Steve Clemons : The Atlantic

Could a New 'Commonwealth of Nations' Lead the Developing World?

2012-02-24T13:34:22-05:00

Formally led by the Queen of England, this collection of former British colonies could reconvene into something new and powerful.

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan, Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard, British Prime Minister David Cameron and Pakistani Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani hold a joint news conference at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Perth / Reuters

India, once considered the jewel in the crown of the British empire, is a member of the fossilized skeletal remains left behind, the Commonwealth of Nations -- but is also a member of the BRICS, the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), the G-20, the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), the East Asia Summit, IBSA (India, Brazil, South Africa), the NAM (or Non-Aligned Movement), the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and the World Trade Organization.

Most big nations -- and even small ones -- are increasingly enmeshed in lots of overlapping global clubs. In part this is hedging, not wanting to be left out, not knowing what will eventually happen to the old-US fashioned, post-World War II structures that just don't align with global power realities today.

Brazil, Australia, Turkey, South Africa, and China today are among the world's leading innovators in engineering even more new associations that let some nations in and keep others out -- all as potential economic or security buffers particularly in a world that is pulled away from over-arching, one size fits all, global institutions, to increasingly powerful regional structures and associations.

The Commonwealth of Nations, a voluntary association of 54 independent countries (though one is suspended at the moment) -- "nearly all of which were formerly under British rule" is not a cluster of countries that one would think of as the potential forefront of a globally agile growth club. Just the acronyms of BRICS or IBSA sound much more hip.

But Michael Ancram, also known as Lord Lothian -- a former conservative party shadow defense minister and foreign minister -- has proposed a 'Neo-Commonwealthianism' to kick-start the hopes and aspirations of both elder powers (like the UK), rising powers like India and South Africa -- and powers like Nigeria that matter but are flagging.

In a provocative paper titled "Farewell to Drift: A New Foreign Policy for a Network World", Ancram notes that the Commonwealth -- whose 'head' remains today the Queen of England -- covers 30% of the population, has members on every continent, and strong representation of the world's most significant religions. Ancram believes that this left-behind infrastructure, that appears arthritic and worn out to most, could be revitalized into "a dynamic vehicle for proactive and constructive diplomacy."

He notes that:

Too often the Commonwealth is scorned internationally as antiquated and irrelevant. Nothing could be further from the truth. Over half of its 1.7 billion members are under 25 and the principles it espouses are those that modern and progressive leaders the world over seek to propagate and support.

Ancram then slides into the touchy subject of what these clusters in part are about -- which is to in part promote like-mindedness among the members and their interests vs an outside set of national players. He notes that today's government in Russia and the Communist regime in China are still occasionally uncomfortable for fast growing democracies like Brazil, Turkey, South Africa, and India.

While the BRICS has Brazil, India, South Africa and does include China and Russia -- it is also interesting to note that IBSA gives India, Brazil and South Africa room to coordinate and engage with each other without Russia and China on occasion.

Ancram writes about democracy promotion opportunities via the Commonwealth as well:

While problems of fostering democratic states in the Middle East and South Asia have left a vastly diminished international appetite and capacity for similar exercises, there is still a need for budding democracy in developing countries to be encouraged and supported. Other initiatives seem to be withering on the branch. 'Dropping democracy from 10,000 feet thankfully seems to have run its course. Extending EU membership appears almost to have reached stalemate. The global community in any event cannot be dogmatic or squeamish about democratic principles as often the most pressing matters of international business involve un-democratic nations such as Russia and China. The disagreements that so regularly paralyse the Security Council would afflict any group of leading democracies.

The quiet promotion of democracy is therefore one of the major roles that the Commonwealth can undertake. The exclusion of both Fiji and Pakistan from the Commonwealth provided much-needed incentive and momentum for a return to democracy in those countries. The "badge of respectability" that Commonwealth membership bestows can add to internal pressures towards democracy.

A special report. See full coverage

Some of the obvious leaders in Commonwealth 2.0 arrangement would be India, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, Singapore, and Malaysia. Oil-rich Nigeria is also a key tone-setter on the African continent.

I asked Michael Ancram whether he really thought that these countries would be ready for the push of reset on one of the world's old colonial artifices -- and he quickly said, no -- not headquartered as the Commonwealth is today in London. Ancram stated that the capital of Commonwealth 2.0 had to be based in India. "India needs to lead this," Ancram said.

Whether or not he convinces India, and South Africa to tilt more of their attention to revitalizing an old global network that includes states like the UK and thus de-emphasizing the time they put into the BRICS and IBSA, the proposal is a novel one.

Like old designs on museum pieces and costumes from Tokugawa era Japan, or the early Renaissance in Europe making their way into the trendiest fashions today, Michael Ancram may be on to something important in revitalizing a network that once was the most powerful in the world.

Former Al Jazeera Chief Wadah Khanfar Streaming Live Today

2012-02-21T17:21:55-05:00

Photo credit: TED

This evening, The Atlantic's new event series, Atlantic Exchange, will host former Al Jazeera Director General Wadah Khanfar for a discussion I will moderate titled "Arab Revolutions Televised, Tweeted and Blogged: The Exit & Entrance Interview with Wadah Khanfar."

Khanfar is now the founding President of the Sharq Forum.

This will stream live here (see below) on this site between 5:45 pm EST and 7:00 pm EST.

For those who want an early dose of Wadah Khanfar, here is his mesmerizing talk about media and the Arab Spring given at TED last year.

If you have any questions you want posed, send to my Twitter Account, @SCClemons.

Live broadcast by Ustream
Should be interesting.

The New Power of the Global Middle Class

2012-02-21T10:50:06-05:00

The world's emerging economies will need more than just cheap labor to keep growing.

People pass by a billboard of a Chinese family in the financial district of Shanghai / Reuters

The BRICS comprise four distinct trillion-dollar plus economies (Brazil, Russia, India & China) plus the recent addition of South Africa which has nearly a half trillion dollar GDP. Whether it was a marketing ploy or brilliantly prescient, Goldman Sachs economist Jim O'Neill -- who coined the BRICs moniker -- created a new portal into debating and thinking about the future global distribution of power that has more dynamism than the conventional binary framing of America vs. Asia or more flamboyantly, the West vs. the Rest.

Many have tinkered with the question of whether the BRICS nations are the right ones to celebrate as tomorrow's national wunderkinds or not. I'm guilty of this as well -- suggesting at the recent Halifax International Security Forum that Turkey, itself closing in on membership in the trillion dollar GDP club, be considered the "silent T" in TBRICS.

In contrast, George Mason University's Jack Goldstone tosses out the decade old skeletal structure of BRICS and says that new significant trends have changed which nations will be up and which down. He suggests that TIMBIs be the new acronym -- Turkey, India, Mexico, Brazil and Indonesia.

Goldstone tosses out Russia and China on demographic grounds, arguing that labor force growth will determine which economies are most fast-growing and vibrant. Russia's population is shrinking while China's workforce will age fairly rapidly.

The argument I find more compelling, however, is that the density and breadth of a country's middle class -- more than the size of labor force -- may determine whether a rising nation jumps up to the level of a stable, enduring, high-wage job generating economy.

Source: OECD Development Centre Working Paper 285

Two must read treatments of this subject are first, The Bridge to a Global Middle Class by Sherle Schwenninger and Walter Russell Mead published in 2003 by the Council on Foreign Relations; and second, an OECD Development Centre Working Paper titled "The Emerging Middle Class in Developing Countries," by Homi Kharas published in January 2010.

Here is the pdf of the 54-page Kharas paper. Regrettably, the Schwenninger/Mead book is priced by the Council on Foreign Relations at $150.00 -- not very middle class friendly -- but they have a number of shorter articles that can be googled and this survey of their thinking by Glenn Yago and James Barth captures the key principles of their smart book.

