Batman, Captain America, and the War on Terror

Art and life mirror each other all the time.  Fictional "technology" has inspired a number of scientists, entrepreneurs, and inventors; and countless works of fiction have been based on actual historical events.  This blog entry will focus on one ongoing event that has exerted significant influence on American policies since 2001.  That event, obviously, is the War on Terror; and two movies which incorporated aspects of the War on Terror in their plots are The Dark Knight and Captain America: The Winter Soldier.

First, let's look at The Dark Knight.  There are two parts of the movie that resemble American war-fighting methods.  Toward the middle of the movie, Batman abducts Lau, a criminal organization's accountant, from Hong Kong.  (Side note: Batman escapes using a CIA-designed personnel recovery system.)  Batman's escape strategy is bolder and more dramatic, but it is virtually identical to a controversial (and in many countries, illegal) counter-terrorism tactic called extraordinary rendition.  The big difference is that instead of being dragged back to Gotham, the prisoner gets delivered to a secret prison in a country where cruel treatment is acceptable. 

The next incident in The Dark Knight that parallels the War on Terror occurs toward the film's end.  Batman uses his corporation's resources to access every cell phone in Gotham, in order to find the Joker.  This also resembled an American government tactic for fighting the War on Terror, although the general public wouldn't learn about the government's mass surveillance programs until about five years after The Dark Knight premiered.

Now, let's look at Captain America.  The central conflict is that Hydra (doesn't that just sound like an evil organization?) has infiltrated S.H.I.E.L.D and plans to use its helicarriers (which make AC-130s look like BB guns) to eliminate Hydra's adversaries.  A Hydra scientist invented a mathematical equation that could identify which people might oppose Hydra; while the helicarriers acted as a high-altitude sniper rifle, and had the advantage of being out of range of antiaircraft weapons.  In many ways, Hydra's master plan is like America's criteria for deciding who ends up on the receiving end of a drone strike.  It's called a "signature strike", and here's a good definition courtesy of Foreign Policy magazine's Dan DeLuce and Paul McLeary:

"Signature strikes were first used during George W. Bush’s administration, and the name refers to the fact that the targets — by virtue of their ages, actions, and locations inside countries known to house terrorist operatives — bear the “signature” of militant activity. U.S. intelligence and defense officials believe the strikes have inflicted heavy damage on al Qaeda and other terrorist groups. But critics say the rules for the drone strikes against large numbers of military-age men are too vague and carry an unacceptably high risk of killing innocent civilians who have no connection to any terrorist plot."

I want to bring up one other point to tie this back to political theory.  Both movies hint at the moral and philosophical conflict of freedom vs security.  That dilemma is something else that comes up a lot in real life.  The Founding Fathers leaned heavily toward the "freedom" side of the scale, especially when it came to restricting government power, and it's pretty noticeable in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, as well as writings many of them left behind.  The back-and-forth debate between security and liberty still goes on, and probably will continue for many decades.  And the secretive organization that promotes iron-fisted control is usually the villain in both works of fiction (SPECTRE, The Galactic Empire, Cobra, Hydra) and in the history books (the Gestapo, the KGB, just about any secret police force).

Trump's Half-Baked Strategy for Afghanistan

On Monday evening, August 21st, President Trump gave a speech laying out his plan for addressing the war in Afghanistan, a place where the US has occupied since 2001.  Given Afghanistan's track record of resisting and outlasting invading armies, I'd be pessimistic about the plan's odds of success even if an exceptionally brilliant general or statesman like Clausewitz or Metternich had drawn it up; and Trump is certainly not on the same level as them.

First, a few things to say about the speech's tone and timing.  The speech itself is far more eloquent and articulate than many of Trump's previous oratories - could this be a sign of a shift in the administration's collective culture now that Bannon has left? Possibly.  It's too early to tell, but there was a distinct change in Monday's speech.  The emphasis on the bonds within the military makes me speculate that McMaster, himself a career soldier, had a major role in writing the speech.  The speech also stresses the importance of national unity, which many pundits attribute to the recent events in Charlottesville, as well as Trump's verbal bungling in the aftermath.  The speech's timing also conveniently benefits Trump: although he couldn't have foreseen the Barcelona terrorist attack, laying out a policy that escalates the war in Afghanistan certainly helps Trump look tough in the face of terrorism.

