Hillary Clinton Heads to Burma
On Wednesday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton travels to the isolated nation of Burma, officially known as Myanmar, in an attempt to spur the reform process. “After years of darkness, we’ve seen flickers of progress,” said President Barack Obama of the troubled country. By visiting Burma Secretary Clinton can test the new government’s willingness to do more.
Of course, the Clinton initiative may fail. But the main argument for the policy change is not that it is certain to work, but that the alternative has failed. Isolating Burma has achieved nothing.
Burma long has been one of the most tragic of nations. The military regime brutally suppressed the democracy movement led by Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi. Even more deadly has been the half-century long battle with ethnic groups like the Karen, which have sought autonomy in the east.
The United States and Europe responded with sanctions, but to no avail. China took advantage to secure a position of political influence and economic dominance. The military regime continued to live up to its reputation for brutality and corruption.
Now there are “flickers of progress,” as the president suggested. A badly flawed election last year; a new, nominally civilian government; the release of a few political prisoners; liberty for Ms. Suu Kyi, who also has been meeting with government ministers; and a slight break between Burma and its chief patron, Beijing.
Individually these are but small changes, and the Burmese military has previously offered tantalizing reforms only to reverse course, intensifying its brutal suppression of any opposition. However, the combination of many small steps offers hope that something more real may be happening this time. Even Suu Kyi has expressed optimism, and is preparing to reenter politics—legally.
Equally important is the increasing evidence that Burma wants to balance the influence of its imperious neighbor China. For all of the worries in America about Beijing’s growing clout around the world, the People’s Republic of China is finding out—just as the United States discovered years ago—that friends can be expensive to buy and often don’t stay bought.
Engaging Burma could encourage that state to continue on a more independent course—separate from China. The regime isn’t likely to dump its patron, but any distance between the two would be progress. The PRC’s churlish reaction to the Clinton initiative suggests that Beijing is concerned.
An adjustment in U.S. policy toward Burma was sorely needed. Isolation resulted in few positive outcomes. For the most part Asian nations, even America’s friends, ignored U.S. and European sanctions. The regime did not fall; Suu Kyi was not freed; democracy did not come; the ethnic groups did not enjoy peace. The generals simply tightened their grip.
Although this policy failure long has been obvious, no one wanted to “reward” the Burmese regime by dropping economic penalties. This left U.S. policy stuck in a political cul-de-sac. Sanctions were ineffective, doing nothing to advance human rights. But they could not be changed for the sake of appearance.
Nascent reform in Burma now offers Washington an opportunity to shift course. No one should get their hopes up. The regime may intend to only adopt a few reforms as window-dressing to win Western aid. Even if the commitment to change is real, the road to a better life for the Burmese people remains long and hard.
Nevertheless, for the first time in years there truly are “flickers of progress” in Burma. The administration is right to try to turn these flickers into something more. A desperately poor and oppressed people deserve a better life.
Obama’s Power Problem, and Ours
I have an op-ed in Politico today that explores what I call President Obama’s power problem, a common theme in my work (my book is now in a Kindle edition!).
Simply stated, when a country has more military power than it needs to defend itself and its core interests, it will expand its definition of “the national interest.” This will, in turn, lead it to intervene militarily in places and disputes that have no connection to the country’s security. That certainly has been the pattern for the United States for at least the last two decades. The problem is nicely encapsulated in the famous exchange between Madeleine Albright and Colin Powell, which Powell recounted in his memoir.
Madeleine Albright, our ambassador to the UN, asked me in frustration “What’s the point of having this superb military that you’re always talking about if we can’t use it?” I thought I would have an aneurysm. American GIs were not toy soldiers to be moved around on some sort of global game board.
This brings us to Libya, and to a new group of people who likely said something similar to Mike Mullen and Bob Gates. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s disagreements with Gates were on public display last Sunday, but reports of a whisper campaign within the administration, in which Clinton and her advisers were frustrated by President Obama’s unwillingness to deploy the U.S. military on yet another mission, have been flying around for weeks.
In the end, the Valkyries got their war. Clinton’s advice, along with that of Samantha Power and Susan Rice, who have all loudly called for U.S. military intervention in the past, convinced President Obama to override Gates and Mullen’s objections, and to launch what Colorado Congressman Mike Coffman aptly characterized yesterday as “just the most muddled definition of an operation probably in U.S. military history.” Anne-Marie Slaughter, who recently returned to Princeton after a stint at State’s policy planning staff, was sniping from the sidelines. Pressure from our European allies, especially France’s Nicolas Sarkozy and David Cameron in the UK, also appears to have been decisive.
