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Article 1.
Jeffrey Epstein [jeeyacation@gmail.com]
2/14/2013 8:47:12 PM
Larry Summers
Washington Post
Obama to make first trip
to Israel, part of a
potential 'new
beginning' with region
Scott Wilson
President Obama will travel to Israel and
the occupied Palestinian territories next
month to make an early second-term push
for peace negotiations between two
divided governments and to assess the
broader political developments remaking
the Middle East.
It will be Obama's first trip as president
to Israel, where suspicions run high in the
aftermath of his unsuccessful early efforts
at Middle East peacemaking.
The choice of destination — one that
Obama avoided in his first term —
suggests a revival of his ambitions abroad
after a year of virtual dormancy on
foreign affairs. The timing also points to
a willingness on his part to quickly
reengage a politically volatile foreign-
Office of Terje Rod-Larsen
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HOUSE OVERSIGHT 029779
policy issue just months after winning his
second term.
But the visit will highlight how much the
region has changed since he last visited
the Middle East in his first year in office,
with the rise of Islamist governments and
the widening repercussions of civil
revolt.
After Obama helped topple Moammar
Gaddafi in Libya in 2011, many in the
region wondered when he would emerge
again to help shape the course of the
tumultuous Arab Spring, which has
replaced a pair of U.S.-allied
dictatorships with elected Islamist
governments.
Within the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,
much has changed since the direct peace
talks Obama inaugurated in September
2010 collapsed within weeks. Israel's
recent battle with the armed Hamas
movement in the Gaza Strip left many
predicting a wider fight in the future, as
divisions deepened within the Palestinian
and Israeli electorates over whether talks
or war would resolve the conflict.
"To make it a substantive trip that is
more than a positive photo-op would
require setting up a specific framework
for an agreement and setting a tight
deadline to achieve it," said Jeremy Ben-
Ami, the executive director of J Street, a
nonprofit group that advocates the
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creation of a Palestinian state alongside
Israel.
White House officials would not provide
a date for Obama's trip, which he will
squeeze into the tight schedule he is
building around a busy domestic agenda
that includes immigration, guns and the
economy.
But Israeli media reported that Obama is
scheduled to arrive March 20 as part of a
trip that will include a stop in Jordan,
where the civil war in next-door Syria
and its growing refugee crisis is
presenting a major challenge to King
Abdullah II, a U.S. ally.
Obama began his first term by making a
strong push for peace talks between Israel
and the Palestinians, believing the
conflict fueled radicalism in the region in
general and toward the United States in
particular, given its historical support for
the Jewish state.
In contrast to predecessor George W.
Bush, Obama wanted to demonstrate to
Arab governments that the United States
would make demands of Israel in pursuit
of a regional peace agreement.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu made little secret of his
preference for Republican Mitt Romney
in last year's U.S. presidential campaign.
Netanyahu and Obama have at times
disagreed bitterly over issues relating to
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the Palestinians, including Israel's
continued settlement construction in the
West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Israel's military occupied those
territories, along with Gaza, in the 1967
Arab-Israeli war. Palestinians view them
as the key territorial elements of their
future state.
In a June 2009 address in Cairo, a speech
that asked for a "new beginning" with the
Islamic world, Obama said: "The United
States does not accept the legitimacy of
continued Israeli settlements." He also
did not stop in Israel on that trip, instead
visiting Saudi Arabia, Egypt and
Germany, where he emphasized the
horror of the Holocaust and the moral
imperative of defending Israel. Romney,
among others, made the omission a
campaign issue.
But on regional security issues, Obama
and Netanyahu have deepened
cooperation amid rising U.S. military aid
to Israel. Obama has agreed with
Netanyahu that Iran must not be allowed
to use its uranium-enrichment program to
develop a nuclear weapon, an issue that
the two will discuss during Obama's
visit.
Netanyahu's Likud party emerged from
elections last month as the largest bloc in
Israel's parliament, meaning that he will
serve another term as prime minister. But
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a surprisingly strong showing by a new
centrist party is likely to put more
pressure on him to pursue talks.
"It was a mistake for Obama not to go in
the first term at a time when it could have
affected Israeli public opinion of him,
and now, it has hardened against him to a
point that I don't believe it can," said
Elliott Abrams, a senior fellow at the
Council on Foreign Relations who served
as a senior Middle East adviser to Bush.
Obama's visit will coincide with growing
concern in the region that the two-state
solution favored by him is in peril, as
Israeli settlement construction continues
and as the Islamist Hamas gains clout
within the once-secular Palestinian
nationalist movement. Hamas emerged
stronger politically from the recent clash
with Israel and continues to reject the
Jewish state's right to exist.
Hamas and its secular rival Fatah are due
to meet Saturday as part of a
reconciliation process. If an agreement is
reached and Hamas joins the Palestinian
Authority, Obama will be faced with an
awkward decision on whether to meet
with a government that includes members
of a U.S.-
designated terrorist movement.
As he begins again in the region, Obama
will be advised by new Secretary of State
John F. Kerry. He has also named former
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senator Chuck Hagel as defense
secretary, a nomination still in question
after an unsteady performance by the
candidate before the Senate Armed
Services Committee last week that
focused in part on his past criticism of
Israel.
"This trip is a signal that the president
has an interest, not just in the peace issue,
but also in the broader concerns that
Israel is facing," said Dennis Ross, a
senior Middle East adviser to Obama
during his first term who is at the
Washington Institute for Near East
Policy. "In some ways, it will be the
president traveling to Israel to ask for a
new beginning."
Article 2.
Foreign Policy
Saeb Erekat - The Peace
Processor
An interview by Aaron David Miller
February 5, 2013 -- Other than Mahmoud
Abbas, Saeb Erekat could be the most
recognizable Palestinian on the planet.
The chief Palestinian negotiator is
certainly among the most passionate in
promoting the cause. And nobody on the
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Palestinian side knows the substance of
the issues or the negotiating history
better.
I first met Erekat in the late 1980s, while
working on the Palestinian issue for then
Secretary of State George Shultz. Back
then, the U.S.-educated diplomat was
already showing the brashness and
outspokenness that would make him one
of the most memorable -- if exasperating
-- of the Palestinians with whom we
dealt.
He annoyed then Secretary of State
James Baker by wearing his kaffiyeh
around his shoulders at the opening of the
Madrid Peace Conference in October
1991. And over the years, he continued to
annoy the Israelis too with his fiery
performances on CNN -- though to this
day, key Israeli negotiators, such as Isaac
Molho, continue to praise his pragmatism
at the bargaining table.
