Vladimir Putin’s irrational behavior: Why the Russian president wins if we think he is crazy.
Scott Radnitz suggests that Vladimir Putin is not crazy — just deliberately acting that way.
….consider strategic theorist Thomas Schelling’s concept of the “rationality of irrationality.” This can be illustrated through the game of chicken, in which two drivers are heading for each other at full speed, and the first to swerve is the chicken. A driver who appears crazy enough to prefer dying over chickening out will always have the advantage. It is therefore rational for a player to convince his opponent that he is actually irrational.
Read more at Vladimir Putin’s irrational behavior: Why the Russian president wins if we think he is crazy..
Environmental quality is improving, not declining | Library of Economics and Liberty
Terry L. Anderson writes
….Thanks largely to the pioneering work of the late economist Julian Simon and, more recently, to the work of statistician Bjørn Lomborg, abundant data show that we are not running out of resources, that we are not destroying our environment, and that the plight of human beings is improving rather than diminishing. Simon’s confidence in challenging Ehrlich’s pessimistic thinking came from his belief that people respond to scarcity by conserving on scarcer resources and by reducing waste and hence pollution.
Doubting Simon’s logic and data, Bjørn Lomborg, a statistician and political scientist, set out to prove him wrong by examining reams of data on various environmental claims…..
Read more at Environmental Quality: The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics | Library of Economics and Liberty.
Putin’s ploy
The Wall Street Journal quotes Vladimir Putin’s justification for occupying the Crimea:
Russian President Vladimir Putin said Tuesday that Russia reserves the right to use force in Ukraine to protect Russian-speaking residents there…….”
This was a ploy used by Hitler to assert control of the Sudetenland in 1938. Sudetenland is the name given to the border districts of Bohemia, Moravia, and parts of Silesia, within Czechoslovakia, that had large German-speaking populations. Hitler encouraged Konrad Henlein, leader of the Sudeten Nazis, to rebel, demanding a union with Germany. When the Czech government declared martial law, Hitler threatened war. This led to the September 1938 betrayal of Czechoslovakia by France and Britain. Adopting a policy of appeasement, the two countries agreed to give Hitler the Sudetenland, with Chamberlain describing the crisis as “a quarrel in a faraway country, between people of whom we know nothing”. On his return to London, Chamberlain asserted that the accord with Germany signaled “peace for our time”.
Hitler enters the Sudetenland, Bundesarchiv, Bild | October 1938
In March 1939, German troops occupied the rest of Czechoslovakia. In September 1939, Hitler invaded Poland on a similar pretext of protecting the German minority from persecution. War followed, leaving more than 60 million dead. Almost two-thirds were civilians.
Hopefully Western leaders have learned from history. Appeasement is not an option.
Read more at BBC History and Wikipedia: The Sudeten Crisis.
An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last. ~ Winston Churchill
As China looks on, Putin poses risky dilemma for the West | Reuters
David Rohde at Reuters quotes James Jeffrey, a retired career U.S. diplomat:
Jeffrey said the days and months ahead will be vital. If Putin faces few long-term consequences for seizing Crimea, it will set a precedent for China and other regional powers who may be considering establishing 19th century-style spheres of influence of their own.
“The Chinese,” Jeffrey said, “are in the same position.”
Read more at As China looks on, Putin poses risky dilemma for the West | Reuters.
Realpolitik In Ukraine | Anatole Kaletsky , Gavekal
Quote from Anatole Kaletsky, Gavekal, in John Mauldin’s Outside the Box newsletter:
…..it is literally inconceivable that Putin will ever withdraw from Crimea. To give up Crimea now would mean the end of Putin’s presidency, since the Russian public, not to mention the military and security apparatus, believe almost unanimously that Crimea still belongs to Russia, since it was only administratively transferred to Ukraine, almost by accident, in 1954. In fact, many Russians believe, rightly or wrongly, that most of Ukraine “belongs” to them. (The very name of the country in Russian means “at the border” and certainly not “beyond the border”). Under these circumstances, the idea that Putin would respond to Western diplomatic or economic sanctions, no matter how stringent, by giving up his newly gained territory is pure wishful thinking.
Read more at John Mauldin: Outside the Box.
A trip to the grocery store [video]
A reminder of our obligation to others.
China: Roiling the Waters
Roiling the Waters: Why the United States needs to stop playing peacemaker and start making China feel uncomfortable.
