The Class of 1941 has an amazing resume. Our class lived through three totally different worlds, and in a sense at least touched three centuries. I will be discussing the larger global scene, but keep in mind the revolutionary changes in science and technology, high-energy physics, communications, bioengineering, medicine, warfare – changes our grandparents never even considered and our parents’ science fiction only speculated about.
How do we bridge three centuries? Well, we were born into a world full of remnants of the 19th century --including our parents. The existing international system had lasted over 1,000 years, and the culture was only beginning to change away from the Victorian past.
The 19th century featured rising and falling states, some of which were assertive in the traditional ancient model, such as Germany, Japan, and of course the United States, which pushed its way into the top tier with the Great White Fleet – the first assertion of America’s growing power and new global ambitions. War was a zero-sum game in which winners would dominate and crush losers. Germany's new assertiveness under Bismarck and eventually Hitler was in fact described by Thucydides when he wrote of the Athenians that they came into the world to take no rest and give no rest to others. All the players in the great international game had return addresses. The Class of 1941 was witness to and part of the explosive ending of an age and beginning of a new one. Many of us in uniform lived and died in the battle. We were both witnesses and eventually participants when the old geopolitics brought ruin to millions and hope to the world for a better way of doing things.
Out of that World War II wreckage came the second great storyline of our time in which our class lived – the Cold War. Communism was an ideology, but it took a giant step toward Hell with a bang. The North Korean communist government invaded South Korea with the blessing of both the Soviet Union and Communist China, and again the world changed for a half-century. For me, working in the State Department to help establish the United Nations and help manage the leftover conflicts, June 24, 1950 was a blazing red signal that we were in a dangerous new world order. Yes, the Soviet takeovers in Eastern Europe had been an earlier signal, but the weapons so far had been diplomatic. With a major war in Korea, our world overnight transformed its geometry of great powers into bi-polar, with only two that could be called superpowers.
It was a scary time. The Class of 1941 will remember when our children practiced meaningless nuclear protection by getting under the school desks, and when we followed JFK’s advice to build fallout shelters. It's not generally known that the first possible nuclear confrontation, however small-scale, involved possible hot pursuit of Soviet military aircraft across the border into Soviet airspace, with unforeseen consequences.
During the next 39 years, when the Class of 1941 was ascending the ladders of life and work, the new map would show two dominant powers and a whole bunch of bit players leaning on (or blackmailing) one or the other of the two nuclear giants for support. In return, the US government found itself backing some rather unsavory leaders because they were useful in the larger conflict. (Remember that FDR once said that he realized some of our allies were SOBs "but they're our SOBs.”) An eventually outsized nuclear arms race began between the US and the Soviet Union to the point where deliverable warheads in the thousands would be capable of pretty much ending life on earth. Fortunately, arms control began to be negotiated. Some of the stimulation came from a joint Harvard-MIT arms control seminar, co-chaired by future Nobel Prize winner Thomas Schelling and myself, that met throughout the 1960’s and into the 1970’s. Virtually everyone involved in this issue in Washington and Cambridge eventually took part. Although the theorizing about nuclear war began to sound like a lunatic version of Thomas Aquinas, some of the key ideas made their way into policy.
In the final years of the Cold War, during the 1980’s, there was still the danger of mutual misperception that could lead to catastrophe for everyone. In early 1980 I found the Soviets depressed at Reagan's victory and privately fearful about their own security. Meanwhile, some Washington hawks were warning against a Soviet nuclear attack. Then, in turn, a US buildup was assessed In Moscow to be part of possible US preparations for an attack on the USSR – precisely the scenario of mutual misperceptions that the whole arms-control effort had sought to avert. By the late 1980’s it was clear that the Soviet Union was crumbling: no food in the shops, disaffected bureaucrats, senior officials saying "the young don't trust us, we lied to them." But there were still some in Washington warning against a. Soviet attack. (Although I was there in various capacities eight times during that final 20 years, I was unaware of the secret crisis planning on both sides.)
