There is life after empire.
The Optimist, FP.com, Charles Kenny. – “Three Cheers for Decline“
Archive for the 'Other' Category
To understand the United States’ role in the world, familiarity with the various frames that decision makers in Washington rely on when formulating foreign policy is helpful. Most statecraft blends these, kind of like a color wheel. The basic contours, however, personified by four giants of American history, are as follows:
The Extroverts
Hamiltonianism maintains that the US should pursue a realist foreign policy, balancing interests, especially material ones, and fundamentally seeks to promote an expansionist agenda. Hamiltonians support a robust national security establishment, a strong dollar policy and a muscular industrial base; in effect the US from WWI to the Great Recession. Domestically, these are the establishment Republicans exemplified by figures such as father George H. W. Bush.
Wilsonianism also subscribes to the furtherance of the Pax Americana. But whereas Hamiltonians favor material interests, Wilsonians emphasize the normative, touchy-feely moral aspects of foreign policymaking. Wilsonians are frequently labeled idealists, like to set up international institutions, are bleeding-heart humanitarian interventionists, prefer to co-opt other states rather than impose their will on them, and ultimately seek to consolidate a global society defined by liberal American values. Recently, Presidents Obama (Libya), more cynically George W. Bush (Iraq after WMD failed to materialize) and Clinton (Bosnia) have all incorporated elements of Wilsonianism in their prosecution of US foreign affairs.
The Introverts
Jeffersonianism boils down to super-sizing pre-industrial Switzerland; trade but focus on the domestic, set a – but don’t strive to lead by a – moral example, keep the national security state at a minimum (the ideal is none whatsoever), don’t pick fights abroad with the army you don’t have. The hitch with Jeffersonianism is that it’s hard to square with America’s post-WWII superpower status and easily derided back home as pusillanimous.
Jacksonianism is Palinesque populist and like Jeffersonianism isolationist at heart. Jacksonians are equally suspicious of the moneyed, power-centralizing Hamiltonians. But they depart from the Jeffersonians when it comes to the use of force. A Jeffersonian will almost always turn the other cheek. A Jacksonian is almost always up for a fight against an enemy he perceives as intrinsically menacing the national interest. And once blood and treasure are committed, surrender, or for that matter showing mercy, is no longer an option. Chest thumping is welcome. Both Jacksonians and Hamiltonians, but the former more forcefully so, tend to shun international institutions and view them as constraints on US freedom of action. The knee-jerk, outraged and ultimately fabulously expensive neoconservatives’ reaction to 9/11 under George W. Bush was Jacksonian through and through.
So, what’s President Obama? My guess is something approximating a longing Jeffersonian with a Wilsonian bent operating in a Hamiltonian world inexorably in relative decline.
Original Print: http://isnblog.ethz.ch/government/the-isms-of-american-foreign-policy
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Western monitoring missions to Sudan announced Saturday that the country’s recent executive and legislative elections failed to meet international standards, but marked an important step in the northeast African state’s democratic transformation.
The Carter Center delegation, headed by former US president Jimmy Carter, and the EU Election Observation Mission, led by Member of the European Parliament Veronique de Keyser, both said that a mix of alleged electoral improprieties, a lack of transparency, logistical issues and party boycotts marred the vote.
Implications: Keep reading.
Original Print: http://www.examiner.com/x-44036-Foreign-Policy-Examiner~y2010m4d18-Sudan-votes-update
Sudan Sunday kicked off three days of national elections as called for by the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) that ended the two-decade long north-south civil war – albeit almost a year late. Note: The National Election Commission (NEC) on Monday extended the vote by an extra two days.
The vote comes amid allegations of electoral improprieties and a boycott by Yasser Arman of the southern Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) and former prime minister Sadiq al-Mahdi of the northern opposition Umma party, effectively securing a win for President Omar al-Bashir of the National Congress Party (NCP) and an indictee of the International Criminal Court (ICC) for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur. EU election observers have also pulled out the western Darfur region, citing security concerns.
Critics charge that the exercise in suffrage will do little more than legitimize the despotic rule of Bashir, increase his defiance toward international opprobrium, and possibly reinvigorate his proclivity to use excessive force against rebels in Darfur and South Sudan.
