May 20, 2012

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Romney Inching Up in Presidential Race

The 2012 presidential election continued to tighten in May. President Obama still leads both in the polls and in our electoral college map, but his lead — within the margin of error — continues to slip.

No new states have flipped into the GOP column; if the election were held today and the national swing away from Obama since 2008 worked out evenly among the 50 states and the District of Columbia, President Obama would win a narrow 285-253 vote in the electoral college.

In practical terms, that means that President Obama’s current level of support is enough to keep Virginia and Colorado in his camp. But a further swing of only 1.92 percent would hand those states, and the election, to Governor Romney.

With the numbers this close and more than five months to go until the election, the only thing we can say now is that both the Democrats and the GOP have a good chance of winning the White House next November. On balance, that is slightly worse news for the incumbent than for the challenger; ideally a sitting president would want a bigger electoral cushion than Obama now has. Undecideds tend to break toward the challenger; our methodology currently divides them evenly between the two.

On the other hand, Romney’s slow rise in the polls looks more as if disgruntled backers of other GOP primary candidates are making up their mind to stick with the party; Romney is rebuilding his base at this point rather than cutting into Obama’s. He won’t win unless he starts taking independents and even some Democrats out of the Obama camp.

As the Romney campaign and the various super PACs assembling on that side of the aisle make their plans, we are going to see how firm the President’s support really is. Since President Obama had no opposition in his own party for the nomination this time around, he has been able to stay in the Rose Garden and hold events that highlight the sides of his presidency and personality he believes will appeal to key groups of voters. But now the Republican artillery is about to launch its first real anti-Obama ad barrages in a spring tryout of themes GOP operatives hope will work in November.

We should soon start to see whether these ads are having an impact, but there are still several months to go before the presidential race really starts.

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Ex Brazil President Wins Million Dollar Prize

Fernando Henrique Cardoso, who was president of Brazil from 1994 to 2002, was awarded the Kluge Prize last week. The Kluge “recognizes and celebrates work of the highest quality and greatest impact in areas that advance understanding of the human experience” and is administered by the Library of Congress. It’s a fitting reward for one of the great statesmen and thinkers of our age.

The Kluge prize recognizes leaders who are influential in fields not normally recognized by the Nobel Prize, like history and politics. Previous winners (there are only eight including Cardoso) include historians and sociologists.

Cardoso’s prize is well deserved. He killed Brazilian inflation (or at least put it to sleep for a while), solidified democracy and the rule of law, promoted assistance to the poor and did more than any other Brazilian president before him to fight racial injustice and call attention to Brazil’s South Africa-style disparities in racial incomes. Via Meadia congratulates him.

Not long ago, I interviewed Fernando Henrique as most Brazilians call him in the American Interest. He’s a serious intellectual of the old school — a sociologist from the days when sociology was a cutting edge discipline grounded in the humanities. His example shows how personal courage, a spacious and strong mind, compassion for the poor and political insight can combine to promote serious change. It’s always fun to watch the good guys win.

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New High Speed Rail Fail in UK?

A high profile plan for a high speed rail link between London and England’s rustbelt in the north is running into trouble. The roughly $50 billion line is backed by those who hope it will boost incomes and business in northern English cities like Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds.

The trouble is that the harder the British stare at the economic impact of the proposed rail line, the less useful it looks — and the more it looks like a huge white elephant of a development project that will never break even. The early calculations of the cost-benefit ratio of the project predicted that every dollar (actually, pound, but the ratios are the same) spent would yield $2.4 in economic benefits. The latest figures cut that ratio in half; there have been four revisions of the rosy figures first proposed, and every new look has reduced the likely benefits. At the current level, the (almost certain) increase in construction costs when and if the project gets under way and the (likely) further downgrades in the anticipated benefits make it look less and less likely that the line will break even. Worse, building the line for such a low return would in effect be squandering taxpayer money; there are many investment options facing the British government with a significantly better payoff than the rail line can now claim.

Given the intense opposition by British NIMBYs to any development of any kind in the countryside and the cash squeeze faced by the UK Treasury, it’s beginning to look as if the UK will join China and the US as countries scaling back ambitious high speed rail projects.

US advocates of high speed rail should take note: the UK is a much better place for high speed rail than the US. Its population density is greater than ours (meaning that a railroad has many more potential customers per mile along its line) and its cities are much denser than ours. High speed rail to the center of Los Angeles leaves most travelers with a long ride still to go to reach their business meetings; in Britain the cities are more compact and there is better public transportation linking train stations with the rest of the city.

