Thursday, July 31, 2008

Discovering How Greeks Computed in 100 B.C.


By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD
Published: July 31, 2008

Fragments of the Antikythera Mechanism, an ancient astronomical computer built by the Greeks around 80 B.C. It was found on a shipwreck by sponge divers in 1900, and its exact function still eludes scholars.


After a closer examination of a surviving marvel of ancient Greek technology known as the Antikythera Mechanism, scientists have found that the device not only predicted solar eclipses but also organized the calendar in the four-year cycles of the Olympiad, forerunner of the modern Olympic Games.

The new findings, reported Wednesday in the journal Nature, also suggested that the mechanism’s concept originated in the colonies of Corinth, possibly Syracuse, on Sicily. The scientists said this implied a likely connection with Archimedes.

Archimedes, who lived in Syracuse and died in 212 B.C., invented a planetarium calculating motions of the Moon and the known planets and wrote a lost manuscript on astronomical mechanisms. Some evidence had previously linked the complex device of gears and dials to the island of Rhodes and the astronomer Hipparchos, who had made a study of irregularities in the Moon’s orbital course.

The Antikythera Mechanism, sometimes called the first analog computer, was recovered more than a century ago in the wreckage of a ship that sank off the tiny island of Antikythera, north of Crete. Earlier research showed that the device was probably built between 140 and 100 B.C.

Only now, applying high-resolution imaging systems and three-dimensional X-ray tomography, have experts been able to decipher inscriptions and reconstruct functions of the bronze gears on the mechanism. The latest research has revealed details of dials on the instrument’s back side, including the names of all 12 months of an ancient calendar.

In the journal report, the team led by the mathematician and filmmaker Tony Freeth of the Antikythera Mechanism Research Project, in Cardiff, Wales, said the month names “are unexpectedly of Corinthian origin,” which suggested “a heritage going back to Archimedes.”

No month names on what is called the Metonic calendar were previously known, the researchers noted. Such a calendar, as well as other knowledge displayed on the mechanism, illustrated the influence of Babylonian astronomy on the Greeks. The calendar was used by Babylonians from at least the early fifth century B.C.

Dr. Freeth, who is also associated with Images First Ltd., in London, explained in an e-mail message that the Metonic calendar was designed to reconcile the lengths of the lunar month with the solar year. Twelve lunar months are about 11 days short of a year, but 235 lunar months fit well into 19 years.

“From this it is possible to construct an artificial mathematical calendar that keeps in synchronization with both the sun and the moon,” Dr. Freeth said.

The mechanism’s connection with the Corinthians was unexpected, the researchers said, because other cargo in the shipwreck appeared to be from the eastern Mediterranean, places like Kos, Rhodes and Pergamon. The months inscribed on the instrument, they wrote, are “practically a complete match” with those on calendars from Illyria and Epirus in northwestern Greece and with the island of Corfu. Seven months suggest a possible link with Syracuse.

Inscriptions also showed that one of the instrument’s dials was used to record the timing of the pan-Hellenic games, a four-year cycle that was “a common framework for chronology” by the Greeks, the researchers said.

“The mechanism still contains many mysteries,” Dr. Freeth said. Among the larger questions, scientists and historians said the place of the mechanism in the development of Greek technology remained poorly understood. Several references to similar instruments appear in classical literature, including Cicero’s description of one made by Archimedes. But this one, hauled out of the sea in 1901, is the sole surviving example.

Sunday, July 20, 2008

In Search of Common Ground: The Role of a Global Ethic in Inter-Religious Dialogue

"Interfaith," Design by vaXzine

Bradley Shingleton
July 1, 2008




In October 2007, a group of 138 Muslim clerics and scholars issued a 29-page open letter to Christian leaders entitled "A Common Word Between Us". The letter asserts that Muslims and Christians together constitute a majority (58%) of the world's population; therefore, world peace requires peace between them. It further identifies moral and religious beliefs that the two traditions, and Judaism as well, have in common and invites Christians to join Muslims in a sustained dialogue with the goal of proclaiming a 'common word' between them.

Many Christian leaders who received the letter greeted it warmly, though there have been some dissenting voices. Observers consider the open letter to represent a significant accomplishment since it was signed by representatives of virtually every segment of the Muslim world.

The Common Word letter is not the first attempt to stake out common moral ground between religious traditions bedeviled by mutual animosity. But it was welcomed by its recipients for its recognition, in a climate of inter-religious friction, of the ethical commonalities Islam shares with the other Abrahamic religions.

Of course, the letter is only an invitation to dialogue; actually achieving a productive dialogue is a different matter. How is dialogue of this kind done properly? And how, if at all, can such a dialogue contribute to international peace and stability?

An obvious approach to dialogue between adversarial groups is to search for similarities. But in matters of religion, that can be an elusive, if not quixotic, undertaking. Without the means to distinguish between spurious and genuine parallels, dialogue can quickly go astray. Some claim that religious traditions are derived from a single primordial source, and that therefore they are fundamentally homogenous despite their distinctive symbolisms. Others hold that religious traditions are essentially resistant to comparison, given their cultural, linguistic and metaphysical differences. Yet others, more modestly, suggest that religions are in essential agreement about basic ethical norms, even though they may conflict theologically and metaphysically. One of the most notable contemporary examples of this position is the Global Ethic project of Catholic theologian Hans Küng.

