Avuncular American

Climate: Earth's Recirc Button Still On

Whatever just happened in Copenhagen - and I reserve judgment 'til I've read a comprehensive debrief - the underlying problem of carbon overproduction hasn't gone away.

One thing is for sure: this post and millions like it, and the millions of emails and spam mails sent daily, will add their share of greenhouse gases to our planet's already full atmosphere.  I read somewhere that the spam sent to Hotmail accounts alone consumed the equivalent of the production of 5 nuclear power plants.  Only they're more likely to be coal-fired plants...

It's like we're in one big airplane, folks, Earth Airlines, breathing in that stale air constantly recirculated around us.  The flight never ends, and fresh air is a relative concept.  So am I going to cease blogging?  Hardly.  I'm already using public transport for most movement throughout Brussels, and I try to climb the staircase vice using the elevator in my building a good half of the time.  But I still am dependent on electricity coming - in the case for Belgium and France - from a mix of nuclear and coal-fired power plants.  I"m in the grid.

For Brussels and its surrounding countryside, the solid waste equivalent of the closed circuit effect was illustrated this past week with odoriferous obviousness.  The private sector contractor in charge of the city's main waste treatment facility decided, apparently without consulting the city (capital region) authorities, to shut down the facility and dump Brussels' untreated effluent into the rivers flowing through and out of the capital.

Into someone's back yard, that is. The backyard being the Flanders region, already prickly about the presence of the million Francophones, expatriates, and immigrants who make up Brussels, in their midst (Brussels is entirely surrounded by Dutch-speaking Flanders).  Every time I flushed the toilet, I felt like saying "excuseer mevrouw en meneer" or some such thing.

The Francophone Brussels environment minister even had to scurry home from Copenhagen to handle the PR mess, since all she could do about the other mess was to frustratedly order the contractor to re-open the plant, which will be done - eventually.

The affair shows, with visual and nasal effect, how no man is an island, or how "down the drain" doesn't end when you flush the toilet.  Homeowners with septic tanks know that the honey-dipper must come or the system backs up; for those with municipal sewerage systems, it gets more complicated.  But someone else always lives downstream.

Maybe politicians weren't the right people to send to Copenhagen.  How about some HVAC technicians to explain that polluted recirculated air remains polluted unless filtered?  Better yet, stop polluting the air in the first place.  Or plumbers, who know that garbage in will result in garbage out, unless purified to an acceptable level.

When it comes down to it, perhaps even in the hearts of the most die hard climate change deniers, it should be common sense and a sense of self-preservation that forces us to do the right thing.  But as last week's ballyhoo in Brussels over solid waste flowing downstream should show us, governments cannot count on their contractors to do the right thing or even the most basic of civic-minded actions.  Not without controls, oversight, rules and regulations.  The job of governments, and the people who elect them.

Strasbourg, Freiburg, My Burg: Saving Earth City By City

We recently spent an extended weekend in beautiful bourgs within easy driving distance of Brussels: Freiburg, Germany; Strasbourg, France; and Luxembourg (capital and country of same name).  For climate change negotiators in Copenhagen, a visit to these three cities near the Rhine and the Moselle rivers could help point the way to a post-carbon future.

None are car or carbon-free, and all are just as over-the-top Christmas-decorated as any typical Germanic town this season (photo: Strasbourg's Place Kleber and its 100 foot-high century-old pine tree).  But their approach to public transportation specifically and urban planning in general would be worth cloning worldwide.

Strasbourg, a city on the Rhine and the object of French and German invasions, occupations, and liberations before a united Europe put an end to all such turf-battling, is built on and between canals, rivers, and water courses of all sorts.  Which didn't keep city authorities from building a beautiful ultra-modern tram system that links downtown with its outlying suburbs.  If only Strasbourg could lick its problem of New Year's Eve car burnings (the young hoods who set fire to their neighbors' cars are not motivated by any extreme green politics; they're just hoods out to attract attention thanks to eager TV cameras)...

Across the Rhine, Freiburg im Breisgau (official website; not to be confused with nearby Fribourg in Switzerland) is a Green Mecca.  Predictably, its mayor is a Green Party member.  Not so predictably, he rules with a conservative CDU deputy.  Environmentalists from the world over flock to Freiburg to see its Vauban neighborhood, which is known for its sensible use of alternative energy sources and low-carbon footprint.  The city nestles in the foothills of the Black Forest, and with vineyards close by, has an almost perfect setting for a mixed economy that points the way to a sustainable future.

