Daniel W. Drezner NOT!

IS THE U.S. SHAFTING MUSLIM COUNTRIES ON TRADE?: The Progressive Policy Institute just issued a policy report warning that current U.S. trade policy will undermine the war on terrorism. Because the U.S. is actively pursuing bilateral and regional trade deals with much of Latin America, Africa, and East Asia, the Middle Eastern countries are falling behind by standing still: "Of the 70-90 countries covered by U.S. regional/bilateral trade inititatives planned for 2003-2005, only one (Morocco) is in the Middle East." Since these countries have similar export portfolios, the creation of new trade deals will lead to a lot of trade diversion -- with other developing countries replacing Middle Eastern exports to the U.S.

The report overreaches a bit. These countries have brought a lot of this difficulty on themselves, with protectionist, dirigiste policies. Only half of the Arab League's members are WTO members; by one measure, Arab countries are among the least globalized states in the world. That said, it has some decent policy proposals, and is worth a look.

HE MUST HAVE BEEN JEALOUS OF TRENT LOTT'S SPOTLIGHT: House Rep. Howard Coble, R-N.C., who chairs the House Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security that supervises the U.S. Department of Justice, including laws aimed at preventing terrorism, praised the decision to intern Japanese-Americans during the Second World War. He observed that some Japanese-Americans ``probably were intent on doing harm to us... just as some of these Arab Americans are probably intent on doing harm to us.'' Note that, by this logic, we might want, in future months/years, to round up and intern all Korean-Americans, Chinese-Americans, and potentially Franco-Americans.

The obvious comparison of this jackass statement is to the Lottroversy. What's chilling is the extent of the parallels:

1) Both are Republicans in positions of leadership.
2) Both praised racist policies that were instituted/proposed more than 50 years ago by Democrats.
3) Both of them have a track record of such embarrassing statements: According to the San Jose Mercury News, "Coble made similar remarks about internment camps in 1988, when he voted against paying reparations and extending a national apology to Japanese-Americans interned during World War II." (Eric Muller links to the specific comments.)
4) Both made their comments at public functions where the media was sure to record them accurately.

Coble wins special dummy points, however, for making his comments a mere six weeks after Lott demonstrated the political danger of praising racist policies.

When Coble received his subcommittee chairmanship last week, he was quoted: "I think we'll be in the eye of the storm. ... It's going to be challenging," I'm pretty sure this is one storm the good Representative can clear up by resigning his chairmanship and beating a hasty retreat to the back benches. On one crucial dimension, this flap is even more serious than the Lottroversy: Coble has direct oversight authority for the type of activity he so enthusiastically supported. Shudder....

One interesting side note: Eric Muller appears to be the first to blog about this, but unlike the Lottroversy, it was old media that first reported on this. Hopefully the Blogosphere will not need to get as exercised this time around, as Coble gets caught in his own perfect media storm.

UPDATE: Coble is not the only idiotarian North Carolina representative. According to this report, "Republican Sue Myrick, commenting on domestic security threats, said -- quote -- 'Look at who runs all the convenience stores across the country.'" [UPDATE: The APhas the fuller quote: "You know, and this can be misconstrued, but honest to goodness (husband) Ed and I for years, for 20 years, have been saying,`You know, look at who runs all the convenience stores across the country.' Every little town you go into, you know?'"]
Her representative said the remark was "not intended as an insult to any ethnic or religious group." I'd like to see exactly how that assertion can be reconciled with the original statement.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Josh Marshall is now blogging about the North Carolina delegation. Yep, it's just a matter of time before they fall like dominoes.

FINAL UPDATE: Coble's press spokesman tries to dig out of the hole his boss created. Now, if you read the text, play devil's advocate, and ignore Coble's history of idiotic remarks on the subject, the rationaly might fly. I'm pretty sure, however, that the last thing a Coble press spokesman would have wanted was the headline: "Coble says internment remark meant to illustrate segregation."

UPDATED SCORE -- NEW EUROPE 18, OLD EUROPE 2: The foreign ministers of the Vilnius Group Countries -- Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia -- just issued a statement strongly supporting the U.S. position on Iraq, in response to the Powell speech on Iraq. This is in addition to last week's statement by the Gang of Eight. Here's the good part:

"Our countries understand the dangers posed by tyranny and the special responsibility of democracies to defend our shared values. The trans-Atlantic community, of which we are a part, must stand together to face the threat posed by the nexus of terrorism and dictators with weapons of mass destruction.

We have actively supported the international efforts to achieve a peaceful disarmament of Iraq. However, it has now become clear that Iraq is in material breach of U.N. Security Council Resolutions, including U.N. Resolution 1441, passed unanimously on November 8, 2002. As our governments said on the occasion of the NATO Summit in Prague: "We support the goal of the international community for full disarmament of Iraq as stipulated in the UN Security Council Resolution 1441. In the event of non-compliance with the terms of this resolution, we are prepared to contribute to an international coalition to enforce its provisions and the disarmament of Iraq."