Beginning in 1990, Küng has sought to identify the components of a common morality shared by world religious traditions. Described in this way, the Global Ethic may appear to be a blueprint for a global religion. But Küng's undertaking assumes the stubborn particularity of religious traditions and consequently aims at coexistence among religions, not their harmonization. Moreover, the Global Ethic is not an exclusively religious affair: Küng believes it can and should be embraced by secular people as well. It is, in the broadest sense, a political/ethical enterprise as well as a religious one.

The Global Ethic is motivated by two convictions: first, that inter-religious understanding is a sine qua non for peace among nation-states. Religion exerts a powerful yet ambiguous influence on politics. It can consecrate selfishness, demonize adversaries, create or aggravate conflict. But it also contain resources for promoting understanding and tolerance. Second, Küng believes that common ethical standards are essential in an era of globalized economics. As an economic phenomenon, globalization is often dramatically disruptive for communities and local economies, and shared norms can help prevent human well-being from being wholly trumped by economic considerations.

Küng launched the Global Ethic project in 1990 in a programmatic book, Global Responsibility. Shortly after it appeared, Küng served as the principal drafter of the Declaration of the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1993. Consisting of four basic principles and four directives, the Declaration summarizes the core elements of the Global Ethic: respect for the 'humanity' of persons, non-violence, just economics, tolerance, truthfulness and gender and racial equality.

In subsequent writings, Küng applied these principles to various spheres of activity. For example, in A Global Ethic for Global Politics and Economics (1998), he describes the implications of the Global Ethic for politics and business. He attacks realpolitik notions of national interest and theories of international relations that lack a normative dimension. In his view, economics and business are properly concerned with profit-oriented self-interest, but they cannot and should not be exclusively concerned with those goals. In general, Küng advocates a middle way between moral rigorism and unprincipled self-concern; he also emphasizes the need for a balance between rights and responsibilities.

Küng finds the elements of such an ethic deeply embedded in historical religious traditions. He claims that there is a remarkable ethical consistency among the major religions regarding respect for life, repudiation of violence, truthfulness and honesty in daily affairs. Those traditions manifest an abiding concern for human well-being and for what Küng terms "elementary humanness." Its basic imperatives consist of prohibitions against killing, lying, stealing, sexual exploitation, and affirmatively, the obligation of children to respect parents, and for parents to love their children. Küng acknowledges that these are minimal, ground-floor principles; nonetheless, they reflect a broadly shared consensus about important areas of human life. Its minimalism is a reflection of its universalism. Given the pluralism of human culture, to expect a detailed moral code common to all would be unrealistic, to say the least.

How does Küng arrive at the norms he holds up as universal? They are developed through engagement with what he describes as the three great river systems of religion: the Abrahamic group of religions with its prophetic emphasis, the Indian with its mystical orientation, and the Asian with its concern for the cultivation of wisdom. Engagement with each of these river systems means for Küng the in-depth study of the history and expressions of each religion—its scriptures, practices, symbols, doctrines and theologies, illuminated through personal interaction with the religion's own adherents. Küng likens this kind of engagement to diplomatic negotiations. It has nothing to do with the polite exchange of breezy platitudes.

This may sound more rhetorical than realistic, but it is backed up by Küng's own work. Beginning with his comparison of Christianity and other major religious traditions, Christianity and World Religions (1987), and continuing through his studies of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, Küng demonstrates how religious boundaries can be crossed responsibly and profitably. Not that everyone must engage in such exhaustive investigative, analytical work on their own: Küng's publications, as well as those of others (such as Keith Ward, Huston Smith, and Masao Abe) provide windows into various traditions and thereby enable non-specialists also to enter, in some capacity or other, unfamiliar religious territory.

Observers have leveled several criticisms at the Global Ethic project. Two recurrent ones are that it is abstract and minimalist. It is allegedly abstract in that its contents are so general that they essentially amount to hortatory injunctions without concrete applicability. While the Global Ethic indeed has its hortatory uses, its norms are no less useful than any other first-order ethical norms. Such norms are inescapably general in formulation, and their interpretation and application necessarily vary depending on specific circumstances—cultural, historical, factual—and on different kinds of moral reasoning.

As for the complaint that the Global Ethic is inevitably minimalist and therefore of little utility, this equates comprehensiveness with worthiness. It overlooks the intrinsic value of consensus, limited though it may be. The fact that certain ethical issues—genetic experimentation and abortion, to name two—remain unaddressed by the Global Ethic hardly invalidates the effort as a whole. The endorsement of its principles by representatives from all major religions—obtained, no doubt, at the cost of generality and the avoidance of any mention of God—endows it with certain precedential significance.

Others have asked whether the contents of the Global Ethic are culturally relative. John Hick has expressed doubt whether there are, in fact, any 'global' ethics beyond very basic norms such as the principle of benevolence found in the Golden Rule and its analogues. He asks whether the host of second-order principles others have derived from the 1993 Declaration of the Parliament of World Religions—legal equality, democratic political rights, right to property and so forth—are not so inescapably tied to western presuppositions that they do not translate well (or at all) into other cultural settings.

This criticism seems legitimate—to an extent. The principles of the Declaration, with their pronounced concern for individual rights and responsibilities, clearly reflect their provenance in western, liberal society. But the principles are not a closed set; they can and should be refined. Hick himself proposes the African notion of ubuthu (roughly, connectedness) as an additional principle. There are undoubtedly others.

