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April 18, 2012

My latest from the Guelph Mercury

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For years, Iran has been on a course of suspected nuclear weaponization.

The regime in Tehran has been aggressively developing both observable and covert nuclear facilities since before the war against Iraq in 2003.

And for years, western powers — usually represented by the five permanent member states of the United Nations Security Council, plus Germany — have tried to woo Iran into verifiably forgoing nuclear weapons, encouraging the Persian state to instead follow a transparent process for peaceful nuclear fuel development.

In the meantime, Iran has: continually promised Israel’s destruction; crushed democratic movements with vicious brutality; developed and supported a transnational, murderous terrorist network across Syria, Lebanon, Afghanistan and Iraq; and detained and humiliated 15 sailors from Britain’s Royal Navy.

Currently, the regime is holding Canadian Hamid Ghassemi-Shall — a Toronto shoe salesperson — in the notoriously inhumane Evin Prison, where he awaits possible execution for “espionage.”

He was visiting his elderly mother.

Being mindful of the full breadth of Iran’s pattern of violent behaviours is key to keeping the specific issue of nuclear weapons in perspective.

On April 14, Istanbul, Turkey, the five permanent member states of the United Nations Security Council plus Germany entered into a new round of dialogue with the Iranians about the ongoing nuclear impasse.

As the leading global power and a deeply interested party in the security and stability of the Middle East, the United States’ core goal for the talks, according to Wall Street Journal reporting, is to achieve an immediate agreement to neutralize the truly threatening elements of Iran’s nuclear program.

That is, the parts of the program that keep the Israelis up at night.

This de-escalation of the standoff, if achieved, should be welcomed by all sides. But it shouldn’t bring more relief than is warranted.

The regime in Tehran has proven itself thoroughly despotic, destructive to international peace and security and corrosive to the sovereignty and political stability of several states across the region.

To allow the U.S.-led west’s confrontation with Iran to hinge upon one single issue-set could risk much more down the road.

Letting Iran off the hook for simply not seeking nuclear weapons would radically narrow the scope of behaviour on which Iran is judged — and therefore how it is engaged by the international community — in the future.

It would also — dangerously to U.S. and allied credibility on freedom and human rights — at least temporarily alleviate political pressure on a genuinely vile and cruel regime, giving it increased manoeuvreability to punish domestic dissidence and systematically undermine Iran’s democratic movement.

True, an agreement to dissolve the need for strikes against Iranian nuclear infrastructure would be positive, for immediate and obvious political and economic reasons.

But any such agreement should not be too much hailed, nor too much taken as symbolic of the state of the relationship between Iran and the international community.

The Iranian regime’s sponsorship of terrorism, its hateful ideology and its systemic human rights violations are threats to peace and security every bit as real as nuclear weapons.

And they will remain so long after the talks in Turkey go silent.

March 15, 2012

My latest from the Guelph Mercury
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When election time rolls around, Republicans usually have an edge on foreign policy.

Republicans tend to carve up the world into good guys and bad guys, giving the voter a sense of clarity and order, and reassuring Americans of their country’s moral righteousness and military dominance.

Democrats, almost always irritated at how conservatives “dumb-down” issues that are truly complex and multi-dimensional — thereby falling into a well-laid PR trap — insist on nuance, subtlety and caveats.

In 2008, then candidate Barack Obama was able to sidestep this political deficit because war fatigue had infiltrated the American electorate, and the Republican nominee — John McCain — is considered a war hawk.

In 2012, however, Obama is likely to overcome the structural Democratic disadvantage on the issue thanks to a much more impressive set of circumstances — ones he created on his own.

At a high level, Obama has recommunicated American intentions to the world. In 2009, he got off to a rocky start with what many conservatives chide as a global “apology tour” following George W. Bush’s controversial presidency. But since then, he’s recalibrated America’s image toward a respectable middle ground, neither bellicose nor weak.

He has unhitched America’s wagon from a hostile, unstable and unpredictable Middle East and hooked up to a burgeoning Asia. He’s done this by consistently calling out and pushing back against Chinese aggression in the region, and leveraging Chinese missteps to deepen America’s alliances and economic integration around China’s periphery.

