Category Archives: Culture

Obama In Cairo

Posted on by
1

Just about everybody has an idea for what the Great O should say. So here’s my run down:

1. Propaganda: One of the basic elements to successfully criticizing someone is to build up them before you tear them down. This is pretty simple psychology. Teachers use it all the time in trying to break it to students that their work is actually pretty bad.

Expect this from Obama, because Arab/Muslim prestige is such a big factor in Middle East politics. The ME has made it clear it would rather be right and poor than admit mistakes, flex, and get wealthy. Thomas Friedman (as well as B Lewis, F Zakaria, F Ajami, and countless others) has argued for years about just how deeply Arabs and Muslims want to fight to hang on to their ‘olive trees,’ regardless what it does to their economy, relations with the West, and overall ME power in world politics. And now, but for Africa, the Middle East is the worst governed region on earth. Yet the ME remains downright recalcitrant when it comes to learning from the West (Khomeini’s classic ‘westoxification’).

This is folly of course. One need only look at China, Japan and Korea to see how well emulation can work, and that it does not mean cultural Americanization, religious betrayal/Christianization, or wild Khomeinist Jewish conspiracy theories. Instead it it is the route to growth and weight in the international system. So 50 years ago, Nasser was more important than Mao, but today China is forging the future, and globalization is passing the ME by.

Nevertheless Obama must cater to this sensibility. He must throw out multicultural softballs about how Americans respect Islam, see it as one of the world’s great religions, value its past cultural achievements in areas like mathematics, etc. The irony of course is that none of this is true. Islam makes the West pretty nervous; its theology is radically simpler than Christianity, much less the western philosophical tradition serious thinkers must engage (and that helped make Christianity so much intellectually richer), so its unlikely most educated westerners ‘respect’ it; and who really cares about Islamic scientific progress several centuries ago? Who cares if Americans invited the lightbulb years ago? You don’t see the Chinese telling the West to respect it because of gunpowder, but rather because it is a growth dynamo, and we desperately need their savers.

2. Truth: Somehow Obama needs to say the same stuff W did about democracy, freedom, rights for women, open markets, and the US commitment to reduce terrorism. Thankfully Obama is a vastly better salesman for the ‘freedom agenda.’ 1. He is not an evangelical, but only mildly religious and mostly secular. 2. He is a Democrat, the party generally associated with multilateralism and internationalism in US foreign policy. 3. He is an intellectual and so probably understands what the freedom agenda actually is (unlike W who repeated it mantra-like, even as his administration undermined it at home). 4. His personal history speaks volumes.

So when Muslims hear a black secular liberal Democrat with the middle name Hussein who lived in Indonesia still say the same thing W did, then hopefully they will know we mean it. Just because Obama is new, young, black, more secular, whatever, doesn’t mean the region’s religious fanatics (including zionist settlers), autocrats, and terrorists should get a pass.

If Obama welches on this, if he avoids criticizing Mubarak, or if he looks a like he is accommodating Muslim supremacist thinking in order to end the GWoT, he will face crushing conservative criticism at home, and deservedly so.

3. Really Tough Truth: If Obama really has guts, he will talk about religious pluralism. To my mind, this is central cultural breakpoint between the West and Islam today. Islam as practiced today in the Middle East does not meaningful embrace religious pluralism or politically accept it. (Note: It does in Indonesia and SE Asia, which is exactly why the Saudi clerical establishment has funded the building of schools and mosques there.) ME Islam particularly seems unwilling to admit the equality of all religions before a neutral secular state. Parts of the world are still designated ‘Muslim lands;’ apostasy is still a crime in at least 8 Muslim-majority states; and even Iraq’s constitution declares it a Muslim state in which the Koran can be a source of law. So long as the supremacy of Islam is a defining feature of politics in the region, it will be hard for non-Muslims to ‘respect’ or feel comfortable with the ME. No other part of the world mixes religion and politics like this anymore. In the West, secular politics dates to the Enlightenment, if not the Reformation. When Westerners look at politicized religion in the ME, they see their own dangerous past of the religious wars of the 16th C.

4. Payoff: 2 and 3 would be pretty tough to swallow for the Islamic ME, so here is a great payoff that is good for the US (and Israel in the long-run) anyway: serious pressue on the Israelis to finally exit the West Bank and get the two-state solution rolling. The debate on this has changed enormously. For the first time since the first Bush administration, we have an adminisration ready to take on the Israel lobby at home and the Israeli government. The intellectual center of gravity has really shifted, so Obama and Clinton are now well-grounded in an emerging consensus in the US. Thanks for this most especially to Stephen Walt‘s tireless, much-derided but actually quite even-handed writing on this. You may have hated his book, but it did a lot to make clear how the the Israel lobby in the US has abetted the worst imperialist instincts of the settler movement and so made a meaning two-state deal impossible for decades. It is now clear to everybody but the most recalcitrant that Israel needs to get out. US pressure to this end will help the ME swallow points 2 and 3 at no cost to the US, because a two-state solution is now clearly in American’s interest anyway.

