Your humble blogger has not been shy in stating that he now votes in presidential elections based largely on foreign policy considerations.  Nor has he been shy in expressing his... er... exasperation with various foreign policy kerfuffles during the campaign.  So as Election Day approaches, you might wonder -- what will Daniel Drezner do?  [Oh, give me a f**ing break, just get on with it!!--ed.]

With Barack Obama, there's an actual record to judge.... and I think it would be best to call it mixed.  The Economist, in its Obama endorsement, noted the following:

[On] foreign policy... he was also left with a daunting inheritance. Mr Obama has refocused George Bush’s “war on terror” more squarely on terrorists, killing Osama bin Laden, stepping up drone strikes (perhaps too liberally, see article) and retreating from Iraq and Afghanistan (in both cases too quickly for our taste). After a shaky start with China, American diplomacy has made a necessary “pivot” towards Asia. By contrast, with both the Israeli-Palestinian dispute and his “reset” with Russia, he overreached and underdelivered. Iran has continued its worrying crawl towards nuclear weapons.

All these problems could have been anticipated. The Arab spring could not. Here Mr Obama can point to the ousting of tyrants in Egypt and Libya, but he has followed events rather than shaping them, nowhere more so than with the current carnage in Syria. Compared with, say, George Bush senior, who handled the end of the cold war, this aloof, disengaged man is no master diplomat; set beside the younger Bush, however, Mr Obama has been a safe pair of hands.

I think that's a decent assessment, although it overlooks what is, to me, the most troubling element of Barack Obama's first-term foreign policy legacy -- his management of the foreign policy process.  As my Foreign Policy colleague Rosa Brooks has written about in agonizing detail, the dysfunction that was talked about in Obama's first year in office hasn't disappeared along with Osama bin Laden. 

Indeed, the aftermath of Benghazi puts this on full display.  To be blunt, for all the GOP efforts to make the lack of pre-attack planning an indictment of the White House, consulate security in Benghazi is not the kind of decision that rises to the White House level.  The aftermath of the attack is another story, however.  In the past 24 hours alone, report after report after report after report shows Obama's foreign policy agencies defending their own turf, leaking to reporters in ways that heighten bureaucratic dysfunction, and revealing the White House's national security team to be vindictive and petty. 

Benghazi also highlights a deeper problem with this administration -- the lack of policy follow-through.  Whether one looks at the Iraq withdrawal or the rebalancing to Asia or the Afghanistan build-up or their embrace of the G-20, the story is the same.  Even if the administration had demonstrated good first instincts, it has failed to follow up those instincts with either next steps or contingency planning. 

So, the biggest indictment of the Obama administraion's foreign policy has been poor management.  Which, as it turns out, is Mitt Romney's genuine strength, as Ezra Klein points out in his excellent Bloomberg column this AM: 

Romney’s apparent disinterest in an animating ideology has made him hard to pin down -- for the Journal editorial board, for journalists, for Democrats and Republicans, for campaign consultants, even for Romney’s closest confidantes. It has led to the common knock on Romney that he lacks a core. He’s an opportunist. He picks whatever position is expedient. He is a guy with brains, but no guts.

But after spending the last year talking to Romney advisers and former colleagues, as well as listening to him on the campaign trail, I’ve come to see this description as insufficient. It’s not so much that Romney lacks a core as that his core can’t readily be mapped by traditional political instruments. As a result, he is free to be opportunistic about the kinds of commitments that people with strong political cores tend to value most.

What Romney values most is something most of us don’t think much about: management. A lifetime of data has proven to him that he’s extraordinarily, even uniquely, good at managing and leading organizations, projects and people. It’s those skills, rather than specific policy ideas, that he sees as his unique contribution. That has been the case everywhere else he has worked, and he assumes it will be the case in the White House, too. 

This jibes with all the chatter I hear about Romney as well.  Which should lead you to think that Romney might be exactly what ails American foreign policy. 

