The National Interest

Al-Qaeda Grows in Sinai

Bruce Riedel — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 10:00:00 +0000

In the year since Hosni Mubarak was toppled, most of our attention has rightly been focused on Cairo and the Nile heartland of Egypt. The future of the Arab world’s most populous country is being determined in the struggle between the army and the revolutionaries, as well as in elections for parliament and the presidency.

But there have also been important developments in Egypt’s eastern frontier, the Sinai Peninsula bordering Israel. The Sinai has long been at odds with Cairo. The Bedouin population that lives in the arid and forbidding desert has long felt neglected by the government in Cairo and ignored by the Egyptian mainstream. Smuggling and crime are rampant among the tribes. Several acts of terror against Western and Israeli tourists along the Gulf of Aqaba in the last decade were blamed on the Bedouin, although the perpetrators of the violence were never really identified by the Mubarak regime.

The Wild East

During the revolution last February, police stations in the Sinai were abandoned or attacked and looted by disaffected Bedouins. A shadowy new organization emerged that went by several different titles, including al-Qaeda in the Sinai Peninsula and Ansar al-Jihad. It took credit for attacks on the Egypt-Israel natural-gas pipeline that crosses the Sinai.

No Hotline to Tehran

Bilal Y. Saab — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 09:00:00 +0000

Bilal Y. Saab

LM/The National InterestIt is neither premature nor defeatist for the United States to start preparing for the possibility that Iran will acquire nuclear weapons. It is not inevitable. But the longer Americans wait to engage in an honest and calm debate about a nuclear-armed Iran, the less prepared they will be should that fateful day arrive.

Should the world be faced with the fait accompli of a nuclear Iran, the immediate reaction of the international community will be massive outrage and condemnation. The United States will be confronted with some familiar options: launch a preventive strike or accept the reality of a nuclear-armed Iran and move to a policy of Cold War–like containment and robust deterrence. This scenario prompts several questions: How would the U.S. stance toward a nuclear Iran differ from Washington’s present policy? Would the costs of containment and deterrence be significantly higher? Would a military option be completely ruled out?

The Conventional Attack

Let’s start with prevention. Launching a comprehensive attack against a nuclear Iran that seeks to physically destroy its nuclear program in full, crush its military and decapitate its political leadership is not unthinkable. But it should be obvious to all that the risks are immensely high and the costs could be intolerable for both the United States and Israel.

Deeper into Terrorism

Paul R. Pillar — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 03:30:34 +0000

Paul R. Pillar

LM/The National InterestAlthough the assassinations of Iranian scientists have until now been followed by no indication of responsibility other than smug comments of satisfaction from officials of the most likely foreign state perpetrator, now NBC offers something more specific. According to a report by Richard Engel and Robert Windrem, the assassinations have been the joint work of Israel and the Iranian cult-cum-terrorist group Mujahedin-e Khalq. According to the report, the partnership has involved Israel providing financing, training and arms to the MEK to accomplish the hits, as well as to commit other acts of violent sabotage inside Iran. The story tracks with accusations from officials of the Iranian government, who say they base most of what they know on interrogations and captured materials from a failed assassination attempt in 2010. Such accusations by themselves would be easy to dismiss, of course, as more of the regime’s propaganda. But the NBC story cites two senior U.S. officials, speaking anonymously, as confirming the story. A third official said “it hasn’t been clearly confirmed yet,” although like the others he denied any U.S. involvement. The Israeli foreign ministry declined comment; the MEK denied the story.

Progressive Grand Strategy

The Editors — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 22:00:33 +0000

The Editors

Can America develop a grand strategy that’s above ideology? According to Georgetown professor Charles Kupchan, maybe not. In a symposium on “America and the World” from the current issue of Democracy, Kupchan argues for a "progressive grand strategy."

After the collapse of the bipartisan Cold War consensus, Kupchan says, only Democrats are well equipped to lead on foreign affairs. Republicans are in two camps: isolationist Tea Partiers and neoconservatives, with the latter now discredited in the wake of Iraq. Watching the recent primary campaign suggests that Kupchan is correct; besides ineffective attempts by Jon Huntsman, Republicans have offered no foreign policy outside these two extremes.