If the high costs and low benefits of high speed rail are forcing the British to a rethink, American supporters of high speed rail need to worry. Costs are almost certainly going to be higher here, and the benefits less. Building the world’s fastest white elephants may not be the smartest way to spend taxpayer money in a time of tight budgets.

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G-8 Leaders Agree: More Rosy Platitudes, Empty Statements Needed

Participants in the most famous of the world’s useless gabfests — the G-8 summit at which such global potentates as the prime ministers of Canada and Italy gather to pretend to make decisions and have their pictures taken with their colleagues — agreed on the need to issue anodyne statements that make them all look good.

Since most of the leaders have at least some functioning brain cells left, it was not hard to reach consensus that words like “growth” and “jobs” needed to feature in the communique. However, in case anyone anywhere might mistake the statement for something of substance, they also noted that each country had its own special circumstances and needed to follow its own course.

The legacy press, which covers empty non-events like this with great relish, strained and gasped to find some drama in the event. Would the leaders fail to find a statement so bland, so meaningless and yet somehow cheery and optimistic sounding that their deliberations would be difficult? Would any leaders have a few too many cocktails and let a little bit of candor slip into the flow of banal talk?

As usual, the answer to these questions appears to be no. President Obama spoke of an ‘emerging consensus’; translated out of dipspeak that means that no consensus emerged. Yet again, absolutely nothing happened at a G-8 summit; yet again, millions of dollars, rubles, euros and yen were spent on a spectacle whose major purpose to to provide flattering photo ops for incumbent politicians; yet again, the summit ended without changing a single thing in the wider world.

For the New York Times, the desire to make President Obama look good and the journalistic need to whomp up some drama led to a story line about “pressure” being put on Germany’s Angela Merkel to shift to a more accommodative, ‘pro-growth’ path. No doubt she is under pressure, but did peer pressure or anything else at the G-8 change her mind? The Times story tries hard to make it look as if something was going on, but close reading of the story shows no movement in Merkel’s position from her first meeting with Hollande and the final communique simply repeats the usual bilge. Judging from the quotes in the piece, the best headline would have been “Merkel Rejects Obama Plea for Change in German Policy”, but the misleading and vacuous “World Leaders Urge Growth, Not Austerity” struck the Times as a happier way to go. (The biggest piece of drama in the story, President Putin’s decision to stay home, sending only his number two prime minister Medvedev, was largely passed over.)

Those who follow the press babble about the endless round of summits may recall that just a couple of years ago the G-8 was widely dismissed as a fossil and a relic. The new, souped up G-20 was the Forum of the Future. It Was Going To Change Everything. It has changed virtually nothing and the G-20 has turned out to be an even emptier photo-op than the G-8. For a while, G-8 meetings were being downplayed to give the new forum some air time; now, largely one suspects because of American politics, both the administration and the press are dusting the old G-8 forum off and trying to act as if this event is some kind of milestone in world affairs.

The most useful feature of these conferences is that they give heads of government a chance to get to know one another on a personal basis. There are times when it helps to have a relationship with the person you are calling on the phone. Watching how these politicians interact with one another can help diplomats and politicians figure out who is comfortable with who, and provides, for example, insight into the dynamics between Germany and France now that the new French president has joined the Club of 8.

By and large these are the meetings that the press doesn’t see and doesn’t cover, but it is in the bilaterals and small groups that anything of note takes place. It is because of these meetings that Via Meadia doesn’t support the abolition of these gabfests. And it matters a great deal to the Canadians, the Italians, the French and a few others that they are members of this club. This is a relatively cheap way to stroke allies, and stroking allies is one of those things that major powers need to do.

Still, for the person trying to follow world news in an intelligent way, these sessions and their communiques are a distraction and a snare. Via Meadia recommends that you pay as little attention as possible to this kind of event, and save your time and attention for the real news.

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NY Met: The End of The Season

What with the end of the Bard semester and rushing to prepare for a two week tour of Europe, I haven’t had the time to write about the biggest event on the Mead social calendar in the first half of May: the last night of the 2011-12 season at the Metropolitan Opera.

