CNN Article: Zakaria: How Obama can overcome the down economy

I talked to John King the other day about President Obama's reelection strategy in this down economy. Take a look at the video above and/or the transcript below:

John King: The data is just simply not good for the president. And then on top of that, that's looking backward on the data we already know, today markets are talking about a bear market, financial markets don't look good, the housing market don't look good, the president can't look out at the horizon and see anything to be optimistic about, can he?

Fareed Zakaria: It looks pretty grim. There's a famous model that was designed by a professor in economic at Yale, Ray Fair, which predicts outcome of presidential elections. He's never been wrong in 40 years. And the basic inputs are economic growth, unemployment, inflation you know your basic economic data that the theory is that the campaign itself is actually irrelevant, that you give me the economic data and I will tell you whether the incumbent will get re-elected. Well, if you use those kinds of models and those numbers, the situation looks very tough for the president.

John King: And this one issue. The president answers the question, 'No, people aren't better off than they were four years ago.' This is in one issue on which you would say he's in absolute agreement with his chief nemesis politically, that would be the House Republicans. Listen here for the majority leader, Eric Cantor: "The president said yesterday that people in the country are worse off than they were when he was elected. We feel the same way. The economy continues to sputter." Is the president's only hope to say it's not all my fault, it's their fault too?

Fareed Zakaria: I don't think that's going to be as convincing. I think his hope is probably the tack he's taking to say, 'Things are very bad; they're bad because of the very broad forces beyond our control, the collapse of Lehman, the financial crisis, the global financial crisis, Europe and the euro zone crisis. But here's the issue, I have a plan. I have a plan to help get us out of this. And that is my jobs plan. And I have a way to pay for it. And the Republican Party, on the other hand has no plan.'

He has to draw that distinction and he has to hammer home the idea that he has a set of proposals that are powerful that would take immediate effect that would help Americans and the other side doesn't. I don't think spreading the blame around or complicating the issue is going to help as much.

Elections are referendums. And there has to be referenda on something. If it's not about the plan, it's going to be about him. And, frankly, I think he's better off it being about a comparative analysis of the plans rather than just a referendum on him.

John King: And how complicated is it? How hemmed in is he by the fact that a lot of the long-term things that need to be done, whether entitlement reform, dealing with debt, other structural issues in the U.S. economy might be at odds. Those long-term challenges might be some would say certainly at odds with his short-term political needs?

Fareed Zakaria: I think the sensible thing to do economically is pretty clear, which is to have a short-term plan that has some stimulus for the economy, and various forms, tax breaks, extensions of unemployment, a very significant infrastructure bill because that is what you get. What the government can do more than anything else is rebuild America and put people to work and a debt reduction plan.

And you do it altogether so that you reassure the markets that while spending some money now, you're going get your fiscal balances in order. Politically this seems impossible. And that is the dilemma I think that the president is grappling with that he's not able to get any of that stuff done that would actually have an impact on the economy because there is so much political gridlock and opposition in Washington that he can't manage to make it happen.

Source: http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2011/10/07/zakaria-how-obama-can-overcome-the-down-economy/?hpt=wo_r1

Nuclear disarmament and the youth: View from India - Dawn Blog

President Obama’s Prague speech, in which he laid the foundations of a renewed quest for a world free of nuclear weapons, was greeted around the world with both awe and skepticism. Analysts all around the world dissected his words, ruminated over his intent and commented on his vision, I found the speech intriguing for completely different reasons. When President Obama said that the goal of nuclear disarmament will not be accomplished in his life time, for many political pundits around the world, it represented an act of buck-passing. However those words conveyed an essential truth: the need of an enabled posterity to understand the risks of a trigger-happy nuclear world and to continue the endeavour towards a world free of nuclear weapons and concomitant hazards. Yet at the altar of political interpretations, this foresight was sacrificed.

It is this characteristically different reading of his speech which allows us to see the importance of an enabled posterity which can understand fully the stakes involved in the project of nuclear disarmament and can convincingly argue the case of a nuclear weapons free world. If the goal of a nuclear weapons free world is to be pursued, one has to acknowledge the importance of youth, the shoulders which are going to bear responsibility for the future and who will make sure that the quest continues, until the ultimate goal of a global zero is achieved. 

