Friday 30 May 2014

Presidential Doctrines are Tough.....

President Obama was at West Point Wednesday to deliver a commencement speech to the new crop of officers, and reset the stage for American foreign policy (transcript linked here) as the United States winds things down in Afghanistan, possibly later this year. In many quarters, both at home and abroad, his speech has gone over like a lead balloon. The President's supporters think he is threading the needle perfectly between intervention and restraint in global affairs (see story). Others think Obama's approach is just the latest bit of evidence that the President is willfully hastening America's slide into irrevocable decline (see story). Some of the punditry and arm-chair quarterbacking is predictable, perhaps including this blog post.

Only the most delusional of partisans would describe President Obama's foreign policy as successful. However, Obama is not the first American president to have their foreign policy efforts blow up in their face. At bottom, I think President Obama would rather the world take a time out so he could focus entirely on issues he cares much more deeply about, such as healthcare, climate change, and the economy. Unfortunately, the world is a messy little place in which foreign policy aims regularly seem to wash up on the complicated rocks of reality.

Those who study American foreign policy spend a lot of time teasing out "presidential doctrines" on foreign affairs. These so-called "doctrines" have become shorthand for both the world view and policy emphases of every U.S. president since Monroe. Experts focused on Wednesday's speech saw in it modifications to Obama Doctrine. Yet, what and who doctrines are for is itself a curious thing. In the rest of this post, I offer a few thoughts about why....

Wednesday 21 May 2014

How not to build a pipeline... and how social science could have helped

The Keystone XL saga continues to deliver head-scratchers. While everyone awaits the decision of the Nebraska Supreme Court (link to case here) expected late this year, a number of items have crossed my desk that reinforce points made in earlier blog posts. A couple of weeks ago, the business pages of the Financial Post reported that TransCanada Pipeline sent letters to some Nebraska land-owners suggesting they are running out of time to get a solid compensation offer in exchange for pipeline right of way (link here). It's a curious development since just a few months ago, TransCanada sent out similar notices with dramatic increases in offers of compensation (link here). In one family's case, a 2012 offer of $8,900 for right of way across their property rose to nearly $62,000 in January 2014. Now, some of those same landowners are being told that unless they sign on the dotted line now, they might be left holding the bag. Not a great way to win friends.

Redefining the Floor....Down

I was scrolling through some YouTube clips the other day and came across the great Seinfeld episode in which Frank Costanza invites Seinfeld...