Serious though these questions are, they do not necessarily compel the conclusion that the articulation of a Global Ethic is futile. Inter-religious dialogue of some kind or other is a moral necessity, not simply an entertaining diversion for professional religionists. Küng declares: "No peace among the nations without peace among the religions; no peace among the religions without dialogue among the religions."

This is not to say that Küng's version of the Global Ethic supplies the definitive recipe for inter-religious dialogue. But his belief in the value of informed engagement among religious traditions has much to recommend it. Some representatives of religions reject his approach as too westernized and rational. While it is undeniably western and rational in flavor, that need not be disqualifying. Küng is not attempting to distill the contents of religious traditions into alien concepts and force them into uncongenial categories; he is seeking to create basic conceptual terms for communication. There are certainly other ways to achieve that, but it needs to be done in one way or another.

Some observers have registered more practical reservations about the Global Ethic. One is that the project lacks popular appeal and accessibility. This seems justified. Küng's institutional platform, the Global Ethic Foundation of Tuebingen, Germany, has little visibility in this country or elsewhere outside of Europe. Many if not most of its publications are in German. For example, the foundation has developed education materials on the Global Ethic for use in schools—but they are only available in German. This offering could easily be expanded with reasonable effort and expense.

The activities of the foundation could also be expanded to include participants beyond the political and religious elites it has engaged so far. Alliances could be formed with like-minded organizations such as inter-faith councils and professional societies. The scope of the foundation's activities could be broadened to include more grass-roots activities, educational and otherwise, such as local inter-faith meetings.

More substantively, the Global Ethic could also be further developed in connection with specific fields of knowledge and activity. For example, it could serve as a resource in law and jurisprudence for the elaboration of norms of customary international law, and for the further development of cosmopolitan theories of law and citizenship. It could also be a reference point for voluntary codes of conduct and other compliance efforts being developed in connection with the expanding fields of business ethics and corporate governance.

The Global Ethic could be useful as a platform, in addition to established governmental channels, for international dialogue. In 1950, Reinhold Niebuhr wrote: "It will be very important to achieve minimal common conviction on standards of justice and to establish degrees of tolerance between disparate cultures which do not now exist. It may perhaps be even more important simply to encourage every possible mode of communication between cultures in order that a common social and cultural tissue may slowly develop." Niebuhr's recommendation is as relevant today as it was then.

Perhaps the Global Ethic could be one of the elements of the dialogue invited by the Common Word letter. That dialogue will not resolve the complex conflicts between the West and segments of the Muslim world. But, if honest, substantive and informed, it could help to dispel deep-rooted prejudices. It could demonstrate, in some modest way, to the ability of religion to connect, not only to divide.

The Resurgent Idea of World Government

Ethics & International Affairs, Volume 22.2 (Summer 2008)
Campbell Craig

July 7, 2008

The idea of world government is returning to the mainstream of scholarly thinking about international relations. Universities in North America and Europe now routinely advertise for positions in "global governance," a term that few would have heard of a decade ago. Chapters on cosmopolitanism and governance appear in many current international relations (IR) textbooks. Leading scholars are wrestling with the topic, including Alexander Wendt, perhaps now America's most influential IR theorist, who has recently suggested that a world government is simply "inevitable."1 While some scholars envision a more formal world state, and others argue for a much looser system of "global governance," it is probably safe to say that the growing number of works on this topic can be grouped together into the broader category of "world government"—a school of thought that supports the creation of international authority (or authorities) that can tackle the global problems that nation-states currently cannot.

It is not, of course, a new idea. Dreaming of a world without war, or of government without tyranny, idealists have advocated some kind of world or universal state since the classical period. The Italian poet Dante viewed world government as a kind of utopia. The Dutch scholar Hugo Grotius, often regarded as the founder of international law, believed in the eventual formation of a world government to enforce it. The notion interested many visionary thinkers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, including H. G. Wells and Aldous Huxley. In 1942 the one-time Republican presidential candidate Wendell Willkie published a famous book on the topic, One World. And after the Second World War, the specter of atomic war moved many prominent American scholars and activists, including Albert Einstein, the University of Chicago president Robert Hutchins, and the columnist Dorothy Thompson, to advocate an immediate world state—not so much out of idealistic dreams but because only such a state, they believed, could prevent a third world war fought with the weapons that had just obliterated Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The campaign continued until as late as 1950, when the popular magazine Reader's Digest serialized a book by the world-government advocate Emery Reves, while at the same time the Senate Subcommittee on Foreign Relations was considering several motions to urge the Truman administration to adopt a policy of world federalism.2 In fact, to this day the World Federalist Movement—an international NGO founded in 1947 and recognized by the United Nations—boasts a membership of 30,000 to 50,000 worldwide.

