Where America Stands: World Power

Fact Or Fiction?
By Lara Logan

Video Where America Stands: World Power

April 09, 2010  "CBS" -- "The mystique of American power I think is gone," said Aaron David Miller of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

The United States is no longer the sole power towering over the post-Cold War era.

"It's not so much we're declining, other countries are coming up," said James Baker, Former U.S. treasury secretary, and U.S. secretary of state.

The report card shows America's foundation is in peril. Most alarming? Deficits are projected to average over $900 billion a year through 2020. The average? $976 billion.

The nation's debt is the largest in history: $12 trillion and counting. That's over $80,000 for every American worker.

China is now the largest holder of U.S. debt. It's also the largest exporter and within the next five to seven years, it's expected to surpass the U.S. as the largest manufacturer in the world.

The Problem:

The problem for America is that its greatness has always been rooted in its economic dominance.

"We're in a real pickle," said Baker. "We will not be as important on the world scene if we continue to be a tremendously large debtor nation."

That debt has forced the U.S. to keep borrowing from foreign countries.

"Can the world's greatest power remain the world's greatest power and also be the world's greatest borrower?" Miller asked. "I don't think so."

Aaron David Miller served as an advisor to six secretaries of state and has witnessed a decline in American diplomatic power.

"We can't morally preach anymore about the virtues of American-style capitalism when we can't fix our own dysfunctional broken house."

And seemingly can't win two wars, Miller says, that have already cost over $1 trillion.

"We can't fix these places and yet we can't walk away from them," Miller said. "For a great power, that's the worst place to be."

Solutions:

The solution is to accept that many nations now have a seat at the table and can influence world outcomes.

Atlantic Magazine's James Fallows just returned after living in China for three years. "It was easier long ago to say well you have a couple big powers. Now you have a lot of big powers."

"China has a very, very long way to go before they have the dimensions of a national power that the U.S. does - maybe never," Fallows said.

Is American power on the decline?

"Not really, things are changing," Fallows replied. "Other countries are getting relatively stronger but it doesn't necessarily mean that the U.S. will decline in any way that really matters."

Fallows believes the changing world order will be a catalyst for an American comeback - much as fear of Soviet domination in the Sputnik era galvanized American education.

"The fact that the U.S. success will eventually end doesn't mean it has to end now - or 10 years from now - or 100 years from now if we do the right things," Fallow said.

What about that Chinese owned debt?

"If the U.S. dollar plummets in value - we suffer and so do the Chinese," Fallow said.

"Their debt is worth nothing then?" Logan asked.

"Yes, exactly," Fallows said.

Baker believes America's absolute power is still intact, for now.

"When I was treasury secretary everybody was writing that Japan Inc. was going to take over the world," Baker said. "America was in permanent decline."

We're in the same situation now with people talking about America's decline.

"I don't think it's going to happen provided - one big proviso - that we deal with this debt bomb," Baker said.

If we don't, Baker said, "Then it might happen."

The U.S. still remains the most important single power in the world. But in the time it took to watch this report, the national debt grew by nearly $18 million.

 

There is nothing civil about civil wars!

Manufacturing Consent For Attack On Iran?

Obama: Evidence Shows Iran is Developing Nukes

By Amir Oren

April 02, 2010 "Haaretz" - -Evidence shows Iran is attempting to develop nuclear weapons, U.S. President Barack Obama told CBS on Friday, adding that he felt his administration should continue the pressure on Tehran to cooperate with the international community over its contentious nuclear program.

In an interview to "The Early Show" Friday, Obama said "all the evidence indicates" that Tehran is trying to get the "capacity to develop nuclear weapons."

With such a capability, Obama said that Iran could "destabilize" life in the Mideast and trigger an arms race in the region, adding that, for that reason, he felt "the idea here is to keep on turning up the pressure."

"We're going to ratchet up the pressure and examine how they respond but we're going to do so with a unified international community," Obama said.

The U.S. president had said earlier this week he wanted new, stronger U.N. sanctions to be in place by late spring. The president also said he believes the country has become further isolated from the rest of the world since he took office.

Obama's comment comes after, earlier Friday, Iran's chief nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili said after meeting China's foreign minister and other officials in Beijing that Iran and China agreed during talks in Beijing that sanctions are "not effective."

"In our talks with China it was agreed that tools such as sanctions have lost their effectiveness," Jalili told a news conference in the Chinese capital, speaking via a Chinese translator.

Asked if China backs sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program, he said: "It's up to China to answer that."

Jalili also said that international sanctions would not prevent Iran from pursuing its nuclear activities. "Iranians are familiar with sanctions ... We consider sanctions as opportunities ... We will continue our [nuclear] path more decisively," Jalili said.