That covers my thoughts on the speech's timing and tone.  Now for its content - and we've got quite a bit to unpack here.

First, there's the speech overall.  As I already mentioned, Trump signaled his intent to ramp up the war in Afghanistan.  This confirms that Trump plans to keep America's foreign policy on the same military-centric, interventionist foreign policy it has been on since the Truman Administration.  He might make a few changes around the edges, but the core approach remains fixed.   Trump has effectively fallen prey to what retired Colonel Andrew Bacevich disparagingly labeled the "bipartisan military consensus" in his book, The Limits of Power.  This is a significant point in Trump's administration, because it represents an important indication of the path his policy will lead, not only in Afghanistan, but in other fronts in the war on terror.  Expect to see him maintain or increase the op-tempo in Yemen, Somalia, and Iraq eventually.

The policy which he outlined in his speech is also self-contradictory and painfully naive.  Early on, he expresses a distaste for nation-building, stating "I share their [the American people's] frustration over a foreign policy that has spent too much time, energy and most importantly lives trying to rebuild countries in our own image instead of pursuing our security interests above all other considerations." However, later in the speech, he states that the United States will "participate in economic development to help defray the cost of this war to us." I could be wrong, but economic development sounds a lot like nation-building.  In fact, the economic component is a key part of nation-building.  Additionally, leaving a nation in ruins creates the conditions which Trump himself acknowledges exploit to establish a safe haven.  There's not going to be any way around nation-building, and Trump will soon learn this; unfortunately, an understaffed State Department will pose an obstacle.  Trump's strategy also seems determined to avoid making the mistakes of the previous war: leaving a power vacuum in a broken and divided country.  This applies to Afghanistan in the 1990s, but particularly Iraq, which is fresh in many generals' minds.

A dearth of nation-building efforts implies an emphasis on military force, and Trump's strategy reflects this.  He's evidently opting for a Bidenesque emphasis on counter-terrorism over counter-insurgency.  Trump has also wised up to NATO's importance, emphasizing that this will be a multinational effort.  How well that goes over with the other NATO countries is anyone's guess, though.

Trump also indicates that he wants the Afghan military to take the lead.  There's logic in that, but also huge potential for trouble.  A nation's army must maintain a strict monopoly on force; but in Balkanized countries like Afghanistan, there's a lot of overlap among the military and a particular faction.  Trump's approach will only make insurgents target US forces more, because they'll see us as allies of their enemies.  Also, the US has been in Afghanistan for seventeen years, so our adversaries have already formed their own opinions of us, and those opinions likely won't change.  Trump stated he's open to a political settlement with the Taliban; if so, letting the Afghan army take the lead will make any settlement more difficult to achieve.

Trump also shows a serious lack of understanding for how the Afghanistan policy rebounds into other areas.  First, publicly criticizing Pakistan and lauding India probably won't incentivize Pakistan to cooperate; and since one of Pakistan's key allies is China, this could potentially make dealing with North Korea more difficult.  In fact, China has already responded.  Second, eschewing nation-building will create a void that other nations could rush to fill, and Russia has already been expanding its influence in Afghanistan through the use of "soft power."

This might all be cause for concern, but the "bipartisan consensus" hasn't really been bothered by half-baked plans in the past.  Whether that's due to indifference or because nobody wants to tell the emperor that he's naked I can't really say, but my guess is that the US wants to keep a flag planted in Afghanistan as part of some grand geopolitical scheme.  Trump's bungling won't make a difference, but it will throw a bit of sand in the gears.  This is one of Trump's major tests as president, and he failed miserably.  His speech showed how little he understands about Afghanistan, military tactics, geopolitics, and the consequences of his words.

