Articles on International Terrorism and Counter-Insurgency.

In the last couple of weeks the American Conservative, and War Nerd have came up with two excellent commentaries on issues relating to terrorism and counter-insurgency.

The 'Rich Get Richer', by American Conservative writer James Kurth, is a top-notch peice of commentary, of a similar standard to the first American Conservative article to grab my attention, Robert Locke's 'Marxism of the Right' ( a critique of libertarianism).

War Nerd mixes dry humour with vigorous common sense and lateral thinking in his latest blog entry - 'Afghanistan, Let Them 'Em Ham'. As a supporter of the war in Afghanistan, who is disappointed with the way things are going, I can strongly relate to his comment - 'I didn't believe we could possibly be so stupid as to blow the one thing we did right'.

Why New Zealand Still Needs More Prisons

In a bid to reduce the cost of dealing with criminals the Government has decided to give judges the option of issuing home detentions for minor criminal offenses.

However, the only proven way of reducing crime rates is to threaten more offenders with imprisonment.

In the United States and Continental Europe, high incarceration rates have led to a significant reduction in crime rates. Conversely, a shortage of prison spaces in Britain and New Zealand is undermining police efforts to get tough in criminals.

New Zealand is one of the toughest places in the world to commit a crime without getting caught, but it also has some of the softest sentencing.

The logic of imprisonment is simple - if criminals are locked up then they can't commit crimes. There is also the deterrence aspect to imprisonment. Although many people argue that prisons are much softer than they used to be, the inmates are still pretty unpleasant. The threat of getting raped in a prison shower (or worse) is always going to make a lot of minor criminals think twice about breaking the law.

While some neo-conservatives question the cost-effectiveness of imprisonment, liberals argue that prison degrades the individual. This may be true, but it depends on your priorities - reducing crime or rehabilitiation. If its the former, then build more prisons.

Ultimately there are only two types of serious penalties - imprisonment or physical punishment. To a criminal, a fine is an empty threat unless a judge is willing and able to send them to prison for not paying one.

Alternative punishments like home detentions may be useful, but only if they are backed up by the threat of stronger penalties. If someone repeatedly breaks the conditions of a home detention then there must be a prison space to which they can be sent.

Just because imprisonment rates are already high does not mean imprisonment doesn't work. Sure, we should be doing more to tackle rising inequality, and inequality is a significant factor in crime rates.

But we can't just go easy on those that have already lapsed into a criminal lifestyle.

In the 1950s when crime rates were at record low levels, society was a lot more egalitarian (in economic terms) but it was also more authoritarian.

Prisons may be unsightly, they may be costly, but they actuallly work - thats why we need more of them and shouldn't moan about paying for them.

The costs of crime are continually being passed onto law-abiding ctitzens through increased taxes, rates, rents and insurance priemiums. Investing in prisons will save taxpayers money in the long run.

Slagging off the French

In the English-speaking world slagging off the French is a popular pastime.

The Americans blame the French for snobbish culture and political correctness. Australia and New Zealand dislike the French for testing nuclear bombs in the South Pacific.

The British still blame the French for their capitulation in 1940 as well as their role in founding the European Union, while English-speaking Canadians blame the French for Quebec.

As far as political correctness goes, France is no worse than any other western country. For example, France has conscription, modern nuclear power stations, and low taxes on cigarettes – hardly signs of extreme political correctness.

Its laws and economy may be a bit bureaucratic and socialist for some tastes but at least it doesn’t impose its economic views on countries outside the EU.

We should also give the French credit were credits due.

France has a proud intellectual tradition from the 18th century physiocrats and encyclopedists to great 20th Century historians like Fernand Braudel and Jacques Barzun – and where would political satire be without Voltaire.

As far as food and wine are concerned, France is number one – this isn’t really a debatable point. A visit to any reasonable sized French supermarket will reveal great food at very reasonable prices. Where else can you get a drinkable bottle of wine for a few euros.

France did co-found the EU (for better or worse) but it has had the good sense to reject the European Constitution and isn’t about to surrender its national autonomy.

Where the French really do deserve to be criticised its for spawning the demonic ramblings of post modern philosophy. France certainly owes the world an apology for the likes of Foucault and Derrida.

In Regards to the French outpost of Quebec, I don’t see what wrong with them asserting their own culture (at least in Quebec) or rejecting some aspects of American consumerism. However, I don’t think Canada or the world for that matter, needs another Pierre Trudeau let loose in Ottowa.

