Tag: China
Liberal democracy at risk
The handwriting is on many walls. Liberal democracy and the world order it has built since World War II are at risk. Equal rights, political pluralism and rule of law are being challenged from several directions.
We see it in Brexit, which aims explicitly to restore borders, reject immigrants and implicitly to end the liberal democratic establishment’s monopoly on governing power. We see it in Trump, who aims at similar goals. We see it in Putin, Erdogan and Sisi, who are selling the idea that concentrated power and restrictions on freedom will deliver better and more goods and services. We see it in China, which likewise aims to maintain the Communist Party’s monopoly on national political power while allowing markets to drive growth. No need to mention Hungary’s Orbán, Macedonia’s Gruevski, Poland’s Szydło and other democratically elected leaders who turn their backs on liberal democratic values once in power, in favor of religion, nationalism or ethnic identity.
Among the first victims are likely to be two bold efforts at freeing up trade and investment and promoting growth by removing barriers and encouraging globalization: the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership between the European Union and the US as well as the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), which was intended to do something similar in the Pacific Basin. Both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have said they are opposed to TPP. It is hard to picture TTIP proceeding while the EU is negotiating its divorce from the United Kingdom.
We have seen assaults on liberal democracy and its associated world order in the past. Arguably that is what World War II was about, at least in part. Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan and Mussolini’s Italy offered Fascist, autocratic responses to relatively liberal democracy in Britain, France, Germany and the United States. The Soviet Union, which fought with the Allies against Fascism, offered a Communist alternative that survived the war and engaged in the Cold War standoff with liberal democracies for almost 45 years thereafter, one that involved proxy wars, Communist and anti-Communist puppets, and the enormous risk of nuclear holocaust. The history of fights between liberal democracy and its antagonists is fraught with war, oppression, and prolonged authoritarianism.
It wasn’t that long ago, when the Berlin wall fell, that liberal democracy seemed overwhelmingly likely to win worldwide. The end of history didn’t last long. The two big challenges liberal democracy now faces are Islamist extremism and capitalist authoritarianism. These are both ideological and physical challenges. Putinism is an authoritarian style of governance that sends warplanes, naval ships and troops to harass and occupy its neighbors and adversaries. The same can be said of Xi Jinping’s China, which is making the South China Sea into its backyard and harassing its neighbors.
The Islamist extremist challenge comes above all from Al Qaeda and the Islamic State, which are competing with each other even as they destroy fragile states like Libya, Yemen and Syria. Iraq appears to be winning its fight, though it is likely to face a virulent insurgency even after it ends Islamic State control over parts of its territory. The outcome is unlikely to be liberal democratic. Many other states face that kind of insurgent Islamist threat: Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Egypt, Somalia, and Tunisia, to name but a few.
But the biggest threat to liberal democracy today comes from inside the liberal democracies themselves. Islamist terror has killed relatively few people, apart from 9/11. Popular overreaction to Islamist threats, immigration and globalization could bring to power people with little commitment to liberal democratic values in the United States, France, Sweden, the Netherlands, Denmark and elsewhere. They will seek to reestablish borders, slow or end immigration, impose draconian laws to root out terrorists, and restore trade barriers in the hope of regaining lost industries.
Another challenge, peculiar to the US, seems to be emerging: black insurgents with guns who think they are retaliating against police for abuse of black citizens. This is bound to elicit a law and order response the could even bring a real threat to liberal democracy in Washington: Donald Trump in the presidency. If the protests in Cleveland this week are not disciplined and peaceful, it could put real wind in his sails.
The menace to liberal democracy is real. If we want pluralism, human rights and the rule of law, we are going to have to take some risks. I find it an easy choice, but many of my compatriots seem inclined to lean in the other direction.