What Schwenninger and Mead argue is that the development of stable financial instruments and social support structures that hold and direct capital to productive investment in a country -- like a stable (not corrupt) home mortgage framework. Other middle class-oriented structures include the creation of retirement savings systems and broadly deployed health care networks. These institutions can create legitimacy for the state in contrast to the hot money flows from outside that can undermine governments. These structures also help create a class of vital middle class stakeholders whose self interest can moderate the potential bad decisions and extremes of politicians.

As Barth and Yago summarize:

[Schwenninger and Mead] convincingly argue that for market-oriented reforms to succeed and produce lasting stability, they must hold out the prospect that all citizens will directly benefit from them. Reforms, for example, must be designed to allow ordinary people access to home ownership through the availability of affordable long-term financing or for private entrepreneurs to enter long protected, government directed business markets. Expanding economic participation in home and business ownership is key to the expansion of consumption and production in these economies. Not only will a program of middle-class oriented development create a constituency that will support reform, but it will be the best guarantor of global stability.

But what are the prospects for middle class oriented development among the BRICS countries and other parts of the world?

Homi Kharas' interesting report doesn't do a line item review of nations -- but he does of regions. And he delves into China's and India's growth vectors in great detail in his paper -- as well as comparing many other high growth economies, including Brazil's.

What he argues is that while there are serious structural constraints facing the super sizing of China's and India's middle class -- both are poised to grow this segment of their economy faster than nearly any other part of the world in the decades to come. Kharas writes that China's 157 million person middle class is now only second to the United States in absolute size. China is now the world's largest user of energy, the largest vehicle market, the number one cell phone market. Kharas also argues that "China's new middle class is eager to become the world's leading consumers" nothing that Chinese consumers shop 9.8 hours per week compared to 3.6 hours a week for the average American.

Kharas cautiously notes that China's middle class is still small -- only 12% -- but that the growth rate of the middle class may help it overcome Brazil's middle class distribution "trap."

About Brazil, Kharas writes:

In this regard, China would do well to look to the contrasting experiences of Brazil and South Korea. Between 1965 and 1980, Brazil grew at an average of 5.6 per cent per capita per year, becoming a middle-income country with a per capita income level of USD7600 (PPP). Yet due to its high income inequality, Brazil's middle class made up only 29 per cent of the country's population in 1980.

This made it impossible for the country to rely on middle-class consumption to drive the transformation into an innovation-based economy. Since 1980 the country has remained primarily a commodity exporter, and has struggled to sustain growth. Per capita incomes today are only slightly higher than they were thirty years ago (0.7 per cent annual growth), and the middle class never took off, currently accounting for just 38 per cent of total population. Brazil's recent growth performance is more hopeful and it may yet join the club of convergers, especially if it can leverage recent oil finds into sustained growth.

In the chart at the top of this article, one sees what happens to the distribution of global middle class consumption if Kharas' assumptions are correct.

Essentially, North America's share of middle class consumption plummets from 26% in 2009 to 10% by 2030; Europe from 38% in 2009 to 20% by 2030; the Asia Pacific from 23% in 2009 to 59% in 2030. Central and South America falls from 7% in 2009 to 6% over this period; Sub-Saran Africa remains at 1% during the time span while the Middle East and North Africa remain flat at 4% over those two decades.

One sees why President Obama and his National Security Advisor Tom Donilon have committed to strategically rebalancing America's assets toward Asia and are reducing the footprint of attention and resources directed at South Asia and the Middle East. The Asia Pacific is where a juggernaut of world economic growth will be.

Another great chart to understand trends in the world is this one:

Source: OECD Development Centre Working Paper 285

The dark blue regions comprise the affluent nations; the dark green the "converging" regions, i.e. regions where the breadth and density of the middle class is growing rapidly; the lighter green areas are areas where structural income disparities have helped stall middle class development -- and the light blue areas are "struggling".

A special report. See full coverage

In this map, Brazil is the real suprise and is considered -- at least in this treatment -- as 'stalled.' China, India, Turkey, even Russia are part of the converging class of nations. One of Goldstone's TIMBIs, Mexico, is hanging with Brazil.

Whether or not these particular categorizations and future estimates hold or not, the notion that big nations need sophisticated structures to manage resource and capital allocation makes a lot of sense -- and is the real contribution to development studies that Sherle Schwenninger and Walter Russell Mead back in 2003.

So rather than shooting from the hip or offering gut prognostications on which nations will rise and which will fall, it may be useful to consider points of analysis like Goldstone's labor force factors or Kharas, Mead and Schwenninger on middle class-oriented development as the driver of tomorrow's global growth champions.

For the record and despite this data, I'm still captivated by Brazil whose economic growth, commitment to self-sustained national energy consumption, and bigger footprint in global affairs may be key drivers of future global power in their own right, and may give Brazilian leadership more tools to eventually generate more balanced distribution of wealth and a kick-start to the further growth of its middle class.

This sort of speculation about what factors will drive growth and power are what makes these BRICS and TIMBIs debates so interesting.

The Next Egypt and Its America Allergy

2012-02-21T08:41:53-05:00

Above in the video clip are some thoughts on the churn inside Egypt over pro-Democracy NGO institutions that I shared on Al Jazeera yesterday.

Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham see the crisis coming to a close soon, with the NGO workers released. I hope this is the case -- but the now politically dominant Muslim Brotherhood's support for the actions of Egypt's military government is clearly a warning shot across America's bow.

I think it's important to realize that the US needs to be careful of the footprint it maintains in nations that are undergoing such profound political change. Americans and Europeans hugging the victors of these revolutions too strongly may undermine the legitimacy of those who toppled the previous regime.

The Real Defense Budget

2012-02-20T09:50:32-05:00

photo credit: Reuters

While everyone knows that the defense budget is large -- even in the numbers that the public sees as the formally admitted figures by the Department of Defense -- the truth is that when one scratches beneath the bureaucratic veneer, national security spending is much larger, nearly double the amount US citizens are told.

A Republican, numbers-compulsive defense wonk at the Center for Defense Information, Winslow Wheeler, has published a great summary of what America's defense budget 'really' is.

Wheeler offers a chart of the budget figures for both 2012 and 2013 -- starting with what is called the "DOD Base Budget (Discretionary)". He then adds line items from different accounts throughout other parts of the budget that really should be part of what is considered defense and security -- including the odd factoid that the Department of Defense and Office of Management and Budget (OMB) issue different figures of what the DOD Base Budget really is -- with the Pentagon shorting what it gives the media by about $6 billion.

Some may quibble with what Wheeler includes in his roster of the nearly $1 trillion the US government is spending to help Americans feel safe -- but I find it a good guide to thinking around the corners of the defense and national security budget.

I also think it's useful to look at the share of "net interest" that Americans are paying for this level of defense expenditure, $$63.7 billion in 2013.

Just like tax and tip noted on a receipt at a restaurant, perhaps we should require those spending US tax dollars to publicly acknowledge the 'extra tax' their spending entails in terms of interest payments on debt.

And to take this just one step further, I really would like to know how many cars and how much it costs to ferry US military personnel, generals, colonels, and the like back and forth between the Pentagon and the US Capitol. The amount of money dedicated by the Pentagon to engage and penetrate the legislative branch of government must be impressive.

Iran War Would Cost Trillions: Will the GOP Pay More Taxes for That?

2012-02-12T22:36:33-05:00

While GOP presidential candidate Ron Paul is doing all he can in this election cycle to gin up a debate about U.S. foreign policy and a measure of the costs and benefits, the debate about Iran, China, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Israel's security has been taking place in a gravityless environment.

Mitt Romney's opening foreign-policy opus at the Citadel criticized Obama for defense cuts with promises to boost America's defense commitments abroad, to boost military spending on hardware and ships in the Pacific -- to do everything we have been doing but more.

