Policy Review - June & July 2011, No. 167

POLICYReview june & july 2011, No. 167, $6.
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THE CONSTITUTION AND ITS CRITICS

THOMAS J. MAIN
AFGHANISTAN: AMERICA’S WAR

OF PERCEPTION
ANN MARLOWE
FEMINISM BY TREATY
CHRISTINA HOFF SOMMERS
COUNTERING BEIJING IN THE

SOUTH CHINA SEA
DANA R. DILLON
ALSO: ESSAYS AND REVIEWS BY

JAMES KIRCHICK, PETER BERKOWITZ,
DAVID R. HENDERSON, HENRIK BERING
A P u b l i c a t i o n o f t h e H o ov e r I n s t i t u t i o n
stanford university
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POLICY Review
J UNE & J ULY 2011, No. 167
Features
3 THE CONSTITUTION AND ITS CRITICS
Taking another look at America’s fundamental document
Thomas J. Main
19 AFGHANISTAN: AMERICA’S WAR OF PERCEPTION
Boots but not facts on the ground
Ann Marlowe
37 FEMINISM BY TREATY
Why cedaw is still a bad idea
Christina Hoff Sommers
51 COUNTERING BEIJING IN THE SOUTH CHINA SEA

Why the U.S. must not let China’s territorial ambitions go unopposed
Dana R. Dillon
Books
69 THE BUTCHERY OF HITLER AND STALIN
James Kirchick on Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin
by Timothy Snyder
78 LIBERAL INTERNATIONALISM AND FREEDOM

Peter Berkowitz on Liberal Leviathan: The Origins, Crisis, and
Transformation of the American World Order by G. John Ikenberry
85 THE ROOTS OF THE 2008 ECONOMIC COLLAPSE

David R. Henderson on What Caused the Financial Crisis?
by Jeffrey Friedman, ed.
90 BRITISH, ZULUS, AND TWO LEGENDARY BATTLES

Henrik Bering on Zulu Rising: The Epic Story of Isandlwana and
Rorke’s Drift by Ian Knight
A P u b l i c a t i o n o f t h e H o ov e r I n s t i t u t i o n
stanford university
POLI CY ReviewJ u n e & J u ly 2 0 1 1 , N o . 1 6 7
Editor
Tod Lindberg
Research Fellow, Hoover Institution
Consulting Editor
Mary Eberstadt
Managing Editor
Liam Julian
Office Manager
Sharon Ragland
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The Constitution and
Its Critics
By Thomas J. Main
I
n planning a freshman undergraduate curriculum with col-
leagues recently, the question arose as to what type of under-
standing we wanted to impart to our students about the
Constitution. Should the goal be to achieve a critical under-
standing of the Constitution or, since most students take only a
single course that covers the document, is a basic understanding all that is to
be expected? Is there, then, some practical way to impart a critical under-
standing of the Constitution in just a very few classes? It turns out there is:
Assign the students Sanford Levinson’s Our Undemocratic Constitution
(2006), or Robert Dahl’s How Democratic is the American Constitution?
(2001). Daniel Lazare’s The Frozen Republic: How the Constitution is
Paralyzing Democracy (1996) could also serve this purpose.
The alleged defects of the Constitution that these books point to are wide-
ranging and can be classified into various categories. Some problems — such
as slavery, the disenfranchisement of women and blacks, and the election of
senators by state legislatures — are historical in nature. Dahl in particular
spends a fair amount of time on these issues. Other defects can be deemed
Thomas J. Main is an associate professor at Baruch College’s School of Public

Affairs.
June & July 2011 3 Policy Review

Thomas J. Main
trivial. For example, Levinson laments the age limitations that bar relative
youngsters from being representatives, senators, and presidents. Another cat-
egory contains problems that are current and well known; its main member
is the Electoral College. But at the heart of these works are two other types
of supposed constitutional defects. The first type are very real but not as
widely appreciated as they should be, such as equal state representation in
the Senate. They raise the question of whether there is any realistic chance of
reform. The second type are supposed defects that turn out to be nothing
less than the entire structure of separation of powers and checks and bal-
ances. Levinson and the other authors are all more or less critical of bicam-
eralism, the presidential veto, and judicial review; the analysis of these insti-
tutions is what makes these books especially inter-
esting though sometimes wrongheaded.
Dahl and Dahl and Lazare judge the Constitution harshly
for compromising in various ways with slavery. The
Lazare judge three-fifths compromise in Article I, Section 2, the
the Constitution provision for a fugitive slave law in Article IV,
Section 2, and the moratorium on the banning of
harshly for
the slave trade until 1808 in Article V all come in
compromising for strong criticism. In one sense, one can hardly
in various ways disagree. Still, the authors’ critique of these compro-
mises suffers somewhat from 20/20 hindsight. For
with slavery. example, there is no mention in these works of the
Constitution’s sedulous refusal to refer to slavery
directly; the words “slave” and “slavery” never
appear. It was partly on this basis that Frederick Douglas argued that the
Constitution was an anti-slavery document. Also relevant to the question of
the Founders’ thinking about slavery is Madison’s discussion of the three-
fifths clause in Federalist No. 54, in which he argues that slavery is based on
law, not nature, thereby establishing the premise that slavery could, as a
matter of law, be abolished when sectional compromise among the states
was no longer necessary.
Other topics are, today, debated more frequently. The Electoral College is
one that seems to be an easy target for the Constitution’s critics. Among the
perverse outcomes attributed to the Electoral College the presidential elec-
tion of 2000 is only the most recent and prominent. While it is certainly
regrettable to have a system in which the popular vote is not necessarily
determinative, Arthur Schlesinger Jr. makes a good case in War and the
American Presidency (2004) that the Electoral College does have certain
virtues. It discourages the formation of minor parties, and prevents the elec-
tion of candidates who lack broad support, since no party without a region-
al base can win electoral votes. The Electoral College also makes close and
disputed elections more manageable since most likely the votes of only one
or a few states would need to be recounted. The question is how to reform
the Electoral College while retaining its good features, while overcoming the
4 Policy Review
The Constitution and Its Critics
opposition of the small states. Schlesinger has an answer here: The “national
bonus plan,” which would create a “national pool of 102 new electoral
votes” that would be awarded to the winner of the popular vote. “This
national bonus would balance the existing state bonus of two electoral votes
already conferred by the Constitution regardless of population,” Schlesinger
writes. “The reform would virtually guarantee that the popular vote winner
would also be the electoral-vote winner.”
By this scheme the most obvious flaw in the Constitution can be mended
without fundamentally altering the document.
Congress and the separation of powers
E qual representation of all states in the Senate seems to most

trouble the critics of the Constitution. Levinson and the other
authors make a convincing case that this malapportionment and its
effects simply cannot be justified. Consider just how malapportioned the
Senate is: The ratio of over-representation of the least populous state —
Wyoming — to the most populous state — California — is 70 to 1. This is
the extreme case. Levinson points out that the two-senator apportionment
means that Alaska, Delaware, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota,
Vermont, and Wyoming all have only one representative in the House and
therefore twice the number of senators that they do representatives. Together
these states have about 4.8 million residents represented in the Senate with
14 senators, while the state of Minnesota, with approximately the same
population, is represented by only two. Five other states — Hawaii, Idaho,
Maine, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island — each have only two represen-
tatives. The upshot is that 25 percent of the Senate is elected by twelve states
that contain five percent of the total U.S. population.
Levinson especially makes a strong case — based considerably on a book
entitled Sizing up the Senate: The Unequal Consequences of Equal
Representation by Frances E. Lee and Bruce I. Oppenheimer — that the
malapportionment of the Senate has great impact on policy decisions.
Levinson reports that Lee and Oppenheimer’s model “predicts that the
smallest states will receive about $120 per capita [in overall federal spend-
ing] while the largest states receive only $82.” Or, put another way, the
model shows that if states were represented on a “one person, one vote”
basis they would receive $139 in federal expenditures, but a state as over-
represented as Wyoming would receive $209 while a state as underrepre-
sented as California would receive only $132.
Nor is unfair distribution of federal money the only way in which equal
state representation in the Senate has an impact. Senators from small states
represent a more homogeneous electorate than large state senators and thus
the politics of small states are easier to manage. One small-state senator
interviewed by Lee and Oppenheimer said: “There’s a commonality of inter-
June & July 2011 5

Thomas J. Main
est in a small state, you can focus on three or four main issues . . . you can
run for the U.S. Congress saying you are going to represent the _____ indus-
try totally and not do anything else.” Small-state senators spend less time on
fund raising and more time on constituent service and on achieving legisla-
tive objectives than do large-state senators. Partly for that reason, small-state
electorates are more satisfied with their senators than are the voters of large
states, according to findings on senator job performance by Lee and
Oppenheimer. Small-state Senate races are also less competitive, allowing for
a wider margin of victory.
Levinson’s book and the other books discussed here do a convincing job
of refuting the traditional arguments in favor of equal representation in the
Senate, despite its apparent unfairness. For example,
the defense of equal representation based on the
The case
alleged need to protect small states from the tyranny
against equal of larger states does not hold up to examination:
representation The large states have never shown any tendency to
tyrannize the small. Indeed the only time when the
in the Senate states divided into interest groups based on size was
is strong. during the debate over Senate representation at the
Constitutional Convention. The argument that the
Daniel Patrick Senate is supposed to reflect the federalist nature of
Moynihan the country by representing the states themselves is
correct as far as it goes but does not justify the gross
thought so.
malapportionment of the current Senate. According
to Lee and Oppenheimer other countries with feder-
alist systems and bicameral legislatures do not grant full equality to the fed-
eral units in either house. The U.S. Senate is by far the most malapportioned
legislature in the modern, democratic world. The Senate could continue its
function as a forum for the states’ interests if the states were represented
proportionally.
Thus the case against equal representation in the Senate is strong. No less
of an authority than Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan thought so. Towards
the end of his career, Lee and Oppenheimer tell us, Moynihan wrote,
“Sometime in the next century the United States is going to have to address
the question of apportionment in the Senate. Already we have seven states
with two senators and one representative. The Senate is beginning to look
like the pre-reform British House of Commons.” What can be done about
it? This question applies to many of the recommendations made by Levinson
and the other authors. It is enough to say now that the cause of reapportion-
ment of the Senate looks almost lost, since equal state representation of the
Senate is the only provision of the Constitution not susceptible to amend-
ment under Article V, which prohibits changing the number of senators
states may have.
Separation of powers — defined as an executive who is chosen indepen-
dently of the legislature — is not the main concern for Levinson and Dahl.
6 Policy Review
Despite his own preference for a parliamentary system, Dahl acknowledges
in How Democratic Is the American Constitution? that “For better or
worse, we Americans are stuck with a presidential system,” and Levinson
doesn’t specifically reject presidentialism per se. Lazare is explicitly hostile to
separation of powers. As he writes in The Frozen Republic, he wants the
House of Representatives to be the “whole show, which means that in addi-
tion to passing legislation, it would have the job of executing it.” Much of
Levinson’s and Dahl’s criticism is directed, rather, at checks and balances,
which James Q. Wilson and John J. DiIulio define as “a system of separate
institutions that share powers.” That is, as Madison famously argued in
Federalist No. 51, checks and balances are provisions of the Constitution
that are designed to keep the branches of govern-
ment truly separated. Aspects of the Constitution Equal state
that are central to separation of powers include the
representation of
bicameral Congress, the presidential veto, and judi-
cial review. To a lesser or greater extent — lesser in the Senate is the
Levinson’s case, much greater in that of Lazare — only provision of
these key features of checks and balances all come in
for criticism by these authors. the Constitution
One can concede the case against equal state rep- not susceptible to
resentation in the Senate and still maintain that a
second branch to the legislature is essential to the amendment
constitutional scheme. Levinson admits as much under Article V.
when, in calling for a new constitutional convention
in Our Undemocratic Constitution, he writes “I can well imagine urging its
members to retain the general structure of bicameralism even as they engage
in the necessary reform of the specifics of our particular version of bicamer-
alism.” Dahl is more skeptical of the merits of second legislative chambers.
He notes that “Nebraska, Norway, Sweden, and Denmark seem to do quite
nicely without them” and asks, “Exactly whom and whose interests is a sec-
ond chamber supposed to represent?” Dahl rejects the argument that a sec-
ond chamber should represent the interests of the federal units and quotes
with approval Hamilton’s observation that “As states are a collection of
individual men which ought we to respect most, the rights of people com-
posing them or the artificial beings resulting from the composition. Nothing
could be more preposterous than to sacrifice the former to the latter.”
Lazare will have nothing to do with such lukewarm criticism and hopes that
an “all powerful House” would “abolish the Senate or reduce it to a largely
ceremonial body a la the House of Lords.” But perhaps no author directed
such vituperation at bicameralism as Richard Rosenfeld who, in a Harper’s
article entitled “What Democracy?: The Case for Abolishing the United
States Senate,” pours scorn on the idea that the upper chamber is supposed
to act as a check on the lower, asking us to consider the occasions when the
House was right about a bill and the “unrepresentative” Senate was wrong.
“If as a matter of experiment,” Rosenfeld writes, “we were to allow a roll of
June & July 2011 7

Thomas J. Main
the dice, the chirp of a parakeet or a phase of the moon to veto the decisions
of the House of Representatives, there would be times when the dice, the
bird, or the moon would be right and the House of Representatives would
be wrong . . . Would our response be to turn the dice, the bird, or the moon
into a permanent part of the government?
Can a case be made, then, for a more proportioned Senate? We have to go
back to the original logic of checks and balances. The peculiar way the
American Constitution maintains separation of powers as a functioning real-
ity is to have the three branches overlap by giving each some power over the
others, so making the branches as coequal in power as is possible. The
famous passage from the Federalist No. 51 explains that “it is not possible
to give each department an equal power of self-
defense in a republican government, the legislative
A unicameral
authority necessarily predominates.” The remedy is
legislature would to divide the legislature into different branches,
completely while “the weakness of the executive may require,
on the other hand, that it should be fortified,”
overwhelm the including giving the president the conditional power
executive and to veto acts of the legislature. And, of course, since
Marbury v. Madison judicial review has been the
complete the power that fortified the judiciary. Thus bicameral-
politicization of ism, the presidential veto, and judicial review are the
administration. bedrock foundation of checks and balances and
hence of the Constitution.
Here then is at least part of the argument for a
bicameral Congress. A unicameral legislature would completely overwhelm
the executive and complete the politicization of administration that already
is a constant threat to good government. Compare the extensive list of pow-
ers that are granted to Congress in Article 1, Section 8, which is topped off
with the open-ended “necessary and proper” clause. Next to these the pow-
ers of the president are already few. Certainly he has considerable power as
commander in chief of the armed forces. Most of his other powers are
sharply limited and subject to Senate approval.
It is important to maintain the legislative and executive branches as close
to coequal forces because at stake is control over the bureaucracy.
Parliamentary systems center control of the bureaucracy in the hands of the
prime minister and make lobbying the legislature to influence the bureaucra-
cy very difficult. In their tome Do Institutions Matter? Weaver and
Rockman write, “In parliamentary systems centralization of legislative
power presumably decreases the alternatives open to interest groups and
party discipline makes appeals to individual legislators an almost hopeless
strategy in terms of changing policy outcomes.” If a citizen doesn’t like what
the bureaucracy is doing, there is no sense, in a country with a parliament,
in lobbying your mp. If the parliamentarian of your district is in the minori-
ty, he can not help you; if he is in the majority he most likely won’t want to
8 Policy Review
help you because effective party discipline means he must back his party’s
policies as they are implemented by the bureaucracy. In a separation-of-pow-
ers system citizens can and do successfully bring their complaints with the
bureaucracy to the legislature.
Under our Constitution, Congress has at least as much control over the
bureaucracy as the president, if not more. In his authoritative volume,
Bureaucracy: What Government Agencies Do and Why They Do It, pub-
lished in 1989, James Q. Wilson writes:
Virtually every political scientist who has studied the matter agrees that
Congress possesses, in Herbert Kaufman’s words an “awesome arsenal”
of weapons it can use against agencies: legislation, appropriations, hear-
ings, investigations, personal interventions, and “friendly advice” that is
ignored at an executive’s peril.
It is this behemoth of organizational and political capacity that critics and

skeptics of bicameralism wish to fortify still more by unifying it and so
doing away with its last internal constraint.
The presidency
N o r i s t h at all. While the Constitution’s critics consider

enhancing the powers of Congress with unicameralism, they
would sharply limit those of the president in various ways.
Lazare would demote the president to “semi-figurehead status.” Levinson is
much more moderate but still asks, “Is the presidential veto a desirable part
of our political system? It does, after all, exemplify just one more antimajori-
tarian feature of our Constitution that serves to make it ever harder to pass
legislation departing from the status quo.” Levinson ends up allowing the
president a “Constitution-based” veto, which he thinks is a necessary conse-
quence of the president taking the oath to “preserve, protect and defend the
Constitution.” But he objects to the president having a policy-based veto.
Levinson writes that once a president has the power to veto a bill simply
because he regards it as unwise or ineffective, and without any claim that the
bill is unconstitutional, then “At that point the president in effect becomes a
one-person third legislative chamber, able with the stroke of a pen to negate
the views of at least a few hundred members of Congress.”
But there are deeper reasons for Levinson’s desire to cut back on the presi-
dent’s power. The first is the objection to what Dahl calls the “myth of the
presidential mandate: that by winning a majority of the popular (and pre-
sumably electoral) votes the president has gained a ‘mandate’ to carry out
whatever he had proposed during the campaign.” Levinson agrees. He
points out that for various reasons many presidents — he names George W.
Bush, Gerald Ford, Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon, and
Bill Clinton — simply did not receive the majority of the popular vote that is
June & July 2011 9

Thomas J. Main
the most plausible basis for the claim of a mandate. The constitutional crit-
ics discussed here are in agreement that in general the aura of power and
prestige that surrounds the American president needs to be dimmed a bit.
Levinson is distressed by the practice of playing “Hail to the Chief” when
the president makes a public appearance, finding the custom more suitable
to a monarchy. He objects to what he sees as a presidency that combines the
functions of chief of state and chief of government, which are separated in
most other modern democracies. Dahl sees the role of president as “the
equivalent of a monarch and prime minister rolled into one, and wonders
“whether the presidency that has emerged is appropriate for a modern
democratic country like ours.”
One may wonder whether a very strong presi-
Levinson objects dency is appropriate for a modern democracy. But
it is more certain that the current veto power is
to what he sees indispensable if a strong presidency is desired. In
as a presidency The Presidential Veto: Touchstone of the American
Presidency (1983), Robert J. Spitzer argues that
that combines “the application and rise of the presidential veto is
the functions of symptomatic of the rise of the modern strong presi-
dency.” One could go further and say that one of
chief of state the features of a strong presidency of any type
and chief of would be the full veto, that is, a veto that can be
policy-based as well as constitutionally-based.
government.
Hamilton’s defense of the veto in Federalist No. 73
implies that the veto can be used on both constitu-
tional and policy grounds. Hamilton argues that a prerequisite of an ener-
getic presidency is “competent powers” granted to the president to defend
himself and to increase the chances “in favor of the community” against
the chance of “passing bad laws” either because of haste, mistake, or
design.
The concern about “bad laws” certainly sounds like a policy-based veto.
But it is potentially misleading to think of the first use — to enable the
executive to defend himself — as a constitutionally-based veto. Levinson
argues for a constitutionally-based veto on the ground that “Presidents do,
after all, take a solemn oath to ‘preserve, protect and defend the constitu-
tion,’ and, as a formal matter, it is hard to square the oath with a duty to
sign what they believe to be unconstitutional legislation.” But Hamilton
does not cite the oath as the source of the president’s veto power, but rather
to enable the executive to “defend himself.” But against whom? The
answer is Congress. In an apparent reference to the defense of separation of
powers in Federalist No. 51, Hamilton explains the need to keep the legis-
lature and executive close to coequal powers, making his well-known refer-
ence to the insufficiency of a parchment delineation of government branch-
es, recognizing the need to furnish each department with “constitutional
arms for its own defense.”
10 Policy Review
The separation’s utility
I n short, the constitutional critics once again turn out to be unen-

thusiastic about separation of powers. This is so even though these
authors don’t say a great deal about separation of powers per se. The
term itself comes up only in passing in Lazare, but the upshot of his analysis
is that he is against it. He sees it as a system in which “a move by one ele-
ment in any one direction would be almost immediately offset by a counter
move by one or both” of the other branches “in the opposite direction.” The
result, Lazare writes, “was a counter democratic system dedicated to the
virtues of staying put in the face of rising popular pressure.”
Dahl and Levinson also mention the term “separation of powers” only in
passing, but as we have seen in substance they are at least skeptical of its
value. Those, such as the present author, who regard separation of powers
as an indispensable part of the American political order will find themselves
skeptical of these criticisms.
The case that Madison makes for the separation of powers, which
appears in Federalist 51, is that it is “essential to the preservation of liberty.”
However, Madison’s case rests on a definition of tyranny that is hard to
accept in the 21st century, one that claims that the “accumulation of all
powers” in one body “may justly be pronounced the very definition of
tyranny,” as he expressed in Federalist No. 47, the first in a string of five
papers on separation of powers.
By this definition the modern United Kingdom, and most other parlia-
mentary systems, would count as tyrannies. Whatever one thinks of the rela-
tive merits of parliamentary and separation-of-powers systems, few people
today would argue that countries with parliamentary systems are by virtue
of that fact tyrannies. One need not be nearly as convinced of the irrelevance
of the Founders’ wisdom as these authors are in order to admit that that on
this point at least Madison was wrong. What good, then, is separation of
powers if not as a barrier to tyranny?
The question of what difference separation of powers makes has been
answered by economists Torsten Persson and Guido Tabellini in their theo-
retical work, Political Economics: Explaining Economic Policy and in their
empirical study The Economic Effects of Constitutions. These authors
report that in theory, separation of power in “the presidential-congressional
regime produces smaller government with less waste” as well as less redistri-
bution and low spending on public goods. Voters are able to “discipline”
politicians, who must compete more keenly with each other, a process that
moderates the tax burden, according to Persson and Tabellini. The parlia-
mentary system, the two authors tell us in Political Economics, leads us to
larger government and more spending on public goods, more waste and tax-
ation. In their other book, the authors make these same points in a rather
June & July 2011 11

Thomas J. Main
different form, arguing that checks and balances hold abuses of power in
check, unlike in parliamentary systems, where “the greater concentration of
powers in parliamentary regimes, [makes] it . . . easier for politicians to col-
lude with each other at the voters’ expense.”
What do the data say about all this theory? Persson and Tabellini looked
at two data sets. For cross-sectional analysis they used data on 85 democra-
cies during the 1990s. To study changes over time they developed a panel
set of data that tracks 60 countries over the period 1960-98. They found
the data strongly support predictions regarding the size of government.
“Presidentialism reduces the overall size of government by about 5% of
gdp,” they write in The Economic Effects of Constitutions. “Compared to
that in parliamentary regimes, government spending in presidential democ-
racies is also much less persistent. . . . Unconditionally, presidential democra-
cies do have lower spending than parliamentary democracies . . . as well as
smaller deficits. The data analyses also show that the size of welfare pro-
grams is about 2 percent lower in presidential systems than in parliamentary
ones.
The American separation-of-powers system probably results in a smaller
government and in particular a smaller welfare state than we would other-
wise have. If one is in favor of a larger government, then separation of pow-
ers is a problem; otherwise, it is not. One can make a case for either prefer-
ence. The important point is that the size of government is very much an
issue when we are considering the consequences of forms of government,
and it ought to have been dealt with directly in the books under review.
Democracy or republic?
W e come down then to the matter of value judgments. We

need to be clear about what the values are against which we are
judging the Constitution. Dahl is admirably frank about what
value he embraces: “I am going to suggest that we begin to view our
American Constitution as nothing more or less than a set of basic institu-
tions and practices designed to the best of our abilities for the purpose of
attaining democratic values.”
For Dahl the only relevant value is democracy. The titles of Lazare’s and
Levinson’s books show that democracy is a very prominent value for them,
too. Yet they do not explicitly indicate a single, overriding value as Dahl
does, which is for the best. It is a mistake to identify any one value as all
important. It is not at all clear that the values against which one might judge
a constitution — why not liberty, justice, good government, etc.? — can all
be boiled down to a single master value. So we ought to say that of course
democracy is relevant, but what else is relevant? Why should not our prefer-
ences concerning size of government be relevant? Perhaps value judgments
concerning size of governments don’t have quite the same elemental ring
12 Policy Review
that democracy, justice, liberty, and some other terms do. But the issue we
come to is why not trade off democracy against other values and what
would those other values be? And is there any value function against which
the Constitution would fare better than it does by the solely or very predom-
inantly democratic value function that these authors bring to bear?
An obvious candidate for such a counterbalancing value is republicanism.
The point is that for the Founders republicanism was, if not the sole political
value, at least a very prominent one. And of course it is well known that the
Federalist Papers do not try to establish the democratic bona fides of the
Constitution but rather seek to demonstrate “The conformity of the pro-
posed Constitution to the true principles of republican government,” as
expressed in Federalist No. 1 (italics in the original). Democracy, rarely com-
ing up in the Federalist Papers, usually appears in the context of “pure
democracy,” i.e., direct democracy without intermediate representation.
Why not then judge the Constitution, at least partly, against the value it was
designed to reflect, republicanism, rather than against democracy alone?
Levinson and Dahl have immediate answers to this question. Levinson
denies that republicanism is relevant today, pointing out that the Founders’
vision of “republican” order included slavery and the “rank subordination
of women” and concludes, “That vision of politics is blessedly long behind
us but the Constitution is not” (italics in the original). Dahl goes further and
argues that, certain appearances to the contrary, the Founders did not under-
stand themselves as applying republican rather than democratic values. He
writes:
Some readers may argue that the Founding Fathers . . . intended to cre-
ate a republic, not a democracy. From this premise, according to a not
uncommon belief among Americans, it follows that the United States is
not a democracy but a republic. Although this belief is sometimes sup-
ported on the authority of a principle architect of the Constitution,
James Madison, it is for reasons I explain . . . mistaken.
One can understand why Dahl wants to make this argument. If the
Founders were trying to create a republic, then republican, not democratic,
values would seem to be the relevant measure. However his case is not con-
vincing. Dahl himself acknowledges that in Federalist No. 10 Madison
famously distinguishes, in the following passage, between republics and
democracies:
The two great points of difference between a democracy and a republic
are: first the delegation of the government, in the latter, to a small num-
ber of citizens elected by the rest; secondly, the greater number of citi-
zens, and greater sphere of the country, over which the latter may be
extended.
This seems like as clear a distinction as there possibly can be, but Dahl
disagrees. He points out, correctly, that “during the eighteenth century the
June & July 2011 13

Thomas J. Main
terms ‘democracy’ and ‘republic’ were used rather interchangeably in both
common and philosophical usage.” But this doesn’t prove that the terms
were interchangeable for Madison in the Federalist Papers. Thus, to prove
so, Dahl quotes from Federalist No. 39 as follows:
We may define a republic to be…a government which derives its powers
directly or indirectly from the great body of the people, and is adminis-
tered by persons holding their offices during pleasure, or for a limited
period, or during good behavior.
Dahl then comments on this passage:

