Month: August 2012
Penny wise and pound foolish
While some may think the choice of Paul Ryan as his vice presidential candidate confirms Romney’s intention to focus on domestic rather than foreign policy, the selection still says a good deal about how the Republican ticket will approach national security issues. Josh Rogin wrote in March that Paul Ryan’s budget proposal
…would see the international affairs account slashed from $47.8 billion in fiscal 2012 to $43.1 billion in fiscal 2013, $40.1 billion in fiscal 2014, $38.3 billion in fiscal 2015, and $38.1 billion in fiscal 2016. The State Department and USAID wouldn’t see their budget get back to current levels until after 2022 if Ryan were to have his way.
The Ryan proposal also increases defense spending, as Romney has said he would like to do. Defense spends more than 10 times the State and USAID budgets combined.
This is not smart. What we’ve got here is a ticket determined to fund the most expensive tool of American national security–the military–and to shortchange the much more economical tools of diplomacy and development.
While many are predicting that foreign affairs will play little or no role in this election campaign, I anticipate something different. It is hard to argue for cuts in diplomacy and development assistance if the international issues you face come mainly from weak and failing states where terrorism, trafficking, instability, epidemics, corruption and other non-military threats thrive. Romney and Ryan are going to have to justify their choice of building up the military instrument at a moment when the United States faces no major foreign military threat. Iran and its nuclear program are handy, but they are going to need more. Russia as our prime geopolitical foe will not suffice.
I imagine they will start waving the China menace, ignoring the very real difference between U.S. and Chinese military capabilities. China will need decades even to begin to catch up. In the meanwhile, it is heavily dependent on the U.S. for export markets and the safety of its savings, which are heavily invested in American government debt. While these factors are often portrayed as limiting U.S. policy options with China, they are also constraints on Chinese policy options. There are already a lot of reasons for the U.S. and China not to go to war. By 2050, there will be a lot more.
I am not arguing for weakening the U.S. military, which has global responsibilities that cannot be ignored without endangering American security. We cannot be the world’s policeman, patrolling every continent. But we do need act as its fireman and put out conflagrations that might threaten our own peace and tranquility.
Nor am I arguing that the Obama administration has done what it recognized it should in the Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review, which argued for a major increase in the civilian instruments of power. There is little sign of that.
Obama and Romney both need to recognize that insufficient funding for the State Department, USAID and associated institutions is unnecessarily increasing the burdens on the U.S. military (and on the national budget). That’s penny wise and pound foolish.
PS: For those who may think Ryan less than serious about his budget proposals (which include drastic reductions in Medicare and partial privatization of Social Security), read Ryan Lizza, who quotes Paul Ryan as saying
I think life is short. You’d better take advantage of it while you have it.
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Bosnia reinvents partial people
It’s hard even for me to get excited about what goes on in Bosnia and Herzegovina, but this letter burned a hole in my inbox yesterday, so I repeat it here, with an invitation to those who disagree to reply in kind (that means forcefully but politely, with facts not invective):
Dear Member of Congress,
We write to you as a coalition of civil society organizations from Bosnia and Herzegovina, to voice our concern about the continuing violation of civil and political rights of Bosnians and Herzegovinians grouped under the derisive label of “Others.” While the label constitutionally applies to the country’s 17 ethnic minorities, such as Jews and Roma, it is also used in public discourse to describe citizens who refuse to embrace ethnic identification and/or espouse a civic or national identity.
In 2009, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled that the Constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina, contained in the 1995 Dayton Peace Accords, abridges equal representation rights of its citizens who belong to the so-called “Others” by not allowing them to run for the positions of the country’s presidency or a seat in the upper chamber of Parliament (the House of Peoples). The “Sejdic-Finci” verdict – named after Jakob Finci and Dervo Sejdic, plaintiffs of Jewish and Roma ethnic background – stated that Bosnia and Herzegovina has to amend its constitution to allow citizens such as Finci and Sejdic to enjoy equal civil and political rights as those afforded to the members of the so called “constituent” ethnic groups (Bosniaks, Croats, and Serbs). Should the BiH politicians refuse to implement the ruling, they risk the country’s membership in the Council of Europe, as well as hopes to join its future in the EU and NATO.
To submit a viable EU candidacy application in 2012, Bosnia and Herzegovina has to meet the “Sejdic-Finci” ruling to the European Commission’s satisfaction by November 30, 2012.
