These days we don’t get a lot of entertainment from the Middle East. But, thank God for the Iranian so-called “president” Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. (for those of you wondering why the word president is in quotes, well, let’s just say Iran is not exactly a blossoming democratic utopia).
Today, the somewhat human-resembling Mr. President, dubbed the Iranian mullah regime as the world’s “number one” power (Agence France Presse, February 28, 2008). Didn’t I say he’s funny?
But, don’t laugh too much. Something tells me the “Professor” (another title he gives himself) has not missed the mark completely. After all, what really constitutes a ‘number one power’? A superpower basically has the highest levels of hard and soft power in the world.
Well, Isn’t Iran ‘number one’ in many ways? Of course, it is. It has hard power, but just not in the traditional sense of the term. It uses extraordinary hard power on the Iranian people to suppress and terrorize them, so that they will never think of opposing the brutal theocracy ruling them.
On Tuesday, authorities hanged a young man in a prison in central Iran for a crime allegedly committed when he was 16 years old, state media and human rights activists said.
A woman and a man were stoned to death in Iran in May 2006. Two sisters, Zohreh Kabiri and Azar Kabiri, allegedly found guilty of adultery, face death by stoning.
The Iranian regime also has soft power. But, again, not in the traditional sense of the term. For example, the state-run TV displays many of the public hangings (done by construction cranes) to instill fear in the population.
The Iranian regime is also the world’s number one power in the amount of hangings (per capita), stoning, suicides, brain drain, child executions (See Amnesty International report (http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/info/MDE13/059/2007), corruption, and a slew of other things.
It’s also, of course, the “number one state sponsor of terrorism.”
All these crimes have transformed the Iranian regime as the most ruthless enemy in the eyes of the Iranian people, who wish to overthrow it and establish a democratic order in its place.
So, yes, the Iranian regime is number one: The number one enemy of the Iranian people and the world at large.
Synopsis In 1966, General Motors, the most powerful corporation in the world, sent private investigators to dig up dirt on an obscure thirty-two year old public interest lawyer named Ralph Nader, who had written a book critical of one of their cars, the Corvair. The scandal that ensued after the smear campaign was revealed launched Ralph Nader into national prominence and established him as one of the most admired Americans and the leader of the modern Consumer Movement. Over the next thirty years and without ever holding public office, Nader built a legislative record that is the rival of any contemporary president. Many things we take for granted including seat belts, airbags, product labeling, no nukes, even the free ticket you get after being bumped from an overbooked flight are largely due to the efforts of Ralph Nader and his citizen groups. Yet today, when most people hear the name "Ralph Nader," they think of the man who gave the country George W. Bush. As a result, after sustaining his popularity and effectiveness over an unprecedented amount of time, he has become a pariah even among former friends and allies. How did this happen? Is he really to blame for George W. Bush? Who has stuck by him and who has abandoned him? Has our democracy become a consumer fraud? After being so right for so many years, how did he seem to go so wrong? With the help of exciting graphics, rare archival footage and over forty on-camera interviews conducted over the past two years, "An Unreasonable Man" traces the life and career of Ralph Nader, one of the most unique, important, and controversial political figures of the past half century.
While the United States is theoretically a multi-party system, it has operated as a de facto two-party system since the Civil War. Seventy-five percent of registered U.S. voters currently belong to either the Democratic or Republican party.
Third-party or independent candidates face a slew of obstacles in American politics, from limited media coverage to legal barriers and Congressional leadership rules. Laws regarding third-party candidates also vary from state to state, presenting additional difficulties. In addition, popular belief holds that a third-party candidate won’t win an election, so there is no need to give him or her publicity. This often becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. But U.S. politics have not always been solely dominated by two major parties.
Creating the Two-Party System
The notion of “parties” in American politics is not indigenous to American government itself. The administration of George Washington and the first four sessions of Congress were non-partisan. By 1797, factions had coalesced into the Federalists (who supported the policies of the Washington administration and a strong national government) and the Democratic-Republicans (who supported states’ rights).
