My first piece for ForeignPolicy.com, “Europe’s Obama Fatigue,” is online.

Despite George W. Bush’s defiant “you’re with us or you’re against us” public stance, he actively solicited advice and input from his NATO partners. Obama, by contrast, is saying all the right things in public about transatlantic relations and NATO but adopting a high-handed policy and paying little attention to Europe.

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It would be ironic, indeed, if the Europeans started longing for the good old days of the Bush administration. But that nostalgia is closer than you might think.

Supporting arguments at the link.

UPDATE: As one might expect, this piece is generating some strong rebuttals.

Daniel Larison argues:

You cannot gauge the importance or unimportance of Europe to the United States on the largely cosmetic, superficial and procedural clashes Washington has had with various European states in the last nine months. Under the previous administration, Europe continued to be “important” to the U.S. even when major EU powers opposed administration policy in very public, dramatic ways. To the extent that Obama is losing ground with Europeans, he had far more goodwill and support to lose; in almost every European country, he continues to rate higher after the drop-off from unrealistic expectations than Bush did at almost any point. Obviously relations were and remained far more strained under the last administration than they have been so far under this one. We notice the minor clashes that have taken place because there was a widely-shared, unreasonable expectation that amity and concord with Europe would prevail under Obama.

[...]

European and especially German interests were flatly ignored by Bush when it came to handling Russia. Promises to Ukraine and Georgia of eventual membership in NATO were given over strenuous German opposition. Were European interests and opinions being heeded then? No. The missile defense ploy prompted Moscow to threaten abandoning its commitments under the European conventional forces treaty and elicited a great deal of bluster from Medvedev about targeting Russian missiles on European soil. Was European security strengthened by any of this? No. What matter then if Bush went through the motions and observed the right formalities when he was getting the major decisions wrong?

Most western European allies were not seriously consulted, nor were their objections given much weight, when the Bush administration decided to push ahead with the missile defense plan. In all of the new commentary claiming that Europe has soured on Obama, this seems not to count at all.

Judah Grunstein adds:

[I]f George W. Bush learned to listen to Europe, and in particular NATO, it was largely after he’d been chastened by the failure of the Iraq war and the 2006 mid-term elections. Up until his final NATO summit, Bush continued to talk loudly about the largely unpopular measures of NATO expansion and missile defense. He listened in the sense that he allowed the alliance — led by France and Germany — to turn him back, but it was out of weakness, not out of strength. There was no movement at all when it came to climate change, which is a major driver of public opinion here.

As for Obama’s handling of Europe, I’d agree with the characterization of his aloofness, especially with regard to the current Afghanistan strategic review. But while my sympathies would normally be with Europe on this sort of thing, I do think that Obama invited the NATO allies last April to assume greater ownership of the Afghanistan war. Given their refusal to do so, I don’t blame him for the freeze-out now. That said, Obama’s brush-off of the U.S.-EU summit is inexcusable and reflects a myopic view of the EU’s potential, especially with the advent of the Lisbon Treaty.

I actually don’t disagree with either Dan or Judah on most of these points and think some of the disagreement comes from the provocative  title the FP folks chose.  My argument is neither that the Europeans have tired of Obama or even that Bush was particularly adept at transatlantic diplomacy.  Rather, it is that Bush cared more about Europe — and particularly the UK and New Europe — than Obama and therefore invested more of himself in the relationship.

It’s true that Obama’s stance on, for example, missile defense and NATO expansion is more popular in some quarters than Bush’s.  Indeed, I prefer his approach on the latter and quibble with him on the former mostly on how the rollout was done vice the policy itself.  But the policy differences are  a reflection of Obama’s prioritizing Russia’s views over that of Europe, especially East and Central Europe.   I think Bush was ultimately wrong in his zeal to bring Georgia and Ukraine into NATO but it was a policy preference motivated by the stated ideals of the Alliance of “a Europe whole and free.”

Tony Blankley, former press secretary to Newt Gingrich and editorial page editor of the Washington Times, has a new book out that, among other things, argues for reinstatement of the military draft.  Unlike liberals like Charlie Rangel or even centrist Phil Carter, he doesn’t do so on the basis of “fairness” or spreading the burden but rather on the sheer need for manpower.

John Hawkins interviews him. Here’s an excerpt:

Let me give you, to me, the biggest argument and that is the almost 4500 troops that have been killed in Iraq and more thousands than that that have been seriously injured. All of that came after we defeated the Republican Guard. Rumsfeld was correct that we only needed about 80,000 troops to knock off the Republican Guard. They were wrong to think that we could occupy that country with only those 80,000 or 100,000 troops. In Germany, after WW2, we flooded the zone. When the 80,000 elite forces finished their fighting, we needed to flood the zone with 300,000 or 400,000 ground occupying troops. Every village, every main intersection, every building guarded — the resistance would never have arisen. We would have saved 4000 lives if we’d had enough troops. We sacrificed lives.

[...]

This was a relatively small war. Now, what happens if the Jihadis overthrow the Pakistani government — a very unstable government. …They have nuclear weapons. If we want to stop the Jihadis from getting nuclear weapons, we’d have to go into Pakistan and try to stop that. We don’t have remotely the number of troops to do that.

Moreover, as the years unfold, according to the intelligence community — the day before I sent my manuscript to the printer — we’re likely to have resource wars over water and oil in the coming decades. China already has a lot of troops in Sudan guarding their oil fields right now.

So, I think it’s obvious that we can’t raise enough troops by the voluntary method. I’ve got a young son, a new 2nd Lieutenant in the Army — I’ve met his friends, …I’ve talked with the generals, and I know how wonderful the volunteer service is, but there just aren’t enough of them.

Blankley, with whom I’ve had conversations and genuinely like and respect, is almost certainly right that, if we need a radically larger force than we now have for some future contingency, we’re not going to be able to achieve it through the current system.  But a slightly plausible future emergency strikes me as a weak rationale for a definite present infringement on personal liberty and weakening of the morale of a military that he admits is superb.

Beyond that, the most manpower intensive missions are those like we’re fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan: post-combat or combat-plus operations like COIN and SASO that require a large, continuing presence.  The scenarios he envisions would likely be met with massive aerial strikes, not infantrymen fighting door-to-door.

Photo: Sharing Miracles.

Right now oil and gasoline prices are low, but are they likely to stay that way? This article says yes for most of 2009.

As we close the doors on the strange and tumultuous year that was 2008, analysts are looking ahead to what 2009 will bring. So far, signs are mixed. The Energy Information Administration projects crude oil will trade at an average of $51 a barrel in 2009, translating into low gasoline prices:

Along with lower projected crude oil prices, annual average retail gasoline and diesel fuel prices in 2009 are projected to be $2.03 and $2.47 per gallon, respectively…The U.S. economic recession is also contributing to lower natural gas wellhead prices. The Henry Hub natural gas spot price is projected to decline from an average of $9.17 per Mcf in 2008 to $6.25 per Mcf in 2009.

The chief energy economist of Deutsche Bank, Adam Sieminski, said recently that the demand for oil in 2009 will drop more than any other time in the last quarter of a century, due to the weak economy. Sieminski forecasts oil traded in New York falling as low as $30 and averaging $47.50 for the whole year. He says higher forecasts haven’t adequately factored in how the global downturn will hurt oil demand.

