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What You're Missing in Our Subscriber-only CounterPunch Newsletter JAMES WEBB: IF THE DEMOCRATS WANT A POPULIST, IT'S HIM, FOR BETTER AND FOR WORSE JoAnn Wypijewski on how Webb really talks on his home turf in Virginia and on the two faces of populism, dark and lite. The New Yorker helped sell the war in Iraq. Now see how it shills for the drug companies at home. Fred Gardner finds Malcolm Gladwell, at the bottom of the New Yorker's deep barrel. David Petraeus is the favorite general of Bush and the New York Times. Alexander Cockburn on how the salesman of surge sold himself. Remember contributions are tax-deductible. Click here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now Get CounterPunch By Email for Only $35 a Year

Today's Stories February 5, 2007 Newton Garver Bush and the Old Hands: Decider vs. Negotiator February 3 /4, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Who Can Stop the War? Tao Ruspoli CounterViews: a Conversation with Dr. Susan Block on Sex, Censorship and Liberation Jeffrey St. Clair The Thrill is Gone: the Withering of the American Environmental Movement Patrick Cockburn Iraqis on the Run P. Sainath They Take the Early Train Sen. Russell Feingold A Symbol of a Timid Congress Diane Christian Dying Well: Why Killing Saddam Backfired on Bush Brian Cloughley Space Missiles Away!: the Irony of Bush's Indignation Diana Barahona How to Turn a Priest into a Cannibal: US Reporting on the Coup in Haiti Timothy J. Freeman The Iraq War Hits Hawai'i: the Stryker Brigade and the Watada Case Conn Hallinan The Vishnu Strategy John Ross Felipe's First Fifty Days Greg Moses The Government Blinks: Freedom for the Ibrahim Family Missy Beattie No More Rebukes or Non-Binding Resolutions Joshua Frank Unsafe in Any Seas: Cruising with Ralph Nader? Evelyn Pringle "These Drugs are Poison to Some People" Stephen Fleischman Let's Hear It for Chuck Hagel! Muhammad Idrees Ahmad Iraq in Fragments Poets' Basement Holt, Engel, Ford and Saavedra Website of the Day Flamenco Dali February 2, 2007 Chris Kutalik The Meanest Industry R. Gibson / E. W. Ross Cutting the Schools-to-War Pipeline Pam Martens America's "Money Honey" as Corporate Matchmaker: Maria Bartiromo and the Co-Branding of CNBC and Citigroup John Feffer Picturing the President Daryll E. Ray Why the Family Farm is Good for Rural America Ronald Bruce St. John Apartheid By Any Other Name Mitchel Cohen Listen Gore: Some Inconvenient Truths About the Politics of Environmental Crisis Website of the Day The Real Issue is Empire February 1, 2007 Diane Farsetta An Army Thousands More: How PR Firms and Major Media Military Recruiters Marjorie Cohn Bush Targets Iran: Cruise Missile Diplomacy Mark Scaramella Our Founding War Profiteers Ranni Amiri Senator Prejudice: the Day Joe Biden Threatened to Kick My Ass Christopher Ketcham Die, TV! Winston Warfield Art Panic Hits Boston! Corporate Crime Reporter Jailing the Artists, Not the Executives: the Great Boston Art Panic, Turner Broadcasting and the AG Who Won't Pursue Corporate Crime Thomas P. Healy Adios Molly Ivins: Populist Journalism and Never Dull Website of the Dau The Ordeal of Gary Tyler   January 31, 2007 Patrick Cockburn Waco of Iraq?: US "Victory" Cult Leader was a "Massacre" Jean Bricmont What is the Decisive "Clash" of Our Time? Tao Ruspoli CounterViews: a Conversation with Dr. Susan Block on Sex, Politics and Liberation James T. Phillips Flashbacks de Jour: Photographing War William Johnson Worker Reistance at Smithfield Foods Tim Wilkinson A Hawk in Drag: Dershowitz and the Iraq War Evelyn Pringle The Judge, the Reporter and the Secret Zyprexa Documents Joshua Frank What America Really Needs to Hear Ramzy Baroud Shameless in Gaza Mickey Z. Nader Still in the Crosshairs Website of the Day What's Goin' On? January 30, 2007 Werther Slapstick on Jenkins Hill: DC's Botoxed Golems Kathy Kelly Engagement with War Uri Avnery "If Arafat Were Alive" Franklin Spinney Embedded Without Blending: Humvees and Tactical Madness in Iraq William S. Lind The Real Game in Iraq Pariah An Iron Curtain is Descending--and Most Americans Don't Know Mike Whitney The Mother of All Bubbles Rev. William E. Alberts Hiding America's Surging Militarism Behind Children Fran Shor Shadow of a Resistance: Can the Anti-War Mvt. Dismantle the War Machine? Anthony Arnove The Logic of Withdrawal: There's Nothing Precipitous About It Website of the Day Our Boys in Iraq January 29, 2007 Nurit Peled-Elhanan "We Are All Victims of the Occupation" Patrick Cockburn Raid on the Soldiers of Heaven JoAnn Wypijewski The Demo in DC: Chirpy Slogans, Empty City Ron Jacobs Our