Showing papers in "Policy Review in 2011"

Countering Beijing in the South China Sea

Abstract: The most dangerous source of instability in Asia is a rising China seeking to reassert itself, and the place China is most likely to risk a military conflict is the South China Sea. In the second decade of the 21st century, the seldom-calm waters of the South China Sea are frothing from a combination of competing naval exercises and superheated rhetoric. Many pundits, politicians, and admirals see the South China Sea as a place of future competition between powers. Speculation about impending frictions started at the July 2010 ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) when U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton delivered an overdue statement on American interests in the South China Sea. Clinton averred that the United States has a national interest in freedom of navigation in the South China Sea; that the U.S. supported a collaborative process in resolving the territorial disputes there; and that the U.S. supports the 2002 ASEAN-China declaration on the conduct of parties in the South China Sea. Despite Clinton's statement of support for China's own agreements with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, China's Foreign Ministry responded negatively, claiming that the secretary's statement was "virtually an attack on China." China's military stated that it was opposed to "internationalization" of the six-country dispute and commenced a new and unusually large naval exercise in South China Sea the very next week. This gathering maritime confrontation is instigated by China's assertions of sovereignty over the entire South China Sea and its stated intention to enforce that sovereignty. But the source of China's hubris is its view of its historic mandate to rule all under heaven. Extending China's borders a thousand miles across the South China Sea is only one policy manifestation of this vision of a new Chinese world order. Consistent with its Sinocentric ideology, Beijing believes its authority over its smaller neighbors should include determining their foreign policy. After Clinton challenged China's claim to the entire South China Sea, China's foreign minister reportedly glared at a Singaporean diplomat and pronounced, "China is a big country and other countries are small countries, and that's just a fact." (1) More telling of China's opinion of its position among nations, the following Monday China's Foreign Ministry posted a statement that "China's view represented the interests of 'fellow Asians.'" The competing territorial claims in the South China Sea are decades old, but today the Chinese government is full of a sense of accomplishment and the People's Liberation Army is flush with the fastest growing military budget in the world. Clinton's statement may have been inspired by earlier statements by Clinton's Chinese counterpart, the state councilor responsible for foreign affairs, Dai Bingguo, directly to Clinton herself and repeated to several U.S. aides that the enforcement of China's sovereignty over the South China Sea was a "core interest" on par with Taiwan and Tibet. While Dai Bingguo reportedly has desisted from using the term "core interest" to describe China's maritime sovereignty, personalities in China's military still do. In January ion the web site of the People's Daily, the official organ of the Chinese Communist party, surveyed readers about whether the South China Sea is China's "core interest"; 97 percent of nearly 4,300 respondents said yes. (2) Short of a shooting war, protecting freedom of navigation in one of the globe's busiest sea lanes requires an amicable resolution of the competing territorial claims. Starting a process to resolve or neutralize the problem will require American leadership and resolve. Firm diplomacy backed by convincing naval power and patient leadership can strike a balance in the region that protects freedom of navigation, the integrity of international law, and the independence and sovereignty of Southeast Asia's nations. The worst solution to the South China Sea dispute from the U. …

PTSD's Diagnostic Trap

Abstract: MILITARY HISTORY IS rich with tales of warriors who return from battle with the horrors of war still raging in their heads. One of the earliest examples was enshrined by Herodotus, who wrote of an Athenian warrior struck blind "without blow of sword or dart" when a soldier standing next to him was killed. The classic term--"shell shock"--dates to World War I; "battle fatigue," "combat exhaustion," and "war stress" were used in World War II. Modern psychiatry calls these invisible wounds post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). And along with this diagnosis, which became widely known in the wake of the Vietnam War, has come a new sensitivity--among the public, the military, and mental health professionals--to the causes and consequences of being afflicted. The Department of Veterans Affairs is particularly attuned to the psychic welfare of the men and women who are returning from Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom. Last July, retired Army General Eric K. Shinseki, secretary of Veterans Affairs, unveiled new procedures that make it easier for veterans who believe they are disabled by wartime stress to file benefit claims and receive compensation. "[Psychological] wounds," Shinseki declared, "can be as debilitating as any physical battlefield trauma." This is true. But gauging mental injury in the wake of war is not as straightforward as assessing, say, a lost limb or other physical damage. For example, at what point do we say that normal, if painful, readjustment difficulties have become so troubling as to qualify as a mental illness? How can clinicians predict which patients will recover when a veteran's odds of recovery depend so greatly on nonmedical factors, including his own expectations for recovery; social support available to him; and the intimate meaning he makes of his distress? Inevitably, successful caregiving will turn on a clear understanding of post-traumatic stress disorder. One of the most important and paradoxical lessons to emerge from these insights is that lowering the threshold for receipt of disability benefits is not always in the best interest of the veteran and his family. Without question, some veterans will remain so irretrievably damaged by their war experience that they cannot participate in the competitive workplace. These men and women clearly deserve the roughly $2,300 monthly tax-free benefit (given for "total," or 100 percent, disability) and other resources the Veterans Administration offers. But what if disability entitlements actually work to the detriment of other patients by keeping them from meaningful work and by creating an incentive for them to embrace institutional dependence? And what if the system, well-intentioned though it surely is, does not adequately protect young veterans from a premature verdict of invalidism? Acknowledging and studying these effects of compensation can be politically delicate, yet doing do is essential to devising reentry programs of care for the nation's invisibly wounded warriors. What is PTSD? THE MOST RECENT edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM IV) of the American Psychiatric Association defines PTSD according to symptoms; their duration; and the nature of the "trauma" or event. Symptoms fall into three categories: re-experiencing (e.g., relentless nightmares; unbidden waking images; flashbacks); hyperarousal (e.g., enhanced startle, anxiety, sleeplessness); and phobias (e.g., fear of driving after having been in a crash). These must persist for at least 30 days and impair function to some degree. Overwhelming calamity--or "stressor," as psychiatrists call it--of any kind, such as a natural disaster, rape, accident, or assault, can lead to PTSD. Notably, not everyone who confronts horrific circumstances develops PTSD. Among the survivors of the Oklahoma City bombing, for example, 34 percent developed PTSD, according to a study by psychiatric epidemiologist Carol North. …

The Accommodator: Obama's Foreign Policy

Abstract: Almost three years into his administration, observers continue to debate the nature of President Obama's overall foreign policy approach. What is the "Obama doctrine"? Some say it is a policy of international engagement. Some point to Libya, and suggest that the Obama doctrine is one of humanitarian intervention multilaterally and at minimal cost. Some look to today's fiscal constraints and say that it is all about insolvency. Some describe the Obama doctrine as a version of traditional great power realism, coming after the crusading idealism of the Bush years. Others respond that Obama has no foreign policy strategy at all--that he is simply making it up as he goes along. Each interpretation has a certain kernel of truth, but each is also seriously flawed and incomplete. Barack Obama does in fact have an overarching foreign policy strategy, going back several years in spite of recent upheavals, but its basic organizing principle is neither engagement, nor intervention, nor insolvency, nor realism per se. The centerpiece of Obama's overall for eign policy strategy is the concept of accommodation. Specifically, the president believes that international rivalries can be accommodated by American example and by his own integrative personal leadership. The problem is not that Obama has no grand strategy. The problem is that it is not working. Obama's grand strategy Any grand strategy or overall foreign policy strategy does several things. First, it specifies certain national goals or ends. Second, it identifies the policy instruments or means by which national goals will be pursued. These instruments might include, for example, diplomatic commitments, military intervention, foreign aid, and/or economic sanctions. Any viable strategy must ensure that means and ends are well matched. Commitments must not exceed capabilities. Yet strategy--unlike say, sculpture--also recognizes that our targets are animate objects, with the ability to respond, make choices, and fight back. Consequently, effective foreign policy strategists must and do strike a fine balance. On the one hand, they need to know what they want. On the other, they must be flexible as to how exactly they pursue it, given the inevitable surprises resulting from pushback by other actors within the international system. The primary ends and means of Obama's foreign policy strategy can be inferred from both his actions and his words, which have been broadly consistent since his election to the White House. To begin, his chief policy interest is not in the international realm at all, but in the domestic. Obama's leading motivation for becoming president, as he himself has said, was not simply to get elected, much less to focus on foreign affairs, but to "remake America." He aims at and has already achieved dramatic liberal or progressive reforms in numerous domestic policy areas such as health care and financial regulation. This focus on liberal domestic reform has several implications for American grand strategy, as Obama well knows. First, it means that resources must be shifted in relative terms from national security spending to domestic social and economic spending--a shift clearly visible in recent federal budgets. Second, it means steering clear of partisan political fights over national security that might detract from Obama's overall political capital. Third, it means that potentially costly new international entanglements must for the most part be avoided. Sometimes these three imperatives are in tension with one another. For example, in the autumn of 2009, Obama was tempted to begin winding down America's military engagement in Afghanistan, yet at the same time wanted to avoid appearing weak on terrorism. So he settled on an approach that called for temporary U.S. escalation in Afghanistan, resolved by subsequent disengagement beginning in July 2011. That approach was hardly optimal militarily, but it was the least bad policy for Obama in domestic political terms given his overarching priori ties. …

