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The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) adopted by Iran and the P5+1 partners in July 2015 was an effort not only to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons but also to avert a nuclear arms competition in the Middle East. But uncertainties surrounding the future of the Iran nuclear deal, including the question of what Iran will do when key JCPOA restrictions on its nuclear program expire after 15 years, could provide incentives for some of its neighbors to keep their nuclear options open.

In their Brookings Arms Control and Non-Proliferation Series monograph, “The Iran Nuclear Deal: Prelude to Proliferation in the Middle East?,” Robert Einhorn and Richard Nephew assess the current status of the JCPOA and explore the likelihood that, in the wake of the agreement, regional countries will pursue their own nuclear weapons programs or at least latent nuclear weapons capabilities. Drawing on interviews with senior government officials and non-government experts from the region, they focus in depth on the possible motivations and capabilities of Egypt, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates for pursuing nuclear weapons. The monograph also offers recommendations for policies to reinforce the JCPOA and reduce the likelihood that countries of the region will seek nuclear weapons.

On May 31, the Brookings Arms Control and Non-Proliferation Initiative hosted a panel to discuss the impact of the JCPOA on prospects for nuclear proliferation in the Middle East. Brookings Senior Fellow and Deputy Director of Foreign Policy Suzanne Maloney served as moderator. Panelists included H.E. Yousef Al Otaiba, ambassador of the United Arab Emirates to the United States; Derek Chollet, counselor and senior advisor for security and defense policy at the German Marshall Fund; Brookings Senior Fellow Robert Einhorn; and Brookings Nonresident Senior Fellow Richard Nephew.

Join the conversation on Twitter using #IranDeal

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• The Iran nuclear deal: Prelude to proliferation in the Middle East?

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• Uncorrected Transcript (.pdf)

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• 20160531_iran_nuclear_deal_transcript

      

      

When Iran and the P5+1 signed a deal over Tehran’s nuclear program last July, members of Congress, Middle East analysts, and Arab Gulf governments all warned that the agreement would prompt Iran’s rivals in the region to race for the bomb.

In a report that Bob Einhorn and I released this week, we assessed this risk of a so-called proliferation cascade. We look at four states in particular—Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, and Turkey—and Bob briefly explores each case in another blog post out today. In the paper, we argue that although the likelihood of a proliferation cascade in the Middle East is fairly low, and certainly lower than a number of critics of the Iran deal would have you believe, it is not zero. Given that, here are eight steps that leaders in Washington should take to head off that possibility:

1. Ensure that the JCPOA is rigorously monitored, strictly enforced, and faithfully implemented;
2. Strengthen U.S. intelligence collection on Iranian proliferation-related activities and intelligence-sharing on those activities with key partners;
3. Deter a future Iranian decision to produce nuclear weapons;
4. Seek to incorporate key monitoring and verification provisions of the JCPOA into routine IAEA safeguards as applied elsewhere in the Middle East and in the global nonproliferation regime;
5. Pursue U.S. civil nuclear cooperation with Middle East governments on terms that are realistic and serve U.S. nonproliferation interests;
6. Promote regional arrangements that restrain fuel cycle developments and build confidence in the peaceful use of regional nuclear programs;
7. Strengthen security assurances to U.S. partners in the Middle East; and
8. Promote a stable regional security environment.

Taken together, these steps deal with three core challenges the United States faces in shoring up the nonproliferation regime in the region.

The first is that the central test of nonproliferation in the Middle East will come from how the JCPOA is believed to be meeting its core objective of preventing Iranian nuclear weapons development and Iranian establishment of regional hegemony. It cannot be stressed enough that the decision to pursue nuclear weapons by any state, including those in the region, starts with a sense of vulnerability to core security threats and an inability to address those threats through any other means. The history of nuclear proliferation is one of tit-for-tat armament in the face of overriding security imperatives. Both finished and aborted nuclear programs bear the hallmarks of a security dilemma impelling states to make the political, economic, and security investments into nuclear weapons.

This is no less true for countries across the region than for Iran. To the extent that the overall security environment can be stabilized, there will be less impetus for any Middle Eastern state to develop nuclear weapons. The United States should focus on:

• Fully implementing and enforcing all sides of the JCPOA (nuclear restrictions, transparency, and sanctions relief);
• Creating a strong sense of deterrence toward Iran, manifest most clearly in the passage of a standing Authorization to Use Military Force if Iran is determined to be breaking out toward acquisition of a nuclear weapon;
• Providing security assurances and backing them up with the mechanisms to make them actionable like joint exercises, logistical planning, and cooperation with a range of regional and extra-regional actors; and,
• Working to promote a more stable regional environment by seeking the resolution of simmering conflicts.

But, these latter two factors also point to another resonant theme in our research: the need for the United States to be a player. After decades of involvement in the region, the United States has yet to settle upon the right balance between involvement and remove. Yet, establishing this equilibrium is essential. States in the region need predictability in their affairs with the United States, including knowing the degree to which our assurances will stand the test of time.

States in the region need predictability in their affairs with the United States, including knowing the degree to which our assurances will stand the test of time.

