The following is the latest in our series from fellows in the Truman National Security Project.  Robin Walker writes:

The recently-completed U.S.-India civilian nuclear deal put a major crack in the nonproliferation dam of the non-proliferation treaty (NPT), International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), and Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG).  That’s in addition to the the announcement last week that China will build two nuclear reactors in Pakistan. The next president will have to move quickly to prevent the complete destruction of the existing nonproliferation regime and a potentially rapid spread of nuclear weapons that could follow.

Under the U.S.-India deal, the United States agreed to provide nuclear fuel for India and enable U.S. firms to sell nuclear it technology.  In exchange, India will allow international inspectors and IAEA safeguards at their civilian (but not military) nuclear sites.

The deal is controversial because it would give India—a non-signer of the NPT like neighbor Pakistan, North Korea, and Israel—the de facto rights of a nuclear weapons state under the NPT, which bans nuclear trade with non-signers and non-nuclear countries.

The United States had to sponsor India for a wavier from the NSG before the deal—considered the Bush Administration’s biggest foreign policy success—passed overwhelmingly through Congress. The perhaps bigger news is that China has announced that it will build the new reactors in Pakistan without pursuing a similar wavier, in essence daring the NSG (or the United States) to challenge them.

So what should the next president do? Attempting to back out of the deal with India would jeopardize one of our most important allies and trading partners in the region—and the wavier would still allow other NSG countries like France and Russia to sell nuclear technology to India, so U.S. firms would lose out.

Options for the next president include:
·      Ignore the Chinese affront and live with the resulting nuclear arms race in South Asia and beyond (Iran, Saudi Arabia…).

·      Confront the Chinese, in the NSG or elsewhere, and risk greater resistance in other deals or agreements.

·      Use a carrot-and-stick approach (primarily helping with international loans) with Pakistan to further counter-terrorism goals and encourage them not to build the new reactors.

·      Immediately begin a new round of international nonproliferation negotiation to deal with the realities of the modern world.

The last option would be ideal, but with two wars and a looming finanical crisis, it seems unlikely to reach the president’s agenda. But this challenge needs to be dealt with and not swept under the rug.
 
Robin Walker is a South Asia and nonproliferation expert .  The views expressed here are his own.

The following is the latest in the Truman National Security Project series.  Truman fellow Michael Kleinman writes (cross-posted from his Humanitarian Relief blog):

It’s been a brutal year for aid workers in Afghanistan. Thirty Afghan and international aid workers have been killed since January, with another 92 abducted.  This includes the killing of three UN staff in Kandahar on September 14th, as well as four IRC staff in Logar Province on August 13th.  This spiraling insecurity means that fewer and fewer people receive assistance - 40-50% of the country is now too dangerous for the UN to operate.

In response, the UN and a number of NGOs recently called on the Taliban to support a new humanitarian agenda in Afghanistan.   According to Kai Eide, the UN Special Representative to Afghanistan: “I would like to underline that this is not a political effort - this is not a hearts-and-minds effort - it is a purely neutral humanitarian effort. There are disagreements on so many things, but let us demonstrate that we can share this humanitarian agenda.”

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The following is the latest in our series from fellows of the Truman National Security Project.  Olivier Kamanda writes:

When Barack Obama is sworn in on January 20^th 2009, the U.S. will take a major step towards repairing its image abroad.  Former secretaries of state agree that the next president’s priority should be to reestablish U.S. credibility abroad.  But we’ve got a lot more to do in order to change the world’s perception of the ‘average American’.

A colleague of mine, native to Slovakia, recounted a story after his semester at American University in Washington, DC.  Upon arrival the US, my colleague’s dorm-mate invited him to dinner at a nearby restaurant. After learning that my colleague was from Slovakia, the dorm-mate paused and began to show him how to use a knife and fork.

My good-natured colleague simply laughed at the insinuation that Slovakia was so backward that he didn’t eat with utensils.  Many wouldn’t. 

I won’t go so far as to assume that America’s foreign policy leaders are as misinformed as this dorm-mate.  But if the ‘average American’ is not concerned or inquisitive about overseas events, then we’ll never have the informed national debate about America’s foreign policy challenges.

We’re more likely to understand issues which affect us on a daily basis, and most voters have a grasp of issues like education, healthcare and social welfare programs.  Simply put, when a decision is made in the statehouse or the halls of Congress to cut after-school funding or raise the retirement age for social security, most of us know they’ll be negatively affected.   We can protest, write letters and advocate for a more fair or sensible strategy.

But debates about how best to respond to Iran, whether to engage North Korea, or how to fight insurgents in Iraq are more complex. It seems Americans only start paying attention when family members are deployed. But at that point it’s too late to ask the right questions about the strategy or policy behind the decision.  If more people understood the difference between Sunni and Shi’a Islam, would our debate over the invasion of Iraq have resulted in different outcome?