Ratifying Women's Rights

Abstract: THE CONVENTION ON the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) has been one of the most broadly supported international treaties since its adoption by the United Nations 30 years ago. Since its inception, I86 UN member states have ratified the convention, showing their commitment to achieving gender equality worldwide. It remains a mystery to many, therefore, that, to date, the United States remains one of a small minority of countries that have not ratified this treaty designed to ensure equality between women and men and advance women's rights across the world. The U.S. ratification of CEDAW has historically faced significant challenges from the American right, led by the late Senator Jesse Helms and conservative organizations who rallied support by claiming that the treaty would result in "demanding abortion" and "decriminalizing prostitution." However, in the past, prominent Republicans including Orrin Hatch, John McCain, and Colin Powell have supported ratification. Recently, the Obama administration has demonstrated a renewed interest in CEDAW, with prominent support coming from President Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and Legal Counsel to the State Department Harold Kon, in addition to key senators such as Barbara Boxer and John Kerry. For many advocates of women's rights, these seem like hopeful indicators that the Senate Foreign Relations Committee will consider ratification of the convention again in the near future, which we believe would be a positive step for the United States and for women across the globe. These revitalized efforts to ratify CEDAW have also been met with renewed opposition from the right. Conservative arguments in opposition to CEDAW are rooted in American exceptionalism, misinterpretations of the treaty itself, and a glorification of women's traditional roles as mothers, wives, and caregivers. They rely on an intense dose of fear-mongering about the potential destructive impact of CEDAW, which conservatives argue threatens family life in the United States with radical about its "sexual egalitarianism." Furthermore, in making these arguments, conservatives stir latent xenophobia, warning us that the CEDAW periodic reviews by a body of foreign experts cannot be better at meeting the moral challenges of equity than our own democratic institutions. And they seem most appalled at CEDAW's Article 5(a), which seeks to "achieve the elimination of prejudices and customary and all other practices which are based on the inferiority or superiority of either of the sexes or on stereotyped roles for men and women." Conservatives believe this to be particularly harmful because it risks eradicating gender roles altogether, which they view as a threat to the fiber of our society even if it is these very roles which threaten the well-being not only of women but everyone. These types of arguments against CEDAW have also been prominent among the religious right, such as the D.C.-based Family Research Council and groups like Concerned Women for America, whose mission is "to protect and promote Biblical values among all citizens" and whose vision is "for women and like-minded men, from all walks of life, to come together and restore the family to its traditional purpose." Opposition to U.S. ratification of CEDAW has not only surfaced from the right. Opponents have also come from the left, albeit to a lesser degree. For example, opponents from the left fear that signing CEDAW will be a symbolic gesture that would amount to sweeping the problem under the carpet instead of creating meaningful change for women in the U.S. who experience discrimination on the basis of sex. Other liberals oppose the U.S. ratification of CEDAW because they claim that the equality framework on which the treaty was developed is outdated. For example, feminist theorists pose the paradox of a rights-based approach that, by working specifically to address women's subordination, in some ways further entrenches women's subordinate positions as opposed to liberating them. …

The Inequity of the Progressive Income Tax

Abstract: Class Wars: A Parable ONCE UPON a time in the land of America, there lived triplet brothers named Tom, Dick, and Harry Class. They were 4 5 years old, had virtually the same aptitude (skill), and were raised in the same home. Each was married and had two children. All three were employed as carpenters making $ 2 5 per hour, working 50 weeks a year. While they were almost identical in most respects, they had somewhat different preferences and values. For example, Tom, who worked 20 hours a week, had a different work ethic from his brothers, Dick and Harry, who each worked 60 hours per week. Neither Tom's nor Dick's wives worked, while Harry's wife worked 40 hours per week as an office manager making $50,000 per year (the same hourly rate as her husband). Tom and Dick spent all of their income, and were relying on Social Security to take care of them when they retired. Harry and his wife, on the other hand, saved most of her after-tax income over many years, gradually accumulating $300,000. They invested this money in bonds and real estate that produced $25,000 a year in interest and rental income. This was the income of each family: Family Tom Dick Harry Work hours per Week: 20 60 100 Annual Wages Husband: $25,000 $75,000 $75,000 Wife: 0 0 50,000 Investment Income: 0 0 25,000 Total Income: $25,000 $75,000 $150,000 Despite their different priorities, the Class families were close; so much so that when a new housing tract was developed in their community, they each bought an equal-priced home on the same private street. Theirs were the only houses on the street. One day the brothers decided to pool their funds for the purpose of improving their street. Concerned about crime and safety, and desirous of a more attractive setting for their homes, the three families decided to: install a gate at the street's entrance to deter burglars; add lighting for safety and additional security; repave the street's surface to repair damage; and install landscaping to beautify the approach to their homes. The work was done for a total cost of $30,000. The brothers were quite happy with the outcome and felt the $30,000 was a worthy expenditure given the benefits provided each family. But when it came time to divide up the bill, the problems began. Harry thought it would be simple to divide the bill. Since the benefits to each family were equal, each brother should pay one-third, or about $10,000. But Tom and Dick objected. "Why should we pay the same as you?" they said. "You make much more money than we do." Harry was puzzled. "Why is that relevant?" he asked. "My family makes more money than yours does because my wife and I work long hours and we earn extra money on our savings. Why should we be penalized for working and saving?" Harry looked at Tom and said, "I'm no smarter or more talented than you are. If you and your wife worked harder and saved more you would make as much as my family does." To which Tom replied, "I don't work more because I value my leisure time more than I value money. And I don't save because I prefer the gratification of consumption today more than I will when I'm too old to enjoy it." Tom was adamant. How could Harry, who was clearly "rich," ask him to pay the same amount, when it was obviously harder for him to do so? Dick thought for a moment, and then said, "I've got an idea. Our aggregate income is $250,000, and $30,000 is 12 percent of that amount. Why don't we each pay that percentage of our income? Under that formula, Tom would owe $3,000, I would owe $9,000, and Harry would owe $18,000. Since I make three times as much as Tom, I would pay three times as much. Harry, who makes twice as much as me and six times as much as Tom would pay two times as much as me and six times as much as Tom. …

No Thanks to Gratitude

Abstract: Twenty years ago the noted political commentator William F. Buckley, Jr. published a short book, Gratitude, M to promote his version of a plan for national public service. His proposal proved highly controversial, especially W among conservatives, with some assailing it as a dangermmous expansion of state power and others praising it as a way to rebuild patriotism. Views on the idea of national service at the time were already so firmly fixed, however, that few commentators bothered to consider Buckley's novel justification for the program, which was encapsulated in the work's title. Buckley introduced his essay by recounting a touching short story by Anatole France, which drew on an old medieval legend. It describes a humble young monk who arrives as a postulant at a monastery possessing the one talent of juggling. Ashamed how this skill compared to the refined proficiencies of the other brothers, who excelled in singing, musical instrumentality, and poetic expression, the young monk slipped furtively into the sanctuary in the dead of night to perform his juggling act before the statue of Our Lady. This gift was all he could offer; but in its very simplicity and sincerity it represented "gratitude reified." Buckley then posed the question of how young Americans might display devotion to their heritage--not just to the country, but to its laws and practices that have given them their liberty. His answer? A term of public service that would include such nonheroic jobs as helping to care for the old and the sick: "By asking them to make sacrifices we are reminding them that they owe a debt, even as the juggler felt a debt to Our Lady." And if these young citizens do not feel a need to repay this debt, or perhaps even acknowledge that they owe one, still, Buckley insisted, performing service is important, for "the failure to express gratitude ... brings on the coarsening of the sensibilities, a drying out of the wellsprings of civic and personal virtue." In the end, Buckley's primary goal was less to provide the concrete benefits from service activities than to "shape the national ethos" of the citizenry by developing a capacity for gratitude. Today, two decades removed from this proposal, little enthusiasm and no funds are available for a program of this kind. The whole idea has vanished from public discussion. What remains of interest, however, are the questions that Buckley introduced about gratitude and its role in political life. In what measure do public actors (or the state) have a stake in expressing or promoting gratitude? Is the virtue of gratitude diminishing in modern America, and if so, what are the sources or causes of its decline? What is gratitude? gratitude IS one of the most fundamental and complex of the virtues, overlapping with and undergirding many of the others. Cicero once characterized it as "the mother of all the virtues." Although precision of definition in such matters is neither possible nor desirable--some things being better investigated by what Pascal called an esprit de finesse rather than an esprit de geometrie--there is need for at least a rough idea of gratitude's meaning. And where better to begin, at least in an American context, than by consulting our greatest lexicographer, Noah Webster? Webster commences his r828 dictionary entry on gratitude as follows: "An emotion of the heart, excited by a favor or benefit received; a sentiment of kindness or good will towards a benefactor; thankfulness. Gratitude is an agreeable emotion, consisting in or accompanied with good will to a benefactor, and a disposition to make a suitable return of benefits or services, or when no return can be made, with a desire to see the benefactor prosperous and happy." The characterization of gratitude as an "emotion" or "sentiment" seems to identify it as a feeling that wells up spontaneously. Even so, it has been subjected to the strongest kind of moral judgment. …