The Federalist party eventually collapsed, and the Democratic-Republican party split further into additional factions: Democratic Republicans, who became the Democrats, and National Republicans, who became known as the Whigs in the 1830s. But by the 1850s, the Whigs had become bitterly divided over slavery. So-called “conscience” Whigs joined “free” Democrats and nativists known as the Know-Nothing party to form what is known today as the Republican party, while other Whigs joined what is known today as the Democratic party.
U.S. Third Parties
Major third parties in America have included the Socialist Party, Libertarian Party, Anti-Masonic Party, Know-Nothing Party, Constitution Party, Green Party and Free Soil Party. While third-party candidates have never held presidential office, they have ran and won numerous smaller positions at the state and local levels. Third parties have also advocated for issues such as women’s suffrage, the abolition of slavery and workers’ rights, challenging incumbent parties to put reforms into effect.
There are more than 100 national third parties in the U.S. today, but most lack the ballot status in most states to make a bid for president. The “winner takes all” system of the U.S. electoral college also favors the two-party system. In recent years, the presence of third-party and independent candidates such as Ross Perot in the 1992 election and Ralph Nader in the 2000 election have drawn attention to the need for election and party reform.
Presidential Debates
A black-and-white image of two men in suits standing at podiums at opposite ends of a stage with another man in the center seated at a desk with an American flag, in front of an audience consisting of four other men in suits seated at a long table
In October 2000, a month before the presidential election, Ralph Nader was prevented from not only participating in, but even attending the presidential debates, physically barred by the private security firm hired by the Commission on Presidential Debates.
Because the televised presidential debate—the “Super Bowl of politics”—is seen as the final showdown between the top candidates prior to the election, the exclusion of third-party candidates from the event not only denies them a public forum, but also ensures that the status quo of the two-party, two-candidate system remains in place. The reasoning behind such exclusions can appear to be contradictory. As political analyst Lawrence O’Donnell says, “In an election in which now the Gore world wants to say, ‘Ralph Nader lost the election for us,’ I guess he must have been a factor in the election. But you said he couldn't be in the debates because he wasn't a factor in the election.” History of Debates
Presidential debates usually take place during the two months leading up to an election and consist of a series of three presidential debates and one vice-presidential debate. In 2004, the first presidential debate focused on domestic policy, the second was held in a “town meeting style” with questions posed by attendees, and the third centered on foreign policy. Each debate lasts for 90 minutes and has one moderator, often a prominent journalist or newscaster.
The major presidential nominees did not debate publicly until 1960, when Richard Nixon and John Kennedy faced one another on network television. But because incumbents often refused to participate in debates, and federal communications laws required equal time for all presidential candidates, the next official presidential debate did not take place until 1976.
Since then, debates have played a major role in forming and reaffirming public opinion about presidential candidates, allowing them to strategically broadcast their personalities to a national audience.
The Commission and Controversy
Nader filed a lawsuit with Pat Buchanan—another third-party candidate barred from attending the 2000 debates—in 2004, challenging the Federal Election Commission’s legitimizing of the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD). The CPD was created in 1987 by the Republican and Democratic parties. The nominees of the CPD decide the number of debates that will take place, the format of the events and who will ask the questions. Further investigations followed the lawsuit, but the CPD continues to be the main organizer of presidential debates, despite growing criticism.
The CPD was initially formed to replace the non-partisan League of Women Voters, which had included independent candidate John Anderson in the 1980 presidential debate and prohibited major party candidates from selecting the debate panelists in 1984. Opponents of the CPD argue that its partisanship is questionable due to the fact that the senior staff and board members are all prominent Democratic and Republican leaders. In order to participate in a CPD-sponsored debate, a candidate must have garnered 15 percent of voter support in a major poll. Critics say that this requirement is tailored to exclude third-party candidates from participating.
