The last week has continued the earlier pattern of daily fireworks in the presidential contest (excepting a brief pause in hostilities immediately after the Aurora massacre), but little if any significant movement in the polls. As anyone near a battleground state television can attest, the Obama campaign (and the Priorities USA super PAC) has continued harsh personal attacks on Mitt Romney as an out-of-touch rich man with no emotional connection with the middle class or interest in its aspirations, who is furthermore determined to cut taxes for people like him. The Romney campaign (which is now beginning to get advertising reinforcement from the very deep pockets of conservative super PACs) has responded harshly with a battery of ads and campaign speeches focusing on a clip from an Obama speech in Roanoke wherein he supposedly disrespected the personal contributions to the economy of entrepreneurs (in fact he was paraphrasing a well-known litany by Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren about the reliance of private businesses on public services and investments). It’s not entirely clear whether this intense barrage is intended simply to reinforce the general and long-standing Republican critique of Obama as someone who does not understand how the economy works and believes government is the source of all good things, or is more narrowly targeted at undermining Obama’s relatively strong standing with upscale, college-educated voters.
With the Fourth of July coming up there are a lot of politicians talking about national security. These are the top ten mistakes they make. Next week we will have the top ten ways to win on national security.
10. Holocaust comparison.
It doesn’t matter whether you’re Glenn Beck or a human rights advocate. As soon as you’ve made the Holocaust / Hitler / Nazi comparison, your audience has stopped listening.
PPI President Will Marshall discusses Germany’s role in solving the European crisis over at CNN:
“Despite all the attention lavished on the Greek election, the outcome barely registered in Europe’s financial markets. Everyone knows the eurozone’s fate won’t be decided by the shimmering Aegean Sea, but in drizzly Berlin.
Germany is the key, but it’s torn by conflicting impulses. As the main engine of European economic integration, Germany is determined to preserve the 17-nation eurozone. But as Europe’s lender of last resort, it’s loath to bail out countries that took advantage of the euro to borrow extravagantly and live beyond their means.
To avoid such “moral hazard,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel sternly insists that Greece and other debt-ridden nations, notably Spain and Italy, commit to stringent fiscal discipline in return for the loans they need to service their enormous debts and pay their bills. Greek voters were incensed by these Teutonic demands for spending cuts and tax hikes, but they narrowly chose to stick with the euro rather than risking a “Grexit” from the eurozone.”
PPI President Will Marshal explains why Bill Clinton’s contributions to restoring the language of civic obligation are so frequently overlooked over at Democracy:
“In “Restoring the Language of Obligation,” [Issue #24] James Kloppenberg laments “the ignorance of most Americans about the centrality of the concept of obligation in American history.” Yet there’s a gaping hole in his own synopsis of that history—the 1990s, when civic themes re-entered the nation’s political discourse in a big way”
“Invocations of civic duty and the disinterested pursuit of the common good were touchstones of American politics from colonial days until around the 1970s, says Kloppenberg, when liberals “traded the language of duties for the language of rights.” He argues persuasively that the ensuing fixation with rights talk and identity politics sped the unraveling of the New Deal coalition, and, by eroding more expansive notions of social solidarity, abetted the rise of Ronald Reagan’s anti-government populism.”
“But there his recap ends, skipping the striking period of civic ferment that followed. In politics, for example, Bill Clinton and the “New Democrats” consciously sought to reclaim the civic-republican tradition. Concepts like mutual obligation, community, and national service, and balancing citizens’ rights with their responsibilities, were central to the nation’s political conversation in the 1990s, and even migrated abroad via the “third way” dialogue between Clinton, Tony Blair, and other center-left political leaders.”
PPI President Will Marshall explains why the U.S. should stop temporizing on Syria at Real Clear World:
“The tenuous ceasefire in Syria is a relief, but it also carries the risk that Bashar al Assad will manipulate the UN-sponsored truce to extend his lease on power. Russia, China and Iran favor that outcome; America shouldn’t. ”
“Yet Washington seems mired in ambivalence. On one hand, the Obama administration has called on Assad to step down. On the other, it has ruled out U.S. intervention and backed Kofi Annan’s UN-Arab League plan, which does not envision Assad’s departure, calling instead for regime-led negotiations with the resistance.”
