This time around, as we approach what’s likely to be the most important presidential election at least since 1864 [bold mine-DL], Republicans cannot afford to nominate anyone other than their best and brightest — and the best and brightest can’t afford to sit it out. The fate of Obamacare, and more broadly of limited government and liberty, too clearly hangs in the balance.

Americans deserve to have 2012 feature Paul Ryan versus Barack Obama, locked in a battle for the future — and the soul — of the country. ~Jeffrey Anderson

Apparently, Americans also deserve to have a second Obama term, because this is what would be the result of such a contest. Calls for Paul Ryan to run for President have lately had two main features: they emphasize that the upcoming election is one of the most important in all of American history, and they then propose that the right way to seize this opportunity is to promote the candidacy of a member of the House of Representatives closely associated with deeply unpopular Medicare reform. Ryan would be almost certain to lose what his fans regard as a pivotal election that will define the future of the country.

Yes, it is possible that economic woes could drag down the incumbent so badly that he might even lose to Ryan, but it would be unprecedented and staggering if a five-term House member ousted the sitting President. If you believe as Ryan enthusiasts do that the outcome of the 2012 election is critically important for the fate of liberty and the soul of America, it is trulycrazy to demand that the GOP rally behind Ryan, but this is what keeps happening. One of the main themes that Republicans may be able to use in the 2012 election is the need for executive experience, and presumably they will attack Obama for not having had any executive experience before being elected to the Presidency. That attack would become useless if Ryan somehow became the nominee.

To believe that Paul Ryan is the answer, one has to believe that a majority is willing to embrace a candidate proposing major alterations to entitlements, and one must also believe that a majority will accept Ryan in this role despite his record of fiscal irresponsibility. Ryan is really one of the worse messengers Republicans could have if they want to reinvent themselves as the party of fiscal responsibility, because he voted for the wars, tax cuts, and entitlement expansions that have contributed so greatly to the federal debt. A presidential campaign would bring all of that to the forefront. That would do Ryan and his budget proposals no favors, and it would allow Obama to limp to re-election as crucial swing states recoil from Ryan’s plans for entitlements.

The Wall Street Journal editors insist that the U.S. sell Taiwan advanced F-16s:

The U.S. is bound under the Taiwan Relations Act to sell Taiwan the weapons it needs to defend itself. And there is no doubt that the advanced F-16s requested by Taipei are badly needed. The Chinese military budget has grown nearly 70% over the last five years, and Taiwan is a main target. The island has older F-16s that it bought in 1992, but these are no longer sufficient to maintain air superiority in case of a Chinese attack.

Back in July, Peter Lee of Asia Timesspoke with David Shlapak, the author of a RAND study that found that the additional F-16s would make no meaningful difference:

Considering that the current F-16 purchase request would do little more than replace the Reagan-era F5Es, Shlapak commented:

It is difficult to see how a changeout of fighter aircraft can dramatically improve the situation.

An F-16 purchase would make little difference in the all-out war scenario. It would be useful primarily as a demonstration of sustained American resolve to support Taiwan despite the disadvantageous shift of the balance of power in the strait; maintain the ROCAF as a force to be reckoned with; and perhaps play a significant role in a limited conflict – for instance, a scenario in which the PRC doesn’t mount a full-scale attack, but tries to get Taiwan to fold through a blockade.

The WSJ editors’ assessment of the military value of the F-16 sale appears to be badly mistaken. They write:

Preventing the Taiwanese military from catching up with the mainland now could put a future U.S. president in a difficult position. In the case of an attack, he would face the awful decision of whether to sacrifice American lives to defend the island and risk a broader war with China. On the other hand, if the U.S. allowed Taiwan to be swallowed up, American allies everywhere would conclude that U.S. security promises are meaningless.

The F-16s would make this choice less likely, since they would provide Taiwan with the ability to defend itself long enough for the U.S. to resupply it with arms without getting directly involved in the fighting, much as it did for Israel in the 1973 Yom Kippur War.

