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6 Ways to Win an Argument Taught by One of America’s Great Professors easoning, tested by doubt, is argu- We’ve been doing this since 1990, pro- mentation. We do it, hear it, and ducing more than 3,000 hours of material R judge it every day. We do it in our in modern and ancient history, philosophy, own minds, and we do it with others. literature, fine arts, the sciences, and math- What is effective reasoning? And how ematics for intelligent, engaged, adult life- can it be done persuasively? These questions long learners. If a course is ever less than have been asked for thousands of years, yet completely satisfying, you may exchange it some of the best thinking on reasoning and for another, or we will refund your money promptly.
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The WILSON QUARTERLY
Winter 2011 volume xxxv, number 1 The Wilson Quarterly Published by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars FEATURES www.wilsonquarterly.com
COVER STORY 26 Indonesia’s Moment 49 THE SEVEN MILLION By Robert Pringle | Indonesia seldom attracts How to Shrink America’s Criminal Population much attention unless it suffers a natural disaster or Seven million Americans are in prison or on some other upheaval, but what’s truly noteworthy is probation or parole. Crime is down, but state this Muslim-majority nation’s thriving democracy. prison budgets have ballooned. A new war on 34 What Is a Tree Worth? crime must focus on reducing repeat offenses By Jill Jonnes | Scientists have recently learned by ex-inmates and steering more young people how to put a price on the benefits delivered by away from crime. urban trees, with results that are rippling through Beyond the Prison Bubble | America’s cities. By Joan Petersilia The Bounty Hunter’s Pursuit of Justice | 42 A Glimmer in the Balkans By Alex Tabarrok By Martin Sletzinger | Before Afghanistan and The Economist’s Guide to Crime Busting | Iraq, there were the Balkans. After 20 years of By Philip J. Cook and Jens Ludwig American and European efforts, the hard work of nation-building continues.
16 Rethinking the Great Recession ON THE COVER: Photograph by David Sanders for The New York By Robert J. Samuelson | The roots of the Times, design by Michelle Furman. Inmates at the Arizona State Prison Complex–Phoenix wait to be placed in cells. recession are far deeper, and will have bigger The views expressed herein are not necessarily those of the Woodrow consequences, than most Americans realize. Wilson International Center for Scholars.
2 Wilson Quarterly ■ Winter 2011 WQ2-3 1/5/11 1:08 PM Page 3
DEPARTMENTS
4 EDITOR’S COMMENT 80 SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY 99 Not Quite Adults: Journals Galore, from Why 20-Somethings Are Choosing 6 LETTERS History of Science a Slower Path to Adulthood, and School for Slugs, from Cabinet Why It’s Good for Everyone. 8 AT THE CENTER By Richard Settersten and Brave New Worlds, from Nature Barbara E. Ray 13 FINDINGS 83 ARTS & LETTERS Reviewed by Michael C. Moynihan Gauguin’s Stillness, from The Nation 101 Song of Wrath: Papa’s Painful Passion, from Raritan The Peloponnesian War Begins. IN ESSENCE The Death of Dance? from By J. E. Lendon our survey of notable Reviewed by James Carman articles from other First Things journals and magazines The Paradox of Words, from 102 Daniel Patrick Moynihan: The Threepenny Review A Portrait in Letters of an 67 FOREIGN POLICY & DEFENSE American Visionary. What’s the Big Idea? from 86 OTHER NATIONS Edited by Steven R. Weisman Foreign Affairs Russia’s Farm Comeback, from Reviewed by Steven Lagerfeld Ending the Endless War, from Demokratizatsiya Columbia Law Review Pakistani Pop, from Granta 103 How to Live: Or a Life of Montaigne in One The Refugee Crisis That Wasn’t, China’s Confucian Democracy, Question and Twenty Attempts at from Middle East Report from Journal of Democracy an Answer. 70 ECONOMICS, LABOR & BUSINESS By Sarah Bakewell Model Students, from Reviewed by Sarah L. Courteau NBER Working Papers 67 CURRENT BOOKS 104 The Age of Auden: 89 Saul Bellow: The Golden Millstone, from Postwar Poetry and the Letters. The Journal of Economic History American Scene. Edited by Benjamin Taylor By Aidan Wasley 71 POLITICS & GOVERNMENT Reviewed by Michael O’Donnell Don’t Blame Polarization, from Reviewed by Troy Jollimore 92 Shock of Gray: The American Interest 106 Self Comes to Mind: The Aging of the World’s Popula- Constructing the Conscious Brain. Disaster Management 101, from tion and How It Pits Young Against By Antonio Damasio National Affairs Old, Child Against Parent, Worker Against Boss, Company Against Reviewed by Richard Restak 73 SOCIETY Rival, and Nation Against Nation. Prime Movers of Getting High in Portugal, 107 By Ted C. Fishman Globalization: from The British Journal of Criminology Never Say Die: The History and Impact of Diesel The Myth and Marketing Engines and Gas Turbines. The Blind Aren’t Race-Blind, from of the New Old Age. By Vaclav Smil Law and Society Review By Susan Jacoby Reviewed by Mark Reutter Untying the Knot, from Reviewed by James Morris California Law Review 108 Preaching With Sacred Fire: 94 A Dictionary of 20th- An Anthology of African American 76 PRESS & MEDIA Century Communism. Sermons, 1750 to the Present. Op-Ed Takes Wing, from Edited by Silvio Pons and Edited by Martha Simmons and Journalism and Mass Robert Service. Frank A. Thomas Communication Quarterly Reviewed by Irving Louis Reviewed by Jonathan Rieder Renaissance on the Airwaves, from Horowitz 109 American Grace: The New York Review of Books 97 Armed Humanitarians: How Religion Divides and Unites Us. 77 RELIGION & PHILOSOPHY The Rise of the Nation Builders. By Robert D. Putnam and Catholicism’s Lessons for Islam, By Nathan Hodge David E. Campbell from The Boston Review Reviewed by James Gibney Reviewed by Kevin M. Schultz Writing Rights, from 98 Makeshift Metropolis: The New Republic Ideas About Cities. A Jewish Revival, from By Witold Rybczynski 112 PORTRAIT The Hedgehog Review Reviewed by Blair A. Ruble Dean of Diction
Winter 2011 ■ Wilson Quarterly 3 WQ4 1/5/11 1:10 PM Page 4
The WILSON QUARTERLY EDITOR’S COMMENT
A New War on Crime
EDITOR Steven Lagerfeld
In 1975, when political scientist James Q. Wilson published Thinking MANAGING EDITOR James H. Carman About Crime, a powerful book that pushed the nation toward a harder line LITERARY EDITOR Sarah L. Courteau ASSOCIATE EDITOR Rebecca J. Rosen against lawbreakers, I was working with a group of criminals. It was actu- ASSISTANT EDITOR Megan Buskey ally a landscape crew, but virtually all of the men on it had been in and out RESEARCHER Lindsey Strang
of jail during their lives. When I think about crime, I think about them. EDITORS AT LARGE Ann Hulbert, James Morris, Most of the men were black, some were white, and it was a changing Jay Tolson COPY EDITOR Vincent Ercolano cast, but one part of their stories was always the same. Uneducated, CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Daniel Akst, sometimes illiterate, they were single men who lacked the tools and the Stephen Bates, Martha Bayles, Max Byrd, Linda Colley, Denis Donoghue, Max Holland, self-confidence to hope for much better—more than one turned down Walter Reich, Alan Ryan, Amy E. Schwartz, Edward Tenner, Charles Townshend, Alan Wolfe, the chance to be foreman, mostly because they didn’t want to play boss Bertram Wyatt-Brown to their friends, but also, I think, because they doubted they could handle BOARD OF EDITORIAL ADVISERS K. Anthony Appiah, Cynthia Arnson, Amy Chua, the responsibility. A few were glowering, malevolent men whom I care- Tyler Cowen, Harry Harding, Robert Hathaway, Elizabeth Johns, Jackson Lears, Robert Litwak, fully gave a wide berth, but others were good and in some ways admir- Wilfred M. McClay, Blair Ruble, Peter Skerry, S. Frederick Starr, Martin Walker, Samuel Wells able sorts. All worked incredibly hard—and virtually all of them regu- FOUNDING EDITOR Peter Braestrup (1929–1997)
larly ran afoul of the law, usually for relatively minor infractions. BUSINESS DIRECTOR Suzanne Napper
Why? Wilson saw that poverty and other social disadvantages were CIRCULATION Laura Vail, ProCirc, Miami, Fla. often the root cause of crime, as in the case of my coworkers (though The Wilson Quarterly (ISSN-0363-3276) is published in January (Winter), April (Spring), July (Summer), and alcohol also seemed to be involved whenever they got into trouble). October (Autumn) by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars at One Woodrow Wilson Plaza, 1300 Other than their fear of jail time, they didn’t have much reason not to Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20004–3027. Complete article index available online at break the law. Wilson famously argued for a stronger emphasis on deter- www.wilsonquarterly.com. Subscriptions: one year, $24; two years, $43. Air mail outside U.S.: one year, $39; rence and punishment, but he also sought to address underlying causes two years, $73. Single issues and selected back issues mailed upon request: $9; outside U.S. and posses- and incentives. It would be “shortsighted,” he said, to raise the costs of sions, $12. Periodical postage paid at Washington, D.C., and additional mailing offices. All unsolicited crime while leaving the rewards of lawful behavior unchanged. manuscripts should be accompanied by a self- In the years after Thinking About Crime, America pursued the first addressed stamped envelope. MEMBERS: Send changes of address and all subscrip- part of Wilson’s proposition with far more enthusiasm than it did the tion correspondence with The Wilson Quarterly mailing label to: second. The get-tough emphasis contributed to the dramatic decline in The Wilson Quarterly crime that Joan Petersilia calls one of America’s great success stories. But P.O. Box 16898 North Hollywood, CA 91615 along with two other contributors to this issue, Philip J. Cook and Jens SUBSCRIBER HOT LINE: Ludwig, she argues that the benefits of that course have been largely 1-818-487-2068 exhausted. It is time to rethink crime. In large measure, that means POSTMASTER: Send all address changes to The Wilson Quarterly, P.O. Box 16898, remembering the other half of Wilson’s proposition, and finding new North Hollywood, CA 91615. Microfilm copies are available from Bell & Howell Infor- ways to help some of the seven million people who are in and out of mation and Learning, 300 N. Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, MI 48106. U.S. newsstand distribution through CMG, America’s criminal justice system break free of the demons that keep Princeton, N.J. For more information contact Kathleen them coming back. Montgomery, Marketing Manager (609) 524-1685 or [email protected]. ADVERTISING: Steve Clark, Advertising Representative, SAGE Publications, Inc. Tel.: (484) 494-5948 / —Steven Lagerfeld Fax: (805) 375-5282 E-mail: [email protected].
4 Wilson Quarterly ■ Winter 2011 WQ5 1/5/11 1:10 PM Page 5
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LETTERS
THE CHINA CONUNDRUM how international diplomacy could Doesn’t!,” Autumn ’10]. In some The exchange between Ross be compartmentalized. Cooperation parts of the country, it already has. Terrill and David M. Lampton on nuclear proliferation, environ- Rising temperatures are melt- [“What if China Fails?,” Autumn mental conservation, international ing glaciers in western China and ’10] highlights the ambivalence terrorism, contagious diseases, and drying up lakes in the east. The with which Americans view China’s illegal immigration is not independ- water deficit in the north stands at recent rise. ent from more contentious issues nine billion cubic meters. Pollution In a multilateral world, it is not such as currency misalignment or kills 460,000 Chinese each year clear that one country’s gain will relations across the Taiwan Strait. and causes damage equal to 5.8 necessarily be another’s loss. I sug- One cannot take it for granted, in percent of gross domestic product. gest considering the counterfactual other words, that arms sales to Tai- The water from half the country’s of how Anglo-American relations wan would not affect technology rivers and lakes is unfit to drink. would have been affected if Britain transfers to Iran. These problems are more obvi- had decided to halt America’s rise Finally, a China caught in ous and immediate than the threats by intervening on the side of the domestic disarray, or even one that of economic decline, social insta- Confederacy in the American Civil is democratizing, may not be a bility, or military conflict. Envi- War. The ascent of the United more congenial partner for the ronmental challenges, moreover, States turned out to be very favor- United States. A vulnerable gov- may make all these threats worse. able to Britain, as the two world ernment may become bellicose Economic growth has suffered wars of the 20th century showed. rather than conciliatory. Countries as it has become more difficult and Could not China at some point be in transition also frequently see a expensive to deal with waste, tox- an important American ally? resurgence of nationalist or impe- ins, and emissions, and to secure Furthermore, the U.S. and Chi- rialist rhetoric. energy, food, minerals, and other nese economies have become so As both Terrill and Lampton natural resources. The large num- thoroughly interconnected that a recognize, things are rarely black ber of protests against chemical Chinese economic setback would and white. More important, Sino- plants and incinerators (the exact not necessarily be in America’s American relations are not a zero- number is uncertain because the interest. Transnational production sum contest. government has stopped releasing chains, the interpenetration of Steve Chan figures) poses a challenge to the markets, the cross-ownership of Professor, Department of Political Science established social order. So does financial assets, and currency link- University of Colorado, Boulder the migration of millions of “eco- ages all mean that what happens to Boulder, Colo. refugees” from the ravaged grass- the Chinese economy will affect the lands and drought regions, as well United States and countries that China’s economy is not as the reckless extraction of the United States cares about, such merely at risk of running into an resources from western China. as Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. ecological wall, as David M. Lamp- As Ross Terrill notes in “The It is also difficult to envision ton suggests [“We’d Better Hope It Case for Selective Failure,” [Au- tumn ’10], a few countries might LETTERS may be mailed to The Wilson Quarterly, 1300 Pennsylvania Avenue N.W., Washington, D.C. welcome an even bigger stumble 20004–3027, or sent via facsimile, to (202) 691-4036, or e-mail, to [email protected]. The writer’s telephone number and postal address should be included. For reasons of space, letters are usually edited for by China. But domestic turmoil publication. Some letters are received in response to the editors’ requests for comment. could easily spill across borders.
6 Wilson Quarterly ■ Winter 2011 WQ6-12 1/5/11 1:13 PM Page 7
LETTERS
What’s more, in the longer term, to earn the relatively high wages it has also presided over sweeping tensions with other countries are that keep goods with the label triumphs. Its philosophers, war- likely to rise as competition for “Made in U.S.A.” pricey. riors, and scientists are legendary. resources and environmentally Neither of these dynamics Failure, at least as a civilization, viable space becomes more intense. shows any sign of flagging. Will seems a very remote possibility. If there’s a silver lining to be China blindly subsidize cheap As David M. Lampton and Ross found here, it’s that China’s envi- exports until the United States Terrill point out, the failure of ronmental bust is practically as racks up obligations beyond its China’s political and economic sys- great a source of policymaking ability to pay? I think not. While tems is another matter. Lampton momentum as its economic boom. China’s leaders may be oblivious to observes that we [ Continued on page 10 ] Last year, China invested almost the theoretical danger of an Amer- twice as much in clean technology ican default, they are likely to as the United States. Terrill is right respond to signs that an impending Jane’s Journeys to state that China’s global influ- inflation of the U.S. dollar will eat Part history, part photographic travelogue, and part memoir—only ence is limited because it cannot away the principal value of the available at www.Amazon.com. match the American brew of Treasury bonds they hold. The only Current editions include Exploring democracy, free markets, and pop- way to reduce the U.S. trade deficit Eastern Germany, Exploring Iceland, Exploring Ireland, and Exploring ular culture. But with much of the (not to mention the federal budget Jamaica, with works on Portugal, world suffering an environmental deficit) may be to get long-term Switzerland, Japan, London, Canada, France, Hawaii, Vienna, and economic hangover, China has inflation growing at a pace that will Bratislava, Budapest, the an opportunity to mix up a new erode the value of U.S. bonds as Netherlands—and more—coming. tonic of low-carbon energy, sus- rapidly as China accumulates Go to www.Amazon.com and search for “Jane Ralls” to see entire selection. tainable consumption, and poverty them. alleviation. It will not taste as good, My hunch is that China’s lead- but it may prove healthier. ers will eventually realize that they Jonathan Watts cannot be sure that they will get Author, When a Billion Chinese Jump: How back the true value of all the goods China Will Save the World—Or Destroy It (2010) they export to the United States Beijing, China unless they allow an approximately equal amount of goods and services I appreciated the thoughtful to flow into China from the United articles on the question, What if States. The slower they are in A PLACE China fails? But they do not adopting this view, the less their IN THE address an equally intriguing countrymen will have for all the conundrum: What are the conse- goods we have bought from them WORLD quences for China if America fails? over the years. China is only the latest in a suc- Gregory R. New Geography, Identity, cession of states that have hitched Washington, D.C. and Civic Engagement their wagon to the American in Modern America import engine. In order for China Centuries before Troy fell, to have an incentive to keep its cur- China’s artisans perfected a com- March 11-12, 2011 à rency artificially low, two phenom- plex process for casting molten ena must continue: American con- bronze into elegant vessels, Pepperdine University sumers must remain addicted to weapons, and musical instruments. Malibu, California buying cheap foreign goods, and Over the centuries China has http://publicpolicy.pepperdine.edu American workers must continue endured turmoil and invasion, but
Winter 2011 ■ Wilson Quarterly 7 WQ6-12 1/5/11 1:13 PM Page 8
AT THE CENTER
BEYOND THE RESOURCE CURSE IN CHAD
When Lori Leonard arrived in Chad more The World Bank agreement dictated that Chadians than 20 years ago, she had little idea that the impover- whose land was seized for the pipeline receive generous ished Central African country would become the focus of compensation, as well as access to ambitious job- her career. At the time, she was just a newly minted BA retraining programs. Those efforts were what attracted with a Peace Corps assignment to teach at one of the uni- the attention of Leonard and her team of researchers. In versities in the capital city, N’Djamena. 2001, they began studying the effects of land seizure on Chad, a barren, landlocked country sandwiched three villages, conducting interviews and household sur- between Niger and Sudan, is “a difficult place to get to,” veys, administering health and nutrition exams, and says Leonard, who is currently a Woodrow Wilson Cen- using GPS devices to gauge land use. The effort contin- ter fellow. But she slowly discovered the riches of a coun- ues to this day. try she calls a “crossroads” of Africa. What have Leonard and her colleagues found? Those Graduate studies at Harvard’s School of Public Health familiar with the notion of the “resource curse”—under called her back to the United States, but Leonard found which resource-rich countries paradoxically exhibit poor herself returning to Chad often. In the late 1990s, as a economic growth and low levels of development—won’t member of the faculty of the Johns Hopkins School of be surprised. Leonard’s study shows that the social pro- Public Health, where she is now an associate professor, grams introduced by the World Bank have not had much she laid the groundwork for the project that brought her positive impact. Programs that train Chadian farmers to to the Woodrow Wilson Center this past September: a work in other occupations, such as carpentry and pioneering study of the effects on local communities of mechanics, are nice, but they don’t create a need for such the World Bank–backed Chad-Cameroon Pipeline. workers. Transferring large lump sums to landowners for In the time since Leonard first set foot in Africa, their property has been a flop because many recipients Chad’s fortunes have changed dramatically. Petroleum have little experience managing money. And Leonard was discovered beneath its scrub-filled terrain in the believes that the teams charged with compensating 1960s, but political instability and inadequate infra- affected Chadians identified beneficiaries “without under- structure kept potential investors away. Then, about 10 standing the nuances of landownership,” putting women years ago, the World Bank signaled that it would support at a particular disadvantage. the construction of a pipeline that would pump low- In 2008, the World Bank backed out of the pipeline grade crude extracted from the flatlands of southwestern project, claiming that the regime in N’Djamena was not Chad to an offshore export facility in Cameroon. meeting its social investment obligations. The pipeline is The pipeline promised to breathe life into Chad’s ail- now in the hands of the oil consortium and the Chadian ing economy. With a budget of $4.1 billion, it was the government, which continues to devote a portion of the largest-ever infrastructure venture in sub-Saharan Africa, revenue to social programs, effective or not. The social and it had a pronounced social-welfare component. The programs are “good PR for the oil companies,” Leonard agreement the World Bank brokered with the Chadian says. Even so, 10 years after the World Bank project government and the consortium of Western oil compa- began to tap the country’s “black gold,” Chadians’ lives nies that would operate the pipeline mandated that 80 haven’t significantly improved. percent of the government’s revenue be invested in health, Leonard will spend her year at the Wilson Center education, agriculture, the environment, and rural devel- writing a book about her decade-long study. Will Chad opment. The pipeline project got off to a better-than- factor into the next project she tackles? It’s possible. It’s expected start, and soon developers started to search for “a difficult place to know well,” she says. “There’s always more places in Chad to drill for oil. something to discover.”
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Michael Van Dusen, Acting Director MINORITY RULES BOARD OF TRUSTEES Joseph B. Gildenhorn, Chair Sander R. Gerber, Vice Chair Two weeks after the Republicans called “the minority wilderness.” EX OFFICIO MEMBERS: James H. Billington, Librarian of Congress, wrested control of the House of Rep- When a party’s contingent is smaller, Hillary R. Clinton, Secretary of State, G. Wayne Clough, Secretary, resentatives from the Democrats in members can spend more time think- Smithsonian Institution, Arne Duncan, Secretary of Education, David Ferriero, the biggest partisan swing in the ing through legislative proposals and Archivist of the United States, James lower chamber since 1948, the Wil- criticisms of the majority’s positions, Leach, Chair, National Endowment for the Humanities, Kathleen Sebelius, son Center’s Congress Project gath- which can help shape legislation Secretary of Health and Human Services. Designated Appointee of the ered a group of noted politicos to dis- if relations between the parties President from Within the Federal Government, Melody Barnes cuss the fortunes of the minority are reasonably amicable. Ideally, a PRIVATE CITIZEN MEMBERS: Timothy M. party in Congress. smart majority party Broas, Charles E. Cobb, Jr., Charles L. Glazer, Carlos M. Gutierrez, Susan The forecast isn’t welcomes criticism Hutchison, Barry S. Jackson, Ignacio E. Sanchez sunny. According to because it helps mem- former representative bers identify weak- THE WILSON COUNCIL Robert Walker (R- nesses in their pro- Sam Donaldson, President Elias Aburdene, Weston Adams, Cyrus Ansary, David Pa.), members of the posals, Walker said. Bass, Theresa Behrendt, Stuart Bernstein, James Binde- nagel, Rudy Boschwitz, Melva Bucksbaum, Amelia minority party are A glance at the Caiola-Ross, Joseph Cari, Carol Cartwright, Mark “more than potted headlines will tell you Chandler, Holly Clubok, Melvin Cohen, William Cole- man, Elizabeth Dubin, Ruth Dugan, F. Samuel Eberts, plants, but not much.” that there is little give Mark Epstein, Melvyn Estrin, Joseph Flom, Barbara Matthew N. Green, an and take between the Hackman Franklin, Norman Freidkin, Morton Funger, Donald Garcia, Bruce Gelb, Alma Gildenhorn, Michael assistant professor of parties now. Republi- Glosserman, Margaret Goodman, Raymond Guenter, Robert Hall, Edward Hardin, Marilyn Harris, F. Wal- politics at the Catholic Jackie Calmes of The New York Times cans took back power lace Hays, Claudia and Thomas Henteleff, Laurence University of America, in the House by “just Hirsch, Osagie Imasogie, Maha Kaddoura, Nuhad Karaki, Stafford Kelly, Christopher Kennan, Joan Kirk- agreed, noting that “from majority saying no” to everything on Presi- patrick, Mrs. David Knott, Willem Kooyker, Markos Kounalakis, Richard Kramer, Muslim Lakhani, Daniel status, all else flows,” including cru- dent Obama’s agenda, said former Lamaute, Raymond Learsy, Harold Levy, Genevieve cial committee chairmanships; con- representative Vic Fazio (D-Calif.). Lynch, Beth Madison, Frederic and Marlene Malek, B. Thomas Mansbach, Daniel Martin, Anne McCarthy, trol over the chamber’s agenda, rules, Jackie Calmes, a national corre- Lydia McClain, Thomas McLarty, Donald McLellan, and procedures; and attention from spondent for The New York Times, Maria Emma and Vanda McMurtry, John Kenneth Menges, Linda and Tobia Mercuro, Jamie Merisotis, the political press. noted that the Republicans voted Robert and Anne Morris, Kathryn Mosbacher Wheeler, Stuart Newberger, Paul Hae Park, Jeanne Phillips, But being in the minority party against legislation they had sup- Edwin Robbins, Wayne Rogers, Michael and does not mean just watching the ink ported in previous iterations (such Sonja Saltman, B. Francis Saul, Steven Schmidt, William Seanor, George Shultz, Raja Sidawi, dry on the nation’s legislation. It can as the health care bill, which she David Slack, William Slaughter, Diana Davis Spencer, Juan Suarez, Mrs. Alexander J. Tachmindji, be “exhilarating at times,” said Walker, called “identical” to what Republi- Norma Kline Tiefel, Anthony Viscogliosi, Michael who spent most of his 20 years in the cans proposed in 1994) mainly Waldorf, Pete Wilson, Deborah Wince-Smith, Herbert Winokur, Nancy Zirkin House toiling in what Congress Pro- because it bore the imprimatur of ject director Donald Wolfensberger the Democratic Party. The Wilson Center is the nation’s living With the political atmosphere so memorial to Woodrow Wilson, president of the United States from 1913 to 1921. It is located polarized, the most important thing at One Woodrow Wilson Plaza, 1300 Penn- sylvania Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C. a party out of power thinks it can do 20004–3027. Created by law in 1968, the The Official and Exclusive Center is Washington’s only independent, is get its opponent to fail, Fazio said. wide-ranging institute for advanced study Airline Sponsor of the That’s the way for the minority to get where vital cultural issues and their deep his- Woodrow Wilson Awards and torical background are explored through what it really wants: to become the research and dialogue. Visit the Center at the Woodrow Wilson Center http://www.wilsoncenter.org. majority party once more.
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LETTERS
[ Continued from page 7 ] shouldn’t hope for of the political freedoms that the response to the financial catastro- China to stop growing, “because Chinese people want. phe, however, should be the enact- wishing for a slowdown is not a Seth Cropsey ment of vigilant oversight mecha- policy.” Indeed, wishing for any- Senior Fellow nisms and sensible reforms thing isn’t a policy. Hudson Institute designed to bring balance, coordi- However, China’s rulers require Washington, D.C. nation, moderation, and overall a more nuanced characterization health to both the public and pri- than what Lampton offers. He says vate sectors. that during the 1989 Tiananmen TAMING THE Jim Valentine Square protests, Chinese authori- DEFICIT MONSTER Woodland Hills, Calif. ties “acted decisively to impose Douglas J. Besharov and order at key junctures,” obscuring Douglas M. Call [“The Global Bud- A brief letter cannot provide the reality that they violently sup- get Race,” Autumn ’10] capably a full rebuttal, so let me say gener- pressed democratic protest. The consider various tax hikes, spend- ally that the essay by Douglas J. moral gulf between the United ing cuts, and retirement savings Besharov and Douglas M. Call is States and China is clearly not the plans that might be introduced in tripe throughout. You should not only difference between them, but some combination to restore sol- have published it. there is no better indicator of the vency to Social Security and By what economic theory is stakes of the competition than each Medicare over the next 20 years. there a “global budget race”? The nation’s vision of domestic and But their goal of offering a tough— authors do not say. They give no international order. but workable—menu of options for evidence. No historical examples. Wouldn’t the United States be paying down the deficit is elusive. Their entire first section is a pas- better off if China leaned more This is in part because the authors tiche of epithets (“staggering,” toward diminished authoritarian- use the recent recession and its “Ponzi scheme,” “unsustainable,” ism, increased political liberty, causes and effects as an excuse to “immediacy”). The clinching line transparent military objectives, argue for imposing austerity meas- is that “most international finance and relationships with neighbors ures. They seem heedless of the economists agree that the bond based on mutual interest rather danger of plunging our sluggish market will eventually insist on a than fear? Won’t Asia also be bet- economy into a death spiral pro- solution.” Along with being undoc- ter off if the U.S. vision—which pelled by falling aggregate demand umented and unpersuasive (who embraces these goals—emerges as and deflation. cares what “international finance the more influential one? To Also absent from the essay is economists” think?), this assertion advance this vision in China, the any reference to the bursting of the means nothing. United States needs assertive, U.S. housing bubble that precipi- The next two sections betray the forward-thinking policies, not just tated the recession. That crisis had title’s promise: The global perspec- hope. The United States should use little to do with federal deficits, tax tive almost disappears in a welter diplomacy, redoubled efforts to rates, aging populations, or a fund- of detail about ways to cut Social demonstrate our stabilizing mili- ing crisis involving outlays for Security and Medicare. There is no tary power in Asia, and deft Social Security and Medicare. structured argument here, just a list alliance management to encourage Certainly fiscal reforms, gov- of proposals and their disadvan- peace and democracy throughout ernment spending cuts, and greater tages, leading to the authors’ pre- the region. individual responsibility for health ferred option. That is (surprise!) to China isn’t going to fail. But our care spending and retirement sav- replace Social Security altogether policy can and should be to blunt ings are crucial for sustaining with defined-contribution “private China’s darker impulses toward Social Security and Medicare over investment accounts.” How sur- Asia and help nurture the growth the long term. The immediate vivors and dependents would fare
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LETTERS
under this system Besharov and Call do not say. On Medicare the authors have no real proposal, just a vaguely stated preference for a “two-tiered U.S. health care system,” with one tier a “pared-down version of today’s benefits for low- and middle-income citizens...the other a better-cushioned system for the more affluent who are able to spend their own money to buy additional services.” This is, at least, admirably blunt. Unintentionally, Besharov and Call remind us how progressive and effective Social Security and Medicare really are, and why we should fight to protect them. Let me add that nothing in their eco- nomic case withstands scrutiny, nor gives any reason to accept the supposed necessity that these pro- grams be cut. James K. Galbraith Lloyd M. Bentsen Jr. Chair in Government/Business Relations consistently improved employee services and the federal budget Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs efficiency by 25 to 40 percent. would be transformational. University of Texas, Austin I led a local government agency, David Childs Austin, Texas applied a synthesis of the quality CEO, Fit for Service management principles used by Irving, Texas I was disappointed that these groups, and left office after Douglas J. Besharov and Douglas 20 years with fewer staff perform- M. Call dismissed the potential ing three times as much work in DNA AND THE impact of focusing on the reduc- faster response times than when I DEATH PENALTY tion of “the proverbial waste, started. Government as a whole Unfortunately, the out- fraud, and abuse” in government. can easily do the same. lines of Troy Davis’s case, which Organizational improvement If the president were to embed William Baude compellingly groups such as the Lean Enterprise trained and certified organiza- describes in “Last Chance on Death Institute and Balanced Scorecard tional improvement specialists in Row” [Autumn ’10], are all too have in many cases successfully government agencies, hold familiar. Time and time again, streamlined repetitive processes, monthly strategy meetings, and courts have been confronted with a reduced red tape, established pro- truly make increased efficiency one person who is scheduled for exe- duction goals for unfocused staff, of his administration’s top mana- cution but maintains he has evi- and encouraged innovative solu- gerial (not political) priorities, the dence of his innocence. tions. These organizations have impact on the quality of federal In some cases, the convict is
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telling the truth, and DNA testing forensic labs, and the recording of Desai also writes that Gandhi helps him prove it. For a book interrogations. Defense teams was “a savvy and serial collector of forthcoming from Harvard Uni- should also receive resources to books and people.” The appropriate versity Press, I have been examin- meaningfully and promptly inves- concept here (which Gandhi bor- ing the cases of the first 250 people tigate potential errors before trials rowed from English law) is trustee- exonerated by DNA testing, many begin, or soon thereafter. If we fail ship rather than ownership. For of whom had a jailhouse informant to correct errors at a trial’s incep- their challenging task of rebuilding or multiple eyewitnesses testify to tion, then persuasive evidence may an ancient culture along modern their guilt. The defendants I stud- continue to surface years later in lines, Gandhi and his associates ied often tried to assert their inno- serious cases like Troy Davis’s. By made use of a great number of cence by attempting to present new then, it may be too late to overturn books, to be sure. But it must be evidence years after their convic- a wrongful conviction. emphasized that they did not own tions, as Davis did. Most of them Brandon L. Garrett them. They were these books’ failed to persuade the courts—until Author, Convicting the Innocent: Where trustees—just as they were, or they obtained DNA test results. On Criminal Prosecutions Go Wrong (forthcoming) strove to be, trustees of their inner average, it took 15 years from their Professor, School of Law resources. Gandhi was once asked conviction to their exoneration. University of Virginia by an anxious coworker, “Do I Even after testing definitively Charlottesville, Va. really need to renounce all my pos- proved their innocence, they often sessions?” He replied, “No. You had difficulty securing their have to renounce the possessor.” release. GANDHI’S That is what the Mahatma spent What of the vast majority of SPIRITUAL CORE his whole life doing. cases, like Troy Davis’s, that are In “Gandhi’s Invisible Hands” Michael Nagler much harder to resolve because [Autumn ’10], Ian Desai provides a Professor Emeritus DNA testing cannot provide clear unique perspective on the most Department of Classics and answers? Baude is right that we inspiring human career of the 20th Comparative Literature should not look to the courts first century. A couple of minor clarifi- University of California, Berkeley for a solution. Judges are institu- cations will make the article even Berkeley, Calif. tionally reluctant to second-guess a more useful. trial verdict years after it’s been Early on, Desai refers to “the Westerners, in particular, but passed down. We can, however, common conception of Gandhi as a also Indians are often surprised to look to legislatures. In the past solitary, saintly hero.” Gandhi is not learn that Mahatma Gandhi was a decade, states have passed laws best thought of as a “saint” in the very savvy and smart operator with that ease access to DNA testing and Western sense. He was a yogi—a organizational, managerial, and polit- establish new procedures to pres- karma yogi, to be exact. Karma ical skills of the highest order. They are ent fresh evidence. yogis, who are often cave-dwelling also unaware that he was exceptionally Still, more should be done. Leg- renunciates, work to turn their well read, well educated, and, finally, islatures should dedicate resources mental energies outward to the that he was well born—the son and to prevent wrongful convictions to benefit of the world, as Gandhi did. grandson of prime ministers of a small begin with. The adoption of sound Spiritual devotion and penetrative princely state in Western India. But procedures can reduce the inci- awareness are also part of the what is truly extraordinary is the dence of mistaken eyewitnesses, karma yogi’s repertoire. Gandhi degree of personal honesty and truth- imprecise forensics, and false con- may have been the first to com- fulness he maintained alongside these fessions. More states are rightfully pletely realize this path—certainly other skills. A singular man. requiring double-blind eyewitness he was the first to do so on such a Mari Sitaraman identifications, closer oversight of spectacular scale. Posted on wilsonquarterly.com
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FINDINGS brief notes of interest on all topics
Dirty Deal and reprinted the novel in 1963. But Dishonest Abe? a Massachusetts court held that the book violated state obscenity law, It’s fine for members of Congress, and the Supreme Court agreed to but Supreme Court justices aren’t hear the appeal. supposed to trade votes—especially The other case involved Ralph when somebody’s freedom is at Ginzburg, a notorious mail-order stake. Yet that’s what happened in pornographer. After a federal trial in two 1966 cases over dirty books and Philadelphia, he was convicted of magazines. L. A. Powe Jr. tells the obscenity for three works: a book story in the Journal of Supreme called The Housewife’s Handbook on Court History (July 2010). Selective Promiscuity, an issue of a One of the cases involved the magazine called Eros—which, scan- 18th-century novel Memoirs of a dalously for the time, showed a nude Woman of Pleasure, better known as black man embracing a white wom- Fanny Hill, the name of its protago- an, also unclothed—and a bawdy nist. (“Fanny Hill” may have been newsletter called Liaison. He was In the 1960s, smutty mailings postmarked slang for the female pudendum.) sentenced to three years in prison for “Middlesex, N.J.”earned Ralph Ginzburg a federal prison sentence. The sex-sodden book was written by the book and two years for the mag- John Cleland and published in two azine, and fined $28,000 for the a deal. Fortas would vote against parts in 1748 and 1749. Though it newsletter. He appealed to the Ginzburg, creating a majority in had provoked obscenity prose- Supreme Court. favor of affirming his conviction, if cutions in the United States since When the justices conferred on Brennan would join him in letting the early 19th century, the publisher the two cases, a majority, including Fanny Hill off the hook. Brennan G. P. Putnam’s Sons took a chance Abe Fortas, agreed that Fanny Hill agreed, and he persuaded Chief Jus- was obscene. Ginzburg’s fate hinged tice Earl Warren to change his vote on the decision of Justice Fortas, on the novel as well. who said he was unsure which way Justice Brennan, writing for a to vote. plurality of the Court, said that Later, Fortas changed his mind material generally had to be “utterly about Fanny Hill, for fear that ban- without redeeming social value” to ning the novel would unleash a wave be obscene. Fanny Hill had at least of censorship. Needing one more some redeeming value, according to vote, Fortas approached Justice expert witnesses, so it was safe. William Brennan, who had judged For Ginzburg v. United States, Fanny Hill and Ginzburg’s materials Justice Brennan came up with a new all obscene, and obliquely proposed test: “pandering.” Ginzburg’s publi-
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FINDINGS
cations had been marketed, Bren- ure rate, there would be roughly 275 that women may view more nan wrote, with “the leer of the sen- U.S. plane crashes and 20,000 fatali- behaviors as offensive because sualist.” Even the postmarks were ties every day,” he writes. At Virgin they’re more intent on maintain- lascivious: Ginzburg had tried to get Galactic’s projected launch rate of one ing harmonious relationships, or mailing privileges in Intercourse and flight a week, “there would be only a because they have a lower thresh- Blue Ball, Pennsylvania, before set- one in three chance that Virgin Galac- old for social pain. Whatever the tling for Middlesex, New Jersey. He tic goes for two years without a Chal- reason, it seems that both sexes ended up serving eight months of his lenger-type disaster.” apologize for behavior they con- prison sentence. Jackie McQuillan of Virgin Galac- sider inappropriate, but for wom- In a note to Justice William O. tic rejects the analogy. Branson’s en, a lot more behavior qualifies. Douglas, Justice Fortas later spacecraft won’t fly as fast or as high acknowledged that he’d made a mis- as the Challenger. Anyway, she says, Shame Shift take. He should have voted to free “the whole point of our effort is to Ginzburg from the jail sentence develop a system that is safer by Placing the blame while leaving in place the fine. “I was orders of magnitude.” Medical diagnoses of children alarmed by Brennan’s vote at sometimes shame the parents, but Conference to affirm the ban on Who’s Sorry Now? what’s shameful in one era may not Fanny Hill,” Fortas said. “So con- stay that way. trary to my principles, I . . . came out My bad In 1887, for example, Dr. John against Ginzburg—I guess that sub- When the actor Jim Belushi titled Langdon Down reflected on his dis- consciously I was affected by G’s his 2006 book Real Men Don’t cussions with parents of mentally slimy qualities.” Apologize, he may have been on to disabled children. (Down syndrome Fortas, who resigned from the something. At the University of is named after him.) Parents pre- Court in 1969 over allegations of Waterloo, in Ontario, psychol- ferred to hear that disabilities ethical missteps, added, “Well, live ogists Karina Schumann and resulted from environmental fac- and learn.” Michael Ross instructed 66 tors, he wrote, in part because “it students, half of them male and frees them from the suspicion of Pricey Ride half female, to note when they hereditary influence.” were rude to others and when That’s because of the stigma Space gamble they apologized for it. The women hereditary factors carried at the Contrary to the future envisioned in turned out to voice a third more time, W. R. Albury explains in the the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, the apologies than the men. online journal Hektoen Inter- first passenger spacecraft won’t be So does macho pride keep men national (September 2010). Eu- labeled Pan Am. Instead, hundreds of from saying they’re sorry? Not nec- genicists spoke of bettering the people have laid down deposits for essarily, the researchers report in human bloodline as a national pri- suborbital flights on Richard Bran- Psychological Science (November ority. Many maladies and misbe- son’s Virgin Galactic, which will fly 2010). Both men and women haviors were attributed to heredity, out of New Mexico—eventually. reported apologizing for about and people with inferior genes Ticket price: $200,000. four-fifths of transgressions, but the weren’t supposed to reproduce. But consider the risk, Charles women said they committed signifi- Consequently, parents cringed Seife cautions in Proofiness: The Dark cantly more of them. An additional upon hearing that heredity lay Arts of Mathematical Deception study confirmed that women are behind their children’s problems. (Viking). Since spaceflight began, likelier to perceive particular acts, Environmental causes were dif- about one percent of rockets have such as snapping at a friend, as ferent, especially in families with killed their passengers. “If today’s U.S. meriting an apology. servants. The blame, Down wrote, passenger aircraft had a similar fail- Schumann and Ross speculate could be placed on the nurse, who
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FINDINGS
“may be suspected of having anyone whom I can so entirely The relationship continued, but allowed the infant to fall or of hav- admire and enjoy,” he wrote her Peck fretted about the future. “Of ing drugged it with opiates.” afterward, and sent a book of his course you will be President,” she Today, by contrast, the eugen- essays so that “you may know me a wrote. “I can see you receding from icists have been long silenced, and little better.” Peck responded that me now.” She was right. After he won healthy parenting, not a healthy she’d been unable to tell him face to the Democratic presidential nomin- bloodline, is deemed vital for fam- face “what knowing you has meant ation in 1912, Wilson complained to ily and society alike. Rightly or to me.” her that reporters followed him “at all wrongly, many people believe that Thereafter, Wilson and Peck ren- times.” He could no longer see her, bad parenting causes some mental dezvoused periodically and corres- but they kept corresponding. disorders. So if a child’s troubles ponded frequently. In letters, he said In 1914, during the second year of seem to result from environmental he thought of her with “longing” and Wilson’s presidency, Ellen Wilson causes, parents may blame them- was “crazy” to see her again. Peck said died. Mary Hulbert (by then she was selves. But hereditary problems she was proud “to feel that you find divorced and no longer Peck) may can’t be blamed on anybody, me worthy of calling me yours.” In have harbored hopes of becoming according to Albury, other than Miller’s view, “it is possible, maybe the second Mrs. Wilson. But, ex- perhaps scientists who haven’t yet probable, that their relationship had plains Miller, marrying her would come up with cures. An explan- become physically intimate” by 1910, have been political suicide for Wil- ation that once stigmatized the year Wilson was elected governor son: His opponents would have parents now partly exonerates of New Jersey. Rumors about the two taken it as proof that he had cheated them. sometimes circulated, but seemed to on his late wife. Instead, the presi- have scant effect on his popularity. dent married Edith Galt, some 17 Woodrow’s Folly months after Ellen’s death. “I hope you will have all the Bermuda triangle happiness that I have In 1915, President Woodrow missed,” Hulbert sourly Wilson confessed to his wrote. fiancée, Edith Bolling Galt, On a few occasions what he later called “a folly before and during his presi- long ago loathed and re- dency, someone supposedly pented of.” tried to market “salacious” According to Kristie letters Wilson had written to Miller, in her book Ellen and a woman. During the 1912 Edith: Woodrow Wilson’s campaign, Theodore Roose- First Ladies (University velt, running as the nominee Press of Kansas), the folly of the Progressive Party, began in 1907, when Wilson defended his Democratic was president of Princeton competitor, after a fashion. University. He was married “Nothing, no evidence,” to the former Ellen Axson, Roosevelt said, “would ever but while vacationing on his make the American people own in Bermuda, he passed believe that a man like Wood- time with a married woman row Wilson, cast so perfectly named Mary Hulbert Peck. as the apothecary’s clerk, “It is not often that I can could ever play Romeo.” have the privilege of meeting Woodrow Wilson and Mary Hulbert Peck met in Bermuda in 1907. —Stephen Bates
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THE WILSON QUARTERLY
Rethinking the Great Recession
In embracing a victims-and-villains explanation of the recession, Americans are missing important lessons about the future of the U.S. economy.
