I previously promised to set out my ideas for a messy compromise (there’s no other kind) on Iraq. I start with the assumption that Blix’s report tomorrow will report Iraqi compliance with the demands that were explicit in 1441 and formed the basis of most discussion beforehand, such as unfettered access to palaces, government offices and so on, but that compliance has been less satisfactory in other respects. The other basis of my analysis is that Saddam poses no significant threat in the short-term (say one year) or at least no threat that could be reduced by an invasion (the risk that he will give WMDs to terrorists is enhanced, not reduced by an invasion).

On this basis, the compromise I favor and think likely is one that allows for continued inspections while raising the bar on Iraqi compliance. Obvious instances include requiring U2 flights and unchaperoned interviews with scientists, with or without their consent. As regards the gaps in the Iraqi declaration that WMDs have been destroyed, there is an obvious analogy with the recent fuss over John Lott and his supposed survey. The appropriate strategy is to identify specific types of records of the destruction process that should exist and demand their production.
The basic idea of the compromise is to continue applying pressure on Iraq until we reach one of the following clear-cut outcomes:
(a) A ‘smoking gun’
(b) Clear Iraqi non-compliance with a specific demand
(c) A clean bill of health

The other pressure that needs to be applied is on the US, to ‘put up or shut up’ regarding its evidence for war. If they have evidence that there are weapons in some specific location they should tip off the inspectors and watch the site to make sure nothing is moved. If they have more general evidence, they should publish it to the world. And if they want to assert that the inspectors are leaking material to the Iraqis, they should offer some proof of that.

Obviously, an outcome leading to war could arise at any time. A clean bill of health, leading to the removal of sanctions might take longer, say six to eight months. I don’t see a problem with this if the Americans are prepared to keep up the threat of military action. And if they don’t have the patience to keep an invasion force on hold for a few months they clearly lack the capacity for the years of occupation and nation-building that would be required after an invasion.

Steven Den Beste at USS Clueless writes.

If we fight, and if we win, and if we win rapidly, and if the rate of American casualties is low, and if the overall casualty rate is low, and if afterwards plenty of evidence is uncovered about Iraq’s WMDs and Iraqi involvement in terrorism – all of which I now think is quite likely to happen – then people will look back and see this as an example of leadership, and they’ll be right.

Well, yes, especially if as Den Beste also predicts, the invasion produces a democratic government in Iraq and if this is the beginning of full-scale democratic reform in the region. Granted these eight or nine “ifs”, I would support an invasion, and, should the invasion take place and produce these outcomes, I will admit that my opposition was based on an incorrect assessment.

I can’t see though, how the ultra-confidence of Den Beste and others in a quick, complete, nearly bloodless military victory squares with the insistence that the war has to start in the next couple of months before the weather gets too hot for fighting. The only obvious route to a quick and easy victory arises if Saddam’s armies mutiny and refuse to fight at all, and presumably hot weather will not reduce the chances of this. More generally, if we agree that a change in the weather will upset everything how can we rule out some other unforeseen contingency of the kind that wars have produced since time immemorial.

Although not strictly relevant to this post, I think it’s worth noting at this point that, even in purely military terms, a decision to go to war without letting the UN process reach a conclusion will have substantial costs, by curtailing any Turkish involvement and therefore foreclosing the “Northern option’.

Update My blogtwin, Tim Dunlop, quotes the identical para from SDB, then says “Well maybe, but I count six big ‘ifs’ in that paragraph…”. The BlogGeist strikes again, right down to turn of phrase!

Further update Steven Den Beste replies here, dismissing the northern option of an invasion from Turkey. I don’t have any basis to doubt his expertise on this, but this option certainly got plenty of apparently well-informed press. In the previous post he says, that he’s puzzled by the sharp swings in rhetoric coming out of Washington (me too!) and gives an exhaustive list of possible interpretations. He goes for misinformation, as he has in the past. I prefer the view I’ve been putting forward for some time, that Blair can’t persuade his Cabinet to dump the UNSC and join a US invasion. So there’s nothing new here that’s likely to change prior beliefs. Nevertheless, it’s well-worth reading Den Beste’s presentation of the alternatives.

Yet further update Kevin Batcho shares my analysis, pointing out the threat posed to Blair by Gordon Brown.