Back to reality in Brussels, where we watched an evening devoted to Copenhagen on French TV (France 2).  One of the documentaries showed Adelaide and its surrounding region, with drought-induced water shortages changing the lifestyles of urban and rural Australians alike.  And yet, in today's Washington Post, you can read about ""A Lingering Pool of Disbelief," Blaine Harden's report on climate change denial in one of the countries hardest hit: "despite a decade of record drought, Australian farmers refuse to buy into climate change."

Maybe they are taken in by the Saudi skeptics, the "ClimateGate" conspiracy theorists, and the Bush dead enders who think it's all in our fervid imaginations.  Tell that to the Alpine or Himalayan mountain guides who hike through dried scree where there used to be glaciers thirty years ago, or to the Bangladeshi families who have had to move yearly to escape the rising rivers downstream.  Maybe the deniers have their own aquifers, their own micro-climates, maybe their own survivalist militias with limitless cans of pork and beans for when climate refugees start to head north.  Maybe it's all in their imaginations - the pipe dream that somehow they can escape from the wages of their profligacy.

For those of us who have a firmer footing in reality, heed the burgs - Freiburg and Strasbourg - that are set to thrive in a post-carbon future.

America: Exceptional, Indispensable, or Musclebound?

Two unrelated but thought-provoking seminars in Brussels, plus a Presidential address from West Point later today, have put American foreign and security policy on my mind.  If the spin is accurate, we are told to expect the announcement tonight of an Afghanistan surge by the President from the US Military Academy.

Bob Herbert in the New York Times today ("A Tragic Mistake") calls escalation - to use a Vietnam-era term - in Afghanistan "the easier option"

It would have been much more difficult for Mr. Obama to look this troubled nation in the eye and explain why it is in our best interest to begin winding down the permanent state of warfare left to us by the Bush and Cheney regime.

Is that true - that the United States has been in "permanent state of warfare?"  That was one of the premises behind Michael Moore's 2002 hit Bowling For Columbine, but for a less hysterical look at a "permanent state of exceptionalism" since the outset of the republic, let me talk about the very serious conference organized around the book launch of "Exceptionalisme américain et les droits de l'homme" (American Exceptionalism and Human Rights, edited by two young ULB law professors Ludovic Hennebel of the Magna Carta Institute and Arnaud Van Waeyenberge of the Perelman Centre).

Non-lawyer that I am, I was most interested in one of the assertions in the book/conference by Van Waeyenberge: that the European human rights concept of "human dignity" - curiously - is not a concept that is enshrined in the US Constitution, though I suppose the Bill of Rights goes some way towards rectifying the omission.  But even there, the enumerated rights don't really address human dignity.

Maybe that's why there is a discipline called Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies (HumanDHS), "Breaking the cycle of humiliation."  Remember how the general public in the US appeared to be less than horrified at the revelations of Bush/Cheney-approved torture?  Perhaps they have become inured to the routine hand and foot shackling of even non-violent suspects in the American judicial system, the fitting of slavery-evoking "spit guards" on young minority defendants, the chaining of women prisoners as they deliver babies... yes, "exceptionalism" can include lots of affronts to human dignity.

One shining example of taking exception to Bush/Cheney legal and moral exceptionalism was in the JAG corps, the military's judicial and prosecutorial cadre in the Judge Advocate General branches of each of the services.  If the US still claims adherence to the Geneva Conventions, it is in large part thanks to several senior military lawyers and judges, who put their careers on the line.

Venerable Realists, and Realistic Upstarts

Exceptionalism, and Madeleine Albright's "indispensable nation" were also the subject of an IERI conference that I moderated on readings of three prominent American strategic thinkers: Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and Samuel Huntington.  I was relieved that the analyst, Jacques Lippert of IERI, took issue with Huntington's "clashing civilizations," as his amalgam of Chinese/Islamic threats to the West always sounded like the lumping together of deadly enemies Iran and Iraq with outlying crazies in North Korea to form Bush's "Axis of Evil."