BY ROBERT J. SAMUELSON
We Americans turn every major crisis into of double-digit inflation in the early 1980s, an event a morality tale in which the good guys and the bad guys that unleashed a quarter-century of what seemed to be are identified and praised or vilified accordingly. There’s steady and dependable prosperity. There were only two a political, journalistic, and intellectual imperative to find recessions, both of them short and mild. Unemploy- out who caused the crisis, who can be blamed, and who ment peaked at 7.8 percent. As inflation fell, interest rates can be indicted (either in legal courts or the court of pub- followed. The stock market soared. From 1979 to 1999, lic opinion) and, if found guilty, be jailed or publicly hum- stock values rose 14-fold. Housing prices climbed, bled. The great economic and financial crisis that began though less spectacularly. Enriched, Americans bor- in 2007 has been no exception. It has stimulated an out- rowed and spent more. But what started as a justifiable pouring of books, articles, and studies that describe response to good economic news—lower inflation— what happened: the making of the housing bubble, the slowly evolved into corrupting overconfidence, the cat- explosion of complex mortgage-backed securities, the alyst for the reckless borrowing, overspending, financial ethical and legal shortcuts used to justify dubious but speculation, and regulatory lapses that caused the bust. profitable behavior. This extended inquest has produced In some ways, the boom-bust story is both more inno- a long list of possible villains: greedy mortgage brokers cent and more disturbing than the standard explanations and investment bankers, inept government regulators, of blundering and wrongdoing. It does not excuse the naive economists, self-serving politicians. What it has- financial excesses, policy mistakes, economic miscalcula- n’t done is explain why all this happened. tions, deceits, and crimes that contributed to the collapse. The story has been all about crime and punishment But it does provide a broader explanation and a context. when it should have been about boom and bust. The People were conditioned by a quarter-century of good eco- boom did not begin with the rise of home prices, as is nomic times to believe that we had moved into a new era usually asserted. It began instead with the suppression of reliable economic growth. Homeowners, investors, bankers, and economists all suspended disbelief. Their Robert J. Samuelson, a columnist for Newsweek and The Washington heady assumptions fostered a get-rich-quick climate in Post, is the author, most recently, of The Great Inflation and Its Aftermath: The Past and Future of American Affluence (2008). which wishful thinking, exploitation, and illegality flour-
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What were they thinking? From Sandy Springs, Georgia, where this house went into foreclosure in 2008, to Wall Street, which traded in mortgage- backed securities,Americans before the Great Recession acted as if the nation would never again experience significant economic turbulence.
ished. People took shortcuts and thought they would get standard weapons (low interest rates, huge government away with them. In this sense, the story is more under- budget deficits) have already been deployed leaves open standable and innocent than the standard tale of calcu- the disquieting question of what would happen if the lated greed and dishonesty. economic system again lurched violently into reverse. But the story is also more disturbing in that it batters The economic theorems and tools that we thought could our faith that modern economics—whether of the Left forewarn and protect us are more primitive than we or Right—can protect us against great instability and imagined. We have not traveled so far from the panic- insecurity. The financial panic and subsequent Great prone economies of 1857, 1893, and 1907 as we Recession have demonstrated that the advances in eco- supposed. nomic management and financial understanding that supposedly protected us from violent business cycles— ruling out another Great Depression—were oversold, ur experience since 2007 has also revealed a exposing us to larger economic reversals than we thought huge contradiction at the center of our pol- possible. It’s true that we’ve so far avoided another Oitics. Prosperity is almost everyone’s goal, depression, but it was a close call, and the fact that all the but too much prosperity enjoyed for too long tends to
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destroy itself. It seems that periodic recessions and lation, misaligned pay incentives, and a mindless burst bubbles—at least those of modest proportions— devotion to “free markets” and “efficient markets” serve a social purpose by reminding people of eco- theory. The result, it’s said, was an orgy of risk taking, nomic and financial hazards and by rewarding pru- unrestrained either by self-imposed prudence or sen- dence. Milder setbacks may avert less frequent but sible government oversight. Mortgage brokers and larger and more damaging convulsions—such as the others relaxed lending standards for home mort- one we’re now experiencing—that shake the country’s gages because they were not holding them but pass- very political and social foundations. But hardly any- ing them on to investment bankers, who packaged one wants to admit this publicly. What politician is them in increasingly arcane securities, which were going to campaign on the slogan, “More Recessions, then bought by other investment entities (pension Please”? funds, hedge funds, foreign banks). These investors In a more honest telling of the story, avaricious were in turn reassured because the securities had Wall Street types, fumbling government regulators, received high ratings from agencies such as Moody’s, and clueless economists become supporting players Standard & Poor’s, and Fitch. All along the financial supply chain, people had incentives to minimize or ignore risks because the THE PROBLEM WAS NOT absent volume of loans, securiti- zations, or ratings deter- regulation; it was that regulators were no mined their compensa- tion. The more they smarter than the regulated. ignored risk, the more they earned. The result was a mountain of bad in a larger tragedy that is not mainly of their making. debt that had to collapse, to the great peril of the If you ask who did make it, the most honest answer entire financial system and the economy. is: We all did. Put differently, the widely shared quest The Right’s critique blames the crisis mainly on for ever-improving prosperity contributed to the con- government, which, it is alleged, encouraged risk ditions that led to the financial and economic col- taking in two ways. First, through a series of inter- lapse. Our economic technocrats as well as our politi- ventions in financial markets, it seemed to protect cians and the general public constantly strive for large investors against losses. Portfolio managers and expansions that last longer, unemployment that falls lenders were conditioned to expect bailouts. Profits lower, economic growth that increases faster. Amer- were privatized, it said, and losses socialized. In 1984, icans crave booms, which bring on busts. That is the government bailed out Continental Illinois National unspoken contradiction. Bank and Trust Company, then the nation’s seventh- Naturally, it’s unwelcome and unacknowledged. largest bank. In the early 1990s, the Treasury rescued What we want to hear is that we were victimized and Mexico, thus protecting private creditors who had that, once the bad actors and practices are purged, we invested in short-term Mexican government securi- can resume the pursuit of uninterrupted and greater ties. The protection continued with the bailout of prosperity. So that’s what most crisis postmortems the hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management in aim to do. They tell us who’s to blame and what we 1998. After the tech bubble burst in 2000, the Fed- must accomplish to resume the quest for ever greater eral Reserve again rescued investors by lowering prosperity. Good policies will replace bad. To simplify interest rates. only slightly, the theories of the crisis break into two The second part of the Right’s argument is that camps—one from the Left, one from the Right. government directly inflated the bubble by keeping From the Left, the explanation is greed, deregu- interest rates too low (the Federal Reserve’s key rate
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fell to one percent in 2003) and subsidizing housing. almost failed. They had lent billions of dollars to In particular, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac— Mexico, Brazil, and other developing countries— government-created and -subsidized institutions— loans that could not be repaid. If banks had been underwrote large parts of the mortgage market, forced to recognize these losses immediately, much of including subprime mortgages. the banking system would have been “nationalized,” We can test these theories of the crisis against writes William Isaac, who headed the Federal Deposit the evidence. Note: Each aims to answer the same Insurance Corporation between 1981 and 1985, in questions. Why did the system spin out of control? his recent book Senseless Panic. Losses would have What caused the surge in borrowing by households depleted banks’ reserves and capital. Instead, regu- and financial institutions? What led to the decline in lators temporized. They allowed bad loans to be refi- lending standards and, as important, the misreading nanced until banks’ capital increased sufficiently to of risk, even by supposedly sophisticated players and bear the losses. Still, regulators weren’t smart enough observers? to prevent the loans from being made in the first place. As for greed and dishonesty, their role in the cri- et’s start with the critique from the Left. The sis is exaggerated. Of course, greed was widespread presumption is that with adequate regula- on Wall Street and elsewhere. It always is. There was L tion, problems would have been identified also much mistaken analysis about the worth of mort- and corrected before they reached crisis proportions. gages and the complex securities derived from them. Although this analysis seems plausible—and has been But being wrong is not the same as being dishonest, embraced by many journalists, economists, and and being greedy is not the same as being criminal. politicians, and by much of the public—it rests on a In general, banks and investment banks weren’t uni- wobbly factual foundation. For starters, many major versally offloading mortgage securities known to be players were regulated: Multiple agencies, including overvalued. Some of this happened; testimony before the Federal Reserve, supervised all the large bank- the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission shows that holding companies, including Citigroup, Bank of some banks knew (or should have known) about the America, and Wachovia. Washington Mutual, a large poor quality of mortgages. But many big financial mortgage lender that had to be rescued and was institutions kept huge volumes of these securities. merged into JPMorgan Chase, was regulated by the They, too, were duped—or duped themselves. That’s Office of Thrift Supervision. Fannie and Freddie were why there was a crisis. Merrill Lynch, Bear Stearns, regulated. To be sure, gaps existed; many mortgage and Wachovia, among others, belonged to this group. brokers were on loose leashes. But there was enough If anything, the Right’s critique—Wall Street oversight that alert regulators should have spotted became incautious because government conditioned problems and intervened to stop dubious lending. it to be incautious—is weaker. It’s the textbook “moral The problem was not absent regulation; it was hazard” argument: If you protect people against the that the regulators were no smarter than the regu- consequences of their bad behavior, you will incite lated. By and large, they didn’t anticipate the troubles bad behavior. But this explanation simply doesn’t that would afflict subprime mortgages or the devas- fit the facts. Investors usually weren’t shielded from tating financial and economic ripple effects. The idea their mistakes, and even when they were, it was that regulators possess superior wisdom rests mainly not possible to know in advance who would and on the myth that tough regulation in the 1970s and wouldn’t be helped. In 1984, the shareholders of Con- ’80s prevented major financial problems. History tinental Illinois weren’t protected; when the FDIC says otherwise. In the 1980s, more than 1,800 banks rescued the bank, it also acquired 80 percent of the failed, including savings and loan associations. Their company’s stock. When the Federal Reserve orches- problems were not anticipated. trated a bailout of Long-Term Capital Management More important, many of the largest U.S. banks in 1998, most of the original shareholders lost the
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majority of their stake. After the bursting of the stock Greenspan and Ben Bernanke), most investors, most market bubble in 2000, most investors weren’t traders, most bankers, the rating agencies, most gov- spared massive paper losses, even with Alan ernment regulators, most corporate executives, and Greenspan’s easy money. From the market’s peak in most ordinary Americans. There were, of course, early 2000 to its trough in October 2002, stock val- exceptions or partial exceptions. Warren Buffett ues dropped 50 percent, a wealth loss of about $8.5 warned against the dangers of financial derivatives— trillion, according to the investment advisory firm but did not anticipate the problem of mortgages. In Wilshire Associates. The Big Short (2010), journalist Michael Lewis chron- Likewise, many investors weren’t protected in the icled the tale of professional investors who were dis- current crisis. The share prices of most major finan- missed as oddballs and deviants when they correctly cial institutions—even those that survived—declined questioned the worth of subprime mortgages. Econ- dramatically. The stockholders of Bear Stearns and omist Nouriel Roubini foresaw the connections Lehman Brothers suffered massive losses, and their between fragile financial markets and the real econ- executives and employees were among the biggest omy, but his early pessimism was a minority view. losers. Fannie and Freddie’s shareholders met a sim- People are conditioned by their experiences. The ilar fate. Institutions that were “too big to fail” did fail most obvious explanation of why so many people did in a practical sense. It is true that, both before and not see what was coming is that they’d lived through after the present crisis, some creditors were shielded. several decades of good economic times that made Foreign lenders in the Mexican debt crisis of the them optimistic. Prolonged prosperity seemed to sig- early 1990s were protected, and most (though not all) nal that the economic world had become less risky. Of lenders to major financial institutions were protected course, there were interruptions to prosperity. Indeed, in the present crisis. But to repeat: The protections for much of this period, Americans groused about the were not pervasive or predictable enough to inspire economy’s shortcomings. Incomes weren’t rising fast the sort of reckless risk taking that actually occurred. enough; there was too much inequality; unemploy- As for interest rates, it is probably true that the ment was a shade too high. These were common very low rates adopted by Greenspan (the one percent complaints. Prosperity didn’t seem exceptional. It rate on overnight loans lasted from June 2003 to seemed flawed and imperfect. June 2004, and even after that, rates remained low That’s the point. Beneath the grumbling, people of for several years) contributed to the speculative cli- all walks were coming to take a basic stability and mate. Some investors did shift to riskier long-term state of well-being for granted. Though business bonds in an attempt to capture higher interest rates, cycles endured, the expectation was that recessions and the additional demand likely reduced the return would be infrequent and mild. When large crises on these bonds somewhat. But a bigger effect on loomed, governments—mainly through their central long-term rates, including mortgages, seems to have banks, such as the Federal Reserve—seemed capable come from massive inflows of foreign money over of preventing calamities. Economists generally con- which the Federal Reserve had no control. Moreover, curred that the economy had entered a new era of rel- the fact that housing booms also occurred in England, ative calm. A whole generation of portfolio man- Spain, and Ireland, among other countries, seems to agers, investors, and financial strategists had profited exonerate the Fed’s interest rates policies as the main from decades of exceptional returns on stocks and cause of the housing bubble. bonds. But what people didn’t realize then—and still don’t—is that almost all these favorable trends flowed in one way or another from the suppression of high he central question about the crisis that must inflation. be answered is, Why was almost everyone It’s hard to recall now, but three decades ago, T fooled? “Almost everyone” includes most inflation was the nation’s main economic problem. It economists (starting with Fed chairmen Alan had risen from negligible levels of about one percent
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in 1960 to about six percent at the end of the 1960s lasted a total of 49 months, or about four years out of and to 12 to 14 percent in 1979 and 1980. Hardly any- 13. Peak unemployment, 10.8 percent as noted, was one believed it could be controlled, although it was a much higher than in the following quarter-century, source of deepening havoc, spurring four recessions when it topped out at 7.8 percent. Economists called since 1969, a stagnant stock market, and rising inter- this subdued business cycle “the Great Moderation,” est rates. And yet, the pessimists were proven wrong. and wrote papers and organized conferences to A wrenching recession—deliberately engineered by explore it. But the basic explanation seemed evident: then–Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker and High and rising inflation was immensely destabiliz- supported by the newly elected Ronald Reagan— ing; low and falling inflation was not. smothered inflationary psychology. It did so in a con- Declining inflation also stoked stock market and ventionally destructive way. Volcker tightened credit. housing booms. By the end of 1979, the Standard & Banks’ prime interest rates, the rates they charged on Poor’s 500 index had barely budged from its 1968 loans to their best customers, averaged 19 percent in level; by year-end 1999, it had risen by a factor of 14. 1981. There were gluts of jobless workers (unem- The rise in housing prices was less steep, though still ployment reached 10.8 percent in late 1982), under- impressive. In 1980, the median-priced existing home utilized factories, and vacant stores and office build- sold for $62,000; by 1999, the median price had ings. But by 1984, inflation was down to four percent, climbed to $141,000. Declining interest rates pro- and by 2000 it had gradually declined to the pelled these increases. As inflation subsided—and as unthreatening levels of the early 1960s. Americans realized that its decline was permanent— When Americans think of this inflation—if they interest rates followed. From 1981 to 1999, interest think of it at all—they focus on inflation’s rise and rates on 10-year Treasury bonds fell from almost 14 ignore the consequences of its fall, disinflation. But percent to less than six percent. Lower rates boosted these consequences were huge and mostly benefi- stocks, which became more attractive compared with cial. The two recessions that occurred between 1982 bonds or money market funds. Greater economic and 2007—those of 1990–91 and 2001—each lasted stability helped by making future profits more cer- only eight months. Over an entire quarter-century, tain. Lower interest rates increased housing prices by the economy was in recession for a total of only 16 enabling buyers to pay more for homes. months, slightly more than a year. By contrast, the Millions of Americans grew richer. From 1980 to four recessions that struck between 1969 to 1982 2000, households’ mutual funds and stocks rose in
12%
Inflation rate 9 10-year Treasury bond rate
6
3
0 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2009 Sources: Bureau of Labor Statistics and Department of the Treasury Disinflation and declining interest rates beginning in the 1980s lulled Americans into thinking economic wizardryhad eliminated economic instability.
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value from $1.1 trillion to $10.9 trillion. The 10-fold riskier strategies, because markets were less frenetic. increase outpaced that of median income, which In particular, they could add “leverage”—i.e., borrow roughly doubled during the same period, reaching more—which, on any given trade, might enhance $42,000. Over the same years, households’ real estate profits. wealth jumped from $2.9 trillion to $12.2 trillion. So, paradoxically, the reduction of risk prompted Feeling richer and less vulnerable to recessions, Americans to take on more risk. From 1995 to 2007, Americans borrowed more (often against their higher household debt grew from 92 percent to 138 percent of disposable income. Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, and other AMERICANS DIDN’T THINK they were financial institutions became heavily depend- behaving foolishly because so many people ent on short-term loans that underpinned lever- were doing the same thing. age ratios of 30 to 1 or more. (In effect, firms had $30 of loans for every home values). This borrowing helped fuel a con- $1 of shareholder capital.) Economists and govern- sumption boom that sustained economic expansion. ment regulators became complacent and permissive. Disinflation had, it seemed, triggered a virtuous cir- Optimism became self-fulfilling and self-reinforcing. cle of steady economic and wealth growth. Americans didn’t think they were behaving foolishly It was not just the real economy of production and because so many people were doing the same thing. jobs that seemed to have become more stable. Finan- This—not deregulation or investor “moral hazard”— cial markets—stocks, bonds, foreign exchange, and was the foundry in which the crisis was forged. securities of all sorts—also seemed calmer. Volatility, What now seems unwise could be rationalized a measure of how much prices typically fluctuate, then. Although households borrowed more, their declined in the early 2000s. Sophisticated investors wealth expanded so rapidly that their net worth—the and traders understood this. Studies confirmed it. difference between what they owned and what they Finally, government economic management owed—increased. Their financial positions looked seemed more skillful. The gravest threats to stability stronger. From 1982 to 2004, households’ net worth never materialized. In October 1987, the stock mar- jumped from $11 trillion to $53 trillion. Ascending ket dropped a frightening 20 percent in a single day, home prices justified easier credit standards, because but that did not trigger a deep recession. Neither did if (heaven forbid) borrowers defaulted, loans could be the 1997–98 Asian financial crisis (when some coun- recouped from higher home values. Because the rat- tries defaulted on loans) or the bursting of the tech ing agencies adopted similarly favorable price bubble in 2000. In each case, the Federal Reserve assumptions, their models concluded that the risks of seemed to check the worst consequences. Faith in the mortgage-backed securities were low. No less a figure Fed grew; Greenspan was dubbed the “maestro.” than Greenspan himself dismissed the possibility of Well, if the real economy and financial markets a nationwide housing collapse. People who sold a were more stable and the government more adept, house usually had to buy another. They had to live then once risky private behaviors would be perceived somewhere. That process would sustain demand. as less hazardous. People could assume larger debts, “While local economies may experience significant because their job and repayment prospects were bet- speculative price imbalances,” he said in 2004, “a ter and their personal wealth was steadily increasing. national severe price distortion seems most unlikely.” Lenders could liberalize credit standards, because As time passed, the whole system became more borrowers were more reliable. Investors could adopt fragile and vulnerable. If the complex mortgage secu-
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rities held by banks and others began to default—as If this explanation of the crisis is correct, it raises they did—then the short-term loans that were used to momentous questions. Since World War II, American finance the purchase of these securities would be democracy has been largely premised on its ability to curtailed or withdrawn, threatening the banks’ sur- create ever greater economic benefits—higher living vival. Because no one knew precisely which banks standards, more social protections, greater job and held which securities (and, therefore, which banks income security—for most of its citizens. The prom- were weakest), this process—once started—could ise has largely succeeded and, in turn, rests heavily on cause a panic within the financial system. Banks, the belief, shared unconsciously by leaders in both hedge funds, pensions, and corporations would parties, that we retain basic control over the economy. retreat from trading and lending for fear that they Until recently, the consensus among economists was might not be repaid. As banks and companies that another Great Depression was unthinkable. We hoarded cash, production and jobs would decrease. could prevent it. As for recessions, we might not be Basically, that’s what happened. The initial reaction able to eliminate them entirely, but we could regulate to disinflation, reflecting its real benefits, had disin- them and minimize the damage. Economic knowl- tegrated into overborrowing, speculation, and self- edge and management had progressed. These com- deception. forting assumptions now hang in doubt. The great delusion of the boom was that we mis- took the one-time benefits of disinflation for a per- t’s worth noting that this explanation of the pres- manent advance in the art of economic stabilization. ent crisis is neither widely held nor original. It We did so because it fulfilled our political wish. Iron- Ivindicates Charles Kindleberger, the late eco- ically, the impulse to improve economic perform- nomic historian who argued in his 1978 book ance degraded economic performance. This hap- Manias, Panics, and Crashes that financial crises pened once before, in the 1960s and ’70s, when occur in three stages. First comes “displacement”: a academic economists—among them Walter Heller favorable development such as new technology, the of the University of Minnesota, James Tobin of end of a war, or a change in government that Yale, and Robert Solow of MIT—sold political lead- improves the economic outlook. Next is “euphoria”: ers on an ambitious agenda. Despite widespread the process by which a proportionate response to the post–World War II prosperity, there had been reces- original development becomes an artificial “bubble.” sions every three or four years. Invoking John May- The last stage is “revulsion”: the recognition of nard Keynes, the economists said they could—by excesses, which leads to panic and a collapse of spec- manipulating budget deficits and interest rates— ulative prices. smooth business cycles and maintain “full employ- Beginning in the 1980s, the U.S. economy fol- ment” (then defined as four percent unemployment) lowed exactly this pattern. The decline of double- most of the time. They couldn’t, and the effort to do digit inflation was the original “displacement.” The so created the inflation that crippled the economy for ensuing prolonged prosperity spawned “euphoria,” 15 years. which culminated in the “revulsion” and panic of We still haven’t forsaken the hope for perfected 2008. But Kindleberger’s views—which built on those prosperity. After the recent crisis, both liberals and of the economist Hyman Minsky—have never com- conservatives offered therapeutic visions. Liberals manded center stage among academic economists. promoted expanded regulation to curb Wall Street’s Though widely read and respected, Kindleberger was excesses. Conservatives wanted a less activist gov- always something of a renegade. He expressed skep- ernment that would let markets perform their disci- ticism and even contempt for the mathematical mod- plining functions. Both may achieve some goals. Lib- els and theoretical constructs that have defined main- erals have already engineered greater regulation. stream macroeconomics for decades, while paying Banks will be required to hold more capital as a cush- great attention to historical conditions and events. ion against losses. The new financial reform legisla-
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tion would allow government to shut large failing Great Recession constitute a watershed for global financial institutions, such as Lehman Brothers, with- capitalism, which has been (it’s said) permanently out resorting to disruptive bankruptcy. Conserva- discredited. Around the world, the political pendulum tives may take solace from fewer bailouts. They are so is swinging from unfettered competition toward more unpopular that investors must know that the chances government oversight. Markets have been deemed of getting one have diminished. Together, these incorrigibly erratic. Greed must be contained, and the changes may make the financial system safer. greedy must be taxed. These ideas reflect a real shift The trouble is that, like generals fighting the last in thinking, but in time that may not be seen as the war, we may be fighting the last economic crisis. main consequence of the economic collapse. These Future threats to stability may originate elsewhere. ideas imply that capitalism was unsupervised and One danger spot is globalization. Economies are untaxed before. Of course, this is not true. Businesses intertwined in ways that are only crudely understood. everywhere, big and small, were and are regulated Supply chains are global. Vast sums of money rou- and taxed. Future changes are likely to be those of tinely cross borders and shift among currencies. degree, in part because countervailing forces, mobile Countries are mutually dependent and mutually vul- capital being the most obvious, will impose limits. nerable through many channels: Supplies of oil and Countries that oppressively regulate or tax are likely other essential raw materials may be curtailed; cyber- to see businesses go elsewhere. attacks could cripple vital computer networks; manipulated exchange rates might disrupt trade and investment flows. Economic activity has grown more hat looms as the most significant legacy of international, while decision making remains largely the crisis is a loss of economic control. with nation-states. Although the global economy has W Keynes famously remarked that “practical remained basically stable since World War II, there men” are “usually the slaves of some defunct econo- is really no good theory as to why it should stay so— mist.” By this he meant that politics and public opinion and there are some signs (currency tensions, for are often governed by what economists (living and dead, instance) that it may not. actually) define as desirable and doable. In the years after Overcommitted welfare states pose another threat. World War II, the prevailing assumption among econ- Most affluent nations face similar problems: High omists, embraced by much of the public, was that we had budget deficits and government debts may portend a conquered the classic problem of booms and busts. loss of investor confidence, but the deficits and debts Grave economic crises afflicted only developing countries have been driven higher by massive social spending— or developed countries that had grossly mismanaged on pensions, health care, unemployment insurance, their affairs. This common view is no longer tenable. It education—that people have come to expect. Eco- has been refuted by events. nomics and politics are colliding. If the debt and Our economic knowledge and tools came up short. deficits aren’t controlled, will investors someday Either they were overwhelmed by change or their desert bond markets, jolting interest rates upward power was always exaggerated. This does not mean and triggering a new financial crisis? But if many that economic growth will cease. Chances are that the countries try to control deficits simultaneously, might United States and the other prosperous nations of the a tidal wave of spending cuts and tax increases cause developed world will, over time, get wealthier as a a global depression? (The United States, Europe, and result of technological changes that are now barely Japan still constitute about half the world’s econ- glimpsed. But the widespread faith—and the sense of omy.) These are all good questions without good security it imparted—that economic management answers. The underlying problem is that economic would forever spare us devastating disruptions has change seems to have outrun economic understand- been shattered. Just as there has never been a war to ing and control. end all wars, there has yet to be an economic theory It’s widely believed that the financial panic and that can end all serious instability. ■
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THE WILSON QUARTERLY
Indonesia’s Moment
It is the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation and a highly successful democracy. How did Indonesia do it?
BY ROBERT PRINGLE
It is hard for a nation of 240 million, and one been rattled by China’s growing strength in Southeast Asia that is overwhelmingly Muslim and a democracy at that, to and its aggressive territorial claims in the South China Sea, slip beneath the radar, but until recently that has been and thus more appreciative of America’s countervailing Indonesia’s fate. Like dozens of other less developed coun- power. tries, it has rarely come to the world’s attention except when Indonesia’s upswing began in 1998, when B. J. Habibie, it suffered a coup or a particularly sensational natural dis- a protégé of Suharto since childhood, succeeded him as pres- aster. In November, however, even as the nation’s perenni- ident. Habibie is a brilliant, German-educated engineer ally active Mount Merapi was dramatically erupting again, who rose to the top ranks of Germany’s aeronautical indus- Indonesia was in the spotlight for another reason, as a visit try before Suharto brought him home in 1974 and eventu- by President Barack Obama signaled that the country he ally made him vice president. But Habibie remained an awk- first saw as a small child has emerged from obscurity. ward technocrat with no apparent aptitude for politics, Obama’s decision to go to Indonesia certified a truth often ridiculed for promoting improbable schemes, such as already recognized by informed observers. After more than his insistence at the end of the Cold War on purchasing a decade as an increasingly stable and genuinely free democ- dozens of ships of the defunct East German navy. racy, Indonesia is beginning to make its weight felt in the Yet in less than two years as president, in the midst of a wider world. On Wall Street, where many have been financial and political meltdown triggered by the Asian impressed by the nation’s steady economic growth, there is financial crisis, Habibie, supported by a robust reform talk of Indonesia adding its “I” to the BRICs, as the world’s movement, terminated military rule, unchained the press, largest emerging economies (Brazil, Russia, India, and and ended Indonesia’s disastrous 24-year occupation of China) are collectively known. With the human rights East Timor. abuses that prevailed during the three-decade regime of Most important, he inaugurated a radically decentral- President Suharto largely a thing of the past, there is a new ized democracy, transferring real power to some 470 districts warmth in relations with the United States. And even and cities, instituting local elections all the way to the village though China has become a major market for Indonesia’s level, and allocating a third of the national budget to sup- products—especially minerals, timber, and fish—Jakarta has port the new system. These were not cosmetic changes. Habibie and the reformers who supported him were con- Robert Pringle, a retired U.S. Foreign Service officer, is the author of Understanding Islam in Indonesia: Politics and Diversity (2010). vinced that a country as huge and diverse as Indonesia
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During his November visit to the country where he lived for several years as a boy, President Barack Obama (with President Susilo Bambang Yud- hoyono) worked to strengthen U.S.-Indonesian relations and vowed to end “years of mistrust” between the West and the Muslim world.
