issue: Foreign Policy & Defense

Three Threats to Liberal Democracy

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

President Trump petulantly attacked U.S. allies at the G-7 summit in Quebec, then dashed off to Singapore to heap praise on North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. You couldn’t ask for a more vivid illustration of the illiberal spirit that shapes his “America First” doctrine.

But Trump is hardly alone in embracing hyper-nationalism. According to PPI President Will Marshall, illiberal nationalism is the common thread running through the three most potent threats to the democratic world: the rise of national populism, especially in Europe; Russia’s reversion to despotism at home and adventurism abroad; and, the emergence of China’s autocratic capitalism as a plausible alternative to market democracy.

Marshall elaborated on the dangers of neo-nationalism in comments prepared for the Biennial Colloquy on the State of Democracy, organized in Rome this spring by the Centro Studi Americani. That commentary follows:

PPI Statement on Trump Administration’s New China Tariffs & China’s Announced Retaliation

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Ed Gerwin, Senior Fellow for Trade and Global Opportunity at the Progressive Policy Institute, released the following statement in response to the Trump Administration’s announcement of new tariffs on Chinese-origin imports and China’s announced retaliation:

“China’s technology mercantilism is a serious threat to America’s economic future that requires a tough and effective American response, but the Trump Administration’s announcement today of $50 billion in duties on Chinese-origin products is not even close to that response.

“Making American businesses and working families pay billions in new trade taxes won’t change China’s bad behavior. Instead, China will respond—as it has already announced—with billions in targeted retaliatory tariffs that will make it much harder for American manufacturers and farmers to export there. It cannot be overstated—these tit-for-tat tariffs will destroy jobs and devastate communities throughout the United States.

“Responding to China’s unfair trade practices and technology theft with “America First” protectionism is a terrible mistake. The Administration’s deeply flawed and poorly focused strategy—based on duties that damage America’s economy and “go-it-alone” trade policies that alienate vital allies—will have large-scale and long-term repercussions.

“Instead of instigating trade wars, the United States should confront China’s unfair trade practices with a targeted, long-term response that enlists our international allies, enforces current trade rules and writes new ones, focuses negotiations on key issues, and ratchets up pressure on China—all while advocating aggressively to keep global markets open. PPI will outline such a strategy in a new report to be released next week.

“Open global markets are manifestly in America’s interest. Given a level playing field, America’s innovative businesses can compete and win anywhere. In trade wars, nearly everyone loses.”

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Populism Watch: 4 Things To Watch as the New Italian Government Moves Forward

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

In Italy, the first populist government in Western Europe was sworn in on June 1st. The win was secured by a coalition between the right-wing League and the eurosceptic 5Star Movement. Below, four things to follow in the coming months:

  1. How long can the coalition hold?

Amid divisions (the League is a right-wing party with a northern background, 5Star is an ideological mixed bag with southern roots) the two parties succeeded in holding together through the election. Their divides, such as differences of opinion on combating economic decline (the League has proposed precipitous tax cuts, while Five Star has supported funds for the unemployed) did not break the coalition. Yet support for the League has grown from 17 to 25 percent since March, while support for 5Star has plateaued at 32 percent. Of additional concern is Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte. Conte is a former academic, whose only government experience has been a stint on the government administrative justice council. What this means for the future of the coalition is yet to be seen. Italy has had over 60 governments since becoming a republic in 1946.

  1. The Impact of the Coalition on Stocks, the Euro, and Italian Public Debt

The coalition has put forth a 58-page agreement outlining its agenda. The plan could cost as much as €125 billion, a far greater sum than the €500 million the coalition has budgeted for it, according to a report by the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Milan. The plan includes a guaranteed income of €780 a month and a near-flat tax policy. Of additional concern is the coalition’s unpredictable impact on stocks, shaky support of the euro, and willingness to reduce public debt. The advancement, stagnation or decline of the Italian economy under the new government may impact future support for the coalition.

