Europe, Russia, and the United States in the Age of Obama

His liberal opponents as well as the folks in the MSM have misconstrued the geopolitical position of the United States with regard to Europe under the Presidency of George Bush. Bush's opponents make the incorrect claim that as a result of his foreign policy choices we lost standing among our European partners. In fact, in reality what we saw was a reallignment of our alliances. No doubt that the Iraq War caused serious friction with much of Western Europe. Yet, what critics and opponents of George Bush fail to recognize is that while Western Europe thawed their alliance with the U.S. under Bush, our alliance with Eastern Europe saw a renaissance. Our alliance with countries like Poland, the Ukraine, Georgia, and the Baltics has never been stronger. In fact, the U.S. has never seen better relations with most of the former satellites of the Soviet Union than we have under George Bush.

If President Obama holds to this fallacious world view, he may commit some serious geopolitical blunders. For instance, Charles Kupchan, of the Council on Foreign Relations, believes there is a window of opportunity for improved relations between Europe, Russia and the United States. There is however an inherent fallacy in such a policy. Many of our new allies fear Russia and see that nation as a threat to their own safety. In fact, Georgia got a first hand look at that threat when Russia invaded that much smaller nation and did as it pleased. This tension appears to be irrelevant to Kupchan.

The different American and European reactions to the Georgia war reveal a deep divergence in perspective. The United States tended to defend the Georgian government and put most blame squarely on the shoulders of Russia and wanted to react to the war by taking concrete steps to punish Russia and break off contacts, particularly within the context of NATO. And the Europeans had a somewhat more balanced view about the causes of the war, and saw the Georgian government as being partly responsible for the conflict which erupted over South Ossetia. Europe was less willing than the United States to see the war as a cause for a serious degradation of relations with Russia, and the EU has taken the lead in restoring dialogue between the European Union and Russia, and in restarting contacts between NATO and Russia.

If the Obama administration were to take the Western European view of Russia, he would also be jeopardizing our new allies in Eastern Europe. It's also important to note that Europe is more "balanced" as Kupchan characterizes it because they rely on Russia for much of their own energy needs. Western Europe wants a conciliatory policy toward Russia for this reason and because the Europeans are generally weak. As such, in order for the U.S. to renew our old alliances with Western Europe, at least as it relates to Russia, it would mean jeopardizing the safety of our new allies in Eastern Europe.

This very important geopolitical reality is something you'll never hear from any Bush opponent because that would mean acknowledging a significantly more complicated geopolitical reality under George Bush than they would ever admit. It is however a reality.

Our relationship with Russia is also significantly more complicated than folks like Kupchan will admit either.

During the campaign, Obama's position was for principled support for a missile defense system, but a more relaxed time frame for development and deployment, based upon the fact that the testing by the Pentagon has not yet been completed, and the quality of the technology remains in question; that is to say it's not clear how effective the system would be.

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The administration will back the system in principle. In the aftermath of 9/11, and in light of the continuing nuclear activities of Iran, it would be imprudent to suggest that some kind of missile defense system is unnecessary. But there will be a deliberation about when and how to deploy such a system, and that might involve moving at a slower timetable to ensure that the technology is ready, but also doing due diligence on the diplomatic front. Many felt that the Bush administration moved in a clumsy fashion and dealt in too bilateral of a way, that is to say it negotiated with Poland and with the Czech Republic, without consulting NATO and without doing enough to try to bring in the Russians. And you might recall that Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice actually went to Moscow at one point and said, "Let's make this a system for all, let's secure Russian participation." So it may well be that a new dialogue is started with the NATO allies and including Russia to try to defang the political antagonism that the system has created. It may well be that the system can be deployed in a more favorable political atmosphere.

Russia is vociferously against the missile shield and anything that brings any of the former satellites into NATO because Russia is determined to intimidate its neighbors in a long term goal of exerting as much control over the area as possible. The reason that the missile system has created "political antagonism" as Kupchan describes it is because the missile shield is a direct threat to Russia's goals in the region. It's also why there is "political antagonism" with Russia when any of the former Soviet satellites have their names floated for entry into NATO.