The thing is, Romney's own foreign policy rhetoric makes it clear that managing foreign policy isn't enough.  As he's said, the president has to be a foreign policy leader.  A president has much greater leeway on these issues than on other policy dimensions.  A good foreign policy president needs to be genunely interested in the subject, possess good foreign policy insincts, and rely on a core set of ideas that allows him or her to make tough decisions in a world of uncertainty.  As I wrote last year: 

[A] philosophy of "I won't say anything until I know all the facts" is bogus because, in foreign policy, the facts are never all in. Very often intelligence is partial, biased, or simply flat-out wrong. It's those moments, when a president has to be a foreign policy decider for a 51-49 decision, that a combination of background knowledge and genuine interest in the topic might be useful.

When I use these criteria to think about Mitt Romney, he doesn't do very well.  Every conversation with every Romney advisor confirms the same thing:  this is not a guy who has engaged deeply in international affairs.  He was perfectly happy to go all neocon-y in the primary season to appeal to his base, and then tack back to the center in the general election to appeal to war-weary independents.  He's not doing this because he's dishonest; he's doing this because he doesn't care.  His choice of foreign policy neophyte Paul Ryan as his VP pick confirms this as well:  Romney/Ryan has the least foreign policy experience of any GOP ticket in at least sixty years.  

Furthermore, in the moments during this campaign when Romney has been required to display his foreign policy instincts, he's foundered badly.  He stuck his beak into the Chen Guangcheng case when silence was the better option.  He did the same thing in the aftermath of the attacks in Cairo and Benghazi, going so far as to accuse Obama of "sympathizing" with terrorists.  As for his overseas trip, well, the less said, the better.  All of these episodes show a guy who's out of his depth on matters of foreign affairs.  And when he's been criticized in taking these stances, Romney has responded by doubling down on a bad position.  His political instincts have led him to some bad foreign policy choices. 

I'm not nearly as enthusiastic about as Obama as, say, Jonathan Chait, but his endorsement of the president makes an interesting point:

It is noteworthy that... the best decisions that Obama made during his presidency ran against the advice of much of his own administration.... Many of his own advisers, both economists steeped in free-market models and advisers anxious about a bailout-weary public, argued against his decision to extend credit to, and restructure, the auto industry. On Libya, Obama’s staff presented him with options either to posture ineffectually or do nothing; he alone forced them to draw up an option that would prevent a massacre. And Obama overruled some cautious advisers and decided to kill Osama bin Laden.

On foreign policy, Barack Obama might be an indifferent manager, but by making his first decision the right one, he has saved himself numerous embarrassments and reversals. 

This was a closer call than I expected, and I honestly hope (and think there's a good chance) that if Mitt Romney is elected, he'd grow into his foreign policy role with time.  For this analyst, however, Barack Obama is the imperfect, but superior, alternative. 

And now the bitter political invective in the comments.... begin!! 

The Financial Times' Alan Beattie is in a grumpy mood about the 2012 campaign, which leads to a wonderfully cranky column about the appalling campaign rhetoric on the global economy: 

Hypocrisy and exaggeration may be an inevitable part of any election campaign, but the discussions on international economics and trade have had experts in the field longing for next Tuesday’s vote to be over.

Herds of peaceably grazing policy wonks have been left shaking their heads in dismay as the marauding presidential campaigns have rampaged through their turf, leaving a trail of wrong-headed assumptions, non sequiturs and outright falsehoods strewn behind them....

Unfortunately, a realistic debate would involve admitting that some of the biggest international economic threats to the US are outside any administration’s influence, and thus destroy an implicit pact to maintain the myth of presidential omnipotence....

And, most likely, we’ll be back here again in four years’ time, with the challenger accusing the incumbent of selling out to China and letting jobs be shipped overseas and the incumbent, by accepting the premise of the attack, ensuring another debate about the global economy that takes place at an oblique angle to reality.

I'm moderately more optimistic than Beattie on what will happen next year on the foreign economic policy front regardless of who wins on Tuesday, but he's not wrong about the ridiculously stupid four-year political cycle. 