In his book No Debate: How the Republican and Democratic Parties Secretly Control the Presidential Debates, George Farah asserts that the CPD took over the debate process from more non-partisan groups in order to give more power to the two-party system. Funded by corporate monies, the current debate system, according to Farah, was created with the intent to stifle third-party candidates. Debate Reform
With the 2008 elections looming, several conservative and liberal non-profit groups are working to sponsor more non-partisan debates. Increased access to the Internet has also allowed for an increased number of forums for opinion sharing and political debate. The Citizen’s Debate Commission, established by civic leaders from across the political spectrum, aims to host presidential debates that allow room for more diverse political views. However, whether or not these goals will be implemented prior to the election remains to be seen.
Keep in mind that I am not advocating that we all run out and vote for Nader, although in a way I am. I think the system should be open and fair. America promotes and exports the notion of open market and the benefit of competition. Then why not in politics? Why is competition litigiously opposed? Why is a third party candidate automatically a spoiler? Or even worse, a wasted vote?
Wikipedia has outlined the arguments for and against a two-party system. It seems a little strange that the US promotes and pushes multi-party democracies in other countries, yet at home the government vehemently opposes any challenge to the current monopoly on power. One more choice for president than North Korea and Cuba has is just that, one choice.
Floundering economies effect us all. That is part and parcel of globalization and the interconnectedness of market economies. So how does the second largest economy impact the world? I would say, in many ways. If the US sub-prime ripple shook the world, the failure of the Japanese economy would hurt us in many more ways. First of all, they, much like the US, are consumers. That keeps the market turning to some extent. They are also investors. Not only in the US economy, but also, and more importantly in China. A continued downturn in Japan could have economic ramifications worldwide. Not to mention, a rise in nationalism and right and left wing groups in Japan, who are more than happy to capitalize on such events. Anyways, here is an interesting article I found in The Economist.
The world's second-biggest economy is still in a funk—and politics is the problem
THE ghost of Japan's “lost decade” haunts the United States. As the consequences of America's burst housing bubble are felt through financial markets, it has become popular to ask whether Japan's awful experience of boom-and-bust has lessons for other rich countries facing, at best, sharp slowdowns. Japan's property-and-stockmarket bubble burst in 1990, creating bad loans equivalent in the end to about one-fifth of GDP. The economy began growing properly again only 12 years later, and only in 2005 could Japan say it had put financial stress and debt-deflation behind it. Even today the country's nominal GDP remains below its peak in the 1990s—a brutal measure of lost opportunities.
Yet ghosts can deceive. Similarities exist between Japan then and America today, notably the way that a financial crisis threatens the “real” economy. But the differences outnumber them. Japan should indeed be a source of worry—not, however, because other rich countries are destined for the same economic plughole, but because it is the world's second-biggest economy and it has not tackled the fundamental causes of its malaise.
A tale of two crunches
Even by today's gloomiest assumptions, Japan's bust dwarfs America's, if in part because its boom did too. Take for instance the collapse in the equity market. America's S&P 500 is down just 8% from its 1999 peak. The Nikkei 225 share index is now nearly two-thirds below its 1989 peak. In commercial property the comparison between the two boom-and-busts is almost as dramatic.
The more important difference, though, is how each country got into its mess and then responded to it. In America, the government can be blamed for inadequate oversight of the vast market in slicing and dicing mortgages, but it has reacted aggressively to the bust, with monetary and fiscal stimulus. Financial institutions are busy declaring their losses. In Japan, the government was deeply complicit in puffing up the market and complicit, too, in hiding the ensuing mess for years.
Japan's economy is still held back by its politicians (see article). Though much has changed since 1990, a cyclical slowdown is now laying bare Japan's structural shortcomings. A few years ago, people hoped that Japan, which is still a bigger economic power than China and has some marvellous companies, would help take up some of the slack in the world economy if America tired; that now looks unlikely. Productivity is disastrously low: the return on new investment is around half that in America. Consumption is still flagging, thanks in part to companies' failure to increase wages. Bureaucratic blunders have cost the economy dearly, and Japan needs a swathe of reforms to trade and competition without which the economy will continue to disappoint.
The Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which has ruled for the best part of half a century and remains a machine of pork and patronage, has given up trying to tackle these problems. What reformist tendencies it had under the maverick Junichiro Koizumi, prime minister between 2001 and 2006, have now gone into reverse. To make matters worse, last July the opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) won control of the upper house of the Diet (parliament). The constitution never envisaged upper and lower houses of the Diet being controlled by opposing parties, and since the upper house has nearly equal powers to the lower one, the opposition can frustrate virtually every government initiative.
Thus Yasuo Fukuda, prime minister since September, spent his first four months in office fighting to reauthorise a solitary refuelling ship operating in the Indian Ocean. Now the government is locked in grinding battles with the DPJ over bills to authorise a budget for the fiscal year that starts in April and to appoint a new governor of the Bank of Japan on March 19th.
But the problem is not merely a constitutional one. Japan is at an uncomfortable point: no longer a one-party state, yet still far from being a competitive democracy with rival parties alternating in power. Both main parties are riven by contradictions: both contain modernisers alongside a grizzled old guard of conservatives and socialists. Political chaos has allowed the old forces within the LDP—the factions, the conservative bureaucrats, the builders and the farmers—to reassert their influence. Meanwhile, the DPJ's leader, Ichiro Ozawa, who used to have a reformist streak, now sounds like an old-style LDP boss.
Japan's politics is skidding for the buffers. The crash may come as early as March, over budget differences. One way to avoid it, some politicians think, is for the LDP and the DPJ to form the kind of “grand coalition” which Mr Fukuda and Mr Ozawa talked about in November. This plan was thwarted when the rest of the DPJ leadership, rightly, balked: in effect, it would have taken Japan back towards being a one-party state, distributing largesse rather than reforming the economy.
Time for a good wash
Yet the buffers may be the best place for Japan. Or rather, a general election—perhaps a string of elections—offers the best chance of forcing parties to confront their inconsistencies, offering voters real choices rather than candidates who compete to bring home the bacon.
There are glimmers of hope. A cross-party group of modernising politicians, academics and businessmen has formed a pressure group, Sentaku (with connotations both of choice and of giving things a good wash). Radically, they want to decentralise the top-heavy system in which local politicians are in thrall to Tokyo's pork providers; they think the main parties should campaign on coherent manifestos; and they are urging ordinary Japanese, who do not readily bother their heads about such things, to reflect on the folly of voting for politicians who smother their districts in unused highways and bridges that lead nowhere—the visible blight of failed politics.
Many politicians say a general election would only add to the chaos. That is the argument of a political class grown fat on a broken system. Voters need a chance to start putting it right. If choice is chaos, bring it on.
The weighing, or balancing, of "hard" and "soft" power is now being integrated into "smart" power. I notice that Nye and a few other of the scholars in this field are starting to discuss this topic. It is very fascinating and well worth talking about when looking at foreign policy and the geo-political events of the world.
“Soft Power Is Cultural Power” Partly. Power is the ability to alter the behavior of others to get what you want. There are basically three ways to do that: coercion (sticks), payments (carrots), and attraction (soft power). British historian Niall Ferguson described soft power as “non-traditional forces such as cultural and commercial goods”—and then promptly dismissed it on the grounds that “it’s, well, soft.” Of course, the fact that a foreigner drinks Coca-Cola or wears a Michael Jordan T-shirt does not in itself mean that America has power over him. This view confuses resources with behavior. Whether power resources produce a favorable outcome depends upon the context. This reality is not unique to soft-power resources: Having a larger tank army may produce military victory if a battle is fought in the desert, but not if it is fought in swampy jungles such as Vietnam.