It was Erekat's academic bent, analytical
chops, and capacity to write in English
that would make him so indispensable to
the only Palestinian who really counted
in those days -- Yasir Arafat. Erekat was
a unique figure -- neither a fighter (no
nom de guerre for him), nor a PLO
insider, nor an organization man from
Tunis. Rather, he was a West Banker
from Jericho, and he succeeded in
maintaining his relevance in a Palestinian
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political scene dominated not by fellow
academics, but by hard men defined by
struggle and intrigue. During the heady
days of the peace process, he became a
key point of contact for the Americans,
the Israelis, the Arabs, and much of the
rest of the international community.
I came to know Erekat not only as a
negotiator, but as a person. He sent his
kids to Seeds of Peace, a conflict
resolution and coexistence organization
that I ran briefly after leaving the State
Department, and my daughter befriended
his and stayed with the Erekats in
Jericho. Saeb and I have yelled at each
other, defended our respective positions,
laughed, and mourned opportunities that
were never adequately explored. But
through it all, what he said about himself
was true: He wasn't as pro-Palestinian or
pro-Israeli as much as he was pro-peace.
That peace has proven elusive to this day.
But with all our differences -- and there
are many -- I believe Erekat believes in
its possibility. Who else would list as an
"objective" on his resume: "Solve the
Palestinian-Israeli conflict based on a two
state negotiated solution through
diplomatic offices"?
If, or perhaps when, another effort to
negotiate a deal is made, one thing is
clear -- Erekat will be in the middle of it.
Last week, he agreed to answer my
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questions on the past and future of the
Israeli-Palestinian problem.
FP: What were your best and worst
moments in the Israeli-Palestinian
negotiations, and what was the greatest
missed opportunity?
Saeb Erekat: Though I was not the chief
negotiator at that moment, the connection
between [then Prime Minister Yitzhak]
Rabin and President Arafat made
everyone around them, including myself,
feel that peace was possible. There was
significant progress in all tracks until
Rabin's assassination by an Israeli
terrorist -- after he was killed, no Israeli
leader had the vision to understand that
the window of opportunity for a two-state
solution would close as fast as they
continued their colonization policies.
The missed opportunity has definitely
been Israel throwing away the Arab
Peace Initiative, which offers
normalization of relations of 57 countries
with Israel in exchange for Israeli
withdrawal to the 1967 border. They
threw it away by bombing Gaza, by
intensifying collective punishments, and
by increasing settlement construction all
over the occupied West Bank,
particularly in and around Occupied East
Jerusalem.
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FP: 2013 is the 20th anniversary of the
Oslo negotiations. What was Oslo's
greatest success, and its greatest failure?
SE: The fact that, two decades after Oslo,
we are still a nation under occupation
shows that Israeli governments did derail
it. The interim accords were not supposed
to last for 20 years but only five. After
that, we were going to enjoy freedom and
sovereignty.
But Israel increased its settlement
expansion. In fact, within 20 years, the
number of settlers almost tripled. The
institution-building efforts led by the
Palestinian government have been
completely undermined by the lack of
freedom. This situation cannot continue.
Oslo succeeded in bringing back 250,000
Palestinians from the diaspora and
building the capacity for our state. The
international community failed though,
by granting Israel an unprecedented
culture of impunity that allowed them to
use negotiations as a means to continue
rather than stop colonization.
FP: What is the most important
thing Israelis don't understand about
Palestinians?
SE: That we are not going anywhere. As
simple as that. We are not going to
disappear just because their government
builds an annexation wall around us.
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They should close their eyes and imagine
their state within 10 years time. What do
they see? If they continue their policies,
they are going to officially adopt the form
of an apartheid regime, which I think is
not what many Israelis want.
FP: What is the most important thing
Palestinians have learned about Israelis?
SE: That Israelis will not take back the
ships that brought them here to leave
somewhere else. We got to understand
that we have to live side by side. The
rules of engagement, though, cannot be
those of apartheid, but those of freedom.
FP: What do you expect from the next
Israeli government on the peace process?
SE: I don't think there is room for
optimism, but our position hasn't
changed. We don't see any other solution
than a two-state solution. Any Israeli
government that recognizes this fact and
respects what previous governments have
agreed upon should become a partner for
peace.
FP: Is Hamas-Fatah unity possible, and
what would the impact be on the future of
Israeli-Palestinian negotiations?
SE: We expect to have progress in the
near future, with Hamas allowing the
Central Elections Commission to register
new voters in Gaza. I believe there is
political agreement -- in fact, there is a
signed agreement. We expect to have
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elections as soon as possible, which is the
right way to solve our differences: Let
our people decide, those in Palestine as
well as our people in the Diaspora.
Having said so, Hamas has recognized
the Palestine Liberation Organization as
the sole and legitimate representative of
the Palestinian people, including its
mandate to negotiate a final status
agreement with Israel. Once that is
achieved, we expect to hold a national
referendum.
FP: How would you describe Egypt's
role in the peace process now? What do
you expect from President Barack
Obama's administration with regards to
the peace process?
SE: Egypt has played a central role, and
continues to do so. We trust that Egypt,
under President Mohamed Morsy's
leadership, will continue to play a strong
role because Palestine and Egypt have a
common interest in achieving peace.
President Obama had stated that he has a
personal commitment to bring peace to
the Middle East. We, the Egyptians, and
the rest of the Arab world tell him that we
are ready for peace. We have the Arab
Peace Initiative. This goes in line with
the stated U.S. national interest.
Washington's failure to explicitly say that
Israel is to blame for choosing
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settlements over peace has contributed to
Israel's culture of impunity.
FP: Can America be an effective broker
in negotiations?
SE: If the U.S. decides to be an honest
broker, it could not only be effective but
in fact could bring real peace to the
region, a just and lasting one. The U.S.
has a moral obligation toward the
Palestinian people, who have been under
occupation and living in exile for
decades.
FP: Is a two state solution still possible?
SE: Yes, but only if there is a political
will. So far, Israel's will is about
colonization, and the international
community has failed to put an end to
decades of double standards by treating
Israel as a state above the law. We don't
see any other solution than a two-state
solution, though Israel is taking us to a
one-state reality.
Aaron David Miller is a distinguished
scholar at the Woodrow Wilson
International Center for Scholars.
Article 3.
