Politics and Governance

The Obama Administration must figure out how to balance a healthy relationship with Turkey with its other global relationships, including with Israel. Obama visited Turkey on his first presidential overseas trip and he has friendly relations with Prime Minister Erdogan (they speak frequently by phone). Turkey’s continued economic growth makes it an attractive destination for U.S. businesses. These days, the Administration appears to be engaging Turkey by speaking a common language: trade. The Administration has developed 20-odd mutually-beneficial initiatives, including the Framework for Strategic Economic and Commercial Cooperation, an annual cabinet-level strategic dialogue to discuss new ways to enhance commercial cooperation. There are currently three bilateral mechanisms (Trade and Investment Framework Agreement, Economic Partnership Commission, Energy Working Group), co-chaired by U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk and Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke on the American side and Zafer Caglayan, Foreign Trade Minister, and Ali Babacan, Deputy Prime Minister, on the Turkish side. Other Initiatives are led by the DOE, State Department, and other agencies (see sidebar).  

Congress’s relationship with Turkey is also complicated. Two of Turkey’s neighbors, Israel and Armenia, have powerful presences on the Hill. Turkey, on the other hand, has not prioritized relations with Congress. So it is not surprising that the Mavi Marmara incident prompted a cacophonous reaction from the Hill, with some lawmakers criticizing Turkey for “growing closer in relations to Iran and more antagonistic towards the state of Israel.” Some lawmakers threatened to switch votes in favor of the Armenian Resolution (H.Res.252), which recognized the mass killing of Armenians from 1915 to 1923 as genocide. After Turkey’s “no” vote on Iran at the UN Security Council, Congress suspended negotiations for arms sales to Turkey. California Democrats Nancy Pelosi and Howard Berman, both influential voices on the Armenian Issue, have constituencies comprised of two of the largest Armenian communities in the country. It is possible that this issue may fare differently under a Republican majority. On January 7, Turkish Parliament Speaker Mehmet Ali Sahin sent a message of congratulations to newly-elected House Speaker Boehner. For the 112th Congress’s storyline, the chapter on U.S. Congress-Turkish relations has yet to be written.  

In October, EWI sent a leadership group to Turkey, Northern Iraq, and Israel, which met with senior leaders and scholars in Ankara, Erbil, and Tel Aviv on topics ranging from U.S.- Turkish relations to Turkey’s ten-year vision, the Kurdish question, and relations with Israel. Stemming from those consultations, EWI DC currently works with the Administration, the Hill, the Turkish Embassy, and several think tanks on U.S.- Turkish relations. EWI will continue to help strengthen this important partnership.  

A Polish essayist castigates Europeans in general for their “euro-centrism” that blinds them to the continent’s decline while new centers of economic and political power emerge elsewhere. He morbidly asks: “Will European civilization outlive Europe, or will it collapse with her?”

A French author, true to form, discusses the even bigger challenge all countries are facing: “The information revolution is a political revolution and an intellectual revolution. It calls into question both power and culture. It challenges the distinction between governors and governed.”

Americans have their own worries about their country’s apparent decline. “Increasingly, many of today’s problems are associated with the historic shift from an economic and financial regime dominated by the United States and the dollar to an unstable and multipolar system,” a New York Times article proclaims.

And then, as always, there’s Russia. One of that country’s few genuinely independent voices warns: “In political terms, his [the Kremlin leader’s] recent strategy can be described as a campaign to achieve democratic change through nondemocratic means. The way I see it, it is an extremely dangerous strategy, threatening to bring forth unworkable antidemocratic structures we’ll have to contend with for a long time.”

You hear such talk a lot these days, of course. But these opinions are hardly new—far from it. The first quotation is from the lead essay by Juliusz Mieroszewski in the March 1950 issue of Kultura, the Paris-based Polish émigré monthly. The French author who discussed the information revolution was Jean-François Revel, writing in his book “Without Marx or Jesus: The New American Revolution Has Begun,” published in 1970. The quotation about the increasingly multipolar world is from an article by Ann Crittenden in The New York Times dated February 4, 1979. And the independent Russian voice is that of dissident Andrei Sakharov, speaking at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington on November 14, 1988; the Kremlin leader he was referring to was Mikhail Gorbachev.

My father zealously monitored the Zeitgeist on such issues all his life. Since he is now ailing and unable to do so, I recently started sorting through his remarkable collection of clippings, and found myself intrigued by the eerie similarities to so many of today’s discussions about supposedly new trends and shifting power relationships.  While my father collected articles on everything from the wars in Korea and Vietnam to the John F. Kennedy assassination and John Paul II’s first visit to the United States, he was especially attracted to the writings of anyone who tried to make sense of the big ideas that flowed from the daily headlines.

