One way for an aspiring power to avoid the hard work of building a formidable economic base upon which to base future military power is to acquire nuclear weapons. Although not easy, this constitutes a fairly cheap way to become a major regional, if not a global, power in spite of one’s pygmy status in the global economy. The Soviet economy in the late forties, ravaged by World War II, was dwarfed by the US economy and challenged by a rebounding Western Europe; but the Soviet Union still managed to test an atomic weapon in 1949, thus securing its status as America’s only rival. Likewise Iran today, with an economy the size of Austria’s and Saudi Arabia’s, and not much more than one-tenth the size of China’s, may soon catapult itself into the club of nuclear nations. Engineers at Ben-Gurion University in Israel have developed a technique for rendering plutonium unsuitable for making nuclear weapons. As a result of this breakthrough, the world’s nuclear fuel producers – the US, Russia, Germany, France and Japan – could ensure that any future buyers would receive “declawed” nuclear fuel, only usable for peaceful purposes. While this would not stop Iran, which is well on its way to having the fuel for a weapon, it would prevent other economic pygmies aspiring to great power status from utilizing this short cut. And by stymieing nuclear weapons proliferation, it could make the world a safer place. Read the article here.
Combatting Nuclear Proliferation
March 3, 2009 by rscherDoes a Rising Power need a flexible economy? The Case of Brazil…
March 1, 2009 by rscher
One of the historic strengths of the U.S. economy has been its flexibility. Dust bowl migrants relocated to Michigan for auto jobs in the thirties. Hiring and firing has been less fraught with regulation in the U.S. than in other countries. Labor mobility has helped buoy U.S. productivity growth in years past. Rapid adjustment could likewise help the U.S. economy rebound from recession and crisis more quickly, than, say, Japan did during its lost decade.
On February 19, I posted a blog about Embraer, Brazil’s world-class airplane exporter, discussing its decision to lay off 20% of its workforce. Since that time, a Brazilian labor court temporarily suspended the layoffs due to an appeal by the metalworkers’ union. President Lula subsequently asked Embraer’s president for an explanation. The president of the metalworkers’ union requested that the president of BNDES, Brazil’s massive, state-owned development bank which owns 6% of Embraer, lobby the airplane manufacturer to reverse the layoffs. A country must strike a balance between worker protection and the free market, true, but Brazil’s balance has been a drag on growth.
For all of the improvements in Brazil’s economic performance and policies of late, GDP growth has lagged many other emerging market powerhouses, including its BRIC peers. Small business, often the engine of job creation and growth in an economy, faces formidable obstacles in Brazil.
After military rule, Brazilian political elites promulgated one of the most populist constitutions in the world, which micro-manages the economy and stymies economic reform. One result is that Brazil remains a difficult place to do business. The World Bank produces a report annually called Doing Business, which ranks 181 countries by how conducive the regulatory environment is to doing business. Brazil ranked 125th in 2009. By contrast, China ranked 83rd, Mexico 56th, and the U.S. 3rd. Brazil was even bested by Russia (120th) and bureaucratic India (122nd).
Brazil’s electoral and legislative rules make it challenging to pass reforms that would make it easier to do business (e.g. labor and tax reforms). Often, 60% majorities in both houses of Congress, required to amend the constitution, must be cobbled together among Brazil’s numerous parties just to make changes to fiscal policy. Brazil suffers from an excess of what political scientists call “veto players,” or the number of actors that must agree in order to reach a decision. Political parties, the executive branch, the courts, local governments, etc. The compelling analysis of Barry Ames, Professor of Comparative Politics at the University of Pittsburgh, of Brazil’s cumbersome politics and mediocre policy outcomes in The Deadlock of Democracy in Brazil is a must-read for any Brazil hand…
A New Realism for American Foreign Policy?
February 24, 2009 by rscherGiven the rise of new powers in the world and America’s relative decline, do the neo-cons in the Republican Party and the liberal institutionalists in the Democratic Party both have it wrong on foreign policy? Do we need a new realism in American foreign policy? John Hulsman, a scholar at the German Council on Foreign Relations, and Wess Mitchell, Director of Research at the Center for European Policy Analysis, think so. I attended a lecture of theirs at a political salon, in which they expounded on their short book utilizing Mario Puzo’s and Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Godfather” to explain what America is doing wrong in foreign policy today.
Their main point was that the United States, a declining hegemon, is similar to the character of Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando), whose criminal empire loses power relative to other crime families. Vito’s three “sons,” represent three currents in American foreign policy. Sonny (James Caan) represents the neo-cons, always ready to use force. Tom Hagen (Robert Duvall), not really Vito’s son but his “consigliere,” represents the liberal institutionalists, Hillary Clinton if you will, who wish to use diplomacy and America’s moral authority to build alliances and cajole nations into participating in U.S. hegemony. Michael Corleone (Al Pacino), who triumphs in the end, represents realism in foreign policy. This is Hulsman and Mitchell’s main point: America needs a new realism to manage its decline in a multi-polar world. The neo-cons and liberal institutionalists both remain mistaken about America’s relative power, believing America is stronger than it in fact is. They differ only over tactics. On the other hand, Hulsman and Mitchell’s realism would represent a new strategy for America, as Michael Corleone developed a new strategy for the Corleone family.
Not a bad point, though it has been made before. Others have noted Great Britain’s shrewd adjustment to its relative power decline from its 19th century zenith. Britain relinquished its colonial empire and allied with the United States, thus forestalling a more dramatic power decline. The Rising Powers blog will have more to say in the future about an appropriate U.S. foreign policy in an era of rising powers. I wish to highlight in today’s blog Hulsman and Mitchell’s entertaining idea and accompanying book, and encourage you to watch Coppola’s fabulous film again! I would add one point to the Hulsman and Mitchell thesis, however. I allude to Kissinger’s fine work, Diplomacy. He notes that during the 19th Century, European diplomacy shifted from a system based on the balance of power plus shared values (the Concert of Europe), during which there were few major wars, to one based on a pure balance of power, to Hulsman and Mitchell’s realism. Kissinger argued that while realism worked well for a time, exemplified by the successes of Bismarck, realism ultimately turned on itself. Actions of statesmen less adept than Bismarck in a world of pure balance of power, pure realism, may have led to World War I. Kissinger argued, somewhat ironically, that realism must be married to shared values and ideals, Teddy Roosevelt “married” to Woodrow Wilson if you will, in order for a stable multi-polar balance of power to work.