could not have genuine democracy without devolving real Indonesia is probably best understood in terms of dual- power from Jakarta. Seen in its totality, the democratic ities. Dualism Number One is embodied in the Indonesian transformation Habibie authored in Indonesia, now more term for “fatherland,” tanah air, which literally means land than a decade old, has had few rivals anywhere. and sea. The sea divides the islands but it also unites them. Because the island interiors are mountainous, the people of the archipelago have always had to reach across the water ndonesia has always been a difficult place to under- to connect and trade with others. stand, and the surprising developments of the past Dualism Number Two juxtaposes the fertile island of I dozen years have in a way made it an even more Java, home to the majority of Indonesians, against all the complex place. A nation strewn across thousands of islands, rest. The others are collectively known as the Outer Islands, with dozens of major languages and innumerable ethnic where soils are typically poor and hard to cultivate. They are groups, it is an improbable success story. New York Times big producers of oil, rubber, spices, timber (from rapidly van- columnist Thomas Friedman once described Indonesia as ishing tropical forests), gold, copper, and, perhaps most “too big to fail, too messy to work,” and for a time its fledg- notably, coal. ling democracy made it even messier than before. The Outer Islands include California-sized Sumatra,
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with the fervently Islamic province of Aceh at its northern tip; Borneo, four times the size of Java but with only one- twelfth its population; and Sulawesi, the one that on a map looks like a Rorschach inkblot, with so many arms that early explorers thought it was more than one island and called it “the Celebes.” Dualism Number Three, perhaps the most important, is Apparent Chaos vs. A Degree of Coherence. Apparent Chaos derives mainly from the sheer complexity of Indone- sia’s diversity and the related messiness of its politics. Indonesia’s reputation for chaos also derives from its tur- bulent past, captured most famously in the 1982 film The Year of Living Dangerously, which dramatized the spasm of anticommunist killings in 1965 and 1966 after Suharto took power. (Like many Javanese, he used only a single name.) Generally suave and polite individually, Indone- sians historically have had a penchant for kris-wielding mob violence. The word “amuck” is of Malay/Indonesian origin, and anthropologists once used it to describe a pecu- liarly Southeast Asian form of hysterical mass attack. The Degree of Coherence results from a shared past, especially a common nationalism forged in resistance to Dutch colonialism. Trade united the archipelago, and at times parts of it were under consolidated political rule. It was blessed by linguistic unity. Most of Indonesia’s languages belong to one great family, including the national language, Indonesian. (Papua, Indonesia’s half of the great island of New Guinea, is the only region with significantly different linguistic and historical roots, and it is no coincidence that it has a separatist movement.) Indonesian is a modern version of Malay, a traditional language of regional trade. The Dutch, who began to colo- animists and ancestor worshipers until around the fifth nize Indonesia in the 17th century, made Malay into an offi- century ad, when Indian traders and holy men introduced cial administrative language in order to avoid teaching the Hinduism and Buddhism, together with the concept of natives Dutch, which they feared might encourage dan- divinely endorsed monarchy. These new influences gave gerous notions of equality. When Indonesian nationalists birth to the long-lived kingdom of Srivijaya in the seventh emerged early in the 20th century, they realized they had century and Majapahit in the late 13th century as well as been handed a national language on a silver platter, and thus some of the world’s greatest “Indian” art, such as the mon- avoided the plague of multiple tongues that would afflict so umental Borobudur Buddhist temple in central Java. many other nation-builders in the developing world. Today Islam arrived a millennium later, brought by Muslim Indonesian is spoken by the overwhelming majority of the Indians who traded in cloves and nutmeg with the people population, but usually as a second language. of the Spice Islands in what is now eastern Indonesia. Dozens of local languages and major cultural varia- Although Islam gradually became Indonesia’s majority reli- tions remain, scattered through Indonesia’s fragmented gion, the archipelago was never completely Islamized. Hin- ethnic landscape, but the country’s religions are layered, hav- duism survived on the island of Bali, and important pock- ing arrived one on top of another. Most Indonesians were ets of animism remained elsewhere. The Dutch introduced
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Christianity, which took root among animists and the eco- With 10 million people,Jakarta is one of the world’s largest cities, but nomically important Chinese minority that began arriving chaotic conditions—most residents lack running water and there is no subway system—have led some to talk of relocating the capital. on the heels of the Europeans. Indonesian Islam soon began to display another dual- ism. In order to achieve widespread conversion of the local War II, an enduring division emerged between those who people, especially in Java, it was important for Islam to tol- wanted an Islamic state that required adherence to sharia erate or incorporate powerful Hindu and animist traditions, law by all Muslims, and nationalists led by Sukarno (most much as the Prophet had done when he made the Kaabah, of them also Muslims). The nationalists, mindful of Indone- an ancient shrine in Mecca, the central holy place of Islam. sia’s diversity and bent on national unity above all else, pre- But debate about precisely where the line between tradition ferred a pluralistic state, requiring only belief in One God. and Islam should be drawn began early and has continued. He was assumed by many to be Allah, but this was not By the 19th century, an uneven polarization had developed enough for those who felt that Indonesia’s majority religion between those favoring doctrinal strictness—fundamen- deserved a more specific role. talism, if you will—and those leaning toward tolerance. When Sukarno declared independence in 1945, he During the Japanese occupation of Indonesia in World enshrined his pluralistic credo in the Indonesian constitu-
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tion. Advocates of Islamic statehood remain a force, but Abu Bakar Bashir, formed Jemaah Islamiyah, a regional today the great majority of Indonesia’s Muslims are mod- Southeast Asian jihadist organization that recruited Indone- erates, both doctrinally and politically. Many of them belong sians to fight in Afghanistan. The jihadis returned home to one of two Muslim mass organizations, Nahdlatul Ulama with motivation and bomb-making know-how, attacking (NU) and Muhammadiyah, with a combined member- hotels, embassies, and Christian churches, and stoking ship estimated at 60 million. unrest in Sulawesi and the Malukus (as the Spice Islands are While the two organizations are internally diverse, they now known). Occurring at the same time that Indonesia was reflect the polarity that developed before the colonial era. NU staggering under the impact of widespread unrest and represents a primarily Javanese tradition of relative toler- score settling brought on by the beginning of Habibie’s decentralized democracy, the attacks helped persuade many analysts that the coun- THE TERRORIST BOMBINGS in Bali try was falling apart. The ugliest crime of all in 2002 outraged most Indonesians. came in 2002, when Jemaah Islamiyah terrorists bombed a nightclub in Bali, killing ance, with strong ties to the more mystical Sufi branch of more than 200 people, most of them foreign tourists. The Islam, while Muhammadiyah has been more influenced by world was shocked: Hindu Bali is supposed to be a place for fundamentalism. eating, praying, and loving. But no one was more upset than In contrast to most Islamic organizations in the Middle Indonesians, who are proud of beautiful Bali and keenly East, both NU and Muhammadiyah have strongly sup- appreciate the tourist revenues it generates. The slaughter ported democracy and government development programs. left Jemaah Islamiyah discredited, and the ensuing gov- Both operate schools, hospitals, and other affiliates. Neither ernment drive against it—Indonesia’s security forces now participates directly in politics, but most members of Islamic have a deserved reputation for competence—led to a three- political parties in Indonesia—there are about half a dozen year stretch free of violent extremism. Though suicide major ones, as well as multireligious parties—have ties to bombers struck again in 2009, attacking two luxury hotels one or the other. In line with NU’s tradition of relative tol- in Jakarta, the terrorism trend line is down sharply. erance, some of its leaders have taken a liberal line on issues Indonesia’s Islamic unrest feeds on a streak of paranoia such as women’s rights, helping the organization to develop that almost all Indonesian Muslims share to some extent. a new constituency among Indonesia’s burgeoning middle It has many roots, including resentment over what are class. Abdurrahman Wahid, a product of NU who suc- seen as the anti-Muslim wars led by the United States in ceeded Habibie as president in 1999, even advocated closer the Middle East and Afghanistan. Equally important is the ties with Israel. grating reality that while Muslims are a majority of the Yet there is also a darker strand in Indonesian Islam. population, Islamic activists have been unable to make During the Suharto era, Saudi-financed religious schools headway against Indonesia’s multireligious constitution. promoted Wahhabi-style fundamentalism. The Saudi teach- ings were not explicitly violent, but they strengthened the intellectual basis for violent extremism, which had already n 1967, the hopes of Muslim conservatives were taken root in Indonesian soil. In 1948, a Muslim extremist high after the army put down a bungled commu- group calling itself Darul Islam had launched a guerilla war I nist power grab and deposed the aging Sukarno. against Sukarno’s nationalists in parts of Java and else- Muslim youth groups in Java had helped the army where. Not finally defeated until 1962, Darul Islam left carry out the killings during “the year of living dan- behind remnants that provided the nuclei for later mani- gerously,” which left thousands of nominally commu- festations of Islamic extremism. nist peasants dead and communism itself virtually In 1993 two Indonesian clerics, Abdullah Sungkar and exterminated. When the dust settled, Muslim leaders
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expected recognition and political rewards for their Ahmadiyyah, an Islamic sect that has offended other support. The newly installed Suharto, however, had Muslims by claiming that its founder was a new spent years as a young army officer pursuing Darul prophet. The government has often chosen to look the Islam rebels and continued to regard political Islam as other way. When FPI activists attacked a group of a threat. And he also saw it as a convenient replacement moderate Muslims and others in 2008 who had for the demolished Indonesian Communist Party as a protested FPI violence, injuring a dozen, the perpe- specter that could be used to justify military rule. trators got off with short stays in jail. Such incidents, Suharto was not all bad. The first two decades of his including violence against Christians and their reign brought near-double-digit economic growth churches in Muslim areas, violate Indonesia’s consti- rates, spurred by oil revenues and the president’s tech- tutional guarantee of religious freedom. However, the nocratic reforms. The introduction of high-yielding country’s generally admirable but very cautious pres- rice varieties lifted farmers’ incomes, while family ident, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, has thus far refused planning programs reduced the looming threat of to risk alienating his fundamentalist Muslim support- Malthusian disaster in Java and Bali and ers by enforcing the law. spurred the emergence of a village-level, The government’s reluctance to crack motor scooter–riding middle down on the thuggery of the FPI and class. From the time of its others is a major blemish on Indone- arrival with the spice trade, sia’s democracy, all the more so Islam in Indonesia had always because it is accompanied by thrived on commerce, and so it more general weaknesses in did again. Muslims grew increas- the judicial system, which is ingly observant, with headscarves shot through with corruption. A and other forms of Islamic dress becoming more fashionable, Seen as eccentric and possibly corrupt when while the more relaxed and he took over from President Suharto in 1998, quasi-animistic Islam of peasant B.J. Habibie put Indonesia on its new course. Java practically disappeared. Prosperity and globalization have nurtured new expressions few years ago, I interviewed Goenawan of Islam, from urban intellectual Mohamad, a famous Indonesian jour- discussion groups to lifestyle-centered nalist and Muslim liberal who has felt radio ministries. One creative Internet the sting of FPI intimidation. I asked him imam caused a minor sensation when he urged his lis- if the country needed more laws, perhaps a bill of teners to emulate the Prophet’s supposed practice of rights, to control such threats. “No,” he said, “we have taking baths with his wife. But rapid change also enough laws; we need to enforce the laws that we brought increasing secularization among Indonesia’s have.” Most Indonesian intellectuals would probably urban youth. Religious conservatives, disturbed by agree. pornography, nightclubs, and symptoms of female lib- Public opinion polling, highly developed in Indone- eration, provided a new political base for a draconian sia, often shows alarming degrees of support (although understanding of sharia, including support for such never majorities) for harsh interpretations of sharia, practices as the stoning of adulterers, polygamy (which such as cutting off thieves’ hands. But there is no evi- is legal but controversial), and even, among a small dence that such sentiment signifies increasing sup- minority, acts of terrorism such as the Bali bombing. port for an Islamic state. Very different and more cred- While terrorism is in retreat, Islamic vigilantism is ible evidence is available from the results of the four a serious problem, most notoriously the repeated vio- truly free national elections held since Indonesia’s lence by the Islamic Defenders’ Front (FPI) against independence, in 1955, 1999, 2004, and 2009. Despite
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the greatly increased level of Islamic observance over regularly get crosswise of each other. Both countries this period, about three-quarters or more of all voters have a dominant religion that is not the state religion. have supported political parties that favor the plural- Our respective fundamentalists are shocked by the istic status quo rather than an Islamic state. In 2009, excesses of youth and do things that worry the mod- only 13 percent of voters chose parties seeking or erate majority. Our politicians sometimes make things appearing to seek a rejection of pluralism. worse by pandering to vocal minorities. Indonesia has been the world’s third-largest gen- The Indonesian national motto, Bhinekka Tunggal uine democracy since 1999, and one of its few Muslim- Ika, usually translated as “unity in diversity,” seems to majority ones. That is arguably the most important mean almost the same thing as E Pluribus Unum, and may have been inspired by American precedent. But if you parse the ancient Bali- WHO DESIGNED INDONESIA’S largest nese text from which it comes, there is a subtle but mosque? A Protestant. powerful difference. The text is concerned with the dual religions of the quality of the country, even more important than its Majapahit Empire: Buddhism, the religion of contem- economic potential or its role in regional affairs. More plation and scholarship, and Hindu Sivaism, best under- than one-third of Indonesia’s national budget is stood as the religion of state affairs. The verse from which devoted to supporting decentralized local governments, the motto is drawn reads, “They are indeed different, but all of which have lively, competitive elections. they are of the same kind, as there is no division in truth.” Decentralization seems to be working, despite Unity, the verse suggests, is not always seen on the surface, plenty of bumps in the road. No one was surprised that and may sometimes be realized only through striving. it added a confusing new layer to the Indonesian pol- In both the United States and Indonesia, diversity icy process. People were taken unaware, however, when tends to push politicians toward the moderate center— local initiative began to stimulate new regional nodes at least in the long run. In a handful of Indonesian of economic growth in places such as Riau, in central localities, politicians who hoped to attract fervently Sumatra, and Samarinda, a coal-mining center in Bor- Islamic voters have enacted religiously inspired regu- neo, reducing Jakarta’s hitherto unhealthy dominance. lations that forbid women to be outdoors after dark, for Indonesia’s experiment could be a model for other example, or require knowledge of the Qur’an as a pre- countries, such as Turkey, that have often been too requisite for government employment. The regula- timid to release real power to local governments. tions are probably illegal, since the decentralization Indonesia’s tremendous diversity does make for a laws did not empower localities to regulate religion, but messier kind of democracy, but it also makes some Jakarta has done nothing to stop them. Many foreign kind of democracy imperative. That is an idea that journalists have pointed to these measures as a sign of should sound familiar to Americans; it is one reason creeping “sharia-ization” in Indonesia. What most of why the United States has a federal system with several them fail to mention is that such regulations have layers of government. proved to be unpopular with most voters, and no new Many facets of Indonesian reality that puzzle out- ones have been enacted since 2006. siders can be understood as a healthy response to diversity. In fact, it often makes sense to look for clues to Indonesian puzzles in the United States, which fre- t is easy to find portents of disaster in Indone- quently has forged a similar set of responses to enor- sia’s story, but one doesn’t need to be an extreme mous diversity. The national and local components of I optimist to imagine a fine future for this often- both the Indonesian and American political systems mystifying country. It has become a model democ-
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These schoolgirls in the city of Bandung make a pretty picture of pluralism, but concerns about political Islam are never far from the surface.
racy against all odds, and there is every reason to Sukarno, who once grandiosely claimed that he hope that it can continue to build on its recent blended all the world’s faiths and philosophies in his progress. As in all healthy democracies, its prob- own person (though he certainly did not hang on the lems are in plain view. For instance, the future role fine points of any of them). In this syncretic spirit, of political Islam remains a question mark. Another Sukarno selected a Protestant member of the Batak issue is uneven economic performance. Indonesia ethnic group from North Sumatra as the architect of boasts one of the fastest-growing stock markets in the Istiqlal Mosque, which was to be the largest such Asia and economic growth averaging around six per- structure in Southeast Asia. cent; it breezed through the recent global downturn Years later, during the Suharto regime, when the virtually untouched. But its widespread poverty and mosque was finally inaugurated, people noticed that low rate of job creation are still problematic, and the its vast dome was supported by 12 pillars. Instant corruption of the judicial system, combined with uproarious joke—the pillars obviously represented the heavy hand of bureaucracy, still deters foreign the Twelve Apostles and had been purposely smug- investment. gled into the plan by the Christian architect, proba- Like Americans, Indonesians love political jokes bly with a wink and a nod from his less than devoutly and innuendo. My favorite example of Indonesian Muslim patron! humor involves the vast Istiqlal Mosque in Jakarta, It almost certainly wasn’t true, but it was far too which President Obama visited on his recent trip. The funny not to repeat. As long as people are laughing, building was commissioned long ago by President one can hope, they will keep anger at bay. ■
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THE WILSON QUARTERLY
What Is a Tree Worth?
Trees brighten city streets and delight nature-starved urbanites. Now scientists are discovering that they also play a crucial role in the green infrastructure of America’s cities.
BY JILL JONNES
On April 8, 1905, President Theodore planted nearest the house at Monticello were full grown.” Roosevelt, attired in a dark suit and top hat, could be But trees were often taken for granted in a new nation found in Fort Worth, Texas, where youngsters looked on that seemed to have a limitless supply. from a nearby window as he shoveled soil over the roots Then along came Julius Sterling Morton, a nature of a sapling. It was Arbor Day, which schools across the lover who moved to Nebraska in the 1850s, briefly edited nation had recently begun commemorating, and the the state’s first newspaper, and soon entered politics. He ever vigorous president was demonstrating his hands-on conceived of an annual day of tree planting, inaugurat- love of trees. For Roosevelt, Arbor Day was no publicity ing a tradition that was rapidly adopted around the stunt. In an address to America’s schoolchildren a cou- country and then the world. (Today, Arbor Day is ple of years later, he celebrated “the importance of trees observed nationwide on the last Friday in April, though to us as a Nation, of what they yield in adornment, com- individual states mark it on other days.) In 1874, when fort, and useful products.” He saw trees as vital to the Nebraska proclaimed Arbor Day an official holiday, The country’s well-being: “A people without children would Nebraska City News rhapsodized about trees: “The birds face a hopeless future; a country without trees is almost will sing to you from their branches, and their thick as hopeless.” foliage will protect you from the dust [and] heat.” For centuries, tree lovers mighty and humble have But tree lovers quickly learn that many practical- planted and nurtured trees—elms, oaks, ginkgoes, mag- minded Americans—especially politicians—see little nolias, apples, and spruces (to name but a handful of value in trees, except perhaps as board timber. Roo- America’s 600-some species). “I never before knew the sevelt was an exception. An ardent birder and conser- full value of trees,” wrote Thomas Jefferson in 1793. vationist, he reveled in his power to create or enlarge 150 “Under them I breakfast, dine, write, read, and receive national forests, mainly by presidential fiat. In 1905, he my company. What would I not give that the trees appointed his partner in boxing and bush-whacking, forester Gifford Pinchot, to run the newly created U.S. Jill Jonnes is a historian and author of Eiffel’s Tower (2009), Conquer- Forest Service and ensure the wise conservation and ing Gotham (2007), and Empires of Light (2003). She will be a public pol- icy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center later this year. use of these public lands.
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President Theodore Roosevelt, a passionate nature lover, took the recently established Arbor Day very much to heart during his years in the White House. On a brief visit to Fort Worth,Texas, in 1905 he stopped long enough to plant an elm on the grounds of the Carnegie Library.
Roosevelt’s national forests were the grand gesture, and the benefits derived therefrom are inestimable.” In but they were supplemented by the more modest efforts the years after World War II, city forestry departments of a number of arborists who saw a need for trees in the planted new trees and maintained maturing ones, while nation’s cities and towns. The Progressive Era witnessed the U.S. Forest Service became known for Smokey Bear a great burst of urban tree planting, with Chicago’s and efforts to fight forest fires that raged out west dur- municipal forester declaring in 1911 that “trees planted ing the dry season. in front of every home in the city cost but a mere trifle, By the 1970s, most Americans lived in cities and
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suburbs, and the tree lovers among them watched sadly an American urban forest? How many poplars, ashes, as graceful old elms, big oaks, and verdant small wood- or lindens were there? How old were they and what lands disappeared, victims of Dutch elm disease, devel- size? How healthy? How did trees interact with the opment, and shrinking municipal budgets. This urban ecosystem? Did they really affect air quality? Anyone deforestation was one more blow to declining cities. whose family home was shaded by large oaks or City streets stripped of trees lost much of their charac- maples knew the delicious cool of those trees on a hot ter and beauty. “Elm trees were part of my life,” one summer day, but how much did they reduce the need for air conditioning? When thunderstorms lashed down, how many CHICAGO MAYOR RICHARD Daley Jr., gallons of rainwater did the leaves of a Norway a self-proclaimed tree hugger, wanted to maple absorb and keep out of the stressed sewer- know: Do more trees mean cleaner air? age system? And what effect did tree-lined streets and tree-rich land- Chicago woman ruefully told a forester in the 1980s. She scaping have on commerce? Or crime? Or human well- cherished the deep shade and cathedral-like canopy of being? Finally, how could you quantify the benefits so these majestic giants. “As each one died in my neigh- as to persuade city officials that trees were valuable borhood . . . the place began to look old, worn, and green infrastructure and not mere ornamentation—or, crowded.” Soon thereafter, she moved to another neigh- worse yet, a leafy liability? borhood that still had trees. Daley hired a young arborist named Edith Makra to be his “Tree Lady.” She was to get lots of trees planted, but the mayor still wanted to know if more trees meant hicago mayor Richard Daley Jr., a self- cleaner air. To get an answer, he prevailed on a fellow tree proclaimed tree-hugger born on Arbor Day, lover in Congress, 20-term representative Sidney R. C was equally heart sore. Upon taking office in Yates (D-Ill.), to earmark some serious federal research 1989, he vowed to plant a half-million trees as part of dollars. Makra was soon on the phone to the man she his effort to revive his decaying Rust Belt city. “What’s believed could answer the mayor’s question, and many really important? . . . A tree, a child, flowers,” the others about city trees: Rowan Rowntree, a 55-year-old mayor said in a Chicago Wilderness Magazine inter- visionary U.S. Forest Service scientist and the grandson view. “Taking care of nature is part of life. If you of the famous California wildflower botanist and author don’t take care of your tree and don’t take care of your Lester Rowntree. child, they won’t thrive.” Knowing that his city’s air “I told him the mayor would be getting us $900,000 was among the most polluted in the nation, he asked, and could he help us,” Makra recalls. The timing was per- “Don’t trees clean the air?” fect. While studying urban forests in Oakland, Tucson, Lumberjacks had long known how to calculate the and Menlo Park, New Jersey, Rowntree and his col- board feet value of a single lodgepole pine or a vast for- leagues had figured out how to establish a science of est, farmers the price of fruit-tree crops. And yet, in the urban trees, but they lacked critical funding, staff, and late 20th century, city trees collectively created an urban data. Now, not only was Makra offering significant forest about which we knew almost nothing. The truth financing, but Rowntree had trained two young scien- was that no one could provide an answer to Daley’s tists, Gregory McPherson and David Nowak, who were question that was grounded in science. ideally suited to work on the ambitious project. In fact, no one had concrete answers to a host of McPherson had grown up in a small, elm-shaded fundamental questions. What was the character of town in southern Michigan, then discovered a love for
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New York (SUNY), Syra- cuse, before taking a tenured position at the University of Arizona in Tucson. That’s where he was when Rowntree lured him to Chicago. Rowntree had met Nowak in the early 1980s when the younger man was a SUNY undergradu- ate, and was so impressed that he suggested Nowak do a master’s in urban forestry with him. In 1987, when Rowntree returned home to Berkeley to help run a U.S. Forest Service research project there, Nowak came out with him to work on his Ph.D. at the University of California. Chicago would be Nowak’s first post-doctoral job. In 1994, after three years of work that encom- passed Chicago as well as surrounding Cook and Du Page counties, Rown- tree and his protégés issued their study, the “Chicago Urban Forest Climate Project.” They could at last report the size of the Chicago metro area’s urban forest: It consisted of roughly 51 City dwellers have always delighted in the pleasures of shaded oases like this vest-pocket hideaway in down- million trees, two-thirds town Chicago. Now that scientists can attach a dollar value to the environmental benefits of trees, however, of which were in “good or planners are beginning to regard America’s urban forests as valuable infrastructure. excellent condition.” The report was replete with the American West while studying in Utah for a master’s charts and graphs and included detailed informa- degree in landscape architecture. Design was not his tion about commercial and residential distribution, strong point, but marshaling data was. He became tree canopy density, and other attributes of Chicago’s Rowan’s doctoral student at the College of Environ- woodlands. In Chicago, street trees made up only a mental Science and Forestry at the State University of tenth of the urban forest, but they provided a quar-
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ter of the tree canopy—what a bird flying overhead and his colleagues could calculate that forest’s mon- would see of the leafy tree crowns and foliage that etary value. The benefits that each tree planted provide shade and cover. And the canopy shaded among Chicago’s streets, yards, and businesses pro- only 11 percent of the city, less than half of the pro- vided over its life span came to $402—more than portion city officials believed was ideal. twice its cost. So how did all these trees benefit the city? Cer- Oddly, Daley, who was remaking Chicago as a tainly the trees of Chicago had long sweetened the air glamorous green city, never embraced the implica- and sheltered homes and streets from hot summers tions of the report. He pushed tree planting, but not and freezing winters, but now here were actual data in the scaled-up, strategic way Rowntree and his to show it. “In 1991, trees in Chicago removed an team had hoped for. In the byzantine world of estimated 17 tons of carbon monoxide, 93 tons of Chicago politics, no one ever discovered exactly why. sulfur dioxide, 98 tons of nitrogen dioxide, 210 tons Still, Daley’s patronage had made possible ground- of ozone, and 234 tons of particulate matter,” Rown- breaking tree science. tree and his colleagues said in the conclusion to their The Chicago study introduced a radically new report. In neighborhoods where trees were large and way to think about city trees, even for those who had lush, they could improve air quality by as much as 15 been thinking about urban forests for years. Ray percent during the hottest hours of midday. More Tretheway, longtime head of the Sacramento Tree trees and bigger trees meant cleaner air. Foundation, a nonprofit tree-planting organization, Trees in the Chicago metro area sequestered vividly remembers hearing McPherson speak at an about 155,000 tons of carbon a year. This sounded urban forestry conference in 1991. “He just blew me like a large amount, but, the report noted, that away,” Tretheway recalls. “These tree benefits, I’d annual intake equaled the amount of carbon emitted never heard of this before.” After meeting with by transportation vehicles in the Chicago area in McPherson and Rowntree, Tretheway persuaded the just one week. However, over time the urban forest U.S. Forest Service to open a new research station in could sequester as much as eight times more carbon Davis, not far from Sacramento. With the Chicago if the city planted greater numbers of large, long- study concluded, McPherson headed to California lived species such as oaks or London planes and to become head of the station’s Center for Urban For- actively nurtured existing trees to full maturity. A big est Research. The University of California, Davis, tree that lives for decades or even a century or two provided a source of graduate students to carry out can sequester a thousand times more carbon than, the research. say, a crab apple with a life span of 10 or 20 years. Tretheway acquired a wealth of studies and new data from McPherson and other tree scientists, who in the late 1990s worked up a detailed portrait of veryone “knew” that trees cooled down build- Sacramento’s five million trees and their numerous ings. McPherson measured the actual energy benefits. McPherson’s graduate student Qingfu Xiao E savings from Chicago’s trees. The shade from did pioneering research on the impact of trees on a large street tree growing to the west of a typical stormwater dispersal—an expensive problem for the brick residence, he found, could reduce annual air- many cities faced with federal mandates to upgrade conditioning energy use by two to seven percent. By their sewerage and water systems—by measuring planting more trees to cool down built-up city neigh- how much rainfall trees of various species and sizes borhoods whose higher temperatures made them intercepted. urban “heat islands,” and promoting utility-sponsored When McPherson had come west, he found under residential tree plantings, the city government could way in Sacramento a real-life study of how trees save further curtail energy use. energy. In 1989, the Sacramento Municipal Utility All of this information about an urban forest, District had been forced by outraged voters to close never fully documented before, meant that Rowntree its dysfunctional Rancho Seco nuclear plant. To
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reduce its peak load, the electric utility’s new, tree- In 2006, McPherson and his colleagues were loving CEO, S. David Freeman, had partnered with adding Queens as a reference city when the New Tretheway’s foundation to plant half a million young York Parks Department asked them to value all of trees for free in the yards of residential customers New York City’s 592,000 street trees. With the over the course of a decade. advances made over the preceding dozen years, By 1993, more than 111,000 trees had been McPherson could deliver a far more sophisticated planted, and the utility wanted to assess whether report than he had for Chicago. Energy savings: New they were starting to reduce energy use. It gathered York City’s trees annually saved roughly $28 million, information from 326 homes on tree mortality, location, species, and size, as well as all the rel- A STUDY IN NEW YORK CITY found an evant specs on each house. McPherson’s num- impressive net annual benefit from trees of ber crunching revealed that a tree planted to the $100 million. west of a house saved about three times more energy ($120 versus $39) in a year than the same or $47.63 per tree. Air pollution: Each street tree kind of tree planted to the south. The shade program removed an average of 1.73 pounds of air pollutants underwent “a paradigm shift,” according to econo- per year (a benefit of $9.02 per tree), for a total of mist Misha Sarkovich, whom the utility had assigned more than $5 million. The report also calculated that to monitor the program’s impact. Today Sarkovich street trees reduced stormwater runoff by nearly 900 runs the program, and he evaluates performance million gallons each year, saving the city $35.6 mil- not by how many trees are planted but according to lion it would have had to spend to improve its the “present value benefit” of each tree, expressed in stormwater systems. The average street tree inter- a dollar amount. cepted 1,432 gallons, a service worth $61, a figure About half of the nearly 500,000 trees the utility large enough to impress cost-conscious city has planted in the last 20 years are still alive, and managers. their overhanging boughs have done much to improve McPherson and his colleagues were also able to customers’ quality of life. Some of that improvement tally various benefits associated with aesthetics, can be measured. The trees’ shade collectively saves increased property values and economic activity, the utility from having to supply $1.2 million worth reduced human stress, and improved public health, of electricity annually. Running the shade program which were estimated at $52.5 million, or $90 a tree. costs the utility $1.5 million a year. As more trees are These drew on straight-up economic studies of real planted and the new canopy becomes lusher, the estate prices as well as social science research, which energy savings will continue to grow. When and if it showed, for example, that hospital patients who could can begin selling carbon credits, the utility will start see a tree out the window of their room were dis- to make a profit on its shade tree program. charged a day earlier than those without such a view. In the post-Chicago years, McPherson and Nowak Other studies showed that shopping destinations developed their science and models, engaging in ever with trees had more customers than those that more ambitious studies. McPherson began system- didn’t, and leafy public-housing projects experienced atically studying a reference city in each of 16 climate less violence than barren ones. zones to expand his database. As this new research All these data led to the finding that each year became known, city foresters and nonprofit arbor New York City’s street trees delivered $122 million in groups increasingly drew on it to advocate for trees. benefits, or about $209 a tree. As New York City’s
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Tree Benefits
The software program i-Tree can calculate the benefits of any urban tree in America. Here are the results for the pin oak in the author’s backyard.
parks and forestry officials well knew, they received showing the canopy cover in each of the 15 council- $8 million a year to plant and tend street trees, and manic districts. While Los Angeles’s overall tree canopy spent another $6.3 million to pay personnel. The net covered a respectable 21 percent of the city, the map benefit they were getting for all these trees was an revealed that the districts with the fewest trees were impressive $100 million. also the poorest. “When we went around with this For the first time, urban forestry science had a dra- map,” notes one official, “people who didn’t care about matic effect on public policy: In 2008, Mayor Michael trees started to care. Council members in east and Bloomberg quadrupled the city’s forestry budget, from south L.A. wanted to know why they didn’t have the $8 million to $31 million (down last year to $27 million), same level of trees as wealthier neighborhoods.” when he launched Million Trees NYC, a partnership In the wake of the report, the emphasis of Million with entertainer Bette Midler’s nonprofit New York Trees LA shifted. “We all knew there were places with Restoration Project. McPherson was thrilled to see sci- fewer trees, but with the map you can really see it,” says ence elevate urban forestry above the level of “a kumbaya executive director Lisa Sarno. “It’s become a matter of idea.” The million trees (350,000 are in the ground so social and environmental justice.” In poor residential far) planted by 2018 will transform the Big Apple, and neighborhoods where tree-planting efforts have been those lush, tree-lined streets and shaded parks may well stepped up, the demand is for lemon, lime, and orange become Bloomberg’s most visible legacy. trees, which produce fruit that is expensive to buy at In Los Angeles, meanwhile, another tree-hugging grocery stores. At long last, this radical new way of mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa, had already launched his thinking about city trees had begun to influence politi- own Million Trees initiative back in 2006. McPherson cians, planners, and city managers. and his team, who had worked with the city’s schools Once they had the science, urban forestry champi- a few years earlier to determine how trees could cool ons became frustrated by the puzzle of how to dis- and shade school property, were called in again. Their seminate what they had learned. David Nowak, who mission for Million Trees LA was to gauge the size of has long worked out of the U.S. Forest Service’s North- the existing canopy, figure out if there was room for eastern Research Station in Syracuse, New York, had another million trees in the 500-square-mile city, and, begun collaborating with the Davey Tree Expert Com- if there was, determine the best places to plant them. pany, a nationwide tree care company, to create free City officials directed McPherson to create a map computer software that could help others to replicate
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his work on the structure and benefits of urban forests. world and connect us to nature. (We also sometimes At the University of California, Davis, graduate student curse them for clogging our gutters with fallen leaves Scott Maco was creating similar software for McPher- or damaging our property when they fall down.) son just for urban street trees, the major concern of Trees are the largest and longest-lived structures on most foresters wanting to impress city hall with trees’ our planet. At the White House, one bedroom is still benefits. shaded by a magnolia planted by President Andrew In early 2003, Mark Buscaino, the new head of Jackson in memory of his wife. But such benefits urban forestry at the U.S. Forest Service, proposed don’t always have traction with public planners and pulling together Nowak and McPherson’s work into a politicians. Money does much of the talking. “The free software suite—christened i-Tree—aimed at city monetizing is a necessary evil,” Nowak says. “We foresters, landscape architects, urban planners, and know trees have great value, but they’re intrinsically nonprofit tree groups. Gregory Ina, general manager of underrated. You have to talk the language of people the Davey Institute at the Davey Tree Expert Company, who make decisions.” loved the idea and brought Maco on board in 2005 to As we humans wrestle with how to repair run the effort. (Of course, in the long run, more trees the damage we have wrought on nature, and how will be good for Davey Tree’s business.) In tandem to slow climate change, urban trees offer an obvious with the U.S. Forest Service and other partners, Maco low-tech solution. Every city, McPherson says, and Davey Tree have worked to make the i-Tree soft- should have a “maximally functional” canopy. “We ware more sophisticated and easier to customize, and should shoot for a performance standard, like how they provide customer support to the municipalities, many megawatt hours of air conditioning we can scholars, foresters, consultants, and nonprofit and cit- save, or how many pounds of nitrogen dioxide we can izen groups that use it. absorb, reducing ozone and smog.” Trees can play a Davey estimates that last year 2,000 i-Tree proj- role in cooling cities while making them more beau- ects were under way, mostly in the United States. A tiful, healthier, and friendlier to humans. And at a software package called i-Tree Hydro, which models time when everyone seems to want to go “green,” stormwater hydrology, will be released this winter. urban forestry science offers meaningful ways to One spin-off, developed in partnership with the think about how to do that. Business sage Warren Washington, D.C., nonprofit organization Casey Buffett, who knows something about the value of Trees, is the Tree Benefit Calculator, which tells thinking long term, has said, “Someone’s sitting in homeowners the value of their trees. It recently the shade today because someone planted a tree a informed me that my 25-year-old backyard pin oak long time ago.” last year provided the following benefits: It inter- It is easy to imagine that Theodore Roosevelt, cepted and absorbed 7,669 gallons of rainwater who believed that trees added “immeasurably to the ($75.92), raised my property value ($75.67), saved wholesome beauty of life,” would have been delighted 229 kilowatts of electricity ($17.36), and improved air but not surprised to learn of the many practical roles quality and stored carbon ($17.58). Of course, my played by the very trees most familiar to family also enjoys the pin oak’s beauty, the squirrels Americans—those that surround them in their daily frolicking about its branches and feasting on acorns, life in cities and suburbs. While science and tech- and the many cardinals and other birds it attracts. It nology are transforming and expanding the way we buffers us from a nearby busy street, abates noise, and think about trees, Rowntree, now a scientist emeri- once held a rope swing for my daughter. tus with the U.S. Forest Service, estimates, “We are only 50 percent of the way to knowing what trees really do for us.” What we have learned only proves ost of us take trees for granted, but when the old proverb truer than ever: “The best time to we do think of them, generally we appre- plant a tree was 20 years ago, the next best time is M ciate how they beautify and soften our today.” ■
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THE WILSON QUARTERLY
A Glimmer in the Balkans
After 20 years of nation-building in the Balkan countries, a big payoff may be in sight. But it will still be a long time before the United States can declare victory and pull out.
BY MARTIN SLETZINGER
There is a folk saying in the Balkans that chance of success, but must immerse themselves in encapsulates the region’s centuries of struggle. It goes local politics. something like this: “We have reached rock bottom, These lessons are now being reinforced in Iraq and but we continue to dig.” Afghanistan on a much broader scale, but there are Twenty years after Slovenia and Croatia seceded two significant differences. United States and North from the crumbling state of Yugoslavia, touching off Atlantic Treaty Organization troops never fought a a civil war in Croatia followed by bloody conflicts in ground war in the former Yugoslavia, arriving as Bosnia and elsewhere in the region, the digging peacekeepers after the fighting was over. And though continues. outsiders, they were operating in a relatively familiar For the United States and its European allies, European environment, not a completely alien which quickly plunged into efforts to moderate the culture. Balkan conflicts, the past 20 years have produced hard lessons about the limits of good intentions, the perils of trying to rearrange the affairs of other uperficially, the situation in the Balkans looks nations, and the limits of nation-building. The allies much better than it did only a few years ago. All have been reminded that it is difficult if not impossi- Ssix countries that emerged from the former ble for outsiders to forge new multiethnic states Yugoslavia are democracies. Slovenia has joined the chiefly by military means. It takes a long time for con- European Union, Croatia is knocking on the door, and tentious ethnic groups to learn to live together, and Macedonia and Montenegro have entered the EU acces- requires constant prodding, coaching, and reassur- sion process. Only Serbia and Bosnia (known formally ance. Outsiders can’t stand back if there is to be any as Bosnia and Herzegovina) have failed to move ahead. Serbia remains a de facto EU protectorate, its path to EU Martin Sletzinger is the former director of the Woodrow Wilson Center’s East European Studies program. membership blocked by its failure to hand over two
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In Belgrade, Serbs remember the dead on the 10th anniversary of NATO’s 1999 bombing of their country, which finally forced an end to the fighting in Kosovo. Old quarrels never really die in the Balkans, but many Serbs are slowly moving toward acceptance of Kosovo’s existence as a separate state.
accused war criminals sought by the international tri- economy.) Ethnic groups throughout the region still bunal at The Hague. Bosnia is at peace but has not been hope above all to create their own ethnically pure able to devise a constitutional structure that satisfies the states by gradually clearing their lands of others or country’s three main ethnic and religious groups. Amer- drawing entirely new borders. ican and EU peacekeepers remain an indispensable During the bloody 1990s, the Americans and presence in both countries. Europeans infused their rhetoric with pious appeals Under this relatively quiet surface, however, little for the maintenance of multiculturalism and ethnic has changed. The schisms that shattered Yugoslavia diversity in the new Balkan states. But where were and unleashed civil war have been papered over but they in the decade after the death in 1980 of Yugosla- not resolved. Ethnic and religious conflicts, along vian leader Josip Broz Tito, when Yugoslavia, which with economic backwardness, still plague all but one was nothing if not multiethnic, was disintegrating? of the former Yugoslavian republics. (The exception They barely lifted a finger. Then, in 1995, NATO is Slovenia, with its largely homogenous population bombed the ethnic Serbs in Bosnia in order to help of ethnic Slovene Catholics and a vigorous export-led preserve multiethnicity there. In 1999, NATO
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bombed the Serbs in Serbia and Kosovo in the name sion of Croatia in 1991 and Bosnia a year later—both of preserving a multicultural Kosovo. Croatia, Mace- with sizable Serbian minorities—the United States donia, and other new Balkan states were strongly and its leading NATO partners (Great Britain, urged to preserve the shaky multiculturalism of their France, Germany, and the Netherlands) immediately societies. labeled the Serbs as criminal aggressors. Western The sad fact is, however, that despite all these publics were horrified by the Serbs’ violent ethnic efforts, ethnic diversity is no longer a distinctive fea- cleansing of Bosnian Muslims in Bosnia’s Drina Val- ture of most countries in the region. Croatia’s popu- ley, their siege of the Bosnian city of Sarajevo from lation, for example, was once a typical Balkan jumble, 1992 to 1996, and the murder of 6,000 Muslim men and boys in and around the Bosnian town of Sre- brenica, to mention just DESPITE INTERNATIONAL efforts to some of the worst offenses. The ranting and preserve it, ethnic diversity is no longer a general mendacity of Ser- bian president Slobodan distinctive feature of the Balkan countries. Milosevic and the unsa- vory personalities sur- rounding him made it but after the shooting finally stopped, most of the even easier for the international community, led by Serbs living in Croatia, some from families that had the United States, to take a black-and-white view of lived there for centuries, had fled or been driven out, these interethnic conflicts. returning only long enough to sell or barter away The allies might have been more evenhanded had their homes to the Croatians. Ironically, the only two they seen the Serbs’ depredations in historical per- states that remain multiethnic are Serbia and Bosnia. spective, as another episode in many rounds of Serbia still has sizable minorities of Hungarians, interethnic violence stretching back to the begin- Croats, and Roma (gypsies). Bosnia remains multi- ning of the 20th century and earlier. From the Ser- ethnic in theory, but its two constituent entities, the bian point of view (and probably from that of the Muslim-Croat Federation and the Serb Republic, are Serbs’ enemies) the events of the 1990s were simply essentially free of minority groups, since virtually all payback. At the same time, the Serbs had special rea- of the Muslims and Croats who once lived in the Serb son to be upset and frightened by the collapse of Republic have fled or been forced out. Tito’s Yugoslavia. They made up 40 percent of the The latest monoethnic bloc to emerge is the break- country’s population and had done the most fighting, away statelet of Kosovo, which is now, since most of dying, and horse trading to help create a new its Serbs have fled, 95 percent ethnic Albanian. The Yugoslavia after World War II. They had the most to legality under international law of its unilateral lose from its disintegration. declaration of independence from Serbia in 2008 The outsiders also failed to fully appreciate that was disputed, but the United States and most of the the Serbs have always been the key local power. An EU countries promptly recognized it as a new nation. ambitious and hard-nosed people, they established an early medieval empire based in the area that is now Kosovo and over the centuries have stood up to nearly rom the beginning, the United States and the every great empire that has confronted them. The Europeans have seen Serbia and the Serbs Serbs were the first group in the Balkans to rise up (in F generally as “the problem”—and the Serbs 1804) against nearly 500 years of dominion by the certainly have given them every reason to think so. Ottoman Empire, ultimately winning a degree of Because of the bloody Serbian reactions to the seces- autonomy. They defeated the Hapsburg armies at
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The Balkans
Budapest Austria
Hungary The Balkans
Ljubljana
Slovenia Zagreb
Croatia Romania
Bosnia and Belgrade Herzegovina
San Marino Serbia
A Sarajevo d r i a Italy t i c Sofia Montenegro Pristina S e a Podgorica Kosovo Bulgaria
Rome Skopje
Republic of Tirana Macedonia
T y Albania r r h e ni a n
S Greece e a Ionian Sea
Big trouble in small packages: Serbia, the largest of the states that emerged from the wreckage of Yugoslavia, has only 7.3 million inhabitants,followed by Bosnia and Croatia, which each have about 4.5 million.
