Follow @BICampaign2012
Editor's Note: The following is a Campaign 2012 policy brief by William Galston proposing ideas for the next president on political and institutional reform in America. Russ Whitehurst prepared a response arguing that there is no lack of ideas about reform, but that judgments about whether reforms are bold or wise represent points of view that can be worked out in the political process. Sarah Binder also prepared a response arguing that significant institutional innovation is unlikely as long as the two parties perceive that unified party control is within reach.

Institutional reform was not a central plank of Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign, which had no eye-catching equivalent of Bill Clinton’s promise to “reinvent government.” Nor has it been the centerpiece of Obama’s administration—or of the Republican critique of his administration. And in all likelihood, it will not play a major role in the 2012 campaign.

Rather, the candidates, the experts, and the pundits, when asked “What should the next president do?” will likely respond with lists of policies, often mixed with stylistic and political suggestions. Institutional reform is not going to catch voter fancy; it sounds too much like yawn-inducing “governmental reorganization.” But it is always a mistake to neglect institutions, never more than in times of crisis. Throughout American history, profound challenges have summoned bursts of institutional creativity, the effects of which linger far longer than the occasions that evoked them, as illustrated by the following examples:

• The dangerous inadequacies of the Articles of Confederation set the stage for the Philadelphia convention and a new constitution.
• The electoral crisis of 1800 produced the Twelfth Amendment, the first significant change in the structures the men of Philadelphia had produced.
• In the aftermath of the Civil War, Congress and the American people ratified three amendments that resolved, at least in principle, the founding ambivalence between the people and the states as to the source of national authority, between the states and the nation as to the locus of citizenship, and between slavery and the equality proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence.
• Recurrent financial panics in the last decade of the nineteenth century and the first decade of the twentieth opened the door to the creation of the Federal Reserve Board.
• The Great Depression produced a flurry of new executive branch and independent agencies in the United States and the Bretton Woods international economic institutions.
• The onset of the cold war spawned the Department of Defense, the National Security Council, and the Central Intelligence Agency.
• Demands for more effective protection of the water Americans drink and the air they breathe led to the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency.
• The growing monopoly of fiscal competence and power in the executive branch led the legislature to counter by creating the Congressional Budget Office.
• The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, led to the creation of the Department of Homeland Security and the massive reorganization of the U.S. intelligence system.
• The near-total collapse of the financial system in 2007–08 gave rise to the Dodd-Frank Bill and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

This “institution logic” is hardly confined to the United States. The ongoing crisis in the Euro zone presents European leaders with a choice between fundamental reform of the European Union’s governing institutions and the possible collapse of the postwar push for a united and prosperous Europe.

The moral is clear: in challenging times, political leaders are drawn to institutional reform, not because they want to do it, but because they must. The present era is unlikely to be an exception, even if the 2012 campaigners deny this reality. Not only is the U.S. system of self-government failing to address the nation’s most important questions, but it is also losing the confidence of the people. Public trust in the federal government now stands at about 20 percent. In a recent CBS/New York Times survey, public approval of Congress fell to a record low of 9 percent, and in the most recent Gallup survey, a record 76 percent of respondents said that most members of Congress do not deserve reelection. Another survey found that on average citizens believe that more than half of all federal spending is wasteful and unproductive.

No democratic political system can resist such widespread public disdain indefinitely. The question is not whether new institutions will emerge in response, but how, and to what purpose. Thus significant opportunities for institutional reform await the next administration and the candidate who figures out how to talk about the issue. Specifically, the time is ripe to push for new fiscal institutions to engage in a long-overdue rethinking of the rules shaping fiscal decisionmaking, to consolidate certain related government functions within unified bureaucratic structures and undo earlier consolidations that have failed, and to adopt measures aimed at depolarizing American politics, including reforms to the judicial confirmation process and to the congressional redistricting system.

The Obama Record

Though he does not speak much about institutional reform, President Obama has been drawn to some institutional innovation, and the two highest-profile instances have both proven intensely controversial. Among hundreds of other provisions, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) of 2010 produced a new organization, the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB), comprising fifteen full-time members nominated by the president and subject to Senate confirmation. Its mission is to slow the growth of Medicare spending. Under the health care law, the board is required to recommend reductions if Medicare spending per capita is projected to exceed specific targets, based initially on measures of inflation and, after 2020, on the growth of GDP plus one percentage point. The secretary of health and human services is required to implement IPAB’s proposals unless Congress overrides them under a fast-track procedure the ACA establishes.

In some respects, IPAB represents a response to the failure of a previous entity, the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC), to slow Medicare spending. Between 1997 and 2008, this body had recommended cuts totaling hundreds of billions of dollars, nearly all of which Congress ignored. Worse, Congress had pressured—even required—Medicare administrators to cover medical instruments and procedures that health experts regarded as costly and ineffective. So much money was at stake that it gave large campaign contributors an incentive to put a heavy thumb on the scales, while compliant elected officials were all too willing to go along. And even when congressional intentions were honorable, as IPAB’s proponents pointed out, members lacked the expertise to determine which medical expenditures were truly worthwhile or how best to use Medicare’s purchasing power to leverage real cost reductions while maintaining the quality of care.

Like IPAB, Obama’s other highly visible and contested institutional innovation—the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB)—was embedded in a massive piece of reform legislation, the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Protection Act of 2010. It was a response to the grave damage inflicted on the American and global financial systems by the subprime mortgage orgy and other abuses of the go-go years. A related concern was that sophisticated financial institutions were tempting consumers with options that few were knowledgeable and experienced enough to evaluate. Without public regulation, critics of the status quo argued, consumers—especially those with lower incomes and less education—would continue to be duped by unscrupulous lenders out to make a quick killing.

Elizabeth Warren, then an obscure Harvard law professor, kicked off the debate in the summer of 2007 with a punchy and (as it turned out) prophetic notion. If regulation makes it impossible to buy a toaster that has a one-in-five chance of catching fire and burning down one’s house, she asked, then why is it possible to refinance an existing house with a mortgage that has a one-in-five chance of putting the borrower out on the street? This logic proved compelling enough for the proposed consumer protection agency to successfully run the legislative gauntlet. Its task was to supervise providers of consumer financial products that otherwise escaped government oversight and to protect families from unfair, abusive, or deceptive financial practices. The new bureau would be headed not by a multimember board typical of regulatory agencies, but by a single director. And like the Federal Reserve Board in which it was housed, its budget would draw on funds generated outside the congressional appropriations process.

A third major institutional development—the so-called super committee designed to break through fiscal gridlock—came into being through the bipartisan legislation that ended the 2011 debt-ceiling crisis. Although Obama did not initiate this proposal, he became a party to it when he signed the bill, which also resembled the framework within which his own bipartisan fiscal commission functioned in 2010. Unfortunately, although Congress was now authorized to give “fast-track” consideration to any proposal on which a majority of the super committee could agree, the deep fiscal policy differences between the political parties persisted, and even the threat of massive cuts in defense and domestic programs proved insufficient to break the gridlock.

But these high-profile examples are actually exceptions. In general, while Obama has proposed major policy reforms in a range of areas, he has generally done so within the context of existing institutions. Given the magnitude of the crises he has faced, this lack of ambition is somewhat anomalous.

As a social and political species, humans need to cooperate to achieve the goals they care about the most. And institutions are arenas of cooperation structured by rules. As such, they are systems of formal constraints on both the ends and means of action. Some institutions have the power to make decisions, and their rules shape not only the process of decisionmaking but also the content of decisions. It is a mistake to view decisions, even in democracies, as simple aggregations of individual beliefs and preferences. Variations in institutional structure can produce very different outcomes, even when the underlying distribution of beliefs and preferences does not vary. A president who ignores this fact gives up huge opportunities to have an impact on the policy process.

The reason is straightforward: no set of rules is “neutral” in its effects. Majoritarian voting rules tilt in one direction, super-majority requirements in another. And as behavioral economics is demonstrating, how one defines “default rules” (that is, what happens if no action is taken) makes a huge difference.

The Republican Critique

Obama’s Republican opponents have taken a dim view of the major institutional reforms he has overseen. They charge, for example, that the IPAB would allow “unelected bureaucrats” to exercise outsized influence over the delivery of health care at the expense of doctors, patients, and democratic accountability. They also argue that the IPAB would lead the entire health care system in precisely the wrong direction and that only the discipline of the market can restrain costs in a manner consistent with the preferences of individual consumers. Price controls administered top-down do not work, Republicans say. They merely substitute the judgment of remote elites for those of citizens with diverse needs that no bureaucratic mechanism can possibly meet. Given the depth of these disagreements, it is easy to see why the IPAB has been at the heart of Republican legislative efforts to halt and reverse the ACA.

Republicans also find fault with the CFPB’s limited accountability. Unlike other regulatory agencies such as the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) or the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the bureau has only one Senate-confirmable position—a director with a five-year term protected from removal even by the president in all but extreme circumstances. The single-director structure, Republicans argue, does not allow for a healthy diversity of perspectives. And because funding for the CFPB does not require annual congressional budget approval, this structure places an enormous amount of unchecked power in the hands of a single unelected official. Being insulated from other federal banking regulators, the CFPB could end up impairing the safety and soundness of the affected financial institutions through its oversight conducted in the name of protecting consumers.

Whatever the merits of these arguments, some of which no doubt reflect the self-interest of previously unregulated entities, one thing is clear: the concentrated powers of the CFPB director constitute a vulnerable point for the law. By blocking the confirmation of Obama’s nominee, Republican critics have brought to a halt all but the most routine operations of the bureau. They have indicated their intention to persist in this strategy until the president is willing to take their concerns into account and work with them to revise the CFPB’s enabling legislation. The president responded to these tactics with a recess appointment. But that is only a stopgap. As with the IPAB, the survival and powers of the CFPB will be determined by the outcome of the 2012 election.

But the Republicans, too, have been somewhat timid in proposing institutional transformations. For all the candidates’ talk of abolishing components of the federal government, it is cloaked in policy, not institutional, terms. (Ron Paul’s all-out assault on the Federal Reserve Board represents a controversial exception, while Rick Perry’s failed struggle to recall the three cabinet agencies he wanted to abolish provided a rare and memorable moment of comic relief.)

Institutional Changes for the Next Administration

Wherever one looks today, the federal government houses mediocre—in many cases failing—institutional structures. Through reform, the new administration could get more bang for its increasingly scarce bucks and also send the public a credible signal that it will no longer be business as usual.

New Fiscal Institutions

Under today’s huge deficits, the normal rules and procedures designed to produce annual budgets and facilitate long-term planning have virtually broken down, while the failings of the “super committee” have proved that ad hoc remedies are unlikely to succeed. Although the confrontation over the debt ceiling in the summer of 2011 yielded some modest first steps, neither balance nor confidence can be restored without more fundamental changes.

One option, recently proposed by a bipartisan group that includes three former directors of the Congressional Budget Office, would be to review entitlement programs such as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid every five years to determine whether projected revenues and outlays are in balance. If not, Congress would be required to restore balance through revenue increases dedicated to these programs, benefits cuts, or some combination of the two. After a severe financial crisis in the early 1990s, Sweden introduced a variant of this plan, and it has worked reasonably well.

