Stupid Buzzword: Technocrat

This is something that I've wanted to do for years.  Every once in a while the political media (both big corporate institutions and public discussions) seem to pick up a term that then gets repeated constantly for weeks or months, often becoming horribly abused and distorted by the end, sometimes to the point that its original meaning risks getting lost.  The first time that I noticed this phenomenon was around 2003-2004 with the word "unilateral", referring of course to the American invasion of Iraq.  The Bush administration's diplomatic strategy and justification for the intervention was derided constantly for so long that I began to see "unilateral" used almost as a synonym simply for "bad".  Any action might be called "unilateral" simply to imply that it was stupidly or unreasonably aggressive or independent.  Eventually, I grew to hate the word itself, and resent anyone I saw or heard using it.

That was the first stupid buzzword I personally noticed.  But I have no doubt that there have been many, many cases before; especially since I occasionally notice new ones cropping up.  Thus, the inspiration for what may be a recurring series of commentary for me: Stupid Buzzwords, in which I will complain about new iterations of this phenomenon as I observe them.

Today's stupid buzzword: Technocrat.

"Technocrat" worked its way into the public consciousness most recently with the installation of new Prime Ministers in Greece and Italy as attempts to contain those countries' relevant portions of the European debt crisis.  Lucas Papademos and Mario Monti are technocrats.  In their case, it's usually a distinguishing term, commentators are attempting to separate them from "other" politicians (or all politicians, if the commentator has a crappy definition of that word).  Ordinary Greek and Italian politicians have failed to resolve the debt crises, possibly because they're too stupid and/or ignorant to know how, and probably because they're constrained by unforgiving public political opinions or ideology.  The technocrats, however, are experts in their fields (economics, in this instance); they not only understand the plans to save their countries' finances, they may very well have written those plans in the first place.  In the cases of Papademos and Monti, the technocrats are also unconstrained (at least in the hopes of the people who selected them) by the typical political machinations which have previously blocked the sorts of policies which they are now expected to implement.

You may see how the definition is beginning to blur.  "Technocracy" means government by experts, technocrats.  Even before the current surge in the term's popularity, its meaning had decayed somewhat.  I've seen technocrat used to describe any politician with a reputation for having better than a layman's understanding of various fields of public policy (usually economics, but also sometimes technical disciplines like engineering, or other sciences).  In that usage, the word may be thought of as a synonym for "policy wonk".  Personally, I like that definition just fine, as it means that I could sometimes be described as a technocrat.

But now it's getting out of hand.

For me, technocrat became a stupid buzzword when I saw that Egypt's Supreme Council of the Armed Forces had offered to replace the cabinet so that the country could be run by "technocrats" for the remainder of the transition to democratic rule.  Now, Egypt has been facing a pretty serious economic conundrum because of the upheaval, so the SCAF may be legitimately concerned about making sure that the people running the treasury are experts.  But it strikes me much more as just an attempt to appropriate a label in order to cast whoever they selected in a good light.  Technocrats were hailed as the solution to a crisis in Greece and Italy, so let's get some technocrats for Egypt, too!

Right now, "technocrat" mostly still has a positive connotation: they're the good guys, coming to save us from those useless politicians.  But that could very easily change, especially if Papademos or Monti screw up or fail, as time goes on and people begin to question them.

Wrapping up, now that's it's become a stupid buzzword, you can use "technocrat" to mean pretty much whatever the hell you want.  To review some of the more common recent usgages, a technocrat may be:

• An expert. ("The technocrats have a 108-point plan to restructure the economy.")
• An autocrat. ("Who put these technocrats in charge, anyway?")
• A non-politician. ("The technocrats have no allegiance to either the majority or opposition parties!")
• Good.  ("We should do what the technocrats say.")
• Incomprehensible.  ("The technocrats' 108-point plan revises the formula for calculating official future deficit projections.")
• Fascist.  ("We will do what the technocrats say.")
• Any combination of the above. ("The EU is sending in technocrats to save us from our own government.")