Fire, Congress's Feet Dave Lindorff The Missing Word at the Anti-War Demo Kevin Zeese A Republican Peace Candidate?: Chuck Hagel's Challenge to America Reza Fiyouzat Iran, Bush and the Banging of the Ironsmiths Pat Williams Turnout and Same-Day Voting: Did It Sink Conrad Burns? Website of the Day Galloway's Indictment of Blair   January 27 / 28, 2007 Diana Johnstone Do We Really Need an International Criminal Court? Eliza Ernshire Exiled from Palestine Patrick Cockburn Slaughter in Baghdad's Bird Market David Rosen Pay-to-Play: the Double Life of Prostitution in America Greg Moses Children Without a Country: Maryam Ibrahim Remains in a Texas Jail Bernard Chazelle Bush the Empire Slayer Tao Ruspoli CounterViews: a Video Interview with Jeffrey St. Clair, Part Two Hermán Uribe Murdering Journalists in Latin America Ralph Nader Democracy in Crisis Paul Craig Roberts Why Can't Americans See What's Coming? Fred Gardner The Suppression of Collective Joy: Barbara Ehrenreich at the Commonwealth Club Brian Cloughley Dying for Lies James Abourezk The High Cost of Congressional Trips to Israel John V. Whitbeck The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine: Ilan Pappe and the Nakba Deniers Seth Sandronsky Peace-In Politics: Localizing the Anti-War Movement Alan Cabal Mayday from the Circus Tent Pam Martens America's Money Honey Does Davos Website of the Weekend Gil Scott-Heron: Winter in America January 26, 2007 Charlotte Laws Are You the Terrorist Next Door?: AETA and the New Green Scare Mike Ely / Linda Flores The Workers at Smithfield Joe DeRaymond Paying for Health Care and Not Getting It Phil Donahue Get Sarah Olson! Zia Mian The Three US Armies in Iraq: Grunts, Contractors and Laborers Jeb Sprague Haiti Struggles to Defend Justice Evelyn Pringle Eli Lilly, the Habitual Offender Missy Beattie Inside the Criminal Mind of George Bush: He Thinks; Therefore, It is So Martha Rosenberg Cloned Food: From Designer Hens to the Transgenic Omega-3 Pig Website of the Day Save Grand Canyon from Glen Canyon Dam! January 25, 2007 Patrick Cockburn What's Really Going on in Baghdad John Ross Mexico Under Calderon: Fake Left, Rule Right Jeremy Scahill Our Mercenaries: Blackwater, Inc and the Privatization of Bush's War Machine Frida Berrigan "Hearts Ruptured with Sadness:" Protesting Gitmo Paul Craig Roberts Bush's State of Deception Jason Yossef Ben-Meir Iraq Reconstruction Failure Christopher Brauchli Why Bush is Arming Fatah: When in Doubt, Start Another Civil War Holger W. Henke Cuba at the Crossroads? Dave Lindorff Falling Dominos and Failing Presidencies Julia Landau From Your Young Cousin Website of the Day The Mighty Edwards Sisters   January 24, 2007 Tao Ruspoli CounterViews: a Filmed Interview with Jeffrey St. Clair Paul Craig Roberts The Empire Turns Its Guns on the Citizenry Lt. Gen. William Odom What Can be Done in Iraq? Sharon Smith Health Care Reform for the Insurance Industry Brian M. Downing Two Americas: the Grunts and the War Profiteers Heather Gray Surviving War Ron Jacobs SOTUS Quo James Brooks Out of Europe, Out of Time Robert Day Translating Snow Website of the Day Defend Sarah Olsen January 23, 2007 Trish Schuh Lebanon on the Brink of Civil War, Again Robert Bryce The Politics of Cheap Oil Stephen Soldz Aliens in an Alien Land John Blair King Coal's Latest Con Job: Clean Coal is Not Clean Gloria La Riva Miami: a Place of Refuge for Anti-Castro Terrorists Joshua Frank Turning Silence into Gold: Hillary and Israel Lobby Patrick Cockburn In Iraq, All Foreigners are Targets Ralph Nader Questions for Bush on Iraq Dave Lindorff Pelosi and Iraq: Blunder or Treason? Uri Avnery Israel and Apartheid Website of the Day Down By the River   January 22, 2007 Manuel Garcia, Jr. China's New Chip in Space War Poker Jen Marlowe Trapped in Darfur: the Ordeal of Suleiman Jamous George McGovern War of the Belligerent Professors: Get Out of Iraq Paul Craig Roberts Only Impeachment Can Save Us from More War Norman Solomon The Pentagon vs. Press Freedom Amira Hass Life Under Prohibition in Palestine Mike Whitney A Fool's Errand in Baghdad Ramzy Baroud The Things We Take for Granted John Walsh Support Jimmy Carter in Boston! Website of the Day The Hagelian Dialectic   January 20/21 2007 Alexander Cockburn First Bomb Carter; Then Nuke Iran! Gail Dines I Was Ambushed by Paula Zahn Newton Garver Evo Morales' First Year Gilad Atzmon 100 Years of Jewish Solitude Seth Sandronksy New Push For Social Security "Reform" Raphaelle Bail Where Nicaraguans Go to Work Jim Goodman Round Up the Usual Experts: Make Them Live on a Dollar a Day Larry Portis Chouraki's Oh Jerusalem Website of the Weekend Press Poodles Play it