Finally, there were a few parts of the speech that I wanted to mention briefly:

• Trump's comment that "historically I like following my instincts." As professor Michael Horowitz of U-Penn insightfully notes, this is a clever way of preemptively shifting blame to the generals if the strategy goes south.
• In keeping with his fragile ego, there were a handful of times when he seemingly went out of his way to remind people that he's the president.
• He also threw a bit of red meat to his base by reinforcing the perception of Democrat weakness on military matters and talking about terrorists in the language of force.

That was what I took away from Trump's speech.  I have a feeling the next 3 1/2 years are going to be a bumpy ride.  Trump is woefully, hilariously, out of his league.

The Prisoner's Dilemma: World War I, The Cuban Missile Crisis, the X-Men, and arms races

Two college students decide to go on a road trip and do a little partying on the weekend before one of their final exams on Monday.  They get a little carried away and end up missing the exam.  When they go to the instructor, they admit they were out of town but say a flat tire made them late.  The instructor graciously allows them to take a make-up exam the following day.  The instructor seats them in separate rooms and hands them the test, which consists of only one question: "Which tire?"

That's an old joke/urban myth, but it's a good lead in to this entry's subject: the Prisoner's Dilemma.  The PD is a situation in which a person must make a decision based on an assumption of another person's actions.  Here's how it works (most people already understand how the PD works, but I'm recapping it anyway).  The police arrest two suspects and place them in separate rooms, and each suspect must choose whether to confess or to stay silent.  The catch is that each suspect's choice affects the other.  If both suspects keep their mouths shut, they each get one year in jail.  If they both confess, they each get a two-year sentence.  But if Suspect B keeps quiet and Suspect A confesses (ratting out B), A goes free while B serves three years; and vice versa if B confesses and A doesn't.  Here's a quick and easy explanation in picture form:

The PD's effectiveness lies in how much the two suspects trust each other, because it's set up to incentivize betrayal.  It's a useful tool for understanding and analyzing decision-making in a broad range of topics, including arms races, economic and environmental treaties, preemptive war, and nuclear weapons tactics, among other things.  I'll lay out a theoretical scenario first, then mention a few real world examples. 

Pretend there are two countries that don't really like each other.  One country gets intelligence that the other country is buying up millions of dollars worth of state-of-the-art weaponry - tanks, fighter jets, artillery, and so on, and that it's growing its army's size by 100,000 people.  Assuming the intelligence is true, Country A just got much more powerful.  Now Country B has a choice: believe the intelligence and start its own military buildup, or not believe it and do nothing.  If the intelligence is wrong and Country B rejects it, then nothing changes.  If the intel is correct and Country B rejects it, Country A gets a strong military advantage.  If the intel is true and Country B believes it, both nations have a greater destructive capacity but they're evenly matched again.  If Country B believes the intelligence even though it's wrong, then it has the military advantage now.  Now think through the scenario again, only imagine the intelligence says Country A is about to invade. John Mearsheimer summed it up well when he said "Uncertainty about the intentions of other states is unavoidable, which means that states can never be sure that other do not have offensive intentions to go along with their offensive capabilities." (The Tragedy of Great Power Politics)

This scenario is called the security dilemma, and it has been the subject of a fair amount of scholarly work.  There's a school of thought within the international relations field called realism which is based on the premise that states must not trust their neighbors because international politics is anarchic (in a way, a scaled-up version of Hobbes' state of nature), a nation's survival is the ultimate goal, and other nations' motives cannot be known or trusted.  If you're interested in learning more about realism, I recommend reading some of Mearsheimer's stuff, along with works by Hans Morthenthau and George Kennan; and if you want to go way back, try some Thucydides, Machiavelli, and of course, Thomas Hobbes.

Now for a few real world examples:

• World War I: By the time the Great War broke out, warfare had changed dramatically from the days of foot soldiers carrying spears and shields.  Industrialization, mass production, technological advancements in weaponry, and railroads had made warfighting much more complex.  The speed with which a nation could mobilize its military and the firepower it could bring to bear meant that the first nation to be ready had a substantial advantage - maybe one that could decide the war's outcome.  Although both nations mobilizing rapidly made the war much bloodier, standing down was not an option because hesitation made defeat likely.  
• The 2003 invasion of Iraq: the United States had suffered a horrible terrorist attack about eighteen months before the invasion, and was obsessed with eliminating threats before those threats could attack the country.  The US government accused Iraq's ruler, Saddam Hussein, of possessing massive stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, and the (since discredited) fear of being on the receiving end of a chem/bio weapon attack prompted the US to launch a preemptive invasion.  As the Bush Administration's National Security Advisor remarked, "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."