By the 1950s, however, serious talk of world government had largely disappeared. The failure of the Baruch Plan to establish international control over atomic weaponry in late 1946 signaled its demise, for it cleared the way (as the plan’s authors quietly intended) for the United States and the Soviet Union to continue apace with their respective atomic projects. What state would place its trust in a world government when there were sovereign nations that possessed, or could soon possess, atomic bombs?3

Certainly, neither the United States nor the Soviet Union was willing to do so, and once the two states committed themselves to the international rivalry that became known as the Cold War, the impossibility of true global government became obvious and the campaign in favor of it diminished. Even after the invention of thermonuclear weaponry and intercontinental missiles in the late 1950s, a technological development that threatened to destroy all of humanity, few voices in the West (it was never an issue in the Soviet bloc, at least until Gorbachev) were raised to demand a new kind of government that could somehow eliminate this danger. There were some exceptions: a surprising one was the common conclusion reached by the two American realists Reinhold Niebuhr and Hans Morgenthau, who deduced around 1960 that the "nuclear revolution" had made a world state logically necessary. But how to achieve one when the United States and the Soviet Union would never agree to it? Niebuhr and Morgenthau had no answer to this question. The British philosopher Bertrand Russell, however, did: the antinuclear activist once argued that, since his preferred solution of total disarmament was not going to occur, the nuclear revolution had made global government immediately necessary and, thus, the only way to achieve it was to wage war on the USSR. There was a perverse logic to this, but we can be thankful that his demands were not heeded.

The end of the Cold War, together with the emergence of various intractable global problems, has spurred the resurgence of writing about world government. In this essay I will introduce three themes that appear frequently in this writing: how the "collective action problem" lies behind many of the current global crises; the debate between those who support a softer form of "governance" and those who look toward a full-fledged world state; and the fundamental question of whether world government is possible, and whether it is even desirable.

The Intensifying Dangers of International Anarchy

Certainly, one of the most evident failures of the nation-state system in recent years has been its inability to deal successfully with problems that endanger much or most of the world's population. As the world has become more globalized—economically integrated and culturally interconnected—individual countries have become increasingly averse to dealing with international problems that are not caused by any single state and cannot be fixed even by the focused efforts of individual governments. Political scientists refer to this quandary as the "collective action problem," by which they mean the dilemma that emerges when several actors have an interest in eradicating a problem that harms all of them, but when each would prefer that someone else do the dirty work of solving it. If everyone benefits more or less equally from the problem's solution, but only the actor that addresses it pays the costs, then all are likely to want to "free ride" on the other's efforts. The result is that no one tackles the problem, and everyone suffers.

Several such collective action problems dominate much of international politics today, and scholars of course debate their importance and relevance to world government. Nevertheless, a few obvious ones stand out, notably the imminent danger of climate change, the difficulty of addressing terrorism, and the complex task of humanitarian intervention. All of these are commonly (though not universally) regarded as serious problems in need of urgent solutions, and in each case powerful states have repeatedly demonstrated that they would prefer that somebody else solve them.

The solution to the collective action problem has long been known: it requires the establishment of some kind of authoritative regime that can organize common solutions to common problems and spread out the costs fairly. This is why many scholars and activists concerned with acute global problems support some form of world government. These advocates are not so naïve as to believe that such a system would put an effortless end to global warming, terrorism, or human rights atrocities, just as even the most effective national governments have not eradicated pollution or crime. The central argument in favor of a world-government approach to the problems of globalization is not that it would easily solve these problems, but that it is the only entity that can solve them.

A less newsworthy issue, but one more central to many advocates of world government, is the persistent possibility of a third world war in which the use of megaton thermonuclear weaponry could destroy most of the human race. During the Cold War, nuclear conflict was averted by the specter of mutual assured destruction (MAD)—the recognition by the United States and the Soviet Union that a war between them would destroy them both. To be sure, this grim form of deterrence could well obtain in future international orders, but it is unwise to regard the Cold War as a promising model for future international politics. It is not at all certain that international politics is destined to return to a stable bipolar order, such as prevailed during the second half of the Cold War, but even if this does happen, there is no guarantee that nuclear deterrence would work as well as it did during the second half of the twentieth century. It is well to remember that the two sides came close to nuclear blows during the Cuban crisis, and this was over a relatively small issue that did not bear upon the basic security of either state. As Martin Amis has written, the problem with nuclear deterrence is that "it can't last out the necessary timespan, which is roughly between now and the death of the sun."4 As long as interstate politics continue, we cannot rule out that in some future conflict a warning system will fail, a leader will panic, governments will refuse to back down, a third party will provoke a response—indeed, there are any number of scenarios under which deterrence could fail and thermonuclear war could occur.

It is possible that the United States, if not other nations, can fight against the thermonuclear dilemma with technology. By constructing an anti–ballistic missile (ABM) system, America could perhaps defend itself from a nuclear attack. Also, and more ominously, the United States may be on the verge of deploying an offensive nuclear capability so advanced that it could launch a first strike against a nuclear adversary and disarm it completely.5 But these are weak reeds. As things currently stand, an ABM system remains acutely vulnerable to inexpensive decoy tactics, jamming, and the simple response of building more missiles. The first-strike option is even more questionable: an aggressive or terrified United States could launch a nuclear war against a major adversary, but no American leader could be sure that every enemy weapon would be destroyed, making the acute risks of initiating such a war (unless a full-scale enemy thermonuclear attack was imminent and certain) likely to outweigh the benefits. Technology is unlikely to solve the nuclear dilemma.

Theorists considering world government regard the thermonuclear dilemma as particularly salient because it epitomizes the dangers of the continuation of the interstate system. As long as sovereign nations continue to possess nuclear arsenals, nuclear war is possible, and the only apparent way to put a permanent end to this possibility is to develop some kind of world government, an entity with sufficient power to stop states—not to mention subnational groups—from acquiring nuclear arsenals and waging war with them.