But for a progressive, Kupchan is remarkably unimaginative about the future of American politics. What if the Democratic Party someday also evinces more isolationist sentiment? Might conservatives eventually reconcile their split personality on international affairs? They could even look to a realist grand strategy, accepting limited interventions while avoiding the neocon overextensions. And wouldn't progressives benefit from a genuine sparring partner, a school of engagement more compatible with political conservatism?

Charles Kupchan

Democracy

The Truth Is Out There

Trevor Thrall — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 18:06:37 +0000

Trevor Thrall

Adam Berinsky from M.I.T. reports over at YouGov that less than a year after President Obama released his long form birth certificate, the number of Americans who believe that Obama is an American citizen has dropped back to same level as before the certificate was made public. The percentage of Republicans who believe Obama is an American has dropped even lower than before. Rumors, Berinsky argues, die hard, and thanks to the Internet, they spread faster and further than ever before.

Rumors may seem a bit far afield for this blog. But in fact, rumors are close cousins of lies, misinformation and propaganda, standard tools of foreign policy in democratic nations and dictatorships alike. Rumors, like their cousins, are designed to alter judgments about people and policies by shifting the basis on which citizens consider them. For example, recent rumors about Obama’s “death panels” can be understood as an effort to shape judgments about Obama’s health care plan by focusing attention on a specific element of that plan (end of life decisions) through the strategic use of misinformation (i.e., that there would be such things as panels determining who would live and die). In this sense, the death-panel rumor differs very little from the Bush administration’s claims about Iraqi WMD in the run up to the 2003 war.

Sadly, Berinsky’s findings are not surprising. As John Stuart Mill argued 150 years ago in On Liberty:

God Bless George F. Will

Jacob Heilbrunn — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 12:56:16 +0000

Jacob Heilbrunn

"Republicans who think America is being endangered by `appeasement' and military parsimony have worked that pedal on their organ quite enough." So says George F. Will in his column today. To which one can only respond: Amen.

Will's column amounts to a vivisection of Mitt Romney, who has made a number of ostentatious claims about how he would restore the American preeminence that has allegedly been squandered by the Obama administration. His principal point is this: traditionally, the GOP has held an edge over the Democrats when it came to national security. Democrats were seen as temporizers, unable to face up to the fact that America actually had an adversary (the Soviet Union) that was determined to surpass it. As a result, Republicans, at least since 1972, battened on the public's perception that Democrats were weak and soft and feeble when it came to foreign affairs.

Now, in an attempt to portray Obama as the latest manifestation of Democratic pusillanimity, the GOP has taken to bewailing the exit from Iraq and the looming one from Afghanistan. Those policies may be popular and common sense, but Romney will have none of it. "We should not negotiate with the Taliban," says Romney. "We should defeat the Taliban." Great. But how? Should we stay for several more decades in an effort to create an Afghanistan in America's image?

Will notes,

How to Defeat Iran

George J. Gilboy — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 10:00:00 +0000

George J. Gilboy

If Tehran crosses the Obama administration’s "red lines"—developing a nuclear weapon or blocking world oil supplies transiting the Strait of Hormuz—Washington will face a dilemma. The risks of using force are high, yet the risk of inaction may also be unacceptable. If red lines are crossed the United States must respond, but it should ponder options other than bombing.

One such option worthy of consideration: using mines around Iran's naval ports and oil-export terminals. This might create better leverage than a campaign of air strikes—without generating the death and destruction that could give Iran a cause for perpetual grievance. Mining would shut in both the Iranian navy and Iran's oil exports.

Modern U.S. naval mines are not indiscriminate weapons. They have programmable sensor-trigger mechanisms. These mines can be set to arm after a delay for a warning period, select targets based on a ship’s magnetic, pressure and acoustic signature, and they can be neutralized or cleared after a conflict.

Naval mines have advantages over air strikes. Even precision-guided weapons might well cause civilian casualties and collateral damage that cannot be undone. Air attacks against inland targets would put American pilots at substantial risk. An air campaign could not assure the complete destruction of underground targets.

Worse, mere air strikes might not provide a successful exit strategy. An exit from conflict must be based on forcing (and also enticing) Tehran to accept a political settlement ending its threatening behavior. Yet in addition to its inherent risks, a bombing campaign might cause the Iranian people to rally in support of the unpopular regime. This could further embolden Iran's leaders.