In 1989, the Class of 1941 was beginning to enjoy, or at least contemplate, retirement. But once again, as the Berlin wall came down and the Soviet Union was dismantled, the global picture suddenly changed dramatically. Our century number three actually began in 2001 with the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Or perhaps it really began a decade later in Cairo’s Tahir Square. Long suppressed forces were released, most recently in the Middle East with the so-called Arab Awakening/Arab Spring. The outcomes are still uncertain, but the Middle East will never be the same again for Americans. Once more the world is multi-polar and in flux. China has surpassed Japan as economic giant number two, and India is close behind, along with other rising powers such as Brazil. In a system dominated by globalization, the competition is intensely economic rather than military. Many of the key actors, both legitimate and terrorist, are not states and, in some cases, have no return addresses. The US is engaged in the painful process of reassessing long-held policy premises. Yes, the Class of 1941 has a long and fascinating resume.
Two relevant footnotes. First, one of the new techniques – social networking – was an unexpected game-changer in the Middle East uprisings. The newly dominant role of networks such as Facebook and Twitter turn out to be crucial mobilizers for a popular revolution. Second, the chattering classes are concerned that the US is in decline, an assertion that can be argued both ways. Like much else, the answer depends as much on attitude and belief as it does on statistical metrics, as I argued in an earlier blog post. In the meantime I recommend keeping in mind that old 19th century maxim that "God looks after drunks, little children, and the United States of America."
Sunday, May 29, 2011
Tuesday, May 3, 2011
Some Quick Reactions to a Mission Actually Accomplished
Perhaps surprisingly, the strongest impression on me was the gathering that night of young Americans outside the White House, complete with American flags, national anthem, and a sense of shared celebration at a demon finally conquered. It may not be unfair to imagine this happening in Western Europe, considering the ritual street mobs, often violent, of young anarchists, disaffected students, complainers about cuts in funding for education, pensions etc, all in the very heart of the welfare state with the cushiest set of paid vacations, working hours, and other perks.
How explain this? The words from our national seal -- e pluribus unum (one out of many) -- ran through my head and I suddenly had an uptick of optimism about this country despite its deep problems. Some of our newly-minted political fanatics consider compromise with political infidels a dirty word – American Taliban in my private vocabulary. I don’t want them to teach anyone in my family the workings of democracy whose give and take produced that splendid scene on Pennsylvania Avenue.
Is this the end of jihad? Of course not. Al Quaeda has decentralized and outsourced to local franchises in Yemen, Somalia, North Africa, and elsewhere, and the snake can do evil despite being headless. The point is that Bin Laden’s lunatic dream of restoring the Islamic Caliphates and getting society back to the 7th century is completely out of synch with the Arab Awakening whose demands feature not the 7th but the 21st century. Their drive toward power already shows signs of the pervasive anti-Americanism that wants an American education and communications technology, but conflates the paramount (and pro-Israeli) US with the roster of Western powers who ruled over them and then supported their greedy and often merciless tyrants.
Anyway, three cheers for an effective national security apparatus and this extraordinary triumph.
--
How explain this? The words from our national seal -- e pluribus unum (one out of many) -- ran through my head and I suddenly had an uptick of optimism about this country despite its deep problems. Some of our newly-minted political fanatics consider compromise with political infidels a dirty word – American Taliban in my private vocabulary. I don’t want them to teach anyone in my family the workings of democracy whose give and take produced that splendid scene on Pennsylvania Avenue.
Is this the end of jihad? Of course not. Al Quaeda has decentralized and outsourced to local franchises in Yemen, Somalia, North Africa, and elsewhere, and the snake can do evil despite being headless. The point is that Bin Laden’s lunatic dream of restoring the Islamic Caliphates and getting society back to the 7th century is completely out of synch with the Arab Awakening whose demands feature not the 7th but the 21st century. Their drive toward power already shows signs of the pervasive anti-Americanism that wants an American education and communications technology, but conflates the paramount (and pro-Israeli) US with the roster of Western powers who ruled over them and then supported their greedy and often merciless tyrants.
Anyway, three cheers for an effective national security apparatus and this extraordinary triumph.
--
Thursday, March 31, 2011
"Liberal Intervention" vs "National Interest"?
“I don’t think the US should use its military force except when we are attacked or directly threatened.”
“The US has a moral responsibility to help when a crazy dictator is machine-gunning his own people”
The issues being debated in the Libyan conflict are the “what?” and the “how?” – mission, means, tactics,is it a civil war, is al Quada burrowing among the rebels? But behind the headlines lies a longer-running American debate about the “why?” In shorthand, a policy of ”realism” has battled a policy based on “idealism” for almost as long as the life of this republic. "Realists" argue that the US should commit its military forces abroad only when the nation is directly attacked or threatened. "Idealists" claim a moral imperative to act against official inhumanity, preferably without using force, but if necessary using it even when the US is not attacked or directly threatened, and has no concrete stake in the outcome.