The Sordid Origin of Hate-Speech Laws

Abstract: All western European countries have hate-speech laws. In 2008, the EU adopted a framework decision on "Combating Racism and Xenophobia" that obliged all member states to criminalize certain forms of hate speech. On the other side of the Atlantic, the Supreme Court of the United States has gradually increased and consolidated the protection of hate speech under the First Amendment. The European concept of freedom of expression thus prohibits certain content and viewpoints, whereas, with certain exceptions, the American concept is generally concerned solely with direct incitement likely to result in overt acts of lawlessness. Yet the origin of hate-speech laws has been largely forgotten. The divergence between the United States and European countries is of comparatively recent origin. In fact, the United States and the vast majority of European (and Western) states were originally opposed to the internationalization of hate-speech laws. European states and the U.S. shared the view that human rights should protect rather than limit freedom of expression. Rather, the introduction of hate-speech prohibitions into international law was championed in its heyday by the Soviet Union and allies. Their motive was readily apparent. The communist countries sought to exploit such laws to limit free speech. As Americans, Europeans and others contemplate the dividing line emerging on the extent to which free speech should be limited to criminalize the "defamation of religions" and "Islamophobia," launched by the member states of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (oic) since 1999, they should bear this forgotten history in mind. However well-intended--and its initial proponents were anything but well-intended--the Western acceptance of hate-speech laws severely limits the ability of liberal democracies to counter attempts to broaden the scope of hate-speech laws under international human rights law, with potentially devastating consequences for the preservation of free speech. Freedom of expression and hate speech The (nonbinding) universal Declaration of Human Rights m (UDHR) adopted in 1948 does not include an explicit duty to prohibit hate speech. Article 19 simply secures "freedom of opinion and expression." However, the drafting history shows that the issues of hate-speech regulation and restrictions on free speech were frequently discussed. During the negotiation of Article 19, the drafters faced the challenge of whether, and if so to what extent, freedom of expression should tolerate even intolerance. (1) The majority of states favored a robust protection of free speech such as that set out in a U.S. proposal (UN Doc. E/CN.4/21), which read "there shall be freedom of speech, of the press and of expression by any means whatsoever." However, the Soviet Union continuously proposed various amendments aimed at prohibiting expressions of intolerance. The first UK proposal on the wording of an article aimed at securing freedom of expression recognized, like the Soviet proposal, the possibility for states to limit this right, in the interests of national security, against incitement to violence and disorder and obscene publications, whereas the UK proposal expressed doubts about the possibility of including publications aimed at suppressing human rights. But the UK did recognize a danger that these words would afford a wider power for the limitation of freedom of publication than is necessary or desirable" they found "that it would be inconsistent for a Bill of Rights whose whole object is to establish human rights and fundamental freedoms to prevent any Government, if it wished to do so, from taking steps against publications whose whole object was to destroy the rights and freedoms which it is the purpose of the Bill to establish. At first glance this proposal may seem wholly reconcilable with the efforts of the Soviet Union. …

Feminism by Treaty

Abstract: On November 18, 2010, a surprisingly large and boisterous crowd gathered in a U.S. Senate chamber to witness new hearings on a decades-old United Nations treaty. Guards had to caution the excited attendees to keep their voices down. Senator Richard Durbin, chair of the Senate Subcommittee on Human Rights and the Law, requested that another room be opened to accommodate the large gathering of feminist leaders, human-rights activists, lawyers, lobbyists, and journalists. "Women have been waiting for 30 years," said Durbin in his opening statement. "The United States should ratify this treaty without further delay." The treaty in question--the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW)--commits signatory nations not only to eliminating discrimination but also to ensuring women's "full development and advancement" in all areas of public and private life. The document was adopted by the General Assembly and submitted to UN member states in 1979. Since then, nearly every nation has ratified what many now call the "Women's Bill of Rights" or the "Women's Magna Carta." The only holdouts are three Islamic countries (Iran, Sudan, and Somalia), a few Pacific islands--and the United States. "Look at the company we are keeping in refusing to ratify this treaty," said a dismayed Senator Durbin. "We can do better." In fact, America's failure to ratify the Women's Treaty has not been for lack of powerful support. President Jimmy Carter submitted it to the Senate for ratification in 1980, and many influential legislators of both parties have favored it over the years. In 1993, 68 senators, including Republicans Orrin Hatch, John McCain, and Strom Thurmond, urged President Bill Clinton to secure ratification. Nine years later, President George W. Bush's State Department told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that it was "generally desirable" and "should be ratified." Its supporters have included not only political leaders and women's groups but also broad-based organizations such as the AARP, AFL-CIO, American Bar Association, and League of Women Voters. Even the Audubon Society has endorsed the Women's Treaty. Some ascribe the U.S. failure to ratify the treaty to one man: the late Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina. To Helms, CEDAW was a terrible treaty "negotiated by radical feminists with the intent of enshrining their radical anti-family agenda into international law." As chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee from 1995 to 2001, Helms refused even to hold hearings on the matter. In 1999, ten women from the House of Representatives marched into his committee room, disrupted a hearing, and demanded that he schedule CEDAW hearings. Pounding his gavel, Chairman Helms reprimanded the placard-carrying women for their breach of decorum. "Please be a lady," he said to the leader, Representative Lynn Woolsey from California. He then instructed the guards to eject the group from the room. (Among the shaken protesters was future Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.) Representative Woolsey would later tell the press that Helms "held CEDAW hostage so that women across the globe continued to be victimized and brutalized." But Senator Helms never wavered. At a 2002. Senate hearing, he described the treaty as harmful to women as well as a direct threat to American sovereignty. "It will never see the light of day on my watch." Helms's watch is now long over, and treaty supporters can see daylight. President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden are strong supporters. So are key Senators John Kerry, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, and Barbara Boxer, chairwoman of the subcommittee with jurisdiction over it. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is an enthusiast, as is Harold Koh, former dean of the Yale Law School and now the State Department's chief legal adviser. An influential advocate of "transnational jurisprudence," Koh invokes the sad irony that "more than half a century after Eleanor Roosevelt pioneered the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, her country still has not ratified . …

The Rush to Condemn Genetically Modified Crops

Abstract: IN SPITE OF more than twenty years of scientific, humanitarian, and financial successes and an admirable record of health and environmental safety, genetic engineering applied to agriculture continues to be beleaguered by activists. Gene-spliced, or so-called genetically modified, crop plants are now grown on nearly 150 million acres in the United States alone, helping farmers to increase yields, reduce pesticide spraying, and save topsoil--and without injury to a single person or damage to an ecosystem. But this remarkable record hasn't kept radical environmentalists from condemning and obstructing the technology. When they can't sway public opinion with outright misrepresentations or induce regulators to reject products, activists have resorted to vandalism of field trials and, finally, to harassment with nuisance lawsuits. Environmental activists succeeded in alarming the American public about gene-spliced crops and foods for a time during the 1990s and the early part of last decade, but they cried wolf so often in the face of an unbroken string of successes that the public began to tune them out. More recently, the activists have had to dig deeper into their bag of tricks and revive a proven strategy for obstructing progress: litigation that challenges the procedural steps government agencies take when approving individual gene-spliced crops. Since 2007, a coalition of green activist groups and organic farmers has used the courts to overturn two final approvals for gene-spliced crop varieties and the issuance of permits to test several others. At least one additional case is now pending. The NEPA process UNDER THE NATIONAL Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), which took effect in 1970, all federal government agencies are required to consider the effects that any "major actions" they take may have on the "human environment." Agencies can exempt whole categories of routine or repetitive decisions, but most other decisions--such as the issuance of a new regulation, the siting of a new road, bridge, or power plant, or the approval of a new agricultural technology--trigger the NEPA obligation to evaluate environmental impacts. If the regulatory agency concludes that the action will have "no significant impact" (a legal term of art), it issues a relatively brief Environmental Assessment explaining the basis for that decision. If the environment is likely to be affected significantly, however, the agency must prepare a comprehensive Environmental Impact Statement, which typically requires thousands of man-hours, details every imaginable effect, and runs to hundreds (or even thousands) of pages. The obligation under NEPA is wholly procedural, which means that even significant environmental effects do not prohibit the agency from ultimately taking the proposed actions. Its purpose is merely to force government agencies to consider the possibility that their actions may result in environmental effects, but courts have interpreted the law broadly and expanded its impact, requiring a comprehensive review of every imaginable effect on the "human environment." This category now encompasses not only harm to the natural ecology but also economic, social, and even aesthetic impacts. It has become easy, therefore, for agencies to miss some tangential matter and be tripped up by an irresponsible litigant who alleges that the environmental review was incomplete. And even when regulators actually do consider a potential impact but reject the concern due to its unimportance or improbability, they can run afoul of NEPA by failing to extensively and comprehensively document their reasoning. That is exactly what happened with the challenges to approvals of gene-spliced crops. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has approved 74 different gene-spliced crop varieties for commercial-scale cultivation, including dozens of varieties of corn, cotton, canola, potato, soybean, and tomato, as well as a handful of other crop species. …

