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In the Wake of the Obama Visitation: Elephants in the Commons

By John C. Dyer, UK Correspondent

(John Dyer is a Public Policy "wonk" with over 34 years public service experience, over 17 as state level policy counsel, legislative advocate and analyst. Writer. Poet.  Dual citizen relocated to UK 2010.)

On Wed, 25 May 2011, President Obama entered Parliament, escorted by a shyly grinning, cherubic Speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow. BBC replayed the moment  every half hour throughout the following day. 

The mood was, in a word, special.  It would not be an exaggeration to say that the British public and leaders treat the President with an interest bordering on  the adoration generally reserved for the Queen.   Nor would it be much of an exaggeration to say that not a few in leadership would love to be leading the 51st state of the Union.  Many (albeit not all for sure) hang much hope and longing onto the so-called “Special Relationship.” 

But as the President addressed Parliament with his usual polished charm, there were elephants in the Commons.

The UK in serious social and economic upheaval

The UK is in serious economic and social upheaval.   That sliding category, “Unemployed and Still Seeking Work,” stands at somewhere around 2 3/4’s million people.  Youth unemployment is 20%.  Economic growth has flat-lined.   The Bank of England and the Business Secretary, Vince Cable, warn in dire tones that the next two years are going to be ugly painful. 

Politicians, economists, and pundits all say the 2008 bursting of the mortgage bubble, and the subsequent melt-down of the financial markets were the root. Perhaps, but that is just the beginning of the analysis.  

The UK Conservative-Liberal Democratic Coalition argue that at the root of the root is a “dole” culture economically based in government debt financing.  They blame Labour for spending the Treasury Dry.    They personalize it as all about former Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s dithering and irresponsibility.

Labour argues that they had everything under control until the Coalition took over in May, 2010.  They argue that the current maladies are exacerbated by the “austerity programme” introduced by the Coalition, personalizing it as all about Chancellor George Osborne’s ideology.

So far the themes may be familiar, but the approach taken by the US differs markedly from the approach taken by the Coalition.   I will not rehash all the specifics here, but summarize.

The basic facts

First the basic facts:  The UK budget deficit at the end of Labour’s time in office was £176 Billion ($287.3 Billion US).  The US deficit for the comparable period was $1.42 (£.868567Trillion. The UK national debt was £760 Billion ($1240.66 Billion US).  The US deficit was $14 Trillion (£8.576 Trillion).

 The US deficit continues to rise.  The US strategy has been to employ “quantitative easing” and grow the economy.    The US plans to cut $38 Billion (£23.27 billion) from its $1.42 Trillion (£.869 Trillion) deficit this year and reduce the National Debt $4 Trillion (£2.45 trillion) over the next 12 years.  

The contrast is dramatic. The UK intends to eliminate its deficit by 2015.  To do so it has slashed public services, transferred ultimate financial responsibility for higher education from the government to the student, jerked the reins hard on benefits of all kinds.   Even Labour would have halved the deficit by 2015.

The IMF's "European plan"

The Coalition strategy owes what decreasing credibility it has to the International Monetary Fund.  The UK is voluntarily following the so-called “European Plan” - “austerity” cutting of public services coupled with privatization of government services.

The IMF imposed this plan on insolvent nations receiving IMF brokered bail outs.  As the Coalition took office, its officials chorused the IMF’s judgement that the UK “has no credible plan to reduce the deficit” as the Coalition imposed its draconian cuts.  The Coalition argued (and continues to argue) there is no alternative.

Recently an IMF official has kind of tentatively offered the same comment on the US plans. Niall Ferguson, the philosopher-historian who mentored both the Conservatives in the UK and former Presidential candidate  John McCain observed on the BBC”s “Question Time” that the hour glass was running down on the President’s strategy.  Republicans began an attack on the President’s handling of the deficit and on Medicare expenditures.

But these forays seem muted compared to the UK's Conservative-Liberal Democratic rhetoric and actions.   The US seems to remain committed to the President’s focus on economic growth first, deficit reduction second.  Certainly, there is no hint of the US eliminating its $1.42 Trillion deficit in the next 4 years.

Why the difference between the UK and US approaches?

Kuda Hafiz—Farewell, Syed Saleem Shahzad

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

Karachi’s Dawn published a piece by S.M. Naseem on Thursday.  It described massive institutional disarray in Pakistan and concluded like this:

"In the wake of its recent twin debacles, the military is increasingly being perceived as a white elephant that grazes well beyond the boundaries it is supposed to protect and is the most obvious candidate for institutional reforms. However, it is obvious that our political class is more likely to be trampled by rather than to rein in the roaming elephant."

Pessimistic?  Yes.  But it’s hard to get over an infatuation.  I refer, of course, to the debilitating dependency that the Pakistani military has nurtured for its own self-aggrandizing purposes, mostly by fear-mongering vis-à-vis India. The Army prospers. The rest of the country starves. So how can the Pakistani army be cut down to size? 

