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Articles by Eric Grover

What would a world without a confident, engaged and preeminent America look like?

Posted by Eric Grover on 13/02/10

“While America Slept” is a worthwhile and timely piece by English author and Americanphile Andrew Roberts. He like Winston Churchill believes given will and self belief Americans can accomplish virtually anything.  In his classic The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order Sam Huntington echoed this sentiment arguing if America’s elites retain confidence in the superiority of America, in American and Western values, the 21st century will be America’s and the West’s, that an ambitious, striving China and surging Islam can be met and contained. But it is abundantly clear today a great many of America’s elites including her Commander in Chief, not only no longer have confidence in their country’s  righteousness and exceptionalism, but actively root and work for, and take pleasure enfeebling America.  

 

Bill Clinton’s Secretary of State Madeleine Albright described America as “the indispensable nation.” She was more right than she knew and probably believed. A world in which America leading English-speaking and like-minded democracies is not globally ascendant would be a decidedly more dangerous, less free and less prosperous place – an increasingly Hobbesian world in which brutish despotisms and tyrannical ideologies cow and run roughshod over much of the planet.  

 

Who would feel safer and be emboldened in such a world? Freedom’s enemies: Russian capo Vlad Putin, North Korean despot Kim Jong Il, militant Islamists, Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chaves and Somali pirates.

 

Many not-so-very-long-ago liberated Eastern European countries would again find themselves in thrall to the Russian bear. Putiniste Russia’s invasion of Georgia, its shutting off gas to the Ukraine and much of Europe, and suspicion it attempted to murder Orange presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko by dioxin poisoning  provided a foretaste. Would the prospect of a protest letter from EU foreign minister Catherine Ashton give a Moscow contemplating sending tanks to Tiblisi or Riga, or seizing the Crimea, pause?

 

Confronted with a nuclear North Korea which has already threatened to turn it into “a sea of fire” and an unchecked China, Japan would go nuclear.

 

Iran, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are major sponsors of supremacist political Islam. In Defeating Political Islam: The New Cold War Moorthy Muthuswamy calls them  the Axis of Jihad. Although to date America and the West have done little if anything to acknowledge, much less to meaningfully check their export of political Islam and terror would increase. 

 

Israel would/will preemptively destroy Islamist Iran’s nuclear program or the mullahs would menace the entire Middle East and trigger nuclear proliferation in a gallery of unsavory regimes. 

 

Nuclear Pakistan which since independence has constructively cleansed the country of Hindus and Christians, could be expected to further attempt to undermine India.

 

Saudi Arabia’s most important export isn’t oil but rather Wahhabism. Its funding of mosques and madrassas in North America, Europe, Africa and South Asia has been largely unchallenged by the West.

 

Freedom of the high seas and secure worldwide shipping have been guaranteed in turn by a confident and globally dominant British Royal Navy and the U.S. Navy. They could no longer be taken for granted.

 

Castroite Hugo Chaves has already heaped praise upon and supported the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), narco-terrorists who have been battling the government for decades. He could be relied up to step up his efforts to sow trouble throughout Latin America.

America, English, United States
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Obama stiffs the plucky Poles and Czechs

Posted by Eric Grover on 03/10/09

Historian Bernard Lewis warned a nation can make few mistakes worse than being “harmless as an enemy and treacherous as a friend.” On September 17th President Barack Obama confirmed lest there had been any doubt, he has taken America there.

On the 70th anniversary to the day of the Soviet Union’s invasion of Poland Barack Obama stiffed Poland. Couched in doublespeak about strengthening Europe’s missile defense Obama announced he was abandoning America’s commitment to putting an anti-ballistic missile system in Poland and the Czech Republic. The timing was creepy. The belief system behind the decision and signal it sends to America’s friends and adversaries are chilling.

The Obama administration’s explanations for the move are risible.

It trumpeted “new” intelligence suggesting the Iranian missile threat to the immediate region is greater and more imminent than the long range missile threat and said therefore America will invest in the sea-based theater missile defense system.

Intelligence is imperfect. The US was surprised by North Korea, India, Pakistan and Israel going nuclear.

Iran launched a satellite. The necessary technology is almost identical with that require for an ICBM armed with a nuclear, chemical or conventional payload.

The Administration has said it wants to save money. Who knew? This preposterous rationale comes from an administration that will incur an almost $2 trillion deficit in its first year, with deficits likely to exceed $13 trillion over the next decade. Obama is happy, indeed keen, to expand spending on all fronts except the military.

Obama has always been viscerally against missile defense and, notwithstanding his pledge during the 2008 presidential debates to not permit Iran to go nuclear, never willing to do anything meaningful to stop the mullahs.

Expanding the Aegis system, which is constrained by the number of suitable destroyers, and deploying interceptors in Poland could be done in parallel. The West would be safer for it.

In dealing with a malevolent foe on a path to acquiring nuclear arms such as Iran, it would be better to eliminate or defend against the threat too soon rather than rationalizing procrastinating.