Conservative Humility, Liberal Irony

Abstract: THREE books on American conservatism were published last year by prominent university presses, and taken together they raise an intriguing question It's not that the books themselves say anything deeply novel In fact each devotes itself to crafting its own variation on a well-worn theme: that in both domestic and foreign policy, American conservatism is a camp divided against itself In domestic affairs, the intramural conservative conflict pits libertarians (or "economic conservatives") against traditionalists (aka "social" or "religious" conservatives) As David Courtwright, for example, tells it in No Right Turn: Conservative Politics in a Liberal America, American conservatism exhibits a "sociological disunity" between "libertarians" who believe in the "free market," with its assumption that the pursuit of individual self-interest leads to maximal social well being, and "Christian conservatives," who worry that "capitalism create[s], temptations, intrusions, and distractions at odds with conservative religious values and moral self-discipline" In The Rise and Fall of Modern American Conservatism: A Short History, David Farber gives the same point a historic spin: In the 1960s, "William Buckley worried that some economic conservatives failed to pay obeisance to the Christian verities, whereas Barry Goldwater was uncomfortable mixing religion and politics" The upshot is that while libertarians are noninterventionists when it comes to government, believing that each individual knows best how to pursue his own interests, social conservatives are interventionists They see a role for government in "soulcraft"--in the molding of character through aid to parochial schools, for example, or measures to strengthen the traditional family When it comes to foreign policy, as the books recount it, conservatives are equally riven In Neoconservatism: The Biography of a Movement, Justin Vaisse explores at length the tension between what he terms the neoconservative "moralism" of Robert Kagan and William Kristol, with its overriding goal of spreading global democracy, and the realism of Henry Kissinger and Brent Scowcroft, with its supreme doctrinal principle that America should act beyond its borders only to the extent that its interests dictate David Farber chimes in on this point as well: "Phyllis Schlafly and other prominent conservatives," he writes, "were sometimes mortified by President George Bush's vigorous use of state power abroad" While realists thus lean heavily toward noninterventionism in almost all cases, neoconservatives are much more open to intervention on the international stage Each book, not surprisingly, concludes on a pessimistic note about the prospects for conservatism in America, For Farber, these twin tensions suggest that American conservatism may have "outlasted its historic purpose" According to Vaisse, although neoconservatism may have a long-term "future," "its fortunes now seem on the decline" Courtwright, though disclaiming any explicit predictions, concludes that the conservatism of the last 40 years was a "messy failure" Warnings of a conservative crack-up in either foreign or domestic policy have of course long been sounded, and conservatives themselves frankly acknowledge and debate the libertarian/social conservative and realist/neo-conservative tensions But in coming out at the same time, and in so fully exploring both conservatism's domestic-policy and foreign-policy fault lines, these books raise questions without answering a deeper issue: Is there, perhaps, an intellectual connection between conservatism's two tensions, the libertarian/social-conservative conflict in domestic affairs, and the neocon-servative/realist divide in foreign policy? And if so, does such a connection actually point to a deeper coherence within contemporary American conservatism? Interest and restraint, values and freedom HERE is ONE way of identifying a pattern--a kind of symmetry--between the two tensions …

China: Big Changes Coming Soon

Abstract: BIG changes are ahead for China, probably abrupt ones. The economy has grown so rapidly for many years, over 30 years at an average of nine percent a year, that its size makes it a major player in trade and finance and increasingly in political and military matters. This growth is not only of great importance internationally, it is already having profound domestic social effects and it is bound to have internal political ones--sooner or later. Two kinds of changes are in store: political and economic. The order in which they occur will affect their impacts, and that order is very uncertain. In any case, big discontinuities are likely before 2020. Social changes Sooner versus later can make a large difference. It is one thing to believe that China's growth will lead eventually to political change (Deng Xiaoping told George Shultz in 1988 that China would become a democracy in 50 years, perhaps meaning: "Forget about it."), but is quite another matter to expect political change within this decade--an argument made here. But things are not so simple (they never are); another line of argument, discussed below, is that there is a good chance of an abrupt economic slowdown over this period. One should not expect these conjectured events to be independent; political turbulence would hurt the economy and a sharp economic slowdown would surely have political consequences. The interplay between these two prospects, a political disruption and/or an economic jolt, can only be a matter of speculation, and some is offered here. The leading edge of the time when these events might occur, assuming continued high-speed growth, is 2015--soon enough to get our attention--with the odds increasing in successive years. The common factor that connects them is that China will reach a GDP per capita level of $17,000 by about then (in 2005 purchasing power parity). This is the level at which all non-oil-rich countries are at least "partly free" as rated by Freedom House, with the large majority being "Free." Also fostering freedoms is the level of education, and that too is steadily increasing in China. While today it is deep in the "non-free" category, assuming growth is sustained at nine to ten percent a year it will reach this freedom benchmark level by 2015; if growth slows to seven percent annually, as Premier Wen Jiabao has suggested it will, that level is reached not long after--by 2017. (To be more precise, with continued high growth there is a 50-50 chance of China being declared partly free by 20 1 7, odds that will increase thereafter.) Most discussion on this topic focuses, understandably, on political freedoms, the ability of a people to choose their rulers. But Freedom House has two freedom indexes: One is on political rights while the other is civil liberties (for the latter, think of the U.S. Bill of Rights). On these measures, China today has a bottom score on political rights and is rated one step above the bottom on civil liberties. There should be no argument about the political rating; it is a Leninist state in which the Communist Party has combined economic liberalizing with tight political control. But economic liberalizing is having profound social consequences. Its foundation is prosperity. Prosperity is decidedly unequally divided, but a large middle class has emerged centered in the cities in the eastern part of the country, there is a growing private sector, the press is freer than a decade ago and much freer than 30 years ago (but with political speech remaining decidedly unfree), the labor market is more open, urban residency permits are less binding, religious practices are often harassed but are widely tolerated, the legal system crawls ahead, and people have a growing sense of having rights (not a traditional Chinese value). Prosperity may be decidedly unequally divided but, again, a large middle class has emerged centered in the cities in the eastern part of the country. …

The Persistence of Genocide

Abstract: ACCORDING TO THE great historian of the Holocaust, Raul Hilberg, the phrase "Never Again" first appeared on handmade signs put up by inmates at Buchenwald in April, 1945, shortly after the camp had been liberated by U.S. forces. "I think it was really the Communists who were behind it, but I am not sure," Hilberg said in one of the last interviews he gave before his death in the summer of 2007. Since then, "Never Again" has become kind of shorthand for the remembrance of the Shoah. At Buchenwald, the handmade signs were long ago replaced by a stone monument onto which the words are embossed in metal letters. And as a usage, it has come to seem like a final word not just on the murder of the Jews of Europe, but on any great crime against humanity that could not be prevented. "Never Again" has appeared on monuments and memorials from Paine, Chile, the town with proportionately more victims of the Pinochet dictatorship than any other place in the country, to the Genocide Museum in Kigali, Rwanda. The report of CONADEP, the Argentine truth commission set up in 1984 after the fall of the Galtieri dictatorship, was titled "Nunca Mas"--"Never Again" in Spanish. And there is now at least one online Holocaust memorial called "Never Again." There is nothing wrong with this. But there is also nothing all that right with it either. Bluntly put, an undeniable gulf exists between the frequency with which the phrase is used--above all on days of remembrance most commonly marking the Shoah, but now, increasingly, other great crimes against humanity--and the reality, which is that 65 years after the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps, "never again" has proved to be nothing more than a promise on which no state has ever been willing to deliver. When, last May, the writer Elie Wiesel, himself a former prisoner in Buchenwald, accompanied President Barack Obama and Chancellor Angela Merkel to the site of the camp, he said that he had always imagined that he would return some day and tell his father's ghost that the world had learned from the Holocaust and that it had become a "sacred duty" for people everywhere to prevent it from recurring. But, Wiesel continued, had the world actually learned anything, "there would be no Cambodia, and no Rwanda and no Darfur and no Bosnia." Wiesel was right: The world has learned very little. But this has not stopped it from pontificating much. The Obama administration's National Security Strategy Paper, issued in May 2010, exemplifies this tendency. It asserts confidently that "The United States is committed to working with our allies, and to strengthening our own internal capabilities, in order to ensure that the United States and the international community are proactively engaged in a strategic effort to prevent mass atrocities and genocide." And yet again, we are treated to the promise, "never again." "In the event that prevention fails," the report states, "the United States will work both multi-laterally and bilaterally to mobilize diplomatic, humanitarian, financial, and--in certain instances--military means to prevent and respond to genocide and mass atrocities." Of course, this is not strategy, but a promise that, decade in and decade out, has proved to be empty. For if one were to evaluate these commitments by the results they have produced so far, one would have to say that all this "proactive engagement" and "diplomatic, financial, and humanitarian mobilization" has not accomplished very much. No one should be surprised by this. The U.S. is fighting two wars and still coping (though it has fallen from the headlines) with the floods in Pakistan, whose effects will be felt for many years in a country where America's security interests and humanitari an relief efforts are inseparable. At the same time, the crisis over Iran's imminent acquisition of nuclear weapons capability is approaching its culmination. Add to this the fact that the American economy is in shambles, and you do not exactly have a recipe for engagement. …

