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MEMO TO PRESIDENT OBAMA: How to Win On Foreign Policy in 2012

Wednesday, November 23rd, 2011
Jim Arkedis


Jim Arkedis is the director of PPI's National Security Project.

by Jim Arkedis

Obama as Commander in Chief

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

MEMO TO PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: How to Win On Foreign Policy in 2012

To: President Barack Obama
From: Jim Arkedis, Director of the Progressive Policy Institute’s National Security Project
RE: How to Win on Foreign Policy in 2012

Mr. President:

I hope and trust that you had better things to do than watch the GOP’s last two debates on foreign policy. I took care of that for you, and reread the transcripts just because I am a masochist.

It’s clear the Republican field is offering nothing new on foreign policy this election cycle, and that creates a real political opening. This memo serves as a guideline for how you can use the issue to your advantage on the campaign trail in 2012. In a nutshell, the public must see you as a stronger leader: Your numbers are hurting there right now, and you should trumpet your national security record to help them rebound. The trick is that if voters view you as a strong leader generally speaking, it will create a spill-over effect, bolstering their confidence in your leadership on domestic issues (read: the economy).

No matter who ends up as the Republican nominee for president, they’re not going to beat you on foreign policy substance. Most of the GOP candidates offer vague criticism that you’ve handled Iran badly, but can do no better than propose “crippling sanctions” as a solution, which are somehow better than the comprehensive ones you’ve enacted.

On areas where they actually differ with you, there still isn’t that much daylight: Michelle Bachmann tried to ding you for sending thirty, rather than forty, thousand troops to Afghanistan, and Rick Perry thinks that any withdrawal timeline from that country is a bad idea (even though Mitt Romney, in the second debate, basically agrees with your timeline for withdrawal). But you know that those are hardly winning arguments with the American public, 53 percent of whom would prefer to wash our collective hands of the whole mess. The GOP field (minus perennial laggard Rick Santorum) might get closer to broad (but confused) public sentiment to slash foreign aid, but on policy alone, this is probably their only opportunity to score political points.

The main conservative line of attack is stale, but potentially effective: They’re going to out-muscle you. I was absolutely shocked that no one critiqued you on “leading from behind” in the debate, but that phrase is sure to appear–on repeat–in ads before next November. But heck, you’ve even got Jon Huntsman — the guy you appointed to be our emissary to China — saying you “can’t lead”! It could erode the public’s confidence in your leadership abilities.

For now, the GOP seemed mostly content to insinuate this alleged weakness: Mitt Romney claimed that your re-election guarantees Iran will get a nuclear bomb; both he and Newt refuse to negotiate with terrorists (you do, in case you weren’t sure); and Herman Cain doesn’t think waterboarding is torture, which is why he’d use it. Most bizarre was Bachmann’s assertion in the first debate that America has lost the War On Terrorism under your watch. I wonder how Usama Bin Laden feels about that.

You’re no slouch when it comes to politicking, and you know that this election will be won and lost on each candidate’s ability to make a case for economic growth. It’s understandable that you might want to minimize foreign policy on the stump this year.

That’s a mistake, because your ability to make an economic case should be buoyed by your solid record on foreign and security policy. This might not be intuitive, so hear me out:

You killed Bin Laden and other al Qaeda leaders, helped oust Mohamar Qaddafi, have ended the Iraq war, and protected the country from a massive domestic attack. Voters have noticed: a November Gallup poll has your general foreign policy approval rating up five percent over disapproval, an astounding 63 percent support you on terrorism, and the numbers are good on handling Iraq and even Afghanistan.

More importantly, if you sell your foreign policy achievements in the right way, it will paint you as a strong leader. That’s critical: Americans want their president to project an image of strength, and you’re hurting there right now. Between May (when Usama Bin Laden was killed) and August, the percentage of Americans who viewed you as a strong leader slipped from 55 to 44 percent. Here’s the kicker: If you’re seen as a credible, effective Commander-in-Chief, voters are more likely to believe that your leadership can pull them out of the economic slump.