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America is already great
On Wednesday, June 29, the Atlantic Council hosted the first public presentation of Pew Research Center’s 2016 annual report on America’s global image, followed by a discussion on international views of America’s role in the world. The discussion was facilitated by Molly O’Toole, Senior Reporter at the Foreign Policy Magazine, and featured David Rennie, Washington Bureau Chief and Lexington Columnist at The Economist, and Richard Wike, Director of Global Attitudes Research at the Pew Research Center.
Wike presented the key findings, which aim to gauge America’s international image. Contrary to claims of increased anti-American sentiment, America’s image remains strong and largely favorable in the countries surveyed, which however exclude Latin America, Africa and the Middle East. More than 50% in every country surveyed (10 European, 4 Asia-Pacific countries, and Canada) expressed a favorable opinion of the US. The exception was Greece, where only 38% embrace this sentiment. Other recent Pew studies suggest the US enjoys a positive image around the globe, including 56% of Indians and 50% of Chinese, with young people much more likely to have a positive opinion, though Wike noted that “young people around the world are more positive towards the US, more positive towards China, more positive towards the UN — they are just more positive, more internationalist.”
In 15 out of 16 countries (Greece again being the exception), the majority expressed support for US-led military intervention against ISIS in Iraq and Syria. This support is remarkably high in most Western European countries, including France (84%), Sweden (81%), the UK (71%), and Germany (71%). This response is different from reactions to all previous US-led interventions in the Middle East. According to Rennie, the refugee crisis, coupled with the increase in the number and magnitude of terrorist attacks, have rendered ISIS the highest security threat in Europe. The fight against ISIS is not seen in Europe as a quarrel in a far away country, but rather as an issue that directly affects European citizens.
The Pew survey also indicates that while America was able to regain perceived primacy as the global economic power — which for the past few years most people attributed to China — perception of US respect for personal freedoms at home remains relatively weak. Only 53% of Western Europeans think the US respects the human rights of its inhabitants. This is lower than 2008, the final year of the Bush presidency. Edward Snowden’s revelations about the NSA’s surveillance programs, increased awareness of unauthorized interrogation techniques used in the post-9/11 era, as well as the controversies regarding police treatment of African-Americans and other minorities likely contributed to the decline. Rennie observed that America’s reputation for upholding individual liberty constitutes an important source of soft power and gives a degree of credibility to US interventions. Government officials should work on improving America’s international perception regarding respect for human rights and liberties.
The panelists all agreed that America’s global image is highly personified in the President: who is in the White House has a tremendous impact on how people around the world see the US. After the start of the Iraq War in 2003, President Bush suffered negative ratings in most parts of the world and Pew observed a significant rise in anti-Americanism in most regions. The image of the United States has improved immensely in most regions after Obama was elected as a President in 2008, a shift that was particularly pronounced in Western Europe.
O’Toole suggested that the 2016 Presidential elections will have a tremendous effect on how people globally view the US. Wike substantiated this claim with hard data. The newest Pew study finds a remarkably negative assessment of Trump, with 85% of Europeans lacking confidence in him, and a median of only 9% confident in his ability to handle international affairs. While not as enthusiastic as for Obama, most Europeans still look at Hillary Clinton favorably. A median of 59% express confidence in her. As Rennie observed,
the caricature of Bush is fairly close to what Trump tells his supporters he will be….Everything that Europe thought they disliked about George W. Bush, Donald Trump is currently telling his supporters is what he will deliver.
As O’Toole noted, both Pew surveys and other evidence invalidate the almost trite claim that today the US is neither respected by its allies nor feared by its adversaries. However, this might in fact change with the 2016 elections. If America’s global image really is personified in the President — as the panelists contended — then we need to envisage Donald Trump, with his 9% favorability rate in Western Europe, personifying America. Recognizing the complexity of the current state of international affairs, and the serious challenges that plague the world, more fear everywhere is nearly guaranteed, while allies’ respect practically inconceivable.
For now, however, America’s global image remains strong and largely favorable.
