Left Flank

Heather Hurlburt and Daniel W. Drezner agree on how to increase funding for the State Department. Yet, it's a little too expansive.

Hopefully, a Democratic Congress can fund Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's transformational diplomacy without just giving State what Defense gets now, and still giving Defense more. It's all a matter of priorities, and, in the short-term, the priority should be funding State.

As for giving more money to Drezner's employer, I like the idea of competition. But, let Tufts find its own private benefactors.

This diavlog is an example of how to arrive at a bipartisan foreign policy.

Representative Tom Lantos (D., CA), former chairperson of the Foreign Affairs committee, has died only one month after announcing his retirement due to esophageal cancer from the US House of Representatives.

Joshua at OFK offered this tribute last month:

Lantos's departure will cost Congress a deep and knowledgeable thinker on Korea policy.  I've attended enough International Relations/Foreign Affairs hearings to see which committee members generally attend, which members don't, which ones are vocal, and which ones are wallflowers.  Those who are vocal occasionally betray their ignorance of the situation.  Disagree with Lantos if you will, but you can't question his knowledge, diligence, or gravitas, and I've never attended a hearing at which he wasn't present, prepared, and insightful.

The New York Sun speculates that Representative Howard Berman (D., CA) will replace Lantos (with some links about Berman also).

President Bush's budget is profligate in the most unrealistic way.

The president forecasts a $48 billion surplus by 2012, keeping a promise he made two years ago when strong revenue predictions made it look far easier. Now, he's relying on spending cuts — for everything from transportation to Medicare and Medicaid to nonprofit groups that help the poor — to do the job in order to keep his signature 2001 and 2003 tax cuts intact instead of expiring at the end of 2010.

"Our formula for achieving a balanced budget is simple: create the conditions for economic growth, keep taxes low and spend taxpayer dollars wisely or not at all," Bush said in his budget message.

Democrats said the forecast of a budget surplus in 2012 was based on flawed math that included only $70 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2009 and no money after that. The budget plan also fails to include any provisions after this year for keeping the alternative minimum tax, originally aimed at the wealthy, from ensnaring millions of middle-class taxpayers. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that fixing the AMT in 2012 would cost $118 billion, more than double the surplus Bush is projecting for that year.

(…)

"There was an assumption that in the short term that the budget would start to correct and that we could balance in the short term," said Sen. Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, top Republican on the Budget Committee. "But with the stimulus package and with the continuing war costs, that's not going to happen. In fact it's going to get very serious when you're hitting $400 billion deficits."

"We've been able to close the deficit gap with good economic growth, therefore good revenue growth. Those days are coming to an end, and we're going to have to do it the old fashioned way, through real spending discipline," said top House Budget Committee Republican Paul Ryan of Wisconsin.

Cato Institute also delivers another choice response quote about the "irresponsible federal budget":

President Bush pushed through a hugh expansion of unfunded commitments by way of Medicare Part D (prescription drug benefits for seniors), estimated to cost many trillions in today's dollars. Compared to those increases, the proposed entitlement savings are peanuts.

There's one year to go, but this is not the time just to let President Bush have his budget.

1. "I think that Mr. Bernanke has been drinking the same sort of Keynesian Kool-Aid that other prominent economists like Larry Summers have been drinking." (Economic Retardant Package)

2. Shameless adoration for Thomas Jefferson. (Capitol Tribune seconds that vote, with a satirical aside.) Anyone who wants to buy me this book will also be worshipped!

Actually I'm not a Jefferson fan (as readers might gather from my trip to John Marshall's home in Richmond, Virginia). I just like a book that undercuts hagiography.

I don't understand US Congress's love affair with the Dalai Lama. I especially can't understand why the Pelosi wing of the Democratic Party would want to make such a paltry public relations gesture when the US needs China to consider its role in the world (i.e., Myanmar, India, Sudan) reasonably. It seems, according to The Economist, that Tibetan monks read newspapers quite proficiently, and aren't so contemplative, either.

On this occasion, the confrontation was sparked not by protests, but by some do-it-yourself work. Monks in the Drepung monastery were whitewashing and painting auspicious symbols on the walls of one of its buildings, assigned as a ceremonial residence for the Dalai Lama, Tibet's spiritual leader, who has been in exile since fleeing Chinese repression of an uprising in 1959. The painting celebrated his latest trophy: a Congressional Gold Medal from the United States—its highest civilian honour.

