international relations

Bryan Bender had a long story in yesterday's Boston Globe about the Obama administration's aspirations for treaty ratification: 

Marking a major reversal from the Bush administration, which considered most treaties to be too restrictive of US sovereignty, the Obama administration says it will seek ratification of three major pacts aimed at reducing nuclear weapons. It also will seek approval of a set of regulations to manage use of the oceans and, by the end of the president’s first term, a new treaty to combat global climate change....

International treaties are signed by the president, but under the Constitution must be ratified by the Senate to become law. They need at least 67 votes to pass, not a simple majority of 51, typically requiring strong support from the president’s own party and a significant number of votes from the opposing party. Democrats now control 60 seats in the Senate, counting two independents who usually vote with the party.

Obtaining 67 votes has proved difficult under the best of circumstances and helps explain why fewer than 20 major security treaties have been ratified since the end of World War II, according to David Auerswald, a professor of strategy and policy at the National War College in Washington.

“The foreign policy consensus in this country has disappeared on many issues,’’ said Auerswald, a leading specialist on treaties. “Given that the Democrats only have 60 of the 67 votes necessary to approve a treaty, they have to hold their ranks and pick off seven Republicans. Yet moderate Republicans are a dying breed in the Senate, making the Democrats’ task that much harder.’’

At first glance, I'd share Auerswald's skepticism.  The Bush administration, for example, wanted the Senate to pass the Law of the Sea Treaty.  Despite Bush's support and the ardent backing of the U.S. Navy, ratification went nowhere -- there were a suficient number of "new sovereigntists" to kill the chances for a floor vote.     

Of course, that was a whole election cycle ago.  Looking at the U.S. Senate, let's do some arithmetic.  Assuming Obama has the backing of all 60 Democrat-ish Senators, who might offer support on the GOP side for, say, the Law of the Sea Treaty?  My tentative list: 

1. Olympia Snowe (ME)
2. Susan Collins (ME)
3. Richard Lugar (IN)
4. Orrin Hatch (UT)
5. Lisa Murkowski (AK)
6. George Voinovich (OH)
7. John McCain (AZ)

So it's possible... hmmm.... well, maybe not McCain.  It's a little unclear, actually. 

I suspect this is going to boil down to whether John McCain wants to be the Arthur Vandenberg of his era. 

Either way, however, I suspect the Obama administration would encounter difficulties getting these same seven senators to vote yea on a raft of international treaties.  Unless there are more GOP Senators available for the picking, I suspect Obama will have to pick only his favorites to push. 

So, how should you interpret the first round of P5 +1 negotiations with Iran that took place yesterday? 

The hard-working staff here at drezner.foreignpolicy.com would never want its readers to view material outside their ideological comfort zone -- that would be crazy talk.  Therefore, please go down this list of different ideological approaches to Iran and read only the one that fits you. 

Liberal internationalism:  An excellent first round of talks.  At a minimum, the Iranian pledge to permit IAEA inspectors into its Qom facility, and the agreement to have fuel encriched outside of Iran, help to lessen fears of a breakout capability.  This shows how a multilateral approach, linked to the threat of sanctions, can successfully bring Iran into a cooperative relationship with the West.

Neoconservatism:  These talks were a feckless and futile exercise.  Iran agreed "in principle" -- which means that it will likely not honor its pledges. This also covers part of the uranium that we know about, and only the facilities that we know about.  Anyone who thinks that this lying, odious, anti-Semitic regime is showing all of its cards on the nuclear question is deluding themselves.  The only thing these talks will accomplish is sapping the will of Americans to use any means necessary to overthrow the regime. 

Realism:  Iran's concessions reinforce the point that this regime a perfectly rational actor that is worthy of even deeper engagement.  We still have no evidence that Iran is trying to develop nuclear weapons, so we should not go looking for red herrings that do not exist.  A deal can be made with this government once we are able to ignore how its rulers treats its own citizenry.  Any failure from here on in is entirely the fault of Israel and the Israel Lobby in the United States. 

So, did I miss anything? 

The Daily Telegraph reports scientific confirmation of something I have known deep, deep down in my psyche for going on three decades: 

Talking to an attractive woman really can make a man lose his mind, according to a new study.

The research shows men who spend even a few minutes in the company of an attractive woman perform less well in tests designed to measure brain function than those who chat to someone they do not find attractive.

Researchers who carried out the study, published in the Journal of Experimental and Social Psychology, think the reason may be that men use up so much of their brain function or 'cognitive resources' trying to impress beautiful women, they have little left for other tasks.

The findings have implications for the performance of men who flirt with women in the workplace, or even exam results in mixed-sex schools.

