Small island nations have been one of history's consistent political losers. Precisely because they are so small, they lack the power to resist domination by larger powers.

After seizing the Marshall Islands from Japan during World War II, the United States proceeded to use the the islands as a site for over 100 atmospheric nuclear tests. Decades of litigation resulted in only paltry compensation for the disposessed islanders.

The British expelled thousands of Chagos islanders from their homeland in the 1960s to make way for a military base and recently refused them the right to return to their tiny island in the Indian Ocean. The grounds? It would be too expensive to relocate them.

Nowadays, it is through pollution and global warming that world powers most threaten small island nations. If current trends hold, many inhabited islands will be submerged completely due to rising sea levels. Assuming large states are unwilling to reverse this trend by implementing drastic pollution controls, we have to ask: Will they compensate islanders for eliminating their territories altogether, and how?

Mathias Risse, a political philosopher at Harvard, supports a radical proposition made by Anote Tong, president of the island nation of Kiribati:

[S]catter his people of about 100,000 through the nations of the world as rising sea levels swallow up their native island.

Risse justifies this solution by invoking the 17th-century ideas of Hugo Grotius, who argued that the Earth should be viewed as owned collectively by humanity. If we take this view, states are obligated to accept immigrants whose ownership rights have been infringed upon because their home territories no longer exist. This raises the further question: Are states that contribute more to global warming more obligated to accept the resulting refugees?

This is all abstract, normative philosophy that rests on a contestable assumption; Risse theorizes about about what governments should think and do rather than what they in reality do think and do. But these issues might end up in court. Such philosophical arguments would then play an important role in determining the fate of the many islanders soon-to-be made homeless by global warming.

Photo: TORSTEN BLACKWOOD/AFP/Getty Images, Wikipedia

The media circus surrounding the upcoming U.S. presidential elections and the candidates' constant reversion to rehearsed talking points in both the debates and interviews might leave you feeling jaded about the value of media political coverage. But rather than hope for the hoopla to stop, perhaps we should pray that it continues.

 

A recent study by political scientists at MIT and IIES, a research institute in Stockholm, suggests that in the long run media attention really does make politicians -- or U.S. congressmen, anyway -- more accountable:

Congressmen who are less covered by the local press work less for their constituencies: they are less likely to stand witness before congressional hearings, to serve on constituency-oriented committees, and to vote against the party line… Federal spending is lower in areas where there is less press coverage of the local members of congress.

The study set low standards for what counts as press coverage; the researchers simply looked at how often a politician's name is mentioned in local newspapers, which makes the apparent impact of such coverage all the more surprising. The study also finds that press coverage of local politicians is lower in areas where residents get their news from media sources that cater to multiple political districts. Bad news for local readers of the Washington Post and the New York Times?

What happens when you put a chief architect of the Iraq war in charge of the world's most important international development institution? Well, the NYT has a good article about that today, profiling Paul Wolfowitz's first 15 months at the helm of the World Bank.

If you haven't heard, Wolfowitz has launched a massive anti-corruption campaign at the World Bank that's highly unpopular among the institution's 10,000 employees. Why would anyone, let alone a group of well-respected economists and development experts, object to something as praiseworthy as fighting corruption? Well, it's the way he's doing it: by withholding loans and bullying poor countries into political reform. Wolfowitz is taking the same approach to cracking down on corruption at the WB as he did to spreading democracy from the Pentagon - through sheer (albeit this time economic) force:

In his first 15 months as president of the World Bank, Paul D. Wolfowitz has made the fight against corruption in poor countries a hallmark issue, waging an aggressive campaign that has led to the suspension of hundreds of millions of dollars in loans and contracts to nations including India, Chad, Kenya, Congo, Ethiopia and Bangladesh.

In a controversial FP March/April 2004 cover story (we're all for debate over here at FP), Sam Huntington argued that the U.S. faces a "Hispanic challenge", and that if immigration from Latin America continues unabated, America will be split into "two peoples, two cultures, two languages". This culturalist argument has since been echoed by anti-immigration lobbyists and politicans across the country, with particular emphasis on the question of English vs. Spanish as a national language:

[I]f Mexican immigration abruptly stopped...[t]he inflow of immigrants would again become highly diverse, creating increased incentives for all immigrants to learn English and absorb U.S. culture. And most important of all, the possibility of a de facto split between a predominantly Spanish-speaking United States and an English-speaking United States would disappear, and with it, a major potential threat to the country's cultural and political integrity.

As a first generation (non-Hispanic) immigrant, I've always found it hard to believe that anyone could get by for long in the U.S. without learning English. And a groundbreaking study by leading sociologists at Princeton and UC Irvine soundly debunks this pillar of the anti-immigration argument:

Although the generational life expectancy of Spanish is greater among Mexicans in Southern California than other groups, its demise is all but assured by the third generation.

