Brad DeLong at his best. He’s always there for us when it’s about time to leave the dreadful current international affairs aside for a moment and delve into the long term streams of human development. And which of them could be more important than the history of economic thought?
William Safire. Again.
William Safire does have a problem. He is seemingly fascinated with a country he does not have a real clue about – Germany. However, as opposed to his recent rantings about Franco-German attempts to dominate the world, in today’s NYTimes column he does make two real points.
Firstly, he is talking about last week’s PR campaign by 8-10 European leaders and the problem of “representing Europe”, secondly, he thinks about the necessity of basing US troops in Germany following teh end of the Cold War and a thought-experiment by a US general.
First things first. Mr Safire writes –
“Leaders of eight European nations – not just Britain, but Italy, Spain, Portugal, Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Denmark – had signed an op-ed statement supporting the U.S. stand on Saddam and in effect asserting that Germany and France did not speak for Europe. Schröder was flabbergasted; he had no idea that this rejection of his anti-U.S. crusade was in the works. Think about that: a Wall Street Journal request started the round-robin letter; eight nations weighed in on its drafting and redrafting for days; but Germany’s chancellor, with his vast intelligence system and diplomatic corps, was totally in the dark.”
There’s a lot in this paragraph: Firstly, Schroeder in all likelihood knew about the letter, as Welt am Sonntag reported yesterday. However, that does not make much of a difference in any political sense – he did not sign the letter, which, by the way, does not even really differ from the German position. Did you read it? It is a call for peaceful disarmement and expression of gratitude for US involvement in Europe since WW2.
Schroeder could have signed it without factually compromising his position on Iraq. But, obviously, the world’s (and worse, the German) media would have framed it differently. So he did not do i – days before important by-elections which his party seemed bound to lose (and lose it did, big time). On the other hand, the fact that Schroeder could have signed indicates that the letter’s content is not too controversial in Europe.
Secondly, there’s the question of “speaking for Europe”. However much I am personally disappointed by the way Schroeder is doing everything he can to make things worse – don’t get me started on last weekend’s “proposal” -, he would never claim to speak for Europe. I believe that it was the US media which created a rift between “Europe” and the “US” which then led to a perception in which “the Weasels” represent “Europe”. Donny complicated things with his “age”-qualifiers. However, the opinion of European peoples is in all likelihood a lot closer to the rethoric of Chirac and Schroeder than it is to the one of the likes of Richard Perle. Even though no British person would ever admit it, according to most polls I see, even British opinion (including that of Blair’s backbenchers) is better represented by Schroeder or Chirac than by their own Prime Minister. Also, thinking about representation, here’s a nice extract written by Charles Utwater II in a comment to a post in Brad DeLong’s blog. I could not have stated it better myself..
While the Wall Street Journal, with the connivance of Tony Blair and the Prime Minister of Spain managed to get the signatures of eight European leaders, those signatures do not represent the will of the people of those countries. Indeed, Vaclav Havel resigned the day after signing, and the Czech government repudiated his signature. The Spanish Prime Minister was taken to task by the president. Silvio Berlusconi of Italy is under threat of indictment as a mafioso and is not a particularly popular figure at the moment. Italy has had some of the largest anti-war demonstrations in Europe. And so on down the list. About 70% of Europeans oppose war in Iraq under current conditions, and even if the UN produces a resolution, about 40-50% oppose.
I think that says it all. Surely, the will of the people is not as important in a democracy as the will of their leaders if it comes to deploying troops. But it still is of minor importance every now and then in elections. Ask W., he should know about the intricacies of electoral systems.
The point being? Even though Schroeder is handling the current situation as badly as Richard Perle must have hoped for, he is not totally out of tune with the European public.
Then, Mr Safire goes on to tell us straight to the face how little he knows about Germany –
“Germany’s new opposition leader, the Thatcheresque Angela Merkel, joined the defining issue as her conservative party’s past candidate had failed to do. She said of the anti-Saddam op-ed: “if we had been in government, Germany would have signed that letter.”
