What's The Matter With The G20? Posted by David Shorr

Experts are worried about the G20. After four years and seven summit meetings, many of my fellow G20-watchers are asking why the group doesn't have more to show for its efforts? But as conventional wisdom about the problem's source starts to take hold, I think my colleagues are getting it wrong. 

Setting the question aside for a moment, this is a good time to debate these issues as the chairmanship of the G20 passes from Mexico to Russia. In fact, many of us were in Moscow last week when Russia's government -- together with leading think tanks RANEPA and the Higher School of Economics -- hosted Think20 and Civil20 expert consultations to collect ideas. Planning for next September's St. Petersburg summit is just getting underway, and President Putin's G20 Sherpa Ksenia Yudaeva hosted her counterparts for the first time, also last week.

As Australia looks toward its turn as summit host in 2014, it has set up a research center on the G20 in the Lowy Institute. The introduction to that center's new report, "Challenges Facing the G20 in 2013," offers the following critique:

Many worry that the G20's agenda has been expanding too widely and covering too many issues. Given a weak, unbalanced, and vulnerable global economy, it is essential that the G20 give top priority to reinvigorating global growth. 

I have no qualms with how the authors characterize the agenda-creep that's taken place or the G20's prorper priority on the health of the global economy. My objection is to the way they -- and, admittedly, many others -- connect the two. If you're trying to lay blame for the G20's modest progress on the leaders supposedly being distracted by secondary matters, count me a skeptic. 

Let's take stock of the shortfalls on the G20's core agenda; judge for yourself whether the its sponsorship of a few working groups on anti-corruption, development, or climate change financing seems a likely culprit: fragile economic recovery; threat posed by sovereign debt on the Eurozone's periphery; structural adjustments to economies overly dependent on exports or leverage; governance reform of the IMF and World Bank; imposition of tougher capital requirements for banks; regulation of derivatives markets... Do we really think that expert-level discussions of financial inclusion, financing for infrastructure, or commodity price volatility kept the G20 from doing more in the priority areas? 

Obviously my underlying point is about the inherent degree-of-difficulty challenges associated with the G20's main tasks. But there's also an obvious explanation that tends to be glossed over: the deep divisions among key governments over stimulus and austerity. In other words, divergence on whether deficit spending is a solution or problem has meant G20 leaders don't agree on the basic issue of how to promote economic recovery. (This split became public before the 2010 Toronto summit when Pres. Obama cautioned against hastily ending stimulus in a letter to his counterparts.)

Among other things, this has left the G20 community with contradictory impulses -- simultaneously fretting over reducing the US deficit and the threat of the fiscal cliff, which is basically drastic deficit-reduction. Indeed, one of the Civil20 conference's most interesting moments was when a light bulb seemed to go off for a development aid advocate during the discussion of fiscal consolidation. Doing the 2+2 arithmetic on austerity and recovery, she pointed out that it would be bad for the global economy for the G20 governments to fulfil their commitments on consolidation.

But let me come back to the broader matter of the G20 and its problems. I think we need to turn the idea of agenda-creep on its head. There's no denying that the G20 agenda has become messy. Critics tend to misdiagnose the problem and overstate the consequences, as I've argued, but there actually is a problem. The really problematic agenda-creep has been happening within agenda items themselves -- internal to the issue areas in the G20 portfolio -- rather than between the different topics.

Strangely enough, the problem stems from the (well-intentioned) desire to take a comprehensive approach toward problems. As issues have been added to the agenda, the impulse to identify all dimensions of those issues is a hindrance rather than a help for the G20. To get a sense of this, just scan this 2011 report from the G20 Development Working Group, which reads more like a tour of horizon for global development work, rather than a focused checklist of advances that can be made on behalf of world leaders. It is probably unrealistic to hope the G20 can catalyze game-changing grand bargains. And yet, we need to adopt a new G20 agenda discipline whereby each issue comes with a theory-of-change showing how the blessing or impetus from world leaders will contribute to progress on the issue. For an example of an agenda item with clear focus, see the latest action plan for the G20 Anti-Corruption Working Group. 

I believe leaders of the G20 have sufficient diplomatic and policy bandwidth to tackle issues beyond the group's core responsibilities for global economic growth and financial stability. In fact, I've heard senior officials argue the need for a range topics to complement the top-tier items on which progress will be unavoidably slow. But with that said, there is plenty of room for sharper focus across the G20 agenda. 

Photo: Russia G20

Recording of NSN's Media Call on Pentagon Reductions and Contractor Myths Posted by The Editors

NSN_Press_Call_12312

PARTICIPANTS: Ben Freeman, National Security Investigator, Project on Government Oversight; William Hartung, Director, Arms and Security Project, Center for International Policy; Christopher Preble, VP, Cato Institute

DATE: December 3, 2012

Obama Foreign Policy - Book Review Edition Posted by David Shorr

For everyone wondering what the foreign policy junkie in their lives wants for Christmas or Hanukkah, I've written a review of two recent books bound to be of interest.

Oh let's face it, the only people who read this blog are foreign policy junkies themselves. So maybe you could buy the David Sanger and/or James Mann book for yourself, or someone else. (Do wonks give their wonk loved ones wonkish gifts?)

Any way, my essay on these two first-drafts of the history of Obama foreign policy appears in the new issue of Policy Review. The authors are two of the most respected journalists on the beat and approach the subject from different angles. Sanger's account is the story of an administration working the levers of the US government's national security apparatus, whereas Mann situates the administration's overall worldview in the political debates that shaped it. Here's how I described the contrast:

The books’ subtitles hint at the authors’ shared questions of interest but also their divergent styles and methods. Sanger’s book is about Obama’s “surprising use of American power,” whereas Mann focuses on a struggle to “redefine American power.” Sanger, who is the New York Times chief Washington correspondent, takes readers more deeply into the workings of national security policy execution; he watches President Obama and his advisers preside over the machinery of statecraft. The revelations that have earned the book buzz as well as controversy — the cyberwarfare used to sabotage Iran’s uranium enrichment centrifuges — are the fruits of this method.

While Sanger delves into the Obama team’s exertion of American power to discern a policy style, James Mann is interested in their deliberate efforts to devise a foreign policy framework matching their view of 21st-century realities. He wants to know whether they could “bring about a new American relationship with the world, one that was less unilateral in approach and less reliant on American military power.” Applying the same approach as his earlier book about President George W. Bush’s foreign policy team (The Vulcans), Mann focuses on the perspectives and ideas that policymakers bring with them into government.

But as they say, read the whole thing. 

Embassy Security in the NDAA Posted by James Lamond

It’s that time of year again, when the amendments process for the National Defense Authorization Act is used as a vehicle to put forth new legislation. Yesterday and today have seen a flurry of amendments go to the floor. One amendment that passed through a voice vote caught my eye. It was proposed by John McCain and increases the number of Marines for security at American embassies and consulates. The amendment also asks DoD to reassess the rules of engagement for those Marines. The Hill reports:

The Senate passed an amendment to the defense bill by voice vote Wednesday that would place more Marines at U.S. consulates and embassies around the world… Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) introduced the amendment. He said the amendment was important to preventing more deaths overseas, referring to the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya on Sept. 11, 2012….

McCain said his amendment, 3051, would also ask the Department of Defense to reassess the rules of engagement for Marines stationed at embassies and consulates so they could engage in combat when attacked.

According to the Marine Corps Times, the amendment results in an overall 1,000 person increase of the Marine Corp. The MCT adds:

It’s not immediately clear how this would affect the Marine Corps’ ongoing personnel drawdown. Current plans call for shedding about 5,000 Marines from active duty each year through 2016 as the service works toward a new authorized end strength of 182,100.

The questions about effects on this amendment would have on personnel structure is only one issue. What caught my eye about this amendment is the overall question about the that Marines play in diplomatic security. In advocating for this bill Sen. McCain stated, the Benghazi attack was “a stark reminder that the security environment confronting American personnel serving in U.S. embassies and consulates abroad is as dangerous as any time that I can remember.”

However, the primary mission for Marines stationed in embassies and consulates abroad is not protection of personnel. The Marines Security Guard detachments are primarily assigned with protecting -- and destroying if necessary -- classified information that is vital to U.S. national security. Protection of the embassy/consulate and its personnel is a secondary mission of the Marines. That responsibility falls primarily to the little known, but highly trained, Bureau of Diplomacy Security at the State Department.

The Bureau of Diplomatic Security is “responsible for providing a safe and secure environment for the conduct of U.S. foreign policy.” Its website adds, “[e]very diplomatic mission in the world operates under a security program designed and maintained by Diplomatic Security.” However, there was no mention of this office in McCain's amendment. In fact, there have been repeated efforts in Congress to decrease funding. “Since retaking control in 2010, House Republicans have aggressively cut spending at the State Department in general and embassy security in particular. [Reps.] Chaffetz and Issa and their colleagues voted to pay for far less security than the State Department requested in 2011 and again this year,” explains Dan Murphy of the Christian Science Monitor last month.

Just to be clear, this is not so say that the Marines do not play an important role in diplomatic security. Clearly they do both in terms of information protection and protection of dignitaries and personnel. However, it is strange that Sen. McCain would advocate so forcefully for increasing the Marines presence with no mention of the forces primarily tasked with the mission, especially since his colleagues have repeatedly decreased funding.

