Researchers have long known that the rich live longer than the poor. Evidence now suggests that the life expectancy gap is increasing, at least here the United States, which raises troubling questions about the fairness of current efforts to protect Social Security.

There's nothing particularly mysterious about the life expectancy gap. People in ill health, who are at risk of dying relatively young, face limits on the kind and amount of work they can do. By contrast, the rich can afford to live in better and safer neighborhoods, can eat more nutritious diets and can obtain access to first-rate healthcare. People who have higher incomes, moreover, tend to have more schooling, which means they may also have better information about the benefits of exercise and good diet.

Although none of the above should come as a surprise, it's still disturbing that, just as income inequality is growing, so is life-span inequality. Over the last three decades, Americans with a high perch in the income distribution have enjoyed outsized gains.

Using two large-scale surveys, my Brookings colleagues and I calculated the average mid-career earnings of each interviewed family; then we estimated the statistical relationship between respondents' age at death and their incomes when they were in their 40s. We found a startling spreading out of mortality differences between older people at the top and bottom of the income distribution.

For example, we estimated that a woman who turned 50 in 1970 and whose mid-career income placed her in the bottom one-tenth of earners had a life expectancy of about 80.4. A woman born in the same year but with income in the top tenth of earners had a life expectancy of 84.1. The gap in life expectancy was about 3½ years. For women who reached age 50 two decades later, in 1990, we found no improvement at all in the life expectancy of low earners. Among women in the top tenth of earners, however, life expectancy rose 6.4 years, from 84.1 to 90.5. In those two decades, the gap in life expectancy between women in the bottom tenth and the top tenth of earners increased from a little over 3½ years to more than 10 years.

Our findings for men were similar. The gap in life expectancy between men in the bottom tenth and top tenth of the income distribution increased from 5 years to 12 years over the same two decades.

Rising longevity inequality has important implications for reforming Social Security. Currently, the program takes in too little money to pay for all benefits promised after 2030. A common proposal to eliminate the funding shortfall is to increase the full retirement age, currently 66. Increasing the age for full benefits by one year has the effect of lowering workers' monthly checks by 6% to 7.5%, depending on the age when a worker first claims a pension.

For affluent workers, any benefit cut will be partially offset by gains in life expectancy. Additional years of life after age 65 increase the number years these workers collect pensions. Workers at the bottom of the wage distribution, however, are not living much longer, so the percentage cut in their lifetime pensions will be about the same as the percentage reduction in their monthly benefit check.

Our results and other researchers' findings suggest that low-income workers have not shared in the improvements in life expectancy that have contributed to Social Security's funding problem.

It therefore seems unfair to preserve Social Security by cutting future benefits across the board. Any reform in the program to keep it affordable should make special provision to protect the benefits of low-wage workers.

Editor's note: This piece originally appeared in The Los Angeles Times. 

The past few months have seen a flurry of reports on discouraging trends in life expectancy among some of the nation’s struggling populations. Different researchers have emphasized different groups and have tracked longevity trends over different time spans, but all have documented conspicuous differences between trends among more advantaged Americans compared with those in worse circumstances.

In a study published in April, Stanford economist Raj Chetty and his coauthors documented a striking rise in mortality rate differences between rich and poor. From 2001 to 2014, Americans who had incomes in the top 5 percent of the income distribution saw their life expectancy climb about 3 years. During the same 14-year span, people in the bottom 5 percent of the income distribution saw virtually no improvement at all.

Using different sources of information about family income and mortality, my colleagues and I found similar trends in mortality when Americans were ranked by their Social-Security-covered earnings in the middle of their careers. Over the three decades covered by our data, we found sizeable differences between the life expectancy gains enjoyed by high- and low-income Americans. For 50-year old women in the top one-tenth of the income distribution, we found that women born in 1940 could expect to live almost 6.5 years longer than women in the same position in the income distribution who were born in 1920. For 50-year old women in the bottom one-tenth of the income distribution, we found no improvement at all in life expectancy. Longevity trends among low-income men were more encouraging: Men at the bottom saw a small improvement in their life expectancy. Still, the life-expectancy gap between low-income and high-income men increased just as fast as it did between low- and high-income women.

One reason these studies should interest voters and policymakers is that they shed light on the fairness of programs that protect Americans’ living standards in old age. The new studies as well as some earlier ones show that mortality trends have tilted the returns that rich and poor contributors to Social Security can expect to obtain from their payroll tax contributions.

