Unintended Consequences

Anybody who knows me for long knows I’m fascinated by history, and I collect interesting (to me) stories to illustrate the many lessons we can learn from it. And few aspects of history are more entertaining (to me) and enlightening (to us all) than those dealing with unintended consequences. You know, the situations where a leader or a group or even a nation does something and ends up–eventually–with an outcome entirely at odds with what they intended.

On one hand, these historical tales describe a rich vein of irony: not the watered down understanding of irony in vogue among post-modern intellectuals, nor the whiny version Alanis sang about (Ray-ay-ain on your wedding day is unfortunate, but hardly ironic). Irony involves the unexpected, which means when you have no reasonable expectation (such as the weather for a wedding day you chose), you can’t have irony. The best example of ironic humor I ever saw was a simple cartoon showing a man hitting a hammer against a glass vase; the hammer shatters, and the vase stands untouched. That’s ironic. And maybe that black fly just likes your Chardonnay!

So here goes with some unintended consequences; enjoy:

1. “The Sins of the Father.”

George H.W. Bush, hereafter Bush ’41, was faced with a post Cold War conundrum. The US was the lone superpower, but what did that mean? When Saddam Hussein occupied Kuwait in a completely opportunistic and aggressive move; he had his answer. Bush ’41 developed a global response, led by the US, to evict Saddam from Kuwait. Why? The US had long guaranteed the House of Saud that it would protect the monarchy as long as the oil flowed. And if Saddam could just seize Kuwait, there was little stopping him from doing the same to Saudi Arabia. We had built complete air bases out in the Saudi desert, even though they had little air power. The bases were financed by the Saudis and built/maintained to US standards, for our use should we ever need to project power in the region. Thus the US did not need to station troops in Saudi Arabia, which would have been offensive to devout Muslims.

So the grand Coalition marshaled its forces in Saudi Arabia and then expelled Saddam Hussein from Kuwait. Except there was no agreement about actually deposing Saddam, so they left him in power. Which meant he was a continuing threat. Which meant we needed to keep some “tripwire” forces in Saudi Arabia. A little-known cleric named Osama bin Laden had been preaching, to little effect, that the Saudi Monarchy was corrupt and in league with the infidel West. He predicted that the Saudis would allow “crusaders” into the Muslim holy lands, and when it happened, he moved from lunatic to prophet. And the seeds of Al Qaeda and 9/11 were sown.

Bush ’41 was looking to create a better world where aggression was punished by collective action. He forgot the simmering tensions that underlay all foreign relationships, and thought our good intentions would be recognized by all. Rather, he inadvertently laid the groundwork for a terrible challenge his son would someday face.

2. “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.” H. L. Mencken.

In the early Twentieth Century, the Progressive movement was quite influential in federal, state, and local politics in the United States. Progressives were impressed with recent, dramatic improvements in science and technology and believed that these advances heralded an age when reason and science would rule between individuals and among peoples. One of their core concepts was the importance of direct democracy and the belief that the people could be relied on to do the right thing, if only given the opportunity to do so (i.e., vote). Partially this was a naive belief in the ‘wisdom of crowds’ but mostly it was a reaction to the various cabals, conglomerates, and oligarchs which proliferated at the same time. These “special interests” had seized control of several layers of government and the Progressives were their sworn enemies.

Progressives in California eventually got control of the state government and enacted several provisions which supported greater democracy: one was the creation of Propositions, whereby the people could vote directly on a policy which the government would then have to accept and enforce. The other was Recall elections, where the people could sponsor a vote to remove an office holder and replace him/her immediately. Both of these provisions were designed to limit the power of tiny groups of influential people by providing a means for larger groups to override them.

Things didn’t quite turn out that way. The Proposition concept did require a simple democratic majority, but it proved to be a blunt instrument that allowed ill-conceived, general concepts to be “approved” by the voters who probably didn’t fully understand the implications. It eventually ended up with the infamous Proposition 13 in 1978, which created a series of prohibitions on raising taxes or appraisals that have hamstrung California leaders to this day. Whatever one thinks about whether taxes are too high or too low, California’s proposition system proved a poor approach.