However, instead of implementing the verdict, the ruling Social Democratic Party (SDP) and Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) have agreed to a set of constitutional amendments which not only do little to address the Sejdic-Finci ruling, but also make Bosnia and Herzegovina’s constitution even more discriminatory.
Among several other discriminatory propositions, the amendments proposed by the two parties would introduce a highly discriminatory concept of “vote value.” The “vote value” would assign greater value to votes of citizens belonging to a majority ethnic group within the country’s administrative units. The provision would, in essence, devalue the vote of citizens who are of Jewish, Roma, Polish, Slovak, Czech, German, Albanian, or other recognized minority background, to 40 percent of those who identify themselves as Croats, Serbs or Bosniaks. A completely unnecessary proposition, introduced under the guise of constitutional reforms necessary to address the Sejdic-Finci ruling, this and similar discriminatory amendments would not address any explicit requirements of the EU or the CoE and would, in fact, lead to further violation of human rights. In addition, the proposed constitutional amendments are also in breach of decision of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Constitutional Court, the country’s highest legal body, which includes three judges appointed by the President of the ECHR. This decision states that it is unconstitutional to uphold the effects of ethnic cleansing and the proposed amendments would do precisely that.
Before the XIV Amendment, the Constitution of the United States of America stated that
Representatives (…) shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, (…) and three fifths of all other Persons.
If the SDP-HDZ agreement is adopted in the Parliament of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the country’s constitution will de facto assign a lesser value to a whole group of its citizens, much like the U.S. Constitution did before the abolition of slavery.
Our coalition of civil society organizations and individuals – spanning from Sarajevo to Banja Luka and from Mostar to Tuzla and including Mr. Dervo Sejdic and Mr. Jakob Finci, the plaintiffs in the Sejdic-Finci ECHR case – is determined to stop these amendments from being adopted in the Parliament of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Committed to democracy and universal human rights, we cannot allow this blatant violation of basic democratic principles and each human being’s inherent equality to be enshrined into our constitution and cemented for years to come.
However, it is our fear that the European Union will fail to see the threat facing the human rights of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s citizens, especially minorities. Eager to see “progress” at any cost, the EU appears likely to accept the proposed SDP-HDZ agreement. We have seen it before: the much-hailed 2007 police reform, completed under the direct supervision of then EU Special Representative Miroslav Lajcak, explicitly renders citizens who do not belong to one of the three constituent ethnic groups ineligible to run the policing agencies of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Yet, the EU accepted this reform as a sign of “progress” and fully endorsed it.
Seventeen years after peace was brought to our war-torn country, thanks to support and leadership of the United States of America – particularly members of the U.S. Congress – we once again need your help. We look to you once again to help us reinforce the values of liberty and equality in our small nation, and join us in the fight to make all of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s citizens equal under law regardless of their ethnicity, religion, or race.
We ask for your support in our opposition to this shameful proposition and demand for a solution that truly provides equal rights to all of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s citizens.
We ask that you help us to convey a clear message to the US and EU decision-makers that the currently proposed SDP-HDZ amendments are not acceptable.
And we ask that you stand by the civil society and citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina as we continue our fight for long-lasting peace, stability, and democracy in our country.
Sincerely,
Mr. Dervo Sejdić
Mr. Jakob Finci
Kali Sara – Roma informative center (Sarajevo)
CA „Why not“ (Sarajevo)
The Association Alumni of the Center for Interdisciplinary Postgraduate Studies (Sarajevo)
Forum of Tuzla citizens (Tuzla)
Sarajevo open center
Youth cultural center Abrašević (Mostar)
Legal institute in BiH (Sarajevo)
CA „Sharp Zero“ (Banja Luka)
Euro Rom (Tuzla)
Youth Initiative for Human Rights (Sarajevo)
Association for Culture and Art CRVENA (Sarajevo)
Citizens’ Action (Sarajevo)
The Association of Independent Creators and Activists “GETO” (Banja Luka)
Revolt (Tuzla)
Foundation „Ekipa“ (Sarajevo) European Research Center (Sarajevo)
Foundation CURE (Sarajevo)
Foundation for Creative Development (Sarajevo)
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No lipstick for this pig
Yesterday’s Project on Middle East Democracy (POMED)-hosted discussion about Iran’s Green Movement critiqued the movement’s leadership and condemned current US Iran policy as riddled with misconception and opportunism.
