Might Japan Be the Broker to Negotiate Peace Between Israel and Palestine?

After the American Century

The Middle East has been the burying ground for American diplomatic missions for decades. Each new president and each new Secretary of State thinks peace is finally going to be attainable. Each is disappointed in different ways. Sometimes peace seems to have been achieved, with treaties signed and handshakes all around. That was Jimmy Carter's experience. Relations were better for a while, particularly between Egypt and Israel, but real peace did not emerge. It is too tedious to go through all the other administrations before or since then, but no one who has followed it all can help but be a bit depressed.

Not only is Israel seemingly no closer to peace with its neighbors than in the 1960s, but the entire neighborhood is in a worse uproar that usual. Syria is in a civil war, with millions of refugees, and none of the three (or is it four or five?) sides is a particularly attractive option.  Iraq is falling apart, along religious and ethnic lines, even in the face of the rise of ISIS, a new factor in teh region, which seeks to create an Islamic state. The Egyptians have gone back to military rule, after a brief experiment with democracy brought the conservative Muslim Brotherhood to power. Lebanon is struggling to remain out of the violence in Syria. The Palestinians are split into two factions. The one in Gaza continues to launch largely ineffective rockets at Israel, to show that they can do it. In return they are pulverized, and gain some sympathy outside the region. But the Hamas is bankrupt, economically speaking, part of the fallout from the Syrian civil war.  For decades Hamas has built complex systems of tunnels underground, which have now been destroyed. The other Palestinians are a bit less militant, but also unable to come to an agreement with Israel.

But perhaps because things are so bad, a negotiated settlement might be attainable. However, this requires a neutral broker to do the job. Who could that be?  When American diplomats attempt to negotiate peace, they are usually perceived to be Israel's allies, and it is hard to convince Arabs that Washington can be an honest broker. Yet Americans are even-handed, the Israeli government typically becomes upset and stirs up problems in the US, through its conservative allies. In short, the Americans are in many respects not well-positioned to broker a deal. Perhaps it is time for the US to step back from its direct diplomatic efforts and instead to encourage another nation to take the lead.

But if not the Americans, who? The EU would seem the obvious choice, but the EU does not have a shared foreign policy. Each member state has a somewhat different policy, and it cannot function effectively in such a negotiating situation. (Indeed, the EU is not good at handling international crises.)  Russia has strongly sided with Syria, where it has a major base, which makes it unacceptable to Israelis. What has long been needed is an honest broker whom both sides have no reason to distrust. The lone superpower manifestly cannot impose a settlement, or it would done so by now. Instead, a country like Japan, Brazil or South Africa might be able to do broker successful negotiations, though none of these three seems to have any inclination to do so. 

My own preference would be Japan, precisely because they are so far from the Middle East and have no obvious axe to grind. The Japanese are also patient negotiators, who take for granted that before a meaningful agreement is possible it is necessary to spend some time face to face. Wouldn't it be worth a try? Imagine Palestinian and Israeli representatives in a pleasant, remote Japanese hotel, with a view of the sea. Taken away from their familiar surroundings, immersed in the fascincating cultural world of Japan, they might gradually find some common ground.

What might be in it for the Japanese? Three things. (1) International praise for succeeding where all others have failed, with a very real chance to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. (2) National pride as Japan shows its importance on the world stage, pushing its economic stagnation and nuclear woes into the background. (3) Recognition as a force for peaceful coexistence, in contrast to Chinese muscle flexing in their own region.

As the US heads into another presidential election, it seems particularly unlikely that it can negotiate peace between Israel and Palestine. It is time to admit the obvious facts. The US is too entangled with its ally Israel to do the job, and it has so many complex and often conflicting interests in the Middle East that it will have trouble focusing on this single problem.  But will any other nation take up the challenge?