5. Prediction: Obama will overdose on the propaganda (watch especially, if he mentions Muhammad, if next he says ‘PBUH’ or ‘praise by upon Him’), ride gently with the truth, talk moderately but firmly in support of the two-state solution, and slide by the tough pluralist part. The reason, I think, is his desire to end the GWoT or at least tone it down, to get out of Iraq and Afghanistan as fast as possible, and then do what he really wants to do and spend where he really wants the US budget to go – on the US welfare state. If he can pull us out of the wars, draw a cool peace with the ME, and then add universal health care and green energy to the New Deal and Great Society, he will go down in history as one of the greatest presidents ever.

What I Learned at a Buddhist Temple Stay

Posted on by
Reply

About 6% of the world is Buddhist, and about 20% of South Koreans. Sri Lanka, Burma and Thailand,as well as Japan (sort of) are the big Buddhist countries. Of course China and NK would be heavily Buddhist too if they permitted freedom of religion.

Buddhism is, thankfully, not that important for IR or world conflicts. Buddhism is not focused a deity and so lacks the ‘my-god-is-the-right-one’ theistic furor that sets Islam, Judaism, and Christianity against each other. When Huntington argued for an East Asian civilization grounded in Buddhism and Confucianism, Asians yawned, but for the dictators who wanted to use ‘Confucian values’ as a legitimizing prop. Monotheists will slaughter each other over doctrine, but Buddhists rarely do (possible exception). They seem to find it bizarre that monotheists would war over catechistic mythologies like Muhammad’s flight to Jerusalem or which way to make the sign of the cross. I find this terribly liberating. This is another of the great benefits of living outside your own culture. The locals see things you never would, in this case, the idiocy of monotheistic absolutism. I always tell my students when I teach the GWoT how nice it is to live in a place where religion is not a fraught contentious social division one must tip-toe around. Buddhists seem far more open to criticism than Muslims or Protestant evangelicals particularly, with their bitter insistence on the literalism of the Bible or Koran, creationism, female sexual restriction, or deitical supremacy. And I find it disappointing that exactly this sort of burning Protestantism is making inroads into Korea. Charismatic evangelicalism is a big wave here. The nocturnal skylines of Seoul and Busan are filled with (rather creepy) neon red crosses. Every time I go to the Busan train station I get harangued by protestant ideologues at the escalator telling me I am going to hell if I don’t embrace Jesus. Ah, how nice to be reminded of Jesus Camp and the Bush years even here so far away…

So off I went last weekend to a ‘temple stay’ at the big Buddhist temple in southeast Korea – Beomeosa. Basically you live like a Buddhist monk for 24 hours. Here a few thoughts.

1. Religion as an endurance test! If you thought Catholic weddings or praying 5 times a day were rough, then try Buddhist bowing. A full Buddhist bow (to images of the Buddha and other major monks, as well as important monks you meet in person) requires great dexterity, particularly ankle and knee strength, and you do it a lot. About half the participants in temple stay were curious westerners like me. We really struggled, as the full bow requires you to go down to the floor and then back up without supporting your body weight with your arms. You could hear knees cracking all over the place. My girlfriend laughed at my pathetic ability and pain. On top of that we had to get up at 3 am for morning prayers and then hiked up a mountain to a shrine. Koreans like to hike up, not across. I think I lost weight by the end of it.

2. Metaphysics instead of theology. We didn’t learn too much theology, and then I remembered of course, that Buddhism doesn’t really have a logic of a god. So instead, it was a lot of (fairly soft, I thought) metaphysics about self-abnegation and finding oneself within. The best account of this I read for a westerner is Maugham’s The Razor’s Edge, but I have to say I find it a little depressing. I asked our monk leader if he didn’t miss having a nice glass of wine looking at the sunset or eating a delicious well-cooked meal. Didn’t he find life kind of dry and flat without these experiences (much less sex, rock’n’roll, nicotine, scotch, etc)? He just laughed at me.

3. Formalism. Chris Rock once said in a stand-up routine that he doubts God will make his decision to allow one into heaven based on what one eats. I must say I agree. I have never understood things like kosher or halal. Our monk leader told us that they don’t even eat garlic or onions, least they ‘stimulate’ the body too much. And then of course, came all the other ritual as well, so common in established religions. There were a great many rules about dress, the arrangement of bowls at dinner time, the manner in which to walk (double file line with right hand on top of the left in front of you), when to talk, etc. It seems to me that rules that start functionally (don’t eat pork because you might get trichinosis), over time solidify into precepts irrespective of other change, and then become central doctrinal tenets that determine to whether or not you get to heaven or nirvana. Will Haredim really make it into heaven because they wear those hats? Do I need to shave my head to achieve nirvana? Really? Do they even believe that?