Safe January 19, 2007 Jonathan Cook Jimmy Carter Doesn't Tell the Half of It Glen Ford Barack Obama: The Mania and the Mirage Dave Lindorff Bush Blinks on Illegal Spying - Don't let him off the hook Larry Portis Zionism in the Cinema: Part Two Website of the Day For Whistleblowers January 18, 2007 William Peace Protest From a Bad Cripple Virginia Tilley The Steady March to War on Iran: What It Would Take to Stop It Michael Donnelly The Real Reason I Can't Stand Obama B.R. Gowani Democracy: Everywhere and Nowhere Larry Portis Zionism in the Cinema: Part One Jason Hribal A Horse is Worth More than Riches Website of the Day Baghdad Clampdown January 17, 2007 Franklin Spinney Why Time is not on Bush's Side John Ross Oaxaca's Rising: Vibrant as the Paint on the Walls Susan George Can World Trade Ever Be Fair? Back to Keynes! Paul Craig Roberts Attacking Iran: What's In It For Bush Joshua Frank Obama and the Middle East David Lindorff Towards Oil at $200 a Barrel January 16, 2007 Col. Sam Gardiner Escalation Against Iran Marjorie Cohn Stimson's Outrageous Threat Saul Landau Gore Vidal in Havana: Part 2 Ron Jacobs Welcome Back to 1965 Susan Block From Snowjob to Blowjob Ken Couesbouck Year of the Pig Website of the Day Amazon's Hit on Jimmy Carter January 15, 2007 Roger Morris Another War the Voters Hoped to End Paul Craig Roberts Bush Must Go Kathy Kelly Umm Heyder's Story William Blum The Anti-Empire Report Ralph Nader The Class War's New Map Saul Landau Gore Vidal In Havana January 12 / 14, 2007 Patrick Cockburn "21,500 More Troops": Will America Ever Leave Iraq? David Rosen Bush's Domestic Sex Policy: the Teen Abstinence-Only Crusade William S. Lind Less Than Zero Laith al-Saud The Ironies of Bush and Iraq Paul Craig Roberts Surge and Mirrors: What Bush Really Said John Ross Celebrating the "Sum of the World" in Chiapas George Ciccariello-Maher The Case of Venezuela's RCTV: Not About Free Speech Christopher Brauchli How to Avoid an IRS Audit: Become a Millionaire! Robert Buzzanco Rogue State, Redux Evelyn Pringle The Secrets in Eli Lilly's Cabinet Peter Rost, MD. Promises, Promises: Playing Politics with Drug Reimportation Mike Whitney Baghdad Crackdown Yifat Susskind Beyond the Surge: Demanding an End to Bush's Wars Saul Cohen Latin America's Real Mr. Danger: Negroponte's Latest Gig Missy Beattie A Day of Action and Questions Stephen Lendman Holiday Hypocrisy Website of the Weekend Bruegel on Bush War Plan   January 11, 2007 Ismael Hossein-Zadeh The Profits of Escalation Paul Craig Roberts Carter's Inconvenient Truths Kathy Kelly Refugee Dreams Dave Lindorff Blood for Face Jeff Leys The War Widens Richard W. Behan Barrels and Bodies Col. Douglas MacGregor Surging Right Into Al-Sadr's Hands Website of the Day An Explanation from Google Speech of the Day Is There Even One Politician Alive Who Could Give This Speech? January 10, 2007 Peter Linebaugh A Walk in Oaxaca Robert Fantina Punishing Deserters: Prosecution or Persecution? Patrick Cockburn Why Troop Escalation Won't Bring Peace to Iraq Paul Craig Roberts Distracting Congress: Troop Escalation and Iran Col. Dan Smith Why U.S. Policy is Failing Ben Tripp The Politics of Bad Karma Evelyn Pringle How the FDA Protects Big Pharma Ron Jacobs Coalition of the Lunatics: Trying to Create the Next World War Mike Ferner If Not Now, When? Dave Zirin Judgment of the Juiced: Why McGwire Wasn't Elected to the Hall of Fame Website of the Day Revolting Students! Bootleg of the Day Bob Dylan: Live at Scotia Bank Place January 9, 2007 R. T. Naylor The Somalian Labyrinth Jonathan Cook Israel's Purging of Palestinian Christians Mike Ely and Linda Flores The Smithfield Strikers: No Longer Hidden, No Longer Hiding Joshua Frank The Democrats and Iran: More Bellicose Than Bush Norman Solomon The Headless Horseman of the Apocalypse Sen. Russell Feingold An Open Letter to President Bush: So Now You Want to Snoop Through Our Mail? Joe Allen Justice for the Omaha Two: Black Power, Racism and COINTELPRO in the Heartland James T. Phillips "Lasciate Ogne Speranza, Voi Ch'Intrate": The Hell That is Iraq Brian Concannon Resolutions for Haiti Leonard Peltier When the Truth Doesn't Matter: 30 Years of FBI Harassment and Misconduct Website of the Day Kick Out the Jams, MFers!: Meet the New RRC   January 8, 2007 Werther Why We Fight Jeff Leys The Occupation Project: a Campaign of Civil Disobedience to End Iraq War Funding Paul Craig Roberts Nuking Iran Shulamit Aloni Israeli Apartheid: Sorry, This Road is For Jews Only Dave Lindorff The Party of Invertebrates Reverts to Form Sunsara Taylor The Democrats' First Day: Same As It Ever Was Seth Sandronsky Syndicated Error: George Will and