issue: Foreign Policy & Defense

How Standing Up For Chinese Workers Helps America’s Economy

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

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:

  1. Put human and worker rights at the center of U.S. diplomacy toward China.
  2. Raise public awareness of the link between workers’ rights in China, and economic benefits for Americans.
  3. Work closely with other liberal democracies to demand China’s adherence to its own labor laws and international standards.
  4. Expand bilateral working groups on labor rights, so that these issues come up routinely in Sino-American relations.
  5. Fund civil society groups that promote and defend workers’ rights.
  6. Use trade as leverage to achieve progress on workers’ rights.
  7. 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.

Download the full report

Italy Boots Berlusconi

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

BerlusconiA 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.

Photo credit: Downing Street

Can Unions Open Burma?

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

PPI Special Report

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.

BurmaIf 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.

Another One Bites the Dust

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

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.

Confirming Ford sends Syria warning

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

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.

Read the entire editorial.

U.S. Outs Pakistan

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Adm. Mike MullenTop 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.

Behind Abbas’s UN Gambit

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

President of Palestinian National Authority Addresses General AssemblyPalestinian 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.

Photo credit: United Nations Photo

Policy Brief: How an Afghanistan-Pakistan Study Group Could Help

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

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.

Read the entire brief.

 

Reflecting on 9/11 from the New York Mayor’s office

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

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.

Read the rest of Mark’s account here.

Photo credit: NASA Marshall Space Flight Center.

Defense’s Careful Contribution to Deficit Reduction

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

PPI’s Will Marshall and Jim Arkedis have a piece in the Detroit News this morning on the defense budget. Here’s an excerpt:

Recently, Republican and Democratic leaders of Congress unveiled their choices to head the so-called “super committee” entrusted with forging a long-term agreement to reduce the nation’s deficit.

The stakes are high for the Department of Defense. Should the super committee fail to propose legislation, or a divided Congress fail to pass a compromise, the deal to avert national default would automatically trigger a $500 billion cut from the Pentagon’s budget. Added to the $350 billion already cut by the deal, the Pentagon’s budget could shrink by $850 trillion over 10 years.

If the Department of Defense is forced to make such a substantial contribution to deficit reduction, one point is clear: Our political leaders remain unwilling to tackle the national deficit’s two main cost drivers — entitlements and taxes.

Nothing is set in stone, but the congressional super committee now faces two crucial questions: Should defense contribute more toward deficit reduction? And, if so, how do we save?

Our answers are that defense can contribute, but carefully.

Continue reading in the Detroit News by clicking here.

Photo credit: Brave Heart.

Strategic diplomacy needed on Israel

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

PPI Senior Fellow Josh Block writes in Politico:

Seven months ago, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton expressed strong U.S. opposition to the Palestinians’ unilateral statehood bid at the United Nations. One month ago, Congress threatened to cut off U.S. aid for the Palestinian Authority if it carried on. Yet President Mahmoud Abbas is still moving full-speed ahead to September with his U.N. initiative.

The Obama administration and Congress have rightfully taken a firm stance against unilateral recognition of a Palestinian State. But with every sign indicating that the Palestinian leadership won’t be changing course, it’s time for the White House to assert a more active approach to blunt the potential impact of this collision.

The United States must begin a vigorous public effort to lobby other countries, large and small, to oppose the Palestinian effort and join President Barack Obama in pressuring the PA to call it off. Acting decisively now, we can persuade the Palestinians not to press ahead with this damaging course – which undermines our quest for peace and risks anti-Israel terrorism and violence on the Palestinian side, when carelessly raised hopes are dashed.

The good news is that the administration has plenty of opportunities to speak out. Last week, a delegation of 18 Washington-based ambassadors from four continents took part in a fact-finding mission to Israel and the West Bank. They were not from major international players but smaller countries like Albania and Macedonia in the Balkans and St. Lucia and Grenada in the Caribbean.

The administration should start by inviting these 18 ambassadors to the White House and directly appealing that their countries vote against the Palestinian bid. In this game by numbers, the smaller countries—which account for a sizable portion of the U.N. General Assembly—can make a meaningful difference.

This can underscore for the Palestinians and the international community the peace is the goal — not just statehood — and there are no short cuts to negotiation.

Read the rest at Politico here.

