Advancing a Free Society

In the debt-limit debate, we’ve been hearing a lot about how a “grand bargain”-style solution with tax increases can’t pass the GOP-controlled House. That’s true. But here’s the issue that’s being neglected: Can a tax increase pass the Democratic majority Senate? Without a realistic possibility of Senate support for tax hikes, the whole revenue side of the discussion ceaselessly promoted by the White House dissolves into meaninglessness.

The problem is electoral politics. Democrats have 23 Senate seats up in 2012, counting the two independents who caucus with them. The GOP has 10. Of the 23, as of now six are retiring. That leaves 17 who will be facing the voters in bids for re-election. Continue reading →

Advancing a Free Society

The International Criminal Court (ICC) has now issued an arrest warrant – the equivalent of an indictment in the U.S. system — against Libyan strongman Muammar Qaddafi for crimes against humanity in his efforts to suppress the rebellion that threatens to topple his appalling regime. The Court also issued warrants for his son Saif, and for the head of his secret police.

It’s the second time the ICC has issued a warrant for a sitting head of state. The first was Omar al-Bashir of Sudan, for genocide in Darfur.

By themselves, the warrants won’t change much in Libya, where the conflict rages on. The ICC has no marshal service to dispatch to haul suspects in. The Bashir warrant was issued in 2009, and he remains firmly ensconced in Khartoum. The pursuit of legal accountability for mass atrocities across international borders rarely moves quickly. Ratko Mladic, wanted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) on charges of genocide against ethnic Bosnians in Serbia, was on the loose for more than 15 years before his arrest this May. Continue reading →

Advancing a Free Society

Council on Foreign Relations President Richard N. Haass, writing in the Washington Post Sunday on “Why Europe No Longer Matters,” asks an impertinent but pertinent question: “If NATO didn’t exist today, would anyone feel compelled to create it?” His answer is no.

He’s right in a narrow sense: A “North Atlantic” military alliance wouldn’t make a lot of sense as a startup these days. The specifically geographical component of the alliance has its origin in the Soviet threat. Whatever you think of Russia’s authoritarian drift, Moscow poses nothing like the danger it once did.

The more interesting question is whether the United States, the most powerful nation in the world, would want to be part of a broad-based collective-security institution with the defining feature of NATO’s Article V, which commits members to regard an attack on one as an attack on all. I think the answer there is yes. Continue reading →