By defining a republic as a government which derives all its powers
“directly or indirectly from the great body of the people,” Madison now
seems to be contradicting the distinction he had drawn in Federalist No.
10.
Dahl seems to think that Madison’s use of the word “directly” refers to a
situation in which the people themselves make the laws, and the word “indi-
rectly” refers to governments in which there is representation. If this were so
then Madison would indeed be contradicting the distinction he drew in
Federalist No. 10, thus blurring the distinction between a republic and a
democracy. But consider how Madison uses the words “directly” and “indi-
rectly” just a few lines later in Federalist No. 39:
It is sufficient for such a government (i.e. a republic) that the persons
administering it be appointed, either directly or indirectly by the people .
. . The House of Representatives . . . is elected immediately by the great
body of the people. The Senate . . . derives its appointment indirectly
from the people. The President is indirectly derived from the choice of
the people. Even the judges . . . will . . . be the choice, though a remote
choice, of the people themselves. (Italics in the original.)
In this context, Madison’s use of the word “directly” has nothing to do

with direct democracy. Government officials are chosen directly when they
are elected immediately by the people themselves, as is the case in the House
of Representatives. And the term “indirectly” does not refer to delegation of
lawmaking to representatives of the people. Government officials are chosen
indirectly when they are appointed by other officials who have been the
immediate choice of the people, as is the case with senators, who are chosen
by elected officials in the state legislature.
The point is that in these passages Madison is consistent in making a dis-
tinction between democracy and republicanism. The broader point is that
this father of the Constitution is perfectly clear that the Constitution is sup-
posed to be a republic, not a democracy. Indeed, elsewhere in Federalist No.
39 Madison asks, “Could any further proof be required of the republican
complexion of this system, the most decisive one might be found in its
absolute prohibition of titles of nobility.”
14 Policy Review
In short even the text Dahl chooses to site demonstrates that the Founders
set out to create a republic, not a democracy.
Is it, then, fair to judge a republic against democratic principles? Of
course, Levinson argues that there must be something wrong with republi-
can principles since they were compatible with slavery and the subjugation
of women. But the fact that the Founders addressed some evils and not oth-
ers doesn’t prove their principles were wrong. And in any case the point
being made here is not that 18th-century republicanism, warts and all,
should be the sole value against which the Constitution ought to be mea-
sured. A republicanism purged, in so far as possible, of its earlier flaws and
balanced with other values, including 20th-century democracy, is what is
being suggested here.
Just what is republicanism and how does it vindicate the Constitution in a
way that the value of democracy does not? The literature on republicanism
and the Constitution is very extensive but we can make some basic points
here. Michael J. Sandel in Democracy’s Discontent (1996), defines republi-
canism as follows:
Central to republican theory is the idea that liberty depends on sharing
in self-government . . . It means deliberating with fellow citizens about
the common good and helping to shape the destiny of the political com-
munity . . . It requires a knowledge of public affairs and also a sense of
belonging, a concern for the whole, a moral bond with the community
whose fate is at stake. To share in self-rule therefore requires that citizens
possess, or come to acquire, certain qualities of character or civic virtues
. . . The republican conception of freedom, unlike the liberal conception,
requires a formative politics that cultivates in citizens the qualities of
character self-government requires.
There is considerable debate on the question to what degree is the

Constitution a republican document. I agree with those authors who argue
that the Constitution is mostly a liberal document, firmly rooted in the
Lockean tradition. But I agree with Sandel’s reading that the Constitution
also has republican features. Analytically disentangling the liberal and
republican features is difficult. Sometimes the same feature is capable of
both a liberal and a republican justification. Consider, for example, repre-
sentation, as opposed to direct democracy. None of the Constitution’s critics,
or anyone else, will object to representation on democratic grounds.
Democratic values accept, or perhaps require, representative government in
all cases where direct democracy is impractical. But representation is capable
of a republican defense too. Madison in Federalist No. 10 makes the
“scheme of representation” the defining characteristic of a republic. As such,
representation does more than simply make democracy possible in situations
where it would otherwise be impractical. The effect of representation,
Madison tells us in Federalist No. 10, “is . . . to refine and enlarge the pub-
lic views by passing them through the medium of a chosen body of citizens,”
June & July 2011 15

Thomas J. Main
whose wisdom, patriotism and “love of justice” will discern the best interest
of the country.
Here we have a republican defense of one aspect of the Constitution, rep-
resentation, which is not available to liberal thought, concerned as it is with
democratic equality. Representation inculcates virtue, if not among the peo-
ple at large, then at least among the political class. Representation makes
self-government possible not simply by being a practical alternative to pure
democracy, but by helping to check the dangers of faction.
Of course representation is not a controversial feature for the constitu-
tional critics. It can be defended on democratic grounds and so perhaps
doesn’t need also a republican justification. But a republican defense of other
features of the Constitution that are less defensible on democratic grounds
can be made. All of the features of the Constitution that are designed to
enhance self-government by introducing a space between the people’s imme-
diate desires and government’s action, a space in which statesmanship and
public spirit can flourish, can be defended on republican grounds.
A republican case for the presidency, and for a strong presidency, can be
made. Recall that Lazare would reduce the president to a figurehead.
Levinson would weaken the office by curbing the president’s veto power and
by making presidents subject to confidence votes of the Congress. Dahl
writes that the presidency is “an office with no equivalent in other of the
other established democracies,” with an “impossible mix of roles” that usu-
ally makes for disappointing presidencies. Are their concerns justified?
Hamilton explains in Federalist No. 71 that while the “sense of the commu-
nity should govern the conduct” of those entrusted with the management of
their affairs, “it does not require an unqualified compliance to every sudden
breeze of passion, or to every transient impulse which the people may
receive from the arts of men, who flatter their prejudices to betray their
interests.”
How fair is it to say that that the authors under discussion here want to
make the president servile? Lazare stands guilty as charged. Levinson and
Dahl are less extreme. They to want to reform, but not debilitate, the presi-
dency. The point here is that any such reform involves a tradeoff. A more
democratic presidency might well be a less republican and less energetic
presidency.
A reform conversation worth having
A
more or less weakened presidency is one part of the critics’
agenda. Another part of that agenda, as we saw, is a more or less
strengthened legislature. These two proposals add up to an
undermining of the checks and balances system. It is important to under-
stand that the checks and balances system, while it is open to a democratic
critique, is also capable of a republican defense. Separation of powers
16 Policy Review
divides the government in several decision points. Different interests orga-
nize themselves in order to influence any of those points. In this way separa-
tion of powers divides society up into a multiplicity of interests or factions, a
point made by Madison in Federalist No. 51, in which he writes that while
all authority in the republic “will be derived from and dependent on the
society, the society itself will be broken into so many parts, interests and
classes of citizens, that the rights of individuals or of the minority will be in
little danger from interested combinations of the majority.” Here we have a
democratic defense of separation of powers: decentralizing government and
society safeguards individual rights. Later in the same paper Madison gives
separation of powers a republican defense, arguing that the in the “extended
republic of the United States” with its many and
varied groups, a “coalition of a majority of the
How fair is
whole society could seldom take place on any other
principles than those of justice and the common it to say that
good.” that the authors
No doubt the Constitution’s critics would simply
deny that our contemporary politics produces the under discussion
public good often enough. All of them see our here want
decentralized constitutional system as in fact result-
ing in hyper-fragmentation more conducive to dem- to make the
agoguery and bullying. No one can deny they have a president
point. Levinson discusses the potentially over-frag-
servile?
menting effect separation of powers can have in a
section entitled “The Special Problem of Divided
Government: How Separate Do We Want Our Institutions to Be?” Here he
presents James L. Sundquist’s argument that “the Constitution fundamental-
ly discourages the likelihood of creating an effective government.” This is
especially the case, these authors argue, when the Congress and the presiden-
cy are in the hands of opposed parties. The possibility of such a disposition
of power is small in a parliamentary system since the majority in the legisla-
ture almost always picks one of its own to be the executive. Thus separation
of powers promotes, not deliberation on the public good, but gridlock. Or
so goes the argument.
However some recent literature has argued that “gridlock is a myth.” In
The New Politics of Public Policy, edited by Landy and Levine, the contrib-
utors contend that the combination of a fragmented institutional frame-
work, divided government, a highly competitive political environment, and
the rights revolution encouraged policy entrepreneurs of various types to
compete with each other to have the best claim to popular political ideas,
leading to nonincremental changes in such areas as the environment, educa-
tion, taxation, and immigration.
The American constitutional system, both its written and informal parts,
has developed processes that are capable of harnessing fragmentation to
achieve significant change. Levinson acknowledges this possibility by accept-
June & July 2011 17

Thomas J. Main
ing that “One might well offer . . . evidence that the perceived necessity of
change will triumph one way or another. If the Constitution is thought to be
too inflexible in allowing formal change, then other, more informal methods
will be developed.”
Let’s take a look at the practical political effects of these criticisms. Dahl is
clear-eyed on this matter: “My reflections lead me to a measured pessimism
about the prospects for greater democratization of the American
Constitution.” He sees the likelihood of reducing “inequality” in the Senate
as “virtually zero.” Certainly the chances for the “democratic coup d’etat”
by the House of Representatives fancifully envisioned by Lazare are small.
Levinson is more realistic when he tries to convince the reader to vote for a
new constitutional convention to consider the changes he proposes. But he is
not convincing when he argues that such a convention could declare the
ordinary method of amending the Constitution void and simply specify that
a national referendum is all that is needed. Of course the authors are all
aware that amending the Constitution is very difficult.
After reading these books this defender of the Constitution wishes the
chances for reform were not so small. The critics are convincing on the mat-
ter of Senate representation, and it is a weakness of our Constitution that
apparently nothing can be done about the matter. And some other sugges-
tions in these books that do not undermine the separation-of-powers system
— for example the suggestions that naturalized citizens be eligible for the
presidency and that Supreme Court justices serve a fixed eighteen-year term
— deserve serious attention. Dahl writes of “the possibility . . . of a gradual-
ly expanding discussion that begins in scholarly circles, moves outward to
the media and intellectuals more generally and after some years begins to
engage a wider public.” The discussion is worth having for the greater
understanding it can generate.
18 Policy Review
Afghanistan: America’s
War of Perception
By Ann Marlowe
I
n the days before he was forced into retirement by scandal,
General Stanley McChrystal was fond of referring to the Afghan
theater he commanded as a “war of perceptions.” In February he
spoke to the Washington Post:
“This is all a war of perceptions,” McChrystal said on the eve of the
Marja offensive. “This is all in the minds of the participants. Part of
what we’ve had to do is convince ourselves and our Afghan partners
that we can do this.”
McChrystal’s phrase — which, we will see, is a superficial interpretation

of counterinsurgency theory — aligns regrettably well with the zeitgeist, par-
ticularly with what I will call “perspectival culture.”
Counterinsurgency theory, or coin, represents the extension to warfare
of the same validation of the “eye of the beholder” that has characterized
the arts and even aspects of the social sciences in the 20th century. This shift
marks a departure from and constitutes a critique of an older, classical
Ann Marlowe, a visiting fellow at the Hudson Institute, blogs for World Affairs.
Her biography of David Galula is available as a free download at
http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pubs/.

Ann Marlowe
understanding of what it means to win or lose a battle or a war — indeed,
about the nature of reality itself as externally given and immutable fact, as
opposed to a social construction built of competing and shared “percep-
tions.” Although the critique has ample merit, as we shall see, it also poses
underappreciated difficulties of its own.
I will argue that perspectival culture is so dominant today that it has led
to a nearly uncritical embrace of “perception” as the heart of coin theory.
The essential problem of coin theory, at least in its crude form (such as
General McChrystal voices it), is its nonfalsifiability, the impossibility of
phrasing it in ways which can be tested and disproved.
When scientists evaluate a new medicine, they want to see if it is better
than a placebo at treating a disease. They test it
The dominance accordingly, and the scientific community agrees
of perspectival that medications that don’t work aren’t brought to
market. But coin advocates insist that perception,
culture has led in this case the perception of the local population in
to a nearly a conflict area, is ultimately determinative of the
success or failure of U.S. military operations. If brib-
uncritical
ing the villagers and spending billions on dubious
embrace of training programs fails to produce security, coin
“perception” as advocates answer that we need more troops and
money. They will not admit the possibility that the
the heart of medicine does not work. And nonfalsifiable is a very
COIN theory. dangerous thing for a military theory to be.
I have argued elsewhere that our strategy in
Afghanistan is far from sound, indeed far from a strategy; that we are
neglecting the political factors and following a “strategy of tactics” that will
inexorably lead to an unnecessary, self-inflicted defeat. I have also argued
that the American civilian and military leadership has been unfortunately
reluctant to test our strategy by available metrics, insisting instead that we
have not had enough time, or enough troops, to make it work. The under-
standing of counterinsurgency in the “war of perceptions” is a far cry from
the unglamorous, common-sense measures that are recommended in the
classic works by David Galula, Roger Trinquier, and Sir Robert Thompson
that underlie the Counterinsurgency Field Manual supervised by General
David Petraeus, “fm 3–24.”
Or consider this excerpt from General Eisenhower’s 1945 manual,
“Combating the Guerilla”:
The most effective means of defeating guerrilla activity is to cut them off
physically and morally from the local inhabitants. While stern measures,
such as curfew, prohibition of assembly, limitations of movement, heavy
fines, forced labor, and the taking of hostages, may be necessary in the
face of a hostile population, these measure must be applied so as to
induce the local inhabitants to work with the occupying forces. A means
20 Policy Review
Afghanistan: America’s War of Perception
of bringing home to the inhabitants the desirability of cooperating with
the forces of occupation against the guerrillas is the imposition of restric-
tions on movement and assembly and instituting search operations with
the area affected.
Counterinsurgency operations, like any other military activity, should be

judged on their merits. And counterinsurgency has worked in some times
and places, though not under conditions acceptable to the current
American population (Algeria, the Huk rebellion in the Philippines, the Sri
Lankan struggle against the ltte). Even during our own Civil War and
Reconstruction, federal commanders treated American citizens with harsh
measures that would never have passed muster in Iraq in 2006. In 1868,
an Army commander took Ku Klux Klan sympathizers hostage to prevent
an assault on Augusta, Georgia. In 1863, Northern troops forcibly reset-
tled relatives of the insurgents in Missouri who were attacking towns in
Kansas.
There are ways of measuring whether counterinsurgency operations are
working, besides the elusive perceptions of the population. Economists look
at the price of transportation, travel data, crop prices, and other variables to
try to devise objective measures of effectiveness. They also look at simple
measures of violence like ied attacks and assassinations. The problem is
that many in the top leadership don’t seem to be interested in what these
metrics tell them. The coarse “war of perceptions” gloss on contemporary
coin theory encourages a lack of interest in metrics and an emphasis on
rhetoric instead.
The metrics of the Afghan war continue to deteriorate under the banner
of coin, and yet Petraeus, who replaced McChrystal as commander in
Afghanistan, has recently assured the American public that our strategy is
basically sound. While Petraeus is a very capable general who understands
the difficulty and subtleties of counterinsurgency as McChrystal did not, he
too appears to be trapped in a conceptual dead end.
Understanding the intellectual history and context of coin helps to turn
it from an article of faith to the mere doctrine it is, so that it can be criti-
cized, improved, amended, or abandoned as needed. We are, after all, in
Afghanistan to win, not to serve a theory.
Where did coin come from?
T here were counterinsurgencies long before there was

counterinsurgency theory. There have been counterinsurgencies
since the Greek city-states fought among themselves. No technolo-
gy was necessary to do what Galula and Trinquier recommended — but
why was counterinsurgency not isolated as a body of thought until after
World War II?
June & July 2011 21

Ann Marlowe
The term “counterinsurgency” is itself a post-World War II creation. The
distinguished Vietnam historian Andrew Birtle thinks it dates to around
1960. He told me:
I believe the word “counterinsurgency” is an American invention — and
possibly a U.S. Army invention. It seems to have first surfaced in 1960.
The earliest uses of the term I have been able to identify come in two
documents written at roughly the same time thousands of miles apart.
The first was a study prepared by the Special Warfare Division of the
Army’s Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Military Operations on 1
December 1960 titled “Counter Insurgency Operations, A Handbook
for the Suppression of Communist Guerrillas/Terrorist Operations.” The
second was a plan developed by the U.S. Military Advisory Group in
Vietnam in 1 9 6 0 and released in early 1 9 6 1 that was titled
“Counterinsurgency Plan for South Viet-Nam.” The term slowly gained
currency in 1961 and was fully accepted by early 1962. For example,
the first use of the term in an Army Field Manual appeared in “fm 33-
5,” Psychological Operations, written at Fort Bragg in 1961 and pub-
lished in January 1962. The following month the Department of
Defense added the word “counterinsurgency” to its list of officially
defined terms in the 1 February 1962 edition of jcs Pub 1, “Dictionary
of United States Military Terms for Joint Usage.
There is one obvious component of the answer. The 19th-century experi-

ence of colonial wars introduced the paradigm of Western soldiers fighting
technologically inferior local soldiers — and having trouble winning. No
one would have bothered to spend time on the techniques of colonial polic-
ing or pacification in the 15th century because those problems didn’t exist.
Secondly, the procedures of coin require a certain kind of army that didn’t
exist until the late-19th or early-20th century in Western Europe: a relative-
ly educated army. It is not enough that general officers understand a doctrine
like counterinsurgency; enlisted men and women must understand it too,
since they are the ones who have daily contact with the population.
General literacy among enlisted men was necessary. Theodore Ropp
noted that the American Civil War was the first “in which really large num-
bers of literate men fought as common soldiers.” In England, widespread lit-
eracy came a little later. Edward Spiers wrote that “The illiteracy rate within
the army declined from 90 percent in 1871 to almost zero by the 1890s,
though fewer than 40 percent of soldiers achieved (or perhaps troubled to
achieve) more than the lowest standard of education required.” French sol-
diers were likely literate earlier, though handicapped by the persistence of
regional dialects well into the 19th century.
Thus, counterinsurgency theory had to wait until Europe emerged from
Third World conditions, and until it found itself bogged down in “small
wars” in its colonies. In the last decades of the 19th century, it was French
commanders who first developed a counterinsurgency strategy, which they
22 Policy Review
used in French campaigns in Africa and Asia. This stream of thought
remained nearly unknown in the Anglosphere, however, and English and
American military thinkers did not begin to theorize consciously about
counterinsurgency until they encountered the revolutionary warfare theory
of Mao. coin as a conscious discipline came into being as military thinkers
like Galula aimed to counter Mao, who wrote and lectured on guerrilla war-
fare even as his armies fought Japanese invaders in the late 1930s. And the
first flourishing of coin in the late 1950s and early 1960s was a response
to the then-feared communist threat, whether in Vietnam, Malaya, Greece,
the Philippines, or Algeria.
Mao in the 1930s and 1940s wrote very originally on war: “There are
those who say ‘I am a farmer’ or ‘I am a student’ . . . . This is incorrect.
There is no profound difference between the farmer and the soldier . . . .
When you take your arms in hand, you become soldiers.” Mao rethought
almost every conventional notion in warfare, including what a battlefield
victory looks like. The Israeli military historian Martin Van Creveld writes
in The Transformation of War:
From the Austrians at Ulm in 1805, all the way down to the Egyptian
Third Army at Suez in 1972, the story of modern strategy is always the
same. Large armed formations are regarded as having been defeated —
and, equally important, regard themselves as having been defeated — as
soon as they are surrounded and their lines of communication are severed.
Yet when Chiang Kai-shek’s armies surrounded Mao’s forces in 1934,

Mao didn’t surrender — he retreated on the epochal “Long March” of
5,965 miles. And he went on to philosophize about his dilemma. In On
Protracted War, a very influential series of lectures Mao delivered in the
spring of 1938 in which he strategized resistance against the Japanese occu-
pation of China, he considers the ideas of “inside” and “outside,” of what it
means to be surrounded, and the relativity of the concept: From one per-
spective, the revolutionary forces are “strategically encircled by the enemy,”
in another, “if one considers all the guerrilla base areas together,” the revolu-
tionaries “surround a great many enemy forces.”
For Mao, even victory is a matter of having the right point of view — the
right perception — and his views were heard deep within the American for-
eign policy establishment in Vietnam. Edward L. Katzenbach, at the time an
American deputy assistant secretary of defense, wrote in 1 9 6 2 that
“Although Mao never states it quite this way . . . his fundamental belief is
that only those who will admit defeat can be defeated . . . . Or, conversely,
when the populace admits defeat, the forces in the field might just as well
surrender or withdraw.” Similarly, Marine Lieutenant General Victor
Krulak, who ran one of the few successful counterinsurgency operations in
Vietnam with his Combined Action Platoons, echoed Mao in saying of the
war, “It has no front lines. The battlefield is in the minds of sixteen or seven-
teen million people.”
June & July 2011 23

Ann Marlowe
The positioning of counterinsurgency as a “war of perceptions” gained
currency after World War II. As early as 1950, the New York Times
Magazine published an article on the French counterinsurgency in Vietnam
titled, “A War not for Land, but for People.” This reflected the beginnings of
French coin theory, which itself had roots in the extensive literature of
French colonial warfare. Even political leaders in Vietnam began to use the
language of perceptions. In 1953, Arnaud de Borchrave wrote in Newsweek
of Diem’s predecessor as premier, Premier Tam, who ruled under the
Emperor: “The important thing, says Premier Tam . . . is to convince the vil-
lage populations that we and not the Vietminh are fighting for their indepen-
dence.” In retrospect, it’s clear that the important thing was to change the
situation of the village population, not their minds.
Yet President Diem sounded the same note as Tam
Widespread in a statement from 1958: “Democracy is not a
American group of texts and laws to be read and applied. It is
popularization of essentially a state of mind, a way of living with the
utmost respect toward every human being, ourselves
COIN theory as well as our neighbors.”
began in 1 9 5 8 Reading this, it’s easier to understand how a bril-
liant and well-intentioned man ended up hated by
with a novel by his people and condemned by his allies. If you think
two former democracy is “a state of mind,” it’s easier to believe
you can win by a sort of advertising campaign,
military men. ignoring the realities of corruption and the abroga-
tion of the rule of law.
Widespread American popularization of coin theory began in 1958
with a best-selling novel by two former military men, The Ugly American,
which sold over five million copies (the U.S. population was 179 million at
the time). Coauthors William Lederer and Eugene Burdick — respectively a
Navy Captain and a Lieutenant Commander who had consulted at the
Naval War College — have a character, Major “Tex” Wolcheck, reflect on
how to stop the series of defeats he sees being inflicted on the French
Legionnaires around Hanoi in 1954: “When I was in Korea, I picked up a
book by Mao Tse-tung. I hate what he stands for, but he does have a kind of
genius.” In the epilogue, Lederer and Burdick point out that the essentials of
Mao’s doctrine were available in English in 1934, and that “The battles
which led to Dien Bien Phu were classic examples of the Mao pattern. And
yet our military missions advised, and the French went down to defeat,
without having studied Mao’s writings.”
The Ugly American was still on the best-seller lists during the 1960 presi-
dential campaign, and its most influential fan was John F. Kennedy. While a
senator, Kennedy and five other opinion leaders bought an advertisement in
the New York Times saying that they had sent copies of The Ugly American
to every senator.
Kennedy’s advocacy of coin had been formed by visits to Indochina dur-
24 Policy Review
ing the Viet Minh struggle against the French. On January 18, 1961, two
days before taking office, Kennedy set up the new Special Group,
Counterinsurgency (sgci), headed by General Maxwell Taylor, designed as
a way to jumpstart the military transformation to counterinsurgency.
Unfortunately, it contained no real coin experts. The contrast with
Kennedy’s predecessor could not be greater. In his State of the Union address
on January 7, 1954, President Eisenhower had stated, “I saw no sense in
wasting manpower in costly small wars.”
According to Rusk’s right-hand man for Vietnam, Roger Hilsman,
Kennedy was reading the special issue of the Marine Corps Gazette on guer-
rilla warfare the day before his State of the Union address, January 10,
1962. This included Griffith’s 1941 translation of
Mao. Six days later, Kennedy sent a letter to the edi- Kennedy’s
tors recommending the volume to “every Marine”;
advocacy of
it was later bound with the book.
Hilsman — a West Point graduate who had studying
fought in Burma and worked for the oss in the counterinsurgency
Second World War — was the author of a paper in
this special issue. He conducted a study for the pres- had a huge
ident on how to respond to the Viet Cong outside influence on the
the maneuver war. Hilsman notes in his memoir that
circa 1961–62, Kennedy’s national security advisor, spread of the
Walt Rostow, and others were trying to figure out doctrine.
how to win guerrilla wars. “Other pioneering work
was going on in the Pentagon, in cia, in the Agency for International
Development, and particularly at Fort Bragg,” Hilsman wrote.
Kennedy’s advocacy of studying counterinsurgency had a huge influence
on the spread of the doctrine. In his brilliant 1982 Duke master’s thesis,
then-Lieutenant Colonel Stephen Bowman has documented the near-frenzy
of coin activity in the Kennedy administration. Bowman, who died in
2009, a retired colonel, would later teach at West Point and head the mili-
tary history department at the Army War College. Bowman notes that
Kennedy made it clear that promotions to general officer would depend on
counterinsurgency expertise. So it is no surprise that Secretary of the Army
Elvis Stahr Jr. wrote on February 8, 1962, that “guerrilla warfare is actually
being fought in many parts of the world today, and the ultimate fate of free-
dom could well rest in the hands of the so-called irregular troops involved.”
Kennedy tried hard to remold the American military. He doubled the size
of the Special Forces from 2,000 to nearly 5,000. The “Howze Board
Report” of January 28, 1962, advocated the “creation of an experimental
unit to develop tactical doctrine for counterinsurgency.” The Board also pre-
dicted that special warfare might become typical of future conflicts.
Helicopters were added to conventional Army brigades for the mobility
demanded by the new type of warfare. As Andrew Birtle chronicles, the
Army began a six-week counterinsurgency course at Fort Bragg on January
June & July 2011 25

Ann Marlowe
26, 1961, which was aimed at the groups the Army thought would use it
most, foreign armies and their American advisors. The first Special Warfare
Staff Officer Course trained 527 officers in 1961, its first year, and 1,212
in 1962. A “Counterinsurgency Course” for colonels and generals was
offered in May 1962. The Army Infantry School offered a voluntary 40-
hour course on Vietnam by 1963. And the United States Military Academy
was not far behind, with Mao, Vo Nguyen Giap, and Truong Chinh
required reading for cadets starting in 1962.
Predictably, a pile of publications by ambitious officers followed these
signposts. Bowman tallies them:
The Army published a book, Readings in Counter-Guerilla Operations
(Special Warfare School, April, 1961) while Army devoted its March
1962 issue to coin. A year later, the Special Operations Research
Office, under contract to the Army, published “A Counterinsurgency
Bibliography” which contained 965 different sources concerned with
counterinsurgency.
Even after Kennedy’s assassination in November 1963, coin retained

momentum. In October 1964, Army Chief of Staff Harold K. Johnson
viewed coin as “the major mission in the foreseeable future.” Robert
Taber’s Castro-sympathizing 1965 analysis of Mao, The War of the Flea,
was so interesting to the American military that they bought up the whole
first printing. And by 1965, the Army Infantry School “was operating two
mock South Vietnamese villages” to train troops.
But the top-down imposition of coin on the American Army during
Kennedy’s administration was not sufficient to make a lasting impact. Ever
since the Vietnam war ended, impressive scholars have tried to make sense
of the American defeat, arguing that we did not use enough counterinsur-
gency theory, or that we used too much, or that the role of coin had ulti-
mately little influence on the outcome of the war. Without trying to adjudi-
cate these learned disputes, I would simply add that the cultural context of
coin must also be factored into the eventual explanation. Its cultural
moment had not quite come. Today, it clearly has.
The Iraq Surge narrative and ‘fm 3–24’
T he counterinsurgency field manual prepared in 2006

under the supervision of General Petraeus begins by presenting
counterinsurgency as a painfully complex combination of concrete
tasks, a difficult slog which, it is careful to note, may be properly executed
and still fail. It recommends common-sense measures long used by coun-
terinsurgents, such as taking a census of the local population and issuing id
cards — which have still not been done in Afghanistan. The emphasis is on
concrete, modest measures that are unglamorous but necessary.
26 Policy Review
The word “perceptions,” beloved of McChrystal, occurs just three times
in the 30 pages of Chapter 1. But there is much discussion of the need to get
the population to accept their government as legitimate. In words that speak
directly to today’s dilemmas in Afghanistan, the authors warn against what
some (including me) have charged we have done in Afghanistan, following a
“strategy of tactics” while allowing the Afghan government to alienate the
population: “Tactical actions thus must be linked not only to strategic and
operational military objectives but also to the host nation’s essential political
goals. Without those connections, lives and resources may be wasted for no
real gain.”
Re-reading the manual in the light of deteriorating conditions in
Afghanistan, one cannot help being struck by the
contrast between the sober, even dour tone of Pro-Surge
Chapter 1, with its emphasis on the host nation gov-
became
ernment’s legitimacy, and the buoyantly optimistic
tone of many official military statements about the assimilated to
Afghan war. We have all but completely failed to pro-COIN and
identify, control, or police the population of
Afghanistan, never mind controlling the 3,436 to pro-Republican
miles of border that allow insurgents refuge in or pro-Bush or
neighboring countries. Changing “perceptions”
seems beside the point in the face of such basic fail- pro-neocon
ures. Conrad Crane — who was the lead author of ideology.
“fm 3–24” and the main author of Chapter 1
(“though gen Petraeus had a lot of input,” as Crane told me in an e-mail) is
a serious scholar, as well as a jaundiced observer of counterinsurgencies and
a retired colonel. But Crane’s ideas have been coarsened in popularization,
and hardened into a dogma.
The political polarization surrounding the Iraq war is partially to blame.
Pro-Surge became assimilated to pro-coin and to pro-Republican or pro-
Bush or pro-neocon ideology, though in fact one could reasonably be anti-
Surge yet pro-neocon or pro-Surge and anti-Republican, and either take
coin or leave it. But at its bare bones, relatively unpartisan form, the con-
ventional narrative behind the current adulation of coin takes the Iraq war
as its lodestone.
This narrative assumes that the Surge of American troops in 2006–07
brought security to most of Iraq and enabled Sunnis to turn against al
Qaeda in Iraq and back the Shia-led government instead. There were enough
troops, living in close enough proximity to the people, to settle things down.
And we spent enough money — $3 billion by June 30, 2009, according to
the inspector general for Iraqi reconstruction — on “armed social work” to
give unemployed men an alternative to planting ieds.
This is a hotly contested narrative in military intellectual circles. Another
colonel, Craig A. Collier, a former squadron commander in Iraq, recently
wrote that “the amount of money spent on economic development is a
June & July 2011 27