But lest the audience of European Union functionaries and diplomats get the impression that American strategic thought is caught in a Kissinger-Brzezinski time warp of the Seventies, I harped on about Boston University Professor Andrew Bacevich and his take on realism as an antidote to the dark ages of neoconservatism. In "The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced By War" (my review), Bacevich builds his argument against military adventurism, and against the bipartisan tendency to look to military solutions for thorny world problems.  A musclebound muscle man is like a one-note song.  Bacevich's most recent book, "The Limits of Power: American Exceptionalism," should be required night table reading for Obama Administration advisers.

Just as Kissinger, Brzezinski, and Albright incarnated the mid-20th century European exodus to the safety of the United States, so do some of today's brightest thinkers on international affairs - Fareed Zakaria and Parag Khanna - represent another, southern, diaspora of growing importance in 21st century USA.  Their books point to "the rise of the rest" or a dynamic, resource-rich "second world" that has come up out of the old Third World.  Neither would sign on to the "realpolitik" definitions of national power that narrowly focus on troop strength or missile range.  They would, however, see merit in the DIME construct that the US military likes to inculcate in its strategic thinkers, that Diplomatic, Informational, Military, and Economic pillars constitute crucial elements of national power.  Not in isolation, but collectively.

Colin Powell, soldier and diplomat that he has been, knows a thing or two about the bases of national power, and was a keen believer in that phrase "all elements of national power."  His Powell Doctrine, which includes overwhelming force coupled with national purpose and an exit strategy, may be due for a revisit, as we learn in today's post from Diplopundit.

If so, it couldn't be more timely.

Low Tech Isn't No Tech: The Right To Dry

Or, "Les culottes à l'air: Airing the Unmentionables."

Cheapskate that I am, I am milking the Financial Times that they gave me on the airplane last weekend for all it's worth.  My favorite piece: "A woman's fight to air her dirty laundry," by Matthew Engel:

Carin Froehlich of Perkasie [PA] has been warned not to dry her laundry on a clothesline outside, following two complaints from neighbours.  “They said it made the place look like trailer trash.  They said they did not want to look at my unmentionables.”

I grew up a few miles away from Perkasie Pennsylvania, which was not known at the time as a hoity-toity high-rent town.  Like my mother, I'd say lots of 1950s and '60s Perkasie mommies dried their clean laundry in the breezy Bucks County air, and it was brought in smelling a whole lot fresher than today's stuff, hot out of the clothes dryer.  The combination of puritan disdain for public display of underwear is combined with a new snobbery which sweeps the untidiness of life behind the idiot buttons of modern machinery.

A wide screen TV in every room

Last weekend's conference in Boston was in a high-rise chain hotel, and my room was a standard-issue high energy use model: air conditioning only (windows do not open), down duvets to keep you warm (see AC, set at Arctic default), and wide screen HDTVs - I mean really wide, like 50 inches - in every one of their thousand plus rooms.

My point is this: my fellow Americans are hooked, in ways that they can't even begin to appreciate, on a high energy lifestyle, one that almost unquestioningly accepts new "musts" that are ever more gluttonous of CO₂ producing energy.

When hotels feel that they must offer ever bigger screens for the business traveler to watch 10 minutes of news, or when municipalities prohibit citizens from using wind energy to dry their laundry, it's simply an illustration of American gas guzzling that goes way beyond the size of SUV in your garage (I take that back; few Americans can park their cars in the garage, it being taken up by the overflow of junk from their MacMansions, or their ordinary suburban split levels).  Is there any hope for a Copenhagen conversion to a more reasonable lifestyle?

Engels of the FT (who brought his non-electric outdoor "Hills Hoist" clothes dryer to the States) mentions Project Laundry List, those of The Right To Dry.  Simply drying your clothes outside or on a rack (ours, pictured above, is the French model, called a "Tancarville," after the Seine bridge of similar shape) could save the United States some six percent of its electricity consumption.  Think of all the savings  to households, let alone the dent that would make in our Saudi oil import bill.  And the millions of carbon tons not spewed into the atmosphere.  Clothes would actually smell better too, and whites would remain white instead of turning clothes dryer gray.

Before Cheney made conservation a dirty word

Until the Boy Scouts of America dumped it for more esoteric disciplines, they used to have the "Conservation" Merit Badge.  That was before former VP Dick Cheney, leading the secret energy policy task force upon taking office in 2001, ridiculed the notion of conservation and pushed production - and consumption.