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Peace Picks June 27-30
- Restoring NATO’s Power And Purpose| Monday, June 27th | 1:30 | Atlantic Council | 1030 15th St NW, Washington, DC 20005, USA| Register HERE | After Britain’s historic vote to leave the European Union, the NATO Alliance has become more important than ever as a platform for European cooperation and security. What the Alliance achieves at its upcoming Warsaw Summit will be integral in defining NATO’s role in the new Euro-Atlantic security environment and strengthening international peace and stability in a turbulent world. Framing a critical conversation about the Alliance’s strategic priorities, this event will present the final conclusions of an Atlantic Council-chartered study on the future of NATO co-chaired by Ambassador R. Nicholas Burns and General James L. Jones. The study is premised on the belief that the Alliance is facing its greatest set of internal and external challenges since the Cold War. The report calls for renewed leadership by the United States and key European allies to restore NATO’s power and purpose in the face of an entirely different security landscape. Featuring a panel discussion with Nicholas Burns, Roy and Barbara Goodman Family Professor of the Practice of Diplomacy and International Relations at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and Former US Ambassador to NATO; and General James L. Jones, Chairman and Board Director, Brent Scowcroft Center on International Security at the Atlantic Council; the event will convene key transatlantic officials and leaders to discuss what the US, UK, and crucial European Allies must do to bolster NATO’s strength and solidarity in a post-Brexit Europe.
- Challenges And Opportunities For The U.S. Government To Improve The Protection Of Civilians In Armed Conflict| Monday, June 27th | 3:30-5:00 | Stimson Center | 8th floor, 1211 Connecticut Ave NW, Washington, DC 20036 | Register HERE | To mark the Washington, D.C. launch of Protection of Civilians, a comprehensive volume published by Oxford University Press, the Stimson Center will host a discussion examining how the U.S. government can advance the protection of civilians agenda. Panelists from inside and outside the U.S. government will explore how the government has engaged through bilateral diplomatic channels and multilateral institutions to prevent and respond to violence against civilians in conflict zones. The panel discussion will be followed by a reception with drinks and hors d’oeuvres. This event will be held under the Chatham House Rule. Speakers include: Victoria K. Holt, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State; Bruno Stagno Ugarte, Deputy Executive Director at Human Rights Watch, Lise Grande, Deputy Representative of the Secretary-General to the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq, Tamara Guttman, Director General, Stabilization and Reconstruction Task Force (START).
- Is China’s Door Closing? | Tuesday, June 28th | 2:30-4:00 | Woodrow Wilson Center | 1300 Pennsylvania Ave., NW, Washington, D.C. 20004 | Register HERE | Ever since Deng Xiaoping launched his reforms in 1978, “openness” (对外开放) has been a central tenet of Chinese policy. While the actual degree of China’s openness has varied from time to time and sector to sector over the past 38 years, the trend toward greater liberalization of society, institutions, and the economy has been clear. Until recently. The passage of China’s foreign NGO law raises doubts about Xi Jinping’s commitment to further opening and reform. The law, which places foreign NGO’s under the supervision of the Ministry of Public Security, is the latest in a series of regulations meant to control “hostile foreign forces.” Surveys indicate that foreign companies are concerned about tightening business regulations in China and wonder whether they are as welcome as they were in recent decades. International journalists and publishers, too, are finding it difficult to obtain visas and to reach Chinese audiences. Is China’s door closing to foreigners? Why are conditions changing for international actors in China? How should the United States respond? Please join us for a discussion of the future of American NGO’s, corporations, and media in Xi’s China. Speakers: Erin Ennis, Senior Vice President, US-China Business Council Isaac Stone Fish, Asia Editor, Foreign Policy Shawn Shieh, Deputy Director, China Labour Bulletin.
