International Herald Tribune

US to Give $900 Million in Aid to Gaza | International Herald Tribune

Cecille Isidro — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 20:39:00 -0500

But even if the bulk of the money goes to Gaza, it will do little good unless Israel first opens the border crossing into the territory, said Daniel Levy, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation, a research organization in Washington. ...

Tocqueville on the Bush Years

Cecille Isidro — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 10:14:00 -0500

It takes time to assess a presidency.

Harry S Truman left office reviled, only to enjoy huge popularity after colorful biographies were published, decades later.

Richard Nixon resigned in disgrace, but enjoyed partial success burnishing his credentials as a foreign policy sage.

Bill Clinton left office after surviving impeachment, but has earned high marks for his charity work since then, despite some bumps in the 2008 campaign.

Daschle Pledges a Bipartisan Reform of Heath Care System | International Herald Tribune

Cecille Isidro — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 12:32:00 -0500

Jacob Hacker, a professor of political science at the University of California, Berkeley, said the new option was essential to the success of Obama's effort ...

Across the Globe, a Cautious Welcome for Clinton | International Herald Tribune

Communications — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 15:05:00 -0500

But others, like Jorge Castañeda, Mexico's former foreign minister, and Julio Burdman, an Argentine political analyst, said her knowledge of and interest in ...

Heeding the Lessons of Another War

Cecille Isidro — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 16:02:00 -0400

Forty years ago, the United States began to mount raids into Cambodia and to undermine the government of King Sihanouk in order to cut Vietcong supply lines.

As a result, America's war with Vietnamese Communism spread into Cambodia, leading to the triumph of the Khmer Rouge and the Cambodian genocide. But these horrors occurred after the U.S. itself had quit Vietnam and after the U.S.-backed regime in South Vietnam had collapsed. Washington's widening of the war benefited neither America nor its local allies.

The U.S. is now making the same mistake in Afghanistan and Pakistan. If continued, ground incursions by U.S. troops across the border into Pakistan in search of the Taliban and Al Qaeda risk drastically undermining the Pakistani state, society and army.

Many Pakistanis are berating their new civilian government and the military for being too supine in their response to the American actions. There have also been public calls for NATO supply lines through Pakistan to be cut, which could cripple the Western military effort in Afghanistan. The latest dreadful terrorist attack in Islamabad illustrates the danger of a wider conflagration and the price Pakistan is paying for its role as a U.S. ally.

The dangers involved in Pakistan are greater even than in Cambodia, where the disasters were contained in one country. The current war has already been driven into the Pakistani heartland. If turmoil increases in Pakistan then the forces of extremism will be strengthened, in the region and the world. Thus the long term implications of "losing" Afghanistan pale into insignificance when set against the risk of "losing" Pakistan.

Nor would undermining Pakistan, whether intentionally or not, in any way help the U.S. and NATO mission in Afghanistan. Pakistan has six times Afghanistan's population and is a nuclear state. The Pashtun population of Pakistan is greater than that of Afghanistan, and provides a large number of Pakistani soldiers. Far from saving Afghanistan, present U.S. strategy toward Pakistan will only risk sinking Afghanistan itself in a whirlpool of regional anarchy.

Instead of this approach, the U.S. and NATO should adopt a radically new strategy for Afghanistan that relies more on soft power. The approach should be based on the recognition that Afghanistan cannot be transformed along Western lines and that the U.S. cannot maintain an open-ended presence in that country without destabilizing the entire region.

Afghanistan must sooner or later be left to the Afghans themselves to run. Local actors should take the lead in carrying out counter-insurgency, as Western forces and an overwhelming reliance on military force are liable only to multiply enemies.

The terrible effects of bombardment on the civilian population have become a potent factor behind the will of many Afghans to resist what they see as an alien military occupation.

