Philosophy.Com

Robert Kagan + The Kantian paradox

The central claim in Robert Kagan's Power and Weakness’ essay in the foreign policy journal Policy Review, later expanded as a book in 2003 was that Europeans and Americans no longer share a common view of the world and, moreover, that in essential ways they can be understood as occupying different worlds. It is an articulation of the neo-conservative view of international relations.

For Kagan, both strength and power are based on military capability, and nothing else. Kagan asserts that strength, and therefore power, is something that America has, and that Europe lacks. It is this lack of military capability that Kagan calls “weakness.” Europe is turning away from power, or to put it a little differently, it is moving beyond power into a self-contained world of laws and rules and transnational negotiation and cooperation. And while Europe has withdrawn into a mirage of Kantian ‘perpetual peace’, the US has no choice but to act in a Hobbesian world of perpetual war. This state of affairs, for Kagan, is not the result of the strategic choices of a single administration, but a persistent divide and the reflection of fundamentally different perspectives on the world and the role of Europe and the US within it.

The fact that Europeans are able to stepp out of the Hobbesian world of anarchy into the Kantian world of perpetual peace’’ was made possible only by American power which assured the Cold War peace. In his article Kagan adresses an issue he calls the “Kantian paradox”:

The United States, in short, solved the Kantian paradox for the Europeans. Kant had argued that the only solution to the immoral horrors of the Hobbesian world was the creation of a world government. But he also feared that the “state of universal peace” made possible by world government would be an even greater threat to human freedom than the Hobbesian international order, inasmuch as such a government, with its monopoly of power, would become the most horrible despotism. How nations could achieve perpetual peace without destroying human freedom was a problem Kant could not solve. But for Europe the problem was solved by the United States. By providing security from outside, the United States has rendered it unnecessary for Europe’s supranational government to provide it. Europeans did not need power to achieve peace and they do not need power to preserve it.

The US is thus invoked into a number of positions: as global leader (faced with Europe’s fail-ings/withdrawal), but also the only state able, due to its power-position, to perceive threats clearly; the only one with a God’s eye view of international affairs. It is thus, at once, the world’s geo-politican and its geo-police; the only state with the ‘knowledge’ but also the capability to intervene.

These ideas prepared the ground, and legitimate US unilateralism and its doctrine of pre-emptive action.The US is Leviathan. The single superpower is the world's policeman, which is not bound by the rules which it enforces. It has no choice but to pursue “law and order” policies. The United States unilaterally assumes the role of international sheriff enforcing peace and justice through the muzzle of a gun. Such a vision is a flat rejection of the rule of law. A self-appointed sheriff is a vigilante.

The rest of the world benefits by either living in a protected paradise (Europe) or in a lawless anarchy which longs for the order made by the superpower (Third World). In Kagan's world, it is by and large power that drives the actors and determines their respective positions in the international system.

It is true that the rest of the world, and Europe in particular, depends on a United States that is willing to employ its huge military and economical capabilities for issues of global concern and the implementation of international law. Without the power of the hegemon, international law remains a dead letter. In the absence of a world Statewith a world police force the enforcement of international rules and principles simply cannot do without “coalitions of the willing”acting with the support of the single superpower.

As Andreas Paulus argues in Antinomies of Power and Law: A Comment on Robert Kagan in the German Law Review Issue 4 no 9 2003:

Power without international recognition and legitimacy will not be viable. Legality without power will remain a dead letter. The compromise between law and power has to be negotiated and re-negotiated. The global institutions where this permanent negotiation takes place may be slow, bureaucratic, burdensome, cynical. But ifthey did not exist, we would have to invent them.

Xmas Day: Solway rose

Merry Xmas everyone.

Gary Sauer-Thompson, white Solway peace rose, Encounter Bay, Victor Harbor, 2009

Have a lovely, relaxing break.