- Changing Tides: The Road To Reconciliation And The Future Of Turkish – Israeli Relations | Tuesday, June 28th | 4:00-6:00 | Turkish Heritage Organization | Carnegie Endowment Conference Center | 1779 Massachusetts Avenue NW | In light of these recent developments and the possibility that a deal between Turkey and Israel is imminent, the Turkish Heritage Organization is hosting a roundtable discussion on Tuesday, June 28th from 4-6pm at the Carnegie Endowment Conference Center to explore and discuss the prospects for reconciliation between Turkey and Israel, the final stages of a deal and what the future might look like for both countries. Spakers include: Dr. Brenda Shaffer, Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council; Dan Arbell, Nonresident senior fellow in the Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings and Former Deputy Chief of Mission, Embassy of Israel in Washington, DC; and Moran Stern, Georgetown University, Center for Jewish Civilization. The moderator will be Dr. Mark Meirowitz, Assistant Professor at SUNY Maritime College.
- Media Activism Amid Civil War: The Role of Syrian Women Journalists | Wednesday, June 29th | 12:30-1:45 | Middle East Institute | 1761 N Street NW Washington, DC 20036 | Register HERE | Syrian citizen-journalists, bloggers, and media activists have played a critical role covering one of the world’s most dangerous conflicts. They do so in the face of significant challenges – from fear for their safety, to overcoming international indifference to the story of an unending conflict. Women journalists face even greater challenges and yet many continue to work in the field. Non-profit initiatives like the Syrian Female Journalists’ Network are providing training and support while promoting a better understanding of the important role of women in the Syrian uprising. The Middle East Institute (MEI) is pleased to host the founders of the Syrian Female Journalists Network, Rula Asad and Milia Eidmouni, and radio journalist Caroline Ayoub for a discussion of their work in promoting the roles of Syrian women in journalism and civil society. Kate Seelye will moderate the discussion with the activists, who are visiting Washington as part of an Asfari Foundation-backed program to highlight the ongoing role of Syrian civil society.
- Kurdistan Rising? Considerations For Kurds, Their Neighbors, And The Region | Wednesday, June 29th | 3:00-4:30 | American Enterprise Institute |1150 Seventeenth Street, NW Washington, DC 20036| Register HERE | Two decades ago, many US officials would have been hard-pressed to place Kurdistan on a map, let alone consider the Kurds as allies. Today, Kurds loom large on the Middle Eastern stage, highlighting their renewed push for independence amid the chaos in Iraq. In his new monograph, “Kurdistan Rising? Considerations for Kurds, Their Neighbors, and the Region,” AEI’s Michael Rubin examines the effects of Kurdish independence and unresolved questions that would follow an independent Kurdistan, including citizenship, political structures, defense, economic systems, and renegotiation of treaties to include the Kurds. Lukman Faily, Iraqi ambassador to the United States; James F. Jeffrey, former US ambassador to Iraq and Turkey; and Michael Rubin, resident scholar at AEI, will speak.
- Congo Crisis: Getting to Good Elections in a Bad Neighborhood | Wednesday, June 29th | 4:00pm | Institute of World Politics | 1521 16th Street NW Washington, DC | Register HERE | Charles Snyder, Former Acting Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Professor of African Affairs, IWP, will speak about prospects for Congo.
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The trouble still brewing
Yesterday’s discussion at SAIS of Learning to Live with Cheaper Oil : Policy Adjustment in MENA and CCA Oil-Exporting Countries raised serious issues. Oil prices are now expected to remain “lower longer,” as IMF deputy managing director Min Zhu put it. While contributing to global growth, the price decline is posing serious economic and governance challenges to the rentier states of the region and their relatively poor dependent cousins.
The 2014 oil price decline resulted from three main factors: increased production of tight oil and gas, slackening demand (especially due to economic slowdown in China and Russia) and increased efficiency. While prices have risen sharply from their lows early this year, the IMF expects them to remain well below their previous peak, with only gradual increases over the next five years or so to around $75 per barrel.
Some efficiency gains have already been erased, as oil prices have risen from their lows at the sharpest rate ever, even if they are still far off their peak. The shale revolution is not going away, even if many less productive wells have been shut. But larger ones are still producing. Much of the shut-in capacity will return as prices rise again.
