16 February 2023

Reflections on Corruption and Warfare

There are lots of trends in nature that involve something growing, like the flow of water into a lake (when winter transitions into spring), followed by an increase in the level of water in the lake, then an increase in the flow out of the lake, which persists after the influx has subsided until the level of water in the lake goes back down during the later summer.

In human affairs, we see this sort of thing with crime and law enforcement. The general level of crime goes up, after which there is growing demand for the authorities to do something about it, which is followed by an increase in arrests, more police hired, more people being convicted of crimes, perhaps an increase in the severity of sentences, leading to a non-linear increase in the prison population. In the crime wave of 1965-1994, the prison population actually peaked 12 years after the murder rate did.

The balance of power between perpetrators of crime and anti-crime forces is also subject to dramatic swings over time. One probable driver is the reliability of law enforcement versus its capture by organized crime. Yet another is the ability of crime to organize; its ability to launder revenues; its ability to win cooperation from the general public (or the ability of crime syndicate members to defect; see this 2018 paper on the problem faced by defecting members of Japan’s yakuza.) It’s worth noting that crime in the USA is heavily studied, but statistics are notoriously unreliable (the Japanese data on the yakuza membership are oddly precise), and after sixty years worth of obsessive study, remains very poorly understood.

Part of the reason is pretty obvious: most crime is not organized (e.g., the UNODC report for 2017 [PDF] estimates a total of 464,000 intentional homicides, of which one-fifth were attributed to some form of organized crime. The UN distinguishes between intentional homicides and war fatalities, of which there were about 130,000 in 2017.) One could argue that at least some share of war deaths represents state corruption, which is where I want to go next.

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03 September 2016

Review, Lebanon: Fire and Embers (Dilip Hiro)

(Disclaimer: the author of this review has no professional experience in Lebanon. This is not an authoritative commentary on Lebanese history or the Lebanese Civil War [LCW]. It is only a review of a book. This review was originally posted at the Amazon website, which has since disabled access to references.)

After reading many books about Lebanese history and the Civil War in particular, I believe this is the best. There are several advantages this book has over alternatives.

The first is that Hiro is not plugged into the customary ideological debates. He feels neither the defensiveness nor the regret that plagues much Western historical writing on Southwest Asia.1 On the one hand, he has some strong ideological convictions (I disagree with these), but spells out what they are). On the other hand, he is oddly unconcerned about revealing facts that undermine those convictions; perhaps his big advantage is that he's too naive to mislead the reader for long. After the introduction, he sets aside his opinions.
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17 February 2016

Review: Charles Winslow, Lebanon: War and Politics in a Fragmented Society 1st Edition (1996)

(Disclaimer: the author of this review has no professional expertise in the Middle East. This is only a review of a book. Also, readers need to know that "Mount Lebanon" refers to a part of Lebanon surrounding Beirut; it's about half the land area of the modern republic.)

This book is exceptionally difficult to obtain; this is no doubt a result of unfair neglect, not unmet demand.1 There are several books about the Lebanese Civil War, however, and sorting out which one is reliable is pretty hard. In the case of the Lebanese Civil War, this event was so long and so complicated that practically any allegation made about any side has a grain of truth (at least), and any defense made by any side for its conduct in the war likewise has a grain of truth. The war involved at least eight major dyadic conflicts (i.e., conflicts between pairs of enemies, including enemy coalitions), and these varied depending on which region of Lebanon we're talking about.

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08 August 2015

Review, David M Robinson's Empire’s Twilight: Northeast Asia under the Mongols

(Review originally posted on Amazon)

Curiously, the Mongol regime in China is a period of scholarly neglect. Ironically, this may be partly the result of the amazingly cosmopolitan nature of the Great Yuwan ulus [nation], since primary research requires fluency in many East Asian languages (several of which are defunct, such as the then-prevailing dialect of Mongolian).1 The Mongol state in China was to remain uneasily poised between complete embrace of Chinese civilization, and attachment to its Mongolian roots in language and custom.

