Presidential Speech-Making: A Flashback to President Obama's 2014 State of the Union Address

{While words don't necessarily translate into action, a president's words nonetheless reveals a great deal about how they communicate with and see the world, as well as their policy goals. In an age of 140-character policy announcements and 24-hour media, this week we take a look back at President Obama's 2014 State of the Union address to highlight the differences (and the inherent, possibly surprising similarities) in how presidents choose to communicate. For instance, note the emphasis on emotional appeals and appeals to "American values." Sound familiar? It's a tactic most presidents have used to bolster their more rational arguments and  to persuade the audience of the importance of their vision for America. However, one may feel that they more saturated with emotional appeals now in 2018 than in the past.}


President Obama’s State of the Union address earlier this year revealed the President’s policy agenda. Throughout his speech, he uses a multitude of methods to persuade the public and Congress to act on the issues he gave the most priority to. From strategy that paints his Republican opponents as not working for the American people to statistics regarding the economy, touching stories about the lives of everyday Americans, and many more. It remains to be seen if the pressures he applied to Congress, other political actors and the public will yield the results he desired. Many of the issues he highlighted in his speech fall under three main categories: the economy, education investment, and foreign policy.

The economy, a top priority issue for many Americans and a common theme underlying his speech, is the first topic the President addresses. First, he credits the success of the economic turnaround to his bailout of the automobile companies with the authority of numbers painting the picture of the recovery, which he also uses to justify further programs he wishes to initiate, like investment in infrastructure (including alternative energy infrastructure investments that would save “$4 billion a year” from going to the fossil fuel industry) and the raising of the minimum wage to $10.10 per hour. Throughout the speech, he seems to tie a lot of policy issues into the improvement of the economy, including further proposals to reform the tax code, bills to address the growing income equality of the middle class and the rich, while working to keep the budget deficit under control. He also makes a pitch for the Affordable Care Act. The President warns that without further bipartisan action on reforms to things like the housing market and tax code, another economic recession could really hurt American families. In effect, he puts a lot of pressure on Congress to set aside the partisanship (which he references when he mentions the government shutdown) and work with him on these policy issues, while giving emotional appeals to the American Dream and equality of opportunity. At one point, he then jabs at Congress by saying, “So get those bills to my desk. Put more Americans back to work.”

Likewise, further into his speech concerning educational reform programs that he would like to see, he again uses language that acknowledges the frustrations that the economic recovery and subsequent events have instilled in many Americans. More importantly, he tells Americans not to lose faith in the American Dream, another appeal to values, and launches right away into proposals that would attempt to address education inequality, provide more student aid for those going to college, and get students early on to be interested in science, engineering, and mathematics. The latter proposal, the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics curriculum (STEM) goes hand in hand with a revamped high quality preschool program he would like to see expanded. President Obama believes that investment in our nation’s children through these policies will help the economy thrive in the long run, create more jobs, and put America ahead of competing countries like China and India. He claims that the extra money saved from enacting these policies can go towards the infrastructure projects he mentioned earlier. In the same way, he puts the onus on Congress primarily, while subtly pressuring the industries and philanthropist organizations themselves to form closer partnerships with him on the interrelated areas of education and the economy. Overall, a common theme I noted besides the appeals to the American Dream, is that he wants to invest in the future of America, through all these proposals, and that Congress is standing in the way of further American innovation.

Later in his speech, he thanks all the American service members for their sacrifices, while painting an optimistic picture of the future when he mentions that around 60,000 service members are home from Iraq and Afghanistan. Ultimately, this ties in to his point, which he emphasizes many times in this section of the address: there are other ways to fight America’s enemies overseas (e.g. Al Qaida) in Syria, Yemen, Mali, Somalia and Iraq besides committing ground troops. President Obama alludes to his foreign policy in advocating limited, specifically targeted measures, such as airstrikes in Syria, while partnering closely with NATO. The previous hints that he is listening to American fears about another draining campaign and is shifting the burden for further military action onto NATO, while trying to get more attention to a subtler kind of terrorism at home in cyber-attacks. Despite all of these emerging threats, the President expressed confidence in fighting more battles through diplomacy and cites examples of this in action, such as with Iran and its nuclear program, the Israel and Palestinian negotiations, the drawing-down of Syria’s chemical weapons stash, and even humanitarian democracy building. Again, he arouses a strong sense of patriotism as a rallying force for Americans to support the troops coming home to civilian life.

He concludes his address with a story concerning an Army Ranger, Cory Remsburg, who nearly was killed by an IED in Afghanistan. Personifying the American determination in the face of hardship, Cory rebounded from his injuries, parallel to the idea that America, like Cory, is capable of rebounding and thriving against all odds.

In conclusion, President Obama makes key policy pitches in the areas of the economy, education, and foreign policy. He uses subtle, loaded language to pressure groups like Congress and to convey that he is always listening to the American people. Meanwhile he instills in Americans a sense of patriotism with a constant reminder of the principle of equal opportunity that constitutes America’s foundation. His reliance on emotional appeals over numbers and facts is powerful and effective in emphasizing American triumphs while instilling in his audience his vision for a future in which America stands as an example for the rest of the world in constant innovation. However, only time will tell if his policy-pushing strategy succeeded and will yield legislation he favors.

Works Cited:

White House Office of the Press Secretary. (2014, January 28). President Barack Obama's State of the Union Address. Retrieved September 28, 2014, from https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2014/01/28/president-barack-obamas-state-union-address.