If life expectancy were the same for rich and poor contributors, the lifetime benefits workers could expect to receive from their contributions would depend solely on the formula that determines a worker’s monthly pensions. Social Security’s monthly benefit formula has always been heavily tilted in favor of low-wage contributors. They receive monthly checks that are a high percentage of the monthly wages they earn during their careers. In contrast, workers who earn well above-average wages collect monthly pensions that are a much lower percentage of their average career earnings.

The latest research findings suggest that growing mortality differences between rich and poor are partly or fully offsetting the redistributive tilt in Social Security’s benefit formula. Even though poorer workers still receive monthly pension checks that are a high percentage of their average career earnings, they can expect to receive benefits for a shorter period after they claim pensions compared with workers who earn higher wages. Because the gap between the life spans of rich and poor workers is increasing, affluent workers now enjoy a bigger advantage in the number of months they collect Social Security retirement benefits. This fact alone is enough to justify headlines about the growing life expectancy gap between rich and poor

There is another reason to pay attention to the longevity trends. The past 35 years have provided ample evidence the income gap between America’s rich and poor has widened. To be sure, some of the most widely cited income series overstate the extent of widening and understate the improvement in income received by middle- and low-income families. Nonetheless, the most reliable statistics show that families at the top have enjoyed faster income gains than the gains enjoyed by families in the middle and at the bottom. Income disparities have gone up fastest among working-age people who depend on wages to pay their families’ bills. Retirees have been better protected against the income and wealth losses that have hurt the living standards of less educated workers. The recent finding that life expectancy among low-income Americans has failed to improve is a compelling reason to believe the trend toward wider inequality is having profound impacts on the distribution of well-being in addition to its direct effect on family income.

Over the past century, we have become accustomed to seeing successive generations live longer than the generations that preceded them. This is not true every year, of course, nor is it always clear why the improvements in life expectancy have occurred. Still, it is reasonable to think that long-run improvements in average life spans have been linked to improvements in our income. With more money, we can afford more costly medical care, healthier diets, and better public health. Even Americans at the bottom of the income ladder have participated in these gains, as public health measures and broader access to health insurance permit them to benefit from improvements in knowledge. For the past three decades, however, improvements in average life spans at the bottom of the income distribution have been negligible. This finding suggests it is not just income that has grown starkly more unequal.

Editor's note: This piece originally appeared in Real Clear Markets.

Much public focus is being given to a broader role for hospitals in improving the health of their communities. This focus parallels a growing interest in addressing the social determinants of health as well as health care policy reforms designed to increase the efficiency and quality of care while improving health outcomes.

This interest in the community role of hospitals has drawn attention to the federal legal standards and requirements for nonprofit hospitals seeking federal tax exemption. Tax-exempt hospitals are required to provide community benefits. And while financial assistance to patients unable to pay for care is a basic requirement of tax-exemption, IRS guidelines define the concept of community benefit to include a range of community health improvement efforts.

At the same time, the IRS draws a distinction between community health improvement spending–which it automatically considers a community benefit–and certain “community-building” activities where additional information is required in order to be compliant with IRS rules. In addition, community benefit obligations are included in the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

Specifically, the ACA requires nonprofit hospitals periodically to complete a community health needs assessment (CHNA), which means the hospital must conduct a review of health conditions in its community and develop a plan to address concerns. While these requirements are causing hospitals to look more closely at their role in the community, challenges remain. For instance, complex language in the rules can mean hospitals are unclear what activities and expenditures count as a “community benefit.” Hospitals must take additional steps in order to report community building as community health improvement.

These policies can discourage creative approaches. Moreover, transparency rules and competing hospital priorities can also weaken hospital-community partnerships. To encourage more effective partnerships in community investments by nonprofit hospitals:

• The IRS needs to clarify the relationship between community spending and the requirements of the CHNA. 
• There needs to be greater transparency in the implementation strategy phase of the CHNA. 
• The IRS needs to broaden the definition of community health improvement to encourage innovation and upstream investment by hospitals.

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At the previous Summit of the Americas in Cartagena, Colombia in April 2012, President Barack Obama was badly roughed up by his Latin American counterparts (and embarrassed by his Secret Service for entertaining sex workers). Happily, the president and his entourage did much better at last week’s Summit in Panama, but the United States still has a way to go before the Summits once again become the productive vehicle for U.S. foreign policy that they once were, at their founding in Miami in 1994.

