Repeat and Recycle: Is Romney Giving Neocons a "Second Chance?"

GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney. 

I just found this post and, though it's a hoary-bearded three weeks old, I find it interesting enough to dust off and shamelessly re-hash in a way that would be acceptable in no other time than our own: the Retweet Generation. So: For those Europeans (or interested others) out there who want to know what the leading Republican candidate's foreign policy might look like, check out the Atlantic Review's post on Mitt Romney's foreign policy team. 

Most controversial is the preponderance of George W. Bush administration veterans that comprise the list, including marquee names such as Michael Chertoff, Eliot Cohen, and Robert Kagan, to list just three. 

Liberal US commentator Rachel Maddow titled her response as: "Romney Gives Bush Neocons A Second Chance," but Joerg Wolf, the Atlantic Review's author, is less excited by the news, re-quoting Washington think tanker James Joyner who said of the announcement, "like Romney himself, it's not particularly exciting. Nor, thankfully, is it frightening."

Wolf concludes with this, highlighting the figures responsible for the Europe dossier:

"Nile Gardiner from Heritage is co-chair for Europe. The other co-chair is Kristen Silverberg, Chief Operating Officer at Vorbeck Materials; Ambassador to the European Union (2008-2009). I wish he would have advisors with a bit more experience. I can think of a few such think tankers in Washington.

"What do you think? To whom should the Republican presidential candidates turn to for advice on Europe, or on foreign policy in general? Which think tankers or former officials would make the best national security and foreign policy advisors for a Republican president?"

EurAmerican has kind of a thing for neoconservatism, in a hot-and-cold, critical-distance sort of way. See past post include the one here. 

As on the Atlantic Review site, comments are welcome here. 

Germany as the EU's "Vicar," Global Christian Support for Israel

From EUobserver, a weird analogy that suggests Germany is the "vicar" of Europe, stuck between a rock and a hard place as the reluctant leader of a crisis-emergent European Union. 

The piece cites the sociological concept of "organizational punishment" -- in which the leader of a group purported to uphold communal values is punished whenever it fails to meet its own lofty principles -- to describe Germany's role, much like a vicar in the Catholic church. 

Speaking of religion, see the latest numbers from the Pew Research Center on foreign policy support toward Israel by white American Christians -- fully 64% of white evangelicals, compared with that of 36% of Catholics and 34% of non-evangelical Protestants. How this sentiment differs from the Israel policy espoused by Christians in Europe! 

More numbers from Pew are below.

Hewitt on Europe and Youth in 2010

Gavin Hewitt of the BBC has posted a wrap-up of the year 2010 in Europe. I'd like to underscore his recurring theme of the beleaguered status of European youth. He begins with three sketches of young people down on their luck: seemingly intelligent and educated young Spaniards queuing for unemployment benefits; a roomful of raised hands when Hewitt asks trade school students if they anticipate emigration; young Italians ready to riot at the broken promises of their government and the generation in power. 

Hewitt goes on to describe their lives in the crushing uncertainly of economic souring, and the new civic religion called "austerity" that most accept only begrudgingly -- because they see no other choice. The year 2011, according to Hewitt, portends to be no less bleak.

"Youth unemployment and austerity are a dangerous cocktail that will play out on the streets of 2011. Austerity challenges a deeply-held idea of a European way of life where the state offers layers of protection. Old certainties are being swept away. Social contracts snapped. An ever-expanding public sector is being pruned. Europe, in the long term, may benefit from a smaller state sector, but no one should underestimate the shock of the new. [...]

In 2011 the orthodoxy of austerity, I suspect, will be challenged. The Greeks are tiring of the lean years that seem to stretch out before them. A new government in Ireland may try and renegotiate the terms of the EU/IMF loan. Increasingly voices question the fairness of it all. In Ireland the banks' debts were taken onto the government's books and the country headed for insolvency. A proud country [and in Ireland's case, an overwhelmingly young one] has sacrificed its independence - that's how many in Ireland see it.

It is a fair bet that in 2011 one or more country will restructure its debt.

Increasingly, when one returns from the streets of Greece or France or Italy, Brussels seems a side-show. While the unemployment lines lengthen for young people Europe's elite is preoccupied with institutions, with their place in the world. They have strategies for growth - but in the distant future. The discussions too often appear inward-looking. Occasionally there is a flicker of reality. The European Parliament, for instance, led the way in challenging bankers' bonuses. [...]

