No time for substantive commentary tonight, but I wanted to point my readers to four articles worth their time. All concern life before the Neolithic Revolution - that is, human society before the advent of agriculture and the civilizations built upon it. 

There are many common misconceptions about hunter-gather societies. This is partly because there are so few left; in the grand contest between agricultural and hunter gatherer society the agriculturalists won. By the twentieth century the only hunter gatherer societies left were those  found in remote environments where agriculture had trouble taking hold. These societies (e.g. San and !Kung bushmen, Aboriginal Australians, the Hazda, or the Inuits) received considerable popular and anthropological attention during the 20th century. Consequently, the small group size, egalitarian social structures, and nomadic life style of these groups are strongly associated with hunter-gatherer society in the mind of most moderns. Many assume that the life style and social structures of these group reflect the general state of humanity before the Neolithic Revolution. 

This assumption is flawed.  The hunter-gatherer societies studied by 20th century ethnographers lived in environments of extreme resource scarcity (e.g. the Kalahari desert or the Canadian tundra). Even today few people live in these regions. This was just as true in the Neolithic.  Most humans would be found in more hospitable environments. What would hunter-gatherer societies there be like?  

Archeologists have searched for the answer to this question. What they have found upturns many of these assumptions about the nature of hunter-gather society. Well before agriculture arrives on the scene, we see evidence of inequality and social stratification, large migrations and displaced peoples, and ritual centers and buildings built of stone. Each of the following articles touches upon one of these these examples:

...About 40,000 years ago humans began developing more complex tools and behaviors, and about 10,000 years ago, agriculture and animal domestication. For a long time researchers believed that these latter innovations, by greatly increasing the volume, reliability, and storability of food resources, were prerequisites for the development of socioeconomic inequality. However, the people of Keatley Creek still made their living by hunting, foraging, and most importantly for this story, fishing. They didn’t have agriculture or domesticated animals, except for dogs. What spurred the rise of inequality in that setting? Read the whole thing-->

Most likely humans who lived in the Fertile Crescent had already known about techniques needed to intensify plant production, but for reasons we have discussed, did not deploy them. The new conditions of widespread warfare, however, imposed an intense selection regime for larger group size, because the best way to ensure tribal survival was to have more warriors. Growing their own food enabled human groups to raise more warriors and concentrate them within larger war bands. Such groups then expanded at the expense of groups that didn’t have agriculture. So we have a typical process of evolution by cultural group selection.

Why was the cultural group selection necessary? Because you cannot switch to farming when everybody else in your group is foraging. The whole group needs to shift to farming together and to acquire a new set of cultural norms, most notably, private property rights. Bowles and Choi in their paper model how this dual switch can occur. 

However, more is needed. Switching to farming makes evolutionary sense only if it leads to a larger tribe size, which is key for surviving under conditions of intense intertribal warfare. But it is not easy to keep a large group of people internally cohesive. You need a new type of social glue.

In his recent articles, including one on the Social Evolution Forum, Harvey Whitehouse argues that large-scale human societies can build up cohesion by inventing and conducting regular symbolic, or ‘doctrinal’ rituals that bring together large numbers of people. Everything we know about Göbekli Tepe suggests that it was used precisely for such rituals, and that it served a very large ritual community. It took many hundreds of people to build the monument, so there had to be a large community numbering in many thousands, since somebody had to provide the food. And it brought together population from a large area.

The cultural group selection logic also explains why agriculture was adopted despite its huge health costs. Groups of poorly nourished and perhaps even chronically sick, but numerous farmers exterminated healthy and tall foragers because of the group size advantage. So individual fitness (both in the evolutionary sense, and in the common sense of physical fitness) declined, but the evolutionary fitness of the group increased, and that is what drove the whole process....  Read the whole thing-->

The best example against the language/farming dispersal hypothesis comes from Australia. Pama-Nyungan languages once covered about 7/8 of Australia's territory, including the entire east, west, south, and centre. Pama-Nyungan is a well-supported genetic entity and its languages show close relationships to one another, demonstrating that this is a family that spread relatively recently - in the mid-Holocene, perhaps, at around the same time as Indo-European. Only Tasmania and Arnhemland preserved non-Pama-Nyungan languages, and even that latter swampy, tropical land was penetrated by Yolngu, a Pama-Nyungan language on the northern tip.

Modern Pama-Nyungan speakers are also much more likely to carry the HTLV-1 retro-virus than non-Pama-Nyungan speakers, and as this is inherited, at least in part, we are probably looking at the expansion of a group of people - or at the very least we can say that the speakers of Pama-Nyungan languages share a high degree of inherited material. This means that the expansion must have been more like true migration than advection, although of course the reality of it was probably quite complicated (as it is with any language family). Just so you're in no doubt, this means that the Pama-Nyungan expansion is attested to by both linguistic and biogenetic evidence.

Now, Australians didn't develop agriculture before Europeans arrived, so we can't link the expansion to the domestication of any grains or animals or whatever else. This is one of the few language family expansions that we can say right off the bat had absolutely no connection to agriculture. The trouble is, the model proposed by linguists is a little old and as far as I can tell, it doesn't fit perfectly with the archaeological evidence as we now have it.... Read the whole thing-->

This video is worth your time. It is long. But it is worth your time. 
   

A longer post on similar themes is in the works. Until that post is completed this is an excellent place to begin the discussion.


FURTHER READING

"The New American Divide" 
Charles Murray. Wall Street Journal. 21 January 2012.

A lengthy newspaper adaptation of Mr. Murray's book, Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010, which includes both the main argument and many of the data points discussed above. 

"Growing Class Gaps in Social Connectedness Among American Youth"
Robert D. Putnam, Carl Frederick, and Kaisa Suelman. Saguaro Seminar: Civic Engagement in America. 8 August 2012. 

This is study that Mr. Putnam uses as the foundation for his remarks. 