Book Review: Gregg Easterbrook's "It's Better Than It Looks"

Is the world actually more better off than the dumpster fire the news and social media would have us believe? Journalist and an American Academy of Arts and Science academic Gregg Easterbrook argues that we should be more optimistic rather than pessimistic about the state of affairs today. In his latest work It's Better Than It Looks: Reasons for Optimism in an Age of Fear, he posits that major indicators in environmental and human health, pollution, conflict and democracy today are overall positive and continuously improving despite serious challenges humanity faces, such as the looming menaces of potential nuclear war and climate change.

Making a case against what Easterbrook terms the increasingly toxic "declinism" of our times, the collective anxiety that the world is in a tailspin, Part 1 first guides readers through the major issues of our time that many fear could be a potential avenue for the end of civilization: agriculture, health, the economy, conflict, technology and democracy (Easterbrook, 2018, p. 210). One by one, Easterbrook makes a case for why such scenarios of apocalypse are unlikely to occur. Starting with agriculture, Easterbrook shows how fossil-fueled Green Revolution technologies like improved fertilizers and irrigation techniques along with genetically engineered crops have "decoupled crop production from acreage," meaning that feeding a projected 12 billion people by 2100 is possible because less land is now needed to produce more food (Easterbrook, 2018, p. 136). In other words, we have enough food to feed ourselves and more. Coupled with reducing food waste and improvements in food distribution, the world can adequately provide for the growing human family.

Most importantly, because food production and overall land use are the cornerstones of civilization, Easterbrook sees the fruits of the Green Revolution as critically important in other important positive trends: reduced conflicts over land as controlling vast swaths of acreage in the past meant wealth and a means to feed one's population; the decline of malnutrition, especially in the developing world; the dramatic reduction in extreme poverty (as of 2015, 10% of the global population still lives in destitution); increased educational prospects; improving lifespans; and overall betterment of living conditions across the board (Easterbrook, 2018, p. 19). The vehicle driving the collective uplifting of the world to Easterbrook is primarily that of market forces, seeing it as the better way to incentivize production and provision of goods and services necessary to modern society, like food, improved medicines, vaccines that help to eradicate or ameliorate the plagues of the past that are communicative diseases (and may also help the spread of democracy in its tendency to reward change, new ideas, and innovation while providing the necessary production base for the defense of free society). This holds true for worrying trends of violence (which have shifted largely from inter-state to intra-state conflicts), environmental problems like climate change and increased resource consumption (i.e. aiding in the more efficient use of resources as populations expand), and technology (for example, the market trend towards ever-safer and more fuel-efficient vehicles and safer and less resource-intensive methods of production).

But isn't laissez-faire economics by itself not a cure-all for society's ills? I had that doubt throughout the book. Easterbrook acknowledges that market failures like increased income inequality, monopolies, and other negative outputs like greenhouse gas pollution still happen and that the system isn't perfect, necessitating some regulation to help guide the world to prosperity and more open, economically-interdependent societies. Nevertheless, I felt in Part 1 that Easterbrook was putting too much stock in the latter, while seeming to gloss over many of the thorny issues that remain today (income inequality, climate change) in favor of seeing civilization as always getting better. In other words, yes, the world isn't so bad and many indices of wellbeing are up and continue to go up, but that doesn't make the remaining issues that less harmful to the people that suffer from them, even if they are as Easterbrook asserts, temporary blips in the upward arc of civilization.

In Part 2, Easterbrook redeems himself on the latter somewhat where he explains why declinism, the opposite of putting on rosy glasses and viewing the world, has become so prevalent and puts forward more detailed policy prescriptions for the challenges raised in Part 1. News flash: this current age of pessimism has come before, but has been augmented by the spread of social media (which can be a great way to spread incorrect and unverifiable information as fact); a tendency of the media to highlight the rare instances of societal downsides; educational trends towards atoning for the past sins of slavery, imperialism and other forms of slaughter and exploitation by emphasizing those past failures without highlighting at the same time the positives of society; increased distrust of a distant Washington; and the twisting of minority group acknowledgement into the claiming by those minorities and co-option of by threatened majorities the "coveted status of victimhood" that can easily turn from being about a legitimate process of achieving reparations to dangerous us-versus-them group-blaming (Easterbrook, 2018, p. 204). Then, this latter collective pessimism can make it that more difficult for people to see the solutions for challenges like climate change, nuclear weapons and income inequality, which to Easterbrook are everything from market-based systems of carbon trading to a Universal Basic Income (UBI), to a heavier emphasis on diplomatic processes like the creation and enforcement of international and bilateral treaties.

Overall, while I did not agree with all of the potential reforms suggested by Easterbrook in It's Better Than It Looks, such as a heavy reliance on a carbon-trading system to reduce greenhouse gas emissions without other regulations or enforcement measures, and his rosy view of the magic of market forces (of course, somewhat reined in by regulative reforms, but still somewhat untethered), he makes an overall good point that we all need to take a collective deep breath. Yes, the spread of problems we have facing us today are daunting, but not as illusorily daunting as the constant barrage of negative news and social media accounts would have us believe. Of course, this overcoming of these surmountable, yet intimidating obstacles is possible through (again) a collective rolling-up-of-sleeves and carrying out of plausible reforms that can create the solutions to our problems, or what Franklin Roosevelt termed "great opportunities disguised as insoluble problems" (Easterbrook, 2018, p. 281).