The next U.S. administration therefore should announce a return to America's original objective, that of hunting international terrorist networks and preventing them from creating safe havens in Afghanistan. This should in fact be America's only core objective. The attempt of the West to "transform" Afghanistan is already meeting the same fate as the Soviet attempt to do so. It is strengthening the insurgency, by creating the impression of a threat to the Islamic way of life and local tradition.

Instead of continuing with what is in effect a purely Western approach, Washington should initiate serious regional talks on Afghanistan's future.

The United States and the West need to remember that however long their forces stay in Afghanistan, sooner or later they will leave, while Afghanistan's neighbors will always remain. Tragically, their policies have in the past generally been directed against each other, with disastrous results for the people of Afghanistan.

The United States should instead seek to shape a regional concert that will stand some chance of at least containing Afghanistan's problems in the long term. None of this will be easy; but a continuation of present U.S. strategy promises only widening turmoil in the region, or at best war without end.

China's Robber-Baron Ways

Cecille Isidro — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 09:00:00 -0400

Only a short time after China's magnificent Olympic coming-out party, the land of Mao's successors found itself making less celebratory news.

"Tainted Milk Formula Sickens Thousands of Chinese Infants" read one of many recent headlines. Twenty-two companies that produce or distribute milk powder had been secretly adding melamine, normally used for making plastics and glue, into milk powder, making thousands of infants sick and causing several deaths.

It is one of the puzzling questions about China: How can a country that organized such a splendid Olympic splash be the same country that produces deadly food scares on a regular basis?

The answer says a lot about today's China. In its March to modernity, Beijing's ruling Communist Party took off the economic shackles of the Mao years and relaunched the country as a capitalist-communist state - a real oddball coupling, if ever there was one. Part of this process involved the radical devolution of economic power to over 30 provinces, fostering a kind of anarchic federalism.

As with American federalism, the national government in China is responsible for certain duties and the country's provincial governments are responsible for others. But in China, none of this arrangement is written down or spelled out anywhere, as it is in the U.S. Constitution.

Instead, it is still a work in progress, with provincial officials taking as much rope as they dare. Power at the provincial level is still vested in the local Communist Party, but also intertwined with personal and family networks, motivated by the former leader Deng Xiaoping's maxim, "to get rich is glorious."

That's an odd motivation for the heirs of Karl Marx, and in practice it's led to lots of cronyism and corruption.

The scale of corruption in China is startling. The Chinese researcher Sun Yan has written that the average "take" in the 1980s was $5,000, but now it is over $250,000. The number of arrests of senior Communist Party members quadrupled between 1992 and 2001. Four provincial governors and one provincial party secretary recently were charged with corruption.

Even at the level of the central government, corruption has been debilitating and helps set the national tone. High-level officials, including the mayor of Beijing, a vice chairman of the National People's Congress, the former president of the Bank of China, the vice governor of the People's Bank of China and the director of China's foreign exchange administration, were arrested and imprisoned for embezzlement and fraud. One of them eventually was executed, and another leaped to his death.

To put that in perspective, says the author Will Hutton, it would be as if the mayor of New York, the speaker of the House of Representatives, and the chief executives of Goldman Sachs and Citibank, along with a governor of the Federal Reserve, were all either imprisoned for fraud, executed or committed suicide.

The Chinese economist Hu Angang has estimated an annual economic loss due to corruption of approximately 15 percent of GDP. In this climate, cutting foreign substances into milk formula, pet food or medicine becomes standard operating procedure, like a drug dealer looking to maximize the street value of his stash by mixing in filler material.

To be fair, not all the provinces and not all the business people or bureaucrats engage in such illicit behavior. And China's leadership has taken steps to crack down. Punishments have been increased, tougher laws have been passed. Officials now are forbidden to enter business relationships with family members. Audits and anti-corruption screenings have been introduced.

But when I questioned a Chinese official about corruption, his defense - "we're not as bad as Burma" - was hardly convincing.

Yes, the central government in Beijing can use its authoritarian power to pull off a brilliant Olympics party. And over the past 30 years, the Chinese leadership has accomplished the remarkable feat of lifting 400 million people out of poverty. But China is still very much a developing country, plagued by a mess of contradictions.