The season closed with a performance of Benjamin Britten’s stunning Billy Budd, the extraordinary adaptation of Melville’s short story. A group of us, including a couple of old friends I’ve known for thirty years, decided to make a big evening of it; we booked a table at the Met’s in-house restaurant, the Grand Tier, for dinner and a get together before the show.

Out of towners coming to the opera might want to check this out. There are now quite a few great restaurants around Lincoln Center that cater to people who need to eat early and get to a performance, but there is something very special about eating in the opera house itself.

The first time I ate in that restaurant was something like a quarter century ago. A friend then writing for the Wall Street Journal had somehow landed the assignment to cover the opening night of the Met’s then-new Franco Zeffirelli production of Tosca; as her plus-one I got to tag along not only to the opera but to the dinner before. We were about three tables away from Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward; during the intermission I ran into Lauren Bacall.

It’s not like that all the time at the Grand Tier or the Met for that matter, but night after night it’s one of the great New York experiences. Last week the conversation and the food were great, but the show was the star. The best operatic adaptations of literary works compress and highlight the essential elements of a play or a story, highlighting the emotional conflicts and providing a direct window into the consciousness of the characters.

Having different characters on stage singing about their own thoughts and ideas offers a way to dramatize the perspective of an omniscient narrator: you can be inside the heads of Claggart, Vere, Billy Budd and other members of the crew and the blending and contrasts in their voices illustrates the relationship between their thoughts and emotions. Good novelists can take you inside characters; opera can reproduce this and even add to it.

The libretto is by E.M Forster and longtime Britten collaborator Eric Crozier; at a time when homosexual acts were still a crime in Britain, the all-male setting and the strong homoerotic undercurrents in the original work seem to have brought an intense focus to Forster’s adaptation in ways that heighten Melville’s drama. At the same time, the libretto benefits from Forster’s grounding in the specifically British background to Melville’s story. The officers on the Indomitable are haunted by recent mutinies in the British fleet; the late 1790s saw the worst unrest in British naval history and the Spithead and Nore mutinies of 1797 threatened Britain just as the war with Napoleon was reaching a crisis. Vere’s decision that Budd must hang for striking the odious Claggart can only be understood against this background, and the libretto handles this extremely well.

This opera, like so many of the great ones, is deeply Christian. When I studied Billy Budd in high school and college, and when I’ve taught it, I’ve always focused on the ways in which Captain Vere is a kind of everyman, above the bestial Claggart but below the celestial innocence of Billy Budd. The name “Vere” recalls the Latin word ‘vir’, meaning man. This approach to the book helps students link the story on the ship to bigger questions of human life and meaning, and the opera does justice to this interpretation.

But it does something more; Forster’s libretto highlights the similarity between the trial of Budd before Vere and the trial of Jesus before Pontius Pilate. Like Pilate, Vere must sit in judgment of a man so innocent that he challenges the basis of law and ordered society; like Pilate, Vere is so bound by his commitment to duty and the defense of the social order that he must condemn a good and innocent man to die for the sake of the people. This is a tragic choice; for Vere there is no good way out. The name Vere is also related to the Latin word for ‘truth’, and the truth is of no more use to Captain Vere than it was to Pilate. That Budd like Christ forgives those who put him to death — his last words are a blessing on Captain Vere — offers a hope of redemption, but this is not an opera about easy options or “cheap grace.”

The Met’s production further intensifies the drama; everything takes place on the narrow decks of a ship that does not fill the whole stage. The paradoxical claustrophobia of a crowded ship on an empty sea comes across; the men are lost in an immensity of space, and they have no room to themselves. It is Melville’s vision, brilliantly brought to life.

Good food, good friends, great art: this is what New York and a handful of other great cities around the world can offer. We have a few months now until the new season starts; HD rebroadcasts can help fill the gap for those who really can’t wait (schedule here).

And next year’s HD schedule looks rich as well: Donizetti, Verdi, Wagner, Mozart, Berlioz and Handel are all headed our way. The Mead tickets are already bought, the plans already laid.

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May 19, 2012

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Hurting Heathrow

London Heathrow still reigns as the busiest airport in Europe, but airlines and airport operators there warn that without expansion plans in place, Heathrow could lose its status as the preeminent European hub in the next 15 years, the Telegraph reports.

With just two runways, industry professionals predict, many airlines would likely abandon London for fast-growing airports like Frankfurt or Amsterdam, leaving Heathrow a mere “branch line” on the vast tree of European air travel.

