Protectionism and the WTO patent regime

"Pundita, Before getting too outraged over the Monsanto [chapati] patent...consider that India has been breaking US patents on drugs and medicines in India for a long time, and then manufacturing equivalents of such medicines by God knows what techniques for domestic sale and usage. My tears shed for the Indians in this Monsanto matter: zero.
John in Lexington"

Dear John:
Pundita agrees with the spirit of your points, as my 2/2/2005 blog amply illustrates. Yet the patents issue regarding agriculture and pharmaceutical products shows two very different reckonings, as a Third World Network report indicates:

When the US introduced IPRs [International Property Rights] in the Uruguay Round as a new issue, it accused the Third World of 'piracy'. The estimates provided for royalties lost in agricultural chemicals are US$202 million and US$2,545 million for pharmaceuticals.

However, as the Rural Advancement Foundation International (RAFI), in Canada has shown, if the contribution of Third World peasants and tribals is taken into account, the roles are dramatically reversed: the US owes US$302 million in royalties for agriculture and $5,097 million for pharmaceuticals to Third World countries, according to these latter estimates.

In other words, in these two biological industry sectors alone, the US owes $2.7 billion to the Third World. This debt will not be paid by the US unless we have our biodiversity legislation in place.

The heart of the issue deals with the legal issues relating to 'prior art:'

Patents are supposed to satisfy three criteria: Novelty, Non-obviousness, and Utility:

Novelty implies that the innovation must be new. It cannot be part of 'prior art' or existing knowledge. Non-obviousness implies that someone familiar in the art should not be able to achieve the same step. Most patents based on indigenous knowledge appropriation violate the criteria of novelty combined with non-obviousness because they range from direct piracy to minor tinkering involving steps obvious to anyone trained in the techniques and disciplines involved.

In the case of the chapati patent, the company didn't even bother to make a minor adjustment to the product. They simply listed the genetic make-up of certain strains of wheat--developed through generations of openly shared knowledge among Indian farmers--and termed that list an "invention." So it's not called biopiracy for nothing.

Biopiracy--the practice of slapping a patent on indigenous products that evolved through open sharing of knowledge--represents pseudo-science and bad business practice. The larger issue is the controversy about the so-called "WTO patent regime" and how the regime fuels biopiracy. There is some weight to the charge that EU and US companies have greatly abused the spirit and intention of the WTO and the legal system by slapping patents on indigenous products in less developed countries. Basmati rice and chapati wheat are but two in a long list of outrageous patents, which includes the infamous patent on turmeric.

Few Americans are aware of the biopiracy issue, but this is a huge issue in China and India and throughout the developing world. At the heart of the issue is the charge by LDC governments that US and the West European governments have used the WTO as an extension of the plantation policies that supported the European colonial empires.

This is a big and hideously complex subject and there are abuses on both sides. Also, there are divisions within the ranks, as this World Socialist Web Site story indicates. Trotskyites are battling with India's Stalinist Communist Party over the issue of patents.

I note that Trotskyites have a bad habit of injecting doctrinal rhetoric even into the weather report, so first you have to scale socialist verbiage before you can grapple with the really confusing part of the story about Indian patent legislation, TRIPS, and the WTO patent regime.

But not to discourage the reader from giving it a try. Even if you emerge confused, as Pundita did, you'll have an idea of how big this issue is, and why US trade policy should take it under serious consideration.

The WTO patent regime falls under the growing list of protectionist issues. See Mover Mike's pithy essays What is Senate Bill 295? and Can't Someone Rid us of Meddling Governments? for warnings about the rising tide of protectionism and its destructiveness.

Operation Muslim World Outreach: US government takes on mind-boggling task of helping to modernize Islam

When the Establishment media are good, they are very, very good. Hats off to US News & World Report for their investigative report on the US government's epoch-making decision to stop futzing around and make a coordinated effort to help Muslim reformers bring Islam into the 21st Century.

The report outlines the chaos, confusion, and waffling that have gone on Inside the Beltway since 9/11, as officials agonized over whether the US government should dive into the vast waters of religious ideology.

From the details of the report, common sense finally prevailed and is now US policy and procedure known as Muslim World Outreach. The road ahead for MWO is still not clear but the journey of a thousand miles has officially begun, and there is no turning back now.

[Karen] Hughes's predecessor at State, acting Assistant Secretary Patricia Harrison, told U.S. News that she felt at times like Sisyphus, the Greek king banished to forever push a boulder up a steep hill, only to have it roll down again. The lesson Washington needs to learn, Harrison says, goes back to the Cold War--that the world matters and America needs to stay engaged.

"You never declare victory," she warns. "You do not declare that it's the end of history and go home."

The report is chock full of hard data and revelations that will surprise the general public (e.g., it was conservatives, not liberals, who insisted on gutting the USIA, leaving the "management of America's image abroad to Hollywood producers and rap musicians.")

Pundita advises that you break out a beer or aspirin before embarking on the report. You'll find yourself nodding and muttering, "This is what I've been saying for years they should do" so many times that you'll risk a crick in the neck. And there are anecdotes to send up the blood pressure.

During a mission to Cairo by a State Department panel on public diplomacy, visitors were repeatedly told how grateful Egyptians were to the Japanese for building their opera house. Yet they seemed wholly unaware that Egypt is the second-largest recipient of U.S. aid--nearly $2 billion a year--and that Americans have funded Cairo's systems for clean water, sewage, and electricity.

For the other side of the battle for hearts and minds, read the fourth rail's short and (to my mind) grimly funny report on Zarqawi's efforts to set up his own website.

I now turn over the podium to US News & World Report. This link directs the reader to the April 25 issue's table of contents because there are three important companion pieces to the main report titled, In an unseen front on the war on terror, America is spending millions to counter the hate of radical Islamists.

Why, one wonders, didn't U.S. News make an earth-shaking report, and one that took much effort and expense to create, the cover story? Pundita has no answer but urges her readers to take a moment, after receiving so much good free data, to write a thank-you note to the editor. The email response form ("Respond to this article") is handily at the bottom of each page of the report.

Is there a traffic engineer in the house? Stuck at the intersection of government and the Mass Age

"Pundita, I know you want to move on to discuss other topics, but I think your Mexico posts brought up issues that go beyond the illegal immigrant problem. I'm getting the feeling the American and Mexican governments and maybe all governments today are stuck at the intersection of mental gridlock.

I thought you and your readers would be interested to know about a voluntary program developed by the Mexican federal and state governments that's scheduled to start at the end of April.

The program puts deported Mexicans to work in Piedras Negras (Coahuila State), just across the Rio Grande from Eagle Pass, TX. The Mexicans will be paid $180 to go through a month's training then put to work in for-export assembly factories.

This Mexican program is a completely different approach than the US voluntary repatriation pilot program you mentioned, whereby deported Mexicans are transported at US expense back to their point of origin, which is usually deep inside Mexico.

After reading your posts on Mexico, I seriously question whether either program is anything more than a bandage. The Mexican program is only set up to provide about 700 jobs to Mexicans willing to stay on the Mexican side of the border, but about 50,000 Mexicans are deported just through Eagle Pass every year.

It's the same with the US repatriation program. It is only set up to handle a few thousand [deportees]. If they were willing to travel all that way to get into America, there's no guarantee they won't make the journey again as soon as they're "repatriated."

Neither approach breaks down the problem, as you did, into different categories of border crossings--migrants, commuters [work in US, live in Mexico], and temporary ['guest'] workers who [live and work in the US and] plan to return to Mexico as soon as they've earned a target amount of money. Their approach ignores the distinctions, so they're like a doctor treating symptoms instead of the illness.
[Signed] Tony in Dallas"

Dear Tony:

You need to realize that governments are not really set up to solve problems but to manage them. The conflict is that the Age of the Masses--the mega-populations--has created situations for civilized societies that demand engineering solutions. The obstacle is that the engineering problem-solvers who work in government are usually at the bottom of a chain of command.

It's virtually impossible to break the chain from within, in a democratic government. So that's an added obstacle to problem solving, which came to the fore in America in the wake of 9/11. I recall published interviews with generals and intel analysts who said flatly that desperately needed solutions to certain US defense problems could only come after the second catastrophic attack.

They were implying that problem-solving of a certain order runs counter to the negotiations and compromise that support democratic government. A second catastrophic attack, which likely would temporarily institute martial law, would allow for greater latitude in solving problems outside the matrix of compromise and the muck of red tape.

So what we have here is a dilemma for modern civilization. Our numbers have created problems that can't effectively be managed or contained. They have to be solved. But implementing the solution can offend any number of factions within a democratic government.

This brings forth the Half-a-Bridge model of problem-solving. You arrive at a solution that will please diplomats and heads of state, a certain number of constituents and their elected representatives and lobbyists. If the solution is not the right one--well, it's a right solution based on the society's priorities.

Yet to return to the other side of the dilemma, these days a half a bridge doesn't cut it in many circumstances.

The time-honored way around the dilemma rests on the happy fact that humans aren't born idiots. If the problem gets so bad that it's clearly obvious a real solution is necessary, most people are willing to bite the bullet, at least temporarily. They will find someone who actually knows how to solve the problem, and allow him to cut through as much red tape and political bickering as necessary to get the job done right.