As I sifted through his collection, I was struck by the degree to which certain preoccupations have been with us for decades—not, as we sometimes tend to believe, just in recent years. We aren’t so much discovering but constantly rediscovering the major global trends of the postwar era: the shift of power from West to East; Europe’s struggle to define its role and identity; the chronic debates about America’s supposed decline; and Russia’s seeming inability to transition to a system that assures its citizens fundamental rights, since even the self-proclaimed reformers too often have failed to embrace democratic principles.

All those are legitimate issues and concerns. And, yes, some trends—most notably, the shift to a genuinely multipolar world as demonstrated by the emergence of China and India as major players—have accelerated significantly in the past decade. The information revolution that Revel wrote about even before the dawn of the digital era, basing his observations on the growing power of television, hasn’t just accelerated: it’s now moving at warp speed. But none of this negates the fact that we are debating many of the same questions that policy analysts grappled with on a daily basis during the last half of the twentieth century.

It’s worth keeping this in mind since it helps put our current preoccupations in perspective. Europeans agonize whether they are losing out to the rising powers in the East, whether the euro-zone can survive its current spate of economic crises, and whether they can handle the cultural tensions produced by their growing immigrant populations. But if they took a step back, they’d see that the current era—when EU and NATO membership binds most of the countries on the continent together as never before—looks pretty good as compared to the 1990s when the Balkans were exploding in violence, or, earlier, when the continent was divided into two heavily armed, hostile camps.

According to a recent Pew Charitable Trusts poll, 50 per cent of Americans viewed the first decade of this century as generally negative, and only 27 per cent saw it as generally positive. In assessing earlier decades, including the 1960s which was dominated by the Vietnam War, protests and assassinations, Americans were far more upbeat. To be sure, terrorism accounts for a large part of that somber mood, but Americans need to remember this was a phenomenon that was widespread earlier, although it hadn’t reached American soil in a way that registered. And anti-Americanism is hardly new either. One of my keepsakes from my father is a mounted chunk of concrete that was thrown through his office window when protesters attacked the U.S. Embassy in Cairo in 1961, where he was serving as press attaché.

Revel’s underlying thesis about the United States—that it was in the best position to embrace and creatively exploit the technological leaps of the new information age—still applies today. That’s why he was convinced that much of the talk about America’s decline, along with knee-jerk anti-Americanism in his country and others, was off the mark. Its combination of entrepreneurial spirit and comfort level with broad freedoms would allow it to maintain its leading role in far more than just military might.

Since then, the United States has added cause for optimism because of its population trends. Writing in the current issue of Foreign Affairs, Nicholas Eberstadt points out that, barring a severe backlash against immigration, the country “will avoid the demographic stagnation and decline that faces most other OECD countries.” In fact, the U.S. population is projected to grow from 310 million to 374 million in the next twenty years. As he points out, this will keep the country relatively young, with much better economic prospects than Western Europe or Japan.

True, the world today is genuinely more multipolar than before, and America’s leaders have to take that into account. The digital age cries out for more international coordination on cybersecurity, in particular, since everything from trade, finance and critical infrastructure is vulnerable without new protective mechanisms that span borders as effectively as web connections do. And given their push for nuclear weapons, countries like North Korea and Iran can no longer be seen merely as regional threats—or only as America’s problem. That certainly applies to disparate terrorist movements as well.

But there’s hope in those kinds of realizations. That may account for the recent indications that NATO and Russia could cooperate on ballistic missile defense, and that China is beginning—ever so tentatively—to reconsider how it should handle its North Korean neighbor. And that on cybersecurity there’s a growing realization that national policies will fail without concerted international cooperation.

Of course that isn’t a new idea either, as my father would be quick to point out—and he has the articles to prove it. The question is whether a more sensible approach is developing based on the premise that joint actions to meet joint challenges aren’t just an idealistic vision anymore but a necessity for survival. Economic, political and, yes, military competition will continue. But maybe—just maybe—the next half century of articles will be less concerned with who is rising or falling and more with how we pulled together when it really mattered.

Andrew Nagorski is vice president and director of public policy at the EastWest Institute. This article was written for Newsweek Polska, the Polish edition of Newsweek (www.newsweek.pl).

“There are common problems that we need to face,” said Dr. Attiya Inayatullah, Former Minister of Women’s Development, Social Welfare and Special Education of Pakistan, identifying the need to challenge extremism for women to take a truly active role in government.