Russia’s contention interceptors in Poland would threaten them was patently absurd. The system was defensive. Moreover, 10 interceptors in Poland and a radar system in the Czech Republic would have been next to useless against Russia’s enormous fleet of missiles. Russia objected to a tangible American military presence in and commitment to defend Eastern Europe.

The putative leader of the Free World Barack Obama believes disarmament and appeasing Freedom’s enemies are the path to peace, love and brotherhood among men. He hopes if the world’s rogues like him America will be safer. To the contrary, to the extent America is overwhelmingly preeminent in arms, steel willed, and feared by them, the world is safer.

The Poles and Czechs have been good American allies. Speaking in San Francisco on August 5th Poland’s foreign minister Radoslaw Sikorski reminded his audience that notwithstanding Poland’s not being one hundred percent in sync on the war’s rationale Poland sent troops to Iraq. And alluding to some Western European NATO members’ restrictions on troops committed to Afghanistan said, he who contributes without caveats gives double. Moreover, though it is an infidel capital, it’s hard to imagine Warsaw is on the top of the mullahs’ target list. That said, with a view to staying free, it is in the interest of both Poland and the Czech Republic to encourage America to stay engaged in Eastern Europe.

While Obama’s betrayal stings, he is not the first American leader to give the Eastern Europeans short shrift.

FDR’s willful blindness during WW2 to the nature of Stalin and the Soviet Union, his rolling over at Yalta, and Harry Truman’s acquiescence led to Eastern Europe’s enslavement by the Soviets for almost half a century.

Today Truman is cited by Republicans as a tough Democratic president. Set against Jimmy Carter or Barack Obama, he was a lion, a veritable Churchill. But recall at the end of WW2 the US enjoyed an atomic monopoly, the most powerful air force and navy ever, and accounted for the lion’s share of the world’s economic production.

Obama’s betrayal leaves free countries in mauling reach of the Russian bear in a lurch. If the Russians overran Estonia or seized the Crimea, the most vigorous response from Western Europe might be dispatching French president Nicholas Sarkozy to broker a ceasefire certifying the facts on the ground. Eastern European states now face the prospect of Finlandization or worse.

Obama’s move also heightens the danger elsewhere.

The price for Obama’s preemptive appeasement will be paid worldwide in blood and diminished freedom. While bad actors whether militant Islamist Iranian mullahs, rapacious Russians, Dear Leader Kim Jong Il or Castroite Hugo Chaves bear primary responsibility for their actions, there will also be blood on Obama’s hands. His weakness is provocative and emboldens freedom’s enemies worldwide.

As long as the Prince of Appeasement Barack Obama is in the White House America cannot be relied upon to support freedom and the liberal world order. Worse is to come.

Czech, English, Iran, Obama, Polish, Russia, Slovak, United States
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Presidential frontrunner Barack Obama declares America “cannot tolerate a nuclear Iran”

Posted by Eric Grover on 24/10/08

Faced with Islamist Iran developing nuclear weapons, America’s political leaders have turned Teddy Roosevelt’s maxim speak softly and carry a big stick on its head.

In the first presidential debate Senator Obama declared “We cannot tolerate a nuclear Iran.”  In the second debate he reaffirmed “We cannot allow Iran to get a nuclear weapon.”  In this he, President Bush, Senator Clinton and Senator McCain appear to agree. It is hard however to imagine Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei and President Ahmadinejad view their declarations as equally credible.

Curbing radical Islam is the transcendent challenge of our time. A nuclear Iran will be an existential threat to Israel, its neighbors, and indeed the entire civilized world.  It is the world’s leading sponsor of terror, wants to commit a second Holocaust, and with nukes will have the means. Iran also calls for a world without America.

The Iranian theocracy has been waging a low-tech war against the West and its neighbors since 1979. It has committed or sponsored terrorism in Argentina, Europe, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and Iraq. When the mullahs have nuclear weapons, missiles that can reach Europe and irregular delivery systems such as Hezbollah and potentially Al Qaeda, they will be far less constrained, our weak-kneed European allies will be even more appeasement minded, and other Middle Eastern states will seek atomic arms.

What has the West done? Having branded it a member of the Axis of Evil, Bush’s feckless policy to prevent Iran from obtaining atomic weaponry accomplished nothing.  Our British, French and German allies conducted three years of utterly fruitless negotiations with Iran, giving the mullahs time, and, forestalling US military action when Bush had the political capital and possibly the will to act, which for some Europeans’ was the exercise’s purpose.

Outside of the much acclaimed Iraq surge Bush’s second term has been characterized by abject weakness on the foreign policy front. Now he has embraced carrot-heavy diplomacy with nuclear North Korea, the third member of the Axis of Evil. The US will remove it from the list of terrorism sponsors in return for yet another empty promise.

It is in the Iranian regime’s interest to have nukes. Absent a credible military threat or punishing economic sanctions vigorously supported by Europe, Russia and China and a blockade, diplomacy to persuade it to give up that ambition was never going work. The mullahs are unpopular. Regime change may have been possible if it had been vigorously supported by the West. But it’s too late to bank on.

The civilized world thus far has rationalized not taking decisive action.