The Daily Beast
The Mixed Legacy Of
Shimon Peres
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Daniel Gavron
Feb 4, 2013 -- Now that he has finished
his consultations with the country's
political parties and charged Benjamin
Netanyahu with forming a new coalition,
Israel's respected President, Shimon
Peres, is once again very much in the
news. In his speech inviting Netanyahu to
form the next government, the President
spoke forcefully about peace and even
seemed to influence Bibi to mention
peace, a word he never used in his
election campaign. Peres has rightly
earned respect for this from many
quarters, but now, as the coalition is
being formed, it might be a good time to
examine one aspect of Israel's political
culture: the lack of respect for the task of
a parliamentary opposition. Peres is at
least partly to blame for this, as he almost
always preferred to join various
administrations—even as a junior
partner—rather than lead the opposition,
ofen citing "our grave situation" and
"national responsibility." Now is surely
a better time to criticize Peres than in
June, when the world (maybe even
including President Barack Obama) will
be coming here to celebrate his 90th
birthday. Then, surely, everyone will be
paying deserved tribute to the wisdom of
this elder statesman and prophet of peace,
and it would be a shame to spoil the
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party. So let's clear the air right now,
well before the festivities. Before we get
to the matter of coalition politics, which
is very much on our minds right now as
Netanyahu struggles to put together a
government, let us consider the other
negative part of the Peres legacy: his stint
as Defense Minister under Prime Minister
Yitzhak Rabin from 1974 to 1977. Today
Peres is widely respected as the architect
of the Oslo Accord of 1993, achieved
while he was Foreign Minister. It was the
first political move toward a settlement
between Israel and the Palestinians, and
Peres deserves huge credit for securing
the agreement. However, two decades
earlier, as Defense Minister, he supported
the Jewish settlement project in the
newly-conquered Palestinian territories,
both overtly and covertly. Not for
nothing did Rabin label Peres in his
memoirs as "an indefatigable intriguer."
In 1975, while Rabin was doing his
utmost to prevent the settlement of Elon
Moreh, near Nablus, Peres continuously
sabotaged his efforts. After no less than
eight settlement attempts, which were
ruled illegal by Israel's Supreme Court, a
"compromise" was reached, and Elon
Moreh was established five kilometers to
the east of the original site. Moreover,
during the furor over Elon Moreh,
Defense Minister Peres quietly facilitated
the creation of Ofra, near Ramallah.
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These two settlements, which have
become flagships of the settlement
movement, were the start of Jewish
colonization in Samaria, the northern part
of the West Bank. The previous year, as
a young reporter, I interviewed Peres,
after he and his political ally Moshe
Dayan had refused "on principle" to join
the government of Golda Meir. "If a
single child can learn that politics is not
just intrigues," Peres told me, "I will be
satisfied that we have done our bit." Just
one week later, when he and Dayan had
reversed their position for no discernable
reason, and were seated snugly around
the cabinet table, I asked Peres what he
had to say to the "single child." His aides
sniggered, but Peres didn't bat an eyelid:
"Just what my mentor, David Ben-Gurion
(Israel's first Prime Minister) told me:
when the security of Israel is laid on one
side of the scales, and everything else on
the other side, security tips the
balance." Peres subsequently used that
self-same argument to join every
government that would have him. The
late Menachem Begin lost nine elections
before finally becoming Israel's Prime
Minister in 1977. He served as a
pugnacious and dedicated leader of the
opposition. Peres almost never headed
the opposition, always preferring a
ministerial appointment, once even
designing a grotesque system of
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"rotation" with Yitzhak Shamir, so that
he could be in the government. He
proposed the ideal of "national unity,"
and greatly devalued the democratic
concept of parliamentary opposition.
Former Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni
ruined her reputation when she refused to
join Netanyahu in his last government.
While it is quite true that Livni was an
ineffective opposition leader, it is the
very fact of her refusal to join the
administration and "influence it from
within" that has provoked most of the
criticism by Israeli political
commentators. Similar criticism is
currently being leveled at Labor Party
leader Shelly Yachimovich for stating
clearly that she would not join
Netanyahu's next government, but would
serve as leader of the opposition. There
are certainly many reasons to criticize
Yachimovich, but not her eminently
democratic decision to lead the
parliamentary opposition. Very few of
our political commentators have ever
expressed respect or even understanding
for the concept of opposition. The most
popular political idea in Israel today is
national unity—better still, a National
Unity Government: "We should all rally
round the flag and support our
government in these critical times." This
position, widely espoused, echoes what
Peres has said repeatedly over the years.
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So, although the Peres vision of peace is
a positive legacy, he has also taught us
less helpful lessons. The settlements are a
supremely negative inheritance, but I
would argue that the anti-democratic
rejection of the concept of a
parliamentary opposition is an even more
harmful bequest handed down to us by
President Shimon Peres.
Daniel Gavron, who lives in Israel, is a
former journalist and the author of nine
books, the most recent of which is Holy
Land Mosaic, stories of cooperation and
coexistence between Israelis and
Palestinians (Rowman & Littlefield,
2008).
Article 4.
NYT
India vs. China vs. Egypt
Thomas L. Friedman
February 5, 2013 -- New Delhi -- It's
hard to escape a visit to India without
someone asking you to compare it to
China. This visit was no exception, but I
think it's more revealing to widen the
aperture and compare India, China and
Egypt. India has a weak central
government but a really strong civil
society, bubbling with elections and
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associations at every level. China has a
muscular central government but a weak
civil society, yet one that is clearly
straining to express itself more. Egypt,
alas, has a weak government and a very
weak civil society, one that was
suppressed for 50 years, denied real
elections and, therefore, is easy prey to
have its revolution diverted by the one
group that could organize, the Muslim
Brotherhood, in the one free space, the
mosque. But there is one thing all three
have in common: gigantic youth bulges
under the age of 30, increasingly
connected by technology but very
unevenly educated.
My view: Of these three, the one that will
thrive the most in the 21st century will be
the one that is most successful at
converting its youth bulge into a
"demographic dividend" that keeps
paying off every decade, as opposed to a
"demographic bomb" that keeps going
off every decade. That will be the society
that provides more of its youth with the
education, jobs and voice they seek to
realize their full potential.
This race is about "who can enable and
inspire more of its youth to help build
broad societal prosperity," argues Dov
Seidman, the author of "How" and
C.E.O. of LRN, which has an operating
center in India. "And that's all about
leaders, parents and teachers creating
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environments where young people can be
on a quest, not just for a job, but for a
career — for a better life that doesn't just
surpass but far surpasses their parents."