In the context of South Asia, the need for involvement of youth in the nuclear discourse is being acutely felt. There is a paucity of institutions, both government backed or private, which can educate the masses specially students and develop a capacity among the youth in order to understand the nuances of nuclear weapons and issue of disarmament. Without an independent and matured understanding of the issue, critical reflection on the need and viability of nuclear weapons has become a casualty. Given the desperate socio-economic condition of the majority of the people in the region, the unwillingness of the state to allow a more informed understanding of nuclear issues and the incapacity of youth to question nuclearisation appear to constitute nothing less than a conspiracy to sustain the discourse of nuclear brinksmanship.

There are also very few avenues for students, who have genuine interest in the subject, to understand the minutiae of the debate and engage with these at both national and international level. Hardly any regional workshops or conferences are organised to bring the youth of the region at a single platform to discuss nuclear disarmament. Given the rapid proliferation of think tanks and NGO’s in the aftermath of 1998 nuclear explosions, such a scenario is an awful reminder that nuclearisation has been accepted as something normal in the subcontinent.

Fallouts of such a situation are many. First, even when most of the states in the region are democracies, the lack of expertise on nuclear issues is a serious handicap in openly debating the need and viability of nuclear weapons and subsequent opportunity costs. This lack of knowledge encumbers the development of strong civil society initiatives against the politically motivated weaponisation program of the national governments. This also allows the dominant narratives of the nuclear hawks and other bureaucratic lobbies in the region to be generally accepted by the uninformed citizenry, since the capacity for critical evaluation is lacking.  More so, such a situation also allows the use of overt weaponisation strategies by the political parties to garner an electoral base.

Second, the politics of nuclear weapons has allowed the building of militarist regional order where power hierarchies have dominated the issues of cooperation and development. The muteness or relative silence of the Non-Nuclear Weapon States (NNWS) on issues of nuclearisation of the region points in this direction. Even when the nuclearisation imperils the security of all the states in the region, NNWS have hardly acted as a cohesive pressure group within the South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation (SAARC) to bring the agenda of nuclear disarmament at the negotiating table in various regional summits. Again the lack of expertise on the nuclear issues and active civil society in these countries has played a spoilsport.

Third, the lack of effective regional youth networks dealing with the issue of nuclear disarmament has not allowed the development of a collective identity of the region as a possible nuclear weapons free zone. The issue of nuclearisation of the region is still seen through the contours of national boundaries and the deficiency of interactions has stifled the possibilities of hearing the views of the others.

Yet to underscore the need for developing and shaping young minds in South Asia is to understand the fact that the thought process of strategic communities in South Asian region is still embedded in the experiences of the Cold War decades. For example, the Indian strategic mindset mostly perceives various arms control proposals through skepticism bred and nurtured during the Cold War years and it is hard to conceive a different approach until this staunchly embedded thinking is challenged. Most of the strategic analysts in the country are victims of this Cold War nuclear schizophrenia.

What is also to be noticed is that India has relinquished its stand on global nuclear disarmament for all practical purposes, though it still rhetorically clings to the past at times. Such a reinterpretation of Indian priorities is informed from a wrong perception of India’s rise. The need, therefore, is to reverse this trend of great power mimicry and to provide a new discourse in which priorities are not the amount of fissile material production but the alleviation of poverty and illiteracy.

In the case of Pakistan, on the other hand, the anti-India security discourse has helped the political elite specially the military to secure its sectional interests over the years. Nuclear weapons are only a new avatar, though much more potent and aggressive, of this contrivance of Pakistan’s military to perpetuate its hold on Pakistan’s polity and society. Interestingly, in both the states, people have come to love the bomb rather than detest it. The atomic publics of India and Pakistan, as Itty Abraham puts it in his new book, have embraced the weapons of their own destruction rather emphatically.  

In this backdrop, it is important to understand the crucial role which young, independent analysts can play in ameliorating the situation. There is a need to question and challenge the current discourse which eulogises nuclear weapons as acceptable instruments of political and social life. The collective wisdom – that nuclear weapons make us safe – is not what the youth of the region have decided for themselves; it is rather an imposition on younger generations from above, from the nuclear hawks who have sworn their life in the service of nukes.

The time is appropriate for thinking of a new collective future for South Asia, a future without nuclear weapons and only the youth can do that because in all legitimacy, the future belongs to them and them only.

Yogesh Joshi studies international politics at the Center for International Politics, Organisation and Disarmament (CIPOD), School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU). New Delhi. He is a youth representative of Global Zero – an international NGO working towards a nuclear weapons free world – and runs a Global Zero Chapter at JNU.

Source: http://www.dawn.com/2011/10/08/nuclear-disarmament-and-the-youth.html