In Cartagena, leader after leader criticized the United States for allegedly heavy-handed counter-narcotics policies; oppressive treatment of immigrants; a weak response to crime and poverty in Central America; and monetary policies that supposedly harmed their economies. Most pointedly, speakers denounced the decades-old economic sanctions against Cuba. But given the upcoming Congressional elections, Obama and his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton did not want to do anything to endanger their Democratic Party’s chances. Obama was reduced to affirming, uncharacteristically, “I am here to listen, but our policies will not change.”

Once the November 2012 mid-term elections were over, policies did, in fact, change as the United States took a more relaxed approach to counternarcotics; the administration announced immigration policy reforms, including negotiating agreements with Central American nations to reduce the outflow of children and promote economic growth and jobs at home; and Vice President Joseph Biden met repeatedly with Central American leaders, and offered $1 billion in economic and security assistance.

In Cartagena, the Latin Americans threatened to boycott the Panama Summit if Cuba was not invited. But last December 17, President Obama and Cuban President Raúl Castro announced their agreement to negotiate the normalization of diplomatic relations, and in one blow, the United States transformed a thorn in relations with Latin America into a triumph of inter-American diplomacy that significantly enhanced U.S. prestige in the region.

So in Panama, most of the Latin American and Caribbean leaders, rather than berate the U.S. president, praised him for his courage and generally treated him with courtesy and respect. The three leaders of Central America’s Northern Tier (Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador—whose president is a former guerrilla commander) were effusive in their praise. The president of Brazil, Dilma Rousseff, who in Cartagena had sharply criticized U.S. monetary policies and had cancelled a visit to the White House to protest NSA spying, was pleased to announce that her visit had been rescheduled for this June. 

Obama’s own performance was more spirited than it had been in Cartagena. In response to a harsh polemic by Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa, Obama shot back: “The U.S. may be a handy excuse for diverting attention from domestic political problems, but it won’t solve those problems.” After listening politely through Raúl Castro’s extended remarks—during which Castro praised him as a man of honesty and authenticity—Obama departed to avoid having to sit through the predictable harangues of Argentine President Cristina Kirchner and Bolivian leader Evo Morales. Few could blame him.

At the parallel CEO Summit of business executives, Obama delivered thoughtful responses to questions posed by several entrepreneurs including Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, distinguishing himself from the facile rhetorical answers of the other presidents on the panel. At a Civil Society Forum where delegates affiliated with Cuban government organizations engaged in disruptive tactics, Obama lectured firmly on the virtues of civility and tolerance. Together with two other presidents (Tabaré Vasquez of Uruguay and Guillermo Solis of Costa Rica), Obama met privately with a dozen leaders of nongovernmental organizations, took notes, and incorporated at least one of their suggestions into his later public remarks.

But Obama’s Panama experience was marred by an inexplicable misstep by his White House aides a month earlier—the very public sanctioning of seven Venezuelan officials for alleged human rights violation and corruption, and the declaration that Venezuela was a “threat to U.S. national security.” To Latin American ears, that language recalled Cold War-era justifications for CIA plots and military coups. The State Department claims it warned the White House against Latin American blowback, but perhaps not forcefully enough. Once Latin American anger become apparent, the White House tried to walk the “national security” language back, saying it was just a formality required by U.S. legislation, but the damage was done. Speaker after speaker condemned the “unilateral sanctions” and called for their repeal.

The ill-timed sanctions announcement provided Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his populist allies with a ready stick to beat the United States. For whileObama’s diplomacy had managed to peel off most of the Central Americans and win over or at least diminish the antagonism of other leaders, it had not found a way to tranquilize the rejectionist states (Ecuador, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Argentina) tied to Venezuela in an “anti-imperialist” alliance. Although a relatively small minority, these spoilers seriously disrupt plenary meetings with long and vituperative monologues, and small minorities of “veto” players can block the signing of otherwise consensus documents such that in Panama, as in Cartagena, no consensus declaration was issued; rather the host leader signed brief “mandates for action” that lacked full legitimacy.

The problem of the rejectionist minority will be partially alleviated when Kirchner is shortly replaced, likely by a more moderate government in Argentina, and political turnover will eventually come in Venezuela, but the hemisphere needs new rules that protect majority rights to get things done. Some simple procedural innovations, such as a more forceful chair, or even the simple system of red-yellow-green lights that alert speakers to their time limits, would help.