Unfortunately, if foreign economic policy wonks were honest with ourselves, we'd have to acknowledge that the truth would not really be a big political winner, unless you think the following speech would really bring out the undecideds:

I strongly favor inking more trade and investment agreements on behalf of the United States.  Yes, it's likely true that greater globalization is one of the lesser drivers for increased inequality in the United States.  Oh, and no trade deal is going to be a jobs bonanza -- the sectors that trade extensively are becoming so productive that they don't lead to a lot of direct job creation.  Will some jobs be lost from these deals?  Probably a few, but not a lot.  But on average, greater globalization will boost our productivity a bit, which will in turn cause the economy to grow just a bit faster, which will indirectly create some jobs.  Goods will be cheaper, which benefits consumers.  Oh, and by the way, there are some decent security benefits that come with signing trade agreements.  

Finally, the rest of the world is going to keep signing free trade agreeements and bilateral invesment treaties whether we play this game or not.  So we can choose to stand pat and have our firms and consumers lose out on the benefits of additional gains from globalization, or we can actually, you know, lead or something.  Your call.   Greater integration with the rest of the globe is no economic panacea, but the one thing we're pretty sure about is that most of the policy alternatives stink on ice.

Here's a challenge to foreign economic policy wonks -- can the above message be sexed up at all without overpromising?  In other words, what would be the best possible campaign rhetoric about foreign economic policy that would have the benefit of also being true? 

Your humble blogger was innocently surfing the web yesterday when someone linked to Niall Ferguson's latest Newsweek column.  Now even though I've warned everyone -- repeatedly -- not to go to there, I made the mistake of clicking.  And this is what I saw: 

Everyone knows there could be a surprise before Nov. 6—a news story that finally makes up the minds of those undecided voters in the swing states and settles the presidential election.

[T]he only kind of surprise I can envisage is a foreign-policy surprise. And if the polls get any scarier for the incumbent, we might just have one.

Recently The New York Times--increasingly the official organ of the Obama administration—offered a tease. “U.S. Officials Say Iran Has Agreed to Nuclear Talks” ran the headline. In the story, the Times quoted unnamed officials as saying that one-on-one talks with Iran had been agreed to in “a last-ditch diplomatic effort to avert a military strike on Iran.”....

Not only that. If the White House could announce a historic deal with Iran—lifting increasingly painful economic sanctions in return for an Iranian pledge to stop enriching uranium—Mitt Romney would vanish as if by magic from the front pages and TV news shows. The oxygen of publicity—those coveted minutes of airtime that campaigns don’t have to pay for—would be sucked out of his lungs....

[There is] an alternative surprise—the one I have long expected the president to pull if he finds himself slipping behind in the polls. With a single phone call to Jerusalem, he can end all talk of his being Jimmy Carter to Mitt Romney’s Reagan: by supporting an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

A few things: 

1)  Here's a pro tip:  if your foreign affairs observations represent a reprise of wacky Donald Trump musings, maybe it's best to take your ball and go home. 

2)  It's really kind of adorable that Ferguson thinks a foreign policy surprise would move that many voters.  Sorry, Niall, while presidents eventually pivot to foreign policy, it's not going to matter that much to undecideds right now. 

3)  If you want a foreign policy "tell" that Obama is in such serious straits that he's willing to gamble on a foreign policy initiative, there's a smaller-bore policy that would work better:  an opening to Cuba.  If Obama suggests that in the remaining week, it's a sign that:  a) he thinks Florida is a lost cause; and b) he is trying to shore up support in the midwest with agricultural concerns that would love a new export market. 

4)  The laziness involved in Ferguson's essay got me to thinking.... could this be the worst international affairs column of 2012?  How can we be sure?  I mean, to be fair, Ferguson cited a real New York Times story in the column -- that indicated an actual modicum of effort.  As I suggested last night, it might be an interesting exercise to create an NCAA-style bracket competition to determine the Worst International Affairs Essay of 2012.  Why shouldn't the foreign policy community have it's own version of the Razzies? 

To that end, I hereby ask commeters and the foreign affairs blogosphere to suggest candidate entries and possible rules for  this contest, as well as possible judges.  We'll see if there's enough momentum to add this contest to the coveted Albies. 

Your humble blogger has been an "advisor" to the Legatum Prosperity Index for a few years now.  They released their 2012 rankings today, and according to Bloomberg, the results ain't good for the United States:

The U.S. slid from the top ten most prosperous nations for the first time in a league table which ranked three Scandinavian nations the best for wealth and wellbeing.