  1. Impact on New Arrivals

The future for migrants, immigrants, and asylum seekers within Italy is uncertain. Interior Minister Salvini has taken a harsh stance, saying “the good times for illegals are over – get ready to pack your bags.” Salvini has pledged to deport up to 500,000 immigrants without papers. Tensions between Italy’s native population and immigrants, particularly migrants, has risen steadily. The fatal shooting of Malian-born legal resident Soumaila Sacko, a trade unionist who protested working conditions for migrants, has done nothing to ease tensions.

  1. Impact on International Relations

Conte has explored lifting the sanctions placed on Russia following the crisis in Ukraine. NATO opposes the idea. In a speech to parliament on June 5th, Conte has pledged to both “reaffirm our convinced membership of NATO” and “support opening up to Russia” including reviewing the sanctions that “risk humiliating Russian civil society.” In response, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said “I think the economic sanctions are important because they send a clear message that what Russia has done in Ukraine has to have consequences.”

These economic, immigration, and foreign affairs concerns will impact both the longevity of the coalition, and the future of Italy, the EU, and international relations as a whole.

Populism Watch: Europe, Populism and the Model of Macron

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Change is afoot in Europe. On the same day last week, Spain ousted the populist Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy in favor of the socialist Pedro Sánchez, while Italy welcomed the first populist government in Western Europe. In the coming months, PPI will track the tides of populism across Europe in real-time and provide updates on this blog.

One key country resisting populist forces is France. In electing Emmanuel Macron president, French voters rebuffed both the far-right populist Marine le Pen and the ultra-left demagogue Jean-Luc Melenchon. The key, argues Progressive Policy Institute President Will Marshall, lay in Macron’s ability to tap into the voters’ mood for radical change without embracing the populists’ reactionary demands. Instead, Macron derived his agenda from the pragmatic elements of both the Socialists and the center-right Republicans. Second, Macron’s economic agenda focused on reducing stagnation by simultaneously shielding individuals against market fluctuations while liberalizing France’s economy. Third, Macron forged consensus among progressives and traditionalists by fusing a hopeful and forward-thinking narrative with classic ideas rooted in the spirit of the European Enlightenment.

Following in Macron’s footsteps, the task ahead for progressives is to channel the insurgent mood in both America and Europe in more constructive directions. That means speaking to voters’ common hopes and aspirations, not the animosities that divide them.

Marshall for New York Daily News, “Trump’s petulant Iran deal pullout: He has no clue what comes next”

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

President Trump seems determined to keep his dumbest 2016 campaign promises. First, he pulled the United States out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which is designed to create a strong economic counterweight to China.

Then, he pulled us out of the Paris climate accord, essentially signaling that the United States will not cooperate with the rest of the world to combat global warming. Now, he’s made good on his threat to pull the United States out of the Iran nuclear deal — like the other two deals, painstakingly negotiated by President Obama.

Trump’s actions constitute not only a repudiation of America’s international leadership role, but of international cooperation itself. Instead, United States seems to be adopting a strategically clueless policy of belligerent unilateralism.

Continue reading at the New York Daily News.

The App Economy in Vietnam, 2017

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

When Apple introduced the iPhone in 2007, that initiated a profound and transformative new economic innovation. While central bankers and national leaders struggled with a deep financial crisis and stagnation, the fervent demand for iPhones, and the wave of smartphones that followed, was a rare force for growth.

Today, there are 5 billion mobile broadband subscriptions, an unprecedented rate of adoption for a new technology. Use of mobile data is rising at 65 percent per year, a stunning number that shows its revolutionary impact.

More than just hardware, the smartphone also inaugurated a new era for software developers around the world. Apple’s opening up of the App Store in 2008, followed by Android Market (now Google Play) and other app stores, created a way for iOS and Android developers to write mobile applications that could run on smartphones anywhere.