Others see the supply-demand balance starting to tip in favor of higher prices later in the year, thanks in part to OPEC’s plans to cut output. Paul Stevens, a professor at the UK’s Royal Institute of International Affairs, said:

In 2009, we will see continued prices weakness in first half or quarter of year. A lot depends on demand and that depends on the nature and depth of the economic recession…if demand does not completely collapse, my guess is that as we move through 2009, as OPEC’s determination to defend its price bears up, then prices will creep up to US$70, to US$80 that they want.

This is good news for the economy. However, OPEC is determined to get the price back up to a more acceptable level. So when the economy does recover it is likely that we could see oil prices move upwards rather sharply. Especially if during the economic downturn and period of lower prices oil companies cut back and lay off employes and cut back on new investments, especially in refining.

Having already devoted several thousand words to the topic of American involvement in the Middle East, I will make my closing comments brief.

First, I’d like to thank Dave for a vigorous debate, James for hosting this discussion, and all the readers who have taken the time to follow the back-and-forth and comment on the posts.  This has been a useful exercise for me, pushing me to justify and clarify and even do some actual new research in defense of my arguments.

Second, I want to clarify a few points.  I don’t believe that the U.S. presence in the Middle East has raised the price of oil.  Rather I simply believe that our presence has not had the stabilizing effect on prices that proponents of active engagement suggest.  I also do not believe that the American presence has caused movements like al Qaeda to arise, but I do believe that our highly visible role gives credibility to their extreme, conspiracy-dominated interpretations of history.  My point is not that we are making things worse necessarily, but rather that the benefits of our presence are largely illusory.

Finally, I am not making a call for isolationism.  Quite the contrary.  I believe the United States should have a significant global role.  But I’d like to see us adopt an internationalism that is more reflective than reflexive.  Instead of simply rationalizing a ratchet-like expansion of the American role anywhere and everywhere, we have to be aware of the costs and benefits and tradeoffs of our commitments.  I believe that in the Middle East, our assessments are out of balance.  Our policies there provide many fewer benefits than expected while carrying many more costs than commonly assumed.

Since this is my last entry in the debate, I’d like to thank Bernard Finel for what I think has been an excellent, interesting, and informative debate. I’ve accomplished what I set out to do when I was moved to propose this debate: I’ve established that complete disengagement with the Middle East (the resolution of the debate) would be imprudent and Bernard agrees with me:

Engagement and disengagement are not binary values. My call is not for zero presence, but rather for a diminished visibility of our role in the region

That’s not what I drew from Bernard’s article that prompted my suggestion nor is it what I drew from his affirmative case. I still don’t have a clear idea of what Bernard is proposing. I do see that he’s dissatisfied with things as they are, a view I share.

I also believe that he and I agree that we should de-emphasize our military commitment to the Middle East somewhat. Where we appear to differ is in what the nature of our continuing engagement with the Middle East should be.

I’ll now consider some of Bernard’s arguments seriatim.

Oil

Let’s dispense with the oil issue first since it’s the easiest. The spreadsheet of oil prices that Bernard produced is highly informative but rather than proving his case it proves mine. Policies aren’t arrived at by averages but by events. The price spike of 1979-1980 was produced by the deteriorating security situation in the Middle East I sketched in my argument. The price spike of 1986 was caused by the so-called Tanker War during the Iran-Iraq War. That each of those was followed by an increase in U. S. military involvement in the Middle cannot mean that they were caused by that involvement although that increased involvement may have had increased hostility to the United States as a secondary effect. I think the message is rather clear: if the states of the Middle East want us to reduce our military engagement

There is currently no way for us to avoid dependence on oil. Even if we produced every single drop of oil that we consumed, since oil is fungible, the Gulf states are major oil producers, and they are the lowest cost producers we would still be dependent on Gulf oil. An oil price shock would affect us under those circumstances as much as it would now. The quantified effects of closing the Straits of Hormuz are estimated to be around $200 billion per year, i.e. more than the cost of the military engagement that Bernard has cited.

There is no alternative to oil at hand and will not be for the foreseeable future. There is no production-ready electric car, there’s no reason to believe that a practical one will be producible in production quantities at a reasonable cost for the foreseeable future, and if neither of those were true we’d still remain dependent on oil for the foreseeable future for two reasons.

It rarely makes discussions of oil independence but even if a production electric car were ready it will take twenty years for us to turn over the complete oil-burning vehicle fleet. That’s a matter of mathematics and economics as well as logistics. 100 million vehicles at $40,000 a pop (on average) cost $4 trillion. If you can produce the batteries in those quantities which nobody knows how to do yet. A price shock in oil would be an economic catastrophe for us for every year of those twenty years.

And even that’s not the whole of it. Our current electrical grid doesn’t have the excess capacity to handle the additional load required to recharge all those electric vehicles, it will take us decades to update our grid, and it will cost trillions more.

But that’s a parochial view. Our investment in stability in the commerce in oil through the Gulf maintains price stability not only for us but for our European and Asian allies and, equally importantly, for every poor country in the world that is far less willing to pay for turning over its vehicle fleet or upgrading its electric grid than we are. Our investment keeps those countries stable and the world at peace.

Terrorism and security interests

There’s little reason to believe that disengagement from the Middle East will result in a reduction of the threat from terrorism. As my good friend Mark Safranski put it, that’s not merely counter-intuitive, it’s lacking in real world evidence. Terrorists have their own intrinsic motivations; they aren’t merely responding to our actions although those may be among the explanations they present for their actions.

The most dangerous, awful anti-American regimes in the world aren’t those with whom we have high levels of engagement, they’re those, like Iran and North Korea, with whom our engagement is very limited.

It isn’t disengagement that will lead to a more positive view of America and Americans but more engagement as the polling data I’ve linked to suggests. Here’s an additional example.

Recent arrests in Belgium have rounded up members of a terrorist ring who apparently were planning an attack in Brussels. Belgium hasn’t been part of the coalition in Iraq and its military involvement in Afghanistan has been nominal. Both its footprint and its fingerprint in the Middle East are quite small. Nonetheless the Belgians are a target for terrorist activities.

Israel

Israel doesn’t figure prominently in my own calculus of American interests in the Middle East and I wish that the nature of the relationship between Israel and the United States were somewhat different than it is now. Howsomever it remains that Israel is our closest ally in the Middle East, there is a substantial constituency in the United States that would render major disengagement from Israel politically impossible, and I have little reason to believe that such disengagement would produce more security for us, the Israelis, for the Middle East, or for the world. In particular I don’t see how major disengagement from the Middle East would motivate the Israelis to arrive at a settlement with the Palestinians nor do I see how relinquishing our strongest bargaining chips—our engagement with the Middle East—would strengthen our hand in achieving such a settlement.

Increased engagement

Bernard wrote:

Our embassies are massive concrete structures, set back from the road, with triple rings of security barriers. Our businesses operate behind barbed wire and are protected by private security. Americans travel in armed convoys and stay in secluded hotels that also feature fortress-like precautions.

Does that describe Egypt, Jordan, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates? Or many other countries in the Middle East and North Africa? Perhaps someone better informed than I could comment.