And that's today's stupid buzzword.  Use at your own risk, and please not anywhere that I will ever see or hear.  These things make me gag whenever I encounter them.

There I went again.

So I didn't manage to sustain the weekly updates of this blog that I'd hoped for back when I wrote the first two articles.  Part of my problem is probably that I was holding myself to too high a standard for the posts.  Much as I'd really like to be able to write lengthy, intellectual essays like the previous two on a weekly schedule, I'm forced to admit that my pool of insight probably isn't deep enough to reach that level of quality so often.  And I'm not to the point that I want to just fake it like a newspaper columnist when I can't actually think of anything good.

But I do want to maintain the blog, even if it never becomes anything more than a vanity exercise.  It's at least a fun vanity exercise.  So what I think I need to do is convince myself that it's acceptable to post shorter, less profound entries, like more superficial commentary and humor.  Such writing may not be quite as satisfying, but if it helps to keep me active here, it will probably still be worthwhile.  As long as I don't get pretentious and start trying to pad out the simplistic crap to pass off as real essays, then I shouldn't offend my intellectual spirit.

I'm calling it a plan.  Check back next week to see if it crashes and burns, too.

Right, well my original idea was to now transition into a shorter post of the sort that I was just describing.  But instead I'm going to make a fully separate post so I can close this one and give it a lone meta tag.

Syria, the UN, and Reconsidering Interventionism

Last week's essay on Libya was easy for me. I got to make myself and my ideology look good by highlighting examples of what seemed like sound judgment on my part, and pointing towards tentative signs of positive results from the sort of foreign policy I endorse. I do like to maintain at least a facade of intellectual honesty, however, so I'm going to use this essay to consider the situation in Syria. It should be worthwhile both for me to sort out my views on the events there, and to provide some indication of whether I really support the sorts of policies and ideals that I claim to.

So my gut instinct when thinking about our approach to Syria is to stick with a hands-off policy: take no action that might be called an active intervention, though passive exercises of pressure like economic sanctions are fine. If I'm honest with myself, then I have to admit that a big part of that reaction comes from my doubts that military intervention would succeed rather than lead to a new Iraq or Afghanistan-like quagmire. Certainly there are military considerations (especially the geography) that make a Syrian expedition more doubtful than the Libya campaign. But really, I'm just afraid of being wrong, and of the potential damage to the prestige of my political ideology and my country if I am.

Well that's a bad reason to take a position on anything, and I would really hate the appearance of doing that. So my next worry is that I end up advocating the invasion or bombing of Syria just to look ideologically consistent. That's another terrible reason to do something, and an indication that it's time to shut down this whole line of thinking and approach the problem from another angle.

I'm certainly an idealist, but I do like to believe that I have a decent appreciation of practical realities, and that I adjust my positions on issues to take these into account. Still, I think it's useful in this situation to set aside practical objections and contemplate an ideal scenario. Given the current violent and cruel suppression of political dissent and unrest in Syria by the government of Bashar al-Assad, what would be the best possible response by the outside world?

To my mind, the answer is a unanimous condemnation of the Syrian Government by the whole of the United Nations, the authorization of an invasion by the blue-helmets, with soldiers drawn from every significant national army including those of the five permanent Security Council members, the destruction or other pacification of Syria's military and secret services by said UN forces, and the removal of Assad's government. Follow that with a long-term deployment of peacekeepers to police the country while overseeing the formation of a competent representative government, and provide generous financial and technical assistance from every UN member until a functioning and reasonably prosperous economy is entrenched.

And then we can all ride unicorns along a rainbow road to the sky. But that is the ideal outcome. That is how the world would respond to Syria if every other nation were as altruistic and determinedly righteous as I wish they were. It's not a plausible scenario because the world isn't that noble, but it gives me a starting point from which to approach other options.

It occurs to me that the important conclusion from that exercise may be that external military interventions can be justified as a response to the sort of evil taking place in Syria. In other words: stopping Assad would be righteous. And having reached that conclusion, the question for me becomes why wouldn't I advocate stopping him? What other considerations might mitigate the ethical good of rescuing Syrians from their dictator?