A couple of years ago, the lawyers’ movement unseated Pervez Musharraf, the latest edition of military dictatorship in Pakistan, it seemed as if civil society—in this case, civilian society—might have a chance.  The movement foundered.  However, thanks to three mind-blowing incidents, that possibility has arisen again, but only if the political class can, for a change, think beyond its own narrow interests.  

The latest of the three events was a brutal assassination. 

When Syed Saleem Shahzad wrote his final column for Asia Times on Line, he was acting as that treasured necessity for democratic society, the investigative reporter.  In this devastating piece made possible only by access to well-informed sources, Shahzad asserted that the Pakistani Navy was riddled with militants.  He also wrote that the nocturnal raid on the Mehran naval base was an inside job designed to punish the Navy for detaining known Taliban sympathizers  while conducting an internal investigation to determine the extent of the infestation. 

Here are some passages that might have been construed as offensive to a military already on the defensive:

"Several weeks ago, naval intelligence traced an al-Qaeda cell operating inside several navy bases in Karachi, the country's largest city and key port.  The... grouping was against the leadership of the armed forces and opposed to its nexus with the United States against Islamic militancy. When some messages were intercepted hinting at attacks on visiting American officials, intelligence had good reason to take action and after careful evaluation at least 10 people - mostly from the lower cadre - were arrested in a series of operations....Those arrested were held in a naval intelligence office behind the chief minister's residence in Karachi, but before proper interrogation could begin, the in-charge of the investigation received direct threats from militants who made it clear they knew where the men were being detained.  The detainees were promptly moved to a safer location, but the threats continued. Officials involved in the case believe the militants feared interrogation would lead to the arrest of more of their loyalists in the navy. The militants therefore made it clear that if those detained were not released, naval installations would be attacked.  It was clear the militants were receiving good inside information...."

ISI, Pakistan’s quasi-independent military intelligence service, is widely assumed to be guilty of abducting, torturing and killing Shahzad, although various official spokesmen have issued vigorous denials.  The denials don’t ring true for many reasons, among them the fact that Shahzad had already been interrogated by ISI. The military had wanted him to name  sources for his reportage on militants’ activities. Like the journalist par excellence that he was, he refused to cooperate. More recently he had received fresh threats from ISI.

Shahzad’s sources were so good, in fact, that I had doubts about his sympathies when I began reading his reports.  I found myself wondering if he was a willing conduit for morale-sapping messages from the Taliban.  He seemed to know so much and his sources in F.A.T.A. seemed amazingly hospitable to him.  Be that as it may, his reports were full of useful information.  Ironically, my lingering doubts were finally laid to rest by the piece on the Mehran incident.  Far from being a partisan, I saw, he was a hard-headed journalist so objective and so trustworthy that well informed people on all sides would dare to talk turkey with him.  They’d leak the important stuff.  They’d blow whistles.  I felt a little ashamed of myself for doubting him.

Erdogan, Europe and the Ottomans’ Libyan Hang Over

By Patricia H. Kushlis

“The past is never dead.  It’s not even past.” William Faulkner

On May 3, 2011 Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan finally told Muammar Gaddafi that enough was enough and it was time for him to leave. To date, Erdogan’s public pronouncement has had as much influence on the tone deaf Gaddafi as similar ones weeks earlier by President Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and a host of European and Middle Eastern leaders.

Or South African President Jacob Zuma's latest fruitless mediation efforts in Tripoli. 

Why so slow to condemn Gaddafi?

Why was Turkey so slow to condemn the errant Gaddafi?  Turkish business interests? Access to oil?  Turkish overseas workers whose lives and livelihood could have been put in more jeopardy than they were already in?  Relinquishment of a possible mediating role that was lost when the country agreed to the NATO mission?  

Or was it Turkish pique at Europe and in particular French President Nicholas Sarkozy who has gone out of his way to sandbag Turkish membership in the EU for religious and ethnic reasons because, well it plays particularly well with his right wing base and others who have yet to distinguish between Europeanized Turks and North African manual laborers?  This was suggested by Raed Ahmed on a May 1 post on Prime Minister Erdogan’s web page.

Sarkozy, after all, faces a tough re-election campaign spring 2012 and anti-immigrant bashing is popular in Europe these days. Even though Dominique Strauss Kahn, Sarkozy’s most likely chief opponent and front-runner in the polls has been suddenly, shockingly and unceremoniously knocked out of the race shortly before declaring his candidacy for his party’s October party primary, the Socialists still have time to find another candidate to face the unpopular Sarkozy.

Turkish foreign policy a bust? 

Is Turkish foreign policy under AK, the mildly Islamist Party led by Turkish businessmen from the country’s interior that has been winning elections since 2002, a bust?  This is how analyst Stephen Cook at the Council on Foreign Relations saw it in an FP article on May 5.    

Cook is not alone in his condemnation of AK’s decision to shift the country’s Eurocentric foreign policy towards one that places greater emphasis on its Muslim neighbors than in the recent past.  Is, however, this directional change really as marked or as bankrupt as various western and Israeli analysts suggest or is it more a pragmatic shift in emphasis albeit not to everyone’s liking?  And what exactly was the Turkish position on the NATO bombing missions and the leadership of those strikes?