Speaking of Sen Marco Rubio... Posted by David Shorr

Now that Marco Rubio has kicked off his 2016 bid by discoursing with GQ about our planet's, er, genesis and getting better acquainted with Republicans in Iowa,^* this seems like a good time to look back at Sen. Rubio's big foreign policy speech at Brookings last April. I have to admit, it really is better than most of what the Republicans offered this cycle. But then, scoring a high grade on that curve is nothing to brag about; Republicans in 2012 were really low-achievers when it comes to foreign policy substance.

I was interested to see Rubio talk about President Obama's efforts to get other international players to help in addressing shared challenges. Together with Nina Hachigian, I've been highlighting this push as a significant driver of current policy. Nina and I sketched what we call the "Responsibility Doctrine" in the September issue of Foreign Service Journal (a fuller exposition will appear in the next Washington Quarterly). So Marco Rubio distinguished himself by refraining from the worst caricatures of Obama foreign policy and engaging with its real substance (sort of).

Actually, Rubio begins by setting aside his differences with Obama and drawing on Bob Kagan's World America Made for a bipartisan case for American international leadership and against turning inward. Back when Kagan's argument appeared in New Republic article form, I wrote a post here at DA saying that Bob was indeed offering the outline of a bipartisan consensus, but that more bridgebuilding was probably still needed from the Republican side. Rubio's speech showed the same blindspot: the need for America to obtain -- rather than presume or demand -- the support of other nations.

As a rhetorical device, Rubio runs through the arguments he's had repeatedly with those who think America should step back, for a change, and let others deal with the world's problems. After explaining that there isn't a candidate to take our place as a global leader, Rubio addresses the idea of greater sharing of responsibility, which is worth quoting at length:

Finally, I'll be asked, if we still have to lead, can’t we at least be equal partners with someone else? In fact, shouldn’t we rely on other nations to carry more of the burden? After all, we all know that they resent us telling them what to do, right?

In this new century, more than ever before, America should work with our capable allies in finding solutions to global problems. Not because America has gotten weaker, but because our partners have grown stronger.  It's worth pointing out, by the way that is not a new idea for us. Our greatest successes have always occurred in partnership with other like-minded nations. America has acted unilaterally in the past - and I believe it should continue to do so in the future -- when necessity requires.  But our preferred option since the U.S. became a global leader has been to work with others to achieve our goals.

So yes, global problems do require international coalitions. On that point this administration is correct. But effective international coalitions don't form themselves. They need to be instigated and led, and more often than not, they can only be instigated and led by us. And that is what this administration doesn't understand. Yes, there are more countries able and willing to join efforts to meet the global challenges of our time. But experience has proven that American leadership is almost always indispensable to its success.

By my reading, the speech is simply a more sophisticated version of the same lame critique Republicans have tried to make for the last four years. There is an entire genre of statements about "what this administration (or president) doesn't understand" that in fact describe the administration's exact approach. Heck, sometimes Obama's critics have cribbed fully detailed policy prescriptions from what he was already doing. This administration is well aware that most coalitions need to be instigated and/or led by the United States. One of President Obama's most impressive successes, as Nina and I argue, has been to spread responsibility for that leadership -- or at least contributions to the common effort -- more widely. 

So let me paraphrase. This is what Sen. Rubio doesn't understand. The real challenge for foreign policy is to somehow induce countries to join efforts when they are less than willing. It isn't only America's allies or the like-minded whose help we need. Economic sanctions and diplomatic pressure on Iran would be impossible without the support of China and Russia (and oh by the way, American allies like Japan and Korea are too dependent on Iranian energy imports to halt them completely).

From what we hear, Republicans are busy these days taking stock of the rethinking they need in order to regain credibility. I offer the above thoughts for that agenda.

^*As a patriotic former Iowa caucus-goer, I would never suggest that it's too early for presidential apirants to start working retail in Iowa. In fact, there's no such thing as "too early."

Photo: Gage Skidmore

The Day after Tomorrow Posted by The Editors

This guest post is written by Erica Mandell.

Anyone who has ever written anything about Israel or Palestine will know that there is
no such thing as a single defining moment, at least not one that exists in the absolute.  Time stretches forward and backward and more so in times of crisis. The current situation in Israel and Gaza is no exception. 

For example, if asked what led to the current escalation, many would point to last
week’s targeted killing of Hamas military chief Ahmed Jabari.  Others would point to 2008’s Operation Cast Lead, or better yet the 2005 withdrawal from Gaza, or perhaps the 2006 election of Hamas.  If we really want to get to the root of things, maybe we should go back farther.  The establishment of the state of Israel in 1948?  The Arab revolts of 1936?  The ill-fated Balfour Declaration of 1917?  Long and lamented story short, all of it is relevant, and all of it continues to play out today in clear, historical narratives.

This is no more apparent than on my Facebook newsfeed, where I watch my Jewish and
Arab friends exchange equally compelling arguments for why their side (be it Israel or Gaza) is more besieged.  Indeed, the situation involves so many considerations that leaving this page blank may be more effective than an attempt to hash out the causations and reactions to what we currently see unfolding.  Instead, let us consider options for where things could stand after, God willing, there is a resolution to this sickeningly tragic impasse.

Israel’s political right is emboldened

We all know what it is like to rally around the flag.  Depending on how the situation plays out, this phenomenon is likely to occur in Israel, just in time for the January 22 elections.  Should Israel manage to halt the rocket fire before any major loss of Israeli life, Netanyahu is likely to be strengthened. His was a gamble however, because should, God forbid, a rocket successfully hit a target in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem, Netanyahu’s decision to go after Jabari (who was taken out in a targeted killing) would cause a significant fall from grace. A ground operation would also likely complicate matters, and would possibly delay the elections.

However, let us assume that Likud and Yisrael Beiteinu win the election and Netanyahu’s
position is assured once again. What happens when things calm down and the status quo prevails? Even before Operation Pillar of Defense began, all in the region felt the status quo was unsustainable. Sadly however, while Netanyahu and his government place priority in guaranteeing Israel’s daily security, they do little to help Israel in the long-term.  Settlements would likely expand and President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority would continue to be marginalized. Adding to Israel’s concerns would be the rise of Mohamed Morsi of Egypt (though he seems willing to reason with Hamas on their behalf) and Iran’s progressing nuclear program.

 It would be business as usual, to the detriment of both sides.

Hamas is emboldened

Now let us assume that Hamas is further endeared to both its constituents and to
its Arab supporters.  It is likely then that Hamas would be encouraged in its quest to compete with Fatah as spokesparty for the Palestinians, thus drawing out any potential end to the conflict.  Indeed, we have already witnessed enthusiasm from the West Bank for Hamas’ efforts in Gaza.  Hamas might also feel confident enough to venture suicide attacks or continue to push Israel’s red lines. An emboldened Hamas would undoubtedly cause Israel to abandon any would-be long-term security efforts in favor of locking down moment-to-moment security. Israel’s security is bifurcated. They focus on current security (i.e. weather forecasts that include rocket fire) and basic security (the continued existence of the state) but rarely at the same time. Arguably, many threats overlap between the two categories, but if current security is threatened, long-term efforts go out the window.

No matter who is in power in Israel, this would effectively mean a step backwards
in security for both sides and a major step backward for Palestinian statehood
aspirations.

Moderate forces prevail

Luckily there is a Goldilocks option, however unlikely. Either Israelis elect a Kadima or Labor-led government or Netanyahu suddenly sees the West Bank and its leadership in a new light.  Just as crises cause Israel to revert to the agenda of the besieged, perhaps a reprieve in violence would inspire Israel to own its role in the conflict and start laying groundwork for final status agreements. Let us not deceive ourselves, a solution is a long way off, but concrete steps can be taken immediately to drastically improve the situation and foster hope. This would include fostering institutions that would serve as the building blocks for a future Palestinian state, start reducing Israeli presence and control in the West Bank, and focus on logistical progress over rhetoric-heavy final status agreements. 

Short-term quiet would give way to concrete progress. 

But lest we forget, this is a two-party conflict. While I continue to argue that Israel has the upper hand in taking effective action toward peace, Palestinians must also act with their long-term interests in mind. Unfortunately, the recent conflict has confirmed Palestinian support for Hamas and has only further alienated Mahmoud Abbas, whose commitment to the plight of Palestine was publicly questioned just weeks ago. For the Palestinians, the key to a moderate way forward is to unify behind moderate leadership. At this point, even if Netanyahu or any other coalition leader were to sit down at the negotiating table, they would be talking with someone who does not represent both territories and therefore cannot speak on behalf of a unified potential state. Rallies and cheers at the sound of rockets falling near Jerusalem may swell spirits in the short term, but they undermine realistic shots at a two-state solution.

As of now, rumors of an imminent ceasefire swell. If it is successful, this would be a good opportunity to analyze the role of Egypt in upcoming peace efforts, and push for American-backed but regionally led frameworks. If a ceasefire remains elusive, and Israel goes forward with a ground incursion, then things will get worse before they get better. Israeli presence in Gaza would no doubt be prolonged and moderation would fall by the wayside for both Palestinians and Israelis.

My preference for option #3 is no secret. While both sides have legitimate claims to fear, resolve, and bereavement, it is time for leaders to abandon the status quo and take
responsibility in acting in their own self-interest to establish peace. I am looking to both sides for this.

While pinpointing single moments in the conflict as stand-alone events is near
impossible, wasting opportunities to resolve long-term security issues seems to
be the rule.  Let us hope that what
happens next is the exception.