 “The international communities are helping,” said Dr. Husn Banu Ghazanfar, Minister of Women Affairs, Afghanistan, who delivered the keynote address. “But I request help from the international community for the education and capacity-building.” Ghazanfar also emphasized the need for western help rebuilding infrastructure, like roads, schools and hospitals, damaged in the war.

“President Dmitry Medvedev’s recent visit to India has given fresh luster to a relationship that had begun to lose its sheen,” Sibal writes.  Sibal argues that the media and the international community have focused too much on the India-U.S. relationship, thus losing sight of the India-Russia relationship.

The economic aspect of the India- Russia relationship has made some progress but still has a far way to go, according to Sibal. As he sees it, the countries’ different economic structures have made it difficult to establish an effective economic partnership and a trusted basis for trade.  However, Sibal believes that the countries are making strides in joint ventures, pointing to a new steel plant in Karnataka and recent agreements in the telecommunications sector.

For Sibal, the India-Russia Inter-Governmental Agreement in the hydrocarbon sector represents an important breakthrough for the relationship because “it formally concretises Russia’s greater willingness to develop the energy relationship.”

From a political standpoint, Sibal points out, Russia has been one of the biggest supporters of India’s permanent membership in the UNSC, as well as India’s nuclear capabilities. Russia “is the only country actually building power reactors in India,” writes Sibal.  “In the defence area, India still receives top-of-the-line equipment from Russia, as well as access to sensitive technologies.”

Sibal concludes that President Medvedev’s visit to Russia restored faith in the two countries’ relationship and bodes well for the future, with a caveat: “For it to graduate to a ‘special and privileged strategic partnership’ that the Joint Statement speaks of will need greater movement in the positive directions that President Medvedev’s visit chartered.”

Click here to read Sibal's piece online

Funding for preventive diplomacy is notoriously tough to secure, particularly in times of tight budgets. But preventive action can save both lives and money. A war in Sudan would cost the international community an estimated $100 billion, according to a recent report by the Aegis Trust – a great argument for preventive action by the United States and others. But arguing how much money you will save by funding a war that doesn’t happen is a tough political sell for Washington policymakers.

Still, legislators looking to support preventive action can point to retroactive cost-benefit analyses that show just how much money timely spending saves: The First Gulf War cost foreign governments $114 billion, while effective preventive action might have cost between $10 and $30 billion, according to The Costs of Conflict: Prevention and Cure in the Global Arena, from the Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict.  Conversely, the United Nations Preventive Deployment Force kept the Albanian and Yugoslav crises out of Macedonia from 1995 and 1999 for a mere $300 million -- a drop in the bucket compared to what a full-blown Macedonian crisis could have cost: $140 billion.  According to those calculations, the combined savings for those two conflicts approached $230 billion.

At the EastWest Institute’s First Global Conference on Preventive Action in Brussels last month—in reality, more a mobilization meeting than a conference--global parliamentarians discussed how to build political support for preventive action. Delegates broadly agreed that intergovernmental organizations must spearhead the movement and that greater collaboration is needed between the United Nations, regional organizations and NGOs.  However, the intergovernmental organizations will be hampered by the fact that they are funded by the very states currently cutting their budgets.

The United States government takes the lead in funding the UN, currently assessed at 22% of the UN regular budget, and the Obama Administration is requesting around $500 million from Congress for Fiscal Year 2011. The figure, while substantial, pales in comparison to the American share of the UN peacekeeping budget, which is expected to be almost $2 billion in 2011 or about a quarter of UN peacekeeping funding. As Washington readies itself for a more conservative 112th congress in January, the last thing anyone expects is enthusiasm for upping UN funding.

But despite the obstacles, Washington has acknowledged the importance of preventive diplomacy in some instances. In August 2009, Senator Mark Begich [D-AK] introduced the United States Ambassador-at-Large for Arctic Affairs Act. Begich’s Chief of Staff, David Ramseur, told EWI, that it “is an attempt to manage Arctic resources and transportation in the Arctic, both of which are becoming more accessible as a result of global warming.” While violent confrontation between the Arctic states is unlikely, the proposal to appoint an ambassador for the Arctic shows a commitment to preventing any protracted diplomatic or economic stand-offs over resource ownership or shipping rights. The bill has gone nowhere, but it at least signaled an attempt to anticipate and defuse future tensions in an increasingly important area of competing economic activity.   

On the other side of the aisle, the 111th Congress marked the third straight session that Congressman Mac Thornberry [R-TX] introduced legislation titled the Quadrennial Foreign Affairs Review Act (H.R. 490 in 111th Congress), with the intention of obligating “a quadrennial review of the diplomatic strategy and structure of the Department of State…to determine how the Department can best fulfill its mission in the 21st century and meet the challenges of a changing world.” After Congress took the lead, Hillary Clinton announced the Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review as an official initiative of the State Department in July of 2009.

