Bernd Debusmann

Bernd Debusmann is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.

“We stand for universal values, including the rights of the … people to freedom of assembly, freedom of speech and the freedom to access information.”

–President Barack Obama, during the Egyptian mass uprising against a detested dictator.

“The United States is … to construct an architecture of  values that spans the globe and includes every man, woman and child. An architecture that can not only counter repression and resist pressure on human rights, but also extend those fundamental freedoms to places where they have been too long denied.”

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in a foreign policy speech in September.

That is the theory — U.S. foreign policy in defense of universal values. In practice, the United States has often been unable or unwilling to live up to the values it preaches. Like other big powers, it has placed its self-interest first, which meant dividing the world into acceptable and unacceptable authoritarians. Soaring rhetoric since the beginning of the pro-democracy uprisings in the Arab world notwithstanding, the gap between theory and practice is in full view again.

In an act of selective intervention, the U.S., France, and Britain launched air and missile strikes on Libya on March 19 to prevent the government of Muammar Gaddafi from using “illegitimate force” against Libyans demanding his ouster and clamoring for the same freedoms the Obama administration, after dithering and zig-zagging, eventually cheered in Egypt.

While Gaddafi’s brutal crackdown on opponents provoked a war, equally ruthless repressions (though on a smaller scale) of pro-democracy demonstrators in Bahrain and Yemen prompted rhetorical American slaps on the wrists of the respective rulers, Yemen’s Ali Abdullah Saleh, who has been in power for 33 years, and a royal family which declared martial law in Bahrain this week.

So why Libya and not Yemen and Bahrain? Here is where lofty talk of universal values collides with self-interest and here is where policies the United States pursued for more than half a century live on. George W. Bush’s secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, put it succinctly in a 2005 speech in Cairo: “For 60 years, my country, the United States, pursued stability at the expense of democracy … here in the Middle East.”

It still does, where Yemen and Bahrain are concerned. As a newly leaked cable (dating back to 2005) from the U.S. Embassy in the Yemeni capital put it: “Saleh has provided Yemen with relative stability … but has done little to strengthen government institutions or modernize the country. As a result, any succession scenario is fraught with uncertainty.”

OUR SON OF A BITCH

Uncertainty in a tribal country that is home to al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula is the stuff of nightmares for the U.S. government, which has been counting on Saleh’s cooperation in the fight against AQAP. So, there has been no public American push for him to step down, not even after the killing of 52 pro-democracy demonstrators in a Sana’a square on March 18. Washington shrugged off a call by Human Rights Watch, a New York-based group, for a suspension of military assistance to Yemen.

Which brings to mind a remark attributed to Franklin D. Roosevelt, more than 60 years ago, about Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza: “He may be a son of a bitch but he is our son of a bitch.” Who says there is no consistency in U.S. foreign policy?

In the case of Bahrain, too, U.S. national interests trump universal values. The tiny island, connected by a causeway to Saudi Arabia, is home to the U.S. Fifth Fleet, there to guard shipping lanes that carry around 40 percent of the world’s tanker-borne oil. Saudi Arabia sent more than 1,000 troops into Bahrain to help the royal family in a ruthless crackdown on dissent.

With martial law imposed, the freedoms of which Obama spoke so approvingly when the Egyptians ousted Hosni Mubarak have been suspended in Bahrain. Hillary Clinton’s talk of an “architecture” to extend fundamental freedoms “to places where they have long been denied” sounds quaint in this context.

But critics of Washington’s dealings with the world should take note that hypocrisy and double standards are not an American monopoly. Take France and Britain, for example, the United States’ main partners in the attack on the Libyan government. Neither country has a record of unselfish promotion of human rights and freedom, not recently and even less in their colonial pasts. Is hypocrisy the inevitable byproduct of power politics?

What makes the United States particularly vulnerable to charges of double standards is its proclivity to going around the world preaching values it cannot live up to — and to portray itself as more moral and righteous than other nations.

In his State of the Union speech in January, Obama followed a long tradition of American leaders in describing his country in superlative terms. America, he said was “not just a place on the map but the light to the world.”

A fine phrase. It clearly does not mean that universal values are applied universally.

(You can contact the author at Debusmann@Reuters.com)

Bernd Debusmann is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.

There is fresh thinking, of a peculiar sort, in the perennial debate over gun violence in the United States, world leader in civilian ownership of firearms. Censorship of news reporting on the mass shootings that have long been part of American life will help prevent other mass shootings.

