Posts

Posted on

Is Child Abduction Media Coverage Color-Based?

Does there not seem something odd about the coverage of the little white girl found with a Roma (gypsy) family in Greece? From what I have seen the coverage has focused on her supposed abduction and the search for her birth mother (who, as it may turn out, is a Bulgarian gypsy with eight children living in squalid conditions who gave the child away to the Greek Roma family. If so, the “stolen” girl is the lucky child given the relative circumstances of her adopted and birth parents). But little coverage has been devoted to why the Greek police decided to seize the girl from her Roma guardians, who may well have been her legitimate adoptive parents if the story about her Bulgarian mother turns out to be true.

What prompted their suspicions? A tip-off about drugs in the Greek gypsy camp has been offered as the official reason, but why would that prompt suspicion about the child? Was it the that she looked different from the Roma parents? Or was it that the people involved were Roma and have a (largely mythological) reputation for abducting and selling children? Could it be that the Greek cops acted out of prejudice rather than legitimate concern, and the press followed their lead?

Given the virulent racism and intense hatred of Roma in Greece, what exactly prompted the Greek police to decide to intervene given that the girl appears to love her adopted parents and seemed happy with them? Would they have done so if the parents were white and the child was black?

The general Greek attitude was inadvertently summarised by a local sociologist who studies Roma, who expressed surprise because, according to him, Roma were known to act as intermediaries for illegal adoptions by childless Greek couples but where not known to adopt a non-Roma child as one of their own (this said before the identity of the Bulgarian gypsy mother was confirmed).

More tellingly, why the focus on the little white gypsy girl when there are thousands of non-white children being abducted, sold and traded every year, including in Greece? Why has the story not been used to highlight child trafficking in general, rather than as a window on Roma and their reputed criminal proclivities?

It could well be that there was something sinister in the placement of this particular girl with that particular Greek Roma family. But it is equally possible that she was adopted in accordance with Roma culture and received the love and care of a natural-born child. So why, exactly, the fuss about her when so many other children suffer far worse fates?

It is hard not to come away with the impression that what matters is that she is white and was being raised by “swarthy” people whose culture does not accord with the Western mainstream. If so, it tells us much more about the imbued or latent racism of the media coverage rather than the merits of the case. Worse yet, it leaves the fate of thousands of non-white children largely ignored by the same press that is so keen to follow this story.

If we backdrop this case against the incessant coverage of the Madeleine McCann case and the endless coverage of missing white kids in Europe, the US and elsewhere, then it becomes hard to escape the view that some missing kids matter more than others, and they matter only because of the colour of their skin as opposed to the circumstances of their disappearance.

I hate to say it and do not mean to go all soft on this particular subject, but if that is so then the media coverage stinks.

 

Posted on

Espiando nossos amigos (Spying on our friends).

Well well well.

Edward Snowden has revealed that the Canadian signals intelligence agency Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC), a Five Eyes partner of New Zealand’s signals intelligence agency GCSB, has been electronically spying on a communications network operated by the Brazilian mines and energy ministry. Brazil has a strategy of using its natural resources exploitation to become a major power, and the Ministry of Mining and Energy (MME) is the coordination node for that strategy. The network connected the ministry, state run oil and mine companies and private Brazilian energy firms, and was a forum where subjects such as investment strategies, negotiating positions and other sensitive commercial information were discussed. This included comunications with firms such as Petrobras, the Brazilian state-owned oil conglomerate.

Needless to say, the MME communications network, presumably internet and telephonic in nature, would be of value to competitors or others seeking to countervail Brazilian economic growth and power projection. With its own energy sector comprising a vital part of Canada’s economy (often in competition with Brazilian interests), it should not be entirely surprising that the Canadian government authorized this instance of economic espionage.

CSEC shared what it obtained with its Five Eyes partners. That particular revelation follows on the heels of Snowden disclosing that the NSA tapped into the personal as well as official communications of Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, although it is unclear if these were also shared with the other Five Eyes partners.

The CESC angle is interesting because Brazil is no adversary of the Five Eyes nations (in fact, it has a history of alliance with the US) and because Petrobras is a direct competitor of US and Canadian energy firms in a number of markets, including some in the Asia-Pacific. Petrobras has also been involved in pushing for off-shore oil and gas exploration rights in New Zealand, which means that the New Zealand government is quite possibly privy, in advance and thanks to the Canadians, to the Brazilian’s internal logics and bottom lines with regards to those ventures.

If so, it is possible that the recently passed legislation to severely curtail sea demonstrations against oil and gas exploration in New Zealand waters was motivated not by a direct request from Petrobras and other energy sector actors, but by direct knowledge of its internal concerns about the cost impact of such demonstrations if left unchecked. If this speculation is correct, it would be a twist to the economic espionage tale because the National government used the information gleaned by Echelon to help rather than hinder the activities of a foreign based private firm facing strong domestic opposition.

