Fall 2011 • Volume Ix

FALL 2011 • VOLUME IX Fall 2011 • Volume IX EDITORS’ NOTE 4 OBAMA'S COUNTERTERRORISM POLICY STUART GOTTLIEB 5 THE CHina SYDNROME: THE EffecTS OF CHINESE INVESTmenT ON GoveRnance IN AFRIA MICHAEL CUSTER 11 THE CROSSRoaDS OF JUSTICE: WAR AND Peace IN LIBERIA DANIELLA MONTEMARANO 42 THE ImpacT OF UNION ON STATE DEBT AURELLE AMRAM 53 ValuaBLE Violence: THE ROLE OF REBellion IN SepaRATIST MovemenTS MICHELLE HOEFER 89 THE ImpacT OF Legal ORigin ON CONSTITUTional PRoviSIONS SARAH WALTON 108 Two SIDES OF THE COIN: HUMAN RIGHTS LevelS IN HOST AND INVESTOR COUNTRIES AS DETERminanTS OF FOReign DIRecT INVESTmenT CHERE SEE 133 This publication is published by New York University students. NYU is not responsible for its contents. 4 EDITORIAL BOARD EDITORS’ NOTE The articles in the Journal of Politics & International Affairs do not represent an agreement of beliefs and methodology. Readers are not expected to concur with all the opinions and research contained within these pages; the Journal seeks to inform and inspire the NYU community by presenting a wide variety of topics and opinions from a similarly broad range of ideologies and methods. Manuscripts submitted to the Journal of Politics & International Affairs are handled by an editorial board at New York University. Papers are submitted via e-mail and selected after several rounds of reading by the staff. Final selections are made by the editors-in-chief. Papers are edited for clarity, readability, and grammar in multiple rounds, during which at least three editors review each piece. Papers are assigned on the basis of fields of interest and expertise of the editors, in addition to a variety of other considerations such as equalization of the workload and the nature of the work necessary. FALL 2011 STAYING THE COURSE 5 OBAMA'S COUNTERTERRORISM POLICY ARTICLES BY STUART GOTTLIEB Stuart Gottlieb is director of policy studies at the Jackson Institute for Global Affairs at Yale University and an adjunct professor at Columbia University. He is also an Adjunct Professor in the NYU Wilf Family Department of Politics. He formerly served as a foreign policy adviser and speechwriter in the U.S. Senate. His most recent book is Debating Terrorism and Counterterrorism: Causes, Context, and Responses (CQ Press, 2010). STAYING THE COURSE: WHY PRESIDENT OBAMA'S ANTITERROR POLICIES LOOK SO MUCH LIKE GEORGE W. BUSH'S The following article by Professor Gottlieb was published in The American Lawyer magazine, reprinted with permission. Of all of Barack Obama’s presidential campaign promises, among the most compelling was his vow to restore “rule of law” to America’s counterterrorism policy. The overly aggressive policies of George W. Bush, Obama said, led the United States to “act contrary to our traditions.” Rejecting as “false the choice between our security and our ideals,” Obama promised to reverse Bush administration excesses and craft new counterterrorism policies “consistent with our values and our Constitution.” Nearly two years into his presidency, and despite early declarations of success in fashioning a new course, the Obama administration’s counterterrorism policies are strikingly similar to and in some cases even more aggressive than those under Bush. Guantánamo prison, which Obama ordered closed by January 2010, remains open, as do other international prisons housing a total of more than 1,000 terror detainees. The most aggressive parts of the Patriot Act remain in force, as does the Na- tional Security Agency’s warrantless surveillance program. Obama’s executive order banning “all forms of torture” has been supplanted by an intensified dronestrike as- sassinations program against suspected terrorists, and a beefed-up renditions policy to shuttle terror suspects to third-party nations for detention and interrogation. And the JOURNAL OF POLITICS AND INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS 6 STUART GOTTLIEB Obama administration’s claims of unilateral executive power to detain terror suspects without any charges, and to quash human rights lawsuits under the “state secrets” privi- lege, would make even a Bush-era Justice Department lawyer blush. What happened? How could such high-profile promises, on such vital national security issues, with such profound constitutional and political implications, have so quickly and egregiously fallen by the wayside? The short answer is fairly simple: Many, if not most, of Obama’s promises were devoid of any practical application for the current threat environment. Thus, upon entering office and no doubt after reviewing the highest-level intelligence reports the Obama administration quickly (if quietly) tempered its efforts (if not its rhetoric) to “reverse” Bush’s policies and to place counterterrorism policy in the sunlight of trans- parent constitutionalism. The