Government web pages

After the American Century

I often have the same experience with web sites set up by governments and monopolistic organizations supported by government:  dysfunctional pages, where the services are hard to use. It requires many clicks to find the information or perform a simple task. For example, when one tries to use the website of the Danish post office system, to tell them when one is on vacation and does not want mail delivered. This proved an impossible  task in over half an hour of trying.  The site kept crashing on me and sending incomprehensible error messages.

In contrast, I had no trouble buying a plane ticket, making hotel reservations, or finding lots of useful information, all provided by people who need to survive in the marketplace.  I realize that this might make me sound like a Republican who wants to reduce government to national defense and farm subsidies, but that is not at all the case.

Some government websites do work well, notably those that provide weather information, which is often of life-and.death importance.  But all too often public services are digitized in order to save money, and to become "more effective," which is often means firing staff and forcing the public to deal with whatever website is substituted.

The solution might be to compare services in different countries and use those that work best as models for others to adapt to their own cultures and circumstances. Most of the needed innovations are probably out there, waiting to be emulated.

So, an example. The Danish tax system, which successfully collects the highest taxes in the world, at least is user-friendly. The citizen can see his tax situation on-line, where most of the needed information is automatically gathered from banks, pension plans, employers, and other institutions. Not only this year's tax is there, but several years previous as well. This particular Big Brother is watching, but they are also communicating what they see, and the taxpayer has a chance to correct or modify it. The taxes may be high, but at least they are extracted with little pain,  and there is a dialogue between citizen and government institution. It is not always the happiest dialogue, of course!

In contrast, another advanced industrial economy, I will not name names, which lies somewhere between Niagara Falls and the Baja California, estimates that a citizen filling out its standard tax form needs a total of 15 hours, or two entire days, to read and understand the basic forms and advice, and then do the calculations needed. The form is blank at the start, and the citizen has to try to remember everything and make no mistakes. (The Danish form is filled in by the tax authorities, and the citizen only has to check the facts, and then make additions or changes.) I know a few people from the other nation, and they tell me that it is often not possible to complete the form in 15 hours without assistance. There is an enormous amount of information on-line, and there are numbers to call for more information, too. But it is a much harder process to negotiate, and once the forms are filled in and delivered, I have it on good authority, one often never hears anything back.  

In Denmark, feedback on all tax returns is made available on a particular date, and the whole country tries to find out at the same time. Now that can cause a cyber traffic jam.

Is the Internet Shortening attention spans and undermining long term cultural memory??

After the American Century

I have been silent for longer than at any other time since this blog began in 2007. I might blame this on any number of events. But my silence has much to do with increasing doubts about the overall effects of the Internet on our lives. The increasing commercialization and the wholesale acquisition and resale of knowledge about everyone using the Internet are disturbing.

It is not just the NSA that invades our privacy. So do many others. Some do so openly.  My opinions, friends, likes and dislikes, and much else is gathered by Facebook. Credit card companies gather data about the purchases of their cardholders. Google has built up an enormous mine of data for resale. As one analyst put it, Internet users have become the product that Internet companies sell.

Many others invade our privacy illegally, prying their way into on-line identities, extracting money from digital bank accounts, or assuming false identities and telling us lies in the hopes that we will give them a pin code or a social security number. Cyber criminality is big business, and the ordinary individual does not have many weapons to fight back.

Once, enormous corporate advertising budgets went to magazines and newspapers, and in exchange one had a vibrant news media. This is all changing today, and it is not yet clear to me that the Internet is an improvement. Yes, everyone can publish, including myself. But there are so many voices competing for attention that only a tiny fraction get an audience. The older media often seem to be dominating the Internet, in any case, and, more and more, they are charging for their services. Is the overall result positive? It is too soon to be certain.

A similar pattern is evident in book publishing. There are far more authors than ever before, but most titles are now self-published. Bookstores are dying. Academic publishers are struggling. The reading audience does not seem to be growing as fast as the population. Moreover, the newspapers seem to review fewer books, and they seldom take note of academic titles, compared to the situation 20 years ago.