In part for this reason, the United States should not only pursue deeper security relationships, but also civil nuclear cooperation with interested states throughout the region. Such a relationship both ensures a closer link between the United States and its partners and discourages the spread of enrichment and reprocessing technology by disincentivizing countries from “going it alone.” In the Middle East, the United States would need to find a formulation that offers some flexibility (such as by building in language that would permit the United States to terminate any nuclear cooperation arrangements in the face of sensitive fuel cycle development by the other side).

The United States should also share intelligence more closely with its partners in the region. This is helpful in the short term, of course, but also helps the United States understand the mindset of and intelligence picture of its regional partners in a broader sense. It also helps leaders in Washington address concerns brought about by unfounded rumors or speculation as to Iran’s intentions or capabilities.

Changing how we do business

Even more important than how the JCPOA was negotiated will be how we transition from its restrictions and transparency mechanisms into a new world in 15 to 20 years. 

The United States seek to incorporate elements of the JCPOA into normal international monitoring practices and should negotiate new arrangements to help govern the future development of nuclear technology in the region. 

To achieve the former, the IAEA will need to make some changes to how it does business. For example, the IAEA determines how best to implement its monitoring mission, contingent on acceptance by the country being inspected. The United States and its partners should work with the IAEA (and other countries with significant nuclear activities) to make some parts of the JCPOA standard operating practice, such as online monitoring of enrichment levels. Other elements of the JCPOA may require agreements at the IAEA and beyond for how nuclear-related activities, including those that could have value for nuclear weaponization, are handled. It might be hard to get agreement, not least because there is clear language in the JCPOA that states that it will not be seen as a precedent for future nuclear nonproliferation efforts. However, it should still be the ambition of the United States to make such steps part of the norm. 

A far more difficult lift would be organizing a regional approach to the nuclear fuel cycle. This is not the same as creating a multilateral fuel cycle, though some elements that approach would be helpful. Rather, the United States should find ways to craft regional agreements or, failing that, moratoria on aspects of the fuel cycle that others in the region would find threatening. It would be easier to negotiate constraints some aspects than others. For example, spent fuel reprocessing is rare in the Middle East, with only Israel having been known to do it to a significant degree. It may therefore be an attractive first place to begin. Enrichment would be altogether more difficult, but it may be possible to convince states in the region to forego the expansion of their enrichment programs beyond their status quo. For Iran, it would continue to possess uranium enrichment but with constraints that limit the utility of this program for weapons production; its incentive would be to avoid creating the rationale for regional competition. For other countries in the region, it would involve holding off on enrichment, but also on the financial and political investment enrichment would involve—as well refraining from creating a security dilemma for Iran that could produce miscalculation in the future.

While some of these recommendations are more challenging (and may prove impossible), others are potentially easier. By taking a multifaceted approach, the United States increases the chances that no further weapons of mass destruction proliferate in the Middle East down the road. 

Editors’ Note: Richard Nephew and Bob Einhorn spoke about their new report at a recent Brookings event. You can see the video from the event here.

      

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s idea to withdraw American forces from Asia—letting allies like Japan and South Korea fend for themselves, including possibly by acquiring nuclear weapons—is fundamentally unsound, as I’ve written in a Wall Street Journal op-ed.

Among the many dangers of preemptively pulling American forces out of Japan and South Korea, including an increased risk of war between Japan and China and a serious blow to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, such a move would heighten the threat of war between China and Taiwan. The possibility that the United States would dismantle its Asia security framework could unsettle Taiwan enough that it would pursue a nuclear deterrent against China, as it has considered doing in the past—despite China indicating that such an act itself could be a pathway to war. And without bases in Japan, the United States could not as easily deter China from potential military attacks on Taiwan. 

Trump’s proposed Asia policy could take the United States and its partners down a very dangerous road. It’s an experiment best not to run.

       

       

       

       

       

Like many Brits, I’m reeling. Everyone knew that the "Brexit" referendum was going to be close. But deep down I think many of us assumed that the vote would be to remain in the European Union. David Cameron had no realistic choice but to announce that he will step down.

Mr. Cameron’s fall can be traced back to a promise he made in the 2010 election to cap the annual flow of migrants into the U.K. at less than 100,000, "no ifs, no buts."Membership in the EU means free movement of labor, so this was an impossible goal to reach through direct policy. I served in the coalition government that emerged from the 2010 election, and this uncomfortable fact was clear from the outset. I don’t share the contents of briefings and meetings from my time in government (I think it makes good government harder if everyone is taking notes for memoirs), but my counterpart in the government, Mr. Cameron’s head of strategy, Steve Hilton, went public in the Daily Mail just before this week’s vote.

Steve recalled senior civil servants telling us bluntly that the pledged target could not be reached. He rightly fulminated about the fact that this meant we were turning away much more skilled and desirable potential immigrants from non-EU countries in a bid to bring down the overall number. What he didn’t say is that the target, based on an arbitrary figure, was a foolish pledge in the first place.