This strategy could be extended to tax expenditures. The first step would be to establish aggregate targets for this vast ensemble of credits, deductions, and exemptions over a five-year period. Each year Congress would review actual and projected tax expenditures to determine whether they remain within the targeted amounts. If they do not, Congress would be required to enact changes to ensure compliance with these goals. And if Congress failed to do so, across-the-board cuts in tax expenditures would automatically go into effect.

Elected officials are not oblivious to the dysfunctions of the nation’s fiscal institutions. In November 2011 House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and ranking member Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) cosponsored a bill calling for expedited consideration of line-item vetoes and recessions that the president would be empowered to propose. This rare display of bipartisanship was one item in a much longer list the House Budget Committee unveiled in December 2011. The following were among its most important proposals:

• Give the budget the force of law by converting it into a joint resolution, which would require the president’s signature.
• Change the budget baseline to remove automatic inflation increases for discretionary spending.
• Establish binding limitations, enforced by sequester, on all programs growing faster than inflation.
• Prevent government shutdowns by providing automatic spending authority at reduced levels when Congress fails to pass appropriation bills by the start of the fiscal year.
• “Sunset” all federal legislation, requiring periodic reviews and reauthorization.
• Enhance the federal government’s ability to make and enforce long-term budget plans.

Fiscal institutions and procedures are in clear need of fundamental reform, and pressure for such reform is increasing. While many of the House proposals are controversial, the next president would be well advised to spearhead this rethinking of the rules shaping fiscal decisions.

Consolidation

Institutional reform sometimes needs to bring related functions together under a single roof. Food safety is a classic example. Responsibility for the safety of the nation’s food supply is now spread among a number of departments and agencies, including Treasury, Commerce, Agriculture, the Environmental Protection Agency, Food and Drug Administration, and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. These entities, with their varying powers and diverse standards, are hard to coordinate. In addition, the Department of Agriculture is under pressure from producers who do not want the kind of inspections that would slow production and raise costs. Furthermore, the globalization of the supply chain has introduced a new level of complexity, as problems with vegetables from Mexico and baby formula from China have illustrated.

This situation cries out for a single, unified agency whose principal mission is to ensure the safety of the nation’s food supply. While the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act of 2011 substantially upgraded and updated the federal Food, Drug and Cosmetics Act, it did not achieve this consolidation. If the challenge of food safety were elevated out of the muck of special interests and governed solely by the criterion of serving the public good, such an agency would long since have come into existence.

Deconsolidation

Other institutional changes push in the opposite direction, calling for separate functions when consolidation proves counterproductive. When the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was created, for example, Congress and the Bush administration cast a wide net—too wide, as it turned out. Including the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in DHS made more sense in bureaucratic flowcharts than in the real world. To be sure, FEMA has improved its performance since the fiasco of Hurricane Katrina. But as long as this agency remains buried in a department whose principal mission is fighting terrrorism, it will be difficult for it to command top-quality management and adequate resources. As the Kennedy School’s Elaine Kamarck has argued, the best and simplest remedy is to restore the status quo ante—meaning an independent FEMA, which performed with great competence during the Clinton administration.

Public diplomacy and strategic communications provide another instance of a failed consolidation. In an important speech, former secretary of defense Robert Gates argued that in waging and winning the cold war, institutions mattered as much as people and policies. In the aftermath, Washington weakened not only the nation’s military and intelligence but also the institutions of “soft power” that enabled Americans to communicate effectively with other parts of the world. By 1999, as Secretary Gates put it, “the U. S. Information Agency (USIA) was abolished as an independent entity, split into pieces, and many of its capabilities folded into a small corner of the State Department.”

The optimism of the 1990s that erupted when liberal democracy seemed victorious in the battle of ideas turned out to be shortsighted. Today the United States finds itself engaged in new ideological struggles—especially against radical Islamism. Public opinion surveys show that it is on the defensive and losing ground throughout the Muslim world.

Any effort to counter hostile ideologies will remain ineffective as long as it is subordinated to the State Department’s traditional diplomatic priorities. Two options would give public diplomacy and strategic communications the emphasis and clout they need. First, Washington could create a twenty-first-century USIA—a new cabinet-level Department of Global Information and Communications (DGIC)—and back it with the authority it would need to succeed. Many people who support this approach in principle, however, believe that it is not feasible in the current political circumstances. The alternative would be to create a new office in the National Security Council headed by a deputy national security adviser for public diplomacy/strategic communications and backed by a presidential executive order giving that office unchallenged authority to coordinate all the public diplomacy and strategic communications activities of executive branch departments and agencies.

Reducing Polarization

Increasing political polarization in recent decades has made it much more difficult for the U.S. government to work effectively. According to a multiyear cooperative study by the Brookings and Hoover Institutions, political elites are now more sharply divided than are citizens, and the latter are more likely to place themselves at the ends rather than in the middle of the ideological spectrum than they were as recently as the 1980s. Having a smaller political center to work with, even leaders committed to bipartisan compromise have found such agreement harder to come by. The study concluded that changes in institutional design could help mute the consequences of polarization and might over time lower the partisan temperature. Here are four ideas, culled from a much longer list.

First, the judicial confirmation process has become poisonously adversarial. One possible response: rely more on bipartisan commissions to generate slates of possible nominees from which the administration would have to choose. This would give the president less opportunity to fire up his base with strongly liberal or conservative picks and would limit his ability to transform the ideological makeup of the federal judiciary. On the face of it, this prospect would not appeal to most presidents. One way to render commissions more attractive to an otherwise unreceptive White House would be to link them to a fast-track procedure for confirmation: judicial nominees selected on a bipartisan basis would have Senate Judiciary Committee hearings expedited and would be assured a prompt up-or-down vote on the floor. The use of Senate “holds” and filibusters would be ruled inadmissible. This would reduce the time, attention, and political capital the White House would have to expend on the confirmation process, freeing up resources for tough legislative battles.

Second, congressional redistricting offers another opportunity for depolarizing reform. While population flows account for much of the growth in safe seats dominated by strong partisans, political science studies indicate that gerrymanders have accounted for somewhere between 10 and 36 percent of the reduction in competitive congressional districts since 1982. This is not a trivial effect.

Few Western democracies draw up their parliamentary districts in so patently politicized a fashion as do U.S. state legislatures. Given the Supreme Court’s reluctance to enter the thicket of redistricting controversies, and given the limits of the federal role in these questions, the president will have limited impact here. Any changes will be up to the state governments. But a president can provide pressure and leadership toward reform. In recent years, voter initiatives and referendums in four states—Alaska, Arizona, Idaho, and Washington—have established nonpartisan or bipartisan redistricting commissions. These local efforts have struggled to solve a complicated riddle: how to enhance competitiveness while respecting other parameters, such as geographical compactness, jurisdictional boundaries, and the natural desire to represent “communities of interest.” Iowa’s approach, which gives a nonpartisan legislative staff the last word, is often cited as a model but may be hard to export to states with more demographic diversity and complex political cultures. Arizona has managed to fashion some workable, empirically based standards that are yielding more heterogeneous districts and more competitive elections.

Third, the president can also push—albeit indirectly—for greater participation of less ideologically committed voters in the electoral process. Some observers do not view the asymmetric power of passionate partisans in U.S. elections as any cause for concern. Why shouldn’t political decisions be made by the citizens who care most about them? While this argument seems plausible on the surface, it is less than compelling. Although passionate partisanship infuses the system with energy, it has built-in disadvantages, one being that it erects roadblocks against problem solving. Many committed partisans prefer gridlock to compromise, which is not a formula for effective governance.

To broaden the political participation of less partisan citizens, who tend to be more weakly connected to the political system, a number of major democracies have made voting mandatory. Australia has instituted its own version of mandatory voting, using small fines for nonvoting but escalating them for recidivism, with remarkable results. The turnout rate in Australia now tops 95 percent, and more than ever, citizens regard voting as a civic obligation. The civic benefits of higher turnouts seem significant as candidates for the Australian House have gained an added incentive to appeal broadly beyond their partisan bases. One wonders whether U.S. members of Congress, if subjected to wider suffrage, might also spend less time transfixed by symbolic issues that are primarily objects of partisan fascination and more time coming to terms with the nation’s larger priorities.

The United States is not Australia, of course. Although both have federal systems, the U.S. Constitution confers on state governments much more extensive control over voting procedures. While it might not be flatly unconstitutional to mandate voting nationwide, it would surely chafe with American custom and provoke opposition in many states. Moreover, federalism American-style has some compensating advantages, including its tradition of using states as “laboratories of democracy” that test reform proposals before they are elevated for consideration at the national level. If a few states experimented with mandatory voting and demonstrated its democratic potential, they might smooth the way to considering the idea on the national level.

Fourth, the president could find inspiration in the military practice of seriously monitoring institutional performance and using the results to improve future operations. Because the military’s costs of failure are so high, its units constantly engage in what they call “after-action reviews.” The goal is to assess, as honestly and bluntly as possible, what went right and what went wrong at the strategic as well as tactical level, and to use the findings to do better next time.

It would be a quiet revolution if the rest of the government were to adopt the after-action review as a standing operating procedure. The performance of each program would be measured against clearly defined benchmarks. If a program were deemed to have fallen short, the next step would be to figure out why and then change the program’s structure and administration accordingly. The American people know that everything made by human beings—including their political institutions—is imperfect. They can accept imperfection. What infuriates them is the typical pattern of denying that anything is wrong, followed eventually by an epidemic of finger-pointing that thwarts a sober assessment of what is needed to put things right.

Downloads

• Reforming Institutions

      

 

 

Editor's Note: The following is a Campaign 2012 policy brief by Shadi Hamid proposing ideas for the next president on U.S. policy in the Middle East. Tamara Wittes prepared a response arguing that the next president must remain flexible in response to the political instability throughout the region. Raj Desai also prepared a response arguing that the next administration should focus on economic development in the region in order to drive democracy and rebuild America’s influence.

It seems unlikely that U.S. policy toward the Middle East will get much attention during the 2012 presidential campaign, especially when it comes to the epochal transformations under way in the Arab world, colloquially referred to as the “Arab Spring.” It received painfully little airtime as the various Republican contenders jostled for their party nomination. There may be some discussion of how best to confront Iran. If Iraq slides back into civil war, as seems ever more possible, there may be some painful debates over who “lost” it. And Republicans have routinely attacked Barack Obama for being insufficiently supportive of Israel, and will continue to do so. But there is seemingly little desire to address what are likely to prove the most influential events of all those currently transpiring across the region. This is in stark contrast to the 2008 contest, where Middle East policy figured prominently in the campaigns of most major candidates.

It was in 2008 that Barack Obama positioned himself as the anti-Bush, drawing sharp contrasts with Republicans on democracy promotion, the Arab-Israeli conflict, Iran, and, of course, Iraq. For many Americans—and many Arabs—the promise to reorient U.S. foreign policy was key to Obama’s appeal. Yet after a brief honeymoon period, opposition to American policies in the region soared under the Obama administration. In fact, according to several polls, U.S. favorability ratings have been lower under President Obama than they were during the final days of the Bush administration.