I think that’s a description of Iraq. We can’t undo the harm to our long term interests in the Middle East that our invasion of Iraq has caused. Nor am I prepared to argue that on net the invasion was a good thing.

Over the next several years we’ll be removing something like half of the troops we have in Iraq which I support as the security situation there has clearly improved substantially.

Bernard scoffed at the possibility of trade with the Middle East. Let’s take a single example: Jordan. Currently the European Union does something like $4 billion per year in exports to Jordan. The U. S. does something like $650 million, only about 6% of the total. It certainly looks to me as though there’s a market there and room for improvement on our part. There’s a similar pattern throughout the Middle East and North Africa.

Emphasis on trade liberalization and increased trade with the Middle East will not only improve the people who live there’s opinion of us but it will improve their way of life, making them more prosperous and happier. And that in turn will make all of us more secure.

Conclusion

The reason I proposed a debate on the subject was simply because the format of a debate calls for the burden of proof to fall on the affirmative. That’s not a trick; that’s the definition. Debating requires the affirmative to meet the burden of proof. I’m not surprised that Bernard doesn’t much care for the format because the real world evidence points the other way.

In the final analysis it actually appears to me that Bernard and I have many points of agreement: we shouldn’t disengage from the Middle East completely, our military engagement with the region is too great. I see no way to reduce our “fingerprint” on the region for the foreseeable future and think that our best interests lie in increased engagement. That’s our historical experience and that’s what the opinions of people all over the world support.

We need to engage with the world rather than withdraw from it and the Middle East is no exception to that but the engagement should not be so heavily in the form of military engagement. More butter, fewer guns.

Dave Schuler’s arguments and his responses to my cross-examination questions highlight three critical failings in his argument. These flaws are his preference for inertia over strategic assessment, overweighing ambiguous evidence that marginally supports his case while ignoring compelling evidence that refutes it, and a failure to account for what might be called “conditions on the ground.” I will address each in turn.

First, Dave’s insistence that the burden of proof ought to rest on me may be good debate technique, but it is poor policy analysis. As I argued in an earlier post, the burden of proof for making policy changes should not be determined by arcane rules of procedure, but rather by a fair-minded assessment of the current status of the policy. For instance, though I support gay marriage personally, I am cognizant of the fact that traditional marriage is a pretty successful policy, and that as a result gay marriage proponents bear some burden of proof to show that it will not damage the institution. In the Middle East, the reverse case obtains. America’s Middle East policy is a disaster. It cries out for change, and the burden of proof for the status quo rests firmly in those proponents of the status quo. But instead of debating the rules of the game, why not deal with reality? An argument is only as powerful as its ability to persuade.

Dave: Instead of appealing to imaginary judges applying obscure scoring rules, let’s let the readers decide. At the end of this debate, let’s poll the readers of OTB, who are, on the whole part of the best informed and most thoughtful blog community out there. Let’s ask them who they think won the debate.

Second, my claim about the burden of proof relies upon more than just positioning. Ultimately, I think this procedural debate reflects an underlying dispute about what the evidence of the case is. Dave argues the following:

I won’t deny that my motives are partly altruistic but that’s not the only reason we should want stability in the Middle East. Avoidance of oil price shocks doesn’t just benefit the United States but every country that buys oil whether they’re in South America, Africa, or Asia.

He also says,

From World War II to the promulgation of the Carter Doctrine and increased U. S. engagement with the Middle East, the countries of the region went to war with each other and European countries more than 15 times. The U. S. wasn’t a party to any of these conflicts. When the Carter Doctrine was promulgated Lebanon was engaged in a lengthy civil war, the Soviet were engaged in a war in Afghanistan, Iran had overthrown the Shah, invaded our embassy, and was holding our diplomats hostage, and relations between Iran and Iraq had already deteriorated. This deterioration culminated in the war between the two countries that took more than 800,000 lives. The entire region threatened to descend into chaos. That’s when we became involved.

Since our increased involvement there have been additional wars in the Middle East but their tempo and severity have decreased. Nothing has approached the level of tension evident in 1980 at least until the deterioration of the situation in Iraq in 2005 and 2006 following the U. S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 (don’t look to me to defend the invasion of Iraq—I opposed it).

I believe the evidence speaks clearly: the increased U. S. engagement in the region has overall been a stabilizing force.

In short, Dave believes that the Middle East is more stable now that the U.S. is more involved. He’s wrong. It isn’t. The price of oil is not more stable. And conflict has not particularly diminished.

Let’s talk about oil first. One measure of the volatility of the price of oil is to the take the standard deviation of the monthly price and divide it by the current price. There are other ways to measure how stable prices are, but they will show similar results. Between 1946 and 1972, the average monthly standard deviation in the price of oil as a percentage of the price of oil was 1.69%, demonstrating tremendous price stability. From 1973 to 1989, it was 9.41%. From 1990 to the present it is 11.07%. (spreadsheet available here)

As American involvement in the region has deepened, the price of oil has become progressively more volatile. Since the 1990-91 Gulf War prices are more volatile even than the period that cover the “oil shocks” of the 1970s. The consequences have been smaller because we are better now at hedging against volatility with reserves and future contracts, not because the price has stabilized. More American involvement correlates with increased volatility, not stability.

The same is mirrored in the security realm. Yes, there were over a dozen “wars” in the Middle East between World War II and 1980. Dave’s list includes:

1. 1948 Arab-Israeli War
2. 1956 Suez War
3. 1961-1991 Eritrean War of Independence
4. 1962-1970 North Yemen Civil War (Saudi, Egyptian regulars participated)
5. 1967 Six Day War
6. 1967 Iraq-Kuwait conflict
7. 1970 War of Attrition
8. 1970 PLO-Jordanian War (Syrian regulars participated)
9. 1973 Yom Kippur War
10. 1973 Iraq-Kuwait conflict
11. 1975-1990 Lebanon Civil War (Syrian regulars participated)
12. 1976 Iraq-Kuwait conflict
13. 1977 Libya-Egypt War
14. 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq War

Several of those were pretty minor. The 1970 War of Attrition including involved no significant conventional ground forces but were instead extended artillery duels and quick, vicious air-combat operations. Three more of these “conflicts” were border spats between Iraq and Kuwait in 1967, 1973, and 1976. The 1970 PLO-Jordan War was not a sign of instability, but rather a counter-terrorism operation by the Jordanians. And in the case of the Iran-Iraq War, we quietly supported Iraq. I had never even heard of the 1977 Libya-Egypt War.

There have also been plenty of conflicts since 1980 – multiple Israeli interventions in Lebanon, insurgencies in Algeria, Egypt, and Yemen. Two Intifadas. The difference is not in the overall level of political violence, but rather in the number of large-scale, organized conflicts between Israel and its Arab neighbors. That’s where the perception comes from that the Middle East is now more peaceful.