It is difficult to imagine how the country's anarchic, robber-baron ways will serve China well for the next 30 years. Either political reform and accountability will slowly take root, or China's modernization will falter.

Urgent Aid for Pakistan

Cecille Isidro — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 13:50:00 -0400

The Democratic vice-presidential candidate, Senator Joe Biden, has drawn up an excellent long-term plan for the United States to help Pakistan economically, thereby strengthening the state against Islamist extremism. This is a vital American interest, not just because of the role of Pakistani Pashtuns in supporting the Taliban's campaign in Afghanistan, but even more importantly because Pakistan itself risks becoming a source of threats to the West that will vastly outweigh those from Afghanistan. It is to be hoped that if John McCain wins the presidential election, his administration too will devote far more attention to helping Pakistan.

The problem is, however, that Pakistan may not be able to wait that long. By the time a new administration has begun to work out its plans, it will be next spring. And as the editor of a leading Pakistani newspaper said to me in Lahore last Monday, "if the government here can't do something serious to help the population economically within six months, it will be finished."

He and others have warned that mass anger at rising food prices and lengthening electricity cuts could combine with hostility to the government's campaign against the insurgents and to Pakistan's alliance with America. Sporadic violent protests against power cuts have already occurred in several cities. The resulting instability could wreck any hope of Pakistan continuing its tough campaign against the insurgents.

Pakistan's new president, Asif Zardari of the Pakistan People's Party, is already hated by much of the population, in part because he is seen as too pro-American. His government's prestige is being damaged still further by intensifying American raids into Pakistan's tribal areas.

The main opposition party, the Muslim League of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, will undoubtedly try to exploit all this as much as it possibly can. Sharif's popularity has soared in recent months, partly due to his opposition to Pakistani help to the Americans in Afghanistan and criticism of the Pakistan Army's campaign against the insurgents.

This does not mean that the United States should treat Sharif as an enemy. If he comes to power, he will probably follow a course of pragmatic cooperation with Washington. Nonetheless, initially at least, his return to power would be a blow to U.S.-Pakistani cooperation.

The Pakistani population is suffering acutely from the twin effects of the surge in the international price of oil, almost all of which Pakistan has to import, and the surge in international food prices. The latter should at least have benefited farmers - but their gains have been largely wiped out by the increased cost of fuel for their tractors, transport and water pumps.

Electricity cuts, meanwhile, have reached 16 hours a day in some areas, including the North-West Frontier Province, where the insurgency is gathering strength. The cuts stem from a number of long-term factors, including poor management and inadequate new investment in power generation. The most immediate problem, however, is that the state cannot pay some $1.4 billion in debts to the power companies, which in turn do not have the money to import necessary fuel.

The United States should make these funds available to Pakistan immediately for this specific purpose. Secondly, America should give emergency aid to the hundreds of thousands of people displaced by the Pakistani military offensives in Bajaur in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas and Swat in the North-West Frontier Province. This should be treated with the same urgency that the United States approaches natural disasters like the Pakistani earthquake four years ago.

America should also use its influence with the IMF to procure its assistance to Pakistan. It is essential, however, that this should not be made conditional on cuts in subsidies and social programs that will further hurt Pakistan's poor; such cuts would undermine the Pakistani government still further.

Limited American financial help can tide Pakistan over its immediate crisis. At the same time, the United States should urgently craft longer-term aid programs intended to strengthen resistance to the spread of insurgency.

These should be focused on the North-West Frontier Province. The planned $750 million for the tribal areas is a good idea in itself, but given the security situation and lack of basic infrastructure in these areas, it will be many years before this money can be spent effectively. Meanwhile, the North-West Frontier Province itself is in grave danger from the militants.

Unlike the tribal areas, the province does have a basic industrial infrastructure. American help should be devoted to building that infrastructure, above all in the areas of hydro-electric plants and communications. The province also badly needs hard cash to combat the militants directly. At present, for example, the North-West Frontier Province's demoralized policemen earn only two thirds of the salary of their comrades in Punjab - and half what the Taliban pays its fighters.

