“F-16s are an ideal counterinsurgency tool,” or Why Pakistan might Fall to the Taliban

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In case you want to explain why Pakistan might go down in flames in just one sentence, it is hard to beat, for sheer pithy idiocy, this money quote from a WSJ editorial:

“We also hear the [Pakistani] military is reluctant to take up U.S. offers to fix Pakistan’s idle attack helicopters and focus on the hardware suited for a civil war against a lightly armed enemy. Instead, says a U.S. Defense official, "we always hear things like, ‘F-16s are an ideal counterinsurgency tool.’"”

This line is so hysterically (in a bad way) bone-headed, its hard to know where to even begin in response. I will just direct you to my shortened thoughts on proper counterinsurgency.

I’ve been teaching terrorism and the GWoT for 5 years now, and this ranks up there with Rumsfeldian classics like ‘freedom is untidy.’ When I first read that F-16 line, I have to admit I laughed out loud. Good lord, even my undergrads learn basic asymmetry in the GWoT. Sigh…

Maybe I should add a monthly ‘surreality’ feature to the blog. This could be the May edition, while Stalin simultaneously battling aliens and dancing to techno could be the April entry.

Update: Here is a good piece explaining why the Pakis obsess so much over the F-16s: http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=2008ecb3-3d16-4240-86e0-5516f7e0caed&p=1. But it hardly validates the silly notion of F-16s as a COIN tool. The real, obvious answer is that they are a prestigious tool against India.

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

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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

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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

RINOs (Republicans in Name Only) vs Rush, Beck, & Fox News

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Before I blogged here, I and a friend tried a blog at blogspot on moderate Republicans under W. Here is the ‘manifesto’ (Sept. 2005), which I think bears repeating now, as Glenn Beck and Rush are taking the Right over the edge and driving away moderates like Arlen Specter.

“The national Republican Party today is slipping away from principles that once appealed to moderate and independent voters. We are concerned that the GOP has aligned itself closely to interest groups as powerful as those we dislike in the Democratic party. We recognize the legitimacy of interest articulation, but sharply conservative interests – from social and religious conservatives, as well as corporations – have seriously reduced the room necessary for moderates to comfortably co-exist. We do not believe that the GOP’s interests in becoming a permanent majority party are suited by the ideological narrowness of today’s leadership and strategy. While we do not blame President Bush entirely for this, he is the foremost example. His “instinctual” leadership style has empowered anti-modern and nepotistic elements in the GOP. We are concerned that short-term electoral interests have driven him to adopt highly contentious, unnecessarily conservative positions. Neither the religious right nor big business are fully consonant with the general will. In a two-party system, big tent parties are inevitable. For conservative activists who view us as “squishy” or “RINOs,” our response is that pluralism too is an American value.
We are, broadly speaking, classical liberals – or perhaps just Midwest moderates. For many years, a proper skepticism toward government and a preference for individual self-determination formed the principled core of the Republican Party. We were comfortable moderate Republicans for several decades. But today’s national GOP, with its untenable opposition to such clear requirements of good governance as accountability, empirical science, and balanced budgets, has left us profoundly alienated. Both of us felt compelled to vote for John Kerry in 2004.
We are deeply concerned that the Bush administration seems to have forgone a genuine trust in markets and individuals to embrace “big government conservatism.” We support necessary government capacity to rectify market failure and provide modern, humane safety nets, but not to reward market winners at the expense of challengers, nor to empower political cronies close to office holders, nor to shower programs on preferred electoral constituencies. We support individual freedom to make private sexual and cultural choices, and a balanced constitutionalism against the Bush administration’s breathtakingly expansive view of executive power.
These are hardly radical ideas. We do not believe the majority of Americans, or even Bush voters, share the social-conservative notion that the state should punish “immorality,” nor lobbyists’ view of public budgets as a windfall to be exploited. There is a modern, neoliberal/centrist way similar to the Free Democrats of Germany or the reformed Labor Party of Tony Blair. Such neoliberals and moderate conservatives exist here too – John McCain, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Christie Todd Whitman, George Voinovich spring to mind. We do not believe they share the divisive social conservatism, regressive fiscal propensities, and general opacity of the Bush imperial presidency.
So we invite all of you centrist and alienated Republicans to post here and engage in our debate. If you think we are Democrats, we are not. As bloggers, we feel close to grounded, moderate conservatives like Andrew Sullivan or The Economist. We generally trust the use of American power in the world. We support legal universalism against the multicultural opt-outs so dear to left. We admire the efficiency of the market and trade. But these sympathies are consonant with modernity. Increasingly the national GOP rejects the Enlightenment. We call it back.”