Thatcherite (isn’t it?) Angela Merkel. I am in stitches. She will love it, too. I bet she has alreay printed a copy of the column and hung next to the Helmut Kohl portrait in her office. I’m kidding. But let’s remember – Margaret Thatcher was a tough British Prime Minister. Angela Merkel is a rather weak German opposition leader. She’s not even uncontested in her own party. And she’s the leader of an opposition that is continuously embarrassing itself by not being able and/or willing to take any real stance in the Iraq issue. Let’s face it – Angela Merkel is as thatcherite as W is a Democrat. She does not have a firm (published) opinion on Iraq and neither has her party. She probably would not have signed the letter as party-leader as it was published before the by-elections in Hessen and Lower-Saxony. And I bet she would not have signed the letter as a chancellor. But as opposition leader without a firm opinion, after the by-elections, and without having been asked to sign in first place, she can now say whatever she wants without the fear of having to act on it later on.
The point being? Mr. Safire entirely misrepresents the mood and the leadership of the CDU/CSU conservative opposition (which is now, after the by elections, via the upper chamber, the Bundesrat, effectively a part of the federal government for all important legislative initiatives).
The last part of the article is concerned with the “European free riding” argument I made several times before. Even though Mr. Safire admits that proposed plans for deployment reductions in Germany are not some sort of punishment for the German chancellor, I suppose it’s not entirely coincidental that the US are starting to think about their continental European bases right now – this is what he refers to.
“a briefing in Brussels Friday of a U.S. Congressional delegation led by McCain and Lieberman by the new NATO supreme commander, U.S. Marine Gen. James Jones,
revealed a developing U.S. strategy. It holds that the 70,000 U.S. troops garrisoned in Germany, accompanied by their 70,000 dependents, make up too many forces with too outdated a mission stationed too far from potential trouble at too high a cost.”
Concerning this potentially crucial development, there are two main political issues which will have to be decided rather quickly following the Iraq war – will the imperialists remain the dominating force of the Republican party or can the libertarians regain some ground, especially in foreign policy? The former faction will not be too interested in closing bases. The latter likely will. Secondly, realizing this, what will Germany’s and Europe’s reaction be? Backing down for free security? Not an unlikely possibility given the budgetary situation of many European countries, especially Germany. Or will Europe begin to invest more into its own security? The last alternative will likely mean more distributive battles and less political stability in the medium run, with an uncertain long run.
Difficult alternatives. But no one said being Chancellor would be easy.
Life Offline / FAQs
It’s been a long time since I haven’t been online for almost a week. It must have been at some point in 1999, I suppose. So, at first, it felt a bit strange not being able to read my email or drop a note in this blog. But then I realized that it’s probably a good thing to renounce to the comforts of cyberspace every now and then. If only to see if it is still possible. And I think it’s reassuring that it is.
So, having to catch up with a lot of things, I will write more later, but I just have to comment some questions I received by email from Roman reader Marcus Tullius Cicero, in case his questions should be common ones –
Q: “Is that really your picture?”
If you are referring to the picture in the upper left hand corner of the page, the reply is probably “yes”. But no one knows what a browser does to your looks ;-).
Q: “Is that a gun nestled in your left armpit?”
Well, I guess some people are indeed able to turn a pen into a weapon as or even more powerful than a gun. But I am not sure if such a compliment is the correct interpretation. So I am slightly disturbed by this question. I am German, after all, not American. See “Bowling for Columbine” for further reference.
Q: “Why don’t you allow comments on your site?”
Good question. The answer is that this site was originally designed to communicate with some friends. So the guestbook was easily sufficient to provide room for non-email based communication. And still, only a tiny fraction of visitors leave comments in the guestbook [ thank you ! ] But I will look into installing a commenting system.
The more discussion the better.
Updates.
Sorry for the lack of updates, but I am out of town and sort of without internet access until Friday.
If You Are In London This Week…
why not attend some of the great events organised for this year’s London School of Economics German Symposium by the LSE German Society.
Unfortunately, you have already missed the one hour special performance “Old Europe At Its Best” by Harald Schmidt, Germany’s #1 late night talk-host. Remembering the one time he did a show entirely in French, I am really disappointed I missed this performance in English.
Also, the Foreign Minister, Joscka Fischer, had to cancel his talk with Tony Giddens due to unplanned UN Security Council business on Wednesday.
For everyone in London who is interested in Germany, LSE is the place to be – certainly this week.
Further Right.
An article published by Doug Bandow, a senior fellow at Washington’s libertarian Cato Institute and former advisor to Ronald Reagon, indicates to me that the real rift concerning foreign policy could be neither the Atlantic nor the middle aisles in the chambers of the US Congress. It indicates to me that there seems to be a deep divide between socially conservative Republicans and Libertarian Reoublicans in the US.
