A very important development in Pakistan: Beitullah Mehsud is dead. The leader of the Pakistani Taliban was killed by a US strike drone. Mehsud was the driving force of a movement that was threatening the very fabric of Pakistani society and there is no doubt that the US and Pakistani government will be very happy that they successfully targeted him. There is still much work to be done to bring peace and security to Pakistan but this is a significant moment. The question for the morning is whether the US and Pakistani governments can build on recent military victories and win the peace via the hearts and minds of ordinary Pakistanis….in particular those in the tribal areas.

The Iranian people are putting the demos back in democracy.  Demos, or, to use the proper ancient Greek word, dēmos, stand for “The common people; the populace.”

By the way, Greek is a part of the Indo-European family of related languages now spoken on every continent on Earth. It includes most European languages along with the Indic and Iranian languages of Asia.

So it could be said that right now by virtue of their continuing demonstrations on the streets of Tehran and other cities that the Iranian people are the best examples of the ancient Greek democratic ideology, bar none.

Like many other people outside Iran I have been monitoring the coverage of the protests over the fraudulent results of Iran’s presidential election. And with all due respect to my fellow blogger Brian Vogt’s post on the subject there can be no doubt that the announced results were a fraud, as in blatantly rigged.

When I watch a YouTube video of a young Iranian woman daring to kick a body armored security force goon and then being repeatedly hit by a baton afterward my heart goes out to her and all the people in Iran confronting the forces of tyranny.

As I write this the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran reported that numerous Iranians beaten and injured by security forces as they tried to stage peaceful demonstrations have been arrested and detained when they sought medical treatment in hospitals.

The question is what can people outside Iran do about it? (more…)

Obama and Shultz at the White House on May 19 (AP photo)

At a meeting Tuesday with former Secretaries of State George Shultz and Henry Kissinger, former Senator Sam Nunn (D-GA), and former Secretary of Defense Bill Perry, President Obama summed up the group’s deliberations on the goal of achieving a world without nuclear weapons:

“This is a reminder of the long tradition of bipartisan foreign policy that has been the hallmark of America at moments of greatest need, and that’s the kind of spirit that we hope will be reflected in our administration.”

It’s great to hear this from the President who also made “bipartisanship and openness” an official plank in his campaign platform, and now identifies it as a key to effective US national security and foreign policy for his Administration.

You might think Obama’s commitment to bipartisan consultation and cooperation on national security would win nothing but plaudits from a group of former leaders obviously assembled not just for their substantive expertise, but for their bipartisan credibility. So then what are we to make of George Shultz’s reply, in the role of spokesman for the elder statesmen? Not once, but twice, the former Reagan administration official remarked that President Obama was wrong about nuclear disarmament being a “bipartisan issue,” because:

“It’s really nonpartisan. This is a subject that ought to somehow get up above trying to get a partisan advantage. And it’s of such importance that we need to take it on its own merits. And that’s the way we’ve proceeded. And that’s the way, at least it seems to us, you’ve proceeded.”

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After the House passed the stimulus bill without a single Republican vote last month, many declared the age of bipartisanship under the Obama Administration over.  How quickly the pundits and the talking heads who hailed the bipartisanship of the new President trumpeted its demise.

So, is President Obama bipartisan or isn’t he?  Everyone wants the answer and they want it now.  The media is tracking bipartisanship as if it can be quantified issue by issue and moment to moment.  This betrays a fundamental misunderstanding about what bipartisanship is and why it is important.

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“Bipartisan” surely won first place last week in the top ten of sound bites. Some congressmen spoke out on the issue with surprising candor: Apparently the lack of bipartisanship is making our elected officials melancholic. In a NY Times article, Carl Hulse quotes Senator Martinez (R, Florida) as saying:

I think there are some aspects of Senate life that haven’t been fun the last couple of years, which have to do with the acrimony and lack of getting things done,” said Senator Mel Martinez, the Florida Republican who announced this year that he would not seek a second term. “It is not fatal to the institution, it has been here a long time, but there are a lot of people leaving.

