Monthly Archives: August 2012

Ecuador, United Kingdom

Correa reelection in Ecuador a key motive in Assange asylum incident

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One of the most fascinating aspects of the latest turn in the Julian Assange drama is why Ecuador — of all places — is so keen on offering Assange asylum. 

Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, made public a huge trove of classified cables from the U.S. State Department, starting in February 2010.  Assange has also been charged on a warrant by Sweden for sexual assault and voluntarily entered English custody in December 2010.

Assange claims that in Sweden (unlike in the Great Britain), he will be subject to extradition or illegal rendition to the United States, where he also claims he will be charged with espionage and other crimes in relation to the release of the U.S. classified cables.  I will leave aside the issue of whether that’s a valid concern or paranoid delusion, but given the global attention now on Assange, it seems certain that the United States would face massive criticism and a significant soft-power blow, even among its allies, for such a move.

In any event, on June 19, Assange fled to the Ecuadorian embassy in London, and Ecuador granted asylum to Assange on August 16.  The United Kingdom, for its part, refuses to guarantee the safe passage of Assange, who now faces the puzzle of getting from Ecuador’s embassy out of the country.  The United Kingdom apparently sent a letter last week to the Ecuadorian embassy that seemed to threaten invasion of Ecuador’s embassy to reclaim Assange — that would appear to be  a fairly significant break with the international law that governs diplomatic relations, which is one of the few areas of international law that countries take seriously as law.

Besides, the idea of UK foreign minister William Hague ordering a military siege in posh Knightsbridge to capture Assange is so outrageous (and hilarious) that I doubt the British government would ever stoop to something like that.  Far better to wait it out until Assange tries to flee, or simply strip Ecuador of its diplomatic status by cutting off ties.

Assange raised the temperature even more Sunday with a scathing denunciation of the United States from the balcony of the Ecuadorian embassy.

But why would Ecuador even bother to step into such a fraught battle of international intrigue that has already become a headache for the United Kingdom, the United States, Sweden and Assange’s native country of Australia?

Max Fisher at The Atlantic makes the case that Ecuadorian president Rafael Correa is angling to pick a fight with a stalwart of Western government:

Though we can’t know the Ecuadorian government’s motivation for sure, engineering a high-profile and possibly protracted confrontation with a Western government would actually be quite consistent with Correa’s practice of using excessively confrontational foreign policy in a way that helps cement his populist credibility at home.  It would also be consistent with his habit of using foreign embassies as proxies for these showdowns — possibly because they tend to generate lots of Western outrage with little risk of unendurable consequences.

That seems just about right, and it doesn’t hurt that South American ally Argentina already detests the United Kingdom over the status of the Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas) since the 1982 war and before.

But there’s a vital element missing from this narrative: Correa faces reelection in February 2013.

Continue reading Correa reelection in Ecuador a key motive in Assange asylum incident →

Dominican Republic

Medina takes power as Dominican president

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Danilo Medina was inaugurated yesterday as the new president of the Dominican Republic — with 10 million people, it’s the most populous country in the Caribbean after Cuba. 

A member of the ruling center-left Partido de la Liberación Dominicana (the Dominican Liberation Party), Medina won the presidential election with 51% in May over former president Hipólito Mejía.

Medina succeeds the popular Leonel Fernández, who served as president from 1996 to 2000 and who has served as president since 2004.

So what to look for as Medina takes power? Continue reading Medina takes power as Dominican president →

Lebanon, Syria

Lebanon remains tense after kidnappings, hopes to avoid Syrian chaos spillover

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Lebanon’s prime minister Najib Mikati yesterday appeared to call for something like a unity government, with further signs that the Syrian civil war next door could cause chaos in neighboring Lebanon.

The situation in Beruit remains tense— the latest episode involved the kidnapping Wednesday of over two dozen Syrians (and a Turkish and Saudi national) by the Meqdad clan (a Shi’a group from the Bekaa Valley, a Shi’a region in eastern Lebanon near Syria) in retaliation for the abduction of one of its kinsman in Damascus.  Although the isolated kidnappings involve just a handful of Syrians, the incident has left Lebanon very much on guard.

The clan claimed that the kidnapped victims were members of the Free Syrian Army, the main opposition group to Syrian president Syrian president Bashar al-Assad in the ongoing civil war in Syria, a country that’s had an outsized influence on Lebanon for the past three decades.