So where does the Prisoner's Dilemma show up in pop culture? (AKA, Where is the fun part?) It actually serves as a reliable plot device for creating a story's central conflict.  Here are two good examples:

• Crimson Tide.  If you don't remember what this 1995 movie is about, here's a brief recap.  A nuclear-armed submarine is deployed and given a mission to preemptively launch its nukes at a Russian nuclear missile installation, if Chechen rebels who seized control of the installation appear to preparing to launch.  The sub loses communication between its higher command, and must decide whether to launch or to stand down.  The central conflict is between the sub's CO, who wants to launch, and the XO, who dissents.
• Thirteen Days.  This movie is based on the Cuban Missile Crisis, from the point of view of the participants as the events were actually happening.  Hindsight is 20/20, but remember, the people making decisions at the time didn't have all the information.

The Prisoner's Dilemma also shows up in The Dark Knight (the Joker places bombs on two ferries and gives each ship's passengers a detonator to the bombs on the other ferry) and Thor (a trio of Frost Giants invade Asgard, and Thor argues with Odin about whether the trio is a rogue faction or a precursor to an invasion, and whether Asgard should strike back or let it slide).  It also forms a core element of my second-favorite Marvel movie series (The Avengers is #1), the X-Men, although it's an imperfect fit: go back up to that graphic I posted and imagine Suspect A is humanity and Suspect B is mutantkind.  The top left square represents a war between equally matched sides, the top right represents mutant supremacy, the bottom right is an uneasy coexistence, and the bottom left is the bleak future portrayed in Days of Future Past.  You could go a step further and say that the X-Men universe's two chief ideological adversaries (Professor X and Magneto) represent the PD's two courses of action: cooperation or betrayal. 

This has been a long entry, so I'll bring it to a close by linking to a clip from LA Confidential, to show what happens when someone exploits the Prisoner's Dilemma to produce a lose/lose outcome.  Watch how Guy Pearce's character manipulates two of the suspects to make them sell each other out.  You only have to watch the first minute of this clip.

So that's the Prisoner's Dilemma.  Pretty cool stuff, huh?

On Monuments and Historical Greatness

This is going to be a short epilogue to my previous post about Charlottesville. . .

There's been a lot of discussion since Saturday about what to do with the Confederate monuments.  One of the counterexamples people who want the monuments to stay is that George Washington and several other Founders owned slaves, so why should the Confederate statues be torn down and not the Washington Monument, etc? That seems like a good argument, but falls apart under closer scrutiny.

Almost all revered historical figures have something extremely shameful on their records.  Washington owned slaves, and by some accounts he treated them pretty harshly.  FDR ordered the military to intern Japanese-American citizens and threw Poland under the bus to placate Stalin.  Gandhi admired Hitler and was a womanizer.  Woodrow Wilson was a huge racist.  Even above-average figures like LBJ and Mother Teresa had some pretty big skeletons in their closets.

Here's the important thing to remember, though.  A lot of those revered figures are remembered for something they did on the positive side of the ledger.  Something they did which benefited their country, their people, or all of mankind.  The members of the Confederacy immortalized by statues aren't.  Quick quiz.  Name something noteworthy that Jefferson Davis and John Calhoun did - besides being important Confederate figures.  Something else they did that makes them stand out.  Same thing with General Lee.  Go ahead, I'll wait.

Tick tock, tick tock. . .

Okay, time's up.  Did you think of anything? I'm betting you didn't, unless you're well-informed on the history of the South.  And that's the important difference.  Lee, Calhoun, Davis, and many others are all remembered entirely for their association with the Confederacy.  Their reputations, the only notable thing they did in their lives, was their association with a secessionist movement dedicated to maintaining slavery.

