Matthew Yglesias: Economists, Pro and Con

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Economists, Pro and Con

I'm going to have to agree with Henry Farrell that dismissing a person's work merely because he's an economist and "therefore" a rightwinger is a pretty damn shoddy intellectual effort. Among other things, it's not immediately clear to me what a person's political views have to do with his research into the origins of baby names or other potentially interesting social phenomena. For another thing, near as I can tell we liberals often want to highlight the many ways in which economic incentives structure behavior. If you haven't heard a liberal argue that one good way to reduce criminal behavior is to increase the wages available to unskilled workers or else reduce the number of workers who lack skills, then you're not looking very hard. More examples, no doubt, could be provided.

On the other hand, this sort of analysis of Iraqi insurgents' behavior doesn't seem to be getting us very far. Indeed, the insurgent strategy's not that hard to grasp, though it probably could have been implemented better.

May 16, 2005 | Permalink

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Comments

Sutherland does spout a lot of shit. He's good on English literature (you would hope so, given that he's a professor of it), but not on anything else.

Posted by: Ginger Yellow | May 16, 2005 1:38:15 PM

the iraqi insurgency is not only not that hard to grasp, it's hard for me to imagine how they could have implemented it better (conceivably they could have avoided the handful of set-piece battles with US forces, but they've largely learned that lesson).

whether the multi-dimensional game in iraq will play out as the insurgents want it too is a different question from whether they could have implemented their strategy better. There are other players in the game.

Posted by: howard | May 16, 2005 1:42:36 PM

Indeed, the insurgent strategy's not that hard to grasp,

Indeed. Unfortunately, the blog to which you linked - Needlenose - has done a remarkable job at NOT grasping it.

It is utterly obvious that the terrorist strategy is NOT to try to provoke the US into overreacting. Most of the terrorists' attacks are NOT against the Americans, but rather against Iraqi civilians. It does not appear that difficult to attack Americans to try to provoke them. There are plenty of places that Americans are in Iraq that could be attacked. Hell, we don't even hardly see the old tactic of mortar attacks at the Green Zone. Instead, there are lots of car bombs attacking Iraqi civilians, which has nothing to do with provoking Americans.

Smarter left-wing analysis, please!

Posted by: Al | May 16, 2005 2:03:01 PM

Actually, child names appear to affect student disruption...
http://bear.cba.ufl.edu/figlio/sue.pdf

And I'm pretty sure that the author is not an ideological nut of any kind.

Posted by: benton | May 16, 2005 2:13:09 PM

Well, Al, apparently you didn't read the links that carefully (what makes you think that the iraqis don't think that the US forces overeact?), but to spare you the effort of looking again, i'll quote the daily telegraph (a decidedly conservative newspaper) to you:

British defence chiefs have warned United States military commanders in Iraq to change their rules for opening fire or face becoming bogged down in a terrorist war for a decade or more.

The Telegraph has learnt that the warning was issued last month in response to a series of incidents that led to the deaths of Iraqi civilians, mainly at checkpoints, after soldiers opened fire in the mistaken belief that they were being attacked by suicide bombers.

The warning is said to have taken the form of advice from senior officers who accompanied Gen Sir Mike Jackson, the chief of the General Staff, on a recent trip to southern Iraq and Baghdad to visit British troops.

A conversation took place between officers on the differences between British and American rules of engagement, during which British commanders expressed their concerns over the use of US tactics.

They attempted to explain that in their experience of post-war counter-insurgency operations it paid to adopt a low-key and less aggressive stance.

American officers were told that when the British Army had made mistakes, such as in Londonderry in Northern Ireland in 1972 when troops shot dead 13 civilians during a civil rights march, the political and military consequences had been disastrous.

In the past month alone in Iraq there have been more than 130 car bombings and 67 suicide attacks that have killed more than 400 people. The attacks have led to renewed fears among coalition officials that American and Iraqi forces are losing the fight against the insurgency.

According to senior British officers, US military operations are typified by "force protection" - the protection of troops at all costs - that allows American troops to open fire, using whatever means available, if they believe that their lives are under threat.