This may be the case, but election observers and foreign governments must still certify the results. Moreover, although his legitimacy may be ostensibly bolstered in northern Sudan, internationally Bashir will remain a pariah as well as a fugitive, and his credibility in Darfur and South Sudan is unlikely to improve.
Proponents of the election, on the other hand, point out that the poll sets a precedent for Sudan and Bashir, and will complicate future attempts by the autocrat, should he so feel inclined, to argue against holding a referendum for southern secession scheduled for January 2011.
Much but not all of Sudan’s oil reserves, a lifeline of the Khartoum government, are located in the south.
NATO’s mission in Afghanistan has less to do with the fight against ‘terrorism’ than member governments maintain.
Western forces entered into Afghanistan back in October 2001 for security purposes, and security purposes alone. The issue is: the security imperative now fails to impress.
Recent developments, namely the Fort Hood shooting in Texas and the attempted Christmas day bombing on board a Detroit-bound airliner, illustrate the futility of NATO’s anti-terror operations in Afghanistan.
There is nothing special about Afghan real estate. Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan, Nigeria, the US, the UK, the Internet, etc…all make for promising substitutes. The developments have also brought into stark relief the matter of fact that the global jihad ideology championed by al-Qaida is highly fungible, transnational and probably impossible to stop without a genuine waning of anti-American and anti-Western sentiments in the Muslim world.
It follows then that ending the West’s military presence in the Muslim world in particular, or at minimum limiting it as best as possible, is a crucial step in mitigating this threat. NATO in Afghanistan, above all else, is kindler for the fire it is ostensibly in-country to suppress.
A more reasonable and less abrasive approach would entail heightening homeland defense measures domestically, working by way of multilateral channels where possible internationally, and carrying out any remaining international security objectives (particularly in the field of terrorism) in a more clandestine fashion.
Adopting such a posture would significantly reduce public expenditures, create jobs back home by expanding the payrolls of national security organs and generally work toward bankrupting the arguments used to recruit young jihadis.
Some commentators, moreover, point out that NATO’s protracted stay in Afghanistan is as much about safeguarding Pakistan’s nuclear weapons as it is about taking the fight to al-Qaida. Maybe, but…
The US already slips Islamabad a billion plus dollars per year, in part, expressly for that purpose. Concerns over Taliban and al-Qaida fighters overrunning the Pakistani military are equally misplaced. Pashtun militants, the ethnic group from which the Taliban hail, can already launch strikes against the Pakistani government and military from inside Pakistan. So far, they have managed to shake, but hardly dislodge the ruling establishment. What is more, since its formation following independence in 1947, the Pakistani military has been a Punjab-dominated institution, one unlikely to afford marginalized Pashtuns a greater say anytime soon.
The West’s security rationale for staying in Afghanistan is weak. That said, inertial forces are likely to secure NATO’s sojourn for a good while longer. They include:
(1) the financial incentives provided by a bloated US military-industrial complex;
(2) the impulse to maintain a Western foothold in this geographically isolated yet geostrategically significant corner of the world;
(3) the reality that US troops are scheduled to pull out of Iraq by late 2011 and as such are surrendering an important western flank against Iran, undermining US containment policy and, without Afghan territory, largely limiting US access to Iran in the event of a US-Israeli strike against the country’s nuclear facilities to the Persian Gulf.
Fifty-odd years on, Colonel Mathieu’s admonition persists. “Should we remain in Algeria? If you answer “yes,” then you must accept all the necessary consequences.”
Dramatic volatility in world financial markets promises to affect not only the industrialized world, but also leading exporter China. The CPC’s future in focus. Claudio Guler writes for ISN Security Watch.
By Claudio Guler for ISN Security Watch, 8 Oct 2008
The Schadenfreude came first. Then governments watched financial chaos permeate world markets, and anxiety quickly took its place. It has become abundantly clear that everyone will be affected.
The month of September 2008 ushered in the most severe financial crisis since 29 October 1929. Many analysts foresaw an economic downturn stemming from a ballooning US housing market. But that it would crumble, and consequently spread precipitously took most by surprise.