Koreanism of the Month – Fan Death

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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?

Start Investigating the Bush People for Torture

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The debate is beginning on investigating the Bush administration for torture. It seems to me that this is a no-brainer, and I am amazed at the hysterical conservative reaction that this will embolden the terrorists or divide the country. Perhaps the worst GOP cliche is that we will be ‘looking backward when we need to look to the future.’ Gimme a break. Accountability, which includes investigation where suspicion merits, is pretty basic in a democracy.

If the law was broken, there needs to be an investigation and possible prosecution. That is legally required. But of course, the politics of it are far more determinative of whether an investigation will happen.

1. If the Bush people have done nothing wrong, then they have nothing to fear. As Al Haig said to Nixon, an investigation can only prove that Dean is wrong, correct? (Ooops!) Indeed, an investigation will give the Bushies a chance to end this thing once and for all and defend their actions openly. Ex-DCI Hayden has already begun this by saying that torture did save US lives. We need to have this debate, in order to set the historical record straight and to decide if our values will permit torture if/when its efficacious.

2. Transparency and oversight are important. The country is far better off for things like the Watergate investigation or the Church committee. Investigating possible abuses of power so as to avoid them in the future is a fundamental difference between open and closed societies. It is also a major part of the balance of power. Congressional investigations of possible executive malfeasance are an important oversight tool. Having these debates out in public is good for the republic. It keeps government honest and insures the citizenry is informed of what occurs in their name, and hopefully encourages them to participate more. It is a healthy exercise that we do this when called for. It keeps us vigilant over our politics.

3. Walt makes the obvious and excellent point that the US has pushed for investigations and indictments of war criminals in places like the Balkans, Iraq, and Africa. If we brush this under the carpet, it will be far more difficult for the US to advocate for war crimes prosecutions in the future. The hypocrisy is so rank and obvious. To not investigate will damage the soft power and US reputation that Obama wants so much to restore and utilize.

Start Admitting that the US Commitment to SK is Weakening

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The Korean press has been filled for months with the coverage of the US military’s redeployment from north to south of Seoul. Usually these reports include protestations from both sides that the military commitment of the US to the South has not diminished.

I just can’t see how that can be the case. I want the US commitment to remain strong, but I think this is wishful thinking.

1. The US has slowly reduced its ground forces in Korea over the last few decades. US force totals are now around 28k and may sink below 25k by 2015. By contrast, the US has about twice that number in Japan and Germany, neither of whom are as directly threatened as SK.

The common response is that the US can provide the same level of protection with fewer people because of today’s greater lethality per US warfighter, as well as the continuing cover provided by the US air force and navy. Essentially this is a Rumsfeldian transformation argument. The ‘transformation’ of the US military has made each US solider more individually effective, so you need fewer of them for the same job. This is achieved through better training, and use of IT to coordinate firepower better. Smart soldiers and combined arms have multiplier effects we didn’t enjoy during the Cold War. So instead of blowing up a whole valley to kill the enemy, you only need the firepower to blow up a part of it, because IT (‘the networked battlefield’) will tell you exactly which part the enemy is in.