A country’s soft power can come from three resources: its culture (in places where it is attractive to others), its political values (when it lives up to them at home and abroad), and its foreign policies (when they are seen as legitimate and having moral authority). Consider Iran. Western music and videos are anathema to the ruling mullahs, but attractive to many of the younger generation to whom they transmit ideas of freedom and choice. American culture produces soft power among some Iranians, but not others.
“Economic Strength Is Soft Power" No. In a recent article on options for dealing with Iran, Peter Brookes of the Heritage Foundation refers to “soft power options such as economic sanctions.” But there is nothing soft about sanctions if you are on the receiving end. They are clearly intended to coerce and are thus a form of hard power. Economic strength can be converted into hard or soft power: You can coerce countries with sanctions or woo them with wealth. As Walter Russell Mead has argued, “economic power is sticky power; it seduces as much as it compels.” There’s no doubt that a successful economy is an important source of attraction. Sometimes in real-world situations, it is difficult to distinguish what part of an economic relationship is comprised of hard and soft power. European leaders describe other countries’ desire to accede to the European Union (EU) as a sign of Europe’s soft power. Turkey today is making changes in its human rights policies and domestic law to adjust to EU standards. How much of this change is driven by the economic inducement of market access, and how much by the attractiveness of Europe’s successful economic and political system? It’s clear that some Turks are replying more to the hard power of inducement, whereas others are attracted to the European model of human rights and economic freedom.
“Soft Power Is More Humane Than Hard Power” Not necessarily. Because soft power has been hyped as an alternative to raw power politics, it is often embraced by ethically minded scholars and policymakers. But soft power is a description, not an ethical prescription. Like any form of power, it can be wielded for good or ill. Hitler, Stalin, and Mao, after all, possessed a great deal of soft power in the eyes of their acolytes. It is not necessarily better to twist minds than to twist arms. If I want to steal your money, I can threaten you with a gun, or I can swindle you with a get-rich-quick scheme in which you invest, or I can persuade you to hand over your estate as part of a spiritual journey. The third way is through soft power, but the result is still theft.
Although soft power in the wrong hands can have horrible consequences, it can in some cases offer morally superior means to certain goals. Contrast the consequences of Mohandas Gandhi or Martin Luther King Jr.’s choice of soft power with Yasir Arafat’s choice of the gun. Gandhi and King were able to attract moderate majorities over time, and the consequences were impressive both in effectiveness and in ethical terms. Arafat’s strategy of hard power, by contrast, killed innocent Israelis and drove Israeli moderates into the arms of the hard right.
"Hard power Can Be Measured, and Soft Power Cannot" False. Washington Post columnist Jim Hoagland has complained that soft power, like globalization, is too “elastic” a concept to be useful. Like others, he fails to understand the difference between power resources and behavior. In fact, it’s quite possible to quantify sources of soft power. One can, for example, measure and compare the cultural, communications, and diplomatic resources that might produce soft power for a country. Public opinion polls can quantify changes in a country’s attractiveness over time. Nor is hard power as easy to quantify as Hoagland seems to believe. The apparent precision of the measurement of hard power resources is often spurious and might be called “the concrete fallacy”—the notion that the only important resources are those that can be dropped on your foot (or on a city). That’s a mistake. The United States had far more measurable military resources than North Vietnam, but it nonetheless lost the Vietnam War. Whether soft power produces behavior that we want will depend on the context and the skills with which the resources are converted into outcomes.
“Europe Counts Too Much on Soft Power and the United States Too Much on Hard Power” True. Robert Kagan’s clever phrase that Americans are from Mars and Europeans are from Venus is an overstatement, but it contains a core of truth. Europe has successfully used the attraction of its successful political and economic integration to obtain outcomes it wants, and the United States has often acted as though its military preeminence can solve all problems. But it is a mistake to rely on hard or soft power alone. The ability to combine them effectively might be termed “smart power.” During the Cold War, the West used hard power to deter Soviet aggression, while it also used soft power to erode faith in Communism behind the iron curtain. That was smart power. To be smart today, Europe should invest more in its hard-power resources, and the United States should pay more attention to its soft power.
