Dialogues concerning Natural Politics: Book Six
The public choice libertarian's problem of political beneficence
Book Six Synopsis: The implicit assumption that policymakers are epistemically privileged is further explicated and shown to figure among the assumptions of otherwise politically skeptical libertarians. Indeed, libertarians, who assume that policymakers are self-interested, if not selfish, confront a problem converse to the variation on the problem of evil that progressives face. Libertarians cannot explain any altruistic decisions that self-interested policymakers might make; indeed, libertarians cannot explain any decisions that such policymakers might make that ultimately fail to produce results in their own interests. The fact that both progressives and libertarians start from motivational assumptions that implicitly attribute adequate knowledge to policymakers which they may not actually possess ultimately leads defenders of both political perspectives astray, methodologically speaking, unable to explain particular political decisions and the consequences of these decisions.
Dramatis Personae
Emma – 30 years old; Fifth-year philosophy PhD student, specializing in political philosophy and epistemology; ABD (“all-but-dissertation”); dating Andre
Andre – 35 years old; Fourth-year philosophy PhD student, specializing in philosophy of science; Academic Advisor to undergraduate students in the Philosophy Department; dating Emma
Connor – 24 years old; Second-year philosophy PhD student, specializing in normative ethics; a devout political progressive
Jack – 25 years old; Second-year philosophy PhD student, specializing in logic and epistemology; a devout political libertarian
Book Six
Emma: Well, while you’re contemplating your navel, I’m going to get back to my original point. All of this was meant to be preparatory to attacking the Wonderdork here.
Andre: That’s right! I forgot…
Jack [laughing]: I thought, was hoping, Em, that maybe you had forgotten…in all the hubbub.
Emma: No, Zip, you’re not getting off that easily.
Jack: Alright. Dammit…
Emma: Where was I before Connie’s insolence led me into this spontaneous digression about spontaneity?
Andre [to Connor, laughing]: Your insolence!
Connor: Always. You know it.
Jack [smiling]: I believe you were engaged in a rather tedious examination of the obvious implications of political belief. You were boring us all, babbling on and on about what it means to advocate for a policy. Andre was pretending to pay attention, because he’s your boyfriend and he has to, but I was thinking about otters and swimming pools. I can’t speak for Connor, but he seemed equally non-plussed – or plussed – whichever one means “unimpressed with your nonsense.” Could I keep a pet otter in a swimming pool, I wonder?
Emma [laughing]: Oh my god, I hate you so much. Why do you do this to me? You realize you leave me no choice but to destroy you now?
Jack [smiles]: Destroy me? I can’t be destroyed. I’m rubber and you’re glue, whatever you say bounces off me a—
Emma [to Andre]: It’s like dealing with a twelve-year old…
Andre: Just like Connor, you’re not trying to leave…
Emma: I’m sticking around to disembowel this dork!
Andre: That’s gross.
Emma: Not literally.
Connor: I think it would depend on whether otters can survive in chlorinated water, right?
Emma: Oh, so you’re going to help him now?!
Connor [a bit timidly]: Well, it’s an interesting question.
Emma: No, it’s not!
Jack: Let’s see what the web says. This is why Al Gore invented the Internet [reaches for phone].
Emma: I swear to God, if you pull your phone out, I will strangle you with your own vas deferens.
Jack: That’s not physically possible.
Emma: Do you want to find out?
Jack [laughing]: Dammit, Emma! Will you just make your point? I am eager in anticipation of my impending disemboweling.
Emma [breathing deep]: Deep breaths, Emma, deep breaths. It’s just Zippy. No one likes him. No one loves him. He goes home every night and drinks all by himself and rubs himself to sleep while crying.
Andre: Wow, she knows you really well…
Jack: Have you been spying on me?
Emma: No. OK, I’m better now. I’m ready. Are you ready, Zippy?
Jack: Emma, I’ve been standing here for an hour now, waiting patiently and peacefully, as if I have nothing better to do, for my long-promised dialectical demolition. Yes, I’m ready.
Emma: You don’t have anything better to do. Never forget that.
Jack: I will think about that as I buff myself to sleep tonight to the taste my own tears.