Douthat on Christianity and Christmas

Ross Douthat of the New York Times takes on some of the more prickly cultural aspects of present-day American Christianity in his latest column. His prose begins with a certain whiff of cynicism before plateauing to a more insightful double book review of sorts on the state of the Christian faith, in a season when it is so consciously thought of (even if this mainly takes the form of shopping and social-event planning). Douthat begins:

"... This is also the season when American Christians can feel most embattled. Their piety is overshadowed by materialist ticky-tack. Their great feast is compromised by Christmukkwanzaa multiculturalism. And the once-a-year churchgoers crowding the pews beside them are a reminder of how many Americans regard religion as just another form of midwinter entertainment, wedged in between “The Nutcracker” and “Miracle on 34th Street.” 

Boom!, cracks the columnist's irony. But Douthat's real thesis emerges late and tucked in among other thoughts of the third paragraph.

These anxieties can be overdrawn, and they’re frequently turned to cynical purposes... But they also reflect the peculiar and complicated status of Christian faith in American life. Depending on the angle you take, Christianity is either dominant or under siege, ubiquitous or marginal, the strongest religion in the country or a waning and increasingly archaic faith.

He goes on to describe the arch of American Christianity's progress to the state we find it in today. Borrowing the metaphor of "a shock and two aftershocks," namely the cultural revolution of the 1960s, followed by the religious conservatism that arose through the 1980s-era "moral majority" and the culture wars of the 1990s. The second aftershock is taking place now, "a backlash to that backlash — a revolt against the association between Christian faith and conservative politics... in which millions of Americans (younger Americans, especially) may be abandoning organized Christianity altogether."

On the European side of things, the near-empty churches and chapels scattered over the European continent seem to have experienced this exodus of the young decades ago. Not since before World War II has Christian life on the Old Continent known any semblance of thriving culture that includes a sizable contingent of the young. Perhaps the U.S. (and Canada, too) is slowly edging toward a European likeness, where Christianity is marginalized as a practice and sometimes openly mocked by opinion leaders in a manner not tolerated States-side.

Douthat ends with a provocative final thought, which bears an uncanny relevance to Europe if one chooses to read it that way. I'll make my conclusion by borrowing his:

"... Believing Christians are no longer what they once were — an overwhelming majority in a self-consciously Christian nation [or civilization]. The question is whether they can become a creative and attractive minority in a different sort of culture, where they’re competing not only with rival faiths but with a host of pseudo-Christian spiritualities, and where the idea of a single religious truth seems increasingly passé.

Or to put it another way, Christians need to find a way to thrive in a society that looks less and less like any sort of Christendom — and more and more like the diverse and complicated Roman Empire where their religion had its beginning."

UPDATE: In an event pregnant with symbolism given the above, the Obama family made a highly unusual church visit this past Sunday.

"Foreign Policy? What Foreign Policy?" Recession-Era U.S. Voting

Andrew Kohut, President of the Pew Research Center, had this to say on US foreign-policy introspection in a recent article in The National Interest: 

"It is hard to recall a time when foreign policy issues played so diminished a role in the American public's thinking. Midterm election exit polls found only 8 percent of voters saying that a foreign policy issue was a voting consideration for them, and more generally, national polls show just 11 percent citing a foreign policy issue as the most important problem facing the nation. This is the lowest registration of international concerns since immediately before the 9/11 attacks."

 He goes on:

"Terrorism, the most immediate threat to [the United States], is a big issue now lacking either prominence in the public’s mind or a heated debate among policymakers. Americans have expressed a steady state of concern about terrorism since the 9/11 attacks, but the polling suggests that most have become somewhat inured to the possibility of another attack. For example, there is no indication this year of widespread anxiety in the wake of reports that terrorists attempted to place package bombs on flights destined for North America. Most Americans (59 percent) say they are worried about an imminent terrorist attack in the United States, but the level of concern today is about what it was in July 2007, and has remained relatively steady since 2003."

Kohut concludes with some interesting thoughts on America's worries in the Asian sphere, specifically China and the Korean peninsula:

"As with terrorism, the public has deep concerns about America's place in the world, but these worries do not evoke a strong policy debate. Yes a growing plurality thinks the U.S. now plays a less important role on the world stage, and majorities recognize China's growing power and worry about it. But for now at least, there is little edge to American attitudes as a consequence. Few regard China as an enemy (17 percent) or a partner (25 percent). As has been the case for more than a decade, China is seen as neither friend not foe by most Americans (52 percent). In fact, more Americans now hold a favorable view of China than did so in 2007 and 2008.

"Neither the recent North Korean bombardment of South Korea as it stands, nor foiled terrorist attack in Portland Oregon seems likely to rouse the American public. If history is any judge, it will take a foreign policy crisis of a major order, to awaken public opinion on international affairs. And when Americans stir, it is hard to predict the new direction of their thinking. What is likely however is that a change in direction of public opinion will be relatively short lived. That has certainly been the case so far in post–Cold War America."