Ann Marlowe
seductive and misleading statistic. It has become to Iraq what the body
count was to Vietnam.” He continued:
Our economic development programs did not play as significant a role
as credited in the success that we witnessed in Iraq in 2008. Lethal oper-
ations were primarily responsible for the real economic development we
observed. The Iraqis were usually capable of finding their own financing
for business development once security was established.
Colonel Collier goes on to argue that there was little interest in the mili-
tary establishment in measuring exactly what we accomplished in Iraq with
our vast expenditures.
Still another colonel who served in Iraq, Gian Gentile, argues that the situ-
ation there turned around because we bribed the sheiks, because Iraqis in
Baghdad had more or less created sectarian apartheid for themselves, and
because they tired of waking up to see bodies with drill wounds in them every
morning. Another American colonel, Joseph Felter, has coauthored some
nber papers which suggest that unemployment has little to do with terror-
ism. Finally, while violence levels in Iraq are much improved from 2005–07,
they are still such as would raise alarm almost anywhere else in the world,
with bombings regularly killing tens of civilians at a time and the government
paralyzed and dysfunctional for long periods following elections. There are
still big problems with providing basic services like electricity and water in
Iraq. It is not a “success” that many governments would be proud of.
It is worth noting that “fm 3–24” places much less emphasis on spend-
ing money on development projects than our execution in the field has.
Perhaps because the money was easy to obtain, it was spent. But relatively
little has been done in terms of strengthening local governance in
Afghanistan, a subject that “fm 3–24” suggests is much more important.
Ignoring the metrics of the Afghan war
I spent only a few weeks in Iraq, and those in 2003. But I’ve
spent a lot of time in Afghanistan regularly since 2002, and I have
witnessed an extraordinarily impressive effort by our military in
southern and eastern Afghanistan in building roads, schools, irrigation
facilities, and the like. During the same period, of course, security has dete-
riorated in the very provinces where we have been — if you take a cynical
view — bribing the locals most assiduously. And also during the same peri-
od, we have added more and more troops to “provide security” to the
Afghan people.
Unfortunately, we appear to be winning neither the McChrystalian “war
of perceptions” nor any other kind. In 2010, Afghan insurgents planted
14,661 ieds, a 62 percent increase over 2009’s 7,228, which in turn rep-
resented a 120 percent increase over 2008’s figure. In many respects this is
28 Policy Review
a fairer measure of insurgent activity than the more commonly used num-
bers of foreign troops’ deaths from ieds, because that needs to be adjusted
for the vastly increased number of foreign troops in Afghanistan. Most of
these victims are exactly those high-capacity, courageous Afghans who are
providing an example of good local governance.
Our exit timing depends on the Afghan National Security Forces stepping
up to the plate, yet they are universally viewed as unready. The problem is
not lack of funding. The $11.6 billion appropriated for training the ana
and anp next year is not far off Israel’s 2008 defense budget. Put another
way, for $11.6 billion, we could hire 116,000 men at $100,000 apiece, a
number which would surely attract some well-trained American soldiers.
Looking at a developing country case, Sri Lanka
built an army of 350,000 that decisively routed the Perhaps we
ltte (Tamil Tigers) at a cost of $1.74 billion.
Perhaps we should just hire the Sri Lankan army to should just hire
fight the Afghan insurgency and be done with it. the Sri Lankan
Even judged by the metrics that partisans them-
selves choose to measure progress, the situation in
army to fight
Afghanistan has been steadily deteriorating. A recent the Afghan
report from the mainstream think tank csis shows insurgency and
statistically that the Afghan population has grown
less and less willing to cooperate with counterinsur- be done with it.
gents — even as we have supposedly refined our
coin tactics and increased the number of troops. The report tracks the per-
centage of undetonated ieds reported to Coalition forces by locals from
January 2004 to the present. Since May 2008 the percentage has hovered
just under 5 percent whereas in 2005–06 — when the official story now
has it that we were not doing effective coin — it was often over more than
10 percent. In May of last year, it was reduced to 1 to 2 percent.
It’s the coin advocates themselves who consider the percentage of ieds
turned in a useful measure. The Center for a New American Security, the
think tank at the epicenter of coin, issued a report in June 2009 written by
Andrew M. Exum, Nathaniel C. Fick, Ahmed A. Humayun, and David J.
Kilcullen, which stated that
a rise in the proportion of ieds being found and defused (especially
when discovered thanks to tips from the local population) indicates that
locals have a good working relationship with local military units — a
sign of progress. Conversely, a drop in the proportion of ieds found and
cleared indicates the population is not passing on information to security
forces, and is standing by while they are attacked — a sign of deteriorat-
ing security.
Such metrics have to be looked at carefully. In some areas, Afghans have

first planted and then reported the planting of ieds in order to pocket
reward money or give the appearance of cooperation. Yet in practice, it
June & July 2011 29

Ann Marlowe
seems that more troops doing more coin are correlated with less local
cooperation and less security. coin is like a medicine that shows declining
effectiveness the longer you take it and the higher doses you take it in.
There are some very smart people in the Pentagon, and in the field, whose
response to the continued deterioration in a key metric of coin effectiveness
has been to claim that they do not yet have enough troops in the field. Such
irrationality suggests our leadership are wearing blinders, and one of the rea-
sons is that they are, along with the rest of us, influenced by a hundred years
of perspectival culture.
The emergence of perspectival culture
C ounterinsurgency theory could not have been formulat-

ed — or accepted — before a sort of Copernican inversion in look-
ing at warfare was possible, and this in turn depended on a wider
cultural openness to the idea that reality is determined by the beholder.
There is nothing so unlikely as the adoption by the world’s best military
forces of a doctrine, counterinsurgency, based on a quintessentially unmili-
tary principle: that each man must judge reality for himself. This flies in the
face of the foundational ideas of a chain of command and the obeying of
orders. To validate the individual’s viewpoint takes the military to a slippery
slope. Yet powerful forces in our society have pushed it in this direction.
Following Nietzsche, its most famous and eloquent exponent, I will call
this cultural faith “perspectivism” or “perspectival culture.” Perspectival cul-
ture takes reality to lie mainly in the eye of the beholder rather than being
fixed, immutable, and objectively given. As articulated by Nietzsche in the
1870s and 1880s, truth is perspectival; the truth of Christianity — to pick
one of Nietzsche’s favorite themes — is suited to what he called the guilt-rid-
den “bad conscience.” Ontology serves cultural, indeed political purposes.
Science is not value-neutral: as Nietzsche wrote, “The human intellect can-
not avoid seeing itself in its own perspectives, and only in these.” The seeds
of these ideas go back to the Renaissance — along with the re-discovery of
perspective in drawing and of the rotation of the earth around the sun. In
philosophy, Montaigne was probably the first major exponent of valuing the
individual’s unique standpoint.1
Perspectival ideas were at the heart of Renaissance thought, culture and
— most decisively — science. The 17th century mathematician and philoso-
pher Leibniz, inventor of formal logic and co-inventor of calculus, argued
that everyone except God knows reality only from his own particular view-
point. He believed, as Babette Babich and Robert Sonne Cohen wrote in
1. By “perspectivalism” I don’t mean “relativism.” Philosophers generally agree that Nietzsche was not a
relativist; he clearly thought certain perspectives and moralities — plural intentional — were better than
others. He thought some moralities are more useful, some nobler, some more productive of high culture.
30 Policy Review
“Nietzsche and the Sciences,” that “The world is not known as it is in itself,
it is known in terms of how it presents itself to a knower in a certain posi-
tion.” Perspectivist ideas were only possible in the West when the strangle-
hold of the church on thought was loosened. Thus it is tempting to evoke
the rise of Protestantism with its view of “each man a priest” and its empha-
sis on the individual’s perspective determining truth. But I would not push
that link much further, for Montaigne, a Catholic, was as much a perspecti-
valist as Nietzsche or his legatee, Emerson. The ideas were in the air
throughout the 16th century and after.
The historian Peter Burke has noted that linguistic hybridization grew in
16th- and 17th-century Europe with increased migration, the decline of
Latin, and the rise of large international mercenary
armies. Exposure to new languages and new words There is nothing
would reinforce perspectivist ideas in those so
so unlikely as the
inclined, even if it was not likely enough to trigger
them. The adaptation of military innovations from adoption by the
one part of Europe to another would also weaken world’s best
fixed ideas. Perspectival thought grew in the
Enlightenment, as the philosophes looked to nature military of a
rather than religion for answers and the divine right doctrine based
of kings disappeared with Louis XVIII’s head. In
1798, just a couple of years before Clausewitz on an unmilitary
entered the Prussian Military Academy, a new spirit principle.
rang out loud and clear from the then-famous joint
satirical verse collection of Goethe and Schiller, Xenien: “In the end the cre-
ated truth is the only truth we can see.”
Social and economic changes in early-19th-century Europe accelerated
the transition to perspectivalism. The replacement of the traditional patron-
age system in music and literature by the sale of works to the bourgeois pub-
lic led to an increase in the creator’s autonomy. Classical music shifted from
“occasional” works composed for courts or churches to works composed
for the concert hall — with a concomitant increase in personal expressivity
and the emergence of the musician-composer as celebrity. As music emerged
from craftsmanship to art, it became natural for composers to take greater
risks in their personal vision and for an avant-garde public to follow them.
Having a distinctive personal vision became key to artistic achievement.
Early-to-mid-19th-century European Romantic artists in many fields
pushed at the boundaries of acceptable content and form — the grim realism
of Courbet’s “A Burial at Ornans” in the 1850 Salon, and Turner’s pre-
Impressionist dissolution of form in light come to mind. Ralph Waldo
Emerson was the great popularizer of the perspectivalism that would later
saturate 20th-century culture and prepare the way for the triumph of coun-
terinsurgency theory. He was both the legatee of Montaigne and an influ-
ence on Nietzsche. Writing in Representative Men in 1850, Emerson said of
Montaigne’s Essays, “It seemed to me as if I had myself written the book, in
June & July 2011 31

Ann Marlowe
some former life . . . ” Emerson articulated a distinctly American perspecti-
valism — homely and unpretentious — in his 1 8 4 1 “Essay on Self-
Reliance,” exhorting readers, “Trust thyself.” “Nothing is at last sacred but
the integrity of your own mind,” he wrote, advising, “Good and bad are but
names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after
my constitution, the only wrong what is against it.”
We know that Nietzsche was reading “Self-Reliance” in the summer of
1881. And the original edition of The Gay Science in 1882 begins with a
quotation from Emerson, who died that year.
The spread of Nietzsche’s influence is a barometer of the spread of per-
spectival thinking. It would not be an exaggeration to say that Nietzsche
became a pop-cultural figure by the early 20th cen-
tury, though as much for his perceived anti-
Nietzsche was Christian and elitist ideas as for his subtler perspec-
tivism. Here too, cause and effect are hard to sepa-
so influential rate. Even modern dance was influenced by
that he was Nietzscheanism, with a proto-commune at Ascona
espousing the philosopher’s ideas, and Isadora
blamed by some
Duncan waxing ecstatic on her first reading of
British writers Nietzsche in 1902 Berlin. More ominously, Rudolf
for inspiring Laban staged a dance with a text from Thus Spoke
Zarathustra at the Berlin Olympics.
World War I. Nietzsche was so influential that he was blamed
by some British writers for inspiring World War I
with his predictions of an apocalyptic and purifying
war. Though this ignores Nietzsche’s complexities, it is true that the man
who killed the Archduke Ferdinand, Gavrilo Princip, was given to reading
Nietzsche’s poem “Ecce Homo” aloud. And when war came, German sol-
diers were issued 150,000 pocket editions of Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke
Zarathustra.
Of course, the enthusiastic reception Nietzsche’s ideas received almost at
once shows a society already attuned to a “revaluation of all values,” as
much as it shows the force of his thought. In 1898, Tolstoy wrote a thun-
derously conservative essay titled “What is Art?” (condemning even the ano-
dyne pleasures of the ballet), but to ask the question is to acknowledge the
frightening probability that it was just what you wanted it to be.
In the last decades of the 19th century and first of the 20th, artists aban-
doned representation in their paintings, and composers like Wagner, Bartok,
Stravinsky, and Schoenberg pushed at the boundaries of tonality in organiz-
ing their works. But one artist, Marcel Duchamp, took perspectivism a step
beyond Nietzsche.
Duchamp created a great scandal by exhibiting the Cubist painting
“Nude Descending a Staircase” in the 1913 Armory Show in New York —
at a time when German soldiers were presumably lapping up Zarathustra.
But when Duchamp exhibited a urinal as a work of art in 1917, he brought
32 Policy Review
the audience into the party. As he wrote 40 years later, “The creative act is
not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact
with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifica-
tions and thus adds his contribution to the creative act.”
Duchamp and his notion of the audience’s creation of or complicity in the
work of art would be a perennial influence on the Western avant-garde,
gaining a new generation of admirers after World War II. In 1963, the first
Marcel Duchamp retrospective opened at the Pasadena Art Museum (now
the Norton Simon Museum). Many artists attended, including some, like
Andy Warhol, Edward Ruscha, and Robert Irwin, who were revolutionizing
the art of the day.
Once a significant number of people agreed that reality lay in the eye of
the beholder, indeed in their own eyes, the later developments of conceptual
art and Abstract Expressionism and happenings and performance art made
sense. Some of these works announced little besides their provisionality, that
they were art only if we agreed that they were. Perhaps the most conceptual-
ly elegant was John Cage’s 1962 piano piece “4’33”,” which consists solely
of silence.
At the same time, scientists were making discoveries that supported the
perspectivist schema, at least in the way the general public understood them.
Einstein’s work on relativity opened up vertiginous vistas of “God playing
dice with the world” in popular culture. Physicists discovered that matter
was made up of invisible particles whirling around other invisible particles!
The world as seen by the naked eye was, truly, the illusion.
And like art, 20th-century science was turning its gaze on its own founda-
tions. In 1962, just as coin enjoyed its first American vogue, Thomas
Kuhn published The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. He argued that not
all ideas are thinkable at all times and that scientists operating in one “para-
digm” will evaluate experimental results differently than they would operat-
ing in another. “Paradigm shifts,” according to Kuhn, occur when a new
theory explains anomalies better than the old one. While Kuhn wasn’t a rel-
ativist, his insistence on the cultural context of science shares an emphasis on
the eye of the beholder with population-centric counterinsurgency theory. It
also suggests an obvious way to evaluate coin: Does it explain the data?
Putting the genie back in the bottle?
W r i t i n g a b o u t du c h a m p in a recent issue of the New

Yorker, critic Peter Schjeldahl summarizes the trouble with per-
spectivalism: “The traffic of the ready-made is one-way; a uri-
nal that becomes art — Duchamp’s ‘Fountain’ (1917), . . . can’t escape to be
a urinal again.”
That is, it’s hard to put the genie back in the bottle. With perspectival cul-
ture a powerful force in today’s military, the “war of perceptions” is easy to
June & July 2011 33

Ann Marlowe
understand. Once you start looking at a war as a matter of swaying the atti-
tudes of the local population or capturing the so-called “human terrain” —
a term only the military could have invented — it’s difficult to stop. It’s hard-
er to understand that you might have the population behind you and still
lose, because they’re more intimidated by the insurgents.
The cure may lie partly in a re-immersion in the actual classics of coin
(as opposed to potted summaries). Reading carefully in Galula or Trinquier,
or even “fm 3–24,” it is hard to get the impression that coin is a matter of
changing perceptions, like running an ad campaign. Books like Trinquier’s
Modern Warfare and Galula’s Counterinsurgency Warfare and Pacification
in Algeria discuss minute and tiresome details, from building latrines to tri-
angulating the location of insurgents to tactics for
night ambushes. They all insist on the difficulty of
Success in counterinsurgency operations, and the dim outlook
Afghanistan and for counterinsurgents.
If we are to succeed in Afghanistan and future
future “small “small wars,” we must move past the glossy “war
wars” means of perceptions” to focus on the mundane tasks rec-
moving past the ommended by the classic theorists and almost sys-
tematically ignored by us in Afghanistan: closing the
glossy “war of borders, counting and identifying the people, and
perceptions.” controlling the movements of the population in hos-
tile areas.
Another part of moving beyond perspectivalism is
returning to the cold, dry realities of success and failure — those dreaded
metrics that many in our military are now so reluctant to credit. While a
wholly quantitative approach is as bad as a wholly subjective one, it may be
better to err on the quantitative, analytic side in correcting for our recent
giddy embrace of the subjective. Here too, past contributions offer fresh
guidance.
One work that never received its due at the time is a book from 1970,
Rebellion and Authority, by Charles Wolf, Jr. and the late Nathan Leites.
The authors say that counterinsurgents ought to focus on reducing the sup-
ply of insurgency — which they prefer to call “rebellion” — rather than the
demand. (Wolf is an economist by training; Leites was a Soviet expert.) In
other words, cut the inputs that allow rebels to act, rather than focusing on
changing the preferences of the population.
The authors point out, correctly, that often rebellions can take hold even
if the rebel cause is unpopular. The population makes a calculation of the
costs and benefits of supporting one side or another and decides accordingly.
Making the government lovable will not necessarily impact that calculus.
But reducing the supply of insurgents may, because the less effective the
insurgents are at enforcing their threats, the less the population will obey
them.
It’s worth quoting one of Wolf’s earlier publications, Insurgency and
34 Policy Review
Counterinsurgency: Old Myths and New Realities, for its bracing common
sense and disdain for mystification:
The primary consideration should be whether the proposed measure is
likely to increase the cost and difficulties of insurgent operations and
help to disrupt the insurgent organization rather than whether it wins
popular loyalty and support, or whether it contributes to a more pro-
ductive, efficient or equitable use of resources . . . Insurgency may be rec-
ognized not as an inscrutable and unmanageable force grounded in the
mystique of a popular mass movement, but as a coherent operating sys-
tem that needs to be understood structurally and functionally if it is to
be effectively countered.
Given the need for two successive administrations, and the Pentagon, to
sell the Afghan war to the American people, it is perhaps inevitable that the
drudge work would be lost sight of, and the need for careful planning sub-
sumed by buoyant rhetoric. But the unwillingness of both the Bush and
Obama administrations to rigorously assess and critique coin tactics can-
not be explained away so easily. Our future wars are likely to be either
asymmetric or stupid, in the words of Crane. If we treat war as a question of
perspective, like art, we will end up doing to ourselves what no army in the
world can do: inflicting defeat.
June & July 2011 35

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argues thatt w
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tates of the futur
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Hee iden tifies
identifies
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problems—the eclines in civic pur
declines pose and pa
purpose atriotism,
patriotism,
cr ises of faith, cynicism,
crises cynicismm, self-absor ption, ig
self-absorption, norance, indifference
ignorance, indiff
ffer
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o the common
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good—and showsws tha
thatt our disr egard of civic
disregard
and mor
moralal vir tue as an
virtue n educa tional pr
educational iority is ha
priority ving
having g a tang ible
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eff
ffec
ect on the attitudes,
effect attitudes, understanding
understanding,, and behavior
behavio or of large
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por tions of the yyouth
portions outh in our ccountry
ountry ttoday.
oday.
Damon eexplains
xplains wh y, unless w
why, wee beg in tto
begin o pa
payy aattention
ttention
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meet our challenge aass st ewards of a priceless
stewards priceless heritage,
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nation and the futur
nation futuree pr ospects of all individuals dw
prospects welling
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omee will suff er
er, mo
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despotism—and vement will bee both
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inevitable and ast astonishingly
onisshingly quick
quick..
William
W illiam Damon is a professor
proffessor of educa
education
tion aatt SStanford
tanfford
University,
Univ director
ersity, director oof the SStanford
tanfford Center
Center on Adolescence,
Ado olescence,
fellow
and a senior ffelloellow aatt the Hoover
Hoover Institution.
Institution. FFor
or the past
ttwenty
wenty yyears,
ears, Damon n has wr written character
itten on char acter development
deevelopment
aatt all ages of human lif life,
fee, most rrecently
ecently TThe ath tto
he PPath o PPurpose:
urpose:
Helping O Our
ur Children
Childrren
en FFind
ind Their Calling
Their C alling in Life (2008).
(2008 8).
May 2011, 148 p

May pages
ISBN: 978-0-8179
978-0-8179-1364-9
9-1364-9 $19.95, cloth
Too order,
T order, ccall
all 800.621.2736
800.621.2736
H oover Institution
Hoover Institution Press,
Press, Stanford
Stanford University,
University, Stanford,
Stanford, C alifornia 994305-6010
California 4305-6010
wwww.hooverpress.org
www.hooverpress.org
Feminism by Treaty
By Christina Hoff Sommers
O
n november 18, 2010, a surprisingly large and boisterous
crowd gathered in a U.S. Senate chamber to witness new
hearings on a decades-old United Nations treaty. Guards had
to caution the excited attendees to keep their voices down.
Senator Richard Durbin, chair of the Senate Subcommittee on
Human Rights and the Law, requested that another room be opened to
accommodate the large gathering of feminist leaders, human-rights activists,
lawyers, lobbyists, and journalists. “Women have been waiting for 30
years,” said Durbin in his opening statement. “The United States should rat-
ify this treaty without further delay.”
The treaty in question — the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms
of Discrimination against Women (cedaw) — commits signatory nations
not only to eliminating discrimination but also to ensuring women’s “full
development and advancement” in all areas of public and private life. The
Christina Hoff Sommers is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise

Institute. Her books include Who Stole Feminism and The War Against Boys.
She is coauthor of One Nation Under Therapy and editor of The Science on
Women and Science. An early version of this paper appeared in the book New
Threats to Freedom.

document was adopted by the General Assembly and submitted to un mem-
ber states in 1979. Since then, nearly every nation has ratified what many
now call the “Women’s Bill of Rights” or the “Women’s Magna Carta.” The
only holdouts are three Islamic countries (Iran, Sudan, and Somalia), a few
Pacific islands — and the United States. “Look at the company we are keep-
ing in refusing to ratify this treaty,” said a dismayed Senator Durbin. “We
can do better.”
In fact, America’s failure to ratify the Women’s Treaty has not been for
lack of powerful support. President Jimmy Carter submitted it to the Senate
for ratification in 1980, and many influential legislators of both parties
have favored it over the years. In 1993, 68 senators, including Republicans
Orrin Hatch, John McCain, and Strom Thurmond,
urged President Bill Clinton to secure ratification.
Some ascribe
Nine years later, President George W. Bush’s State
the U.S. failure Department told the Senate Foreign Relations
to ratify the Committee that it was “generally desirable” and
“should be ratified.” Its supporters have included
treaty to one not only political leaders and women’s groups but
man: the late also broad-based organizations such as the aarp,
afl-cio, American Bar Association, and League of
Senator Jesse Women Voters. Even the Audubon Society has
Helms of North endorsed the Women’s Treaty.
Some ascribe the U.S. failure to ratify the treaty
Carolina.
to one man: the late Senator Jesse Helms of North
Carolina. To Helms, cedaw was a terrible treaty
“negotiated by radical feminists with the intent of enshrining their radical
anti-family agenda into international law.” As chairman of the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee from 1995 to 2001, Helms refused even to
hold hearings on the matter. In 1999, ten women from the House of
Representatives marched into his committee room, disrupted a hearing, and
demanded that he schedule cedaw hearings. Pounding his gavel, Chairman
Helms reprimanded the placard-carrying women for their breach of deco-
rum. “Please be a lady,” he said to the leader, Representative Lynn Woolsey
from California. He then instructed the guards to eject the group from the
room. (Among the shaken protesters was future Speaker of the House
Nancy Pelosi.) Representative Woolsey would later tell the press that Helms
“held cedaw hostage so that women across the globe continued to be vic-
timized and brutalized.” But Senator Helms never wavered. At a 2002
Senate hearing, he described the treaty as harmful to women as well as a
direct threat to American sovereignty. “It will never see the light of day on
my watch.”
Helms’s watch is now long over, and treaty supporters can see daylight.
President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden are strong supporters.
So are key Senators John Kerry, chairman of the Foreign Relations
Committee, and Barbara Boxer, chairwoman of the subcommittee with
38 Policy Review
Feminism by Treaty
jurisdiction over it. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is an enthusiast, as is
Harold Koh, former dean of the Yale Law School and now the State
Department’s chief legal adviser. An influential advocate of “transnational
jurisprudence,” Koh invokes the sad irony that “more than half a century
after Eleanor Roosevelt pioneered the drafting of the Universal Declaration
of Human Rights, her country still has not ratified . . . cedaw.”
The Obama State Department has notified the Senate that ratification of
cedaw is its top priority among the many human-rights treaties the United
States is considering. The prospects remained good even after the November
2010 elections. It is the Democratic Senate, not the newly Republican
House, which provides advice and consent to treaties. In any event, the
treaty has enjoyed Republican support in the past
and will again. U.S. ratification
So U.S. ratification of the treaty, followed by an
of the treaty,
inspirational address by President Obama in some
international forum, may seem inevitable. Except followed by a
that it is not. For many years, Senator Helms’s speech from the
adamant opposition to it made support an easy ges-
ture for many senators who may have shared his president, may
qualms but not his temerity. Now that ratification seem inevitable.
has become a live prospect, there will be a real
debate. The senators are going to have to confront Except that
the treaty itself — what it says and what signing it it is not.
would mean. It is a complicated and problematic
document, and there are many good reasons why the Senate has resisted rat-
ification for more than 30 years.
The question the Senate has to consider is not, as Chairman Durbin sug-
gested at the November hearing, “Should the United States stand with
oppressed women of the world?” Of course we should, and we do. No
nation on earth gives more to foreign aid or has more philanthropies and
religious groups dedicated to women’s causes. Voters across the political
divide welcome innovative programs to help women struggling with repres-
sive governments and barbaric traditions such as child marriage, dowry
burnings, genital cutting, and honor killings. What the senators have to
answer are two more basic questions. One, is cedaw a necessary and wor-
thy addition to an already vibrant national effort to help the world’s
women? Two, for better or worse, how will ratification affect American life?
Supporters such as Durbin, Biden, Boxer, and Koh are emphatic about
how the Women’s Treaty would affect American rights and liberties — not
at all. “cedaw wouldn’t change U.S. law in any way,” said Durbin at the
hearing. In a 2002 op-ed, Biden and Boxer reminded readers of the horrors
of honor killings in Pakistan, bride burnings in India, and female genital
mutilation in sub-Saharan Africa. By signing the treaty, they said, the United
States would demonstrate its commitment to helping women secure basic
rights and increase its leverage with oppressive nations. And, contrary to
June & July 2011 39