Yes, that quote that Easterbrook leaves the reader with is maddeningly broad and seems like a mere platitude, but it makes sense: the problems we face are complex and require equally complex and creative solutions. But first, we all need to stop an unnecessary degree of collective panic and choose to view the world and its betterment as something worth continuing to fight for.


Works Cited:

Easterbrook, Gregg (2018). It's Better Than It Looks: Reasons For Optimism In An Age of Fear. New York: PublicAffairs.

Book Review: Michio Kaku's "The Future of Humanity"

There are some days in which it is hard for people to envision a positive future, let alone a sustainable one at all and we stop moving forward or caring. That's why it's important to read books that remind us of the continuing value of what humanity could be and how we could possibly get there from our present moment. Michio Kaku's 2018 book The Future of Humanity: Terraforming Mars, Interstellar Travel, Immortality, and Our Destiny Beyond Earth to me is one of those books that inspires in that very important way. In The Future of Humanity, the professor of theoretical physics lays out for the general reader his optimism for humanity's interstellar future in logical steps, describing how humanity could use continuously improving technologies to leapfrog first to the moon, Mars, and beyond.

While it seems like in the present moment that a multiplanetary, even galactic civilization is impossible science fiction fantasy, Kaku makes a good case for why it can and could be otherwise. Like any good author, he early on gives us context on our present moment and how we arrived at that point, in order to build a case for how we could progress even further forward. In the introductory chapters, he shows how humanity got to where it is today by progressing through various "waves" of scientific and technological development, starting in the 19th century with the development of theories surrounding mechanics and thermodynamics that enabled the Industrial Revolution (Kaku, 2018, p.12). Moving through the 20th century, scientists discovered the laws of electricity and magnetism, allowing electrical devices to become the norm and allowing us to develop the first space programs. Currently, Kaku sees us in the third wave of the Internet, supercomputer and highly developed forms of telecommunications underwritten by advances involving the transistor and laser. What is next for humanity?

Kaku here intertwines popular culture and science fiction and utilizes it to better envision our possible futures. In the first part of The Future of Humanity, Kaku sees humanity as first colonizing our solar system before moving even further out into the stars and galaxy by utilizing technologies of the fourth wave, or the infant technologies of the present moment seen in artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, and biotechnologies. Assuming technological progress continues at the rapid pace it has to the present, Kaku believes these technologies should be ready for us by the next century and will able to help us to build a moon base and terraform Mars through self-replicating, autonomous robots and specially engineered crops and building materials to create our first settlements and waystations to the stars (such as on Jupiter and the asteroids as well). Even farther into the future, Kaku sees fifth wave technologies (akin to those in most science fiction novels and movies, like Star Trek) like antimatter engines, nanoships, laser sails, and ramjet fusion machines further aiding our expansion into the galaxy at large for our descendants, who may have at this point have built starships that are equipped to travel swiftly and protect their perhaps genetically-engineered travelers.

While most of these latter projects and technologies have barely emerged from the enterprising minds of science fiction writers, scientists, and even entrepreneurs onto drawing boards and into laboratories at NASA or private companies like SpaceX, Kaku shows readers how present trends bode well for our continued development: the declining cost of sending materials into space (partially due to private companies incentivized to profit from potential moon bases, asteroid mining and space tourism by developing cheaper and easier modes of travel that involve less fuel and travel time without compromising safety too much), the potential of ultra-strong carbon nanotubes as building materials for a space elevator and bases and for robotic assembly of machines in orbit, and an emerging space race among nations that has begun to renew interest in space programs. (For example, Kaku cites President Trump's announcement that he has asked NASA to accelerate the current time-table for putting American astronauts on Mars and China is looking past launching satellites to its own landing on the moon or Mars, with national pride at stake as much as scientific advancement.)

But...there are of course obstacles to humanity's progression from a uniplanetary to a multiplanetary and galactic species: the pesky laws of physics. The two most handy classifications/scales of civilization are Kardashev's three-rung typology of civilizations based on energy consumption and A-Z scale based on informational consumption conceived by the late astronomer Carl Sagan. Kardashev sees a Type I society as one that uses energy that reaches the planet from its home star, a Type II as directly utilizing all the energy its sun produces, and a Type III as having outstripped these energy needs and instead uses the entire galaxy as an energy source. Sagan's classification also sees considerable energy needs to sustain a civilization's consumption of information undergirding its continued scientific, cultural, social, political and economic development, but allows for progression up the scale without using more energy via the continued development of more efficient, sophisticated and miniaturized computers and similar devices. However, the magnitudes are staggering for moving up on each scale, anywhere from a factor of ten billion and one hundred billion. (Yikes!) At the present moment, we are a 0.7 civilization on the Kardashev scale, as we have not deployed technologies like space-based solar or fusion to produce and consume the energy of a Type I civilization, for other physics-and-biologically based of continued issues like nuclear proliferation, climate change, and bioterrorism. Yet Kaku is optimistic that we will find ways to continuously meet our changing energy needs and even rise to the level in the far future where we can draw energy from our universe and other universes, such as machines like a Dyson sphere (which harvest star energy) to even technologies that transmit our consciousnesses rather than our physical bodies across vast distances.