The clan has released several hostages and has announced that it will not abduct any further victims, but the move was nonetheless troubling for a country that stands more to lose from the escalation of the Syrian civil war than any other country in the Middle East.  It caused Air France and other airlines to divert flights from Beirut to other cities after reports of a blockage of the road from the airport to Beirut, and it’s been calamitous enough for Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait to urge their nationals to leave Lebanon.

Another group, the al-Mukhtar al-Thufki brigade, announced that it abducted 10 Free Syrian Army members in Beirut and the Bekaa Valley, and it will furthermore target anyone that is a Free Syrian Army supporter.

Lebanon, which endured a grueling sectarian civil war from the late 1970s through the entire 1980s, has done an admirable job of avoiding spillover from the Syrian chaos for the past year and a half — aside from some unrest in the largely Sunni city of Tripoli on Lebanon’s north coast earlier this year in May, Lebanon has avoided much of the bloodshed and chaos that has enveloped Syria in the past 18 months and Lebanon, despite current tensions, remains far from the hell of its civil war.

It remains to be seen if Mikati can form a new unity government to stand in the face of growing shockwaves from the Syrian war, given that Lebanon’s two main political blocs are defined on the basis of their pro-Syria and anti-Syria stances.  A new general election in Lebanon is due in 2013.

Multi-volume books could be written that barely begin to reveal the intricacies of Lebanese politics — it’s safe to say that the confessional system, whereby each of Lebanon’s 18 religious groups are allocated power, is complex.  Furthermore, the Syria axis defines Lebanese politics even more than the traditional left-right axis.  Continue reading Lebanon remains tense after kidnappings, hopes to avoid Syrian chaos spillover →

Assorted Links

First Past the Post: August 16

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Emile Roemer is under fire in the Dutch election for his statement that he would refuse to pay fines to the European Union if the Dutch budget exceeds 3% of GDP.

More evidence that the Angolan election on August 31 will be neither free nor fair.

In Canada, François Legault, the leader of the upstart new Coalition avenir Québec, wants young Quebeckers to be more like Asians.

Brazil gets a $66 billion stimulus package.

The Netherlands

The incredibly shrinking Geert Wilders

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The past decade in Dutch politics has been fraught with what in the United States would be called “culture war” issues.

It may be surprising when you think of the Netherlands and its liberal attitude towards many of the hot-button issues in the U.S. — marijuana legalization, euthanasia, prostitution, same-sex marriage — but the Netherlands has had more than its share of tensions over Muslim immigration in the past decade.

The current standard-bearer of anti-Islam politics is Geert Wilders, somewhat of a Dutch Cultural Warrior, version 2.0 (following in the tradition of the late Pim Fortuyn, filmmaker Theo van Gogh and, to some degree, former Dutch parliamentarian Ayaan Hirsi Ali).  Wilders, the platinum blonde enfante terrible of Dutch politics, has highlighted the influx of Muslim immigrants to the Netherlands as a threat to the culture and way of life of the Netherlands (and Europe, generally).

His Partij voor de Vrijheid (PVV, Party for Freedom) swept the last general election in 2010, winning nearly one-sixth of the seats in the Tweede Kamer, the third-highest total.

Wilders dominated that election campaign with his views — he would ban all Muslim immigration to the Netherlands, pay current immigrants to leave and ban the Koran. He then dominated the months of coalitions talks that resulted when no party won enough seats to govern.  And then, as an outside supporter of Mark Rutte’s government, he has dominated Dutch governance — right up to April 2012, when he withdrew his support for additional budget cuts, leading to the snap elections on September 12.

So it’s with some surprise to see that the PVV is not dominating this election campaign: polls show that Rutte’s liberal, free-market Volkspartij voor Vrijheid en Democratie (VVD, the People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy) is tied with Emile Roemer’s Socialistische Partij (SP, the Socialist Party).  Rutte is running a campaign defending his push to bring the Dutch budget within 3% of Dutch annual GDP, while Roemer (and not Wilders) has emerged as the voice of opposition to austerity.

What’s clear is that, for the first time in over a decade, next month’s Dutch election is about spending, growth and the economy and less about Muslim immigration and ‘culture war’ issues — and early polls indicate that Wilders has not been as germane to the 2012 debate as he was in 2010.