critics’ fears, “ratification . . . would not impose a single new requirement in
our laws — because our Constitution and gender discrimination laws
already comply with the treaty requirements.” On this view, cedaw is a for-
eign-policy initiative — in Senator Boxer’s words, “a diplomatic tool for
human rights.” cedaw opponents see the treaty’s consequences in exactly
opposite terms. They say American ratification would do little to help
women in oppressive societies. Signatories like Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and
North Korea have done almost nothing to reform their laws, policies, and
practices, even when admonished by the un’s cedaw-monitoring commit-
tee. By contrast, the United States takes its international treaty obligations
seriously: If we ratified cedaw, we would consider ourselves morally com-
mitted to abide by its rules. But many of those rules
The American are antithetical to American values, and any good-
faith effort to incorporate them into American law
Bar Association would conflict with our traditions of individual free-
and Amnesty dom.
A case in point is the central cedaw provision
International that requires “all appropriate measures to modify
insist that it is the social and cultural patterns of conduct” of citi-
zens in order to eliminate all practices based on
wrong to suggest “stereotyped roles for men and women.” Under
that CEDAW c e daw , private behavior such as how couples
would supersede divide household and childcare chores is subject to
government regulation under the tutelage of the un
American law. oversight committee. In written testimony for the
November 2010 hearing, John Fonte, a senior fel-
low at the Hudson Institute, described how cedaw could subvert our
democracy “by taking political issues out of the hands of elected officials
and transforming them into ‘universal human rights’ to be determined by
judges on the basis of ‘evolving norms of international law.’”
The pro-treaty side has heard complaints like this many times and has
drawn up detailed refutations. The American Bar Association and Amnesty
International, for example, insist that critics are wrong to suggest that
cedaw would supersede American law or traditions. On the contrary, they
say the United States could ratify it subject to caveats. If some provision in
the treaty conflicts with our laws, we can simply exempt ourselves from it.
Furthermore, the treaty would not be “self-executing” — once ratified, it
would not become the law of the land until our legislators took action to
make it law.
The aba and Amnesty International are correct that a nation can ratify a
treaty with caveats called reservations, understandings, and declarations, or
ruds. The Clinton administration proposed nine such ruds, including one
that the United States “does not accept any obligation under the Convention
to regulate private conduct except as mandated by the Constitution and U.S.
law” and another that we do not accept an obligation “to put women in all
40 Policy Review
Feminism by Treaty
combat positions.” To protect American autonomy still further, the adminis-
tration added, “No new laws would be created as a result of cedaw.” As
the Amnesty International fact sheet says, “Such language upholds U.S. sov-
ereignty and grants no enforcement authority to the United Nations.” So, it
seems, the critics are wrong: With the help of ruds, we can show our sup-
port for women’s rights abroad while protecting American sovereignty and
liberties at home.
But here is the problem. Legal experts disagree about the power of ruds
to insulate a nation from provisions of a treaty it has committed itself to
honor. The legitimacy and role of reservations to international human-rights
treaties is one of the most contested areas of international law. cedaw itself
states, “A reservation incompatible with the object
and purpose of the present Convention shall not be Legal experts
permitted.”
disagree about
It is not even clear that the aba, Amnesty, and
other pro-treaty activists believe that ruds offer the power of
genuine protection — at least not when they are RUDs to insulate
talking among themselves. When the National
Organization for Women met with several human- a nation from
rights groups in 2009 to plan the current campaign provisions of a
to get the treaty passed, it expressed concern that
ruds would make it difficult to enforce treaty pro- treaty to which it
visions in the United States. But as now somewhat has committed.
indiscreetly reported on its website on August 31,
2009, “Representatives from groups who have advocated for ratification
over the years suggest that ruds have little meaning and could potentially
be removed from the treaty at some point.”
Even more telling, the un Division on the Advancement of Women, the
agency that monitors the treaty’s implementation, is emphatic that the docu-
ment is obligatory, not hortatory: “Countries that have ratified or acceded to
the Convention are legally bound to put its provisions into practice.”
Moreover, many American legislators — and judges — will sincerely feel we
are obligated to bring our laws in line with a treaty we have agreed to honor.
But, according to the aba and Amnesty, as well as Durbin, Biden, Boxer,
and Koh, these arcane questions of international law are irrelevant. Because
American laws are already in full or near-full compliance with the treaty, it
will have few if any domestic consequences. This argument brings us to the
most striking feature of the discussion: the treaty’s most engaged and knowl-
edgeable proponents — activist women’s groups — disagree with the for-
export-only argument emphasized by public officials and human-rights
groups like Amnesty. now, the Feminist Majority Foundation, and their sis-
ter organizations actually agree with conservative critics that cedaw would
have a dramatic impact on American laws and practices.
“U.S. women have endured denials of their basic human rights long
enough — please do not make them wait any longer,” wrote now President
June & July 2011 41

Terry O’Neil in a March 11, 2010, letter to President Obama urging imme-
diate ratification. Feminist activists see the treaty as an opportunity for
American women to secure rights the Constitution has not delivered. The
Feminist Majority Foundation has released a video explaining how
American women can use cedaw to bring about a “sea change” in our
laws. It shows Congress debating the 2009 “stimulus bill” and explains
how cedaw can lead to “gender-fair budgets.” State-mandated quotas, the
narrator explains, have led to gender-balanced legislatures in South Africa,
Iraq, and Rwanda. Images of beaming women in the Rwandan parliament
are juxtaposed with the sorry picture of the U.S. Senate, with only 16
women members out of 100. The video also juxtaposes images of young
Afghan women hideously disfigured from acid
attacks with those of corpses of American women
Current
brutally murdered by intimate partners. “Clearly we
American law need cedaw,” says the narrator. Janet Benshoof,
promises equality president of the Global Justice Center, speaks for
many in the feminist establishment when she says,
of opportunity — “If cedaw were fully implemented in the United
but not equality States it would revolutionize our rights . . .
American women need legal tools to fight patri-
of outcome. archy.”
CEDAW could The most detailed assessment of its potential
effects on American law appears in a 50-page book-
change that.
let, Human Rights for All: CEDAW, first published
in 2001 by a consortium of more than 100 legal and
philanthropic associations who support it. The publication includes seventeen
pages that spell out how the treaty would transform the American legal sys-
tem. For example, current American law promises equality of opportunity —
but not equality of outcome. “How cedaw would help?” ask the authors of
Human Rights for All. Their answer is in bold, capitalized, red letters:
“cedaw Calls Upon State Parties to Adopt Temporary Special Measures
Aimed at Accelerating De Facto Equality Between Men and Women.”
Without using the words “quotas” or “comparable worth,” the authors
make it clear that cedaw could give new life to these policies. “U.S. laws,”
they explain, “do not create rights for women that are specific to their day-to-
day reality.” The new treaty would correct that. If this guide is to be trusted,
treaty ratification will mean that women’s groups can litigate all areas of
American life that fail to evince statistical parity between the sexes.
What is certain is that, after 67 consensus-seeking senators vote to ratify
the treaty and turn to other legislative business, the feminist groups and
lawyers who have forthrightly declared their ambitions would be in posses-
sion of a powerful new tool. “cedaw . . . sea change” is the refrain in a
pro-ratification rap song put out by the Feminist Majority Foundation. To
understand just what this sea change might entail, let us turn to the treaty’s
little-known intellectual provenance.
42 Policy Review
Feminism by Treaty
Back to the future
T he circumstances of cedaw’s creation are submerged in the

current ratification debates but essential to making sense of those
debates. The Women’s Treaty is a product of a unique and unset-
tled moment in the American women’s movement — a moment when a radi-
cal version of feminism was briefly ascendant but was soon to be eclipsed by
its very success.
In the early 1 9 7 0 s, the u n General Assembly declared 1 9 7 5
“International Women’s Year” and authorized the first World Conference on
Women. Thousands converged in Mexico City for both the official un con-
ference and a parallel conference, called the Tribune, held a few miles away.
The un conference was formal, orderly, and decorous. The Tribune, by con-
trast, was a raucous affair, attracting some 4,000 feminist activists, writers,
and intellectuals. The 1,500 American participants included such feminist
luminaries of that era as Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, Angela Davis, Jane
Fonda, and Bella Abzug.
Foreign Affairs gave a detailed account of some of the many quarrels that
broke out between Western feminists and women’s activists from the devel-
oping world.1 The Westerners believed that “all women are subject to colo-
nization” and spoke of themselves as members of an inferior “caste.” The
Third World women were taken aback by facile comparisons between the
sometimes-uncomfortable circumstances of privileged middle-class
Americans and those of the impoverished, often essentially enslaved women
in their own countries. And they were alarmed by the bitter gender politics.
When members of the official U.S. delegation from the un conference
came across town to visit the Tribune, the male delegates were harangued,
shouted down, and driven out. One hapless fellow who identified himself as
a population expert was unable to complete his remarks because the
American feminists demanded to know whether he had had a vasectomy.
When he said, “Yes,” there was thunderous applause. At a later Tribune
event, all men were banished from the room so the women could engage in
an impromptu “consciousness-raising” session. “The Third World women
were outraged,” said Foreign Affairs. “Female chauvinism is the last thing
we want,” complained an Indian journalist. The women from the develop-
ing countries also accused the Westerners of “denigrating woman’s maternal
role” and weakening marriage. Soon women from the Soviet Union joined
the fray and made it clear that they did not share the Western feminist goal
of eliminating gender roles. In fact, they sought the “liberation of their femi-
ninity.” Most of them had been forced into the workplace by the
1. Jennifer Whitaker, “Women of the World: Report from Mexico City,” Foreign Affairs 54:1 (October
1975).
June & July 2011 43

Communist system — yet they continued to do all the work at home. “They
now want pleasure and beauty; they want to dress up and be courted, per-
haps to emphasize motherhood and domestic life.”
The disputes over femininity, family, and motherhood that erupted at the
1975 conferences were nothing new to the women’s movement. Since the
movement’s beginning in the early 18th century, reformers have held radi-
cally different views on gender roles. “Egalitarian feminists” stressed the
essential sameness of the sexes and sought to liberate women from conven-
tional social roles. By contrast, “social feminists” were not opposed to gen-
der distinctions. Indeed, they embraced them, looking for ways to give wives
and mothers greater power, respect, and influence in the public sphere, as
well as more protection from abuse and exploitation
in their domestic roles.
Social feminism Social feminism has always enjoyed a distinct
has always advantage over its more egalitarian sister: great
enjoyed a majorities of women like it. It clearly had a strong
following among some of the non-Western and
distinct Soviet women at the Mexico conference in 1975.
advantage Indeed, an updated version of it informs the lives of
most American women today. They want the same
over its more rights and opportunities as men — but few make the
egalitarian sister: same choices as men. To give one example, accord-
ing to a 2009 Pew survey, “A strong majority of all
great majorities working mothers (62%) say they would prefer to
of women work part time . . . An overwhelming majority [of
like it. working fathers] (79%) say they prefer full-time
work. Only one-in-five say they would choose part-
time work.”
The rowdy egalitarian feminists at the 1975 Tribune included the leaders
of the then-raging feminist revolution in the United States — the “Second
Wave of Feminism” as it is now called, which had begun in 1963 with the
publication of Betty Friedan’s canonical The Feminine Mystique. Feminists
like Friedan and Gloria Steinem urged American women to live “not at the
mercy of the world, but as builder and designer of that world.” Women lis-
tened, and by the 1980s, they were entering the workplace in record num-
bers; filling the colleges, law schools, and medical schools; starting business-
es; joining sports teams; and generally enjoying freedoms and opportunities
far beyond those of any women in history.
But then the women’s movement suffered a serious setback. After scoring
a series of landmark legal victories in the 1960s and early 1970s, they
failed to pass the Equal Rights Amendment. In 1975 the era seemed to be
on a fast track to ratification. But as the political scientist Jane Mansbridge
explains in her meticulous study, Why We Lost the ERA, Americans became
disenchanted when they began to understand the worldview of its feminist
sponsors: radical sexual egalitarianism.
44 Policy Review
Feminism by Treaty
The egalitarian feminists who dreamed of a fully androgynous society are
found today in university women’s studies programs, law schools, and not
least in a network of activist organizations that sprang into being in those
heady days. They are relatively small in number, but they wield dispropor-
tionate influence. But without question, the defeat of the era was a serious
setback from which they never really recovered. What these activists now see
in cedaw is a second chance in another venue. It is not for nothing that the
Women’s Treaty is sometimes called a “global era.”
So, then, what does the treaty actually say? It requires signatory countries
to remove all barriers that prevent women from achieving full equality with
men in all spheres of life — law, politics, education, employment, marriage,
and “family planning.” It defines discrimination
against women to be “any distinction, exclusion or
restriction made on the basis of sex.” Some of its It is clear that
more specific provisions are highly laudable, such as CEDAW’s
its requirement that signatories “suppress all forms
of traffic in women and exploitation of prostitu- drafters are
tion.” Others are, from an American standpoint, determined to use
unexceptional, such as the requirement that signato-
its provisions to
ries “accord to women equality with men before the
law.” But its central provision, Article 5(a), is pure eradicate gender
1970s egalitarian feminism, and is the key to under- stereotypes.
standing what the Women’s Treaty envisages. It
reads, in part: “States Parties shall take all appropri-
ate measures . . . [t]o modify the social and cultural patterns of conduct of
men and women, with a view to achieving the elimination of prejudices and
customary and all other practices which are based on the idea of the inferi-
ority or the superiority of either of the sexes or on stereotyped roles for men
and women” (emphasis added).
The philosophy of Article 5(a) pervades the entire document. Throughout
it, the drafters are determined to use its provisions to eradicate gender
stereotypes, especially those that associate women with caregiving and
motherhood. The treaty instructs signatories “to ensure that family educa-
tion includes a proper understanding of maternity as a social function and
the recognition of the common responsibility of men and women in the
upbringing and development of their children.” It also calls for the “elimina-
tion of any stereotyped concept of the roles of men and women at all levels
and in all forms of education . . . in particular, by the revision of textbooks
and school programmes.” States are advised to provide paid maternity leave
as well as “the necessary supporting social services to enable parents to com-
bine family obligations with work responsibilities . . . in particular through
promoting the establishment and development of a network of child-care
facilities.”
And the battle against stereotypes requires special efforts to guarantee
equal results in the workplace and in government. “Temporary special mea-
June & July 2011 45

sures aimed at accelerating de facto equality between men and women,”
reads Article 4, “shall not be considered discrimination.” The un’s cedaw
Committee interprets this as mandating “positive action, preferential treat-
ment or quota systems to advance women’s integration into education, the
economy, politics and employment.”
Signatory governments are also required to “take all appropriate mea-
sures” to ensure women’s “right to equal remuneration . . . in respect of
work of equal value.” This means “comparable worth” policies, according
to the cedaw Committee, which effectively require the establishment of
government agencies to determine the proper level of salary for differing
kinds of work. “Comparable worth” was a concept much bandied-about in
United States in the 1980s until its backers found it impossible to deny they
were advocating a radical governmental intrusion into the workings of the
private marketplace of an unprecedented kind. The treaty brings it back.
And it would not just be American intermediaries that would be charged
with figuring out how the U.S. is handling these matters.
The Committee
I ndeed, if the United States were to ratify cedaw, we would

immediately be subject to an evaluation of how well we comply with
the treaty’s provisions. Such an evaluation is to be carried out by the
cedaw Committee — 23 experts of “high moral standing and competence
in the field covered by the Convention.” They are elected by signatory
nations including Cuba, Burma, and Nigeria. Countries under review submit
detailed reports outlining their progress toward fulfilling the treaty’s require-
ments. Their representatives then meet with the Committee every three
years, when they are questioned, challenged, sometimes rebuked, and pro-
vided with official recommendations for improvement.
Today any country, no matter how free and democratic, is out of compli-
ance with the treaty as long as significant gender roles are still discernible in
its customs or institutions — both public and private. If, for example, more
women than men routinely take care of children, the Committee recom-
mends ways to turn things around, usually with government-imposed quo-
tas and “awareness raising” campaigns. The un publishes detailed accounts
of exchanges between the Committee and countries under review. It is hard
to read them and not conclude that the United States would be in for a
rough time.
Consider what happened during Iceland’s formal cedaw review in July
2008. Iceland has one of the most extensive gender-equity bureaucracies in
the world; there are equity ministers, equity councils, equity advisors, and a
Complaints Committee on Gender Equality whose rulings are binding.
More than 80 percent of Icelandic women are in the labor force, and par-
ents enjoy paid maternity and paternity leave, including one month of pre-
46 Policy Review
Feminism by Treaty
birth leave. Iceland is ranked first in the World Economic Forum’s 2009
Global Gender Gap Report. It would appear to be a paradigm of egalitari-
anism. Yet it falls short of the cedaw Committee standards.
The Committee praised Iceland for its “strides” toward gender parity,
but several members found it remiss in its efforts to stamp out sexism.
Hanna Beate Schopp-Schilling, an expert from Germany, was concerned
that for all the government’s gender and equity committees, the Parliament
itself had not formed a committee on gender equity. The expert from
Algeria wanted to know why so few women were full professors at the
University of Iceland. Magalys Arocha Dominguez, a gender authority
from Cuba, was unhappy to find that many Icelandic women held part-
time jobs and spent much more time than men tak-
ing care of children. She was also displeased by sur- Today any
vey findings that Iceland’s women were allowing
family commitments to shape their career choices. country is out of
She demanded to know, “What government mea- compliance with
sures have been put in place to change these pat-
terns of behavior?”
the treaty as long
Treaty proponents such as Senator Durbin, Vice as significant
President Biden, Senator Boxer, and Harold Koh
gender roles are
praise its work with women in the developing
world. But in practice the c e daw Committee still discernible.
devotes disproportionate energies to monitoring
democracies and urging them to realize egalitarian ideals in all spheres of
life. It recently advised Spain to organize a national awareness-raising cam-
paign against gender roles in the family. Finland was urged “to promote
equal sharing of domestic and family tasks between women and men.”
Slovakia was instructed to “fully sensitize men to their equal participation in
family tasks and responsibilities.” Liechtenstein was closely questioned
about a “Father’s Day project” and reminded of the need to “dismantle gen-
der stereotypes.”
The Committee sounds far more reasonable when reviewing countries
where women are truly oppressed, like Nigeria, Niger, Mauritania, or
Yemen. Such nations often send delegates who present their homelands as
models of gender equity. “Mauritanian women and men were equal before
the law in all spheres,” reported one. The Yemeni delegation spoke of legal
reforms, new programs, and strategies for women’s empowerment. To its
credit, the Committee respectfully but firmly pressed these delegates on mat-
ters such as child marriage, polygamy, legal wife beating, stoning, female
genital mutilation, and high maternal mortality rates. Members often give
the delegations concrete ideas on how to improve women’s lives. In its 2007
review, Niger was advised to offer families micro-credits for each daughter
enrolled in school and to try to limit female genital mutilation by finding
alternative employment for the older women who perform the procedure for
a living. The same Committee that sounded so absurd when it rebuked
June & July 2011 47

Liechtenstein for recognizing Father’s Day was impressive in its exchanges
with Yemen about how to address female illiteracy.
The efficacy of these reviews of repressive countries is a matter of dispute.
Most experts believe they do some good. They point out that these countries
are getting a strong sense of where they stand in relation to a set of universal
standards. Furthermore, the Committee issues a final report after each
review, which it believes helps local women’s advocacy groups foment
change. But critics note that many of the world’s most repressive nations
show little or no intention of abiding by the treaty. Yemen ratified cedaw in
1984 without reservations. It has undergone six Committee reviews. Yet in
2010, for the fifth year in a row, it came in last in the World Economic
Forum’s annual Global Gender Gap Report. Fifty-seven percent of females
are illiterate, compared to 21 percent of males. Girls as young as eight years
old can be legally married, and its penal code specifies that any man who
kills a female relative suspected of adultery should not be prosecuted for
murder. In the 2008 review, exasperated Committee members repeatedly
asked the Yemeni delegation if its government understood the treaty or took
any of its provisions seriously.
Is the treaty likely to improve the circumstances of women in places like
Yemen (and for that matter Cuba)? Would U.S. ratification make it more
effective? Are there better ways for America to advance women’s rights than
through a un treaty? There is lots of room for argument on these points,
and there are many disagreements among feminists and human-rights advo-
cates. As for its effects on American life, however, there is no doubt: They
would be momentous.
Fallout
I f the united states ratifies cedaw there will be a three-ring

circus each time we come up for review. American laws, customs,
and private behavior will be evaluated by 23 un gender ministers to
see whether they comply with a feminist ideal that is 30 years out of date.
The Committee will pounce on all facets of American life that fail to achieve
full gender integration. That many American mothers stay home with chil-
dren or work part-time will be at the top of their list of “discriminatory
practices.” Committee members like Cuba’s Magalys Arocha Dominguez
will want to know what our government has done to change our patterns of
behavior. The American delegation will then enter a “consultative dialogue”
with the Committee to develop appropriate remedies.
They will get plenty of help from organizations like now, the Feminist
Majority, and the American Association of University Women. Groups of
which Americans know little or nothing will take cedaw as a legal mandate
to implement their worldview. If ratified, the treaty would give these organi-
zations a license to sue, reeducate, and resocialize their fellow citizens.
48 Policy Review
Feminism by Treaty
Gender quotas, comparable-worth pay policies, state-subsidized daycare,
and other initiatives that have failed again and again to win democratic sup-
port would instantly be transformed into universal human rights. And the
women’s groups would have new allies: un officials and international ngos
would join them in cultivating American pastures under the legal and moral
authority of the Women’s Treaty.
At the November 2010 Senate hearing, one pro-cedaw expert witness
openly praised the Treaty for its impact at home. According to Marcia
Greenberger, copresident of the National Women’s Law Center, “No one
would disagree that there is still progress to be made in the Unites States. . . .
We like every other country in the world have our own challenges to con-
front.” She is right, of course, but what she needs to
explain is why an international treaty and a body of If the United
foreign experts is better at meeting the moral chal-
lenges of equity than our own democratic institu- States ratifies
tions. CEDAW there
For groups like now, the Feminist Majority, and
the National Women’s Law Center, life under will be a three-
cedaw would be exhilarating and gratifying. For ring circus each
the majority of Americans who do not share their
time we come up
egalitarian agenda, it could be oppressive.
But let’s say, just for the sake of argument, that for review.
the Obama administration and the U.S. Senate do
ratify the Women’s Treaty subject to various “understandings” that effective-
ly protect our institutions from the ministrations of the Committee and deny
the feminist network its “tool” to dismantle the American patriarchy.
Should the United States be lending its authority to a human-rights instru-
ment that treats the conventions of femininity as demeaning to women?
Few women anywhere want to see gender roles obliterated. The late
Elizabeth Warnock Fernea was an expert on feminist movements in the con-
temporary Muslim world. In her travels through Saudi Arabia, Morocco,
Turkey, and Iraq, she met great numbers of advocates working to improve
the status of women — and who were proud of their roles as mother, wife,
and caregiver. Fernea called it “family feminism,” but it was classic social
feminism — the style of women’s liberation that hard-line egalitarians dis-
dain but that great majorities of women find ennobling and empowering.
The women of America are no exception.
Harold Koh suggests that by abjuring “the Women’s Rights Treaty”
Americans are betraying the legacy of Eleanor Roosevelt — the leader of the
group that created the celebrated Universal Declaration of Human Rights of
1948. But Koh is confused about Roosevelt’s legacy. She was a lifelong,
dyed-in-the-wool social feminist, energetically committed to women’s rights
as well as to the protection of their social roles and callings. She saw men
and women as equal, but decidedly different. No woman, she said, should
feel “humiliated” if she gives priority to home and family. “This was our
June & July 2011 49

first field of activity,” she said, “and it will always remain our most impor-
tant one.”
Gender experts at now or the nwlc will say that Roosevelt was captive
to the prejudices of her time. Maybe so. But it is more likely that this deeply
humane and large-souled woman, whose vision helped create the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights, also had a clear vision of where women’s
emancipation might lead. Social feminism appears to be the universal femi-
nism of women. By endorsing the treaty, the United States Senate would be
canonizing a school of egalitarian feminism most women reject, one that is
as likely to impede as to advance women’s progress in societies where their
current circumstances are most degraded.
cedaw contains many worthy and indeed noble declarations, but its key
provisions are 1970s feminism preserved in diplomatic amber. Releasing
those aged provisions in 21st-century America would be strange at best, and
at worst they could seriously compromise the privacy, well-being, and basic
freedoms of Americans. At the November hearing, Senator Durbin called on
his colleagues to “ratify this treaty without further delay.” For the past 31
years, our legislators have wisely delayed ratification. Today’s Senate should
continue to follow that example.
50 Policy Review
Countering Beijing in
the South China Sea
By Dana R. Dillon
T
he most dangerous source of instability in Asia is
a rising China seeking to reassert itself, and the place
China is most likely to risk a military conflict is the
South China Sea. In the second decade of the 21st cen-
tury, the seldom-calm waters of the South China Sea are
frothing from a combination of competing naval exer-
cises and superheated rhetoric. Many pundits, politicians, and admirals see
the South China Sea as a place of future competition between powers.
Speculation about impending frictions started at the July 2010 asean
Regional Forum (arf) when U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton deliv-
ered an overdue statement on American interests in the South China Sea.
Clinton averred that the United States has a national interest in freedom of
navigation in the South China Sea; that the U.S. supported a collaborative
Dana R. Dillon is the author of The China Challenge (2007) and a frequent
commentator on Asian and national security issues.