Cheney is gone, but his climate change denial is still with us: this week we learned that among Republicans, the percentage of those "who believe that climate change is happening is down sharply -- 76 to 54 percent," according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll.

I write this on "Black Friday," the new American feast day to the God of Consumption.  It's enough to make Smokey Bear - and this old Boy Scout - cry.

From Insecurity To Interdependence

"... from insecurity, to interdependence."

So ends the brief but eloquent "Declaration of Interdependence," written by Dr. David Suzuki and colleagues for the 1992 Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit.

In the lead up to the 2009 Copenhagen summit, scientists, political leaders, and pundits are feverishly trying to set the stage, respectively issuing dire warnings of climactic disaster, or "managing expectations," shorthand for lowering hopes for definitive action.  Exhibit One: this weekend's APEC Summit.

Like the United States' own "Founding Fathers" seminal document, the Declaration of Independence, Suzuki's declaration tries to distill self-evident truths into language that Everyman and Everywoman can grasp - "This We Know" ("we are interconnected -- using, cleansing, sharing and replenishing the fundamental elements of life").  Or, looking at the glass half full, abusing, polluting, expropriating, and wasting the fundamental elements of life.

Thankfully, the eminent Canadian scientist labors from the optimistic premise of "a new politics of hope."  Remember, he wrote the Declaration of Interdependence in 1992, when even a President like George H.W. Bush could utter these words when signing the Framework Convention on Climate Change: " to sustain development, we must protect the environment; and to protect the environment, we must sustain development."

A decade after father Bush worried about leaving a legacy for his children, son George W. was castigated by environmental groups for not only ignoring Rio's 10th anniversary, but for actively siding with the polluters.  Bush Jr. is back in Texas, where his air conditioner is presumably turned down to an Arctic low, shutting out all evidence of rapidly rising temperatures.  Once in a bubble, always in a bubble.  Until it bursts.

Independence and Interdependence need not be mutually exclusive options.  When I see a country like Denmark, in the wake of the '70s oil crises, make a concerted effort toward energy independence through use of wind, solar, and other alternative resources, I see it as helping the rest of us.  One less EU country that has to face a cold sweat as Russia threatens another natural gas valve malfunction and plunges parts of Europe into a winter deep freeze.

And if countries as different as Nigeria and Vietnam can adopt sound agricultural practices that lead to greater food security, then the rest of the world also reaps the benefit.

The US Declaration of Independence referred to "the Laws of Nature" in its preamble, though we had to wait more than two centuries before Dr. David Suzuki enumerated how those same Laws militated for our global Interdependence.  The bubble that we live in, that little crust surrounded by a vulnerable atmosphere, is our shared environment.  If you live by zero sum arithmetic, then you might look at the drought-stricken starving East Africans and say "there but for the grace of God...".

But today's starving nomads are tomorrow's boat people refugees, or next year's terrorists.  Interdependence is not idealistic gibberish: at its very root is self-interest, where the self-interest is mutual.  John Dunne said it best:

No man is an island, entire of itself...any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

If that was a self-evident truth in the 17th century, when most people never traveled beyond their village, how much truer is that in our interconnected world of today?

Israel's Long Straw, Palestine's Trickle

The Biblical "land of milk and honey" and the "wilderness" of the holy book are one and the same.  There's the freshwater Sea of Galilee, the saltwater Dead Sea (getting deader by the minute), and the Jordan River in between.  There is rocky desert, chaparral, and the occasional verdant spring.

Until the rampant development of urban Israel, suburban Israeli settlements on occupied Arab land, and the increasing gerrymandering, walling off, and bypass-roading of what is left of "Palestine" thanks to the Oslo Accords, there was basically enough water.  Enough even to build a swimming pool in the then sleepy West Bank town of Ramallah, where I went in 1972 to dig its foundations out of solid rock.  Even during those early years of The Occupation, Israelis and Palestinians managed to share the region's precious water resources.

"Share" is a word that would be difficult to justify in the current circumstances.  Today's release by Amnesty International of its damning "Troubled Waters" report elicited a predictable official Israeli response, essentially saying "Water? ...what water problem?"  After denying there is a problem, the Israeli MFA, in a reaction that is remarkable for its brevity and chutzpah, goes on to say that if there is a problem, it's the Palestinians own fault.  For a more realistic account, see the BBC's report from Gaza.