4. Social science vs meditation. I found my social science training collided badly with quietude of mind the monks told us to cultivate. I am one of those people who can’t even watch dumb movies without analyzing them to death. So when we went on our meditation walk in the forest, all I could do is observe and think instead of clearing my mind as we were told to do. I drifted: What is the importance of this particular shrine? What kind of tree is that? Why are the pathways so uneven? I was supposed to be thinking of inner peace and calming my mind. Instead, I found myself wondering if Korea has liability laws, because on the dark, uneven path, you could easily trip and break your legs badly.

So I guess I am not cut out to be a Buddhist, but it was good exposure.

Koreanism of the Month – Food (1)

Posted on by
Reply

If Fan Death is the Koreanism most widely discussed (and mocked – I must admit) by westerners, the salutary affects of individual foods is the one you encounter most regularly. At almost every meal I enjoy with Koreans, my companions will speak to me about the health-improving qualities of this or that item we are eating. This occurs so consistently, I expect it now as a regular social element of Korean dining.

This goes far beyond what your mother told you when you were young about eating your carrots for your eyes, or the importance of milk for your bones. Koreans routinely ascribe far more specific salutary effects to almost ALL food items. Indeed, sometimes I ask my dining companions, out of sheer curiosity, what this or that food does. None (of my friends) are trained nutritionists or health experts, yet my acquaintances ‘answer’ this question immediately, easily, and earnestly. It is an astonishing piece of shared social knowledge. One wonders if North Koreans would similarly be able to comment on the salutary effects of individual food products.

I will try to comment on particular improving properties and foods as I learn them. Here are the most singular three I have heard so far:

1. Eating Duck Fat will scrub the inside of your blood vessels.

2. Eating dog will improve your ‘vitality’ (ie, sexual virility or potency – and yes, I have tried dog, and yes, it was tasty).

3. Eating foods of many colors simultaneously will synergize into an extra booster effect for your overall health.

Religious Tolerance in Islam and an End to the War on Terror

Posted on by
2

Here is a good column on a point widely ignored in the debate over Islam’s relationship with the other two abrahamic monotheisms. C Hitchens at Slate.com has been particularly good on this, but few have mentioned it, likely out of political correctness. The Islamic revival since 1967 has in included a powerful purifying zeal toward non-Muslim remnants in ‘Muslim’ lands. (That very expression of course is unhelpful in itself, as it suggests religious pluralism is somehow an imposition in Muslim-majority countries.) Today this is harshest in Africa, where strident Islamic insistence has generated tension across the Sahel, most notably in Nigeria and southern Sudan. Even as far away as Korea, when I teach the War on Terrorism, a lot of my Buddhist students remember the needless Taliban destruction of the Bamyan Buddhas. The Taliban were quite open in stating that Buddhism was irreligion and paganism. Of course, the Taliban are an extreme marker, but the wider issue of religious pluralism cuts both ways. If Muslims in the West enjoy religious freedom, citizenship, and all the rest, and if Muslim governments feel they can intervene in the West to ‘defend’ their co-religionsists (as the OIC did during the Muhammad cartoon flap), then eventually the question of those rights and privileges will be raised in the Middle East for non-Muslims. Without that reciprocity, the West will slide toward the idea that Muslim states are trying to export sharia to the West.

At some point this has to stop for the War on Terror to stop. If non-Muslims perceive that they will be the targets of harassment and recrimination in Muslim-majority states, the Muslim world’s isolation will only increase, FDI will never pick up, the war on terror will go on and on, Israel will remain recalcitrant on a permanent peace, etc, etc. And an intransigent monotheistic zeal and belligerence at home will certainly translate into foreign adventurism (think 9/11), and this will only encourage the clash of civilizations we all want to avoid.

Worse, thoroughgoing islamification will only worsen the problems of most of these states. The Arab/Muslim world seems to ache for a return to lost glories, but homogenization will only make that return even harder. Jeffery Herf wrote about ‘reactionary modernism’ – trying to find the future by rebuilding a romanticized past through cultural cleansing. But we know this doesn’t work. As Thomas Friedman notes again and again in his books and columns, the future belongs to open societies welcoming globalization and diversity. Ethnic/cultural cleansing reduces the pluralism that generates new ideas or visions, adds flexibility to cope with globalization’s traumas, enlivens cultural offerings from food to music, spurs artists and creators to to new innovations, keeps majorities from slipping into self-satisfied complacency, etc. (Koreans have learned this lesson, albeit with some difficulty, since the ROK’s opening with the ‘88 Olympics. They now realize the value of globalization, so markers, like good English speaking skills, have high social prestige.) It will make Muslim bridges to the rest of the world harder, not just because others will think them intolerant, but because the citizens of these homogenizing states will lack access to local others who can prepare them for globalization, travel, foreign imports and languages, etc. Closed monolithic states slip easily into paranoid xenophobia. (Watch the Russian film East-West on this; note how the ‘foreigner’ is so suspected in the USSR. Or consider Ahmadinejad’s laughable assertion, clearly bred in the isolated womb of a closed society, that Iran has no homosexuals.) The UN Arab Human Development Reports have already expressed great concern about the cultural sealing off of the Middle East. The Middle East is one of the least globalized parts of the world according to Foreign Policy/AT Kearney globalization index. Expurgating the remnants of difference will only accelerate that process, push the ME further and further behind the rest of the globalizing world (and so worsening its relative poverty, status grievances, and anger toward the rest of the world), and so drag out the end of the GWoT. 

