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    <title>Fareed Zakaria</title>
    <category>Fareed Zakaria</category>
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    <description>Latest local news from The Durango Herald.</description>
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        <link>https://tj.durangoherald.com/the-cancerous-consensus-in-todays-washington/</link>
        <title>The cancerous consensus in today’s Washington</title>
        <description>You often hear that in these polarized times, Republicans and Democrats are deadlocked on almost everything. But the real scandal is what both sides agree on. The best example of this might be the defense budget. Last week, the Democratic...</description>
        <pubDate>Mon, 22 Jul 2019 23:33:17 -0600</pubDate>
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        <content:encoded><![CDATA[You often hear that in these polarized times, Republicans and Democrats are deadlocked on almost everything. But the real scandal is what both sides agree on. The best example of this might be the defense budget. Last week, the Democratic House, which Republicans say is filled with radicals, voted to appropriate $733 billion for 2020 defense spending. The Republicans are outraged because they – along with President Trump – want that number to be $750 billion. In other words, on the largest item of discretionary spending in the federal budget, accounting for more than half of the total, Democrats and Republicans are divided by 2.3%. That is the cancerous consensus in Washington today. America’s defense budget is out of control, lacking strategic coherence, utterly mismanaged, ruinously wasteful and yet eternally expanding. Last year, after a quarter century of resisting, the Pentagon finally subjected itself to an audit – which itself, in true Pentagon style, cost more than $400 million. Most of its agencies – Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines – failed. “We never expected to pass,” admitted then-Deputy Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan. The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction has identified $15.5 billion of waste. But that is after reviewing only $53 billion of the $126 billion appropriated for Afghan reconstruction through 2017. He wrote in a 2018 letter, “[We] have likely uncovered only a portion of the total waste, fraud, abuse and failed efforts.” Outside war zones, there are the usual examples of $14,000 toilet seat lids, $1,280 cups (yes, cups) and $4.6 million for crab and lobster meals. Remember when then-Secretary of Defense Robert Gates noted that the Pentagon had about as many people in military bands as the State Department had active foreign service officers? Well, it’s still true today. Donald Trump says he is a savvy businessman. Yet his attitude toward the Pentagon is that of an indulgent parent. “We love and need our Military and gave them everything – and more,” he tweeted last year. Far from bringing rationality to defense spending, he has simply opened the piggy bank, while at the same time trying to slash spending on almost every other government agency. The Pentagon is the most fiscally irresponsible government agency, but the Republicans’ response has been to simply give it more. The much deeper danger, however, is spotlighted by Jessica Tuchman Mathews in a superb essay in the New York Review of Books. Mathews points out that we tend to think about the defense budget as a percentage of the country’s gross domestic product, which is fundamentally erroneous. The defense budget should be related to the threats the country faces, not the size of its economy. If a country’s GDP grows by 30%, she writes, it “has no reason to spend 30% more on its military. To the contrary, unless threats worsen, you would expect that, over time, defense spending as a percentage of a growing economy should decline.” The United States faces a world in flux, to be certain, but surely not a more dangerous world than during the Cold War. The U.S. now spends more than the next 10 countries in the world put together, six of which are close allies – Britain, France, Germany, Japan, Saudi Arabia and South Korea. And the real threats of the future – cyberwar, space attacks – require different strategies and spending. Yet Washington keeps spending billions on aircraft carriers and tanks. There are even more fundamental questions about the structure of the Pentagon. Why do we have an Air Force if the Army, Navy and Marines all have their own air forces? Why does each service have its own representatives to essentially lobby Congress? When he was Defense Secretary in the early 2000s, Donald Rumsfeld tried to force some coherence onto the department (a legacy overshadowed by his disastrous handling of the Iraq War), but he was mostly outmaneuvered by the Pentagon and Congress. “You refer to closing unneeded bases,” Rep. Rob Simmons of Connecticut said to Rumsfeld. “I only have one base, and I do need it.” Multiply this response by 535 members of Congress to understand the depth of the problem. Dwight D. Eisenhower was the kind of Republican who had a pragmatic skepticism about government. He was the kind of seasoned general who understood that peace came from a combination of military strength and diplomatic engagement. That was why in his presidential farewell address he spoke about the dangers of the “military-industrial complex.” Sixty years later, it looks like one of the most prophetic warnings any president has ever made. Fareed Zakaria is a columnist for The Washington Post.]]></content:encoded>