But let’s be honest here, war has never been quite as endemic as Israeli apologists have tried to make it seem. Yes, there was conflict after decolonization in 1948. But the 1956 “war” was just a British-French-Israeli plot to seize the Suez Canal. True, from 1967 to 1973 was a period of essentially open warfare between Israel and a combination of Egypt, Syria, and Jordan. But after 1973, three dynamics operated to quell that conflict. First, Israel essentially made clear its nuclear status. Second, politics in Syria and Egypt gradually transitioned from a post-colonization period of rule by populist demagogues into rule by entrenched elites with dynastic ambitions (and hence low risk tolerance). Third, the United States helped sponsor a peace agreement between Egypt and Israel and solidified it with a multi-billion dollar annual aid package. From my perspective, that makes the lack of interstate wars between Israel and its neighbors over-determined. And at this juncture, peace between Israel, Egypt, and Syria is sustained by dynamics that operate independent of American actions.

So, the price of oil is more volatile, not less, and the reduction is warfare is mostly an illusion and can be ascribed to broader trends and developments moreso than to active American diplomacy.

One last point about ambiguous evidence: Sayyid Qutb. Without getting down in the weeds, Qutb was an Egyptian intellectual who helped develop the Muslim Brotherhood movement in Egypt. He did influence al Qaeda in some ways, though the differences are more significant than the similarities from an American perspective. Qutb felt that the Muslim world was mired in poverty, weakness, and humiliation because Muslims had turned their backs on Islam. He further made a revolutionary argument that since Muslim leaders were complicit in this rejection of Islam and mainstream clerics were in the employ of these apostate leaders, it was up to righteous Muslims individually to fight for the creation of a new, pure Islamic state. Qutbism is a problem for Muslim rulers. What al Qaeda did was externalize the argument, saying that while local rulers were indeed a problem, no progress could be achieved without first defeating foreign countries that were supporting those apostate rulers – the “far enemy.”

Dave’s argument, which conflates Qutbism with bin Ladenism is at the root of the misguided nature of American foreign policy. The United States simply cannot be against Islamism as a general principle. If people want to be governed by religious law, it is none of our business. It becomes our business when their quest encourages them to attack American interest. Dave’s claims about Qutb and the Muslim Brotherhood make my case, not his. There is a powerful populist movement in the Muslim world that ought to be primarily focused on domestic reform and is instead increasingly focused on anti-American violence because of our meddling. We have essentially transformed local grievances into international terrorism.

Finally, a few words about conditions on the ground. Dave would like more contact between Americans and Middle Easterners, rather than less. Let’s discuss the face of American power. The American presence in the Middle East is ominous and provocative. It is missile strikes and renditions. Our embassies are massive concrete structures, set back from the road, with triple rings of security barriers. Our businesses operate behind barbed wire and are protected by private security. Americans travel in armed convoys and stay in secluded hotels that also feature fortress-like precautions. The Lebanon hostage crises of the 1980s, attacks on tourists since 1992 in Egypt, and the 1998 Embassy bombings have combined to create a distance between Americans and ordinary citizens in many Arab countries. We simply cannot turn the clock back to an idealized day when broad-based, informal contact was the norm. Beyond that, there are just not that many great business opportunities. Throughout the region, corruption is rife, security a challenge, language barriers remain significant. The Middle East is just not going to be a particularly promising area for American involvement in the near future.

Engagement and disengagement are not binary values. My call is not for zero presence, but rather for a diminished visibility of our role in the region. I will provide some additional thoughts in final post, but at this juncture I think it should be clearly that the case for continued involvement – as ably laid out by Dave Schuler – is ultimately seriously flawed on procedural, logical, and empirical grounds.

Question 1 (Finel): You write: “I believe the evidence speaks clearly: the increased U. S. engagement in the region has overall been a stabilizing force.” What is the precise benefit to the United States of this increased stability? Are American interests in the region more or less secure today as a result? Or is this purely a altruistic argument on your part?

Schuler: I won’t deny that my motives are partly altruistic but that’s not the only reason we should want stability in the Middle East. Avoidance of oil price shocks doesn’t just benefit the United States but every country that buys oil whether they’re in South America, Africa, or Asia. Some of the governments in these places are holding on very tenuously as it is. An oil price shock could send them over the edge. We recently saw risks of that in Pakistan.

Pakistan recently applied for a World Bank loan because of the high price of oil. The significantly higher price spike caused by an interruption in Gulf oil might well have sent them over the edge. That presents a very real direct security threat to us. The Pakistani government is bad enough at preventing terrorist training camps from operating in the country as it is; a failure of that government would make matters even worse. Additionally, our supply lines for Afghanistan run through Pakistan. A collapse of the Pakistani government would be a very bad thing for our troops there.

Repeat that in Central America, South America, and Africa and you’d aggravate the poverty and misery in the countries in those areas. People in poor, chaotic places can be driven to great lengths. They resort to piracy as in Somalia or drug production and trafficking as in Afghanistan. They go where they think they might find work or relief—here, France, Italy, the United Kingdom. That places strains on our health and educational systems among others, not to mention social stresses.

And people living in prosperous countries make better customers for American goods and services than people in poor, chaotic countries do. Improving security is a fine example of doing good while doing well.

Question 2 (Finel): You quote from Sayyid Qutb. What evidence can you produce to show that Qutbism is followed by anything more than a tiny sliver of the population of the Middle East?

Schuler: A recent Pew poll suggested that roughly 8% of Muslims living in the United States expressed opinions which I’d interpret as radical Islamist ones. The number of foreign-born Muslims, particularly Arabs, who expressed such views among the whole was somewhat higher. I wouldn’t be surprised if 10% of the population of the Middle East had such views. That’s tens of millions of people.

The membership of the Muslim Brotherhood is certainly estimated to be in the millions. I don’t think there’s any doubt that his teachings are very influential.

I’m not certain whether the absolute numbers are particularly important. There weren’t a lot of Japanese who believed that Japan should attack the United States sixty years ago and only a very small number actually took part in the attack. We engaged in total war against the Japanese anyway. My point is emphatically not that we should be engaging in total war but that a relatively small number of people can create a lot of misery.

Question 3 (Finel): How would you guarantee the security of “American tourists, American products, American students, and, especially, American businessmen”? Which of the security measures undertaken after the 1998 embassy bombings would you reverse in order to encourage greater contact between these groups and the people of Middle Eastern countries?

Schuler: It’s certainly a problem and I’m open to suggestions. I don’t know that I’m advocating reversing any of the post-1998 measures. I’m not advocating a sudden flood of Americans but a gradual increase. American businesses aren’t doing as much business as they could be in the Middle East and North Africa and real as opposed to perceived security concerns probably aren’t the most important reason for that.

Clearly, some places are riskier than others. Iraq would be pretty darned risky. However, to the best of my knowledge there’s only been one murder of an American in Jordan over the period of the last 20 years. There are all sorts of places in the Middle East and North African where American tourists and businessmen aren’t in considerably more danger than British or French tourists or businessmen and the British and French are doing quite a bit of business in the Middle East.

It would also help if there weren’t exaggerated and mistaken impressions given in our own media. For example, the early reports of the attacks in Mumbai last month emphasized that the terrorists were after Americans and Britons. Later reports tended to refute that. There’s never been a definitive answer to whether that was the case and our media accounts have left us with the impression that Americans were particular targets whether that was the case or not. That makes it hard to assess the actual risks.

