Topic: Foreign Policy and National Security

Iran: Political and Religious Persecution Proceeds Apace

By
Doug Bandow

The Islamic Republic of Iran will soon hold a presidential election. The result is in doubt—the clerical elite itself is split—but the country’s overall direction unfortunately is not. Iran has a deteriorating human rights record. Although Tehran is not the bloodiest or most tyrannical government in the Middle East, repression is increasing and the space available to regime opponents is diminishing.

Most attention has been focused on the unpleasant potential of an Iranian nuclear weapon. There is good reason to maintain an active campaign to forestall such a prospect. However, war almost certainly is a worse option. Bombastic rhetoric is common in Tehran, but the diverse political and religious figures now bitterly battling over power and wealth seem pragmatic, not suicidal. There is no reason to believe that the United States (as well as Israel) cannot deter Iran even if the latter developed an atomic bomb.

Iran’s worsening religious persecution is far less publicized. As I note in my latest Forbes online column, Tehran has generated a not-so-enviable record in brutalizing religious minorities—Baha’is, Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians, and Sunni Muslims. Such behavior belies a lack of confidence in the dominant theology which underlies the regime.

Sadly, there isn’t a lot the U.S. government can do. But people of goodwill around the world might achieve more. As I argue in Forbes online:

The West’s leverage over Iran is minimal. Some activists have criticized the Obama administration for not doing more, but it is not clear what more could be done, given the sanctions already imposed regarding the nuclear issue.

There may be a better hope of using international popular pressure. Explained [Indiana University Professor Jamsheed] Choksy, “Despite their heavy-handed actions, the Islamic Republic’s hard-liners seek to present their rule as benevolent and humane,” and therefore the regime has been “exhibiting rising concern about negative public perceptions of its rule.”

Individuals, groups, and activists, especially those which have not been at the forefront of the campaign to sanction and even bomb Iran, should press the Iranian government and other entities, from media to business, and protest the manifold violations of human rights. Visiting officials should be embarrassed by protestors. The regime should understand that its fight against sanctions for its nuclear activities continues to be undermined by its brutality at home.

Ahmed Shaheed, the UN Special Rappoteur, confirmed that public pressure works. In March he noted that “At least a dozen lives were saved because of the intervention of international opinion.” More such action is needed.

In 1979 the Iranian people overthrew the Shah, a corrupt thug long supported by Washington. Alas, the Iranian revolution delivered even more tyranny. The Iranian people desperately await a revolution which actually liberates.

Topics: 
Foreign Policy and National Security

Encouraging Continued Reform in Burma

By
Doug Bandow

Burmese President Thein Sein will be visiting Washington next week. It’s the first trip by a Burmese head of state in nearly five decades and reflects the reform winds blowing through Naypyitaw.

Burma, or Myanmar, languished under brutal military rule for a half century before the armed forces moved into the background and created a nominal civilian government. Thein Sein is a former general and the retired junta leaders undoubtedly remain influential, though their exact role remains hidden.

Nevertheless, Burma has come far in the last couple of years. Many political prisoners have been released. Many restrictions over the media have been lifted. Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi has been freed from house arrest and elected to parliament. Fighting has ceased against many separatist ethnic groups. Naypyitaw has distanced itself from its former patron, China.

There’s still more to be done. Conflict with the ethnic Kachin continues to ravage parts of Burma, while Buddhist mobs have been conducting a different form of war against Muslim Burmese. Nor is it certain that the military is prepared to fully yield power in 2015, when the next election is scheduled. Indeed, Tomas Ojea Quintana, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on human rights in Burma, recently issued a report citing the need for additional reforms, which I discussed in a recent article in National Interest online.

Nevertheless, after spending years vying with North Korea for distinction as the world’s worst government, Burma now offers its people hope of liberating change. Ultimately enduring reform will come from inside Burma. But the West can help.

The best reward for Naypyitaw for continuing reform is steadily eliminating remaining economic sanctions. Foreign investment and trade will help moderate poverty, expand the middle class, and provide resources for democratic activism. Expanding the economic pie also would give government and security personnel a stake in a freer society in which their power is more limited.