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        <link>https://tj.durangoherald.com/george-wills-book-shows-why-conservatism-failed/</link>
        <title>George Will’s book shows why conservatism failed</title>
        <description>NEW YORK – Today’s crisis of conservatism has produced surprisingly few books that try to understand what exactly has happened to the venerable creed. For decades, conservatism was a dominant ideology in the Western world, championed by Margaret Thatcher and...</description>
        <pubDate>Mon, 08 Jul 2019 11:33:09 -0600</pubDate>
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        <content:encoded><![CDATA[NEW YORK – Today’s crisis of conservatism has produced surprisingly few books that try to understand what exactly has happened to the venerable creed. For decades, conservatism was a dominant ideology in the Western world, championed by Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. Now it has quietly collapsed. Donald Trump’s populism has taken over the Republican Party, and Brexit fever has consumed Britain’s Conservative leaders. Into this muddle comes George F. Will’s “The Conservative Sensibility.” I have long admired Will, who embodies the ideal of thoughtful, learned conservatism. When I was in college, he was already a fixture of American political and intellectual life – a columnist for The Washington Post, a regular commentator on Sunday morning television and the author of several books. As the editor of an undergraduate publication, I summoned the courage to write to Will asking for an interview, to which he agreed. That was 35 years ago, and since then my admiration and respect have remained undimmed. Thus, I picked up “The Conservative Sensibility” with great anticipation. The book, as one might expect, is deeply erudite, filled with examples from history and illuminating quotations from politicians and poets. Will has attempted to outline the basic features of his creed. American conservatism, Will announces, has almost nothing to do with European conservatism, “which is descended from, and often is still tainted by, throne-and-altar, blood-and-soil nostalgia, irrationality and tribalism.” He paraphrases Margaret Thatcher in observing that “European nations were made by history, the United States was made by philosophy.” American conservatism, then, is a project that seeks to defend the original philosophy of America’s Founding Fathers: classical liberalism, which promotes limited government and the veneration of individual liberty. The counterpoint to this tradition, Will argues, is progressivism, the philosophy articulated by Woodrow Wilson and most capably enacted by Franklin Roosevelt. Born during the industrialization of the country after the Civil War, progressivism sees society as requiring collective action, undertaken by government, which can best enable individuals to flourish economically, politically and morally. This tradition, for Will, has eroded the ideals of the American founding, enervated the spirit of America and created a country that is less free, less self-reliant and poised for economic stagnation. But the problem for Will and for modern conservatism is that, as progressivism rose in the 20th century, the United States became the most powerful, productive and dynamic nation in the world. Indeed, after the New Deal came the astonishing American boom of the 1950s and 1960s. After the Great Society came the information revolution, which America has dominated more than any other nation. The fact remains that in 2019, the U.S. is one of the most free, dynamic and innovative countries on the planet. If that is the result of a century of progressive policies, maybe we need more? The fundamental flaw of modern conservatism is that it is unsure whether America today is a fallen republic or an astonishing success story. This confusion has produced a political crisis among conservatives, which might help explain the rise of Donald Trump. Ever since the 1930s, conservatives have been promising their flock the rollback of the progressive agenda. They have warned about the dangers of leaving the welfare state intact and pilloried conservative leaders for failing in this crucial task. Yet, despite the Reagan revolution, the Gingrich revolution and the tea party revolution, the welfare state is still standing as strong as ever. Republicans dominate almost every arena of American politics – and the state is bigger than ever. Should we chalk this up to incompetence? More likely, conservatives know that the public actually wants the welfare state and that a modern country could not function today under some libertarian fantasy experiment. Of course, they will never admit this. In any case, the result is that conservative leaders left their base permanently aggrieved, feeling betrayed, and distrustful of any new campaign promises made. In recent years, as the fever grew, conservative voters became desperate for someone who had not played this game of bait-and-switch with them. And into this rage walked Donald Trump, who easily toppled the old conservative establishment and rode the frustration with elites all the way to the White House. George F. Will has written a fascinating book. But at its heart is the same saga of a lost utopia that has crippled modern conservatism and damaged American politics. Will describes himself as “an amiable, low-voltage atheist.” Well, then he surely knows that there never really was a Garden of Eden. Fareed Zakaria is a columnist for The Washington Post.]]></content:encoded>