The U.S. fell to 12th position from 10th in the Legatum Institute’s annual prosperity index amid increased doubts about the health of its economy and ability of politicians. Norway, Denmark and Sweden declared the most prosperous in the index, published in London today.

With the presidential election just a week away, the research group said the standing of the U.S. economy has deteriorated to beneath that of 19 rivals. The report also showed that respect for the government has fallen, fewer Americans perceive working hard gets you ahead, while companies face higher startup costs and the export of high-technology products is dropping.

“As the U.S. struggles to reclaim the building blocks of the American Dream, now is a good time to consider who is best placed to lead the country back to prosperity and compete with the more agile countries,” Jeffrey Gedmin, the Legatum Institute’s president and chief executive officer, said in a statement (emphasis added).

In the Wall Street Journal, Gedmin and Prosperity Index program director Nathan Gamester push on this message a bit harder in an op-ed: 

Earlier this month the Obama administration received good news: U.S. unemployment seems finally to be coming down. This week, however, the news is not so good. In fresh data on economic prosperity from countries around the world, the U.S. has fallen out of the Top 10 for the first time ever. If elections were decided by data, today's findings would spell trouble for President Obama.

The 2012 Legatum Prosperity Index captures not simply the quarterly or annual ups and downs of the national economy, but rather long-term underlying components of national prosperity. Our findings suggest that the American Dream is in jeopardy.

The first problem is well-known. America has saddled itself with crippling debt and soaring entitlement spending. Couple these with projections of low growth—and possibly even another recession—and a bleak picture emerges.

It seems that even parts of Old Europe, the euro crisis notwithstanding, can teach America a thing or two. Norway, Denmark and Sweden top our rankings this year. Once upon a time the Scandinavians were world champions in big government and social spending. But bloated welfare states have been brought to heel in recent years. There has been deregulation and privatization: The Swedes even privatized air traffic control. Today Denmark has one of the most flexible labor markets in the world.  (emphasis added)

So, the subtext seems pretty clear:  U.S. prosperity is declining because of staggering debt and a bloated public sector, in contrast to those newly laissez-faire Scandinavians.  You can guess which presidential camdidate is better-placed to reward entrepreneurship. 

This has prompted some gnashing of tweets teeth about the future of the United States.  Now, having looked at the numbers, I share some of this anxiety.  There is a powerful grain of truth to Gedmin and Gamester's assertions.  But there are a few other grains of truth that should be sprinkled about before reaching any conclusions: 

GRAIN OF TRUTH #1:  The U.S. didn't really fall too far in the rankings -- it went from 10th place last year to 12th this year.  That's partly because Luxembourg got added to the index in the interim and it did better than the United States in the rankings.  It's not great, but it's not an exaggerated decline either. 

GRAIN OF TRUTH #2:  High levels of debt ain't what's holding the United States back in these rankings.  Japan has a much higher debt-to-GDP ratio, but its economic performance ranked eight places higher than the U.S.  There are other factors at work here. 

GRAIN OF TRUTH #3:  If you burrow into the report itself (.pdf), you find that the primary reason for the drop in the U.S. ranking was a fall in the "Entrepreneurship and Opportunity" score.  The primary driver for this?  "This fall is driven by a decline in the number of US citizens who believe that hard work will get them ahead and a decrease in ICT exports (p. 10)."

Now this leads to an interesting question:  what drives the decline in the belief that hard work will get one ahead in life?  Legatum explains that on p. 38: 

Low business start-up costs and a positive  perception of a country’s entrepreneurial environment contribute to improving citizens’ economic prospects and overall wellbeing. The sub-index also evaluates a country’s ability to commercialise innovation and measures the technological and communication infrastructure  that is often essential to successful commercial endeavours. It further provides a snapshot of access to opportunity by tracking inequality and by asking citizens whether they believe their society to be meritocratic. (emphasis added)

And now we get to the nub of it.  The decline in America's prosperity score is partly a function of the weak economy -- but it's primarily a function of citizen perceptions of their ability to get ahead.  Government barriers to entrepreneurial activity would certainly depress those perceptions, but so would very high levels of inequality (moderate levels of inequality are a different animal altogether).  The more unequal a society is, the less that ordinary citizens feel that their own efforts will yield commensurate rewards.  And in the past few years, the data shows that the United States has become increasingly unequal. 

