Life in the Kool Aid Jacuzzi Posted by Lorelei Kelly

Small steps forward for the UN: In the interests of documenting UN reform, how's this?:  Recently Kemal Dervis was named head of the United Nations Development Programme despite financial enticements offered to the organization by two other nations with candidates in the running, Japan and Norway. Meritocracy worked.

I agree with Derek about the need for Members of Congress and their staffs to travel abroad. The more international perspectives we can get on Capitol Hill, the better. As a Hill staffer, I experienced both the boondoggle and the worthy educational tour. Sometimes they were truly over-the-top. Awhile back, I was on a trip to view some very expensive military hardware with a group of (mostly Republican) staff. It was like being the Greenpeace observer on a tuna boat--with the crew eating roasted dolphin for dinner. Unbelievable. Over the course of a week, defense industry lobbyists in tow, I found out how easy it was to go from drinking the kool-aid to full-out swimming in the kool-aid jacuzzi. Eeeuw! I had to shower for a week when I returned.  But most of the international trips were to rainy Brussels in January to discuss NATO or the European constitution. Not too sexy, but very helpful.

Congress insanity:  The Hill --when not fleeing incoming cessnas-- is going through its yearly appropriations process--the time when the money is doled out.
Here's how distorted the oversight and budgeting procedure has become: The State Department requests funding through the Defense budget because it is so beleagured and unsupported that it can't get the funding in its own right.  Then the Defense Department transfers the money back to State.  Why? Because Congress only really wants to fund military spending.

Why is our policy making process so out of whack, despite the many warnings from all quarters, criticisms from greybeard Republicans and promises to improve heard across the government? I'm relying once again on the social sciences for an explanation.  Remember intro psychology? More to the point, remember the Stockholm Syndrome?  It is commonly known as identifying with the hostage taker--named after an incident in Sweden in 1973.

Well, both political parties are presently stuck in a sort of Stockholm Syndrome of defense policy, captured by President Bush, his right wing allies, and cowed by his main policy theme: inspirational fear.

Captives of Stockholm Syndrom begin to identify with their captors initially as a defensive mechanism, out of fear of retribution and based on the idea that the captor will not hurt those who cooperate (They won't run those awful ads in my district.) Small acts of kindness by the captor are magnified and are cause for groveling or rationalization (I feel queasy, but, well, he did go to the UN, so let's go ahead and approve of pre-emptive war in Iraq by 77-23 in the Senate and 296-133 in the House.) Capitives also vociferously defend the hostage taker (Zell Miller at the convention.) Rescue attempts are seen as a threat (Quit giving me all those namby pamby alternatives, traitor!)

Putting policy makers in analysis: Foreign Policy in Focus has just released its Unified Security Budget which makes the case that it is pro-military to be against militarization.

"During the last year, the ground under the security debate has begun to shift. A diverse and growing universe of voices, including former national security advisors, representatives of the business community, and the Bush administration itself, now recognizes that expanding the role of nonmilitary tools in our portfolio of security spending is necessary to keep Americans and the rest of the world safe. In the
federal budget, though, where the debate takes concrete form, this shift barely registers. Small increases planned by the administration for some nonmilitary security programs would still leave the overall proportion of resources severely unbalanced."

This document underscores the need for more soft power--economic aid, rule of law support, diplomacy--in other words, the power to attract others to our interests.  But it also moves beyond the traditional liberal "guns versus butter" framework and moves forward with the guns versus guns debate.

So now everyone is on the same page about the need for more soft power to balance out our military dominance--neo-cons and liberals. A true test of this belief will be if President Bush aligns his administration and the Republicans on the Hill with his rhetoric, and follows it up with demonstrated political will. Although many military professionals are talking about the need for change, few civilian elected leaders stand up for real difference. 

There is no obvious political constituency for soft security and team Bush squandered a great public education opportunity to talk to Americans about new threats and different priorities during campaign 2004. Instead, he skewered John Kerry repeatedly for saying that defeating terrorism will require a law enforcement and an economic strategy. His campaigned continued this absurd line of reasoning despite the fact that his own administration testified to the same end in Congress. 

For policy, then, The Stockholm Syndrome is self-defeating.  But not for elections. At least not yet.

Comments

[manoppello]

According to Chaim Potok in his book "Wanderings: History of the Jews" it could be called the "Ur" syndrome. The early Sumerian city states gave up early agrarian democracies to procure security and survival during emergency situations. Unfortunately, the generals that were appointed to see the city through the end of the emergency found ways to ensure that the emergency never ended... it often lasted for decades. Eventually it lead to royal succession.

Thus, this appears to me to be more along the lines of the "Ur" syndrome as opposed to the Stockholm syndrome.

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James Titus

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