But Washington and other democratic states should not bury Naypyitaw in foreign aid. Alas, history demonstrates that foreign “assistance” more often deserves to be called foreign hindrance, actually slowing reform and entrenching corrupt elites. Burma desperately needs a broader civil society as the foundation for a freer and more prosperous future.

There is a lot of bad news in the world today. Burma offers some welcome good news. Washington should use Thein Sein’s visit to encourage continuing political and economic reform.

Topics: 
Foreign Policy and National Security

The Misery Index: A Look Back at Bulgaria’s Elections

By
Steve H. Hanke

With Bulgaria’s May 12th election fast approaching, it is useful to reflect on past elections and the resulting economic performance of each elected government. To do this, I have developed a Misery Index inspired by the late Prof. Arthur Okun, a distinguished economist who served as an adviser to U.S. President Lyndon Johnson.

The Misery Index measures the level of “misery” in the economy. My modified Misery Index is equal to the inflation rate, plus the bank lending rate, plus the unemployment rate, minus the annual percent change in GDP.

An increase in the Misery Index indicates that things are getting worse: misery is increasing. A decrease in the Misery Index indicates that things are improving: misery is decreasing. The accompanying chart shows the evolution of Bulgaria’s Misery Index over time.  

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The Socialist Party government of Prime Minister Zhan Videnov created hyperinflation and a lot of misery. The Misery Index under the Videnov government’s watch peaked at 2138 in the first quarter of 1997. That number isn’t shown on the accompanying chart—if it was, the chart would take up an entire page of Trud.

So, the chart starts in the second quarter of 1997, with the Kostov government. Shortly after Kostov took power, Bulgaria installed a Currency Board System, based on a draft Currency Board Law, which I authored at the request of President Petar Stoyanov. The Currency Board brought an end to Bulgaria’s hyperinflation, which peaked with a monthly inflation rate of 242%, in February 1997.

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Topics: 
Cato Publications, Finance, Banking & Monetary Policy, Foreign Policy and National Security, International Economics and Development

Barro and de Rugy on Defense Spending and the Economy

By
Christopher A. Preble

Earlier this week, Harvard economist Robert Barro and Veronique de Rugy of the Mercatus Center published a short paper assessing the economic effects of defense spending. Their findings are consistent with those of other studies, including one that Cato published last year by Benjamin Zycher. To wit, from Barro and de Rugy’s abstract:

While the impact of across-the-board federal defense spending cuts on national security may be up for debate, claims of these cuts’ dire impact on the economy and jobs are grossly overblown…

[A] dollar increase in federal defense spending results in a less-than-a-dollar increase in GDP when the spending increase is deficit-financed…

[O]ver five years each $1 in federal defense-spending cuts will increase private spending by roughly $1.30

The Barro-de Rugy paper should be of particular interest to Republican politicians and those who advise them. 2012 GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney and his fellow Republicans attracted considerable scorn (including from yours truly) during a campaign in which they railed against government spending, but also wailed against military spending cuts. His critique was not primarily, or even chiefly, about the potential impact of sequestration on national security; rather, echoing the hardly objective estimates flogged by the Aerospace Industries Association and the National Association of Manufacturers, Romney asserted that cuts in military spending would result in the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs. 

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Topics: 
Foreign Policy and National Security, Tax and Budget Policy

The Pentagon as a Jobs Program, Cont…

By
Tad DeHaven

Last week I discussed the tendency for policymakers to treat the Pentagon like a giant jobs program. It was prompted by an article from the Associated Press on members of Congress shoving unwanted upgraded Abrams tanks down taxpayers’ throats because retooling tanks sustains jobs back in the district. As it turns out, former Reagan budget director David Stockman touches on the Abrams tank situation in his new book, The Great Deformation. 