The latter reasons of energy and informational consumption barriers are ones where I became admittedly skeptical that we'd reach the Type I level any time soon that would allow us to sustainably invest in a spacefaring civilization. Our current society is hard-pressed to be sustainable and one that requires increasingly vast spaces and energy needs (from one planet and star to solar systems, galaxies and even universes) seems similarly problematic. There's also the omnipresent issues surrounding the energy needs and physics behind ships that are sub-light or faster-than-light traveling and if they are possible to develop at all (like the Star Trek warp drive). That's not even considering the various ways in which humanity can self-destruct before we settle other planets and moons, like climate change, bioterrorism, nuclear holocaust, or even the continued rise of dangerous political attitudes and movements. The seeds for all of the technologies that Kaku speculates as guiding our space-faring future are all there, it's ultimately a matter of continuing to survive through the latter obstacles so that we have a chance to develop them.

Notwithstanding the various obstacles to humanity's future in space that Kaku very elegantly lays out for the general reader, nonetheless one has to commend his grand, big-picture thinking and guarded optimism in The Future of Humanity. Without digging too deep into cliches, Kaku's enthusiasm and vision reminds us all that despite many harrowing obstacles, there is probably a way forward if we care to look for it.

Works Cited:

Kaku, Michio. (2018). The Future of Humanity: Terraforming Mars, Interstellar Travel, Immortality, and Our Destiny Beyond Earth. Doubleday Publishing Group.

Book Review: Pankaj Mishra's "Age of Anger"

I'm sure this will be a review of one of many books that have emerged to explain 2016, but none of the ones I've considered seem to dig too as far back in history to explain the present as Pankaj Mishra's 2017 entry Age of Anger. Mishra's book goes back to the intellectuals of the tumultuous 18th-19th centuries, whose various theories of how to adapt to the tumult of the onset of modernity, of many nation-states centered on individualist commercialism built upon the premise of equal opportunity, in order to explain today's populist backlash against globalization. Ultimately, Mishra sets out to make the case to the reader that while history does not repeat itself exactly, history rhymes. And quite eerily.

What is the most intriguing and different from many other books that seek to explain 2016 in the context of largely political, cultural, and economic factors is Age of Anger's attempts to probe the spiritual and cultural consequences of today's modern age. From the conception of the traditions of secularism and self-interested, rational individuals in a materialist society that emerged with the Enlightenment in the 18th century, there have been considerable opposing forces that rose with the modernist tide from those excluded from the promise of prosperity. These intellectual and spiritual traditions that arose in opposition to the minority of powerful bourgeoisie (i.e. elites) included the demagogic and revolutionary cults of anarchism, messianism, nationalism and nihilism. {Notwithstanding the fact that nationalism has many positive aspects, like many other ideologies, it can be weaponized to serve more nefarious rather than positive, unifying purposes.} Mishra's main argument for the rise of these opposing forces (both one to two centuries ago to the present) is the persistent inequalities of modernity, in which a small minority accrues the most benefits-economically, politically, culturally and socially-to the detriment of the masses whose labor helps to fuel the system.

These revolutionary minds-from Rousseau, Nietzsche, Fichte, Weber, Herzen, Pushkin and more-pushed an often hyper-masculine, heroic, militant, misogynist and totalitarian ideology on the masses disoriented spiritually and culturally by the universal tide of modern civilization, where "all social, political and economic forces determining their lives seem opaque" and the masses are beset by "a competitive fever" and an accompanying sense of the possibility of the system being rigged against them (Mishra, 2017, p. 19). These toxic conditions of persistent inequality and anxiety not only extend to the masses but their leaders as well, making scapegoating of enemies like immigrants, Muslims, and, often, women, very easy, giving a convenient face to those shadowy forces seeking to keep them down despite the promises of equal opportunity enshrined by most democratic, secularist societies. Having a target to direct their built up frustration, humiliation and anger, masses often reacted militarily against their enemies, bringing great destruction and suffering upon humanity.

In other words, demagogues preceding today's Trump, Putin, Erdogan, Jong-un (and many more) benefited tremendously from their predecessors in Germany, India, and Iran (the prominent cases studied by Mishra), whose economic and spiritual malaise were blamed on myriad enemies (Others against which to redefine themselves in a world of unmoored identity): the imperialist (yet secular) West, a decadent France, Westernized natives, feminists, immigrants (often theorized to be there to drag wages down for everyone), and the financial elites. These enemies were often blamed for the unattainable ideal of continuous expansion and progress that modernity promised for all individuals and the failures of both capitalist and socialist systems to take hold and bring mass benefits. Their resulting wrath was cultivated by demagogues and unleashed in the forms of ethnic cleansing (directed against the Jews in the Holocaust and the Armenians by the Turks in the Armenian Genocide) and two absolutely devastating world wars.

Today's almost universal expansion of Western ideas of an egalitarian and entrepreneurial society post WWII has exacerbated the malaise felt by most of the world's population, while bringing the world even closer together, meaning the destructive ideologies of the (seemingly distant and irrational) past have reemerged and spread incredibly fast around the world. And destruction seems to many influenced by these ideas a legitimate way to gain revenge and a sense of authentic self-expression denied to them by the inability or unwillingness of governments to redress the grievances of economic, social, and political inequality (especially in developing countries, where recent reports by major international financial organizations like the IMF forecast a longer time period than was previously assumed for their catch-up to the West). {Don't forget that today we also have more destructive weapons than those used in the past which we can use to inflict greater harm on each other. And the looming threat of climate change, another consequence and perhaps mirror in the natural world of humanity's growing malaise and disorientation in the modern age.}

At risk of sounding like a member of the smug bourgeoisie, I believe that there must be hope enough to right the ship before humanity self destructs under the twin pressures of unachievable universal development and global climate change (despite the unease and disorientation described by Mishra that tickled at my subconscious as I read Age of Anger that made me pessimistic about humanity's chances). That must start with the recognition that the West's vision of a universal form of civilization is not feasible and that more realistic forms of societal betterment must be pursued according to conditions on the ground in various countries of the world. I don't have all the answers and neither, does it seem, does Mishra.

