We all know about incentives: Reward behavior that you want to promote and to encourage. However, organizational behavior theorists also offer examples of the Fallacy of rewarding A to encourage B. You know, you want teamwork and cooperation but you reward only individual performance, or you want to encourage customer satisfaction but you reward only sales. But this past week President Obama provided our first exposure to punishing A to encourage D. Bear with us for a short motivational detour about families and behavior; this is really about Israel, Jerusalem, North Waziristan, and a number of places in between.
Punishing A to encourage D? Imagine my son is downloading pirated Tarentino films (A), and it's raining outside (B). His downloading the Tarentino film really bothers me -- first it's illegal, and second, I'm not sure I want him watching stuff where phrases like "I'm a get Medieval on yo ass" will be made all too graphically clear. I want him to go outside and play (C) so that he will have more friends (D).
Right now I have A and B, and I don't want either of them. So I exercise parental controls on his laptop so he can't access the website he wants, which I hope means he'll go out and play, and thus have more friends. Except that it's still raining, and even when it stops raining he would rather stay in and watch Kill Bill on his laptop, which he downloaded weeks ago. And even when he does go outside, he takes solitary walks, hangs out in the Arms and Armor collection at the Met, or goes to visit his grandmother. No surprise: my intervention doesn't work -- the links from A to B to C to D are all too tenuous. This example is pretty obvious. And no one would assume that blocking a kid's access to a website would make it stop raining, or that sending him outside would make him popular. "Where are the causal mechanisms?", as we scientists like to say.
But you're not interested in my son. How about this instead: President Obama has to deal with the fact that the Israelis intend to build a housing project in a disputed part of East Jerusalem (A) and also with the fact of Arab intransigence in moving toward a two state solution to the Palestinian Problem (B). He faces intense resentment in the Islamic world, resentment toward the U. S. and European powers, and towards the non-Islamic world more generally, which has been building for decades or centuries, depending on how you count. He wants this resentment to diminish, or even vanish. Let's call this (C). And his real problem, of course, is the complex combination of wars and counter-insurgency operations that America faces in Iraq and the Afghanistan-Pakistan region. He believes that reducing Islamic resentment will reduce the opposition that the American military faces in Iraq and Afghanistan saving American "blood and treasure" (D).
Okay. This is more interesting than a Tarentino-addicted son. President Obama clearly believes that there is a linkage from A to D, and that achieving a settlement to the Palestinian Problem has become a "vital national security interest of the United States", but can action on A even get us to B? Just as blocking my son's website access doesn't stop the rain, one can wonder why stopping a housing project in East Jerusalem should end Arab intransigence on a two-state solution to Palestinian demands for statehood?
What if the core bases of Palestinian resistance are inherently rational? Maybe the Palestinians feel they can wait long enough to ensure that any single-state solution to the Palestinian Problem would result in an Arab majority. Could the Palestinians and their supporters take actions that within two or three decades force Israel to become either a Muslim-majority democracy or a Jewish apartheid state? The former would be the end of Israel as a Jewish homeland, while the second would result in Israel becoming an international pariah state and would be unsustainable. Either way, the Palestinians are better off waiting than making serious concessions now. There is no reason to assume the Palestinian negotiators are unaware of this scenario; indeed, if they were previously unaware, they would simply need to pick up a recent copy of Foreign Affairs to have it explained to them. So, stopping A may not stop B.
But let's move on with our analysis of Obama's reasoning: why would stopping B have any effect on C? The creation, and continued existence, of Israel is only one item on a long list of Islamic grievances. Egypt remembers Napoleon and the venal British occupation. Syria remembers its dismemberment by the League of Nations. Iran remembers the British manipulation of its oil revenues, the overthrow of Mossadegh, and U. S. support for the Shah. Afghanistan remembers the nineteenth century "Afghan Wars" and Pakistan remembers Partition. Osama bin Laden's grievances go well beyond the existence of the State of Israel and include the expulsion of the Moors from Spain under Ferdinand and Isabella in the 1400s and The Crusades four hundred years earlier. A solution to the Palestinian Problem will not end militant incursions into "Indian Occupied" Kashmir, bombing in Mumbai or in Bali, unrest among the Uighurs, or the standoff in Darfur (C).
