Public Discourse in Long Standing Conflicts

Courtesy of the Daily Beast & Getty Images

Much has been said over the course of this week about President Obama’s recent speech on the affairs and future of the Middle East.  As with any such presentation, many in the world of political media have gone to great length arguing the minutia of the speech’s content and reading into conspicuous absences among those subjects not touched on.  Despite the noteworthy weight of the President’s words on the future of the region and the commitments the US intends to make toward aiding economic and governmental development, one subject has stood out among the rest.
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Regime Change & Instability

The conflict between democracy and stability is an old one, and one of the fundamental arguments at the roots of democracy promotion. In most any transition to self-governance from authoritarian rule resistance to change is a given, and often, that resistance is violent in nature.  Since the earlier literature of the 20^th century, academic discussion of democracy has been countered steadily by argument for stability over democracy.  Recently the subject has flared into the public eye over the danger of instability presented in the “Arab Spring”.
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Complicated Relationships in the War on Terror

To be blunt, the governments of the United States and Pakistan are far from kindred spirits.  Our national relationship with Pakistan is largely strategic in nature and is at best a unity of mutual benefit.  The Pakistani regime has been challenged throughout the war on terror by a need to balance its relationship with the United States with its own sovereignty and has suffered in the eyes of its people as a result.  Thus it strikes as particularly amazing to see pundits who weeks ago bemoaned our government’s failure to support our authoritarian allies in the Middle East, now  questioning Pakistan’s commitment to the war on terror in the wake of the death of Osama Bin Laden.
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A Time for Foreign Aid Cuts

Many have written here and elsewhere on the common fallacies in American political thought regarding Foreign Policy.  Our flawed national understanding of the proportionality of foreign aid in our country’s budget and the impacts of aid on people’s lives have been discussed heavily and to little effect in the sphere of policy making.  Rather than harp on issues that seem a lost cause then, I thought I’d discuss the timing of these cuts and the implications on American interests of the decision to cut back on foreign aid in a time of immense political change.
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Money, money, money

More than a year after the earthquake that devastated the island nation, Haiti remains in a state of relative ruin. The U.S. is currently facing the prospect of further prolonged conflict in the Middle East with the situation in Libya. Our role and goals in Afghanistan evolve with alarming frequency.

And yet, the very kind of preventative aid and work overseas is on a chopping block known as the United States Congress, the House Foreign Affairs Committee in particular. Committee Chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen is moving forward with her desire to slice and dice the State Department’s budget in order to help reduce overall federal spending. This is an admirable and absolutely necessary goal–it’s just that the funds she seeks to nix will have a marginal, if any, impact on the bottom line.

It is understandable that in a time of fiscal austerity here in the U.S., doling out dollars to the world’s poorest populations seems like it should come second to fixing our own problems. I completely understand this sentiment. The issue is, however, that we spend far less on foreign aid–specifically on work that with primarily humanitarian rationale–than most of the American public realizes. It’s not a problem of the purse, it’s a problem of perception. Continue reading »