While many reviews have critiqued that, another symptom of Mishra's sometimes stream of consciousness style of writing in his unenviable quest of synthesizing the past and the present and their common intellectual/spiritual traditions, I believe the unambiguity is a strength. Age of Anger gives us all room to think critically and hopefully come together and work towards a solution (even if the solution is as unattainable as the promises of modernity for all). But, as they say, it's better to try than not do anything at all.

Works Cited:

Mishra, Pankaj. (2017). Age of Anger: A History of the Present. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Case Evaluation: Syria

{Syria continues to be in the news as the Trump administration continues to mull over whether or not U.S. troops should largely be pulled from Syria, which currently is embroiled in a horrific civil war resulting from an ill-fated attempt by rebel forces to oust the current regime of President Bashar al-Assad. Not to mention U.S., British and French air strikes launched on suspected chemical weapons in Damascus and Homs in retaliation to a suspected chemical weapons attack in Douma by the Syrian government. This week, to provide additional context on the Syrian conflict and the thorny issues of intervention with or without military force and sovereignty that remain to this day, I flashback to an analysis I conducted of President Obama's decision to conduct air strikes on Syrian territory in 2011. How the Trump administration plans to handle the thorny situation long-term remains to be seen.}

Background:

The case of Syria demonstrates the extent to which globalization has increasingly internationalized civil wars and illustrates the complexity of international terrorism and anti-terrorism partnerships. Specifically, the outbreak of armed conflict between Russian-backed government forces of President Bashar al-Assad, United States-supported Kurdish and Syrian rebels (Free Syrian Army), and various terrorist groups is considered an outgrowth of the instability brought by the regional Arab Spring movement of 2011 in the Middle East and North Africa. The Arab Spring movement of 2011, widely seen as a popular uprising against authoritarian governments, toppled many regimes seen as oppressive. However, in Syria, this coup was not successful and the Assad regime has responded by cracking down against his opposition, seen as a loose coalition of rebels and terrorist groups such as the Al-Nusra Front and the Islamic State (IS). The country is presently in a state of civil war, as terrorist groups took advantage of power vacuums in Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East after the 2011 protests.

Adding to the complexity of the civil-war situation was the use of sarin nerve gas, one of many internationally-banned chemical weapons underneath the 1925 Geneva Convention, against civilians in the Syrian capital, Damascus, on August 21st, 2013, by the Syrian government, in which 1,423 people were believed by U.S. intelligence to have been killed. The use of chemical weapons put additional pressure on President Obama to take decisive action in Syria, as use of chemical weapons against civilians was a “red line” for possible United States military action in the country considered to be a state-sponsor of terrorism. Additionally, the president was also constrained by a deadlocked UN Security Council in terms of action on Syria. Previously, the United States had maintained an indirect approach to Syria that involved maintenance and expansion of joint US-EU-Turkey-Arab League economic sanctions on Syria, support of a UN weapons-inspection regime, and support of the rebels in the form of humanitarian aid to achieve possible democracy in the country; prevent proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs); and fight terrorism as part of the larger international “War on Terror.”

In the wake of the August incident, President Obama announced his updated strategy of targeting Syrian government military positions, but stopped short of a commitment of ground troops, no doubt in part due to the war weariness induced by previous unsuccessful operations in Iraq and Afghanistan taken in response to terrorism. Additionally, President Obama announced his seeking of formal support from Congress to authorize the Syria military operation at a time in which public skepticism over Middle East-interventionism was mirrored in the divided legislature, especially among Republican lawmakers critical of the president’s response to the Syrian crisis. Around the same time, a similar vote in Britain’s parliament to authorize the use of military force in Syria failed. Thus, to assuage a skeptical Congress, the American public, American allies abroad, and the United Nations (with both domestic and international actors retaining varying degrees of isolationist or internationalist sentiment), President Obama announced the limited military operation (purposefully not terming the operation a “war”) in a strings-attached manner, seeking to toe the line regarding international law and the US War Powers Act (1973).

Evaluation:

To explain the president’s decision-making on the Syria case, in which he supported limited military strikes against the Assad regime, I will utilize the realist and emotional/cognitive perspectives to enumerate the security interests at play and the contrasts in perspective in Congress and the Obama administration.

In the context of international anti-terrorism efforts, securing Syria by attempting to oust an oppressive regime along with maintaining progress towards reducing the amount of land (and potential WMDs) held by terrorist groups such as IS reflects a realist national-security interest on behalf of the United States. This strategic prerogative was passed on to the Obama administration through the “War on Terror.” Moreover, in terms of the post-9/11 foreign policy strategy of democratization in the Middle East, reflected in the United States’ support of the Free Syrian Army, lack of response to the crisis (especially the chemical weapons attack) would indicate the United States was not only unwilling to back up its democratic ideals, but also would allow a dictator (supported by rival Russia) to get away with violating international law. This in turn, it was reasoned by some in the administration and Congress, could embolden Syria, Iran, North Korea and various non-state groups in their proliferation of WMDs and thus threaten America and its allies. However, not all saw the situation the same.