Obama basically continued and accelerated the Bush administration’s policy in Iraq — ending in a quick drawdown — and having made solid progress in priority population centres of Afghanistan, is pulling American troops home from that region, too.

Obama masterfully played his hand in Libya, modelling what American foreign policy scholar and broadcaster Fahreed Zakaria would call a “chairman of the board” approach, convening a politically strong coalition and providing high-tech support while letting its junior partners do the heavy lifting.

And most impressively, Obama has built an international consensus on Iran. The Obama administration has managed to get China and Russia on board with harsh sanctions, tightening the vise without giving Tehran the oxygen — American “imperialism” — it needs to survive.

These successes and others point to a president who has hit his stride on national security issues and, if judged on that issue set alone, probably deserves re-election.

Where Obama may be vulnerable is at the most basic level. He’s proven a very skilled manager of foreign policy issues, but what is he managing?

Is he simply managing what many Americans and others feel is an inevitable U.S. decline? Is he presiding over a strategic “retrenchment” — a period of economic and military restraint designed to shore up America for an eventual re-emergence as a more active and assertive power?

In other words, what’s the point? What basic vision of the world does Obama have, and what role should America play in it?

For a president who has masterfully managed the files, a mission statement for the entire portfolio would round out his foreign policy credentials beautifully.

But he’s got to get this thing down to a sentence — or the Republicans will.

January 19, 2011

My latest from the Guelph Mercury

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Ready, aim, misfire.

When asked by the moderators of the Fox News Republican debate in South Carolina on Monday whether he’s taken in any hunting since his last presidential bid, former Massachusetts governor and presumptive presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s gun fell silent.

“I went moose hunting – not moose hunting, I’m sorry, elk hunting – with friends in Montana,” he said. “I’ve been pheasant hunting. I enjoy the sport and when I get invited I’m delighted to be able to go hunting.”

This son of privilege, this northeastern pragmatist, this venture capitalist, is “delighted” to go hunting.

Of course, your average conservative Republican — especially when he’s on about his guns — doesn’t talk like that. Richard Nixon’s archetypal “Joe Six Pack” voter doesn’t talk like that. Feelings of unrestrained delight are for royals and dandies and the la-di-da crowd.

And rich guys.

Romney’s rich-guy persona continues to widen the cultural gap between himself and the folks doing the voting in November.

For example, only a rich guy cozies up to voters in the key primary state of New Hampshire by reminding folks he and his (perfect) family have a summer house — not a cottage, mind you, a summer house — in the Granite State.

Only a rich guy fluffs off his earnings from the speaker’s circuit — he typically pulled in about $40,000 per jibber-jabber — as “not much” when asked about his annual income.

Only a rich — or pampered, or timid or temperamental — guy would whine to debate moderators to intervene when his opponents land a rhetorical punch and follow it up with a little rough and tumble.

And only a rich guy would challenge a debate partner, on live cable news, to a $10,000 bet over competing versions of the truth.

Of course, Romney’s problem isn’t that he’s rich. Romney’s problem is that these missteps and many others signal a tin political ear and an inability to fit in with those “real” Americans that wealthy politicians often talk about but seldom understand.

Knowing that, one suspects that the Republican brain trust is earnestly searching out a running mate that can bring out the best and most personable in their candidate. Romney needs a vice-presidential sidekick that can help His Richness tone down the hoity-toity and connect with average Americans at the gut level.

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, an early and energetic Romney supporter, probably and properly sits atop the shortlist. Christie is everything that Romney’s not, in the former’s ability to speak plain American English and engage voters in a remarkably authentic way.

Christie’s personality would not only balance against Romney’s, but may prove so infectious that it actually brings out the normal in the Massachusetts governor, helping prospects with middle class voters in the electorally rich regions of Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan and other competitive states.

If Romney’s personality wasn’t so impressively liable to turn off American voters, Christie might not be the right choice. Christie, like Romney, is a northeastern moderate; and Christie fails a key VP-candidate litmus test in that he can’t obviously deliver a major swing state like, for example, Republican Senator Marco Rubio might be able to deliver Florida.