I realize that you’re not the type of guy who wants to pound the podium and out-flex your opponent. That’s okay. However, you still have to keep in mind that foreign policy is an emotional issue for voters, and that you have to connect with their gut subconscious before you can lead them elsewhere. Below, I offer four ways you can use foreign policy to increase your leadership credentials in 2012.

1. Explain your vision and your values. Having a good track record isn’t worth a damn if you don’t connect with voters. They’ve got to feel you on these issues. Even assuming the GOP nominee is the shape-shifting Mitt Romney, he’ll sell a consistent, militaristic vision of American exceptionalism that might resonate with America’s gut.

Don’t cede that ground, just tell your own version. You might not make a major foreign policy campaign address, but your stump speech absolutely must include your vision of America’s leading place in the world in the 21st century. It doesn’t have to be “rah-rah”. It does have to be convey some emotion using two frames: “strong and smart.”

Explain that you know that the threats facing America have changed since the end of the Cold War, and we must rise to meet the challenge. That requires strong American leadership, complemented by strong alliances and backed the world’s strongest military.

But it also requires a laser-focus on the long term: American strength in the 21st century means being smart, too. Safety at home is enhanced by spreading American values abroad, and that requires more robust diplomacy to expand economic and political opportunity for all. That’s a great way to connect on the economy, too: Economic strength is what drives American power, and that means we need to out-innovate, out-produce, and out-think our challenges.

2. Tell a us a story (often). Specifically, tell us the story of how you decided to send SEAL Team Six to kill Bin Laden. Voters remember stories, not policies. So give them the best you got, because it will reinforce your image as a substantive Commander-in-Chief. You could recount the version you gave CBS’ 60 Minutes in May. It doesn’t have to be overly dramatic: just calmly recount the facts and remember that details are good. The story sells itself, and shows America that you made a bold, gutsy, strong decision. Most importantly, the country, not your administration, was successful.

3. Use military veterans as surrogates: Your campaign should have the most robust veterans surrogate network in the history of American politics. In an age when Congressional approval languishes in the single digits (and yours are in the 40s), guess who the public believes? The military. A September 2011 poll reinforces a standing trend: 92 percent of Americans are confident in the military and hence, its veterans.

Remember the Swiftboat Veterans who sunk John Kerry’s campaign? They tipped the balance because they were credible messengers. This year, you’ve got to get out ahead of the game. A few days ago, I received a campaign-sponsored email from Rob Diamond, who runs “Veterans and Military Families for Obama” (full disclosure: Rob is a friend). You need to give him every resource he asks for because he needs to pack cable news, campaign rallies, and small-town newspapers in military-heavy swing-states like Virginia, North Carolina, Ohio, and Colorado with veterans supporting you as the Commander-in-Chief they were proud to serve.

4. Attack Republicans as reckless. You have to make the public’s decision on national security a binary choice. If you’re to be a strong leader and a tough, competent Commander-in-Chief, you need to define (presumptively) Mitt Romney is reckless and out-of-touch. A poll from back in 2008 found this to be an effective attack against Republicans on foreign policy, and I sense that it would continue to work in 2012.

Why? Well, Romney’s rhetoric isn’t that different from George W. Bush’s. In an October speech at the Citadel, Romney promised to reverse proposed defense cuts, resurrect the neocon missile-defense shield, and build six more navy ships per year, even though America’s wars are coming to a close and the country faces a massive debt issue. Does that sound smart, efficient and strong in the 21st century, or does it echo the reckless George Bush, a playground bully who fights but doesn’t think and remains stuck in the Cold War?

Mr. President, it’s going to be a tough election. But used correctly, you can turn a solid record on matters of foreign policy and national security into a real asset this year, and just maybe tip the balance in a few key states. And how’s this for a bonus? The GOP isn’t expecting that you’d dare try.

