UK

The Coming of the Second Jimmy Carter

17 Apr
by John, posted in Euro, Falklands/Malvinas, Middle East, President, UK   |  No Comments

For those of us in 2008 who voted enthusiastically for Senator Obama from the center of the Democratic Party it has been quite a ride.  Through TARP, the auto-bailouts, and the killing of Osama Bin Laden we saw a steady moderate hand at the tiller of crisis.  Then the diversion into healthcare resulted in the loss of a governing majority.

Having sacrificed his political capital on healthcare, the President has been unable to follow a traditional Keynesian path to stimulate the economy.  His vaunted stimulus was both more effective than his critics admit, too structurally dependent on temporary tax cuts,  and too short lived to have any real long term effect.  His efforts on “too big to fail” banks who are bigger than ever ended in another regulatory flop. The most capitalists in the US can hope for is that the supposedly “Keynesian” President ceases raising taxes, imposing higher healthcare costs, raising the minimum wage, and pursuing short term austerity in a shrinking discretionary budget.

But while the President remains tactically more reliable than his predecessor overseas, he remains blunderingly opaque on strategy.  Surely a pivot to Asia involves more than sending a detachment of Marines to Australia. Would not a transformative economic proposal linking China further into the international trading system be a stronger strategic initiative?

But there is another immediate foreign policy strategic tipping point coming in our most important ally – Great Britain. In 2014 Scotland may secede from Britain. Sometime after 2015 Great Britain will probably vote on whether to leave the European Union.

What is President Obama’s policy on revolutionary change within our strongest ally?

If Scotland leaves, the Labor Party in Britain is finished.  England is a Tory bastion.  And in a rump Britain England will dominate even more. The Tories will chart a more conservative course.  And since the desire to leave the EU is even stronger with Tories than in Britain as a whole, a follow-on referendum could leave a smaller and militarily weakened Great Britain outside the EU.

Mr. President, what is our plan for that?

Scotland has played an outsized role in Anglo-American defense strategy since World War I.  Most of the secure naval harbors in Britain, including its only harbor for nuclear weapons capable ships, are in Scotland.  The Scots have sacrificed the most per capita in causalities within the UK from World War I onward.  Scotland has always been at the heart of British defense capabilities.

Now this is not all bad news.  Change is inevitable and Britain has not yet faced all of its past in Scotland, Ireland, the Falklands, and Gibraltar.  The US could much more easily reach trade agreements with an independent Britain than with the EU.  The debate over Scotland’s readmission into NATO after it leaves Britain could force a needed conversation. Why are the United States, Britain, Canada, and France undertaking to defend small countries who cannot or in the case of the Scottish Nationalist Party will not contribute to our nuclear deterrent?

The point is a major strategic moment is coming within this President’s term.  What is the plan?  Surely it is not merely to send a mid-level official to London to lecture the British government on why it is in the United States’ interest for Britain to stay in the EU. I am confident FDR or Reagan would have sent a high level official to explain why it is in Britain’s interest to stay in the EU.

But as with all the strategic things in his Presidency – the economy and foreign policy – President Obama is incapable of acting. It is if he exists in an ether world of soft focused rallies calling for dinners to discuss budgets.  As with President Carter’s last years the President just cannot get anything strategic done.  Perhaps at this point that is a comfort.  And on and on we go riding the 13 year merry-go-round of limp leadership.

Obama the Ugly American Tourist

25 Jan
by John, posted in President, UK   |  No Comments

Really, the President does not know anything about Britain and Europe.  It is perhaps not the foremost scandal on the average American’s mind during Presidential Inauguration week.  But, the President and his foreign policy team have very publicly been interfering in Prime Minister Cameron’s decision to put Europe on notice that Great Britain is not going to surrender anymore sovereignty to the EU without a vote of the British people.

This blog has been a consistent supporter of President Obama’s foreign policy.  A reluctance to commit US forces when their effectiveness is unsure is a return to the policies of FDR and Eisenhower.  A focus on inserting US power in strategic doses not scattershot into every crisis is a return to the policies of Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and Clinton.  With all the problems in the world today threatening US interests the President and his team should butt out of Britain’s business.

How is it apparently an American interest for its closest ally in Europe to surrender more of its sovereignty including absorption into a European political state on terms that marginalize Britain?  A Europe that is inherently more pacifist, more socialist, more economically sclerotic, and from an entirely different tradition than the Anglo-American world.