Happy Holidays from PPI

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute
It’s been a surreal political year, but PPI has much to celebrate this holiday season. Throughout 2017, we expanded our productive capacity and the scope of our political and media outreach significantly. For example, PPI organized 150 meetings with prominent elected officials; visited 10 state capitals and 10 foreign capitals, published an influential book and more than 40 original research papers, and hosted nearly 30 private salon dinners on a variety of topical issues.
Best of all, we saw PPI’s research, analysis, and innovative ideas breaking through the political static and changing the way people think about some critical issues, including how to revive U.S. economic dynamism, spread innovation and jobs to people and places left behind by economic growth, and modernize the ways we prepare young people for work and citizenship.
Let me give you some highlights:
  • This fall, David Osborne’s new book, Reinventing America’s Schools, was published on the 25th anniversary of the nation’s first charter school in Minnesota. David, who heads PPI’s Reinventing America’s Schools project, documents the emergence of a new “21st Century” model for organizing and modernizing our public school system around the principles of school autonomy, accountability, choice, and diversity. David is just winding up a remarkable 20-city book tour that drew wide attention from education, political, and civic leaders, as well as the media. Because David is a great storyteller, as well as analyst, it’s a highly readable book that offers a cogent picture of a K-12 school system geared to the demands of the knowledge economy. It makes a great holiday gift!
  • Dr. Michael Mandel’s pioneering research on e-commerce and job creation also upended conventional wisdom and caught the attention of top economic commentators. Dr. Mandel, PPI’s chief economic strategist, found that online commerce has actually created more jobs in retail than it destroys, and that these new jobs (many in fulfillment centers in outlying areas) pay considerably better than traditional ones. His research buttresses the main premise of PPI’s progressive pro-growth agenda: that spreading digital innovation to the physical economy will create new jobs and businesses, raise labor productivity, and reduce inequality.
  • PPI challenged the dubious panacea of “free college” and proposed a progressive alternative – a robust system of post-secondary learning and credentials for the roughly 70 percent of young Americans who don’t get college degrees. PPI Senior Fellow Harry Holzer developed a creative menu of ways to create more “hybrid learning” opportunities combining work-based and classroom instruction. And PPI Senior Fellow Anne Kim highlighted the inequity of current government policies that subsidize college-bound youth (e.g., Pell Grants), but provide no help for people earning credentials certifying skills that employers value.
  • Building on last year’s opening of a PPI office in Brussels, we expanded our overseas work considerably in 2017. In January, I endeavored to explain the outcome of the U.S. election to shell-shocked audiences in London, Brussels, and Berlin. In April, we led our annual Congressional senior staff delegation to Paris, Brussels, and Berlin to engage European policymakers on the French presidential election and other U.S-E.U. issues, including international taxation, competition policy, and trade. PPI also took its message of data-driven innovation and growth to Australia, Brazil, Japan and a number of other countries.
Other 2017 highlights included a strategy retreat in February with two dozen top elected leaders to explore ideas for a new, radically pragmatic agenda for progressives; a Washington conference with our longtime friend Janet Napolitano (now President of the University of California system) on how to update and preserve NAFTA; public forums in Washington on pricing carbon, infrastructure, tax reform, and other pressing issues; creative policy reports on varied subjects; and a robust output of articles, op-eds, blogs, and social media activity.
I’m also happy to report many terrific additions to PPI in 2017. Rob Keast joined to manage our external relations and new policy development; Paul Bledsoe assumed a new role as Strategic Adviser as well as guiding our work on energy and climate policy; and Emily Langhorne joined as Education Policy Analyst. We will also be adding a fiscal project next year.
All this leaves us poised for a high-impact year in 2018. In this midterm-election year, our top priority will be crafting and building support for a new progressive platform — a radically pragmatic alternative to the political tribalism throttling America’s progress. That starts with new and better ideas for solving peoples’ problems that look forward, not backward, and that speak to their hopes and aspirations, not their anger and mistrust.
It’s a tall order, and we cannot succeed without your help and support. Thanks for all you have done over past years, and we look forward to working with you in 2018.
Happy holidays and New Year!

