NEWS,23.10.2012

Presidential Election: Obama, Romney Race To Finish Line

 

With just two weeks until Election Day, President Barack Obama on Tuesday began a cross-country rush to hold onto office in tough economic times with a new booklet outlining his second-term agenda and a closing argument that the choice comes down to trust.The president emerged from the last of his debates with Republican Mitt Romney fueled by a rush of adrenaline matched by thousands of boisterous supporters who filled the outdoor Delray Tennis Center to hear him speak. The crowd repeatedly interrupted Obama's 22-minute speech with applause and chants of "four more years" that drowned out his remarks.Obama, with sleeves rolled up, held up a copy of the full-color, 20-page "Blueprint for America's Future" that his campaign planned to distribute across the country  a booklet that offered a repackaging of his ideas in response to GOP criticism that he hasn't clearly articulated a plan for the next four years. He argued that voters want to know what a presidential candidate will fight for and said Romney isn't offering a clear vision."We joke about Romnesia," Obama said, a reference to his joke that his challenger has a habit of vacillating positions. "But you know what? This actually is something important. This is about trust. There is no more serious issue in a presidential campaign than trust."Neither side can claim the lead at this late stage with polls showing a neck-and-neck race nationally and in some of the key swing states. Obama's challenge is to convince voters who may be hurting financially that he is better qualified to lead the country back to economic prosperity than Romney, who made a fortune as a successful businessman."Florida, you know me," Obama said. "You can trust that I say what I mean and I mean what I say. And yes, we've been through tough times. But you've never seen me quit."Both campaigns predicted victory, trying to ward off worries among the supporters they need to get to the polls. "In two weeks, a majority of Americans will choose Gov. Romney's positive agenda over President Obama's increasingly desperate attacks," said Romney spokesman Ryan Williams in a statement responding to the president's Florida rally.Obama senior strategist David Axelrod said he was confident Obama would win and that Americans soon will know who's been bluffing in their dueling declarations of victory. "We have the ball, we have the lead," Axelrod told reporters on a conference call.Axelrod said the campaign was printing 3.5 million copies of his second-term agenda to reach the "small universe" of voters who haven't made up their minds. The booklet, which they plan to distribute at events and campaign offices across the country, outlines the president's plans to improve education, boost manufacturing jobs, enhance U.S.-made energy, reduce the federal deficit and raise taxes on the wealthy.Romney policy director Lanhee Chen responded that Obama was trying to fool people into thinking he has new ideas when all he's offering is more of the same plans that Chen said have been ineffective. "A glossy pamphlet two weeks before an election is no substitute for a real agenda for America. As much as President Obama might try, you can't gloss over four years like the last four," Chen wrote in a memo.Obama also touted economic gains in a new 60-second television advertisement in which he speaks directly to the camera about his plans for a second term. The ad will air in the nine states whose electoral votes are still considered up for grabs – New Hampshire, Virginia, North Carolina, Florida, Ohio, Wisconsin, Iowa, Nevada and Colorado.Those states were sure to see a burst of activity in visits from the two campaigns, political commercials and voter mobilization in the race that's likely to cost upward of $2 billion by the time it all ends. Obama campaigned Tuesday in Florida and was headed to Ohio, while Romney's campaign