Image Credit: Washington Post,

Interesting things happen in Asia. Over the last few months a lot of interesting things have happened. Yet as 2013 rolls forward I find myself increasingly dissatisfied with the standard explanations  American commentators rely on to explain Asia's great power politicking. This post presents a few themes neglected by many analysts but nevertheless critical to understanding Asian geopolitics. The observations I offer are very candid.  I group these observations along three broad themes: 

1)When Historical Memory Matters
2) Pivots Have Consequences 
3) Profit and Peace on the Korean Peninsula

While each of these sections touches upon affairs in the entire region, each point has a natural national focus. The first section centers on China, the second Japan, and the third Korea.  

1. When Historical Memory Matters. 

A few weeks ago I had a conversation with an old friend from Hong Kong. When she reported that a card game version of Romance of the Three Kingdoms was all the rage among the city's well to do young 20-somethings, I took the opportunity to lodge my characteristic complaint about the dearth of books on Chinese military history published in English.

"Can you believe that there isn't a single history of the Three Kingdoms in the English language? [1] They've translated the San Guo Yan Yi, but it is the fictional version, not the real thing. Maybe I will just have to go and write the book myself."

"You should! Put all of that history in your head to use somewhere."

"Ah, but I have enough trouble as it is with Chinese.  To write a book like that I would need to learn Japanese as well - all of the best histories of the period are written in Japanese."

Her reaction was sharp and immediate. 

"You can't believe anything the Japanese say about history. Don't you know the lies they put in their history text books and teach in their schools?"

"But those books are about the Second World War. When it comes to the Three Kingdoms Period it is much easier for the Japanese to be even-handed. They were not participants."

"I could never trust the Japanese when it comes to history. They are not honest with the past and their leaders are not trustworthy. You do know what the Japanese did in Nanjing?"

"Yes, I know what happened in Nanjing and I know what Prime Minister Abe has been saying about it. But you cannot condemn the entire Japanese people for something that happened 60 years ago. Heck, the Japanese I am friends with are the least aggressive people I know!"

And on it went, I trying to convince her that the Japanese public takes the values set forth in their constitution seriously, and she insistent that Japan is as jingoistic and dishonest as nations come. The conversation was surprising and a tad disconcerting; my friend was not a backwater provincial hoodwinked by PRC education and censorship, but a free citizen of Hong Kong educated (in the field of political science no less!) in the United States.  The conversation was a sharp, personal reminder that Americans and Chinese have very different perceptions of Japan's place in history.

Most Americans who know enough about Asia to distinguish Japan from other Asian nations associate the country with harmless novelties. The Japanese are the kind of people who eat fish without cooking it, like robots a little too much, are altogether more polite than they need to be, use really complicated emoticons, have the quirkiest game shows on the planet, buy underwear from vending machines, and are crazy enough to not just invent Hello Kitty, but build a theme park devoted to her. If Japanese militarism registers with Americans at all, it is usually for the sake of a few laughs:

This image of the Japanese as the quirky game show contestants of the world, combined with 50 years of peaceful alliance, have dispelled any lingering trust issues Americans might have about the country or its people. Indeed, when the Pew Global Attitudes Project asked Americans what countries they trusted most, Japan came second only to Great Britain. [2]

Things are seen differently in China. Between 1937 and 1945 some 10 to 20 million men, women, or children died because of Japanese campaigns. That is more than 20 times the number of Americans who died in that terrible global war. [3] The Chinese have been slow to move past these horrors. Chinese pop culture ensures that even those born long after these events took place are well acquainted with their details. While American film makers feel a moral obligation to tell the story of the Second World War from the Japanese perspective, Chinese directors have no such compunctions. In Chinese cinema, Japanese people are most commonly depicted as vicious and vulgar soldiers who make perfect cannon fodder for the hero of the tale. [4]


Noting the clear differences between the way Americans and Chinese people think about Japan is not novel. Most observers recognize these historical tensions. Less recognized is the way these tensions and narratives shape the decisions made by the leaders of Asia's great powers.

Consider the recent border dispute between India and China. Three weeks ago a PLA platoon crossed 19km over the border between Aksai Chin and Ladakh and set up camp. In New Delhi there was a minor political crisis; for three weeks Indian media personalities, opposition politicians, analysts, and military men protested and pontificated. In China things were different. There was no heated rhetoric emanating from Beijing. The Chinese press was silent; the dispute was covered on the margins, never reaching the front page. Even though the dispute ended on terms favorable to China, the usual wave of national triumphalism just waiting to erupt on Weibo never came. More important matters had captured the Chinese imagination: the week Chinese troops withdrew the Global Times and Peoples Daily published op-eds by Chinese academics questioning Japan's claim to Okinawa and the Ryukyu islands.

Notice the gap between the percentage who feel that China's  relationship with Japan is "hostile" and the  percentage that believes the same thing about  Sino-Indian relations. Source: Pew Global Attitudes Project.  "Growing Concerns in China about Inequality, Corruption."  (Washington: Pew Research Center). 16 October 2012. p. 13.

All of this reflects broader Chinese attitudes towards Japan and India. Less than a fourth of Chinese citizens surveyed by Pew believe that China has a hostile relationship with India; more than double that number believe  China and Japan's relationship is marked by hostility. There is little evidence to suggest that these feelings come from government propaganda efforts. The reverse is true: government propaganda uses these beliefs to bolster the government's legitimacy.  Narrative is at the crux of the problem. "China Dream" [5] is Xi Jinping's spin on this narrative, but its contours have been adopted by the Chinese elite for at least a decade. "China is resurgent, returning, taking back its former glory. The imperialist nations that shamed China will never do so again."

The legitimacy of the Chinese government rests on its ability to live up to this narrative. As long as this is the dominant narrative pushed by leaders of the CCP, Beijing will stands its ground when facing national embarrassment at the hand of old enemies. And none of China's imperialist enemies was so malicious in its heyday or infamous in the present as the Japanese Empire.