If the Gallic world could just apologise for post modernism and Trudeau then I think all should be forgiven. In return, as a sign of good faith, the English-speaking world should apologise for reality television and Britain’s railway system.

Laws gets Lean and Mean on Political Correctness

In Michael laws latest Sunday Star Times article - 'Forget the muck, how about the pork'. He makes some interesting and very humorous points about obesity, immigration and political correctness.

I think the country could well surpass the US in obesity statistics if current trends are anything to go by.

Perhaps we should start favouring ectomorphs in our immigration policy.

In Praise of Borat

In last week's post on the decline of T.V comedy, I did overlook one recent gem - Sacha Ben Cohen's character Borat, from the Ali Gee Show.

According to Canadian blogger Black Rod, Cohen has bought Borat to the big screen in Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, which recently screened at the Toronto Film Festival. Reuters was suitably shocked, calling it:

'the mosts appalling, tasteless, grotesque, politically incorrect sladerous flim of the year'

However, for festival goers 'It was also the hottest ticket item that night'.

I do have one major criticism of the Borat character though - he doesn't look like he's from Kazakhstan (Kazakh's look more East Asian dam it!)

As a self confessed expert on central Asia ( I have seen several repeats of Reilly Ace of Spies, and have spent at least 40 minutes reading up on the various republics in the region) I have come to the conclusion that Borat should be from Azerbeijan ( which technically isn't in Central Asia). The Black Adder crew would never have made such an oversight.

Technology and the New Zealand Economy

Looking back over the last 150 years of New Zealand development it's that noticeable that the country has prospered as new forms of technology have become available.

The Vogel boom of the 1870s was possible because of advances in railways, shipping, and communications. In the 1890s refrigeration provided the cornerstone of the prosperous Liberal Era (1891-1911). Top dressing, Land Rovers, and the Green Revolution allowed New Zealand to become one of the world’s most affluent countries in the 1950s and 1960s. During the 1990s, cheap air travel and advances in irrigation and uses for dairy products led to significant growth in tourism and dairy farming.

During these periods the country had a wide of governments with a wide range of economic policies. The Vogel government was classically liberal; the Liberal government - progressive populist; the government’s of the 1950s and 1960s - Keynesian, while the National government of the 1990s was neo-liberal.

Hence, there is little evidence that economic success is dependent on a particular set of policies, suitable for all situations, as lobby groups such as the Business Roundtable suggest.

British writer John Gray argues that technology, rather than ideology, is the cornerstone of economic success. Given that technological advances have always preceded economic growth in New Zealand’s history, I am inclined to agree with him.

The experiences of Japan and Sweden provide further evidence in favour of Gray’s argument. For over 30 years economic libertarians have been predicting the economic decline of overtaxed Sweden yet it is still one of the West’s strongest economies. Sweden invests heavily in scientific research and does remarkably well in hi-tech industry for a country with just nine million people. Similarly, Japan, a bastion of old school protectionism and limited immigration, thrashes the English-speaking world in large-scale manufacturing.

At present New Zealand has one of the lowest rates of productivity growth in the developed world. This suggests that we are going through a serious technological trough. However, what research is the Maxim Institute or the Business Roundtable doing into new technology that could turn things around – nothing.

Economic libertarians in New Zealand seem to be fixated on the economic mirage that is immigration based economic growth. They seem to think that large numbers of immigrants ‘carefully screened’ for western values will suddenly come to our rescue. Ayn Rand once said that as an economic libertarian she considered herself to be a romantic realist.

Economic libertarians are certainly romantics but I fail to see in what sense they are realists.

When China Wakes Up

How much longer will China be happy making cheap goods for the West?

Vdare columnist Paul Craig Roberts argues that once a particular industry is moved to China, research and development in that industry will also be moved there - this could have dire consequences for western economies.

At the moment China is quite happy pandering to the needs of western consumers.The Yuan is pegged to the US dollar at an artificially low rate, while the dollar is propped up by Chinese investors. This is increasing the competitiveness of Chinese manufacturers and boosting the purchasing power of American consumers.

Since the mid 1990s working class westerners have became dependent on cheap Chinese imports to offside stagnating wages and rising costs in services. A pricey ticket to a football game is still affordable because a new toaster only cost 20 dollars.

However, two things are starting to change:

1. China is now producing more sophisticated, better quality goods

2. Chinese domestic demand is rapidly expanding.

In the early stages of industrialisation, capital starved industrialists make sure that their workers produce significantly more than they consume. However, as productivity picks up, a surplus of goods accumulates and employers increase wages so that workers can consume more of the surplus.