Better yet, watch "Drying Up Palestine," the short documentary film on how Israel has been sucking on a long straw, digging deep under future Palestinian independent territory and depriving currently-occupied Palestinians and future "independent" Palestinians of one of the very requisites of statehood: water resources.  Maybe Peter Snowdon and Rima Essa's film (you can see a clip here) should be up on the Amnesty site.

Image: AppleWorks clip art.

Treading Water, Under the Radar: Maldives & Diego Garcia

Dots in the Indian Ocean (image: DuniyaLive.com)

The Maldives stand an average of 7ft above sea level, and the government says they face being wiped out if oceans rise.  The government of the Maldives has held a cabinet meeting about 16ft underwater to highlight the threat of global warming.

BBC, 17 October 2009

The island has an area of approximately 10.5 square miles with an average natural elevation of four feet above sea level.  The British wish you an enjoyable stay on Diego Garcia. Upon your arrival, please familiarize yourself with BIOT [British Indian Ocean Territory] regulations and try to preserve the island's ecology.

US Military Sealift Command (MSC) website briefing for US personnel

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How nice that the US Navy is concerned about the "island's ecology."  No such care was extended to the Island's human inhabitants, who were summarily exiled by an Anglo-American pact that denied their very existence (see my post about the long-suffering Chagos Islanders).

But the Maldives President's worries about being swamped under the rising tides of climate change are starting to have their impact in strategic circles.  Here's Senator John Kerry in September:

Diego Garcia Island in the Indian Ocean, a vital hub for our military operations across the Middle East, sits on an atoll just a few feet above sea level.

Kerry's concerns about the security impact of global warning (from the Boston Globe) were echoed weeks later by NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, speaking to an audience that probably cares more than most about catastrophic effects of global warming - Lloyd's of London:

Rising sea levels will have a clear effect on the ability of our armed forces to do their jobs.  Look at Diego Garcia.  It is an important logistical hub, including for this country; it is also only a few feet above sea level at its highest point.  A one metre rise in sea levels and most of it would be flooded.   We need to assess the impacts that these kinds of events would have.

Now, though it's gratifying that these two gentlemen are concerned about the planet's health and its defense, I wish that something other than the prospect of a B-52 runway getting flooded would galvanize them into action.

The upside for the Chagos Islanders, who have been quietly rotting away in distant Mauritius for upwards of forty years, is that their native Diego Garcia and other Chagos Archipelago islands might start taking water, and therefore send the US and UK scurrying for other lily pads (how about those in Central Asia?).

Maybe the Chagossians should team up with the Maldivians to drum up support for their respective causes.  With his underwater cabinet meeting stunt - "What else could I do to attract attention?" - the Maldives President appears to be on an effective public diplomacy strategy.

Journée Sans Voitures - No Car Day In Brussels

This is an experiment, attempting to do a post by email. I am cheating, because to insert this nice "No Car" sticker from the Boston bloggers "Choosing No Car," I had to log on to my Typepad account.

Okay, enough geeky detail. The important thing is this: for the nth time in recent years, Brussels, seat of the European Union, is turning itself into a carless capital. "La Journée Sans Voitures" is a joy for anyone who values fresher air, walking IN the streets, and peace and quiet.

Not that our leafy neighborhood is noisy, but this morning, going out for fresh bread, it was like the final scene (minus the scary post apocalyptic music) of the end of the world in "On The Beach." No sound, empty streets. That will have changed when we take the tram a little later; last year our tram could barely move for all the cyclists and pedestrians clogging the city's many cultural and historic venues.

Brussels, a city of only about a million people, can go carless thanks to its wonderful integrated public transport system, where one simple ticket gets you on to trams, buses, metros, and trains. We almost never go into city center by car. So, looking for inspiration for a post-Detroit future? Come to Brussels next September and savor what it's like to spend a day without The Car.

Planet Earth: The Final Frontier

Yes, yes.  Happy 40th moon landing anniversary, NASA.  There are celebrations galore to mark the event, which I suppose is fine, given the general gloom prevailing.  But let's not get carried away.  There is nothing on the moon - or on Mars - that is nearly as important as there is on Earth.

Listening to all the Apollo nostalgia, you hear lots of stuff about not only exploring Mars, but colonizing it.  And some even see this as the ultimate escape from a dying Earth.  These people, I submit, have watched too many Star Trek episodes.