the Minimum Wage Dr. Susan Block Baghdad Cockfight Ends in Snuff Film Website of the Day Watch CounterPuncher Sunsara Taylor Take on Bill O'Reilly! January 6 / 7, 2007 Alexander Cockburn The War and the NYT Franklin C. Spinney Stalingrad on the Tigris Paul Craig Roberts The Urge to Surge Ralph Nader Democrats in the Spotlight Walden Bello Globalization in Retreat? Marleen Martin The Needle and the Damage Done: Tortured in the Death Chamber Brian Cloughley We Do What We Like: Return Our Rapist or Else ... Uri Avnery The Kiss of Death Saul Landau Fidel Castro in the Fields Ron Jacobs From Cointelpro to the Patriot Act: a Legacy of Torture Joseph Nevins Crimes Against Humanity from Ford to Saddam William S. Lind A State Restored? Somalia and 4GW Gary Leupp Attention John Conyers: Impeach the President! Elisa Salasin Bringing Life to Numbers George Ciccariello-Maher Beyond Chavistas and Anti-Chavistas: Deepening the Bolivarian Revolution Stefan Wray Confronting Recruiters: the Story of the Bush Street Raiders Michael Leonardi Toward an International Moratorium: Italy's Crusade Against the Death Penalty Richard Rhames Reality TV: Triumph of the Thugs Jeffrey St. Clair Playlist: What I'm Listening to This Week Barbara LaMorticella Two Poems Website of the Weekend FBI Witch Hunts Song of the Weekend End Times: a Soundtrack January 5, 2007 Jorge Mariscal Growing the Military: Who Will Serve? John Walsh Clash of the Elites: Beltway Insiders vs. Neo-Cons! Christopher Brauchli The Great Relaxer: Bush and Federal Regulations Travis Sharpe No More New Nukes, Please Tom Barry Hawk for Hire: Roger Noriega's New Gig Linda Schade / Kevin Zeese Americans Voted for Peace: Has the New Congress Already Let Them Down? Tiffany Ten Eyck Workers' Centers and Unions: a New Alliance Mahmoud El-Yousseph A Challenge to Pelosi Lucinda Marshall 3003 Funerals: "And They're Still Burying Ford!" Website of the Day Van the Man: Warm Love January 4, 2007 Patrick Cockburn The Martyrdom of Saddam Hussein Winslow T. Wheeler A Guide to Earmarks: Will the Democrats' Reforms Do Anything to Curb Pork Barrel Spending? M. Shahid Alam Has Regime Change Boomeranged? Raed Jarrar So This is Plan B? The US Attack on Saleh Al-Mutlaq's Headquarters Bert Sacks Can the US Legally Kill Iraqi Children?: a Challenge to the Supreme Court Kathy Rentenbach Report from Oaxaca Stephen Fleischman The Rain of Riches: Bonuses, Then and Now George Bisharat Carter's Truths Peter Rost, MD Hail the Hangman, Jail the Cameraman! Evelyn Pringle Can Eli Lilly be Held Criminally Liable for Zyprexa? Website of the Day Courage to Resist   January 3, 2007 Kathy Kelly Wrapped Around a Bullet Paul Craig Roberts His Last Hurrah: Bush Cuts and Runs from Reason William Johnson No Worker is Illegal: SEIU Members Push Their Union to Change Its Policy on Immigration Stan Cox Under a Brown Cloud: Money vs. the Monsoon Trita Parsi A Lose-Lose Situation with Iran Declan McKenna Ireland's Slavish Hostility Toward Cuba Joe Bageant Dispatch from the Chinese Landfill Nicola Nasser Somalia: New Hotbed of Anti-Americanism Missy Beattie Dead Wrong Website of the Day Pharmed Out January 2, 2007 Michael Watts Oil Inferno Amina Mire Return of the Warlords: Death and Destruction for Somalis James Brooks Pushing the Wedge in Palestine Alevtina Rea The Tyrant is Dead! Long Live ... ? Al Krebs Global Food Security: a Call to Action Peter Rost Invitation to a Hanging: the Saddam Hussein Execution Video Niranjan Ramakrishnan A Deadly December John Stanton Appetites for Destruction Website of the Day Out Now: Petition   January 1, 2007 Patrick Cockburn Iron Man, Tin God: the Meaning of Saddam Hussein Uri Avnery What Makes Sammy Run? Joshua Frank Eliot Spitzer's Constitutional Hang Up: Architect of New York's Patriot Act         Subscribe Online

February 5, 2007 Bush and the Old Hands Decider vs. Negotiator By NEWTON GARVER The report of the Iraq Study Group (ISG) in November of 2006 laid open a split in the Republican Party, as has been widely noted. James Baker is a negotiator and George W. Bush is, as he himself has insisted, a decider. The contrast speaks volumes. The two men have, of course, much in common: they are both Republicans, they both see the same other nations as friendly and the same ones as hostile, and the Negotiator is hardly indecisive, nor is the Decider loath to make deals. So what is the big fuss? The difference has to do first with perception and then with style. That may sound at first superficial. But the morality of both everyday life and political life is, one might say, profoundly superficial. Or as Mies van der Rohe once put it, in a brilliant variation on a familiar