By April 12, 2006
“We are in very deep trouble in Iraq. I am sobered by it. I am frightened by it.” Warning his audience that the next hour “wouldn’t be a happy one,” Larry Diamond, former senior advisor on governance to the Coalitional Provisional Authority in Baghdad, relayed his fear that Iraq is sliding deeper into the greatest foreign policy disaster in the history of the United States, with his lecture yesterday entitled, “Prospects for Democracy in Iraq and the Middle East.”
Making his claim that Iraq must be stabilized immediately to avoid an all-out civil war similar to the current situation in Lebanon, Diamond did not shy away from using hyperbolic language.
“The situation is so complicated, so volatile, so fraught with danger, it is almost impossible to comprehend,” he said. “[Iraq] is the most difficult situation [the U.S. has faced] since the Cuban Missile Crisis.”
“It is five minutes to midnight,” he continued, quoting New York Times journalist Thomas Friedman’s recent column, “Iraq at the 11th Hour.”
The chaos in Iraq, rise of radical Islamists throughout the Middle East and other serious problems throughout the Persian Gulf, Saudi Arabia and Iran have left many members of the Bush administration, people in the region and analysts asking themselves, “what are we doing?” Diamond said.
Diamond criticized Bush both for his decision to go into Iraq in the first place, as well as his means of bringing about democracy in the country, calling it “disastrous and self-defeating.”
“[Bush] has created the perfect storm for political insurgence against the new order,” he said.
Rather than promoting democracy through war, Diamond advocated soft power, moral leadership and peaceful means.
Further condemning Bush, Diamond criticized his religious motivation to invade Iraq, which he described as “messianic.”
“Bush had a sense that he was completing a mission and promoting God’s gift to humanity,” Diamond said. “In Iraq, this led to stubbornness, a sense of personal rightness and a refusal to listen to evidence. There is a fine line between Churchillian resolve and self-defeating messianic stubbornness.”
But it is not always a bad thing for politicians to use faith to influence policy decisions, he said, using the example of former President Jimmy Carter, who, according to Diamond, used his own Christian faith to place human rights at the center of his foreign policy decisions,
Diamond believes that every country has the potential to achieve democracy. It is false to generalize that the Arabic world is unsuitable for democracy, he said.
However, Diamond said, Bush failed to realize that the Middle East is unique in that it has a, “coherent, confident, deeply organized alternative to democracy – radical Islam.”
Calling for the global community to challenge radical Islamists who, for years, have had unchecked intellectual dominance, Diamond emphasized the need to fight an ideological war.
“It’s time to translate great books about democracy into Arabic,” he said. “It’s time to build an independent civil society with a free press and political culture.”
Looking towards Iraq’s future, Diamond said the only way the country can be saved from all-out civil war is a stakeholder conference, in which all surrounding nations are involved. Diamond believes that Iran specifically holds the key to helping the U.S. negotiate with Iraq. He stressed that Bush’s project to turn Iraq into a democracy cannot be accomplished solely unilaterally, as America does lacks both legitimacy in the region and an understanding of it.
Success in Iraq will be “a product of international engagement,” he said.
Nicolas van de Walle, director of the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies, praised Diamond’s “great passion for the topic, cool reasoning and strong analytical mind.”
Zoe Geltman ’08, who attended the lecture as part of her NES 274: History of the Modern Middle East class, was impressed by Diamond’s realism.
“[Diamond] wasn’t impartial and really took a stand on the issues,” she said. “He described a very realistic picture of what’s going on in Iraq and what we can do to improve things in the future.”
Diamond’s talk, co-sponsored by the Einaudi Center and the Peace Studies program, was the inaugural address in the Center’s foreign policy distinguished lecture speaker series.
By April 12, 2006
Prof. John Losey, entomology, recently published a study showing that insect services save the United States over $57 billion a year. The study, which Losey co-authored with Mace Vaughan M.S. ’99, appeared in the April issue of BioScience.
The study focuses on four areas of insect services – wildlife nutrition (valued at $50 billion), pest control (valued at $4.5 billion), crop pollination (valued at $3 billion) and dung burial (valued at $380 million). Losey said that these four areas of insect services were chosen not because they are the most important but because the appropriate data was available for these functions. He supports gathering more data so that the value of insect services in other areas can be estimated as well.
The idea for this study can be traced as far back as 1999 when Losey wrote a paper focusing on the effects of Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt), a bacterium used to prevent insect damage to the corn crop. In this paper he discussed the effects of Bt-corn on the target insect, the European corn borer, as well as on non-target populations. As Losey presented his findings, people often asked him why the negative effects for non-target populations were important. This inspired him to develop a class, Entomology 344: Insect Conservation Biology, highlighting the importance of insect conservation.
The first semester he taught this class, Losey included a question on the mid-term about the economic value of insect services. That question eventually developed into his paper.
“It was a fortuitous melting of research and teaching,” Losey said.
Some of the data used for the study had been published for a long time, while other pieces of data have quite recently become available. After making adjustments to account for inflation, the team had to evaluate the data in new ways in order to make it yield new information.
“We had to put data sets together in a way far different from they ways they were originally presented,” Losey said.
There are many other important insect functions that the paper could not address. It only establishes the dollar value for the control of native pests, for instance. Losey estimates that the value for the control of foreign species could be just as great or even greater. Another important insect service that is not included in the report is the spreading of plant seeds, which indirectly produces oxygen and prevents soil erosion.
“To ensure that these insects continue to contribute to the economy, we have to think about getting a handle on invasive species,” Losey said.
This can be accomplished by modifying how chemicals are used and by providing important resources like flowering plants and nesting areas.
Even individuals can help with insect conservation, Losey said. By buying integrated pest management (IBM) produce, they can support the best pest management practices.
“The main thing is that there should be more money and effort devoted to studies such as this in order to ensure that these insect services can continue into the future and maybe even be enhanced,” Losey said.
Losey’s latest endeavor is a citizen science project that involves collecting data on the New York state insect, the nine-spotted lady beetle. This particular lady beetle has not been collected anywhere in the eastern United States in over twenty years, and researchers worry that it is possibly being replaced by introduced species. The project will enlist help of citizens who will take digital pictures of ladybugs and send them in to be identified. Experts will compile a database that includes the pictures and identifications as well as information about the locations of the sightings.
“The project allows people to participate through virtual collection instead of by actually killing and collecting the bugs,” Losey said.