In Theories of International Politics and Zombies, I noted that "one can only speculate" what great power governments were doing to prepare for the contingency of an attack of the undead.  One could argue that the absence of any mention of zombies in the Wikileaks cables suggests that no planning has taken place -- but one would assume that scenarios involving the undead would be classified as Top Secret or higher. 

Courtesy of the New York Times' William Glaberson, however, we now know that the State of New York is thinking seriously about this problem:

Major disasters like terrorist attacks and mass epidemics raise confounding issues for rescuers, doctors and government officials. They also pose bewildering legal questions, including some that may be painful to consider, like how the courts would decide who gets life-saving medicine if there are more victims than supplies.

But courts, like fire departments and homicide detectives, exist in part for gruesome what-ifs. So this month, an official state legal manual was published in New York to serve as a guide for judges and lawyers who could face grim questions in another terrorist attack, a major radiological or chemical contamination or a widespread epidemic.

Quarantines. The closing of businesses. Mass evacuations. Warrantless searches of homes. The slaughter of infected animals and the seizing of property. When laws can be suspended and whether infectious people can be isolated against their will or subjected to mandatory treatment. It is all there, in dry legalese, in the manual, published by the state court system and the state bar association.

Uh-huh... this is for "radiological" or "chemical" contaminations.  Ok.  Right.  Wake up and smell the rotting corpses of the undead, people!!!!!

Seriously, fhe foreword of the New York State Public Health Legal Manual (.pdf) opens with the following explanation/justification: 

 

In today's world, we face many natural and man-made catastrophic threats, including the very real possibility of a global influenza outbreak or other public health emergency that could infect millions of people. While it is impossible to predict the timing or severity of the next public health emergency, our government has a responsibility to anticipate and prepare for such events. An important element of this planning process is advance coordination between public health authorities and our judicial and legal systems. The major actors in any public health crisis must understand the governing laws ahead of time, and must know what their respective legal roles and responsibilities are. What is the scope of the government's emergency and police powers? When may these be invoked, and by which officials? What are the rights of people who may be quarantined or isolated by government and public health officials?

These questions must be researched and answered now-not in the midst of an emergency-so that the responsible authorities have a readymade resource to help them make quick, effective decisions that protect the public interest.

Are planning documents like this useful?  Yes and no.  On the one hand, this kind of thing is a classic example of what Lee Clarke would refer to as a "fantasy document."  In Mission Improbable:  Using Fantasy Documents to Tame Disaster, Clarke argued that plans like these have little chance of success, because an actual crisis contains too much randomness to plan out in advance.  They serve primarily as a way for the state to soothe the the public that Someone Is In Charge and will provide control, order, and stability.  Similarly, Anthony Cordesman argued in October 2001 that pre-crisis government efforts to handle this kind of emergency are likely to disintegrate once the actual crisis emerges. 

On the other hand, as many contributors argued in Avoiding Trivia, even if the plans themselves never work out, the effort to plan can be useful both for crisis and non-crisis situations.  This kind of exercise forces bureaucrats and officials to think about what standard operatijngf procedures won't be so standard in a post-disaster environment.  It also serves as a form of mental aerobics to prepare to the truly unknown unknowns. 

So, on the one hand, kudos to the New York State legal community for thinking about these questions.  On the other hand, I doubt that things will go according to plan.  Plus, I'm really curious to hear whether they think habeas corpus applies to the living dead. 

I was remiss in not blogging about Tom Donilon replacing James Jones as National Security Advisor. Well, actually, I don't think I was remiss, because I didn't think it was all that big of a deal. Past reportage indicated that Donilon had been the de facto national security advisor for some time now. 

The one difference is that Donilon has had the ear of Obama in a way that Jones never did. And sure, access to the president is an important lever of influence in Washington. It's no guarantee of success, however. Condoleezza Rice probably had a closer relationship to President Bush than Steve Hadley, but the latter did a better job as NSC advisor. Like Peter Feaver, I figured that this move simply matched titles to actual responsibilities. 