The police wanted to stop the painting. The monastery was then sealed off and surrounded by armed police. The reports tell of a similar showdown at another Lhasa monastery, Nechung, and of various other attempts by Tibetans to celebrate the congressional honour. It is impossible to confirm their accuracy. For all the relative openness of China these days, much of what goes on in Tibet remains hidden from the outside world. New rules introduced at the beginning of the year to make it easier for foreign reporters to travel and report in China excluded Tibet.

The reports are entirely plausible, however. Tibetans revere the Dalai Lama, both as a spiritual leader and as a symbol of a national identity that is not â€ūChineseâ€?.

Howard W. French thoughtful essay goes a long way to understand Tibet as it is.

As with most long-running disputes, the facts that underpin the Tibetan question are full of nuance and subject to competing interpretations. That no major party to this situation has been particularly generous in acknowledging this has only reinforced the overall air of intractability.

China's rulers, accustomed to controlling the flow of information and ideas, and hence how history is taught, skim over - or edit out - parts of Tibet's past that are inconvenient to their narrative.

Tibet's formation as a recognizable nation began as far back as the fourth century. In the early seventh century, Tibetans, under Songtsen Gampo, converted to Buddhism and adopted a written language based on the Ranjana script - both imported from India, it is worth noting.

Tibetans came to control much of their region, including parts of Nepal, Burma, India and present-day Xinjiang (China), and they did it the old-fashioned way, through warfare. They pointedly refused to defer to Tang Dynasty emperors, and in the late eighth century even briefly captured Changan, the Chinese capital, leading to the negotiation of borders between the two states.

Effective Chinese control over Tibet didn't come until the late 18th century and even then was mostly supervisory. Early in the last century, even that began to fall apart, as did China's hold on other parts of its periphery.

To enhance their position in India, the British worked intermittently to reinforce the de facto Tibetan state, which China wiped out in 1950 amid since-flouted promises of «broad autonomy,» and an understanding of this leads to the second important acknowledgement.

Chinese insecurity is driven, and understandably so, by the involvement of Western powers on its periphery. Even as the People's Liberation Army marched into Tibet, Chinese troops were girding to repulse the United States from the Korean peninsula.

Where President Truman saw Communism on the march, China's eyes were fixed on another prize: ending a so-called century of humiliation, which required establishing buffers of its own. The Dalai Lama's popularity in the West arouses Chinese suspicions for much the same reason.

The third unpleasant fact is the ugly record of feudal rule by Tibetan lamas, which China naturally enjoys highlighting.

«Do you know how cruel the lamaism was?» asked Lu Xiuzhang, Tibet's former deputy chief of propaganda. «People were dismembered to be served up in ceremonies, and ordinary people were slaves.» The characterization may not be the fairest, but the man has a point.

Under Communist rule, though, this country committed widespread abominations of its own in Tibet, killing monks, destroying temples and causing famine, yet the only account you can get is of the march of progress as investment pours in.

«Even though the Dalai Lama has agreed to give up the request for Tibet's independence, there's been no breakthrough,» said Wang Lixiong, a Chinese author whose writing about the country's western regions have caused his arrest. «China really doesn't have any intention to solve this issue.»

Wang, like many others, believes China is content to play a game that involves meeting with delegations of exiled Tibetans when the demands of public relations require it, while patiently awaiting the Dalai Lama's death.

That might sound like playing a strong hand smartly, but is it really?

After all, well before the Chinese in Tibet, European colonists and South African whites asked: Why would black Africans prefer independence with poverty to association with deep-pocketed outside powers?

The answer is that self-respect and cultural integrity have no price.

On the surface, Tibet is like Taiwan and Hong Kong, both regions Beijing claims for its own, but which should be independent. Yet, Lamaism is no way to improve Tibet. What Beijing needs to know is, that it doesn't need to grab all the territory around its periphery. Histrionics over the Dalai Lama will not reassure Beijing, but only hardens centralizing tendencies.

After all, even Beijing understands the limits of its own outrage, even when it does repay insults.