Here we come to a snag. If you don't have expert knowledge, it's unlikely you can recognize when a problem is at the Red Flag stage. This is the snag that's tripping up governments at this time in history. In many cases they don't recognize a system failure until it's too late for problem-solving; it's just enough time for triage if they're lucky.

The good news is that there's a very loosely organized discipline that's sprung up to preempt this snag--and just in the nick of time for the human race, I might add. The discipline is large scale systems design. I learned about this field of endeavor from Guru David, who made his first appearance in Pundita's essays as The Guru--the computer scientist who was the go-to guy for computer systems engineers who were stumped.

They were stumped a lot because they had the job of computerizing, from the ground up, one of the largest utilities in the world. It's hard for young people to imagine but there was a time when phone, electric, water processing facilities, etc. were not computerized. The computer systems engineers who made it happen wrote a new chapter in human history.

But just because they were out there at the edge of No More Knowledge--with no referents, no guideposts for how to proceed--they had to cast around for problem-solving ideas that were from outside the field of computers.

That's why I never saw Guru David carrying a book on computing; he was always reading stuff like biology, astrophysics, history, city planning, and bridge and tunnel design. So one day I asked him: Just exactly what do you do at your work?

That is how I learned that you can look at many things as a large scale system and from there, draw analogies between phenomena that are as diverse as the solar system, living organisms, a bridge, a city, and human societies.

Systems engineering greatly predates computing; the military and logistical engineers who moved armies from Point A to Point B during ancient times were systems thinkers. But by the 20th Century, systems engineers from many different fields were beginning to talk with each other about the similarity of certain kinds of problems they repeatedly encountered in their work.

Thus, the highly abstract concept of systems engineering, as a discipline in itself, began to form. This was given a boost by the computer revolution and the kind of problem-solving that formed Guru David's daily work grind.

The field is still in its infancy, but it holds the key to good governing in the Age of the Masses. This is because of the First Law of large scale systems design, which I pried out of Guru David by asking the clever question, "Is there a first law of large scale systems design?"

"Yes. The first law is that the more successful the system you create, the quicker it will break down."

This is the way of gurus. They mean to always prod you to another question.

How can you call a system successful if it's bound to break down?

"Think it through," The Guru replied patiently. If you build a bridge that efficiently carries traffic to a hub, then more and more people will use the bridge. The more use the bridge receives, the more strain on the bridge's structure, which means it will break down faster than a bridge that is not as successful at moving people to the hub."

Success begets failure. A paradox, to be sure.

"Not really, if you know that success begets failure. Because then you can build monitors and fail-safes into the system that take the First Law into account. For example, you inspect the successful bridge more often than the other one, make repairs much sooner than you would for a bridge that carries less traffic, and build alternate routes that put less strain on the successful bridge."

"Is the solution to the paradox the secret of the universe?" I asked in wonder.

"I don't know," replied The Guru. "But it sure as hell is the secret to preventing switching procedures from crashing."

To be continued.

Better Pirating through Chemistry: Monsanto patents the chapati

Pundita begins the week not in the best of moods. Saturday we spent an hour wrestling a thimbleful of Old Bushmill's into a hysterical squirrel. I put this question to a certain segment of my European readers: If you want to travel to Washington, DC to protest at the IMF-World Bank Spring meetings, what part of this ritual necessitates hopping up and down and screeching in a manner to scare the dead?

Things went from bad to worse when Pundita received a letter from Boris in Jackson Heights:

"Pundita, dear, the next time you stop off in Kargil for rice, beans and chapatis, you might have to pay a surcharge for the chapati patent. See the attached.[ Guardian Unlimited report Monsanto's chapati patent raises Indian ire]"

Monsanto, the world's largest genetically modified seed company, has been awarded patents on the wheat used for making chapati - the flat bread staple of northern India. The patents give the US multinational exclusive ownership over Nap Hal, a strain of wheat whose gene sequence makes it particularly suited to producing crisp breads.

Another patent, filed in Europe, gives Monsanto rights over the use of Nap Hal wheat to make chapatis, which consist of flour, water and salt.

Environmentalists say Nap Hal's qualities are the result of generations of farmers in India who spent years crossbreeding crops and collective, not corporate, efforts should be recognised.

...Monsanto inherited a patent application when it bought the cereals division of the Anglo-Dutch food giant Unilever in 1998, and the patent has been granted to the new owner.

Unilever acquired Nap Hal seeds from a publicly funded British plant gene bank. Its scientists identified the wheat's combination of genes and patented them as an "invention."

Greenpeace is attempting to block Monsanto's patent, accusing the company of "bio-piracy". "It is theft of the results of the work in cultivation made by Indian farmers," said Dr Christoph Then, Greenpeace's patent expert after a meeting with the European Commission in Delhi.

"We want the European Patent Office to reverse its decision. Under European law patents cannot be issued on plants that are normally cultivated, but there are loopholes in the legislation."

A spokesperson for Monsanto in India denied that the company had any plan to exploit the patent, saying that it was in fact pulling out of cereals in some markets.

"This patent was Unilever's. We got it when we bought the company. Really this is all academic as we are exiting from the cereal business in the UK and Europe," said Ranjana Smetacek, Monsanto's public affairs director in India....

The UK Guardian report is inaccurate in that the chapati is not the staple in north India, it's the staple Indian bread, period.

Note that the spokesperson did not say Monsanto is exiting from the cereal business in India--and bread not being a cereal, the spokesperson actually dodged the entire issue.

If you think this is a tempest in a teapot, a Texas company managed to patent basmati rice, which has only been around for zillions of years. What's particularly upsetting is that Monsanto's two-faced stand plays into China's excuses for not adhering to international patent laws.

Yet India--in this case clearly the victim of patent law gone berserk--is now making an honest attempt to play by the rules. In March, the upper house in India's parliament approved a patents bill that is very controversial and carries high political risk. For an overview of the issues, see the Reuters report on the bill passing the lower house.

The patents issue is enormously serious; much is at stake with regard to US trade relations, not to mention trillions of dollars over time. So let us hope that someone at ranking level in the American government has a heart-to-heart talk with the Monsanto CEO. Else your special homemade bread recipe could be next.

For more on the shocking chapati affair as reported by the Guardian Unlimited, click here . The story, datelined January 31, 2004, is old news to activists--of just the kind who gather to protest at IMF-Bank meetings. But the details are enough to cause even a very reasonable person to consider hopping up and down and screeching.

Which is why Pundita begins the week on a grim note. It was, after all, the European Union that granted the patent. So one would think there's quite enough to protest in Europe.

Fight Club! Thrills! Chills! Press Kits! Democracy Stage Show slugfest on in Russia!

Pundita's favorite Russia analyst, Peter Lavelle, referees the boxing match in Spinning the Color Orange and declares the Russian people the loser.

Speculation surrounding the possibility of a "people's revolution" in Russia following recent events in Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan has both the Kremlin and political opposition spinning alternative futures. Unfortunately, these scenarios have little to do with democracy and everything to do with power...since the opposition can't win at the polls, it hopes to gain power through encouraging the population to take to the streets.

If you haven't kept up with the State Department's spin, don't miss the clanking of chains from the Washington Post Get Putin Gang. And let's not leave unconsidered the view from the aptly named Eurasia Net, funded by George Soros's Open Society. But I'll give Lavelle the last word. From his April Fool's Day send-up of the Democracy Stage Show crowd:

Anti-Putin youth groups – “Hey, where is the dough?”

"The students who attained 15 minutes of fame after claiming to be anti-Putin are up in arms. The commentariat’s limited attention span appears to have let them down. “We made the right moves and said the right things – then everything happens in Kyrgyzstan!” an irate anti-Putin youth supporter screamed. “We aren’t receiving the respect, attention, and big bucks we deserve” he went on to say. “Kyrgyzstan! What is Kyrgyzstan? Who cares about Kyrgyzstan!? We are the mother lode – don’t you guys get it ?!” were some of the commentary to be heard. “What are we doing wrong? What do you want us to do?” were the closing remarks.

It's a relief to find a Russia analyst with a sense of humor yet the situation is no joking matter for democracy advocates. During the Cold War the US government got in the habit of playing Sorcerer's Apprentice then turning around a decade later and gasping, "Oh Lordy, monsters are on the loose!"

Yes, once you make them, it's not easy to control them, as Mickey Mouse learned the hard way.

In this case the marching broom is not a person, such as Saddam Hussein, but a system--a set of methods for putting on a whopping good imitation of a democratic movement. Of course necessity drove the inventions but this era compresses reaction time; the monsters, and the events they set in motion, can move much faster than a diplomatic corps and armies.

America is now out there on the cutting edge, advocating democracy as a cure for the world's most deeply entrenched social ills. So the Democracy Stage Show Kit should be deployed with great caution and only when all other avenues have been exhausted. Whatever we gain at the moment from slapdash use of the kit is lost when disillusionment with faux democracy sets in.

It's late in the day for such warnings but better late than never. That's why Pundita continues to harp on the situation, which is not even an issue here in the USA, thanks to our glorious mainstream media's tendency to fawn over their sources at the State Department and the thunderous silence from most of the blogosphere.

For more on Peter's thoughts on Russia's youth movement, read Moving to Nowhere. Note his remark, "Actually, the Kremlin candidates have lost a number of recent local and regional elections – usually to the far right."