2. Pivots Have Consequences

That is the Chinese side of things. Lets turn to their rivals across the sea.

The Japanese have been spectacularly active diplomats in 2013. Over the last few months they have restarted talks with the Russian government to reach an official peace agreement, agreed to give the Philippines a set of $11 billion dollar patrol boats to ensure Chinese ships stay out of Filipino waters, struck a deal allowing Taiwanese ships to fish near the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands, doubled the number of jets scrambled over the South China Sea, declared that the Japanese Self Defense Force has the right to develop pre-emptive strike capabilities, sent a flurry of ambassadors and special representatives to ASEAN member states, joined the American led Pacific-free trade negotiations, placed its final touches on a nuclear plant capable of producing nuclear grade weapons, invested its reserves in the South East Asian bonds market, held bilateral talks with Vietnam on maritime security, set up a fund for investing in Myanmar's infrastructure and reaffirmed its promise to waive the $6 billion dollars of debt Myanmar owed the Japanese government, and announced that it would begin talks to strike a trade deal with Mongolia while building the country a new world-class airport.

This flurry in diplomatic activity has surprised many observers; Tokyo's current energy stands in marked contrast to the moribundity that defined its foreign policy over the last decade. Washington has been positively alarmed with Japan's activities and has not kept their discomfort secret.

What accounts for Tokyo's new found assertiveness? American observers tend to focus their answers on the person of Shinzo Abe. This focus is misplaced; many of these activities began well before Prime Minister Abe took his current office. Moreover, this is his second tour as Prime Minister. His first run did not display such vigor. Perhaps the man has changed. It is more likely that the position that he helms has changed instead.

Japan's strategic environment has changed in recent times. The change began on the other side of the Pacific when the Obama Administration declared its decision to "pivot" to Asia. Strategy is no different in America than it is elsewhere; to strategize is to prioritize, to open doors at the cost of closing others. The "pivot" to Asia was just such a choice. To pivot to is also to pivot away, and the administration's declaration was designed to assure America's Asian allies that they would take priority over the superpower's many other concerns. The primary audience for the announcement was the string of democracies that marks the Asian periphery. Why America sought their support was clear: central to the United States's strategic vision is a ring of solid allies to be arrayed against resurgent China if the need arises. Major Robert Chamberlain describes this strategy as "Containment Lite" in an essay for Armed Forces Journal:

The grand strategic solution to this challenge is “containment-lite.” In this approach, America seeks out smaller regional states threatened by China’s growing power and facilitates their balancing strategies by offering a much less threatening alternative than simply bandwagoning behind China’s regional aspirations. Thereby, American power in Asia is pooled with smaller states and incipient Chinese militarism is checked. However, unlike the Cold War, Chinese membership in regional organizations is encouraged, expanding Chinese trade is welcomed and Chinese economic growth is applauded. The goal is to raise the cost of militarizing international disputes such that the only rational Chinese alternative is to seek pacific resolution through the tools of economic or diplomatic power. [6]

As it turns out, America's allies were listening when the United States announced its pivot. Japan did more than listen; it acted.

First, the back-drop: a delicate dance between two jealous giants is little fun. For the last decade the Japanese, as acutely aware of China's rising power as anybody in Washington, has tried to court both suitors.  The source of some frustration in Washington, it is a game played by many of United State's friends.   Americans have little sympathy for their allies' dilemma; what Americans seem to forget is that the United States has the least to lose in all of this. If the dance does not go her way and China becomes the central hub of all Asia, America will still be a first class super power. She will retain a fully independent foreign policy. Even a disastrous war is unlikely to scar her cities or kill many of her people. The same cannot be said for India, Korea, Vietnam, the Philippines, or Japan.

Thus the uncomfortable position Japan found herself in - she could not move to closer to one giant without standing square in the firing line of the other. The American nuclear umbrella ensured that Washington would win out if the Japanese were forced to make a decision, but the Japanese were far less sure America would reciprocate. Heavy commitments in the Near East signaled Washington's true priorities. Japan could not afford to be assertive when its defensive line was so preoccupied.

The "rebalance to Asia" announcement made clear that these preoccupations were over. The Far East would be the focus now. Alas, if Washington hoped that publicly declaring the fact would increase American influence in the region then they were sorely mistaken. [7] The effect has been the opposite. By publicly guaranting American commitment to her allies' defense, the United States has given them the  space they need to pursue foreign policy goals with an independence they never would have employed when they knew that they would have to bear the consequences of their actions alone.

it is for this reason that suggestions like those made by the New York Time's editorial board asking Japan drop its "unnecessary nationalism" are not just arrogant; they are unrealistic. [8] While the Japanese might tone their rhetoric down for diplomacy's sake, there is no compelling reason for them to change their actions. If American designs in the region are to succeed then we need the Japanese. They know this. As Prime Minister Abe wrote a few weeks after assuming office: "In a period of American strategic rebalancing toward the Asia-Pacific region, the US needs Japan as much as Japan needs the US." [9]

American observers have been slow to realize the consequences of their pivot. [10] Peter Lee, who writes a column for the Asia Times Online, is one of the few to recognize the connection between American and Japanese policies. His analysis is compelling enough that I will break my customary rules and place their citation in the body of the post instead of burying them in the foot notes:

"Japan Stirs Campbell's U.S. Pivot Soup"
Peter Lee. Asian Times Online. 26 April 2013.

"U.S. Hoisted by its Own Pivot Petard"
Peter Lee. Asian Times Online. 10 May 2013.

"Fox Leads Tiger into China's Crosshairs"
Peter Lee. Asia Times Online. 17 May 2013.