The personnel change, however, is causing some people to say some silly things. Steve Clemons, for example, provides this assessment:

Obama's decision making system -- which is huge now and an obvious corrective to the cabal-like operation that Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Richard Cheney ran during the G.W. Bush years -- simply could not function without Donilon (and [Denis] McDonough).

But that does not mean that the role of being the premier adviser to the president on America's global threats and challenges can be properly filled by someone who is excellent at a speedy, inclusive, decision making process but too overwhelmed to get distance to think and advise strategically.

Some of the early reactions to the Donilon appointment have focused on his political connections and savvy over his intellectual merits and standing. These critics couldn't be more wrong.

While Donilon has not taken the path to power that many others in the national security establishment have of carefully pruned and crafted exposes on American foreign policy -- published in journals of record like Foreign Policy, Foreign Affairs, National Interest, and American Interest -- he has been actively engaged for years in national security strategy groups and working meetings.

His thinking about U.S. foreign policy is known to any who have worked with him in these groups. He's a systematic, creative, pragmatic thinker about America's foreign policy challenges -- and whether he has expressed himself in roundtable discussions rather than a large volume of opeds makes no difference.

Donilon is a pragmatic, non-ideological practitioner who knows that America's greatest challenge today is restoring its stock of power and its ability to positively shape the global system. He knows that American power is doubted today and needs to be reinvented -- and he thinks about this all of the time. It is what animates him and the furious pace he keeps.

This might be the ritual suck-up-to-the-next-NSC-advisor kind of blog post, but taken at face value, a few minor corrections are warranted. 

First, by definition, a good foreign policy process should be able to function well regardless of personnel changes. If a process can't function without particular individuals in charge, then it's neither a good nor a robust decision-making process. 

Second, "non-ideological" policymakers don't exist. Policymakers might be in denial about what ideologies they possess. Their ideologies might be so moderate and mainstream that they're not noticed as ideologies. But any policymaker has a set of ideas that guides them through the complex swamp that is world politics. 

Finally, from what I can read, there was no policy distance between Jones and Donilon. The only difference seems to be that Donilon was more willing to push back against the military, and that the military dislikes Donilon more. Why this promotion should lead to fundamental policy changes is beyond me.   

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave a major foreign policy speech today at the Council on Foreign Relations office in DC.  This is interesting, as the Obama administration released its National Security Strategy only a few months ago, so one would think that a major speech by the Secretary of State would be pretty superfluous. 

The guts of Clinton's speech can be excerpted as follows: 

[L]et me say it clearly: The United States can, must, and will lead in this new century....

Architecture is the art and science of designing structures that serve our common purposes, built to last and withstand stress.  That's what we seek to build - a network of alliances and partnerships, regional organizations and global institutions, that is durable and dynamic enough to help us meet today's challenges and adapt to threats that we cannot even conceive of, just as our parents never dreamt of melting glaciers or dirty bombs....

After more than a year and a half, we have begun to see the dividends of our strategy.  We are advancing America's interests and making progress on some of our most pressing challenges.  Today we can say with confidence that this model of American leadership works, and that it offers our best hope in a dangerous world.

I'd like to outline several steps we are taking to implement this strategy....

First, we have turned to our closest allies, the nations that share our most fundamental values and interests -- and our commitment to solving common problems.  From Europe and North America to East Asia and the Pacific, we are renewing and deepening the alliances that are the cornerstone of global security and prosperity....

[T]he second step in our strategy for global leadership is to help build the capacity of developing partners.  To help countries obtain the tools and support they need to solve their own problems and help solve our common problems.  To help people lift themselves, their families, and their societies out of poverty, away from extremism, and toward sustainable progress.  The Obama Administration views development as a strategic, economic, and moral imperative - as central to advancing American interests as diplomacy and defense....

We must also take into account those countries that are growing rapidly and already playing more influential roles in their regions and in global affairs, such as China and India, Turkey, Mexico and Brazil, Indonesia and South Africa, as well as Russia, as it redefines its own role in the world.