adage, "God is in the details." Defining the Difference For the Decider the world is black and white, for the Negotiator it is shades of gray. For George Bush and his crowd, anyone who stands contrary to him or his policy is black. We have seen this in his remarks (or those of his staff) about people who have left his administration because of disagreements. In nearly every case we have an instance of denigration of the person's character or competence, or both. There are no honorable dissidents or defectors. When we expand our scope to the whole globe, the contrasts are even starker, the emblem of his manner of perception being the famous "axis of evil" remark in his first inaugural speech. The contrasts between black and white, once made, seem curiously independent of actions. So Hamas and Hezbullah remain black even when they participate in democratic elections, and no action whatever would convince the White House of Iran's worthiness to remain an Islamic state, whereas Israel stays white as a Jewish state even though killing hundreds (perhaps thousands) of innocent civilians. For the Decider, the challenge is to increase the areas of white and reduce the areas of black. Removing Saddam was a good thing because it removed an area of black, and it remains a good thing because even though Iraq is in a kind of Limbo, not at the moment pure white, but no longer all black either. The rhetoric of the Decider is one of ideals, such as freedom and democracy, and the Decider sees his pursuit of these ideals as far loftier than the dirty gray pragmatism of the Negotiator. The Negotiator sees shades of good and evil, and is comfortable with the world remaining various shades of gray. Power is always some shade of gray or other. The great advantage of political power is not that it brings either freedom or democracy, let alone justice, but stability. It is stability that lightens the darker shades of gray, and it is instability that sullies what might seem like promising ideals. Pure white is an illusion, as is pure black. The challenge is to discern where there are lighter shades of gray, and to enlarge them by increasing stability among those who have power. An important part of such discernment is recognition of who it is that actually has power - - and hence has the capability of entering into an agreement that promises stability. It is entirely right to understand the contrast between the Negotiator and the Decider as one form of the contrast between pragmatism and idealism, as well as one of perception. So manners and style are a crucial aspect of the contrast. With respect to style, the Negotiator works through apparent differences to a consensus on which all can agree. In the process he normally hides his own deepest fears and aspirations, so that in representing the group he becomes a spokesperson rather than a decision-maker. Baker did this brilliantly in hammering out a unanimous report from the ISG. The style of the Negotiator requires careful listening to other viewpoints and incorporating them - - perhaps not in their original formulation - - in the final negotiated agreement. The handbook on negotiation, Getting to Yes (Fisher, Ury, and Patton; Penguin 1991), lays stress on distinguishing between positions and interests, insisting that a serious negotiator always looks behind conflicting positions fo convergent interests. Such, indeed is the style of the report of the ISG. The report notes that it is in the interest of both Iran and Syria, as well as Turkey, that Iraq not erupt into such chaos that refugees flee into neighboring countries. This interest might well be convergent with US interests, however much current rhetoric suggests that the parties are mired in incompatible positions. The style of the Decider is to dismiss and denigrate divergent positions rather to work through differences. This has been apparent since the first notes of tension and disagreement emerged from the Beltway, with the departure of the first Treasury Secretary, the denigration of various arms-control experts, and the exposure of Valerie Plame as a CIA agent following her husband's candid report on alleged uranium shipments from Niger to Iraq. There can be no such thing as honorable disagreement with the Decider. That is part of what is meant by Bush being the Decider: disagreement is betrayal, just because disagreement refuses to acknowledge the decisions the Decider has made. It is not a shade of gray but jet black. Therefore the Decider is undermined by negotiators as much as by dissidents. This style is equally apparent in foreign policy, especially in those domains of foreign policy that are in the