Movie Review: “The Mission” – De-culturate Them for their own Good

Posted on by
Reply

Robert DeNiro, Jeremy Irons and Liam Neeson play Jesuits who choose to defend a mission helping Native Americans against Spanish and Portuguese depredation in 18th C South America. It is sad and painful to watch. These are good stories to tell. They help reduce Western arrogance about progress and modernity when we see the terrible costs this inflicted on people who probably just wanted to be left alone. All in all, it is quite depressing. The production values are good, as is the acting and music. Recommended.

1. Perhaps the ‘best’ moment when I watched this, was when my Korean girlfriend turned to me in amazement and said, ‘you white people really did this (to the Native Americans)?” Sigh. I guess it helps to have a cultural alien around to see what you are just ‘used’ to. I realized I was so accustomed to the story of the native extermination that it didn’t shock me as much anymore. (Koreans react the same way when they see images on Google of Jim Crow.) I recently read Guns, Germs and Steel and Collapse by Jared Diamond, and am now reading the Birth of the Modern by Paul Johnson. All three document in detail the savagery of whites to indigenous peoples. But Koreans don’t know this stuff the way westerners do, and they get, rightfully, pretty stunned when they hear about it. Korea has the powerful moral argument that they never invaded anyone, but always got invaded. So their shock isn’t a pretense.

2. DeNiro should stick to strong, dynamic characters. His 10 minute turn as the maruader was more fascinating and believable than his role in the rest of the film as a do-gooding Jesuit. I just didn’t believe it. But his ferocious slaver was pretty frightening, especially on horseback, where he seemed to embody the brutal Spanish colonization and rapine of the New World.

3. It was nice to see the Catholic Church portrayed as real, morally mixed institution. I say this not out of personal loyalty, but because filmic portrayals are usually silly (DaVinci Code, End of Days), or wildly ahistorical (Kingdom of Heaven), or mythological (Omen, Exorcist). The usual flim-flam about conspiracies or the end-times are not present, so the Church looks like it probably was – a large, but troubled institution, trying to survive in the world of the rising and powerful nation-state, faced with difficult choices and populated with believers struggling to know what was right. The Jesuits in the film are genuinely concerned about the fate of the locals, at the same time they are tragically erasing their religious traditions. The papal envoy is torn about how the Church will thread its way in this difficult era. The Church wasn’t morally defined from the start of the picture, but filled with the struggle of everyday politics, and you genuinely hope the envoy will make the right decision. Paul Johnson noted how on the frontiers of the New World, it was usually clerics who restrained the worst savageries of the whites. Hopefully they ameliorated the worst, but all in all, it is still a pretty sad showing.

4. The story is disappointingly eurocentric. The natives are foils for the struggle between the Church and the Spanish and Portugese on the frontier. We learn little about them other than their reduction before Western power. I imagine European encroachment was the primary indigenous fear in the centuries after Columbus, so its not the filmmaker’s fault, but still it is sad to see. In this I give credit to Mel Gibson in Apocalypto. I can’t think of any other major film about indigenous peoples that does not involve their interaction with white colonizers. Even intelligent and sympathetic movies like Last of the Mohicans or Dancing with Wolves are filled with white characters – presumably to give western audiences an anchor within the film. But Gibson tried to make a movie about a wholly lost culture on its own terms. You may have hated his vision, but its originality is undeniable.

5. It is also sad to see that the heroes of the film are also destroying the indigenes in their own way – call it ‘culture stripping’ – but never realize it. Every time I read about some tribe in Indonesia or the Amazon that is ‘discovered,’ there is always an adjacent story about some Christian group that has dispatched a missionary to them immediately. Why must we do this? Can’t we leave this people alone? Monotheism seems to have a built-in drive that animists, ‘pagans,’ etc. need the real faith. What if these people don’t really want this? Do we have to bowl over their fragile local culture and stories with the full-intensity of modern theology immediately? I am sure if we encounter extra-terrestrials, some TV preacher will tell us we need to christianize them too. The New World would be a far more interesting cultural space if the pre-columbian peoples had survived with greater integrity

Koreanism of the Month – Fan Death

Posted on by
Reply

Non-koreans, but Westerners especially, in Korea immediately notice that Koreans will argue for concepts – particularly related to food, healthcare, Korean physiology, and Korean nationality – that we inevitably find singular if not peculiar. This is common in cross-cultural interaction of course, but still, I have found more unique cultural positions or ‘myths’ here than I have in the other places I have lived or travelled to over the years. I thought it might be interesting to record them as they pop-up

The most famous one among the expat community here is Fan Death. On the ‘mechanics’ of fan-induced asphyxiation or hypothermia, check the wiki entry. Also put ‘fan death’ or ‘fan death korea’ into Google and drift around the sites. Try this one, and check out the scanned graphic half-way down.