Maybe it’s because Wilders has been so thoroughly identified as an anti-Muslim candidate (rather than an anti-Europe or anti-austerity).  Maybe it’s because there’s no mistaking the message of anti-austerity that voting for the Socialists sends.  Maybe it’s because Wilders originally provided support to prop up Rutte’s minority government.

But for whatever reason, Wilders has watched Roemer’s party rush to the front of the pack.  Although Wilders would normally seem mostly likely to benefit from a strong protest vote this year, he’s been relegated to watch as the unlikely Roemer drinks his milkshake — Wilders and the PVV remain trapped in a four-way tie for third place alongside the progressive Democraten 66 (Democrats 66) bloc, and the two struggling parties that dominated postwar Dutch politics until the last decade, the center-right Christen-Democratisch Appèl (CDA, Christian Democratic Appeal) and the center-left Partij van de Arbeid (PvdA, Labour Party).  It’s a little odd, considering that Wilders has a populist style that dwarfs that of either the technocratic Rutte or the plodding Roemer.

That doesn’t mean Wilders is going down gently, and Dutch voters are just starting to tune into what’s been a subdued campaign that coincides with summer holiday season.

His latest bid has been to expand his brand of populism to Europe — the PVV’s platform for 2012 reads, “Their Brussels, Our Netherlands.”  In typical Wilders fashion, it’s not nuanced — it proclaims, “other parties may choose Islam or EU nationalism, our party is for the Netherlands!”  Continue reading The incredibly shrinking Geert Wilders →

Pakistan

Everything you need to know about the showdown between the Pakistan People’s Party and the Supreme Court of Pakistan

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So you already know that Pakistan is, well, kind of a hot mess, as far as governance is concerned.

You also know that the Muslim country of 180 million has had, since Partition from India in 1947, a helter-skleter relationship with democratic institutions, with periods of civilian rule interspersed with healthy intervals of autocratic military regimes.  You know that on many vectors, Pakistan falls short of what even its neighbors have accomplished, not just with respect to democracy, but also with respect to rule of law, corruption, terrorism, press freedom and so on.  (Think of Pakistan, perhaps, as a 21st century version of mid-20th century Argentina, or any other South American country where democracy didn’t quite take, despite strong party identification.)

You know that Pakistan is a traditional U.S. ally and a key strategic relationship in the ongoing U.S. efforts in Afghanistan (and along the Af-Pak border), but that Pakistan’s political and military establishment rarely speaks with one voice and that Pakistan’s government more often hinders than helps the U.S. government in its ongoing anti-terror efforts.

But what of the latest political crisis there?  The prime minister has been dismissed by the Supreme Court? And the new prime minister may be dismissed as well? All because of some corruption charges against the president? But isn’t basically every public official in Pakistan corrupt?

It’s understandable that a crisis like this could leave your head spinning in a run-of-the-mill democracy, but in a place like Pakistan, with so many extrapolitical considerations, it’s nearly incomprehensible.

Without further ado, Suffragio presents a quick primer on what’s happened so far in the showdown, and what we might expect in the near future. Continue reading Everything you need to know about the showdown between the Pakistan People’s Party and the Supreme Court of Pakistan →

Assorted Links

First Past the Post: August 15

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Venezuela’s latest model for Bolivar is actually French.

The geopolitical future of the Arctic.

ThreeHundredEight‘s latest forecast shows a potential majority government for the Parti québécois after the Sept. 4 election in Québec.

Politics is starting to resume in Ghana following the death of president John Atta Mills.

One man’s view on the Lugo ‘coup’ in Paraguay (spoiler: it has to do with the United States and oil).

Bunga, bunga is costly, costly: Silvio Berlusconi is no longer among the top 10 richest in Italy.

A troubling sign with regard to press freedom in Mohammed Morsi’s Egypt.

Libya’s new national assembly president is moderate Islamist and Qadaffi opponent Mohamed al-Magariaf.

London mayor Boris Johnson tells fellow Tory and UK prime minister David Cameron to stop ‘pussyfooting around’ on expanding London airports.

Benjamin Netanyahu appoints Kadima legislator Avi Dichter as new home front defense minister and potentially a deciding vote in Israel’s inner security cabinet on the issue of launching a strike on Iranian’s nuclear facilities.