On March 28 President Obama explained the US action, asserting that “acting on behalf of what’s right” is where US interests and values converge. The following analysis tries to unpack the strategic debate that hangs over the battlefield. In one form or another it has been a basis for defining the national interest through much of American history.
As early as 1808, John Quincy Adams warned against going abroad “in search of monsters to destroy.” Early 20th century isolationism was an exaggerated and ultimately discredited expression of realism’s assessment of the national interest. In the mid-twentieth century the foundational realist approach to national interest was expounded by three brilliant men – George Kennan, Hans Morgenthau, and Reinhold Niebuhr – who were enormously influential theorists of the position that, however much the heart may be touched by inhumanity, the head tells us to stay our hand unless attacked. An extreme version was supplied by an Englishman, Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Gray, who famously said that Britain had neither friends nor enemies, only interests. All were doubtless influenced by a 15th century Florentine palace adviser named Niccolo Machiavelli.
The opposing school of thought took modern shape when President Woodrow Wilson’s justification for war was defense of democracy. Human rights as a policy driver in the Carter administration marked a changing equation, and by the 1990’s the US intervened to stem official outrages in Somalia, Bosnia, and Kosovo – but looked away from the far greater carnage in Rwanda (for which President Clinton later publicly apologized). Belated US intervention produced mixed results in the genocidal Balkan wars, and a humiliating failure in Somalia. Realists deplored Clinton’s use of force for humanitarian purposes as well as doing so through the irrelevant UN. (In 2000 Condeleeza Rice, forecasting President George W. Bush’s foreign policy, blew off the “international community” as a phantom. Later, as Secretary of State, she never failed to invoke the international community in her speeches.) Iraq neither attacked nor, it turned out, threatened the US when Washington launched the 2003 war (official lies led me to initially support the use of force). The concept of “responsibility to protect” in case of genocide and war crimes within national borders, hitherto sacrosanct, was formally adopted by the UN in 2005. On occasion itt was supported by President George W. Bush as well as President Obama.
In fact, all conservatives are not necessarily realists, nor all liberals unadulterated idealists. One columnist dubbed the Libyan action “liberal intervention,” yet it was supported by former Republican presidential candidate Senator John McCain as well as by neoconservatives, who have their own Middle East agenda. Defense Secretary Gates seemed to support his president’s policy while still saying that Libya was not a “vital interest”. Republican Senator Lugar agreed, but went further to conclude that it was thus not justified. A pure realist position would reject US involvement in wars of choice rather than wars of necessity.
But having established humanitarian intervention as policy, what about Bahrain and Yemen, not to mention Syria, Zimbabwe, Central African Republic, and Congo, all places where governments are murdering their citizens? Are we being hypocritical? The answer is that we can’t be everywhere, given limits on both resources and public patience. There are places like Bahrain, with a major US naval base, where vital US interests will trump responbility to protect. The multilateral urge can be left, it is argued, to the African Union.
Vital national interests must first mean defending and responding to attacks on the United States. But US major interests arguably include two fundamental values that define America as a nation and keep it exceptional. The first is our core ideology, neither realist nor idealist but universal, captured in Thomas Jefferson’s immortal words in the Declaration of Independence proclaiming that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. The second is protection of the helpless when they are being slaughtered by tyrants. The US pioneered the concept of collective security under the UN Security Council and though it has as many failures as successes, it is particularly applicable ro egregious governmental brutality in a time of evolving regional leadership under the banner of human rights and humanitarian protection. We should look at it as another small step toward a more effective multilateral community, of which America remains an indispensable contributor.
“The US has a moral responsibility to help when a crazy dictator is machine-gunning his own people”
The issues being debated in the Libyan conflict are the “what?” and the “how?” – mission, means, tactics,is it a civil war, is al Quada burrowing among the rebels? But behind the headlines lies a longer-running American debate about the “why?” In shorthand, a policy of ”realism” has battled a policy based on “idealism” for almost as long as the life of this republic. "Realists" argue that the US should commit its military forces abroad only when the nation is directly attacked or threatened. "Idealists" claim a moral imperative to act against official inhumanity, preferably without using force, but if necessary using it even when the US is not attacked or directly threatened, and has no concrete stake in the outcome.