But how would our foreign policy debate look like in twenty years if, for example, we had more foreign exchange programs in rural America?  Or if we created international pen-pal programs in every elementary school?  Or if we had federal support for programs like the Brown Bell Foundation which provide study abroad opportunities to minorities? 

A closing thought from former secretary of state, Elihu Root:
“Of course it cannot be expected that the whole body of any people will study international law; but a sufficient number can readily become sufficiently familiar with it to lead and form public opinion in every community in our country upon all international questions as they arise.”

Oliver Kamanda is the editor-in-chief of ForeignPolicyDigest.org.  The views expressed here are his own.

The following is the latest in our series from fellows of the Truman National Security Project.  Jeff Bloodworth writes:

“For the nitwits who vote for the man or woman they’d most like to have over for dinner, or hang out at a barbecue with, I suggest you take a look at how well your 401(k) is doing…” Bob Herbert, New York Times, October 10, 2008.

For a generation, smarty-pants liberals, like Bob Herbert, have propagated the meme that working class white voters are stupid. To him or Tom Frank (of What’s The Matter With Kansas), Reagan Democrats vote for conservatives out of ignorance, latent racism, or “false consciousness.” Rather than demeaning working class voters or adopting Republican talking points, it is time for liberals to trust and even learn from working class Democrats.

From the early 1970s through 9/11, in terms of foreign policy, educated middle class liberals have generally been wrong. Trained to assume rationality and raised in an open and pluralistic democratic society, middle class liberals have usually misunderstood authoritarian states and erratic dictators and have crafted bad policy as a result. Unburdened by years of “education” and accustomed to the more rough-and-tumble environment beyond academia, the office park, or think tank, working class voters implicitly understand the world is a dangerous place that sometimes requires the use of force.

Barack Obama’s hawkish positions on Afghanistan and Pakistan are not only good politics but the right policy. After a generation of liberal doves defining Democratic foreign policy and reducing their opponents’ objections to “war-mongering,” we finally have a Democrat whose foreign policy jives with Middle America. To make Obama’s inroads with Indiana’s and Virginia’s working class whites a lasting shift, however, liberals must heed, not just tolerate, their worldview. Whether it is Patrick Murphy, Heath Shuler, or Jane Harman, these so-called Blue-Dog Democrats reflect their constituents’ concerns and should help define an Obama administration’s foreign policy.

George Bush’s foreign policy fiascos and concomitant economic mismanagement have given liberals an historic opportunity for an electoral realignment. To become the nation’s majority governing party, liberals must recognize the class snobbery that has so defined our ideology for the last generation and rid ourselves of it. Triangulation and rhetoric won’t do; we must reconnect to our working class roots embrace their tough, pragmatic, and principled worldview in order to build a durable governing coalition and a workable foreign policy fit for the 21^st Century.

Jeff Bloodworth is an assistant professor of history at Gannon University in Erie , PA. His manuscript, Farewell to the Vital Center: A History of Liberalism, 1968-1980, is under review with the University of Kentucky Press.  The views expressed here are his own.

The following is from our series of guest-posts by fellows of the Truman National Security Project.  Jordan Tama writes:

In one of the more pointed exchanges in Tuesday night’s debate, John McCain criticized Barack Obama for stating his willingness to use force in Pakistan to take out Osama bin Laden.

Here’s the exchange:

McCain: “You know, if you are a country and you’re trying to gain the support of another country, then you want to do everything you can that they would act in a cooperative fashion. When you announce that you’re going to launch an attack into another country, it’s pretty obvious that you have the effect that it had in Pakistan: It turns public opinion against us…”

Obama: “Nobody called for the invasion of Pakistan… What I said was the same thing that the audience here today heard me say, which is, if Pakistan is unable or unwilling to hunt down bin Laden and take him out, then we should.”

If this issue weren’t so important, the back-and-forth would be most notable for Obama’s more hawkish attitude than the ultra-hawkish McCain. But McCain’s position on this issue is more than surprising—it’s indefensible, and it shows that Obama has a better grasp of how to protect America.

First, Obama’s stance is already U.S. policy. In January, the CIA used two Hellfire missiles to kill one of bin Laden’s top lieutenants, Abu Laith al-Libi, in Pakistan. So Obama is not telling the Pakistanis anything they don’t know.

Second, our willingness to take out Al Qaeda leaders should make Pakistan’s government more, not less, cooperative in pursuing them. Since Pakistan doesn’t want U.S. forces to operate within its territory, its fear of U.S. intervention can help prod it to go after Al Qaeda itself.

Third, we must be willing to act unilaterally to eliminate bin Laden or his aides because we cannot trust the Pakistani military or intelligence service. If we obtain actionable intelligence and share it with the Pakistanis, there’s a significant risk that the Al Qaeda leaders will be tipped off and thereby escape.