But Christie might help Romney in a way that is more important, and more fundamental, than any other political calculation: he might help Mitt Romney become the kind of candidate you’d want to sit down and have a beer with.

And, hey, at least he’s buying.

 
 
 
 

November 17, 2011

My latest from the Guelph Mercury

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Nominate the most electable conservative. To the late William F. Buckley Jr., founder of the popular National Review magazine and America’s most consequential conservative intellectual of the last century, it was that simple.

Simple, it surely is. But easy, surely not — at least not in the realm of Republican primary politics, where presidential candidates need the support of their party’s base, which is anchored significantly to the right of the centre.

So who’s electable?

Of the entire bevy — which includes several governors, a former House speaker, several House members, a former senator and retired pizza restaurant magnate — only a few satisfy the criterion of electability.

Mitt Romney, a weak front-runner stuck at about 25 per cent support among Republican primary voters, checks this box. He looks and sounds like a president, whatever that means. He’s a successful Republican governor from Massachusetts, which gives him cred with the Democrat-leaning industrial states in the northeast and midwest, and he’s a polished operator – suspiciously so, to some – who rarely makes big gaffes or gets thrown off message.

Arguably the only other contender with serious national viability is former Utah governor Jon Huntsman, who also served as U.S. ambassador to China. Along with Newt Gingrich (see: conservative, not electable) he is an intellectual heavyweight, and his foreign policy expertise and executive experience make him a genuinely qualified presidential candidate.

Who’s conservative?

It depends on what the word means in its application to the Republican party of 2011. If conservative means right-wing to the point of caricature and recklessly partisan, then there’s quite the line-up. Former House speaker Gingrich fits the bill, as does congresswoman Michelle Bachman, former restaurateur Herman Cain, and sitting Texas Gov. Rick Perry.

If conservative means traditionalist on social issues and hawkish on foreign policy, you’re looking at Rick Santorum, a former senator from Pennsylvania, whose national electability is aptly measured by his current poll standing of about three per cent. Or, if you mean conservative in the sense of heeding America’s long-standing opposition to government intervention in citizens’ lives and in the marketplace, then you’ve got yourself the admirable but unelectable-on-spec Ron Paul, a congressman of Texas.

So if the so-called conservatives aren’t electable, are the electables conservative?

Again, it depends what you mean. Romney has been accused of flip-flopping more than once. His former liberalism on social issues — he once ran to the left of Ted Kennedy on social issues in a Massachusetts senate election — is not forgotten by the party’s very active and influential evangelical constituency. But he ran a solid campaign for the Republican presidential nod in 2007-2008, and his policy positions on key issues of conscience, economics and foreign policy have been tightly aligned with the conservative consensus at least since the beginning of his post-gubernatorial political career.

Huntsman is a conservative more in the traditional sense than in the rigid, purist, tea party sense. He favours facts on the ground over air-tight ideologies on issues ranging from national security decision-making to climate change. His approach is incrementalist, as inclusive as possible, and imbued with the conventional trappings of statesmanship not often seen and less often praised in modern American politics; virtues like magnanimity, fair-mindedness and intellectual acuity.

Huntsman is also — sadly for America and embarrassingly for the Republican party — polling only marginally above absolute zero.

If Romney clinches the Republican nomination, Buckley’s rule will have been satisfactorily applied, as Romney passably, but only passably, meets the broadest range of criteria as an electable conservative.

If Huntsman were to rally and roar to the top of the party ticket, something greater even than the electoral prescription of Buckley will have been served: the restoration of American conservatism itself.

 
 
 
 

October 20, 2011

My latest from the Guelph Mercury

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Blame the mess he inherited. Blame the financial crisis. Blame the Republicans if it makes you feel better. But whatever the root cause, make no mistake about the corresponding effect: U.S. President Barack Obama’s incumbency is unusually vulnerable heading into the 2012 election cycle.

Like him or not — and most like him — the core electoral metrics aren’t shaping up for the president.

For starters, Republicans don’t fear him. Sounds petty, maybe, but that’s life, and that’s politics.

The increasingly far-right and populist Republican party rarely even dignifies Obama with a tough, fair-minded negotiation any more.

