Archive for the ‘Foreign Policy’ category

« Short and Sweet Blog home page

CHINA’S ONE-CHILD POLICY OUT OF THE SHADOWS

August 27, 2011

U.S. vice president, Joe Biden, a practicing Roman Catholic, said something in “prepared remarks” during his China visit on Tuesday which I have difficulty understanding.

“But as I was talking to some of your leaders, you share a similar concern here in China. You have no safety net. Your policy

Biden in China Image Courtesy of Whitehouse.gov

has been one which I fully understand — I’m not second-guessing — of one child per family. The result being that you’re in a position where one wage earner will be taking care of four retired people. Not sustainable. So hopefully we can act in a way on a problem that’s much less severe than yours, and maybe we can learn together from how we can do that.”

Under that country’s “one child policy” the Chinese are restricted to having small families. In urban areas they are permitted a single child. In rural areas they are permitted two, but only if the first is a girl.

The vice president’s office responded to the growing controversy concerning these remarks through its spokewoman, Kendra Barkoff.

The Obama administration strongly opposes all aspects of China’s coercive birth limitation policies, including forced abortion and sterilization. The vice president believes such practices are repugnant.

All of this made me think. Assuming the office of the vice president is correct in saying that he views these practices as repugnant, how could he have been so deaf to the implications when delivering his prepared remarks on this issue?

I think that it is very clear, though he may find forced abortions personally abhorent, that Mr. Biden really more deeply believes that the Chinese Communist government has the legal and rightful power to inflict this policy upon it’s own people. I admit that, on examination of my own conscience, this is also the basic flawed mind-set under which I have been operating.

We need to spend a moment examining the conflict here. This is no small problem, a forced abortion occurs in China, according to a panel of experts, astoundingly every 2.4 seconds. Phillips, M. (2010/06/02), Women forced to abort under China’s one child policy. Washington Times. http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/jun/2/women-forced-abort-under-chinas-one-child-policy/. That amounts to millions per year. Can this be true? If it is true, isn’t this entire controversy really about the inviolability of national sovereignty and the virtually unlimited authority of governments over their own people? Is it also about our government or perhaps any government’s right and, perhaps even, obligation to be values neutral in setting policy? Do ends in this case justify means? Are the ends, a smaller population of humans, an unfettered good thing? If so, what government policies can be tolerated in a civilized world even for the sake of achieving this good? Where is the line which cannot be crossed between governmental authority and personal human reproductive rights? Is it different for different countries? Do the citizens of one country have the obligation to try to effect change in the policies of another country if they violate personal human rights? What is the role of the government of one country vis-a-vis protection of the citizens of another country against the cruel or inhumane use of power by the government against citizens of that other country? Is this a legal issue or a moral issue?

I am thrust back into my youthful self-debates about national sovereignty and when and under what circumstances it should yield to other ideals. What burdens should be borne for those not of our own nation? Should we have forcefully confronted Germany on behalf of defending the Jews before most of those European Jews were murdered? Would that intervention have been legal? Should our government give much more in foreign aid to prevent starvation and poverty around the world? Can we use force against governments which refuse to take this aid on our terms, i.e. giving directly to the people of that nation bypassing the, usually corrupt, government? Or is the obligation to intervene more of an individual moral obligation animated by individual religious faith or other moral conviction? I am reminded of the woeful response we made to genocide in Rawanda. Should we have sent our military to prevent this genocide? How long would they have had to stay? At what cost in lives and treasure? Wouldn’t we be accused of being colonialists? And our military, is it intended to be used only in situations of threats which at least theoretically involve the United States? If not, and if it is seen as a vehicle for righting wrongs, shouldn’t we tell those in uniform that they are signing up for a job which is not solely protecting their country, but to be the world’s policeman? Should we, as a nation, at least embargo trade with China to try to end this repugnant “one-child policy”, as we did in an attempt to end apartheid in South Africa and communism in Cuba? This would obviously cost all of us in terms of the increased prices we would have to pay for things we now take for granted as being cheap or cheaper. The Chinese government would try to get back at us though using the trillion dollars worth of U.S. Treasury bonds that they hold. Is this a risk which is incumbent on the U.S. government to take or should we be left to taking individual steps against this abhorent Chinese policy? If we firmly believe that forced abortion is among the most repugnant and inhumane acts which can be committed regardless of who the perpetrators are, are we obligated to agitate to impose these potential burdens and risks on our fellow U.S. citizens who don’t share our view of morality or of human dignity? After all we are ultimately doing so in order to give women, Chinese women, the right to control their own uteruses. Sort of seems like a strangely reversed Roe v. Wade, doesn’t it? Is it a matter of the dignity of life for which the United States, in my own view, should always stand? But what of the lives of the Tutsi in Rawanda? Were the Tutsi blameless victims? Did we owe them a duty of protection? If so, why did we let them down? And then what of our own country, the right to life and the dignity of the fetus as a potential human person is not exactly respected here either, what of that contradiction? What is the moral difference between having a policy of forced tonsilectomies and a policy of forced abortions? Aren’t they both, under the theory of abortion used in this country, simply forcing women to render a bit of their own tissue?

I know the debate over the right to abortion in this country has scarred me. It has apparently scarred the vice president as well. He has pushed it down inside himself so far that the implications of what he was saying didn’t even occur to him. Bringing this issue of forced abortions in China out of the shadows will lead to an even more emotion laden debate between us and within us. It’s probably not what the vice president had in mind, but it is very a good thing. When we push it down and leave it out of our everyday thoughts and prayers, it just festers inside us. One thing I know is true and this is the point from which I will start, human dignity is human dignity regardless of the sovereign country in which the persons involved reside or of which they are citizens.