Allreza Nader, a Senior International Policy Analyst at the Rand Corporation, focused on the internal dynamics of the Green Movement. Since the unsuccessful 2009 protests, there is a widening schism between the movement’s leadership and the Iranian rank and file. Mousavi, Karroubi and Khatami (MK&K) have been effectively neutralized by the regime. The first two sit under house arrest, and Khatami does not represent what the Green Movement wanted. Many of the people who took to the streets seek an Iranian republic instead of an Islamic republic. MK&K don’t support this goal. They want to throw Khamenei out but keep the system enshrined by Khomeini. Khatami went so far as to deny a link between the Green Movement and other secular nationalist movements.
Iranians have lost faith in the Green Movement and in the reformist leadership, whom they don’t see as effective. Attitudes toward Khatami in particular have soured. People ask why he isn’t under house arrest. His advocacy of reform damages his reputation. People see him as belonging to the regime.
Most Iranians feel that the Islamic Republic is not reformable. They crave democracy and separation of religion from the state. This is the true Green Movement in Iran: not the leadership, but the rank and file who reject unreal reform and call for democratic norms to prevail.
Jamal Abdi, Policy Director at the National Iranian American Council, condemned Washington policymakers for forgetting the Green Revolution. Those who remember treat the revolution either as a nuisance or an opportunistic instrument to advance pre-conceived goals. The last time the Green Movement was invoked in the mainstream media, it was a Wall Street Journal article calling for more crippling sanctions on Iran. The thinking is that if we punish the Iranian people economically, they will join the movement.
This rhetoric, so common in Washington, shows a complete misunderstanding of the situation on the ground. The Green Revolution is not about angry bread mobs. It is about people demanding their civil rights. It is about the Iranian middle classes, fed up with eroding liberties. But the sanctions have weakened this same middle class, and distract them from demanding their civil rights. The net effect of US policy on Iran has been damaging. We can put lipstick on this “ugly failed policy” of sanctions, but it has eroded the very middle class that could bring about real change.
Suzanne Maloney, Senior Fellow in Foreign Policy at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy, echoed Jamal Abdi’s criticisms of the US and expressed confidence in Iran’s future as a functioning democracy. The fact that the event was not focused on nuclear war or sanctions against Iran makes it unique in Washington circles. Very few policymakers focus on what is going on inside Iran today. We are blind to the internal political realities. Our information is stale and limited. Inability to see what is going in Iran is a huge problem for good policy.
Why did the Green Movement fail? It was a historical moment, but it did not bring us the change we would like to see and that many Iranians would like to see. We need to understand what went wrong: why did Egyptians keep coming back to Tahrir square, but Iranians went to their homes? How does that change? How can Washington encourage that change?
The schism between the leadership and the rank and file is a good place to begin to understand what happened. Iranians want more radical change than people like Moussavi were willing to support. But the US doesn’t know how to advance real change in Iran any more, and the current nuclear-focused policy is opportunistic and doomed to failure.
Don’t just blame the Obama administration for this. It is doubtful that a Romney policy would be substantially different. Perhaps it would be worse. Perhaps the best thing the US can do in Iran is to recognize that we are not going to be the authors of change through sanctions or through any other policy mechanism. When change happens, we are probably not going to see it coming. Iran will become a functioning democracy long before almost all of its neighbors, but we can’t know when that will be.
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Socialism lives in Serbia
Milan Marinković continues his discussion of issues confronting the new Serbian government, which took office late last month:
The heads of two important institutions have been replaced since the new Serbian government was constituted. Dejan Šoškić is no longer the central bank (NBS) governor. He resigned four years before his term was to expire amid pressure from the governing coalition. His successor is Jorgovanka Tabaković, championed by President Tomislav Nikolić. She is a high-ranking official of Nikolić’s Serbian Progressive party (SNS).
Tabaković has a PhD in economy from the University of Novi Sad. She graduated from the faculty of economics in Priština at the age of 23 as the best student in her class. Such qualifications are respectable; whether they will be sufficient for the challenging central bank role remains to be seen. Just a couple of days ago Standard and Poor’s downgraded Serbia’s credit rating to BB minus, with a negative outlook.
More important is the new law on NBS, passed as a prelude to the change at the bank’s top. Some articles of the law seem controversial and likely to endanger the central bank’s presupposed independence from the government. The whole thing smacks of Prime minister Ivica Dačić’s determination to pursue his populist economic agenda despite persistent warnings from experts.