Score One for NATO

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Libyan rebels—the “rats” as Muammar Qaddafi calls them—are closing in on the eccentric dictator. Although a hundred things could go wrong in post-Qaddafi Libya, Americans should always welcome a tyrant’s fall.

Rather than ponder what comes next, the ever-parochial U.S. media is fixated on whether Qaddafi’s ouster will boost President Obama’s sagging poll ratings. Thus do all those ordinary Libyans who gave and risked their lives to liberate themselves get reduced to bit players in Washington’s never ending political melodrama.

Obama deserves some credit for lending a hand, but he wasn’t the instigator of the Libyan intervention. That honor goes to France and Britain, who were most determined to prevent Qaddafi from carrying out threats to obliterate regime opponents. Already mired in two wars, the United States was happy to fall in behind its allies, and after some opening salvos, content itself with mainly providing logistical support.

So credit NATO as well as the rebels if Qaddafi is toppled or flees. Assuming Libya does not dissolve into Iraq-style chaos, either outcome would be a big morale boost to an alliance that hasn’t gotten much respect lately. NATO’s decision to enforce a “no fly, no drive” zone in Libya was widely panned as ineffectual, a half measure that would make Europeans feel good but only prolong the violence and end at best in stalemate. On the other side, non-interventionists of the left and right complained that NATO has used its U.N. mandate to protect civilians as cover for waging an offensive war on the regime.

Well, that’s true—NATO’s real, if undeclared, goal has been regime change. Airstrikes on regime ground forces first stopped Qaddafi’s drive on the rebel stronghold of Benghazi, and have played a critical role in the rebels’ counterattack since then. A heavy NATO bombardment paved the way for their dramatic entry into Tripoli over the weekend. Maybe the Chinese or Russians are scandalized by NATO’s loose construction of the U.N. resolution, but strictly playing defense would undoubtedly have led to more bloodshed.

NATO’s success may or may not breathe new life into the creaky old alliance, which suffers from a cloudy rationale and steep cuts in European defense spending. It would, however, challenge assumptions about the supposed folly of using limited force in situations where the strategic stakes don’t justify “all-in” intervention. Foreign policy realists recoil at the idea of limited war— recall the Powell Doctrine, which says go in big or don’t go in at all—but in fact such interventions have become the norm since the end of World War II. None of the NATO allies has a compelling strategic interest in what happens in Libya, but there as elsewhere a strong humanitarian case for intervention could be made.

If Libya turns out well, it will be another step toward entrenching the “responsibility to protect” as a new global norm. But isn’t this a slippery slope? If limited war worked to prevent massacres in Libya, don’t we have a moral obligation to intervene next in Syria, whose thuggish dictator has killed close to 2,000 civilians over the last five months?

Well, no. International politics, like domestic politics, is the art of the possible. Each case is unique and requires its own careful balancing of prudential and moral considerations. Given Libya’s relative backwardness and Qaddafi’s political isolation, the risks of Western military intervention there are less than in Syria. Call it opportunism if you like, but it beats the perverse logic of denying anyone help because we can’t help everyone.

The most persuasive objections to the Libyan intervention have always turned on the question of what comes after Qaddafi. Have we opened the door to radical Islamists, as many U.S. conservatives fear? Can the National Transitional Council (NTC) established by the rebels last February, and united mostly by hatred of Qaddafi, sustain the support of a fragmented, tribal society? Will a rural country without a large, educated middle class be able to establish a stable, representative and effective government?

We’ll see. But having abetted the NTC’s victory, the NATO allies should have considerable leverage over the course of events there, especially if they are willing to follow military with economic and political support. In any event, Qaddafi’s imminent fall will likely invigorate the Arab spring and encourage a tougher regional and international response to Syrian dictator Basher al Asad’s depredations in Syria.

That alone would be a solid return on NATO’s modest investment in helping Libyans free themselves from a mad tyrant.

Photo credit: Defence Images

Danger Will Robinson! GOP Actually Not Serious on Defense Cuts.

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

In the GOP’s Establishment v. Tea Party battle, this round, at least, looks like it was won by the outsiders. And, so it seems, the Establishment looks to be fine with that.

After making a big political show last week of storming out of Vice President Joe Biden’s fiscal negotiations over taxes, Republican Majority Leader Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.) appears to have made a decision: cutting the Pentagon’s budget is less sacrosanct to conservatives than raising revenue. Cantor has positioned himself firmly against tax increases while using the Tea Party’s focus on spending cuts as political cover to give the appearance that he’s willing to give ground on Defense spending. “Everything is on the table,” Cantor said when referring to Defense cuts, implicitly endorsing the position of Tea Party-backed freshman Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) who says we “can’t afford” this Republican “sacred cow” anymore.