If you’ve read this far, you might follow me on Twitter @JimArkedis

Photo credit here.

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Defense & Deficits: How to Trim the Pentagon’s Budget-Carefully

Friday, October 14th, 2011
Jim Arkedis


Jim Arkedis is the director of PPI's National Security Project.

by Jim Arkedis

Getting America’s exploding deficits and debt under control isn’t just an economic and political imperative, it’s also vital for U.S. national security. America’s military strength and leading role in international affairs rest on the foundation of a dynamic, growing economy. To the extent that runaway public debt undermines prospects for growth and compromises America’s economic sovereignty, it also endangers American security.

Let’s be clear at the outset: defense spending is not driving the fiscal crisis. True, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have contributed to the debt, but that’s because President Bush, in a break with wartime precedent, declined to raise taxes to pay for them. The good news is that as the overseas deployments wind down, future military spending is set to naturally shrink.

The structural causes of America’s escalating national debt are the unsustainable cost growth of federal entitlements—Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid—and historically low tax revenues (which reflect both subpar economic growth and the Bush tax cuts). But it has become apparent that as America’s political leaders shirk tackling tax and entitlement reform, the burden of debt reduction threatens to fall disproportionately on domestic discretionary spending, including defense.

The first shoe has already dropped. On August 2, President Obama and Congressional Republicans struck a deal that would cut spending by $2.1 trillion over ten years in exchange for raising the debt ceiling. Among other cuts, the compromise takes an initial bite of $350 billion from defense spending. The deal also created a Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction or “supercommittee” to come up with an additional $1.2 to $1.5 trillion in federal savings by the end of the year.

If the committee fails, it will trigger a “sequester” that automatically cuts domestic and defense spending across the board. That could mean an additional $500 billion—if not more—cut from the military.

All told, defense spending could be reduced from $850 billion to $1 trillion over the next decade. Cuts of this magnitude are simply too large. They would jeopardize America’s ability to successfully conclude the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, conduct global counterterrorism operations, and hedge against the rise of new threats—both state and non-state actors—to U.S. security and international order. Absent corresponding reductions in America’s global commitments, such large cuts portend exactly what Walter Lippman warned against—foreign policy “insolvency,” in the sense that America’s commitments far exceed its means.

Nor would deep cuts in national defense solve the country’s fiscal problems. America’s national debt now exceeds $14 trillion and is growing rapidly. Since 2004, it has zoomed from 40 percent to about 70 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), and is on course to exceed 100 percent in the coming decade. There is wide agreement among fiscal experts that policymakers need to cut at least $4 trillion over ten years just to stabilize the debt at 60 percent of GDP. So even if the new “supercommittee” succeeds in cutting $2.1 trillion, there’s still a long way to go.

Yet the Pentagon should not escape scrutiny, either. The fiscal task before the country is monumental, and President Obama has rightly called for “shared sacrifice” in crafting a bipartisan solution. This means everything—entitlements, tax revenues, domestic spending and defense—must be on the table.

The military must contribute its fair share to deficit reduction, but it must not be made to pay for America’s leaders’ inability to grapple with the country’s fundamental fiscal challenges. Beyond marginal adjustments, the basic level of defense spending should be set by America’s strategic needs, not by a game of fiscal chicken.

Moreover, how defense spending is cut matters almost as much as the cut’s size. Across-the-board caps or freezes—as proposed by some leading bipartisan groups—are convenient for political budget cutters, but they are a bad way to wring savings out of national defense. The fact is that not all Pentagon programs are created equally: To en- sure that reductions in the military’s budget don’t disrupt current missions or impair the U.S. mili- tary’s ability to sustain qualitative technological superiority over the long term, policy makers need to make strategic trade-offs among competing security priorities.