For about a decade the answer to these worries seemed to be that e-publishing would expand the market. But in 2013 sales of e-books in fiction fell just slightly, the first time this had ever happened. Overall, e-book sales have flattened out after rising quite rapidly in the first years. At present, the e-book is eating into sales of hard copy books, but the overall sales are not increasing. Predictions seem to be that e-books will surpass printed volumes in the very near future, but the market as a whole is not necessarily growing. 

Moreover, the number of books actually being read is probably falling, if my own experience is any measure. I have purchased many inexpensive e-books and downloaded quite a few free ones, but I have read very few of them. I got them because they were free and made it possible to search a large corpus quickly. This is admittedly an advantage. But when I buy the complete works of Mark Twain for a few dollars, in order to search them easily for certain materials, such a multivolume purchase falsely suggests a larger reading public than is actually is out there.

The kind of public that surfs the Internet constantly is not thinking long and hard, it seems. The attention span dwindles. Like students who browse the Web during classes (which they have seldom prepared for, in any case), the Internet seems to support banter and jokes on Twitter more than thoughtful, long analysis.

In short, the pluses may be gradually outweighed by the minuses of the Internet. This is particularly clear in Denmark, where the government has decreed that all communication between the state and the citizen must be conducted digitally. More, they have created systems that only work with new computers, so that anyone, like myself, who has a 32-bit computer literally cannot log in. I know a number of older people who do not even know how to use email, and they will effectively be cut off. I intend to make a personal and a written protest, along with a request to be allowed a tax deduction for purchasing an other wise unnecessary new computer. 

In a similar move, the Danish state schools are beginning to demand that all parents supply their children with a laptop or an Ipad for use in school every day. Imposing this expense while saving money on textbooks is wrong. Asking children under 10 to carry around a valuable computer is an invitation to thieves and bullies. Expecting teachers to solve the software problems that will ensue because children have different systems and machines is an idiotic waste of their time. Assuming that technology makes education better without public discussion is dubious.  I could write a column about this issue alone.

But to keep to the larger perspective. The new reality is that banks, government, schools, and employers now demand that everyone has a new or recent computer. It is fast becoming impossible to pay taxes, seek a job, pay a bill, or keep track of expenses without mastery and continual updating of multiple accounts, including continually changing passwords.

Worst of all, I suspect that in the long term this vast digital system is going to suffer memory losses. On a personal level, I cannot now access the things I wrote and in many cases published in the 1990s. The software and the hardware has changed too much. Does anyone really believe that if a tax or financial or legal issue arises that requires older records, that these will really be available? The jury is necessarily unable to decide this issue, and we will just have to wait several decades to find out.

Last year I was in a small courthouse in Iowa, and wanted to see some records from 1894. They were handwritten, easily retrieved, and perfectly legible. Will the same thing be true of our digital records 120 years from now? I doubt it. 

Is the Internet shortening attention spans in the short term, and undermining long term cultural memory? Is the state beginning to abuse the Internet and demand "participation" in digital systems simply to save money and to distance itself from actual contact with citizens? Are state institutions, such as schools, substituting technology for books and other physical resources, and transferring the cost to citizens? In the name of efficiency and convenience, we seem to be entering a digital prison, with short-term advantages but long-term costs, not the least of which is collective memory loss.

On Becoming A Knight

I was knighted in Copenhagen on Monday, 27 January.

Such ceremonies are private, with no reporters or photographers allowed. Even family members are not permitted to attend or to wait inside the palace. I had originally thought to write up the experience, but I have realized that it would be considered improper for me to write at length about this happy event. Not everything is open to public scrutiny!

The medal that one receives cannot be sold or transferred to anyone else. It remains the property of the Queen, and must be returned after one passes away. It must be worn whenever I am in the Queen's presence. I have not yet needed to wear it a second time.