Australia contemplates how to get its offshore asylum-seeker detention center up and running in Nauru.

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First Past the Post: August 14

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Québec premier Jean Charest attacks the newly ascendant Coalition avenir Québec (CAQ).

Corruption is becoming the main theme of the Sept. 4 election in Québec.

Doug Schoen argues that the recent conviction of former Mongolian president Nambar Enkhbayar is politically motivated.

Spiegel considers the troika of potential leaders of the Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (the Social Democratic Party) in advance of Germany’s federal election in 2013 (but doesn’t mention Hannelore Kraft!)

 

Mongolia

Altankhuyag appointed as new prime minister in Mongolia

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Mongolia today has a new prime minister in Norov Altankhuyag (Норовын Алтанхуяг), the leader of the Democratic Party (Ардчилсан нам, Ardchilsan Nam).

The landlocked central Asian country of just under 3 million, nestled between Russia and China, is undergoing somewhat of a mining-based boom these days — for decades, it was locked in the socialist shadow of the Soviet Union, but today is riding the crest of China’s state capitalist wave and its capital, Ulan Bator, is being transformed like many of China’s provincial capitals from dusty backwater to a thriving boomtown.  Its largest coal mine, Tavan Tolgoi, is due to be listed on Hong Kong- and London-based stock exchanges next year, and investors are already looking to the next administration for signs that it will be business-friendly:

Over the next four years, the country’s vast mineral wealth will be exploited and the state coffers will begin to fill, putting the new government in a strong but testing position.

“The importance of this next term cannot be overstated,” says Travis Hamilton, founder of the Khan Mongolia Equities Fund. “The stakes are a lot higher now, and the actions over the next four years will determine the coming decades. Mongolia is still heavily dependent on foreign investment, but when they run at capacity they will be able to go on their own. The country is on the precipice of financial independence.”

The appointment comes after weeks of coalition talks following the June 28 election of the 76 members to Mongolia’s State Great Khural (Улсын Их Хурал, Ulsyn Ikh Khural).  In that election, the pro-free market Democratic Party won 31 seats to just 25 for the ruling Mongolia People’s Party (Монгол Ардын Нам, Mongol Ardiin Nam), formerly the communist party that ran Mongolia from 1921 to 1996.

A third party, formed in 2010 by former president Nambaryn Enkhbayar, the Mongolian People’s Revolutionary Party (Монгол Ардын Хувьсгалт Нам, Mongol Ardyn Khuvsgalt Nam), won 11 seats, and will join the coalition with the Democratic Party.  That’s somewhat, troubling, in part because Enkhbayar himself was just sentenced to four years in prison last week on corruption charges.

Nonetheless,Reuters reports that Mongolia’s new leaders are taking a much more favorable position toward foreign investment: Continue reading Altankhuyag appointed as new prime minister in Mongolia →

Australia, Nauru, Papua New Guinea

Gillard’s 180-degree turn and what it means for Australian asylum policy

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It’s not just American politicians who have a hard time dealing with illegal immigration.

Unravelling stability in Afghanistan, where the United States has led an 11-year military effort, may be exacerbating a rise in boat-bound refugees to Australia, causing headaches for its Labor-led government.

Australian prime minister Julia Gillard yesterday announced that her government would seek to enact the recommendations of a nonpartisan review and adopt a version of the ‘Pacific Solution’ adopted by Labor’s predecessor Liberal government of John Howard — Gillard has called on Australia’s parliament to pass a new law allowing for the reopening of detention centers on Nauru and on Manus Island in Papua New Guinea within as soon as a month.

The move will result in a return to offshore processing for asylum-seekers trying to arrive by boat to Australia.  That means that such refugees would face years of detention in Nauru or PNG if apprehended by Australian authorities at sea.

It’s a 180-degree turnaround for Labor, although Gillard had promised (during her latest interparty leadership contest with former prime minister Kevin Rudd in February) to reverse what’s been a five-year upswing in illegal arrivals by sea to Australia — and a correspondingly higher number of refugee deaths.  So although Gillard may be weakened by the sudden turn, it’s an issue that’s long been a political albatross for her and for Labor.  When Labor returned to power in 2007 under Kevin Rudd, the party quickly scrapped the ‘Pacific solution’ by enacting what Rudd considered more humane policies, closing the Nauru and PNG detention centers in favor of onshore processing centers.