The United States and Israel, meanwhile, have both been making efforts to engage China in pursuing harsh international sanctions against Iran over the latter's contentious nuclear program.

The head of the Israel Defense Forces' Planning Directorate, Maj. Gen. Amir Eshel, will make an official visit to China next week to meet senior officials in the defense establishment there.

Eshel, who is in charge of strategic planning and foreign affairs for the Israel Defense Forces, is hoping to present the Chinese with Israel's view on Iran's drive toward nuclear military capability.

U.S. President Barack Obama, meanwhile, held an hour-long telephone conversation with Chinese President Hu Jintao on Thursday, in which he "underscored the importance of working together to ensure that Iran lives up to its international obligations," the White House said in a statement.

The head of Israel's Military Intelligence, Maj. Gen. Amos Yadlin, recently traveled to China and relayed to his hosts details of the Iran's progress toward nuclear arms.

The spokesman for the Chinese military, with a rank of brigadier general, visited Israel last week as a guest of his Israeli counterpart.

The Israel Defense Forces considers exchanges with China to be important in softening Beijing's opposition to international sanctions against Iran - which is suspected of developing nuclear weapons.

Last week China announced for the first time that it would consider going along with sanctions against Iran, even though its final decision will be made following talks in the UN Security Council over the substance of the resolution that will be brought for a vote.

In conversations with Israelis in recent weeks, Chinese officers and officials have made it clear that they both oppose Iran's drive to acquire nuclear arms, but also any military action to stop the Iranian program. The Chinese also said that they oppose targeting Iran's nuclear program through sanctions.

The Chinese opposition to sanctions was presented as a point of principle and was justified by the historic experience of the Communist regime in China, which suffered in its early decades as a result of Western sanctions.

U.S. and Israeli efforts are focused on convincing Beijing that the best alternative to preventing a nuclear Iran and a military operation targeting it would be to agree to more severe sanctions - without actively supporting these.

A successful effort to convince Russia, another permanent member of the Security Council, to support the sanctions would result in four of the five members voting in favor of tightening sanctions against Tehran, while Beijing would abstain and not veto the resolution.

China sells arms, equipment and advanced technology to the Iranian military and the Revolutionary Guard, which also make their way to Hezbollah. These include an anti-shipping missile that struck the Israeli gunship Hanit in July 2006.

A U.S. intelligence report on the proliferation of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and missiles in 2009 was delivered to Congress last week. The unclassified version concluded that the Chinese government has implemented, during the past two years, legislation that is meant to monitor the export of banned items, but enforcement is not complete.

"Chinese entities" continue to sell items "related to missiles" to many clients, including Iran, according to the report.

The improvement in IDF relations with China is striking in view of the cooling of ties between the U.S. and Chinese militaries during the past two months, as a result of the announcement of the Obama administration on January 30 of plans to sell arms worth $6.4 billion to Taiwan.

Even though the United States was careful to stress that the arms in the package are not offensive weapons - Blackhawk helicopters, Patriot air-defense missiles, and mine sweepers - the Chinese responded by freezing contacts between the militaries of the two powers.

The exchange of visits by senior officers from Beijing and Jerusalem also reflects the rebuilding of ties that were strained following the crisis over the cancelation of an early warning aircraft deal in 2000. The sale of the Phalcon radar that ELTA was to mount on a Russian-made Ilyushin IL-76 transport aircraft was vetoed by the Americans.

The U.S. concern then, as it is today, is that China will upgrade its military capabilities to operate far from home.

In recent years Israel has been careful to follow American guidelines and avoid exporting sensitive military equipment to China.

As a result of the cancelation of the deal, Israel was forced to pay China $350 million in compensation.

Talks with Chinese officers suggest that the effects of that crisis have been minimized but not entirely forgotten: One officer said that he was surprised to witness, on arrival at Ben-Gurion International airport, a test flight of the second of the three Phalcon early-warning aircraft that are being supplied to India. A $1.1 billion deal was signed in 2004 following the failed Chinese deal. The aircraft was delivered to India late last week.

There is nothing civil about civil wars!