As the fifth anniversary of 9/11 approaches, there's been a lot of debate and political mudslinging over a key question: Has the war on terror made the United States any safer? 

Well, there's nobody better qualified to answer that than Lee Hamilton, vice chairman of the 9/11 Commission, member of the President's Advisory Council on Homeland Security, and a distiniguished former Democratic congressman. In this week's Seven Questions, FP spoke with him to get an insider's opinion on what the American government has learned from 9/11, what threats the U.S. still faces, and whether Americans are any safer. 

An intriguing study by Syracuse University researchers reveals that, amazingly, terror prosecutions in the U.S. have fallen off steeply to pre-9/11 levels. The Justice department now declines 9 out of every 10 terrorism cases that it receives from other government agencies like the FBI. 

There are two possible interpretations of the study: 1) The Department of Justice is being overburdened with cases and isn't doing its job. 2) The sharp rise in terrorism prosecutions just after 9/11 was mostly paranoia - and the prosecution rate is simply returning to normal.

Considering all the hype and scrutiny that terror prosecutions are subjected to these day, I seriously doubt the former explanation. A look at this graphic showing the massive drop-off in average sentence length for those charged with terrorist offences suggests that, since 9/11, a lot of people have been tried without much evidence or for very minor crimes. 

Some say that sentence lengths have fallen because the Department of Justice is trying to preemptively prosecute terrorist plots:

There are many flaws in the report," said Justice Department spokesman Bryan Sierra. "It is irresponsible to attempt to measure success in the war on terror without the necessary details about the government's strategy and tactics."

For instance, Sierra said, prison sentences are "not the proper measure of the success of the department's overall counterterrorism efforts. The primary goal ... is to detect, disrupt and deter terrorist activities."

Others say it reflects a post-9/11 world of paranoid prosecutions and racial profiling - and the recent-drop off in prosecutions shows that the DoJ is finally returning to its senses. You decide.

Just yesterday, I mentioned that the White House has been trying to recast the War on Terror as the Third World War, in an effort to regain public support in the run-up to November elections. There's further evidence of that today in Bush's speech at the American Legion convention:

As veterans you have seen this kind of enemy before. They are successors to fascists, to Nazis, to communists and other totalitarians of the 20th century. And history shows what the outcome will be.

Over at TPMCafe, Bruce Jentleson explains why the rhetorical strategy of discrediting critics by comparing them to appeaser Neville Chamberlain is the oldest (and most misleading) trick in the hawk's book. Here's Lyndon Johnson talking about the Vietnam War: 

Everything I know about history told me that if I got out of Vietnam and let Ho Chi Minh run through the streets of Saigon, then I’d be doing exactly what Chamberlain did in WWII. I’d be giving a big fat reward for aggression.

As Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora begs for international aid to help offset the  estimated $3.6 billion dollars in damages his already economically fragile country has endured over the last few weeks, California Democratic Rep. Tom Lantos -- in a mind-boggling move -- is promising to stop a bill that would send $230 million in reconstruction funds to Lebanon. The top Democrat on the International Relations Committee, Lantos is apparently concerned about smuggling on the Syrian border and worried that Israel isn't getting enough money:

Lebanon will get help from both Europe, the Arab world and the United States. Unless the United States provides some aid to Israel, Israel recieves no aid.

Lantos needs to get his priorities straight. Smuggling is something the international community can worry about after it ensures that the Lebanese government is back on its feet and the Lebanese people are no longer dependent on Hezbollah for relief. And reconstruction money for Israel can come later: With a per capita GDP of $21,000, Israel, which is already on the U.S. dole to the tune of $2 billion a year, is more than capable of funding what little "reconstruction" it needs.

For more on this bizarre move to slow Lebanon's reconstruction and present Hezbollah with a golden opportunity to build its support base, see Belgravia Dispatch and Eugene Gholz.  

It's not just a War on Terror anymore. Nope, according to the White House, it's becoming a War on Fascism too. Check out what Juan Cole, the LAT, and the WaPo have to say about the GOP's latest attempts to recast the War on Terror - associated with unpopular missions like Iraq - in WWII terms.

Looks like the Bush administration is finally heeding Newt Gingrich's advice. The former House Speaker just a few months ago stated on Meet the Press (video clip) and in an interview with the Seattle Times that World War Three has already begun: 

Gingrich said that public opinion can change "the minute you use the language" of World War III. The message then, he said, is "'OK, if we're in the third world war, which side do you think should win?"