George Washington is remembered for more than owning slaves.  George Washington did more than own slaves.  The same is true for most other revered historical figures.  They are more than their shameful deeds.  And that is what makes them different from Lee, Davis, and Calhoun. The Confederates are not; whatever else they did in their lives, their notable contribution to history is fighting to preserve a slave state.  Their legacy is not one worth honoring.

Charlottesville: Hate, Fear, and Ignorance in America

This is going to be a different blog post than the ones I've done so far.  It doesn't fit into any of the major themes I had intended to write about when I started this blog, but I'm writing it to get a few things off of my chest.  It will also have a different style to it - less like an academic research paper and more like an opinion piece.  So here goes. . .

Everyone knows what happened in Charlottesville on Friday night and yesterday afternoon, so I won't spend much time on those events.  I want to talk about some people's reactions to it and how those reactions pave the way for the Friday/Saturday race riot (I'm calling it a race riot because that's what it was; tough shit if you don't like it).  The reaction in question is a shrug of the shoulders and a casual endorsement for the Nazis and the white supremacists.  The way I remember it - I'm fuzzy on the details, but I recall the gist of it - was an implication that minorities brought this on themselves because of the various protests over the past several years.  Movements like BLM, Gay Pride, Women's Rights, and so on were just "whining" and the minority protesters should just "suck it up and get over it".  It's this attitude I want to talk about.  The way I see it, it develops when someone possesses these three traits: a lack of knowledge, no sense of intellectual curiosity, and an inability to empathize.

Let's use a real-world example to explain my hypothesis.  The Black Lives Matter movement is as good as any.  Someone with the aforementioned attitude probably doesn't know about the racial disparities when it comes to sentencing and incarceration for comparable crimes, or about practices like "DWB", or how the GOP routinely makes it difficult for minorities to participate in the electoral process.  Maybe this person has never heard of Philando Castile or Eric Garner.  That doesn't make someone a bad person in and of itself - maybe this person doesn't watch much news.  That's pretty implausible with the 24-hour news networks and the internet news saturation, but I suppose it's possible.  It's the other two traits that really create this attitude, though.

First, the absence of intellectual curiosity.  A lot of people go through life accepting what they're told without questioning it or applying any critical thought.  That's just human nature.  The vast majority of people don't have the time, the knowledge, the desire, or the mental bandwidth to critically evaluate every piece of knowledge that gets thrown at them.  People are also psychologically predisposed to screen and reject information that doesn't fit with our core beliefs or opinions.  So we're all guilty of intellectual laziness to some degree.  But like any sampling distribution, some data points fall on the high end of the spectrum, meaning that a certain percentage of people are indifferent when it comes to critical thinking.  Here's how this plays out in the real-world example.  Suppose a person got most of their news from the Fox network, which is hardly a friend to minorities.  How would that person view BLM, which has some very real and very serious grievances? They're going to downplay it, of course.  Here's the curious part, though.  This person is almost certainly aware of the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 60s.  Maybe they only read about in a history textbook, so they only see it as an abstract concept, devoid of the emotional resonance; but maybe they lived during that time, and saw the real-life images on TV and in the newspapers.  The protesters getting sprayed with fire hoses.  The balcony where MLK was standing when he was assassinated.  The burning crosses and bombed-out churches.  The Civil Rights struggle probably had more of an impression to people who were alive when it happened, but either way, how does someone reconcile that movement with everything that happened since then? With what's going on now? Aren't they able to make the connection?

That last one is the one that drives me bonkers.  They don't have the intellectual capacity to conceive that racism hasn't ended.  To them, the Civil Rights movement ended things, like it was a sporting event where time ran out, the ref blew the whistle, and that was that.  They're surely aware that racists still exist, but the fact that those racists actively seek to undo the Civil Rights era reforms, and that those racists comprise an appallingly influential political bloc, evidently escapes them.  That's the kind of shallow thinking that leads to some deeply contradictory behaviors and beliefs, such as flying an American flag and going to church every week while condoning a movement that represents the opposite of the ideals their religion and their nation embody.  People like this don't realize that the Confederacy's secession was by definition a treasonous act, or that slavery has had a legacy that still resonates today.  "What's the big deal?", they say when someone points these things out.  "That was a long time ago, why does it still matter?" Unbelievable.  This sort of lazy thinking manifests itself in many, many other ways, but those are outside the scope of this post.