That’s because while keeping Americans safe is the federal government’s first responsibility, America’s military power also underpins its diplomacy and anchors strategic alliances in Europe, the Middle East and Asia. The military cements America’s position of world leadership, which rests on the United States’ will and capacity to defend liberal democratic values and strengthen global institutions for collective problem solving. I see no evidence that the American people are clamoring for a retreat from these responsibilities.

For all these reasons, heedless cuts in military spending have no place in a progressive strategy for restoring fiscal discipline. In this Policy Brief, I offer pragmatic answers to these questions:
The post-Cold War benchmark of three percent of GDP constitutes a floor beneath which defense spending should not be allowed to sink. This decade, a range of 3.0–3.5 of GDP is more realistic. This suggests that the military’s budget should be cut by no more than $600–650 billion—or about 10 percent—by 2021.

How much should the Pentagon contribute to defense spending reductions?
And how do policymakers realize these savings?

I answer those questions by examining defense spending in an historic and current budget context, break down Pentagon spending by category, distinguish between one-off war spending and on-going military missions, and contrast spending proposals from the political left, right and center. I conclude with a series of strategic guidelines for how much and where to trim the defense budget.

Based on this analysis, I believe military spending can safely be reduced over the next decade towards the “post-Cold War benchmark” achieved in the late 1990s: After a series of exhaustive strategic re- views, military spending slowly declined through- out the decade and eventually settled at around three percent of GDP by 1998. During peacetime and absent a major nation-state military competi- tor, this range was deemed sufficient to handle two regional conflicts while maintaining the U.S. military’s high-tech edge and global reach.

Of course, this formula cannot be applied mechanistically because the United States is not at peace and faces a different slate of threats than in the 1990s. Therefore, budgeteers must build in some leeway above three percent of GDP to accommo- date the following realities: America must con- clude the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; maintain a vigorous, global counterterrorism campaign; assure its qualitative military superiority over po- tential rivals, such as China; continue to invest robustly in advanced technology; and be prepared for unanticipated contingencies.

That’s why the post-Cold War benchmark of three percent of GDP constitutes a floor beneath which defense spending should not be allowed to sink. This decade, a range of 3.0–3.5 of GDP is more realistic. This suggests that the military’s budget should be cut by no more than $600–650 billion— or about 10 percent—by 2021.

In achieving these savings, policymakers should be guided by five rules:
1. Don’t let fiscal politics trump U.S. strategy.
2. Cut over time.
3. Focus on personnel costs.
4. Avoid radical surgery to military procurement and research & development.
5. Set a floor beneath defense cuts.

Read the entire memo.

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U.S. Outs Pakistan

Friday, September 23rd, 2011
Will Marshall


Will Marshall is the president of the Progressive Policy Institute.

by Will Marshall

Adm. Mike MullenTop U.S. officials this week accused Pakistan of abetting a terrorist group responsible for attacks on U.S. forces in Afghanistan. The bombshell here isn’t Pakistani duplicity—that’s old news—but the Obama administration’s decision to go public. It means Washington finally has run out of patience with our supposed “ally.”

The U.S. complaint centers on the Haqqani network, an Afghan terrorist group holed up in Pakistan’s North Waziristan region. Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Congress that the network is “a veritable arm of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency.” He said the ISI helped Haqqani operatives carry out a truck bomb attack that wounded more than 70 U.S. and NATO troops on Sept. 11, as well as a suicide assault on the U.S. Embassy in Kabul.

The ISI’s ties to Haqqani network date back to the anti-Soviet jihad and subsequent Taliban takeover of Afghanistan. Apparently, the ISI sees no reason to sever those ties just because the Haqqanis are now killing U.S. and NATO forces instead of Russians. As Mullen explained, the ISI sees the network as a valuable “proxy” that can give Pakistan leverage in Afghanistan, especially after U.S. forces have gone home. There’s another somewhat more sinister explanation: many in the ISI and army hierarchy share an ideological affinity with Islamic terror groups that target both Afghanistan and India.