Categories: Foreign Policy, Political Economy, Politics
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Comments: Comments Off on CHINA’S ONE-CHILD POLICY OUT OF THE SHADOWS

THE IMPERATIVE OF POWER

March 9, 2011

Libyan Dictator Gaddafi

It is clear to me as I watch the pressures increase on President Obama to somehow become militarily involved in the Libyan “civil war” that at this time in history this is only one in a long line of uniquely American situations. The US is the indispensible nation in every sense. Britain, France and Italy, together or in any forseeable combination with others including China and/or Russia, could not project force into the region in sufficient quantity and quality to impose a “no fly zone” or to deploy and supply land forces to intervene in this part or any part of northern Africa. Hence, the decision as to what to do with Col. Gaddafi is ours and ours alone.

What mounting pressures? First, there are the news stories of the dictator Gadaffi’s airplanes attacking civilians and images of the injured. Second, there is the economic problem of the potential interruption of exports of Libyan crude and natural gas which is causing a spike in oil prices. Third, there is the Hitler problem, i.e. this idea is that leaving a brutal dictator in power is a bad thing, if he can be removed, since the dictator is, by definition, brutal. The fact that leaving him in power may not be the worst thing that could happen is disregarded or never even entertained. Last, there is the political pressure applied by John McCain and others on the President to “do something.” The political benefit of the latter’s course is that after having come out publically for a “no fly zone,” in subsequent days if the President does nothing and anything bad happens in Libya, it can politically be spun as being the “President’s fault.”

As the American public we simply must become less idealistic and more realistic. First, American armed forces are not and should not be used as the policemen of the world. They have been raised and are supported by us to advance the interests of the United States. If the mere fact of their existence creates irresistable political pressure for them to be deployed unwisely and in ways not directly related to the interests of the United States of America, then it might very well be better if they did not exist in the first place. In short, as the father of a soldier, I suggest that it may be better to be France which has no power to do anything so they can simply sit back and criticize and complain which ever way it turns out.

As Strafor’s George Friedman observed recently:

It should also be remembered that the same international community that condemned Saddam Hussein as a brutal dictator quite easily turned to condemn the United States both for deposing him and for the steps its military took in trying to deal with the subsequent insurgency. It is not difficult to imagine a situation where there is extended Libyan resistance to the occupying force followed by international condemnation of the counterinsurgency effort.

As much as I may disagree with President Obama on many things, I do not envy him his job. He has no way to go where he will not be castigated and criticized for what he does or doesn’t do. He simply cannot win. There is no outcome, other than full fledged western-style democracy, which will unambiguously please everyone and that is very unlikely indeed.

It reminds me of discussions I have had with friends and acquaintances about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Some of them criticize former President Bush for going into these wars, others criticize him for mishandling them but almost no one refrains from criticizing him under the philosophy that “he did his best to do what was right for the US” and leave it at that. They also refuse even to engage in the “hypothetical situations” which I pose. Usually they simply snort and act as if my hypothetical and indeed any such hypothetical is ridiculous. An example, assume that President Bush failed to take aggressive military action against those who attacked us from Afghanistan, what further mischief would those miscreants have been encouraged and enabled to inflict and who would have been blamed? Would Osama Bin Laden have been able to take up the mantle of Salladin, having defeated and humiliated the obviously weak infidel enemies, and been able to earlier and even more thoroughly radicalize south Asian and north African Muslims in their opposition to the West. Would Mubarak have fallen earlier? Where did the Bush go who promised no “nation building” and a humble foreign policy when the crap hit the fan?

Obviously, it is far too complex an exercise for a 10 minute conversation to rerun history with all it’s moving parts possibly moving differently. The problem is, however, that we prefer to act (and vote) as if the one variable that we would like to modify would have been the only change in the entire situation and that if our preferred choice had been made ‘things’ would have obviously turned out better. We like to think only about the opportunity costs of the roads not taken without giving any credit to the beneficial effects of the road actually taken.

This same kind of analysis could be applied to the folks who opposed the Obama stimulus. They don’t like to talk about the probability that without it the US and much of the world could have been plunged into a rather lengthy depression with attendant deflation with far more unemployment for a substantial period of time. They simply assume that the last two years would have been the exactly same (or maybe even better) except we wouldn’t have borrowed 3 trillion dollars. This is a ridiculous assumption. On the other hand, the pro-stimulus group prefers to leave to later the question of the future costs of having borrowed trillions to provide the present liquidity which has kept transactions happening and prices from falling. That this may very well cause a Japan style lost decade or worse is dismissed out of hand by the gogo-stimulus crowd (namely Paul Krugman) as being unthinkable. The opponent in Krugman’s mind is a repeat of the Great Depression and anything is better than that. The only possible problem with borrowing these trillions in Krug-world is that you may not borrow enough to keep everyone happy until the bandwagon starts rolling again.

I guess what I am really saying is that the existence of power–whether to project substantial military force into Libya or the power to borrow and spend trillions of dollars–creates it’s own imperative to use that power and let the future care for the future. It may be better policy in the long run to have our leaders constrained by laws and other circumstances which do not allow them the freedom to engage in the “big thing.” As it stands, our leaders, rather than being subject to a future of being second guessed as to what the world would have looked like if they had used the power they had, they are very likely to be overtempted to simply use it and see what happens.

Categories: Foreign Policy, Politics
Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Comments: Comments Off on THE IMPERATIVE OF POWER