the beginning of World War I, only to be flattened by had not existed as self-governing polities since the the Germans a year later. Under Tito, they stood up early Middle Ages—and even though it was clear to Stalin and in 1948 were cast out of the interna- they were going to become largely minority-free tional communist movement, landing on their feet as states, in flat contradiction of the allies’ stated goals. a leader of the nonaligned countries (and cooperat- Now, with the mission still incomplete 16 years after ing closely with the West). Today, Serbia remains the the Dayton Peace Accords ended the war in Bosnia, single largest nation in the Balkans, even without the nation-building efforts that resulted are faltering, the 1.8 million people of Kosovo, and most knowl- especially in Bosnia, where the United States has edgeable observers agree there will be no stability or spent more than $2 billion on various aid, institution- security in the region until the Serbs’ legitimate con- building, and reconciliation efforts since 1993. An cerns are addressed. effort led by the EU to craft a constitutional agree- Through three different U.S. administrations, ment to bring together the largely autonomous beginning under President Bill Clinton, policymak- Muslim-Croat Federation and Serb Republic (both ers harbored a strong anti-Serbian bias. That attitude established under the Dayton Accords) under a fully fueled the U.S. imperative to save Bosnia and Croa- functioning central government in Sarajevo has made tia as functioning, legitimate states, even though they little progress. To make matters worse, Western
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nation-building efforts in Bosnia and Kosovo (where bia many walls still feature graffiti scrawled during the some 2,000 U.S. National Guard troops remain as NATO bombing of 1999 cursing Columbus for having peacekeepers, along with a larger European contin- discovered America.) gent) have taken a back seat to the larger and more The allies’ speedy recognition of Kosovo’s decla- complex undertakings in Iraq and Afghanistan. ration of independence in 2008 (on the heels of a report by a UN-appointed mediator calling for a more gradual transition) represents yet another entry t may be difficult to recall today, when the United on the list of their dubious Balkan achievements. In States is up to its eyeballs in Afghanistan and giving Kosovo their imprimatur, they also recognized IIraq, that for nearly a decade, from 1991 through the borders of 2008 as legal and inviolable. But those 2000, the Balkans were the primary focus of U.S. borders were arbitrarily established in 1945 when diplomatic and military efforts abroad. Clinton Tito made Kosovo an autonomous province within administration officials feared that if NATO could not Serbia, and he later modified them in an effort, iron- contain the violence on its eastern flank, within ically, to artificially increase the Serbian population Europe itself, it would become militarily irrelevant in after it had been depleted during and immediately after World War II. No freely elected parliament ever ratified Tito’s bor- SIXTEEN YEARS AFTER the Dayton ders. Why are they now inviolable? Peace Accords, nation-building efforts in the The Western powers insist that altering Balkans are faltering, especially in Bosnia. Kosovo’s borders would have created a dangerous precedent for other the post–Cold War world. By coming to the aid of the potential breakaways in the region, such as Western endangered Muslim population of Bosnia, moreover, Macedonia from Macedonia and, God forbid, the they thought they could improve relations with global Serb Republic from Bosnia. But it is the West’s hasty Islam. Another vain hope. But the anti-Serbian tilt, recognition of Kosovo that has created a dangerous never openly acknowledged, greatly hampered U.S. precedent. Seeing how the Serbia-Kosovo border was efforts to mediate the Balkan conflicts. drawn in the name of establishing a monoethnic The war in Bosnia might have ended significantly state, other states that have significant Albanian sooner had the United States not quietly scuttled earlier minorities—particularly Macedonia, Montenegro, attempts at a peace accord on the grounds that any such and Greece—must now wonder about the security of agreement would legitimate the Serbs’ ethnic cleansing their own borders. in lands they would possess under the settlements— These states are painfully aware that Kosovo’s concerns that were largely dropped at Dayton. In the independence is bound to feed fuel to the long- lengthy negotiations over the status of Kosovo, U.S. simmering passions for a Greater Albania. The eth- diplomats adopted a pose of neutrality, but when Kosovo nic Albanian minority in Macedonia is especially ripe issued its legally questionable declaration of independ- for trouble. Its members, who constitute 20 to 30 per- ence from Serbia in 2008, the Bush administration, cent of Macedonia’s population, are crowded into along with the vast majority of EU members, instantly the western part of the country, abutting Kosovo, recognized it. (Nobody was fooled by the American and they are mostly dissatisfied with their status. claims of neutrality: A central street in Pristina, the cap- Over the horizon lies the frightening prospect of a ital of Kosovo, bears Bill Clinton’s name and is graced by new Greater Albania incorporating Kosovo, West- a formidable statue of the former president, while in Ser- ern Macedonia, and Albania proper. Albania’s lead-
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ers vociferously deny any intention of creating such a state, but given all that has been said and written in their country during the past century or more about the dream of what Albanians call Illyria, their claims ring hollow. The Albanians are divided by region, tribe, and religion—about 70 percent are Muslims and 30 percent Christians—but for them, the ethnic identity and language they share come first. And the Albanian diaspora includes many eager nationalists who are willing to lend their considerable financial and political support to the cause, including a sig- nificant number in the United States. While the United States and the Europeans pro- fess to be strongly opposed to the creation of a Greater Albania, it remains to be seen if they have the neces- sary political will and resources to stop it from emerg- ing. The very prospect of a Greater Albania is a chal- lenge to all the efforts of the past 20 years. How would such an entity, which could fracture three sov- ereign nations (Macedonia, Montenegro, and Ser- bia), be a more stable, morally justifiable, and viable state than the Greater Serbia desired by Milosevic, which was no more than the old Yugoslavia in a new guise? Is it for the creation of such a Greater Albania that the EU, the United Nations, and the United States have tried to move heaven and earth these past 20 years? For the foreseeable future, however, what matters most in the Balkans are the Serbs. Remarkably, there has been progress on that front. In October, Serbia’s government agreed to direct talks with the leaders of Kosovo under EU auspices. The scope of the negotiations has yet to be deter- mined and the Serbs have emphatically stated that recognition of Kosovo’s independence is not on the table, but their willingness to talk at all represents a significant shift. Since the fall of Milosevic in 2000, Serbia’s leaders have disagreed over the fundamental choices con- fronting their country. A more European-oriented camp, led by President Boris Tadic, sees eventual membership in Euro-Atlantic institutions, especially the EU, as the salvation of Serbia. (Tadic’s Democratic Party recently reached an agreement with an important opposition Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had a laugh posing last October in party declaring that EU membership must be Serbia’s front of a statue of former President Bill Clinton in Pristina, Kosovo. number one goal—a proposition that will be tested
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against public opinion in parliamentary elections ten- mism, but these are hopeful signs. Two things must hap- tatively scheduled for this year.) Others, such as former pen for further progress to occur in the Balkans. Serbia prime minister Vojislav Kostunica, do not reject the must make its way toward membership in the EU, which European option but insist that the first priority must be will not only give it an enormous economic boost but to retain Kosovo. In pursuit of this goal, leaders on this help to weave the Serbs into a web of relationships with the rest of Europe, particularly with other regional powers such as Bulgaria and Roma- THERE’S ONLY ONE IDEA that most nia. But no progress on that front is possible as long as Serbian leaders agree on: Kosovo must Serbia refuses to deliver its two remaining fugitives to always be part of Serbia. the war crimes tribunal in The Hague, General Ratko Mladic, the notorious side of the Serbian divide have maintained warmer ties wartime leader of the ethnic Serbs in Bosnia, and Goran with Russia, with which Serbia shares the Orthodox Hadzic, a leader of the Croatian Serbs. (Hadzic’s where- religion, the Cyrillic alphabet, and not much else. The abouts are uncertain, but even though the Serbian gov- Russians have repaid them by threatening to veto any ernment has offered a large reward and made other ges- effort in the UN to recognize and admit Kosovo as a sov- tures toward Mladic’s apprehension, there is not much ereign state. doubt that he continues to enjoy the protection of key The only idea most Serbian leaders agree on is that members of the Serbian army’s general staff and intelli- Kosovo must always be part of Serbia. Not a single gence services.) Serbia will get nowhere until the status of Serbian leader has dared to state the simple truth that the two fugitives is resolved. Kosovo is lost. Much of Serbia’s population buys into its leaders’ delusion, but truth be told, most Serbs don’t really care all that much about Kosovo, and here is very little in the history of the Balkans few have their bags packed to move there. They are far to suggest that Serbia and its neighbors will more concerned with their country’s anemic economy T find their way to a peaceful future without and disastrously high unemployment rate (19 percent outside help. Despite the protracted, difficult, and last year) and its continuing political and economic often frustrating nature of their efforts to build peace isolation from the world. and nations in the Balkans, it is essential that the It is no accident that President Tadic agreed to talks United States and its European allies maintain their with Kosovo not only after much hard lobbying by EU stabilizing presence in Bosnia and Kosovo, with the members and the dangled prospect of accelerated EU EU taking the lead in negotiations and nudging Ser- membership, but after a visit by Secretary of State Hillary bia toward a more moderate stance. Clinton shortly before the Serb’s announcement (and one In the end, Serbia and Kosovo are probably best by Vice President Joseph Biden in 2009). While the rid of each other. There is little prospect that Serbia Europeans are taking the leading role as mediators, the will formally recognize Kosovo’s existence, but the two United States long enjoyed the most trust among the neighbors must establish at least a modicum of every- Balkan countries. The Clinton and Biden visits have day cooperation. They will be living next to each gone a long way toward convincing the Serbs that the other for a long, long time. There is conflict in their United States now really does have their interests in past, but also amity and a complex web of economic mind as much as those of their neighbors. and social ties. If they can find a way to live together Anybody who has been involved in Balkan affairs for in peace, the people of the Balkans may finally leave any length of time learns to guard against excessive opti- rock bottom behind. ■
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THE SEVEN MILLION How to Shrink America’s Criminal Population
After more than a decade of declining crime rates, America’s prisons are full and spending on corrections has ballooned. It’s time for the next step in the war on crime: breaking the cycle of repeat offenses by people who are already part of the core crimi- nal population and preventing others from going wrong.
Joan Petersilia on what to do about Alex Tabarrok on the lessons of bail
the prison crisis ...... p. 50 bondsmen and bounty hunters . . . . p. 56 Philip J. Cook and Jens Ludwig on
smart moves to prevent crime...... p. 62
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THE WILSON QUARTERLY
Beyond the Prison Bubble
For decades, America’s chief answer to crime has been to put more criminals behind bars for longer. That expensive strategy is yielding diminishing returns. It’s time for a closer look at ways of helping ex-offenders steer away from crime.
BY JOAN PETERSILIA
The announcement last summer that in handful of convicted felons, decreased by nearly 2009 the number of Americans behind bars had 3,000. Although the drop was slight in percentage increased for the 37th year in a row provoked a fresh terms, it was the first since 1972. (State prisons held round of national soul-searching. With its prisons 1.4 million inmates at the end of 2009 and federal and jails now holding some 2.4 million inmates— prisons more than 200,000, while the number held roughly one in every 100 adults—the United States in local jails, mostly for minor crimes, averaged has the highest incarceration rate of any free nation. about 770,000 over the course of the year, and the As a proportion of its population, the United States majority had yet to face trial.) In California, which incarcerates five times more people than Britain, has the nation’s largest state prison system, with nine times more than Germany, and 12 times more nearly 170,000 men and women behind bars, the than Japan. “No other rich country is nearly as puni- prison population fell for the first time in 38 years. tive as the Land of the Free,” The Economist has The national prison population—including those declared. held in federal facilities—grew by less than one per- But a highly significant fact went largely unre- cent, the slowest rate in the last decade. These marked amid the hubbub: The population of the changes mean it is very likely that we are seeing the nation’s state prisons, which house all but a relative beginning of the end of America’s long commitment to what some critics call “mass incarceration.” Joan Petersilia is the Adelbert H. Sweet Professor of Law at Stan- ford University and codirector of the Stanford Criminal Justice Center. If that shift does occur, it will not be because the She is the author of several books, including When Prisoners Come United States has solved its crime problem. In fact, Home: Parole and Prisoner Reentry (2003), recently reissued in paper- back, and she is coeditor of the new book Crime and Public Policy. if there were a close correlation between crime rates
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An influxof offenders forced the states to build more prisons,but annual costs as high as $50,000 per prisoner are spurring a search for newanswers.
and incarceration, the prisons would have begun particularly for violent repeat offenders. Legislatures emptying out in the late 1990s, when crime in most responded by passing “get tough” measures, including of its forms began to decrease. sentencing guidelines (which required prison sentences for some offenders who in the past might have been put on probation), so-called three-strikes-and-you’re-out ow did we get here? Soaring crime rates, espe- laws (which mandated prison terms for repeat offend- cially in the inner cities, are the most obvious ers), mandatory minimum sentences (forcing judges to Hpart of the explanation. From 1960 to 1990, impose fixed sentences regardless of mitigating factors), the overall U.S. crime rate increased more than fivefold, and truth-in-sentencing measures (requiring inmates to the frequency of violent crime nearly quadrupled, and serve a greater proportion of their imposed sentence the murder rate doubled. Drug use increased. The before becoming eligible for parole). These policy upsurge was widely blamed on lenient punishment, changes increased both the probability of going to prison
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if convicted and the length of prison terms. state’s prison population surged, and so did costs: The Many liberal critics, pointing out that two-thirds of state spent nearly $10 billion on corrections last year, those imprisoned in federal and state facilities are or about $50,000 per prisoner. (The national average African Americans and Hispanics, contended that “mass is $23,000.) Now that California is grappling with a incarceration” is little more than a reworked form of budget crisis, it is clear that it cannot continue on this racial and social domination—“the new Jim Crow,” as course. The evidence for the rest of the country may Michelle Alexander, a law professor at Ohio State Uni- be less dramatic, but it is no less clear. versity, put it in the title of her recent book. These vast sums are not buying as much as many But virtually all those who study the matter now agree people think. Mass imprisonment has helped reduce that imprisonment has reached often counterproductive lev- crime rates, but most specialists agree that the effects els, particularly in the case of drug possession and other non- have been considerably smaller than proponents violent crimes. The prominent conservative scholar James claim and that we are now well past the point of Q. Wilson, whose book Thinking About Crime (1975) set the diminishing returns. Confinement behind bars national crime control agenda during the 1980s, recently accounted for at most about a quarter of the sub- stantial decline in crime that occurred during the 1990s (mainly, most MASS IMPRISONMENT has helped researchers believe, by preventing imprisoned reduce crime rates, but the effects have been offenders from commit- ting fresh crimes against considerably smaller than proponents claim. the general public rather than by promoting a deterrent effect). wrote, “This country imprisons too many people on drug More important, that decline may well be reversed charges with little observable effect.” In my travels around if we don’t do a better job of planning for the reentry the country I have conducted an unscientific survey of of prisoners who have finished their sentences. There prison administrators, and nearly all of them say that 10 to is a very simple and immutable “iron law” of impris- 15 percent of their inmates could be safely released. onment: Almost everyone who goes to prison ulti- What we are seeing today is a growing recognition mately returns home—about 93 percent of all offend- that our approach to dealing with convicted criminals is ers. (A relative handful die in jail; the rest have life simply too costly. Not only is the price too high, but the sentences or are on death row.) Although the average benefits are too low. The states now spend an estimated offender now spends 2.5 years behind bars, many $50 billion on corrections annually, and the growth of terms are shorter, with the result that 44 percent of these outlays over the past 20 years has outpaced budget all those now housed in state prisons are expected to increases for nearly all other essential government serv- be released within the year. This year, some 750,000 ices, including transportation, higher education, and men and women will go home. Many—if not most— public assistance. will be no better equipped to make successful, law- abiding lives for themselves than they were before they landed in prison. alifornia, where I was involved in the correc- Today’s offenders are different from those of the tions system in various capacities under past. They are still overwhelmingly male (though the Creform-minded governor Arnold Schwarze- female proportion of the population has climbed to negger, pours 10 percent of its massive state budget nine percent), African American or Hispanic, and into correctional facilities. Between 1985 and 2005, unskilled. But the offenders leaving prison now are it built 21 new prisons—more than one a year. The more likely to have fairly long criminal records,
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lengthy histories of alcohol and drug abuse, signifi- ing and home health care. Such legal barriers some- cant periods of unemployment and homelessness, times protect us from dangerous felons, but they also and a physical or mental disability. Their records are make it hard for men and women who want to go more likely to include gang activities and drug deal- straight to get their feet on the ground. ing. In short, the average offender today leaves prison It should not come as a surprise to learn that we at a greater disadvantage (and more primed for trou- have a corrections system that does not correct. The ble) than his predecessors did. Yet fewer participate U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics reports that two- in prison rehabilitation and work programs than a thirds of released prisoners are rearrested for at least decade ago. When I was cochair of California’s Expert one serious new crime, and more than half are re- Panel on Rehabilitation in 2007, the panel found incarcerated within three years of release. The two- that California spent less than $3,000 per year, per thirds rearrest rate has remained virtually unchanged inmate, on rehabilitation programs, and that 50 per- since the first recidivism study was conducted more cent of all prisoners released the year before had not than 40 years ago. Former prisoners account for an participated in a single program. estimated 15 to 20 percent of all arrests among adults. Even as the states were cutting back in-house That means that thousands of Americans are being prison programs most severely, in the decade from victimized every year by criminals who have already 1985 to 1995, Congress and state legislatures were done time without experiencing “correction.” passing dozens of laws closing off many job opportu- At the same time, we are beginning to recognize nities to ex-offenders and restricting their access to that our overreliance on locking people up has an welfare benefits and housing subsidies. Former especially malign effect on poor urban neighbor- inmates are now commonly barred from working in hoods, where up to 20 percent of the adult male pop- some of the economy’s fastest-growing fields, includ- ulation may be behind bars at any given time. Not ing education, childcare, private security, and nurs- only do the men come home with diminished prospects that hurt the whole community, but as criminologist Todd Clear shows in Imprisoning Com- What They’re In For munities (2007), their absence weakens the family (State Prison Populations) and social networks they need when they come home and hurts those left behind. It is no accident that the sons and brothers of men who go to prison are more likely to follow the same path. These trends help Public-order cause crime rather than prevent it. offenses* Murder and Manslaughter Prison is where some people belong, many for Rape long periods of time. But we need policies that do not produce more crime in the long run. Budget cutters may rejoice at the chance to gut Drug offenses Other sexual assault corrections budgets, and liberal critics of “mass incar-
Other Robbery Fraud Drug offenders now account for about 20 percent of all state Car theft/ prison inmates, up from only six percent in 1980.Among all property crime Larceny Burglary Assault state prison inmates, the average sentence served is 2.5 years. About 38 percent are African American and 20 percent are His- panic. Roughly two-thirds lack a high school diploma or pos- sess only a GED.Women are still a small minority (less than 10 Other percent) of those behind bars, but their numbers have grown. violent crime
*Includes drunk driving, vice, weapons, and other offenses Source: U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics
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ceration” may celebrate any policy that shrinks the strates that offenders who earn a high school equivalency prison population, but cutting corrections budgets diploma while behind bars are more likely to get jobs will prove hugely counterproductive if we act without after release. Those who receive vocational skills train- giving serious thought to how we will deal with the ing are more likely to get jobs and higher wages after offenders who are released. Until recently, for exam- release. And those who go through intensive drug treat- ple, Kansas was a model of forward-thinking prison ment programs in prison are less likely to relapse outside policy. In 2007 the state legislature funded a range of of it. If we could implement effective programs, we could programs—involving education, drug treatment, and expect to reduce recidivism by 15 to 20 percent. To put it in concrete terms: About 495,000 of the 750,000 prisoners who will be A CHRONIC OFFENDER may cost released this year are likely to be rearrested within society more than $7 million in the course three years. With effective programs, we could reduce of his criminal career. the number of repeat offenders by nearly 100,000. We could do even subsidized housing—to help former inmates reinte- better if these efforts were linked to improved services in grate. The approach appeared to work: The number the community upon release. Such efforts would pay for of ex-offenders returning to prison dropped by 16 themselves by reducing future criminal justice and cor- percent between 2007 and 2009. But then came the rections costs. Economist Mark A. Cohen and crimi- economic crisis and cutbacks. According to state leg- nologist Alex Piquero found in a recent study that a islator Pat Colloton, recidivism rates quickly spiked. high-risk youth who becomes a chronic offender costs Kansas is back where it was in 2007. society between $4.2 and $7.2 million, principally in To avoid throwing away much of the progress we police and court outlays, property losses, and medical have made in reducing crime, it is more imperative care. We either pay now or pay later—and we pay a lot than ever that we pursue alternatives to prison and more later. new ways to ease inmates’ reentry into civilian life. Advocates of rehabilitation constantly struggle The good news is that after decades of false starts, against the widespread view that “nothing works.” In researchers have finally begun to zero in on the things part, this view grows out of an experience that began in that can make a difference in at least some cases. the 1980s, when horrendous prison crowding in south- The news was good enough to help persuade the con- ern prisons, economic woes, and court rulings spurred servative Bush administration to push through the some unusual experiments. When federal courts ordered $330 million Second Chance Act in 2007, giving states either to build new facilities or find some other way government agencies and nonprofits the tools to get to punish offenders, the states began experimenting some of these efforts off the ground. The money was with alternative sanctions. Georgia, for example, devel- to be doled out over time. The bad news is that amid oped an intensive supervision program (ISP) for pro- today’s intensified financial strains, Congress may bationers that yielded some evidence that it reduced be reluctant to continue funding this effort to recidivism rates—and also appeared to save the state the enhance prisoner reentry programs. cost of building two new prisons. By the mid-1990s, virtually every state had passed some kind of legislation for intermediate sanctions. ehabilitation programs reduce recidivism if Probation and parole departments across the country they incorporate proven principles and are tar- implemented a variety of ISP programs, including boot R geted to specific offenders. Research demon- camps, day reporting centers, and electronic monitoring.
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The hope was that some offenders who normally would cent. Several states, including Maine, Illinois, and Ore- have been bound for prison could be “diverted” from gon, are now using the RNR model. expensive prison cells to intensive community programs Community partnerships are another approach that that could keep a closer watch on them and offer more sup- hold great promise. An excellent example is the Boston port services. Other offenders could be released early into Reentry Initiative, a city interagency program that brings community programs. But as I discovered when I was co- together law enforcement, social service agencies, and director of the RAND Corporation’s national evaluation of religious institutions to start working with inmates while ISPs in the early 1990s, despite all the good intentions, they are still incarcerated. On the day the prison doors most of the ISP dollars wound up being used to fund swing open, a family member or mentor is on hand to more drug testing, parole agent contacts, and electronic meet each released prisoner, and social service agencies are monitoring rather than enhanced social services. The prepared to begin working to help the former inmate get main result was that offenders who violated court condi- a fresh start. The initiative focuses only on the highest-risk tions by using drugs, for example, were identified more offenders leaving prison. They are offered opportunities for quickly and sent into custody. work and treatment, but for those who fail to take advan- Within a decade, ISPs went from being “the future of tage of them and slip back into crime, the program calls American corrections,” as one probation officer enthused for swift arrest and fast-track prosecution. In a sense, the to a Washington Post reporter in 1985, to what seemed Boston Reentry Initiative is the ISP experiment all over to be a failed social experiment. Most of the programs again—but this time backed with treatment resources, were dismantled by the late 1990s. Some advocates of the mentorship, and community collaboration. The results prison buildup pronounced that alternatives to prison have been impressive. Harvard researchers found that had been tried and did not work. But the RAND study participants had a rearrest rate 30 percent lower than that found that in places where efforts were actually imple- of a matched comparison group. mented according to the original design, they were rather effective. Offenders who participated in drug or alcohol treatment, community service, and employment t is no longer justifiable to say that nothing works. programs had recidivism rates 10 to 20 percent below There is scientific evidence that prison and parole those of nonparticipating offenders. Iprograms can reduce recidivism. It is not easy and Today, we have even more refined knowledge of what it is not inexpensive, but it is possible. To retreat now works. The most popular approach involves using some- would be to pull the rug out from under hundreds of pro- thing akin to a medical technique, focusing on individ- grams that are contributing to the decades-long war ual cases. Called the risk-need-responsivity (RNR) against crime, which, whatever its shortcomings, has model, it uses risk assessment tools to size up each per- been one of the nation’s great success stories, vastly son and match him or her to the right program. The improving the lives of ordinary citizens and the vitality treatment efforts are behavioral in nature (with rewards of cities. One of the surest ways we know to keep crime and punishments) and geared to place the sharpest down is to prevent those who have committed crimes in focus on higher-risk offenders. There is a heavy empha- the past from doing so again. sis on cognitive behavioral and “social learning” That is not to say that criminality is a problem that techniques—ranging from anger management training can always be solved. People go to prison for a reason, to sessions devoted to weaning offenders away from and in many cases there is very little or nothing that any- their negative and antisocial attitudes. All of these efforts one can do to change the choices they will make in the use peers and family members to reinforce their mes- future. Rehabilitation programs are not for every pris- sages. And, as several studies show, they work. Crimi- oner, and we should not waste money on those who nologist Edward J. Latessa of the University of Cincin- lack motivation. But it would be foolish not to help nati studied the results of RNR efforts in Ohio’s 38 those who wish to change. Effective rehabilitation and halfway house programs and found that they cut the reentry programs that help offenders go home to stay are recidivism of high-risk offenders by as much as 20 per- good for them, and good for the rest of us, too. ■
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THE WILSON QUARTERLY
The Bounty Hunter’s Pursuit of Justice
When felony defendants jump bail, bounty hunters spring into action. It’s a uniquely American system, and it works.
BY ALEX TABARROK
Andrew Luster had it all: a multimillion- show Dog: The Bounty Hunter, tracked Luster for dollar trust fund, good looks, and a bachelor pad just off months. He picked up clues to Luster’s whereabouts the beach in Mussel Shoals, California. Luster, the great- from old phone bills and from Luster’s mother, who grandson of cosmetics legend Max Factor, spent his inadvertently revealed that her son spoke fluent Span- days surfing and his nights cruising the clubs. His life ish. He also gleaned useful information from a mysteri- would have been sad but unremarkable if he had not had ous Mr. X who taunted him by e-mail and who may have a fetish for sex with unconscious women. When one been Luster himself. Finally, a tip from someone who woman alleged rape, Luster claimed mutual consent, but had seen Dog on television brought Chapman to a small the videotapes the police discovered when they searched town in Mexico known for its great surfing. Days later, his home told a different story. Eventually, more than 10 he and his team spotted Luster at a taco stand, appre- women came forward, and he was convicted of 20 counts hended him, and turned him over to the local police. of rape and sentenced to 124 years in prison. There was Most people don’t realize how many fugitives from only one problem. Luster could not be found. the law there are. About one-quarter of all felony defen- Shortly before he was expected to take the stand, Lus- dants fail to show up on the day of their trial. Some of ter withdrew funds from his brokerage accounts, found these absences are due to forgetfulness, hospitalization, a caretaker for his dog, and skipped town on a $1 million or even imprisonment on another charge. But like Lus- bail bond. The FBI put Luster on its most-wanted list, ter, many felony defendants skip court with willful intent. but months passed with no results. In the end, the The police are charged with recapturing these fugitives, authorities did not find him. But Luster was brought to but some of them are chased by an even more tireless justice—by a dog (or at least a man who goes by that pursuer, the bounty hunter. name). Duane Chapman, star of the A&E reality TV Bounty hunters and bail bondsmen play an impor-
Alex Tabarrok is Bartley J. Madden Chair in Economics at the Merca- tant but unsung role in a legal system whose court dock- tus Center at George Mason University and director of research for the ets are too crowded to provide swift justice. When a Independent Institute. He writes regularly with coauthor Tyler Cowen at the popular economics blog Marginal Revolution. suspect is arrested, a judge must make a decision: set the
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suspect free on his own recognizance until the court is ready to proceed, hold the suspect in jail, or release the accused on the condition that he post a bail bond. A bond is a promise backed by incentive. If the suspect shows up on the trial date, he gets his money back; but if he fails to show, the money is forfeited. We don’t want to deprive the innocent of their liberty, but we also don’t want to give the guilty too much of a head start on their escape. Bail bonds don’t solve this prob- lem completely, but they do give judges an additional tool to help them navigate the dilemma. Bail might be a rich man’s privilege were it not for the bail bondsman. (Many bondsmen are women, but “bondsper- son” doesn’t have quite the same ring, so I’ll use the standard terminology.) In return for a non-refundable fee, usually around 10 percent of the bond, a bonds- man will put up his own money with the court. A typical bond might run $6,000. If the defendant shows up, the bondsman earns $600. But if the defen- dant flees, the bondsman potentially can forfeit $6,000. Potentially, because when a fugitive fails to appear, the court gives the bondsman a notice that essen- tially says, “Bring your charge to justice soon or your money is mine.” A bonds- man typically has 90 to 180 days to Duane “Dog” Chapman’s reality TV show imparts a sheen of lurid glamour to bail bonding, bring a fugitive back to justice, so when which in actuality is an essential industry dominated by mom-and-pop operations. a defendant jumps bail, the bondsman lets the dogs loose. Although a bondsman never knows when a desperate client might turn violent, his job is usually routine, as I found out when Dennis Sew volunteered to show me the ctually, that last image suggesting a massive ropes. Dennis has been in the business for more than 20 manhunt is misleading. Bail bond firms are years and in 2009 was named agent of the year by the A often small, family-run businesses—the wife Professional Bail Agents of the United States. Never- writes the bonds and the husband, the “bounty hunter,” theless, I was apprehensive as I drove to Baltimore early searches for clients who fail to show up in court. one morning to try my hand at bounty hunting.
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When Dennis and I meet, he hands me a photo thanks us for being quiet, because there’s a child in the showing our first fugitive of the day. I’ll be honest. I was house who was scared the last time the police came by. expecting to see a young African-American male. What The child is Chrissy’s son. We drive to the location and can I say? It’s Baltimore and I’ve seen every episode of look for the car. Dennis and his deputies see what looks The Wire. But I’m surprised. Taken a few years ago in bet- like the vehicle and knock on one of the dirty windows, ter times, the picture shows an attractive young woman, peering intently into the interior. The car is empty. Den- perhaps at her prom. She has long blond hair and bright nis and his deputies will return later. eyes. She is smiling. What it takes to be a successful bounty hunter is We drive to the house where a tip has placed her. It’s mostly persistence and politeness. On most days your leads don’t pay off, so you need to visit and revisit the fugitive’s home, work, and favorite hangouts. Waiting A DEFENDANT WHOSE BOND is co- is a big part of the game. Why politeness? Well, signed is less likely to flee. “Even the mean where do the leads come from? From people like ones are afraid of their mom,” remarks one Chrissy’s aunt—relatives and friends who might not seasoned bondsman. talk to the police but who will respond to a kind word. Bounty hunters are polite even to the fugitives a middle-class home in a nice suburb. Children’s toys are who, after all, are also their customers, and sadly, bounty strewn about the garden. I’m accompanied by Dennis hunters rely a lot on repeat business. One customer of a and two of his coworkers—a former police officer and a firm owned by the same family that runs the one Den- former sheriff’s deputy. One of them takes the back nis works for told him proudly, “My family and I have while Dennis knocks. A woman still in her nightclothes been coming to Frank’s Bail Bonds for three generations.” answers. She does not seem surprised to have four men Most fugitives don’t fight, and Dennis is eager to knocking at her door this early in the morning. She vol- avoid confrontation. Cowboys don’t last long in this unteers that we can search the house, and eventually we business. Most bounty hunters have a working rela- get the whole story from her. tionship with police officers and will sometimes call on “Chrissy,” our fugitive, is the woman’s niece. Chrissy them to make the arrest once a fugitive has been located. was at the house two days before and may return. The A bounty hunter also benefits from being prepared. A once attractive young woman has had her life ruined by typical application for a bond, for example, requires infor- drugs. Or she has ruined her life with drugs—sometimes mation about the defendant’s residence, employer, former it’s hard to tell. She is now a heroin addict whose employer, spouse, children (along with their names and boyfriend regularly beats her. The aunt is momentarily schools), spouse’s employer, mother, father, automobile shocked when we show her the photo. No, she doesn’t (including description, tags, and financing), union mem- look like that anymore—her hair is brown, her face is bership, previous arrests, and so forth. In addition, bond covered with scabs and usually bruised, and she weighs dealers need access to all kinds of public and private data- maybe 85 pounds. “Be gentle with her,” the aunt says, bases. Noted bounty hunter Bob Burton says that a list of even though, she predicts, “she will probably fight.” friends who work at the telephone, gas, or electric utility, The aunt gives us another location to scout: a park- the post office, welfare agencies, and in law enforcement ing lot where Chrissy and her mother are supposedly liv- is a major asset. Today, familiarity with the Internet and ing out of a car. We are about to leave when the aunt computer databases is a must.
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Good bond dealers master the tricks of their trade. brother became the keeper—which explains the origin The first three digits of a Social Security number, for of the strong rights bail bondsmen have to pursue and example, indicate the state where the number was capture escaped defendants. Initially, the surety’s guar- issued. This information can suggest that an applicant antee to the sheriff was simple: If the accused failed to might be lying if he claims to have been born elsewhere, show, the surety would take his place and be judged as and it may provide a clue about where a skipped defen- if he were the offender. dant has family or friends. The English system provided lots of incentives for If at all possible, bail bondsmen get a friend or fam- sureties to make certain that the accused showed up ily member to cosign the bond. The reason is simple. A for trial, but not a lot of incentive to be a surety. The defendant whose bond is cosigned is less likely to flee. As risk to sureties was lessened when courts began to Dennis told me, “In my line of work, I deal with some accept pledges of cash rather than of one’s person, but mean people, people who aren’t afraid of me or the the system was not perfected until personal surety police. But even the mean ones are afraid of their mom, was slowly replaced by a commercial surety system in so if I can get Mom to list her house as collateral, I know the United States. That system put incentives on both the defendant is much more likely to show up when he sides of the equation. Bondsmen had an incentive is supposed to.” A defendant whose bond is cosigned is both to bail defendants out of jail and to chase them also more likely to be caught if he does flee, because the down should they flee. By the end of the 19th century, bondsman will remind the cosigner that if the fugitive commercial sureties were the norm in the United can’t be found, it’s not just the bondsman who will be left States. (The Philippines is the only other country with holding the bag. a similar system.) Bounty hunters have robust rights to arrest fugitives. Bail was widely admired as a progressive institu- They can, for example, lawfully break into a suspect’s tion when the alternative was jail, but in the 1950s and home without a warrant, pursue and recover fugitives ’60s many judges and law professors began to think across state lines without necessity of extradition pro- that the alternative to bail should be release on a ceedings, and search and seize without the constraint of defendant’s own recognizance. Bail looked increas- the Fourth Amendment’s “reasonableness” requirement. ingly like a conservative institution that kept people, Just like everyone else, however, bounty hunters must especially poor people, in jail. Many opinion makers obey the criminal statutes. A bounty hunter who uses came to support the creation of pretrial services agen- unreasonable force or mistakenly enters the home of cies that would investigate defendants and recom- someone who is not a bail jumper is subject to criminal mend to judges whether they could be safely released prosecution. on their own recognizance. In essence, the agencies would replace the judgment of bail bondsmen with the judgment of a professional bureaucracy. he prerogatives of bounty hunters flow from the In the early 1960s, the Vera Institute of Justice’s historical evolution of bail. Bail began in Manhattan Bail Project in New York City began gath- T medieval England as a progressive measure to ering information about local defendants’ commu- help defendants get out of jail while they waited, some- nity ties and residential and employment stability times for many months, for a roving judge to show up to and summarizing it in a numerical scoring system conduct a trial. If the local sheriff knew the accused, he that it used to identify those who could be recom- might release him on the defendant’s promise to return mended for release on their own recognizance. The for the hearing. More often, however, the sheriff would experiment was successful. The failure-to-appear rate release the accused to the custody of a surety, usually a among felony defendants the project recommended brother or friend, who guaranteed that the defendant for release was no higher than the rate among those would present himself when the time came. So, in the released on bail. Largely on the basis of these results, common law, custody of the accused was never relin- President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Federal Bail quished but instead was transferred to the surety—the Reform Act of 1966, which created a presumption in
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bond. If the defendant fails to ap- pear, he may lose the deposit and be held liable for the full value of the bond. But while a defendant in a commercial bail system who shows up in court must still pay the bondsman a fee, those who do so in jurisdictions with systems like Illi- nois’s get all their money back (less a small service fee in some cases). And the only people empowered to chase down a defendant who has fled are the police. The results of the Manhattan Bail Project seemed to support the position of progressives who argued that commercial bail was unneces- sary. But all that the findings really demonstrated was that a few care- fully selected felony defendants could be safely released on their own recognizance. In reality, the project allowed relatively few defendants to be let go and so could easily cherry pick those who were most likely to appear at trial. As pretrial release programs expanded in the late 1960s and early ’70s, failure-to- appear rates increased. Today, when a defendant fails to appear, an arrest warrant is issued. But if the defendant was released on his own recognizance or on gov- ernment bail, very little else hap- Bail bond agents cater to captive customers near Los Angeles’s 5,000-inmate Men’s Central facility. pens. In many states and cities, the police are overwhelmed with out- favor of releasing defendants on their own standing arrest warrants. In California, about two mil- recognizance. lion warrants have gone unserved. Many are for minor Although the new law applied only to the federal offenses, but hundreds of thousands are for felonies, courts, the states have widely emulated the reforms. including thousands of homicides. Every state now has some kind of pretrial services pro- In Philadelphia, where commercial bail has been reg- gram, and four (Illinois, Kentucky, Oregon, and Wis- ulated out of existence, The Philadelphia Inquirer recently consin) have outlawed commercial bail altogether. In its found that “fugitives jump bail . . . with virtual impunity.” place, Illinois introduced the government bail or “deposit At the end of 2009, the City of Brotherly Love had more bond” system. The defendant is required to deposit with than 47,000 unserved arrest warrants. About the only time the court a small percentage of the face value of the the city’s bail jumpers are recaptured is when they are
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arrested for some other crime. One would expect that a hunter fails to find his man, the bond is forfeit to the gov- criminal on the lam would be careful not to get caught ernment. Because billions of dollars of bail are written speeding, but foresight is rarely a prominent characteris- every year and not every fugitive is caught, bond forfeits tic of bail jumpers. Routine stops ensnare more than a few are a small but welcome source of revenue. At the fed- of them. When the jails are crowded, however, even serial eral level, forfeits help fund the Crime Victim Fund, bail jumpers are often released. which does what its name suggests, and in states such as The backlog of unserved warrants has become so bad Virginia and North Carolina they yield millions of dol- that Philadelphia and many other cities with similar lars for public schools. Indeed, budget shortfalls around systems, including Washington, D.C., Indianapolis, and the nation are leading to a reconsideration of commer- Phoenix, have held “safe surrender” days when fugitives cial bail. Oregon, which banned commercial bail in 1974, are promised leniency if they turn themselves in at a local is considering a controversial bill to reinstate it, and church or other neutral location. (Some safe surrender even Illinois, nearly 50 years after establishing its alter- programs even advertise on-site child care.) That’s good native system, may once again allow bail bondsmen. for the fugitives, but for victims of crime, both past and Bail bondsmen monitor defendants, guide them future, justice delayed is justice denied. through the court process, and help them show up for trial. When defendants skip town, it’s the bounty hunters who track them down. But despite the benefits of commercial nserved warrants tend not to pile up in juris- bail, bondsmen and bounty hunters don’t get a lot of dictions with commercial bondsmen. In those thanks. The American Bar Association has said that the U places, the bail bond agent is on the hook for commercial bail business is “tawdry,” and Supreme Court the bond and thus has a strong incentive to bring those justice Harry Blackmun once called it “odorous.” After Dog who jump bail to justice. My interest in commercial bail Chapman arrested the serial rapist Andrew Luster and and bounty hunting began when economist Eric Helland delivered him to the Mexican police, Dog was the one who and I used data on 36,231 felony defendants released ended up in jail. Bounty hunting is illegal in Mexico, and between 1988 and 1996 to investigate the differences Chapman was charged with kidnapping despite the fact between the public and private systems of bail and fugi- that (according to him) he had a local police officer with tive recovery. Our study, published in The Journal of Law him at the time of the arrest. It surely didn’t help Chap- and Economics in 2004, is the largest and most com- man’s case that he was not trying to recover a bond that he prehensive ever written on the bail system. had posted, since Luster had put up his own money. Lus- Our research backs up what I found on the street: ter was quickly extradited by the FBI, which offered Chap- Bail bondsmen and bounty hunters get their charges to man no gratitude or assistance with the Mexican author- show up for trial, and they recapture them quickly when ities. As if to rub salt in the wound, the judge in the Luster they do flee. Nationally, the failure-to-appear rate for case refused even to reimburse Chapman for his expenses defendants released on commercial bail is 28 percent out of the $1 million Luster had forfeited. lower than the rate for defendants released on their Dog Chapman’s television show has brought him own recognizance, and 18 percent lower than the rate for and the bail bond industry plenty of fame and notori- those released on government bond. ety, but Chapman is a controversial figure among Even more important, when a defendant does skip bondsmen. The famed bounty hunter’s checkered his- town, the bounty hunters are the ones who pursue jus- tory includes prison time, drug abuse, and charges of tice with the greatest determination and energy. Defen- racism, and many bondsmen think that “Dog” doesn’t dants sought by bounty hunters are a whopping 50 per- do much for their image. Bondsmen don’t want to be cent less likely to be on the loose after one year than other the dogs of criminal justice; they want to be recognized bail jumpers. as professionals working alongside police, lawyers, In addition to being effective, bail bondsmen and and judges. They are tired of being called “odorous.” bounty hunters work at no cost to the taxpayers. The Bounty hunters want some respect. The record shows public reaps a double benefit, because when a bounty that they’ve earned it. ■
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THE WILSON QUARTERLY
The Economist’s Guide to Crime Busting
The old divide between hard and soft strategies is breaking down under a wave of new thinking about how to control crime.