Is China the only one still shopping?
February 20, 2009 by rscherAt the Foreign Policy Association’s Rising Powers blog, we have highlighted news stories about China’s buying and lending spree across the globe, including in Russia and Latin America. Today’s New York Times published an article detailing strategic deals China has made with natural resource companies worldwide, exploiting today’s low equity prices and dearth of capital to secure access to crucial industrial inputs, such as metals and oil. Some Western analysts may worry about growing Chinese influence at a time that Western multinationals are reeling. However, the arguments made in the past that multinationals provide the needed capital and know-how for development and growth apply equally to China. Have a look: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/21/business/worldbusiness/21yuan.html?hp.
Nobody is immune: Brazil’s Embraer hit by global recession
February 19, 2009 by rscherThe recession this year may not in fact be global. Planet Earth could possibly squeak by with slightly positive growth in 2009. This is thanks to growth, albeit slower, in the major Emerging Market economies, notably the BRICs, and in spite of contraction in the advanced industrialized world. Certainly, forecasting growth this year will be as accurate with a crystal ball as with a team of economists; yet what is likely is that Brazil, Russia, India and China will grow.
Brazil, in contrast to its fellow BRICs, is a closed economy. Current account transactions (a broad measure of trade) represent some 30% of GDP, versus over 40% for the US and over 70% for China. Nevertheless, Brazil’s expanding export sector has enabled Latin America’s largest country to amass US$200 billion in foreign exchange reserves — for the first time in decades insulating Brazil from the worst effects of a global crisis. Moreover, Brazilian exports are diversified, not as highly dependent on commodities as peer Russia or as neighbor Peru. Major exports include cars, planes, chemicals and semi-manufactured metals, in addition to iron ore, oil and soy beans. Further, Brazil is not overly dependent on one market, with roughly a quarter of exports going to the rest of Latin America, a quarter to the EU, 19% to Asia, and only 15% to the US and Canada. The country’s strength in terms of manufacturing and natural resources, as well as access to global markets, underpins its status as a true Rising Power.
So, is Brazil immune from the current crisis? Not exactly.
Brazil boasts some world-class companies, including CVRD in mining, AMBEV in beverages, Aracruz in pulp and paper, Petrobras in petroleum, and Embraer in jet airplanes.
Embraer is the world’s fourth largest airplane manufacturer after Boeing, Airbus and Canada’s Bombardier. It competes head-to-head with the latter in the growing regional jet market. At US$5.5 billion last year, airplanes represented nearly 3% of Brazil’s exports, its fifth largest export category. Yet the market for airplanes has been grounded. Embraer today announced a 20% cut in its workforce (see http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2009/02/19/ap6073139.html). Likewise, Brazilian exports are affected by lower commodity prices and declining cyclical demand for such products as metals and pulp and paper. Brazilian GDP and export growth will slow dramatically.
Yet this setback should not stop the rise of Latin America’s strongest economy. Since the late 1990s, Brazilian policymakers have been committed to sound macro policies — a flexible exchange rate, low inflation targets, and gradual public debt reduction. The country’s position in the global economy should continue to improve, as long as Brazilian politicians, entangled in a cumbersome system, manage to maintain sound macro policies and to accelerate the slow pace of economic reform – for example, by streamlining the tax system and promoting infrastructure investment and a more friendly business environment. The adoption of green technologies would serve to protect the Amazon rainforest and put Brazil at the forefront of the new economy. Most importantly, reform of the unwieldy political system – reducing obstacles to legislative action – though unlikely, could accelerate Brazil’s rise.
China Promotes Trade in Latin America
February 18, 2009 by rscherChina’s rise has been export-driven, like Japan’s and Korea’s before it. China took note during the Asian Financial Crisis of the late 1990s that foreign exchange reserves are king. By keeping its currency undervalued, China has encouraged exports (the latter helped as well by tax rebates) and amassed foreign exchange. With the drivers of demand for Chinese goods – the US and European Union – in recession, Chinese leaders have launched a road show to open markets (and access to raw materials) among its Emerging Market brethren. No better place to start than Latin America, in America’s backyard, where over 500 million consumers live.
Today, China’s State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE) announced a “slowing” in the growth of the nation’s current account surplus (see press release at http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-02/18/content_10840178.htm). It is not surprising that the day before, China’s Vice President Xi Jinping hailed the importance of ties with Latin America in an appearance in Caracas, Venezuela, following a visit to Mexico and on his way to Brazil (read about it at http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-02/18/content_10844156.htm). The current account surplus (a broad measure of trade) expanded only 20% in 2008, down from 49% in 2007. This enormous surplus has been responsible for China’s mind-numbing US$1.8 trillion in foreign exchange reserves, over 12% of US GDP. This Great Wall of foreign exchange limits the country’s vulnerability to the global economic crisis.
Nevertheless, with GDP per head at under US$3,000 and a population of 1.3 trillion, China has enormous development needs. With the engines of external demand sputtering, China needs to either jumpstart domestic demand (by loosening the fiscal purse and printing money, as well as by letting the currency rise) or find other external engines…or both. Last November, China’s President Hu Jintao launched the country’s Latin road show with a swing through the region. He signed a free trade agreement with Peru (China’s second in the region) and attended the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Lima. This year, he sent three senior officials back to promote trade.
With protectionism mounting in the US and EU, both of which have huge trade deficits with China, China must diversify. Because many Latin countries have trade surpluses with China, driven by commodity exports, the region is listening. Latin-Chinese trade has grown, totaling an estimated US$143 billion in 2008, still dwarfed by US-China trade of US$409 billion. With its lower labor costs, China has elbowed Latin manufactures out of the US market. Chinese goods have begun to compete in Latin markets as well. Witness the protests last November of Peruvians against free trade with China. Latin textile manufacturers particularly are living on borrowed time. In any event, this latest example of China’s economic diplomacy demonstrates that the world’s Rising Powers are not sitting idly by as the greatest financial crisis in decades grips the developed world.
