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February 11, 2007
Confused Americans for Truth - Unscientific American
Bruce was going through the index of the latest issue of Scientific American (March 2007), and came across the following blurb.
Preventing the spread of war will depend on strategies that recognize shared interests of adversaries.
This seemed an incredibly silly point of view, given that the primary conflict of our time revolves around groups of people whose only shared interest is that they don't want the other guys to have bragging rights to a stupid block of stone in the middle of Jerusalem.
The blurb, however, doesn't do justice to the article itself, which I believe was written on another planet. (Sometime next month a copy of the article will be located here, in case you want to see for yourself.) In the mind of author Jeffrey Sachs, the appropriate model for peace in our time is the Cuban Missile Crisis. Sachs describes how the 1962 Crisis was a prelude to a 1963 test ban treaty.
How does one go from the brink of war to a breakthrough peace treaty in under a year? Kennedy's methodological starting point was to avoid vilifying the Soviet Union or declaring the adversary to be evil. At every step, Kennedy assumed that Soviet counterparts were rational, though not necessarily beyond mistakes in their chosen actions.
But the test ban treaty was hardly a sudden shift. Negotiations had been going on for 8 years. The primary points of contention revolved around verification of underground tests. The breakthrough was simply to remove underground nuclear tests from the ban.
The most egregious problem with Sachs's analysis, however, is the fact that the nuclear balance of terror lasted for two more decades. When it finally came undone, the man at the helm of the United States was Ronald Reagan, who had quite famously vilified the Soviet union as an "evil empire".
So, recent history would seem to argue precisely the opposite of Sachs's conclusion. This, however, is not nearly as bad as the fact the world of 1963 is completely different from the one going on right now outside the window. In the brush fires of the Cold War, military violence was a means to a specific end: usually securing a profitable economic relationship. As such, there was always something to talk about when you sat around the table. The terrorists, however, are immune to any sort of negotiation. You can strike a deal with Fatah, and if Hamas doesn't like it they'll keep on killing.
The idea that terrorists should be treated as rational is exactly the miscalculation the Democrats have made. They cling to the hope that if we show the terrorists we're willing to back down, they'll stop hating us. What rational person would choose hate over peace? Unfortunately, the terrorists are irrationally holding a grudge over the results of the 1948 Palestine War, and until they're willing to give that up, the hate is just going to keep on keeping on.
So here's my suggestion to Scientific American: when you put up the March 2007 issue on your web site, instead of labeling the Sachs article as Sustainable Development, consider putting it in the section called 50 Years Ago.
If people think that Sachs is completely unaware of what's happened in the last five decades, his article will make a lot more sense.
Respectfully submitted,
Ferdinand T. Cat
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