Where are the dollars going to come from?

I am one who thinks that war with Iran is far off and in the near term unlikely -- unless Israel makes a tremendous mistake by triggering and forcing a geostrategic move by the United States, a choice that could very well ultimately dismantle the close U.S.-Israel relationship, or alternatively if forces inside Iran that would benefit from war actually cause an escalation of events that produce a potential nightmare in the Persian Gulf and region.

That said, fewer and fewer people agree with me -- and various of the presidential candidates seem to be competing with each other to tell U.S. citizens how quickly they would deploy U.S. military and intelligence assets to undermine Iran's Supreme Leader and his government.

That's OK -- in the summer of 2007, both analysts and agitators in the political left believed Bush and Cheney would bomb Iran before year's end. Neoconservatives and pugnacious nationalists like John Bolton also believed this. I did a survey of folks on the inside and argued in September 2007 in a widely read Salon article that they would not bomb Iran. They didn't.

In the summer of 2010, some folks on the left were absolutely convinced that the U.S. would bomb Iran before August. Again, that was not how things turned out -- and was not the analysis I had from talking to people in the defense and intel establishments.

Today, things are fuzzier -- but at the highest levels of the national-security decisionmaking tree there is palpable doubt that bombing Iran achieves any fundamental strategic objectives while at the same time ultimately undermining U.S., Israel, and regional security, undermining the global economy. One senior official I heard when asked about bombing Iran then said, "OK, and then what? Then what?! Seriously, then what???"

I'll write more soon about what a much more level-headed and serious strategy with Iran would look like -- particularly since so many are hyperventilating today and in some cases pounding the drums for a collision, one that they think can be done on the cheap.

It is ridiculous to think that a strike by Israel against Iran, that would in real terms tie the U.S. to the conflict, would not be staggeringly expensive and consequential.

So, it would be interesting to hear from those who want to reside in the White House -- and even the Obama administration which has some 'kinetic action' advocates on the inside -- on what a more sensible financial management strategy for these proliferating conflicts, including an Iran war, would be.

George H.W. Bush got the Japanese citizens to write a check for $13.5 billion to the U.S. to pay for the first Gulf War. He was perhaps the last fiscally responsible war-time U.S. President.

Wars cost lots and lots of money -- and if a substantial chunk of the GOP crowd wants these wars and feels that it is in our national interest to have them, then by all means they should start lining up some of the wealthiest in the country who are helping to agitate for these conflicts to pay more in taxes for them.

Monti Warns of European Disintegration

2012-02-08T14:45:46-05:00

photo credit: Reuters

The ancient North African Christian theologian St. Augustine once wrote: " Resentment is like taking poison and hoping the other person dies."

That feeling of bitterness, national self-directed anger, and disdain among nations inside Europe for each other has become palpable and manifested itself in Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti's comments last night on The News Hour.

In an interview with senior correspondent Margaret Warner, Monti said "The Eurozone crisis has indeed brought about quite a bit of misunderstandings and the re-emergence of old phantoms about prejudices between the North, the South of Europe, and a lot of mutual resentment."

The Warner-Monti discussion focuses on the broad impact of the European financial crisis and the economic crush underway in Italy as well as the fate of the Euro. Prime Minister Monti hinted that the Eurozone crisis could not only lead to the disintegration of the Euro, but of Europe itself.

He stated "And it is very, very important that we all take this with great attention in order to avoid that something that was meant to be the culminating point of the European construction -- namely, the single currency -- turns out to be, through psychological negative effects, a factor of disintegration of Europe."

Europe may not disintegrate tomorrow -- and the Euro could some how squeak by in a two-speed European deal, but the deep divisions between those citizens who are now choking under the prospects of long-term, imposed debt burdens and the loss of sovereignty to German bankers and financiers could have the impact of a 21st century Versailles Treaty that dissolves the ties that have bound together the once fractious region.

Monti's comments are not the reckless sort that Silvio Berlusconi might have made. They are serious and sobering.

Obama vs. Romney on the 3 a.m. Call

2012-02-07T09:09:14-05:00

Last evening I had an interesting chat with Lawrence O'Donnell, host of MSNBC's The Last Word, considering how President Obama has done answering the "3 a.m. call" versus how Mitt Romney might answer the crisis call.

One of my friends said the key issue with Romney is how many layers of staff (or servants?) he might have stacked up to answer that call.

The Atlantic's Steve Clemons speaks to Lawrence O'Donnell about the "3 am call"

And yes, I know that I should 'never' use sports metaphors when talking politics.

In the clip above, I mention Obama's nuanced use of the clock with Iran, comparing it to "that football game we just saw. . .uh, the Superbowl."

We use what we have in our experience to communicate -- and for the first time in many years, I watched the big game and got obsessed with the clock and those final plays. I bet something like this shows up in President Obama's White House Correspondent's Dinner speech.

Key Proposition 8 Ruling Expected Tomorrow

2012-02-06T13:57:15-05:00

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has just issued a release that it expects the Court to file an opinion tomorrow morning at 10:00 am in the case of "Perry v. Brown" (case numbers 10-16696 and 11-16577) regarding the constitutionality of Proposition 8 and the denial of a motion to vacate the lower court judgment in the case.

The release says that "A summary of the opinion prepared by court staff will be posted along with the opinion."

Here is a pretty good backgrounder on the legal back-and-forth that has taken place since the passage of California's Proposition 8 which made the following line part of California's Constitution: "only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California."

Because this proposition would take away rights previously granted to those who married under California's marriage laws which for a window of time recognized same sex marriages, the law was later declared unconstitutional by a panel of judges. In an appeal, parties supportive of Proposition 8 then challenged that US District Court Judge Vaughn Walker, who is himself gay, should have recused himself in the judgment.

So, tomorrow's decision should clarify whether Vaughn Walker was in the right or wrong in participating in a judgment on this case.

10:00 am PST -- should be interesting.

Sheryl Sandberg Proved Herself With Summers

2012-02-06T11:01:29-05:00

Over the years, I have met Sheryl Sandberg in and around DC but not in some time, when I seemed to have had a long blink, only to discover now that she is one of the first women to break into the Silicon Valley nest of billionaire guys.

She has become a huge force lifting the horizons of what women may think is possible of themselves. Making roughly $1.6 billion in 42 months must be some kind of record. New billionaires rarely take time so quickly to invest in the hearts and minds of others -- and that seems to me what Sandberg is doing. She has my applause for it.

But I had to say that I should have tried to buy stock in her when I was reminded of something the New York Times reported yesterday:

But none have made promoting women a cause the way Ms. Sandberg has. . .Everyone agrees she is wickedly smart. But she has also been lucky, and has had powerful mentors along the way. After Harvard and Harvard Business School, she quickly rose from a post as an economist at the World Bank to become the chief of staff for Lawrence H. Summers, then the Treasury secretary. After that, she jumped to Google and, in 2008, to Facebook.

What I had forgotten was that, of course, she was Larry Summers' Chief of Staff at Treasury -- and in all of my encounters with Summers since 1994, he seemed more in control of his game and message (one that I often disagreed with) than at any other time I had watched him in action.

Clearly, Sandberg gave order and discipline and imposed a 'game plan' on Lawrence Summers -- who must be just in the person he is one of the greatest challenges possible for an "organizationalist".

We should have known then what heights Sheryl Sandberg would reach -- and there is probably much more ahead.

Corruption Watchdogs Have a Hot New Blogger: Jack Abramoff

2012-02-03T12:44:46-05:00

Holy Indian reservation roulette wheels Batman!

The newly launched Republic Report, an anti-corruption blog focusing on how self-interested dollars are warping the public-interest responsibilities of America's democratic institutions has actually hired convicted felon Jack Abramoff to be one of its lead bloggers.