BY PHILIP J. COOK AND JENS LUDWIG
What is the more cost-effective way to weigh in, in part because their perspective provides a way control crime? Is it to focus on making crime unattrac- to get past the stale debates over whether to adopt tive by threatening offenders with long prison terms? Or “tough” or “soft” solutions. to make the law-abiding life more attractive by provid- The economic theory of crime starts with the prem- ing better education and job opportunities? It’s an old ise that crime is a choice. It is not the result of character debate. The federal crime commissions of the 1960s or culture, or not only of those things, but is at bottom emphasized crime’s links with poverty and racism, and a product of decisions individuals make in response to President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society programs their available options. Most of us choose to abstain were central to his war on crime. But ultimately the from crime in part because we have a lot to lose if we get “hawks” won the debate about how to wage that war, as caught. Even so, we may slip up occasionally—say, at tax they did later in helping to launch President Richard M. time or when driving—but generally the temptations of Nixon’s war on drugs. The result has been plain to see, crime are not strong enough to override our restraint. with the rate of imprisonment surging to unprecedented The calculus for an unemployed dropout with readily heights. available criminal options and few licit prospects is Now the debate has been reopened. It is not so much likely to be quite different. that the public views mass incarceration, with its dis- This economic perspective generates a nicely sym- proportionately high levels of imprisonment for blacks metrical approach to crime control. Crime policy and Hispanics, as immoral or racist. Rather, the dreary should focus both on making criminal opportunities fact is that, in the face of gaping budget deficits, the states less tempting and on making the law-abiding life can no longer afford to support huge prison popula- more rewarding. We can debate how best to accom- tions. It seems like a good time for the economists to plish each of those aims (and long prison terms are by no means the only answer for reducing temptation), Philip J. Cook is the ITT/Terry Sanford Professor of Public Policy at Duke University. Jens Ludwig is the McCormick Foundation Professor but it’s important to realize that they are closely of Social Service Administration, Law, and Public Policy at the University linked: The threat of arrest and imprisonment is of Chicago. They are coeditors with Justin McCrary of the forthcoming book Controlling Crime: Strategies and Tradeoffs. sharper for those who have something to lose, so giv-
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In downtown Oakland, California, helmeted “Security Ambassador” Quinton Pierce called the police to deal with a drunken man. Pierce and other guards are employed by a business improvement district, a new breed of nonprofit organization that has proliferated nationwide and helped reduce urban crime.
ing at-risk people a bigger stake in the law-abiding Madoff comes to mind, along with Enron president Jef- life is a deterrent to crime. frey Skilling and publishing magnate Conrad Black. Thankfully, most of us are spared the temptation to rake in millions from fraudulent dealings by the simple f course, this logic doesn’t always work out. One fact that we wouldn’t even know how to begin. reason so many people were shocked by the The “crime as choice” perspective expands the dis- O criminal charges against NFL stars Michael cussion of crime control from the question of how many Vick (for staging dogfights) and Plaxico Burress (for new prisons we need to a wider-ranging consideration carrying a gun illegally) is that both had so much to lose. of how to make illicit choices less attractive. Here we will But these cases help prove the rule precisely because they focus on three proposals: raising the minimum age at are so rare. When high-income people commit serious which youths can leave school, promoting business crimes, it is much more often in response to opportuni- improvement districts and other forms of self-protection, ties for great financial gain: Investment bilker Bernard and increasing taxes on alcohol. To understand why
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these measures’ moment has arrived, it’s first necessary rate during the period 1991–2000.) If the incarcera- to take a brief excursion into the recent history of Amer- tion surge of the 1990s gets credit for the retreat of ican crime control efforts. crime, then the surge that occurred between 1984 and The most notable feature of that history is that the 1991 ought to get the blame for the increase in rob- rate of incarceration has increased by a factor of seven beries in that period. Clearly, that doesn’t make sense. in the last generation. America now locks up one percent The point is that we can’t learn much from such sim- of its adult population—the highest rate of imprison- plistic comparisons. ment in the world. While many thoughtful people are There are other reasons to question the size of the uneasy about our policy of mass incarceration, a good impact of putting more people behind bars. As Franklin number believe that it is justified by the dramatic reduc- Zimring, a law professor at the University of California, tions in crime since the early 1990s. Homicide and rob- Berkeley, has pointed out, Canada experienced a drop in bery rates have declined to levels not seen since the crime during the 1990s similar to what the United States early 1960s. Property crime rates have fallen even more saw, but without any notable expansion in its prison dramatically. As a result, America’s cities have seen big population. Of course, Canadians do not make an ideal improvements in property values and the quality of life. control group for Americans because too many other Harlem and many other urban communities that were variables are different to the north, but the general sim- once hobbled by pervasive crime are thriving. Wash- ilarity in crime trends for the two countries is nonethe- ington, D.C., the murder capital of the country for a less worth remarking upon. time during the crack epidemic, has become far more liv- In fact, the drop in crime remains an enigma—and, able and secure. These gains are worth a great deal, seemingly, a miracle. It was completely unexpected. No perhaps even as much as the vast human and financial expert (or anyone else we know of) predicted it. And now, costs of mass incarceration. But prisons are often given faced with the fact that this new world of low crime rates is far too much credit for what has occurred. real and has staying power, criminologists have been scram- The general view that crime is suppressed by put- bling to explain it. This is not just an instance of Monday ting more people behind bars is supported by a com- morning quarterbacking. The stakes are high, since the monsense argument: People who are in prison can’t “winning” explanation is bound to influence policy. commit crimes against those who are not. It would In the social sciences, it’s usually difficult to provide indeed be surprising if locking up so many people a satisfactory analysis of past national social and eco- didn’t have some effect on crime. But even a casual nomic trends. There is only one observation—a partic- look at the statistics challenges the view that prison ular historical trajectory such as the decline in crime— trends deserve all or most of the credit for the crime and numerous plausible explanations. There is no way drop. A look at three recent periods (see table) makes of knowing how that trajectory would have been altered it clear that the crime decline of the 1990s did coin- if, say, one of the factors cited as a possible explanation cide with a large increase in the prison population. had been removed from the mix. In the case of the But the large crime increase during the preceding decline in crime in the 1990s, there are several possible period coincided with an even bigger jump in impris- explanations. In addition to the big increase in the incar- onment, and incarceration rates continued to climb ceration rate, there were significant expansions of police after 2000 even though crime rates were relatively budgets and an easing of the gang wars over the lucra- static. (Robbery is a good indicator of violent crime tive crack trade. Other pressures, such as the large generally, and follows the same pattern as the murder increase in the number of children born to unmarried women and the growth of income inequality, probably pushed in the other direction, fostering an increase in Prisoners per 100,000 people Robbery rate crime. It’s nearly impossible to sort out the impact of 1984–1991 + 66% +33% these different forces. 1991–2000 + 53 -47 Thinking up possible explanations for the crime 2000–2008 + 5 0 drop can be a sort of parlor game for social scientists.
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Why not finger the popularity of hip-hop clothes such as of the prison population by about 400,000 people while baggy pants, which might impede fashionable young yielding little increase in crime. (The best estimate is that would-be criminals who have to keep one hand on their longer prison terms account for about a third of the waistbands? Or what about the obesity epidemic, which increase in the nation’s prison population.) Spending on might be weighing against the commission of certain corrections would decline by about $12 billion, enough active crimes? Or the pervasive video games that serve to fund an additional one million students per year. as a pacifier for the bored and disaffected? The point is It goes without saying that the extra schooling would that if we’re looking for a way forward, historical trends have a range of positive effects beyond crime reduction. in American life are unlikely to provide much guidance. People who earn high school diplomas enjoy better Fortunately, it’s some- times possible to isolate and measure the effects of a particular policy, espe- ONE EXTRA YEAR of high school cially if it has been tried in different times and places reduced arrest rates for young men by and a natural control group exists. That is the about 11 percent. case with three crime control proposals that deserve serious attention now. health, improved employment prospects, and greater In today’s labor market, people who don’t have high success in forming families. The same can’t be said about school diplomas have terrible job prospects and very lit- those who serve longer prison terms. tle to lose in economic terms, so it’s not surprising that two-thirds of the inmates in state prisons are high school dropouts. In about half the states it’s legal to drop out of ur economics-based “crime as choice” frame- school at age 16, but between the 1960s and ’80s some work also invites consideration of things that states increased their minimum age to 17 or 18. Those Ocan be done on the other side of the ledger, by changes provide a natural experiment in the effects of reducing criminal opportunity. That brings us to our sec- extra schooling on crime. Economists Lance Lochner of ond proposal. One of the most underappreciated devel- the University of Western Ontario and Enrico Moretti of opments in crime prevention is the rise of various kinds the University of California, Berkeley, found that people of private self-protection, from anti–car theft technolo- in the birth cohorts that were forced to stay in school gies to new forms of community organization. longer had lower crime and incarceration rates as adults For many youths, the choice to commit a crime such than their predecessors did. One extra year of high as shoplifting or robbery is strongly influenced by how school reduced arrest rates for young men by about 11 many opportunities they see and how lucrative these percent. It’s not clear what caused this improvement— opportunities appear to be. Private self-protection meas- everything from better economic prospects to the influ- ures give them a shorter and less appealing menu. Uni- ence of a more salutary peer group could be a factor— forms by themselves tend to restrain vagrant appetites. but it is a remarkable finding that has been confirmed by The ranks of private security guards in the United States similar studies in Britain and Italy. have been growing rapidly—at more than one million, At a time when state budgets are under severe strain, they now outnumber police officers. The move toward an increase in mandatory school attendance would be a a cashless economy has made robbery less lucrative, huge burden. But a lot of additional money for schools and burglars increasingly must contend with sophisti- could be usefully pared out of states’ prison budgets. cated alarms on houses. Technological change has also Imagine that prison sentences were cut back to what helped. High-tech devices on new vehicles that make they averaged in, say, 1984. That would reduce the size starting the engine without the key almost impossible,
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along with hidden GPS tracking devices, get much of the reasons for that—hormones, immaturity, stress—but credit for sharp declines in vehicle theft. There were surely one of the most important is intoxication. Public fewer car thefts in 2008 than there were 20 years earlier. policies that reduce alcohol abuse are a pretty obvious All of these efforts have the nice effect of taking the crime prevention measure. During the Euro 2000 soc- profit out of crime without resorting to punishment. cer championships, the mayor of the Dutch host city of An innovative form of self-protection that deserves Eindhoven ordered the city’s bars and restaurants to special note is the business improvement district. BIDs are serve only half-strength beer, hoping to stave off violence relatively new, usually established as nonprofit organiza- by Britain’s notorious soccer hooligans. The city tions in downtown commercial areas by merchants and remained peaceful for the most part. The next week the property owners who aim to make their neighborhoods games shifted to Belgium, where the beer was full “clean” and “safe”—two words that are repeated like strength and free flowing, and the British fans resumed mantras in the world of BIDs. The city government’s role their violent ways. is chiefly to provide the organization with the authority to Many studies show that alcohol is a significant factor collect fees from local businesses. There are now more in various kinds of crime. Victim reports suggest that than 1,000 BIDs in American cities, and they are starting about one-third of those who commit rapes and other sex to appear in Europe as well. The Hollywood Entertain- crimes and one-quarter of those who commit assaults ment BID in California was one of the pioneers in the have been drinking. One straightforward way to reduce 1990s. It employs armed private security officers, usually this sort of crime is to raise the price of beer, wine, and hard retired law-enforcement officers, who patrol the Holly- liquor. The average state excise tax on beer is now only wood district seven evenings a week, accomplishing a about 10 cents per 12-oz. bottle. Raising it to 55 cents great deal simply by being a presence. They keep an eye might not seem like a big increase, but it would be enough on potential troublemakers and get to know the local cast to persuade, say, some teenagers not to pick up that sec- of characters. The BID has also installed eight closed- ond six-pack on Thursday night. Data from a 2007 book circuit television cameras for the Los Angeles Police by one of us, Cook’s Paying the Tab, suggest that a 55-cent Department to use. All told, the organization spends a lit- tax would reduce beer consumption by perhaps 10 percent tle more than $1 million a year on private security, approx- and reduce crime by around six percent. And there would imately half of its operating budget. be significant fringe benefits, including fewer auto acci- BIDs have been very effective at reducing crime. A dents and more money for state treasuries. study one of us (Philip J. Cook) carried out with John These and similar ideas represent a new frontier in MacDonald of the University of Pennsylvania found thinking about crime. Whatever one thought of the old that BIDs cut crime and its associated costs by huge formula of putting more and more people behind bars, amounts. Every additional $10,000 a BID spent reduced it is simply no longer affordable. Likewise, the old debate the social costs of robbery by roughly $150,000, and of between hard and soft approaches to crime has been assault by $44,000. It wasn’t just the number of crimes exhausted. The line between those false extremes is that dropped, but the number of arrests as well. More- being blurred by new approaches that recognize that we over, there was no evidence that crime was displaced into can deter crime by improving peoples’ life chances, and nearby neighborhoods. that coercion can in some cases be a key element of such efforts, as with compulsory schooling laws. As in medicine, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of ur third proposal zeroes in on improving the cure. We must learn to think of programs as various as quality of individuals’ decision making rather preschool education and drug treatment as elements of O than changing the options confronting them. our crime-fighting strategy. America’s next war on crime It’s obvious that in considering criminal opportunities, must look at the full spectrum of solutions and pay spe- such as whether to break a beer bottle over the head of cial attention to giving those people who are most likely the obnoxious Yankees fan on the next barstool, people to turn to crime the skills and incentives to make a bet- often make foolish, impulsive choices. There are many ter choice. ■
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IN ESSENCE
reviews of articles from periodicals and specialized journals here and abroad
67 Foreign Policy & Defense // 70 Economics, Labor & Business // 71 Politics & Government // 73 Society // 76 Press & Media // 77 Religion & Philosophy // 80 Science & Technology // 83 Arts & Letters // 86 Other Nations
FOREIGN POLICY & DEFENSE tant to wage war about. Huntington’s idea, propound- ed in The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order What’s the Big Idea? (1996), “was the most novel and jarring,” in Betts’s opinion. The argues Richard K. Betts, director Harvard political scientist and THE SOURCE: “Conflict or Cooperation?” by Richard K. Betts, in Foreign Affairs, of the Saltzman Institute of War former U.S. national security Nov.–Dec. 2010. and Peace Studies at Columbia adviser saw globalization as a University. force for generating conflict, not As the 20th century drew Of the three, Fukuyama’s vi- consensus. He argued that to a close, foreign policy strate- sion in The End of History and civilizations could modernize gists struggled to imagine what the Last Man (1992) is seemingly without accepting Western politi- would drive world politics after the outlier. Fukuyama, a former cal ideals. Pushing liberal values the end of an era that saw two U.S. State Department official would only promote resistance; world wars and a global order who is now a professor of interna- America would be wise to follow a defined by the clash between tional studies at Stanford, argued more isolationist course. communism and capitalism. that globalization was bringing The homogenization Fukuyama Three ideas from that time stand about the “homogenization of all made so much of, in Huntington’s out, argued in the pages of well- human societies.” With the fall of opinion, pertained only to elites, who known books by Francis Fuku- the Berlin Wall and the triumph make up less than one percent of the yama, Samuel P. Huntington, of liberal democracy, states would world’s population. “Somewhere in and John Mearsheimer. no longer have anything impor- the Middle East a half-dozen young These three thinkers presented men could well be dressed in jeans, contrasting frameworks for un- drinking Coke, listening to rap, and derstanding the struggles for Three thinkers pro- between their bows to Mecca, put- global power, and their prescrip- posed different frame- ting together a bomb to blow up an tions for U.S. policy were starkly works for understand- American airliner,” he wrote, five different. But today, when one ing the global power years before 9/11. takes account of events since Sep- struggles at the end of Mearsheimer, who Betts tember 11, 2001, and examines the 20th century. Have describes as “an unregenerate “the conditions the authors set for their ideas stood the realist,” was, like Huntington, not their forecasts, it turns out that optimistic about the future. The test of time? they point in a remarkably simi- University of Chicago political lar—and pessimistic—direction,” scientist argued in The Tragedy
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of Great Power Politics (2001) FOREIGN POLICY & DEFENSE nations, organizations, or persons” that conflict would continue be- that had any role in the 9/11 attacks cause societies always fight for Ending the “in order to prevent any future acts power, not the spread of “nice of international terrorism against ideas.” He predicted that coming Endless War the United States.” conflicts would make people miss Some aspects of the war on terror the “simplicity and stability of THE SOURCE: “The End of Al Qaeda? Re- do resemble traditional warfare. The the Cold War.” Walls may fall, but thinking the Legal End of the War on Terror” terrorist organization Al Qaeda, for by Adam Klein, in Columbia Law Review, nothing really changes. Nov. 2010. example, is hierarchical and central- Betts argues that some of ized, like a sovereign state. It is pos- Fukuyama’s conclusions bring Will the war on terrorism sible to imagine a time when Al him more in line with his peers ever end? The nature of the con- Qaeda, weakened structurally and than is obvious at first. Fukuyama flict—irregular, against a nonstate financially, is no longer a threat. foresaw a struggle for recognition enemy—has raised fears that it (That time is not now. Al Qaeda was by many groups, stirring the won’t. Our traditional under- still strong enough in 2009 to assist potent forces of nationalism and standing of war, with its simple the would-be Christmas bomber in religion. He conceded that history on/off options and relatively his attempt to blow up a plane on its could “restart,” particularly if peo- clear-cut legal distinctions, is way to Detroit from Amsterdam.) ple who felt unrecognized politi- not well suited to the current con- But many terrorism specialists cally sought to assert greater flict, argues Adam Klein, a law argue that the graver threat today is power on the world stage. Fuku- student at Columbia University. from homegrown cells and lone yama said little about China, leav- The war on terrorism is now individuals, such as Army psycholo- ing “an elephant-sized exception nearly 10 years old, legally inaugur- gist Nidal Hasan, charged with the to the end of history.” If China ated by the 2001 Authorization for 2009 shootings at Fort Hood, Texas. “restarts” history, the distance the Use of Military Force. The law’s Such terrorists, aided and inspired between the Fukuyama thesis and scope is broad, giving authority to by Internet sites, are members of the pessimistic scenarios of the president “to use all necessary something that is more like a social Mearsheimer and Huntington and appropriate force against those movement than an organization. shrinks considerably. Big ideas are essential for policy- makers, who need an overarching vision as they grapple with daily challenges. But none of these three ideas has become the consensus position for shaping policy; they are “out of step with the attitudes that have dominated U.S. foreign policy and made it overreach after the Cold War.” What is needed, Betts says, is a fourth vision, one that pre- serves the “compatible elements” of Fukuyama, Huntington, and Mearsheimer, and provides policy- makers with a framework to help guide them as they navigate the 21st century. A clear-cut end is unlikely in the war on terrorism, since no one enemy can wave a white flag.
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Traditionally, the legal power to costing the country $1 billion a detain an enemy combatant is The United Nations year. The international commun- premised on—and limited by—the vastly overestimated ity directed nearly $400 million notion that a soldier is an agent of in aid to Jordan to help with the the number of Iraqi his sovereign. When the sovereign influx of Iraqi refugees from refugees who fled to declares the war over, the soldier is 2007 to 2009. no longer a threat. But that’s not true Jordan following the But evidence has emerged to of terrorists who act on the basis of 2003 invasion. indicate that the number of Iraqi personal ideology. refugees was nowhere near Congress or the president could 750,000. A Norwegian research end certain aspects of the war on countries, particularly Jordan. By organization, Fafo, worked with terrorism, such as military action, by 2007, the United Nations was Jordan’s Department of Statistics a public act. But Klein argues that estimating that there were and found that, by one statistical the federal government will still 750,000 Iraqis living in Jordan— measure, the true number might need the power to detain dangerous the equivalent of more than 10 be as low as 161,000, though Fafo individuals. Courts, in his view, percent of Jordan’s population— cautioned that some Iraqis may should be given the authority to and some thought even that not have identified themselves assess the threat a detainee poses number was too low. In the for fear of deportation. and the validity of his detention, in a United States, Democrats seized The United Nations’ Refugee process akin to deciding whether to on the influx as an indictment of Agency has never registered release a criminal suspect on bail the Bush administration’s entire many more than 65,000 Iraqi before trial. Thus, the power to gambit in Iraq. U.S. aid poured refugees in Jordan. When Jordan detain would continue until each in, but much of it has helped opened its schools to Iraqi chil- individual in custody had been poor Jordanians rather than dis- dren in 2007, officials expected released or died in detention. placed Iraqis. This isn’t your typ- some 50,000 students to enroll, This hybrid model of a war that ical case of aid gone awry, writes but only 12,000 have, and leaks extends certain wartime powers Nicholas Seeley, editor of JO, an from the Ministry of Education beyond others lacks the “superficially English-language magazine indicate that even that figure satisfying clarity” that comes with based in Amman. It turns out may be inflated. Despite the the absolute end to traditional wars, that there weren’t so many Iraqis mounting evidence, Jordanian Klein concedes. But clarity is not a who needed help. officials continue to claim that characteristic of the war in which we Before 2007, in its dealings there are more than 500,000 dis- are now engaged. with international donors, Jor- placed Iraqis within their dan generally downplayed the borders, arguing that other data FOREIGN POLICY & DEFENSE number of Iraqis arriving in its (such as cell phone registrations) cities. King Abdullah II’s desert support this higher estimate. The Refugee nation was reluctant to provide Because Iraqi refugees settled assistance, worried that the among poor Jordanians, some Crisis That Wasn’t “guests” would get too comfort- aid programs stipulated that 25 able and never return to Iraq. In to 50 percent of the beneficiaries THE SOURCE: “The Politics of Aid to Iraqi April 2007—perhaps because of be Jordanian, but it seems likely Refugees in Jordan” by Nicholas Seeley, in Middle East Report, Fall 2010. international pressure to address that a lot more Jordanians than the situation—Jordan changed that have been reaping the bene- After the U.S.-led invasion its tune and began arguing that it fits of American efforts to miti- of Iraq in 2003, Iraqi refugees needed help to deal with a refu- gate the damage caused by the began trickling into neighboring gee population it claimed was war in Iraq.
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ECONOMICS, LABOR & BUSINESS Some may object that Cabal- lero is being impatient, “that with enough time, we will arrive at an El Dorado of macroeconomics.” He Model Students thinks that economists are just dig- ging themselves into an ever deeper internal logic that it has begun to con- hole. But he’s not saying that the THE SOURCE: “Macroeconomics After the Crisis: Time to Deal With the Pretense-of- fuse the precision it has achieved model should be scrapped entirely, Knowledge Syndrome” by Ricardo J. Cabal- about its own world” with accuracy in just that it should be recognized for lero, NBER Working Papers, Oct. 2010. describing the real one. Economists what it is: a tool that can help us Since the financial panic in have worked to fine-tune a model of understand “equilibrium in a fric- the fall of 2008, many economists great elegance, the “dynamic stochas- tionless world.” have embarked on some soul-search- tic general equilibrium approach,” In the real world, unlike in a ing: How did we miss this? But the with the hope that ultimately macro- model, people make economic deci- failure to predict the largest economic economics will be able to explain sions with limited information. crisis since the Great Depression everything. But the economy is too Every now and then, something will doesn’t bother MIT economist Ricar- complex for that. give—for example, the defaults of do J. Caballero. Major the Penn Central Railroad crises are “essentially in 1970 and Lehman unpredictable,” he says. The Brothers in 2008—and big problem is not what EXCERPT people will panic. Such economists don’t know, but crises are not predictable, that they think they know and events that cause a cri- more than they do. They America’s Surprising sis one time may not do so aren’t asking the right the next. Some economists question: What policy Export Centers have argued that the oil advice can economists use- The 20 cities that most rely on export-related price spikes in the 2000s fully give when so little is jobs include, not surprisingly, San Jose, Calif.; caused fewer economic known? Seattle; and Portland, Oreg.—Asia-oriented hubs of frictions than those of the Give credit where credit high-technology innovation filled with young profes- 1970s because people had is due: At the periphery of sionals, bike paths, and coffee bars that offer options come to expect volatility the field, particularly at the of Euclidean complexity. But the list also includes and hence did not panic. intersection of macroeco- places where the morning coffee run is more likely to Economists can be most nomics and corporate McDonald’s or Dunkin’ Donuts: Hartford, Conn.; useful not by attempting to finance, researchers are Rochester, N.Y.; Milwaukee; Greensboro, N.C.; and predict the future but by asking narrowly defined Toledo and Youngstown in Ohio. Only San Jose (at studying how to manage questions and producing 22.7 percent) generated a larger share of its employ- the inevitable uncertainty “sensible but incomplete ment from exports than did Wichita, Kans. (22.3 per- and anxiety of economic answers” about real-world cent), where a vibrant global sales network has life, Caballero concludes. events such as liquidity developed around civil aviation powers such as This research would enable evaporation, bubbles, and Cessna and Hawker Beechcraft. them to devise policy contagion. options, such as different But the core of macro- —RONALD BROWNSTEIN, editorial director insurance schemes, that economics “has become so of National Journal (Winter 2010) could help quell future mesmerized with its own panics.
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ECONOMICS, LABOR & BUSINESS bered as a time when every country from the Depression earlier than imposed strict trade barriers in an those that stayed on the gold The Golden effort to protect its own. But nations standard. that abandoned the gold standard France, which stuck with gold Millstone tightened their trade restrictions until 1936, reacted to the fall in “only marginally.” As their cur- the value of the British pound THE SOURCE: “The Slide to Protectionism in the Great Depression: Who Succumbed rencies devalued, these countries (which made British goods and Why?” by Barry Eichengreen and Dou- benefited from an influx of gold, as cheaper overseas) by imposing a glas A. Irwin, in The Journal of Economic History, Dec. 2010. people sought their cheaper goods. 15 percent surcharge on British To prevent their gold from going goods. The Netherlands, also tied Robert Zoellick, the presi- overseas, those still on the gold stan- to gold, raised its duties by 25 per- dent of the World Bank, recently dard were forced to enact tariffs, cent. Between the third quarters suggested that leading economies duties, and other protectionist of 1931 and 1932, world trade consider adopting a diluted gold measures against imported goods. decreased 16 percent. standard (under which currencies The first big step toward a Once countries ditched the gold are pegged to the price of gold) to restrictive trade era was the enact- standard, they began relaxing their help moderate international cur- ment in the United States of the trade restrictions. In 1934, one year rency fluctuations. The gold stan- Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930, after the United States left gold be- dard is not beloved by mainstream which raised tariffs by 20 percent. hind, Congress passed the Recip- economists, and a study by econo- But the wave of protectionist poli- rocal Trade Agreements Act, mists Barry Eichengreen of the Uni- cies did not begin in earnest until authorizing the president to re- versity of California, Berkeley, and 1931. That September, following a duce tariffs. Within four years, Douglas A. Irwin of Dartmouth financial crisis in Austria, Britain the Smoot-Hawley increases were should give Zoellick further pause. abandoned the gold standard, a virtually gone. Countries that stuck to the gold move that “sent shock waves Ideally, countries should have standard throughout the Great through the world economy.” coordinated a simultaneous devalu- Depression enacted harsh protec- Other countries with close finan- ation against gold, Eichengreen and tionist policies that caused a sharp cial ties to Britain followed suit Irwin argue. Instead, devaluation contraction in international trade; within days, including Denmark, occurred willy-nilly between 1931 even after economies began to Finland, Norway, and Sweden. and 1936. For the countries married recover, trade lagged. Japan did so two months later. In to the gold standard during that The Depression is often remem- general, these countries recovered time, those were five very long years.
POLITICS & GOVERNMENT the aisle—rather, it’s the fear that they’ll lose their seats. Over the last 30 years, it has been easier to pass bipartisan leg- Don’t Blame Polarization islation “when political voting patterns are stable and most
THE SOURCE: “The Gridlock Myth” by supermajorities the only way to members have reason to believe Michael Barone, in The American Interest, move beyond gridlock? No, con- their seats are reasonably safe.” Nov.–Dec. 2010. tends Michael Barone, coauthor From 1938 until the late 1970s, Does America’s polarized of The Almanac of American Poli- when turnover in Congress was political landscape render bipar- tics. Partisanship isn’t the reason low, a loose coalition of centrist tisan legislation impossible? Are why politicians don’t reach across Republicans and southern Demo-
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crats constituted a reliable voting Left Behind education reform done? Because they’re afraid that bloc for many important pieces of effort, the 2003 Medicare pre- bipartisan compromise will get legislation. That coalition came scription drug bill, the invasion of them thrown out of office.” undone as liberal Republicans Afghanistan, and the Iraq war (a from the Northeast lost their vote many Democrats later came POLITICS & GOVERNMENT seats and conservative votes in to regret). the South shifted to the GOP. But in 2005, the stable pattern Disaster After the elections of 1982 and of the prior decade fell apart 1984 passed without significant when support for Republicans Management 101 upsets, however, members felt dropped sharply in the polls. comfortable. In 1985 and 1986, President Bush’s plans for a com- THE SOURCE: “Our Responder in Chief” by Patrick S. Roberts, in National Affairs, bipartisan majorities passed prehensive immigration reform Fall 2010. major legislation on taxes and bill, which enjoyed some Democ- immigration. ratic support, died in the House When Hurricane Katrina Bipartisanship receded from because Speaker Dennis Hastert pummeled New Orleans in 2005, 1991 to 1995, a period that “saw (R–Ill.), aware that many Repub- Americans looked to the White an upending of political verities.” licans were at risk of losing their House to handle the crisis. Not long Republicans were thought to seats, refused to press the legis- ago this would have seemed odd. have a hold on the presidency, lation. Then came the large Dem- Only in the last 60 years, with the but Bill Clinton took the White ocratic majorities after the 2008 advent of executive agencies respon- House in 1992. Democrats were election, which removed incen- sible for national security, has the thought to own Congress, but tives for bipartisan collaboration. president become the go-to official they lost control in 1994. The rise President Barack Obama’s stimu- for disaster response. Patrick S. of Ross Perot and other third- lus package, health care legis- Roberts, an assistant professor of party candidates added to the lation, and financial reform all public administration at Virginia uncertainty. passed with little, if any, Republi- Tech, warns that the “fixation on the The years from 1995 to 2005 can support. White House badly distorts the way tell an interesting story. Pundits The upheaval in the 2010 elec- America thinks about and prepares decried the bitter partisanship in tion, in which Republicans took for major disasters.” Washington, but there was a sur- control of the House, makes it For most of the Republic’s history, prising amount of bipartisan legis- plain “that major legislation federal assistance to disaster-stricken lation. Despite the hot rhetoric, addressing long-term problems communities took the form of one- members of Congress didn’t feel will have to have bipartisan sup- off congressional appropriations. The that their seats were especially port to pass.” But because the first of these came in 1803, when endangered. President Clinton was electorate has been so volatile, much of Portsmouth, New Hamp- able to pass welfare reform in Barone thinks it will be difficult shire, was destroyed in a fire. Con- 1996, and he had a good chance of for legislators to overcome their gress provided a temporary waiver of passing Medicare and Social Secu- fears and make headway on the tariffs to residents in hopes of attract- rity reforms too until the impeach- deficit, entitlement reform, and ing investment to rebuild the city. As ment debacle, Barone says. immigration. a later instance shows, federal inter- Even after the divisive election It’s a vicious cycle, Barone vention could also be ad hoc: When of 2000, bipartisan coalition- observes. “Why are voters so will- Army troops helped restore order in building was possible. President ing to ‘throw out the bums’? Be- the aftermath of the 1906 earthquake George W. Bush enjoyed support cause they think they can’t get in San Francisco, they did so “infor- from congressional Democrats on much of anything done. Why mally,” with no instructions from his 2001 tax cuts, the No Child can’t they get much of anything Washington.
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It wasn’t until the Great Depres- Federal Emergency Management reason to hope that hurricanes, sion that the federal government Agency, consolidating the various fires, and floods look terrible on tel- formalized its role. The Reconstruc- disaster-response programs spread evision. The 1988 Stafford Act guar- tion Finance Corporation, created throughout the government. In antees that the federal government in 1932 to spur investment and 2003, FEMA was brought under the will cover a minimum of 75 percent lending, was also tasked with aegis of the Department of Home- of the response and recovery costs disbursing federal money for disas- land Security. Even so, FEMA is not in presidentially declared disaster ter relief. But it was the Cold War chiefly a hands-on agency; 90 per- areas. Presidents have made more that really drew Washington into cent of its $10 billion budget is con- than a thousand such declarations. dealing with the aftermath of disas- sumed by grants to state and local It’s time for the White House to ters. Agencies such as the Federal governments and to individuals. back off from disaster management, Civil Defense Administration were The money pot, along with Roberts argues. The federal govern- created to help the country in case increased media coverage, has ment should focus on preventing dis- of nuclear war, but, in part thanks to changed the politics of disaster. In asters in the first place by redirecting pressure from state and local gov- the past, localities tried to downplay subsidies to steer development away ernments, they soon became key the damage they suffered because from flood-prone areas, for example, instruments in responding to natu- they feared driving away potential and should encourage state and local ral disasters. investors and residents. Today, state officials to ramp up their disaster- In 1979, Congress created the and local governments have every prevention efforts.
SOCIETY rationale for decriminalization was to provide “a more health- oriented response.” The number of users enrolled in drug treatment Getting High in Portugal programs increased by around 60 percent between 1998 and 2008, of diseases such as HIV/AIDS, tuber- from a little under 24,000 to THE SOURCE: “What Can We Learn From the Portuguese Decriminalization of Illicit culosis, and hepatitis B and C among more than 38,000. Drugs?” by Caitlin Elizabeth Hughes and users of heroin and other intravenous The greatest success has been in Alex Stevens, in The British Journal of Criminology, Nov. 2010. drugs. Drug use rates in Portugal, a reductions in drug-related mortality, land of 11 million people, have histori- HIV, hepatitis C, and tuberculosis. In Drug decriminalization is cally been pretty low. In 2001, fewer particular, there has been a large a topic almost too hot to handle in than eight percent of Portuguese 15- reduction in opiate-related (i.e., the United States, but Portugal qui- to-64-year-olds admitted to ever hav- heroin-related) deaths, likely because etly took the plunge 10 years ago. ing used an illegal drug, compared more heroin addicts are receiving Since then, overall drug use has with about a third of Britons. Yet by treatment. And the number of increased slightly, but the preva- 1999 Portugal’s rate of drug-related HIV/AIDS diagnoses among drug lence of “problematic” (e.g., intra- AIDS was the highest in the Euro- users has declined substantially, from venous) drug use is estimated to pean Union. Since the policy went 1,413 in 2000 to just 375 in 2008. have declined, report Australian into effect, the prevalence of drug Portugal stands out not because drug policy researchers Caitlin Eliz- users thought to be injecting drugs of decriminalization—other nations abeth Hughes and Alex Stevens. has declined from 3.5 per 1,000 have done that—but because of its Portugal’s decriminalization policy people to 2.0. emphasis on treating addiction, was a response to growing concern in Because of the concern about which seems to have produced an the 1980s and ’90s about the spread drug-related diseases, a key Iberian success story.
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SOCIETY According to Obasogie, an asso- A new study shows that ciate professor at the University of The Blind Aren’t blind people experience California’s Hastings College of Law, the visual cues allow blind people to race the same way that Race-Blind place racial characteristics in socie- sighted individuals do: tal context, just as they do for visually. THE SOURCE: “Do Blind People See Race? sighted people. A blind man Obaso- Social, Legal, and Theoretical Consider- gie identifies as Mickey noted that ations” by Osagie K. Obasogie, in Law and Society Review, Sept.–Dec., 2010. blind people are as prone to “racial individuals do: visually.” prejudice, stereotypes, and miscon- “Race-blind” and “color- Virtually all of the study partic- ceptions as anybody else.” Some blind” are terms that describe a soci- ipants who were blind mentioned blind interviewees recalled that in etal ideal. But how do people who skin color as a race-determining their younger years sighted people literally are blind think about race? factor. Others went beyond color, took pains to alert them to the race Sighted people, according to Osagie Obasogie reports, to “demonstrate of other people. Sometimes sighted K. Obasogie, often assume that the a rather sophisticated under- people would “impart information blind, as one sightless person he standing of the range of visual about their assumptions about that interviewed put it, exist in “a kind of cues,” such as bone and face struc- person,” one blind man related, and Star Trek race-blind society.” Yet ture, that can be used to identify a about “how I should or should not after conducting interviews with person’s race. A blind black man behave, or who I should or should 126 sighted and sightless people, Obasogie interviewed noted that not be talking to.” Obasogie concluded that “blind peo- other blind people he met always Obasogie’s blind subjects also ple largely understand and experi- “went for [the] hair,” determining proved to be race-conscious in their ence race the same way that sighted his race by touch. dating behavior. One black man
on getting men to give women some of the power they EXCERPT used to give only to their sons, it hasn’t figured out how to pass power down from woman to woman, to bequeath authority to its progeny. Its inability to Feminism’s Lost conceive of a succession has crippled women’s progress not just within the women’s movement but in Inheritance every venue of American public life. The women’s How many times have we heard women say, “No movement cycled through a long first “wave,” and, in older woman helped me in my career—my mentors increasingly shorter oscillations, a second and third have all been men”? How many surveys report that wave, and some say we are now witnessing a fourth. young women don’t want, and distrust, female bosses? With each go-round, women make gains, but the move- How often did we hear during the last presidential elec- ment never seems able to establish an enduring tion that young women were recoiling from Hillary Clin- birthright, a secure line of descent—to reproduce itself ton because she “reminds me of my mother”? Why as a strong and sturdy force. At the core of America’s does so much of “new” feminist activism and scholar- most fruitful political movement resides a perpetual ship spurn the work and ideas of the generation that barrenness. came before? As ungracious as these attitudes may seem, they are grounded in a sad reality: While Amer- —SUSAN FALUDI, author of Backlash: The Undeclared ican feminism has long, and productively, concentrated War Against American Women (1991), in Harper’s (Oct. 2010)
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noted that he found it impossible to place within a spiritual tradition, perform civil unions and allow wed- date outside his race. A white man and the state endows religious fig- dings’ expressive aspects to be han- stopped seeing a black woman as ures with legal authority to per- dled by religious or other groups. soon as he discovered her skin color. form these ceremonies. Whatever a state provides in There is an important practical What Nussbaum sees as the civil terms of a marriage-type union, it implication in these findings, Oba- function of marriage is also cut- must make open to all, Nussbaum sogie believes. In Bowen v. Gilliard and-dried. Wedded couples get tax says. The Supreme Court called (1987), the Supreme Court defined breaks, insurance benefits, and marriage “one of the basic civil factors to take into consideration inheritance rights. They receive rights of man” in 1967 when it when deciding whether to apply preference in adoption and custody struck down a statute barring inter- “strict scrutiny” to a case involving decisions. The list of government racial marriage in Loving v. an allegation of discrimination; one benefits is long and well known. Virginia. The Court has also upheld of them was that a plaintiff have an It’s when it comes to “obvious, immutable, or distin- marriage’s expressive guishing characteristic.” Obasogie aspect that the appropri- says his research shows that it’s not ate role of the state gets what people look like that matters, murky. When a couple but “the social practices that make gets married, they such visual distinctions salient and express their love and perceptible.” commitment to each other, and “society, in SOCIETY response, recognizes and dignifies that com- Untying the Knot mitment.” (This unique status in society is one THE SOURCE: “A Right to Marry?” by reason why many same- Martha C. Nussbaum, in California Law Review, June 2010. sex couples consider civil union a half-measure What role should the and insist on full marital state play in marriage? The rights.) But there is answer depends on what you “something odd about think marriage is. According to the mixture of casualness University of Chicago law profes- and solemnity with sor Martha C. Nussbaum, which the state behaves When couples say“I do,”should the government stay out of it? marriage is an institution with as a marrying agent,” three distinct aspects—religious, Nussbaum says. It does nothing to the right of state prisoners and par- civil, and expressive—and the investigate whether the couple de- ents who have fallen behind on state currently has a hand in all of serves this privileged status. The wed- child support payments to tie the them. Especially in light of today’s ding of drunken strangers in Las knot. Even people in polygamous disputes over gay marriage, she Vegas enjoys the same status as the and incestuous relationships have suggests that the state’s presence union of a genuinely devoted pair. the right to marry, Nussbaum says, ought to be more limited. Nussbaum writes that it would be though the state’s interest in pro- The state’s role in the religious “a lot better, as a matter of both politi- moting gender equality and pre- aspect of marriage is pretty cal theory and public policy, if the venting child abuse allows it to for- straightforward. Lots of people state withdrew from the marrying bid them from exercising that right. want to have their weddings take business.” She proposes that states Nussbaum goes to great lengths to
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show how the controversial unions of the Supreme Court to extend mar- Better to let the states experiment, one minority—gays and lesbians—do riage to homosexuals. Such a step allowing the public to see that gay not constitute such a threat. Even so, would “further politicize the Court marriage is not a threat to children or she does not think the time is right for and further polarize public opinion.” to the institution itself.