Cameron’s government, though, seems content to ignore the demands for the addition of a third runway, stunting the growth of traffic and discouraging airlines based in Heathrow from expanding to more destinations.

Willie Walsh, chief executive of IAG, the BA parent, is lending his support to the campaign. He said: “I have seen no evidence of the Government appreciating the importance of aviation to Britain.”

“The rest of the world is securing infrastructure to ensure they can grow their economic while Britain has done the opposite. We need action by the Government and I’ve seen none. I fear for the future.”

Air travel to and from Heathrow (and to a lesser extent Gatwick, Stansted and Luton) is one of the best things London has going, and it’s perplexing to see the government opposed to any long term plans to ensure it does not outgrow its facilities and lose traffic to nearby alternatives. Just one additional runway can drastically increase Heathrow’s capacity and make it an attractive place to connect smaller routes to the already well-established main lines that flow through every day. London’s economic success relies in no small part upon Heathrow’s air traffic success. For centuries London was a crossroads of world travel, culture and business because of the determination of its merchants and politicians to keep the port working and the seas free.

London’s rivals like Frankfort and Paris are pressing their governments to use their weight in the EU to strip London of its position at the center of European — and therefore to a large extent of world financial leadership. It’s a shame that NIMBY activists at home are collaborating de facto with Britain’s rivals abroad to turn London from a bustling hub into one of Europe’s many genteeling declining post-imperial capitals: the Vienna or the Venice of the west.

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Notching Up A Win In Burma

The Obama administration may be worried about the domestic economy and unemployment these days, but there is one policy the president can look on as a significant success—the new US approach to Asia. It was scarcely six months ago when the Administration, in a rare display of display of diplomatic finesse, announced a movement of troops and deepening of military ties with a group of nations from Australia to Vietnam to the Phillipines in the span of less than a week. This  set the tone for American presence in the region from that point on, and although nothing as dramatic as that first week has occurred since, the tides have continued to run America’s way. In the past year, we’ve seen the emergence of something less formal and less directed than an alliance but more organized and more focused than a supper club springing up around the Chinese perimeter. At Via Meadia we think of it as the entente, and it stretches from Korea to India around the Asian rim.

Perhaps the most significant changes have come in Myanmar, long one of the most repressive countries in a region not particularly known for open government. The past few months have seen the beginnings of significant liberalization in the country, which is turning towards the west as it has become more aware of the risks involved in its dependence on China. It is very unlikely that any of this change would have taken place without the prospect of American help.

Although Myanmar is still far from a model of openness, it is clearly moving in the right direction, and The New York Times reports that the Obama Administration is now rewarding Myanmar for these steps by removing a ban on investment from American businesses. In a meeting at the State Department’s Treaty Room, Secretary Clinton sat with her Burmese counterpart and declared Myanmar open for business. This is an even more dramatic step than many had expected, and it is a testament to the rapid pace of progress in Myanmar, and in American Asia policy as a whole. While nothing is permanent in the Game of Thrones, it looks as if Burma has set a new course both at home and abroad.

In what must be a pleasant surprise for Obama, his Asia policy has garnered a good deal of bipartisan support—both John McCain and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell have announced (in guarded and generic ways) their support for the general thrust of our Asia policy as well as the switch on Burma. This is good for Obama, and it is good for the country; should Obama lose the upcoming election, his Republican successor would be likely make adjustments to our Asia policy rather than switching direction completely.

Observers in the US and abroad often underestimate the capacity of the American system to develop and implement foreign policy and to stick with our measures long term. There is also an excessive fear of isolationism and many Asians from time to time voice their fears that the US commitment to the region is evanescent.

It isn’t. The US is in Asia to stay, and while a Romney administration would no doubt bring its own Asian agenda to the table, the broad lines of American policy in this vital part of the world look pretty clear.

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Ratcheting Up The Crisis In Europe

“Crisis in the eurozone” stories are getting boring and this is one two year old soap opera the world would just as soon see disappear. Nevertheless it grinds on; yesterday the German finance minister said it could go on for another two years.  Unfortunately, he’s right.

