Gratitude on Thanksgiving

We moved into our new house on Thanksgiving week, which means we have much to be thankful for this year. Our new home has also given me reason to pause and reflect on the millions of displaced people around the world with no place to call home.

EJ Dionne, in the spirit of thanksgiving, calls on readers cast aside politics and consider humility and gratitude. Quoting from Ecclesiastics 9:11 he speaks of grace, and reminds those with plentiful not to be arrogant, and remember what we have does not necessarily come from our own hands and works, but from Above.  Casting aside politics (but not religion), it's a call to be both gracious and caring.

Obama, Syria, Migration, and Intervention

Initial reactions from a few Republican presidential candidates and handful of Republican governors have ranged from disheartening to appalling. Unsurprisingly Democrats, including President Obama have attacked Republicans and others for refusing to accept Syrian refugees.

Conservatives have hit back, putting some of the blame on the Obama Administration for producing the Syrian crisis., and making a case for intervention. As Fred Hiatt of the Washington Post argues:

Four million Syrians have fled, with even more internally displaced. Half of all Syrians have been forced from their homes.For that, the Obama administration bears some responsibility — and the reasons should be something voters think about in 2016....He withdrew all U.S. troops from Iraq when experts advised that a residual force of 15,000 would help to keep a fragile peace. He bombed Libya to overthrow its dictator but opposed a small NATO training force that might have stabilized the new government. He ordered a limited surge of troops to Afghanistan but soon began withdrawing them on a timetable unmoored to conditions. When Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad cracked down on democracy protesters, kindling violence, Obama kept the United States aloof.

As a result, Hiatt claims we are paying "the price of inaction."

Today Libya is “engulfed in civil war and bloodshed.” In Iraq, having lost leverage and interest, the United States stood aside as the Shiite prime minister turned the U.S.-trained armed forces into a sectarian militia that gave space and impetus for radical Sunnis — reborn as the Islamic State — to reemerge. In Syria, effects even direr than Obama feared from U.S. intervention bloomed in its absence: a wider war, spilling across borders; radical jihadists establishing the kind of statelet that al-Qaeda never achieved; millions of refugees destabilizing not only Syria’s neighbors but all of Europe. 

This argument fits well with an ongoing discussion in my class on the extent to which the U.S. needs to engage in global affairs. Following Chris Preble in  The Power Problem, overextending our reach only does us more harm than good, and does not benefit U.S. interests. We should rely on regional powers and our allies to deal with crises in distant lands, especially if we cannot make the situation any better. Others, believe the U.S. must exercise its leadership and lead by example, recognizing that securing long term U.S interests do require maintaining/managing  global crises.

The One-Child Policy and Teaching About Human Rights in China

China ended it's controversial one-child policy last week, most likely on economic rather than any humanitarian grounds given potential labor shortages and an ageing population. The NY Times provided a timeline chronicling the implementation and effects of the policy. The one-child policy is often associated with forced abortions, compulsory sterilization, infanticide, and other abuses committed by party officials (usually at the local level). Here is one anecdote from the Washington Post:

Katherine Hesse. From NY Times.
 http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/31/world/asia/one-child-rule-china.html

His wife was seven months pregnant with their second child when the group of people barged into his home and took her away. He followed them to the local hospital, where — against medical advice and despite his pleadings — they jammed a needle into her belly.“They grabbed my wife’s body like they were grabbing a pig, four or five people holding her hands and legs and head, and injected a shot into her belly,” the man said, asking not to be named for fear of retribution. “Neither my wife nor I signed any consent form.”Ten hours later, she gave birth to a boy, wriggling and faintly crying. But the doctors in southern Hunan province would not even let her hold the dying infant, the husband said. They put the baby in a plastic bag and instructed him to pay a cleaner a small sum to bury it on a nearby hill.

Several other news stories appeared about the horrors of the one-child policy last week. See here, here, and here. Adding to criticism, despite the welcome end to the one-child policy, human rights organizations such as Amnesty International argued that the policy change didn't address the deeper issue of setting limits on child bearing. Coincidentally, I invited renowned activist Chen Guangchen, currently affiliated with Catholic University, to my class the week before China's announcement. Mr. Chen has made it his life commitment to challenge the abuses associated with the one-child policy. Despite this qualified victory, I'm certain he will continue to press on with his activism.

There is no question that this policy has resulted in horrible abuses. A classic example of initially well-intentioned social engineering gone wrong (future labor shortages, uneven gender ratios, inability to support ageing population etc...). But from a teaching standpoint, I am curious to hear the official Chinese stance on the one-child policy. Was there ever any merit to this policy which has been thoroughly tarnished in the West?  Did the CCP intentionally encourage abuse to support policy? Some of the articles I read indicated it wasn't necessarily the central government which enforced abortions, bur rather local party cadres intent on moving up in the ranks. How effective was the one-child policy? Amartya Sen argues more credit is given to the one-child policy than warranted (he attributes declining fertility to other factors such as women empowerment  and new norms of smaller households).

I have one student from mainland China in my Intro to IR class and wondered what was going through his mind during Chen Guangchen's discussion. His presence has made me mindful of how I discuss China in class, especially after inviting Mr. Chen. I wouldn't say it's self-censoring, but I'm reminded that all sides of the debate should be represented, even if China is an easy target to condemn for its human rights abuses.

David Vine's Base Nation

Celeste Ward Gventer reviewed David Vine's book, Base Nation in this Sunday's Washington Post. The book, which was added to my syllabus on the Politics of Overseas Bases and American Empire, basically presents an argument for why overseas U.S. bases do more harm than good. In the bad category, they're expensive, force local people off land, tie the US to dictatorships, result in environmental destruction, corrupt local economies.  

David and I have had several conversations over the years about bases. Although we disagree on several key points about the nature and consequence of US basing, we both agree that a consensus of sorts exists among policy elites regarding basing strategy. However, one point Gventer raises which is absent from Vine's book, and which Stacie Pettyjohn and I address in a working paper evaluating realist and imperial interpretations of overseas base expansion is the relationship between American strategy and bases. Gventer writes: 

Bases are merely a symptom of U.S. strategy, a visible sign of America’s expansive view of its role in the world. Indeed, the bases underscore the relative continuity of American strategy since the end of World War II.

Stacie and I have a slightly different take. US strategy evolves, as reflected by reductions, downsizing, and consolidation of overseas bases over time, and particularly following the 2004 Global Defense Posture Review.