Kasi-Blog

There was an Earthquake in the UK, but I did not notice any rumbling last night. Maybe the Bass Drum in the Club where me and my classmates went last night was to heavy.

Oh, this morning I got up after four hours sleep and I felt like Moist von Lipwig when he’s been awaken by Vetinari, the Tyrant of Ankh-Morpork, after climbing around Ankh-Morpork at night. Thanks to Tealin for the great picture!

After getting up, I went to the Exam Hall and finished International Law. I answered a question on the general characteristics of International Law and tried to pull some Environmental Law into it. The other question was on Sources of International Law in relation to the Prohibition of Torture. Well, we’ll see how it went.

Afterwards me and my classmates went to the Eagle, the Pub where in 1953 the discovery of DNA was announced. Was good to kick back the shoes a little bit. We were discussing the exams and our plans afterwards.

I am in two minds about the exams. I think I rather prefer writing essays because then it is easier to focus on things that are interesting. On the other hand, with exams once they are done, they are done. Writing exams is mostly a memorizing practice, but with only two weeks time for studying the memorizing becomes quite patchy.

Anyway, it’s time to enjoy a little bit of the Cambridge sun now and then do some research for the Master-Thesis.

I don’t sleep well before exams. Not because of excitement, but usually when I crammed my head with the things in the book, I get so many interesting ideas. Brains are strange. Just came back from US Foreign Policy exam. I answered questions on China and on Economic Foreign Policy. Went alright. Now it’s time to do some catching up. And then Tuesday with International Law, one more to go…

Finished the Economics Exam, chose a question on exchange rates and another one on Regional Trade Agreements. A funny thing happened in the beginning. It turned out that the page with the questions of the exams included some remarks made by the lecturers when they drafted the questions.

Afterwards went to lunch with my classmates discussing the Economics class. We all really liked the heterodox approach that Michael Kuczynski took in explaining economics and we liked discussing concrete problems in the seminar with John Forsyth, such as Sovereign Wealth Funds or the Commodity Markets for Energy Resources.

One of my classmates told me that Michael Kuczynskis brother is Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, the former prime minister of Peru. Well, Cambridge always makes up for unexpected surprises.

Back to the desk to study US Foreign Policy. Two more exams to go…

Just finished the exam in International Political Economy. Exam questions dealt Trade and Finance. One was about the Doha Development Agenda, the other about the collapse of the Fixed Exchange Rate System which I answered by discussing the impact of the Gold Pool in the 1960ies. Doable. Back to the library for Economics. Three more to go…

Today I received a letter from the British National Health Service inviting me to a pregnancy screening test. I am not pregnant, but maybe because I somehow ended up in the Health Database as Miss Karsten Wenzlaff got me this preventive medical treatment.

Thinking of it, I recovered quite good from my accident and the service of the National Health Service was efficient, free, and worked. After I came home from studying in the Library, I couldn’t sleep yet so I watched Michael Moore’s Sicko – a movie about the American Health Care System. Read on, my friend »

In 2006, a friend of mine, Alexander, worked in the US Congress. He told me about this exciting new Democratic Senator from Illinois, named Barack Obama, who excites his crowds and is going to challenge Hillary Clinton in the presidential campaign. At that time everybody, the media, the political establishement, almost everybody, believed that she would win the Democratic nomination.

18 months later I find myself going to the Youtube-Video-Channel of Barack Obama almost every night, hoping that their campaign team has put a new video there. And even though I was skeptic for a long time that one person can change a whole country, can redefine its economic and political interests and give the people the perspective of change, I think Barack Obama can do that. Read on, my friend »

Oh what a joy – a golden message from Germany including some Knusperflocken.

Easily translated into Nibbeflakes. The English name does really not describe well the oral sensation of chocolate-covered crisp bread in small portions.

Hmmm… I have to keep this for a special day, otherwise the golden bag will be empty soon.

Wait it is a special day Oops, already empty.

Head is in a fog from the books and readings, and outside Cambridge is cloudy and murky.

…is the birthday of a special person in my family. He will probably be very busy blogging about this world – even on this special day.

Hopefully he finds the time to reflect upon the last year and take a stroll through the alley of magnificent trees that his efforts have preserved for the at least another 50 years!

Knowing that is sometimes not easy to start something new, I want to wish the best of luck and success for this exciting new project. I am confident he will make the best out of this great opportunity!

Happy Birthday!

Image from Der Rüdnitzer

Mario Ruckh is a frequent guest here in Cambridge due to his personal connections into the city. I was fortunate to meet him earlier this year and to learn more about one of his current projects, Kindo.

Kindo is a family social network enabling the joint work on family trees. In a recent press release, additional support from Ambient Sound Investment was announced. ASI was started by the same people who invented Skype.

For Kindo this is a big step forward because the additional investment will allow them to pursue their expansion strategy into other languages and cultures. On the other hand: the big challenge is still stickiness. How to get users to come back once they have finished their family tree? In any case, I wish lots of success with the future development of Kindo!

Today I had the last seminar in International Law. I had to present three cases, two WTO cases and one NAFTA case, where environmental and developmental goals clashed with free trade objectives. It went quite well, given that I only had a few hours effectively to work on the presentation. On Friday I had to present six cases in Environmental Law and that also went quite well.