“While Assad’s forces have stopped firing, they haven’t pulled back from population centers, as the Annan plan also demands. Resistance groups are planning street protests to test Assad’s supposed conversion to talks and reconciliation.”
In Foreign Policy, PPI President Will Marshall explains how President Obama is needlessly increasing the risks of a ruinous war by ruling out the possibility of deterring a nuclear Iran.
U.S. President Barack Obama, under pressure from Israel and American conservatives to take a harder line on Iran, keeps insisting that “all options are on the table.” That’s a diplomatic way of saying that the United States is willing to use force to keep Iran from getting nuclear weapons.
To buttress this thinly veiled threat, however, Obama recently took one important option off the table: deterrence. In an interview with the Atlantic, he ruled out “containing” a nuclear Iran in the same way the United States has contained other unfriendly nuclear powers — by threatening the country with massive retaliation if it attacks us or our allies.
This is a significant — and needless — change in U.S. foreign policy. It raises the likelihood of war with Iran, despite Obama’s preference for a diplomatic solution. And launching air strikes on Tehran’s nuclear facilities would undercut America’s ability to play the long game in Iran by abetting a “Persian Spring” that could eventually topple the Islamic Republic.
China may look like an unstoppable economic juggernaut, but it is increasingly beset at home by worker protests and strikes. Last June, for example, security officials in Zengcheng, a manufacturing city in southern China, fired tear gas at hundreds of migrant workers who smashed windows and overturned police cars after hearing the rumor that authorities had pushed a pregnant migrant street vendor to the ground.
Spreading labor unrest in China has large economic as well as political implications for Sino-American relations. Put simply, stronger rights for Chinese workers is good for America’s bottom line. By explaining our economic interest in empowering China’s workers, U.S. leaders could galvanize broad public support behind a more insistent push for individual and civil liberties in China. Too often, however, they fail to make that connection. They may deplore the way China arbitrarily limits speech and imprisons lawyers,
human rights watchdogs, religious leaders, and worker advocates. But they rarely note that empowering China’s workers would likely lead to higher wages and benefits, and therefore a shrinking labor cost advantage over U.S. competitors.
In this paper, I explore the vital link between the rights of Chinese workers and the competitive health of the American economy. If a nation has lax labor laws, or has good ones but doesn’t enforce them, local employers can keep wages down and produce goods at much cheaper cost. Moreover, if workers are unable to strike or effectively petition their employers because the legal system doesn’t guarantee freedom of speech and association, then their country is essentially subsidizing its companies, giving them an unfair advantage in the global economy.
Indeed, inconsistent labor law enforcement, inattention to workplace safety, and violations of binding legal contracts (such as wage agreements) have enabled Chinese manufacturers to hold down the price of Chinese labor. The labor cost differential, of course, is the main reason Chinese goods are significantly cheaper, even after they have been shipped to the United States. Raising labor standards in China will inevitably lead to raising the price of Chinese-produced goods, making goods produced by U.S. workers more competitive. That’s why strong U.S. support for the rights of China’s workers should be an integral part of Washington’s strategy of constructive engagement with Beijing. Not only is it the right thing to do from a human rights standpoint, it is also clearly in America’s economic interests as we seek a more balanced commercial relationship
with China.
More specifically, let me offer seven recommendations for U.S. policymakers:
Put human and worker rights at the center of U.S. diplomacy toward China.
Raise public awareness of the link between workers’ rights in China, and economic benefits for Americans.
Work closely with other liberal democracies to demand China’s adherence to its own labor laws and international standards.
Expand bilateral working groups on labor rights, so that these issues come up routinely in Sino-American relations.
Fund civil society groups that promote and defend workers’ rights.
Use trade as leverage to achieve progress on workers’ rights.
Ratify two key International Labour Organization protocols: the Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to Organise Convention (1948), and the Right to Organise and Collective Bargaining Convention (1949). In advocating rights and liberties around the world, the U.S. must also lead by example.
A funny thing happened on my way to an international forum on democracy and human rights in Rome last week: the Italian government fell. It was hard to concentrate on the business at hand with crowds gathering in piazzas to demand the head, figuratively speaking, of the man who has dominated Italian politics since 1994—Silvio Berlusconi.
