What next, Mr. President?

The President waves to the crowd before his 2012 acceptance speech.

    On Nov. 6, Barack Obama secured a second term as President of the United States of America. While I congratulate Obama on his victory, I must ask: what exactly, Mr. President, will you do in the next four years?
    The focus of Obama’s reelection campaign was the economy, so it is reasonable to assume that he will make strengthening the economy his top priority. The centerpiece of the President’s first-term economic policy was the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (i.e. the stimulus), which made long-term investments in infrastructure, green energy, education and manufacturing. Obama plans to enact another, smaller stimulus in his second term, named the American Jobs Act, which will cut income and payroll taxes and increase infrastructure and education spending. The rest of his economic plan consists of an overhaul of the tax code and investments in energy. Obama promises to raise the capital gains tax (a tax on investments and stocks held for more than one year that primarily affects the wealthy) from 15 to 20 percent and to raise taxes on the top two tax brackets from 33 and 35 percent to 36 and 39.6 percent, respectively. His tax plan also includes promises to eliminate loopholes and to streamline the tax code for businesses and individuals. The plan specifies to phase out loopholes for those with incomes over $200,000 and to eliminate several loopholes for large companies, although how it plans to streamline the tax code remains unclear. He also aims to create or extend numerous tax credits for individuals and businesses, such as a $3,000 credit per each worker hired for businesses, cut the corporate tax rate, eliminate the current tax credit for outsourcing and extend the Bush tax cuts and other tax cuts and credits for individuals making less than $200,000 per year.

The President’s energy policy in his next term will be similar to his first term’s energy policy. Obama plans to focus primarily on funding alternative energy while also expanding access to cheap hydrocarbons. He aims to raise fuel efficiency requirements for vehicles, set a requirement that all utilities must produce 80 percent of their electricity by 2035, continue funding and supporting the alternative energy industry and increase gas, oil and coal production by opening up some public lands to drilling and encouraging hydraulic fracking (a new, controversial type of natural gas extraction) while insisting on higher environmental safeguards for drilling and fracking.

    For the President, economic policy and fiscal policy dovetail, which is why he has proposed a plan for cutting the deficit. His plan for reducing the deficit centers around an 80-page deficit reduction plan that he drafted in 2011. Obama calls for raising taxes on the wealthy by eliminating the capital gains tax, raising marginal income tax rates and eliminating loopholes for the wealthy. The plan also incorporates spending cuts. Obama plans to cut $257 billion from discretionary spending, primary by cutting subsidies to agriculture and the oil industry. He will also cut $450 billion from the defense budget, try to cut Medicare’s budget by negotiating with pharmaceutical companies to lower drug prices and to levy an additional Social Security tax of 2-4 percent on those with incomes over $200,000 to try to make Social Security solvent, among other things. According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO), this budget will cut the debt by $2 trillion and increase GDP growth by 0.6 percent, although the President’s opponents point out that his budget adds $4 trillion to the deficit when compared to the CBO’s baseline budget, which includes the expiration of the Bush tax cuts and sequestration (an imminent series of spending cuts). Despite his willingness to cut the deficit, Obama has stated that he will try to prevent the impending “fiscal cliff” (i.e. the impending combination of the expiration of the Bush tax cuts and sequestration), which is projected by the CBO to put the economy back into recession. Like much of Obama’s economic policy, however, his deficit plan is unlikely to pass through the Republican-controlled House.

Indeed, because the Democrats do not control Congress, the only thing that Obama can be guaranteed to do in his second term is to cement the achievements of his first term. Two of his main accomplishments, the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (Dodd-Frank), a banking and financial sector reform law and the Affordable Care Act, still have major provisions that need to be implemented. The main achievement of Dodd-Frank was to require regulatory agencies and new committees set up by the law to draft and enact certain regulations of the financial sector. Only one-half of these rules have been drafted however, so Obama will have to fight to get the rest of the regulations drafted. Similarly, most of the important provisions of the Affordable Care Act, including the individual mandate and the ban on gender discrimination by insurance companies, will be enacted in 2014. Since several states are already trying to fight these provisions through both legislation and governor decree, Obama will have to fight, using the courts, personal influence over state governments and possibly legislation, to ensure that the main provisions of healthcare reform get enacted.