On March 28 President Obama explained the US action, asserting that “acting on behalf of what’s right” is where US interests and values converge. The following analysis tries to unpack the strategic debate that hangs over the battlefield. In one form or another it has been a basis for defining the national interest through much of American history.
As early as 1808, John Quincy Adams warned against going abroad “in search of monsters to destroy.” Early 20th century isolationism was an exaggerated and ultimately discredited expression of realism’s assessment of the national interest. In the mid-twentieth century the foundational realist approach to national interest was expounded by three brilliant men – George Kennan, Hans Morgenthau, and Reinhold Niebuhr – who were enormously influential theorists of the position that, however much the heart may be touched by inhumanity, the head tells us to stay our hand unless attacked. An extreme version was supplied by an Englishman, Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Gray, who famously said that Britain had neither friends nor enemies, only interests. All were doubtless influenced by a 15th century Florentine palace adviser named Niccolo Machiavelli.
The opposing school of thought took modern shape when President Woodrow Wilson’s justification for war was defense of democracy. Human rights as a policy driver in the Carter administration marked a changing equation, and by the 1990’s the US intervened to stem official outrages in Somalia, Bosnia, and Kosovo – but looked away from the far greater carnage in Rwanda (for which President Clinton later publicly apologized). Belated US intervention produced mixed results in the genocidal Balkan wars, and a humiliating failure in Somalia. Realists deplored Clinton’s use of force for humanitarian purposes as well as doing so through the irrelevant UN. (In 2000 Condeleeza Rice, forecasting President George W. Bush’s foreign policy, blew off the “international community” as a phantom. Later, as Secretary of State, she never failed to invoke the international community in her speeches.) Iraq neither attacked nor, it turned out, threatened the US when Washington launched the 2003 war (official lies led me to initially support the use of force). The concept of “responsibility to protect” in case of genocide and war crimes within national borders, hitherto sacrosanct, was formally adopted by the UN in 2005. On occasion itt was supported by President George W. Bush as well as President Obama.
In fact, all conservatives are not necessarily realists, nor all liberals unadulterated idealists. One columnist dubbed the Libyan action “liberal intervention,” yet it was supported by former Republican presidential candidate Senator John McCain as well as by neoconservatives, who have their own Middle East agenda. Defense Secretary Gates seemed to support his president’s policy while still saying that Libya was not a “vital interest”. Republican Senator Lugar agreed, but went further to conclude that it was thus not justified. A pure realist position would reject US involvement in wars of choice rather than wars of necessity.
But having established humanitarian intervention as policy, what about Bahrain and Yemen, not to mention Syria, Zimbabwe, Central African Republic, and Congo, all places where governments are murdering their citizens? Are we being hypocritical? The answer is that we can’t be everywhere, given limits on both resources and public patience. There are places like Bahrain, with a major US naval base, where vital US interests will trump responbility to protect. The multilateral urge can be left, it is argued, to the African Union.
Vital national interests must first mean defending and responding to attacks on the United States. But US major interests arguably include two fundamental values that define America as a nation and keep it exceptional. The first is our core ideology, neither realist nor idealist but universal, captured in Thomas Jefferson’s immortal words in the Declaration of Independence proclaiming that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. The second is protection of the helpless when they are being slaughtered by tyrants. The US pioneered the concept of collective security under the UN Security Council and though it has as many failures as successes, it is particularly applicable ro egregious governmental brutality in a time of evolving regional leadership under the banner of human rights and humanitarian protection. We should look at it as another small step toward a more effective multilateral community, of which America remains an indispensable contributor.
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
IN LIBYA JUST DO IT
There is something wrong with the debate about whether the United States should intervene in Libya. Reported Pentagon opposition to a no-flight zone made it sound as if they see any US involvement as a World War II operation, requiring new air bases, facilities for multiple refueling tanker aircraft, massive suppressive fire on all Libyan air bases, etc.
These doubtlessly reflect an understandable mood of "no more Iraq's or Afghanistan's". As a one-time naval officer and lifetime student and practitioner of national security issues, I applaud Defense Secretary Gates’ doctrine urging just that. Libyan oil is certainly in the picture. But no one except perhaps the ruling Libyan sociopath is interpreting help to defenseless civilians as a new armed, democracy-exporting, nation-building war by the West.
