Suggested Answers to the First Short Quiz

[johnkarls]

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Question 1

Who was Machiavelli?

Answer 1

Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli (1469-1527) was a historian, politician, diplomat and philosopher in the Republic of Florence in the center of Tuscany in what is now Northern Italy.

However, most of the City-States of Northern Italy for most of the period from 1138 until World War I were part of The Holy Roman Empire which for most of its 1,000 years comprised primarily modern-day Germany.

[NB: Hitler usually called his Nazi Regime “The Thousand-Year Reich” though he sometimes referred to it as “The Third Reich” with the 1,000-year Roman Empire being The First Reich and the 1,000-year Holy Roman Empire being The Second Reich. The Third Thousand-Year Reich, of course, lasted only 13 years.]

Machiavelli is famous for “The Prince” which was a compilation of political advice for Princes (or other heads of government) about the need to be strong and harsh in order to be effective, and how to achieve that with considerable specificity.

He actually wrote “The Prince” to ingratiate himself with the Medici family which, in 1512, had ousted the previous government in which Machiavelli had for 14 years been one of the primary leaders.

Question 2

What, per our author, was the key piece of advice in Machiavelli’s The Prince?

Answer 2

Always try to avoid interfering with your subjects’ property and women insofar as possible.

Question 3

Who was Nizam al-Mulk?

Answer 3

Abu Ali Hasan ibn Ali Tusi (1018-1092) -- aka Nizam al-Mulk meaning Order of the Realm -- was, like Machiavelli, an astute writer on how to wield power effectively.

He was also one of the first absolute rulers of The Seljuk Turk (Persian) Empire (1072-1092).

[As we have studied several times in the past, in the mid-1000’s the Seljuk Turks swept in from Russian Turkestan which fragmented into all of the “stans” except Afghanistan which was always separate, and from Chinese Turkestan aka Sinkiang Province. Following their arrival in the Middle East, the Seljuk Turks were centered in Persia (modern-day Iran) where they promptly “went native” in terms of dress, language, inter-marrying, etc.]

[The Seljuk Turks would no longer have been recognizable as Turks by the Ottoman Turks who 250 years later in 1299 also swept in from Russian and Chinese Turkestan and established their empire -- centered in Constantinople (aka Istanbul) after its capture in 1453 and stretching all the way from the outskirts of Vienna down through The Middle East and across North Africa.]

Question 4

What, per our author, was the key piece of advice in Nizam al-Mulk’s Styasat Nameh (Book of Politics)?

Answer 4

Know your subjects through direct, personal contact insofar as possible. Avoid intermediaries since the use of intermediaries will always produce corruption which will cause you to be hated, since you will be blamed for the actions of your intermediaries.

Question 5

Is our author’s primary experience with foreign-government corruption in Afghanistan?

Answer 5

Yes.

Question 6

What does our author say about Afghanistan?

Answer 6

That the Afghan government was so riddled with corruption that it was hated by the general population just as much as, if not more than, they had hated the Taliban.

However, although I feel terrible about questioning a person who has dedicated so many years of her life to a cause, it strikes me as amazing that our author did not call attention to what should have been a Blinding Glimpse of the Obvious (BGO).

Especially since she obviously intends her book to be a beacon for U.S. policy for the future with regard to many countries.

What should have been the BGO???

Who appoints the Provincial Governors???

The Constitution of Afghanistan was essentially written by the U.S. Government.

The Afghan Constitution provides for a President (Hamid Karzai was first elected in 2004) and a National Assembly comprising a House of the People and a House of Elders (the first such National Assembly was elected in 2005).

The Afghan Constitution provides that Provincial Governors will be appointed by the President subject to approval by the National Assembly!!!

Anyone who has passed Political Science 101 should know that local officials should be chosen by the local population whom they hope to govern!!!

So why did our Social Engineers think that such choices should be dictated by such remote officials who have no incentive to please the local populations???

And please forgive the sarcasm -- if our Social Engineers thought remoteness was a virtue, why didn’t they have the Afghan Constitution provide that Provincial Governors would be appointed by the United Nations Secretary General with the approval of the U.N. General Assembly???

And why didn’t our author mention this???

After all, she complains considerably about Karzai’s corrupt crony who was running Kandahar where she lived for a decade!!!

And a 218-page book could easily have been expanded another 5-10 pages to expound on how important it would have been for each little group, no matter how small, to have elected its own officials!!!

Indeed, our failure to put that into the Afghan Constitution should be Exhibit A for our author’s thesis that Nizam al-Mulk was prescient in advising against using intermediaries and for knowing your subjects as intimately as possible. Because locally-elected officials are THEIR intermediaries (not YOURS), and just like it is impossible for a U.S. President to know all 319 million of her/his constituents, an Afghan President can’t possible know 32 million constituents much better -- but knowing as many of their elected representatives as possible (vs. the dictators you have appointed to rule them) would be far preferable from the viewpoint of Nizam al-Mulk.

