedures could be created for other criminal cases, there is a safeguard: the executive’s power forms of new evidence to pardon, one last chance for a case that has slipped The mistake is in thinking that judges are the only through the cracks. An unending right to keep chal- ones who can or should fix this injustice. If we care so lenging that decision would make the legal system much that actual innocence claims get into court, we pointless. should be lobbying the democratically elected branches, Moreover, judges cannot decide the limits of their which have the power to create new procedures. If we are own power. They hear cases that the legislature has unwilling to demand better systems for assessing inno- decided are within their purview. This legislative role is cence from them, we should not be surprised that the part of the balance of powers: Judges exercise great courts are reluctant to invent one. ■

Autumn 2010 ■ Wilson Quarterly 21 THE WILSON QUARTERLY

The Web’s Random Logic

The Internet’s oceans of information seem to defy comprehension, but that doesn’t prevent us from trying—often successfully—to make sense of it all.

BY JEFF PORTER

When I heard that Leon Redbone had well known that the National Geo- recently played at the Tralfamadore Café in Buffalo, my graphic Channel picked it up for old hometown, I went online for details. I hadn’t broadcast a couple of years ago. seen the Panama hat–wearing, string-tie-strung, Every Google search benefits bantering blues performer in from the billions of queries users have years. I wondered if he still made in the past, generating a looked like Frank Zappa on mathematical model of diazepam. Googling the the way words are put name and place produced an together. Each query inventory that ran for several triggers a Web crawler pages. Redbone’s show in Buf- (called a “spider”) that falo was buried deep down the scours the Internet, list. At the top was gathering URLs and a YouTube video of a herd tagging hyperlinks. The of Cape buffalo facing off popularity of “Battle at against a pride of lions. This was Kruger” convinced the the “Battle at Kruger” video that Web spider that I had made a tourist filmed at South Africa’s a mistake when typing my Kruger National Park in 2004, entry. Did you mean Lion which went viral when it was posted online and became so and Buffalo? I was politely asked. The many hits tallied by the sensational nature video weighed heavily against my Jeff Porter is the author of Oppenheimer Is Watching Me (2007), and his interest in the blues. And of course, in Spanish lion is león. essays have appeared in Antioch Review, Shenandoah, Missouri Review, Hotel Amerika, and elsewhere. He teaches English at the University of Iowa. Not one to be pushed around by an algorithm, I was about

22 Wilson Quarterly ■ Autumn 2010 to scream indignantly at Google’s candy-stripe logo—but not the Library of Alexandria, only without the gardens. before I played the lion clip. Writers and publishers have been raising a stink over this, worried that the giant Internet company will gain enormous leverage over the distribution of books, lready I have forgotten Leon Redbone. His name but progress toward a global electronic library is is a vanishing signifier in the hullabaloo that is my unstoppable. The Library of Congress has already A hippocampus. I scroll down the search list, losing scanned, digitized, and uploaded some 19 million his- all focus, and stumble onto another Leon in Buffalo. The torical documents and other items—everything from infamous one. I click on “Leon Czolgosz and the Trial,” part slave records and photos of the American frontier to of a centennial site created by the University of Buffalo the biography of Harry Houdini. Libraries to commemorate the Pan-American Exposition of American Memory, which includes the bulk of 1901. The site is rich with information I never encountered these digital artifacts, is not a work of art. The home- when visiting the Buffalo Historical page provides a simple out- Society as a kid. A bottle line and one or two small of beer and a sardine images, and the inter- sandwich cost 30 nal links take you to cents at the Pabst a bare-bones data- Restaurant on the base. The whole Exposition Mid- thing is as sexy as a way. The first lawnmower. I click exhibit on the Mid- on the Presidents tab way, if you’re wonder- and navigate down ing, was Eskimaux Vil- the list to “The Last lage, constructed of Days of a President: papier-mâché and plaster to Films of McKinley and represent the faraway frozen North, the Pan-American Expo- peopled by Inupiaq men and women who sition, 1901.” I’m looking for a mounted spear-throwing contests, dogsled facsimile of the police report filed races, and kayak competitions. I try to imagine on Czolgosz, McKinley’s crazed assassin. I these scenes unfolding in Buffalo, in Delaware Park to be click next on Early Motion Pictures, scrolling down precise, native Alaskans overdressed in animal skins come to a film labeled “Execution of Czolgosz, with all the way from the North Slope running in and out of imag- panorama of Auburn Prison.” After being beaten inary igloos. Luckily, there’s a link to a movie of Eskimaux severely, Czolgosz was tried, convicted, and trans- Village made by Thomas Edison. The 52-second clip shows ferred to Auburn Prison, in the Finger Lakes region several Inupiaq men overdressed in animal skins running of upstate New York, where he was electrocuted a in and out of imaginary igloos chasing three baffled Siber- month later. The film opens with railroad cars pass- ian huskies. The link has taken me to the Library of Con- ing by, then follows uniformed guards who escort gress’s American Memory project. Czolgosz down murderers’ row. There’s a cut to an Six years ago, the Library of Congress signed on isolated chairlike contraption with wires attached. with Google and institutions from Egypt, China, and Czolgosz is strapped in, the current is turned on at Canada to digitize a million books. The idea was to a signal from the warden, and the assassin’s body create a massive virtual storehouse of information— rises up three times, as though heaving from a bad

Autumn 2010 ■ Wilson Quarterly 23 The Web’s Random Logic dream, then falls slack. The doctors report to the Reviews, where it is suggested that Edison was inter- warden that he is dead. ested in making the Czolgosz film largely because he “Execution of Czolgosz” is a wicked little movie. wanted to brand anything associated with electricity If it weren’t a reenactment, it might qualify as the with his own name. At www. buffalohistoryworks.com first snuff film. The short was produced by Thomas I find out that Czolgosz was the 50th casualty of the Edison, and the electrocution sequence was shot electric chair in New with actors in West Orange, New Jer- York. I also, at last, stum- sey, at Edison’s Black Maria studio. ble upon the police But this back story is withheld from report of McKinley’s the Library of Congress page. murder. Impatient, I’ve already cut and The document is run from the American Memory fronted by a mug shot of project. Czolgosz staring into the In a frenzy of clicking and camera. The narrative is rapid eye movement, I’m col- short. “While Wm. lecting facts from various McKinley the Presi- sources. Wikipedia tells me dent of the that Auburn Prison had the United States dubious distinction of being was holding a the first penal institution to roll public reception out the newly invented elec- in the Temple of tric chair. The Canadian Music at the Coalition Against the Death Pan-Amer. Expo- Penalty tells me that William Kemmler, who mur- sition, he was shot in the abdomen twice with a .32 cal. dered his girlfriend with an ax in Buffalo, was the revolver.” I have seen this face before, in middle school, first convict ever to be electrocuted at Auburn. (That and the pistol pointed at McKinley’s chest. It was a was in 1890.) The site also summarizes the intense cold November day when our class visited the “Infa- rivalry between George Westinghouse and Edison mous Crimes” exhibit at the Buffalo Historical Society. over electric-chair technology, another episode in the Czolgosz’s gun, a .32-caliber Iver-Johnson revolver, war between alternating current (AC) and direct cur- was tucked on a dark mahogany shelf behind glass. rent (DC). A few years later, Westinghouse lit up the McKinley had been glad-handing the public in a Pan-American Exposition with AC. Elsewhere I learn receiving line outside the domed Temple of Music. At that Edwin S. 4:07 p.m., the disgruntled Czolgosz reached the front Porter (no rela- of the line and, at point-blank range, shot McKinley tion) directed the twice. In the Czolgosz photograph, there is no trace of short movie for the “diabolical” anarchist described by the press. No Edison, Porter mustache, no extremist fervor. It’s not a portrait of a being the same bloodthirsty gunman. man who would In one of those strange congruencies that no one soon become later believes is true, I happened to be gazing at the famous for The revolver (it seemed so small) when news of the shoot- Great Train Rob- ing of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas spread bery (1903). This through the hallway and then exploded into startled bit of information cries and hysterical screams. For a moment I felt gets me to Paghat implicated, as if gawking at the pistol were regicidal, the Ratgirl’s Film some sort of thought crime. That’s what I recall now,

24 Wilson Quarterly ■ Autumn 2010 The Web’s Random Logic the shadowy museum, the revolver, the photograph— On Google Maps, much of this part of northern and the footage of Lee Harvey Oswald’s own assassi- New Jersey looks bleak. Two blocks away from the nation two days later. These sites can’t be moused Edison site I see a conspicuously vacant lot at the over, for memory is an ancient mystery. corner of Alden and High streets. I toggle to Wikipedia. Here, comprehensive demographic data on West Orange is at my fingertips. As of the 2000 y Google search has taken little more than census, there was a population density of 3,700 peo- 20 minutes. I’ve bounced around a uni- ple per square mile (where I live it’s 53), and the M verse of digital information, zigzagging median household income was $69,254. Industrial through time and across a patchwork of nodes. Some from the start, the township was home to the Orange research suggests that Internet surfing stimulates the Beer Brewery, Thomas E. Edison, and the U.S. brain. In one recent study, neuroscientists at the Radium Corporation. The latter was famous for University of California, Los Angeles, placed 24 sub- manufacturing “glow-in-the-dark” timepieces, many jects in an MRI machine while recreating the expe- of which were shipped overseas to American sol- rience of Googling and found increased activity in diers fighting in the blacked-out trenches of World the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain responsi- War I. That in itself isn’t much of a story, but I linger ble for complex reasoning and decisionmaking. Book long enough to learn that the firm’s employees lovers also underwent scans, but simple reading trig- (women who tipped their brushes in their mouths gered far fewer neural circuits. “There’s evidence while painting the dials of watches and instruments that the more the brain is active,” said one researcher, with a radioactive substance) met a horrible end in “the more the brain makes connections.” Searching one of the greatest epidemiological catastrophes of the Internet may even be addictive. In a survey a few the period. years ago, more than 90 percent of American office When I find out that the vacant lot at the corner workers said they surfed the Web, and among those, of Alden and High is the former site of the U.S. roughly half said they would rather give up their Radium Corporation, I grope for the right adjec- morning coffee than go offline. tive. An unexpected narrative is coming to life, as if Today, the debate is either/or-ish. Some say we are there were a kind of haphazard intelligence lying in getting dumber on Google, some say smarter. It’s wait at these data points. Information that is random anybody’s guess where this technology will take us, only in appearance is using me to arrange itself. I am but I have a hunch the outcome will be more com- the conduit through which it streams into existence. plicated than we currently think. In my own case, the U.S. Radium employed an estimated 4,000 buzz I felt wasn’t triggered by the digital distractions women as dial painters from 1917 to 1926. The inges- of Web surfing so much as by a growing desire to connect the dots between random data points. It was the buzz a gamer might feel. I was looking for the next level, as if the Internet were a colossal game space with uncharted secrets. As a player, I had to respect its digressive structure. Another search, another click, and I’m back to Edison’s Black Maria. The tarpapered West Orange motion picture studio was closed in 1901 shortly after Edwin Porter’s completion of “Execution of Czolgosz,” and demolished two years later.

Autumn 2010 ■ Wilson Quarterly 25 The Web’s Random Logic

tion of radium paint resulted in a condition called three of which point to the U.S. Radium Corporation, “radium jaw,” a painful swelling of the upper and 422 Alden Street, West Orange, New Jersey. I’m lower jaws, and ultimately led to the demise of many wondering how this story in particular, one indus- dial painters, most in their late teens and early twen- trial tale out of a thousand, wound up in the digital ties. When Grace Fryer, who had worked at U.S. archive of the Library of Congress. The collection Radium for three years, blew her nose, her handker- features several black-and-white photos and a chief glowed in the dark. Soon, Fryer’s teeth fell out lengthy report on the history of the U.S. Radium and her jaw swelled to enormous size. The mysteri- Corporation’s two-acre complex, which was desig- ous deaths of the dial painters were often blamed on nated a Superfund site in 1982. To complete the syphilis. Eventually Fryer and three other dial cleanup, the whole neighborhood would have to be painters took U.S. Radium to court, but by the time decontaminated and the moribund factory build- legal procedures began, the four—dubbed the ings would have to be demolished. Not, however, “Radium Girls”—were in bad shape. The two not con- before a cadre of writers and photographers con- fined to bed were unable to raise their arms under verged on the area in a documentary blitz. The ill- oath. Fryer needed a back brace just to be there. famed U.S. Radium Corporation was not exactly an American treasure, like Edison’s nearby labs, but its toxic role in early-20th-century labor history was aunted by the Radium Girls, I toggle back recorded on 18 reels of microfilm. to American Memory and type “radium” in Many of the photographs are simply a record of Hthe search field. Up comes a list of 42 items, deserted buildings soon to be leveled, cinder-block

26 Wilson Quarterly ■ Autumn 2010 The Web’s Random Logic structures with broken windows and peeling paint, lockjaw. Marie Curie herself kept a glass vial of embellished with giant strokes of graffiti. Inside, the radium salts on a stand next to her bed for comfort. complex is littered with industrial debris and dis- As late as 1927, the novelty of radium hadn’t worn carded junk, strewn haphazardly, as though the own- off. In that year, a wealthy Pittsburgh industrialist, ers had left in a hurry. There are a dozen large can- Eben Byers, was advised by his doctor to try Radithor isters in one building looking vaguely perilous; in another is a large mix- ing drum where perhaps HOW DID THE STORY of the Radium radium and zinc sulfide were combined with Girls wind up in the digital archive of the resin. A wasted place. Where are the young Library of Congress? women? They are in a differ- ent database, where I download a black-and-white for the chronic pain in his arm. Radithor was a pop- photo of the dial painters. Hunched over their deadly ular nostrum bottled and marketed by the notorious jars of radium, 15 young women meticulously outline quack and confidence man William Bailey, whose the hands and faces of clocks, licking their brushes. Radium Laboratories sold half-ounce bottles of “cer- The photo was taken in the Paint Application Build- tified radioactive water.” Unlike many bogus reme- ing of the U.S. Radium Corporation in 1922. dies, Radithor was in fact radioactive. Byers, Most of the girls were happy to have such a 49, became Bailey’s best customer, drinking as well-paying job, though no one is smiling in many as three bottles of Radithor a day, the photo. The windows are half open to believing it had not only healed what ailed ventilate fumes. The women wear ear- him but rekindled his sexual vitality. muffs. At the end of the workday, the girls (Radium was frequently marketed as a kind brushed the buttons on their sweaters, of Viagra, as in Vita Radium Supposito- even their eyelids and fingernails, with ries.) In two years’ time, Byers went luminous paint to make them glow in the through 1,400 bottles. Two and a half years dark before going out on dates. What you later, he began complaining of chronic can’t see in the photo are the swollen faces headaches and weight loss; soon his teeth and crippling lesions of those with acute fell out, holes formed in his skull, and his radium poisoning, severe anemia and mouth collapsed. As a headline in The Wall leukopenia, symptoms that could manifest Street Journal read, “The Radium Water anywhere from one to seven years after Worked Fine Until His Jaw Came Off.” exposure. Death came within months of the Radithor was manufactured in East Orange, first symptom. By some estimates, at least 100 dial New Jersey, from 1918 to 1928. It was removed from painters died from their brief stints at U.S. Radium. the market in 1931, but by then half a million bottles The productive workers, those girls who painted had been shipped worldwide. William Bailey became hundreds of clocks a day, died soonest. very rich. His facility was only a mile from Edison’s The medical community routinely assured dial lab and the U.S. Radium Corporation. The string of painters that handling radium was safe. In fact, com- municipalities known to New Jerseyans as “the pany physicians suggested that exposure to low doses Oranges” were the radioactive hub of the world. of radioactivity was good for their health. Since the Most of this history is available on the Web, but turn of the century, radium had been portrayed as a there is another site, an old-fashioned terrestrial miracle drug that could cure anything from acne to archive, where America’s fascination with radium

Autumn 2010 ■ Wilson Quarterly 27 The Web’s Random Logic is preserved in the raw—the William J. Hammer rays.” Following dinner and a round of speeches, the Collection at the National Museum of American lights were dimmed as members of the Technology History in Washington, D.C. Among the 100 boxes of Club rose to toast their alma mater. There was an documents in the collection—including more than awkward pause; then a member shouted, “There, I 30 cubic feet of letters, diagrams, photographs, can see it now,” his cocktail glowing with a brilliant sketches, books, and magazines—are several folders blue fluorescence. containing newspaper clippings from around the The sheer number of articles on radium is over- country speculating on the mysteries of radium. whelming, each one reflective of a collective fantasy Hammer, a former high-level assistant to Edison, that knew few limits. Particularly absurd are became obsessed with radium while in Europe accounts describing the efforts of dermatologists to in 1902. He assisted the Curies for several months bleach the skin of blacks. A Philadelphia physician, in Paris and was rewarded for his efforts with for example, stumbled onto the possibility of “turn- nine tubes of radium, which he brought home ing a Negro white with the Magic Rays of Radium” to Newark. It was Hammer who invented lumin- when removing moles and facial blemishes from his ous paint and radium-water cures. He hired sev- patients. In one instance, he produced white blotches eral newspaper clipping services to track and gather on a black man’s face while bombarding his birth- reports on radium in the popular press. The closest mark with X-rays and radium. “Then came the happy thing to Google at the beginning of the 20th cen- idea that caused both doctor and patient to thrill tury, the clipping services gleaned a trove of articles with pleasure,” a reporter explained in a local mag- and advertisements from daily newspapers, trade azine in January 1904. “Why not continue the journals, and popular pamphlets, all of which process and change the entire color of the patient’s became part of the vast collection Hammer skin from mahogany to white?” For more than two accumulated. months, the patient received daily doses of radium To see the radium clippings you have to go to the and X-rays, and reportedly “changed completely to third floor of the archives center at the museum. a white man.” Two weeks later, a New York newspa- There, in Box 19, Series 3, are crammed scraps of yel- per ran the story “All Coons to Look White.” Women lowed newsprint, bizarre articles from around the too were targeted. Gynecologists were particularly country on the wonders of radium. Brittle and flaky, eager to give radium a try, believing that a woman the newsprint cracks along the edges, and brown with excessive menstrual flow could correct her debris falls in your lap. The news has not quite dis- problem simply by inserting radioactive tubes into integrated, but its fragility, the fragility of informa- her uterus. tion, is disquieting. We expect archives and the doc- One spectacle led to another. Lines formed at uments they contain to last forever. But they don’t. public demonstrations across the nation wherever Several clippings in the Hammer files describe a radium went on exhibit, as many hoped for a chance 1904 event when MIT alumni gathered to attend to see the uncanny element glow in the dark. “All day the ninth annual dinner of the Technology Club in long crowds swarmed, pushed, and elbowed their New York City. The theme of the night was radium. way to this little bit of powder,” reported The New A wineglass was placed before each guest filled with York Sun when New York’s American Museum of “liquid sunshine,” a solution produced by stirring Natural History put radium on display. At the 1904 together the bark of the horse chestnut, quinine, World’s Fair in St. Louis, record-breaking crowds and water, then inserting a radium tube that pro- stood patiently outside the mines and metallurgy duced enough “radio-activity” to give off “ultra-violet building waiting to glimpse a gram of radium. “There is something weird and even awe-inspiring in watch-

Illustrations: p. 30, Leon Redbone; p. 31, water buffalo; p. 32, (top) Thomas Edison with his mov- ing the action of this invisible force,” wrote a jour- ing picture machine, (bottom) Leon Czolgosz after his arrest; p. 33, still from “Execution of Czol- gosz”; p. 34, the Radium Girls; p. 35, a bottle of Radithor; p. 36, Roberto Bolaño. nalist for a Connecticut newspaper. In 1929, the average person could buy 80 patent

28 Wilson Quarterly ■ Autumn 2010 The Web’s Random Logic medicines containing radium. It was available in black body radiation. A degree of indiscriminate ran- pills, bubble bath, anodynes, and suppositories. It domness has entered our lives and is altering the way we was advertised as an ingredient in candies, cock- come to know things. New technologies prompt us to tails, aphrodisiacs, and toothpastes. But the public- synthesize data that is more and more disparate. Did you ity evoked by the deaths of Eben Byers and the dial mean Lion and Buffalo? asks Google. “Mark Anthony painters dampened radium’s popularity. By the late added you as a friend on Facebook,” an automated e-mail 1930s, radium was more likely to appear in a horror says. (Who’s that?) Over on Amazon, I want to buy a copy feature such as Boris Karloff’s The Invisible Ray of The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens, but first I than in mouthwash ads. have to go through customer service: Readers who bought this item also bought The Romantic Dogs by Roberto Bolaño. hat began as a search for Leon Redbone Which is how I discovered the Chilean author. ended, by way of the 20th century’s first It’s hard not to imagine that randomness is a side W assassin, at the unmarked gravesite of effect of the massive, unprecedented effort to concen- some young New Jersey women. Fishing for infor- trate and arrange all information online in searchable mation, I stumbled on the story of little-known peo- databases. The Library of Congress went into a digi- ple who in their day had become headline news. How tizing craze in the 1990s, uploading books, movies, many remember Leon Czolgosz, the once notorious photographs, and audio recordings onto servers at a son of Polish immigrants, who worked at the Ameri- furious rate. More than a decade later, everything is can Steel and Wire Company in Cleveland, suffered a being fed into computers, from credit reports and nervous breakdown, read socialist newspa- phone conversations to the three billion building pers, and became reclusive—who said he blocks of the Neanderthal genome map. As Wal- killed McKinley because he was an enemy lace Stevens knew, a violent order can also be of working people? Who recalls Amilia a disorder. This is what modern literature Maggia, the daughter of Italian immi- teaches us, not that order comes from chaos grants, one of seven sisters who worked at but the other way around. Yet we also know the U.S. Radium Corporation, she of the that part of the inspiration for Web 2.0, as ravaged mouth and crushed bones, the socialized Internet is called, lies in from whose nose escaped a black the assumed relatability of the unre- discharge smelling of garlic? Their lated. Like the followers of fragmentary stories have materi- Hermes Trismegistus, Web alized out of the tailings of a his- mongers and marketers tory that survives by chance in believe that everything random archives and data- is linked, and they gen- bases. I have a feeling that erate algorithms based were I to turn off my laptop, on theories of fuz- they would disappear zy connectedness to forever. make it so. What’s sur- All of this may seem prising is how well the entirely improbable, if not human imagination takes arbitrary, but that’s the point. In to the extravagance of ran- the age of information, meaning dom order. Necessity may be happens by happy accident. It’s not the mother of invention, as the an attainment of the will, but something old adage goes, but the road of else that we haven’t named yet—something excess still leads to the palace strangely inexplicable, like Planck’s constant or of wisdom. ■

Autumn 2010 ■ Wilson Quarterly 29 THE WILSON QUARTERLY

Gandhi’s Invisible Hands

A dust-caked library left behind by his inner circle shows how Mahatma Gandhi’s saintly, putatively solitary crusade for peace was made possible by a well-honed enterprise of resourceful supporters.

BY IAN DESAI

On September 4, 1915, in the sticky heat of This statement, in which Desai contemplated abandon- late summer, Mahadev Desai and Narahari Parikh ing his nascent legal career in order to devote himself to walked without speaking along the Sabarmati River, on the service of someone he had met for the first time that the outskirts of Ahmedabad, a city in northwestern day, changed the course of his life. It also helped change India. Desai and Parikh were best friends who shared the course of history for a colonized nation seeking free- everything, so the silence between them was uncharac- dom and its entrenched imperial rulers. With these words, teristic. Their day, however, had been highly unusual, the 23-year-old Desai began a journey that would produce and they were both lost in reflection on what had tran- one of the most important partnerships the modern world spired. When they reached the Ellis Bridge, which has known. The lawyer they had met had extraordinary spanned the surging waters of the Sabarmati and sup- ambitions that were growing by the day, and he had ported a steady flow of carriage, mule, foot, and, occa- started to assemble a team of gifted individuals to help him sionally, car traffic from the bustling city, they stopped achieve his visions. That lawyer’s name was Mohandas and faced each other. They were both thinking about a Gandhi, and in Mahadev Desai the future Mahatma had meeting they had had a few hours earlier with a 46-year- found a crucial partner for his historic cause. old lawyer who had recently returned to India after liv- ing for two decades in South Africa. Desai finally broke their prolonged silence: “Nara- n March 2005 I was in Ahmedabad, now a major hari, I have half a mind to go and sit at the feet of this man.” industrial metropolis. It had not rained for nine months, and the temperature hovered above 100 Ian Desai I is a postdoctoral associate and lecturer in South Asian studies degrees. Although the room I was in felt like an oven, and history at Yale. He received his doctorate from Oxford, where he stud- ied on a Rhodes scholarship. it happened to be a library housed in a museum on

30 Wilson Quarterly ■ Autumn 2010 The iconic Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi leads the way during his historic Salt March, gathering new followers as he moves toward the Arabian Sea. the site of Gandhi’s former residence, the Satyagraha As I explored the old, dust-caked books in this Ashram. Wiping my hands clean, I reached for a startling collection over the following weeks, months, book from the rusting metal case in front of me. Gen- and years, a story of Gandhi’s life and work unfolded tly brushing off dust, cobwebs, and an insect from the before me that diverged from the accounts I knew. surface of the volume, I opened it and examined the The very presence of such a substantial collection of elegant signature on the inside cover identifying its books in proximity to Gandhi—who famously owner as “Mahadev Desai.” What the signature espoused a philosophy of non-possession—suggested didn’t tell me was that this book, along with several that the image of simplicity and detachment long thousand others, was read, used, and shared jointly associated with the Mahatma, or “Great Soul,” was by Desai (no relation to me) and his boss, Mahatma misleading: There was clearly a hidden degree of Gandhi. complexity to Gandhi’s life.

Autumn 2010 ■ Wilson Quarterly 31 Gandhi’s Invisible Hands

From the heart of this library, I began to learn that Africa. He resolved to fight the racial injustices the common conception of Gandhi as a solitary, around him, and by the time he finally moved back to saintly hero who stood up to the British Empire and India in 1915, two decades later, he had transformed led India toward independence was incomplete. himself from a relatively unknown provincial barris- Gandhi was actually an energetic and effective direc- ter into a political powerhouse and social reformer tor of one of the 20th century’s most innovative social with an international reputation. enterprises. He was, in essence, an exceptional entre- It was during a campaign for the rights of the preneur who relied on a tight-knit community of Indian community in South Africa that Gandhi first coworkers—and an extensive store of intellectual came to rely on the support of a cohort of eccentric resources—to support him and his work. and talented men and women. Most of these collaborators—who were of both Indian and Euro- pean backgrounds—were volunteers, and were he origins of Gandhi’s enterprise stretch back housed at Gandhi’s two experimental communities in into the 19th century, well before he became South Africa, the Phoenix Settlement and Tolstoy T known as the Mahatma. Gandhi was born in Farm. These institutions, loosely based on ancient 1869 in Porbandar, a city on the Kathiawar Peninsula Indian religious communities called ashrams, became in Gujarat Province, facing the Arabian Sea, 250 the headquarters for Gandhi’s activism, which miles west of Ahmedabad. The youngest child of a was based on his philosophy of Satyagraha, or “truth force,” and its attendant practice of civil disobedience. THOUGH PHILOSOPHICALLY Gandhi Gandhi’s collaborators not only assisted him disavowed material possessions, he with the practical ele- ments of his political became a savvy and serial collector of campaigns and residen- tial communities; they books and people. also served as his intel- lectual companions and introduced him to the successful political administrator, Gandhi grew up in writings of a variety of authors. Although he was a part of India shaped by a rich tradition of cross- busy juggling his legal career and increasingly high- cultural exchange. Despite being a shy and diffident profile political work, Gandhi took advantage of his student, the young Gandhi made a dramatic decision frequent travels around South Africa to immerse to leave his homeland and seek his future abroad by himself in books on religious history, literature, pol- enrolling in a law program in London in 1888. Almost itics, and other subjects of interest to him. immediately following his return to India three years Though philosophically he disavowed material later, he accepted a job as a lawyer for a Gujarati possessions, Gandhi became a savvy and serial col- trading firm in South Africa. lector of books and people. When he returned to At the turn of the 20th century, South Africa was India, he brought a number of his coworkers from home to a sizable population of Indian immigrants, South Africa with him as well as almost 10,000 books primarily indentured laborers, who were often treated and pamphlets. Once in India, he chose a secluded as second-class citizens. Accustomed to respectful spot outside Ahmedabad on the banks of the Sabar- race relations from his time in London, Gandhi was mati River as the site of a new ashram. The Satya- startled and outraged by the racial discrimination graha Ashram quickly became the focal point of he experienced and witnessed while living in South Gandhi’s social and political endeavors around India

32 Wilson Quarterly ■ Autumn 2010 Gandhi’s Invisible Hands and a hub for his burgeoning community of attitude of industriousness. Accordingly, he trans- coworkers. formed his ashram into a workshop where each mem- Gandhi’s nephew Maganlal had been a linchpin of ber engaged in substantial amounts of communal his communities in South Africa, and he continued to service, from working in the community’s kitchen to serve as a foreman of sorts for Gandhi in India, lead- teaching in the ashram school to cleaning the shared ing his experiments in agriculture and other fields latrines. The latter task was one of Gandhi’s favorite involving physical work that were key components of chores, both to do himself and to assign to others. He his ideal of self-sufficient living. Yet Gandhi still saw a person’s readiness to clean latrines, a major needed someone who could match his tremendous taboo in India, as an indication of a willingness to intellectual, social, and spiritual capacities, who transgress deeply embedded social values in service would work for him and sustain his causes. He found of his movement’s larger ideals. such a person later that year, when he met Desai. This regimen underscored Gandhi’s central philo- Despite the rapport immediately felt on both sides, sophical tenet: For India to achieve true independ- Gandhi instructed the young man to wait a year ence, it needed a widespread ethos of service. More before joining his movement: The work he was about than political freedom from the British, independence to start would be all-consuming. to Gandhi implied the ability of a society’s system of Desai officially joined Gandhi in 1917, fulfilling the self-governance to serve the interest of its citizens vision of his future he had first shared with Narahari completely and without corruption. Gandhi was Parikh on their walk by the Sabarmati River. From the determined to show India (and the British) exactly outset, Desai’s daily routine was grueling. He woke what he meant by such service. A demonstration of before Gandhi arose at 4 am in order to work on the selflessness and self-sufficiency, then, was the first Mahatma’s schedule and make other preparations. crucial responsibility of Gandhi’s enterprise. How- He was by Gandhi’s side throughout the day, taking ever, given the nature of his social and political cam- notes on his meetings and various activities and help- paigns, it was by no means the only one. ing him draft correspondence and articles. (Desai’s son Narayan, who grew up working with Gandhi and his father, recalled a number of occasions when f all the political events in Gandhi’s life, per- Gandhi had only one change to make to Desai’s arti- haps none is more famous than the Salt cles: He replaced Desai’s authorial initials, M.D., OMarch of 1930. That theatrical act of with his own, M.K.G.) Finally, after Gandhi had defiance—in protest of the heavy tax on salt imposed retired, Desai wrote a diary account of the Mahatma’s by the British in India—catapulted Gandhi to new day so that no important detail went unrecorded. heights in his political career, as the image of this frail In addition to Desai, who performed his role under individual challenging a mighty empire captured the the title of personal secretary, and Gandhi’s family hearts and imaginations of millions of people around members—especially his wife, Kasturbai—the the world. Mahatma’s inner circle in India came to include a sec- Yet like many popular conceptions of Gandhi, this ond secretary named Pyarelal; an English admiral’s image is incomplete. Absent are the 78 members of daughter who abandoned life in Britain to live in the the Satyagraha Ashram who accompanied him on austere environment of Gandhi’s community after his march, as well as numerous aides, lieutenants, and reading a biography of the Mahatma; and Columbia volunteers who worked behind the scenes to stage the University–trained economist J. C. Kumarappa, among historic event. There would have been no Salt March, others. As many as 200 people lived with Gandhi at the no iconic Gandhi images, without them. Satyagraha Ashram at the institution’s zenith. A month before the march, Gandhi’s colleague Ever since reading Unto This Last, John Ruskin’s Vallabhbhai Patel led a team that canvassed arid 1877 paean to the dignity of manual labor, in South Gujarat Province to determine the best route. Chief Africa, Gandhi had had a credo to match his Victorian among their considerations were the route’s proxim-

Autumn 2010 ■ Wilson Quarterly 33 Gandhi’s Invisible Hands

The Mahatma called his longtime secretary Mahadev Desai, pictured here at his periodical-laden desk in 1940, his “alter ego.” ity to salt deposits and to towns where local govern- strating the link between the salt tax and the degra- ment officials would be likely to resign their posts on dation of Indian society, and publishing it in Gandhi’s Gandhi’s arrival in support of the protest, as well as weekly journals Young India and Navajivan, where easy access for the news media so that it could report the arguments could be picked up by mainstream on the march’s progress. Gandhi had become a mas- media outlets. Parikh and Desai scoured the vast ter of employing media coverage to make his efforts print resources in the ashram—not only Desai’s per- successful, and he and his team orchestrated the sonal library, but the main library, which housed the march so that it would be a sustained media event. thousands of books that Gandhi had brought back They plotted a trail for a three-week trek from from South Africa—for statistics about salt and the Gandhi’s ashram in Ahmedabad south toward the Salt Act. Desai used these figures in articles in Young Arabian Sea, paralleling the railway line, which would India as well as in Gandhi’s communications with the be the primary means for maintaining commun- imperial government and the speeches he helped ication—by both post and messengers—between the Gandhi draft. Gandhi himself contributed to the marchers and the ashram headquarters, as well as the information-gathering efforts, urging associates to conduit for the media covering the march. send him publications and other sources of informa- Meanwhile, at the Satyagraha Ashram, Gandhi’s tion on salt and related subjects. secretariat was busy marshaling evidence demon- Gandhi’s personal accounts and other articles from