“The Bush Administration Neglects America’s Soft Power” More true in the first term than the second. When Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was asked about soft power in 2003, he replied “I don’t know what it means.” The administration and the country paid a high price for that ignorance. Fortunately, in Bush’s second term, with Condoleezza Rice and Karen Hughes at the State Department and Rumsfeld’s reputation dented by the kind of failures the private sector would never tolerate, the second term team has shown an increased concern about America’s soft power. The president has stressed values in foreign policy and has increased the budget for public diplomacy.
“Some Goals Can Only Be Achieved by Hard Power” No Doubt. North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il’s penchant for Hollywood movies is unlikely to affect his decision on developing nuclear weapons. Hard power just might dissuade him, particularly if China agreed to economic sanctions. Nor will soft power be sufficient to stop the Iranian nuclear program, though the legitimacy of the administration’s current multilateral approach may help to recruit other countries to a coalition that isolates Iran. And soft power got nowhere in luring the Taliban away from al Qaeda in the 1990s. It took American military might to do that. But other goals, such as the promotion of democracy and human rights are better achieved by soft power. Coercive democratization has its limits—as the United States has (re)discovered in Iraq.
“Military Resources Produce Only Hard Power” No. The mention of hard power immediately conjures up images of tanks, fighters, and missiles. But military prowess and competence can sometimes create soft power. Dictators such as Hitler and Stalin cultivated myths of invincibility and inevitability to structure expectations and attract others to join their cause. As Osama bin Laden has said, people are attracted to a strong horse rather than a weak horse. A well-run military can be a source of admiration. The impressive job of the U.S. military in providing humanitarian relief after the Indian Ocean tsunami and the South Asian earthquake in 2005 helped restore the attractiveness of the United States. Military-to-military cooperation and training programs, for example, can establish transnational networks that enhance a country’s soft power.
Of course, misuse of military resources can also undercut soft power. The Soviets had a great deal of soft power in the years after World War II, but they destroyed it by the way they used their hard power against Hungary and Czechoslovakia. Brutality and indifference to just war principles of discrimination and proportionality can also destroy legitimacy. The efficiency of the initial U.S. military invasion of Iraq in 2003 created admiration in the eyes of some foreigners, but that soft power was undercut by the subsequent inefficiency of the occupation and the scenes of mistreatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib.
“Soft Power Is Difficult to Use.” Partly true. Governments can control and change foreign policies. They can spend money on public diplomacy, broadcasting, and exchange programs. They can promote, but not control popular culture. In that sense, one of the key resources that produce soft power is largely independent of government control. That is why the Council on Foreign Relations recently suggested the formation of a Corporation for Public Diplomacy—modeled on the U.S. Corporation for Public Broadcasting—to engage wider participation among private groups and individuals (who are often unwilling to be part of official government productions).
“Soft Power Is Irrelevant to the Current Terrorist Threat” False. There is a small likelihood that the West will ever attract such people as Mohammed Atta or Osama bin Laden. We need hard power to deal with people like them. But the current terrorist threat is not Samuel Huntington’s clash of civilizations. It is a civil war within Islam between a majority of moderates and a small minority who want to coerce others into an extremist and oversimplified version of their religion. The United States cannot win unless the moderates win. We cannot win unless the number of people the extremists are recruiting is lower than the number we are killing and deterring. Rumsfeld himself asked in a 2003 memo: “Are we capturing, killing, or deterring and dissuading more terrorists every day than the madrasas and the radical clerics are recruiting, training, and deploying against us?” That equation will be very hard to balance without a strategy to win hearts and minds. Soft power is more relevant than ever.
Joseph S. Nye Jr. is distinguished service professor at Harvard University and author, most recently, of “The Power Game: A Washington Novel” (New York: PublicAffairs, 2004).