Released in December by the Department of State, the Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review (QDDR) provides some insight into how State and USAID will “determine how to use our resources most efficiently in a time of tight budgets.” The QDDR emphasizes a civilian-based approach to leadership in regards to foreign policy -- more consulates and an enlargement of the foreign service and civil service. Moving forward, the QDDR also calls for the development of a “standing interagency response corps” and “a single planning process for conflict resolution” that will strengthen the capacity of State and USAID “to anticipate crisis, conflict, and potential mass atrocities.”

At EWI, we are strongly positioned to promote preventive diplomacy–in particular, with our active global parliamentarian network working for conflict prevention. We plan to invite more American policymakers into that network. EWI DC will continue to try to keep this issue on the discussion boards in Washington and elsewhere, and work towards tangible, timely and cost-effective results. 

“India’s core foreign policy challenges in 2011 will be no different than in 2010, but we enter the New Year with a somewhat strengthened diplomatic hand” Sibal predicts, pointing out that all P-5 countries visited India in 2010.  Sibal writes that, as in 2010, India’s foreign policy interests will revolve around its relations with Pakistan and China, potential for permanent membership in the UNSC and continued economic growth.

One of the issues facing the India-Pakistan relationship is the continued territorial dispute over Kashmir. Sibal argues that until this issue is resolved, “the India-Pakistan dialogue is stalemated.”

For Sibal, the challenges facing the India-China relationship are both economic and territorial, beginning with the issue of border sharing in Kashmir.  Sibal argues that China is using economic incentives to shift India’s focus away from Kashmir: “While keeping its political options toward India open, it seeks to disarm Indian resistance by shifting the focus to economic ties, for which it is mobilizing powerful Indian private sector interests.”

India has received considerable support for its membership in the UNSC, but this “will not get translated into concrete results any time soon,” Sibal writes, adding that how India conducts itself as a non-permanent member over the next few years will be critical.

Sibal predicts that India’s political influence will rise as the economy grows: “India, with its impressive growth rates, will continue to have an important voice in the G-20 in 2011.”

But in order to exercise more power abroad, says Sibal, India must continue to strengthen its internal governance: “We cannot control our external environment when the internal one seems adrift.”

When recently discussing the war in Afghanistan with a former high-level Pakistani official, I was whisked from the streets of Kabul by my interlocutor’s jaunty conclusion: “We’ve had the devils own day, haven’t we?”; to which I instantly replied: “ Yes – lick’em tomorrow though.”

With this brief, apparently enigmatic, exchange we both acknowledged our membership in a rather obscure subculture: non-American Civil War buffs. The dialogue we quoted was an actual exchange between Ulysses Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman after the first day of the battle of Shiloh, the bloodiest battle fought in the western theater of the war.

Rather than further musing on the progress of the war in Afghanistan, we spent the next two hours talking about Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s Gettysburg campaign, the siege of Petersburg, and Stonewall Jackson’s bold exploits in the Shenandoah Valley. Before we parted, my companion confessed that the US Civil War was the conflict he studied most for one simple fact: It is virtually the only civil war in human history which did not end in dictatorship or monarchy. As we approach the 150th anniversary of the last "gentleman’s war," this fact is often forgotten.

There is indeed no equivalent in European history to parallel how democratically elected governments handle internal strife without becoming autocratic. Ancient Rome’s civil war ended after Octavian declared himself emperor. The English Civil War ended with Oliver Cromwell’s dictatorship. The French Civil War resulted in the first Empire. Francisco Franco established a fascist government in 1939 at the end of the Spanish Civil War, as did Austria at the end of a brief war in 1934.

Enduring lessons for democracies in times of war

Consequently, the Civil War in the United States holds valuable lessons for democracies in times of war. It answered fundamental questions about the durability and resiliency of democratic governments in times of existential crisis.

Fought primarily by amateur soldiers, neither side questioned the inherent truth of democratic government in spite of military commanders publicly displaying their reservations regarding government’s conduct of the war. For example, Joseph “Fightin Joe” Hooker, the momentary commander of the Army of the Potomac, advocated dictatorship to end the military cul-de-sac into which the Union had wandered. Lincoln famously replied: “I have heard, in such a way as to believe it, of your recently saying that both the army and the government needed a dictator…. Only those generals who gain success can be dictators. What I now ask of you is military success, and I will risk the dictatorship.”

