Is Economic Power Replacing Military Might?

Has Economic Power Replaced Military Might? -- Joseph S. Nye, Project Syndicate

CAMBRIDGE – At the Cold War’s end, some pundits proclaimed that “geo-economics” had replaced geopolitics. Economic power would become the key to success in world politics, a change that many people thought would usher in a world dominated by Japan and Germany.

Today, some interpret the rise in China’s share of world output as signifying a fundamental shift in the balance of global power, but without considering military power. They argue that a dominant economic power soon becomes a dominant military power, forgetting that the United States was the world’s largest economy for 70 years before it became a military superpower.

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My Comment: During the time of the Roman empire, it was Egypt that was the economic super power, providing grain and resources to all parts of the Roman Empire and beyond. But because of Rome's military reach and influence .... everyone said allegiance to Rome.

In the 21rst century .... China and Asia will probably be the dominant economic power .... but it is America that everyone not only looks at, but more importantly wants to live in .... the Chinese included.

How The Arab Spring Changed President Obama's Foreign Policy

Photo: Obama has said that his foreign-policy ideas defy traditional categories and ideologies. Photograph by Martin Schoeller.

The Consequentialist: How the Arab Spring remade Obama’s foreign policy. -- Ryan Lizza, The New Yorker

Barack Obama came to Washington just six years ago, having spent his professional life as a part-time lawyer, part-time law professor, and part-time state legislator in Illinois. As an undergraduate, he took courses in history and international relations, but neither his academic life nor his work in Springfield gave him an especially profound grasp of foreign affairs. As he coasted toward winning a seat in the U.S. Senate, in 2004, he began to reach out to a broad range of foreign-policy experts––politicians, diplomats, academics, and journalists.

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My Comment: Charles Krauthammer has a rebuke to Ryan Lizza's article, and it is here. Ryan Lizza was also interviewed by Charlie Rose last night, and that discussion is here.

What is my take .... last night Ryan Lizza remarked how the term .... "leading from behind" .... is the best way to describe U.S. foreign policy, and that the phrase first came from South Africa's Mandela who embraced it and used it to convince South African authorities to change their way of governing. I cannot deny that, but where I differ from Ryan Lizza is that Mandela had a clear objective and ideology as well as a willing negotiator in South African President Frederik Willem de Klerk. President Obama does not have this clarity of purpose in his foreign policy (with the exception of being critical of past U.S. foreign policy decisions), nor does he have willing allies who will go to bat for him when he needs them. He is a solitary leader on the world stage, and when interests intersect is when other world leaders will talk to him. Charles Krauthammer's analysis is on the money .... and unfortunately for us .... this lack of vision, commitment, and purpose from the White House (and State Department) is severely hurting U.S. foreign policy .... a situation that almost every other country around the world is now taking notice.

Afghanistan, Vietnam, And The Limits Of Force -- A Commentary

Senator Obama, General Petraeus, Senator Hagel (Baghdad, 2008)

From The Atlantic Council:

The other night I watched the film "The Deer Hunter." Afterward, I remembered why it took me so many years to be able to watch Vietnam movies.

It all came tumbling back -- the tragedy, the innocent victims, the waste. Too often in Washington we tend to see foreign policy as an abstraction, with little understanding of what we are committing our country to: the complications and consequences of endeavors. It is easy to get into war, not so easy to get out. Vietnam lasted more than 10 years; soon, we will slip into our ninth year in Afghanistan. We have been in Iraq for almost seven years.

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My Comment: When I read this commentary, I said to myself that this is something that a Washington politician would write (as a rule, I always try my best to read the article first, check the author later).

No surprise, this commentary is written by Senator Chuck Hagel.

His prose and his thinking comes from a man who has been in the circle of power for a long time. His mindset is focused on history, tough decisions to make, consequences and responsibility. A man in government who once had to make tough decisions.

Sighhhh ..... and this is what is so wrong with Washington today.

The people who are best positioned to give people like Sen. Hagel the guidance and directions that they are looking for are from the American people themselves. With Vietnam .... which Sen. Hagel brings up on numerous occasions from the "men in power" point of view .... he should focus more on what the American people were thinking at the time .... and more importantly .... what they wanted.

But he does not .... his focus is on President Johnson .... and others like him. Limits of power .... consequences of actions .... responsibility for decisions .... limits for force .... legacy and ego all into play while denying that it is the case.

Senator Hagel is looking and searching for the making of a new world order, but what he should look and search for is what the American people want.

In a case like Afghanistan .... the direction that we should take is ridiculously simple. After 8 years of strong support for the Afghan war .... the American people (in six months) have lost confidence and trust in the war policy of this President .... and this support is dropping fast. They know that the time is to get out now .... that we tried our best but the Afghan conflict is a conflict that is best sorted by the Afghans themselves. President Obama is not going to deliver the silver bullet that will end this conflict .... the American people are coming to accept that .... time to move on.

Unfortunately .... Sen. Hagel is not listening .... and neither is President Obama. President Obama is positioning himself to be stuck in a conflict that has no strategic importance to the United States. It has now become political, and his ego will not accept the criticism that would come from his opponents if he becomes the President that lost Afghanistan to the Taliban and their Al Qaeda allies.

