Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Taking Bentham Seriously

No, Utilitarians Are Not Nice, Contentions, September 27, 2011. "It is all very well to suggest that legislation should seek to do more good that harm. But the problem with applying utilitarianism to legislation, in Bentham’s day or ours, is that someone has to decide which ends serve the greater good, just as the Ivy League experiments require someone to decide who lives and who dies, and just as top-down legislation in the progressive tradition requires wisdom that no single person possesses. This vision presumes the goal of legislation is control and direction, not the promotion of freedom under law."

Monday, September 26, 2011

More Solipsism on Drones

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall . . . , Contentions, September 26, 2011. "But what comes through most clearly in Finn’s article is that the issues raising concern about military robotics are ethical and legal, not strategic. Unfortunately, the current emphasis on drones – both from enthusiasts and skeptics -- repeats the fallacy that Fred Kagan addressed half a decade ago: the way that the U.S. focus on military transformation in the 1990s tended to convert war into “killing people and blowing things up,” at the expense of defining and achieving political objectives that can be advanced with the use of force."

Friday, September 23, 2011

Not Money, But Democracy

The Soft Underbelly of Europe, Contentions, September 23, 2011. "The underlying problem in Europe is not financial, or even economic. It is that we are no longer in the historical era of nation-making, and the entire raison d’etre of the EU is, indeed, to oppose nationalism. As former Europhile Max Hastings has recently confessed, that itself is a kind of narrow-mindedness. But it is madness to try to build an economic and political super-state on a base of contempt for the popular will and regular condemnations of nationalism, which historically is the force that has created unified body politics. Europe is not paying the price for too much borrowing. It is paying the price for too little democracy."

Cohen is Wrong on Drones

Asking the Wrong Questions About Drones, Contentions, September 23, 2011. "The larger problem is not that using drones undermines the confidence of our allies in uniform. It is that drones vastly reduce our ability to fight a counterinsurgency campaign by protecting local populations and collecting intelligence that allows us to prosecute the war more effectively."

Friday, September 16, 2011

The 2012 Race Shapes Foreign Policy

Foreign Policy Enters the 2012 Race, Centre for Policy Studies, September 16, 2011. "What is more interesting, though, is the way that the Democratic defeat in NY-9, which the victorious Republican framed as a referendum on President Obama, shows how foreign policy is slipping into the 2012 race, at a time when all eyes seem to be focused on the economy."

Friday, September 9, 2011

On 9/11, A Decade On

9/11 Reflection: Ted Bromund, Yale Daily News, September 9, 2011. "I wasn’t scared by 9/11. What scared me after 9/11 was the reaction I saw at Yale."

Thursday, September 1, 2011

Obama's Top Ten Errors on Libya

Obama’s Top Ten Errors on Libya, Centre for Policy Studies, September 1, 2011. "Instead of focusing on the unknown – for we do not know what will come next in Libya – and trying to judge the war by its aftermath, we should give thought to the known, and judge the war by the consequences it has already produced. Here, therefore, are the top ten errors of President Obama’s conduct of the Libyan War to date."