Whatever the specifics, the Canadian-Brazilian spy saga confirms what Snowden has previously disclosed, which is that the Five Eyes network routinely engages in economic espionage on allies as well as adversaries. Brazil has protested the intrusions vigorously, most recently by calling in the Canadian ambassador in Brasilia to complain about the breach of trust and previously by means of President Rousseff’s scathing speech to the UN General Assembly where she denounced the practice of spying on friends and partners. The Brazilians denunciations are not just rhetoric–they are actively looking for ways to create alternative internet routing systems that can circumvent US dominance of fiber optic cable networks. They have been joined in this initiative by–no surprises here–the Chinese.

Given these revelations, the questions begs as to what the GCSB is doing when it comes to economic espionage on allies or partners as well as adversaries. Given the Canadian revelations and given that Canada is considered to be a junior partner in Echelon/Five Eyes just like New Zealand, by what means does the GCSB do so and does it share the information that it collects with its Five Eyes counterparts?

We must remember that it is already known that the GCSB has eavesdropped on Japanese diplomatic communications regarding whaling and on UN communications in the build up to both Gulf Wars. Although this is a more traditional form of signals intelligence gathering in that it targeted diplomatic intercepts, the communications being intercepted were from a country that New Zealand is friendly with and an organization that New Zealand has been a champion of (and in which it is lobbying for a seat on the Security Council).

The revelations are important because it suggests that economic espionage by the Five Eyes network is pervasive and equally shared amongst the partners.

If I were involved with a Chinese firm, to say nothing of Petrobras and any number of other foreign commercial entities (state or private), I would be concerned about doing business in and with New Zealand given what we now know (so far–there is more to come). Forget milk powder contamination and other production snafus: the real issue is not so much product quality or reliability but whether New Zealand can be trusted to not use its signals intelligence capabilities and network to engage in the type of economic espionage the Canadians and Americans are clearly doing (and one would assume the Australians and British are doing as well). That the GCSB can now do it locally as well as from afar (thanks to the recently passed GCSB Act amendments) should double the concern.

The same concerns might be raised by the eight countries involved in negotiating the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade and investment agreement that are not Echelon members. Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the US are parties to the negotiations, which given the Snowden revelations raises questions as to what they might covertly know about the other countries’ negotiating positions and about how much of what they might know is shared exclusively amongst themselves in order to better coordinate their approaches to the negotiations.

It should also be remembered that the NSA used private telecommunications firms and other corporate entities to cast its signals trolling net overseas. Does the GCSB do the same?

Of course, other countries engage in economic espionage. The Chinese, Russians, French and Israelis are known for it. But none of these countries have had their means and targets exposed in public, nor do they have the reach of the Five Eyes network at their disposal.

It is a big difference. If the Chinese, Russians or many others, either directly via state agencies or through  any number of non-state (including corporate) fronts, want to obtain signals intelligence abroad, they have to do so covertly. But the Five Eyes partners freely share their signals intelligence. In other words, non-Five Eyes signals intelligence agencies have to try and sneak through back doors to access the sensitive information of others, whereas the Echelon members freely pass surreptitiously gathered information through the front doors of their respective signals intelligence agencies.

Perhaps that is why the GCSB and TSIC Bills have been pushed so hard and so fast by the National government. The concern was not about terrorism, which served as a good fig leaf. The concern was not just defensive, in countering cyber and signals espionage on New Zealand targets and interests No, the concern was as much if not more offensive in nature in that the new powers of the GCSB facilitates exactly the type of spying that the CSEC was engaged in with regard to Brazil.

More precisely, before the passage of the Bills (I am assuming that the TSIC bill will pass) the GCSB could engage in economic espionage on friendly countries and firms but the legality of it doing so was in question when it came to it engaging in such spying (as well as more traditional types of signals intelligence) on New Zealand soil. Now it can do so legally. Any country or firm not part of the Five Eyes network that proposes to do business with or in New Zealand needs to take account of that.

The bottom line is that the Snowden revelations increasingly point to GCSB involvement in economic espionage of the first order. It may be only a matter of time before he drops a bombshell about the who, what and where of GCSB espionage. For a minuscule isolated nation heavily dependent on trade with foreign partners for its economic prosperity, this could be a potentially disastrous development.

Posted on

Mission to nowhere.

It is said that the who and when of diplomatic missions tells much about the disposition of the government sending them. If that is true, then consider this.

The most important annual Trans-Pacific diplomatic (APEC) meetings are being held in Bali this week. John Key and Tim Groser are there, once again pushing their trade-first (only?) agenda in the main sessions and back rooms.

Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Murray McCully is on a mission to Antarctica.

Since Antarctica has no diplomatic agencies on its soil, it seems odd that the foreign minister is headed that way in the absence of a treaty signing or other diplomatic event. His press release states that the visit, his first, is because he is the minister responsible for New Zealand’s Antarctic Affairs and that along with his visit to Scott Base he will head to the US base at McMurdo Sound. But there is nothing diplomatic on his agenda.

Mr. McCully is not a minister for anything scientific, so he is not discharging science portfolio responsibilities by visiting one of the research stations on the continent. Perhaps, as Minister of Sports and Recreation, he is looking into possibilities along those lines, especially since he was flown down on an Air Force plane along with 117 others plus the 11 person Air Force crew.

But if he is not engaged in anything other than a tour of the realm, why is he not with other Trans-Pacific foreign ministers in Bali? Is this the contemporary equivalent of the colonial practice of assigning diplomats in disgrace to a posting in Brazzaville? Is Antarctica New Zealand’s diplomatic version of the Mosquito Coast?