Acrimony? Lack of getting things done? And who is to blame, Mr Martinez? Apparently not the senators themselves, since Mr Martinez goes on to say:

… another factor is the incessant fund-raising needed to generate the money to run for the chance to win and raise more money to run again.

Then there are the politically charged message votes, the impossible-to-please interest groups, the strain on family, the angry constituents, the uninformed critics and the intensifying news media scrutiny.

Mr Martinez is right: serving the people under these circumstances doesn’t sound like much fun. It would serve the senate well to start thinking of ways to reform itself to avoid human hemorrhaging. For starters, it could try less acrimony.

In a piece for this weekend’s New York Times Magazine, Times political reporter Matt Bai evaluates Obama’s effort to reach white male, gun-toting, church-going (and traditionally conservative) voters.  He highlights Obama’s dogged pursuit of a “50-state” strategy, which includes dozens of campaign offices in places like Southwestern Virginia, South Dakota, and North Carolina.  Bai suggests that despite being the first ever Democratic nominee who is not a white male, Obama might have a good shot of bringing white males into the Democratic camp.  This speaks to the question of whether Obama can win a commanding majority that includes both traditional Democratic voters and new converts from rural, white, working class communities.  But Bai touches only briefly on the much more important question of why Obama would want to win such a majority.  He writes:

From the start, Obama has aspired not simply to win but also to stand as a kind of generational break from the polarized era of the boomers, to become the first president in at least 20 years to claim anything more than the most fragile mandate for his agenda. Absent that, even if he wins, Obama could wake up on Nov. 5 as yet another president-elect of half the people, perched uncomfortably on the edge of an impassable cultural divide.

From a purely tactical standpoint, winning by a wide margin would clearly be preferable to winning by a narrow margin.  After all, extra electoral votes to push the winner over the top are an insurance policy against potential close calls like Florida in 2000, and a commanding win certainly bodes better both for popularity polls during the winner’s first term, and for his chances of winning a second term in 2012.

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Given the prospect of a trillion-dollar-plus government bailout package for Wall Street, tonight’s Presidential debate is likely to stray from the official theme of national security and foreign policy.  But, as Senators McCain and Obama have each suggested, America’s economic future is closely linked to our national security, our international standing, and our competitiveness in the global marketplace.  For that reason, any conversation about putting the US economy back on track will raise some serious questions about the next President’s national security and foreign policy agenda.

The Partnership for a Secure America’s distinguished bipartisan Advisory Board issued a statement asking Senators Obama and McCain five critical questions about foreign policy challenges that will require cooperation between Democrats and Republicans in January of 2009.  The statement begins: “As Democrats and Republicans, we believe that the next President of the United States must initiate a new era of US global leadership based on bipartisanship at home and cooperative engagement abroad.”

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Last night, as part of the launch of its new master’s degree program in global policy studies, the LBJ School of Public Affairs hosted former Secretary of State Madeline Albright for a discussion of foreign policy issues facing the United States (you can see a webcast here). The discussion covered a range of issues, and Secretary Albright highlighted a number of points that she raises in various of her recent books, notably including her new one, styled as a memo to the new president. Not surprisingly, her answers to questions tended to fall back on now-well-known Democratic foreign policy positions, and although she made a show of trying to stay above the political fray, her positions in the election are so well-rehearsed that electoral politics of course slipped into the discussion. The crowd didn’t seem to mind, even if a few of us weren’t so sure we agreed with everything she was saying and, more important, were a bit uncomfortable with a borderline-partisan launch event for a non-partisan educational program.

Public affairs programs tend to lean liberal. Many students are attracted to the field because they want a leg up in careers that try to transform the world for the better. Their whole reason to get into this business is anti-conservative, because they don’t like what they see and they are optimistic about their ability to make the world a better place. There’s definitely a place for their idealism, but public affairs education should temper it with realism. And at UT, many of us on the faculty — even liberal-leaning faculty members, I think — try to do that.

