I thought about how the media has been instrumental in promoting the dominant narrative of agents-gone-wild while reading this report from CNN in which an author familiar with the Secret Service attempts to establish a counter-narrative. Using an almost “boys-will-be-boys” argument, the author suggests that both the events themselves and the resulting damage have not been nearly as significant as our media would have us believe. I haven’t seen any evidence that his argument is influencing the public debate.

Missing from most of the public narrative about this scandal has been any consideration of the foreign policy implications of the misconduct. Perhaps that is because, aside from the significant perceptual issues I mentioned in my last post, they are few in number. The news media told us breathlessly that the scandal derailed the Summit of the Americas. In reality, as Richard Feinberg points out in Foreign Affairs, the summit fizzled primarily because the U.S. was reluctant to give ground on an issue important to our hemispheric partners: inviting Cuba to attend the next summit. While it may be politically expedient to credit President Obama with a foreign affairs loss due to a scandal, the truth is both more complicated and far less sensational than a salacious scandal.

Image Credit: CNN

As an earlier post suggested, the dramatic rise in U.S. natural gas production is one large reason why fears about America’s strategic decline may well be misplaced.  The press is awash with articles about how the domestic abundance of low-cost energy promises significant economic gains.  Fortune magazine carries an essay on how “the coming energy renaissance” will revive the U.S. manufacturing sector, a theme that is echoed in a new Citigroup report.  Tyler Cowen, the economist who in last year’s The Great Stagnation argued that the good times are over, now foresees a coming era of export-based prosperity resulting, in significant part, from lower energy prices.  Philip K. Verleger, Jr., a noted energy expert, anticipates an investment boom that creates millions of jobs across the U.S. economy.

Some commentary has dealt in a glancing way about how energy self-sufficiency will lessen America’s fraught profile in the Middle East and how the possibility of the United States becoming a major gas exporter could transform world energy markets.  But with some exceptions (see here and here), there has been little focus on how America’s pioneering of the shale gas revolution might reshape international politics and the global economy.

The future has a way of making fools of bold prognosticators, but perhaps at this point two tentative propositions can be advanced.  The first is that America’s emergence as the world’s largest gas producer seals shut the coffin on Moscow’s great power aspirations.  Russia is already facing a catastrophic demographic decline and its power prospects derive largely from revenue generated by oil and gas exports.  The emergence of the United States as a low-cost energy supplier threatens to undercut the country’s long-time dominance of the European gas market, so much so that Vladimir Putin has started to take worrying notice.

Verleger points to an additional cause for Moscow’s concern.  The shale revolution’s trailbreakers are nimble companies drilling on a vast number of low-cost sites, something at which expensive, state-owned energy behemoths like Gazprom – or for that matter, the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) and the China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) – cannot hope to excel.  As Verleger puts it, “large energy companies fall flat on their faces every time they attempt such endeavors.”

This observation prompts a second thesis: The shale revolution will lead the way in restoring U.S. soft power.  America’s reputational clout took a huge hit with the onset of the “Great Recession,” with some advising that the future now belongs to state-managed capitalism.  Others maintain that a key element of China’s spectacular rise resides in a state-centric brand of economic management that presents a superior alternative to the Western free-market principles.

But if Verleger is correct about organizational limits, then CNPC and CNOOC cannot possibly hope to exploit the rich shale reserves China is thought to possess.  This visible failure, juxtaposed with the plain success of agile, private-sector producers operating in the United States, will do much to burnish the luster of the Western model of liberal capitalism and its American exemplar.

As Niels Bohr and (more famously) Yogi Berra have observed, the future is a damn hard thing to predict.  The rising excitement about shale gas might suddenly deflate and take its place in the rubbish bin of history along with recent jeremiads about “peak oil.”  But if the reality does approximate the current hype, then the speeding of Russia’s national decline and the revival of America’s ideological authority will be among the transformative effects.

This commentary was originally posted on Monsters Abroad.  I invite you to follow me on Twitter.

Photo Credit: Wikipedia Commons

Often criticized for ignoring our Latin American neighbors, President Obama had been looking forward to the Summit of the Americas as an opportunity to engage in diplomacy and talk up trade deals. Instead, the summit was all but hijacked by what the media is calling the greatest scandal to ever rock the Secret Service. By now you are probably familiar with the details of alleged wrongdoing by both Secret Service members and military personnel, so I won’t go into the sordid details here. Suffice to say that the Secret Service advance team showed questionable judgement and potentially exposed their team to the kinds of compromising situations that security professionals usually steer clear of.