What was once a major strength and source of appeal for Obama has become a potential liability. Indeed, on the Middle East, President Obama’s first term will be defined by the Arab Spring and his response to it. In part because it initially deprioritized democracy promotion in the region, the Obama administration was caught unprepared. As late as January 25, 2011—the day Egypt’s revolution began—Secretary of State Hillary Clinton famously stated, “Our assessment is that the Egyptian government is stable.” Eventually, senior U.S. officials responded to Cairo’s massive demonstrations by calling for an immediate transition and by using their influence to urge Egypt’s military—which receives over 20 percent of its budget from the United States—to refrain from using force against protesters. Since then, the administration has tried to get on the right side of history, with President Obama repeatedly proclaiming his support for Arab democratic aspirations. Yet the rhetoric has not been translated into clear policy initiatives, let alone significant material assistance. A major critique of neoconservatives and Arab revolutionaries alike is that the Obama administration has—in nearly every country facing mass protest—been slow to support protesters on the ground.

For its part, the Obama administration has avoided articulating a broader vision or grand strategy and instead emphasized the need for a “boutique strategy” that focuses on the specifics of each particular case. Considering the vastly different contexts of each country, this is unavoidable. Yet, a case-by-case approach, to be successful, needs to be guided by a coherent vision. Despite the historical import of the Arab Spring, there is nothing approaching the unified purpose of Truman’s Marshall Plan or even the rhetorical sharpness of Bush’s short-lived “freedom agenda.” The scale and scope of Obama’s declared policies can at times seem tepid. The amount of U.S. economic assistance promised to transitional countries is minimal, dwarfed by the commitments made by the Gulf countries.

In the United States, there is growing sentiment, particularly on the Left, that America’s declining influence and negligible credibility in the region compel it to adopt a “hands-off” approach and reduce its footprint in the Arab world. Yet it is precisely because of its still considerable power and influence in the region that the United States can and should provide critical support to Arab countries transitioning to democracy. After supporting autocratic regimes for more than five decades, the United States has a second chance to get it right and, in the process, build considerable goodwill among Arab populations and the governments they elect. That new governments are likely to be Islamist in orientation only strengthens the argument for sustained U.S. engagement. By establishing a working relationship with Islamist parties, the United States can encourage them to consider and respect key U.S. security interests, such as isolating Iran, pursuing peace with Israel, maintaining a stable oil market, and continuing vital counterterrorism cooperation.

Whether Obama is reelected or replaced by a Republican, the United States must:

• Articulate a comprehensive strategy toward the Middle East that advances American long-term interests by prioritizing the support of democracy and democrats in the region.
• Institutionalize the promotion of Arab democracy by coordinating the funding of a multilateral “reform endowment” that would provide clear incentives to Arab countries to implement necessary reforms.
• Pursue a strategic dialogue with rising Islamist parties in key countries of interest.
• Recognize that the window for a two-state solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict is closing, commit to rebuilding frayed ties with Israeli and Palestinian leaders, and outline clear U.S. parameters on borders, right of return, and the status of Jerusalem.

The Obama Record

Obama’s record on the Middle East, and the Arab Spring in particular, is challenging to assess because of the unrealistic expectations set early on. When he first took office—in part because of how he ran his presidential campaign and in part because he seemed the opposite of George W. Bush in every way—Arabs of all stripes (and often of radically different viewpoints) were well disposed toward the president. His June 4, 2009, Cairo address was applauded across the Middle East and seemed to be the first sign that Obama would be the sort of leader that so many in the region had hoped for. But the disappointment quickly set in. Beyond some limited programming on entrepreneurship and some science and technology cooperation, there was surprisingly little follow-up after the speech.

Initially, the administration put the pursuit of Arab-Israeli peace at the core of its Middle East policy—as signified by the appointment of special envoy George Mitchell. Administration heavyweights let it be known that they believed that once the conflict was satisfactorily resolved, a truly refashioned relationship with the Middle East would become possible. But the administration’s almost single-minded focus on halting settlement construction backfired, arousing the ire of the Israeli government while distracting from the key Palestinian concerns of borders and the right of return. Faced with this initial rebuke, the administration seemed to lose interest in the Israeli--Palestinian issue, and thereafter few new ideas or initiatives were forthcoming. When Senator Mitchell resigned in May 2011, the administration made no move to replace him with someone of similar stature.

Compared with its predecessor, the Obama administration put little emphasis on promoting democracy abroad. As early as March 2009, Egypt’s ambassador to the United States, Sameh Shukri, approvingly noted that bilateral ties were improving because Washington was dropping its demands “for human rights, democracy, and religious and general freedoms.” In her first trip to Cairo, that same month, Hillary Clinton assured the Egyptian government that “conditionality is not our policy.” Meanwhile, U.S. democracy assistance to Egypt was slashed by 60 percent (from $54 million to $20 million) and funding for civil society and good governance programs in Jordan fell by 44 and 36 percent, respectively.

The administration’s priority, instead, was strengthening government-to-government relations, something that Obama administration officials felt had suffered unnecessarily under the Bush administration. The relationship with Egypt had gotten so icy that President Hosni Mubarak suspended his annual visits to Washington for five years. Journalist Spencer Ackerman, who interviewed Obama’s foreign policy advisers extensively during the 2008 campaign, wrote that the Obama Doctrine was “dignity promotion” rather than democracy promotion. Indeed, the common thread throughout the statements and speeches of Obama and his senior advisers is the emphasis on institutional reform, economic development, and poverty alleviation first, and free and fair elections later. Such gradualism may have made sense for status quo powers like the United States that sought to avoid the untidiness of rapid democratization, but it made little sense for Arabs, who had already waited decades and only seen their societies grow more closed and repressive.

In the lead-up to elections in Egypt, Jordan, and Bahrain in late 2010, the Obama administration did little to exert pressure on leaders in these countries, all three of them close allies. The polls produced the most unrepresentative parliaments in Egyptian and Jordanian history—in Egypt because of widespread fraud and in Jordan because of an opposition boycott. Throughout the region, there was a pervasive sense of steady political deterioration, after the short-lived democratic openings of the “first Arab Spring” of 2004 and 2005, triggered in part by the Bush administration’s democracy promotion measures.

After the Arab uprisings began in early 2011, the Obama administration stated that it supported the peaceful struggles for freedom and congratulated the Tunisian and Egyptian people on their revolutions. The administration’s rhetorical support for democracy—particularly the pressure on Mubarak to leave office—was seen as an ominous sign by Arab regimes, particularly Saudi Arabia, and created significant tension between the two countries. At the same time, the United States tried to reassure Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and other allies that it stood behind them. President Obama reportedly called King Abdullah of Jordan personally to assure him of American support. He also sent the State Department’s then number three official, William J. Burns, and Admiral Michael G. Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on a tour of Arab capitals to demonstrate Washington’s commitment to their bilateral ties. Rather than assuaging the fears created by the Arab uprisings, the administration’s diplomatic efforts backfired. They alienated a wide range of potentially pro-American groups, simultaneously convincing Arab protesters and revolutionaries that Obama was siding with the dictators and panicking Arab autocrats into suspecting he was backing revolutions across the board.

The administration’s efforts at a nuanced policy toward the Arab Spring—what its critics damned as half-hearted and half-baked—produced additional confusion with its decisions on Libya. There, the Obama administration initially disparaged the appropriateness of a military option. Washington, to its credit, later reversed course and took decisive action after Muammar Qaddafi’s forces threatened to commit massacres in Benghazi, the seat of the democratic rebellion. Even then, however, France and Britain, Libyan rebels, and some Republicans like Senator John McCain attacked Obama for waiting too long. Moreover, after the first few weeks of the NATO operation, Washington publicly distanced itself from the ongoing fight and withdrew considerable American military hardware, once again leaving Arabs to wonder just what parts of the Arab Spring the United States was trying to support—and why. Ultimately, Libya was a qualified success for President Obama. Without American diplomatic and military support, the NATO intervention would not have happened and Qaddafi would almost certainly still be in power today. Yet it did little to ease the confusion over how the administration intended to pursue American interests in the region.

Washington’s handling of Syria has only muddied the waters further. If the administration’s handling of Libya was a qualified success, then Syria can only be seen as the opposite. Early on, the intensifying regime violence and the militarization of some opposition elements provoked only the most grudging and tardy of condemnations from the United States, coupled with half-hearted diplomatic efforts. Moreover, the violence in Syria provided a rebuke to the Obama administration’s early attempts to peel Syria off from Iran and bring it into the Western orbit, making those efforts seem naïve or even cynical in retrospect. After holding out hope that Bashar al-Asad might be persuaded to reform, the United States finally called on him to step down in August 2011 and began implementing asset freezes, travel bans, and sanctions on the regime and its most senior officials. As the Syrian uprising reached its one-year anniversary, the Syrian regime’s assault against civilian population intensified, dragging the country into all-out civil war. With the international community failing to stop the killing, the criticisms that the United States was either leading from behind—or not leading at all—persisted.

In formulating responses to the many and varied Arab uprisings, the Obama administration has opted for slow deliberation and caution, avoiding the strong, sometimes impulsive, gestures of the Bush administration. But the line between caution and irresolution can easily be blurred. Whatever the genesis of the term “leading from behind,” it does seem to capture key aspects of the administration’s approach to the Middle East and the president’s temperament on foreign policy more generally. The declining influence of the United States in comparison with the influence of rising powers like China, Brazil, India, and Turkey has led many American policymakers and analysts to conclude that the United States cannot act like it once did and that it must allow, even encourage, others to lead. Senior American officials routinely emphasize the inability of the United States to shape events in the Arab world and alter the behavior of reluctant allies. However, America’s actual influence often stems from how others, friends and enemies alike, perceive it rather than from a strict assessment of its objective ability or (more often) willingness to take action. By repeatedly discounting U.S. leverage in the region, the Obama administration has undermined the impact of its own declarations and policy measures when it does choose to act.

The result, in the Arab world, has been a noticeable power vacuum, with growing confusion over the thrust of American policy. What role does the United States see for itself in a rapidly changing region? “I’ve never seen Americans so confused and worried as I have ever since January [2011],” said Egypt’s Hisham Kassem, a prominent liberal publisher. While this may be overstating the case, the narrative of a United States that is feckless, incoherent, and increasingly irrelevant is one that has taken hold in Arab public discourse. And in the Middle East, perception is often reality.

The Republican Critique

Republican responses to Obama’s policies toward the Middle East in general and the Arab Spring specifically run the gamut. Republican hawks who remain close to the neoconservatives, such as John McCain and to a lesser extent Mitt Romney, believe Obama’s “less is more” approach has endangered efforts to promote democracy in the region. Other Tea Party–influenced Republicans, animated by a sense of American overcommitment abroad, have criticized Obama’s adventurism in Libya and suggested that he too quickly withdrew support from embattled allies, including President Mubarak.

As varied as they are, two common threads run through Republican critiques. First, they portray President Obama as an indecisive leader whose ad hoc, incoherent policies have undermined American credibility abroad. Second, they argue that Obama is not comfortable with American supremacy and is abdicating leadership to others in acknowledgement of a “post-American century.” With few exceptions, the Republican candidates failed to offer anything resembling a coherent alternative to Obama’s policies. To the extent that they have, the candidates, save Ron Paul, focused primarily on three issues—Israel, Iran, and the threat of Islamism—which gives some sense of where priorities will lie under a Republican administration. Republican policy toward emerging democracies—or existing autocracies—would primarily be a function of a given government’s positions on Israel and Iran as well as whether or not it had an Islamist orientation.