Mr. Cameron was unable to deliver on his campaign pledge, and immigration to the U.K. has been running at about three times that level. This fueled anger at the establishment for again breaking a promise, as well as anger at the EU. In an attempt to contain his anti-European right wing, Mr. Cameron made another rash promise: to hold a referendum.

The rest, as they say, is history. And now, so is he.

Immigration played a role in the Brexit campaign, though it seems that voters may not have made a clear distinction between EU and non-EU inward movement. Still, Thursday’s vote was, at heart, a plebiscite on what it means to British. Our national identity has always been of a quieter kind than, say the American one. Attempts by politicians to institute the equivalent of a Flag Day or July Fourth, to teach citizenship in schools, or to animate a “British Dream” have generally been laughed out of court. Being British is an understated national identity. Indeed, understatement is a key part of that identity.

Many Scots, Welsh and Northern Irish feel a much stronger affinity to their home nation within the U.K. than they do to Great Britain. Many Londoners look at the rest of England and wonder how they are in the same political community. These splits were obvious Thursday.

Identity politics has tended in recent years to be of the progressive kind, advancing the cause of ethnic minorities, lesbians and gays, and so on. In both the U.K. and the U.S. a strongly reactionary form of identity politics is gaining strength, in part as a reaction to the cosmopolitan, liberal, and multicultural forms that have been dominant. This is identity politics of a negative kind, defined not by what you are for but what you are against. A narrow majority of my fellow Brits just decided that at the very least, being British means not being European. It was a defensive, narrow, backward-looking attempt to reclaim something that many felt had been lost. But the real losses are yet to come.

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Editor's Note: This piece originally appeared in the Wall Street Journal's Washington Wire.

       

       

       

       

       

       

       

       

In a rare Kumbaya moment, the nation's leaders of both parties have decided that rebate checks and a flurry of other short-term measures are needed to help stave off an economic slowdown.

Unfortunately, but predictably, we're hearing far less from Capitol Hill and the campaign trail about the bigger picture and the long-term challenges facing the American economy.

Increasing competition from nations like China and India, the impending retirements of the baby boomers, and the highly unequal distribution of benefits from the recent expansion all signal the potential for slower U.S. economic growth in the future.

These challenges, and our responses, will resonate throughout the Puget Sound region.

Already, the region is one of America's economic juggernauts. According to the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue metropolitan area is the fourth-most productive in the world. And the ports of Seattle and Tacoma together form the eighth-largest gateway for foreign goods nationwide.

In that strength — and the strength of other metropolitan areas around the country — are the seeds of solutions.

Like the call for "three T's" in the stimulus debate — measures that are timely, targeted and temporary — policies to improve our nation's long-run economic performance and address its overhanging challenges would instead do well to focus on the "three I's" — innovation, intellect and infrastructure.

Innovation has always served to propel economic growth. Here, Puget Sound companies lead the world in the fields of aerospace, software and retailing, developing new ideas and products that trump the labor-cost advantages of offshoring.

Yet as a nation, we have fallen behind European competitors in innovative new-growth fields like alternative energy, where none of the world's 10 largest solar-cell manufacturers, and only one of the world's 10 largest wind-turbine manufacturers, is a U.S. company.

Intellect — the knowledge and skills of our people — translates into economic growth by raising worker output and incomes and creating more of the first "I," innovation.

Yet, while the United States sends the highest share of its young people to college worldwide, our rank falls to 16th when you measure who actually graduates. And though the Puget Sound region boasts one of the most-educated adult populations in the nation, the feeder system (especially Seattle's public schools) loses too many young people along the pathway to higher education.

Infrastructure supports long-term economic growth in many ways. High-quality transportation infrastructure — roads, transit, rail and ports — speeds the movement of goods and people within and across markets.

Yet, the Seattle area succeeds economically despite the real hurdles it faces on this front. Even taking into account high performers like Sea-Tac Airport and King County Metro, rising congestion highlights the lack of cogent plans for key corridors like Highway 520 and the Alaskan Way Viaduct, as well as the need for a renewed commitment to rail transit.

To its credit, the Puget Sound region, like other metropolitan areas around the country, has tried to tackle some of these issues on its own.

But, because the route to resolving our long-term challenges runs through areas like Seattle, its issues demand national attention.

For instance, shouldn't the federal government — through direct investments in scientific research and favorable tax treatment for corporate investment in research and development — help put innovative regions like Puget Sound ahead of the curve in cutting-edge "green" industries?

To upgrade our nation's intellectual capacity, shouldn't the federal government partner with states, localities and the private sector to support the diffusion of successful, entrepreneurial urban education models for districts like Seattle?

And on infrastructure, shouldn't the federal government deploy its roughly $50 billion in annual transportation expenditures in smarter ways to help relieve congestion and promote sustainability in key trade corridors like the Seattle-Tacoma area?

Once we get past the stimulus frenzy, let's have a real debate about the blueprint for bolstering America's long-term economic growth.

Building on the strengths, and addressing the challenges, of the "three I's" in regions like Seattle ought to be another strategy leaders in our nation's capital can agree upon.

Alan Berube is research director of the Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. David Jackson is a policy analyst with the program.