The policy quandaries have resulted in a month-long paralysis and hand-wringing by the United States, as well as the UN and NATO, both of which require US leadership.The President’s month in the Situation Room that so far has produced a completely rhetorical defense of civilians being bombed and machine-gunned by their own government is unworthy of him, The late Harlan Cleveland described what he called "hardening of the categories'. So if a Libyan coastal no-flight zone and covert help to the embattled rebels does not fit the vast and ominous model advanced by the bureaucracy, what category that is temporary, offshore, largely symbolic but potentially game-changing, does fit?
The Libyan scene bears no resemblance to the great wars of history. It is more like a massive mugging by a freakish but iron-clawed ruler who got super-rich thanks to everyone's addiction to oil. Libya is as large as Alaska. but it is 90 percent desert, and is concentrated along a coast convenient to a naval flotilla and other assets of our half-trillion dollar a year (not counting Iraq and Afghanistan) military establishment and $80 billion intelligence apparatus.
US national security has, for better or worse, always had a moral component. A pair of moral elements belong in thinking about US intervention. Both grew out of failures to act in the face of criminal governmental assaults on helpless civilian populations. One was a belated public apology by President Bill Clinton in 1998 for the disgraceful way the United States and others averted their gaze as hundreds of thousands of Rwandans were slaughtered. The other theoretically transformed international relations when a United Nations summit in 2005 approved a doctrine of "responsibility to protect" that legalized hitherto forbidden interference in the internal affairs of a state in conditions of genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, or crimes against humanity.
There are times when the most powerful and influential nation in the world needs to act on the basis of both national interest and national values, which converge in the Libyan case. The advice of counselors is carefully considered, but under the Constitution the president makes the decisions. Ideally, the international community -- the UN and NATO -- on our insistence authorize an immediate operation that demoralizes the pilots and mercenaries doing the slaughtering, and sends an unmistakable message of overwhelming over-the-horizon strength. If they fail to act, form a coalition of the willing, and just do it.
Thursday, February 24, 2011
NO-FLY IN LIBYA -- NOW
In Rwanda in 1994, when an estimated 800,000 men women and children were being viciously slaughtered by the Hutu, United Nations, the international community, and "the leader of the free world." all wrung their hands, issued impassioned statements, and passed resolutions -- and did nothing to stem the genocide. In 1998 President Clinton apologized profusely for inaction. Some thought it could never happen again. It's happening again in Libya, where the mad dog egomaniac, who has run the country for 40 years of tyranny has launched his Air Force to bomb and strafe peaceful protesters against his tyrannical rule. His planes and helicopters are again in the air.
In the face of governmental mass murder on the streets of Tripoli the UN Security Council has unanimously passed a condemnatory resolution, and President Obama has denounced the murderous behavior of Mr. Qaddafi. But once again, both did – exactly nothing. Yes, the fairy with several hundred US citizens had not yet left Libya because of bad weather, and there was a case for waiting until they were safely beyond Libyan territorial waters before actually doing something other than rhetorically. But this time, it should not be a replay of Rwanda. The president should call for an immediate emergency UN Security Council session and demand an immediate authorization of a no-fly zone above Tripoli along the lines of the US-UK-French no-fly enforcement over Iraq following the 1991 removal of Saddam Hussein’ invasion forces from Kuwait
Some of us have, over the years, fruitlessly advocated more life- and cost-saving preventive action rather than retroactively cleaning up the messes and internationally forbidden crimes that have already taken place. Granted, this runs against the conservative culture of the decision-making community and diplomacy in general, as well as straying from well-established juridical principles that do not recognize crimes until they have actually taken place (sensibly modified in the case of hatching terrorist plots). Preventive action has had a recent rebirth, at least in theory. It is past time for a coalition or if necessary the United States alone to actually prevent more mass killings from the air in Libya. This is likely to be among the contingency plans under discussion in Washington. If the president decides to act now and do the right thing, he may be blocked by arguments from Navy and Air Force that not enough time, forces him to look not available etc. I hope he agrees that he has every right to expect immediate compliance from our multi-trillion dollar defense establishment.