Notwithstanding the misstep on Venezuela sanctions and the disruptive tactics of the rejectionist minority, the overall mood in Panama was upbeat, even celebratory. Leaders made reference to the xenophobic violence and religious intolerance plaguing other continents, and remarked with some pride that, in comparison, Latin America was a zone of peace that was also making progress, however inadequate, on human rights, poverty alleviation, and clean energy. With some procedural fixes, favorable political winds, and continued progress on concrete issues of mutual interest, inter-American relations could well continue their upward trajectory.

Read more about the Summit with Richard Feinberg's post on Cuba's multi-level strategy at the Seventh Summit of the Americas.

INTRODUCTION

Over the past decade, the focused attention of African nations, the United States, U.N. agencies and other multilateral partners has brought significant progress toward achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in health and malaria control and elimination. The potential contribution of these strategies to long-term peace-building objectives and overall regional prosperity is of paramount significance in sub-regions such as the Horn of Africa and Western Africa that are facing the challenges of malaria and other health crises compounded by identity-based conflicts.

National campaigns to address health Millennium Development Goals through cross-ethnic campaigns tackling basic hygiene and malaria have proven effective in reducing child infant mortality while also contributing to comprehensive efforts to overcome health disparities and achieve higher levels of societal well-being.

There is also growing if nascent research to suggest that health and other humanitarian interventions can result in additional benefits to both recipients and donors alike.

The social, economic and political fault lines of conflicts, according to a new study, are most pronounced in Africa within nations (as opposed to international conflicts). Addressing issues of disparate resource allocations in areas such as health could be a primary factor in mitigating such intra-national conflicts. However, to date there has been insufficient research on and policy attention to the potential for wedding proven life-saving health solutions such as malaria intervention to conflict mitigation or other non-health benefits.

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HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius may lose the most from the Senate’s rule change on the filibuster—and the Affordable Care Act may be healthier for it. I wrote last month on the FixGov blog that “Republicans are the Reason Secretary Sebelius Won’t Resign” (or be fired). That argument is no longer valid. My claim—the president’s inability to get her successor confirmed because of filibustering Republicans—is nullified by the Senate’s rule change, and the benefits may reach far beyond Obamacare.

The Implications of Filibuster Reform for Healthcare

Problems exist in HHS. No one denies it. However, for many appointees in the Department, the Senate rules served as a life preserver in a torrent of poor implementation, managerial failures, and bad PR. So long as the president faced the prospect of long-term vacancies among appointees overseeing ACA, the HHS leadership would be spared.

Today, that all changed. Moving forward, President Obama needs the support of only 51 Senate Democrats to replace top-level political appointees throughout the executive branch. This offers the president substantial breathing room. Nominees no longer need the support of every Democrat and a scarcely identifiable five Republicans. Instead, nominees can draw the ire of as many as four Democrats and still be confirmed.

Maybe Kathleen Sebelius is not to blame for the botched healthcare marketplace roll out. Maybe her Office did not give the thumbs up for the President to repeat “if you like your plan you can keep it.” Maybe she did not contribute to the poor salesmanship of the legislation from the start. However, if she was to blame (and perhaps if she wasn’t), her days in the president’s cabinet may well be numbered. The same may be true for deputies and other administrators in the Department who oversaw the weaker areas of the roll out of this law.

By repositioning HHS personnel or breathing new life into a Department facing continued struggles, the president may well ensure the administration of his signature legislation accomplishment improves. The right appointees can coordinate and communicate policy needs and goals up and down the bureaucratic hierarchy. Rather than settling for a program that meets or falls short of expectations, there is an opportunity to build an effective ACA.

Good Governance beyond Obamacare

The first half of October showed us that political actors in Congress contributed to a broken legislative branch. The second half of October showed us that political actors in the Administration contributed to a broken executive branch. Now is the time for the president to start anew and fix one branch, in the shadow of a Senate trying to fix itself.

In my piece from last month, I also argued that the filibuster rules in the Senate allow for the continuation of poor management and governance. If weak appointed personnel are causing policy problems, communication miscues, and other headaches for the president, the ability to replace them with something other than the word “ACTING” was limited by the 60-vote threshold.