A diversity of political viewpoints is really useful in the classroom, too. We wouldn’t want only liberals (or only conservatives) in the incoming class. Fortunately, we have enough diversity, even though its safe to say that more students and faculty at the LBJ School are Democrats than Republicans, and more are liberals than conservatives. That’s probably the case in Washington policy debates, both inside government (among permanent staffers — there’s certainly little diversity among political appointees, for obvious, good reasons) and in the “policy community.” That pluralism helps us make better policy choices, when we have civilized discussions about ends and means. (more…)

Keep in mind that the Partnership for a Secure America is dedicated to recreating the bipartisan center in American national security and foreign policy. As its mission statement says, “the United States is being ill-served by the growing partisan divide surrounding its national security and foreign policy. Although partisan rancor has traditionally stopped “at the water’s edge,” this tradition of bipartisan cooperation has eroded significantly in recent years in negative and harmful ways.” 

Thus, let us look at presidential candidates Barrack Obama and John McCain. Forget for the moment their positions on various issues, Iraq, Iran, Georgia, war on terror etcetera. Let’s just simply consider how well receptive they would be to reaching out and working with members of the other party. I have not seen that much written on this so the article by Ronald Brownstein in the current issue of Atlantic Monthly caught my attention. 

He writes that because both men are balancing their daily criticisms of the other with these inclusive signals, each may succeed more than Bush did at keeping a foot in the door to those who ultimately prefer the other candidate. That would allow either to emerge from this election with the opportunity to build broader coalitions than Bush has done or than Bill Clinton managed to do after 1997.

But will they?

To reach agreements that attract support beyond their own party, politicians usually must make concessions that antagonize interests within it. In the Senate, McCain has often passed that test, partnering with Democrats on several intensely controversial issues, including the “patient’s bill of rights,” campaign-finance reform, preserving the filibuster for judicial appointments, comprehensive immigration reform that included a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants, and global warming. In each of those fights, he accepted severe criticism from conservatives in and out of Congress as the price of building legislative alliances with Democrats.

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Taking into account some of the arguments made by Devil’s Advocate in response to my previous post, I’d like to expand on some of my original points as well as clear up a few inconsistencies and misunderstandings that seem to have emerged in this exchange. I’ll return to the question of defense spending and America’s geostrategic position in a moment, but I’d like first to clear the debate of some straw arguments that Devil’s Advocate makes, likely due to my incomplete exposition of some of my original ideas.

In disputing my diagnosis of likely causes of twenty-first century instability, Devil’s Advocate makes the following argument:

Mr. Eckel attributes 21st century instability to “poor resource management, unresolved tensions between political institutions and political identity, [and] governments that are unresponsive to the needs of their people.” The exact opposite in fact is true: The instability in the world is directly caused by governments that attempt to manage their resources and economies (Pre-1995 India, Soviet Union, Zimbabwe, North Korea, Cambodia, Indonesia, Maoist China, Vietnam, etc.) Planned economies create much more instability than ones that rely on the free market and capitalism.

Just to be clear, I’m not advocating the reintroduction of central planning as the guiding principle of global economic management. I’m certainly not advocating for, nor defending, the kinds of klepto-socialism practiced by the leadership of Zimbabwe, Vietnam, Maoist China or the now-defunct U.S.S.R. When I talk about “managing” the global economy, I’m talking about using market-based institutions to guide global development. This isn’t a new idea, nor is it a particularly leftist one. The I.M.F. manages the global economy by ensuring that individual government insolvencies don’t lead to the systemic collapse of global finance. The W.T.O. manages global trade. The World Bank attempts to manage economic development. None of these institutions are particularly socialistic, and they certainly aren’t back doors to central planning. (more…)