Tag: john kerry

Stop Rewarding North Korea

By
Doug Bandow

To a degree almost impossible to imagine just a month ago, North Korea has won international attention, dominated events in Northeast Asia, and embarrassed the United States. Unfortunately, the Obama administration has played into Pyongyang’s hands by responding to the North’s provocations. Now Secretary of State John Kerry is visiting East Asia, beginning Friday, where the so-called Democratic People’s Republic of Korea will dominate the agenda.

Rushing off to the region on a high-profile trip is another mistake. Whatever Secretary Kerry does or says is likely to be seen as enhancing the DPRK’s stature. Better for him to have stayed home, phoning his counterparts as appropriate. 

No doubt the Obama administration hopes to craft a diplomatic answer to what is widely seen as a crisis. However, Washington dare not reward the North for its caterwauling, even if Kim Jong-un suddenly adopts the mien of a serious leader of a serious nation. Rather, Secretary Kerry should hold out the possibility of engagement, even diplomatic relations—but only if Pyongyang chooses to behave like other nations. No more providing benefits in response to threats. 

Moreover, the secretary and other U.S. officials should stop responding to every new North Korean development, big and small. America is a superpower with the ability to vaporize every acre of the DPRK. The North is impoverished; its people are starving; its military is antiquated. Its leaders are evil, not stupid or suicidal, and have neither the ability nor the incentive to attack America. Washington should respond to the next North Korean provocation, whether verbal challenge or missile test, with a collective yawn. 

Hope continues to breed eternal that China will tame or replace the Kim regime. No doubt Beijing is frustrated with its nominal protégé. However, the Chinese government will act only if it believes doing so is in China’s interest. Insisting or demanding will achieve nothing. Secretary Kerry must seek to persuade Beijing, an unusual strategy for Washington, which is used to dictating to other nations. 

North Korea is a human tragedy, but its belligerent behavior is primarily a problem for its neighbors, not the United States. Washington should give Pyongyang the (non) attention that it so richly deserves.

Topics: 
Foreign Policy and National Security

Susan Rice and the Interventionist Caucus

By
Christopher A. Preble

The Associated Press is reporting that Susan Rice, “appears to have a clearer path to succeeding retiring Secretary of State Hilary Rodham Clinton” now that John McCain and Lindsey Graham have softened their opposition to her candidacy. “If she is nominated for the position,” the AP’s Steven Hurst predicted, ”it may signal greater U.S. willingness to intervene in world crises during Obama’s second term.”

Bill Kristol believes that it would, which is why he supports Rice over other qualified candidates, including especially John Kerry (D-MA). Asked on FoxNews Sunday why he prefers Rice over Kerry, Kristol said:

“Because I think Susan Rice has been a little more interventionist than John Kerry…. John Kerry has been against our intervening in every war that we intervened.”

That isn’t entirely true, of course. For example, Kristol noted that Kerry “was for [the second Iraq war] before he was against it.” But as Ben Friedman writes today at U.S. News and World Report, within the generally interventionist foreign-policy community, Susan Rice is more interventionist than most.

In that context, I understand why the Senate’s small (and shrinking) Interventionist Caucus prefers Susan Rice. I understand why Kristol and the neoconservatives do. But I don’t understand why other people support her so strongly. Although the political class favors costly crusades abroad, most everyone outside of that tiny circle believes in leading by example, and favors, in Obama’s words, more “nation building here at home.” In short, Americans generally favor global engagement, but they reject the neoconservative variety (.pdf).

The recent election was not a referendum on foreign policy. The issue barely registered. Although those who cared most about foreign policy favored Obama over Romney by a 56 to 33 margin, those voters represented just 5 percent of the electorate according to a Fox News exit poll. What’s more, Barack Obama and Mitt Romney agreed on most foreign-policy issues. Romney favored more belligerent rhetoric, and huge increases for the Pentagon’s budget, but his prescriptions for the future boiled down to: “What Obama did, just more of it.” More meddling in distant civil wars, more nation building, a heavy U.S. military footprint wherever possible, and more drone strikes with less oversight where ground troops can’t go.

