Lincoln Mitchell

Blog

This page contains links to recent blogs by Lincoln Mitchell

Posted in: Foreign Policy

Misoverestimating China

China is clearly an economic power which can become the world’s major power if the U.S. continues to make mistakes and if China avoids some major economic, political and environmental crises that are on its own horizon. However, China’s rise to global supremacy is hardly an inevitability and should not be seen as one. For the U.S., therefore, it is important both not to underestimate China’s potential, but also not to overestimate it either. Recent media coverage of China seems to have clearly veered towards the latter mistake.

Comment

A Grim Report on Democracy

Freedom House’s finding should not come as a surprise to anybody who even casually consumes international news. Fraudulent election in Belarus, Iraq and Afghanistan being, at best, stuck in some kind of post-conflict semi-democratic morass, and the stubborn persistency of authoritarian regimes from Pyongyang to Havana all support these findings. Democracy is frequently spoken about in waves, with the third wave beginning in southern Europe in the 1970s. For the last few years, however, democracy has been in something of a trough with few advances or breakthroughs and a paucity of hope.

Comment

Five Issues for 2011

It is likely that by the time 2011 winds down, the major international affairs questions dominating the news will include issues that seem distant in the first week of the year. Every year brings surprises, unforeseen wars, natural disasters and the like, but it is also possible to look with some confidence towards the New Year and identify some foreign policy issues, or questions, that are likely to become more important during the year.

Comment

Elections and Power in Belarus

The Belarusian regime has already resorted to violence and repressive measures, arresting presidential candidates and numerous activists, cracking down on demonstrations and beating demonstrators. In this regard the Lukashenka regime is significantly different than the regimes in Ukraine, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan in 2003-2005 who were all either unwilling or unable to use violence to crackdown on demonstrators. This suggests that if regime change occurs in Belarus, it will not be as peaceful as it was in these other countries.

Comment

Richard Holbrooke and American Empire

Richard Holbrooke’s death this week at the age of 69 brings to a close one of the most extraordinary diplomatic careers in American history. Holbrooke’s career began in 1962 and continued until his death. During these years, not only did Holbrooke work for every Democratic president from Kennedy to Obama, but he was involved in one way or another with many of the most important foreign policy issues facing the U.S. including the war in Vietnam, the reunification of Germany, the dissolution of Yugoslavia, and the war in Afghanistan, during a career of nearly fifty years.

Comment

Blaming WikiLeaks

The WikiLeaks story has unified the political elite in the U.S. elsewhere to a startling degree. It is as almost as if a readiness to strongly criticize WikiLeaks is the not so secret password to be part of this elite. Based on the barrage of attacks on WikiLeaks and its leader Julian Assange, one would think that Assange is single-handedly responsible for the difficulties the U.S. faces all over the world.

Comment

WikiLeaks and the Power of Secrecy

The WikiLeaks incident raises some bigger question about secrecy as well. While we bemoan WikiLeaks for revealing state secrets, it should be recognized that some of this information is not exactly earth shattering or needed to be kept secret in the first place. For example, the fact that some American diplomats think German Chancellor Angela Merkel is “risk averse” and uncreative and areaware that the Afghan government is riddled with corruption, should not come as news to anybody who is even a casual consumer of news related to international affairs. Much of the secret information in these cables could have been gathered from spending twenty minutes online reading blogs about the countries or issues in question.

Comment

The START Treaty and Partisan Politics

For many years the notion that partisan politics ended at America’s shores contained a smattering of accuracy with a healthy overlay of propaganda. There have been too many exceptions over history for that phrase to contain more than a kernel of truth. Partisan disputes about entrance into World War II, Cold War strategy and the Vietnam War were just some of the times that the American political leadership was divided on key foreign policy questions during the time when this framework was allegedly at its strongest. Since the Vietnam War era, disputes over foreign policy from Central America to the Middle East have been a constant presence in our political life.

Comment

China Can't Have it Both Ways, but Neither Should the U.S.

American irritation at China trying to have it both ways is certainly reasonable but it is also somewhat hollow, or even hypocritical. When the American diplomats and politicians refer to international laws, norms of behavior of the like, they are really referring to laws and norms which were created by the U.S. and its allies. As the world’s most powerful country for much of the last sixty years, and the world’s only superpower for roughly a third of that time, it should be no surprise that the U.S. has played a major role in crafting and forming these laws and norms. However, if another country, other than for example traditional allies with whom the U.S. crafted these laws, is asked to accept the responsibility of being a superpower, than that country probably should have a right to help further develop these norms. The U.S. is asking China to play by the rules it, the U.S., has created as part of the cost of being a superpower. It is no wonder that this is not well received in Beijing. The U.S. is thus also trying to have it both ways as well by asking China to step up and meet its new responsibilities as a rising power, but seeking to make sure that those responsibilities remain defined by the U.S. and its allies.

Comment

Georgia's Paradoxes

The current Georgian paradoxes are not altogether unusual. There are other countries that have been modernized by soft authoritarian regimes, or that have financed economic progress on borrowed money and faced the consequences when those debts have come due. Perhaps recognizing the unexceptionalism of Georgia can be useful for policy makers. This might allow policy makers to see Georgia as a country more concerned with modernization than democracy, and to recognize the potential seriousness of a looming debt crisis, which is scheduled to coincide with a sharp decline in American assistance, and how this could have a potentially destabilizing impact. This might be a better foundation for a sound Georgian policy than increasingly vague rhetoric, particularly from Washington, about democracy and territorial integrity.

Comment

Will the Election Change Obama's Foreign Policy?