Drafting Software Policy at DoD

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

We have been focusing in recent months on the expansion of the IT revolution from the digital industries, such as entertainment and communication, to the physical industries such as manufacturing, construction, and transportation.

But in some sense, the ultimate physical industry is the Department of Defense, and that’s why we found the latest National Defense Authorization Act, now moving through Congress, to be so interesting, and well, puzzling.

First, the bill *appears* to require companies to turn over the software source code for any products purchased by the Department of Defense. Second, the bill as written takes a strong position in the long-running debate between open source and proprietary software.

 “§ 2320a. Use of open source software

“(a) Software Development.—All unclassified custom-developed computer software and related technical data that is not a defense article regulated pursuant to section 38 of the Arms Export Control Act (22 U.S.C. 2778) and that is developed under a contract or other transaction awarded by the Department of Defense on or after the date that is 180 days after the date of the enactment of this section shall be managed as open source software unless specifically waived by the service acquisition executive.

“(b) Release Of Software In Public Repository.—The Secretary of Defense shall require the contractor to release source code and related technical data described under subsection (a) in a public repository approved by the Department of Defense, subject to a license through which the copyright holder provides the rights to use, study, reuse, modify, enhance, and distribute the software to anyone and for any purpose.

“(c) Applicability To Existing Software.—The Secretary of Defense shall, where appropriate—

“(1) apply open source licenses to existing custom-developed computer software; and

“(2) release related source code and technical data in a public repository location approved by the Department of Defense.

By itself the requirement that all existing and future custom-developed software be treated as open source is odd, because most everyone acknowledges that open source and proprietary software both have their pros and cons. Indeed, the Internet seems to be living happily integrating a mixture of open source and proprietary software.  Sometimes proprietary software has problems, sometimes open source software does.  The Equifax hack, for example, was due to a problem in an open source component.  Shouldn’t any policy promote competition among all models, rather than pre-determine one outcome?

But I’m primarily concerned with the impact of these provisions on leading edge technologies such as the Internet of Things. The old model of a software program that runs on a single computer no longer holds.  Instead, more and more software development is focused on physical objects such as connected cars and trucks, smart watches, 3D printers and IT-intensive medical equipment, which all contain millions of lines of carefully-developed code.

This cutting-edge code is what gives American companies their advantage against foreign competitors, and what will power the next wave of the information revolution in the United States and around the world.

Does it really make sense to force these companies to make their software open-source if they make any changes requested by the Department of Defense? Does configuring a car’s software for DOD requirements trigger the “open-source” requirement? If a leading 3D printer company wrote altered its operating software to DOD specs, is that operating software now going to be open source?

As the Internet of Things moves forward, the Department of Defense needs the best applications of IT to the physical world that it can get.  Moreover, the best American companies need to be able to modify their technology to fit DOD requirements without worrying that foreign companies will lift their best ideas.

Marshall for The Daily Beast, “How Liberals Are Blowing It Worldwide-and How Macron Might Not”

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Nearly everywhere you look, parties of the left are on the skids. That’s a big part of why Macron won in France. If he delivers, it’ll point the new direction.

Europe seems to be containing the fever of resurgent nationalism that propelled last year’s Brexit vote as well as Donald Trump’s improbable election here. Emmanuel Macron’s landslide victory over Marine Le Pen in France’s presidential election is just the latest sign that continental Europe isn’t catching the populist bug.

Not yet, anyway. Nativist and illiberal nationalist movements continue to make headway in many democratic countries. They could break through and take power—as they did in the United States last November—if mainstream parties can’t channel popular grievances toward constructive change.

As populists push political debate to the right, however, center-left parties are floundering on both sides of the Atlantic. Yoked to stale ideas and change-averse constituencies, they are failing to offer restive voters a radically pragmatic alternative to populist panaceas like cutting off immigration, seceding from the global economy and reverting to zero-sum nationalism.

Continue reading at The Daily Beast. 

