Tag Archives: US

United Kingdom

Would a Miliband-led Labour government be an improvement on British civil liberties?

Leave a comment

onenationed

The troubling case of David Miranda, the partner of Guardian reporter Glenn Greenwald, who was detained by British police at Heathrow yesterday for nine hours under schedule 7 of the U.K. Terrorism Act, is now a full-blown fully international incident. United Kingdom Flag Icon

The case has implications not only for U.S. politics (Greenwald has been the chief source for the leaks about the U.S. National Security Agency’s Internet intelligence-gathering programs) and even Brazilian politics (Greenwald lives in Brazil with Miranda, a Brazilian native), but for British politics as well, where the issue of civil liberties has been contentious for the past decade and a half under both the Labour governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown and the Conservative-led government of current prime minister David Cameron.

Political strategist Ian Bremmer is already suggesting that the United States and/or the United Kingdom may be preparing an indictment against Greenwald (presumably under the U.S. Espionage Act), which would explain why Miranda’s laptop computer and other personal effects were confiscated in London.  We already know that the United States, by the admission of White House deputy press secretary Josh Earnest was given a heads-up by London prior to Miranda’s detention, though Earnest has denied that the United States requested or collaborated with the detention.  It’s equally plausible that overeager police officials in London jumped at an opportunity to gather information they thought top U.S. and U.K. officials would appreciate — if the United States and the United Kingdom really are pursuing an international case against Greenwald, you’d think they would be careful not to commit what seems like a prima facie violation of the U.K. Terrorism Act.

With both Scotland Yard and Cameron saying little about the incident, and with U.S. officials remaining relatively mum, most of today’s discussion has been dominated by vehement critics of the detention on both sides of the Atlantic.

One of the most striking has come from Labour Party’s shadow home secretary, Yvette Cooper, a rising Labour star who may herself one day lead the party, who has called for an investigation into whether the detention was appropriate under the Terrorism Act:

Schedule 7, which applies only at airports, ports and border areas, controversially allows officers to stop, search, question and detain individuals. Miranda was held for nine hours, the maximum the law allows before officers must release or formally arrest the individual.

According to official figures, most examinations under schedule 7 – over 97% – last less than an hour, and only one in 2,000 people detained are kept for more than six hours. It has been widely criticised for giving police broad powers under the guise of anti-terror legislation to stop and search individuals without prior authorisation or reasonable suspicion – setting it apart from other police powers.

As we approach the annual convention period in British politics, pressure on Labour leader Ed Miliband is growing to draw a deeper contrast with the current coalition government on many issues, including civil liberties.  Soon after his election as Labour leader in September 2010, Miliband criticized his party’s overreach on civil liberties, identifying in particular the Blair government’s plan to hold suspects for 90 days without trial and the broad use of anti-terrorism laws.  At the time, Miliband argued that he wanted to lead Labour to reclaim the British tradition of liberty, though Miliband also indicated at the time he supported Blair’s widespread introduction of what are now over 4 million closed-circuit television surveillance cameras throughout the country.

As the parties begin to jostle for position for an election that’s now just 21 months away, Cameron certainly won’t be able to run for reelection on as vigorous a pro-liberty position as he did in 2010, though his junior coalition partners, the Liberal Democrats, can point to their success in repealing Labour’s plan to introduce national ID cards and scrapping the Tories’ proposed communications data bill this year.

That leaves a key opening for Miliband to champion civil liberties, but given the durability of the British surveillance state and Labour’s role in creating the legal framework last decade for the British surveillance state, it is unclear whether Miliband will do so, though Cooper delivered a high-profile speech in July arguing for more oversight and protections in relation to the U.K. intelligence and security services.  It’s likelier, however, that a future Labour government will pursue many of the same pro-security policies that each of the Blair, Brown and Cameron governments have pursued.

British voters will certainly remember the truly dismal record of the past Labour government under Blair and Brown on liberty (whether the efforts made the United Kingdom more secure is another question) — the list of curbs on personal freedom is long, and it includes not only the push for CCTV cameras: Continue reading Would a Miliband-led Labour government be an improvement on British civil liberties? →

China, United States

Two systems, two transitions: China, U.S. face leadership crossroads simultaneously

Leave a comment

Next week, arguably the two most important countries in the world will kick off two very different leadership transitions.

On Tuesday, November 6, the United States of America will hold a general election.  For the 57th time since 1790, Americans will vote for U.S. president, at once the country’s head of state and head of government.  The winner will most certainly be one of two men: the Democratic Party incumbent, former Illinois senator Barack Obama (pictured above, right) or the Republican Party challenger, former Massachusetts governor Willard ‘Mitt’ Romney.  Americans will also determine who will control the both the lower and upper houses of the U.S. legislature.‡  The new Congress will be sworn in early in January 2013 and the president will be inaugurated (or reinaugurated) on January 20.