Fan Death seems wholly unique to Korea. No one I know and nothing I have read has ever noted its existence elsewhere, even in Asia. It is the koreanism most common ridiculed by foreigners, and which westerners most reliably roll out in those tiresome arguments over Korea’s ‘modernity.’ It also makes for great humor:

Fan Death

WARNING: The video contains profanity.

I honestly don’t know what to make of this. Lots of Koreans genuinely believe it, as fans sold in Korea have timers installed explicitly to prevent fan death. As far as I know, fans with timers are sold in no other country. Clearly it is more than just an urban legend or goofy joke when it affects the buying decisions of 50 million consumers. In my own experience, some of the Koreans I know best – smart, educated people – swear this is true, and say that its western racism to reject it as blithely as we do.

On the other hand, the empirical, rationalist, social scientist in me is awfully doubtful. Indeed it is kinda hard NOT to see as simply surreal – like the video of Stalin dancing to techno. Comments?

3 Areas where South Korea Isn’t ‘Modern’ Yet

Posted on by
1

South Koreans worry a great deal about their status or position in the world, especially in relation to the West and other OECD countries. On the whole, South Korea is modern and pleasant. Income per capita exceeds $20k per annum. All the toys we associate with modernity are here – HDTVs, cell phones, cool cars, whatever. And to boot SK is an open liberal democracy, so it is a comfortable place to live. But Koreans like to talk about themselves; national auto-dissection is a cottage industry. A constant meme over which they like to speak with Westerners is the question of its modernization, and one of the sleights from foreigners that angers Koreans most is to tell them Korea is still in the third world or a developing country. No one in the rest of the world thinks that, I say all the time, but still, it is a conversation I have surprisingly often here. Some of this comes off as fishing for complements or national therapy. Koreans seem to enjoy hearing Westerners tell them they are modern. But some of it, I imagine is also, fear that SK’s achievements are precarious, if only because the traditional agrarian past is so close. Nation-wide literacy, eg, is only two generations old.

So after the usual remarks I make to my interlocutors about the Miracle on the Han, democracy, pluralism, how I like living here, etc, here are 3 areas where it strikes me that Korea is still struggling.

1. Traffic

Nothing in my everyday experience could reinforce the ‘still a developing country’ line as much as the chaotic traffic patterns. Its not India or Egypt, but its not the West either. Koreans run red lights too frequently for my comfort, and stop signs are almost non-existent, so many smaller intersections are simply a mish-mash of whoever is pushiest gets through first. Pedestrians will walk about in the streets with great abandon. Tailgating is widespread, as is speeding. Gridock is a terrible problem, especially in Seoul and Busan. Koreans have also picked up the Indian practice of nudging slowly into traffic, waiting for someone to give way. Frequently this results in unsafe ‘pinching’ of the perpendicular traffic. Streets with room enough only for one car are frequently used for 2-way traffic, resulting in snarls that mean one car must carefully back up, and the cars behind it must back-up too. Finally, parking is only partially organized, with only about half of my experiences in a parked car being in a properly painted parking space. Friends have said this is driving in Asia, but its not this way in Japan and Singapore, so I am unconvinced. I have a Korean drivers license, but honestly, I am too afraid to drive.

2. the Grey Cash  Economy

The retail sector in Korean is highly disaggregated, with many small dealers selling furniture, housewares, small appliances, etc. out of mom-and-pop corner stores. (For those of you who want to see the non-Walmart world of ‘main street’ mom-&-pops, come to Korea.) I have been surprised how much tax evasion occurs in this sector, and the government has taken extraordinary measures to prevent vendors from engaging in off-the-books sales (consumers are offered a tax rebate for cash purchases, which requires the vendor to give you a receipt, and so, record the purchase). I had to buy furniture for my apartment here. In the US, one would simply charge all this, nor even consider a side or ‘private’ deal with the vendor. But in Korea, these dealers frequently prefer cash, and give you a discount if you do. The point is to avoid a receipt. I didn’t understand this until it was explained to me that this is to avoid paying taxes on the sales. I was pretty shocked at this. There is a whole revenue stream untapped by the government creating a grey economy of underground cash deals.