So if punishing settlement-building (A) won't end Palestinian intransigence (B), and ending B won't end Islamic anger (C), how does this get us to the final objectives of ending the snarl of conflicts between the Tigris and the Indus (D), or of successfully working with the Taliban in North Waziristan or Afghanistan? It doesn't. Achieving D will require thoughtful, astute, patient efforts by many players inside and outside the region over a long period of time.
Still, solving any part of this conundrum is a good thing. Is punishing A to get at least B worth a try? Might stopping settlements in Jerusalem, with luck, at least get us to Palestinian statehood and an end to the Palestinian Problem?
We're not sure. The study of systems sciences suggests that changing one part of a complex system can have unanticipated effects. Let's assume that we do publicly rebuke and punish the Israelis, and look at two possible outcomes:
Mr. Obama is our president, and we wish him well. We live in a dangerous world, and anything he can do to make it safer for us, for the Middle East, for our armed forces, and for everyone else, would be a good thing. Mr. Obama has made great strides over his predecessor and is attempting to solve the problems of the Middle East systemically and systematically, not merely one piece at a time. However, he has not yet mastered the matrix of interactions that tie causes to diverse effects in this complex system. We simply wish that the Harvard Law School curriculum included more courses in logic and military history.
But what, then, should President Obama do?
Eric Clemons is Professor at Wharton and an expert in modeling the behavior of complex and unpredictable system. Elizabeth T. Gray, Jr. is an expert on complex negotiations and a translator of Persian texts.
Robert Greenwald: War Is Making California Poor
The economy and promise of California is collapsing, and yet we send our money to pay corrupt contractors and to fight a war with no definition of success and no exit strategy.
Robert Naiman: Rep. Michael Honda Backs Afghanistan Military Withdrawal Timetable
On Tuesday, Rep. Honda signed his name to legislation that would require the President to establish a timetable for the redeployment of U.S. troops from Afghanistan. This is potentially a bellwether event.
Second, your axioms are questionable. To assert that the action (A): attempting to halt new construction in East Jerusalem must have the outcome (B): the end of Palestinian grievances against Israel, and therefore (C); a diminishing of larger Islamic grievances against the West in order to be successful is a false dichotomy. Those options are not collectively exhaustive, nor are they binary in execution. Reality is a great deal fuzzier than either/or logic. The possible benefit of the US moving towards being perceived as, and indeed acting as, a neutral broker in the region rather than as a tool of Israeli interests is only one of the many factors left out of this analysis.
Third, the logic is backwards: If (A): new construction in East Jerusalem comprises a major contemporary cause of (B): Palestinian grievances against Israel; then while removing (A) will probably not end (B) in a binary way, it will very probably lower the absolute prevalence of (B) in a much more complex and multi-axial fashion, while not removing (A) will almost certainly continue to make the situation worse.
No mention of Iraq Afghanistan blunders and atrocities on the populations, of the US's one sided support for Israel while being a so called "Fair broker of peace", no mention of the fact that this fire was spread due to US led invasions into lands far far away in a region they did not understand. No analysis of the possible ulterior motives of the invasions (Oil/Gas).
I had to giggle - it's been a long time since I've seen "orientalist" enter a discussion. Fanned.
That was the most peculiar part of the article. Left there dangling was Harvard Law's failure to include military history in the curriculum and then - allez, poof! - nothing said about our misbegotten adventures of the last eight years and how that might redound on us, Israel, and the rest of the region and all the world.
If you want to get your card punched and join the Orientalist Club, a good place to start is David Fromkin/s book entitled "Peace to End All Peace". More annoying history that will leave you even more puzzled about how we could've possibly entered into Iraq as blithley as we did.