The Yuan Dynasty of Chinese history is exceptional in so far as it was not a Chinese dynasty at all, but a Mongolian empire that survived its expulsion from China. Also, the Mongol state was characterized by competing centers of power that maintained rival foreign policies. This complicated its relationship with neighbors such as Koryo (present-day Korea); the rulers of Koryo were obligated to intrigue with factions in Beijing in order to preserve their regime.There are several threads to follow in this story: the role of Buddhist holy men, the rival contenders for power, the array of warlords with their changing relationship with Beijing, the Red Turbans and their invasion of Koryo, and eventually, the struggle between Emperor Toghon Temur and his son for the future of the Yuan Empire.

Through all of this, Koryo's elites were unable to do much besides react. The big shock is King Kongmin's celebration of his victory over the Red Turban invaders with a massacre of his most successful commanders.

Readers need to know that this book is mostly about Korea; it's not about the transition to the Ming Dynasty, which is a Chinese matter, and it's not about the Red Turbans, whose ideology is barely touched upon. There is brief explanation of the main crises of the Mongol regime, as it experienced a sort of "heat death": the change in course of the Huang He, efforts to restore navigability, and regime paralysis in the face of rebellion. But the main point is that Korea would be integrally connected to China's regime until it changed entirely.


NOTES

  1. On the uniqueness of a English-language work on the transition, see review by Edward J. Shultz, The Journal of Korean Studies, Vol. 17, No. 1 (Spring 2012), pp. 206-210; Prof. Robinson himself discusses this in the introduction. One point that bears noting is that there were many different languages of the Asian steppes: Mongolic (e.g., Old Mongolian), Tungusic (e.g., Manchu), and Turkic (e.g., Old Uyghur), and most of these languages are now extinct.

21 July 2015

Review, Mahmoud A. El-Gamal & Amy Myers Jaffe, Oil, Dollars, Debt, and Crises (2009)


The factual shortcomings of this book have been noted elsewhere, such as the claim that the United States "fully supported" the creation of al-Qaida to fight the USSR (p.66).1 The book's use of sources is not convincing: for example (p.117), the authors mention that Britons disapproved of the Bretton Woods Agreement because it virtually restored the gold standard.2 But to support this, the authors cite a work published in 1932! Needless to say, that work—a polemical pamphlet—reveals nothing about what most Britons thought even in 1932, let alone in 1944.

Arguments about economics are dismal. On p.5, they refer to the dollar price of gold as a measure of its "real value." This is just a bizarre ideological position (there is a chart showing the ratio of the price of oil to that of gold since 1973, which makes this point obvious).3 On p.13, they mention that a "shift to pricing exports in Euros would insulate [oil exporting countries of the Middle East] from effects of dollar depreciation." Two points here: the euro can also depreciate, and no, pricing in euros won't insulate oil from the effects of the US dollar losing value against other currencies since objective reality would be the same: US-pegged economies would continue to represent a large share of world demand for oil.

If the euro, US$1.4651 on the date of publication of this book, were to soar to $2.93/euro shortly afterward, then the fact that oil was priced in euros would merely mean that the price of oil—US$72.64 that particular day—would now be US$145.28 instead, or that EZ consumers would buy a larger share of output than American consumers. On p.19, the authors claim that a large depreciation of the US dollar would lead to a recession in the short term; the experience of other countries, such as Germany's de facto depreciation on adopting the euro, is one of immense increase in prosperity.4 There's lots of valid reasons to ignore basic economics, but at least acknowledge you're doing so.