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        <link>https://tj.durangoherald.com/anti-semitism-is-like-cancer-in-the-islamic-world/</link>
        <title>Anti-Semitism is like cancer in the Islamic world</title>
        <description>NEW YORK – In recent weeks, attention has focused on two freshman Democratic members of Congress, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, both of whom are Muslim and have made critical statements about Israel and its most ardent American supporters. Their...</description>
        <pubDate>Thu, 21 Feb 2019 17:33:18 -0700</pubDate>
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        <content:encoded><![CDATA[NEW YORK – In recent weeks, attention has focused on two freshman Democratic members of Congress, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, both of whom are Muslim and have made critical statements about Israel and its most ardent American supporters. Their tweets and comments have been portrayed by some as not simply criticisms of Israel but rather as evidence of a rising tide of anti-Semitism on the new left. I don’t know what is in the hearts of the two representatives. But I believe that Muslims should be particularly thoughtful when speaking about these issues because anti-Semitism has spread through the Islamic world like a cancer. Omar and Tlaib are not responsible for this, of course, but they should be aware of this poisonous climate. In 2014, the Anti-Defamation League did a survey in more than 100 countries of attitudes toward Jews and found that anti-Semitism was twice as common among Muslims than among Christians, though it’s far more prevalent in the Middle East than the Americas. It has sometimes tragically gone beyond feelings, morphing into terror attacks against Jews, even children, in countries like France. It might surprise people to know that it wasn’t always this way. Through much of history, the Muslim Middle East was hospitable to Jews when Christian Europe was killing or expelling them. The historian Bernard Lewis once said to me, “People often note that in the late 1940s and 1950s, hundreds of thousands of Jews fled Arab countries. They rarely ask why so many Jews were living in those lands in the first place.” In his seminal book, “The Jews of Islam,” Lewis points out that in the Middle Ages, when polemics against Jews were commonplace in the Christian world, they were rare in the Islamic world. One shouldn’t exaggerate the status of Jews back then – they were second-class citizens – but they were tolerated and encouraged to a far greater degree in Muslim societies than in Christian ones. Things changed in the Muslim world only in the late 19th century when, according to Lewis, “as a direct result of European influence, movements appear among Muslims of which for the first time one can legitimately use the term anti-Semitic.” Muslims worried that the British, who came to rule much of the Middle East, were favoring the small non-Muslim communities, especially Jews. Muslims began importing European anti-Semitic tropes like the notion of blood libel, and noxious anti-Semitic works started to be translated into Arabic, including the notorious “Protocols of the Elders of Zion.” What supercharged all these attitudes was the founding of Israel in 1948 and the determination of Arab leaders to defeat it. In their zeal to delegitimize the Jewish state, men like Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser promoted anti-Semitic literature and rhetoric. Arab states became propaganda machines for anti-Semitism, brainwashing generations of their people with the most hateful ideas about Jews. Even the supposedly secular president of Syria, Bashar Assad, declared in 2001 that Israelis were “trying to kill all the values of the divine religions, with the same mentality that brought about the betrayal and torturing of Christ and in the same way that they tried to betray the Prophet Muhammad.” Religious states like Saudi Arabia were just as bad, if not worse. Decades of state-sponsored propaganda have had an effect. Anti-Semitism is now routine discourse in Muslim populations in the Middle East, and also far beyond. While some Arab governments have stepped back from the active promotion of hate, the damage has been done. It should be possible to criticize Israel. As Peter Beinart has written, “establishing two legal systems in the same territory – one for Jews and one for Palestinians, as Israel does in the West Bank – is bigotry... And it has lasted for more than a half-century.” It should be possible to talk about the enormous political influence of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC. I recall senators privately worrying that if they supported the Iran nuclear deal, AIPAC would target them. (Of course, this is true of other lobbies and is not the only reason senators voted against the deal.) These are legitimate issues to vigorously debate and discuss in America, just as in Israel. Unfortunately, by phrasing the issue as the two new representatives sometimes have, they have squandered an opportunity to further that important debate. Fareed Zakaria is a columnist for The Washington Post.]]></content:encoded>