A Climate Policy for the Real World

Abstract: GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS WORLDWIDE are trying to put the best face on the 2010 United Nations climate change negotiations in Cancun, especially after 2009's debacle in Copenhagen. But the talks produced little real progress and led many to wonder whether the two global climate meetings represent a necessary, albeit somewhat sideways step in the long process towards an eventual global treaty reducing greenhouse gases or, alternatively, the gradual and unsurprising end to a nearly twenty-year effort to achieve binding international mandates. Advocates of a binding global treaty on greenhouse gas emissions are divided over the importance of the new agreement coming out of Cancun. For any who might harbor doubts, the Obama administration's approach to the negotiations is revealing: Neither the president nor the secretary of state (nor the vice president, for that matter) traveled to Mexico, leaving the negotiations in the hands of State Department Special Envoy Todd Stern. Key congressional leaders also skipped this year's talks. The administration's reduced emphasis on the UN meetings, and continuing international disagreements over climate change, demonstrate an uncomfortable fact for many greens: U.S. efforts to stem climate change thus far have largely vindicated the Bush administration's approach to global action on climate change during its final years. The failures of the high-profile Copenhagen talks--and of U.S. domestic legislation--reflect structural political and economic realities that will be profoundly difficult to overcome, if they can be overcome at all. Obama would do well to understand the lessons of Copenhagen and cap-and-trade and move on to a more practical approach--especially after the 2010 midterm elections. The pragmatic wing of the activist community has cautiously praised the Cancun summit, which produced a deal that brought a voluntary international climate agreement reached on the margins in Copenhagen inside the UN process and created a fund to help poor developing countries reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and manage the consequences of a warming Earth. At the other end of the spectrum, the climate movement's doctrinaire ideologues have denounced the talks' failure to produce a binding agreement on deep reductions. They are all the more bitter after the Copenhagen fiasco, years of resentment of the Bush administration's approach, and earlier surety that the Democrats controlling the White House and the Congress would accomplish what the prior Republican president was unwilling to try. The fact that they have no "Plan B" for addressing the climate problem--and apparently cannot conceive of a solution other than unprecedented and therefore very unlikely global regulation--only adds to their frustration. Equally troubling to both of these camps is the Kyoto Protocol's looming expiration in 2012, with its results limited and no follow-on arrangements in place. Since Kyoto's modest emissions targets were secondary to its goal of establishing a global system for deeper future reductions, supporters of binding international targets and timetables for emissions are alarmed by the relentless ticking of the clock. Compounding activists' worries is the refusal of key parties to the Kyoto Protocol--including Japan and Russia--to agree to an extension through a new so-called "commitment period." Japan sensibly refuses to accept deeper emissions reductions without commitments from the United States and China. Russia--whose ratification brought Kyoto across the threshold that made the pact legally binding--seems more interested in its ability to sell emissions credits than in preventing climate change. Moscow was an enormous beneficiary of Kyoto's 1990 base year for measuring emissions reductions; the combination of the Soviet Union's vast and highly inefficient industrial base and Russia's subsequent economic collapse meant that the country did not have to do anything to meet its targets and could sell both its natural gas and its leftover emissions to Europe. …

The Perfect Officer

Abstract: MILITARY ESTABLISHMENTS CHERISH heroes that confirm their self-image, and as the embodiment of British cool, Sir John Moore has few rivals: Described by his biographer Carola Oman as an Achilles without the heel, Moore was one of Britain's most accomplished commanders during the Napoleonic wars, and he has a timeless quality about him. Having risen in the army ranks due to ability rather than wealth, he served in the hotspots of the war against the French: in the West Indies, in Egypt, in Sicily, and on the Iberian Peninsula. "With his direct and unaffected manner, he was the very opposite of a show-off like the navy's Sir Sydney Smith, who had blocked Napoleon's advance at Acre and who was busy promoting himself as a second Nelson. Reporting home on the battle of Alexandria, Smith turned up at the Admiralty decked out in a Turkish outfit, complete with turban, shawl, and two pistols in his girdle. Smith was long on daring, but short on judgment. Moore had both. Needless to say, the two of them did not get along. In the British effort to drive the French out of Egypt, where Napoleon had left his army to fend for itself after Nelson had destroyed the French fleet in Abukir Bay, General Moore was sent to coordinate with the Ottoman army in Jaffa; his equanimity was deemed to have a calming effect on the volatile Orientals. In the ensuing battle of Alexandria, the reserve under Moore bore the brunt of the French onslaught and stood firm despite running out of ammunition, confirming Moore's image as "a man impossible to alarm." The surrender of the garrisons of Cairo and Alexandria marked the definitive end of the French adventure in Egypt. Not only could Moore fight. His reputation as a trainer of men was established as commander of the Light Brigade at Shorncliffe Camp on the Kentish coast, whence he directed defense preparations against the force Napoleon had assembled across the Channel during the 1803-1805 invasion scare. Moore did not share the enthusiasm for Prussian tactics shown by Sir David Dundas, the army's adjutant-general, whose drill manual boiled the Prussian method down to eighteen maneuvers, to which Moore referred dismissively as those "damned eighteen maneuvers": Prussian precision maneuvers might look fine on the parade ground, but on the battlefield, they were outdated. What Moore sought, he noted, was "not a new drill, but a new discipline, a new spirit that should make of the whole a living organism to replace a mechanical instrument." Thus the much looser light infantry tactics that became known as "Sir John Moore's system" required "not so much men of stature as it requires them to be intelligent, hardy and active." The point was to "encourage to the utmost the initiative of the individual, treating soldiers as men and not as machines." A well-read and humane man, he was sparing in his use of the lash. Of the 52nd, "there is not a better regiment and there is none where there is less punishment," he proudly noted. What was to be his final assignment was with the British expeditionary force on the Iberian Peninsula, an ill-planned and ill-led venture. Moore had to take over after its commander was recalled. The efforts of the Spanish allies had collapsed, but in a daring move, designed to lure Napoleon north, Moore attacked his line of communication, forcing the French emperor to move against him personally, but managing to give him the slip. In disgust Napoleon left it to Marshal Soult to take over the chase. A retreat is considered the most depressing maneuver a commander can undertake. After untold sufferings in the Spanish winter and casualties of 3,000 dead and 500 wounded that had to be left behind, Moore managed to get his force into position to be extracted by the navy. But first they had to make a stand to beat off their French pursuers, which they successfully did in the battle of Corunna. Moore, however, was among the casualties. …

A Smarter Approach to the Yuan

Abstract: THE BEST LAW schools and public policy graduate schools inculcate in their students an ability to make the strongest possible case in favor of a position or policy with which they disagree. The test of whether the lesson has been truly learned is whether those who favor the position would accept its rendition as a fair and effective representation of why they favor it. With this in mind, I present below the argument for the U.S. stance favoring a substantial rise in the undervalued Chinese yuan. The U.S. position has been repeatedly stated, albeit in abbreviated and nuanced form, by President Obama and Treasury Secretary Geithner. It is also reflected in the large bipartisan majority in the House of Representatives that approved legislation to allow a retaliatory tariff on China's exports to the U.S. unless China revalues its currency. It has been expressed more vociferously and combatively by key leaders in the Senate, and by politically-charged commentators including Paul Krugman. Once the case for this "pro" position has been presented fairly and fully, I will explain why I think it is fundamentally wrong. I will then go on to suggest measures that would be more appropriate and effective in contributing to a "rebalancing" of China's international accounts as well as those of the U.S. than would a revaluation of the Chinese yuan. In early January, when President Hu Jintao met in Washington, D.C., with President Obama, the agenda for the meeting deftly acknowledged the presidents' disagreement on the currency issue without discussing, let alone resolving, it. The case for revaluing the yuan THE CHINESE YUAN (also known as the renminbi, or "people's currency") trades in foreign exchange markets at a rate of approximately 6.7 yuan per dollar (equivalent to about fifteen U.S. cents per yuan). Another measure that accords the yuan a considerably higher value is based on the goods and services the yuan can buy within China compared to what these same goods and services would cost in the U.S. This rate is referred to as the yuan's purchasing power parity (PPP). The PPP valuation of the yuan is roughly two or three times higher (between 2.2 and 3.4 yuan per U.S. dollar, or between 30 and 40 U.S. cents per yuan) than the market exchange rate. Associated with the yuan's value in foreign exchange markets is the fact that the value of China's global exports of goods and services perennially exceeds by large amounts the value of its imports. Indeed, this excess has often been larger than the combined trade surpluses of the two countries that have the world's next-largest trade surpluses, Germany and Japan. China's annual global trade surplus is currently about $200 billion; the surplus has been considerably larger in prior years. More than half of this global surplus is China's bilateral trade surplus with the U.S. When China's net current earnings from other sources besides trade--including its net receipts from accumulated prior Chinese investments in the U.S., Europe, Asia, and the rest of the world, as well as the remittances it receives from Chinese residents abroad--are added to its trade surplus, the result is a Chinese global current account surplus amounting to about $300 billion annually. The value of a currency that underpins such a large surplus would normally be expected to rise (that is, to "appreciate"). The reason for this expected revaluation is that the dollar demand for that currency (the yuan) by other countries to pay for the imports they receive from China greatly exceeds the supply of yuan resulting from China's requirements to pay for the imports it receives from the U.S. and the rest of the world. But this normal revaluation process is thwarted because China interferes with the functioning of this standard demand-supply interaction. China does this by withdrawing the surplus dollars from the exchange market, thus neutralizing their effects on the exchange value of the yuan. …