In Chapter 5, “Triumph of the Warfare State,” Stockman gives an account of the behind-the-scenes dealings that resulted in the massive military buildup during the Reagan administration. Stockman says political calculations—and not “one scintilla of bottoms-up program detail or even a single hour of professional analysis”—drove the new Reagan administration to champion 7 percent (real) growth in defense spending every year for five years (1982-1986), and from an already elevated level. According to Stockman, the “7 percent real growth top line” was a “blank check” for the Pentagon to go on a spending binge, much to the pleasure of the military-industrial complex. 

From p. 74: 

No fresh start or strategically coherent defense plan was ever developed by the Reagan administration. This immense, content-free “top line” was simply backfilled by the greatest stampede of Pentagon log-rolling and budget aggrandizement by the military-industrial complex ever recorded. 

In a process that went on week after week for the better part of a year, the huge swaths of empty budget space under the new defense “top line” were converted into more and more of virtually everything that inhabited the Pentagon’s vasty deep. Much of it, which had languished for years and decades on the wish lists of the brass and military contractors, now got funded without much ado. 

With defense funds being virtually slopped onto the waiting plates of the four military services, it is not surprising that much of it went to the conventional forces. Notwithstanding all the scary stories about the nascent Soviet nuclear first-strike capabilities, there really weren’t many concrete programs to counter it except for a new strategic bomber and an MX missile upgrade. 

At the heart of the Reagan defense buildup, therefore, was a great double shuffle. The war drums were sounding a strategic nuclear threat that virtually imperiled American civilization. Yet the money was actually being allocated to tanks, amphibious landing craft, close air support helicopters, and a vast conventional armada of ships and planes. 

These weapons were of little use in the existing nuclear standoff, but were well suited to imperialistic missions of invasion and occupation. Ironically, therefore, the Reagan defense buildup was justified by an Evil Empire that was rapidly fading but was eventually used to launch elective wars against an Axis of Evil which didn’t even exist. 

That leads to the Abrams tank. 

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Topics: 
Foreign Policy and National Security, Tax and Budget Policy

Libertarians Shouldn’t Want Perfect Security—Reply to Professor Epstein

By
Jim Harper

I was pleased to see last week that Professor Epstein had penned a response to my criticism of his recent piece on Hoover’s Defining Ideas in which he argued against treating protection of civil liberties and privacy as “nonnegotiable” in the context of counterterrorism. It is not the disagreement that is pleasing, of course, but the opportunity to air it, which can foster discussion of these issues among libertarians while illustrating to the broader world how seriously libertarians take both security and liberty.

What’s most important in Professor Epstein’s rejoinder is what comes at the end. He says that I should “comment constructively on serious proposals” rather than take an a priori position that civil liberties and privacy will often impede expansions of government power proposed in the name of counterterrorism.

I believe that Professor Epstein and I share the same prior commitments–to limited government, free markets, and peace. Having left it implicit before, I’ll state that I, too, believe that protection of life and property is the primary function of the state. But I also believe that excesses in pursuit of security can cost society and our liberties more than they produce in benefits.

Some years of work on counterterrorism, civil liberties, and privacy bring me to my conclusions. I had put in a half-decade of work on privacy before my six years of service on the Department of Homeland Security’s privacy advisory committee began in 2005. While interacting with numerous DHS components and their programs, I helped produce the DHS Privacy Committee’s risk-management-oriented “Framework for Privacy Analysis of Programs, Technologies, and Applications.” From time to time, I’ve also examined programs in the Science and Technology Directorate at DHS through the Homeland Security Institute. My direct knowledge of the issues in counterterrorism pales in comparison to the 30+ experts my Cato colleagues and I convened in private and public conferences in 2009 and 2010, of course, but my analysis benefitted from that experience and from co-editing the Cato book: Terrorizing Ourselves: Why U.S. Counterterrorism Policy is Failing and How to Fix It.

Whether I’m operating from an inappropriate a priori position or not, I don’t accept Professor Epstein’s shift of the burden. I will certainly comment constructively when the opportunity arises, but it is up to the government, its defenders, and here Professor Epstein to show that security programs are within the government’s constitutional powers, that such programs are not otherwise proscribed by the constitution, and that they cost-effectively make our society more secure.