MFAT and National will say that he was superfluous to requirements in Bali (not exactly in that language) because the PM and Trade Minister are there. That tells us two things.

On the international relations front it confirms that New Zealand’s foreign policy is dominated by a trade fixation (fetishism?) that has come to dominate all other aspects of New Zealand’s diplomatic endeavor. In spite of Mr. Key’s posturing at the UN with regard to UN reform, weapons non-proliferation and multilateral intervention in search for votes for a Security Council temporary seat next year, the hard fact is that New Zealand’s diplomatic ranks have been purged, one way or another, of arms control and non-proliferation specialists, climate change and human rights experts and many other senior diplomats whose primary expertise lies outside the realm of trade. They have been replaced by younger, less costly and more narrowly focused trade zealots (many riding on Groser’s coat tails) whose knowledge and experience in other diplomatic fields is comparatively thin.

This has been accompanied by out-sourcing lead responsibility for intelligence sharing and security assistance negotiations to the GCSB, SIS and NZDF, which is one of the reasons, in concert with the trade fixation, that New Zealand’s foreign relations have taken a distinctly schizophrenic look under National (trade with the East, defend with the West, even if the PRC and US are on a collision course for supremacy in the Western Pacific).

One might respond that spy agencies and armed forces should cut their own deals with foreign counterparts, since it is their business after all. But that is precisely why diplomatic intercession is required–securing the national interest is a long-term game played on many fronts that is not reducible to bureaucratic self-interest, making friends amongst foreign counterparts, or currying immediate favor. It is a fluid balancing game rather than a static one-off opportunity, which is why allowing spooks and uniforms to dictate the terms of engagement on matters of intelligence and security is less than ideal. That is particularly so when the ministers in charge of security and intelligence as well as military affairs are less than conversant with the nature of the operations they are responsible for and where there is no independent oversight of their decisions regarding the conduct of those operations.

Likewise, trade zealots need to have their single-minded obsession with neo-Ricardian prescriptions tempered by those who understand that the world is not solely dominated by trade balances and import/export quotas, tariffs, licensing and the other minutiae of cross-border economic interaction. Important as these are, they need to be considered in relation to other areas of diplomatic endeavor so that coherence, congruence and continuity in foreign affairs can be achieved and maintained. The latter is important for no other reason than it helps establish and maintain a nation’s reputation as a global actor.

New Zealand’s reputation as a global actor has transformed under National from that of an independent and autonomous honest broker into that of a wheeling, dealing “free” trading operator that hedges its bets by cozying up to the world military superpower. It remains to be seen how tenable this position will be over the long-term.

On the internal front McCully’s Antarctic junket offers proof that he is an outcast within his own party, a pariah best unseen and unheard. He has no significant allies in the Collins or Joyce factions of the National caucus and no real friends elsewhere. He has no discernible influence on foreign policy, serving more as a spokesperson and chief of ceremony. The weeks before his trip to the frozen continent he was flitting about the US and Caribbean, visiting the America’s Cup before heading to the UN for some meeting and greeting, then onto bilaterals with Caribbean counterparts. Prior to that he was at the Pacific Island Forum in the Marshall Islands, preceded by trips to Hong Kong, China and Mongolia, Melanesia and the Cook Islands and Africa and the Seychelles. He presented many gifts to a variety of dignitaries from far-off lands and wore colorful shirts as much as he did suits. He did little hard negotiating.

That is a lot of time spent abroad during times when parliament is sitting, particularly when the bulk of the trips were for more symbolic than significant purposes. Come to think of it, when was the last time he answered a question in the debating chamber? I may have missed it but he does seem conspicuous by his absence.

In effect, McCully has been given a comfy sinecure to ensure that he stays away from his own caucus and steers clear of involvement in the “real” business of foreign affairs, that being trade. This neuters him in terms of the internal politics within National as well as with regard to foreign policy making (which is now the province of Groser and his minions). This is a variation on the theme used by Labour with respect to Winston Peters, when he became a Foreign Minister not in cabinet who spent a similar amount of time as McCully does exploring the far–and nicer–reaches of the globe. Except Antarctica.

And we have paid for all of it.

 

Posted on

Blog Link: The Transition Tango in Fiji.

Over at 36th Parallel Assessments I explore some of the dynamics that are and will be key factors in the political transition to free and open elections in Fiji scheduled for mid 2014. Unique circumstances in Fiji notwithstanding, the success of a transition from military-bureaucratic authoritarianism to freely elected government (if not democracy) hinges on some key factors, particularly the interplay between regime and opposition hard- and soft-liners. The essay explains how and why.

Posted on

Whose Team New Zealand?

As much as anybody I enjoy sports and competition, so much so that I enjoy watching top level competition in sports that I am unfamiliar with. I have therefore enjoyed watching the America’s Cup racing, not so much because of the nationality of the teams but because of the boat design, speed, tactics and seamanship involved. In fact, I am poorly placed to get worked up on patriotic grounds because as readers of my earlier post on liminality may remember, I have allegiances to several countries and divided loyalties as a result. Moreover, I believe patriotism to be the last (and best) refuge of political scoundrels so I endeavour to resist its emotional pull wherever I happen to be living.