The Impact

Keeping Canada Close

Tom Velk — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 10:00:00 +0000

Tom Velk

History, geography and economic logic combine to make America and Canada close partners. Today, Canada is being shaken up by the uncertainty of a U.S. election year, and some analysts suggest it should "look east" to Asia or "diversify" its trading portfolio. Canadians should ignore these calls. Canada needs to find the right balance for its national interests. But the danger exists it will shift too suddenly—and there is no better example than the current negotiations with the United States on the Keystone oil pipeline.

Obama's Energy Reality

On January 17, President Obama’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness said that the continuing importance of traditional fuels, combined with uncertain supply lines ”require the United States to optimize all of its natural resources and construct pathways (pipelines, transmission and distribution) to deliver electricity and fuel." It continued that "permitting obstacles that could threaten the development of some energy projects" would "negatively impact jobs and weaken our energy infrastructure.”

Later that day, acting on “advice” from the State Department, The president delayed—and some fear de facto cancelled—completion of the Keystone oil-pipeline project. If the TransCanada corporation completes the project, the thirty-six-inch conduit would carry 1.3 million barrels a day of unrefined petroleum from Canada’s oil sands of Alberta to refineries and shipping assets in Nederland and Port Arthur, Texas.

Exposing Earmarks

The Editors — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 22:14:24 +0000

The Editors

The February 7 Washington Post had a front-page story on how members of Congress have used those ubiquitous "earmarks"—federal monies directed by Congress to specific purposes—to foster public projects right near the homes or investment properties of those very members of Congress. The piece jumps to the inside, with two full pages of investigative prose and mini-profiles of sixteen specific examples. Earmarks are a scourge on American democracy, not because they represent a material amount of money in the bloated federal budget but because they are a recipe for corruption.

Heretofore the focus has been on members helping favored constituents who then contribute significantly to those members’ campaigns. The Post, in a bit of really probing journalism, shows that the corruption goes beyond that. There’s no particular reason this should be surprising. It should be a rule of thumb in politics that entrenched power always gets abused. That’s what this story is all about.

Of course, the members deny that there is any corruption here—or that there is any connection at all between the earmarked funds and their own interests. As the Post said, "Any potential personal benefit—financial or otherwise—is nonexistent, minimal or secondary to the needs of the public, they said."

That rings hollow, of course, and is likely to seem even more hollow after the next installment in this two-part series—a look at money delivered to institutions connected to lawmakers’ relatives.

David S. Fallis, Scott Higham and Kimberly Kindy

The Washington Post

Occupy Afghanistan

Malou Innocent — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 19:40:46 +0000

Malou Innocent

In an essay for Armed Forces Journal, Army Lt. Col. Daniel L. Davis writes that after traveling across Afghanistan and speaking with more than 250 soldiers in the field, “What I saw bore no resemblance to rosy official statements by U.S. military leaders about conditions on the ground.” Further down he continues, “I witnessed the absence of success on virtually every level.”

It’s hard to disagree.

Davis’s essay comes weeks after the top-secret 2011 National Intelligence Estimate on Afghanistan finds that security gains in the Afghan war are unsustainable and that pervasive corruption, government incompetence and militant safe havens in Pakistan have undercut progress.

I’m reminded of a comment made recently by Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee:

There have been gains in security . . . but the Taliban is still a force to be reckoned with. They still occupy considerable land in the country.

Appeasing Assad

The Editors — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 15:35:38 +0000

The Editors

The last thing anyone wants to do is offer Bashar al-Assad a carrot. The idea of granting concessions to the brutal dictator is enough to make one’s stomach turn. But the implications of failing to do so are more dire than anyone cares to admit.

In a thoughtful New York Times op-ed, Nicholas Noe makes the case for negotiating with Assad—for “bargaining with the devil.” His point, well made and well-taken, is that the United States and its allies are currently operating as if they can somehow engineer a controlled collapse of the Assad government. In fact, for a number of reasons that Noe puts forth, the far likelier scenario is “a bloody last-ditch effort by Mr. Assad, Iran and Hezbollah to save the Syrian government, which they have the means to do.”

