Would John Kerry do a good job of filling Hillary Clinton’s shoes? JAMES TRAUB
than anyone since George Marshall. As a casting decision, it’s a no-brainer. It’s important
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TILL, I’m not the only one who knows. One very plugged-in friend of mine says that she’s talked to Pete Rouse, the Obama advisor now assembling lists of names for President Barack Obama’s second-term cabinet, and he says that Senator John Kerry has the short odds. But a White House correspondent responded by e-mail that, in fact, Kerry is “a long shot,” since Obama won’t want to risk losing a Senate seat, that U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice is still the leading candidate, but that national security advisor Tom Donilon “REALLY wants it.” Then, the New York Times reports that Donilon doesn’t want it, and that Rice is “crippled” because GOP senators will use the confirmation hearing to torture the administration over Benghazi. That’s the problem with rumors: Knowledgeable people know things that contradict what other knowledgeable people know. Since, to be honest, I don’t know what Obama is thinking — and neither does anybody else I’ve talked to — let me try to answer instead the question of who it would make the most sense for him to appoint. I think the answer is pretty clearly John Kerry. Tom Donilon is a highly competent administrator who would die of impatience halfway through an interminable lunch with Afghan President Hamid Karzai. Susan Rice is a pugnacious team player who, like Donilon, is more insider than outsider, and is notably deficient in that unctuous fluid which issues from the pores of professional diplomats. She would make a very good national security advisor if Donilon goes elsewhere. Obama, by all accounts, trusts Rice’s judgment and is very fond of her; but he may be penetrating enough to see her shortcomings. John Kerry is Hillary Clinton in pants. (Yes, I know, Secretary Clinton also wears pants.) He came within a whisker of being president — much closer than she did — and thus enjoys the aura of the almost-commander in chief. He is, like Clinton, a kind of living embodiment of America. He is immensely solemn and judicious, like her, but, unlike her, immensely tall. He is a decorated veteran with the iron grip of the ex-athlete. His baritone voice bespeaks bottomless gravitas. The man looks and acts more like a secretary of state
aftermath of the arrest of CIA agent Raymond Davis, and the killing of Osama bin Laden;
I’d like to tell you who’s going to be the next secretary of state. But I can’t. It’s a secret. to understand what space Kerry, or someone else, would be seeking to fill. With a few important exceptions, Hillary Clinton has not been asked to formulate America foreign policy but rather to represent it, to talk about
it, and to execute it. And she has done so almost flawlessly. If she is a conceptual thinker, she has kept her vision to herself. The big thinking in this administration comes from the Big Thinker in the White House, and a very small circle of aides. That is unlikely to change. And Kerry, though deeply familiar with everything and everyone, poses no danger of trying to impose a worldview of his own. He is an implementer, not a thinker. Tell John Kerry to take that hill, and he will take that hill or die trying. Then there’s the foreign policy work that needs to be done. Pervaiz Kayani. He visited Pakistan in the
and both times he left cooler tempers in his wake (though the effect didn’t last). In 2009, he listened to Hamid Karzai rant for hours about how the world was shafting him before finally persuading Karzai that it was not in
his own interest to accept the outcome of the transparently rigged election which has just won him a second term as prime minister. If anyone can talk those guys off a ledge, it’s Kerry. All presidents want to bring peace to the Middle East. They all fail, but that doesn’t stop them from trying. Nor should they. In the first term, Obama delegated that task to George Mitchell, his special representative. That won’t work; the Israelis need to feel that they are the most important thing in the world, just as the U.S. Congress tells them they are. John Kerry has known Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, since the latter was
Europe still a model for Asian integration? ing will cause the destruction of the EU. Old prejudices between the north
JEERAWAT NA THALANG
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HE ongoing eurozone crisis has raised the question whether the European Union (EU) is still a model for regional integration for Southeast Asian countries. The euro provides less flexibility for countries affected by sovereign debt to manoeuvre their way out of economic trouble. At a recent AsianEuropean Editors’ Roundtable organised by Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, two experts exchanged views on why the EU is a success story. In addition, should Southeast Asian countries strive for some kind of integration with the ultimate objective of creating permanent peace in the region. The euro-zone debt problem is a crisis in the big picture of the EU project, which has overcome many challenges in the past, including the fall of communism in Eastern Europe in 1989, leading to German unification in 1990. “Under the leadership of Chancellor Helmut Kohl, it was possible to combine German unification