Emma: So…If believing some policy goal ought to be pursued implies that the advocate believes the policy to be an effective means to realize the relevant goal or that the policy will otherwise improve the state of the world, and if policymakers are ultimately responsible – causally responsible, at least – for bringing about these results, then the policy advocate must also believe that either policymakers’ relevant causal knowledge or extant spontaneous forces are adequate to realize these results. Advocating for a policy implies that the advocate believes either that policymakers possess all of the knowledge necessary to either realize the goal of the policy or to otherwise improve upon the condition of the world, or that spontaneous forces are adequate to compensate for the relevant ignorance of policymakers.
Jack: Yes, you have established this…to what end? We’ve been waiting breathlessly to find out…
Emma [smiling]: Part of my point is that most people never consider the causal role of these spontaneous forces in political and social life. Indeed, we’ve just heard Connor question them—or insolently try to assimilate them to miracles. Few people consider the possibility that their favored policies might succeed only if spontaneity, perhaps a heaping helping of spontaneity, intervenes to compensate for the effects of policymaker ignorance. In other words, most people – although they would likely deny this, if you brought it to their attention – attribute, implicitly at least, if not omniscience and omnipotence, then special knowledge and abilities to policymakers. More exactly, they attribute special knowledge and abilities to do good to members of their favored party, and they attribute special knowledge and abilities to do bad to members of the party rival to their own.
Connor: I do not consider the politicians of my party to be uniquely epistemically privileged.
Emma: I think you do! Implicitly, at least. As I said, many people would deny it if you brought to their attention the absurd epistemic capacities they implicitly attribute to policymakers. In your case, up until about ten minutes ago, you apparently believed that every social outcome was the result of either deliberate policymaking or a miracle, and since you reject miracles…Deny it all you like, but I think my assertion is well-grounded.
Connor: I’m still not convinced. Anyway, I certainly don’t think that members of the other party are in any way epistemically special. They’re a bunch of racist, invisible-man-worshipping, science-denying homophobes. They’re morons, in other words.
Emma: You attribute to them the ability to bring about states of the world of which you disapprove while, at the same time, denying – or failing to fully appreciate – the role of spontaneity in society. These negative conditions cannot manifest spontaneously, on your way of thinking. They must be someone’s fault. So, yes, you implicitly attribute to politicians of the rival party knowledge of relevant causal mechanisms adequate to realize states of the world that you would prefer to avoid. Consciously or not, you treat them like they’re evil geniuses. In your mind, the opposing party is full of Ernst Blofelds.
Connor: Ernst Blofeld?
Andre: James Bond’s archnemesis…
Connor: Oh.
Emma: My main point, which I’ve been trying to get to this whole time, is that it should never be just automatically assumed that policymakers are knowledgeable and capable enough to realize anything. There are ends with respect to which they are to some degree ignorant of the required causal knowledge. It is always an open question whether policymakers possess the knowledge required to realize some end without exacerbating social problems or whether, and to what extent, this objective can be realized only if spontaneous forces compensate for the effects of their ignorance. Yet, it seems that many, if not most, people make exactly this unjustified assumption about policymakers. But, people, including policymakers, are never all-knowing and all-powerful, a fact not modified by membership in a particular political party. In short, advocating for a policy assumes, usually without an explicit argument or empirical evidence, a positive answer to the open question regarding the adequacy of policymakers’ knowledge for realization of the relevant goal. Connor’s Rousseauian political philosophy, for example, implies that policymakers know of what the common good consists and, relying ostensibly on scientific input, how to realize goals associated with it. This is a very dubious assumption.
Jack: Ha! In your face, Connor!
Emma: However! Zippy’s Humean assumption, to wit—
Jack: —“To wit”?! What century is this?
Emma: Yeah, “to wit,” you twit. I’m an aspiring philosopher. Pretentiousness is my mother tongue.
Connor: The first of the twelve steps is admitting that you have a problem.
Emma: Shut it! Where was I?
Jack: To wit…
Emma: Right. To wit! The Zipster’s Humean assumption that policymakers are always knaves unswervingly focused on their own personal satisfaction, strikes me as dubious for similar reasons.
Connor: In your face, Wonderboy!
Emma: He’s a Wonderdork. Get it straight.
Connor: Sorry. In your face, Wonderdork!
Jack: OK, Em. Whattaya got?
Emma: I’ll get to it. I need to clarify a few things first.
Jack: I can’t wait.