Republican candidates have reserved their harshest rhetoric for Obama’s approach to Israel. Romney, for example, has regularly attacked the administration for throwing “Israel under the bus” and blames Obama’s policies of “appeasement” for encouraging the Palestinians to pursue statehood at the United Nations. Meanwhile, several candidates cast doubt on the very notion of an independent Palestinian state—the product of decades of bipartisan consensus. Most famously, former Speaker Newt Gingrich called the Palestinians an “invented people.” In addition, he declared shariah law a “mortal threat to the survival of freedom in the United States and the world as we know it.”

Indeed, Republicans have routinely brought up the specter of an Islamist threat and have tended to lump nonviolent Islamist groups, such as the Muslim Brotherhood, with violent ones, such as al Qaeda. The Obama administration, in contrast, has begun engaging, if reluctantly, with the Muslim Brotherhood and has repeatedly affirmed the need to respect democratic outcomes, regardless of who wins. President Obama’s willingness to engage with Islamists has invited a flurry of attacks from conservatives that he is soft on extremism and indulges anti-American forces. There is some degree of fantasy in these criticisms. Notwithstanding the aggressive anti-Islamist rhetoric coming from most candidates, a Republican administration would have little choice but to adapt to new realities and work with Islamically influenced governments too.

Middle East Policy in the Next Presidential Term

None of the extant problems of the Middle East are likely to abate over the next four years. There may be some bright spots—Tunisia in particular shows considerable promise—but the overall regional trend is unlikely to improve significantly for some time, and it could well get worse before it gets better. Thus the central question for the next American president is the extent to which he wants to try to alleviate the problems of the region and help steer it away from the worst paths and toward better ones. The inward turn of American public opinion, political deadlock in Washington, and the country’s continuing economic problems will all limit just how much any president might do for the Middle East. None of these obstacles, however, is so great that determined leadership might not be able to overcome or at least mitigate them.

The direction of U.S. policy toward the region is far from settled and is likely to vary considerably depending on who wins the November election. During the primary campaign, different presidential candidates staked out very different positions, from neo-isolationism, to restrained involvement, to a much more muscular role in the region. On the Middle East, the divide between the Democratic administration and mainstream Republicans has continued to grow, certainly in rhetoric but also, increasingly, on policy—a result of real philosophical differences over the importance of American leadership during a time of significant financial constraints and greater global competition. If President Obama is not elected, there is still a considerable range of views within the Republican Party itself.

With the lack of bipartisan consensus or even a consensus within either party, there is an opportunity for a frank and wide-ranging debate about the past and future of U.S. policy in the Middle East. The relative decline in America’s influence and standing in the region—whether real or perceived—can, and should, be reversed, and the Arab Spring presents a particularly opportune moment to do so. Many of the American establishment’s long-held assumptions about the Middle East have proved false. A Democratic or Republican administration must be prepared to think creatively about how to reengage with the region on the basis of a new set of principles. The aspirations of ordinary Arabs can no longer be cast aside as irrelevant to U.S. interests. Americans are no longer engaging solely with unelected and unaccountable regimes but with populations that are demanding a voice not just in their own affairs but in foreign policy as well.

Active and consistent support for democratic change in the Arab world—even if it means occasionally angering long-standing allies—is important for a number of reasons. First, it aligns American policy with regional trends that are irreversible. Instead of being caught unaware once again, the United States should anticipate the changes to come—and recognize that the region is growing more, not less, democratic. It means little to support the demands of protesters after they have already won. It will send a much stronger signal to the region’s future leaders if Washington encourages and defends them when it is not easy and when their victory is far from a foregone conclusion.

Second, before the Arab Spring, anti-American sentiment could be—and often was—ignored or dismissed as irrelevant. After all, it mattered what governments did, and most Arab governments were firmly in the pro-U.S. orbit. In the coming years, however, what Arabs think and what their governments do will be much more closely linked. And, as long as tens of millions of Arabs dislike the United States, viewing it as a destructive force in the region, Arab democracies will feel compelled to act against American interests to gain popular support. Of course, Arab public opinion, fueled by deeply held resentments, will not change overnight, but, over the long run, the United States can work to build new relationships—based on shared values and common interests—with the region’s rising democracies.

As for countries that are not democracies, and may not be anytime soon, a forward-looking strategy is required. Many, including Morocco, Jordan, and Kuwait, will follow a middle path, somewhere between outright revolution and total repression. Here, the United States and like-minded nations should work to persuade them that they must start or continue down the path of reform because substantive change, however difficult, is ultimately the only viable option. Rather than being satisfied with partial, cosmetic reforms, the United States should clarify that the ultimate goal is a revamped political system in which the king or dictator relinquishes significant power to elected bodies. The United States should judge reform efforts by that standard. In these cases, it is critical that American policy be seen as supportive and beneficial to those who are willing to tread this arduous path. Reform is costly and often painful, and material assistance of all kinds from the United States and its allies should figure at least as prominently as the threat of sanctions—diplomatic, economic, and otherwise—in Washington’s efforts to help foster stabilizing change in the Middle East.

Moving in this direction requires measures that institutionalize the promotion of Arab democracy. The next president should coordinate the funding of a “reform endowment” that would provide clear incentives to Arab countries to implement necessary reforms. The endowment would include a minimum of $5 billion and would be available to all interested countries. Receiving aid would be conditioned on meeting a series of explicit, measurable benchmarks on democratization. These benchmarks would be the product of extensive negotiations with interested countries. Unused funds would be reinvested, while new democracies would be asked to contribute annual dues to help grow the endowment over time. For skeptical Arab audiences, the message from the United States and other donor countries would be clear—democracy cannot be imposed, but it can be actively and vigorously supported.

For transitional states like Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya, benchmarks could include military noninterference in civilian affairs, the establishment of judicial independence, and the protection of a vibrant, independent press. For liberalizing monarchies, such as Jordan, Morocco, and Kuwait, benchmarks should focus on expanded political space for opposition groups and the gradual devolution of power to elected institutions that are accountable to the people. This reform endowment should be funded with contributions from the United States, European nations, Turkey, Brazil, Qatar, and other like-minded powers. An international board would apportion loans and grants to states seeking to bring about real reform.

Democracy skeptics will counter that such efforts are in vain and that democratization has its dark side in light of the rise of Islamist parties. In a sense, they are right; in the Middle East, the future is Islamist. Instead of denying or fighting what is now an unmistakable reality, the United States and Europe should adapt by pursuing a strategic dialogue with Islamist actors across the region. Such parties are either already playing major roles in parliament and government or are likely to do so in the near future. Therefore, U.S. interests in the region will, whether Americans like it or not, be inextricably tied to theirs. With this in mind, there is an urgent need to foster a degree of mutual understanding and trust with these groups. Many of them, including Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, have made clear their desire to engage with the United States, realizing that American support will be critical to boosting trade and attracting foreign investment. Again, timing matters. Such relationships should be developed before these parties come to power, rather than afterward, when American leverage is likely to be less effective. With such channels, the United States can exert influence—and, if necessary, pressure—when Islamist parties overreach and take action that threatens vital U.S. interests in the region.

It is, by now, a cliché, but the importance of getting on the “right side of history” should not be underestimated. Yet all the support of Arab democracy will still fail to usher in a refashioned U.S. relationship with the region if, as currently seems likely, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict continues to fester. There is reason to fear that the window of opportunity for a two-state solution is closing, and the next president will have the weighty task of trying to resuscitate a defunct peace process. A Republican administration is unlikely to make this a priority, while a second-term Obama administration will continue to be constrained by its tense and sometimes acrimonious relationship with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (or a similarly minded right-wing government). A top priority for the next president must therefore be rebuilding trust with Israeli leaders and reaching out to the Israeli public. A presidential visit and public address in Israel, focusing on the concerns and fears of Israelis, would be a good place to start.

The Arab Spring will see the emergence of governments that are less amenable to Israel’s security interests. The more democratic the Middle East becomes, the more anti-Israel new elected governments will be. Israel’s isolation is only likely to grow. With this in mind, the United States should make clear that it stands firmly by Israel during a difficult time, while also impressing upon it the need to act sooner rather than later to make the difficult but ultimately necessary compromises for a durable peace.

Downloads

• Prioritizing Democracy

      

 

 

Editor's Note: The following is a Campaign 2012 policy brief by Bruce Jones, Thomas Wright and Jane Esberg proposing ideas for the next president on America’s role in the world. Strobe Talbott and John-Michael Arnold prepared a response arguing that political polarization in America is preventing the federal government from taking much-needed action on critical issues such as climate change and international security. Homi Kharas also prepared a response arguing that stark ideological differences between Republicans and Democrats mean the 2012 presidential election could have far-reaching impacts on America’s role in the world.

In April 2009 President Barack Obama announced: “I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that Brits believe in British exceptionalism, and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism. . . . I see no contradiction between believing that America has a continued extraordinary role in leading the world towards peace and prosperity and recognizing that that leadership is incumbent, depends on, our ability to create partnerships.” Though Obama meant it as an endorsement of burden sharing, Republican candidates in 2012 have latched on to this comment, arguing loudly and often that not only is America special, but that conservatives believe this more than the president does.

In the eyes of former Republican candidate Rick Perry, “the exceptionalism of America . . . makes it the last best hope for mankind.” For Ron Paul, this “exceptional country” sets the example that “others will emulate.” Likewise, Herman Cain, Michele Bachmann, and Jon Huntsman have all remarked that America is an “exceptional nation.” Mitt Romney put it most cuttingly when he said that Obama “went around the world and apologized for America.”

While such rhetoric captures the headlines, what should be of greater concern is the likely effect of the 2012 election on U.S. foreign policy and the future of the U.S.-led international order. The next president—whatever his party—will face a series of domestic and international constraints that will press for the continuity of Obama’s policy, rather than significant change. In fact, there is already broad agreement on three principles concerning reform of the international order, advocacy for human rights, and the use of military force. Bipartisan support for these principles should be fostered and communicated to allies, enemies, and “swing states” alike. Building on that foundation, the next administration should

• Concentrate on economic diplomacy designed to preserve economic openness, promote international trade, and correct financial imbalances that make the order crisis prone.
   
• Foster a more just and stable international order. Where feasible, that means relying less on nondemocratic regimes and building ties with communities inside authoritarian states and states newly transitioning toward democracy.
   
• Broaden and intensify efforts to form creative new multilateral arrangements in which emerging powers take on responsible roles, and efforts to enhance the credibility and efficacy of existing instruments.
   
• Retain the option for credible use of force, but make more effective use of diplomacy, civilian engagement, and other forms of power and influence, so as to minimize the times and circumstances in which force is necessary. The new administration should therefore avoid cuts to the State Department’s budget and ensure that savings in the Defense Department are linked to a strategy designed to deal with future threats and challenges, with some burden sharing from new and old allies, where possible.
   
• Strengthen and deepen America’s traditional alliances in Asia and Europe and develop new strategic partnerships.

The Progression in Obama’s Foreign Policy

When Barack Obama took office, he outlined three major foreign policy goals: “reestablish America’s standing in the world; create dialogue with friends, partners, and adversaries based on mutual respect; and work together in building partnerships.” Yet arguably the greatest foreign policy successes of the ensuing three years—the deaths of Osama bin Laden and Anwar al-Awlaki and the overthrow of Muammar Qaddafi—rested not on American soft power but on the uses of hard power, applied unilaterally in two of the three cases. Moreover, two of the acts probably violated some elements of international law. This does not mean that his focus on engagement has been replaced, but that increasingly it has been balanced by overt and covert military action, coercive diplomacy, and a deepening of alliance commitments.