Chinese firms are now buying up unprofitable western manufacturers, such as the UK car manufacturer Rover, and shifting the capital equipment back to China. Soon component manufacturers will also have to move and it will become impractical to maintain research and development facilities back in the home country.

Furthermore, the Chinese will be able to study how the blue prints of the capital equipment and set up their own industries for building capital equipment.

At this China won’t really need to subsidise western consumers since they will control production. The Chinese will then be able to float the Yuan and charge western consumers higher prices for their products.

The West won’t be able to respond by moving production to cheaper countries, such as Bangladesh and Pakistan, because the West won’t own the patents for the products or the capital equipment needed to produce them.

Two other factors will also serve to increase the price of Chinese goods:

1. the cost of raw materials, such as oil and wheat, will also increase in the coming decades

2. the aging of the Chinese population will put upward pressure on wages.

Prices for oil and gas, as well as farm products such as wheat and beef, are likely to increase and China will need a stronger currency to pay for these essential imports. At that point it won’t make sense for China to compete in low wage manufacturing. The Indian sub-continent, with a much younger population than China, will then take over a lot of low wage manufacturing.

Although, many western economists hate the term ‘strategic industries’, the West is going to have to identify essential industries that it won’t surrender to China. The fact that Chinese companies are already producing aircraft components for a strategic firm like Boeing, suggests that this is not yet happening.

Some Thoughts on the Decline of Popular Culture

The noticeable decline in popular music and television comedy over the last twenty years is often talked about but rarely explained.

From the late 1960s to the early 1980s there was a remarkably diversity of novel output in popular music and comedy but in the mid 1980s this outpouring of creativity abruptly dried up. Twenty years on, there isn’t much sign of a renaissance.

The essential characteristic of the comedy of Monty Python and Peter Sellers was irreverence. These young guns were free to lampoon every canon of western culture from the Catholic Church to Nietzsche. Such expansive comedy was unknown in the first 60 years of the 20th century.

In the early 1980s a second wave of comedians arrived. ‘Smith and Jones’ produced elaborate satire with highly crafted sketches that the 18th Century satirists would have been proud of. Meanwhile Rowan Atkinson and Bell Elton fused A-level history with dry British sarcasm in the hilarious Black Adder series.

By the late 1980s intellectual humour became increasingly unfashionable, in part, because viewers were insufficiently educated about western culture to understand jokes about ‘soccer playing philosophers’ and ‘rococo gasworks’. Similarly, comedians aren’t interested in things they don’t have much knowledge about.

The work of today’s comedians, such as Ricky Gervais, is mainly about cultural cringe and social embarrassment. This seems appropriate for an age characterised by self-consciousness and political correctness. However, by Monty Python standards, modern comedy like the The Office is pretty mediocre.

In the early 1970s popular musicians like Yes, Genesis and Pink Floyd audaciously plundered the canons of classical music and Jazz - much to the annoyance of traditionalists. A lot of ‘prog-rock’ output was overblown, but its practitioners did produce some decent material.

At the same time notable Jazz musicians, such as Herbie Hancock and Miles Davis, experimented with funk, rock and psychedelia.

During the late 1970s punk rock emerged, partly as a reaction to the excesses of the progressive rock era. However, it proved to be even more short-lived than its predecessor and has left few memorable pieces of music.

Since the late 1970s music that includes references to western hi-culture or displays of instrumental prowess seems to be automatically derided by popular music critics. This has pretty killed off interesting and melodic popular music. When Kate Bush moved over for post-modern squawker Bjork, the end was nigh.

It seems that you can only have a vibrant and creative popular culture when you have a respected hi-culture that the popular culture can draw upon for ideas and inspiration. In today’s culture of political correctness and post-modern relativism it is difficult to produce anything intelligent, audacious or dynamic.

Some Thoughts on Economics and IQ

According to the controversial psychologist Richard Lynn, the secret to a successful capitalist economy is a population with a high IQ. However, maintaining a successful economy may also be about recognising and dealing with IQ weaknesses.

In IQ studies, Western countries tend to come out on top in measures of verbal intelligence. Conversely, people in East Asia tend to have higher non-verbal IQs. The verbal IQs of English speaking western countries like Britain and the United States are further boosted by an Ashkenazi Jewish population with an average verbal IQ (according to Philippe Rushton) of 107.5.

The IQ patterns of Western and East Asian countries seem to match their respective economic fortunes over the last few decades. After a period of industrial decline in the 1970s, the English speaking West has enjoyed a high rate of growth over the last 12-15 years, in part, by shifting from manufacturing into services, software and media products, ie, just the sort of economic output requiring a high verbal IQ.