A deeper problem is that the authors are chained to a view of the world in which nation-states are cohesive actors. "The USA" or other countries do not want, think, say, or do, anything; this makes as much sense as a serious discussion of the religious affinities of trees. It makes a bit more sense to talk of institutions like the IMF or the Federal Reserve System "wanting" or "doing" something, or the role of ideologies, or individual leaders. Even as a quick-n-dirty shortcut, this is a bad idea because one cannot check it. How do the authors know "the USA" enjoyed goodwill in the Middle East, especially after it was delinked from gold in 1971" (p.12)?5

Efforts by the authors to infer what motivates the populations of entire regions are markedly free of anything resembling evidence. On p.68, for instance, having just outlined 'Usama bin Laden's allegations that the USA was exploiting the Middle East by buying oil at below peak rates, the authors claim that "the general nature of his grievance was widely shared by large segments of Middle East populations, Muslims and Christians (the Egyptian-Orthodox Pope still forbids Christians from visiting Jerusalem under Israeli control)..." Think about this for a minute: how general is "general"? So general as to include any basis of disapproval between the Arab world and the USA whatever, even to the extent of US support for Israel?  But that is actually something else entirely. Even then, "widely shared" and "large segments" are weasel words par excellence.

By the way, to prepare this review I checked past and current results of surveys conducted by Pew Research on world perceptions of the USA. See, for example, "America's Image in the World: Findings from the Pew Global Attitudes Project" and a date for preferred years. Any of these reports are far more detailed and explicit than the contents of the book—despite the fact that the book revisits the subject many times.

In summary, the authors were not sufficiently confident of their readers' interest and prior knowledge to discuss the subjects raised in any advanced way; but they were not interested in explaining any of the technical issues, such as changes in financial and credit markets, or different markets for crude (West Texas Intermediate, Dubai/Oman, or Brent Blend). Their analysis of countries consistently ignores divisions of opinion, interests, technical constraints, and urgent needs felt by the different divisions within those countries. They aren't determined to deceive their readers with polemics, but they have no idea what sort of book they intended to write, and they produced something that is not up to the challenge of explaining either oil, dollars, debt, or crises—of any sort.


NOTES

  1. Steve Coll, Ghost Wars , Penguin Press (2004), p.255. Or see my review of Bruce Riedel's What We Won: America's Secret War in Afghanistan, 1979-89, Brookings Press (2014). The CIA had extremely limited access to members of the mujahidden and accepted this after 1979 as a natural result of its extreme unpopularity in the Muslim world.

  2. The Bretton Woods Agreement (July 1944) provided for a fixed dollar price of gold ($35/oz), and fixed exchange rates for other currencies to the USD; changes in these rates would require a formal agreement from the IMF. This is called a "gold exchange standard," and was intended to preserve some flexibility of monetary policy for member states. If El-Gamal & Jaffe are talking about the differences of position between US negotiator Harry Dexter White and British negotiator John Maynard Keynes, then these differences were far more complex and definitely worth discussing—given the subject of the book. Sadly, none is given.

  3. My opinion is that, after the price of gold was allowed to rise past $35, it was thereafter a random piece of trivia; and the price of oil was thereafter mostly random, although far from trivial. And indeed, the ratio of the two oscillates wildly. If my opinion is wrong, there should be some discernable pattern. The authors don't describe any.

  4. One assumption made by the authors is that "the USA wants" an expensive dollar because it enables energy imports, and allows the country to borrow in its own currency. This was an "advantage" awarded to Greece when it adopted the euro (1 Jan 2002), which at the time of this book's publication (Dec 2009) had a substantial premium against the USD in purchasing power parities. Needless to say, remotely technical considerations such as purchasing power parities never come up in this book.

    More realistically, some parties benefit from this, and other parties do not. Americans who are concerned about their jobs will want a cheap dollar, since this makes them competitive as workers. Taxpayers will also favor a cheap dollar, since this reduces unemployment (lowers claims on the government) and increases the share of Americans who pay taxes (so the deficit shrinks even if tax rates remain the same). Americans whose income comes mainly from investments will tend to favor a higher dollar, since they can then buy more assets in other countries. This is a gross oversimplification, but it's still more nuanced than what appears in ODD&C.

  5. The full sentence is: "The dominance of the U.S. Dollar as the global reserve currency , especially after it was delinked from gold in 1971, was built on two pillars. The first was international political and economic goodwill acquired over the first half of the twentieth century, as European colonialism came to an end, and the second was the absence of viable alternatives to the Dollar." The authors can accuse me of twisting their words, since they said the goodwill was from 1900-1950. But they are clearly emphasizing trends taking place at least 21 years later, since there's only one reason required to explain USD "hegemony" before 1971: before then, the USD was a direct substitute for physical gold.