The conservative, traditional, hierarchical model of social coordination favoured by the former is usually abhorred by the latter’s assertion that laisser-faire is the only just way to organise a society/economy. Of course, a two party system does not offer too many alternatives if you want to “make votes count” (Gary W. Cox’ book is really brilliant!), so both faction have teamed-up due to their even stronger disgust of the plans for social and! economic reengineering proposed by those who sit on the other side of the aisles. But from time to time, the internal divisions surface. Current US foreign policy is an example thereof.
In this article, which appeared in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung last Friday (link in English), Bandow pratically asks France and Germany to stand firm in their opposition to a US led war on Iraq –
“If Berlin and Paris back down after publicly avowing their opposition to war in such strong terms, they will reinforce the justifiable contempt in which they are held in Washington. And U.S. administrations will continue to ignore them in foreign crises. The credibility of European and other critics of Washington is at stake. Giving in will feed Washington’s conviction that it can impose its will without constraint.”
Bandow’s opinion does not look too isolated if you have a look at this page, which is listing the body of work Cato scholars have done since 911 regarding a potential U.S. war with Iraq.
However, if you compare Bandow’s view (or even the piece by Eric Alterman I already linked some days ago) to this interpretation of the US-European problems by the Carnegy Endowment’s (neoconservative) Robert Kagan, you’ll clearly sense a difference not only in style, but in content, too.
Kagan is a vocal proponent of what he calls “American benevolent hegemony“. And it seems, those who share his opinion are willing to pick up the tab for continued American hegemony – inducing all the parallels I already referred to on January 20th. Bandow, on the other hand does not see a point in paying for hegemony – and this is not just a different financial assessment. It’s a different world-view.
“Still, it is understandable why Europe has so little influence over American policy. Europe as a whole is a security black hole for America. … Providing a handful of special forces and lending a couple of AWACS planes would not have been necessary were the U.S. not devoting a substantial share of its military to defending Europe.
The Europeans would do far more for America by simply garrisoning their own continent, instead of expecting the U.S. to maintain 100,000 troops to protect populous, prosperous industrialized states, as well as another 13,000 to enforce order in the Balkans, a region of no strategic interest to America.”
He realises that Europe’s attitude may be one of rational free riding. But that, of course, feeds US demands of eternal subservience, which Europe is seemingly less willing to swallow these days.
In the end, the Iraq crisis is teaching all parties involved that it’s impossible to have the cake, and eat it, too – in Bandow’s words (from last September) –
“… neither side has conducted itself with much maturity in the ongoing international spat. The Bush administration believes that allies such as Germany should do what it says, no questions asked. The Schroeder administration believes that Germany deserves a significant say in international relations, while shrinking its military and relying on Washington to resolve tough global problems. … The administration wants doormats, not allies. Germany and Europe don’t have to remain irrelevant, however. The Schroeder- Bush fight offers Berlin and other European states a unique opportunity to strike a more independent course. It’s time for Washington to encourage such a change.”
As for the last sentence of the quote, the current administration does not seem to listen to Mr Bandow. At least, not yet. As always, time will tell.
German Is Getting Sexy Again.
Bjørn Stærk, who kindly recommended my blog to his readers some days ago, has been wondering why there are relatively few European, particularly German and French, (political) blogs published in English.
Contemplating the deeper issue at hand – the relation of national cultures and supra-national languages – in this case English – in an age of global interaction – Bjørn makes an interesting argument concerning cultural imperialism, linguistic protectionism, linguistic economies of scale and scope as well as the advantages of publishing in English instead of one’s native language.
No doubt about it – English has become some sort lingua franca in many respects.
Who doubts that an age of global interaction needs a way to communicate beyond hands, feet and other body parts’ interactions? Those are clearly sufficient to guarantee human procreation, but as soon as things become a bit more tricky – which is not entirely unlikely in a globalised knowledge economy – they won’t carry the communicative day. And it will still take years, if not decades, for automatic translation to become useful. As long as hands and feet are a more reliable means of communication than electronically created translations, we will actually need to sit down and learn foreign languages – and probably one above all others.
There is hardly any language which could challenge the English dominance. Given India’s British colonial history as well as her linguistic fragmentation, there’s only one, in my opinion: Mandarin. Assuming a rapidly growing Chinese economy, Mandarin could become a lingua franca, too. But I am not too sure of that – it might simply be too late, as more than a billion Chinese, eager to contribute to the world economy, are equally eager to learn English, whereas the rest of the world is not too keen to learn Mandarin – ask *me* in seven years, as I bet a friend from Singapore that I will be able to speak at least a little Manadarin in 2010 (UPDATE: 04/2012 – I guess it depends on your defintion of *some*, but I suppose I lost that bet). Not least for this reason, Mandarin will become important. But it probably will not rival English in terms of global penetration.