The clear and present danger posed by the Saddam Hussein's regime requires a united response from the community of democracies. We call upon the U.N. Security Council to take the necessary and appropriate action in response to Iraq's continuing threat to international peace and security."

It will be interesting to see if similar declarations emerge from non-European countries in the next couple of days.

[Aren't you exaggerating the story? These countries are small compared to France and Germany. They won't be involved in any actual fighting. What's the big deal?--ed. Consider that 13 of these 18 countries are not yet members of the European Union, and to get in, they're going to have to make France and Germany happy. These governments took a significant political risk to make these statements -- don't trivialize it.]

THE NEXT (SPECTACULARLY WRONG) BIG IDEA: Public intellectuals like big ideas, because they help us organize the way we see the world. You can't go far as a public intellectual by being consistently wrong. You can, however, go very far if you are spectacularly, grandiosely wrong in a big-idea kind of way . Spectacularly wrong big ideas demand attention. Countless authors devoted countless numbers of pages to proving why Francis Fukuyama was wrong in "The End of History?" and Samuel Huntington was wrong in "The Clash of Civilizations?", few people remember them; they remember Fukuyama and Huntington.

Which brings me to Fareed Zakaria's forthcoming book, The Future of Freedom, which is the end result of a question he initially asked in a Foreign Affairs essay entitled "The Rise of Illiberal Democracy." Zakaria was at the University of Chicago's John M. Olin Center for Inquiry into the Theory and Practice of Democracy yesterday to road-test some of his book's arguments, which boil down to:

1) It took a long time for constitutional liberal democracy to develop properly in the West;
2) When democracy has been installed in places without a prior decentralization of religious, commercial, and political authority, bad things happen to democracy, i.e., Nazi Germany;
3) Encouraging the acceleration of democracy in the developing world will lead to democracies that are fundamentally illiberal, which would be bad. So, rather than cajole China into democratizing faster than it is currently doing, let nature take it's course, otherwise you wind up with backsliding democracies, such as Russia.

Now, this is a great big idea. It's topical, relies on history, has few moving parts, and leads to counter-intuitive policy recommendations. But it's still spectacularly wrong.

1) Stable democracies have emerged without the preconditions Zakaria spells out. Some (big and small) examples: Botswana, Costa Rica, India, Japan, and the Baltic states.

2) The slow processes stressed by Zakaria have equally adverse consequences. States that are in the middle of Zakaria's process are more dangerous than even illiberal democracies. As Jack Snyder has pointed out, these sort of states often have a sufficient mix of particularistic coalitions that lead to overexpansion, which leads to war. Snyder and Ed Mansfield have statistically demonstrated that states undergoing regime transition are far more likely to initiate wars than either democracies OR autocracies (click here for a precis of this argument).

As for illiberal democracies, it is undoubtedly true that their first few years are volatile ones, with lots of potentially aggressive leaders getting elected and then causing problems. However, as Stephen Walt has shown, these revolutionary states tend to mellow, and act as responsible members of the international system.

This doesn't mean that illiberal democracies are necessarily better for world politics than slowly reforming authoritarian states are. But they are not necessarily worse, either. It's more a question of timing -- illiberal states that become democratic are more likely to have problems sooner rather than later, while authoritarian states that are slowly democratizing are likely to have problems later rather than sooner.

So, to conclude: a) states do not necessarily have to go through the same long-term evolution that England or America endured to become a liberal democracy, and b) over the long term, illiberal democracies are not necessarily more violent actors than other non-democratic states.

All that said, I have no doubt that three months from now, this will be the next big idea. So bookmark this post and remember it for cocktail party chatter come late April! [So whaddaya think of Zakaria's other stuff?--ed. His first book is a staple of my U.S. Foreign Policy class.]

UPDATE: Several people have e-mailed to point out that Japan did have a long history of decentralization in political/economic power. This may be true, but that certainly does not hold on the religious dimension. Since Zakaria seems to imply that all of these myriad sources of power must be decentralized, I don't think his argument holds here.

SIGN #248 THAT I AM A POLITICAL SCIENCE GEEK: When I was a senior in college, I was essentially choosing three career routes -- investment banker, policy gadfly, or serious research. I chose the latter because I found the idea of being paid to think deep thoughts and then research whether those thoughts have any merit enourmously appealing. However, every once in a while (usually when I'm looking at my bank balance) I ponder whether I made the right choice.

Today, however, I just put the finishing touches on my syllabus for an undergraduate course I'll be teaching on globalization. Putting together the list of topics and readings is crucial, because the best improvisations can't cover a badly-designed course or dull-as-sin essays. The fact that I'm excited about the substantive debates that will undoubtedly ensue makes me positively giddy.

I may occasionally muse about making loads of money in the private sector, or exercising loads of power in the policy world. In the end, however, I'm too happy being a professor to consider anything else full-time.