The crucial part of Noe’s piece is his insistence that Washington—not Russia, not China, not even Assad himself, although these actors certainly deserve their fair shares of blame—should be held accountable for jettisoning its “inconsistent maxim that bargaining is morally prohibited when a leader is deemed to have gone beyond the pale—especially when bargaining could actually mitigate future fallout, while eventually securing one’s interests and values.” Sanctions aren’t working. Threats aren’t working. The UN Security Council resolution is dead in its tracks. Washington should be willing to seriously consider the option of negotiating, even if it will produce a less-than-ideal outcome and even if it entails granting concessions to the devil.

Nicholas Noe

The New York Times

Turkey's Syria Imperative

Leon Hadar — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 10:00:00 +0000

Leon Hadar

Turkey's foreign minister Ahmet Davutoglu has famously pursued an ambitious zero-problems-with-the-neighbors policy. But Davutoglu, Turkey’s would-be Kissinger, has been trying to demonstrate that he can just as easily turn his back on the West.

Though the European Union, led by France and Germany, continues to give the cold shoulder to Turkey's membership application, a more diplomatically assertive and economically advanced Turkey has another option in terms of a grand strategy: playing a leading role in the formation of an economic and political union of Middle Eastern states, one that would include neighboring Syria and other Levantine entities that once upon a time were part of the Ottoman Empire.

Arab Dreams and Realities

In the aftermath of the so-called Arab Spring, support for this geo strategic concept has been gaining some momentum. Pro democracy activists in Tunisia and Egypt—joined by Wilsonian daydreamers in Washington and other Western capitals—propose that Turkey could provide a model for the region: a successful Muslim democracy and a thriving free-market economy under which political Islam and liberalism could coexist and flourish. Hence, Davutoglu’s realpolitik regional project could be sustained by the force of idealism—or Turkey’s “soft power.”

Understanding America's Fall

Robert W. Merry — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 10:00:00 +0000

Robert W. Merry

Robert Kagan has produced a fascinating cover piece in the February 2 New Republic entitled, "Not Fade Away: Against the myth of American decline." It’s an excerpt from his forthcoming book entitled The World America Made, due out soon from Knopf. Kagan specializes in diminutive volumes, with small pages and few of them, that pack tight, provocative arguments. A previous such book was Of Paradise and Power, which compared the United States as Mars with Europe’s Venus. It was a huge success. Now he marshals his analytical and writing skills on behalf of the argument that rumors of American decline are vastly exaggerated.

He makes a compelling case, and Kagan’s foray into the breach could serve as a bit of a corrective to much of what’s being written today under the voguish consensus that America is roughly equivalent to Great Britain circa 1910. It would be a positive development if Kagan’s essay brought forth a bit more rigor from some of those positing the consensus argument of decline.

But Kagan’s essay doesn’t say much about what kind of foreign policy America should pursue in its next decades of lingering global dominance. And, whatever merit one sees in his analytical framework, it certainly doesn’t serve as a blueprint for the kind of foreign policy that the neoconservative Kagan has been championing since the end of the Cold War. One could almost suggest that Kagan has a vested interest in American global power since he always displays such abandon in advocating its use.

Afghanistan and the Guantanamo Roach Motel

Paul R. Pillar — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 03:08:49 +0000

Paul R. Pillar

One of the latest efforts by members of Congress (especially, but not exclusively, Republicans) to impede the executive branch's conduct of foreign policy concerns the possible transfer of several Afghan Taliban out of the detention facility at Guantanamo as part of the process of negotiating an agreement with the Taliban. Specifically, the move would entail transferring five senior Taliban from Guantanamo to Qatar as a good-faith gesture. One anonymous Republican member of Congress forecast strong opposition if the Obama administration attempted this transfer, saying, "If they do that, then all hell breaks loose. There's just no way."

Opposition to this move probably reflects a combination of several misconceived and unhelpful beliefs:

That negotiating is mutually exclusive with fighting. A substantial modern history of warfare, including the U.S. wars in Korea and Vietnam, demonstrates that not only are they not mutually exclusive, but negotiating while fighting may be the only way out of a war with even a hope of a satisfactory outcome. This belief is related to a more general one...

That diplomacy is a reward that should not be bestowed on enemies. This attitude merely handicaps ourselves by removing one of our tools of statecraft. The late Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin said it best: you negotiate peace with your enemies, not with your friends.

A Tortured Comparison on Drones

The Editors — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 23:39:49 +0000

The Editors

Some say where there’s smoke, there’s fire. Andrew Cohen says—perhaps blinded by his own exhaust—where fire was, fire will be.