What sparked the crisis was a sharp spike last week in Italian bond yields, which raised doubts about Italy’s ability to service its $2.6 trillion debt. The prospect of a default by Europe’s fourth-largest economy sent tremors throughout the euro zone. Forget about Greece: If big countries like Italy and Spain can’t pay their debts, European banks that hold all that sovereign debt will fail. Then someone—most likely Germany—will have to finance a massive bank bailout just like the United States did in 2007. Otherwise, a financial collapse would likely throw Europe, and probably the United States, into a bona fide depression.
Fortunately, this prospect seems to have concentrated minds in Italy. Arriving in Rome on Thursday, I found its usually fractious political class galvanized by the crisis and resolved to put a new government in place before the markets open today.
On Friday, the Italian Senate passed a budget with an initial set of reforms (including a hike in the retirement age) tailored to European Union specifications. On Saturday, Berulsconi resigned, as gleeful crowds chanted “Bye Bye Silvio” and sang the “Hallelujah” chorus outside the Quirinal palace. And on Sunday, Mario Monti, a widely respected technocrat, agreed to form a unity government.
As our own Congress dithers endlessly over debt reduction, it was nice to see democratic politicians somewhere acting purposefully and with dispatch. How long the Monti government will last, however, is anyone’s guess, especially since it must pass painful reforms aimed at paring down bloated state bureaucracies and stimulating private enterprise. But Rome’s tumultuous weekend seems to have made several things clear.
First, Italy’s sovereign debt crisis probably has driven a stake through the political heart of Berlusconi. In recent years, he has presided more than governed as Italy’s once-vibrant economy slowed down and its borrowing soared. Like a latter-day Nero, the 75-year-old Berlusconi, Italy’s richest man, seemed more interested in fiddling with underage girls in “bunga-bunga” parties than tackling structural reform of Italy’s economy.
Second, Berlusconi’s fall and Monti’s government of national unity have the potential to rescramble Italian politics in useful ways. Beneath a top layer of supposedly apolitical technocrats, Monti is expected to fill key sub-cabinet level posts with leaders from the center and center-left, shutting out the right-wing Northern League as well as the left’s unreconstructed Communists and Socialists. This could spur the emergence of a new coalition of the progressive center dedicated to reviving Italy’s global competitiveness rather than rehearsing old ideological arguments. Such a coalition might include pragmatic progressives like Rome’s former Mayor, Francesco Rutelli and Gianni Vernetti, whose Alliance of Democrats organized a fascinating, if overshadowed, conference featuring democracy activists from the Middle East, North Africa, China, and elsewhere.
Third, the imbalance between the power of global markets and the weakness of European governance has reached a sort of tipping point. The markets are now punishing spendthrift governments like Greece and Italy that have borrowed massively to cover the growing gap between public spending and anemic private sector growth. For these and other European countries, joining the euro-zone in 2002 was an opportunity to relax fiscal constraints, because such profligacy would no longer lead to currency devaluations. It turns out, however, that a common monetary union also requires common fiscal policies, and the 17 members of the euro-zone have no institutions for setting or enforcing such policies.
At its heart, then, the euro crisis is really a political crisis. I heard many Italian political leaders over the weekend argue that the salvation of the euro lies in “more Europe.” This means a resumption of the stalled march toward more comprehensive economic and political integration, which of course means EU members must surrender more sovereignty. This won’t be easy, especially if to average Europeans it means the pain and sacrifice of a thorough-going fiscal retrenchment, or bailouts for countries that have evaded the consequences of irresponsible policies by free-riding on the euro.
Italians, nonetheless, seem ready to cast their lot with Europe, even as they search for more effective political leadership to revitalize their economy.
The following is a guest column from PPI friend and sometime contributor Earl Brown, Labor and Employment Law Counsel for the American Center for International Labor Solidarity.
If you want to see what a society without law or civic space looks like, go to Burma. A half century of military misrule has devastated this once fertile center of Asian science, scholarship, law, commerce and civic debate. But in this desert, Burmese activists are preparing to seize the potential democratic space recently opened up by the new regime. Last month, it issued a new labor law, the Labor Organization Law, which appears to allow independent unions to register and function legally for the first time in memory.