On social policy, Obama supports gay rights, gender equality and immigration reform. The most important social policy for Obama is women’s rights, judging by the amount of focus he placed on it in his first term. The President aims to expand free contraceptive access to women, pass the Paycheck Fairness Act, which aims to make it easier for victims of wage discrimination to discover if they are being discriminated against and to seek justice and to try to pass other bills that combat sexual violence and wage discrimination. The President believes that women should be allowed to get abortions, so he will likely oppose potential legislation that restricts access to abortions, both in Congress and at the state level. In terms of gay rights issues, Obama supports legalization of same-sex marriage, although how he plans to achieve this is unclear, as it can only be accomplished by amending the Constitution. He also plans to enact the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (which bans hiring discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity) and repeal the Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage as between a man and a woman for federal purposes. On the issue of immigration, the President’s platform notes his support for reforming and streamlining the immigration process, although his platform lists no explicit reforms. He is a noted supporter of the DREAM Act, which would provide illegal immigrants who are students or soldiers in America with permanent residency status, and he would probably make trying to pass the DREAM Act his biggest goal as far as immigration is concerned. Since he has described his failure to pass the the DREAM Act as the biggest failure of his first term, it is reasonable to expect that he will make pushing for the DREAM Act one of his top priorities in his second term.

Although Obama fought for all of these issues in his first term, the extent to which he would be able to achieve them in his second term is limited due to both the limited Constitutional role of the President and the fact that the House is controlled by Republicans. The most important way that Obama can influence social policy is through whom he appoints to the Supreme Court. Four justices are in their late 70s and are thus likely to retire. The Court, which is split 5-4, is set to rule on cases concerning the constitutionality of the 1968 Civil Rights Act, the Defense of Marriage Act, the constitutionality of affirmative action and California’s Proposition 8, among other important social issues, so who Obama appoints to the Court will have long-lasting effects on social issues.

The foreign policy of Obama’s second term, like his first term, will be centered on slowly ending the War on Terror while preparing to face other, more long-term threats. Obama’s primary foreign policy challenge in his next term will be to ensure that the 2014 withdrawal from Afghanistan goes well. The success of the withdrawal will be contingent on whether Afghan security forces are able to fight terrorism on their own in 2014 and whether the Afghan government will be able to become functioning, strong and non-corrupt, so the President will likely focus on making these things happen in his second term. Even after the Afghanistan withdrawal, Obama will have to continue to fight terrorism. He will probably continue his policy of drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen, and will have to manage the backlash and opposition that they generate, although he has offered no specifics.

The President’s primary foreign policy plan is to shift American power away from the Middle East and towards Asia. The centerpiece of this effort will be to continue the “pivot” to Asia, which is the rebalancing of American power (especially military power) towards East Asia and especially China. The President promises to shift 60 percent of our military strength to Asia by 2020, an effort that is already underway, and to attack China’s allegedly unfair trade policies, although he probably will not do so due to the risk of starting a trade war. He also will likely reach out to American allies in East Asia, especially India, and continue to invest in military hardware for South Korea and Japan. Unfortunately, he has offered few specifics on other major foreign policy issues, including Iran, the rise of the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India and China) and the economic crisis in Europe. Judging from his first-term’s record, Obama will likely try to reach out to Brazil and India, increase sanctions on Iran while continuing both covert military actions against Iran and create efforts to find a diplomatic way to remove Iran’s nuclear weapons and ignore the crisis in Europe.

Barack Obama has a difficult four years ahead of him. He will have to fix the economy, prevent the deficit from spiraling further out of control, protect the rights of minorities and refocus our foreign policy towards long-term threats, all while having to battle strong Republican opposition in Congress. I wish him good luck. He’ll need it.

We gave up in Afghanistan today

An American medic treats a wounded French soldier in Afghanistan.