news. The nations of the world are generally either black or white. A flagrant example, at the time of acrimony over the invasion of Iraq, was the division of NATO into Old Europe (black) and New Europe (white), based simply on whether or not they supported the invasion. Israel is white, Iran, Syria, and North Korea are black, and Hezbullah and Hamas and very black. In Latin America Cuba and Venezuela are black, Bolivia, Nicaragua, and Ecuador and turning black, Colombia and Chile are white, while Mexico, Brazil and Argentina are in Limbo. Latin America has been severely neglected by Washington in recent years, as never before in the previous century, in that there have been no major economic or military moves in that region, Bush's early visit to Mexico proving to be mere show. There have indeed been significant decisions made in Latin America, but with the Decider's attention focussed elsewhere, the decisions are being made by others. Domination vs. Prosperity The aim of a negotiated agreement is enduring cooperation, which is incompatible with domination. There is of course a form of pseudo-cooperation, whereby what the stronger party means is obedience to the dominant power. That is what parents have in mind when they ask their young children to cooperate. In genuine cooperation, on the other hand, the parties begin with more balanced powers, at least in the sense that either can effectively nullify the proposed cooperation. In such a case domination is out of place, and therefore decision-making is shared. There can be no Decider where there is genuine cooperation. It is a famous thesis of Hobbes, taken over by nearly all political philosophers, that cooperation will never work where there is no overarching dominating authority (the "sovereign") to which all the cooperating parties are submissive. The fruits of cooperation are stability and prosperity, and Hobbes claimed that in a state of nature (that is, where there is no sovereign authority), there is bound to be a "war of all against all", and "the life of man is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." That dismal thesis was brilliantly challenged several decades ago by Robert Axelrod in his book The Evolution of Cooperation (Basic Books 1984). The challenge was presented by means of game theory. One basic distinction in game theory is that between zero-sum games and variable-sum games. In a zero-sum game the size of the pie is fixed in advance, and there can therefore never be a winner unless there is also a loser. That is, I cannot get a bigger slice of the pie unless you get a smaller one. In a variable-sum game, on the other hand, the total payoff is not determined in advance, so that there can be win-win outcomes, as we have learned to say. That basic distinction, about which there is no theoretical dispute or obscurity, allows us to restate the distinction between the Decider and the Negotiator. The Decider believes that political life consists always and only of zero-sum games, while the Negotiator believes that most of political life (he is not such an absolutist as the Decider) consists of variable-sum games. The Decider is with Hobbes. Axelrod focussed on a variable-sum game called "The Prisoners' Dilemma" (PD). PD is a two-player game defined in game theory by the proportions in which various payoffs stand to one another. The payoffs that Axelrod used are that if both players are "mean" (try to dominate or "win"), each gets one point; If both are nice (try to cooperate), each gets three points; and if one Is mean and the other nice, the meanie gets five points and the nice guy nothing. In that simple form, the rational outcome seems a clear vindication of Hobbes, and it really makes no sense to be nice. Axelrod, however, studied a variation called "The Iterated Prisoners' Dilemma" (IPD). In this variation, the players encounter each other over and over, and what counts is the total score in the end. Though neither version is a perfect model of life, IPD clearly corresponds to many life circumstances. How do you act towards people you expect to encounter over and over? Axelrod could not figure out the answer to this question from his armchair, so he devised a tournament. He asked colleagues in game theory, policy studies, and politics to submit programmable strategies for an IPD tournament in which each strategy would play against each other, and also against itself, for 200 encounters, and the winner of the tournament would be the strategy that had accumulated the most points at the end of the tournament. Each strategy needed to specify precisely at every given move whether its current move would be mean or