Our third major step has been to deepen engagement with these emerging centers of influence....

[T]he fourth key step in our strategy has been to reinvigorate America's commitment to be an active transatlantic, Pacific and hemispheric leader....

[O]ur fifth step has been to reengage with global institutions and begin modernizing them to meet the evolving challenges of the 21st century.  We need institutions that are flexible, inclusive, and complementary, instead of competing with one another for jurisdiction.  Institutions that encourage nations to play productive roles, that marshal common efforts, and enforce the system of rights and responsibilities that binds us all....

As we strengthen and modernize regional and global institutions, the United States is also working to cement democracy, human rights, and the rule of law into their foundations.  To construct an architecture of values that spans the globe and includes every man, woman and child.  An architecture that can not only counter repression and resist pressure on human rights, but also extend those fundamental freedoms to places where they have been too long denied.

This is our sixth major step.  We are upholding and defending the universal values that are enshrined in the UN Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (emphases added). 

So, what do I think of all of this?  Let's divide my reactions into what I think are the good, the bad, and the BS portions of Clinton's speech.

The Good:

1)  The Asia/Pacific.  Clinton shoehorned this into her fourth tactic, but it was an effective articulation of the administration's calibrated approach towards China. 

2)  Russia.  The Obama administration has certainly reversed what had been a badly deteriorating relationship with the Russian Federation.  One quibble:  Clinton said at one point that the relationship in January 2009, "invigorated spy novelists and arm chair strategists."  Gimme a break:  Anna Chapman did a much better job of invigorating spy novelists. 

The Bad: 

1)  The overestimation of shared interests.  Clinton talked about, "international diplomacy aimed at rallying nations to solve common problems and achieve shared aspirations" as a constant of American foreign policy.  That's great -- but what about the areas where values and aspirations are not shared?  There were far too many Pollyannish paragraphs in this speech.

2)  The underemphasis on patience.  Clinton used a good turn of phrase -- "strategic patience" -- to talk about the time required to see some of these foreign policy initiatives bear fruit.  This should have been played up much more.  Indeed, the exemplar Clinton gave of her foreign policy vision -- Iran -- does not really look all that successful right now.  The speechwriter should have also tied in this notion of patience with American determination and resolve. 

The BS:

1)  Europe.  The whole section on strengthening bilateral and multilateral ties to Europe almost caused me to lose my cornflakes.  I mean, c'mon.  Is forcing the Europeans to cut down their number of seats in the IMF an example of strengthening alliances?  I see the intrinsic merit in occasionally dissing the Europeans, but don't tell me that anything transatlantic has been "strengthened" over the past 18 months. 

2)  The entire "global architecture" theme:  You know, it's a funny thing:  the revamped G-20 is, in many ways, at the center of the whole "remaking the global architecture" idea.  Guess how many times it was mentioned in this speech?  Once.  If the State Department thinks the Iran policy is a more successful case than the G-20, then how can I possible have any faith in any new global governance structure? 

Am I missing anything? 

Hey, remember last month when I promised I'd do more than skim the National Security Strategy? It took me a while, but I finally got around to looking closely at the entire document.

My assessment perfectly mirrors The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy's assessment of Earth: mostly harmless.

First of all, when reading these documents, you need to separate the parts that seem really important from the parts that seem.... boilerplate. For example, consider this laughably overtaken-by-events pledge:

Effectively Manage Emergencies: We are building our capability to prepare for disasters to reduce or eliminate long-term effects to people and their property from hazards and to respond to and recover from major incidents. To improve our preparedness, we are integrating domestic all hazards planning at all levels of government and building key capabilities to respond to emergencies. We continue to collaborate with communities to ensure preparedness efforts are integrated at all levels of government with the private and nonprofit sectors. We are investing in operational capabilities and equipment, and improving the reliability and interoperability of communications systems for first responders. We are encouraging domestic regional planning and integrated preparedness programs and will encourage government at all levels to engage in long-term recovery planning. It is critical that we continually test and improve plans using exercises that are realistic in scenario and consequences.

