A Word from London  

Herbert London

      Herbert London is John M. Olin Professor of Humanities at N.Y.U., President of the Hudson Institute, and author of the recently published book Decade of Denial, published by Lexington Books. He can be reached at: www.herblondon.org.

Asymmetry in the Middle East

      It is self-evident in negotiating strategy that unless both parties have something to gain, negotiations will break down.

      While there have been literally dozens of articles published about the “road map” for peace in the Middle East very few have noted the asymmetrical nature of the deliberations.

      Israel is asked to give something tangible; the Palestinian Authority is asked to give something abstract. This explains the failure of Oslo and the likely failure of the “road map.” “Land for peace” is the embodiment of this asymmetry.

      Ariel Sharon has released more than 200 Palestinians terrorists from Israeli prisons since the second round of peace talks started.

      He infuriated members of his Likud party by using the word “occupation” in reference to the West Bank, a term Bibi Netanyahu said he would never employ, preferring instead “contested territory.”

      Sharon has virtually conceded the creation of a Palestinian state with a timetable for its establishment.

      And last, Sharon has vowed to dismantle several settlements in the West Bank and Gaza.

      By contrast, Abu Mazen has promised to control the terror, a condition he cannot possibly manage.

      Here then is the diplomatic quagmire. Israel offers something real; Palestinian representatives offer promises, empty ones at that.

      If some understanding is to be achieved, Mazen—probably with U.S. assistance—will have to stop the attacks. The U.S. can squeeze Islamic Jihad, Al Aqsa and Hamas by telling Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Iran that the funding of these terror groups must end or else.

      A threat based on the recent invasion of Iraq cannot be overlooked. Moreover, the U.S. has made it clear that Arafat with toxin in his DNA cannot be trusted and, as a consequence, cannot be part of the peace equation.

      It may well be that peace is a chimera. However, at the very least Israel has every right to demand a modus vivendi. Stability without fear is probably a more realistic goal than peace. Yet stability cannot be achieved with the present diplomatic asymmetry.

      As I see it, if Israel gives land and legal legitimacy for a Palestinian state, it must receive concrete assurance that the terror will end. Without this assurance, all concessions must be withdrawn.

      Second, the Palestinians must remove from consideration the “right of return.” These words are a code for the destruction of Israel as a sovereign Jewish state and can never be countenanced.

      Third, Mazen should do what no other Palestinian has had the courage to acknowledge: an official recognition of the state of Israel.

      If Israel concedes on the settlements—which it appears to be willing to do—Palestinians minimally must concede on the right of return. That trade-off is essential if stability is to be achieved in the near future.

      With stepped up attacks on Israeli citizens, Hamas and Al Aqsa have made it clear they will do whatever is necessary to undermine the peace talks. The June 11th suicide bombing that killed 16 and wounded 100 Israelis was designed not only to cause havoc, but to send a message to the Bush administration about the road map for peace. For the terrorists there is only one peace: A Palestine from the Jordan to the Mediterranean.

      If the Bush administration wants to force Israel into dubious peace talks, it should be willing to apply as much pressure as possible to avert terror attacks. There must be the realization that Israel faces 9/11 every day and that Jewish blood has the same value as American blood. There cannot be a compromise with violence that randomly attacks civilians.

      Should the U.S. be disinclined to act directly, President Bush should remove the shackles on Sharon’s military moves and allow him to engage in proportionate military retaliation. The Arab world will protest, but, alas, the Arab world has allowed and fostered the bloodletting in Israel. In fact, the Arab world has allowed the suffering of Palestinians.

      Hence, the U.S. should in unequivocal terms tell our allies and adversaries that aiding and abetting terrorists in the Middle East will be treated in the same fashion as assisting Al Qaeda worldwide. What is sauce for the goose will be sauce for the gander.

      Since asymmetry hasn’t worked; it is time to give symmetry a chance.

BTB

      When the American history of the late 20th century is written with the benefit of sufficient hindsight, my suspicion is that this will be called the era of experimentation. Ideas from the sublime, such as the discovery of DNA, to the ridiculous, such as Esalen, will be plumbed in an effort to make sense of this period.

      Although it is probably premature to attach a label to the beginning of a new century, there is a condition coming into focus, a condition predicated on the rejection of absurd experimentation. In its most elemental form I would describe this current state as “Back to Basics” or BTB. It is already evident from relatively trifling issues from dieting to American foreign policy. Perhaps specifics would be helpful.