Such changes reflect a shift in Obama’s foreign policy vision resulting from the experience that just as American power is limited so too is the willingness of other states to cooperate. At the same time, Obama still seems open to forging an international order in which emerging powers take on greater responsibility, but as yet those powers do not seem ready for prime time.

Obama’s campaign platform of peace through diplomatic engagement and military restraint played off the post-Bush distaste for war. Just before announcing his candidacy, Obama called for a “strategy no longer driven by ideology and politics but one that is based on a realistic assessment of the sobering facts on the ground and our interests.” Pragmatism also drove his policies of high-level engagement with allies and adversaries alike, including rogue regimes like those of Iran and North Korea. Thus high-level dialogue aimed at constraining and reasoning with governments meant in part tacitly supporting rogue or dictatorial regimes.

During the Green Revolution, for example, Obama avoided showing direct support for protestors for fear that it would backfire. In a 2007 debate, he called China “neither our enemy or our friend. . . . But we have to make sure that we have enough military-to-military contact and forge enough of a relationship with them that we can stabilize the region.” To promote dialogue, Obama publicly supported the One China initiative and postponed a visit with the Dalai Lama. He also called for “direct and aggressive diplomacy” to address the North Korean nuclear program. He was wary of using military force outside of addressing a direct national interest, saying in 2007 that he would not leave troops in Iraq even in the event of genocide: “if that’s the criteria by which we are making decisions on the deployment of U.S. forces, then by that argument you would have 300,000 troops in the Congo right now.” Thus above all else, stability and peace drove Obama’s foreign policy rhetoric.

By the early months of 2011, however, Obama’s goal of engagement with adversaries had shifted. The discovery of a secret nuclear facility in Qom, Iran’s refusal to negotiate, and the regime’s crackdown on the Green Revolution persuaded Obama to seek UN Security Council authorization for sweeping sanctions. These passed, even though the move alienated Brazil and Turkey, which were negotiating a fuel-swap deal with Iran. In the same period, China became increasingly assertive in the South China Sea, submitting claims to vast amounts of the maritime territory and harassing U.S. naval vessels on a surveillance mission. It also proved intransigent on discussions of nuclear weapons reductions. These moves would eventually result in Obama’s “rebalancing to Asia” in the winter of 2011. Engagement also failed to mend relations with North Korea, which unveiled an advanced uranium enrichment facility and began provocations against South Korea that included sinking its navy corvette Cheonan and shelling the coast. High-level talks seemed most effective in Russia, where Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) discussions created a new strategic reduction treaty and American concessions on missile defenses bought Russian support for sanctions on Iran and the cancellation of S-300 missile sales to Iran. Ironically, when discussing Russia during the campaign, Obama had supported “pushing for more democracy, transparency, and accountability” and called a “resurgent” and “aggressive” Russia “a threat to peace and stability.”

What changed was not Obama’s belief in America’s special role in the world but his understanding of how that must manifest itself, given that other states were not always willing to cooperate and differed from the United States in their perception of threats. As a result, Obama’s foreign policy shifted in three respects: it showed greater readiness to use America’s military reach, put greater emphasis on the United States leading the way in the design of new institutions, and intensified the focus on human rights and democracy abroad. Thus Obama sent troops into Pakistan without permission, in violation of Pakistani sovereignty, to conduct the raid that killed Osama bin Laden. He agreed to the assassination of al-Awlaki, an American citizen and al Qaeda operative, in Yemen. Iran’s nuclear timeline was delayed in large part because of likely U.S. or Israeli covert actions, such as use of the Stuxnet computer virus and probable assassinations of Iranian scientists and engineers. To reorient American power toward the Asia-Pacific, the United States announced that marines on rotation would operate from a base in Darwin, Australia, and that Washington would provide new littoral battleships to Singapore and naval support for the Philippines. To promote cooperation on issues of American interest, Obama spearheaded the creation of new global arrangements, including the Nuclear Security Summit (NSS), the Global Counterterrorism Forum (GCTF), and the Open Government Partnership (OGP), and he also announced the creation of a U.S.-led economic framework for Asia. In addition, during Hu Jintao’s January 2011 visit, Obama twice referred to the need for China to improve its human rights record, and he repeated the sentiment in his speech to Australia’s parliament.

The deployment of resources to the Asia-Pacific and the use of drones has been called a form of “offshore balancing,” which in this context means greater reliance on air, sea, and naval power, a reduction in major troop presences in the greater Middle East, and fostering strategic regional alliances. The logic is that a step back from costly land-based commitments will provide the United States with additional options to achieve its geopolitical objectives. This position is hardly new. With intellectual roots in the cold war, Obama’s policies in many ways represent a return to tradition. What is novel about Obama’s version of offshore balancing is its moral dimension, which centers on America’s exceptionalism—including its respect for human rights—rather than just its hegemony. Although Libya was, after all, an exercise in U.S. and allied airpower, the strict realist interpretation of offshore balancing considers it a means to undermine any potential challengers. By contrast, Obama’s version also stresses ethical responsibility: “Some nations may be able to turn a blind eye to atrocities in other countries. The United States of America is different.” Even the development of new global arrangements like the NSS, GCTF, and OGP can be seen as a form of diplomatic offshore balancing, ensuring American interests while indirectly pressuring other governments to fall in line by building partnerships and setting global norms.

In this regard, the foreign policy actor that Obama most closely resembles may be James Baker, secretary of state to George H. W. Bush. Initially using traditional offshore balancing through deployment of troops to Saudi Arabia to protect Kuwait, Baker also pushed for direct Western intervention in the Bosnia-Herzegovina crisis: “The only way to solve [the situation in Bosnia-Herzegovina] is selective bombing of Serbian targets.” However, he balked at unilateral action, stating that the United States “cannot be the world’s policeman.” Baker effectively balanced American power, alliances, and international institutions to achieve national interests, and Obama has followed suit.

The Republican 2012 Debates

Despite ongoing hostilities in Afghanistan, tensions with Iran, regime transition in North Korea, the Arab Spring, the Eurocrisis, and America’s tense relationship with China, foreign policy has been a minor theme of the Republican primary debates. In fact, it was hardly mentioned in the numerous debates in the summer and fall of 2011. Even when several conservatives expressed concern about the exclusion of international issues from the contest and candidates held two national security debates in response, one received only an hour of live televised time and was relatively lackluster, while the other concentrated on Iran and terrorism-related issues. The second debate also veered throughout into domestic politics—such as entitlement reform and immigration—and had no discussion of Asia or the European crisis. Despite Egypt’s second wave of protests in Tahrir Square, which coincided with the first round of its elections, the Arab Spring was only touched on at the very end.

The debates reflected the substance and style of the primary campaign as a whole. Whenever foreign policy realities—the Arab Spring, Libya, Europe—intruded, the candidates’ positions were underdeveloped and subject to change. One candidate, Herman Cain, managed to dominate the news cycle for several weeks despite committing several major foreign policy gaffes, including not knowing that China had nuclear weapons, promising to release all prisoners in Guantánamo in exchange for U.S. prisoners held by the Taliban or al Qaeda, and being unable to offer a view about the Libya intervention. This was less significant for what it said about Cain than about primary voters’ lack of interest in a candidate’s foreign policy views. Of all the candidates, only Mitt Romney ever had anything approaching a foreign policy infrastructure similar in size and scope to that of John McCain or the two top Democratic contenders of 2008.

In the absence of a substantive debate or conversation on foreign policy, the candidates engaged the issues of national security and foreign policy rhetorically and by invoking themes that resonate with the base—notably that of American exceptionalism and Obama’s penchant for underplaying it. When a May 2011 article in the New Yorker by Ryan Lizza included a quotation from an unnamed White House official describing the president’s strategy on Libya as “leading from behind,” GOP candidates immediately jumped on this statement and returned to the theme in the fall. Issues that seem compatible with the narrative of Obama the naïve appeaser (on Iran and Russia) are embraced, and inconvenient facts (such as covert activities against Iran) are ignored. Issues that do not lend themselves to the narrative—such as Obama’s Asia strategy of balancing China—are avoided entirely. The harsh criticism is of a general nature and fails to provide substantive arguments on major issues such as the Arab Spring, counterterrorism, the European crisis, or the intervention in Libya.

When the Republican candidates have focused on foreign policy, they have conceived it narrowly and in 2004 terms, focusing on terrorism, Iran’s nuclear weapons, and sovereignty. America’s broader role in the world—particularly in such regions as Asia and Europe—has been given short shrift. For example, Romney’s foreign policy speech made no mention of any of America’s Asian allies, even though it emphasized a commitment to alliances. Only Israel and the United Kingdom made the cut. Not only have the candidates not offered policies to deal with the international dimension of the financial crisis, they have shown little sign of understanding it at all. On other transnational issues, such as climate change and foreign aid, the Republican position has weakened since the Bush administration, as made clear during the second GOP foreign policy debate when Paul Wolfowitz, deputy secretary of defense during the Bush administration and a leading hawk, implicitly admonished the candidates for proposing to cut aid to Africa. Grand strategy appears to have contracted as well. Bush made the promotion of democracy and freedom the central pillar of his worldview, but with the exception of Rick Santorum, no candidate for 2012 has taken up his banner. Indeed, the Republican notion of the national interest and security has shrunk considerably since George W. Bush left office.

What is more, though seemingly united in their criticisms of Obama, the Republican Party is sharply divided on its view of America’s role in the world. Henry Kissinger once wrote, “It is above all to the drumbeat of Wilsonian idealism that American foreign policy has marched since his watershed presidency and continues to march to this day.” While accusing Obama of Wilsonianism, the Republican foreign policy line itself has proved confused, split between three separate—and often contradictory—strains of thought: machoism, isolationism, and engagement. These correspond very roughly to the Jacksonian, Jeffersonian, and Hamiltonian foreign policy traditions. Most candidates incorporate at least two such concepts into their rhetoric, though all reveal a different vision of what it means for America to be exceptional.

Perhaps the clearest offshoot of exceptionalism is American machoism, which implies that by grace of its strength the United States can shape the rest of the world into what it wants. Saber-rattling on Iran has been its most overt sign in the debates, as well as in Romney’s call for increased military spending. However, this current machoism is more expansive than its Jacksonian roots: while similarly uncompromising and lacking a moral dimension, it has developed a cockiness about the nation’s ability to promote its interests short of force. Newt Gingrich, for example, stated that the United States needs to start “taking back” the United Nations and to refuse engagement with the “terrorist” Palestinian Authority. Romney denounced the “reset” of relations with Russia as “caving in” to demands on Iran. Such comments essentially argue that the United States can have its way in any scenario—and that President Obama simply hasn’t been demanding forcefully enough.

If this machoistic rhetoric seems like a natural extension of exceptionalism, it is also reminiscent of Bush’s policies, so the candidates have almost universally tempered it. To avoid the appearance of warmongering, they have balanced it with a Jeffersonian emphasis on avoiding “entangling alliances.” Current Republican isolationism rests on two beliefs: first, that America is “exceptionally” self-sufficient and thus does not need to engage extensively to preserve its own security; and second, that engagement weakens America by draining its resources. Foreign aid in particular rankles isolationists. Rick Perry promised to drop all aid to zero and to reevaluate whether recipients “deserve” it, a proposition with which Gingrich agreed. He also promised a “very serious discussion of defunding the United Nations.” Gingrich called for the suspension of UN funding in response to the vote on Palestinian statehood. None of the candidates espousing such arguments have explained how this foreign policy vision takes into account the realities of an interconnected global economy.