And for readers who missed it, here is the Democracy Stage Show Kit and the unfortunately named (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it) Not Clockwork Orange Century. The latter was written in November, which I now look back on as my era of fast-dwindling innocence about State's interpretation of the Bush Democracy Doctrine.

Oh and while you're visiting Peter's site, check out his report on the Kremlin's zeal at playing tax collector. Pity Vicente Fox doesn't ring up Vladimir Putin for advice on how to stay in power while nudging the ruling class to cough up unpaid taxes.

Duck security at DEFCON1, Russia still in doghouse, and gentle reminder to Gold Bugs

WASHINGTON, April 14 (Reuters) - U.S. officials bolstered security on Thursday for a duck nursing eggs near the White House to protect her from demonstrators at a global economic summit beginning on Friday... workers on Thursday afternoon erected a second line of metal crowd-control barriers about 10 feet (three metres) outside stanchions already in place...

Officials are concerned protesters could disturb the mallard hen, who is incubating what officials say are nine eggs at the foot of a tree on the sidewalk in front of the Treasury Department and next door to the presidential residence.

"We are widening the perimeter around the duck as a precautionary measure," Treasury spokesman Rob Nichols said...

The bird spends her days nibbling mulch around her, dozing in the spring sunshine, or feathering her nest. Every evening at dusk, she covers her eggs and leaves for about 15 minutes to feed, a Treasury official said.

Decision-making about the duck's safety was closely guarded.

"We don't comment on security matters," Nichols said.

Pundita doesn't need to look at the calendar to know when the World Bank-IMF Spring Meetings are approaching. The squirrel, who was traumatized during his childhood by mobs of protestors hopping up and down and shrieking outside IMF headquarters, bunkers in my garage with the words, "They're coming they're coming they're coming."

I suppose he sees the street barricades going up. Yes, this is the time of year in Washington that streets are clogged with bedraggled youth wearing T-shirts that read SAVE THE WORLD KILL WORLD BANK, asking passersby, "Please you know where is cheap hotel?" and littering Northwest Washington with granola bar wrappers printed in French and German.

It shouldn't be too bad this year; the troops are saving their euros to travel to Scotland for the July G7 summit. Notice I typed G7, not G8. In addition to the IMF and World Bank meetings this weekend, there will be two meetings in Washington of the "G7" finance ministers, Reuters reports. This suggests Russia wasn't invited. And now a cautionary tale for Gold Bugs:

...On the table [at the Washington G7 meetings] are proposals that range from increasing grant aid, the establishments of an international finance facility that would double aid for the poor countries, and the sale of IMF gold to finance a portion of the debt relief.

The United States, the largest single shareholder of both the IMF and World Bank, has rejected the British proposal for the finance facility and gold sales.

The U.S. has argued that its own plan would permanently wipe off the debts with increased grant handouts -- versus decades of loans -- through the World Bank's International Development Association, the lender's lowest-cost lending arm.

But critics say the U.S. plan of outright grants would give the bank less money to lend to poor countries.

IMF Managing Director Rodrigo Rato said if shareholders decide to use some of the IMF gold stocks, it would be better to sell bullion rather than revalue it on its balance sheet.

But he said great care should be taken not to disrupt bullion markets and suggested the IMF join the voluntary central bank agreement, under which they say in advance how much gold they will sell and over what period of time.

"If the board would take that decision, it should be taken technically by selling gold in the market, not by reviewing the value of the gold in our balance sheet," he told a news conference before the meetings.

"Secondly, to do that without disrupting the market -- that is, to do that being part, formally or informally, of the central banks' agreement for selling gold," he said.

European central banks agreed last March to limit total gold sales to 2,500 tonnes over five years from 2004 to avoid distorting the market, under an agreement known as the Central Bank Gold Agreement.

But Rato stressed that the decision to sell gold belonged to the IMF's board of member governments. Selling the gold would require an 85 percent majority backing on the board.

"At the end of the day all of the proposals have their trade-offs ... but some of their aspects are feasible," Rato said. "The question is for governments to make a decision."

The IMF is the world's third largest holder of gold, behind the United States and Germany.

As to what talk of selling IMF gold might portend for gold investors--probably not much. As to what it could mean for individual gold traders--always the same old story, which has earmarks of The Pit and the Pendulum. Playing against the Lords of the Craps Table is not for the fainthearted.

Mexico: Pundita clarifies a point

Some readers asked how the World Bank could be expected to write a loan that deals with US-Mexico border security. The question was in response to a sentence in yesterday's post on Mexico.

The answer is that the Bank (and the Inter-American Development Bank) wouldn't write that type of loan. I was suggesting a study on Mexico's illegal immigrant problem.

Mexico is playing ostrich; they claim that most of their illegals are just passing through on their way to the US. This flies in the face of Mexico's status as a middle-income country. However, even taking the argument at face value, "passing through" Mexico, for the very poor from other Latin American countries, can take months or even years. During the time the illegals are trying to make it to the US, they are a drain on Mexico's resources.

So, data from the study would have a dual use; it would help Mexico get a handle on their illegal immigrant situation and it would help the US get a clearer picture of the illegal immigrant situation at the US-Mexico border.

The US border patrol is in the position of Hans Brinker. They are charged with stopping a tide of humanity. But the tide does not arise in the Mexican towns that border the US; it rises much deeper in Latin America. So the repatriation program, whereby the US flies a few apprehended illegals back to their homes deep in Mexico, is emptying the ocean with a sieve.

To stem the tide at the US border, the cascade effect--whereby criminals fleeing the war on drugs in various Latin American countries, and Latin America's poorest fleeing to and through Mexico, has to be treated. But right now there's not enough data on the cascade effect. Thus, strategies such as the US repatriation program and the Mexico's harsh dissuasion measures (toward their illegal immigrants) are ineffective.

The only people profiting from such strategies are the "coyotes"--the smugglers who charge gouge prices to bring people across the borders. With every strategy, the coyotes simply increase their fee.

This means that illegal immigrants passing through Mexico from say, Honduras, have to stay in Mexico even longer to earn money to pay the coyotes to make the journey across the US border. This is turn means the illegals are an even greater strain on Mexico's facilities; e.g., electricity, garbage collection, mass transit, schools, hospitals, etc.

In short, this is a cuckoo situation. And one that's easy for terroristas and banditos to exploit. So for the love of sanity, treat the problem of illegal US border crossing at an earlier stage. For that, you first need good data. USAID could fund a study, but the World Bank is set up to do such studies, which is why I suggested them.

The catch is that would be an expensive study, which is why the Mexican government doesn't want to pay for it. The way around this is to get other affected governments, such as Honduran and Salvadoran, to pick up part of the tab. And you could throw in some USAID money to make up the shortfall.

It's a matter of adjusting the view. Mexico looks at the 200,000+ illegals they detained last year as "undesirables." Heck, that's good data on the hoof. Don't let it get away. Give amnesty and a few bucks, if the detainees will answer about 358 questions.

Mexico: Beep this is a recording

"Pundita, I'm writing about your observation [in yesterday's post] "The illegal commutes can and must be thinned out, so that the banditos and terroristas cannot easily commute between Mexico and the US under cover of crowds."

That's what I've advocated for some time. Your World Bank approach is certainly an effective method although the method I've advocated is enforcement with employers in California, Texas, and Illinois. By the way, W. F. Buckley isn't entirely clueless about Mexico. He's a native speaker of Spanish (spoke Spanish before English IIRC), spent his early years in Mexico, has close contacts there. Family fortune made through the Mexican oil industry.
[Signed] Dave in Chicago"

Dear Dave:

Buckley's own words, as expressed in the Op-Ed piece I quoted in the post, demonstrate that he is not knowledgeable about Mexico--although it would be more precise to say that whatever he knows or believes about Mexico is no use whatsoever to getting a handle on Mexican immigration, the problems of Mexico, what constitutes good US policy toward Mexico, and the southern border security problem.

Enforcement of laws with regard to employment is a purely domestic issue, which is outside this blog's purview. But off the top of my head I think it's wrong to put the American small business employer on the front lines of the war on terror. Of course we should all be watchful and this applies as well to employers, large and small. Within their limits small business employers should hire only legal workers; however, I wouldn't depend on them to accurately verify whether a prospective hire is in the US legally.

And the issue of border security needs to be looked at as distinct from the issue of illegal migration/commuting. That point was pounded home by the 9/11 hijackers. Having legal status in this country is no barrier to the person being a terrorist.

The 9/11 terrorists found US airports to be a soft target; that's why they chose that venue of attack. The same applies to US border checkpoints, which are still a soft target. The task is to harden those checkpoints. The question is which border most needs hardening. The US Customs and Border Protection division of INS reported in 2004 that:

A majority of illegal immigrants who try to cross the southern [Mexican] border are not from border communities. They have made the long journey from rural villages in southern Mexico.

The big question is how many of those journeying people are Mexican. Don't expect good results on that question from the Mexican government. They don't want to spend money on the kind of studies and patrolling that's needed to get a good handle on migrations from other Latin American countries into Mexico and via Mexico to the US.