The most recent Pew Survey of Global Attitudes found that people in other countries who had more personal exposure to America and Americans were also more likely to have a favorable attitude towards America and Americans. We aren’t going to improve our security situation by barricading ourselves within our borders. Ignorance and isolation are our enemies not our friends.

Question 1: What evidence do you have that reducing our “footprint” and “fingerprint” will result in a reduction of radicalism in the Middle East?

BERNARD FINEL: Obviously, it is impossible to prove a hypothetical, so there is no direct evidence to support my contention that reducing our visibility will reduce radicalism. Indeed, I don’t think it is likely to reduce radicalism at all—what I believe is that it will reduce anti-American radicalism, which is a slightly different argument. I also want to point out that we need to think through carefully the evidentiary requirements of the case for a policy change. If our current policies were working well, then there would be a strong argument for the presumption against a major departure, and hence a high-standard of proof would be required. In the current case, where our Middle Eastern policy is, I think, self-evidently unsatisfactory, the standard of proof for change is lower. That said, I agree with the implicit assumption behind these questions, which is that the first principle ought to be to first do no harm to American interests.

As to the evidence. I come to my conclusion on the basis of both an analysis of public opinion data and by comparison to other countries. First, opinion data: There is deep, deep skepticism of American motives. According to a survey done by Shibley Telhami of opinion in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, 83% of respondents held an unfavorable view of the United States in 2008. Of that 64% held a “very unfavorable” view. The fundamental reason for this unfavorable opinion is skepticism of American motives. When asked whether the U.S. goal was to “weaken and divide Islam” a worldpublicopinion.org poll in 2007 showed 78% of Moroccan believed that was the U.S. goal, as did 92% of Egyptians and 73% of Pakistanis. This is a common belief in the Middle East. Indeed, it is one of the few obvious sources of anti-American sentiment, along with support for Israel and the Iraq war. On the whole, the public in the Middle East responds positively to American “values”—such as democracy, freedom, and so on. And on the whole, these same publics reject terrorism. So, I think we can infer, from this, that it is the American role in the region that prompts anger and resentment.

Second, do a comparison with other countries. If the issue if “who we are” rather than “what we are (perceived as) doing,” then why are we more unpopular than our European allies who share most of our values. There is no correlate between level of democracy and unpopularity. There is no correlation between percentage of Christians and unpopularity. Muslims in the United States are, on the whole, better integrated into American society than are Muslims in Europe, and yet in the Middle East that is not reflected in a different in public opinion.

If you can explain 83% unfavorable ratings—in countries that are largely American allies—with some other data point, I’m open to reconsidering my argument. But I just think the data leads one to the conclusion that it is American involvement that is generating a backlash.

Now, as a policy matter, does that imply that reducing our footprint would ease this challenge. I really don’t know. I can’t see how it could hurt. But I am also not sure it will help. Just as anti-Semitism often exists even in the absence of Jews, it is possible that anti-Americanism has become so ingrained in modes of political analysis that even if we reduce our presence, we will still be blamed for negative developments in the bizarre conspiracy theories that seem to dominate political analysis in the Middle East. I think reducing our footprint and fingerprints is the best option, but I would not bet the mortgage on it.

Question 2: what evidence do you have that reducing our “footprint” and “fingerprint” will result in enhanced security for Israel or a greater likelihood of the Israelis and Palestinians reaching a mutually agreeable settlement of their differences?

BERNARD FINEL: Actually, I don’t think it will do either of those things, and I apologize if I gave that impression. About Israeli security — my view is that the Israelis can take care of themselves. They are a nuclear armed state with the best conventional military in the region. Deterrence should hold against state actors. In terms of non-state actors, I think the answer lies in multilateral non-proliferation initiatives — fissile material cut-offs, international nuclear fuel banks, and so on. Unilaterally whacking countries that might someday become a threat to Israel seems to me an inefficient approach, and one that will make the U.S. and Israel increasingly unpopular thus feeding the problem we seek to resolve.

About the Israeli-Palestinian dispute… actually, I don’t think there is a negotiated solution available, and I just think that it is mistake to be so involved that we get blamed when no agreement arises. I also think it is a mistake to raise false hopes. My view here is that we should acknowledge we have no power over the situation, offer our assistance if requested, but otherwise try to break the notion that the road to peace in the Middle East somehow runs through Washington.

Question 3: what evidence do you have that pursuing “alternative energy, oil exploration at home, better fuel efficiency from cars” will result in a substantial reduction in oil use in the near term in the United States let alone in the long term? How large a reduction and in what time frame?

BERNARD FINEL: My argument is a long-term one actually. I come at the issue from the reverse perspective. Is there any reason why, even given today’s technology, we “need” to use oil? No. Replacing the roughly 9% of electricity generated by oil-fired power plants is within easy reach by a combination of coal, nuclear, solar, and wind. The bigger issue is the use of oil in the transportation sector. Here there are again plenty of existing solutions — plug-in electric, hydrogen-powered, natural gas, etc. The big challenge in making a switch is primarily infrastructure. The cost of building out this infrastructure is massive… but so is the cost of fighting wars in the Middle East and maintaining power-projection capabilities for regional contingencies there.

According to Energy Independence Now, converting all of California’s gas stations to carry hydrogen would cost roughly $5 billion. Extrapolate that to the rest of the country and we are looking at maybe a $50 billion price tag. Add in investments in generation capacity—maybe twice that again, so another $100 billion. We spend roughly $150 billion in purchasing foreign oil every year (the figure varies with prices, of course). For the money we spend in a single year on foreign oil, we could make a major dent in a hydrogen infrastructure. Hydrogen is still more costly than oil if you don’t take into account the political and military costs associated with oil dependency. If you do, the gap closes. But you don’t need to replace all oil. Just reduce our use and exposure to the point that we don’t feel compelled to be a regional policeman.

Just a caveat—the numbers on energy independence are all over the map. It depends on how quickly you do it, which technologies, assumptions about economies of scale, etc. My point is, we spend $150 billion on foreign oil, we spend perhaps another $100 billion annually in supporting military capacity and political engagements to reduce risk in access to that oil, and we spend tens of billions more a year in mitigating the consequence of this dependence. There is a massive amount of resources locked up in the status quo. Oil dependence is not cheap.

On January 23, 1980 President Jimmy Carter enunciated what became known as the Carter Doctrine. He stated, “An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.” To give this commitment meaning, the United States began a military buildup in the region that ultimately led to the creation of Central Command, which now has responsibility for fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Carter Doctrine came about during the period of the “Big Red Arrow” Soviet threat. Readers of a certain age will remember seeing scary maps back then. A big red arrow originating in Soviet Central Asia, plunging through Afghanistan and toward Iran. A second red arrow originated in Ethiopia and shot up into South Yemen, aimed at Saudi Arabia. This was the context of the significant increase in American military presence in the Middle East.

This transformation was significant. Traditionally, the United States had been pretty hands off in the Middle East. Though the United States recognized Israel immediately after its founding, Israel received more aid from other countries for a generation. Massive financial aid to Israel and Egypt only began following the Camp David Accord during the Carter Administration. Otherwise, the United States had always been willing to remain at arm’s length from developments.

