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. 

Euro Summit: Chinese Help and Italian Trouble

The Economist just published this post on the element of this week's eurozone summit that would involve Chinese cash as a part of the currency zone's recapitalization plan. Ever instructive, the article lays out the China factor in some of the magazine's trademark economics-in-layman's-terms. I didn't know, for example, that the EU is China's biggest trading partner. Given all the hub-bub stateside, wouldn't most Americans assume that position was enjoyed (or maligned) by the United States? 

Yet the piece's author makes an effort to signal that the appeal for Chinese cash is neither revolutionary nor a particularly important change in the status quo. He takes a longer-term view on the EU-Chinese relationship, which of course bears direct influence on the American role between the two. 

"Grand political bargains between China and Europe—money in return for more representation at the IMF, or market-economy status—seem wildly improbable. These prizes will eventually come anyway; and weak though parts of Europe are, the EU cannot be seen to trade them too nakedly. Bargaining of this sort would also require both parties to change their positions markedly. China is keen not to be seen as a source of “dumb money”, but requiring big political concessions in return for cash is a pretty clear signal that this is not a commercially attractive investment. As for the euro zone, it can hardly claim that senior Spanish and Italian debt is now safe for institutional investors if it has to horse-trade too hard to get China on board."

And further along the pessimism spectrum is the Wall Street Journal, which, true to form, has expressed typical euro-skepticism on the summit's results and bemoaned the plan's lack of detail and the risks that remain for U.S. companies and stakeholders. Though the European Financial Stability Facility will "backstop" troubled eurozone countries against default, the paper says, this week's decisions fall short of the muscular moves called for by experts and do relatively little to stem fears of a backslide toward recession in Europe and worldwide. 

Both articles signal the lingering dangers of the tenuous Italian situation, where fractious politics in Silvio Berlusconi's government has dimmed hopes for any kind of meaningful action against the euro's woes. Italy is heavily in debt and, as the third-largest economy on the euro, its future determines that of a host of other dependent nations both in and outside the monetary bloc.

Courtesy of the Wall Street Journal and ICAP

Though the chart refers to Italy only, its title -- "Brief Relief" -- sounds just as appropriate for the whole of the eurozone for the many observers that continue to be concerned about the currency's immediate and middle-term prospects.

Update: European Daily

All apologies for a lapse in activity at EurAmerican.  Just a heads-up, I'll be contributing to the European citizen newspaper European Daily, specifically to the "Abroad" section, on a regular basis.  You can check out my work for the Sunday page here.

Mixed Feelings on Mid-Crisis EU

Behind the euro crisis is a crisis of confidence, felt differently but to similarly intense degrees throughout the Continent. 

Northern countries have been feeling taken advantage of, with the common refrain echoing a feeling that the southern EU countries have spent with abandon the considerable benefits received from their neighbors. But "the feeling is mutual," reports Global Post, and in the case of Spain, many feel they have exchanged cash for compromised protections of rights, crisis-time mismanagement, sacrifice of national sovereignty, and kowtowing by Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero toward demanding eurocrats in Brussels. 

Nobel laureate Robert Mundell said on August 26, "I don't think the euro is on the verge of collapsing."

Alan Greenspan, the former head of the US Federal Reserve, said on August 24, "The euro is breaking down."

Eschewing with the "United States of Europe" idea, Romanian Mircea Cărtărescu favors a union centered around the "European mind" and a federation "not solely focused on the issue of economic survival." He says: 

"Present-day Europe relates to the United States as Athens once did to ancient Rome. And although at one point Athens sought to emulate Rome, I can see no reason why modern Europe should seek to emulate the United States."

German ex-foreign minister Joschka Fischer counters that "we need to work toward the United States of Europe now."

In Estonia, a slightly but definitely more optimistic note can be heard in the public opinion of the country's lot as it relates to the EU, again reported by Global Post. Says Swedish Prime Minister, Carl Bildt, 

“I remember the days when the counters of the shops in Tallinn were empty and the people were starving. The economy more or less had to be rebuilt from scratch... If you had asked people on Aug. 20, 1991 whether in 20 years “Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania would be seen as economic success stories in Europe, would be full members of NATO, full members of the European Union,” Bildt asked, “if anyone had said yes, that person would have been seen as a fairly likely candidate for lunacy.”

But such a public, party-line voice is bound to be tempered by ordinary citizens, in this case from Tallinn, the Estonian capital:

"Nineteen-year-old Katrina Ulbeerte, bopping along with her younger sister, laughs when asked what she knew about Soviet times before she was born. In American slang, she said her parents have told her that life then was difficult. “They told about special lessons about, like, communists and, like, all kinds of military stuff. I’m happy I don’t have to go work in a factory!”