President Obama, who has faced a string of personnel and management issues over the past year, now has greater freedom not simply to oust problematic appointees, but to install talented, effective leaders. With this ability comes a tremendous opportunity to jumpstart an administration that is sputtering.

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ABSTRACT

In recent decades economists have turned their attention to data that asks people how happy or satisfied they are with their lives. Much of the early research concluded that the role of income in determining well-being was limited, and that only income relative to others was related to well-being. In this paper, we review the evidence to assess the importance of absolute and relative income in determining well-being. Our research suggests that absolute income plays a major role in determining well-being and that national comparisons offer little evidence to support theories of relative income. We find that well-being rises with income, whether we compare people in a single country and year, whether we look across countries, or whether we look at economic growth for a given country. Through these comparisons we show that richer people report higher well-being than poorer people; that people in richer countries, on average, experience greater well-being than people in poorer countries; and that economic growth and growth in well-being are clearly related. Moreover, the data show no evidence for a satiation point above which income and well-being are no longer related.

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Many scholars have argued that once “basic needs” have been met, higher income is no longer associated with higher in subjective well-being. We assess the validity of this claim in comparisons of both rich and poor countries, and also of rich and poor people within a country. Analyzing multiple datasets, multiple definitions of “basic needs” and multiple questions about well-being, we find no support for this claim. The relationship between well-being and income is roughly linear-log and does not diminish as incomes rise. If there is a satiation point, we are yet to reach it.

Introduction

In 1974 Richard Easterlin famously posited that increasing average income did not raise average well-being, a claim that became known as the Easterlin Paradox. However, in recent years new and more comprehensive data has allowed for greater testing of Easterlin’s claim. Studies by us and others have pointed to a robust positive relationship between well-being and income across countries and over time (Deaton, 2008; Stevenson and Wolfers, 2008; Sacks, Stevenson, and Wolfers, 2013). Yet, some researchers have argued for a modified version of Easterlin’s hypothesis, acknowledging the existence of a link between income and well-being among those whose basic needs have not been met, but claiming that beyond a certain income threshold, further income is unrelated to well-being.

The existence of such a satiation point is claimed widely, although there has been no formal statistical evidence presented to support this view. For example Diener and Seligman (2004, p. 5) state that “there are only small increases in well-being” above some threshold. While Clark, Frijters and Shields (2008, p. 123) state more starkly that “greater economic prosperity at some point ceases to buy more happiness,” a similar claim is made by Di Tella and MacCulloch (2008, p. 17): “once basic needs have been satisfied, there is full adaptation to further economic growth.” The income level beyond which further income no longer yields greater well-being is typically said to be somewhere between $8,000 and $25,000. Layard (2003, p. 17) argues that “once a country has over $15,000 per head, its level of happiness appears to be independent of its income;” while in subsequent work he argued for a $20,000 threshold (Layard, 2005 p. 32-33). Frey and Stutzer (2002, p. 416) claim that “income provides happiness at low levels of development but once a threshold (around $10,000) is reached, the average income level in a country has little effect on average subjective well-being.”

Many of these claims, of a critical level of GDP beyond which happiness and GDP are no longer linked, come from cursorily examining plots of well-being against the level of per capita GDP. Such graphs show clearly that increasing income yields diminishing marginal gains in subjective well-being. However this relationship need not reach a point of nirvana beyond which further gains in well-being are absent. For instance Deaton (2008) and Stevenson and Wolfers (2008) find that the well-being–income relationship is roughly a linear-log relationship, such that, while each additional dollar of income yields a greater increment to measured happiness for the poor than for the rich, there is no satiation point.

In this paper we provide a sustained examination of whether there is a critical income level beyond which the well-being–income relationship is qualitatively different, a claim referred to as the modified-Easterlin hypothesis. As a statistical claim, we shall test two versions of the hypothesis. The first, a stronger version, is that beyond some level of basic needs, income is uncorrelated with subjective well-being; the second, a weaker version, is that the well-being–income link estimated among the poor differs from that found among the rich.

Claims of satiation have been made for comparisons between rich and poor people within a country, comparisons between rich and poor countries, and comparisons of average well-being in countries over time, as they grow. The time series analysis is complicated by the challenges of compiling comparable data over time and thus we focus in this short paper on the cross-sectional relationships seen within and between countries. Recent work by Sacks, Stevenson, and Wolfers (2013) provide evidence on the time series relationship that is consistent with the findings presented here.