On Thursday, November 8, the People’s Republic of China will watch as the 18th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (中国共产党) gets underway in Beijing, where all but two of the members of the Politburo Standing Committee, China’s foremost governing body, will step down and new members will be appointed in a once-a-decade leadership transition.  China’s ‘paramount leader’ Hu Jintao (pictured above, left), the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party and PRC president since 2002, is expected to be replaced by Xi Jinping as general secretary, with the other state offices to follow through early 2013.  China’s premier, Wen Jiabao, is expected to be replaced by Li Keqiang.  Otherwise, the Politburo Standing Committee is expected to be reduced from nine to seven members and will include Xi, Li and five new faces — generally known as the ‘fifth generation’ of China’s leadership.

Despite their vastly different political systems, it’s fitting that the two transitions will coincide so neatly for the two most powerful countries in the world, both so alien culturally and interlinked economically — and there are parallels for both the superpower of the 20th century and a rising superpower of the 21st.  For every ‘5,000 years of history,’ there’s a corresponding ‘shining city on a hill.’  The United States has George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and 1776; China has Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai and 1949.

The United States is the world’s third-most populous country with 315 million people, the third-largest country by land area, and the world’s largest economy with a GDP last year of over $15 trillion.  China, meanwhile, is the world’s most populous country with 1.347 billion people, the second-largest country by land area, and the world’s second-largest economy with a GDP last year of $11.3 trillion.

In 2012, if we don’t quite live in a bipolar world, we certainly live in a multipolar world where the United States and China are first among equals, and the U.S.-Chinese relationship will, of course, be a major focus of both governments over the next four years and beyond.

Indeed, Chinese relations have been an issue throughout the U.S. presidential election.

China emerged, if not unscathed, certainly more economically powerful than ever before following the 2008-09 global financial crisis, and China may well have the world’s largest economy within the next decade.  But the juggernaut of its double-digit economic growth, which has been fairly consistent throughout the past 20 years, is showing signs of sputtering, and a Chinese slowdown (or even a recession) would have a major impact upon the global economy.

Romney has vociferously attacked China for manipulating its currency, the renminbi, to keep the cost of its exports low, and Obama’s treasury secretary Timothy Geithner has made similar, if more gentle, criticisms.  Notably, however, the renminbi has appreciated about 8.5% since Obama took office in January 2009, chiefly because the Chinese government has hoped to cool inflationary pressure.

The level of U.S. debt held by the Chinese government has also become an important issue, especially with the U.S. budget deficit at its highest level (as a percentage of GDP) since World War II.  China, however, holds only about $1.132 trillion out of a total of around $15 trillion in U.S. debt, which is down from its high of around $1.17 trillion in 2011 — meanwhile, Japan has accelerated its acquisition of U.S. debt and may soon hold more than China.  The outsourcing of jobs previously filled in the United States has long been an issue across the ideological spectrum of U.S. domestic politics, with respect to China and other Asian countries.

In reality, however, other issues are just as likely to dominate the next generation of Chinese and American leadership.  With both militaries looking to dominate the Pacific (note the growing U.S. naval presence in the Philippines and throughout the Pacific), geopolitical stability throughout the region will be more important than ever — not just the perennial issue of Taiwan, but growing concerns about North Korea’s autarkic regime, tensions between China and Japan over territorial claims or other future hotspots could all spur wider crises.

As China’s middle class grows in size and purchasing power, and as the United States continues to boost its exports, China will become an increasingly important market for U.S. technology, entertainment and energy in the next two decades.  China’s accession to the World Trade Organization in 2001 and its increasing role as a trading partner with the United States mean that trade-related issues — such as the case that the United States brought against China in the WTO last month on cars and auto parts — will only become more important.

But while the U.S. federalist constitutional structure — with its tripartite separation of powers — has been set in place since the adoption of its Constitution in 1787, the Chinese structure is a more recent creation.  The Chinese Communist Party holds a National Congress every five years, with a handover of power every ten years, vesting power in a collaborative Politburo Standing Committee that makes all key policy-making decisions, a process that came into being only really with the passing of Deng Xiaoping in the 1990s.

After Deng, Jiang Zemin and the so-called ‘third generation’ of China’s political leadership essentially regularized the current process, and the ‘fourth generation’ led by Hu and Wen that assumed leadership in 2002 and 2003 is now set to pass leadership on to the ‘fifth generation’ under Xi and Li.

China’s party-state essentially has a dual structure: the state institutions of government (the National People’s Congress and the State Council) and the structure of the Chinese Communist Party are essentially parallel — the same people control both.  So from a wide base of over 2,000 delegates to the National Party Congress, around 200 will form the Party’s Central Committee, just 25 the more important Politburo and, after next week’s transition, merely seven will form the Politburo Standing Committee.  Those seven will also hold the key offices of state — as noted, Li is expected to become China’s premier, the head of the PRC government and Xi, as general secretary of the  Party, will serve as the president of the PRC and the chair of the Central Military Commission, the entity that directs the People’s Liberation Army, China’s main armed forces. Continue reading Two systems, two transitions: China, U.S. face leadership crossroads simultaneously →

United States

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

1 Comment

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.