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May 24

Friday Puzzler: Obama’s Shift on Drones

By Barbara F. Walter

US Air Force photo by Airman 1st Class Michael Shoemake

US Air Force photo by Airman 1st Class Michael Shoemake

The idea for today’s puzzler comes from my good friend Luke Condra at the University of Pittsburgh. Wednesday President Obama announced a major shift in the way the United States would use and control of drones. After years of carefully guarding information about the program, Obama has agreed to three significant changes. First, the United States would sharply limit the use of unmanned drones outside of overt war zones, limiting their use in key strategic places like Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia. Second, control over the program would shift from the CIA to the Department of Defense. Third, Obama agreed to provide new information to Congress and the public about the rules governing attacks on Al Qaida and its allies.

So today’s puzzler is this: Why did Obama decide to make these changes? Why now? And what effect do you think it will have on US behavior?

Last week I asked what caused Google to recognize Palestine. None of the comments specifically addressed the question, so I’m on my own on this one. I think there are three reasons why Google recognized Palestine. The first has to do with public opinion about a Palestinian state. It is now clear that a majority of people around the world (including in the United States and Israel) support an independent state for the Palestinians. The only two players who do not support it are a small minority of Americans and right wing parties in Israel, meaning that the vast majority of Google’s customers support recognition. So, probably not a bad business move.

Still, that doesn’t explain why Google CEO Larry Page would want to get involved in such a controversial political issue. Why not simply keep quiet? I think Google decided to recognize Palestine because Larry Page believes that Israel should recognize it. My sense is that Larry Page has a strong opinion on what Israel should do with the occupied territories and he’s letting his preference be known. But there’s a third factor that probably played a role in his decision. Larry Page’s mother is Jewish, and Google co-founder Sergey Brin is of Russian-Jewish heritage. As anyone who has been to Israel can attest, Israelis are far more critical of Israel’s government than most anybody you know. Not only was Page perhaps willing to criticize current Israeli policy toward the Palestinians, but he was likely insulated somewhat from censure because of his heritage. Had the founder and CEO of Google been a Protestant from Iowa or a Muslim from Indonesia, I doubt the logo would have changed.

May 23

Comparative Xenophobia, Part III: The Quickening

By Steve Saideman

Over the past couple of days, Max Fisher has posted a few maps and some commentary about global comparisons of ethnic tolerance and diversity.  This led to as series of posts as I had more than a few thoughts about this stuff, which Fisher was kind enough to summarize back at his Washington Post blog.

I promised in my initial post to get to the relationship between economic freedom and tolerance that was a key issue raised in the first piece on tolerance. I got distracted by the second post, but now I can try to remember what I was thinking two days ago.

Fisher reports that the study he is analyzing finds that economic freedom has no correlation with racial tolerance, but does with tolerance of homosexuals. So, we have two separate findings — do they have a common logic? It depends on what one considers to be the sources of racism versus the sources of homophobia. Do all forms of discrimination and animus have the same logic? Maybe, maybe not.

Some caveats:

  • I am not an expert on homophobia, so I am going to have to speculate a bit. Yes, I should do a heap of reading, but my blog is not my day job.
  • The data on tolerance may be flaky, as my and Fisher’s various posts suggest.
  • The data on economic freedom is from institutes that are ideologically committed to less government. It does not mean that their data is necessarily wrong, but it is something to keep in mind.

The Fisher posts do not include a map of the Economic Freedom stuff, so here it is:

So a few comments on this data. Note that the US and the Scandinavian countries are in the same category. This tends to run against what libertarians generally think — as the social democracies of Europe tend to have much more government intervention in the economy. All I can say is that a map having Sweden and the US in the same category tells me that the economic freedom that is meant here is not that which tends to jibe with popular views of that concept.