The sums involved are miniscule compared to those spent by the United States on the war in Afghanistan - and Pakistani help is essential if the U.S. is to have any chance of winning that war. Reliance on purely military means will be the surest way for the America to lose it.

The Grim Realities of Power

Cecille Isidro — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 07:44:00 -0400

During the Peloponnesian War, as powerful Athens prepared to put the independent-minded, but tiny, island of Melos to the sword, the Melians appealed to principles of honor and fair play in a bid to save themselves.

The Athenians scoffed, noting that "the strong do as they will and the weak suffer as they must." And suffer the Melians did -- alone and unassisted.

Georgia is a latter-day Melos. It has been battered by Russia's over-the-top reaction to what began as a shoot-out between Georgian troops and forces belonging to the Russian-supported breakaway territory of South Ossetia and segued into a clash between Russian and Georgian military units.

Even if one accepts the Russian version in its entirety, the severity of Moscow's response was both unnecessary and unjustified. The United States and its European allies are indignant over the Kremlin's conduct. But, simply put, they will not do anything that truly makes Russia feel pain.

The reasons for patience and for taking the long view are already being offered: There are too many important issues on which Russia's cooperation is critical, pushing it into a corner will only strengthen its authoritarianism and bellicosity, the better course is to practice patient diplomacy... and so on.

The proposals now being proffered by pundits to arm Georgia, to boycott the 2014 Winter Olympics that will be held in Russia's Black Sea resort of Sochi, and to evict Russia from the Group of 8 will have no takers. Such measures may have been applied in an ideal world; they won't in the real one. This is unfair to Georgia, which is the victim; but it is nevertheless the reality.

Another unpalatable truth is that Russia's behavior in this instance is the norm, not the exception: Great powers impose their will on weaker neighbors and limit their freedom of action -- all the time.

Airy discourses about the commerce-driven dynamics of globalization and new norms of international conduct will not vanquish realpolitik. Just as other powerful states have done, Russia will be persistent in preventing weak neighbors that it considers to be part of its legitimate sphere of influence from forging links with its adversaries; the means used will vary, but not the ends. In today's Russia, Vladimir Putin personifies this policy, but it reflects deeper realities rooted in balance of power politics.

In this crisis, America and Europe have also behaved as states invariably have: They do not want to spend blood and treasure when the risks are too high and vital interests are not involved. In this instance, no state within NATO wants to pick a fight with Russia right on its doorstep. Nor do they wish to offer Georgia a guarantee of future protection.

The prevailing view seems to be that Russia's full-bore attack on Georgia increases Georgia's chance to gain entry into NATO; the reverse is more likely to be the case. NATO, as seem at its Bucharest summit meeting earlier this year, is already divided on Georgia's membership, and the discord is apt to deepen now that the implications of including it in the alliance are clear. Russia's attack on Georgia also illustrates how little gratitude matters in the politics among nations and how easily it is trumped by the dictates of power.

When Georgia's president, Mikheil Saakashvili, sent troops to Iraq, and was hailed as a steadfast democratic ally by President George W. Bush, he no doubt expected to win some good will that could be redeemed in an hour of need. Perhaps he believed that the United States would mobilize its allies and admonish Russia if it were to attack Georgia -- perhaps even offer tangible assistance.

If so, he miscalculated, and the United States is culpable for not making it clear that its thanks would not translate into tanks.

This crisis also tells us something - and it's not reassuring -- about the efficacy of international organizations when it comes to handling aggression. Some observers have looked to the United Nations to do right by Georgia. But what does that mean exactly? The UN can no more check Russia than it could block the Bush administration's preventive war against Iraq.

That Washington lacked a UN mandate and was criticized by most of its members mattered little to the White House. The same is true of the Kremlin; it will continue to debate its critics in the Security Council, and joined by its ally, China, will veto any resolution that condemns Russia.

