Archives: 11/2007

How Much Defense Spending Is Enough?

By Justin Logan

Over at the National Interest, my boss Ted Carpenter has been slugging it out with former senator Jim Talent over (originally) Fred Thompson’s proposal to spend 4.5% of GDP on defense.

Ted notes correctly that we already spend as much on defense as the rest of the world combined, but Sen. Talent is nonplused. To the contrary, he protests that

the Navy must buy new DDG-1000 destroyers, ramp up procurement of Virginia-class submarines, and buy large numbers of littoral combat ships and the next-generation cruiser. The Air Force must buy its new superiority fighter, the F-22, as well as Joint Strike Fighters or equivalent aircraft and additionally fund its strategic-airlift requirement, design and build a new tanker and develop an interdiction bomber to replace the B-52. The Army must modernize and replace almost its entire capital stock of fighting vehicles.

How does Ted oppose doing the things Sen. Talent says we “must” do? Because, according to Talent, he

ignores the risks created by: the collapse of democracy in Russia, the rapid growth of Chinese power and the reemergence of Chinese national ambitions, the proliferation of nuclear weapons to rogue states and unstable governments, the rise of Islamic fanaticism empowered by the tools of asymmetrical warfare, and the intense ethnic and religious rivalries that have led to genocide on a vast scale in Europe, Africa and Asia in the last twenty years.

This is an interesting exercise in bait-and-switch. So the justifications for buying new battleships, the Joint Strike Fighter, and a new bomber are supposed to include all of these things? How is the Joint Strike Fighter going to deal with the collapse of democracy in Russia? How would new battleships help us deal with nuclear proliferation? And how would a new bomber help us deal with “the rise of Islamic fanaticism empowered by the tools of asymmetric warfare” or “the intense ethnic and religious rivalries that have led to genocide on a vast scale in Europe, Africa and Asia in the last twenty years”?

The only plausible case Mr. Talent could be making is that we should be preparing these tools because ultimately we’re going to have a shooting war with the Chinese. And indeed, if one were inclined to look seriously at the prospect of a shooting war with the Chinese, many of these tools are ones you’d like to have. Then again, a shooting war with the Chinese would also collapse the global economy and possibly have macroeconomic effects that would be felt for decades. Also, a lot of people would die.

Alternatively, if we’re going to get ourselves ready to replicate our experience in Iraq with Iran, the responsible thing to do would be to scrap a lot of these technologies and invest heavily (and quickly!) in a large-scale expansion of the ground forces. The men and women who have taken orders from this administration in the Army and Marine Corps have served valiantly, but they aren’t supermen. At some point, those who advocate endless wars in the Middle East (to be fair, I’m not sure what Sen. Talent’s views are on the Iran question) are going to have to decide which is more important: these large-ticket defense items, or equipping the DOD with the tools it needs to enact the strategies given it by the political leadership in this country.

Alternatively, we could spend 10 or 12 percent of GDP on defense, but I haven’t heard that proposal floated in serious quarters. Another alternative would be to continue initiating wars in the Middle East, continue preparing for war with China, and continue all of the other security commitments America has taken on in the past decades, on what would be the shoestring budget of 4.5 percent of GDP, inadequate to support any of these policies sufficiently.

It’s not clear how Sen. Talent proposes to deal with these tradeoffs, but what’s certainly unhelpful is pretending that the DDG is a workable solution to proliferation. In addition, given that he throws around accusations of “weakening” the United States as opposed to a “strong” United States, it’s worth observing that the charge is coming from a proponent of the current war, which has done more than anything in 40 years to weaken our country.

For a much sounder assessment of where we are and where we should go, see Richard Betts’ article in the current Foreign Affairs, “A Disciplined Defense.”

Topics:
Foreign Policy and National Security

The Right Way to Engage China

By Daniel Griswold

The United States and China reached an agreement yesterday on a dispute over alleged Chinese export subsidies. In exchange for the U.S. government dropping a case it was pursuing through the World Trade Organization, China agreed to end subsidies that the U.S. claimed were promoting exports and hindering imports of steel, wood, IT products, and other manufactured goods.

Details of the case aside, the announcement shows how trade disputes with China can be resolved without resort to threats of retaliatory tariffs. This is not the first time China has changed its trade laws in response to pressure from the United States through the WTO. In 2004, China dropped a discriminatory tax refund on domestically produced semiconductors after the U.S. government filed a complaint.

Today’s announcement is another vindication of resolving trade disputes with China through a rules-based system rather than through threats of unilateral retaliation. China’s accession to the WTO in 2001 not only committed China to lowering trade barriers on a broad range of goods and services; it also brought China into the generally effective WTO dispute settlement mechanism.

