US Foreign Policy - Hope but no Change

With two entries in the works, I first wanted to bring to your attention this short but interesting tidbit from Der Spiegel:

"When he entered office, US President Barack Obama promised to inject US foreign policy with a new tone of respect and diplomacy. His recent trip to Asia, however, showed that it's not working. A shift to Bush-style bluntness may be coming."

I recommend you all go read it, it's fairly thoughtful and less influenced by domestic politics than most of what we get here. It's also indicative of a gradually-clarifying world opinion on Obama. The honeymoon appears to be over, and now the soft approach and "nice" rhetoric that got him the Peace Prize is being weighed in the scales and found wanting.

The highlight of the piece, as far as I am concerned, is the following statement (emphasis mine):

"Upon taking office, Obama said that he wanted to listen to the world, promising respect instead of arrogance. But Obama's currency isn't as strong as he had believed. Everyone wants respect, but hardly anyone is willing to pay for it. Interests, not emotions, dominate the world of realpolitik."

One might say, convinced that after eight years of Bush, the world was just waiting to be charmed, President Obama and his team are finding that charm only gets you a willing audience, the "Hope" if you will. But the "Change" only occurs after strong, realistic, and well-executed foreign policies are brought into play. Bush's policies were strong, and even occasionally well-executed, but often fatally rooted in personal idealism over practical realism. Obama's policies seem, like Bush's, to consist largely of optimistic idealism, but unlike Bush, his optimism is based not on the persuasive and positive effects of freedom, but on the universal goodness and reasonableness of mankind, an even shakier and less stable foundation.

One has to wonder whether his repeated failures to charm the world into a better place will result in his adoption of a different strategy, one more resembling Bush's aggressive and often preachy stance towards the world.

The Spiegel piece suggests this may already be occurring:

While in Asia, Obama mentioned "consequences" unless it followed his advice. This puts the president, in his tenth month in office, where Bush began -- with threats. "Time is running out," Obama said in Korea. It was the same phrase Bush used against former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, shortly before he sent in the bombers.

We are approaching a situation remarkably and dangerously similar to the one we occupied pre-WWII in the Pacific: lecturing Japan on its policies, while sending our forces to deal with conflicts elsewhere. Eventually militant forces in Japan gained the upper hand, and all the outraged blustering Washington could issue weighed little in the face of the new overwhelming Japanese naval supremacy in the region.

Fastforward to the 21st century: Lectures on human rights fall on deaf, unappreciative, and increasingly (and rightfully?) resentful ears in China when our irresponsible economic policies are agitating their own economy. Meanwhile their military is more or less openly stating that their immediate objectives are to deny us air and sea supremacy further and further out from their mainland.

One major difference between then and now: China has more than a handful of nukes. And, as the Spiegel article points out, nuclear disarmament is a non-issue there. Nukes = respect and leveraging power. Why on earth would they want to give them up?

Meanwhile, apparently Obama's playbook has only one entry for China: Demands for transparency, increasing debt, and more lectures on human rights.

The piece goes on to point out the similarities that are being drawn between Obama's foreign policy and that of Jimmy Carter. It might be worth noting that it was under Carter that we funded central asian terrorist groups (Al Qaeda, for example), and Osama Bin Laden.

From weak policy to funding our future enemies... We can hope that weak and misguided policy now does not lead to either of the two parallel situations later. A capable and realistic foreign policy might remember that history has a way of repeating itself...

-()4|<..

Bowing to No One

Obama has created a furor over his repeated bowing to foreign leaders. Arguments have tended to rage over whether or not his nearly 90-degree bend at the waist constituted a "bow" or not, which is of course silly. Yes, he was bowing.

However, I submit that this is not the point at all. The relevant question to me is brought up by a statement by former Vice President Cheney:

"There is no reason for an American president to bow to anyone. Our friends and allies don't expect it, and our enemies see it as a sign of weakness."

While it's certainly true that our friends don't expect it, whether our enemies see it as a sign of weakness is a more esoteric criticism, protocol notwithstanding. It gives more the impression, perhaps, of an inexperienced leader who is not sure how these matters are conducted. Yet while Cheney's comment is representative of a very common attitude in the US, I consider that attitude to be well-meaning but misguided.