34 Wilson Quarterly ■ Autumn 2010 Gandhi’s Invisible Hands the Salt March and Desai’s pieces in Young India and selves was a vital component of Gandhi’s strategy. A Navajivan detailing the narrative drama of the march, third category within Desai’s library embraces thou- along with reports and photographs in the main- sands of works that might come under the heading of stream news media, put the Mahatma and his cause “indigenous knowledge”: by Indians, for Indians, and before a growing audience in India and around the about India. These books were especially relevant to world. Yet the organizational sophistication behind Gandhi’s mission of building a self-sustaining and Gandhi’s dramatic march never got a mention in the self-governing Indian nation in the wake of imperial headlines the enterprise worked so hard to produce. rule. Its invisibility was partly by design: By effacing their Rounding out the collection is a dizzying assort- own efforts, Gandhi’s associates reinforced his image ment of books on subjects close to the heart of as a simple and self-reliant crusader. Gandhi’s work: imperialism and counter-imperialism, health and nutrition, education, religion, literature, philosophy, economics, and world history. Scanning hile most traces of Gandhi’s enterprise the shelves of Desai’s library, I picked out works as were indeed erased from the historical diverse as the writings of Winston Churchill, the plays W record, Mahadev Desai’s library is a of William Shakespeare (in a beautiful miniature vel- notable exception. Gandhi’s team compiled lum set), the poetry of Percy Bysshe Shelley, Vincent and utilized an extensive variety of intellectual Smith’s History of India (1907), Reynold Nicholson’s resources to support the Mahatma’s mission. Desai Mystics of Islam (1914), and William James’s Varieties was the heart of this intel- lectual operation, helping Gandhi refine his philos- ophy over the course of DESAI WAS THE HEART of Gandhi’s his career and providing him with concrete infor- intellectual operation, helping him refine mation to use in his ideo- logical struggle with his philosophy. British imperialism. As I studied Desai’s library, it became clear to me why these books were of Religious Experience (1911) alongside titles such important to Gandhi: If you were living in the first as R. D. Ranade’s A Constructive Survey of Upan- part of the 20th century and your goal was to oust the ishadic Philosophy: Being a Systematic Introduction Raj from India and establish swaraj, or self-rule, on a to Indian Metaphysics (1926), Tulsidas’s version of The national scale, these would be the books you would Ramayana (in an edition published in 1922), and S. want on your shelves. R. Narayana Ayyar’s Experiments in Bee-Culture Desai’s library covers almost the full spectrum of (1938). human topics, and the books in it were used as gen- Once I grasped the scope of the collection before eral references on particular subjects as well as me, I was puzzled by two questions: When did Desai sources for specific facts. First are books that repre- and Gandhi have time to read all of these books, and sent the collective knowledge the British had amassed how did they get them in the first place? about India since the beginning of their engagement The answers to both questions were, in fact, inside with the subcontinent in the 17th century. The second the books themselves. A variety of dedications from category of material comprises volumes that convey friends and admirers in India and around the world, Britons’ knowledge about their own society and his- stamps of Indian and British booksellers, and other tory. Understanding how the British understood notations revealed a staggering number of sources. India as well as how the British understood them- These books were the fruits of the transnational intel-

Autumn 2010 ■ Wilson Quarterly 35 Gandhi’s Invisible Hands

Gandhi speaks at a prayer meeting during his fast protesting communal violence in January 1948. Gandhi persuaded Indian religious leaders to halt their hostilities, but passions were again inflamed when Gandhi was assassinated 12 days after he ended his hunger strike. lectual network in which Gandhi and company were if they want to live happily in jail, should accustom active participants. themselves to reading good books.” Still, what good is a great library if its contents are Because Desai, in particular, was an active reader, never consulted? Given how little free time Desai and we can follow his progress through many of the books Gandhi had, it is hard to imagine when they found the in his library and see how he mined these intellectual opportunity to read in this vast collection. resources for material useful to Gandhi’s movement. Two important types of evidence shed light on not Furthermore, writing in the margins and other parts of only when but how these books were read. On the the books indicates that many of them were read by inside covers of hundreds of the volumes are small more than one person within Gandhi’s circle, includ- indigo stamps surrounded by a series of dates and sig- ing the Mahatma himself. Indeed, Gandhi’s political natures. These are Indian prison stamps, recording colleagues, including Vallabhbhai Patel (who became when each volume entered and exited the penitentiary. independent India’s first home minister) and Jawa- Here was the missing time needed to read so many harlal Nehru (India’s first prime minister), sent books books: when Gandhi, Desai, and their coworkers were to Desai while he was in one prison and they were locked in jail for acts of civil disobedience. As Gandhi each in another. Far from stymieing the work of himself noted, “In this world good books make up for Gandhi’s enterprise, by repeatedly arresting Gandhi the absence of good companions, so that all Indians, and his coworkers the British unwittingly supported it.

36 Wilson Quarterly ■ Autumn 2010 Gandhi’s Invisible Hands

In his lifetime, Gandhi was arrested 14 times on halves of the Muslim state of Pakistan from Hindu- two continents. By the time of his final incarceration, majority India. in August 1942, at the start of the Quit India move- Gandhi spent most of the last part of his life—both ment to force the British out of the subcontinent before and after independence—traveling from one once and for all, his enterprise and stature had grown fractious part of India to the next, attempting to halt to such an extent that the British had to take special outbreaks of violence, particularly between Hindus care to keep him and his assistants confined without and Muslims (and often succeeding, in ways the gov- further agitating the public. Gandhi was imprisoned ernment could not, leading the last viceroy of British along with his wife, Mahadev Desai, and several other India, Lord Louis Mountbatten, to call him a “one- aides in the Aga Khan Palace in the city of Pune. man boundary force”). As he walked through devas- The strain of organizing Quit India agitation had tated villages, he was often physically assisted by his taken a toll on the entire group, as the demand for two grandnieces, who supported him on either side complete and immediate independence had brought and whom he called his “two walking sticks.” a swift and heavy response from the British around Although they helped him stand until the end, his India. Desai particularly worked himself into a frenzy grandnieces and the other remaining members of of concern about the 73-year-old Gandhi’s fragile his entourage could not replace the likes of Kasturbai health. Nevertheless, after settling into the palace and Desai, and the Mahatma’s power was accord- prison, Desai and Gandhi got back to their regular ingly diminished. The girls, Abha and Manu, were at work routine of reading and writing. Eight days after his side when he was shot and killed in New Delhi in their arrest, following a morning spent taking 1948 by a Hindu extremist who believed that Gandhi Gandhi’s dictation, Desai began to feel lightheaded. was being too conciliatory toward Muslims. Within minutes he suffered a massive heart attack, Despite the contributions of Gandhi’s enterprise and died shortly thereafter in Gandhi’s arms. Just 50 to his life and work, it continues to be overlooked in years old, he had spent half of his life serving Gandhi both popular and academic studies of the Mahatma. and his mission. Consequently, we often draw the wrong lessons from Gandhi’s story. The real magic of the Mahatma was not a trick of popular charisma, but in fact a deft abil- y the time Gandhi was released, in 1944, ity to recruit, manage, and inspire a team of talented Kasturbai—his life partner and wife of 64 individuals who worked tirelessly in his service. Byears—had also died. Without Kasturbai and Gandhi himself was one of the few people to recog- Desai, Gandhi’s enterprise lost its twin engines, and nize how this phenomenon worked. “With each day sputtered as it tried to support the Mahatma during I realize more and more that my mahatmaship, which the dramatic run-up to independence in 1947 and the is a mere adornment, depends on others. I have shone accompanying chaotic partition of the subcontinent with the glory borrowed from my innumerable co- into two countries, India and Pakistan. As tensions workers,” he wrote in 1928 in Navajivan. increased over the issue of dividing the subconti- Recognizing this fact does not diminish the rare nent, Gandhi assumed the responsibility of mediat- and valuable qualities Gandhi himself possessed. ing between the vying political factions while also try- Rather, it acknowledges that great work is the prod- ing to calm an increasingly anxious and aggravated uct of collaborative processes, and that many hands citizenry. While the first part of Gandhi’s vision of working together toward a common purpose can swaraj was fulfilled with the peaceful transfer of achieve monumental results. In Gandhi’s case, it was power and the departure of the British, India’s polit- the relationship between a visionary leader and the ical freedom did not free it from religious strife. Vio- team supporting him—and their collective use of the lent episodes of communal antagonism erupted as right resources, such as the books in Mahadev Desai’s millions of people migrated in both directions across library—that paved the way for extraordinary and the new borders separating the eastern and western lasting accomplishments. ■

Autumn 2010 ■ Wilson Quarterly 37 THE WILSON QUARTERLY

The Global Budget Race

The Great Recession drove home a reality Americans have long avoided. An aging nation with mounting health and retirement bills must make hard choices or be outrun by its competitors—some of whom have been quicker to face facts.

BY DOUGLAS J. BESHAROV AND DOUGLAS M. CALL

News stories regularly remind us that to the bottom, but rather a race to develop more economi- most national governments in the developed world are cally efficient tax and social welfare policies while maintain- essentially insolvent. The United States has one of the worst ing an effective social safety net. As in any race, learning from balance sheets, with a projected debt in 2050 of $123 trillion. your competitors can be crucial to doing well. Around the Of course, what can’t happen won’t happen, as economist world, countries are trying different approaches to solving the Herbert Stein taught us. Long before that point, most coun- same long-term budgetary problems. tries will get their finances in order—either after a careful The accruing national debts are truly staggering. In a analysis of the alternatives or because they will be unable to report earlier this year that reflected the catastrophic impact borrow money and will be forced to take corrective action. of the recent recession on national balance sheets, the Con- How capably they respond will determine their future eco- gressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated that in 2050 the nomic competitiveness and their standard of living. U.S. gross debt will reach about 344 percent of the nation’s Those countries that do a better job of bringing rev- gross domestic product (GDP). That’s up from an already enues and spending into balance—in a way that fosters a alarming estimate of 292 percent before the recession. (State healthy and productive citizenry—will have a competitive and local liabilities, in the form of unfunded pension and advantage in the global economy, and they may be able to health costs, would add trillions of dollars more.) As of late avoid economic decline. last year, in 2050 France’s debt was projected to reach 337 Whether they know it or not, the developed (and emerg- percent of GDP, Germany’s 221 percent, and Britain’s 560 ing) nations of the world are in a race—not, one hopes, a race percent. The root of the problem is the same in most countries:

Douglas J. Besharov is a professor at the University of Maryland With populations aging, the intergenerational transfer sys- School of Public Policy and director of the university’s Center for Interna- tem that has paid for pensions and health care is breaking tional Policy Exchanges. Douglas M. Call is a senior research analyst at the University of Maryland School of Public Policy. down. Low birthrates and longer life spans are changing the

38 Wilson Quarterly ■ Autumn 2010 By permission of Michael Ramirez and Creators Syndicate, Inc.

Only five years from now, as the number of retirees grows, Social Security will start paying out more in benefits than it takes in from taxes.

balance between workers and retirees so that current levels year, the government “owed” the trust funds about $4.3 tril- of taxation cannot support the promised benefits. Across the lion. (These IOUs are dutifully printed at the Bureau of the developed and, increasingly, developing worlds, worker-to- Public Debt in Parkersburg, West Virginia, and placed in a recipient ratios are declining. By 2050, the U.S. Census filing cabinet. Not exactly Al Gore’s lock box.) Bureau estimates, there will be only 2.7 American workers Years ago, budget watchers warned that the so-called for each retiree, down from 4.7 in 2008. The European wealthy countries of the developed world had erected unsus- Union nations will have only 1.8 workers per retiree, and tainable social welfare systems. The predicted crisis, however, Japan 1.3. China faces the biggest adjustment, dropping was decades in the future, so neither politicians nor voters from about 7.7 workers per retiree to 2.1. were prepared to make tough choices. Then came the recent As a result of these demographic changes, many gov- recession. Sharply reduced tax revenues combined with ernment pension and health care systems for the elderly massive stimulus spending raised budget deficits in devel- worldwide are now little more than Ponzi schemes that are oped countries to levels unprecedented in peacetime and running short of new “investors.” Aggravating the budget sit- added vastly more debt on top of the existing long-term uation is the rapid rise in health care costs caused by the devel- social welfare debt. In the United States, the federal deficit opment of new—and expensive—medical technologies, jumped from about 1.2 percent of GDP to about 9.9 percent drugs, and treatment procedures. between 2007 and 2009, reaching $1.4 trillion. According The math is simple: Projected tax revenues are not nearly to The Washington Post, the federal government will “borrow sufficient to cover future obligations—with the imbalance 41 cents of every dollar it spends” this year. growing over time as larger shares of the populations in For a while, it seemed that the developed countries might these countries begin to receive benefits. The U.S. Social be able to borrow their way out of immediate trouble. But Security and Medicare trust funds are giant and growing with Greece’s brush with insolvency this past year, and fears IOUs from the federal government to future recipients. Last that Spain, Italy, and Portugal would soon face similar prob-

Autumn 2010 ■ Wilson Quarterly 39 The Global Budget Race lems, the day of reckoning suddenly, very suddenly, seemed and 39.7 percent in the European Union. At least for now, at hand. however, we are at a political impasse about raising tax rates, Many European countries responded by adopting especially on the voting middle class. multibillion-dollar austerity packages including elements Around three-quarters of our projected debt in 2050, such as higher taxes, cuts or freezes in government spending, according to the CBO, will be caused by three factors and salary freezes for government employees, and, most impor- their effect on interest rates and payments on the national tant, rollbacks in social welfare benefits. Some of the pack- debt: (1) the continuing impact of the George W. Bush ages were modest, but many involved major tightening, administration’s tax cuts of 2001 and 2003, about 80 percent notably in Britain, where the new Tory–Liberal Democratic of which went to the middle class; (2) the continued index- coalition government is cutting most government depart- ation of the alternative minimum tax to inflation, which ments by 25 percent over five years (though health care, keeps taxes on the middle class lower; and (3) Congress’s reg- notably, is largely exempt) and raising taxes. ular suspension (in every year since 1997) of the rule that is As politically controversial as they have been, these aus- supposed to limit increases in Medicare and Medicaid reim- terity measures aren’t anywhere close to correcting the bursements to the rate of GDP growth, which would hurt immense long-term imbalances these countries face. And, of doctors, nurses, and other health care providers. course, the United States has yet to start the process of Fix all three, and the U.S. debt 40 years from now falls to retrenchment because the Obama administration, with the about 90 percent of GDP. That is still too high in the opin- support of many economists, has decided that the economy ion of many economists, but it probably would be manage- should recover first—a strategy that is easier to pursue able and, bearing in mind the imponderables of estimating because America’s bond rating is not yet under pressure. a federal budget 40 years from now, a reasonable goal. But Nevertheless, the immediacy of today’s budget a different mix of solutions will have to be found. problems—and the looming threat of a failed debt As the three key sources of our problems suggest, it won’t refinancing—makes the conditions for long-term reform in be just the rich who will have to pay higher taxes. President the United States ripe. Most international finance economists Barack Obama has repeatedly promised not to raise taxes agree that the bond market will eventually insist on a solu- “even one single dime” on families earning less than tion and that the sooner the needed corrections are made, the $250,000 and single people earning less than $200,000. less jarring they will be. They also agree the fix will be a com- Unfortunately, increasing taxes only on upper-income peo- bination of big tax hikes and deep spending cuts. ple will not yield nearly enough money to fill the revenue gap. Reinstating pre-Bush tax rates on people in the top two tax brackets (who now pay rates of 33 and 35 percent) would hatever one’s view on the proper size of gov- yield only $55 billion of the $250 billion in revenues cut by ernment, one thing is undeniable: Contempo- Bush. Hence, Obama is widely expected to find some way to W rary American politics have given us a govern- reverse his promise not to raise middle-class taxes (and ment that seems incapable of living within its means. Even many have noted the president has already done that in the though our relatively high birthrate gives us a demographic health care bill). The report of his National Commission on advantage over most other developed countries in paying for Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, which is expected to rec- retirement benefits, our lower tax rates and costlier health ommend a broad-based tax increase, could give him an care system mean that our projected debt is higher. excuse to do just that. The report will be delivered after the Despite vociferous opposition from many quarters (not November elections. just the Tea Partiers), any realistic solution will require that Here is the menu of unappetizing tax choices Obama all Americans pay considerably higher taxes. The budgetary and Congress face: imbalance is so large that fixing it with spending cuts alone Increase Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes. would eviscerate important parts of the federal government. Payroll taxes now fund all of Social Security and about 42 per- Americans are now taxed substantially less than citizens in cent of Medicare. If immediate action were taken to fill the most European countries. In 2007, taxes (federal, state, and long-term Social Security funding gap, the payroll tax would local) amounted to 28.3 percent of GDP in the United States need to increase from its current 12.4 percent of wages to 14.2

40 Wilson Quarterly ■ Autumn 2010 The Global Budget Race percent. (Half the tax is paid by employers, half by employ- jobs, which reduces their incentive to work. At least at the ees.) Filling the gap by cutting spending would require an margin, payroll taxes can hurt employment, productivity, and immediate 12 percent cut in benefits. The longer decisions international competitiveness. That is one reason why so are delayed, the more the cost will go up. many other nations have turned to consumption taxes. As for Medicare, if the payroll tax increase were imme- Impose consumption taxes. Consumption taxes, such diate, the rate would need to go from its current 2.9 percent as a value-added tax (VAT) or an energy or carbon tax, are of wages to either 3.6 or 4.8 percent, depending on how effective one assumes the cost-cutting measures in the BIG TAX HIKES and deep spending cuts new health care law would be. (As with Social Security, are inevitable. the cost of Medicare is shared by employers and employ- ees.) Again, delays raise the cost. Combined, these new U.S. used to apparently good effect around the world to raise large payroll tax rates would reach a level approaching the Euro- amounts of money, encourage saving, conserve energy, and pean norm of about 22 percent of workers’ paychecks. minimize negative impacts on productivity and interna- The advantage of using a payroll tax increase is that it tional competitiveness. Although both kinds of taxes have would maintain the connection (however tenuous) between been decisively rejected in the United States, this time could “taxes” and “benefits” in Social Security and Medicare, which be different—if they were part of a grand social welfare advocates on both sides of the debate see as important. Lib- budget compromise in which both political parties admitted erals fear that breaking the connection—by using general rev- that, one way or another, middle-class taxes needed to enues to cover the shortfall—would highlight that neither increase and, at the same time, agreed on a major fix to the program is really a form of insurance, thereby reducing benefit structure. voter support for the programs. Conservatives fear that More than 140 countries have a VAT, including every drawing on sources other than a payroll tax would open the country in Europe, the vast majority of Asian and South door to even bigger increases in benefits, as voters not sub- American countries, and most of those in Africa. A VAT is ject to the relevant taxes would be more inclined to push for essentially a sales tax that is levied on the value added to a higher benefits. product at each stage of its manufacture and distribution. Set There are, however, at least two major disadvantages to at European levels (around 20 percent), a VAT could raise raising the payroll tax rate. First, many consider such taxes almost $1 trillion a year, or about 70 percent of the value of regressive: Because the rate is the same for all payers, it hits today’s deficit. That’s enough to make it extremely attractive low-income taxpayers hardest. One way to compensate to both deficit hawks and defenders of government spend- would be to increase the size of the Earned Income Tax ing. A VAT has the added benefit of reducing consumption, Credit, which is available to lower-income people, but that thereby increasing saving. The VAT does not apply to exports, would create problems of its own. Another would be to raise and because it is a flat-rate tax, some U.S. proposals include or remove the cap on earnings subject to the tax, currently measures to offset the regressive effects. $106,800. (There is no cap on the Medicare payroll tax.) But Some sort of additional tax on energy may also be on the sharp disparity between what the many millions of the table. The cap-and-trade bill that died in the Senate affected people would pay in taxes and receive in benefits earlier this year would have brought in some $750 bil- would also dramatize the politically uncomfortable fact that lion over 10 years. There are now bills in Congress to cre- Social Security is not an insurance system. ate a carbon tax that would generate revenues of between A second disadvantage to raising these taxes is that pay- about $70 billion and $125 billion annually. Besides roll levies are a tax on labor. They make it more costly for raising money, energy taxes would push consumption employers to take on new employees, and they diminish the down, thus reducing U.S. dependence on oil imports. As potential take-home pay of people who may be looking for with a VAT, the burden of an energy tax would fall most

Autumn 2010 ■ Wilson Quarterly 41 The Global Budget Race heavily on those with low incomes, so it too might be big three of social programs collectively accounted for a accompanied by some form of targeted tax relief. much bigger share of spending: Social Security (about 19 per- Using consumption taxes to help fund Social Secu- cent), Medicare (about 12 percent), and Medicaid (about rity and Medicare would, indeed, break the direct link seven percent). between taxpayer “contributions” and benefits. One way What about the proverbial waste, fraud, and abuse in to avoid the perils that both liberals and conservatives see government that so many critics decry? Even President in such a course is to change the way benefits are calcu- Obama has felt the need to promise a new crackdown. lated so it is based upon an explicit and transparent set The projected savings? About $300 million a year. Not of objective criteria. That could give the system an aura a small amount of money, at least outside Washington, of fairness the current one does not enjoy, and, if the but only a rounding error in the health care budget. experience in other countries is a guide, help voters and politicians to internalize budget discipline. Voter hostility to higher taxes will be the major check his year, for the first time, Social Security payments on the size and shape of any tax hike. Concerns about tax- to retirees will exceed tax revenues, thanks to the ation’s effects on the economy and international com- T recession. The imbalance is then expected to right petitiveness are another limit. Even those economists itself, but only temporarily. Beginning in 2015, as the num- most skeptical of the Laffer curve recognize that tax ber of baby-boomer retirees increases, a more fundamental, increases eventually produce diminishing returns. demographically driven shift will occur. From then on, funds Higher taxes can raise the price of a nation’s goods in the will be “drawn” from the Social Security Trust Fund to main- global marketplace, deter investment, and invite tain benefit levels until the trust is exhausted in about 2037. increased tax avoidance, while taxing specific activities After that, Social Security payroll taxes will be able to pay for or groups can lead to harmful distortions of incentives. only about 78 percent of expected benefits. That’s why, in the past few decades, European countries In 1983, the last time a major correction to Social Secu- have been hesitant to raise their taxes much, and why rity was made (as a result of the Greenspan Commission’s rec- their recent austerity packages rely so heavily on spend- ommendations), the payroll tax was raised from 5.4 percent ing cuts. to 6.2 percent, the retirement age was increased from 65 to People who have not been paying close attention to 67, and a tax was imposed on the benefits of individuals with government spending might wonder why the cuts need incomes over a specified threshold (with the revenues to go to be in Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid and not to the Social Security Trust Fund). The conventional wisdom elsewhere, such as the military. The quick answer is the is that it will be relatively easy to repair the system with sim- same one Willie Sutton gave when asked why he robbed ilar “small” adjustments to the age of retirement and bene- banks: That’s where the money is. fit levels. Don’t count on it. Up close, the adjustments most Cuts in military spending are surely coming, especially as frequently suggested don’t seem as small as advertised—and American troops leave Iraq and Afghanistan. Some of the raise serious questions of fairness and viability. resulting savings, however, will have to be used to replenish In 2008, a third of all Social Security recipients relied on badly depleted stocks of weapons and equipment. Moreover, their monthly check for about 90 percent of their retirement there just won’t be that much to cut from—even if military income, and almost two-thirds of all recipients depended on readiness is reduced. The cuts Secretary of Defense Robert it for about half or more of their income. Even if benefit cuts Gates proposed in August, though controversial, came to only are phased in slowly enough so that current workers have $100 billion over five years, or about a week of each year’s time to adjust, perhaps by increasing their savings, they may Social Security and Medicare expenditures. not want or be able to do so. There will be plenty of politicians Military spending has not amounted to more than 25 eager to take up their cause. percent of the federal budget since 1989 and the end of the The major reform options include: Cold War. Last year, even as the United States was fighting Raise the retirement age. A popular proposal, at least two costly wars, the Pentagon accounted for only about 19 among Washington analysts, is to raise the Social Security percent of all federal spending (or about $660 billion). The retirement age, on the ground that life expectancy has

42 Wilson Quarterly ■ Autumn 2010 The Global Budget Race increased dramatically. When Social Security was launched health care specialist Henry Aaron points out, raising the in 1935, a 65-year-old retiree could expect to live another 12 retirement age is “simply an across-the-board benefit cut.” An years. Now that number is 19. increase to age 70 would amount to a 20 percent cut. Currently, retirees born between 1943 and 1954 cannot Later retirement might be fine for lawyers and university receive full benefits until they reach age 66. (Retiring at 62 professors, but what about people who make a living lifting reduces benefits by 25 percent, with the penalty lessening the heavy things, or waiting on tables, or standing behind a later one retires.) Between now and 2022, the age of eligibility counter? Right now, their practical choice is to retire at age will gradually increase until it reaches 67. (The penalty for 62 and accept a reduced benefit. To raise the retirement age early retirement will increase to 30 percent.) Some have to 70 would mean increasing the penalty for early retirement, suggested a further incremental increase, perhaps to age 70 exacerbating class differences. over a 20-year period. Others have proposed “objective” for- Replace a smaller share of workers’ pre-retirement mulas that would have roughly the same effect, for example, income. Most Americans probably don’t realize that the for- by changing the retirement age to keep post-retirement life mula for determining their Social Security payment is set at expectancy constant at 12 years. But as Brookings Institution an arbitrary percentage of their past wages. This is called the The Demographic Future

2008 2050 European Union Males Females Males Females

Ages 50–54

Ages 0–4

2008 2050 United States

Ages 50–54

Ages 0–4 Source: U.S. Census Bureau America’s population will age considerably in the next 40 years, but not as much as Europe’s. Yet if its current policies on health care, Social Security, and taxation remain unchanged, the United States is expected to amass an even larger national debt than some European countries.

Autumn 2010 ■ Wilson Quarterly 43 The Global Budget Race

“replacement rate,” and some proposals would, over the long middle-income workers even worse by indexing past earn- term, reduce it drastically. ings to the increase in prices rather than wages. That would Currently, replacement rates are set to be “progressive,” reduce benefits by about 39 percent by 2050, enough to erase so that lower-wage workers get monthly Social Security the funding problem. In order to soften the blow for the less checks that represent a bigger share of their pre-retirement well-off, some analysts would add yet another arbitrary twist earnings than others do. The rates are calculated using a for- to Social Security’s formulas by indexing these workers’ earn- mula based on an arbitrarily selected percentage of a retiree’s ings differently. previous earnings, which also are arbitrarily measured: The Reduce the inflation adjustment. Social Security pay- recipient’s highest 35 years of earnings are indexed to the ments are adjusted for inflation using a version of the Con- increase in wages in order to derive “average indexed monthly sumer Price Index (CPI). Many economists believe that the index overstates inflation, with surprising results over time. In 2008, the liberal SOME PROMISE SOCIAL Security will be Center on Budget and Policy Priorities recommended saved with a few small adjustments. Don’t using a different version of the CPI, which would reduce count on it. annual increases by about three-tenths of a percentage point. According to one esti- earnings” (AIME). That number is then multiplied by polit- mate, that change alone would shrink Social Security’s long- ically determined replacement rates to arrive at the recipient’s range funding gap by about 30 percent. Although this is a monthly Social Security benefit. widely supported option, it is not pain-free. Over those 75 For AIME up to $761, the replacement rate is 90 percent. years, it would reduce benefits by roughly 20 percent. For the amount of AIME income between $761 and $4,586, Increase taxes on Social Security benefits. Retirees it is 32 percent. And for AIME income above that level, it is whose income rises above a certain threshold ($44,000 for 15 percent. (However, remember that during earners’ work- married couples) must pay income tax on 85 percent of ing years, some of the income in this category was above the their Social Security benefits, with the revenues funneled back Social Security tax cap and so was not subject to the payroll into Social Security. If all benefits were subject to taxation, tax.) According to Andrew Biggs of the American Enterprise regardless of the recipient’s income, the proceeds would Institute and Glenn Springstead of the Social Security reduce the 75-year gap between Social Security outlays and Administration, in 2005 the average middle-income retiree revenues by about 28 percent. received about 64 percent of his or her last year of pre- The threshold is another indirect way that Social Secu- retirement earnings in Social Security benefits. rity is means tested, and thus made more progressive. It is also In keeping with Social Security’s progressive framework, a disincentive to work for retirees whose paychecks might however, workers with slightly higher incomes do not do push them over the threshold. Some analysts recommend nearly as well. In 2005, the Social Security Administration’s eliminating the threshold on grounds of equity, arguing that chief actuary estimated the “internal real rate of return” on current beneficiaries should not be exempt from helping alle- the amount people paid in Social Security taxes—their return viate the system’s future deficits. And why, they ask, should on investment. For a hypothetical two-earner couple who Social Security income be treated differently from income retired in 2008 with “high” average career earnings (about from traditional pensions, which is already fully taxable? Oth- $50,000), the average annual rate of return was about 1.64 ers, however, argue that taxing benefits discourages work and percent. For a single woman with “very low” earnings (about saving among the elderly, an ever more significant share of $8,000), it was about 4.42 percent, and for a one-earner cou- the population. ple with similar earnings, it was about 6.59 percent. The reform of Social Security presents an unattractive set Some current proposals would make the return to of options: push the retirement age to what, for many work-

44 Wilson Quarterly ■ Autumn 2010 The Global Budget Race ers, would be an unfairly high level; reduce benefits by by President George W. Bush and decisively rejected by the adjusting the payment formulas; or increase taxes, either on public—in part because they seemed to leave the size of all or only on higher-income workers, thereby lowering the retirement nest eggs to the vagaries of the stock market. And, return on their lifetime payments. No matter which of these yes, the returns can be negative. Even in the wake of the bru- options is adopted, it will mean the continuation of a program tal downturn in world equity markets in 2008, however, the that shortchanges middle- and higher-income workers while long-term performance of some funds has been quite good. failing to encourage people to save. In Australia, workers had a large share of their money in equi- ties when the global recession began, and their realized losses between 2007 and 2008 were about 26 percent. Yet aced with the difficulties of traditional social security stretching our perspective to include the 10 years between systems, many countries have decided that “defined- 1998 and 2008 yields a brighter picture: The median account Fcontribution plans” are a fiscally and politically supe- grew at a seven percent annual rate—a much higher return rior approach to providing for citizens’ retirement. than most Americans can hope for from Social Security. Under these plans, a portion of a worker’s pretax earnings Almost overlooked in the political drama surrounding is paid into or credited to an account. In some countries, there private investment accounts has been the development is a real account in the individual’s name; in others the of defined-contribution plans with predetermined account is “notional,” more like a bookkeeping entry. When or formulaic—and guaranteed—rates of return. Such there is an actual private account, the worker decides how the “provident funds,” found mostly in Asian countries, require money is invested and, therefore, bears the investment risk workers to deposit a percentage of their wages via payroll (and upside potential). Workers with notional accounts have deductions into an interest-bearing account in a government- no choices about investments or only very limited ones, and administered institution. Hong Kong, India, Malaysia, and the interest rate is set (and guaranteed) by the government. Thailand are some of the places where this strategy is used. But in both cases, the direct link between payments and sub- In Singapore, for example, workers’ contributions are sequent benefits provides a defensible rationale for keeping deposited with the nation’s sovereign wealth fund, which benefits in check when workers retire rather than bumping invests the proceeds in Singapore and abroad. The returns them up for political purposes. Another virtue of defined- are tied to government bonds, with a guaranteed minimum contribution systems is that they encourage work and sav- annual return of 2.5 percent. ing: The more a person earns, the larger that person’s con- Notional accounts are used in Italy, Poland, and Sweden. tribution and ultimate payout. At the same time, most Workers and employers are taxed at a specified rate and the countries in the developed world that have such plans com- proceeds credited to a virtual account, with the government plement them with a second retirement benefit, funded by setting the rate of return. At retirement, the total is invested general revenues, to ensure that low-wage workers receive in an annuity (which throws off regular payments) that is adequate pensions. given to the retiree. Private investment accounts are used in more than Countries that have existing pay-as-you-go systems, such two dozen countries, including Australia, Denmark, and as the United States, face huge problems in attempting the Sweden. The individual manages the funds in the transition to certain kinds of defined-contribution plans. account, but regulations often limit choices to some The Bush proposal, for example, would have required that degree in order to reduce risks. a portion of each person’s Social Security payroll taxes be “Privatization” is the mantra of those who want to radi- directed into one of the new accounts, which would have cally reform Social Security by establishing private investment meant that more money would need to be raised to maintain accounts—and the epithet of their opponents. President existing Social Security benefits—$754 billion in the first 10 Obama has raised the bloody flag of privatization in advance years. A significant advantage of notional plans like those in of the 2010 elections, warning that the Republicans are Australia and Sweden is that the accounts do not need to be pushing to make such a scheme “a key part of their legisla- funded with tax dollars during the transition. tive agenda if they win a majority in Congress this fall.” The One key attribute of notional plans is that the promised term conjures up the private investment accounts proposed rate of return can be made affordable by pegging it to a rea-