Britain is great.  It is not some American colony that brings backbone and capitalism to the continent.  Unlike almost every European state but Malta and Switzerland, Britain never surrendered to Hitler or in a thousand years to any invader.  It is particularly British to stand alone on matters of British sovereignty.

This does not mean that Britain needs to leave the European Union as it was originally envisioned.  A strong free trade zone with harmonized markets is one thing, a continental bureaucracy dictating to the oldest elected Parliament economic, human rights, and social policies is another.  As the continent drifts toward a single hegemony, Britain is turning to its traditional sovereignty.

If the United States has any horse in this fight, it is with the right of the British people to exercise their vote on the terms of any further surrendered sovereignty.  Surely, the sacrifices of the British nation to preserve the right  to chose at the ballot box the system that rules them is an American value.   Dunkirk and Normandy were not about smarmy politicians surrendering the right of the British people to vote in some back room deal at a continental resort complex.

It is of late fashionable to toss the “Troubles” in Northern Ireland out as an example somehow relevant to the stalemate in the Israeli Palestinian conflict.  But one of the central lessons of Northern Ireland is that the more foreigners intervene, the more difficult the situation becomes.  It was when the American financing for the IRA dried up and the British Army stood down that progress became possible in Belfast.

And of course once put in the position to decide their own fate, the people of Northern Ireland fully justified their right to do so.  Outsiders always complicate negotiations.  President Obama’s intervention, in the opinion of this dual citizen, is likely to drive Britons away from the EU.  It is the definition of blundering American tourist behavior straight out of Fawlty Towers.

Any British Prime Minister is perfectly capable of asking any American President for help in his relations with Europe.  Prime Minister Cameron, indeed no British politician of any political stripe, has made any such request. Until such a request, the polite thing to do in London, in Liverpool, in Manchester, in Birmingham, in Edinburgh, in Taunton, in Belfast, and in York is to keep your American mouth shut.

And by the way, the minute a British Prime Minister asks for such help is the minute he guarantees a crushing electoral defeat.

 

Repeating the Disarmament Mistakes of the 1930s

29 Dec
by John, posted in China, Cost-Cutting, Government Spending, Middle East, UK   |  No Comments

In the early 1930s Stanley Baldwin, stalwart Conservative and Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, told the British people what they wanted to hear.  Britain could afford to disarm.  Germany was weak militarily and economically.  The allied French army was on paper the greatest military force in Europe.  The British fleet controlled all the world wide sea lanes without challenge.

Neville Chamberlain succeeded Baldwin as the next Tory Prime Minister.  Chamberlain was a successful businessman who hated government spending and saw cost-cutting as essential to British recovery from the Great Depression.  Chamberlain continued to resist effective rearmament  into the mid and late 1930s, while he negotiated with Hitler and a rearming Germany.

What an irony of 2012 that a Conservative government in Britain followed by the United States would essentially disarm in the face of rearming and expansionist totalitarianism.  But where is Hitler today? Germany is even more disarmed than Britain and Chancellor Merkel is as far from her predecessor as possible.

China is predicted to pass the US economy in size based on GDP at some point in the next decade or two.  More troubling is the opaque expanding Chinese military budget.  We know it is growing even faster than its GDP growth, but we have to rely on our intelligence agencies for estimates of the growth.  And we also know that the more a culture differs from Western cultures the more likely those estimates are inaccurate.  Vietnam, the Soviet Union in the 1980s, and Iraq stand out amongst other less spectacular failures.

Hitler  began negotiations during Baldwin’s premeirship with the occupation of the Rhineland in 1936. He followed that violation of international law with a persistent attack upon the unfairness of the Versailles Treaty that ended the First World War against Germany.  Hitler’s outward argument was that a revived Germany was entitled to a place at the world stage with its historical territorial claims heard not as conquering demands but the righting of a historical wrong.  His internal argument was German nationalism, German racial dominance in a “Greater Germany”, and a xenophobic hatred of non-Germans.

Chinese nationalism is on the rise.  In the last year we have seen repeated protests against the Japanese  and others within China all with state encouragement.  China is aggressively pursuing long dormant claims in the South China Sea and Sea of Japan.  The shores opposite Taiwan are now armed with missiles capable of threatening any US or allied naval transit of these international waters.  China’s external explanation for rearmament and territorial claims are a revived China is entitled to a place at the world stage with its historical territorial claims heard not as conquering demands but the righting of historical wrongs.  We have to rely on our intelligent services for the internal Chinese argument.