Almost five years ago I suggested that America's relationship with China is not "the most important bilateral relationship in the world this century."[11] As I noted:

Our relationship with China is nowhere near as important as our relationship with another Asian country- Japan. ...Our relationship with Japan is the foundation of all other American activities in Asia. If we want to get our "Asia policy" right, we have to get our relationship with Japan right first. [12]

This judgment has aged surprisingly well. As recent events suggest, the real spark in the East Asian tinderbox is not China, but Japan. If our relations with Tokyo fail then our relations with Beijing will not succeed; to guide the rise of China is to manage the decline of Japan.  

This whole thing ought to serve as a cautionary tale for all of those think-tank types who hope to rope India into an alliance with the United States. When the leading members of India's foreign policy establishment published their strategic vision for the Deccan republic in Non-Alignment 2.0, American observers were shocked (shocked!) that India's relationship with the United States was relegated to a few stray bullet points. [13] The report puts China front and center, expressing skepticism that a stronger relationship with the United States would guarantee American aid once the bullets began to fly. Does Washington really want to change this perception? Is America prepared to defend and support an India whose foreign policy is as assertive as Japan's is proving to be?

 I do not think many have considered the question.

3. Profit and Peace on the Korean Peninsula  

The recent crisis in North and South Korean relations have brought international attention to the peninsula. Many editorials and opinion pieces were written in response, explaining how America can best temper the region's boiling tensions. No one has stopped to ask an important question: What interest does Washington have in defusing the situation?

Observers seem to miss just how well the status quo suits everyone involved. Running the thin line between war and peace is a dangerous game and it is a game that may prove harder to control than the interested parties anticipate. But who really wants a war on the Korean Peninsula? Who stands to profit by breaching the peace?

The North Korean regime does not. One has difficulty dreaming up a scenario where war does not end with the destruction of the regime all together. While totalitarian regimes do not have a great track record when it comes to acting in a rational manner, the North Koreans know the forces arrayed against them. They know what war will mean for them.

South Korea has no more reason for war than its adversary. South Korea is prosperous now; war would change that. They would suffer the brunt of the war's potentially catastrophic human cost, and would be saddled with the enormous burden of reconstructing a country scarred by war and decades of totalitarian rule. 

China, for its part, would lose a client state and face the justified extension of American military power right up to its front door (more on that in a bit).

This brings us to the United States and Japan. What do they have to lose if war comes to Korea? Korea itself.

This is another problem of historical memory. All of the grievances and historical baggage that the Chinese bring to their relations with Japan is matched or exceeded by the Koreans. It was Seoul, not Beijing, that withdrew its foreign minister from a scheduled trip to Tokyo after 168 members of the Diet visited the Yasukuni Shrine. Recent public opinion polls

Koreans protesting visits to the Yakusuni Shrine. Source: The Japan Times.

show that the Korean populace trusts China more than it does Japan. [14] Following the public's lead, Prime Minister Park will be the first Korean Prime Minister to visit Beijing before traveling to Tokyo first.

There are deep historical roots for all of this. Korea has been a part of the Chinese sphere since the Han Dynasty; the two have a history of presenting a united front in the face of Japanese provoactions since the Imjin War in the 1590s.The current alliance structure in Northeast Asia is a historical anomaly. In a world where the two Koreas are united in peace, there is no guarantee that Seoul would reject an offer to join hands with Beijing - especially if the offer was prompted by perceived Japanese aggression.

Fear of North Korea is the glue that binds South Korea, Japan, and the United States together. Washington has nothing to gain from war - but nor does the United States have much to gain from undisturbed peace. Tension keeps South Korea dependent on the alliance, and provides a pretense Japanese and the American statesmen can use to accomplish broader strategic goals. Consider, for example, the logistical maneuvers the two allies have put in place in response to North Korea's most recent provocations:

B-2 and B-52 bombers, radar-evading F-22s and anti-missile system vessels like the USS John S. McCain represented the initial U.S. response to North Korea's repeated, explicit threats to launch nuclear strikes against the United States.

The U.S. also said it would shift THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense System) to defend Guam from missile attack. And Tokyo's Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper said Japan would permanently deploy Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3) anti-missile systems in Okinawa to counter North Korean missiles. [15]

These weapon systems will aid South Korea, Japan, and the United States in a conflict with North Korea. They will also prove useful if relations with Beijing begin to sour.  

So to return to the original question: what interest does the United States have in resolving the situation on the peninsula? Very little. North Korea is just too useful of an enemy to lose.




[1] The obscene nature of this travesty is explained with more depth in T. Greer. "Troubles With the Chinese Military Tradition." The Scholar's Stage. 23 March 2013.

[2] Pew Global Attitudes Project. "U.S. Public, Experts, Differ on China Policies."(Washington:Pew Research Center).12 September 2012. p. 8. A recent article from The Diplomat provides a fair example of how American opinion makers perceive Japanese militarism:

One of the interesting outcomes of the postwar Constitution is that the public bought Article 9 and it has often been presented as a source of pride for Japanese—theirs is the one country to renounce war. In conversations with many Japanese over the years I have occasionally used the term “guntai” in reference to the SDF. I am always corrected that the SDF is “jietai” (or rikujô jietai for ground forces), meaning a self-defense force as opposed to the meaning of guntai, which refers to an army and implies offensive capabilities. I have been told that the U.S. has a guntai, while Japan does not. While from an American perspective, it is difficult to see the difference beyond the fact that the Japanese do not maintain offensive weapons like aircraft carriers—oh, right, they have helicopter carriers now—don't have ICBMs, and don’t participate in offensive actions alone or with their allies, from a Japanese perspective the difference is real and allows for the conceptualization of Japan as a country that does not maintain a military or at least not in a way that other countries do. In other words, Article 9 is a basis for a kind of Japanese exceptionalism built on the idea that Japan is the only country to renounce war.

John Traphogan. "Revising the Japanese Constitution." The Diplomat. 17 May 2013.