Dana R. Dillon
process in resolving the territorial disputes there; and that the U.S. supports
the 2002 asean-China declaration on the conduct of parties in the South
China Sea.
Despite Clinton’s statement of support for China’s own agreements with
the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, China’s Foreign Ministry
responded negatively, claiming that the secretary’s statement was “virtually
an attack on China.” China’s military stated that it was opposed to “inter-
nationalization” of the six-country dispute and commenced a new and
unusually large naval exercise in South China Sea the very next week.
This gathering maritime confrontation is instigated by China’s assertions
of sovereignty over the entire South China Sea and its stated intention to
enforce that sovereignty. But the source of China’s
Consistent with hubris is its view of its historic mandate to rule all
its Sinocentric under heaven. Extending China’s borders a thou-
sand miles across the South China Sea is only one
ideology, Beijing policy manifestation of this vision of a new Chinese
believes its world order. Consistent with its Sinocentric ideolo-
gy, Beijing believes its authority over its smaller
authority over its neighbors should include determining their foreign
smaller neighbors policy. After Clinton challenged China’s claim to
the entire South China Sea, China’s foreign minister
should include
reportedly glared at a Singaporean diplomat and
determining their pronounced, “China is a big country and other
foreign policy. countries are small countries, and that’s just a
fact.”1 More telling of China’s opinion of its posi-
tion among nations, the following Monday China’s Foreign Ministry posted
a statement that “China’s view represented the interests of ‘fellow Asians.’”
The competing territorial claims in the South China Sea are decades old,
but today the Chinese government is full of a sense of accomplishment and
the People’s Liberation Army is flush with the fastest growing military bud-
get in the world. Clinton’s statement may have been inspired by earlier state-
ments by Clinton’s Chinese counterpart, the state councilor responsible for
foreign affairs, Dai Bingguo, directly to Clinton herself and repeated to sev-
eral U.S. aides that the enforcement of China’s sovereignty over the South
China Sea was a “core interest” on par with Taiwan and Tibet. While Dai
Bingguo reportedly has desisted from using the term “core interest” to
describe China’s maritime sovereignty, personalities in China’s military still
do. In January 2011 the web site of the People’s Daily, the official organ of
the Chinese Communist party, surveyed readers about whether the South
China Sea is China’s “core interest”; 97 percent of nearly 4,300 respon-
dents said yes.2
1. John Pomfret, “U.S. takes a tougher tone with China,” Washington Post (July 30, 2010). .
2. Edward Wong, “China Hedges Over Whether South China Sea is a ‘Core Interest’ Worth War,” New
York Times (March 30, 2011).
52 Policy Review
Countering Beijing in the South China Sea
Short of a shooting war, protecting freedom of navigation in one of the
globe’s busiest sea lanes requires an amicable resolution of the competing
territorial claims. Starting a process to resolve or neutralize the problem will
require American leadership and resolve. Firm diplomacy backed by con-
vincing naval power and patient leadership can strike a balance in the region
that protects freedom of navigation, the integrity of international law, and
the independence and sovereignty of Southeast Asia’s nations.
The worst solution to the South China Sea dispute from the U.S. point of
view would be for China’s asean neighbors simply to acquiesce to Beijing’s
position and for the entire South China Sea to become the sovereign territo-
ry of the People’s Republic of China (prc). The Beijing position is also the
worst solution for the asean and every other trading nation on the planet.
But an almost as bad solution is for the U.S. to become involved in a bilater-
al confrontation with China without the firm endorsement and commitment
to American actions by the other littoral claimants and by America’s Asia-
Pacific allies. Without the support of regional alliances, the U.S. would be
entangled in a campaign at the far end of its logistical tail but deep inside the
reach of a large and rising power.
The ideal solution would be for the asean countries to stand up to China
and insist on a multilateral resolution to the disputes based on the provisions
of the United Nations Convention of the Law of the Sea and the code of
conduct specified by the Treaty of Amity and Commerce, which China
signed in 2002. This solution is not possible unless asean develops the
political, economic and military resources to challenge China’s influence. In
the short term, backing from the United States and other regional powers
including Japan, India, and Australia could be an incubator while asean
develops an indigenous deterrent capability. In the long term, it must stand
up for itself.
asean will be reluctant to accept American assistance if it is presented as
a part of a great power, anti-China geopolitical policy. China is not only a
neighbor to Southeast Asia, but also its most important trading partner,
investor, and occasional political ally. Asserting a Chinese menace and ask-
ing the asean countries to participate in an anti-Chinese coalition is a
recipe for policy failure. Instead, the United States must articulate a vision
for the nations of Asia that contrasts with the re-imposition of ancient
Chinese hegemony. That vision should include the traditional Western prin-
ciples of open commerce, political independence, and territorial sovereignty.
The South China Sea problem
S ix countries claim the islands of the South China Sea: the

People’s Republic of China, the Republic of China (Taiwan),
Vietnam, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Brunei. The prc and
Taiwan (as rival governments of “China”) claim the South China Sea by
June & July 2011 53

Dana R. Dillon
virtue of cultural artifacts, ambiguous literary allusions, and outright occu-
pation. Vietnam also claims all of the islands in the South China Sea based
largely on historical documents, Japan’s postwar abandonment of title to the
South Sea islets, and the legacy of French colonial deeds to several key South
China Sea islets. The Philippines, Malaysia, and Brunei claim all or parts of
the Sea’s southern swath of Spratly Islands based largely on their respective
Exclusive Economic Zones (eezs) and continental shelf. According to unc-
los, an eez extends 200 nautical miles from the low-water line on a coun-
try’s coast. China’s published map of the South China Sea shows a dotted
line extending all the way to the eez of Indonesia’s Natuna Island, poten-
tially enlarging the number of conflicting claimants to seven.
This problem is not an arcane legal issue, but a
Disputes over the near and dangerous threat to the global economy
and to the regional ecology. The sea lines of com-
South China Sea munications through the South China Sea connect
are not arcane Europe and Asia, making the sea one of the busiest
waterways in the world. Almost half of world ship-
legal issues but ping passes across it, and from the Middle East a
dangerous threats significant portion of northeast Asia’s oil. The
South China Sea is also rich in hydrocarbons in var-
to the global ious forms, and the full exploitation of these
economy and to resources is hampered by unresolved boundaries
and blatant military intimidation. Lastly, because of
the regional
overfishing, there is a marked decline in the overall
ecology. fish catch, inspiring fisherman to use more aggres-
sive techniques. With no multilateral agreement to
regulate fishing in the South China Sea the fishing industry and sea ecology
are rapidly approaching disaster.
China’s claim. All the claimant countries justify their respective territorial
claims using highly interpretive definitions of unclos articles. Only China,
however, exhibits the combination of broad territorial claims; economic,
political, and military strength; an uncompromising diplomatic stance; and
demonstrated aggressiveness in pursuing its objectives. This unique combi-
nation of traits makes Beijing at once the most important player in resolving
the territorial disputes and the biggest obstacle to doing so.
When discussion turns to diplomacy and a negotiated resolution to the
dispute, Beijing persists in reminding all other claimant countries that the
South China Sea is Chinese sovereign territory and refuses to negotiate
unless the parties accept China’s indisputable sovereignty. To date, China’s
tactic is to engage in talks only bilaterally and avoid objective adjudication
through unclos procedures or any outside parties. Additionally, China has
made declarations and provided highly interpretive definitions that exceed-
ingly complicate the resolution process and put China on a collision course
with the rest of the seagoing world.
Continental shelves and the impracticality of drawing coastal boundaries
54 Policy Review
for countries with complex and deeply indented coastlines, like Norway, or
for archipelagic states, such as the Philippines or Indonesia, were recognized
in such unclos provisions as Article 7 (“Straight baselines”), Article 47
(“Archipelagic baselines”), and Articles 76 and 77 (“Continental Shelf”).
These articles permit countries to draw straight boundary lines across com-
plex or closely spaced coastal features and islands as long as they do not
interfere with customary freedom of navigation. Beijing, however, extends
the definitions of these articles by applying them to its claimed islands and
coastal features.3
The Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress adopted the
“Law on the Territorial Waters and Their Contiguous Areas” (Territorial
Sea Law) on February 25, 1992. This law does not specify China’s exact
territorial claim, but it does assert sovereignty over the Paracel and Spratly
Islands. Moreover, China has published a map showing the entire South
China Sea from Hainan Island up to Indonesia’s Natuna Island in an
enclosed loop as territorial waters. In 1993, China’s foreign minister verbal-
ly reassured his Indonesian counterpart that the densely populated and eco-
nomically important Natuna Island was not claimed by China, but Beijing
has since failed to formally confirm that informal statement.
According to unclos and international custom, “territorial waters”
extend twelve nautical miles from the low-water line along a country’s coast.
When Beijing signed unclos, however, it included declarations that postu-
lated definitions of territorial waters and rights of coastal states different
from those written in unclos. Among other things, China declared that:
1 . In accordance with the provisions of the United Nations Convention
on the Law of the Sea, the People’s Republic of China shall enjoy sov-
ereign rights and jurisdiction over an exclusive economic zone of 200
nautical miles and the continental shelf.
2. The People’s Republic of China will effect, through consultations, the

delimitation of boundary of maritime jurisdiction with the states with
coasts opposite or adjacent to China, respectively, on the basis of
international law and in accordance with the equitable principle.
3. The People’s Republic of China reaffirms the sovereignty over all its
archipelagoes and islands as listed in Article 2 of the Law of the
People’s Republic of China on the Territorial Sea and Contiguous
Zone, which was promulgated on February 25, 1992.
4 . The People’s Republic of China reaffirms that the provisions of the

United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea concerning inno-
cent passage through the territorial sea shall not prejudice the right of
3. Max Herriman, “China’s Territorial Sea Law and International Law of the Sea,” Maritime Studies 15
(1997). See also the discussion of China’s claim by Xavier Furtado in “International Law and the Dispute
over the Spratly Islands: Whither unclos?” Contemporary Southeast Asia 21:3 (December 1, 1999).
June & July 2011 55

Dana R. Dillon
a coastal state to request, in accordance with its laws and regulations,
a foreign state to obtain advance approval from or give prior notifica-
tion to the coastal state for the passage of its warships through the
territorial sea of the coastal state.
These declarations substantially change the meaning of unclos articles

and are in marked contrast to traditional sea laws. China claims its eez is
not just an economic boundary but sovereign territory, thus extending its
maritime border 200 nautical miles. Beijing is also claiming that the unin-
habited islands and reefs of the South China Sea are Chinese territory and,
thus, also have eez extending an additional 200 nautical miles from each of
them, and that its continental shelf extends as far as
Beijing is also Beijing chooses to draw it. Finally, the declarations
claiming that greatly broaden China’s prerogatives as a coastal
state by insisting that warships making innocent
the uninhabited passage must first obtain Chinese permission, again
islands and reefs a violation of both unclos and the traditional laws
of the sea.
of the South The position of the Chinese government has
China Sea are direct implications for regional economies, the free-
Chinese territory dom of navigation of global air and surface fleets,
and America’s naval and air forces. If China were
and, thus, also entitled to enforce its sovereignty over the South
have EEZ. China Sea, then merchant ships traversing that Sea,
no matter their flag, would be subject to China’s law
and regulations and any fees, duties or other restrictions China may choose
to impose. Additionally, China would have exclusive fishing and mineral
rights over a Sea that the other littoral countries depend on for a significant
portion of their natural resource income. Lastly, China’s insistence that any
warship traversing the South China Sea must first gain permission nullifies
the rights of foreign warships to conduct innocent passage. Furthermore,
warships that do traverse territorial waters have severe restrictions applied
to their operations.
These restrictions, if applied to the entire South China Sea, would severely
restrict the operations of the United Sates Navy and hinder its ability to pro-
tect both American and international shipping. Furthermore, in light of
China’s position, the dispute between China and the United States over the
activities of the ep-3 reconnaissance airplane near Hainan Island in April
2001; the multiple harassing actions against the American ships USNS
Impeccable and Victorious in the Spring of 2009; the collision between a
Chinese submarine and the USNS John McCain’s sonar array in June 2009,
and the recent show of force through naval exercises in the Yellow Sea are
not isolated incidents, but rather the latest chapters of China’s campaign to
assert its sovereignty over the South China Sea and could well be the first
rounds in an escalating shoving match between China and the United States.
56 Policy Review
How strong is China’s claim? In the 9th century, an Arab trading dhow
sank off Belitung Island, in what are now Indonesian waters, at the southern
reaches of the South China Sea. The ship was laden with 60,000 artifacts of
gold, silver, and exquisite porcelain apparently from China’s southern port
metropolis of Guangzhou and bound for markets in Southeast Asia. The
dhow was discovered in 1998 by Indonesian fishermen and is now consid-
ered one of the most important finds in maritime archeology.
The Belitung wreck was not a Chinese merchant vessel (Tang Dynasty
China did not have a functioning seafaring culture), but it is emblematic of
China’s new Sinocentric ideology of preeminence in East Asia. The Chinese
government’s claim to the South China Sea is based in part on ancient relics,
coins, pottery shards, and the like that litter South
China Sea islets. The fact that these artifacts most China also
likely were not left by Chinese sailors does not
justifies its claims
appear to influence Beijing’s outlandish claims.
Neither can Beijing demonstrate that Chinese ever to the South
permanently inhabited the Spratly or Paracel China Sea with
Islands, because they are uninhabitable. Many are
wholly or intermittently submerged. The ones that various vague
are mostly dry lack sources of fresh water, and these writings dating
low features are seasonally exposed to the mon-
soons. Today, the only human populations of these back more than
islands and reefs are military garrisons maintained at 2,000 years.
immense expense to their respective governments
and at great personal risk to their members. They can by no means be said
to have “an economic life of their own” and consequently are not able to
generate their own eez under Article 121 of unclos.
China also cites various vague, questionable, and off-point historical writ-
ings dating back more than 2,000 years in its attempt to document its
claimed sovereignty over the South China Sea.4 Without doubt, Chinese
explorers and fisherman sailed the South China Sea for two thousand years,
and some recorded their exploits, but it is equally clear that the Chinese tra-
ditionally have viewed Hainan Island as the southernmost outpost of their
civilization, certainly until the end of the 19th century.5
Ancient Chinese records do not disprove the claims of Vietnam, the
Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei, or Indonesia. There is substantial archeology
showing that today’s Southeast Asians lived on those archipelagos long
before written Chinese history. Several waves of settlers arrived in the
Indonesian and Philippine archipelagos as far back as 250,000 years. These
early peoples sailed or paddled the South China Sea to arrive where their
descendents are living today. Although the Spratly and Paracel Islands were
4. Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China, “Jurisprudential Evidence to Support
China’s Sovereignty over the Nansha Islands” (2000).
5. See the introduction to Edward H. Schafer, Shore of Pearls (University of California Press, 1970).
June & July 2011 57

Dana R. Dillon
too small for permanent habitation, peoples of all the littoral countries
fished and economically exploited them before China existed.
For countries that are littoral to the South China Sea, China’s claims are
analogous to one of your neighbors claiming that the entire street in front of
your home is his personal property. Furthermore, he claims that your side-
walk, driveway, and front yard clear up to the doorstep also belong to him.
His armed guards park their cars in your driveway and he picks flowers out
of your garden. If you or your neighbors protest he denies the validity of
your title and refuses to settle in court. If someone insists on his property
rights then the guards beat him.
Competing visions
T he international community, led by the United States, is

already pursuing a vision of Southeast Asia’s future and the resolu-
tion of the South China Sea disputes that competes with China’s
world view. The world’s vision of nation states is of the Westphalian model
of independent countries with sovereign territories. The United Nations
Charter and the un Convention on the Law of the Sea are manifestations of
that model. China’s vision, on the other hand, is a Chinese world order, a
new face to China’s ancient tributary system where China is the central
power and Beijing is the global political pole.
The countries of Southeast Asia have already adopted the Westphalian
model as their own and formed asean as an explicit defense of member
countries’ sovereignty and independence. Nevertheless, the tributary system
is a familiar part of Southeast Asia’s history and at the cost of independence
it was tolerable, especially as an alternative to confrontation with Chinese
military power.
The Chinese world order. The mechanics of the tributary system are often
described as relatively benign. Countries paid a tribute, the kings or their
ambassadors performed a kowtow ceremony to the Chinese emperor
acknowledging his sovereignty, and in exchange they were given expensive
gifts and granted lucrative trade concessions. According to the historians
that espouse this view of the tributary system the Chinese emperors rarely
intervened in the internal affairs of a country and were not territorially
acquisitive.
The reality is that the Chinese emperors viewed their vassal kingdoms in
the same terms as the European monarchs viewed their colonies: The emper-
or did not hesitate to use military force in order to protect his property. For
example, in the 15th century, a tribute-paying king on the Indonesian island
of Java killed some Chinese imperial envoys who had been sent to recognize
the investiture of the self-proclaimed “king” of the Chinese colony at
Palembang, a colony that had been subordinate to Java. In response the
emperor sent a large naval fleet to deliver a note that said, “You should
58 Policy Review
immediately send 60,000 ounces of gold to redeem your crime, so that you
may preserve your land and people. Otherwise we cannot stop our armies
from going to punish you.”6
When the Chinese Communist party usurped the emperor’s throne in
1947 it sought to regain control over all the empire’s former realms. The
venerable China scholar John K. Fairbanks described China’s world view in
concentric circles with a an inner “Sinic Zone” of nearby countries that were
culturally similar, the “Inner Asia Zone” of tributary states on the fringe of
Chinese territory, and the “Outer Zone” of barbarians. The Kingdom of
Kashgar was once a tributary state in the Outer Zone, as opposed to Korea,
which was in the inner Sinic Zone. Today the former Kingdom of Kashgar is
part of the Chinese province renamed Xinjiang.
Although the same colony twice declared indepen- The Chinese
dence as the East Turkistan Republic (in 1933 and
emperors viewed
1944) the People’s Liberation Army “peacefully lib-
erated” the independent state from itself in 1949. their vassal
The People’s Republic of China lacked the kingdoms the
strength to extend its influence to all the empire’s
former vassals. Korea escaped Kashgar’s fate same as the
because of the rise of the Japanese Empire. Korea European
became a battleground between the Chinese and
Japanese Empires, and was won by the Japanese monarchs viewed
Emperor in 1895. Despite the painful memories of their colonies.
Japanese occupation, the silver lining for today’s
Koreans is that Japanese colonization and the aftermath of World War II
prevented China from annexing Korea as it did East Turkistan and Tibet.
The proposition that Korea could share the fate of other former Chinese
vassal states is not mere speculation but the considered opinion of the
Chinese Academy of Social Science. In 2002, the Chinese government
launched a research effort called the Northeast Project. In 2004 project
researchers from the Chinese Academy of Social Science declared that the
ancient Korean Kingdom of Koguryo was not an independent kingdom, but
a Chinese province. The same year, China’s Foreign Ministry removed all
references to Koguryo as a period of Korean history from its website. The
Chinese government hosted similar research efforts called the Northwest
Project and Southwest Project for Xinjiang and Tibet respectively. It is per-
haps only a matter of time before the Chinese Academy of Science launches
fresh research projects on China’s former vassals in Southeast Asia.
Southeast Asia also owes its contemporary independence to foreign occu-
pation. Between the 17th and 19th centuries, European powers extended
their empires to many of China’s tributary states across southern Asia and
Southeast Asia, including Vietnam and several kingdoms that ruled in
6. Giovanni Andornino, “The Nature and Linkages of China’s Tributary System under the Ming and
Qing Dynasties,” Global Economic History Network working paper 21 (2006).
June & July 2011 59

Dana R. Dillon
regions of the modern-day Philippines and Indonesia. The Japanese and
Europeans plucked these states from the weak Chinese emperor in what
modern China derides as the “unequal treaties,” and they turned China’s
colonies into European colonies. After the Japanese empire was destroyed in
World War II and the European empires retreated from Asia, the most
important legacy of their occupation was the residual concept of indepen-
dent and sovereign states. China was too weak to reassert control over its
former tributary states against European and American opposition, and new
countries were built on the boundary templates of the former colonies freed,
at least temporarily, from Chinese influence.
In pursuit of Beijing’s ambitions, China disregards the “unequal treaties”
negotiated with Japan and the European powers
China disregards and bases its current territorial claims on the pre-
colonial tributary relationships. For example,
treaties and between 1992 and 2000 China and Vietnam nego-
bases its tiated their Gulf of Tonkin maritime boundaries.
The basis for Vietnam’s claim in the Gulf was an
current 1887 treaty between France and China that estab-
territorial lished Vietnam’s modern borders. China, however,
would not recognize the validity of the treaty or
claims on the
Vietnam’s historic claims.7 A treaty was eventually
pre-colonial agreed to, but it was evidently so inequitable to
tributary Vietnam that Hanoi kept the terms secret for years.
Eventually some of the terms leaked out, inflaming
relationships. nationalist passions and threatening the stability of
the Vietnamese government.
Since every country in Southeast Asia derives its present-day borders from
colonial era treaties and agreements (including even Thailand, which was
never a European colony, but did sign border treaties with European
empires), Vietnam’s experience should serve as warning to any of the asean
countries trying to bilaterally negotiate with China. Nevertheless, shortly
after Vietnam concluded its border treaties President Gloria Macapagal
Arroyo of the Philippines struck an agreement with China, in 2004, for oil
exploration. Like Vietnam she also tried unsuccessfully to keep the terms
secret. The formerly secret Annex “a” showed that the delineated bound-
aries included huge areas of the Philippines’ eez. Of the total of almost
150,000 square kilometers covered in the agreement, around 24,000
square kilometers included maritime territory previously claimed only by the
Philippines. When the terms of the secret treaty were finally exposed, nation-
alist passions were once again inflamed. Amado Macasaet, publisher of the
popular and respectable Philippine magazine Malaya, went so far as to say
that President Arroyo should be charged with treason for signing the agree-
7. Zou Keyuan, “The Sino-Vietnamese Agreement on Maritime Boundary Delimitation in the Gulf of
Tonkin,” Ocean Development & International Law 36 (2005).
60 Policy Review
ments he claimed were made in exchange for loans “attended by bribery and
corruption.” Afterward even the overthrown former President Marcos was
more popular than Arroyo.
For China’s former colonies, there is little reason to believe that appeasing
China in the South China Sea will satisfy its appetite for territory or hege-
mony. In the Chinese world order China is not one country in a community
but the oldest civilized country among upstarts. Any country’s sovereignty is
ultimately owed to China and the degree of independence depends on its
appreciation of Beijing’s “core interests.” In asserting its “indisputable sover-
eignty” over the South China Sea, Beijing is laying down its markers as if to
say, “We can solve this problem the easy way, or the hard way, but it will be
China’s way.”
Perceptions in Southeast Asia
A
ggressive american diplomacy that seeks to pull together
a “balancing alliance” against China can only confirm China’s
suspicions of an American strategy to contain China while, at the
same time, American actions are alienating Southeast Asian governments.
asean capitals are more concerned about China than Washington, but they
are also far more vulnerable to Beijing’s economic and military pressures and
thus reluctant to provoke Chinese retribution. Ideally, asean would have
the United States Navy steam in force into the South China Sea to maintain
the peace, while asean then clucks disapprovingly from the sidelines and
reassures the Chinese that it had nothing to do with it. Intellectually, of
course, asean knows that it has to do better than that. Understanding the
views of the asean countries is the first step in developing a balanced and
appropriate policy.
Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand formed
asean in 1967 with the stated goal of fostering peace and stability, but the
most important goal was to gain every member’s acceptance of the
Westphalian-like principle of “mutual respect for the independence, sover-
eignty, equality, territorial integrity, and national identity of all nations.”
During the Cold War, asean continued to evolve as a diplomatic tool to
fence out superpower competition in the region. After the Cold War, asean
recruited Brunei, Burma, Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam, and focused on
economic development. In the 21st century, security issues are again taking
precedence on the asean agenda. First it was international terrorism and
maritime piracy that inspired inter-asean security cooperation, and now the
rise of China increasingly tops the agenda of security discussion.
Citing the recent steep rise in military spending in Southeast Asia, some
analysts speculate that these countries are already preparing for military
competition with China. For example, the Stockholm International Peace
Research Institute has reported that arms imports to Indonesia, Singapore,
June & July 2011 61

Dana R. Dillon
and Malaysia rose by 84 percent, 146 percent, and 722 percent, respective-
ly, in the last five years. In the same timeframe Thailand’s defense budget has
doubled. Some analysts argue that this huge increase in defense spending is
an indicator of Southeast Asia’s concern over the Chinese threat.
Unfortunately, like many government-led activities in Southeast Asia, there is
much less substance than the raw data suggest.
In Malaysia, for example, the often-cited billion-dollar purchase of French
submarines and many other expensive weapon systems perhaps has more to
do with extravagant corruption than with strategic defense planning.8 In
fact, the history of arms purchases in Malaysia appears burdened with cor-
ruption — a way of bejeweling its armed forces with expensive, low-density
weapons that complicate logistics without adding
In the combat value.
In Thailand, the current military buildup began
Philippines,
only after the Royal Thai Army’s 2 0 0 6 coup
vulnerable to installed an Army-dependent government.
the Chinese Furthermore, although the generals espouse a pro-
American defense policy to visiting U.S. officials,
juggernaut, their equipment purchases are from an unusual mix
national security of non-U.S. companies. From a logistics point of
view a menagerie of military equipment is difficult
is sacrificed to and expensive to maintain; on the other hand, using
domestic politics. smaller, non-U.S. arms suppliers may give Thai offi-
cers easier access to kickbacks.
In the Philippines, the Southeast Asian country that is second only to
Vietnam in its vulnerability to the Chinese juggernaut, national security is sac-
rificed to domestic politics. Since September 11 the United States has engaged
in a sustained effort to improve the capabilities of the Philippine Armed
Forces. Total U.S. assistance tripled from roughly $38 million in 2001 to
almost $120 million in 2010. Additionally, not counted in those assistance
dollars are the millions spent on an ongoing series of robust U.S.-Philippine
military exercises designed to improve the capabilities of the Philippine
Armed Forces. Unfortunately, despite the sincere efforts of the U.S. Pacific
Command, there have been only marginal improvements in the paf.
This lack of improvement relates to the declining Philippine defense bud-
get. As U.S. assistance grew, the Philippine Congress cut the defense budget.
Besides the China threat the Philippines is also beleaguered by multiple inter-
nal insurgencies, yet most of the paf’s equipment is Vietnam War vintage
and the defense budget is now only about one percent of gdp, or about
$1.16 billion in 2009. Despite, or perhaps because of America’s unstinting
assistance, many Philippine politicians, including the newly elected President
8. Asian Sentinel has published an excellent series of articles exposing the submarine scandal in Malaysia,
but John Berthelsen’s individual piece provides a good synopsis: John Berthelsen, “Malaysia’s Submarine
Scandal Surfaces in France,” Asian Sentinel (April 16, 2010).
62 Policy Review
Benigno Aquino III, feel that they are entitled to more. Ignoring their own
complicity in underfunding Philippine security forces, these politicians are
calling for a review of the Visiting Forces Agreement (the agreement that
permits the American military presence to help train the paf). Their objec-
tion is that the U.S. is not doing enough to modernize the Philippine Armed
Forces, and they imagine the Visiting Forces Agreement as a tool to leverage
ever greater American military subsidies.
Fortunately, the security picture in Southeast Asia is not all venality and
indolence. Both Vietnam and Indonesia are making significant arms pur-
chases focused on strengthening their national security. Additionally, after
decades of wise investment, Singapore’s armed forces are world-class and by
far the most powerful in asean.
On paper, asean’s total air and naval forces are ASEAN’s total air
imposing. asean boasts a fleet of 680 fixed-wing
combat aircraft, 412 surface combat vessels, and and naval forces
eight submarines in the combined navies.9 These are imposing, but
numbers are not enough to defeat the powerful
People’s Liberation Army, with its 2,300 combat
they are not
aircraft, 65 submarines, and 256 surface combat enough to defeat
vessels, but they are sufficient to act as a deterrent
the powerful
were there any sense of common defense.
Unfortunately, asean is not nato: No country in Chinese Army.
Southeast Asia is treaty-bound to assist another in
case of an attack, and there are few solely indigenous efforts to coordinate
military activities.
Indonesia is the largest country in Southeast Asia, making up 40 percent
of the region’s population; it has the largest economy and is a developing
democracy. Indonesia’s views on China’s activities reflect Jakarta’s vision of
itself as an informal leader of asean. Speaking at the Center for Strategic
and International Studies in Washington, D.C., Indonesia’s Foreign Minister
Marty Natalegawa said, “For members of asean, what is more worrying is
the possibility that the South China Sea could be a central theater for possi-
ble rivalry.” Indonesia’s goal, and by extension asean’s as well, is to bal-
ance the United States against the Chinese in order to protect their territorial
integrity and independence.
The government of Vietnam perceives China as nothing less than an exis-
tential threat; an anxiety validated by historical experience. Vietnam’s
recorded history dates back 2,700 years. China occupied the country for
more than a thousand of those years and Hanoi was subject to a burden-
some tributary status for most of the rest of its history. Despite many long
and difficult wars with China, Hanoi enjoyed genuine independence for only
brief periods.
9. These numbers are based primarily on material published by the Center for Strategic and International
Studies in “The Military Balance in Asia: 1990–2010.”
June & July 2011 63