By contrast, the British military has a graduated response to a threat and its rules of engagement are based on the principle of minimum force. Troops also have to justify their actions in post-operation reports that are reviewed by the Royal Military Police, and any discrepancy can lead to charges including murder.

A British officer said that some of the tactics employed by American forces would not be approved by British commanders.

The officer said: "US troops have the attitude of shoot first and ask questions later. They simply won't take any risk.

"It has been explained to US commanders that we made mistakes in Northern Ireland, namely Bloody Sunday, and paid the price.

"I explained that their tactics were alienating the civil population and could lengthen the insurgency by a decade. Unfortunately, when we ex-plained our rules of engagement which are based around the principle of minimum force, the US troops just laughed."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/05/15/wirq15.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/05/15/ixworld.html

Anyhow, this is means to an end. The strategy itself is quite clear: if we can get the Americans to leave, we'll take our chances on regaining power. Which is, of course, what you can find if you read the links Matthew provided carefully.

Posted by: howard | May 16, 2005 2:22:19 PM

Howard,

Apparently you didn't read my post very clearly. Because if you did, you would understand that the fact that so many bombs explode far away from Americans - killing Iraqi civilians - demolishes that theory. Take, for example, this attack:

"Attack Kills 4 Baghdad University Students"
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/16/AR2005051600402.html

What happened, the attackers were trying to attack Americans to provoke them, but missed and hit the university instead? No. The terrorists were not in any way trying to provoke Americans; rather, they were simply trying to kill Iraqi civilians. Given that this type of attack is increasingly the case, your (and Needlenose's) theory is simply proven wrong.

Posted by: Al | May 16, 2005 2:41:59 PM

I'm an economist, and I'm a liberal. So, um, there you go.

Posted by: Kimmitt | May 16, 2005 2:50:48 PM

Al, you're confusing tactics and strategy.

The current focus of insurgent tactics is to prevent a functional government from getting off the ground.

The overall focus of insurgent strategy is to get the americans out. They've already created a situation where understandly nervous soldiers shoot first and ask questions later. They don't need to provoke that any further: the reaction has already been ingrained.

Posted by: howard | May 16, 2005 2:52:56 PM

It's worth noting that Swopa's analysis is confirmed in great detail by this Boston Globe article.

Posted by: praktike | May 16, 2005 2:57:08 PM

While the insurgents seem to be successful in provoking overreactions, I don't know if it really is "so easy to understand." First, Needlenose--and implicitly, Matthew--is assuming that the insurgency is being directed by the "former government." This is unproven. Hitchens has us believe that the "insurgency" (a term he objects to) is a coalition between the Baathists and jihadists led by Zarqawi.

Not to say that he's an authority on the subject, but it seems a pretty intuitive point: couldn't the seeming "illogic" of the targetting of Iraqi civilians above and beyond American troops (targetting American troops in public areas would do quite well in provoking excessive response) be a result of the incomplete intersection of two (or more) disparate policy goals? I.e., couldn't an effort at provoking American response and instilling of fear among Iraqi civilians be conjoined with some instances of purely expressive or retributive violence. Couldn't this also--a la Battle of Algiers/Mao red book--be a power play to force a choice among the civilians, keeping them from being confident in remaining neutral? By directing violence at the larger civilian population, aren't they expressing through violence the substance of the statement "either your with us, or your against us"? Only through costly action--contributing directly to the insurgency in some regard, or fleeing the country entirely--can one remain safe to some degree? Further, and this contradicts my last speculation, isn't part of the underlying notion of "force protection" as well as the stated assessments of Bin Laden among others that we Americans place far too high a value on life? The lives of civilians and fighters are not valued highly in the larger understandings of Al qaeda (or the Baath party, for that matter), so the deaths of large numbers of civilians, insofar as it does not truly become counterproductive, is largely ignored as long as it keeps the insurgency going? Time is on their side, in terms of getting Americans to leave, so all other factors are secondary to the goal of creating chaos in any way.

These points are unclear, but are meant to illustrate that certainty regarding the strategies of the insurgents is presumptive, and speculation that there is no cohesive set of principles to the violence is quite reasonable.