Nearly 30 years later, by a combination of inertia, mission creep, and ill-considered friendships, the United States now finds itself deeply enmeshed in politics throughout the Middle East and South Asia. It is time to reverse that trend. Fundamentally, we have made a key mistake in our relations with the Middle East — we have overstated the benefits of deep involvement and the costs of disengagement while systematically underestimating the risks associated with playing such a visible role in a politically unstable region. Challenging the Soviet threat was a credible basis for a greater role, the hodge-podge of half-considered issues we face today is not.

I have argued for a the United States to maintain a dramatically smaller “footprint” on the ground in the Middle East while actively seeking to reduce our “fingerprints” on policy developments in the region. The U.S. military is too active and too visible. American Embassies are too large. And in general, our role in region is too overwhelming. Poll after poll shows the same thing — The United States is blamed for many of the misfortunes of the region and is considered an aggressive, hostile, imperialist power. At this point, our active involvement is self-defeating.

If we were to limit our involvement, this would impact three issues directly: Radicalism, Oil, and Israel. Let me discuss each in turn.

The big issue for the United States today is the threat posed by radical and violent Islamist movements. I would argue that in this area we would reap the greatest benefits of a more detached policy. Simply put, during the Cold War we accepted a quid pro quo with “moderate” Arab rulers. In return for consistent anti-Communism we would allow them to scapegoat us for domestic repression largely aimed at Islamist groups. That policy worked all too well as over the past two decades the biggest change in the Islamist movement has been increased focus on the “far enemy” (i.e. the United States) and less on the “near enemy” (i.e. corrupt rulers at home). It was a bad bargain during the Cold War, and is an even worse one today. The United States simply can no longer allow hatred of us to serve a steam valve to reduce pressure on Middle Eastern rulers. If we are going to be closely associated with regimes in the region, we have to insist that they forthrightly and consistently defend that relationship with their own people. No more message segmenting. No more blame shifting.

On the reverse side, some argue that we cannot reduce our presence because that is what our enemies want. In short, they believe that to spite groups like al Qaeda we have to go against our own interests. As a matter of strategy, it is tremendously dangerous to allow your enemies to define your interests for you. If we allow al Qaeda to pick the time and place of our confrontations, we cede to them the initiative and choice of terrain. Just because AQ might consider Iraq or Afghanistan a central front does not mean we have to. Yes, they may indeed claim victory if we do retrench. But we cannot make American policy in response to AQ press releases. Reducing the visibility of the American role will reduce the viability of anti-American movements and do more to undermine groups like al Qaeda than anything else, even if it gives them the theme for a crowing video.

The second issue is oil. The U.S. presence in the Middle East does serve to reduce some of the risks associated with the Western world’s reliances on Middle Eastern oil. It does not lower the cost necessarily, but it may reduce some potential for volatility in supply. But the cost of this risk mitigation is tremendous. We pay for lowering the supply risk with increased risk of terrorist attacks, greater hostility from the Arab population, and the costs of men and materiel associated with military commitments. Are there other ways to reduce those risks? Of course there are. They include investments in alternative energy, oil exporation at home, better fuel efficiency from cars. Certainly those are costly measures in the short-run, but so is deep involvement in a volatile region. In the long-run, the calculus is easy. Energy independence is a strategic imperative.

The third issue is Israel. There are some in the United States who believe it is in America’s interests to play “whack-a-mole” against an ever-shifting set of potential enemies of Israel. Yesterday Iraq, today Iran, tomorrow Syria. Ultimately, though, Israel has nuclear weapons and is unlikely to be attacked by any state actor. Certainly, the United States has an interest — as does the entire international community — in preventing terrorist groups from acquiring nuclear weapons, but pursuing a non-proliferation agenda does not require unilateral commitment to the region. The other part of the Israel issue is the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. Here, I am more pessimistic than most. As long as the Israeli political system is fractured — there are 18 parties represented in the Knesset and the largest party has fewer than one quarter of the seats — and Palestinian political power is split between Fatah and Hamas and even factions within those movements — it is simply impossible to conceive of a lasting, broadly accepted peace. The more visible the American role in brokering such a broken peace, the more resentful enemies we are likely to see emerge. Israeli land-grabs will become American land-grabs in frustrated Palestinian perceptions. Palestinian corruption and violence become American corruption and violence in the minds of angry Israelis. Genuine peace is a fantasy, and before you can visualize hope, you need to recognize reality.

In short, the benefits we believe accrue from deep engagement are largely illusory, and the costs associated with retrenchment are smaller than most fear.

Image by Flickr user Stewf under Creative Commons license.

Just out of curiosity…why? I thought those evil oil companies could control the price of oil and gasoline. Maybe we should bail these guys out too.

Sarah Palin is a big star now.

In this Nov. 4, 2008 file photo, Gov. Sarah Palin, R-Alaska, acknowledges the crowd during an election night rally in Phoenix. Oprah wants her, and so do Letterman and Leno. Fresh from her political defeat, Sarah Palin is juggling offers to write books, appear in films and sit on dozens of interview couches at a rate astonishing for any first-term governor, let alone a Hollywood star. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola, File)

Oprah wants her, and so do Letterman and Leno. Fresh from her political defeat, Sarah Palin is juggling offers to write books, appear in films and sit on dozens of interview couches at a rate that would be astonishing for most Hollywood stars, let alone a first-term governor.

The failed Republican vice presidential candidate crunched state budget numbers this week in her 17th-floor office as tumbling oil prices hit Alaska’s revenues. Meanwhile, her staff fielded television requests seeking the 44-year-old Palin for late-night banter and Sunday morning Washington policy. Agents, including those from the William Morris Agency, have come knocking. There’s even been an offer to host a TV show.

“Tomorrow, Governor Palin could do an interview with any news media on the planet,” said her spokesman, Bill McAllister. “Tomorrow, she could probably sign any one of a dozen book deals. She could start talking to people about a documentary or a movie on her life. That’s the level we are at here.” “Barbara Walters called me. George Stephanopoulos called me,” McAllister said. “I’ve had multiple conversations with producers for Oprah, Letterman, Leno and ‘The Daily Show.’”

[...]

Palin has sent unmistakable signals she is open to running for president in 2012, but to advance her political ambitions she must stay in the public eye in the lower 48 states. As with any celebrity, there is the risk of overexposure. At the same time, she’ll be under pressure to attend to governing her home state, which is thousands of miles from the rest of the nation.

“She has to deal with the perception that she bobbled her debut,” said Claremont McKenna College political scientist John Pitney. “She needs to stay home for a while. If she wants a future in national politics, her No. 1 job is doing a good job as governor.”

I’m inclined to agree. She’s already got name recognition in spades; the problem is the perception that she’s not ready for prime time. Of course, it’s going to be mighty hard to “do a good job” at this point, given that the job has become tremendously harder now that oil is back to $50 a barrel.

There are a couple of interesting snippets this morning in the coverage of the seizing of a Saudi oil tanker by Somali pirates I commented on yesterday. First, the Financial Times echoes my observations about the potential impact of this on the oil trade:

While most other seizures have been of vessels heading into or out of the Suez Canal, the latest incident will raise question marks about the safety of the route from the Arabian Gulf to the Cape of Good Hope – a route taken by the largest oil tankers heading from the world’s main oil-producing regions to both Europe and North America.