Now, let's look at the third and final component: the lack of empathy.  These people can't relate to minorities, because they've never experienced the myriad forms of discrimination.  Nor do they know many people who have.  They'll never have to worry about police assuming they're guilty by default or politicians disenfranchising them.  Their resumes won't go straight into the trash because of their name.  They won't be denied various legal protections and privileges simply because of who they are, so they take those things for granted.  And because they don't have any frame of reference, they dismiss the complaints of people who do experience these problems.  More than that, they make statements that imply minorities don't deserve these things, often without fully understanding what they're saying.  Things like "Why do they have to push their agenda on us?" or "Aren't they happy with what they have now?" There's a sub-context that the victim's grievances are just whiny complaints or overblown exaggerations.

By now, you might have noticed that I'm a bit worked up and angry.  Yep.  This stuff is a "button pusher" topic, and here's why.  I have a low tolerance for people who live in intellectual bubbles.  It's hard to stay informed, I get that.  And it's harder to see past your own mental blind spots.  That's partly human nature, and I'm as guilty as anyone.  When I'm faced with contradictory information, my natural reaction is to dig in my heels.  But at some point, a person crosses over from a normal confirmation bias to burying their head in the sand.  That infuriates me.  The sky isn't neon green no matter how much you believe it is.  On top of that, I have a default tendency to side with the underdog.  Maybe it's because I disagreed with the aforementioned attitude so strongly that I moved pretty far to the opposite end of the spectrum - I dunno, that's a question for the psychoanalysts.  However it came about, I'm kinda like Tyrion Lannister; we both have a soft spot for "cripples, bastards, and broken things." Automatically siding with the marginalized is one of my mental blind spots.  So maybe I'm getting too dramatic about Charlottesville, but I don't think anyone can deny America has a racism problem now.

Typically, the actual racists are only a small portion of any population.  It's the mentally shallow people are the ones who allow racism to flourish.  They are the ones who turn a blind eye to the insidious spread of racist groups/movements or invent rationalizations to dismiss it.  The ones I spent most of this blog post describing.  They are indifferent to the reality of the situation, and indifferent people usually comprise the vast majority of a given population.  They need to be pulled down off the fence and be made to understand the reality of the situation, because staying in their bubble allows the problem to grow.

 

"Nasty, Brutish, and Short": Gotham City and the State of Nature

In my first blog post, I mentioned a concept called the State of Nature, by way of explaining Hobbes' Leviathan.  I'm going to circle back to that concept now, because it's this post's main topic.  The State of Nature refers to what people were like before sociopolitical structures like cities and governments existed.  These days, it's a question for anthropologists and paleontologists to research, but a few hundred years ago it was primarily a philosophical question.  Several philosophers and political theorists have offered up explanations of what the State of Nature was like, but I'm going to focus on two prominent ones: Thomas Hobbes and John Locke.

You might remember from the first blog post that Hobbes didn't have a very positive view of humanity, so it's not a big surprise that his description of the State of Nature was grim and brutal.  He saw human life in the State of Nature as "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short", because people were in a constant battle for survival.  And I do mean battle.  Since Hobbes considered survival to be the ultimate goal, whatever got someone closer to that goal was justified.  In other words, anything goes and fair play is out the window.  Might makes right and everyone is at war with everyone else.

Now that you have an idea of what the State of Nature according to Hobbes looks like, you might be thinking it makes a good setting for an action/adventure story.  Well, as it turns out, a lot of people in Hollywood have had that same thought.  Hollywood loves a good fictional anarchic setting, and they've churned out a lot of stories straight out of a Hobbesian State of Nature: everything in The Dark Knight Rises after Bane takes control of Gotham; Lord of the Flies; Mad Max; and the hunger games (the contest within the books, not the books themselves).  Now, more than a few people have wondered why don't people just stop fighting, if the State of Nature sucks so much.  That's an excellent question, and I'm going to answer it by linking to a quick video (the same video used to provide an answer to me when I was a poli-sci student).  For those who didn't follow the link, it's the Mexican standoff scene from Reservoir Dogs.  It's a great illustration of why nobody stops fighting - they don't want to put down their weapons and leave themselves vulnerable.