So says the National Rifle Association (NRA) in an open letter responding to President Barack Obama’s suggestion that it is time for all sides in the gun debate to get together and find a “sensible, intelligent way” to make the United States a safer place. The president mentioned common sense and a White House spokesman talked of the need to find common ground.

Common sense has not been in abundant supply in decades of on-again, off-again debate on guns and violence. As to finding common ground between the leading gun lobby and advocates of better controls, the NRA’s Executive Vice President, Wayne LaPierre, says his group will “absolutely not” take part in the sort of meeting envisaged by Obama. Such a meeting, he said in a series of media interviews, would be with people opposed to the constitutional right to bear arms.

Talking to people of different views is obviously not a concept the politically powerful gun lobby intends to embrace.

In his open letter, LaPierre listed steps the president could take to prevent mass shootings, such as the January 8 rampage in Tucson that killed six people and wounded a member of Congress, Gabrielle Giffords. “One of these (steps) is to call on the national news media to refrain from giving deranged criminals minute-by-minute coverage of their heinous acts, which only serves to encourage copycat behavior.”

It’s an argument that presupposes that there are plenty of deranged Americans who, like the Tucson shooter, are well-armed, passed the background check required to purchase guns, and are primed to spring into action after they see scenes of carnage on television. It’s also an argument fit for a pre-Internet dictatorship where presidents could tell the media how and what to report.

Until he tip-toed into the subject of gun violence on March 13, with an op-ed article in the Arizona Daily Star, Obama had kept silent on the issue, disappointing many of those who had voted him into office after a campaign in which he promised various gun control measures, including a permanent ban on the sale of assault weapons. The disappointment ran so deep that one of the most prominent gun control groups, the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, gave him an “F”, a failing grade,  after his first year in office.

The president’s belated entry into the discussion, stirred anew after the Tucson shooting, will not earn him a reputation as an audacious reformer of a system even some gun enthusiasts admit is defective. “No guts on gun reform,” noted a headline over an opinion piece critical of Obama in The Washington Post.

OBAMA MUM ON KEY ISSUES

The president made no mention of assault rifles, no mention of the high-capacity magazines control advocates want banned, no mention of private sales of guns that do not require background checks, no mention of the so-called Tiahrt Amendment which restricts the ability of local law enforcement to access important information to trace guns, no mention of a proposal that would have required around 8,500 gun shops along the border with Mexico to report multiple sales of two or more assault weapons to the same person.

Thousands of weapons from those gun shops end up in Mexico, where more than 36,000 people have died since 2006 in parallel wars drug traffickers wage against each other – for access to the rich U.S. market – and against the government. President Felipe Calderon has repeatedly called for a re-instatement of the ban on assault weapons the administration of George W. Bush allowed to lapse in 2004.

The Mexican government expressed disappointment when the limited measure – it called for reporting, not prohibiting, bulk sales – died in the House of Representatives in February after energetic lobbying by the NRA. For it, and other gun rights group, tighter regulations are part of a long-standing conspiracy to undo the Second Amendment of the Constitution.

Passed in 1789, the amendment says that “a well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” The sinister forces working for infringement, in the eyes of many gun owners, include New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the coalition he set up in 2006, Mayors Against Illegal Guns.

It has grown from 15 mayors then to 550 now, advocates “common sense legislation for background checks”, and in January dispatched on a tour of 25 U.S. states a truck carrying a billboard with a running tally of Americans killed by guns since the Tucson mass shooting. When the truck left New York, on February 16, that count stood at 1,300. By March 17, it had risen to 2,316. Daily average: 34.

Such figures do not impress the self-appointed guardians of the Second Amendment. Neither does a bigger number: since the September 11, 2001, attack on New York and Washington, more than a quarter million Americans have died by firearms  (murder, suicide, accidents).

In online discussions about guns, without fail someone comes up with the observation that more people die in car accidents than by bullet. So, goes the inevitable question, should there be restrictions on car sales?

Sombre analyses of America’s decline come in waves and the latest seems to be gathering strength. “AMERICAN DECLINE. This Time It’s Real” proclaims a recent magazine cover. “Yes, America is in Decline,” echoes another. Time to prepare obituaries for the world’s remaining superpower?