Is Hillary Clinton Ignorant about Geography, Fiscal Policy, or Both?
Hillary Clinton recently opined that Brazil was a great role model for the idea of soaking the rich with higher tax rates. She didn’t really offer evidence for that specific assertion, but Politico reports that she did say that “Brazil has the highest tax-to-GDP rate in the Western Hemisphere and guess what — they’re growing like crazy.”
I’m not sure if “growing like crazy” is an accurate description, particularly since poor nations normally have decent growth rates because they start from such a low baseline.
But let’s excuse that bit of rhetorical excess and focus on the really flawed portion of her remarks.
Contrary to her direct quote, Brazil does not have the “highest tax-to-GDP rate in the Western Hemisphere.” It may have the highest tax burden in South America. And it may even have the highest tax burden in all of Latin America, but its overall tax burden of about 24 percent of GDP is slightly below the aggregate tax burden in the United States.
I suppose I should issue a caveat and say there’s a very slight chance that the recession has temporarily pushed U.S. tax receipts as a share of GDP below the Brazilian level, but that isn’t apparent from the IMF data. Moreover, there’s no doubt that the tax burden in Canada is significantly higher than the Brazilian burden.
So Secretary Clinton either was unaware that the United States and Canada are in the Western Hemisphere, or has no clue how to read fiscal statistics.
Is Europe Irrelevant?
Paul Starobin at the National Journal‘s Security Experts Blog has kicked off a spirited debate surrounding Europe’s military capabilities (or lack thereof). The jumping off point in the discussion is Robert Gates’s speech to NATO officers last month, in which Gates lamented that:
“The demilitarization of Europe — where large swaths of the general public and political class are averse to military force and the risks that go with it — has gone from a blessing in the 20th century to an impediment to achieving real security and lasting peace in the 21st.” [Justin Logan blogged about this here.]
Starobin asks: “Can America Count On Europe Anymore?”
Is Gates right? What exactly does “the demilitarization of Europe” mean for U.S. national security interests? Should Americans care if Europe has to live in the shadow of a militarily superior post-Soviet Russia? Is NATO, alas, a lost cause?
[...]
In short, should the U.S. be planning for a post-Europe world? Does Europe still matter? Can we count on Europe any more?
It would be unwise for Americans to write off Europeans as a lost cause, congenitally dependent upon U.S. military power, and unable to contribute either to their own defense or to policing the global commons. We can’t count on Europe — right now — but that doesn’t mean we can never count on Europe in the future.
Americans who complain about Europe’s unwillingness to play a larger role in policing the globe, and who would like them to do more, should start by exploring the many reasons why Europe is so weak militarily.
Consider, for example, Europe’s half-hearted and inconsistent steps to establish a security capacity independent of NATO — and therefore independent of the United States — since the end of the Cold War. Such proposals have failed for many reasons, but we shouldn’t ignore the extent to which Uncle Sam has actively discouraged Europe from playing a more active role. Most recently, Hillary Clinton expressed the U.S. government’s position that political and economic integration would proceed under the EU, but security would continue to be provided by NATO. This echoes similar comments made by the first Bush and Clinton administrations with respect to European defense. (See, for example, Madeleine Albright’s comments regarding European Defence and Security Policy (EDSP) in 1998).
What Do You Do Once You Get the Fight Out of Europe?
Yesterday Defense Secretary Bob Gates complained that European defense spending is too low:
The demilitarization of Europe — where large swaths of the general public and political class are averse to military force and the risks that go with it — has gone from a blessing in the 20th century to an impediment to achieving real security and lasting peace in the 21st.
If Gates is really upset about this, he should blame his predecessors. The United States has played an active role in stifling European defense, and is now reaping what it has sown. As Alex Massie points out, American opposition to anything that would “duplicate, decouple from, or discriminate against” NATO meant that anything the Europeans decided to do would have to be kept within the context of NATO and the “transatlantic alliance.” For more on this phenomenon, see this paper by Cato research fellow Chris Layne, and pages 105-117 of Layne’s excellent and very provocative book The Peace of Illusions.
