The Voting System's Not the Problem

Are We Voting for a Better Democracy or Simply Ignoring the Real Problems?, Yorkshire Post, May 29, 2011. "The fault in Britain lies not in the system. It lies in the people who vote in it. The majority of the British people want more benefits than they are willing to pay for, so the state has run out of money. No one wants to be blown up by terrorists, but, for too many of the elite, Islamism is a natural response to the supposed prejudices of British society. Everyone pretends to want the virtues that stable family life brings, but the elite’s left-wing condemns anyone who defends family values as an intolerant bigot."

The Convention on Cluster Munitions

The United States Should Not Join the Convention on Cluster Munitions, with Steve Groves, Heritage Foundation Backgrounder #2550, April 28, 2011. "The Convention on Cluster Munitions is a misbegotten treaty that neither advances the laws of war nor enhances security. It is an unverifiable, unenforceable, all-or-nothing exercise in moral suasion, not a serious diplomatic instrument. It creates perverse incentives for insurgents to use civilian populations as human shields, undermines effective arms control efforts, inhibits nation-states’ ability to defend themselves, and denigrates the sovereignty of the United States and other democratic states. The U.S. should emphatically reject both the convention and the undemocratic Oslo Process that produced it and should instead continue to negotiate a realistic and enforceable protocol on cluster munitions that balances U.S. military requirements with the humanitarian concerns posed by unexploded ordnance."

So, About Those Harriers

You Don’t Know What You’ve Got Till It’s Gone, Contentions, April 15, 2011. "William Hague, Britain’s Foreign Secretary, now says that “It would be useful to have a larger number of aircraft capable of striking ground targets.” Mr. Hague is right. What Britain needs now is an aircraft capable of taking off from an aircraft carrier conveniently parked off the coast of Libya, able to land on rough or improved airstrips, and able to engage both air and ground targets. Such an aircraft would allow Britain to respond more quickly to targets as they are identified, maintain a continual presence in the air and thus keep the heads of Gaddafi’s thugs down, and spend less time and aviation fuel flying its small force of Tornado GR4s back and forth across the Mediterranean. . . . But of course, Britain grounded its Harrier force as a result of its last defense review, conducted by Mr. Hague’s government."

Kosovo Redux

It's Beginning to Feel A Lot Like Kosovo, Contentions, April 15, 2011. "Does the Libyan affair remind anyone of Kosovo? It’s taking place on Europe’s borders, yet—as always when Europe’s hour strikes—no one from the EU is home. NATO has taken over, but most of its members are unenthusiastic. British leadership is a constant, while France has replaced Germany—even more riven by pacifism today than it was in the 1990s—as Britain’s comrade in arms. The U.S., militarily essential as always, gives the appearance of indecision when compared to Britain, although the sentiments of the British people are less clear."

The Case of the Missing Harriers

Libya Mission Demonstrates That British Defense Cuts Must Be Reversed, with Nile Gardiner, Heritage Foundation WebMemo #3231, April 19, 2011. "The prime minister cannot effectively wage a major military campaign in Libya without reversing the crippling defense cuts his Coalition government has introduced, as well as significantly increasing defense spending. The government should reconsider the review and reject its flawed foundations. The British armed forces should be funded at a level sufficient to allow them to successfully accomplish the missions given to them by the country’s political leaders."

The Long-Term Defense Problem

Britain’s Decline: Entitlements and the Armed Forces, BigPeace, April 13, 2011. "Byron York has a fine piece in the Examiner pointing out that, while Britain has taken a leading role in the Libyan intervention, there is almost nothing left militarily behind the curtain. The entire British stockpile of cruise missiles amounted to 64 when the war began, and Britain was careless enough to fire off 12 of them at the start of the conflict. That’s 20 percent of Britain’s entire arsenal, shot off in a single volley."

I Am Rubber, You Are Glue

What Bounces Off Me Sticks To You, Contentions, April 13, 2011. "To date, the Obama Administration’s strategy on internet freedom has been to talk a lot, but do absolutely nothing that would alienate China. Thanks to Senator Lugar, who led the charge on this issue, the Administration has been forced to step away just slightly from their strategy. The Chinese have told us very clearly what they are afraid of, and where they think they are vulnerable. We would be foolish not to take advantage of this."