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        <link>https://tj.durangoherald.com/american-left-must-find-its-voice-on-venezuela/</link>
        <title>American left must find its voice on Venezuela</title>
        <description>NEW YORK – The Trump administration faces a test in Venezuela. It must pursue a foreign policy that helps usher out the odious regime of Nicolas Maduro without triggering a backlash against perceived American “imperialism.” It must support a political...</description>
        <pubDate>Thu, 14 Feb 2019 17:33:10 -0700</pubDate>
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        <content:encoded><![CDATA[NEW YORK – The Trump administration faces a test in Venezuela. It must pursue a foreign policy that helps usher out the odious regime of Nicolas Maduro without triggering a backlash against perceived American “imperialism.” It must support a political transition that doesn’t threaten the old guard so much that they fight to the end. And the U.S. must join with other nations to help a country that’s virtually been destroyed over the last decade. But Venezuela also poses a challenge for the Democratic Party. Can it find its voice on Venezuela and foreign policy more generally? So far, there are worrying signs that the new Democratic foreign policy could turn out to be a reflexive isolationism that is not so different from Donald Trump’s own “America First” instincts. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii says, “The United States needs to stay out of Venezuela. Let the Venezuelan people determine their future.” Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota says, “We cannot [hand-pick] leaders for other countries on behalf of multinational corporate interests.” Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders notes, “We must learn the lessons of the past and not be in the business of regime change or supporting coups.” Leftist hero Noam Chomsky and 70 other academics and activists have signed a letter largely blaming the crisis in Venezuela on U.S. actions. Does one really have to explain that Venezuela’s problems are primarily caused by its nasty government? That the Venezuelan people have not been allowed to determine their own future or pick their own leaders for years, going back to Hugo Chavez’s rule? The current government has clung to power by rigging elections, crushing opposition parties, muzzling the media and using lethal force against protesters. During a single week in January, pro-Maduro forces allegedly killed at least 30 people and arrested at least 850, according to the United Nations. The Chavez-Maduro regime has destroyed what was once Latin America’s richest nation, producing an almost unimaginable inflation rate of 1 million percent. (Prices double approximately every 19 days.) The simplest, bleakest indicator of how bad things are in Venezuela is that since 2015, an estimated 3 million Venezuelans have fled the country. That’s about 10 percent of the country, equivalent to an exodus of 30 million Americans. But millions more Venezuelans are staying and fighting. They have come out in droves to vote against this government, almost defeating Maduro in 2013 despite an unfair election, and successfully bringing an opposition parliament to power in 2015. For the last few years, Venezuelans have organized massive protests against the regime, enduring tear gas, arrests and killings. They have now rallied behind an opposition leader, Juan Guaido, and are using a constitutional process to shift control of the government from the regime to the elected parliament. Over the years, the Venezuelan government has used its oil wealth to support anti-American movements throughout Latin America, from Cuba to Nicaragua. It has deep ties to drug traffickers, and it is well-documented that the nation has developed ties with Iran and even Hezbollah. The Maduro regime is, not surprisingly, being supported by a rogues’ gallery of strongmen, from Vladimir Putin to Xi Jinping to Recep Tayyip Erdogan to the Iranian mullahs. There is a larger debate to be had about the path forward for a progressive foreign policy. There is appropriate skepticism about a defense budget that is $700 billion and growing. There are lessons to be learned from the overextension of American power abroad, from interventions that have gone on too long. Policy toward Venezuela will require tact, caution, regional engagement and more. But to shield us from the danger of mistakes and bad actions, the answer is surely not resolute inaction. In a brilliant book released last year, “A Foreign Policy for the Left,” the political philosopher (and card-carrying leftist) Michael Walzer argues that the default position of the left has tended to be inaction. The world is complicated, American power can be misused, information is never enough, so best to just stay the hell out. But those criteria could be a counsel for inaction at home as well. After all, a swift transition to Medicare for All would also be fraught with complexities and risks. Walzer makes a powerful case that “in a world beset by wars and civil wars, religious zealotry, terrorist attacks, far-right nationalism, tyrannical governments, gross inequalities and widespread poverty and hunger, [the world] requires intelligent leftist attention.” One additional example: You cannot tackle climate change without a deep and continuing engagement with the other 95 percent of humanity. “Our deepest commitment is solidarity with people in trouble,” writes Walzer. Right now, there are millions in trouble in our hemisphere who are trying to help themselves. They deserve the active support of the American left. Fareed Zakaria is a columnist for The Washington Post.]]></content:encoded>