Reasonable people can argue how close Iran is. Many urge more futile diplomacy suggesting there’s always time for the military option. However, intelligence is not perfect.  Pakistan’s, India’s, North Korea’s and Israel’s going nuclear surprised us. Better to act before we think absolutely necessary than to risk waiting until it is too late.

America has the power to prevent Iran from going nuclear.  Retired Air Force Lt. General Tom McInerney outlined how comprehensive precision air strikes could destroy its nuclear weapons facilities and military command and control infrastructure.

Nobody likes military force, but at this juncture it is the only assured means of preventing Iran becoming a nuclear power.

Bombing would prevent a pariah state and supremacist Islamists from obtaining and using nukes, preserve options for curbing Iran’s sponsorship of terrorism, and deter bad actors worldwide. Recall Bush’s unheralded first-term success persuading Libya to abandon its nuclear weapons program. After the American-led coalition toppled Saddam Hussein, Libyan strongman Qaddafi worried he might be next and decided his nuclear program wasn’t worth the risk.

But surely America shouldn’t act alone.

The U.N. and our European allies will never beseech the U.S. to act.  The principal help America’s allies could offer would be to provide a US administration with domestic political cover. But the British, French and Germans aren’t even willing to go that far. The world’s most beneficent superpower in history will have to decide to act, or not, on its own, in its and the civilized world’s interest.  Or the “little Satan” Israel may have to strike.

Whether America has the will however is very much in doubt. The mullahs believe it doesn’t.  They also have a stake in America’s presidential election. Notwithstanding Obama’s proclamations Iran doesn’t take him any more seriously than Bush. Why should it? McCain may be another matter.

Regardless of who wins the White House, if America permits Iran to go nuclear the world will pay a terrible price.

America, Iran, Obama, United States, World War IV
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Western weakness will only whet the bear’s appetite

Posted by Eric Grover on 28/08/08

Western weakness spurred Russia’s invasion of Georgia.

The image of the leader of the free world grinning watching Olympic volleyball and basketball while Russian tanks penetrated deep into Georgia captured the moment.

What did KGB alumnus and strongman Vladimir Putin see when he surveyed the world scene while baiting his trap for the Georgians?

President George Bush had dithered and not dealt forcefully with Iran’s nuclear weapons program, reinforcing the impression America was otherwise distracted and irresolute. In May Germany and France blocked fast-tracking Georgia and the Ukraine into NATO, which, lest Putin had doubts, was a green light to act. That said, the estimable Victor Davis Hanson rightly notes had Georgia been in NATO Russia’s overrunning it would have exposed the alliance as hollow. If NATO is only a call option on American troops, it is indeed a shell of the alliance that once held the Soviets at bay. Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are in NATO now.

What if Russian tanks rolled to Vilnius, Riga and Tallinn? Who seriously believes France’s and Germany’s political classes would put their troops in harm’s way to protect the Baltic States, the Ukraine or even Poland?

The West’s response to Russia’s invasion of Georgia, a sovereign democratic proWest state has been pathetic.

Bush’s condemnation and dispatching humanitarian aid and Condi to Tbilisi was tepid. NATO issued an even-handed, utterly toothless statement and cancelled the next NATO-Russia Council meeting.

EU and French president Nicholas Sarkozy had his Munich moment, racing to Moscow broker a cease fire, which ratified the facts on the ground and did not mention Georgia’s territorial integrity.

Not to be outdone, Great Britain’s foreign secretary David Mililband weighed in with his own invertebrate response, recommending the invasion be addressed by the United Nations, where Russia has a veto, and the powerless Organization for Security and Cooperation. Putin must be quaking in his boots.

And from West’s legions of self-styled human rights and peace activists there’s been nary a peep. In stark contrast, massive crowds filled Western Europe’s streets to protest the liberation of Iraq and in the eighties to object to America’s installing Pershing missiles to defend them from the Soviet Union.

The only responses to Russian aggression of any consequence came from those well within the bear’s reach. The presidents of the Baltic States, Poland and the Ukraine flew to Tbilisi to signal support. Poland approved installing a missile defense system. The Ukraine offered the West a satellite tracking facility to incorporate within a broader European missile defense system and imposed new restrictions on the Russian fleet operating out of Sevastopol.

What now?

If there is anything positive in this war, it is that Russian tanks crushing a weak democratic neighbor may reinvigorate NATO, dispel Euro “soft power” delusions, and wake up a somnolent American electorate that the world remains a dangerous place.

Former US UN ambassador John Bolton warns the vacuum between Russia and NATO increases the likelihood of Russian aggression. New Europeans can afford and need to spend more on defense, much more. The US should furnish arms.

The US is the most benign superpower in history. Today the world’s problem is not that the US is not sufficiently loved or deferential to the United Nations or Brussels bienpensants, but rather that the US is not sufficiently feared by the world’s bad actors.

Russia’s aggression is a clarion call for American leadership.

Russian savagery must be roundly condemned. It should be expelled from the G8 and blocked from joining the WTO. It’s high time to reconstitute NATO, within Europe where it seems almost moribund, and beyond, where it would fill a void. Ukraine and Georgia should forthwith be invited to join a revamped NATO.