For example, President Obama, in his advocation of a limited military strike in Syria seems to recall the failure of U.S. ground missions in Afghanistan and Iraq that ultimately ended up contributing to the instability of the Middle East in concert with the Arab Spring. In his public announcement, Obama hints that past interventions in the Middle East of a preemptive nature produced greater security threats to the United States. Additionally, the President seems to have intertwined matters of national security with matters of morality, citing similarly to Congress that American nonintervention against the Assad regime’s use of chemical weapons against civilians not only would embolden America’s enemies, but also would send a message that the United States no longer committed itself to its ideals and the upholding of international law. Therefore, inaction would produce greater national security consequences in the undermining of U.S. credibility abroad. Yet, the president continued to hope for a diplomatic solution to prevail on Syria.

Meanwhile, in Congress, conflicting analogical reasoning among prominent individuals seemed to have also played a great role in President Obama’s decision-making. Many members of Congress across party-lines largely echoed public concerns about the degree to which national security was threatened and the wisdom of committing U.S. ground troops. Seeming to similarly recall the campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq, in which security arguments were put forward in regards to needing to act against unstable dictators with WMD-development aspirations to garner support, many members of Congress thus expressed doubts about the proposed military plan. A sizable majority of Congress seemed to advocate the further use of diplomacy alone or as part of a more comprehensive Syria strategy rather than resorting to potentially unilateral military force on its own to confront the Assad regime. Thus, to preserve political flexibility while seeking to still act on his principles and the security interests in Syria, President Obama thus made a tentative military commitment dependent on Congressional approval.

Ultimately, while many government actors seemed to grasp the national security concerns at play in Syria, the conflicted analogical reasoning of key parts of the legislative and executive branches towards Syria (and the resulting tentativeness on the foreign policy front) seem to have played an equal or greater role in the president’s decision-making to carry out the limited air strikes versus choosing inaction or a wholesale commitment of boots on the ground.


Works Cited:

BBC News (2013, September 24). “Syria Chemical Attack: What We Know.” Retrieved November 18, 2016 from http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-23927399.

BBC News (2016, December 5). “Syria Profile: Timeline.” Retrieved December 5, 2016 from http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-14703995.

BBC News (2018, April 17). Syria Air Strikes: Theresa May Says Action 'Moral and Legal'. Retrieved April 18, 2018, from http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-43775728?intlink_from_url=http://www.bbc.com/news/topics/cme1yzdkllxt/syria-air-strikes&link_location=live-reporting-story.

Blanchard, C. M., & Sharp, J. M. (2013, September 12). “Possible U.S. Intervention in Syria: Issues for Congress.” Retrieved November 18, 2016 from https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/mideast/R43201.pdf.
CIA World Factbook (2016). “Syria.” Retrieved November 16, 2016 from https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/sy.html.

Hayden, C. (2013, August 31). “President Obama's Decision on Syria.” Retrieved November 15, 2016 from https://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2013/08/31/president-obamas-decision-syria.

Slack, M. (2013, September 3). “President Obama Meets with Congressional Leaders to Discuss the Situation in Syria.” Retrieved November 15, 2016 from https://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2013/09/03/president-obama-meets-congressional-leaders-syria.

The New York Times (2013, August 31). “Obama Seeks Approval by Congress for Strike in Syria. Retrieved December 1, 2016 from http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/01/world/middleeast/syria.html.

The New York Times (2013, September 5). “Where Lawmakers Stand on Military Action in Syria.” Retrieved November 16, 2016 from http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/09/05/us/politics/syria-vote-tracker.html?_r=1&.

United States. Congress. House. Committee on Foreign Affairs. Subcommittee on the Middle East North Africa, author. (2013). Breaking the Iran, North Korea, and Syria Nexus: Joint Hearing Before the Subcommittee on the Middle East and North Africa and the Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific and the Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation, and Trade of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, House of Representatives, One Hundred Thirteenth Congress, first session, April 11, 2013. (United States. Congress. House of Representatives. HR hrg.; 1-89). Retrieved December 3, 2016 from https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CHRG-113hhrg80364/pdf/CHRG-113hhrg80364.pdf.

United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Foreign Relations, author. (2014). The Authorization of Use of Force in Syria: Hearing Before the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate, One Hundred Thirteenth Congress, first session, September 3, 2013. (United States. Congress. Senate. S. hrg.; 113-479). Retrieved December 3, 2016 from https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CHRG-113shrg91222/html/CHRG-113shrg91222.htm.

United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Foreign Relations, author. (2014). U.S. Policy Toward Syria: Hearing before the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate, One Hundred Thirteenth Congress, first session, April 11, 2013. (United States. Congress. Senate. S. hrg.; 113-197). Retrieved December 4, 2016 from https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CHRG-113shrg86861/pdf/CHRG-113shrg86861.pdf.

United States Department of State (2014, March 20). “U.S. Relations with Syria.” Retrieved November 18, 2016 from http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/3580.htm.