[3] Wikipedia has an informative entry on this topic. It lists the number of American dead as a bit less than 420,000.

[4] Anti-Japanese themes are not restricted to theaters; even more common are TV dramas devoted to the topic:

According to a local news report, 70 of the 200 primetime dramas on major TV networks in 2012 were about the Sino-Japanese War. Sources from Hengdian Movie and Television City [a drama and film production compound] in Zhejiang province said [zh] that among its 300,000 contracted actors, 60 percent have performed the role of Japanese soldiers.

Oiwan Lam. "China's Anti-Japanese TV War Dramas Knocked For Vulgarity." Global Voices Online. 14 April 2013. 

A collection of articles, essays, and blog post of merit.

This one is a bit smaller than normal; there are a few other posts or essays that deserve to go here, but I hope to devote entire posts to them at a later date. 

TOP BILLING:

"An Introduction to Historical Linguistics' - Terry Crowley and Claire Bowern. Part 1: Introduction" and "Part Two: Types of Sound Change: Lenition and Fortition"
Al West. West's Meditations. 13 May and 15 May 2013.

The reason historical linguistics is so important is because it is a well-established population science, meaning that we can infer historical relationships and activities from linguistic data. If two groups of people speak languages that are clearly related, we can infer that they share some kind of history. That's a very useful thing. In fact, linguistics is such a reliable indicator of shared history that some archaeologists and other non-linguists use language families (more about these later) as hooks on which to hang their theories - 'Austronesian' migration into southeast Asia with rice farming, etc. They're generally pretty reliable hooks.

I really want anthropologists, archaeologists, and geneticists to be conversant with this branch of the human sciences.... so what I'm going to do here is to re-read Crowley and Bowern's book and write about it for you. I'm using the fourth edition, published by OUP in 2010, for this series. I'm going to go through it chapter-by-chapter, noting the important ideas and key terms in each section. As this is an introductory text, and a summary of an introductory text at that, you shouldn't expect it to be in-depth, but it should be comprehensive, in that all relevant topics will be covered. It should serve as a mini-introduction to an introduction. An amuse-bouche for historical linguistics.

This is a fantastic introduction to a poorly understood topic. I eagerly await Mr. West's next installment.

THE REPUBLIC

"Biometric Databas of All American Adults Hidden in Immigration Reform Package"
David Kravets. Wired's Threat Level. 10 May 2013.

"Are all Telephone Calls Recorded and Accessible to U.S. Government?"
Genn Greenwald. The Guardian. 4 May 2013.

"Irony"
Mark Safranski. Zenpundit. 14 May 2013.


THE MIDDLE KINGDOM

"Long Battle of Over China's 'White Pollution' "
Shi Yunhan. Tea Leaf Nation. 26 April 2013.

In the past weeks, Chinese citizens have learnt that the styrofoam boxes from which they eat their lunches will soon be legal. On February 16, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), China’s highest economic policy-making body, changed the Industrial Restructuring Catalog (2011) and removed disposable foam plastic tableware from the list of banned products. On May 1, the fourteen-year ban will be formally removed. 

Ban? What ban? 

The fact that it had ever been illegal came as a surprise. Many Chinese did not know the widely prevalent tableware has in fact been banned.

Please read this whole article. The topic seems a bit pedestrian, but it reveals a lot about how the Chinese government deals with its people and how the people perceive the government.

"China's Unhealthy Elites"
Elanah Urestky. The National Interest. 30 April 2013.

See also: "Book Review: China's Economy, in Thrall to the Underworld." David Carligiano. Tea Leaf Nation. 13 May 2013.


CULTURE 

"New England vs. Midwest Culture"
George Mattel. The Urbanophile. 6 November 2012.

I have lived in both regions, and I affirm that everything Mr. Mattel writes is spot-on.

"The New Sick Man of Europe: The European Union"
Pew Global Attitude Project. 13 May 2013.

Support for European economic integration – the 1957 raison d’etre for creating the European Economic Community, the European Union’s predecessor – is down over last year in five of the eight European Union countries surveyed by the Pew Research Center in 2013. Positive views of the European Union are at or near their low point in most EU nations, even among the young, the hope for the EU’s future. The favorability of the EU has fallen from a median of 60% in 2012 to 45% in 2013. And only in Germany does at least half the public back giving more power to Brussels to deal with the current economic crisis.

"War Nerd: Our Ringer vs Your Ringers"
Gary Brecher. nsfwcorp. 8 May 2013.

Easily the best thing I have read on Syria all year. h/t hbd chick.


"The Beginning of the End for Hezbollah"
Michael J. Totten. World Affairs Journal. 22 April 2013.

"Back to Reality: Why Land Power Trumps in the Rebalance Towards Asia"
Maj. Robert Chamberlin. Armed Forces Journal. May 2013. h/t Information Dissemination. 




CLIMATE

"Provoked Scientists Explain Gap in Global Warming"
Paul Voosen. E&E Publishing. 25 October 2011.

"Sulfate Aerosols Cool Climate Less than Assumed"
Science Daily. 14 May 2013.

Drug war related deaths by state,  2007-2009. Image Source: Sean Connely et. al. "Mexico Under Siege." Los Angles Times interactive feature.

This week The Washington Post published an investigative report on the role U.S. intelligence agencies have played in Mexico's ongoing campaign against the drug cartels. This is their introduction to the topic:

For the past seven years, Mexico and the United States have put aside their tension-filled history on security matters to forge an unparalleled alliance against Mexico’s drug cartels, one based on sharing sensitive intelligence, U.S. training and joint operational planning.

But now, much of that hard-earned cooperation may be in jeopardy.

The December inauguration of President Enrique Peña Nieto brought the nationalistic Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) back to power after 13 years, and with it a whiff of resentment over the deep U.S. involvement in Mexico’s fight against narco-traffickers.