The GOP's 2012 Field

Abstract: ELECTION 2012 HAS already begun. In fact, it's in full gear. To no one's surprise, President Barack Obama in early April formed his reelection committee, which will allow his campaign to begin raising money for what is expected to be the most expensive presidential campaign in American history. His reelection, though, is by no means a sure thing--thanks in large part to the state of the U.S. economy. With the U.S. unemployment rate hovering around nine percent, the national average price of gas approaching four dollars per gallon, and the housing market nationwide continuing to fall, Republicans are preparing for a presidential election that they hope will be a referendum on President Obama and his economic policies. A recent USA Today/Gallup poll should not give "Obama for America" (ofa) much comfort: Only 37 percent approve of the president's handling of the economy. With that as a backdrop, eight Republicans have already declared their candidacies for the Republican nomination--sensing a real opportunity to make Barack Obama a one-term president. The White House, of course, has taken notice of the polls and the competition. And it has readily acknowledged that the electoral map that won Obama the Oval Office in 2008 will be strikingly different in 2012. What follows is an evaluation of the Republican field for the nomination, who the White House fears most, and what will likely be the path to the presidency for the 2012 Republican nominee. The candidates WITH A WAR chest that dwarfs his closest competitor, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney is seen by the White House as the early front-runner for the nomination. Money matters for Republicans--particularly in this election cycle. Obama the senator raised $750 million in 2008. With the power of the presidency, OFA is widely expected to meet or exceed that total in 2012. Romney's fundraising prowess was put on display in mid-May when he raised $10.25 million in Las Vegas in a single one-day call-a-thon. But it's not just Romney's network of wealthy donors that the White House fears. It's his ability to appeal to independents that won Romney the governorship in "liberal" Massachusetts. Since losing the Republican nomination to John McCain in 2008, Romney has never really stopped campaigning. From Iowa to New Hampshire to South Carolina and Florida--the states that vote first in the Republican nominating process--Romney has touted his business experience as a way to attack President Obama and his handling of the U.S. economy. The attacks on Obama (and Romney's high name identification) appear to be working. Romney now leads most polls of likely Republican voters. Even more impressive, he is the only Republican presidential candidate who leads President Obama in a head-to-head match-up in some recent national polls. Romney is betting that the faltering U.S. economy--combined with his business and executive experience--are the perfect ingredients to secure him the Republican nomination and ultimately the White House. As his campaign spokesman told me, "This election is about two things--jobs and the economy." Romney gave a preview of his campaign message in the first Republican debate in New Hampshire. Obama, he argued, didn't cause the economic recession. Instead, he said, his economic policies have prolonged it. Romney's message has found some resonance with voters. An nbc/Wall Street Journal poll released in mid-June found that 62 percent of those polled believe the country is moving in the wrong direction--a jump of twelve percent from a month earlier. Even the White House--both privately and publicly--acknowledges that the economy will likely be a focus of the 2012 presidential election. As David Axelrod, President Obama's senior adviser, put it on CNN's State of the Union: "The fundamental issue is how do people feel? Do they feel like we're making progress? Do they feel like we're moving in the right direction? …

America's Fading Middle East Influence

Abstract: THE MIDDLE EAST has gone through eras of projection of power by external powers, and it has adapted to the balance of power between them. This was the case during the age of colonialism (predominance of Britain and France), the Cold War (competition between the U.S. and the USSR), and the period of American predominance since the end of the Cold War. For the last two decades, the region has been characterized by the conflict between "status-quo" and "anti-status-quo" forces. The former were represented by the existing regimes in Egypt, Tunisia, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, etc., and the latter by Iran, the Islamic movement, Hezbollah, and their allies. For over two decades, the United States has been the predominant superpower in the region and the main force in maintaining the status quo. However, today, the Middle East is undergoing a sea change. The revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya were the result of developments within the countries themselves: deep economic and social malaise and the perception of the loss of domestic deterrence by ossified regimes led by aging leaders. However, the popular perception that the United States had abandoned its erstwhile allies to support those revolutions facilitated their spread to other theaters. This turnabout in American policy is not seen in the region as reflecting American power though intervention, but rather the decline of American power, manifested in a policy of "bandwagoning" after years of proactive American policy. Clearly, the decline of American projection of power in the region will have as profound an effect as the projection of American power had at its height. The policies of the United States under the Obama administration have given rise to a broad perception in the region that the United States is no longer willing to play the role of guarantor of the security of its allies there; America is indeed "speaking softly" but has neither the present intention nor the future willpower to wield "a big stick" if push comes to shove. This perception is reflected in seven, key interrelated regional issues: (1) Islam and jihadi terrorism; (2) revolution and democratization in the region; (3) nuclear proliferation; (4) Iran; (5) the Israeli-Arab peace process; (6) Iraq; and (7) Af-Pak. In all these issues, the U.S. is perceived as searching for the path of least resistance, lowering its strategic profile, and attempting to accommodate the de facto powers in the region. In all these areas, the United States is projecting an aversion to proactive action, disinclination to project power, and lack of resolve to support its allies. Remaining American allies in the region realize that they cannot rely on the United States and must adapt themselves to pressures of the masses, predominance of radical ideologies, and Iranian strategic hegemony. Obama's strategic Weltanschauung THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION views the revolutions in the Arab I world as a rerun of the fall of the Soviet bloc in 1989, which resulted in a surge of democracy that was conducive to American strategic interests. However, the transformation of America from staunch supporter of status quo (even in Iran) to surfer on the wave of revolutionary change is not without a price. Having lost the already waning confidence of its remaining allies from the "anciens regimes" in the region, it has not gained that of the new regimes, which have yet to take form. This transformation, though, did not take place overnight. It came after a long-perceived decline in the American support of its allies against external and domestic challenges, decline in its resolve to employ force to support them, and decline in its willingness to persevere. This perception was not unfounded; the Obama administration came to office with an agenda, according to which the United States is strategically overstretched and must implement a drastic reduction in its strategic profile. Such a change could be brought about, according to the worldview of the administration, only through engagement and dialogue with those very forces which had been perceived as anathema to the previous administration and by eschewing the confrontation--the projection (not to mention actual use) of hard power and unilateralism--which characterized the Bush administration. …

Invading Iran: Lessons from Iraq

Abstract: THE INITIAL MILITARY SUCCESSES in Iraq and Afghanistan were overcome by protracted insurgencies and political instability, resulting in tenuous gains in democratic development that came at an enormous cost. The United States is fast approaching a decade at war. In these current conditions of political and military fatigue, a U.S. invasion of Iran seems unlikely; however, the Iranian regime's pursuit of nuclear weapons and its fierce anti-Americanism create the imperative to consider a future where diplomatic and economic coercion is exhausted, and no options remain other than military action. Should a war become necessary, lessons learned during the Coalition occupation of Iraq can be instructional for conjecture on a post-invasion Iran. The similarities are many: repressive leadership, a brutal security apparatus, and a society in search of opportunity, social mobility, and political inclusion. Ethnicity and sectarianism play key roles both in public and in private life. And although Iraqi Baathism differs drastically from Islamism, parallels exist in their use of oppression and state control. These key similarities and distinctions between government, society, and security in Iraq and Iran, in light of Iraq's immediate pre-and post-war environment, can illuminate the major challenges of shaping the peace in a post-war Iran. Government, society, and security in Iraq COALITION EFFORTS TO establish a democratic Iraqi government encountered societal challenges from the beginning. The Bush administration operated under the impression that after Coalition forces toppled Saddam Hussein, Iraqis would welcome the liberators. This theory was only partly true, and the part that was true was fleeting. Of the 27 million Iraqis, 18.5 percent are Sunni Arabs and 55 percent are Shia--or, in the words of Hassan al-Alawi, the country is divided between the "sect of the rulers" (the former) and the "sect of the ruled." The fall of Saddam Hussein brought an end to Sunni Arab glory, and for them, there was no liberation in that. A sense of liberation did sweep over the Shia, and the Kurds as well, who comprise nearly 20 percent of the population, but it was short-lived. The envisioned embrace of democracy, freedom, and equality was supplanted by the distrust and suspicion that many Iraqis had for foreign occupiers and for indigenous rival sects and ethnicities. The Coalition that swept away the regime could do nothing to assuage the pain caused by the mass graves filled with victims of Saddam's brutality--a malice that left over 150,000 Shia dead, an estimated 3,000 Kurdish villages destroyed, 1.5 million people displaced, and up to 180,000 Kurds killed under orders of Saddam's cousin, Ali Hassan al-Majid. As summer replaced spring in 2003, retribution among separate Iraqi social classes emerged, and internecine violence increased as Iraqis settled old scores in the absence of law and order. Without ample military forces or a coherent plan to protect the population, security in Iraq disintegrated, and the liberators morphed into occupiers, rekindling memories of the British occupation after World War I during the formation of the modern Iraqi state. A study of this period reveals a historical Iraqi loathing for occupation and a proclivity for heightened sectarian animosity relative to other Islamic societies. In April 1920, the League of Nations mandated that Britain prepare Iraq for self-rule. Having endured British occupation since 1914, most Iraqis were not receptive to an indefinite extension of colonial administration, and in defiance, on June 30, 1920, Iraq embarked upon a six-month, Shia-inspired insurrection against the British. The British, reports William Roe Polk in his book Understanding Iraq, lost 1,654 men and spent six times what they had spent during their entire World War I Middle East campaign. Horrified by the losses and the financial drain, the British taste for a presence in Iraq soured. …