The militaries of the Baltic States, Poland, the Ukraine and Georgia should be fortified and supplemented with Western troops. If, however, NATO members are not prepared to move troops east then moving NATO’s perimeter east would be a mistake. And if some Western European NATO members are not committed to the alliance, perhaps it’s time to end the charade and invite them to leave.

But for its massive nuclear arsenal, Russia is weak. Russia’s Russian population is declining. Its economy is largely dependent on oil and gas. There are more than 1.3 billion resource-hungry Chinese next to vast, empty, resource-rich Siberia. Additionally there are hundreds of millions of Muslims along Russia’s southern border and its growing Muslim population is increasingly likely to define itself as Muslim rather than Russian.

Yet, Russia arms Islamist regimes and China, foments trouble in the Middle East, and seeks to cow or reabsorb much of its near abroad and former satellite states.

Weakness whether lack of will in the United States or lack of will and means in the case of Western Europe, invites further Russian aggression.

Georgia, NATO, Russia, United States
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Ireland kills the Lisbon Treaty, for the moment

Posted by Eric Grover on 29/06/08

Two years ago Dutch and French voters rejected the European Constitution, which was to have ceded substantial remaining national sovereignty, perhaps irretrievably, to a European superstate. Dutch and French citizenry can be forgiven for thinking their votes were dispositive, that the absorption and destruction of the EU’s 27 member states’ had gone far enough. The EU’s political elites simply repackaged their political manifesto under the Lisbon Treaty, which Valery Giscard d’Estaing acknowledged was virtually the same as the rejected constitution.

EU political Brahmins hold their electorates in contempt and wherever possible have avoided letting the people vote on a momentous ceding of sovereignty. They would have bypassed a referendum in Ireland too, but the Irish constitution inconveniently required a vote and vote the Irish did. With the entire Irish political establishment and Brussels Eurocrats supporting the Lisbon Treaty, Irish voters said “stop!” They said stop for Ireland and for voters in all the other EU nation states who would have said no if they had been permitted a vote.

What now?

The great champion of liberty Czech President Vaclav Klaus said the EU must abide by its own rules, that the Lisbon Treaty must be ratified by every EU member in order to come into force. Ireland rejected it therefore it cannot come into force. Klaus may be unduly optimistic. Brussels’ political elites have been only too happy to ignore their own rules when it suits.

The preferred path for Brussels and Ireland’s political establishments will be to have the Irish vote again and again and again on cosmetically touched up treaties, until they get it right, at which point there will be no more votes.

However, what’s in their interest? Would the Irish gain greater freedom, prosperity and security by ceding yet more sovereignty and falling deeper into the maw of Brussels?

From Ireland’s standpoint the status quo would appear eminently satisfactory.

The Celtic Tiger’s economic performance over the last several decades has been stupendous relative to sclerotic Belgium, France, Germany and the rest of Old Europe. Ireland lowered taxes and along with New Zealand is one of only a few counties to have reduced government as a percent of GDP.

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The Heritage Institute’s Freedom Index ranks Ireland the third freest economy in the world after Hong Kong and Singapore. France ranks a dismal 48th, Italy 64th and Greece 80th.

There is another at first blush more radical option. Ireland could turn westward and petition to join the United States. In “Why Britain should join America” historian Paul Johnson argued Britain should join the United States “leaving behind the stagnancy and depressing statism of Europe.” Johnson argued that Britain was more compatible culturally, economically and politically with America and that its prospects would be better off as part of an expanded English-speaking Republic than in thrall to a continental regulatory yoke. Much of his case obtains for Ireland as well.

Moreover, Americans of all political stripes romanticize and have enormous affection for the Irish, notwithstanding that Ireland has not always been a stalwart ally like other English-speaking nations such as Britain and Australia. Congress would stampede to welcome the first new state since 1959. Ten thousand Irishmen parachuted into Boston or New York would fit quite comfortably, far better than in Frankfurt, Rome or Athens.

If it joined the US Ireland might also lay the basis for a genuine North Atlantic free trade area, which would have huge benefit for North America and Europe.

Ireland, Lisbon Tready
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Czech President Vaclav Klaus warns global-warming alarmism imperils our freedom and prosperity

Posted by Eric Grover on 02/06/08

Last Wednesday I attended the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s 24th annual dinner in Washington at which Czech President Vaclav Klaus was given the Julian Simon award and delivered the keynote address “Is Schumpeter’s Vision of the End of Capitalism Relevant?”   Klaus received rousing a standing ovation when CEI’s Fred Smith introduced him and again at the conclusion of his speech.   Like Julian Simon, Klaus is an economist and courageous thinker willing to stand against fashion and the herd. In 1980 Simon famously bet author of The Population Bomb and enthusiastic Malthusian pessimist Paul Ehrlich that a basket of commodities selected by Ehrlich: tin, nickel, tungsten, chromium and copper, would be cheaper a decade hence. All were.  