Lame Duck Opening Moves: GOP Leadership Agrees DoD is on the Table? Posted by Bill R. French

Speaker of the House John A. Boehner (R - OH) has just delivered the opening statement in what is sure to be a difficult lame duck debate within Congress over avoiding the fiscal cliff. If lawmakers fail to act, the combination of expiring tax cuts and arbitrary spending reductions will be automatically triggered in two months time. The consequences for the American economy could be disastrous, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Of those reductions, those affecting the Pentagon have received disproportionate attention. What role the Pentagon budget should play in avoiding the fiscal cliff has been hotly debated,  with many – but by no means all – conservatives calling for a deal to exempt the DoD from cuts. Some, most notably Buck Mckeon (R-CA), have even called to reverse the cuts already in place, even though those "cuts" are from projected budgetary increases and the Pentagon budget is still on course to rise slightly over the next decade.

But Boehner may have just signaled a significant softening of the GOP position.  In his speech, he dedicated only one sentence to Pentagon spending to oppose “slashing” the DoD budget. Crucially, this is not objecting to reductions in Pentagon spending as such – a rhetorical fact which is likely indicative of GOP intentions when uttered in such a calibrated address. This interpretation would seem to be corroborated by House Majority Leader Eric Cantor's (R-VA) statements today when he similarly indicated merely opposing  “massive defense cuts.”

In looking forward to near-term the work required to avoid the fiscal cliff, it seems that the GOP leadership now tacitly agrees that Pentagon spending should remain on the table.

National Security Politics-Winners and Losers Posted by Heather Hurlburt

Losers
Islamophobes: Rep Bill Pascrell, who faced Islamophobic attacks in his primary, won in NJ. A sharia-fearing Senate candidate lost in FL. Romney adviers' efforts to subtly channel Islamophobia don't seem to have helped.

Pentagon spending scare-mongers:  The McCain-Graham-Lieberman-Ayotte sequester tours, and the misleading Romney rhetoric about the source and likelihood and severity of the Pentagon's share of sequestration don't seem to have hurt downticket candidates in Virginia, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maine. Someone's leak today of a dialogue between the UAW and legislators in Ohio about M-1 tank production which the Army doesn't want didn't do the trick in Ohio.

Those tempted to play the Israel card: Obama's Jewish vote, it seems, stayed the same or declined about the same proportion the overall vote did. It didn't turn the tide in Pennsylvania (Florida still hangs in the balance as I write). Certainly the effort to use Iran-Israel as a surrogate for leadership to counter Obama's record on terrorism failed. The Perhaps one could argue that Romney's Israel-Iran rhetoric helped fire up the Christian Zionists and kept him close... but I haven't seen anyone arguing that yet. So, what will that next conversation between Obama and Netanyahu be like?

Winners

The national security establishment: Obama hugged the Pentagon, the homeland security community, the intelligence community, hard. They have hugged him back. They will get in return a President who is solicitous and centrist on their concerns.

Democrats: it's official -- Obama has now exploded the security gap that bedeviled Democratic politicians for 40 years. What are you going to do with that strength, Democrats?

Military families: they get an Administration that funds the VA and doesn't engage in adventurism. and doesn't tolerate prejudice against servicemembers who are immigrants, or gay... or others who are, for that matter

 

 

The Cedar Retribution: The Long Struggle for the Levant, from Hariri to Hassan Posted by The Editors

This post is by Anthony Elghossain, an attorney at a global law firm based in Washington, D.C. He blogs at Page Lebanon. 

On October 19, a bomb tore through Achrafieh, a predominantly Christian neighborhood and upscale gathering place in Beirut. Initially, many Lebanese believed the bomb was a scare tactic or a senseless consequence of a long-anticipated Syrian “spillover.” But investigators soon announced that Brigadier General Wissam al-Hassan was among the dead. He’d been the target; Achrafieh was merely the price.

And then Lebanon exploded. Angry youths took to the streets. At Hassan’s funeral in downtown Beirut, ardent members of the March 14 coalition attempted a quixotic coup. Meanwhile, armed bands performed another of their almost ritual bloodlettings. Although the state has since quelled major fighting, Beirut and other flashpoints across the country remain tense.

The assassination wasn’t surprising. Hassan’s relationships, politics, communal affiliation, and security endeavors made him a prime target. A Sunni with close ties to the Hariri family, Hassan headed the Internal Security Forces’ (ISF) information branch. While transforming the information branch into an effective operation, Hassan cooperated with the U.S., France, and Arab states in Lebanon and beyond.

Of course, immediate causes are evident. Hassan had recently uncovered an alleged Syrian plot to destabilize Lebanon. Furthermore, in recent months, Hassan had reportedly joined international efforts—not all of them public—to bolster Syrian rebels.

But this killing means more.

At its heart, Hassan’s assassination was another salvo in the long struggle for the Levant. For more than a decade, rival factions—each aligning Lebanese and Syrian actors alongside foreign sponsors—have sought to control Beirut. Lebanon’s capital has long been an open arena; with the onset the Syrian conflict, these rivals are competing for Damascus too.

The scenes have included Beirut, foreign capitals, the media war, licit and illicit business, and Lebanon’s far-flung diaspora. The Assad regime and allies like Hezbollah have routinely used violence to silence opponents, eliminate liabilities, deplete pools of knowledge, and create political space. They probably killed Hassan because, in the complicated tapestry of the Levant, he tied many threads together:

The Closing Arguments of Foreign Policy 2012 Posted by David Shorr

The Des Moines Register has been kind enough, this election year, to publish a series of my op-eds on foreign policy issues in the campaign. Below is the final pre-election column (also reprinted in today's Iowa City Press-Citizen)...

It is now election crunch time; everything is over except for final swing voter decisions, turnout and tallying the results.

That makes it a good time to look back at the debates between President Obama and Gov. Romney and take stock of the hot foreign policy topics of 2012.

The bulk of attention has fallen on the Middle Eastern nations of Iran and Libya as well as China. It is questionable whether the election-year foreign policy debate has kept the issues and regions in the right proportion to America’s stakes.

For exmaple, there are still 68,000 American troops fighting in Afghanistan. Both presidential candidates support the same timeline to draw down this combat force, after Romney dropped his previous strong objections to setting a withdrawal date. Still, the candidates’ discussion of the three highest profile countries offers a good basis to compare their approaches.

Overall, Romney has shown a strong impulse for confrontation and general disregard for international sentiment. He has contrasted himself with the more measured approach of Obama, who has worked to build international support for U.S. positions and keep the world’s sole superpower from being viewed as heavy-handed.

The Obama administration, for instance, has used the World Trade Organization as a referee of our disputes with China and just in the last few days won a big case on steel production. There has been important progress on China’s artificially weak currency too. The administration has combined America’s voice with others and pressured China into letting its currency strengthen by 11 percent in four years — which helps lower the price of American exports. In the eight years of the Bush administration, the Chinese currency exchange rate didn’t budge.

Watching Romney and Obama’s recent debate on foreign policy, I was particularly struck by the discussion of the extensive sanctions Obama has imposed on Iran over its nuclear program. A diplomatic resolution of the nuclear issue has been elusive for the last two administrations, but Obama has had notable success in building broad international support for pressure on Iran.

Romney tried to criticize the president by claiming to have favored tougher sanctions much earlier, but Obama exposed the flaw of this critique. Sanctions cannot work unless they are multilateral, and gaining international support is harder when the U.S. tries to hurry, instead of letting Iranian stubbornness become obvious to everyone. The tough challenge of reaching a solution remains, but Iranian leaders are under greater pressure to negotiate than ever before.

In Libya last year, the dictator Muammar Gaddafi threatened to massacre thousands of civilians rising up against him in Benghazi. It grew clear that leaders in the region and the wider world community favored intervening to prevent a bloodbath, and Obama worked with European and Arab counterparts to mount a successful air operation to support the resistance and removal of Gaddafi.

The first senior representative of the U.S. to work with rebels in Benghazi was the same Ambassador Christopher Stevens who, along with three other Americans, was killed in that city a few weeks ago.

It is safe to say that Stevens would have found the political hue and cry over his death very strange. For him, and many of his fellow U.S. diplomats, it was important not to become isolated within embassy fortresses. He was proud that the U.S. stood with the people of Libya against their oppressor.

What is strangest of all, though, is hearing Romney’s loud criticisms over the September Benghazi attack when last year he came out against forcibly removing Gaddafi.

But the real point of Libya is what happened after the death of the four Americans. There were much larger protests in appreciation of the U.S. than any of the anti-American demonstrations — ordinary Libyans wanted to express their gratitude for Obama’s intervention last year, to not let the murderous terrorists speak for them. This is just one example of how Obama has skillfully navigated the Arab Spring to preserve American influence.

Romney tries to argue that tumultuous events in the Mideast represent a foreign policy failure, as if players in the region would all fall into line for a Romney administration.

He is not only flattering himself but showing dangerous naivety about world affairs.

Photo: Voice of America

How Low Can You Go? Latino Voters Are Not Amused! Posted by The Editors

This post is by Johanna Mendelson Forman, a Scholar-in-Residence at the American University School of International Service.

