On the margin and above the rim

Statistician Bill James introduced quantification concepts known as 'sabermetrics. to the sport of baseball. Before these new models, aggregation of results such as batting average, home runs, wins for pitchers, and errors were baselines to determine market value of baseball players. Since 1977, when James' Baseball Abstract first outlined these principles, the new ways of evaluating players, based on calculations relying on weighted averages and ratios rather than simple sums, have changed much of both the business aspect and actual game play. Simply, there were new, reliable ways to determine who was really clutch, and which situations called for certain tactics. By definition, no game can ever be played in the vacuum of a spreadsheet. However, bringing economics optimization theory has turned conventional wisdom on its head in all sports.

Yesterday, this piece regarding Kobe Bryant's infidelity illustrates the sort of Jamesian analysis. Well done, Timothy Burke, et alia. Anytime science triumphs over ignorance, everyone benefits.

Happy Christmas to all. Remember the neediest.

Safety cracking

Appearing in the current Vanity Fair issue is a thoughtful, incisive piece which delves into the theme of perception and reality as applied to the United States airport security apparatus.

Citing evidence from security expert Bruce Schneier, author Charles Mann concludes that US$1.1 trillion spent in the 10 year life span of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has had negligible effect in curtailing potential threats. Though far from comprehensively assessing all TSA practices, the analysis does address the inefficacy of using expensive processes and time-consuming checkpoints to target a few obscure methods with an unlikely chance of duplication. By making airports and airplanes harder targets, the focus of potential terrorists will shift elsewhere. The displacement argument is a winning objection to the 'pressure-ouch' strategy. Moreover, for those still keen on attacking air travel, their likely entry will be through special access gates rather than standard, passenger security checkpoints. As the article states, 'I asked Schneier if he thought terrorists would in fact try this approach. Not really, he said. Quite likely, they wouldn’t go through the checkpoint at all. The security bottlenecks are regularly bypassed by large numbers of people—airport workers, concession-stand employees, airline personnel, and T.S.A. agents themselves (though in 2008 the T.S.A. launched an employee-screening pilot study at seven airports). “Almost all of those jobs are crappy, low-paid jobs,” Schneier says. “They have high turnover. If you’re a serious plotter, don’t you think you could get one of those jobs?”' For those who are both lazy and inclined to mayhem, Schneier's comments provide a pretty good primer in abbreviated, crib-sheet form.

Distinguishing between real security and 'security theater', the piece seems to echo the Franklinian maxim that one who trades off liberty for security deserves neither, and, in this case, one has gotten neither. However, does that not lead the fundamental point: how to behave coolly when things get really fucked up? Yes, preparing to avert future attacks is paramount for the thousands of cryptographers, field intelligence agents, computer programmers, and police as well as the practitioners of statecraft. Yes, vigilance, rather than the mood of blithe blindness to real foreign threats that seemed to permeate and reek through Federal officialdom for nearly a decade under Clinton and Bush, must not deviate. But what do you do at the instant of outrage?

If one accepts the fairly flimsy premise that the United States was in a state of war from the point the first plane hit, then how did the television polemics by politicians rate when applied to the military touchstone? The theater in the aftermath permuted, over time, to 'security theater.' Classify both unequivocally as theater of the absurd. Yet, it is equally absurd to believe that cool reason will always win the day.

So, perhaps the biggest challenge in the post-9/11 world - a loathsome expression on many levels - is to write the response rulebook. Chairman Mao Ze-Dong wrote a brilliant read, On Guerilla Warfare, which diagrammed the steps to successful insurgency. The United States military has several field manuals for different theater operations. So do police and fire departments as does the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The RAND Corporation, a think tank, took the time to publish a manual for individual response. So, why not have a cognate for the leadership? The principle applies beyond terrorist attacks, for its ramifications extend to any outrage. Granted, no two crises are the same - 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, collapse of financial institutions. Yet, though officials respond under uncertainty, it is under much less uncertainty than for everyone else. Because of that position of privilege, their actions broadly influence behavior. Hence, the need for a set of principles.

The nation is past due for guidelines of conduct for public officials when people are genuinely scared. No blueprint can say with certainty when the time is right either to draw the brakes or to put the foot on the accelerator. Solely acting within the moment can be as damaging as ignoring the nature of the moment altogether and sticking stolidly to the play book. Such is an example of absolutism which fails to apprehend the context and consequence of reaction. So, in the continued absence of any basic guidelines, all anyone will be prepared for the next time something awfully frightening happens in America will be rash words and ill-conceived laws.