Yes, that Jack Abramoff, "Casino Jack", as profiled in the Alex Gibney film, Casino Jack and the United States of Money.

The Republic Report may be "pulling a Joe Kennedy" here -- and I think it's provocative, bold, will attract a huge heaping pile of hate mail -- but nonetheless brings in DC's version of The Fantastic Mr. Fox to tell the world how the system works and what to watch out for.

This is what Franklin Roosevelt had in mind when he hired Joseph Kennedy Sr., a known stock manipulator and inside trader, to serve as the inaugural chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. Roosevelt wanted to catch the crooks on Wall Street, and said to a person asking why he had appointed a crook to be the watch dog, "Takes one to catch one."

And to the naysayers out there, it's probably better for Abramoff to be writing out about how DC-style corruption works so as to help those unfamiliar with the nuts and bolts of 'how to make a Senator smile' do a better job reforming the system rather than getting Abramoff back out there advising the bad guys how to cash in on the system.

The other bloggers in the group are outstanding and have, for the most part, crystal clear clean progressive track records -- including former Think Progress writer Lee Fang, former Center for American Progress youth and college program activist David Halperin, also another former Think Progress correspondent Zaid Jilani, former Foreign Policy and The Atlantic staffer Suzanne Merkelson, tough-minded investigator for the conservative Senator Charles Grassley Paul Thacker -- and one of the undisputed early leaders of modern grass roots, digital political activism, Matt Stoller.

Thacker the exception -- the rest are real progressives and none have done felony convicted jail time. Bringing Abramoff into this mix is one really interesting way for this blog to distinguish itself in a very crowded marketplace.

Nick Penniman, the well known former TomPaine.com editor and former lead of Huffington Post's investigative unit is the president of United Republic which has launched the blog.

I really want to go to the holiday party these folks throw and see if Stoller and Abramoff can do a buddy to buddy thing under the mistletoe -- and unite in their common work highlighting the corruption of America's key democratic platforms.

Abramoff's first post has gone up -- and in it he offers a Joe Kennedy-esque rationale for why he's doing this with a bit of confession:

It is a privilege for me to add my insights and experience to their strong and sagacious team and I look forward to working with them to reveal to our nation the way Washington really works.

There is a rising tide of outrage in our land about the abuse in our system. Sadly, in my former life as a lobbyist, I participated in this dysfunctional and byzantine world. But now, in these pages, and with my other efforts, I intend to do what I can as we all attempt to repair our democracy.

Interesting move by Nick Penniman and his team. We really look forward to following the entire line up there but also to the next and next next contributions by Jack Abramoff.

Afghanistan 2013: America's Next Groove

2012-02-03T08:36:49-05:00

Last night, former State Department official and US Marine Matthew Hoh, now a Senior Fellow at the Center for International Policy, and I had a very good discussion with Chris Matthews on MSNBC's Hardball about Defense Secretary Leon Panetta's comments that the US would cease combat operations in Afghanistan in 2013 -- rather than the end of 2014.

Chris Matthews speaks with The Atlantic's Steve Clemons and Matthew Hoh of the Center for International Policy

Key points made during the discussion: First, this is a key shift in strategy -- and a positive one.

Second, this remains consistent with the President's announced strategy, also articulated well by Vice President Joe Biden, that the military's job today is not to "beat" the Taliban but rather to shape the choices in the field for the political stakeholders and to be able to preempt any effort to overthrow the government in Kabul.

Third, I believe that there is a bit of an 'invisible hand' at work here in sending confidence building signals during a fragile early process of trying to negotiate with the Taliban. There are secret negotiations that various sides are attempting to hatch -- and Panetta's comments may be designed to shore up the process. The trip by Pakistan Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar to Kabul yesterday and his comments blessing the peace talks seem likely to also be part of this mutual posturing, confidence building process.

Lastly, for those like GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney, who think that the US should commit itself, its military manpower, and a bigger hold of debt to a longer stay in Afghanistan, I suggest to Chris Matthews that the outcome after another five or ten years would be a much more strategically deflated and impotent United States that fuels the ambitions and agendas of nations like Iran in the region, and China globally.

White Parties in Davos vs. Montreal: Igloos Play Differently!

2012-01-29T14:34:13-05:00

(Swiss Social Democrats JUSO President David Roth inspecting first igloo at OccupyWEF camp at Davos World Economic Forum encampment; credit: Reuters)

This past week, Davos saw that a well organized group of turbo-charged style globalization protesters, OccupyWEF (Occupy the World Economic Forum), set up shop in igloos in the smallish village where the world's economic and political elite flock to the end of January each year. My hat is off to the protestors whose blogging in the icy cold was great and unforgiving of those who tried to shrug them off. OccupyWEF have pushed out the boundaries of what comes to mind when one thinks of "white party."

And whether they were 'actually invited' to participate in the World Economic Forum meetings or not, they ultimately achieved the attention of the WEF Maestro himself, Executive Chairman Klaus Schwab, and were told publicly that they were invited. I can think of a lot of other groups and individuals who would like to wrangle an invite to this ultimate economic policy insiders club. So, if OccupyWEF really did not get an invite this year -- better demand entry for next year's meeting before decamping from the Igloo mother base.

But igloos play differently where I was last night -- Montreal. The White Party up here is called the "Igloofest" which draws more than 60,000 people over three weekends of fun, intense, thumping, out in the freezing cold and open night air of Montreal's old port. (image used with permission; credit: Miguel Legault for Igloofest; click image for larger version)

Here is more info on the fun that happens here -- and the organization's website, which at the time of this writing has crashed most likely because of too much traffic -- and this is the morning after the final night (!).

I stopped by the Igloofest mania last night -- and the gathering was packed, sold out capacity crowd -- thousands of people in parkas and mukluks dancing to techno music that blared across the St. Lawrence.

I didn't get the sense last night that the young folks dancing and happy amidst an igloo-themed rave had any idea that others of their age group were fighting against a global corporate take-over (probably many of the companies the OccupyWEF were taking on were simultaneously sponsors of Igloofest but just speculation on my part).

But I think it would be quite a global party -- all during the same week for those protesting and those dancing around igloos to get together. Perhaps OccupyWEF could have an Igloofest night -- and the Igloofest Montreal folks can pay tribute to those working hard to get people to think through what is happening in the lives of the world's 99%.

And while I am on Montreal, some other things for those who, like me, enjoy getting to know the little things and big in cities. (By the way, do check out my buddy Richard Florida's brilliant work at The Atlantic's new sister site, The Atlantic Cities.)

After the Igloofest, go stop by the W Montreal -- and while bars and clubs abound in the place, just go straight to the second floor to the Plateau Lounge for the slightly psychadelic maple leaf covered bar.

On a weekend night, there are four plus bartenders making specialty cocktails -- but ask for the bartender who is not from Montreal and not descended from one of the 1000 women that Louis XIV provided dowries for to get the population of French Canada going in the mid-17th century -- but rather is from Cairo. His name is Karim Terouz, a former Egyptian-based art director who moved to Montreal and decided to take his obsession with making the perfect drink to one of the higher end bars in the city, so as "to try and better under the people of Montreal" he told me.

He said that lots of drink and bar critics sneak in to write about the place and test them -- and that he always has to be ready for the ultra-demanding client, which I am in a passive aggressive way. I rarely know what I want in a bar -- but when I get it, I know whether it's quality or not. Usually not. This shout out is not bartender infatuation -- it's just Karim adjusts drink recipes to fit what he thinks works, he is burning lemon rinds and adding stuff I've never seen go into drinks made at any of my DC haunts. My friend and I sitting there agreed that we had not seen anyone so obsessed with making a perfect cocktail except in Japan -- and those cocktails cost about $100 each.