Autumn 2010 ■ Wilson Quarterly 45 The Global Budget Race sonable standard, such as the rate of economic growth. Con- According to President Obama, the new law took into trast that with the arrangement in the United States, where account “every idea out there about how to reduce or at political factors can intrude. Last year, for example, President least slow the costs of health care over time.” Barring some Obama proposed to override Social Security rules in order to breathtaking new developments, perhaps in prevention or give retirees an extra $250 because there had not been low-cost technology, future belt tightening will pose even enough inflation to trigger an increase. The one-year cost? more unattractive choices. $13 billion. The Senate narrowly defeated the measure. The shortage of ideas is leading many analysts to take another look at European health care systems. The United States leads the world in health care expendi- s is the case for Social Security, Medicare’s looming tures, both in per capita terms and as a percentage of insolvency is widely recognized among policy GDP. Most other developed countries spend about a A experts. But Medicare’s day of reckoning will come third less per capita. At the same time, European coun- earlier, and its impact will be much larger. Outlays exceeded tries provide medical services that seem to be at least as income in the Medicare Hospital Insurance Trust Fund for good as those in the United States, and by some meas- the first time in 2009, a landmark slightly hastened by the ures better. The studies that find this, however, are the recession. Funds are now being drawn from the trust, which subject of much dispute. The United States has a much the Medicare trustees estimate will be exhausted by 2029. more diverse population with higher levels of unhealthy Last year, Medicare and Medicaid made up almost 22 behavior, often provides a wider array of services, and percent of the federal budget, about $500 billion and $250 seems to do better at handling various serious medical billion, respectively. By 2050, together with the additional challenges, including organ transplants and treatment costs of the new health care law, they will expand to 48 per- of some cancers. cent of the budget (excluding interest payments on the Many factors help explain why European nations spend national debt). At about $4.8 trillion (in today’s dollars), less, from lower patient expectations about how much med- that sum will dwarf that year’s projected spending on Social ical care they should get (especially in the last stages of life) Security by a factor of more than two, even though the retire- to tighter government control over payments to doctors and ment program, at $680 billion, is currently much larger. hospitals. An often-unappreciated reason is the relative Not even its strongest proponents claim that the new wealth of our societies. According to a study by Uwe Rein- health care law, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care hardt of Princeton, Peter Hussey of the RAND Corporation, Act, will solve our long-term health care spending problems. and Gerard Anderson of Johns Hopkins, as much as 60 per- Even if all its provisions work as predicted, the CBO estimates cent of the difference in spending between the United States that over the next 20 years, it will reduce health care expen- and Europe could be a function of Americans’ greater soci- ditures by “only” $1.1 trillion. That’s a truly massive sum, of etal wealth. Just as wealthier people spend more on their course, but in 2030, it is expected to amount to only a half- health, so, too, do wealthier countries. percentage-point reduction in total health care expendi- In any event, as Europe has become wealthier, its per tures as a share of GDP, not enough to produce a substan- capita health care costs have risen faster than incomes. Nev- tial change in the long-term financial prognosis. ertheless, European medical spending continues to be lower Critics think that even these predicted gains are wishful than America’s, and the gap between the two is increasing. thinking. As Medicare’s chief actuary, Richard Foster, Health spending in the 33 countries in the Organization for explains, projections based on current law “do not represent Economic Cooperation and Development rose from 7.8 per- the ‘best estimate’ of actual future Medicare expenditures,” cent of GDP in 2000 to 9.0 percent in 2008. In the United in part because some significant cuts called for in the law are States, it rose from 13.6 percent to 16.0 percent. unlikely to be implemented. Douglas Holtz-Eakin, former Lower earnings for physicians. By far the biggest “sav- director of the CBO (and now a Republican policy adviser), ings” in the Obama health care law come from a cut in pay- projects that the new law will add about $579 billion to ments to private physicians, hospitals, and health care health care spending between 2010 and 2019. providers generally. All take a big hit under the new law—and The hard work of cost containment has not even begun. much commentary has focused on whether political pressure

46 Wilson Quarterly ■ Autumn 2010 The Global Budget Race will lead Congress to reverse these reductions. The long-term erous paymasters. That’s certainly the way it has worked in trend seems clear, though: Taxpayers in the future will not pay Europe. providers as much as they do now. So, American doctors could be in for a long-term decline The new law (which in effect continues an earlier rule that in earnings—that is, unless more of them refuse to take Congress has repeatedly suspended in the past) pegs patients covered by Medicare and other low-paying insur- Medicare reimbursement increases for providers to the rate ance plans. According to an American Medical Association of the nation’s GDP growth, even if health care costs rise at survey, nearly a third of all primary care physicians “restrict a faster rate. This is the oft- delayed 23 percent cut in reimbursement rates sched- uled to take effect in Decem- AMERICAN DOCTORS could be in ber. The new law included a further annual cut in pay- for a decline in earnings. ments to providers, saving some $196 billion over the next 10 years. the number of Medicare patients in their practice.” One con- Many observers think these reductions are not sustain- sequence of these changes could be further increases in the able and that Congress will continue to override the cuts in number of foreign-trained doctors and other medical pro- the future. The new law seeks to make that more difficult by fessionals (who are generally paid less than U.S.-trained creating an Independent Payment Advisory Board. Begin- physicians) working in the United States. ning in 2014, IPAB is to propose yet more spending cuts in Tax increases and benefit cuts. More than one-fifth of Medicare if the program’s per capita growth rate exceeds a the projected $1.1 trillion in “savings” from the new law certain threshold. The law also makes it harder for Congress comes from tax increases that take effect in 2013: A nine- to override the cuts, by mandating a tougher version of the tenths of a percentage point increase in the Medicare payroll rules that were used to achieve military base closings: Con- tax and a 3.8 percent levy on net investment income on top gress must either accept the recommendations in whole, or of the existing investment taxes, both limited to couples find a comparable set of savings. Otherwise, 60 votes in the making more than $250,000 and individuals earning more Senate will be needed to override the payment rates. The than $200,000. Beginning in 2018, there will be a new 40 CBO estimates that the actions of the board will result in sav- percent tax on so-called Cadillac health insurance policies, ings of $15.5 billion between 2015 and 2019, with the savings defined as those that cost more than $27,500 a year per growing larger each year. But will it work? family. Many are dubious. Former CBO director Holtz-Eakin Many budget hawks have set their sights on the federal argues that IPAB will confront the government “with the pos- government’s generous menu of tax subsidies for health sibility of strongly limited benefits, the inability to serve ben- care, including the exclusion of employer and employee eficiaries, or both. As a result, the cuts will be politically portions of health insurance premiums from taxable personal infeasible.” income; the tax deductibility of corporate spending on health The skeptics might be right, but it is easy to envision a insurance; money deposited in tax-advantaged health sav- world in which physicians earn much less than they do ings plans and similar accounts; the value of benefits people today. (The many doctors now considering early retirement receive from Medicare, Medicaid, and the State Children’s clearly can imagine it.) In 2004, the average American gen- Health Insurance Programs; and the income tax deduction eral practitioner earned $146,000 and the average special- for itemized health care expenses. (The congressional Joint ist $236,000. Their European counterparts earned much Economic Committee estimates that these tax subsidies less. The average French general practitioner, for example, together accounted for about $185 billion in lost revenue in was paid $84,000 and the average specialist $144,000. 2007. To understand the stakes involved, compare that to the When the choice is between higher taxes on voters or lower $250 billion cost of the Bush tax cuts in that year.) payments to providers, politicians tend to become less gen- The new law also trimmed reimbursement payments

Autumn 2010 ■ Wilson Quarterly 47 The Global Budget Race to Medicare Advantage programs by some $135 billion A final form of rationing involves limiting payment for over 10 years. These programs offer seniors a bigger expensive treatments for patients near the end of life. Uwe menu of benefits (which can include vision and dental Reinhardt and his colleagues write that most countries coverage, and assistance with Medicare cost-sharing) implicitly set an upper limit on how much they will pay to and analysts predict the cuts will lead to fewer benefits, extend a patient’s life through price controls or by limiting higher fees, and lower enrollment. capacity to supply certain services. Without getting into the highly charged rhetoric of “death panels,” it seems that the groundwork for the kinds of urther cuts in benefits seem inevitable. The crude determinations such panels would make has been estab- word for such decisions is rationing. Until the passage lished in the new U.S. law in the form of the Patient-Centered F of the new law, care in the United States was rationed Outcomes Research Institute. The institute is to fund “com- chiefly through limits on insurance coverage (such as annual parative effectiveness research” on drugs and medical pro- and lifetime limits on the payments insurers would make) cedures. For now, the institute is explicitly prohibited from and on the assistance provided to people who lacked private using such research to implement cost-based rationing, insurance and Medicaid coverage. But this will change. The which may explain why this method is estimated to save only only question is how that rationing will be targeted. $300 million over 10 years. But that prohibition may not last Other affluent countries ration health care in various forever. Especially given the fact that the new law removes ways. The most obvious technique is to exclude a service or limits on annual and lifetime benefits, some other means of treatment from the basic government-provided health care constraining costs seems inevitable. There won’t be “death package. In some cases, a whole sector of care is excluded (for panels,” but many treatments could be deemed insufficiently example, vision and dental care in Switzerland), while in oth- “effective” to be used, even if no other treatment exists. ers particular services are. A number of countries, including The biggest visible change under the new law is the Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Britain, have establishment of American Health Benefit Exchanges, which boards or committees that review particular services and states must create by 2014. The exchanges are to help indi- determine if they will be included in the basic health care viduals and small businesses obtain health insurance. Indi- package. In Germany and Switzerland, the primary criterion viduals with incomes up to 400 percent of the poverty level is effectiveness, but in Britain cost is also taken into consid- will qualify for tax subsidies to help pay premiums when they eration. The London-based National Institute for Clinical buy coverage through an exchange. Effectiveness (NICE), established under Tony Blair’s gov- The exchanges are supposed to create a large and diverse ernment, uses a cutoff price of about $53,000 per addi- risk pool, while also reducing administrative and marketing tional year of healthy life in assessing whether particular costs. The insurance plans will be heavily regulated, with stan- drugs and treatments are to be covered. dardized benefits, limits on copayments and deductibles, A second form of rationing is through global budgets. In community-rated premiums, and prohibitions on using risk Britain, the National Health Service provides portions of the to adjust premiums or determine eligibility—which will health budget to 152 regional primary care trusts that man- make them much more like standardized commodities than age how, when, and where patients are treated, depending is usual today. Standardization is designed to counter adverse on the available budget. This often results in long waiting lists selection, in which higher-cost enrollees flock to plans with for non-emergency care, a common feature of universal attractive features. systems. In order to lower costs, the law requires participating A third form of rationing restricts the number of insurance companies to cap their administrative expenses advanced medical devices that are available. Canada, for and profits at less than 20 percent of premiums. Many example, has relatively few CT scanners and MRI machines firms, especially small ones, are expected to have difficulty relative to its population. With only 6.7 MRI machines per keeping overhead costs that low, one of several factors that 1,000,000 people (as compared with 25.9 in the United will probably push a number of them out of the market. In States), Canada in recent years has seen waiting times for most states, that will mean consumers will have fewer and scans as long as three months. larger insurance companies to choose from than today.

48 Wilson Quarterly ■ Autumn 2010 The Global Budget Race

These large insurance firms will probably enjoy a modest but most European systems require consumers to pay more steady income, but they will have even less incentive to inno- money out of pocket for medical care than Americans do. vate and compete than they do today. According to Jacob F. Kirkegaard of the Peterson Institute The primary purpose of the exchanges, however, is not for International Economics, “In reality, America’s health care to push down overall costs but to provide a mechanism for system is already more ‘socialized’ than in most European and implementing universal coverage. In the absence of major other developed countries.” legislative changes, they are unlikely to exert strong down- Although U.S. employer-provided health insurance plans ward pressure on spending, a conclusion even optimistic pro- increasingly require beneficiaries to bear more costs jections suggest. Estimates of the savings vary widely. The themselves—through paying deductibles, coinsurance, and CBO projects that the sav- ings over 10 years will be only about $27 billion. In reality, no one knows AMERICA’S HEALTH CARE system is how the exchanges will actu- ally operate and whether already more “socialized” than most of they will succeed. And they remain a work in progress. those in Europe. Both Democrats and Repub- licans would like to make changes to the law. And much will depend on the regulations direct payments to medical professionals—such cost sharing issued by the Department of Health and Human Services— is still much more common in Europe. In 2006, out-of- and the responses of the uninsured, employers, and private pocket payments made up about 12 percent of total U.S. insurance companies, as well as the states, which will oper- health care expenditures. The average in Europe was about ate them. 17 percent, with a low of six percent in the Netherlands and Based on the European experience, an equally if not a high of about 31 percent in Switzerland. more important question is how, or even whether, private In many European countries, patients often make direct health insurance purchased by people with incomes too payments to physicians—to purchase treatment that is high to participate in the exchanges will be regulated. The excluded from coverage, to move up in the queue, or to get same question applies to the private market for supple- better service. In France, individuals directly pay between 10 mental insurance that could exist outside the exchanges and 40 percent of their own costs, with different rates for (much as private Medigap insurance arose to supplement drugs, lab work, and other services. Such cost-sharing Medicare coverage). The many European countries that requirements are means tested. In France, low-income con- have basic universal coverage and are thus freed of the need sumers are eligible for free government-provided supple- to worry about protecting the interests of low- and moderate- mental insurance that pays for any cost sharing, and in income beneficiaries have allowed private-sector insurance Switzerland, households receive an income-based subsidy. companies relatively wide discretion in the services they Cost sharing serves two separate purposes: It keeps pub- offer and the prices they charge. Many analysts think this has lic costs down, and it discourages unnecessary care. If recip- had a positive impact on the varieties, quality, and costs of ients are required to pay for a particular service or procedure, care. The new U.S. law seems to foreclose such unfettered they will have a direct incentive to limit its use. In the United competition, but that could change. States, however, fear that some will not get needed medical care because of its cost (along with pressure from labor unions and interest groups such as AARP) has restricted cost common misconception is that Europe is home to sharing. socialized medicine, probably because it has long In light of the success of cost sharing in Europe and the A provided universal health care. But with a few pressures in the U.S. market, it seems fair to expect that notable exceptions, such as Britain’s National Health Service, American consumers will also be required to pay more out-

Autumn 2010 ■ Wilson Quarterly 49 The Global Budget Race of-pocket expenses. Already, Medicare has significant cost- provided retirement and health benefits. So, despite the sharing provisions. In 2006, Medicare beneficiaries paid political rhetoric on both sides and the emergence of a Tea for about 25 percent of the care they received, through Medi- Party movement that instills the fear of higher taxes in Wash- gap insurance or direct payments such as deductibles. (As in ington, we are still betting on the politicians to cut a deal. Call Europe, low-income patients are protected; Medicaid cov- it a “grand social welfare compromise.” ers the costs for eligible seniors.) The immediate concern must be to find a way to close The new health care law is actually expected to reduce the long-term budget gap; but how it is closed is just as overall cost sharing in American health care by about $237 important. The understandable temptation will be to billion between 2010 and 2019, according to the chief actu- tinker—to raise a tax here and there, and to trim benefits ary of Medicare, Richard Foster. The reasons: the expansion in one way or another, in the hope that a series of small of coverage for the uninsured, subsidies for insurance pre- changes will solve our long-term budget problems. That miums and cost sharing, and limitations on cost sharing in may be the most appealing course politically, but it is not the exchanges. Relieving consumers of the sense that they are likely to work, and it certainly will not maximize domes- helping to pay for their own health services runs counter to tic productivity and international competitiveness. The key developing practice for private insurance in the United will be to raise taxes and trim benefits in a way that min- States, as well as long-standing European practices. Over imizes disruption and hardship while creating incentives time, we should expect higher levels of cost sharing, especially for saving and investment. This will take analytic smarts for more affluent consumers. and political savvy. These developments—cuts in payments to providers, Countries around the world are grappling with many the creation of commodity-like plans for the new insurance of the same issues that bedevil the United States, and exchanges, and the rationing of services in taxpayer- while no one has found a silver-bullet solution to the insol- supported insurance plans—could accelerate the develop- vency of the social welfare state, a pattern does emerge— ment of a two-tiered U.S. health care system. One tier would and it is not a testament to the wonders of socialism. offer a pared-down version of today’s benefits for low- and First, even in nations that pride themselves on pro- middle-income citizens (much as in Europe), the other a viding “universal” social welfare benefits, the middle class better-cushioned system for the more affluent who are able has been excluded from entire categories of benefits for to spend their own money to buy additional services. reasons of economy. And, whether it knows it or not, the middle class in these countries pays for the benefits it does receive through an array of direct and indirect taxes. he unfunded promises of the modern social wel- Our political system does not seem ready to accept the fare state mean that we (and our children) are not mathematical reality that benefits must be paid for or T nearly as rich as we thought we were just a few dropped. years ago. Unaddressed, this burden threatens to create a Second, even some of the most fervently committed prolonged period of economic stagnation, if not worse, advocates on the left seem to appreciate the importance with a palpable reduction in living standards. Sooner or of competitive forces and market pricing in the provision later, government borrowing on the scale that is now of social welfare benefits. While they continue to provide required will raise the cost of public and private borrow- a safety net for the poor and other low-income groups, ing, thus reducing the productivity of American industry most countries are moving, however hesitantly, to shift the by starving it of capital investment and making U.S. com- middle class to market-based government pension and panies less competitive in the global marketplace. health care systems. For now, the United States seems to In the past, the United States did reasonably well by be going in the opposite direction. muddling through crises. But this time, temporizing may not It took decades for shortsighted and self-serving policies serve us as satisfactorily. The needed medicine is bitter. Tax to get us into this mess, and in the end politics will decide increases in the trillions of dollars appear necessary, and they whether there is a grand compromise, and what it will con- probably won’t be politically possible unless accompanied by tain. Let’s hope our politicians—and the electorate— similarly large—and permanent—cuts in government- appreciate what is at stake in getting it right. ■

50 Wilson Quarterly ■ Autumn 2010 WHAT IF CHINA FAILS?

Americans are feeling anxious and a bit ornery about the rise of China. Does that mean they should hope the Asian giant stumbles and falls?

Ross Terrill: Certain setbacks should David M. Lampton: Success is a be welcomed ...... ,p. 52 win-win game ...... p. 61

AUTUMN 2010 ■ Wilson Quarterly 51 THE WILSON QUARTERLY

WHAT IF CHINA FAILS? The Case for Selective Failure

BY ROSS TERRILL

Seven decades ago President Chiang Kai-Shek global “cities” (the developed countries) as Mao had wrote in a preface to his wife’s book China Shall expected, and the Cultural Revolution flopped. Rise Again, “For the rebirth of a people certain factors Another failure. And another great relief for the West, are necessary. Of these one is that the people should as China sobered up after Maoism. go through a period of trials and tribulations.” China Beginning in 1978, Deng Xiaoping used the fail- had already endured a century of turmoil when ure of Maoism as a springboard for replacing class Chiang wrote those words in 1941, but more was to struggle with economic development as China’s top come. In contemplating China’s future, we should priority. Some in the West exaggerated the degree to remember that its modern past includes numerous which China was becoming capitalist, “just like us,” failures. The Chinese themselves certainly don’t for- and amenable to international arrangements made in get. For decades before the collapse of the Qing its absence. We received a warning at Tiananmen dynasty in 1911, China was beset by foreign encroach- Square in 1989 that Deng’s politics were still Lenin- ment and farmers’ uprisings, and, after the estab- ist, like Mao’s. But soon the American hope in China lishment of the Chinese republic, it experienced the kicked back into gear. It always does. depredations of regional warlords, an invasion by It may be that China will again face disappoint- Japan, civil war, the collapse of Chiang’s regime in the ment. Its economic resurgence could be just one link late 1940s, and Mao Zedong’s quarter-century of in a “growth chain that began with Japan,” as uneven rule (1949–76). Jonathan Anderson, the head of Asia Pacific Eco- Initially, Mao cast his lot with the Soviet bloc, but nomics at the Swiss bank UBS, wrote a few years the “everlasting” Sino-Soviet friendship evaporated ago. That chain then lifted the Asian tigers, and now within two decades. This was a failure. Emerging from embraces China—but tomorrow may pass to the Moscow’s embrace in the mid-1960s, Mao announced Indian subcontinent. Yet China’s latest rebirth looks a “rebirth.” A Cultural Revolution denounced both to be the most solidly grounded in its modern history. imperialists (the United States) and back-sliding The question is where the new course steered by socialists (the Soviet Union) and promised the coming Deng, Jiang Zemin, and now Hu Jintao leads: Is of Chinese-style revolution worldwide. But the global China moving only to rescue itself from Maoism, or “countryside” (the Third World) did not “surround” the is it aiming also to wrench world leadership from the United States? Since Deng’s death in 1997, its

Ross Terrill, associate in research at Harvard’s Fairbank Center for Chi- direction has been ambiguous. nese Studies and a former public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Cen- Some observers, believing that Beijing’s new course ter, is the author of Mao (rev. ed., 2000), The New Chinese Empire (2003), and Myself and China, just published in Chinese in Beijing. has already triumphed, urge American accommoda-

52 Wilson Quarterly ■ Autumn 2010 What will tomorrow bring? Passersby appear to like what they see in a Shanghai architect’s rendering of the city’s future. tion to China’s coming dominance. Journalist Martin ter for the West if China flourishes. But China could Jacques titled his recent book When China Rules the stumble. And why not be relieved if, in certain World: The End of the Western World and the Birth of endeavors, it does? a New Global Order. Columnist Fareed Zakaria detects China’s success or failure over the next 20 to 30 a “post-American world.” President Barack Obama years will be revealed in four areas: himself favors a change from the United States as (1) The drive to achieve an ever higher standard of sole superpower to one among equals. living for a populace still mostly poor, ranked 124th “If China can succeed in the next few years,” for- among nations in gross domestic product per capita mer Clinton administration national security adviser by the World Bank. Sandy Berger wrote in 2007, attacking President (2) The preservation of the unity of the enormous, George W. Bush’s “tough posturing” toward Beijing, multinational territory of the People’s Republic “it will transform that country, Asia, and the world in (almost double the size of the territory ruled by the ways that serve our long-term interests.” Along the Ming dynasty of 1368–1644 and far bigger than the same lines, respected China specialists such as Ken- China of the earlier Han and Tang dynasties). neth Lieberthal and David M. Lampton, who are (3) The ability of the Communist Party of China sanguine about President Hu’s authoritarian China as (CCP) to maintain its monopoly on political power. the new centerpiece of Asia, make two assertions: that (4) The effort to eclipse the United States in Asia China’s present course will continue, and that it is bet- and beyond.

Autumn 2010 ■ Wilson Quarterly 53 What If China Fails?

In the first two of these areas, success is quite in trouble, the more so should the economy stall and likely; in the last two, less likely. the party be split over what course of action to follow. What are the possible triggers of a setback that National social protest interacting with one of these would affect China’s performance in one or more of other threats is quite possible, but it could be fore- these areas? Most likely is a lengthy economic slow- stalled by clever Beijing policies. down resulting from exhaustion of the Deng-Jiang- The third trigger for a setback could be the eruption Hu model of development (cheap labor, high exports, of major trouble in the large western half of the People’s Republic, which was historically not Chinese but inhabited by WHY WELCOME A CHINA that leaves Uyghurs, Kazakhs, Mon- gols, Tibetans, and others. our ally Japan in the dust and quarrels end- Especially problematic would be anti-govern- lessly over trade issues? ment turmoil in the far western “autonomous” region of Xinjiang simul- piggy-backing on Western technology). Not only taneously with a pro-democracy surge in Hong Kong would China’s confidence in its role on the world or, worse, a renewed independence push in Taiwan. stage deflate, but the position of the CCP could be Historically, China has feared facing Inner Asian and threatened. An economic slowdown of some sort is maritime challenges at the same time. The words of close to certain for China. It would not necessarily exiled Xinjiang leader Abdulhekim of the East harm U.S. interests. Why welcome a China that Turkestan Center in Istanbul a few years ago must leaves our ally Japan in the dust, a China rich enough have sent a chill down Beijing spines: “If China attacks to buy and sell its small neighbors, a China quarrel- Taiwan at four o’clock in the morning,” he said, “we will ing endlessly with the United States and the Euro- have an uprising at three.” pean Union over trade issues? Important political But while Xinjiang is a tense place, resentful of constituencies within the United States—labor on Han (Chinese) rule, fracture of the semiempire is the left, business on the right—might be relieved to unlikely. Beijing has the capacity and the experience— see China’s annual growth rate cut in half, to four or if the CCP doesn’t split over how to respond—to limit five percent. its damage to a few years and a bloody nose. In the process, however, Beijing would lose momentum in its current activist foreign policy—to the benefit of the second trigger could be social protest from United States. below. Labor turmoil in Guangdong and other A few countries might privately welcome China’s A coastal provinces will probably grow as social disruption or partial fragmentation. Histori- migrant workers seek wages more in line with their cally, major neighbors Japan and Russia have taken actual productivity. In the countryside, where 600 advantage of turmoil or disunity in China; the United million Chinese still toil on farms, many people are States is less well-placed to do so even if it wished. Chi- angered by rigged village elections, arbitrary taxes and nese weakness has at different times enhanced the fees, and land grabs by local authorities seeking to influence of Japan (from the 1890s to 1940s) and the make a quick yuan through development projects. Soviet Union (1920s to 1960s), on both occasions at Protests already erupt in both the cities and rural high cost to the United States. Chaos would bring both areas, but they are spontaneous and uncoordinated. If loss and gain to America’s friends in Asia. A trade widespread city-village networking occurred, facili- slump and an influx of refugees from China would be tated by the Internet and cell phones, China would be a loss to much of Southeast Asia. But Chinese arro-

54 Wilson Quarterly ■ Autumn 2010 What If China Fails?

President Hu Jintao reviews an army unit in 2009.Assertive rumblings sometimes issue from Beijing, but its military lacks crucial capabilities. gance toward smaller immediate neighbors—Vietnam, seem well placed to prepare the goose of Taiwan for the Cambodia, and Laos, among others—would be punc- oven of unification simply by continuing their recent tured. In the event of severe disruption, Washington successful steps toward economic integration and freer would worry about the Chinese nuclear arsenal, of travel across the Taiwan Strait. whose nature and whereabouts U.S. intelligence has But conflict abroad arising from tensions at home— incomplete knowledge. economic slowdown, coordinated social protest, or A final trigger could be military conflict on one of party struggle—is another question. In Taipei, leaders the five flanks that China has to reckon with, more than have long been aware of the danger of some faction on any other great power: Southeast Asia, Northeast Asia, the mainland stirring up the Taiwan issue to exploit, or Central Asia, South Asia, and, to the north and west, divert attention from, domestic woes. Not out of the Russia and Kazakhstan. But a major conflict seems question is armed conflict arising from any one of a very unlikely in the 30-year span that I take as man- number of sources of tension, such as territorial dis- ageable for looking ahead. Russia and Japan have putes among several nations over the tiny, oil-rich every reason to avoid war with China. And Beijing has Spratly and Paracel island groups in the South China good reason to avoid war with the United States over Sea (on which President Obama is taking a belated Taiwan. With President Ma Ying-jeou in office in Taipei stand by rejecting China’s attempts to avoid multilat- and President Obama in Washington, the Chinese eral negotiations). Grievances expressed in the Chinese

Autumn 2010 ■ Wilson Quarterly 55 What If China Fails? province of Inner Mongolia that prompt the adjoining pressed to retain its monopoly on political power for independent Republic of Mongolia to make criticisms another 30 years, and Beijing is certain to fail in edg- of China—rejected by Beijing as “interference”—are ing aside the United States. Moreover, in these two another danger. It is also possible that an uprising in areas U.S. interests favor Chinese failure. Xinjiang would entangle one or more of the nearby A few years ago, the Party School of the Central Central Asian states toward which Moscow feels a Committee in Beijing asked me to compare the coun- paternal interest, or that turmoil in restive Tibet would try’s recent reforms with those of the late Qing push India to the boiling point over border issues. dynasty in the 1880s. The issue on my hosts’ minds War always has unintended consequences, but, to was intriguing: When does reform steady a system, be hard-nosed about the matter, U.S. interests are and when does it undermine it? The Qing failed to unlikely to suffer if China gets into a conflict with Rus- change, belatedly tried to reform, and quickly crum- sia or even Japan. War in the Taiwan Strait, however, bled. Meiji Japan reformed itself at roughly the same though increasingly unlikely, would be appalling for the time, and to this day Japan retains its monarchy. My United States and Japan, hardly less than for China. young Party School interlocutors were quite aware Similarly, military conflict in the South China Sea that contradictions between the nature of China’s would be unwelcome. political system and the post-Mao reforms could resemble the late Qing contradictions. They can- didly compared the loss IT MAY BE GOOD for the West that China of faith in the Confucian worldview in the late continue its economic progress, but not if it 19th century with the loss of faith in Marxism in remains authoritarian. China after Mao died. At Harvard and the Council on Foreign Rela- The United States should be neutral toward China’s tions, and in prominent U.S. and European news- economic and territorial evolution. It is probably good paper columns, awe at China sweeps aside doubts for the West that Beijing continue its economic that are vivid to the young CCP elite. Historian Niall progress, though not if it remains authoritarian decade Ferguson walked “along the Bund in Shanghai” and after decade. To a degree, it is also in the West’s inter- suddenly realized “that we are living through the est for China to avoid a return to its past disunity. That end of 500 years of Western ascendancy.” Journalist said, China is as likely to lose territory as it is to become Orville Schell felt “an unmistakable sense of energy larger by adding Taiwan and other “lost territories,” and and optimism in the air” while in China, “bitter- the West should prefer the former to the latter. “One sweet for an American pondering why the regener- Mongolia,” for example, uniting China’s Inner Mon- ative powers of his own country have gone missing.” golia region with independent Mongolia, while Such premature declarations of China’s success unlikely, would not be against U.S. interests, nor would seem to have influenced public opinion. A recent Xinjiang becoming a separate country or part of an Wall Street Journal/NBC poll found that more existing Turkic country to its west. Americans expect China to be the world’s leading nation 20 years from now than expect the United States to be. Columnist Nicholas Kristof, a fan of the f the prospects for continuing Chinese economic Chinese education system, told his New York Times growth and unity are reasonably bright, China’s readers, “One reason China is likely to overtake the I prospects with respect to the two other gauges United States as the world’s most important country of success or failure are not. The CCP will be hard in this century is that China puts more effort into

56 Wilson Quarterly ■ Autumn 2010 What If China Fails? building human capital than we do.” He may be right was to allocate resources; the market increasingly about the larger contest—a century’s a long time— does this in China. A second was to be the guardian but, while waiting, one marvels at why millions of of truth; yet official doctrine can be disregarded by Chinese and other young people around the world most Chinese much of the time. Young Chinese yawn are foolish enough to seek student visas to study on when a party congress rolls around. The practical American campuses. problem is that the muscle power of China’s economy “Chinese people are educated to be the same,” and civil society grows by the month, seemingly at complained a savvy Shanghai fashion designer to the expense of the party. A showdown could give The Washington Post, adding “that’s a problem.” It is, China a more just and sustainable political system. and as long as that trait persists, and the oxygen of Or it could lead to chaos. intellectual freedom lacks, Chinese higher educa- The CCP’s monopoly on power might end in var- tion will not match ours. Maybe it’s no accident that ious ways. The CCP could drop “Communist” from its no Chinese has won a Nobel Prize without first leav- name and become the China Party or the China ing China. National Party. Such a result would fulfill the hope The theoretical problem for China’s authoritarian of Hu Jintao for a “harmonious society,” just as Nikita state is that the rationale for paternalistic communist Khrushchev hoped for “a state of the whole people,” rule is disappearing. One rationale for Leninist rule signaling an end to class struggle in the Soviet Union.

Russia

Kazakhstan

Heilongjiang

Mongolia Jilin Kyrgyzstan

Liaoning Tajikistan Xinjiang North Korea Gansu Inner Mongolia Beijing Beijing Pakistan Tianjin South Hebei Korea Shanxi Ningxia Shandong Qinghai Japan Henan Jiangsu Tibet Shaanxi Shanghai Hubei Anhui Nepal Sichuan Chongqing Zhejiang Jiangxi Bhutan Hunan India Guizhou Fujian Bangladesh Taiwan Yunnan Guangxi Guangdong Pacific Burma Hong Kong Ocean Vietnam Macau

Bay of Bengal Laos Hainan Philippines

Autumn 2010 ■ Wilson Quarterly 57 What If China Fails?