J. Thomas Schieffer, American ambassador to Japan, should be told that the national papers are not the White House intercom. Especially, that is, when he uses the newspaper to bìtçh and try to pull rank.

In his cable, sources said, Schieffer stressed that he does not believe that Japanese interests should dictate U.S. policy toward North Korea. But he warned the president that rumors were flying in Tokyo that the talks on removing North Korea from the terror list were progressing rapidly, which he suggested could potentially harm U.S. relations with its closest ally in the Pacific. He noted that Assistant Secretary of State Christopher R. Hill had assured him that North Korea needed to first show substantial progress on the abduction issue before any action was taken, but Schieffer said he was seeking direction and clarification in part because the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo appeared cut out of the process.

But, it's no surprise Ambassador Schieffer would take this route, when Congress and the State Department are going at it in the other papers. And, that's with this sparing going on in the House Foreign Relations Committee hearings with Assistant Secretary Christopher Hill.

Democratic and Republican lawmakers on the panel made clear their doubts about whether North Korea could be trusted to come clean on its nuclear activities and follow through on the denuclearization pledges.

«My fear is that we will settle for something less than hard decommission» of the North's nuclear reactor, said Rep. Brad Sherman, a California Democrat and chairman of the House Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation and Trade.

Sherman accused the Bush administration of soft-pedaling doubts about North Korea to achieve a lone diplomatic success amid what he said were failures in Iraq and Iran.

«What I can assure you is that we are not playing 'trust me,'» Hill said of the U.S. dealings with North Korea. «We cannot conclude this process without getting to the heart of any proliferation concerns.»

Indiana Republican Rep. Dan Burton demanded that Hill share more information with Congress on reports that the Syrian targets bombed last month by Israel were buildings under construction similar in design to a North Korean reactor.

Such nuclear cooperation, denied by Syria and North Korea, would violate Pyongyang's nonproliferation pledges and could kill congressional support for the deal.

«You guys over at State can't keep this from Congress,» Burton said, noting that Congress is being asked to approve $106 million to pay for denuclearizing North Korea.

Hill told the panel he was unable to discuss national intelligence matters in an open hearing.

Speaking of hanging leaders (of both parties, retired or serving), I'm willing to give government officials the benefit of the doubt until the proof of their perfidy or incompetence is too overwhelming. After all, I elected a few of these people, so I can't gloat. But, arguing in public like this is worse than advertising the government's problems. Diplomatic negotiations and intelligence are off-limits in public discourse. The Bush administration has been fractious starting even with its transition before the inaugural, and it has infected Washington with that disease ever since then.

Do we have to clear the rolls before the next election and ban this rotten brood for the rest of their careers?

Korean national pride doesn't seem to be the only reason both Japan and ROK might build fighter jets independently of the US.

Japanese military officials have been discussing a possible F-22A purchase with the United States for more than two years, and several of the aircraft have made visits to Japanese air bases, but Congressional and other opposition to selling the U.S. Air Force's top-of-the-line stealthy fighter appears to still be enough to block the sale. Despite the fact that Japan is perhaps the number one security partner of the United States in the region, there is still a mindset within the U.S. Government that is hesitant to export the new-age technologies that are the basis for the Raptor's performance and combat effectiveness.

This past August the House Appropriations Committee passed legislation banning the export of the F-22A to any foreign government. DoD officials in Washington said this would derail plans by Israel and Japan to obtain the advanced fighter sometime during the next three years, Middle East Newsline reported.

The F-22A would be a suitable procurement for both American allies, and even without that option, research assistance from American firms would also be beneficial, especially to Seoul. The optimal solution would be to let each ally contribute to the F-35 program. But, Seoul is not the only putative ally bent on feeding its own industrial offspring. «In Japan the main reason for upgrading airplanes is not to provide the armed forces with a higher capability. Instead it is to give money to Japanese aerospace industry and maintain the industrial base.»

But then, there's the DPRK problem. Just how trustworthy is Seoul (and, to a lesser extent, Tokyo), none too secure from North Korean spies and eager to build mutual defense ties with its authoritarian neighbor, with any defense knowledge and technology. The F-22A sits atop the fault line between economic globalization and national defense, between corporations and air forces. Looking at this procurement tangle, Washington could indeed be justified in its paranoia.

The Arsenal of Democracy is no longer in business.