plane taxied past Air Force One on Tuesday morning as he headed West to Nevada and Colorado.With 270 electoral votes needed for victory, Obama at this point appears on track to win 237 while Romney appears to have 191. The other 110 electoral votes are in the hotly contested battleground states.Asked Tuesday whether the race comes down to Ohio, Virginia and Florida as some observers have suggested, Vice President Joe Biden described the three as "critically important." He predicted victory in Ohio and Florida without mentioning Virginia."Look, this is going to be close," Biden said on NBC's "Today." "We always knew at the end of the day this was going to be a close race, no matter who the Republicans nominated."After Obama and Biden campaign together in Ohio, the president splits off on what his campaign is describing as a two-day "around-the-clock" blitz to six more battleground states. He'll be in constant motion making voter calls and sleeping aboard Air Force One as he flies overnight Wednesday from Nevada to Tampa, Fla.The vice president is midway through a three-day tour of uber-battleground Ohio, and Obama's team contends its best way of ensuring victory is a win there. The campaign says internal polling gives Obama a lead in the Midwestern battleground state, in large part because of the popularity of the president's bailout of the auto industry.But even if Obama loses Ohio, his campaign sees another pathway to the presidency by nailing New Hampshire, Iowa, Wisconsin, Nevada and Colorado.Romney and running mate Paul Ryan are picking up their pace of campaigning, too, and their schedule reflects an overarching strategy to drive up GOP vote totals in areas already friendly to the Republican nominee.Romney and Ryan start their two-week dash in Henderson, Nev., then hopscotch to the Denver area for a rally with rocker-rapper Kid Rock and country music's Rodney Atkins at the Red Rocks Amphitheatre. Then Romney heads back to Nevada, on to Iowa and then east to Ohio for three overnights in a row.The state is critical to both campaigns, and economic concerns rank high. Ryan aides already were looking ahead to a Wednesday speech at Cleveland State University as a chance to tout what a Romney administration would mean for middle-class voters and those struggling to get by. Ryan aides said he will argue that those stuck in poverty cannot afford four more years like Obama's first term and that Romney offers better a pathway to improve their lives through opportunity and upward mobility, including school choice and public-private partnerships.Romney plans to return to Florida by week's end, before a significant uptick in his schedule during the final week of the campaign. Aides say he'll touch down in two or three states a day, or hold that many daily events in big states like Florida.Both sides are working furiously to lock down every possible early vote, and the results are evident in the 4.4 million people who've already cast ballots. Obama will detour to Chicago on Thursday to make a statement about voting early by becoming the first president to cast his own early ballot."Every single day right now is Election Day," Obama campaign manager Jim Messina told reporters on a conference call outlining their strategy to win the race.Neither candidate scored a knockout punch in Monday's third and final debate, as both men reined in the confrontational sniping that had marked their previous testy encounter. The topic was foreign policy, and Romney went in to the debate with a key piece of advice from his aides: talk about peace in an appeal to independent voters, particularly women, who are weary of more than a decade of war. "I want to see peace," Romney said in his closing argument.Romney's campaign produced a new television commercial overnight using debate footage of the him lecturing Obama for going on an "apology tour" of Middle East nations while never visiting Israel as president.