3. the Queue

Another surprise was Koreans’ only partial willingness to wait on line, unless mandated by a number taking system. As friend has said, respecting the queue is basic element of social order. Yet Koreans will frequently push their way to the front of lines at counters, in stores, the subway, bus stops, etc. This can be pretty disconcerting when you are accustomed to the social norm of ‘waiting your turn.’ Perhaps the most disturbing practice is for someone to walk up to a counter and hover about you or stand right next to you – frequently glaring at you or interrupting you – while you are conversing with the clerk behind the counter. I try to tolerate this in the interest of cultural adjustment, tolerance, and all that, but once it happened to me at a hospital while I was discussing my health information with a nurse. Given the intimacy the conversation, I simply waited for the nurse to ask him to go sit back down. I promptly got annoyed looks from him, the nurse, and my translator. One of the most amusing sights in Korea is watching Koreans enter and exit busy subway cars during rush hour. The most efficient system would be to allow those exiting to leave first, and then those entering would then fill the newly opened space. Arrows are even painted onto the subway platform to encourage this behavior. But frequently those entering will simply push on first anyway, creating a pellmell of people coming and going, banging into each other. I have simply taken to standing back and waiting for it to end; then I get on. The irony is that a more orderly off-on process would actually be faster for all.

He’s a Black President and No One Really Cares … So Stop Bringing It Up

Posted on by
1

Eugene Robinson finally got one right about race in the US. Usually he (and Bob Herbert at the NYT and Tavis Smiley) represent the worst unreconstructed, temperature-raising, black vs white, ‘civil rights’ commentary. So he deserves recognition, even if he did take the time to remind us that Obama is black, even while telling us no one is thinking about it (he clearly is). Kinda snarky there, but understandable given what a breakthrough Obama was.

The notion that somehow Obama’s great relevance is his race is astonishingly irrelevant, parochial, and incorrect. If the liberal commentariat and black political/academic elite absorb this, then hopefully the notion of a ‘black America’ as a Quebec-like societe distincte will slowly disappear. It is divisive, unhelpful, and empirically inaccurate anyway; Obama’s own election demonstrates this, as does the wide popularity among non-black Americans of black socio-cultural contribution – Oprah, jazz, rap, Michael Jordan, C Powell on the lecture circuit, the brief and rather quixotic ‘Condy for president’ wave, whatever. This is Obama’s own vision (‘no white America, no black America’) – as well as ML King’s of course – and the promise of the US melting pot. The alternative is that hideous and divisive multiculturalist metaphor – that the US should be a ‘tossed salad’ of clumped ethnic groups simply living in proximity. This strikes me as risky (Canada, Yugoslavia) and inaccurate – with the exception of Native Americans and the Amish, I don’t think most minorities in the US are so removed or culturally alienated that they merit the classification francophones demand in Canada. Do we really want to give up on integrative Americanization in favor of  self-segregated suburbs and gated-communities?

Irrelevant, because in the midst of 2 wars and the worst economic crisis since the Depression, who really cares? Parochial, because he is president of the whole country, and a simple black-white bifurcation no longer corresponds to its ethnic reality anyway. To say he is one of ‘us’ against them is narrow, racist, and needlessly perpetuates US racial divisions. Finally, it’s incorrect, because – if you must read race into his presidency – his mixed race background is the real story, not his ‘blackness.’ His family is a great story of the integration and tolerance the US seeks to achieve.

And in point of fact, the great man has not governed in any recognizably ‘black’ manner. IR feminists used to hope that women in power might in some way be more peaceful or multilateral, than their male counterparts. Yet women as different in background as M Thatcher, G Meir and I Gandhi were just as ‘realist,’ nationalist, and prickly as any other male foreign policy figure (too bad…sigh). And Obama too has shown that black American presidents will go the same way. Abroad, he has increased Predator strikes in Afghanistan and has raised US troop levels there. He is holding the line on NK (sort of), and Ipredict he will soon be confronting Russia and Iran in the place of the vaunted but empty ‘reset.’ (They’re simply too illiberal and nasty for a liberal like Obama to stomach for long.) At home, his governing style is marked by gifted oratory and outreach, but this veils a clearly partisan agenda. He has not talked up or openly identified ‘black issues’ for special treatment, and his staff is packed with white technocrats. All these choices are his right – he won. But it shows that he hardly self-indentifies as a ‘black politician’ in the sense of classic ‘civil rights’ figures like Jesse Jackson, Marion Barry, or George Forbes. He is clearly a racial bridge-builder, but he seems to do this naturally, not as a stratagem for power or moral recognition on cable TV. (In this he is similar to former Cleveland mayor Michael White.)

So stop telling us he is black, start judging him by his record, and even better, start admitting that its not going so well.

The Tragicomedy of US Soft Power: Exporting Banality to Korea (1)

Posted on by
2

The term soft power seems to have a acquired a good amount of play in the last few years. Nye of course is the major exponent, but the EU openly uses the term and the Obama people seem to have picked up it too. (The IR scholar in me, of course, is green with envy over the extra-academic success of Nye’s work; that is how you get the real dollars, cool gigs, and policy relevance in this field. And Nye is a great scholar to boot. Very nice.)