Countries that fail to do that will have a
youth bulge that is not only unemployed,
but unemployable, he argued. "They will
be disconnected in a connected world,
despairing as they watch others build and
realize their potential and curiosity."
If your country has either a strong
government or a strong civil society, it
has the ability to rise to this challenge. If
it has neither, it will have real problems,
which is why Egypt is struggling. China
leads in providing its youth bulge with
education, infrastructure and jobs, but
lags in unleashing freedom and curiosity.
India is the most intriguing case — if it
can get its governance and corruption
under control. The quest for upward
mobility here, especially among women
and girls, is palpable. I took part in the
graduation ceremony for The Energy and
Resources Institute last week. Of 12
awards for the top students, 11 went to
women.
"India today has 560 million young
people under the age of 25 and 225
million between the ages of 10 and 19,"
explained Shashi Tharoor, India's
minister of state for human resource
development. "So for the next 40 years
we should have a youthful working-age
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population" at a time when China and the
broad industrialized world is aging.
According to Tharoor, the average age in
China today is around 38, whereas in
India it's around 28. In 20 years, that gap
will be much larger. So this could be a
huge demographic dividend — "provided
that we can educate our youth — offering
vocational training to some and
university to others to equip them to take
advantage of what the 21st-century global
economy offers," said Tharoor. "If we get
it right, India becomes the workhorse of
the world. If we get it wrong, there is
nothing worse than unemployable,
frustrated" youth.
Indeed, some of India's disaffected youth
are turning to Maoism in rural areas. "We
have Maoists among our tribal
populations, who have not benefited from
the opportunities of modern India,"
Tharoor said. There have been violent
Maoist incidents in 165 of India's 625
districts in recent years, as Maoists tap
into all those left out of the "Indian
dream." So there is now a huge push here
to lure poor kids into school. India runs
the world's biggest midday lunch
program, serving 250 million free school
lunches each day. It's also doubled its
number of Indian Institutes of
Technology, from eight to 16, and is
planning 14 new universities for
innovation and research.
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But this will all be for naught without
better governance, argues Gurcharan Das,
the former C.E.O. of Procter & Gamble
India, whose latest book is "India Grows
at Night: A Liberal Case for a Strong
State." "The aspirational India has no one
to vote for, because no one is talking the
language of public goods. Why should it
take us 15 years to get justice in the
courts or 12 years to build a road? The
gap between [youth] aspirations and
government performance is huge. My
thesis is that India has risen despite the
state. It is a story of public failure and
private success."
That is what Das means by India grows at
night, when government sleeps. "But
India must learn to grow during the day,"
he said. "If India fixes its governance
before China fixes its politics that is who
will win. ... You need a strong state and a
strong society, so the society can hold the
state accountable. India will only get a
strong state when the best of society join
the government, and China will only get
a strong society when the best Mandarins
go into the private sector."
Article 5.
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Foreign Policy
Don't be too sure there
won't be another U.S.
war in the Middle East
Richard L. Russell
February 5, 2013 -- Shortly before he left
office in Feb. 2011, Defense Secretary
Robert Gates told West Point cadets that
"in my opinion, any future defense
secretary who advised the president to
again send a big American land army into
Asia or into the Middle East or Africa
should 'have his head examined,' as
General MacArthur so delicately put it."
The remark no doubt reflected Sec.
Gates's fatigue and frustration from the
enormous intellectual and emotional
burdens associated with overseeing the
wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
One suspects, however, that in a more
reflective moment, Gates would have
acknowledged that "never say never" is a
wise rule of thumb in planning for
military contingencies, especially in the
region that makes up Central Command's
area-of-responsibility. Few, for example,
predicted the 1979 Soviet invasion of
Afghanistan. Gates himself -- who was a
senior CIA official during the covert war
supporting the Afghan resistance -- surely
did not anticipate then that the United
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States would have to return to
Afghanistan two decades later to oust a
Taliban regime that was harboring
terrorists. Before 1990, moreover, no one
predicted that Iraq, having just ended a
bitter eight-year war with Iran, would
swing its battered forces south to invade
Kuwait.
So if it's conventional wisdom that the
United States will not, or should not,
intervene militarily in the Middle East or
South Asia after it draws down forces in
Iraq and Afghanistan, it's also likely dead
wrong. What is true, however, is that
political and military trajectories in the
Middle East and South Asia are likely to
increasingly challenge U.S. contingency
access in the coming decade. The ability
for the United States to surge large-scale
forces into the region, as it did in the
1990 and 2003 wars against Iraq, will
grow increasingly circumscribed. The
United States will have to adapt to this
new strategic landscape by developing
more nimble, highly-mobile, stealthy, and
networked forces, and by abandoning the
traditional practice of slowly and steadily
building up conventional forces at
regional logistic hubs prior to launching
war.
* * *
Perhaps the most significant factor that
portends against further intervention in
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the Middle East and South Asia is
increased political resistance -- and
outright opposition -- from the countries
in the region. That resistance is likely to
come from the new regimes emerging
from the Arab uprisings, as well as a
number of Gulf monarchies.
Indeed, the political trends in the region
are unlikely to conform to the rosy
predictions of democratic peace theorists,
whose musings have implicitly informed
the security policies of both Republican
and Democratic administrations for
decades. Old authoritarian regimes seem
to be passing the way of the dodo bird,
but the new regimes taking shape are
heavily influenced by militant Islamic
ideology that will make them less likely
to engage in security or military
cooperation with the United States.
Democracy optimists argue that these
ideological regimes, once entrenched in
power, will have to moderate their zeal in
order to govern. Pragmatism will
ultimately trump ideology. That line of
reasoning, however, is based on the
assumption that the policy decisions of
such regimes can be explained by rational
choice economic theory. In other words,
if they want to attract international capital
and participate in the world economy,
they are going to have to break with their
ideological affinities. But that reasoning
ignores a hard fact of international
HOUSE OVERSIGHT 029803
politics: that time and again, political and
ideological prerogatives trump economic
rationality. It made little economic sense,
for example, for Pakistan to pursue a
nuclear weapons program in the 1970s,
just as it makes little economic sense for
Iran to do so today. Clearly, both
Pakistan and Iran made major policy
decisions based on political-military
priorities rather than economic
calculations.