Dana R. Dillon
Hanoi’s experience with post-empire China is the latter’s enduring disre-
gard of Vietnam’s sovereignty and independence. In 1979, in order to chas-
tise Hanoi for policies Beijing did not like, China attacked Vietnam and
briefly occupied parts of the country. Additionally, China’s pla Navy has on
multiple occasions attacked and sunk Vietnamese naval vessels operating
just off southern Vietnam and hundreds of miles from China’s coast;
Chinese soldiers garrison tiny islands and atolls inside Vietnam’s eez; pla
Navy vessels frequently harass or arrest Vietnamese fishermen; and Beijing
interferes with Hanoi’s efforts to exploit natural gas resources well inside
Vietnam’s eez. Nevertheless, Hanoi is careful not to provoke China and
continues to seek good relations with Beijing.
Although Singapore is not party to the South
Hanoi’s China Sea maritime territorial dispute, and 75 per-
cent of its population is of Chinese descent,
experience with Singapore’s views on rising China prove the rule that
post-empire asean is suspicious of China’s intentions. Singapore
is an ethnically diverse country, but the bulk of its
China is the
population is descended from Chinese immigrants,
latter’s enduring mostly laborers brought in during British rule.
disregard of Because of its immigrant population and economic
success some countries in the region resent
Vietnam’s Singapore and often voice suspicions of its loyalties.
independence. Although Singapore has for decades built strong
economic links with China, it waited until 1990 to
open formal relations with the People’s Republic — the last country in
asean to do so. Singapore continues that strong economic link, but China’s
recent belligerence has forced Singapore to declare its side.
In order to assure its neighbors (and notify China) that Singapore is not a
Chinese province, Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, at the
August 2 0 1 0 National Day celebration, made a point of describing
Singapore’s unique cultural identity, including the adoption of English as the
national language and the distinctive Singaporean cuisine. To emphasize that
message, in a September 6, 2010, editorial the Straits Times, Singapore’s
national newspaper and government mouthpiece, emphasized that the peo-
ple of Singapore were not overseas Chinese, saying, “the term ‘Overseas
Chinese’ should rankle Singaporeans of all races because it implies that the
Chinese in Singapore are somehow ‘overseas,’ separated from the ‘main-
land.’ It also implies a desire to perhaps ‘return’ some day. In fact, most
Singaporeans here are not ‘overseas.’ They are rooted here.” In another edi-
torial last summer the Straits Times guardedly approved Washington’s new
approach to the South China Sea and warned Beijing that its “actions will
be closely watched for what it says about the growing power’s ‘peaceful
rise.’”
Singapore’s biggest concern about the new U.S. policy is not fear of pro-
voking China but the fickleness of American foreign policy, a point of view
64 Policy Review
that reflects the broader asean position. From asean’s point of view,
despite decades of strident Chinese declarations and demonstrative military
actions, the U.S. has been “standoffish” about the dispute; seemingly
unaware or unconcerned of Beijing’s acquisitiveness in the South China Sea
and the implications for the region and the globe. For example, when the
Philippines, an American treaty ally, discovered a Chinese naval installation
on Mischief Reef, Washington did not share Manila’s outrage and took no
position on the dispute, even as the Chinese continued to expand and
enlarge their presence.
But asean countries are ambivalent about both America and China.
They ask for consistent American support and presence to balance China. At
the same time, many asean countries are reluctant to grant the U.S. too
much access for fear of compromising their sovereignty. asean countries
fear China’s military power and political intentions, but they welcome
Chinese investment and trading opportunities in the vast Chinese market.
Finally, asean countries are far from unified in their view of China as a
threat. Four of asean’s ten countries, Burma, Cambodia, Laos, and
Thailand, are not party to the South China Sea territorial dispute. Burma’s
junta, an international pariah regime, ranks the People’s Republic of China
among the few governments friendly to it and would be reluctant to defend
its asean partners against its patron’s encroachment. Thailand is in the
midst of deep political schism and unlikely to participate in a common
defense. Furthermore, Thailand’s elite are proud of Thailand’s flexible
“bamboo” foreign policy and see no reason not to bend with the wind from
China. The royal families in both Thailand and Cambodia are on friendly
terms with the Chinese government. Lastly, asean’s consensus decision
process means that Beijing needs only one dissenting vote to avoid asean
censure.
Moving forward
T he countries of Southeast Asia use asean to create a diplo-

matic fence around the region. As recent events have shown, how-
ever, a rising China is pushing against that boundary and asean is
now wishing for increased United States presence to balance the Chinese
encroachment. The harsh reality is that even ironclad security treaties and
the presence of American warships are not enough to protect Southeast
Asian countries if they are not willing to defend themselves. The asean
countries must act individually and collectively to create a substantive deter-
rent to Chinese encroachment. To quote the poet Robert Frost, “Good
fences make good neighbors,” and asean lacks the institutional strength,
cohesion, and unity of purpose to build a good fence.
China poses a substantial and present military threat, but starting U.S.
assistance with a buildup of asean militaries is analogous to building a
June & July 2011 65

Dana R. Dillon
house by starting with the roof. The first priority must be for the individual
countries to build a foundation for that house by cleaning up their legal sys-
tems and reducing corruption. With the exception of Singapore, every coun-
try in asean is afflicted with deeply corrupt legal systems. Judicial corrup-
tion is extremely unpopular, known in Indonesia as the “judicial mafia,”
and U.S. assistance in fighting it would be welcome. The U.S. has a number
of programs, particularly in the Departments of Justice and Homeland
Security, that can assist indigenous judicial-reform efforts and should be the
first priority for assistance to the region.
The second priority for building asean’s house is the economic walls and
posts that will hold up the roof. asean has made progress in loosening
inter-asean trade restrictions, but it must continue
Substantial to expand those efforts, and the countries must
reform their internal economies to permit economic
improvement in growth. Again, the U.S. has many departments and
ASEAN’s legal agencies that can and should aid economic develop-
ment in Southeast Asia. In particular, the U.S. Trade
systems and Representative could negotiate an enhanced trade
growth in its agreement between the U.S. and asean, perhaps
modeled on the U.S.-Vietnam trade agreement that
economies must
did so much to assist Vietnam’s economic reforms.
come before In Southeast Asia the U.S. can for a time provide
increased military a security shield for the asean countries, but that
commitment must not become a bottomless obliga-
strength. tion. Security subsidies, like welfare, trade, or indus-
trial subsidies, can become expensive entitlements
and eventually prompt behavior that runs counter to the original intent of
the subsidy.
If there is substantial improvement in the legal systems and growth in the
economies, then increased military strength will follow naturally. Relieved of
the burden of purchasing weapons systems whose only practical use is
enriching politicians or generals will significantly increase military capability
without costing an additional penny. Furthermore, with larger and more
robust national economies, the regional militaries will gain more resources
for modernization without increasing their burden on taxpayers. The
Pentagon already has robust military assistance programs in the region, and
improved national militaries will be more able to take advantage of
American assistance.
Diplomatically, asean should begin inter-asean negotiations on internal
borders. Beginning the process may force China to ask to participate in the
multilateral process, allowing asean to set the terms of the negotiations.
Even if Beijing will not participate, an asean border agreement would com-
plicate China’s diplomacy and spoil its bilateral intimidation.
Militarily, asean should begin the process of improving its ability to con-
duct collective military defense. Building on the small steps already begun —
66 Policy Review
fighting transnational terrorism, suppressing maritime piracy, and providing
disaster relief — the asean militaries should begin to look for opportunities
to improve their ability to perform coalition operations. asean’s stated
diplomatic and political goals are to protect the sovereignty and territorial
integrity of the member nations. Building a collective military deterrent to
defend those goals against all possible adversaries is not an anti-China
activity.
Lastly, it is not the purpose of this article to argue that Beijing will neces-
sarily enforce its ancient prerogatives, but rather that the Sinocentric ideolo-
gy is the historical base from which Chinese leaders will view the world.
Beijing must be convinced to become a devoted adherent to the Westphalian
model. Former Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick often opined that
China needed to be more of a “stakeholder” in the international system and
that that goal needs to remain a long-term U.S. policy objective. During the
latter half of the 20th century, China greatly benefited from the inherent
protections of the Westphalian model of a nation-state and the broader
international system. Now that China is big enough to influence the world
order, it must not be permitted to establish a tiered structure with China
demanding greater rights than other countries.
Washington policymakers must remember that China is not currently a
threat to any country. Although there is considerable potential for a U.S.-
China clash, good diplomacy in Washington and growing political maturity
in Beijing may obviate any such confrontation. The best way to achieve this
goal is to embed China in rules-based organizations and then insist that
Beijing abide by those rules. The most important global maritime treaty is
unclos, but the United States has not yet ratified the treaty and thus has
less power to influence the treaty implementation than does China. The only
way for the U.S. to get a seat at the unclos table is to ratify unclos and
participate in the various commissions guiding its implementation.
American interests in maintaining the freedom of navigation in the South
China Sea and other contested waters should be defended with diplomacy
backed by military strength. The U.S. must not flinch or compromise,
because any temporary concession to China’s demonstrably unreasonable
demands will not earn gratitude, but instead will become a precedent for
China’s future demands. Diplomatically and militarily, Washington must
continue to deploy sufficient force to deter China’s unjustifiable territorial
ambitions.
June & July 2011 67

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of tens of thousands of civilians, for
instance — desensitizes one from
appreciating the sheer terror and physi-
cal pain that individuals endured.
Books Even with the knowledge of these
attrocities, there is still little than can
prepare a reader for the grisly accounts
of the Ukrainian Famine that Timothy
The Butchery Snyder details in Bloodlands: Europe
Between Hitler and Stalin. Of course, I
of Hitler and knew something about the widespread
starvation that afflicted Ukrainians in
Stalin 1 9 3 2 and 1 9 3 3 . This mass culling
was directly caused by Josef Stalin’s
collectivization policies, which were
By James Kirchick
comprised of seizing private farms and
exporting whatever food was grown to
Ti m o t h y S n y d e r . Bloodlands: the rest of the Soviet Union and
Europe Between Hitler and Stalin. beyond. Those who have studied the
Basic Books. 544 Pages. $29.95. event in-depth will not find anything
new in Snyder’s account. But most
readers, I imagine, will reevaluate their
T here were moments read-

ing this book when I was
forced to shut it closed, an
experience utterly alien to me. Like any
reasonably historically-aware individ-
conception of the depths of human
depravity when they read, in particular,
about the widespread cannibalism that
became rampant in what Robert
Conquest has referred to as “one vast
ual, I considered myself familiar with Belsen.” These are tales that one imag-
the carnage that overtook Europe in ined lay only in the realm of zombie
the earlier half of the 20th century: the films: parents cooking and eating their
gas chambers and the gulags, the mass own children, children in a nursery eat-
shootings and show trials, the wanton ing each other, a starving toddler liter-
disregard for human life and the ally eating himself.
heinous ideas which compelled people The lack of popular knowledge
to, actively or passively, play a part in about the Ukrainian Famine, or
the deaths of tens of millions of fellow Holodomor, is largely attributable to
human beings. Reading about this peri- two factors. The first is that, unlike the
od, there comes a point when the sheer Nazi Holocaust, the question of
scale and horror of the events which whether the famine constitutes a pre-
took place — the instant incineration meditated act of genocide on the part
of Joseph Stalin (as opposed to, at
worst, a symptom of callous neglect, or,
James Kirchick is writer at large with
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty at best, a tragedy brought upon by
based in Prague and a contributing environmental factors) remains a topic
editor of the New Republic. of a highly politicized historical debate.

Books
In modern-day Ukraine, a nation still cide,” intended that it include crimes
struggling to find an identity for the against members of a “social collectivi-
post-Soviet age, this question is a con- ty.” Early drafts of the United Nations
tentious issue, to say the least (the first Convention on the Prevention and
act of pro-Russian President Viktor Punishment of the Crime of Genocide
Yanukovich, after his inauguration last included members of “political” groups
year, was to remove a section on the in the definition, yet due to hard lobby-
presidential website dedicated to the ing by the Soviet Union, this was writ-
Holodomor). Memory of the famine ten out. The Soviets cynically argued
has also not been served well by the that defining “social” or “political”
various apologists for communism, groups was a nebulous task at best;
from Walter Duranty (who, as the New given Stalin’s wanton killings of ene-
York Times’s man in Moscow at the mies, real or perceived, this elision was
time, not only denied that it was hap- obviously convenient. As opposed to
pening but won a Pulitzer Prize for the strict racial classifications of Nazi
doing so) to the celebrated Marxist his- Germany, which left no room for ambi-
torian Eric Hobsbawm, who, when guity as to what constituted an inferior
asked in a television interview, “had the class of human beings, the mutability
radiant tomorrow actually been creat- of the groups which the Soviet leader-
ed, the loss of fifteen, twenty million ship invariably deemed “reactionary”
people might have been justified?” sim- or “counter-revolutionary” rendered
ply answered, “Yes.” Secondly, the Stalin’s terror all the more arbitrary.
Holocaust of European Jewry in the With its ferocious attention to detail-
subsequent decade has overshadowed ing the crimes of both the Nazi and
the Ukrainian tragedy, in both scale Soviet regimes, Bloodlands has
and intent. Today, denial of the Nazi inevitably become a new entrant into
Holocaust is a crime in many European the long-running debate about the com-
countries. While some former Soviet parative evil of Nazism and Stalinism,
states have passed similar laws regard- though Snyder, a scrupulous historian
ing the crimes of communism, minimiz- who shies away from polemic (an
ing or rationalizing said crimes as the exemplar of this increasingly rare
result of poor leadership as opposed to breed), does not consider himself a par-
the inevitable results of an inherently tisan in this particular battle. Contrary
unjust doctrine remains, in some to some of his critics, Snyder has not
Western intellectual circles, a mark of minimized the horror or unique evil of
erudition. the Holocaust by writing a book that
That the Ukrainian genocide (or, studies it alongside the array of atroci-
indeed, any of the Soviet Union’s mass- ties carried out by Stalin in the years
killing campaigns) is not popularly leading up to, during, and after the
remembered as such is also partly due Second World War. Rather, Snyder’s
to the machinations of that regime in aim is to place the Holocaust within
crafting the internationally agreed- the context of this era of mass killing.
upon legal definition of the term. He does so by focusing on the region
Raphael Lemkin, the Polish Jewish he terms the “bloodlands,” the territo-
lawyer who devised the term “geno- ries that fell under both German and
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Soviet occupation between 1933 and mass murder by these two regimes in
1945 and were the main theaters of the bloodlands is a distinct phenome-
those regimes’ policies of non-combat- non worthy of separate treatment.”
related mass murder. The era of the
bloodlands commences with the
Ukrainian famine, is followed by
Stalin’s Great Terror of 1937–1938,
continues with the combined German
and Soviet mass murder of Poles during
T hat these territories would
one day earn the moniker of
“bloodlands” became
inevitable before Adolf Hitler ever
came to power. In 1 9 2 8 , Stalin
the short-lived period of the Molotov- announced the first in what would
Ribbentrop Pact and the German star- become a series of Five Year Plans,
vation of Soviet citizens across present- mandating the forced collectivization of
day Belarus, Ukraine and Russia, and agricultural land in the Soviet Union.
ends with the German “reprisal” Two years later, the ogpu, or Soviet
killings of Belarusians and Poles. All Secret Police, promulgated a policy
told, some fourteen million people are calling for the “liquidation of the
estimated to have died as a result of kulaks as a class.” There was no partic-
these atrocities; to put this number into ular rhyme or reason involved in deter-
context, it is two million more than the mining what constituted a “kulak”;
total number of German and Soviet sol- Snyder recounts one local party leader
diers killed in battle and over thirteen stating, “We create kulaks as we see
million more than American losses in fit.” Basically, any peasant who owned
all of its foreign wars combined. land was considered a kulak, and this
Without diminishing the enormity of relatively privileged position meant that
the Holocaust, Snyder dissents from they had to be eliminated in order to
those writers who argue that it is its allow “history” to proceed apace. In a
very enormity that renders it inexplica- murderous adaptation of the local traf-
ble. “To dismiss the Nazis or the fic cop’s speeding ticket quota, local
Soviets as beyond human concern or communist party officials were given
historical understanding is to fall into victim targets; “the numbers came
their moral trap,” he writes. down from the center,” Snyder writes,
Considering the fact that genocides “but the corpses were made locally.”
have occurred with depressing regulari- Camps were established in the far
ty over the seven decades since the reaches of the Soviet Union, in Siberia
mass-murder of Ukrainian “kulaks,” and Kazakhstan, where, eventually,
Roma, gays, the Polish intelligentsia, some 1.7 million kulaks, (among them
and the attempted extinction of 300,000 Ukrainians), were deported.
European Jewry itself, this is a sensible, By the summer of 1932, over one mil-
and morally responsible course to take. lion people had starved to death.
The Holocaust was a unique historical Did the murder of the kulaks — and
event, the causes of which were distinc- the starvation of Ukrainians more
tive. But it’s precisely because it broadly — constitute “genocide?” The
occurred alongside other wide-scale language that Stalin and his henchmen
horrors that Snyder is right to “test the used to describe these victims was simi-
proposition that deliberate and direct lar to the sort employed by Nazis to
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depict Jews and other undesirables. In this sense, too, can the various anti-
“We will make soap of kulaks” and national killing sprees of the Soviet
“Our class enemy must be wiped off Union be classified as “genocides,”
the face of the earth” were two such even if Stalin did not frame them in
slogans. There can really be no doubt such an explicitly racialist or ethnic
about the eliminationist intent of Stalin manner. The anti-kulak campaigns, for
here, even if the killings were not as all their class-laden rhetoric, were
mechanized or methodically carried out directed mostly at Ukrainians. And
as was the mass murder of nearly six “the most persecuted European nation-
million Europeans Jews by the Nazis al minority in the second half of the
and their allies. Kulaks were essentially 1930s,” Snyder writes, “was not the
endowed with ethnic traits; the children four hundred thousand or so German
of Kulaks were forever cast as such by Jews (the number declining because of
the Stalin regime. emigration) but the six hundred thou-
In terms of mass murder, Stalin had sand or so Soviet Poles (the number
a major head start on Hitler. By 1938, declining because of executions).”
only 267 people had been sentenced to Concocting a conspiracy by which a
death in Nazi Germany (compared to “Polish Military Organization” caused
the nearly 400,000 death sentences the Ukrainian famine by sabotaging
meted out in the anti-kulak operation collectivization schemes, Stalin had
by this time). Both ideologically and some 85,000 Soviet Poles executed in
practically, Stalinism gave rise to Hitler. 1937 and 1938 as part of his larger
This was thanks to Soviet commu- Great Terror campaign, in which nearly
nism’s absolutist and totalitarian 700,000 were killed across the Soviet
nature, which gave Hitler all the evi- Union. At the time, Poles represented
dence he needed that nothing less than less than 0.4 percent of the Soviet pop-
the full militarization of society was ulation. The motivation for these mur-
required to confront the eastern men- der campaigns — genocides — belied
ace. Similarly, Stalin’s paranoid world- the basic Marxist principle of interna-
view directly contributed to policies tionalism, predicated as they were on
which only emboldened Hitler. Stalin the very racial and nationalist fears that
instructed German communists to treat capitalists supposedly provoked to
their Social Democratic countrymen as undermine international worker soli-
“social fascists,” leading to fractures on darity. “If the diaspora ethnicities of the
the German left that ultimately gave Soviet Union were disloyal, as the case
way for Hitler’s ascent. This hothouse against them went, it was not because
geopolitical environment created, as they were bound to a previous econom-
Hobsbawm would later put it, an “Age ic order,” Snyder writes, “but because
of Extremes.” they were supposedly linked to a for-
Despite its mantra of international eign state by their ethnicity.”
brotherhood and cross-cultural frater- The perverse irony of both Stalin’s
nity, the Soviet Union’s killing cam- and Hitler’s desire to conquer the
paigns were very much targeted at par- bloodlands was that by expanding their
ticular ethnic groups, even if they were empires they diversified them. Suddenly,
publicly presented as class-motivated. they had a whole lot of foreigners living
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under their domain, who would need to us today. Throughout the existence of
be pacified. And so the solution to this the Soviet Union, the special suffering
problem would have to be the liquida- of the Jews was never acknowledged,
tion of massive numbers of people. It as it presented a “threat to postwar
was in Poland where these murderous Soviet mythmaking.” To this day, the
impulses first converged. Both Nazi populations of the former Soviet Bloc,
Germany and the Soviet Union could and some elements of their intelli-
agree on the decapitation of the Polish gentsia, have yet to come to terms with
intelligentsia, “an attack on the very their historical complicity in the
concept of modernity,” Snyder writes,
“a policy of de-Enlightenment.” It was It was in Belarus where
this mutual interest — fear of Poland — the conflagration between
that brought the erstwhile antagonistic
powers to sign the Molotov-Ribbentrop
Nazis and Soviets, and
Pact in 1939. Over the two-year period between collaborationists
in which the Pact held firm, both sides
and partisans, was
murdered about 200,000 Poles and
deported a million more. greatest. By the end of the
But it was in Belarus where the con- war, a full half of the
flagration between Nazis and Soviets,
and between collaborationists and par- country’s population had
tisans, was greatest. By the end of the either been killed or
war, Snyder writes, a full half of the
country’s population had either been
deported.
killed or deported. Minsk had the Holocaust, painting their ancestors as
greatest concentration of Jews in victims, which indeed many of them no
Europe, and it was here where Nazi doubt were, while ignoring the fact that
anti-Semitism confronted Stalin with a many were erstwhile collaborators. In
challenge. “If the Soviet Union was Lithuania, for instance, where over 95
nothing more than a Jewish empire,” as percent of the country’s Jewish popula-
Hitler claimed (a belief that was some- tion died in the Holocaust with wide-
how able to coexist with the equally spread Lithuanian complicity, the gov-
maniacal belief that Jews controlled the ernment has actually attempted to
levers of international finance), “then bring legal charges against Holocaust
surely (went the Nazi argument) the survivors who participated in the anti-
vast majority of Soviet citizens had no Nazi underground because they hap-
reason to defend it.” Stalin deflected pened to collaborate with communists.
this propaganda by ignoring the vast The problem of forgetting is treated
crimes committed against Soviet Jews, brilliantly in Snyder’s study of postwar
qua Jews, characterizing Hitler’s vic- Stalinist revisionism, and the role that
tims as “Soviet citizens,” the greatest Western policies played in eliding the
portion of whom were, he emphasized, significance of the Holocaust. Allied
ethnic Russians. The baleful effects of leaders did not want to portray the war
this double denial of the anti-Semitic as one to save European Jewry, not
nature of the Holocaust remains with because they were “reticent” to buy
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into “Hitler’s racist understanding of vast majority of Jews killed in the
the world” (which Snyder allows Holocaust never saw a concentration
would have been a “more enlightened camp.” Their murders were personal
form” of interpreting their motives), affairs in that they involved soldiers fir-
but because they knew that a war ing bullets into their bodies; death did
which explicitly cited the rescue of not take place within a closed chamber
European Jews as a principal aim and the murderers saw the faces of
would not gain popular support among their victims. Most of the killing took
their domestic constituencies. In this place in the fields and forests of Eastern
way, the motive of their downplaying Europe.
of Nazi anti-Semitism was similar to Again and again, we see how the
Stalin’s. And while Holocaust educa- policies of Nazi Germany and the
tion and memorializing is prevalent in Soviet Union complimented each
the United States (far more so than in other in killing off the people who
Europe — with the notable exception lay between them. As the Red Army
of Germany — which is shameful con- advanced on Warsaw in late 1944
sidering the geographical location of and the Polish Home Army rose in
the events), this was not always the resistance to the Germans, Snyder
case. Despite the images of walking writes that “it made perfect Stalinist
skeletons that greeted American libera- sense to encourage an uprising, and
tors at Buchenwald, the full enormity then not to assist one.” The logic
of the Holocaust was not fully appreci- behind this was that the deaths of
ated, even in the Western world, until both Germans and Polish partisans
relatively recently, for the simple reason would be beneficial to Soviet aims,
that “the Americans and the British lib- as the latter would be expected to
erated no part of Europe that had a resist communist control of their
very significant Jewish population country once they had repelled the
before the war, and saw none of the Nazis. When the war was over and
German death facilities.” Those facili- the Soviet Union took control of
ties, and the fields in which the Poland, Stalin executed those non-
Germans exterminated the vast majori- communists (and many communists)
ty of their Jewish victims, lay in the who took part in the anti-Nazi resis-
bloodlands, which were conquered by tance in the belief that “armed
the Soviets. action not controlled by the commu-
The concentration camp and the gas nists undermined the communists”
chamber loom large in our understand- (Stalin carried out a similar policy
ing of this era, and for good reason: during the Spanish Civil War,
The locus of mechanized and efficient encouraging his proxies to turn on
killing, they were the horrific fruits of the other anti-fascist forces, thereby
20th-century technological expertise ensuring a victory for Franco). As
put to use in service of a barbaric ideol- one Polish Home Army soldier put
ogy. Snyder stresses, however, that this horrible predicament in a poem
these impersonal houses of slaughter quoted by Snyder, “We await you,
were not the places where most victims red plague / To deliver us from black
of the bloodlands died. Indeed, “the death.”
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Snyder’s conclusion that it was followed the next year by “The
Stalin who “won Hitler’s war” will be Doctor’s Plot,” when the Soviet central
controversial with many historians and committee accused “Jewish nationals”
contemporary anti-communist political of attempting to kill Stalin and over-
figures who argue that Nazi Germany throw his regime. “Every Jew is a
and the Soviet Union were equally to nationalist and an agent of American
blame for the outbreak of World War intelligence,” Stalin declared in
II. By renouncing the Molotov- December 1952; the implications of
Ribbentrop Pact and declaring war on this statement, given everything we
the Soviet Union, Hitler plunged his know about his treatment of those he
erstwhile ally into the most devastating deemed “nationalists” or “agents” of
conflict that the world had seen, in foreign powers, is chilling. Fortunately,
which over twenty million Soviet citi- he died just a few months later. Had
zens perished. This was a war that Stalin lived longer, Snyder writes, it
Hitler ultimately wanted — and started would not have been too much to
— but from which Stalin ended up expect that “the Jewish people as such
being the biggest beneficiary. As his would have been subject to forced
pre-war policies made clear, Stalin was removal or even mass shootings,” or
not in the least worried by the deaths even, one presumes, a second
of his own people — even in their mil- Holocaust.
lions. By the time he had defeated the
Nazis, Stalin found himself in control
(with the connivance of his Western
allies) over whole swaths of Eastern
Europe that he had long coveted. Post-
war Soviet population transfers fit
H ow is it that Stalin, and
communism more general-
ly, gets a better hearing
than Hitler and Nazism, universally
regarded as the epitome of evil? Snyder
hand-in-glove with the very Nazi racial reports that the Nazis deliberately
policies that the West had tried to killed upwards of eleven million; for
defeat; by removing ethnic minorities the Soviets during the Stalin period the
from Poland and killing the country’s figure was between six and nine mil-
nationalists, “communists had taken up lion. On the Soviet side, these numbers
the program of their enemies.” But are far less than what had originally
world domination was not the motivat- been believed, due to the opening of
ing goal of the Soviet Union, even Eastern European and Soviet archives
under Stalin, as it was for Nazi in the twenty years since the dissolution
Germany. of the Soviet Union. Numbers alone,
Snyder leaves us with the frightening however, cannot be the only measure of
thought of what fate might have befall- these regimes’ evil, especially when they
en Soviet Jewry if Stalin hadn’t died in are so ghastly high on both sides. As
March, 1953. In 1951, with Stalin’s Snyder has written elsewhere,
goading, Czech communists launched “Discussion of numbers can blunt our
the notorious Slansky show trial sense of the horrific personal character
against alleged traitors within their of each killing and the irreducible
ranks; eleven of the fourteen defen- tragedy of each death.” What has
dants were of Jewish origin. This was allowed the Soviet Union to escape the
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Books
same sort of historical reproach as Nazi of European history, which, unlike the
Germany is that its killing was carried more nuanced take of Snyder (who,
out in the furtherance of various causes while placing the Stalinist and Nazi
— absolute economic equality, the regimes alongside each other as sub-
preservation of a dictatorship, the col- jects of historical inquiry, does not
lectivization of agriculture — that are equate them in terms of moral depravi-
not commonly considered to exist on ty), is explicitly political. In 2008, a
the same moral plane as a theory of group of political figures from the
racial superiority. “In Stalinism mass European Soviet successor states issued
“The Prague Declaration,” which calls
upon Europe to accept Nazism and
Nearly 70 years since Communism as its “common legacy.”
the end of the Second Lithuania’s Museum of Genocide
Victims is emblematic of this worrying
World War, this book trend. The “genocide” it refers to is the
has been released in the accumulated crimes of the Soviet occu-
pation, which, over the course of nearly
midst of a contentious five decades, resulted in the deaths of
debate in Central and 74,500. There is no mention of the
word “Holocaust,” and hardly any
Eastern Europe about
mention of the more than 200,000
the relative nature of the Jews who were murdered by the Nazis
Nazi and Soviet regimes. or their Lithuanian collaborators from
1941 to 1944.
The Nazi plan to eliminate the
murder could never be anything more Jewish race — a plan which it executed
than a successful defense of socialism, often with the gleeful participation of
or an element in a story of progress local collaborators who needed no
toward socialism; it was never the prompting in rounding up and murder-
political victory itself,” Snyder ing their Jewish neighbors — is today
explains. That of course doesn’t excuse being downplayed so that Soviet crimes
the crimes of Stalinism or render them, loom larger. If this were being done
on an individual scale, less tragic or evil merely to recover a part of history that
than those committed by Nazis. was suppressed until 1989, and whose
But the question won’t go away. enormity continues to be downplayed
Nearly 70 years since the end of the by Western leftists, it would perhaps be
Second World War, this book has been defensible. But there are ulterior
released in the midst of a contentious motives. This historical airbrushing
debate in Central and Eastern Europe amounts to “Holocaust obfuscation,”
about the relative nature of the Nazi in the words of the academic Dovid
and Soviet regimes. Academics, jour- Katz, which, he writes, “tries to reduce
nalists and political leaders in this all evil to equal evil, in effect to confuse
region, particularly in the Baltic states, the issue in order to write the inconve-
have put forward a “double genocide” nient genocide that is the Holocaust
approach to understanding this period out of history as a distinct category.”
76 Policy Review
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Last year, for instance, the Lithuanian lite territories. And while the Nazis also
government passed a law making it ille- had collaborators during their occupa-
gal to deny that the actions of the tion of the Baltic States, there was
Soviet Union in Lithuania constitute never any room for a Jewish collabora-
“genocide,” as it is illegal to deny the tor in the Nazi project. A Jew’s fate
Holocaust. Another suggestion of those under Nazism was inescapable and
pushing the “double genocide” analysis could not be mitigated by membership
is the commemoration of August 23, in the Nazi party, as, say, a Lithuanian’s
the date the Molotov-Ribbentrop or Pole’s or Ukrainian’s fate under
Soviet-Nazi Non-Aggression Pact was Soviet occupation could be affected by
signed, as a single memorial day for the his membership in the local
victims of both totalitarian regimes, Communist party. Though Stalin’s
thus reducing the importance of murder campaigns were, in many cases,
Holocaust remembrance. In campaign- predicated on ethnic antagonism, the
ing for EU recognition of this new stan- difference is that the Soviets did not
dard, the Lithuanian foreign minister exterminate for extermination’s own
has said that the body’s understanding sake. Once Stalin’s discrete policies had
of genocide should be broadened to been achieved (the collectivization of
include crimes against groups targeted Ukrainian farms, for instance), the
for their “social status or political con- mass murder stopped, and the Soviet
victions,” in other words, Lemkin’s Union eventually wound down its
original formulation. widescale deportations and mass
That’s a proposal with which Snyder killings in the mid-1950s. Had Hitler’s
would no doubt agree. But his regime, with its animalistic understand-
acknowledgement that the period of ing of human nature, lasted beyond
1933 to 1945 was marked by several 1 9 4 5 , its mass murder and terror
genocides, rather than a single one, would not have decreased. For these
does not lead him to promote the tactics were not just means but ends;
“double genocide” theory. Snyder has they were the very lifeblood, the
written elsewhere that “The mass mur- weltanschauung, of nazism itself.
der of the Jews was, indeed, unprece- Following the extermination of
dented in its horror; no other campaign European Jewry, the Nazis would have
involved such rapid, targeted and delib- moved onto the wholesale elimination
erate killing, or was so tightly bound to of other ethnic and national groups. As
the idea that a whole people ought to the historian David Satter has written,
be exterminated.” It is morally specious “Their plans for the racial purification
to compare the Jewish Holocaust to the of Europe envisaged an open ended
Soviet “genocide” of Balts or Poles or process.” The crucial factor one must
Ukrainians, awful as the experiences of consider in evaluating these two strains
these peoples were, because of the of totalitarianism is their competing
inherently different nature of the meth- long-term visions, and the policies that
ods the Soviet and Nazi regimes used were required to execute them.
against their subject populations. The Classifying Stalin’s various murder
Soviet Union had many local collabora- campaigns (alongside Nazi policies
tors throughout its occupied and satel- towards Roma, gays, educated Poles
June & July 2011 77

