I suspect Matt’s always thought that Pakistan is the more important half of the Af-Pak clusterfuck, and today he comes out and says it. I’ve been beating around that bush for a while now too. Recently, however, I’ve been pondering the possibility that too much involvement in Pakistan might be a mistake as well.

I just finished carefully re-reading John Lukacs’ sketch of George Kennan last night and was struck anew by Kennan’s prescient calls to prudence in international relations, his conviction that most problems in the world are by their very nature too complicated to be “solved” in any meaningful way, and his counsel, therefore, that America be extremely selective in its engagements.

Remaking Afghanistan certainly doesn’t reach Kennan’s threshold for American involvement. One is tempted to wonder whether Pakistan does either. It’s not that the stakes aren’t high—nuclear weapons in a failed state are about as high as they can get. It’s that the paucity of our policy options and leverage is matched with a frightful lack of insight as to what’s happening on the ground, which makes the further improvement of our options seem unlikely. Indeed, the situation is so fluid and murky that even Pakistani journalists close to the events seem to be baffled by each new turn. It’s not that we shouldn’t concern ourselves with Pakistan, Kennan might say, but that we should be very hesitant about just “doing something” lest we muck it up more.

Matt Yglesias surprises me again with his four demands Democrats should make before acquiescing to the bail out:

Preserve substantial financial upside for taxpayers in the event that the bailout works (I think in practice this requires an equity stake in the bailed out firms, but I’m not sure).

Meaningful steps to restructure mortgages and keep most people in their houses.

A real second stimulus package.

Controls on executive pay for bailed out firms.

Reasonable people can argue about the first three points, but the last one’s a howler. What does Matt think would happen with that unused executive pay? Would the secretaries and janitors all get raises? And more broadly, if you think that inequality is the problem to be addressed today, is this even the tenth best way to address it?

UPDATE: Josh Marshall largely agrees.

Does Matt Yglesias really want this? Is he serious?

In November, there’s going to be an election. And in January, there’ll be a new President. And in the interim, progressive groups will probably come up with a lot of “ten ways to make everything awesome” proposals. And it’ll take 41 conservative senators to filibuster them all, and so they’ll all be filibustered. But if the government directly controls major financial institutions, that would give the new administration extraordinary leverage over the national economy. Suppose the new CEO of AIG decided he didn’t want to insure assets of companies whose executives make unseemly multiples of the national median income? There are all kinds of crazy things you could do. And of course not all of them would be good ideas. But some of them would! And the smart folks on our side need to be figuring out which ones they are. It seems doubtful to me that a progressive administration would ever be able to get away with this much nationalizing of everything, but what’s done is done and I think it creates a real opportunity for “socially conscious insurance underwriting” or whatever you care to call it.

I’m absolutely dumbfounded.

Having read David Leonhardt’s extensive piece on Obamanomics, I’m inclined to think that Obama would avoid such foolish market interventionism. Indeed, he explicitly says he’s opposed to it in the above-cited article:

“If you talk to Warren [Buffett], he’ll tell you his preference is not to meddle in the economy at all — let the market work, however way it’s going to work, and then just tax the heck out of people at the end and just redistribute it,” Obama said. “That way you’re not impeding efficiency, and you’re achieving equity on the back end.”

I always knew that people of terribly unsound economic judgment were bound to be part of the Obama bandwagon. I guess I never assumed Matt Yglesias was among them.

UPDATE: I should clarify, perhaps, that I’m not terribly thrilled with Obama’s gambit. It’s completely acceptable in contrast to Matt’s formulation, however.

Matt Yglesias posts an article at The American Prospect touting the imperfections of the outcome in Kosovo as a tentative, hedged proof that even well-intentioned humanitarian unilateral interventions are bad news.

He ends his argument thus:

Timely and effective diplomacy can often avert humanitarian catastrophes before they break out at much lower cost than coercive force can end them once they’ve started. And the U.N.’s traditional peacekeeping operations, where parties to a conflict request third-party troops to help monitor and enforce a peace deal, have a solid track record of success but are perennially under-resourced by an indifferent United States. Greater commitment — political, financial, and (when appropriate) military — to these kinds of operations would bring much larger humanitarian benefits than would any hypothetic humanitarian wars.

Sounds good on paper. But in Kosovo’s case, Milošević recognized what current Serbian politicians don’t seem to grasp: Kosovo was ungovernable by Serbia with 2 million Albanians living there. He therefore began expelling them. Given that kind of rationale, it’s hard to imagine that diplomacy without at least some sort of a willingness to back it up with force would yield much.¹

As for parties to a conflict requesting third-party troops to help monitor a peace deal, Milošević had that one figured out too. In both Croatia and Bosnia he would agree to UN troops coming in to help him consolidate his gains on the ground. In Croatia, the UN Protected Areas (UNPAs) stood until 1995 when they were overrun by a Croatian offensive covertly backed by the US. In fact, it wasn’t until the Croatian offensive started to threaten Milošević’s gains in Bosnia that he became more than eager to enter into the negotiations that yielded the Dayton Accords.²

In the Balkans at least, diplomacy not backed up by force and reliance on just the UN yielded terrible results. Matt’s a very smart guy and I look forward to reading his book to see how he addresses these kinds of issues. I don’t doubt it’ll be a thoughtful argument, though I do doubt I’ll agree with much of it.