As for the surviving monarchies in the
Middle East, they too will likely be less
accommodating to American military
forces than they have been in the past. To
be sure, much of the Arab support for
past American military operations -- like
both Iraq wars -- was hidden from the
public eye. Arab states often loudly and
publicly denounced "unilateral
American" military action in the region at
the same time as they supported it in
backroom dealings, quietly authorizing
facilities support and air, land, and sea
access.
But if Arab Gulf states were quietly
supportive in the past, their opposition to
American military force is likely to grow
in the future. They read the aftermath of
the Arab uprisings much differently than
did American and European
policymakers. The Gulf monarchies were
shocked that the United States
"abandoned" Egyptian President Hosni
HOUSE OVERSIGHT 029804
Mubarak in his time of need in early
2011. Their leaders expected the United
States to push for Mubarak and the
Egyptian military to crack down on
public protests in Cairo. After all,
American policymakers during the Carter
administration had at least given this
policy option consideration during the
Iranian revolution in 1979.
Already, several Gulf states have begun
to translate their displeasure into policy
independence from Washington. In 2011,
for example, a coalition of Gulf states led
by Saudi Arabia intervened in Bahrain to
quell domestic unrest in the island
country. They did so under the banner of
the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC),
which for years had been a feckless
military force. Largely unnoticed in
Western commentary was that the GCC,
for the first time in its history, mounted a
relatively effective military intervention.
Bahrain today is for all intents and
purposes a province of Saudi Arabia,
even if it is not polite to say so in
diplomatic circles. Since the Iranian
revolution, Bahrain -- like the United
Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Oman, and Qatar
-- has pursued close ties with the United
States, in significant measure to
counterbalance Iran and Saudi Arabia.
With Washington at their back, they were
able to stake out security policies that
were at least nominally independent from
HOUSE OVERSIGHT 029805
Saudi Arabia. When Saudi Arabia wanted
American forces removed from the
kingdom, for example, Qatar was eager
to compensate by hosting a more robust
American command presence in the
region.
The Arab uprisings and subsequent GCC
intervention in Bahrain have turned the
tables, making Saudi security backing a
necessity for the smaller Gulf
monarchies. From their perspective,
American forces are clearly more capable
than Saudi forces, but given the
alignment of their interests, Riyadh is a
more reliable security partner. Gulf
leaders and military commanders in the
coming decade will be focused on how to
avoid following in Mubarak's footsteps.
Part of minimizing that risk will involve
decreasing security dependency on the
United States. Gulf leaders have to worry
that if push comes to shove, the
Americans will throw them under a bus
just like they did to Mubarak.
* * *
If the political dynamics in the Middle
East and South Asia do not favor further
American military intervention in the
future, neither do the emerging military
trends. The proliferation of supersonic
cruise missiles and mines in the region
will make for nasty forced entries into
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narrow maritime confines like the Suez
Canal, the Red Sea, and the Persian Gulf
But the likely proliferation of nuclear
weapons -- and ballistic missile delivery
systems -- will pose even more
formidable challenges to conventional
military surges in the region. In the
future, the United States will not be able
to take for granted unchallenged surges
of naval, air, and ground forces into
regional theaters via logistics hubs. These
hubs -- like the American naval presence
in Bahrain -- are large, readily
identifiable, and will be increasingly
vulnerable to future targeting by nuclear
weaponry.
Iran's nuclear weapons, assuming it gets
them, will pose a direct threat to
American military surge capabilities.
Although American policymakers and
military commanders might feel
confident that they could surge forces
into the Gulf despite Iranian nuclear
threats because of the American nuclear
deterrent, Gulf security partners might be
more nervous and less willing to
cooperate. As a result, they might not
grant access to U.S. air, naval, and
ground forces out of fear of angering
Iran.
American observers who doubt that Gulf
states would make such calculations
should recall how Kuwait responded in
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the lead-up to Iraq's invasion in 1990.
When faced with a build-up of Iraqi
forces along its border, Kuwait decided
not to mobilize its military out of fear
that the move would provoke Saddam
Hussein. The incentives for Gulf states to
make similar strategic calculations in the
future will be greater when Iran has an
inventory of nuclear weapons to match its
growing ballistic missile capabilities.
The Gulf states, moreover, will likely
reason that the U.S. capability to threaten
or use force against a nuclear Iran will be
significantly diminished. Even without
nuclear weapons, Gulf states have seen,
in their view, a long history of American
reluctance to threaten or use force against
Iran. For example, the United States took
no direct military action against Iran after
it aided and abetted Hezbollah bombings
against Americans in Lebanon in the
1980s, after Iran supported the bombing
of Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia in
1996, or even after Iran supported the
deadly campaign of improvised explosive
devices (IEDs) against U.S. troops in
Iraq. Gulf states will no doubt judge that
if the United States was unable and
unwilling to attack Tehran under these
circumstances, then it is certainly not
going to attack Iran in the future, when it
will be able to retaliate with nuclear
weapons.
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American policymakers may counter that
Iran would never be foolish enough to
threaten or use nuclear weapons against
the United States, given its robust nuclear
deterrence posture. But the threat or use
of nuclear weapons might not look so
foolish from Iran's perspective. One of
the great strategic lessons drawn from the
long history of conflict in the Middle East
is this: Do not go to war without nuclear
weapons, as Saddam Hussein did when
he invaded Kuwait. The corollary is: Do
not allow the United States to
methodically build-up forces in the Gulf
prior to invading, as Saddam did both in
the run-up to the 1991 re-conquest of
Kuwait and in 2003, before the drive to
topple the regime in Baghdad.
Drawing upon these lessons, Iran will
likely do everything in its power to deny
the United States the ability to surge
conventional forces into the region -- and
that might include threatening to target
U.S. forces with nuclear weapons. Iran
might accept the risk that preemptive use
of nuclear weapons could bring on
American nuclear retaliation, because
failure to do so would mean certain
destruction for the regime. The United
States would be able to build-up
conventional forces in the region and oust
Iran's leaders just as it did in Baghdad.
This line of strategic reasoning runs
counter to conventional wisdom in the
HOUSE OVERSIGHT 029809
West, but we actually know little or
nothing about what Iranian decision-
makers think about nuclear weapons or
deterrence theory. Since the Iranian
revolution in 1979, opportunities for the
exchange of professional views between
Western and Iranian scholars,
policymakers, and military leaders on
these critically important issues have
been extremely limited. Therefore, it's not
unreasonable to assume that the Iranians,
like American policymakers in the early
stages of developing their nuclear triad
doctrine, will think of nuclear weapons as
merely "big artillery." Unfortunately, the
United States and its security partners
lack formal and informal exchanges with
the Iranians akin to the Cold War
discussions and arms control negotiations
between the Americans and Soviets,
which allowed both parties to develop
mutual understandings of the other's
perception of nuclear weapons. These
understandings were essential for crisis
management in the Cold War strategic
relationship after the Cuban missile
crisis.
