When President Hugo Chávez was first elected, in 1998, his critics, many of whom have published in these pages, argued that he would slowly move Venezuela away from democracy. After 12 elections, including the December 2007 referendum, which he narrowly lost, that claim has finally crumbled under the evidence. Now the argument against Venezuela has shifted, and instead of being called undemocratic, Chávez's social programs are labeled as inefficient and his economic management categorized as catastrophic. Much like the first accusations against Chávez, the new criticisms, put forth by Francisco Rodríguez in "An Empty Revolution" (March/April 2008), simply do not stand up to the facts.
Michael E. O'Hanlon, Kenneth M. Pollack, and Stephen Biddle
Publication Date:
09-2008
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Foreign Affairs
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
The situation in Iraq is improving. With the right strategy, the United States will eventually be able to draw down troops without sacrificing stability.
The United States can curb its own emissions and encourage energy efficiency and the development of clean-energy technology worldwide by rethinking carbon regimes.
The international community must ensure that people seeking saftey are protected; soverignty is not a shield behind which authoritarian governments may terrorize their own people.
Michael Ross ("Blood Barrels," May/June 2008) argues that oil triggers conflict in three main ways: fluctuating oil prices lead to economic instability, which is followed by political instability; oil wealth supports insurgencies; and oil wealth encourages separatism. These factors are important, but Ross is too selective. Embedding them in a broader framework would be more illuminating and would better inform policy.
Condoleezza Rice ("The New American Realism," July/August 2008) evokes a certain sympathy but also substantial disappointment with her account of the accomplishments of the Bush administration over the last eight years. Her argument is undeniably poignant, especially for its hyperbole and obfuscation. It is embarrassing that she should offer so self-serving an account of the pretended achievements of the Bush administration, given that its foreign policy disasters are well known.
Replying to Padma Desai's letter ("Putin's Russia," May/June 2008), Michael McFaul and Kathryn Stoner-Weiss assert that, like the Yeltsin-era media bosses, the United States' "oligarchs . . . own" many media outlets, including The Nation. In reality, The Nation -- the United States' oldest continuously published weekly -- has operated at a loss during all but a few of its 143 years and has been kept alive by its subscribers, advertisers, and many loyal supporters. Moreover, The Nation's equally long-standing antioligarchic positions are known to virtually everyone familiar with the American press.
Is China democratizing? The country's leaders do not think of democracy as people in the West generally do, but they are increasingly backing local elections, judicial independence, and oversight of Chinese Communist Party officials. How far China's liberalization will ultimately go and what Chinese politics will look like when it stops are open questions.
China's rise will inevitably bring the United States' unipolar moment to an end. But that does not necessarily mean a violent power struggle or the overthrow of the Western system. The U.S.-led international order can remain dominant even while integrating a more powerful China -- but only if Washington sets about strengthening that liberal order now.
Beijing has recently stepped back from its unconditional support for pariah states, such as Burma, North Korea, and Sudan. This means China may now be more likely to help the West manage the problems such states pose -- but only up to a point, because at heart China still favors nonintervention as a general policy.
Politicians in Washington are clamoring for currency revaluation in China to reverse China's trade surplus with the United States. But the trade imbalance is not the threat they make it out to be, and a stronger yuan is not the solution. Everybody should focus instead on properly integrating China into the global economy.
A growing conventional wisdom holds that Vladimir Putin's attack on democracy has brought Russia stability and prosperity -- providing a new model of successful market authoritarianism. But the correlation between autocracy and economic growth is spurious. Autocracy's effects in Russia have in fact been negative. Whatever the gains under Putin, they would have been greater under a democratic regime.
The Bush administration wants to contain Iran by rallying the support of Sunni Arab states and now sees Iran's containment as the heart of its Middle East policy: a way to stabilize Iraq, declaw Hezbollah, and restart the Arab-Israeli peace process. But the strategy is unsound and impractical, and it will probably further destabilize an already volatile region.
Political Geography:
Iraq, Iran, Washington, Middle East, and Arab Countries
After the Cold War, NATO and the EU opened their doors to central and Eastern Europe, making the continent safer and freer than ever before. Today, NATO and the EU must articulate a new rationale for enlarging still further, once again extending democracy and prosperity to the East, this time in the face of a more powerful and defiant Russia.
Global corporate citizenship means that companies must not only be engaged with stakeholders but be stakeholders themselves alongside governments and civil society. Since companies depend on global development, which in turn relies on stability and increased prosperity, it is in their direct interest to help improve the state of the world.
The massive growth of sovereign wealth funds -- pools of capital controlled by governments and invested in private markets abroad -- should not cause alarm. But it does raise legitimate questions for the United States, pointing to the need for new policy principles for both the funds and the countries in which they invest.
Nuclear terrorism poses a grave threat to global security, but seeking silver bullets to counter it does not make sense. Instead of pursuing a perfect defense, U.S. policymakers should create an integrated defensive system that takes advantage of the terrorists' weaknesses and disrupts their plots at every stage, thereby chipping away at their overall chances of success.
The United States needs a foreign policy that is based on reality and is loyal to American values. The next U.S. president needs to send a clear signal to the world that America has turned the corner and will once again be a leader rather than a unilateralist loner. Getting out of Iraq and restoring our reputation are necessary first steps toward a new strategy of U.S. global engagement and leadership.
The Bush administration's arrogant bunker mentality has been counterproductive at home and abroad. American foreign policy needs to change its tone and attitude, open up, and reach out. In particular, it should focus on eliminating Islamist terrorists, stabilizing Iraq, containing Iran, and toughening its stance with Pakistan.
Walter Russell Mead rightly argues that the United Kingdom and the United States made the modern world. But his call for Washington to pursue both a maritime grand strategy and Niebuhrian realism will not fly.