PRESS & MEDIA Tribune—which occasionally pub- lished outside contributions of the sort Oakes envisioned—folded. The Tribune had provided a conserva- Op-Ed Takes Wing tive counterweight to the Times’ more liberal outlook, and some on source. Publisher Arthur Ochs the Times staff felt, as assistant THE SOURCE: “A Profitable Public Sphere: The Creation of the New York Times Op-Ed Sulzberger was not keen on Oakes’s managing editor Harrison Salis- Page” by Michael J. Socolow, in Journalism idea, not wanting to mess with the bury put it, that the newspaper and Mass Communication Quarterly, Summer 2010. popular, revenue-generating obitu- must commit to “providing a plat- aries page. Others felt that the op-ed form for responsible conservative In the body politic’s circu- page would “encroach on the inter- opinion.” lation system, in which opinion and pretative analysis then appearing in Sulzberger soon convened a analysis are the blood that gives life the news pages,” and were doubtful study group to flesh out Oakes’s to policymaking, the New York Times that “outside contributions would idea. Would the page need its own op-ed page is the heart. What is be of sufficient quality.” editor and staff? Would they use printed there courses through blogs, But Oakes would not be de- syndicated material? Would there magazines, and cable TV, shaping terred. “The function of news- be political cartoons? How would how Americans understand the papers and newspapermen,” he advertising fit in? Over the next news. But just a half-century ago, the two years, the group continued to paper of record had no such page. tweak the concept, but it wasn’t (Other papers, including The Wash- until the fall of 1969, when ington Post and The Los Angeles The turbulent 1960s and Sulzberger decided to raise the Times, at various times had had a determined editorial newsstand price from 10 to 15 pages they called “op-ed,” but unlike writer inspired The New cents, that he put the plan in the op-ed pages we know today, these York Times to launch its motion, hoping that the new had relied entirely on staff writers for signature op-ed page. feature would preserve readership their content.) Across from the despite the higher cost. He Times’ editorials was a different pop- appointed Salisbury as editor and, ular section—the obituaries. in July, publicly announced the A New York Times editorial said, was to “interpret [the] age to page’s impending arrival. writer, John B. Oakes, began a cam- the general public.” Newspapers The effort was a quick success, paign to establish an op-ed page in had the same responsibility to and the paper never looked back. the early 1960s following an inci- their readers that colleges had to Within its first six months, the new dent in which he received a piece of their students: to make them section brought in $112,000 in commentary from a Suez Canal think. (Oakes, a bit of an idealist, advertising profits. Lou Silverstein, Company representative about the was opposed to devoting any of the one of the page’s designers, later Egyptian government’s seizure of page’s space to advertisements.) remarked that the 1960s were “a the canal. But the paper had no Oakes’s plans got a boost when, bad time for the country but a good space for an essay by an outside in 1966, The New York Herald time to start the op-ed page.”
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PRESS & MEDIA And these well-regarded news pro- good you can’t leave your car. Both grams (polls show that public radio programs have tackled subjects many Renaissance on is the most trusted news source in traditional news outlets would shy the country) are just the tip of the away from. The hosts of Radiolab, in the Airwaves iceberg—a panoply of high-quality “an almost comic attempt to make call-in shows, local talk programs, their job hard,” have explored topics THE SOURCE: “All Programs Considered” and interview shows such as Fresh such as time, morality, and memory. by Bill McKibben, in The New York Review of Books, Nov. 11, 2010. Air round out the standard NPR The Internet’s ascendance has station’s offerings. meant that audio files can circulate There’s something of a Not too long ago, “radio was among friends, and that a program, mini-renaissance taking place on dead,” remembers Robert Krulwich, once aired, has a second life online. America’s radio waves—particularly a host of the science- and philos- Before the Internet, says Radiolab’s on public radio—but you’d be hard- ophy-focused Radiolab. “All the other host, Jad Abumrad, “it was pressed to find any note made of it in smarties were at the Times or The hard for us to justify the amount of most newspapers, on television, or Washington Post.... This group of labor we put into it. Because it was even on public radio itself. Compared nutty people wandered in and said, disposable, just out there in the with other media, “radio may be the let’s do radio. We’ll reinvent it.” Today, world and then gone.” least discussed, debated, [and] under- those nutty people run the show, But the economics aren’t quite stood,” remarks author and environ- “and now they have a little of the working out, for stations and produc- mental activist Bill McKibben. swagger of the Timesmen.” ers alike. Podcasts are nearly univer- It’s not that no one is listening. McKibben argues that the success sally offered for free, and many NPR’s flagship news programs, of the NPR news programming has stations can’t afford edgier, more ex- Morning Edition and All Things “tended to wash out some of the dis- perimental programs. One independ- Considered, each draw about 13 mil- tinctiveness.” Today, the creativity is ent producer, Benjamen Walker, esti- lion listeners in the course of a happening elsewhere, in programs mates that he made $80 on a widely week, audiences that dwarf the such as Radiolab and Ira Glass’s This promoted show called Theory of number of subscribers to major American Life, a weekly hour that Everything that ran on six NPR sta- print publication such as The New prides itself on producing so-called tions across the country. “If I thought York Times and The New Yorker. driveway moments—segments so about it too hard, I would just quit.”
RELIGION & PHILOSOPHY the model of a Muslim party, appealing to believers while playing by democracy’s rules, but many oth- ers within Turkey and elsewhere Catholicism’s Lessons continue to fear that Islam and democracy are incompatible. for Islam Concerns that religion and democracy do not mix aren’t new, lawed. State prosecutors argued writes Princeton political theorist THE SOURCE: “Making Muslim Democra- cies” by Jan-Werner Müller, in The Boston that the conservative AKP—whose Jan-Werner Müller, nor are they Review, Nov.-Dec. 2010. official platform includes economic confined to Islam. In the 19th modernization and EU member- century and far into the 20th, Cath- In 2008, Turkey’s ruling ship—was bent on Islamizing the olicism was the big worry. Many Justice and Development Party secular state and moving toward blamed Catholicism for “the persist- (AKP) narrowly missed being out- theocracy. Some may see the AKP as ence of dictatorship in Latin Amer-
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Don’t be so fast to dismiss the the push-and-pull democratic Catholic parallel, says Müller. First, arena, Muslim parties will inevit- Europe’s newly formed Christian ably be forced to adapt religious Democratic parties were hardly precepts and traditions, Müller puppets of the Vatican, which often argues, a fact that “blanket con- did not approve of their creation, demnations of Islam as incompati- control their leadership, or condone ble with democracy overlook.” their left-veering programs. The Vatican endorsed democracy “only RELIGION & PHILOSOPHY after decades of Christian Democra- tic practice.” Writing Rights Instead, Müller argues, Christ- ian doctrine did indeed inspire THE SOURCE: “Rights, Words, and Laws” by Amartya Sen, in The New Republic, Catholicism’s turn toward democ- Oct. 28, 2010. French philosopher Jacques Maritain (1882–1973) racy. The ideas of French philoso- believed that democracy was a Christian ideal. pher Jacques Maritain provide What are rights and where one good example. Beginning in do they come from? Behind the ica and on the Iberian Peninsula” the 1930s, he developed an array word “rights” are two distinct con- and believed that Catholic citizens’ of arguments that embraced cepts: a moral and political call to deepest loyalties lay with the Vati- democracy and human rights as action in the absence of a legal right can. (Memorably, this was a big issue Christian ideals. Though Christian (i.e., a right to fight for suffrage for Catholic presidential candidate Democracy’s “astounding electoral where none exists) and a right cre- John F. Kennedy in 1960.) Yet in the successes” owed a lot to its firm ated by law, such as the right to vote. latter half of the 20th century, Chris- anticommunist stance and other The two ideas are certainly related, tian Democratic parties (generally factors, they were aided by an ideol- but the line from natural rights to Catholic-based) informed by “select ogy that tacked between believers’ legal ones may not be at all direct, doctrinal values” but respectful of spiritual values and nonbelievers’ observes Nobel Prize–winning the church-state divide flourished in need for “assurance that religiously economist Amartya Sen. Western Europe and to an extent in inspired parties would not abandon Public recognition of a right often Latin America. Couldn’t Islam chart state neutrality in religious affairs leads to legal recognition, but laws a similar course? once in power.” are not the only avenue for establish- Many in the West object that this Whether such a path is available ing rights. Organizations such as analogy is false. Some argue that to Islam is an open question, Mül- Doctors Without Borders and the European Catholics only embraced ler concedes. What the Catholic Red Cross help advance the cause of democracy on orders from the Vati- example does show is that “the for- human rights (such as a right to can—and Muslims have no similar mation of some liberalized Islam by health care) simply by doing their central institution. Others hold that self-consciously moderate and work. And there are certain cases in the character of Christian Democra- democratic Muslim intellectuals which rights can be better estab- tic ideas wasn’t any more instru- should not be seen as a sideshow.” lished through social criticism and mental in Catholics’ eventual politi- Debates among Muslims about the public debate than by statute. For cal integration than a “specifically role of sharia in state law and the example, law is not the best way to Muslim style of democracy” might thinking of such polarizing figures protect a woman’s right to have a be, because it is “the structure of as scholar Tariq Ramadan may voice in family decisions. democratic inclusion, not the dis- cause alarm, but they are important Within the legal sphere of rights, tinctive ideas that inform it, that for developing a hospitable founda- laws do not necessarily need to be leads to moderation.” tion for democracy. And in entering changed in order for new rights to be
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legally recognized. Recognition can American Jewish culture. Musar to the ethical and ritual require- come through judicial interpretation. began in Lithuania in the 19th ments of Jewish law, and engaging It’s “hard not to be an ‘originalist’ in century as a reaction to the ex- in acts of kindness beyond what some sense” when interpreting the tremely scholarly, text-focused the law requires.” The work is Constitution, Sen says, but even that Jewish culture that dominated. highly individualized. It aims to leaves a lot open to discussion about (The Hebrew word musar can be foster the virtues of “love, justice, “what exactly of the original enter- loosely translated as “morality.”) compassion, generosity, reverence, prise needs to be preserved”: the spe- Led by Rabbi Israel Salanter faith, humility, equanimity, and cific language used or the “constitu- (1810–83), proponents argued patience.” tional motivation.” Interpreting the that text study alone does not Salanter’s hopes for a mass Constitution in light of the motiva- lead to greater moral character. movement were never realized in tions at its core—the Framers’ vision Instead, adherents must engage Lithuania. Traditionalists rejected of a system that would “make room in frequent and rigorous intro- his methods in favor of more for people with divergent interests spection and develop practices to intellectually driven moral educa- and values to live together”—Sen address their character flaws. In tion, and liberals were turned off argues, is a more compelling method certain important ways, the by musar’s piety, favoring more for keeping it modern. revival of musar today is, like the Western approaches to morality. Surprisingly, adhering to a strict The would-be movement more or textual interpretation of the Consti- less died out when a large portion tution does not proscribe some of its followers were killed in the accommodation to modern ideas. Musar, a rigorous Jew- Holocaust. Some of those who Over time language evolves, and ish ethical practice from survived emigrated to America, some of the words of the Founders Lithuania, is gaining but few continued to teach the today mean something quite differ- adherents in America. practice. One prominent Ameri- ent than they did in 1787. As a result, can rabbi is said to have thought even a strictly textual reading will that Americans were not equipped change over time. Though the evolu- to handle the enormous work that tion of words and our ideas about impulse behind its Lithuanian musar requires. human rights may not correspond predecessor, countercultural, re- Strangely, this movement is exactly, it’s important to acknow- jecting the prominent American now flourishing in America, and ledge that judges who embrace origi- feel-good ethos of self-esteem particularly among non-Orthodox nalism are not just machines but coddlers. But, argues Jewish The- Jews. Though musar’s rigor and interpreters of words, which, as ological Seminary doctoral candi- intensity certainly don’t appeal to Samuel Johnson put it, “are but the date Geoffrey Claussen, “there are everyone, some of its elements are signs of ideas.” ways in which the revival of the a good fit for American Jews. musar movement is encouraged by Studies have shown that Amer- RELIGION & PHILOSOPHY strong trends in Jewish culture and icans prefer solitary meditation to in the broader American culture.” group worship. Jews—often alien- A Jewish Revival The practice of musar is no ated by impersonal synagogue walk in the park. It calls for services, an ancient liturgy, and THE SOURCE: “The American Jewish “introspective meditation and prayers in a foreign language—are Revival of Musar” by Geoffrey Claussen, in The Hedgehog Review, Summer 2010. journaling, conversations about no exception. Perhaps the most one’s moral situation that elicit appealing aspect of musar is that Over the last decade, a critical feedback, chanting and it speaks a universal language, small, obscure movement has visualization exercises that engage asking Jews to become more ethi- made inroads into non-Orthodox the emotions, a deep commitment cal people, not just “better Jews.”
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SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY For scientists, this meant that simply knowing what was known was often impossible. Zoologists, for example, found it increasingly challenging to Journals Galore determine whether a species identi- fied as new really was unknown to the library may be a more difficult and scientific establishment. One com- THE SOURCE: “Seriality and the Search for uncertain process than the first plained, “Nearly the whole lives of Order: Scientific Print and Its Problems During the Late 19th Century” by Alex discovery in the laboratory.” zoologists will come to be spent in Csiszar, in History of Science, Sept.–Dec. When scientific journals emerged libraries, until the thing gets so intol- 2010. in the 17th century “they would have erable that someone suggests that we If a scientist publishes new been among the last places to look to burn all the books and start afresh findings in a journal and no one reads find authoritative knowledge claims,” from nature.” the article, did that scientist still make Csiszar says. Books and monographs, Moreover, in the period before a discovery? and even informal correspondence scientific journals established their That question is not very relevant among colleagues, not periodicals, authority, credit for discoveries was to researchers today because powerful were the agreed-upon space in which often contested. In 1846, when Nep- online databases ensure that a publi- to document scientific advances. Like tune was first observed by telescope, cation won’t be lost to history. But for newspapers and gazettes of that era, a French publication credited as- scientists in the 19th century, a sud- the early scientific journals were not tronomer Urbain Le Verrier with den profusion of specialized scientific seen as reliable. Many functioned having earlier predicted the planet’s periodicals combined with the ab- more as specialty news sources, sum- existence. British astronomers pro- sence of a tracking system for publica- marizing findings from books. tested that John Couch Adams had tions made the threat of obscurity The development of organiza- done so first, in a conjecture that very real, writes Harvard historian tional systems such as comprehensive was unpublished but “a subject of Alex Csiszar. One English physicist indexes and bibliographies lagged common conversation” among his remarked that “the rediscovery in the behind the proliferation of journals. friends. One Frenchman responded
of science. In the biomedical sciences, where we worship EXCERPT at the altar of the randomized controlled trial, the supremacy of the hypothesis is written into our codes of conduct; you are forbidden not to have one. When The Light Bulb Myth bright-eyed epidemiology students ask me about “fishing” (our more organic term for data mining), I have Scientists themselves have done little to disabuse to tell them it is streng verboten to trawl through their the public of the view that they have thought-bubble data until they net some association that will be moments of brilliance which they then toil to confirm. statistically significant and thus give them a “result.” We That’s in part because the myth is tidier than the truth. protect against this wickedness by requiring researchers “We retrofit that idea of hypothesis-driven science in to tell us what questions they will be answering before part because scientists are too embarrassed to admit they have enrolled a single person in a clinical trial. that they were stumbling around in the data and stubbed their toe on a finding,” said Chris Hilton, senior archivist —ELIZABETH PISANI, an epidemiologist and writer, in at the Wellcome Library, which specializes in the history Prospect (Dec. 2010)
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that the only “rational and just way to write the history of science is to rely exclusively on publications hav- ing a precise date.” Over time, that position prevailed. By the beginning of the 20th century, authoritative scientific journals were the place to establish credentials and make findings public. In 1902, Brit- ain’s Royal Society initiated the publi- cation of the International Catalogue of Scientific Literature, an annual index running 17 volumes in length and covering all major areas of scien- tific research. The rise of journals posed a prob- lem that was bigger than how to Undersea slugs don’t know the three Rs, but they can learn just enough to be the perfect organize publications; it was a ques- specimens for scientists who study how learning occurs. tion of how to organize the entire field of science. Before journals, a screen behind him. early 1960s, Kandel was looking for common metaphor for nature was a Aplysia californica is not just any the model organism for the science of book. Nature was a self-contained, old slug, but “the creature upon which learning. Dogs and rats were too com- intelligible document that scientists much of the modern scientific under- plicated, their behavior too intricate. could “read.” But by 1900, the meta- standing of learning has been built,” He “wanted to study learning in an phor had changed. Mathematician writes D. Graham Burnett, a Prince- animal built for the very simplest and physicist Henri Poincaré re- ton historian and an editor of Cabinet. kinds of information acquisition and ferred to nature, as Csiszar puts it, The first half of the 20th century storage,” Burnett says. “An animal that “as a vast expanse of print matter, a saw halting progress in the quest to could be understood as a little labora- body the scientist did not so much understand what exactly learning is. tory learning-machine: limited behav- read through, as search, select from, German psychologist Hermann ioral repertoire; large, simple wiring; a and catalog.” The medium, it seems, Ebbinghaus identified the “learning resilient metabolism; and, ideally, represented the message. curve,” and Russian physiologist Ivan small teeth (no one likes getting Pavlov famously trained animals to chomped by lab animals).” SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY respond to certain stimuli in what he Enter Aplysia californica, a large called “classical conditioning.” But slug that lives in the kelp forests and School for Slugs when it came to describing how rocky reefs off the Pacific coast of the learning actually happens, scientists United States. An individual specimen THE SOURCE: “Learning Degree Zero” by D. Graham Burnett, in Cabinet, Fall 2010. were stymied. Psychologist Karl can weigh more than 10 pounds. The Lashley joked in 1950, “I sometimes slugs’ skin is translucent, allowing When neuroscientist Eric feel, in reviewing the evidence, . . . them to turn the color of the kelp they Kandel gave his acceptance speech that the necessary conclusion is that eat and hide from predators. “When after winning the Nobel Prize in learning is just not possible.” scrunched up contentedly, they look a Physiology or Medicine in 2000, he The study of what are called “mod- bit like rabbits,” Burnett notes. A. cali- puckishly flashed a Photoshopped el organisms” has produced many core fornica conveniently has huge neur- picture of a giant undersea slug scientific discoveries. Where would ons, and relatively few of them to boot sporting a Nobel medal on the genetics be without fruit flies? In the (about 20,000, whereas mammals
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can have upward of 100 million). face. Io is just one wonder among launches of Galileo to Jupiter (1989) Equally convenient, the slugs “have many uncovered in the last 50 years and Cassini-Huygens to Saturn organized their ‘brain’ into half a with the advent of the space age and (1997). The latter mission disclosed dozen little brainlets called ‘ganglia’ its interplanetary probes, space- Titan (one of Saturn’s moons) to be which are located in some proximity based telescopes, and other techno- “a remarkable world,” Burns writes, to the parts of the body they control.” logical advances. But the pace and complete with “globe-girdling, hy- But could they learn? In the 1960s nature of the recent revelations drocarbon sand dunes, apparent and ’70s, Kandel and his colleagues about the solar system—and be- dendritic valley systems, and re- showed that if you had patience, a yond—also underscore, says Joseph gional-scale methane lakes.” Waterpik, and a cattle prod, you could A. Burns, how “sluggish” the pace of These space missions, says “train” the slugs. They could get used discovery was during the 350-year Burns, who teaches astronomy at to stimuli that were harmless, and, period after Tuscan scientist Galileo Cornell University, also uncovered notably, they could be classically con- Galilei first turned his “improved, chaos’s “determining role in the ditioned, meaning they could learn to but still primitive, telescope heaven- solar system’s accumulation and associate one stimulus with another. ward” in 1610. evolution.” Observing the random Eerily, they still behaved the same way Until humankind ventured into spin of Hyperion (one of Saturn’s with “their intact brainlets carefully space, astronomy could advance moons) and Mars’s odd oblique removed from their bodies and laid on only at the slow but steady pace of orbit forced scientists to com- a sheet of glass, . . . provided one didn’t incremental improvements in tele- pletely dispense with the notion of sever the various nerves that wired scopes, as scientists built larger view- a “clocklike universe” that had them up,” Burnett says. Learning, ers and improved lenses. Observers persisted even up to the mid-20th Kandel and his colleagues discovered, counted five moons of Saturn be- century. And evidence of long-ago happens through what scientists call tween 1655 and 1684, and added collisions between Earth and “synaptic plasticity”—changes that four more by the end of the 19th cen- immense extraterrestrial objects, occur in the connection between two tury. William Herschel’s chance as well as the spectacular impact neurons in response to stimuli. sighting of Uranus in 1781 vastly of the disintegrating remnants of Of course, that’s putting it simply, extended the perceived size of the the Shoemaker-Levy 9 comet with but, like the slugs, sometimes simple solar system. From mathematical Jupiter, demonstrated that the things can help us understand some- analysis of that giant planet’s orbital universe, far from being a serene, thing much more complicated. fluctuations, others inferred the exis- unchanging realm, as observers tence of Neptune (in 1846) and then had once believed, could trans- SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY Pluto (hailed as the ninth planet form in an instant. upon its discovery in 1930, though What comes next? Burns ap- Brave New recently downgraded to a mere plauds NASA’s present strategy to “dwarf planet”). But little was known “follow the water” in its search for Worlds about the chemical makeup of the extraterrestrial life. Could some form planets, moons, comets, and aster- of life exist at the bottom of Martian THE SOURCE: “The Four Hundred Years of Planetary Science Since Galileo and Kepler” by oids that populate Earth’s galactic river basins or emerge from frigid Joseph A. Burns, in Nature, July 29, 2010. neighborhood. Titan’s “rich organic environment”? Despite the 1986 Challenger dis- The list of potentially habitable Scientists were stunned in aster and chronic funding difficul- zones, both in and out of our solar 1979 when Voyager 1 revealed Io, a ties, the National Aeronautics and system, has been lengthened in moon of Jupiter long thought to be a Space Administration still managed recent years, but, Burns concludes, “if dead chunk of rock, to have a num- a series of deep-space triumphs in extraterrestrial life is found, probably ber of active volcanoes spewing lava the 1970s and ’80s with the two it will not be where or what scientists in spectacular plumes above its sur- Voyager missions and follow-up currently forecast.”
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ARTS & LETTERS still, you feel they could move at any minute; even when the humans are shown in motion, they seem fixed in place.” Gauguin’s Stillness This stillness in Gauguin’s work “reflects his urge to perceive he took to the seas again, settling in something eternal within the THE SOURCE: “Old Vagabond” by Barry Schwabsky, in The Nation, Nov. 1, 2010. the Marquesas Islands, where he momentary,” Schwabsky notes. died in 1903. Unlike many wanderers, Gauguin Paul Gauguin was the most At the heart of Gauguin’s was not searching for something paradoxical of painters: a restless, legacy is “the tension between the new, but “something ancient and footloose man who produced paint- incessant, restless movement of perhaps close to vanishing.” ings of “uncanny stasis,” writes The his life, and the steadiness charac- Many art historians have not Nation’s art critic, Barry Schwabsky. teristic of his art,” Schwabsky known what to make of Gauguin, Born in Paris in 1848, Gauguin observes. Consider an early paint- often treating him with disdain. spent his childhood in France and ing, Breton Girls Dancing, Pont- Judged through the lens of feminism in Peru, where his grandmother Aven (1888). “What gives this and anti-colonialism in the 1980s, he had roots that he liked to believe work its atmosphere is the way was deemed “just one more adven- were Indian. As a stockbroker in the three girls embody an inexpli- turer” with a “passion for exotica . . . Paris he was quite successful, and cable stillness,” he says. The chil- and a sleazy thirst for sex with dark- collected works by Camille Pissar- dren look more like they are play- skinned underage women.” ro, Paul Cézanne, and Edgar De- ing at being statues than enjoying More recently, the critical tide gas. In his own right, he was suc- a dance. The one exception to has turned in Gauguin’s favor. A cessful as a “Sunday painter.” motionlessness is animals. “Even new show at the Tate Modern in When the markets crashed in when the animals are shown as London attempts to make sense of 1882, he decided to pursue paint- ing full time. Leaving his Danish wife with their five children in Copenhagen, he set sail for Martinique and Panama, seeking to refresh himself “far from the company of men.” In the late 1880s Gauguin re- turned to France and was invited to Arles by Vincent van Gogh to help establish a “Studio of the South.” After an intense and dramatic collaboration (which some histori- ans now believe ended when Gau- guin accidentally severed Van Gogh’s ear, though most people place Gauguin in Paris when the incident occurred), Gauguin left for Tahiti, where he produced many of The human figures in Paul Gauguin’s paintings display an “uncanny stillness,”says art critic his most famous paintings. In 1901 Barry Schwabsky, while animals seem ready to pounce, as in this 1892 canvas, Arearea.
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Gauguin’s legacy “under the rubric Four recently discovered love let- impression of the relationship. Hem- of ‘narrative.’ ” It’s a misbegotten ters reveal the players in this ménage ingway was, as Meyers puts it, “more effort, in Schwabsky’s view. Gauguin à quatre: Ernest Hemingway, fresh in love with the idea of love than with was not a storyteller. “The bodies from completing Across the River the actual woman, and his painful and faces of the Polynesian women and Into the Trees (1950), his first passion for Jigee was probably not Gauguin incessantly painted were novel in 10 years; his wife, Mary; consummated.” not simply offered up for delectation Jigee Viertel (née Virginia Ray of Hemingway’s infatuation with and the projection of fantasies. They Pittsburgh); and Viertel’s husband, Jigee fits neatly into a pattern noted possess their own intelligence and Peter, also a writer, who later penned earlier by F. Scott Fitzgerald, who keep their own counsel; their slyness a memoir of Hemingway, Dangerous once observed, “I have a theory that and self-possession make them Friends. According to Berkeley-based Ernest needs a new woman for each resistant to interpretation, almost writer Jeffrey Meyers, author of a big book. There was one for the sto- indecipherable. Gauguin identified 1999 biography of Hemingway, “these ries and The Sun Also Rises. Now with them precisely because he letters reveal Hemingway construct- there’s Pauline [his second wife]. could not entirely ‘read’ them.” ing and prolonging a romantic fan- A Farewell to Arms is a big book. If What matters most about Gau- tasy, part paternal and protective, part there’s another big book I think we’ll guin is his use of color. His “rich courtly and devoted.” Jigee seems to find Ernest has another wife.” As cadences of dissonance and har- have both encouraged and enjoyed Hemingway aged, Meyers believes, mony [made] out of color and line, the older novelist’s attention, and and became “more anxious, fearful the likes of which had no more made no effort to conceal it from her about his health and his creativity, he been seen before in painting than husband. Hemingway, she told Peter, needed to be ‘a tiny bit in love with had his Polynesian subjects,” cap- simply needed to be “a tiny bit in love someone’ to ward off despair and ture a moment and a mood, but with someone in order to feel more remind him of how he felt when he their stories are hidden. alive.” wrote his best work.” “When you went away,” Heming- Hemingway’s battle with despair ARTS & LETTERS way wrote to Jigee, after she and ended in suicide in 1961. Jigee, too, Peter left for Paris, “I missed you so met a sad end. Peter abandoned her Papa’s Painful badly that better not to talk, nor when she was pregnant with their think, nor write it.” He told her, “I feel only child, and she became an alco- Passion like people feel after big amputa- holic; in 1960, Meyers reports, “she
THE SOURCE: “Hemingway in Love: tions.” He portrayed himself, in a let- accidentally lit her nightgown with Four Found Letters” by Jeffrey Meyers, in ter sent the next day, as “the loneliest her cigarette, suffered horrible Raritan, Summer 2010. worst dressed man in the world,” but burns, and died after a month in It sounds a bit like a Hem- made no mention of his wife. Yet it hospital.” ingway novel: An aging novelist, was around this time that Heming- bound for Europe on the Île de France way confessed to Mary—as she ARTS & LETTERS with his fourth wife, meets a viva- revealed in a later memoir—“in dev- cious, attractive fellow passenger, and astating detail Jigee’s campaign to The Death of during the long Atlantic crossing flir- snare him. ‘[Mary] obviously doesn’t tation blossoms into infatuation. Dur- appreciate you. We’ll have a ranch Dance? ing the ensuing month’s sojourn in with horses in California and you can THE SOURCE: “Last Rites” by Sara Ham- France, the young woman—to the give up the heat of Cuba. I under- dan, in First Things, Aug.–Sept. 2010. annoyance of the novelist’s wife— stand your wonderful sensibilities.’ ” joins them, and not even the arrival of Despite these intimate glimpses Only a few decades ago, the woman’s own husband blunts the into Hemingway’s doings, Meyers Mikhail Baryshnikov and Rudolf budding affair. aligns himself with Peter Viertel’s Nureyev graced the covers of
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national magazines. Today, dancers to attract people who are put off by and choreographers find that even a the expense and formality of dance. The best that writers steady income, let alone this degree Trained dancers find them- can achieve, says of fame, is nearly impossible to at- selves in a difficult situation as Argentine essayist tain. According to Sara Hamdan, companies continue to close, leav- Alberto Manguel, is “an herself a former dancer, “the dance ing a large number of talented approximation to a world is crumbling, and young dancers competing for a shrinking dancers . . . are training for a profes- number of positions. Much like copy of a blurry intu- sion that grows smaller and less sig- journalism schools, dance schools ition of the real thing.” nificant by the year.” have continued to churn out Dance has fallen out of favor trained professionals despite the with the public, especially younger field’s decline. Even those dancers libraries are the glorious record of audiences. Ballet attendance with paying work usually need to that failure.” dropped by a third between 1982 take on other jobs to pay their The conviction that language can and 2008 and by nearly half among bills. Younger dancers find them- create worlds is an ancient one. those 18 to 24. selves vying against veterans for According to Jewish mystical Dance demands a lot of its au- positions with minor companies. thought, God created the 22 letters dience—it’s not an iPod experience. The traditional system of handing of Hebrew, and all beings came into The legacies of the innovative chore- down knowledge from one dance existence through the “mere inter- ographers who turned dance into “a generation to the next is breaking weaving” of the alphabet: The cultural sensation” in the 20th cen- down. “Slowly but surely,” Ham- words of God created the earth and tury are now at risk. The Paul Taylor dan notes, “a career path is fading all that lives upon it. Dance Company, for example, away.” But, Manguel says, this story has stages about half as many shows a counterpart—the story of the Tow- today as it did in 2008 and earns ARTS & LETTERS er of Babel, where God divided the fees that are much less than those it world’s unified tongue into many, received not long ago. The New The Paradox and no longer could any single York City Ballet has laid off dancers, language encapsulate the essence of reduced staff salaries, and initiated of Words any thing. Taken together, these sto- a hiring freeze, but still has a large ries illustrate both the promise and THE SOURCE: “The Muse of Impossibility” deficit. by Alberto Manguel, in The Threepenny the limitations of language. The only way dance will recover Review, Fall 2010. Every time we use words to is by finding a way to appeal to express ourselves, we implicitly young people, Hamdan says. Tough Argentine essayist Alberto declare our faith in the words’ abil- customers, they hold an idea of Manguel believes that at the heart of ity to convey what we mean, but, dance that reflects what they see on writing lies a paradox: Writers think says Manguel, “faith in language is, videos and television—dance as that they “can construct (or recon- like all true faiths, unaltered by a competition or as a display of pure struct) the world through words”— practice that contradicts its claims— physical talent. Ballet and modern that language can, by expressing real- unaltered in spite of our knowledge dance have traditionally concerned ity, create reality—but at the same that whenever we try to say some- themselves with conveying mean- time, capturing the world with words thing, however simple, however ingful narratives, and dance compa- is impossible. Writers can never cre- clear-cut, only a shadow of that nies are reluctant to experiment. ate anything more than “something something travels from our concep- Instead, they pour money into that suggests an approximation to a tion to its utterance, and further restoring marble lobbies and pros- copy of a blurry intuition of the real from its utterance to its reception cenium arches—not a shrewd way thing,” Manguel writes. “All our and understanding.”
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Manguel notes that the paradox wrote, “No one can write a book. / appear.” The only artist whose work of language is “apparent in almost For a book truly to be / You require is reality, according to Borges, is every culture.” Hindu poet Tulsi Das the sunset and the dawn, / Centur- God. “argued that the reality of fiction is ies, weapons, and the cleaving sea.” The futility of attempting to always other than the reality of the Could an artist actually create create a world through words material world, and overrides it.” reality in some of his stories? In gnawed at Borges. He wrote to a For Zen Buddhists, “the instan- “The Congress,” Borges’ character friend in 1919, “Sometimes I think taneous illumination or satori is “dreams of compiling a complete that it’s idiotic to have the ambi- always both within and beyond the encyclopedia of the world and in the tion of being a more-or-less grasp of words.” end realizes that the encyclopedia mediocre maker of phrases. But The poet and writer Jorge Luis already exists, and is the world that is my destiny.” Of course, Borges (1899–1986) explored this itself.” In another, “Parable of the Borges’ “mediocre” phrases are paradox throughout his life. In his Palace,” a poet perfectly captures an cherished by readers the world poem “Ariosto and the Arabs,” he emperor’s estate, “causing it to dis- over, failures though they might be.
OTHER NATIONS This “political humiliation” spurred the once proud superpower to make big changes to its food policy, Weg- ren writes. Russia’s Farm Comeback Over the next few years, the Kremlin plumped the coffers of rationing,” Wegren writes. Long- the country’s agricultural produc- THE SOURCE: “Russia’s Food Policies and Foreign Policy” by Stephen K. Wegren, in standing state subsidies for farming ers by forgiving farm debts, simpli- Demokratizatsiya, Summer 2010. collapsed along with communism, fying tax regimes, and increasing bringing agricultural production financial support through invest- Only 20 years ago, images to a halt and causing food prices ment, interest-rate subsidies, and of disgruntled Soviet citizens to skyrocket—they rose a mind- credit extensions. The government standing in long queues near run- boggling 2,670 percent in 1992. pledged to shield grain producers down groceries were a common During these tough years, much of from a devastating drop in prices sight on Western television. But the food Russians managed to get during good harvests (when supply recently, the fruits of the Russian their hands on came from individual flooded the market and drove zemlya (earth) have made their garden plots the Soviet government down prices) by buying up the way to dinner tables from Oslo to had parceled out when the food cri- country’s surplus grain. In the Miami. The resurgence of Russian sis dawned in the 1980s. interest of becoming “food secure,” agriculture introduces a new and Buying food from other coun- the state introduced a menu of intriguing dimension into rela- tries became common practice, protectionist quotas, tariffs, and tions with the often bellicose giant, with Moscow officials estimating bans to squeeze foreign producers writes Stephen K. Wegren, a polit- that large Russian cities imported out of the Russian market. ical scientist at Southern Method- more than 70 percent of their The new policies seem to have ist University: food policy. meat in the mid-1990s. In 1998, paid off: The volume and yield of In the years leading to and after a particularly poor harvest, food commodities produced in following the demise of the Soviet Russia had to accept nearly $1.5 Russia have vastly improved, and Union in 1991, Russians endured billion in food aid and humani- 78 percent of the country’s farms “chronic [food] shortages, poor tarian assistance from the United reported breaking even or making quality, poor selection, and even food States and the European Union. a profit in 2007, compared with
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only 11 percent in 1998. Russia eign. The privileged among us auditorium hosted its first battle of rose to become the world’s third could visit it, but none of us could the bands. In December 1988 largest wheat exporter behind live there.” But in 1987, a distinc- Bhutto was sworn in as prime the United States and Canada, tive Pakistani youth culture minister. “Elation was in the air, although a drought in 2010 de- emerged with the video hit “Dil and it had a soundtrack”—“Dil Dil pressed output of wheat and Dil Pakistan” (“Heart Heart Pak- Pakistan.” other grains. istan”), by the band Vital Signs But Bhutto’s election did not Russia’s agricultural rebound from Rawalpindi. “Millions of presage the bright future many had doesn’t have everyone applauding. Pakistanis, including my 14-year- hoped for. One reason was that Moscow’s “boorish international old self, fell over in rapture,” Islamization had taken hold. For economic behavior,” including Shamsie remembers. example, one alumnus of Vital politically motivated embargoes As Pakistan’s youth culture Signs, Junaid Jamshed, became a on French poultry in 2006, Indian entered a new era, so did the “fundo,” a derogatory term for a rice in 2007, and Georgian wine in young country’s politics. Over the fundamentalist. He joined a prose- 2008, has made many countries preceding decade, under the rule lytizing movement that advocates wary. Even though Russia is not of military dictator Mohammad following Muhammad in the most yet a leading global food producer, Zia ul-Haq, Islamization had literal ways: the length of one’s the world does not want a new spread throughout Pakistan. Zia’s beard, the style of one’s dress, even Iron Curtain to snap down around alliance with the United States how one speaks—such as adopting the country’s verdant heartland. had brought guns, Shamsie says, an Arab inflection. Another Vital and his alliance with the Saudis Signs member, Salman Ahmad, got OTHER NATIONS had brought Wahhabism, a strain deeply into Sufism and pioneered of Islam at odds with the deeply Sufi rock. A Vital Signs spinoff Pakistani Pop personal Sufism that was tradi- band, Junoon, produced rock star tional in Pakistan. In 1986, how- Ali Azmat, who has used his fame THE SOURCE: “Pop Idols” by Kamila ever, Zia’s more secular-minded to fight against Zionism. Together, Shamsie, in Granta, Autumn 2010. rival Benazir Bhutto returned to these paths illustrate the “polarity When novelist Kamila Sham- Pakistan after eight years in exile, and discordance” that animate Pak- sie left Pakistan for America in and a million people flooded the istan today. the early 1990s, she expected that streets of Lahore to welcome her. “It’s a strange business, growing some of the pop stars of her youth That same year, Lahore’s Al-Hamra up,” Shamsie remarks. “Your teen would “fade away.” idols grow up too, But instead they’ve and you realize that transformed them- the vast gulf of years selves, and in ways which separated you that “reflect Pakis- from them is actually tan’s shifting just a narrow ravine, religio-political and that you are all landscape.” roughly part of the When she was same generation. In growing up in Pak- the particular case of istan, in the mid- the Pakistani pop 1980s, one thing pioneers, you also was obvious, Sham- realize that your sie reflects: “Youth nation is growing up culture was For- Vital Signs’rockhit “Dil Dil Pakistan”captured the hearts of young Pakistanis in 1987. with you too.”
