Over time I’ve come to the conclusion that where news entities fail miserably is in their analysis with international politics. Most pundits, writers, journalists, etc, seem to be able to semi-grasp domestic policies, albeit still in the usual, overly simplistic, fits-to-the-narrative type of way, but lose all rationality with respect to international affairs.
Interestingly enough, I think their failures in both domestic & international analysis stem from the same basic cause, oversimplification. But it would seem that the degree to which it effects each type of analysis differs due to the lack of incentives private interests have in resolving inaccurate reports on international issues.
Thinking about the counter thought to international policy, domestic policy, we see incentives existing to resolve press inaccuracies. For instance, if the press pushes inaccurate opinions and analysis which oversimplifies a given topic, a special interest group or two, plus at least one political party, and finally non-profits everywhere will try to enlighten by showing the fallacy of the common narrative.
This is because people rightfully see domestic issues as more directly impacting their lives. The corollary is that our politicians, our leaders, our special interests, and our non-profits tend to focus where we as a society focus.
The problem that can stem from this seems intuitive – inaccurate press on international issues should be held as highly suspect, but get printed without much serious disagreement. Since very little counters popular wisdom, this gives the press a power to change opinions and as well as spread myths.
This leads to all kinds of odd conclusions, with large swaths of people all over the planet prone to believe in things without substantial proof nor any degree of rational logic.
For instance believing that western countries are somehow to blame for poor countries with constant internal strife and corrupt governments which inefficiencies and lack of resources. Or said another way, people all over believe in a zero sum game. This is true not only in the international sense, but also when dealing with immigration and free trade issues.
Mistaken assumptions such as zero-sum games also lead to beliefs about what one thinks a President can actually do, versus what reality tends to dictate what will actually be done. This leads to politicians making believable, yet highly impossible claims about given international situations. This has been done to all recent Presidents, including President Obama when pulling a missile defense shield out of Poland & Czechoslovakia was made to appear as a rash decision amounting to abandoning our allies, when in fact it wasn’t a bad decision when concluding what options were open and what were the greatest threats to our security and security in the region (wrote about it here, though Mr. Obama went and said it had nothing to do with Russia… which was just amazing… wrote about that here).
It leads to pundits everywhere snidely remarking how this action wasn’t “tough” or that action was going to anger others because it was “unilateral”. With little recourse, journalists print all sorts of things without taking into any account the actual framework through which any given action action was taken, under what circumstances, with what available options, or really they just leave out anything resembling actual analysis.
Unfortunately, it seems no organization is immune. A recent piece published in the Economist titled Even greater expectations discussing the idiotic Nobel Prize Committee decision, is a far cry from the analysis for which the Economist is known.
They rightfully begin with the question the world was asking, “Is it premature to give Barack Obama the Nobel peace prize, less than a year into his presidency?”, but delve quickly into non-international events dressed up to seem as if change had already happened:
…Most broadly, he has sought to engage with opponents, saying that America would “extend a hand, if you unclench your fist”, for example to those who were earlier dismissed as an “axis of evil”. Somewhat to the discomfort of Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who had bolstered his domestic support by vilifying America as an aggressor, Mr Obama has proposed holding talks about nuclear affairs, removing a precondition that Iran first abandon enrichment of uranium. Mr Obama made withdrawal of American forces from Iraq one of the main pledges of his election campaign and has since overseen a slightly quicker run down of troops than was envisaged by Mr Bush. Towards North Korea, too, Mr Obama has dangled the prospect of bilateral talks and closer engagement.
Regarding Russia Mr Obama has developed a policy of notably warmer ties, dubbed “hitting the reset button”. Relations had become especially frosty towards the end of Mr Bush’s presidency when war broke out between Georgia, an ally of America, and Russia…
Continuing with this as reasoning:
…Yet Mr Obama’s main achievement is a change of tone in foreign policy. A speech given in Egypt in June was an eloquent call for a new understanding between America and Islam. It was designed both to assure Muslims, now thought to number 1.6 billion around the world, that America is not set on a crusade. Similarly it was intended to convey to any Americans (and others) who believe in the notion of a “clash of civilisations” that friendly ties between religions is eminently possible.