During the election campaign, Dačić and his Socialist party (SPS) frequently criticized then-governor Šoškić for his restrictive monetary policy, accusing him of thwarting Serbia’s economic growth. Šoškić explained that more expansive measures would be possible only after the government stabilized the economy through fiscal consolidation and other structural reforms; otherwise, it would result in high inflation and a serious slump in the value of the national currency.
Šoškić was right, but obviously to no avail. Even though Prime Minister Dačić’s party holds no economy-related ministry in the government, its impact on economic policy is already visible. Dačić likes to quote French socialist president Francois Hollande, whom he is apparently trying to emulate. But Dačić neglect two facts: Serbia and France are in completely different positions; Hollande’s economic program has yet to yield results.
The Serbian prime minister has also recently labeled the financial sector as “the biggest enemy to the Serbian people.” He was alluding primarily to the foreign-owned banks in Serbia, which are generally considered the healthiest setment of an otherwise weak economy. Although Dačić later downplayed the statement, saying that he was speaking metaphorically, potential investors have every reason to be nervous about his government’s future steps. It was not the first time that Dačić made such remarks, and it likely won’t be the last time, either.
Dačić and his partners need to begin thinking about what they can do to rein in Serbia’s public debt. The debt-to-GDP ratio has already exceeded by 10% the ceiling of 45% defined by law. Those opposing austerity measures argue that the ratio is much higher in the most developed countries, such as Germany and the United States. This may be true, but Serbia’s is by no means comparable with these far stronger economies.
Serbia is at the same time struggling with a large trade deficit, caused largely by poor export performance. Serbia’s weak industrial base and technological obsolescence mean that currency devaluation can hardly mitigate the problem, let alone solve it. Foreign investment would help, but Serbia is instead facing capital flight.
Many in Serbia fail to understand that the roots of Serbia’s economic troubles are much deeper than the global crisis. The downturn in the global economy only caused deficiencies long embedded in the country’s economic system to surface and suddenly become painfully evident to everyone. The Serbian economy desperately needs relief from state intervention, as well as thorough rationalization of the public sector. That would also help reduce corruption, which has reached epic proportions, by cutting out unnecessary bureaucratic procedures.
Dačić and his government are nevertheless planning to impose more burdens on entrepreneurs. Instead of announcing the needed urgent budget cuts, Minister of Economy and Finance Mlađan Dinkić has announced that pensioners who receive less than 15,000 dinars a month (approximately 125 euros/150 dollars) will get an extra (13th) pension of 20,000 dinars by the end of the year through four monthly installments, starting in September. The extra pension was promised in the election campaign by the Party of United Pensioners (PUPS), which is a member of the ruling coalition. Dinkić himself may be reluctant to fulfil this commitment, but seems to have little choice.
After more than a decade of post-Milošević transition, Serbia still appears locked into a socialist economy and, even more damaging, mentality.
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How we spend resources
Yesterday my wife and I took in the Newseum, which is an example of my thesis that creation of museums marks the acme of power. This extraordinarily lavish tribute to the news media dates from 2000, when the land for the half-billion dollar project was acquired (ground was broken in 2003). Oh, how the mighty newspapers and networks have fallen since then! Voting in the Newseum shows almost half its visitors get their news online, not on paper. Home delivery of the Times and Post is definitely an anachronism, but my spouse insists on it.
This is nonetheless a thoughtful and interesting museum (it had better be at the $21.95 admission price, $17.95 for oldsters). Its display of paper artifacts (mainly front pages) may be figuratively (and literally) dated, but it is really more interesting than the frequent and distracting videos showing hilarious episodes of Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart (both of whom I enjoy watching, but why not at home?). Who knew that W.E.B. Dubois died in the same week as the 1963 March on Washington? Nor did I know that the first two amendments to the U.S. constitution (on the size of Congress and its pay) were not approved by the states. I would not have been able to name the five freedoms specified in the first amendment that did pass: speech, press, religion, assembly and petition (Roosevelt’s four kept the first two but added freedom from want and freedom from fear).
When it comes to war and peace, the Newseum minces few words and presents a lot of pictures, without however quite capturing the horror of the enterprise. The memorial wall to slain journalists is tucked away outside the main flow of museum traffic, as is the introductory film that presents the “war and peace” theme quickly but well (along with life and death, love and hate and some others I can’t remember). You would know from this museum what bullets do to a Toyota pickup truck or a road sign but relatively little about what they do to human flesh. I suppose the Newseum knows its audience (me included).
