@Putin. heh, maybe I oversold it. :)No, you didn't miss it. Like I said, it's off-topic. Perhaps we should start a new thread regarding what happens after the barbarian wikileaks run roughshod through Rome. This thread is getting difficult for me to keep up with as it is. We were talking about wikileaks, remember, and how it reduces our IR overlords' ability to turn our foreign policy into the moral equivalent of a heavily armed frat party on PCP with impunity? I think you and I agree on just about everything anyway, except that I'm a little more optimistic about the outcome and have greater faith in humanity.
I don't agree with the others here that are gushing over your account of international relations (I much prefer to read your valiant defenses of the USSR and watch how it blows people's minds.) It's as if there were a menace to the flock in my questions, and when you came forward and answered my questions without fear, it produced a general outpouring of relief and gratitude. I like to think it's much easier to give a good response when someone is asking the right questions. To be sure, your answers are concise, but you avoid, I think deliberately, any of the blurry areas and bigger issues that obviously underpin the questions, to the point that your answers are essentially just begging the questions.
Me:“Who are the IR professionals? How do you know they're the professionals?"
Putin: “The people whose occupations involve international relations - civil servants in the Defense and State departments, academic social scientists who study and analyze international relations, policy think tanks, etc. How do we know they're professionals? The same way we know doctors and lawyers are professionals. They have rigorous degrees qualifying them as such, or they are practitioners of statecraft.”
____I understand that someone who has a degree in IR has a degree in IR and someone who works in IR works in IR, it probably would have been safe for you to assume my questions were aiming a little deeper. It's not too late, though, let's dig a bit beyond the surface shall we? Obviously there are different schools of thought within International Relations which is reflective of identifiable values and ideologies. On this page there seems to be a superabundance of “Realists” but that does not mean that the value system that informs the context for the Realism is the same, and clearly Realisms in different value contexts lead to vastly different conclusions regarding objectives and methods. How does one identify the national interests? This is just an example of the diversity that can be present in the field, but I think it's safe to postulate that in the real professional world, the diversity is dramatically reduced. Getting a job in IR, one must suppose is not just a matter of being educated, but for any given job, a particular ideology will be preferred, a certain way of making decisions and a certain system of values. Pockets form, like bonds with like, certain ideologies or value contexts extend and reproduce. If you have to hire someone for your team, who do you bring in? We can suppose that someone that has received the same indoctrination as you would have a certain competitive advantage. Indeed, the exam for joining the foreign service is basically an ideological litmus test. The ascending ideologies infect the schools (we must suppose that at this point in the game, the diversity is already reduced to maybe two dominant competing world views with various niche evolutions resulting, but the base remaining more or less stable.) And now choosing from the candidates is more purely a matter of credentials, all those belonging to a competing indoctrination being eliminated out right (approximately half presumably). And without any input from the body politic, and more as a result of organic infection rather than an evolution or dialectic of reason, international policy is canalized and takes its direction.
Me: "What is the agenda of the professionals and where does it come from?"
Putin: “Like any professional community, there is no monolithic 'agenda'. Some IR professionals seek to advance the national interests of their respective states (so-called 'realists'). Some however, are not nationally focused and aim to advance the cause of international law and global governance (so-called neo-liberals, cosmopolitan theorists, etc). It depends. It comes from their experience, analysis, and normative beliefs.”
____Here again, you've underestimated the scope of the question but I've already gone a long way toward getting into the juicy bits. Curiously there are precisely two schools that you thought worth mentioning so it appears we're pretty much on the same page at this point, though you pretend that's just the natural state of things rather than going for an underlying cause. Even assuming you're right, that the main division in schools is a natural division between focus on the nation versus a focus on an overarching or global framework, it still doesn't account for the clear biases that exist in terms of identifying the interests at either level.
Me: "Who decides if they're doing a good job or not?"
Putin: “Who decides if a doctor is doing a good job or not? Other doctors, typically. Since the foundation of cosmopolitan or international law is weak, typically IR practitioners are judged by the extend to which they advance the interests of their states, although international lawyers do have a say also, since IR professionals are indeed agents of the law.”
_____I think comparing IR professionals to doctors is an exercise in self-flattery (assuming you are or have been yourself in the field of IR) and belies a predisposition to view doctors with respect that I apparently don't share. Curious that you would say the doctor is the doctor's judge. And of course it is not only natural but convenient that it should be so for it discounts and ignores the object upon which the doctor practices his art: the patient. To a patient's protests that the cure did not take, that the side effects were worse than the disease, that a doctor immerses himself in the comfort and reinforcement of the brotherhood who, it turns out, are so much more sympathetic and understanding. It's no surprise that finally the doctor is deaf and dismissive of any other voice that intrudes.
Me: "Who prevents them from abusing their position?"
Putin: International relations has no centralized authority - it is a system of sovereign states - so it is difficult to prevent 'abuse'. But to the extent that international law is accepted (and it is to a great extent), international organizations such as the ICJ and United Nations tribunals are able to prevent abuse. However, typically the Law of Nations has always been the law of the stronger. Without a centralized authority capable of independent enforcement, this will continue to be the case. I personally do not believe any such centralized authority will ever exist. So to a certain extent, the state and its agents can do as their power permits.