Question 7

What does she say about The Arab Spring?

Answer 7

That it was caused by corruption.

Question 8

What countries does she discuss? Are all of them Islamic or at least partially Islamic?

Answer 8

Afghanistan, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Uzbekistan and Nigeria.

All are overwhelmingly Islamic except Nigeria which http://www.cia.gov reports is only 50% Muslim, 40% Christian and 10% indigenous beliefs.

Boko Haram, which is the militant organization creating havoc in Nigeria, is Muslim.

Question 9

What is the relationship between corruption in these countries and the rise of Radical Islam?

Answer 9

Our author argues that corruption is the cause of Radical Islam.

Question 10

Does U.S. policy in these countries violate the key advice of Machiavelli and Nizam al-Mulk?

Answer 10

Our author spends 218 pages (sans notes & index) arguing that it does.

Question 11

Didn’t the U.S. legislate against bribery of foreign government officials by US-based companies back in the 1970’s, threatening both criminal prosecutions and tax penalties such as the loss of foreign tax credits? How effective has the enforcement of these provisions been?

Answer 11

Yes, it did so legislate in The Tax Reform Act of 1976 and the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act of 1977.

The tax penalties of the TRA of 1976 are enforced by the IRS. The criminal prosecutions of the FCPA of 1977 are enforced by the DOJ.

Enforcement is difficult when US-based companies are forced to compete in third-world countries with, for example, European-based companies which are free to follow local customs.

Violations are difficult to detect since bribery can often be effectively disguised as, for example, legal fees paid to law firms.

Just like in the United States!!! So what else is new??? [Except, perhaps, using a foundation as a “bag man” rather than a “law firm”???]

Question 12

Should the U.S. government be prosecuting itself for fostering the corruption of foreign governments?

Answer 12

Of course!!!

Question 13

What put a stop to The Arab Spring?

Answer 13

Please see Q&A-14 & Q&A-15. Hint = a country with the initials S.A.

Question 14

Was the U.S. too eager to throw allies such as Egypt’s President Mubarek under the bus?

Answer 14

So it would appear.

“One and done” is a famous phrase first coined (despite the American myth that it relates to U.S. basketball players only spending one year in college before departing for the NBA) to describe the attitude of the world’s famous dictators (e.g., Hitler, Stalin, etc.) and not-so-famous dictators toward democratic elections.

Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, in general, and Mohamed Morsi whom they elected as Egyptian President, in particular, were strong believers in “one and done.”

The U.S. immediately cut off its $3 billion/year of foreign aid when the Egyptian Military dictated that new elections would be held after Mohamed Morsi had allegedly become extremely unpopular.

It is always amusing how the U.S. media thinks that U.S. foreign aid is important because of its magnitude!!! According to http://www.cia.gov, the Egyptian economy was $945.4 billion in 2014, which means that our foreign aid was 3/10’s of 1%!!! The real significance of U.S. foreign aid anywhere in the world is that it usually comprises U.S. military hardware/weapons/training.

So cutting off our $3 billion/year of military aid to Egypt in effect told them that they should look elsewhere for their armaments -- such as from Russia which was the military supplier of Egypt and most of the other Arab countries from World War II until 1967.

Saudi Arabia immediately started giving Egypt $15 billion/year of aid in the wake of the U.S. action.

And in view of the impending U.S. nuclear deal with Iran, $15 billion/year is probably all Egypt needs to implement its announced intention to buy nuclear weapons from non-U.S. sources, after which it should have little need for the conventional arms the U.S. was supplying.

Question 15

As the U.S. was throwing Mubarek under the bus, were the Saudis wise to bar Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Defense Secretary Robert Gates from entering Saudi Arabia to lecture its government on how it must kowtow to Arab public opinion and, instead, to immediately send troops into neighboring Bahrain to put down the rebellion of its majority Shiite population?

Answer 15

What do you think???

It would appear that this was the Last Gasp of the Arab Spring.

But the question is whether you think this was wise.

Question 16

Was Soviet President Gorbachev forced to implement Glasnost or could Stalinism have lasted forever?

Answer 16

What do you think??? Let’s discuss!!!

Question 17

In other words, has there been a Great Leap Forward in democracy in China during the 26 years since Tiananmen Square? Or has there been any discernable progress vis-à-vis human rights since the inception in 1959 of the Stalinist regime that still rules Cuba?

Answer 17

Obviously not -- obviously not.

Question 18

Or if Hitler had won World War II, does anyone think that he and his Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels would have permitted any exceptions to a Big Brother darkness forever? Ditto Stalin if the Soviet Union had rolled across Europe and conquered the world?