Something huge happened today: we gave up in Afghanistan. This was a long time coming. American interest in the war has fallen substantially and is now nearly non-existent. The Republicans did not mention the war at their convention (Clint Eastwood's mention of Afghanistan in his speech, the only mention of the war in the Republican convention, does not count) and devoted just part of a paragraph to it in their platform while the Democrats mentioned the war just once at their convention. The war receives just two percent of all news coverage. Although everything from the high price and difficulty of the covering the war to the complexity of the conflict (which makes it too difficult for most Americans to understand), the main reason the war is not featured in the media is simple: people just don’t care about it. Three-fourths of Americans disapprove of the war, and almost none rank it as the most important issue in the Presidential election. Even the government is ignoring the war. Because of its unpopularity, the war in Afghanistan is ignored by the President. The most popular solution, speeding the withdrawal, is militarily impossible: the Afghan army is not ready to maintain order in Afghanistan or combat terrorism, evidenced by its systemic corruption, its failure in counter-terrorism operations (specifically in the Helmand region), and, most importantly, the huge number of green-on-blue attacks that raise questions about the loyalty and cohesiveness of the Afghan force. The President knows that he is in a double-bind: succumbing to popular opinion would lead to a partial collapse of the Afghan state at best and a Taliban resurgence at worst, neither of which would go over well with voters, while dragging on the expensive and bloody war is unpopular. The best solution for the President is to thus keep the war out of the spotlight, where it cannot hurt his chances for re-election.

All of this collective disgust with the war and ignorance towards it has an effect on the situation on the ground. The President’s sole focus in Afghanistan has, for the past year, been trying to end the war as quickly as possible. The entirety of the Afghanistan section in his platform is devoted to reminding the American people that he is orchestrating the withdrawal of American forces from the country. Indeed, his entire line of attack against Romney in his platform is that Romney “has suggested he would leave [American troops in Afghanistan] indefinitely.” The consequences of this have been his decision to publicly announce the withdrawal timeline (which is very useful for the Taliban because it gives them a clearly defined schedule for preparing to reconquer Afghanistan, a schedule that yesterday’s massive, complex attack on “impregnable” Camp Bastion proves they are following) and to leave no troops in Afghanistan after the deadline, which could contribute to instability there if the Afghan army is not ready by 2014, as now looks probable.

The president’s strategy vis-a-vis Afghanistan is now shifting to include another aim: keep the war out of the spotlight. This shift in strategy is best illustrated by today’s announcement that man-on-man training of the Afghan army, which is more effective than training in huge groups (think of the benefits of learning from a tutor over learning in a huge lecture hall), will be ended. This will surely reduce number of American casualties (which will also reduce the amount of news coverage the war receives), but it will make the Afghan army less effective. Although it can be argued that Obama is simply showing concern for our troops, we have to keep in mind that the point of sending soldiers somewhere is for them to go into harm’s way. While it is very generous of Obama to care for American troops, it runs counter to the point of deploying soldiers somewhere in the first place.

It’s hard to place the blame on Obama for America’s failure to fully commit to Afghanistan because it is brought on by the American people’s apathy and disgust towards the war. Mitt Romney’s vague plan for Afghanistan, which consists of little other than a promise to provide security in South and Central Asia (that’s about as specific as if he made his China policy “interact with China”) and a criticism of Obama’s public announcement of the withdrawal timeline. If we want to see change in our Afghanistan policy, we need to take interest in the war. We can’t have both a speedy withdrawal and a low-intensity war. We have to ramp up troop training efforts and supervision of the Afghan forces if we want order to stay in the country. Bases for drones and special operations will have to stay past the 2014 deadline in the likely event that terrorism threatens the Afghan government. We may even need to do a top-down restructuring of the Afghan government and military to root out corruption and diffuse power from the current elite to include more ethnic groups. Will this take a lot of effort and resources? Of course. But we have committed far too many resources to Afghanistan to simply half-ass the final, crucial transition and waste our 11 years of hard work there. Afghanistan is not just some backwards hellhole that we invaded in an imperialist fit of post-9/11 rage. It is a resource rich energy hub that, if its natural gas and minerals are exploited and the proposed pipelines through there are built, could change the balance of power in Asia depending on which country, China or India (or both or neither) exploits it first. It is a key piece in the struggle between India, a rising superpower, and Pakistan, an important player in the War on Terror, that shapes all of our interactions with South Asia and most of our policy towards the Indian Ocean. And, finally, it has the potential to become a terrorist base once again, which would allow for Al-Qaeda to launch another mass casualty attack on the American mainland. Afghanistan is still crucial to our country’s security, and if we give up now, all our resources spent their will be wasted. If the American public puts pressure on the Administration to go whole hog in Afghanistan, we may yet succeed. It is not yet too late.