The new law allows the creation of new unions, with a minimum of 30 members. Burmese trade union activists are now using this new labor law and filing papers to establish free trade unions. In the past few weeks, groups of woodworkers, garment workers, hatters, shoemakers, seafarers and other trades, including agricultural workers, have registered openly as trade unions. After decades of unceasing international pressure and sanctions to little discernable effect, outside watchers of Burma are eager to see positive movement and are praising this new law. They see the new labor law as part of other highly publicized initiatives by the regime to open up Burmese society. For example, Burma’s new president has recently received the leader of the Burmese democracy movement, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, in a highly publicized audience. The Burmese regime released 200 political prisoners in October and has also cancelled a huge dam project with Chinese construction firms that was fiercely opposed by villagers.
Whether these apparent openings—including the new labor law—are real is a matter of debate by those following events in Burma. All are watching to see the reaction of the Burmese regime to the efforts by Burmese industrial workers as they organize under the Labor Organization Law. Will the regime actually allow free unions?
Autonomous unions were once among the pillars of the robust civil society in Burma that had grown up in the face of British rule, fueled by a fierce desire for independence and democracy. Unions helped build this vibrant and diverse civil society by giving voice to industrial workers. Alongside associations of scholars, students, professionals in various disciplines, including lawyers, religious folks in temples and churches, ethnic and political parties, unions laid the basis for Burmese democracy. So did the Burmese bar.
True, many of Burma’s laws were repressive imports from colonial India. But the independent and anti-colonial Burmese bar was populated by talented advocates and drafters, employing both Burmese and British traditions and languages. In this bar, a skilled group of labor lawyers waged vigorous advocacy for both sides of the industrial relations equation, for unions and employers.
When General Ne Win seized power in the 1960s, however, he launched an attack on the diversity and vigor of Burmese civil society. Using the slogans of socialism, General Ne Win sought to replace peaceful debate about and advocacy of divergent interests with the dreary and artificial “harmony” of military rule. The honest articulation of any interests beyond those of the military was suppressed in the name of order. In this imposed order, unions, and lawyers as vehicles of advocacy and debate became targets. After 50 years of suppression, these once proud traditions of democratic trade unionism, of legal advocacy, and of civil debate eroded and eventually disappeared.
The demise of a vigorous civil society and civic debate did not steal the impulse for democracy. But it did eliminate robust traditions of independent trade unionism and law. Unions and legal institutions, such as independent lawyers, could have helped check the repressive hand of Burma’s military junta. That is why they, and most other independent civil society organizations, became targets of the military.
In her 2010 speech to the Community of Democracies on civil society, Secretary of State Hilary Clinton explained why dictators are impelled to suppress unions, lawyers and the other building blocks of that civic pluralism and robust advocacy so essential to sustaining democracy beyond elections:
Our democracies do not and should not look the same. Governments by the people, for the people, and of the people will look like the people they represent. But we all recognize the reality and importance of these differences. Pluralism flows from these differences. And because crackdowns [to civil society] are a direct threat to pluralism, they also endanger democracy.[1]
Freedom of association and expression is the air that union movements and lawyers must have to breath. Guaranteeing those rights is thus one first step to rebuilding the pluralistic Burmese civil society so necessary to democracy and economic development. Unions and lawyers are clearly key to recreating the vigorous democratic civic world and discourse that have been suppressed and degraded for so long inside Burma, and so necessary to any Burmese revival.
If you worry, like so many Americans, about excessive regulation, just check out recent Burmese history—where military officers can get a piece of your enterprise or endeavor at their whim. Talk to the Burmese entrepreneurs who without consent, compensation or process acquired new and rapacious military “partners” in their businesses. That’s what a world without rules and regulations looks like. A world without law, process, or lawyers does not have the diversity of interests needed to insure governmental accountability.
The International Confederation of Trade Unions (ITUC) has just completed an analysis of the new labor law, pointing out its many defects. It allows for the complete suppression of strike activity for wages, hours and working conditions. This important economic law was issued without any consultation with unions, independent scholars or employers. It is poorly drafted, and not harmonized with other Burmese laws or the new Burmese Constitution. It lacks clarity and important detail, and sadly reflects the deterioration of Burmese legal traditions such as draftsmanship. But, despite all these negative features, this new law seems to allow for registration of autonomous trade unions. The woodworkers and other workers who are registering under the Labor Organization Law will give the outside world, and Burma itself, a real test of whether this initiative in the direction of a freer civil society is genuine.