Just a few months after 9/11, we allowed bin Laden to slip away from our grasp in the mountains of Tora Bora because we relied on local allies to pursue him, instead of sending in enough of our own troops to do the job. Our next president must do everything in his power to prevent that mistake from recurring. It’s shocking that McCain is now criticizing Obama for telling the American people—and the world—that he won’t allow bin Laden to get away again.

Jordan Tama is a PhD candidate at Princeton University.  The views expressed here are his own.

This post is part of our series from Truman National Security Project Fellows.  Frankie Sturm writes:

One of John McCain’s more interesting foreign policy ideas is the creation of a league of democracies. In the first presidential debate, he argued that a band of democratic brothers could bypass Russian trouble-making at the United Nations and impose painful sanctions on Iran. If he were right, we’d be in great shape. But he’s not, and we’re not either.

Our European allies agree that Iran must not obtain nuclear weapons, and have worked hard to make sanctions a reality. Yet after three rounds of UN resolutions, Iran remains defiant. We could try to work with democracies outside of the UN, but that isn’t likely to be effective. 

Why?  Money.  Iran has deepened trade ties with Russia and China in recent years. Trade between Iran and Russia jumped from $661 million in 2002 to more than $2 billion in 2005, while Chinese exports to Iran went up by 70% in the first six months of 2007 alone. Thanks to these trends, the United States and Europe simply do not have the economic clout to make Iran hurt without support from Russia and China.

The League of Democracies fantasy also sidesteps the fact that democracies do not always get along. India is the world’s biggest democracy, but the Indian government is relatively unconcerned about Iran’s nuclear program. During the debate, Senator McCain referred to our ability to work with France and Germany. This is true, but the Iraq war proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that democracies will not always speak with one voice on questions of war and peace. Even the NATO mission in Afghanistan is showing fractures between democratic allies.

The appeal of the European Union and the expansion of NATO into Eastern Europeare perfect examples of how democracies can work together to make the world a better place. But it is unclear what a so-called “league” can do. What role would it play compared to NATO and the UN? Who gets to join? Who gets to decide who gets to join? More importantly, how are democracies going to solve important transnational issues like terrorism and nuclear proliferation if they alienate Russia and China?

John McCain has failed to answer these questions because there are no good answers. After eight years of George Bush, the impulse to renew American diplomacy is laudable. But the whimsical notion that a league of democracies can snap its fingers and ignore the realities of the complicated world we live in is not laudable. It’s laughable.

Frankie Sturm is the communications director for the Truman National Security Project.  The views expressed here are his own.

The following is an installment from the Truman National Security Project fellows’ series.  Aaron Chatterji writes:

The most interesting moment of last Friday’s debate came at the very end, when Senator Obama spoke about his father’s journey from Kenya to the United States, at a time where “[t]he ideals and the values of the United States inspired the entire world.”  He then argued “that I don’t think any of us can say that our standing in the world now, the way children around the world look at the United States, is the same.” It was yet another moment where I felt that Senator Obama, by virtue of his unique background and perspective, was speaking directly to my own experience.

Like Senator Obama, I believe we need to restore America’s standing in the world and inspire the next generation of global citizens. My father also came to the United States in the 1960s, in pursuit of higher education and inspired by American ideals.  He has told me about the letters he wrote to universities all around the country, just like those penned by Senator Obama’s father, detailing his educational background and his research interests. To this day, I am still in awe that there were so many open-minded and open-hearted American professors willing to sponsor a student they had never met from half way across the world. This is the American dream I grew up believing in.

As my parents settled here, became citizens, and started a family, America continued to be a magnet for immigrants from around the world who have created millions of jobs and added considerable value to the American economy. The American dream I believe in is a two-sided bargain: we create an environment to attract the best and the brightest and these immigrants make our nation stronger and more prosperous.

There are some troubling signs that this bargain may be breaking down. At Duke, I often listen to foreign students discuss their future plans.  While I frequently think of my father, one detail is fundamentally different. Many of these students are hoping to return home after finishing their education at Duke. In particular, as India and China have developed rapidly in the last decade, local opportunities for educated young professionals have grown dramatically. For many, the idea of returning home at a comparable salary and a much higher quality of life is enough to dissuade them from ever pursuing the American dream.

I worry a lot about losing these bright and creative minds to other nations, but I am consoled that our efforts to improve the developing world have succeeded in the decades since my father came to the United States. As we reach out, both through policies to attract high skilled immigrants and with initiatives to help poor countries develop their own economies, we face a difficult tradeoff: By fostering international development, we might improve our international image but also attract less international “stars” as we expand peace and opportunity around the world. Fortunately, Senator Obama has articulated the right set of policies to tackle this dilemma, including important investments in American education and innovation. For him, me, and the millions of others like us, our task will be to globalize the American dream while somehow preserving American exceptionalism.

In my view, this will be our next President’s most important challenge.

Aaron K. Chatterji is an assistant professor at Duke University and a Fellow at the Center for American Progress. He is also a Fellow of the Truman National Security Project. The views expressed here are his own.