However, the reality is that most polls show that the majority of Palestinians DO want a two state solution (these polls also tend to show that around 70% want either peaceful negotiations or peaceful resistance).
Clearly Wharton is not working Prof Clemens hard enough if he has to time to waste writing copious articles analysing imaginary suppositions.
U.S. officials slam pro-Israel Jerusalem ad
By Barak Ravid - Ha'aretz, April 21, 2010.
EXCERPT: "United States administration officials have voiced harsh criticism over advertisements in favor of Israel's position on Jerusalem that appeared in the U.S. press with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's encouragement. The authors of the most recent such advertisements were president of the World Jewish Congress Ronald Lauder and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel. 'All these advertisements are not a wise move,' one senior American official told Haaretz."
GO PRESIDENT OBAMA, GO!!!! TRUTH AND JUSTICE ARE ON YOUR SIDE!!!
http://www.richardsilverstein.com/tikun_olam/2010/04/18/wiesel-if-i-lie-about-thee-o-jerusalem/,
I noticed something common when people are dealing with President Obama. He is continously being underestimated and called naive no matter what he manages to achieve on problems that have defeated POTUS 1 to 43
May be I am wrong but I have deduced that President Obama may not be loud and he may always smile but he is very sturbborn and once he has made up his mind, he will ignore those trying to bully him into opposite action
Feels like reality takes a back seat to politics sometimes
You want simple cause and effect? Ok, here goes.
(A) Israel builds settlements on disputed lands.
(B) this is like stomping on someone's broken foot.
ergo, (C) DON'T DO THAT.
was that enough cause and effect for you?
I'm with you on this one. And why make the shot over the bow about Harvard Law not teaching military history and then wander off after a vague reference about the Crusades and Moorish Spain? Plenty of military history taught at West Point and it's those graduates I expect to represent the discipline - not necessarily a civilian leader. Maybe if the military establishment had listened to General Shinseki? And since they didn't which part of the alphabet soup does that belong to? Maybe things got away from the authors.
But back to the core of your argument with one last observation. Whatever dizzying array of options one can invent for the Palestinians, they aren't going anywhere. The choice of whether they wait or not is a false one - unless, of course, they're not supposed to be able to change their minds anywhere along the process. No matter how they''re provoked.
The Jews are a peculiar people: things permitted to other nations are forbidden to the Jews.
Other nations drive out thousands, even millions of people and there is no refugee problem. Russia did it, Poland and Czechoslovakia did it.
Turkey threw out a million Greeks and Algeria a million Frenchman.
Indonesia threw out heaven knows how many Chinese and no one says a word about refugees.
Yet at this moment, Israel is our only reliable and unconditional ally.
We can rely more on Israel than Israel can rely on us.
And one has only to imagine what would have happened last summer [1967] had the Arabs and their Russian backers won the war, to realize how vital the survival of Israel is to America and the West in general.
I have a premonition that will not leave me; as it goes with Israel so will it go with all of us.
Should Israel perish, the Holocaust will be upon us all.
Israel just isn't big enough for a seat on the top table. Sorry.
In fact, along with other Palestinian lands (as well as Syria's Golan Heights and Lebanon's Shebaa Farms), all of East Jerusalem/the Old City, including its illegally extended boundaries, is illegally and belligerently occupied by Israel.
Security Council Resolution 446 (22 March 1979) affirms that "the policy and practices of Israel in establishing settlements in the Palestinian and other Arab territories occupied since 1967 have no legal validity..."
Security Council Resolution 465 (1 March 1980) "...all measures taken by Israel to change the physical character, demographic composition, institutional structure or status of the Palestinian and other Arab territories occupied since 1967, including Jerusalem, or any part thereof, have no legal validity..."
On 24 February 2004, the U.S. State Department declared: "Israel occupied the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights after the 1967 War.... The international community does not recognize Israel's sovereignty over any part of the occupied territories."