The key question over the past five years is why the number of refugees by boat rose so dramatically in 2007 — proponents of the Pacific Solution, such as Liberal/National Coalition leader Tony Abbott, argue that the leniency of Labor asylum policies encouraged more refugees to arrive by sea.  Abbott supports the return to using offshore detention, has harshly criticized Labor policy for resulting in over 600 refugees deaths by drowning, and is today crowing over Gillard’s reversal:

“I’ve been saying for four years that the Prime Minister should pick up the phone to Nauru,” says the Opposition Leader.

“We have had enormous cost, untold tragedy and trauma that could have been avoided if the Prime Minister had been prepared to do this at any time in the last four years,” says Tony Abbott.

“We’ve had 22,000 illegal arrivals, almost 400 illegal boats.”

Although many of the refugees come directly by boat from Indonesia or Malaysia, asylum-seekers often begin their journey from throughout greater Asia, including China, Vietnam, Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan.  Even under the Pacific Solution, most refugees who arrived by boat were bona-fide refugees and around two-thirds were either granted asylum in Australia or resettled in other countries.

Opponents of the Pacific Solution, such as former prime minister Malcolm Fraser, say that the number of refugees rose due to external factors.  Fraser, a former Labor prime minister of Australia from 1975 to 1983, yesterday called Gillard’s propsed approach ‘racist’: Continue reading Gillard’s 180-degree turn and what it means for Australian asylum policy →

Assorted Links

First Past the Post: August 13

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Newly-minted Republican U.S. vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan has voted in the past to lift the U.S. embargo of Cuba.

Speaking of Cuba, Fidel Castro turns 86 today. Granma’s coverage here.

An interview with Chinese artist-dissident Ai Weiwei.

Anders Åslund at the Peterson Institute for International Economics looks to the breakups of Yugoslavia, the Soviet Union and the Austro-Hungarian Empire for lessons to the current eurozone crisis.

Australian prime minister Julie Gillard backs down over boat refugees, will support processing centers in Nauru and Papau New Guinea.

 

Egypt

Morsi, in firing defense minister, asserts presidential control over Egypt

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Of course, the significance of the decision by Egyptian president Mohammed Morsi on Sunday to announce the resignation of not just Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi as defense minister, but his deputy, General Sami Anan, cannot be understated.

It is easily the most significant moment in Egyptian governance since Morsi’s election — and it, surprisingly, comes just over a week after Morsi’s first cabinet was sworn in — a cabinet that seemed destined to feature Egypt’s military, with little civilian participation from beyond the Muslim Brotherhood and its sphere of allies.

But it also comes very soon after Morsi fired his intelligence chief in the wake of increased attacks and a growing Islamic fundamentalist threat on the Egypt-Israel border in Sinai.

Tantawi, the leader of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces that led Egypt’s transitional government between the fall of Hosni Mubarak and Morsi’s election, has essentially been the head of Egypt’s military since his appointment as secretary of defense in 1991.  His reappointment as defense secretary in the cabinet of Morsi’s prime minister, Hisham Qandil, was seen as a sign that the Egyptian military had reached somewhat of an uneasy truce with Morsi — Morsi may be the elected president, but the military would have enough residual power to veto Morsi on key issues, especially where national security is involved.

That changed Sunday — and the Tantawi and Anan retirements are not all that Morsi (pictured above, right)accomplished.

Morsi amended the last-minute June 17 declaration by SCAF that has attempted to limit presidential powers; instead, Morsi issued a new Constitutional Declaration that gives the president full executive and legislative authority, as well as power to set Egyptian public policy and sign international treaties.  He also appointed Mahmoud Mekki, a respected deputy head of the Cassation Court, as his vice president (although in doing so, Morsi seemed to break a promise to appoint a woman and a Coptic Christian as his vice presidents).

Morsi appointed as the new defense minister a little-known general, Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi (pictured above, far left).  In a profile today, Al Ahram noted that the 57-year-old El-Sisi, who previously served as Egypt’s military attaché to Saudi Arabia, will be the first Egyptian defense minister who also doesn’t hold the title of field marshal.  El-Sisi is best known internationally as the general who announced that the military had conducted virginity tests on female protestors at Tahrir Square in order to prove soldiers had not raped them.  SCAF subsequently backtracked on El-Sisi’s somewhat embarrassing statement.