Emma: What do you, or what did Hume, mean by “knaves”? To say that policymakers should be conceived as knaves sounds like they should be treated as, not merely self-interested, but as selfish. The difference is that self-interested policymakers might think their interests lie in promoting the interests of their constituents, but selfish policymakers, on the other hand, would always seek to maximize their own personal wealth and power. Which is the Humean committed to?
Jack: Selfishness. Policymakers always act to ensure that they get their own, regardless of what constituents demand.
Emma: OK. But, in order for this assumption to have any explanatory force, it must be further assumed that policymakers are knowledgeable about their own selfish interests and how to realize goals associated with them. Otherwise, the assumption that policymakers are knaves can explain neither their decisions nor the consequences of these decisions. In other words, if you answer, in response to the question, “Why did policymakers choose policy P and why did P fail to manifest altruistic, constituent-minded, results,” that “Policymakers chose P because they are selfish knaves, who always selfishly choose policies that will lead to results that promote their selfish interests,” then you are implicitly assuming that the relevant policymakers knew what their selfish interests consisted of and that P would lead to results that promoted these interests. Aren’t the Rousseauian and the Humean making the same mistake of attributing knowledge to policymakers that they may not possess? Just as there may be cases where the Rousseauian assumption is false, can’t there be cases where the Humean assumption is false? What if policymakers don’t know where their selfish interests lie? Or, what if they know their selfish interests, but don’t know which policies will promote them? What if they don’t know how to be selfish effectively? I mean, think about the present case. According to you, in cutting the humanities budget and expanding funding for STEM, the University Administration is acting in the selfish interests of the Administrators themselves. But, what if the Administration’s decision to re-orient the budget away from the humanities leads to something like a revolt among humanities students or, more likely, what if the decision is eventually perceived by the Board of Trustees to have undermined the University’s mission and leads to successful calls for the Administration’s removal? If the social outcomes that we get are determined by policymakers’ pursuit of their own selfish interests, then how can the Humean explain cases where policy action fails to promote or even undermines policymakers’ interests? It seems plain to me that the Humean cannot explain such cases. If the Rousseauian is wrong to attribute knowledge adequate to promote the general will to policymakers that they may not possess, why is it not wrong for the Humean to attribute knowledge of their own selfish interests to policymakers that they may not possess? Isn’t the Humean illicitly assuming something like the infallibility of knowledge of one’s own mental states?
Jack: Surely, one is necessarily more fallible about the common good than about one’s own mental states.
Emma: “Necessarily” seems too strong, but, as a practical matter, yes, perhaps we tend to know our own mental states better than we know other persons’ mental states, much less the general will. But, consider another, perhaps more perverse, problem: what if the broader University community comes to accept and agree with the Administration’s budgetary decisions? How can the Humean, who thinks that policymakers always and only act in their own interests and never for the general good, explain this outcome? The only way, it seems to me, would be to say that the University community shares the interests of a bunch of selfish knaves, the Administrators. This strikes me as an ugly conclusion that you should try to avoid.
Jack: The problem with Connor’s view is not just that he conceives of policymakers as knowledgeable about and capable of realizing goals associated with the general good, he also believes that policymakers are well-intentioned with regard to the general good, and he infers from these premises – and possibly other normative assumptions, such as that policymakers ought to act on their good intentions; I don’t mean to accuse Connor of drawing an ought from an is – that policymakers ought to act on their policy analyses. The problematic assumption here has nothing to do with epistemics, but with the preposterous notion that policymakers are well-intentioned with regard to the general good, a premise that, it should be noted again, he does not accord to all policymakers. It is this premise that leaves Connor in his current quandary, ostensibly committed to policies he actually abhors.
Emma: I’m not so sure that Connor’s commitment to these policies can be so neatly separated from the dubious assumption that policymakers are adequately knowledgeable and capable to realize goals associated with the general good. Indeed, it seems to me that this assumption carries the weight of the commitment. I think it is likely that, if we could convince Connor of the falsity of this assumption, either in this or in some other case, if we could persuade him that policymakers are not epistemically equipped to realize goals associated with the general good, he would reject the relevant policy, even if he remained convinced that policymakers are properly morally oriented with respect to the general good.
Jack [laughing]: Well, we don’t need to put words in his mouth. He is standing right here…
Emma: Connie, if we could convince you that the theories or the data that informed the Administration’s decisions in the present case were inadequate to the task to which they were applied, would you remain committed to the policies?