BY Elbridge Colby, Ely Ratner
History has demonstrated the perils of focusing too much on stability at the expense of deterrence. The Cuban missile crisis, the modern world’s closest brush with the apocalypse, was precipitated by Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev’s perception that the United States, especially President John F. Kennedy, was overly concerned about stability and cooling tensions between the superpowers. Khrushchev’s sense that America could be pushed was formed by Kennedy’s cautious reactions to assertive Soviet moves toward Berlin, as well as Khrushchev’s measure of Kennedy at the 1961 Vienna superpower summit as “weak” and accommodating……..
OF COURSE, CHINA IS NOT THE SOVIET UNION. And 2014 is not 1962. The point is simply that a country with the power of the USSR or China, unsatisfied with features of the existing order, motivated to do something to change it, and skeptical of the resolve of the United States, could well pursue a policy of coercion and brinkmanship, even under the shadow of nuclear weapons. As historian Francis Gavin has argued, the whole history of the Cold War shows that countries like China — and, at times, the United States — can bluff, coerce, and threaten their way to geopolitical gain.
The worst way to deal with such a power is to leave it with the impression that these approaches work. Just as the United States would have been far better off if Kennedy, at the Vienna summit, had squelched Khrushchev’s doubts about his resolve to defend Berlin, it will be far better if the leadership in Beijing has the clear sense that the United States will meet each challenge to its and its allies’ interests resolutely.
Read more at Roiling the Waters.
An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.
~ Winston Churchill
Absence of ethics in advertising [video]
The Pitch from Gruen Planet asks two ad agencies to come up with a campaign concept to sell viewers on the idea of restricting advertising. The first ad is amusing, but the second is chillingly Orwellian.
http://youtu.be/wsRk99L_6pQ?t=21m30s
The Pitch runs from 21:20 to 23:30.
The latter reminds me of Noam Chomsky’s observation about propaganda and the media:
The public relations industry, which essentially runs the elections, is applying certain principles to undermine democracy which are the same as the principles that [it] applies to undermine markets. The last thing that business wants is markets in the sense of economic theory. Take a course in economics, they tell you a market is based on informed consumers making rational choices. Anyone who’s ever looked at a TV ad knows that’s not true. In fact if we had a market system an ad say for General Motors would be a brief statement of the characteristics of the products for next year. That’s not what you see. You see some movie actress or a football hero or somebody driving a car up a mountain or something like that. And that’s true of all advertising. The goal is to undermine markets by creating uninformed consumers who will make irrational choices and the business world spends huge efforts on that. The same is true when the same industry, the PR industry, turns to undermining democracy. It wants to construct elections in which uninformed voters will make irrational choices. It’s pretty reasonable and it’s so evident you can hardly miss it.
~ From lecture titled “The State-Corporate Complex: A Threat to Freedom and Survival,” at the The University of Toronto, April 7, 2011
Two more quotes by Chomsky from Alternet.org:
The leading student of business propaganda, Australian social scientist Alex Carey, argues persuasively that “the 20th century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance: the growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy.
~ From World Orders: Old and New
If the media were honest, they would say, Look, here are the interests we represent and this is the framework within which we look at things. This is our set of beliefs and commitments. That’s what they would say, very much as their critics say. For example, I don’t try to hide my commitments, and the Washington Post and New York Times shouldn’t do it either. However, they must do it, because this mask of balance and objectivity is a crucial part of the propaganda function. In fact, they actually go beyond that. They try to present themselves as adversarial to power, as subversive, digging away at powerful institutions and undermining them. The academic profession plays along with this game.
~ From Lecture titled ” Media, Knowledge, and Objectivity,” June 16, 1993
Chomsky has been painted as a wacko conspiracy theorist by mainstream media — and some of his later statements on global politics do strike me as odd — but his early insights into the unholy alliance between the media, business and politics and their use of propaganda are chillingly accurate and should not be ignored.
The EU should take inspiration from Switzerland in its attempts to increase democratic legitimacy | EUROPP
Joseph Lacey explains why the EU should follow the Swiss example:
Three major factors help to explain how Switzerland is possible. First, there are national elections and nationally-held referendums connected to the workings of a national government. Second, though national elections only take place every five years, referendums are far more frequent. On average, usually on three scheduled dates, Switzerland holds seven referendums annually. Some of these are constitutionally mandated, though the majority are demanded at the initiative of at least 100,000 citizen signatures. Third, unlike the case of Belgium where national consciousness is fragmented by two party systems divided along linguistic lines (French and Flemish), Switzerland has a single party system where the dominant cleavage is ideological, cutting across linguistic barriers and thereby allowing parties to draw common support from all public spheres.
Read more at The EU should take inspiration from Switzerland in its attempts to increase democratic legitimacy. | EUROPP.