Oh, and the recall option? Progressives set the signature bar low for initiating a recall, and thus have cost one Democrat his Governorship and forced the current incumbent into an expensive defense, which had it failed, would have inaugurated a conservative Republican who managed only twelve percent of the vote! Power to the People, indeed.

3. Upsetting a delicate balance

Those who had a basic civics and government course can quickly describe the various “check and balances” built into the government of the United States by the Founders. There are the struggles between the three branches of the federal government, the powers reserved under the Constitution to the States and the People, Judicial Review, and the anti-majoritarian aspects of that same Constitution. These balances are constantly under stress. For example, as the US moved from a developing nation to a global superpower, the federal government naturally accrued much more sway. But sometimes the balance is voluntarily upset.

The Founders designed the House of Representatives to be representative of the people: directly- and more frequently-elected, more passionate and more partisan. For the Senate, the Founders intended a more deliberate body, selected by State Legislatures and therefor representing their (i.e., the States’) interests. But in the early years of the Republic, the federal Senate was less powerful (even a backwater), and some States either didn’t bother to send Senators, or didn’t send their best.

During that Progressive era at the beginning of the Twentieth Century, William Randolph Hearst, a fan of direct elections, sponsored a fictional novel, “The Treason of the Senate,” which detailed the failings of various Senators and State legislatures, fueling the fire for change. The result was the 17th Amendment to the Constitution, which took the Senate away from the States and made it directly-elected, like the House. And as we all know, since that time, the Senate has never had any members who would be considered dishonorable in any way.

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*EDIT: a sharp-eyed friend pointed out Agnew was only President of the Senate (as Vice President of the United States), so he merits inclusion as disreputable, but not as a Senator!

More to the point, since that time, no entity represents the view of the States in the federal process, which has led to further “federalizing” of State functions, and greater stress on the delicate balance that is the American form of government.

4. A prophet is not without honor except . . .

On June 8th, 1978, Harvard University held its annual commencement exercises, discharging another set of high-achieving alumni into careers as leaders of the nation. As is its custom, Harvard had bagged the most influential commencement speaker: former Soviet political prisoner, Nobel prize-winning author, and famously private dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.

No doubt the Harvard administrators expected an important address, not the usual platitudes about ‘changing the world’ or ‘finding yourself.’ Perhaps the soon-to-be graduates expected a paean to the West, which had helped rescue the Russian dissident just as the Cold War was reaching its peak. What they got was “A World Split Apart,” a jeremiad worthy of the original Old Testament prophet.

Solzhenitsyn, characterizing his criticism as coming from a friend, not an adversary, attacked the West from start to finish. He said Western society was morally bankrupt and weak. Youth were selfish and complacent and materialist. The press was corrupt, interested in influencing the public rather than informing them. He asked what moral force the West could provide in the larger battle against the evil that was Communism, and he saw none.

The crowd at Harvard was rapt as the speaker–in Russian–and his translator–in English–continued. A few times they cheered, more often they vocally hissed. Afterward, the major media attacked the messenger, not the message, calling him “bitter,” “unappreciative”, with James Reston at the New York Times saying the speech represented “the wanderings of a mind split apart.”

Solzhenitsyn never apologized and never withdrew his criticism. After the fall of the Communist regime in Russia, he returned there, dying in 2008. His speech, which merits your attention, is amazingly prescient, accurately describing how trends evident in the West in the 1970’s resulted in many of the problems which bedevil us today. The speech is widely considered one of the greatest of the Twentieth Century, alongside Churchill’s “Blood, Tears, Toil & Sweat” and Martin Luther King’s “I have a Dream.”

Needless to say, Harvard got more (and different) than they bargained for.