Connor: I hate the policies! I don’t consider myself committed to them! But, Jack keeps saying I am implicitly obliged to approve of them.
Jack: You are committed to them in virtue of your claims regarding the criteria of good policymaking. I merely pointed out that these criteria are not consistent with your rejection of the Administration’s recent policy decisions.
Connor: Whatever. If what you’re asking, Emma, is whether I would support a policy that I had reason to believe policymakers were too ignorant to make effective, I don’t know. Maybe, maybe not. It would depend on the other policy objectives available and the conditions of policymakers’ ignorance with respect to these.
Emma: Very good, yes. But, more than this, presumably, your support of a policy would also depend on your appraisal of circumstances beyond policymakers’ ken – the aforementioned spontaneous forces – no?
Connor: Maybe. In any case, I would not support a policy that I believed policymakers were too ignorant to do anything but bungle, a policy likely, because of policymaker ignorance, to exacerbate circumstances that I care about.
Emma: Right. In effect, the “ought” claim to which you would otherwise be committed in virtue of your other commitments would evaporate, if you could be convinced to reject the assumption about the adequacy of policymakers’ knowledge. On the other hand, even if we convinced you that policymakers were not rightly oriented with respect to the general good, you need not give up support for some policy, provided that you evaluated it as a tool to advance the general good, isn’t that right? You might remain morally committed to the wisdom of a policy relative to the general will, even if politicians were not.
Connor: Yes, I think so.
Emma: See, Zippy, in order to get out of the quandary that you claim Connie is in, he should give up the assumption concerning the adequacy of policymaker knowledge. The moral-probity assumption does little work in the end. If they accord with his moral perspective, Connor will support policies with regard to which he appraises policymaker knowledge to be adequate and not support – or, more exactly, not automatically support – policies with regard to which he appraises this condition to not obtain. In short, we have isolated the problem with Connor’s conception of policymakers. The remaining question, however, is whether we have identified what seems to me the central problem with the Humean conception of policymakers.
Jack: Have at it.
Emma: There seem to be three problems, at least, with your conception of policymakers as selfish. First, as I have already noted, it is explanatorily inadequate: it starts from the implicit assumption that policymakers are infallible about both their selfish interests and the various policy maneuvers that will promote those interests, and any model that incorporates this conception of policymakers will systematically fail to explain outcomes not in their selfish interests. If policymakers act on their selfish interests, know both these interests and how to realize goals that promote them, how do we explain cases where their decisions lead to consequences not in their selfish interests, such as the possibility I mentioned earlier that the University’s administrators will come to regret their present decisions? Simply put: we can’t.
Jack: It wouldn’t help matters – would it? – to go back on what I said earlier and claim now that self-interest rather than selfishness motivates policymakers. The implicit assumption would then be infallible knowledge of one’s self-interest rather than infallible knowledge of one’s selfish interests…and the explanatory problems would remain.
Emma: That’s right.
Jack: OK. Let me modify what I said earlier in a different way. It is not their selfish interests per se, but their subjective perceptions of their selfish interests that motivate policymakers. They might be wrong about their interests, but, surely, they cannot be wrong about their perceived interests. We could then explain the present case, even if it ultimately goes wrong for the Administrators in the end, in terms of how they misperceived their interests.
Emma: But, you’re still making the tacit – and I would argue, illegitimate – assumption that they automatically know how to realize goals that promote their interests, as they perceive – possibly misperceive – these to be. In other words, assuming the new policy goes awry for the Administration, in the way I suggest it might, the explanation could be either that they misperceived their interests or that they misperceived the policies that would promote their perceived interests.
Jack: Right. So, to the assumption that policymakers act on their selfish interests as they perceive them, I need to add that they choose policies that they perceive, perhaps mistakenly, as means to the end of promoting their selfish interests…as they perceive them.
Emma: You could do that, but I don’t think it would improve your position. It is not much better as a starting point for political analysis. Unless we could get some purchase on the relevant perceptions, empirical analysis of political decision-making would seem to be impossible. We would assume that policymakers act on their perceptions, but we would know little or nothing about these perceptions. We might be able to generate a sort of pure logic of political choice, but we could never draw empirical predictions from such an underspecified conjunction of theory and data. Without the relevant data about policymakers’ perceptions of their selfish interests, such a pure logic would be of only limited value for empirical purposes, for explanation and prediction. In the absence of these data, a conception of policymakers as acting on their perceptions becomes almost a tautology: policymakers do what policymakers do…for reasons we do not really understand.