In short, what happens in the UN will make for good theater: There have been, and will be, pious declarations, angry denunciations and sanctimonious finger-pointing. But none of this will help Georgia's fundamental problem, which is the disparity between its power and Russia's, and Moscow's determination to press that advantage to define what Georgia can and cannot do.

Utterly unsentimental and thoroughly cynical, Putin understands the arithmetic of power. In attacking a small and weak state located across Russia's border he did not take any big risks; and he bet that the West wouldn't either.

Bush did not look deeply enough into the Russian prime minister's soul -- and he apparently hadn't read his Thucydides in awhile.

Drawing a Red Line With Iran

Cecille Isidro — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 07:22:00 -0400

The George Bush administration's decision to open direct contacts with Iran is to be welcomed, but precisely because it marks such a break with previous U.S. policy, it also carries a great danger.

This is that hard-liners in the American and Israeli governments will treat this Western proposal as a last chance for the Iranians, to be followed by an attack if Tehran fails to accept it.

Meanwhile, it is already clear that much of the Iranian establishment interprets the latest Western conditions not as a final red line, but as yet another pink line, a vague basis for further negotiations.

In consequence, it is unlikely that the Iranians will agree to a complete suspension of uranium enrichment within the six-week deadline set by the West.

Apart from anything else, Iranian leaders know that as long as they stop short of weaponization, neither the Europeans nor much of the U.S. uniformed military will approve an attack on Iran, with all its potentially devastating consequences for Western security.

An attack will open up disastrous splits not only between the United States and Europe, but possibly within the U.S. security establishment itself.

If we in the West are to set a genuine red line that the Iranians can recognize as such, two interlinked things are necessary. This line needs to be rooted in international rules that the Iranians themselves have formally recognized, and it needs to have the full support not only of the Europeans, but of the Russians, Chinese and Indians as well.

In other words, our red line must be strict, verifiable adherence to the terms of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, or NTP, accompanied by a list of detailed, concrete and severe sanctions that leading members of the international community undertake to impose if Iran breaks the treaty and moves to weaponization.

The nonproliferation treaty -- with all its flaws -- must therefore be treated by the West as an asset rather than a burden.

According to Hans Blix, former director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the idea that Iran's past violations and secretiveness have canceled out its right to uranium enrichment under the treaty is a "thin legal argument."

Even officials of the U.S. State Department are privately beginning to admit Iran's right to enrichment and the dead end into which the current strategy has led the West.

On the other hand, the nonproliferation treaty does provide the West with a very strong legal ground to pursue what should be our red line: to place a verifiable cap on Iranian enrichment and other nuclear capabilities well short of weaponization.

This is a red line that all states of the UN Security Council agree on, and which Iran itself has always said that it accepts. Through the NPT, Tehran can be held to its own oft-repeated position that it does not want weapons and that its program is for peaceful purposes only.

Russia, China and India all strongly dislike being forced to support what they regard as unilateral and illegal American pressure on Iran, but equally, strongly oppose Iran developing nuclear weapons.

The NPT therefore gives the West a strong basis on which to go to these countries and say: We will go back to the letter of the nonproliferation treaty and allow strictly limited and inspected Iranian enrichment if you will sign a binding international agreement setting out in public, in detail and in advance the sanctions that you and the other signatory nations will impose if Iran moves toward weaponization.

These threats should include removing Iran from all international organizations, ending outside investment, imposing a full trade embargo, ending -- as far as possible -- all international flights to Iran and inspecting all transport headed to that country.

By way of an additional incentive, Russia or China might be allowed to appear to take the diplomatic lead in this matter, boosting their regime's international status and domestic prestige.

On the other hand, Russia in particular should be clearly warned that if Iran did weaponize and Moscow failed to impose the sanctions that they had promised, the results would be an increase in anti-Russian policies by the West across the entire spectrum of our relations.