As we know in the context of public goods and alliance behavior, the bigger countries are forced to carry disproportionately big loads. By extension, when there is one super-giant country in the alliance, the only reason smaller countries would contribute would be if it were outside of the alliance context, which we have just seen the U.S. opposes. Accordingly, the European abrogation of its own defense has only gotten more pronounced since the end of the cold war, because Uncle Sucker has insisted on picking up the tab. Call your Congressman.
And we have recent evidence of U.S. opposition to increased European efforts: on a trip to Europe last month, Secretary of State Clinton was asked about the prospect of an independent European defense force. Her answer, in full:
Well, again, this is a European matter. It certainly is a French and German matter. And I respect the decision making of allies like France and Germany, so it is really within those two countries’ sphere of authority.
I think the U.S. view is that we would not want to see anything supplant NATO. If it were able to supplement NATO, that would be different. But given the strains that already exist on NATO’s budget and military expenditures in our countries, we think it’s smarter to figure out how to use the resources we have more effectively, use the alliance that we’re members of in a more strategic way. But again, that is ultimately a decision of the French and the German people.
What America is asking is for European countries to refuse transfer payments from U.S. taxpayers who are currently paying for their defense. Not likely to happen.
Bonus question of interest to theory hounds: What does American opposition to the formation of an autonomous European security and defense policy tell us about IR theory? Given that the countries in question definitely qualify as democracies, wouldn’t liberalism tell us that the United States should be encouraging, rather than stifling, an autonomous European defense?
Secretary Clinton on Free Speech
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave a major speech on Internet freedom today. The text has been posted on the State Department web site, and Adam Thierer has a review of it up on the TechLiberationFront blog.
As a signal to other governments, it was a good speech. It placed the United States government on the side of freedom movements around the world and extolled how technology empowers them.
From a domestic perspective, it was nothing special. References to the liberating power of the Internet were carefully caveated with cautions about online dangers that could justify government intrusion on the Internet. Secretary Clinton was particularly equivocal about online anonymity.
The irony, of course, was provided by the breaking news of the day: the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United, discussed by my colleagues here, here, and here, as well as in this podcast. The case dealt with speech critical of Secretary Clinton produced by a corporation during her candidacy for the presidency. It reversed precedents allowing a ban on corporate and union speech about political candidates.
The Court said in Citizens United:
Speech is an essential mechanism of democracy, for it is the means to hold officials accountable to the people. The right of citizens to inquire, to hear, to speak, and to use information to reach consensus is a precondition to enlightened self-government and a necessary means to protect it.
The fact that speech issues from people organized as corporations or unions makes no difference.
In her speech, Secretary Clinton echoed similar themes. “Countries that censor news and information must recognize that from an economic standpoint, there is no distinction between censoring political speech and commercial speech.” Perhaps she was trying to distinguish between economic consequences of speech and other consequences, but later she said:
[C]ensorship should not be in any way accepted by any company from anywhere. And in America, American companies need to make a principled stand. This needs to be part of our national brand. I’m confident that consumers worldwide will reward companies that follow those principles.
The Citizens United case is the product of a company taking such a stand, though not in the way Secretary Clinton meant it.
The Global Warming Shakedown
Pat Michaels and others are working heroically to save America from global central planning for purposes of combatting global warming (or climate change, or whatever they’re calling it now). But let’s also be thankful this holiday season for our Founding Fathers, who wisely created a system based on separation of powers. If the United States had a parliamentary system, there would be no hope of derailing some of the statist schemes being discusssed in DC, even if Pat worked 24 hours a day.
The secretary of state, for instance, is issuing pronouncements about putting American tapxayers on the chopping block to help finance $100 billion per year of new “climate change” foreign aid. This money can only be squandered, however, if the House and Senate agree to do so. That’s a real possibility, of course, but at least there’s some hope that common sense will prevail since the fiscal burden of government already is far too large.
Here’s a NY Daily News report on what’s happening in Copenhagen, including worrisome signs that politicians who don’t pay for their own travel are planning to make the rest of us pay more for ours:
The U.S. is prepared to work with other countries toward a goal of jointly mobilizing $100 billion a year by 2020 to address the climate change needs of developing countries,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said.
…While she would not disclose how much the U.S. would be contribution to the climate fund, Clinton said there would be a fair amount contributed to the pot that would be made available in 2020. The finances will reportedly be raised partially by taxing aviation and shipping, as proposed by the European Union.