In this America’s Cup series I am cheering for Team New Zealand because I know that it means a lot to New Zealand and very little to the US. Other than rugby, Kiwis tend to adopt a “David versus Goliath” approach to international team sports. They are not alone in this small country syndrome, as I have pointed out previously with regard to Uruguay and team sports other than soccer. But in New Zealand that syndrome extends beyond sports, including into the international political and economic arenas.

With regard to the America’s Cup, here in NZ there is live blow by blow coverage of every meter of every race, whereas in the US it is not being covered live anywhere except on boutique cable boating channels. Here it is front page news in every newspaper and news broadcast. In the US it barely rates a header in the sports section of big city newspapers, including that of the race venue San Francisco. Heck, in Texas high school football (the helmeted version) gets more coverage on a weekend than the America’s Cup has had in a year!

In the US most people do not give a darn that Larry Ellison indulges a billionaire fancy with a crew that includes only one American. Here people want to name their first born sons after Dean Barker. They also want that turncoat, traitorous preferably ex-kiwi Russell Coutts strung from the lanyard because he dared to work for the competition. In other words, Kiwis are heavily invested in the outcome whereas in the US they are not.

Or are Kiwis that heavily invested? From what I gather from video coverage of people watching the race live on television on the Auckland waterfront, there is hardly a brown face in the mix. The same goes for those Kiwis who have traveled to the America’s Cup Village in San Francisco. Pure pakeha pulsation throughout.

So where are the non-Pakeha kiwis when it comes to this race? Are they just not into sailing? If so, why not? Why is something that is so heavily promoted by the media and advertisers as a nationalistic rallying point having so little impact on non-Pakeha communities?

I ask because the New Zealand taxpayers have put $38 million into Team Emirates for this race series (both Labour and National support the expenditure). So whether or not they are emotionally invested in the racing, Kiwis are financially invested in it. The public expenditure was justified on grounds that the economic benefits to NZ of a future Cup defense in the event of a win would justify the investment (since winners get to name the venue for the next race). The narrow investment now is said to bring greater and broader future returns.

Besides the fact that no public consultation preceded the allocation of taxpayer money to Team Emirates, the issue of benefits is thorny. Even if Auckland benefits from hosting a future defense of the Cup (and that would mostly go temporarily to hoteliers, restaurants, bars and other service sector providers), what about the rest of the country? Other than Auckland based niche industries like boat-building and sail-making and a few high-end tourist locations and ventures, is it true that the country as a whole will benefit from the tax revenues generated by increased economic activity in Auckland? Do we really expect to believe that places like Ruatoki and Twizel will see direct benefit from an America’s Cup defense in Auckland?

It should be noted that Team Oracle USA received no public funds for its Cup defense, and that the redevelopment of the Embarcadero in San Francisco was a majority private venture that has not yielded the economic dividends to the city that were originally tabled by way of justification for holding the race there. So the “future benefits” argument is contentious at best, especially if drawn over the long-term. Yet spending public money on the challenge is seen as in the long-term NZ national interest.

Put another way, why is it that NZ taxpayers coughed up money for a yacht race campaign that not all New Zealanders care about and which relatively few New Zealanders will benefit from in the form of future uncertain economic returns in the event of a successful challenge this year? Since hosting the Cup defense will undoubtably include allocations of more taxpayer dollars to infrastructure and venue development, is this an appropriate use of public money? Given that the food in schools program receives just $10 million a year, could it not be argued that government priorities are a bit out of whack when it comes to long-term investment in the nation’s future?

Leftist conspiracy types will claim that the government subsidy for a small appeal elitist sport is designed to benefit its rich and upper middle class business supporters, nothing more. I would hope not, but then again I come back to the question of who in New Zealand is truly supporting the Cup challenge. Is the America’s Cup for the few or for the many? In the US it is for the few by the few, but here in NZ the issue appears a bit more complicated.

Anyway, I could be entirely wrong in my read and certainly do not have a good handle on the extent of support for the America’s Cup outside of what I have seen and heard in the media. Readers are welcome to ponder and comment on the issue.

Better to do that than to get started on the subject of host venue race time limits being enforced in low wind conditions on a day when a overwhelming match-winning victory by the challengers was in sight!

Posted on

The end of a norm.

One perennial argument in international relations is that between realists on the one hand and idealists and constructivists on the other. Idealists believe in the perfectability of humankind and in the ability to interject moral and ethical authority into international affairs. Both Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush adopted this approach to US foreign relations, Carter with his human rights policy and Dubya with his Pax Americana doctrine for transforming the world into the neoconservative’s preferred image. Closer to home, the Lange government’s non-nuclear declaration appealed to the higher minded elements in the global community.

Constructivists are not as prone to believe in the power of moral authority in international affairs. Instead, they believe that the behaviour of international actors can be constrained and regulated  by international norms and institutions. New Zealand’s support for multinational institutions and multi-lateral approaches to international conflict resolution, as well as its support for  international norms such as those embodied in the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), are examples of constructivism in foreign policy. Idealists and constructivists dovetail in their belief that multinational institutions and norms can promote better international behaviour than otherwise would obtain.