Meanwhile, the Gulf states, led by Saudi
Arabia, are likely to look for their own
nuclear deterrents. Much like France
wanted its own nuclear force de frappe
during the Cold War, the Gulf states will
want their own nuclear weapons to deter
Iran. Saudi Arabia and the smaller Gulf
HOUSE OVERSIGHT 029810
states will worry that the United States
would be deterred from coming to their
defense in future regional crises by Iran's
nuclear weapons.
Saudi Arabia and other Arab states are
likely to see nuclear weapons as a quick
fix for all of their security woes.
Although they have been on a shopping
spree in the past decade, buying
expensive and sophisticated Western
military technology, they have had a
tough time absorbing the new technology
and fully utilizing and integrating
weapons systems. To be sure, in a rough
net assessment, Saudi Arabia and its
allies in the Gulf have significantly
greater conventional capabilities than
Iran. But if Iran goes nuclear, they will
want to follow suit.
* * *
Americans may be weary of conflict in
the Middle East and South Asia, but
strategic prudence demands that we
contemplate future military interventions
in the Central Command theater. A scan
of the horizon reveals that both political
and military trends in the region pose
formidable obstacles to conventional
force surges into the region.
But there is another wrinkle in this story
that U.S. policymakers must contend with
as they plan for the future. As Gulf
monarchies seek to reduce their
HOUSE OVERSIGHT 029811
dependence on American military power,
they will increasingly look to China for
security assurances. China does not have
a political agenda devoted to promoting
democratization, and it maintains
political and diplomatic ties with both
Arab states and Iran. China's military
activity in the region is modest but
increasing, as evidenced by its recent
peacekeeping dispatches to the region
and naval port visits in the Gulf Beijing
is likely to send more naval forces to the
Gulf to increase its presence there and
enhance its ability to protect the sea lanes
which bring oil to China's thirsty
economy. China is keenly aware that the
United States has naval supremacy in the
Gulf, but will be working to erode that
strategic edge in the future.
Faced with these realities, there is a need
for new thinking and innovative
conceptualizations of surges into
Centcom's area of responsibility. Theater
campaign planners will have to think
about contingencies in which the United
States cannot slowly and methodically
build up forces in the region and then
kick off campaigns after most troops,
arms, and equipment are in place. Future
U.S. force build-ups in the region will be
far too vulnerable to preemptive nuclear
strikes. As a result, planners will have to
devise campaign plans in which the
insertion of U.S. military forces begins
HOUSE OVERSIGHT 029812
with an immediate rolling and flowing
start. The United States will have to work
from smaller troop footprints and be
prepared to start fighting even as follow-
on-forces are on the way. Ideally, these
forces would flow from multiple staging
positions to reduce vulnerability to
nuclear attack. The politics of the region,
however, will work against securing a
multitude of staging areas from which to
deploy.
The region under the purview of
Centcom has always been riddled with
political violence that has posed
formidable challenges to military
operations. But in plotting a course over
the horizon, the political and military
obstacles for American military surges
into the region are poised to grow even
larger. As a result, theater contingency
planners will have fewer good options for
projecting American military power into
the region -- and they'll have to do more
with the bad and the ugly.
Richard L. Russell is Professor of
National Security Affairs at the Near East
and South Asia Center for Strategic
Studies.
HOUSE OVERSIGHT 029813
Article 6.
The Diplomat
Getting to the Endgame
With Iran
Robert Dreyfuss
February 6, 2013 -- Why did it take so
long to secure a date for talks between
Iran and the P5+1?
After all, in the weeks before the
presidential election in November, it was
reported that the United States and Iran
had already tactically agreed to convene
private, one-on-one talks. And since then
the United States, the European powers,
Russia, and China, all sought to arrange
another round of negotiations, first in
December and then in January. It now
appears that Iran, which is about to enter
its presidential election season, has
finally agreed to what will be the first
round of negotiations with the P5+1 since
the last round in Moscow seven months
ago. On Tuesday, Tehran announced that
it will join talks on February 26 in
Kazakhstan.
The negotiations will be a serious test for
the Obama administration and for John
Kerry, the new secretary of state.
Previous rounds have all faltered because
neither side was willing to make
HOUSE OVERSIGHT 029814
concessions to the other, and so far there
is little sign that the United States and the
P5+1 have improved their offer to Iran
very much. As the talks were announced,
the Washington Post reported: "The P5+1
powers have made only mild revisions to
a proposal that Iran flatly rejected last
June." Until now, the United States has
been unwilling to acknowledge Iran's
right to enrich uranium on its own soil
and to suggest that some economic
sanctions might be lifted as part of a deal,
and Iran has refused to agree even to a
limited deal called "stop, ship, and shut"
— involving the suspension of its
enrichment to 20 percent purity, shipping
its existing stockpiles of 20% uranium to
a third country for processing, and
shutting down its underground facility at
Fordo, near Qom — without an agreement
to lift sanctions.
After the reelection of Barack Obama in
November, there were great hopes that
the president would have greater political
freedom of offer concessions to Iran. Yet,
publicly at least, the White House isn't
signaling that it is ready to make a more
generous offer to Iran, and in fact Obama
in January signed into law yet another
round of draconian economic sanctions.
Perhaps as a result, Iran allegedly
dragged its feet on setting a date for talks.
Despite prodding from the P5+1 —
including urgent efforts by Russia — in
HOUSE OVERSIGHT 029815
January Iran reportedly went silent about
talks. Russia, increasingly frustrated by
the inability of Tehran and the West to
negotiate seriously, vented its frustration.
"Some of our partners in the six powers
and the Iranian side cannot come to an
agreement about where to meet," Russian
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told a
news conference. "We are ready to meet
at any location as soon as possible. We
believe the essence of our talks is far
more important (than the site), and we
hope that common sense will prevail and
we will stop behaving like little
children."
According to analysts in Washington,
reinforced by comments from Iran itself,
a big reason for Tehran's recalcitrance is
that Iran wants to prove to the United
States that its vaunted sanctions regime
will not force Iran to make unilateral
concessions at the bargaining table. In
addition, Iran is concerned that it won't
get much in return in talks with the West,
and that it will be asked to make
unilateral concessions on uranium
enrichment without getting sanctions
relief in return. Combined with Iranian
internal divisions, as its own presidential
election season gets underway, that could
mean that for the next six months or so
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei simply won't be
ready to talk seriously, despite scheduling
the Kazakhstan round.