But while the news from Europe is complicated and inconclusive (they are always threatening to jump off the bridge but so far, no one has), this is still a story one has to watch. And after months and years when the crisis was mostly in the hands of elites — heads of government, central bankers and the like — in the last couple of weeks the public has been getting involved, and that makes the crisis more dangerous and harder to solve.
Continue reading →

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Relief as Chen Leaves For US

The barefoot, blind lawyer from China is apparently on a flight bound for the US, and there are huge sighs of relief in both the Foreign Ministry in Beijing and at the US Department of State.

Although some breathless commentary describes the diplomacy around Chen’s flight to freedom as the worst diplomatic spat between the US and China in many years, that is a very poor description of what took place. This was actually a triumph of diplomacy: the two teams of diplomats did exactly what they should do — they kept what could have been a major political crisis from erupting as they crafted and kept a deal that was acceptable to both sides.

To do that, they had to handle political problems inside the two countries as well as between them. Elements in China’s security forces — and the local authorities in Shandong — had their own agendas and in various ways took actions against Chen and/or his family that threatened to blow up the deal. And there were plenty of people in the US eagerly sniffing for signs of weakness in order to turn the Chen affair into a domestic political issue.

But in the end, Chen got out and the disruption to US-Chinese relations was contained. There are some regrets on both sides; diplomacy by its nature produces compromises, and compromises never satisfy anyone. Chen is worried about the health and safety of his family members and friends in China as well he should be; we must hope that the Chinese authorities in Beijing understand the importance of keeping this issue quiet and so make sure that local authorities and hotheads don’t do anything ill-advised.

But overall, this is a story of problem solved and crisis averted. The US China relationship is strong; our diplomats can work with one another; both sides are committed to making things work. That is the takeaway message from the events in Beijing, and it is very good news.

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WRM To Europe

With the last class of the semester out of the way, I’m off for two weeks in Europe. I’ll be in Germany at some conferences and events this coming week, and then it’s off to St. Petersburg to give a talk at a conference at the Smolny Institute.

With any luck there will be time to slip out of the conferences to get a little art time; this is my first trip to St. Petersburg, and there is a lot there I haven’t seen.

I’ll do as much blogging as I can while on the road, and will be checking in frequently to see what the interns are doing to the blog while I’m gone. In both Germany and Russia I’ll have the chance to meet with some of the most interesting people thinking and writing about Europe today and hopefully I’ll hear some things that readers find useful.

We’ve been developing the Via Meadia team for several months now, and the next two weeks will test our ability to keep up our standards even when I’m heavily committed to other work. As always, feedback from readers is important; without you Via Meadia wouldn’t exist, and we — and I — genuinely want to know what you think.

During this stress test of the Via Meadia system, weekends will be the toughest time; on the advice of counsel we are letting the interns out of the holding pens to spend weekends with their families, so we will be a little shorthanded.

Even so, we’ll do our best to continue covering the big stories we see taking place in the US and the world, and, where we think it adds value, sharing our opinions about what we think it all means. I’ll be back in the USA on June 1, God willing; in the meantime, I hope all Via Meadia readers enjoy this lovely spring.

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Medvedev Nukes Russia’s Stock Market

It was just a short aside in a speech; the junior member of Russia’s rotating leadership team was talking about how conflicts like the one in Syria could have broader implications for world politics and pointed out that great powers could get involved in unpredictable ways:

“At some moment, such actions, which undermine sovereignty, can end with a full-fledged regional war, or even, and I don’t want to scare anybody, the use of nuclear weapons.”

(From the New York Times.)

It was intended as a veiled threat to the United States — more as an expression of Russia’s strong displeasure with the US approach to Syria than as an actual announcement that Russia would consider a nuclear strike if the US intervenes in Damascus.

But it was enough to cause the fragile Russian stock market to fall 3.5 percent, wiping, the Times estimates, $24 billion from the values of Russia’s listed companies.

The market fall was not, I think, caused by investors wondering what nuclear war would do to Gazprom’s earnings. It was due to their perception that a Russian government given to random and pointless saber-rattling was not going to move forcefully on economic reforms and transparency issues, and that the long term interests of the country are going to be sacrificed for short term demagoguery. Instead of a moderate, responsible and focused leadership aimed at reforming and restructuring an increasingly ramshackle economic structure, Putinocracy 3.0 would be, if anything, a little worse than the 2.0 model when Medvedev was the president and Putin the prime minister. More, it suggested that the prime minister is on a short leash; Medvedev has been presented as a modern minded reformer. If he is mouthing stale and unconvincing Cold War threats, it looks as if he has even less autonomy than markets feared.