29 June 2015

Review, Martin McCauley, Bandits, Gangsters and the Mafia: Russia, the Baltic States and the CIS since 1991 (2001)

(Originally published on Amazon

This book is a pretty good summary of political events in the former USSR from 1989 to 2000. However, there are no footnotes; on rare occasions, the author includes a parenthetical reference. The writing style is folksy, and McCauley hews to a personality-oriented version of history. McCauley sees the historical landscape as being dominated by good guys and bad guys—mostly bad guys, or at least, morally weak guys. Qualities McCauley admires include decisiveness, forcefulness, dedication to the nation (i.e., ethnic group—as with Gen. Alexander Lebed—or command structure—as with the August 1991 coup plotters). McCauley observes that shock therapy was a disaster, although he generally admires the instigators for their determination and comparative cleanliness1; he argues the specific form of shock therapy known as "perestroika" was especially ill-conceived.2 He believes that the USSR collapsed because it could not keep up with US Pres. Ronald Reagan's boost in military spending, an error which is important because it reflects the lack of quantitative data in McCauley's analysis.3 For McCauley, it is clear what actors in the period ought to have done, and clearer still that they did not do it.

As a result, the lack of viable alternatives never enters the story. In order to offer his readers a compelling conclusion (that the Soviet military general staff allowed the USSR to disintegrate, leading to eight years under the dead hand of Boris Nikolayevich), he has to pretend that the problem was that Gens. Yazov and Shaposhnikov were fools and traitors, and the one true patriot, Gen. Alexander Lebed, was Russia's Coriolanus—pure but dimwitted.4

In the chapter "Bandit Capitalism," he introduces Yegor Gaidar, and points out that Karl Marx had a clearer insight into the workings of capitalism than did Adam Smith (p.266), and prefers Keynes to Milton Friedman and Paul Samuelson (p.267)—some readers will take umbrage at this, but at least he tells you clearly where he's coming from.

Errors crop up every now and then. On p.118, he declares that Georgia supported Russia's incursion into the breakaway state of Chechnya in order to stop the depredations of Chechen-supplied separatists in Abkhazia. In fact, the Abkhazian separatists are wholly loyal to Moscow, and received their supplies from the Russian military, not from Chechens.5 Referring to the August 1991 coup, he refers to the officers to refused to use deadly force against Muscovites as traitors (p.198). However, this is not central to the value of the book, which really does an excellent job outlining the various dimensions of Soviet transformation. Since the book is organized thematically, this only crops up in Chapter 6, on the role of the military and security services.

I was not able to verify his analysis of the legal developments in Russia since 1991. He goes into some detail describing the conflicts between the constitutions of the Russian Republics and the center (the Russian Federation itself). These seem to take the form of indulgences extended by the Yeltsin Administration specifically to regions that did not vote for him or his party in elections of 1996. One gets the impression that there's a critical problem with deciding which laws or remits override the other, so that two sides in a dispute are very likely each correct. Economic policy is concocted to take this into account—inflation, for example, was permitted in order to restore the power of the administration over particular enterprises and their revenue streams (p.270).

The account of privatization as a legislative process of self-corruption jibes with what I've read elsewhere—that the dread of having the transition to a market economy interrupted before it was irreversible led Chubais and Co. to support all manner of disastrous compromises, such as making it easier for the incumbent management to retain control after privatization took place. Towards the end, the book becomes very sophisticated and detailed, and I'd say, weathers well.



NOTES
  1. The Yeltsin Era in Russian history was fraught with corruption, but mostly the people at the center—Yegor Gaidar, Maxim Boycko, and Anatoly Chubais—did keep their noses clean. In Nov 1997, Boyko and Chubais—as well as other "shock" reformers Alfred Kokh, Alexander Kazakov, and Pyotr Mostovoi—were implicated in an "inflated advance" scandal involving Vladimir Potanin, owner of Oneximbank. See Jeffries (2013), p.499. All but Chubais were asked to resign at once. By the standards of Russia c.1997, this left them still pretty clean, although it looked at the time like a bribe for facilitating Potanin's sale of shares in of Svyazinvest, the telephone company.