Basically, the soft power argument is: hard power coercion is expensive. Militaries costs money, violence destroys lives and economies. Isn’t it much better if we re-make others ideologically to want what we want? This is actually a social constructivist, 3rd face of power argument. If we can reshape their preferences, then our interests will align, not collide. So the US should broadcast its exciting, fun, liberal-democratic, modernist, universalist cultural tropes to the world. Others will see the attractions, and a secret lifestyle yearning will arise. Frictions with the allies will decline as they ‘Americanize.’ And if those living in repressive authoritarian or traditional societies can pick up this stuff up too (and it is awfully hard to be isolated in the globalized world), then there will be a slow grassroots revolution of rising expectations that pressure the state’s elites to soften toward the US. My own sense is this theoretic logic is basically correct.

Consequences from this argument include:

1. Liberals like soft power, because it suggests it might be substitute for hard power (especially attractive if you don’t want to pay for a military). Hence one can be a ‘civilian superpower’ (EU, Japan). NK, the Georgian war, 9/11, etc. have disproved this idea, but the EU doesn’t seem to have gotten the message.

2. Diplomats and academics like soft power. a) It means that diplomacy isn’t just gabbing, but can serve a national security purpose (trying to open closed states so that western/American culture can get in), and it keep things like Voice of America and al-Arabiya alive. b) Maybe our academic work means something! Someone on the other side might read it and be influenced by it, and then maybe bring those new preferences to the state. This is the idea that Gorby’s reformers read US IR, realized that we weren’t so bad and didn’t want to invade the SU, and therefore winding down the Cold War would not destroy the USSR.

3. American Conservatives like it because it lionizes the US way-of-life as the envy of everyone else and confirms that immovable and deeply-held US belief that everyone else really, secretly, in their heart-of-hearts wishes they were like us. (They they just won’t admit it to our faces – those damn French.)  Specifically, it reinforces post-Cold War liberal-democratic triumphalism. There’s a ‘we-won-the-Cold-War-and-that’s-a-helluva-good-thing’ feel to it that American exceptionalists and nationalists (basically, most of the country) just love. It’s pretty cool when an esteemed liberal academic tells you that we really are the last best hope for mankind living in a city on the hill in the greatest country on earth at the end of history.

4. There is a nice inevitability to soft power’s triumph over tyranny. As T Friedman would say, closed systems fall behind rapidly, because technology improves and diffusion ensures wide adoption. This puts authoritarian systems in a terrible dilemma. Opening up risks exposure to soft power forces like the influx of West German or SK TV shows. But perpetual closure means decay and irrelevance. Cuba and NK opted for decay. The USSR tried opening, but so late, that it blew up. The PRC too is trying opening, but no ones knows if it can avoid a Velvet Revolution-style popular revolt. And there does seem to be growing empirical evidence that soft power can work in long ideologcal stalemates. Liberals have generally argued that the CW ended not because Reagan spent the SU into the round, but because the Helsinki accords opened a chink in the Iron Curtain, through which flowed lots of liberalism. Or think about the painful opening of NK civil society and growing paranoia of the DPRK because of the flood of SK VHS from China after the introduction of DVDs in SK in the 1990s. Consider also the slow burn of the youth movement in Iran, desperate to connect to modernity.

5, But no one seems to pay much attention to a) the internal colonialist dimension of soft power, or b) the possibility of blowback from those who resist. 

a. I agree that it is cheaper for us to get our way if ‘they’ are like ‘us.’ (I think Nye is correct.) But isn’t it culturally imperialist to make them like us and to baldly say that this is a US foreign policy goal? Should they be like us? Do they want to be? Shouldn’t we care about that? It is astonishing hubris and arrogance to say we should try ‘remake’ others to be like us. That’s Americanism on steroids. And just how much Americanism do we want them to share? How far down should this Americanization go? Is it enough that they are liberal, democratic and capitalist, or do they have to share other US values like individualism, wide social tolerance of minorities, protestantized religiosity, consumerism, sports, food, Pimp My Ride, etc, etc? Just how totalist is this project? Whenever I hear liberals praise soft power, I always think of 1) the song “America, F— Yeah!” from Team America: World Police, and 2) that colonel in Full Metal Jacket who says, ‘we are fighting this war, because inside every gook there is an American trying to get out.’ How different is the logic?

b. Also, what if they really actually don’t want to be like us (contrary to point 3 above)? Won’t there be blowback? I am thinking here of the Arab-Muslim Middle East and the Islamic revival ranging from the Muslim Brotherhood to al Qaeda. Remember that Sayyad Qutb went to the US and came home convinced that the Middle East should absolutely NOT become like the US. The intellectual descent from Qutb to bin Laden is very clear. If the Iranians set up the ‘Voice of Shiite Islam’ in Toronto and beamed it into the US with declared intent of converting Americans in order to improve US-Iranian relations, we would flip out. Foreingers will be a lot more recpetive to American cultural inputs if those inputs seem casually available and selected by the conusmer. If transmission of our lifestyle looks like a brainwashing plot to reduce friction to US power in the world, they will be far more resistant. And shouldn’t they be?