The Road to (and from) the 2010 Elections

Abstract: THE 2008 ELECTIONS gave the Democrats the House, the presidency, and a "filibuster proof" Senate. Pundits spoke of the election as a "game changer." Evan Thomas wrote that "Like Franklin Roosevelt in 1932 and Reagan in 1980, the Obama run of 2008 marks a real shift in real time. It is early yet, but it is not difficult to imagine that we will, for years to come, think of American politics in terms of Before Obama and After Obama." (1) According to Borsage and Greenberg: "But election 2008 was not simply a testament to the remarkable candidacy of Barack Obama, nor a product of Bush's catastrophic presidency. Rather, the results suggest that this may not be simply a change election but a sea-change election ... we may be witness to the emergence of a new progressive majority, that contrary to conservatives' claims, America is now a center-left nation." (2) Even James Carville's 40 More Years: How the Democrats Will Rule the Next Generation did not seem as outlandish when published in early 2009 as it does in the aftermath of the 2010 congressional elections. This article examines what happened to the president and his party between the electoral zenith of November 2008 and the nadir of November 2010. We begin by reviewing an analysis that appeared in these pages early in 2009. Contrary to much commentary at the time, that analysis showed that the Obama victory was less a reflection of an electorate that had moved to the left than it was a negative judgment on the performance of the Bush administration. We extend that analysis, showing that in 2009 and 2010 the public came to view the performance of the new administration increasingly negatively, in part because of policies it pursued that did not enjoy wide popular support. In particular, we show that the administration's focus on health care and, to a lesser extent, cap and trade probably cost the Democrats their House majority. We conclude with brief speculations about the prospects that the new Republican House can make progress on its avowed goal of reducing government expenditures. The road to 2008 AS WE POINTED out in our earlier article, between 2004 and 2006, numerous public opinion polls reported a significant increase in Democratic Party identifiers and a corresponding decrease in Republican identifiers. (3) Since these polls were cross-sectional snapshots, however, the causes of the change were unclear. Thus, we commissioned YouGov/Polimetrix, an internet-based poll, to sample nearly 13,000 respondents who had been in their large database since 2004. This allowed us to track change in parry identification over the four-year period and relate them to questions about the policies and performance of the Bush administration. Figure 1 shows that 2004 Republicans who stuck with their identification in 2008 were much more likely to approve of the Bush administration's overall performance as well as its handling of the war in Iraq and the economy than were stable independents and 2004 Republicans who had moved to Independent in 2008. The latter in turn were more favorable to the administration than stable Democrats and 2004 Republicans and Independents who had moved to the Democratic side in 2008. [FIGURE 1 OMITTED] But while disapproval of the Bush administration was strongly associated with movement away from the Republican Party, disapproval did not indicate that voter sentiment was shifting to the left across a range of policy issues. We used the same survey to examine public positions on a set of issues where party differences were clearly evident: universal healthcare, global warming, gay marriage, abortion rights, and illegal immigration. The Republican response was coded as: oppose universal health care, think effects of global warming are overstated, oppose any legal recognition of same sex couples, allow no abortions or only in case of rape and incest, and favor deportation of illegal immigrants. Figure 2 plots the percent taking the Republican response for each of the three categories of respondents: stable Republicans, stable and new independents, stable and new Democrats. …

Thinking about Torture

Abstract: CHARLES FRIED AND GREGORY FRIED. Because it is Wrong: Torture, Privacy, and Presidential Power in the Age of Terror. W. W. NORTON & COMPANY. 222 PAGES. $24.95. THIS IN MANY ways admirable book was "born of conversations" between father and son. The father, Charles Fried, a professor at Harvard Law School, is the author of many works on legal and political philosophy, and served as solicitor general of the United States under President Ronald Reagan. The son, Gregory Fried, is chair of the Philosophy Department at Suffolk University and author of Heidegger's Polemos: From Being to Politics. The father voted for George W. Bush in 2000 and supported the war in Iraq; the son opposed Bush and "only reluctantly" backed the Iraq war. The conversations in question arose out of shared concerns about the dangers posed to the United States by those who attacked the country on 9/11 and about the legality and morality of measures adopted by the Bush administration to defend the nation. Father and son found that their conversations increasingly focused on two controversial tactics in the war against the terrorists--brutal interrogations of suspected terrorists abroad and pervasive electronic surveillance at home--tactics used to get desperately needed intelligence about a hidden and unfamiliar enemy. What we realized they shared was the question of whether an executive has the right to break the law in a time of crisis, for both were indeed illegal. To assess whether Bush administration interrogation and surveillance policy were nevertheless proper, the Frieds examine the meaning of torture and the significance of suffering and inflicting it; the sphere of privacy and the cost to liberty when government invades it; and the conditions under which executives may honorably and justly break the law. Despite their political differences, father and son succeed in producing a single voice and, up until their final pages, a single line of argument. They diverge on what to do about the Bush administration officials implicated in the use of harsh interrogation techniques that, they assert unequivocally, broke domestic and international law prohibiting torture. The younger Fried believes that Bush administration officials should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law, while the older Fried believes the extraordinary circumstances under which they acted and the need in a democracy for winners in elections to refrain from using their power to pursue their defeated rivals counsel forbearance. They articulate their difference of opinion in the same lucid tones and restrained terms that characterize even their most uncompromising claims. At the same time, their argument is marked by evasions, equivocations, and rash conclusions. The evasions and equivocations begin with their failure to state clearly that the genuinely hard questions they laudably confront arose not in the struggle against terrorists of all kinds but in a battle against Islamic extremists who have chosen terror as their tactic and are determinedly seeking weapons of mass destruction to kill vast numbers of American civilians and strike crippling blows against the United States. Prominent among their rash conclusions are the two most dramatic in their book: the philosophical opinion that torture is "absolutely wrong," and the legal and political claim that in ordering the use of harsh interrogation and warrantless electronic surveillance the Bush administration brazenly, if on behalf of the national interest as the president and his team understood it, defied the law. Although scholars of law and politics will profit from their book, which draws on art, philosophy, moral and political theory, history, and legal analysis, it was not in the first place written for specialists. It is intended, rather, for "fellow citizens, and particularly for those engaged in public service, be it in the military or the government, who find themselves running up against those limits in the crisis we now face and may continue to face in new and unexpected forms. …

Can Iran Be Deterred

Abstract: THE POSSIBILITY OF Iran acquiring nuclear weapons leads some experts to suggest that such a development may be containable. They argue that a stable balance of deterrence can be achieved with Iran, akin to the nuclear equilibrium between the U.S. and the Soviet Union during the Cold War. I will argue that this is an erroneous proposition, as the levels of instability and risk involved in nuclear armament in the Middle East are incalculably higher. My view is based, among other considerations, on the working assumption that a nuclear Iran will lead to the development of a nuclear capability by other regional players, such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Turkey. Certain models from game theory are important here. These models were part of the basis on which U.S. strategy during the Cold War was conceived and formulated, and for the concepts developed by Robert McNamara, the Rand Corporation, and others. (1) These models have a unique status in the realm of strategy because, in the nuclear field, there is hardly any empirical experience capable of providing a better source of knowledge than such models. (2) The analysis of nuclear strategy on which I will focus refers to the "core era" of the Cold War, from the mid-I960s to the mid-I980s. The formative idea of this core era was mutual nuclear deterrence based on second-strike retaliation capability. Both sides benefited from enormous nuclear redundancy, so that even if one side was to initiate a nuclear attack, the other side would still possess sufficient residual nuclear capability to completely destroy the initiating side with a retaliatory strike. Accordingly, the nuclear destruction of both sides was assured (Mutually Assured Destruction, or mad), and nuclear weapons became the resource not to be used. The period preceding this core era was characterized by learning and adapting to the new weapons' strategic rationale, which gave rise to the massive retaliation strategy of the I950s, eventually abandoned as impractical, and the Cuban Missile Crisis, which led to the development of agreed rules for the nuclear game. After the core era the Reagan administration attempted to replace the nuclear deterrence paradigm with the concept of prevailing in a nuclear war, e.g., making use of the SDI project. Even during the core era there were some notions deviating from mad, such as the use of tactical nuclear weapons, nuclear strikes against military assets only ("counterforce"), gradual nuclear escalation, or nuclear demonstration attack, but these did not become the central principle of nuclear strategy. A poor man's MAD? THE MAD CONCEPT depends on the survivability of nuclear capability, which enables a second-strike retaliation even after sustaining the initiator's nuclear strike. Such survivability is achieved in two ways. The first is numerical superfluity. Indeed, during the core era the superpowers maintained thousands of nuclear warheads. The second way is highly survivable launch platforms, such as deep-water nuclear submarines able to loiter under the polar icecap, a fleet of bombers continuously airborne around the globe, and silo-based or mobile ground-launched ballistic missiles. These means ensured two basic conditions: Intelligence would not be able to locate all platforms at any given moment, and even if a platform was located it could prove difficult to destroy. The U.S. and the Soviet Union learned that there were additional conditions to be met in order to support a second strike, first among them that the two sides must be geographically removed from each other. The Cuban crisis was partially due to the fact that positioning of missiles in such proximity to the U.S. could shorten early warning time and limit U.S. retaliation (at least in respect of command and control and retaliation from the continental U.S.). The second condition was identification of attack. In the case of superpowers, only massive launching of thousands of weapons could potentially destroy nuclear capability. …