We, on the outside, will not only be able to see if the apparent opening of civil society is real, we may also see the recreation of a robust civil society with unions and other civic associations as new soil for the growth of democracy and the rule of law inside Burma. All concerned with the rule of law and democracy in Burma and Asia should keep their eyes on the efforts of the Burmese woodworkers, garment workers, seafarers and others to register free unions. Their efforts will tell us all if the openings are cosmetic for outside consumption or real for use by Burmese civil society.
[1] Clinton, H. (2010, July). Civil Society: Supporting Democracy in the 21st Century. Speech presented at the Community of Democracies, Krakow, Poland.
Unlike the dictators of Tunisia and Egypt, Muammar el-Qaddafi refused to go peaceably when the Arab spring uprisings migrated next door to Libya. Last week he paid for that defiance with his life; an outcome that should rattle other regional tyrants, especially Syria’s Basher al-Assad.
Qaddafi’s ouster was a triumph not only for Libya’s rebels, but also for NATO, which turned the tide of battle in their favor. It also vindicated President Obama’s decision to let Europe take the lead and limit U.S. forces to a supporting role in enforcing the U.N.-sanctioned “no fly zone” over Libya.
I was skeptical that NATO airpower alone would be sufficient to defang Qaddafi, and wanted the allies to arm the rebels. It turns out, however, that NATO—in a very liberal interpretation of its mandate to protect Libyan civilians—worked closely with the opposition in a combined air and ground offensive that methodically wore down regime forces.
With a little help from their friends, Libyans liberated themselves, and some are now waving French and U.S. flags in gratitude. What we’ve witnessed in Libya, in fact, could be a new model for collective security in which the United States no longer bears a disproportionate share of the risks and costs of intervention. “We’ve demonstrated what collective action can achieve in the 21st century,” Obama declared last week. “Without putting a single U.S. service member on the ground, we achieved our objectives, and our NATO mission will soon come to an end.”
Unfortunately, the new model probably isn’t applicable to Syria, where another ruthless dictator confronts a popular revolt.
Basher al-Assad is busy doing in Syria what NATO prevented Qaddafi’s forces from doing in Libya—slaughtering civilians. Even though his henchmen reportedly have killed between 3,000–5,000 civilians, courageous Syrians still take to the streets daily to challenge the regime.
The regime’s brutality has prompted thousands to defect from the Syrian army and join the opposition. Syria thus appears headed toward the same kind of armed insurrection that convulsed Libya. This time, however, there’s little chance that NATO will play deus ex machine to Syria’s rebels.
Western military intervention in Syria is unlikely for three main reasons. First, Syria is bigger and better armed than Libya, and lies in the Arab heartland rather than on its periphery. Second, while Libya’s erratic “Brother Leader” had few friends in the world, Assad has an important regional patron in Iran, whose Revolutionary Guard reportedly is helping him put down the protests. Third, Russia and China vehemently object to the principle of humanitarian intervention, presumably because they fear it could be invoked someday against them. Earlier this month they vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning Assad for the violent suppression of peaceful protests.
The political and humanitarian stakes in Syria are growing. Qaddafi’s fall and probable execution by vengeful rebels will likely reinforce Assad’s determination to bludgeon Syrian demonstrators into submission. If he succeeds in resurrecting what was among the grimmest police states in the region, Assad will have delivered the most serious check to date to the Arab spring’s revolutionary momentum. It will also bind Damascus more tightly to Iran, and boost morale among the radical rejectionists in Hezbollah and Hamas. Assad’s survival could also push Iraq, which is apprehensive about a Sunni takeover in Syria, closer to its Shia brethren in Tehran.
Having abetted Libya’s liberation, the United States and its European partners obviously have an interest in encouraging its Transitional National Council to set up an effective and representative central government. This won’t be easy in a relatively backward (despite its oil and gas riches) Arab state rent by tribal and regional divisions and, thanks to 42 years of despotic rule by Qaddafi, lacking in strong civic and national institutions.
The council’s weekend announcement that it is imposing Sharia law throughout Libya has provoked “I told you so” reactions from U.S. “realists” and other critics of NATO’s intervention. But as Obama said, Libya’s road to self-government will be long and winding, and thanks to NATO’s intervention, the West will have some influence over the course of events there.