Barack O'Cameron

Meet Barack O'Cameron, Contentions, April 11, 2011. "David Cameron has taken a leaf from the Book of Obama and launched a worldwide apology tour. On his recent visit to Pakistan, he rightly declined to get involved in Kashmir but for the wrong reasons. He said he does not 'want to try to insert Britain in some leading role where, as with so many of the world’s problems, we are responsible for the issue in the first place.' Figuring out where Cameron stands on international affairs is a full-time job."

Defending the U.S.-U.K. Extradition Treaty

Tensions Ahead Over U.S.-U.K. Extradition Treaty, Heritage Foundation Foundry, April 11, 2011. "It’s a common-sense idea that criminals should not be able to escape justice in one country simply by fleeing to another. In this Internet age, it’s also common sense that citizens of one country should not be able commit crimes electronically in another without fear of punishment. This is the problem that extradition is intended to solve."

Obama's Doctrine

Last In, First Out, Contentions, March 30, 2011. "Commentators here and elsewhere have dissected the belated strengths and considerable weaknesses of the president’s speech on Libya. But no one has noted that the speech is yet another piece of evidence that this administration regards foreign policy as a problem to be overcome as rapidly as possible, not as an enduring challenge with serious consequences. Barack Obama remains eager to get to the serious business of domestic policy."

NGOs and Neutralism

Why There Is No Neutral, Contentions, March 28, 2011. "Nadia Schadlow has a fine essay at Foreign Policy which points out that many of the NGOs on which the U.S. and its allies are relying to contribute to the “Build” phase of the counterinsurgency strategy proclaim that they refuse to take sides in the conflict. It’s not just the Red Cross that believes it is “essential to provide neutral and impartial assistance to all populations.” Most of the others follow suit. Many NGOs go beyond simply providing aid to all civilians, and – in the words of the Afghanistan NGO Safety Office – argue that NGOs have “nothing to gain and much to lose” by interacting with ISAF, which in their view only wants to “[leverage] advantage from [NGO] activities.” This is not the neutralism of helping the poor, no matter who they be: it is political neutrality."

Wanted: Flexibility

Google, Wisconsin, and Distributional Coalitions, Big Government, March 25, 2011. "Over the past month, Google made waves with the announcement that it has tweaked its search algorithms to penalize ‘content farms.’ These are “low quality sites whose main goal is to attract search traffic by piling up (mostly) useless content.” The lesson from Google is simple: no system devised by the mind of man is immune to being gamed by other men. Google’s merit is that it can respond quickly to thwart the gaming. That will, in turn, breed more gaming, but Google will, if it is attentive, not fall too far behind. If it slacks off, it will quickly be overtaken by a more nimble rival. The same, unfortunately, is not true of society as a whole."

America the Exceptional

The Exceptional Battleground: A Controversy, The City, Spring 2011 edition, a publication of Houston Baptist University. "The United States is an exceptional nation. Most Americans would not regard that as a controversial statement. And there is a good reason for that: it is true."

The Arms Trade Treaty and Libya

On Arming Those Libyan Rebels, Contentions, March 10, 2011. "Max Boot has argued that arming the Libyan rebels may be the best way to ensure that a prolonged conflict in that country doesn’t flood the world’s black market with arms. I am agnostic on this point: the world’s black market is flooded with arms in any case, and if I believed it was necessary or desirable to arm the rebels — though certainly not with surface-to-air missiles, a possibility against which Max rightly cautions — I would not be dissuaded by the reality that at least some of the weapons would inevitably surface somewhere else."

Intervention to Enforce Non-Intervention

John Stuart Mill on Mercenaries in Libya, Contentions, March 9, 2011. "It’s not clear whether Muammar Qaddafi is importing mercenaries to help him (further) crush his own people. The Christian Science Monitor is inclined to credit the reports, while Human Rights Watch argues that the allegations are unconfirmed and arise from Qaddafi’s efforts to promote civil equality in Libya (no, really, that’s what they say)."

Press Freedom in Russia?