Jack: Yeah, I see that.
Emma: But, more than this, whether we assume it is their interests or their perceived interests that motivate policymakers, we will be unable to adequately explain a – presumably, non-empty – class of political decisions, namely, truly constituent-minded decisions. Given Hume’s maxim as a starting point for political analysis, the only explanation that can be offered of a constituent-minded political decision is that the interests of constituents must have aligned with the interests or the perceived interests of a bunch of greedy knaves. This is like the example in which the broader University community comes to agree with the Administration’s decision to favor business and STEM programs at the expense of the humanities: the only possible explanation – on the Humean conception – is that the interests of the members of this community must have aligned with the interests or perceived interests of the knavish Administrators. Whereas Connor and his Rousseauian assumption confront a problem similar to the traditional problem of evil – he cannot explain any failures on the part of knowledgeable altruistic policymakers to achieve results in the public interest – you and your Humean assumption confront a problem that we might call the “problem of benevolence”: you cannot account for any policy decisions that ultimately lead to results which accord with the public interest, except to damn the public as sharing the interests of knaves.
Jack: Fair enough. I see the problem.
Emma: This actually leads me to my second criticism of the Humean conception of policymakers: for all of the reasons I gave against Connor and more, how can it possibly fit with your own advocacy of particular political programs and policies?
Jack [laughing]: What do you mean? I’m a libertarian! Surely it is consistent with libertarianism to take a dim view of policymakers’ motivations!
Emma: Do you advocate for liberal society, generally, and liberalizing policies, in particular, because you take these to be in citizens’ interests or because you take them to be in policymakers’ interests?
Jack: In citizens’ interests.
Emma: Are they also in policymakers’ interests? Or do policymakers perceive such policies to be in their own interests?
Jack: Probably not. Or, at least, probably not generally in their own interests.
Emma: Then in order to convince policymakers – as knavish as you conceive them to be – to pursue liberalism, generally, and liberalization policies, in particular, you could not appeal to their good natures, their feeling for their fellow citizens, or their moral probity. You would need to convince them that liberalism and liberalization were in their own interests. Do you plan to bribe them? What set of incentives might you present them with that would convince them of the selfish or self-interested wisdom of liberalizing? Without some such system of incentives to turn self-interested policymakers toward what you take to be best for citizens, you’re effectively in the awkward position of advocating for things that you have little reason to think policymakers will ever actually pursue. A policymaker who would turn against his own interests, as he perceives them, to do something “good” for the people, like liberalize society, is a unicorn on your account. Unless you and your fellow libertarians can somehow convince policymakers that liberalization is in their own interests – or otherwise incentivize them to act as if liberalization is in their interests – you have no reason to believe liberalism or liberalization will ever be pursued in this world.
Jack: Yeah, OK. It’s a problem, admittedly.
Emma: Oh, but the problems don’t end there, my Zipperrific friend. Recall what I said before – which you assented to – about what advocacy of a policy implies about its realizability. Do you believe policymakers possess all of the knowledge necessary to liberalize effectively, which is to say, to liberalize in such a way that all of the wonderful properties which you and your fellow libertarians attribute to a liberal society actually manifest?
Jack: How could they not? It’s just a matter of breaking down existing barriers to freedom.
Emma: Breaking down barriers to freedom might be quite epistemically challenging. First, you must identify the relevant barriers. Second, you must remove them in such a way that the properties libertarians attribute to an expansion of freedom actually emerge in the post-reform environment without exacerbating other problems, without undermining other values, that libertarians also care about. I don’t see why we should assume that policymakers necessarily possess either kind of knowledge, much less both. Why think these barriers are necessarily easy to identify, much less breakdown in such a way that the posited effects will manifest post-breakdown? Indeed, I see many reasons why we should not make this assumption about the epistemic capacities of the would-be liberalizing policymaker. The evidence we have gathered over the last twenty or so years from, oh, China, the Balkans, post-Soviet Russia, various Eastern European and sub-Saharan countries, not to mention Iraq and Afghanistan, suggests that liberalization can proceed in better and worse ways. Policymakers can screw up even something as seemingly simple as breaking down existing barriers to freedom.