Image Credit: Fernando Llano / Associated Press / SF Gate.com

I’ve done a fair bit of traveling abroad and always with the attitude that you respect your host country, respect their laws, their traditions and their culture and you do this to be a good ambassador for the U.S. and not a stereotype of the “ugly American.” That term has fallen out of currency and that’s a good thing. It’s a term that predates the 9/11 era (which provided a different lens by which to view America) and harkens back to a time when Americans abroad were often thought to be loud, brash, selfish and arrogant. Sadly, that’s exactly the picture painted by those implicated in this scandal. You can only imagine how this is playing in the local media. According to this Reuters report, a local commentator provided this telling quote: “Obama’s guards expelled in Colombia over prostitution – shame the gringos think that Latin America is a brothel and they act like it too.” In a part of the world where past U.S. actions still reverberate and the terms “gringos” and “Yankees” are used pejoratively, it’s a huge step backwards.

We can only hope that this scandal may provide a cautionary warning to those who travel abroad on behalf of their country and prompt them to think twice about how their actions reflect on the U.S. role in the world.

One does not have to look hard to find publications or experts pronouncing or describing an America in decline. They have now become ubiquitous and in many circles pass for the conventional wisdom of the day. In a similar vein, it is not that hard to find arguments that other countries, particularly China, have a more efficient, productive economy and government. Living in California, I’ve heard many unfavorable comparisons to our attempt at building a high speed train to China’s already extensive train network. While, I understand the United States faces deep fiscal issues; and our current political class appears incapable or unwilling (both?) to tackle them, I am still an optimist about my country. After all, the US is not alone in facing headwinds to a prosperous future. We cannot judge ourselves accurately without looking more closely at our peers, with China being the most obvious target. Analyst Ian Bremmer makes a strong attempt at this and finds that China’s very system has plenty of warts:

China has indeed grown by leaps and bounds over the past decade. That’s a huge credit to a country that has modernized and industrialized on a previously unseen scale. And because of its 1.3 billion citizens, China has quite a bit of growth (read: catching up) still to come. China’s style of governance leaves the country light on regulation. However, it’s also light on rule of law, transparency, freedom of speech and several other key features that make the U.S. economy go ’round. Just because the Chinese government can move a village and build a road without holding a single hearing doesn’t mean the free market has taken hold. Indeed, it shows the opposite: China’s economy is largely state-planned, state-owned and state-run. The government uses capitalism only as a tool to reach its ends, not as a true expression of a free market.

Bremmer is right. China can indeed get many things done, but all of these accomplishments come from a centrally planned government, not a dynamic society or economy. The human race has yet to create an omnipotent, all-wise group of men and women that can lead a society to ever growing levels of prosperity. Economic growth cannot just be planned, as the market contains too many forces coming from too many different directions. The Chinese have opened up portions of their economy to the ‘animal spirits’ of capitalism, but as Bremmer points out, this is not really as it seems. There is no such thing a free market in modern China:

where the Chinese government compromises the free market, it does so to fulfill its own desires of effective control over the entire country. It’s capitalism of the state, by the state and for the state, where the state is the principal economic actor. That’s in marked contrast to where the U.S. compromises on “pure” capitalism, adding things like the social safety net, worker safety, product safety, health insurance and retirement planning.

One of the major problems China has had with its economic model is that at nearly any time, the majority owner of most of its economy — the state — can jump into an enterprise and distort it for its own purposes. It can cook the books, it can pull out profits, it can hide losses, it can launder money and it can even shut down a company altogether.

The United States has its challenges. At times, I have strong feelings of doubt that we can get ourselves back on track. Back to being a nation built on rugged individualism that produces dynamic outcomes. It is impossible for me to imagine an Apple being created in Beijing, but I would not be surprised to see a similar story (Pomegranate?) arise in the US. American culture isn’t without flaws and embarrassments, but no other on earth has proven to be so productive and resolute. It just keeps on ticking and with it American power and influence.

The Deepsea Challenger (Mark Thiessen/National Geographic)

James Cameron’s solo journey into the ocean’s deepest recesses is being hailed as a tale of personal daring and scientific adventure.  But it also holds a lesson relevant to the debate about whether the global hierarchy is being reshuffled and to what consequence.

The debate is propelled, of course, by the meteoric growth of Chinese power, made all the more vivid in recent years by America’s “Great Recession” and military exhaustion in the Greater Middle East.  Martin Wolf at the Financial Times captures the mood when he argues that “we are seeing at least the beginning of the end not just of an illusory ‘unipolar moment’ for the US but of western supremacy, in general, and of Anglo-American power, in particular.”  Philip Stephens, his colleague at the newspaper, concurs, noting that “the march of power from west to east has become the central, unnerving fact of geopolitical life.”