"But 55-year-old Ieva Inauska, who couldn’t speak English but conveyed her thoughts quite clearly in broken German and hand gestures, doesn’t see much of a change. “Soviet Union? Bah. European Union? Bah. The European Union bureaucracy is even bigger than the Soviet Union’s!” And, she indicated, she preferred the latter."

EU, Texas Economics: Language, Money, Mobility

The Wall Street Journal compares, of all things, EU economics to Texan ones:

"Arguably, the heart of the euro zone's problem isn't a matter of culture or governance or remaining barriers to trade in goods. Rather, it's the huge hurdle that has always existed: Europe's multiplicity of languages. The fact that few Greeks or Portuguese have enough German to take on professional or even semi-skilled jobs in Germany removes the sort of safety valve that properly integrated federations rely on.

A case in point is the Texan economic miracle, the subject of considerable debate in the U.S. right now. Texan politicians make strong claims for the state's performance relative to the rest of the U.S. during the recovery. Doubters point to the fact that Texan unemployment remains high.

But a close reading of the data by Matthias Shapiro on his Political Math blog highlights something very interesting. Texan unemployment belies the strength of the state's economy because it has had considerable population growth during the past couple of years. Texas's strong employment growth has inspired people to flock to the state—so much so that the actual proportion out of work hasn't come down as fast as it might have done otherwise.

Since the start of the recession in December 2007, Texas's labor force has grown by 6%, astonishingly quickly for such a large state—more than twice as fast as the next-fastest state. When people are hit by hard economic times in one part of the U.S., they pack their bags and move to where the jobs are. The same doesn't happen in Europe.

For instance, the economically active population in Germany, Europe's economic powerhouse, has shrunk by about half a percentage point during the same time Texas has boomed. This is why Germany's unemployment rate has fallen much faster than that of Texas even as unemployment remains at stratospheric levels in countries like Spain.

Even in the years before the financial crisis, immigration to Germany from other European Union countries was equivalent to only about 0.4% of Germany's population, and most of that in the form of cheap labor from neighboring Poland.

Because it's harder for people from poorer euro-zone countries to move to the core, where there are jobs, fiscal transfers are crucial to address imbalances between the economies. But there's currently very little scope for these in Europe. EU spending as a percentage of GDP is less than a tenth of the U.S. federal government's.

 

Consummate Citizens: Turks Defend Turf in London Riots

Thought I'd break the silence with my first post in way-too-long with this unusual piece on Turkish shopowners taking matters into their own hands during the London riots. 

Al-Jazeera reports a groundswell of local action against the looting and lawlessness currently plaguing London. With PM David Cameron pondering curfews and many in Europe wondering whether the unrest will spread to the Continent -- endemic of the same recession-related problems of unemployment and ever-tighter strains from austerity -- in the coming days. 

Interviewees expressed a surprising common theme of pro-Turkish sentiment, specifically concerning the question of the integration of Turkish-descended European citizens and, by extension, Turkey's accession into the European Union. The best bits of the Al-Jazeera piece are below.

"Our local shopkeeper refused to close. He said 'we are Turkish' as explanation," said one post. Another added: "Reports of heroic scenes on Dalston High Street. Turkish families lining the streets to oppose riots. What great Londoners."

Another, along similar lines, read: "Upper Dalston looks busier than a Saturday night with all the Turks on patrol! Thanks for Keeping Dalston safe!" followed by: "Who needs riot police when you’ve got Turkish shop owners."

One posting characterised the showdown between the Turkish restaurateurs and their masked adversaries as "baklavas versus balaclavas," while another summed up prevailing sentiments with "Say what you will about letting Turkey getting in the EU, they’re there when we need them."

Perhaps extrapolating the policing skills of London's Turks somewhat implausibly to the level of international diplomacy, one post mused: "If only Turkey can bring to Syria in the next few days what they've brought to Dalston and London in the last few."

German Mothers and Gendernomics

The IHT journalist Katrin Bennhold provides her latest work on mothers in the German workforce -- or rather, their absence.

Only 14 percent of one-child mothers return to full-time work once the baby is born, she notes, and a mere 6 percent of mothers stay full-time after two children. In a culture still defined (tragically, says Bennhold) by the old adage of “kinder, küche, kirche” -- or “children, kitchen, church” -- women too often stand at the losing end of professional prosperity and the leadership roles available to their male counterparts in what is, despite the ongoing eurozone crisis, one of the world's wealthiest nations.

The gender disparity is not for lack of effort by German women. Germany's Chancellor, Angela Merkel, is pointed to as a prominent counter-example when women push for greater equality in the work world. And one of Merkel's cabinet members, Ursula von der Layen, has advocated paternity leave and a quota system for female presence on corporate executive boards.