Yet one of the most striking bits of information I've come across is that the ratio of USD-peso wage earnings has barely changed in a century. That means higher wages in the US, per se, have not created the flood of migrants from Latin America. What's changed vastly is ease of travel from Central America to the Mexico-US.

America saw few migrations from southern Mexico and further south in Latin America until the 1960s, when extensive road building projects in Latin America and cheap airfare made it possible for large numbers to travel long distances with relative ease.

The most irritating information I've seen is from the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas :

Underdeveloped capital markets in Mexico are a contributing factor [in Mexican migration to the US] because they make borrowing difficult for most people. In surveys, migrants often cite the need for capital to start businesses, build houses, repay loans or pay for medical procedures as a main reason for migrating to the United States.

What is this? "Give me your tired, your poor, your first time home builders and loan refinancers?" I swear, Vicente Fox and the entire Mexican government are going straight to hell unless they modernize the banking system, cut out mountains of regulatory ed tape, and get the rich in Mexico to pay their fair share of taxes.

But when you put those two pieces of information together, something is screwy. This is on the theory that poor rural southern Mexicans don't have paying off loans and raising capital for business startups at the top of their list of reasons for migrating.

So I suspect that the Dallas Federal Reserve tends to use the term 'migrant' loosely. There seem to be three separate categories of workers from Latin America: migrants, commuters, and 'expats' -- people living and working in this country just long enough to study or raise capital before they return to their homes in a Latin American country.

Pundita can't find data that treats the Latin American 'migration' situation according to the three categories and within those categories the breakdown on illegals and legals. That doesn't mean the data isn't available; it means I can't find it and I'm not going to spend weeks scaring it up. That's the government's job. Then they need to publish all the compiled data online so we can see what we're really dealing with.

Of course data on the number of illegals is always a rough estimate. But Pundita dislikes feeling her way around in the dark. How can we come up with intelligent strategies for hardening the border checkpoints without good data?

In any case, that's I mean when I talk about thinning out the crowd at the southern border checkpoints. It's going to take a combination of approaches before the checkpoints can be hardened. The World Bank-IMF have a use in this respect because they can lean on Fox's government to make structural adjustments. These will remove the impetus for the Mexican loan shoppers and capital raisers to travel to America. That will greatly reduce traffic at the border crossings.

But that doesn't thin the traffic enough, when all three categories are taken under consideration. The idea is to thin the crowd to the point where border agents have roughly as much time as Israeli airport personnel to examine inbound and outbound commuters. For that, you need filters.

The number of Mexican-US checkpoints should be increased and strung out over a larger area. Commuter buses or trains can bridge the distance needed to travel from an outlying checkpoint to the one nearest the commuter's region of employment.

But the first filters should be deep in Mexico. For that the Mexican government has to cough up the money for improved border patrols, surveillance, and data gathering and analysis. Here, a World Bank loan would come in handy but the Mexican government doesn't want to take out that kind of loan. They want other types of loans from the Bank--loans they wouldn't need, if they had an adequate tax base beep this is a recording.

With that, we bring to a close, for a time, our series of discussions about Mexico.

For links to other Pundita essays on Mexico, US-Mexico relations, immigration from Mexico and the Mexico-US border situation/war on terror, see Mexico Desk.
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Mexico: Terroristas, banditos, and the difference between commuting and migration

In January the US Department of State issued a travel warning about the deteriorating security situation in Mexico's northern border region, where killings and kidnappings have increased in an escalating war between drug traffickers.

In September 2004 the US consul in Reynosa, a border town across from McAllen, Texas, issued a travel advisory to US citizens. The advisory came on the heels of reports that Reynosa police were forcing US drivers to remote locations or ATM machines and demanding they hand over money or be imprisoned.

The warnings barely speak to the seriousness of the cascade effect, which Mexicans dub the 'Colombianization' of their country. Whatever successes are measured in the war on drugs in one Latin American country translate to a rising tide of organized crime somewhere else in Latin America.

Vicente Fox is understandably upset about the US warnings, which dampen tourism trade from the US and lend strength to calls for tighter border security and a clampdown on illegal immigration.

Pundita assumes President Fox is also miffed at complaints that Mexico is hard-handed with their illegal immigrants, which Mexican officials claim are mostly just passing through on their way from other Latin American countries to America.

Common sense tends to agree; of the official number of 200,000 illegals that Mexico detained last year, surely only a fraction represents professional kidnappers, drug traffickers, child slavery traders, hit men, and other representatives of the crime world. But it only takes a couple hundred of such characters to turn a region into hell. The banditos, as with the terroristas, have learned to think globally and act locally: when the heat is on in one locale, they transfer operations to another.

This is reminiscent of the Paddy Wagon solution, which the NYPD under the Koch regime infamously deployed. When the winos, heroin addicts, and prostitutes turned the Lower East Side into a zoo, the police would show up with a caravan of paddy wagons, load up the undesirables and deposit them in Harlem. When the same types sent Harlem business owners to the police station with blood in their eye, the paddy wagons would show up again and deposit the undesirables back in the Lower East Side. When the Lower East Side merchants set up another howl, the paddy wagons would arrive and deposit New York's colorful street life back in Harlem.

The problem is that banditos and terroristas are not zonked winos. Before you can load the varmits into a paddy wagon, first you have to catch them. If you can't catch them, you end up with gangs shooting bullets at each other in broad daylight a few blocks from the White House, as happened in Washington a year or so back.

All the above is preface to William F. Buckley's gaga perspective on illegal immigration from Mexico, which Pundita found through following a link on The Glittering Eye blog to the PoliBlog, which deposited me at Buckley's Op-ed titled, Can we stop illegals?

Buckley's analysis follows the time-honored Commentariat Rule: If you don't know anything about the subject you're talking about, talk about something you do know about, even if has nothing to do with the subject under discussion. Thus, Buckley dedicates his commentary to a discussion of the Berlin Wall, then tacks on closing observations about Mexico:

The flow of Mexicans to the north can be strategically contained either by improving the quality of Mexican economic life, or by suppressing opportunities in U.S. life. The former cannot be done, given cultural rigidities and impermeabilities. The latter can be attempted, but at great cost to American business interests and ideals...The immigration wave appears uncontainable, and we cannot generate the sentiment required to do the kind of thing the East Germans did. All of which argues that effective reduction in illegal immigration is not going to happen.

Buckley's Eastern Establishment mindset clearly excludes knowledge of the cross-fertilization of cultures in Mexico and the American southwest. And his Cold War paradigm limits him to thinking in terms of containing a migratory pattern. Germans wanted to flee East Germany, never to return until the communist dictatorship fell. The majority of Mexicans who come illegally across the border every day are not fleeing Mexico, they're commuting to work.

Informed discussion about the Mexican immigrant situation must draw a sharp distinction between illegal commuters and illegal immigrants. The illegal commutes can and must be thinned out, so that the banditos and terroristas cannot easily commute between Mexico and the US under cover of crowds.

As for the idea that the US cannot help to improve the quality of Mexican economic life, the US has already given considerable help and continues to do so, as has the US-led World Bank.

And the warning has gone out to President Fox from the International Monetary Fund. If Mexico wants the Bank to keep the loan spigot open, the IMF wants Fox's government to stop futzing around with tax reform.

No matter how understanding President Bush sounds when he talks about illegal immigration--when the IMF talks tough, that's a sure sign the US administration is really ticked off. Although it might not sound like tough talk to you, the IMF managing director's November speech to the Mexican Congress gets down to brass tacks when it arrives at Point #13:

...Tax reforms, focusing on broadening tax bases and improving administration, are needed to bolster Mexico's ability to finance the public sector and increase its resilience to shocks. Mexico's tax base is the lowest among OECD countries and a full 6 percentage points below Korea's, which has the second lowest. The public sector relies on the oil sector for a third of its revenue, although it is only 3 percent of the economy. The tax efficiency of the VAT in Mexico is well below that in other countries, reflecting many exemptions. And, as in many other countries, public pension reform is urgent. The current system is widely seen as inequitable and financially untenable. The fiscal costs of delaying reforms would be high, taking away scarce resources from spending programs pivotal for growth.

By point #17, the director is on a roll:

Finally, the costs of living and doing business in Mexico continue to be higher than warranted as a result of a lack of competition and a weak judiciary system. First, competition has been artificially limited in particular domestic markets such as the telecommunication sector, where tariffs count among the highest in the world, and regulatory reforms would help level the playing field. Second, Mexicans need to be provided with a reliable, rapid, efficient, and transparent justice system and root out corruption. The perception of a lack of legal protection is currently widespread among individuals and businesses in Mexico, which discourages new economic activity. Indeed, recent World Bank research indicates that Mexico is lagging the main OECD countries with respect to regulatory quality, and is lagging emerging market competitors in Asia and Eastern Europe from the perspective of the rule of law.

Mexico's ruling class should get one thing very clear. The US need for Mexico's oil will not prevent the US from adopting draconian measures against illegal immigrants and commuters in the event of another terrorist attack in the USA. Both sides of the border are living on borrowed time in this respect, so the Mexican government would be well advised to take the IMF instructions to heart.

For links to other Pundita essays on Mexico, US-Mexico relations, immigration from Mexico and the Mexico-US border situation/war on terror, see Mexico Desk.