Last year, anti-Chinese riots by Muslims in Xinjiang left a woman in anguish and scores dead. It was China’s worst ethnic violence in decades.

In this clever transition—which eluded Khrush- and South Korea, but in these democracies elections chev—some kind of one-party state might continue function as a safety valve that makes for ultimate sta- for some time, with freedom and democracy per- bility. China does not have such a safety valve, and as haps advancing a little. But Hu’s “harmonious soci- long as the CCP remains in power, it will not. The ety,” like any consensus crafted from above, offers less failure of the CCP, if it led to a freer China, should long-term stability than a society in which interests please Americans. clash openly in an atmosphere of free competition of Finally, there is the question of China’s geopolit- ideas. ical ambitions. Are the Chinese “catching up” or Alternatively, the CCP could split over a crisis, positioning themselves to be the “indispensable with non-Leninists winning out and forming a power” in Asia? Some Western observers see Beijing social-democratic party that takes power in Beijing. well on the way to joining the “international com- This would be a major victory for freedom and munity.” Others see China seeking a return to its democracy. Other possibilities, such as a military past imperial primacy in Asia, when Korea, Vietnam, takeover, are less likely. and even Japan paid tribute to the Chinese court. We A freer China is not guaranteed after the end of can see hints of Beijing’s long-range strategy before the CCP’s monopoly on power, but such a China our eyes. would undoubtedly be in the interest of the United China urges an “East Asian community” that States. There would come better access to China for would exclude the United States. It quickly befriends U.S. products, genuine cultural exchanges, as well as any country in Asia, Africa, or Latin America whose reduced tensions over human rights, the Internet, poor relations with Washington give Beijing an and many other issues. Washington folk complain at opportunity to aid and trade, especially countries times about the political ways of Japan, Germany, whose oil fuels the U.S. economy. China has devel-

58 Wilson Quarterly ■ Autumn 2010 What If China Fails? oped ballistic and cruise missile forces and diesel and would simply hand the future to China. Others on nuclear submarines aimed at canceling the U.S. mil- the left, happily not dominant in the Obama admin- itary presence in the East and South China seas, the istration, embrace decline because they don’t believe Taiwan Strait area in particular. It denies Washing- the United States is morally fit to be the world’s sole ton even observer status in the Shanghai Coopera- superpower. tion Organization, which links Beijing and Moscow Some declinists nudge world leadership on a to the Central Asian countries in a mutual security bemused China. Asked by The New York Times about pact. The Chinese navy has announced a “far sea China’s rise, a Chinese assistant foreign minister defense” strategy to justify activity in the Middle replied, “If you say we are a big power, then we are.” East and across the Pacific, a departure from China’s Declinists of all stripes are united in failing to grap- longstanding strategy of devoting itself to coastal defense. These are formi- dable steps. BY BEING A SHRINKING violet, the Yet so far Beijing has often acted with pru- United States would simply hand the future dence. It knows that China’s prospects of suc- to China. cess or failure depend heavily on whether the United States is determined to stay number one; a ple with the simple fact that a Pax Sinica designed to provoked America would be as tough to challenge as replace Pax Americana would not work. America’s a supreme America. Beijing will go beyond “catching world leadership derives not only from its economic up” if and when it is able to do so. Call it Hegemony weight—which remains vastly greater than China’s— by Available Opportunity. but from additional strengths that China lacks. For decades Beijing has been keenly focused on Most obviously, despite Beijing’s ambitious mil- U.S. power, checking how far China is behind the itary buildup, the People’s Liberation Army doesn’t United States, assessing what it would take to catch have the ability to project power far from home. up, and recruiting other powers to help it resist the China also lacks a magnetic message for the world United States. The 1991 Persian Gulf War, for exam- that could replace the American brew of democracy, ple, led the Chinese military to reappraise American free markets, pop culture, a near universal language, power upward and postpone hegemonic hopes. The and innovation. Beijing’s model of authoritarian- Chinese Communists are very conscious of this puta- led prosperity may prove useful for minor Third tive contest with the United States, though Ameri- World countries, but Chinese nationalism is empty cans (beyond the Pentagon) are not. Chinese look out of answers for most of the non-Chinese world. Sim- their windows and see one great mountain, the ilarly, Chinese culture remains impermeable, clumsy United States, plus several big hills (Japan, the EU, in give-and-take with other cultures. Extraordinary Russia). Most Americans look out their windows numbers of Chinese workers and engineers now and see multiple hills, one of which is China. work at sites in the Middle East, Latin America, and “Decline is a choice,” the columnist Charles Africa, but they live largely in isolation from their Krauthammer wrote, and some hand-wringing host societies. Last year, on the 60th birthday of the American intellectuals have chosen it with regret- People’s Republic of China, Hu Jintao said, “Today a table haste. They are agitated at American assertive- socialist China is standing toweringly in the Eastern ness abroad, yet they nonchalantly report that China world.” Yet, especially in East Asia, Chinese domin- is taking over the world. They ignore the likelihood ion would be a very hard sell. that by being a shrinking violet, the United States A tacit East Asia security system exists, and only

Autumn 2010 ■ Wilson Quarterly 59 What If China Fails? its unusual character has prevented full recognition ducked the issue. Ironically, so far he has won less of its achievements. It consists of the United States cooperation from Beijing than did the “cowboy” Bush. as a hub with spokes out to Japan, South Korea, Australia, Taiwan, Thailand, the Philippines, and other countries. Its unstated function is to hold istorically, Americans have been slow to meet Japan and China in balance. a foreign challenge but relentless once Since the 1970s, Washington has had businesslike Huncoiled. Ask those Japanese who remember or better dealings with both Tokyo and Beijing, and the 1940s. Ask the British (who thought us slow in 1940) these two have had fruitful intercourse with each or the Germans (who subsequently experienced Amer- other. This is no mean achievement. It would be ican might). For many years—since Tiananmen Square, canceled by a China that “succeeded” in the sense of actually—Gallup polls have found most Americans to eclipsing the United States and keeping it out of have a “very unfavorable” or “mostly unfavorable” view security arrangements for East Asia. All benefits of of China. The Chicago Council on Global Affairs has the tacit balance in the region would be at risk. found Americans increasingly negative toward China Japan-China tensions would sharpen overnight. with each survey since 2004. Japan might spread its wings, to the dismay of some There are wise heads in Beijing who understand the Asians. Voices in Australia would say that China latent power of American nationalism and other dangers must replace the United States as the regional gate- facing a Chinese rush to the top. They urge their leaders keeper. Small countries close to China would simply to stick with Deng’s maxim of “hide our strength and throw in the towel. bide our time.” These cautious folk in well-connected The desirable policy to keep the current balance think tanks and even government ministries do not believe in East Asia and peacefully stave off a Pax Sinica the public mantra that the United States is “holding China is twofold. First, burnish America’s East Asia back.” Rather, they see clearly that the United States is a alliances so that Beijing has no illusions about the force fueling China’s rebirth—by buying Chinese exports strength and loyalties of Japan, South Korea, and and supplying technology for Chinese industry, among Australia, nor about the sentiments of other U.S. many other ways. friends, including India, Indonesia, Thailand, the The undulation of national success and failure in the Philippines, Singapore, and Vietnam. Since money 20th century was spectacular—Russia, Germany, and and trade talk, too, the pending free-trade agree- Japan all rose and fell—and is unlikely to be replicated ment with South Korea is urgent, and Obama soon. With globalization, failure for a major nation can should not shackle American multinationals in Asia hardly be total because many countries would see it in their with the new taxes he is seeking. Second, speak up interest to forestall that outcome. But, also because of for freedom and democracy and do not hesitate to globalization, a new world hegemon is hardly possible in assert them as American values. These two policies the dramatic, “fill the vacuum” sense of the United States’ would keep pressure on Beijing not to reach for post-1945 ascendancy. hegemony. I hope for a measured rise of China that balances eco- Unfortunately, President Obama has lapsed from nomic growth with political freedom; that takes pains to this twofold policy. He declines to distinguish democ- achieve give-and-take between China’s singular culture racies from authoritarian governments; all have an and other Asian and world cultures; that appreciates the equal chair at Obama’s table. Last November he wel- 21st-century world as an interlocked whole with little vir- comed “the rise of a strong, prosperous China” as a gin space for a new hegemon to plant the flag; that “source of strength for the community of nations.” restrains its militant generals in the People’s Liberation Unlike his predecessor, George W. Bush, he did not say Army and rejects hyper-nationalism; and that is cautious a “free” or “democratic” China. But there is a world of about its apparent looming triumph because the United difference between China as an unfree superpower States is more resilient than believed by eager Chinese and China as a democratic superpower. Obama nationalists and the United States’ own pessimists. ■

60 Wilson Quarterly ■ Autumn 2010 THE WILSON QUARTERLY

WHAT IF CHINA FAILS? We’d Better Hope It Doesn’t!

BY DAVID M. LAMPTON

Americans are anxious about the rapid rise other groups that chafe under Beijing’s rule. In fact, while of China, and they may be forgiven for idly wishing that setbacks and mistakes are the lot of every nation, the like- the Asian giant would trip and suffer a nasty fall. Many lihood of large-scale failure in China is extremely low, and blame China for America’s economic distress and see it a closer look at various failure scenarios shows that we as a growing challenge to U.S. power, not only in Asia but should be grateful for that. Almost any such reversal would in other corners of the world, including our Latin Amer- be profoundly contrary to American and global interests. ican “backyard.” That “giant sucking sound” that Ross The speed of China’s emergence as a great power has Perot once predicted we would hear as U.S. manufac- been unsettling, but the country has become a positive and turing jobs disappeared to Mexico can now be heard loud virtually indispensable element in the global economy, and clear, but far to the east. woven into a web of interdependent relationships that Among specialists who watch China closely, there is a connect it to many nations, including the United States. In very different sort of anxiety. Their nervousness grows a single issue of The Wall Street Journal I chose at random from the realization that the kind of Chinese failure that (August 11, 2010), there were 11 articles that dealt in some occurs in some Americans’ daydreams would create enor- way with China’s significance to the global economy. Sev- mous problems for the rest of the world. So mighty has eral were related to the just-announced decline in the China become that such a fall seems almost unthinkable, growth rate of Chinese imports in July, which produced a but Wall Street seers nevertheless nervously watch the dramatic jump in China’s trade surplus and a host of rip- Chinese markets, alert for any sign of a bubble or imminent ple effects: new fuel for protectionist sentiment in the U.S. collapse, while economists attuned to larger movements Congress; increasing demands for Beijing to let the yuan search for fatal economic imbalances and policy shifts. appreciate against the dollar; the worrisome depreciation Intelligence specialists scan for rumblings of instability of the U.S. dollar against other currencies; and a sizable among the country’s tens of millions of hard-pressed (often drop on stock exchanges in China and around the world. migratory) industrial workers; they also keep an eye out for The stories underscored the fact that China was the world’s outbursts among the Muslims of Xinjiang, the nearly growth engine during the recession and that now even that three million Tibetans whose “autonomous region” encom- engine seemed to be sputtering, unsettling global markets. passes about an eighth of China’s enormous territory, and (The United States has found Chinese markets impor- tant: In 2009, U.S. exports to China decreased by less David M. Lampton, dean of faculty and director of China studies at the than a single percentage point, while exports to the rest of Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, is the author of The Three Faces of Chinese Power: Might, Money, and Minds (2008) and the world shrank by about 20 percent.) Strikingly, alarms the inaugural recipient of the Scalapino Prize, awarded this year by the were sounding not because China was importing less than National Bureau of Asian Research and the Woodrow Wilson Center. The author thanks David Bulman and Sophie Lu for their research assistance. before but because its imports had grown “only” 22.7 per-

Autumn 2010 ■ Wilson Quarterly 61 What If China Fails? cent from a year earlier. Imagine the shock if China’s everyone in its neighborhood—India, the Soviet Union, Tai- imports were to decline in absolute terms. wan, and several Southeast Asian countries—as well as the Other Journal articles that day dealt with the China United States, and Beijing supported insurgencies in Africa trade’s implications for individual U.S. companies. The and Latin America. Mao used external conflict to foster stock of aluminum producer Alcoa fell on fears of reduced unity at home in the face of hardship and whip up support Chinese purchases, while General Motors expected to for his policies and power. As Beijing’s domestic agenda report its biggest profit in six years, fueled in part by fast became focused on economic growth and ever higher lev- els of well-being in the wake of Mao’s long reign, Beijing’s foreign policies moderated SOME MAY HOPE that a setback at home considerably, with China becoming a good citizen of will rein in Beijing’s ambitions abroad, but major international organi- zations such as the United the opposite result is more likely. Nations, the World Bank, and the International Mon- etary Fund. Wealth and sta- bility do not assure a benign growth in China. The newspaper reported that this success foreign policy, but economic success at home and integra- was energizing efforts by GM’s executives to reduce the U.S. tion into the world economy have created the conditions government’s ownership share of the company. that make responsible behavior more likely. A poor or The Wall Street Journal’s reports hardly exhausted the floundering China is unlikely to be a cooperative China. ways in which China has become essential to the U.S. and global economies. For better or worse, China by a wide margin is the number one foreign bankroller of the U.S. gov- here are at least three paths that could lead to fail- ernment, with a growing pile of U.S. Treasury securities ure for China, and if one scenario began to unfold, ($868 billion as of mid-2010) that dwarfs the holdings of all T it probably would cascade into the others. While all the oil-exporting countries combined. Chinese foreign direct three are unlikely, none are beyond imagining. investment in the United States is still small but growing, The first path would be economic disaster, triggered by and includes employment-generating investments in South a protracted period of inflation, deflation, or agricultural cri- Carolina, Minnesota, and other states—a Chinese sis; dramatic constriction of the international economic sys- automaker even considered building the revived MG line of tem or China’s access to it; or the growth and collapse of automobiles in Oklahoma a few years back. Chinese invest- bubbles in the stock and property markets. ment is now a significant force in the economies of Canada, A second path, one that would almost immediately Australia, Southeast Asia, and some parts of Europe, Latin produce spillover into the economy, would be a break- America, and Africa. Estimates of future global expansion down of the political system precipitated by a dissatisfied by the World Bank and other institutions rely heavily on citizenry, a fractured Communist Party elite, or both. While expectations of continued Chinese growth. ethnic tensions receive the headlines, they are not a major The damage wrought by a sharp Chinese downturn threat to regime survival because China’s ethnic minorities likely would not be limited to the economic realm. Some are relatively small and widely dispersed—Beijing can may hope that a major setback at home will rein in Beijing’s handle them, albeit at substantial cost. Rather, the princi- ambitions abroad. But the opposite result is more likely. pal dangers to the regime stem from the possibility that a Under Chairman Mao Zedong’s rule, from 1949 to 1976, rising middle class will demand more rights, participation, China’s share of global economic output was very low and and control over its destiny and interests. Particularly dan- hardly changed at all—Mao’s China was abysmally poor. gerous would be a fracture of the party elite during a During those years, China was in conflict with almost domestic crisis, with different top leaders allying with con-

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Millions of cargo containers pass through Shenzhen each year,making this Hong Kong neighbor one of the world’s busiest ports.While China’s exports get all the attention, its imports last year topped $900 billion, including some $14 billion in U.S.-made semiconductors, aircraft, and plastics. tending social forces—there are already some signs of elite dangerous to mental development.” division, not least over the pace of political reform. A related risk arises from the possibility of a significant A third path to failure could unfold if China ran up infrastructure breakdown. Imagine if today’s relatively against ecological limits faster than technology could be urbanized and open China experienced a major dam col- found to ameliorate them—a risk that the behavior of the lapse like the one that occurred in August 1975, when the current leadership suggests could easily receive insuffi- Banqiao Dam in Henan Province (and many other dams) cient attention until problems reached near-intolerable gave way in a typhoon, in part because of poor construction. levels. A significant percentage of what the Chinese gov- Between 85,000 and 230,000 Chinese perished, and, ernment categorizes as “mass incidents” (i.e., public dis- according to the Chinese journalist and dissident Dai Qing, turbances) have their origin in the ecological impacts of “two million people were trapped for weeks in trees and poorly regulated industries: polluted drinking water, chem- floating wreckage. Some 11 million were stricken by disease, ical contamination, and “cancer villages” in the countryside food poisoning, and famine in the aftermath.” In 1975 this caused by unregulated industrial and mining effluents. story could be swept under a large rug; in today’s wired Children in Shenyang, Shanghai, and other cities, the China, the political fallout would be very difficult to contain, World Bank reported as early as 1997, “have blood-lead lev- particularly if the death toll were increased by the erection els averaging 80 percent higher than levels considered of substandard buildings allowed by corrupt officials, a

Autumn 2010 ■ Wilson Quarterly 63 What If China Fails? common occurrence in China. Indeed, in the wake of the applaud without hesitation, recognizing the simple value 2008 Wenchuan earthquake, which took the lives of nearly of human progress. At the same time, we would have no 69,000 people, including many children who died in poorly difficulty recognizing that a wealthier society is one that is constructed schools, the regime had a very difficult time more likely to adopt policies with benefits that reach far containing popular anger and demonstrations. Disasters beyond its borders—energy efficiency, environmental can be of enormous scale in China, and the potential for improvement, and innovation contributing to the fund of public backlash has become serious enough that one of human capabilities. A healthy society, moreover, is one China’s senior leaders can now be counted on to hasten to that efficiently solves problems that can quickly affect other any disaster site in a public show of concern. nations, such as the spread of infectious disease and poor None of these possible failures could be counted as a quality control of exported food and other products. China boon for the United States. While China’s rise unques- contributes to the world simply by responsibly governing tionably carries with it costs and risks for the rest of the itself. Consider what the inability of Afghanistan, with its world—from job losses as Chinese competitors move into mere 30 million people, to maintain order and create a bet- new areas of business to security risks as Beijing’s ambitions ter life for its citizens has meant for the rest of the world— and power increase—contemplating failure only serves to it is less populous than 20 of China’s 33 provincial-level underscore the reality that China’s rise is a net gain not only jurisdictions. A stronger China willing to use its resources for the United States but for the world as a whole. to strengthen international treaty regimes, institutions, If China were a small African nation lifting its people and norms should be welcome, particularly at a time when out of poverty at the same impressive rate, we would U.S. capabilities are increasingly stretched. The issue is not

Frolicking in Beiliu, one of China’s “cancer villages,”can be hazardous to your health. Coal-based industry fouls the air and water of this village on the outskirts of Linfen, an industrial city several hundred miles southwest of Beijing, and the death rate is reportedly much higher than average.

64 Wilson Quarterly ■ Autumn 2010 What If China Fails?

Chinese power, but how that power will be used. The was America’s fastest-growing large export market, as it has United States and other nations can influence China’s been for a number of years. And China’s growing appetite choices through their policies, but the course of China’s own for education has produced an enormous flow of human tal- internal development will be the decisive factor. ent (and tuition payments) to institutions in the West. The Institute of International Education reports that China had the second-biggest number of foreign students enrolled in here are two ways to look at development that I find U.S. colleges and universities (about 99,000) in the particularly useful. The first derives from the psy- 2008–09 academic year—only India had more. Many T chologist Abraham Maslow’s thinking on the hier- Americans may not realize it, but education, like corn and archy of human needs. Maslow’s idea was that individuals, automobiles, is an export item. Unlike commodities and and by extension societies, have a hierarchy of needs, with manufactured goods, however, talented Chinese graduate physiological requirements most fundamental, followed students contribute mightily to U.S. hard science and other by the needs for personal security, then community, with the areas of research. apex of the hierarchy being self-actualization. As more basic The second way to think about development derives needs are satisfied, society’s agenda moves on to higher- from the American political scientist Samuel Huntington’s order needs. But that upward momentum cannot be taken 1968 classic, Political Order in Changing Societies. Hunt- for granted. Even in the 21st century, some large and sig- ington argued that development is a dynamic process in nificant countries, such as Pakistan, with its inability to which societies strive for a balance between the capacity to cope with floods and other challenges, find it difficult to regulate behavior and maintain order (by building institu- devote effort to national integration, political participation, tions) and the demands of individuals to participate in and self-actualization. political life. If institutions are too strong, the result is The story of China in its reform phase, starting with the authoritarianism. But unrestrained popular participation ascent of Deng Xiaoping in the late 1970s, has revolved with no institutional capacity to regulate it leads to various around the movement of massive numbers of people up this degrees of anarchy. “Failure” means a radical and sustained hierarchy, with perhaps 400 million people being lifted move away from balance in the system—too much disorder out of absolute poverty (albeit with growing inequality by or too much order (though what constitutes “too much” some measures). The country has achieved astonishing depends on the beholder). progress in improving its citizens’ quality of life. The death China’s reform-era leaders have acted decisively to rate for children under age five was 65 per 1,000 as recently impose order at key junctures, such as the 1989 crackdown as 1980. It dropped to 46 in 1990 and 21 in 2008. The wide in Tiananmen Square and the move to regulate their citi- gap in public health between urban and rural areas has also zens’ access to the Internet by erecting the Great Firewall in shrunk, at least as measured by some indicators, according 2003. Nonetheless, even as institutional strength has grown, to a recent study by sociologists Martin Whyte and Zhongxin so too has the space for individual and group action, except Sun, and life expectancy has increased. Literacy is now vir- in the most directly political domains. Groups of citizens, for tually universal among the young, with women making example, sometimes organize to stop or delay major infra- especially great gains since 1990. At the higher end of the structure projects such as petrochemical facilities and, occa- hierarchy, the annual number of newly enrolled university sionally, nuclear power generating plants, and urban con- undergraduates rose by a factor of more than nine between dominium owners now join together to protect their 1990 and 2006. property. Last summer, there was what may prove to have In the space of three decades, the bulk of China’s people been temporary tolerance for collective worker action— have gone from grappling with issues of survival to aspiring strikes—against some foreign (particularly Japanese) man- to self-improvement. They are enjoying undreamed of geo- ufacturers’ pay and working conditions. graphic and career mobility and ever-broadening material China is not a land of black and white; it presents a com- and cultural horizons. This has positive implications for the plex picture of growing individual freedom, episodically world. For one thing, wealthy people buy more goods and increased repression, and institution building, all proceed- services from abroad than poor people do. Last year, China ing simultaneously. The overriding point is that the world

Autumn 2010 ■ Wilson Quarterly 65 What If China Fails? has an interest in China keeping order as it enlarges free- tic consumption rises and the relative dependence on dom. This is not an easy balance to maintain; Beijing’s exports declines. Military spending is growing significantly leaders have a heavy hand, but chaos would bring a signif- in absolute terms along with the economy, but thus far the icant human and global toll as well. government has limited it to a modest share of GDP (in the Were China to fail in either Maslow’s or Huntington’s three to four percent range). These developments are good terms, it would mean some combination of declining con- news for China and the world, but they also pose a challenge sumption and investment, increased immigration, declin- to the United States. As China moves up the value-added ing (or stagnating) indicators of human welfare, less capac- ladder, with an ever more skilled workforce and ever more ity to deal effectively with acts of nature, more social and capital at its disposal, Americans will have to increase their political disorder, and a diminished ability to regulate capacity to innovate and boost productivity. If they don’t, domestic predatory behavior, whether stemming from cor- America’s national competitiveness will decline. ruption or unrestrained market activity. Any mix of these But if relatively vigorous growth in China is very prob- developments would have mind-numbing human rights able for the next couple of decades, the Chinese still face and security implications. uncertainties. How successfully will Beijing deal with a What is bad for China would be, in almost every case, rapidly aging population, which, thanks to a significant bad for the world. Apart from the implications of economic degree to its one-child policy, will be considerably older interdependence, consider some of the environmental issues than the U.S. population by 2040? Will it be able to main- raised by China’s rise. Generally speaking, countries with tain political stability as a burgeoning middle class and economic wherewithal and social stability use resources increasing interest-group activity multiply demands on a more efficiently, even though the overall volume of con- system with still-limited institutional and economic capac- sumed resources climbs with development. It is also true ity? Political reform has been painfully slow, but some of the that total energy consumption rises dramatically with devel- country’s leaders seem to recognize that it is necessary. In opment and urbanization despite increases in efficiency, and August, Premier Wen Jiabao acknowledged, “Without polit- that has been the case in China. Demand for electric power, ical system reform, economic system reform and modern- for example, will more than double in the cities by 2030, ization construction cannot succeed.” even though energy intensity, a measure of how much energy must be consumed to create a given amount of out- put, is declining. So why not hope China stops growing, or eyond demographics and politics, will China man- grows more slowly? Because wishing for a slowdown is not age mounting environmental stresses? The record a policy. Because economic decline or stagnation would Bso far, with water and air quality and the supply of reduce the prospects for more liberal political governance arable land all still in decline, is not encouraging. Will Bei- in the People’s Republic. And because slower Chinese jing keep military claims on the economy at a moderate level growth would stunt American growth prospects as well. and persist with a foreign policy that has not caused signif- No matter what some others may wish, relatively high icant friction with other nations? Not all signs are positive growth rates are likely to continue in China. The regime’s on this score. China’s leaders have become more assertive emphasis on market forces has the support of most ordinary about waters and resources off the country’s coast. China has Chinese, despite widespread dissatisfaction with corruption protested U.S. and South Korean joint military exercises in and the ill-gotten gains of the politically well connected. Bei- the vicinity of the Yellow Sea and is involved in tussles with jing generally has been fiscally prudent (though many local regional neighbors over a number of disputed tiny islands, governments have not), and individual debt burdens are the surrounding waters, and the resources beneath them. comparatively low. China saves about 50 percent of its gross Given their record of adaptation and success over the domestic product. Access to secondary and tertiary educa- past several decades, it would be unwise to bet against the tion and universities is rapidly improving. The Chinese Chinese. The United States and other nations should plan middle class is still only at the early stages of growth, so there on facing an increasingly capable China. That is in many is enormous potential for further expansion. Beijing is ways a daunting prospect, but it is a far better one, and aware of the need to rebalance its economy so that domes- richer in promise, than the alternative. ■

66 Wilson Quarterly ■ Autumn 2010 IN ESSENCE reviews of articles from periodicals and specialized journals here and abroad

67 Economics, Labor & Business // 69 Politics & Government // 71 Foreign Policy & Defense // 74 Society // 75 History // 77 Religion & Philosophy // 79 Science & Technology // 82 Arts & Letters // 86 Other Nations

ECONOMICS, LABOR & BUSINESS hardly the most obvious course.” Economists should “constantly test [their] assumptions and policies against real-world results,” says Man- Maximizing the kiw, who chaired President George W. Bush’s Council of Economic Multiplier Advisers (CEA) from 2003 to 2005. And though predicting the effects of the economy back to life, the admin- economic policy is quite difficult— THE SOURCE: “Crisis Economics” by istration economists concluded not there are an outlandish number of N. Gregory Mankiw, in National Affairs, Summer 2010. that their basic prescription was variables, all influencing one an- flawed but that the patient had been other—a recent spate of research has When Team Obama arrived much, much sicker than they had real- shown that the multiplier effect of tax at the White House in January 2009, ized. The stimulus hadn’t been big cuts may be more sizable than previ- the first order of business was tend- enough. ously thought. (Ironically, Mankiw ing to a very sick patient: the U.S. Perhaps, says Harvard economist notes, Christina Romer, former chair economy. The administration’s doc- N. Gregory Mankiw, but “to react to a of the CEA under President Barack tors (a.k.a. economic advisers) made model’s failure to predict events ac- Obama, once coauthored a study that a diagnosis (flagging aggregate de- curately by insisting that the model found that the tax cut multiplier was mand) and prescribed a course of was nonetheless right—as Obama’s three times larger than what the action (government spending). economic advisers have done—is Obama administration estimated it to Their plan was based on the Key- nesian paradigm that for every dollar the government spends, the recipient of that dollar will turn around and spend some portion of it too (saving the rest), as will the next person, and the next person, and so on. This is called the multiplier effect. The Obama team estimated that govern- ment spending would have a bigger multiplier (1.57) than tax cuts (0.99), the other possible strategy for ramp- ing up aggregate demand. When fed- eral stimulus spending failed to bring

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be.) Of course, as with any economic small empirical studies may supply policy, the details matter greatly, and the building-blocks for bigger theo- a poorly designed tax cut could be just Could it be time to look ries, as has happened in the field of as ineffective as poorly spent govern- at foreign aid and just medicine, in which “clinical evidence ment funds. test which strategy of therapeutic effectiveness has for Even if economists could perfectly works best? centuries run ahead of the theoretical predict the future, their prescriptions understanding of disease,” Angrist and would still be subject to the vagaries of Pischke explain. In their study of the the political process. Politicians, after increased use of empirical tools, not all, must answer to voters, not data. ogy (MIT), are staking out a third just in development economics but in Still, Mankiw advises, “The foremost position: Enough with your labor economics and public finance as job of economists is not to make the grandiose theories, they say. Let’s well, they assert their hopes that the lives of politicians easier, but to think look at very small, specific actions fields of macroeconomics and indus- through problems . . . and to propose (subsidies for mosquito nets, for trial organization will find uses for the solutions most likely to work.” example, or incentives for vaccines), these methodologies too. and test which strategies work best For their part, the “randomistas” ECONOMICS, LABOR & BUSINESS for the least cost. Established in (as Duflo and her associates are some- 2003 by Esther Duflo, Abhijit Baner- times derisively called) are not dis- Theory-Free jee, and Sendhil Mullainathan, J- couraged by critics, Tkacik reports. PAL has quickly grown to include 46 Many of them grew up watching big- Foreign Aid professors at about a dozen universi- name economists issue sweeping but ties conducting at least 200 random- “ultimately ineffectual” policy pre- THE SOURCES: “The Pragmatic Rebels” by Maureen Tkacik, in Bloomberg Business- ized control trials in 33 countries. scriptions. As Duflo puts it, “Ideology week, July 2, 2010, and “The Credibility Duflo won a 2009 MacArthur doesn’t really matter so much when Revolution in Empirical Economics: How Better Research Design Is Taking the Con Foundation “genius” grant for her the objective is getting kids to show up Out of Econometrics” by Joshua D. Angrist work, which “is so minutely focused for school or immunizing children.” and Jörn-Steffen Pischke, in The Journal of that its importance is not easily Economic Perspectives, Spring 2010. grasped at first glance,” observes jour- ECONOMICS, LABOR & BUSINESS Two warring camps have nalist Maureen Tkacik. In one repre- divided the field of development eco- sentative study, Duflo found that How Nations nomics in recent years. One side, led Kenyan farmers were just as likely to by Columbia University professor Jef- buy fertilizer if free shipping were of- Get Ahead frey Sachs, argues that massive infu- fered as they were if offered the fertil- THE SOURCE: “Was the Wealth of Nations sions of foreign aid can bring the izer at a heavily subsidized price. Since Determined in 1000 BC?” by Diego Comin, developing world out of poverty. On the shipping discount was cheaper, William Easterly, and Erick Gong, in Ameri- can Economic Journal: Macroecon- the other side, led by William Easterly the discovery should allow aid givers omics, July 2010. of New York University and econo- to get more bang for their buck. mist Dambisa Moyo, are those who Empirical economists have been Why are some areas of the criticize foreign aid, saying it has not criticized for focusing on situations world so poor and others so wealthy? helped poor countries create jobs or that are too “narrow” or trivial to have Economists generally look for an- industry but fostered dependence on any useful implications for policy, note swers in contemporary conditions, Western handouts. economists Joshua D. Angrist of MIT such as the soundness of economic Now a group of young economists and Jörn-Steffen Pischke of the Lon- policies or the presence of political based at the Abdul Latif Jameel don School of Economics in The Jour- instability. When they do look to his- Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), at the nal of Economic Perspectives. But over tory, they tend to point to the Indus- Massachusetts Institute of Technol- time, the cumulative results of many trial Revolution or the colonial period

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as parting points, when some coun- capable of crossing oceans, magnetic tion dynamics”—the inverse relation- tries hopped on the train to moder- compasses, movable-block printing, ship between the cost of adopting nity and others stayed at the station. steel, and plows. The authors found new technology and a country’s level But economists Diego Comin of Har- that the level of technology adoption of development—play a major role in vard University, William Easterly of in 1000 bc explained differences in determining the wealth of nations New York University, and Erick Gong technological prowess 2,500 years today. Well-known historical puzzles, of the University of California, Berke- later—in 1500, just before coloniza- such as China’s failure to capitalize on ley, contend that inklings of future tion—and that the technological dif- its ancient technological achieve- development patterns can be dis- ferences in 1500 strongly predicted ments and the stagnation in the cerned as far back as the time of King wealth variations today. countries of the Islamic empire after David. To put a number on it, with the their early progress, are not numer- Comin and colleagues assembled data adjusted to account for migra- ous enough to overturn the “snapshots” of development for the tions (thus counting America today worldwide correlations. predecessors of 100 modern nations as primarily European, not Native The authors say that although at three points in history. For 1000 bc American), the countries that were the their results help explain historical and “ad 0,” they looked at whether a most technologically advanced in patterns, they do not predict the society had technologies such as writ- 1500 have populations earning 26 future. Today, technology is developed ing, pottery, and bronze or iron times more per capita than those that and spreads much more rapidly than weapons, and whether it had begun live in countries that were behind 500 in the past. It’s not a sure thing that to use pack or draft animals for trans- years ago. the dynamics that shaped the last portation. For 1500, the relevant The major trends reinforce the 3,000 years of development will per- advances included firearms, ships authors’ belief that “technology adop- sist in the centuries to come.