This puts the oil producers in a difficult and long-lasting bind. The immediate impact was on their foreign exchange rate reserves, which are down dramatically. Growth is slowing. Budgets are being cut. The oil producers cannot continue to subsidize food and energy prices as well as avoid taxing their populations.
Sharply cutting their budgets however will not be a sufficient policy response, especially as it will have growth-reducing effects like limiting bank credit. The oil producers will need to undertake structural reforms to generate private sector growth that has heretofore been lacking. This is basically a good thing. Low oil prices will force producers to do what they’ve known for a long time they should have been doing, including cutting government jobs, reorienting it towards revenue collection rather than distribution and privatizing bloated state-owned enterprises.
But it is still difficult to picture how the oil producers will generate sufficient jobs to meet the needs of their bulging youth populations. If they somehow manage it, the social contract that has enabled the often non-democratic regimes to claim legitimacy will need revision, with citizens receiving less and asked to provide much more. Governing institutions will be under enormous strain as they try t o learn to collect taxes even as they reduce public services. Legitimacy will be in question. This is a recipe for trouble.
The fiscal squeeze will affect not only the oil producers themselves but also the states of the region to which they provide support, either in the form of aid or remittances. The eventual political consequences could be dramatic not only for the Gulf but also for Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Pakistan and others. We have not seen the end of consequences “longer lower” will generate.
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Trump’s defeat
With Hillary Clinton clinching the Democratic nomination, it is time to consider the far more likely scenario: that she will win the November election, become the first Madame President, and return to the White House in January. What are the implications for America and its foreign policy?
Trump’s defeat, the third in a row for Republicans, will leave the party weakened and possibly divided. It could well lose control of the Senate if not the House. Blame for this will be heaped on those who backed Trump, a blatant racist, misogynist and xenophobe. Balancing acts like this one will look ridiculous in the aftermath of an electoral defeat:
Those who did not support Trump will try to resurrect the direction the party thought it had chosen after the 2012 election: towards becoming more inclusive rather than less. That will be a hard sell once more than 70% of Hispanics (and 90% of African Americans), similar percentages of gas and lesbians, and a majority of women have chosen Clinton. Some of the defeated will try to launch a new party or join the Libertarians. Diehard Trumpies will head off into the white supremacist/neo-Nazi corner of American politics.
The Democrats will seek to exploit their moment of triumph. I imagine top of their priorities will be “comprehensive” immigration reform, including a pathway to citizenship for undocumented people. This would solidify their Hispanic support. I doubt Clinton will reverse her position on the Transpacific Trade Partnership (TTP), but she might well quietly encourage Barack Obama to get it done in the lame duck Congress, before she is sworn in, with some improvements. I hope she will back the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), which raises fewer hackles that TTP.
Clinton will want to reassure America’s allies in Europe, Asia and the Middle East. She will look for ways to sound and act tougher on the Islamic State, Al Qaeda, Russia, Iran and China, which have each taken advantage of Obama’s retrenchment from the over-extension of the Bush 43 presidency to press the envelope on what Washington will tolerate. She will maintain the nuclear deal with Iran and likely try to follow a similar model with North Korea. She opt for a no-fly zone in northern or southern Syria, hoping to stop at that.
Clinton will try to sustain Washington’s tightened relationship with India, Vietnam and other Asian powers as well as ongoing moves towards democracy and free market economies in Africa and Latin America. She’ll try to avoid sinking more men and money into Afghanistan and will try to get (and keep) Pakistan turned around in a more helpful direction. Israel/Palestine will be low on her priorities–why tred on turf where others have repeatedly failed?–unless something breaks in the positive or negative direction.