      For decades Americans were told eating was fun and losing weight easy. An industry was created around weight loss fads. There was the ice cream diet, the water diet, the Atkins diet, the magic diet pills, Weight Watchers and a host of others. But it is now clear and indisputable that if you use more calories than you consume, weight will be lost. This isn’t hocus pocus, but basic arithmetic. Should someone consume 2500 calories a day, but maintain an activity level of 2000 calories, the waist and hips will expand.

      If there is one area of life where experiments were on continual trial, it is education. From the open classroom to whole language study to the new math, educators displayed extraordinary imagination in organizing dubious programs. Students were told memorization is wrong; process is more important than outcomes; specifics in history such as dates are unnecessary; and all subjects are a reflection of power politics in one form or another.

      After years of educational nonsense adopted as the next best experiment, President Bush and his Secretary of Education Paige have argued for a return to drills, phonics and “old fashioned” methods of pedagogy. To the astonishment of many, even the teachers’ unions seem to embrace this emerging standard, perhaps due—in no small part—to the obvious failure of the experiments they once adopted.

      American business has seemingly come to its senses as well. In the high-octane economy of the late 1990s it was easy to believe that PE ratios don’t count and that the laws of financial transactions had been repealed by new economic development.

      Now that the bubble has burst and it is increasingly evident valuations in the 90s were often fictional, fundamentals have regained appeal. Value rather than growth is suddenly in vogue. Moreover, earnings—once dismissed by a Wall Street guru as telling you nothing important about a company—now tells a great deal.

Evaluating the Rise in the Euro

      In recent weeks the rise of the euro and the fall of the dollar have been nothing less than spectacular. At the moment the euro is at $1.18, exceeding the $1.17 when the currency was born in 1999. Yet while Europeans take great pride in the rise of its currency, this rise is squeezing growth and hastening deflation, perhaps recession.

      From 1999 to 2001 the dollar’s ascent vis-à-vis the euro was explained by America’s superior economic performance. However, the United States still has a growth rate that outpaces Europe’s. Obviously other conditions offer an explanation.

      It would appear that the rate of G.D.P. growth is less relevant in currency evaluations than trade imbalances and interest rates. Investors are seemingly less willing to finance the U.S. current account deficit and are gravitating to relatively high European interest rates. Capital flows from Europe to the U.S. have dried up as European investors suffered major losses on their dollar assets.

      Some prognosticators contend that in two years the euro could be at $1.60, a prospect that doesn’t scare many U.S. policymakers who fear deflation more than inflation and who believe a cheaper dollar can reduce deflationary risk. It is not surprising that the Fed recently left interest rates unchanged and hinted there may be further easing even below the 1.25 percent level.

      Are these conditions sustainable? In my judgment they are not. The prospect of continental recession is real and foreboding. European Central bankers will unquestionably demand currency easing that goes beyond consensual accords. Better to break an agreement than break the backs of workers. At the present rate unemployment in central Europe could reach 15 percent this year.

      As significant as recession is the long-term prospect of having to deal with unfunded pension liability. There is little doubt that the disparity between retirees and productive workers is growing. If one were to do a straight-line extrapolation of the debt on Italian pension payments, there is virtually no way in which the government can meet its obligation other than monetizing the debt.

      Moreover, while the Italian example might be seen as extreme, it is not dramatically different from conditions in France, Germany and much of Western Europe.

      High interest rates—which may attract capital investment—discourages industrial development. There are signs that Europe’s stock market resilience is being tested by the climbing euro. When the euro rose to $1.18 the Dow Jones Euro Stoxx index plummeted 3.8 percent.

      It is already clear that European companies are generally inefficient and unable to compete on the world stage. The disparity between the 2.5 percent monetary rate established by the European Central Bank (ECB) and the interest accruals delivered in the bond market, offers an obvious candidate for monetary arbitrage.

      But those high interest rates also make European products very expensive and depress trade activity. As is the case with all financial decisions, there are winners and losers. However if this present high rate is sustained, the political ramifications will be profound. Politicians recognize the value of having more winners than losers. Worker strikes and commercial slowdowns usually generate a political response.

      Markets, however, are extraordinarily adaptable. Secretary of the Treasury John Snow has suggested that a somewhat weakened dollar might be a spur for economic activity. But the value of the dollar does not exist in isolation. Decisions made here will have consequences elsewhere.

      The ECB may not respond immediately, but it will respond. I am confident in asserting that if unemployment rates rise dramatically and recession has political effects, the pressure to ease—thereby reducing the value of the euro—will be irresistible.