Realists do not believe this is possible. Realists operate on the premise that because there is no moral, ethical or ideological consensus in international affairs, and because there is no superordinate authority to consistently and effectively enforce its rules of conduct, then the world is effectively in a state of nature (as used by Hobbes). Absent Leviathan in international affairs, states and non-state actors pursue their interests checked only by the relative power of other actors. Self-interest, not morality, rules the day. Classical realists see war as a systems regulator and military force as the ultimate determinant of power. Neo-realists (who emerged in the late 1970s and 1980s) believe that economic power is more important than military might and that the exercise of economic power determines the ability of actor’s to project force in defense of national and self-interest. They used the example of the USSR as a case where military power did not equate or supersede structural power in the long-term course of foreign affairs.

For realists international norms and institutions are nice and ideally preferable, but are no substitute for self-interested power projection as the basis for international stability. Realists see a place for idealist-based international institutions and norms in peripheral areas of international behaviour, but not in core areas of national interest. Thus saving whales can be approached via constructivist means, but securing trade routes and borders cannot.

In the realist view, international actors need to fend for themselves in the last instance, and therefore should approach the global arena with a view to best defending their own interests rather than those of the world community as a whole. Where national power is insufficient to defend core interests, alliances are constructed to do so. Contrary to the perception that realists are military hawks, realism is risk and war adverse in any circumstance where core national interests are not at stake. They do not believe in perfectability campaigns such as democracy and human rights promotion, nor do they believe in wars of choice fought to promote a preferred political outcome or moral ideal. Realism, at its core, is pragmatic and self-limiting.

The Syrian crisis has shown that when it comes to enforcing international norms the global community does not have the will or capability to do so. The bulk of world opinion is against US military intervention to punish the Assad regime for using sarin gas against his civilian population (not once, but a total of at least eleven times in the past 18 months). This occurs in spite of the 1927 and 1993 international bans on chemical weapons and the 1997 international convention calling for the destruction of all chemical weapon stockpiles. The political leadership of the majority of nation-states oppose the use of force to punish Assad for his war crimes (I will leave aside for the moment the question of who did the gassing, as the focus here is on international norm violations). Amongst those who believe that Assad should be punished (including the National government), only France appears willing to go to war. Even the US Congress is divided on the issue.

That is striking. The ban on chemical weapons is one of the oldest international conventions. It has obvious moral weight. It has been ratified by over one hundred countries. Images of the victims of the latest attack have been compelling and transmitted world-wide. One would think, if idealists and constructivists are correct in their views of the international community, that Assad’s transgression of such an important norm would prompt a call to arms by fair-minded people the world over. Yet it has not. To the contrary, it has elicited apathy, denial, disinterest or fretful handwringing by the world at large.

What this demonstrates is that when push comes to shove, pragmatism and self-interest trump idealism and constructivism in world affairs. While seemingly promising on the surface, the Russian proposal to have Syria hand over its chemical weapons to the UN can also be seen as a cynical ploy to give Assad some time to disperse his chemical weapons stores while continuing his counter-offensive against the rebels by conventional means (which the Russians are supplying). I say that because ensuring the transfer of Syria’s several thousand tons of chemical agents will be lengthy and exhaustive process that will require thousands of foreign technicians on the ground in Syria, and assumes perfect cooperation by the Syrian authorities and the rebels in the midst of a nasty civil war. That is an optimistic view at best, and something that idealists and constructivists may believe possible if a negotiated settlement can be reached under the auspices of the UN Security Council.

However, the Russians are no idealists when it comes to foreign relations and international affairs. Instead, they are very much informed by realist notions of inter-state behavior, so it is safe to assume that their proposal has less to do with humanitarian concern and more to do with Russian power projection and strategic interests in Syria and beyond.

One could argue that the same is true for the US and its allies, and that the call for military intervention by the US against the Assad regime has little to do with humanitarian concern or international norm enforcement and more to do with the geopolitical competition between Iran and its proxies (including the Assad regime) and the Sunni Arab world and the West. This view is backed by the misuse by NATO of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) doctrine to justify the Libyan intervention. Under R2P foreign military intervention is justified in order to protect vulnerable populations from the depredations of their governments or in the face of government incapacity to defend them against the violence of others. But in Libya it was used as a pretext for forcible regime change over the objections of the Russians and Chinese. Given the outcome, that has for all intents and purposes killed off R2P as an international norm.

The situation with enforcing the norm against use of chemical weapons is even more fraught. Besides the reluctance of the global community to enforce a norm in a conflict in which most have no strategic stake, there is the problem of its prior unsanctioned use. Not only did Saddam Hussein use chemical weapons in the Iran-Iraq war (with the CIA providing targeting data to Iraq fully knowing that Saddam intended to use chemical weapons against Iranian troop formations). More recently Israel has used white phosphorous (another banned agent) in Gaza and the US used white phosphorous in the Battle of Falluja. In both cases the dense urban combat environment made it impossible to discriminate between civilian and military targets, so their use was arguably criminal even if there were not a ban against them.

