It’s now clear to all that the US Administration has no real evidence on Iraqi weapons -there might be enough hints to help the inspectors, but even that’s not clear. Evidently, the strategy has been to apply maximum pressure and hope something turns up. For reasons that aren’t entirely clear, the Administration is pinning its hopes on a defector, having finally abandoned the idea of ‘compulsory out of country interrogation’ or, as Hans Blix put it, ‘abduction’. Others are not so sure:

At the crux of the differences between the administration and the inspectors, however, are questions about the value of such interviews. Rumsfeld and others have said that Iraqi defectors provided the basic leads proving that Hussein had withheld prohibited weapons during earlier rounds of inspections. But the inspectors maintain that the productive leads came from their investigations on the ground, for which interviews with Iraqi scientists were among several tools.

“They think a lot of scientists are just waiting to get out and tell their stories,” said one former inspector about the administration.

The U.S. intelligence community is leery about taking large numbers of Iraqis out of the country, saying that such a process will not necessarily produce the information the administration is seeking, and that it may undermine the existing clandestine relationships it has developed in Iraq.

Something may well turn up. But there’s no reason to suppose that this will happen at a time convenient for the wintertime war the Administration still seems to be planning. And, as I’ve previously observed, no evidence will almost certainly mean no British participation.

According to those well-known lefties at the Bureau of Meteorology, El Nino’s return in 2002 helped raise global temperatures to the second-highest on record , with Australia experiencing its hottest year on record and the Earth scorched with widespread drought. No doubt Bizarre Science and its imitators will shortly be producing lengthy demonstrations that the thermometers and rain gauges have been tampered with.

Before making a substantive post on Keith Windschuttle, I’ll declare an interest. Windschuttle’s press, MacLeay Press published a book by William Coleman and Alf Hagger (2001), entitled Exasperating Calculators: The Rage over Economic Rationalism and the Campaign against Australian Economists. I was criticized in the book (though not as sharply as others) and responded in kind in my review., which also covered a book by Wolfgang Kasper A short snippet:

lthough the authors claim to be responding to a ‘campaign against Australian economists’, their book contains more personal attacks on Australian economists, living and dead, of all schools and persuasions, than any other volume I have read. Those denounced include H.C. Coombs (‘elderly’ and ‘nostalgic’), Russel Mathews (‘frenzied’), Geoffrey Brennan (an ‘appeaser’), Stephen King and Peter Lloyd (‘indefensible’), Clive Hamilton (‘florid irrationalism’), Ted Wheelwright (‘insignificant’) and even Wolfgang Kasper, among many others. (The present reviewer gets off relatively lightly, as a ‘distinguished economic theorist’, who is prone to ‘foolishness’ in matters of policy).

My reaction to Windschuttle’s work is no doubt coloured by this book, which shares many of the faults he displays. It’s obviously polemical, but claims to be unbiased. The authors pick up trivial errors in the writings of those they want to attack, but (inevitably) their book is riddled with similar errors itself. They complain that opponents of economic rationalism haven’t defined the term, but offer no definition of their own.

In addition, although I didn’t want to waste the Fin’s review space on a personal gripe, I’ll use the freedom of blogging to suggest that the authors pinched the idea for their title from me. It’s a quote from W.K. Hancock’s Australia about the traditional Australian hostility to economists. In my book, Great Expectations: Microeconomic Reform in Australia, I quoted Hancock’s observation that ‘The Australians have always disliked scientific economics and (still more) scientific economists’ – I’m pretty sure I was the first to mention Hancock in the context of the microeconomic reform debate. Hancock’s reference to exasperating calculators is in the chapter following the one I quoted.

More generally, the historical discussion of economic rationalism in Exasperating Calculators draws heavily on my work and also on the work of Michael Schneider, without attribution (certainly in my case, and I think also in Schneider’s). It doesn’t rise to the level of plagiarism, a sin of which Windschuttle has been accused, but Coleman and Hagger are at least guilty of biting the hand that feeds them.

This NYT piece on the Bush response to the Iraqi declaration takes a long time to get the point, but finally says that Bush will not claim that the well-publicised omissions are sufficient to justify an invasion

Mr. Bush, some aides expect, will take a cautious approach, denouncing Iraq but stopping short of any pre-emptive action. Most likely, some officials say, is that President Bush will declare that what Washington sees as Iraq’s failure to account for missing chemical and biological weapons, and Baghdad’s declaration that all its nuclear weapons research has stopped, are the latest in a series of steps that violate Security Council Resolution 1441.