The development therefore puts at risk a far higher proportion of the world’s energy shipments than the 12 per cent that shipping organisations had already considered in danger. “That route from the Cape to the Gulf was not considered the riskiest route,” said Mr Mukundan.

The New York Times has an interesting observation about the sophistication of the pirates’ operations:

The location of the latest attack, far out to sea, suggested that the pirates may be expanding their range in an effort to avoid the multinational naval patrols now plying the Gulf of Aden and the Arabian Sea.

“I’m stunned by the range of it,” said Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, at a news conference in Washington. The ship’s distance from the coast was “the longest distance I’ve seen for any of these incidents,” he said.

The vessel was headed for the United States via the Cape of Good Hope when it was seized, Reuters reported.

Maritime experts recently have noticed a new development in the gulf — the pirates’ use of “mother ships,” large oceangoing trawlers carrying fleets of speedboats which are then deployed when a new prize is encountered.

“They launch these boats and they’re like wild dogs,” said Mr. Choong in Kuala Lumpur. “They attack the ship from the port, from starboard, from all points, shooting, scaring the captain, firing RPGs and forcing the ship to stop.”

We’re beginning to see the future of piracy unfold in the seas south of the Horn of Africa. Somali pirates have captured an oil tanker belonging to Saudi ARAMCO:

JIDDA, Saudi Arabia: Pirates captured a Saudi-owned supertanker loaded with more than $100 million worth of crude oil off the coast of Kenya, seizing the largest ship ever hijacked, United States Navy officials said Monday.

The hijacking follows a string of increasingly brazen attacks by Somali pirates in recent months, but this appears to be the first time that pirates have seized a full oil tanker.

“This is unprecedented,” Lieutenant Nathan Christensen, a spokesman for the Fifth Fleet, told Reuters. “It’s the largest ship that we’ve seen pirated. It’s three times the size of an aircraft carrier.”

The attack took place despite an increased multinational naval presence off the Somali coast, where most of the recent hijackings have taken place. The pirates are generally heavily armed, and travel in speedboats equipped with satellite phones and GPS equipment.

I’ve been predicting this unwelcome development for some time. I don’t believe that either the oil-exporting or oil-importing nations can allow this to go unchallenged. To date the pirates have mostly been demanding ransoms for captured ships, crews, and cargoes and the ransoms have grown higher as their prizes have become richer. However, that’s not the only possibility.

If the pirates can seize prizes of this size with impunity, I have little doubt that fences will step up to take the oil itself off their hands. It seems to me that could have serious consequences for the world oil trade itself.

As John Burgess points out

Perhaps we’ll be seeing Saudi naval vessels escorting the country’s own ships soon. The Royal Saudi Navy hasn’t had much of a chance to exercise its abilities, compared to the Army and Air Force, so this might be useful.

As I noted before piracy in the Caribbean and Atlantic was only tamped down by the United States and the United Kingdom in the 19th century with a combination of changes in the law and naval might. If the Saudi navy isn’t up to the task, the world’s great navies may be called on once again.

Update

This AP news update would appear to suggest that the tanker remains in the hands of the pirates:

MOGADISHU, Somalia – A Somali official is vowing to rescue a hijacked Saudi oil supertanker “by using force if necessary.”

Abdullkadir Musa is the deputy sea port minister in northern Somalia’s Puntland region, which is a hotspot for piracy. He says that if the ship anchors anywhere near Eyl — where the U.S. says it’s heading — then his forces will rescue it.

The tanker was hijacked over the weekend. Its owners grappled with how to respond Tuesday, as naval forces patrolling the region said they would not intervene to stop or free the captured vessel.

That would seem to contradict earlier reports that the vessel had been freed, a story which I haven’t seen confirmed anywhere.

I wrote a quick post before bed last night giving my off-the-cuff reaction to Barack Obama’s nomination acceptance speech, arguing that, despite all the talk of “change,” it was basically a speech that Jimmy Carter, Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis, Bill Clinton, Al Gore, or John Kerry could have given.

The NYT has a six-page transcript of the speech as delivered.  Let’s skip the biography and gotcha attack lines and go through the policy pronouncements.  These are problems for which he’s blamed George W. Bush and has promised to fix if elected president.

[M]ore Americans are out of work and more are working harder for less. More of you have lost your homes and even more are watching your home values plummet. More of you have cars you can’t afford to drive, credit cards, bills you can’t afford to pay, and tuition that’s beyond your reach.

Exactly zero of these are within the power of the president to fix. Seriously, what does he propose to do about housing prices reaching equilibrium and people borrowing to live lifestyles they can’t afford?

We’re a better country than one where a man in Indiana has to pack up the equipment that he’s worked on for 20 years and watch as it’s shipped off to China, and then chokes up as he explains how he felt like a failure when he went home to tell his family the news.

So, we’re going to ban trade with China? Ban American companies from participating in the global marketplace? Radically raise the cost that 300 million Americans pay for consumer goods to keep a relative handful of people employed in sectors where First World nations have lost their comparative advantage?

We are more compassionate than a government that lets veterans sleep on our streets and families slide into poverty…

So, we’re going to return to locking up drug addicts and people with non-dangerous mental disorders? We’re going to guarantee everyone a minimum income?

We measure the strength of our economy not by the number of billionaires we have or the profits of the Fortune 500, but by whether someone with a good idea can take a risk and start a new business, or whether the waitress who lives on tips can take a day off and look after a sick kid without losing her job, an economy that honors the dignity of work.

Don’t people start new businesses every day in this country? And isn’t his party the one that wants to erect regulatory barriers making it harder to start new businesses? For that matter, don’t waitresses get days off already? I’m pretty sure they do.

Implicit in this sentence, though, are the inherent contradictions in Democratic domestic policy. The more mandates we put on small businesses, the harder it is for them to succeed. Sure, it would be great if even unskilled labor got terrific benefits, including paid family leave. But somebody’s got to pay for that. If it’s the customer, it makes the product or service less attractive. If it’s coming out of the owner’s pocket, it makes hiring employees less attractive. If it’s the government, it takes money out of everyone’s pocket — including those with dreams of starting their own business. Including the very waitress who we’re trying to help. Whose salary, incidentally, will naturally go down as a result of the policy — if she’s hired to begin with.

Ours — ours is a promise that says government cannot solve all our problems, but what it should do is that which we cannot do for ourselves: protect us from harm and provide every child a decent education; keep our water clean and our toys safe; invest in new schools, and new roads, and science, and technology.

Now this is terrific line. It starts off appealing to conservatives and moderates and then promises a chicken in every pot. Who can be opposed to these things, after all? Why, mean old out-of-touch people like John McCain, that’s who!

But how does this translate into policy?

Protect us from harm. Keeping foreign enemies from attacking us and domestic criminals from terrorizing the innocent is the fundamental purpose of government, one could argue. But we’ve been trying to do these things since Day 1. One suspects, though, he’s defining “harm” much more broadly.

Decent education for all. I’m for it. But isn’t that a local responsibility? The federal government doesn’t run too many schools, after all, aside from those on military bases and diplomatic outposts. And what does “decent” mean, exactly?

Are we going to have government only do “that which we cannot do for ourselves”? Or is it going to invest in science and technology?