A year later, Lincoln appointed General Ulysess S. Grant to command all Union forces, investing him with unprecedented military powers. Only in the last months of the war was Jefferson Davis willing to appoint General Robert E. Lee commander of all Confederate forces, fearful of the consequences of uniting the aggregated military power of the Confederacy in one person. Political leaders of both North and South were aware of the intrinsic dangers military leaders can pose to a democratically elected government.

To non-Americans, it matters little whether the war was fought over slavery or states’ rights or what battles were won or lost by which side. More important to us should be the practical lessons we can derive from the conflict, for example, how a democratically elected president dealt with public opinion, the press, and censorship under the extreme duress or war. Further lessons to be taken from the Civil War are how the American president, a lawyer by profession, could suspend habeas corpus and arrest agitators without due process of law, what role the opposition played in the conflict, how governments in both the North and South reacted to war weariness, and how a national election could be completed successfully amid civil strife.

The Civil War also holds enduring lessons for democracies in times of war. This monumental rupture of the greatest democracy in human history provides valuable insight into the manipulative power of the press, the often zigzagging contradictions of elected leaders reconciling military strategy with electoral politics, and the seminal importance of public opinion and the home front. Most important, the Civil War affords a unique perspective on defending liberal democratic principles without compromising them and, above all, how a country that fought for four bloody years and suffered more than 600,000 deaths could emerge as one nation.

America: a living rebuttal to famous political philosophers

Political philosophers from Plato to Jean Jacques Rousseau were convinced that democracy could not be extended beyond the boundaries of a small city-state and would collapse due to internal strife in times of crisis. European history seemed to prove them right. The US Civil War, however, showed that this is not a historical dictum. The United States emerged out of the conflict as a stronger nation and more integrally than ever bound to its democratic liberal principles.

While there is little danger for most Western democracies to turn toward autocracy, the Civil War illustrates inherent dangers facing democracies at war.

Democratic government is not immune to excesses, misjudgments, and violations of the law. No government, however, should ever abandon its republican principles for the sake of expediency or necessity even in times of severe national crisis. That’s a lesson my Pakistani friends and many other citizens of the world should learn from the great American Battle Cry of Freedom.

Franz-Stefan Gady is an Austrian foreign policy analyst. He works for the EastWest Institute.

Wang spoke at the EastWest Institute (EWI) on December 8, 2010, to an audience that included EWI Co-Chairman Ross Perot, Jr. (who chaired the event); Edward Cox, Chairman of the New York Republican State Committee; Maurice Greenberg, Chairman and CEO of C.V. Starr & Co., Inc.; Winston Lord, former U.S. Ambassador to China; and Frank G. Wisner, Jr., International Affairs Advisor at Patton Boggs LLP.

Wang shared his first-hand impressions of the United States and China’s approach to addressing various global challenges. In his speech, Wang endorsed a piece of advice given to him by Henry Kissinger, a former U.S. Secretary of State and National Security Advisor who helped normalize relations between the U.S. and China in the 1970s. Kissinger had suggested that the two countries find solutions to differences in private rather than present the contents of all conversations publicly to the media.

Wang emphasized the value of this kind of discreet communication in approaching the North Korean leadership, particularly during the current crisis on the peninsula. Regarding U.S. calls for China to take more forceful action against North Korea, he noted that his country does not publicize all that it does. Therefore, simply because China has not announced that it is conducting quiet diplomacy does not mean that it is not doing so.

Wang also suggested more candid exchanges between the United States and China, similar to the 2nd U.S.-China High-Level Political Party Leaders Dialogue recently convened in Washington, D.C. Lauding the dialogue as an important new platform for promoting relations between the two countries, he proposed the possibility of organizing additional dialogues between various groups, such as businessmen or youth. Citing interest by Ohio political leaders in attracting Chinese businesses to their state, Wang stressed, for example, the constructive role that a dialogue between Chinese and U.S. businessmen could play.

This speech came at the end of a nine-day, four-city visit of the United States by a 22-member Communist Party of China (CPC) delegation led by Wang.

Following the dialogue sessions in Washington, D.C. with Democratic and Republican leaders, the CPC delegation visited Chicago, Illinois, and Columbus, Ohio, before concluding their trip in New York City. In Chicago and Columbus, the delegation had meetings with a number of prominent local Republicans and Democrats (including Illinois Governor Pat Quinn, Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, Ohio Governor Ted Strickland, and Ohio Governor-Elect John Kasich), members of the Midwest U.S.-China Association, leading Ohio businessmen, and The Ohio State University President Gordon Gee. In New York, the delegation also met with Dr. Henry Kissinger.