White House Office of the Press Secretary (2013, August 30). “Government Assessment of the Syrian Government's Use of Chemical Weapons on August 21, 2013.” Retrieved November 16, 2016 from https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/08/30/government-assessment-syrian-government-s-use-chemical-weapons-august-21.

White House Office of the Press Secretary (2013, August 31). “Statement by the President on Syria.” Retrieved November 16, 2016 from https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/08/31/statement-president-syria.

Book Review: Jennifer Palmieri's "Dear Madam President"

The ghost of the 2016 election seems to be still with us, with various media covering its aftermath almost ad nauseam, a new book coming out it seems every week trying to explain this highly unlikely outcome. It's enough to make us want to scream at these various authors for rehashing 2016 yet again and also hide away and try to proceed with life as normally as possible. Nevertheless, it remains important to resist the impulse to hide away without compromising one's psychological well-being. This seems to be the overall message of former White House (under President Obama) and Clinton campaign communications director Jennifer Palmieri's 2018 open-letter style memoir of the 2016 election Dear Madam President: An Open Letter to the Women Who Will Run the World.

Composed of nine chapters, Palmieri's memoir seems to be at first glance primarily a means of psychological venting and healing (although it definitely is in part) and to its detractors a thinly concealed partisan screed against Donald Trump's election victory. However, while not devoid of criticism of Donald Trump's politics, Dear Madam President is primarily composed of advice for future women leaders, especially those that aspire to political office. There are various obstacles that have been cited in the literature about women leaders, which can be boiled down primarily to misogyny and the overwhelming pressure to suppress feminine qualities while running for office or once in office in favor of emphasizing masculine-ascribed traits of strength and decisiveness. Palmieri states this bluntly in the introduction as she reflects that the campaign reduced Hillary Clinton to a "female facsimile of the qualities we expect to see in a male president" (Palmieri, 2018, p. 9). Clearly, this is an untenable position and a new model of leadership is needed. What is this new model of leadership?

The latter is the million dollar question. How does one overcome thousands upon thousands of years of patriarchal precedent? How does one define what male or female leadership even is in the first place? It is a circular and endless wade into the intellectual, psychological and cultural morass. So, not unlike others in the past Palmieri doesn't pretend to have all the answers and just gives nine bits of sage advice based on her many years in left-leaning politics:

1. (A bit cheesy): "Since we live in a world where the unimaginable is suddenly possible, we need to seize on that by imagining what else might be possible...that seemed unimaginable before" (Palmieri, 2018, p. 20). To me, this speaks on the need to always be flexible when things get tough and require a new approach, while holding onto the soothing of anchor of who we are personally. Palmieri relates this more specifically to staying true to one's self while reinventing the outdated rules of the game (politically and otherwise).
2. Be prepared for push-back: Generally, society smiles upon women who are selfless and subsume their own needs in favor of satisfying the interests of others. It is thought that women are better in indirect supporting roles to their male counterparts rather than direct leadership. Going contrary to these expectations still is a huge political drag for many women candidates, even in the post second-wave era where women have definitely gained ground. Palmieri throws out this notion by stating bluntly that women need to be prepared for a long fight for change, but that persistence and forward-motion (and thick skin) are key.
3. (Again, a bit cheesy): "Speak up" (Palmieri, 2018, p. 34). Personally, that can be very difficult for my introvert self. Nevertheless, Palmieri speaks to both introverts and extroverts in that we shouldn't be afraid to speak up with confidence in whatever you do, lest you regret your silence later.
4. Be emotional rather than stoic all the time. It helps to preserve your humanity and keep one's self sane.
5. A healthy balance between dry logical reasoning and emotional expression is definitely needed in a high-stress environment.
6. Trying to have a perfect appearance all the time is untenable and unrealistic, despite the push-back (see #2). For women, expected to be polished all the time, it is especially important, as merit is more important and age conveys experience. Mind over matter here. 
7. Increasing the telling of women's stories whenever possible is also important when the dominant discourse centers around male experience (hence the term "history"). 
8. Be graceful in your losses, but continue moving forward anyway. Definitely a mind over matter thing here. 
9. Last, but not least, women unite! This also tends to be a cheesy kind of trope in women's literature and public speaking, but it remains true. Trying to bridge divisions between all women and between people generally in the country rather than resort to divisive politics and rhetoric will be the key to success and true change. Who knows what women can accomplish if they can overcome these barriers? Maybe the Women's March was just a prelude.

Will we achieve that revolutionary change? Will America eventually elect a female president? When will the dreaded female-first trope become a relic of history? Is it possible? Who knows. Palmieri's conclusion is definitely frustrating and the given advice somewhat generalizable. That doesn't mean Dear Madam President's advice isn't valuable. We could all use a reminder that laying down and giving up isn't an option right now.


Works Cited:

Beard, Mary. (2017). Women & Power: A Manifesto. New York: W.W. Norton & Company.

Palmieri, Jennifer. (2018). Dear Madam President: An Open Letter to the Women Who Will Run the World. New York: Grand Central Publishing.