While Tibet may not be Poland in 1940, it certainly has the appearance of occupied France in 1940.  It is a culture preserved solely for the amusement and propaganda of the conquerors.  While the current US and British governments are obsessed with the same budget deficits of Baldwin and Chamberlain, the Chinese are rearming and hiding the extent of it just as Hitler did.

What then is the lesson of US and British disarmament in the 1930s?  It is certainly not Senator McCain’s reactively attack everywhere dissipating our strength.  That line of thinking has us obsessed with Georgia, Syria, and the other backwaters of the Middle East, the Caucuses, and Asia Minor.  The lesson of the 1930s is to carefully identify the fatal threat and maintain a national defense capable of overwhelming deterrence to that threat.

China is growing and rearming.  It is the only potential fatal threat.  If its economy peaks that threat may fade, but if the pace continues potential will become reality.

Once you begin disarmament and incorporate the savings into your yearly budget, it is enormously difficult to reverse.  The cost of rearmament under threat contributed to Chamberlain’s desire to negotiate, which further encouraged Hitler’s view of British decline – the opposite of deterrence.  To publicly cut in 2013 the US and British military for Baldwin’s and Chamberlain’s 1930s budget priorities is to repeat the mistakes of history and invite a shooting war in Asia.

Come on Mitt – Give Us A Real Alternative Based on Growth!

14 Oct
by John, posted in competitiveness, Cost-Cutting, Government Spending, leadership, Policy, President, UK   |  No Comments

In 2010 the Conservatives or Tories won the election in Britain and formed a coalition government with the silly Liberal-Democratic party.  It is a silly party because its only principle is it is not the Tory party or the Labour Party.  And of course it had to betray even that silly principle to become junior Tories.

The British system does not contain the “checks and balances” of the US form of government.  There is no US Senate in Britain that can slow down the rapid implementation of a new government’s plans.  It allows for a much more radical change in direction after an election, whether that means the nationalization of industry or actual cuts to government expenditures.  Not cuts to growth in spending, but actual cuts.

The Tories came to power on a pledge to reign in spending and instituted a budget of real cuts to the military, to higher education, and other social services combined with top income tax rate cuts.  Essentially with the exception of the military cuts, it is the Romney plan.

Promising that such cuts would lead to a surge in confidence that would restore the economy, the government set about its program.  Since the first days of the Tories in office the economy has fallen behind the recovery in the US, Canada, and Northern Europe.  Now those policies have resulted in Britain entering its second recession.  We need look no further than across the Atlantic to see the failure of a policy that relies solely on budget cuts and tax cuts for the wealthy.

So what can Romney learn from Britain’s experience?  That it is not enough to reign in spending, you have to press forward with pro-growth economic polices and you have to be bold and creative.  If Romney merely converts Medicare and Medicaid to a voucher system, cuts the discretionary budget, cuts taxes for the wealthy, then waits for the magic “confidence fairy” the country will tilt right back into recession.

If Romney wants to use the debates for more than a transitory bounce in poll numbers, he could provide a much more detailed plan on how he is going to push for energy independence.  It cannot just be the Republican party’s usual pro-pollution agenda of drilling off-shore and in Alaska in sensitive areas.  He has to commit to reduce well head emissions, while greatly expanding energy production on BLM  and other appropriate federal land.  He has to leave the ideology behind.

A drive toward responsible energy independence is a key growth strategy and he has said it is center piece of his plans.  But of course, he has provided little detail other than he intends to repeal regulations.  In other words he intends to encourage pollution.

Assume for a moment that he pivots in the debate and promises to solve well head emissions through technology and promote a responsible energy independence policy.   It would radically reverse our debtor status and balance of payments, while providing huge employment opportunities.  He has to detail his plans, including specific statements on how he will protect the environment and drill.

Then to build credibility, he needs to be bold on cost cutting and start with corporate welfare not Democratic priorities.  Close the Department of Commerce, end the ethanol subsidies, break up “to big to fail financial institutions”, and any other transfer of wealth from taxpayers to corporate America. Then with Reagan-like credibility, he can tackle entitlements, the federal education bureaucracy, and the bloat on the Democratic side of the government balance sheet.