Flashback Friday: PPI in Hindsight

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Just over a year ago, PPI unveiled a big ideas blueprint with a prescient subtitle: Unleashing Innovation and Growth: A Progressive Alternative to Populism. We knew that progressives in the United States and Europe needed better answers to the economic and cultural grievances that have fueled the rise of a retrograde populism and nationalism around the world. We did not foresee that Democrats would fail to offer a forward-looking plan for jobs and shared growth, opening the door to Donald Trump’s improbable victory.

Which makes the themes and ideas in PPI’s sweeping policy blueprint more important than ever. Populism today thrives in the political vacuum left by center-left parties that offer no clear vision for reviving economic dynamism and hope. “Winning the economic argument will be essential to victory in the 2016 elections and it starts by getting the diagnosis right,” the blueprint noted. Instead, Democrats ran a campaign that leaned heavily on identity politics, wealth redistribution and centralized, small-bore solutions.

Unleashing argued that America (and Europe) are stuck in a slow-growth trap that holds down wages and living standards. And it offered bold prescriptions for building on America’s competitive advantage in technology and entrepreneurship to spread innovation – now concentrated in a vibrant digital sector — to the nation’s physical economy, which continues to suffer from low productivity. In addition, the document proposed creative ways to modernize the nation’s economic infrastructure, improve the regulatory environment for innovation, build middle class wealth and empower poor Americans to work, save and chart their own course to social mobility and inclusion.

Crucially, the blueprint also urged progressives to reject anger and victimhood and offer voters a confident account for how America can build a new, inclusive prosperity:

What America needs is a forward-looking plan to unleash innovation, stimulate productive investment, groom the world’s most talented workers, and put our economy back on a high-growth path, It’s time to banish fear and pessimism and trust instead in the liberal and individualist values and enterprising culture that have always made America great.

That was the road not taken in 2016. Now it’s the road to political relevance and success for progressives here and elsewhere.

 

Yarrow for Washington Monthly: Why French Presidential Candidate Emmanuel Macron Could Save Western Democracy

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

He’s the last best hope to stop the ethno-nationalist Marine Le Pen from capturing the presidency.

Why are this spring’s French presidential elections so important to the United States and the world?

Typically, few Americans pay attention to elections beyond our borders, although Britain’s “Brexit” vote last summer was potentially a harbinger of Donald Trump’s election in November. Likewise, for most Americans who think about France, it is as a romantic tourist destination, an occasionally annoying ally, and a country whose language we studied in high school. And, for those very few who think more about French politics and policy, the picture is of a succession of lackluster, often corrupt leaders since before World War II, rigid regulatory policies that have hurt the French economy for more than 30 years, and some social policies—like the French health-care and child-care systems—that could be a model for the United States.

This year is very different. For Americans, and Brits and others—deeply disturbed by rising xenophobia and racism, the go-it-alone nationalism that sees other countries as enemies and free trade as harmful, and the rise of “alternative facts” and disdain for a free press—the French election could be a dramatic turning-point. For those who support President Trump and Brexit leader Nigel Farage, a victory by Marine Le Pen, the far-right National Front leader in France, would be the third, and decisive, domino to fall in the overturning of the post-World War II order of liberal democracy.

Read more at Washington Monthly. 

Bledsoe for RCP: The Shared Illusions of Brexit and Obamacare Repeal

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

“Have your cake and eat it.”  With these six aggressively monosyllabic words, the redoubtable Boris Johnson came clean, almost despite himself, about the contradictions of Brexit, and perhaps those of today’s right-of-center populism altogether.  In time, the phrase may be seen as the defining utterance of the post-truth era in trans-Atlantic politics.

The Washington corollary was minted by an aide to Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell regarding Obamacare – “repeal and replace.”  Less elegant, perhaps, but the inherent hubris and contradictions are much the same:  After throwing them off the system, we can then provide more than 20 million Americans health insurance, without patient costs, government expenditure or regulation, since our ideology forbids considering those policies.