nice, based on a rule that could take account of some or all of the prior moves. Axelrod included a strategy he called RANDOM, that chose whether to mean or nice in a mathematically random succession. Altogether there were fourteen entries. The winning strategy was submitted by Anatol Rapoport, himself a fascinating scholar, since he was a mathematician and pacifist who also wrote the introduction to the Penguin edition of On War by Karl von Clausewitz. Rapoport's strategy was the simplest of all those submitted: it started by being nice on the first move, and then on every subsequent move did whatever the other player had done on the previous move. A moment's reflection on the payoffs shows that this strategy can lose by five points (but never by more than five points) or can tie the other player, but can never get more points than the other player. So we have the seeming paradox that the winner of the tournament never won any of the individual matches! That could never happen in a tournament consisting of zero-sum games, such as all the sporting tournaments of our culture. Nor in a chess tournament could a player with the simplest strategy ever win, since the opponent would win soon after figuring out the strategy. In the IPD tournament, however, Rapoport hoped that his opponents would figure out his strategy, since they would then realize that they could attain more points by cooperating than by overwhelming wins, or whatever. Axelrod published an extensive analysis of the results of this tournament and announced a second round of his IPD tournament. There was a slight change in the rules, in that each match would end at some randomly selected number in the area of 200 encounters. The apparent paradox of the winner of the first round never winning even a single individual match led to a great increase in interest, and there were 62 entries for the second round, coming from six countries and representing eight academic disciplines. All sorts of people thought that must be a way to do better than a very simple strategy that never outscored any other strategy in one-on-one encounters. It made no sense to the experts that you could win tournaments without winning any individual matches. They were wrong. Rapoport submitted the same strategy and won again. Overwhelmingly. And Axelrod then experimented with evolution, changing the population in each generation so that those most successful in the previous generation had a correspondingly greater representation in the next. Most of the meanies quickly became extinct, and the strength of Rapoport's strategy increased with each generation. The conclusion for evolutionary studies: There are certain circumstances, perhaps not too rare, in which nice guys do not finish last but rather they flourish and multiply. As Axelrod usefully puts it, Rapoport's strategy is not strong but it is robust. And it is robustness rather than strength that leads to long-term stability and prosperity. Cooperation and long-term stable arrangements are generally the aim of negotiation, but a Negotiator is not necessarily a Cooperator. In diplomacy, a Negotiator normally combines a fairly fixed conception of "national interest" with a more flexible conception of prosperity and well-being as competing goals of the negotiation. Consequently IPD is not always a reliable model of real-world negotiations. But the Negotiator remains much closer than the Decider to the wry wisdom of Anatol Rapoport's winning IPD strategy. The Poverty of Unilateralism To be a Decider is to be a Unilateralist. The Bush administration has augmented this American tendency, exempting the US from the International Criminal Court and other international jurisdictions having to do with war crimes and unfair trade practices (such as our agricultural subsidies). An instructive but little-known example of obstructionist unilateralism has been the Bush administration's stance on the 2001 UN Program of Action on small arms and light weapons (SALW), a segment of the UN's First Committee on Disarmament and International Security. Every year since 2001 three of our allies, Japan, Colombia, and South Africa, have introduced an omnibus resolution about illegal trade in SALW but have failed to find the consensus they desired. Finally in 2006 they gave up on consensus and put the measure to a vote - 172 in favor, no abstentions, and only the US opposed. A similar obstruction, not quite so flagrant, occurred with respect to a resolution pertaining to the Arms Trade Treaty, to set up a process for establishing common international standards for the import, export, and transfer of conventional arms. The vote on this resolution