Skinner, the Bush Administration, and Coercive Diplomacy
I had the pleasure of seeing America Abroad's own Bruce Jentleson today, discussing his paper on the uses and limits of coercive diplomacy on countries such as Iran, North Korea, and Libya.
Funniest line of the discussion; "A lot of this comes down to basic psychiatry--how you see human motivation. Unfortunately, the Bush Administration seems to have read only B.F. Skinner, and sees every state as a rat to be shocked."
(okay, so international relations just isn't that funny... I was amused)
Two highlights of the panel:
One, David Schorr's reminder that other states are not simply passive objects surrounded by a smorgasboard of carrots and sticks, but active agents in setting their own agendas and manipulating the world around them.
Too often, we place credit and blame on America for issues that are truly well beyond our ken. This is obvious in the case of a strong country such as Russia, but as any new parent knows, even the seemingly most helpless of individuals can wield their own fierce power over the world around them. And as any political leader knows, (and Bruce Jentleson pointed out) the political fallout from any international incentive system is felt through an often very opaque lens of domestic politics.
Second, Jentleson's key point that military power does not equal influence. In other words, the importance of legitimacy and the key role other states play in coercive diplomacy means that raw military power in today's threat environment does not bequeath much power to influence other countries to do what we want them to do--the general meaning of the term "power".
Rather like old-fashioned nuclear weapons in conflicts with developing countries that lack targets--we have the big guns, (and Jentleson was clear they can provide some essential teeth to our diplomacy), but they cannot be decisive in helping us address the problems we face.
Comments (16)
"Rather like old-fashioned nuclear weapons in conflicts with developing countries that lack targets--we have the big guns, (and Jentleson was clear they can provide some essential teeth to our diplomacy), but they cannot be decisive in helping us address the problems we face."
In your last post you gave us however the apocalyptic scenario of Iran with "old-fashioned nuclear weapons." What a difference a day makes.
December 7, 2006 3:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
I like your general point, but I'm afraid your depiction of Dr. Skinner is skewed. He wasn't much for aversion as a shaper of behavior. His technique was focused around the concept of rewarding desired behavior rather than punishing. Just about the opposite of the Bushies, who thought that Bill Clinton's "bribes" to the North Koreans were shameful. Until this week.
December 7, 2006 5:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think KJL has a point about BF Skinner. It appears the NeoConz got the Executive vetted 3 x 5 card, version. However, Jentleson seems to have really captured something with the 'black box' concept
an often very opaque lens of domestic politics. … Not that there aren't particular national biases in the world, but in the modern western world, this is most uniquely a American phenomenon
Snerd
Snerd Gronk
December 7, 2006 5:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well, that's not true. The consequences of international incentives on the domestic political scene are refracted darkly and non-predictably in almost every country. For example, the vote on the EU constitution took on a symbolic, not practical, character in domestic French and Dutch politics, leading to a rejection which had no clear practical linkage to any of the concrete desires of the electorate. The consequences of denying the state of Israel's right to exist are only pernicious for Palestinians, leading to further armed conflict; but that very armed conflict drives the electorate to respond with nationalist anger and further rejectionism. The Israeli invasion of Lebanon resulted in a catastrophic defeat and damage to the Israeli international position, but the government in the aftermath shifted further right, not left. And, obviously, international opprobrium towards Iran over its nuclear program pushes the electorate towards hawkish nationalism.
The only extremely clear-cut case of a rational response to international incentives which I can think of is in the case of Vietnam, where a US-friendly foreign policy is directly connected to a free trade agreement that has driven bilateral US-VN trade up to about 8% of Vietnam's GDP, vastly improving the lives of average citizens. That is a simple, rational reaction to international incentives. But the incentives are crystal-clear and can be felt in every citizen's pocketbook, almost month by month.
"All governments lie, but disaster lies in wait for countries whose officials smoke the same hashish they give out." - I.F. Stone
December 7, 2006 6:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
Rather off topic, but I once heard Skinner say, in reflecting upon the decline of behaviorism as a credible theory of mind, that the world would be in many ways a better place if behaviorists still held sway - that, for example, the arms race might have been contained if we only took seriously what that theory has to teach us.