I've had my share of the very best versions of an old fashioned and sidecar -- and even a mint julep that would have kept Tennessee Williams there all night. He has a Cirque du Soleil drink mixing move and the women and men at the bar seem to realize that that is what they are really paying for.

Anyway, The W Montreal's Plateau Lounge is highly recommended -- particularly as a midway stopping point from the Igloofest to the Le Centre Sheraton which every late January is the site along with McGill University where 2,000 college students from around Canada and the US gather in what is known as McMUN to engage in Model United Nations mock diplomatic battles.

I really think that McMun should invite former recess-appointed US Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton (who was embraced by Newt Gingrich as his likely Secretary of State until perhaps Bolton endorsed Mitt Romney. . .ouch!) and me up here to debate the value of what they are doing -- and make it part of Igloofest.

Last note. If you stay at the Le Centre Sheraton and don't have your room serviced, the coffee replaced, and the towels and sheets turned over -- they give you a $5.00 credit for other stuff at the hotel. Environmentally designed incentives can work. They did with me.

News you can use. Now back to igloos. . .

Obama's Speeches and that SEAL Team: Bad News for Bad Guys

2012-01-26T08:37:11-05:00

Steve Clemons discusses with Lawrence O'Donnell Obama's big gamble deploying Navy SEAL Team 6 on another high-risk mission

I shared some thoughts with Lawrence O'Donnell on MSNBC's The Last Word on the yet again amazing performance of the Navy SEALs, Team 6, in rescuing American Jessica Buchanan and Dane Poul Thisted.

A couple of quick items that I mention in the video clip above.

First, Obama does really keep his cool when major, high risk actions are underway and he's off giving big speeches like he did Tuesday evening at the State of the Union address or when he was speaking at last year's White House Correspondents' Dinner and the bin Laden action was being readied for the following morning.

If this incursion into Somalia had failed, had members of the SEAL team been captured and/or killed as happened during the Clinton administration -- that loss would likely tip the electoral contest towards the Republican candidate, whether Mitt Romney or Newt Gingrich.

Obama didn't play it safe, and he and his team deserve credit for that.

Second, I ran into a senior legal adviser in the administration who made the good point that this is "not Rambo, not John Wayne, not bravado and swagger." The person said that there is multilateral coordination and legal authority that has been carefully constructed to both legitimate and support these police actions. This is effective, multilateral, legally-valid action, not unilateral swagger that says damn the international rules.

Killing Somali pirates who have kidnapped Americans and Europeans may appeal to the action-lust many have when watching action movies or reading a Tom Clancy novel, but the real achievement of the Obama White House is not just knowing how to deploy this great Navy SEAL team but also how to operate in the international system in a rules based way (and yes, I include the killing of bin Laden in this calculation).

Nate Silver Wins Again—Plus, Doha's Shafallah Forum

2012-01-21T23:25:01-05:00

View of my balcony at the Grand Hyatt, Doha

Good morning to those of you heading to bed on the news that Newt Gingrich dominated the South Carolina GOP primaries. I don't have much to add to the pundit commentary on Newt's return -- other than that take a look at the forecasting success yet again of 538's Nate Silver.

I've been a junkie for his electoral commentary for quite a while -- but every time he drops numbers before something happens, it's eery to see that he just about nails it every time.

Here is what Silver published on his New York Times blog before today's primary:

Souce: FiveThirtyEight, New York Times

As I wake up this morning in Doha, Qatar -- and yes, that's a picture off of my balcony at the Grand Hyatt this morning -- it looks like Nate Silver's estimates on Gingrich's 39% share and Romney's 29% take are dead on. Ron Paul seems to have come in last -- just behind Rick Santorum, but Silver's models still predicted well their general market share of the primary.

For those in Doha today, I'm here with Bob Woodruff, Cherie Blair, Sheikha Moza, Valerie Amos, and many others for the Shafallah Forum on Crisis, Conflict and Disability. I'll be moderating a session this afternoon on the challenges those who are disabled face during natural disasters. Bob Woodruff is moderating the session on disability issues in military conflicts. Luckily, I have an excellent set of panelists who have thought deeply about what might be done to even out the chances for those who are disabled during either man-made or natural shocks.

I don't see a spot on the website for live-streaming. Come on Doha!! But if there is a video, I'll try to get it posted later.

Here are some interesting data points and references I plan to raise during my opening remarks. First, a reference to Europe's 2003 heat wave that killed more than 50,000 people -- the majority of whom were elderly and/or disabled. A flashback to Katrina's deadly impact on the disabled. And a look at what some NGO groups, like Prepare Now, are doing to encourage those with disabilities and constraints to plan ahead.

Romney Snubbing Hispanics?

2012-01-20T12:15:00-05:00

While there have been a long slog of GOP debates, and people may be asking why any more encounters matter at this point -- Hispanic Americans want their turn at bat and are working hard to pull off 'the Hispanic issues conversation' next Wednesday.

Only problem is that Mitt Romney won't return calls and say yes or no to attending.

Scheduled for Wednesday, 25 January at the 140,000 student strong Miami-Dade College, the "meet up with candidates" organized by Univision, the US Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and the college has secured commitments from both Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum to attend. Ron Paul's staff is still trying to work it out and has had discussions with the debate organizers.

But despite a full court press by numerous Romney advisers and donors and even senior members of the LDS Church, Romney and his campaign have been radio silent over whether he will appear or not. The campaign has not yet responded to this writer's inquiries about its position on the event.

At this point, leading members of the Hispanic community say that they have had enough and are going public with their grumbling about the former Massachusetts governor. One senior Hispanic policy activist has said that Romney is not signalling that America's Hispanic community is a priority for him.

The President and Chairman of the US Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, Nina Vaca and Javier Palomarez respectively, have issued these statements "thanking" Santorum and Gingrich for their commitments -- but also implying that Romney is dissing them.

Nina Vaca, Chairman of the Board of Directors
"As the premier voice for America's Hispanic business community, the USHCC has organized this event to provide a forum for the Republican Presidential candidates to directly address the fastest-growing and most dynamic group of job creators - the nation's Hispanic entrepreneurs."

"64% of jobs in our country are created by small business, and Hispanic entrepreneurs are leading the growth in that segment. Our nation's economic recovery will require continued growth in the Hispanic business community, and Speaker Gingrich and Senator Santorum's willingness to speak at this event underscores their understanding of our contributions.
Javier Palomarez, President & CEO
"We have worked closely with two world class institutions -- Univision and Miami-Dade College-- to create an event that will allow the Republican candidates to begin a national conversation with America's Hispanic community.
We are thankful for the participation of Speaker Gingrich and Senator Santorum, these gentlemen have shown they recognize the important role that Hispanic job creators play in the American economy. Our three organizations have a unique ability to reach the very voters who will decide the next Republican nominee, and I hope that Governor Romney and Rep. Paul will decide to join us.

In the fall of 2011, a strange dust-up took place between Florida's leading Hispanic politico, US Senator Marco Rubio, who accused Univision of trying to shake him down by foregoing commentary about the criminal record of one of his family members if he'd do an interview for the network. Univision denies the allegations -- and The New Yorker's Ken Auletta wrote an extensive, thoughtful profile of this episode here. The consequence last October was that Rubio then got most of the potential GOP presidential contenders (who might want him on their ticket in the VP slot) to boycott this Univision debate.

So, Romney's reluctance may still be tied to the Rubio-Univision sumo match, or may be that he's just pretty busy and hasn't gotten to his in-box.

But Hispanic leaders involved in trying to get Romney to talk with them and engage Hispanic issues are now issuing alerts that they are not at all happy being ignored.