Once again, there is a natural tension between renewing our alliance with Western Europe and continuing our new alliance with Eastern Europe. The Western Europeans have a natural and an economic motivation not to confront Russia whenever it is aggressive toward any of its neighbors. Yet, a lack of a missile shield (or even a slow down of finishing the system) and a lack of entry into NATO, is a direct threat to most of the former Soviet satellites. As such, once again, there is a natural tension between our new allies and the allies with which our relationship thawed under Bush.

Kupchan also places a fair amount of value on Obama's affinity toward confronting global warming and closing GITMO. While those two moves may in fact mean that the United States will poll better in some poll of Europeans, it is unclear what geopolitical advantage this will give the United States.

The geopolitical reality of the situation is this. Russia is a tyrannical regime with imperial aspirations. Those aspirations threaten the safety of all our allies in Eastern Europe. Our traditional allies in Western Europe want nothing more than to look the other way while this occurs. In Europe our alliances have shifted, and soon enough, we will need to decide whether we stand with our new allies or drift toward our old ones.

The Shadow Government of the Obama Administration

While the media goes through a never ending cycle of adoring adulation toward the new President, there are many inconvenient stories that they simply refuse to answer. One of those stories is the immense number of newly created advisors and envoys. These advisors appear to have no clear role. That's because there are already entire cabinets created specifically for what they are supposed to do. The two latest are George Mitchell and Richard Holbrooke. Beyond these two envoys, Obama has named an enormous amount of czars as well as a few other folks simply called advisors.

Obama is not the first to have czars, advisors, and certainly not the first to have envoys. What makes the Obama administration different is first the sheer numbers of these folks, and second the scope that some of these folks will have. In the case of both Holbrooke and Mitchell, there are in fact deputy level positions for each of their roles. In other words, why are Holbrooke and Mitchell envoys to Afghanistan/Pakistan and the Middle East respectively, when the State Department specifies deputies to the Secretary already for those specific roles? In other words, why did he name them envoys when they should have just been appointed Deputy Secretaries for these respective areas?

This is not just some inconsequential concern. Both these men technically operate in the same function as the State Department but envoys aren't necessarily part of the State Department. As such, who do they report to? That is a question with no easy answer.

President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton all announced Thursday that two high-profile diplomats will serve as envoys to volatile regions, resolving the outstanding question about American foreign policy: Who will be in charge?

The answer: All of them.

Obama and Clinton appeared Thursday at the State Department to formally announce Clinton’s appointment and to roll out some of her senior staff and envoys. Among them was former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell, who, a source said, will report to both Obama and Secretary Clinton as Mideast envoy; Richard Holbrooke, envoy to South Asia and Afghanistan, will have a similar arrangement. The Mitchell appointment puts the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the hands of an experienced power player and deal-maker, but leaves unresolved some of the lines of command in the new administration.

As such, the role of foreign policy is ripe for a shadow government.

State Department is only the beginning of where the Obama administration could turn into a shadow government. Let's look at the world of intelligence. Leon Panetta is head of the CIA. That role is defined. He runs the Central Intelligence Agency. Dennis Blair will be Director of National Intelligence. He will coordinate all of the intelligence agencies. So, what will John Brennan do? Brennan was originally tapped to be the head of the CIA. Then, his nomination was railroaded when the left wing turned on him because he was perceived to be in favor of Bush terrorism policies. Now, Obama has tapped him as terrorism advisor. Of course, the terrorism advisor is a brand new position created by Obama for Brennan. What will Brennan's role be in intelligence? That's anyone's guess. Given that Panetta has ABSOLUTELY NO EXPERIENCE IN INTELLIGENCE, it is very likely that Brennan, an intelligence veteran, will have significant power in intelligence. Unlike the CIA director and DNI though, his role will be entirely undefined. If he were to exert any influence in intelligence, it would be entirely as a shadow government.