Ok, I've given Bernard Lewis more than a week...and Iran still hasn't launched an apocalyptic nuclear attack on Israel as predicted by the White House's favorite Middle East historian:

What is the significance of Aug. 22? This year, Aug. 22 corresponds, in the Islamic calendar, to the 27th day of the month of Rajab of the year 1427. This, by tradition, is the night when many Muslims commemorate the night flight of the prophet Muhammad on the winged horse Buraq... This might well be deemed an appropriate date for the apocalyptic ending of Israel and if necessary of the world.

If you hadn't heard, Bernard Lewis - an eminent Princeton academic who is an extremely influential voice in the White House - actually predicted that Iran might try to wipe out Israel on August 22, 2006.  Perhaps I shouldn't have been surprised to see this kind of blind speculation gracing the op-ed pages of the WSJ. And one week after August 22, the prediction seems even more ridiculous. 

But this got me thinking: Do the neocons have grand conspiratorial designs on the Middle East, or are they just getting really bad advice? Lewis was one of the first experts that the White House consulted after 9/11 and was a key figure in promoting the Iraq invasion. Cheney even spoke at his 90th birthday:

Be sure to check out this article by Ayaan Hirsi Ali - a Somali refugee, former Dutch parliamentarian, and prominent critic of Europe's Muslim communities who can now be found at Washington think tank AEI - on the key to reforming Europe's immigrant Muslim communities: Women's rights. 

Some nations are just doomed from the start, often because their borders are not squiggly enough. That's the conclusion of a recent NBER study by Harvard economists Alberto Alesina and Janina Matuszeski and NYU's Bill Easterly. 

The researchers developed an equation for measuring the "squiggliness" of national  borders using grids, coming up with (ln (box count) = a + b * ln (box size)), which they argue roughly corellates with how "artificial" or "natural" a state is - that is, how well a country's borders reflect existing regional, ethnic, historical, geographical, and linguistic fault lines. They also developed another measure to determine to what extent borders "partition" ethnic groups.

The researchers then set out to find whether artificial states with straight, partitioning borders do any worse than natural states with squiggly borders. The findings? The names of the “most artificial” states according to both the "squiggly" and "partition" measures - Chad, Ecuador, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Guatemala, Jordan, Mali, Morocco, Namibia, Niger, Pakistan, Sudan, and Zimbabwe - should give you a clue (hint: a lot of them show up on FP's Failed State Index). Yup, less squiggly countries turned out to do worse all around: they are poorer, more prone to unrest, governed poorly, and have higher infant mortality rates. 

You know those grave allegations made by U.S. authorities that Iran and Syria have been providing Hezbollah rockets, even in the midst of the recent conflict? Well, part of the evidence for these claims came from some good, old-fashioned..."crateology": 

In the closed world of spy satellite photo analysis, it's called "crate-ology": the science of identifying a weapon or some other key component by the size and shape of its box.

The technique came into play last month when a U.S. spy satellite, looking down on an Iranian air base, captured images of military crews loading what U.S. intelligence analysts concluded were eight C-802 Noor anti-ship cruise missiles on board a transport plane, according to intelligence officials.

Hat tip: Arms Control Wonk 

As the Islamist militia in Somalia marches across the country (for a quick backgrounder, see FP's Seven Questions: Somalia's Struggle), I can't help but wonder: Are they fundamentalists or liberals? It's getting hard to tell. Check out some of the things the Somali Islamists have achieved that most Western liberals would be proud of:

Liberal objective number 1) Rule of Law. The Union of Islamic Courts swiftly defeated Somalia's widely-hated, lawless, violent (and some of them U.S-backed) warlords. By all accounts, crime, rape, and murder are all down in Mogadishu since the Islamists came to power.

2) Free Trade. The Islamists have made the streets (and waters) safe for trade. Due to increased safety, shopkeepers are for the first time keeping their doors open after dark. The Islamist militia has outlawed Somalia's highway "toll"-extortionists and is in the process of eliminating piracy on its coastal waters. The Mogadishu airport, closed for over a decade, has finally reopened.

Read more after the jump. 

According to a recent U.S.Congressional investigation, for every dollar paid by honest American taxpayers, seven cents is stashed away by big companies and wealthy individuals in offshore tax havens. There's an estimated $11.5 trillion parked in tax havens worldwide, with much of it coming from money launderers, criminals, and elites in the impoverished developing world. But the 70 or so tax havens worldwide may not be all bad. Harvard and Michigan economists have shown that not only do tax havens flourish, they stimulate economic growth in nearby countries as well.

Regardless of their merits, tax havens are in bad shape. In June 2000, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development released a list accusing 35 jurisdictions worldwide of engaging in harmful tax practices. Since then, all but five have agreed to clean up their acts and cooperate with international authorities. After 9/11, the U.S. joined the crackdown on tax havens as part of the war on terror. And politicians everywhere are closing legal loopholes that have for years allowed companies to save billions by moving their profits offshore.