Planning integration!! Community collaboration!! More integration!! Hey, that's killer material in the NSS. It's a good thing this stuff is being done to prepare for a real emergency. Oh, wait....

As to the portions that matter: it's not that bad. In contrast to some previous strategy documents, this NSS is an actual strategy rather than a laundry list of regions and countries. The administration wisely notes the connections between domestic economic vitality and the ability to project and husband power in a complex world. In contrast to a lot of criticism I read, the administration makes a clear distinction between allies (NATO, Japan) and partners (Russia, China). The attitude towards multilateral institutions is appropriately clear-eyed. Al Qaeda is discussed but not to the point of obsession. The strategy could have just quoted John Quincy Adams rather than trying to perfect his prose about promoting democracy abroad by practicing it at home -- but that's picking at nits.

So, most of it is harmless. There are two things that nagged at me after I'd finished it, however.

First, there's a mismatch between the Obama administration's emphasis on retrenchment/"hard choices" and their sincere commitment to eliminating nuclear weapons. From his 2007 Foreign Affairs essay onwards, every major strategy document has emphasized that the administration will "Pursue the Goal of a World Without Nuclear Weapons." This is the part of the NSS with feeling, and the part where the administration has racked up some significant achievements.

The thing is, a retrenchment strategy requires relying on the tools of power that yield the greatest bang for the buck. Nuclear weapons accomplish little as a means of compellence, but they are the best and most cost-effective deterrent capability imaginable. Now, nothing the Obama administration has done to date compromises that deterrent capability. They seem to be moving in that direction, however. Pledging to eliminate nuclear weapons involves investing a lot of diplomatic capital towards a goal that fundamentally contradicts the national interest of the United States.

The second problem is the strictly horatory nature of some of the key NSS planks. There's a lot of "rising fiscal and trade deficits will... necessitate hard choices in the years ahead" kind of talk in the document. There are repeated emphases on getting America's fiscal house in order. Which is great, until we get to the paragraph on how this is going to happen:

Reduce the Deficit: We cannot grow our economy in the long term unless we put the United States back on a sustainable fiscal path. To begin this effort, the Administration has proposed a 3-year freeze in nonsecurity discretionary spending, a new fee on the largest financial services companies to recoup taxpayer losses for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), and the closing of tax loopholes and unnecessary subsidies. The Administration has created a bipartisan fiscal commission to suggest further steps for medium-term deficit reduction and will work for fiscally responsible health insurance reform that will bring down the rate of growth in health care costs, a key driver of the country’s fiscal future.

That's it? I was expecting a bit more. True, budget pledges in a National Security Strategy don't count for much, but would it have been so bad to articulate a more detailed vision of our fiscal future? If the administration can pledge to double exports in the next five years, can't it put in a goal for what the debt/GDP ratio will look like by 2015?

Still, on the whole, it's a decent strategy document as these things go.

Mostly harmless. Mostly.

Your humble blogger has been concerned about paranormal threats to the planet Earth for some time now.  Via Glenn Reynolds, I see that Stephen Hawking is also concerned:   

The aliens are out there and Earth had better watch out, at least according to Stephen Hawking. He has suggested that extraterrestrials are almost certain to exist — but that instead of seeking them out, humanity should be doing all it that can to avoid any contact....

He suggests that aliens might simply raid Earth for its resources and then move on: “We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn’t want to meet. I imagine they might exist in massive ships, having used up all the resources from their home planet. Such advanced aliens would perhaps become nomads, looking to conquer and colonise whatever planets they can reach.”

He concludes that trying to make contact with alien races is “a little too risky”. He said: “If aliens ever visit us, I think the outcome would be much as when Christopher Columbus first landed in America, which didn’t turn out very well for the Native Americans.”

Hmmm... this is undeniably true, but dare I say that Hawking is being a bit simplistic?  Oh, hell, who am I kidding, I'm a blogger.  Of course I'll say that Hawking is being simplistic.   