I find this moderately compelling, but the verdict is not really in yet on transformation. (See Thomas Ricks at Foreign Policy and Fred Kaplan at Slate, who have long chronicled the ups and downs of this notion.) While it seemed to work well in Afghanistan, it was an abysmal failure in Iraq, where low force totals were the single biggest US problem until the surge. Transformation and smaller forces also seem to run against a basic military lesson – more is better. Ceteris paribus, a larger force should improve options and create a greater cushion to absorb casualties and defeats. I think we all assume that NK’s military is clapped out, but it is over 1 million strong, and US totals seem awfully low. Also, should the US be involved in another war – as we are now – at the time of a conflict with the DPRK, more is again better. It just seems awfully risky.

2. US forces are being moved south of Seoul. To me, this is the most obvious sign of decreased willingness. During the Cold War, US troops were purposefully strewn along the DMZ, so that if there was a conflict, US lives would be lost almost immediately. Dead Americans would then rouse US public opinion to commit to the war. NATO followed the same logic in central Europe. The more flags on the initial coffins, the more likely collective security would be honored.

It seems willful blindness to say that the US is not looking to avoid casualties and therefore the public opinion chain-gang effect by this southward move. This may be good for the US. It lowers the likelihood of an immediate public outcry, and so gives DoD and the White House some time in a crisis. But if I were South Koreans, I would be nervous.

Similarly, US forces will no longer be located between Seoul, the capital, and the DMZ. 20m people live in greater Seoul – 40% of the national population. It is extremely exposed. It is only 30 miles from the DMZ; it is extremely dense, and it is filled with skyscrapers and high apartment tower blocks that would fall easily if it hit by NK artillery. (Picture the horrifying WTC collapse happening dozens of times.) I imagine the ROK army will be put in the US place, but still if I were a Korean, I would be pretty spooked that the US is no longer protecting what would obviously be the primary target if the DPRK drove south.

3. In 2012, the US will relinquish wartime authority to control SK forces. This abolition of Combined Forces Command (CFC) is marketed as restoring sovereignty and control to the South, but an obvious extra for the US is that it is no longer obligated to command in the case of a war. Again, this gives the US more wiggle room.

4. Finally, I think US public opinion is hardly deeply committed the defense of SK anymore. The Cold War is over. If SK were to go communist now, it would not matter to US security as much as before. And Americans are exhausted from Iraq, Afghanistan, and the general stress of the GWoT. To the extent Americans even know where SK is, most of their political images will be of a wealthy country (Samsung TVs, etc, etc) that should be able to defend itself. The American attitude, and probably that of DoD, is burden-sharing. Allies should carry more of their own defense. NK is SK’s problem, let them fix it; it’s their war, let them fight it.  Only 41% of Americans think we should aid the South against the North with combat troops (p. 18 here).

In sum, the bulk of smaller US forces will be 100 miles from the DMZ, south of Seoul, and we don’t have the authority to command the SK military in a fight most Americans won’t see as critical for national security. In other words, we are reserving options for ourselves, including just how much we want to commit.

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

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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.

Al Qaeda vs SK? Seriously? Why? The Enemies List isn’t Long Enough Yet?

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Most of the work on terrorism says that al Qaeda is an intelligent, serious organization of dedicated loyalists deeply committed to the cause. In the language of Cindy Combs, AQ is not a crazy or a criminal but a crusader.

This is an important insight, as our reflex is to respond angrily by denigrating them as  mad, crazy, nihilists. During WWII, we used to caricature Hitler as chewing the carpet in wild rages that almost certainly never happened. The reality is that AQ – and Hitler, Pol Pot, Stalin, and most of history’s horribles – are rational, strategic, and intelligent. These various opponents of liberal democracy have different values and pursue different (ie, awful) political goals, but they are rarely stupid or simply nihilistic.