Kohut's last paragraph is his most poignant, and one that identifies a structural American gene within the national political DNA. This level of isolationism would strike European publics as downright otherworldly. Europe is small compared to the U.S., and its foreign policy thoughts are often foremost in mind given that they are always closer to home. The United States has the singular peculiarity of being separated from both allies and enemies by an ocean on each side. So when other matters become pressing, in this case the national economic crisis, unemployment and widespread disillusionment with Obama's platform of hope and change, U.S. citizens traditionally put foreign policy thoughts on a very distant back burner.

Paradoxically, the U.S. seems to be ignoring the very wars it launches, and Europe is just as (if not more) preoccupied with world affairs in which the United States is at work. 

This cockamamie balance of today's Atlantic ring countries results in the world's progress toward multipolarization, a status much distrusted by many of the classical powers in the West. 

And yet some see beyond this, toward a future power balance in which the West will dull its appetite for world predominance with a healthy slice of humble pie. Just last week Hubert Vedrine, the former French foreign affairs minister, hit the radiowaves asserting that the transatlantic community was guilty of "Western arrogance" and that its member nations are "no longer the masters of the world." The recent economic tremors certainly don't help matters, where in Europe the Euro currency seems ready to crumble. The United States are faring no better, with the latest studies putting the jobless rate at a disastrous 9.8%.

Of course, the obvious insinuation of Kohut's piece is that Transatlantics, while struggling to steady a rocking economic boat, shouldn't take their eye off of the horizon. Prolongued economic travails will only increase the likelihood that one or several Western states drops the ball in a fateful moment of  security absent-mindedness. 

Should this risky position continue, Kohut's forebodings of a "foreign policy crisis of a major order" -- we're all probably thinking September 11th -- may come to pass. As for predicting the new direction in Americans' thinking should another disaster happen, well, the last lurch in U.S. opinion led to the Iraq War. Yes it was strongly resisted, both in the U.S. and abroad, but it happened anyway. 

American voters and the greater West risk more than they know while spending so much time navel-gazing over their domestic problems. They should also keep a watch on the dangers creeping just beyond its borders, and hone their global affairs literacy to know how best to act should action become necessary.

Midterms and Moderation

In the frenzy of international coverage on the U.S. midterm elections, voices on either side of the Atlantic are starting to turn from frenetic excitement to more cool-headed thinking on what lies ahead for American politics--and their effect in the world.

The latest post from Gulfstream Blues paints a damning picture of the new make-up in Congress, where Republican candidates won six seats in the Senate and a whopping 67 in the House of Representatives. But Democrats managed to hang on to their majority in the Senate, and have a steady ally in Obama; As most bills pass from the House to the Senate and then to the President, the new GOP-heavy House still faces tall hurdles in getting the Washington political machine to crank its way. 

And the government shake-up may still be feeling the first tremors of the 2010 partisan earthquake. Some House Democrats have joined fed-up Republicans in calling for Nancy Pelosi to resign. Pelosi, the Speaker of the House and superlative bête noire of conservative circles around the country, has become increasingly seen as a stale mouthpiece of the Democratic Party. 

Growing rumors place Steny Hoyer (D-Maryland) at the top of the Democratic Party's leadership list, though his record is considered too moderate by many progressives under the Democratic party banner. But no clear alternative has emerged, giving Hoyer a strong shot at clinching the Democratic leadership despite some of his party's misgivings. A choice like Hoyer may bring his party's side of the rapidly partisan  Congress toward the middle, which may neutralize some of the incendiary rhetoric heard in the election run-up. Then again, the fiscally conservative coalition of "Blue Dog" Democrats suffered heavy losses Tuesday, which may remove a stabilizing force from Washington's already polarized atmosphere.

Now that the Republicans have poured into Congress (the biggest victory in 70 years, writes The Washington Post), key questions have risen on message and how much the party can realistically expect to accomplish. The "Party of 'No'" has been surprisingly effective at stonewalling much of Obama's initiatives, stirring ire from within the country and baffled confusion from without. 

Yet Republicans can't get too ambitious, or the electorate will throw them out in 2012. Nevertheless Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) publicly stated Thursday that his aim is to "deny President Obama a second term in office." He tempered these stiff words with a reminder to Republicans that they "have to be realistic about what we can and cannot achieve, while at the same time recognizing that realism should never be confused with capitulation." 