It's easy to write off such a statement as more American arrogance: "We're the leader of the free world; others may bow to us, but we bow to no one." Yet the issue of paying respect to foreign leaders is a subtle one.

It's clear that part of Obama's approach to dealing with foreign leaders is wanting to be on good terms with all the other kids on the playground. Not totally a bad thing; though it shows a certain naivety on his part, as on the part of most liberals concerning foreign policy, it very rarely hurts to show respect to other people. The nonsense about "showing weakness" is probably true in dealing with a nation like Russia (and may very well stem from the Cold War mentality which most of our current government/infrastructure people seem irretrievably locked into), but does not apply in most cases.

It's 2009. The Cold War is over. Though President Obama doesn't seem to have any kind of cohesive strategy for engaging an increasingly belligerent Russia whatsoever, his interactions with China are arguably more important. And in that culture, bowing is not seen as a sign of weakness.
(Unless perhaps it be taken to the extreme of a kow-tow. And lest you think that idea laughable, go look again at how in debt we are to China. And recall that the Empire State Building was lit up yellow and red very recently in honor of the Communist revolution in China. We may yet see Obama approaching the Dragon throne, with the "three kneelings and nine head-knockings")

The problem with Obama's bowing is not so much that it projects weakness, but that it demonstrates a fantasy-approach to foreign policy. One in which by showing each other respect and being nice to everyone, "bad" leaders will suddenly see the light of freedom and reasonableness. This is similar to Bush's unswerving and irrational faith in the idea that if we can bring freedom to a people, they will choose to use this freedom in the same manner that people who earned their freedom have used it. Neither approach has demonstrated anything more than ephemeral success. Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea, Myanmar, all greatly appreciate the attention they so desperately crave and are now under Obama's administration receiving, yet at the same time make it clear that they do not intend to change their policies just because we threw them a bone of recognition. To believe that they would do so is in itself arrogance. And while a more subtle arrogance than that of America in some periods in the past, it is as foolish and ineffective nonetheless.

In any case, bowing to the Japanese Emperor is not going to make Al Qaeda decide that this is their big chance to launch another attack, or Iran decide to build another reactor, or Russia invade another small, former-Soviet province. Those things are all happening anyway.
A lack of a prudent foreign policy or economic strength to back up the bow will indeed bring trouble, however, and that is precisely what has been occurring.

"Walk softly but carry a big stick": this is an expression I've quoted here before, one containing much insight. The strong may bow to the weak with no loss of face, because they do it out of generous respect and not out of obligated weakness. If we as a nation really feel that bowing is in and of itself a sign of weakness, perhaps it shows how unconfident we have in fact become.

-()4|<...

Secession in Sudan

Just a short entry tonight: this story was brought to my attention by an African missionary.
Apparently there is a distinct possibility that southern Sudan may secede.

November 11, 2007 (KHARTOUM) — South Sudan could unilaterally split from the north because of a dispute over the oil-rich region of Abyei in Africa’s largest country, leading Islamist opposition party leader Hassan al-Turabi said on Sunday.

Sudan is currently in a period of uneasy "stability" after the end of the civil war there in 2005, with a coalition government uniting the nation, though unresolved situations like Darfur belie any perceptions of actual peace...

Observers say the biggest obstacle to reconciliation is the unresolved status of Abyei, which is on the north-south border.

"I realise now that this is a very critical issue — it could risk something very serious for the whole deal," Turabi told Reuters in an interview. "It might provoke the south to proceed directly towards a proclamation of secession."

They have also not yet accepted UN peace-keeping forces.

(Hmm, perhaps they spoke to the Congolese...)

-()4|<.

Warming? Cooling? Whatever is convenient

The BBC News reports that not only has global warming disappeared to be replaced by global cooling, but that this cooling trend will continue for some time.

This headline may come as a bit of a surprise, so too might that fact that the warmest year recorded globally was not in 2008 or 2007, but in 1998.

But it is true. For the last 11 years we have not observed any increase in global temperatures.