Not so fast, my friends. Cantor is trying to have his cake and eat it, too, stipulating that any reduction in Defense “belongs in the appropriations process.” This handful of words goes a long way when you parse them. In short, there are two major problems with this caveat:

First, and in English, that means Cantor is willing to give a nod towards reducing Defense spending on paper and in the press, but knows full-well that Republicans in charge of the House Armed Services and Appropriations Committees can fight to reinstate cut programs on a case-by-case basis at a later date.

Second, fixing the problem in the appropriations process focuses solely on weapons systems, which are, after all, the things that get appropriated. But weapons systems are hardly the lone driver of the Defense budget’s exorbitant rise over the last decade. As I’ve detailed in a PPI Policy Memo, personnel costs are the somewhat hidden story of Defense spending, even though Secretary Gates has stated that military health-care costs are “eating the Defense Department alive.”

A serious reduction in the Pentagon’s budget would agree to both reducing personnel costs and making any weapons systems reductions part of a legally-enforceable deal between the parties. Cantor doesn’t seems prepared to do either.

Worse, some Democrats are falling for Cantor’s slight-of-hand. Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) seemed ready to embrace Cantor’s apparent willingness to talk defense cuts, saying, “If we can get $100 billion from reducing unneeded military spending, that’s better than $100 billion in taxation.” The risk is that in Frank’s haste to cut military spending, he is signing up for a deal that the Republicans have no intention of keeping.

We must scrutinize the Defense budget as part of a realistic national deficit reduction plan. But let’s do it the right way: reductions in Defense spending must come from personnel as well as weapons, and be enforceable over the long term. Eric Cantor is disingenuous about serious cuts, and Barney Frank seems too eager to reduce military spending to get a realistic deal from Republicans.

Photo Credit: drp

Buying Time in Afghanistan

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

President Obama is taking heat for announcing troop withdrawals last night without clarifying U.S. war aims in Afghanistan. Yet his basic strategy couldn’t be clearer. It is to depart Afghanistan gradually – a fighting withdrawal – to maximize the odds that the Taliban won’t be able to take over once U.S. troops are gone.

It may not work, but it’s hard to see a better alternative. The United States can’t “win” this war in any conventional sense. We can’t defeat the Taliban, which unfortunately has an ethnic and popular base in Pashtun regions. We can’t afford nation-building in Afghanistan right now, even if we knew how to do it. We can’t make the central government fundamentally less corrupt and more effective in delivering basic services. The best we can do is to build and train Afghan security forces, bolster local resistance to the Taliban and degrade the insurgents’ military strength.

This course at least gives Afghans a fighting chance to keep the Taliban at bay without foreign help, and may reinforce efforts to find a political resolution to the conflict. Otherwise, the United States faces an unpalatable choice between getting out quickly and hoping for the best, or an endless military engagement to prevent Afghanistan from once again becoming a haven for Islamist militancy and terror plots.

The political media interpreted Obama’s decision to withdraw 10,000 troops as a bid to split the difference between a public that seems increasingly disenchanted with the war and U.S. military leaders, who believe we are making progress against the insurgency. In fact, the president’s purpose was to buy time for the U.S. military to continue its campaign to weaken the Taliban. Here’s the headline we should have seen: “Obama promises three more years of war.”

The president plans to draw down an additional 20,000 troops by next summer, but that will leave over 60,000 U.S. troops in the fight until 2014. He argued that his surge of 30,000 additional troops into Afghanistan has succeeded in dislodging the Taliban from broad swaths of the south. Meanwhile, drone attacks have taken a heavy toll on al Qaeda and Taliban leaders in Pakistan, and of course U.S. forces finally caught up with Osama bin Laden. It wasn’t quite a “mission accomplished” moment, but Obama clearly believes these tactical gains justify a more deliberate withdrawal than many in his own party – and a growing band of restive Republicans – would like.

In a sense, Obama is applying the Iraq template to Afghanistan. His pledge during the campaign to withdraw all U.S. troops from Iraq by 2012 helped cool anti-war passions at home and give Gen. David Petraeus’s surge a chance to work. Likewise, by setting a date certain for an end to U.S. operations in Afghanistan, Obama buys time to build on the U.S. military’s hard-won successes.