On the somewhat opposite end of the spectrum we have John Locke, who laid out a more optimistic, less violent vision of what the State of Nature looked like.  Locke's concept imagined more cooperation and less combat, and mutually agreed-upon social structures that fulfilled societal needs in the absence of a government.  Locke didn't go so far as to believe people would behave ethically 100% of the time - he understood that some people would not feel like "playing nice", so some proportional punishments would sometimes be necessary to maintain society and deter these individuals.  Locke's idea of the State of Nature is less exciting, but it still shows up in this scenario: a diverse group of individuals with strong opinions have to put aside their differences for a greater goal.  The Avengers is a decent example.  The members of the team are (mostly) noble and heroic, don't fully like or trust each other, but have to work together despite their differences and manage to cooperate pretty well.  The Dirty Dozen, Top Gun, and most disaster movies adapt a Lockean concept of society as well. 

So how do these concepts relate to real life? Well, there are plenty of examples of both the Hobbesian and the Lockean versions of the State of Nature throughout history and the modern world.  Under the "Hobbes" column, you have Afghanistan, Russia (to a certain degree), and parts of Mexico and Albania under control of drug cartels.  Anywhere a lawless and violent enclave or region exists, basically.  On the "Locke" side of the ledger, you have New York after Hurricane Sandy and post-civil war Lebanon (this one might be a stretch). 

So there's a quick look at the State of Nature concept.  We'll revisit it in a future post, and will take a look at the Social Contract next time.

The Force, The Matrix, Hogwarts, and Plato

The concept I'm discussing in this entry is more of a general philosophical one instead of a politically-themed one, although it does have some relevance to politics which I'll mention later.  I wrote about it because it's such a well-known thought experiment, as well as a prolific one in books, movies, and TV shows (especially in the sci-fi genre).

The ancient Greek thinker known as Plato is one of the most influential philosophers in history.  Even if a person has never read any of Plato's works or doesn't realize how vast of an impact he had, they are usually aware that he has been hugely influential.  One of his most well-known philosophical concepts was his allegory of the cave.  I won't go into a lot of detail about the allegory, but you can read about it here.  Plato's main thrust of the story is that most people don't see the world for how it really is.  They're deceived by illusions that create a false image of the world, and few people make the journey out of this illusory world and into the real one.  The imaginary world is a world filled with a person's false perceptions and ignorance, and they enter the real world when they discover fact based upon the application of reason and intellect.

This concept doesn't have a lot of relevance to politics.  The closest application I can think of comes from my own personal experience - although it's still a bit of a stretch.  Getting a security clearance and being able to read classified intelligence reports opened up a doorway to a lot of information that usually doesn't make it into the news (a lot of that intelligence is exaggerated, half-true, or outright false - but that's another post in itself).  The point is that, to some degree, I had shifted from one way of seeing the world to another.  I got to read reports summarizing conversations between countries that didn't appear to have any meaningful relationship, at least based on what I read in the news.  But mostly, Plato's "cave" fable applies to politics like that classic Bismarck quote: "No one should see how laws or sausages are made."

The "cave" concept shows up a lot in works of fiction, though.  It's been a key theme in a handful of extremely popular sci-fi and fantasy franchises, as well as many lesser-known ones.  Whenever one of the main characters gets introduced to a fantastic world they previously had no idea even existed, you're seeing an example of the allegory of the cave.  Here's a handful of popular ones: Harry Potter's introduction to the world of magic, Luke Skywalker learning about The Force, Neo and the Matrix, and Agent K joining the Men in Black (okay, maybe this one's not quite as popular as the others).

So there you go.  You've probably watched at least one movie or TV show, or read a book, that used Plato's allegory of the cave without realizing it.  If you look for it, you'll see it lots of places.