International Environmental Law and International Economic Law is so fascinating. These areas mix economic, political and legal considerations – but at the same time they touch on ethical criteria and discussions of fairness and justice. I am convinced that the development of international law in this field will determine whether humanity can solve the problems it is facing right now. Even Dr. Gehring, the lecturer, seemed to enjoy more talking about Environmental Law than talking about Countermeasures, State Responsibility or Sources of International Law.

In these four months that I am studying International Law in Cambridge, I have learned more about decision-making then in the four years of my Bachelor Studies of Philosophy and Economics. I can’t believe that they still claim that “The Syllabus in Bayreuth is the best organized” and “We want to educate experts in complex decision situations.”

This is rubbish. In my experience, decision-making can not be studied by looking at philosophical theory. In order to make good decisions – be it in politics, in business, in academia, in science – you need to have three things: practical experience on the ground, detailed knowledge about the rules of the game, and a strong mental focus on your objective. None of these things you can learn in Bayreuth in the studies of Philosophy and Economics.

Today I had a look at the syllabus of the last semester in Bayreuth. There was no course in law required. But according to the advertisement-leaflet alumni should be able to work in Consultancies, Management Teams in Companies and Governments, International Organisations, Media or Education Facilities.

How is it possible to work in Business Consultancies without having a little glimpse of how Civil Law and Tax Law works? Well, you can probably pick up a lot on the job. Yet Bayreuth does not even make an effort to teach students some principles of Corporate Law. Not even in the field of the department’s specialisation, Business Ethics, can you find a course that teaches CSR-Standards or Corporate-Governance-Standards.

How can you work in Goverment if you have no clue about Public Law? Good governance is knowledge about how law is made and implemented. Sure enough, it helps to understand the Economic Impact of Law, and it helps to understand the basic principles which govern the major legal systems, but a course in Legal Philosophy will not help you in any decision-making.

How can you work in International Organisations if you don’t know how the relations between states are regulated and how international laws are created and changed? How can you discuss development and global justice if you don’t know how the dispute mechanisms in the major economic organisations work?

I am not saying that lawyers have an edge in all of these issues. To make good decisions, you need to have knowledge about economy as well as psychology and probably lots of politics. I picked up some of this of years in volunteering and NGO-work, but I know that very soon I will have to jump into the waves and try whether my intuitions work in the real world out there. Yet I know that the classes in Bayreuth were not doing anything to help me or my classmates making a succesful jump into this exciting world.

When the syllabus is created, the lecturers in Bayreuth do not think about how the taught knowledge can help students make meaningful decisions in the real world out there. Instead, they enforce their own research agenda on the students and pretend that these are meaningful treasures to be discovered in the vast oceans of human knowleddge. They don’t ask themselves how to develop the intellectual potential of the students in the best possible ways.

To be fair, some things are improving in Bayreuth. But the big legal gap in the Bayreuth syllabus (despite excellent facilities offered by the Law Faculty) can not be overlooked. Even though lawyers don’t have the answer to everything, without knowledge of law, you don’t even know how to ask the question.

In a couple of days I have to give a small presentation on the impact of US Economic Interest on US Foreign Policy. It is a rather broad question, isn’t it? How to answer it in 10 minutes? Maybe showing this video?

The seminar and the lectures in US Foreign Policy did not really give me an academic framework for this specific policy analysis. In general though, Dr. Halper’s perspective as a Washington-insider was interesting, especially when we discussed Sino-American-Relations. And Dr. Thompson is a great historian with enthusiasm for Wilson – the seminar on Wilsonianism was one of the best debates in Cambridge.

But somehow I struggle to put the complicated and complex American policy making into simple concepts, such as Wilsonianism, Liberalism, Realism, Isolationism, Internationalism and relate them to the Economic Interests. When I read Frank Ninkovich’s Wilsonian Century, I wondered whether it is really possible to put the different objectives of American Foreign Policy into these terms.

Take for instance the claim that the United States foreign policy before the 1900 was isolationist, afterwards realist or internationalist. The United States has intervened in other countries since its foundation in the 18th century.

In almost all these conflicts policy-makers had to think about the economic and security consequences as well as about opinion at home. They had to motivate the citizens to go to war by appealing to higher ideals, but often enough financial and trade related motives came into play as well.

Was the foreign policy mostly dominated by economic concerns? In support of this theory, one could say that despite its rhetoric appealing to higher ideals, the US has supported dictatorships and authoritarian regimes around the world if it suited its economic or security interests.

The Comic Book Addicted to War uses an entertaining way to make the claim that the United States have employed military threats to receive economic concessions from other countries or and that they have intervened in countries when revolutions threatened to endanger American business interests.

The comic book features some interesting quotes by American Policy Makers and Army Representatives:

When any territory outside the present territorial limits of the United States becomes necessary for our defense or essential for our commercial development, we ought to lose no time in acquiring it.

Senator Platt

I spent thirty-three years and four months in active service in the country’s most agile military force, the Marines. I served in all ranks from second Lieutenant to Major General. And during that period I spent most of my time being a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.