The latter two questions are collapsed somewhat by the Fourth Amendment’s requirement of reasonableness, or “fit” between means and ends when a search or seizure occurs. And to the extent I can discern the program that Professor Epstein prefers, I have commented on it as constructively as I can.

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Topics: 
Foreign Policy and National Security, Telecom, Internet & Information Policy

Our Astrategic Syria Debate

By
Justin Logan

Only a terrifically secure country could have as poor and astrategic a debate about war as the one we’re having about taking sides in Syria’s civil war. 

Actually, we’re not having a debate about taking sides in Syria’s civil war. That’s the problem. We’re debating Syria as though it’s an engineering question—an electrical outage, or a bit of erosion in the backyard. Doing so removes the most vexing aspects of the issue, leading us to the delusion that military action can easily make things better. 

Too much of the discussion has focused on moral arguments and too little of it on the very real political problems beneath the war. Take the advocacy of Shadi Hamid of the Brookings Institution. As Hamid wrote of his thinking on Syria in January 2012, he was pro-intervention “emotionally, and from a purely moral perspective,” but had some nagging non-emotional, non-moral concerns: “I cannot say whether military intervention would work.” By June, though, the emotional and the moral took over, with Hamid declaring that it was “not the job of civilian think tanks” to figure out how military intervention would produce the desired outcome. 

Princeton’s Anne-Marie Slaughter, who until recently occupied George Kennan’s old office at the State Department, has similarly assumed away Syrian politics, making the case for intervention much easier. As she tweeted Sunday, “Suppose US goal in #Syria were simply to STOP THE KILLING. Forget who might/might not win down the line. What’s fastest/best way to do that?” 

But forgetting who might win down the line waves off the central problem: the killing is happening for a political reason. Bashar al-Assad and his enemies are not engaged in wanton, nihilistic slaughter; they are struggling over political control of Syria. Any analysis that removes that basic fact from the discussion of how to “STOP THE KILLING” turns a complex political question into a technical, scientific project, creating the delusion that it can be readily fixed by the U.S. government. 

In fairness to Hamid and Slaughter, they are carrying the torch of a time-honored American tradition of foreign policy thinking. Historically, debates over foreign intervention in the United States have featured liberal analysts against realists and the military. In the 1950s, President Eisenhower reportedly had to admonish his activist Secretary of State John Foster Dulles to calm down: “Don’t do something, Foster, just stand there!” 

In the 1990s, apolitical liberal thinking on war reached its pinnacle. When Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell expressed hesitation about the Clinton administration’s intervention ideas, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright lashed out: “What’s the point of having this superb military you’re always talking about if we can’t use it?” And President Clinton’s lack of understanding of war caused him to ruminate, accurately, to General Hugh Shelton that it would “scare the shit out of al Qaeda if suddenly a bunch of black ninjas rappelled out of helicopters into the middle of their camp.”

In the 1990s, realists like Richard Betts were warning Americans not to fall victim to the “delusion of impartial intervention.” Admonishing policymakers for their newfound enthusiasm for limited, ostensibly apolitical intervention, Betts reminded readers of a ground truth: “A war will not end until both sides agree who will control whatever is in dispute.” This is as true in Syria as it is anywhere. Alternatively, if analysts want to use the U.S. military to regime-change Assad, they have every obligation to explain how they intend to shepherd the country toward whatever political order they seek.

More honest hawkishness can be found at the Institute for the Study of War, whose recent paper advocating aiding the Syrian opposition admitted that politics matter: 

The goal behind U.S. support to the opposition should be to build a force on the ground that is committed to building a nonsectarian, stable Syria, with a government more likely to respect American interests. 

That outcome is presumably what all analysts urging intervention desire. The trick is to acknowledge the problems of connecting military means to our political desiderata. Anyone who doesn’t deal with the underlying political problems at stake is threatening to push the country into another ill-considered, potentially costly war.

Topics: 
Foreign Policy and National Security

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