What’s crucial now is for the U.S. and Europe to turn their attention to Syria’s incipient civil war. Even as Assad’s jets hammer unarmed civilians, there’s no chance of a U.N. sanctioned no fly, no drive zone there. But the West has other means at its disposal to buttress the rebellion, and thereby help sustain the momentum of Arab demands for freedom and justice.
In POLITICO, Senior Fellow Josh Block explains why the Senate should renew U.S. Ambassador Robert Ford’s appointment to Syria:
At a time when the Syrian regime continues to brutally murder its own citizens clamoring for democracy and an end to the Assad regime’s terrorist-sponsoring police state, perhaps the last thing Congress should be considering is forfeiting one of the few tools we have on the ground supporting the Syrian people.
After several months of regrettable delay, Robert Ford, President Obama’s ambassador to Syria, has spent recent weeks launching one creative campaign after another. A talented diplomat with years of experience in the Arab world, he has put himself in harm’s way, making trips to some of Syria’s most dangerous war zones to highlight the regime’s crimes and to show support for its victims — defying the regime’s travel restrictions, gathering information, listening to protesters and garnering positive headlines. In a region of the world in which American diplomats have been kidnapped by Syrian proxies and tortured for literally years, his actions are not just effective but brave.
Despite all this, Ambassador Ford’s tenure may soon come to an abrupt and unnecessary end. While the Syrian regime has yet to throw him out of the country, the United States Senate may be responsible for his expulsion by refusing to extend his term.
Top U.S. officials this week accused Pakistan of abetting a terrorist group responsible for attacks on U.S. forces in Afghanistan. The bombshell here isn’t Pakistani duplicity—that’s old news—but the Obama administration’s decision to go public. It means Washington finally has run out of patience with our supposed “ally.”
The U.S. complaint centers on the Haqqani network, an Afghan terrorist group holed up in Pakistan’s North Waziristan region. Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Congress that the network is “a veritable arm of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency.” He said the ISI helped Haqqani operatives carry out a truck bomb attack that wounded more than 70 U.S. and NATO troops on Sept. 11, as well as a suicide assault on the U.S. Embassy in Kabul.
The ISI’s ties to Haqqani network date back to the anti-Soviet jihad and subsequent Taliban takeover of Afghanistan. Apparently, the ISI sees no reason to sever those ties just because the Haqqanis are now killing U.S. and NATO forces instead of Russians. As Mullen explained, the ISI sees the network as a valuable “proxy” that can give Pakistan leverage in Afghanistan, especially after U.S. forces have gone home. There’s another somewhat more sinister explanation: many in the ISI and army hierarchy share an ideological affinity with Islamic terror groups that target both Afghanistan and India.
So is Pakistan really an enemy masquerading as a friend? The situation is complicated because Pakistan has cooperated with the United States in targeting al Qaeda and the Taliban, even as its army rebuffs our pleas to expel the Haqqanis from North Waziristan.
The blunt testimony by Mullen and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta signals the end of several years of “quiet diplomacy” aimed at getting Pakistan to make a clean break with jihadi terrorism. Outing the ISI may put more pressure on a weak civilian government. However, the Pakistani government is not only looking over its shoulder at the powerful security branches, but also at a public strongly opposed to U.S. infringements of Pakistani sovereignty.
On the other hand, Americans are entitled to ask what we have to show for the $20 billion in U.S. aid sent to Pakistan over the last decade. Last year, Congress approved $1.7 billion for economic aid for Pakistan, and $2.7 billion in security aid. At a minimum, we ought to stop trying to bribe a government that is playing us for fools.
With two wars on its hands, maybe the United States can’t afford a total rupture with Pakistan. But we can’t achieve any kind of lasting success in Afghanistan as long as Pakistan provides a safe refuge to the Haqqanis and other insurgents. That’s a genuine dilemma, but at least U.S. leaders have begun to grapple with it honestly.
Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas will ask the United Nations tomorrow to welcome Palestine as its 194th member and newest state. As Abbas well knows, that’s not going to happen. So why are Palestinians devoting their diplomatic energies to scoring purely symbolic points at Turtle Bay?