During the debt ceiling debacle this summer — during which Obama repeatedly said he was prepared to take “significant heat” from his own party to strike a grand deal on deficit reduction and entitlement reform — the GOP, led by House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner, responded with one simple syllable: “No.”

And when Obama sought permission from Congress to deliver an address on jobs and the economy — the commander in chief technically can only give a speech to congress if he’s invited, even speeches like the state of the union — Speaker John Boehner expressed an only slightly more elegant disinclination to oblige his president.

In both instances Obama could have thrown a punch but didn’t.

Lately, he’s been more fiery and confrontational, but most of it has backfired already. He recently addressed the congressional black caucus, and told them — to their very mixed subsequent reaction — to stop complaining about his presidency’s lack of progress.

It was like watching a Quaker driving a tank. He gave the “tough” thing a shot and ended up hurting himself.

But the lack of an Obama fear factor in Washington isn’t the only troubling measure of Obama’s electoral prospects. The economy is still in the tank, and historically, presidents don’t make re-election with a national unemployment rate of eight per cent or higher.

The U.S. continues to register poor growth and historic market volatility, and incredibly inconveniently for the president, the European debt crisis is hanging over the U.S. financial sector like the sword of Damocles. Pair that up with the business community’s reluctance to make new investments and new hires due to uncertainty over the administration’s plan to raise taxes on certain segments of society, and you’ve got a recipe for flat or negative medium term growth.

But it’s not all bad news. Obama has performed well on security, blunting what is normally a Republican advantage.

Obama has drawn America’s profile and investment in Iraq down to new lows. He personally assembled and continues to oversee a strategy to preserve gains and reduce exposure in Afghanistan. He’s been remarkably tough and aggressive on terror, and he’s moved the Democratic party rhetorically and conceptually in line with the realist-based school of foreign policy normally associated with tough, hard-headed conservative policy-makers.

As we head toward the 2012 cycle, the presidency is very much up for grabs, with Obama ahead on security, behind on moral authority, vulnerable on the debt issue, and with Americans feeling generationally weak as a nation and an economic community.

Soon — either just before the Republicans declare a nominee or immediately after — the GOP’s line of attack will start to emerge.

Watch for the Republicans to hammer away on Obama’s high-tax, high-spend, high-debt Democratic profligacy, and for Obama to defend himself on the basis of extraordinary circumstances calling for extraordinary fiscal measures and a long-term vision for fundamental economic change.

And then watch the American people ask the only timeless and universal political question: “Which is worse?”

 

 
 
 
 

September 15, 2011

My latest from the Guelph Mercury

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So much for the neocons.

“Bring our troops home,” Republican presidential hopeful and former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman said recently at the third Republican presidential debate, to pronounced applause.

If any George W. Bush administration alumni were watching the GOP presidential forum — particularly the speechwriting team that positioned the Bush White House as the spearhead of human freedom — they must have wondered what happened to the Republican party’s neoconservative wing, so triumphantly ascendant since the 9/11 terror attacks and so conspicuously silent this election cycle.

“It is the policy of the United States,” the 43rd president proclaimed in 2005, the high-water mark of Bush-era foreign policy zeal, “to support the growth of democratic movements and institutions… with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world.”

Bold stuff. Big picture stuff.

So why would the GOP stop now? Iraq is increasingly free and stable, thanks to the ongoing U.S. presence; al-Qaida has been significantly degraded both in the Afghan theatre and globally; and freedom-seeking uprisings are convulsing the Middle East in precisely the way Bush’s foreign policy team hoped and envisioned they would.

But invoicing the American taxpayer for stabilization missions in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya is hard enough, and raising the spectre of new or broadened military engagements would fall out of bounds with the economy-centred message of the Republicans’ 2012 presidential campaign.

So the party’s conservative base is prioritizing fiscal consolidation over its vision for a more free and democratic planet, and it’s taking the Republican presidential field along with it.

Even front-runner Mitt Romney has traded in his uber-hawk bona fides in exchange for membership to the realist school of foreign policy — the pro-military but non-interventionist approach that drove Republican foreign policy right up to the Reagan era.

In 2009, Romney said, “We must confront threats to freedom and sustain the capabilities we need to sustain the cause of liberty.”