To preview, we find no evidence of a satiation point. The income–well-being link that one finds when examining only the poor, is similar to that found when examining only the rich. We show that this finding is robust across a variety of datasets, for various measures of subjective well-being, at various thresholds, and that it holds in roughly equal measure when making cross-national comparisons between rich and poor countries as when making comparisons between rich and poor people within a country.

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Abstract

We explore the relationship between agency and hedonic and evaluative dimensions of well-being, using data from the Gallup World Poll. We posit that individuals emphasize one well-being dimension over the other, depending on their agency. We test four hypotheses including whether: (i) positive levels of well-being in one dimension coexist with negative ones in another;and (ii) individuals place a different value on agency depending on their positions in the well-being and income distributions. We find that: (i) agency is more important to the evaluative well-being of respondents with more means; (ii) negative levels of hedonic well-being coexist with positive levels of evaluative well-being as people acquire agency; and (iii)both income and agency are less important to well-being at highest levels of the well-being distribution. We hope to contribute insight into one of the most complex and important components of well-being, namely,people’s capacity to pursue fulfilling lives.

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Saudi Arabia, America’s oldest ally in the Middle East, is in the midst of the most profound changes in decades. The leadership is going through an unprecedented generational change and has adopted an aggressive foreign policy. The driver of change is the king’s favorite son, Deputy Crown Prince and Minister of Defense Mohammed bin Salman.

MBS, as he’s often called, is 30 years old, remarkably energetic, and very ambitious. King Salman has promoted him to an array of powerful positions and concentrated power in his hands quickly. In addition to being third in the line of succession behind the king and his cousin Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, he often acts as the country’s top diplomat and he chairs the committee that sets economic and energy policy. He acquires new titles and responsibilities every week. Late in April he became the Saudi chief of a new cooperation council with Jordan, for example, with promises this will lead to stepped-up Saudi financial aid to Jordan.

The prince is the author of “Saudi Vision 2030,” an ambitious plan to wean the country of its dependence on oil income and create a more diverse economy. On May 7 the king issued 51 royal orders restructuring the government to implement his son’s plan, including sacking the oil minister, Ali Naimi, who had run the portfolio for two decades. The new orders also seek to encourage more foreign pilgrimage to the two holy cities of Mecca and Medinah by highlighting the opportunity for pilgrimage not just during the traditional Haj holy month, but year-round as well. Encouraging tourism is a major part of “Vision 2030.” All of the changes bear MBS’s stamp.

MBS effectively makes Saudi oil policy now. He sabotaged Naimi’s efforts to freeze or reduce OPEC oil production last month. His plan to open ARAMCO to outside investment is the centerpiece of “Vision 2030.” Oil is being used as a weapon by keeping production high to keep Iran from getting an oil bonus after the nuclear deal lifted sanctions.

The king has other and older sons with more experience than Prince Mohammed. One is Saudi Arabia’s only astronaut and another is governor of Medinah. But King Salman apparently has unique confidence in the young prince who controls access to his father and the Royal Court.

Other Saudis have been given great responsibility at an early age before. The modern kingdom’s founder, Abdelaziz ibn Saud, captured Riyadh when he was only in his late twenties. His son Faisal represented the kingdom after the First World War in London and Paris at the age of 14 and commanded an army three years later in battle. Prince Bandar became ambassador to the U.S. in his early forties. But MBS’s rise is unique for an heir to the throne in the last half-century. He is the symbol of youth in a nation where most of the population is his age or younger.

The prince is also the hand behind the creation of a new Islamic military alliance based in the kingdom. Some three dozen countries have joined. The prince envisioned the alliance as both a counter to terrorist groups like the so-called Islamic State and al Qaida as well as a counter to Iran and its allies like Hezbollah and Bashar Assad. It held large military exercises called “Northern Thunder” in the kingdom this winter.

MBS is also the architect of Saudi Arabia’s year-old war in Yemen. Initially it was called Operation Decisive Storm but then the war settled into a stalemate so the name was changed. The Saudis and their allies, especially the United Arab Emirates, captured the southern port of Aden but have been unable to wrest control of the capital Sanaa from Zaydi Shia rebels called Houthis and their partner, former Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh.