So if AQ is rational, I don’t understand the value of attacking South Koreans. Why are the South Koreans, of all people, now ‘infidels’ too? I understand of course that in a maximal binladenist reading, a vast swathe of humanity, including Shiites, are the enemy. But if AQ is in fact acting strategically, can’t the Koreans wait their turn for elimination after the more proximate and threatening opponents (the West/Christianity, Israel/Jews, India/Hindus)? More practically, shouldn’t AQ just simply be trying to survive the GWoT right now, rather than adding another opponent?

AQ appears to see the world as a clash of civilizations. Islam, in this view, is encircled and already in conflict with errant pre-Islamic monotheisms (Christianity & Judaism), polytheistic Hinduism, and ‘pagan’ African animism/naturalism. Why open another potentially huge front by targeting Buddhist-Confucian states? It seems like a gigantic risk, especially if Japan and China read this as a religious assault on Confucianism and/or Buddhism (which seems to be the point, as AQ refers to the S Korean victims as ‘infidels.’)

The answer is likely that SK is a US ally, but this doesn’t seem like enough to explain 2 quick attacks and the infidel rhetoric. SK is an American ally, but it is hardly involved in the GWoT. Koreans know little about Islam, and there are less than 100 Muslims in the whole country. Given the NK menace, its forces can hardly deploy out-of-area anyway. Although it has a sizeable Christian population now, its deep religious roots are Buddhist-Confucian. And Buddhism and Confucianism are scarcely germane to  the fiery theistic conflicts that divide deep partisans of Judaism, Islam, Christianity and Hinduism.

I suppose we can only hope that AQ and radical Islam are foolish enough to declare war on all the world’s (non-Sunni) non-Muslims simultaneously.

How Come Walt’s top 10 IR books weren’t Assigned in my IR Program?

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So Walt published his top 10 IR books at FP. It is a good list, except that I was not required to read any of them in my grad program. Hah! Pieces of a few of them were listed in secondary suggested reading. By FP’s own ranking, I attended a top 20 IR PhD program. Why is this so?

1. The most important ‘books’ in IR at any one time are not this or that actual book, but the latest issue (book-length) of International Organization, International Studies Quarterly, or International Security. 75+% of my IR reading in grad school was articles. This is where the most recent research was (critical to know because it made you sound smart and ‘cutting edge’ at department gatherings), and the articles usually summarized the major arguments from previous work. So you didn’t need to read books or previous articles unless you had the time, which of course you never did. A lot of the IR books I like and recommend below, I read before or after my course work. Then I had time to actually ‘soak’ in the work and not just plow through the theory chapter as fast as possible so I could get to the next reading assignment.

2. No one had time in grad school to read books. Books are for wimps and generalists; plowing through dense, turgid article prose is the mark of a real social scientist! Besides, they were way too long, and you were already exhausted and out-of-shape from living in your basement, eating badly, rarely going into the sun (your implacable enemy), and binging on the weekends in breakouts of ‘freedom.’ I think I read only 3 IR books cover-to-cover in grad school – Waltz’ Theory of International Relations, Schelling’s Arms and Influence, and Gilpin’s War and Change in World Politics. I read these in my first year when I still thought books were to be read in their entirety. That fantasy disappeared quickly.

3. Walt stress lots of history and history of ideas stuff – like Guns, Germs and Steel or The Best and the Brightest. I would love to have had him as a professor, because these are the sorts of ‘big idea’ books with exciting history attached to them that made me go into IR in the first place. But that is hardly what I read. It was all theory, formalism, and models. This stuff made me a sharper abstract thinker, but it sure wasn’t as exciting as Walt’s list. So I can drone on about escalation dominance or the ideational structures of the ‘new regionalism,’ but undergrads and basically the rest of the world zone-out pretty fast when you shift into ‘social science voice.’

4. Here are my top ten IR books, in order:

Waltz, Theory of IR

Wendt, Social Theory of IR

Fukuyama, End of History

Thucydides

Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations

Carr, 20 Year Crisis

Gilpin, War and Change

Gilpin, Global Political Economy

Huntington, Clash of Civilizations

Schelling, Arms & Influence