The Unrealism of the Russian Reset, Contentions, March 8, 2011. "Russia, I acknowledge, is not one of those places we can afford to dismiss diplomatically. Nuclear weapons and oil aside — and that is pretty much all Russia has going for it in the great power sweepstakes — Russia has a UN veto and an almost infinite capacity to make trouble, not least for our supply lines into Afghanistan. But it is one thing to recognize that, in the world as it is, we are sometimes going to have to work with places like Putin’s Russia, and quite another thing to kid ourselves about what they are."

A Policy of Binding Our Hands

Libyan Revolution Reveals Foolishness of Arms Trade Treaty, Heritage Foundation Foundry, March 4, 2011. "The Obama Administration has declared its support for the U.N.’s efforts to negotiate an arms trade treaty (ATT) that would regulate the transfer of conventional arms. This is unwise for many reasons. The following stories show just how an ATT, far from saving civilians, would actually tie the hands of democracies in resisting dictatorships."

The Other Ones

The Dictators We Forgot, Contentions, March 4, 2011. "In the face of the Middle East’s revolutions, it’s easy to believe that the world’s dictators are comprised of autocrats we worked with (Mubarak), dictators we were trying to (Gaddafi), and dangerous regimes that won’t play ball (Iran). If only. The biggest category of all is the dictators we forgot."

Qaddafi's Academic Toads

London School of Economics’ Ties to Libya the Tip of the Iceberg for Academia, Contentions, March 4, 2011. "The Director of the London School of Economics, Sir Howard Davies, has resigned after fresh revelations of LSE ties to Libya emerged on Thursday morning. The LSE was already under intense fire for taking a donation of 1.5 million pounds from Qaddafi’s son Saif al-Islam, who studied at LSE and — it appears — may also have plagiarized his thesis."

How Must America Practice Diplomacy?

How Must America Practice Diplomacy?, Heritage Foundation, Understanding America Series, Essay Number Six, March 3, 2011. "The purpose of American diplomacy never changes: It is to secure the national interests of the United States. The fundamental American interest is to ensure that America remains independent and governed by the American people."

VIDEO: U.S. Landmine Policy: Status and Prospects

U.S. Landmine Policy: Status and Prospects, lecture given to Center for Security Policy's National Security Lunch, February 25, 2011.

A LOST Ancedote

Secretary Rumsfeld, Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and the Law of the Sea Treaty, Heritage Foundation Foundry, February 24, 2011. "Secretary Rumsfeld's memoir is a fascinating read, as reviewers both friendly and hostile have agreed. As the Secretary has been alive for one-third of the history of the United States—as he ruefully observed—it’s not surprising that his memoir is such a treasure trove. His remarks on Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and the Law of the Sea Treaty are a relevant example."

Special Interests At Work

The American Historical Association and Civics Education, Contentions, February 20, 2011. "The American Historical Association is propagandizing to save the Teaching American History (TAH) Grant Program and Civic Education funding from the 2011 axe of the House of Representatives. As their e-mail to members puts it: 'To help our nation’s schools meet their civic mission to help students understand their rights and responsibilities as citizens, Congress should retain the Teaching American History Grants program and maintain federal funding support for civic education, while making the civics grants competitive.' "

A Huge Missed Opportunity

Internet Freedom, Back Again, Contentions, February 17, 2011. "It’s too soon to accept that the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions were simply caused by Facebook, Twitter, and the Internet. Technology enthusiasts naturally say such things, but theirs is the faith of the true believer. Still, the fact that these regimes tried to control the Net, and clamped down even harder when the streets started to stir, is strong evidence that they viewed online freedom as their enemy. America — with Congress playing a constructive and serious part — was set to play a leading role in advancing that freedom. That would have been the right thing to do — it is still the right thing to do — even if it meant confronting the Chinese. Instead, we did nothing, and we are still doing nothing. That is an embarrassment — almost as embarrassing as Secretary Clinton’s trotting out a supposedly revolutionary policy after a year of doing nothing about it."

The Anglo-American Analogy on Defense Cuts

As in Britain, Discontent Portends Danger for Defense, Heritage Foundation Foundry, February 16, 2011. "A look at Britain’s experience reveals the problem with making decisions about freezing or cutting defense spending on the basis of allegations about inadequate financial controls. In 2009, British politics were rocked by a series of leaks and then an exhaustive report that made many of the same allegations of mismanagement, waste, and lack of control in Britain’s procurement budget."