To demonstrate that IR has no lock on the unfunny, I'll repeat the (to me funny) response of a philosopher I know when I related this to him: well, if you're a behaviorist, post hoc ergo propter hoc (occuring after, therefore caused by) is a valid form of argument, so there you are.
December 7, 2006 8:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
Pigeons were Skinner's favorite experimental subjects. Probably did some rats too, though. Oh, and KJ Liberal is right, he wasn't much into giving shocks.
December 7, 2006 9:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
"Too often, we place credit and blame on America for issues that are truly well beyond our ken."
Based on recent actions, the United States should best shut up for about 100 years. And listen.
December 8, 2006 1:03 AM | Reply | Permalink
Skinner would never have condoned the Bush administrations action, being a very active advocate of the power of encouragement and the problems involved in punishment. it is truly amazing that it is still possible to carry the misconceptions about Skinner that inspired the title of this article.
Skinner abandoned rats in favor of pigeons in 1944, having discovered that pigeons were easier to work with. his pet project was to uncover universal behavioral laws (he was fully aware of innate, instinctive and species-specific behavior, he was just more interested in the universals). he never published an article where he had studied the effects of punishment, as far as a am aware, and I do believe that I have been through most of them.
in response to criticisms that he was too preoccupied with positive reinforcement, he did on one occasion give electric shocks to rats for one day, and then he quit, arguing that it bothered the rats and he didn’t learn anything from it.
December 8, 2006 5:05 AM | Reply | Permalink
sorry to spoil you fun, but that’s not post hoc ergo propter hoc. what you quote there is just a speculation.
a post hoc ergo propter hoc is when you infer, when two things happen at once, that one of them must be due to the other. so if, say, the arms race was stopped at a point in time when behaviorism was at a peak and Skinner used the coincidence in time to argue that behaviorism was cause, then that would be a post hoc ergo propter hoc.
philosophers used to know this.
December 8, 2006 5:09 AM | Reply | Permalink
Actually, I wish the Bushies were sophisticated enough to use even the 3x5 version of any coherent philsophy. For a long time, I've had this creepy feeling the administration has been operating on the intellectual level of a bunch of 12-year-olds playing Risk.
December 8, 2006 6:24 AM | Reply | Permalink
Sure, but you know, when it's a joke, you can take some liberties with the logic. Jokes tend to work that way.
December 8, 2006 6:30 AM | Reply | Permalink
I'm just a dilettante where it comes to the good doctor, but as I recall he explained it something like this:
We can easily understand the mechanism of positive reinforcement. The subject "learns" quickly (he emphatically refused to address why it works this way, but said that he could prove that it does) that Behavior B leads to Reward R and the subject therefore tends to repeat the behavior. The subject's emotional perception of the behavior/reward sequence is, in fact, post hoc propter hoc.
On the other hand, the mechanics of negative reinforcement are less direct and simple. The subject learns Behavior B may lead to Punishment P, so the subject may change so that he follows Behavior B with Avoidance A and thereby skip Punishment P. He/she/it thereby does not necessarily innately "learn" to abjure the Behavior B itself, but rather to behave and avoid.(The word "learn" here is mine, I think not Skinner's.)
The theory is elegant and has the additional advantage of being repeatable and effective.
December 8, 2006 8:19 AM | Reply | Permalink
The US has FORMALLY threatened Iran with a NUCLEAR FIRST STRIKE (read the Nuclear Defense Posture Review)
President Bush confirmed that nuking Iran is "an option on the table"
The US held Israel's jacket as Israel CRIMINALLY attacked and bombed Lebanon.
The US armed and financed Saddam's chemical weapons program and directed his attacks on Iran.
So, who is a threat to whom?
December 8, 2006 10:23 AM | Reply | Permalink
Yep. Idiots generally have a hard time discerning intelligence, until their brutish behavior does not prevail.
December 8, 2006 12:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yes, but most psych students had mice when they learned Skinners principles of negative behavior reinforcement, couldn't afford pigeons.
December 8, 2006 12:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yep, many mice simply avoid hitting the lever and getting shocked, so they starve. Other mice lean to hit the lever when the light is on, so as to avoid the shock. Both behaviors result in not being shocked however, one results in starving while the other eats well.
December 8, 2006 1:03 PM | Reply | Permalink