I’ll just quote from this DefenseTech post again:

Actually, RAND did the math on this one in a report last year, in typical RAND style, using sophisticated modeling to simulate a Chinese invasion of Taiwan in the 2010–2015 timeframe. RAND’s conclusion was that the addition of a few dozen upgraded F-16s would have little to no impact on the cross-strait balance. In fact, RAND found that in the event of a Chinese attack, “the air war for Taiwan could essentially be over before much of the Blue air force has even fired a shot.”

If the F-16s will make no meaningful difference in the event of a Chinese attack, selling them to Taiwan is mostly a symbolic gesture.

P.S. Previous posts on the proposed sale can be found here and here.

Camp Ashraf in Iraq belongs to the terrorist group Mujahidin-e Khalq (MEK), and recently the plight of the inhabitants of the camp has been used as a smokescreen to advance the argument to take the group off of the foreign terrorist organization list. Barbara Slavin relates the main issues concerning the camp:

American diplomats have been trying to arrange new homes for the camp residents but have been hampered by the fact that their leaders refuse to accept refugee status.

Maziar Bahari, an Iranian-Canadian journalist imprisoned in Iran after disputed 2009 presidential elections, said the MEK needs to keep the camp to maintain control of its foot-soldiers. He said that US officials feared a “Jonestown in Ashraf” if attempts were made to remove camp residents by force. He was referring to the mass suicide in Guyana in 1978 of hundreds of fanatical followers of a self-styled prophet, Jim Jones.

Bahari, speaking at a conference in Washington on Thursday sponsored by the National Iranian American Council, a non-partisan group that advocates for Iranian Americans and opposes the MEK, expressed sympathy for MEK members but said it would be a mistake to take the group off the State Department list at this time.

Jasmin Ramsey wrote a long article on the push to de-list the MEK, and she explains why it is wrong to link the issues of de-listing with the treatment of the inhabitants of Camp Ashraf:

However, even the Bush administration had ignored neoconservative entreaties to delist the MEK, which would make it strange for Obama to adopt a position that his predecessor found too risky. The humanitarian concerns at Camp Ashraf are legitimate, but they could be resolved through the assistance of organisations like the ICRC and UNHCR. To conflate this issue with the decidedly political question of delisting may only exacerbate the already fragile US-Iran relations.

Nobody expects Chile to follow up its words with actions. Sometimes, though, you’ve just got to take a stand in much the way that an editorialist might. But precisely because the United States has a lot of military assets at our disposal that clearly aren’t needed to repel a Canadian invasion, it’s difficult to find a middle ground between turning a blind eye to atrocities and calls for military intervention. ~Matt Yglesias

The question that presents itself is this: why does Chile hate freedom?

In fact, it is not that difficult for Americans to find a middle ground “between turning a blind eye to atrocities and calls for military intervention.” We find that middle ground all the time. Sometimes it takes the form of supporting sanctions that are often useless or counterproductive, and sometimes it takes the form of a rebuke in private when the government is otherwise cooperative on matters of security. Eric Martin is right that this is one of the first steps towards armed confrontation, but we are generally satisfied to stop at sanctions when the state is the client of another major power (e.g., Burma, North Korea) or too marginal to warrant additional attention. What is difficult is keeping the government from acceding to the wishes of a vocal minority that insists on frequently using the military to respond to repressive tactics or internal conflicts in other countries.

Where Yglesias goes wrong here is in attributing this mostly to excess military capacity. The excess military capacity accounts for why the impulse to “do something” does not result in greater disasters than it has, but it does not explain why the government yields to this impulse as often as it does. The U.S. doesn’t just intervene in so many places because it can, but because a substantial part of its political class wants to do so and considers not doing so to be wrong. Yglesias greatly underestimates the importance of ideology and specifically the belief that the nation has a mission and a responsibility to the rest of the world. The U.S. military could be reduced to a tenth of its current size, but until we rid ourselves of the idea that the internal conflicts of other countries are legitimately our concern our government will keep looking for and finding ways to intervene. The British government’s behavior in the last year is instructive. Cameron’s government engaged in deep austerity cuts in its military budget. Given British deficits, this was an understandable move provided that they didn’t intend to keep launching major military expeditions. Unfortunately, Cameron and many of his Cabinet ministers continued to believe that Britain had to “punch above its weight” after having put Britain on a diet, and some of them were ideologically committed to the idea that Britain must intervene for humanitarian and democracy-promoting reasons.