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OTHER NATIONS views. A smaller group—25 How can the Chinese percent—gave answers that track Western understandings of democ- China’s Confucian support both democ- racy, invoking elections, checks and racy and their country’s Democracy balances, or the separation of powers. authoritarian regime? THE SOURCE: “The Shadow of Confucian- But a not insubstantial segment, ism” by Tianjian Shi and Jie Lu, in Journal just under 20 percent, described of Democracy, Oct. 2010. democracy in terms flavored by the How is it that surveys con- country,” Chinese respondents gave Confucian doctrine of minben, sistently find that the majority of the an average score of 8.5 on a one-to-10 whose central tenet is expressed in Chinese population strongly supports scale; only residents of Thailand gave the maxim “Minwei bangben,” mean- both democracy and the country’s democracy a higher rating. When ing “The people alone are the basis of authoritarian regime? There’s a sim- asked to characterize how democratic the state.” The Confucian philoso- ple explanation, according to Tianjian their government was, respondents in pher Mencius (372–289 bc) put it Shi and Jie Lu, political scientists at China—the sole authoritarian regime this way: “Most important are the Duke University and American Uni- in the survey—gave a score of 7.2. people; next come the land and versity, respectively. In China, Only citizens of Thailand and Taiwan grain; and last the princes.” But the “democracy” is understood quite dif- gave their governments higher marks. implication is not that the people ferently than in America and other Then the authors examined Chi- rule, only that their welfare is central. liberal democracies. Confucian ideas nese responses to the ABS question, At its heart, minben is a paternalistic help create a “unique” blend of princi- “What does democracy mean to ideal: A government is legitimized by ples that accommodates the rule of you?” More than 40 percent of those the effects of its policies on the peo- the Chinese Communist Party. surveyed indicated that they had “no ple, not the process by which it came Asked as part of the Asia Barome- idea what democracy means.” Obvi- to power. More than two millennia ter Survey (ABS) to judge “how suit- ously, that alone could explain some after his death, Confucius still shapes able you think democracy is for your of the contradictions in Chinese Chinese political life.
one is pretty sure everyone is cheating on his taxes, or EXCERPT bribing politicians, or taking bribes, or lying about the value of his real estate. And this total absence of faith in one another is self-reinforcing. The epidemic of lying and When in Athens cheating and stealing makes any sort of civic life impos- sible; the collapse of civic life only encourages more The Greek state was not just corrupt but also lying, cheating, and stealing. Lacking faith in one another, corrupting. Once you saw how it worked you could they fall back on themselves and their families. understand a phenomenon which otherwise made no The structure of the Greek economy is collectivist, sense at all: the difficulty Greek people have saying a but the country, in spirit, is the opposite of a collective. kind word about one another. Individual Greeks are Its real structure is every man for himself. Into this delightful: funny, warm, smart, and good company. I left system investors had poured hundreds of billions of two dozen interviews saying to myself, “What great dollars. And the credit boom had pushed the country people!” They do not share the sentiment about one over the edge, into total moral collapse. another: The hardest thing to do in Greece is to get one Greek to compliment another behind his back. No —MICHAEL LEWIS, author of, most recently, The Big success of any kind is regarded without suspicion. Every- Short, and a contributing editor of Vanity Fair (Oct. 1, 2010)
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Also in this issue:
James Morris on old age in the new CURRENT millennium
Irving Louis Horowitz on BOOKS communism reviews of new and noteworthy nonfiction James Gibney on armed humani- tarians
Steven Lagerfeld Hurricane Man on Daniel Patrick Reviewed by Michael O’Donnell Moynihan
In a little essay about Mozart that halls and loan sharks. Sarah L. Courteau SAULBELLOW: on Montaigne Saul Bellow wrote toward the end of his life, Capturing this juxtaposi- Letters. he expressed admiration for the prodigious tion of things high and Edited by Troy Jollimore on composer’s facility with melody and har- low became his unique lit- Benjamin Taylor. mony, and marveled at the way the music “is erary mission. Breathing Viking. W. H. Auden in 571 pp. $35 America given so readily, easily, gratuitously. For it is in the sooty air of the not a product of effort. What it makes us see American city, Bellow exhaled hurricanes. Richard Restak on is that there are things which must be done He was never anything but a writer, except consciousness easily. Easily or not at all—that is the truth perhaps a scoundrel; his correspondents about art.” If we needed reminding that were mistresses, wives, editors, lawyers col- Jonathan Rieder Bellow—who won the Nobel Prize for Liter- lecting alimony, fans, combatants, and on African- ature in 1976, and every other major literary fellow novelists, to whom he was uncom- American sermons award besides—warrants mention in the monly generous. same breath as Mozart, we now have it in his Early in the collection, Bellow provides a Kevin M. Schultz collected letters. This volume, well edited sort of mission statement: “A novel, like a on religion in and ably introduced by novelist and essayist letter, should be loose, cover much ground, American life Benjamin Taylor, who spent years collecting run swiftly, take risk of mortality and decay.” its contents, is at once an autobiographical He was responding to a criticism of The portrait and a work of literature unto itself. Adventures of Augie March (1953), the auto- Bellow (1915–2005) was one of the bril- biographical novel that was his breakout liant English-prose stylists of the 20th cen- masterpiece. He later cringed at its busy- tury, rivaled perhaps only by James Joyce ness, and it is true that his mature works, and Vladimir Nabokov. (The former he especially Herzog (1964) and Humboldt’s admired, the latter he scorned as “one of the Gift (1975), are more disciplined and re- great wrong-way rubbers of all time.”) He fined. But alone among his novels, Augie was born in Canada, but when he was nine March displays Bellow’s full, flexed muscula- his family moved to Chicago, where the tas- ture: He is like a prizefighter who swings in seled dons of Hyde Park strolled past pool all directions and somehow lands punches
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every time. Beginning with that brassy, counter- the other hand, the letters show that casual bril- factual declaration of independence in the book’s liance seems to have poured out of his pen. Imag- opening sentence—“I am an American, Chicago ine being a young Philip Roth and receiving these born”—the energy and vitality of Bellow’s prose is words in 1969: “I knew when I hit Chicago (was astonishing. Chicago is the city of broad it 12 years ago?) and read your stories that you shoulders, but also the place of giant strides, and were the real thing. When I was a little kid, there after a few pages of Augie March, you are sure were still blacksmiths around, and I’ve never for- Bellow could tilt his hat, gather his papers, and gotten the ring of a real hammer on a real anvil.” walk the Magnificent Mile in just three or four. Whether or not Bellow found making art easy, he The letters display the same extraordinary certainly made it look easy. facility with language that characterizes Bellow’s Atlas’s definitive 2000 biography, Bellow, is fiction. In 1949, he complained of the kind of excellent but harsh, and Bellow will redeem himself mail that had been arriving: “Junk, madness, for some readers here, in his own words. The letters haughtiness, injury. Enough to provoke a man to bear full witness to his rakish nature: A serial phi- abjure all intimacy and withdraw to a tent as far landerer, he married five times, and usually di- as possible from sea-level, whence life came, and vorced badly. His expression in the cover photo of live on snow and hawkshit.” After gall bladder the collected letters seems to say, “Darling, be rea- surgery, he observed, “The only prominent scar sonable. It’s not as though I actually told you I love goes through my navel. Out of some sheer primi- you.” But the letters also reveal his poignant longing tive magical conviction, I felt the navel to be invi- for acceptance from his streetwise father and olable.” Bellow frequently paused in letters to brothers, his tenderness toward his children, and a paint characters in his Dickensian way. Here he fierce love of his friends. It’s hard to stay angry with is on a university colleague: someone who composes lines like this: “My sister’s husband has had a stroke again, and this time is He’s the archetype of the learned idiot. He’s a Har- partly paralyzed. He lies in the hospital, all the vard Ph.D., conservative to the flap of his long sweetness of his character showing in the new soft- underwear, collects pornographic poetry, has a ness of his face. Forgiving everyone.” pistol range in his basement, knows how to mend His letters to and about other writers are among a dog sled in driving snow and is an Admiral Peary the most fascinating in the collection. He upbraid- manqué, is president of the burial society of Min- ed William Faulkner for seeking to rehabilitate the neapolis, and takes vitamin B1 all summer long on Hitler sympathizer Ezra Pound. He maintained a the belief that mosquitoes will not bite a man workaday chumminess with Ralph Ellison, with whose perspiration is saturated with it. whom he once shared lodgings. Evelyn Waugh he denounced as a snob, and Graham Greene as an A running theme is Bellow’s complaint to anti-Semite. George Orwell gets some of the high- friends that he did not find writing easy: He may est praise: “You hardly realize how deep Orwell have blared Così Fan Tutte from the speakers as goes because he is so clear about what he’s doing.” the words came, but he was no Mozart. The per- Bellow famously wrote people from his own plexed reader spends the entire volume evaluat- life directly into his fiction, sometimes infuriating ing this claim. Bellow was forever apologizing for them. He was an observer, not an imaginer, and being an irregular correspondent, and, according the letters show that the price of his fiction was to his biographer, James Atlas, he tossed out not borne easily by those around him. In one of pages of outstanding fiction because they weren’t the most remarkable letters in the collection, he perfect. He disciplined himself to spend each defends this practice as the artist’s prerogative. morning writing, and finishing a book exhausted Bellow placated his childhood friend David Peltz, him. It humanizes Bellow to see him strain. On who protested the appearance of a scene from his
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Oscar Tarcov died. As he grew physically frail, he tried to reassure his corres- pondents: “I do go out of doors and rinse my brains in God’s icy air without knowing whether the tears in my eyes come from the cold wind or gratitude to my Creator.” At the same time he stepped in as a paternal figure after the English novelist Martin Amis’s father, Kingsley, died. Martin Amis has writ- ten movingly about his con- nection to Bellow; now we see Bellow’s equally poign- ant side of this improbable literary relationship as he “willingly take[s] up the slack as a sort of adoptive father.” In 1981, Bellow sent his close friend John Cheever, who was dying, a letter full of admiration:
“A novel, like a letter, should be loose, cover much ground, run swiftly, take risk of mortal- You were engaged, as a ity and decay,”wrote Saul Bellow in one of the many letters he penned during his lifetime. writer should be, in trans- forming yourself. When I own life in Humboldt’s Gift, by saying, “I should read your collected stories I was moved to see the think it would touch you that I was moved to put transformation taking place on the printed page. a hand on your shoulder and wanted to remem- There’s nothing that counts really except this trans- ber you as I took off for the moon. . . . You are forming action of the soul. I loved you for this. I welcome to all my facts. You know them, I give loved you anyway, but for this especially. them to you. If you have the strength to pick them up, take them with my blessing. Touch The same might be said of Bellow himself. them with your imagination and I will kiss your Brittle and brilliant as crystal—as prone to slice hands.” If you have the strength—that’s a big “if,” those who handled him as to dazzle those who coming from a muscleman. gazed on from afar—Bellow attains that rare The entries toward the volume’s end are the stature in which all that really matters is what is most affecting. In his later years, Bellow was on the printed page. We no longer have him, but called upon to deliver many eulogies as his old we will always have that. comrades gave way, one by one. “It wears out Michael O’Donnell’s essays and reviews have appeared in The your heart,” he wrote after his lifelong friend Nation, The Washington Monthly, and The Los Angeles Times.
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The Old Story Reviewed by James Morris
In separate books, Ted C. SHOCK OFGRAY: 438 million in 2050; indeed, China in 2025 “will Fishman and Susan Jacoby The Aging of the be home to one-fifth of the world’s population, both cry crisis, but in different World’s Population but home to one-fourth of all people over 65.” By registers of alarm. Their com- and How It Pits 2050, Spain is projected to have a higher propor- Young Against Old, mon theme is the disruptive tion of people over 65—37 percent—than any Child Against effects, on nations and individ- Parent,Worker other country in the world. uals, of the coming worldwide Against Boss, How will nations so configured, with declin- increase in the ranks of the CompanyAgainst ing birthrates, sustain their economic status and aged. Fishman tends toward Rival,and Nation prevent crippling fissures in their societies? dispassion; Jacoby, toward Against Nation. Where will they find the resources, psychic and exasperation. He’s a better By Ted C. Fishman. financial, to attend to the new numbers of the Scribner. guide to the scale of the 401 pp. $27.50 aged, and on what haphazard landscape of changes; she’s more adept at homes, hospitals, hospices, asylums? NEVER SAYDIE: making them painful and per- The Myth and Fishman’s geographic chapters are interlaced sonal. Both sound wake-up Marketing of the with others reflecting on various aspects of aging. calls that go on till afternoon, New Old Age. There is, for example, a universal sequence to long after they’ve made their By Susan Jacoby. how we age physically, and Fishman summarizes points. But their troubling Pantheon. it deftly, decade by decade, in a dozen pages that 322 pp. $27.95 message needs to be heard. may leave you gone fetal on the floor. Our bodies Take it in perhaps with a glass of aged scotch. destroy themselves daily at the molecular level Fishman is a cool-headed observer, whether (“We begin to die while still in the womb”) in as journalist, demographer, or sociologist, and their progress from the pulled muscles of age 30 has done a prodigious amount of research. He to the slack, papery skin and dementia of 80. But piles on the facts and figures, from the biological the inevitable deterioration doesn’t necessarily to the economic, the transnational to the domes- hasten death. Thanks, if that’s the word, to stub- tic, and leaves the worst of their possible conse- born genes or the holding-pattern powers of quences to our extrapolating imaginations. Five medicine, the ancient mad may one day number of his 10 chapters have a geographic focus, on countless millions around the world. aging populations in two American cities— Buried deep in Fishman’s book is an inspired upscale Sarasota, Florida, and downscale Rock- subhead, a backhanded (backsided?) homage to ford, Illinois—and in the nations of Spain, Japan, the columnist Thomas L. Friedman: “The World and China. (Several chapter titles even manage to Is Flatulent.” The page is a nice example of how put a smiley face on the dour demographics: the macro-minded Fishman can also narrow his “Señor Moment: Spain’s Discovery of Age,” range, here to foresee a future of better bath- “Japan, Land of the Missing Son.”) Each geo- rooms for the aged: “Toilets will sport stylish graphic chapter is headed by attention-grabbing handrails, lift and drop on command, and even demographic data specific to the region. Thus, spray water in places that older people have a there will be 66 million Americans over the age hard time reaching. And because the physical of 65 in 2025. There were 167 million Chinese effects of age befoul the air, the toilet deodorizes over the age of 60 in 2009, and the estimate is for its bowl, its user, and the room.” Well, that’s
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something. the old old, the shuttered, stumbling, ailing, dia- Little about the gassy world to come leaves pered, defecating, delusional, and adrift old. And Susan Jacoby composed. She derides the myths it’s the likely growing number of the latter that we’re fed about aging in favor of what to her is alarms Jacoby. Madness is much on her mind: the evident reality. She skewers Americans’ fash- “The most important thing Americans need to ionable tendency to deny age and postpone death know about dementia is how many of the old— with a lifestyle cocktail of scientific advances, nearly half of those over 85—are affected. The chemical procedures, Pilates, vegetables, and no prevalence of Alzheimer’s doubles in every five- desserts but their just deserts. She dismisses the year period over age 65. These statistics cannot psychobabble that calls old age “a time of placid be cited often enough.” Science is apparently not contemplation” or tells the aged they’re not get- close to a cure for dementia, even as scientific, ting older, just wiser and happier and freer. She’s medical, and public health advances keep us alive a secularist and an the extra years that put atheist, and she coun- us at increasing risk for ters arguments that the condition. America push the nobility of suf- is not prepared—and fering and oppose what not preparing—to cope she calls “rational” with a great population suicide. of devastated minds. Jacoby makes an “The two over- essential distinction whelming problems of between the “young real old age in the old” and the “old old.” United States today,” It’s the young old Jacoby writes, “are (among whom, at 65, health, which generally she counts herself) worsens over time, and who write books the tendency of all but about the privileges of the richest Americans old age and the new to grow poorer as they opportunities for find- grow older.” The most ing fulfillment by crippling side effect of embracing every clap- prolonged illness is trap mantra and junk Increased longevity means more gray heads than ever before. often impoverishment, promise that society and that reality will not pitches. The higher wisdom of the moment abate as years are added to lives. Science may one routinely makes a distinction between chrono- day cure diseases that today are intractable, she logical age and “real” age. Real age is now what acknowledges, but faith in a future redeemed by you and your lifestyle will it to be. Real age science must not keep us from doing what the old sends those fond-hope and fat-chance birth- need now, such as expanding Medicare to help day assurances that 70 is the new 50. Yet for cover “the open-ended care of those who may live every paragliding 80-year-old there are for years with Alzheimer’s.” legions of immobile others, pressed to sub- Jacoby wears her New Yorker’s passion on mission by disease or the stony weight of every page and her liberal politics on almost as madness. many. She wants “a new intergenerational con- Chances are the young old won’t be cheerlead- tract that covers social welfare needs for Ameri- ers for longevity when they cross the line to join cans of all generations,” and she would “tax all
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income, including that of people over 65, at a litany of demands with an insistence that old level necessary to maintain the kind of social old age and death, if they do have to occur, safety net that exists in every other developed treat their cohort with due deference and at country—which would include comprehensive minimal expense. health insurance for the young as well as benefits In the end, at the end, living and dying both for the old.” Amid the current fierce divisions earn their clichés. The dice are rolled, the wheel over health care in this country, her proposals are is spun, and some of us are lucky, and some not. below the level of the quixotic. It alters nothing to rail against the roster of rea- A doomed agenda, then—unless, Jacoby sons why, whether a divine plan, planetary align- suggests, America’s aging, privileged boomer ment, or bum genes. Does age at least bring wis- generation can be persuaded to come to the dom? (Another myth, Jacoby says.) The evidence rescue and use its shortened breath to demand is mixed. When Verdi was almost 80, he wrote it. To the confluence of developments explored Falstaff and set his librettist’s final lines—life is a in her book—the medical advances that delay farce and makes fools of us all; laugh last and you death but may not soon cure the ailments that laugh best—to music that itself whirls and ravage the extra years, the bankrupting costs laughs. When Sophocles was near 90, he wrote to individuals of coping with extended life that Oedipus at Colonus, and his chorus sang that is no more than half-life—add one that might anyone who wants a long life is a fool; not to be have a disproportionate effect. As the charmed born is best, but next best is to die as soon as pos- boomers come up against the limits of the sible. Amen to them both. immortality they had assumed for themselves, James Morris is an editor at large of The Wilson Quarterly and they may decide to conclude their lifelong a senior scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center.
Communist Manifesto Reviewed by Irving Louis Horowitz
While we are routinely tion of entire classes and cultures. ADICTIONARYOF taught that the failure to appre- 20TH-CENTURY Today, the egalitarian impulses of earlier ciate “history” may doom us to COMMUNISM. stages of communism have given way to a repeat it, at times forgetfulness Edited by Silvio Pons dynastic system in places as far flung as North may be considered evidence and Robert Service. Korea (now entering its third generation of fam- Translated by that optimism and innovation Mark Epstein and ily rule) and Cuba (where Fidel Castro is trans- can move us beyond past disas- Charles Townsend. ferring authority to his brother Raúl). The theo- ters, at least of the human kind. Princeton Univ. Press. retical underpinning of communism has shifted 921 pp. $99.50 Certainly by most measures, profoundly from the thirst to cleanse society by communism could be counted among the more liquidating older classes such as the aristocracy destructive of such disasters. Having begun with and bourgeoisie, to the empowerment of politi- high expectations as an ideology and philosophy in cal elites and military strata drawn from the Germany and France in the mid-1800s, it took poorer segments of the population. The eventual deadly political form as a system of class rule in the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union and early 20th century. Eventually, communism Eastern Europe did not drive such elites from resulted in the death of millions, and the destruc- the political scene. Communism as an ideology,
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philosophy, party label, and social ethic has suf- editions is welcome. As the author of numerous fered defeats but not termination. It is the stay- books on communism and Russian history, ing power of communism—now in its third including Comrades! A History of World century—and not its historical antecedents that Communism (2007), Service provides a useful explains the need for A Dictionary of 20th- counterweight to the Continental tradition of Century Communism. communist commentary that informs so much of Those who wrote the promotional literature for this volume. It is a tradition that still works hard this compendium seem not quite certain whether to separate Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin— it should be identified as a dictionary of what now sparing the founder’s thought the contamination exists or an encyclopedic reference to what once of the follower’s deeds—and even more, Lenin was promised by the founders and leaders of com- from Joseph Stalin. Service brings the critical munism. The dictionary is essentially a collection edge shared by important British and American of papers by 160 reasonably qualified specialists scholars of communism such as Leonard who have produced more than 400 entries in an Schapiro, Ronald Radosh, and Walter Laqueur— oversized effort of nearly 1,000 pages. The chal- none of them, astonishingly, listed in the index. lenge to the reviewer is thus complex, and the Nevertheless, the dictionary includes some attempt to be fair is inherently circumscribed by truly insightful profiles of key figures and his own prejudices and biases. While I, like many theoretical articles ana- of the contributors to this dictionary, have been lyzing such matters as interested in the subject all my life, I also strongly the stages in the evolu- Communism as an believe that communism is no longer a manifesto tion of European ideology, philosophy, party for the future, but a blueprint to the disasters of communism. The dic- label, and social ethic has the past century. tionary as a whole suffered defeats but not It is unfortunate that Silvio Pons, who also exhibits a socialist and termination. helped bring forth the original edition of this social-democratic per- work in Italian, has not made a similar frank spective, which is evident in the treatment of acknowledgment of his limitations. Pons is not such “isms” as McCarthyism in the United States only a professor of Eastern European history at and, in the Soviet Union, Proletkultism (proletar- the University of Rome, but the director of the ian devotion), regarded in the early days of the Gramsci Institute Foundation, named for Anto- Soviet revolution as “the most universal and nio Gramsci, a pivotal figure in the Italian Com- global of cultures.” These entries describe with munist Party in the years after World War I, mixed results the rifts and schisms imposed by when fascism gained ascendancy. Doctrinal dif- ideological thought and utopian goals. They also ferences with the Soviet Bolshevik Party serve as a reminder of how powerful abstract notwithstanding, Gramsci remained loyal to the quasi-theological concepts were in the hearts and cause of communism all his life, during years of souls of communist revolutionaries. Indeed, in imprisonment by the Fascists, who cordially pro- his unusually fine analysis of Marxism-Leninism, vided him with writing paper and books while Italian scholar Vittorio Strada indicates that this behind bars to state his objections. (That said, overarching ism “performed its ideological func- the article on Gramsci by Giuseppe Vacca— tion, preserved even after Stalin’s death and another scholar affiliated with the Gramsci adapting to the new political situation, only Institute Foundation—is fair, balanced, and finally to become an empty shell, devoid not only respectful.) of its sacred qualities, but its credibility.” The appearance of Robert Service, a historian The surveys of communist parties in various at St. Antony’s College at Oxford University, as countries—from Albania to Yugoslavia—and the second editor of both the Italian and English regions might well have formed the core of a sepa-
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rate book. The sweeping essay by University of dered it in a cult of personality. Bologna historian Francesco Benvenuti outlining This volume is far more useful as a collection of the tortured relationships of nationalism and com- specific entries than as a general overview of com- munism, particularism and universalism, armed munism. It fails to explain communism’s continued guerrilla movements and democratic social goals, dominance in a pure form in countries ranging could have served as a prolegomena for such a vol- from Cuba to North Korea, and in modified form in ume, along with French political historian Marc such a major player of our times as China. Its rela- Lazar’s piece on the roads various countries took to tivistic approach wouldn’t be tolerated in a diction- socialism. As it is, these and other well-researched ary on that other totalitarian pole, Nazism. Myopi- articles are wedged among entries that embrace a cally extolling “economic opening” and improved variety of other considerations. “educational levels” as a consequence of single- The surveys are often notable for what they party domination and ethnic subjugation (as politi- omit. Not since Robert J. Alexander’s Commun- cal scientist Luigi Tomba does in his entry on ism in Latin America was published in 1957 have China) is a disastrous consequence of pure relativ- we had an in-depth survey of communism in that ism dressed up as social science and historical region. Alas, his book is not recognized in the dic- objectivity. tionary’s entry on the communist party in Latin And at the risk of turning this into a biblio- America. Perhaps the most egregious problem in graphical critique, simply too many important this section is the utterly mechanistic allocation scholars are overlooked. Worthwhile classical stud- of space. The entry on the Communist Party of ies by Karl Wittfogel, Sheldon Wolin, and Herbert the United States (CPUSA) runs only one page, Marcuse have been included, but there is no men- about the same length as that devoted to the par- tion of such works as Frank H. and Fritzie P. ties in Switzerland and Yemen. Worse yet, two of Manuel’s monumental study Utopian Thought in the most important works on the CPUSA are not the Western World (1979) and Melvin Lasky’s mentioned: The American Communist Party, a groundbreaking Utopia and Revolution (1976). Critical History, 1919–1957 (1957), by Irving The Italian origins of this book likely account for Howe and Lewis Coser, and The Roots of Ameri- the overwhelming number of references to authors can Communism (1957), by Theodore Draper. from Italy, though even here one wonders what- The dictionary’s sharpest and most telling ever happened to encyclopedic figures such as Ital- criticisms of communism come not from authors ian historians Renzo De Felice (mentioned only in who grew to maturity in Western democratic passing) and Franco Venturi. societies, but from Russians who experienced Some figures of note must inevitably be omit- Soviet totalitarianism as an everyday fact of life. ted from even an exhaustive reference. Still, the For example, in her entry on Zhdanovism, Russ- strong bias favoring left-leaning earlier texts ian scholar Elena Zubkova shows acute under- whose authors examined communist decision standing of how this peculiar ism served as making in economics and politics, often with Stalin’s alter ego and second in command during limited access to information about the quantity the post–World War II years. Andrey Zhdanov and quality of human suffering that is now avail- was a key Stalin henchman who served as “cura- able through newly opened archives, weakens the tor”—czar might have been a better term—of Bol- objectivity and comprehensiveness that a reader shevik standards for culture. He purged Soviet has a right to expect from an authoritative culture of cosmopolitan and modernist trends in dictionary. The defects are especially notable the arts and music, and cleansed the Soviet because the editors and publisher had more than Union’s propaganda arm, the Sovinformburo, of five years to improve and update the entries from Jews. Zhdanovism stripped the communist the Italian edition, but elected to take essentially regime of its remaining utopian dress and laun- the original version as a given.
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Still, on balance this is a work well worth this panoramic volume of the 20th century is a reading. Awkward and contradictory as its painful reminder of the continuing search for entries may be, they remind us of the tragedies perfection and the endurance of human suffered by so many at the hands of so few. As a imperfection. political system, communism has many recog- nized defects and far fewer adherents than in the Irving Louis Horowitz is Hannah Arendt professor emeritus of sociology and political science at Rutgers University. Over the past. As a moral system, it has provided few past 60 years, he has written extensively on communism. His books include Radicalism and the Revolt Against Reason (1961, guideposts and much disillusion in the search for rev. ed. 2009), Behemoth: Main Currents in the History and The- the good life. Read as a backdrop to a world now ory of Political Sociology (1999), Ideology and Utopia in the United States: 1956–1976 (1977), and The Idea of War and Peace in Con- entering the second decade of the 21st century, temporary Philosophy (1957).
CONTEMPORARY AFFAIRS fixing, and power generating a part of war fighting. Confronted in Afghanistan and Iraq by the Masters of Peace absence or collapse of any functioning state, Reviewed by James Gibney blooming insurgencies, and a State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development In the first 11 months of (USAID) unable and unwilling to engage in its Iraq deployment, the Fourth ARMED nation-building under fire, the U.S. military Infantry Division’s Third Brig- HUMANITARIANS: stepped into the breach. ade Combat Team spent $72 The Rise of the The relatively lean Army Civil Affairs teams Nation Builders. million on public works projects that started an $8 million military reconstruction in just one Baghdad suburb. By Nathan Hodge. effort in Afghanistan in 2002 evolved into a well- Bloomsbury. That’s roughly equivalent to one 338 pp. $26 funded menagerie of acronyms: CHLCs (Coalition year of U.S. foreign aid to the Humanitarian Liaison Cells, nicknamed “chick entire country of Botswana, but merely a rounding licks”), which turned into PRTs (Provincial Recon- error in the U.S. military’s massive outlay of devel- struction Teams, composed of Civil Affairs troops, opment dollars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In Armed a security detachment, and experts from USAID Humanitarians, freelance defense correspondent and the departments of State and Agriculture), Nathan Hodge sets out to explain how and why which were later supplemented in Iraq by HTTs the Pentagon embraced the once-dreaded business (Human Terrain Teams, composed of social scien- of nation-building, and the “tectonic shift” that this tists hired to provide military commanders with new mission portends for American foreign policy. cultural insight). The military, meanwhile, was in Hint: It’s not good news. the throes of what Hodge characterizes as “a full- During the late 1990s, Pentagon theorists such blown intellectual revolt.” Stung by their inability as Thomas Barnett called for the military to to subdue insurgents in either Iraq or Afghanistan, develop its ability to cope with “gap” states—those officers and enlisted soldiers embraced a new that were not plugged into the world economy, and counterinsurgency doctrine proposed in 2006 by were therefore more prone to wars and humani- General David Petraeus. He argued that U.S. tarian crises. The tremendous resources available forces would not be able to kill or capture their way to the military’s regional commanders had already to victory, and that soldiers must immerse them- given them de facto control over U.S. policy in selves in foreign cultures and, as Hodge puts it, be many global hot spots. It took the exigencies of “as skilled at managing reconstruction funds as 21st-century conflict, however, to overcome the they were in sending tank rounds downrange.” military’s reluctance to make school building, road They certainly had a lot of funds to manage:
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From 2002 to 2006, the portion of all U.S. foreign and Afghanistan may well be better, but not more, aid funneled through the military rose from six armed humanitarianism, as when the Pentagon percent to 22 percent. But efforts to realize the swiftly mobilized aid after Haiti’s earthquake last new vision ran into problems on the ground. Pri- year and then withdrew once the immediate crisis vate contractors brought in to manage projects eased, leaving the Haitians to make their own often imported their workers, which meant fewer choices. As Hodge takes pains to show, in nation- jobs and dollars for needy local economies; the building, less is often more. companies also lured skilled employees away from James Gibney is a features editor at The Atlantic. the U.S. government with higher pay. Anthropolo- gists fretted about the ethics of working with the military and balked at serving on the new HTTs, The Plan Is All despite fat salaries. More broadly, the PRTs pur- Reviewed by Blair A. Ruble sued projects that met the short-term needs of Witold Rybczynski, the military commanders rather than long-term devel- MAKESHIFT opment goals. When officers and units cycled out, author of more than a dozen METROPOLIS: whatever progress they had made in cultivating extraordinarily popular treatises Ideas About Cities. relationships and solving problems was often lost. on cities and architecture, is a By Witold Rybczynski. Hodge is fair-minded in his critiques—as a for- master of making professional Scribner. 240 pp. $24 mer Foreign Service Officer, I ruefully agree with quarrels—over the value of the his diagnosis of the State Department’s institu- American suburban landscape, the relative impor- tional allergy to innovation and discomfort—and tance of psychological comfort and technical offers crisp, sympathetic portraits of practitioners perfection in home design, and others—accessible and champions of the nation-building movement, to nonspecialist readers. In Makeshift Metropolis, including Joseph Collins, the retired colonel who which grew out of a 2007 lecture at the National pushed the PRT concept, and Montgomery Building Museum, he seeks to place contemporary McFate, the pixie-cut, Marin County–bred anthro- American city planning within the context of pologist who pioneered the development of HTTs. American life past and present. This slim and ele- And Hodge provides some illuminating historical gant book is just the thing for readers who want to context: Readers of his chapter on the lessons of acquaint themselves with the American planning Vietnam might think the military was trapped in tradition during an evening by the fireplace. an endless George Santayana loop, in which noth- Rybczynski’s core argument is that the United ing is ever learned from the past. States does indeed have a worthy planning tradi- Harder to swallow is Hodge’s larger claim that tion that often is ignored or denied by those who “armed humanitarianism” represents the “new promote an image of a country shaped by individu- face of American foreign policy.” Even if our fiscal alist capitalists who function absent state control. situation were not as dire as it is, the debacles of He makes his case with profiles of well-known Iraq and Afghanistan are likely to have a strong urban visionaries of the past—such as Washington, inoculative effect on future interventions. Hodge D.C., planner Pierre L’Enfant and architect Frank rightly dwells on the obscene imbalance of re- Lloyd Wright, as well as 20th-century urban land- sources between the Pentagon and the State scape critics Lewis Mumford and Jane Jacobs. He Department, but that reflects Congress’s long- also highlights those who are little known beyond standing prejudices more than a strategic choice: professional circles, such as Charles Mulford Rob- Appropriating money for our camo-clad boys and inson, who promoted the City Beautiful movement girls is always a better populist bet than helping at the turn of the 20th century, and Robinson’s out the striped-pants set. English counterpart, Raymond Unwin. And he The enduring legacy of our experiences in Iraq reaches back to recognize largely forgotten figures,
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including Washington, D.C., surveyor Joseph Elli- Rybczynski ends with an examination of The cott and Francis Nicholson, who helped establish Yards, a new office-condominium development colonial Annapolis and Williamsburg. adjacent to Washington, D.C.’s new baseball In Rybczynski’s view, residents—rather than stadium, next to the Navy Yard. He sees in The planners—ultimately determine a plan’s success Yards an attractive high-density plan that doesn’t when they decide whether to live, shop, play, and rely on towering apartment buildings. But to me it linger in the space the designer has created. feels like an etiolated variation on the ever more Rybczynski demonstrates his point that people popular waterfront development scheme. It fails to drive the process by tracing the movement of promote with serendipity and surprise the texture America’s retail spaces from streets to covered of life as it is actually lived. In a way, however, my arcades, the latter of which launched the depart- misgivings about The Yards underscore Rybczyn- ment stores that eventually migrated from down- ski’s larger point: Only the passage of time and the towns to anchor suburban shopping centers, only accumulation of thousands of individual decisions to be usurped in recent years by big-box stores. can reveal a plan as a success or failure. Cities and their surrounding regions are makeshift Rybczynski quotes Edward G. Rendell, when creations that build up incrementally, as coral Rendell was mayor of Philadelphia. “We can’t sim- accretes on a reef. ply let our cities decline,” he declared in 1996 to a The collective expression of individual prefer- group of developers and investors. “After all, you ence through the market, however, is insufficient can’t have a society without cities.” And Rybczynski to create the sorts of cities required for 21st- makes a compelling case that you can’t have cities— century life. The metropolitan regions that con- even sprawling, automobile-oriented cities— stitute many of our modern cities are larger than without planning, albeit of a makeshift kind. That any single planning entity can handle. Still, met- planning must be humble in its ambitions, foster- ropolitan development requires government ing multiple projects and urban visions rather than support and intervention in myriad ways. striving to impose just one from above. Fortunately, Rybczynski cites architect Moshe Safdie’s design Americans have a planning tradition worthy of for Modi’in, a town in Israel that encourages pri- pride. We also have Witold Rybczynski to help lead vate development of an overall plan that empha- the way.