Tax havens may be on the decline, but they still hold a lot of the world's treasure. In this week's list, FP looks at six of the world's leading tax havens to find out whether their future is more stashing - or just crashing.

They say that this is the year that Democrats might retake control of the U.S. Congress. It's still hard to tell, but if this National Journal ranking of the House and Senate seats most likely to switch sides is any clue, the Dems are looking good for November.

The top five Senate seats, top nine House seats, and top five gubernatorial spots most likely to switch party hands are currently Republican. Check it out.

Back in November, Robert Litan warned Wal-Mart executives in an FP memo that the  company needed a foreign policy:

You have become the quintessential multinational corporation, and with an incredible $285 billion in sales last year, your revenues exceed the gross domestic product of Austria, Greece, and Switzerland. All of which raises the question: What is WalMart's foreign policy?

A foreign policy has yet to materilize, but the company seems to be gearing up politically for something more local - the upcoming U.S. elections in November and the Democratic presidential primaries in 2008. Reports emerged today that the monster retailer has distributed a "voter guide" to its 18,000 employees in Iowa attacking Democratic congressmen and governors across the U.S. who have criticized the company. The "voter guide" targets four prominent potential Democratic presidential candidates: Evan Bayh, Joe Biden, Bill Richardson, and Tom Vilsack.

It's more than coincidence that Wal-Mart chose to release its voter guide in Iowa - the first election stop in the Democratic presidential caucuses - where nominees are often made or broken. It's also no surprise that many Democratic politicans have made a big show of their criticism of Wal-Mart, which has become a hot-button political issue in small towns and states across the Midwest, and yes, in Iowa. 

If you trust the media reports, all's well between China and India. The two massive nations claim to be putting aside their long-standing border dispute (which led to a war in 1962) in an effort to cement their supposedly newfound friendship. But here's one for the conspiracy theorists: Could China be secretly planning a border invasion in case talks fall through? 

One intrepid Google Earth explorer has found in northern China what appears to be a 1:500 scale terrain model of the disputed Indo-Chinese border. The 630,000 square meter plot of land is an extraordinarily intricate replica of the border region - complete with snow-capped peaks, lakes, and mountain passes.  And it seems to be situated next to a Chinese military compound; Google Earth images reveal mysterious buildings, military trucks, lookout towers, and a communications facility nearby. 

Newly implemented security measures, following the discovery of the recent airplane bombing plot, have resulted in massive delays and security costs in airports on both sides of the Atlantic. But this threat hasn't caught the US Transport Security Administration unawares. Apparently, the TSA has been flirting for some time now with a pretty Orwellian technology they think could revolutionize airport security. 

The WSJ today revealed that TSA officials have been testing an Israeli-developed biometric machine that can detect travelers with "hostile intent". The machine, called "Cogito", asks travelers questions and measures their biometric responses. FP ran a story back in March about similar voice-analysis screening at a Moscow airport. With Cogito, the machine's software draws on Israeli interrogation data and field experience with terrorists to identify suspicious response patterns:

The method isn't intended to catch specific lies, says Shabtai Shoval, chief executive of Suspect Detection Systems, the start-up business behind the technology dubbed Cogito. "What we are looking for are patterns of behavior that indicate something all terrorists have: the fear of being caught," he says.

The machines cost $200,000 each and had a 85% success rate in mock Israeli trials. It sounds good: According to company releases, the machines would speed up and cheapen security procedures as well as help identify suspicious travelers without resorting to racial profiling. 

But there's always (and in this case, a particulary frightening) catch. The machine still implicates many innocent travelers. It can also be culturally calibrated based on demographic research, which means that not only could certain ideologies and opinions be targeted by the machines, but certain ethnic or social groups as well. 

Two years after his retirement, former Chinese President Jiang Zemin is putting his political legacy into print with the Selected Works of Jiang Zemin, released today in bookstores across China. The anthology of speeches and writings, published by a printing arm of the Chinese government, is one of the Communist Party of China's highest accolades; only CPC icons Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping have had their selected works published before.

It's pretty dense stuff - uncontroversial and over a thousand pages long. Nonetheless, the books are flying off the shelves. Why? In usual Chinese state-sponsored fashion, purchases will be compulsory in many government institutions. Sales are also expected to be strong (and sometimes mandatory) among members of China's expansive military. And of course, there's no shortage of nationalism among Chinese readers. But topping the bestseller list may not be the only thing on Jiang's mind. Some analysts think he may be using the book to reestablish his political clout in the run-up to an important CPC Congress next year.