"Laws help change mentalities," she has said. Adding heft to the German debate from outside, EU vice president Viviane Reding has written to all companies of Germany's DAX stock market, urging increased female visibility in their boards or else risking EU-wide quotas. 

One angle Bennhold mentions -- then leaves disappointingly unexplored -- is the comparison to corporate gender profiles in the United States. Despite the stark contrast between state funding for daycare and other child-oriented services, U.S. boardrooms boast a much greater parity of skirts to suits than Germany can. Behind even such traditionally male-dominated countries as China, Germany scores a paltry two percent of females on executive committees. 

Courtesy New York Times

And Bennhold leaves another, more provocative question well wide of her report's scope: what are the social effects on German women who, seeing how steep the ramp is for career and family, forego child-rearing altogether? The author alludes to the consequences, perhaps unwittingly: 

"One of the countries in most need of female talent — at 1.39 the German birthrate is among the lowest in Europe and labor shortages in skilled technical professions are already 150,000..."

The reader is left to wonder what may be revealed by deeper study on what economic, social and emotional effects are wrought on a society that statistically seems anti-family.

EurAmerican has examined Bennhold's work previously, on French mothers and the conditions particular to their role in a neighboring and similarly male-driven culture to that of her native Germany. In each, she interviews a broad sample of feminists and ordinary women.

She would make her good reports better if she practiced her own lesson of gender equality -- by balancing her perspective with more male voices, and considered them in working toward the common goals of not only gender equality, but maximum opportunity, competitiveness and, I dare say, liberty for all.

UPDATE: Progress on the gender front? French think-tanker Dominique Moisi argues that European women may be the continent's best bet for "agents of change," while the EU Parliament backed a non-binding agreement on July 7 to strengthen obligations for female representation on EU-area executive boards.

Flags and the Fourth of July

Happy Fourth, y'all!

The Pew Research Center has found that fully three-quarters of Americans display the Unites States flag in some form or another, be it in their home, at work, on their cars (ie, bumper stickers) or on their clothing. 

The poll, measured along partisan lines, reveals a range between 67 percent of flag-showing among liberals and 87 percent among conservatives. In other words, the range runs between strong and really strong. One can hardly imagine the contrast were a similar poll to be conducted in Europe...

In a related video, Good Magazine explains its view on "What's Great About America" -- in just over a minute. 

Obama's Poland Jaunt: Low Marks Overall

See the latest op-ed published by yours truly at atlantic-community.org on US President Barack Obama's recent trip to Europe and specifically his jaunt in Poland. 

Obama started strong just by virtue of being in Europe, and stopping in Poland helped provide a badly needed shot in the arm for US public diplomacy and strategic relations in the former Communist bloc. 

But he flailed on Israel -- a poignant subject for Poland, the home of Auschwitz, in which masses of Jews perished at the hands of the Nazis -- offering a dubious "I will always be there for Israel" in response to a question from a concerned Polish Jew. Obama's statement would have been more convincing if he hadn't just been snubbed big-time during Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's visit to Washington, who called Obama's plan to return to Israel's 1967 borders "indefensible."

Nor did Obama do much better on the military dossier. He highlighted plans to house a squadron of US fighter jets in Poland in 2013, which did generate some positive echo in the national and regional press. Yet the US squadron's presence in the country would have been more significant had these same arrangements not been already scheduled, well in advance of the President's trip.

For these reasons and more, Obama's European tour was more style than substance. 

After Mladic, the Serbian March to EU Accession

In a telling gesture following the recent arrest of Bosnian Serb and former general Ratko Mladic on allegations of war crimes, the EEAS' chief Lady Catherine Ashton announced June 1 that Danish diplomat Peter Sørensen will assume the long-empty post of EU ambassador to Bosnia. 

The nomination came amid a flurry of EU musical chairs, and early indicators suggest the choice is largely disappointing to a broad range of European diplomats and dignitaries.

European Voice reported that Ashton claimed, “I can think of no one better qualified to take over this enhanced role of head of delegation,” which was met with "the sound of spluttering in London and Berlin." 

In more positive news, EV echos the recent press rumoring that Mladic's arrest will now open -- some would say pry -- the doors open toward EU accession.

Yet some insist that Mladic's arrest and subsequent extradition to the International Criminal Tribunal in the Hague, Netherlands is "is not enough to achieve reconciliation in the Western Balkans," according to EUobserver.

Ivan Vejvoda of the German Marshall Fund calls on the court to tend to "unfinished business" left from the Bosnian conflict, in which ethnic and religious conflict erupted into violent conflict in the middle and late 1990s.