The Foreign Policy Debate 2012 and Grand Strategy

 

Monday's presidential debate focused on foreign policy. Rarely do such debates actually refer to a grand strategy, instead talking about crises and countries piecemeal. The audience is left to infer a strategy if there is one. Below, I'll first sketch out the strategy options and then attempt to place the candidates' views into that framework.There are only a handful of grand strategies available to the United States in the twenty-first century. In their classic forms, one or another of them has been employed since the eighteenth century. They were updated in a spirited debate after the end of the Cold War, and recent efforts have added little if anything. We will be choosing one when we vote in the presidential elections.Grand strategies are generally categorized as being either realist or idealist. The realist strategies elevate the state over international institutions, and they focus on state acquisition and use of power in pursuit of national interests. The idealist strategies--pursuing an ideal not currently in existence--see security as a shared responsibility and favor working through international institutions. The strategies differ in how they distinguish between vital and peripheral interests, on the threshold for military intervention, and on whether aggressive foreign policy creates more problems than it solves.Classic isolationism has three components defining the U.S. role in the world: (1) nonintervention with military force, (2) restrictive, nationalistic trade policy including protective tariffs, and (3) restrictive immigration policies. Isolationists tend to see aggressive foreign policy as causing threats to national security rather than solving them. Isolationism defines vital interests very narrowly and sets a very high threshold for military intervention.Isolationism was the preferred strategy from the birth of the nation until WWI.How much is enough? Isolationists accept the need for defensive power, military power sufficient to defend the homeland, and little else. Today's neo-isolationists might argue for a nuclear deterrent, a force to defend the borders, and a conventional force concentrated in the National Guard and Reserve for those once-in-a-generation mobilizations to protect narrowly defined vital interests, survival.Classic collective security is premised on the idea that states pursuing power advantage led to the world wars. Idealists believed that states pursuing selfish interests and aggregating power through secret treaties led to power imbalances and war. Instead, idealists believed that preventing war was a collective responsibility. They hoped to (1) establish a pattern of international cooperation on global issues through international institutions, (2) establish a pattern of great power intervention, even when their vital interests are not threatened, that would eventually deter aggressive wars, and they (3) favored free trade and refuted the "beggar-thy-neighbor" nationalistic, protectionist trade policies they believed had led to major wars.Woodrow Wilson attempted collective security after WWI through the League of Nations but was overruled by a Republican Senate that retained a preference for isolationism. Roosevelt attempted collective security after WWII through the United Nations and was more successful. Truman entered Korea under a UN resolution and without congressional authorization.The Clinton administration updated collective security to something called cooperative security. A greater emphasis was placed on preventing countries from acquiring (not just using) power sufficient to wage aggressive war against neighbors. The strategy called for military intervention to prevent states from acquiring potent conventional and nuclear forces.How much is enough? Cooperative security requires a military force sufficient to defend the homeland, ensure U.S. vital interests, and an additional force to contribute to international efforts. Cooperative security defines vital interests very broadly and sets a low threshold for military intervention.Professor Robert Art coined the term "selective engagement" at the end of the Cold War. It can be seen as a specific version of a classic balance of power strategy. It shares the isolationist belief that an aggressive foreign policy creates threat and the belief that states balance against power, but it differs believing that the U.S. must remain engaged internationally. Thus the name, selective engagement--stay engaged internationally but be very selective in the use of force. Professor Christopher Layne offered an even more restrictive strategy called offshore balancing with the U.S. in the role of balancer of last resort. Art's strategy forward deploys a larger force than Layne's. These strategies set a higher threshold for intervention than collective security but a lower threshold than isolationism. They shift the burden from direct military intervention to coercive diplomacy. When vital interests are threatened, the U.S. will not be alone. For example, threats to the flow of cheap oil from the Middle East threaten all oil-dependent countries. Based on shared national interests, power can be aggregated into a coalition of the willing sufficient to balance against the threat.Alexander Hamilton favored a strategy with the U.S. balancing between France and Great Britain without permanent allegiance to either.Interventionist presidents Truman, Johnson, and Bush 43 were followed by presidents elected to end wars. And Eisenhower, Nixon, and Obama all tended toward some form of balancing and selective engagement. Following the end of the Cold War, Bush 41 appeared to be moving in that same direction. Both the president's national security strategy document and JCS Chairman Powell's national military strategy document were in line with Layne's strategy. Troops would return home and forward presence would be reestablished through temporary rotations of forces as long practiced by Navy and Marine forces. Iraq invaded Kuwait the day the president was to announce the new strategy. The speech was never given and the strategy never implemented. The successful eviction of Iraq from Kuwait under UN authority instead encouraged a new optimism for collective security or something closer to Art's selective engagement.How much is enough? A selective engagement strategy would require enough force to defend the homeland and a war winning force to defend somewhat narrowly defined vital interests. Forces include a nuclear deterrent, a standoff capability to support coercive diplomacy and a balancing force to tip the scales when only peripheral interests are threatened, and a war winning conventional force organized, trained, and equipped to deter, and if necessary defeat, a military threat to vital interests. A significant portion of the forward deployed Cold War force would be redeployed to the U.S. Like isolationism, there would be a greater reliance on the National Guard and Reserves.The last strategy is often referred to as primacy or hegemonic primacy. It, too, has a classic version and a post-Cold War update. Under this strategy a state wishing to maintain its dominant position must have a preponderance of power rather than defensive or balancing power. It is a strategy followed by past great powers like Great Britain and