Jack: Libertarians know all about such issues.
Emma: Knowing about them and having a strategy to address them are two different things—
Connor: A strategy other than crying “more freedom!” at every possible turn.
Emma: Exactly. Crying “freedom” is little help when freedom – or, more exactly, it’s beneficial effects – are hard to come by.
Jack: I suppose you’re not wrong.
Emma: Just as it is an open question whether policymakers possess the knowledge required to deliberately realize the goals of a progressive interventionist / borderline socialist / secret Nazi, like our friend Connor here, it is an open question whether they are epistemically equipped to deliberately realize a perfected liberal society, such as you cream over in your sleep, or even to liberalize this society. And, just as Connie assumed – illegitimately, as you correctly pointed out – an affirmative answer to the first open question, so you have no-less-illegitimately assumed a positive answer to the second open question.
Jack: Well, in any case, I wasn’t really meaning to advance a robust conception of the policymaker perfect for all explanatory purposes. I was just trying to irritate Connor by calling him a Nazi.
Emma: Oh, so this whole conversation has just been an exercise in you being a prickish troll?!
Jack: Yeah, pretty much
Emma: How do you feel about that, Connor?
Connor: It’s par for the course in our crowd. Anyway, I suppose I’ve given Zippy as good in the past as he just gave me. I’ve been known to act the troll merely for the fun of it.
Emma: Yes, but Jack does it so well. You really have to wonder whether he’s acting. That’s why he’s Zippy the Wonderdork.
Connor: True.
Jack: Screw you both.
Connor [laughs]: In any case, I think it’s an interesting question. “How should we conceive of policymakers for the purposes of political analysis?” That is essentially what we’ve been talking about, right?
Emma [smiling]: Yes, I do believe that is the question that has been on the table—a question I’m quite sure we won’t settle tonight. Anyway, I’m bored with this conversation. And I’m thirsty… [walks away from the group]
Book Six: For Further Reading
On the Conception of Policymakers as Selfish (or Self-Interested)
Niccolo Machiavelli – The Prince, David Wootton (trans.) ([1532] 1995), Hackett
Thomas Hobbes – Leviathan, Edwin Curley (ed.) ([1668] 1994), Hackett
Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu – The Spirit of Laws ([1748] 1989), Cambridge University Press
David Hume – “Of the Independency of Parliament” ([1741, 1747] 1994), in Hume: Political Essays, Cambridge University Press
Jeremy Bentham – An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation ([1780] 1823), Clarendon Press
Publius (Collective pseudonym of Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay) – The Federalist Papers ([1787-1788] 2012), Penguin
James M. Buchanan and Gordon Tullock – The Calculus of Consent: Logical Foundations of Constitutional Democracy ([1962] 1999), in The Collected Works of James M. Buchanan, Volume 3, Liberty Fund
James M. Buchanan – “Public Choice: Politics Without Romance” (2003), Policy: The Quarterly Review of The Centre for Independent Studies, Spring 2003
Geoffrey Brennan and James M. Buchanan – The Reason of Rules: Constitutional Political Economy ([1985] 2000), in The Collected Works of James M. Buchanan, Volume 10, Liberty Fund
Mark Pennington – Robust Political Economy: Classical Liberalism and the Future of Public Policy (2011), Edward Elgar
Book Six: Discussion Questions
1. What knowledge does the “Rousseauian” assumption implicitly attribute to policymakers? What knowledge does the “Humean” assumption implicitly attribute to policymakers? Why is each of these assumptions doubtful? Why is each of these assumptions methodologically problematic, i.e., what does each assumption fail to explain?
2. Discuss the difference between self-interestedness and selfishness. What are the different implications if policymakers are self-interested rather than selfish (and vice versa)?
3. Consider and discuss the tension between the libertarians’ preference for liberalism and liberalization policies, and their tendency to conceive of policymakers as self-interested, if not selfish.
4. Consider and discuss some of the difficulties that policymakers confront in acquiring the knowledge required to liberalize society effectively. How have these difficulties manifested in particular historical contexts, e.g., in post-Soviet Russia and Eastern Europe, Afghanistan, and Iraq?