This narrative has been broadcast in a cascade of recent books, with such titles as: When China Rules the World; The Beijing Consensus: How China’s Authoritarian Model Will Dominate the Twenty-First Century; Eclipse: Living in the Shadow of China’s Economic Dominance; and most provocatively, Becoming China’s Bitch.  We are advised that China will “trounce” the United States in the coming years and generate an astounding $123 trillion in economic output by 2040.  A key element of the country’s success, it has been alleged (here and here), resides in a state-centric brand of economic management that presents a viable alternative to the Western model of liberal capitalism.

But the story line about China’s eminence and America’s declension may not be as preordained as many conclude.  It is easy to dismiss the profusion of febrile rumors that came out of Beijing last week.  But their proliferation has exposed deep ideological rifts within the leadership, suggesting (here and here) that the regime is not as stable as is widely believed.  Moreover, it is very much an open question whether the country’s authoritarian structures, bereft of incentives for commercial innovation, will permit its economy to continue on a high-flying trajectory.  Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson, in their noteworthy new book, Why Nations Fail, argue that “the spectacular growth rates in China will slowly evaporate” precisely because of its closed political institutions.

Add to this the serious population challenges that are about to befall the People’s Republic.  As one expert notes, “China is confronting the demographic version of ‘the perfect storm’, and these new demographic realities may ultimately force us to revise today’s received wisdom about ‘China’s rise.’  Suddenly, its long-term future does not look quite so bright.

Now contrast America’s prospects, which rather unexpectedly appear to be brightening.  Of particular note are the key advances recently registered by the private sector in spurring economic growth and technological innovation.  Consider, for example, the marked surge in domestic oil and natural gas production that promises to transform the country’s energy outlook, its trade balance and, perhaps, its foreign policy agenda.  An article last week in the New York Times charts the magnitude of this development:

Not only has the United States reduced oil imports from members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries by more than 20 percent in the last three years, it has become a net exporter of refined petroleum products like gasoline for the first time since the Truman presidency. The natural gas industry, which less than a decade ago feared running out of domestic gas, is suddenly dealing with a glut so vast that import facilities are applying for licenses to export gas to Europe and Asia.

National oil production, which declined steadily to 4.95 million barrels a day in 2008 from 9.6 million in 1970, has risen over the last four years to nearly 5.7 million barrels a day. The Energy Department projects that daily output could reach nearly seven million barrels by 2020. Some experts think it could eventually hit 10 million barrels — which would put the United States in the same league as Saudi Arabia.

This stunning turnabout is, in important measure, a story of private entrepreneurs pursuing breakthroughs in drilling technology that have unlocked energy resources believed just a short time ago to be inaccessible.

The growing self-reliance in energy may also be matched by the reversal of America’s decline as a manufacturing powerhouse.  A new report by the Boston Consulting Group concludes that the United States is on the cusp of an industrial renaissance, brought about by the relocation of production assets due to rising labor costs in China as well as a growing appreciation about the dangers of operating extended global supply chains and the advantages of being closer to U.S. consumers.  A new Booz & Company study likewise finds reason for optimism about the manufacturing sector.

As the approach of Facebook’s initial public offering reminds us, America has never lacked for creative entrepreneurs such as Mark Zuckerberg.  But James Cameron’s achievement illuminates a highly significant new trend: How the private sector is supplementing and in some cases supplanting governmental efforts to push forward the frontiers of science, technology and imagination.  Cameron’s submersible (see photos here), designed by himself and funded by private groups, has accomplished a feat that none of the world’s governments can duplicate at present.  Other private deep-sea expeditions are also in the works, including vessels financed by swashbuckling entrepreneur Richard Branson and Google’s executive chairman Eric Schmidt.

A similar trend is playing out in the heavens, as the private sector fills the void left by cutbacks in the U.S. manned-space program.  In December 2010, Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (more popularly known as SpaceX) became the first private company to launch and return a spacecraft from orbit.  Established by Paypal co-founder Elon Musk, the firm has signed a contract with NASA to conduct a dozen cargo flights to the International Space Station.  An unmanned demonstration flight to the Station is scheduled for next month.  If successful, private entrepreneurs will have inaugurated a new era in space transportation, taking on tasks that were heretofore the province of governments.

As we learn more about the exploits of Cameron and SpaceX in the weeks ahead, we might do well to ponder their broader significance.  There is no question that the global order is becoming more pluralistic.  Yet the opportunities for entrepreneurs, innovators and risk-takers engendered in the West, and especially in America, should give pause to confident predictions about China’s inexorable ascendancy.