I believe I hinted at a big part of the answer in my Libya essay, and it is implied in my ideal scenario above. I'm an internationalist (and there's another label I can add to my list). I believe that the United States is the best country in the world, and I have no problem with the use of American might to help transform the rest of the world into a better place in that image. But even better than a peaceful, liberal, and democratic world secured by the United States would be that same world secured by a commitment from all humanity. I think that the United States should pursue a foreign policy with a long-term objective of establishing and strengthening international institutions and politics which are not only dedicated to the same ideals that we are, but are capable of defending them with our help and, eventually, in our stead. There's quite a bit more I could say about that ideology, but I don't want to launch into it in this essay. Instead I'll merely let it stand that this is one of my major goals when thinking about politics and policy, and return to focus on the implications of that goal for my policy towards Syria.

Well then, as much as I think an intervention might be justified on moral grounds, the context of my internationalist objective may well mean that it's a bad idea. Every time we bypass the United Nations in order to fix problems like Syria on our own, we make it more difficult to realize a world where the UN has the willpower and the teeth to address those problems itself. We undermine the legitimacy of the UN as an authority capable of enforcing decisions and resolving international disputes. And we piss off all the UN members who opposed our actions, making it harder to get them on board the next time we try to pursue our objectives through the UN.

It was a good thing that we got UN authorization for the Libya campaign. But it was a bad thing that we had to rely on a dubious interpretation of that authorization in order to expand the scope of the operation to the level that we wanted. If we want the good results to outweigh and outlast the bad, then it's important to emphasize the UN authorization of Libya going forward, and de-emphasize the impression that it was just a cover for us to do what we were going to do anyway. Unfortunately, that may well mean abandoning hopes for a more forceful response to Syria in order to bolster the legitimacy of the UN. After Libya, Russia is almost certainly not going to approve any Security Council resolution that could provide the tiniest particle of an excuse to use force against Assad. My read of China is that they'd be just as queasy about the precedent, but disinterested enough in Syria itself that they wouldn't go out on a limb to stop a resolution without Russia's cover. Still, the result is that, if we want a better UN, then we'll need to be willing to stand idle and watch the slaughter in Syria run its course.

That basically means selling out the Syrian people to a vague and distant ideal. It also means risking the impression that we fought in Libya for the oil, and don't really care about Syria because of its negligible reserves. The latter concern is a pet peeve of mine, and though it's frustrating it does not constitute a good reason to advocate a policy. But the first point is a brutal, terrible truth. I do think the cost may be worth it (easy for me to say, but then just avoiding the appearance of being unsympathetic is also a bad reason to take a position), so that the ends would justify the means. But if we do take that position, then we have a moral imperative to do everything within the limits of our power and imagination to make sure that we eventually realize the end goal, and do it as quickly as possible.

Or we could kick the can down the road. Intervene in Syria to satisfy our consciences now, and focus on reforming the global order afterwards. I can't even say that I would be all that unhappy with that option. It would be a right thing, even if not the wisest thing. But I think I'd rather we accept the larger responsibility and see to accomplishing that objective soonest. Our ability to always take it up again in the future is not a certainty.

In happier thoughts: foregoing military intervention in Syria doesn't have to mean doing nothing through the UN. We can and should step up our efforts to get help from Russia, China, and Syria's regional neighbors in putting pressure on Assad. Reassurances that we've ruled out the use of force without very explicit approval from the UNSC may help on that front. And we can still take some punitive measures. Each new round of sanctions that we extract from of the UN is good, but we can do more to link them to the oppression. Sanctions, when passed, should be issued as ultimatums: either Syria undertakes concrete measures to demonstrate restraint, measures which can be verified by UN officials, or the new sanctions will be implemented on a fixed date. The point is to get the UN acting as an enforcer of its policies rather than just a legislature handing down new rules.