So is Pakistan really an enemy masquerading as a friend? The situation is complicated because Pakistan has cooperated with the United States in targeting al Qaeda and the Taliban, even as its army rebuffs our pleas to expel the Haqqanis from North Waziristan.

The blunt testimony by Mullen and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta signals the end of several years of “quiet diplomacy” aimed at getting Pakistan to make a clean break with jihadi terrorism. Outing the ISI may put more pressure on a weak civilian government. However, the Pakistani government is not only looking over its shoulder at the powerful security branches, but also at a public strongly opposed to U.S. infringements of Pakistani sovereignty.

On the other hand, Americans are entitled to ask what we have to show for the $20 billion in U.S. aid sent to Pakistan over the last decade. Last year, Congress approved $1.7 billion for economic aid for Pakistan, and $2.7 billion in security aid. At a minimum, we ought to stop trying to bribe a government that is playing us for fools.

With two wars on its hands, maybe the United States can’t afford a total rupture with Pakistan. But we can’t achieve any kind of lasting success in Afghanistan as long as Pakistan provides a safe refuge to the Haqqanis and other insurgents. That’s a genuine dilemma, but at least U.S. leaders have begun to grapple with it honestly.

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Behind Abbas’s UN Gambit

Tuesday, September 20th, 2011
Will Marshall


Will Marshall is the president of the Progressive Policy Institute.

by Will Marshall

President of Palestinian National Authority Addresses General AssemblyPalestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas will ask the United Nations tomorrow to welcome Palestine as its 194th member and newest state. As Abbas well knows, that’s not going to happen. So why are Palestinians devoting their diplomatic energies to scoring purely symbolic points at Turtle Bay?

In essence, Palestinians are engaging in a kind of forum shopping. Historically, the U.N. has been sympathetic to their plight, and notoriously hostile to Israel. Abbas comes to New York seeking statehood on terms more favorable than the Palestinians have been able to get from nearly two decades of peace processing with Israel. It’s part of an all-too-familiar pattern in which Palestinian leaders expect the international community to spare them from making the unpopular concessions that peace with Israel demands.

Abbas claims his hand has been forced by Israeli intransigence. There’s something to that: The right-listing government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been obdurate and prickly in its dealings with everyone, from the PA to Washington. It has failed to offer imaginative proposals for rekindling stalled peace talks, to confront a settler movement that threatens to hijack Israel’s domestic politics, and to counter effectively a spreading campaign to isolate and  delegitimate the Jewish state.

Nonetheless, it was Abbas, not Netanyahu, who walked away from bilateral talks last year in a dispute over Israeli settlements. Now Abbas is pulling an end run around the peace process—and putting Washington on the spot—by asking the Security Council to grant Palestine full U.N. membership. The Obama administration has vowed to veto any such resolution, even though it supports a Palestinian state in principle. The White House rightly insists that the Palestinians can earn statehood only by making peace with Israel.

Abbas won’t return home to Ramallah with the grand prize of statehood. So why raise expectations that he knows will be dashed?

Here we wade into the multilayered subtleties of Middle East politics. One obvious motive is to dramatize Israel’s growing isolation in the region, as Turkey turns on its erstwhile ally and anti-Israel sentiment flares next door in post-Mubarak Egypt. Another is to split Europe and the United States and stoke anger at America in the Arab street, thereby racheting up pressure on Washington to extract concessions from Israel.

Many observers believe that Abbas is desperate to head off Arab spring-style demonstrations against the PA, which has been losing popularity in recent years to Hamas. If this reading is correct, then Abbas’s U.N. gambit has more to do with perpetuating the PA’s lease on power in the West Bank than winning recognition of a Palestinian state.

Finally, even if statehood is out of reach the Palestinians could win a booby prize if the U.N. General Assembly upgrades their status to that of a “non-member state.” This would allow Palestine to join various international bodies and possibly to press claims against Israel in the International Criminal Court.