You might do the same as Putin…
February 7, 2009 by rscherBy Roger M. Scher
January 25, 2008
…if your empire had been dismantled and your great nation humiliated.
It is common practice in the West to bemoan the autocratic, obstructionist bully that Putin’s Russia has become. Yet there is another viewpoint policymakers would do well to acknowledge. The FT article below is a piece I wish I had written, but alas Quentin Peel beat me to it. It contains the Russian view on international relations in the post-Cold War period.
According to this view, Western leaders have made a strategic blunder, missing an opportunity to work closely with post-Soviet Russia toward building an effective world order. The West has been unable to resist the temptation to extract the maximum benefit from victory in the Cold War by signing everyone but Russia up to its clubs, NATO and the European Union. Russia’s long history as a great power, its grip on world energy resources, and its desire to be treated with respect have been dismissed by most Western leaders. Instead of pursuing a foreign policy of goodwill, instead of playing the magnanimous victors, as the European powers did when they brought post-Napoleonic France into the Concert of Europe in 1818, the West could not resist extending its influence to Russia’s borders.
The West’s assertive policy toward Russia has not only entailed bringing the Polands and Hungarys of central Europe into the fold, but also the Latvias and Estonias, former Soviet republics now NATO members. NATO is attempting to station an anti-missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic, despite opposition from Russia. Russia alone was not asked to join NATO. Remember Kissinger’s remark a few years ago about NATO expansion: alliances are meant to be against somebody (i.e. Russia).
Western meddling has likewise extended to the Ukraine and Georgia, where Russia has had claims for more than two hundred years. The West has openly supported the Kremlin’s political opponents in and held out the prospect of NATO membership to these nations. NATO has sought military bases and other defense arrangements in a number of central Asian republics on Russia’s eastern flank. Anyone who has studied the Cold War and ‘the sources of Soviet conduct’ knows that, since the czars (and at least since the Crimean War in the mid-19th century when France and Britain brought Russia to its knees), Russia has been a little sensitive about being surrounded. Add Napoleon’s and Hitler’s all-out invasions of Russia, Russian defeat by the Japanese in 1905, and Western intervention against the Bolsheviks in 1920, and you can perhaps understand Russian prickliness.
No wonder Russia is selling sophisticated arms to Syria and Iran. The failure of Western diplomacy to limit Iran’s acquisition of a nuclear weapon indicates just what a strategic blunder not cooperating with Russia has been.
True, there is more to the story than a maltreated Russia, including the notion that Vladimir Putin has become a modern-day czar – inept and authoritarian. Even so, policymakers in the West would be well-advised to study Peel’s article below, especially the quotes from Russian leaders, for insight into the current state of the Russian heart…
How Russia is reasserting itself
By Quentin Peel
Published: July 31 2007 19:18 | Last updated: July 31 2007 19:18
Vladimir Putin is not a man who pulls his punches in public. By all accounts the Russian president is a cautious bureaucrat in private, carefully weighing up all the options before reaching any decision. But in front of a domestic audience he often slips into harsh language, even street slang, to get across his message.Thus it was two weeks ago, when he received a delegation of leaders from Nashi, the pro-Kremlin nationalist youth movement, at his dacha at Zavidovo outside Moscow. Speaking of the diplomatic confrontation between Britain and Russia over Moscow’s refusal to extradite the suspected murderer of Alexander Litvinenko, the former Russian agent poisoned with radioactive polonium in London, Mr Putin suddenly switched from calm analysis to harsh words.
“They are making proposals to change our constitution, which is insulting for our nation and our people,” the president declared at the televised meeting. “It is their brains, not our constitution, that need to be changed.”
Mr Putin’s coarseness contrasted with his earlier dismissal of the affair as a “mini-crisis”. But it was in keeping with a much more assertive Russian stance on foreign policy. It also reflected the bitterness of the Russian elite at perceived western indifference, or even condescension, towards their efforts to reform the system and abide by a written constitution.
“We deserve to be treated as normal,” says a former top Kremlin official. “The US and the west have been making a fantastic mistake with Russia for the past 15 years. For a long time we were ready for normal co-operation. When we chose democracy and the market economy, we changed the world. We made it a safer place. But what did we get in return? The west pushed Russia aside. They did not understand it. It was a huge stupidity and a missed opportunity.”
Is it the west that has mishandled a Russia bent on becoming normal, or is it Russia that is falling into old Soviet habits – of mistrusting the outside world and seeing anti-Russian conspiracies on all sides? Russian liberals and western critics see the all-pervasive influence of the siloviki – present and former members of the security services, such as Mr Putin himself – as central to the new mindset. They see enemies all around. At the same time, Russian self-confidence has soared with rising revenues from oil and gas. So does the new nationalism represent a fundamental change, or is it just tactical – with an eye on parliamentary and presidential elections in the coming months?
The Russian perception of an ungrateful and unfriendly west was the focus of a private trip to meet senior US officials in Washington last year by Alexander Voloshin, former chief of staff to both Mr Putin and his predecessor, Boris Yeltsin. “Voloshin spelt out all the concessions made by Moscow,” says Dmitri Trenin, deputy director of the Carnegie Moscow Centre. They included closing its intelligence-gathering post in Cuba, another base in Vietnam, and – after September 11 2001 – giving a green light for the US to use air bases in central Asia to support the invasion of Afghanistan.
“He told them Putin was miles ahead of the pack in the Kremlin,” Mr Trenin says. “But in return, what did we get? Nato in Kosovo, the Orange Revolution in Ukraine and the Rose Revolution in Georgia. The US response to Voloshin was: ‘So what?’ They simply batted him away. That was the last straw for Putin. He decided that to get the attention of the US by continuing to play Mr Nice was a losing proposition. He stopped being Mr Nice and started playing Mr Nasty.”
That heralded Mr Putin’s speech to the Munich Security Conference in February, when he fiercely criticised US foreign policy, including the siting of missile defence units in Poland and the Czech Republic, and attacked Nato enlargement as a hostile gesture. Fyodor Lukyanov, editor-in-chief of Russia in Global Affairs, Moscow’s leading foreign policy periodical, sees the switch as a “completely new stage in Russian development, underestimated in the west. Since the Munich speech, or a little bit later, there is a new approach: that we do not compromise.”