Instead, with a few exceptions, this map looks a lot like first world vs. non-first world (Italy, Greece, Turkey, Chile, Saudi Arabia, Mongolia and Kazakhstan are on the wrong sides of this divide, more or less), which means that there is a whole going on in the data other than just economic freedom — that is, the correlations may be spurious. I am sure the article controls for some stuff (I cannot seem to get through via Carleton’s library this morning), but it may be the case that what this data really captures is developed democracies and everyone else. If this is the case, it could be that the other stuff associated with developed democracies matters more than the economic freedom in shaping tolerance towards homosexuals but not towards different races: greater secularism, greater women’s rights (more on that below), being rich, and so on. Again, I cannot say whether the authors of the study handle the other things in play well or not.

So, what do I think? First, my view of ethnic conflict, including racial conflict, tends to focus on the factors that ameliorate or exacerbate competition for political power, which then may affect how the distribution of economic growth, jobs, happiness, etc. In my own work with David Steinberg of U of Oregon, I have found that economic freedom (using a different data source) is associated with less ethnic conflict. Why? Because if the government is more deeply involved in the economy, groups will have greater incentives to gain control of the government — the stakes are larger. This competition and fear of what the government might do if group y over may cause group x to pre-empt. To be clear, this is just about ethnic violence, not intolerance. So, the study Fisher reports and the work I did with Dave suggests that intolerance and violence are not necessarily related since the same kind of variables (economic freedom indicators) are correlated with violence but not intolerance. What this says to me is that intolerance itself is all around us but is only politically relevant under particular circumstances, such as what the government is doing and who has access to the government. As far as I can remember, most of the Minorities at Risk findings tended to show that the various suites of discrimination variables tended not to be significantly related to ethnic violence.

Second, I am not sure what causes homophobia or tolerance of homosexuals, but I would guess that those places with more religiosity would be more homophobic. Sorry, but most of the major religions tend to be unfriendly towards homosexuals (gets to my basic view of religions as market maximizing entities, and homosexual is bad for procreation and thus market share). Western societies tend to be less religious, which might facilitate tolerance. Advanced democracy might have something to do with it as well, since equal protection under the law, something that is only now really being applied in the US, is a fundamental democratic concept. But it does seem to take a while to be applied so older democracies may be “getting it” now, while younger democracies are still focused on other elements of democracy: civilian control of the military (largely an afterthought in US, Canada, UK, Sweden, etc), free and fair elections (sort of), etc. Anyhow, if economic freedom is associated with tolerance of homosexuality, it is probably due to the stuff that causes economic freedom rather than the economic freedom itself doing the causal work.

Third, what this discussion really misses is the real key to human progress, which is not economic freedom but better conditions for women. Women doing better is associated with less civil war, more democracy, more economic growth, etc. All kinds of studies (which elude me this early morning) show that the more women are treated better/equally in the workplace, in government, and in the economy, the better off societies and countries are — less violence, etc. Of course, there may be other stuff going on as well, but this particular causal relationship is so appealing that I am not going to question it, especially as I have already written too many words on an early morning.

I am sure my readers can find plenty of work via scholar google that shows that the better off women are, the better off we all are. Right?

A version of this post was first published at Steve Saideman’s blog.

May 22

1 Comment

Comparative Xenophobia, Part II

By Steve Saideman

I had intended to address the relationship between economic freedom and tolerance Max Fisher touched on in his recent post on world racial tolerance, but the piece pushed a couple of buttons that require a quick reaction.

diverity-map-harvard

To be clear, I am a big fan of Max Fisher and his infographics. They make me think, and I could always use more of that. He is also quite judicious in his post, noting that diversity and conflict do not line up neatly. And he does deploy the key “money quote”:

In general, it does not matter for our purposes whether ethnic differences reflect physical attributes of groups (skin color, facial features) or long-lasting social conventions (language, marriage within the group, cultural norms) or simple social definition (self-identification, identification by outsiders).* When people persistently identify with a particular group, they form potential interest groups that can be manipulated by political leaders, who often choose to mobilize some coalition of ethnic groups (“us”) to the exclusion of others (“them”). Politicians also sometimes can mobilize support by singling out some groups for persecution, where hatred of the minority group is complementary to some policy the politician wishes to pursue.