Today? “Our troops shouldn’t go off and fight a war of independence for another nation.”

Not all conservatives, however, are on board with the realistic Republican retrenchment. In fact, one hawk’s feathers are ruffled more than those of the others. In June, when the Republican presidential race was in its infancy, erstwhile White House contender and leading foreign policy guru Sen. John McCain called the presidential contenders to task for flirting with isolationism.

“There’s always been an isolationist strain in the Republican party,” the feisty Arizonan said. “But now it seems to have moved more centre stage.”

Thing is, McCain’s overreacting. Yes, mainstream Republicans have shifted away from the freedom agenda back toward traditional conservative turf, signalling ebbing party support for pre-emptive war, supercharged rhetoric and divisive diplomacy.

But true isolationism would require a massive withdrawal of U.S. military positions worldwide, especially in east Asia, the Middle East and Europe — and only perennial presidential also-ran Congressman Ron Paul of Texas is interested in going anywhere near that far.

The Republican party of 2011 is simply getting back to basics, back to its foreign policy roots.

Isolationism it ain’t, even if some hawkish Republicans — and perhaps even the odd opinion columnist — would caution against too swift a shift.

August 11, 2011

My latest from the Guelph Mercury.
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America’s 44th president was always going to lose the expectations game. The youthful Democrat’s soaring rhetoric and refreshing faith in the universal appeal of principled compromise predestined it.

But the ominous events of these last few weeks are more than a string of tactical disappointments; they show the strategic vulnerability of a now-sideways presidency.

The summer started positively enough for the administration. The Republican presidential field looked generationally weak; the Republican-dominated House of Representatives’ push to repeal Obama’s signature health-care initiative seemed out of gas; and U.S. forces finally brought Osama bin Laden to justice, on Obama’s own daring and decisive orders.

And then. . .

And then House majority leader Eric Cantor, the legislative chieftain of the populist tea party movement, and Republican House speaker John Boehner decided to politicize a piece of housekeeping legislation.

The U.S. government’s debt limit — an arbitrary, self-imposed cap on Washington’s credit limit — needed a bump, like it’s been bumped tens of times during recent presidencies. But instead of raising the cap, House Republicans took the full faith and credit of the United States hostage, securing a handsome ransom.

Obama inked a debt deal that includes no tax increases, leaving leading Republicans to gloat that they negotiated their hostage situation (they actually used those words) masterfully, weakening the president as he heads into an election year.

Turns out the hostage was still hooked up to the bomb, though. Last Friday – well after the crisis had cleared – leading credit-rating agency Standard & Poor’s indicted American creditworthiness by lowering its long-held triple-A rating.

Tragically, later that same day, further magnifying America’s mortality, 22 U.S. commandos plus support crew were killed in Afghanistan, representing the single largest loss of coalition life since the war began a decade ago.

What a week. What a horrible week.

The true victims of these twin tragedies are the families of those brave servicemen, and the citizens and businesses and nations whose financial security is now that much weaker due to America’s urgent economic woe.

But the Obama presidency is also a victim. It is victim of a global economic crisis it had no part in creating; victim of a dangerous political movement willing to risk America’s basic economic order, and a victim of the vicissitudes of a tragic, complex, noble and protracted conflict, with political liabilities payable on demand.

Perhaps most troubling, it is victim of the ghost of another president from another time, whose administration was swallowed by the same dangerous tide. Jimmy Carter’s failure in Iran, his shaky economic stewardship, and his loss of the American public cost him the Oval Office, leaving it to a feisty challenger named Ronald Reagan to reignite American confidence, and restore American prestige and power in the world.

Obama needs to be his own Ronald Reagan, and he needs to start now.

He needs to pick a fight with the tea party hostage-takers and win it. He needs to shelve his prime ministerial instincts — his preference to convene, oversee and ratify — and lay out a fourth-year political program that will reassert the authority of the American presidency and the vitality of the Democratic party. He needs to make the tea party anarchists wear their self-indulgent, traitorous willingness to jeopardize America’s future around their necks every single day until the ballots get counted.
The president needs to do nothing less than to make the sun rise, just as Reagan inaugurated a new morning in America not so long ago.

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