He says that will be true of Russia’s rejection of the US- and European Union-backed plan for the independence of Kosovo and of Russia’s decision – announced by Mr Putin last month – to abrogate the Conventional Forces in Europe treaty. “The rejection is absolute,” he says. “There will be no movement.”
Mr Lukyanov thinks the new foreign policy stance goes beyond mere truculence. He sees an attempt by Mr Putin’s team in the Kremlin, and at the foreign ministry, to spell out a new ideology of international relations just as they are seeking to forge a new political platform for the forthcoming elections at home.
The turning point was the confrontation in April between Russia and Estonia, its tiny Baltic neighbour, when the Estonian government decided to move a Soviet-era war memorial and the bodies of the soldiers buried beneath it. At the time, members of Nashi attacked the Estonian embassy in Moscow and blockaded border posts. Russian oil stopped flowing through Estonian ports and an electronic blitzkrieg was launched against Estonian websites.
“Russia tried to demonstrate in this unfortunate way that there are values that we will defend. It was the first time when not just interests but values mattered,” says Mr Lukyanov.
The most substantial statement of the new thinking was given by Sergei Lavrov, foreign minister, in an article supposed to be published last month in Foreign Affairs, the US magazine, but then suddenly withdrawn by the minister amid accusations of US censorship (firmly denied by the editor). Mr Lavrov wrote that US unilateralism had failed and that Russia was competing with it in an international market of ideas. “As globalisation has extended beyond the west, competition has become truly global,” he wrote. “Competing states must now take into account differing values and development patterns. The challenge is to establish fairness in this complex competitive environment.”
Mr Lukyanov sees parallels with neo-conservative thinking in the US, including close ties to religion, in the shape of the Russian Orthodox church. He cites one passage edited out of the article as saying that unipolarity – having the US as sole superpower – is “contrary to God’s order”.
Says the Carnegie centre’s Mr Trenin: “There has been a rise in internal self-confidence. Putin is a real tsar. He does not have to look over his shoulder. The Kremlin is fully sovereign in the country and we are one of the few truly sovereign states around the world, along with the US and China.”
He says the confidence of Russia’s leaders now exceeds that even of the Soviet leadership in the 1970s, when the US finally accorded Moscow equal status in political and military affairs.
Russia wants respect for its differences – whether it is the system of “managed democracy” that has seen the creation of two artificial pro-Kremlin parties to dominate the State Duma, or the peculiar sort of market economy it has introduced, combining a free-for-all in wealth creation with rules favouring state-controlled companies. Both attract strong criticism in the west, where they are seen as falling far short of genuine democratic or market standards – quite apart from the underlying influence of the security services.
Is Moscow’s new self-confidence well-founded? The most important factor is Russia’s economic performance. Since he came to power in 1999, Mr Putin has presided over a remarkable period of recovery, which has seen per capita incomes return to the level they were in 1990, just before the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The international assertiveness is also a reflection of growing election fever, with a parliamentary poll for the State Duma in December followed by elections to choose a successor to Mr Putin next spring.
A third element in the equation, however, is an underlying uncertainty that stems from the lack of transparent rules in both politics and the economy. No one knows who Mr Putin’s successor will be. Whoever it is, any change in leadership is likely to mean not just a change in power but in the people with access to wealth in or close to the Kremlin.
There is uncertainty about the economic outlook, too. “This period [of Putin’s rule] has been one of easy growth,” says Yevgeny Gavrilenkov, chief economist at Troika Dialog, Russia’s largest investment bank. “We have had a very favourable external environment, with low global interest rates, high commodity prices, cheap domestic energy and excess labour.” As a result, Russia boasts a healthy twin surplus on both the current account and the state budget. Growth of gross domestic product was running at an annual rate of 7 per cent in the first half of this year.
Mr Gavrilenkov warns, however, that the medium-term scenario is much more precarious. “Growth is driven by external borrowing, which reached a total of nearly $400bn in the first half of 2007. State-controlled companies such as Gazprom, Rosneft and Russian Railways are the major drivers. It is largely a result of the central bank’s effective guarantee of rouble appreciation and it is not sustainable. It was intended to get domestic inflation down, but it did not succeed. Inflation was 9 per cent last year and we are expecting much the same in 2007.”
One weakness is the failure of the state energy companies – Gazprom and Rosneft – to invest enough to boost their production to keep up with rapid overall economic growth. Gazprom’s output is rising at 1-1.5 per cent, and Rosneft’s by 3 per cent at most, Mr Gavrilenkov says. “I’m very sceptical about their ability to restructure.”
The former senior Kremlin official says that Russian business may not look pretty but he insists there is no going back. “The transition period may look like the gangster capitalism of the US in the 1930s, but in Russia it is an accelerated process,” he says. “There were gangsters in every restaurant in Moscow in the 1990s. They did not even try to hide it. Ten years have passed and you can find none of them. Half have been killed and half have become normal businessmen. Our democracy and our economy are far from perfect, but they are for real.”
The worry is that Russia may have just exchanged one set of gangsters for another – the siloviki surrounding Mr Putin. “If some of them take money, tomorrow they will think how to protect the money they have stolen,” says the former Kremlin insider – now working in a state-controlled enterprise.
“It is really important who will be next president,” says Mr Gavrilenkov. “At the moment, the president is trusted. The elite is happy. The bureaucrats are happy.
“Leaders are chosen to preserve the status quo: Gorbachev was chosen to save the Communist party. Putin was chosen by the oligarchs to secure their future. But neither succeeded. The same may happen if the next president is chosen by the siloviki. They may run the country but they are not united.”
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
December 5, 2008 by rscherA Brief Discussion of the Tennessee Williams play in light of M. Bergmann’s paper, The Anatomy of Loving
Bergmann in his wonderful work of 1987 culled insights into the nature of falling in love from the ideas of Freud and subsequent psychoanalytic thinkers. He highlighted Freud’s famous statement in his 1905 paper, Three Essays on Sexuality, echoing Plato, that the “finding of a [love] object is in fact a refinding of it.” This compelling idea suggests that a person seeks throughout life to “refind” parental love. Other psychoanalytic ideas raised in the Bergmann paper relevant to a discussion of love include narcissism, splitting, merger fantasies, and reality testing.