I have to admit, I don’t know much about Earhart beyond the basic facts of her disappearance and was a bit surprised that this is something Secretary Clinton would spend her time on. Why exactly would the U.S. Secretary of State bother with such an old, if enduring, mystery? Secretary Clinton offered an answer in her remarks in which she depicted the aviator as a symbol of the U.S. role in the world. According to Secretary Clinton:

Think for a minute about the world Amelia and her navigator Fred Noonan were circumnavigating. America in 1937 was still in the grips of the Great Depression; millions were out of work, millions more were struggling. Around the world, authoritarianism was on the march. War loomed, people wondered openly about the future of our country. They asked if democracy, if free market capitalism, America itself could survive. [...] Now Amelia Earhart may have been an unlikely heroine for a nation down on its luck, but she embodied the spirit of an America coming of age and increasingly confident, ready to lead in a quite uncertain and dangerous world. She gave people hope and she inspired them to dream bigger and bolder. When she took off on that historic journey, she carried the aspirations of our entire country with her.

In a time when celebrities are so often symbols of the worst of America it’s nice to think that there was a time when a celebrity aviator could serve as a symbol for the best of America by demonstrating bravery, courage, and pushing science and technology to the edge of what was possible at the time.

Image Credit: ABC News

President Obama with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev(Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP)

My posts for the U.S. Role in the World blog tend to focus on specific expressions of the U.S. role that are current and timely (like foreign aid or defense spending) but I was reminded today that it’s sometimes good to step back from the specific and look at the big picture. The American Enterprise Institute (AEI) hosted a bipartisan panel discussion today on the role of national security in the 2012 presidential campaign and one of the themes of the discussion was the overarching role of the U.S. in the modern post-war era. The panel participants focused on the book “The World America Made” by Robert Kagan, in which the author takes a big-picture look at how the U.S. has managed the present international order. In Kagan’s opinion, the U.S. has done an excellent job of promoting peace, freedom and prosperity. The idea that a dominant world power will set the rules of the road, make sure everyone follows the rules, and generally provide for the peace and stability of the system is something political scientists like to call hegemonic stability theory. Kagan says the U.S. is doing a good job in that role and fears that a declining U.S. would demonstrate that this world may look very different if ordered by other countries and other value systems. As he wrote for CNN:

International order is not an evolution; it is an imposition. It is the domination of one vision over others — in America’s case, the domination of liberal free market principles of economics, democratic principles of politics, and a peaceful international system that supports these, over other visions that other nations and peoples may have. The present order will last only as long as those who favor it and benefit from it retain the will and capacity to defend it. If and when American power declines, the institutions and norms American power has supported will decline, too. Or they may collapse altogether as we transition into another kind of world order, or into disorder.

Kagan offers as a nice rebuttal to those who focus more on the character of the international system rather than the character of the leader of the system. Yes, we have international system defined by the U.N. and several regional groups, so does it really matter who leads? It does, just ask the people of Libya. An international system dominated by Russia or China would probably have a made a very different call there.

It shouldn’t surprise you that your U.S. Role blogger does share the view that there is something unique to the American role and that it has been generally positive for the world and is worth defending and preserving.

Kagan’s book is bound to inspire more discussion about the U.S. role and although critics will no doubt find many flaws and counter-examples, I’m certain the debate will be helpful, not only for recognizing U.S. leadership but also pointing out the many areas in which the U.S. can improve.

General Dempsey and Mr. Panetta spoke two days after Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, who lost to Mr. Obama in 2008, became the first senator to call for American airstrikes on Syria as “the only realistic way” to stop what he called a slaughter there. Both General Dempsey and Mr. Panetta faced sharp questions during their testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee from Mr. McCain, who is the panel’s ranking Republican.

Senator McCain, who proposed air strikes against Syria’s military targets, cited the example of former President Clinton, who used military force to answer the crisis in the Balkans during the mid 1990s. The problem is that using the model of a previous intervention ignores the realities of the situation on the ground, the international climate surrounding the situation, and assumes that the outcome of the intervention will be similar to the previous scenario. The New Republic’s Lawrence Kaplan best addressed this fallacy prior to last year’s NATO intervention in Libya.

Source: Euronews

As for the sober reality:  the Syrian opposition is barely organized, and the conflict on the ground is much more complex than the David vs. Goliath fight being broadly portrayed. The conflict in Syria goes beyond the authoritarianism of the Assad regime, and also involves the complicated interactions between race, religion and economic circumstance. No amount of military intervention can address long term societal problems instantaneously.  If anything, the lessons of Iraq and Afghanistan should have taught policymakers that any intervention by foreign forces is rarely an easy, clean cut affair. Instead, good intentions can become painful, drawn out exercises in sorting out fights and maintaining a tenuous peace. Even the “relatively successful” intervention in Bosnia was fraught with difficulties, and had many analysts questioning the future value of the activity.