So, if Gedmin and Gamester are correct that Americans should use this report to think about which presidential candidate would be poised to improve American prosperity, you have to ask yourself which candidate is more likely to improve Americans' belief that their society rewards hard work and effort.  And I don't think the answer is as clear cut as they think it is. 

What do you think? 

While your humble blogger was wending his way back from Paris to the States, everyone and their mother emailed, Facebooked or tweeted me the following campaign video from geek god Joss Whedon: 

Now, as much as I've dissected both candidates' foreign policies and foreign policy statements, I hadn't really thought about which one of them would be more likely to trigger the zombie apocalypse. 

Indeed, this masks reveals a flaw in Theories of International Politics and Zombies.  In that book, I argued that any measures by governments to prevent the creation of zombies were likely to fail.  The problem was that the origins of zombies are so multifaceted -- biological, radiological, supernatural -- that it was foolish to deevote resources to trying.  Furthermore, the very nature of "normal accidents" could mean that preventive measures could actually increase the probability of flesh-eating ghouls. 

But Whedon is onto something different and altogether more interesting in his video.  Are there domestic policies that would increase the likelihood of a true zombie apocalypse?  He lists serious cuts in health care and social services, as well as Romney's commitment to "ungoverned corporate privilege" that would foment the undead apocalypse. 

Now I give Whedon points for acknowledging that we don't know which kind of undead are coming -- "no one knows for sure if they'll be the superfast 28 Days Later zombies or the old school shambling kind."  But is Whedon's hypothesis actually true?  One could posit that he's got it backwards.  After all, the key to preventing the spread of the zombie apocalypse is to slow down the infection rate and spread of the undead contagoion.  Cuts to public services might actually discourage the 47% from congregating in public places, thereby making it that much harder for the initial cluster of the undead to be able to spread their pestilence and hunger for human flesh to others.  Similarly, it is likely true that giving corporations a freer hand might incentivize one of them to take the Umbrella path to global domination, Romney's tough stands on immigration will likely restrict the H1-B visas necessary to hire the Eurotrash that always seems to be a the top of the corporate ladder when Things Go Wrong. 

Stepping back, if you think about it, the relationship between economic inequality and the zombie apocalypse is kinda complicated.  On the one hand, consistent with Acemoglu and Robinson, more politically and economically egalitarian societies are likely to invest in the public goods necessary to mitigate the spread of the deadites.  On the other hand, unequal societies are likely to have elites invest in worst-case scenarios -- mountaintop redoubts, vast underground laboratories, panic rooms, evil volcano lairs -- that guarantee a minmax outcome in which the human species will continue to exist in some form.  Of course, on the third, undead, dismembered, delicious hand, those last redoubt solutions never seem to work out as planned. 

Still, as I contemplate a revised revived edition of Theories of International Politics and Zombies, I thank Whedon for bringing this important issue to the fore -- just as the massive zombiestorm prepares to strike the Northeast Corridor. 

Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to stock up on canned goods and imagine the dialogue that a movie treatment of Night of the Living Dead meets Atlas Shrugged would inspire. 

Readers are warmly encouraged to proffer their suggestions for policies that would trigger/foment the zombie apocalypse in the comments. 

Your humble blogger has been eating as much creme brulee as humanly possible in Paris attending a German Marshall Fund/Science Po conference on the 2012 election.  Any conference where Mo Fiorina, Bruce Cain, and Greg Wawro talk shop is gonna be fun.  Any conference where I'm on a panel with James Mann is gonna be... daunting.  

That said, it was William Burke-White who made the most interesting policy observation.  He argued that regardless of who would be president in 2013, it would be foreign economic policy that would take  center stage for U.S. foreign policymakers.  The more I think about it, the more I'm pretty sure he's right. 