Global Governance versus a World State

Scholars nevertheless disagree whether an informal, loose form of governance is sufficient, or whether a more formal world state is necessary. Supporters of global governance argue that the unique dangers created by globalization can be solved by a gradual strengthening of existing international institutions and organizations, making the imposition of a full-blown world state unnecessary. Anthony McGrew, a leading scholar of globalization in the British academy, where support for global governance is particularly pronounced, suggests that global problems can be effectively dealt with by liberal international agencies, such as the World Trade Organization; nongovernmental organizations, such as Greenpeace and Doctors Without Borders; and security bodies, such as the U.N. Security Council. McGrew argues that the key is to grant increased and more formal powers to such institutions and organizations, ultimately giving them greater effectiveness and influence on the international stage than nation-states. Another British scholar, David Held, stresses the importance of making international institutions accountable to democratic controls. Held maintains that the world's population must have a direct say in the composition and policies of increasingly powerful international bodies.6 Held, along with others who insist on greater democratic oversight of global institutions, worries that the current "democratic deficit" afflicting existing international bodies, such as the International Monetary Fund and the U.N. Security Council, could become far worse as they acquire and wield greater and greater power.

The European Union is often offered as a model of what could happen at the international level. Gradually, once-hostile European states have cooperated to develop forms of transnational governance without subjecting themselves to the convulsive and possibly violent task of creating a European state. Nations that might refuse to accept the formation of a dominant state have nevertheless readily accepted the establishment of institutions and bureaucracies that slowly create transnational political bonds and reduce their own sovereignty. True, the process of establishing the European Union has been unsure and—for those who want to see a stronger political union—remains incomplete, but it has taken place, and in a peaceful manner. A similar process at the international level, contend advocates of global integration, would constitute a practical way to establish global government.

Theorists who believe that a more formal world state is necessary do not necessarily disagree with the logic of global governance: it is difficult to dispute the claim that the gradual creation of supranational institutions is likely to be more feasible and peaceful than the imposition of a true world state. The "key problem" for the governance argument, however, as Alexander Wendt writes, is "unauthorized violence by rogue Great Powers."7 As long as sovereign states continue to exist under a system of governance, in other words, there is nothing to prevent them from using violence to disrupt the international peace for their own purposes. The European Union has created forms of transnational governance, but decision-making in the areas of security and defense is still the prerogative of its member states. Thus, the EU remains effectively powerless to stop violence undertaken by one of its own members (such as Britain's involvement in the Iraq war), not to mention war waged by other nations even in its own backyard (such as in Bosnia and Herzegovina). Until this problem is solved, world-state advocates argue, any global order will be too fragile to endure. Sooner or later a sovereign state will wage war, and the inability of a regime of global governance to stop it will deprive it of authority and legitimacy. International politics would then revert to the old state system.

In "Why a World State Is Inevitable," Wendt argues that a formal world state—by which he means a truly new sovereign political entity, with constitutional authority over all nations—will naturally evolve as peoples and nations come to realize that they cannot obtain true independence, or what Wendt calls "recognition," without one. In other words, the advent of global technologies and weaponry present weaker societies with an emerging choice between subjugation to powerful states and globalized forces or participation in an authentic world government; a world state would not threaten distinct national cultures, as pluralist scholars have argued, but rather it is the only entity that can preserve them. Wendt sees this as a teleological phenomenon, by which he means that the logic of globalization and the struggle by all cultures and societies for recognition are bound to lead to a world state whether it is sought or not. Such a state, Wendt argues, would not need to be particularly centralized or hierarchical; as long as it could prevent sovereign states from waging war, it could permit local cultures, traditions, and politics to continue.8 But a looser system of governance would not be enough, because societies that seek recognition could not trust it to protect them from powerful states seeking domination.

Daniel Deudney's recent book, Bounding Power, provides the fullest and most creative vision yet of formal world government in our age.9 Deudney argues that the driving force behind world government is the fact that international war has become too dangerous. Unified by a common interest in avoiding nuclear extermination, states have the ability to come together in much the same way as tribes and fiefdoms have in the past when advances in military technology made conflict among them suicidal. Unlike Wendt, Deudney does not see this as an inevitability: states may well choose to tolerate interstate anarchy, even though it will sooner or later result in a nuclear war. But Deudney is also optimistic that a world government created for the purpose of avoiding such a war can be small, decentralized, and liberal. In Bounding Power, he develops an elaborate case for the establishment of a world republic, based upon the same premise of restraining and diffusing power that motivated the founders of the American republic in the late eighteenth century.

World-state theorists such as Wendt and Deudney stress the danger that advocates of more global governance often downplay: the risk that ambitious sovereign states will be unrestrained by international institutions and agencies, even unprecedentedly powerful ones, and wage war for traditional reasons of power and profit. For Wendt, military conflict of this sort will simply push along the inevitable process of world-state formation, as societies and peoples recognize that a return to interstate anarchy will only unleash more such wars, while a world government will put an end to them and so guarantee their cultural independence. Deudney is less hopeful here. Military conflict in our age can well mean thermonuclear war, an event that could put an end to the pursuit of meaningful human independence and of the kind of world government that would respect it.

Is a World Government Possible?