That seems to neatly summarize Susan Rice’s views, also. If Barack Obama nominates Rice to be the next Secretary of State, he will effectively be saying that he doesn’t care what the public wants, and that Mitt Romney was right.

Topics: 
Foreign Policy and National Security, General

Romney, Kerry Miss the Point on Threats: Size Matters

By
Justin Logan

Senator John Kerry (D-MA) is the latest person to mock Mitt Romney’s declaration that the Russian Federation “is, without question, our number one geopolitical foe.” It was a pretty silly statement, particularly given the fact that Russia is a demographic basket case and a very humble economic power. But there’s all sorts of weirdness going on in Romney’s assertions and those of his critics.

Take, for example, Wolf Blitzer’s follow up to the Romney assertion:

BLITZER:  But you think Russia is a bigger foe right now than, let’s say, Iran or China or North Korea? Is that—is that what you’re suggesting, Governor?

ROMNEY:  Well, I’m saying in terms of a geopolitical opponent, the nation that lines up with the world’s worst actors.  Of course, the greatest threat that the world faces is a nuclear Iran.  A nuclear North Korea is already troubling enough.

But when these—these terrible actors pursue their course in the world and we go to the United Nations looking for ways to stop them, when—when Assad, for instance, is murdering his own people, we go—we go to the United Nations, and who is it that always stands up for the world’s worst actors?

It is always Russia, typically with China alongside.

And—and so in terms of a geopolitical foe, a nation that’s on the Security Council, that has the heft of the Security Council and is, of course, a—a massive nuclear power, Russia is the—the geopolitical foe and—and the—and they’re—the idea that our president is—is planning on doing something with them that he’s not willing to tell the American people before the election is something I find very, very alarming.

In fairness to Governor Romney, it does seem like he realizes he’s made a gaffe here, so he tries to back up and take another run at it. But in doing so, he just makes it worse. Taking a mulligan, he tries to pivot from the Russia allegation by folding in Iran (“the greatest threat the world faces”) and North Korea, and gesturing at Syria.

It’s the same thing Kerry does in his condescending lecture to Romney:

We have much bigger problems on this planet in the Middle East, with the evolution of Egypt, with the challenge of Syria, terrorism, al-Qaeda in Yemen, and so forth.

Both of these guys should be ashamed of themselves. And they ought to be light-headed from the amount of threat inflation they’re doing. We spend too much time debating the relative size of our enemies and too little debating their absolute size. Every country at all times has a #1, #2, and #3 “geopolitical foe.” But the threat environments posed by those foes vary radically.

In a better world, American political elites would discuss the absolute level of threat they face rather than just bickering over our enemies’ batting order. As Ben Friedman and I recently wrote in Orbis:

The dirty little secret of U.S. defense politics is that the United States is safe—probably the most secure great power in modern history. Weak neighbors, vast ocean barriers, nuclear weapons and the wealth to build up forces make almost nonexistent the threats that militaries traditionally existed to thwart. Americans cannot seriously fear territorial conquest, civil war, annexation of peripheral territories, or blockade. What passes for enemies here are small potatoes compared with what worried most states at most times. Most U.S. military interventions affect U.S. security at best marginally. We have hopes and sometimes interests in the places where we send troops, but no matter how much we repeat it to honor the troops, it is untrue that they are fighting to protect our freedom.

Part of the reason our national security politics are pathological is that we focus disproportionately on debating which enemy is the biggest without stopping to ask how big the enemies are.

If your three biggest problems are being infected with Black Death, having a bull rhino charging at you, and being knee-deep in quicksand, you can wonder—for a few seconds, at least—which is your #1 problem. Similarly, if your three biggest problems are that you got into an argument with your spouse about who left a dish in the sink, your shoelaces are untied, and you can’t log in to Facebook, you can puzzle over which of those is bigger. But only a fool would miss the distinctions between the two scenarios.