  2. The transition of the Soviet economy to capitalism involved many phases and is still incomplete. Following Soós (2011), one can speak of a phase of "primary privatization" (in which the state relinquished its direct ownership of the the means of production) and "secondary privatization" (in which the new owners—in Russia's case, the general population of voucher recipients—converted their diffuse holdings into new capitalist structures of production, including corporations and cooperatives). In the USSR, there was effort to skip over privatization (1986-1991) by giving the existing managers of the state-owned enterprises (SOEs) control over methods and amounts of output. This was the essence of perestroika, and it led to the problem that the existing management c.1986 could not be displaced, but could not raise prices (or dismiss workers) to reflect economic realities.

    Instead, since the "red directors" could not manage under actual market conditions, they became a surrogate political class of opposition to additional reforms. As a result of subsequent primary privatization schemes, the red directors usually (but not always) preserved direct control over enterprises.

  3. The Soviet military budget peaked in 1982 and declined afterward; this, despite a large (2% GDP) commitment to the war in Afghanistan. See, for example, Richard Ned Lebow and Janice Gross Stein, "Reagan and the Russians"; The Atlantic Monthly; Volume 273, No. 2; pages 35-37. (Feb 1994). Estimates of Soviet military expenditures are difficult to validate, and it seems likely that even the Soviets had only a vague idea of what they were spending. However, one compelling point is that the USSR relied overwhelmingly on exports of hydrocarbons for hard currency—and this source evaporated suddenly in the early 1980s.

  4. Lt. Gen. Alexander Lebed's main historical role was that he was one of the front-runners in the 1996 presidential elections (3rd place, behind Gennady Zyuganov) and subsequently was appointed to the incumbent administration and endorsed Yeltsin in the runoff. This decision doesn't say much for his purity.

    Lebed was commander of the 14th Army in Moldova, which he elected to use on behalf of Russian separatist rebels in the Transnistrian Republic. McCauley's account on this is misleading: he says that Lebed shelled advancing Moldavian Army units, when in fact he attacked the regular Moldovan Army after they had taken the Moldovan city of Bendery, killing 112. In other words, Lebed simply carried out a punitive massacre of regular Moldovan soldiers on their own territory.

  5. Moscow's sub rosa support for Abkhazian separatists is common knowledge, but see, for example, Alexandros Petersen, "The 1992-1993 Georgia-Abkhazia War: A Forgotten Conflict," Caucasian Review of International Affairs, 2, (Autumn 2008), p.198.

    To be fair, McCauley gets around to acknowledging this (p.350), but his account whitewashes the affair. He generally paints foreign policy as having been "subservient" to the West (1989-Jan 1996), then correcting course after Andrei Kozyrv stepped down. This is not a strength of the book, but it may accurately reflect Russian attitudes.




SOURCES 🙵 ADDITIONAL READING

Robert V. Barylski, The Soldier in Russian Politics 1988-1996, Transaction Publishers (1998); in my view, easily the best book on the post-Soviet transition.

Serguey Braguinsky, "The Rise and Fall of Post-Communist Oligarchs: Legitimate and Illegitimate Children of Praetorian Communism," MONOGRAPH (2007)

Ian Jeffries, The New Russia, Routledge (2013)

Elena Medova & Larissa Tischenko, "Lawless Privatization?" Cambridge Endowment for Research in Finance (2006)

Alexandros Petersen, "The 1992-93 Georgia-Abkhazia War: A Forgotten Conflict," Caucasian Review of International Affairs Vol. 2 (4)-(Autumn 2008)

Károly Attila Soós, Politics and Policies in Post-Communist Transition, CEU Press (2011). Soós account is very dry and specializes in a direct comparison of policies adopted by different successor states of the Warsaw Pact. However, it is scrupulously accurate and explains the dilemmas faced by the policymakers involved with privatization.