Rare Yglesias Screwup

Once again, Matthew Yglesias is a smart guy who mostly writes reasonable things. When he slips up, though, you've got to come down hard to keep him in line.

He wrote this about the prospects of an "Arab Sharon":

"The underlying assumption on which the contention that two hard-nosed realpolitikers could make peace [is based] is that in some sense there isn't really a conflict of interest here."

As I noted in his comments, this is absurd. The United States and Canada have conflicts of interest, but I feel as though continuing peace is at least a possibility. The only thing required for peace to be possible between "two hard-nosed realpolitikers" is that there be some advantage from peace that can be shared between the two parties. For instance, the current situation might suck for Palestinians, but it would probably suck even worse if open warfare broke out. Thus a pragmatic Palestinian leader should be willing to make some concessions to preserve peace.

There are complications, of course. One is that this is a bilateral monopoly. Whatever surplus is to be had from peace must be shared in some fashion, and each side wants to play chicken to get as much of it as possible. That's problematic, but it doesn't lead inevitably to war or even to violence.

In short, one of the great advantages of modern governments is that they can channel conflicts into productive competition (free trade), or at least toward solutions less costly than war. The world would be a much worse place if Yglesias were right.

[UPDATE: fixed link]