Domestic issues will take priority, including fixes for Obamacare, increased infrastructure and education funding, reductions in student loan debt, criminal justice reform, corporate tax reform and appointment of at least one Supreme Court justice (unless Merrick Garland is confirmed in the lame duck session) and many other Federal judges at lower levels. She will support modestly increased defense funding and tax cuts for the middle class, funded by increases on higher incomes. She will tack slightly to the left to accommodate Bernie Sanders’ supporters, but not so far as to lose independents.
In other words, Hillary Clinton is likely to serve Barack Obama’s third term, correcting the relatively few mistakes she thinks he has made, slowing retrenchment and adapting his pragmatic non-doctrine foreign policy to the particular circumstances and events as they occur. It will take some time for the Republicans, or whatever succeeds them as the second major party, to figure out whether they are protectionist or free traders, anti-immigrant or not, interventionist or not.
Trump’s defeat will be momentous for the Republican party, but it will leave the country on more or less the same trajectory it has followed for the past 7.5 years. If she can keep it pointed in that direction for four more, we should be thankful.
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Good critique, but where’s the beef?
Hillary Clinton went after Donald Trump on national security issues yesterday, landing lots of body blows and a head shot or two as well. She said he was unqualified to be president, both substantively and temperamentally. Her fans are applauding loudly.
It is easy enough to slam a guy who likes (and gets endorsements from) President Putin and Chairman Kim Jong Un. He also advocates withdrawal from NATO, US government default on its debts, nuclear weapons for Japan and South Korea, a blockade on Muslims from entering the US, and Mexican payment for a wall on the border. Little of what he says makes sense. Much of it is dangerous. But what would Hillary Clinton do (or not) about the Islamic State (ISIS), the civil wars in Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Libya, North Korea’s nuclear weapons and China’s challenges to freedom of navigation in the South China Sea?
She didn’t outline her own national security perspective. Her speech suggested little more than continuity with President Obama’s efforts:
We need to take out their strongholds in Iraq and Syria by intensifying the air campaign and stepping up our support for Arab and Kurdish forces on the ground. We need to keep pursuing diplomacy to end Syria’s civil war and close Iraq’s sectarian divide, because those conflicts are keeping ISIS alive. We need to lash up with our allies, and ensure our intelligence services are working hand-in-hand to dismantle the global network that supplies money, arms, propaganda and fighters to the terrorists. We need to win the battle in cyberspace.
I am no isolationist, but the fact is we’ve got more problems than our limited resources allow us to resolve. That’s an important part of the reason Barack Obama tried to get us out of Iraq and Afghanistan and refused to get involved in post-Qaddafi Libya. But withdrawal and abstention left vacuums that ISIS and the Taliban have filled. How would President Clinton bring our capabilities and resources into balance with the requirements? Which problems would she put at the top of the list, and which at the bottom?
President Obama succeeded in getting a decent nuclear deal with Iran, but Tehran continues its regional destabilization efforts in Yemen and Syria. North Korea continues to test nuclear weapons and, without success, ballistic missiles while China continues to build artificial islands. What would President Clinton do to counter them?
It is widely believed that Clinton is more hawkish than Obama, because she recommended the Libya intervention and voted for the Iraq war. But it is one thing to advise the president, or vote in the Senate. It is another to make your own decisions once you hold the levers of power. The admittedly stirring speech–I dislike Donald Trump’s fakery as much as the next liberal internationalist–did little to clarify Clinton’s own positions on the issues.
Of course there is time in what will be an excruciatingly long campaign. Campaigning is also different from advising and governing. Questioning your opponent’s basic qualifications seems a good enough place to start. But it is a cerebral exercise, not an emotional one. It depends on demonstrating incoherence.
That is not an adequate response to Trump. His talent is that he has tapped into a reservoir of emotions, including misogyny, Islamophobia, xenophobia and racism, that were out there and waiting to be exploited. Clinton tried but was less successful at tapping into a strikingly different reservoir: one that treasures pride in the liberal world order, confidence in American talents and optimism about the country’s political and economic future. Here’s hoping she finds the right way!
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