Simon believed in the immense ingenuity of man, technology and free-market dynamism to harness nature. Ehrlich had a dour, static and fundamentally fatalistic view of mankind and our world.  

In Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy Schumpeter contended capitalism sowed the seeds of its own demise in creating a class of elites and intellectuals hostile to capitalism and freedom.  Whereas in the past enemies of free markets and private property railed against “the immiseration of the masses” now they decry “the immiseration of the Planet.”  

Klaus grew up under the Bolshevik heel of oppression and knew firsthand the greatest menace to liberty in the last century.   

Today Klaus stands almost alone among European, indeed among world political leaders in warning that radical environmentalism and global-warming alarmism are the transcendent threat to freedom and prosperity at the top of the 21st century.  

Environmentalism, Global warming, biofuels, energy saving, renewable energy sources, sustainable energy
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Evita decisively beats Saint Barack in critical Pennsylvania primary

Posted by Eric Grover on 25/04/08

Earlier this week Hillary Clinton beat Barack Obama in Pennsylvania’s democratic presidential primary by 10 percent points, which was all the more impressive as Obama outspent her 3 to 1 and won over 92% of the black vote.

What does it mean?

Obama’s character and record have started to receive a modicum of scrutiny, albeit late in the game. Remarks by Obama’s pastor of 20 years and spiritual father Jeremiah Wright have provoked a firestorm of outrage.  Saint Barack and Pastor Jeremiah Wright have both said Wright’s remarks were taken out of context. If anything, in context they’re worse. Here’re two Wright sermons in their entirety.  They reveal Obama’s moral lodestar of 20 years as a vile, anti-America, racist hate monger, which reflects something about the essence of Obama.  The incomparable and Pulitzer-prize winning Charles Krauthammer pierces the aura of Obama cult worship and asks why, if Jeremiah Wright – a man who curses America, expressed moral satisfaction with the deaths of three thousand innocents on 9/11, and preaches racial essentialism utterly at odds with the American creed, did Obama contribute $22,500 to his church and more importantly why did he expose his daughters to Wright’s divisive and hateful message.  Speaking to an affluent lefty San Francisco audience Obama derided small-town Pennsylvanians as small-minded bigots clinging to guns and faith. His attempts to explain himself reinforced the original message and impression that he is an elitist out-of-touch with Joe Six Pack.

Notwithstanding his de rigueur protestations to the contrary, Obama clearly does not believe in the second-amendment protecting Americans’ right to own fire arms.  Of course Clinton is far from a stalwart defender of the second amendment. Nonetheless she has done a better job at disguising her real views. Most Pennsylvanians have a gun in the household.

Obama has maintained a 20 year association with Bill Ayers, an unrepentant 1960’s era radical who founded the terrorist Weatherman Underground.  In a NYT interview Ayers said “”I don’t regret setting bombs. I feel we didn’t do enough.”

On the American political continuum Obama is an extremist with the most leftwing voting record in the US Senate, to the left of ‘liberal” icon Ted Kennedy and Socialist Bernie Saunders.

Still Clinton remains well behind in elected delegates and the media’s beloved Obama the favorite. But come the convention neither Obama nor Clinton is likely to have sufficient elected delegate to cinch the nomination.  Therefore the votes of Democrat “super delegates” – politicians and party establishment , ultimately will pick the nominee.

Including contested Florida and Michigan, Clinton has in fact won more popular votes. Except for Obama’s home state of Illinois, she won the large states: California, New York, Texas, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Michigan and Florida. Any Democrat will carry California, New York and Illinois. No Democrat will win come November without carrying Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Clinton polls stronger among women, Hispanics and blue-collar workers. Obama  is stronger with Blacks and Independents.

Democrats can take the Black vote for granted.However, Hispanics, women, and particularly the decisive blue-collar vote will be in play.

While Clinton’s negatives remain high, she has an increasingly powerful  argument  that she would be the stronger Democrat candidate against Senator John McCain in the general election.  

Amendment, America, Clinton, European Parliament Online, Obama, Uncategorized, United States
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For clean, reliable, cheap energy with no carbon emissions, nuclear is the answer

Posted by Eric Grover on 23/03/08

William Tucker’s “The Case for Terrestrial (a.k.a. Nuclear) Energy” is a thoughtful discussion of our energy alternatives and powerful case for: (1) taking a cue from the French, and aggressively adopting clean, reliable nuclear power, and (2) using sustainable, fast-breeder reactor technology. To my great surprise and delight Tucker is an alumnus of my doctrinaire “liberal*” and politically correct alma mater.  

 Many Western governments subsidize and from a regulatory standpoint advantage so-called alternative energy, by which is meant wind mills, solar radiation and a range of biofuels. In his 2006 and 2007 State of the Union addresses President Bush, pandering to environmentalists who didn’t vote for him and indulging Green fashion rather than leading, touted wood chips. While they may have niche applications, none of the much ballyhooed alternative energy sources will power modern 21st century economies. It is high-time to stop indulging in reckless fanciful romanticism. No energy is cost free. One can, indeed must, make rationale rather than sentimental choices. The world will rely upon some mix of nuclear, coal and oil for the remainder of the century. Public policy will affect the mix and cost, which have a huge impact on the prosperity and health of mankind.  