In "COIN of the Realm" (November/December 2007), Colin Kahl divided counterinsurgency (COIN) theory into two opposing schools of thought: "hearts and minds" and "coercion." Kahl cited me as an advocate of "coercion," quoting my observation about "a radical religion whose adherents are not susceptible to having their hearts and minds won over."
Richard Betts ("A Disciplined Defense," November/December 2007) laments that most "organizations associated with mainstream policy thinking," instead of arguing for military budget rationality, have been cowed into silence. He refers to recent proposals by my own organization -- the Institute for Policy Studies, which has been known over the years for its far-reaching proposals to scale back the military budget -- that focus on a set of cuts amounting to only about $56 billion, or 11 percent of the total. Betts is right that this $56 billion is only the low-hanging fruit.
In "Jerusalem Syndrome" (November/December 2007), Walter Russell Mead is disappointed in John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt's The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy. I am disappointed in Walter Russell Mead. The U.S. relationship with Israel is difficult and complex. I was directly involved in Middle East matters at the State Department and the White House in the 1970s and early 1980s and have worked in key Middle Eastern capitals, including Amman, Cairo, and Jerusalem. Several presidents, secretaries of state, and national security advisers have wrestled unsuccessfully to find ways and means to develop a creative and objective-driven dialogue in the Near Eastern neighborhood.
In "The Old Turks' Revolt" (November/December 2007), Ömer Taspinar states, "Unlike the Ottoman elites, the Kemalists rejected multiethnic and multinational cosmopolitanism and banned Armenians, Greeks, and Jews from holding government jobs." On the night of April 24, 1915, the Ottoman police rounded up over 200 Armenian intellectuals, poets, politicians, writers, journalists, and translators from their homes in Istanbul; sent them to remote holding places; and murdered them. This began the systematic genocide of approximately 1.5 million Armenians, with another 2-2.5 million uprooted from their millennia-old homeland in central and eastern Turkey. o say that the Kemalists later banned the Armenians from government jobs is somewhat of a moot point. Qualified applicants had been assassinated earlier.
Defending the indefensible is an occupational hazard for even thoughtful former officials in Washington these days, but Victor Cha's "Winning Asia" (November/December 2007) goes too far. Instead of lauding President George W. Bush's admirable turnaround on North Korea last summer, he would have readers believe that the administration's North Korea policy was right all along.
The violence that has engulfed Kenya since the disputed December 27 election has deep historical roots and it will take more than a recount or the formation of a national unity government to resolve the crisis. Although December 27 was billed as the crowning event of the country's two-decade struggle for democratic rule, all of the ingredients for violence were present prior to the election. Public opinion polls indicated that the race between incumbent president Mwai Kibaki and his principal challenger, Raila Odinga, was too close to call; outbreaks of violence had occurred in the run-up to previous elections in 1992 and 1997; and many Kenyans, especially civil society leaders, worried that unless the Election Commission of Kenya (ECK) conducted the December elections in a manner that was free, fair, and universally regarded as legitimate, the losers would not accept the verdict. Sadly, their fears were correct. Between 500 and 1,000 people have died in post-election violence while an estimated 250,000 Kenyans, mainly Kikuyu settlers in the western Rift Valley, have been displaced from their homes.
A climate of fear and a sense of powerlessness caused by the threats of terrorism and natural disasters are undermining American ideals and fueling political demagoguery. Rebuilding the resilience of American society is the way to reverse this and respond to today's challenges.
Despite international calls for reform, the North Korean government is doing its best to maintain the domestic status quo -- and with good reason, at least from its perspective. Still, change is coming in very slow motion thanks to international aid and illegal exchanges with the outside world, which are eroding Pyongyang's legitimacy.
Americans generally belittle the role of ethnic nationalism in politics. But in fact, it corresponds to some enduring propensities of the human spirit, it is galvanized by modernization, and in one form or another, it will drive global politics for generations to come. Once ethnic nationalism has captured the imagination of groups in a multiethnic society, ethnic disaggregation or partition is often the least bad answer.
After decades of historic gains, the world has slipped into a democratic recession. Predatory states are on the rise, threatening both nascent and established democracies throughout the world. But this trend can be reversed with the development of good governance and strict accountability and the help of conditional aid from the West.
Even critics of Hugo Chávez tend to concede that he has made helping the poor his top priority. But in fact, Chávez's government has not done any more to fight poverty than past Venezuelan governments, and his much-heralded social programs have had little effect. A close look at the evidence reveals just how much Chávez's "revolution" has hurt Venezuela's economy -- and that the poor are hurting most of all.
Thanks to global warming, the Arctic icecap is rapidly melting, opening up access to massive natural resources and creating shipping shortcuts that could save billions of dollars a year. But there are currently no clear rules governing this economically and strategically vital region. Unless Washington leads the way toward a multilateral diplomatic solution, the Arctic could descend into armed conflict.
Denmark has forged a social and economic model that couples the best of the free market with the best of the welfare state, transcending tradeoffs between dynamism and security, efficiency and equality. Other countries may not be able to simply copy the Danish model of social democracy, but it nonetheless offers important lessons for governments confronting the dilemmas of globalization.
Economic activity between Africa and Asia, especially China and India, is booming like never before. If the problems and imbalances this sometimes creates are managed well, this expanding engagement could be an unprecedented opportunity for Africa's growth and for its integration into the global economy.
The United States has failed to understand the global resurgence of religiosity. Washington should put the promotion of religious freedom at the center of U.S. foreign policy -- recognizing that it is vital not only to liberty and stability abroad but also to U.S. national security.
The World Trade Organization has changed the world in the past decade by welcoming China and transforming national fortunes in Cambodia and Saudi Arabia. It provides the catalyst that political leaders need to reform.