The initial argument against a world state, and even a coherent system of global governance, is the one that anyone can see immediately: it is impractical. How could nations of radically different ideologies and cultures agree upon one common political authority? But the "impracticality" argument disregards historical experience. The history of state formation from the days of city-states to the present era is precisely the history of warring groups with different ideologies and cultures coming together under a larger entity. While the European Union is not at all yet a state, who would not have been denounced as insane for predicting a political and economic union among France, Germany, and other European states seventy years ago? For that matter, how "practical" would it have seemed forty years ago to foresee the peaceful end of the Cold War? As Deudney argues, smaller political units have always merged into larger ones when technology has made the violence among them unsustainable. The surprising thing, he maintains, would be if this did not happen at the planetary level.

The more important objections to world government posit not that it is impractical but that it is unnecessary and even undesirable. According to one such argument, the world should be governed not by a genuinely international authority but rather by the United States: a Pax Americana.10 This school of thought stresses two main points: that such authority could more readily come into being without the violent convulsions that would likely accompany genuine world-state formation; and, as neoconservative writers particularly stress, that a world run by the United States would be preferable to a genuinely transnational world government given the superiority of American political, economic, and cultural institutions.

The case against Pax Americana, however, can be boiled down to one word: Iraq. The war in Iraq has shown that military operations undertaken by individual nation-states lead, as they have always done, to nationalist and tribal reactions against the aggressor that pay no heed to larger claims of superior or inferior civilizations. The disaster in Iraq has emboldened other revisionist states and groups to defy American will, caused erstwhile allies and friends of the United States to question its intentions and competence, and at the same time soured the American people on future adventures against states that do not overtly threaten them. In conceiving and executing its war in Iraq, it would have been difficult for the Bush administration to undermine the project of Pax Americana more effectively had it tried to do so. The United States could choose in future to rally other states behind it if it can persuade them of a global threat that must be vanquished. But, as Wendt implies, to do that successfully is effectively to begin the process of world-state formation.

Another objection to world government was first identified by Immanuel Kant. In articulating a plan for perpetual peace, Kant stopped short of advocating a world state, for fear that the state could become tyrannical. In a world of several nation-states, a tyranny can be removed by other states or overthrown from within. At least it could be possible for oppressed citizens of that state to flee to less repressive countries. But a sovereign world government could be invulnerable to such measures. It could not be defeated by an external political rival; those who would overthrow it from within would have nowhere to hide, no one to support them from the outside. Kant concluded that these dangers overrode the permanent peace that could be had with world government, and he ended up advocating instead a confederation of sovereign, commercial states.

One can raise two points in response to Kant's deeply important concern. First, he wrote in the eighteenth century, when the specter of war was not omnicidal and the planet did not face such global crises as climate change and transnational terrorism. International politics as usual was not as dangerous an alternative to his vision of perpetual peace as it potentially is today. Second, as Deudney argues, there is one central reason to believe that a world government could avoid the temptations of tyranny and actually exist as a small, federal authority rather than a global leviathan.11 This is the indisputable fact that—barring extraterrestrial invasion—a world government would have no need for a policy of external security. States often become increasingly tyrannical as they use external threats to justify internal repression and authoritarian policies. These threats, whether real or imagined, have throughout history and to the present day been used by leaders to justify massive taxation, conscription, martial law, and the suppression of dissent. But no world government could plausibly make such demands.

Will the world-government movement become a potent political force, or will it fade away as it did in the late 1940s? To a degree the answer to this question depends on the near-term future of international politics. If the United States alters its foreign policy and moves to manage the unipolar world more magnanimously, or, alternatively, if a new power (such as China) arises quickly to balance American power and instigate a new Cold War, the movement could fade. So, too, if existing international organizations somehow succeed in ameliorating climate change, fighting terrorism, and preventing humanitarian crises and other global problems. On the other hand, if the United States continues to pursue a Pax Americana, or if the transnational problems worsen, the movement could become a serious international cause.

These considerations aside, as Reinhold Niebuhr, Hans Morgenthau, and others discerned during the height of the Cold War, the deepest argument for world government—the specter of global nuclear war—will endure as long as sovereign nation-states continue to deploy nuclear weaponry. Whatever occurs over the near-term future, that is a fact that is not going away. The great distinction between the international system prevailing in Niebuhr and Morgenthau's day and the system in our own time is that the chances of attaining some form of world government have been radically enhanced by the end of the Cold War and the emergence of a unipolar order. This condition, however, will not last forever.


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NOTES

1 Alexander Wendt, "Why a World State Is Inevitable," European Journal of International Relations 9, no. 4 (2003), pp. 491–542. For a more extensive discussion of new scholarship on world government, see especially Catherine Lu, "World Government," in Edward N. Zalta, ed., The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2006 Edition); available at plato.stanford.edu/entries/world-government/.
2 See Paul Boyer, By the Bomb's Early Light: American Thought and Culture at the Dawn of the Atomic Age (New York: Pantheon, 1985); and Luis Cabrera, "Introduction," in Cabrera, ed., Global Government/Global Governance, forthcoming.
3 Campbell Craig and Sergey Radchenko, The Atomic Bomb and the Origins of the Cold War (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2008).
4 Martin Amis, Einstein's Monsters (London: Jonathan Cape, 1987), pp. 16–17.
5 Keir Lieber and Daryl Press, "The End of MAD?: The Nuclear Dimension of U.S. Primacy" International Security 30, no. 4 (2006), pp. 7–44. Lieber and Press do not advocate an American first strike against a potential aggressor; they simply argue that the United States has developed a capability to do so.
6 For an overview of McGrew's and Held's positions, see Anthony McGrew and David Held, eds., Governing Globalization (London: Polity, 2002), chaps. 13 and 15. Also see Andrew Hurrell, On Global Order (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007). American scholars in favor of global governance include Richard Falk, On Humane Governance (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995); and Anne-Marie Slaughter, A New World Order (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2005). For an innovative treatment of the problem of global democracy, see Luis Cabrera, Political Theory of Global Justice: A Cosmopolitan Case for the World State (London: Routledge, 2004).
7 See Wendt, "Why a World State Is Inevitable," p. 506.
8 Ibid., especially pp. 507–10 and 514–16. For the argument that world government would threaten cultural pluralism, see Michael Walzer, Arguing About War (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2004).
9 Daniel H. Deudney, Bounding Power: Republican Security Theory from the Polis to the Global Village (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2006).
10 For example, Niall Ferguson, Colossus: The Rise and Fall of the American Empire (New York: Penguin, 2004).
11 Deudney, Bounding Power, esp. chap. 6 and conclusion.