Cross-posted from the Skeptics at the National Interest.

Topics: 
Foreign Policy and National Security

A ‘Privacy Bill of Rights’: Second Verse, Same as the First

By
Jim Harper

The White House announces a “privacy bill of rights” today. We went over this a year ago, when Senators Kerry (D-MA) and McCain (R-AZ) introduced their “privacy bill of rights.”

The post is called “The ‘Privacy Bill of Rights’ Is in the Bill of Rights,” and its admonitions apply equally well today:

It takes a lot of gall to put the moniker “Privacy Bill of Rights” on legislation that reduces liberty in the information economy while the Fourth Amendment remains tattered and threadbare. Nevermind “reasonable expectations”: the people’s right to be secure against unreasonable searches and seizures is worn down to the nub.

Senators Kerry and McCain [and now the White House] should look into the privacy consequences of the Internal Revenue Code. How is privacy going to fare under Obamacare? How is the Department of Homeland Security doing with its privacy efforts? What is an “administrative search”?

Topics: 
Law and Civil Liberties, Telecom, Internet & Information Policy

The ‘Privacy Bill of Rights’ Is in the Bill of Rights

By
Jim Harper

Every lover of liberty and the Constitution should be offended by the moniker “Privacy Bill of Rights” appended to regulatory legislation Senators John Kerry (D-MA) and John McCain (R-AZ) introduced yesterday. As C|Net’s Declan McCullagh points out, the legislation exempts the federal government and law enforcement:

[T]he measure applies only to companies and some nonprofit groups, not to the federal, state, and local police agencies that have adopted high-tech surveillance technologies including cell phone tracking, GPS bugs, and requests to Internet companies for users’ personal information–in many cases without obtaining a search warrant from a judge.

The real “Privacy Bill of Rights” is in the Bill of Rights. It’s the Fourth Amendment.

It takes a lot of gall to put the moniker “Privacy Bill of Rights” on legislation that reduces liberty in the information economy while the Fourth Amendment remains tattered and threadbare. Nevermind “reasonable expectations”: the people’s right to be secure against unreasonable searches and seizures is worn down to the nub.

Senators Kerry and McCain should look into the privacy consequences of the Internal Revenue Code. How is privacy going to fare under Obamacare? How is the Department of Homeland Security doing with its privacy efforts? What is an “administrative search”?

McCullagh was good enough to quote yours truly on the new effort from Sens. Kerry and McCain: “If they want to lead on the privacy issue, they’ll lead by getting the federal government’s house in order.”

Topics: 
Law and Civil Liberties, Telecom, Internet & Information Policy

Finally, a Breakthrough on the Colombia Trade Agreement

By
Daniel Griswold

To no great surprise, the Obama administration announced today that it has cut a deal with the government of Colombia to address concerns about labor protections and to finally move toward enacting the long-stalled free-trade agreement between our two countries. This is welcome news for trade expansion and for strengthening our ties to a key Latin American ally.

Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos is expected to arrive later this week in Washington to cement the deal. In exchange for the agreement, Colombia has reportedly agreed to expand its efforts to protect union members from violence and to more vigorously prosecute those responsible.

As my Cato colleague Juan Carlos Hidalgo and I documented in a Cato study earlier this year, concerns about labor protections were never a valid reason for holding up this agreement. The overall murder rate in Colombia has declined dramatically in the past decade, and the murder rate against members of labor unions has declined even more rapidly. A union member in Colombia today is one-sixth as likely to be a victim of homicide as a fellow citizen who does not belong to a union. Meanwhile, the Colombia government has increased convictions for homicides against union members by eight-fold in the past three years.

As Democratic Senators John Kerry and Max Baucus pointed out in an op-ed this week that endorsed the agreement, the International Labor Organization has certified that Colombia is complying with its international labor agreements.