Rome.An example is provided by proposals to determine the necessary size of the old British Navy. A two-power standard was adopted in 1889 and a three-power standard in 1902. That is, the number of capital ships should exceed the next two or three largest navies--a preponderance of power at sea. The U.S. currently spends more on its military than the next 14 countries combined--a 14-power military based on cost. That's nearly 40 percent of worldwide expenditures.The modern version of primacy came in response to the end of the Cold War to preserve the unipolar moment. The primary threat to U.S. security was seen as the rise of a peer or near-peer competitor. Primacy rejects the established theory that states balance against power and replaces it with the belief that states balance against threatening power. The challenge, then, is to maintain the preponderance of power while being seen as a benign hegemon. By the benign extension of global security, no other power need enter into an arms race to challenge U.S. primacy.The Bush 43 administration campaigned on selective engagement but shifted to a form of primacy after 9/11 and quickly went beyond primacy. The U.S. forced regime change in Iraq after failing to receive UN authorization was not interpreted as the behavior of a benign hegemon. Rather than primacy's objective of preserving the unipolar moment, the beyond primacy strategy sought to exploit the unipolar moment to forcefully spread democracy without the risk of provoking conflict with a competing superpower.How much is enough? The force must be sized to assure global security. Primacy, like all the alternatives, requires a nuclear deterrent. Like collective security, and unlike isolationism, it requires a war-winning conventional force on active duty. Like collective security, the force is likely to be consistently engaged around the world rather than standing at the ready as under selective engagement.Some argue that there is little difference between cooperative security and primacy. They share the belief that international activism reduces threats to U.S. national security. One has an initial preference for acting through established international institutions like the UN but will act unilaterally if the institution is uncooperative. The other has an initial preference for acting unilaterally but will accept the contributions of a coalition of the willing. One pursues diplomatic solutions before resorting to military force while the other is quicker to intervene militarily. Both rely on preponderance of power. Both strategies include the option for discretionary, preventive war.No presidential administration will be entirely consistent with any of these strategies. The world is too complex, and these are only thumbnail sketches of strategies. But administrations generally exhibit a central tendency toward one strategy or another. A vigorous scholarly debate took place after the Cold War came to a close, but scholars don't make policy; elected and appointed officials make policy. Among policy makers, isolationism is a dismissive, pejorative term, and it is a label applied to neo-isolationists and inaccurately applied to those advocating selective engagement. These more restrictive strategies have greater appeal with a war-weary electorate in hard economic times.Obama has demonstrated a tendency towards selective engagement, perhaps acting as balancer of last resort. Romney has no record to evaluate, but his forming national security team is dominated by primacy advocates from the Bush 43 administration. There is, however, at least one important adviser that comes from the selective engagement camp. You most likely will be choosing between selective engagement and primacy strategies when you vote in November.Everything above was written before the debate. It was my intention to attempt an evenhanded placement of the two candidates in the context of the grand strategies presented above based on their debate statements. It was pretty tough to do, but I could see some subtle differences that are better explained with the material I developed in an earlier article on burden sharing.First, professionals think in terms of four distinct expressions of grand strategy. (1) Declaratory policy is what we'll say we'll do. (2) Employment policy is what we actually do with our force. (3) Deployment policy is where we position our forces to reflect our strategic priorities. And (4) force development policy is what force we maintain and what force we are developing. Declaratory policy is talk, very important talk, and that's all we have from the debate. Let's be fair, both candidates can talk, but only the incumbent president has a record on the other three expressions of strategy. If I had only one chance to characterize the difference between the two is that they agreed on many objectives, but Romney wanted quicker progress toward those objectives.I heard from both a little bit of the protectionism from the isolationist strategy. That's understandable given tough economic times. Obama talked more about working through international institutions characteristic of collective security, but not much. Romney hinted at less interest in working through the UN based on the blocking tactics of Russia. Both talked of inhibiting the spread of nuclear weapons, but that's characteristic of multiple strategies.The question about responding to the conflict in Syria revealed a bit of daylight between the two. Obama expressed greater resistance to involvement limiting engagement to diplomatic efforts and providing humanitarian assistance. Romney expressed a preference for arming insurgents but expressedan understanding that we don't really understand the various factions. I think the distinction is best explained in my article on revolutions rather than this article on grand strategy.The other distinction between the two candidates is best explained in the article on burden sharing. Again, Obama has employment policy to evaluate, and Romney doesn't. Obama has been consistent in his position on burden sharing in Tunisia, Egypt, Iran, Libya, and Syria. He said the Syrian people must bear the primary burden. We have only declaratory policy from Romney. In general, there wasn't much light between the two. And, in general, Romney expressed only one increment more aggressive behavior than Obama.As for deployment policy, Obama has drawn down forces in Iraq and Afghanistan and is shifting freed resources to the Pacific. Romney expressed no specifics in this regard.There were more easily identified differences between the two on force development policy. Romney proposes a much greater investment in growing the force. Military expenditures have been reasonably stable, with annual increases, under Obama. Romney proposed an increase in expenditures considerably greater than has been requested by the military.I'm disappointed that I didn't learn much, and I have to stick with my pre-debate guess. Obama's strategy is most closely aligned with selective engagement and a high threshold for direct military intervention as evidenced by four years in office. Romney expressed a somewhat lower threshold for military intervention, not much, as evidenced only in speech. The key is in the advice that will be provided by Romney's national security team and Romney's response to that advice.