Christopher Stevens: In Memorandum

An artist's depiction of Operation Eldorado Canyon, in which U.S. aircraft attacked state terrorists in Libya with a single, high-firepower airstrike. Obama's response to the death of Christopher Stevens strongly resembles this operation.

 
The death of Christopher Stevens, the American ambassador to Libya, is a tragedy. That, hopefully, should be agreed upon by everyone. This tragedy should help us reflect on both how we interact with the world and how our counter-terrorism strategy is evolving.

We must first be clear about what happened in Benghazi. Crowds in Libya and Egypt attacked U.S. consulates roughly simultaneously. The mobs in Libya and Egypt were protesting over an internet video titled "Muhammed Movie Trailer" released by an Israeli-American Jew. The 14-minute video is an untrue, libelous and sick assault against the founder of Islam. Muslims thus ought to be disgusted by this video. The protests at the U.S. consulates seem to have been sparked by the belief that this video was broadcast on the American mainstream news media and that it reflected the beliefs of most Americans. Both of these beliefs are of course false, but what matters is not whether they are true, but how they came to be believed. It appears that an activist leaked the video to a reporter, who in turn spread it via Facebook to Libya and/or Egypt, where it quickly spread and went viral. Although the crowd in Benghazi that protested outside the U.S. Consulate was never peaceful (they scaled the consulate wall and burned an American flag), they were not what did Stevens in. The protest was infiltrated by insurgents, who attacked Stevens and his entourage with a rocket propelled grenade and automatic weapons. The insurgents possibly have links to Al-Qaeda, according to the Wall Street Journal.

There are a few things that are significant about this event. First, the fact that an insignificant video can be seen by thousands of Muslims as representative of prevailing American culture speaks to the fact that the U.S. has an image problem. Here, it is apparent that this image problem is not, as some claim, a result of the fact that the U.S.' primary means for interacting with the world is through its military. While it is true that America's main way of interacting with her enemies and neutral countries is through military force (or threats and shows of force), we no longer live in an area where states are the main global actors. Instead, groups of people, from Libya's National Transitional Council to the protestors in Tahrir Square to Al-Qaeda, are the main actors in the world. Most global individuals interact with the U.S. in one of two ways: through our culture (which includes not only our values, but also how we convey those values e.g. entertainment and the media) and our economy, namely through multinational U.S. corporations that sell to all nations, although the former is clearly more influential. While it is idealistic and pretty hopeless to ask the media to tone down the Islamophobia in order to protect American lives, it is the only real solution.

In remarks following Stevens' murder, Obama stated that he would "avenge" Stevens' death. Obama gave us a pretty clear indication of what he meant by that: two Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, heavily armed warships designed for air defense and high-volume bombardment, were deployed to Libya. U.S. drone aircraft have also been spotted in Eastern Libya, where the attack took place. So Obama is planning to crush Stevens' killers with overwhelming force. The unilateralism of this operation and its reliance on a single, highly visible usage of heavy firepower (in contrast to a protracted counter-insurgency campaign like Afghanistan or a lower-profile targeted operation like the U.S. operations in Pakistan) seem reminiscent of the approaches Reagan and Clinton took to counter-terrorism, namely to the Eldorado Canyon operation in Libya and the attack on Tora Bora under Clinton. Does this mean that Obama is changing his counter-terrorism strategy from targeted killings to overwhelming force? Probably not, since deterrence by force (aka "shock and awe") has clearly not worked against Al-Qaeda. However, it is important to keep in mind that the the insurgents who carried out today's Benghazi attack are representative of the new face of global Islamic terrorism: local groups operating under the banner of Al-Qaeda to increase their publicity and get support from both foreign donors and local recruits. With that in mind, it seems that Obama is trying to send a message to these Al-Qaeda-inspired groups, many of whom have less resolve than Al-Qaeda itself (compare how much longer Al-Qaeda in Pakistan has held out to how long Al-Qaeda in Nigeria and the Philippines have held out): if you associate with Al-Qaeda at all, you will be wiped out. If this strategy is successful, which it probably will be since it relies on basic, tested theories of deterrence, it will mean the end of global terrorism, and thus of the ability of terrorist organizations to conduct global operations like 9/11. However, it will also serve to drive local terrorist groups, especially the less dedicated ones, underground, decreasing their effectiveness. While this would make it more difficult to root out these organizations, it would also take away our rationale for doing so: that they pose a threat to our security. In other words, if this strategy and Obama's current targeted killing strategy aimed at Al-Qaeda's leadership work, it will mean the end of global Islamic terror. Let's hope it works.