In two weeks, Treasury Secretary Paulson, U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab and other cabinet members will meet with their Chinese counterparts in Beijing as part of the ongoing Strategic Economic Dialogue. As today’s announcement verifies, the SED represents the right approach to encouraging China to continue its evolution toward a more free and open economy.

Topics:
International Economics, Development & Immigration, Trade Policy

NCLB: Putting Swine before PIRLS?

By Neal McCluskey

At least among education wonk-ish types, it’s well known that on national and international assessments American students perform best in 4th grade, decline by 8th grade, and do dismally in high school. Well yesterday a report was released—the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS)—which hinted that even our vaunted 4th graders might be losing ground. And this despite the fact that since 2002 the federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) has “demanded” good results starting in the 3rd grade.

There is, it should be noted, a bit of good news in PIRLS: Our kids scored above the PIRLS average—set at a “scale score” of 500—in both 2001 and 2006. But then, one would expect our kids to perform above average since we are the world’s leading economic power and, according to the PIRLS report, our gross national income (GNI) per-capita, after adjusting for purchasing power, was surpassed by only Norway and Luxembourg among PIRLS participants.

And then there’s the bad news. It starts with our average score dropping a tad between 2001 and 2006, going from 542 to 540. Worse, several countries and territories we’d beaten in 2001, including Russia, Hong Kong, and Singapore, surpassed us in 2006. And we can’t blame poverty for our problems: None of the places that moved ahead of us, at least as measured by GNI, are as well off as we are economically.

Importantly, the analytical limitations of average scores, and the generally small changes seen between 2001 and 2006, make PIRLS far from a final word on either NCLB or the general progress (or lack thereof) of American education. However, when coupled with other recent testing results, PIRLS adds to an increasingly clear conclusion about NCLB: the law is at best having no positive impact on American education, and is very likely having a negative one.

Topics:
Education and Child Policy

Judicial Restraint and the Second Amendment

By David Boaz

Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, has a column on HuffingtonPost and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution arguing that the Supreme Court should uphold the D.C. gun ban and reject the idea that when the Constitution says “the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed,” it means that people have the right to keep and bear arms. His basic argument, summed up in the title, is that “The will of the people must not be overruled.” He pounds away at that theme:

Last March, the District of Columbia saw judicial activism replace the will of the people….

More than 30 years ago, the elected representatives on the D.C. City Council decided to enact a system of strict gun laws to help protect public safety. The people in D.C. strongly support these laws….

[The Court of Appeals] imposed their own policy preferences on the people of D.C.

It was a textbook example of judicial activism at its worst….

If the justices reject judicial activism and refrain from substituting their own policy preferences for the people’s elected representatives, then the District of Columbia will prevail. And so will the American people.

As a lawyer and a lifelong Republican, I have deep respect for judicial precedent, for American history and for a close reading of all the words in the Constitution. As one who served as mayor of Fort Wayne, Ind., for 12 years, I also believe in the importance of local communities being able to pass the laws they believe will help keep them safe.

It’s a powerful argument, and it may well resonate with the conservative justices who think that judges often overreach and “substitute their own policy preferences” for those of the people’s elected legislators. But I wonder if Helmke really believes that judges should respect the will of legislators and not strike down laws. Does he believe that the Warren Court should not have struck down school segregation, which was clearly the will of the people’s elected representatives–and no doubt the people–in Kansas, as well as in South Carolina and Virginia, whose similar cases were combined with Brown? Does he believe that the Supreme Court was wrong to strike down Virginia’s law against interracial marriage in 1967? The Texas law outlawing sodomy in 2003? The Communications Decency Act in 1997? Does he indeed think the John Marshall Court was wrong to invalidate a section of the Judiciary Act of 1789 in Marbury v. Madison? That’s the implication of his ringing words in defense of legislative absolutism.

I don’t think he believes this for a minute. I am sure he agrees with Cato’s constitutional scholars that the Supreme Court has an obligation to strike down laws that exceed the powers granted to Congress or that violate the rights protected in the Bill of Rights. He just doesn’t want the Court to apply that rule to the right to keep and bear arms. But in fact there’s an increasingly broad consensus among scholars that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to bear arms. And thus the Court should do its duty and find that an absolute ban on gun ownership by law-abiding citizens clearly exceeds any power of reasonable regulation that might be permitted under a properly understood Second Amendment.