      Does it make sense to invest in European bonds? Yes, if you’re in for the short term (a year or two) and no, if you have a longer investment strategy. What looks like gold today can easily look like mica tomorrow.

      Even psychology, that great warren of ridiculous ideas, is reevaluating its past and recommending the logical and, I might add obvious, recommendations on everything from child development to courtship. The ’60s recipe for self-actualization led to one accident after another on the rocky shoals of freedom without limits. There is a price to pay for instant gratification that cannot be overlooked. “If it feels good do it” died with a generation of strung-out drug addicts.

      Moreover, the contention that if you have it, flaunt it, is wrong as well. Show offs are usually knocked off their pedestal. Walk humbly in the face of God is reemerging as a welcome code of deportment, even though Hollywood hasn’t yet imbibed that message.

      The father of America, George Washington, warned against entangling alliances. For most of our history these words led directly to a foreign policy position, including but not restricted to the U.S. unwillingness to join the League of Nations. During World War II F.D.R. challenged this belief with his assumption that only through a global organization could international equilibrium be established.

      He was not entirely wrong since United Nations’ peacekeeping operations have proved to be invaluable in several trouble spots. But when Iraq war preparations were stalled through UN resolutions and a Security Council veto, America’s independence to act in behalf of its interests on the world stage was adversely affected.

      It is not at all surprising that President Bush stated he wanted UN support for the war but would not be deterred by UN objections. In fact, what he was saying is consistent with our most fundamental foreign policy position.

      Has the nation come to its senses based on my examples? Have the extreme experiments of the last half of the 20th century been interred? In my judgment the true believers of hoaxes and fantasies will not disappear. Not only is a sucker born every minute, but it’s often impossible to dispel silly ideas even with rational argument and incontrovertible evidence. Nonetheless, there are hopeful signs. BTB appears to be catching on. As soon as buttons appear with BTB letters and red, white and blue ribbons are worn on one’s lapel, the counter-revolution will be in full swing. Who knows, perhaps the new century will be the age of restoration. It happened after Napoleon; maybe now it will happen after Dr. Spock.

Picasso-Matisse v. Manet-Velasquez

      If ever the aesthetics in the past few centuries and 20th century could be compared, it is now in the 21th century in New York City. At this time two blockbuster exhibits are on display, one at the Museum of Modern Art (in Sunnyside Queens), the Picasso-Matisse exhibit, and the other at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Manet-Velasquez exhibit.

      Clearly Picasso and Matisse spoke to one another literally and figuratively. They were inspired by similar themes and seemed to capture the spirit of a new century. Both were subversives who were intent on challenging bourgeois sensibility, most specifically the aesthetics of visual reality. They imbibed Freudian metaphors, the relativism of an age that lost faith in certainty, the brutality of World War I and subsequent totalitarianism.

      From the mangled bodies in Verdun and the Spanish Civil War, they found dismembered figures in their paintings. Theirs was a vision of experimentalism and nihilism. They were existentialists caught in the web of future shock. They were the artisans of imagination; the brush being less significant than the palette, the hand subordinate to the mind.

      But, as I see it, they were poseurs laughing at the world. Robertson Davies, in his novel, Bred in the Bone, makes the same point. To him, Picasso is a fraud who recognizing his own limitations as a painter, changes the standard for evaluating art.  Instead of beauty—the central criterion of artistic judgment—Picasso offers ugliness.  Instead of life forms, Picasso and Matisse offer masks. Instead of civilized expression, they offer primitivism. Instead of manners, they deliver barbarism.

      It is ironic indeed that the masses pouring into MOMA to see the founders of modernism are largely middle class patrons there to see an unmitigated assault on bourgeois values. Here is yet another illustration of a “safe” walk on the wild side for a bourgeoisie that is confused about its own position. As one woman said to her mate “should I really like that?” Yes, the aesthetic revolution is complete.

      Or is it?

      Velasquez is a 17th century Spanish artist who so thrilled the French painting world that his work in a scant two decades went from anonymity to the most profound influence in European culture. Manet drank from the artistic well Velasquez created and as the exhibit demonstrates, the Velasquez influence crossed the Atlantic and melted onto the canvasses of Whistler, Sargent, Chase, Cassatt and a host of American artists.

      The color and grandeur of Velasquez bullfights touched a universal impulse for action and bravery. For nascent French democracy, Velasquez captured the sentiments of vagrants, prostitutes, and street musicians. He offered the era of Louis Napoleon what it could not see on its own. It took the sack of Seville, more than a century after his death, for Velasquez to be recognized. He found beauty in the pedestrian. He elevated the quotidian to majestic heights and he gave the French Revolution a culture for the common person.