POLITICS & GOVERNMENT in Congress, a president’s ranking fell more than one spot. More often than not, former mayors made bad presidents, but since only three have Throw Away the served in the White House (Andrew Johnson, Grover Cleveland, and Political Resumés Calvin Coolidge), it’s impossible to know how strong the correlation is. better leadership. But history says Experience as a governor, state- THE SOURCE: “Ready to Lead on Day One: otherwise, according to University of level legislator, state administrator, or Predicting Presidential Greatness From Political Experience” by John Balz, in PS: Chicago political science doctoral general seems to be slightly beneficial, Political Science and Politics, July 2010. candidate John Balz. but the effect was too small to say for For the most part, political experi- certain. (And the president with the During the battle for the ence seems to have no bearing on a most experience as a general, Zachary 2008 Democratic presidential nomi- person’s ability to be a good, or even Taylor, was one of the nation’s worst nation, Hillary Clinton made sure to great, president. Balz looked for links chief executives.) Years spent in the let everyone know how much more between White House occupants’ private sector also raised presidents’ experience she had than Barack resumés and how their tenures ranked rankings a bit, a correlation perhaps Obama. “Ready to lead on day one,” in scholars’ assessments. Certain kinds boosted by one of the greatest there she intoned. No one seemed to ques- of experience—serving in Congress, in ever was: Abraham Lincoln, who had tion her basic premise: More years of particular—actually produced worse a long career as a private lawyer political experience would make for presidents. For every two years spent before he headed to Washington.

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It’s impossible to flip the method- ology around and try to predict whether a given set of experiences will produce a successful president. Divin- ing how a president will fare based on his resumé is essentially a crapshoot. This is not to say some things aren’t predictable: Andrew Johnson’s resumé included 17 years of congres- sional service and three years as mayor of Greenville, Tennessee, a “perfect storm for lousy presidential performance.” Johnson was im- Thomas Paine (left) accused Edmund Burke of protecting the rich and powerful.Burke believed Paine’s peached by the House of Representa- predilection for revolution could lead to barbarism.Their ideas continue to shape our own. tives in 1868. The ability to steer the country “not-so-obvious fact: That where we parliament for 30 years, thought on a path of greatness can’t be stand on many of the great questions Paine put too much stock in reason. gained by time in the statehouse or at the heart of liberal democratic poli- Do not wise men disagree? Reinvent- on the floor of Congress. But candi- tics often depends decisively upon our ing society, as Paine would have it, dates will campaign on their res- view of the relationship between the would run the risk of collapse. Instead, umés nevertheless—in the end, it’s present and the past,” writes National Burke favored incremental improve- really all they have. Affairs editor Yuval Levin. ments to our governing systems, Paine, a political writer and acti- which he believed were themselves a POLITICS & GOVERNMENT vist who lived in England, America, good starting point because they and France over the course of his life, embody, in Levin’s words, “the collec- Liberalism’s believed that the Enlightenment tive wisdom of the ages as expressed in should usher in an era of revolutions. the form of long-standing precedents, Two Camps With the newfound tools of reason institutions, and patterns of practice.” and political science, leaders should Though society’s institutions may not THE SOURCE: “Burke, Paine, and the Great seek to transform society to make it be just at present, over time they will Law of Change” by Yuval Levin, in The Point, Fall 2010. more just and more sensitive to evolve to at least imitate justice. Burke human equality and rights. Paine dismissed Paine’s adulation of choice, In a rip-roaring debate in wrote that for every child born, “the believing that people enter into society the early 1790s, Thomas Paine and world is as new to him as it was to the not by choice but by birth, and that Edmund Burke fleshed out two dis- first man that existed, and his natural the society they enter is a partnership tinct strains of liberalism whose dif- right in it is of the same kind.” He “not only between those who are ferences continue to animate our should not be bound by the past, but living, but between those who are liv- political life today. Paine was the should choose anew society’s design. ing, those who are dead, and those archetypal progressive liberal. Burke, Choice was central to Paine’s philoso- who are to be born.” though often considered simply a phy. He agreed with his friend Paine rejected Burke’s philosophy, conservative, is better understood as Thomas Jefferson that it would be a finding it to be “thoroughly mis- representing a conservative interpre- good idea for every law to come with guided, if not just a cynical defense of tation of liberalism. At the heart of an expiration date so that it would not privilege and power,” Levin explains. their disagreement, which on its sur- be imposed upon future generations Paine wrote, “Mr. Burke is contending face was about the revolutions taking without their active consent. for the authority of the dead over the place in America and France, lay a Burke, a member of the British rights and freedom of the living.”

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Despite their differences, these very few people participate, and chaos national primary would require two men had much in common, erupts every four years, as states vie to candidates to be able to campaign Levin observes, including a belief in schedule their contests earlier and ear- on a national scale from the get-go. “open debate, freedom of expression lier to gain greater sway over the final But Tolbert and her colleagues and religion, the rule of law.” It’s not outcome and to boost their econo- aren’t too keen on one of the leading liberalism and anti-liberalism that mies. Political scientists Caroline J. alternatives, known as a “graduated shape our political life, but liberalism, Tolbert, Amanda Keller, and Todd random presidential primary system.” divided by the little detail of what we Donovan have a solution that com- Under such an arrangement, smaller should keep from the past. bines the best features of earlier states would vote early in the primary reform ideas. season, but the exact order would POLITICS & GOVERNMENT Seven in 10 Americans favor change every four years. Larger states switching to a national primary—one would be allowed to begin holding Fixing the day when voters everywhere would their primaries several weeks into the head to the polls. Such an event would process. Some critics worry that such a Presidential likely boost participation, since many system would be confusing for voters Primaries people don’t vote under the current and unfair to large states. system because the winner is often The authors propose a hybrid THE SOURCE: “A Modified National Pri- decided long before it’s their turn to approach: Begin with a dozen primar- mary: State Losers and Support for Chang- ing the Presidential Nominating Process” by cast a ballot. In 2008, less than a quar- ies or caucuses in small-population Caroline J. Tolbert, Amanda Keller, and ter of the voting-age population voted states to allow unknown candidates a Todd Donovan, in Political Science Quar- terly, Fall 2010. in a presidential primary, and that chance to prove themselves, but let was a good year. The problem with these contests decide only a “tiny” Why is the process for se- a national primary is that it would number of these states’ delegates to lecting the candidates for the nation’s do away with one of the greatest the nominating conventions. In highest office such a mess? In the strengths of the current system: Since essence, let these early contests be absence of constitutional directives, it the primaries begin in small states, straw polls. Then, when that phase is has evolved haphazardly over 200 candidates without huge war chests completed, hold a national primary. years, and the result is a system that is and who are not necessarily the This approach would preserve the rel- deeply unpopular: The tiny and very darlings of the political establish- atively open playing field of the cur- white states of Iowa and New Hamp- ment can win with old-fashioned rent system and at the same time shire have disproportionate power, door-to-door campaigning. A allow more people’s votes to matter.

FOREIGN POLICY & DEFENSE Past attempts at centralization have always failed, from Amanullah Khan’s doomed effort to become Afghanistan’s Kemal Atatürk in the Decentering Kabul 1920s to the Soviet-backed commu- nist power grab in the late 1970s, States, has struggled to build a cen- which resulted in years of civil war. THE SOURCE: “Defining Success in Afghanistan” by Stephen Biddle, Fotini tralized democracy. The 2004 con- “Put simply, the current model of Christia, and J. Alexander Thier, in Foreign stitution placed nearly all executive, Afghan governance is too radical a Affairs, July–Aug. 2010. legislative, and judicial authority in departure” from what has worked in Since 2001, the government Kabul. But centralization does not Afghanistan historically and the of Afghanistan, led by Hamid sit well with local authorities in “underlying social and political Karzai and backed by the United Afghanistan’s rugged countryside. framework” that exists today, declare

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dation of a decentralized system. Their traditional authority would provide much-needed stability. In a decentralized democratic model, local governments would need to hold elections and have some de- gree of transparency. Kabul would hand over its authority to dictate local budgets, design justice systems, and select local officials. Such a system would be difficult to achieve, requiring ongoing U.S. administrative assistance and a sus- tained counterinsurgency campaign against Taliban members who oppose democracy on Shuras,communitycouncils like the one above,could be the keyto building a more stable Afghanistan. principle. Easier to achieve but less pala- Stephen Biddle of the Council on tioned group of “ministates”; and table would be a system of mixed Foreign Relations, Fotini Christia of anarchy. The latter two are not sovereignty, in which local authori- MIT, and J. Alexander Thier, of the acceptable, but either of the first ties would rule without elections or U.S. Institute of Peace. It’s time to two could fulfill the United States’ transparency. Kabul would have to start looking at what is actually possi- two main security interests: barring enforce three strict “redlines” in ble in Afghanistan and work toward terrorists who hope to attack the order for this system to remain con- the most acceptable options. United States and its allies and sistent with U.S. security interests: Biddle and his colleagues say denying shelter to insurgent groups Don’t host terrorists or insurgents. there are only four outcomes with that could destabilize neighboring Don’t mess with other local any real likelihood of emerging: Pakistan. districts, by, for example, diverting decentralized democracy; a regu- Local councils, called shuras, are their water. And don’t participate in lated mix of democratic and non- found in “virtually every commun- narcotics trafficking, large-scale democratic territories; a parti- ity,” and could become the foun- theft, or the exploitation of state-

Qaeda terrorists hide in plain sight in Karachi. . . . Anyone EXCERPT who traveled to South Africa for the 2010 World Cup might have noticed how private security forces outnumbered official police two to one, and gated The Age of the City communities protected elites from the vast townships where crime is rampant. Cities—not so-called failed Look at a satellite image of the Earth at night: It will states like Afghanistan and Somalia—are the true daily reveal the shimmering lights of cities flickering below, test of whether we can build a better future or are but also an ominous pattern. Cities are spreading like a heading toward a dystopian nightmare. cancer on the planet’s body. Zoom in and you can see good cells and bad cells at war for control. In Caracas, —PARAG KHANNA, a senior research fellow at the New gang murders and kidnappings are a fact of life, and Al America Foundation, in Foreign Policy (Sept.–Oct. 2010)

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owned natural resources. If those clearly superior is not simply for a lines can be toed, a system of mixed Presidents don’t usually president’s personal benefit but also sovereignty could balance the reali- want to hear an intelli- necessary to a successful policy. If a ties of Afghanistan with U.S. policy leader is plagued with doubts, the gence analyst’s doubts, aims. uncertainty can filter down to the preferring confidence The downside: “This would rep- rank and file and doom a policy resent a retreat from nearly nine (even when unwar- before it is even launched. years of U.S. promises of ranted) in one policy When uncertainty exists, intel- democracy, the rule of law, and option. ligence analysts can be suscepti- basic rights for women and minori- ble to pressures from policymak- ties, with costs to innocent Afghans ers to change their conclusions. and the prestige of the United For both political and psycho- But the charge of “politicization” States.” But, sadly, those promises logical reasons, presidents often is too easily lobbed about, Jervis may be impossible to keep. expect the intelligence community argues. How can you tell the dif- to be able to provide them with ference between a politician mak- FOREIGN POLICY & DEFENSE clear answers. Politically, presidents ing sure that due diligence has need intelligence backing to sell been done and one simply The Limits of their policies to the public. Psycho- demanding a different answer? logically, they need to sleep at night, “In many of these cases, I suspect Intelligence and that requires seeing a world in that one’s judgment will depend which one policy is clearly prefer- on which side of the substantive THE SOURCE: “Why Intelligence and Poli- able to another and its costs, often debate one is on,” he remarks. cymakers Clash” by Robert Jervis, in Politi- cal Science Quarterly, Summer 2010. measured in lives, are less than The president’s need to have those of any alternative. Even when the backing of the intelligence It is conventional wisdom the news is good, it may not be community in order to sell his that whether because of President greeted favorably. This was the case policies stems from the public’s George W. Bush’s aversion to com- when the Central Intelligence faith in the quality of the intelli- plexity, Vice President Dick Cheney’s Agency told Lyndon B. Johnson gence community’s judgments. obsession with Saddam Hussein, or that other countries would not fall But when the president presses something else entirely, somehow to communism even if South Viet- intelligence analysts to support Washington simply ignored the U.S. nam did. Since Johnson’s Vietnam his policies, the quality of the intelligence community’s doubts that policy was based on the domino information is likely to suffer. Saddam was collaborating with Al theory, he did not welcome the And even in the absence of politi- Qaeda and that a stable Iraq could information. cal pressure, reliable intelligence emerge after an invasion. But the Presidents don’t usually want to is difficult to come by. When the Bush administration’s mistakes in hear an intelligence analyst’s United States failed to anticipate Iraq are only the most recent illustra- doubts. Policymakers will try to the 1974 coup in Portugal, then tion of the challenges policymakers convince both themselves and the secretary of state Henry Kissinger and intelligence analysts face when public that one policy measure is resented congressional com- attempting to communicate—chal- better than an alternative on every plaints about intelligence failure: lenges that presidents of every politi- dimension, even when, as Jervis “Anytime there’s a coup you start cal stripe encounter as they struggle writes, “there [is] no reason to with the assumption that the to lead with confidence in an expect the world to be arranged so home government missed it.... ambiguous world, writes Robert neatly.” The confidence (even when Why the hell should we know bet- Jervis, a professor of international unwarranted) that comes from ter than the government that’s politics at Columbia University. believing one policy option is being overthrown?”

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SOCIETY into any school in America, they may have simply been less competent.

Imported Doctors SOCIETY

congestive heart failure in THE SOURCE: “Evaluating the Quality of Welfare’s Care Provided by Graduates of International Pennsylvania from 2003 to 2006. Medical Schools” by John J. Norcini, John R. Of the roughly 6,000 physicians in New Tune Boulet, W. Dale Dauphinee, Amy Opalek, their study, 25 percent were gradu- Ian D. Krantz, and Suzanne T. Anderson, in THE SOURCE: “Effects of Prenatal Poverty Health Affairs, Aug. 2010. ates of foreign medical schools. A on Infant Health: State Earned Income Tax quarter of those international Credits and Birth Weight” by Kate W. Strully, David H. Rehkopf, and Ziming Xuan, in If you’re rushed to the graduates were U.S. citizens. American Sociological Review, Aug. 2010. emergency room with a heart How did the doctors perform? attack and your doctor is a gradu- Five percent of the patients who In the last quarter of the ate of a foreign medical school, found themselves in the care of a 20th century, federal welfare policy are you in good hands? That foreign-born physician died, while increasingly tied benefits to an indi- depends, say John J. Norcini, 5.8 percent of those in the hands vidual either having a job or at least president and chief executive offi- of an American educated abroad making efforts to get one. President cer of the Foundation for Ad- did. The foreign-born doctors even Bill Clinton’s 1996 welfare reform vancement of International Med- outperformed their U.S.-educated sealed the deal, but the trend began ical Education and Research, and peers, who lost 5.5 percent of their in earnest with the 1975 enactment his colleagues. If your doctor is patients. of the Earned Income Tax Credit not a U.S. citizen, you should The authors speculate that the (EITC). Unlike old-school entitle- thank your lucky stars. If he or Americans who studied abroad ment programs such as Aid to Fami- she is American, well, the outlook may have performed worse be- lies With Dependent Children for you is not quite as rosy. cause they attended particularly (AFDC), EITC makes benefits more The authors examined the out- bad international schools. Or, generous as a recipient’s wages in- comes of more than 244,000 hos- since many may have enrolled crease. (The benefits eventually pitalizations for heart attacks and abroad because they didn’t get taper off, stopping at incomes of

any acknowledgment of the millions of human beings eating, EXCERPT sleeping, arguing, copulating, and dying only inches away. Modern society does not help us to put forward our more dignified sides. The public spaces in which we typically The Calamity of encounter others—commuter trains, jostling pavements, shopping malls, escalators, restaurants—conspire to throw Main Street up a demeaning picture of our collective identity. It can be Whereas the Bedouin who surveys a hundred miles of hard to keep faith with humanity after a walk down Oxford empty sand will crave company and can psychologically Street or a transfer at O’Hare. afford to offer each stranger a warm welcome, his urban contemporaries, at heart no less well meaning or generous, —ALAIN DE BOTTON, author of the book A Week at must in order to preserve a modicum of balance live without the Airport: A Heathrow Diary, in Harper’s (Aug. 2010)

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about $40,000 for a single parent Albany; David H. Rehkopf of the income single mothers in those states with two children.) The idea is to University of California, San Fran- bore slightly bigger babies (about half make work more worthwhile by help- cisco; and Ziming Xuan of the Har- an ounce heavier) than their peers in ing recipients pay for transportation, vard School of Public Health, low- states without the additional assis- childcare, and other job-related costs. income single mothers are benefiting tance. One explanation is that preg- Some specialists worried that the from the policy. nant mothers living in places with policy would backfire—that working Birth weight is a valuable indicator, state EITCs smoked less than low- single mothers would be under too not just because it acts as a proxy for income single mothers elsewhere. much stress and that increased cash the health of the mother during preg- The authors say that the data for would mean more smoking and nancy but also because it can be a reli- policies whose benefits decrease with drinking. By one measure, however, able predictor of future earnings and earnings, such as AFDC and the that doesn’t seem to be happening. educational attainment of children. newer Temporary Assistance to Judging by the weight of EITC bene- Beginning in the 1980s, 16 states Needy Families, were less clear. One ficiaries’ newborns, report three enacted their own versions of the tax thing was certain: Both programs sociologists, Kate W. Strully of the credit to supplement the federal pro- increased the likelihood of maternal State University of New York at gram. The authors found that low- smoking by nearly 10 percent.

HISTORY rich and poor, and even graced the covers of two books. The photo speaks for itself; nothing more need be said. But Guardian columnist and Triumph of the Toughs former Granta editor Ian Jack tracked down each of the boys, and division was self-evident. the story is quite different from what THE SOURCE: “Five Boys: The Story of a In the decades since, the picture the picture so plainly suggests. Picture” by Ian Jack, in Intelligent Life, Spring 2010. has illustrated countless articles about The photo’s two “toffs,” as later

On July 10, 1937, the Brit- ish daily newspaper the News Chroni- cle published a photograph of five boys, two of them dressed in the Eng- lish gentleman’s uniform of top hat, tail coat, and silk waistcoat, and car- rying canes. The three other boys stand to the side, smirking at the dandies, wearing oversized jackets, perhaps bought to last longer as the boys grew. Above the photo, taken by Jimmy Sime, the headline read, “Every Picture Tells a Story,” and below it was a no-nonsense caption: “Outside Lord’s, where the Eton- Harrow match opened yesterday.” There was no accompanying article. The message of Britain’s sharp class From left to right: Peter Wagner,Thomas Dyson, George Salmon,Jack Catlin, and George Young.

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iterations of its captioning labeled worked as a foreman for Imperial them, were Peter Wagner and Metal Industries and helped the com- Supreme Court justice Thomas Dyson, both Harrow pany expand across Europe. Catlin Roger B. Taney infa- students. In the picture, Wagner joined the civil service and rose to a mously described blacks stares down the street, awaiting his senior position in the Department of as “beings of an inferior parents’ arrival to take him and his Health and Social Security. “We’ve order,”but he once friend Dyson home for the weekend. always been jolly happy,” Young once The Wagners were quite wealthy. told a reporter, “just as we were when called slavery “a blot on They had arrived in England from I was a kid. You don’t need to be rich. our national character.” Germany via South Africa in the late We’ve had a very rich life.” 19th century. Peter’s father, Richard Today, Jack observes, class trap- Harry Wagner, went to Harrow on a pings aren’t visible in the same way— Historians have long struggled to scholarship and made out quite well. a photographer looking for such a reconcile the two Taneys, Timothy He and his wife may have arrived in shot might find five boys dressed all S. Huebner notes. Although Taney’s the family’s Rolls-Royce just minutes quite alike, in jeans and T-shirts. “Giv- antislavery statements were made after the picture was snapped. But a ing a superficial impression of equal- during his defense of the Reverend rough road lay ahead for young ity,” Jack writes, “the picture would be Jacob Gruber, an abolitionist minis- Peter: After attending the University even more of a lie than before.” ter on trial for preaching a sermon of Cambridge, marrying, and start- that his accusers claimed had dis- ing a family, he began to be haunted HISTORY turbed the peace and promoted by mental illness. He died in a slave rebellion, Huebner says that locked ward of a mental asylum at The Real the 42-year-old Taney didn’t limit age 60. himself to a simple defense of his Peter’s friend Thomas Dyson fared Justice Taney client but “went a step further, reaf- worse. His English father and firming and validating the sub- THE SOURCE: “Roger B. Taney and the Australian mother were stationed in Slavery Issue: Looking Beyond—and stance of Gruber’s sermon.” India with the Royal Field Artillery. Before—Dred Scott” by Timothy S. Huebner, Taney’s stance carried significant in The Journal of American History, (It’s ironic that a boy of German her- June 2010. political risk in a state filled with itage and another who was half-Aus- slaveholders, but it was consistent tralian came to symbolize the upper Who was the real Roger B. with other actions he took during echelons of English society.) Just a Taney? Was he the Supreme Court that time. As a member of the Mary- year after the photo was taken, he justice who infamously wrote, in the land Senate between 1816 and 1821, sailed to Bombay and boarded a train 1857 Dred Scott decision denying citi- he supported several resolutions to visit his parents. During the jour- zenship to blacks, that they had “for seeking to limit slaveholding, and, by ney he fell ill with diphtheria, and more than a century before been 1820, had manumitted 11 of his own died on August 26, 1938, at age 16. regarded as beings of an inferior slaves. By contrast, the picture’s three order...altogether unfit to associate But Huebner, a historian at “toughs” did quite well. Not toughs at with the white race”? Or was he the Rhodes College in Memphis, all, but from the “typically straitened impassioned lawyer from Frederick detects a subtle shift in Taney’s per- circumstances of the old London County, Maryland, who argued in spective during the decades follow- working class,” George Young, George 1819 that slavery was “a blot on our ing the Gruber trial. As U.S. attor- Salmon, and Jack Catlin all lived well national character” and insisted that ney general under Andrew Jackson, into old age, enjoying successful “every real lover of freedom confi- for instance, he authored an 1832 careers and good health. Young ran a dently hopes that it will be effectually, opinion on the constitutionality window-cleaning business, and his though it must be gradually, wiped of a South Carolina law, in which four sons joined the trade. Salmon away”? he referred to African Americans as

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pointed him chief justice in writes, “Taney’s thinking had evolved 1835, Taney wrote several into full-blown extremism.” He now opinions that, Huebner says, believed that “only states could con- “reflected an emerging trol slavery, ruled that Congress ‘southern rights’ argument could not prohibit slaveholding in that emphasized the need to the territories, concluded that the protect the property rights of Declaration of Independence had no slaveholders by preserving bearing on black rights, believed that state control over slavery.” slavery elevated African Americans, Previously, slavery had been and abhorred the thought of eman- defended mostly as a neces- cipation.” sary evil created by the After Taney died, in 1864, just six nation’s early colonists. A months before the end of the Civil polarizing political climate War, a pamphlet appeared compar- fed by the rise of radical ing him to Pontius Pilate, inaugurat- abolitionism squeezed ing a continuing debate about who Chief Justice Roger B.Taney near the end of his life middle-of-the-roaders such the “real” Taney was. Huebner doubts as Taney, and Nat Turner’s that a useful conclusion can be a “degraded class” whose rights 1831 rebellion “prompted a nearly reached: “Taney’s changing views existed only on “the sufferance of universal response of fear and dread show that he was both a product and the white population.” on the part of white southerners.” By a proponent of this shifting discourse After President Jackson ap- the time of Dred Scott, Huebner about slavery.”

RELIGION & PHILOSOPHY records arguing for toleration. New Amsterdam was no beacon of religious toleration. The authorities discriminated against Jews, Luther- How Religious Toleration ans, and Baptists, among others. In 1657, English colonists on Long Came to America Island sent a request to the New Amsterdam government for religious tions became a model for America. In freedom for Quakers. The petition THE SOURCE: “Dutch Contributions to Reli- gious Toleration” by Jeremy Dupertuis Bangs, the academic world, many delighted (now called the Flushing Remon- in Church History, Sept. 2010. in seeing the English philosopher strance) was denied and not thought John Locke—traditionally credited of again until the 19th century. It was Six years ago, historian Rus- with popularizing the idea of religious hardly the forerunner of the Bill of sell Shorto rescued the life of one freedom—knocked off his pedestal. Rights, as some now imagine. Adriaen van der Donck from obscu- It’s a nice yarn, writes Jeremy “With sophistry bordering on rity. Van der Donck, as Shorto told it, Dupertuis Bangs, director of the Lei- hypocrisy, tolerant New Netherland was one of the earliest advocates in den American Pilgrim Museum in offered its inhabitants freedom to the New World of a republican the Netherlands, but no more than believe whatever they wanted, as long system of government and Dutch- that. None of Van der Donck’s writ- as their belief did not extend to relig- style religious toleration. Upon the ings—published or otherwise—touch ious exercises outside the family foundation Van der Donck laid, New upon religious toleration. He doesn’t circle—no preaching, no prayer meet- Amsterdam flourished and its institu- make any appearances in the colony’s ings, no group discussions of theology,”

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Bangs writes. One Quaker preacher RELIGION & PHILOSOPHY Christian in character, extolling was dragged through the streets Christian virtues such as humility behind a cart. Two Presidents and brotherly affection, and The Flushing Remonstrance was warning against cunning and the product of a misunderstanding. and Their God ambition. Many in the English-speaking world By the time Lincoln took to the THE SOURCE: “American Scriptures” by of the mid-17th century thought there C. Clifton Black, in Theology Today, stage to deliver his second inaugu- was religious toleration in Holland July 2010. ral address, the nation was riven by because the text of the Union of sectional conflict, much as Wash- Utrecht (1579) had circulated widely George Washington’s Fare- ington had feared. Lincoln, unlike in translation. The treaty unified the well Address (1796) and Abraham Washington, didn’t shy away from northern, Protestant provinces of Lincoln’s second inaugural address theology, and instead framed the what would eventually become the (1865) are standard texts for any Civil War in “relentlessly theologi- Netherlands against a perceived student of American history. C. cal terms.” By Black’s assessment, threat from the united support of the Clifton Black, a professor of bibli- no fewer than 85 of the 700 words southern, Catholic provinces for the cal theology at Princeton Theolog- in the address are either direct bib- Spanish king. It promised that “every ical Seminary, explores these lical quotations or allusions to particular person shall remain free in speeches not to understand politi- Scripture. Lincoln propounded his religion.” cal philosophy but in a search for what Black describes as “a radical But just two years later, under the theology, however unspoken, monotheism that properly elicits pressure from the Dutch Reformed undergirding their authors’ both awe before the Almighty’s Church (Calvinist), the Dutch govern- perspectives. He finds Washing- inscrutable purposes and compas- ment banned the Catholic Mass and ton’s theology “predictably mea- sion for the thousands who died in shuttered Catholic monasteries ger,” but Lincoln’s exploration of the sincere yet mistaken belief that and convents. The Synod of Dort the nature of providence put to God was on their side.” At the heart (1618–19) marked the effective end of shame even the leading religious of Lincoln’s address is the acknow- the Union of Utrecht and led to a fur- thinkers of his day. ledgment that men on both sides ther crackdown that encompassed In his farewell, Washington “read the same Bible, and pray to even non-Calvinist Protestants. The primarily reflected upon his deci- the same God; and each invokes English-speaking world was mostly sion to retire and warned the His aid against the other,” as the unaware of these developments. young nation to be wary of parti- president put it. Only God’s even- Dutch dissenters, largely from sanship and sectionalism. Wash- tual discretion would reveal which Mennonite and Remonstrant ington was politically wise, but he side he was on; why he allowed war churches, continued to plead for reli- portrayed religion as nothing to persist among God-fearing men gious toleration in their own country. more than simple civic morality— was beyond human understanding. Of particular importance are the for example, “Of all the disposi- Today Washington is often crit- works of Philip van Limborch, a tions and habits which lead to icized for owning slaves, and Lin- Remonstrant theologian whose writ- political prosperity, religion and coln for suspending habeas corpus ings and friendship deeply influenced morality are indispensable sup- in wartime. Under the unrelenting John Locke. Locke dedicated his 1689 ports.” Black writes, “Theology— scrutiny of our modern world, nei- Letter on Toleration to Van Limborch. such as it is—does not so much ther comes off scot free. But this It’s through the connection between inform and correct political the- would be no surprise to them, these two men that religious liberty ory as prop it up.” With only pass- Black remarks. Central to both spread to the English colonies, accord- ing and superficial references to men’s understanding of the world ing to Bangs, and reached Thomas God in more than 6,000 words, was the fallibility of man—and Jefferson’s pen. the speech was nevertheless quite they were no exception.