      

The Seattle city council voted to push up the city’s minimum wage to $15 an hour. If the wage hike is fully implemented, it will guarantee Seattle’s workers the nation’s highest minimum wage. The increase in the minimum wage will be phased in over a number of years. Big employers that do not provide their employees a health plan are the first that will face the $15 per hour minimum, a requirement that will be fully phased in around 2017. Large employers who offer health benefits will have to pay the $15 minimum starting in 2018. Small businesses with employees who receive tip income will have to pay the $15 per hour minimum a couple of years later, but the countable wage will include employees’ tips. By 2021 all employers in the city must offer a minimum wage of $15 an hour, regardless of the employer’s size.

The federal minimum wage is currently just $7.25 an hour, unchanged since 2009. If Congress does not raise the national minimum wage, Seattle’s minimum will be more than twice the federal minimum wage. Many states currently have a higher minimum wage than the federal one. As it happens, Washington has the nation’s highest state-level minimum wage, $9.32 per hour. Unlike the federal minimum wage law, Washington’s state law increases the state minimum wage every year in line with changes in the consumer price index. By the time Seattle’s $15 per hour minimum becomes effective for large employers in 2017, the Washington state minimum wage will be about $10 per hour, assuming consumer prices continue to rise 2% a year. Thus, large employers in Seattle will have to pay their minimum-wage employees 50% more than minimum-wage employees receive outside the Seattle city limits.

I strongly favor the Administration’s proposal to boost the U.S. minimum wage to $10.10 an hour. It will boost the spendable incomes of millions of poorly paid workers and their families, and I expect it will have only a small adverse effect, if any, on low-wage workers’ job opportunities and work hours. However, I am more cautious about the wisdom of raising a single city’s minimum wage to $15 an hour when nearby jurisdictions leave their minimum wages unchanged.

One reason for my caution is that a big minimum-wage hike can place Seattle’s low-wage employers at a competitive disadvantage compared with employers engaged in the same line of business but located in a nearby suburb. If compensation costs for low-wage workers represent a big percentage of a Seattle employer’s costs, and if the employer faces competition from businesses on the other side of the city limits, companies located in Seattle can lose customers to competitors outside the city.

Consider a business that mainly sells low-cost, fast-food meals. If it must pay $15 an hour to its low-wage employees, while its competitors less than a mile away are only required to pay $10 an hour, the companies outside Seattle can charge lower prices to their customers for shakes, burgers, and fries, and yet still make a profit. The lower cost establishments can capture a larger percentage of the local fast-food trade, reducing fast-food sales inside Seattle’s city limits. The same is true of the goods and services sold by laundry and dry cleaning establishments, inexpensive motels, and other businesses that depend on low-wage workers to stay competitive. The labor cost disadvantage caused by a higher minimum wage can hurt low-wage employment in Seattle and possibly reduce the value of some of the city’s commercial real estate.

To the extent that consumers have the option of buying goods or services from companies that are not required to pay a higher minimum wage, some of the hoped-for gains from a higher minimum wage will be lost. When customers can conveniently buy products or services from firms that face lower labor costs, the new businesses that they patronize will grow and the old, high-cost businesses they abandon will shrink. Low-wage workers may earn higher wages inside the Seattle city limits, but their employment opportunities in Seattle may shrink.

Seattle is a prosperous city, and its mayor was elected in part because of a promise to boost the pay of its most poorly paid residents. If a $15 an hour minimum wage has a chance of working and enjoying broad political support, Seattle is a good place to test the idea. I will be interested to see whether low-wage Seattle businesses continue to prosper even after they are required to pay a minimum wage that is 50% higher than the one faced by competitors in nearby suburbs. The risk of a big minimum-wage hike at the city level is that the city’s low-wage employers will be harmed in their competition with out-of-town businesses that sell the same products or services. The risk of this kind of harm is vastly smaller when the minimum wage is increased at the state or national level. If the Administration can persuade Congress to boost the national minimum wage, all employers—inside and outside a city’s limits—will be required to raise the pay they offer to their most poorly paid workers.

Note: An edited version of this post appears on Fortune.com

       

When my wife and I relocated from D.C.’s Logan Circle to Capitol Hill five years ago, the most tumultuous change in our lifestyle (aside from my not being able to walk to Brookings every day) concerned the much farther distance we’d have to travel to the nearest supermarket. We had the luxury of shopping at a very nice, if spendy, grocery store about two blocks from our home, which meant that we often did “just-in-time” dinner shopping on the way home from work. Now we were moving to a house where the distance to the nearest supermarket was 1.5 miles, not so walkable at 7 pm.

Did we live in a “supermarket desert?” On the one hand, Capitol Hill is a pretty densely populated part of D.C., so 1.5 miles felt like a long way. And while the Hill is an economically diverse area, it’s large with significant pockets of affluence. On the other hand, like a lot of our neighbors, we own a car. So while nightly trips to the supermarket were out, it was hardly an onerous trip on the weekends.