* I do appreciate the idea that the kind of identity does not matter so much (my view of ethnicity includes religion as well as race, language, and kinship as potential shared attributes that tie the group), although one could argue that certain kinds of divides have somewhat different dynamics.

This is why in my ethnic conflict classes I show both the classic Star Trek episode (black/white vs white/black) and the Babylon 5 episode where ethnicity is randomly assigned (purple vs. green) via scarves pulled out of a box. Ethnicity is not primordial (sorry, Robert Kaplan), but constructed with social and political meaning attached but changes over time due to politics and context. The money paragraph that Fisher quotes basically sets up the puzzles of the contemporary study of ethnic conflict: when do people support politicians who use identity to divide and coordinate and when do they not? Not all appeals based on ethnicity work (David Duke, anyone?).

So, heaps of good stuff in this piece, especially the end. I just want to address the instances of conventional wisdom that are problematic. That is, they are my pet peeves.

  • Fisher cites the article discussing how Somalia’s identity politics changed after the civil war in 1991. This would be fine, except that Somalia has always been poorly understood. People often think that Somalia could be the one African country that could support secession and even be irredentist (seeking to annex neighboring territory inhabited by kin) because of its homogeneity (unless they have read my stuff). Somalis speak the same language, are all Muslim, are of the same race, and so on. But they were always divided by clan identity (kinship), which meant that the irredentism was always inconsistent. The leaders in Mogadishu would support the claims of some of the kin in some of the neighboring countries, depending on whether the kin had ties to politically relevant kin in Somalia. So, lots of irredentism targeting Somalis in Kenya, Ethiopia and Djibouti occurred in the early 1960s because then the electoral system required playing to a wider audience. In the mid to late 1970s, however, the irredentism only focused on the Ogaden clan residing in Ethiopia because its kin was a key partner in the authoritarian regime, while the clans tied to the Somalis in Kenya and Djibouti were not in the regime.
    • Fisher and the folks he is citing are probably correct in that the focus since 1991 has probably moved to sub-clan identities. It is still kinship, but with smaller fractions so you get fighting between different sub-clans that belong to the same clan or clan-family rather than competition between clans or clan-families.
  •  Fisher does a great job of explaining ethnic fractionalization indexes. I wish I could communicate that concept as well. The problem with fractionalization is that it has been used poorly in the study of ethnic conflict and civil war. Two of the most productive and respected scholars in the field, Jim Fearon and David Laitin, wrote a very influential piece on civil war (3,500 citations!), and most of it is quite good. But when they seek to test whether ethnicity matters in the onset of violence, they use ethnic fractionalization as their indicator of whether ethnicity is relevant. They find it is not. The problem with this is there is very little work in the field on whether more diversity causes more conflict. What is the logic? Yes, one has to have more than one ethnicity to have ethnic conflict (not much ethnic conflict in South Korea), but beyond that? Not so clear.
    • Tanzania is among the most diverse countries in the world with over a hundred different groups, but has had very little conflict. Why? Well, in part, no one group is big enough perhaps to dominate the rest? (I am guessing a bit here since my knowledge of Tanzania is thin).
    • What might be related to ethnic conflict and civil war is the square of ethnic fractionalization. That is, in societies with very little diversity there is no opportunity for violence. For societies where this is a great deal, there is no threat of dominance. But in places where there are a few groups that rival each other, then the threats they pose to each other, or at least one to the others, can be severe. Ethnic violence may not be about fractionalization/diversity but about polarization.
    • The one consistent finding for ethnic conflict is not about fractionalization but about group concentration. That where ethnic groups have distinct areas apart from each other within a country, there is more conflict. Why? Well, partly because it facilitates separatism. Partly because groups that are separate have a secure base from which to launch attacks. Partly because intermingled groups may be deterred from attacking since they themselves are vulnerable (kind of like mutual assured destruction).