“I don’t expect the President will say that this this alone is casus belli” — a cause for war — said one senior Administration official. “But it builds the case.

Of course, the NYT has its best sources in the peace camp within the Administration, and people like Rumsfeld are clearly keen to declare war now, but the crucial point made in the report is that the British government is unwilling to back the claim that the declaration is a “material breach” sufficient to justify war. This accords with my reading of the British press. As I’ve consistently argued, Britain has an effective veto, not only because its military contribution is significant but also because the US public won’t support a war without international support and British participation is a minimal requirement for this.

An interesting sidelight is that the recent ‘Cheriegate’ mini-scandal over Cherie Blair’s dealings with Australian conman Peter Foster have been perfectly timed to weaken Tony Blair’s capacity to dragoon the Labour cabinet into supporting a war, assuming that this is what he wants. But the crucial factor is the weakness of the US case and the increasingly strong evidence that the ‘dossier’ Blair used as evidence against Iraq was at best erroneous in key respects and at worst fabricated. In these circumstances, it’s doubtful that Britain will be inclined to support any action until the UN weapons inspectors have made their report.

Obviously, all this is speculation. But I’ve had a pretty good track record on this so far. By contrast, the warbloggers have repeatedly overestimated the likelihood of war, and underestimated the need for international support. In September, for example, Steven Den Beste predicted

Support for the war in the US will rise; concern about foreign support for it will fall; American unilateralism will reemerge; Congress will grant formal approval in October; and actual hostilities will begin no later than the end of December.

We’re right on track.

I pick SDB because he’s among the most sensible of the warbloggers. As I noted a while ago, the majority have now descended into self-parody, or else moved on to other things.

Taking a break from corporate corruption and the war of the rich against the poor, Arianna Huffington focuses on America’s apostrophe catastrophe, one which is at least as bad in Australia, where any plural word can come with a free apostrophe. She defends spending time on this trivial issue saying

sometimes a small thing like this can have much bigger ramifications.

Think of it as the literary equivalent of the broken-windows theory of crime fighting, which holds that by fighting small quality-of-life crimes like graffiti and vandalism, police send a persuasive message that antisocial behavior, of any scale, will not be tolerated. In this case, putting an end to the chronic misplacement of apostrophes could eventually lead to a better-educated populace, a greater sense of harmony and order, more fuel-efficient cars, a slimmer, trimmer you, cleaner air, an end to the heartbreak of psoriasis, the cancellation of “The Bachelor,” and, who knows, maybe even world peace.

At this point, if Arianna were a blogger, she would surely invoke George Orwell. Mercifully, she doesn’t.

Nathan Lott continues his coverage of the EU-Turkey issue. I’d like to over the relatively optimistic view that, disappointing though the outcome was, even a ‘date for a date’ will be hard to break. Europe’s leaders will be forced either to confront xenophobic anti-Muslim sentiment or cave in openly. And, as far as Turkey is concerned, it’s hard to see them spitting the dummy at this point, and the only reasonable response is to push ahead with much-needed improvements in human rights. Nathan suggests his post will be the last for a while on this topic, and barring big news, the same is true for me.

A while ago, I asked whether Strom Thurmond had conceded that he deserved to lose in 1948. According to this piece by Timothy Noah the answer is no. He says

The legend of Strom’s Remorse was invented, by common unspoken consent within the Beltway culture, in order to provide a plausible explanation why Thurmond should continue to hold power and command at least marginal respectability well past the time when history had condemned Thurmond’s most significant political contribution

. Noah suggests that Thurmond made a few token gestures like hiring black staff, and was promptly given a free pass by the bipartisan Establishment.

William Safire seems to specialise in making counterproductive suggestions. A little while ago, it was his suggestion that a tame post-Saddam government would repudiate Iraq’s debts to any countries that were not enthusiastic supporters of the US. Now it’s his plan to interrogate Iraqi scientists outside the country. He says

Draw up his own list – the names and addresses of the leading 50 scientists are no secret – and then go and knock on their doors. Ask them to step into a helicopter, with families if desired, and transport them to a safe house outside the country for questioning.