and the currency union project,” Pflueger said. While the eurozone debt crisis dominates headlines in the press, the EU is in fact “a political move,” Pflueger said. Therefore, there is no question of whether the EU should have Greece and Italy on board. “For political reasons, for stability, there’s a consensus to have them in the euro,” he said. The EU members are closely connected. Seventy per cent of exported goods from Germany go to other EU countries. And now, countries such as Spain, Greece, Poland and Ireland have received rescue funds from the EU to help them through their financial woes. The crisis erupted in 2009 when it was found that Greece had a high hidden deficit. There was a sudden uproar, but a lack of firm assurances from EU leaders made the matter worse. “Had the EU said at that time, we know the problem and the EU can handle it [the situation would not have been so bad]. However, the reaction from the EU was ambiguous, causing chain reactions in other euro-zone countries such as Spain and Italy,” he said. The crisis caused by a lack of trust is critical. “Japan’s public debt is higher but people trust Japan,” he added. “We have to restore trust.” He dismissed the notion of Greek exiting the euro, saying, “Greece leav-
disputes in the South China Sea. In addition, Asean countries have different
Professor Friedbert Pflueger, chief executive officer of Pflueger International Consulting GmbH, a former politician of the German Christian Democratic Union (CDU), insisted “the EU is a great success story”. European history was shattered by wars between arch-enemies France and Germany. But the EU project, starting with cooperation in coal and steel, has so far brought long-term peace. “We have lived with peace in the EU for 60 years. Peace is self-evident and natural for people in the EU,” said Pflueger, who is also the German secretary of state in the Federal Ministry of Defence.
and south [of Europe] will be back.” But if the EU has been successful in ensuring peace, does it serve as a model for Asia to follow? Brahma Chellaney, professor of strategic studies at the Centre for Policy Research, said that compared to Europe, the inter-institutional structure in Asia is not adequate to provide for regional integration on the lines of the EU. The Asean project, created in 1967, was aimed at bringing peace and stability to the region in the same way as the European project did. Asean started the Asean Free Trade Area in the early 1990s and is now moving towards the Asean Economic Community (AEC), to promote freer flows of goods, services and capital across the region.However, Asean leaders have so far shied away from discussing political and security issues in the region, such as territorial
views on the presence of the superpowers in the region. On the Obama administration’s military “pivot” to the region, the Philippines welcomes the plan but some countries like Thailand do not want to offend China. Chellaney said that regional integration in Asia is contingent on a number of factors. First, Asian countries have to get rid of the baggage of history and negative legacies. Asians have to come to terms with history, as the European countries have done, before moving on to other areas of cooperation. Secondly, Asian countries have to deal with rising nationalism, which, in the Asian context, comes with an increase in wealth. “The more prosperous, the more nationalistic countries become,” said Chellaney. “There is a surge of identity of roots, and governments tend to whip up nationalism.” —Courtesy - Nation, Thailand
making a living in Cambridge, Massachussetts, some twenty-odd years ago. I have heard him say nice things about Netanyahu off the record. He knows everyone who matters in Israel, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey. If a relationship of trust confers any advantage — and I’m not convinced that it does — Kerry has that edge. Kerry is also a world-class listener. When I traveled to Afghanistan with him in 2010, he
(see this striking WikiLeaks cable). But the Arab autocrats club is history. The point is not that Kerry is naïve, or soft on dictators. It’s rather that he is, to a profound degree, a status quo figure who deals with the world as he finds it. When I taxed him over his role in Syria, he said to me, “Countries and people and leaders of countries act out of self-interest. Foreign policy is the art of finding those interests and seeing what serves your na-
The Obama administration will spend the next few years trying to extricate itself from Afghanistan and, collaterally, Pakistan with the least possible risk to America’s reputation or national security. Kerry has been the White House’s designated placater of Hamid Karzai and Pakistan’s military chief of staff, Gen. Pervez Kayani let me sit in while he met with a leading human rights campaigner. “Tell me where you think we are,” he said. And, “What do you think are the chances of a civil war?” And, “What is the U.S. doing wrong?” And “What is your most important advice for us?” It has to be very flattering to be so earnestly interrogated by an enormously tall man who was almost president of the United States. Tom Donilon and Susan Rice can’t do that. John Kerry will make heads of state everywhere feel that American policy is in good hands. He is the secretary of state they would choose if anyone was asking. But this is a limitation, too. The world has been