In essence, Palestinians are engaging in a kind of forum shopping. Historically, the U.N. has been sympathetic to their plight, and notoriously hostile to Israel. Abbas comes to New York seeking statehood on terms more favorable than the Palestinians have been able to get from nearly two decades of peace processing with Israel. It’s part of an all-too-familiar pattern in which Palestinian leaders expect the international community to spare them from making the unpopular concessions that peace with Israel demands.
Abbas claims his hand has been forced by Israeli intransigence. There’s something to that: The right-listing government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been obdurate and prickly in its dealings with everyone, from the PA to Washington. It has failed to offer imaginative proposals for rekindling stalled peace talks, to confront a settler movement that threatens to hijack Israel’s domestic politics, and to counter effectively a spreading campaign to isolate and delegitimate the Jewish state.
Nonetheless, it was Abbas, not Netanyahu, who walked away from bilateral talks last year in a dispute over Israeli settlements. Now Abbas is pulling an end run around the peace process—and putting Washington on the spot—by asking the Security Council to grant Palestine full U.N. membership. The Obama administration has vowed to veto any such resolution, even though it supports a Palestinian state in principle. The White House rightly insists that the Palestinians can earn statehood only by making peace with Israel.
Abbas won’t return home to Ramallah with the grand prize of statehood. So why raise expectations that he knows will be dashed?
Here we wade into the multilayered subtleties of Middle East politics. One obvious motive is to dramatize Israel’s growing isolation in the region, as Turkey turns on its erstwhile ally and anti-Israel sentiment flares next door in post-Mubarak Egypt. Another is to split Europe and the United States and stoke anger at America in the Arab street, thereby racheting up pressure on Washington to extract concessions from Israel.
Many observers believe that Abbas is desperate to head off Arab spring-style demonstrations against the PA, which has been losing popularity in recent years to Hamas. If this reading is correct, then Abbas’s U.N. gambit has more to do with perpetuating the PA’s lease on power in the West Bank than winning recognition of a Palestinian state.
Finally, even if statehood is out of reach the Palestinians could win a booby prize if the U.N. General Assembly upgrades their status to that of a “non-member state.” This would allow Palestine to join various international bodies and possibly to press claims against Israel in the International Criminal Court.
Whatever his motives, Abbas’s U.N. caper carries immense risks. The PA has called for massive, non-violent demonstrations in the West Bank today to drum up support for the statehood bid. If these get out of hand, and provoke a violent confrontation with Israel, it will break a fragile peace and undo progress toward handing over security responsibilities in the West Bank to Palestinian forces.
Unilateral assertions of “sovereignty” could also prove costly for the Palestinians in other ways. Israel, for example, could withhold custom duties it collects that help to pay PA salaries. Both Houses of Congress likewise have passed resolutions threatening to cut off U.S. aid—$600 million a year—to the PA.
Such punitive measures, however, raise the specter that many observers fear most—the PA’s collapse. If as seems likely Abbas’s gambit fails to change conditions on the ground, it could engender massive disillusionment with the PA and Fatah. The winner would not be Israel but Hamas, which has no interest in a Palestinian state that does not include the whole of what is now the state of Israel. Barring another intifida and outbreak of terrorism, Israel and Washington ought to keep cool and keep funding the PA.
The United States nonetheless should stand firm against premature demands for Palestinian statehood. If it were created today, the new entity would lack two prerequisites for international recognition as an independent state: political unity and an unambiguous commitment to peaceful cooexistence with Israel.
In fact, it is the PA-Hamas split, not Israel, that poses the greatest obstacle to Palestinian aspirations to dignity, justice and independence. The blunt truth is, that until the Palestinians resolve their internal conflict—in favor of a negotiated peace and a two-state solution—they don’t deserve to have one of their own.
In June 2011, the House Appropriations Committee unanimously approved an amendment introduced by U.S. Representative Frank Wolf (R-Va.) that would provide $1 million for the establishment of an independent Afghanistan-Pakistan Study Group. The blue-ribbon panel’s charge would be to assess U.S. policy in Afghanistan and Pakistan and offer recommendations within 120 days.
Could an Afghanistan-Pakistan Commission actually accomplish anything? Although the popular perception is that commission reports achieve little beyond giving publicity to the graybeards that serve on them, my research on over 50 blue-ribbon panels shows that under the right circumstances they can catalyze important policy changes.