The obstacle of labor violence was just a political smokescreen that had been raised by labor-union leaders in the United States looking for any shred of an argument to oppose the agreement. Even the agreement announced this week is not going to win over the AFL-CIO. The Colombia government could have raised a hundred murdered union members from the dead, and organized labor in American would still chant that not enough was being done.

The breakthrough this week clears the path for Congress to approve, by what I predict will be comfortable bipartisan majorities, the pending trade agreements with Colombia, Panama, and South Korea.

Topics: 
Trade and Immigration

Good News! Online Tracking is Slightly Boring

By
Jim Harper

You have to wade through a lot to reach the good news at the end of Time reporter Joel Stein’s article about “data mining”—or at least data collection and use—in the online world. There’s some fog right there: what he calls “data mining” is actually ordinary one-to-one correlation of bits of information, not mining historical data to generate patterns that are predictive of present-day behavior. (See my data mining paper with Jeff Jonas to learn more.) There is some data mining in and among the online advertising industry’s use of the data consumers emit online, of course.

Next, get over Stein’s introductory language about the “vast amount of data that’s being collected both online and off by companies in stealth.” That’s some kind of stealth if a reporter can write a thorough and informative article in Time magazine about it. Does the moon rise “in stealth” if you haven’t gone outside at night and looked at the sky? Perhaps so.

Now take a hard swallow as you read about Senator John Kerry’s (D-Mass.) plans for government regulation of the information economy.

Kerry is about to introduce a bill that would require companies to make sure all the stuff they know about you is secured from hackers and to let you inspect everything they have on you, correct any mistakes and opt out of being tracked. He is doing this because, he argues, “There’s no code of conduct. There’s no standard. There’s nothing that safeguards privacy and establishes rules of the road.”

Securing data from hackers and letting people correct mistakes in data about them are kind of equally opposite things. If you’re going to make data about people available to them, you’re going to create opportunities for other people—it won’t even take hacking skills, really—to impersonate them, gather private data, and scramble data sets.

If Senator Kerry’s argument for government regulation is that there aren’t yet “rules of the road” pointing us off that cliff, I’ll take market regulation. Drivers like you and me are constantly and spontaneously writing the rules through our actions and inactions, clicks and non-clicks, purchases and non-purchases.

There are other quibbles. “Your political donations, home value and address have always been public,” says Stein, ”but you used to have to actually go to all these different places — courthouses, libraries, property-tax assessors’ offices — and request documents.”

This is correct insofar as it describes the modern decline in practical obscurity. But your political donations were not public records before the passage of the Federal Election Campaign Act in 1974. That’s when the federal government started subordinating this particular dimension of your privacy to others’ collective values.

But these pesky details can be put aside. The nuggets of wisdom in the article predominate!

“Since targeted ads are so much more effective than nontargeted ones,” Stein writes, ”websites can charge much more for them. This is why — compared with the old banners and pop-ups — online ads have become smaller and less invasive, and why websites have been able to provide better content and still be free.”

The Internet is a richer, more congenial place because of ads targeted for relevance.

And the conclusion of the article is a dose of smart, well-placed optimism that contrasts with Senator Kerry’s sloppy FUD.

We’re quickly figuring out how to navigate our trail of data — don’t say anything private on a Facebook wall, keep your secrets out of e-mail, use cash for illicit purchases. The vast majority of it, though, is worthless to us and a pretty good exchange for frequent-flier miles, better search results, a fast system to qualify for credit, finding out if our babysitter has a criminal record and ads we find more useful than annoying. Especially because no human being ever reads your files. As I learned by trying to find out all my data, we’re not all that interesting.

Consumers are learning how to navigate the online environment. They are not menaced or harmed by online tracking. Indeed, commercial tracking is congenial and slightly boring. That’s good news that you rarely hear from media or politicians because good news doesn’t generally sell magazines or legislation.

Topics: 
Cato Publications, Telecom, Internet & Information Policy

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