The big difference, though, is that Iraq’s Sunnis turned against al Qaeda. The Taliban is an indigenous insurgency, not an imported conspiracy like al Qaeda. And the longer U.S. forces stay in Afghanistan, the more they risk triggering a broader and more nationalistic revolt against the latest foreign invader.

Obama is betting that we have a brief window of opportunity to wear down the still unpopular Taliban before that sort of transformation can take place, and before war-weary Americans give up on the Afghan mission. It’s not a bet that inspires confidence, but for now it’s the least-bad option.

Photo Credit: Dan Love

Presidential “Speeches”, A Comparison

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Yesterday, Jim Arkedis, director of PPI’s National Security Project, gave his take on what the president should say in his speech on the Afghanistan troop draw down. A day later, let’s compare the two to see if the president’s speech lived up to Arkedis’ hopes.

Key Similarities:

● The president prescribed a troop withdrawal plan that brought home all of the surge troops by the end of 2012 similar to Jim’s desired troop withdrawal.

● Both agreed on the need for a political solution as the pinnacle of a successful resolution to the Afghanistan conflict.

● The two argued the withdrawal in terms of recent U.S. accomplishments on the ground in Afghanistan.

● Finally, both understood that America’s role in Afghanistan is not as a nation builder but as facilitator of democracy.

The Big Differences:

● A grand strategy: the president’s speech was lacking on details on America’s grand strategy for the end of the war.

● The troop numbers: the extra 3,000 troops advocated by Obama and in a slightly shorter timeframe reverberates politically. It allows the president to say during the 2012 that America has returned more than just the surge troops but has made a down payment on returning all of our servicemen home by 2014.

● The president had a larger economic focus, bringing up the concept of nation building at home instead of abroad.

● Frankness on the Afghanistan: the president lightly glazed over the current reality of Afghan-U.S relations.

● The president delved into Pakistan and Libya, which Jim avoided.

● The president did not address the recent U.S Senate Foreign Relations Committee report that aid was not having a tangible impact on Afghanistan’s infrastructure.

 

Both the president and Arkedis agreed on the key concepts of an appropriate Afghanistan withdrawal. The troop totals were nearly similar, and both advocated for a more progressive internationalist view of American foreign policy, emphasizing a support for enabling democracy without verging on nation building.

A majority of the differences were explainable due to the president’s position in global politics. A harsh yet true statement by the president has a larger impact on foreign relations then the statement of a policy analyst. For example in the case of U.S-Afghan government relations, the president has properly taken the high road, while letting his subordinates like U.S Ambassador to Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry handle the harsher rhetoric.

The president’s position as a global leader, however, does not prevent him from being frank with the American people. A recognition by the president that currentaidmechanismsare not working would have been the honest route. Talking foreign aid reformation would not have been politically pretty but could have dovetailed into Obama’s focus on the economy without creating an inverse relationship between domestic on defense spending.

A lack of a grand strategy by the president was also disappointing. In his December 2009 speech, the president outlined specific goals he wished for our troops to meet during the surge. Achieving these goals was the cornerstone of his rationale for the levels of troop withdrawal. A similar approach in the president’s most recent speech would have been logical.

Finally, the conflation of defense and domestic spending implied by the president’s decision to “to focus on nation building here at home” seems a bit troubling. Implying a choice between rebuilding America and securing it is a false choice: The United States should make crucial spending choices on security and domestic programs independent of one another.

 

The overarching themes of the president’s speech could largely have been predicted ahead of time, with news reports needling administration officials for the troop reduction totals. Political realities are understandable, and given the political landscape the president did a reasonable job in addressing the major issues, especially in terms of term withdrawal numbers and America’s role abroad. We hope that specifics on strategy and a clarification of the president’s domestic spending plan are presented in the upcoming round of interviews with administration officials.

Links to the president’s speech and Jim’s “speech”.

 

What the President Should Say on Afghanistan

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Here’s a message that President Obama would do well to tell to the American people tonight:

Good evening, my fellow Americans.

The last time I addressed you on Afghanistan in 2009 from West Point, it was to announce a new direction in that campaign. I appreciate that you might be getting tired of these kinds of speeches. Though our deployment in Iraq is winding down, America remains involved in two major war zones and a mission to protect Libya’s civilians.