In contrast, industrialisation benefits from a population with a high non-verbal IQ, and so it seems likely that China’s extraordinarily rapid rate of industrialisation is at least partly due to the high performance IQ of its population.

However, there is a danger in letting people fashion the economy in their own image without industrial planning. The English-speaking world seems to have forgotten the message that all wealth ultimately comes from production. In English-speaking western countries, there has been an explosion in jobs requiring a high verbal IQ that don’t really add to GDP. People such as real estate agents and public relations staff readily come to mind. Subsequently, productivity levels have stagnated while serious trade imbalances have built up with more industrialised Asian countries.

The Japanese seems to have the opposite problem. They have perhaps over-emphasised production and neglected their service economy. Even though Japan is highly efficient in manufacturing, its banking and distribution sectors are surprisingly antiquated. Subsequently, as manufacturing has peaked, the whole economy has stagnated. The Japanese have perhaps become too reliant on activities requiring a high performance IQ.

The IQ problem in developed countries is going to become more acute as their populations start aging. Hence it is important that western countries maximise opportunities for those with atypical IQ profiles.

In the West, it is important that workers with high performance IQs are lured into productive jobs and get the best available training and incentives. In New Zealand, it is absurd that maths teachers aren’t paid more than arts teachers, even though the former are in serious under-supply. Similarly, many of the countries best scientists are driven away by lack of government spending on scientific research.

Perhaps the most important thing in making the most of a nation’s intelligence, is good intelligence- acknowledging the importance of IQ in many life outcomes and taking steps to record it on a national level.

National and Immigration

I was amused to read in the Southland Times (September 8, 2006 p3) National Party M.P Eric Roy complaining that New Zealand’s Immigration system is skewed in favour of people with high academic qualifications.

In the early 1990s National talked up the wonders of the ‘knowledge economy’. Ruth Richardson claimed East Asian immigration would lead to a new wave of prosperity. At the same time the National Government dismantled the 1983 Apprenticeship Training Act and discouraged young New Zealanders from taking up practical trades.

Today the country is suffering from a shortage of trades people in the provinces and a surplus of unemployed East Asians in the cities. It is pretty ironic a ‘pragmatic farmer’s party’ like National is responsible for this state of affairs.

Surprisingly, the Labour Party has done the most to address the trade shortage. It has reintroduced traditional apprenticeships and the shortage of tradesmen is now easing in the main centres.

It has also introduced stricter English language requirements, which have helped to slow East Asian immigration somewhat. Maybe it’s just me, but I think there is something curiously embarrassing about people with physics degrees running junks shops- and its hardly healthy for the economy.

Slowing East Asian immigration is also good for existing East Asian residents. In the last few years many East Asians have stated finding jobs in the medical field and higher end jobs in the service industry. Furthermore, their driving has improved!

While I agree that immigration is skewed in favour of academic qualifications, rather than practical skills, I don’t think major skills shortages can be solved through immigration. New immigrants always seem to gravitate to the big cities – especially if they are from different cultures.

Most other developed countries are also suffering from labour shortages so in many instances we are simply ‘robbing Peter to pay Paul’ – a policy which doesn’t really benefit anyone in the long run.

Employers in general are going to have to get used to living with a moderate labour shortage and provincial employers are going to have to pay city wages to attract city workers. National should also stop droning on about free markets and conduct a serious inquiry into the country's poor productivity levels.

Some thoughts on John Gray's - 'Al Qaeda and What it Means to Be Modern'

In his book, Al Qaeda and What it Means to Be Modern, John Gray makes some excellent points about the naivety of the liberal right in believing that the world can be re-made in the West's image. However, while he acknowledges the cultural distinctiveness of the West he denies westerners the opportunity to protect themselves by limiting immigration.

Gray lucidly states that globalisation is not making the world more uniform:

"As societies throughout the world become more modern, they do not thereby
become more similar. Often they move further apart. In these circumstances, we need to think afresh about how regimes and ways of life that will always be
different can come to coexist in peace".

This is sort of thinking that traditional U.S conservatives have been promoting for the last one hundred years but is a message that Liberals, from Woodrow Wilson to Tony Blair, have been consistently ignoring. Most of the World is not like the West and doesn’t want to be like the West.

In military affairs Gray takes the traditional conservative view that enemies can never be eliminated, only contained:

"There cannot be tolerance so long as terrorism is unchecked. Dealing with it is
a precondition of any kind of civilised existence and requires courage, skill and - at times – ruthlessness. Yet in the new kind of conventional war
that is now being fought there is no prospect of victory".