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SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY year. Yet the results have been “disappointing.” The Venter Insti- tute’s announcement last spring that it had managed to create Is Science Finished? “artificial life” may have grabbed headlines, but Le Fanu remains seems extraordinary that geneti- unmoved. “Fabricating a basic THE SOURCE: “Science’s Dead End” by cists can’t tell us why humans are toolkit of genes and inserting James Le Fanu, in Prospect, Aug. 2010. so different from flies, and neuro- them into a bacterium—at a cost Has the era of major sci- scientists are unable to clarify of $40 million and 10 years’ entific breakthroughs run its how we recall a telephone num- work—was technologically ingen- course? Lord Kelvin famously ber,” Le Fanu muses. ious, but the result does less than claimed at the end of the 19th cen- Life is much harder to study what the simplest forms of life tury that future scientific achieve- than matter. For one thing, it’s have been doing for free and in a ments would be found “in the sixth “immeasurably more complex.” matter of seconds for the past place of decimals.” Just a few years Think of a fly and a pebble of the three billion years.” later, Albert Einstein proposed the same size. A common fly is “bil- For all its money, Big Science is theory of relativity and forever lions upon billions upon billions” not supporting those who are “dis- changed our understanding of of times more complicated. Life’s content with prevailing theory,” physics. Science writer John Hor- most basic units—cells—are at and could make history-altering gan caused a minor stir in the work in every living thing, con- discoveries. The end of science 1990s by arguing that science has verting nutrients into tissue, won’t come when there’s nothing reached its limits now that we have repairing, and reproducing, and left to discover, but “when the a basic understanding of the physi- each cell is a tiny fraction of the geeks have taken over and the free cal world, from the nanoscale to the size of the smallest machines ever thinkers [have been] vanquished.” universal. built. Another wrinkle: Many of That’s true for matter, agrees the mysteries of life produce no SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY James Le Fanu, a columnist for tangible evidence. What do you Britain’s Telegraph, but our “look” at if you want to study The Frozen Past understanding of life still leaves thought, memory, or belief? The something wanting. If more assumption that science could one THE SOURCE: “A Humanist on Thin Ice” by Tom Griffiths, in GriffithREVIEW, breakthroughs are made, they day probe such inscrutabilities Spring 2010. will be in clarifying two of the “remains an assumption,” Le Fanu greatest mysteries: how it is that writes, as, “strictly speaking, they In the three billion years the double helix of DNA gives rise fall outside the domain of the of life on this planet, ours is not the to vast biodiversity, and how the methods of science to investigate first era of mass extinction and electronic impulses in our brains and explain.” global climate change. But we are create an individual—personality, Times are flush for Big Science. the first creatures to live through free will, memories. “At a time Biomedical research alone is a such upheaval and know what is when cosmologists can reliably $100 billion industry, dwarfing happening. Much of our under- infer what happened in the first the gross domestic products of a standing comes from studying sim- few minutes of the birth of the dozen countries. The quantity of ple, frozen hydrogen dioxide. The universe, and geologists can research is astonishing, with story of ice—how it came to exist in measure the movements of conti- many journals publishing around such concentrations at the planet’s nents to the nearest centimeter, it 100,000 pages of articles each poles and what makes up the gases

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that nothing in the first century of SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY The century-long study climate research supports the sinis- of ice, a historian says, ter, left-wing conspiracy many Cloning the global warming skeptics imagine. reveals “the cumulative, When scientists did raise the possi- Neanderthals insidious, all-pervading bility of global warming, “they saw it power of people on mostly as positive. . . . Indeed, if the THE SOURCE: “Should We Clone Neander- thals?” by Zach Zorich, in Archaeology, Earth.” world were warmer, it might make March–April 2010. winters more comfortable and agri- culture more productive, or even Nearly 50,000 years ago in trapped within it—“is the key to help stave off the next Ice Age. For northern Spain, 11 Neanderthals understanding climate change,” the first two-thirds of the 20th cen- were murdered. The circumstances writes Tom Griffiths, a historian at tury the global warming trend was remain mysterious, but the evi- the Australian National called the ‘embetterment’ of climate, dence—1,700 broken bones—is University in Canberra (and no or the ‘recent amelioration.’ ” today providing scientists with many relation to the GriffithREVIEW’s It wasn’t until very recently that clues about what color hair Nean- namesake). scientists began to recognize the derthals had (red), what their skin The first inklings of the role ice peril posed by global temperature looked like (pale), and whether they has played in shaping the world fluctuation. There were two key spoke (probably). It’s possible that in emerged in the late 1830s, when discoveries. First, in the early due time, DNA extracted from those Swiss-born scientist Louis Agassiz 1980s, scientists studying the bones or those of another Nean- postulated that large sheets of ice Greenland ice sheet found that cli- derthal will be implanted in a cell, once covered much of the globe. mate change had occurred much that cell will be coaxed into multiply- Decades passed before this idea more quickly than they had ing, and, with the right techniques gained wide acceptance. In 1859, assumed was likely, sometimes as and no shortage of luck, the result Irish researcher John Tyndall went much as five or six degrees Celsius will be a living, breathing Neander- poking into the causes of the Ice within a few decades. Second, the thal. Such an achievement will “force Age, examining the gases in the levels of C02 in the atmosphere the field of paleoanthropology into atmosphere to see if they all today are higher than at any time some unfamiliar ethical territory,” behaved the same way. He found in at least 400,000 years, as indi- writes Zach Zorich, a senior editor at that not all atmospheric gases are cated by archived ice cores from Archaeology. transparent to radiant heat—in par- Antarctica. Neanderthals are modern ticular, carbon dioxide (C02) is Until now, major scientific dis- humans’ closest extinct relative, hav- opaque—which means that fluctua- coveries have invariably estab- ing branched off from our line of the tions in the amount of C02 in the lished that humans are less than family tree some 450,000 years ago. atmosphere could affect how the central actors in the physical Locked in their DNA could be price- earth heats and cools. One and a world. Copernicus upended the less information for scientists study- half centuries ago, the role of green- notion that the sun revolves ing diseases that are “largely human- house gases in setting the earth’s around Earth; geologists and biol- specific, such as HIV, polio, and temperature was flagged. What we ogists have demonstrated the in- smallpox.” If Neanderthals turn out to know about climate and global credibly recent appearance of be genetically immune to such warming today began with efforts to Homo sapiens on the planet. By ailments, it’s possible that studying understand the climate of eras past contrast, the century-long study of their DNA could lead to gene therapy and the glaciers that once covered ice reveals “the cumulative, insidi- treatments. But for scientists inter- large swaths of Europe. ous, all-pervading power of people ested in cloning a Neanderthal, tech- Griffiths is quick to point out on Earth,” Griffiths observes. nical hurdles stand in the way. A

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ecologists is calling on the scien- tific establishment to pay more attention to what they call “novel ecosystems,” writes Emma Marris, a writer working on a book about proactive conservation approach- es. These are areas not under human management where species that have not previously existed together (and therefore did not evolve together) are now living in the same place. By one estimate, such ecosystems cover 35 percent of the earth, a propor- A technician touches his drill to a piece of fossilized Neanderthal bone as part of the Neanderthal tion that is likely to grow. genome project at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. Ariel Lugo, a scientist in Puer- to Rico, has shown that novel stitched-together genome (since no under the Constitution and interna- ecosystems can be nearly as rich intact ones exist) would likely be full tional law? How much of a genome in species as native ones. They of errors, and to make it, scientists needs to be changed before someone may also have more above-ground would have to take several samples, is not considered human? Moreover, biomass and use nutrients more destroying rare bones in the process. no one would be creating these clones efficiently. Sometimes such eco- One method of cloning—nuclear just on a lark. They’d be created for systems provide much-needed transfer—tends to produce many research—to be studied and experi- habitats for native species. sickly organisms that often die. Per- mented on. Wouldn’t they need to Peter Kareiva, chief scientist of fecting the process would “require a give their consent? The Nature Conservancy, says that horrifying period of trial and error,” “The ultimate goal of studying studying novel ecosystems helps Zorich explains. Another method— human evolution is to better under- conservationists to “face the facts using stem cells—has so far only been stand the human race,” Zorich writes. and be strategic” rather than try to tested in mice. “But what if the thing we learned deny their existence. In some cases, Even if scientists are one day able from cloning a Neanderthal is that a novel ecosystem may be “better” to clone a Neanderthal, the resulting our curiosity is greater than our com- at what are known as “ecosystem being would lack “the environmental passion?” services”—processes that benefit and cultural factors that would have humanity such as filtering water in influenced how the original Neander- SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY wetlands, preventing erosion, and thals grew up.” One scientist says that sucking carbon dioxide from the the clones would be no more than In With the New atmosphere. Should such eco- “neo-Neanderthals.” systems merit the same protection Bernard Rollin, a bioethicist and THE SOURCE: “The New Normal” by as pristine ones, or even more? Emma Marris, in Conservation, professor of philosophy at Colorado April–June 2010. That’s “a question we don’t talk State University, doesn’t believe that about that much,” Kareiva admits. cloning a Neanderthal would be a Conservationists have tra- But novel ecosystems have their problem—the issue, he says, is how ditionally focused their efforts on skeptics. James Gibbs, an ecologist that clone would be treated once he preserving “pristine” ecosystems— at the State University of New York, or she was brought into the world. those unchanged by modern Syracuse, warns that increased bio- Would a clone have human rights man—but an upstart brigade of diversity is not inherently a good

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thing. For example, in Clear Lake in plants descended from the small agement to keep them that way. But northern California, the number of genetic pool of just a few invaders for scientists interested in how envi- fish species has risen from 12 to 25 will have more genes in common ronments change and evolve when since 1800. But species that were than those that have evolved and new species appear, novel eco- unique to that lake are long gone. bred over thousands of years. systems can be “ideal natural experi- The species there today can be Ironically, pristine places such as ments.” After all, Marris explains, “it found in many other lakes. Also, a rainforest or an old-growth forest takes a dynamic ecosystem to study genetic diversity may decrease, as often require intense human man- ecosystem dynamics.”

ARTS & LETTERS (1872–1951)—and count CityArts senior art critic Lance Esplund firmly among that number—the uprooting is a sacrilege, “no dif- Barnes Storm ferent from the destruction of a Gothic cathedral.” Pennsylvania, to its new home The Barnes collection has THE SOURCE: “No Museum Left Behind” next to the Philadelphia Museum always excited attention not only by Lance Esplund, in The Weekly Standard, May 31, 2010. of Art in 2012 as the long-over- because of its scale (conservative due unlocking of one of the appraisals put its worth between Many in the art world are world’s premier art collections. $20 billion and $30 billion), but celebrating the Barnes Foun- But to defenders of the original the uniqueness of its arrange- dation’s relocation from Merion, vision of Albert Coombs Barnes ment. Barnes eschewed the con-

Henri Matisse called the Barnes Foundation the “only sane place”to view art in America.Above, he gazes upon a painting of his own on display there.

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ventional curatorial approach of governor Edward G. Rendell, the Dead Souls, among other Russian hanging art chronologically, or Annenberg Foundation, and offi- classics, have garnered praise by period or “school,” preferring cials at the Philadelphia Museum from such diverse cultural to display his masterpieces on of Art, who conditioned aid on arbiters as The New Yorker and the basis of other similarities—in the collection’s becoming a Oprah Winfrey. But accolades do color, subject matter, technique, downtown Philadelphia tourist not sway Gary Saul Morson, a or artistic sensibility. A Picasso attraction. But in Esplund’s view, humanities professor at might hang next to an African though the new museum “will Northwestern University. In mask, or a buxom Renoir nude supposedly replicate the scale, Morson’s eyes, P&V, as the two next to similar works by Rubens proportion, and configuration of translators, who are married, are or Titian. This is not just an idio- the existing galleries, it will be known among the literati, churn syncratic approach. “It is the through a Frankenstein’s out “Potemkin translations— way artists look at art,” Esplund monster–like revivification.” apparently definitive but actually writes. After a 1930 visit to the Gone will be “Barnes’s spectacu- flat and fake on close inspection.” Barnes Foundation, the French lar and well-thought-out views Morson holds that P&V’s artist Henri Matisse prophesied that lure and entice you from, for weakness as translators owes a that the Barnes aesthetic would example, the forms in a particu- lot to their method. Volokhonsky, “destroy the artificial and disrep- lar Cézanne in one gallery to utable presentation of the other those in a particular Cézanne or collections.” Courbet or Renoir in the next.” Matisse proved to be overly The loss of the original Barnes, A humanities professor optimistic, perhaps because only a Esplund argues, is another step believes the famous select few ever saw the collection. in the homogenization of Russian translators While the mercurial Barnes, who museum collections, as larger known as P&V give made his fortune in pharmaceuti- institutions gobble up the short shrift to essential cals, was still alive, students had to smaller, unique places, often literary elements. demonstrate that they were designed, like the Barnes, “to get “in earnest” to gain admission; us closer to the minds of art’s after his death, it took a lawsuit makers.” brought by The Philadelphia a St. Petersburg native, kicks off Inquirer and its publisher, Walter ARTS & LETTERS the process by translating the Annenberg, to force the museum Russian text into highly literal to open to the public in 1961. Since Potemkin English, which is then massaged the 1990s, the trend has been to into readability by Pevear, a liter- adopt the modus operandi of other Translators ature professor from Massachu- museums—raising admission setts who has only a basic com- THE SOURCE: “The Pevearsion of Russian prices, opening a gift shop, and Literature” by Gary Saul Morson, in Com- mand of his wife’s native tongue. aggressively courting attendance mentary, July–Aug. 2010. That approach gives short shrift and donations. None of these to essential literary elements efforts has offset the dwindling Like Dostoyevsky’s saintly such as context, tone, humor, and endowment of the foundation, Prince Myshkin, literary trans- timing, Morson says. which has struggled to care prop- lators Richard Pevear and Take a passage from Nikolai erly for the masterpieces. Larissa Volokhonsky seemingly Gogol’s Dead Souls (1842). In the Financial distress left the can do no wrong. Their recent 1942 English translation by foundation vulnerable to power translations of Anna Karenina, Bernard Guilbert Guerney, the brokers such as Pennsylvania The Brothers Karamazov, and protagonist, a bureaucrat, settles

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into “a very dark cubbyhole, the sack of various lackey toi- ARTS & LETTERS whither he had already brought letries brought in after it.” The his overcoat, and together with it, use of “toiletries” in the P&V ver- Forgotten a certain odor all his own, which sion is prompted by the Russian had been imparted to the bag word tualet in the original, but Bauhaus brought in next, containing Gogol’s intention, Morson says, THE SOURCE: “The Powerhouse of the sundry flunkeyish effects.” “Sun- was for tualet to be funny and New” by Martin Filler, in The New York dry flunkeyish effects” is true to jarring. This effect is achieved by Review of Books, June 24, 2010. the spirit of Gogol, Morson as- Guerney, but not in the P&V serts, since “Gogol often chooses translation. Say the word Bauhaus and words less for their meaning than A handful of instances in the thing that pops into just about for their humorous sound and which P&V emphasize semantic everyone’s mind is Bauhaus architec- resonances.” Guerney also stays accuracy over tone and overall ture, codeword for boring, sleek, soul- true to Gogol by ending the pas- meaning round out Morson’s less, corporate design. This is all a ter- sage with a funny image, as in indictment of the lauded literary rible misunderstanding, declares the Russian. pair. For Morson, a great work of architecture critic Martin Filler. The P&V’s translation is quite dif- literature is an “experience, not Bauhaus was not an architectural ferent. In their version, the just [a] sequence of signs on a movement but a school for artists, bureaucrat settles into “a very page.” If translators are not able architects, and designers whose dark closet, where he had already to convey that experience, they uniqueness was found “not so much managed to drag his overcoat risk leading readers to think that [in] its departure from prevailing and with it a certain smell of its the book’s greatness is the real aesthetic norms—specifically its rejec- own, which had been imparted to sham. tion of historical styles—but rather

description of Rabbit dumping the “sweet crumbs out EXCERPT of the wrapper into his palm and with his tongue lick[ing] them all up like an anteater”—one of those actions we’ve all done but would be at pains to Creation Mists describe. But if these are the keys to a literary universe, Just about any person fascinated by books has felt where are the locks? None of us, presented with this the seductive pull of the writer’s archive. Human beings miscellany of sources, could sit down and write the love creation stories, and that’s what the researcher Rabbit novels. What they actually reveal is how hopes to discover: to witness, in retrospect, the birth of mysterious the essential act of creation is. You might a masterpiece. . . . [Sam] Tanenhaus writes excitedly as well gather together Picasso’s paint jars, canvas, [in The New York Times] of the trove of materials that and easel and try to reconstruct Les Demoiselles d’Av- went into the making of Rabbit at Rest: snapshots of ignon, or imagine a ballet by looking at the music, storefronts in a Pennsylvania town, photocopies of costumes, shoes. What’s missing is the alchemy that pages from medical books on heart disease, a memo takes an assortment of random objects and from a researcher on sales practices at Toyota dealers, transforms them into a work of art. And that process a list of basketball moves. There’s even the wrapper leaves no trace. from a Planters Peanut Bar, “as lovingly preserved as a pressed autumn leaf,” which Tanenhaus imagines —RUTH FRANKLIN, senior editor of [John] Updike using to come up with the novel’s vivid The New Republic (June 30, 2010)

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[in] its systematic recasting of the (Pillar With Cosmic Visions) way in which the fine and applied arts (1919–1920) by Theobald Emil Eudora Welty and were taught.” (Many buildings Müller-Hummel, a wooden sculpture Richard Wright deemed Bauhaus are actually carved from a World War I fighter were born in Jackson, Modernist works by Modernist stars plane propeller. “Closely resembling Mississippi, nine who had nothing at all to do with the an oceanic tribal totem, this objet Bauhaus, Filler insists.) trouvé—taken from an engine of months apart, yet The school was founded in mass destruction and metamor- they never met. Weimar, Germany, in 1919 and closed phosed into a talisman of social at its final location in Berlin (on suspi- transformation—movingly summa- cion of Kulturbolschewismus— rizes the Expressionist search for spir- Ellen Ann Fentress, a writer cultural Bolshevism) when Hitler itual treasure amid the wreckage of living in Jackson, ponders why. came to power in 1933. The industrialized warfare,” Filler writes. Though the writers’ childhoods— Bauhaus’s key innovation was the Beyond the characters of Itten and Wright’s one of deprivation and Vorkurs, “a required introductory Gropius, those interested in discrimination, and Welty’s one of class that provided intensive back-to- understanding the Bauhaus should privilege and parental pampering— basics immersion in the fundamen- turn to two artists who exerted a were spent “a Jim Crow galaxy” apart, tals of color theory and composition.” “tremendous” influence on the school, their careers ran roughly parallel as The course was conceived and taught Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) and they worked in the New Deal’s Works by Johannes Itten, “the extravagantly László Moholy-Nagy (1895–1946). Progress Administration, published eccentric, mystically inclined Swiss Kandinsky’s “pulsating colors and early-career short stories in 1936, Expressionist painter...an oddball hyperactive forms” and Moholy- came out with well received books even for a radical art school,” who Nagy’s innovations with photography (Wright, Uncle Tom’s Children in 1938 often donned medieval-style robes and sculpture are a far cry from the and Native Son in 1940; Welty, A Cur- and sandals and “consumed copious Modernist architectural style tain of Green in 1941 and The Robber quantities of garlic.” “Bauhaus” normally evokes. Bridegroom the next year), received a Itten, Filler writes, was “the id to Guggenheim each, and won multiple the superego” of architect Walter ARTS & LETTERS O. Henry awards. Gropius, the school’s first director. And there were mutual acquain- Together, the pair represented “both Welty’s Southern tances to introduce them—the writer sides of the Bauhaus’s bifurcated Ralph Ellison and the 1940s “literary nature, at once utopian and Discomfort powerhouse couple” of Edward Aswell pragmatic, intuitive and scientific, (Wright’s editor) and Mary Louise THE SOURCE: “Intimate Strangers” by highly ordered and subversively anar- Ellen Ann Fentress, in The Oxford Ameri- Aswell (Welty’s close friend). Welty chic.” Itten left the Bauhaus in 1923 in can, Issue 69. visited both New York City and Paris protest over Gropius’s intent to focus while Wright was living in those cities, on commercial prototypes rather Eudora Welty was not only a and when Wright’s memoir Black Boy than theoretical design. jewel but an emblem of the South. came out in 1945, she refused The An exhibit that ran from Novem- Richard Wright, self-exiled from Journal of Mississippi History’s re- ber 2009 to January 2010 at the home at the age of 17, became a sym- quest that she review it. The two writ- Museum of Modern Art, “Bauhaus bol of black anger and empowerment. ers’ failure to connect, concludes Fen- 1919–1933,” offered “an eye-opening Both writers hailed from the same tress, “had to have been deliberate.” experience for those familiar only small town of Jackson, Mississippi, While conceding that it is a with the cliché of the Bauhaus as a and were born within nine months of “slippery business” to speculate about soulless assembly line of mechanistic each other—Wright in 1908 and a “relationship that didn’t happen,” she design.” The show included Untitled Welty in 1909. Yet they never met. insists it’s worthwhile to consider why

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a seemingly inevitable meeting never wrong end of history’s pointing finger.” and in a town south of Jackson, the occurred. In the memoir of Harper’s Welty rarely addressed race directly in school board held a “graduation” for editor Willie Morris, North Toward her work and was afraid of reprisals 10 members of the class of 1962 who Home (1967), Fentress discerns an against her and her mother if she were expelled as seniors for their civil inkling: Wright was a guilty reminder openly defied “local racist customs,” rights activities. The wrongs and of the complicity that even a “decent but, writes Fentress, she didn’t avoid shortcomings of the past still resonate. white Southerner” had in a “diseased Wright merely out of “petty pragma- “When we circle back to Southern his- civilization.” As a young man, Morris tism.” It wasn’t “as much about Wright tory in this more evolved time,” writes had sought out Wright in Paris, but as about what he set off in a thought- Fentress, “it is because we want to the night that the two shared at a bar ful, pre–Civil Rights white person.” show that we pass our own muster. was awkward, and Morris didn’t fol- Why should we care about this When we step in to fix past failures, low up on Wright’s suggestion that “tidbit” of midcentury history? we cast ourselves in the story, too, an they correspond. “He felt that with Recently, the FBI reopened 108 cold outlying speck on the Civil Rights Wright,” Fentress writes, “he was at the murder cases from the civil rights era, timeline.”

OTHER NATIONS American society that made the civil rights movement not only possible but successful. Roma arrived in Eastern Europe Separate and Unequal in from northern India perhaps as early as the fourth century. Today, Eastern Europe they are one of the fastest-growing groups in Eastern Europe. In the schools. When the Berlin Wall fell in four countries Greenberg studied, THE SOURCE: “Report on Roma Education 1989, they were ill prepared to work Roma make up as little as two to Today: From Slavery to Segregation and in a capitalist economy and have since three percent of the population Beyond” by Jack Greenberg, in The Colum- bia Law Review, May 2010. fallen into “staggering” poverty. In (Czech Republic) to as much as eight some Roma areas, the unemploy- to 10 (Bulgaria). Hungary and African Americans and the ment rate is 100 percent. Romania fall somewhere in between, Roma of Eastern Europe may live The Roma (also known as Gyp- though the data are rough approxi- thousands of miles apart, but their sies, though that term is no longer mations. Everywhere, Roma are poor histories have taken remarkably simi- widely used) need to take a page from and uneducated. Maybe as little as lar paths. Both groups suffered cen- the civil rights movement’s playbook, one percent of Roma have a college turies of slavery, were emancipated in writes Jack Greenberg, one of the education, and 70 to 80 percent have the middle of the 19th century, and lawyers who argued Brown v. Board not completed primary school. endured decades of poverty and seg- of Education and the former head of European law prohibits discrimi- regation. But around World War II, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. In nation against the Roma, and courts their stories diverge. In the United 2003, Roma leaders invited him to at both the European and national States, the civil rights movement Eastern Europe to help them figure levels have ruled in favor of Roma in began to take shape, while in Europe, out how to desegregate schools. But individual anti-discrimination cases. the Nazis killed as many as 1.5 million Greenberg found that the Roma lack But the verdicts have been toothless. Roma in the Holocaust. Under com- the makings of a political movement. National authorities, despite passing munism, Roma got jobs and apart- Missing were the churches, institu- desegregation laws, have shied away ments, but they continued to receive tions of higher education, and organ- from enforcing them, in part because inferior educations in segregated ized civil-society groups—features of of a residual, postcommunist resis-

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tance to centralized power. average of 15,000 people a Greenberg says that year between 1998 and without a Roma rights EXCERPT 2001. Singapore, with a movement, there is little population only a little hope of achieving larger than Houston’s, exe- integration. Roma A Pox on Islands? cuted upward of 70 people scarcely participate in in 1994 and 1995, approx- politics at all. There is An island is a bit of earth that has broken faith with imately as many as Hous- only one Roma member the terrestrial world. This quite naturally gives rise to ton did for the entire period of the European Parlia- concern about the reliability and goodwill of these from 1976 to 2004—and ment, and Roma across landforms, which have so clearly turned their back on Houston is “the most the board vote in very geographical solidarity. Creeping anxiety along these aggressive executing juris- low numbers. To compli- lines likely accounts in some measure for the promin- diction in the most aggres- cate matters, some Roma ence of islands in the robust literatures of betrayal, sive executing state in the don’t support desegre- solitude, madness, and despair. One is abandoned on most aggressive executing gation, fearing that it will islands (Ariadne, Philoctetes), trapped on them (Odys- democracy in the world.” lead to assimilation and seus, repeatedly), and subjected thereupon to the Fifty-two people were exe- the loss of their cultural whims of lunatics (e.g., the islands of doctors No and cuted in the United States heritage. It’s time to put Moreau). Prisons and penal colonies abound, encircled in 2009. an end to this, says by an oceanic moat: Devil’s Island, Alcatraz, Rikers, In the last few years the Greenberg. “Europe has Robben Island, Saint Helena, Guantánamo. number of executions has dithered long enough fallen dramatically, with with one of the gravest —D. GRAHAM BURNETT, a historian of science just 14 in Singapore humanitarian and econ- and editor of Cabinet (Summer 2010) between 2005 and 2008 omic crises of our time.” and perhaps as few as 5,000 a year in China by OTHER NATIONS ingly rare. There remain four death 2008. Many countries (including penalty strongholds: the United India, Japan, Thailand, and Muslim- Asia’s Dying States, the Caribbean, the Middle majority nations such as Malaysia, East, and Asia. Asia, home to 60 per- Bangladesh, and Indonesia) have Death Penalty cent of the world’s population, instituted temporary death penalty accounts for more than 90 percent of moratoriums in recent decades. THE SOURCE: “Asia’s Declining Death the executions of recent years. There are two causes behind cap- Penalty” by David T. Johnson, in The Jour- nal of Asian Studies, May 2010. Still, the death penalty’s preva- ital punishment’s decline in Asia, lence in Asia is diminishing, writes and they’re the same two that have Over the last 50 years, the David T. Johnson, a professor of soci- driven executions down around the prevalence of capital punishment ology at the University of Hawaii, world: the fall of authoritarian around the world has decreased dra- Manoa. Of 29 Asian jurisdictions, regimes (which explains abolition in matically. By 1970, a total of 21 coun- just 13 have capital punishment and Cambodia, East Timor, and the tries had abolished capital punish- only four—China, Vietnam, North Philippines) and the ascent of left- ment. Today, 103 have done so, and Korea, and Singapore—use it with liberal parties (which explains execu- 36 more have the death penalty on any frequency. These countries do not tion rate declines in South Korea the books but have not executed any- provide official data on the number of and Taiwan). The absence of these one in at least 10 years. In Europe, executions (in China it’s a crime to two factors in Japan may account for Central and South America, and disclose that figure), but Johnson says continuing use of the death penalty Africa, capital punishment is exceed- that China “probably” executed an there, Johnson says.

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One “noncause”: public zation (NGO) sector, religion, and communist ANC and the formerly opinion. “There is strong support private business are all thriving. all-white business community. In for capital punishment everywhere “These ingredients give hope that 1991, after his release from prison in Asia where the issue has been South Africa will be able to consoli- but before he became the nation’s studied—whatever the execution date its still fragile democracy,” first president, Mandela said, rate,” Johnson notes. The push for Kaminski writes. “The private sector must and will abolition tends to come from the In South Africa’s democracy, play the central and decisive role in “very top of the power structure.” only one party, the African National the struggle to achieve many of the It’s a delicate irony: Democracies Congress, wins elections. But the [transformation] objectives.... tend to do away with the death ANC’s power does not go We are determined to create the nec- penalty, despite widespread unchecked. A robust civil society essary climate that the foreign inves- support for it. grew out of the movement that tor will find attractive.” As president, ended apartheid; its various parts— Mandela governed accordingly. The OTHER NATIONS newspapers, activist organizations, ANC “inherited a debt-ridden state, churches—have become “surrogate a closed economy, and a strong but South Africa’s checks and balances to complement white-dominated private sector. In a those that are ostensibly provided few years, budgets were balanced, Staying Power in the constitution.” There are more trade opened, the rand made than 26,000 registered NGOs, and convertible, and numerous state THE SOURCE: “State of Play: How South Africa Became South Africa” by many are effective at both companies sold.” Before the global Matthew Kaminski, in World Affairs, providing services the government recession began in 2008, growth July–Aug. 2010. doesn’t and advocating for better had averaged five percent per year. Is the young South African policies. Active news media get In contrast to the situation in other democracy at risk of falling apart? “under the thin skin” of the African nations, in South Africa, Widespread crime (215,000 people country’s politicians—Zuma the public sector is not the best were murdered in the first decade is a “serial filer” of libel path to riches. Slowly, South after the end of apartheid), an suits. And reli- Africa’s black middle and even AIDS epidemic (more people are gious leaders, upper classes are growing. infected with HIV than anywhere else in the world), and a government rife with corruption (the current president, Jacob Zuma, disbanded the A critic of President Jacob Zuma depicts the evolution of South Africa’s democracy. police’s anti-corruption unit upon taking office) certainly stain the such as Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Over time, economic growth miracle of the peaceful transition to are among the ANC’s loudest will “produce voters who yearn for full democracy in 1994. But though critics. responsive government that won’t the political system is “borderline A growing private sector is endanger their livelihoods,” rotten,” the fruit around the pit is another stakeholder the ANC must Kaminski believes. In the end, the healthy, argues Wall Street Journal now answer to. With Nelson ANC’s economic policies may editorial board member Matthew Mandela’s leadership, the transition someday lead to its own downfall, Kaminski. An independent press, a from apartheid fostered warm rela- as the political system stabilizes large nongovernmental organi- tionships between the once quasi- and more parties emerge.

88 Wilson Quarterly ■ Autumn 2010 Also in this issue:

Edward Tenner on the Web and CURRENT our brains

Georgia Leven- son Keohane on BOOKS the World Bank reviews of new and noteworthy nonfiction Thomas Rid on America at war

Michelle Sieff on human rights Armed for a Fight Reviewed by Andrew Exum Sarah E. Igo on passports The real use of gunpowder, es- history of the develop- THE GUN. Steven Biel on sayist Thomas Carlyle wrote, is “that it ment and spread of light makes all men tall.” As far as inventions go, automatic weaponry is the By C. J. Chivers. Grant Wood Simon & Schuster. none have had as democratizing an effect as argument that while the 481 pp. $28 James Morris on the rifle. While the battlefield before the academy, the military, TV in the 1950s advent of firearms was marked by a class and the rest of society were busy system as rigid as the one that ruled the contemplating nuclear weapons, a quieter Andrew Starner larger society—with armored knights on revolution in arms was taking place in lesser on fashion as art horseback directing the masses (quite liter- technologies that deserves at least as much ally beneath them)—rifles and muskets attention. Just before the Soviet Union Eric Hand on meant that a well-trained peasant could as tested its new atomic bomb in 1949, it began space exploration easily kill a nobleman as vice versa. to manufacture and disseminate a light The development of small arms is one of assault rifle of devastating simplicity and the most important evolutionary processes durability. That assault rifle, the Avtomat in warfare, though it does not receive nearly Kalashnikova, or AK-47, has killed orders of as much attention as the periodic introduc- magnitude more people than atomic wea- tion of larger weapons systems—tanks, sub- ponry, though its effect on the battlefield is marines, atomic bombs—from both never mentioned in the same breath as that academics and casual students of military of nuclear weapons. A modified design is history. Following World War II, entire still in production today. fields of scholarly inquiry were devoted to Chivers hopes to change that state of how nuclear weaponry might affect the neglect. Anyone who has followed the wars behavior of states and shape the world in in Iraq and Afghanistan in the pages of The which we live. Small arms are more or less New York Times and Esquire is familiar with assumed to occupy a static place on the bat- his work. He is justly lauded as one of the tlefield, only driving change, if ever, along finest war correspondents of his generation, the margins. and he has a former infantryman’s eye and Implicit in C. J. Chivers’s fascinating new ear for the staccato cadences of small-unit

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combat. (Upon graduating from Cornell in 1988, shifts in the ways of combat. Vignettes from the Chivers served in the U.S. Marines for six years Anglo-Zulu War (1879) and the Spanish- and led infantrymen in the Gulf War of 1990–91.) American War (1898) illustrate the value of the As consistently excellent as Chivers’s embedded Gatling gun—a precursor of automatic wea- reporting for the Times is, his regular posts on pons—and, more generally, the effect of massed the newspaper’s “At War” blog about small arms fire on infantry formations. Rifle fire—either and marksmanship—subjects for which he has single-shot, volley, or automatic—can be effec- an enduring and obvious affinity—are equally tive as a means of suppression, forcing enemy enthralling. This book is testament to his erudite fighters to take cover even when it does not understanding of military history and profes- immediately kill them. Chivers notes that much sional interest in gunfighting. The AK-47 has of the fire employed by riflemen in World War II already been the subject of a book by the journal- was intended to suppress the enemy. A rifle that ist Larry Kahaner, AK-47: The Weapon That allowed infantrymen to put more fire down- Changed the Face of War (2006), but Chivers’s range would be an advantage to frontline effort surpasses that earlier book in both depth infantry units. and breadth of inquiry. Chivers provides three corrections to the histori- cal record. The first and most obvious is to the nar- he first third of Chivers’s book is devoted rative advanced by Kahaner, the Soviet authorities, to the history and development of auto- and Mikhail Kalashnikov himself: that the inven- T matic weapons and is nearly the length, tion and development of the Kalashnikov series of at 140 pages, of John Ellis’s seminal book, The small arms was largely the work of a lone hero of Social History of the Machine Gun (1975). Many the proletariat. Kalashnikov played a major role in of Chivers’s general themes are similar to Ellis’s: the development of the weapon that bears his The machine gun was introduced to Western name, but Chivers rightly points out that the pro- armies in the 19th century over the objection of duction and dissemination of the weapon could not the armies themselves. Senior officers in Western have happened outside the massive centralized armies—most especially, perhaps, those of Britain Soviet system. Portraying the weapon’s develop- and the United States—found machine guns ment as the work of an uneducated enlisted man ungentlemanly, and failed to imagine how auto- was part of a Soviet propaganda campaign by matic weaponry might be used to devastating Stalin’s regime. effect both against and in support of their own Second, where John Ellis in his history saw troops. “The blindness that afflicted the senior automatic weaponry as a means to further imperial officer class was extraordinary,” Chivers writes. “In conquest—especially the colonization of Africa— addressing the more difficult questions of devel- Chivers points out that in World War I, the oping tactics and doctrine for fighting with and machine gun in the hands of the indigenous against modern automatic arms, institutional defenders of German East Africa (now Tanzania) inertia trumped individual intellect.” helped to repel a British assault, shaming British In some ways, Chivers’s decision to tell the officers who were defeated by black African troops. story of the AK-47 within the context of Like the rifle before it, the machine gun was first automatic weaponry is an odd one. As he has effectively employed by colonial powers but then reported, assault rifles, the AK-47 included, are leveled the playing field between them and their often ineffective when fired in automatic mode. would-be subjects. The best and most experienced gunfighters In the same way, Chivers takes aim at the employ assault rifles on semiautomatic, firing AK-47’s iconic status as the weapon of liberation. In rounds either as single shots or controlled pairs. the popular imagination, at least, the AK-47 is for- But Chivers is a keen observer of the often subtle ever associated with plucky freedom fighters resist-

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Armed with an AK-47 assault rifle, a young boy rides with Sudanese rebels near the Chad border. ing Western hegemony. But as Chivers notes, the against U.S. and allied soldiers are due more to first time the Kalashnikov was employed outside improvised explosive devices and the tried-and- the Soviet Union, it was used to brutally repress true insurgent tactics of protraction and exhaustion burgeoning freedom movements in East Germany than to effective use of the AK-47, though it and Czechoslovakia, in 1953, and Hungary, in 1956. remains ubiquitous in both countries. More often than not, the AK-47 has been a tool in The most important lessons from this book the service of repression and autocracy. concern not the effect of the AK-47 on the modern Chivers, like Kahaner, seems to want to draw battlefield, but rather the ineptitude displayed by larger conclusions about the evolving character of the British and U.S. armies in adapting to auto- war from the story of the AK-47, but I am not sure matic weaponry in World War I, and later by the that the spread of irregular war can be so easily U.S. Army in developing a capable alternative to linked to the spread of small arms. One should also the AK-47. not overstate the importance of the assault rifle in Given the stakes involved in combat, readers the successes of nonstate actors on the battlefield. could be forgiven for imagining that military organ- Though the AK-47, held in a raised fist, enjoys priv- izations are among the most flexible and pragmatic ilege of place on the flag of Hezbollah, it was not of bureaucracies. In reality, though, they are among through coordinated infantry assaults but through the most hidebound and resistant to innovation, in roadside bombs, antitank rockets, and a savvy large part due to the organizational cultures that propaganda campaign that Israel and its allies were take root and instruct the officer corps not only driven from Lebanon in the 1990s. The same tac- about what war is but what war should be. Chal- tics are evident in Iraq and Afghanistan today. As lenges to military culture are often successful only Chivers himself has written elsewhere, Iraqi and when accompanied by exceptionally strong leader- Afghan insurgents are, by and large, comically poor ship or the kind of external shock that follows a dis- marksmen. What successes they have enjoyed astrous defeat. The weapons acquisition process is

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usually slower to change than are units in the field. ing the Vietnam War, the U.S. Army and Time and again, in Chivers’s account, the fates of Marine Corps were victimized by an insular mud-caked infantrymen in far-off lands were Army Ordnance Corps that had failed to com- determined by procurement and budgeting mission or develop an assault rifle to match the decisions made in London and Washington. AK-47 carried by the Viet Cong and their The British rifleman in World War I was North Vietnamese allies. With the rest of the betrayed by his uniformed leadership in two ways. nation focused on the development of nuclear Even after German machine guns (built on a vari- weapons, the leaders of the Ordnance Corps ant of American-born inventor Hiram Maxim’s had, as Chivers puts it, “lost the arms race of model) decimated British ranks at the Somme, their lives.” Although the M-16 and its variants the British continued to lionize close-in bayonet eventually developed into fine rifles and fighting as decisive, though, as Chivers memor- carbines, superior to the AK-47 in most ways, ably writes, it reduced the Enfield rifle to “a 20th- U.S. infantrymen in Vietnam were badly century spear.” It was not until late in the war that outmatched for the duration of the war. infiltration tactics were developed to mitigate the Though I have never met Chivers, we have horrific defensive advantages the machine gun much in common: Like him, I am a recovering offered in trench warfare. Second, consistent with infantryman who takes delight in the esoterica Barry Posen’s argument in The Sources of Military of small arms and rifle ballistics. I am unsure Doctrine (1984) that strong civilian intervention is how much enjoyment the non-specialist will required to spur military innovation, only at the take from this excellent contribution to the field urging of statesman David Lloyd George did the of security studies. If it is half as much as mine, British army finally acquire enough machine guns though, Chivers’s book will be well worth reading.

for each of its battalions. Andrew Exum is a fellow at the Center for a New American Even the hard lessons of combat don’t Security. A veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, he grew up in East Tennessee and learned how to shoot with a Winchester quickly penetrate organizational culture. Dur- Model 68 when he was about 10 years old.

