Libya's Inevitability

In the weeks leading up to allied intervention in the Libyan conflict, I felt a growing anxiety for the people in Benghazi, Tripoli, and points between. It was frustrating to watch the UN and Western diplomats bat around details of military encroachment onto foreign soil while a burgeoning resistance movement was getting pounded into dust by Qadaffi’s complement of Soviet-era jets and paid mercenaries. We all felt that. And now that we’re in the middle of this conflict, we're all feeling some serious buyer’s remorse.

Why so much doubt? Money and ongoing military obligations are worth mentioning. Lack of moral consistency is a good reason to doubt the West’s intent. The idea of an innocent nation being crushed under the boot of some deluded madman is reprehensible. Some critics point to situations in Congo, Cote d’Ivoire, and several other locations, noting how they can be accurately described in those same terms. There is a fairly clear moral equivalence in these scenarios, but the impetus for the West to respond could not be more different. The endless factional horrors of Sub-Saharan Africa are as bad or worse as the situation in Libya, but lacking in several factors that lead to foreign military intervention. Oil is certainly important, but it’s not the only factor in play here. How important was oil to Southeast European intervention in the 90s? Freedom is something we all like. But how can we countenance friendly relations with thugs elsewhere? Trade relations rationalize all sorts of moral inconsistency, the world over.

An overlooked difference between our indifference to Sub-Saharan Africa is public consciousness. US and other Western powers decision to become embroiled in a given conflict has as much to do with the zeitgeist as it does to the acquisition of resources, ideology, or morality. US intervention in Latin America in the 70s and 80s, however cruel, moral, or justified, was driven in large part by its proximity to our shores. But proximity is only one factor that plays into public consciousness. US involvement in the Balkan conflicts, while far from home, were at the gates of Europe, in the same land that touched off the First World War. We choose our conflicts in large part by how strongly they are perceived by the global public. In many ways, it feels like we were bound to get involved in Libya, for better or worse. Why?

First, in case it you missed it, the past decade has been a running narrative of conflicts in the Mid-East. News out of that region has flowed in a ticker at the bottom of the TV screen ever since September 11, 2001. We have hundreds of thousands of Western troops scattered across the region, trillions of dollars in sunk costs from that military intervention, and trillions more tied up in our energy supply. Trade matters. Not to mention the ongoing low-grade menace of terrorism. With some small exceptions, none of this can be said of Sub-Saharan Africa.

Second, there’s Al Jazeera, Twitter, and Facebook. For whatever reason, these media are ubiquitous across the Arab world. No dictator can repress a story there. No citizen can be without contact with the outside world indefinitely. No story of victory or defeat can go untold in the West. All of the suffering and triumph is ours to witness, ours to ignore, ours to get bogged down in. People drown all the time, but few would ignore a drowning person if they were shouting for your help right in front of you. Oil and morality aside, these conflicts have an in-your-face quality that's impossible to ignore.

Third, something big is happening to this region. Really big. An elemental shift is taking place in nations whose political, social, and economic institutions have been stagnant for decades, if not centuries. Each nation’s story is different from the next, but an outcry is heard across them all. If we end up on the wrong side of this change, supporting callous and calcified rulers over the youth who will one day inherit their power, we will be in big trouble. Would sanctions and UN resolutions convince these people of our commitment? Would Qadaffi respond rationally to diplomatic approaches?

I don’t know what’s going to happen here, but I have trouble imagining a positive outcome emerging out of the West doing nothing. Regardless, even if Libya decays into a drawn-out civil war, endless tribal conflicts, or Somali-style anarchy, there was some inevitability to our involvement. We don’t have much of a vision for where things were headed, but who does? We don’t have control over the situation, but we have considerable influence, and in such a fluid situation, how smart is a solid plan? Is public distaste for another drawn-out foreign conflict enough of a counterweight to the prospect endless involvement in Libya? Maybe, maybe not. Will the French and the British take things over? I hope so. I have a lot of doubt about where this is going, but what were the alternatives to the path we took?

Japan Looking Forward

Located at the confluence of several major tectonic plates, Japan gets earthquakes. Being the most homogenous industrialized society on Earth, Japanese culture is more susceptible to cultural seismic shifts as well. The Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 is often cited as one such shift in Japan's history.

Many historians point to the Kanto Earthquake as the moment where necessity catalyzed massive modernization of infrastructure and industrialization, and with it, the Japanese nationalism responsible for their participation in the Second World War.