Even former astronaut Buzz Aldrin has succumbed to the mania, calling in today's Washington Post for "the first homestead in space: an American colony on a new world."  Oh my.

Climate change on a vast scale has reshaped Mars. With Earth in the throes of its own climate evolution, human outposts on Mars could be a virtual laboratory to study these vast planetary changes.

Well, Buzz, the real life laboratory is Earth in the here and now, and the goal has to be keeping Earth green and livable, not studying how Mars became the Red Planet.

Almost every day, there is a new dire report on how bad things have become so quickly, whether it's our seas becoming acidic, our glaciers melting, or the tropics heading north.  Doing the necessary on an urgent basis - drastically reducing greenhouse gases, protecting forests and wetlands, to name only a few priorities - will require effort that will dwarf that of the space program.

Do we want to divert precious resources from the fight to save Earth to mount a quixotic attempt to colonize a planet millions of miles away?  Talk about a distraction from Priority Number One.  Maybe we need a massive "place branding" campaign for the place that can't be replaced - Earth.

I'm no Luddite, and admit that research for space exploration has produced highly useful spinoffs in the battle to save planet Earth.  But we Earthlings cannot entertain notions of trashing our planet and finding refuge on Mars.  We can't just continue to pollute our way to the next pristine wilderness; there aren't any left.  It worked for a while - picture American pioneers heading ever Westward - but the trash builds up, if not in landfills, then in terms of carbon trash in the air and in our oceans.  The atmosphere - the ultimate bubble - holds it all in.

So honor those astronauts, engineers, and scientists who gave us the original Moon Walk, but harbor no illusions about Mars providing a home away from home.  And the next time you hear a politician go on about Mars exploration, bring him down to Earth.

(image: AppleWorks clipart)

Multilateralism, Sovereignty, and Homeowner Associations

In my Brussels apartment building (there are about 25 units, mostly owner-occupied), we have a homeowners association ("HOA").  I'm on the board this year, for my sins.  The board is a sort of pin-cushion, navigating the middle ground between cheapskate owners who want top-quality services but at bargain-basement fees, and the management firm that oversees maintenance, projects, etc.

It occurred to me that being in a condominium (where the "Nazis" aren't always those who you might expect) is a bit like a country belonging to a multilateral organization.  You have to sacrifice a bit of sovereignty, a bit of that freedom to do as you damn well please, in exchange for those things that are feasible in numbers.

For individuals, that might mean living in an urban or semi-urban setting, where there is intellectual stimulation and where you don't have to use a car to accomplish any task beyond mowing your lawn.  You don't always have to live in a condo or apartment complex to live this way, but there is a greater density of population, even for single-family dwelling urbanites.  You're going to get along with some of your neighbors, and some will never cease to be a pain in the neck.

When it comes to countries, some opt for the constraints of belonging to multilateral organizations because they see safety in numbers: tiny Luxembourg, hemmed in between France and Germany, was occupied (actually, annexed) by the latter in the two world wars.  For Luxembourg and other countries coming out of the 20th century's cycle of wars, surrendering a bit of sovereignty to organizations like NATO and the European Union was a bargain they were willing to strike.

Sure, there are downsides: in the UN, the US and other democracies have to listen to lectures on such things as human rights from countries to whom waterboarding is just a prelude to the really nasty stuff.  But, as the senior George Bush found when confronting Saddam Hussein in 1991 with much of the world standing behind him, there is strength in numbers.

In the many issues facing President Barack Obama, from climate change to universal health care to rekindling the economy, it's worthwhile to consider this trade off between public and private, between solidarity and individualism, between living in a condo vs. a MacMansion.  Just today, in the New York Times, you can read about how several American communities are thinking the unthinkable - "car-reduced communities," like they have in Germany.

European media have been intrigued by the possibility of an Obama Administration breakthrough on making health care available to most Americans - something that is a given here, just part of what it means to be a civilized democracy.

Yes, those "Condo Nazis" exist, but they can be tamed, and probably a worse enemy is the "condo dropout," the person who doesn't bother showing up at the annual meeting.  In this current situation of multiple world crises, no country can drop out from issues of mutual governance, where the problems are beyond the power of one country to solve.  It's good to see that the US is rejoining the "HOA."