The Longterm Perils of Fracking

After the American Century

Fracking is much in the news. This new way of extracting oil and natural gas is controversial because, while it lowers energy prices and generates jobs, it has an environmental cost. If North Dakota is booming and crying out for more labor, deep beneath the surface of the state fracking is pumping chemicals into the bedrock.  No one knows with certainty how this may affect the ground water a generation from now. North Dakota is extracting oil using this method, while it is being used in Pennsylvania and New York to extract natural gas.

Regardless of where fracking is taking place, the public does not know what exactly is being injected into the ground, because industries regard this as a trade secret, and no legislation forces them to disclose what exactly they are doing to the land. However, some of these chemicals used in fracking are known, including hydrochloric acid, boric acid, sodium chloride, and ammonium chloride. Many of the chemicals are "biocides" that are intended to kill bacteria.  Others seek to change the ph of the water.

It may seem amazing, but the "Safe Drinking Water Act" has an exemption for hydraulic fracturing (or fracking). The act specifically does not control or regulate, "the underground injection of fluids or propping agents (other than diesel fuels) pursuant to hydraulic fracturing operations related to oil, gas, or geothermal production activities." (See the Environmental Protection Agency.) There are rumors that some oil and gas drillers are using nano-technologies whose environmental consequences are not known.

Fracking demands large amounts of water, between two and eight million gallons for a single well. Permits have been issued for more than 80,000 wells, and these typically have pools of waste water nearby. Lawsuits in several parts of Pennsylvania and New York have established that this chemically charged waste has polluted drinking water. The contamination is necessarily a mix of chemicals injected by the drillers and substances already in the ground that were released along with the oil and gas. These also include the methane being sought; Duke University scientists found methane in many wells near fracking operations in Pennsylvania. It may be that methane is not toxic in small does, but it definitely is "an asphyxiant in enclosed spaces and an explosion and fire hazard." A methane-polluted well is unsafe as a domestic water supply.

Safe Water Drinking Act to remove a special exemption for hydraulic fracturing - See more at: http://www.dcbureau.org/201203097069/natural-resources-news-service/cuomo-and-corbett-ignore-health-concerns-from-gas-fracking.html#sthash.iZpPPkht.dpuf

Safe Water Drinking Act to remove a special exemption for hydraulic fracturing - See more at: http://www.dcbureau.org/201203097069/natural-resources-news-service/cuomo-and-corbett-ignore-health-concerns-from-gas-fracking.html#sthash.iZpPPkht.dpuf

The long-term pollution of water is an obvious danger that is being downplayed in the rush for quick profits, but there is another danger that is less discussed. Fracking has given the oil and gas energy regime a new lease on life. Just five years ago one could argue that both national security and the danger of global warming pointed to the need for a rapid conversion to alternative energies. But in 2014 US oil and gas production is soaring to the point where the government is under pressure to allow the nation to become an oil exporter again. The falling cost of natural gas is making the US highly competitive in some industries, in contrast to Europe where gas prices are noticeably higher. In the short term, this stimulates the economy, but in the longer term it encourages Americans to remain high energy consumers, embracing an unsustainable style of life.

The current American oil and gas bonanza will delay, perhaps for an entire generation, the transition away from fossil fuels to sustainable homes, vehicles, and consumption levels. Leadership in the new technologies of wind, solar, and bio-fuels may continue to slip away from the US to foreign competitors. Germany, for example, has made a major commitment to becoming more energy efficient, even as it is abandoning nuclear power. The Danes have developed one of the world's largest and best windmill industries.The Chinese are investing heavily in solar energy and have out competed the US for foreign markets.

Fracking may be good for the American economy in the short run, but in the long run it cannot be very good for the land itself. Furthermore, it misdirects economic development toward an inefficient, high-energy dead end. It will not reduce the cost of oil, because that is shaped by world demand, which is rising rapidly. It will retard transition to a sustainable energy regime, and it may well undermine US competitiveness in the growing area of alternative energy technologies.