No-Brainer? Reviewed by Edward Tenner

Two recent books on the goes further, questioning the faith of many com- THE SHALLOWS: future of media go against the puter industry leaders that the Web can enhance What the Internet Is grain of their authors’ profes- Doing to Our Brains. thinking and accelerate learning. sions. Nicholas Carr is a journal- Clay Shirky, on the other hand, is a tenured pro- By Nicholas Carr. ist who has written mostly for W.W. Norton. fessor at a major private research university, whose business and technology publi- 276 pp. $26.95 heart is clearly with the amateur upstarts who cations but has courageously COGNITIVE doubt the need for scholarly hierarchy. While Carr challenged some of his readers’ SURPLUS: does not address Shirky’s earlier book Here Comes most cherished assumptions. In Creativity and Everybody (2008) directly, he does cite a blog post Does IT Matter? (2004), he Generosity in a Shirky wrote that dismisses the reverence for liter- Connected Age. argued that the transformative ary classics such as War and Peace and In Search of power of corporate computing is By Clay Shirky. Penguin Lost Time as the “side-effect of living in an environ- Press. 242 pp. $24.95 overrated. In The Shallows he ment of impoverished access,” before today’s digital

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abundance. Carr fears that Shirky’s remark reflects tation is also remarkable. Beginners, after only five not just a provocative pose but an emerging “post- days of one-hour Web-surfing sessions, begin to use literary mind.” the same area as Internet veterans. MRIs per- The conflict exemplified by these two authors is, formed on people while they read books show that in Internet time, already old. It can be traced back they use regions linked to language, memory, and at least as far as Bill Gates’s The Road Ahead (1995), vision; surfers call on prefrontal sites of decision in which the Microsoft chairman predicted that the making and problem solving. Web would revolutionize reading and dedicated his The cognitive neuroscientist Maryanne Wolf millions in royalties to educational technology. The has argued that the rapid-fire decision making classic opposition salvo, Sven Birkerts’s The Guten- required to pause, evaluate, and click on links berg Elegies, appeared even earlier, in 1994. Gates is impedes our ability to make the deep connections still financing electronic learning, and Birkerts is associated with reading traditional texts. And there still lamenting it. is evidence that the distractions of surfing raise the Of the books at hand, The Shallows is the longer barrier between short-term and long-term memory and more earnest. The center of Carr’s argument is that must be bridged before we can achieve a rich that the current media environment is destroying understanding. Carr is right to contrast the techno- the ideal and practice of rich, contemplative read- logical impact of the pocket calculator, which freed ing—not always realized, but a norm of Western the brain from its cognitive load and promoted the education—with a steady diet of electronic distrac- transfer of concepts to long-term memory, with tion. Carr turns the early enthusiasm for the Inter- that of hypertext, which net on its head. Hypertext, with its ability to jump taxes our working mem- to new pages when a reader clicks a mouse on high- ory more. Nicholas Carr argues lighted words, appeared ready to fulfill the dream Not all of Carr’s that the Internet is of engineer visionaries such as Vannevar Bush of examples are as persua- destroying contemplative linking all knowledge. But in Carr’s analysis, the sive. Studies of road reading with a steady diet ability to navigate away from conventional text to safety support his point of electronic distraction. richer but more distracting resources turns out to that multitasking tends be a bug, not a feature. to degrade humans’ Carr has assembled a formidable body of scien- mental performance across the board, and it’s true tific studies on the negative consequences of new that television viewers remember less when a media. At the core of this research is neuroplastic- news crawl and information graphics appear ity, the brain’s seemingly endless ability to reconfig- onscreen than when they see and hear only the ure itself in response to new stimuli, as established announcer. But what does it mean if volunteers in more than 30 years of experiments by the neuro- who watch a presentation enhanced with sound scientist Michael Merzenich, whose work Carr and video remember less and report less enjoy- deeply and rightly admires. Heavy use of the Inter- ment of the experience than those who view the net, according to Merzenich and the neuropsychia- text alone? Results might be different with better trist Gary Small, strengthens some of the brain’s media materials; think of the powerful impact of processes and weakens others, as neurons and photography and video on the efficacy of the civil synapses are shifted to the functions in greatest rights movement of the 1960s. And perhaps demand. somebody who experiences an inspiring multi- Magnetic resonance imaging of people while media presentation will in the long run be more they are using the Internet shows that intensive motivated to read deeply into a subject than users of Google, for example, activate a zone of the someone who recalls more of a straight lecture or brain called the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, little text—as in the old adage that education is what’s used by Web novices. The speed of the brain’s adap- left after you’ve forgotten everything on the exam.

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Carr sometimes implies that Web users have “labors of love,” and that users desert companies no choice but to click on every link they come that abuse their trust. In Shirky’s view, the Web is across. That’s not my experience; in fact, I’ve enabling a new style of generous common culture found so many links to be trivial that I usually as an alternative to the professionally created don’t bother following them. And for serious conventional media that prevailed in times of study, isn’t following a hyperlink less distracting information scarcity. He sees the social Web than the old process of tracking down a footnote’s expanding from personal expression to group source in a book or bound journal? Carr cites a mutual help, and ultimately to public and civic researcher who fears that London taxi drivers projects that can transform society. who use new satellite navigation technologies may Shirky, like Carr, overstates valid points. For weaken the area of their brains enlarged by mem- one thing, he exaggerates the conflict between orizing geography before the introduction of GPS; amateurs and professionals. Both have long doesn’t this suggest that the brain’s changes, at helped and complemented each other in least in adults, are reversible, that neuroplasticity scientific fields such as astronomy and ornithol- works both ways? (It’s true, though, as Wolf and ogy. Many “generous” contributors to the Web others have urged, that we should be cautious are really aspiring pros who still dream of attract- about technology’s impact on young people’s ing conventional agents and publishers. The non- developing brains.) professional volunteers who work on Wikipedia articles frequently insert calls for better docu- lay Shirky shares Carr’s low opinion of mentation—in practice, that usually means the television. But while Carr regards the work of career academics and journalists. And C Web as a failed attempt to rescue serious lay collaboration is better for assembling facts reading from the remote control, Shirky still than synthesizing them. That’s one reason for the takes the early cooperative idealism of the Web survival of the print edition of the Encyclopaedia seriously. He reminds us that cultural critics such Britannica despite all predictions voiced in the as Harvey Swados wondered whether the paper- 1990s that it would become obsolete. back revolution that began in the 1930s was Both authors invoke history, but their exam- going to increase access to classics or flood the ples don’t always support their points. Consider market with trash. It did both. Information Carr’s technological determinism. He cites the abundance multiplies the quantity of low-grade early medieval substitution of space between material and reduces the average quality of words for the unbroken scriptura continua of media, but it also enables the experimentation ancient Latin as evidence that media technology that is essential to keeping a culture alive and reshapes our thinking. Yet the change reflected dynamic. not the advent of a new pen or writing surface The Internet is a revolutionary medium in but the need of early medieval Irish monks to that it allows millions of people and organi- teach Latin texts efficiently to speakers of non- zations to share ideas collaboratively at low cost, Romance languages. Mechanical clocks arose as as book readers, television viewers, and even tele- a result of religious orders’ quest for punctual phone users cannot. Shirky rejects the notion, observance, not the other way around. Nor did advanced by Carr on his own blog, that the work print-era cultural authorities always welcome of YouTube and Facebook contributors is “digital reading as a form of mental self-discipline. In sharecropping,” uncompensated and exploitive The Nature of the Book (1998), which Carr labor for the shareholders and executives of Web doesn’t mention, Adrian Johns cites the natural media companies. Shirky counters that social philosopher Robert Boyle, who was prescribed networking sites are sought for “sharing rather romances to cure his melancholy, but found that than production,” that contributors’ works are fiction “accustom’d his Thoughts to such a Habi-

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tude of Raving, that he has scarce ever been their the society was originally limited to gentlemen quiet Master since.” and denied recognition to the craftsmen who Carr also reaches surprising conclusions on actually performed many of the experiments it more recent media history. He considers Google published. Shirky also argues that the gin craze in a product of the efficiency movement instigated early-18th-century London ended with the social in the early 20th century by Frederick Winslow and political integration of the city’s poor. But his Taylor, when it is really the opposite in spirit, dates are fuzzy; the (male) working class did not even if both are dedicated to reducing effort. get the vote until 1867, more than a century after Taylor preached benevolent imposition of a sin- the fad’s end. Rising alcohol prices had more to gle scientifically determined method and tool for do with the change. Besides, there was another each job, disdaining workers’ individual and col- gin mania in London in the early 19th century. lective knowledge. As a search engine, Google It is in prognosis that Shirky has the edge over rejects prescriptive, hierarchical library classifi- Carr. Carr holds out some hope of stemming the cation systems; it’s an organized anarchy (to tide of distraction, but toward the end of The Shal- quote a classic definition of the market) aiming lows he confesses to backsliding into following to give users not necessarily what they ought to social networking sites, a captive of his own tech- have but what most people entering a search nological determinism. Shirky, rejecting inevitabil- term are looking for. Taylor’s procedures had ity arguments, ends with a more nuanced view of to be followed to the letter; Google’s options the possibilities and some memorably epigram- encourage personalization. matic advice (e.g., “Intimacy doesn’t scale” and Shirky, too, sometimes misdirects his histori- “Clarity is violence”). Those who would save deep cal examples. Printed vernacular Bibles may have reading and a place for print need not more initially interrupted “the interpretive monopoly elegists but a Shirky of their own. of the clergy,” but Protestant leaders were soon persecuting Unitarians, Anabaptists, and others Edward Tenner, a contributing editor of The Wilson Quarterly, is the author of Why Things Bite Back: Technology and the Revenge for their heretical readings of Scripture. London’s of Unintended Consequences (1996) and Our Own Devices: How scientific Royal Society may have exemplified the Technology Remakes Humanity (2003). He is a visiting scholar at the Rutgers Center for Mobile Communication Studies and the cooperative spirit, but it was no protodemocracy; Princeton Center for Arts and Cultural Policy Studies.

World Leader Reviewed by Georgia Levenson Keohane

In August, the World vacation? fatigued from Haitian earthquake Bank redirected nearly a billion AGLOBALLIFE: relief?—few and far between. The World Bank, MyJourneyAmong dollars in aid to Pakistan from however, responded immediately to the disaster. Rich and Poor, development projects to emer- From Sydney to While this might seem a natural role for a well- gency flood relief. Weeks of Wall Street to the capitalized international institution, crisis inter- heavy rain had left millions of World Bank. vention has not been the business of the bank for Pakistanis without food, shel- By James D. much of its history. The shift in recent years is ter, clean water, or medical Wolfensohn. due in no small part to James Wolfensohn, World PublicAffairs. care. Media coverage was 462 pp. $29.95 Bank president during the tumultuous decade sparse, and private donors—on from 1995 to 2005.

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The World Bank got its start in 1944, when considered for the bank’s top spot, this time by the International Bank for Reconstruction and President Bill Clinton. To hear Wolfensohn tell it, Development—which, together with the Interna- he quietly put out feelers to Secretary of Health tional Development Association, constitutes the and Human Services Donna Shalala and Clinton bank today—was founded to help rebuild the confidant Vernon Jordan. But according to jour- decimated economies of Europe after World nalist Sebastian Mallaby’s insightful account of War II. That mission, vast as it was, is modest Wolfensohn’s battles at the bank, The World’s compared with the broader one that evolved over Banker (2004), Wolfensohn wanted the job with time: poverty alleviation in developing countries. a “10 million–volt passion” and enlisted every Today, the World Bank, which is owned and gov- member of his vast network to lobby on his erned by 187 member countries and has 10,000 behalf. employees worldwide, dispenses tens of billions When Wolfensohn arrived at the bank, it was of dollars in loans and grants every year. The under fire from both left and right. By the early challenges of effectively directing this behemoth 1990s, it had grown decidedly market oriented, are amply illustrated in James Wolfensohn’s reflecting the neoliberal economic orthodoxy (the memoir A Global Life. “Washington Consensus”) of its largest donors, Born in a suburb of Sydney, Australia, in 1933, including the United States and Britain. Lending to parents who had left a comfortable existence was conditioned on “structural adjustment” pro- in London only to encounter financial straits grams that prescribed market deregulation and Down Under, Wolfensohn initially seemed to privatization, debt repayment, deficit reduction, buckle under the pressures from home. It was and cuts in government spending. Nongovern- not until his second year at the University of Syd- mental organizations (NGOs), officials in recipi- ney that he began to excel. He learned to fence ent countries, and academics charged, often (and competed in the 1956 Olympic Games), rightly, that the bank had championed economic went to law school, then moved to the United growth at the expense of social, cultural, and States to attend Harvard Business School. environmental concerns, and that the costs of Wolfensohn quickly learned the ropes of corpo- implementing its policies frequently resulted in rate finance and joined the ranks of the banker- even greater poverty and political instability. titans at Schroders and Salomon Brothers before Two weeks into his tenure, Wolfensohn and opening his own advisory firm. In 1995, when his wife, Elaine (who joined him on nearly all of Wolfensohn was tapped to head the World Bank, his bank travels), embarked on a five-nation sub- The New York Times described him as “a Renais- Saharan tour, beginning in Mali. On this trip— sance man”: He was a spectacularly successful the first of more than 120 country visits during financier by day, and an accomplished cellist and his two terms—he witnessed firsthand the chair of Washington’s Kennedy Center for the perverse effects of “debt overhang”: impoverished Performing Arts in his off hours. countries forced to take on new bank loans sim- It was this ambition that landed Wolfensohn ply to repay old ones, with nothing for infrastruc- at the World Bank. By custom, the World Bank ture projects or social programs. Under Wolfen- president is an American and the International sohn, debt forgiveness became a priority for the Monetary Fund’s managing director a European. bank, made manifest in the Heavily Indebted In 1981, when Wolfensohn learned that he was Poor Countries Initiative, a joint debt relief pro- on President Jimmy Carter’s list of potential gram with the International Monetary Fund. nominees for the bank post, he immediately And, breaking with tradition, Wolfensohn tried applied for the requisite U.S. citizenship, though to engage the NGOs that railed against the bank. he was ultimately passed over for Alden Clausen. Often these conversations took place in the field, In 1994, he discovered that he was again being with representatives from high-profile nonprofits

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such as Oxfam as well as more indigenous envi- when it established an internal postconflict unit. ronmental and human rights organizations. In 2004, the bank responded rapidly—in concert Wolfensohn’s forays persuaded him of the with the United Nations—to the Asian tsunami, futility of supporting kleptocratic regimes in and it was on the ground quickly in crisis-beset places such as Côte d’Ivoire, Nigeria, and Haiti. places such as Turkey. Traditionally, the World Bank had avoided the Wolfensohn recalls that his “willingness to word “corruption” on the grounds that it should break eggs” to get things done ruffled feathers, stay out of politics, but at the bank’s annual meet- but he glosses over the pace and tone of the ing in 1996, Wolfensohn delivered a now famous shakeup. Career specialists bristled at what they speech on the “cancer of corruption,” describing it perceived as hubris and naiveté on the part of a as an enormous obstacle to development and call- brash newcomer. In 1999, when Wolfensohn pre- ing for more rigorous measures to combat it. sented his “New Development Framework”—a Although there was near consensus on the impor- unified theory of development according to Jim tance of good governance, the new focus on corruption proved controversial—within the bank as well as outside of it. Some argued that the bank’s standard for corruption was hard to define and selectively applied. Moreover, a hard line on corruption was at odds with Wolfensohn’s drive to improve the bank’s responsiveness to client needs—as defined by the countries themselves. This tension was particularly pronounced in places such as Indonesia, where the World Bank helped to foster extraordinary economic growth and dramatically reduced poverty under the regime of a ruthless and corrupt military dictator. Wolfensohn also reshaped what he believed was the World Bank’s “relevance” in political and World Bank president James Wolfensohn, right, chats with humanitarian emergencies. Historically, the bank slum dwellers in Jakarta, Indonesia, in 1998. had focused on long-term economic develop- ment. “For a change of policy,” Wolfensohn Wolfensohn—some greeted it with derision. Calls explains, “we needed a trigger.” In August 1995, for a more holistic approach to human develop- the U.S. special envoy to Bosnia and two other ment—to put poverty rather than economic high-level American negotiators died in a car growth front and center in the bank’s work, to crash outside Sarajevo. President Clinton make lending more “participatory” by allowing received the news while vacationing in Jackson clients to define their own needs—were hardly Hole the day he was to celebrate his 49th birth- new. Ultimately, however, the question of day at a party at Wolfensohn’s home there. whether Wolfensohn’s articulation represents Instead, the two met to discuss how the bank, original, or simply good, thinking about poverty which already had a team on the ground prepar- relief is less important than whether what he was ing for postconflict reconstruction, could help. doing worked. Even though fighting had not yet concluded, the In his second term, during which George W. bank’s team prepared a seminal needs assess- Bush was president, Wolfensohn lacked the kin- ment for rebuilding that helped lay the ground- dred spirit and worldview he had enjoyed with work for the Dayton peace talks that fall. The Clinton. The new administration was skeptical bank played a similar role in East Timor in 1999, about the bank’s efficacy, and as the United

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States grew increasingly unilateralist, Wolfen- which has been occupied with two expensive sohn contended with an international board of military conflicts and a number of domestic directors that did not share the American policy battles, is only now beginning to articu- appetite for war in Iraq or protracted engage- late a comprehensive international develop- ment in Afghanistan. In 2002 the bank estab- ment strategy. lished its first ground office in Afghanistan In the meantime, under the leadership of for- since 1979, but rebuilding activities were mer U.S. trade representative Robert Zoellick, stymied by ongoing conflict, corruption, and a the bank has ratcheted up its commitments to brisk drug trade. In 2003, it was shut out of crisis locales including various African states, the Pentagon’s planning for reconstruction in earthquake-ravaged Haiti, and now Pakistan. Iraq but was later pressed to help with nation- Many of the additional billions have come from building. Still, Wolfensohn was buoyed by developing countries themselves—countries that global enthusiasm for poverty alleviation. An are now the engines of global economic growth. international coalition of nonprofits mounted In exchange, the bank recently changed its voting the Jubilee 2000 campaign for debt relief for structure to give nations such as China (now its poor countries, and the United Nations’ mem- third-largest shareholder), Brazil, India, Indone- ber countries pledged through the Millennium sia, and Vietnam greater say in running the Development Goals to reduce poverty and to place, and is considering ways to shift the balance improve health, education, and development of power further, including, quite possibly, the assistance by 2015. inauguration of a non-American president. Per- Since Wolfensohn’s presidency, the global haps more than the legacy of any leader (even economic crisis has exacerbated entrenched one of Wolfensohn’s wattage), it is the more poverty around the world. According to World prominent role of developing countries in deter- Bank figures, nearly half of the world’s six bil- mining bank policy that will redefine the institu- lion people still live on less than two dollars a tion: a brave new World Bank for the new day; when factors such as education, health economic order. care, and credit access are taken into account, the picture is even direr in some of the world’s Georgia Levenson Keohane writes and consults on social and economic policy. Her work has appeared in Harvard Business poorest places. The Obama administration, Review, The Nation, The American Prospect, and elsewhere.

CONTEMPORARY AFFAIRS versity, has often walked the fine line between scholarship and mass-audience opinionating. As a American Conspiracy self-styled realist, he has mostly crafted these posi- Reviewed by Thomas Rid tions with detached, historically balanced analysis. Washington Rules breaks with this trend: It is Over the past five years, the passionate, personal, and polemical story of Andrew Bacevich has emerged WASHINGTON how Bacevich, as an Army officer visiting Berlin in as one of the most prolific and RULES: 1990, embarked on an educational journey that led eloquent critics of American for- America’s Path to him to discover the ideological roots of America’s Permanent War. eign policy. In several influential path to permanent war. At times Washington Rules books and essays, Bacevich, a By Andrew J. Bacevich. articulates a sophisticated critique of the United Henry Holt. professor of international rela- 286 pp. $25 States’ global ambitions. But with this book, Bace- tions and history at Boston Uni- vich is dancing along another line. He now has at

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least one foot in the murky territory of conspiracy Clinton’s secretary of defense, William Cohen, con- theory. served the rules, and his secretary of state, Made- The first indicator is Bacevich’s obsessive use of leine Albright, midwifed them into the 21st century. dogma and quasi-religious language. The country President George W. Bush’s defense team, Donald is run not by presidents and senators, but by some- Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz, applied them in thing bigger, the “Washington rules.” These rules Afghanistan and Iraq. start with the “credo”: All presidents from Harry S. For Bacevich, there is an obvious “chain of Truman to Barack Obama have faithfully adhered events” that paved the way to 9/11: the overthrow of to a “catechism” of American statecraft founded on Mohammad Mossadegh in Iran in 1953; America’s four assertions: (1) The world must be organized “deference” to Israel after the 1960s; U.S. dealings and “shaped.” (2) America, and only America, has with Saddam Hussein in the 1980s; Washington’s the vision, the will, and the wisdom to lead and support for jihadis in Soviet-occupied Afghanistan; enforce this global order. (3) America has articu- and the Gulf War in 1990–91. If George W. Bush lated the principles that govern the international had acknowledged the order, and these principles are, not surprisingly, connection between American ones. (4) The world, despite occasional these policies and the fall complaints, wants the United States to lead. of the Twin Towers, For Andrew Bacevich, The other half of the Washington rules consists Washington’s sacred there is an obvious of the “sacred trinity”: the convictions that the dogma would have been chain of events that paved United States must maintain a global military pres- called into question, so the way to 9/11. ence, that it must configure its forces to project he deliberately ignored it. power globally, and that it must counter anticipated Instead, under the Bush threats around the world with interventions. The administration, the stan- credo and the trinity—terms Bacevich uses dard of debate fell to a level “hitherto achieved only throughout the book—promise prosperity and by slightly mad German warlords.” peace but, in effect, usher in the opposite: insol- Bacevich carefully acknowledges that the vency and perpetual war. Washington “elite” is not all-knowing and often just Washington Rules imposes a grand and simpli- doesn’t get it. Yet, especially when he discusses fying scheme on a vast set of complex facts. Consid- recent examples, he unearths willful deceit. General er Bacevich’s explanation of the Washington rules’ David Petraeus’s counterinsurgency doctrine, for origins: the cloak-and-dagger world of Cold War instance, is dismissed as “counterfeit coin,” a strat- spies and the hidden Air Force command centers egy that only gives the appearance of purpose to where cigar-chomping four-star generals devised military activity, and in truth is a recipe for more strategies for nuclear overkill. The most important and more wars in the various broken quarters of masterminds were Allen Dulles, the first and most the world. Bacevich dismisses the threat of Islamic influential director of the CIA, and Curtis LeMay, terrorism in a nonchalant way, shrugs off the the first and most influential commander of the geopolitical relevance of the Middle East and Cen- Strategic Air Command, the agency that was in tral Asia, and disregards mad dictators eager to get charge of nuclear war. These two “semiwarriors,” their hands on nuclear weapons. Osama bin Laden, as Bacevich calls them with a curl of his lip, “left Saddam Hussein, and Kim Jong Il are ridiculed as an indelible mark on our age.” He describes how not more than “a motley collection of B-list foes”; the Washington rules and America’s global foot- North Korea, Syria, and Cuba are derided as “pyg- print survived the defeat in Vietnam as well as the mies.” America and its allies seem to have no A-list demise of the Soviet Union, aided by legions of enemies. Consequently, there is no need for Bace- semiwarriors on the left and the right, apparently vich to suggest alternative policies beyond just “get- uninfluenced by partisan politics. President Bill ting out.”

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This book is a pity. U.S. foreign policy in the Mid- poorer Americans are more likely to spend dle East and Central Asia, driven by ideology and every penny of their current paycheck before now hope, is indeed producing more and more the next one comes. They rely on their income questionable outcomes. An authoritative and con- tax “refunds” (an inaccurate term because poor structive critique by an outsider with an insider’s Americans receive back far more than was knowledge would be highly welcome. Washington withheld from their paychecks) to pull them Rules offers a few illuminating glimpses, but no bal- out of the financial sinkhole. anced view. Bacevich ends up doing a great service To get by between paychecks or to absorb to his reviled semiwarriors by handing them a straw unexpected expenses (e.g., a broken-down man they will manage to shoot down with ease. vehicle), they often need to borrow money.

Thomas Rid is a visiting scholar at the University of Konstanz in Because of their meager incomes and cyclical Germany and was a public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson spending, they can’t get the sort of credit that Center in 2009. His most recent book, Understanding Counterin- surgency, was published earlier this year. is available to America’s middle class. That’s where Poverty, Inc., comes in. In Rivlin’s telling, that’s also where the problem starts. Poor Man’s Bank From any one or two poor Americans, there Reviewed by Jeremy Lott is not a lot of money to be made. But poor peo- ple’s numbers add up to a market that is The poor we may always extremely lucrative for lenders willing to take have with us, but must they BROKE,USA: some added risks—Rivlin estimates revenues From Pawnshops always get a raw deal? That’s to Poverty,Inc.— of roughly $100 billion a year, a figure that has the question award-winning How the Working seen a meteoric rise over the last two decades journalist Gary Rivlin poses Poor Became Big as mom-and-pop operations have given in Broke, USA. “Poverty, Inc.,” Business. ground to large, publicly traded corporations is the somewhat loaded term By Gary Rivlin. such as Dollar Financial Corporation and Cash he uses to describe financial HarperBusiness. America International. Some of these business 358 pp. $26.99 services firms that cater to models are very old, while others are of more the working poor—people in American house- recent vintage: pawnshops, check-cashing holds making up to about $30,000 a year. centers, payday loan shops, instant refunders, Normally these folks scrape by, living paycheck lenders that specialize in “subprime” loans. to paycheck. But once a year they are flush These institutions extend credit to the poor, with cash. Thanks to the Earned Income Tax but at a steep price. Big payday lenders such as Credit, they receive lump-sum payments from the federal government, often equivalent to two or three months’ salary. There are many reasons for persistent working poverty—from single parenthood to injury and disease to just plain awful luck. But this once-a-year payday has arguably made things worse by encouraging poor habits. Instead of trying to conserve some of their scarce resources to build capital or deal with unexpected expenses, Temptations abound for low-income customers to cash out—for a price.

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Moneytree are particularly reviled for the high rates they charge customers. Payday loans are Immoderate America Reviewed by Ethan Porter small advances—usually $200 to $500—to people with jobs who need cash right this minute. The customer writes a postdated Nearly 50 years ago, THE DISAPPEAR- check for the amount of the loan plus a hefty sociologist Philip Converse pub- ING CENTER: fee. Voters in Ohio recently chased many pay- lished his landmark article “The Engaged Citizens, day lenders out of the state after they learned Nature of Belief Systems in Polarization,and that these fees were the equivalent, in some Mass Publics,” in which he pre- American cases, of interest rates as high as 391 percent sented polling data showing that Democracy. per year. most American voters lacked By Alan I. Abramowitz. Payday lenders complain about the unfairness coherent ideologies. Now, Yale Univ. Press. 194 pp. $35 of the comparison. These are not long-term loans, Emory University political scien- they say. If you were to express the rental rate of a tist Alan I. Abramowitz has turned this notion on $29-a-day compact car on a yearly basis, it would its head. In his important and persuasive book The total more than $10,000. Switching back and forth Disappearing Center, he argues that voters today between outraged consumer advocates and out- take their ideologies quite seriously. His analysis of raged businessmen, Rivlin reports scrupulously on survey data stretching back several decades leads both sides of the fight over the ethics of payday him to believe that Americans “are more interested lending and other financial services for the poor. in politics, better informed about public affairs, and Ultimately, however, he concludes that the poor are more politically active than at any time during the being exploited, and that the government needs to past half-century.” Everyone knows how polarized step in with more regulations that would shut some our politics have become. Abramowitz points out lenders down. that this is so in large part because we have become But exploited compared to what? Rivlin only more politically engaged. glancingly considers the question. He quotes the Abramowitz’s findings refute the notion that CEO of a credit union as saying that rather than polarization is only an inside-the-Beltway phenom- take out a payday loan, “I’d say go get a loan enon foisted on a reluctant electorate. At the start shark. . . . They’re cheaper.” The remark is both of the 1960s, he observes, less than 40 percent of telling and damning. Loan sharks are cheaper Americans identified as strongly partisan; by 2004, because they must absorb fewer defaults. They more than 60 percent did. The liberal and conser- have fewer defaults because, unlike payday lend- vative ideologies have ossified in voters’ minds, and ers, they are willing literally to beat the money become inseparable from the parties they call out of their customers. home. Abramowitz’s survey data shows that the Is it worth a few hundred dollars to avoid the strength of the relationship between partisanship threat of broken arms and busted kneecaps? and ideology has nearly doubled over the last 30 That’s not an academic question, and I confess a years. Meanwhile, pace his title, the center has all personal interest here. My family is doing fine but disappeared. now, thank God, but we went through economic This is startling. The consensus view of Ameri- rough patches when I was growing up and made can politics, especially among political operatives, use of the services of Poverty, Inc. Rivlin might holds that primaries are for base voters and general say we were exploited—but it beat the hell out of elections are for persuadable moderates, whose the alternative. votes get politicians over the finish line. But today, if Abramowitz is right, base voters are where most of Jeremy Lott is an editor for the Web site Real Clear the action is. Politics (www.realclearpolitics.com) and the author of William F. Buckley (2010). An engaged public, as Abramowitz notes, is a

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sign of a healthy democracy—especially when the the Night (2002) and Paul Berman’s Power and parties in power respond to that engagement. Yet as the Idealists (2005)—is essential reading for any- he recognizes in his closing pages, polarization pres- one who wishes to understand the origins of our ents serious problems for governance. American modern foreign-policy vocabulary. politics is structurally embedded with numerous Though many historians have traced human anti-majoritarian features. In particular, in the Sen- rights to the Enlightenment notion of the “rights ate, states have power disproportionate to their pop- of man,” Moyn draws a useful conceptual distinc- ulation, and individual senators have immense tion. The “rights of man” described a “politics of capacity to stymie legislation. When its opponents citizenship at home,” in which the nation-state are unified, the majority party can find it very diffi- was seen as the ultimate locus of rights. But cult to accomplish much of anything, as the Democ- human rights activism implies a “politics of suf- rats have learned over the past two years. fering abroad,” in which states are generally For whatever reason, Abramowitz ends up viewed as the problem. In this sense, the histori- glossing over the perverse result of this cal struggles of Jews, women, and blacks for the dynamic: While moderate citizens are a dimin- rights of citizenship—protections afforded by the ishing class, moderate legislators have grown state—were different from modern human rights more powerful, sometimes playing roles of struggles. near-presidential importance. Because the “Human rights” entered wide English par- Obama administration desperately needed lance in the 1940s. In his 1941 Four Freedoms Senator Joseph Lieberman’s vote to pass its speech justifying America’s possible entry into health care bill last spring, for example, his World War II, President Franklin Roosevelt pro- opposition alone doomed a major provision claimed that freedom meant “the supremacy of that would have allowed uninsured Americans human rights everywhere.” The 1948 Universal ages 55 to 64 to purchase Medicare coverage. Declaration of Human Rights codified and The center may be disappearing in the elec- defined the concept of human rights in interna- torate, but the same cannot be said of Wash- tional law. ington. If the will of the majority is to prevail, Moyn emphasizes that the human rights slo- then, as Abramowitz well knows, our political gan failed for many years to percolate into the institutions must be reordered. Unfortunately, wider political discourse. Postwar anticolonialists though he offers a trenchant analysis, he stops invoked the principle of self-determination, not disappointingly short of even attempting to individual human rights. They were more inter- describe how this could be brought about. ested in creating states than restraining them.