Two weeks ago, in preparation of last week’s “Elyssée Treaty” treaty celebrations, the German weekly “Die Zeit” printed an interview (in German and French) with the French education minister Luc Ferry. Mr Ferry interestingly, and rightly, remarked that
“English as a language has to be treated differently.”
It is no longer just a foreign language. It has become a cultural technique, just like using the phone or sending emails. Today, less than 25% of Germans ever attempt to learn French (let alone speak it), less than 20% of the French try to learn German. Most Franco-German cooperation is handled in bad English these days.
And for everyone but the native speakers English, as a cultural technique, is about to solve an important problem that usually arises the more the better one speaks a foreign language. The better your use of a foreign language in a conversation, the more will native speakers assume that you also know the correct social code transmitted by the words you use as well as the correct instance for their application. But in all likelihood you will not be too familiar with a significant amount of semiotic subtleties in any given culture and language. Cultural misunderstandings are much more likely in this case than if both parties speak in a foreign language.
While this is very helpful for non-native speakers, it also means that native English speakers lose some of the advantage they have. They no longer control the development of their own native language beyond its application in their own culture. English, as a cultural technique, is likely to come in different semantic and possibly even syntactic flavours, spiced up with local cultural ingredients – far beyond the subtle problems arising from the use of “fit bird” in the US or “hot fox” in Britain.
As more and more people speak English, it will probably become more and more difficult to imply. A great example illustrating this is a story I once heard about an British woman working for the UN in New York. One day, she went to see her gynecologist only to realize he had sold his practice to an Italian who called himself “doctor for women and other diseases”. She tried to explain the error but the doctor insisted that it was perfect Italian-English.
Seriously, we will have to explain a lot more in the future. Just think about the current transatlantic communication problems. We might have a rough idea of what is being said – but I can’t help but wonder – do we really understand it? The more we hear from each other in (roughly) the same words, the more our cultural differences will become a nuisance to real understanding – there are also disadvantages to publishing in English. Clearly more noise. But more signal?
Having said all this, I would like point out that I agree with much of what Bjørn Stærk says regarding the value of publishing in English – particularly when he writes that
“[t]o practice linguistic protectionism in this age is cultural suicide.”
[ NOTE: But I don’t believe linguistic protectionism carries the day when it comes to explaining the absence of political blogs from, say, Germany or France, that are published in English. I don’t think there’s a simple explanation for their relative scarcity, apart from the obvious truism that English is not the native language of most European countries – as the discussion regarding Bjørn’s entry amply demonstrates. I think, the most important variables have been named by those commenting in his blog – penetration of internet connection, especially flat-rate connections allowing to spend a significant amount online reading, awareness of blogging as a concept as well as a technology, motivation to put one’s opinion out there – someone mentioned a possible connection between 9/11 and a rise in blogging -, the main topics of the blog in question, one’s native language’s market size, the target audience, and evidently, the ability to write in English in a way allowing to express sometimes complicated issues and thoughts in a (hopefully) clear and mostly coherent manner. Just by looking at this range of factors (and there are probably a lot more), it becomes obvious to me that c.p. only a small fraction of blogs will be written in English instead of their author�s native language. ]
However, he also makes some points I have a hard time to swallow (which he actually expected)). Most importantly, his assumptions that
“[l]anguage isn’t culture…”,
and that
“[m]ost of the _new_ contributions to Western culture are being made by the US and Great Britain…”,
which then lead him to the conclusion that
“…nothing beautiful or sensible should ever be written in Norwegian, if it could be written in English…”
I again entirely agree with him that it is crucial for Europe, especially the larger linguistic markets in Europe, to
“… drop our linguistic pride, get out of the audience and get onto the stage.”
I’ve been saying for years that having a large linguistic market can create problematic incentives if a larger one is around the corner, especially in academia. A lot of German professors still do not publish in English because the German market is sufficiently big to scientifically survive without doing so. Being exempt from competition has never really benefitted anyone in the long run. And it doesn’t in this case.