Afghanistan: America's War of Perception

Abstract: IN THE DAYS before he was forced into retirement by scandal, General Stanley McChrystal was fond of referring to the Afghan theater he commanded as a "war of perceptions." In February he spoke to the Washington Post: "This is all a war of perceptions," McChrystal said on the eve of the Marja offensive. "This is all in the minds of the participants. Part of what we've had to do is convince ourselves and our Afghan partners that we can do this." McChrystal's phrase--which, we will see, is a superficial interpretation of counterinsurgency theory--aligns regrettably well with the Zeitgeist, particularly with what I will call "perspectival culture." Counterinsurgency theory, or coin, represents the extension to warfare of the same validation of the "eye of the beholder" that has characterized the arts and even aspects of the social sciences in the 20th century. This shift marks a departure from and constitutes a critique of an older, classical understanding of what it means to win or lose a battle or a war--indeed, about the nature of reality itself as externally given and immutable fact, as opposed to a social construction built of competing and shared "perceptions." Although the critique has ample merit, as we shall see, it also poses underappreciated difficulties of its own. I will argue that perspectival culture is so dominant today that it has led to a nearly uncritical embrace of "perception" as the heart of coin theory. The essential problem of COIN theory, at least in its crude form (such as General McChrystal voices it), is its nonfalsifiability, the impossibility of phrasing it in ways which can be tested and disproved. When scientists evaluate a new medicine, they want to see if it is better than a placebo at treating a disease. They test it accordingly, and the scientific community agrees that medications that don't work aren't brought to market. But coin advocates insist that perception, in this case the perception of the local population in a conflict area, is ultimately determinative of the success or failure of U.S. military operations. If bribing the villagers and spending billions on dubious training programs fails to produce security, coin advocates answer that we need more troops and money. They will not admit the possibility that the medicine does not work. And nonfalsifiable is a very dangerous thing for a military theory to be. I have argued elsewhere that our strategy in Afghanistan is far from sound, indeed far from a strategy; that we are neglecting the political factors and following a "strategy of tactics" that will inexorably lead to an unnecessary, self-inflicted defeat. I have also argued that the American civilian and military leadership has been unfortunately reluctant to test our strategy by available metrics, insisting instead that we have not had enough time, or enough troops, to make it work. The understanding of counterinsurgency in the "war of perceptions" is a far cry from the unglamorous, common-sense measures that are recommended in the classic works by David Galula, Roger Trinquier, and Sir Robert Thompson that underlie the Counterinsurgency Field Manual supervised by General David Petraeus, "FM 3-24." Or consider this excerpt from General Eisenhower's 1945 manual, "Combating the Guerilla": The most effective means of defeating guerrilla activity is to cut them off physically and morally from the local inhabitants. While stern measures, such as curfew, prohibition of assembly, limitations of movement, heavy fines, forced labor, and the taking of hostages, may be necessary in the face of a hostile population, these measure must be applied so as to induce the local inhabitants to work with the occupying forces. A means of bringing home to the inhabitants the desirability of cooperating with the forces of occupation against the guerrillas is the imposition of restrictions on movement and assembly and instituting search operations with the area affected. …

The Gaza Flotilla and International Law

Abstract: On May 31, 2010, in defense of a naval blockade imposed on the Gaza Strip, Israel seized control of the Mavi Marmara in international waters, detained the passengers, and towed the ship to the Israeli port city of Ashdod During the previous three days and without incident, Israel had boarded, inspected, and brought to Ashdod the other five ships that had set sail from Turkey as part of the "Gaza Freedom Flotilla" But on the Mavi Marmara, passengers wielding pipes, knives, and axes attacked Israeli commandos as they rappelled from helicopters down to the ship's deck Nine passengers were killed in the operation and several dozen were injured Seven commandos were injured as well The flotilla's ostensible purpose was to bring humanitarian goods to the Palestinian population of Gaza In fact, humanitarian goods had been arriving in Gaza over land through Israel, and Israel had repeatedly volunteered to deliver the flotilla's humanitarian cargo through the established land crossings The flotilla's real and obvious goal was, as one of the organizers put it, "breaking Israel's siege" The international outcry in response to Israel's raid on the Mavi Marmara was immediate Little attention was given to the Turkish flotilla's deliberate provocation or to the possibility that Israel had acted ineptly or unwisely The focus rather was on the accusation, often couched as a conclusion, that Israel had acted unlawfully On May 31, almost as soon as the news broke, UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon insisted that it was incumbent upon Israel to explain its actions to the world: "I condemn this violence it is vital that there is a full investigation to determine exactly how this bloodshed took place I believe Israel must urgently provide a full explanation" Also on May 31, Richard Falk, UN special rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, immediately pronounced Israel in egregious violation of international law: "Israel is guilty of shocking behavior by using deadly weapons against unarmed civilians on ships that were situated in the high seas where freedom of navigation exists, according to the law of the seas" Falk called for an investigation on the grounds that "It is essential that those Israelis responsible for this lawless and murderous behavior, including political leaders who issued the orders, be held criminally accountable for their wrongful acts" He characterized the Gaza blockade as "a massive form of collective punishment" constituting "a crime against humanity, as well as a gross violation of the prohibition on collective punishment in Article 3 3 of the Fourth Geneva Convention" He insisted that failure to punish Israel's lawlessness would itself be criminal: "As special rapporteur for the Occupied Palestinian Territories, familiar with the suffering of the people of Gaza, I find this latest instance of Israeli military lawlessness to create a situation of regional and global emergency Unless prompt and decisive action is taken to challenge the Israeli approach to Gaza all of us will be complicit in criminal policies that are challenging the survival of an entire beleaguered community" Such was Israel's "flagrant flouting of international law" that, to end its blockade of Gaza, Falk concluded, "the worldwide campaign of boycott, divestment, and sanctions against Israel is now a moral and political imperative, and needs to be supported and strengthened everywhere" Many nations promptly condemned Israel and some presumed its guilt that day According to the bbc, within hours of the boarding of the Mavi Marmara French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner announced he was "deeply shocked" by Israel's action and called for an inquiry, and French President Nicolas Sarkozy accused Israel of a "disproportionate use of force" Sweden summoned the Israeli ambassador to discuss the "unacceptable action" The Turkish foreign ministry issued a statement declaring the incident a "flagrant breach of international law" while Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan proclaimed Israel's raid "totally contrary to the principles of international law" and an act of "inhumane state terrorism …

Cuba's Lost History

Abstract: WHEN I WAS A child and the communist authorities would send a volunteer worker to inquire why I had not yet joined the Pioneros or generally was not going along with the rhetoric of the Cuban Revolution, my grandmother would react in a way I found puzzling. She would show the visitor, usually a woman, to the sitting room my family used for people with whom we were not intimate, and then serve coffee in the good china (not the chipped and weathered cups used with family and friends). Then she invariably would launch into a version of the same routine. Abuela would employ an exceedingly cordial but distant manner, with none of the comfortable banter that Cubans with bonds of friendship use with one another--though she was careful to drop here and there a well-calibrated cubanismo, to display her roots in the native soil. A cold smile fixed on her lips, she would get around to informing our visitor that "this family has been in these parts for many generations--centuries." Yes, she would go on, "we've noticed there is a Revolution going on outside. The important thing to us is that we're a familia cubanisima. And what was it that you said about my grandson again? Oh, no, he won't take part in that civic event Sunday morning. He will be at church, you see. He's an altar boy there. Our family built that church, by the way, the one you saw on the way here. Yes, our name is on the first brick was laid there." Why on earth Abuela wanted to share these things with these visitors, I always wondered. Today, four decades on, I know why she proclaimed we were a corner stone. We had memories of a time past, and history put things in context. From earliest childhood I was taught that my father's family's roots in Cuba ran deep. "Childhood" is perhaps too quaint a word for what was a daily anomaly: Outside raged the Revolution, with such foreign visitors as Angela Davis and Stokely Carmichael descending on Havana to join Fidel in marches, sloganeering, and taunting counterrevolutionaries; inside our walls, laden with portraits of ancestors, angels, and saints, we had ourselves, books, and hallways that echoed of La traviata and Cavalleria rusticana, emanating from my father's record player and prized 78-rpm record collection. Our knowledge of the past amounted to more than just the point of pride that people take in their family histories in stable countries. History gave us a sense of permanence that assured us of our daily survival, just as oaks can withstand gale force winds because of deep tap roots. The people of Cuba today need that permanence, that stability and sense of belonging. This may jar those who have visited Cuba and seen a deprived but proud people. Yet, as the Cuban blogger Yoani Sanchez has written, "Most young people's eyes are looking to the outside, because they see that they cannot make change in their country. They desire to take a plane to Miami or Europe and in ten hours change their lives completely." Convincing them that they have a future on the island will require wholesale change: massive amounts of capital, a huge infusion of technical know-how, and restoration of the rule of law (respect for private property, for starters). But even these major fixes won't be sufficient to secure the island's revival. As the Cuban writer Jose Azel recently observed, "Post-Castro Cuba will need to rebuild much more than its economy; it will need to rebuild its national identity." That is because wiping out that identity--one that had grown organically through the centuries and had produced an enterprising and creative national character--was Job One for the Revolution; it was a necessity, even an obsession, to communists intent on imposing an alien blueprint on the people of Cuba. "Cubanism" had to be wrung out of the people's consciousness so that the much-touted "revolutionary consciousness" could be installed in its place. Timeless habits had to be changed, ways of thinking rewired, history rewritten. …