One more thought to mention before I conclude. I've been realizing as I write this that the practicalities of a military intervention are not actually so important to me. This is probably for the best: I'm no military theorist and prognosticating on the issues and probable outcomes of a military operation would probably only be setting myself up to look foolish (not that this has actually stopped me in the past nor likely will in future). I'm confident in saying that the much denser human geography of Syria compared to Libya would make greater civilian casualties during a foreign intervention much more likely. But whether that would be the most important factor in determining the actual success, both objectively and in subjective international perceptions? I'd be naive to think I knew.

Instead, I've come down to making my judgment on ethical and ideological considerations. On that basis, I think my answer is actually in keeping with my initial instinct, and not the conclusion I expected I would reach when I sat down to start writing. I do not advocate foreign military intervention in Syria, except with broad and explicit UN approval which I do not expect. To be clear: I think the UN should intervene, and on a massive scale with a long, open-ended commitment. But I don't believe that's plausible. What I want is to make it plausible in the future. And I think the best way to get there is for the United States to show both restraint in pursuit of its agenda and a dedication to compromise and cooperation with other nations under the auspices of the international institutions it has helped to forge.

And of the killing in Syria and the future of the Arab Spring? I feel great regret over what I think we should do. But great hope for what Syrians may accomplish in spite of us.

Libya

Last night I found myself obsessively refreshing Google News, as if I expected the entire civil war to wrap up within the time frame of a motion picture. Looking again now, the battle for Tripoli is still unfinished; but it seems unlikely that the conclusion could take more than a few days, if that long. I don't care to predict whether the larger war will end with the capture of the city, but I certainly share much of the excitement which has taken hold of the politicians and commentators observing the situation. Even if Qadafi himself doesn't fall soon, or even if the war somehow continues without him, I doubt that the Council's opposition can sustain a fight on anything approaching the previous scale. The intensity of the conflict, at least, will surely diminish.

So it's time for me to reflect on my own judgments and analysis of the uprising, before I stake out my position on future policy towards Libya.

Soon after Mubarak's ouster in Egypt, back before the fighting had begun in earnest, I was just taking note of the first stirrings of revolt. Then, I did not believe that Libya would see any serious change, like Egypt and Tunisia. I believed that Qadafi would stay true to form and suppress any dissent swiftly and brutally, by machine-gunning angry crowds if necessary. I was correct about Qadafi; if anything, I underestimated the level of brutality he would resort to using against his own people. But I was wrong about the Libyan population. I was, quite frankly, astounded that they were willing to stand up to the snipers and machine guns and artillery and aerial bombardments. I did not believe that it was possible for a largely unarmed (or even lightly armed) citizenry to successfully withstand determined attack by a genuine military force with heavy weaponry. I was pleased to have been wrong about that.

I was revising my judgment again within a few weeks, as the rebellion's heady progress was reversed and Qadafi's military encroached on Benghazi. Maybe it was harder for heavily armed forces to massacre civilians within a city than I realized, or maybe Qadafi's thugs had initially shown more restraint than I had believed, but either way it seemed pretty conclusive that irregular fighters had no hope of winning a war or conquering a country when opposed by a reasonably well trained and equipped regular military.

At that point, the international community was frantically debating their response; and among the interventionists, the most prominent proposal was for a "no fly zone" to stop Qadafi's air forces from bombing civilians. I opposed a no fly zone. I'm very much an interventionist myself, but I believed that an NFZ would be a pointlessly weak response. For one thing, it seemed to draw a silly moral distinction between bombing civilians with warplanes and gunships, and shelling them with artillery or shooting them with small arms. Nor did I believe an NFZ would actually do any good. First, because the Colonel's aerial bombardments seemed of limited military consequence compared to his other means of killing his citizens. Second, at the time, air transport of military forces from southern Libya and mercenaries from other countries had seemed to be a significant component of Qadafi's strength, but had largely been effected by the time of the NFZ proposals. So I thought, essentially, that an NFZ would be a waste of effort, and perhaps even a somewhat insulting attempt to claim responsibility for a revolution to which we had made little meaningful contribution. In a choice between a no fly zone and doing nothing, I preferred we do nothing. What I would really have preferred would have been a serious military intervention in support of the rebels, followed up by massive material aid and professional advice to assist the country in a transition to a stable, representative government. But I thought there was no hope of any such thing occurring.