With the election just days away the Romney campaign has tried again to make a last ditch effort to attract Latino voters.  In Florida, one of the biggest prizes in electoral votes, Latino voters could not be fooled by an offensive Spanish-language ad portraying President Obama as soft on dictators.  The ad, which started running yesterday on TV, tries to tar the President with connections to Venezuelan president, Hugo Chavez, and Cuba’s aging dictator, Fidel Castro

Fortunately, the immediate reaction from Florida’s Latino voters has been one of disbelief that Republicans would stoop this low to try to garner their support.  How could a candidate that has spoken out against immigration reform, who has supported self-deportation as the only solution for illegal aliens, and who has been against in-state tuition for the children of the undocumented be taken seriously?  Invoking smear tactics about foreign leaders cannot overcome a campaign that has been anti-immigrant from the get go and downright insensitive to the diversity of our Hispanic heritage.  Just because Romney tries to underscores his Mexican roots does not a Latino make! Ads alone cannot seal the deal in any election, and Latinos in Florida do not like what they see at the top of the Republican ticket

Obama was right when he talked about Romney’s most recent acquired ailment– “Romnesia.”  Does Romney not remember that in 2008 Obama received 67% of the Latino vote in the Sunshine State, compared with 31% for Sen. John McCain?   Did his advisors not read the most recent report of the Pew Hispanic Center that clearly showed that Latinos favored Democrats to Republicans, by a wide margin of 61 percent to 10 percent?   But can you blame a guy from trying?  Latinos represent 13.5 percent of the state’s registered voters it is highly unlikely that at this late date the Romney camp can win hearts and minds by running a Spanish TV ad that is both outrageous in its twisting of words, and offensive in bringing attention to the likes of an autocratic populist like Venezuela’s President, Hugo Chavez.

The dated concept of a president being soft on communists or coddling autocrats should be a warning sign that a vote for Romney is a throwback to an era of U.S. Latin American relations that does not reflect the growing partnership that President Obama has with our neighbors, equal partnership that has been a cornerstone of his foreign policy to the region since he first spoke of it at the April 2009 Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago:

“To move forward, we cannot let ourselves be prisoners of past disagreements... Too often, an opportunity to build a fresh partnership of the Americas has been undermined by stale debates. And we've heard all these arguments before, these debates that would have us make a false choice between rigid, state-run economies or unbridled and unregulated capitalism; between blame for right-wing paramilitaries or left-wing insurgents; between sticking to inflexible policies with regard to Cuba or denying the full human rights that are owed to the Cuban people. I didn't come here to debate the past -- I came here to deal with the future I believe, that we must learn from history, but we can't be trapped by it. As neighbors, we have a responsibility to each other and to our citizens. And by working together, we can take important steps forward to advance prosperity and security and liberty. That is the 21st century agenda that we come together to enact. That's the new direction that we can pursue.”

These are the words of President Obama who has been attacked by Chavez and by Castro. This is the leadership we need to work with our friends and our enemies in the Americas. Trying to make Obama look soft on those who challenge democracy and freedom had better think twice. Sunshine is the best disinfectant, and it sure looks like the Romney campaign could use a major cleaning job when it comes to its Spanish language advertising. This is what the Latino voters of Florida and the rest of our nation want to hear about the future, not some commie-baiting claptrap that panders to voter’s fears.

Romney Wrong on American Weakness Posted by Bill R. French

Tonight’s debate was right to include the rise of China as its own section for discussion. But taking the challenge posed by China seriously first requires an honest look at the Sino-U.S. relationship. Regrettably, here, Governor Romney instead decided to paint picture of fear and paranoia. In this effort, Governor Romney insinuated that China perceives the United States as economically and militarily weak due to the policies of the Obama Administration. "How strong are we going to be?" he asked, going on to to say:

“They look at the fact that we owe them a trillion dollars and owe other people 16 trillion (dollars) in total, including them. They -- they look at our -- our decision to -- to cut back on our military capabilities -- a trillion dollars. The secretary of defense called these trillion dollars of cuts to our military devastating…”

 First, it is disappointing that on the serious question of Chinese holdings of U.S. debt, honest conversation has been systematically avoided. Far from being a situation in which the United States is weakened or beholden to China because of Beijing’s holdings of U.S. debt, China actually depends upon buying American Treasury Bonds to favorably regulate the value of its currency. James Parker at The Diplomat explains:

There is an old banking saying which goes something like: “If you owe your bank a thousand pounds, you are at their mercy. If you owe a million pounds, then the position is reversed.” …  China is not a commercial bank; it did not decide to “lend” its foreign exchange reserves to the U.S. per se. Rather, China’s accumulation of reserves is a by-product of the government’s exchange rate policy. It used to buy large quantities of U.S. dollar assets because it had to maintain reserves of the currency to which the renminbi was pegged (although Beijing has allowed the renminbi to fluctuate around a basket of currencies since 2005)…

Present day, Parker continues, "the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) maintains a weakened renminbi by agreeing to purchase nearly all U.S. dollars accumulated by Chinese exporters and corporations." This scheme works because some of these dollars, in turn, are invested in U.S. Treasury Bonds. The return on investment on these bonds helps to finance the scheme by counteracting some of the inflation generated by replacing American dollars with renminibi. The remainder of his explanation is highly recommended, though slightly technical.

Similarly disappointing was Romney’s treatment of the American trade deficit with China.  After characterizing the trade deficit as a “trade war,” he went on to say:

“It’s a silent one and they’re winning. We have an enormous trade imbalance with China. And it’s worse this year than last year. And it was worse last year than the year before.”

To be sure, trade imbalance presents serious challenges. But characterizing those challenges as a “trade war” polarizes the issue far too severely, blurring the fact that US-Chinese bilateral trade benefits the United States, even while in deficit. For instance, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, “on average, of every dollar spent on an item labeled ‘Made in China,’ 55 cents go for services produced in the United States. In other words, the U.S. content of “Made in China” is about 55%.”

Second, in the context of China cited above, Romney implies that the future of the U.S. military – which, baring sequestration, will see its budget continue to rise slightly in real dollars – is somehow demonstrating weakness. While the modernization of the People’s Liberation Amy should be taken seriously, the balance of forces remains sharply in Washington’s favor. For example, the “budgetary basics” confirm this, as I have pointed out with former Assistant Secretary of Defense Lawrence Korb: “The Department of Defense estimates that Chinese military expenditures were $105 billion in 2006, while the US spent $419 billion on defense, a gap of $314 billion. In 2010, US military spending increased to $533.8 billion while Chinese military spending increased to only $160billion, a gap of $373.8 billion -- nearly $60 billion greater than the gap in 2006.”

Yet, Obama was right to consistently point out tonight that it is military capabilities and not budgets that determine military power. Here, while it is certainly the case that the PLA has developed considerable capabilities, they pale in comparison to the ability of the United States to project power around the world. Awareness of this massive disparity in power projection capabilities has even generated discussion about the option for the United States to simply exersize "offshore control" of China's economy by closing maritime choke points in the unlikely and tragic event of conflict.

For instance, as the president pointed out tonight, “We have these things called aircraft carriers where planes land on them.” While the United States maintains 11 aircraft carriers, the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) possess only one  – the Liaoning. As the PLAN’s sole carrier, The Liaoning will be limited to training operations for the foreseeable future as the Chinese navy figures out the basics of carrier aviation, as Naval War College professor Andrew Erickson has explained. Indeed, as he points out, the Chinese have even yet to successfully land an aircraft on her hull.

What was it that Governor Romney was saying about weakness, again?

The Skinny on Bayonets Posted by Heather Hurlburt

In case you were wondering, MG Paul Eaton (ret) tells me that everyone is still issued a bayonet to go with his/her M4. The problem being that M4s are shorter than older rifles, so it is actually harder to fight with one.

Romney's Evolving Stances Posted by James Lamond

In tonight's debate, Governor Romney outlined his strategy towards Iran. He stated he wants to lay out a pressure track of economic sanctions, which he says are working, combined with increased pressure to isolate Iran diplomatically, backed by a strong  credible military threat. This was the message that came out of his speech last week at the Virginia Military Institute as well. This has also been the cornerstone of the Obama administration strategy over the past three years. 

However, this has not always been Romney's position. In June, when speaking to a conservative audience Romney stated: 

"I think, by and large, you can just look at the things the president has done and do the opposite... You look at his policies with regards to Iran... He's almost sounded like he's more frightened that Israel might take military action than he's concerned that Iran might become nuclear."

Of course, tonight he said he would do more sanctions and more diplomatic isolation, but that is not quite the "opposite" of what the president is doing. Accepting the premise of the strategy is a welcome development, considering some of the hawkish stances that his advisors have taken. However it is also another of the Governor's inconsistencies on foreign policy issues. A common trend throughout this campaign has been an attack from Romney on a current policy, then outlining essentially the existing approach. This has been the case on Syria, Afghanistan and Libya. 

Earlier in the campaign season, Romney had embraced the rhetorical bluster of his neoconservative and hawkish advisors. Now as the election approaches he is forced to give specifics, he has shifted towards a more centrist approach.  As friend-of-DA Brian Katulis wrote in this Sunday's New York Daily News, "Though in policies and plans, Romney offers nothing to distinguish himself from the President, in tenor and tone, he carries a neoconservative shtick."