While many analysts wish it was more convenient, the situation in Syria nowhere resembles that of Libya, Bosnia, Rwanda, etc, and replicating the same strategy would be foolish. An air strike as proposed by Senator McCain may halt the progress of the Syrian army, but the strategy also runs the high risk of civilian casualties, as has been seen in Iraq and Afghanistan. For now, the Obama administration’s use of diplomatic pressure and indirect support for the Syrian opposition will be the best way to ensure that the right thing is done, while waiting for the nature of the conflict to become clearer.

Over the succeeding post-war years the U.S. presence in Europe would go on to be quite large, providing the logistical backbone of NATO and serving as an almost unquestioned fact of life in many European countries. That fact of life is now changing. Thanks to looming budget cuts the U.S. presence in Europe is set to change dramatically over the next few years. According to this report in The Washington Post:

The Obama administration has decided to remove two of the four U.S. Army brigades remaining in Europe as part of a broader effort to cut $487 billion from the Pentagon’s budget over the next decade, said senior U.S. officials [...] the United States will continue to rotate Army units through Europe on training missions to augment the presence of the remaining two brigades. [...] Senior Obama administration officials have targeted Europe for cuts because they recognize that reductions in U.S. forces abroad will generate less congressional outcry than cuts in the United States, where the soldiers pump money into local economies. The U.S. military maintains about 80,000 troops in Europe from all of the services. Cutting two Army brigades and the noncombat units that support them will result in a reduction of about 10,000 to 15,000 soldiers. Panetta’s idea of augmenting American presence around the world by rotating combat brigades or smaller Army units through areas on training exercises is a relatively new concept for the regular Army, which has historically maintained a more static, garrison-based force in Europe.

The U.S. European Command issued this report on the changes in force posture and notes that Germany will be particularly hard-hit by the Army draw-down. Italy will also take a hit as the Air Force closes an air control squadron at Aviano Air Base.

As the above report from The Washington Post notes, U.S. forces are not necessarily leaving Europe, the U.S. is simply transitioning to a new pattern of deployment – rotating deployments – that will keep U.S. personnel as an active, if transient, presence. Still, I can’t help but wonder what effect this will it have on the character and quality of the Western alliance.  And it’s not just the reduced number of American personnel but the temporary nature of the deployments that has me worried. I look back fondly on the time I lived in Italy as a military brat, an experience made all the more memorable due to the number of years my family lived there. It was not a temporary duty assignment. And like many Americans stationed there we relished the opportunity to travel the continent and immerse ourselves in the different cultures of Europe as we got to know our NATO hosts. Everywhere we went there was a strong sense of welcome for Americans. In lands rich with history, U.S. sacrifices in WWII have never been forgotten.

It’s true that such things – an appreciation for other cultures and a shared sense of common purpose – are rather intangible. They are certainly difficult to compare with spending cuts. Still, as we debate the harsh realities of budgetary belt-tightening it’s worth discussing what the U.S. might be losing as we strive to draw-down our forces, especially at a time when politicians find it easy to disparage our European allies and certain segments of the electorate drift ever closer to isolationism. There may come a time in the future when we realize that it wasn’t such a bad idea after all to have thousands of Americans living and working side-by-side with our European allies.

Image Credit: New Europe

Finally, we should remember that prior to World War II the United States had turned inward and refused to play a leading role in world affairs. Convinced that the Second World War had come about in part from the global economic depravity that helped give rise to fascism in Europe and Asia, FDR used the war as a catalyst for the construction of a new political, strategic, and economic order. It was based in large part on the extension of American moral and military power through the United Nations and the extension of American economic power through the creation of the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, and a new multilateral economic system that would open up the world’s markets and natural resources to freer trade. Taken together, these measures resulted in a permanent restructuring of the world’s social, economic, and strategic makeup. They formed the basis of the new world order that has given rise to the globalization of the world’s economy and the American-led multilateral security system that the United States has played a leading role in since 1945.

As much as I would like to believe, with Woolner, that these institutions still form the basis of a stable world order, it’s clear that time has taken a toll on their legitimacy and credibility. Take the United Nations, for example. Just today, the Security Council failed to pass a resolution on Syria hours after an attack on the city of Hom’s by Assad’s security forces, an attack that some are calling a massacre. U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice voiced “disgust” over the veto by permanent members Russia and China that has derailed any hope of coordinated action to end the violence. The U.S. should be proud of having assembled a broad diplomatic consensus with allies in Europe and the Arab League. In the end, though, it was no match for the veto power wielded by permanent members.

The UN was born in the aftermath of a world war started by dictators and now permanent members of the Security Council are defending a dictator. What would FDR think?