Women, however, were not affected by chatting to a handsome man.

Well, beyond proof that there's a very fine line between the truth and The Onion, I think there are several fascinating implications from this finding. 

1)  You gotta admit, this explains a lot about Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi.  He is the foreign policy leader who seems most determined to be close to attractive women.  If you think about it, it's nothing short of miraculous that Berlusconi hasn't screwed up more than he actually has. 

2)  Attractive first ladies are trouble.  The closest the United States came to a nuclear confrontation was the Cuban Missile Crisis -- which just happens to be when Jackie Kennedy is first lady.  A coincidence?  Oh, I think not! 

One can only hope that Presidents Obama and Sarkozy will recognize this and prevent Michelle Obama and Carla Bruni from being the 21st century equivalents of Helen of Troy. 

3)  Suddenly my Britney Spears suggestion is making a lot more sense. 

4)  Add another explanation to Angelina Jolie's relative success as a celebrity activist.  Semi-seriously, it would be interesting if gender was a determining factor in the ability of celebrity activists to move the agenda. 

5)  Whichever country makes Salma Hayek their queen will have finally chosen the One Woman to Rule Them All!!!

Dd I miss anything? 

Two interesting articles of note over the weekend.  The first is Clive Thompson's essay on Bruce Bueno de Mesquita (otherwise known as BDM) and his Fabulous Foreign Policy Game Theory Contraption forecasting model-for-hire.  Bruce is the leading proselytizer of using game theory as a predictive tool in political science -- and he has quite the forecasting business to back him up. 

Bruce seems to merit one of these every two years or so, and Thompson hits most of the same sources and critics of BDM's approach.  He does add this nugget of information, however: 

Those who have watched Bueno de Mesquita in action call him an extremely astute observer of people. He needs to be: when conducting his fact-gathering interviews, he must detect when the experts know what they’re talking about and when they don’t. The computer’s advantage over humans is its ability to spy unseen coalitions, but this works only when the relative positions of each player are described accurately in the first place. “Garbage in, garbage out,” Bueno de Mesquita notes. Bueno de Mesquita begins each interview by sitting quietly — “in a slightly closed-up manner,” as [U.K. telecommunications company Cable and Wireless Richard] Lapthorne told me — but as soon as an interviewee expresses doubt or contradicts himself, Bueno de Mesquita instantly asks for clarification.

“His ability to pick up on body language, to pick up on vocal intonation, to remember what people said and challenge them in nonthreatening ways — he’s a master at it,” says Rose McDermott, a political-science professor at Brown who has watched Bueno de Mesquita conduct interviews. She says she thinks his emotional intelligence, along with his ability to listen, is his true gift, not his mathematical smarts. “The thing is, he doesn’t think that’s his gift,” McDermott says. “He thinks it’s the model. I think the model is, I’m sure, brilliant. But lots of other people are good at math. His gift is in interviewing. I’ve said that flat out to him, and he’s said, ‘Well, anyone can do interviews.’ But they can’t.”

Patrick Appel links to this essay because of BDM's Iran predictions (according to him, the student protestors will be more powerful than Khamenei by the fall).  He notes, "Let's hope his model is right, but I'm skeptical that these questions can be predicted by equations alone."  Except as the above quote suggests, it's not just equations alone -- it's knowing what values to plug into those equations.  This requires a different set of skills -- and rare is the person who excels at both. 

Speaking of brain skills, I found Emily Yoffe's Slate essay on brain chemistry to be kind of interesting.  The argument in a nutshell:

Our internal sense of time is believed to be controlled by the dopamine system. People with hyperactivity disorder have a shortage of dopamine in their brains, which a recent study suggests may be at the root of the problem. For them even small stretches of time seem to drag. An article by Nicholas Carr in the Atlantic last year, "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" speculates that our constant Internet scrolling is remodeling our brains to make it nearly impossible for us to give sustained attention to a long piece of writing. Like the lab rats, we keep hitting "enter" to get our next fix....

[O]ur brains are designed to more easily be stimulated than satisfied. "The brain seems to be more stingy with mechanisms for pleasure than for desire," [University of Michigan professor of psychology Kent] Berridge has said. This makes evolutionary sense. Creatures that lack motivation, that find it easy to slip into oblivious rapture, are likely to lead short (if happy) lives. So nature imbued us with an unquenchable drive to discover, to explore. Stanford University neuroscientist Brian Knutson has been putting people in MRI scanners and looking inside their brains as they play an investing game. He has consistently found that the pictures inside our skulls show that the possibility of a payoff is much more stimulating than actually getting one....