Tennessee Williams’ play, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, explores a web of love relationships in the Pollitt family in mid-20th century Mississippi. Although the centerpiece is the love between Brick Pollitt and his wife Maggie, the relationship Brick has with his authoritarian father and his psychically-weak best friend are critical to understanding his capacity to love.
Early in the play, Brick and Maggie bicker, illustrating that Maggie’s love for her husband is not reciprocated. Brick, a former football star, drinks bourbon all day in order to ease his nerves. Brick’s parents, called Big Daddy and Big Mamma, return from a trip to a cancer clinic in the belief that Big Daddy has been given a clean bill of health. A celebration at the sprawling Pollitt estate ensues.
Brick is contemptuous of Maggie, who attempts to coax her husband’s love back with her feminine charms. The play climaxes as Big Daddy learns from Brick that he is in fact dying, and as Big Daddy’s curiosity about Brick and Maggie’s nonexistent sex life uncovers the story of the suicide of Brick’s best friend Skipper. While Tennessee Williams, who was homosexual, arguably left it open as to whether Brick and Skipper had a homosexual relationship, homosexual feelings, and especially Brick’s unresolved oedipal feelings, clearly energized this relationship.
Big Daddy was the son of a penniless hobo, a cause of great shame to this self-made millionaire. Yet by the end of the play, Brick causes Big Daddy to admit that his father loved him and that he loved his father. Big Daddy’s drive to hammer his way to success and to annul the shame of his father caused him to repress his love for his father and also for his wife and children. Likewise Big Daddy never believed in his wife’s love. He saw Big Mamma as nothing but a money-grubbing, controlling liar. Tennessee Williams’s characters rail about the “mendacity” of the people around them, when the mendacity actually lies within themselves, i.e. the mendacity of the repression of their emotions, including love.
Brick was never able to experience a non-traumatic separation from his mother, which the positive involvement of his father at an early age would have encouraged. Merger fantasies likely persisted, underpinning his yearning for an exceptionally close relationship with Skipper. Nor later in his childhood could Brick experience a healthy resolution of the Oedipus Conflict that would have involved his giving up his wishes for his mother and identifying in a positive way with his father. Instead he identified with his father’s shame, his father’s anger, and his father’s rejection of love. He witnessed his father’s rejection of his older brother Gooper and concluded that only by being better than Gooper, by being a football star, could he win his father’s love. He became an overachiever. He developed a strong, but rigid ego – arguably the definition of masculinity in the culture of the South of these times, conquering reality instead of enjoying it and possessing love objects, instead of experiencing love.
In attempting to “refind” the pathological triad with his parents, he found Maggie. Maggie adored her handsome, upper-crust football star, much like Big Mama adored Big Daddy. Brick also found Skipper, a man with a fragile ego, who idolized Brick. They played football together; however, one day when Brick wasn’t on the field, it became clear that Skipper had little skill to play professional football. Brick idealized this weak man, who he believed was the only one in the world he could count on. He deluded himself into believing he could experience the bliss of a passive male relationship with Skipper, the kind of non-traumatic yielding to one’s father that occurs in a healthy resolution of the Oedipus Conflict. In fact, he chose Skipper in order to avoid closeness with a stronger male, whom he feared would be like his authoritarian, unloving father. And, Skipper chose Brick because Brick represented the archetype of manhood — strong, capable, hard. Skipper killed himself after his failure on the football field, after Brick hung up the phone on Skipper because he had let him down. The sudden realization that Skipper was not the strong male he could count on may have set Brick into a rage. Maggie went up to Skipper’s hotel room before the suicide, circumstances that led Brick to believe she was unfaithful to him with Skipper. We learn later that this was not true. Brick Pollitt’s “compulsion to repeat” makes for dramatic theater in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.
Freud posited that homosexuals often set themselves up as their mothers and their objects as themselves. They identify with their mothers instead of their fathers, according to Freud. In this case, however, it appears that Brick played the role of his father, projecting the unloved part of himself onto Skipper. The climax of his rejection of himself came when he hung the phone up on Skipper. Subsequently, he could not bear the thought of having been so cruel to Skipper, having acted out his father’s rage against this fragile man; so, he projected his unwanted aggressive self onto Maggie, turning her into the lying, money-grubbing cat his father believed his mother was, and Brick believed he himself was. She was the one responsible for Skipper’s demise, not him. This fantasy sustained Brick’s exhausted ego. Only then was it safe for him to identify with his father; only then could he be the strong, upright man he believed his father was. Brick’s loss of Skipper hewed more to “melancholia,” or the loss of an intrapsychic object, than to simple “mourning,” the pain of the loss of a real object.
Very compelling was the agreement that Brick and Maggie made after Skipper’s suicide. They would remain together, but with no love, no physical intimacy, only psychic torture. This way she could be with her ego ideal (her handsome husband) and he could hold his debased self at a safe, but close distance. Brick had “refound” the triad of his youth.
A therapeutic episode ensues when Brick tells Big Daddy he is going to die. Faced with the truth at last, Big Daddy realizes he loved his father, which brings into relief his love for Brick, Big Mamma, and the rest of his family. This episode also causes Brick to accept that he had let down Skipper, but that Skipper was a weak man and that Brick therefore was not responsible for his suicide. This enables him to see Maggie for what she really is. A desirable woman who loves him. She is not a liar; she is not money-grubbing; though she still is a little catty, a little seductive, and a little interested in moving up the socioeconomic ladder.
Freud’s theory on narcissism also helps explain the love relationships in this play. Freud suggested that the narcissist loves what he himself is or was or would like to be, or even a part of himself. Maggie’s narcissism is a love of what she would like to be, her ego ideal as embodied in Brick. Brick’s narcissism is the love (and often the hate) of a part of himself, the rejected part, the heartless, money-grubbing man his father was, his father believed his mother was, and he believed Maggie was. He likewise loved in Skipper that despised, weak part of himself, rejected by his father. At the same time, in his conscious thoughts, Brick turned Skipper into his ego ideal — a supportive, kind-hearted and strong man, albeit a distorted view of Skipper. In the event, when Skipper failed him, he swung from idealization to devaluation in the nanosecond it took to hang up the phone.