Economists and central bankers are now focusing on jump-starting frozen credit and inter-bank lending markets. It is proving to be no simple task. Political scientists, alternatively, must begin considering the political instabilities that have historically succeeded such economic crises.
Today’s most volatile case is the People’s Republic of China. Can the Communist Party of China (CPC) weather the impending storm?
Since committing to economic liberalization under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping in 1978, China has maintained its autocratic political structure. Mao Zedong first introduced it in 1949.
The contradictory nature of an open economic sphere – the state now controls less than one-third of China’s economy – and a closed political arena, has forced the CPC to rely on two pillars of legitimacy: economic growth and nationalism.
Extraordinary economic growth has allowed the CPC to divert attention and quell calls for democratization. Since the events of Tiananmen Square in 1989, the CPC has experienced little domestic turmoil – with the exception of longstanding tensions with Tibet and Xinjiang Province in the northwest of China.
Nationalism is the CPC’s second pillar of legitimacy. It springs from China’s 5,000-year-old status as a great civilization and the foreign interference it suffered at the hands of the West from 1842 to 1945. The 1894-1895 Sino-Japanese War and Japan’s invasion of Manchuria in 1931, moreover, reinforce the narrative of a humiliated China longing for atonement.
International trade and financial investment enabled China’s rapid growth over the past two decades. The industrialized world had moved into the post-Fordist era by the late-1980s, i.e. manufacturing no longer took place in the US, Europe and Japan, but rather in the world’s developing countries where labor was inexpensive. The industrialized world, instead, shifted to service-based economies. This, in effect, permitted China to become the world’s foremost manufacturer, and pursue an export-based growth strategy. Over the past 15 years, Chinese exports increased by 1,600 percent. Since 2005, exports have contributed to more than 20 percent of China’s growth.
Sino-US trade in 2007 amounted to US$385 billion. Sino-European trade came to roughly US$245 billion in 2005, and Sino-Japanese trade reached US$215 billion in 2007. The size of China’s trade with the world underlines its economic interdependence. So far, the balance was in China’s favor, and allowed it to amass an extraordinary US$1.8 trillion in foreign currency reserves.
The extent of China’s trade with the world therefore raises an important question. If international demand for Chinese products falls or even collapses, what next?
Weisbrot and Rosnick from the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington DC predicted back in July 2006 that the US import market would shrink over the decade 2010-2020. The current crisis promises to accelerate this trend. A consumer-based recession looms large in the US. Credit card issuers have lowered charge limits, many Americans live from pay check to pay check, are heavily indebted and have low savings rates.
If only US consumer demand drops, China’s growth will suffer. If European and Japanese consumer demand also declines, exporting in significant quantity will become difficult. Asia and the Middle East still import from China, but if the industrialized world slows, it is difficult to imagine that they will not follow suit.
The trend, unfortunately, is already observable. Chinese exports are falling, the Shanghai Stock Exchange is down 60 percent on the year-to-date, the Hang Seng index is down 45 percent, and property values in China, much like in the US, are plummeting. However, unlike US homeowners, the Chinese have not used home equity to finance their spending.
Investment, which comprises 40 percent of Chinese GDP, may sustain the economy for some time, but it too is likely to fall as international sources dry up. Chinese consumer spending, which makes up 30 percent of GDP, is a buffer, but insufficient. The government, finally, can employ its massive foreign currency reserves to subsidize the economy. However, time limits this strategy, and any large sell-offs will cause the dollar’s exchange rate to sink, consequently lowering the absolute value of Beijing’s reserves.
Not too long ago, the CPC may have welcomed a slowing Chinese economy to combat rising inflation. Now, a grinding halt may threaten the Party’s survival.
The coming years will prove decisive. Slow growth jeopardizes the CPC’s legitimacy and forces it to fall back on nationalist credentials – an exceedingly disconcerting notion. The still unpredictable depth of the global financial crisis is very likely to shake the CPC and test its fortitude. And in the worst-case scenario, it may even spell its demise.
Original Print: http://www.isn.ethz.ch/isn/Current-Affairs/Security-Watch/Detail/?ots591=4888CAA0-B3DB-1461-98B9-E20E7B9C13D4&lng=en&id=92451
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