Jack Strocchi poses the challenge:

Now it is time for the peace bloggers to start doing their sums. If the US caves in, I issue this challenge to the most competent advocate in the peace camp: what will the long term consequence for international order be when the US is forced to backdown and relinquish global threat neutralisation responsibilty to the impotent and inept UN and the unwilling EU?

Given that Jack has adversely characterized the EU and UN, let me observe that the US is thoroughly ill-suited to the role of hegemon in which he wants to cast it. The US record in the Middle East proves this. The problem states in the region, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Iran (as well as the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and OBL himself) are current or former US clients, and the problems we have now can be traced directly to past US policy. In addition, the US has excluded all other powers from intervening in the Israel-Palestine dispute, and the disastrous failure to achieve peace must be laid at the door of the successive US administrations who have asserted ownership of the problem.

The defects of past policy are entirely evident today. The first is a black-and-white notion of good and evil, which, when combined with realist power politics produces disastrous outcomes. One regime is demonised as uniquelyevil, with the result that all its enemies are regarded as good. In the 1980s, Khomeini’s Iran was the villain and Saddam was “a thug, but our thug”, using weapons of mass destruction with the tacit approval of the US. Today, Saddam is the villain and the Saudi and Kuwaiti governments are good guys.

The other, even more noteworthy defect is a short attention span. In five years time, Iraq will still be a mess but the Americans will have forgotten about it and moved on to some other concern. If anyone picks up the pieces it will be the EU and UN that Jack derides.

The alternative to US hegemony is a series of messy compromises, formulated on a case-by-case basis. I’ll post more on what this means in the case of Iraq soon.

It’s getting harder to read the tealeaves as the UNMOVIC report (Jan 27) and Bush’s State of the Union speech (Jan 28) draw closer, but the latest reports saying that the U.S. May Not Press U.N. for a Decision on Iraq Next Week seem to support the messy compromise scenario.

The Erskineville Trendy

I’m pleased to meet you, my name’s Will
I’m doing up a terrace in Erskineville
Two up, two down and an outside loo
It’s a perfect steal, only 1.2
Hooray, home sweet home
Paying 6 per cent on a thirty year loan

Work a six day week and a twelve hour day
But the mortgage gobbles up all my pay
So I dabbled in dotcoms to make some cash
I lost the lot, now I’m dealing hash
Hooray, grateful thanks
For second mortgages and Japanese banks

I’m ripping up th floorboards and stripping back the walls
Putting potplants on the balcony and pictures in the halls
Getting bruises on my knees and blisters on my hands
Hooray, aches and pains
It’ll all be worth it for the capital gains

Prices keep on rising, I’m telling you
A man just doesn’t know what to do
The cost of a living is a perfect disgrace
You should see what they charge for iron lace
Hooray, ain’t that nice
Fifty grand more on the resale price

I’m between two railways with a flight path overhead
Very close to transport the agent said
But we’ve blocked off all the roads, it’s really neat
You need a degree just to find my street
Hooray, happy days
Living out my life at the bottom of a maze.

I pinched this one from the master of Australian satirical parody, John Dengate. The original was about a battler, who worked in a factory in Erskineville, and followed the ponies in a futile attempt to save the deposit for a block of land. My parody was written in the 1980s, but updating was easy – I just multiplied the prices by a factor of ten.

Alex Robson has announced that he is closing his blog and moving to intermittent posting at the new Australian Libertarian Society collective blog – this seems to be something of a trend.

Given that a significant proportion of the posts at ALS so far have come from the unspeakable “Strawman” (his pieces gloating over the Canberra fires represent the bottom of the Australian blogging barrel), additional input has to raise the average standard. At this point, I can’t resist the temptation to refer to the joke about an academic moving from Oxford to Cambridge and raising the average intelligence level in both places, but I’ll try to redeem myself with a serious comment.

While I’m not a libertarian, I’ve certainly learned a lot from libertarian contributions to public debate, particularly in the blogosphere. I’m always interested, for example, to read what Jim Henley or Jason Soon has to say on any issue of public concern. I wish the ALS site well, and hope that open debate there will strengthen the humane and rational strand in libertarian thought.

Although Howard is still calling for more time for the UN process to be completed and denying that we have taken a decision to participate in an invasion of Iraq without UN sanction, our masters think differently.

It is their prerogative, if they choose, to be on the sideline,” the White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said of France and Germany. He said President Bush was confident that much of Europe, including Britain and probably Spain, Italy and some Eastern European countries, would “heed the call,” as would Australia.