Image Credit: Wikipedia

We gather tonight knowing that this generation of heroes has made the United States safer and more respected around the world. For the first time in nine years, there are no Americans fighting in Iraq. For the first time in two decades, Osama bin Laden is not a threat to this country. Most of al Qaeda’s top lieutenants have been defeated. The Taliban’s momentum has been broken, and some troops in Afghanistan have begun to come home. These achievements are a testament to the courage, selflessness and teamwork of America’s Armed Forces. [...] And we will safeguard America’s own security against those who threaten our citizens, our friends, and our interests. Look at Iran.  Through the power of our diplomacy, a world that was once divided about how to deal with Iran’s nuclear program now stands as one.  The regime is more isolated than ever before; its leaders are faced with crippling sanctions, and as long as they shirk their responsibilities, this pressure will not relent. Let there be no doubt:  America is determined to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, and I will take no options off the table to achieve that goal. [...] The renewal of American leadership can be felt across the globe. Our oldest alliances in Europe and Asia are stronger than ever. Our ties to the Americas are deeper. Our ironclad commitment — and I mean ironclad — to Israel’s security has meant the closest military cooperation between our two countries in history. We’ve made it clear that America is a Pacific power, and a new beginning in Burma has lit a new hope.  From the coalitions we’ve built to secure nuclear materials, to the missions we’ve led against hunger and disease; from the blows we’ve dealt to our enemies, to the enduring power of our moral example, America is back. Anyone who tells you otherwise, anyone who tells you that America is in decline or that our influence has waned, doesn’t know what they’re talking about. hat’s not the message we get from leaders around the world who are eager to work with us. That’s not how people feel from Tokyo to Berlin, from Cape Town to Rio, where opinions of America are higher than they’ve been in years.

The State of the Union address is at best an opportunity for the president to be Cheerleader-in-Chief and to use the powers of the presidency to propose programs and initiatives that make all of our problems seem solvable if only the Congress would simply follow his lead. It’s an opportunity for him to deliver a national pep-talk that allows us all to feel good about the country and our role in the world. In the harsh light of day critics are sure to find fault in many of his statements, but for one brief moment (very brief if you watched the televised response from the opposition party following the speech) we can all cheerfully buy into the spin that all is well.

Should we allow doubts to enter, listen to the critics, and find fault with such a grand exercise in shared wishful thinking? We could, if we wanted to, note counter-examples to almost every positive statement. Yes, for example, the alliance between the U.S. and Israel is strong. And yes, the U.S. is resolved that Iran should not become a nuclear power. How then to explain the sudden delay in long-planned military exercises between the U.S. and Israel? Has deterrence suddenly become unfashionable? And yes, the U.S. is for free trade an open markets, but we are apparently not averse to a little populist protectionism (with China) when needed. And yes, the U.S. is back. But, excuse me, I wasn’t aware that we left.

Still, I’m inclined to bask in the moment for at least one night and to accept the idealized picture presented by the president as a true representation of reality. It’s the U.S., and the U.S. role in the world, as we wish them to be, and perhaps if we try hard enough, as they will be.

Image Credit: Press Pool photo by Saul Loeb

Google, Reddit, and Wikipedia all are using their considerable web presence today to protest legislation pending in the U.S. Congress. According to the Google announcement:

Two bills before Congress, known as the Protect IP Act (PIPA) in the Senate and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the House, would censor the Web and impose harmful regulations on American business. Millions of Internet users and entrepreneurs already oppose SOPA and PIPA.

It may appear to the casual reader that this is an effort by entertainment corporations (Hollywood) to impose their particular view of internet regulation on the rest of the country and encountering opposition from Silicon Valley. What’s not commonly understood (and why this is a subject for our discussion) is that provisions of these laws block foreign websites. In other words, the U.S. Congress has taken it upon itself to legislate for the world. This is why Wikipedia (a global encyclopedia) has blacked-out it’s English-language version that is available all over the world. While this is much more common than most would think (the U.S. Congress often sets standards that other countries and businesses must meet in order to do business in the U.S. – often their largest market – which makes the U.S. Congress a de facto global lawmaking body) it’s an excellent example of the global scope of American laws.

It’s particularly ironic that the U.S. Congress is seeking to curtail internet access while another branch of the U.S. government, the Executive Branch (namely the State Department) is seeking to undermine those countries that censor the internet. As this report notes:

The United States plans to pump millions of dollars into new technology to break through Internet censorship overseas amid a heightened crackdown on dissent in China, officials have said. State Department officials said they would give $19 million to efforts to evade Internet controls in China, Iran and other authoritarian states which block online access to politically sensitive material [...] The funding comes out of $30 million which the US Congress allocated in the current fiscal year for Internet freedom.