      In Manet, Velasquez had the ideal disciple. His clear, powerful brushstrokes convey a message about the human condition—the suffering, the heartbreak, the determination and the unheralded acts of grace. Before he became intoxicated by impressionism, Manet was the voice of common expression.

      The combined exhibit of Velasquez and Manet’s painting is nothing short of breathtaking. As revolted as I was by Picasso-Matisse, I was exalted by Manet-Velasquez. If the former duo changed artistic aesthetics, the latter enhanced them. Where the former subverted the middle class, the latter rejoiced in their accomplishments, however mundane.

      It is hard to say whether the crowds that went to see these respective exhibits share my opinion. My impression is that the American middle class has been so browbeaten it can no longer recognize a hoax. Yet even “vulgarians” or those so labeled by the artistic tastemakers, must respond intuitively to beauty and the sheer power of imagery made majestic.

      I was stopped in my tracks by Léon Bonnat’s “Job,” a painting that had so forcefully captured human suffering and redemption that it entered my dream world for days. Not one Picasso or Matisse painting influenced me in the same way. Those were mere passing images, novelties like ads on a billboard.

      Am I too harsh, perhaps unforgiving? I’m not sure. What I do know is that art can affect deeply when it speaks to the human condition. Without doubt Manet and Velasquez do.

 Do Ideas Have Consequences?

      In the aftermath of Richard Weaver’s powerful arguments in Ideas Have Consequences published decades ago, the title became a phrase ensconced in the public imagination, a calling card for intellectuals and a banner for political parties. I too fell under the spell of this captivating phrase arguing that ideas change the way we live and think.

      While my view of this matter hasn’t changed, it most certainly has been modified by experience. I would now contend that ideas have consequences when, and only when, they are the right ideas, strategically advanced, marketed effectively and embraced wholeheartedly. Unfortunately most ideas do not meet those criteria.

      A good idea with the wrong strategic backdrop cannot possibly be successful. Anti-Communism, to take one example, was predicated on the obvious idea that Marxist views challenged human nature and could be imposed only through a dictatorial regime. Yet anti-Communism, i.e. the free market and liberal democracy, did not catch hold, despite its condign expression, until the Communist regimes in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe were at the point of collapse.

      It is usually at the moment of failure when an idea, untried but promising, can replace another.  If an idea has ossified over time, it usually doesn’t disappear on its own; it has to be shoved over the cliff of public opinion. Although normally applied to scientific theory, idea replacement falls into the realm of what Thomas Kuhn described as a “paradigm shift,” a phrase that is much overused and one I have come to deplore even when it has its utility.

      What I have also experienced is that grand ideas or theories require little ideas, supported notions, that make big ideas acceptable. For example, President Lyndon Johnson advanced a big idea when he declared a war on poverty. Unfortunately the war was fought with very little ideological ammunition or the requisite institutional apparatus to make it successful.

      This war was organized on the seemingly sensible proposition that the way to make a poor person less poor is giving him money and support services. What Johnson never understood is that poverty is as much a cultural issue as an economic one; consequently much of the money spent to alleviate a problem had little or no effect.

      It is also the case that the idea must be marketed effectively and the public must be ready to receive it. Western Union attempted to introduce its own version of a fax machine in the late 1940s, but the public wasn’t ready for this innovation and the marketing effort was half hearted.

      Similarly, the idea of a voluntary military force proposed most vigorously by the Nobel laureate Milton Friedman didn’t receive public approbation until after the Vietnam War, a war that became unpopular after 1970 and that produced widespread anti-war and anti-military sentiment.

      Until this post 1970 period most Americans assumed that military duty was part and parcel of one’s civic responsibility. In fact, that notion was reinforced by the military experience in World War II, a war that was fought with overwhelming public support.

      Clearly ideas can have consequences, a point I don’t wish to negate. President Ronald Reagan’s insistence on a missile defense system in the face of enormous opposition—even from members of his own administration—raised the stakes in the nuclear equation and forced the Soviet Union to cede its intractable position on mutually assured destruction.

      It may well be that President Bush has carved out a new national security idea for the 21st century with his West Point speech that articulated the need to fight terrorism with preemptive strikes. While this position would most certainly have been vigorously criticized before 9/11, after that date the public appears to have become amenable to this alteration in policy perspective.