Much of Egypt’s independent media and figures such as Mohamed ElBaradei have welcomed Morsi’s move.  A wide spectrum, from youth protest leaders to Salafists are applauding what seems to be a bona-fide transfer of power from the military to the civilian president.

Mark Lynch at Foreign Policy dubbed Egypt’s president “Lamborhini Morsi” and offers three alternative (not incompatible) takes: Continue reading Morsi, in firing defense minister, asserts presidential control over Egypt →

Canada, Quebec

Newly-formed third party CAQ rises in Québec

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A new poll out in Québec Friday from Leger Marketing shows an increasingly three-way race in advance of the snap September 4 election.

The two longstanding parties in Québec are essentially tied.  The sovereigntist (and more leftist) Parti québécois (PQ) wins 32% of Québécois voters, while the federalist (and more centrist) Parti libéral du Québec (Liberal Party, or PLQ) of premier Jean Charest wins 31%.  Charest, who has led Québec since 2003, is seeking his fourth consecutive mandate.

But the real surprise is the newly-formed Coalition avenir Québec (CAQ), which got 27% — although the CAQ led polls briefly when it was formed in January 2012, it had steadily lost support.

And, perhaps, for good reason — it’s a relatively aimless group that has been vague about its position on key issues, such as a proposed hike in student tuition fees.  It’s been just as cagey on more fundamental stands: whether its economic program is right or left, or whether it is more sovereigntist or federalist.

Founded by François Legault (pictured above, left), a longtime minister in the PQ governments of the 1990s and a leader of the pro-independence movement in the 1995 sovereignty referendum, the CAQ incorporates some other PQ stragglers and much of the old Action démocratique du Québec, the party led by Mario Dumont that made significant gains in the 2007 Québec election (only to watch those gains evaporate in the subsequent 2008 election).

Yet there’s precedent from recent Québécois elections to indicate that voters are weary of both the Liberals and the PQ:

  • As noted, in 2007, Mario Dumont’s ADQ won 41 seats to Québec’s 125-seat Assemblée nationale, leaving Charest’s Liberals with a 48-seat minority government and pushing the PQ (with just 36 seats) out as the official opposition.
  • In the 2011 general election, the progressive New Democratic Party won 59 of Québec’s 75 ridings for seats in the House of Commons.  The NDP, led by the late Jack Layton, had previously not been a factor in Québec’s federal elections; in 2011, it reduced the PQ’s federal counterpart, the Bloc québécois to just four seats, despite its domination of Québec’s federal delegation since 1993.

Like the ADQ in 2007, the CAQ is leading polls in and around Québec City.  But also like in 2007, anglophone Quebeckers are still overwhelmingly in favor of the Liberals, the PQ has a steady lead among francophone voters, and the CAQ lags behind both parties in and around Montréal.  That result would lead to three-way deadlock that favors a minority Liberal government — unless the CAQ can somehow break through to the core supporters of either the PQ or the Liberals.

Two recent developments indicate that the CAQ could pull off that kind of upset.

Legault has emphasized the recruitment of high-profile candidates, which paid off last week when popular anti-corruption figure and former Montréal police chief Jacques Duchesneau (pictured above, right) announced last week that he would stand as a candidate for the CAQ.  That put Charest on the defensive — his government is under investigation for corruption charges related to tying government construction contracts to political cash.  Meanwhile, prominent anglophone Quebecker Robert Libman gave his support to the CAQ and trashed Charest for using scare tactics against the CAQ.

But the election remains three weeks away and it’s unclear if the CAQ may be surging too soon — to say nothing of whether voters trust Legault and his slippery platform enough to make him premier.

Continue reading Newly-formed third party CAQ rises in Québec →

United States

U.S. Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan’s foreign policy views

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If sources are true, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney has selected Wisconsin congressman Paul Ryan as his running mate, with the formal announcement to come Saturday morning.

Ryan is most well-known for his strong views on budget policy — think of him as the United States’s version of George Osborne.

He’s become something of the intellectual spokesman for the Republican Party on budget matters in the post-Bush era — his proposed budget would cut massive amounts of spending out of the federal government, transform Medicare into a voucher program and render other federal programs virtually unrecognizable from their current form.  To the massive anti-government ‘tea party’ view that has emerged in the U.S. center-right since the bailouts of former U.S. president George W. Bush and former Treasury secretary Hank Paulson and the election of U.S. president Barack Obama, Ryan represents somewhat of a true believer in effecting a reduction in government spending.