 

Debating America's Response to the Green Movement Posted by James Lamond

In tonight's debate, Gov. Romney brought up a repeated criticism on Iran. That President Obama made a huge mistake in not being more supportive of the 2009 Green Movement in Iran. The argument has been repeated by conservatives critical of the administration for three years. The oversimplification of this argument is astonishing. However, if one remembers correctly the whole reason for caution in support of the uprising was that this was that the both the U.S. and the protesters did not want this to be perceived as a a U.S. inspired political movement. It is also simply a counter-factual argument, but as usual, Dan Drezner says is best:

The beauty of this criticism is that it rests on a magical counter-factual that will never be tested: according to this narrative, if only Barack Obama had been more forceful in June 2009, then the Iranian regime would have crumbled and sweetness and light would have prevailed in the Middle East. It's a great campaign argument, because we'll never know what would have happened if Obama had acted as Rubin, Romney et al would have liked him to act. Romney can pledge that he would have acted differently in the summer of 2009, and he'll never, ever have to flip-flop on it.

The thing is, this argument that Obama could have tipped the scales in 2009 is utter horses**t. Recall that, during the uprising, the leaders of the Green Movement wanted nothing to do with more sanctions against Iran or with military action -- it took them six months of brutal repression for them to even toy with embracing targeted sanctions. Indeed, the reason the administration tiptoed around the Green Movement was that they did not want the Khamenei regime to taint the resistance as a Western-inspired creation. If Obama had been more vocal during the initial stages of the movement, it likely would have accelerated the timetable of the crackdown. And no U.S. action short of a full-scale ground assault could have stopped that.

Drezner also points out a potential side effect that that is so often left out of this line of this arguemnt: "such an approach would also spur Tehran into accelerating its nuclear program as a means of guaranteeing its own survival (which is, by the way, the one constant of Iranian foreign policy)." 

 

A Renaissance for the Project for a New American Century? Posted by The Editors

By Bill French

In 2000, the Project for a New American Century published its capstone policy document, “Rebuilding America’s Defenses.” As is well known, the document formed the core of neoconservative national security thought and the intellectual DNA of what later became the Bush Doctrine. But now, a decade later, how alive are its ideas? A quick sketch of the document alongside parts of Governor Romney’s national security platform shows that some of PNAC’s ideas well positioned for a renaissance.

This should come as little surprise given that six of Romney’s national security advisors are former PNAC members, including Eliot Cohen – who wrote the forward to Romney’s primary foreign policy document – and Robert Kagan – a Romney top foreign policy advisory.

That said, neoconservatives are only one camp in the Romney campaign.  The other is composed of moderate realists. This helps to explain a peculiar, confusing  feature of Romney’s national security campaign: some policies appear moderate and barely distinguishable from the present course – presumably attributable to the realist camp – while on other issues, the campaign holds radical positions reflective of neoconservativism.

At the broadest level, “Rebuilding America’s Defenses” was a strategy to achieve an American dominated 21^st century. “At present,” it reads, “the United States faces no global rival. America’s grand strategy should aim to preserve and extend this advantageous position as far into the future as possible.”

The Romney campaign evinces signs that it remains committed to the same ends. In Mitt Romney first major foreign policy address, he openly declared, using familiar language, that “This century must be an American Century.”

These objectives are not entirely unique in the history of American foreign policy. In 1948, George Kennan in Policy Planning Study 23 prescribed similar goals:

"… we have about 50% of the world's wealth but only 6.3 % of  its population. This disparity is particularly great as between ourselves and the peoples of Asia. In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity w without positive detriment to our national security.”

However, despite the Cold War having ended a decade before “Rebuilding America’s Defenses” was written, PNAC had gone beyond Kennan.  Above, Kennan introduces a critical qualifier: power should be pursued “without positive determinant to our national security.” That is, the pursuit of power must be self-limited. Yet, this self-limiting was absent from PNAC, and there is reason suspect something similar may fester in a Romney Administration.

Neoconservative foreign policy been unable to self-limit in this respect because it considers military power as the basic way that dominance must be achieved.  PNAC noted that, “America should seek to preserve and extend its position of global leadership by maintaining the preeminence of U.S. military forces.” Under this assumption, the risks of overstretch, blowback and opportunity cost by neglecting other national security tools – i.e. incurring ‘determinant to our national security’ – is heightened. And if the objective must be dominance, and if dominance can only be achieved by military power, these risks seem more necessary than they would otherwise, and even acceptable.

Evidence suggests that a Romney foreign policy may go down the same path. While his main foreign policy document, “An American Century,” includes discussion on non-military power, his more elaborated national security proposals have heavily emphasized the role of the military. For example, Romney has infamously proposed to spend 4% GDP on the Pentagon. Note that this is above the 3.5-3.8% of GDP recommended in “Rebuilding America’s Defenses.” Meanwhile, Paul Ryan calls for reducing the State Department’s budget from $47.8 billion in 2012 to $43 billion in 2013 and $38 billion by 2016. As Gordon Adams has observed, "If this were to happen…it would amount to the further escalation of the militarization of American foreign policy."

For a sense of scale, consider that Todd Harrison of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Analysis has shown that by 2022, spending 4% of GDP on the Pentagon would equal $986 billion per year. Alternatively, the current trajectory of defense spending would otherwise result in $2.6 of GDP in 2022, for a total yearly cost of $629 billion. The total difference between the two plans, according to Harrison, are $1.8 trillion. Some estimates place it higher.

Should the Romney campaign be given the opportunity to form a transition team to the White House after the election, his part-neoconservative, part-realist national security team will have to resolve its internal differences. While it is impossible to predict the odds for how successful the neoconservative component of his advisors will be in influencing policy, the potential for a PNAC renaissance looms.

Foreign Policy Debate Preview -- Do You Believe in Magic? Posted by David Shorr

Monday night's debate on foreign policy will feature one candidate with a strong pragmatic record and another with a lot of rhetoric about strength that he tries to pass off as a policy platform. Three weeks ago Governor Romney published a universally panned Wall Street Journal op-ed on the Middle East, prompting me to wonder whether the mere veneer of a foreign policy is the best Romney can muster. 

The truth is, Romney has a one-point foreign policy plan to go with his economic plan. For the past year, Romney has argued that a more bullheaded approach -- brooking no possibility of others resisting American wishes -- will get the rest of the world to straighten up and fly right. As I've said before, right-wingers like Romney really should heed an adage widely cited in the military: the enemy gets a vote. Meaning, other players aren't necessarily obliged to do what we want them to.

Meanwhile, Governor Romney and his advisers regularly emphasize words like leadership, resolve, strength, and exceptionalism as if they're the Republicans' magical powers to melt away the world's problems and problem-makers. This naive ideological faith that steely determination can shape world events seems to be the essence of Romney's approach, and it prompted me to borrow a page from Paul Krugman and coin the idea of the Resolve Fairy^TM. (The trick-or-treating daughter of a fellow Krugman fan dressed as the Confidence Fairy is pictured above.) And I have to give a shout-out to Daniel Nexon over at Duck of Minerva for putting it all together and casting Romney as a misguided Teddy Roosevelt wannabe who advocates "talking loudly and carrying a magic wand."

But going back to the debate, let's get a few things clear:

• President Obama has put Iran under the strongest sanctions and international pressure it has ever confronted -- a success he's achieved not through bluster but dilligent coalition-building. The sanctions that have spurred hyperinflation in Iran are the major inconvenient fact for the Romney campaign, and it would be impossible to carry them out without the cooperation of other nations. As for the relatively new GOP talking point that they call for quicker, earlier imposition of sanctions, it's important to note that recruiting international support gets much harder when the United States tries to rush things -- rather than persistently yet steadily spotlighting Iranian intransigence as President Obama's done. For one thing, the international community is a little leery of American alarmism after that whole episode with the WMD that turned out weren't in Iraq. Also NB: for all the Romney-ites emphasis on supporting America's friends and allies, South Korea, Japan, and India are among the biggest importers of Iranian oil. 
• If Romney had been in the White House last year, Qaddafi would still be ruling Libya. Can we finally call BS on the Republicans' way over-hyped Benghazi "scandal?" For one thing, I have a hard time listening to Chairman Darrell Issa's supposed concern over national security when he mishandles sensitive information and endangers the lives of Libyans who have helped the United States (not to mention House Republicans slashing the State Department security budget). For another thing, by now it's obvious what Obama's harshest critics are really after: not the facts of the attack (when and by whom it was planned), but playing word games over which political side makes the attack sound worse. And for Ambassador Stevens and the three other Americans killed, it would be a sad legacy if we forgot the real meaning of Benghazi. President Obama worked with NATO allies and Arab partner nations to mount Operation Unified Protector to keep Qaddafi from slaughtering thousands of his own people in Benghazi -- where Stevens was the first senior official on the ground, despite the dangers -- and at the time Romney said Obama was going too far. 
• China is another case where Obama has shown results in contrast to Romney's hotheadedness. Believe it or not, the Benghazi attack wasn't the first time Romney inserted himself in the middle of a delicate international situation before the dust had even settled. President Obama's team was still working closely with a Chinese dissident who had been hosted and protected by the US embassy, Chen Guangcheng, when Romney impulsively seized on a sudden reversal by calling it “a dark day for freedom” and “a day of shame for the Obama administration.” Today Chen and his family are living in Manhattan, where he is a visiting fellow at New York University. And as for the Chinese currency, President Obama's persistent pressure on Beijing helped induce an 11% appreciation in the value of the renminbi -- to the benefit of US exports -- having success where President Bush failed to achieve any in his eight years. (For a reminder of John Bolton's role in the Romney campaign's hot mess of a foreign policy, see this dissection of Bolton's own op-ed on Chen Guangcheng.)