The new administration has shifted priorities away from the U.S.-backed strategy of arresting kingpins, which sparked an unprecedented level of violence among the cartels, and toward an emphasis on prevention and keeping Mexico’s streets safe and calm, Mexican authorities said.

Some U.S. officials fear the coming of an unofficial truce with cartel leaders. The Mexicans see it otherwise. “The objective of fighting organized crime is not in conflict with achieving peace,” said Eduardo Medina Mora, Mexico’s ambassador to the United States.

Interviews with more than four dozen current and former U.S. and Mexican diplomats, law enforcement agents, military officers and intelligence officials — most of whom agreed to speak about sensitive matters only on condition of anonymity — paint the most detailed public portrait to date of how the two countries grew so close after so many years of distance and distrust, and what is at stake should the alliance be scaled back. [1]

I recommend that you read the whole thing. The lack of attention paid to events in Mexico by most media outlets is deplorable. 60,000 men and women have died and 25,000 more have gone missing over the last six years. American drug consumption has driven this violence; American officials orchestrated the campaigns designed to stop it. Like it or not, America is inextricably tied to Mexico's home grown terror. This report is as good of an introduction to the role played by the U.S. government in the fight against the cartels as you will find anywhere else.

I would like to focus on one sentence hidden in the body of the report. Shortly after the implementation of the Merida Initiative in 2008, the Mexican intelligence agency CISEN discovered that various cartels were employing American trained, ex-special forces. Understandably alarmed, American intelligence agencies floated a proposal to cut the power of the cartels:

"Anxious to counterattack, the CIA proposed electronically emptying the bank accounts of drug kingpins, but was turned down by the Treasury Department and the White House, which feared unleashing chaos in the banking system."

This one sentence betrays Washington's distorted foreign policy priorities.  The CIA proposal had several clear benefits: drug lords forced to pull their investments would have less incentive to stay in the game,  cartels would be robbed of operating funds, and most importantly of all, the proposal could be implemented with minimal American involvement. [2] There would be no need for more boots on the ground. The drawbacks were also clear: folks on Wall Street would lose money. The White House took Wall Street's side in the debate, and favored a policy designed to kill or capture those same "high value targets" whose bank accounts were not to be touched.  (Readers curious about the cost of these operations -- in terms of man-power as well as money -- will find plenty of details in the last few pages of the Washington Post report.)

The source of flawed reasoning. Image Source: Lynn Stuart Parrimore. "Wall Street Power Player." Salon. 3 April 2013.

The reasons the Bush administration gave for rejecting the CIA proposal are reminiscent of Obama administration's justifications for not prosecuting mega-bank HSBC. In 2012 a Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations report revealed that the bank - one of the world's largest - had lent money to Middle Eastern financial institutions that were closely linked with terrorist groups and, you guessed it, laundered money into the hands of Mexican drug cartels. The total exchange between the bank and the cartels was an estimated $881,000,000. [3] The Obama administration's Assistant Attorney General explained why the Justice Department chose not to prosecute anyone for these offenses:

“If you prosecute one of the largest banks in the world, do you risk that people will lose jobs, other financial institutions and other parties will leave the bank, and there will be some kind of event in the world economy?” [4]

For several decades business strategy has been beholden to the dangerous idea of maximizing share holder value. [5] Those setting America's grand strategy have fallen under the same spell. 



[1] Dana Priest. "U.S. Role at a Crossroads in Mexico's Intelligence War on the Cartels." Washington Post. 27 April 2013.

[2] The Mexicans seemed to have reach a similar conclusion:

"The Mexican government has increasingly been conceptualizing the DTOs as for-profit corporations. Consequently, its strategy, and U.S. efforts to support it, has begun to focus more attention on disrupting the criminal proceeds used to finance DTOs’ operations.67 In August 2010, the Mexican government imposed limits on the amount of U.S. dollars that individuals can exchange or deposit each month. In October 2012, the Mexican Congress approved an anti- money laundering law establishing a financial crimes unit within the Attorney General’s office (PGR), subjecting industries vulnerable to money laundering to new reporting requirements, and creating new criminal offenses for money laundering. 

Source: Clare Ribando Seelke and Kristin M. Finklea. "U.S.-Mexican Security Cooperation: The Mérida Initiative and Beyond." Congressional Research Service. 14 January 2013.

The Mexicans did this unilaterally; one questions how effective these policies will be without similar efforts to crack down on drug lord deposits abroad.

[3] Matt Taibbi offers a colorful account of these events in "Gangster Bankers: Too Big to Fail." Rolling Stone. 14 February 2013. A more reasoned and mature critique of the DoJ is found in Sarah Coxin. "What's in a Fine?" The American Interest. 5 February 2013. The executive summary of the Senate report can be found here.

[4] Nils Patley. "HSBC: Banking to a Different Set of Rules Reaps Dividends and Stability." The Guardian.4 March 2013.

[5] Fore more of the history and impact of this idea, see Steve Denning." The Dumbest Idea in the World: Maximizing Shareholder Value." Forbes. 28 November 2012; Karen Ho. Liquidated: An Ethnography of Wall Street. (Durham: Duke University Press). 2009. ch 3 & 4, pp. 122-212. 

This post was originally published in December 2010. A comment thread at Zenpundit's place has inspired me to resurrect it.

I recently read a book by survivalist blogger James Wesley Rawles, How to Survive the End of the World as We Know It. This reading has prompted a few thoughts on the aims and validity of the survivalist movement that may be of interest to readers of the Stage.