HOUSE OVERSIGHT 029816
Others suspect that Iran is waiting to see
how President Obama's new national
security team — with Kerry as secretary of
state, Chuck Hagel as secretary of
defense, and John Brennan at the Central
Intelligence Agency — will shape
Obama's stance at any talks.
In Washington, some would argue there's
a growing consensus, at the level of think
tanks, Iran experts, and other analysts,
that a preliminary, first-round deal,
including "shop, ship, and shut," might
work, if in response the P5+1 could lift
some of the economic sanctions on Iran
and agree to limited Iranian enrichment.
Perhaps the best-case scenario is the
possibility that there are ongoing, secret
and back-channel talks between
Washington and Tehran. Nothing along
those lines has leaked and there is no
indication of this, yet. But in advance of
the first round of Iran-P5+1 talks in
Vienna in 2009, the United States and
Iran did indeed engage in quiet, behind-
the-scenes diplomacy.
In fact, of course, any sanctions relief for
Iran will occur slowly and step-by-step,
not all at once, in parallel with steps
taken by Iran and openness to more
intrusive inspections and oversight by the
IAEA.
But it's certainly not helpful that in early
January yet another round of unilateral
HOUSE OVERSIGHT 029817
sanctions was passed by Congress and
signed into law by President Obama. The
complex set of new measures targets key
industrial sectors, including shipping and
imports of products such as aluminum,
steel and coal, and seeks to block Iran
from using barter commodities such as
oil and gold to pay for imports. The
Washington Post paraphrased U.S.
officials as saying that, "the new policies
are closer to a true trade embargo,
designed to systematically attack and
undercut Iran's major financial pillars
and threaten the country with economic
collapse." Obama signed the National
Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that
contained the sanctions provisions
despite having hinted earlier that he
might veto the NDAA over a host of
measures contained in the bill.
If the Obama administration believes that
ever-tougher sanctions will cause Iran to
cave in at the talks, it's likely that they
are badly misreading Iranian politics.
For many observers, however, and for
Iran, too, the nomination of Hagel for
secretary of defense may be a sign that
the White House is beginning to realize
that sanctions, and threats of military
action, won't force Iran's hand.
As has been widely reported, hawks,
neoconservatives, and members of the
pro-Israel lobby in Washington have
HOUSE OVERSIGHT 029818
slammed Hagel for his past comments
and positions on Iran. In conjunction with
Israel-friendly members of Congress,
they've warned Obama to rein Hagel in
so as not to send a dovish signal to
Tehran. Robert Satloff, executive
direction of the Washington Institute for
Near East Policy (WINEP), a pro-Israel
think tank, warned bluntly that the White
House should act quickly to make sure
that Hagel backs away from his previous
views on Iran and at least toes the
administration's tougher line. "If the
White House does not take steps soon to
correct that impression, the chances for a
negotiated resolution of the Iran nuclear
crisis will fall nearly to zero and the
likelihood of Israeli military action will
rise dramatically," he wrote.
Indeed, within days of his nomination as
secretary of defense, Hagel was already
backing away from his earlier views,
meeting with senior Pentagon officials
and influential senators who'll vote on
his confirmation to clarify his views on
Iran, asserting that he supports broad
international sanctions against Iran and
that he believes that the military option
ought to be "on the table." Several
Democratic senators who met with Hagel
announced with satisfaction that the
former senator from Nebraska had
sufficiently backtracked or "clarified" his
views on Iran. Consequently, they
HOUSE OVERSIGHT 029819
announced that he had earned their
support — and their vote.
Then, during his confirmation hearings
on January 31, Hagel — under hostile
questioning from several Republican
senators — backed away from earlier-held
positions on Iran, including the role of
sanctions. And, though he previously
been a sharp critic of a military attack on
Iran, in his opening statement Hagel said:
"I am fully committed to the President's
goal of preventing Iran from obtaining a
nuclear weapon, and—as I've said in the
past—all options must be on the table to
achieve that goal. My policy is one of
prevention, and not one of containment—
and the President has made clear that is
the policy of our government. As
Secretary of Defense, I will make sure
the Department is prepared for any
contingency."
Satloff's views were echoed by another
tough-talking official at WINEP, former
Ambassador Dennis Ross, a pro-Israel
hawk who served as Obama's top adviser
on Iran during much of the president's
first term. "I think 2013 is going to be
decisive," Ross told the Los Angeles
Times, expressing concern about Hagel's
previous comments. "Time really is
running out. For diplomacy to have a
chance of success, the Iranians need to
understand that if diplomacy fails, force
is going to be the result. We still have a
HOUSE OVERSIGHT 029820
challenge to convince the Iranians that
we're quite serious about the use of
force," he said. "In the first term, the
administration didn't always speak with
one voice on this issue. So what Hagel
says can make a difference."
Despite his poorly receieved performance
at his confirmation hearings, it's widely
believed in Washington that Hagel will
be confirmed as secretary of defense and
that his private advice to Obama will
more closely hew to his long-held beliefs
about the futility of sanctions and the
grave downside to a military strike. Partly
for that reason, it remains very unlikely
that the Obama administration will resort
to force to resolve the dispute with Iran.
In fact, in remarks that Iranian officials
cited as promising, Vice President Joe
Biden expressed the administration's
willingness to hold bilateral talks with the
Iranians. In response to a question at the
Munich Security Conference Biden said,
"We have made it clear at the outset
that...we would be prepared to meet
bilaterally with the Iranian leadership"
when Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah
Ali Khamenei is serious about
negotiations. Iran's Foreign Minister, Ali
Akbar Salehi responded favorably and
said, "I am optimistic, I feel this new
administration is really seeking this time
to at least divert from its previous
HOUSE OVERSIGHT 029821
traditional approach vis-a-vis my
country."
But if Washington remains committed to
ever-tougher sanctions — and without
promising Iran that sanctions will be
lifted as part of a deal — then negotiations
are unlikely to succeed. Vali Nasr,
another former Obama administration
official with expertise on Iran, suggested
recently that there's not much more the
world can do to sanction Iran, and that
such penalties could drive Tehran to take
radical action. The regime of sanctions
against Iran over its nuclear activity
"really has reached its end," Nasr, dean of
the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced
International Studies at Johns Hopkins
University, said during the World
Economic Forum in Davos. And he
warned that unless there is a diplomatic
breakthrough — or, alternatively, an
attack on Iran — "you really are looking
at a scenario where Iran is going to rush
very quickly towards nuclear power,
because they also think, like North
Korea, that (then) you have much more
leverage to get rid of these sanctions."