The election results, however, may have an effect on American foreign policy, but this will probably not be as significant as some might think. The new Republican members of congress will focus likely continue to focus their attention on domestic issues. Moreover, many of these people have very little experience on foreign policy and know very little about it. Of course, this is true regarding domestic policy as well, but lack of experience and knowledge tends to be more of a barrier in the making of foreign policy.

Comment

Angela Merkel and the Failure of Multiculturalism

Believing that multi-culturalism has failed in your society, even if you are the chancellor, is not a policy prescription, it is a complaint. It may be a widespread complaint, but it is little more than that. Multi-culturalism is not an “approach” to use Merkel’s word, nor is it some kind of experiment created by well-meaning liberals, it is simply part of the reality of today’s Europe, and much of the world. The tone of Merkel’s complaint may have overshadowed that at least one part of her observation, that Germany has not handled this new reality well, is probably true.

Comment

Is U.S. Soft Power Declining Too

It is difficult to open a newspaper or peruse the internet without reading about America’s declining power around the globe. These stories which never really go away but seem to have increased in the last few years almost invariably focus on America’s reduced economic power as well as the rise of other powerful countries or blocks, most prominently China, but also India, Russia, Brazil and even Europe.

Comment

Why Obama Institutionalized the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars

The war in Afghanistan has now gone on for nine full years with no clear end, other than a self-imposed summer 2011 deadline from which the administration has been back pedaling almost since it was set, in sight. Similarly, the end-again-of combat operations in Iraq has left 50,000 American troops there with no clear indication of when they will come home. Ironically, a president whose campaign was initially made possible by substantial support from the anti-war movement, will be responsible not for ending the two wars that he inherited, but for institutionalizing them.

Comment

A New Third Party in America? What It Would Take

There is, however, at the grassroots level strong sympathy, albeit rooted in different worldviews, from both the left and the right for the notion that perhaps the U.S. does not need to be involved in every corner of the world. On the left this grows out anti-war sentiments and a belief that other countries should be left alone. From the right, isolationism grows out of a belief in smaller government and a sense that the government should not spend American tax dollars trying to solve other people’s problems. Both sides, as well as many centrists would also add that our government should focus more attention at home and that in the current fiscal environment the U.S. cannot afford such a broad internationalist approach to the world. These views may have varying degrees of accuracy, but they represent substantial portions of the electorate.

Comment

Another Election in Afghanistan

During the Vietnam War era one of the slogans of the anti-war movement was “What if they gave a war and nobody came?” Among the more popular riffs on that slogan, usually used to bemoan low voter turnout is “What if they gave an election and nobody came?” The election in Afghanistan last week raises a different question “What if they gave an election and it really wasn’t that important?” It is becoming evident that if and when Afghanistan makes meaningful steps towards democracy, elections will play a key role, but until that happens, elections may not be very central to Afghanistan’s development.

Comment

What New York's Voting Machines Can Tell us about Democracy Assistance

Voters in New York City yesterday were confronted with a new voting system for the first time in about a century. While I had always liked casting my vote for Barack Obama and other recent candidates on the same type of machine, and perhaps even the same machine, that my grandparents used to cast their votes for Franklin Roosevelt and Fiorello LaGuardia, not everybody shared this view. The new technology used on Tuesday generated some controversy as voters struggled to figure them out, glitches occurred and many were confused. Michael Bloomberg, the city’s mayor, referred to Election Day with the new machines as “a royal screw-up, and it’s completely unacceptable.”

Comment

Hmm. Maybe Obama Won't Change Global Opinion of the U.S. After All

Perhaps a similar dynamic will evolve globally as well. People around the world who saw Obama’s election as evidence of the real promise of America and as a reason to hope that Bush’s America was an aberration may begin to question these assumptions too. This is partially natural as American foreign policy has always been characterized by more continuity than change between administrations. U.S. interests almost never change substantially when a new president comes to office. People anywhere in the world who expected the Obama administration to abandon long standing alliances, tone down U.S. efforts to combat Jihadist terror or to seek to change the U.S. role in international relations were inevitably going to be disappointed.

Comment

The Surge and the Speech

The events in Iraq and the relatively quiet response to President Obama’s recent speech on the subject suggest, not surprisingly, that Americans are experiencing a relatively acute case of Iraq fatigue. Few Americans who are not directly involved with the war effort seem interested or concerned about the “end” of the war there, but we probably should be paying more attention. The Obama administration has prioritized the war in Afghanistan as their most important foreign policy concern. Other issues such as Iran’s nuclear potential, new, renewed and failed peace efforts in the Middle East and a spate of natural disasters from Pakistan to Haiti have knocked Iraq out of the forefronts of the consciousness of those Americans who think about foreign policy, while the still battered economy has made foreign policy feel less important to most Americans.

Comment

American and Iraq: A Surreal Ending to an All Too Real War

The final withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from Iraq is being treated like something of a non-story. For years, withdrawing troops from Iraq was a central demand of the anti-war movement, and one of the issues that helped jump start Barack Obama’s presidential campaign back in 2007, but now that it is actually happening, there is little celebration, or even for that matter recognition. The major reason for this, of course, is that few people believe that the war is actually ending anytime soon. This is partially due to the 50,000 American troops which will remain in Iraq. These troops are allegedly non-combat troops, but there has been no clear explanation of what that means, particularly in a context like the current one in Iraq. It seems pretty unlikely that Iraqi insurgents will no longer target American troops because the only ones remaining are non-combatants; and it seems equally unlikely that these troops will retain their non-combat status if these types of attacks continue to occur.

Comment