The raison d'etre of survivalism is a subject much discussed on this blog: the proper balance between between resilience and efficiency. Robustness and facility are two virtues fundamentally at odds, and all complex systems, be they organisms, economies, or militaries, are subject to the trade off between them. While the relation between specialization and efficiency was noted by both Xenophon and Ibn Khaldun centuries earlier, widespread acceptance of the "drag" redundancy places on a system's productivity did not come until publication of Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations. Mr.Smith uses the example of a pin factory to teach the general principle:

...the trade of the pin-maker; a workman not educated to this business (which the division of labour has rendered a distinct trade), nor acquainted with the use of the machinery employed in it (to the invention of which the same division of labour has probably given occasion), could scarce, perhaps, with his utmost industry, make one pin in a day, and certainly could not make twenty. But in the way in which this business is now carried on, not only the whole work is a peculiar trade, but it is divided into a number of branches, of which the greater part are likewise peculiar trades. One man draws out the wire, another straights it, a third cuts it, a fourth points it, a fifth grinds it at the top for receiving the head; to make the head requires two or three distinct operations; to put it on, is a peculiar business, to whiten the pins is another; it is even a trade by itself to put them into the paper; and the important business of making a pin is, in this manner, divided into about eighteen distinct operations, which, in some manufactories, are all performed by distinct hands, though in others the same man will sometimes perform two or three of them. I have seen a small manufactory of this kind where ten men only were employed, and where some of them consequently performed two or three distinct operations. But though they were very poor, and therefore but indifferently accommodated with the necessary machinery, they could, when they exerted themselves, make among them about twelve pounds of pins in a day. There are in a pound upwards of four thousand pins of a middling size. Those ten persons, therefore, could make among them upwards of forty-eight thousand pins in a day. Each person, therefore, making a tenth part of forty-eight thousand pins, might be considered as making four thousand eight hundred pins in a day. But if they had all wrought separately and independently, and without any of them having been educated to this peculiar business, they certainly could not each of them have made twenty, perhaps not one pin in a day; that is, certainly, not the two hundred and fortieth, perhaps not the four thousand eight hundredth part of what they are at present capable of performing, in consequence of a proper division and combination of their different operations..... The division of labour, however, so far as it can be introduced, occasions, in every art, a proportionable increase of the productive powers of labour."

Mr. Smith does not present the primary drawback of this arrangement. With efficiency comes fragility. Ten men working by their lonesome produce a paltry number of pins, but the faults of one man do not destroy the efforts of another.  In contrast, if something happens to one of the ten factory men and; his equipment, no pins get made and the factory must shut down. One bad cog puts a stop to the entire machine.

For the survivalist this is a problem pervading not only the pin factories, but all of modern society. Over the last century two trends have decidedly shifted society's balance away from robustness and towards efficiency. Modern dependence on technology and the specialized knowledge needed to maintain it is the first of these trends; the second is the fusion of local communities with the global economy and larger political units. The day is past where a man is expected to know how to repair all that is on his property, grow his own food, or make and use his own fuel. In some cases this is simply the fruits of geographic isolation and economic specialization - the knowledge needed to raise livestock and plant crops is quite useless to the city dweller. Other cases reflect the 'division of knowledge' that inevitably comes with man's growing understanding of and ability to manipulate the universe in which he dwells (e.g. few Americans know how to build a hard drive, much less a nuclear power plant). The rise of multinational conglomerates and global supply networks ensure that most of what we need is made far away; the eclipse of local civic and political institutions by national agencies erodes our communities' capacity to solve problems without outside help. What we are left with is a culture of dependency, so ingrained as to be seen in our aesthetics. Explains Matthew Crawford in his excellent essay, "Shop Class as Soulcraft":

At the same time, an engineering culture has developed in recent years in which the object is to “hide the works,” rendering the artifacts we use unintelligible to direct inspection. Lift the hood on some cars now (especially German ones), and the engine appears a bit like the shimmering, featureless obelisk that so enthralled the cavemen in the opening scene of the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. Essentially, there is another hood under the hood. This creeping concealedness takes various forms. The fasteners holding small appliances together now often require esoteric screwdrivers not commonly available, apparently to prevent the curious or the angry from interrogating the innards. By way of contrast, older readers will recall that until recent decades, Sears catalogues included blown-up parts diagrams and conceptual schematics for all appliances and many other mechanical goods. It was simply taken for granted that such information would be demanded by the consumer. 

A decline in tool use would seem to betoken a shift in our mode of inhabiting the world: more passive and more dependent. And indeed, there are fewer occasions for the kind of spiritedness that is called forth when we take things in hand for ourselves, whether to fix them or to make them. What ordinary people once made, they buy; and what they once fixed for themselves, they replace entirely or hire an expert to repair, whose expert fix often involves installing a pre-made replacement part.

Those concerned with the passivity of the American citizenry in the face of curtailed liberties and constant government encroachment ought to give this matter a moment's thought. A people well accustomed to dependency lose little sleep over lost independence.

1. A major but unpredictable disaster of short duration and limited geographic range (ex: large scale terrorist attack, earthquakes, hurricanes, blizzards, icy storms, or another natural disaster)
2. An extreme (but not sudden) and long term economic depression (ex: extreme hyperinflation, an extreme deflationary depression, peak oil, food crisis, possibly political collapse)
3. A disaster which is national in scale and whose effects will be felt for decades (ex: nuclear or civil war, EMP attack, political collapse, an epidemic reminiscent of the black plague)

Of the three, the only scenario we can be sure will occur is the first. This type of disaster should be accepted as an unalterable facet of life. No generation has lived without suffering them; no place on Earth has been left unscathed by them. We know such disasters will strike sometime in the future, but beyond simplistic probabilities we can not accurately predict when or where they will occur. Given the nature of these events, the prudent course for all Americans is to be prepared for whatever type-1 disasters are incident to their location.

I am certain that a disaster of a second type will occur in America sometime over the next thirty years. This is a political judgement on my part; those who do not share my politics may come to a different conclusion. Each reader will have to decide whose predictions are worth the trusting. In any case, I do not fancy being caught unprepared in the event my prediction becomes a reality.