There are, however, many communities nationwide in which that trip to the supermarket is a long one, and most have much lower incomes than the Hill. That’s the conclusion from new research we conducted with help from The Reinvestment Fund (TRF), a community development financial institution and research organization based in Philadelphia. TRF played a lead role in designing and implementing the Pennsylvania Fresh Food Financing Initiative, a program that provides grants and low-cost capital to facilitate the location of new supermarkets and fresh food retailers in that state’s underserved communities. That initiative is now the model for several other state and local programs, as well as the inspiration for a major new federal budget initiative that seeks to improve community health and economic development outcomes through supermarket attraction and expansion.

With TRF, we looked at 10 metro areas across the country, ranging in size from Jackson, Miss. to Los Angeles. Unlike a lot of previous research that attempted to identify “food deserts,” TRF’s analysis looks at factors beyond distance to a supermarket that matter for access, including a community’s population density and level of car ownership. And it uses household income and expenditure data to help pinpoint the communities that have a significant untapped local demand for supermarkets.

Across the 10 metro areas, about 1.7 million people (5 percent of total population) live in low- and moderate-income communities that are significantly underserved by supermarkets. African Americans, children, and very low-income families are over-represented in these areas. Greater Los Angeles alone accounts for half a million of the underserved; and in the Cleveland metro, more than one in nine residents lives in a low-supermarket-access community. Estimates suggest that upwards of $2.6 billion annually in grocery expenditures may “leak” out of these communities due to a lack of nearby supermarkets.

The real upside of this research project is that all of the results are viewable online, through TRF’s PolicyMap service. So local economic development officials, neighborhood-based organizations, retailers, and others can examine the location and characteristics of low-supermarket-access areas in their own communities. On Capitol Hill, the analysis suggests that we’re pretty well served. Lots of car owners, and it’s really not that far to the store. Cross the Anacostia River, however, and it’s another story altogether. Pinpointing and describing the untapped opportunities for supermarket development is hopefully a first step toward reducing market obstacles to higher-quality, lower-cost food options for residents of communities like Ward 7 and Ward 8 nationwide.

      

       

       

       

       

       

       

       

       

       

       

       

       

       

Midway through Hong Kong’s second public consultation on the method of electing the next chief executive (CE), both pro-democracy “pan-democrat” legislators and the Hong Kong government and Chinese Central government are still holding their cards close. Following the current public consultation, members of Hong Kong’s Legislative Council (LegCo) will cast an historic vote on political reform. Hong Kong’s mini-constitution, the Basic Law, states that “the ultimate aim is the selection of the CE by universal suffrage upon nomination by a broadly representative nominating committee in accordance with democratic procedures” (Basic Law Art. 45). Pan-democrat LegCo members currently plan to vote against the eventual resolution on political reform, given their dissatisfaction with the reform process to date. Observers predict that passage of a resolution will happen only if the Hong Kong and Central governments can swing a few pan-democrats over to their side in the final hour.

The problem is a prickly one: Is it possible to design an electoral system that is sufficiently open and democratic in the eyes of the Hong Kong people and, at the same time, that guarantees to the Central Government that the elected leader of this special administrative region accepts the supremacy of the Chinese Communist Party? Even as politicians on each side reiterate the near “impossibility” of changing their positions (see e.g., RTHK Backchat discussion with Justice Secretary Rimsky Yuen at 4:25), thought-leaders from Hong Kong’s universities are inventing creative proposals with the potential to break the deadlock.

The Ground Rules

A 2004 decision of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (NPCSC), China’s national legislature, interpreted the Basic Law to require a “Five-Step Process” in order to amend the selection method for the CE. Hong Kong is now between Steps 2 and 3.

• Step 1: The current CE must submit a report to the NPCSC on the need to amend the electoral system. That submission took place on July 15, 2014 after a five-month initial public consultation process. The CE’s report faced heavy criticism in Hong Kong for not accurately reflecting public opinion.
• Step 2: The NPCSC must issue a decision affirming the need for the amendment. The NPCSC announced that decision on August 31, 2014. It endorsed a system by which citizens may directly vote for the CE but imposed restrictive conditions on the nomination procedure of eligible candidates. The decision triggered 79 days of protest and civil disobedience – what activists and the media have referred to as the “Umbrella Movement.”
• Step 3: The Hong Kong government must introduce the political reform bill in LegCo, and two-thirds of legislators must endorse it. The vote in LegCo is scheduled to take place during the first half of 2015, although a precise date has not been set. The purpose of the second-round public consultation is to forge consensus behind political reform within the parameters set out in the August 31 NPCSC decision.
• Steps 4 and 5: In the event that LegCo endorses the bill, the CE must provide his consent and report the amendment to the NPCSC for its final approval.

If the bill does not receive two-thirds endorsement of LegCo (or if it does, but the NPCSC does not approve) then political reform would fail. Hong Kong would be left with the status quo, and Hong Kong people would lose the opportunity to vote for their chief executive for at least the next seven years.