Why so truthful all of the sudden? It's hard to know the motive. Perhaps the bald-faced lies perpetuated by the rabid global-warming crowd were finally so obviously at odds with reality that cooler heads (pardon the pun) decided that if any vestige of the human-caused climate catastrophe crowd were to survive, it would have to be admitted that climate change was at very least not confined to warming trends and rising sea levels.

I personally am rather confused by the warming catastrophe crowd, considering some of them seemed to be convinced that by tomorrow morning the Atlantic might very well be lapping at our thresholds, while others were simultaneously predicting an apocalypse so slow in coming that we might well be living on other planets before it arrives.

Meanwhile, evidently it was getting colder all the time...
Now record cold temperatures are being seen all over.

We should note, however, that while climate change skeptics see this cooling as justification for their skepticism of inexorably rising global temperatures, true believers' faith in the heat death of the world by our own hands continues unabated:

In addition, say Met Office scientists, temperatures have never increased in a straight line, and there will always be periods of slower warming, or even temporary cooling.

What is crucial, they say, is the long-term trend in global temperatures. And that, according to the Met office data, is clearly up.

Yes, thus spoke the oracle: Centuries-long ice ages may interfere, as in the past, but at some day in the hypothetical future, it will get hotter than it is now. Other scientists agree:

Professor Latif is based at the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences at Kiel University in Germany and is one of the world's top climate modellers.

But he makes it clear that he has not become a sceptic; he believes that this cooling will be temporary, before the overwhelming force of man-made global warming reasserts itself.

Notice the language here. Does anyone not realize that this has taken on all the artifices of a religious institution? Dr. Latif, worried that he might be perceived as a nonbeliever in Warming, clarifies that despite the scientific data stating otherwise, he is not a skeptic! Yes, we must have faith that the heat is coming. Ignore the cooling trend. Just believe. Sooner or later a heating trend will re-emerge, then we can start all this up again.

Meanwhile, the American people are less and less convinced; polls show that significantly fewer Americans are worried that Florida will go the way of the Siberian land bridge any time soon...

The new poll found that only 57 percent of Americans believe there is “solid evidence” for the existence of global warming, compared to 71 percent in April 2008.

Additionally, the poll shows that the percentage of Americans who believe global warming is caused by human activity has dropped from 47 percent last year to 36 percent today.

One can only hope this means we'll hear less hysteria about carbon footprints and other such nonsense related to carbon dioxide levels, which have never been causally linked to warming anyway. But "Cap-and-Trade" is already here, and something tells me that more of the same taxes are coming whether facts or the American people back them up or not. It's not a question of reality or democracy anymore. As President of the Czech Republic Vaclav Klaus (currently being sidelined in the EU for being a disagreeist) has pointed out, global climate change politics is just a power-play.

So should we sit idly by and watch our freedoms be taken for whatever trendy excuse the religio-scientific backers of the liberal pan-bureaucracy may contrive? We already have been. And that realization is by far the most frightening thing I'll encounter this halloween...

-()4|<.

Update: Transparency

It would appear that the Democratic party is backing off of it's "transparency in government" goal.

House Democrats blocked the public from attending the unveiling ceremony of their health-care bill Thursday morning, allowing only pre-approved visitors whose names appeared on lists to enter the event at the West side of the Capitol.

Only pre-approved visitors are allowed to hear what the massive health care bill is going to do? And they've gone so far as to block off normally public entrances. If they are unwilling to let the public hear about the bill, can we expect to get the promised 72 hours for everyone to read the bill before voting occurs? The Obama administration seems to be breaking a lot of campaign promises. I wonder if anyone in real journalism will notice.

UPDATE: Looks like the promise to leave the final bill up online for 72 hours has been officially broken.

Conservativity Rising

It appears that more Americans are identifying themselves as conservatives this year.
Gallup has the numbers...

Conservatives continue to outnumber moderates and liberals in the American populace in 2009, confirming a finding that Gallup first noted in June. Forty percent of Americans describe their political views as conservative, 36% as moderate, and 20% as liberal. This marks a shift from 2005 through 2008, when moderates were tied with conservatives as the most prevalent group.