Then, there are all of the czars that Obama has created. For instance, Dr. Stephen Chu is the Secretary of Energy. Carol Browner is going to be the energy czar. So, what will her role be in energy policy? Unlike the Secretary of Energy, the energy czar has no defined role. Dr. Chu is an academic with a history of running nothing more than a sophisticated lab. As such, he will likely be overwhelmed by the massive bureaucracy of the Department of Energy. Browner is the former head of the EPA. She has much more significant experience in management. As such, it is very likely that her own personality will overwhelm his. If it does, she will create a shadow government as well.

The czars only start there though. There's a climate czar, technology czar, auto czar, regulatory czar, health czar, among about a dozen of folks with the title "Czar". Their role overlaps with a full department. As such, their role is unclear. Why have an energy czar when there is a full Department of Energy? When the automakers get another round of bailouts, will it be Treasury or the car czar that decides how the money is dished out?

Most of these questions will be answered by which person has the stronger personality. Yet, if the stronger personality comes from the person with the role of a "Czar" then that creates yet another shadow government. After all, these Czars don't even go through a confirmation. They don't have a department. Their role is entirely undefined. The more influence they exert the more they create a shadow government. In the Obama administration, there are all sorts of folks with the ability to create their own little shadow government within the government.

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The Stimulus: Pork, Deficits, Voter Reallignment...and Maybe a Few Jobs

When we look back, we may find that the Congressional Budget Office report on the stimulus package played a critical role in changing the dynamic of the debate on the stimulus. The CBO report found that most of the money allocated in the stimulus won't be spent for at least two years. Such an analysis, makes this stimulus indefensible. After all, if the money isn't even being spent, how in the world will it stimulate anything? What we are finding now is the beginnings of a lot of criticism of this stimulus. This criticism may lead to a slowing down of the process. That would be a welcomed relief because right now this stimulus is a giant mess. All it will do is create needless pork, massive deficits, voter reallignment. Meanwhile, it's job creating stimulus is marginal.

Beyond the problems highlighted in the CBO report, much of this stimulus is nothing but pork with no stimulating value whatsoever. Here is how David Brooks described it.

The committee staff took the kernel of President Obama’s vision — infrastructure programs to create jobs — and surrounded it with an undisciplined sprawl of health, education, entitlement and other spending. There’s money for nurse training, Medicare, Head Start, boatyard support, home weatherization and so on. Eleven of the programs in the bill account for the vast majority of the actual job creation. The rest may be worthy or not, but they have little to do with stimulus. The total package is so diffuse, it costs $223,000 to create a single job.

So, out of more than fifty programs appropriated, only eleven appear to be ones in which jobs maybe created. As such, to call this a stimulus bill is to be rather misleading. Instead, this is much more a bill to fund the pet projects of liberals. We have Pell Grants, after school education, food stamps, alternative energy, stem cell research, etc. Most of these programs won't create many jobs. They will, however, fund many of the liberal's favorite causes.

Brooks' criticism is mild compared to the shocking discoveries laid out by Donald Lambro.

-- Government-run programs at the federal, state and local level. This stimulus bill will pour billions into 150 different federal programs, from the money-losing Amtrak rail service to the Transportation Security Administration.

-- $15.6 billion goes into Pell Grants to increase each student grant by $500, though the added money ends in two years. This may be a worthy thing to do, but it's not going to create any new jobs.

-- $54 billion will go to 19 programs that the Office of Management and Budget has rated as "ineffective" or "results not demonstrated."



-- Much of the money will go to federal programs that still have unspent funding in their accounts. For instance, the bill will pump another $2 billion into the Army Corps of Engineers' water-construction program that still has $1.5 billion in unobligated funds.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development's homeless-assistance program would get $1.5 billion despite an unobligated balance of $1.5 billion.

The General Services Administration has $3.3 billion of unspent funds, but GSA would get another $7.7 billion from the stimulus package.

-- Billions will be dished out under this so-called stimulus bill mostly to protect or create government jobs -- including money to renovate federal buildings, and $600 million for the government to buy brand-new cars and vans.