Similarly, American policy towards small and repressive regimes, ranging from Myanmar to Cuba, has shifted in mood, if not yet substance, by offering the prospect of engagement if governments demonstrate progress towards democracy…
Which to date has not only done absolutely nothing to help international cooperation, but has made our interests tougher to protect. In nearly every UN Conference on whatever, for instance the G-20 dealing with the economic crisis, the US asks for a lot of cooperation and everyone goes their separate ways.
In some ways this is to be completely understood. American solutions for economic issues will differ from that of Germany or the UK. Even though the same basic problem afflicts most countries during the global recession, their banking industries are setup with much different regulations, making the solutions for one country not necessarily compare to another country. The separate policies might even be attempting the exact same “type” of solution, for instance increasing capital requirements, but under different systems any one specific solutions will affect different countries differently.
When it comes to reaching our hand out to those regimes, we see that North Korea, Russia, and Iran have been openly hostile to any US intents. Iran’s deadline of October the 1st to fess up or face sanctions has come and gone, even while it was precipitated by Iran admitting to an additional enrichment facility.
And all this, including that all important warming of US-Russian relations, Russia has stated publicly the will continue to trade with Iran, meaning they will back them, if the UN, lead by the US impose stricter sanctions against Iran.
Now these situations are fluid to some extent, especially between cautious friends such as US-Russia and most of the controversial moves taken by Iran & North Korea would likely have happened to test any new US President’s resolve.
The issue is that by glossing over the realities we end up believing in myths. Think about all that talk about “unilateral” action as if it’s a huge negative due to the controversy surrounding the last semi-unilateral decision to be made, without understanding that this is exactly as we should expect it.
No country should do something the US requests if they know in the end the analysis states otherwise. On the international stage, Europeans, Cechs, Persians, Africians, indeed every person deserves the same representation we deserve – for their representatives to look out for their interests.
Now this can and does lead to all kinds of international policies from all different governments that appear wrong or unseemly when in truth it’s a playing field for which no one actor controls the rules which leads to countries making decisions that seem antithetical to their stated morals or goals.
It also allows one country to look at another as particularly egregious, regardless of their country’s current international policies. It should be obvious that while beating up on your own politicians on domestic policy makes sense, doing so on the international stage is just beating yourself up. Even if well-deserved, it’s easier to beat up on other country’s policies than it is to self reflect.
In some ways, national feeling probably affects this as well. When most countries populations have enough information to dislike a number of other countries, going against that grain can be seen as being unpatriotic. You certainly wouldn’t see a major political figure like Tony Blair coming to the US to air Britain’s dirty laundry or Putin to do the same in the US against Russia.
It also allows for journalists to paint country X with any brush they choose. This helps some countries as the press will like some allies, but can obviously hurts or diminish countries for which popular sentiment doesn’t exist.
In the end, what it does is allow for a type of international superiority by enhancing nationalistic feelings. When only reviewing other countries’ by hand picking policies, self-selecting cultural attributes, last recent controversy, crazy politicians, one can get the opinion of their general greatness over all those “other” people.
Lastly, and in my opinion, the most unfortunate consequence of this misinformation, is our inability to actually analyze international issues. In between these simplistic news stories real trade-offs on the international stage are being made and constantly simplified. From a high-level view the policy might appear to be utterly wrong, but in reality might not be so. It might simply be the least bad of all the bad options. & it might really be the policy itself which is wrong.
For real analysis however, historical context, actions taken versus realistic options available, trends, and a number of other data points are required. Without honest sourced information cost/benefit analysis simply isn’t possible.
October 26, 2009
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Posted by Michael S. Langston
Categories: Economics, free market, Legislation, NGOs, Politics
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Tags: Cato, Competition, Congress, Creative Destruction, Critical Thinking, Decentralization, Economics, Free Market Principles, Freedom, Government Services, health care, Health Care Reform, Incentives, Legislation, Logic, NGOs, Obama, Obama Administration, Political Philosophy, Politics, Statism
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