Posted by: alex | May 16, 2005 3:05:59 PM

Of course, some Iraqi with shitty Soviet-era mortar is always hitting what he is aiming at but the most complicated military machine on the planet kills a bunch of people on accident near daily.

Posted by: Ed Marshall | May 16, 2005 3:07:23 PM

Alex, other than citing hitchens you seem like a pretty smart feller, so it's worth addressing your comments a bit.

Certainly it's presumptuous for me sitting here at a keyboard and a monitor to pretend to a detailed knowledge of every action the insurgents take. Indeed, it's probably presumptuous to think that the "insurgents" are one, single unified force: while the bulk of the insurgents, all along have been Sunnis, they haven't been the exclusive participants.

So it's entirely possible that there are multiple perspectives and causalities (indeed, Phil Carter has a discussion of this point, and i apologzie for my Ludditic inability to create a link: http://www.intel-dump.com/archives/archive_2005_05_15-2005_05_21.shtml#1116169874)

But i don't think it's presumptuous at all to conclude what i concluded (and millions of others did as well) roughly 2 weeks after major combat operations ended (ah, the halcyon days!): that the Sunnis, and in particular the former upper echelons of the Saddam regime, saw no future for themselves in a rule-of-law driven, market-oriented democracy, and would do whatever they could to disrupt the creation of such a utopian Iraq.

This means two things in practice: a.) get the americans out; b.) don't let a sucessful government form and win friends and influence people.

I can't say for sure about "a;" many of us who opposed the war nonetheless also oppose an abrupt departure of american forces, and certainly there is no chance of an american departure while george bush is still in office, but forcing us to lose 50-100 soldiers, see hundreds to thousands more injured, and spend billions every month has to count as progress from an insurgent, get the US out perspective.

Meanwhile, as for the second, it's hard to see how anyone can claim that the insurgents aren't doing a good job preventing an effective government from getting off the ground, especially by targetting police, military recruitment, and senior officials.

In short, that there may be no "cohesive set of principles to the violence" is probably a true statement, but it doesn't really help us very much in an analytic sense: the goals, to me, remain very clear.

Posted by: howard | May 16, 2005 3:16:05 PM

Well, I wish you would enlighten us then Matt, since the neither of the two Needlenose posts you cite manage to convey any coherent hypothesis about the nature of the insurgency - or at least no hypothesis that saves the insurgents from the charge that they are just "losers", as professor Joes suggests. Yet swopa and fubar seem to resist this charge strenuously.

Here are several hypotheses about the overall nature of insurgency, most of which seem to me to cast the insurgents into the "losers" category:

1. The insurgents are at this point simply defending themselves, savagely and aggressively, as they come to the end of the line. Most of those deeply involved in the insurgency know that they have no chance of surviving - literally - the consolidation of power by a new Iraqi government, and so they continue to attack that government and its security forces, to forestall as long as possible that fateful day when they meet their last end from the barrel of a government gun or at the end of a government noose. [If this is what is going on, then the insurgents are indeed "losers" - or "dead-enders" - fighting only to delay the inevitable.]

2. They seek both to drive out the Americans and prevent the Shiities and Kurds from consolidating their control over all of Iraq, so that they may themselves regain control of all Iraq. [This is another loser interpretation. There is no realistic chance of the Sunnis re-establishing control over all of Iraq. If this is their aim, then they are idiots. The US might be compelled to withdraw, but they will continue to arm the Kurds, and several powers including possibly both Iran and the US would continue to arm the Shiites. And no cold war rivals are going to come to the rescue and arm the Baathists the way the US armed Saddam. These guys don't have many friends left.]

3. They seek both to drive out the Americans and prevent the Shiities and Kurds from consolidating their control over all of Iraq, so as to preserve for themselves some Sunni-run rump portion of Iraq. [This makes much more sense as a realistic, achievable strategic objective. And it makes sense of the attacks in places like Mosul, aimed at preventing Kurdish rule over Sunni Arab populations. But if this is indeed the plan, why are they are not attacking US forces as vigorously as they did in the past, but focussing so much on Iraqi government forces and civilians instead? If their aim was to drive the US out, why wouldn't they attempt to inflict more pain on the US directly? And why burn so many bridges with the civilian population?]