In the face of governmental mass murder on the streets of Tripoli the UN Security Council has unanimously passed a condemnatory resolution, and President Obama has denounced the murderous behavior of Mr. Qaddafi. But once again, both did – exactly nothing. Yes, the fairy with several hundred US citizens had not yet left Libya because of bad weather, and there was a case for waiting until they were safely beyond Libyan territorial waters before actually doing something other than rhetorically. But this time, it should not be a replay of Rwanda. The president should call for an immediate emergency UN Security Council session and demand an immediate authorization of a no-fly zone above Tripoli along the lines of the US-UK-French no-fly enforcement over Iraq following the 1991 removal of Saddam Hussein’ invasion forces from Kuwait
Some of us have, over the years, fruitlessly advocated more life- and cost-saving preventive action rather than retroactively cleaning up the messes and internationally forbidden crimes that have already taken place. Granted, this runs against the conservative culture of the decision-making community and diplomacy in general, as well as straying from well-established juridical principles that do not recognize crimes until they have actually taken place (sensibly modified in the case of hatching terrorist plots). Preventive action has had a recent rebirth, at least in theory. It is past time for a coalition or if necessary the United States alone to actually prevent more mass killings from the air in Libya. This is likely to be among the contingency plans under discussion in Washington. If the president decides to act now and do the right thing, he may be blocked by arguments from Navy and Air Force that not enough time, forces him to look not available etc. I hope he agrees that he has every right to expect immediate compliance from our multi-trillion dollar defense establishment.
Saturday, February 12, 2011
EGYPT AND AMERICAN VALUES
With the electrifying news of President Hosni Mubarak’s departure, the pin has been put back in the Egyptian grenade. Change is now possible and should be welcomed. But it’s worth remembering that in a worrying sense, the Mubarak regime continues even without Mubarak. Maybe that will change in an Act Two, as imagined in President Obama’s inspiring statement of February 11. One thing that must change is the state of emergency that has allowed the Egyptian people to be abused without redress. It must change for both American and Egyptian reasons. There is no escaping the fact that new Egyptian leader Suleiman was Mubarak’s intelligence chief, earlier accused of torture, and recently quoted as blaming the demonstrations on foreigners. The other new leader, the army, played the role of wizard of OZ, exercising power behind the curtain, but tends to be politically neutral, owns major industries, is committed to order, and doubtless oversaw Mubarak’s ouster. Can it tolerate a liberal populist government?.
Before the transformative denouement, US policy confused others with uncertainties and flip-flops. We can sympathize with the struggle to combine US strategic interests with efforts to teleguide the upheaval in constructive directions – constitutional reform, unrigged elections, and eventually a rule of law. But US policy can be brought into much sharper focus by expanding the campaign to end Egypt’s 30-year state of emergency law that made possible arbitrary seizure, brutal incarceration, torture, and sometimes disappearance and official murder.
Why prioritize that issue?As both a political scientist and former government official, I have dealt for years with large abstractions like democracy, elections, conflict management, and the rest of the policy apparatus. But in the Egyptian drama, even from afar a familiar smell issued from police stations and detention centers.-- the stink of human fear felt by people with an idea, a complaint, a dream for the future, or a journalist's notebook, people who felt naked and vulnerable in the face of arbitrary abuses. The Egyptian climate, according to the few reports by victims,has been no different from the pervasive smell of fear one saw in Chiang Kai-shek's China, during eight visits to the Soviet Union, and lecturing in Ceausescu's Romania, pre-democratic Korea and Indonesia, and other police states -- all tyrannies that sickeningly abused their citizens for thinking, speaking, writing, assembling.
A traditional American aversion to such abuse (including abuse by US agents) takes specific shape in a core US policy that is not only right but popular. Vice President Joe Biden’s February 8 call on the Cairo leadership to end the 30 year state of emergency that made Egypt an oppressive police state was the most unequivocal American message yet. It called for lifting the law that legitimized arbitrary arrest and imprisonment. President Obama was wise to pick up that theme and share it with an Egypt-wide audience.
US Middle East policies are delicately balanced, for good and bad reasons., and quiet diplomacy often goes unappreciated on the Egyptian or any other public. Until the Obama February 11 statement, it left the impression of an unsympathetic America. The Middle East future will belong to a younger generation that is fed up with an oppressive status quo, Internet-savvy, and unemployed thanks to grossly mismanaged economies. Human rights policy is one way to address that weakness. The US handles human rights concerns as a subtext to the big-ticket political, economic, and security issues. American politicians like to proclaim “American values” but these are often unspecified. There is in fact one clear value that directly affects the human person. It is the only value with unequivocal moral content. It is the right to civilized treatment by those in charge. It belongs at the top rather than at the fringe of American priorities when a tyranny is confronted by a fed-up citizenry.