Freud also talks about how a strong, object-oriented love can impoverish the ego. Clearly, this speaks to Skipper’s love of Brick. Skipper leaned on Brick. Brick was his ego ideal, the mirroring mother he probably never had. All Skipper’s libidinal energy was directed at Brick, leaving little for his ego. Once Brick withdrew his love, the selfobject representation that sustained Skipper’s self-esteem went from “good” to “bad,” making suicide the only option.
The abrupt swings in this play from loving to hating and vice versa bring to mind the concept of splitting and Freud’s discussion of emotions as distinct from instincts. The ego synthesizes all sexual instincts and libidinal energy into love and all aggressive energy into hate. A weak ego cannot integrate these opposing emotions, cannot see people for the gray characters they often are, resulting in splitting and in sharp mood swings. Thus, the rage, and in the case of Skipper, suicide.
The extreme emotional reactions experienced by Williams’s male characters, in comparison with his female characters, are consistent with Altman’s notion that it is easier for women to find an appropriate non-incestuous love object from the onset of adolescence than it is for men. This is because girls have already renounced their first love object, their mother, during the oedipal stage, when they choose their father. Boys have a greater tendency to remain fixated on their mothers, making it perhaps more challenging to find appropriate non-incestuous object choices later on.
In ego psychological terms, it appears that Maggie the Cat may have been the character with the strongest ego. Although in her compulsion to repeat, she may have clung to “the hot tin roof” as long as she could, she was always sure about Brick and loved him amid the storm. She was the most capable of Tennessee Williams’s characters at enduring frustration, showing compassion, and performing reality testing by airing the truth and integrating contradictory material.
Clearly, the love refound by Tennessee Williams’s characters one stormy night under a hot tin roof was a refinding of the lost love, or rather the incomplete love, of childhood. But, it was a therapeutic refinding, flexible enough to allow the kindling of mature adult relationships, and the jettisoning of unwelcome patterns.
Keep the Democrats Honest on Trade
November 8, 2008 by rscherOriginally published October 21, 2008
Obama and the Democrats are on a roll. Could be a landslide. As for this swing voter, I am leaning Obama because of Sarah Palin, but probably won’t decide until I pull the curtain shut on November 4th and it’s just me, Obama and McCain.
I understand the surge of support for the Democrats. It makes sense. They do government intervention well. A deepening financial crisis is when government must act, so we need the Democrats now more than ever. But please, when they take power, join me in holding their feet to the fire on trade.
The Republicans have been hamstrung by their ideology, their love of anything that looks like a market solution. We need a government solution to a market failure. Sure, a President McCain, who unlike Obama has a record of bipartisanship, could forge a coalition with Democrats and likeminded Republicans, not unlike what Paulson put together for the $700 billion rescue. However, McCain could be resistant to the kind of “bold, persistent experimentation” required. A President Obama, working with large Democratic majorities, could enact a new New Deal.
What worries me most about the Democrats is trade policy. Free trade, pioneered by Britain in the 19th century, has driven the greatest increase in prosperity and reduction in poverty humankind has ever known. During the Great Depression, global trade collapsed. As the pain of the 1929 Crash was felt, governments failed to act jointly, pursuing instead “beggar-thy-neighbor” policies, including erecting trade barriers. According to one estimate, global trade declined 33% from 1929-32, aggravating unemployment which was skyrocketing, and putting in peril capitalism and liberal democracy.
Protectionist Republicans at the time passed the Smoot-Hawley tariff increase of 1930, with other governments following suit. Totalitarian governments came to power overseas, sealing off their economies. Still, by 1934 the Democrats under FDR had the wisdom to begin reducing trade barriers in concert with America’s trading partners.
So, I applaud the cooperation today among governments making economic policy. I applaud the coordinated bank rescues, interest rate reductions, and fiscal stimulus packages. I applaud Bush, Paulson, and yes, Pelosi, Reid, and Mitch McConnell, but also Sarkozy, Merkel, Brown and other world leaders. I applaud the fact that governments, so far, have not resorted to trade protectionism.
The bad news is that the Democrats of today in their mad dash to the White House and to larger majorities in Congress have left free trade twisting in the wind.
The Democratic presidential candidates earlier this year promised to scrap NAFTA and staunch trade liberalization in order to win votes in places like Ohio and Pennsylvania. In these and other states, some industries have declined as our economy has been transformed from one based on manufacturing to one based on knowledge. Renegotiating NAFTA, attaching environmental and labor riders to existing trade agreements, halting multilateral trade negotiations, opposing CAFTA with Central America and the Caribbean, killing the free trade agreement with our ally Colombia, imposing tariffs on China — these were the promises the Democrats made on the campaign trail and in the U.S. Congress.
I was disappointed by Barack Obama’s remarks on trade Wednesday night in the final debate, which seemed a calculated sugarcoating of his protectionism. Likewise, he parroted the defamation of the Colombian government found on AFL-CIO blogs dealing with the failed Colombia free trade agreement.
Maybe Barack Obama, Pelosi, Reid, and bash-the-Chinese Chuck Schumer can wiggle out of this one after January 20th. I hope so. Ohio ain’t gonna like it.
The truth should be told in the Rust Belt, as John McCain did in Michigan. Economic adjustment is inevitable. For all the pain experienced in Midwestern factories, there has been gain in border areas trading with Mexico and Canada and in the knowledge-based industries located all across the country. This includes Wisconsin, which has lost manufacturing jobs, but has also gained knowledge-based jobs due to its superior universities. Sure, we should soften the blow of adjustment through job training, out-placement and an adequate social safety net. And, education must be a top priority in the knowledge-based economy.
The record of the Democrats on trade during the 20th century was generally good. From FDR to Bill Clinton, free trade talks were pursued with vigor. We have more to do, such as liberalizing trade in agriculture and services, protecting intellectual property, and bringing more countries into the global trading system.