Man-Made Tragedies, Angelina Jolie, and Women

2012-01-16T11:44:24-05:00

During the crush that Angelina Jolie endured and seemed to enjoy for hours, elder woman after elder woman recounted in whispers stories of the trauma their families or relatives had experienced during either the Holocaust of World War II or the genocidal atrocities that occurred during the Bosnia War.

(Credit: Alberto Barreto; reprinted with permission, CIPE)

I haven't yet sorted out all of the intense feelings generated by watching the new Angelina Jolie written and directed film, In the Land of Blood and Honey, but I will have something up soon.

The film is still haunting my thoughts -- but during the after party which went longer than any policy issue-oriented, mostly heterosexual after-event I have been to in a long time (that is to say that 'policy events' with my gay crowd always go late), I got the chance to chat with the film's director and to eavesdrop unintentionally on conversations Jolie was having with others at the Holocaust Museum.

During the crush that Angelina Jolie endured and seemed to enjoy for hours, elder woman after elder woman recounted in whispers stories of the trauma their families or relatives had experienced during either the Holocaust of World War II or the genocidal atrocities that occurred during the Bosnia War. I heard many talking about brothers and cousins and children who lived in the forest during the Bosnia conflict -- and inevitably, the discussions -- so many of them -- came down to the abuse of women, their systematic rape, and other horrors that were pressed on them.

Frequently, Jolie and the women she spoke to would comment about what a different world it would be if women were running the show, were more empowered. Wars like this, they said, "would not happen."

I'm not sure that ultimately this view is correct. Margaret Thatcher, as we are reminded of in Meryl Streep's award-winning performance in Iron Lady, was no peacenik.

But what I do think is dead-on right is that around the world, the real nut cases that rise to power and decide to use war and killing as a tool of their further ambitions are nearly always men. And as part of their rise, they make the further subordination and harassment of women a key part of their playbook.

The US is making major strides in the right direction in the equalization of the "state of men" and "state of women" as argued by Hanna Rosin in her cover story on the subject in The Atlantic -- but much of the rest of the world lags.

Thus, awareness-wrangling is important elsewhere and political cartoons can generate a viral edginess that inspires and empowers others to insist on equality. The Center for International Private Enterprise recently held an international competition of political cartoons in three categories -- democracy, corruption, and gender equality.

Here is a link to the cartoon that won the gender equality prize as well as other category winners, and here is a link that gets you to the semifinalists. And for those who want to go a step further, here is a pdf of the interesting media package that includes bios and quotes from various of the cartoonists.

The entry pasted above of the world on the back of an old cleaning woman evoked the strongest response from me -- and was one of the semifinalists in gender equality. It was done by El Tiempo (Columbia)'s political cartoonist Alberto Barreto. This cartoon, at least in my reading of it, depicts the doubled down abuse that women worldwide endure. First, they are expected to do the tasks many men won't do, holding the world and countries and their homes and communities together -- while nonetheless being looked down upon.

Other cartoons in the mix may move readers of this note more than the one I have selected, but as a person who doesn't write much about gender issues -- the power and solemnity of many of the post-film chats I heard Jolie have with women who have dealt with so much man-made tragedy got me thinking about this.

More on this powerful film soon. And yes, you should see it -- but expect to be pounded.

Streaming Live: George Mitchell and Jeffrey Goldberg on Middle East Conflict

2012-01-12T15:42:39-05:00

This evening between about 5:50 pm (might start a few minutes late) and 7:15 pm EST, I will be chairing at Atlantic Exchange event on the subject of Middle East peace.

Former Obama administration Middle East envoy and former US Senator George Mitchell will join us, share some framing remarks, and then be interviewed by Atlantic national correspondent Jeffrey Goldberg.

The event will stream live above.

We have organized tonight's discussion with the S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace and its director, former Congressman Robert Wexler -- who have partnered with The Atlantic to produce a four-part series online now, each video about 15 minutes long, titled "Is Peace Possible?"

The four topics covered in this fascinating exchange are the clear ones: borders, security, refugees and Jerusalem. I encourage folks to check these out.

The subject of a resolution to the Israel-Palestine conflict is a volatile one that I think should have been not only near the top of the Obama administration's roll out priorities (which it was) but also among the top of their foreign policy/national security priorities -- which ultimately it has not been except rhetorically and perhaps intellectually, not politically.

This increasingly complex knot in foreign affairs has far greater consequence for the world than just the population of Israelis and Palestinians directly involved -- and in my view, the failures and lack of vision in the leadership on both sides of the equation are something that the global community cannot acquiesce to.

C-Span will also be taping the event tonight, and I'll post those links here once they become available on line.

U.S. Marines Give Ammo to Taliban

2012-01-12T13:57:42-05:00

As Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, US military officers -- incumbents and retired -- and others in DC's firmament condemn the US Marines that apparently urinated on dead Taliban militants, I'm wondering how long it will take for a movement to grow inside the United States that embraces the soldiers and the "pissing act" that Panetta has called "deplorable."

Thus far, the Taliban leadership is shrugging off the incident -- stating that what happened is nothing new. In an AFP report, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahed stated: "Over the past 10 years, there have been hundreds of similar cases that were not revealed."

But many Americans are going to pound their chests and celebrate those who would "piss" on their enemies. Comment sections on some of the YouTube sites that have clips of the group urination scene are already filling up with crude blasts praising the soldiers and degrading the dead Taliban insurgents. Many wish they were part of the group scene. This is the pugnacious nationalist side of American politics that is growing today -- and many soldiers come from corners of the United States where this behavior is the norm.

I haven't read the latest figures on the number of moral waivers that the US military continues to extend to gain new recruits, but the last time I wrote about this, the New York Times in February 2007 noted that in the preceding three years more than 125,000 moral waivers had been extended (while nonetheless still expelling outed gay military service people) for crimes including serious misdemeanors as well as "felonies such as aggravated assault, burglary, robbery and vehicular homicide."

So, while many in the national media and in polite circles promise to investigate this act, to punish those involved as Panetta said "to the fullest extent", the truth is that the Iraq War and Afghanistan War and the building up of national security commitments that rest on the backs of a new generation of soldiers -- many of whom don't understand and operate with nuance -- has empowered those who think pissing on the enemy is the thing to do.

Whether many want to admit it or not, what those soldiers allegedly did represents "us" today -- and that's yet another part of the malignant manifestation of these current conflicts.

Reframing U.S. Strategy in a Turbulent World

2012-01-11T11:20:15-05:00

As previously mentioned, I will be chairing a session today at the New America Foundation between 12:15 pm and 1:45 pm EST titled "Reframing US Strategy in a Turbulent World: American Spring?"

The speakers are Georgetown Professor and Council on Foreign Relations Senior Fellow Charles Kupchan, New America Foundation fellow and Georgetown Law professor Rosa Brooks, former Congressman Tom Perriello, Duke Professor and co-author of The End of Arrogance: America in the Global Competition of Ideas Bruce Jentleson, and Democracy: A Journal of Ideas editor Michael Tomasky.

The stream will follow below.

Broadcasting live with Ustream

Are U.S.-Japan Relations Really in Such Great Shape? 2 Views

2012-01-10T09:31:01-05:00

Reuters

In case you don't recognize him, that is Japan Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda, Japan's 3rd head of government since August 2009, talking to President Obama.

On the same day, I received two dispatches from the Asia Pacific that touched on Japan's political health as well as US-Japan relations. Thanks to Sheila Johnson, long time spouse and editor of Chalmers Johnson, for sending me the latter piece, a brutal essay by Australia-based Gavan McCormack -- and the State Department for the dispatch of Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell's remarks in Japan.

It's just interesting to compare perspectives. First from Kurt Campbell at Tokyo's Imperial Hotel on the 7th of January:

I just wanted to say it's been very good to be back in Japan. We've had excellent meetings with the business community, with people from the Prime Minister's Office and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. I just want to underscore that I think U.S.-Japan relations are in excellent shape, and we're looking forward to strong progress on a range of issues in 2012.