I look forward to more maps and other graphics at the Washington Post. They get my juices flowing on this stuff, when I have been focusing elsewhere the past several years.

And I will get to the economic freedom/tolerance stuff tomorrow.

A version of this piece was first posted at Steve Saideman’s blog.

May 22

Weekly Links

By Taylor Marvin

William H. Johnson, "Training for War." Via the Smithsonian Institute

William H. Johnson, “Training for War.” Via the Smithsonian Institute

The International Crisis Group’s report on the Syrian refugee crisis in Lebanon.

The Economist lists a who’s who of Syrian rebel leaders, and the BBC has a detailed new map of the conflict (via Moses Brown).

El Salvador Catholic Church: Pawn or player in gang truce?

Moving, and graphic, photos from Operation Condor (via Greg Weeks, via Colin M. Snider).

Why do some people flee war, and others stay?

Kenneth Waltz passed away last week. Stephen Walt, Robert Farley, Daniel Nexon, Steve Saideman, Michael C. Desch all have retrospectives on his career, and Foreign Affairs has made his writings for the magazine freely available.

May 21

2 Comments

Did Charles Tilly Labor in Vain?

By Will H. Moore

Last week Jonathan Panikoff posted a stream of clap-trap and nonsense at Small Wars Journal to support his headline that, in Syria, “The True Chaos Will Begin After the Fall of the Regime.”

sigh_answer_2_xlarge

Why do I sigh?  Mr. Panikoff is, of course, correct, if by “chaos” he means lots of people will be killed. I’m not certain that’s what he means, but I think it is at least part of it. Two things are troubling. First, the point has nothing to do with Syria: it is a general point that holds anywhere that an irregular transfer of power takes place a new state must assert its authority. Charles Tilly taught us this, first in his study of the French Revolution (The Vendee, 1964), and more generally in From Mobilization to Revolution(1978, see esp. pp. 191, 214-22). Yet Mr. Panikoff fails to mention this.

Instead, and this is the second part that wears on me, he trucks in what used to be Sovietology, which is a form of interpretation and prognostication akin to what one finds on ESPN: experts familiar with the names of various principals opine about the interests of each, intrigue among them, coalitions, etc. These folks are, as far as I can discern, blissfully unaware of the extent to which their ideas and interpretations are colored by standard narratives in their culture (ranging from children’s tales, fiction for adult consumption, and religious texts, to learned scholarship). In that sense it is rather unfair for me to pick on Mr. Panikoff, for he is but one of literally thousands of analysts who engage in this practice. Please take this critique, then, as targeting those analyses of which Mr. Panikoff’s is but one example.

Charles Tilly’s work (by which I am largely referring to his pre-1990 writing) was unusually informative. But perhaps the point most strongly branded onto my brain by Chuck are points three and four on pp. 218-29 of From Mobilization to Revolution. It illuminates beautifully (1) why you are an ignoramus if you wear a Che Guevara t-shirt (he directly oversaw the slaughter of thousands of Cubans denied due process, but if you like mass murders, by all means, celebrate Che) and (2) why so many of us were stunned beyond words when the Bush administration banned Ba’athists, who made up the overwhelmingly majority of Iraq’s military and police forces, from government service, thus creating a “monopoly of coercion” vacuum.

Third, the revolutionary coalition is likely to fragment once the initial seizure of control over the central government apparatus occurs, and that fragmentation itself tends to produce further struggles involving violence…. Fourth, the victorious polity still faces the problem of reimposing routine governmental control over the subject population… As the government returns to its work of extracting and redistributing resources, it finds  people reluctant to pay taxes, give up their land, send their sons to war…. And so a new round of violent imposition and violent resistance begins.