Book Review: Jung Chang's "Empress Dowager Cixi"

{The last entry in a series belatedly continuing the celebration of Women's History Month, this week's entry will take a look at a controversial historical figure, Chinese Empress Dowager Cixi, whose life is chronicled in a 2013 biography by Jung Chang. Chang is an author of Chinese descent who currently lives in London as a British citizen.}

Historical nonfiction can make for dry reading. Many books try to be as comprehensive as possible, ignoring the individual trees in favor of the looking at the whole forest, in order to get a better understanding of the various forces at work during a specific time period in history. It is preferable then when a book can balance both an exploration of historical forces and the people caught up in them, so as to keep the reader both anchored and interested. In my opinion, English writer Jung Chang's biography of the Chinese Empress Dowager Cixi in her 2013 biography titled Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China succeeds for the most part in achieving this balance. In the process, the reader is introduced into the life of one of the more controversial Chinese leaders, the penultimate in a long line of empresses, whose tale of political intrigue contributes greatly to our understanding of Chinese modernization. In addition, with greater access to both Chinese and English sources, the author forces us to confront traditional portrayals of the Empress as a conservative force opposed to reform.

Cixi's tale evoked for me a corollary to that of fictional character Cersei Lannister from George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series in the way that the former elevates herself into a position of power in the patriarchal Qing dynasty. Starting off as just a teenage concubine in 1852, one of many that the Emperor (in this case Emperor Xianfeng) kept after a long selection process, Cixi was interested in affairs of state and politics, both long considered masculine domains. Like Cersei, Cixi lived in a period in which female leadership in the public sphere was frowned upon, forcing her to take indirect measures to access the domains of power, slowly building up influence by networking first with the other women and the eunuchs of the court (lest she acted assertively enough to give people the impression she was the next Empress Wu Zetian, who had historically been seen as seizing power and ruling illegitimately). For example, as she rose through the ranks to the near-top by giving birth to a son on April 26, 1856, she entered into an important partnership with then Empress Zhen in her quest to reform her country, which she feared was falling behind the Western world. 

The Opium Wars of 1839-1860 in which the British and their allies violated Chinese sovereignty and forcefully opened Chinese markets to trade was a powerful factor in her behind-the-scenes coup when she was in exile at the Summer Palace with Emperor Xianfeng. It was at the Summer Palace that her policy of "Make China Strong" (sound familiar?) began to take shape. In a series of Machiavellian maneuvers, Cixi was able to gain control over the process of Xianfeng's deathbed naming of his successor (Cixi's son Tongzhi) and the approving of imperial decrees away from a Council of Regents she regarded as wanting to continue the isolationist hardliner status quo of the previous century. This policy had nearly ruined the country and made it just another colonial outpost of the West or Japan, which had overwhelming naval power it threatened to use to occupy parts of China in the first Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895. Ruling indirectly through the male heirs (as Cersei does with her sons as Regent), first with her son and then her adopted son Guangxu and through cooperation with other high-ranking (read: male) members of the court and royal family, Cixi oversaw China's diplomatic and economic opening to the West and set the groundwork for the development of modern China's extensive rail network and military build-up.

However, like the current period of globalization and the backlashes against its universalist values, internal tensions over the intrusion of Western values into the traditional Confucian value system naturally erupted and threatened the dynasty. Various attempts to contain these forces of dissent weren't perfect, especially when in 1899-1901, under pressure from popular discontent over the reach of Western missionaries, the dynasty allied itself with xenophobic and anti-Christian segments of Chinese society to disastrous results. Beijing was once again put under foreign occupation. Dynastic support of the Boxers in an ill-advised attempt to hold off another foreign invasion damaged her reputation both domestically and abroad, damage that wouldn't be undone when she again seized power after the death of her adopted son, who was sympathetic to radical reformers who may or may not have been associated with imperial Japanese intelligence officers who sought a hostile reunification (to form a Pan-Asian nation, supervised by Japan). Recognizing the unsustainable foreign and domestic pressures resulting from the uneven, incremental opening of China, Cixi, at this point nearing the end of her life, devoted her remaining political clout towards cementing dynastic legitimacy through the introduction of a constitutional monarchy and the vote to the masses.

At this point, in the early 20th centuries, it became clear that the dynasty could no longer be sustained. Factions long-held in check by Cixi, such as the Boxers and those who sought a full-fledged republic (whether Communist or otherwise) were unleashed upon Cixi's death in 1908. The resulting political turmoil precipitated the abdication of the last emperor (then 5 years old) by the last empress, Longyu, in 1912, which created a Chinese republic. Since then, a series of reformist experiments have led to the present, in which the Communist Party seems to have become a new dynasty of sorts, their legitimacy similarly seen in terms of being able to maintain modernist reforms and guarantee continuing prosperity in an era of globalization and backlash to its pressures. (In a way, modern China owes much to Cixi, despite all her flaws and miscalculations, like that during the Boxer Revolution. Even with critical accusations of perhaps toeing the line dividing true consideration of new historical sources from historical revisionism, a point which I could see at certain points of the book-such as the mysterious circumstances surrounding the death of Cixi's adopted son and her second coup-Chang nevertheless does make a point for reconsidering Cixi's historical image as a conservative tyrant.)

As the saying goes, while history doesn't repeat itself, it often rhymes. It will be interesting to see if modern China continues down the path that the Empress Dowager set for it and how it handles the tumultuous twenty-first century. In any case, Chang's biography of Empress Dowager Cixi provides valuable lessons for general readers and policymakers alike in her detailing of the historical challenges China faced in the 18th-19th centuries and that it and other developing countries (and perhaps even developed countries) continue to face today.

Works Cited:

Chang, Jung. (2013). Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China. New York: Anchor Books.

Frankel, Valerie Estelle. (2014). Women in Game of Thrones: Power, Conformity and Resistance. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland Publishers.