So on Monday night I expect Romney to fall into the trap H.L. Mencken famously described: "for every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong." And I expect President Obama to call him on it. 

Pentagon: Now on Sale at The Foreign Policy Auction Posted by The Editors

Guest Post by Ben Freeman, Ph.D.

Ben Freeman is an Investigator at the Project on Government Oversight, where he specializes in Department of Defense personnel issues, weapons procurement, and the impact of lobbying by foreign governments on U.S. foreign policy.

The ongoing debate about Pentagon spending and sequestration is a glaring example of how special interests with deep pockets can convince policymakers that even their most absurd claims are true.

After slashing tens of thousands of jobs during years of record profits, the defense industry finances “studies” professing their ability to create jobs. While threatening to layoff off even more workers to save for their corporations’ money, big Pentagon contractor CEO’s enjoy lavish compensation packages worth more than $20 million. To put that into perspective, the Pentagon could pay more than 300 soldiers with the compensation of just one of these CEO’s.

But, Pentagon contractors aren’t the only special interest that would like to keep the spigot of taxpayer money flowing to the Pentagon. For decades, lobbyists working for foreign governments have been quietly, but effectively, working to keep Pentagon money flowing to foreign countries. From fighting to keep and expand military bases in Germany, to lobbying for sending dozens of new F-16’s to Taiwan, foreign lobbying has been instrumental in keeping the Pentagon budget bloated.

Foreign lobbying’s impact on the U.S. military is one of the few issues in America politics that can, without hyperbole, trace its roots back to Adolf Hitler. As the Nazi party came to power in Germany during the 1930’s it sought to influence citizens in other countries, particularly the U.S. On October 22, 1936 a New York Post headline read “Nazi Publicist on GOP Payroll,” and reported that the Republican State Committee was employing prop­agandists associated with U.S. Nazi groups. Outrage over this and similar incidents ultimately led to passage of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) – the first major piece of lobbying legislation at the Federal level.

Reports filed under FARA tell stories of special interest influence that are eerily reminiscent of the tactics employed by big Pentagon contractors. From making large campaign contributions on the very same day they meet with a Member of Congress to discuss a foreign client’s needs, to drafting legislation on behalf of a foreign government, there is little that many D.C. lobbyists won’t do for their foreign clients.

And, most of these governments aren’t exactly staunch U.S. allies. As I chronicle in my book, The Foreign Policy Auction, almost every country that experienced political uprisings during the “Arab Spring” lobbied in the U.S. The Egyptian government, specifically, was aggressively lobbying for U.S. non-intervention before, during, and after the revolution in Egypt. The Pakistan foreign lobby went on a lobbying blitz following the death of Osama bin Laden, in what was a relatively successful campaign that kept more than a billion dollars in U.S. military aid flowing to the country harboring the mastermind of 9/11. China routinely lobbies to discuss the U.S.’s growing debt. Even Iran has lobbyists working in the U.S.

In short, almost every major U.S. national security decision in the 21st century has been influenced by the lobbying of foreign governments.

This undermines U.S. sovereignty and costs taxpayers billions of dollars a year. Foreign lobbyists have even cost the family members of terrorist attack victims $4.5 billion, as I document in The Foreign Policy Auction. Here’s how the story goes:

Muammar Gaddafi’s Libya sponsored and carried out several terrorist attacks that killed U.S. citizens, including the bombing of France’s UTA Flight 172. After years of fighting in U.S. courts, families of UTA Flight 172 victims were awarded $6 billion in damages on January 15^th 2008 by a D.C. District Court.

Two months later the Libyan government was looking for a way out of paying this hefty sum, and signed a $2.4 million contract with The Livingston Group, headed by Bob Livingston, former Republican Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee.

Ultimately, this investment helped Libya get all their terrorist attacks forgiven, during the height of the “War on Terror,” for just pennies on the dollar.

Within a month of signing the contract, the Livingston Group had, on Libya’s behalf, contacted Minority Leader John Boehner, numerous officials at the State Department including the Assistant Secretary of State for Legislative Affairs and Secretary Condoleeza Rice’s chief of staff, as well as staffers and Members of a number of Committees including the Judiciary, Armed Services, Foreign Affairs, and Foreign Relations.

On July 31^st the Libyan Claims Resolution Act that the Livingston had been pushing was introduced. By that time the firm had contacted nearly 600 Legislators, staffers, members of the Executive Branch, and other influential players on behalf of Libya, according to FARA records. The Livingston Group was even gracious enough to provide Legislators with actual legislative language and a script for discussing Libya in Congressional hearings. In short, agents working on behalf of a known terrorist were putting words in the mouths of U.S. politicians.

According to an official statement, the families of the victims of flight 772 were not pleased with the Bill because it would, “invalidate the court’s judgment, and allow Libya to avoid a court judgment. This simply cannot be what Congress intends.”

Unfortunately for the victims’ families, the bill passed both Chambers that same day. Within weeks the bill was signed into law and the U.S.-Libya Claims Settlement Agreement was signed by U.S. and Libyan representatives in Tripoli. The Agreement required Libya to pay just $1.5 billion to U.S. families who lost loved ones in all of Libya’s terrorist attacks; $4.5 billion less than the UTA Flight 172 victims’ families had been awarded just 8 months before.

The real tragedy is that Qaddhafi was neither the first nor the last terrorist to be pardoned through the work of foreign lobbyists. The State Department announced just last month that the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), or People's Mojahed in Organization of Iran was being removed from the list of foreign terrorist organizations, after years of running a well-financed lobbying, advertising, and public relations campaign.

The fact is that every single day the agents of foreign governments are working to undermine U.S. foreign policy. The Auction is always open. The only question is - which country is buying your government today?

Romney’s Evolving Security Policy: Unreality and Distinctions without a Difference Posted by Bill R. French

Today, Governor Romney gave his third major speech on foreign policy in what appears to be a last-ditch effort to pass the commander-in-chief test. This came just a day after John Lehman, one of Romney’s advisors and Reagan’s Secretary of the Navy, offered further details into the campaign’s much flaunted plan to increase shipbuilding from 9 to 15 vessels per year. Reading both sets of proposals together confirms that the campaign is continuing its foreign policy agenda of taking positions that either stay the course plotted by the current administration -- while claiming some sort of a new departure -- or represent basic misunderstandings of key security realities.  

Here are four of Romney’s proposals that fit into those categories and leave unanswered questions.

1. “I will deepen our critical cooperation with our partners in the Gulf.”

The current administration has already dramatically increased security cooperation with Gulf partners. Included in that cooperation has been a $30 billion dollar arms deal to Saudi Arabia which contains 84 modified F-15s – adding to the country’s already enormous military advantage over Iran – and integrating the capabilities of American regional partners into an interoperable missile defense system. The latter effort has involved a multi-billion dollar deal to sell the United Arab Emirates the advanced THAAD ballistic missile interceptor system and the construction of a missile defense radar site in Qatar. In addition, the United States recently concluded a naval exercise focused on countering underwater mines with over 30 countries in the Gulf in response – the first of its kind.

Hence, the question to the Romney campaign is obvious: what has been deficient about U.S. cooperation with its Gulf partners and what should be done differently?

2. Lehman: Add an additional carrier air wing to the U.S. Navy.

While Lehman’s proposals made for an interesting read -- including a number of serious thoughts --  this was among those that appeared intended to help check the box on having elaborated on Romney’s much touted shipping plan without having met the burden of making sense. That’s because the basic math and operational realities of the Navy’s carrier fleet and air wings make this idea dead in the water.  

The background here is that despite having 11 carriers, the Navy maintains only 10 air wings of around 80 aircraft. Romney now wants to go 11-for-11. But the reason for the current number of air wings is because the full carrier fleet is never fully deployed at once, making having enough planes for the 11^th carrier superfluous. At any given moment, a number of the Empire-State-Building sized ships are undergoing repair or nuclear refueling. Because of this, according to a RAND study, Nimitz class aircraft carriers are deployed an average of 19 percent of the time. Of course, the Navy can surge more of its carrier fleet into action -- as is being done currently with a deployment of two carriers in the Gulf and two in the Pacific --  but since 1990, the Navy has never surged more than 6 carriers into service at once. For these reasons, what function an expensive 11^th air wing would have is unclear.

3. “I will call on our NATO allies to keep the greatest military alliance in history strong by honoring their commitment to each devote 2 percent of their GDP to security spending. Today, only 3 of the 28 NATO nations meet this benchmark.”

Of Romney’s latest round of foreign policy commitments, this one is surely the easiest to meet: calling on other countries to do something can be done in the time it takes to utter a phrase. However, having that call be meaningful or accompanied by any reasonable chance of success is another matter entirely. While hopefully those who have projected the Euro Crisis will extend some 20 years are wrong, the fact remains: no solution remains in site and funds are scarce for military spending. Even if the crisis was to be ‘fixed’ overnight and the continent’s debt was brought under control, the European budgets would no doubt remain tight and highly prioritized.

With this backdrop, one wonders what plan Governor Romney has that will convince European members of NATO to spend more on defense when their publics generally want to reduce or maintain current levels military spending?

4. “I will vigorously pursue the terrorists who attacked our consulate in Benghazi and killed Americans.”