[...]

Thus I helped make Mexico, and especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenue in. I helped in the raping of half-a-dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers and Co. in 1909-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras “right” for American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.

Major General Smedley Darlington Butler

These quotes suggest that foreign policy is dominated by business interests. But not all foreign policy decisions are dominated by economic considerations. During the Cold War, American Foreign Policy was dominated by containment objectives towards the Soviet Union than business prospects.

One could argue of course that the military itself has been a striving business in the US whose interest it was to maintain a permanent state of confrontation to justify its expenditure. The United States spend more on the military than the rest of the world combined.

But if you compare the military spending of the United States to the American Economy, it is still rather small (only about 3.7 percent). While it is true that the military has an important standing in determining US Foreign Policy, I really wonder how much power the military industry in Washington has?

How about the importance of Economic Foreign Policy in the general Foreign Policy in the US. Jerel Rosati in his book “The Politics of United States Foreign Policy” has argued that many presidents were more concerned with diplomacy and security than with the economic foreign policy which was handled by a variety of agencies and departments in the American administration.

Do Economic Interests play a role in Elections? Election campaigns in the US are expensive and maybe politicians have a strong incentive to tailor politics to the needs of the corporate sponsors?

Yet election campaigns can also be financed through other means. The previous Obama campaigns were almost totally financed by individidual contributions.

Politicians in the US have to address the median voter because of a winner-takes-it-all system that permeates most primary elections and as well the presidential elections. This voting system allows some minorities to dominate regional elections which might be crucial to win the overall-elections. Also the majority voting also makes the congress less representative in terms of minority opinions. But it also limits the powers of single interest to be influential in elections.

Business interests do play a role in Washington – through providing expertise, lobbying, networking in the day-to-day policy process. However, it is unclear whether these business interests have always stronger role than other interests from NGOs or Activists Groups.

In Germany, individual politicians need the support of a political party. The major political parties need the support from business organisations and labor unions as well, so they are much more resceptible to economic arguments than in other countries. In the USA, Presidents in office can not count on the loyalty of their party, they need to win individual votes in Congress when conducting foreign policy. This process of finding a compromise opens the possiblity to have regional interests connected to larger policy initiatives, but it is not certain that this would allow business interests to dominate the foreign policy agenda.

All of this points to the finding that economic interests do play a role but maybe not a prominent one. Can we then say that US foreign policy are much more dominated by higher ideals like the struggle for democracy? I don’t think so. Historians and Policy Analysts should not confuse that the public statements of politicians and the actual policy can be quite different from each other. I think no one seriously doubts that often enough the US Foreign Policy has been in contradiction to democratic values and liberal objectives.

The key to understand the Economic Interest in US Foreign Policy is the character of the issue at hands. When the problem is a Zero-Sum-Problem where gains of the US means losses to other states (like the access to oil reserves), then economic interests and security interests align and interventions on behalf of these interests are clouded by referring to higher values.

When the US faces a problem where coordination between countries yields a higher output (a typical coordination-game in Game Theory Lingo), then the US Foreign Policy deviates from a strict security-based or economic-based foreign policy. The two World Wars can be cited as examples for that. In these instances, personal values of leaders have an impact on shaping the foreign policy of the United States.

Martin Wilke has recently written an article about the use of Single Transferable Vote in the Primaries in the USA. Single Transferable Vote means that voters can vote for several candidates by indicating a preference (this flash animation explains in English and German how STV works).

Martin says:

Those citizens which voted for Edwards are now in bad luck because from now on their vote is not counted anymore and has only symbolic value.

Henry Dubb says that Caucusing is somehow similar to STV because voters can change the corner if they think that their candidate will not receive enough votes in the districts. The following video explains how Caucus works and features Bill Clinton running on a treadmill and Hillary singing slightly out of tune:

A few words on Martins blog. For a long time, I have tried to convince Martin Wilke that with his knowledge about democracy, alternative education and voting procedures, he should start a weblog. There it is: Demokratie von unten.

Martin is an extraordinary person. We met when we were 8 years old and have been friends since then. In school, we created a new sovereign state (called the “United States of Europe”) which had two citizens (me and Martin), covered the territory of our rooms where we had sole jurisdiction and even our own currency.

Already during school he was an expert in direct democracy, candidated for the Berlin Parliament, wrote and translated books about Democratic Education and worked in an NGO advocating Rights of Children.

Recently he finished his Thesis – I think one of the best discussions of voting systems like Single Transferable Vote. His new project is a campaign for Mehr Demokratie e.V., a German NGO working on implementing methods of direct democracy. Looking forward to read more from him in the future!

Last week a presentation on Basel II, this Thursday a presentation about Institutional Design, today a presenation about Environmental Law and then it was announced that next Friday’s presentation about Economic Law was moved to Monday. Which leaves me about 2 hours to prepare for next Tuesday’s presentation about Economic Policies in US Foreign Relations. Saying goodbuy to weekend which was already filled with revisioning.

I am going on a temporal intellectual boycott now. The sun is shining in Cambridge and I’ll grab my camera and go down to the city to make some nice pictures of the town.