Hence .... because our politicians are not listening to us .... we are stuck in a region that has been a crossroads for man since the beginning of time .... fighting and dying for a piece of rock that many others throughout history have fought for and finally left when they realized that it had no value or importance to anyone but themselves.

What Is On The Foreign Policy Horizon For President Obama -- A Commentary

Acid Foreign Policy Test -- Washington Times

Battle in two states, and a one-state delusion.

The struggle in Afghanistan and Pakistan ("AfPak") is President Obama's most urgent foreign policy and national security priority.

Taliban insurgents, with rocket-propelled grenades and AK-47s slung over their shoulders walk the streets of Peshawar, the capital of Pakistan's Northwest Frontier Province, unchallenged by police or army. The pro al Qaeda Taliban insurgency in Pakistan proper spread to within 60 miles of Islamabad, the capital of one of the world's eight nuclear powers. Pakistani helicopter gunships are now in action against homegrown guerrillas.

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My Comment: A good review of what is probably going to happen on the foreign policy scene this year. I would only add the rise of Hezbollah to power in Lebanon and its impact on Israel, and how the economic crisis will further impact the economies of Europe and the U.S. The possibility of Iraq falling back into open sectarian warfare is a remote possibility .... but it is still a possibility.

Contradictions In American Policy Towards Pakistan -- A Commentary

Suddenly -- Belmont Club

The Times Online says the administration is now pressing Islamabad to fight after its disastrous peace agreement with the Taliban in the NWFP inaugurated a pell-mell retreat. Secretary of State Clinton and senior diplomat Richard Holbrooke urged Pakistan not to abdicate to the Islamic extremists as they moved closer to the capital itself. Meanwhile, Bill Roggio, who has been warning against the peace deal with the Taliban from the beginning, notes that Pakistani Rangers have been deployed on the outskirts of Islamabad.

Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, accused Pakistan this week of “abdicating to the Taleban”, which “poses a mortal threat to the security and safety of our country and the world”. … Mrs Clinton’s remarks followed a recent deal between Mr Zardari and the Taleban in the Swat Valley, allowing them to establish a fundamentalist enclave in the former tourist area in exchange for laying down their arms.

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My Comment: An excellent summary and commentary on what is happening in Pakistan, and U.S. reaction to this turn of events.

Vice President Biden Is Right -- A Commentary

President Obama and Vice President Biden. (Photo from Javno)

Testing 1-2-3 -- Weekly Standard

Biden predicted Obama would be tested by our adversaries. He was right.

Yes. Joe Biden was right.

That's not a sentence we expect to type too often over the next four years, but it's proper to give credit where credit is due. And, on October 19, at a fundraiser in Seattle, the vice-presidential candidate explained:

And here's the point I want to make. Mark my words. Mark my words. It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama. .  .  . Remember I said it standing here if you don't remember anything else I said. Watch, we're gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy. .  .  . I can give you at least four or five scenarios from where it might originate. .  .  . They may emanate from the Middle East. They may emanate from the sub-continent. They may emanate from Russia's newly emboldened position.

Various unsavory characters do seem to have marked Biden's words.

The Iranian regime, having spent the first couple of weeks of Barack Obama's presidency preemptively scorning his overtures, mocking his weakness, and assuring the world its nuclear program is nonnegotiable, last Tuesday reported it had launched a satellite into orbit, making clear that Iran intends to have a missile launch capability on which to deploy its nuclear warheads.

Sounds like a test by the mullahs.

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My Comment: The Vice President is right. The only surprise is that it is happening now .... not a few months from now.

With all of President Bush's faults, there was always a perception in the international community that people like Vice President Cheney, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell, and the scores of under secretaries, diplomats, and generals ... that as a group these men would insure the safety and protection of the American people and its allies.

The impact of 9/11, followed by the invasions of Afghanistan, later Iraq and then the war on terror .... these actions by these men dispelled any doubts on their will and resolve to fight and to win.

But these men and women are now gone .... replaced by a different group of men and women.

I wrote a few months ago that the world trouble makers will perceive the results of the American election as a decisive shift away from the past .... and I have been right so far. President Obama is no President Bush. Vice President Biden is no Cheney. Secretary of State Clinton is no Powell. Soon to be CIA Director Panetta is like .... well .... he is like no one else.

The military option is off the table, the intelligence war is off the table, and the will to use any of these resources is no longer there .... even in clear cut cases like Afghanistan and the war on terror, the willingness to follow-up on rhetoric and to use force is absent.

The results of this perception are now obvious .... a leadership vacuum is present on the world stage, and President Obama and his team are unsure of how to proceed. After spending years running for office, they are having trouble shifting gears to govern. This in turn has the potential to be disastrous in the short to medium term to both us and to our allies.

William Kristol in his Weekly Standard post outlines all of the trouble spots .... pop-quizzes before the real thing. The real test is going to happen in the next year to two .... with economic upheavals, oil, resource, and energy fluctuations impacting rogue states and their populations, coupled with the proliferation and distribution of WMDs .... the real test will come in 2010 and 2011 .... and from what I am seeing, team Obama is not ready.