The first interviewee should be obvious to longtime readers of this space: Rihab Taha, “Dr. Germs,” the British-trained biologist who has been running Saddam’s anthrax and botulism laboratories for nearly 20 years. In the mid-90’s, when a U.N. inspector caught her in a flat lie, she replied, “It is not a lie when you’re being ordered to lie.”

Would Dr. Germs and her oil-minister husband tell the truth now, if spirited out of Saddam’s circle? Unlikely; but if told their secret cooperation might ameliorate sentences at war-crimes trials, they might discreetly provide a few leads. Same with the smallpox virologist Hazem Ali, the anthrax expert Abdul Nassir Hindawi, the nuclear physicists Jaffar Dhia Jaffar and Mahdi Obeidi, all named in The Washington Post yesterday.

Even if these scientific Saddamites hang tough, such off-site interrogation of supposed Saddam loyalists would give cover to other Iraqi scientists

If I was an Iraqi scientist reading this, I can’t say I’d be keen to get on any helicopeters.

The news that National Express, the main provider of privatised public transport services in Victoria is to walk away from its contract with two weeks notice follows a similar pullout in South Australia by bankrupt electricity generator NRG only a week ago. In both cases, Labor governments have been left to pick up the tab for deals done by their Liberal predecessors. This may help to wean them off the bipartisan assumption that privatisation is the best way to deal with government services.

More significantly, these episodes underline the point that, for essential services, government is the provider of last resort. It can sell the assets, and forgo the associated earnings, but it can’t divest itself of the obligation to step in (and pay up) when something goes badly wrong.

Until now, North Korea has appeared in the blogosphere mainly as a debating point. Right-wingers have used the North Korean government’s breach of its agreement not to develop nuclear weapons as a club with which to beat Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton who made the deal with Kim-Jong Il. Opponents of war with Iraq (including me) have pointed to the differential treatment accorded to this highly unattractive member of the “Axis of Evil’ as evidence that the US Administration either lacked a coherent policy or was not being honest about its motives.

The news that the North Korean government plans to reactivate graphite-moderated reactors previously used in their nuclear weapons program suggests that the time for pointscoring is over. The much-derided print media particularly the NYT have already realised this.

Unfortunately, there are no appealing options in this case. It seems clear that the co-operation, or at least acquiescence of the Chinese government is going to be needed, and that any military option raises a severe risk of an attack on South Korea and perhaps Japan. The most promising solution is one where China applies the pressure required to force the abandonment of North Korea’s nuclear program and its missile development. The amount of pressure required will be large, and the diplomatic price correspondingly high. Unlike Saddam, Kim Jong-Il cannot be regarded as a rational bargaining partner – he and his father have pursued policies that have driven their kingdom into the ground, and, while it’s impossible to tell anything about such a closed society, it’s hard to believe he has a secure hold on power.

China could probably bring the regime down by opening its border. Even with tight controls on both sides there’s a steady flow of refugees with as many as 300 000 now hiding out in China), but this would be a hugely costly and problematic step. South Korea would have to accept most of the refugees and they would be highly reluctant to do this.

I find the prospect of a deal with the Chinese Communist Party even more worrying than than the deal with Musharraf that was needed to secure Pakistan’s overthrow the Taliban, or the various trade-offs that will be required in any Middle East deal. The partners in those deals are tinpot dictatorships that can safely be dumped when they are no longer needed. By contrast, China represents the only dictatorship left among the great powers (or even the second-rank powers) and its rulers have demonstrated a surprising capacity to handle succession problems. The Chinese government is the most important single enemy of democracy in the world today.

But there may be no alternative to a deal. Some juicy carrots will have to be offered, but if Bush has the moral clarity he claims to have he shouldn’t be afraid to show the stick as well. If the Chinese government is prepared to give aid and comfort to the Dear Leader Kim Jong-Il and his insane plans, they should be given the cold shoulder in every respect, starting with Most Favored Nation treaties.

Having taken this hard line, I have to say that, even more than with respect to Iraq, this is an issue where discretion is the better part of valour for Australia. We’re not as vulnerable as South Korea and Japan, but we are still mice in the cornfield when it comes to hard words between elephants like the US and China.

Whereas I’m still relatively optimistic about some sort of reasonable outcome in relation to Iraq and even Al-Qaeda, this business fills me with foreboding.