"Train like you fight" - an old army saying

"There's an old saying in the Army that you should 'train the way you fight.' For the most part, the Army ignores it.  That's why regular Army units almost always get their asses kicked in their initial battles, unless they have a long train-up period before their first taste of combat.  Under those conditions, units will develop training programs that actually prepare men for combat.  But for some strange reason, the generals and other senior officers see to it that peacetime training has little resemblance to reality." - CSM (Ret.) Eric Haney, Inside Delta Force

I saw a news story a few days ago that caught my attention, about how SECDEF Mattis wants the military to cut away some of the non-combat related training requirements.  Here's a decent summary from the Air Force Times: "Notably, Mattis has ordered a review of the 'requirements for mandatory force training that does not directly support core tasks' – the many hours soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines spend prior to deployment meeting the Pentagon-required tasks that sometimes have little to do with the role they will actually fulfill when deployed."

I have a couple different takes on this development. . .

Here's why I support what Mattis is doing: I served a four-year hitch in the Army.  I suffered through my share of unnecessary, useless training, and naturally I complained about it.  Loudly and often.  My position hasn't changed in the years since I separated from the military.  I once heard someone say that the military's purpose is to "break things and kill people." That's stark, but it's absolutely right.  The military needs to spend more time training for war and less time waxing floors, marching in parades, and parking Humvees in a perfectly aligned formation.  Support troops should go to the range more than once every 2 - 3 months.  Riflemen should go to the range at least once a week.  Intelligence analysts should be reading up on every intelligence report related to their unit's future Area of Interest months in advance, not just weeks - all the analysts, not just the officers and senior NCOs.  And because of the nature of the current conflicts the US is waging, there needs to be thorough training on the area's culture and history, and some level of language proficiency.  That's not touchie-feeley nonsense: asymmetric warfare requires a lot of direct interaction with locals, so the troops need to understand them to keep from alienating them.  It helps them do their jobs better, and ultimately keeps them alive.  If Mattis wants to move the armed forces closer to that objective, I could support it - with a few caveats.  Read on. . .

Here's why I'm wary about this new policy: the US military already has 800-something bases in various foreign countries.  Not all of these are full-blown military posts like the ones in the United States, of course, but 800 installations is a lot.  The United States already takes a lot of criticism for its interventionist military posture: besides the overseas bases, it conducts a lot of counter-terrorist missions (mostly drone strikes and SOF raids) and espionage operations in other countries.  It's not farfetched to think that a more highly-trained military force would lead to more interventions, and I don't think that's a good thing.  Military interventions anger the locals, encourage retaliation, and increase the odds of a terrorist attack on US soil.  To paraphrase George Washington, the military would seek out bigger and meaner foreign dragons to slay.

Here's why I think Mattis will have an uphill battle: Mattis is up against a lot of entrenched interests, including defense contracting companies, Congress, and the military itself to some degree.  Not to mention the bureaucratic realities of budget and material constraints.  I say defense contractors and Congress because the military is like a house that looks like a mansion on the outside but a tenement on the inside.  It has plenty of sexy-looking hardware such as tanks, fighter jets, and aircraft carriers; but is sorely under-equipped when it comes to day-to-day items: cleaning supplies, office supplies, computers & printers, training materials, tools, spare parts, and so on.  There's definitely not enough money for the intensive training I'd like to see happen, probably not even for the modest increases in training Mattis envisions.  To implement the kind of training that could really be helpful, Mattis would have to spike some of that costly hardware; and neither the contracting companies nor Congress will allow that to happen.  Congress controls the purse strings, and defense contractors bring jobs to Congressional districts.  Do the math on that one.

Ultimately, I think Mattis will be lucky to accomplish a few incremental changes.  A tiny bit of improvement here and there, at the fringes.  But a decent-sized overhaul is unrealistic.  And I'm kind of glad.  I think the inadequate training helps put the brakes on overseas military operations, or at least from expanding further.  If the military retrenched and only worried about the continental US + Alaska and Hawaii, then I'd be a huge cheerleader in Mattis' corner.  But seeing as how we haven't had a military like that since about before World War I, I can't really get enthusiastic about it.