Predictably, liberals in charge of government have caused a number of Americans to react by shifting towards the opposite end of the ideological spectrum. This is partly because this time, they are so much more dramatically militant, in-your-face liberals than Americans are accustomed to seeing in positions of power. (People, for example, such as Obama adviser Robert Reich who say things like: "We are going to have to, if you are very old, we're not going to give you all that technology and all those drugs for the last couple of years of your life to keep you, maybe, going for another couple of months. It's too expensive. So, we're going to let you die.")

This sort of thing horrifies decent people, who react away from it. But it works both ways, and people are sadly vulnerable to pressure on how they ought to think. It's a natural process; those same outraged people might well trend back into liberal territory under a conservative administration. (or what passes for one these days)

In fact, it's likely that these are indeed middle-grounders who moved towards the fringes of the liberal camp during the later Bush years, in reaction to issues such as the Iraq War and the perceived threat of anthropogenic climate change, but who are now drifting back to the average American slightly-conservative-but-not-very-well-informed moderatism.

It has been predicted that America will continue to follow this trend, due if nothing else to higher birthrates among conservatives. (though this trend is greatly eclipsed by the ongoing northward migration of and birth rates among immigrants, which will play a far greater role in political shifts in America to come) Yet at the same time, polls clearly indicate that younger Americans (the 18-29 crowd) are much more liberal than their older counterparts.

One thing that sticks out, however, is that the increases in Conservativity (if one may so phrase it) and in Liberalism, while somewhat antagonistic to each other, both came at the expense of the moderate camp, which has been in decline since 2005.

In other words, people are slowly moving away from the middle, towards the opposite ends of the spectrum. Further information on the Gallup site confirms this:

While these figures have shown little change over the past decade, the nation appears to be slightly more polarized than it was in the early 1990s. Compared with the 1992-1994 period, the percentage of moderates has declined from 42% to 35%, while the percentages of conservatives and liberals are up slightly -- from 38% to 40% for conservatives and a larger 17% to 21% movement for liberals.

Yet some of us refuse to see the issue as we are being told to see it. That is, with two camps (Republicans on the conservative to moderate-conservative side, and Democrats on the liberal to moderate-liberal side) fighting for the attentions of the balanced Americans in the center who haven't chosen a side yet.

Sometimes the old paradigms need to be replaced. This conception of the two party system is one of them. I don't agree with much I hear from either side these days, and I think I'm not at all alone in that. Obama captured the hearts of a large portion of America's population by getting them to believe that he was "for them", in a deep and meaningful sense. His falling popularity seems to be a sign that Americans are starting to realize that he is not. (whether they grasp on a collective scale that many of his policies are exactly the opposite of what we need right now, or were merely empty rhetoric, remains to be seen. If that is beginning to happen, we'll see popularity levels around 40% before the end of his first year, I suspect.)

Americans want representation by their government, and the simmering dissatisfaction that makes itself known at things like the tea parties, town hall meetings, and other demonstrations will only increase as Washington in general, together with this administration in specific, attempt to hijack our nation for their own ideologies.

-()4|<.

The Forum Troll President

I have had an interesting time picking a story to write on for the past few days. An extremely busy weekend made it easy to delay the choice altogether, but I realized that I was shying away from stories involving our president. Enough has already been said about him, certainly, and yet I find myself writing one more entry about him today.

Obama has achieved and maintained total media saturation (indeed, with the media's acknowledged support and involvement) since his nomination, with significant coverage before then. That has not diminished. With the reception of the Nobel Peace Prize, the failed bid for the Olympics in Chicago, the situation in Afghanistan; everyone is waiting to see what the president will do.

Even aside from the media, in our national discussion President Obama has been like an especially controversial troll in a forum; some take his side and defend him, others hate him with that special hatred reserved for forum trolls, but either way he has now taken whatever discussion existed prior to his involvement and focused it entirely around himself and his statements.