Apparently, Rick Perry isn’t an “isolationist” or even a “near-isolationist.” In other news, I have been reliably informed that Perry is neither a manticore nor a unicorn. Isolationists don’t exist in today’s America, and many, if not all, of those labeled isolationists in the past were no such thing. As Mark Krikorian points out, the label is simply inaccurate:

In fact, I’m not sure I’d even classify Ron Paul as an isolationist, though you can make an argument for it in his case given his ideological commitment to non-interventionism as dogma rather than a pragmatic choice that could change with changed circumstances.

It’s not clear to me that Ron Paul’s commitment to non-interventionism should be described as dogmatic. If it is, one might say the same of any foreign policy tradition. Any one of them has the potential to become a rigid dogma that is accepted uncritically and applied without regard to present circumstances or the actual needs of the country. What we can say about non-interventionism at present is that it is not as inflexible as a position that requires its adherents to recite mantras about “the unique and exceptional role that the U.S. plays in the world, and the need for U.S. strength and leadership,” as Katrina Trinko’s source described Perry’s cookie-cutter views. Indeed, if anyone is enforcing a foreign policy tradition as if it were the equivalent of religious teaching, it would have to be those flinging the epithet “isolationist” with the accusatory tone of the heresy-hunter.

Krikorian concludes by saying that we should all “skip the name-calling,” which would be a fine idea, but the name-calling is an important part of perpetuating the myth of isolationism as a way of shutting down debate before it can go very far.

Dan Drezner explains why we should care about this gossipy Politico story* about Jon Huntsman’s campaign chaos:

First, I’d expect decent odds that Huntsman would be the secretary of state in any incoming GOP administration (quick, name me an alternate candidate with sufficient gravitas). Even if he’s a sideshow to the current GOP nomination, he wouldn’t be if a Republican won in 2012.

Let me stop him right there. There are quite a few alternative candidates. The first name that springs to mind is Richard Lugar. If the next Republican President thought that Lugar was too much of a realist and too close to Obama, there would have to be some retiring Senators or former Bush administration officials who would be much higher on the list than Huntsman. I’m not saying this because Huntsman would be a bad choice for Secretary of State. Quite the opposite. I just don’t see how someone goes from serving in the Obama administration to being the Secretary of State for a Republican President who will have been running as someone far more hawkish and aggressive than Obama. Assuming the Republican nominee wins next year, the main obstacle to Huntsman’s receiving the nomination for State would be that his foreign policy views are generally much more sensible than the views of any of the likely nominees.

If Romney is the nominee, as I expect he will be, and he somehow manages to win, Huntsman’s chances are even worse, because the two have had a long-running and increasingly bitter rivalry. Huntsman’s presidential campaign has been just the latest installment in their feud. Huntsman’s campaign strategy is in direct competition with Romney’s in New Hampshire and South Carolina, and he seems to be targeting moderate Republican voters that Romney will need to head off a challenge from the right. As long as Huntsman’s candidacy remains marginal, this won’t undermine Romney very much, but it is hardly going to win Huntsman any favors.

* Is there any other kind?

An Iranian bomb is likely to unleash the most divisive partisan discord in this country since the 1949 debate about who lost China. In the end, neither the turbulent order of the Middle East nor the partisan politics of Washington can afford an Islamic Republic armed with nuclear weapons. ~Ray Takeyh

The first thing to say about this is that the debate over “who lost China” was a phenomenally stupid one. The correct answer was that the Nationalists lost China, and this wasn’t something that U.S. policymakers were in any realistic position to prevent. Since WWII, there have been many events around the world that partisan opponents of a given administration have used as ammunition for their attacks, and the refrain is always the same, “How could President [fill in the blank] have let this happen?” This is a politically useful tactic, but it vastly exaggerates what any President is able to control. Of course, when the government enjoys global preeminence and takes that preeminence as license to dictate terms to weaker states, it becomes hard for the head of that government to admit that there are things that this government cannot effectively influence or stop. This week, Obama is being blamed for deaths in Syria for which he has no responsibility whatever, because he has “failed” to do enough to prevent them, which takes for granted that there is something that could have been done that would have prevented them. In the unlikely event that the Iranian government tests a nuclear weapon in the next few years, there will certainly be a great deal of finger-pointing, because most elected members of both parties have been opposed to Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons, and administrations of both parties could be unfairly blamed for having “failed” to prevent it.