In a theatrical Atlantic editorial, “The Torture Memos, 10 Years Later,” contributing editor Cohen marks the ten-year anniversary of the Bush administration’s ironic memo on “Humane Treatment of Taliban and al-Qaeda Detainees.” He claims the same obfuscation and legal malfeasance that marked that fiasco is now occurring on Obama’s drone program.

Let’s be clear. There is no question that the U.S. government needs to make greater efforts on transparency. But more information needs to be learned about the drone program before it can be compared to a document that abandoned America’s commitment to crucial provisions of the Geneva Convention and allowed the brutalizing torture of terror-law detainees.

Cohen argues that we remember the detainee memo anniversary “because it may help us muster the courage today to ask the right questions of the Obama White House.” Fair enough, but his undoing is buried later in his very argument, “Yet we cannot even see the legal memos upon which the drone program is based, much less evaluate the documents for their loyalty to the Constitution and to the rule of law.”

And not having seen them, how can we possibly make a prudent judgment, no less compare the drone program to one of the most embarrassing American foreign policy episodes in recent history? This reckless howler shoots first and asks questions later.

Andrew Cohen

The Atlantic

Bursting the Chinese Bubble

The Editors — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 15:56:55 +0000

The Editors

America is finished as a superpower. Or so you might think from the recent discussion in the U.S. media. Popular books lament that “that used to be us” and that the United States is committing “suicide.” Meanwhile, a majority of Americans believe that China has already passed Washington as “the leading economic power in the world today,” according to a 2011 Gallup poll.

In the latest issue of International Security, Michael Beckley argues strongly that this is all wrong—as his title, “China’s Century? Why America’s Edge Will Endure,” indicates. Beckley, a research fellow at Harvard, brings empirical facts and cool analysis to an issue often dominated by overheated rhetoric. His main target is the idea that we can measure China’s rise solely based on its rising levels of GDP.

Michael Beckley

International Security

Libya Begets Syria?

Christopher A. Preble — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 10:00:00 +0000

Christopher A. Preble

A little over a year ago, as members of the Obama administration were pondering military intervention in Libya, skeptics (including The Skeptics) pressed them to explain how that situation differed from other comparable cases elsewhere in the world. If Libya, why not Yemen? Why not Bahrain? Why not Syria? We may soon learn the answer to that last question. And their too-permissive—or merely haphazard—approach a year ago might pave the way for an intervention in Syria that would be ill-advised, if not disastrous.

At the time of the Libya debate (to the extent that there was one), the president and his foreign-policy advisers dismissed concerns that the intervention in Libya would set a precedent. "It is true that America cannot use our military wherever repression occurs," President Obama said in a televised speech to the nation on March 28, 2011. But, he continued:

Israel and Iran: Countdown to War

Benny Morris — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 10:00:00 +0000

Benny Morris

Israel's strategy for the Iranian nuclear weapons program is working—but it’s unlikely to solve the problem, or solve it in time.

Europe, which for constitutional and economic reasons for years shied away from using the big stick, recently decided to impose drastic economic sanctions against Iran in an attempt to compel it to halt its nuclear-weapons program. Meeting in Brussels, the European Union's twenty-seven foreign ministers, led by Britain, France and Germany, agreed to halt all imports of Iranian oil products or to help ship them to any destination; to halt all exports to Iran of oil-production equipment and all investments in the Iranian oil industry; to freeze the assets in Europe of Iran's central bank; and to prohibit all trade in diamonds, gold and other precious metals with Iranian state agencies.

But the union added the proviso that all existing oil-purchasing contracts between Iran and the three major European importers of Iranian oil–Spain, Italy and Greece—would be honored until 1 July, substantially reducing the immediate impact of the sanctions. In 2011, Greece imported 35 percent of its oil from Iran, Italy 15 percent and Spain 13 percent. All three countries are in the throes of a major financial crisis.

The European foreign ministers agreed to compensate those of its members economically injured by the sanctions. Meanwhile, both Europe and the United States have pressed Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Libya to increase their oil production to compensate for the loss in Iranian exports and keep oil prices down.

What Is Our Number One Priority?