The New York Times clarifies some of the specific strategies and tactics the U.S. will use as this policy is implemented:

The State Department plans to finance programs like circumvention services, which enable users to evade Internet firewalls, and training for human rights workers on how to secure their e-mail from surveillance or wipe incriminating data from cellphones if they are detained by the police [...] Administration officials say that the emphasis on a broad array of projects — hotly disputed by some technology experts and human rights activists — reflects their view that technology can be a force that leads to democratic change, but is not a “magic bullet” that brings down repressive regimes.

A commendable policy, to be sure, but what happens if the repressive regime is the U.S.?

We are witnessing a very odd development in which other countries seek to block access to politically sensitive material while the U.S. seeks to block access to commercially sensitive material. Some would say it amounts to the same thing: state-sponsored censorship.

It is now a stock phrase among presidents and presidential candidates that they want to champion U.S. values abroad. Here is a perfect opportunity for them to do that. Does the U.S. stand for freedom of expression or censorship? The upcoming votes on SOPA and PIPA may well provide the answer.

Image Credit: CNN/AFP/Getty Images

REUTERS/Deborah Gembara – Detainees participate in an early morning prayer session at Camp IV at the detention facility in Guantanamo Bay

On New Year’s Eve, President Barack Obama signed into law the post-9/11 practice of detaining terrorist suspects indefinitely without charge. Shock and awe waves rippled through the blogosphere in response to the move, not least because Obama had threatened to veto an earlier version of the bill. Other grumbles included its lack of temporal or geographic limitations, which signaled to some the potential for military detention of anyone, anywhere, anytime.

But despite congressional approval of the well-worn practice, most rights wonks don’t expect any significant change in the frequency or type of indefinite detentions going forward. They do, however, maintain that the practice breaches international humanitarian law and undermines counterterrorism efforts.

One such expert, Martin Sheinin, professor of international law and UN Special Rapporteur on human rights and counterterrorism from 2005 to 2011, spoke with me about the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) and its potential to derail US counterterrorism efforts.

The War on Law

To put the controversy in context, Mr. Sheinin explained why Washington supports indefinite detention:

“The NDAA builds upon the well-established rule in international humanitarian law (law of armed conflict) that during an international armed conflict combatants, i.e. soldiers of one of the states involved in the war, can be detained as prisoners of war until the end of hostilities. When there is an international armed conflict and when someone is a combatant, then such detention does not amount to arbitrary detention that would violate international human rights law.”

When the “global war on terror” was waged following 9/11, he said, the possibility of indefinite detention was extended to terrorism, “far beyond genuine situations of international or even non-international armed conflict. And it extends indefinite detention to persons who are not combatants. For instance, persons who are held to have provided substantial support to terrorism would be subject to indefinite detention.”

Against that background, Mr. Sheinan suggested several ways in which violating human rights in the course of countering terrorism can “backfire.” Rights violations can “add to causes of terrorism,” he said, “both by perpetuating ‘root causes’ that involve the alienation of communities and by providing ‘triggering causes’ through which bitter individuals make the morally inexcusable decision to turn to methods of terrorism.”

Further, “these kinds of legal provisions are always open for bad faith copying by repressive governments that will use them for their own political purposes.” Though such copying was found to be less common than expected, “repressive governments may do so for their own political purposes.”

“It is hard to see any practical advantage gained through the NDAA. It is just another form of what I call symbolic legislation, enacted because the legislators want to be seen as being ‘tough’ or as ‘doing something.’ The law is written as just affirming existing powers and practices and hence not providing any meaningful new tools in the combat of terrorism,” he concluded.

With Washington simultaneously fostering democratic transitions across the Middle East and North Africa and gambling on military exits from Iraq and Afghanistan, such “backfires” may well hamper development of the rule of law and respect for human rights when they are needed most.

For the second time in days the U.S. Navy has saved Iranian fishermen. As you will recall, it was earlier this month that the Navy rescued Iranian fishermen being held by Somali pirates. That incident came amid rising tensions and threats from Iran that it would close the strategic Strait of Hormuz (through which 20 percent of the world’s oil flows) in retaliation for Western sanctions. This report from The Washington Post nicely contrasts the humanitarian U.S. actions with the recent threats from Iran:

A U.S. Coast Guard cutter, the Monomoy, picked up the Iranians off the coast of Oman about 3 a.m. Tuesday after their cargo dhow, the Ya-Hussayn, signalled with flares and flashlights that they were having engine trouble, Navy officials said [...] On Thursday, the Navy liberated 13 Iranian fishermen who had been hijacked and held hostage for several weeks by Somali pirates, also in the Arabian Gulf. In both cases, U.S. officials portrayed the Iranian sailors as extremely grateful for the emergency help — a sharp counterpoint to the Iranian government’s recent threat of war if U.S. forces don’t stay out of the nearby Persian Gulf. “Without your help, we were dead,” Hakim Hamid-Awi, the owner of the Ya-Hussayn, was quoted as saying by a U.S. Fifth Fleet account of the rescue. “Thank you for all that you did for us.” The Good Samaritan acts by U.S. forces also stood in contrast to the Iranian government’s harsh announcement Monday that it had sentenced an Iranian-American citizen to death, allegedly for spying.