 

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May 18, 2012

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North Korea Bites the Hand That Feeds It

Armed North Koreans took control of several Chinese fishing vessels on Thursday. They are holding 29 Chinese fishermen hostage and demanding a ransom payment. It is not clear if they were operating on orders from Pyongyang or are just pirates.

Whether planned or not, it’s foolish for North Korea to provoke its only friend and benefactor in the region. For whatever reason, Pyongyang has yet to publicly respond to the hijacking. Reports in China suggest that a Chinese mafia organization might be responsible, and might have been collaborating with the North Korean military.

China is seeking to downplay the incident, labeling it a “fisheries case.” Pyongyang should appreciate that China does not want this to become a high-profile international argument.

Remember, this is China’s only real friend.

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Ezra Klein Explains the Fallacy of American Decline

In his latest Bloomberg column, “American Decline a Mirage in a World That’s Rising,” Ezra Klein points out something we’ve been stressing at Via Meadia for some time:

If American preeminence relies on the continued immiseration of Brazil, China and India, then, even in the most selfish terms, I’m not sure that it’s worth having. . . .

If hundreds of millions of Chinese and Indians continue to be stuck on unproductive farms or in unskilled jobs rather than being freed to develop their human capital, the rest of the world will be denied access to the endless innovations they otherwise might have developed. . . .

The problems associated with expansive global economic growth are real, but they’re problems in the context of an improving world. Conversely, if the BRICs can’t rise out of poverty, and Europe and Japan can’t right their economies, that’s a world we don’t want, with problems we may well not be able to solve. Those who yearn for a form of American preeminence that can only exist due to economic stagnation elsewhere really do not know what they’re talking about.

Klein gestures toward a crucial but often unappreciated insight: The goal of American power isn’t to create a world in which we are rich and everyone else is poor, or in which we are strong and everyone else is weak. Rather, the goal of American power is a stable, fruitful global system that other countries like (or at least tolerate) because it works well for them.

Now, for this to happen, countries like China and India need to grow rich, which means growing faster than the United States. But this is a cause for celebration, not pronouncements about declinism. When Germany and Japan grew rich after World War II, their success did not make America weaker, even though its share of global wealth and GDP fell. Instead, as those countries grew and became more integrated into the world system, their success actually undergirded the development of the liberal democratic order that the United States wants.

In other words, American power is committed to the concept that international relations is not a zero-sum game; it is about hunting for global win-win solutions. Many observers try to assess American power as if we were playing a zero-sum game in which every ounce of Indian, Chinese or Brazilian wealth or power somehow detracts from the United States.

The failure to recognize this basic truth about American power is why so many analysts—basically going back to the 1940s—have so persistently prophesied American decline, even as the U.S.-backed international system has gone from strength to strength.

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Tuition War in Texas: UT Faculty Wants More

A new fight over higher education is brewing in Texas, where a decline in contributions from the state government has prompted the University of Texas’ flagship Austin campus to propose a tuition hike on in-state students that would push tuition above $10,000 per year. The school’s president, William Powers, Jr., has been leading the push for tuition increases, and the faculty has given him their support, unanimously voting last week to back the proposal, according to the Wall Street Journal. The plan is meeting resistance, however, from the Board of Regents, as well as Governor Rick Perry, who has issued a challenge to UT schools to look at ways to cut costs and offer a bachelors degrees to Texas residents for only $10,000 (total, not per year).

Now the fight is on. Although some schools in the University of Texas system have responded favorably to Governor Perry’s request, faculty at the Austin campus have raised concerns that a tuition freeze of any sort could make it difficult for the school to remain competitive with other top schools around the country. Perhaps more surprisingly, many students are joining the faculty in protest of the freeze, citing concerns about quality of education.

You can always make a case for more revenue, and even with the higher tuition proposed under the plan, UT remains one of the great bargains in American education, but American universities need to lead by redesigning themselves to deliver a better product at a lower cost. Faculty senates know what faculties want—and it is almost always more resources to go on doing things the same way but in more comfort. But faculty senates are generally focused on protecting the rights and the privileges of the academic guild. Sometimes guild interests align with the public interest; often, they do not.