At first blush, an Afghanistan-Pakistan Study Group might seem pointless, since President Obama has already decided to implement a gradual withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan. But beyond the withdrawal of our surge forces much of our policy remains uncertain or undecided.
In particular, it remains unclear how large of a troop presence we will maintain in Afghanistan beyond 2012, how we will seek a negotiated settlement in Afghanistan and deal with the Taliban if they gain ground as we pull out, and, as relations with Pakistan remain tumultuous in the wake of the Bin Laden assassination, how the U.S. will craft a comprehensive, stable policy toward Islamabad that best serves national interests over the long term.
Mark Ribbing, PPI’s former Director of Policy Development, was a senior speechwriter for New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani on September 11, 2001. Here’s how he remembers that day, over at NewGeography.com:
Up on the sidewalk I kept my eyes on the pavement, lost in my own thoughts. Finally, after a good 70 yards or so, it occurred to me that the street was different today. There were countless people out, as always, but instead of rushing around in their usual morning bustle, they were standing still. Something about this felt weird, displaced, transfixed. It momentarily reminded me of children huddled outside a school during a fire alarm.
Then I looked up. Ahead and to the right, four blocks to the southwest, the Twin Towers were burning. Keeping symmetry even now, each tower had a gash of yellow flame from which black smoke blew upward in tight veils.
City Hall was a whirl of confused, frightened activity. The mayor was not in the building. He had gone to the towers. In the frenzied buzz, reports and rumors flew. Someone said a hijacked plane had hit the State Department; someone else added that another plane had struck the Pentagon; another jet, its intentions unknown, was said to be heading for New York.
The last week has continued the earlier pattern of daily fireworks in the presidential contest (excepting a brief pause in hostilities immediately after the Aurora massacre), but little if any significant movement in the polls. As anyone near a battleground state television can attest, the Obama campaign (and the Priorities USA super PAC) has continued harsh personal attacks on Mitt Romney as an out-of-touch rich man with no emotional connection with the middle class or interest in its aspirations, who is furthermore determined to cut taxes for people like him. The Romney campaign (which is now beginning to get advertising reinforcement from the very deep pockets of conservative super PACs) has responded harshly with a battery of ads and campaign speeches focusing on a clip from an Obama speech in Roanoke wherein he supposedly disrespected the personal contributions to the economy of entrepreneurs (in fact he was paraphrasing a well-known litany by Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren about the reliance of private businesses on public services and investments). It’s not entirely clear whether this intense barrage is intended simply to reinforce the general and long-standing Republican critique of Obama as someone who does not understand how the economy works and believes government is the source of all good things, or is more narrowly targeted at undermining Obama’s relatively strong standing with upscale, college-educated voters.
Editor’s note: This item is cross-posted from 
PPI President Will Marshal explains why Bill Clinton’s contributions to restoring the language of civic obligation are so frequently overlooked over at 
PPI President Will Marshall explains why the U.S. should stop temporizing on Syria at 
In 
A funny thing happened on my way to an international forum on democracy and human rights in Rome last week: the Italian government fell. It was hard to concentrate on the business at hand with crowds gathering in piazzas to demand the head, figuratively speaking, of the man who has dominated Italian politics since 1994—Silvio Berlusconi.
If you want to see what a society without law or civic space looks like, go to Burma. A half century of military misrule has devastated this once fertile center of Asian science, scholarship, law, commerce and civic debate. But in this desert, Burmese activists are preparing to seize the potential democratic space recently opened up by the new regime. Last month, it issued a new labor law, the Labor Organization Law, which appears to allow independent unions to register and function legally for the first time in memory.
Top U.S. officials this week accused Pakistan of abetting a terrorist group responsible for attacks on U.S. forces in Afghanistan. The bombshell here isn’t Pakistani duplicity—that’s old news—but the Obama administration’s decision to go public. It means Washington finally has run out of patience with our supposed “ally.”
Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas will ask the United Nations tomorrow to welcome Palestine as its 194th member and newest state. As Abbas well knows, that’s not going to happen. So why are Palestinians devoting their diplomatic energies to scoring purely symbolic points at Turtle Bay?