Pan-societal tragic events are a major theme of the past century of Japanese history. No living generation has escaped the horrors of war, natural, and nuclear disaster. At each turn, Japan's social cohesiveness has allowed the nation to bounce back, and even to capitalize on such moments.

In the US, different elements of society react to tragedy in different ways. After 9/11, some people became more nationalistic and inward-focused, while others saw that moment as a call to embrace Western pluralism. The cultural changes resulting out of tragedy are often canceled out by opposing forces in American society. Japan's history of uniform reactions to tragedy can manifest themselves as in unimaginably good and bad ways.

But this time for Japan, it is uniformity itself that will have to change. To rebuild, Japan will need foreign labor and capital. In a global economy, Japan cannot afford to mobilize its own citizens to clear debris and pour concrete. Second, Japanese debt levels, largely sustained by their own citizens' investments in national bonds, cannot continue.

Pressures on the national budget in health and pensions were bad enough before the disaster. Now more than ever, Japan must retain its comparative advantage in capital-intensive markets like electronics and pharmaceuticals if it is to have any economic future. East Asia stands ready with boundless human resources primed to work on infrastructural recovery. East Asia is also a vast market for services that an educated, outward-looking Japanese workforce can and should provide. After centuries of fairly justifiable animosity towards Japan, China's eagerness to offer assistance is a leading indicator of how Japan's relationship with its neighbors is about to change.

If an aging workforce, debt, and economic pressure were not good reasons to trigger social change, this moment is. The very characteristic that has been responsible for the nation's dynamism is now a major long-term threat to their prosperity. This time, Japan cannot do it on their own. Japan needs diversity, and not just to repair itself, but also to rejuvenate itself, and to open new markets to new products.

Japanese society will never be the same again.

Smart is Stupid

I come from a background where one of the greatest virtues a person can have is being smart. By smart, I mean some combination of high test scores and a little original thinking, nested in a fairly conformist, eager-to-please personality.

It's smart to think logically. "Common sense is for the common man." But how do you change common sense? With logic?

It's smart to go along with the assumptions made by other smart people because they're probably older and more powerful than you. "Don't publish that. You'll never write again in this town." But how are ideas challenged?

It's smart to suppress all but the most restrained emotions. "For heaven's sake, don't get mad. You'll end up with a criminal record or worse yet, ostracized." But how does a lack of passion get people on your side, or spell out what's right or wrong?

For the record, I'm guilty of mindlessly working towards all of these ideals of smartness.

But I'm reminded again and again by others in this struggle just how limiting this fixation on smartness can be to keeping an open mind for oneself, or for opening the minds of others. Sure, I want a smart guy performing brain surgery, but do I want him as a leader? I can't count how many times I've heard that people in the hinterlands are stupid, uneducated, or don't know what's good for them. I won't attempt to refute any of that here. Why? Because it's mostly irrelevant. Here's why smart doesn't matter so much:

1. People with decent social skills, a middle-class background, and a work ethic are just as likely (if not more) to become rich and powerful. Being smart isn't in the top three. A 1600 on the SATs doesn't help you make eye contact, give you connections, or give you motivation to do things you don't want to do but have to. Neither does the high-falutin college degree that follows.

2. All people, smart or stupid, are allowed to vote. We all have the same rights to a decent life. An intelligence test at the ballot box might lead to a smarter government, but it's unfathomably immoral. Which means: If you want someone to vote the way you vote, you need to change their minds.

3. If the NPR bi-coastal set is so smart, why can't they convince stupid people to believe what they believe? How smart can you be if nobody cares about your ideas? It seems pretty stupid to keep rattling on about what's logical, parsimonious, or prudent when people understand things in stories, or on moral terms.

It's time for everybody who aspires to smartness to step back and consider some other virtues.
Emotions matter, and not just as some formality of communication. Emotions motivate people to do things, like voting for the smart guy you want in power. Logic just says whether something makes sense or not.

Having real respect for everyone, no matter how smart or stupid they are, matters. Nothing kills a movement like bad faith. People will one day realize just how cynical and condescending the other side is. They will see their leaders as they are: Ivy League oilmen and Wall Street insiders putting on an "aw shucks" demeanor. People will feel mass revulsion for being played for saps. But not until someone else offers them some real respect.

Franklin Roosevelt was as elitist as they come, but he spoke to people. He really cared about what they thought, or how they felt. It wasn't an empty exercise. At least that's how it looked. People don't hate elites or intellectuals-- they hate people who treat them like they're not.

It's time for some humility. Smart doesn't matter as much as we might think. We're not as great as our test scores or our abilities to reason. We're as great as our influence on the world.