The United States is opting for a strategy of quick profits and "pollute now, pay later."  Most of the costs will be paid by later generations.

NSA Violations Undermine the US Abroad: Is this Obama's Legacy?

After the American Century

This is the 400th blog entry for After the American Century.

More revelations about the NSA's snooping are being discussed in the world press, and it is increasingly clear that the NSA has undermined US relations with allies. How much distrust it has created cannot be quantified, but every Danish person I have discussed this with dislikes what the NSA is doing, including colleagues, teenagers, pensioners, students, neighbors, and taxi drivers. All can see that some spying is needed for national security, but hoovering up all the data available seems not just expensive, not just overkill, not just excessive, but the actions of a rather paranoid international bully.  Sorry, my American readers, but this is the bad news the domestic press is not saying too much about.

Because the underlying reputation of the United States in the world has been adversely affected, news is beginning to appear about American businesses losing contracts abroad because of fears of NSA surveillance, fears that trade secrets are being stolen, fears that negotiations and bidding on lucrative contracts are being spied on, and so on. Many foreign businesses want to avoid saving data on US systems, because of these fears. Some estimates suggest that the IT industry alone may lose $180 billion in foreign business because of the NSA revelations. Little wonder that the largest technology companies wrote an open letter to President Obama protesting the NSA's over-reach.

Likewise, many ordinary people abroad wish they could stop using American-owned sites, such as Google, Facebook, Twitter, and all the rest, because the newspapers have confirmed that all these corporations are compromised. In the end, it matters little whether they intentionally shared date with the NSA or were hacked by the NSA. The lack of privacy is more than disturbing; it is driving a wedge of distrust between the US and the rest of the world.

The average person assumes that if the German Prime Minister is not safe from NSA snooping, if the Israeli Defense Minister is not safe, if the diplomats of the EU are not safe, then of course no one else is safe either. The assurances that  information gathered is not shared with other government agencies rings rather hollow. After all, Mr. Snowdon was able to obtain huge amounts of information about all sorts of things. There appear to be thousands of others with the same security clearance. Have none of these men and women ties to other US government agencies? Are all of them able to resist pressure to help out a friend in another government agency? Are none of them corrupt? Who can seriously believe that the federal access to information is limited to NSA?

Unhappily, this ongoing scandal may become what President Obama is remembered for. On the one hand, he spent hundreds of billions on a global paranoia project to gather more information on more people than ever before in history. On the other hand, he did not allocate sufficient funds or find sufficient expertise to put Obamacare into working order. This is bad leadership.

The conclusion I reached in June still seems valid. Then I wrote that "The problems of the Obama Administration are to a considerable degree of its own making. Presidential second terms are often difficult, and this one seems to be no exception. Think of Lyndon Johnson after his re-election, when antiwar protests dogged his every step. Think of Richard Nixon's second term, engulfed by Watergate. Think of Reagan's second term, and Irangate. Think of Bill Clinton's scandal-ridden second term and the attempted impeachment. And finally, think of George W. Bush's second term, when his approval ratings sank below 25%. Since 1963, not one  president found a way to escape controversy and unpopularity in a second term. Obama unfortunately seems headed toward a similar fate." President Obama's popularity rating has sunk by more than ten points since this time last year. Recent second-term presidents have often had ratings around 50% at the end of their fifth year. Obama's rating is 43% according to CBS, but only 40% according to Gallup.

What an irony it will be if the American economic recovery is compromised by the NSA and Obama's slow correction of its excesses. How ironic that a president who began his term with tremendous good will abroad has squandered it.