Whatever his motives, Abbas’s U.N. caper carries immense risks. The PA has called for massive, non-violent demonstrations in the West Bank today to drum up support for the statehood bid. If these get out of hand, and provoke a violent confrontation with Israel, it will break a fragile peace and undo progress toward handing over security responsibilities in the West Bank to Palestinian forces.

Unilateral assertions of “sovereignty” could also prove costly for the Palestinians in other ways. Israel, for example, could withhold custom duties it collects that help to pay PA salaries. Both Houses of Congress likewise have passed resolutions threatening to cut off U.S. aid—$600 million a year—to the PA.

Such punitive measures, however, raise the specter that many observers fear most—the PA’s collapse. If as seems likely Abbas’s gambit fails to change conditions on the ground, it could engender massive disillusionment with the PA and Fatah. The winner would not be Israel but Hamas, which has no interest in a Palestinian state that does not include the whole of what is now the state of Israel. Barring another intifida and outbreak of terrorism, Israel and Washington ought to keep cool and keep funding the PA.

The United States nonetheless should stand firm against premature demands for Palestinian statehood. If it were created today, the new entity would lack two prerequisites for international recognition as an independent state: political unity and an unambiguous commitment to peaceful cooexistence with Israel.

In fact, it is the PA-Hamas split, not Israel, that poses the greatest obstacle to Palestinian aspirations to dignity, justice and independence. The blunt truth is, that until the Palestinians resolve their internal conflict—in favor of a negotiated peace and a two-state solution—they don’t deserve to have one of their own.

Photo credit: United Nations Photo

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

Thursday, September 15th, 2011
Jordan Tama


Jordan Tama is an assistant professor at American University’s School of International Service and a fellow at the Truman National Security Project.

by Jordan Tama

In June 2011, the House Appropriations Committee unanimously approved an amendment introduced by U.S. Representative Frank Wolf (R-Va.) that would provide $1 million for the establishment of an independent Afghanistan-Pakistan Study Group. The blue-ribbon panel’s charge would be to assess U.S. policy in Afghanistan and Pakistan and offer recommendations within 120 days.

Could an Afghanistan-Pakistan Commission actually accomplish anything? Although the popular perception is that commission reports achieve little beyond giving publicity to the graybeards that serve on them, my research on over 50 blue-ribbon panels shows that under the right circumstances they can catalyze important policy changes.

At first blush, an Afghanistan-Pakistan Study Group might seem pointless, since President Obama has already decided to implement a gradual withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan. But beyond the withdrawal of our surge forces much of our policy remains uncertain or undecided.

In particular, it remains unclear how large of a troop presence we will maintain in Afghanistan beyond 2012, how we will seek a negotiated settlement in Afghanistan and deal with the Taliban if they gain ground as we pull out, and, as relations with Pakistan remain tumultuous in the wake of the Bin Laden assassination, how the U.S. will craft a comprehensive, stable policy toward Islamabad that best serves national interests over the long term.

Read the entire brief.

 

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Defense’s Careful Contribution to Deficit Reduction

Thursday, August 25th, 2011
The Progressive Policy Institute




by The Progressive Policy Institute

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

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

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

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

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

Our answers are that defense can contribute, but carefully.

Continue reading in the Detroit News by clicking here.

Photo credit: Brave Heart.

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Strategic diplomacy needed on Israel

Wednesday, August 24th, 2011
Josh Block


Josh Block is a senior fellow at the Progressive Policy Institute, a partner in Davis-Block LLC (a strategic consulting and public affairs company he co-founded with Lanny Davis), and a fellow at the Truman National Security Project. He was previously the spokesman for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and for the State Department's U.S. Agency for International Development during the Clinton Administration.

by Josh Block

PPI Senior Fellow Josh Block writes in Politico:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Read the rest at Politico here.