However, some Republicans favor a Hamiltonian emphasis on engagement to promote American interests, in close alignment with Obama’s foreign policy. Unsurprisingly, Jon Huntsman became the symbol for this strand of Republican thought, supporting talks with China, Pakistan, and other key states in the interest of U.S. security. Romney, too, thinks the United States should “employ all tools of statecraft” and “exercise leadership in multilateral organizations.” Though recently critical of the United Nations, even Gingrich encouraged the United States to increase funding for certain UN programs when cochairing a 2005 task force on UN reform for the United States Institute of Peace. In the debates, Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum stated that staying engaged with Pakistan is of vital importance to U.S. security.

Most candidates avoided embracing any single policy strain fully: machoism too closely aligns with Bush’s Iraq invasion, isolationism too clearly ignores the transnational threats the United States still faces, and engagement too closely echoes Obama. With the exception of Ron Paul and Jon Huntsman, the candidates have pieced together parts of multiple lines, with somewhat schizophrenic results. In one breath, Romney states the United States should “embrace the challenge . . . not to crawl into an isolationist shell,” in another that it “ought to get the Chinese to take care of the people [in need of humanitarian aid].” That is to say, America—strong as ever—should lead, but why not let someone else do it. Such competing policies are highly suggestive of an actual Republican administration’s stance.

Facing Reality

The Republicans have strived to differentiate themselves from Obama, but part of the reason for the inconsistencies in their foreign policy line lies in the evolution of his thinking. Defining an “Obama Doctrine” is a challenge. He is not an interventionist (in Sudan and Congo), except where he is (in Libya and in Uganda in a small way). He addresses threats cooperatively (in the Nuclear Security Summit), except when he doesn’t (in the bin Laden raid and allegedly in the case of the Stuxnet attack on Iran). He calls for democracy (in the Middle East), except when he by and large stays silent (on Russia). He does not fit neatly into a realist or an idealist box. Obama has evolved to a position that might be termed ethical offshore balancing. While, as Walter Russell Mead has argued, he campaigned on Wilsonian-Jeffersonian ideals, he has developed a hybrid Wilsonian-Hamiltonian foreign policy.

Any candidate will face a number of foreign policy challenges and have limited policy options to manage them. China’s growth and influence are a fact of life: hard containment is at odds with the reality of U.S.--Chinese economic entanglement, but allowing China unfettered dominance of Asia is hardly a viable or desirable option either. Obama’s balancing effort contains most of the right notes, and it is hard to see how any Republican president might differ substantially from Obama’s eventual position on this. Brazil and India are playing an increasingly important role in the global order, and the United States must find ways to engage them or else risk alienating important regional players and leaving their potential contributions to a stable order on the table. But equally, no American president in the foreseeable future is going to offer these countries anything like a veto over American foreign policy programs (or a veto in the UN Security Council). The shaky economic foundations of the global financial system need urgent attention, and it is striking to recall that it was George W. Bush—hardly America’s greatest multilateralist—who authorized the most important expansion of International Monetary Fund (IMF) powers in recent times to deal with the global financial crisis. Obama has continued strengthening the IMF, and although no Republican candidate has mentioned the IMF explicitly, Gingrich’s and Romney’s foreign policies seem unlikely to radically change the stance at the IMF or in the G20. Neither isolationism nor machoism addresses the reality that the United States has clear and important stakes in the global economy that make it vulnerable to the actions and behaviors of other nations. Similarly, transnational threats mean isolationism is not an option.

Hints of the same basic policies can already be seen in the Republican field. The most developed foreign policy statement of any of the Republican campaigns came in a Romney speech, and its parallels with Obama’s foreign policy are striking. On major doctrinal matters—including the use of military force, advocating for human rights, and reforming the international order—the positions are similar.

Indeed, many on both sides of the aisle believe that a healthy global economy is integral to a functioning and effective international order. The next administration should intensify its economic diplomacy to preserve economic openness, foster international trade, and correct financial imbalances that invite crisis. Many would also agree that the United States has a unique role both in fostering a stable international order and in promoting justice and dignity. As mentioned earlier, America should rely less on autocratic regimes and more on building ties with communities inside authoritarian states and those moving toward democracy. These are better achieved through quiet policy than declarative rhetoric, given the inevitable reality that there will be important exceptions—as in the case of Saudi Arabia.

Equally important, U.S. power and security need to be embedded in multilateral institutions and alliances. The next administration should intensify U.S. efforts to foster such arrangements and encourage emerging powers to take on responsible roles, and to enhance the credibility and efficacy of existing instruments.

As also mentioned earlier, the credible use of force must remain an option, although the emphasis should be on more effective use of diplomacy, civilian engagement, and other forms of power and influence. It is therefore vital to keep the State Department budget at its current level and to ensure that savings to the Defense Department’s budget are linked to strategies to deal with future threats and challenges and to make sure that allies and partners will share some of the burden, where possible. In its relations with China, the next administration should aim to retain a judicious blend of efforts to balance and efforts to engage. As a new generation of leadership takes over in Beijing, it will be important to communicate the resolve to balance China’s regional muscle and a desire to see China succeed at economic growth, social development, and gradual political liberalization.

For now, the Republican candidates tend to favor continuity in their general worldview, although some may diverge on climate change and arms control. Whichever party finds itself occupying the White House in January 2013, America’s international order strategy seems likely to be shaped not by minor differences between the two parties but by the twin realities governing present times: American reliance on the global economy and global reliance on American power.

Downloads

• Download Paper

      

 

 

Editor's Note: The following is a Campaign 2012 policy brief by Alice Rivlin proposing ideas for the next president on America’s health care system. Tom Mann prepared a response arguing that Americans must accept the reality of today’s political polarization and challenge Washington to offer tangible solutions to the nation’s urgent problems. Ross Hammond also prepared a response arguing that the next president must address the nation’s obesity epidemic by renewing prevention efforts, increasing investment in public health research and better coordinating America’s public health policy.

Health care reform was a prominent issue in the 2008 campaign, dominated the congressional agenda for much of 2009, and culminated in landmark health care legislation in 2010. So that was settled, and no one has to think about health care policy in 2012, right? Wrong. It’s back. Health care is still high on the political agenda and destined to be one of the most polarizing issues of the 2012 campaign.

In his presidential campaign, candidate Barack Obama promised health care coverage for the uninsured and action to rein in the rapidly rising health costs. “I will judge my first term as president based on . . . whether we have delivered the kind of health care that every American deserves and that our system can afford,” he said. He made good on the first step of that promise when the Affordable Care Act (ACA) narrowly passed the Democrat-led Congress in 2010. The Obama administration is working hard to implement the ACA, but Republican primary candidates uniformly call for its repeal.

In addition, the country’s rising debt has become a growing concern for policymakers. Increased longevity, the retirement of the baby boom generation, and rapidly rising health care costs make Medicare reform essential to reducing projected federal borrowing. The president contends that the ACA’s multiple provisions designed to restrain the cost of Medicare will solve the problem, but Republicans disagree. They call for “structural” changes in Medicare, such as “premium support,” which would allow Medicare beneficiaries to choose among competing private health plans and cap the government’s contribution.

Americans agree on the need to reduce the growth of health care costs, improve quality, and increase availability but are divided on what role the government should play. In the next administration, whichever party prevails, the ACA should be fine-tuned but not repealed. The president should

• Work with Congress to find a constitutional way to ensure near-universal access to health care if the individual mandate is struck down by the Supreme Court.
   
• Implement key provisions of the ACA as quickly as possible and add sensible tort reform to it.
   
• Forge a bipartisan consensus to stabilize federal debt by controlling entitlement growth and raising revenues from a reformed tax system.
   
• Include in the debt solution a bipartisan compromise on Medicare reform that protects traditional Medicare but offers premium support and caps the federal contribution at a realistic rate.

The Obama Record

• An Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) to recommend legislative proposals that would keep Medicare spending from growing faster than the economy plus 1 percent. These recommendations will go into effect unless blocked by Congress. However, the IPAB cannot ration care, increase revenues, or change benefit structures.
   
• The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI), which is charged with designing, testing, and evaluating payment methods for government health programs that can be shown to reduce costs without lowering health care quality.
   
• The Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI), established to support comparative effectiveness research. This research compares health care practices and procedures on the basis of cost and quality measures with a view to identifying less costly ways to deliver the same or better quality care. However, PCORI research may not be interpreted as a mandate or guideline for health care delivery.
   
• Accountable care organizations (ACOs), which are integrated groups of health care providers responsible for the overall care of beneficiaries and are given a share of the cost savings they achieve for the Medicare program if they voluntarily meet specific quality thresholds.

The Republican Critique

Health Care, Debt, and Deficit in the Next Administration

Downloads

• Download Alice Rivlin's Paper

      

 

 

Follow @BICampaign2012
Editor's Note: The following is a Campaign 2012 policy brief by Benjamin Wittes and Daniel Byman proposing ideas for the next president on America’s counterterrorism efforts. Stephen Grand prepared a response arguing that the next president must seize the Arab Spring as a historic opportunity to prove to the region that the United States is a meaningful and trustworthy partner. Rebecca Winthrop and Kevin Watkins also prepared a response arguing that the United States must put poverty, including strategies for positive youth development, at the center of the nation’s wider national security agenda.

At the dawn of the Obama administration, counterterrorism seemed to be one of the new president’s biggest weaknesses. Unlike the preceding administration, which repeatedly emphasized that it was keeping America safe from a post-September 11 homeland attack, Barack Obama promised during the campaign to “restore the rule of law” and “close Guantánamo,” in other words, to smooth off the hard edges of the War on Terror. Within months of taking office, Obama found his various moves in this direction thwarted by opponents who painted the new president as weak. Two near-miss terrorist attacks domestically—one on an airplane, the other in Times Square—accentuated the political problem. By the time the president had completed his first year in office, counterterrorism ranked among his political vulnerabilities.

What began as weakness, however, has over time morphed into strength. As a result, Obama goes into the 2012 campaign enjoying far higher public confidence in his pursuit of terrorists than on other matters. He has developed a strong operational record both in overseas counterterrorism and against domestic jihadists. He has made bold decisions that have enraged his political base. He has also been lucky. And barring a successful strike on the homeland in the coming months, he will have turned counterterrorism from a sword wielded against him to a sword in his own electoral hand.

Unfortunately, Obama’s operational successes have not been matched by comparable success in establishing a durable legal framework for counterterrorism activities. Despite his victories against al Qaeda overseas, the president finds his position on counterterrorism in the eyes of Congress growing steadily worse. Some of this trouble reflects frankly unreasonable policy constraints that Congress has attempted to slap on executive operational flexibility. Some of it, however, reflects poor and timid leadership on the part of Obama, who has steadfastly refused to invest his political prestige and capital in the legislative politics of counterterrorism. As a result, the next president will face a significantly improved strategic climate with respect to America’s principal terrorist enemy but also a set of thorny policy disputes with the legislature—which seems bent on pushing approaches that no president, Republican or Democrat, is likely to embrace.