As a practical matter, Washington would be doing well by doing good if it continually insists on an end to official abuses. For an American president to proclaim this as the litmus test for a civilized country is admittedly interference in internal affairs. But it would be supported by 305 million Americans, and would help clear up our ambivalent image in a new era of popular rejection of tyranny.
Before the transformative denouement, US policy confused others with uncertainties and flip-flops. We can sympathize with the struggle to combine US strategic interests with efforts to teleguide the upheaval in constructive directions – constitutional reform, unrigged elections, and eventually a rule of law. But US policy can be brought into much sharper focus by expanding the campaign to end Egypt’s 30-year state of emergency law that made possible arbitrary seizure, brutal incarceration, torture, and sometimes disappearance and official murder.
Why prioritize that issue?As both a political scientist and former government official, I have dealt for years with large abstractions like democracy, elections, conflict management, and the rest of the policy apparatus. But in the Egyptian drama, even from afar a familiar smell issued from police stations and detention centers.-- the stink of human fear felt by people with an idea, a complaint, a dream for the future, or a journalist's notebook, people who felt naked and vulnerable in the face of arbitrary abuses. The Egyptian climate, according to the few reports by victims,has been no different from the pervasive smell of fear one saw in Chiang Kai-shek's China, during eight visits to the Soviet Union, and lecturing in Ceausescu's Romania, pre-democratic Korea and Indonesia, and other police states -- all tyrannies that sickeningly abused their citizens for thinking, speaking, writing, assembling.
A traditional American aversion to such abuse (including abuse by US agents) takes specific shape in a core US policy that is not only right but popular. Vice President Joe Biden’s February 8 call on the Cairo leadership to end the 30 year state of emergency that made Egypt an oppressive police state was the most unequivocal American message yet. It called for lifting the law that legitimized arbitrary arrest and imprisonment. President Obama was wise to pick up that theme and share it with an Egypt-wide audience.
US Middle East policies are delicately balanced, for good and bad reasons., and quiet diplomacy often goes unappreciated on the Egyptian or any other public. Until the Obama February 11 statement, it left the impression of an unsympathetic America. The Middle East future will belong to a younger generation that is fed up with an oppressive status quo, Internet-savvy, and unemployed thanks to grossly mismanaged economies. Human rights policy is one way to address that weakness. The US handles human rights concerns as a subtext to the big-ticket political, economic, and security issues. American politicians like to proclaim “American values” but these are often unspecified. There is in fact one clear value that directly affects the human person. It is the only value with unequivocal moral content. It is the right to civilized treatment by those in charge. It belongs at the top rather than at the fringe of American priorities when a tyranny is confronted by a fed-up citizenry.
As a practical matter, Washington would be doing well by doing good if it continually insists on an end to official abuses. For an American president to proclaim this as the litmus test for a civilized country is admittedly interference in internal affairs. But it would be supported by 305 million Americans, and would help clear up our ambivalent image in a new era of popular rejection of tyranny.
Sunday, November 14, 2010
IS AMERICA IN DECLINE?
Will America overreach and fall by the wayside as ambitious newcomers overtake it, the way the Barbarians overcame a declining Rome, Bismarck’s Germany pulled up alongside Britain and France in the late 19th century, and a bumptious America in the early 20th century elbowed its way to the top table, dramatized with the world tour of the Great White Fleet? An American president leaving a G-20 summit empty-handed in late 2010 will confirm to many that the United States is losing its post-World War II position of global influence and leadership.
Yale historian Paul Kennedy, writing a couple of decades ago about the rise and fall of great powers, advanced the thesis of “imperial overstretch,” where one power after another fell under the weight of costly military adventures alongside mounting deficits at home. Twenty years later he is still what jargon-lovers call a declinist. The quarrel Harvard historian Niall Ferguson has with Kennedy is not his implication of American decline, but whether it would take place all of a sudden or in a leisurely fashion.
Historians are not the only ones with this gloomy perspective. According to a 2010 NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, two-thirds of Americans polled see the US in decline, with a worse future for their children. What a contrast with the classic American view, summed up by anthropologist Clyde Kluckhohn, that “America’s Golden Age has always been in the future.”
There are no agreed metrics for deciding whether or not our nation is in decline. Those who boast that "we’re number one" have in mind our military power; the US is the only nation capable of conducting worldwide military operations, with a defense budget twice the size of the next ten largest national defense budgets combined. Or they may be comforted by the fact that the US remains the greatest economic power in terms of GDP, while also consuming a quarter of the world's petroleum (and outpolluting all other polluters).