Obama's U.N. Sanctions Push

IRAN

After long resisting calls to join in sanctions efforts aimed at the Iranian nuclear program, "China signaled to its partners on the United Nations Security Council that it is ready to consider a council resolution" in favor of sanctions. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton "affirmed late Monday the participation in Iranian sanctions talks of China, seen as the most hesitant member of the so-called 'P5-plus-1' -- the five permanent U.N. Security Council members plus Germany that are negotiating with Tehran." On Wednesday, the six major world powers -- the United States, Russia, France, Great Britain, Germany, and China -- agreed "to begin putting together proposed new sanctions on Iran over its suspect nuclear program after China dropped its opposition." U.S. and other Western diplomats are "also pressing hard on two non-veto-wielding Council members, Turkey and Brazil, both of which have publicly questioned the usefulness of sanctions, to at least abstain on any final vote." President Obama predicted on Tuesday that he would be able to persuade the United Nations to "move forcefully" against Iran with new sanctions within weeks, not months. "The fact that Beijing has agreed to discuss these steps is bad news for Tehran," writes Iran analyst Meir Javedanfar. "This is why Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, dispatched the top nuclear negotiator, Saeed Jalili, to hold talks with the Chinese government." State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said the United States wants to focus on financial holdings of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps, as part of a resolution that puts an appropriate bite on the Tehran government but spares the Iranian people undue hardship. The Iranian government remains defiant that sanctions will not halt its nuclear program.

'AN INTELLIGENCE COUP':
Earlier this week, ABC News reported that an Iranian nuclear scientist "who disappeared last year under mysterious circumstances, had defected to the CIA and been resettled in the United States." Intelligence officials called the defection of scientist Shahram Amiri "an intelligence coup" in the continuing CIA operation to spy on and undermine Iran's nuclear program. In a recent report (pdf) to Congress, the CIA concluded that "Iran continues to develop a range of capabilities that could be applied to producing nuclear weapons, if a decision is made to do so," but also restated its previous conclusion that "we do not know whether Tehran eventually will decide to produce nuclear weapons." While the upcoming National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran is expected to revise some of the key conclusions of the 2007 NIE -- which held that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 and that the program remains frozen -- the news that the United States has had custody since last June of a key Iranian nuclear scientist raises questions about how drastic those revisions might be. ABC reports that Amiri "has been extensively debriefedThey say Amiri helped to confirm U.S. intelligence assessments about the Iranian nuclear program." Obama told CBS that "all the evidence indicates" that Tehran is trying to get the "capacity to develop nuclear weapons." since his defection by the CIA, according to the people briefed on the situation.
 
CONSERVATIVES COMPLAINING:  
For eight years, the Bush administration failed to effectively confront Iran's nuclear ambitions, yet many former Bush officials and supporters are now criticizing the Obama administration for the same thing. Former (recess-appointed) U.N. ambassador John Bolton, a long-time advocate of bombing Iran, said Thursday that Obama is "naive" in thinking more sanctions against Iran will stop its nuclear program. "This additional round of sanctions will have no material impact," Bolton said. Likewise declaring the new sanctions to be "failing" even before they've been adopted, Danielle Pletka of the American Enterprise Institute described the options as: "Either Iran gets a nuclear weaponpreparing to accept an Iranian nuclear weapon. However, another Weekly Standard writer, Reuel Marc Gerecht, has credited Obama's approach with putting pressure on the Iranian regime, writing that "Obama could rightly claim that his outreach policy toward the Islamic Republic helped create the tumult that we've seen" since Iran's June 12 elections. Similarly, journalist David Ignatius, a long-time Iran watcher, wrote that "White House officials argue that their strategy of engagement has been a form of pressure, and the evidence supports them." and we manage the risk, or someone acts to eliminate the threat" through military force. Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol declared Obama's engagement policy a failure and accused the administration of
 
FORGING EFFECTIVE PARTNERSHIPS:  

During the 2008 presidential campaign, then-senator Obama clearly stated that a secondary benefit of his Iran engagement policy was the creation of greater international unity and focus on the Iranian nuclear problem. "If it [negotiation with Iran] doesn't work," Obama said during the first presidential debate, "then we [will] have strengthened our ability to form alliances to impose tough sanctions" on Iran. That strategy seems to be working. Russia had been a skeptic of sanctions, but has now indicated a willingness to consider them. In late March, Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said that Iran was allowing an opportunity for mutually beneficial dialogue with the West to "slip away." "The [Iranian] regime has become more isolated since I came into office," Obama said in an interview with CBS News. "Part of the reason that we reached out to them was to say, 'You've got a path. You can take a path that allows you to rejoin the international community, or you can take a path of developing nuclear weapons capacity that further isolates you.'" Center for American Progress analysts Sam Charap and Brian Katulis wrote that Obama's "emphasis on collaboration and shared responsibilities constructed a new foundation for global security co-operation, which will extend beyond reining in Iran's nuclear program. In little over a year, the engagement policy has revived America's influence and leverage and created a diplomatic infrastructure that will make America more secure." As Rudy DeLeon, Winny Chen, and John Gans wrote in a 2008 report (pdf) for the Center for American Progress, "diplomacy, when integrated with other policy tools," provides "a powerful force multiplier for advancing U.S. interests."
 


There is nothing civil about civil wars!