Of course, in real life, and even eventually in politics, one must choose to either eat cake or have it.  Britain currently seems to have a slightly stale piece of cake, and a largely hungry populace.  Their American cousins, meanwhile, have a simple homespun saying: “You can’t replace something with nothing.” Yet, for the time being, that is precisely what congressional Republicans plan to do regarding Obamacare.

Continue reading at Real Clear Politics. 

Marshall for The Hill: Why the era of US global leadership is over

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

The era of U.S. international leadership is over. How do I know? Because President Trump so decreed in his inaugural address. He put the world on notice: Henceforth, America will be looking out exclusively for No. 1.

Do the people, whose instrument Trump claims to be, share his vision of an insular America? We’ll see, but it’s hard to find a popular mandate for Trump’s retro-nationalism in the 2016 election results.

No doubt plenty of Trump voters respond favorably to his “America First” message, but the president seemed oblivious to the reality that he presides over a closely divided country and political system. After all, he was U.S. voters’ second choice for president, by a non-trivial margin of nearly 3 millions votes.

Polls on the eve of the inauguration found that he is the least-popular new president in memory (with an approval rating of just 45 percent) and a solid majority of Americans on Election Day said Trump is lacking in presidential temperament.

Continue reading at The Hill.

Reforma Tributaria y la Econom’a App: El Ejemplo de Colombia

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

En los Estados Unidos hemos estado, con mucha razón, obsesionados con el resultado de las elecciones presidenciales. Pero el mundo sigue girando. Por ejemplo, la semana pasada Colombia ratificó un tratado de paz histórico entre el gobierno y el movimiento rebelde. PPI tuvo el privilegio de estar en Bogotá este octubre, donde realizamos un evento sobre la Economía App, el cual fue muy difundido, y describió cómo la Economía App de Colombia ha generado más de 80.000 puestos de trabajo.

Hay que felicitar al presidente de Colombia, Juan Manuel Santos por su éxito. Al mismo tiempo, él ha presentado una importante reforma tributaria que simplifica el sistema de impuestos corporativos mientras que recauda nuevos fondos. No es sorpresa que la medida de reforma tributaria sea controversial. Por ejemplo, las franquicias de la cadena de sandwiches Subway reclaman que el incremento en los impuestos puede terminar con el negocio.

De mayor impacto, la reforma tributaria de Santos afecta directamente al sector digital de Colombia y en particular a la Economía App. Incrementaría el IVA en dispositivos (teléfonos, tablets y computadoras) del 16 al 19% – solo las tablets y las computadoras menos costosas estarían exentas del IVA. La reforma ialzaría el IVA sobre los servicios móviles de datos del 16 al 19% y agregaría un 4% adicional de impuestos al consumo (un total de 23%). Finalmente, la reforma tributaria impondría un IVA sobre todo el contenido y servicios digitales que sean provistos por proveedores de origen extranjero.

Estas medidas tributarias podrían potencialmente restringir la continuación del crecimiento de la Economía App de Colombia, la cual depende de dispositivos asequibles y el banda ancha móvil, y del acceso a apps provenientes de cualquier parte del mundo. Más aún, esto podría afectar negativamente la competitividad en el resto de la economía, ya que la Economía App es mucho más que solo entretenimiento y aplicaciones de juegos. De hecho, se desarrollan y usan aplicaciones por grandes multinacionales, bancos, compañías de medios audiovisuales, tiendas minoristas, y gobiernos.

La importancia a futuro de la Economía App va incluso más lejos. Citamos de nuestra publicación de octubre 2016, «Siguiendo la Economía App de Colombia»:

Uno de los cambios más grandes que se aproximan es el Internet de las Cosas, el cual es el uso de Internet para ayudar a controlar objetos físicos y nuestro entorno físico. Los agricultores usarán cada vez más aplicaciones que ayuden a su producción agricultural, los enfermeros y doctores usarán aplicaciones para administrar el cuidado de los pacientes, y los productores usarán aplicaciones para controlar sus fábricas.