Ethan Porter is a contributing editor of Democracy: A Journal Western sympathizers of anticolonial movements of Ideas. draped their idealism in the more militant doctrines of Marxist “Third Worldism.”

HISTORY Activism based on the human rights idea only triumphed in the 1970s. Moyn synthesizes an A Law Unto Itself impressive array of sources to describe its rise in Reviewed by Michelle Sieff different regions. In the West, Amnesty Inter- national—founded by British lawyer Peter Columbia University his- THE LASTUTOPIA: Benenson in the early 1960s—pioneered the pub- torian Samuel Moyn has writ- Human Rights in lic “naming and shaming” strategy of human ten the first sober history of the History. rights advocacy. Dissidents in the Soviet Union doctrine of human rights. His By Samuel Moyn. and its satellites, such as Václav Havel, adopted book The Last Utopia—togeth- Belknap/Harvard. the human rights vocabulary after the violent 337 pp. $27.95 er with David Rieff’s A Bed for crackdown that ended the Prague Spring of 1968.

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The 1975 Helsinki accords, intended to improve agenda. And Moyn lambastes the George W. Cold War relations between the communist bloc Bush administration for hijacking human rights and the West, included human rights provisions. rhetoric to justify the Iraq war. The treaty spurred the creation of several But if the birth of human rights activism was groups—such as Helsinki Watch, later renamed part of the struggle for democracy, then it is Human Rights Watch—that demanded enforce- wrong to view democracy promotion as a perver- ment of the human rights clauses. President sion. Moreover, perhaps human rights activism Jimmy Carter’s 1977 inaugural speech invoked was most successful in the 1980s—as a weapon human rights as the guiding principle of Ameri- against Soviet totalitarianism—precisely because can foreign policy. In Latin America, activists dissidents were clear in their own minds about fighting brutal military dictatorships appealed to the liberal democratic preconditions of human human rights. And in France, a group of “New rights. Moyn is right to assert that the human Philosophers” such as André Glucksmann and rights idea has gone wrong, but it’s not for the Bernard Henri-Lévy invented a new political reasons he thinks. vocabulary, which included a version of human Michelle Sieff is a research fellow at the Yale Initiative for the rights activism. Interdisciplinary Study of Anti-Semitism. She is writing a book on the ideology of the modern human rights movement. The human rights idea finally triumphed as a basis for activism because, Moyn contends, other utopian political ideologies collapsed. It offered a Paper Trails pragmatic alternative to bankrupt, grandiose Reviewed by Sarah E. Igo visions, such as communism. The claim that human rights transcended politics helped Craig Robertson opens cement coalitions among diverse voices. his history of the passport with THE PASSPORT But Moyn is muddled about whether early a seemingly trivial anecdote: In IN AMERICA: human rights activism was philosophically—or 1923, a Danish man traveling The History of a Document. just strategically—apolitical. Some of the Soviet in Germany reportedly had to bloc dissidents whom Moyn quotes suggest that regrow his mustache before By Craig Robertson. Oxford Univ. Press. their adoption of legalistic human rights rhetoric border officials would permit 340 pp. $27.95 was tactical. Perhaps they understood that their him to return home. When goal was political—democratic transition—but clean-shaven, he did not resemble the publicly framed their struggle in the language of photograph in his passport, a document that had human rights to widen its appeal. Havel himself, only recently become essential for travel across in his landmark 1978 essay, “The Power of the national boundaries. Powerless,” warned against fetishizing the law. The Dane’s experience seems benign com- “Even in the most ideal of cases,” he wrote, “the pared to those of Arizona’s immigrants and other law is only one of several imperfect and more-or- undocumented individuals in our post-9/11 less external ways of defending what is better in world. But the beauty of Robertson’s The Pass- life against what is worse. By itself, the law can port in America is that it shows how a modern never create anything better.” “documentary regime of verification” created new In the book’s epilogue, Moyn reveals his own rules of movement for the well-heeled and mar- motive for narrating the history of the human ginal alike. The United States was slower than rights idea: to bury it. He believes that the doc- Europe to require identity papers, devising a uni- trine has mutated into the beast it was intended versal passport system only after World War I to slay: a utopian form of politics. In his view, the hardened borders abroad and internal clamor Reagan administration corrupted human rights resulted in immigration restriction in the 1920s. by embedding it within a democracy promotion Yet America was perhaps more vigorous in its

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effort to track individuals and make them visible prove that they were who they said they were. In to the state. these instances, bodies were scrutinized more Robertson, an assistant professor of com- carefully than papers, inspectors’ personal judg- munication studies at Northeastern University, ment trumping bureaucratic procedure. asks how “a piece of paper” came to be thought One might imagine a history of bureaucracy of as official identification, and why that docu- to be dreary, but apart from a few moments of ment “was considered reliable and accurate excessive technical detail, The Passport in Amer- enough to secure the border of a nation-state.” ica is compelling reading. We learn, for instance, The emergence of nation-states themselves, the about the difficulty that newly enforced borders new value placed on experts’ claims to objective posed for individuals who straddled them: One knowledge, and increasing bureaucratic cen- unfortunate man lived in his Canadian woodshed tralization are all part of his answer. Tracing for four years, lacking the proper papers to enter the career of the the back door of his American residence! And we American passport catch intriguing glimpses of an older world, When passports were from “a letter of intro- where the U.S. secretary of state personally introduced, “respectable” duction to a certif- signed passports and, most foreign to us, where travelers took offense at icate of citizenship to validating one’s citizenship was unnecessary for the idea that their word an identification most travelers. could not substantiate document” between Increasingly, however, the passport became their identity. the 1840s and the tangled with questions of state, exposing the gap 1920s, when it as- between Americans who requested protection sumed its modern abroad and those who were entitled to first-class form, Robertson takes fascinating excursions citizenship. Passports sometimes wound up in into the history of currency, voting, immigra- the hands of noncitizens and non-natives—free tion, tourism, and even filing methods. blacks, not-yet-naturalized immigrants, residents Robertson probes the technologies of identifi- of the Hawaii Territory—complicating a tacit cation that gradually became part of the U.S. understanding of U.S. nationality as the property passport, such as the bearer’s name, signature, of whites only. Mormons (deemed polygamists physical description, and photograph, as well as and therefore undeserving of state protection), the ever-more-standardized bureaucracy that expatriates, and married women who had not produced it. The result, he argues, was official, changed their names posed further challenges for state-produced identities that became truer, in a a novel apparatus for establishing identity and sense, than individuals’ own testimony about nationality simultaneously. who they were. Yet, Robertson regularly reminds Bureaucratic rationality could never be as us, public (and even official) acceptance of the comprehensive or confident as its advocates passport was contested. hoped. As U.S. citizenship became more rigor- One hurdle was the persistent association of ously policed, and therefore more valuable, official documentation with suspect populations passport fraud proliferated. Nevertheless, the such as criminals and the insane, so that curious “archival logic” of the modern passport “respectable” travelers took offense at the idea regime progressed, whereby an official identity that their word could not substantiate their iden- was assembled by the government in anticipa- tity. The flip side was the fact that official-looking tion of its future use. By the 1930s, Robertson papers were not enough to enable particular writes, “the state could only accurately ‘know’ sorts of individuals—Mexican workers crossing people through documents,” and, in an exqui- the border, merchants exempted from the site irony, if appropriate supporting docu- draconian Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882—to ments could not verify one’s identity, the appli-

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cation process “had to create them,” providing the impetus to formalize other documents such as birth and naturalization certificates. One of the many virtues of Robertson’s book is that it makes these mundane bureaucratic practices strange once again.

Sarah E. Igo teaches history at Vanderbilt University and is the author of The Averaged American: Surveys, Citizens, and the Mak- ing of a Mass Public (2007).

ARTS & LETTERS Tortured Artist Reviewed by Steven Biel Grant Wood’s life story, as he told it to the press and as GRANT WOOD: ALife. many of his biographers have repeated it, went like this: Born By R. Tripp Evans. Self Portrait by Grant Wood, 1945 Knopf. in rural Iowa in 1891, Wood 402 pp. $37.50 showed artistic precocity from tary, the latest in a series of young male protégés an early age, flirted with bohemianism, turned and companions. Faced with constant threats of his back on his benighted region under the sway exposure, he sought protection in his regular-guy of H. L. Mencken, traveled to France, grew a persona, to the point of ratifying the virulent hideous beard, produced derivative Impression- homophobia of his friend and fellow Midwestern ist paintings, returned home, shaved off the regionalist Thomas Hart Benton, whose 1937 beard, discovered a “native” subject matter and autobiography he praised for its “healthful com- style (most famously in his 1930 painting Ameri- mentary” on “the parasites and hangers-on of can Gothic), and became America’s “artist in art . . . with their ivory-tower hysterias and overalls.” Well adjusted, hard working, and clean frequent homosexuality.” living, the mature Wood was everything the Evans gives us a moving and persuasive stereotypical artist wasn’t. Most of all, he was psychoanalytic study that finds in both the life masculine—“a sturdy, foursquare son of the Mid- and the work powerful forces of “desire, memory, dle West,” as an admiring critic put it. The art, and dread.” The artist’s father, who died suddenly like the artist, was solid, straightforward, and when Wood was 10, looms large throughout. robustly American. Stern and intimidating, Maryville Wood com- In Grant Wood: A Life, R. Tripp Evans, an art pared Grant unfavorably to his two brothers, dis- historian at Wheaton College in Norton, Massa- approved of his unmanly artistic inclinations, chusetts, reveals how this narrative of “normalcy” and left him with “a sense of shame” about “his hid in plain sight the reality that Wood was a artwork and its attendant sense of fantasy.” The closeted homosexual. Newspapers and maga- doting and adored mother, Hattie, completed zines routinely remarked on his apparently per- “the family romance that would shape so much of manent bachelorhood. In 1940, some of Wood’s Wood’s life and work.” Wood lived for most of his colleagues at the University of Iowa tried to have adult life with his mother and his younger sister, him fired for, among other transgressions, his Nan—his model for the woman in American alleged homosexual relationship with his secre- Gothic—in a small carriage-house studio in

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Cedar Rapids. Taking care of Hattie served as his far” as a symptom of resistance, Evans precludes excuse for bachelorhood until the prospect of her even sympathetic readers from reasonably identi- death prodded him into a disastrous marriage, in fying instances of overreaching. Why not leave 1935, to an older woman, Sara Sherman Maxon. potential critics to their opinions rather than pre- Pushing aside the public inspirations for emptively psychoanalyze them? and meanings of Wood’s work that have preoc- No doubt there will be readers, whatever their cupied critics since the 1930s, Evans explores motives, who see Grant Wood: A Life as a slander “the personal factors that complicate every- against the self-described “simple Middle West- thing we may think we know about his paint- ern farmer-painter” and his wholesome paint- ings,” including American Gothic, which ings. But Evans has done Wood a great service in displays “not the artist’s patriotism” or some saving him and his work from the one-dimen- conception of the national character “but a sionality to which they have largely been con- fractured return to his own past.” From osten- signed. He has rendered the artist and the art in sibly unimportant details—the female figure all their ambivalence, disquiet, mischief, decep- wears the Persephone brooch Wood gave to tiveness, and anguish. This is a deeply respectful Hattie; the male figure wears Maryville and compassionate biography.

Wood’s glasses rather than those of the model Steven Biel is executive director of the Humanities Center at (the artist’s dentist)—Evans establishes the Harvard and a senior lecturer on history and literature at Harvard University. His most recent book is American Gothic: A Life of presence of the family romance in the paint- America’s Most Famous Painting (2005). ing. We immediately recognize that the woman’s gaze is directed away from us, but on NewTube closer examination so is the man’s. “In estab- Reviewed by James Morris lishing this peculiar standoff between sitter and viewer,” Evans explains, “Wood deftly Eric Burns’s lapel-grab- illustrates his own feelings of invisibility bing title does his book a dis- INVASION OFTHE MIND SNATCHERS: before his father”—feelings that Wood repeat- service. The invocation of a Television’s edly articulated in his unfinished and unpub- 1956 sci-fi movie that made Conquest of lished autobiography, Return From Bohemia. people wary of watermelons is America in In American Gothic’s complex invocation of at odds with his more sober the Fifties. the Persephone myth, Evans finds an artist judgments about how the new By Eric Burns. who was far from reconciled to this return. medium changed the country. Temple Univ. Press. 342 pp. $35 Late in the book, after an equally dazzling Television did not turn us into reading of Parson Weems’ Fable (1939), Wood’s zombies: “What we Americans learned to do as last major painting before his death in 1942, the fifties progressed was incorporate television Evans offers a sweeping defense of his method. into our lives rather than allow our lives to be Having claimed that the small figures in the controlled by it. The medium became a choice background suggest “an incestuous union” rather than a czar.” between mother and son (to complement the Not much to argue with there, even for “patricidal hatchet job” in the foreground), he those of us who watched test patterns on off- addresses readers who might react with “alarm the-air channels during the late ’40s and early and disbelief” to this interpretation and those ’50s. The wonder of the motionless patterns that precede it. Such reactions, Evans argues, identifying the idle channels was that they would indicate not only a lack of sympathy with existed at all, grayish and humming, right his approach but a “conscious resistance to the there in our living rooms. Though the psyche’s raw and anarchic operations.” By treat- technology had been around for decades, TV ing any objection that an interpretation “goes too sets did not become household items till the

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postwar ’40s. With remarkable speed, televi- Nixon in her respectable Republican cloth coat, sion then moved from marginal to main- and Checkers the family dog; Amos, Andy, and, stream. uh-oh, the politically incorrect Kingfish; über- The first half of Burns’s history is a scatter- Catholic Fulton Sheen and entrepreneurial shot survey of television’s encroachment on evangelist Oral Roberts; quiz show cheater American life, a process that altered every- Charles Van Doren; and brave black students thing from where and when we ate dinner to kept from their classrooms and threatened how we picked our toothpastes and our presi- with violence. All found their televised way to dents. He hopscotches his way across the America’s homes, and the nation was riveted. decade, landing on an interesting trend here Burns’s lively retrospective glides smoothly (television had a calming effect on persistent through their stories, at about the depth of a viewers) and an alarming one there (“the standard TV documentary. Eric Burns is not fifties were a time of frivolity . . . fads ruled”). Ken Burns, and that’s all to the good; the Hula-Hoops, Pez dispensers, pedal pushers, reader stays awake for the duration. and ponytails, he argues, distracted us from “Television was nothing when the fifties serious thought—as if a Hula-Hooper would started, everything when they ended,” writes otherwise have been reading Hegel. A Davy the sober Burns, who immediately turns into Crockett coonskin cap has for Burns the tem- the suspect sociologist: “But with time and poral pull of a Proustian cookie, and the audi- circumstance Americans had lost not only ence most likely to appreciate the cascading their initial enthusiasm for the medium; we detail in his narrative are grownups of his had lost our belief in its veracity and good own advanced baby-boomer age willing to be intentions, and for most of us, neither quality pulled back with him to the analog America of would be fully restored.” That’s a statement as their childhoods. worthy of a place in the serious annals of mass Burns, author of five other books, grants the disenchantment as the curtain pull on the ’50s a Blob–like expansiveness; the decade Wizard of Oz. seeps forward, backward, and sideways. Narra- Within a few years of its primitive begin- tive discipline and chronology are not his nings, commercial television had headed strong suits, and as sociologist and cultural down paths of evolution and devolution that critic he repeatedly invites interruption. What it travels to this day. The basic programming does it mean, for example, to call the ’50s “a genres were set—drama, comedy, politics, uniquely vexing and eclectic decade”? More news, sports, games, even competitive humili- vexing than the ’30s, or ’60s, or now? He ation (Strike It Rich, Queen for a Day). Ahead thinks that the ’50s were “a fulcrum that tipped lay proliferation, refinement, coarsening, and from yesterday to tomorrow,” and then makes endlessly burgeoning fallout. This past sum- that fulcrum do somersaults, taking us from mer, the sitting president of the United States Graham Greene’s novel The Heart of the Matter sat within the estrogen-laced precincts of (1948) to the rock musical Hair (1967). ABC’s The View, the coffee klatch as art form. In the second, and more coherent, half of The president did so willingly and could not, the book, Burns revisits the effects television for once, blame his predecessor. He was had on politics, religion, and the movements merely catching a cultural wave that began as for civil and women’s rights. He gets to recall a a ripple in Burns’s distant ’50s, has gathered cast of marvelous midcentury characters, force ever since, and shows no signs of break- including Senators Kefauver (crime fighter) ing. Not even on the Jersey Shore. and McCarthy (alarmist); avuncular, calculat- ing Ike; Dick Nixon on offense and defense, Pat James Morris is an editor at large of The Wilson Quarterly.

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psychoanalyst and writer. Garments culled from Story Material storage, commissioned for the exhibition, or created Reviewed by Andrew Starner by Clark herself were tucked into Blythe House’s vast galleries of ceramics, textiles, and drawings, as In a 2000 exhibition at well as in its underground coal bunker and on the London’s Victoria and Albert THE CONCISE roof overlooking West London. Museum titled “Papiers à la DICTIONARY The thrust of Clark and Phillips’s creations isn’t OFDRESS. Mode: Paper Fashions,” Belgian the indefinability of fashion, but rather its proliferat- artist Isabelle de Borchgrave and By Judith Clark and ing meanings. Each entry in The Concise Dictionary Adam Phillips. collaborator Rita Brown Photographs by of Dress—devoted to an installation in the exhibi- painstakingly recreated dozens Norbert Schoerner. tion that represents a word such as provocative or Violette Editions. of dresses from 300 years of 136 pp. $39.95 essential—has a single page of definitions followed fashion in white drafting paper by several pages of photographs. Phillips’s quirky, twisted to look like braid, delicately buttoned and almost metaphysical take on fashionable—the drawn into bows, and otherwise manipulated. meanings he lists include “a form of alarm” and Borchgrave elaborately painted most of these whim- “excited impatience with the body”—gives an idea of sical ensembles to mimic the silk and damask of the how the exhibition and this book frustrate conven- originals; the few pieces that were not given this tional expectations. Clark’s accompanying illustra- treatment functioned like a window into fashion’s tion consists of eight wig forms arranged in a glass unconscious—they looked more than anything like cabinet, displaying, among other articles, a sequined the pages of a book tortured into expressive shape. headdress in the style of a 1930s hairdo, a knitted The catalog to another show that was up this hood, and a barrister’s curled headdress. spring at the Victoria and Albert Museum, which Readers may get a fuller experience of the instal- houses the world’s largest collection devoted to dec- lations (which were devoid of wall texts and labels) orative arts and design, appears to perform the than did museumgoers, thanks to the illuminating inverse operation: It shoehorns a succession of end matter, which includes detailed information three-dimensional garments into a two-dimen- about the objects on display as well as a colloquy on sional book. The message of “The Concise Diction- fashion in which Clark fields anonymous questions ary of Dress”—the name of the exhibition as well as from notable thinkers from a variety of disciplines, the catalog—is that clothing functions simultan- including Shakespeare scholar Stephen Greenblatt eously as textile and text, sensuous object and intel- and art historian T. J. Clark (no relation to the lead lectual exercise. A visit to nearly any museum can curator). By masking her interlocutors’ identities, offer a window into another time and place, but an Judith Clark elicited adventurous questions—her exhibition of historical costumes encourages a cor- inspired response to “Do you believe in ghosts?” will poreal engagement: to imagine the feel of a corset or forever alter your experience of second-hand cloth- the weight of a brocade. ing shops. Sponsored by the London-based arts commis- Although the word costume has fallen out of sioning agency Artangel, the exhibition allowed visi- favor among fashion curators, it evokes the duality tors a behind-the-scenes view of the Victoria and of dress, which can be a form of make-believe (don- Albert Museum’s monumental storage facility at ning another’s clothing) or just as easily a form of Blythe House. Visitors took a private tour of 11 authenticity (self-fashioning one’s identity). This tableaux created by Judith Clark, a lecturer at the oscillation of fashion between reality and fiction, London College of Fashion who codirects the mas- static display and animate object, makes The ter’s program in fashion curation (the existence of Concise Dictionary of Dress intriguing. The wonder- which signals the increasing importance of fashion ful photographs by Norbert Schoerner, accom- in museum collections), and Adam Phillips, a panied by minimal text, make reading it akin to

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watching an engrossing silent film with just enough entrée? Most Orthodox Jews say six, but German subtitles to convey the plot. Terse and brittle, it is an Jews say three, and Dutch Jews just one. art-house primer on the intersection of fashion, sex- Today, the defining characteristic of kashrut is uality, performance, and art. While it cannot explain the extreme precautions taken to ensure that no the current phenomenal success of outré music per- treyfe (nonkosher food) is eaten. For example, obser- former Lady Gaga or what her outrageous outfits vant Jews will not eat meat from a plate that has mean, it does illustrate that we live in a world where ever touched dairy, just in case a nano-sized speck of what is on the surface speaks volumes about what cheese is clinging to it for dear life. One formerly lies beneath. observant Jew aptly calls the entire system an “exer- cise in neurosis.” Such safeguards have given rise to a Andrew Starner is a graduate student in theater and perform- ance studies at Brown University. global kosher food industry, whose inspectors go to every corner of the globe, making sure that none of

RELIGION & PHILOSOPHY these strictures are violated at any step of the food production process. (China, for example, has nearly Food Police 2,000 food factories under kosher supervision, Reviewed by Rebecca J. Rosen largely to cater to American and Israeli markets.) Today, between a third and a half of processed In 2008 at Kosherfest, food products sold in the United States are certified KOSHER NATION: the annual U.S. trade show of Why More and kosher, though “less than two percent of the popula- kosher food manufacturers, cer- More of America’s tion is Jewish, and only a minority of Jews keep tifiers, and purveyors, an Iron Food Answers to a kosher.” Much kosher-certified food is consumed by Chef–like culinary competition Higher Authority. non-Jews who are vegetarians , Muslims, or believe featured not brisket, nor bagels By Sue Fishkoff. that kosher food is somehow “purer.” And many and lox, but sushi. While not Schocken. other people who buy kosher products are simply 364 pp. $27.95 traditional Jewish cuisine, Cali- oblivious to the tiny symbols on the packages— fornia rolls and tuna sashimi are now staples of Nabisco, Entenmann’s, and Godiva all have stamps religious weddings and bar mitzvahs. Observant of approval. American Jews, once consigned to a limited pantry When people prepared most of their meals at and sparse restaurant options, are enjoying the home from scratch, Jews had no need for mash- output of a massive kosher industry made up of gichim. If you bought your meat from a butcher you thousands of mashgichim (kosher certifiers) who knew and trusted and grew your own vegetables, monitor food production to ensure that Jewish you could ensure the kosher status of your food dietary laws are strictly followed. It is this industry yourself. But beginning in the 19th century, the that journalist Sue Fishkoff deliciously serves up in advent of prepared and packaged foods removed Kosher Nation. those labors from the house and placed them The basics of these laws, known in Hebrew as behind closed factory and restaurant doors. An kashrut (the related word, kasher, means “fit” or industry sprang up to give observant Jews peace of “proper”), are straightforward. Observant Jews do mind about the products they bought and ate. As not eat milk and meat together; nor do they con- Fishkoff writes, kosher certification became a busi- sume a wide variety of animals—pig, most notor- ness. In 1923, Heinz Vegetarian Beans was the first iously, but also shellfish and bugs. (This makes brand-name product to receive an official certifica- preparing salad a complicated endeavor; who tion. (In the 1980s, the Japanese company Fuji knows what might have burrowed into the celery?) added a symbol of kosher certification to its camera Permitted animals must be ritually slaughtered and film. Upon learning of its error—only food requires bled. Of course, it’s not so simple. How many hours certification—the company apologized, saying it had must you wait to eat a dairy dessert after a meat heard that products with that symbol “sell better in

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the United States.”) Business is business, and since the early days of the industry, competition has been cutthroat, rife with fraud and corruption. One hundred kosher retailers amassed $4,200 in 1914 to pay for a hit job on poultry dealer Barnett Baff, suspected of under- selling rivals who adhered to fixed prices. The ugly underbelly of the kashrut industry took center stage in 2008 when federal agents raided Agriprocessors of Postville, Iowa, the largest kosher meatpacking plant in the United States, and arrested 389 undoc- umented workers, including 18 minors. For many kosher-keeping Jews, the incident was a wake-up AVoyager spacecraft, in an artist’s rendering, points toward Earth, to which it has sent data for more than 30 years. call: Your meat may be “kosher,” but those who bring it to your plate may not be treated fairly—or in keeping with Jewish law. edge of the solar system, writes Arizona State Uni- In response to the Agriprocessors scandal as well versity environmental historian Stephen Pyne, was a as wider American food trends, fledgling kosher rare alignment of political will and technological movements such as “ethical kashrut” and “eco- know-how. The Voyager program was born just kosher” are gaining traction. “Jews,” Fishkoff writes, before the Cold War spirit—and dollars—of Apollo “are hard-wired to link our food choices to moral dissipated and just after key advances occurred in and political beliefs.” Entertaining and sympathetic microprocessors and software. This coincidence throughout, Fishkoff is at her finest when discussing ushered Voyager from the launch pad to the firma- new interpretations of kashrut. ment—where today the twin probes still coast on as Of course, some things never change. Last year the “grand gesture” of an era that began with the at Kosherfest, the theme for the culinary competi- space race of the late 1950s and ’60s. tion was the much-beloved deli sandwich. In Voyager, a long and occasionally labored meditation on the nature and meaning of explor- Rebecca J. Rosen is associate editor of The Wilson Quarterly. ation, Pyne braids his narrative with anecdotes from the two earlier exploratory eras: the flood of

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY 15th-century ships that Portugal unleashed in search of gold and glory, and the intracontinental The Long Goodbye journeys of the late 18th century, rooted in the Reviewed by Eric Hand science of the industrial age Enlightenment and exemplified by Alexander von Humboldt’s explor- Several years after their ation of South America. launch in 1977, the twin space- VOYAGER: Parallels abound. Like Voyager’s mission man- craft Voyager 1 and 2 flung them- Seeking Newer agers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Worlds in the Third selves past Jupiter, using the California, Christopher Columbus had to hawk his Great Age of giant planet’s gravity as a Discovery. plans for years to the powers that were before purse booster rocket. Thanks to this strings loosened. And, as with previous exploration By Stephen J. Pyne. innovation of orbital mechan- Viking. 444 pp. $29.95 missions, on which scientists were a rare luxury ics—and a once-in-176-years among soldiers and quartermasters, science was alignment of the planets—Saturn and even not all that was packed aboard Voyager. Of the two Uranus and Neptune lay within reach. crafts’ total 1,817-pound weight, just 13 percent But what really propelled the two Voyagers to the went to scientific instruments, with the rest going

110 Wilson Quarterly ■ Autumn 2010 CURRENT BOOKS

to other equipment and fuel. NASA to develop orbiting telescopes that will turn But Pyne is also aware that the spacecraft tell a inward on Earth to study carbon cycles that are key fundamentally different story. They are machines to addressing climate change. whose cameras have retrieved spectacular visions As enamored as he is of Voyager, Pyne under- of dead places. These encounters contrast with the stands that exploration can take these other gripping (and often murderous) confrontations forms. He writes of the moment in 1980 when between earlier explorers and indigenous peoples. Voyager 1 flew past Titan, the methane-shrouded And while journeys of previous eras hewed mostly moon of Saturn, whose soup of prebiotic amino to the Odyssean ideal of the return, each Voyager acids and carbohydrates was supposed to illumin- spacecraft, having escaped the sun’s gravity alto- ate something about Earth’s earliest history. But gether, will eventually exit the solar system and Titan’s murk remained mostly impenetrable to drift through the vast emptiness of the galaxy— Voyager 1’s instruments. Meanwhile, wildfires perhaps outliving Earth. raged around the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Will the third age of exploration itself live on? the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains. At the After Voyager 1 took a last picture postcard of the time, ecologists were just beginning to under- solar system in 1990, the Voyager spacecrafts’ elec- stand how inextricably life is linked to fire, which tronic eyes lidded shut. Today, their radio beacons generates oxygen and hydrocarbon fuels, and, pulse ever more wanly as their nuclear fuel runs since humans have been around, often provides out. Meanwhile, orbiting telescopes, parked near the spark of ignition. The wildfires offered a more Earth, may have mooted future grand planetary vivid insight than Voyager into how life evolved on tours like Voyager’s. Voyager discovered 26 new Earth. Later advances in astrobiology would come moons in total; the Hubble Space Telescope has not from outer space, but from Earth’s frozen discovered 48 around Jupiter alone. The deep of deserts and geothermal pools—when, observes Earth’s oceans still beckons. Astronomers, with Pyne, “new eyes viewed seemingly old worlds telescopes on the ground and in space, are hunting afresh.” for the first Earth-like planet outside the solar sys- Eric Hand is a Knight science journalism fellow at the Massachusetts tem. And the Obama administration has pushed Institute of Technology and a reporter at Nature.

Credits: Cover, p. 51, Photograph by Robert Croma; p. 2, AP Photo/Ng Han Guan; p. 12, Magnes Museum/Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life; p. 13, IStockphoto.com; p. 14, The Baldwin Company; p. 15, RIA Novosti; p. 17, I Am Troy Davis, by Lavar Munroe; p. 20, © Henry Diltz/Corbis, all rights reserved; p. 21, © Theo Allofs/Radius Images; pp. 22 (top), 70, © Bettmann/Corbis, all rights reserved; p. 22 (bottom), © Corbis, all rights reserved; p. 23, Movie still from American Memory, Collections of the Library of Congress, extracted from orig- inal film by Daniel Carman; pp. 24, 77, 105, 112, Reproduced from the Collections of the Library of Congress; p. 25, ORAU/Roger Macklis; p. 27, Album/Pilar Aymerich/Newscom; p. 29, © Vithalbhai Jhaveri/GandhiServe; p. 32, © Wallace Kirkland/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images; p. 34, AP Photo; p. 53, © Michael Christopher Brown; p. 55, Xinhua/Photoshot, all rights reserved; p. 58, AFP Photo/Files/Peter Parks; p. 63, Travel Ink/Gallo Images; p. 64, © Louisa Lim; p. 67, © Dave Grunland, www.davegrunland.com; p. 72, AFP Photos/Mauricio Lima; p. 75, Jimmy Sime/Getty Images; p. 81, Copyright © Volker Steger/Photo Researchers, Inc.; p. 82, © The Pierpont Morgan Library/Art Resource; p. 88, Cartoon by Zapiro, www.zapiro.com; p. 91, © Konrad Fiedler/New York Sun; p. 97, AP Photo/Charles Dharapak; p. 100, © Richard B. Levine, all rights reserved; p. 110, NASA image.

Autumn 2010 ■ Wilson Quarterly 111 PORTRAIT

California Unmoored

With its laid-back attitudes, Arcadian landscape, and peerless sunshine, California can seem like a land all its own. For a couple of centuries, it was—on paper, at least. Thanks in part to the wrongheaded Spanish explorer Juan de Fuca, by 1622, the idea had taken root that California was completely surrounded by water. One reason the fallacy persisted well into the 18th century, historians believe, is that it outfitted California with the romantic trappings of an island. Insistent explorers eventually corrected the public record, but hundreds of documents, including this circa 1650 map by Dutch cartographer Johannes Vingboons, preserve the error.

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