Herbert London

Herbert London is the author of Decade of Denial (Lexington Books) and most recently America's Secular Challenge (Encounter Books), and publisher of American Outlook. He can be reached at: www.herblondon.org.

Brzezinski, Obama, and Foreign Policy Reconceptualization

In the January/February issue of Foreign Affairs Zbigniew Brzezinski outlines the ambitious efforts of the Obama administration to redefine the foreign policy of the United States and, as he puts it, "reconnect the United States with the emerging historical context of the 21st century." According to Mr. Brzezinski, President Obama has done this remarkably well reconceptualizing foreign policy in several areas that he outlines:

* Islam is not an enemy, and the "global war on terror" does not define the United States' current role in the world;

* The United States will be a fair-minded and assertive mediator when it comes to attaining lasting peace between Israel and Palestine;

* The United States ought to pursue serious negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program, as well as other issues;

* The counterinsurgency campaign in the Taliban-controlled parts of Afghanistan should be part of a larger political undertaking, rather than a predominantly military one;

* The United States should respect Latin America's cultural and historical sensitivities and expand its contacts with Cuba;

* The United States ought to energize its commitment to significantly reducing its nuclear arsenal and embrace the eventual goal of a world free of nuclear weapons;

* In coping with global problems, China should be treated not only as an economic partner but also as a geopolitical one;

* Improving U.S.-Russian relations is in the obvious interest of both sides, although this must be done in a manner that accepts, rather than seeks to undo, post-Cold War geopolitical realities;

* A truly collegial transatlantic partnership should be given deeper meaning, particularly in order to heal the rifts caused by the destructive controversies of the past few years.

For all of this, Brzezinski adds, Obama did deserve the Nobel Peace Prize. Of course, the erstwhile national security advisor does not point out that he heaps praise on a policy he helped to shape. That observation might well detract from his presumptive objectivity. But in almost all respects the reconceptualization attributed to Obama is either wrong, misguided, or based on a set of false assumptions.

Let me cite the ways. The global war on terror is a war against a radical strain of Islam that has imperial goals and a jihadist tactical temperament. The U.S. may avert its gaze or ignore the magnitude of the threat, but the threat remains and weakness as a response only makes it more threatening;

Second, the U.S. was a fair-minded mediator in the Israel-Palestinian issue as the evolution of the two state-solution suggests. By "fair-minded" Brzezinski means tilting in favor of the Palestinians whatever objections the Israelis may have;

Third, serious negotiations have been on going with the Iranians through back channels and the Europeans for years. Yet despite blandishments and mild threats, they have not had the slightest influence in defusing the Iranian pursuit of nuclear weapons. From the Iranian perspective, nothing the U.S. offers can compare to the regional influence nuclear weapons can confer;

Fourth, counterinsurgency, according to the General McChrystal plan, was conceptualized long before the Obama presidency, and relies on securing strongholds in Afghanistan's urban areas. It is both a confidence-building strategy and a military plan;

Fifth, respect for President Chavez and Fidel Castro has not yielded reciprocal reactions from these leaders. On the contrary, they are intent on spreading their brand of socialist revolution throughout Latin America and have done their utmost to undermine President Uribe, a true democratic leader, of Colombia;

Sixth, by agreeing to equalize its delivery capacity with Russia, the U.S. has accorded Putin and company a unique advantage. Since the U.S. nuclear umbrella protects Japan, Taiwan, etc. we require delivery expansiveness and, secondly, much of the Russian decrease in capacity is composed of planes and subs that were scheduled for mothballing in any case;

Seventh, China is not an ally and not yet a foe. However, with a blue water navy and patrols in the Sea of Japan, it is engaged in sabre rattling that bears careful observation. It is hard to think of China as a partner when it provided the advanced technology for the Pakistani nuclear arsenal;

Eighth, surely acceptance of post-Cold War geopolitical realities should be recognized by the Russians, but Putin's strategic vision is predicated on the reacquisition of the near-abroad as recent actions and doctrine indicate;

Ninth, a transatlantic partnership should be recognized and encouraged. But it should be noted that the U.S. has assumed a disproportionate share of NATO expenses and the Europeans, who have grown to love freedom and prosperity, do not yet know how to defend these cherished concepts.

Alas, what Brzezinski provides is a cliche-driven set of propositions that have little if anything to do with real world conditions. In the aggregate these positions make the U.S. look weak and ineffectual, in my opinion.

In the end, however, it is not what drives this reconceptualization of policy, but whether or not it is successful. So far, this effort has been a failure, but President Obama has several years to recover from missteps. Perhaps one way to begin is by not taking Brzezinski's proposals too seriously.

Conservatives' Road to Recovery

After the Hangover: The Conservatives' Road to Recovery, by R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr., (Thomas Nelson Inc: Nashville, 2010 pp. 272.

Although Sam Tanenhaus, editor of the New York Times Book Review, argued the Conservative movement is "dead" and interred, the redoubtable R. Emmett Tyrrell in his latest book After the Hangover tells us that reports of conservatism's death are greatly exaggerated. With his usual panache, Mr. Tyrrell offers a remarkable distillation of conservative history and, most significantly, how it is unfolding in the United States circa 2010.

