Is (Social) Democracy a’comin to the USA? Insights with Matthew Schmidt

Interesting interview with Matthew Schmidt, who is an expert on U.S. military issues, Russia, Vladimir Putin, and U.S. foreign policy in North Korea. 

What is your own background briefly?

I grew up on a dairy in western Kansas, between Denver and Kansas City. My parents were teachers at the local catholic high school. I was a competitive debater through college, and got a BA in literature and political science. Mostly poetry. Milosz, Wallace, Rich, etc. I did an MA in Russian and East European Studies in U. Kansas and studied in Moscow, St. Pete, Talinn, and Tbilisi on scholarship. I worked for the Army after Georgetown, teaching strategic planning before coming to New Haven.

Does it seem like a logical background to what you do now?

As it goes, yes. But I’m a literary critic at heart. Most of what I’ve done successfully has been lit crit disguised as political analysis or some such!

How was the last 12 months? What were your big wins?

Hard, but beautiful. I spent nearly a year in Italy with my partner and 3 young kids. We spent 8 weeks on Sardegna, which was glorious some days, and hell on others depending on the kids. We realize now it was training for quarantine, but will good cheap wine, and the best beaches in the world. I was in Ukraine 3 times, twcie with students. It’s always a thrill to introduce people to that part of the world. And it was the first time my partner had ever seen that aspect of my life. That was special.

We saw Chernobyl, right after the HBO film came out. And then we spent 2 weeks in Tbilisi and my kids got to meet the family I lived with as a student. Watching my Tbilisi family connect with my non-Georgian speaking kids was why I believe so strongly in the educational work I do. It’s a better world every time people connect across language and culture lines. Those were all wins.

What would you have done differently?

I would have studied Italian more. My kids were in Italian public school and it annoyed me when they got better than I was!

1 min pitch for what you are doing now?

I’m in the midst of learning how to learn online, and so are my students. The students I’m teaching now are test pilots for the future of higher ed, and they’re uncomfortable with the format, too. But most people just assume since their digital natives that’s not the case. That hasn’t been my experience. So figuring out how to teach about international affairs online is critical to the project of educating future decision-makers.

The next step is to find ways to make international education, study abroad, work under these conditions, because that’s probably the most important part of this kind of education. No one knows how to do this. We’re all test pilots now.

Tell us more about your take on the EU and NATO? 

As long-term changes get accelerated by COVID. Eg, Turkey pressuring EU with more migrants and Italy, Spain, Poland, etc. turning to the right and threatening the Union because they’re more worried about immigration.

COVID is stressing the idea of liberal-institutionalism, and the best example of an almost supra-national constraining-institution is the EU. But states are reverting to hard national identities – UK, Poland, I’d argue Italy, etc. – This was already happening before COVID, but the crisis will highlight these tensions. And one big test is the German willingness to now back a big stimulus bill.

This would seem to fly in the face of the logic used to justify the harsh measures in the crisis in Greece just a few years ago. So maybe with a real supra-national response and good results some of the centrifugal tension relaxes. But I’m skeptical

As oil prices are shifting the geostrategic center from Middle east, what could this mean in the future for us & what about the impact of the rise in renewables too?

If the energy pivot of the world shifts from MENA rapidly, the sheer instability that results will pose the biggest security issue in half a century. I’d suggest a world in 2030 that’s more unstable politically than any time since 1914.

As for renewables, they’re on an upslope to taking over carbon. No one really denies that anymore. The question is how fast, and in what combo of technologies. If solar leads China has a good position. Germany has led in wind. But if there’s a real breakthrough, like fusion, things become super radical. France and the US are probably the leaders here. But Gates is backing supersafe, tiny fission reactors that could be just as disruptive because they’re exportable and safe to run in countries that otherwise couldn’t safely run fusion plants. Nukes in the bush, as it were.

Energy changes everything. Nothing is untouched. So cheap energy changes the trajectory of many countries in Africa. Portable reactors make laser weapons more feasible. Cheap batteries for your home feed by hyper efficient solar, or microwave beamed electricity, completely changes the structure of cities. The thing is to think in scenarios with different ratios of these possibilities.

We are seeing a rise in AI and surveillance as a response to COVID, how can we manage the risks this brings?

AI is the biggest advance in human history. I’m a social scientist, which means I know that humans behave in predictable patterns. That’s what AI exploits, too. It’s a machine that can see in seconds the patterns underlying human behavior in groups it’s taken people like me a century to identify. But it should be made clear that most of what AI does is use algorhythms based on the work of social scientists.

What’s scarier is that because of the ubiquity of sensors now, the machines have access to social science data that we mere biologics couldn’t have imagined even a few years ago. So AI uses that access to new data to spot anomalies and in essence, show us new theories about social behavior.

It shows things about ourselves that we didn’t know about ourselves.

That’s what parents do with their kids – see things about their behavior that the kid can’t see. That’s enormous power.

I’m nervous about a machine that can do that. But I don’t see a real exit from this kind of world. Stage 1 AI – machine learning of social patterns, is unstoppable. Stage 2 – granting machines the power to shape our behavior by using that knowledge; we can still affect that. But it’s a question of capitalism and legal norms, not tech.

Is (Social) Democracy a’comin to the USA?

USA was prigeniture of social democracy at the end of the 19th century. Yes, I think many aspects of that history will likely be strengthened. But that’s the normal answer. COVID may well finally push systemic electoral change – giving us a popularly elected president. That changes us to a center-left politity because it redresses one of the big legacies of slavery on our system. Personally, I also hold out for a enlargement of the House, or, inshallah, a PR system after midcentury. Climate change is a collective action problem that dwarfs COVID. The original US system was not built to be effective on those kinds of CA problems.

 We love Leonard Cohen, what are your favourite 3 songs by him?

I actually met him. A lit prof I was close to was friends with Cohen. It was the period when he was living at the Buddhist retreat center on Mt. Baldy outside LA. He was every bit the voice of god in person as one imagines. He just had this aura of…Jobian deepness?

Tower of Song

Dance Me to the End of Love

Suzanne

How can people find out more about you personally & your work?

Check out my faculty bio page at: https://www.newhaven.edu/faculty-staff-profiles/matthew-schmidt.php

There are clips from media and links to things I’ve written. Or ask my mom. She lives in Austin. Everyone knows her. 😉

Who and where do you get inspiration from?

See the world as it is, not as you wish it to be. (Plato)

More mysteriously:

Souls demand a rising,

Whenever they are touched,

By hands unafraid of dirt and ashes.

– by Me

Love is an illusion. But it’s the only illusion that counts.

-also by Me (though surely someone has said this before)

Lift me like an olive branch, be my homeward dove.

Cohen

About Matthew

Matthew Schmidt is an expert on U.S. military issues, Russia, Vladimir Putin, and U.S. foreign policy in North Korea. He was part of the core team on the Project on National Security Reform, an initiative sponsored by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, that recommended major reforms to the U.S. intelligence and national security community after 9/11.

The author of four books, Dr. Schmidt is currently at work on The Habit of Strategy: Confronting Complexity by Thinking Like a General, Learning Like an Artist. When he was teaching strategic and operational planning at the U.S. Army’s School of Advanced Military Studies, he co-authored The Art of Design, a student textbook. Instrumental in bringing planning techniques from architecture into the design curriculum, he was named to Fast Company magazine’s list of the 100 Most Creative People in 2012. His recent piece, “War as Political Work: Using Social Science for Strategic Success,” published in Military Review, integrates design principles in its strategic viewpoint.

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