I get it. We’ve been at war for nearly ten years, and we’re tired of it. Particularly in this time of economic difficulty, many are rightly asking tough questions: What are we doing there? Is America’s mission still keeping us safe as we spend billions of dollars every month? Can we come home now that we’ve killed Osama Bin Laden?

Back in December 2009, I argued that the state of our mission in Afghanistan was not well. We had the wrong strategy and not enough bodies on the ground to execute a strategy that fit the realities of the situation. That is why I announced a surge of 30,000 troops, bringing the American-lead coalition’s total deployment to approximately 132,000. I also promised during that speech that in July 2011–next month–our troops would start to come home. I am here tonight to make good on that promise.

Importantly, these forces were given a new mission in 2009: first and foremost, they were to protect Afghan civilians from the Taliban, which was designed to give the Afghan people the time and space to rebuild their country. This strategy has been successful in places, but less so in others.

At the time of the surge, the Taliban were on the verge of reasserting control over key areas of the country. I can report that we have undoubtedly reversed the Taliban’s momentum. We’ve made real security gains across significant parts of the country: the north and west regions are more stable, while volatility in the south and east. We’ve invested time, money, and effort into Khandahar, an important city of 800,000 in the southeast and traditional base of Osama Bin Laden and the Taliban. We’ve experienced marked security gains in Khandahar but, as in other areas of the country, we’re keenly aware that those gains remain fragile and reversible.

Furthermore, much of Afghanistan’s government is still a difficult partner. Corruption remains rampant, with officials, businesses and warlords are pocketing too many American taxpayer dollars that they shouldn’t. President Hamid Karzai continues to issue unhelpful statements, and proves time and time again that he’s hardly his country’s answer to George Washington or Abraham Lincoln. We understand that he’s playing to his domestic political audience most of the time, but the fact is that Americans have sacrificed too much in blood and treasure for the good of Afghanistan to be used as a punching bag by an ungrateful host.

Meanwhile, we continue to train Afghanistan’s security forces in hopes that they’ll assume many of America’s military duties. Afghan forces are increasing in size and competence but only in fits and starts. They’re frankly not quite ready yet.

Having taken all this into account, it is time to adjust our posture in Afghanistan again, and I’m not just talking about troop numbers. No doubt that headlines across the country will focus tomorrow on the number of withdrawing soldiers I’m about to announce. It’s crucial that we discuss not only how many will be left — an important factor that effects military families across the country — but what those that remain Afghanistan will do.

We know that the war in Afghanistan ends with a political solution. The United States leaves Afghanistan for good when its governing partners renounce violence towards the United States and each other, and agree to rule Afghanistan for its own sake. Throughout this process, I am keenly aware that it’s in America’s national security interest that Afghanistan never again become the base of operations for an attack against our country. As president, I will not hesitate to return large-scale forces to the region if I feel our security is threatened.

While searching for this political solution, we must also acknowledge that it’s highly unlikely that we will ever fully eradicate the Taliban or the remnants of al Qaeda. That is why this war ends with an agreement amongst Afghanistan’s tribes, ethnic groups, government, and yes, some weakened Taliban, to peaceably rule the country.

Based on the gains we’ve achieved in the last 18 months, I’m confident that we are putting ourselves, and Afghanistan’s government, in a strong position against the Taliban’s leadership. We’ve hit them hard, and they are reeling. Yes, we’ve killed Bin Laden, but that’s not the end of the road: we will continue to keep the American boot on the throats of al Qaeda and the Taliban through night raids and missile strikes.

Furthermore, we will continue to protect Afghanistan’s citizens in major cities and towns, like Khandahar and Kabul, by maintaining our current strategy in those places. We can sustain required manpower levels in those cities by withdrawing forces from areas that are reasonably safe. And we will redouble our training efforts and turn over patrols to competent Afghan security forces as fast as we can.

We will press for more aid money, sustainable development and government reform within Afghanistan’s governments. We are Afghanistan’s partner, but only so long as America’s money is spent more wisely than it has been.

I believe we can accomplish this mission by withdrawing 30,000 troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2012. I reserve the right, as Commander-in-Chief, to reevaluate this decision if the United States’ major national security interests are threatened by a degradation of security conditions in Afghanistan.

This war has lasted too long and cost too much. With this new plan, I firmly believe we are doing right by America’s hardworking military, their families, our citizens, and our national interests.

Thank you.

Photo Credit: Isafmedia