The italicization of "excellent shape" was done by me.

Now to get a more sobering view of the state of Japan's political order today from the ever blunt Gavan McCormack (do read his longer piece on the state of Okinawa's resistance against Japan's central government and US authorities on efforts to relocate the dense urban-based Futenma Air Station to Henoko, on the north end of Okinawa):

By then, the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) government, elected at the end of August 2009, was into its third Prime Minister and had abandoned or reversed almost all the key policies on which it had been elected: the commitment to substitute political for bureaucratic direction, the renegotiation of the relationship with the US on an equal basis, the promotion of an East Asian community, the maintaining of the current level of consumption tax, an end to the Liberal-Democratic Party's long-entrenched "construction state" policies which would be symbolized in particular by the abandonment of the Yamba dam project, and, not least, the closure of Futenma Marine Air Station in Okinawa without substitution in the prefecture.

McCormack is on to something vital for anyone who wants to try his or hand at US-Japan futurism to understand.

The success of the Democratic Party of Japan was never assured -- but it was the very first time that the Japanese electorate put full faith and confidence in a genuine, rather than fake, transfer of power from one political party to another. Japan's democracy has largely been artificial until the DPJ's August 2009 victory. The fall of Hatoyama was in part because of his own failings -- but also because the US fought him so hard and so publicly over Futenma that his administration collapsed. Many Japanese think that the US knocked off their prime minister. As I wrote at the time, too bad the US didn't try some of the same boldness with Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu.

But now, the Japan that Assistant Secretary Kurt Campbell is referring to when he says that US-Japan relations are in "excellent shape" is a lobotomized, constrained, knocked around Japan -- one that gets praise if it does what the United States wants and slammed when it doesn't.

The entire Democracy 2.0 effort in Japan has largely collapsed both because of US pressure and the resulting collapse of confidence in DPJ leadership.

This is a dangerous brew -- and will in time produce a counter-reaction in which the legitimacy of a future, strong Japanese leader will be a combination of pugnacious nationalism, a dark version of Japanese soul-searching, that not only wants to scrimmage with its neighbors but defies controls set by the United States.

And it doesn't have to be this way. America can give Japan much more breathing room in the relationship -- and revitalize the strategic partnership between both countries by doing so.

Romney vs. Obama vs. Paul in Political-Memorabilia Sales

2012-01-09T17:52:25-05:00

The CafePress folks -- the makers of all sorts of fun political paraphernalia, buttons, t-shirts, mugs, bumper stickers (this is where I got my much loved Talking Points Memo t-shirt and coffee mug) -- think that while Romney may be ahead in the GOP polls, Obama is slaughtering him in political merchandise sales. In 2008, CafePress' sales figures predicted Obama's victory over John McCain.

Guess we'll see how things go in 2012 -- but a couple of tidbits. For 2011, Obama's political merchandise in the aggregate beats Romney 68-32%.

Would probably be better to look at these numbers at the end of the first quarter in 2012 as it may be a stacked deck to compare an incumbent US President to a GOP contender who wasn't really in the public eye the full year.

Ron Paul, in contrast, clobbered President Obama in 2011 -- beating the President 75-25% in merchandise sales. In a press release, CafePress suggests that Ron Paul is the only candidate with the breadth of support big enough to beat President Obama. I respectfully disagree but the sales figures are interesting.

CafePress also noted that Michelle Bachmann items fell from 7% of all sales to just 2% during December 2011. Just sayin'. . .

Here's where you can check out the weekly figures on the CafePress Cultural Barometer.

Obama Should Call Rumsfeld to Work on Defense Strategy and Cuts

2012-01-07T11:55:17-05:00

photo courtesy: White House

While budget details of President Obama's just unveiled new defense strategy remain scant and vague and the President feels the need to continue hawking his combo of budgetary constraint and military hawkishness, stating that his forthcoming budgets would still be larger than those of the preceding Bush administration. Obama last week stated:

Over the next 10 years, the growth in the defense budget will slow, but the fact of the matter is this. It will still grow. In fact, the defense budget will still be larger than it was toward the end of the Bush administration. And I firmly believe, and I think the American people understand that we can keep our military strong and our nation secure with a defense budget that continues to be larger than roughly the next 10 countries combined.

Nonetheless, the President and his team are indicating serious shifts in America's strategic picture. A rebalancing is underway -- troops, resources, and attention shifting away from the Middle East and South Asia with a reconfiguration of assets and slight beefing up in Asia -- not just of personnel and naval and air capacity but time on the Presidential attention clock.

China Vice President Xi Jingping, widely estimated to be the successor later this year to Hu Jintao as China's next generation President, will visit Washington, DC in February -- and the message, communicated by new China handler-in-chief Joe Biden, will be constructive but hard-headed, interest-driven mutual US-China engagement in which the US will communicate that it's legs in the region aren't weakening with China's rise -- but rather getting stronger and providing an ongoing platform for the peace and stability that have benefited much of the region including, as one senior White House national security official told me, CHINA.

To some degree, one might call this element of President Obama's new strategy the "Mearsheimer Imperative" -- responding at long last perhaps unconsciously to University of Chicago uber realist John Mearsheimer's call for US focus on China's inevitable, "offensive realist" ambitions to become "the Godzilla" of the Asia Pacific region -- working to push the US out of the regional picture. In the latest issue of The Atlantic, Robert Kaplan has written an incisive and daring profile of Mearsheimer that blasts through the surface noise criticisms of Mearsheimer's recent work focusing on Israel's disruption of America's strategic behavior and choices. (will post link when available -- next Tuesday morning 8 am)

But rebalancing slices of the White House's attention pie are but one part of the strategic shift. It's also clear that the era of large-manned occupations of other countries, the wholesale adoption of and rebuilding of states, or COIN (counter-insurgency) strategy, is over. One element of COIN that grew in the fold of the doctrine was the integration of highly sophisticated information, communications, and geospatial intelligence -- informed by feeds of massive data as well as from on the ground intel from small units working in the field -- to the battle field and drone targeting. When America invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, its capacities in standing up a "smart army" and "smart soldiers", fighting units integrated into real time intelligence frameworks, far outstripped any other nation. But in the ten plus years since, America's capacities in the intelligence arena as well as the ability to deliver decisive blows to enemies (albeit frequently at intolerably high costs to innocent civilian lives) from relatively remote distances has upended the need and rationale for large scale troop deployments.

Just as the controversial drone has quietly and quickly replaced the manned bomber as the platform of choice for surgical bombing of targets -- the information and computing revolution and military capacity that has grown out of it -- in part developed in concert with COIN-innovator General David Petraeus' support -- has made COIN and a big chunk of the US Army less relevant to prosecuting contemporary conflicts. Petraeus, now Director of Central Intelligence, is helping to usher in new strategies and management for the further consolidation of intelligence to conflict missions. In some ways, Petraeus was a founding father of COIN, and is now helping to oversee the dismantlement of COIN and ushering in a new successor strategy that is potentially, leaner, smarter, and more nimble -- and potentially substantially less costly than COIN.

This gets me to former defense secretary twice over Donald Rumsfeld -- a complicated and controversial personality in the defense and national security arena. But the overall package that Obama seems to be promulgating in this era of hard choices has played out briefly if unsuccessfully before -- and that was when President George W. Bush called Rumsfeld back to service in early 2001 to reshape and modernize the Pentagon. The Fiscal Times' Bradley Graham has written an insightful flashback piece about the arm-wrestling over strategy and defense budgets in that pre-9/11 period when Rumsfeld was skirmishing against the Pentagon's generals and working to compel efficiencies and new ways of conducting wars.