Books
and Soviet citizens in Belarus and toriographic oversights. With this mag-
Ukraine) as “genocides,” which Snyder isterial book, he has rendered the
does, while also singling out the Holocaust, and the horrors that preced-
Holocaust as the worst of them all, is ed and accompanied it, their rightful
not mutually exclusive. To recognize place.
the uniqueness of the Holocaust is not
to be “soft” on the crimes of commu-
nism.
Surveying a time and subject that Liberal
has been studied, dramatized, and
argued about perhaps more thoroughly
than any other in history, Bloodlands is
Internationalism
an incredibly original work. It seeks to
redirect our understanding of the
and Freedom
Holocaust as primarily an eastern phe- By Peter Berkowitz
nomenon, and one which took place
among a spate of mass killing policies.
When popular interest in the Holocaust G . J o h n I k e n b e r ry . Liberal
and an “international collective memo- Leviathan: The Origins, Crisis, and
ry” of it began to form in the 1970s Transformation of the American World
and 1980s, it focused almost exclusive- Order. P r i n c e t o n U n i v e r s i t y
ly on the experience of German and Press. 372 Pages. $35.
West European Jews, the wealthiest
and most assimilated on the continent,
who died in far smaller numbers than
did the Jews of Poland, Belarus, and
the Baltic States, who were nearly erad-
icated. “Deprived of its Jewish distinc-
tiveness in the East, and stripped of its
C onfronting a war-weary
nation, candidate Obama ran
in 2008 as the anti-Bush, par-
ticularly in regard to foreign policy and
national security. Obama promised no
geography in the West, the Holocaust more reckless military adventures based
never quite became part of European on poor intelligence and ill-conceived
history,” Snyder writes. Similarly, “By goals. On his watch, he insisted, the
introducing a new kind of anti- shredding of the Constitution in the
Semitism into the world,” Snyder detention, interrogation, and prosecu-
writes, “Stalin made of the Holocaust tion of enemy combatants would cease;
something less than it was” by mini- to that end he promised to promptly
mizing the distinct hatred that the close the detention facility at
Nazis reserved for the Jewish people.
(Ironically, by their promotion of the
“double genocide” rubric, today’s Peter Berkowitz is the Tad and
nationalistic eastern European anti- Dianne Taube Senior Fellow at the
Hoover Institution, Stanford
communists are furthering Stalin’s own
University, where he chairs the Koret-
pernicious historical whitewash of the Taube Task Force on National
Holocaust’s distinctly anti-Jewish Security and Law. His writings are
nature). Snyder has corrected these his- posted at www.PeterBerkowitz.com.
78 Policy Review
Books
Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and to bring Mubarak’s ouster in mid-February.
enemy combatants, such as self-con- This prompted President Obama — as
fessed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh he refused to do in June 2009 when
Mohammed, to trial in federal court. Iranian military forces wielded lethal
He made clear that when he was at the force against citizens protesting the
helm, America would refrain from corrupt presidential election that pre-
imposing its way of life on other coun- served Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s hold
tries and cultures, and so would aban- on power — to affirm America’s inter-
don the Bush administration policy of est in advancing democracy and liberty
seeking to advance democracy and free- abroad. Meanwhile, engagement with
dom abroad. His administration, he Iran and Syria proved a total failure,
declared, would engage hostile powers and relations between the U.S. and
and cultivate multilateral relations. vital allies Britain, France, and
And the hunt for Osama bin Laden and Germany cannot be said to be on a
the struggle against al Qaeda would be better footing than they were under
conducted consistent with our values President Bush. And finally, President
and in accordance with our obligations Obama gave the orders to Navy seal
under international law. Team Six, an elite unit formerly
President Obama has discovered denounced as “Cheney’s death squad,”
that the conduct of foreign policy and that resulted in the long-awaited
national security is not so simple. killing of Osama bin Laden. The suc-
Flying the flag of humanitarian inter- cessful raid on bin Laden’s compound
vention while confusingly demanding in early May was unilateral, based, in
that Qaddafi must go but by means of part, on intelligence obtained through
diplomacy and not force, the president the much-decried coercive interroga-
ordered limited military action in tions authorized by the Bush adminis-
Libya in the face of considerable, and tration, and flew in the face of the
continuing, uncertainty about the char- European and generally progressive
acter and intentions of the rebels to view that bin Laden was a criminal
whose aid the United States came. On who needed to be brought to trial.
Obama’s watch, Gitmo will remain To record the deviation of President
open indefinitely — and Khalid Shaikh Obama’s foreign and national security
Mohammed will be tried there by mili- policy from candidate Obama’s promis-
tary commission (a decision formally es is not to underestimate the difficulty
announced by Attorney General Eric of translating intentions into practice.
Holder on the same day in early April Nor is it to deny the difference of
that the president launched his reelec- strategic sensibility that separates
tion bid). The Arab spring has further Obama policy from Bush policy. Nor is
altered the presidential script. It was it to minimize what is at stake in the
set in motion in mid-December 2010 different approaches to international
when a humiliated vegetable vendor relations and national security that gen-
immolated himself in front of the gov- erally distinguish progressives and con-
ernor’s office in Sid Bouzid, Tunisia, servatives. It is to suggest, though, that
and reached a culmination of sorts clarifying the issues presents complex
with Egyptian President Hosni challenges.
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In the quest for clarity about However, common sense — to say
America’s foreign policy, consulting the nothing of the spirit of adjustment, bal-
great theoretical alternatives propound- ance, and calibration that John Stuart
ed by academic political scientists will Mill, no less than Edmund Burke, saw
provide limited assistance. Some inter- as essential to grasping the require-
national relations theorists are realists; ments of a free society — counsels a
they tend to believe that, operating in more subtle approach. It suggests the
an essentially anarchic system, states utility of the insight at the core of each
seek to advance their national interests of the major theoretical alternatives in
contemporary international relations
theory — the importance of power,
Ikenberry succeeds in principles, and perspectives; the inade-
bringing into focus the quacy of each by itself; and the need to
combine them in proper measure to
large stake America has in make sense of world politics.
refurbishing and extending G. John Ikenberry, the Albert G.
Milbank Professor of Politics and
the liberal international
International Affairs at Princeton
order over whose University, brings a welcome common
construction and expan- sense to his application of international
relations theory to the problems of
sion it has, for more than world order and the analysis of the
half a century, presided. opportunities and dangers that America
confronts. A leading member of the lib-
eral internationalist bloc, Ikenberry
by achieving a balance of power that believes that the liberal world order —
maximizes their room to maneuver “that is, order that is relatively open,
while minimizing that of other states. rule-based, and progressive” — that
Others are idealists or liberal interna- America has led since the end of World
tionalists; following in the footsteps of War II is undergoing a crisis, but is
Woodrow Wilson, they argue that the capable of being renovated by America
primary goal of foreign affairs should to its and the world’s advantage. In
be the formation of an international making his case, Ikenberry provides an
order devoted to democracy and unusually accessible and instructive
human rights. And still others are con- synthesis of the last several decades of
structivists; they contend that states’ liberal internationalist theory.
national identities and vital interests, He is very much of the tell-them-
along with core moral and political what-you-are-going-to-tell-them, tell-
concepts, are socially constructed — them, and then tell-them-what-you-
that is, historically contingent artifacts told-them school of presentation. In his
determined by shared values and fun- scholarly commitment to clarity, preci-
damental assumptions. In the rarefied sion, and comprehensiveness he goes
world of political science, each of these overboard in restating points with at
theories purports to explain the whole best minute variations from at most
of international relations. slightly different angles. But the repeti-
80 Policy Review
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tion serves a good cause. Ikenberry suc- its wake.” What is needed is “a new
ceeds in bringing into focus the large bargain, not a new system.”
stake America has in refurbishing and
extending the liberal international
order over whose construction and
expansion it has, for more than half a
century, presided.
In the least compelling parts of his
I k e n b e r ry a dva n c e s four
major claims about the rise and
prospects of liberal internation-
al order. First, after World War II,
America led the way in constructing a
book, Ikenberry blames the crisis of lib- world order whose hierarchical roots
eral international order, or its dramatic and liberal principles were in tension.
exacerbation, on the George W. Bush On the one hand, as the most powerful
administration. Through “its contro- and dominant nation the world had
versial ‘war on terror,’ invasion of Iraq, ever seen, the U.S. established itself as a
and skepticism about unilateral rules hegemon, providing collective security,
and agreements,” the Bush administra- distributing economic aid, and main-
tion not only “triggered a global out- taining open markets. On the other
pouring of criticism” and intensified hand, the U.S. built an international
anti-Americanism around the world, order grounded in multilateral rules,
but also gave rise, contends Ikenberry, reciprocal political processes, and inter-
to the justified fear that the U.S. sought national law and international institu-
to mold a unipolar globe in which it tions in which it voluntarily yielded
placed itself above international law some of its freedom of action to induce
and at the head of an imperial and illib- other states to do the same. This order
eral order. promised, and to a remarkable extent
The main argument of his book, delivered, stability and predictability
however, has to do with the pressures which in turn allowed for the achieve-
for change produced by the internal ment of extended peace and prosperity.
dynamics and abiding logic of liberal It fused American preeminence with
international order itself: respect for the sovereignty of all
nations and deference to universal prin-
the crisis of the old order tran-
ciples and general rules. It created a lib-
scends controversies generated by
eral hegemonic order with the U.S. at
recent American foreign policy or
its top.
even the ongoing economic crisis. It
Second, the crisis of authority that
is a crisis of authority within the
both America and the international sys-
old hegemonic organization of lib-
tem face stems from several factors
eral order, not a crisis in the deep
quite independent of which party holds
principles of the order itself. It is a
the White House. One destabilizing
crisis of governance.
factor has to do with American unipo-
Shifts in its “underlying founda- larity in the international system. In a
tions” have called into question “how bipolar world, with two major powers,
aspects of liberal order — sovereignty, or a multipolar world, with several
institutions, participation, roles, and major powers, coalitions form to
responsibilities — are to be allocated, achieve a balance. A unipolar world,
but all within the order rather than in however — in which one state, by
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Books
virtue of its military might and eco- mately enforced through coercive uses
nomic clout, dominates — is inherently of power.” In contrast, the liberal order
threatening to weaker states, even whose leadership the U.S. inherited
when that dominant state is a liberal from Britain after World War II “is
democracy. Another destabilizing factor based on bargained and rule-based
has to do with the rise of new major relations.” In it, “weaker and sec-
powers including China, India, and ondary states have voice opportunities,
Brazil. Also a factor is that norms of and their agreement to operate within
state sovereignty — the principle that the order is based on the willingness of
states have the last word on what takes the dominant state to restrain and com-
place within their borders, on which mit its power and lead in the provision
international order has been based of public goods.” In the liberal order,
since the mid-17th century — have no state, even the hegemon, is above
eroded. Particularly in the last few the law. Ideally, the participation of all
decades, international institutions and states in the system is based on the
organizations, led by progressive logic of consent.
Western intellectuals, have labored to Fourth, preserving and extending
establish the principle that nations and liberal international order should
international bodies have a responsibil- become the centerpiece of American
ity to protect endangered peoples, grand strategy. Renovating the “archi-
including from crimes committed by tecture of global governance and
their governments. Furthermore, all frameworks of cooperation” is neces-
states, progressive Western intellectuals sary to deal with a great variety of chal-
argue, including the United States, have lenges such as global pandemics and
on obligation to bring their domestic international health concerns, terror-
practices in line with evolving interna- ism, nuclear proliferation, climate
tional understandings of human rights. change, and failed states. In addition,
A final factor is the rise of new security the U.S. should refurbish its security
threats — in particular, though alliances so that America remains first
Ikenberry avoids precisely naming it, among equals even as other nations rise
the transnational terrorism practiced by to challenge its preeminence; this will
Islamic jihadists seeking weapons of involve partners taking on more
mass destruction. The new threats have responsibilities in exchange for the U.S.
impelled America, given its special relinquishing some autonomy. Also,
responsibilities, to reexamine the America should band with the other
requirements of international law and capitalist democracies to further pro-
the strategic bargains by which it has mote the incorporation of China into
been bound. the liberal international order. And
Third, the American-led liberal finally, American elites must recover
international order is characterized by the “public philosophy” of liberal
distinctive forms of power, law, and internationalism. That public philoso-
legitimacy. Throughout history, the phy is devoted to developing interna-
common form of order, imperial order, tional rules and institutions that
has been based on force. In it, “rules strengthen the capacity of national gov-
are imposed and compliance is ulti- ernments to provide security and pro-
82 Policy Review
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mote prosperity; it emphasizes agreements such as the Kyoto Protocol.
America’s provision of public goods to At the same time, the Bush administra-
other states in exchange for their coop- tion went to considerable lengths to
eration with the international system; it establish that it was complying with its
values close consultation and coopera- obligations under international law;
tion with fellow liberal democracies; aggressively collaborated with
and it counsels humility concerning the European allies in the war on terror;
capacity of the United States to pro- and, contrary to Ikenberry’s suggestion
mote the expansion of liberal order by that it proceeded unilaterally, assem-
direct intervention in the affairs of
other states. In the liberal order, no
By cooperating with other states “to
rebuild and renew the institutional
state, even the
foundations of the liberal international hegemon, is above
order,” America can, Ikenberry con-
the law. Ideally, the
cludes, “reestablish its own authority
as a global leader.” participation of
Although his state-of-the-art elabo- all states in the system is
ration of liberal internationalism grace-
fully incorporates realist insights and based on the
responds to realist challenges, logic of consent.
Ikenberry’s analysis suffers from weak-
nesses characteristic of his theoretical bled a large coalition for Operation
outlook and larger discipline. Iraqi Freedom comprising 40 nations,
First, Ikenberry’s account is marred with crucial logistical support coming
by partisan progressive bias, if relative- from, among other Arab Gulf monar-
ly restrained, typical of the political sci- chies, Kuwait, Qatar, and Bahrain. The
ence professoriate. Notwithstanding a determination to view the Bush admin-
few of President Bush’s more pithy and istration as seeking to exit or upend the
pungent public statements, Ikenberry liberal international order reflects the
wrongly presents Bush administration progressive habit, on exhibit every now
foreign policy as a deliberately sharp and again in President Obama’s
break with the principles of liberal rhetoric, of suggesting that conservative
internationalism. To be sure, the Bush opinions are contrary to American
administration pushed back against principles.
progressive interpretations of what Second, Ikenberry displays a tenden-
international law and cooperation with cy to blame America for disagreements
the international community required that arise between the U.S. and Europe
— in regard to the detention, interroga- and the ensuing instabilities in the inter-
tion, and prosecution of enemy com- national system. To take one telling
batants; the role of the UN in authoriz- example, following the progressive and
ing the use of military force; and the French line of analysis, he faults
value of particular international institu- President Bush for taking the United
tions such as the International Criminal States to war with Iraq without formal
Court and particular international Security Council approval. But, even
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Books
beyond the formal coalition the U.S. importance of individual freedom to
assembled and the extensive coopera- the theory and practice of liberal inter-
tion of Arab Gulf states, there is more nationalism. The words “freedom” and
to consider. Ikenberry does not note “liberty” are almost entirely absent
that the Bush administration argued from his book; they don’t appear as
that its decision to invade Iraq drew terms in the index. Certainly, Ikenberry
support from no fewer than seventeen does not include dedication to the prin-
Security Council Resolutions over the ciple of individual freedom as a hall-
course of more than a decade requiring mark of liberal international order. It’s
Saddam to abandon his weapons of true that the central features he does
mass destruction and wmd programs; discuss — openness, the rule of law,
that in November 2 0 0 2 the Bush consent, reciprocity, progress — are
administration won unanimous passage bound up with the belief in the natural
of Security Council Resolution 1441, freedom and equality of all. But his
which found Iraq “in ‘material breach’ account obscures the connection. This
of its obligations under previous resolu- is in stark contrast to Hobbes, who
tions” and promised “serious conse- made clear that the interest individuals
quences” if Saddam failed to promptly have in exiting the state of nature and
comply with his obligations under inter- creating a commonwealth or leviathan
national law; that the French, among is to protect, through mutual limita-
others, had large commercial interests tion, the natural and inalienable rights
with Iraq that disinclined them to that each shares equally with all. Surely
enforce the international law that the liberal leviathan that Ikenberry cele-
Saddam was flouting; that failure to brates is not less dedicated to, and does
enforce international law against Iraq not draw less legitimacy from, the idea
threatened to turn that law and the of the equal freedom of all individuals
Security Council into toothless tigers; than Hobbes’s leviathan.
and that Saddam’s stealing of revenues The neglect of freedom’s centrality
from the un-sponsored Oil-for-Food to liberal internationalism has conse-
program was producing a humanitarian quences. It contributes, among other
crisis in Iraq among children and the ill. things, to the difficulty that Ikenberry
In other words, in the case of Iraq the and his fellow liberal internationalists
Bush administration sought to respect have in understanding the conservative
international law and institutions and critique of liberal internationalism. In
respond to a humanitarian crisis, and many cases — certainly in that of the
had a respectable argument that by Bush administration — the conserva-
removing Saddam it was doing just tive critique is grounded in a commit-
that. At the same time, some European ment to individual freedom that it
criticism of the U.S. can be traced to the shares with liberal internationalism.
very envy and resentment that, as The debate between more-progressive
Ikenberry notes elsewhere, great powers and more-conservative analysts of
inevitably engender among weaker and American foreign policy, in fact, tends
secondary states. to revolve around the practices and
Third, and most importantly and policies that best advance America’s
surprisingly, Ikenberry neglects the interest in making freedom more secure
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Books
at home by advancing it abroad. More one judge which alleged causes are
attention to freedom’s centrality to lib- most likely, and which less so. As an
eral internationalism would not only economist I have followed this issue
clarify puzzles in political science. It closely over the past two and a half
would also contribute to the modera- years, and yet I still found this book
tion and refinement of a great deal of illuminating. The bottom line for me:
progressive foreign policy analysis and The case is fairly strong that govern-
rhetoric, including that of the president. ment regulation was one of the major
sources of the financial crisis.
The most important chapter is the
first. This 66-page segment is editor
The Roots of Jeff Friedman’s overview of subsequent
chapters, along with his own contribu-
the 2008 tions to the debate. It is by far the dens-
est part of the book, not in the sense of
Economic being hard to understand, but in the
sense that if you miss even one para-
Collapse graph, you may miss a lot. Friedman
carefully sifts through the other
authors’ arguments and evidence. His
By David R.
work would be impressive if done by a
Henderson Ph.D. economist with twenty years of
experience in the profession. What
Jeffrey Friedman, editor. What makes it more impressive is that Jeffrey
Caused the Financial Crisis? Friedman is not an economist at all but
U n i v e r s i t y o f P e n n s y lva n i a a political scientist (he is a visiting
Press. 360 pages. $29.95. scholar in the Department of
Government at the University of Texas
T h i s b o o k ’ s t i t l e is
appropriate. In it, various
economists and financial
experts address the question: What
caused the financial crisis? Not surpris-
at Austin).
One point that almost all informed
observers agree on is that the financial
crisis started in the housing market and
that the crash in housing prices caused
ingly, they disagree in their answers. a more-general banking and financial
Why, then, read the thing? Because it crisis. Therefore, to understand the
narrows the range of disagreement and cause of the financial crisis, one needs
supplies vital information that can help to understand two things: First, why
the housing crisis happened and, sec-
ond, how the housing crisis caused the
David R. Henderson is a Hoover larger financial crisis.
Institution research fellow and an
associate professor of economics at the
Graduate School of Business and
Public Policy at the Naval
Postgraduate School. He blogs at
www.econlog.econlib.org.
F riedman argues that both
questions can be answered by
looking to government regu-
lation. As to the crisis’s cause, he points
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Books
to the U.S. government’s push, under Of course, when the housing crisis
the Community Reinvestment Act of caused huge losses for Fannie Mae and
1995, to have banks lend money to Freddie Mac, the federal government
low-income people who would, in stepped in and bailed them out.
many cases, have a slim chance of Because of this bailout, notes
repaying the loans. Friedman draws on Friedman, the U.S. government has an
a chapter written by Peter Wallison, an even bigger debt problem.
economically literate lawyer at the Nevertheless, the bailout did not cause
American Enterprise Institute and an the crisis of 2008.
So how did the housing crisis lead to
the financial crisis? Friedman’s argu-
Friedman’s bottom line is ment is complex and detailed and can’t
that banks and other be justly explained here. His bottom
line, though, is that banks and other
investors relied too heavily investors relied too heavily on the aaa
on the AAA ratings given ratings given to mortgage-backed secu-
rities by the three sec-recognized rat-
to mortgage-backed
ings agencies: Standard and Poors,
securities by the three Moody’s, and Fitch. The problem,
SEC-recognized ratings according to Friedman, was that “Even
the most sophisticated investors seemed
agencies: Standard and to have been ignorant of the fact that
Poors, Moody’s, and Fitch. Moody’s, s&p, and Fitch were protect-
ed by s e c regulations.” Friedman,
drawing on a chapter by Lawrence J.
expert on financial regulation. Wallison White, an economics professor at New
explains that to make banks lend these York University’s Stern School of
substantial funds, federal regulators Business, argues that these three ratings
held up approval of bank mergers and agencies did not have a strong incentive
acquisitions. Friedman adds that in to give accurate ratings because of their
1995, the U.S. Department of Housing sec-protected status. He points out
and Urban Development ordered two that executives at giant investment
government-sponsored enterprises, firms were shocked when Moody’s
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, to direct “suddenly downgraded” some of its
42 percent of their mortgage financing triple-A, private-label (as distinct from
to low- and moderate-income borrow- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac), mort-
ers. In 1997, to help achieve that goal, gage-backed securities in the second
Fannie Mae introduced a three-percent- half of 2 0 0 7 . Had these investors
down mortgage — the traditional known that Moody’s could prosper no
mortgage had required a twenty-per- matter how inaccurate its ratings,
cent down payment. With only three writes Friedman, “they surely would
percent down, an owner whose house not have been stunned when its ratings
value fell only a bit below the original turned out to be so inaccurate.” Nor,
price would be tempted to walk away he writes, would they “have been so
from it. reliant on its ratings.”
86 Policy Review
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Another strand of Friedman’s analy- designed to minimize risk is not the
sis involves deposit insurance. same thing as minimizing risk. It is
Instituted under Franklin Roosevelt to adherence to a bureaucratic require-
prevent bank runs, deposit insurance ment, nothing more.”
distorted banks’ incentives: They could Jablecki and Machaj are also among
make riskier loans than they otherwise the few authors in the book who ana-
would, knowing that a large percentage lyze the likely effects of the further reg-
of their losses would be borne, not by ulations imposed in response to the cri-
the banks, but by taxpayers. This sis. They reach a scary but plausible
“moral hazard” inevitably led to gov- conclusion: that the natural tendency is
ernment regulation for capital adequa- to pile on more rules to the point where
cy so that the banks would be unlikely “bureaucratic controls increasingly
to lose their depositors’ money. The substitute for market mechanisms.”
capital adequacy rules were part of the When that happens,
Basel I rules that regulators in many
countries adopted. Friedman refers to government decrees replace the
the chapter by Viral V. Acharya and knowledge-discovery process of
Matthew Richardson, both finance profit (when one has discovered a
professors at New York University’s useful product that consumers are
Stern School of Business, to make his willing to buy) and loss (when one
case. Acharya and Richardson explain merely thinks one has done so).
that many of the banks engaged in
“regulatory arbitrage.” Under Basel I, The result, they say, is likely to be
the less risky the rating of an asset, the cartelization, which “could actually
lower the capital requirements. So, for aggravate the systemic risk that already
instance, if a bank held mortgages, it pervades the financial markets.”
had to hold capital equal to a certain Most people, myself included, tend
percentage of the assets’ value. But if to get fearful when they hear about a
the bank sold the mortgages and used new, complex economic institution.
the funds to buy mortgage-backed And their fear often leads them to be
securities that the rating agencies had credulous about claims based on fear.
rated aaa, it needed to hold a lower So, for example, many people got
percentage of the value, freeing up scared when they heard about credit
funds to invest elsewhere. Thus the default swaps (c d s ), a term that
term “regulatory arbitrage.” sounds complicated, and then heard
In a later chapter, aptly titled, “A further that the “notional value” of
Regulated Meltdown: The Basel Rules such swaps was in the tens of trillions
and Banks’ Leverage,” economists of dollars. The book’s short chapter by
Juliusz Jablecki of the National Bank of Wallison goes far in describing credit
Poland and Mateusz Machaj of default swaps and, in the process,
Wroclaw University in Poland also reducing the fear generated by those
make the point about regulatory arbi- who should know better. Wallison
trage, and they do it particularly well. writes: “The best analogy for a cds is
In commenting on the Basel rules, they an ordinary commercial loan. The sell-
write: “Unfortunately, obeying a rule er of a cds is taking on virtually the
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Books
same risk exposure as a lender. It is no
A
more mysterious than that.” h i g h l i g h t o f Fried-
Credit default swaps, he points out, man’s introductory chapter
simply allow lenders to offload the risk is his rebuttal of the wide-
of a default on a loan to someone else ly-held view that the way that high-
who, for a price, is willing to take on level employees in financial firms were
this risk. No new risk is created in the paid gave them an incentive to take on
process. Did the sellers of these swaps inordinate risk. Friedman points out
underprice them because they under- that this view was accepted early in the
stated the risk of default? Absolutely, crisis despite a complete lack of evi-
says Wallison; we know that now. But, dence. Three studies of the issue came
he writes, “If we wanted to prevent along after this consensus had been
losses that come from faulty credit reached. One study found some evi-
analysis, we would have to prohibit dence in favor of the consensus view —
lending.” Wallison also notes that if “Financial companies that paid large
regulators are allowed to second-guess incentive bonuses tended to perform
risks we have no basis for thinking that slightly worse during the crisis” — but
their guesses “will be any more insight- a second study found that the higher
ful into actual creditworthiness than the proportion of stock compensation
the judgments of those who are making for banks, the worse the banks did.
the loans.” Friedman indicates that had the bank
And what about the idea of “notion- executives realized that their banks
al value” of the amounts on which the were taking excessive risks, they would
c d s s are written? Wallison quotes have cut the risk or sold their stock. By
financier George Soros’ 2008 state- not doing so, they took heavy losses. A
ment that “The notional amount of third study found that some executives
cds contracts outstanding is roughly did sell large amounts of stock in the
$45 [trillion] . . . To put it into per- eight years preceding the crisis. But
spective, this is about equal to half the Friedman makes the obvious point that
total U.S. household wealth.” if you get almost all your compensation
Wallison’s response? “This is not in stock and want to have purchasing
putting credit default swaps ‘into per- power, you must sell a lot of your
spective.’” Wallison shows that each stock. Moreover, he notes, banking
time a cds is traded, the “notional executives “did not cash in the bulk of
amount” increases, even though the their stock compensation.” Jimmy
amount of risk is unchanged. He Cayne of Bear Stearns, for example,
shows that the “net notional amount” sold $289 million in stock during the
is “actually about 5 percent of the fig- preceding eight years but held on to $1
ure Soros used.” The problem with billion in stock, which he later sold —
credit default swaps, concludes for $61 million.
Wallison, is not their financial effects One main reason so many people
but their political effects. They can think more financial regulation is the
become, he writes, “political piñatas” answer is that they have been told over
and “divert scrutiny from the actual and over that the financial sector is
causes of problems.” unregulated. Unfortunately, m i t ’s
88 Policy Review
Books
Daron Acemoglu, in his chapter, does “limitations of the credit-rating agen-
some of this telling. Acemoglu claims, cies were well known to professional
although he presents no evidence, that investors.” He concludes his argument
policy makers in Washington “were by writing, “Professional investors
lured by ideological notions derived who failed to treat their ratings of
from Ayn Rand novels rather than complex securities with a degree of
from economic theory.” Acemoglu con- skepticism despite knowing all this had
cludes, “In reality, what we are experi- only themselves to blame.” Maybe, but
encing is not a failure of capitalism or then isn’t that Posner’s way of admit-
free markets per se, but the failure of
unregulated markets — in particular, of
an unregulated financial sector and
Jimmy Cayne of Bear
unregulated risk management.” Stearns, for example,
It takes some chutzpah for an econ-
sold $289 million
omist to claim that one of the most reg-
ulated industries in the country is in stock during the
“unregulated.” In a previous chapter, preceding eight years but
Wallison argues that the financial sec-
tor is under “the most comprehensive held on to $1 billion
regulatory oversight of any industry.” in stock, which he later
I’m not sure that Wallison is right —
medical care and health insurance have
sold — for $61 million.
been highly regulated for decades and
are surely a close competitor for the ting that even professional investors
dubious honor — but it’s clear that the might have been too credulous? People
financial industry does, indeed, operate make mistakes. Investors made mis-
under intense regulation. takes. Regulators made mistakes.
In the book’s afterword, the prolific Posner’s point seems petulant rather
Judge Richard Posner takes on some of than illuminating.
Friedman’s arguments. One such argu- In discussing the high ratings of vari-
ment is that the various bond-rating ous bonds, Posner reminds us that we
agencies’ ratings were inaccurate. “must be wary of hindsight bias” —
Posner notes, correctly, that whether that is, seeing as obvious after the fact
they were inaccurate “depends on how what was obvious to very few people
likely it seemed that the securities rated before the fact. He’s right. But Posner’s
triple-a were likely to tank.” This own solution for preventing or reduc-
probability, he writes, seemed small to ing the probability of future financial
“regulators, financial journalists, econ- crises is a grand example of hindsight
omists, and the professional invest- bias. Posner recommends more regula-
ment community.” That’s true, but tion, buying into the Acemoglu view
were they right to think the probability that the financial sector is “unregulat-
was low, and could the lack of incen- ed.” But how, exactly, given Posner’s
tives for the three agencies to make own admission that regulators thought
accurate ratings matter? Posner argues, the probability of a collapse was small,
without providing evidence, that the are regulators supposed to do better in
June & July 2011 89