This is true in part because of what's in the pipeline already.  The Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations are already under wa, with additional countries joining in.  In the WTO, momentum to launch a plurilateral International Services Agreement is growing.  The European Union and United States are "pre-negotiating" a transatlantic economic agreement that wouldn't exactly be a free-trade agreenent but is definitely more important than, say, a bilateral investment treaty.  Speaking of which, the Obama administration finally crafted its own model bilateral investment treaty (BIT), and U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk announced that BITs were being negotiated with China and India.  Obviously, international trade and foreign direct investment take place regardlesss of whether these agreements exist or not -- but they do suggest greater levels of liberalization, particularly in the service sector. 

Now, surely, you must think, whoever wins the election will affect the status of these agreements.  Except that I don't.  All of these deals are being negotiated by the Obama administration, so I think we can assume that the prsident has signed off on them.  If Mitt Romney wins, I don't see him rejecting any of these agreements.  If anything, he'll try to add to them.  More free trade deals is part of his five point plan to create 12 million jobs that will be created regardless of who is president. Intriguingly, when he's mentioned this plank in the last few debates, he mentions Latin America in particular.  A shameless play for the Hispanic vote?  Maybe, but I don't care. 

Furthermore, regardless of who wins Congress, these are the kinds of deals that still fall under that shrinking category of "doable in a reasonably bipartisan fashion."  If Romney wins I can see the Democrats in the Senate playing a bit more hardball -- but most of these deals would likely go through. 

A United States that is both willing and able to sign more economic agreements is a good thing for the country -- oh, and it's a good thing for my argument that, contrary to expectations, global economic governance is doing a pretty decent job. 

So, I'm intellectually happy... and I'm in Paris.  I haven't felt less cranky since the start of the 2012 presidential election!  So au revoir until Monday!! 

Let's face it, we are at the stage in the U.S. presidential race when politics junkies like myself are feasting on the tiniest scraps of relevant information about the campaign. And, because I live next door to the swing state of New Hampshire, I'm getting bombarded with negative advertisements up the wazoo. 

I bring this up because of the latest BBC poll: 

A BBC World Service opinion poll has found sharply higher overseas approval ratings for US President Barack Obama than Republican challenger Mitt Romney.

An average of 50% favoured Mr Obama, with 9% for Mr Romney, in the survey of 21,797 people in 21 countries.

Here are the charts: 

Now let's be honest -- this doesn't matter all that much from a foreign policy perspective.  Obama scored similar numbers in 2008, and yet the signal lesson of his first year in office is that a president's personal popularity can't be leveraged into tangible concessions at the global stage. 

Instead, all I see when I read these numbers are the negative taglines that could be played:

"Can we really trust a president who is super-popular in France?  Of course not -- vote for Romney."

The country of Pakistan is a breeding ground for radical Islamic terrorists who want to destroy the United States -- and Pakistanis want Mitt Romney to be president.  The choice is clear: vote for Barack Obama." 

Readers are warmly encouraged to offer their own ways to twist this data into a negative ad. 

Following last night's presidential debate on foreign policy, I'd like to offer three quick apologies: 

1)  To those readers playing my debate drinking game -- sorry, you got pretty hammered, didn't you?  Sorry about that -- I forgot that the one thing conservatives love about the United Nations is the 2002 Arab Human Development Report.  When Romney name-checked that, a lot of bottles had to be downed.

2)  To those readers who read my quick take in the New York Times on Mitt Romney's pivot to moderation during last night's debate -- there's one crucial word missing.  When I said, "Romney’s sotto voce message was that he would be a hot-headed, trigger-happy cowboy – like the Last Republican President Who Shall Not Be Named."  I meant to say "Romney’s sotto voce message was that he would not be a hot-headed, trigger-happy cowboy – like the Last Republican President Who Shall Not Be Named."

3)  Finally, to those readers who watched the whole debate -- I'm sorry, there wasn't much of a foreign policy debate, was there?  Both candidates pivoted towards the economy frequently.  When they stayed on foreign policy, Mitt Romney kept agreeing with Barack Obama.  I nearly spit out my drink when Romney said the Afghanistan surge had "worked."  Methinks he must have read this post from last month. 

So -- to repeat -- I'm sorry. 

Here endeth my apology tour.