The Democrats today are confused. They don’t want to oppose trade and be seen as protecting the privileged few. So, they come up with a nifty construct: we’re for “fair trade.” They propose attaching labor and environmental riders to free trade agreements in order to protect the poor from abuse and pollution. In principle, it’s not a bad argument. But it’s pure politics. Some American labor unions seek to derail free trade agreements in order to protect their industries. Environmental and labor accords may be better negotiated separately, rather than used to hold up trade liberalization.
If the Democrats can accelerate trade liberalization while at the same time attaching labor and environmental protections, they should be supported. But, my suspicion is that these are arguments designed to hamper free trade in deference to important Democratic constituencies.
Now, I agree that trade policy should not be the sole driver of this election decision. If it were, I would vote Republican. However, if the United States does not lead on this issue, then the world could slip into another bout of protectionism, which (at the risk of sounding hyperbolic) could threaten civilization as it did in the thirties.
I believe it is time for Responsible Centrists to keep the Democrats and Republicans honest. There has been a lot of negative campaigning. Passions are running high. We should all calm down a bit. Obama and the Democrats look set to win, and win big, but please, let’s put their feet to the fire on trade.
Why I Voted for Barack Obama
November 7, 2008 by rscherHope.
I had my doubts, as you well know, and still do. But, those who know me understand what I call my West Wing or “aspirational” politics. These are at odds sometimes with my real-world politics, which tend to be centrist. In spite of my cynicism, my sober reading of history, and my need to hector friends on the left, I too hope for a better world.
My philosophy can be summed as follows: while it is easy to follow your ideals, it is more difficult to make realistic choices that ultimately yield durable results consistent with your ideals. My misgivings about Barack Obama in the past had to do with my concern that he represented an idealistic, rather than a hard-headed choice. That is why I supported Hillary Clinton. I now believe that there is a good chance Barack Obama possesses the skills to be a successful president.
I voted for Obama because I hope that he can harness the euphoria he has unleashed toward sound and effective policy making. John McCain, an experienced, principled public servant, lacks Obama’s magic, what I call his political “kevorka” (a Seinfeld reference). As a result, the coalition McCain would have assembled, both in the United States and abroad, would have been narrow, and therefore, less effective.
The election of Barack Obama represents a new day for America, a turning of the page on the 20th century, a final nail in the coffin of an historic injustice, the stain of slavery and Jim Crow. This new day itself will advance the cause of America in the world.
The surge of support for the Democrats this past Tuesday likewise makes sense. They are the party of government intervention. A deepening financial crisis is when government must act. A President McCain might have been resistant to the kind of “bold, persistent experimentation” required, and might have projected a more cantankerous image abroad. Hopefully, President Obama will confront our financial problems head on, working closely with Democratic majorities in Congress and other world leaders. There is goodwill in the world toward Obama, goodwill that has a half life, but goodwill that can be exploited toward repairing our planet.
Now it is time to get to work. In his first press conference on Friday, President-elect Obama gave a good, short speech about his plan to create jobs and confront the financial crisis. He mentioned a rescue of the auto industry, which I hope will mean help in downsizing, job training, and shifting to the production of fuel-efficient cars, not protection and subsidies, which would postpone the inevitable.
Obama’s remarks, his lucid thinking-aloud, and his bearing were on balance, well, presidential, though he betrayed a little nervousness and uncertainty. This was especially the case in his gentle fumbling of the first question about what he would do on day one to rescue the economy. As was pointed out during the campaign, there will be some on-the-job training for this exceptional man with limited experience, but we can expect that he will do well. Give him time; he’s not president yet.
I am happy he is putting a laser focus on the economy. As I have said in the past, the vigorous pursuit of free trade is critical to our economic wellbeing; this will prove difficult and, frankly, unlikely under the Democrats, given their recent rhetoric. Remember, the Great Depression was aggravated by trade protectionism. Yet if anyone has the talent to do the political gymnastics necessary to flip from protectionism to free trade, it is Barack Obama.
Obama must likewise begin to lay the groundwork to address longer-term problems such as climate change and fiscal consolidation. Critical global concerns such as anchoring Russia and China in Western institutions, preventing Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons and nuclear proliferation more broadly, resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict, stopping the slaughter in Darfur, and broadening the free trade area in the Americas to include Colombia, Brazil and others require immediate attention.
Talented people are enthusiastic about working for Obama. The appointments he has made and is reportedly about to make seem sound. Rahm Emanuel, as chief of staff, Tim Geithner at Treasury, and perhaps even Bob Gates at Defense would be an impressive start. I could even live with John Kerry at State, though would prefer the likes of Nick Burns, a former Foreign Service Officer and centrist who flourished in both Democratic and Republican administrations. I feel lukewarm about Chuck Hagel. Nevertheless, it appears that President-elect Obama will assemble an ideologically diverse group of people, and that his management style — weighing a wide range of views – will serve our country well.
When the celebrating dies down, I hope Obama supporters will take a sober look at the president-elect’s warts. Signs have already emerged that goodwill toward him could be short-lived.
The financial markets fell dramatically last month, reflecting not only weakness in our financial institutions, but also concerns about the lack of economic policy credentials of the two presidential candidates. Markets remain under pressure due in part to persistent concerns about Obama’s ability to handle the crisis. Yet his hands-on approach, his immediate focus on the economy, his subtle lowering of expectations, and his quick staffing of key positions are encouraging.
Overseas, the Russian government has just thrown down the gauntlet on missile defense in Europe, threatening to station missiles near Poland if the U.S. erects its missile shield there. Pakistan called for an end to attacks against Al Qaeda on its territory by U.S. forces in Afghanistan. The world remains dangerous and volatile, Obama euphoria notwithstanding.
I suggested in September that there were others better able to lead this country than Obama or McCain, including Al Gore, Hillary Clinton, Michael Bloomberg and Jon Corzine. Last January, in a polemic in support of Hillary, I expressed doubt that Obama’s charisma was what we needed to confront the economic crisis. I expressed concern about how Americans project their hopes onto a blank slate and elect a charismatic president, especially in the wake of what is perceived as a failed administration. After Nixon, we believed that Carter would restore American credibility and prosperity.