While Rumsfeld argues that he was not part of the information-technology intoxicated "revolution in military affairs" crowd, he did become a flag-waver for the deep integration of next generation IT and communications into the broad defense platform -- arguing that this would turbo-charge America's capacity to command theaters of conflict. After having heard Rumsfeld on a number of occasions at RAND Corporation meetings in the 1980s, I don't buy his claim not to have seen not only the efficiencies that could come from IT tech leaps but the upticks in real, bottom line military power because of them.

My argument here -- despite the controversies over Rumsfeld's management style and some would argue his disregard for the legal framework for national security decisionmaking after 9/11 -- is that Rumsfeld worked through more than any of his other then colleagues what would be required to transform a large footprint, Army-heavy, clunky, globally sprawling military machine into something that shed a lot of that weight -- and whose priorities, deployments, and budgets were driven by new factors rather than by some equation of inertia spiced up by safe, risk-averse incrementalism.

I feel like I'm somewhat mimicking Robert Kaplan defense of John Mearsheimer's value to America's strategic course in suggesting that Donald Rumsfeld, derided by many, also has quite significant insights into the struggles that the Pentagon and White House are working through now.

I haven't spoken to Rumsfeld about this subject recently -- but about six months ago at a meeting he and his staff invited me to with Henry Kissinger, I did raise with him my sense that the hard choices the Obama administration would face budgetarily would force a return to the issues he wrestled with in early 2001 and I got no push-back from the former Defense Secretary.

Leon Panetta has continued to talk somewhat obliquely about "numbers" when trying to defend defense and military capacities of the country. He did this at the recent Halifax International Security Forum -- and has largely continued to do it when responding to Congress or public questions about his concerns that budget cuts not cut deeply into the muscle of America's national security machinery.

What Panetta could learn, and I mean this in a constructive way, from Donald Rumsfeld is the capacity to think and speak out loud about what forces might look like in a reconfigured Pentagon dealing with a very different terrain of conflict than the types of wars and conflict the Pentagon was organized to deal with during the last many decades.

The military has been having this sort of discussion about strategy and mission needs behind closed doors -- not much transparency -- and this is something that Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Martin Dempsey has said was a good thing. I respectfully disagree.

Rumsfeld's public ruminations about what might be possible in achieving efficiencies and dealing with a tough budgetary environment were leading the nation in my view to do some of the "rebalancing" back in early 2001 that would have been healthy for the country. Robert Kagan, writing in July 2001, strongly disagreed with my perspective, but his piece gives a sense of the times before 9/11 that roughly feel like the budgetary and hard choice debates unfolding today.

A return to Rumsfeld's efforts to strangle some parts of the Pentagon while conceptualizing new ways to achieve security would be a constructive discussion for the Obama team to consider.

Obama, Leon Panetta, Tom Donilon, Ashton Carter, David Petraeus, General Dempsey and others on the Obama national security team may find that such public discourse could very well help Americans see something that might be true -- that greater security deliverables are possible with reform and change, even amidst budget cuts.

Maybe it's time to invite Donald Rumsfeld to be invited to join the respective advisory boards tasked with thinking through new blueprints for a reformed and rewired military strategy. Controversial, of course -- but also a smart thing to do, even in an election year.

Romney's Slim Thin Likes

2012-01-05T10:42:08-05:00

I have a stunted sense of humor, but I really liked what TIME did with it's latest cover.

Much could happen that throws the GOP race into a somersault, paraphrasing Charlie Cook and Ron Brownstein, but I basically agree with David Frum's blunt assessment offered last night on CNN that Romney will be the last man standing in this race and will ultimately win the primary.

I sort of wish this were not true because 'any' of the other candidates would keep this interesting -- Romney will help us snooze.

Here is Joe Klein's piece that was TIME's December cover story. And here is the new one by David von Drehle's piece just posted this morning.

Biden Gets China

2012-01-02T09:28:14-05:00

Biden's Next Big Project: Recognizing that Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping will be China's president-in-waiting through much of 2012, the White House will move Vice President Joe Biden to the helm of the Obama administration's US-China policy.

Reuters

A senior White House official has confirmed that Vice President Joe Biden will take the lead on the administration's next phase China policy.

While the Departments of State and Treasury have held important functional roles in conducting the China-US Strategic and Economic Dialogue meetings, raising the bilateral status of US-China relations with ongoing meetings between two senior US Executive Branch officials with two of China's most senior leaders, Vice Premier Li Keqiang and State Councillor Dai Bingguo, there has been a general sense that neither Timothy Geithner nor Hillary Clinton and her team were comprehensively driving US-China policy.

The White House official made clear that the coming shift in the locus of US-China policy management was not a critique of either Clinton or Geithner's management of the China portfolio -- but rather, the rise of Hu Jintao heir apparent and current Vice President Xi Jinping as the likely next President of China created certain practical challenges in dealing with him on a same-status level throughout much of 2012 until Xi's accession to the presidency is formalized.

The view of some of the administration's China-handlers is that management of US-China policy has become so central to a vast array of other policy challenges that the administration's approach needs to be both broad and managed with "a deep and senior bench." The evolution of many functional offices at the Department of State and Treasury tasked with various line items in the China-US Strategic and Economic Dialogue has helped stabilize many aspects of the relationship and has helped to benchmark meeting to meeting progress on core concerns.

National Security Advisor Thomas Donilon has essentially been holding the China policy portfolio himself since September 2010 when in the early part of that month he and then Obama national economic advisor Lawrence Summers went to Beijing to attempt a reset in a quickly deteriorating US-China economic and military relationship. For the most part, currency politics aside, Donilon's mission has succeeded -- and he has since preempted either Clinton's China hands, particularly Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell, or Geithner's team from taking primacy over US-China policy.

The shift to a strategy of engagement with Biden at the top, orchestrated by Donilon, allows the US to deal with China's likely next president from a Vice President to a Vice President/Next President status -- and to continue both the Departments of State's and Treasury's ongoing engagement with other designated key Chinese leaders.

After President Obama's 2008 presidential win, the original intention of the White House was to focus the Vice President primarily on domestic matters -- telling this writer at the time to remember that Joe Biden had recently been featured in Working Mother magazine. Part of the concern at the time was that with such personalities as Defense Secretary Bob Gates, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, then National Security Advisor General Jim Jones, super-general-in-the-field David Petraeus, CIA Director Leon Panetta, Envoys Richard Holbrooke, former Senator George Mitchell, Stephen Bosworth, and Dennis Ross -- Joe Biden as a roving foreign policy/national security hand wasn't perceived to be stabilizing to a strong-on-divas Obama team.

However, Joe Biden quietly took on national security tasks that were key to President Obama and that needed more off the newspaper front page handling. These included laying the groundwork for the major nuclear materials summit that the Obama administration hosted in April 2010 as well as lining up the continuity of thinking and policy deployment tying together this nuclear materials and WMD summit with President Obama's Nuclear Posture Review and the Senate passage of the New START treaty. Biden also played a leading role -- along with Defense Secretary Bob Gates -- in the "Russia reset."

And whether Iraq's democratic-appearing government survives or not, the person who did more than any other behind the scenes to broker the deals and to play communications envoy between factions of Iraq's fractured political order was Joe Biden. Biden has worked nearly every day -- and definitely every week of his tenure in the vice-presidency trying to seduce former, bitter enemies to realize that they had more ultimately to gain for their constituents, their nation, and themselves personally if they held together the semblance of a constitutional arrangement rather than ripping it up and devolving into civil war once again.

Biden has checked off the boxes of Iraq, Russia, and nuclear materials -- and his foreign policy slate is largely clear.

While this writer thinks he should be the person who does for US-Afghanistan policy what he did in the US-Iraq case, a topic for another day, Biden's next big task will be the next phase evolution of US-China policy.