Books
the future? We, including regulators, ulated capitalism, since an idea or
never know, except after the fact, that a practice that is homogeneously
low-probability event will occur. So accepted by all market participants
isn’t future regulation likely to be clos- in a given time and place is likely
ing the barn door only after the horses’ to be accepted by the regulators of
low-probability escape? that time and place, too. But at
Fortunately, Friedman has much of best, competing businesses will
value to say on this issue. He points out embody different theories, with the
that when regulators impose rules, the bad ones tending to be weeded
people they regulate must follow them out.
and that, therefore, the rules homoge-
nize behavior and prevent diversity. Amen.
The advantage of diversity is that not
all participants will walk off the cliff.
Friedman notes that Wells Fargo Bank,
J.P. Morgan, and Goldman Sachs all British, Zulus,
became aware of the risks of mortgage-
backed securities and took actions to
reduce or hedge their risks. Had regula-
and Two
tion been even tighter, this would have
been impossible. However heteroge-
Legendary
neous are the regulators’ opinions of a
regulation, he notes, only one regula-
Battles
tion becomes law. Diversity among
By Henrik Bering
market participants, by contrast, “takes
the more concrete form of different
enterprises structured by different theo- Ian Knight. Zulu Rising: The Epic
ries.” Story of Isandlwana and Rorke’s Drift.
For that reason, regardless of what 600 Pages. Macmillan. ₤20.
caused the financial crisis the way to
avoid a future crisis is not through
O
more regulation. Why? Friedman says n may 21, 1879, a cavalry
it best: brigade with infantry support
led by General Frederick
Where there are competing pow- Marshall set out from Fort Melville in
ers, as in a capitalist economy, the British colony of Natal on a melan-
there is more chance of heterogene- choly mission: Crossing into Zululand,
ity than when there is a single reg- it was to retrieve the wagons the army
ulator with power over all the had lost four months before in the dis-
competitors. At worst, in the limit- aster at Isandlwana, where the British
ed case of a market that, through camp was wiped out by a Zulu army,
herd behavior, completely con- the most humiliating defeat inflicted on
verged on an erroneous idea or
practice, unregulated capitalism
would likely be no worse than reg- Henrik Bering is a writer and critic.
90 Policy Review
Books
a British army by native forces. Among er.” Mostly, it was a question of recog-
the accompanying war correspondents nizing “a ring on a finger bone” or “a
was Archibald Forbes of the Standard, pair of socks in a few known
whose report is not for the faint of instances.” Prior’s sketches of the
heart. This is what he saw: remains proved too graphic for the
Illustrated London News editors and
In this ravine, dead men lay thick, had to be cleaned up.
mere bones, with toughened discol- One of Prior’s originals, complete
ored skin like leather covering with outsized skulls, is reprinted in Ian
them, and clinging tight to them, Knight’s Zulu Rising, the authoritative
the flesh all wasted away. Some study of Isandlwana and the subsequent
were almost wholly dismembered, battle at Rorke’s Drift. Knight combines
heaps of yellow clammy bones. I panoramic descriptions of the landscape
forbear to describe the faces, with with lively testimony from the partici-
their blackened features and beards pants. The battles greatly stirred the
bleached by rain and sun. Every Victorian imagination, particularly the
man had been disemboweled. Some heroism exhibited at Rorke’s Drift.
were scalped. And others had been They still stir imaginations today. The
subject to even ghastlier mutila- movie Zulu, with Stanley Baker and
tions. The clothes had lasted better Michael Caine in the roles of
than the poor bodies they covered, Lieutenants Chard and Gonville, invari-
and helped keep the skeletons ably shows up on British television
together. screens at Christmas time.
All the way up the slope I
traced the ghastly token of dead
men, the fitful line of flight. Most
of the men hereabout were
infantry of the 24th. It was like a
long string with knots in it, the
T he catastrophe was set
in motion when Sir Bartle
Frère, the British high com-
missioner, decided that an independent
Zululand under King Cetshwayo was
string formed of single corpses, the an impediment to British interests in
knots clusters of dead, where (as it the region. Frere knew that military
seemed) little groups might have action ran counter to the wishes of
gathered to make a hopeless, gal- Her Majesty’s government, which did
lant stand and die. not want new commitments at this
point. But with communication
According to Illustrated London between London and the colonies
News sketch artist Melton Prior, in being slow, Frère believed that the
most cases identification was hard matter could be settled before the
work, “for either the hands of the Colonial Office could object. A series
enemy, or the beaks and claws of vul- of demands that he knew the King
tures tearing up the corpses, had in could not meet provided Frère with
numberless cases so mixed up the the necessary pretext.
bones of the dead that the skull of one Heading the invasion was Lord
man, or bones of a leg or arm, now lay Chelmsford, who had previously put
with the parts of the skeleton of anoth- down the remnants of a Xhosa rebel-
June & July 2011 91

Books
lion, and who now made Cetshwayo’s ground having dropped his sword
capital, Ondini, his objective. His three and revolver. “Good God,
columns consisted of 5,000 redcoats, a Harford,” I said, “you are hit!”
volunteer corps of carbineers, and a “No, Sir,” he replied, “not hit, but I
hastily trained Natal Native have caught such a beauty.” And
Contingent, with himself commanding there the lunatic, in his first action,
the center column. On Jan 11, 1879, and under heavy fire, his qualms
this column began crossing the Buffalo and nervousness all forgotten, had
River at Rorke’s Drift, where the captured some infernal microbe or
army’s commissariat depot had been other, and was blowing its wings
established in the mission station. out, unconscious of the bullets
Chelmsford’s supply wagons were striking the rocks all around him as
drawn by teams of sixteen oxen, which if he had been in his garden at
meant slow progress, as oxen can only home.
work four hours a day. The nineteen- He was just expatiating on his
year-old Lieutenant Horace Smith- victory and reeling off Latin names
Dorrien, serving in the supply train, — they might have been Hebrew
provides the soundtrack: “The driver for all I cared — when I stopped
who yielded the whip was usually an him, and told him to get as quick
Afrikander [sic]; the oxen were named as he could to the right flanking
and, when the pull became very heavy, company and hurry them up. He
were urged forward by name and pistol looked at me with sorrow, put his
like cracks of the whip. Such names as prize into a tin box, and was off
‘Dootchman,’ ‘German,’ and like a shot.
‘Englischmann’ [sic] were bestowed on
This is heady stuff, affording just the
them, and when a wretched animal
right amount of excitement, and con-
possessed the last it seemed to me there
vincing everybody that this expedition
was more emphasis in shouting it out,
was going to be a breeze.
and more venom in the lash when
applying it.”
The first clash of the war had
occurred when the Natal Native
Contingent sent out on reconnoiter in
an empty landscape finally spotted a
party of Zulus. The conduct of one
H is column having only
advanced about ten miles
in ten days, on Jan 20th
Chelmsford set up camp beneath the
jagged rock of Isandlwana, described
officer, Lieutenant Charles Harford of by one of the officers as “queer shaped,
the 9 9 th regiment, a keen amateur like a Sphinx lying down.”
biologist, is described by his superior, On receiving scouting reports that
Commandant George Hamilton an enemy force of undetermined
Browne: strength had been encountered in the
Mangeni gorge, Chelmsford sets out on
We were in rather a hot corner and the morning of the 22nd at 3 a.m.,
he was standing to my right rear with 2,500 men and four guns. His
when I heard an exclamation, and fear was that the Zulus would sneak
turning saw him lying on the past him and hit Natal. He thus com-
92 Policy Review
Books
mits the cardinal mistake of dividing Meanwhile, King Cetshwayo, hav-
his force. ing rejected advice to mount a counter
He commits a second mistake in not raid into British territory — he wanted
ordering the camp at Isandlwana Chelmsford to be the aggressor —
laagered, i.e, protected behind a square instead had ordered his lieutenants to
of wagons, instead leaving the soldiers creep up on the British, taking advan-
and their tents out in the open. Having tage of the landscape. “Perhaps the
brushed off prior Boer warnings about greatest Zulu masterstroke was to
the need to laager at every halt, he had move some 25,000 men undetected to
stated, “Oh, British troops are all right;
we do not need to laager — we have a Chelmsford had faith in
different formation.” his army’s breech-
Chelmsford had great faith in his
firepower, supplied by the army’s loading Martini-Henry
breech-loading Martini-Henry rifle. rifle. “The first experience
“The first experience of the Martini
Henrys will be such a surprise to the
of the Martini Henrys will
Zulus that they will not be formidable be such a surprise to the
after the first effort.” Admittedly, his
Zulus that they will
own Regulations for Field Forces in
South Africa required that camps be not be formidable after
laagered and “partially entrenched on the first effort.”
all sides,” but according to Knight that
only applied to more permanent camps. within eight kilometers of the British
The underestimating of native forces camp — and the greatest British short-
by professional officers was not coming their failure, despite extensive
uncommon: Three years before, when patrolling, to intercept them,” writes
going against the Lakota Sioux, Custer Knight.
had omitted to bring along Gatling Having finally been spotted, the
guns and declined the offer of four Zulu impi moved at once on the camp,
extra cavalry companies, bragging that before having completed their rituals.
he could “whip any Indian village on Zulu tactics involved the impi being
the plains.” deployed in the ox formation, consist-
To make matters worse, Colonel ing of two horns that would envelop
Durnford, the commander of the sec- the enemy on the flanks, while the
ond column, had been ordered to main body formed the chest. Its war-
Isandlwana, presumably to reinforce riors were armed with assegai thrusting
the camp. But when he arrived, there spears, man-sized cowhide shields,
were no explicit orders awaiting him. clubs, and throwing spears. Some car-
Receiving confused reports including ried ancient rifles and muskets; only a
one that an enemy force was moving few had Martini-Henrys, but did not
towards Chelmsford, Durnford decided understand how to operate the rear
to move out with his men to protect sights.
Chelmsford’s rear. Thus the force at The camp commander, Lieutenant
Isandlwana was divided a second time. Colonel Henry Pulleine, hearing shots
June & July 2011 93

Books
on his left flank, and receiving reports Having failed to react to the first
of Durnford’s men falling back on his report of the attack, Chelmsford’s
right under heavy attack, ordered his force was too scattered to mount a
men to line up on both sides of the field quick rescue. When Chelmsford’s look-
guns. Smith-Dorrien again provides the out suddenly realized that the tents
soundtrack, describing the attackers had disappeared in his telescope, he
emitting “a curious, humming-buzzing knew it was all over. Only about 100
noise”: “They were giving vent to no men got away, and these were all on
loud war cries, but to a low, musical horseback.
murmuring noise, which gave the
impression of a gigantic swarm of bees,
getting nearer and nearer.”
The 24th Infantry was an experi-
enced regiment. Rather than blazing
away independently, Knight notes,
B ack at the depot at the
mission station at Rorke’s
Drift, Lieutenant John
Chard, an engineer, was temporarily in
charge of the garrison with Lieutenant
they were trained to fire slow and Gonville Bromhead as his second in
deliberate, as volleys delivered in this command. Both were regarded as
way had a devastating impact. A rather dull and unambitious officers;
recent archaeological find of a group Bromhead came from an old military
of bullets neatly bunched together on family, but was indolent and half-deaf
top of each other suggests “a calm and to boot.
unhurried manner.” But the British Rather than flee, which with men
were too few and too spread out, sick in the hospital was considered
“pretty, but too extended,” in the hopeless, it was decided to defend the
words of one lieutenant. And mission station, consisting of a store, a
Durnford’s men being out on the right kraal, and a hospital. Chard ordered an
meant that the defenders were in effect improvised defense barrier to be
“fighting two separate battles.” thrown up, consisting of mealie sacks,
While this was happening, the right biscuit tins, and two wagons. In case
horn of the impi had snuck around and the outer defense line should collapse,
fell on the camp from behind. “The he also ordered that an inner perimeter
Zulus came on us like ants from all be prepared to withdraw to. Amid
sides,” notes one of the survivors. these activities, the native troops desert-
According to Knight, the men formed ed, leaving him with 152 men.
“receive cavalry squares,” infantry Disobeying Cetshwayo’s orders, the
practice when in a tight spot, with the Zulu reserve under prince
soldiers standing shoulder to shoulder Dabulamanzi, eager to get in on the
with the officers in the middle. But kill, crossed the river and entered Natal
with the tents having “collapsed like a with 4 , 0 0 0 warriors. Contrary to
pack of cards,” the jumble of tent poles Isandlwana, this time their attack was
and ropes prevented them from form- noiseless and ghostlike. James
ing up properly. They ended up defend- Reynolds, the surgeon, described the
ing themselves “with just their pockets sight: “On they came at the same slow
knives, or with their fists,” according to slinging trot, their heads forward, their
a Zulu warrior. arms outspread, and all in a dead
94 Policy Review
Books
silence. Here and there a black body he felt as if he was walking on air,
doubled up, and went writhing and as he never expected to see daylight
bouncing in the dust; but the great host again . . . In front of the verandah
came steadily on.” and outside the hospital and near
Here the British fire discipline and the two blue gum trees the Zulu
superior marksmanship asserted itself. bodies were lying three deep.
Trooper Harry Lugg reported “some Gunny especially pointed out one
of the best shooting at 450 yards” he young Zulu Induna with a plume
ever saw, while in the hand-to-hand head dress, telling me that he was a
fighting at the barricade the bayonet very gallant man, and had headed a
was put to furious use. Curiously, charge three times. “But we got
notes Knight, for people used to using him the third time.”
the assegai, the Zulus seemed to fear
the bayonet more than the bullets.
They believed themselves immune to
bullets, thanks to the ritual medicine,
but the bayonet proved a man’s mor-
tality most convincingly.
After fierce fighting, the hospital, its
I n the battle of Isandlwana,
according to official figures
quoted by the author, 7 2 7
white troops and 471 black troops per-
ished on the British side. The Zulu fig-
straw roof on fire, had to be aban- ure is unknown. At Rorke’s Drift, the
doned, with everybody retreating to the British had fifteen killed and two mor-
inner perimeter in front of the store- tally wounded, while the Zulus suffered
house. In addition, Chard had ordered an estimated 1,000 killed or wounded.
a pyramid-shaped redoubt built of In recognition of bravery, a survivor
mealie sacks, from the hollow top of from Isandlwana, Private Samuel
which sharpshooters could fire over the Wassall, was awarded a Victoria Cross
heads of their fellow defenders. for saving a fellow trooper. Lieutenants
Throughout, the Reverend Smith was Melville and Coghill, who had tried to
making himself useful by passing out save the colors of the 2 4 th, later
ammunition, praying for salvation, and retrieved from the river, got theirs
admonishing the men not to cuss: posthumously in 1 9 0 6 , after the
“Don’t swear, men, don’t swear, but statutes had been amended following
shoot them, boys, shoot them.” This is lobbying by family members.
surely what is meant by “muscular Isandlwana, of course, also pro-
Christianity.” duced its cowards, among them
After numerous assaults, the attacks Lieutenant Higginson, who, grabbing
faltered around midnight, and around somebody else’s horse, in true
four they stopped. The Zulus reap- Flashman fashion managed to leave
peared briefly, but vanished, not men behind him on three occasions.
because of recognition of the bravery of (Needless to say, Flash himself was pre-
the defenders, as suggested in the sent in both battles, as briefly told in
movie, but because they spotted Flashman and the Tiger.)
Chelmsford’s force on the horizon. The defenders at Rorke’s Drift were
When surveying the field after the awarded eleven Victoria Crosses.
battle, Bromhead told a colleague that Chard and Bromhead became the toast
June & July 2011 95

Books
of London, though not everybody was which, despite Knight’s scrupulous
impressed. Jealous colleagues still saw evenhandedness, make it hard to warm
them as lackluster officers and General to the Zulus. All the horses were killed
Sir Garnet Wolseley grumbled, “It is as well, but that at least had a military
monstrous making heroes of those rationale, “because they were the feet
who, shut up in buildings at Rorke’s of the white men.”
Drift, could not bolt, and fought like
rats for their lives which they could not
otherwise save.” In Knight’s opinion,
the point about the defenders at
Rorke’s Drift is that they were ordinary
men, who rose in spectacular fashion to
D efeats demand scape-
goats. The most convenient
was Colonel Durnford,
since he was dead and therefore could
not defend himself. As an engineer, he
the occasion. was blamed for an insufficient grasp of
The battles inspired Victorian tactics. But as Knight points out, he did
artists. From the battle of Isandlwana, not interfere in Pulleine’s dispositions
the Irish painter R.T Moynan has a and had only arrived an hour before
solitary soldier killed in the “self-confi- the attack. He did take his troops with
dent martyrdom” typical of the him when leaving again, but the ulti-
Victorian age, as Knight puts it. mate responsibility rests with
Equally popular motifs were Chelmsford, Knight notes, for sloppy
Lieutenants Melville and Coghill’s staff work and ambiguous orders.
“dash with the colors,” depicted with Obviously, setbacks to British imper-
varying degrees of accuracy — one ver- ial power could not be tolerated: The
sion has them surrounded by exotic Zulus had to be vanquished, and hence
jungle. From Rorke’s Drift, the burn- a new force was assembled. A new
ing hospital forms the dramatic back- commander, Sir Garnet Wolseley, had
ground in the best known renderings. also been picked, but Chelmsford man-
Among the myths Knight disposes of aged to defeat the Zulu army in the
was the rumor the Zulus used torture battle of Ulundi on July 4 , 1 8 7 9 ,
at Isandlwana. There were no tortured before Wolseley could take charge.
drummer boys, as the Victorians Nevertheless, the Duke of Cambridge
believed, but there was mutilation saw to it that Chelmsford never com-
galore, as Zulu custom holds that the manded troops in battle again.
spirit residing inside a man must be set As for army procedures, a revised
free by ripping his belly open. In addi- edition of Chelmsford’s Regulations
tion, a Zulu quoted admits that “some was published in February 1879, mak-
of our bad men cut away the lower ing the laagering of camps obligatory
jaws of those white men who had “when halting, though but for a few
beards and decorated their heads with hours.” All too often, military wisdom
them.” It is practices such as these comes at a high price.
96 Policy Review
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POLICYReview june & july 2011, No. 167, $6.

THE CONSTITUTION AND ITS CRITICS

AFGHANISTAN: AMERICA’S WAR

COUNTERING BEIJING IN THE

ALSO: ESSAYS AND REVIEWS BY

The Hoover Institution’s overarching purposes are:

Ideas have consequences, and a free flow of competing ideas leads

In the words of President Hoover:

51 COUNTERING BEIJING IN THE SOUTH CHINA SEA

78 LIBERAL INTERNATIONALISM AND FREEDOM

85 THE ROOTS OF THE 2008 ECONOMIC COLLAPSE

90 BRITISH, ZULUS, AND TWO LEGENDARY BATTLES

Policy Review ® (issn 0146-5945) is published bimonthly by the

Subscription information: For new orders, call or write the

Thomas J. Main is an associate professor at Baruch College’s School of Public

June & July 2011 3 Policy Review

Congress and the separation of powers

E qual representation of all states in the Senate seems to most

June & July 2011 5

June & July 2011 7

It is this behemoth of organizational and political capacity that critics and

N o r i s t h at all. While the Constitution’s critics consider

June & July 2011 9

The separation’s utility

I n short, the constitutional critics once again turn out to be unen-

June & July 2011 11

W e come down then to the matter of value judgments. We

June & July 2011 13

Dahl then comments on this passage:

In this context, Madison’s use of the word “directly” has nothing to do

There is considerable debate on the question to what degree is the

June & July 2011 15

A reform conversation worth having

June & July 2011 17

McChrystal’s phrase — which, we will see, is a superficial interpretation

June & July 2011 19 Policy Review

Counterinsurgency operations, like any other military activity, should be

Where did coin come from?

T here were counterinsurgencies long before there was

June & July 2011 21

There is one obvious component of the answer. The 19th-century experi-

Yet when Chiang Kai-shek’s armies surrounded Mao’s forces in 1934,

June & July 2011 23

June & July 2011 25

Even after Kennedy’s assassination in November 1963, coin retained

The Iraq Surge narrative and ‘fm 3–24’

T he counterinsurgency field manual prepared in 2006

June & July 2011 27

Ignoring the metrics of the Afghan war

Such metrics have to be looked at carefully. In some areas, Afghans have

June & July 2011 29

The emergence of perspectival culture

C ounterinsurgency theory could not have been formulat-

June & July 2011 31

Putting the genie back in the bottle?

W r i t i n g a b o u t du c h a m p in a recent issue of the New

June & July 2011 33

June & July 2011 35

May 2011, 148 p

Christina Hoff Sommers is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise

June & July 2011 37 Policy Review

June & July 2011 39

June & July 2011 41

Back to the future

Policy Review - June & July 2011, No. 167

Policy Review - June & July 2011, No. 167