Critics might accuse me of being soft in the Theoretical War Against Aliens, embracing the mushy-headed liberalism of Contact over the hard-headed realpolitik of, say, Independence Day.  And the risk-averse approach suggested by Hawking is certainly a viable policy option.  But let's dig a bit deeper and consider four five thought-provoking questions from an interplanetary security perspective. 

1)  In space, does anybody understand the security dilemma?  In international relations, there is at least full information about who the other actors are and where they are located.  Clearly, we lack this kind of information about the known universe.   

What Hawking is suggesting, however, is that efforts to collect such information would in and of themselves be dangerous, because they would announce our presence to others.  He might be right.  But shoiuldn't that risk be weighed against the cost of possessing a less robust early warning system?  Isn't it in Earth's interests to enhance its intelligence-gathering activities? 

2)  Carried to its logical extreme, isn't Hawking making an argument for rapidly exhausting our natural resources?  If Hawking is correct, then the sooner we run out of whatever might be valuable to aliens, the less interest we are to them.  Of course, this does beg the question of which resources aliens would consider to be valuable.  If aliens crave either sea water or bulls**t, then the human race as we know it is seriously screwed. 

3) Why would aliens go after the inhabited planets?  Ceteris paribus, I'm assuming that aliens would prefer to strip-mine an uninhabited planet abundant with natural resources than an inhabited one.  Three hundred planets have already been discovered in the Milky Way, and there are "likely many billions."  Even rapacious aliens might try some of them first before looking at Earth, since we are mostly harmless. 

There is a counterargument, of course.  Over at Hit & Run, Tim Cavanaugh tries to assuage fears of aliens by observing, "Why would a race of superintelligent jellyfish or blue whales even take notice of us, let alone want to conquer us?"  This cuts both ways, however.  If those jellyfish fail to notice us but notice our abundant amounts of salinated water, they could decide to come without a care in the world for the bipedal inhabitants of Earth. 

4)  How do we know that some human aren't already trying to contact aliens?  Stephen Walt and others assume that the presence of aliens would cause humans to form a natural balancing coalition.   I'm not so sure.  My research into other apocalyptic scenarios suggests that some humans -- that's right, I'm looking at you, Switzerland! -- would bandwagon with the aliens.  Indeed, for all we know, some humans are already trying to welcome their future alien overlords.  Which begs the question --  wouldn't Hawking's isolationist policy allow the quislings to monopolize the galactic message emanating from Earth? 

5)  What about preventive action against the microbials?  Hawking admits that most forms of extreterrestrial life will likely exist as micro-organisms.  Which is swell, except that, if you believe those crazy scientist types, then humans also started off as little microbes.  But if Hawking is correct about the motivations of any alien that would seek out strange new worlds, then we are missing a golden opportunity to wipe out any and (nearly) all extraterrestrial threats at the preventive stage.  Perhapsw we should nuke all these emergent microbial life forms from orbit -- it's the only way to be sure. 

I look forward to a healthy exchange of diverse viewpoints in the comments -- remember, the future of mankind may depend on it.

[I]s the sacrifice of 58,000 Americans worth a bad Yankee team?

The answer is obviously yes.

This is a question that could tear apart the nation... Red Sox Nation, that is. 

More here.  I really don't think this is anything more than a coincidence, and I certainly don't agree with the blogger's estimation of Lyndon Johnson. 

Still, if one wanted to develop a completely unsubstantiated hypothesis, however, one could posit that the explanation for this correlation is that under a GOP president, the mercurial owner of the Yankees faced fewer contraints to royally f**k up interfere in the management of the team, resulting in some spectacular flame-outs on the diamond. 

It's not true, of course, but it's a more entertaining urban myth than Obama's citizenship status or Bush's role in the 9/11 attacks. 

Just as TNR's precise transcription of Denis McDonough's talking points long disquisition about the Obama administration's policy planning process comes out, Roger Cohen unfurls his long-form essay in the New York Times Magazine about the administration's thinking on Iran, the Middle East, and U.S. foreign policy.