There is a good deal more focus on human tragedy in the section devoted to 9/11. Its focus–part of the antenna on top of one of the World Trade Center buildings–is odd but somehow works, its twisted metal symbolizing the incredible physical, psychological and human toll of the event. The dramatic photography and film of that dreadful day heightens the impact, as does the timeline that surrounds the antenna.
The question is whether the nation that can afford such a spectacular tribute to freedom of expression still has the edge required to help others enjoy its benefits? The part of the Berlin wall that adorns the lower level with pastel graffiti is a stark reminder of the human costs that have been paid: 5000 Germans died trying to escape its confines. We rightly celebrate freedom and the wall’s fall, but could the process have been accelerated? How many of those 5000 might have been saved? How many more suffered without trying to escape, trapped in a system that ruined countless lives?
The questions are still with us: how many Syrians will die fighting the Asad dictatorship? We are up to something like 20,000. I am among those who doubt that intervention would improve the situation, but I never stop wondering. The privilege of living in a country that sports the Newseum comes with the responsibility to worry about how we expend our resources and what we might do better than we have done in the past.
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The trick is to stay on course
Loyal readers will not be surprised by Libya’s smooth handover of power yesterday from its revolutionary Transitional National Council (NTC) to its General National Conference, the parliament elected in July. The July election went far better than many expected.
The Libyan revolution had many ways of going wrong. I wrote about them for the Council on Foreign Relations during the spring of 2010. My visit last September convinced me they had come down to just two: militias and Islamic extremism. Both have proved problematic, but they have not derailed a process that the NTC scoped out a year ago.
Why has Libya gone more right than wrong? There are many reasons. It is a geographically large but demographically small (6.4 million, more or less) country. It is rich. Even before the oil and gas started flowing, repatriated frozen assets provided ample resources. Libya is relatively homogeneous from an ethnic and sectarian perspective (compared to Iraq or Syria), though there are distinct groups, especially in the south, that have not yet fully accepted the revolution. The regional tensions are real, especially in the eastern province of Cyrenaica, but the revolution against Qaddafi gave Libyans a common cause, at least until now.
The role of the international community in Libya has been one of support, not direction. The United States and Europe, which were vital to the NATO operation that dislodged Qaddafi, had more important things on their minds once he was gone: Syria, Iran and the euro crisis. The United Nations and closely allied agencies (UNDP, IFES, etc.) provided assistance in organizing the July elections, but the Libyans were unequivocally in the lead. They have owned their revolution and its aftermath.
Now Libya faces its biggest challenges: deciding on how power is to be distributed and who will have it to start. A prime minister and new government is to be chosen within 30 days. When I left Libya last month, the clear intention of the biggest winner in the election, Mahmoud Jibril, was to form a broad, national unity government. If it can be done, this is smart. Bringing the Muslim Brotherhood and others with significant popular support in is a lot better than keeping them out.
The first and most important job of that new government is to decide how the committee to write the constitution is to be chosen. The original plan was for the GNC to somehow empower a committee. The TNC decided, in a last-minute move of dubious validity intended to encourage electoral participation in the east, that the committee should instead be elected on a regional basis.
However selected, the committee is to prepare a draft within 60 days that has to be submitted for approval by a 2/3 majority in a popular referendum. This is important: it guarantees that, however and by whomever written, the new constitution will have to have broad geographical and popular legitimacy. The time for preparation of the new constitution is far too short to allow serious public participation in the process. It would be wise for the GNC to give the process more time.
Once the constitution is approved, the GNC promulgates a new election law within 30 days and new elections are held with 180 days.
Many people are still worried about Libya’s once-revolutionary militias, which have not been fully demobilized or reintegrated, and about its Islamic extremists, who have been attacking the Red Cross (symbol of the crusaders of course) and trying to sow havoc. These are real and present dangers. Libya is still a long way from establishing law and order, even if the environment is already reasonably safe and secure most places most of the time.
Libya is on a good course. That is what counts. I am reminded of Zeno’s “dichotomy” paradox in its collegiate version: if you halve the distance between yourself and an attractive other at a constant rate, mathematicians say you’ll never arrive. But for all practical purposes, you do.
On its current course, Libya will arrive at something resembling a democracy, sooner or later. The trick is to stay on course.
PS: for another, well-informed, view see Christopher Blanchard’s Libya Transition and US Policy.
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