The next presidential term should not, and probably will not, see a radical departure from the current framework of counterterrorism policy. Whether Obama or a Republican is at the helm, the United States must continue with its robust domestic law enforcement alongside vigorous covert and open targeting of al Qaeda–affiliated groups in Pakistan, Yemen, and elsewhere. It must also maintain and expand work with cooperating intelligence partners in other nations.

But important changes should be entertained as well. In particular, the next president should talk more publicly about the legal and policy parameters of the fight; settle relations with Congress on counterterrorism matters, and establish a set of understandings with the legislature regarding available counterterrorism tools; and end the standoff with the legislature over whether to close Guantánamo, accepting the fact that noncriminal detention is not going to end and that the naval base is as a good a site as any at which to conduct it under appropriate judicial supervision.

The Obama Record

Our goal is to construct a legitimate legal framework for the remaining Guantánamo detainees that cannot be transferred. . . . If and when we determine that the United States must hold individuals to keep them from carrying out an act of war . . . my administration will work with Congress to develop an appropriate legal regime so that our efforts are consistent with our values and our Constitution.

The Republican Critique

is only a few sentences long, its language is quite general, and it has not been updated since its enactment. While the statute clearly authorizes force against al Qaeda and the Taliban, it does not directly address what other groups might also be covered. Recent administrations have interpreted the AUMF expansively to include those who substantially support forces associated with al Qaeda and the Taliban, but as more time passes, the connections between those two groups and the terror threats we face will become more and more attenuated. These new terror groups—like al-Shabaab in Somalia—may share al Qaeda’s ideological objectives but lack close operational ties with the larger network.

Counterterrorism Policy in the Next Presidential Term

Downloads

• Keeping on Offense: The Next President Should Keep After al Qaeda but Mend Relations with Congress on Terrorism

      

 

 

Editor's Note: The following is a Campaign 2012 policy brief by Suzanne Maloney proposing ideas for the next president on Iran. Shibley Telhami prepared a response arguing that the next president must address the concerns of key regional actors as he works to contain Iran’s nuclear program. Michael Doran also prepared a response arguing that the most consequential decision the president faces this election year is determining the fate of Iran’s nuclear program.

Get audio and video from our Campaign 2012 event on Iran »

The question of what to do about the Islamic Republic of Iran has proved a reliable feature of American campaign debates for more than three decades. This reflects U.S. policymakers’ abiding concern surrounding the threats posed by Tehran’s nuclear program, support for terrorism, and repression of the democratic aspirations of its people. Beyond the tangible dimensions of the Iranian challenge, the history of Tehran’s tormented relationship with Washington entails a special resonance with the American electorate and a pointed relevance for aspirants to political office, who are all too familiar with the fallout from the hostage crisis and the Iran-Contra scandal on prior American presidencies.

So it is hardly surprising that Iran has already emerged as a major point of contention in the jousting over foreign policy in the 2012 presidential campaign. The Republicans have identified Iran as a chief foreign policy vulnerability for the president, one that underscores their narrative that the Obama administration has mishandled the country’s most urgent challenges and that American primacy in the world must be restored. For its part, the White House has argued that its approach has succeeded in generating greater multilateral cooperation on the threat from Iran and in imposing high costs on its leadership.

Unfortunately, the campaign debate on Iran thus far has generated more heat than light. Beneath the Republican recriminations and White House cheerleading, the overall approach and specific policy prescriptions of the two parties vary only modestly. They share the same expressed objective and, for the most part, the same instruments; the principal difference is one of tone. However, the political rewards for talking tough on Tehran tend to discourage serious and realistic discussion of an issue that has stymied presidents from both parties for more than three decades. That electoral theatrics eclipse sober analysis is hardly unusual, but on this issue at this juncture, it is particularly unhelpful. As tensions between Washington and Tehran intensify, the campaign discourse on Iran risks escalating the spiral between the two countries with a profoundly negative impact on American security interests and the international economy.

In the next term, the president must clarify U.S. goals and intentions and commit his administration to the strenuous and often-complicated diplomacy needed to deal with such a persistent problem. This diplomatic effort must remain focused on continuing to prolong Iran’s path toward a nuclear weapon and preventing Tehran from threatening its neighbors or global energy markets. Sanctions and regional security policy have succeeded in constraining Iran’s most dangerous policies. Ultimately, the Iranian threat will not reach a conclusive end without a transformation of the country’s leadership—and only the Iranian people themselves can accomplish this.

The Obama Record

The Republican Critique

Iran Policy in the Next Term

Downloads

• Download Paper

      

 

 

Editor's Note: The following is a Campaign 2012 policy brief by Kenneth Lieberthal and Jonathan Pollack proposing ideas for the next president on America’s relationship with China. Joshua Meltzer prepared a response arguing that the next president must build stronger economic ties with China and work to resolve several outstanding trade disputes between the two nations. Richard Bush also prepared a response arguing that the U.S. and China must reduce their mutual mistrust in order to cooperate on global challenges.

The U.S.-China relationship seems certain to be a dominant issue in any foreign and defense policy debate during the 2012 presidential campaign. Although foreign policy in general appears unlikely to become a major focus of this year’s election, the distinctions between foreign and domestic policy are not always clear-cut, especially when many see China’s primary challenge to the United States as more economic than strategic. Both parties have placed America’s relations with the Asia-Pacific region at the center of their foreign policy priorities, with clear expectations that China’s economic weight, strategic intentions, and military capabilities will increasingly impact on U.S. policy choices.

The Obama administration has moved over time toward a stronger focus on hedging against China's power, even as it continues to advocate Beijing’s fuller inclusion in the regional political, economic, and security order. The administration’s Republican opponents have advocated a much more hard-edged approach with respect to economics and trade, security, and human rights. However, setting forth ambitious objectives without detailed regard for their potential effects on larger U.S. interests could entail significant costs and unanticipated consequences for U.S. foreign policy.

China's rise is having a large and complex impact on the United States and Asia, and on various global issues. The best American strategy to pursue warrants serious debate. At this point, though, it appears there will be more posturing than thoughtful analysis during the campaign, and there is more than a little danger that the dynamics of the China debate in the campaign will exacerbate tensions and problems in U.S.-China relations.

In the coming presidential term, the administration will need to confront the reality that the single biggest factor determining the shape of the U.S.-China relationship will be the extent of America’s success in getting its domestic house in order. It will therefore need to focus enormous attention on setting the United States on a fiscally sound path that includes allocating resources for investments necessary for long-term growth and innovation.

Whoever is president during 2013–17 also must work to establish initiatives with the new Chinese leadership that hold out the possibility of building greater trust based on deeper consultations and concrete actions. A key part of achieving this goal is to conduct in-depth, sustained discussions of U.S. and Chinese military doctrines in Asia, their perspectives toward potential contingencies on the Korean peninsula, their efforts to address their respective domestic economic challenges, and the prospects for the coordination of development assistance and possibly other policies in Central Asia.

The Obama Administration’s Record

The Republican Critique of Administration Policy

Policy Recommendations

• First, as mentioned at the outset, the U.S. president as of 2013 should recognize clearly that the single biggest factor determining the shape of the U.S.-China relationship over the coming four years will be the extent of America’s success in getting its domestic house in order. Expectations are extremely important in this relationship, and throughout Asia—very much including in Beijing—there is great uncertainty as to whether America will resolve its domestic political dysfunction and bounce back as a vibrant and strong engine of global growth and center of global innovation. A positive answer to this question will do more than any potential initiative to ensure a more respectful, cautious Chinese policy toward the United States.
   
• Second, distrust in both countries over each other’s long-term intentions has deepened in recent years, despite a generally very sound record of handling U.S.-China relations by the Obama administration. Such distrust is corrosive. Mutual suspicion moves both sides into worst-case scenarios on issues like military strategy and postures, and it thus threatens to become a self-fulfilling prophecy, at very high cost to both sides.
  
  The U.S. administration should therefore work to establish initiatives with the new Chinese leadership that hold out the possibility of building greater trust based on deeper consultations and concrete actions. There should be a serious effort to develop in-depth, sustained discussions of respective American and Chinese military doctrines in Asia, of their respective thinking about potential contingencies on the Korean peninsula, of their initiatives and results in their efforts to address their domestic economic challenges, and of their views on the evolution of Central Asia and their own roles in that evolution.
  
  These discussions should be accompanied by efforts to at least act in broadly mutually reinforcing ways, if not in actual cooperation. Those efforts might focus on, for example, development assistance in central Asia and then move to more difficult issues. An agreement to proceed in consciously parallel—and increasingly in actively cooperative— fashion may over time deepen mutual understanding to the point where it is possible to agree on, inter alia, mutual restraint in development and deployment of certain types of military capabilities.

Downloads

• Establishing Credibility and Trust

      

 

 

Editor's Note: The following is a Campaign 2012 policy brief by Martin Baily proposing ideas for the next president on stimulating America’s economic growth. Karen Dynan prepared a response arguing that the housing finance system must be reformed in order to introduce greater certainty into the market. Elisabeth Jacobs also prepared a response arguing that the next president should act forcefully to promote economic security and opportunity in America.

Introduction

• Continued stimulus for workers’ incomes;
• Maintaining assistance for housing;
• Providing continued aid to the states;
• Controlling the trade deficit;
• Helping Europe address its debt crisis;
• Setting a framework for a balanced budget;
• Encouraging states to bring in private capital to undertake significant
  infrastructure investments; and
• Embracing the trends of developing educational technology and expanding competition among educational institutions.

The Obama Record

[1]

The Republican Response

Policies to Revive Growth

• Nationwide, many mortgages are underwater—currently to the tune of $700 billion. Any serious effort to write down mortgage debt with government funds would be very expensive.
   
• The underwater mortgages are concentrated in a few states. California has 26.8 percent of such debt, and adding only Florida and Arizona pushes the total to nearly 48 percent. This means that any large-scale assistance would involve a big transfer to those few states and hence would be difficult politically.
   
• Addressing the underwater mortgage problem would help but would not necessarily revive home building or household spending. The big pool of home equity waiting to be tapped has gone, and the magic attraction of home-ownership has been lost.

• Work with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to encourage greater exchange rate flexibility globally, especially in the Asian economies. Some form of sanctions may be necessary for countries that manipulate their exchange rates and run chronic multilateral current account surpluses.[6]
   
• China, in particular, needs to let its exchange rate appreciate. Public pressure or trade sanctions on China would be counterproductive, but the United States should work with its allies to make it clear that China must maintain external balance. The Wall Street Journal reported March 1, 2012 that China is sharply reducing the proportion of its foreign exchange reserves held in dollars, a possible sign that they plan more currency flexibility. But they are still accumulating reserves at a rapid rate (reserves were $3.2 trillion at the end of June 2011 up from under $1 trillion in 2006).
   
• Balancing the federal budget over the longer term would greatly reduce the need for foreign financing and help avoid an overvalued dollar.

Conclusion

Downloads

• Download Paper

      

 

 

Editor's Note: The following is a Campaign 2012 policy brief by Ted Gayer proposing ideas for the next president on climate change. Charles Ebinger and Govinda Avasarala prepared a response identifying five critical challenges the next president must address to help secure the nation’s energy future. Katherine Sierra also prepared a response arguing that the introduction of a carbon tax would encourage the United States to tackle greenhouse gas emissions and help the nation regain its international leadership on the issue.