The more that everyone exaggerates and hypes the significance of this development beforehand, the worse the political fight will be later. Recognizing that an Iranian bomb isn’t a disaster the world cannot afford is a good place to start. This will not only allow for more sober responses in the event that Iran acquires one, but it may allow the U.S. and its allies to avoid doing the very things that will prompt Iran to decide to build one.

Patrick Disney had a valuable article the other day that should force us to think more critically about what we think we know of Iran’s nuclear program. For one, the Iranian government has probably not yet decided on whether to develop nuclear weapons:

While there is no way to know for sure, many Iran experts agree that Iran most likely does not have a nuclear weapon because there is as yet no consensus in the political leadership in favor of weaponization. This is good news, because without such consensus, there can be no Iranian weapons program.

Instead of treating an Iranian bomb as something that Tehran is desperately seeking and must be prevented from having, a far more constructive approach would be to give Iran as few reasons as possible for wanting to develop these weapons. If there is no internal consensus in the Iranian government on this question, don’t provide it with an excuse to forge that consensus. Almost everyone involved in this debate in the West treats Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons as a given, but it is this assumption of inevitability that produces policies that will ensure that something that may well be avoidable becomes inevitable.

The most troubling aspect of Obama’s performance has been his frigidness, exacerbated by indecision, when it comes to human freedom – the major issue of the day, and of the post-Cold War world. For a man supposed to embody the triumph of an African-American community long denied its freedom at home, Obama has been unusually reluctant to employ American power – military, ideological, and diplomatic – to assist those abroad denied their freedom. Whether it was his response to the demonstrations in Iran against the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, or the revolts in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen Syria, or even Libya, where the U.S. is involved in the NATO campaign, the president has been evasive and hypocritical, incapable of transcending his innate analytical detachment to seize the high emotions of the moment and shape them to his benefit. ~Michael Young

There are good reasons to find Obama’s responses to the various uprisings to be lacking, but his supposed reluctance “to assist those abroad denied their freedom” is not one of them. What could Obama have done that would have assisted the Green movement? Never mind that the Green movement did not want outside help. What could Obama have done that he failed to do in 2009? I suppose he could have given another one of his pointless speeches to declare the importance of “universal rights,” which simply would have underscored how little Washington could do to help. It’s true that the administration did not hasten to align itself with Tunisian protesters, but incredibly the administration’s position was that it was “not taking sides,” which was almost as good as writing off Ben Ali. If the administration wasn’t going to cheer on the protesters, it wasn’t going to give Ben Ali any political cover.

Egypt was a bit more complicated, and the administration was a bit more confused in its response, but by any measure the speed with which the administration decided to drop an ally of thirty years in response to protester demands was remarkable. By comparison, it took Reagan years to give up on Marcos when he was confronted by his opposition, and Bush stuck by Musharraf for years when he didn’t need to do so. The reality that the Egyptian military was willing to sacrifice Mubarak to preserve their regime suggests that Mubarak might have been removed with or without U.S. support. As far as Egyptian freedom is concerned, removing Mubarak and replacing him with a military government has probably been a change for the worse, but this was the inevitable result of siding with the demands of the protesters, which is finally what the administration did.

If removing Mubarak has not ushered in the political order that the protesters desire, that has more to do with the inherent weakness of Egyptian liberalism than it does with the administration’s reluctance to help. Indeed, direct support is not always all that helpful. Contrary to the pious wishes of democratists in the West, foreign support really can hurt local democrats. When some Egyptian protest groups have been linked to foreign funding and training in news reports, this has served to discredit them in the eyes of their countrymen, and they have had to deny having any such links.