Friday, July 18, 2008

The 28 Percent President


By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Wednesday, July 16, 2008; 12:13 PM

At his press conference yesterday, President Bush tried to emphasize the positive about the economy -- and his presidency. The financial system is "basically sound," he said. And he rejected the naysayers who say "aww, man, you're running out of time." But at the end of the day, Bush found himself overridden, ignored and disdained.

We'll start with disdained.

Jon Cohen blogs for The Washington Post: "Another month, another new low for George W. Bush: Just 28 percent in the new Post-ABC poll approve of the way the president is handling his job. This marks a new career low in Post polling, and is the 40th consecutive month his ratings have been under 50 percent.

"His negative rating has also hit a record, with 69 percent saying they disapprove of his job performance. And the percentage holding 'strongly' negative views is up to 56 percent, another new high, and nearly five times the number who 'strongly approve.'

"While most Republicans remain steadfastly behind the president, a third now disapprove, including two in 10 who strongly disapprove. This is the first time so many Republicans have expressed such sharply negative views of Bush's tenure. Strong disapproval among Democrats has also reached a new high in the poll, 81 percent."

Alan Fram writes for the Associated Press: "28 percent said they approve of the job Bush is doing, tying his low in the AP-Ipsos survey set last April. . . .

"Just 63 percent of Republicans and 46 percent of conservatives approved of Bush's handling of his job, strikingly low numbers. . . .

"With soaring fuel prices, ailing financial and housing markets and rising inflation, Bush got his lowest grade for handling the economy. Just 24 percent approved of how he's dealing with it, tying last month's AP-Ipsos low on that issue.

"Only half of Republicans gave Bush good grades on the economy, as did hardly any Democrats or independents."

Terence Hunt writes for the Associated Press: "This is hardly the way he wanted to go out. . . .

"As of Tuesday, Bush had 189 days before he walks out of the Oval Office for the last time. His term is ending with Americans on edge, the mood of the country sour."

A new New York Times/CBS poll shows Bush's approval at -- you guessed it -- 28 percent, with 65 percent disapproving. That's not an all-time low; a CBS poll in June found Bush approval at 25 percent. But approval on his handling of the economy, at 20 percent, does break the record.

And are you looking for a simple explanation of why John McCain is trailing Barack Obama in the polls? The AP poll finds that by a 2-1 margin, Americans believe McCain would generally continue Bush's economic policies. And by a more than 4-1 margin, they believe he would generally continue Bush's Iraq policies.

Ignored


Kenneth R. Bazinet and David Saltonsall write in the New York Daily News: "On a day that saw one economic bombshell after another, President Bush squinted, smirked and grimaced into the future Tuesday, declaring - contrary to a growing mountain of evidence - that the country's financial system is 'basically sound.'

"'I'm an optimist,' a sometimes testy Bush said in his first White House news conference since April. 'I believe there's a lot of positive things for our economy.'

"For all of Bush's bullishness, everyone from Wall Street kingpins to small-fry depositors seemed increasingly edgy as the U.S. economy hit one new low after another."

Maura Reynolds and Walter Hamilton write in the Los Angeles Times: "President Bush sought to calm the contagion of fear in financial markets Tuesday, but his upbeat tone was out of sync with a sobering new assessment from Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke, a jump in the prices manufacturers pay for raw materials and other unsettling economic portents."
David Lightman and Tony Pugh write for McClatchy Newspapers: "President Bush began Tuesday trying to calm consumers troubled by an increasingly shaky economy, but his words had little effect. . . .

"Even the administration's plan to support the mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- hurriedly announced over the weekend -- didn't stem the tide. Both enterprises saw their stocks drop more than 25 percent.

"The turmoil -- the Dow Jones Industrial Average ended the day at 10,962, the first time it had closed below 11,000 in two years -- clouded Bush's effort to use his first news conference since April to provide reassurance."

Richard Wolf writes for USA Today "President Bush declared himself an optimist, not an economist, Tuesday -- and a good thing, too."

Wolf writes that Bush's expression of confidence in the economy is "a message that has been delivered by presidents before in times of economic trouble.

"'Herbert Hoover kept telling the country during the Depression that "things are sound, it's the usual business cycle, and it will turn in the right direction," ' presidential historian Robert Dallek said.

"'Presidents become desperate to reassure the nation that they have a handle on things,' Dallek said.