Introduction

Despite this apparent bipartisan support, the past three years has seen cap-and-trade legislation fail to make it through the Senate, and has now seen the politics of climate change transformed to the point where a politician’s stated support of cap-and-trade is commonly viewed as a political liability. According to polling jointly organized by the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication and the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication in November 2011, only 12 percent of Americans believe “global warming should be a very high priority for the president and Congress,” down from 21 percent in November 2008. Those who think it should be a low priority jumped from 17 to 30 percent during that same period.

While in 2008 the president said that “combating global warming will be a top priority of my presidency” and “putting a price on carbon is the most important step we can take to reduce emissions,” a search of President Obama’s 2012 campaign website finds no mention of cap-and-trade. There is also no mention on the website of “climate change,” “greenhouse gas,” or “global warming.” The website of the leading Republican candidate, Mitt Romney, also makes no mention of climate policy; indeed, the only oblique references concern Romney’s proposals to “eliminate the regulations promulgated in pursuit of the Obama administration’s costly and ineffective anti-carbon agenda” and to “amend [the] Clean Air Act to exclude carbon dioxide from its purview.”

Given this turn of events, a comprehensive climate policy faces long odds in the next administration. A possible path forward for the next president that could have political (as well as economic) appeal is to:

• Focus on the policy that gives us the most bang for the buck, which is to place a price on greenhouse gas emissions. Inflexible regulatory mandates, and government attempts to target subsidies through such things as loan guarantees, won’t work.
   
• Couple climate policy to fiscal reform, by using the revenues from a carbon tax to fund either deficit reduction or a reduction in economically harmful marginal tax rates.
   
• Couple climate policy with comprehensive environmental reform, by eliminating, reducing or amending existing costly regulations that could be made largely redundant with a carbon tax in place.

The economics and politics of climate policy, and the Obama and Republican Positions

Policy recommendations for the next administration

Downloads

• Download Paper

      

 

 

The 2012 presidential election will be defined and dominated by the economic challenges that persist an incredible 33 months after the formal end of the Great Recession.

At the most basic level, the U.S. needs more jobs— 12.1 million by one estimate—to recover the jobs lost during the downturn and keep pace with population growth and labor market dynamics. Beyond pure job growth, the U.S. needs better jobs, to grow wages and incomes for lower- and middle-class workers and reverse the troubling decades-long rise in inequality.

To achieve these twin goals, the U.S. needs to restructure the economy from one focused inward and characterized by excessive consumption and debt, to one globally engaged and driven by production and innovation. It must do so while contending with a new cadre of global competitors that aim to best the United States in the next industrial revolution and while leveraging the distinctive assets and advantages of different parts of the country, particularly the major cities and metropolitan areas that are the engines of national prosperity.

This is the tallest of economic orders and it is well beyond the scope of exclusive federal solutions, the traditional focus of presidential candidates in both political parties. Rather, the next President must look beyond Washington and enlist states and metropolitan areas as active co-partners in the restructuring of the national economy.

Remaking the economy, in essence, requires a remaking of federalism so that governments at all levels “collaborate to compete” and work closely with each other and the private and civic sectors to burnish American competitiveness in the new global economic order.

The time for remaking federalism could not be more propitious. With Washington mired in partisan gridlock, the states and metropolitan areas are once again playing their traditional roles as “laboratories of democracy” and centers of economic and policy innovation. An enormous opportunity exists for the next president to mobilize these federalist partners in a focused campaign for national economic renewal.

Given global competition, the next president should adopt a vision of collaborative federalism in which:

• the federal government leads where it must and sets a robust platform for productive and innovative growth via a few transformative investments and interventions;
   
• states and metropolitan areas innovate where they should to design and implement bottom-up economic strategies that fully align with their distinctive competitive assets and advantages; and
   
• a refreshed set of federalist institutions maximize results by accelerating the replication of innovations across the federal, state and metropolitan levels.

Current State: Obama Federalism and the Republican Response

From 1789 to about 1933, all levels of government were small by modern standards, but the states were clearly more important than the federal government, except possibly in time of war. Moreover, the two levels of government usually ran on separate tracks, each in control of its own set of activities. Scholars called the arrangement “dual federalism.”

From the Great Depression through the 1970s, all levels of government expanded their activities, but power shifted to Washington. The federal government took on new responsibilities, and the distinction between federal and state roles faded. Scholars talked about “cooperative federalism.”

By the beginning of the 1980s, the drive for centralization had peaked, and power began shifting back to state capitals. No new concept emerged of how responsibilities should be divided. The current era has been called a period of “competitive federalism,” meaning the federal government and the states are competing with each other for leadership in domestic policy.

A Federalist Roadmap for the Next President

• With federal innovation funding at risk, metros like New York and states like Ohio and Tennessee are making sizable commitments to attract innovative research institutions, commercialize research and grow innovative firms.
   
• With the future of federal trade policy unclear, metros like Los Angeles and Minneapolis/St. Paul and states like Colorado and New York are reorienting their economic development strategies toward exports, foreign direct investment and skilled immigration.
   
• With federal energy policy in shambles, metros like Seattle and Philadelphia are cementing their niches in energy-efficient technologies, and states like Connecticut are experimenting with Green Banks to help deploy clean technologies at scale.
   
• With federal transportation policy in limbo, metros like Jacksonville and Savannah and states like Michigan are modernizing their air, rail and sea freight hubs to position themselves for an expansion in global trade.

New technologies, globalization, and deregulation, ha[ve] brought a new era of speed, entrepreneurship, innovation, flux and complexity—as well as new challenges—for organizations. . . . Compelled by the new conditions, firms, governments and organizations of all types have embarked upon an urgent search for new, more flexible and effective forms of organization out of which the outlines of a distinctive 21st century style of governance have begun to emerge. Top-down planning and control structures are giving way to decentralized, “federated” systems —because pre-set central plans cannot encompass the complexity and variation of contemporary reality—to build in space for decisive front-line responsiveness, problem-solving, experimentation, and learning (emphasis added).

A Concluding Federalist Thought

Downloads

• Download Paper

Video

• Collaborative Federalism to Create More and Better Jobs

      

 

 

Editor's Note: The following is a Campaign 2012 policy brief by Bruce Riedel and Michael O’Hanlon proposing ideas for the next president on America’s foreign policy toward Afghanistan and Pakistan. Vanda Felbab-Brown prepared a response arguing that corruption and political patronage in the Afghan government must be overcome to help reconnect the country’s citizens with their government. Elizabeth Ferris also prepared a response arguing that a vital step in establishing security and stability in Afghanistan and Pakistan is meeting the long-term humanitarian needs of their people.

Four years ago, Barack Obama ran for president arguing that Afghanistan and Pakistan were the most crucial national security issues for the United States and that he would prioritize his attention and the nation’s resources in their direction if elected. His reasons began with the fact that Afghanistan was the preferred sanctuary for al Qaeda, where the 9/11 attacks were planned. In addition, Afghanistan offered huge swaths of land where al Qaeda and other extremist groups—mainly, Pakistan’s own Taliban, which seeks to destabilize that country, and Lashkar-e-Taiba, which seeks to attack India—would likely take refuge if the Afghan Taliban again seized power in much or all of that country.  And Pakistan, soon to be the most populous country in the Islamic world and the fifth largest in the world, also has the fastest growing nuclear arsenal in the world and is on track to be the world’s third largest nuclear weapons state.

The Obama administration has had major successes.  The good news is that Osama bin Laden is dead and much of the broader al Qaeda leadership has similarly met its demise. Since preventing attacks by transnational terrorists against the United States and its allies was the core objective of military operations in Afghanistan, this is no mean feat. Also, Pakistan has arrested the progress of its own Taliban in threatening its internal stability. No further terrorist incidents like that of Mumbai in 2008 have brought India and Pakistan to the brink of what could be nuclear war.  In addition, the momentum of the Taliban within Afghanistan has been stanched.  By 2011, the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) was documenting fewer enemy-initiated attacks than had been witnessed in 2010 (though still more than were observed in 2009).

But, there is ample bad news as well. The U.S.-Pakistan relationship has not been worse since 9/11. President Obama’s troop buildups in Afghanistan, announced in two tranches in February-March and December 2009, have not produced dramatic battlefield changes like that witnessed in Iraq in 2007-2008 and have failed to convince key regional players that the United States and its allies will get the job done before leaving. And, the leaving has begun; by the end of this summer, the December 2009 tranche of additional American forces will have come home. Many sense the next tranche will follow in 2013, perhaps before the job is done.

America needs a new policy for dealing with Pakistan and a new political strategy, though not a new military strategy, for dealing with Afghanistan. The next president should:

• Stop relying on the Pakistani Army to protect American interests, but rather move toward containment of that army’s aggressive instincts, while helping those who want a progressive Pakistan and keeping up the fight against terrorism
   
• Show patience toward a major drawdown of U.S. forces in Afghanistan
   
• Try to build a constitutional, institution-based government in Afghanistan—however imperfect and
   
• Insist on the orderly exit from office of President Hamid Karzai in 2014, as required by the Afghan constitution.

The Obama Record

The Republican Critique

The Job for the Next President

• First, secure areas below Kabul, so the country’s ring road connecting Kabul to Kandahar can be safely traveled, and so Kabul can be better protected from insurgents by a layered defense.
   
• Second, deepen the military’s hold over the south, while gradually handing off more responsibility there to improving Afghan forces.
   
• Third, keep building up Afghan security forces to their requisite size and capability—a process that will remain intensive for about two more years, before reaching the goal of at least 350,000 trained and equipped Afghan army and police units who have not only gone through basic training but spent at least a year in the field in a form of apprenticeship with NATO forces.
   
• Fourth and finally, find ways to steadily hand off more responsibility to Afghan forces in a growing percentage of the country, while still keeping our hands on the steering wheel, to the extent necessary.

• Strengthen the body’s ability to devise new policies, including legislation. This might be done without constitutional change. For example, the executive branch could informally agree that a bill strongly approved by a parliamentary committee would be automatically forwarded for further consideration and a final vote, once the government had a chance to review it and propose changes.
   
• Strengthen parliament’s technical ability to consider changes to policy, to give it more intellectual and policy heft. Some type of Afghan Parliament Research Service, staffed with dozens of researchers in various fields and headed by a technocrat whose term does not coincide with those of members or the president, might usefully strengthen parliament’s role.

Conclusion

Downloads

• Download Paper

     

 

 

Editor's Note: The following is a Campaign 2012 policy brief by Ron Haskins proposing ideas for the next president on reducing the federal budget deficit. Isabel Sawhill prepared a response arguing that while deficit reduction is crucial, near-term economic stimulus is a better prescription for curing the nation’s economic ills. William Gale also prepared a response arguing that tax reform should make the nation’s tax system more equitable and progressive.

Introduction

• Opening negotiations with the congressional bipartisan leadership in which everything—entitlements and taxes alike—is on the table;
   
• Pushing reforms on Medicare based both on some of the top-down funding control mechanisms in the Democrats’ Affordable Care Act and the type of Medicare spending control measures specified in the Ryan-Wyden and Rivlin-Domenici proposals; and
   
• Achieving reforms of the budget process, including—most important—resurrection of the paygo rule.

Background

The Obama and Republican Records

What Should We Expect from the Next President

Downloads

• Download Paper