In 2004, the International Court of Justice ruled that “no territorial acquisition resulting from the threat or use of force shall be recognized as legal.” The Court denoted this principle a “corollary” of the U.N. Charter and as such “customary international law” and a “customary rule” binding on all member States of the United Nations.
Indeed, the only real solution to the conflict is full application of international law.
UNSC Res. 242 stated: "Withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from _TERRITORIES_ occupied in the recent conflict."
Res. 446 refers to the _SAME AREAS_ as: "Palestinian and other Arab territories"
Res. 465 refers to the _SAME AREAS_ as "Palestinian and other Arab territories occupied since 1967, INCLUDING JERUSALEM."
One would think that three different wars had occurred. Fast forward this progression to 2010 and the next res. might read: 'Palestinian and other Arab territories occupied since 1967, INCLUDING ALL OF JERUSALEM.'
Next year the resolution (using the same temporal-displacement curve) might say: 'Palestinian and other Arab territories occupied since 1967, INCLUDING ISRAEL'
International sovereign borders are NOT a popularity contest my friends. They are traditionally established through political declarations of sovereignty and protected by force of arms. (The Jewish populations being the seeming exception to all these rules--is required to disband every century or two at the whim of its neighbors and/or invaders.)
Once again I draw your attention to the fact that it is HIGHLY probably that the Arab/Muslims citizens of East Jerusalem may well prefer to remain Israeli citizens. Amazingly, I do not hear the leftist choirs and minions caring one molecule for the democratic interest of the Arab citizens of East Jerusalem. Anyone, anyone . . .Buhler . . .Buhler . . .
Needless to say, the Jews became Israeli citizens, the Palestinians, even in the West Bank and Gaza, were put in refugee camps (none of which were set up by Israel).
If you view Israel as simply a creation by the UN, and ignore the social, religious, political and cultural movement that was modern Zionism, you will forever misinterpret what goes on over there.
Israeli Jewish historian Avi Shlaim, from an affluent Jewish Iraqi family: "We are not refugees, nobody expelled us from Iraq, nobody told us that we were unwanted. But we are the victims of the Israeli-Arab conflict." (Ha'aretz, August 11, 2005) Yisrael Yeshayahu, former speaker of the Knesset: "We are not refugees. [Some of us] came to this country before the state was born. We had messianic aspirations." Shlomo Hillel, former minister and speaker of the Knesset: "I don't regard the departure of Jews from Arab lands as that of refugees. They came here because they wanted to, as Zionists." Ran Cohen, Knesset member: "I am not a refugee....I came at the behest of Zionism, due to the pull that this land exerts, and due to the idea of redemption. Nobody is going to define me as a refugee." (Ha'aretz, October 8, 2004)
If Jews who left Arab states believe they have legitimate claims against these states, they are free to pursue justice through international law. The bottom line is that while Palestinians were expelled by Jewish forces, they had nothing to do with any of the alleged injustices perpetrated against Jews in Arab countries. In short, apples and oranges.
Obama is doing just fine...thank you very much!
Instead Obama is busy bashing Iran, and now Syria, because ISRAEL says these countries are against them.
Grow up. America continues the same attitude as ever. Mouth the words, but do nothing.
I would think they should be a lot more concerned about angering us than we should be about angering them (seriously, are they going to actually hate us more or something? Is that even possible?). The truth is, Palestinians can be as mad at us as they like and it won't make much difference in my life--after all, they have been hateful toward me all my life so what would really change? If they make us mad enough, on the other hand, it is technically possible for us to erase their entire civilization in under an hour, making the world a safer place for everyone in the process--shouldn't they be far more worried than we are?
It seems to me they should be, but never are. How does one go about reasoning logically with people who pick up a handful of rocks and declare war on a nuclear power and think it's smart? Answer that, and peace in the Middle East will probably follow shortly thereafter.
No, I don't think we really give a damn about what any nation in the Middle East thinks, with the possible exception of some of Israel.