Freud called it idealization. It is a defense against uncertainty and unpleasantness. The human psyche exalts and overvalues a person. Given the economic crisis we’re in, we need to idealize our next president. But, it could lead to a huge letdown, when the other side of the coin – devaluation – sets in.
I hope this letdown doesn’t occur. Jimmy Carter was a failed president. He presided over stagflation, and his perceived weakness goaded the Soviets to invade Afghanistan and the ayatollahs to take over the US Embassy in Teheran. It was not unlike JFK, another charismatic young man with euphoric followers. It was Kennedy’s perceived weakness, coming on the heels of the respected and feared Eisenhower, that led to the Cuban Missile Crisis. Recently opened Soviet archives suggest that Khrushchev put the missiles in Cuba because the Kennedys were viewed as weak.
Besides making us feel good about ourselves, our president must have the capacity to lead. There are indications that Obama has such a capacity.
It is important to make a distinction between politics and government. Politics is the art of getting elected, the art of persuasion, and requires charisma. Government is the art of making policy, fixing things. Charismatic politicians, good at politics but bad at government, can be a huge letdown. This is the story of W, Oliver Stone’s latest twisting of history notwithstanding. The ideal president is good at both. Maybe this is Barack Obama.
John McCain pointed out in the final debate last month a certain cynicism behind Obama’s “new politics,” and “post-partisanship.” In 2005 during a standoff between the White House and the Senate, John McCain introduced the real “new politics” by assembling the “Gang of 14,” a group of seven Democrats and seven Republicans, some of the ablest statesmen and women in America, who broke the deadlock over judicial appointments that had been leaving the courts understaffed. While McCain withstood the ire of the Republican base for this, partisans Joe Biden and Barack Obama, God love ‘em, chose not to join the gang. Both were considering runs for the White House and therefore could not stand up to their leadership and the Democratic base.
In the past, Obama has stayed true to his liberal ideals, assembling a voting record that did not brook compromise with the other side of American politics. That’s fine for getting elected president, but it’s not fine for being president. Obama’s temperament indicates a capacity for compromise and leadership. I hope he moves to the center.
In his advertising, Obama outspent any previous presidential candidate. Attack ads represented an estimated third of his ads. He said he would accept public financing, but when contributions reached to the heavens, he went back on his word. He has done more than any other American politician to wreck public financing of elections. The reality is that Obama has been an artful practitioner of the old politics.
It is true that McCain engaged in a hard-hitting campaign. Yet, in America most underdog campaigns go negative, including Obama’s. In 2004 when David Axelrod ran Obama’s Senate bid, it was alleged that the campaign aggressively pushed a story about domestic abuse by his Democratic primary challenger, who was well ahead in the polls. We wouldn’t be toasting a new dawn of American leadership today if not for Axelrod’s brawling Chicago-style campaigning. I believe McCain’s bringing up Obama’s past associations with Khalidi, Wright, and Ayers was fair. The Obamas spent nearly twenty years sitting in a pew listening to Pastor Wright say many intolerant, and yes, racist things. On the other hand, Obama is a “big tent” politician, maintaining an appropriate distance from some of the more objectionable views of people he associates with. The strength of this approach is that it can build broad coalitions; the weakness is that it can blur the distinction between right and wrong.
Racism has played a role in the opposition of some people to Barack Obama. It is driven by a fear of others not like you having power over you. While Obama did better than previous Democratic presidential candidates in some “red states,” he performed worse in some southern states, which, it has been suggested, had to do with race.
Let’s look at the flip side. I am reminded of that episode of Seinfeld, when Elaine tells Jerry he is racist for preferring Asian women. Jerry responds, it’s not racism if I like their race. The excitement many Obama supporters have for this historic victory is not a completely colorblind sentiment. The difficulty his opponents have in criticizing him for fear of charges of racism is not a fiction either.
Let us also admit that there was probably a dose of “age-ism” involved in the electorate’s choice of Obama over McCain. Young, vigorous leadership over tired, old leadership. It was a factor.
Obama has an Achilles’ heel. He projects a slight superciliousness, arising out of his message that he offers transformational leadership and represents perhaps the only way forward. He himself poked fun at this at the Al Smith dinner last month. The risk here is his potential reluctance to admit mistakes.
In my piece in September, I bemoaned the “pomp and distortion” of both campaigns. I wish we could enhance the profile of truth and critical thinking in our political discourse. Politicians dumb us down and appeal to emotion, rather than reason. The media has filled the void to an extent with their “fact-checking.” We need a calming of emotions and an end to the demonization of the other side, so characteristic of the culture wars.
A lot of McCain supporters feel left out right now, and I commend Obama for reaching out to them in his victory speech. There are reports that he plans to appoint leading Republicans to his cabinet. I urge his supporters, many engaged in euphoric celebration, to likewise reach out to the other side when calm returns to our daily lives.
I consider myself a centrist and enjoy being a gadfly with my friends who lean left, pointing out overlooked facts and attempting to open minds. I too commit the sin of spin and polemical writing, and get riled up and closed-minded. Yet I believe we need a movement in our country of likeminded centrists to help invigorate our democracy, to keep both Democrats and Republicans honest. This is the point of the pieces I send around and Scherblog. Join me in this endeavor by passing around my work to others.
Obama ran a near-flawless campaign, and in spite of his lack of management experience, this bodes well for his administration. In the coming two years, the Obama administration will likely confront further economic deterioration and market turmoil, rising unemployment and widening budget deficits. It will likely face tensions with Russia, Iran and Iraq (and elsewhere), requiring tough decisions, including, as a last resort, military action. Joe Biden was right in suggesting that Obama (and the Democrats) will be tested soon. If they do well, they may be able to hold fast to the political realignment they achieved on Tuesday. If they don’t, we can toss them out of Congress in two years and have a crack at a new president in four. This is the beauty of American democracy.
Sometimes there is simply a “chemistry” emanating from a human endeavor. “Movement Obama” – including its central figure, its architects, its foot soldiers and its followers – has chemistry. There is magic in this movement, and for that, I am hopeful about an Obama administration, and wish him, the Democrats, and the country every success.