Paul R. Pillar — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 00:50:22 +0000

Paul R. Pillar

In an interview broadcast during NBC's Super Bowl pregame show on Sunday, President Obama made a couple of statements that were disturbing, even if politically unsurprising. In a portion of the interview about the danger of Israel touching off a war with Iran, the president said, “My number one priority continues to be the security of the United States, but also the security of Israel.” Wait a minute—shouldn't the security of the United States be the number one priority of the president of the United States? Rather than merely sharing the top spot on the priority list with some foreign country's security? This comment was part of an unscripted interview, and perhaps the language of a prepared speech would have come out differently. But the president said what he said.

Elsewhere in the same interview, Mr. Obama said that in dealing with Israel regarding the issue of Iran, “We are going to make sure that we work in lockstep.” If working in lockstep means that Israel defers to U.S. interests and preferences, that would be fine for the United States. But of course the deference nearly always works the other way around. For a glaring recent example involving President Obama, recall how he caved to Benjamin Netanyahu regarding the continued Israeli construction of settlements in occupied territories. So this statement is disturbing as well.

Washington's UN Temper Tantrum

Ted Galen Carpenter — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 20:22:15 +0000

Ted Galen Carpenter

Dmitri Medvedev with Hu Jintao (www.kremlin.ru)U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice huffed that her country was “disgusted” by Russia and China’s decision to veto a UN Security Council resolution condemning the violence in Syria and calling for an immediate end to that bloodshed. Their actions, she added, were “shameful” and “unforgivable.” Not only could Ambassador Rice apparently use a refresher course in diplomatic language, Washington’s response also betrays a troubling arrogance on two levels.

First, U.S. officials seem to believe that even such major powers as Russia and China should simply kowtow to the United States and adopt whatever measure Washington and its allies want on any subject, even when such a measure might be contrary to the interests of Moscow and Beijing. That is an offensive attitude that is provoking more and more irritation and resentment not just in those capitals but in such places as Ankara, Brasilia and New Delhi as well. Someone needs to convey a message to Rice and other Obama-administration officials—and much of the U.S. foreign policy community—that America’s “unipolar moment” is over and that other powers in the international system are increasingly unwilling to take dictation from Washington.

A Neocon by Any Other Name

The Editors — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 18:08:20 +0000

The Editors

In his piece for the January/February 2012 edition of World Affairs, Washington Post editorial writer Charles Lane sets out to evaluate the foreign-policy stances of the GOP hopefuls. He comes to two major conclusions: Republicans will not “enjoy their customary edge over the Democrats as the party of national security,” and “the ‘neoconservative’ movement has no obvious candidate in this race.” (The one possible exception, he claims, is Rick Santorum, who Lane must be forgiven for writing off as having “little chance of winning” before the surprising Iowa-caucus results.)

The first conclusion seems solid, albeit arrived at through a series of oft-repeated observations: voters care more about the economy; the contenders don’t know what they’re talking about; the new threats are ill-defined; the public is generally content with Obama’s foreign-policy record.

The second is where Lane encounters difficulties.

He claims the GOP hopefuls eschew a neoconservative agenda of democracy promotion in favor of a “narrowed-down version” of Bush’s foreign policy “whose central concern is not so much expanding democracy across the Middle East as protecting its one outpost—Israel.” There's something to Lane’s notion that protecting Israel has supplanted spreading democracy as the top Republican foreign-policy priority. There can be no doubt that the race for the nomination has been marked by a sort of Israel one-upmanship.

Charles Lane

World Affairs

Obama's Bad Education Ideas

Jacob Heilbrunn — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 13:58:31 +0000

Jacob Heilbrunn

President Obama announced in his State of the Union address that no one should be allowed to drop out from high school under the age of eighteen. Obama's desire to raise graduation rates is laudable. But simply raising the age limit is not. In fact, it's a dumb idea.

Whether students drop out at age sixteen or age eighteen is largely immaterial. The truth is that teachers shouldn't be forced to try and teach students who don't want to be taught. Instead, they pose a disruptive presence inside public schools. Obama is proposing to identify the schools with the highest dropout rates, close them and then transfer students to better districts. But is that simple a recipe for adding troublemakers to districts that are performing well? Yes, the administration should work to improve schools and lower dropout rates. But don't try to enforce it by executive fiat, which is what raising the dropout age would represent. You can't legislate your way to better results. Schools have to produce them.