Not only do we have billions in pork, but many of these billions are going to go to branches that haven't even spent money that has been allocated yet. That's indefensible, and of course, it goes without saying, that it won't create one single job. In fact, if Obama were serious about short term stimulus, he could start by mandating that each of these departments spend the money they have been allocated first. This is frankly a boondoggle unlike any other. It is a liberal orgy of spending on pet projects and government bureaucracies that they have supported for decades.

Of course, if the spending isn't troubling enough, it's the so called tax cuts that are downright scary. Here is how Dick Morris described these so called tax cuts.

The most pernicious of his proposals will be the massive Make Work Pay refundable tax credit. Dressed up as a tax cut, it will be a national welfare program, guaranteeing a majority of American households an annual check to “refund” taxes they never paid. And it will eliminate the need for about 20% of American households to pay income taxes, lifting the proportion that need not do so to a majority of the voting population. Unlike the Bush stimulus checks, this new program will be a permanent entitlement, a part of our budget that can only go up and never down. Politically, it will transform a majority of Americans from taxpayers, anxious to hold down government spending, into tax eaters, eager to reap new benefits.

So, what these PERMANENT tax credits will do is create a permanent welfare class. That's because as a result of these tax credits more than half the population won't pay any federal income tax at all. Right now, it is about a third of all Americans that are in this category and this number will rise by about twenty percent. As such, more than half of all Americans will be the beneficiaries of the very big government that Obama is expanding. That provides Obama and the Democrats a permanent majority for the very policies that they are pushing in this stimulus. Only more people knowing about the findings of the CBO will stop this train wreck from becoming law and permanent fixture on our political landscape.

Council Winners

Council Submissions
First place with 2 1/3 points! - The Colossus of Rhodey - The entertainment of moral ambiguity
Second place with 1 2/3 points - (T*) - Joshuapundit - Israel Capitulates
Second place with 1 2/3 points - (T*) - Mere Rhetoric - I’m Going To Miss Westminster Abbey - Britain Hands Itself Over To Radical Islam, Blames Israel
Third place with 1 1/3 points - (T*) - The Provocateur - The Insider Story of ACORN
Third place with 1 1/3 points - (T*) - The Glittering Eye - Fallacy of Composition
Fourth place with 1 points - Rhymes With Right - And Where Does He Get His Life Back?
Fifth place with 2/3 point - (T*) - Bookworm Room - The Inspirational President
Fifth place with 2/3 point - (T*) - Soccer Dad - Teaching Thomas
Non-Council Submissions
First place with 2 1/3 points! - Robert Avrech/Big Hollywood - The Real Battle Of Algiers, Part 2
Second place with 1 2/3 points - Armed and Dangerous - Gramscian Damage
Third place with 1 1/3 points - Daled Amos - Did Monty Python Negotiate Israel’s Ceasefire?
Fourth place with 1 points - (T*) - Pajamas Media - We Have Overcome Today
Fourth place with 1 points - (T*) - Middle East Forum - Syria Can’t Be Flipped
Fourth place with 1 points - (T*) - BookForum.com - Onward and Downward
Fourth place with 1 points - (T*) - Jeff Jacoby’s Pundicity - Questions for Obama’s science guy
Fifth place with 2/3 point - Badger Blogger - A call to action for Wisconsin conservatives

The Ironic and Terrible Case of Geert Wilders

I had a chance to travel through Amsterdam when I was a junior in college in 1996. Much of what everyone has heard about that city is true. It's most famous of course for its libertine attitude including the availability of marijuana in most coffee shops and the red light district which houses an endless array of prostitutes that stand in front of a glass door posing for any passer by. In Amsterdam, as much of the Netherlands, the folks believe in a live and let live attitude.


For this reason the case of Geert Wilders is just that much more shocking. Wilders is a member of the Netherlands parliament and he has been an outspoken critic of Islam. Recently, he helped make the movie, Fitna, which criticized Islam.The Dutch Court of Appeals recently charged Wilders with "incitement to hatred and violence" because he made this film. This is all parts stunning, tragic, and very ironic that the same place that sees no problem with women standing nearly naked in front of a full sized window will send someone to jail because they have made a movie that a religion finds offensive.