Tilly continues to make several interesting claims, and I leave it to those interested to pursue them. I wish to emphasize both the abstract concepts and his use of active voice. Tilly’s work provides us with neutral concepts such as challenger, contender, coalition, and bureaucratic apparatus. He speaks of mobilization processes, routine governance, and competition. He also recognizes that government impose control, extract taxes, and redistribute resources. These are activities pursued by a self interested state, challenged by groups of people who prefer not to cooperate, if they can. It is absolutely devoid of Manichean narrative: there are no “white hats” or “black hats” to be found. Yet Charles Tilly is dead, and as I search for evidence of the impact of his work, I fear it may be shrinking, not growing.

Returning to posts like that offered by Mr. Pannikoff’s, such analyses of  ”coming chaos in Syria” fail not only to add content to what we learned from Tilly, they actually subtract content by leading us to view what might happen next through the same lenses we might use as we consume Survivor, a soap opera, or The Walking Dead. And that, folks, is why I sigh.

@WilHMoo

Cross-posted at Will H. Moore’s personal blog.

May 20

When the Going Gets Tough, Fake It?

Guest post by Victoria Piccione

Image by Photoshop, via David Cenciotti.

Image by Photoshop, via David Cenciotti.

This January the Iranian government announced that it had successfully launched a monkey into space and returned it safely. The announcement became comical when, even to the untrained eye, it was obvious that the monkeys photographed before and after the flight were not one and the same (the Iranian government maintains that the discrepancy was due to a mistaken photo release). Equally laughable was Iran’s recent release of clearly Photoshopped pictures of a new “stealth” fighter jet — a model that critics claimed was undersized and seemingly made of fiberglass. While Iran’s technological leaps would be cause for concern if they were legitimate, they have been nothing more than elementary hoaxes.

Why would Iran (so weakly) seek to deceive the United States, a country with powers and capabilities far exceeding its own? Perhaps these announcements aren’t directed at the American government at all — instead, they are a form of international signaling about the internal Iranian state. The ease with which Iran’s faked technological achievements have been disproven suggests that these claims do not serve to destabilize the international environment; rather, they are directed at improving Iran’s crumbling domestic situation rather than threatening the US. Fearful of heightened internal strife, Iran’s government did what any reasonable, struggling regime would do: it staged a diversionary campaign.

Less costly than overt military moves, reports of technological advancements serve a diversionary purpose by attempting to rally public support through distracting citizens. Yet unlike other regimes’ bellicose diversionary threats, Iran’s attempts to divert the public’s attention away from economic struggles and towards recent scientific achievements creates national pride predicated on economic potential.

In light of these apparent motivations, Iran does not seek to threaten the US and other world powers with announcements of technological innovations. Rather, another possibility consistent with the evidence is that these pictures are forged so as to signal that the announcements are primarily directed at the Iranian people. Ahmadinejad wants the public to believe Iran’s tech programs are thriving, and highly censored media allows him to accomplish this. However, the photos are clearly bogus so that other countries are aware that Iran’s technologies still pose no threat to them.

This interpretation suggests that it would be unwise to take any immediate action. Ahmadinejad is claiming technological breakthroughs to salvage a deteriorating domestic situation, and making such claims known internationally serves two primary ends: (1) it makes his claims credible nationally, and (2) it creates some transparency and avoids confusion that could result in the security dilemma.

Of course one might argue that the threat presented by the creation of a stealth fighter jet and the one suggested by a monkey’s trip into space are different. But the technology necessary for launching a rocket into space is fundamentally the same required to build an ICBM. Thus, that astronautical monkey could actually induce the security dilemma — had it truly made it among the stars! The stealth fighter jet, were it real, does not represent the same grave threat an Iranian ICBM technology. Curious George, on the other hand, does. In either case, however, both were nothing more than farces: George has likely not yet experienced the unique sensation of zero-gravity, and the “fighter jet” remains firmly grounded… as does Iran’s technology programs. Properly analyzed, the security dilemma is induced in neither case.