4. The insurgents do not want to drive the US out, but actually want to keep the US in Iraq. By continually weakening the governement and its security forces, disrupting the economy and terrorizing civilians, they hope to tie the US down in Iraq for a long time. [This makes sense perhaps from a "jihadist" point of view, but not a Baath point-of view. My understanding is that the insurgency is mainly a Baath-lead affair, in which eager jihadist suckers from neighboring countries are recruited as suicide bombers. But why would Baathists or "neo-Baathists" want to keep US forces in Iraq?]

5. The violence is expressive - bitter and resentful destruction aimed only at venting rage and causing pain to enemies, without regard to any achievable political objectives. [This is perfectly, though regrettably, intelligible from an ordinary human perspective. But it would suggest the ultimate in loserhood - the collapse of politics and strategic goals into nihilistic despair and frustration.]

6. The violence is aimed at such local, liitle aims as settling vendettas, personal aggrandizement, profitting from the business of gun-running and warlordism, etc. [This is in some sense understandable and rational behavior, but if this is what is mainly going on, then there isn't realy much of an "insurgency" at work in Iraq at all, and the insurgency has already lost.]

7. The insurgency is promoted by outside powers - other states that prefer to tie the US up in Iraq for their own purposes, including the purpose of keeping the US out of their own states. It is driven by monetary enticements to the leaders, and ideological enticements to some of the jihadist foot soldiers. [This makes sense, if true, but it again portrays the insurgents themselves as mainly suckers/losers - pwans in someone else's game.]

One thing all these hypotheses have in common, is that the US is in a forlorn position no matter what - mixed up in intractible local conflicts with no end in sight, and stuck to an Iraqi tar baby.

Posted by: Dan Kervick | May 16, 2005 3:31:31 PM

Al, you're confusing tactics and strategy.

The current focus of insurgent tactics is to prevent a functional government from getting off the ground.

The overall focus of insurgent strategy is to get the americans out.

Howard, that makes no sense. The "tactic" of preventing the government from effectively starting has nothing at all to do with the "strategy" of getting Americans out. Indeed, if the point really is to get Americans out, the fastest way to do that would be to get the government running! So your two points contradict themselves.

But you are also missing the broader point. Even IF the strategy is to "get the Americans out" - what's the purpose of that? Why would they want the Americans out? It certainly doesn't seem as though the insurgents want to govern the country again -- after all, as the article says: "The insurgents in Iraq are showing little interest in winning hearts and minds among the majority of Iraqis, in building international legitimacy, or in articulating a governing program or even a unified ideology or cause beyond expelling the Americans. They have put forward no single charismatic leader, developed no alternative government or political wing, displayed no intention of amassing territory to govern now."

So it is pretty clear that the insurgents do NOT want to govern the country again. So, why do they want the Americans out?

Posted by: Al | May 16, 2005 3:31:43 PM

Indeed, if the point really is to get Americans out, the fastest way to do that would be to get the government running!

Now you just need to give everyone in Iraq a lobotomy so that's believable.

Posted by: Ed Marshall | May 16, 2005 3:34:24 PM

One thing all these hypotheses have in common, is that the US is in a forlorn position no matter what

Actually, none of those scenarios really say anything about whether the US can effectively respond.

Posted by: Al | May 16, 2005 3:34:40 PM

Indeed, if the point really is to get Americans out, the fastest way to do that would be to get the government running!

Not if:

1) The government is an American puppet, and
2) The government is inclined to tolerate and/or welcome a substantial American military presence.

(1) is probably not true, but they may think so. (2) is absolutely true.

Posted by: Kimmitt | May 16, 2005 3:35:56 PM

1) The government is an American puppet, and
2) The government is inclined to tolerate and/or welcome a substantial American military presence.

(1) is probably not true, but they may think so. (2) is absolutely true.

(1) is probably not true, but they may think so. (2) is not true, at least depending on what you mean by "substantial". After all, we know that pressure can be brought to bear, but internally in Iraq and externally in the international community, for the US to take its military out of Iraq -- at least substantially, if not completely -- once the situation there has been pacified and the government established.