Given the tragic deaths of Ambassador Stevens and three other American diplomats, this bromide is perhaps the most disconcerting of those released by the Romney campaign in its national security media blitz.  Here, Romney tacitly paints the picture that the administration is not  pursuing those responsible for the attack against the U.S consulate in Benghazi but all evidence is to the contrary.

First, Libyan officials have just announced a number of arrests made in connection with the attack.

Second, there are mounting signs of potential military action against the group that perpetrated the killings and affiliated organizations. The Washington Post is reporting that:

 “The White House has held a series of secret meetings in recent months to examine the threat posed by al-Qaeda’s franchise in North Africa and consider for the first time whether to prepare for unilateral strikes.”

Further, the New York Times reports that:

 “The top-secret Joint Special Operations Command is compiling so-called target packages of detailed information about the suspects…the command is preparing the dossiers as the first step in anticipation of possible orders from President Obama to take action against those determined to have played a role in the attack on a diplomatic mission in the eastern city of Benghazi that killed Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three colleagues three weeks ago.”

 In connection with these developments, the intelligence group Stratfor is reporting on "curious U.S. and French military deployments.”

What, then, would Governor Romney be doing differently on this score? 

Initial Steps Towards a Right-Sized, Targeted Approach to Maritime Stability in the Western Pacific, Part 2 Posted by Bill R. French

Last week I began to outline some initial steps available to the United States to encourage greater maritime stability in the Western Pacific. The overriding sense was to examine immediate, near-term options that were both ‘right-sized’ and ‘targeted.’  Emphasizing ‘targeted’ approaches calls for actions to address instability associated with ongoing disputes specifically. This should seem obvious but is in contrasts to the approach taken by some conservatives who treat maritime stability as a 'trickle-down effect' of regional balance of power and American military presence. Emphasizing ‘right-sized’ approaches calls for being mindful of the potential consequences of overreaction and escalation – a case I’ve made elsewhere while critiquing the official GOP proposal for dealing with Chinese assertiveness.

This is not to say ‘hard’ measures cannot be useful, only that they must be smart. To be sure, exploring smart approaches to maritime stability in the region is particularly timely given the administration's extensive use of hard power in the Pacific -- recently summarized by Deputy Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter -- and the continued standoff between Japan and China over disputed territories in the East China Sea.

The three recommendations proposed last week work in that direction. However, depending on Chinese behavior after the leadership transition, stronger measures may be worth considering. Should Beijing continue or increase its assertiveness, it may be constructive to signal that more assertive behavior  will come at higher costs designed specifically to undermine the effectiveness of such strong-armed strategies. 

Targeted military and security consequences are one way to affect Chinese calculus in this way. For American policymakers, this creates the problem of having to carefully balance the strength of the signal with the risks of stoking the fears and insecurity of Chinese decision makers. A potential solution to this problem is outlined below as a fourth recommendation:

Romney's Foreign Policy Veneer Posted by David Shorr

Every time Mitt Romney tries to talk about foreign policy he only reveals himself as an emperor with no clothes, and his latest Wall Street Journal op-ed on the Middle East is no exception. Now it's true that Romney trots out my very favorite Republican magic word resolve -- a vague-to-meaningless virtue that supposedly deters hostile deeds and melts animosity. But Romney's WSJ piece represented such a new level of vacuity it made me think differently about Team Romney's approach.

I'm starting to think Governor Romney is merely trying to create the appearance of foreign policy. The best way to describe it would be akin to Stephen Colbert's famous truthiness. What would that be, foreign policyness? Or policyish? 

In other words, it's time to flip around the question about the lack of policy specifics and look at what's being provided in its place. I can't add much to what Greg Scoblete, Daniel Larison, Danielle Pletka, and Jennifer Rubin have already said about how far Romney fell short of offering a constructive alternative to deal with the Middle East. Except this thought: what if this bland nonsense goes as far as the Romney camp feels compelled to? What if this is their unreflective, arrogant, of-course-we'd-do-it-better idea of a foreign policy? What if this looks like foreign policy to the nominee offering himself as the next commander in chief?

As I wrote in reaction to Romney's July speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, Republicans' 2012 platform has often made me wonder if they really think foreign policy and national security are as easy as they make it sound. Their proposals carry no trace of difficult trade-offs, unintended consequences, or defiance in the face of "resolve." When I read passages like below, it only confirms a sense of the self-delusion: 

Yet amid this upheaval, our country seems to be at the mercy of events rather than shaping them. We're not moving them in a direction that protects our people or our allies...

Since World War II, America has been the leader of the Free World. We're unique in having earned that role not through conquest but through promoting human rights, free markets and the rule of law....

The Arab Spring presented an opportunity to help move millions of people from oppression to freedom. But it also presented grave risks. We needed a strategy for success, but the president offered none....

In this period of uncertainty, we need to apply a coherent strategy of supporting our partners in the Middle East—that is, both governments and individuals who share our values.

But this Middle East policy will be undermined unless we restore the three sinews of our influence: our economic strength, our military strength and the strength of our values... 

For me, what really solidified this notion of the Romney campaign's confusion of superficiality with substance was top Romney adviser Jim Talent's appearance on Chuck Todd's Daily Rundown this morning. Go ahead and watch the clip for yourself, but I was struck by the off-handed way former Senator Talent said: "we can have a foreign policy where we stabilize these parts of the world if we'll act in the bipartisan traditions of foreign policy since World War II." Apparently all it would take to settle things down in the Middle East would be to "set forth a clear vision for where the region ought to go." Point the way to constitutional governance and respect for human rights, support those who are with us, oppose those who are against, and there you are! Stability, I guess. To his credit, Chuck Todd pressed the question of how deeply the United States should involve itself in molding political order in the region. Talent's response: "we should set forth a vision and identify and give credibility" to the good guys. (Hmmm, maybe I was wrong to pick on resolve, maybe vision is really the thing.) Then for good measure -- and with an attitude of why-don't-you-get-this impatience --Talent rattled off the essentials of the post-WWII consensus: "lead," "work through alliances," "maintain robust power," "anticipate events." 

As I say, what's emerging is that Mitt Romney isn't actually holding back the details of his foreign policy; he thinks he's offering them.

Obama Foreign Policy - A Six-Week Appraisal Posted by David Shorr

According to David Ignatius, President Obama's refusal to make major foreign policy moves in the final weeks before the election will leave the 2012 campaign without a meaningful public airing of the subject:

This strategy of avoiding major foreign policy risks or decisions may help get Obama reelected. But he is robbing the country of a debate it needs to have — and denying himself the public understanding and support he will need to be an effective foreign policy president in a second term, if the “rope-a-dope” campaign should prove successful.

This is a pretty odd idea. Ignatius seems to argue that without real-time statecraft at the height of the political season, voters won't know where the candidates stand. I guess the last four years somehow don't really count. 

In terms of the campaign itself, only by spending the last year living under a rock could you believe voters head to the polls with no foreign policy issues they can weigh. Take President Obama's press conference at the November 2011 APEC summit in Hawaii for example. In the midst of the Republican primary candidate forums, reporters asked the president about Governor Romney's cheeky boast that he would stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon whereas Obama would allow it to happen. That claim and President Obama's response (quoted in part below) were early salvos in a debate Mr. Ignatius appears to have missed. 

[Y]ou take a look at what we've been able to accomplish in mobilizing the world community against Iran over the last three years and it shows steady, determined, firm progress in isolating the Iranian regime, and sending a clear message that the world believes it would be dangerous for them to have a nuclear weapon.

Now, is this an easy issue? No. Anybody who claims it is, is either politicking or doesn’t know what they're talking about. 

This has been the heart of an ongoing debate for nearly a year: how exactly, aside from tough-talking bluster, would our Republican friends manage to compel Iran to roll over and obey US wishes? Last spring I gave an optimistic view of the quality of the foreign policy debate, arguing that in 2012 the opposition couldn't dodge the tough choices that governing entails. Throughout the campaign Team Romney has been pressed to say how their policy would differ from President Obama's mix of strong international pressure and attempted negotiations. (By the way, I'm not sure how Ignatius can argue -- on the basis of an Ahmadinejad taunt in his UN speech -- that these pre-election weeks represent a critical window for the nuclear talks with Iran.) In terms of the Romney-Obama contrast, the president himself has tried numerous times to goad Romney to admit that he favors going to war with Iran, most recently in his 60 Minutes interview (h/t RealClearPolitics). After all, the Obama administration has run a full-court press on all peaceful means.

And the debate has continued literally to this very day, with Romney saying on the campaign trail Friday about Iran that "I do not believe that in the final analysis we will have to use military action." From the Washington Post's report, here's how Romney tried to distinguish his position from Obama policy:

When a reporter asked how Romney’s position on Iran’s nuclear arms development differs from President Obama’s, Romney accused the president of having “moved over time.”

“From the very beginning, I thought crippling sanctions needed to be put in place,” Romney said. Of Obama, he added, “his words more recently are more consistent with the words I’ve been speaking for some time, and we’ll see what actions he pursues.”

So the latest line from the Romney camp is that they'd take the harsher steps more quickly. Okay, this is another substantive contrast we could debate. Two problems. First is the inconvenient fact that the sanctions imposed by President Obama are far more stringent than any of the steps taken by President Bush.