Of course, that can be said for most disaster scenarios, no matter how outlandish they may be. That is the difficulty with type-3 disasters: the probability of their occurrence does not square with the measures that must be taken to truly prepare for them. The cost of these preparatory measures (such as relocating one's family far away from urban centers, as Mr. Rawl's advises) is very high - too high to recommend their adoption. If moving to a backwoods Idaho cabin is the only sure-fire way to survive a nuclear war, I would rather live my life as I will and meet, if it comes, my fiery death with a grin. I assume that I am not the only to share this view. Moreover, if preparations are made for type-1 and type-2 disasters, those of the third type will be much easier to survive. The extreme measures advocated by many survivalists are simply not necessary.

I say this not because I find fault with the preparation ethic of the survivalists, but because I find fault with what the survivalists prepare for. Survivalist literature is dominated by images of chaos and disorder, social disintegration à la Mad Max, full of riots, robbers, bandits, and desperate men willing to do anything - and kill anyone - to survive. This vision of bellum omnium contra omnes in the suburbs of America betrays a profound unfamiliarity with disaster psychology and sociology. The literature on this topic is extensive (this, this, and this are a few good introductory articles; this and this are popular books on the subject) and it lends no support to the notion that disasters produce panic stricken mobs or roving bandits prone to avarice and violence. It is the opposite that occurs: those who survive sudden disasters respond to their plight not with riots and terror, but with spontaneous acts of altruism and amazing feats of self-organization. Remember the 11th of September, when more than 500,000 denizens of Manhattan Island were evacuated by boat, bridge, and ferry without any centralized planning or direction. Consider the state of New Orleans as Hurricane Katrina raged,  levies broke, and hundreds of thousands of  people fled the region for safer climes. The Hurricane and its aftermath are widely seen as an unparalleled disaster. The centralized response to the Hurricane was just that; everything from the army-built levees to FEMA's delayed relief efforts were marked by failure and mismanagement. The same cannot be of the said of the main populace's uncoordinated response to the disaster. Though millions of people were evacuating the region and police forces temporarily lost control of New Orleans and its immediate environs, crime levels in New Orleans were no higher than normal. Reports of looting and violence were creations of an easily excited media machine, bearing no resemblance to reality.

This suggests that, contrary to the expectations of most survivalists, the greatest danger will not come from the other disaster survivors, but from outside elites trying to reassert authority over a disaster ravaged area. These elites are susceptible to what has been called the "Myth of Panic": being the largest beneficiaries of the traditional order, they cannot see anything but chaos, violence, and carnage in its absence. The government response to Hurricane Katrina is a testament to the perilous effects of such misperception. Fear of violence and crime led to the misallocation of relief resources, and in a few shocking cases, refusal to offer relief at all. Eager to restore "peace and order", government officials stripped Louisianans of their rights, confiscating all weapons in the city of New Orleans. Hurricane Katrina is small fare compared to most of the scenarios survivalists prepare for; in the event that such a disaster occurs, we cannot expect the authorities' scramble for control to pose any less of a danger to the lives and liberties of disaster survivors.




While we do not need to prepare for "the end of the world," some preparation is prudent. Ask yourself the following questions:

• If the water in my pipes stops flowing, will I have access to a water supply that will fulfill the needs of myself and my family for three days? How about three weeks? Three months? A year?
• Do I have enough to food to meet the needs of myself and my family for three days? How about three weeks? Three months? A year?
• Could I heat my home for three days if the power grid failed? How about three weeks? Three months? A year? Without power would I be able to receive or send communications outside of the disaster zone?
•  If emergency and medical services were unavailable, would I have the materials and equipment needed to treat a seriously injured friend, neighbor, of family member?
• If I was forced to evacuate my home, would I know where to go? Do I have the supplies necessary to meet the needs of myself and my family until we would reach our destination? Could we leave at a moment's notice?

It is unlikely that we will face any disaster so bad that we will be forced to eat from our larders for a year or more's time. However, preparing for that year as if it were a certainty is quite sensible: those with supplies otherwise unavailable will undoubtedly be providing for the needs of more than just their immediate family. When friends and neighbors are sick or starving and asking you to help them survive, the wisdom in such extensive preparations will be more than evident.

This focus on supplies should not mislead us into thinking that survival is simply a matter of gear or supplies. Herein lies one of my main complaints with the survivalist movement: too many survivalists seem to think that survival comes down to equipment. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The key to survival does not lie with supplies, but people. 

I mean this in two senses. On the one hand, an individual's skill set is incalculably more valuable than anything they might own. (E.g. if you are not trained in basic first aid then all of the medical supplies in the world will do you no good). Yet even this is not enough. As with most things, what we know is less important than who we know. The notion of a lone survivalist tramping off into the wilderness to make it through doomsday is utter nonsense. These figures are great for Hollywood, but they stand little chance of surviving in the event of a real world disaster. The well supplied lone wolf is even less resilient than the masses of modern society he so abhors. One accident is all it takes to bring the best laid plans of the single survivalist to nought. Their survival will be dependent on a margin or error that simply does not exist.

Mr. Rawls and a few other survivalists recognize this. They recommend "forting" with a small group of several families or close friends. I submit that even this will prove unsatisfactory. The most successful survivors will be those who belong to a much larger community. We've already discussed how networks of mutual aid spontaneously arise in the wake of disaster; those formed around existing social groups with a strong sense of collective identity, social cohesion, and a regularly exercised ability to care for their own will be by far the most successful of these communities. Being independent of national infrastructure and existing political structures  these groups will have little trouble organizing and mobilizing after a major disaster. Minority immigrant groups, Mormon congregations, military bases, rural towns, and their like will become the loci of the new commonwealths forged by disaster. The organizational capacity of these communities will far outstrip what any family commune is capable of providing.

Becoming a part of one of these communities before disaster strikes is the best way to ensure your survival in its aftermath.