McConnell and Obama may find some common ground when they meet at the White House November 18th. Obama may agree to a temporary extension of high-earner tax cuts, and McConnell could build support for an upcoming House bill that would limit its current $1.4 billion operations budget. House minority leader and Speaker-apparent John Boehner (R-Ohio), has agreed to seek a 72-hour reading period for all bills, which will give the diminished Democratic caucus more time to consider new legislation.

Each of these measures will, if passed, play to the middle of taxpayers' concerns with profligate government spending on one end and, on the other, recession-era federal liquidity seen by many as vital to keeping the U.S. economy on track to recovery.

*

For European observers of the midterms, it is vital to accept that American politics is fundamentally different from politics on the Continent. The U.S. and Europe are not aligned on one continuous political spectrum. Their histories in classical liberalism, socialism and other political thought lines are connected but different. Observers frequently use the one-spectrum image to reduce transatlantic comparison to bite-sized and ultimately meaningless dimensions. Europe has its own political spectrum, and that of the U.S. is wholly separate; together the two form a kind of fuzzy X shape in which certain fundamental values and ideas make up the center in similar ways--or don't. All other branches trace their roots to distinct roots of the transatlantic political tree. 

Criticizing U.S. politics is easy (and easy to oversimplify) from a European perch, especially given certain night-and-day differences, such as how much money is involved in American campaigning. The liberal commentariat unleashed withering rebukes on the mostly Conservative Supreme Court for having opened up the floodgates of deregulated campaign finance in 2009. But little suggests that more cash in the game means more money for conservatives, any more than for the Democrats as well. 

"Perhaps the most important lesson from Election Day was that money simply can't overcome demographics. Republicans who spent big tended to run in states where the Democratic Party dominates," writes the Washington Post.

Americans are sometimes chided as not voting in a way that considers all those under American governing influence, which is to say all those affected -- worldwide -- by all (or any one) U.S. policy. Ridiculous notions that "Europeans should get to vote in U.S. elections too" surface in op-eds like this one from European Voice:

"If European observers ever wondered if American elections matter, this mid-term election is likely to demonstrate how important shifts in political power can be, especially for Europeans and others who did not get a vote."

This kind of pontificating, with its apparent disregard for national sovereignty and will of the people, is exactly what alienates Americans from Europeans politically, and vice-versa. It does little to advance the understanding that would inform U.S. voters, who would lean on representatives, who would then legislate in the common interest of transatlantic citizens everywhere.

Let's be more specific, and take the foreign policy example of Iran. Fears over a U.S. military response to Iran's nuclear progress are largely overblown, contrary to what European Voice has claimed, because the two wars America is currently fighting leave next to zero political capital to take on a third fight. Likewise, the U.S. resistance to climate change legislation, a top-priority issue for Europeans, sits on the back-burner of Congressional legislation when global economic recovery, huge joblessness, and Iraq and Afghanistan are still left on its political plate--and all that, in an election year. 

*

Many Republicans dug in their heels in 2008-2010 because they felt they had to. Greatly outnumbered in Congress, with furious voters at home, the GOP had to fight tooth-and-nail to preserve its influence. Some fear more entrenched partisan skirmishing through 2012; I wonder if a chamber held by each party may actually have the psychological effect of easing the pressure on each side not to reflexively dismiss the other's concerns. In an interview in the Washington Post, Blue Dog Democrat Heath Shuler (D-North Carolina) cited Bill Clinton's urge to grab at small-scale progress in the face of steep odds. 

"If you can't get a dollar but you can get a dime, take a dime every time," Schuler quoted the former President.

With Democrats holding both the Senate and the White House, Republican triumphalism--or the liberal doom-and-gloom that has inversely mirrored it--is far from a practical, moderate reading of this week's events. If the GOP leads the pack today, there's no guarantee they won't stumble in future clutch moments. We saw as much in the mediocre transatlantic dealings of a Democrat-controlled House, Senate and White House since 2008.

Europe Covers Mid-Term Election Day 2010

See it for yourselves, transatlanticists: this is a smorgasbord of headlines from across the pond, covering the US mid-term elections. 

By tomorrow, Washington may be a considerably different -- and likely more Republican -- political capital, with all the attending pitfalls and windfalls that come with the seismic political shift both domestically and for the US' friends and enemies abroad. 