5. Packing, Cracking and Majority-Minority districts

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was a landmark piece of legislation that, among other things, attempted to redress decades of voting rights violations committed against many minority groups. One of the things the Act specifically prohibited was the drawing of voting districts in a way to reduce the influence of minority voters. This is a type of gerrymandering (drawing voting districts to create an artificial vote result) called cracking: you divide a concentrated minority group (say for example, blacks in a city) among several voting districts that also include larger numbers of suburban whites, making it difficult for a black candidate to win. The end result is few if any successful black candidates.

But as anyone who is mathematically and geographically literate can tell you, if you draw a district to create a majority of minority voters (hence the term majority-minority district), you greatly reduce the number of minority voters in all the surrounding districts (because you’re dealing with small numbers–a minority–in the first place)! This is another form of gerrymandering called packing, which nearly guarantees a successful black candidate in one district, but also also greatly increases the chances of all the other white candidates’ success.

Currently there are approximately one hundred majority-minority districts in the US House of Representatives, representing about one quarter of the four hundred and thirty-five seats. These seats are overwhelmingly occupied by minority representatives, strongly indicating that the Voting Rights Act of 1965 worked. But, and there is always a but, over time voters have increasingly sorted themselves politically (like-minded voters choosing to live where they think other like-minded voters live).

Gerrymandering to disadvantage voters by party — or political gerrymandering — may be distasteful, but it is constitutional according to the US Supreme Court (Gill v. Whitford). But what if a racial group (i.e., African-Americans) overwhelmingly identifies with a single party (i.e., Democrats)? Then gerrymandering those voters might be a violation of the Voting Rights Act. So these majority-minority districts become protected (in theory) during redistricting. Which means if certain seats can not be changed (or changed much), all the other seats become subject to even worse gerrymandering.

So the law which seeks to protect minority representatives actually also places many more Democratic candidates at risk of being re-districted into noncompetitive campaigns.

6. Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi Weapons that Weren’t

From the moment he took power in 1979, Saddam Hussein was on a mission toward self-aggrandizement and Iraqi domination of the Middle East. He constructed a security service that strangled Iraq’s many ethnic minorities, built up military forces, and sought weapons of mass destruction (WMD, especially nuclear and chemical). By 1981, Israel deemed the threat of Iraq’s nuclear program sufficient to justify a risky long-range aerial bombing and destruction of Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor. During the Iran-Iraq war in 1988, Saddam gassed the (Iraqi) Kurdish village of Halabja, killing thousands of his own citizens. He repeatedly demonstrated the capability and will to use such weapons.

US and Coalition military forces were prepared for Saddam to use such weapons during the first Gulf War in 1991, but he didn’t, fearing the reprisals. After the war, UN sanctions forced him to destroy his WMD munitions and infrastructure. Saddam complied, but continued to conduct suspicious actions which led the UN and various intelligence agencies to believe he retained a covert stockpile and program. Why else would he deny certain inspection areas, or make sudden movements of equipment and people to avoid inspections, if not to hide a residual capability? In the end, Secretary Colin Powell laid out the circumstantial case about Saddam’s programs before the UN, and Bush ’43 proceeded to occupy Iraq, capture Saddam, but never found any WMD!

During debriefings by the FBI after his capture, Saddam explained that he knew Iraq had the technical know-how and scientific capability to rebuild its WMD program. But he didn’t do so, so as to avoid giving the West an excuse to remove him from power. However, the West (and especially the US) was a more distant threat; Saddam firmly believed WMD and his demonstrated willingness to use them were all that was deterring the Iranians–and to some extent the Israelis–from attacking him. So he took a calculated gamble: act suspicious enough to make Israel and Iran stay back, but not so suspicious that the US would get involved.

This approach worked for decades. By the year 2000, human rights organizations were calling for the removal of sanctions on Iraq for humanitarian reasons (fake child mortality data provided by Saddam), Russia was actively working around the sanctions, and even France was signalling the sanctions had to go. But the 9/11 attacks had heightened US sensitivity about vulnerability to terrorist use of WMD. Combined with the Bush administration’s belief Saddam was a problem which would only get worse, his WMD bluff proved in the end to be his undoing.

Hope you enjoyed this small foray into the world of unintended consequences; if not, maybe I just committed another myself!