Honest fixer

As Jewish settlement construction has proliferated during the tenure of Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu, he and his coalition government have come under criticism from Israel's staunchest allies: The United States of America. Since the Six Days War of 1967, The United States has provided material and monetary aid to Israel. Additionally, United States policy has backed Israeli policy in seeming lock step during this period. Few American politicians have criticized publicly Israel's expansionist ambitions, law enforcement technique, and military incursions into Lebabon. Condemnation for the aforemtnioned has been the province of European nations such as France and Britain as well as the United Nations Council on Human Rights. However, the State Department and Vice-President Joseph Biden have had harsh words regarding settlement construction in contentious bits of the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The two principle questions are: why now? And should America scale back its relations with Israel?

First, why is now an opportune moment to criticize Netanyahu for not placing a moratorium on existing and new construction? The best answer is that the United States is holding the prime minister accountable as he is reneging on an earlier pledge. However, the complex intercalations of US-Israeli diplomacy provide fertile ground for what strategic signals this sends. The main signal that the United States has projected are that it cannot seemingly revert on the fine words of Cairo. For Palestinians and Arabs in the region, Obama oratory and Biden's barbs still amount to mere words. Little visible evidence exists that the current administration is any different than the previous one regarding its relations with Israel. Iraq is stabilizing within a fledgling, plural democracy. Syria has been more amenable to talks. Yet, this is not enough. Public perception holds that American foreign policy is influenced by the powerful and well-funded 'Israel lobby' of the American-Israeli Political Action Committee (AIPAC). These inherently conspiratorial claims are somewhat specious since American presidents such as Carter, Clinton and Bush the elder have been able to persuade previous prime ministers that abandoning certain expansion programs were in Israel's national security interest. What makes the claim less specious especially for those in the region is the scale of American aid to Israel in proportional comparison to that given to the Palestinians. This is the principle mitgating factor which casts doubt on American status as an honest broker for peace in the region.

However, American diplomats for too long have confused an end to settlement construction as a sufficient condition for peace. The situation is too fraught with other independent variables such as refugee right of return, the status of Jerusalem - a non-starter for even the most dovish of Israeli policymakers, and the fractious, incoherent Palestinian leadership. There is no proof that if the hammers stopped, a solution on borders would ensue. Furthermore, American diplomats have confused that material, financial and moral support for Israel would give the US greater sway over its ally. Years and billions show that Israeli ambition will not be cowed by the whims of US presidents seeking to burnish their places in history.

It is apparent why the US has reacted how it has when it has. Though this administration has shown more openness to nuance than the previous one, it does not mean it entirely understands it. Neither does the American public. Hence, the calls for the United States to 'scale back' relations with Israel. Doing this would be an exercise of folly. If the United States were to follow through on a program of ending or slowing the scale of assistance to Israel, then the strategic signal it would send to other US long-time allies such as France, Britain, and Japan is that you better do what we say. This brand of diplomacy has graver implications than the with us or against us proviso of the Bush doctrine. Even during the Bush years, when international treaties were given short shrift, and suits between the US and the EU piled up in the WTO, the Trans-Atlantic alliances held because there was always more to gain from sustained co-operation than through antagonism. However, much is won and lost in the battle of perception. Whereas other allies are big economies, Israel is at best a newcomer on the world stage. Its economy sprightly and innovative, its military and intelligence superb, Israel is still seen as a quasi-client state of the US. Because of this distinction, the United States ought to begin to treat Israel on a more equal footing. This does not entail witholding material assistance which is what the 'scale back' camp attempts to say implicitly. Moreover, what signal does it send to Israeli leadership? Essentially, it signals that the US has had enough. However, the US is the only country with any influence over Israeli policy. Will Britain and France check Israeli ambition if the US were to decide its relationship has become too cozy, and it must retrench? Loosening ties would make life more wretched for the oppressed Palestinians and could trigger a wider regional arms race and conflict if US involvement receded.

In economics, the counterinutitive solution can be the most appropriate. Similarly, strenghtening relations with Israel at this juncture is the correct course of action. However, aid to Palestinians must increase. Moreover, it must not be tied to anodyne conditions. Basic improvements in infrastructure and funding NGOs and private firms to provide basic services to improve the lives of the impoverished are key. If schools and hospitals go up in Gaza, built with US funds, designed by an Israeli architect, then that would show that the US indeed is interested Palestinian concerns. If more profound diplomacy creates special economic zones on the border, then a future, more permanent solution would not destroy drivers of wealth creation and opportunity for both sides. The rules and the order have changed since 1967. So have the terms of trade. 'Scaling back' relations with Israel might be a seductive option. Yet, though the rest of the world might not perceive the US to be an honest broker in the region, it is the only one with enough clout to ellicit concessions from Israel. That might suffice to make it an honest fixer.