But there are things which can not – and which should not – be said in English. Abstracting from the brain-busting problem what contributions to Western culture actually are, I believe it is far from true that most of them are now being made by the US and Great Britain – certainly not in relative terms. If they are marketed in English, it is probably a sign of quality, as someone has deemed it useful to translate them and put them on the world stage. However, evolutionary variation is what made the Western model of social coordination a success story. Thus, in some respects, and I believe also in the linguistic one, diversity is a value in its own right.
Once again omitting impossible definitions, I would agree that “culture” does not only consist of language. But language is a very important part of culture. Just think of slang, think of thirteen year-olds inventing their own words to represent their own worlds, think of the fit birds and the hot foxes mentioned above. Even British English and American English are quite different today. Differences in language reflect differences in culture and thinking. I very vividly remember a discussion of three Norwegian fellow students in a seminar concerning ethnic conflict regulation about which language is the real “Norwegian”. Their discussion was a clear sign to me that, also in Norway, language is an important part of culture.
Using English, the cultural technique, will keep us afloat on the ocean of global interaction. But it will not enable us to see the beautiful maritime vegetation underneath the ocean’s surface. Even in Amsterdam, where almost everybody speaks perfect English (see my entries from December 2002), no one will ever be able to really understand Dutch culture without speaking their language – all the risks of misunderstanding included.
Cultural deep diving is never easy, always an adventure, and in most instances a rewarding one.
English, the cultural technique, will not enable non-German-speakers to find out first hand just why this entry is titled “German is getting sexy again.” Although, luckily, this wired article offers some diving advice ;-).
One Of The Hardest Days.
It is disasters like today’s tragic loss of seven lives, who died when Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated in 60 km altitude during the re-entry into the atmosphere, that remind us of the courage, the risks and the possible hardship involved in human space exploration which are all too often forgotten when success has become routine.
It is days like these that make it difficult to believe in the rationale Kennedy once gave for human space exploration.
“We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard…”
Those two women and five men who died today did not choose to board a shuttle because it was hard. They, as all other astronauts before them, pursued a dream for all of mankind which gave them the courage and strength to take extreme risks even though they knew it could be so hard for them and their loved ones.
I am not sure if it is already the time for NASA to announce that
“[w]e’ll find the cause, fix it, and then move on”
– as one official just stated on CNN. But remembering the days when I had a picture of shuttle Columbia in my room, there’s something I know for sure.
The crew of STS-107 will not be forgotten. And their dream is still alive.
Valentine’s day.
For those Americans who wanted to get their girlfriends a nice Chanel dress or French lingerie for Valentine’s day but have now decided to boycot French fashion because of the Anti-American tendencies of the French government, some of the items available here may offer at least some relief.
Seriously, guys.
Sorry for the lack of updates. I will write more later, but this one could not wait.
I just checked the MIT’s blogdex and found an “instapundit.com” entry ranked #38. The entry links this article concerning the increasing isolation of France and Germany following yesterday’s Aznar-Bush advertising campaign. Today, Slovakia and Albania signed up, too. Remember Albania? The county that virtually attacked the US in Barry Levinson’s “Wag The Dog“?
Anyway, Albania is not what I wanted to talk about. As Glenn Reynolds rightly notices –
The article goes on to minimize (if that’s possible) the military importance of Albania and Slovakia.
But then he says something which I could not find in the article he linked to and which really makes me wonder about the quality of information out there these days.
He goes on to say –
“But that’s not the point. The point is that — despite (or because of) their diplomatic anschluss — France and Germany are now isolated within the E.U. Indeed, there is now talk that the E.U. may splinter as a result of their anti-American efforts.”
Excuse me? Let me repeat it for your reading pleasure.
“Indeed, there is now talk that the E.U. may splinter as a result of their anti-American efforts.”
How far is Europe from the US again? Seriously guys, it does make a huge difference to say that
a) the joint European position, which EU foreign ministers agreed on last Monday is about to splinter as a result of non-reconcilable positions – as actually stated in the linked article – or that
b) the EU, a supranational entity with a common market, which is performing governmental, legislative and judicial functions for its member states could be disbanded because of a foreign policy dispute regarding Iraq. However important the Iraq-question may have become – such a proposition is sheer and utter nonsense.
Mr Reynolds also rather doubts the proposition, adding that –
“[t]hat probably won’t happen…”
No, it will CERTAINLY NOT happen. I really wonder if this proposition has actually been made, and if so, by whom? And why?
It is this kind of avoidable disinformation does make me angry. Seriously.