Actually all our electronic communication devices—e-mail, Facebook feeds, texts, Twitter—are feeding the same drive as our searches. Since we're restless, easily bored creatures, our gadgets give us in abundance qualities the seeking/wanting system finds particularly exciting. Novelty is one. [Washington State University neuroscientist Jaak] Panksepp says the dopamine system is activated by finding something unexpected or by the anticipation of something new. If the rewards come unpredictably—as e-mail, texts, updates do—we get even more carried away. No wonder we call it a "CrackBerry."

I fully recognize the biochemical reward system discussed in the essay, and I've certainly heard this argument applied to bloggers who allegedly lose the ability to engage in long-form writing.  But based on my own experience, I don't buy it. 

True, blogging, updating, etc. brings excitement.  But I get the same thrill from perfecting a longer stretch of prose.  When I'm polishing up a case study or trying to refine a theoretical argument, I usually feel the desires for new information that I get when I'm blogging.  Indeed, the biggest mental rush I get from writing is tackling a completely new subject and then, 10,000 words later, retackling the first draft with renewed vigor and the promise of molding it into something better.  Once I think I have something of merit, oooh, does the dopamine kick in.

But that's just me.  Tell me, dear readers -- are your electronic gadgets hampering you ability to do long-form work?     

My latest TNI online essay is now available for viewing on the interwebs.  It looks at recent U.S. foreign policy actions through the ever-useful lens of the good cop/bad cop routine.  Can a gambit that always worked on NYPD Blue work on the global stage?  I have my doubts:

On the whole, the good cop-bad cop routine is of limited utility in world politics. Iran appears to be unbowed in the face of a hawkish Israeli government (though, to be fair, they have been preoccupied with other matters recently). A protectionist Congress has not made it any easier to complete the Doha round. Bill Clinton’s good cop was able to secure the release of the hostages, but at the price of a photo op that looked bad no matter how necessary it might have been. And while no one doubts that Biden occasionally goes rogue, it remains unclear just what policy benefits that strategy yields.

In theory, the best kind of bad cop is the one that seems genuinely unconstrained and ready to strike. An independent but allied government plays this part much better than a subordinate member of the executive branch. In other words, if you want to successfully execute the good cop-bad cop routine in world politics, the odds are long to begin with. To pull it off, however, under no circumstances should you let Joe Biden be Joe Biden.

Go read the whole thing. 

[Would a threat to display more of Dennis Franz's posterior work as a compellent threat?--ed.  Hmmm... let me check the Biological Weapons Convention to see if it's a legit move and I'll get back to you.] 

CLOSING SCENE OF "THE SECURITY COUNCIL CLUB":

INT. SECURITY COUNCIL CHAMBER - DAY -- we see the U.N. SECRETARY-GENERAL enter the Security Council room and pick up an essay. 

CHINA (voice-over)

Dear Mr. Secretary-General, we accept the fact that we had to sacrifice a whole Saturday in Security Council session for whatever international problem that we failed to address.  But we think you're crazy to make us write an essay telling you who we think we are. What do you care?

You see us as you want to see us... In the simplest terms, in the most convenient definitions.

But what we found out is that each one of us is an economic engine...

 UNITED STATES (voice-over)
...and a military power...

 RUSSIA (voice-over)
 ...and a basket case...

 EUROPEAN UNION (voice-over)
 ...and a princess...

  IRAN (voice-over)
  ...and a rogue state...

 CHINA (voice-over)
     Does that answer your question?
       Sincerely yours, the Security Council Club.

     We see SUSAN RICE walking across the football field
     as she thrusts her fist into the air in a silent cheer
     and freezes there.

Fade to....

My latest column at The National Interest online is now available.  It takes a closer look at the mismatch between domestic and foreign expectations of American hegemony.  I also throw in some international relations theory:

While the Obama administration and the American people might be content with the notion of America as just another country, this sentiment raises some uncomfortable questions. There is the factual one: is America really just one of many nations? Despite everything that has befallen the United States during this decade, the fact remains that by standard metrics—GDP, military might, cultural attraction—the United States is far and away the most powerful country in the world. This fact is so glaring that even academics are starting to acknowledge it. Stephen Brooks and William Wohlforth wrote an entire book on the durability of American unipolarity. World Politics published a special issue this year on the nature of the unipolar era.

Go check it out! 

So I'm back from my week off.  Did I miss anything?  Let's see: 

1. Coup in central American country;
2. North Korea acts provocatively
3. Iran's regime ramps up its paranoia
4. Republican governors gone wild
5. The Washington Post commits an odd blunder. 

In other words, a typical week in 2009. 

Actually, that's not fair to Central America -- thankfully, coups there are much rarer than they used to be.