The neo-conservative idea that threats like terrorism and drugs can defeated in all out, short-term offensives is another utopian idea with a very short shelf life.

Another vital point that Gray makes is the importance of overpopulation in global problems:

"The human prospect is shaped by rising human numbers, mounting competition
for natural resources and the spread of weapons of mass destruction …Interacting with historic ethnic and religious enmities, they argur conflicts as destructive as any in the twentieth century".

Unfortunately, on the topic of immigration Gray backs down from his usual non-liberal position and criticises ‘far right’ political parties that seek to promote limited immigration. Surely, if western culture is unique, and is threatened by global overpopulation and terrorism, then the West is perfectly entitled to try and limit immigration from non-western countries.

The eminent scientist Gareth Hardin has made a very strong argument that countries need to be made responsible for their own overpopulation problems and that lack of border controls will set up a "tragedy of the commons" situation where countries pass the problem of overpopulation onto their neighbours. If Gray expects to be taken seriously by traditional conservatives then he needs to address Hardin’s hard-headed argument.

Furthermore, contrary to what Gray suggests, political parties don’t have to play on "racist fears" of voters to win support for limited immigration policies. Opinion poles indicate that most people already support limited immigration. The reason we don’t have limited immigration policies in place already is because political parties are deliberately putting big business interests ahead of majority interests. Gray himself acknowledges that western businesses are driving immigration: "Remember Voltaire’s quip: ‘The comfort of the rich depends on abundant supply of the poor".

In type-casting limited immigration advocates as ignorant populists, Gray alienates the kind of people that are most likely to take his other, more hard headed arguments seriously. Its high time self-styled iconoclasts like John Gray stopped squirming around politically sensitive issues like immigration and reveal what they actually think.

Demography and the Middle East

In blogosphere debate on armed conflict in the Middle East, one factor is conspicuously absent from most discussions - demography. Given the huge demographic problems that the region faces this appears to be a big oversight.

Most countries in the Middle East have young, rapidly expanding populations, while the regions resources are in steady decline. Water is becoming scarcer while oil and gas are very unequally distributed. Many countries like Egypt are already dependent on grain producers like Australia and the U.S for basic grain supplies.

Traditional conservative Lawrence Auster argues that the primary reason for Islamic terrorism is the Islamic religion itself. He points out that many other developing countries have reason to dislike the West but you don’t see Nigerians or Burmese, for example, attacking US airliners. In terms of explaining the suicide attacks on Westerners, Auster’s cultural explanation is very plausible. Historically suicide attacks are quite a rare form of conflict yet are commonly carried out by young Muslims.

In terms of explaining the high general level of violence in the Middle East the cultural theory is more limited. Although, Islam may be a more aggressive religion than say Buddhism, only a relatively small proportion of the world’s huge Muslim population is actively engaged in terrorism. Furthermore, much of the conflict in the Middle East is between Muslims rather than between Muslims and non-Muslims.

The most common reasons for war are not culture or religion but disputes over resources. When you combine a shortage of resources with a large population of young aggressive males the chances of violence are greatly increased. The Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s was a classic resource war where large numbers of Iranians died attacking oil rich Iraqi. Only a country with a large surplus population of young males could tolerate such losses.

The current instability in Iraq has provided unemployed males from overpopulated countries like Pakistan, Iran and Jordan an opportunity to practice ‘’low risk’ terrorism against Americans and pro-Americans. Only well-educated, suicidal Muslims are willing to strike at Westerners on their home territory.

However, in the chaos of Iraq, terrorists with more limited training and courage have an excellent chance of inflicting damage on their enemies without losing their lives in the process. The good work the US and UK are doing in foiling attacks on the West is being undone by their blunders in Iraq.

The enormous losses Iran sustained in the conflict with Iraq have had a significant effect on the nation’s demographic policies. Iran, alone among Middle Eastern countries, has implemented a major population control program. Sadly, this policy has not been acknowledged by Western governments, or held up as good example for other Middle Eastern countries.

Ironically, the wealthiest country in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia, has one of the most irresponsible attitudes to population control. If Saudi Arabia followed Iran’s example, and implemented a responsible population policy, it would be a great example for many other Middle Eastern states.

As well as supporting population control policies, Western governments need to send a firm message to nations in the Middle East that they can’t export their demographic problems to the developed world. There is no place for large numbers of Middle Eastern Muslims in western countries.