Here's the bigthink of Cohen's essay: 

Just how far Obama is ready to go in engagement’s name has become clearer in Iran. At the time of that Thursday demonstration, almost a week after the election, the toughest thing he had found to say about the turmoil was that the suppression of peaceful dissent “is of concern to me and it’s of concern to the American people.” He had also equated Ahmadinejad with Moussavi, from the U.S. national-security standpoint, because both support the nuclear program, even as people died for the greater openness that Moussavi espoused.

A sobered America is back in the realpolitik game. A favored phrase in the Iran team goes, “It is what it is.” Now the question is whether such an approach can yield results. Can Ross honor his own precept to match objectives with “available means”? To the nuclear clock has been added a democracy clock, complicating every diplomatic equation. An Iran of mullahs and nukes has morphed, for many Americans, into the Iran of beautiful, young Neda Agha-Soltan, cut down with a single shot while leaving a June 20 demonstration, a murder caught on video that went viral. Whatever Obama’s realism — and it’s as potent as his instinct for the middle ground — a president on whom so much youthful idealism has been projected can scarcely ignore the Neda effect.

All well and good, but there's a nugget buried in Cohen's tale that wories me juuust a bit.  As fans of Laura Rozen are aware (and if you're not a fan, you should be), Barack Obama had a disappointing meeting with Saudi King Abdullah last month: 

[T]wo sources, one a former U.S. official who recently traveled there and one a current official speaking anonymously, say the meeting did not go well from Obama's perspective. What's more, the former official says that Dennis Ross has told associates that part of what prompted Obama to bring him on as his special assistant and NSC senior director for the "Central Region" last month was the president's feeling that the preparation for the trip was insufficient.

Ok, except that after reading Cohen's story, I can't help but wonder whether Ross was part of the problem rather than part of the solution.  Here is Cohen's description of Ross' meetng with the Saudi King -- which occured six weeks before Obama's: 

On April 29, in Dammam, in Saudi Arabia’s eastern province, Ross sat down with King Abdullah. He talked to a skeptical monarch about the Obama administration’s engagement policy with Iran — and talked and talked and talked. When the king finally got to speak, according to one U.S. official fully briefed on the exchange, he began by telling Ross: “I am a man of action. Unlike you, I prefer not to talk a lot.” Then he posed several pointed questions about U.S. policy toward Iran: What is your goal? What will you do if this does not work? What will you do if the Chinese and the Russians are not with you? How will you deal with Iran's nuclear program if there is not a united response? Ross, a little flustered, tried to explain that policy was still being fleshed out.

When the Saudis are accusing you of being all hat and no cattle, you know you have a problem.

Seriously, let's think about this from Abdullah's perspective for a second.  A new envoy comes to chat filled with new plans and ideas on Iran.  Except it turns out that these new plans and ideas haven't been filled out exactly -- key contingecies haven't been thought through, etc.  For a leader who had to deal with eight years of George W. Bush, this had to sound a lot like U.S. foreign policy déjà vu.  Why should he have been more forthcoming with Obama. 

So, just to be clear, Obama found that meeting unsatisfactory -- and as a result he brings in the guy who might have laid the groundwork for the unproductive meeting? 

Look, Ross is a smart guy, and he might have ust had a bad day when he met with Abdullah.  But there are times when the Obama administration, for all the talk about embtracing realpolitik,* doesn't sound terribly realist at all. 

*Granted, there are other points in the essay where the administration sounds positively Waltzian. 

The implicit message in Steve Walt's ten commandments for foreign policy wonks is that if you dare to violate any of these commandments, the Council on Foreign Relations Henry Kissinger God will strike you down with a mark and brand you for life as unworthy of wonkdom. 

Some of Walt's commandments hold, and some of them don't (who's getting pilloried on Cuba nowadays?), but there's an important corollary to these commandments that needs to be highlighted: 

If thou hast deviated from the consensus of the foreign policy community, thou shalt go to the tallest mountain, and rend one's clothing, and scream from the top of thine lungs like Charlton Heston in Planet of the Apes/Soylent Green, and declare that the mark of transgression itself is proof that thou must be right.