Compared to previous administrations, these moves marked Obama as unusually reluctant to back up allied authoritarian governments confronted by popular protests. One can agree or disagree with those decisions, but it is important to describe correctly what happened. Certainly, the response to protests and crackdowns in Bahrain and Yemen was muted or non-existent, but it would be unreasonable to expect much more than that. At this point, the administration has gone so far as to tell Saleh he should resign, which Saleh has dutifully ignored. The Syrian case is supposedly the “easiest” for deciding how to respond, but once again the question of what the administration can actually do arises. Besides using the presidential magic wand, there is not all that much constructive that the administration can do. As for a reluctance to use military power, Young conveniently ignores that the U.S. was already engaged in two wars at the start of this year. In spite of that, and in spite of the fact that the U.S. had nothing at stake in Libya, the U.S. facilitated and participated in yet another military intervention. If U.S. participation has been limited and half-hearted, this is an indirect acknowledgment that new adventures in militarized democracy promotion have virtually no support at home.

Comparisons with Carter are usually more misleading than they are instructive, but if there is one thing Obama and Carter have in common it is that most of their ideological critics have deliberately ignored their relatively greater willingness to put support for “universal rights” in other countries ahead of national interests* and bizarrely treat their administrations as more favorably inclined toward dictatorships than others.

* If it isn’t obvious, I consider this to be one of the main flaws of the Carter administration.

The Financial Times had a good story from last Friday on the Mujahidin-e Khalq’s payments to former officials and politicians in the U.S. to get them to speak on behalf of the terrorist group:

An Iranian exile group is spending millions of dollars in a lobbying effort to be removed from the US’s list of foreign terrorist organisations, recruiting a group of US national security luminaries to be its advocates.

Dozens of former officials across the political spectrum – from conservative John Bolton to liberal Howard Dean – have been paid tens of thousands of dollars to speak at events organised by supporters of the Mujahedin-e-Khalq, or People’s Mujahedin, in the US, the Financial Times has learnt.

The response from some of the people tied to these MEK payments is a curious one. Some of them seem to think that it is all right to be paid to speak on behalf of the MEK because they genuinely support the group, as it that made everything all right. Here is one example:

None would disclose how much they had been paid but Ed Rendell, the former Pennsylvania governor, said he received $20,000 for an 11-minute speech. “But even if I was paid $50,000, I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t believe in it,” he said.

Is it supposed to be a consolation that the people the MEK has been paying aren’t just advocating on behalf of a listed terrorist group for the money? It seems to me that it is far worse that they “believe in” the MEK.

Another FT story from Friday explains that the MEK’s funding has allowed it to exaggerate its importance as an anti-regime group:

“Because of this campaign, they have been able to delude many into thinking that it is a rather powerful opposition organisation, which it is not,” said Wayne White, a former Middle East intelligence official in the State Department.

P.S. Paul Pillar commented last week on the Treasury Department’s announcement and related it to the MEK lobbying push:

The Treasury announcement also does not address Iranian motives in fooling around with al-Qaeda, notwithstanding the sharply different interests and objectives between the regime and the group. The motives have to do with shared antagonism from the United States. In particular, they have to do with the United States’ own fooling around with the terrorist group-cum-cult known as the Mujahedin-e Khalq, which some in the United States foolishly believe should be accepted as a legitimate actor because it opposes the Iranian regime. Tehran is in effect saying, “If you are going to flirt with a terrorist group that is of particular concern to us, we will flirt with a terrorist group that is of particular concern to you.” It is important to remember this amid the renewed push, backed by vigorous lobbying on Capitol Hill and the paying of fat fees to notables who will speak on the MEK’s behalf, to get the group off the U.S. list of foreign terrorist organizations. If delisting were to occur, the harmful effects would include substantial damage to the pro-democracy movement in Iran. An additional effect would be to increase the incentive for Tehran to flirt even more with Sunni terrorists including al-Qaeda types, to the point that some actual secret deals might be struck.