For the complete storry, click this.

Tuesday, July 01, 2008

The Therapeutic Verses of the Koran

Ofer Grosbard and his "Quranet" Project

Along with his students at the University of Haifa, the clinical psychologist Ofer Grosbard compiled a collection of advice for bringing up children from Koranic verses. Hisham Adem talked to the Israeli lecturer about the practical pedagogy of the holy book

"This book was given to all of humanity." The Israeli Ofer Grosbard searched the Koran for educational guidelines - and found them | How did you come up with the idea for "Quranet"?

Ofer Grosbard: The project was an idea and initiative of one of my Bedouin students, Bushra. Last year a group of fifteen Bedouin students studying for graduate degrees in educational counseling attended a course in Developmental Psychology given by me. One day Bushra came up to me and said, "May I tell you the truth? What you are teaching us is not going to be of help to us." "Why do you say that?" I asked her.

Bushra said that when she becomes an educational counselor, a parent may come to her and say, "A demon has entered my child" or something similar. "Do you think that what you have taught us here will be of any use to me then?" "What would he helpful to you?" I asked her. She replied with one word, "The Koran." I asked her to explain. She said that, in the appropriate context, the quotation of a verse from the Koran has enormous impact on Muslims.

I brought a copy of the Koran to our next lesson. I divided the chapters among the students and asked them to locate the educational-therapeutic verses. There are many of these verses in the Koran, exhorting individuals to take responsibility, learn the truth, respect others, etc. I also asked them to write a brief story from everyday life for each verse to illustrate how a parent or teacher can utilize the verse to convey a message to the child. Together we collected more than three hundred stories, and I added a simple, brief educational-psychological explanation to each one. That was how Quranet came into being.

Which language did you choose?



"What happens when we repay evil with good?" Quranet provides interactive content with brief, simple explanations. However, the project is not yet ready to go online

Grosbard: The material has been developed in Hebrew, with an introduction by three distinguished sheikhs. It was recently published in book form by the Ben-Gurion University Publishing House.

How exactly does Quranet work?

Grosbard: The user selects a particular issue from the list of contents and receives the relevant Koran verse. He or she can then study a brief description of an everyday event illustrating how the verse can be utilized to convey a message to the child. The session concludes with a brief educational-psychological explanation of the process.

What are the main goals of Quranet?

Grosbard: Quranet transforms the Koran into a unique and useful educational tool for parents and teachers, making the beneficial power of the Koran widely accessible. It combines the Koran with a modern educational approach in an unprecedented fashion. Moreover, Quranet reveals the beauty of the Koran and its respect for human dignity, providing a resounding response to those who exploit the Koran to justify terrorism.

You said that one of the ideas of this project is to use the Koran as an educational tool. What exactly does that mean, particularly in terms of fighting radical Islamism?

Grosbard: I am a Jew, and, although I taught my students psychology, they taught me about the Koran, which I had not known before. They showed me its beauty and the way it deals so well with human relations. The essence of the Koran is actually human relations and human dignity – the opposite of terrorism. We used it to show parents and teachers what love means in the Koran.

Did you cooperate with Islamic theologians?

Grosbard: Although we worked on the material, we did not cooperate with sheiks or imams. We are only educators, and I would like to emphasize this as strongly as I can. The students are not interpreters of the Koran, nor have they pretended to be. They simply want to bring the Koran to the child and the family. A father who reads the Koran to his son is not automatically an interpreter of the Koran. Quoting a phrase from the Koran to a child – that one should tell the truth, for example – doesn't make you an interpreter of the Koran.


According to Ofer Grosbard, the players in the Mideast conflict are basically misunderstood children. His book "Israel on the couch" can be read on "Google Books" (see link below)

I emphasize this because we received many responses from the Arab world that talked about conspiracy and our presuming to interpret the Koran without actually reading the material – because the book is in Hebrew, and they only saw the website. After we finished our work, we presented it to well-known sheiks in Israel, England, and India and got wonderful feedback.

The project has caused apprehension among Islamic circles inside and outside Israel. They consider it Israeli propaganda and a means of manipulating the Koran to suit the interests of Israel.

Grosbard: First of all, the initiative came from Bedouin students, who did most of the work under my guidance, and it did not have any connection to the State of Israel. I know that in nondemocratic countries it may be difficult for people to believe that not everything is political and dictated by the government.

It is true that the State of Israel is proud of this project, which presents the beauty of the Koran. Why not? Muslims also believe that the Koran was given to all humanity. Is it forbidden that I, as a Jew, for example, study it? I would like to encourage everyone who feels that way to read the material I sent and make an honest judgment – then they will have the right answer. This project is a product of love, not conspiracy.

Do you think your project will be able to establish a bridge between the Islamic world and the West?

Grosbard: For Muslims, the Koran is a bridge between the Islamic and the western way of thinking. Non-Muslims may discover the beauty of the Koran. That's actually what happened to me. The Koran built a beautiful bridge of love between me and my students. They showed me the beauty of their culture, something I will never forget.

Interview by Hisham Adem

© Qantara.de 2008

Ofer Grosbard, born in Israel in 1954, comes from a German-Lithuanian Jewish family. He fought in the Yom Kippur War in 1973. He is a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst and the author of several books, including License for Insanity and An Arab in the Heart, a narrative analysis of the Middle East conflict. He is currently a lecturer at Haifa University.