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Mexico: Truth, lies, and damning statistics

Mexico is so dependent on the United States that it's a cause of resentment among Mexicans. Mexico's ruling class knows this so to divert attention from the real problems, they pull the time-honored maneuver of blaming the problems on somebody else--in this case, America.

From the American side, more than half century of Natoist (NATO oriented) thinking and the Cold War agenda means that the American national media, which is dominated by an Eastern establishment, couldn't find the American southwest much less Mexico on a map if you paid them. Thus, national headlines about Bush's proposed guest worker program, illegal Mexican immigrants, and loss of US manufacturing jobs feed into a highly distorted or completely wrong view of Mexico.

Readers who missed yesterday's post, kindly go there first and study the 2001 Statfor report mentioned in the essay. The informal energy alliance between Mexico and the US, which flummoxes Chavez's plan to use OPEC as a bludgeon against the United States, is greatly dependent on the relationship between Vicente Fox and his political party and the Bush administration.

The catch is that there is price tag for Fox casting his lot with America rather than the Latin American alliance Chavez is trying to forge. The price is that the US get more greatly behind policies toward Mexico that Fox's administration wants the US to implement.

The question is whether those policies are sound; i.e., actually help the vast majority of Mexicans; if they are not sound, they play into resentments that keep radicalism alive and the Communist party in business. To put this less politely: historically Mexico's ruling class doesn't have a good report card when it comes to noblesse oblige; the grade tends to hover in the Let Them Eat Cake range.

And because the Mexican ruling class (MRC) is aware that few Americans outside the deep southwest know much about Mexico, they get away with a lot, such as convincing President Clinton that Mexico's poor would be helped if the US bailed Mexico out of a financial crisis brought on by a burst speculative bubble.

The latest scheme by the MRC has been to convince the Bush administration and the World Bank that the way to help Mexico's poorest is make it even easier for Mexicans working in the US to send remittances back home. What the MRC wants, Vicente Fox wants, which is why Pundita wrote an essay titled Vicente Fox is going straight to hell.

New readers kindly skim the essay for an introduction to the topic of remittances and to learn why encouraging the remittance economy is a horrible idea. It doesn't take a doctorate in economics to figure out what's wrong with remittances, but since publishing the essay Pundita has learned that sometime this month three academics at Colombia University are publishing a study that tends to support the points I made.

The Miami Herald got an early peek at the study results, or at least conversed with the authors about the results, and reported the news. Yale University's Global Online republishes the Herald article with a helpful summary.

With regard to Mexico, one must look at the downside about remittances against some damning statistics:

Pundita doesn't recall the placement for the year 2000 but it's fairly accurate to say that so far this century, Mexico has been hovering between the world's 9th and 10th largest economies. That will come as a shock to Americans who think of Mexico as a 'third world' country.

The real shocker is that oil is not Mexico's largest source of foreign exchange. As of November 2004 oil export is second, remittances are #1. In other words, Mexico's largest source of income comes from Mexicans who work for US employers and return a portion of their wages to Mexico.

Only a tiny fraction of those workers are illegal; in 2001, when the US economy was very slow, about 700,000 Mexicans legally commuted across the border every day to work and/or shop in the US. I haven't researched the current number but can say with assurance it's much higher since the US economy picked up. Indeed, that's just why remittances have gone from #2 to #1 in the past year as Mexico's largest source of income.

The number I cited lumps together the workers and the shoppers--the latter not an insignificant number--but 700,000 daily commutes explains how it could be that Mexico's largest source of income derives from a portion of paychecks from US employers.

If I were Mexican I would be very scared of that statistic; one's economy doesn't get more vulnerable than that, if the economy has to depend on portions of paychecks earned from working in another country. But that's exactly the case for Mexico.

How could a country rich in oil, with a 90% literacy rate, and brimming with entrepreneurial spirit, get themselves into such a vulnerable position?

But here the reader might reasonably ask why, given the peso-dollar exchange rate, many Mexicans prefer to shop in the US. For the same reason Mexican businesspeople prefer to borrow money in the US: without a bank account you can't get a credit card.

Less than 40% of Mexicans have bank accounts, and the Mexican commercial banking system is an outgrowth of the Byzantine regulatory system in Mexico. So, Mexican entrepreneurs and shoppers prefer doing their banking in the USA. This is so they don't have to wait 20 years to see a loan come through or pay hurry-up money. It's the same with India and China and the world's poorest countries, I might add.

I interject this is why reports about increased UFO sightings in recent years are probably true. The gold rush is on. Banks galaxy wide are sending reps to China, Mexico, and India in a push to convince rubes that the thoroughly modern thing to do is get into credit-card debt up to your eyeballs.

Intergalactic bankers would have stiff competition from Citibank and every other transnational commercial bank based in a country with modern banking regulatory rules. So it's not for nothing that Secretary Rice's first stop in Latin America was to visit a USAID micro-finance project aimed at broadening access to banking opportunities for Mexican small businesses.

The World Bank and IMF have also gotten greatly interested in modernizing the banking system in Mexico and for the same reasons that USAID has taken up the interest. Not all the reasons are on behalf of Western banks scrounging new credit card customers. Of course you can't have a competitive economy without your banks writing lots of loans to business, and the banks can't do such without a good deposit cushion.

However, USAID's five-year program to help sort out Mexican banks is with an eye to making remittances easier to process.

Here the reader might reasonably ask, "What is USAID doing helping Mexican banks to modernize? Isn't US aid money supposed to directly to the world's poorest and the most crushing problems, such as AIDS and drought?"

Pundita's answer is: Since when has the American public noticed what USAID has been up to during the past 15 years? Pundita's sidebar, before I took it down for repairs, was specifically designed to bring the reader's awareness into the 21st century. That's why the sidebar posted a link to USAID, the World Bank, the IMF, and so on.

Yes, the Mexican government is perfectly capable of modernizing the banking system without US aid money--or World Bank loans. But what Mexico's ruling class wants is for the US and Mexican banks to make it not only easy but very attractive for Mexicans to keep up remittances. This is to take the heat off calls for tax reform in Mexico and the delicate business of collecting taxes from the ruling class.

Yet unless a country has an adequate tax base, pouring aid and soft loan money into Mexico is pouring money into a sieve. Every other issue with regard to Mexico--and the world's poorest nations--is a distant second. All attempts to evade this bald truth are misinformed or outright lies; Pundita's Paw, a Revenuer's at the door... embarks on explaining why this is so.

For links to other Pundita essays on Mexico, US-Mexico relations, immigration from Mexico and the Mexico-US border situation/war on terror, see Mexico Desk.
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Mexico

In 1999, our dear allies the Saudis got together with Mexico and Argentina and cooked up a plan to lead non-OPEC producers such as Norway into what was in effect an alliance with OPEC. This was so there would be real clout behind an OPEC price hike. A 2001 Stratfor report lays out the juicy details.

But in 2001 Mexico bolted the agreement, refused to go along with an OPEC cut in oil production and sided with the USA. That led to the collapse of the cozy three-way alliance. Democrats and Republicans who cuss at Bush about the border situation should remember that, for it was Bush who wooed Mexico away from OPEC.

This doesn't mean Mexico owns the United States but to be adult about it, Americans need to get past the idea that Mexico is the poor cousin. Mexico is the wastrel cousin--the one who keeps blowing his inheritance money, driving while drunk. There's one in every family.

But because of the petroleum angle and what's in effect Mexico's energy alliance with the US, there are limits to how hard Bush can lean on Vicente Fox. If the ruling class in Mexico pushes Fox out, there's no telling whether the next president will be as friendly with the US as this one or whether he'll become best buddies with Hugo Chavez.

Of course there are other considerations but that is the one to keep in mind, when you throw up your hands about the illegal immigrant situation.

Tomorrow we'll start in earnest on an adult discussion about Mexico. As with the situation in Ukraine, the Mexican one has aspects that transcend a single nation's problems. However, as with the wastrel relative Mexico has a very special problem, which is that they can always turn to 'family' to bail them out no matter how many times they mess up. Applying tough love in this situation is a very limited option.

Cut and paste url for Strafor report:
http://199.245.17.152/corpus/terror/www-stratfor-com/latinamerica_commentary_0101192330.htm

For links to other Pundita essays on Mexico, US-Mexico relations, immigration from Mexico and the Mexico-US border situation/war on terror, see Mexico Desk.

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This is what happens when one gets flippant with people who study history

ZenPundit is back from vacation and wrote to respond to Pundita's snit at being branded a Hamiltonian realist and to elaborate on why he termed the Democracy Stage Show Kit essay (see sidebar) "Hamiltonian realism." With his permission I publish our exchanges:

"Pundita, Your DSSK essay was, in fact, the very first piece of yours that I read. Actually I haven't read the Mead book either. I was using "Hamiltonian" in its truest sense (Hamilton I have read) of an awareness of the complexity and fallibility of human nature intersecting with government and requiring a realism about the latter's perfectibility as a system. (Personally, on schools of foreign policy I like McDougal's Promised Land-Crusader State dichotomy.)

Hamilton made his case in the Federalist papers to dispel the inevitable purist complaints of the radicals--the Henrys, Paines, Sam Adams, etc.--in order to establish a Constitutional system that would actually work in the real world.

Hamilton understood the difference between Jefferson's romantic agrarian idealism and republican realism and pushed Washington to be the strong executive so that the new national government would actually be capable of taking effective decisions, unlike the Confederation.