In each of these instances the perpetrator used chemical weapons because it was felt to be expedient and because they could get away with doing so. Although there was some hue and cry about their use, no effective action was taken against any of these perpetrators. Only later, in the first Gulf War, was Iraq’s prior use of chemical weapons used to justify the military response to his invasion of Kuwait (and even then his suspected chemical weapons stockpiles were not destroyed by Desert Storm and the US-led alliance refused to help the Shiia uprising against him in the wake of his defeat).

Israel and the US have paid no price for having used chemical weapons in recent years.

Moreover, in spite of the 1997 convention on destroying chemical weapon stockpiles, it is widely believed that most countries that had them at the time (including the US, UK, Israel and Russia), failed to completely eliminate them from their respective inventories. Others, such as Syria, never signed up to the chemical weapons ban and thus have proceeded to develop that capability as a deterrent and a hedge against conventional military defeat.

All of which to say is that at least when it comes to the ban on use of chemical weapons, idealists and constructivists have been proven wrong and realists have been proven right: besides the strategic calculations of many nations that advise against involvement in the Syrian conflict, regardless of the outcome the international norm against using chemical weapons is not worth the paper it is written on. It is, as they say in Spanish, letra muerta.

 

Posted on

Identity is politics

(Or: How the activist left learned to stop worrying and love identity politics.)

Here and elsewhere I spend much time railing against the notion that “identity” is somehow distinct from “politics”, or that “identity politics” is anathema to the idealised “real politics” of class and ideology. I don’t accept that those with politicised identities — in our context most often women, Māori and LGBTI people — ought to fall in behind the straight white able-bodied men of The Cause on the understanding that The Cause will lend its support to their subordinate issues when the time is right. Moreover, I don’t accept that a person’s politics can meaningfully be divorced from their identity. Identity is politics. I am far from alone in these views.

Recently it has come to my attention that many of those who claim to oppose “identity politics” are pretty happy with it too, given the right circumstances. The contest between Grant Robertson, Shane Jones and David Cunliffe provides a good example.

Right out of the gate the contest was framed in terms of identity — Grant Robertson’s sexual identity. “Is New Zealand Ready For A Gay Prime Minister?”, the headlines asked, proceeding then to draw dubious links between unscientific vox-pops and the reckons of sundry pundits, all of whom were terribly keen to assure us that they, personally, were ready, even if the country isn’t yet. But while Robertson’s identity is what it is, his campaign is not an identity politics campaign in any meaningful way. In this it differs sharply from the campaigns of the other two contenders.

Shane Jones
Shane Jones is expressly running an identity politics campaign: he’s Māori, and his goal to win all five seven of the Māori electorates for Labour is one of many explicit appeals to his Māoritanga, and well he might appeal: it is an attribute sorely lacking among our political leaders, and a particularly stark omission in Labour, with its long claim to being the, um, native party of Māori.

But Jones’ Māoritanga isn’t the only identity pitch: he has made overt masculinity a part of his brand. When he came clean about charging pornographic movies to Parliamentary Services, his explanation was “I’m a red-blooded male”. He recently doubled down on this in relation to Labour’s proposed gender-equality measures, saying New Zealanders didn’t want “geldings” running the country, and that “it was blue-collar, tradie, blokey voters we were missing”. His value proposition for the Labour leadership is that he can expand the party’s electoral base into the archetypally-masculine realm of the “smoko room” where such voters are said to dwell. It seems likely that this strategy will alienate a good number of female voters into the bargain.

David Cunliffe
David Cunliffe’s identity pitch is doesn’t look like an identity pitch, because we’re not used to seeing identity pitches from straight white men. But identity politics isn’t the sole domain of women and minorities — the US Republican Party has been running a long identity politics campaign for most of a decade against Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

Cunliffe’s claim is his identity as a guy who greets his supporters in a dozen different languages and whose announcement of a candidacy is greeted with a waiata, wearing a lei like it ain’t no thing. He is a mutual-second-best candidate for a bunch of different identity groupings — he’s male, but he has strong caucus support from Labour women, including his previous running-mate Nanaia Mahuta and marriage equality champion Louisa Wall. He’s straight, but he’s not homophobic or chauvinistic about it. He’s Pākehā, but his multicultural bona fides are clear, and he has strong support from Māori and Pasifika caucus members. He studied at Harvard, but he’s the working-class son of an Anglican minister. He’s comparatively young — Generation X — but not so young as to be seen as a whipper-snapper by the Baby Boomers. Homo Sapiens Aotearoan is David Cunliffe’s identity; a modern native of the biggest Pacific city in the world.

Grant Robertson
Grant Robertson’s campaign is quite unlike the others, which are pitched at the electorate, or parts of it. Robertson’s campaign is focused on unifying the Labour Party, on the basis that a unified party will be a more effective machine for building electoral support. His isn’t a pitch based around his individual brilliance or personal character, but his ability to organise, strategise, and forge an effective team out of his diverse and complicated group of colleagues. Robertson’s identity is a part of this — his advocacy and work in passing the marriage equality bill earlier in the year indicates where his politics lie, and make clear he’s no shirker — but this is by no means the focus.