Limited Room for Negotiation

The terms set out by the August 31 NPCSC decision limit the range of possible political reform options. For that reason, one of the core demands of the Umbrella Movement was to scrap the decision and re-start the Five-Step Process; that didn’t happen, however. In January 2015, the Hong Kong government issued a public consultation document framing the discussion in the lead up to the vote in LegCo. The consultation document hews closely to the NPCSC decision:

• The Nominating Committee (NC) will resemble the previous committee that elected the CE with the same number of members (1,200) belonging to the same limited number of subsectors (38). The Wall Street Journal recently described that committee as “a hodgepodge of special interests.” During the consultation, citizens may discuss adding new subsectors to make the committee more inclusive and representative (such as adding new subsectors to represent the interests of women or young voters), but restructuring will necessarily mean disrupting and eliminating the positions of existing subsectors or committee members. Therefore, the consultation document suggests these changes are unlikely to be achieved (Consultation Document, Chapter 3, Sec. 3.08 p. 10).
• The NC will nominate two to three candidates, and each candidate will require endorsement from at least half of the NC membership. (Given the difficulty of restructuring the subsectors or their electoral bases, these terms would effectively exclude any pan-democrats from nomination.) In order to make this more palatable, the consultation document proposes that citizens discuss a two-stage nomination process. In the first stage, a quorum of 100-150 committee members would “recommend” individuals for nomination. The committee would then elect the nominees from this recommended group (Consultation Document, Chapter 4, Sec. 4.09 p. 14). In theory, the meetings when recommendation and nomination votes take place could be staggered in order to allow campaigning and public debate. The idea is that NC members would take public opinion into consideration before casting their second vote.
• On the voting arrangements, citizens may discuss a “first-past-the-post” arrangement with either a single-round, two-round, or instant runoff vote systems (Consultation Document, Chapter 5, Sec. 5.06 p. 17-19).

Both sides in this negotiation have fired shots across the bow. At the launch of the second public consultation on January 7, Chief Secretary Carrie Lam remarked, “there is no room for any concessions or promises to be made in order to win over support from the pan-democratic members.” For their part, the pan-democrats vowed to boycott the public consultation and veto a resolution that conforms to these terms. They argue that the proposed method of electing the chief executive does not improve upon the status quo.

Most pan-democrat legislators are directly elected from geographical constituencies, and public opinion could provide legitimate grounds for shifting their position. According to polling by the Hong Kong University Public Opinion Programme last month, a plurality of respondents view the Hong Kong government’s proposal as neither a step forward nor a step backward for democracy. If the government were to commit to making the electoral system more democratic in the next CE election in 2022, a clear majority of respondents would then support the government’s plan.

Inventing Options and Finding Common Ground

The two-stage nomination mechanism in the government’s proposal is an acknowledgement that the NC ought to be responsive to public opinion. But without additional tinkering, this procedure does not materially change the incentives of NC members. What if the public had the power to reject the slate of candidates nominated by the committee?

Since the first public consultation, a few academics, including Simon Young at Hong Kong University (HKU), have considered at least two ways this could happen. An “active” approach would allow Hong Kong voters to cast blank votes and require a minimum percentage of affirmative votes for the winning candidate. A “passive” approach would require a minimum voter turnout rate for a valid election. NC members might then have to take public opinion into account.

Early last month, Albert Chen, also a professor at HKU and a legal advisor of the NPCSC, began to advocate publicly for a proposal that employs a ballot with a none-of-these-candidates option (see RTHK Jan. 13 edition of The Pulse). Under his proposal, if a majority of people vote for “none-of-these-candidates,” the slate of candidates put forward by the NC will be voided. When the public votes down the candidates, the NC could revert back to an election committee and choose a provisional CE. Alternatively, the Chief Secretary could assume CE duties during a six-month interim period prior to a new election (drawing upon Basic Law Art. 53). Chen argues that his proposal would give the Hong Kong people—not pan-democrat politicians—decision-making power to accept the new NC and its slate of candidates or to revert back to the status quo.

More recently, Johannes Chan, HKU professor and human rights advocate, floated a competing proposal that would provide voters with the option for negative voting. A 20 percent “no” vote for an otherwise leading candidate would trigger a re-vote. Between the first and second elections, the candidates would have additional time to campaign. If after the second election, still 20 percent of voters oppose the leading candidate, the candidate would be disqualified, and the NC would nominate new candidates. Given Hong Kong’s governance problems and increasing public polarization, the 20 percent veto ensures that no CE will be saddled with a substantial block of Hong Kong society affirmatively opposed to him or her from day one.

Albert Chen’s proposal received a tepid if supportive response in pro-Beijing quarters. Jasper Tsang, the Speaker of LegCo and member of the largest pro-establishment political party, and Rita Fan, a member of the NPCSC, affirmed their view that the none-of-these-candidates mechanism does not violate the Basic Law. While the government’s consultation document does not expressly mention the none-of-these-candidates concept, Hong Kong’s Justice Secretary indicated that the proposal should be considered. Starry Lee, another leader of the biggest pro-establishment party in LegCo, countered that technical difficulties and limited time for discussion would pose obstacles to the none-of-these-candidates ballot proposal.