A fragile cease-fire began last month. Political talks are underway in Kuwait between the rival Yemeni groups but there has been little progress. Meanwhile the Saudis and Emiratis have driven al Qaeda out of several cities along the southeast coast of Yemen. Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula is regrouping and is far from destroyed. But it no longer is the main beneficiary of the war.

The Yemeni people have paid an enormous cost. Both sides have been guilty of egregious violence. The Saudi blockade has left millions of Yemenis at risk of malnutrition and without medical help. The rebels have starved the city of Taiz for months.

The Saudis claim they acted to prevent Iran from creating a puppet regime on the kingdom’s southern border. They were concerned when the Houthis set up direct air links from Sanaa to Tehran and offered use of the port of Hodeida to Iran. Hezbollah and Iran have provided some military advisers to the Houthis, but their influence on the rebels is limited.

The king and his son are pro-American but disenchanted with President Barack Obama. He has sold the kingdom over $100 billion in arms on his watch, according to the Congressional Research service. Obama has backed the Saudi-Yemen war with diplomatic, logistical, and intelligence support. U.S. advisers are now on the ground fighting al Qaeda.

But the Saudis cannot forgive Obama for abandoning Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak in 2011. If one autocrat could be thrown under the bus, who might be next? They don’t like the Iran nuclear deal and believe Obama has been indecisive in Syria. MBS says he wants America to do more, not less, in the region. He is courting American journalists and think tanks.

King Salman has already dismissed one succesor. His half-brother, Crown Prince Muqrin, was removed from office a year ago without warning or explanation. The 80-year-old king could remove the current crown prince, his nephew Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, and elevate MBS at any time. The old guard in the royal family, which believes MBS is reckless and inexperienced, won’t like it, but they have few options to resist. If the king does put his son in the crown prince position the kingdom will skip a whole generation. It’s already been a remarkable journey for MBS.

This piece was originally published in The Daily Beast.

As of last week, it has been a full year since the U.S. Export-Import (Ex-Im) Bank—the government export credit agency which lends money to foreign buyers of American exports—has been unable to approve loans over $10 million. This is because Senator Richard Shelby, Republican of Alabama, is single-handedly holding up the nomination of a third member to the Ex-Im Bank’s five person board; all transactions over $10 million require board approval, and short of its required quorum of three members, no major loans can get through. Looking beyond the immediate fight over Ex-Im, however, underlying trends in both American and international politics suggest commercial diplomacy is on the rise.

The Ex-Im Bank is but one of many instruments of American commercial diplomacy; there is a wide range of policies the government uses to actively help individual American companies compete abroad. Through the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), the U.S. government sells political risk insurance to American firms investing in “risky” developing countries. Moreover, U.S. ambassadors frequently lobby foreign governments to award procurement contracts to American firms. Similarly, officials from the Department of State, Department of Commerce, and Office of the U.S. Trade Representative often advocate for U.S. companies involved in investment disputes with foreign governments. What distinguishes active commercial diplomacy from general foreign economic policy—such as signing trade agreements—is that in involves deploying the resources and reputation of the government to help specific firms in particular transactions, rather than broadly setting the rules of the road for all firms to follow. It represents a significantly greater co-mingling of interests and activities between public and private actors.

While both Secretary of State John Kerry and Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker have placed considerable emphasis on advancing commercial diplomacy, the long running struggle to keep Ex-Im operating underlines the political fault lines that cut through the issue. On the one hand, as highlighted in the Ex-Im fight, commercial diplomacy can be criticized as crony capitalism or corporate welfare. Government resources are being used to support private gains. Thus those who prefer free and unfettered markets may see commercial diplomacy as simply another form of unnecessary government intervention, akin to industrial policy. At the same time, as globalization has come under attack from both the left and the right in this election cycle, it is easy to see how encouraging further globalization through commercial diplomacy could face populist pushback. Those supporting commercial diplomacy tend to favor greater integration in the global economy—a view which has found little support in the 2016 campaigns to date.

And yet, the current trends in American political debates over globalization may ultimately presage more, not less, reliance on commercial diplomacy. If politicians increasingly view the global economy through a zero-sum, mercantilist lens, they may be more eager to use the power and purse of the U.S. government to help American firms “win” abroad. Indeed, Congress, which has historically been more protectionist than the executive branch, has also consistently pushed the State Department to do more to actively defend the interests of U.S. companies operating overseas (see, for example, here and here). Aggressively fighting to help U.S. companies win contracts and compete abroad could be one plank of an “America First” policy. Thus even if America, and the world, becomes more protectionist, foreign economic policy may become even more preoccupied with assertive commercial diplomacy, even as interest in seeking mutual benefits through economic liberalization subsides.