UT faculty by and large think that what Texas needs is a flagship public university which is a first class research university—as that concept was developed in the second half of the twentieth century. What the state actually needs is a first class twenty-first century university, and that is almost certainly something that delivers more education to more students at less cost per head than the universities of the last century. The nature of faculty appointments probably needs to change; tenure may not play the same role in the future as it has in the past; “research” may not play the same role in faculty responsibilities and compensation, especially outside of the natural sciences.

Faculty senates are going to fight all these changes tooth and nail; so will administrators who are products of the system and can’t imagine a great university in any other form.

Via Meadia doesn’t think the answer to our university problems is to go all Henry VIII on them, and close down the cloisters. But if universities don’t develop a greater capacity for self criticism and self reform, Henry VIII—perhaps in the form of Governor Perry or others like him—will be knocking at the door much sooner than they think.

 

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Asia Pivot: Boost Trade—and Don’t Forget the Navy

Via Meadia has been closely watching the rollout of Washington’s new Asia-Pacific policy, somewhat awkwardly called a “pivot.” All in all, we have noted, the focus on Asia is an ambitious foreign policy project that could come to rival the Marshall Plan in its impact on global geopolitics. Pundits and politicians across the political spectrum have gradually cottoned on and in its broadest outlines the new Pacific policy commands wide support. But no policy is without its slipups or weak spots.

National Defense magazine points out a few problems:

The [Pacific] plan already is being shredded both by election-year politics and criticism that it alienates Europe and other allies. The strategy also is complicated by Washington’s uncomfortable stance regarding China.

The president’s guidance, critics said, antagonizes China and implies that the United States is pivoting away from the rest of the world.

Some of this is trivial. The United States isn’t turning away from Europe, or the Middle East, or Africa for that matter. Washington can walk and chew gum. The dogs bark, but the caravan moves on. If anybody thinks Washington isn’t engaged with Europe, Russia and the Middle East, they haven’t been paying attention.

Other criticisms are more serious:

From a military perspective, the Obama plan has been blasted by shipbuilding industry advocates and other defense hawks on Capitol Hill who had assumed that pivoting to Asia meant a huge naval buildup. “The Asia-Pacific region is primarily a maritime theater, so our ability to project military power there depends mostly on the U.S. Navy,” [Senator John] McCain said. “And yet the Navy is still short of its own goal of 313 ships. What’s worse, the administration now proposes to retire seven cruisers earlier than planned; to phase out two major lift ships needed by the Marine Corps; and to delay the acquisition of one large-deck amphibious ship, one Virginia-class attack submarine, two littoral combat ships and eight high-speed transport vessels,” he griped. “We are now retiring ships faster than we are replacing them.”

The Obama Administration’s plans for cuts in military spending seem to be running ahead of the realistic possibilities. Maritime Asia strategy is likely to be less cheap than some officials hope. A strong Navy is vital to our ability to project power in faraway waters and the rapid pace of military and missile technology is likely to force a faster pace of spending rather than allowing for big cuts.

Furthermore:

He [McCain] hammered the White House for not having concluded or ratified a single free trade agreement of its own making. Agreements signed with South Korea, Colombia and Panama were started by the Bush administration; China, by contrast, has secured nine trade agreements in Asia and Latin America since 2003, McCain said. It is negotiating five more, and it has four others under consideration.

“The bottom line is that America’s long-term strategic and economic success requires an ambitious trade strategy in Asia” [said McCain].

These critics are right. We can’t have a serious Asia strategy without a serious pro-trade agenda. Here the Obama Administration has problems with its base: unions, environmentalists, and the “new protectionists” who keep finding creative arguments for supporting inefficient industries and raising the prices American consumers and businesses must pay for the things they need.

Via Meadia‘s overall position is that the Obama Administration has correctly drawn the outlines of America’s new policy in the Pacific, but that filling in the details is going to take time. The implications for American diplomacy, trade policy and military spending are going to be large, and healthy debate is a natural and necessary part of the policy process. We’ve already noted that one unfortunate byproduct of the policy is that some Asian countries will try to engage the US on their behalf as they pick fights with China over contentious issues like the South China Sea. The policy of balancing China in maritime Asia also needs to be balanced by a direct approach aimed at deepening US-China relations and building trust. Striking the right diplomatic tone, meshing that with the right military posture, and undergirding it all with an appropriate trade policy will engage the attention of our top diplomats and strategists for some time to come. VM commends the administration for this positive start, and we look forward to a serious national conversation on how to carry the policy to the next stage.

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