Best wishes in your voting.

Obama Handily Wins Third Debate

 

Tonight's third Presidential debate featured a battle between Obama the Professor-in-Chief vs. Romney the student-who-didn't-do-the-reading. As someone who has ADD, even I had trouble keeping up with many of Governor Romney's non-linear arguments. Indeed, Romney's desperation to hit all of his talking points and critiques at all costs came at the expense of appearing Presidential. Presidents and leaders don't just critique problems they offer specific solutions on how to fix them in that regard, Obama handily won. Romney clearly can memorize the talking points Dan Senor and John Bolton feed him -- hence his obsession with Israel and Iran but they all need to look at a map, because last time I checked Iran has a whole ocean border with the Indian Ocean (I'm still not sure how Syria is Iran's path to the sea). Also, a pre-emptive attack on Iran will do nothing but unite the Iranian people with the Ayatollah's for at least another generation Obama gets that, Romney scarily does not. The last thing America or the planet needs is an American war with Iran. While Governor Romney clearly wanted to use Israel against President Obama as much as possible, the President's story about visiting the Holocaust memorial and shelled Israeli cities while Romney held fundraisers was one of the most poignant and moving moments of the debate. In fact, I'd argue too much time was spent on Israel and Iran and not nearly enough on what I think will be the single most important foreign and economic policy development of the 21st century -- the emergence of the Chinese middle class. The day China's middle class can replace the US middle class as consumers is the day China no longer needs to fund our debt. President Obama at least attempted to talk about long-term competitiveness of American labor via improved education standards because we need to be able to make things better and cheaper than everyone else. Sadly, neither man offered up enough specifics on policies that the US could enact to protect the American economy from the loss of China's investment. Now is the time to solve our coming China problem not 10-20 years from now when China decides it no longer needs us to buy its goods to keep its economy growing. . I found it striking that Afghanistan got such little mention (in comparison to Iran and Israel) as we still have just under 100,000 troops in Afghanistan. Once again, neither candidate acknowledged the truth about American involvement in Afghanistan that we will remain in combat in Afghanistan potentially until 2024. Governor Romney absolutely incorrectly screwed up when he said we will be finished in Afghanistan in 2014. America signed a treaty to train the Afghan Security Forces till 2024. Combat won't stop simply because we bring home "combat troops" (i.e. the 82nd Airborne, 101st Airborne, etc...). I was an adviser to the Afghan Security Forces, I got shot at on my 13th day in country and many days thereafter and yet I wasn't technically a "combat troop" the same will happen to our advisers for the next ten years. Sadly, the conversation of Pakistan was also too limited. Pakistan is the most dangerous country on the planet (a state sponsor of terrorism, Osama Bin Laden's last sanctuary, and the greatest proliferator of nuclear weapons and material on the planet). The US-Pakistan alliance has essentially collapse over the last decade and yet neither candidate offered specifics on how to fix that relationship. The US must find a way to keep Pakistan from falling apart or Afghanistan and Iraq will look like a cakewalk. Also, what happened to Europe? Their economy is on the verge of collapsing and could take ours with it yet not a single mention during the debate.I enjoyed the discussion of Syria but I still can't find a difference in either candidate's policy towards the conflict. Indeed, while neither candidate wants to commit the US militarily to Syria, this probably is not possible esp. if the conflict expands to Turkey and Jordan, our staunchest allies in the Middle East. I had hoped both men would have offered specifics on how to address the growing regional war in the Levant. I found the limited conversation of US drone attacks frustrating and supremely disappointing. Lethal drone strikes have become the weapon de jure of the war on terror and could actually move people (i.e. the children of the killed) towards terrorism in the future I found President Obama's acknowledgement that we need to move people away from terrorism refreshing, but to do that, we actually need to expand literacy as literacy increases the access to the marketplace of ideas. We need to prevent today's children from becoming tomorrow's terrorists, but to do that, we'll likely have far greater success with words, not drones.Had I been Mitt Romney's debate coach, I would have had him congratulate President Obama off the bat for getting Bin Laden. Such a move would have come across as magnanimous and would have taken the bite out of President Obama's forceful narrative on what it means to be a President: "When we bring those who have harmed us to justice that sends a message to the world...because that's the kind of clarity of leadership that a President must make." Conversely, I would have never have allowed Romney to call himself a son of Detroit who's father ran a car company. Most sons of Detroit and their fathers worked the line and not in the board room. Romney continued to come across as out of touch with the American middle class. A point further exacerbated by the President's criticisms of Romney's business practices that helped send many of those Detroit jobs to China. Indeed, it took three debates, but President Obama finally pointed out that Romney helped pioneer outsourcing to China. President Obama came across the most Presidential and coherent when he tied the ending of the Iraq war with increased resources for fixing things at home and taking care of our veterans. As a veteran, I applaud the President for taking the time to acknowledge the need to take care of our veterans a point Romney did not make once in all three debates. President Obama continues to be the most culturally in-tune President in modern American history. His use of David Spade throw away line "The 1980's called and want their foreign policy back" was simultaneously hysterical and powerful. Even more poignant were President Obama's statements regarding the changing nature of warfare, especially the "we used to have horses and bayonets" line. President Obama's correctly asserted that warfare changes and evolves to demand new weapons and tactics a lesson that sadly many politicians and US government officials never learn. For example, the US military spent billions of dollars on the F-22, an aircraft designed to fight Soviet MiGs but now finds itself unused as we face enemies who fight with IEDs and small unit ambushes. We can no longer afford to learn the lessons of the last war during the first moments of the next one. Finally, thank God President Obama acknowledged that we all hate campaign ads a sentiment with which I'm confident all Americans can agree.