The other idea that the Obama administration proposes is even worse. Far worse. It is embracing high technology as a panacea for teaching students. In a scorching column in the Los Angeles Times, Michael Hiltzik points out that the administration is peddling moonshine. U.S. education secretary Arne Duncan is pushing for a major infusion of iPads into school classrooms. Who's eager for this to happen? Apple computers, naturally. It stands to make big bucks. The claim is that iPads are studier than textbooks, can be updated and are cheaper in the long run. Baloney, says Hiltzik. For one thing, you can drop a textbook, but an iPad? It's finished.

Burma Comes in from the Cold

Doug Bandow — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 10:00:00 +0000

Doug Bandow

Once isolated by the West, Burma, also called Myanmar, has chosen to join the rest of the world. Although Burma’s future course is not guaranteed, the country’s prospects are growing brighter. The United States should reward the government in Naypyidaw for further expanding democratic reforms.

The military first seized control in Burma in 1962.The junta varied between bizarre (long-time dictator Ne Win was guided by astrology) and brutal (suppressing democracy protests equally ruthlessly in 1988 and 2007). Callous incompetence after Cyclone Nargis in 2008 resulted in mass suffering. In eastern and northern Burma, the regime literally warred against its own people, with numerous ethnic groups seeking autonomy.

Over the years the United States withdrew its ambassador and imposed a range of economic sanctions. However, Washington only inconvenienced regime elites, who grew rich from their political connections.

The government, known as the State Law and Order Restoration Council and later the State Peace and Development Council, occasionally relaxed its control, only to return to repression. The regime voided the election of 1990 after the poll was won by Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD). The Nobel laureate and daughter of one of Burma’s national heroes, Suu Kyi spent fifteen of the next twenty-one years under house arrest.

In 2010, the regime remade itself but offered little hope of genuine change. Top generals retired while creating a nominally civilian government dominated by officers who shed their uniforms. The constitution preserved the military’s dominance; the parliamentary election was rigged.

Blinded by Transition

Dead End in Damascus

Ariel Cohen — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 10:00:00 +0000

Ariel Cohen

In another blow to President Obama’s “reset policy” with Russia, Moscow and Beijing imposed a double veto at the U.N. Security Council resolution that would have condemned the Syrian government for killing civilians. In an unprecedented rhetorical escalation, U.S. ambassador Susan Rice announced that the United States was "disgusted" by the veto: "The international community must protect the Syrian people from this abhorrent brutality, but a couple members of this council remain steadfast in their willingness to sell out the Syrian people and shield a craven tyrant."

The gathering diplomatic clouds have produced a thunderbolt. A contretemps this week between the foreign ministers of the United States and Russia reflects the growing tensions between the two countries, not to mention the two officials. According to State Department spokesman Victoria Nuland, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton tried repeatedly on Tuesday to reach her Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov. He avoided her calls for twenty-four hours. Meanwhile Lavrov, who was in Australia, said State gave him an inconvenient time frame for the conversation, which didn't work as he had scheduled meetings with high officials in the Australian government. When asked why the Americans were complaining, he replied, "Probably this is due to her manners."

Regime Change, Humanitarianism and Syria

Paul R. Pillar — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 03:45:10 +0000

Paul R. Pillar

The West and especially the United States are still paying a price for the messy habit of conflating regime change with other objectives, even the laudable objective of saving lives. Last October, Russia and China vetoed a United Nations Security Council resolution on Syria. The Russians in particular made it clear they were determined not to fall again for what they regarded as a bait and switch on Libya, in which a NATO military intervention that received multilateral support on humanitarian grounds quickly morphed into support for toppling the Libyan regime. Last Saturday saw a replay at the Security Council: another resolution on Syria, and another double veto by Russia and China. It's not as if the Russians and Chinese are throwing vetoes around with abandon these days. The vetoes on the Syria resolutions are four of only five vetoes that have been cast at the council in the last couple of years (the United States used the other one a year ago against a resolution criticizing continued Israeli construction of settlements in occupied territories). Despite efforts to word the most recent resolution on Syria in a way that would assuage Russian and Chinese concerns, all the talk about seeing the backside of Bashar al-Assad, in addition to the experience with Libya, makes it easy to see why Moscow and Beijing were still not buying.