Next, I want to look at the South Korean case as a study of US soft power.

5 Things I Like about Korea

Posted on by
5

I guess it was inevitable that I post this sort of list. Just about every expat blogger in Korea does. Frequently this degenerates into blather and mawkish navel gazing, but then I have found that Koreans seem to like this sort of ‘tell us what you think about us, foreigner?’ stuff more than we do. Yakking about Korean culture is a cottage industry for Koreans, and the breadth of the cultural gap means the westerners here usually have lots to say too.

As for my qualifications to pass judgment, they are – of course – pathetic. I have only been in country 7 months. I don’t speak Korean. Most of my time has been spent in Busan, Seoul, and Pyongtaek (where Korean friends live). On the upside, I have a Korean girlfriend, and I work with and teach Koreans regularly.

1. The Food

This was pretty unexpected. Like most Americans, I think, my sense of Asian food was Chinese (mediocre take-out usually) and Japanese (cool steakhouses and sushi). I had a sense that Vietnamese food was distinct, but not Korean. I don’t think I ever saw a Korean restaurant in Ohio, where I lived most of my life in the US. What a surprise when I got here and learned that Korean food is pretty unique. Given how culturally close Korea is to China, this surprised me. And the food is quite good too. But like most westerners here, I think I have begun to overdose on rice and kimchi with every meal.

2. Bustling Cities/Nightlife

Too many American cities lack a good street life because of crime, suburbanization, bad downtown parking, whatever. But Korean residence patterns (ie, the lack wide sprawling suburbs) insure that large numbers of people live in close urban contact. Korean communitarianism (IMO, see point 5) keeps crime down and the streets safe (see point 3). Finally, Koreans seem to love hanging out after work in bars, clubs, salon rooms (bangs), etc., so there is always a mass of people to go mix and move with. Its fun.

3. Safety

I find Korea mercifully, blessedly safe. I have seen 8 year old girls prancing down the street alone (although aren’t parents worried about accidents?), or young women alone at 2 am in short skirts and heels walk by me on a darkened street without even throwing a glance. Also, I told friend how nice I found the lack of a serious drug problem in Korea. He asked me if I meant marijuana. Of course, I had in mind the meth explosion in the US, ecstasy which is all over American campuses, the heroin and coke problems that are driving Mexico to disaster, but if Koreans think marijuana is hard drug, that’s fine with me.

4. Quality Public Transportation

Like the Europeans, Koreans have got the bug for good public transportation (even if they promptly waste it by buying so many large cars and causing traffic jams all over the place). And the intercity fast trains (KTX) are better than the French TGV or DB ICE. In another experience of ‘why-can’t-this-stuff-work-so-well-at-home?,’ I find Korean urban transportation safe, clean, cheap, and timely. Nice.

5. Communitarianism

Contrary to America’s usual individualist leaning on the communitarian-liberal split, I must say I like Korea’s community cohesiveness. Koreans I know who dislike it, say that Korean is collectivist. I think that is an exaggeration. It is disturbing that this seems based mostly in shared ethnic-linguistic tradition. It makes it tough for outsiders to join, and Koreans seem to overreact to minor foreign crime. But still, it is admirable to watch Koreans think more collectively about national welfare than we do.

Bonus Banalities I Refuse List:

I tried to be concrete in this list, because usually these exercises degenerate into third-rate sociological bathos. So here is the usual trite cultural mawkishness we all know shouldn’t pass as insight. The usual banalities offered to foreigners on arrival anywhere include: We are very friendly, warm, and hospitable. Our culture is great, unique, old, rich. Our heritage is respected worldwide (cue UNESCO). Our grandmothers are the pillar of our culture and the repository of social wisdom. We are multilateralists and global citizens who love foreign guests. Our technology is cutting edge and that means we are modern and building bridges to the world. We are a regional cultural/economic ‘hub.’ Bonus snarky potshot if you are lucky and a US foreigner: we are nicer than you because George Bush ruined the world.

None of this flim-flam applies to Korea (nor anywhere else, as it is just cheesy pop multiculturalism). Every state community is unique of course, but usually in ways that aren’t that mind-blowing. So yes, Korean grandmothers are salt of the earth, but so are Russian babushkas. I don’t think Koreans are anymore friendly or charming (or rude) than any of the other non-Americans I have met. That doesn’t mean they aren’t nice, but that there is nothing particular about Korean hospitality that sets them aside. Nor do Koreans seem to possess any more gnostic wisdom on the secrets of the good life than any other culture I have experienced. Nor are they any more globalized and less nationalized. In short, their ‘culture’,’ like everyone else’s, is malleable and differentiated enough that these mindless ‘culture studies’ generalizations are just propaganda easily turned to fit your likes/dislikes. All in all, I find Korea a good place to live – a pleasant, (farirly) green/clean, wealthy, liberal democracy tolerant of social pluralism while trying to maintain a national integrity. That should be enough for anybody.