____I've already started a response to this line elsewhere. Evidently it is an accurate description, but it is in part because this state of affairs is no longer acceptable or viable in a technologically globalized world in which one language has become more or less dominant (and where that fails the electronic translators are becoming increasingly adequate) and the people of disparate backgrounds and cultures (all the non-IR types) are realizing that their own interests and the interests of the citizens of the neighbour state are not in conflict as the governments and IR Realists of their respective states would have it. Indeed it may be said that such a centralized authority already exists albeit in a nascent and just awakening form, it is the authority of the people. Of course there are differences, the culture clash cannot be ignored, but I believe the greatest part of the bite of these differences is removed when government and organizations at every level are forced kicking and screaming into a heightened state of transparency. I think the response of the US government has been exactly the response Wikileaks was hoping to provoke. A constriction of the conduits of information has already begun, the club of initiated insiders is getting smaller, which means the number of informed and disgruntled outsiders is on the rise. There will be more leaks regardless of what comes of the absurd and trumped-up charges against Mr. Assange. The precedent goes much farther back, but in the last regime finds its counterparts in the heroic atomic spies in the nuclear-scientific community who recognized the danger of a single or one-sided nuclear power the need to disseminated their knowledge, in particular to the Soviet Union (whether or not their efforts were finally successful or necessary).
@goldfinger: “why not let the "priestly class" do the statesmanship?” _____Because their belonging to the priestly class has more to do with having been initiated into the arcane rites and secret handshakes than an actual superior preparation and because the continuity of their influence rests on their ability to maintain a veil of opacity and mystery. In short, because they are priestly. Haven't you ever read Beyond Good and Evil?
@Putin again: “For a clue as to how the mass public would run our foreign policy, simply look at Congress.” ______A better argument for transparency and against corporate and indeed all financial influence in politics I have never heard. It turns out the people are massively in favor of campaign finance reform. I bet we can make it happen if we try. I am not a populist, but I firmly believe that given the right conditions, the population is much more sensitive and reasonable than you give them credit for. Every resource must be managed by those who use it and have an interest. When the people see that they have a responsibility for the management of what is closest and effects them most directly, they will behave more responsibly. The tendency of power is to concentrate and centralize. That tendency should be resisted.
@chrispminis: “mcbry, really with doctors and plumbers?” _____Yes, chrisP, really. Oh, wait, are you from Canada? Being a doctor in the US is a lifestyle choice, not a sober acceptance of great responsibility. And consider the dermotologist. If you're not using a steroid cream they put you on. If you're not, they take you off. What's so fucking impressive about that?
@ Putin again: “And what is replacing it is anarchy and disorder, just like what replaced the Roman Empire was to certain extent, anarchy and disorder. Like you say, internal contradictions will lead to the unraveling of the international order which is held up by the lonely creaking shoulders of the United States.” _____What huh? The internal contradictions have their most qualitative and quantitative advocate in the United States! The lonely creaking shoulders? The United States has been the single most destabilizing force in the world in the last hundred years. They've had their hand in almost every significant regime change, most often in favor of dictatorships and against democracies. That's how you get situations like Afganistan where the US finds itself fighting against people it trained and armed and who are funded by its own addiction to foreign oil. Iraq was even worse, how they could justify a war by citing WMDs the recipe for which was sold to Iraq by the US in the time of the Iran Iraq war which was also deliberately provoked by the US in the wake of a revolution that ousted the US's strongman... it's enough to put your hands on your head. With its already much discussed rift between rhetoric and reality, it has almost single handedly revealed the utter hypocrisy and self-contradiction of the system by being its most extreme (ie most Realist) proponent. I suppose I should be thankful.
Putin:”We are in an era of information overload, where the dawn of new technology makes information of all kinds instantaneously available. In order to be 'heard' in such a world, you have to scream louder and louder. People are becoming more extreme as a result, and much less deferential to authority. This is going to mean that every individual is going to feel 'entitled' to get 100% of they want, and if they don't they will not hesitate to engage in violence against authority. It's now fashionable to simply want to tear down, destroy and be cynical, rather than build.” ____Of course this shift is driven by the information explosion, but I see many ways in which this explosion has been empowering, has increased ties facilitated organization and resistance and permitted cultural boundaries to be crossed. I concede that your vision may be right. I am more optimistic than you, but I don't have a crystal ball with all the answers. I can say this: Even if your vision is true, and the only thing between humanity and self-extinction in a conflagration of chaos and destruction is a secretive regime that keeps the population in a state of placid torpor and ignorance while it seeks its own ends, I still prefer to see the system fall. If more people got busy looking at the inevitable future and thinking about how to make the transition less painful and more likely to succeed rather than lamenting the changes and fighting against them tooth and nail (exactly the response of the US gov to the leaks, which was without any doubt the response Wikileaks was designed to provoke) I think our chances of coming through this would be greatly enhanced.
@Putin again: I see the trap you've set: any populist that would disagree is a fool, no? Well, I'll spring the trap but I'm not a populist. I don't want to give the population what they want, I want to give them to smacks in the face and wake them up. It's certainly true that historical events have happened in such a way as to produce the unification of Germany, but there were so many factors involved in that process that were so far beyond the foresight of Otto von Bismark, that to imply that germany's current success is a direct result of Otto's choices, for much that he may have been an IR genius, is bullshit at its most rank.
“States should behave in such a way as to maximize the overall power and influence of their state. Operating according to any other principle will sacrifice the long-term security of the state for short-term popularity, or the long-term security of the state for utopian fantasies of a law and morality based international order.” ______a concise and accurate description of the objectives of Realism in statecraft, and an excellent reason to believe that the state ruled by this precept is an enemy of the people. Speaking of foresight, George Orwell saw perfectly clearly what would be the product of an applied realpolitik over time. He put his insights into a book and called it 1984. I'd just as soon destroy that future before it arrives. I may not know exactly what I want, but I sure as hell know what I don't want.
@orathaic: I don't really see any points of disagreement, so I'm not sure why you singled me out to disagree. :)
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