what the Republican house means for the world

I thought we were better than this, America. The results of this year’s election are in, and America has spoken: throw the bums out! Or, more specifically our nation’s voters have decided that they want less taxes and government spending. The House is now dominated by Republicans, and the Democratic majority in the Senate is slipping.
So what does this mean for our nation? The most obvious impact of this new decision is that Obama won’t be able to get many of his campaign promises through Congress. Don’t expect another healthcare bill or stimulus package for a long, long time. What this means for Obama is obvious: his popularity will plummet even further, and he may end up being only a one-term president. But for America? Our nation will collapse even further, unless we throw these new Republican bums out.
Most think-tanks and professors will agree that there are two issues that outweigh all other issues in politics: the economy and foreign policy. These two issues are endlessly intertwined, and have been the most important issues in American elections since 1776.
First comes the economy. This was the main reason the Republicans captured the House: frustration over Obama’s shortcomings in the economic sector. These aren’t totally unwarranted. The unemployment rate has continued to skyrocket, and the market is barely stable. This, however, fails to recognize the fact that Obama and his despicable bailouts, now the symbols of big government, brought Wall Street and Detroit back from the brink and have significantly slowed the pace of economic decline.
It’s no secret that the Republicans want to repeal the bailouts, slash spending and cut taxes. Shrinking government, after all, is practically the definition of conservatism. The results of this will be disastrous. It was Bush’s deregulation that allowed banks to get away with the shady subprime loans that caused this mess in the first place. Tax cuts have also failed. The New York Times pointed out that Obama slipped a $116 billion tax slipped into his stimulus package, but consumer spending has remained level. Sure Obama’s big government tactics haven’t fixed the economy, but that’s simply because they haven’t fixed the economy yet.
So what happens if we let the Republicans derail Obama’s next bailout and deregulate the economy? The simple answer is that this recession becomes the “Great Recession”, featuring more unemployment and long recovery times, as well as all of the associated harms.
But that’s just the simple answer. The long answer involves something called a trade war. A trade was involves a great number of sanctions, tariffs, economic legislation and other governmental action to ensure that another country’s exports don’t undercut one’s own economy. In today’s modern, globalized economy, the trade war is becoming the most common form of combat, coming before war or even diplomacy.
The United States has been engaged in a trade war before, fighting the Japanese and their minions Toyota and Mitsubishi in the 70s and 80s. Needless to say, we won, but not because of lasseiz-faire capitalism, as the Republican party likes to announce. Rather, we won that war through increased governmental regulations, such as a law mandating that a certain percentage of all automobiles purchased in this country be made in this country.
These days, the Internet is aflame with talk of a new trade war, this time with China. The panic started after an incident a few weeks ago in which China cut off its supply of rare-earth metals (neither rare nor earths, this group of 17 elements is essential in everything from earbuds to smart bombs) to Japan after the two nations had a scuffle over some disputed islands.
Many experts contend that China and the United States are on course to have another such trade war of epic proportions, “Trade War I” if you will. They also agree that if we let the market run its course (the Republican advocacy) we will almost certainly lose.
The effects of such a loss would be disastrous. Not only will our economy tank, but our foreign relations will decline. We will be delegated from a “hyperpower” to a mere superpower, one that has to do battle with China, which will emerge from Trade War I as the world’s other superpower. America’s ties with the world’s other rising power, India, will be cut once India realizes it can gain nothing from the weakened United States, and progress in the War on Terror will become impossible. But it won’t just be India who will lose respect for us. Much of the rest of the world, from Brazil to Djibouti will stop caring about what the United States wants, and many 3rd world countries will abandon American aid for Chinese aid.
Clearly the effects of a Republican Congress are to be disastrous. When the 2012 election rolls around, be sure to remember to throw these Republican bums out too.