Hamilton, in short, dealt with republican governments as they would actually work when infused with interests and factions. His contributions, I would argue, kept our system from being hijacked by demagogues for a want of clarity about a leader's motives and the wisdom of the crowd.

So, more or less, I saw a similar clarity in your Democracy Stage Show Kit essay: democracy being a fine thing but not a deus ex machina moment where a good parade erases elite interests or the factions that operate behind the scenes. Probably not quite the same thing as what Dave [Schuler at the Glittering Eye blog] means by "Hamiltonian"--I've meant to get into that debate with him....

[Signed] Mark (ZenPundit)"

"Mark, may I publish your reply? I think Pundita readers would enjoy it. I certainly did.

[Signed] Pundita"

"Feel free to publish it though you might wish to drop the parenthetical aside on Walter McDougal since that would probably confuse people who are not up on the minutia of diplomatic historiography.

The great thing about our founders--Franklin, Madison, John Adams, Hamilton, Jefferson, Mason and the rest--is that they really had read deeply--Montesquieu, Locke, Polybius, Aristotle, Machiavelli--and frequently in the original languages.

They also had the trial run of writing state constitutions. Most of the delegates to the [Constitutional Convention or 'Continental Congress'] had been involved in writing constitutions for the various states; they had several years in which to observe what wasn't working. Their view of human nature had no illusions and that's one reason why, Hamilton excepted, they died [of natural causes].
[Signed] Mark"

Well. More reasons to prod one's children to study Latin and ancient Greek. And another reminder about the usefulness of studying history. At least those Pundita readers who don't get around to perusing Mead's book can nod knowingly at a cocktail party if the author's name comes up in conversation. Now as for McDougall's Promised Land-Crusader State dichotomy....

US Foreign Policy: Dave Schuler's handy cheat sheet and the lessons of history

Pundita is still stewing that ZenPundit branded ideas put forward in Democracy Stage Show Kit as "Hamiltonian realism." However, never having actually read historian Walter Russell Mead's Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How it Changed the World, which coins the term 'Hamiltonian,' and never having met a Washingtonian who has actually read the book, it occurred to me that I didn't know exactly what a Hamiltonian is.

Add to this, 'realism,' as applied to foreign policy schools of thought, tends to be interpreted variously according to which scholar or wonk and which side of the Atlantic is using the term. A visit to Wikipedia was no help, if one doesn't count learning that the Hamiltonian operator in physics and Hamiltonian cycles in graph theory are named after Sir William Rowan Hamilton.

This left two options. I could read up on the life of Alexander Hamilton and from there figure out what a Hamiltonian is, or I could break down and read Mead's book. There was a third option, of course, but generally it's not wise to tell someone, "Before I can make mincemeat out of your critique, would you mind explaining what you said?"

Thus, I was happy to learn that not only had Dave Schuler at The Glittering Eye read Mead's book, he'd also published a review that serves as a cheat sheet on major US foreign policy schools and their history.

I say to you with great seriousness that we need more book reviews like that.

In a recent essay I looked at the tendency to 'sell' the freedom aspect of democracy while avoiding discussion of its operational aspect. I cynically implied that much of this tendency could be traced to self-interested motives. However, it struck me while reading Schuler's review that there is another reason why Americans, at least, tend to shy away from discussing the mechanics of democratic government: most Americans have only the vaguest idea of the mechanics. Thus, conversations between an American and a person unfamiliar with democratic government tend to go like this:

"So, tell me what your democratic government is."

"It's about freedom. It's about liberty and justice for all."

"That sounds good. How does the democratic government work in your country?"

"It works by everybody exercising their right to vote."

"How does voting work to make the government run?"

"We elect people to Congress and the White House who run the government. If they don't do the job right, we elect new leaders. That's the great thing about freedom."

It's not quite that bad in all cases, and perhaps it's stretching the point to say that "most" Americans are unclear on the mechanics of their government; however, I think it's fair to say that my general point holds true. To grab an American off the street and ask for an extemporaneous discussion of American government is generally to receive a hazy explanation about how the government works.

Yet to really understand how our government works--indeed, how any government works--requires at least a passing knowledge of the history of its development and the schools of thought influencing the implementation of governing principles.

Reading the Constitution and Bill of Rights does not alone produce such knowledge. And such readings do not illustrate the principles of government in action, which were not 'thought up' but hammered into existence on the anvil of fractious debate.

Mead's book, and Schuler's review, stands on that fundamental point. Of course there are many ways to organize a discussion of American foreign policy, and one doesn't have to agree with Mead's interpretations to benefit from his approach, but the historical view provides an objective basis for discussion.

As to whether I am still huffy--now more than ever. I can't believe ZenPundit mistook me for a Hamiltonian. If he'd read even a few of my other essays and fully grasped the points in Democracy Stage Show Kit, he would have pegged me for a neo-Jacksonian.

Finish the dance

"Dear Pundita, It's no problem if you publish this letter but we don't want to give our names or tell where we live, except it's okay to say we're in Asia. We are 19 and 22 and we have been married now less than a year against our families wishes so we had to run away and now we live and work in a big city where our families can't find us. Even though you sound like a mean person we think you care about people. We can't believe you are American because you understand about the way people in other countries are. It is so true what you said [in "Waiting for Pasha" essay] about not wanting to take out the garbage. Even though we try to have faith in God we don't want to have children. To bring them into this world where there is so much evil and corruption would be wrong. The older generation will never change. Sometimes we don't feel like going on.
[Unsigned]"

Dear 19 and 22:

So. Our ancestors clawed their way out of the caves, fought behemoths with their bare hands; survived earthquakes, floods, volcanic eruptions, meteor showers and plagues, all so their descendents could sit on the road and wail.

There are many Americans who understand people in other lands, for many Americans are well traveled and America is a land of immigrants. It's just that you might not know about those Americans, which is one of the nice things about the blogosphere; it allows ordinary Americans to circumvent the traditional media channels and speak directly to people in other lands.

This is a foreign policy blog, not a counselor's office, but we will make an exception this one time by way of warning. This blog discusses very difficult subjects; we try to get to the bedrock of what's wrong with many things. The blog is not meant for young people, but for people who have lived long enough to be able to put bad things in context--see them against the big picture.

The big picture is not one of corruption and evil--else humanity would have killed each other off eons ago. But with every leap in technology or knowledge, a relatively small number of humans get the jump on the rest. When that happens, adults must set things back in order. For that, we need to look squarely at situations, in order to see what we're really dealing with. That is not easy and it involves taking a critical stance.

You may think what you wish of your elders and you should take care to avoid their clutches, if you think they mean you harm. However, you must never let down our ancestors--all those who came before. Do not sneer at their efforts, for there is nothing this modern world has that they did not help create. For that reason, find words of praise for elders and temper your criticism with a remembrance of their accomplishments. By thanking your elders on occasion, if only in your thoughts, you are remembering to thank all those who came before.

It is none of Pundita's business whether you choose to have children, but if you allow the bad in this world to overwhelm your thinking you forget that this is your time. There is no way to avoid suffering and grief, no way to avoid really bad things that are determined to visit, but you should remember they are happening in your time. No one can own that time except you.

Being human is to make many unwise choices, but that is not all it means. Many years ago I was a guest at Bharata Natyam recital that took place in Bethesda, Maryland. The Bharata Natyam is surely one of the most difficult dances that humanity has thought up; as such it's an accurate reflection of the very ancient and complex Indian culture.

Except for a handful in attendance, including Pundita, the audience was Indian or Americans of Indian heritage. The recital was a graduation ceremony for American girls of Indian ancestry who had been studying Bharata Natyam for years -- some practicing since early childhood.

One girl among the dancers riveted the audience's attention. She was beautiful, incredibly graceful, and for one so young she demonstrated impressive dance technique.

I ask you to put yourself for a moment in the girl's place and consider that the Indian culture, even when transposed to Indians living in America, is very conservative, very restrained. Think of practicing for years to master a dance that is far more than dance -- at once living history, a statement of your heritage, and a spiritual meditation. Finally comes the time to demonstrate everything your teacher has taught you and make your parents and community proud.

Now ask yourself what might be the worst thing that could happen to you on that stage, with hundreds of eyes upon you.

Suddenly a murmur went up from the audience. The woman next to me gripped my arm and whispered, "Oh my God her pantaloons have come undone!"

Yes. The button or safety pin had given out. As the hapless child continued her dance the leggings underneath her costume slowly continued their descent. A look of horror fleeted across the girl's face. The other dancers broke their stride a bit to glance in sympathy.

The girl's teacher raced to the stage wing and gestured, calling softly for her to leave the stage for a moment so she could regain her dignity and her pantaloons. Everyone would have understood if she'd left the dance momentarily under those awful circumstances.

A look of determination came over the girl's features; within an instant the look was gone, replaced by the stylized expression of the deity her dance was meant to represent.

Without missing a beat, and as the pantaloons continued their downward journey to twist around her ankles, the girl continued with her dance.

Even before the triumphant stamping of the dancers' feet to signal the end of the dance, the audience was clapping her on.

Yet only after all the dancers made their bow to the audience was the deity replaced by a mortified child. She whisked off the pantaloons, scampered to her teacher's embrace, then disappeared backstage for pantaloon repair.