knocked from its moorings; some of the friendly autocrats Kerry had spent years cultivating, like Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak, have been toppled by popular outrage. Kerry’s understanding of the world has been profoundly shaped by the countless hours he has spent talking to leaders in their palaces. He understands their problems. After repeated visits to Syria, for example, Kerry became convinced that President Bashar al-Assad was a man the United States could do business with. Assad and his wife drove Kerry to a mosque in Damascus and spoke sadly of the decline of secularism and the rise of Islamic fundamentalism. Kerry nodded his great, graven image of a head. He asked Assad to take confidencebuilding steps, and Assad came through. Good friends like the Emir of Qatar told Kerry that Syria held the key to Middle East peace
tion and trying to marry them.” Kerry operates one small turn of the wheel at a time. But his caution goes further than that: He also accepts the existing terms of debate. Throughout the 2009 debate on policy towards Afghanistan, when Vice President Joe Biden was torturing the generals with tough questions about counterinsurgency and proposing a sharply different alternative, Kerry was keeping mum. He has never deviated sharply from the administration position on this or almost anything else. Kerry is prepared to pilot the boat in the face of incoming fire, but not to rock it. He has courage — but not intellectual courage. Perhaps Kerry would be more outspoken inside the White House than out. He is not one to speak out of turn. The combination of his natural ponderousness and his extreme care about secret discussions often make him maddeningly vague in public. His default public posture is a kind of high-minded WASP propriety. In private, he is a gracious man with impeccable manners, genuinely curious about others, at times touchingly deferential. And the same restraint and reserve which made him such an unsatisfying presidential candidate have also made him the kind of consummate diplomat whom the White House has counted on to soothe troubled waters in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Sudan, and elsewhere. Kerry has shortcomings. Who doesn’t? But I can’t think of anyone who would be better for the job.—Courtesy - FP.
Future scenario
How to View Defense Spending in Asia DR ROBERT FARLEY A recent Defense News special report highlighted global trends in defense spending. The conclusions are unsurprising; The locus of global military spending (and global military power) is shifting towards Asia, especially as some European countries ramp down defense expenditures. The “Asian Pivot” by the United States threatens to exacerbate this trend, although the United States already devotes a great percentage of its military strength to the Pacific. The bulk of new spending comes in the form of investment in air and naval capabilities, revealing an international focus. Spending on armies can go to either international influence or to domestic security; ships, planes, and the support capabilities necessary to keep them sailing and flying tend to have foreign objectives. To be sure, the shift in weight of defense spending can be overstated. Britain and France remain two of the most prolific spenders, with big ticket items including major warship and aircraft purchases. A few other European countries (most notably Norway and Poland ) have also accelerated defense spending. Taken as a whole, the European Union can throw around a considerable amount of military weight, especially given the lack of any internal tensions. Moreover, the purveyors of the most sophisticated defense technology continue to hail from Europe (as well as the United States). The increase in absolute defense spending in Asia obscures an important truth, however; despite the increases, the economies of East and South Asia remain relatively demilitarized in comparison to the Cold War. Apart from North Korea, no South or East Asian country spends more than three percent of its GDP on defense. India devotes a considerably lower percentage of its economy to defense today than it did during the Cold War. Chinese military expenditures have similarly declined as percentage of GDP. Russia spends only a tiny fraction of what it spent during the Cold War, and unlike China and India it spends from a smaller pie. Japan, of course, remains constitutionally com-
mitted to 1% spending, which remains an enormous amount because of the
creases represent balancing against one another, perhaps with a focus on
Rights to the waters of the Nile have been long disputed between downstream and upstream countries. According to the 1929 and 1959 colonial treaties, Egypt and Sudan hold absolute rights to the Nile’s waters. However, after independence, these agreements have been contested. Ethiopia is currently constructing the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, which would provide the country with hydroelectric power as well irrigation flow. Downstream states, especially Egypt, have felt threatened by Ethiopia’s actions. If diplomatic efforts were to be fail, these tensions could potentially lead to serious regional conflict. size of the Japanese economy. By comparison, the United States currently spends 4.5% of its GDP on defense (including costs associated with the ongoing war in Afghanistan) while both Britain and France spend more than 2%.