The sad spectacle seems to justify the title of this Blog itself. The American Century perhaps could be dated from 1918, when the US emerged from World War I as the wealthiest power, with the world's largest industrial plant. The US reached the apogee of its economic power in the early Cold War, but its hegemonic position has gradually eroded as a percentage of the world's economy since then. To some extent this was unavoidable, as other nations industrialized and digitized. But there is also a purely internal decline into dysfunctionality that is not primarily due to external foes. No outside power eviscerated public education. No foreign government forced the US to have unworkable immigration laws. No international agency failed to monitor and control its banks. No nefarious outsiders are responsible for the foolish tax policies of the Bush years or the problems created by the "sequester." No outsiders force Americans to purchase ever more weapons for personal use. These egregious and unnecessary errors are just part of a catalog of mistakes that would drag down any nation, if persisted in long enough. The United States seems intent on undermining and defeating itself. The excesses of the NSA are part of that pattern.

Education: Pisa Test Results, 2012

After the American Century   

Pisa rankings have been developed, based on extensive testing in 65 countries.  Students at age 15 were tested in math, reading and science. When taking all three tests scores into account, the first forty nations are ranked as shown in the list below. Note that the first three scores are for cities, not nations. Impressive as they are, they cannot easily be compared to entire countries. South Korea and Japan have high scores for a much larger sample, including a cross-section of the entire population.

In general, the top twenty are improving, in some cases remarkably. But most of those with composite scores below 1520 are not improving or only improving a little. Geographically, Asia leads, followed by Eastern Europe, and then Western Europe plus New Zealand and Australia. Well below the middle one finds the United States. There is a dismal tie between Latin America and the Moslem World for the weakest showing. The real last place may be somewhere in Africa, which was not included in the study.

                                                        score in 2009        improvement

1. Shanghai                   1783             1731                     52

Above 1600

2. Singapore                  1666            1630                    - 36

3. Hong Kong               1661             1637                   - 24

4. South Korea             1628              1623                   -  5

5. Japan                        1621              1588                    33

6. Taiwan                     1606               1558                    48

Above 1550

7. Finland                     1588               1631                  - 43

8. Estonia                     1578               1541                    37

9. Liechtenstein           1576                1555                    21

10. Macau-China         1568               1523                    45

11. Canada                   1566               1580                    14

12. Switzerland            1565               1552                    13

13. Poland                    1562               1503                    59

14. Netherlands            1556               1556                    no change

Above 1500

15. Vietnam                  1547                n.a.                     

16. Germany                 1546               1530                   16

17. Ireland                    1534                1489                   45

18. Australia                 1534                1556                   22

19. New Zealand          1528                1559                   21

20. Belgium                  1519                1528                  - 9

21. United Kingdom     1507                1500                    7

22. Czech Republic       1500                1473                  27

23. Austria                     1502                1503                   1

Above 1475

24. France                       1499              1491                    8

25. Slovenia                    1496              1496                   no change

26. Denmark                   1494              1497                   -3

27. Norway                     1488              1501                  -13

28. Latvia                        1482                n.a. 

29. United States             1476              1489                 -13

From 1422-1469

30. Italy                          1469

31. Luxembourg             1468

32. Spain                        1468

33. Portugal                    1464

34. Hungary                   1459

35. Lithuania                  1455

36. Iceland                     1454

37. Croatia                     1447

38. Sweden                    1446                1486                 - 40

39. Russia                      1443

40. Israel                        1422

Latin America (selected scores)

Chile                            1309

Costa Rica                   1277

Mexico                        1252

Uruguay                      1236

Brazil                          1206

Argentina                    1190

Colombia                    1178

Peru                            1125  (last place in all categories)

Moslem World (selected scores)

Turkey                        1386

Unit. Arab Emirates   1324

Tunisia                        1190

Jordan                         1188

Qatar                          1148

Indonesia                    1153 (next to last place overall)

With the notable exception of Finland (which declined from a high position), the Nordic nations made a poor showing. They have collectively fallen toward the bottom of the league table. If their decline continues, within another decade one of them might be relegated and formed to move en masse to Argentina.

Decline in education may well be a predictor for a decline in economic development a generation later.