Pan-democrats so far have tended to rebuff government overtures to engage on the topic. A few legislators, such as the Civic Party’s Ronny Tong, have been willing to engage (with Albert Chen on the Jan. 13 edition of The Pulse) but have reservations about what happens after a voided election, and feel that the threshold for public veto is too high. Law Chi-kwong, a founding member of Hong Kong’s Democratic Party and also a member of the HKU faculty, suggested that the winning candidate ought to receive an absolute majority of votes with blank votes counted. (E.g., when one candidate receives 45 percent, another receives 35 percent, and none-of-these-candidates receives 20 percent, that would lead to a void election.) However, other scholars associated with the Democratic Party have distanced themselves from the blank vote debate and Law’s statements.

The Merits of Blank Voting

The debate over blank and negative voting in Hong Kong unfolds in a global context where none-of-these-candidates has become an increasingly common political choice. Several democracies have institutionalized the practice. Proponents cite instrumental rationales, such as improved accountability and transparency. However, these benefits are not necessarily guaranteed. More broadly, people recognize the inherent value of the “no” vote as a form of political expression.

In the U.S. state of Nevada, for example, a none-of-these-candidates option has appeared on the ballot for all statewide and national elections since 1975. During the 2012 presidential cycle, the Secretary of State of Nevada argued that removing a none-of-these-candidates option would harm Nevada voters by taking away a “legitimate and meaningful ballot choice.” There is precedent for none-of-these-candidates winning a plurality of votes in a congressional primary; in that case, Republican Walden Earnhart finished behind the none-of-these-candidates option but still “won” the primary and got the nomination. More typically, the ballot option plays a “spoiler role.” In the 1998 Senate race, for example, 8,125 votes for none-of-these-candidates dwarfed the 395-vote margin between Harry Reid and John Ensign. This allowed Reid, the incumbent, to be re-elected.

It is hard to find examples where none-of-these-candidates has won a majority of the popular vote. Hong Kong’s pan-democrats may be right to question whether this possibility would meaningfully affect the calculus of the NC. Colombia is one of the few jurisdictions where blank votes can have institutional consequences. The right of citizens to cast a blank vote was established by the Colombian Constitution in 1991, and later codified in political reform statutes in 2003 and 2009. Similar to Albert Chen’s proposal in Hong Kong, if the number of blank votes equals a majority of the total number of votes cast, the election must be repeated. The original candidates cannot participate in the second election.

The Colombian experience suggests that the blank vote is more consequential in races with fewer candidates. Colombian voters have never nullified a slate of candidates at the national-level, where the field is crowded. In the city of Bello, however, the blank vote won the mayoral election in 2011. In that case, the electoral authority disqualified the one opposition candidate. This led to a one-man race and united all opposition forces around the blank vote in order to reject the establishment Conservative Party candidate. In the second round election, the replacement Conservative Party candidate (Carlos Alirio Muñoz López) won 59 percent of the vote. In the end, his party benefited with a resounding popular mandate. By this logic, the blank vote could matter in the two- to three-candidate race contemplated for Hong Kong.

Empirical evidence also suggests that local conditions in Hong Kong could support a relatively high turnout for none-of-these-candidates. Based on data from Spain and Italy, Chiara Superti at Harvard finds that blank voting is a sophisticated political choice, more likely to take place in municipalities with highly educated and politically engaged electorates. Hong Kong would qualify.

Beyond candidate selection, voting is a highly expressive act. A citizen’s vote is an expression of identity as well as a channel for protest. Echoing this view, the Supreme Court of India recently held that the country’s constitutional guarantees of freedom of speech and expression confer on Indian citizens a right to reject all candidates and to exercise their right to affirmatively vote for none-of-these-candidates in secrecy. As a people who define themselves by “core values,” including freedom of expression, this resonates with Hongkongers. More fundamentally, the ballot serves a powerful safety-valve function. At the time universal suffrage was introduced in England and France, the vote was presented as a way to channel political turmoil into more moderate political expression—and this, too, resonates in Hong Kong today.

Views expressed in the article are the author's personal views.

       

       

       

       

       

       

       

In a series of pieces during the past two weeks (see here, here, and here), I've laid out the evidence for two propositions: The president's economic record will be at the heart of the 2012 election, and he cannot win without focusing on the heartland — the swing states stretching from Pennsylvania to Iowa.

The case for the first proposition goes as follows:

To an extent that we haven't seen since 1992 (and maybe not even then), the 2012 election will focus on a single issue: economic growth and job creation.

For that reason above all, President Obama will be waging an uphill battle for reelection, because the American people are giving his management of the economy very low grades. (Recent CBS/NYT surveys have placed approval of his performance on the economy and job creation at below 40 percent.)

While for understandable reasons the president's campaign team wants to turn the election into a choice between two futures, the odds of success for that strategy seem low. Most political scientists who have studied the question conclude that when there's an incumbent in the race, the principal issue is that candidate's job performance. (That's why Reagan's "Are you better off..." was such a killer question against Carter in 1980.)

President Obama, therefore, has no choice but to address the economic question head-on, which will require him to offer a much more persuasive defense of his record than he has up to now.