If public policy –notably in America, Great Britain and Germany, does not do a 180° on nuclear energy, coal, which is abundant, will be the de facto choice. Coal however comes
at a much higher cost in human lives, pollution and carbon emissions. It is time for public policy makers concerned about the economic welfare and health of their citizens to act responsibly and champion nuclear power.   

*In the current US rather than European or classical sense of the word.

Energy & Climate, Global warming
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Americans voting for “hope”

Posted by Eric Grover on 03/03/08

In “The Warrior and the Priest” Ramesh Ponnuru contrasts Senator Hillary Clinton’s and Senator Barack Obama’s core support. I suppose it is fair to describe Obama as a “secular priest” of sorts.

For secular, left-leaning and some not so left-leaning, affluent white Americans, supporting Obama is an exercise in moral narcissism, affirming they are good people. They wear their Obama support on their sleeves as a badge of that goodness. For a great many it’s about sentiment, not policy. And, just as they eagerly share that they’ve installed solar panels and drive a hybrid, Chablis in hand Marin and San Francisco elites gush over Obama. The black American vote is more straightforward. It has been owned lock, stock and barrel by the Democrats since WW2. Why do most blacks support Obama over Democrat stalwart Clinton? Identify politics. His skin is brown. Hers isn’t.

The next leader of the free world may well be decided by this infantile political dynamic. In the general election McCain’s conservative support will be less than enthusiastic and many independents and Lincoln Chaffee Republicans will be susceptible to the Obama spell.

America, Obama, United States
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Africa needs tough love, not more aid poured down a rat hole

Posted by Eric Grover on 06/02/08

Daily our calloused senses and consciences are assaulted by the African tragedy: starving babies with bloated bellies, bloody tribal and sectarian genocide, massive government corruption and pillaging, military coups, endemic AIDS, resurgent tuberculosis and malaria, UN employees and blue hats buying child prostitutes and French protégé the Central African Republic’s Emperor Jean-Bédel Bokassa credibly accused of cannibalism.

There is not a single state on the African continent that would not today be better off administered under a colonial regime, as Hong Kong was by Britain. If the West genuinely cared about Africa and wanted to make a difference rather than more charity, it would send soldiers to overthrow corrupt and despotic regimes, and constitutional law experts and administrators to architect and operate governing legal and economic systems there patterned after our own.

The West –principally Britain and France – abandoned Africa. The British colonial - to use that unfashionable word- model was reasonably successful worldwide, if less so in Africa, planting institutions incubating and sustaining political and economic freedom. In the Americas economically and politically free countries once governed or administered by Britain include: Canada, the US, Barbados, Jamaica, and Belize; in Asia Pacific: Hong Kong, Singapore, India, Australia and New Zealand; and in Europe: Ireland, and Germany. In stark contrast, France’s colonial legacy includes no free countries, much less any exemplars of freedom.

The African continent is a patchwork quilt of artificially drawn and imposed borders, established, for the most part, by European colonial powers. They force together different, often violently antagonistic, cultural, linguistic and religious groups, resulting in festering tension, outbreaks of horrific violence, and in the politically and militarily dominate group oppressing, brutalizing and harvesting economic rents from other factions. This has resulted in millions of Africans having been slaughtered by other Africans, while the West has simply watched.

By most fundamental metrics the quality of life in Africa is poor and getting worse.

Africa is the least free continent on the planet. The Heritage Foundation’s economic freedom index ranks not a single African economy as free. In most of the continent Africans cannot hold a transferable and enforceable title to their homes and land. This renders the most significant potential source of capital for the average African inert.

2005 Heritage Freedom Rankings Select African countries

  2005 Ranking 2005 Score
Libya 153 4.40
Zimbabwe 151 4.36
Nigeria 141 3.95
Guinea
Bissau		 138 3.85
Congo, Republic of 136 3.80
Sierra Leone 135 3.78
Ethiopia 133 3.73
Togo 131 3.68
Malawi 129 3.65
Benin 128 3.63
Cameroon 126 3.60
Rwanda 121 3.54
Niger 118 3.53
Equ
atorial Guinea		 118 3.53
Central African Republic 117 3.51
Algeria 114 3.49
Tanzania 109 3.41
Zambia 106 3.40
The
Gambia		 106 3.40
Gabon 106 3.40
Chad 103 3.38
Egypt 103 3.38
Lesotho 102 3.36
Mozambique 100 3.34
Ghana 98 3.30

*Note Angola, Burundi, Democratic Republic of the Congo and Sudan were not rated. Of 155 countries scored, North Korea ranked as the least economically free country on the planet.

Freedom House’s 2003 survey of political rights and civil liberties, ranks no country in Northern Africa as free, and, generously, categorizes 11 countries in sub-Saharan Africa as free.

Africans on average live their freedom-starved lives far fewer years than people of any other continent. Life expectancies in huge swaths of Africa are plummeting. Of the ten countries with the world’s lowest life expectancies all are African. Life expectancy in these countries is under 40 years, comparable to medieval England.