This report from the Christian Science Monitor also does the same with this well-worded headline: Iran keeps issuing threats, US keeps saving Iranian sailors

Will the U.S. rescue operations have any impact on the crisis over Iran‘s nuclear program? Not likely. We can hope that reports of these rescues will reach the ears of Iranian citizens and lead them to question the anti-American propaganda fed to them by their government. Even if that happened, recent events in Iran would make us question what role, if any, public opinion plays in shaping Iranian foreign policy. Just ask those democratic reform activists. Oh wait, you can’t, because they were imprisoned or executed.

The rescues at sea are in keeping with the finest traditions of the U.S. Navy. They are also an example of what political scientists call “international norms,” broadly accepted standards of international behavior. There’s not a navy in the world that would ignore a distress call. It’s clear that if Iran were to obtain a nuclear weapon the entire region would send out a distress call. Hopefully the U.S. Navy will still be on hand (budget permitting) to lead the rescue.

Image Credit: Christian Science Monitor/U.S. Navy/AP

The U.S. formally ended the Iraq War today. As The New York Times reports:

Almost nine years after the first American tanks began massing on the Iraq border, the Pentagon declared an official end to its mission here, closing a troubled conflict that helped reshape American politics and left a bitter legacy of anti-American sentiment across the Muslim world [...] For Americans, the ceremony on Thursday marked an uneasy moment of closure, with no clear sense of what has been won and lost.

Lasting nearly a decade and claiming close to five thousand American lives, the war became for many a Rorschach test of the U.S. role in the world. There are millions of people in the world whose first thought when asked to describe America is that we are a country that invades other countries, and Iraq is the premier example. The war was controversial from the start, a war of choice meant to deprive Saddam Hussein of weapons of mass destruction. When those weapons failed to be found, U.S. motives were further questioned (some said it was always about the oil) and the war was recast as an effort to promote democracy. Even as U.S. forces withdraw, the war remains controversial, with some expressing concerns about a precipitous withdrawal and others defending the withdrawal as prudent.

I suspect that the war was never really about weapons of mass destruction, oil or democracy. It was about Saddam Hussein and George W. Bush. It was about Hussein trying to assassinate George H.W. Bush and the former president’s son deciding that simply would not stand. Hussein had good reason to expect a covert attempt to remove him from power as soon as George W. was inaugurated (after all, the Iraq Liberation Act was passed by Congress during the Clinton Administration), though he probably never imagined such an overt attempt as a massive land invasion. The 9/11 attack created a “permissive environment” in which the exercise of American power in the context of removing a dictator-behaving-badly was well within the bounds of the “new normal,” but I’m not sure it would have mattered. Bush would likely have found a way to remove Saddam from power one way or another. One could make the case that the attempt by a foreign government to assassinate a sitting or former American president constitutes an act of war. Sadly, that case was never made, at least, not in public.

Historians will debate the causes of the war for many years to come. What can’t be debated is the outstanding performance of the U.S. military. The all-volunteer force demonstrated once again that our soldiers will answer the call to duty, even when it means serving in far-off lands. The greatest mistakes of the war (sending too few troops and disbanding the Iraqi army) were made by civilian administrators, while military leaders found innovative ways of working with Iraqi tribal and sectarian leaders (the Awakening Councils) and imbedding troops in local communities, strategies that went a long way toward stabilizing Iraq. As our troops return home we can be justifiably proud of their service and sacrifice. They removed a dictator from power and gave Iraq a democratic government – now let’s see if they can keep it.

And finally, let’s return to that idea of Iraq as a Rorschach test of the U.S. role in the world. Yes, the U.S. invaded another country without having first been attacked. Yes, we removed the leader from power and then carelessly crushed all the social institutions that could have provided order, setting the stage for a violent sectarian and tribal bloodletting. That is all true. But we also worked over years, sacrificing lives and treasure, to rebuild what had been destroyed. If a Rorschach test can reveal many different perspectives then my hope is that history will note the negative while focusing on the positive and conclude that the U.S. ultimately did more good than harm and set Iraq on a path to being a prosperous and free country.

Photo Credit: MSNBC