How long will it take for the U.S. to follow the example of the Roman Empire and end up as Italy? That’s a question the prognosticators of America’s waning power and influence (also known as declinists) tend to sidestep, perhaps because so many past predictions of doom have been so wrong.

The “This Time It’s Real” assertion is on the cover of Foreign Policy, a magazine closely read by the foreign policy community. Inside, the British commentator Gideon Rachman lays out a well-argued case for saying the U.S. will never again enjoy the dominance it had in the 17 years between the collapse of the Soviet Union and the global financial crisis of 2008.

The “Yes, America Is in Decline” headline is on the cover of TIME, the country’s most widely-read news magazine. The author and foreign policy analyst Fareed Zakaria bemoans the fact that Americans seem unable to grasp the magnitude of the challenges facing their country and that the political and economic changes now being debated in the U.S. “amount to rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.”

America’s modern-day Cassandras (Rachman and Zakaria are not the only ones) draw on a wealth of statistics to back up their arguments, from spending on research and development (once 1st in the world, now 6th) and domestic savings (84th) to life expectancy (27th) and college graduation (once 1st, now 12th). They all add up to a bleak picture that could lead to the following observation:

“The decline argument…is driven by concern about the vast federal deficits of recent years and, consequently, the immense growth of the national debt. It reflects apprehensions regarding the deficits in the balance of trade, the necessity to borrow staggering sums abroad and the dramatic shift of the United States from a great creditor nation to the world’s largest debtor.”

That sounds as if it were culled from today’s headlines but it was written in the summer of 1988, by James Schlesinger, a former secretary of defense and then scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank. At the time, there was a full-blown debate over whether the United States was past its prime and headed for second-rank status. The dispute was prompted by the historian Paul Kennedy’s book “The Rise and Decline of Great Powers.”

In Kennedy’s view, the decline of the United States could probably be slowed but not averted and “the American share of world power has been declining relatively faster than Russia’s over the past few decades.” Not long after the book came out, the Berlin Wall fell. Not long after that, the Soviet Union collapsed.

CYCLES OF DECLINISM
The Soviet threat to American dominance turned out to be more imagined than real and that may well prove to be true for China, the country that today looms large in the popular imagination and in forecasts about the future alignment of world powers. According to a Gallup poll in February, 52 percent of Americans think China is the world’s leading economic power.

Such perceptions are out of synch with reality. China’s Gross Domestic Product is less than two thirds that of the United States. GDP per capita is roughly one to six ($47,123 to $7,518), according to 2010 figures from the International Monetary Fund. As far as productivity is concerned, one American produces, by some estimates, as much as six Chinese.

Harvard University’s Joseph Nye, in a response to Zakaria’s gloom-and-doom analysis, says polls such as Gallup’s highlight “cycles of declinism” that say more about America’s collective psychology than underlying shifts in power.

“In the last half-century, polls showed Americans believed in their decline after the Soviet Union launched Sputnik in 1957, after Richard Nixon’s devaluation of the dollar and the oil shocks in the 1970s, and after the closing of Rust Belt industries and the budget deficits of Ronald Reagan’s administration in the 1980s,” he writes.

Declinists tend to give short shrift to an element that tends to play a key role for the global standing of a country – a culture that encourages innovation and attracts the world’s best and brightest. On this, the U.S. has an edge over China, whose world-changing inventions belong to the ancient past – paper, gunpowder, the compass and wood printing.

The contemporary invention that changed the  world more than any other, the Internet, was made in the United States which, declinist talk notwithstanding, still employs more than two thirds of the world’s Nobel Prize winners, accounts for about a third of the world’s patents, and is home to 13 of the world’s 20 top-ranked universities.

Unlike the doomsayers, President Barack Obama sounds confident that the U.S. can retain its position: “It is my belief that we have all the pieces in place for us to make sure that the 21st century is the American Century just like the 20th was,” he said in February. “That means that we’ve got to out-educate every other country in the world. We’re going to have to out-innovate every country in the world.”

It’s a very tall order. Is it possible? We’ll know by around 2030.

(You can contact the author at Debusmann@Reuters.com)

Bernd Debusmann is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.

WASHINGTON — In 2005, the average ransom paid for the release of a ship hijacked by Somali pirates was around $150,000. By the end of last year, it stood at $5.4 million. That means revenues for the business of piracy more than doubled every year. The 2005 to 2010 percentage increase is a staggering 3,600 percent.