Sitting on his perch at The American Spectator, Tyrrell has lanced the boil of contemporary liberalism and has offered a valuable critique of conservatism, both its wisdom and failures. In what can only be described as a tour de force, Tyrrell chronicles the ebb and flow of contemporary politics from the Republican success in the 1994 congressional elections to the defeat in the 2008 presidential election.

Despite an inclination to embrace conservative ideas and what Tyrrell calls the conservative "temperament," he includes a scathing indictment of conservatism as often "pinched by a smallness that has set the movement back and encouraged intramural squabbling." Alas, based on my own experience, this is an accurate portrayal.

Without the heavy-handed club conservatives sometimes employ to attack media myrmidons, Tyrrell notes that gaffs of a truly amusing variety by President Obama and Vice President Biden are given scant attention by members of the press corps (pronounced as "core" for President Obama's edification). Tyrrell recognizes the obvious bias, but doesn't dwell on it; what he does dwell on is the difference between elites and the man and woman in the street. He recalls with nostalgia a time when there was genuine solidarity among conservatives, the height of what might be called the William F. Buckley era and the founding of National Review.

However, the political ascendancy of conservatism in the 1950s and 1960s occurred in large part because the movement was small, united, and virtually powerless. Fragmentation insinuated itself into conservatism with the political success of the Reagan years. At that point Young Americans for Freedom conservatives saw themselves as the genuine article as opposed to the arriviste neo-cons and the paleos of yesteryear. Liberals, as Tyrrell points out, have "silenced disagreement," a conspicuous difference with conservatives. And yet even after Obama's election, roughly twice as many Americans claim to be conservative as opposed to liberal, a legacy, I suspect, of first principles on which conservatism was founded. Nonetheless it is important to note, that many, if not most, of these conservatives are not registered Republicans.

What appears to enjoin liberal loyalty is a general cultural understanding ratified by moral sentiment, etiquette, and reflexive cues. "Bush lied," "McCarthy destroyed civil liberties," "trickle down economic theory adversely affects the poor," are homilies that drip from the lips of liberals without the slightest regard for historical accuracy or context. Here is the herd of independent thinkers incapable of nuanced thought. These views sculpted into the national culture through textbooks such as Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States, represent the conservative challenge for the future. Tyrrell describes it as overcoming "Kultursmog."

A new generation of conservatives face a challenge its predecessors did not have to consider. Fifty years ago the ideas that threatened America came from outside our borders; now the threat is from within as the servants of a command economy are attempting to impose a behemoth government on every American. They do so with the conviction this helps the poor and downtrodden, but as conservatives understand, dividing the economy doesn't multiply the wealth.

It is difficult to convince youthful idealists that the road to serfdom (apologies to Hayek) is paved with good intentions. The conservative attitude is predicated on individualism and anti-utopianism, ideas that do not immediately awaken youthful enthusiasm. However, as the ship of state moves relentlessly down an ocean of hazards and icebergs, there will be many looking for a helmsman who can provide a different direction. As I see it, they need look no further than After the Hangover since R. Emmett Tyrrell has outlined a remarkably sensible agenda for the future with his policy prescriptions. I was particularly taken with his reassertion of American exceptionalism. At a time when "declinists" are on the rise, it is refreshing to read that with all our national imperfections the United States is still the beacon of hope for mankind.

As a conclusion, Tyrrell notes the nation's political center is shaped by conservatism. There is little doubt that is true, but there is a major task ahead in reclaiming the culture from radical elitists who dominate it. That is the mission this book explores and the reason it should be read.

Start Up May Be a Start Down

"Aquarius," the show, is in revival on Broadway and in revival in the Obama administration. The utopian idea of "the zero option," of eliminating nuclear weapons, of an apollonian globe where lions and lambs live in harmony, is alive and well and evident in the new Start treaty.

Of course it would be wonderful if we had a world without nuclear weapons, but the genie is out of the bottle and weapons of mass destruction offer influence, prestige, and power even for nations that cannot adequately feed their people.

While the START treaty reduces delivery capacity of Russian and U.S. missiles, planes, and submarines, using arcane accounting methods, the real issue, as I see it, is that Russia reserves the right to withdraw from the treaty if it deems missile defense deployment in Eastern Europe threatening.

The obvious question is why should the United States Senate ratify a "conditional" arrangement? If the treaty is ratified (a likely prospect) the United States is committing itself to unilateral compliance. In other words, Russia determines on its own whether the treaty remains in effect. This is a truly unprecedented matter, one that may indeed violate national security interests.

Moreover, in an effort to convince other nuclear powers that they should embrace our disarming impulse, the president has circumscribed "no first use policy" to only those adversaries employing nuclear weapons and has announced that the U.S. will not develop a new generation of nuclear weapons. I'm sure that this heartfelt gesture has resonated appropriately with Kim Jung Il and Ahmadinejad. It would take a leap of illogical proportions to assume that if the U.S. does not modernize, China, Iran, North Korea, and Pakistan will follow suit.