We all know the score, and Fleischer is almost certainly right, but I thought the US government liked to make some pretence of deferring to the constitutional processes of its client states. The correct form is to give the orders to Howard and then let him announce them to us.

From what I can see, almost all the governments nominated by Fleischer as obeying US orders are still doing their best to keep the hope of some sort of UN sanction alive (even Blair has been careful not to commit himself all the way, despite his recent swing to tough rhetoric). This is a war that no-one outside Washington really wants, particularly given the desperately thin casus belli Bush is currently putting forward.

Update Judging by today’s papers, Howard has got his orders, but has yet to work out a palatable way of passing them on. In the meantime, here’s another take on the coalition of the not unwilling from Andy Borowitz. Link via Tom Spencer

In the course of following up the work of John Lott, I came across some interesting points about defensive gun use (DGU). There has been a dispute between estimates based on surveys of crime victims, such as that of Hemenway et al, which show very low rates of DGU (less than 100 000 per year for the US) and others such as that of Kleck et al, which show as many as 2 million DGU’s per year. I came across an interesting piece by Tom Smith, which attempted a reconciliation between the two estimates. Among other things the the crime victimisation surveys exclude such crimes as “trespassing, vandalism, and malicious mischief”. By including these cases, Smith adds as much as 40 per cent to the derived from the crime victims survey, though this still doesn’t get him anywhere near the Kleck estimates.

It struck me that, even on the most generous definition of reasonable force, shooting or threatening to shoot a trespasser or vandal would be a crime more serious than the original offence, so I emailed Dr Smith to ask him about this. His response:

I’m no expert on American law, but such uses do meet the criminological definition of DGUs that has been used in the research literature. That literature also states that not all DGUs are necessarily legal or appropriate, just that the gun is used in response to a crime/threat in the mind of the user.

From this definition, it’s pretty clear that the kind of person who brandishes or even fires a gun in the course of, say, a dispute between neighbours over fence lines, could correctly record this as a DGU. The same goes for this case, where the outcome was more tragic (the killer was acquitted of a manslaughter charge, but that says more about Louisiana juries than anything else). Even the use of a gun in a street brawl would qualify, assuming that the shooter felt threatened.

On Smith’s estimates, such criminal misuse of guns constitutes as much as a third of all DGUs. The rate would be higher for the much more frequent use estimated by Kleck et al.

In summary, it appears that, if the Kleck estimates have any validity, they represent an epidemic of unrecorded gun crime.

This is good, if somewhat ambiguous, news. I’ll blog more on this at a later date

The Telegraph reports a public ownership plan for failing British Energy, the nuclear electricity generator privatised by Thatcher.

As yet renationalisation is primarily a device for picking up the pieces when privatisation has manifestly failed, but we can expect more aggressive action now that the taboo has been broken. And already the notion of privatisation as the inevitable wave of the future (taken as gospel only five years ago) is as dated as dialectical materialism.

As I mentioned, my last AFR piece on unemployment has been reproduced at australian policy online. Stephen Kirchner criticises me and says

The unemployment rate in NZ has already posted a low of 5.1% and could well push sub-5%. The NZ case demonstrates that a more liberal approach to labour market institutions can be successful in lowering unemployment.

I think this is drawing a pretty long bow. The National Party government in NZ passed the Employment Contracts Act in 1991. When the Nationals lost office in 1999 the unemployment rate was close to 7 per cent, above that in Australia. The incoming Labour government (which Kirchner criticises pretty regularly) repealed key aspects of the Act. The subsequent decline in unemployment (latest rate 5.4 per cent) may not be a consequence of Labor’s reforms but it certainly doesn’t help Kirchner’s case in the slightest.

Oddly enough, Kirchner goes on to endorse the ‘characteristically intelligent’ comments of John Edwards who begins by pointing out the failure of the radical free-market model in the US. Edwards goes on to respond to a number of the points that I raised in my piece (though he doesn’t mention names on either side), and concludes

If the Australian economy continues to grow over the next few years at the rate I expect, it won’t be long before we are more worried about finding workers than finding jobs.

Of course, a few more years of growth would imply a 15-year expansion, which would certainly be good for unemployment. This may happen, but I see no reason to suppose that Australia is any more immune to the business cycle than the US where similarly rosy predictions held sway until very recently.