Second is the importance of lining up international support. As they teach you in Foreign Policy 101, sanctions have to be multilateral in order to work; they're just not effective unless all the key players are on board. I make the comparison to President Bush not to say he should've gone further, but to highlight the hubris of Team Romney's we'd-be-tougher argument. Because recruiting international support gets much harder when the United States tries to rush things -- rather than persistently yet steadily spotlighting Iranian intransigence, just as President Obama's done. For one thing, the international community is a little leery of American alarmism after that whole episode with the WMD that turned out weren't in Iraq.

As Romney has campaigned on a platform of general toughness and bluster with scant practical policy steps, it's become clear that their core argument is a belief in what can be achieved with just an aura of strength. Just a couple weeks ago, top Romney surrogate Rich Williamson claimed the Middle East embassy protests wouldn't even have occurred under a President Romney. This is the same blind overconfidence and magical thinking behind Romney's secret videotape boast that the eonomy would get a major boost just from his being elected and before he'd done anything. (With a nod to Paul Krugman, I invented the "Resolve Fairy"^TM to drive home the point.) 

With Williamson's boast as backdrop, I'll close with a question about Libya. As we know, there has been confusion over the nature of the Benghazi attack, which has prompted this statement by the Director of National Intelligence and an ongoing investigation by the State Department. But for the purposes of offering voters a constructive debate to help inform their choices, which is more important for us to discuss: diplomatic security in Benghazi or what was the right response to Ghaddafi's bloody assault on civilians in that city last year? Which issue is a better commander in chief test? As ABC News' Jake Tapper documented a year ago, Romney's position on intervening in Libya was all over the map.

Of course the chief difference between the two issues is that the atttack that claimed the lives of Ambassador Stevens and three others occurred just a few weeks ago, here in the midst of the campaign. Does that mean it's more important? That seems to be what David Ignatius is saying, and I don't think Ignatius' argument is a good case for making the campaign season action-packed with foreign policy. Unless he's saying voters can only decide issues that happened recently; in which case he doesn't give voters much credit.

You say Potato ... Posted by James Lamond

Heather has a comprehensive breakdown of Mitt Romney’s speech at the Clinton Global Initiative earlier this week that is worth a read. After going back a taking a look at the speech, one of his proposals jumped put. In his CGI remarks Romney proposes the creation of “Prosperity Pacts,” to encourage economic growth and foreign investment.  This sounds like an interesting idea. The only issue is that it already exists. The State Department has a program call the Partnership for Growth, which does pretty much what Governor Romney proposes.

Romney specifically proposes:

To foster work and enterprise in the Middle East and in other developing countries, I will initiate “Prosperity Pacts.”  Working with the private sector, the program will identify the barriers to investment, trade, and entrepreneurialism in developing nations. In exchange for removing those barriers and opening their markets to U.S. investment and trade, developing nations will receive U.S. assistance packages focused on developing the institutions of liberty, the rule of law, and property rights.

We will focus our efforts on small and medium-size businesses. Microfinance has been an effective tool at promoting enterprise and prosperity, but we must expand support to small and medium-size businesses that are too large for microfinance, but too small for traditional banks.

Now the language from the State Department’s website explaining its Partnership for Growth program:

Partnership for Growth (PFG) is a partnership between the United States and a select group of countries to accelerate and sustain broad-based economic growth… It involves rigorous joint analysis of constraints to growth, the development of joint action plans to address these constraints, and high-level mutual accountability for implementation. One of PFG’s signature objectives is to engage governments, the private sector and civil society with a broad range of tools to unlock new sources of investment, including domestic resources and foreign direct investment. By improving coordination, leveraging private investment, and focusing political commitment throughout both governments, the Partnership for Growth enables partners to achieve better development results.

The program has already begun with El Salvador, Ghana, Philippines, and Tanzania as the first group of partners. 

2012 and the Implications for Terrorism Detention Policy Posted by James Lamond

For those that missed it, Charlie Savage has a piece on the role of detainee policy and torture this campaign season. He reports:

Mr. Romney’s advisers have privately urged him to “rescind and replace President Obama’s executive order” and permit secret “enhanced interrogation techniques against high-value detainees that are safe, legal and effective in generating intelligence to save American lives,” according to an internal Romney campaign memorandum.

While the memo is a policy proposal drafted by Mr. Romney’s advisers in September 2011, and not a final decision by him, its detailed analysis dovetails with his rare and limited public comments about interrogation.

…

The Romney campaign document, obtained by The New York Times, is a five-page policy paper titled “Interrogation Techniques.” It was a near-final draft circulated last September among the Romney campaign’s “national security law subcommittee” for any further comments before it was to be submitted to Mr. Romney. The panel consists of a brain trust of conservative lawyers, most of whom are veterans of the George W. Bush administration.

Terrorist detention has clearly not been a priority campaign issue this year. When foreign policy and national security issues do rise to the campaign discussion it has typically been Iran, the Benghazi attack and the protests in the Middle East. To a lesser extent Russia and China has also been discused. However, as was seen with the NDAA battle last year, this debate is far from over and whover wins in November will be faced with serious decisions.

What I continue to find surprising however is the debate continuing specifically on the issue of “enhanced interrogation techniques.”  In 2008 both John McCain and Barack Obama took strong stances against hese abuses. Additionally expert interrogators repeatedly discount the utility of  “EITs”:

Mark Fallon, a former interrogator and special agent in charge of the criminal investigation task force at Guantanamo Bay: “I was privy to the information from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed at the time. I’m not aware of any information or intelligence that was a product from water boarding…  I’ve seen no information that the infliction of pain equates to the elicitation of accurate information.”  [Mark Fallon via MSNBC, 5/3/11]

Matthew Alexander, the pseudonym of the Air Force interrogator who located Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, said: “When you use coercive techniques, which includes waterboarding and enhanced interrogation techniques, you get the bare minimum amount of information out of a detainee. And that bare minimum of information is going to lack the details that you need to execute a mission to take out a target.” [Matthew Alexander, 5/4/11]

Glenn L. Carle, a retired C.I.A. officer who oversaw the interrogation of a high-level detainee in 2002, told the New York Times that coercive techniques “didn’t provide useful, meaningful, trustworthy information.” [Glenn Carle via NY Times, 5/3/11]

Additionally, there is a strong consensus that such actions actually hurt our national security interests. David Petraeus famously noted, when asked if he wished that the use of torture or “enhanced interrogation” was available as a tool during interrogations,  “I think that whenever we have, perhaps, taken expedient measures, they have turned around and bitten us in the backside… Abu Ghraib and other situations like that are nonbiodegradables.  They don’t go away.  The enemy continues to beat you with them like a stick in the Central Command area of responsibility.”

On his second day in office President Obama very publicly broke with the previous administration’s policies on detainee issues. While Congressional hand tying has prevented progress on some issues, including the closure of Guantanamo Bay, the use of EITs was for many a settled issue, that we have moved past. Besides it is not as if there has not been great success against al Qaeda in that time period. 

Initial Steps Towards a Right-Sized, Targeted Approach to Maritime Stability in the Western Pacific, Part 1 Posted by Bill R. French

The ongoing spat between China and Japan over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands in the East China Sea highlights increasing maritime instability in the Western Pacific. While the standoff between the world’s second and third largest economies is troubling enough, the crisis is but the latest in a series of serious maritime disputes involving the Peoples Republic of China. Until this flare up, the epicenter of territorial and maritime disputes in East Asia had been concentrated in the South China Sea where, for example, a major standoff took place between Beijing and the Philippines in April-May of this year over the Scarborough Shoal.

While the severity of China’s behavior in these disputes has eased slightly compared to previous years, the intensity and frequency of dispute-driven tensions remains well above the relative calm seen in the previous 15 years or so. And although the disputes have not returned to the feverous peaks of the 1970s and 1980s which witnessed two limited naval wars between China and Vietnam (ending in China occupying features of the Parcel Islands), the future remains uncertain – especially as Chinese power grows. 

Thinking Through a Way Forward:  U.S. Interests and Objectives

Underlying American economic interests – and security commitments – gives the United States a strong stake in the stability of the Western Pacific. While the situation is not as dire as some have portrayed, American policymakers should be considering options to bolster stability and moderate the trajectory of maritime disputes in the region. This entails addressing instability in both the East and South China Seas. Unfortunately, though the Senkaku/Diaoyu dispute and the Scarborough Shoal standoff have been widely discussed, few American commentators have proposed constructive ways forward. Even fewer have proposed ways forward that are readily available, near-term options -- what will therefore be the focus of the recommendations found below.

In actionable terms, bolstering stability and moderating the trajectory of these disputes would entail the following objectives:

• Further blunt Chinese assertiveness in pressing its claims;

• Better incentivize Beijing to diplomatically engage the relevant parties in the South China Sea and East China Sea to ease tensions and minimize the risk of future escalations;

• Reassure U.S. partners regularly locked in disputes with Beijing, especially the Philippines and Japan who are both U.S. treaty partners; and

• Take the necessary steps to reassure the Chinese that such measures are not intended to contain China.

The most vital – and most difficult – of these objectives is to incentivize China to relax its behavior and take diplomacy more seriously as a way ease - and eventually resolve -- its disputes. For example, while Beijing plays lip service to diplomatic solutions to maritime disputes, it has all but abandoned cooperation with efforts to establish a Code of Conduct in the South China Sea. China seriously returning to these diplomatic efforts should be the primary midterm goal of any maritime stability strategy developed by the United States for the region.