Answer 18

What do you think??? Let’s discuss!!!

Question 19

Is democracy good per se? Is its adoption in many areas of the world, such as The Middle East, good from the perspective of American interests?

Answer 19

What do you think??? Let’s discuss!!!

Question 20

Does technology in the form of social media, etc., guarantee that such repression will soon be consigned to history?

Answer 20

Please see Q&A-21.

Question 21

If democracy and social media are so powerful, why does the U.S. still have a government which, as we have studied several times, compels long-time Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank and long-time Business Week columnist Robert Kuttner to document that nothing gets done in the cesspool that is Washington DC except as the result of campaign contributions? And which NEVER addresses America’s most pressing problems such as doing anything to address mainstreaming the Permanent Under-Caste of our Inner Cities?

Answer 21

Seven years ago, Dana Milbank’s “Homo Politicus: The Strange and Scary Tribes That Run Our Government” and Robert Kuttner’s “The Squandering of America” were the twin foci of our 2/14/2008 meeting on “The Best Government Money Can Buy: Bribery & Extortion” -- the theme of both Milbank and Kuttner was that nothing happens in THE CESSPOOL THAT IS WASHINGTON DC except as the result of extortion by the politicians and bribery of the politicians, both in the form of “campaign contributions.”

This issue was revisited last month as part of our discussion of Corruption in America: From Benjamin Franklin’s Snuff Box to Citizen United by Prof. Zephyr Teachout.

So with all that background, why do you think America is saddled with a government that NEVER addresses America’s most pressing problems???

[Or do you think it does???]

Question 22

And warping back on Machiavelli and Nizam al-Mulk, isn’t America’s violation of their Most Important Advice NOT SO MUCH our support of corrupt foreign governments in The Middle East, BUT RATHER our drone program?

Answer 22

Our author stated that Machiavelli’s most important advice was to avoid interfering with your subjects’ property and women insofar as possible.

And that Nizam al Mulk’s most important advice was to avoid intermediaries since the use of intermediaries will always produce corruption which will cause you to be hated, since you will be blamed for the actions of your intermediaries.

However she only mentions our Drone Program once in passing (p. 150) because for a decade she was located in southern Afghanistan where the U.S. employed troops rather than drones, and because the other countries she discusses were NOT subjected (like northern Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, etc.) to U.S. drone strikes.

Nevertheless, the two primary principles of NOT relying on intermediaries (examples of which saturate her book, including examples of Afghan officials who are claiming political and business rivals as “enemies” to be zapped and even CIA “assets” who do the same) and NOT destroying your subjects’ property and women (collateral damage when the U.S. zaps the political and business rivals of its intermediaries) -- are probably endemic to our Drone Program just as much as they are a danger when we send troops into an area.

Accordingly, I would like us to re-consider at our May 13 meeting our failure to reach consensus at our March 11 meeting on a Six-Degrees-Of-Separation E-mail Campaign (quoting from the Proposed Discussion Outline) “to Pew Research to implore them to conduct polls to determine the impact on public opinion in Islamic countries of the U.S. Drone Program -- especially now that it no longer appears true as Leon Panetta once reported to the National Security Council (p. 288) that ‘Al Qaeda’s leadership was being removed faster than it could be replaced.’”

Our policy is not to propose a Six-Degrees-Of-Separation E-mail campaign if there is more than one dissent. On March 11, there were two attendees who believed the proclamations of our government that our Drone Program is NOT counter-productive.

Even though we had studied for our 7/10/2013 meeting “The Thistle and The Drone: How America’s War on Terror Became a Global War on Tribal Islam” by Akbar Ahmed -- the Ibn Khaldun Chairman of Islamic Studies at American U in Washington DC, the first Distinguished Chair of Middle East Studies at the U.S. Naval Academy, the former Pakistani-Government Administrator of South Waziristan (the tribal area often called the most dangerous place on earth), and the former Pakistani Ambassador to the United Kingdom.

And even though Leon Panetta’s one-time claim (p. 288 of his “Worthy Fights”) to the National Security Council that “Al Qaeda’s leadership was being removed faster than it could be replaced” is obviously no longer true.

After all, what is the objection to Pew Research polling???

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And, while we are at it, how about the other proposal in the same 3/11/2015 Discussion Outline for a Six-Degrees-Of-Separation E-mail Campaign --

“To Pew Research to implore them to conduct polls in Islamic countries and polls of members of Al Qaeda and its affiliates regarding the extent to which Osama bin Laden is still worshipped (while America is still hated) and the extent to which his followers feel an obligation to execute Osama’s fatwā to nuke 10 million Americans.”

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Vis-à-vis both proposals, we should be ashamed as an organization that we are so close-minded that we do not even want to ascertain facts!!!