longer answer is more complex, and contains a cautionary tale for the future: President Obama and many senior officials in his administration deeply believe in a more constitutionally grounded criminal justice approach to fighting terrorism, for reasons of both symbolism and substance, and view their reliance on Bush hard-line tactics as a necessary evil until their more “enlightened” approach can be accepted and implemented. The problem is that this dichotomy maintaining the core of Bush’s policies while at the same time continuing to disparage and disassociate from them has led to cognitive dissonance in the administration, and a dangerous disconnect between the administration’s rhetoric and its policies. In practical terms this has damaged the credibility of the administration’s foreign policy in the Muslim world, where Obama’s approval ratings are now equal to or lower than Bush’s levels. And it has undercut the American public’s trust in Obama to deal effectively with terror threats at home, where Republicans are now favored over Democrats on the issue of terrorism by nearly 2 to 1. Reconciling the dichotomy between its counterterrorism rhetoric and policies requires that the Obama administration finally embrace the obvious: that the core of the Bush policies will remain necessary in America’s fight against global terrorism for many years to come; and, more importantly, that the Obama administration’s continu- ation (and refinement) of Bush’s policies has in fact helped institutionalize an effective, bipartisan approach to fighting terrorism. Unfortunately, this necessary moment of clarity for the Obama administration will likely not come easily. The administration has invested a tremendous amount of political capital both at home and abroad arguing that Bush’s hard-line policies were unconstitutional, un-American, and fundamentally flawed, and promising to “turn the page” from the past. Indeed, accepting a new bipartisan consensus in counterterrorism will require not simply toning down the antiBush rhetoric, but also dismantling the counterterrorism model the Obama administration brought to the White House. While the Bush administration operated consistently—for better or worse— under a “terrorism as warfare” paradigm, Obama officials developed a hybrid “criminal justice/national security” model based on three components: firm reliance on reas- FALL 2011 STAYING THE COURSE 7 suring “turn the page” rhetoric; showcasing the symbolic power of American ideals by placing, whenever at all possible, counterterrorism decisions under the rubric of constitutional “rule of law”; and quietly maintaining the aggressive warfare practices and policies they believe were effective and necessary under Bush. During its first year in office, the administration leaned heavily on the first two components. This was best seen with Obama’s executive orders banning torture, clos- ing Guantánamo, and halting military commissions; the decision to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) and other alleged 9/11 conspirators in civilian court in New York; and the change in counterterrorism language used by the administration—eliminating phrases like “war on terrorism” and replacing terms like “Islamic terrorism” with “vio- lent extremism.” However, the administration’s first year also coincided with the largest spike in “terror-related events” (plots and foiled plots) inside the U.S. than any year since 2001, an uptick that has continued into 2010. With the threat level remaining high, and Americans increasingly concerned about terrorism, nearly all of Obama’s core promises regarding constitutional values have fallen like dominoes, including promises to close Guantánamo, grant all terror detainees baseline habeas corpus rights, put KSM on trial in New York, and end warrantless surveillance. What remains is a counterterrorism policy based almost entirely on the third component aggressive warfare practices that began under Bush in the wake of 9/11. Indeed, new rules are being written by the Obama White House nearly every day that make a mockery of its claim to have “turned the page” from Bush toward a greater reliance on enlightened values, including, most recently, an effort to quash an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit opposing Obama’s stated right to target American citizens overseas for execution, if it is determined they are actively supporting Al Qaeda military operations. Despite this, the administration continues to insist that it has shifted America’s approach to fighting terrorism in a more constitutionally grounded direction. For ex- ample, it refuses to officially rule out a civilian trial for KSM in New York, despite there being no chance that such a trial will ever occur. And it continues to tout its promise to move

Load more