Robert Dreyfuss is an independent,
investigative journalist in the
Washington, D. C, area, who writes
frequently for The Nation, Rolling Stone,
and other publications. His blog, The
HOUSE OVERSIGHT 029822
Dreyfuss Report, appears at
TheNation.com. He is the author of
'Devil's Game: How the United States
Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam'.
Article 7.
The Wall Street Journal
A New U.S. International
Economic Strategy
Robert B. Zoellick
February 5, 2013 -- Five years into the
global economic storm, America's
traditional allies, theEuropean Union and
Japan, are struggling. Developing
economies are reshaping the global
dynamic but also face big challenges. The
United States is the one country that
could lead the modernization of the
international system so as to supply
security, economic opportunity, and
prospects for liberty. America's own
strategy for economic revival cannot be
limited to the nation's borders. And its
future foreign policy—its projection of
power and principle—must be grounded
in the emerging economic order.
President Obama has said he admires
Ronald Reagan's transformative thinking.
If so, he should ask for an assessment of
HOUSE OVERSIGHT 029823
Reagan's second-term innovations on
currency and monetary affairs, trade, debt
and development. Reagan advanced a
new international system to match the
revival of capitalism after the oil shocks
and stagflation of the 1970s. America's
success in the 1980s contributed both to
the end of the Cold War, by persuading
the Soviet Union it could not keep up,
and to two decades of exceptional global
growth.
The new U.S. international economic
strategy should have five parts. First, this
country should strengthen its continental
base by building on the North American
Free Trade Agreement with Canada and
Mexico. Together, the three partners
could boost energy security, improve
productivity, and give North Americans
an edge in manufacturing and other
industries that are already experiencing
rising wages in East Asia. A politically
acceptable immigration policy, and a
push for educational innovation using
new technologies and competition, could
lead to a more prosperous, populous,
integrated and democratic future for the
hemisphere.
Second, the extraordinary monetary
policies of late, led by the Federal
Reserve's continued near-zero interest-
rate policy, are taking us into uncharted
territory. Central banks have tried most
every tool to stimulate growth; if Japan is
HOUSE OVERSIGHT 029824
any warning, the next tactic is
competitive devaluation, which risks a
new protectionism. "Currency
manipulation" could become a danger
that reaches far beyond the debate about
Chinese policies. The world economy
will need at some point to withdraw the
drug of cheap money and negative real
interest rates. The U.S. should anticipate
these dangers.
The International Monetary Fund also
could help set standards about exchange-
rate policies and serve as a referee that
blows a whistle, even if it cannot
penalize. The IMF and the World Trade
Organization should anticipate this risk
and give effect to the existing WTO
agreement that economies must "avoid
manipulating exchange rates . . . to gain
an unfair competitive advantage."
Third, the U.S. needs to break the logjam
on opening markets. As the leading world
economy, America should initially try to
strengthen and increase international
trade through the WTO. As my
colleagues at the Peterson Institute have
pointed out, there are gains from the
stymied Doha Round of trade
negotiations that should be harvested
now: ending agricultural export
subsidies; limiting food export controls;
eliminating tariffs and quotas for almost
all exports of the poorest countries;
facilitating customs and clearance
HOUSE OVERSIGHT 029825
procedures; and improving the
transparency and speed of the system for
settling disputes.
Next, the U.S. needs to keep the WTO
current with a vastly changed world
economy. The past WTO agreements are
valuable for all 158 WTO members. But
some economies want to go further by
reducing barriers in important sectors
such as the services trade, environmental
goods and services, government
procurement, and the digital economy.
The services trade, for example, is vital
for boosting innovation, productivity and
jobs in developing and developed
countries alike—but regulatory,
licensing, zoning and other barriers to
services are often equivalent to a 30%
tariff or higher. Because liberalization in
the WTO has been stuck, countries have
turned increasingly to bilateral and
multilateral free-trade agreements, some
of which have addressed these newer
topics. The U.S. should foster the WTO
principle of world-wide liberalization by
adopting standards in various industries
and sectors that would be open to all
economies that reciprocate. The WTO
also needs new rules for fair trading by
state-owned enterprises.
Yet the U.S. also should use free-trade
agreements to open markets. Trade
competition advances structural reforms
HOUSE OVERSIGHT 029826
and growth without bigger government
and more spending. The Obama
administration has talked about trans-
Pacific and trans-Atlantic accords. Yet it
has failed to close even one new free-
trade agreement. Ron Kirk, the
president's trade representative, said in
2009 that the administration did not have
"deal fever." In fact, it has been "deal
delinquent."
Fourth, gender equality is not only fair
and right—it is smart economics. No
economy can reach its potential if it
overlooks the talents of half its people.
The U.S. should lead in identifying
structural barriers in countries that hold
back girls' and women's health,
education, credit, jobs and
entrepreneurship.
Finally, the U.S. needs to match growth
priorities of developing economies.
President Obama should expand the
global food-security initiative he
announced in 2009 to boost agricultural
productivity and production across the
value chain, including through the private
sector, in sub-Saharan Africa and other
poor regions. Infrastructure investment
could increase global demand today
while building productivity for tomorrow.
The U.S. can lead a push with middle-
income economies to develop public-
private infrastructure models that move
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from "one-offs" to a deal flow. The zero
returns for savers from U.S. monetary
policy can make infrastructure
investments attractive.
In addition to offering financing, the
private sector can improve the design,
operation and maintenance of
infrastructure. As the state of Indiana has
shown, the federal government could
profitably use public-private partnerships
for its infrastructure, too.
The administration has talked about some
of these topics. But it is oddly passive, as
if it were hesitant to lead. State
Department speeches are not enough. To
carve out an international economic
strategy, the new secretary of the
Treasury needs to choreograph policies
across all U.S. departments and with
multilateral economic institutions. The
U.S. had better wake up: International
economic strategy is the new foreign
policy.
Mr. Zoellick has served as president of
the World Bank Group, U.S. trade
representative and deputy secretary of
state. He is now a fellow at the Belfer
Center at Harvard and the Peterson
Institute for International Economics.
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