Governor Romney won the first debate on style and leadership, but on substance it’s the same old:

  1. Tell people who they can sleep with, when they can have reproductive medical treatments, and do nothing on immigration;
  2. A foreign policy based on “toughness” = more wars;
  3. Cut every Democratic discretionary spending priority, while increasing corporate welfare and cutting taxes for the wealthy.

Essentially a failed Tory government with more discrimination, interference in citizens’ private lives, and wars.  Come on Mitt – give us a real alternative based on growth!  Or lose the election, because in case you have not noticed the polls have not moved appreciably in swing states and time is running out.

Warmongering, Unilateral Disarmament, and The Proper Application of Force

02 Oct
by John, posted in election, leadership, President, Roosevelt, UK   |  No Comments

(Crater of my grandfather’s and grandmother’s house in London, October 14th, 1940. The morning after a German bomber scored a direct hit killing my grandmother, my infant aunt, another little girl, and approximately 20 British and Belgian refugees on the subway platform underneath the house.)

I thought things could not get worse for someone like myself who suspects Mitt Romney is surrounded by too many George W. Bush advisors. Then I heard former Senator Talent, “a senior advisor to Governor Romney”,  lecturing that the President has abandoned something called the “Post-WWII bipartisan” foreign policy that rested on four premises that American presidents always follow:

  1. Lead;
  2. Work through alliances (ironic for a GW supporter);
  3. Maintain robust power; and
  4. Anticipate events and try and deter conflict.

Supposedly it is the American President’s obligation to stabilize parts of the world.  I missed that part of the Constitution.

We should do this by anticipating events like the Arab Spring, set forth a vision on where the Arab region should go, in this case toward democracy, then get involved in Arab countries with the elements that support our vision for their region, and oppose other Arab elements with a different agenda than our vision. All urged rapid fire in a tone that brooks no dissent.

That is neo-conservative ideology, particularly the you are a traitor if you disagree part.  Unfortunately, it is at the heart of the Romney campaign.  It is the worst possible sign that Mr. Romney believes as did George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, and John McCain  that you can impose democracy at the end of the American spear in the Arab world regardless of the wishes of the people in the region.

The President has rightly learned the obvious lessons of US history.  From George Washington to Franklin Roosevelt to Ronald Reagan successful US presidents have carefully picked where to become involved overseas and even more carefully when to use force.  President Eisenhower never deployed a single soldier, marine, sailor, or airman into combat at the height of the Cold War.

The Republican willingness to commit US combat forces to Libya, Syria, and whatever is tomorrow’s crisis is the President’s opportunity to show not that the Republican party is weak, but rather it is reckless, ignorant of the people we attack, and a key source of the loss of American influence abroad.

But President Obama whose policies killed Osama bin Laden  has placed before the nation massive defense cuts.  Unilateral disarmament is the opposite of the Republican recklessness.  It is the one point former Senator Talent made that Romney could make stick in a debate.

In 1932 Germany was completely bankrupt with a tiny army, no air force, no navy, prostrate before the world.  Britain under Conservative leadership stripped funding from its army, the world’s greatest navy, and its air force.  Eerily, it was in an austerity drive to fight the effects of the Depression and a growing national debt.  Hitler consolidated his power in the 1933 and 1934 elections, then rearmed Germany. Britain’s Conservative leadership continued disarmament.

Six years later in 1939 Britain was unprepared for war.  France and all of the ancient free states of Europe fell under totalitarian occupation.  It happened that fast.

The picture above is the crater after a German bomb destroyed my grandparents’ house in London in 1940 killing my grandmother, infant aunt, and about 20 other people.  That picture is the cost of foreign policy blunders.

Foreign policy and military preparedness are not games.  These are not political issues.  When politicians make the wrong decision, act cravenly for election purposes, seek simple snearing solutions in complex times, they risk the welfare of their people.

President Obama needs to:

  1. Continue the centuries old American policy of first deciding what national interests of the United States are at stake in any given region, country, or event;
  2.  If he identifies a national interest, he has to determine if the US military can actually win on the battlefield; and
  3. He has to maintain the military, diplomatic, and economic might of the US.

If the President reverses course on defense cuts (3) and pursues (1) and (2), he can continue to protect the US against the rising military powers in Asia.  In the next four years he can permanently change Americans’ faith in which party can responsibly pursue our national security interests.  But if he continues with the sequestration defense cuts, he is as reckless as Governor Romney and the Conservatives of 1930′s Britain.

 

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