And yet last night’s story by Brooke Sabin basically wrote Grant Robertson’s candidacy off on the basis of a series of ad-hoc buttonholes with workers at a union rally who apparently didn’t like that he was gay. Sabin reported that only two of the 40 people spoken to would support Robertson, and in the studio introduction to the piece anchor Hilary Barry inflated this to:

Labour leader hopeful Grant Robertson was dealt a blow today. Many in the religious and socially-conservative faction of the party, out in force at a rally this afternoon, don’t like that he’s gay, and won’t vote for him.

There are a swag of problems here: most obviously that repeatedly and urgently raising the issue (“not that there’s anything wrong with that”) sets the agenda. Further, the footage suggests that the only thing these vox pops were given to go on when assessing Grant Robertson’s fitness to be Prime Minister was that he was gay — so it was the only thing on the agenda. Worse yet; one respondent, when prompted to choose between Jones and Cunliffe, asked “Shane Jones … is he a gay too?” suggesting that not only was she not very well placed to make an informed assessment of the comparative merits of each candidate, but that asking her to do so anyway, taking her word as an indication of general union sentiment and then playing her naïve answer on national TV bordered on exploitation. (At least part of my assessment is shared by Neale Jones from the EPMU, who was there, and said on Twitter, “Sabin went around repeatedly badgering workers about whether they had a problem with Grant’s sexuality. Got story he wanted.”)

The Identity Agenda
Jones’ identity pitch is clear, and Cunliffe’s is less so, but not much less so. Robertson’s identity pitch is inferred from his sexuality and inflated. The only aspect of the archetypal “identity politics” candidate’s campaign which is focused on “identity politics” is the “ready for a gay PM” agenda, which is set by commentators and the media, outside Robertson’s control (but which he must tolerate, lest he be reframed as a “bitchy gay” rather than as the solidly masculine, rugby-playing sort we are possibly prepared to tolerate.)

So that’s ironic. But the deeper irony of this is that David Cunliffe is the darling of many of the people on the activist left who have railed most fiercely against “identity politics” all these years. (Check the list of endorsements here). There’s no policy to speak of in this contest — Cunliffe’s campaign is identity politics through and through, and yet the activist left loves him for it. I don’t think it’s unfair to observe that they love him, and they love it, because now it feels like their identity being prioritised in politics, as if it hasn’t ever been before. All that evil old “identity politics” they railed against before — the problem wasn’t that it was identity politics, but that it wasn’t their identity politics.

But I’m glad they love it. It works, after all. We have a strong sense of who David Cunliffe is, where he comes from and what motivates him, and that helps us understand, and more importantly to believe, his strategic vision and the policy platform he articulates. I think he genuinely does speak to a wider audience of potential Labour supporters than any recent leader, and that can only be a good thing for the party and the polity as a whole. If he wins, and I think he will, I hope it will go some distance to demonstrating that identity and ideology aren’t zero-sum; they’re complementary. Maybe once that realisation sinks in we’ll be really ready for a gay Prime Minister, or a Māori one.

Posted on

Crossing: the flaw

This evening the GCSB Amendment Bill passed its third reading in Parliament, 61-59, despite a desperate last-minute campaign to persuade selected government MPs to cross the floor and vote against the bill.

I’m sure everyone involved would accept it was a long shot, a last-ditch effort after every other challenge had failed. But it shares some faults with the remainder of the campaign, and the left’s political strategy more generally, which has been marked by a lack of coherence and internal consistency, poor targeting, and seemingly more at shoring up support among activists than in extending that support.

Motivation

The merits of the GCSB issue were thoroughly thrashed out — the main problem is that it is an extremely complex topic about which few people have the expertise to make authoritative claims. Nevertheless, many of those people have made such statements, and the evidence is out there. This has been the strongest aspect of the “Stop the GCSB Bill” campaign more generally: its appeal to evidence.

But this was not a topic upon which government MPs were amenable to evidence. If they had been, they would surely have been swayed by testimony from the Law Society, the Human Rights Commission, and defence, security and IT experts including the former head of the GCSB itself. They were not moved by these appeals to evidence; not even slightly. They simply hold a different opinion on the merits of the GCSB Bill, one that happens to not be supported by the aforementioned experts (no doubt the PM provided another set of experts who gave them a counterview).

This is fundamentally because their motivation for passing the bill is ideological, not policy-oriented. National governments are strong on security. Whether they are or not, it’s part of their brand. They keep people safe, both at the day-to-day criminal level and at the level of transnational crime and terrorism. They are simply not willing to let some liberal bed-wetters prevent them from implementing a security system that better suits their petit-authoritarian worldview.

Hardening

Calls to cross the floor arose mainly from the left-liberal activist community. The biggest problem with calling on your ideological foes to cross the floor is that they’re your ideological foes. If they cared about what you thought, they wouldn’t be your foes, and they very likely would be amenable to changing their views based on the evidence, or at least to moderating them and cooperating.

But this is war. Not war on terrorism; war on the liberals, who are the real strategic threat to this government, and are ascendant in New Zealand’s left following the success of marriage equality, the continuing strength of the Greens, relative to Labour. In a war, when your enemies offer to parley, it is a sign of weakness, and nobody could mistake left-wing activists begging the Minister of Justice for a vote to sink a key plank of her government’s legislative agenda as anything other than a sign of desperation. In a war, when your enemies offer to parley, you only accept if you can’t crush them, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentation of their women. Hard ideological power is rarely vulnerable to moral suasion.