China. A second interpretation, however, implies that the great powers of Asia feel relatively secure, and have not yet begun to engage in the kind of defense buildup that would suggest real concern about their safety. In American political culture, dire warn-
There are at least three potential interpretations of the increase in Asian defense spending. The first is straightforward; Asian powers are beginning to transform post-Cold War economic growth into military power, producing more modern, competent, and capable military organizations (especially at sea and in the air). The broad trend of defense growth suggests that these in-
ings about the paucity of the defense budget are common, and yet few-to-no Asian countries devote nearly the same resources to defense as the U.S. In this interpretation, the absolute increases represent simply the results of economic growth, perhaps looming larger in the imagination because of simultaneous cuts to European budgets. —Courtesy - TD.
Transitions
China and America’s Economic Challenges JAMES PARKER
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N the United States, the world’s largest economy, President Obama has secured a second term as leader of the country. In China, the second largest economy, by this time next week new leaders will likely have been confirmed as well. In both cases, the new leaders will officially begin their terms in 2013, even if Obama has the luxury of being already on the job. The end of the leadership “contests” in both countries sees the end of a struggle for power which at times got pretty tough. Obama has already been dealing with a sluggish post crisis-economy, and China’s incoming president and prime minister have also already been bat-
tling economic difficulties in their current roles in government. For both countries, whilst by this time next week the political-leadership struggles may be over, from an economic and financial standpoint, the real challenges are yet to come. For the United States, the most pressing issue is the impending “fiscal cliff”. This is the term used to describe an automatic package of tax increases and spending cuts with a combined value of appx. U.S. $600 billion. Time is tight with only weeks before the deadline on 1st January 2013. Without a deal to either increase the U.S. government debt ceiling, or an extension of the deadline, the U.S. will almost certainly fall into a double dip recession in 2013. The Republicans have lost the presidential
election, and have some pretty hard soul searching to do as to why. Their control in the House of Representatives and ongoing ability to complicate matters in the Senate makes them extremely relevant though, especially since they can effectively kill any attempt to push the fiscal cliff further down the road. China’s new leaders, face an equally daunting task. Whilst China’s growth rates still far outshine that of the U.S., the economy is facing structural issues which will take years, and a lot of political capital to resolve. The investment heavy growth model is unsustainable, even if one more burst of investment stimulus may be tempting to a new president and prime minister looking to consolidate their power next year. China’s rebalancing must require house-
holds to get a larger share of the economic pie, allowing consumption to take over as a growth engine rather than debt-backed investment which is increasingly misallocating capital. The main challenge for the incoming leaders if they are serious about rebalancing is going to be overcoming the opposition of “entrenched interests” as key policies are reversed. These interests include those linked to state owned enterprises, the export industries, any employers relying on cheap labour, and any firms addicted to what is effectively “subsidized” credit. If the U.S. tumbles over its fiscal cliff, the outlook for China will become that much harder. A double dip U.S. recession will further batter China’s export markets (pain which will also be felt by countries in China’s manufacturing sup-
ply chains) and rebalancing for Beijing will be much harder in the resulting dismal international environment. One bit of good news for emerging markets is that Chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve Ben Bernanke, whose looser monetary policies at the Fed have maintained a comfortable international liquidity situation, is now set to keep his job (whereas Romney had promised to remove him). In addition, with the fiscal cliff line up now unchanged, it is more likely than before that Bernanke will have to offset a fiscal rooted slowdown next year with even more monetary accommodation. Generally speaking, abundant liquidity in developed markets is positive for emerging market performance. —Courtesy - The Diplomat.