Iran offers an important lesson on how to cope with internal upheaval: when the going gets tough, fake it. Don’t pick fights with someone many times your size. And most importantly, be self-deprecating abroad and deceptive domestically. The US should keep this in mind so that no rash actions are taken. Intelligence proves most useful when it’s collected and interpreted with domestic political motivations in mind.

Victoria Piccione is a student at Harvard College.

May 17

6 Comments

What Caused Google to Recognize Palestine?

google_palestineBy Barbara F. Walter

On May 1 Google quietly changed the name of its regional search page from “Google: Palestinian Territories” to “Google: Palestine.” This is a big deal in a region where semantics matter a lot, and the response was immediate: Palestinians celebrated what appeared to be recognition of Palestinian statehood by the American internet giant. Israelis immediately voiced their displeasure. Google’s CEO and co-founder, Larry Page, must have known that this would be a controversial move, especially in the United States and Israel, and yet he still chose to do it, albeit as quietly as possible.

So today’s Puzzler is this: Why did Google decide to recognize Palestine, why did it do it the way it did, and why now?

Last week I asked why the Obama administration chose to lie about the source of the attack on the American embassy in Benghazi. Why didn’t the administration relay to the American public that the attack was the work of an al Qaida affiliate as soon as it knew?

Most of the comments I received questioned the validity of the puzzle, arguing that the Obama administration didn’t know who was behind the attack until later in the week. This might be true, but I have it on good authority (someone with close ties to Christopher Stevens and members of the US diplomatic corps in Libya) that it was quite clear to everyone involved who was behind the attack. When I asked this person why Obama chose to mislead the American public as long as he did, the answer was “I really don’t know.” So I don’t have a good answer to the puzzle, except to say that the fog of an election could be as problematic as the fog of war in terms of making good decisions. In the last few weeks of a closely contested election, perhaps a bit of panic and bad decision-making did take hold.

May 16

8 Comments

Comparative Xenophobia, Part I

By Steve Saideman

Yesterday, the Washington Post put up this map based on World Values data and other information:

racism-map3

The variable shown is “share that answered ‘people of another race’ when asked to pick from groups of people they would not want as neighbors.” This makes it appear that India, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Vietnam, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Nigeria are the most racist countries. The article mentions a heap of appropriate caveats. Mine is this: I could not find this question in the dataset quickly as the dataset is vast.* Heaps and heaps of variables. So, I am going to be guessing a bit here, but as a xenophobia kind of guy, I have a few thoughts:

  • The first thing is that the question is not so much whether people are more or less tolerant of different races but that among the various factors that might shape one’s intolerance towards neighbors, race is the most cited. It may be that a place is very racist, but is even more homophobic or sectarian or whatever. There are many ways to hate or to target intolerance, so it may just be that a particularly hateful place is just somewhat more intolerant of groups who are distinct by a cleavage other than race.
  • Second, in some places, when one is asked this question, they may think of a single race; perhaps the Vietnamese think of the Chinese but not of other races. So, it may not be that the people are very racist in general — they just hate one group that is defined by race.
  • Third, living nearby is a moderate test of the question of tolerance. Can you work with group x? Can be friends? Can have in the family? Oh, yes, that is a tougher test of tolerance. Check out the figure of a series of questions asked of Romanians:

graphic_racism

What this illustrates is there are varying degrees of tolerance. And I wonder from looking at the WashPo infographic whether we would have seen very different results if the question had been friends/family rather than live nearby. Still, given that the US did well on this despite much segregation, perhaps this question is a suitable test.

The larger point is that hate is a many, uh, splendored thing. Ok, not so splendored. But it is complex, so we cannot just look at it and say that Indians are the most racist folks. Race, as we have been reminded in the past week thanks to a particularly problematic dissertation, is a very fuzzy thing. So the WashPo graphic is interesting and provocative but not conclusive.

I will consider the second part of the article, the relationship between economic freedom and various kinds of tolerance, later (today or tomorrow).