was 139 in favor, 24 abstentions, and one (the US) opposed. Would it be unreasonable to conclude that the US on principle will not cooperate on any issue in the First Committee, at least not if there is a hint of any impending obstacle to selling arms? Such action puts us in the position of a meanie in Axelrod's IPD tournament, with the prospect progressive impoverishment. We already see signs of that process in the decline of the dollar and the rapid rise of US indebtedness to China. Fortunately the posture of the Bush administration is partially compensated by commercial cooperation on a global scale, and it may therefore take a long time of the negative effects of going it alone to take effect. Stability can accompany the rule of a Decider only if the Decider is sovereign, as Hobbes envisioned. If the Decider is not sovereign - that is, if there are other persons or states that make effective decisions altogether independent of the Decider - then strife and conflict concerning who is dominant and who is independent is bound to lead to instability. Such instability exists in the Middle East and looms in the rest of Asia. For 2007 we can look forward to continuing prosperous relations with China and India and Korea and Japan, in spite of their independence, but also to continuing costly and abrasive relations with Iran and Iraq. Cooperation is pragmatic, not moral. Cooperation is generally preferable to war, but there are limits to its merits. One genuine drawback to cooperation is uncertainty about the morality or justice of cooperative arrangements. It is therefore reasonable that there be moral strings attached to cooperation, something that is left entirely out of the picture presented in Axelrod's study. When we take matters of justice and morality into account, we again see not only the difference between a Negotiator and a Cooperator but also the sharp contrast between a Decider and a Negotiator. Cooperation is often the door to corruption - you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours. Trade agreements between large corporations and emerging states have often resulted in huge bribes to third-world officials as well as to flagrant neglect of basic working standards and environmental concerns. Collegial cooperation among corporate executives in the US has led executive pay to soar from 20 times a worker's pay to 400 times a worker's pay, in just a couple of decades. Such cooperation is only partial, peasants and workers being left out, and a seasoned Negotiator, having read Fisher and Ury, will realize an inherent instability in such partial cooperation. That is a good part of the reason that the ISG strongly recommends serious talks with Iran and Syria. But confronting considerations of morality and justice is not simple or easy. Two reasons why morality and justice present genuinely tough problems are, first, that claims of justice or morality are often fraudulent masks for power grabs, and, second, that they may conflict even when they are based on sound principles. The obstacles presented by considerations of morality and justice again show the contrast between the Decider and the Negotiator. The Decider, to preserve his own status as Decider, has no recourse but to articulate and insist on his own conception of morality and justice, which quicky leads to impasse. The Negotiator proceeds by listening to the other party and then trying to separate out positions from interests. There is no guarantee for success through negotiation, but there is a richer array of possibilities. When the ISG presented its report, President Bush slapped down the Negotiator, almost rudely, certainly with all the arrogance that normally accompanies unilateral action. His 2007 State of the Union address may have lacked the vigor and bluster of the Decider's earlier pronouncements, but he did not back away either from his role as Decider or from any of his unilateral decisions. We can hardly expect that he will be more accommodating toward Nancy Pelosi than toward James Baker. Even if the Peace Fairy were to resolve matters in Iraq tomorrow, the pattern would remain, and there are many issues to resolve before we sleep. It is likely, therefore, that we can look forward to another year of impoverishment. Newton Garver is SUNY Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus at University at Buffalo. Eleven of his essays on war, power, ethics, truth and justice in the US during the Bush years, and the recent struggle for human rights and political decency in Bolivia, were recently published in Limits of Power: Some Friendly Reminders.

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