Then there was UNSC Resolution 1973, and once more I was surprised and impressed. This time by the Security Council itself, mostly for its speed in securing a vote once they actually realized the crisis merited some action (though I did and still do believe that there was too much dithering in reaching that initial conclusion). I was further impressed at the relatively permissive language of the Resolution, which I had expected would, if anything, be merely an authorization of a useless NFZ. I speculated that the British and French governments might exploit the language to bomb ground targets beyond those strictly necessary to achieve air superiority.

Well, obviously, the military intervention has far exceeded my expectations, and this has mostly been to my delight. I do have reservations about the way we've stretched interpretation the UNSC Resolution in order to justify the bombing campaign and, perhaps even more grievously, to arm the rebels. While I believe both of these were the right things to do, morally, I think it's poor policy to place so much emphasis on internationalizing the intervention with Security Council authorization, only to then largely ignore the limitations which result from that process. Strengthening the UN's resolve to confront evils like Qadafi and promoting international commitments to provide material support to those UN decisions is a goal worthy of emphatic support. But it requires long-term commitment and compromises along the way. If we're not willing to honor those compromises, even when it's because we want to pursue moral policies like the Libyan intervention, we risk undermining those objectives.

The most significant other quarrel I have with the affair has been the level of America's commitment to the intervention. I understand our government's reluctance to take a lead role in any stage of arranging or implementing the intervention for reasons of both foreign and domestic political perception. But I question the wisdom of trying to pass off much of the military responsibility (or even the appearance of such responsibility) to our allies. To be sure, I can construct an argument in favor of doing just that: I am gravely concerned about the deterioration of military capabilities among NATO's European members. The exhaustion of their forces which has been a result of the intervention may obviate the need for and spur actual reform among those states. However, I think I worry more about our policies encouraging complacency towards America's military capabilities and responsibilities. Western Europe in its present state doesn't seem capable of conducting more than one operation like this at a time, and even just this one will necessitate a period of down-time for their forces to recover, repair, and rearm. But in the US, we've provided ourselves an excuse for reducing our own capabilities and commitment to such interventions: because the Europeans can do it instead. So I am uncertain and uneasy about where this policy will lead. Perhaps it will work out for the best, and I will be grateful to have worried over nothing, but for now I have doubts.

Coming back around to the situation in Libya itself: I am seriously concerned for the future. The need for foreign military assistance may be ending, and I am happy that the rebels now seem guaranteed to prevail. But the temptation among outsiders to start congratulating themselves on a job well done worries me too much to truly celebrate. What we've done up to now has been the easy part, and we risk all of our accomplishments if we now begin to disengage.

In the realm of foreign policy, I regret few things more than the fact that "nation building" has become a scornful buzzword. Libya will need nation building. My original position on our choice in Libya—that our ideal response was a strong military intervention followed up by significant reconstruction assistance—has not changed. Libya will need vast sums of money in reconstruction and new investment. Libya will need clear-headed guidance and expert advice from the outside world. We can be grateful that the Transitional Council's leaders have demonstrated so much excellence and professionalism as they have, and we can be grateful that the country's oil wealth provides a good opportunity for quick economic growth. But these alone will not be enough to secure the sort of future for Libya that we ought be trying to achieve: a future where Libya is stable, prosperous, and governed by leaders accountable to their citizens. That will require even more assistance from the international community in the years to come; we need to be generous and we need to remain engaged. But because these things are harder to do than conducting a military campaign, because we have so many other worries of our own, economic malaise chief among them, I fear that we will shirk this responsibility.

So there is still much left to do, pleased as we might be about recent events. I wonder what plans have been made among western leaders to provide assistance and advisers to Libya. I wonder what preparations have been made to end international sanctions on the country quickly once the fighting has stopped. I wonder if we're really going to see this through to the end.

Because, if we're not, then what was the point?

Here I go again.

And with a much better title this time, one that suits my ego without being quite so shamelessly arrogant. Now to see if I can sustain a serious writing schedule.