It appears that the libertarian attitude of the Dutch only goes so far. Prostitution and drug use are protected under the guise of libertarianism while free expression is deemed to be "incitement to hatred and discrimination".

Of course, if the establishment continues on this obscene road to multiculturalism, they will soon be shocked by how far it will go. After all, merely having prostitutes stand in front of a glass door and offer their bodies for money is no less an affront to Islam than is making a movie that challenges the religion. The long road toward multiculturalism only starts with jailing someone that makes a movie deemed insulting to religion. Soon, the establishment will realize that much of their society as they know it is in and of itself an affront to Islam.

Momentum: The One Word Problem for the Economy (and the Solution)

In yesterday's City Journal, Nicole Gelinas has a piece that argued about the limitations of current monetary policy however the piece also illustrates the problems of our economy in the process.

Banks are hoarding much of their new government capital against future losses, rather than using it to make new loans. This behavior isn’t irrational, as many government officials seem to think—among them House Financial Services Committee chairman Barney Frank, who has chastised the banks for their reluctance to lend. The banks just aren’t sure how many existing borrowers—from credit-card holders to big corporations—are going to default, and they’re also unsure whether there’s more federal money on tap if borrowers keep defaulting in large numbers. Banks also want to hoard capital because their private investors—those few left—want them to. It’s unlikely that the market will look favorably any time soon on banks that lend as aggressively as they did a few years ago.

Moreover, borrowers aren’t as interested in taking out loans, cutting demand for credit even as the supply dries up. It’s no surprise that they’re balking. Consumer debt, including mortgage debt, more than doubled between 1999 and 2007, largely based on unsustainable increases in home and other asset prices. With home prices plummeting, consumers who had depended on constant refinancings to take cash out of their homes simply can’t do it any more. As for businesses, they didn’t swell their own debt by quite so much during those years, but consumer borrowing often drove their growth. Customers used money, often borrowed from their homes, to purchase goods and services, from home renovations to plastic surgery. As two bankers in Los Angeles noted recently, small businesses can hardly increase their borrowing when the revenues against which they’re borrowing are down 20 to 30 percent.

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It’s not just a lack of capital and fear of future losses that are keeping banks from stepping up and replacing the vanished securitization markets as the economy’s credit creators, however. Banks simply don’t remember how to be banks—that is, long-term direct lenders to customers—any more, since the securitization markets have done that job for so long.

So, essentially, banks made all sorts of bad lendind decisions. Now, not only are banks afraid to make these decisions again but furthermore, they don't know how bad things are. Since banks aren't lending, businesses can't borrow. When businesses don't borrow, they don't expand. When businesses don't expand, they don't hire. When people aren't working, they don't spend. In other words, one economic problem leads to another, that leads to a third, and on and on. So, in a word the problem with the economy is momentum.

With all the momentum pointing down, the economy finds its way in a vicious downward cycle. Now, anyone that has watched sports knows how important momentum is. Yet, in sports, momentum can easily swing. In football, all it takes is a massive hit by a linebacker on the other team's star quarterback or running back. In basketball, it takes a monster dunk. In baseball, it takes a strikeout of the other team's star.

The economy, too, needs a momentum changer. Only with the economy, a momentum changer is much more difficult to attain than in sports. The President believes that a massive stimulus spending bill from the government will change the momentum. He hopes that it will create jobs which will get people spending.

I have a better idea. Instead of massive new government spending, I suggest a massive corporate tax cut retroactive to 2008. I say cut corporate taxes from 35% to 10%. By doing so, most of those companies that had weaker earnings, will in fact keep more money after taxes than they did in 2007. By keeping more money, they will invest more money on expansion. That will provide the momentum changer the economy needs. Corporations will expand and invest. This will create more jobs. With more jobs, consumers will spend more. With consumers working, less loans will go bad. With less loans going bad, more banks will lend. Momentum changed and problem solved.