sizes access to public space, as a hopeful vision Blair A. Ruble, the director of the Kennan Institute and the for the urban future. Comparative Urban Studies Program at the Woodrow Wilson Cen- ter, is the author of several books about cities, most recently Wash- Rybczynski bookends Makeshift Metropolis ington’s U Street: A Biography (2010). with descriptions of two very different projects that illustrate Americans’ new fascination with waterfronts, which only a generation or two ago Kids These Days were avoided by anyone who sought respectabil- Reviewed by Michael C. Moynihan ity. He begins with Brooklyn Bridge Park in New Constantly in need of new York City, a two-decade effort to convert NOTQUITE deserted piers into recreational and park land. I and more terrifying copy, news ADULTS: was living in Brooklyn Heights when discussions editors and television produc- Why20-Somethings of the project began in 1988, and have followed ers reach for that evergreen Are Choosing a its evolution since. A rough-and-tumble political tale—cultural details slightly Slower Path to Adult- hood,and WhyIt’s and consulting process delayed, but probably modified—of America’s disillu- Good for Everyone. perfected, the final plan. I quite agree with sioned youth. From zoot suit By Richard Settersten Rybczynski that this initiative is likely to grace rioters to punk rockers, grunge and Barbara E. Ray. the pages of planning and urban design acolytes to goth kids, the Bantam. 239 pp. $15 textbooks a century from now. specter of the coming gener-
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ation’s apathy and aimlessness, political While busting myths about the harmful disengagement and social alienation, contin- effects of “helicopter” parenting (it gets a bad ues to alarm parents and financially moti- rap) and questioning the frequent hand- vated experts. Today, the problem is the so- wringing about the “death of marriage” (put- called Peter Pan generation of Millennials. ting off wedlock and parenthood helps young Headlines lament that more kids are living at people earn a degree), Settersten and Ray home after high school, waiting to marry, and devote considerable attention to the American racking up student loans. view of higher education. They’re skeptical of But in Not Quite Adults, a book that distills our one-size-fits-all model that prescribes eight years of research supported by the Mac- bachelor’s degrees for everyone. Nearly half of Arthur Research Network on Transitions to students fail to graduate within six years of Adulthood, Oregon State University sociolo- enrolling in college, thus assuring that they gist Richard Settersten and Barbara E. Ray, exit without a degree but burdened by sizable former communications director for the net- debts. The authors make the politically incor- work, argue that kids aren’t simply dragging rect and undeniably true argument that some their heels about growing up. Mining a pile of students simply aren’t cut out for a four-year data from government surveys and other university (one interviewee chose a college sources, as well as more than 500 interviews based on the availability of parking) and conducted with subjects between the ages of would be better served by vocational or tech- 18 and 34, Settersten and Ray conclude that nical training. the “traditional milestones” of adulthood— Those who are ready for college, Settersten including quickly leaving the parental nest, and Ray contend, should stop gaping at the getting a job, and marrying and having steep price tag of many institutions and, in children—have moved back, and that there light of the vastly higher salaries earned by are significant financial advantages to workers with advanced degrees, view college ambling toward adulthood. debt as an investment. It’s true that the typi- cal student who graduates with debt from a public university— where the cost of tuition, room, and board grew 67 percent between 1987 and 2008—owes $20,000. But installments on that debt are equivalent to a monthly car payment, and the value of an education lasts a lot longer than that of a car. That said, the authors suggest that parents seek détente in the education “arms race” of elevated expectations that goads them to overextend their resources in order to launch their kids into the “top tier.” But they offer no concrete suggestions for how this goal could be achieved other Many kids of today’s so-called Peter Pan generation are living at home after high school. than to say that the country
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needs “education reform” at the primary ginia historian J. E. Lendon, Thucydides and level—though whether this means more char- Hobbes are “the progenitors of the theoretical ter schools and voucher programs, higher realism that abides in today’s universities and teacher pay, or some other remedy isn’t clear. think tanks.” Settersten and Ray conclude with a num- But Lendon demurs. He argues that the first ber of surprisingly banal prescriptions for the 10 years of the Peloponnesian War are best problems Millennials face. It seems obvious understood not as a struggle between two mighty that young people should choose their friends opponents for survival, but as an often petty con- wisely, lest they be influenced by rogue peers. test over time,Ω “which consisted of esteem by oth- It is undeniable that today’s young adults are ers and others’ confirmation of one’s lofty impres- “creating communities of like minds” and sion of one’s own merits,” with the rest of the “want freedom and autonomy.” “In the past,” Greek world occupying the twin roles of audience the authors write, “dating eventually led to and judge. sex. Today, sex eventually leads to dating.” Yet When the war began, in 431 bc, Sparta, both Millennials are also holding out for a partner because of its heroic defense against the Persians who is a “best friend or a soul mate.” None of at Thermopylae earlier in the century and its fre- this would be out of place in a book about the quently demonstrated prowess in land battles, purportedly indifferent Generation X-ers who possessed the greater time,Ω and had allied itself preceded them, or unfamiliar to those who with other land-based came of age in the 1980s. powers such as Corinth. Historian J. E. Lendon argues Still, Settersten and Ray have produced an But Athens dominated that the first 10 years of the occasionally interesting—and consoling— the seas and had ac- Peloponnesian War are best account of a supposedly troubled generation. quired its own empire of understood as an often petty And when Millennials reluctantly acquiesce tribute-paying islands. contest over reputation. to adulthood, the same concerns will likely be The resulting wealth applied to the next generation. had enabled the Atheni-
Michael C. Moynihan is a senior editor of Reason magazine. ans to build the mighty Acropolis as well as an impregnable wall that protected their port of
HISTORY Piraeus, and they hungered to be seen as Sparta’s equal. The War of Symbols Although the surest way to win such respect Reviewed by James Carman was to defeat Sparta on the battlefield, Pericles and other Athenian leaders knew there was little “The growth of the pow- SONG OFWRATH: hope of that. Instead, Athens employed a strat- er of Athens, and the alarm The Peloponnesian egy that the playwright Aristophanes later which this inspired in Sparta, War Begins. described as “one pot, whacked, kicking back in made war inevitable,” wrote By J. E. Lendon. anger at another pot.” When Spartan forces Thucydides in his fifth-century Basic Books. marched into their lands, the Athenians refused 608 pp. $35 bc chronicle of the Pelopon- to fight, and the invading warriors could only nesian War. Most scholars have accepted his destroy the crops that lay outside the city walls. explanation for the causes of the three-decade Athens, meanwhile, sent its dreaded triremes struggle that reshaped the Greek world. Thucy- around the Peloponnesian peninsula, raiding dides’ writings greatly influenced the thinking of and destroying coastal villages and harrying far- 17th-century political philosopher Thomas off allies of Sparta to whom the Spartans could Hobbes about how and why great powers come not provide promised defense. Though each side into conflict. Together, writes University of Vir- worried at various points that its adversary was
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angling for a destructive advantage, the war was never about extermination. The Thinking Lendon is a gifted storyteller and military Man’s Politician historian. His Soldiers and Ghosts (2005) is a Reviewed by Steven Lagerfeld rewarding journey through classical warfare from the Trojan War to the Roman conquests, Daniel Patrick Moyn- and the ancient battles he reenacts with his Uni- ihan was the kind of figure who DANIELPATRICK MOYNIHAN: versity of Virginia students are regular campus almost makes you wish there APortrait in spectacles. In Song of Wrath, he deftly explains were more intellectuals in Amer- Letters of an how battles could turn as much on misappre- ican political life. The problem is, American Visionary. hensions and chance as on bravery and superior there was only one Moynihan. Edited by skill. This was especially true at Pylos and Professor, bureaucrat, presiden- Steven R. Weisman. Sphacteria (425 bc), where Sparta suffered its tial adviser, ambassador, and PublicAffairs. 705 pp. $35 most ignoble defeat and—almost unthinkable!— finally U.S. senator from New surrendered rather than fight to the death. York from 1977 to 2001, he could as easily write a Lendon writes that “after that Sparta was merely White House memo citing Jean Paul Sartre as a playing for a draw,” which it achieved after best- warm note to Tammany Hall’s Carmine DeSapio, ing the Athenians in several battles. telling the imprisoned New York City Democratic Although most histories of the Peloponnesian Party boss in 1972 how sorry he was to hear that fed- War encompass the intervening decade of un- eral authorities had denied his request for parole. “If easy peace that followed and Sparta’s eventual you are ever around Boston,” he wrote, “you should defeat of Athens at the great sea battle of Aegos- know you have a friend on the Harvard faculty.” potami in 405 bc, Lendon ends his history with At the time, Moynihan (1927–2003) was enjoy- the Peace of Nicias in 421 bc, when the Atheni- ing one of his brief sojourns in the academy, having ans were up. “The Athenians won both the war served as domestic policy adviser to President Rich- itself and, no less necessary in a war of symbols, ard M. Nixon and in lower-level jobs under Presi- the simultaneous war to define victory and dents Lyndon B. Johnson and John F. Kennedy. defeat,” he writes. In his view, the Athenians’ Soon he would become the U.S. ambassador to subsequent doom—including their devastating India, and then ambassador to the United Nations, loss of more than 40,000 men who were killed where his angry, eloquent (and unsuccessful) crusade or taken prisoner in a risky expedition to Sicily against that body’s infamous 1975 resolution declar- in 415–413 bc—was brought on only when they ing that “Zionism is racism” made him a hero to “began to look around for some mighty deed many and probably won him his seat in the Senate. they could perform that would raise their rank Just to list these accomplishments—and the list in the eyes of the Greeks.” does not include his 18 books and much else—is Athens was not, of course, the last power that enough to leave one panting for breath. I’m happy would overreach and sow the seeds of its own to report that this collection of Moynihan’s letters, destruction, which is one reason why the world journal entries, and other writings, superbly edited still seeks to draw lessons from this long-ago by former New York Times reporter and editor struggle. But today, Lendon says, the Pelopon- Steven R. Weisman, is an apt, even riveting test- nesian War’s most telling insights may be about ament to Moynihan’s public life. Weisman’s “international actors whose aims and actions the succinct introductions weave the entries into some- contemporary West finds it hardest to under- thing like a Moynihan memoir. The book displays stand and manage: the wrathful ones . . . who all the man’s energy, wit, wide-ranging interests, seek revenge for ancient slights.” and determination, along with (to Weisman’s great
James Carman is managing editor of The Wilson Quarterly. credit) his weaknesses—his insecurities, political
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flattery, and occasional whining. It’s as stability” of American government, and espe- vivid a portrait of a political life as you cially his long campaign, inspired by could ask for. President Kennedy, to revive a bedraggled Some have called Moynihan a gad- Pennsylvania Avenue. He prevailed. The fly, but the writings collected in this vol- nation’s splendid “Main Street” runs past my ume underline the constancy of his office at the Woodrow Wilson concerns. Moynihan’s father deserted International Center for Scholars, an the family when Moynihan was 10, institution Moynihan was instrumental and his boyhood in a single-parent in creating, which itself is only one ten- working-class family, in Manhat- ant in a large, handsome Moynihan- tan’s rough-and-tumble Hell’s inspired building bordering the avenue. Kitchen neighborhood, influ- These are stirring achievements. enced everything he thought. In 1965, as an aide in the John- son Labor Department, Moynihan wrote the memo that still, for many, defines his career. Moynihan was fortunate enough to see Alarmed by the rapidly rising number a good number of his words become deeds, of black families without a father pres- but even those that did not are a powerful ent, Moynihan called for “national reminder in these rhetoric-filled times of the action”—and was branded a racist for importance of considered ideas in public life— pointing out the unpleasant facts and the rare people who put them there. about the plight of the black family. Moynihan’s reality-based politics Steven Lagerfeld is editor of The Wilson Quarterly. made him a critic of orthodox liberalism as it
developed during the 1960s. One of the most extra- ARTS & LETTERS ordinary entries in this volume is his anguished let- ter to Edward Kennedy after the assassination of He Put the I in Tries Robert Kennedy, accusing the slain leader of having Reviewed by Sarah L. Courteau abandoned the “tradition of stable, working-class urban politics”—“your people,” he reminded Ted— Last fall, two Harvard HOWTO LIVE: for the voguish liberal “salons of Central Park West.” psychologists published a study Or a Life of (It appears the letter was not sent.) for which they had developed a Montaigne in One Moynihan followed his own path. He worked smartphone application that Question and steadily for welfare reform, yet bitterly opposed the allowed people to rate their hap- TwentyAttempts Clinton administration’s 1996 welfare overhaul as piness in the midst of everyday at an Answer. disastrously harsh. (He wasn’t always right.) After activities ranging from sex to By Sarah Bakewell. the end of the Cold War, he campaigned relentlessly commuting. The intrepid (intru- Other Press. 389 pp. $25 for a larger role for international law and against sive?) researchers found that peo- excessive government secrecy and the CIA, which he ple whose minds wander are less happy than regarded as an incompetent monstrosity. those who focus on the present moment. It’s the One cannot turn many pages in this collection sort of phenomenon Michel de Montaigne before coming upon yet another letter or memo would fasten upon if he were alive today—he penned in pursuit of one more of Moynihan’s abid- spent much of his life disciplining himself to live ing concerns: his goal of creating public architec- in the here and now—and one more reminder of ture symbolizing the “dignity, enterprise, vigor, and why the essays of this minor French nobleman
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and vintner have resonated with so many read- himself, a habit that seems to reflect his character as ers in the four centuries since he wrote them. much as the fact that his essays are pastiches of at Living today amid the wheat and chaff of the least three major editions. He added—but seldom Age of I, it’s easy to forget that not long ago, subtracted—material over the years. personal accounts, unless they related heroic and Montaigne gained a large following before his likely exaggerated feats or events for the historical death in 1592, at age 59, of complications related record, weren’t written for public consumption. to kidney stones. Informed by the traditions of Sto- The man who changed that was Montaigne, born icism and Skepticism, he has been regarded by near the city of Bordeaux in 1533 to a family that some critics in the years since as a bit of a cold fish had bootstrapped itself from workaday to nobility. (and not sufficiently religious), but many others From his pen, which produced 107 essays in all, have found his temperate views a comfort. In How was born an entire genre based on the idea that to Live, Bakewell organizes her delightful intro- writing about one’s own experience can, as biogra- duction to Montaigne just as the man himself pher Sarah Bakewell might have wished—not chronologically or com- Living amid the wheat and puts it, “create a mirror prehensively, but around the loose themes and chaff of the Age of I, it’s in which other people questions that informed his life and touch upon easy to forget that not long recognize their own our own. “I set forth a humble and inglorious life; ago, personal accounts of humanity.” that does not matter,” he wrote. “You can tie up all Montaigne spent the moral philosophy with a common and private life everyday life weren’t writ- last two decades of his just as well as with a life of richer stuff.” It’s hard to ten for the public. life fleshing out his imagine a more modern and democratic senti- essays, when he wasn’t ment in this age when we are all famous for 15 reluctantly attending to the political duties that minutes—or believe we have a right to be.
sought him out, fleeing an outbreak of the plague, or Sarah L. Courteau is literary editor of The Wilson Quarterly. running interference in the religious wars that were rending France. Some of his essays run a few para- graphs, and others are much longer. In my Transatlantic Poet Everyman edition of his complete works, translated Reviewed by Troy Jollimore by Donald Frame, his essays occupy 1,000 pages, and his letters and travel journals a few hundred By the time of his death THE AGE more. in 1973, at age 66, the poet Wys- OFAUDEN: What distinguished Montaigne from his tan Hugh Auden had been an Postwar Poetry and contemporaries, as Bakewell explains in How to American citizen for almost the American Scene. Live, her unconventional and thoroughly charming three decades. Born in Britain in By Aidan Wasley. biography, was his interest in how people—and he 1907, the onetime schoolteacher Princeton Univ. Press. 280 pp. $35 was always Subject A—actually live, rather than was already well on his way to how they ought to live. Whether he was musing on establishing himself as one of the 20th century’s his sensitivity to human body odor, the conscious- leading poets when in 1939 he emigrated to the ness of his beloved cat, or the question of whether a United States. It is not surprising, then, that at his captive is likelier to elicit mercy from his captors passing it was American poets who felt most keenly through pleading or bravado, Montaigne’s writings that they had lost a master craftsman and an elder embody the meaning of the French word essayer, statesman. He had adopted their country as his which means to try. He twisted his subjects this way own, and it had adopted him. and that, now asking an impertinent question, now Auden’s poems—including such famous lyrics as adding a colorful observation, now offering a per- “September 1, 1939” and “In Memory of W. B. sonal or historical anecdote. He often contradicts Yeats”—combined elements of the traditional with
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Modernist innovations; the result was a voice that shadow of Auden’s death and ends with Auden’s could move rapidly between a public declamatory shadow itself instructing Merrill in the relationship tone and one that was markedly personal and inti- between his own living poetic voice and those of his mate. In The Age of Auden, University of Georgia dead precursors,” Wasley writes. Rich saw in Auden English professor Aidan Wasley explores the ways in a powerful male authority whom she desired both which Auden’s work shaped that of young American to please and to resist. As her work matured, Was- writers who read and, in many cases, knew him. ley says, “Rich would achieve, on her own terms, During his lifetime, Wasley writes, Auden influ- the ‘radical change and significant novelty in artistic enced “a startlingly diverse range of poets whose style’ that Auden had found lacking in her first work would go on to define what we talk about book.” Wasley resists the dominant view that Ash- when we talk about contemporary American bery’s main influence has been Wallace Stevens, poetry.” arguing—as Ashbery himself has occasionally sug- The American edition of a book Auden pub- gested—that Auden was at least as important, par- lished in 1941, two years after his arrival in ticularly early in Ashbery’s career. America, was titled The Double Man, and “In Memory of W. B. Yeats”—the first poem Wasley emphasizes the var- Auden wrote after arriving ious senses in which the in the United States—con- poet’s life, career, and even tains his famous statement character were bifurcated that “poetry makes nothing as he reinvented himself happen.” Wasley returns after crossing the Atlantic. repeatedly to that phrase, “Auden’s renunciation of his attempting to dispel the idea English poetic identity that Auden meant to express amounted to a wholesale deep pessimism about poe- redefinition of poetry’s try or skepticism about its power and place in the power to influence politics world,” Wasley writes. and society. A few lines later, Interestingly, the American Auden wrote that poetry poets Auden inspired often “survives, / A way of happen- identified more with the ing, a mouth,” and Wasley youthful radicalism of his takes this as an indication earlier work than with the Britain’s W. H.Auden exerted enormous influ- that Auden hoped poetry apolitical, conservative val- ence on generations of American poets. might reflect “the world not ues he seemed to adopt by standing outside it and later in life. Wasley is clearly aware of this fact, looking in, but by taking a fundamental, engaged though he does not explore it in The Age of place within it.” Auden to the extent some readers might wish. I confess to finding such formulations a bit Wasley pays particular attention to Auden’s vague. Of Wasley’s main contention—that Auden, influence on James Merrill, John Ashbery, and for all his Britishness, has exerted a powerful influ- Adrienne Rich. (Auden selected both Ashbery’s and ence on American poetry—there can be no doubt, Rich’s first major collections for the renowned Yale but it is not a new idea. The book is strongest when Series of Younger Poets.) For Merrill and Rich— it focuses on particular poems, not only those by who had complicated relationships with their own Ashbery, Merrill, and Rich, but also James Schuy- fathers—Auden functioned as a poetic father ler, Frank O’Hara, and William Meredith. There is figure. Merrill’s most important work, The Chang- an undeniable pleasure in seeing connections ing Light at Sandover (1982), begins “in the drawn between such disparate writers, especially
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when these lines converge in a figure as compelling Antonio Damasio, director of the University of and multifaceted as Auden, and when the delight Southern California’s Brain and Creativity Institute, Wasley himself takes in the poetry of Auden and admits as much in his illuminating book Self Comes those he inspired is evident on nearly every page. to Mind. But fortunately, there is a flip side to this conundrum. The development of the self and con- Troy Jollimore, an associate professor of philosophy at Califor- nia State University, Chico, is the author of Tom Thomson in Pur- sciousness enables us to employ reasoning and sci- gatory, which won the 2006 National Book Critics Circle Award entific observation rather than depend on mislead- for poetry. His second book, At Lake Scugog, is forthcoming in the Princeton Series of Contemporary Poets later this year. ing assumptions. For instance, some neuroscientists still believe
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY that a specific site within the brain is responsible for self and consciousness. Damasio suggests instead Mental Maps that many brain sites, all active at once, are involved. Reviewed by Richard Restak He compares the situation to a symphonic perform- ance in which the musical piece doesn’t emerge As you read this review, from one musician or even one section of the SELFCOMES your brain is undergoing TO MIND: orchestra. Instead, the orchestral conductor takes changes by the millisecond. Constructing the form as the performance unfolds: “For all intents These words and sentences are Conscious Brain. and purposes, a conductor is now leading the stimulating ideas and emotions By Antonio Damasio. orchestra, although the performance has created the based on your brain’s current Pantheon. conductor—the self—not the other way round.” 367 pp. $28.95 organization and content, which According to Damasio, we can best understand are reflective of all your experiences up to the pres- the brain as a series of maps that are “changing from ent moment. Additional changes will occur as you moment to moment to reflect the changes that are proceed down this column of type. happening in the neurons that feed them,” much Only recently did neuroscientists realize that the like an electronic billboard on which the display can human brain exhibits such astonishing plasticity. be “rapidly drawn, redrawn, and overdrawn at the This insight coincided with the introduction in the speed of lightning.” Consciousness expands our abil- 1970s of modern brain-imaging techniques such as ity to experience brain maps in the form of images magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). With today’s that can be manipulated and reasoned about. In sophisticated methods, including functional MRI, fact, the mind and consciousness partly evolve from neuroscientists can capture in real time color-coded the brain’s unceasing and dynamic mapping of these images of what happens in the brain during distinct images. Incidentally, Damasio doesn’t restrict the mental states—even during “default states,” such as term image to the visual, but uses it to refer to “the when we’re sleeping or daydreaming. brain’s momentary maps of everything and of any- These advances have led neuroscientists to opine thing, inside our body and around it, concrete as on subjects that were once the purview of philos- well as abstract, actual or previously recorded in ophers, such as mind, self, and consciousness. But memory.” studying the self or consciousness is a bit like engag- The fact that maps and images dwell within the ing in the childhood game of trying to jump on one’s brain and are accessible only to the owner presents a shadow. While it seems doable, it isn’t. Your move- “hurdle” to scientific measurement, as Damasio ments change the position of your target. Fathom- admits. For this reason, the “mental state/brain state ing mind, self, and consciousness presents similar equivalence”—that is, the idea that the mind is indis- paradoxes: The organ of investigation is the same as tinguishable from the operations of the brain— the organ carrying out the investigation; the proces- “should be regarded as a useful hypothesis rather ses employed are the same processes the investiga- than a certainty.” He cautions that even using neuro- tor is seeking to understand. science techniques more powerful than those
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currently available, “we are unlikely ever to chart the bine engines in the worldwide economy. Both con- full scope of neural phenomena associated with a vert the chemical energy of fuel into the mechanical mental state, even a simple one.” power—horsepower—that drives objects through While most neuroscientists agree with Damasio the air or across water. that consciousness is rooted in biological processes, These mechanical powerhouses are the Rodney he goes a step further in emphasizing the impor- Dangerfields of globalization, suggests Smil, an tance of the body as a whole rather than the brain environmental scientist at the University of Mani- alone in the experience of consciousness. He toba and the author of some 30 books. Buried in the concurs with other neuroscientists that conscious- bowels of ships, diesel engines move billions of tons ness contributes to adaptability and evolution, but of foodstuffs, fuel, and industrial goods between he isn’t afraid to make the surprising suggestion continents. They also propel trains, trucks, and (although perhaps not surprising to some pet own- barges. Whirring reliably underneath the wings of ers) that animals may possess a rudimentary form of planes, gas turbines make possible the flight of jet- consciousness. liners that transport more than five million passen- I found Self Comes to Mind a delight. But despite gers a day. Damasio’s attempts to address a general audience as While these machines have received little atten- well as other neuroscientists, readers with little know- tion, Smil writes, they have “led to epochal shifts in ledge about the brain may well experience the cogni- world affairs,” most noticeably the rise of China as tive equivalent of seasickness. Still, all is not lost for the world’s manufacturing hub. A modern first-time brain-book readers. Start with the container ship such as China Shipping Container appendix, a lucid summary of the main elements of Lines’ Xin Los Angeles can transport 24 times more neuroanatomy and neurophysiology. Next, read chap- goods than the first container vessels could in the ter 10, “Putting It Together,” in which Damasio sets late 1950s. Moreover, it can be loaded and offloaded out his main points minus the jargon-dense and peer- about 20 times faster than in the days of grappling directed hairsplitting of earlier chapters. After that, hooks and sweaty longshoremen, by cranes that are you’ll be reasonably equipped to start reading this themselves usually powered by diesel engines. book from the beginning. If you do, you will embark The diesel engine was pivotal in freeing land on an intellectual journey well worth the effort. and sea commerce from the shackles of the
Richard Restak is the author of 20 books on the brain, includ- thermally inefficient steam engine. German ing, most recently, The Playful Brain: The Surprising Science of engineer Rudolf Diesel developed the theoretical How Puzzles Improve Your Mind (2010). design in the 1890s, but because the engine’s high- pressure system made unprecedented demands on The Engines of Progress the working parts, several decades passed before it Reviewed by Mark Reutter gained widespread use. By then, diesel production had been commandeered by aggressive U.S. When we think of global upstarts such as Cummins (trucks), Fairbanks- PRIME MOVERS OF power, we think of political or Morse (ships), and General Motors (locomotives). GLOBALIZATION: military might or the clout of big The History and The gas turbine for jet propulsion is another corporations. We certainly don’t Impact of Diesel case in which technical improvements occurred ponder horsepower, a unit of Engines and Gas incrementally after the first big leap of invention. measure originally developed to Turbines. Patented by both British and German engineers in compare the output of steam By Vaclav Smil. the 1930s, the jet turbine was met with skepticism engines with the pulling power MIT Press. by military authorities and was not commercialized 261 pp. $29.95 of draft horses. Vaclav Smil until a Boeing 707 (using a Pratt & Whitney turbo) wants to change that. In Prime Movers of Global- took flight in 1954. Subsequently, turbine-powered ization, he examines the role of diesel and gas tur- jets rapidly replaced propeller-driven aircraft.
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If diesels and turbines have made it possible to RELIGION & PHILOSOPHY shuttle ever-increasing payloads of cargo and peo- ple among the continents, they have also changed A Feast of the Spirit commercial relations among nations. Consider that Reviewed by Jonathan Rieder the manufacture of both engines was the exclusive preserve of Western nations (plus Japan) through Black Christianity has PREACHING WITH most of their history. No longer. Nearly all large always had an ambiguous rela- SACRED FIRE: diesel engines designed by European companies tionship to American culture. If An Anthology of are now made in Asia. This is in keeping with Asia’s African slaves grew to embrace African American rapid rise to dominance of ocean shipping, with Christianity, they did so in their Sermons,1750 to China now accounting for nearly half of the traffic own way: hallowing Exodus and the Present. handled by the world’s top 20 container terminals. wondering, “If God delivered Edited by Martha Simmons and Backpedaling from his overall claims for the Daniel, why not every man?” Frank A. Thomas. beneficial nature of these two prime movers, Smil Thus was born the amalgam W.W. Norton. 960 pp. $45 adds up the environmental costs of transporting “Afro-Christianity”—a universal- more and more freight and passengers over long istic faith drenched in particularity. The “African- distances. In 1996, international shipping ac- ness” was a matter of style, too, given in moan and counted for just 1.8 percent of the global carbon shout, which often led whites to view black religion dioxide released by fossil fuels. By 2008, ocean as exotically emotional. Even Martin Luther King shipping was responsible for about four percent. Jr. was known to recoil at the sight of a preacher Aviation releases about half the carbon dioxide “jumping out” and “screaming with his tune.” that shipping does, but jetliners emit greenhouse Not the least of the virtues of Preaching With gases into a more environmentally fragile part of Sacred Fire, a smorgasbord of an anthology, is to the atmosphere. Still, Smil sees no reliable or remind the reader of the dazzling array of black affordable alternatives. “Green power” has not preaching. There’s plenty of the fire that readers found any niche on the high seas or in the air. For might expect. Toward the end of “The Eagle Stirreth the foreseeable future, the global economy will Her Nest,” delivered around 1941, the legendary C. rely on diesel engines and gas turbines. L. Franklin, father of Aretha Franklin and King’s Smil is a discursive writer who rarely finds a detail favorite preacher, breaks into fervent chanting. But about engines that he doesn’t want to share, which that wasn’t fireworks for its own sake; Franklin had makes for heavy going at times. And he overplays his already well explored his main theme, God’s love insistence that international trade agreements take a and mercy. In his 1987 sermon “Chaos or Creation,” subordinate role to diesels and turbines as the drivers Charles G. Adams, known as “the Harvard of globalization. In fact, both political power and Whooper,” launches his signature crescendo only horsepower shape the world’s commerce. One sets after parsing the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo. the rules, the other delivers the goods. Style, then, can be the vehicle of substance and But his descriptions of the mechanics of modern not its enemy, and in Preaching With Sacred Fire, all shipping, as well as earlier waves of globalization manner of stylists abound: cerebral, mystical, whim- propelled by steamships and tall-mast vessels, sical, tender, contemplative, offbeat, angry, sublime. make for stimulating reading. By scrutinizing com- Some of the most beautiful moments are gently lyri- mon yet often-overlooked technologies, Smil offers cal. Gardner Taylor, now retired as pastor of Brook- a fresh and useful perspective on world economics. lyn’s Concord Baptist Church of Christ, asks in a 1982 sermon, “Do you sometimes in the solitude of Mark Reutter is a fellow at the Progressive Policy Institute and a former Woodrow Wilson Center fellow. He edited Railroad His- your own reflection weep a silent tear as the words tory for eight years and is the author of Making Steel—Sparrows of that hymn come to you, ‘Was it for crimes that I Point and the Rise and Ruin of American Industrial Might (1988, rev. ed. 2004). have done, / he groaned upon the tree?’ ”
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For all the concern with the redemption of “all Yet it’s worth remembering that not so long ago, God’s children,” black preaching has never lost its as a new Great Awakening was unleashing evangel- this-worldly concern for black people: from Freder- ical zeal, theorists of modernity were predicting the ick Douglass’s lamentation (“This Fourth of July is triumph of secularism. The “so-called Negro yours. . . . I must mourn”) to King’s reassurance church” is still the place where most black Chris- (“We as a people will get there”), from Henry tians worship. And when hasn’t it had to rebalance McNeal Turner’s 1898 sermon “God Is a Negro” to its portfolio of race, faith, and citizenship? What’s Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad’s warn- different in today’s post–civil rights, post–identity ing about Judgment Day (“Our oppressors . . . are of politics world is that the meaning of blackness, like the devil!”). Jewishness or gayness, is no longer obvious or This tradition of jeremiad puts in context the ordained: It must be fashioned before it can be cho- heated sermons of Jeremiah Wright, President sen. The constancy here is change, the ceaseless Barack Obama’s former minister, who was attacked need for self and communal reinvention. And during the 2008 campaign as a race baiter, among what’s more American than that?
other things. Read in its entirety, Wright’s contro- Jonathan Rieder, a professor of sociology at Barnard College, versial post-9/11 sermon “The Day of Jerusalem’s Columbia University, is the author of The Word of the Lord Is Upon Me: The Righteous Performance of Martin Luther King Jr. (2008). Fall” is less an expression of Afrocentric rage than a prophetic chastisement with a pacifist twist. “They moved from the hatred for armed enemies to the Bowling With God hatred of unarmed innocence,” he intoned, equat- Reviewed by Kevin M. Schultz ing vengeful Americans with the ancient Israelites when they strayed from faith into retribution. “The Harvard’s Robert D. Put- AMERICAN GRACE: babies. The babies. ‘Blessed are they who dash your nam is probably the most famous HowReligion Divides babies’ brains against a rock.’ ” sociologist in America, especially and Unites Us. The black pulpit has been a mainly male since 2000, when he published By Robert D. Putnam preserve, but editors Martha Simmons and Frank Bowling Alone, a landmark book and David E. Campbell. A. Thomas, both preachers in their own right and about Americans’ increasing Simon & Schuster. 673 pp. $30 publishers of the journal The African American disconnection since the 1950s from Pulpit, restore pride of place to women of God and family, friends, neighbors, and community institu- their precocious feminism. As early as 1833, Jarena tions. In the decade since Bowling Alone came out, Lee, a born-again exhorter, asked, “And why should Putnam has turned his gaze on religion, and now, it be thought impossible, heterodox, or improper with Notre Dame political scientist David E. Camp- for a woman to preach, seeing the Saviour died for bell, he has produced American Grace, an expan- the woman as well as the man?” sive survey of religion in American life during the Ultimately, Preaching With Sacred Fire is an past half-century. invitation: Come savor this feast of history. Still, it’s It’s a good book, though not as revealing or hard not to wonder if the “Afro” in Afro-Christian provocative as Bowling Alone. Putnam and Camp- can endure. King envisioned the withering away of bell’s thesis, supported by numerous surveys, the “so-called Negro Church” once racism dimin- including two they conducted themselves, is that ished. Just as entertainment, therapy, and market- since 1950 the American religious landscape has ing now inform white evangelical worship, black become simultaneously more polarized and more empowerment preachers such as T. D. Jakes today tolerant. While 72 percent of Americans today give a new twist to the American obsession with think “America is divided along religious lines,” a emotional recovery and self-improvement. An “whopping 89 percent” (including 83 percent of expanded black middle class resonates to the mes- evangelical Protestants) nevertheless believe that sage of a spate of prosperity preachers. heaven is not reserved solely for those who share
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their faith, a finding that suggests tolerance absent side with that pastor, most parishioners are quite just a generation ago. happily tolerant. This is the American grace of the How has this come to pass? Regarding polariza- book’s title. tion, Putnam and Campbell propose a three-phase Those familiar with the scholarship on religion theory. First, the widespread liberalization of sexual in America will find these conclusions unsur- mores during the 1960s pushed some people away prising. The rise of the nones, the fact that churches from the pews. But this initial “earthquake” led to a that make stringent demands gain followers at the more important “aftershock”: the Religious Right. expense of those that don’t, and the “browning” of Those who came of age from the 1970s to the ’90s American Catholicism as whites depart the faith in provided the bulk of this evangelical movement’s droves and Latinos join it are also well-established membership (currently about a third of the popula- trends. And one can quibble with some of the tion), animated not by frustrations with Great Soci- authors’ analysis. They paint the 1950s as a time ety liberalism or changing gender roles, but mostly when religious divisions were muted (they weren’t), by the liberalization of sexual attitudes. When sexual creating an artificially placid baseline against which issues became political, evangelicals mobilized. They to measure events in the years since. The authors initially tacked toward Jimmy Carter, the first self- also sometimes identify a change over time by com- proclaimed born-again president, but once the paring surveys that are just one year apart. Democratic Party came out in support of abortion But what makes this book a joy to read is the rights in 1980 and the Republicans in opposition, statistical data Putnam and Campbell have evangelicals aligned with the GOP. collected. Mormons express appreciation for every- For those who came of age in the 1990s, the one, for instance, while almost everyone dislikes likes of Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell were a Mormons. Jews are the most loved religious group massive turnoff. That generation became “nones,” in America. Half of all married Americans have proclaiming no religious affiliation, and they be- spouses of a different faith. American religious came Democrats. This was a second “aftershock,” observance has decreased since the 1950s—fairly and its effects are still evident. Nones currently con- significantly since the early 1990s. Adherence to stitute about 17 percent of the population, and, biblical literalism has diminished too. Meanwhile, among twentysomethings, they outnumber evan- the intensity of people’s religiosity is predictive of gelicals better than 1.5 to one. (The authors do not, their views on only two political issues, abortion however, predict widespread secularization any- and gay marriage. time soon.) Intriguingly, on these two issues Putnam and If we’ve become more religiously polarized, how Campbell find the nation growing less polarized. have we also become more tolerant? Putnam and On the one hand, Americans are increasingly com- Campbell argue that America’s religious market- fortable with gay rights, as greater numbers of peo- place—nearly one-third of Americans at some ple realize they have a gay friend or colleague. On point change faiths—has created a churning envi- the other hand, members of the generation that ronment in which relatives and friends are likely to came of age in the 1990s, influenced by the be of other faiths. We all have an Aunt Susan who is widespread availability of contraception (and per- the most delightful person we know—certainly haps ultrasound imaging), are more reluctant to meritorious of heaven—but who is not of our faith. support unregulated abortion. It is feasible that (The authors call this the “Aunt Susan Principle.”) A these transformations will take the sting out of the Missouri Synod Lutheran pastor, confronted with country’s religious polarization, which would likely data showing that more than four-fifths of his provoke another realignment of American religion.
denomination don’t believe that one’s faith is the Kevin M. Schultz, an assistant professor of history and only avenue to heaven, remarked that he and his Catholic studies at the University of Illinois, Chicago, is the author of the forthcoming book Tri-Faith America: How Postwar fellow pastors had “failed.” But while most clergy Catholics and Jews Held America to Its Protestant Promise.
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(Act of August 12, 1970: Section 3685, Title 39, United States Code) 1. Publication Title: THE WILSON QUARTERLY. 2. Publication number: 0363-3276. 3. Filing Date: September 30, 2010. 4. Issue Frequency: Quarterly. 5. Number of issues published annually: 4. 6. Annual subscription price: $24.00. 7. Complete mailing address of known office of publication: One Woodrow Wilson Plaza, 3rd Floor S, 1300 Pennsylvania Ave NW, Washington, D.C., 20004. 8. Complete mailing address of general business offices of the publisher: One Woodrow Wilson Plaza, 3rd Floor S, 1300 Pennsylvania Ave, NW, Washington, D.C., 20004. 9. Names and addresses of business director, editor, managing editor: Business Director: Suzanne Napper, One Woodrow Wilson Plaza, 3rd Floor S, 1300 Pennsylvania Ave NW, Washington, D.C., 20004. Editor: Steven Lagerfeld, One Woodrow Wilson Plaza, 3rd Floor S, 1300 Pennsylvania Ave NW, Washington, D.C., 20004. Managing Editor: James H. Carman, One Woodrow Wilson Plaza, 3rd Floor S, 1300 Pennsylvania Ave NW, Washington, D.C., 20004. 10. Owner: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, One Woodrow Wilson Plaza, 3rd Floor S, 1300 Pennsylvania Ave NW, Washington, D.C., 20004. 11. Known bondholders, mortgagees, and other security holders owning or holding 1% or more of total amount of bonds, mortgages, or other securities: None. 13. Publication Title: THE WILSON QUARTERLY. 14. Issue Date for Circulation Data Below: Autumn 2010. 15. Extent and nature of circulation: Average number of copies each issue during preceding 12 months: a. Total number of copies: 56,935 b. Paid and/or requested circulation: (1) Paid/ Requested outside-county mail subscrip- tions stated on form 3541: 49,057 (2) Paid in-county subscriptions: 0 (3) Sales through dealers and carri- ers, street vendors, counter sales and other non USPS paid distribution: 2,211 (4) Other classes mailed through the USPS: 0 c. Total paid and/or requested circulation: 51,268 d. Free distribution by mail (sam- ples, complimentary, and other free): (1) Outside county as stated on form 3541: 0 (2) In county as stated on form 3541: 0 (3) Other classes mailed through the USPS: 0 (4) Free Distribution Outside the Mail (Carriers or Other Means): 1,512 e. Total free distribution (sum of 15d, 1-4): 1,512 f. Total Distribution (Sum of 15c and 15e): 52,780 g. Copies not distributed: 4,155 h. Total (sum of 15f & g): 56,935 i. Percent Paid and/or Requested Circulation (15c/15f x 100): 97.1%. Actual number of copies of a single issue pub- lished nearest to filing date: a. Total number of copies: 61,370 b. Paid and/or requested circulation: (1). Paid/requested outside county mail subscriptions stated on form 3541: 49,239 (2). Paid in county sub- scriptions: 0 (3) Sales through dealers and carriers, street vendors, counter sales and other non USPS paid distribution: 3,769 (4) Other classes mailed through the USPS: 0 c. Total paid and/or requested circula- tion: 53,008 d. Free distribution by mail, (samples, complimentary, and other free) (1) Outside county as stated on form 3541: 0 (2) In county as stated on form 3541: 0 (3) Other classes mailed through USPS: 0 4. Free Distribution Outside the mail (Carriers or Other Means): 1,362 e. Total Free distribution (sum of 15d, 1-4): 1,362 f. Total Distribution (Sum of 15c and 15e): 54,370 g. Copies not distributed: 7,000 h. Total (sum of 15f & g): 61,370. Percent Paid and/or Requested Circulation: 97.5%. 17. I certify that all the infor- mation furnished above is true and complete.
Suzanne T. Napper, Business Director
Credits: Cover, p. 49, David Sanders/The New York Times; p. 2, Bill Fritsch/Getty Images; p. 9, Copyright © David Hawxhurst; p. 13, top, Bernard Gotfryd/Hulton Archive/Getty Images; p. 15, Reproduced from Story of Mrs. Peck, by Mary Allen Hulbert (1933); p. 17, Chris Rank/Bloomberg News; p. 27, AP Photo/Dita Alangkara; pp. 28–29, Copyright © Mark Clacy 2006; p. 31, © David Levine; p. 33, Courtesy of Robert Pringle; p. 35, Theodore Roosevelt Collection, Harvard College Library (560.52 1905-059); p. 37, Copyright © Bob Long, Jr.; p. 40, Created at www.treebenefits.com/calculator/; p. 43, AFP Photo/Andrej Isakovic; p. 47, AP Photo/Mandel Ngan; p. 51, AP Photo/California Department of Corrections; p. 57, Reproduced by permission of Arts & Entertainment Television Network; p. 60, Photo by David McNew/Getty Images; p. 63, Copyright © Michael Mullady, www.michaelmullady.com; p. 68, Copyright © 2002 Pat Bagley/The Salt Lake Tribune; p. 75, Dolly G Photography, www.istockphoto.com; p. 78, © Henri Martinie/Roger- Viollet/The Image Works; p. 81, Aplysia californica inking, Courtesy Genevieve Anderson; p. 83, © Rèunion des Musèes Nationaux/Art Resource; p. 87, Reproduced from islamabad.metblogs.com; p. 91, Copyright © Nancy Crampton; p. 93, Brandon Archibald, www.bArchibald.blogspot.com; p. 100, Jon Keegan/Laughing- Stock.com; p. 103, Reproduced from Daniel Patrick Moynihan: The Intellectual in Public Life, edited by Robert A. Katzmann (2004); p. 105, Mary Evans Picture Library/Jeffrey Morgan; p. 112, Usage ballot repro- duced by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, All rights reserved.
Winter 2011 ■ Wilson Quarterly 111 WQ112 1/5/11 1:29 PM Page 112
PORTRAIT
Dean of Diction
David Foster Wallace, the virtuosic novelist who wrote Infinite Jest (1996), was a staunch advocate of flawless grammar, once describing himself as “the sort of person whose idea of Sunday fun was to look for mistakes in Safire’s column’s prose itself.” (William Safire wrote a column on language for The New York Times Magazine.) Wallace’s sensibilities made him a fitting pick for The American Heritage Dictionary’s Usage Panel, a group of 200 preeminent writers, artists, and thinkers whom the dictionary’s editors annually survey on English usage and grammar. A page from Wallace’s AHD ques- tionnaire, which the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas, Austin, acquired along with the bulk of his writings after he committed suicide in 2008, offers a peek at the MacArthur genius grant winner’s zeal for the nuts and bolts of language.
112 Wilson Quarterly ■ Winter 2011 Covers 2-4 1/5/11 1:39 PM Page 3
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WILSOTHE N LEGACY SOCIETY
he Wilson Legacy Society recognizes Tthose supporters who choose to provide for the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars through their estates. Planned and deferred gifts are crucial in providing a sound financial foundation for the Center’s future and may include:
• a bequest in your will or revocable trust; • a life income arrangement, such as a charitable remainder trust; or • naming the Center as the beneficiary of a retirement plan or life insurance policy.
Please consider a planned gift in support of The Wilson Quarterly or another program at the Woodrow Wilson Center. Your gift can be tailored to fit your personal estate plans and charitable goals and, at the same time, help support the Center’s commitment to non- partisan dialogue and its role as one of the most trusted voices in the public policy world.
To learn more about this expanding group of friends, please contact the Development Office at 202.691.4172 or development@ wilsoncenter.org,, or click on our website at
www.wilsoncenter.org/legacy