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Score One for NATO

Tuesday, August 23rd, 2011
Will Marshall


Will Marshall is the president of the Progressive Policy Institute.

by Will Marshall

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Photo credit: Defence Images

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Gas vs. Gasoline

Friday, July 22nd, 2011
Bill Budinger


Bill Budinger is former chair and CEO of Rodel, Inc. and a PPI Trustee.

by Bill Budinger

America has a serious oil deficit.  We consume almost three times as much oil as we produce.  As a result, we send more than $250 billion a year offshore (mostly to our enemies and other bad guys) to import oil so we can keep our trains, planes, and automobiles running.

On the other hand, America now has a huge surplus of natural gas, enough to last us for 100 years or more. If we replaced the oil we import with domestic gas, we could end our energy dependence and stop enriching U.S. adversaries.  But rather than convert from oil to gas, plans are afoot to export the gas!

The economics of importing oil and exporting gas make no sense.  We currently pay about $100 to import a barrel of oil.  We are exporting natural gas at a price that has the energy equivalence of about $25 a barrel.  That’s right, we are buying energy as oil for $100, selling the same amount of energy as gas for $25.

Buying high and selling low – this is what passes for national energy policy today. Our leaders should be embarrassed.

In addition to the economics, the strategic implications of converting from oil to gas are huge.

About two-thirds of the oil we use is for transportation.  Converting our transportation fleet to natural gas would almost eliminate the need to import oil.  Our trade deficit would be cut in half, petro-despots would be deprived of their largest revenue source, and our economy would get a $250 billion shot in the arm – every year.

So why aren’t we doing it?  Converting gasoline and diesel engines to gas is relatively easy and very safe.  The challenge is the infrastructure – a national network of filling stations that need to be in place before people will convert their cars and trucks to gas.  Building that infrastructure requires such a huge effort and coordination among so many actors that it is unlikely that the private sector can or will make the switch by itself.  Among other things, investors will worry that OPEC will defensively collapse the price of oil as they did in the ’70s.  Given these market realities, the only way this switch can possibly happen will be if the government steps up to catalyze and help underwrite the effort.  150 years ago the government made a similar commitment to enable the trans-continental railroad – which ushered in America’s great industrial expansion.  Converting to natural gas could bring about a similar economic boom.

Installing the required new fueling infrastructure for gas-propelled vehicles would be a tremendous generator of new jobs.  There are few other investments the nation could make with as large a payoff across so many areas of national concern.

For those interested in the math:

One barrel of oil = about 5.6 million BTU.  One Mcf of natural gas = about 1.02 million BTU.  (The actual energy content varies slightly depending on the grade of the oil or gas.  These are industry averages.)

Energy equivalence:  The BTUs in 1 bbl. oil = The BTUs in 5.6 Mcf natural gas.

1 bbl oil costs $96.75 and the same amount of energy in gas costs $25.59  (5.6Mcf  x $4.57),

The energy cost ratio between oil and gas is roughly 4  ($100/$25).

That means we’re paying 4 times as much for an oil BTU as we get when we sell a gas BTU.

It also means that once we have completed the conversion, operating on gas instead of gasoline will reduce our transportation energy costs by almost 75 percent.

Photo Credit: Arimoore

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

Monday, June 27th, 2011
Jim Arkedis


Jim Arkedis is the director of PPI's National Security Project.

by Jim Arkedis

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Photo Credit: drp

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Buying Time in Afghanistan

Thursday, June 23rd, 2011
Will Marshall


Will Marshall is the president of the Progressive Policy Institute.

by Will Marshall

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Photo Credit: Dan Love

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Presidential “Speeches”, A Comparison

Thursday, June 23rd, 2011
Chip Lebovitz


Charles Lebovitz is a research assistant for the Progressive Policy Institute.

Brian McGrail


Brian McGrail is a research assistant at the Progressive Policy Institute.

by Chip Lebovitz and Brian McGrail

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

Key Similarities:

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

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

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

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

The Big Differences:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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