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        <link>https://tj.durangoherald.com/what-khashoggis-death-says-about-america/</link>
        <title>What Khashoggi’s death says about America</title>
        <description>NEW YORK – The apparent murder of Jamal Khashoggi tells us something important about Saudi Arabia. But it also tells us something important about America. First, Saudi Arabia. As has been often noted, Jamal Khashoggi used to be part of...</description>
        <pubDate>Mon, 22 Oct 2018 17:04:14 -0600</pubDate>
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        <content:encoded><![CDATA[NEW YORK – The apparent murder of Jamal Khashoggi tells us something important about Saudi Arabia. But it also tells us something important about America. First, Saudi Arabia. As has been often noted, Jamal Khashoggi used to be part of the Saudi establishment. Although not a member of the House of Saud, he was well-born and well-connected. He edited an important Saudi newspaper and worked for senior royals. I first met him 14 years ago; he was one of the people who assisted me when I spent a week in Riyadh and Jeddah. Khashoggi was working for Prince Turki al-Faisal, the longtime head of Saudi intelligence who was at that time ambassador to Britain and would later become ambassador to the United States. Turki is one of the sons of King Faisal -– in other words, as senior a royal as you can get, other than the monarch. Khashoggi was, even in those days, a liberal and a reformer but always moderate and incremental in his approach. He worried that too much reform would be disruptive. “I would like to see my government taking harsher measures against [extremist elements],” he told me in 2005. But at the same time, he warned about going too fast. “We do not want to break the society,” he said. Watching Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s approach today, a mix of authoritarianism and real reforms, Khashoggi became more critical but was never a radical. So why was he apparently seen as so threatening? Perhaps because he was respected within the Saudi establishment. Harvard’s Tarek Masoud suggests that the Khashoggi affair might signal that there is greater dissent within the Saudi establishment than we had believed. If so, this is significant. Historically, Saudi Arabia has maintained stability because it was really a patronage state, not a police state. The kingdom has typically dealt with its critics and dissenters by buying them off – most importantly in the case of hardline clerics. It employed this strategy again most recently after the Arab Spring, when it massively increased subsidies to the people and gave bonuses to government employees. It worked. Yet MBS, as the Saudi crown prince is known, appears to be changing the patronage model, bringing it closer to the police-state one. He has mixed economic, social and religious reforms with an ever-tighter grip on power, shaking down businessmen, imprisoning activists, targeting news platforms – and now, it would seem, executing a columnist. Leaving aside their immorality, ruthless actions such as these tend to produce instability in the long run. Mohammed bin Salman is a complicated figure. He has moved Saudi Arabia forward in some areas while moving it toward greater repression in others. But the larger issue is that America’s foreign policy should not be based on personalities. Donald Trump’s worldview seems utterly rooted in his likes and dislikes of other leaders – from Kim Jong Un to Angela Merkel to MBS. In the Middle East, this has led to the blind subcontracting of American foreign policy to Saudi Arabia. Washington has watched and de facto endorsed the kingdom as it ramped up its war in Yemen, blockaded Qatar, quarreled with Turkey, and essentially kidnapped the prime minister of Lebanon. All these moves have, in large measure, failed. America’s Middle East policy should be based on its interests and values in the region, and these will never be perfectly aligned with any one country. Historically, this has meant being an honest broker, respected by all major powers. It is what allowed Henry Kissinger to practice shuttle diplomacy and pull Egypt away from the Soviet camp, and it is what helped Jimmy Carter forge the Camp David accords. This is why, from Bill Clinton to George W. Bush to Barack Obama, the U.S. government has urged even its Arab allies to undertake serious political reforms. All this requires nuance, sophistication and ceaseless high-quality diplomacy. This is the price of being the leader of the free world, a job that we appear of late to have vacated. Fareed Zakaria is a columnist for The Washington Post.]]></content:encoded>
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