France:

Nuit cruciale pour Barack Obama et les démocrates ("Crucial Night for Obama and the Democrats")  

"Marée républicaine en vue au Congrès" ("Republican Tidal Wave Seen From Congress") -- La Libération

Un scrutin à l'ombre de la crise immobilière-- Le Figaro
("An Election in the Shadow of the Mortgage Crisis")

Ce Tea Party qui bouscule la politique américaine "Tea Party Shakes Up American Politics" -- Le Figaro

Vers une large victoire des républicains
("Toward a Big Republican Victory") -- Le Figaro

 

UK:

"Midterm elections 2010: live" -- Daily Telegraph
"A Gathering Storm" -- The Economist

 "Mid-Terms in America: Home Stretch" (audio)-- The Economist

"Republicans poised for biggest gains in Congress for a century" -- The Independent

Germany: 

'Obama Failed to Connect the Dots' -- Der Spiegel

More to come tomorrow, with an "after" post to complement this "before"post. 

Comments welcome.

 

German Pride, EU Crisis, and the US

Check out this big-picture perspective on resurgent national pride in Germany from the New York Times.  The country that Jurgen Habermas once termed the "self-absorbed colussus," crippled with guilt over two world wars, the horrors of the Nazi-led Holocaust and global acrimony spanning generations is now staging a comeback -- to itself. 

The historically conflicted "German-German relationship" of its citizens could be showing signs of thaw, evident in new roles of German prominence from crisis-time leadership in the European Union, to its soccer team's success in this summer's World Cup to the current preponderance of German acts on European pop charts. From the article:

“Maybe it’s our time again,” said Catherine Mendle, 25, a school social worker strolling the grounds and halls of the square glass and concrete Chancellery building on a recent afternoon as part of a government open house. A military band played in the background, and Mrs. Merkel signed autographs for curious visitors.

“We have this extreme helper syndrome, to try to make the world love us again, and it’s completely overdone,” Ms. Mendle said. Germany, she said, had been reduced to simple stereotypes — Oktoberfest, auto factories, the Holocaust. Its rich traditions in music and literature, and its enduring emphasis on social welfare and a strong commitment to the environment, deserve more respect abroad and at home, Ms. Mendle said.

And this on German politics and history:

 "... Chancellor Angela Merkel has led a bloc of countries fending off President Obama’s calls for stimulus spending to combat the economic crisis, certain that the world should follow Germany’s example of austerity.

German pride did not die after the country’s defeat in World War II. Instead, like Sleeping Beauty in the Brothers Grimm version of the folk tale, it only fell into a deep slumber. The country has now awakened, ready to celebrate its economic ingenuity, its cultural treasures and the unsullied stretches of its history.

As Germany embarks on this journey of self-discovery, the question is whether it will leave behind a European project which was built in no small measure on the nation’s postwar guilt and on its pocketbook."

It remains to be seen how Germany will deal with its load of problems also shared throughout Europe. On integration, for example, a stark line is drawn between the assimilated and those who suffer the brunt of the global unemployment trend, including immigrants, like the Turkish manual laborers brought in en masse during the 1970s and after. Immigration remains today a question roiled by entrenched opinion, and the European demographics problem doesn't help. The German vision for economic recovery stands at loggerheads with the socialized economic thinking of France, Spain, Italy and elsewhere. 

The risk of playing the EU's rich daddy during the crisis, of course, is that other Europeans won't remedy their economic weaknesses exposed by the 2008 meltdown -- or worse yet, that Europe will come to expect German bail-outs at every hard turn -- both after the crisis and in the long run.

And what would such a reality mean for the United States? Frittered German cash means badly depleted EU capital, both of the economic and political kind. (And on the latter: ask an average American to name three EU leaders, they'll likely say "Uhh," "Hmm" and "What?") Skeptics and Euro-Doomers are already airing bold claims that "Europe is history" -- and that particular damning, from IHT editor-at-large Roger Cohen. 

A healthy future transatlantic relationship is not just a matter of national pride as with the Germans, a growing light within a confused-as-ever European palette. Both the US and Europe want to see a finished EU masterpiece -- not because it should be beautiful, but because it's vital to our common interests.

Justin Vaisse on Eurabia/"Eurabia"

Brookings Institution scholar Justin Vaïsse adds his say to the debate on Islam in Europe. Read on for the real thrust of his argument (which is not what's directly below).

"By 2050, Europe will be unrecognizable. Instead of romantic cafes, Paris's Boulevard Saint-Germain will be lined with halal butcheries and hookah bars; the street signs in Berlin will be written in Turkish. School-children from Oslo to Naples will read Quranic verses in class, and women will be veiled.

Douthat on Moderate Islam, Eurabia

Just dug up this thought-provoking pair of posts from Ross Douthat on moderate Islam and Eurabia, or the concept of European Islamification. Consider these part of the level-headed, rarefied side of conservative criticism in the Ground Zero mosque controversy.