Posted by: Al | May 16, 2005 3:42:25 PM

John Maynard Keynes a right winger? Heh.

Posted by: Ontario Emperor | May 16, 2005 3:42:48 PM

Read this

http://www.babynamewizard.com/blog/2005/04/name-onomics.html

and this

http://www.babynamewizard.com/blog/2005/05/names-race-and-economists.html

There's nothing wrong with being an economist. There is something wrong with ignoring social science done on a topic becuase it isn'T your field.

Posted by: Ikram | May 16, 2005 3:49:19 PM

I find myself in agreement with Al on this point. The Americans would love to begin reducing their presence in Iraq, if only so that they might turn more of their attention to others on their hit list, and begin to make more credible threats aginst them. Attacking civilians, infrastructure and native Iraqi security forces is likely to prolong the US occupation, not shorten it.

Posted by: Dan Kervick | May 16, 2005 3:53:55 PM

'Reducing their presence in Iraq' doesn't mean 'getting out'. The US administration would love having a peaceful situation in Iraq, with a sufficiently pliable local government. That was the goal from the beginning - set up a puppet state, withdraw most troops from the country, with the rest in large, remote bases where they could be reinforced and strike at need. Remember that such independence as the current Iraqi government has it due to Shiite resistance and the guerrrilla war.

Posted by: Barry | May 16, 2005 4:04:37 PM

Al, i realize that it's your habit to pretend that things don't "make sense" if you don't agree with them, but still....

The Sunni/Baathists have never had a program for "winning hearts and minds," so the fact that they don't have one now isn't at all the same as saying they don't want to be in control. Saddam ran the country for quite a long time without giving a rat's ass about hearts and minds, and there are plenty of other examples around the world of leaders who could care less about "hearts and minds" (take this country, for example, but i digress). Saddam took power in a coup, and he held power through totalitarian means. Why should anyone in iraq (whose whole existence is a story of control without "hearts and minds") think otherwise? It's the people who want there to be a free flow of ideas, free speech, open political debate, the sorts of things that democracy means, who have the uphill struggle against previous norms....

Now, what are the impediments to the same old same olds running iraq? Why, they are the US military presence and a functional iraqi government.

So there shouldn't be anything at all confusing to you about why the insurgents would want the americans out and wouldn't want an effective government: an american withdrawal that results from clear indications of an effective, multi-ethnic government in iraq does not help the cause of those whose interests lie in re-establishing totalitarian control. This isn't really that confusing.

Dan, i don't understand: since you think the situation is FUBAR, why do you think the insurgents can be accurately labelled as "losers?" At least Al doesn't think that the situation is FUBAR, so when he wants the insurgents to be "losers," it's part of a coherent point-of-view (democracy in iraq is a good thing, people who are opposed to democracy in iraq will, in the end, fail in their opposition, and therefore, the opponents of a democratic iraq are, by definition, losers, especially when they blow up other iraqis).

I think we don't have to think all that hard (although some of your premises are also potentially true) about what the insurgents have in mind: they don't want US aims to succeed. This is what swopa, et al have argued, and it's what i argue too. You may not agree, but why isn't that a "coherent" approach?

Posted by: howard | May 16, 2005 4:05:16 PM

Dan, i see that you posted further while i was wrriting, so just to address your 4:04 in slightly greater detail:

the US leaving under positive circumstances (a nascent government earning nascent respect, domestic security forces ready and able to replace americans for national security purposes) is not, in any sense, a positive outcome for the insurgents. A positive outcome for the insurgents is the US leaving under conditions of failure.

Context, in short, is everything.

Posted by: howard | May 16, 2005 4:08:20 PM

That was the goal from the beginning - set up a puppet state, withdraw most troops from the country, with the rest in large, remote bases where they could be reinforced and strike at need.

Nobody - not even the Administration - knows whether that will be politically possible. As I mentioned above, both internally in Iraq and externally in the international community, pressure can be brought to bear on the US to withdraw completely. However, we can be pretty sure that large troops withdrawals will be less likely with an insurgency raging than without.

Posted by: Al | May 16, 2005 4:11:46 PM

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