November 18, 2014--Minding Our Business

Briefly--

Why is it that every president since at least Harry Truman, when abroad, feels the need to lecture other leaders about human rights?

Most recently Barack Obama in China where he chided his host, President Xi Jinping, about stifling political dissent in Hong Kong, then during a quick visit to Myanmar he gently prodded fellow Nobel Prize winner Daw Aung San Suu Kyi about her country's resistance to power sharing with the opposition, and then a day or two later at the G-20 summit in Australia where he again took Vladimir Putin to task for Russia's incursions in Ukraine.

Without doubt, China, Russia, Myanmar, and a host of other countries could do a lot better. A lot. But is it our place to criticize them about their human rights crimes and misdemeanors?

Back in the old Cold War days in response to our constant hammering on abuses in the repressive Soviet Union, though God knows there was much to point out, Soviet leaders such as Nikita Khrushchev were equally quick to retort that we were hypocritical, that we had human rights problems of our own, most notable that there was still government sanctioned and imposed segregation that kept Negroes "in their place" and Native Americans mainly confined to arid reservations.

And today, if they were inclined (and Putin certainly has been--severely criticizing us as the cause of most of the problems in today's Middle East) they could point out that after six years of the Obama presidency Guantanamo is still operating, U.S. citizens are routinely spied on by many government agencies, and poverty and inequality are worsening.

I know that one reason American leaders feel it necessary to criticize the records of others--even when being hosted by them--is to demonstrate to the rightwing back home that they are tough enough to stand up to our adversaries while trumpeting our alleged "exceptionalism."

My question to traveling presidents--In a dangerously fractured world, where we should be seeking to reduce tensions even with leaders we despise (Putin comes to mind), do we need another Cold War, do we want to chill further relations with our major trading partner and debt holder (China), do we want more Westerners to be beheaded in Iraq, do we want to find peaceful ways to keep Iran from getting The Bomb?

I am more and more attracted to Henry-Kissinger-style realpolitik--diplomacy based primarily on power and practical and material considerations rather than on ideological notions or ethical premises.

Just as we hate it when others point fingers at us, it's time for us get off our proverbial high horse.

March 10, 2014--Amerika

I've been rethinking what I wrote the other day about Vladimir Putin. When I speculated that he would back off from a full-scale crisis in Ukraine because the Russian economy is now fully globalized, billionaire kleptocrats within Russia are worried about the value of their ill-gotten assets, and Putin likes being a part of the post-modern civilized world and doesn't want to be tossed out of the G-8 club.

That was last week.

This week he seems to have no problem dispatching Russian troops to Crimea (albeit without the uniform patches that would identify them as Russian); racing ahead with a referendum there that would allow Crimea to secede from the rest of Ukraine; and he is not hesitating to push back against American sanctions pressure, even, in uncensored ways, calling us hypocrites for lecturing him and Russia about human rights violations and acting, by annexing Crimea, unconstitutionally and in violation of international law.

How constitutional is it, he is chiding President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry, to move quickly to recognize the new government in Ukraine, a government that seized office two weeks ago by ousting the admittedly corrupt but legitimately elected president, Viktor Yanukovych? That does not sound constitutional, much less consistent.

And, as to international law, Putin is enjoying poking us by asking what's worse--Russia sending a few thousand troops to Crimea or the United States launching a full-scale "preemptive war" against Iraq? A war that not only led to the overthrow and execution of Saddam Hussein and the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, but also to the military occupation of a sovereign nation for nearly a decade by the U.S. military

Putin also seems fed up being hectored by Obama and Kerry about democracy and human rights when, he points out, we continue to have and use our prison in Guantanamo Bay and in many states, abetted by our Supreme Court, efforts are vigorously underway to deny voting rights to people of color.

And, while he's at it, Putin has taken to pointing out that our vaunted free market economy is not as open or free as we claim. It is getting more difficult in the U.S. to move upward socioeconomically, gaps between rich and the rest of us are widening, and for many who have been most successful it is because the system is substantially rigged in their favor.

As unsavory as Putin may be, he has a point.

Not only has he had it with us, but, sadly, many others around the world are also tired of our holding ourselves up as the governmental and economic model to which everyone else should aspire.

Now that we are virtual paper tigers--unable, really, to impose our will anywhere--nations big and small are feeling no hesitation to expose our inconsistencies and internal contradictions.

We appear to be interested in directing Putin to an "off ramp," a way to back down without feeling humiliated. But it may be that we too need an off ramp of our own.