In other words, Ryan’s not being picked for his foreign policy bona fides, but rather for other concerns — his Midwestern background, his conservative credentials and his wonky credibility (to the American right, at least) on budget matters.

But what would a Vice President Ryan add to foreign policy?  Given that the vice presidential pick is perhaps the most important decision Romney will make before his (potential) election as U.S. president, given that the pick telescopes Romney’s own worldview to some degree, given the influence of recent former vice presidents Dick Cheney and Joe Biden on foreign policy, and given the reality that Ryan would be a heartbeat away from the presidency, it’s a question worth asking.

Uri Friedman, writing for FP Passport, tried to answer the question back in April in a primer on Ryan’s foreign policy — the consensus is that Ryan prescribes a healthy dose of American exceptionalism, but fundamentally remains a more realist, liberal hawk than a neoconservative crusader.

When it comes to slashing U.S. military spending, however, it seems that the Pentagon is the one area Ryan would spare from his federal budget cuts:

Ryan’s 99-page “Path to Prosperity” plan, released last month, provoked an outcry in calling for boosting military spending while slashing the international affairs budget — funding for entities such as the State Department and USAID — by nearly $5 billion. When Ryan said “we don’t think the generals are giving us their true advice” in reference to the military budget, he was quick to walk back his comments. “I really misspoke,” he explained.

Otherwise, when it comes to foreign policy, Friedman notes, in sum, Ryan’s a blank slate:

Ryan’s worldview, in other words, appears to be a bit of a Rorschach test. And in a general election where appealing solely to the Republican base just won’t cut it, that might be exactly what Romney needs.

The Weekly Standard, marking a key Ryan foreign policy speech in June 2011, applauded his stance in favor of American exceptionalism:

“A world without U.S. leadership will be a more chaotic place,” Ryan said. “A place where we have less influence, and a place where our citizens face more dangers and fewer opportunities. Take a moment and imagine a world led by China and Russia.”

Ryan spoke at length about American exceptionalism as it relates to America’s role in the world. “America is an idea,” he said. “And it was the first nation founded as such. The idea is rather simple. Our rights come to us from God and nature. They occur naturally, before government.”

This belief in the American idea, Ryan said, should inform the nation’s foreign policy. “Now, if you believe these rights are universal human rights, then that clearly forms the basis of your views on foreign policy,” he said. “It leads you to reject moral relativism. It causes you to recoil at the idea of persistent moral indifference toward any nation that stifles and denies liberty, no matter how friendly and accommodating its rules are to American interests.”

 Jonathan Chait, writing for The New Republic in 2011, deemed Ryan’s foreign policy “Norquistian-Churchillian,” pitted the budget-cutting Ryan against the foreign policy version of Ryan:

In reality, Ryan’s budget is unworkable and something would have to give. Many Republicans, and especially the neoconservatives forming the draft-Ryan committee, loath the idea of pressuring the defense budget. Ryan’s forceful endorsement of neoconservative principles, along with his continued opposition to defense spending cuts, reassures his base. In the neoconservative world, mighty declarations of willpower always trump puny arithmetic.

The world press has not spent much time vetting Ryan, for what it’s worth.

For example, Israel’s Haaretz mentions Ryan in an article back in February on the cutting of $6 billion from the U.S. budget on Israeli missile defense.  The United Kingdom’s Guardian features coverage mostly going to Ryan’s role in American politics, not to his view on US-UK relations.

 

Assorted Links

First Past the Post: August 10

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I somehow missed it from the May/June issue of the American Interest, but it’s good weekend reading from Tyler Cowen on U.S. export growth and what it means for the global (and U.S.) economy.

Not entirely unrelated, an expat on China on why he’s leaving the People’s Republic (for good).

Also not entirely unrelated, Edward Hugh at A Fistful of Euros makes the case for pessimism on Italy.

Brazil gets a new affirmative action law in higher education for Afro-Brazilians, mestizos and indigenous students.

Could Germany hold a referendum on transferring more power to Brussels?

All of China is watching the trial of Gu Kailai (wife of former Chongqing chief Bo Xilai), who’s now admitted to committing murder.