Rank Country 2000-2005 Life Expectancy
at Birth (in years)
1 Zambia 32.4
2 Zimbabwe 33.1
3 Sierra Leone 34.2
4 Swaziland 34.4
5 Lesotho 35.1
6 Malawi 37.5
7 Mozambique 38.1
8 Rwanda 39.3
9 Central African Republic 39.5
10 Botswana 39.7

*UN Department of Economic & Social Affairs, Population Division, 2004

In many of these countries Aids and other diseases ravage the population. Aids has not however reduced European and North American life expectancies to medieval levels.

Under Robert Mugabe’s rule life expectancy in Zimbabwe fell from 56 years in 1985 to 33 years in 2005. A boy born in Zambia between 2000 and 2005 has a life expectancy of 32.7 years, which is 7 years less than he would have had if he had been born half a century earlier.

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Africa is the world’s economic basket case. Between 1975 and 2000 African GDP per capita fell .6% per year. While most of the world enjoys economic growth, African economic and political systems destroy wealth.

The world’s most impoverished continent exports legitimately saved and ill-gotten capital because capital in Europe and North America is generally safe, welcome and generates reasonable returns. Perhaps even more damaging, Africa also exports its human capital to developed countries.

Few African countries have solid money, which is a requisite but not sufficient condition for vibrant and healthy economies. Twelve of the 25 countries with the world’s highest inflation rates are African.

    Infl
ation r
ate (%)
CONGO DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC Africa 358.0
ANGOLA Africa 110.0
SOMALIA Africa 100.0
ZIMBABWE Africa 100.0
TURKEY Europe 69.0
IRAQ Middle East 60.0
SURINAME South America 59.0
BELARUS Europe 46.1
ROMANIA Europe 34.5
TAJIKISTAN Asia 33.0
MALAWI Africa 28.6
CYPRUS Europe 27.6
GHANA Africa 25.0
UZBEKISTAN Asia 23.0
ECUADOR South America 22.0
RUSSIA Asia 21.9
ZAMBIA Africa 21.5
MYANMAR Asia 20.0
SIERRA LEONE Africa 15.0
ERITREA Africa 15.0
NIGERIA Africa 14.9
SRI LANKA Asia 14.2
HAITI North America 14.0
BURUNDI Africa 14.0
LIBYA Africa 13.6

Even more destructive of individuals’ efforts to create wealth and better lives for themselves and their families is endemic corruption. In Africa it is pervasive. The Daily Telegraph reported Nigeria’s rulers plundered over $200 billion. Ghanaian economist George Ayittey testified to the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee in September, 2004 that General Sani Abacha of Nigeria embezzled $20 billion; Ivory Coast President Felix Houphouet-Boigny $6 billion; Nigeria’s General Ibrahim Babangida $5 billion; Zaire’s President Mobutu Sese Seko $4 billion; and Mali’s President Mousa Traore $2 billion. The only thing exceptional about these government looters is the scale of their plunder. Most African leaders steal to the extent they can.

In the face of this continental-scale tragedy, the West indulges in feel-goodism calling for more billions collected from American and European tax payers to be poured down a continental rat hole. Since 1960 on an inflation adjusted basis Africa received more than $400 billion in aid, to no good effect.

Monetary aid is poison. It does not encourage more responsible government. Rather it enables dictatorial government elites to buy military and police support. Corrupt Africa elites enrich themselves and funnel Western tax money and charity into Swiss bank accounts and villas in southern France.

Democrats and Bush Republicans are all for more largesse for Africa, sometimes quibbling on the particulars of its putative use. Much like George Bush, Pat Robertson views the US government, which is to say the American taxpayer, as an enormous and bottomless piggybank with which to do good works. Robertson recently urged that the US to tithe 1% of total Federal spending to aid Africa. A deluge of aid will not fix what ails Africa.

Entertainment celebrities such as Bono and Bob Geldoff organize hyper-publicized extravaganzas, which enhance their moral self-esteem and charitable reputations, but do little, if anything, lasting and system atic to help Africa. More rock concerts and aid are not a solution.

What can be done that will have a meaningful, sustainable and systematic positive impact?

Socialist and kleptocratic despotisms have dominated the African political landscape since the post WW2 decolonization wave. They must be eliminated. It bears mention: African dictators do not of their own volition turn over the keys to honest, reform-minded liberal governments.

The state as a night watchman is a useful conceptual framework. The night watchman guards his charge and their property from threats, theft and assault. In Africa states perform many functions they shouldn’t, but not this most basic and essential function.

Good government serves a vital role in enabling civil society, economic and political liberty, and wealth creation. Good government maintains a framework within which individuals can pursue their fortunes as they see fit.

Governments’ paramount function is to ensure physical security against internal and external threats. Africa is racked by low-level wars, internecine sectarian and tribal violence, and rampant criminal violence.

