According to the New York Times, Barack Obama is about to get tough on China. Helene Cooper quotes Clinton administration national-security expert David Rothkopf, who says, “There’s been this well-orchestrated and clearly well thought-out campaign, over the past two weeks, involving the secretary of state, Treasury, defense and commerce making strong statements regarding currency, the trade imbalance, human rights and China’s military stance.” Cooper notes: “The more assertive strategy comes after Mr. Obama was criticized as appearing to kowtow to China in his visit there in 2009, and then again for allowing Beijing to get the upper hand against the United States at the Group of 20 summit meeting in Seoul late last year.”
A genuine policy shift is certainly welcome, but this is not it. The administration’s new approach on China will likely fail because it is compartmentalized. Without a bold change in America’s larger foreign policy, these feints amount to no more than fleeting imitations of power. Why would Hu Jintao concern himself with a one-day human-rights condemnation from an administration that has spent two straight years softening its human-rights rhetoric? Why would Hu fear the retaliation of a president who is so mild on international trade that now, as the Times puts it, “corporate leaders are pressing” him to “take a tougher stance”? Why would Beijing be concerned with a narrow and localized military investment boost pledged by a White House that has sworn to shrink America’s military posture around the globe?
America cannot simultaneously apologize and intimidate. So long as there remains no connection between this week’s slapdash simulation of American confidence and long-term American policy, we are negotiating without credibility. Which will prove no more effective than asking nicely.
Actually, I’m going to make another stab at a theory: anyone know the price of toilet paper in India?
I’m guessing that Indian newspapers are far less expensive than Charmin.
P.S. Yes, I know Indians overwhelmingly use squat toilets.
But I’m just wondering whether all the newsprint is actually going to newspapers.
Abe, you know P.J. is a humorist, right? He’s not actually making a case for bailing out newspapers as he is illustrating the absurdity of the bailout. Lines like this should have given the game away;
“We need a swift infusion of federal aid. Otherwise all the information in the US will be about Lindsay Lohan’s sex life.”
Responding to satire with a factual argument just seems silly.
Chris,
I referred to O’Rourke’s piece as “typically mordant” at the beginning of this post. And satire is best employed in the service of just causes. As O’Rourke is actually making the case for financial freedom, I don’t see how bolstering that case with interesting facts is silly. But, to each his own.
Abe
Abe,
I got the “mordant” part but you threw me by using such a tongue-in-cheek piece about giving money to writers as a jumping off point for a piece on the financial state/stability of the newspaper indistry in general. So fair enough; I missed your point and it was my mistake.
Cheers!
Chris–India pioneered what I call the “free-paid” newspaper model. Newspapers typically cost 5-8 US cents (24 pages all color) and can get bought for even less. Only reason to charge even that is because if there is no paper transaction with end-user, it will go into recycling. But the larger point is that the industry has grown both in terms of advertising and readership (400 million Indians still can’t read and write and 359 million Indians who are technically literate still don’t buy papers yet) and the industry–despite needing a bit of a consolidation in these slow times–will be healthy and grow. There are other issues of being an industry entirely dependent on advertising (with circulation not really contributing) but that is for another day and time. Raju Narisetti, editor Mint.
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