* Max Fisher, who wrote the WashPo piece responded to my tweets with more info about the data, so I may explore it further later today or tomorrow, depending on if I need to be distracted from the stuff that has actual deadlines. Yet more proof that Twitter rocks, as I would never have called up Fisher nor would have he have responded this quickly to a semi-random question.

Cross-posted at Steve Saideman’s personal blog.

May 13

Weekly Links

By Taylor Marvin

Illustrated London News, via Wikimedia.

Illustrated London News, via Wikimedia.

What happens in Syria doesn’t stay in Syria (via Jon Western).

Nadav Morag on Syria’s broken sense of nationhood: “the idea that some sort of common Syrian civil identity can be created, especially in the wake of such bitter and bloody sectarian warfare, is highly misguided.”

The “war of the holy tombs” and why the US should stay out of Syria.

Olga Khazan talks to Admiral James Stavridis about Syrian air defense systems. Micah Zenko notes a discrepancy between Stavridis’ description and Gen. Martin Dempsey’s. And how much would a no-fly zone cost anyway, and what does the recent Israeli airstrikes in Syria say about the difficulty of establishing one?

The myth around China’s growing military supremacy (though I’m pretty sure the title image is more due to Photoshop than the PRC’s increasing defense budget…).

Jay Ulfelder on sovereignty without territoriality: “Contemporary drug cartels arguably exemplify the possibility of organizations that compete for power in trade space without asserting sovereignty over territory or society…”

Edward Hugh asks what happens when countries depopulate. Joshua Keating and Robert Farley have more. Contributor Tanisha M. Fazal’s book State Death seems at least tangentially related to this discussion.

May 10

6 Comments

Friday Puzzler: Why Lie About Benghazi?

By Barbara F. Walter

It’s now increasingly clear that Obama knew as early as the evening of September 11, 2012 that the attack on the US embassy in Benghazi was the work of al Qaida-affiliated terrorists. Gregory Hicks (the deputy chief of mission at the US embassy in Tripoli) said he knew immediately. Susan Rice certainly knew five days later when she went on all the Sunday talk shows insisting the attack was the result of a spontaneous reaction to a YouTube video. If Obama knew the attack was the work of terrorists, and he knew that everyone at the embassies in Libya knew it was a terrorist attack, why did he try to hide this from the American people? Obama must have known that the information would quickly leak out, and that this revelation would make him and his administration look even worse.

So today’s puzzler is this: Why did Obama lie to the American public about the nature of the Benghazi attack?

Last week’s puzzler asked why the garment-factory tragedy in Bangladesh uncharacteristically caused Western retailers to rethink operations in that country. I think there are three possible answers to this question. The first is that retailers were simply engaged in a PR game and had no intention of moving operations elsewhere. As Taylor Marvin pointed out “the newsworthy, singular character of the collapse” made it impossible for retailers operating in Bangladesh to ignore the tragedy. They had to offer some response and verbal statements to the press were easy and costless.

The second is that retailers were sincere in their concern about working conditions in Bangladesh, and their threats to leave the country were real. If this was the case, the question is why now and why Bangladesh? I think retailers are willing to pull out of Bangladesh because (a) there are so many other cheap places to manufacture clothes, and (b) Bangladesh represents the bottom of the barrel in terms of working and operating conditions. It’s easy to pull out of Bangladesh if there are numerous better places to go.

But there’s a third, more hopeful reason. An article yesterday by Stephanie Clifford reveals that American consumers are increasingly interested in the origins of their clothing and are willing to pay more for a t-shirt that isn’t made in a sweat shop. If consumers demand to know where and how their clothing is made, operating in the current conditions in Bangladesh becomes a losing business proposition.

Which do I think is the best answer? # 2. I’m not holding my breath that clothing manufacturing will come back to New England anytime soon. Still, it’s nice to know that consumers are beginning to care. Artisanal t-shirts anyone?

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