This is what President Obama, consciously or unconsciously (considering the skills of his media team, probably consciously), has done on the national stage. Perhaps it's also the forte of a populist president; if you wish to run as a personality and not a platform, your personality must necessarily remain in focus if your goals are to be achieved.

Obama has gambled daringly that his 'brand' is sufficient to sustain loyalty to his goals and ideals. This has largely worked. (with perhaps the notable exception of the tea-party attendee types, who have been marginalized by the White House as disagreeists. Whether they can be successfully marginalized or not is a question for another time, but while they are numerous, they are still a clear minority.) It's interesting to note that if his brand becomes unpopular, his clout vanishes. He is only left with the usual political maneuvering, in a field where he is still a newcomer.

But for now, the president has the world's attention. The peace prize was as clear a sign of this as could be given. Consider Bono's recent editorial in the NYT. It's quite glorifying of President Obama, and at the same time surprisingly pro-American. More insightful pundits than me will doubtless pull many valuable observations from his take, but let me focus on one of the most obvious: The world is calling, and Obama is America's chance to respond.

Obama is our first global president. Perhaps fitting as America's power and influence in the world peaks and enters a decline (perhaps 'the' decline, but it's too early to call), a man has risen to the top who is using that high platform to spread idealism throughout the world. Many feel, as does this writer, that some (not all) of those ideals are flawed at best. But that is irrelevant in a global sense. I submit that the world in general feels more ownership of our president than we do, and that is both based in his approach to the world, and mirrored in his response to it.

Liberally-minded (in the modern political sense) Americans feel very strongly the pressure of the rest of the world opinion weighing in, and are finally basking in the glow of a president they think they just might be proud to show the world. For example, let us consider that the left end of the political comedy spectrum (SNL and the Daily Show), previously unwilling to mock Obama even in a tangential sense, are now doing so. But unlike former president Bush, it is not his ideals that they mock, nor his actions, but his inaction. Obama is their applicant to the rest of the world, to demonstrate their solidarity, to show that the world's most touted issues (environmentalism, poverty, nuclear disarmanent, etc) are their issues as well. They see this as their shot to be at the world's table not because of American's power, (a reason they would despise, like a crass and socially awkward uncle who nevertheless is invited to every family party because he also happens to be extremely wealthy) but as sensitive, knowing, and worldly intellectuals who belong there. Obama is their personified manifesto, their best shot yet at getting in. They don't want him to mess this up.
Neither does the rest of the world, as Bono writes:

"The Nobel Peace Prize is the rest of the world saying, 'Don’t blow it.'"

Conservatives often make two mistakes in their response, either blowing off the rest of the world altogether as irrelevant (short-sighted, unwise, and furthermore uncharitable: in these times, "no man is an island" applies to nations more than ever), or else attacking those ideals of Obama which are demonstrably false, yet without supplying their own methods of dealing with the problems he purports to be solving.

Example of the latter: People do need health care. I believe that no plan currently circulating through our congress would be anything less than a disaster, but our current situation is clearly inexcusably bad as well. While I have heard many compelling reasons given in impassioned speech as to why Obama's plan should be consigned to a place where the worm does not die, nor is thirst ever quenched, I have not yet heard a single agreed-upon workable alternative solution by those opposing the Obama plan.

What does that accomplish on a national level? The president (who seeks to advance his goals by the force of his own personality, remember) could easily claim that the attacks are not really against the health plan, but against himself. In fact, he doesn't even need to say this. His backers can do that for him. And we see that this is exactly what is occurring now. To return to the analogy, the troll has struck again. The forum topic is no longer health care, but all the commenters' opinions of the troll himself, generally expressed in wholesale irrational favor or disfavor. Few bring forth a detached, logical analysis of the forum troll and his arguments. He is now setting the agenda. His provocative statements, and existing opinions about his kind, generally reduce all conversation to endorsements, rejections, or endless bickering. Eventually the topic is closed, no meaningful progress having been made on the subject.

If we seek to have a meaningful national dialogue on anything worth accomplishing, this trolling must end. The president has ushered in a new era in which every political argument defaults back to himself. He remains the center of attention, and as long as we all argue about him, he wins. For is not that the goal of the troll?

-()4|<.