The ransom numbers come from the One Earth Foundation, a U.S. think tank, and help explain why the business of piracy, probably the world’s most profitable, has been expanding — despite an increased international naval presence in the waters hounded by Somali pirates, despite a string of plans to protect shipping, and despite increasingly exasperated statements from politicians and ship owners.

Talking about pirates off Somalia, who killed four Americans on February 22, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said this week that “I’m fed up with it.” Piracy is moving up Washington’s list of priorities, according to her. A few weeks earlier, Ban Ki-Moon, the United Nations Secretary General, noted that “piracy seems to be outpacing the efforts of the international community to stem it.”

Ship owners agree. Early in March, five of the world’s largest maritime organizations, complaining that “2,000 Somali pirates are hijacking the world’s economy”, launched an advertising campaign and a website (www. SaveOurSeafarers.com) demanding tougher action. The group includes the International Chamber of Shipping, which represents about 80 percent of the world’s merchant ships, and INTERTANKO, whose members operate most of the world’s tankers.

In half page advertisements in leading newspapers, including the Wall Street Journal, the group noted that “even when caught red-handed, 80 percent of pirates are released to attack again.”

The practice, known as “catch and release”, figures in the risk-reward calculations of the piracy business, whose leaders are aware of the thicket of laws, regulations and jurisdictional ambiguities which has made arrest and prosecution of pirates difficult. There are no uniform rules of engagement for the warships on counter-piracy missions in the Gulf of Aden and the Indian ocean. By some definitions, an act of piracy does not begin until grappling hooks are thrown over the sides and the pirates start clambering up.

While the number of navy vessels on counter-piracy patrols has increased (there are about 30 warships on patrol now) so has the area threatened by pirates, who launch speedboats from mother ships up to a thousand miles from the Somali coast. So, the warships are looking for needles in a haystack.

AN ENTERPRISE DOOMED TO FAILURE

Which is why trying to end piracy purely with sea-borne operations looks like an enterprise doomed to failure. The key to solving the problem is on land – the fact that Somalia, a failed state, is a sanctuary for pirates. No country is prepared to take action against that sanctuary, where more than 800 seafarers are currently held hostage.

“The problem is being addressed right now only from the sea,” Nikolas Gvosdev, a professor at the U.S. Naval War College, said in a recent radio discussion on piracy. “We are trying to deter attacks. We are trying to protect ships. But the problem lies on land. It lies in villages and port cities, in ungoverned spaces where…this is a profitable business. It is essentially the main driver for revenue in Somalia.”

Donna Hopkins, the U.S. government’s coordinator of Counter Piracy and Maritime Security, has described piracy as “deeply ingrained in the Somali economic and social structure” and said the problem would continue as long as there is no effective government to control territorial waters and the Somali coastline.

When might that happen? Don’t hold your breath. Somalia has had no effective government since 1991 when the Communist dictatorship of Mohamed Siad Barre was toppled. In the two decades since then, the country has been torn by fighting between rival warlords and militias, an Ethiopian invasion to oust Islamists, and battles between militants linked to al Qaeda and what passes for a government.

In the process, Somalia earned the dubious distinction of being ranked the world’s most corrupt country. It came dead last on the 2010 corruption perception index of 178 countries compiled by Transparency International, a watchdog group based in Berlin.

The longer the problem festers, the more difficult it is to resolve. “As pirates become richer, they become harder to dislodge,” says Roger Middleton, the author of a report on piracy by Chatham House, a British think tank. “Pirates can be chased on the ocean, but piracy can only be eradicated on land.”

So what to do? One way would be stepped up military action on land, following the example of a daring helicopter-born French commando raid in 2008 to capture pirates who had held 30 hostages from a French yacht. Another way would be to redouble international efforts to finally help Somalia establish an effective government to tackle the linked problems of piracy, poverty, hunger and war.

Both options require what the ship owners backing the Save Our Seafarers campaign say governments around the world lack — political will.

(You can contact the author at Debusmann@Reuters.com).

Photos: Top;  Hostages and pirates stand with their hands up before the intervention of Dutch NATO soldiers off Somalia’s coast in this NATO handout photo made available April 18, 2009. REUTERS/NATO/Handout  Bottom; Pirates on speedboat approach one of their mother boats docked near Eyl, Somalia in this framegrab made from a November 24, 2008 TV footage. REUTERS/Reuters TV