The celebratory self-image lies deep in the American psyche. From its inception the US was defined by its leaders, poets, and clerics as morally singular, using phrases such as “God’s American Israel,” “the new Jerusalem,” “a city on a hill,” “the glorious renovator of the world,” and “the last solemn experiment of humanity.” Unsurprisingly, some other nations felt culturally and morally superior: Consider France with its mission civilizatrice, Iran with its 2,500 year-old Persian conquests, Britain’s songs about ruling the waves, and China’s mandate from heaven.
What is declining, aside from the self-confidence of Americans? Some data points help sketch the picture. The starting premise is that in a world increasingly interdependent, technology-based, and wired (or, more accurately, wirelessed), the nation with the best educated population is the nation best prepared for the complex challenges ahead. There should always be a place for the humanities and classics. But when it comes to competition for leadership and influence, science and math win the day. As the humorist Ring Lardner noted, the race is not always to the swift nor the battle to the strong – but that's the way to place your bets.
Where does the US stand on the educational scoreboard? A study by the National Academy of Sciences produced some devastating statistics that would startle the “we’re number one” trumpeters. Here are the US rankings:
· Global innovation-based competitiveness: 6
· Rate of change over the last decade: 40
· Percent of 25- to 30-year-olds who have graduated from high school: 11
· College completion rate: 16
· Broadband Internet access: 22
· Life expectancy at birth: 24
· Quality of K-12 science and math education: 48
In 2010, Newsweek magazine undertook an ambitious study in collaboration with research and academic institutions, aimed at identifying the “best” countries. Among populous nations, the US was ranked number 2 on quality of life and number 1 on economic dynamism. But it did not make the top ten in either education or overall ranking of high-income countries. The final US ranking was number 11.
The end of the recession may change our pessimistic mood, but it won’t change the fact of flagging competitiveness. Nevertheless, it’s worth considering declinist Paul Kennedy’s list of America’s tremendous advantages compared to other great powers, such as demographics, land-to-people ratio, raw materials, research universities, laboratories, and a flexible work force. I might add a steady though inadequate inflow of foreign brainpower. If our slump is temporary, the policy question is how to mobilize our assets to make America successful again.
In the late 1950's the Cold War was unfolding in a threatening fashion, and the atmosphere was darkened by Soviet successes in the race to outer space. Sputnik I had successfully achieved a low earth orbit, while early American attempts were producing humiliating misfires, U-turns, and flaming plunges back to earth. The malaise would be reversed only when President John F. Kennedy reinvigorated the national spirit with soaring rhetoric announcing the goal of a moon landing by the end of the decade, and its actual achievement in 1969.
In the same period I left the State Department to join the MIT Center for International Studies. One of my new colleagues at MIT was a lively and charismatic Russian émigré named Alexander Karol who was working on a study of Soviet education in science and technology. Alex Karol’s scholarly book on Soviet science and engineering education was headed for academic reviews, but suddenly appeared on the front page of the Sunday New York Times book review section. Schools everywhere took a fresh look at their teaching of science and math, as some are doing now, and the educational system was at least temporarily transformed.
It is certain that other powers – China, India, Brazil – will inevitably rise, generating a fierce competition. (As International Herald Tribune editor Fareed Zakaria wrote, the rise of the rest does not mean the US is necessarily through.) Yes, the US could remain stuck in political gridlock and declining growth, and essential federal support for research and innovation could fatally dry up. The squabbling political class is failing in its responsibilities, and some mass media only make things worse. For me, the bottom line is that, whatever its defects and problems, America has enormous latent assets, including its peoples’ unparalleled spirit of enterprise and independence, noted as long ago as 1831 by Alexis deToqueville. That spirit built a great nation that came from elsewhere to conquer a wilderness and make it thrive. It became a place where initiative, innovation, and education were synonymous with the word America; today, whatever our doldrums, foreigners of all stripes still compete for acceptance at American universities.
As in the 1950’s, it may again take a crisis or worse to shake us up sufficiently to strengthen American commercial, technological, and political innovation and drive. In the new Great Game of the 21st century, the US will need a fresh brand of imaginative and persuasive leadership to become a prime player. One possible scenario is a country that, in the words of New York Times columnist David Brooks, experiences national humiliation and diminished power. But another scenario is imaginable for a nation that once again mobilizes to remain a paramount power, and once again is uniquely placed to share the lead in the management of a safer and more cooperative world.
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