A nivel global, los países exitosos digitalmente como Vietnam y China aplican tasas de IVA relativamente bajas a los datos y servicios móviles para estimular el uso (Vea este informe reciente sobre la inclusión digital y los impuestos sobre el sector móvil).

Finalmente, como hemos mencionado en nuestra publicación de octubre de 2016:

Si los legisladores son serios con respecto a fomentar un ecosistema dinámico para nuevas empresas y la Economía App, entonces continuar con las políticas que apoyen la Economía App será lo que ayudará a Colombia a participar en la revolución móvil global como productor más que como consumidor. Aplicar demasiadas restricciones costosas sobre la Economía App de Colombia podría desviar el crecimiento hacia otro lugares. (énfasis añadido)

The Thucydides Trap, Updated

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Last year Graham Allison of Harvard wrote an article for the Atlantic entitled “The Thucydides Trap: Are the U.S. and China Headed for War?”  Allison noted that

in 12 of 16 cases over the last 500 years in which there was a rapid shift in the relative power of a rising nation that threatened to displace a ruling state, the result was war.

He goes on to examine the probability of a US-China clash, and points out that

And yet in four of the 16 cases that the Belfer Center team analyzed, similar rivalries did not end in war. If leaders in the United States and China let structural factors drive these two great nations to war, they will not be able to hide behind a cloak of inevitability. Those who don’t learn from past successes and failures to find a better way forward will have no one to blame but themselves.

It’s a great article, and well-worth reading.

 

 

China Poised to Fill Economic Void Left by U.S.

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Few Americans paid attention last week as Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak traveled to China to witness the signing of a host of business agreements between Chinese and Malaysian companies. They should have, because Razak’s pilgrimage to Beijing is likely to be repeated by other Asian Pacific leaders if Washington lets President Obama’s proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership die.

In addition to more than 20 agreements covering a range of activities including e-commerce, solar panel manufacturing, agriculture and education, Malaysia wants to buy 10 littoral warships from China for $300 million. Just last month, Malaysia announced it was scraping joint development of an amphibious force with the help of the U.S. Marine Corps as part of a big defense budget cut.

This would be the first major defense contract between China and Malaysia, despite continuing tensions in the South China Sea. And it’s not an isolated incident. Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte recently rankled Washington by calling for a “separation” between the long-time allies. He called for the withdrawal of all U.S. troops from the Philippines within two years, despite his country’s contentious dispute with China over its actions in the South China see. In July of this year an international tribunal declared China’s military development of a Philippine island illegal.

Both of these developments suggest America’s standing in the region is waning, leaving Pacific Rim countries to be sucked into Beijing’s orbit. But as U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter has said, the United States does have a potent “soft power” option to counter China’s flexing of its economic and military muscles. It’s the TPP agreement, which he has called the commercial equivalent of having another U.S. carrier in the region. Other Asia leaders have echoed this assessment.

Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong has said economic investments are inseparable from defensive commitments. In March, he told the Wall Street Journal “if you are not prepared to deal when it comes to cars and services and agriculture, can we depend on you when it comes to security and military arrangements?” New Zealand Prime Minister John Key agreed, warning that if the United States “abdicates leadership in the region” by failing to sign the TPP regional governments will have to pursue other options. China is already prepared to offer a replacement called the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) that includes all Asian TPP signatories in its ongoing negotiations.

Our friends and allies in Southeast Asia are actively seeking increased economic opportunities in the form long term commitments. Through the TPP they have signaled our government, businesses, and ideals as their first choice. If the U.S. does not follow through with this commitment that enforces open competition, higher labor standards, and better environmental protections, these governments have demonstrated clear evidence they will be forced to pursue options with a power that respects none of these ideals while it actively infringes upon their sovereignty. The TPP opens up not just fair economic opportunities, but demonstrates the U.S.’s commitment to the welfare of the region.