Topics:
Law and Civil Liberties

Hyde Will Be Missed

By Roger Pilon

Former Congressman Henry Hyde of Illinois, who died this morning in Chicago at the age of 83, was a friend of the Cato Institute who worked closely with us in our efforts to put a spotlight on the abuses flowing from America’s civil asset forfeiture law. A staunch defender of the war on drugs, Rep. Hyde saw nonetheless that not every tactic the government used in that war could be justified. In particular, the government’s seizure for itself of private property that merely “facilitated” a crime, often from completely innocent people, drove him to do whatever he could to end such abuses. He called hearings, at which Cato scholars were invited to testify. Then in 1995 Cato published his book, Forfeiting Our Property Rights: Is Your Property Safe from Seizure? The tone of the book was captured in its opening words:

Much of what you may have learned in school or college about your rights and liberties no longer applies. Increased government and police powers, rising criminal activity and violence, popular anxiety about drug use–all have become justifications for curtailing the application of the Bill of Rights and the individual security it once guaranteed.

The book was a ringing indictment of the government’s war on private property through the awful practice of civil asset forfeiture. More hearings followed its publication, culminating in a reform bill, which Hyde unveiled as the keynote speaker at a 1999 Cato conference. Hyde was tireless in shepherding the bill through both houses of Congress, fighting the Justice Department all the way, and in obtaining President Clinton’s signature. We will miss him.

Topics:
General, Law and Civil Liberties

Henry Hyde, RIP

By Tim Lynch

Rep. Henry Hyde died this morning. He was one of the “elder statesmen” in the GOP and, as this article says, was known around the capital for his courtly manners. Hyde and Cato found common ground in the mid-1990s as the government was seizing property left and right under the guise of civil forfeiture laws. Cato published his book, Forfeiting Our Property Rights: Is Your Property Safe from Seizure?

Here’s a brief excerpt from that book:

I think it evident that an individual’s free nature indicates clearly that we are self-providers, that we naturally want to support ourselves and our families. But when an individual is robbed of his or her property, of the right to ownership of material goods, that individual then becomes subject to the will, caprice, and power of others in a way that degrades the dignity and independence of his or her human nature. And when this power is concentrated in the hands of government, it becomes an even greater threat to life and liberty. … My personal belief, which prompted my writing this book, is that there is an immediate need for restoration of the constitutional principles that are debased by the current application of asset forfeiture laws.

Hyde shepherded reform legislation through the Congress following the publication of his book.  Although Hyde and Cato had disagreements–especially with respect to term limits–he had kind things like this to say: “The Cato Institute has consistently provided a much-needed and very certain trumpet among the unreasoning cacophony that is everyday Washington.”

Topics:
General, Law and Civil Liberties

Greenwald on the GOP and Limited Government

By Timothy B. Lee

While I’m on the subject of Glenn Greenwald, I should point out his great response to David Brooks’s latest column on the alleged death of small government conservatism. Greenwald cites a Cato study by Gene Healy and Tim Lynch on the Bush administration’s terrible civil liberties record to make the broader point that the Bush administration has abandoned the limited government ideals that animated the Republican party in under the leadership of Goldwater and Reagan:

But neoconservatism – which is really what the right-wing pro-Bush movement has become – doesn’t believe in any of that, and Brooks’ column demonstrates that they are admitting that more and more explicitly. Instead, it touts a radical and authoritarian nanny-statism that seeks, at its core, to provide feelings of protection, safety, and moralistic clarity – “security leads to freedom” – all delivered by political leaders using ever-increasing federal government power and limitless militarism. Whether one believes in that radical and warped vision of the American federal government is, more than any other factor, what now determines one’s political orientation.

I have argued several times before that the radicalism of the Bush presidency and the neoconservatism on which it is based has resulted in a fundamental political re-alignment. As Brooks points out, the issues that shape our political spectrum and determine one’s political orientation have changed fundamentally – Brooks contrasts today’s predominant issues with those of the 1970s in order to demonstrate this shift, but the shift is just as drastic even when one compares today’s predominant political issues to those that drove the key political dispustes as recently as the 1990s.

There is one principal reason for this shift – the Bush presidency and the political movement that supports it is not driven by any of the abstract political principles traditionally associated with “liberalism” or “conservatism.” Whatever else one wants to say about the Bush presidency, it has nothing to do with limiting the size, scope and reach of the federal government. The exact opposite is true.

On every front, the Bush administration has ushered in vast expansions of federal power – often in the form of radical and new executive powers, unprecedented surveillance of American citizens, and increased intervention in every aspect of Americans’ private lives. To say that the Bush movement is hostile to the limited-government ends traditionally associated (accurately or not) with the storied Goldwater/Reagan ideology is a gross understatement.

Of course, our own Ed Crane saw this coming almost a decade ago, observing in 1999 that the future President Bush had absolutely no interest in carrying on the Goldwater/Reagan tradition of limited government.

Topics:
Political Philosophy

Pages