Then at the insistence of the other dancers, her teacher, her parents, the musicians and the audience, the girl shyly returned to the stage to take a bow to thunderous ovation.

As the audience dispersed I heard a man say to a companion, "It was as if Saraswati [the goddess of wisdom, music and the arts] appeared tonight to teach us a lesson."

Goddess or no goddess, the lesson was abundantly clear. To be human means you can't avoid making a damn fool out of yourself, even if you're the best-looking and most accomplished of the lot. But you show the spark of that which transcends the human condition when you hang in there and finish your dance.

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Tony Blair calls for May 5 general election in Britain. Brussels seizes an opportunity

Despite their past disagreements with the Iron Chancellor about his insistence that sound government fiscal policy is, well, sound, two days ago Brussels gave Gordon Brown a glowing endorsement. One might argue that they couldn't help but doing so, given that Mr Brown's policies on the British economy have been famously vindicated; however, Brussels watchers know that the compliments verged on the fawning. Coming as they did just 24 hours before Tony Blair's unsurprising call for a general election, what can we read into Brussels' fit of generosity?

Looming on the horizon is Britain's referendum on the ratification of the EU constitution. The drop-dead deadline for ratifying the constitution is November 2006, but it's likely the event will occur in the early part of 2006. What's particularly interesting about the referendum is that it was never supposed to happen. Blair, determined that Britain should fully integrate with the EU, initially dismissed the need for a referendum. In doing so, he neglected the gathering opposition in Britain to EU integration. But through the miracle of polling, which revealed his steep decline in popularity and the opposition, he reversed course and called for a referendum.

As to where Tony Blair stands now on the issue of integration with the EU, seemingly where he's always stood. His view is that first you join them, then you battle to regain what you gave up by joining. Mr Blair is quite a scrapper--a trait that endeared him to Americans who support the invasion of Iraq--so his logic might work, for him. But he has all but promised the Labor party that if returned to power after election he won't serve his full term, thus clearing the way for Gordon Brown to become PM. Pundita is not sure how much Blair's promise is worth but at this juncture we have to take him at his word.

As to where the Tories stand on integration--they stand for whatever the polls indicate might give them a shot at unseating Labor. Right now polls show that British voters are roughly split on the question of integration.

In coming months we'll have more to say about all this because Britain's decision on integration will have profound implications for the US war on terror and the trade war.

So now seems a good time to bone up on just exactly what Euroscepticism is. The topic represents a formalized school of thought, so the explanation is a little dry--although Pundita strongly recommends that her readers make the time to read every point.

To ease into the subject, and to dispel the notion that Pundita is mean to Brussels, I suggest you first read a genuine, card-carrying Eurosceptic's opinion of the European Union. Next to Robert Locke, Pundita is the soul of sweetness on the topic. Those who are coming to Locke's 2002 piece for Front Page Magazine for the first time should be warned to remove small children and even sensitive pet goldfish from the reading area before clicking on this link .

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Hugo Chavez, The Coffee Club, and Plan A & B. You will need math and aspirin for this one.

"Pundita, What is Hugo Chavez up to? Is he planning on becoming the next Castro or Bolivar or Napoleon or what?
[Signed] Caesar in San Francisco"

Dear Caesar:
He's just doing a little horse trading, in the effort to convince the Bush administration to back away from pushing Brazil for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. I'm not sure how much you want to know about this situation, unless you have a secret wish to jump back in time and see for yourself what life was like in the Italian Renaissance.

It all started innocently and coherently enough, if one is able to follow Machiavellian logic. Back in the early 1990s, a "wily Sicilian," as he is known around the halls of the United Nations, cobbled together an informal group of nations that was dubbed the Coffee Club or sometimes the Cappuccino Club. This was because Rome wanted to flummox Germany's designs on becoming a permanent member of the UN Security Council (UNSC). Rome was concerned even back then that a unified Germany in the post-Soviet era would control the European Union and soon the world.

As you will soon see why, it's virtually impossible to nail down how many nations belong to the Coffee Club but the number tends to wax and wane around 30-40. The nations are characterized as 'middling' in military and trading power and don't have a permanent seat on the UNSC.

The idea behind the club is that while few middling nations would lose sleep about Germany's designs, they would have their own reasons for opposing a radical change in the UN ecosystem, which an additional permanent member on the UNSC would touch off. Thus, the Coffee Club was founded on a simple strategy: Every time there's discussion about expanding the UNSC, everybody in the club raise such a squawk that the US administration shelves discussion.

This worked for a time due to President Clinton's daily routine. Every morning Clinton would look at the intelligence briefings stacked in his in-box, make a face, and ring up his secretary of state or national security advisor to ask whether the United States was doing okay. They would ring up the America desk at the State Department, which would ring up George Soros, who would ring up Brussels. Then by noon they'd report back to Clinton that the NATO alliance was still holding strong, yet another republic was being peeled away from Russian influence, and so the United States was doing just fine.

Then George W. Bush became President. He not only read every intelligence briefing in his in-box, he also hauled the DCI into his office every weekday morning for an in-person report. The first time this happened, Tenet's chauffeur got lost enroute to the White House because it was only the second time he'd made the trip. Within days of Bush settling into his morning routine, the yelling from the Oval Office could be heard all the way across the Potomac. The gist, with expletives deleted:

How did Brussels manage to pussyfoot around South America without the US government noticing, instigate a trading bloc (Mercosur) and forge an alliance between the EU bloc and Mercosur that worked against NAFTA?

And here we are today. Mercosur is dead and the replacement bloc (SACN) is years away if ever from getting off the ground. By happy coincidence Brazil is now a proud member of the G-4--the group of four nations most likely to be invited to become permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, if Plan A is adopted by the UN.

Somewhere along the way, Brazil realized that their Bingo Club meeting schedule conflicted with Coffee Club meetings. But what the Coffee Club loses on one hand, they pick up on the other, for there are virtually infinite combinations and permutations of reasons why middling nations would have reason to oppose Germany, Brazil, India or Japan having permanent membership on the UNSC and the general principle of an expanded permanent membership for the UNSC.

Things started getting really complicated as soon as word got around about the details of the proposed UN reform package that Kofi Annan was overseeing--and overseeing with great zeal, I might add, once the Iraq Oil for Scandal wrecking ball swung his way. The package, which Annan insists is a take-it-or-leave it deal, presents two options for changing the security council--Plan A and Plan B (or 'models' as Kofi likes to say).

Plan A
Six new permanent UNSC seats, with no veto being created, and three new two-year term non-permanent seats, divided among the major regional areas: Africa, Asia & Pacific, Europe, Americas.

Plan B
No new permanent seats but creates a new category of eight four-year renewable-term seats and one new two-year non-permanent (and non-renewable) seat, divided among the same regional areas as above.

Now if you count on your fingers you immediately note that the G-4 does not equal six. That means even if Plan A is adopted and Brazil, Germany, India and Japan get permanent seats, that still leaves two seats up for grabs. The two proposed seats are for Africa.

So the way the Coffee Club is thinking at this moment, subject to change the next moment:

Italy wants to block Germany
Pakistan wants to block India
Mexico and Argentina want to block Brazil
South Korea wants to block Japan
Egypt wants to block Nigeria and South Africa and vice versa
From here on, you need math

On Monday and Tuesday, Israel wants to block India. On Wednesday and Thursday, Israel wants to support India.

On Monday and Wednesday, Egypt wants to block India because they don't want a nation with a Hindu majority having a permanent seat on the UNSC. On Tuesday and Thursday, Egypt is busy lobbying the US for a permanent seat on UNSC and posing no objection to India.

On the second Monday of every month, when the Indonesian Central Bank talks with the Bank for International Settlements, Indonesia wants to support Japan. The rest of the month Indonesia wants to block Japan to stay on China's good side and out of concern that Japan already has too much power in Asia. This is excepting Thursdays, when Indonesia worries that China is throwing too much weight around in Asia.

See above for days of the week that Malaysia wants to support or block Japan and why, then continue down the list of middling countries in the Coffee Club, if we had a list which we don't.

Now we come to the P-5 (five permanent members of the UNSC). China wants to block Japan, except on Wednesdays and Fridays when they become worried that other Asian nations perceive them as a bully. Russia would like to back Japan and India except on....darn, the dog just ate my notes.

Pakistan, which is currently leading the Coffee Club charge against India, has realized that things are slipping toward chaos. So Pakistani thinkers are trying to get the discussion back on track by pointing out that the Coffee Club is supposed to be Little Guys against Goliath. If everybody would just agree that they need to fight for Plan B, they might win the day. Don't you agree, Brazil? Hello? Hello? What do you mean this phone number isn't working anymore?

For a summary of the UN reform policy report and the UN view about the reform plan click here . To retrieve the entire UN reform follow-up report (PDF format) click here. Type "Box 5" into the Find field to bring up Model A and B for the UNSC or scroll to page 43.