Government must provide an environment in which the citizenry is physically safe from criminal violence. South Africa, which remains Africa’s most prosperous economy, has the highest level of criminal violence on the planet. Its reported per capita murder rate is 114 per 100,000, versus 1.72 per 100,000 in Canada in 2003 and 5.6 per 100,000 in 2002 in the U.S.

The culture of corruption that infects African government at every level must be utterly rooted out.

Bad guy regimes and endemic corruption must be forcefully and relentlessly vilified by the West, whether the villains are black, brown, or blond with blue eyes, Christian or Muslim.

Africans desperately need genuinely free markets and the supporting legal infrastructure, which treat capital, labor and entrepreneurs well, indeed royally. The establishment of the rule of law, property rights, and impartial contract enforceability is critical.

Most African countries should outsource monetary policy. Adopting the dollar, euro or pound as a national currency, or a currency board, would provide stable money enabling individuals and firms to transact, save and invest with greater certainty, facilitating wealth creation.

Lack of access to Western markets for products in which African producers enjoy comparative advantage such as sugar, cotton and textiles is a huge problem. Western import restrictions and tariffs stymie wealth creation in Africa. Moreover, they punish Western consumers with higher prices and, in a perverse negative cycle, pressure for higher taxes to fund aid to help Africans impoverished by American and European trade barriers.

American and European markets should be unilaterally opened to Africa goods, with protective regimes for Western producers being discarded. This would benefit American and European consumers and African businesses, making Africa, America and Europe wealthier.

Regime change happens with regularity in Africa. For the lucky deposed despots, this means a life of luxury in exile in southern France, for the not so lucky, death. Normally the new gang overthrows the old to become the country’s new chief thieves. Meaningful regime change and reform inAfrica however is not likely absent outside intervention.

The San Francisco Bay Area, Boston and Vermont are full of bumper stickers with pious admonitions such as “War is never the answer.” Nonsense! Force and war are very often the most efficacious and morally correct answer. There are few African countries where five thousand British or American troops couldn’t quickly send the despots packing.

A couple small countries with egregiously revolting regimes could be forcibly transformed into Hong Kong style colonies. Beneficent intervention targets should be selected to maximize the chance of success and the political palatability in the U.S. They should be small enough to be manageable, ruling out countries such as Egypt and Nigeria. They should also be manifestly repugnant regimes. And, arguably, a significant portion of the population should not be fanatical Mohammedans, at least not without a native Atatürk type collaborating in the enterprise.

Several such beneficent interventions might trigger a freedom-and- prosperity-domino effect.

In 2000 Britain’s modest unilateral intervention in Sierra Leone with 1500 troops took control of the government. It organized combating rebels and in 2003 turned over control to the U.N., which in 2004, in turn, passed control to Sierra Leonean forces. Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe is a basket case by any standard. Three to four million Zimbabweans have fled the country. Zimbabweans today are reaping the grim harvest sown a quarter of a century ago by progressive Western elites’ high-minded policies. The paper of record for America’s progressive elites the New York Times in an August 23, 1980 editorial gushed “Mr. Mugabe has quickly established himself as an African statesman of the first rank.” They further applauded Mugabe’s standing “firmly by the rule of law” and urged the US to pony up more aid “to assure Mr. Mugabe’s success.” In a January 20, 1981 editorial the New York Times hailed Zimbabwe as a model that “can still instruct most of its neighbors in the democratic norms.” Wishing it was so does not make it so. This horribly and patently false message relentlessly pounded home by elite Western media tom toms influenced British and American policy with horrendous, bloody and utterly tragic consequences for Africans.

Zimbabwe would be an eminently logical target for Western-imposed regime change. In 2007 former Zimbabwean archbishop Pius Ncube called for foreign intervention to overthrow Mugabe. A Zimbabwe with the pound as a currency, British troops, courts and civil servants, low flat taxes, and an open door to investment, trade and entrepreneurs, would be an economic dynamo and a lighthouse for the continent. African countries lucky enough to have Hong Kong style colonial regimes imposed would rather swiftly become oases of economic growth and freedom, and magnets for immigration, for Africans, Westerners, Asians, et al.

The usual suspects, the same sanctimonious elites who were Mugabe cheerleaders when he was in the bush and apologists for his regime for years, would howl in protest. Africans however would vote en masse with their feet and migrate to islands of liberty, political stability and opportunity, for their families, administered, at least for a while, by Western civil servants and soldiers.

The symptoms and underlying causes of Africa’s malaise are widely understood. Nevertheless for almost half a century, in addressing the African malaise the West has stubbornly indulged in counter productive feel-goodism. Now, acknowledging the worsening human tragedy Western leaders, myopically, and a bit piously, call for more of the same. This is deceptive feel-good fodder for the casually concerned. For political, media, religious and business leaders paying attention, this is a cynical hamster-wheel prescription. This Western folly consigns hundreds of millions of Africans to generations more of shortened, impoverished and less free lives, and unrealized dreams.

Africa needs tough love from the West, not more charity. Corrupt despotic regimes must be changed and the institutional plumbing of economic and political freedom installed, forcibly in at least a few of the worst cases. Does the West have the confidence, will and interest in pursuing such a course? Probably not.

Africa
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