Change means a tax code that doesn’t reward the lobbyists who wrote it, but the American workers and small businesses who deserve it.

Don’t workers and small businesses have lobbyists? And why is government in the business of deciding who “deserves” to keep the money they earned?

I will stop giving tax breaks to companies that ship jobs overseas, and I will start giving them to companies that create good jobs right here in America.

They’re the same companies!

I will — listen now — I will cut taxes — cut taxes — for 95 percent of all working families, because, in an economy like this, the last thing we should do is raise taxes on the middle class.

This is another great line. It sounds very New Democrat. But, really, it’s the same old class warfare: We’re going to cut taxes for most people — even though we’ve just listed trillions in new spending programs — while raising them on those already paying the largest burden. But, hey, 19 out of 20 people will like it! Democracy! As Dave Schuler likes to say, “When you rob Peter to pay Paul, you can always count on the support of Paul.”

And for the sake of our economy, our security, and the future of our planet, I will set a clear goal as president: In 10 years, we will finally end our dependence on oil from the Middle East.

We will do this. Washington — Washington has been talking about our oil addiction for the last 30 years. And, by the way, John McCain has been there for 26 of them.

And Joe Biden 35 of them, by the way.

This is sheer fantasy. Of late, it’s become a bipartisan one, since even President Bush has spouted similar platitudes. It’s simply not going to happen.

And I’ll invest $150 billion over the next decade in affordable, renewable sources of energy — wind power, and solar power, and the next generation of biofuels — an investment that will lead to new industries and 5 million new jobs that pay well and can’t be outsourced.

Man, if $150 billion would do this Exxon would already be doing it.

I’ll recruit an army of new teachers, and pay them higher salaries, and give them more support. And in exchange, I’ll ask for higher standards and more accountability.

I suppose they’ll work side-by-side with the 100,000 new policemen Bill Clinton put on the beat.

Teachers are hired, trained, and supervised at the state and local level. Even if we federalize them, how is it that we’re going to attract better caliber people to do a job that’s often thankless and repetitive? Simply by paying them more? And what are these “higher standards”? Test scores? Democrats don’t like that measure. No Child Left Behind, Part Deux.

Granted, Clinton and others have made this promise and it’s almost certainly rhetoric that won’t translate into policy. If it did, though, we’re likely to see the repeat of federalizing airport security screeners: The same people doing the job as before but making more money and even harder to fire for poor performance.

And we will keep our promise to every young American: If you commit to serving your community or our country, we will make sure you can afford a college education.

What does this mean, exactly? If, say, you work in a soup kitchen a couple hours a week, we’ll send you to Harvard?

If you have health care — if you have health care, my plan will lower your premiums. If you don’t, you’ll be able to get the same kind of coverage that members of Congress give themselves.

So, if I don’t have a job, I get the same coverage we provide for 535 elites making executive salaries? Groovy. No scaling problems there.

I will make certain those companies stop discriminating against those who are sick and need care the most.

I think we have different definitions of “insurance.”

Now is the time to help families with paid sick days and better family leave, because nobody in America should have to choose between keeping their job and caring for a sick child or an ailing parent.

See our earlier discussion on this. Look, I’m for this. That’s a situation I’ve never been in and would dearly hate to be in. But who’s going to pay for it? A small business owner with, say, five employees almost certainly can’t afford to pay one of them for an extended period while not reaping the benefits of their work. Nor, realistically, can he afford to pay a temp to come in and do that work while paying the person he’s replacing. Large companies can probably absorb this sort of thing more easily — and many in fact do so — but, then again, large companies have more employees and therefore a greater likelihood of having to pay this out.

Or is this going to be some sort of government insurance program? If so, are we going to pay everyone on a capped basis, as with unemployment insurance? Or are we going to pay, say, an executive with a sick kid $20,000 a month while she’s out? What if her company sends good American jobs to China?

And now is the time to keep the promise of equal pay for an equal day’s work, because I want my daughters to have the exact same opportunities as your sons.

Dude, the 1970s are over.

Obama’s a bright guy. He anticipated these objections and dealt with them squarely:

Now, many of these plans will cost money, which is why I’ve laid out how I’ll pay for every dime: by closing corporate loopholes and tax havens that don’t help America grow.

But I will also go through the federal budget line by line, eliminating programs that no longer work and making the ones we do need work better and cost less, because we cannot meet 21st-century challenges with a 20th-century bureaucracy.

Clearly, the man has seen “Dave.”

I mean, seriously, we’re going to pay for all this by closing loopholes?! We quite literally couldn’t pay for it if we closed the entire federal government excepting the Defense Department and the Social Security Administration.

Yes, government must lead on energy independence, but each of us must do our part to make our homes and businesses more efficient.

The cameras didn’t show Jimmy Carter but I’m sure he was smiling. And wearing a sweater. While turning his thermostat down to 72.

[W]e must also admit that programs alone can’t replace parents, that government can’t turn off the television and make a child do her homework, that fathers must take more responsibility to provide love and guidance to their children.

Agreed. One small problem: They ain’t gonna.

Turning to foreign policy, the speech was actually much stronger there. I actually agreed with much of it, including some of the contrasts he drew with Bush and McCain. Two exceptions:

You know, John McCain likes to say that he’ll follow bin Laden to the gates of Hell, but he won’t even follow him to the cave where he lives.

We have no clue as to which cave bin Laden lives. Or if he lives in a cave. Or he’s still alive.

Do we seriously believe that, if he could, Bush wouldn’t be killing or capturing bin Laden? His approval ratings would jump 25 points.

We are the party of Roosevelt. We are the party of Kennedy. So don’t tell me that Democrats won’t defend this country. Don’t tell me that Democrats won’t keep us safe.

I agree with the underlying premise here: Of course Democrats want to keep the country safe and, goodness knows, Democrats aren’t any more reluctant to send troops into harm’s way than Republicans. One probably doesn’t want to invoke JFK here, though. Bay of Pigs. Taking us much closer to the brink of nuclear holocaust than we’ve ever been. Vietnam.

Look, I realize that I’m not the target audience here and that convention speeches are often full of platitudes and sops to the base.  My guess is that John McCain’s will be, too — and we’ll criticize that, too.   But don’t base your entire campaign on “CHANGE” and give me warmed over ideas from the Carter administration.

Obama Photo: Linda Davidson/The Washington Post. Magic pony  via Adam Stein.

The McCain campaign has launched two new ad videos in consecutive days under the titles “Broken” and “Family.” I find the juxtaposition amusing.  The spots themselves strike me as weak but, as I keep reminding myself, I’m not the target audience.

“Broken”

Washington’s broken. John McCain knows it. We’re worse off than we were four years ago.

Only McCain has taken on big tobacco, drug companies, fought corruption in both parties. He’ll reform Wall Street, battle Big Oil, make America prosper again.

He’s the original maverick.

One is ready to lead — McCain.

Somehow, I’m reminded of “Babylon 5.”

“Family”

Is the biggest celebrity in the world ready to help your family?

The real Obama promises higher taxes, more government spending. So, fewer jobs.

Renewable energy to transform our economy, create jobs and energy independence, that’s John McCain.

The problem with this is that both candidates favor all these things and neither will have the ability to achieve them.