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Pundita plays White Rabbit to a reader's Alice in Washington-land

"Pundita, the hallmark of science is not its ability to explain but its ability to predict (I mean prediction BEFORE something actually happens rather than the more common claiming to have predicted something AFTER it happens). How do so many people (particularly in foreign relations) whose predictions have been so poor hold onto their jobs?
[Signed] Dave in Chicago"

Dear Dave:
Your remark about science and your question are very broad, but if you're referring to people whose job it is to make predictions for the US government, you are misinformed. Such people are almost invariably 100% right in their predictions. I know this will come as a shock and you might think Pundita is pulling your leg. So allow me to play White Rabbit. Before we pop down the hole, let us hop back in time.

Say your job is to be the high priest--a job that was passed down by your uncle. Your main job duty is to ensure a good harvest each year, which you accomplish by hurling 10 virgins off a cliff. It worked for your uncle, it worked for his uncle, and for 20 years it's been working for you. On the 21st try, the harvest comes a cropper.

Naturally you are hauled before the king, who demands an explanation for why the crops failed. This is because all his subjects are massed outside the gates and demanding an explanation. Now tell Pundita what you would say. "I have no idea" would be the wrong answer, if you want to hang onto your position not to mention your life. You have come up with an explanation for the presumed anomaly.

Put another way, you haven't the foggiest idea why hurling virgins off a cliff worked to bring a good harvest and why it stopped working. And if you're a very smart high priest, you might have a hunch that one event has nothing to do with the other. However, with your life on the line, it would be the wrong time to take up lab bench science.

To spare you the brain sweat, Pundita will quote from page 432 of the 11,465 page How to Survive your Job as High Priest Book of Answers which provides an array of explanations for earlier science's failure to accurately predict things.

The crop failed because:

Blame it on the Assistant
a) The virgins were too young.
b) The virgins were too old.
c) They hadn't been properly tested to ascertain that they were actually virgins. (Note: Here call for the immediate execution of your assistant.)

Blame it on the Harvest god
a) The god is now demanding a doubling in the number of sacrificed virgins.
b) The god is in a bad mood.
c) The god was busy fighting a war with other gods and forgot about the harvest.

Blame it on the King's subjects
a) The people have not been showing proper respect to the harvest god.
b) The people have been fighting with each other, which angered the god.
Note: float this one if the people have been complaining a lot recently about the king and the king is in good standing with the military.)
c) The people became lazy and deceitful and didn't share enough harvest with the king's bounty collectors.

Note: Different combinations of the above explanations should be enough to get you through for a few years, until whatever's wrong with the harvest rights itself. If all else fails:

Blame it on the King
a) The king has started thinking he's more powerful than the harvest god.
CAUTION: Try this one only after consultation with courtiers and generals assures that the king is next off the cliff.

From all the above, you can begin to intuit that Pundita was not pulling your leg. Predicting how foreign relations will go is not a science but hanging onto your job in Washington is. Those who labor in government, policy institutes and academia can predict with virtual 100% accuracy what will happen to their funding if their predictions are outlandishly wrong. Thus, they build myriad escape hatches into the predictions so that they can never be nailed as outlandishly wrong.

A favorite escape hatch is conveyed in a joke that a CIA policy analyst told Pundita years ago. I interject that during the Clinton years it was trying to find oneself seated next to a CIA employee at a Washington dinner. The CIA under Clinton had to spend their clock time in a booth at Taco Bell playing checkers. One could only think up so much polite dinner conversation about a burrito menu, you understand. I don't remember the exact wording of the joke but it went like this:

After World War Three broke out, the DCI and the top CIA policy analyst were hauled before POTUS and his defense advisors. The President picked up a CIA report titled, How to Avoid World War Three, tossed it to the DCI and said angrily, "We read every page of that 832-page report. We took into account every prediction and followed every recommendation. Now you tell us what we did wrong."

The DCI tossed the report to the analyst and snapped, "What did they do wrong?"

The analyst thumbed through the report then replied, "They missed the third footnote on page 471."

What's funny about the joke is that nobody in Washington except grad students and 3.5 senators reads an actual policy paper; they read a two syllable one-page summary of the paper, which does not contain footnotes. Policy analysts know this because they also write the summary. Therefore, you would be hard pressed to find a prediction stated in a paper that is not qualified or completely contradicted somewhere in the same paper.

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"Things fall apart, the center cannot hold"

Sometime during the 1970s we passed into a new chapter in the saga of the human race. Here is the outline: Present technology + human population number + Amazon going up in flames due to bad development projects + rapidly escalating desertification + present phase of earth's cycle + very limited knowledge about dealing with problems of mass populations.

The earth has her own cycle of life--as we saw on the day we refer to as the Tsunami. Yet we can't tell the earth, "Please suspend your cycle until we get it together."

That means we're now operating on a very thin margin of error. One of the many recent signs of this was the heroic Canadian doctor who battled SARS to the death in a hospital in Canada. She had to wage battle with her back to the wall of bureaucratic bungling. That kind of situation is happening more and more. Yet when we're routinely having to depend on just one person to save us from a mega-disaster, this is a clear sign of system failure. It's a sign that our margin of error has shrunk to near zero.

Those who talk about saving humanity from disaster are referencing opportunity that is long gone. The ship left the pier decades ago. Given the combination of factors, there is no way humanity can avoid crashing into the metaphorical iceberg. However, the Titanic passengers who were killed did not die because of the impact of the ship's crash. They died because the ship maker and the shipping company didn't build in margins of error. They assumed the ship was unsinkable so--not enough lifeboats, no disaster drills, no backup SOS system, etc.

We can't avert all coming disasters but we can widen our margin of error--minimize our exposure to disasters and maximize our responses to them. There's plenty enough human brainpower for the task, thanks to our mega-population. The challenge is to get more of the brainpower involved with governing decisions and oversight.

That's where democratic government comes in. Democracy is no longer just about the choice between freedom and slavery. It's about transferring decision-making from small numbers (an 'elite') to large numbers with their vast diversity of experience and education. It's about the human race making it through this century in one piece.

Here we come to a snag. There are two democracy doctrines; one is phony. The Democracy Bubble of the 1980s and 1990s, when it burst, left many people round the world feeling cheated by their experiment in democracy. But they didn't really have democracy. They were sold a form of government that's a stage show run by a small circle.

How did so many people get taken in? Pundita's been trying to figure that out, in the manner of a bunko squad detective taking apart a con. I've zeroed in on the word 'freedom,' which is the word I hear most associated with democracy. Remove the dom and you're left with free--the con artist's favorite word.

(To the tune of "A Christmas Song" sung by Alvin and the Chipmunks):

Freedom for you and freedom for me!
We'll be free with democracy!
We won't worry when we are freeeeee!
All we do is vote and see
Our leaders will make us free!

Freedom is not free. It has a very high price and the payment is not a one-time shot. It's a huge ongoing investment of time and because time is money in the modern world, it's lot of money to invest. So the question is whether all the freedoms that come with democratic government are worth the high price for all peoples in all circumstances. From a Darwinian perspective, and during earlier eras, the answer would be no; the Democracy Stage Show Kit essay looks briefly at one reason--the exhaustion factor. But the choice is no longer about accepting democracy. The choice is how well the human race survives this century.

A Palestinian once told Pundita that humanity has no worries about the future because Muslim prophets have said that the end of the world is near. Hello, the end of the world is sure enough near for some peoples if they don't get cracking but we're not looking at a doomsday scenario in this century. We're looking at hell on earth for a lot more people, if we don't get more brainpower set to work on the problems we're facing. The fastest and best way to do this is via genuine democratic government beep this is a recording.

The US government needs to take all the above into consideration, the next time they decide to cut corners--for the greater good--and support a democracy stage show. They need to update their concept of the greater good. Same goes for the governments in other developed countries. Let's get it together, ladies and gentlemen, because this earth will not suspend her schedule of events while we're working through our issues.

In the Democracy Stage Show Kit I noted, "We have simply passed the era when a small elite could be counted on to properly manage the problems of governing a populace. It takes large numbers of people to efficiently govern populations that run into the hundreds of millions. "

In his commentary Zenpundit observes, "This point is not merely one of functionality but of political legitimacy."

I agree, and yet functionality and political legitimacy must converge, else the concept of 'government' is rendered invalid. I don't know the exact population number that has to be reached before tribal government begins to break down but at some point up in the thousands, it does. The same for imperial government when the population rises to the millions. "Things fall apart, the center cannot hold."

From then on, the choice is to rule by force or bring in democracy, which can efficiently govern very large numbers. Yet the functionality of democracy has not been emphasized during the past century; democracy has been presented as a philosophical subject and ideal. That's allowed for a lot of fuzzy inspirational talk and not much talk about the nuts of bolts of democratic government. That's what is missing, when we preach democracy. A little less preaching, a little more explanation. That would make it harder to palm off a show for the real deal.

We might try something new for a change and get creative. Someone could think up a board game that has players set up a democratic government. Then would come the computer game. Then the movie and the theme park.

Better yet--ask Mark Burnett to create a reality show on setting up a democratic government. Maybe we could get a LDC government to cooperate. The president of the country could give the same task to different members of his government then fire the one who did worst with the task. You could spin a soap opera off it. The BBC would pick it up; it could go on playing forever all around the world, like EastEnders.

Well why not, if you really want to see 'the masses' learn democratic government? But gee come to think of it, there never has been that much interest in teaching the masses the actual nuts and bolts of democratic government. What we've had is--

Freedom for you and freedom for me!
We'll be free with democracy...

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