The case for my second proposition — the Heartland Strategy — is this:

The president's team hopes to recreate the "new majority" strategy that expanded the playing field and led to victories in states such as Virginia, North Carolina, Colorado, and Nevada in 2008 and perhaps Arizona and Georgia as well in 2012. This does not seem realistic, however: while the president's support among African Americans remains strong, it has dropped sharply among Hispanics disappointed by what they see as his failure to push for comprehensive immigration reform and his administration's aggressive deportation strategy. And every survey and focus group points to diminished enthusiasm among the young adults whose relentless networking on Obama's behalf contributed significantly to his historic victory.

To make matters worse, the president's numbers in Florida are dismal, he trails likely Republican nominee Mitt Romney by 10 points in New Hampshire, and he has no chance of repeating his 2008 miracle victory in Indiana.

These facts underscore the crucial importance of the heartland states — especially Ohio and Pennsylvania. As a matter of history and simple arithmetic, is very unlikely that President Obama can be reelected without carrying them both.

Although Pennsylvania is usually 3 to 4 points more Democratic than Ohio, the evidence suggests that Obama is surprisingly weak there and needs to do some real work to shore up his standing in a state that Democrats often regard as being in the bag.

As for Ohio, the last Democrat to take the White house without winning that state was John Kennedy, who did it with electoral votes from Texas and other southern states that Obama will not receive. (The last Republican to win the presidency without Ohio? There hasn't been one since the founding of the party in the 1850s.)

Ohio is pivotal, election after election, because it is a demographic and political microcosm of the country. If a presidential candidate can win a majority there, he or she can almost certainly do so in the nation as well. And that's why both parties should pay close attention to the results of last week's election, in which the Ohio electorate overwhelmingly rejected both Gov. Kasich's assault on public sector unions and the individual mandate at the heart of President Obama's health reform law.

If these two core propositions are correct — if the 2012 election will be about Obama's economic stewardship and will be won or lost in the heartland — then the key question is this: How can the president defend his economic record in a region much of which has not enjoyed robust growth for quite some time?

Let's look at some basics:

It's hard to imagine Obama losing Illinois or winning Indiana in 2012. That leaves six key heartland states. Note what they have in common: despite widely varying rates of unemployment, none of them has experienced a rapid decline in that rate over the past year. Because there's no sense of dynamism in the region, hope and confidence in the future are at a low ebb. That's the reality the president must speak to, there and elsewhere.

How can Obama recast the economic discussion? Here's my best shot:

First, he must acknowledge Americans' sense of being stuck and then explain why recovery from this downturn has been so painfully slow — in particular, the impact of the financial collapse and our excessive debt burden, private as well as public.

Second, he must display some humility and acknowledge that he didn't get everything right. It was a mistake not to underscore the difficulty of our circumstances right from the start. It was a mistake to predict that unemployment would peak at 8 percent if his stimulus bill were enacted. While it was necessary to save the big financial institutions from a total meltdown, it was a mistake to ask so little from them institutions in return. And it was a mistake to act so timidly in the face of a housing and mortgage crisis that has cost the middle class many trillions of dollars in lost wealth.

Third, he should emphasize what most Americans believe: without the steps his administration took at the depth of the crisis, there might well have been a second Great Depression. Sure, "It could have been much worse" isn't much of a bumper sticker, but it's a place to start, and it has the merit of being true.

Fourth, what he has done so far has not only halted the decline but has yielded more than twenty consecutive months of growth in private sector jobs — progress that would be more noticeable if states and localities hadn't been shedding so many employees in response to the squeeze on their budgets.

Fifth, while most Americans didn't like it when his administration intervened to save GM and Chrysler, it was the right thing to do, not only for auto workers, but for much of the heartland's economy as well. Allowing these two firms to dissolve would have broken the back of regions already struggling with double-digit unemployment. Leadership means doing what's necessary and right, even when it's unpopular.

Sixth, we now have the opportunity to build on the foundation laid during this painful period in our history. Obama can emphasize steps such as: a bold new response to housing foreclosures and underwater mortgages; an infrastructure bank that mobilizes both domestic and foreign capital to put Americans back to work on projects that will strengthen our economy; and a tougher stance vis-à-vis Chinese policies that have taken their toll on American workers and firms. And yes, we need to come together around fundamental spending and tax reform that can stabilize our fiscal future without further undermining the hard-pressed middle class.

That's the guts of the affirmative case Obama can make. (No doubt he believes he's already doing it, but he hasn't been frank, comprehensive, and persistent enough to break through.) And if he does make it relentlessly until next Labor Day, he can then pivot and ask, What's the alternative? What is my opponent offering? If you think that an agenda of deregulation for big polluters, more tax breaks for the wealthy, and a laissez-faire policy that allows the housing sector to "hit bottom" is the way to jump start job creation, the by all means vote for him. If you don't, you have a chance to continue moving down a path that can move us from the shadows of stagnation to the sunlight of opportunity and to build a new economy in which all Americans — not just a favored few — enjoy the fruits of growth.