Trying to persuade individual MPs to betray their cause from a position of such ideological and strategic isolation was never likely to have any effect other than to harden their resolve, and to increase pressure on them from within their party to toe the line. In particular, given the vitriol to which certain MPs — notably Peter Dunne, hilariously regarded as being the most likely to switch — have been subjected in recent months, a sudden switch to flattery and appeals to better nature was simply incoherent and too jarring to be credible. Even a dog, if mistreated, will bite when petted. The fact that so much abuse continued even after the charm offensive began made it doubly ineffective.

In many ways this was a concentrated version of the overall strategy of moral and evidence-based persuasion: because support for the bill has been framed in a partisan way, there’s little point in convincing your own side. The task is to convince people who, for the most part, like John Key and trust his government that they are neither likeable nor trustworthy. It’s a hard thing to do — but doubly hard when your cause gets occupied by the Occupy movement, a point that Pablo made in one of his many excellent posts on this topic recently.

Target selection

Nine MPs were selected. Not to say that there were any actually good targets, but the selections misunderstand each MP’s place within the government machine.

The most obviously-idiotic target was Judith Collins, the Minister of Justice and probably the toughest authoritarian in government, including Key himself. Converting her was simply never a happening thing. National party newcomers Paul Foster-Bell and Claudette Hauiti were almost as laughable, given that their political careers exist only at the pleasure of the party.

Peter Dunne was probably the best target six months ago, except that he has since been subject to the greatest amount of vitriol over this issue. His relationship with the government has also been weakened recently, a bond he needed to renew, which he has.

John Banks, although personally of a nature similar to Collins, is vulnerable to his party machine which could possibly have been talked around — but the activist left thinks of him (and it) as being beyond liberal redemption, in spite of his voting in favour of marriage equality.

The others (Sam Lotu-Iiga, Melissa Lee, Jami-Lee Ross, and Nicky Wagner), were no worse than anyone else in the party.

Who do you love?

The only thing that gives a non-delusional Prime Minister in this data-driven age the sort of swagger John Key has is the knowledge that the polls are solid. There have been a few public polls: Research NZ; ONE News/Colmar Brunton; 3 News/Reid Research and most recently Fairfax/Ipsos.

Campbell Live’s unscientific, self-selecting plebiscite is barely worth a mention. So of these polls, only the last gives anything like a picture of an electorate that is closely engaged with this issue; it tells us three-quarters of New Zealanders do care about the GCSB Bill. But 75% on its own means nothing. Polls told us that 80% of the electorate opposed asset sales, and look how that worked out. This poll also tells us how much they care, and the answer is: only 30% are very concerned, and 25% aren’t concerned at all. More than half trust the government to “protect their right to privacy while maintaining national security”.

Key and his government will have much better polling than this, and broken down by party allegiance, too, and that’s important — Key would be perfectly happy to alienate 30%, or even 40% of the population as long as they’re all committed Labour and Green voters, and more than half overall still basically trust him. Key said people were more interested in snapper quotas than the GCSB bill, and he’s probably right — if you read that as “people who might actually vote for him.”

What was the performance in aid of?

The major effect of this campaign was to give the activist community something to believe in, a sense that they were Doing Something, rather than just sitting there while their freedoms got gutted. It was very much attuned towards focusing existing opposition, rather than towards expanding that opposition. (This was true to a lesser extent of the public meetings and mass rallies, which effectively church services, but these did also have an important role in disseminating evidence and bringing the discourse into the mass media).

The effect has been clear: there has been no effect. While opinion polling for the left has picked up in the last few days, it remains to be seen whether this will persist.

Although this one was poorly-executed I also don’t think a “cross the floor” campaign was necessarily a bad idea. Theatre matters. Morale matters. For all the criticism, there are many positives here. One is that people have gotten angry — even if it’s only a relatively small cadre of activists, that’s something we haven’t really seen much of recently. And there are some signs the discord may spread further (though not much further, as yet).

But while Do Something campaigns can be worthy in terms of making people feel better about losing, that is often all they are good for. They are often not very effective in terms of actually winning. This campaign worked well as a salve, but as far as effectiveness goes it was badly framed and focused on the wrong objective. It was both too partisan to draw in broad support from across the ideological spectrum, and then, later (once its ideological hostility was confirmed) began to treat the government as only a semi-hostile force that might be reasoned with. A less-ideological campaign to begin with, hardening into a more rigorous strategy as it became clear that the government would remain intransigent would likely have been more effective if it could have been stitched together (admittedly a big if).

Further, focusing on the bill’s passage was unrealistic. It was a fair enough interim goal, but more realistic is to focus on the repeal of the bill — now act — when Labour and the Greens are next in government, and to use it as a lever to assist them into government. Good progress has been made towards this as well, especially in securing what seems to be solid assurances of repeal from Labour, whose prior form on civil liberties has been very mixed.

What remains to be seen is if those involved can maintain momentum for another year. If they can, and this kicks off a 14-month campaign season, then it will have been a triumph, in spite of its tactical failure.

L