Such a deal is the best that we can realistically hope for. The Iranian establishment has talked itself into a position where it would be virtually impossible for Tehran to abandon enrichment altogether.

As for an attack on Iran, this would at best only delay the Iranian program, while catastrophically undermining American efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan and indeed the entire U.S. position in the Muslim world.

A settlement along these lines, on the other hand, would prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon and open the way for a resumption of the aid that Tehran provided in 2001 against al-

Qaida and the Taliban, which we badly need and which the Bush administration spurned.

Three Strikes And We're Out

Ron Tang — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 06:21:00 -0400

A scientific and political consensus now exists on the threat posed to our civilization by climate change. The problem is generating the political will to take the steps necessary to radically reduce our consumption of fossil fuels.

The present oil shock provides the answer to that problem -- if our leaders have the courage to use it.

The price of oil is now at a level where it is having a seriously adverse effect on the world economy. Moreover, to fears of Middle Eastern stability are now added concerns over Russia using oil and gas supplies for geopolitical leverage.

As a result we have the best chance in a generation for Western leaders to go to their electorates and seek support for a new approach involving a willingness to make real short-term sacrifices.

This should especially be the case because although the latest, speculation-fueled price surge may not continue, structural factors including the rise of China and the dwindling hopes of new untapped reserves mean that, unlike in the 1980s, there seems no realistic prospect of a dramatic fall in prices.

We must not repeat our response to the oil shocks of the 1970s, which in most countries led to far less change than they should have done. Japan did by far the best in its response to the oil shocks, drastically reducing its energy consumption through the introduction of fuel-efficient vehicles, the refocusing of industry on electronics, and the enforcement of strict standards for new buildings.

Some European countries also did well. The United States did by far the worst, and failed again after 9/11.

Britain too has not done nearly as well as it should have, though the Clean Air Act of 1956 could have provided a model for decisive action. Instead, North Sea oil and gas were used to tide Britain over for a generation; and the revenues generated by that oil and gas were used to prop up government budgets, not to prepare for the day when the oil would run out and the international price of energy surge again. Neighboring Denmark, lacking fossil fuel reserves, invested heavily in wind energy.

As a result, 20 percent of Denmark's electricity now comes from wind. By contrast Britain generates a measly 1.5 percent of its electricity from wind despite the fact that approximately 40 percent of all the wind in Europe blows through the British Isles.

Today, we have a third chance to make a strategic choice concerning energy; and compared to the 1970s, we have far less excuse for not making it. For today, we know that excessive dependence on fossil fuels not only renders our economies vulnerable, but the associated release of greenhouse gases risks not only crippling the world economy but destroying modern civilization itself, if global temperatures rise by more than four degrees Celsius.

And if an additional, short-term spur were needed, dependence on Russian energy supplies is causing great anxiety in the West. Whining about this will do no good, and nor will spurious talk of European unity against Russia. If we want to lessen our dependence on Russian fossil fuels we have to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, period.

As Japan has proved, the technology to bring about radical reductions in fossil fuel consumption is already present.

What is needed is collective will, summoned by courageous leadership. Instead, too many governments seem prepared to buckle to public discontent and threats of disorder from truckers and others, and do their utmost to increase and subsidize supplies.

It is true that even conservative politicians like Senator John McCain are now talking about the need for action; but incremental action, not the revolutionary changes needed if we are both to create really secure long term sources of energy and have any assurance of avoiding catastrophic environmental damage.

A cynic or authoritarian would say that this is the central, inescapable flaw of a consumerist democracy: its inability to ask for real sacrifice from its electorate, short of full-scale war against a visible enemy. There is an element of truth in this but it is also unfair: In a representative democracy, elected leaders are supposed to lead, decide and inspire support for their decisions. The "people" as such can't do anything.

However, we must also understand that if Western democracies fail to meet the greatest threat facing human civilization, historians of the future -- if there are any -- won't think much of our vaunted claims to represent the highest possible form of political order.

In fact, they probably won't see any important difference at all between us and the authoritarian systems we affect to despise.