This treaty also means in effect that President Obama will not upgrade U.S. missile defenses. If he were to do so, the Russians would pull out of the treaty. The one major bargaining chip former President Reagan had in his negotiations with the Soviet Union was Star Wars, or missile defense. Now the Obama team is willing to give it away and receive nothing in return. The only way to describe this negotiating strategy is political ambition wrapped in the cellophane of naivete.

One gets the impression that the president operates from a view of what he would like the world to be, not what the world is. Unfortunately the globe is an unwieldy place where national interests invariably trump international equilibrium. There is no way to eliminate nuclear weapons so long as rogue nations cheat, the non-proliferation treaty is ignored without penalty, and nuclear weapons offer nations political clout. Who would care about a backward nation like North Korea if it did not possess nuclear weapons?

The fear for those of us who believe in "peace through strength" is this START agreement is merely the beginning of a unilateral disarmament campaign following Obama's life-long adolescent vision for a world without military tocsin in the air. It is already rumored that the president will attempt to join the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and limit defense deployment in space. What can allies like Taiwan, Japan, and Canada, to cite a few examples, be thinking when the U.S. nuclear umbrella that affords deterrence is now laden with holes?

The voluntary abandonment of U.S. superiority in space technology and nuclear weapons could haunt our people and our allies. It is as if the U.S. is suffering from leadership fatigue and wants to halt the course of history. However, historical forces march to their own drumbeat.

What we may want -- whatever utopia we may envision -- is often undermined by the constraints of reality. As I see it, President Obama hasn't learned that lesson. I can only hope our enemies aren't looking and listening too closely.

There is a Russian tale that takes place in a zoo where a lion and a lamb reside together in the same cage. Onlookers are astonished to see this unlikely union. At one point, a sightseer asks the zookeeper how this happens. "Oh," he notes it isn't difficult, "We put a new lamb in the cage each morning." If only President Obama knew this Russian tale.

ACT Reviews Education in America

To cite a cliche, the more things change, the more they remain the same. This applies to many areas of life, but arguably it is the essence of educational reform.

Recently the ACT, an independent organization that provides assessment, research, and program management in broad areas of education, issued a statement on the "essentials for college and career readiness."

What it found is precisely what evaluators of education in the United States have been saying for decades. Despite an enormous per capita national expenditure for education, exceeded only by Switzerland, "high school learning standards are still not sufficiently aligned with postsecondary expectations."

Across the curriculum, college instructors and high school teachers differ on the level of preparation for college assignments with many more high school teachers than college instructors reporting that graduates are prepared. At the same time, while college math and science instructors agree that reading is one of the most important skills needed for success in this century, "overwhelming majorities of them report spending little or no time teaching reading strategies in their courses."

Apparently findings indicate that students are shortchanged in high school and post secondary courses, despite the fact many high school teachers believe their students are adequately prepared for higher education study. There is simply a huge disparity between skill level and performance expectations.

To address this concern the ACT contends high school standards should focus on fewer -- but essential -- college and career readiness conditions and a rigorous core curriculum should be mandated for all high school graduates. These are sensible recommendations that have been advocated for at least half a century. The key question is why haven't these recommendations been put into practice if everyone -- or almost everyone -- knows what should be done.

There are several factors that account for this state of affairs. One, student readiness is not related to faculty compensation. In fact, merit pay, which could be related to readiness, is consistently opposed by the teachers' union. Second, relatively little time is spent on "hard subjects" such as math and science. The curriculum is, to some degree, a mirror on national social conditions. If there are fatalities on our highways, driver education is encouraged. When rates of illegitimacy rise, sex education is emphasized. As rates of drug abuse assail us, drug education is introduced. And, of course, political correctness is a time-consuming theme that crosses all disciplines, even the sciences.

There are, in most high schools, pep rallies prior to the Friday night football game. There are announcements of various kinds during the school day and, of course, the required weekly assembly program.

In addition, distractions prevail. Texting is the nemesis of concentration. There are video games, e-mails, Facebook, sororities, fraternities, parties, and television programs that trump serious study. It is also the case that high school teachers are among the most marginal students in their college classes. Although there are superb teachers, the profession lacks the status and prestige that accompany other professions.

Last, perhaps most noteworthy, is the nation's dysfunctional social life. Divorce, illegitimacy, and various forms of social deviancy have disrupted home life so that mom at the kitchen table with cookies and milk at 3 p.m. is as rare as two-dollar bills. Mom is probably working; no one is there to guide Johnny and Mary when they return from school except Oprah Winfrey. Homework is for autodidacts and, most teachers do not count on homework assignments, a bygone vestige of education in another era.

The "Leave It to Beaver" family is interred and with it have gone attention to student performance. Parents may retain expectations for their children, but the conditions necessary to achieve these goals are lacking. Now schools do not concentrate on subjects that matter, distractions make learning a chore, and the mediating social structures that aided educational attainment are in trouble.

Clearly ACT should be commended for pointing out what should be done to improve educational performance, but I've heard all the claims before. Until there is recognition of what ails us, there will be many more reports in our future, but little progress in student attainment. *

"National defense is one of the cardinal duties of a statesman." --John Adams