Agamben + biopolitics

Agamben has called attention to the fact that Michel Foucault,despite introducing the concept of biopolitics in the late 1970s (The History of Sexuality, Volume I) "never dwelt on the exemplary places of modern biopolitics: the concentration camp and the structure of the great totalitarian states of the twentieth century." Instead Foucault dwelt on disciplinary institutions, in particular, the prison. But, to Agamben, "the camp -- and not the prison -- is the space that corresponds to this originary structure of the nomos." Agamben argues that life captured within the sovereign ban is bare life, and as such, is life irreparably exposed to the force of death that characterizes sovereignty. Further, Agamben argues that the originary relation of the law to life is not application, but abandonment

Catherine Mills in Agambenʼs Messianic Politics: Biopolitics, Abandonment and Happy Life in Contretemps December 2004

The IPA + market failure

The key point about the use of emissions trading schemes to address green house gas emissions and global heating is that the market by itself is not able to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions. So what those free market institutes, such as the Institute of Public Affairs, who argue against the Rudd Governments emissions trading scheme, propose to do about mitigating greenhouse gas emissions.

Greenhouse gas emssions are what economists call a negative externality. If a firm pollutes the atmosphere when it produced electricity through coal-fired power stations, and if it is not forced to pay for the use of this resource, then this cost will be borne not by the firm but by society. Hence, the market price for this electricity will fail to incorporate the full opportunity cost to society of producing. More electricity will be produced from coal fired power stations than would occur were the firm to have to pay for all of its costs of production and the greater the cost to society (public good) from the pollution.

The existence of a market failure and the subsequent tragedy of the commons is often used as a justification for government intervention in a particular market. The market-driven approach to correcting externalities is to "internalize" third party costs and benefits, for example, by requiring a polluter to repair any damage caused. Two ways to address this are a carbon tax, or charging a fee for the right to pollute and allow polluters to sell the pollution permit.

The issue of market failures (and how they should be addressed) is a source of dispute between different schools of economic thought. Economists from the Chicago school and the Public Choice school, argue that market failure does not necessarily imply that government should attempt to solve market failures, because the costs of government failure might be worse than those of the market failure it attempts to fix. Others, from the Austrian school argue that there is no such phenomenon as "market failures".

Though the Institute of Public Affairs runs ETS chokes the economy argument I'm unclear about the position of the IPA on market failure. They appear to be both opposed to government attempt to solve market failure through an emission trading scheme and to not accept the concept of market failure.

If the IPA have any solution they seem to favour technological solutions based on entrepreneurial action through the normal workings of the market. On this account the existence of "market failure" is seen as irrelevant or temporary.

However, reliance on the Austrian School leads to a deadend. According to this account:

Conventional economics teaches that if the benefits or costs of one person's economic decisions spill over onto others, an externality exists, and it ought to be corrected by the government through redistribution. But, broadly defined, externalities are inherent in every economic transaction because costs and benefits are ultimately subjective. I may be delighted to see factories belching smoke because I love industry. But that does not mean I should be taxed for the privilege of viewing them...Another area where Austrians differ is how the government is supposed to go about the practical problem of correcting for market failures. Grant that somehow the government can spot a market failure, the burden of proof is still on the government to demonstrate that it can perform the task more efficiently than the market. Austrians would refocus the energy that goes into finding market failures to understanding more about government failures.

It leads to the dead end of individual subjectivism. I love electricity produced from coal fired power stations (its cheap), therefore I should not have to pay extra to use that energy. What is eliminated is the tragedy of the commons and the public good-- the contamination of the atmosphere, a shared resource. Hence the cooperative solution to the problem of the contamination of a shared resource is not possible.

The Austrian school is also opposed to government regulation:

For Austrians, economic regulation is always destructive of prosperity because it misallocates resources and is extremely destructive of small business and entrepreneurship.Environmental regulation has been among the worst offenders in recent years. Nobody can calculate the extraordinary losses associated with the Clean Air Act or the absurdities associated with wetlands or endangered species policies. However, environmental policy can do what it is explicitly intended to do: lower standards of living.

Planning and regulation inevitably result in failure because the abolition of private property, market competition, and money prices eliminates the institutional prerequisites for economic calculation, without which the central planner is left with no rational method to determine whether or not the resources under his control are being applied in an efficient manner. Hence we have the contradictions and inconsistencies that inevitably arise from all forms of government intervention and regulation in the marketplace.

There is no need for regulation because there is no tragedy of the commons or public good.