If the U.S. government does start to prioritize more actively helping American firms in their foreign operations, it will still have a ways to go to catch up to many other countries. China, of course, is well known for using state resources to advance the commercial goals of Chinese firms venturing abroad—which should not be surprising, given that many of these firms are state-owned enterprises. But a number of other advanced democracies—including Japan, Korea, Germany, and France—also have closer and more coordinated relationships between big business and government than the U.S. does. And most of these countries show no signs of slowing down. As a recent report (PDF) from the Ex-Im bank notes, “In the wake of slowing global growth, foreign export credit agencies are becoming more aggressive.” In fact, some of these agencies are capitalizing on Ex-Im’s current plight, offering American companies export financing in return for the promise of job creation. General Electric Co., for instance, recently announced it would expand production in France because Coface, the French equivalent of Ex-Im, will finance GE projects in a number of emerging markets—the type of financing that GE used to get from Ex-Im.

Looking forward, unilateral disarmament in the competitive world of commercial diplomacy—as the U.S. is currently doing with the Ex-Im Bank—is likely to become increasingly rare. The ultimate effects of this accelerating international competition, in both economic and political terms, remain to be seen.

Editor’s Note: The following chapter is part of the report, "After the Drug Wars," published in February 2016 by the London School of Economics and Political Science's Expert Group on the Economics of Drug Policy.

Even as the administration of Mexico’s President Enrique Peña Nieto has scored important reform successes in the economic sphere, its security and law enforcement policy toward organized crime remains incomplete and ill-defined. Despite the early commitments of his administration to focus on reducing drug violence, combating corruption, and redesigning counternarcotics policies, little significant progress has been achieved. Major human rights violations related to the drug violence, whether perpetrated by organized crime groups or military and police forces, persist – such as at Iguala, Guerrero, where 43 students were abducted by a cabal of local government officials, police forces and organized crime groups. This has also been seen in Tatlaya and Tanhuato, Michoacán, where military forces have likely been engaged in extrajudicial killings of tens of people. Meanwhile, although drug violence has abated in the north of the country, such as in Ciudad Juárez, Monterrey and Tijuana, government policies have played only a minor role. Much of the violence reduction is the result of the vulnerable and unsatisfactory narcopeace – the victory of the Sinaloa or Gulf Cartels. 

The July 2015 spectacular escape of the leader of the Sinaloa Cartel and the world’s most notorious drug trafficker – Joaquín Guzmán Loera, known as El Chapo – from a Mexican high-security prison was a massive embarrassment for the Peña Nieto government. Yet it serves as another reminder of the deep structural deficiencies of Mexico’s law enforcement and rule-of law system which persists more than a decade after Mexico declared its war on the drug cartels.

The Peña Nieto administration often pointed to the February 2014 capture of El Chapo as the symbol of its effectiveness in fighting drug cartels and violent criminal groups in Mexico. The Peña Nieto administration’s highlighting of Chapo’s capture was both ironic and revealing: ironic, because the new government came into office criticizing the anti-crime policy of the previous administration of Felipe Calderón of killing or capturing top capos to decapitate their cartels; and revealing, because despite the limitations and outright counterproductive effects of this high-value-targeting policy and despite promises of a very different strategy, the Peña Nieto administration fell back into relying on the pre-existing approach. In fact, such high-value-targeting has been at the core of Pena Nieto’s anti-crime policy. Moreover, Chapo’s escape from Mexico’s most secure prison through a sophisticated tunnel (a method he had also pioneered for smuggling drugs and previously used for escapes) showed the laxity and perhaps complicity at the prison, and again spotlighted the continuing inadequate state of Mexico’s corrections system.

Read the full chapter here.

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• Cuidado: The inescapable necessity of better law enforcement in Mexico

During his address at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy graduation this week, President Obama highlighted climate change as “a serious threat to global security, an immediate risk to (U.S.) national security.” Is President Obama right? Are the national security threats from climate change real?

When I listen to the “know-nothing” crowd and their front men in Congress who actively ignore ever-stronger scientific evidence about the pace of climate change, I want to quit my day job and organize civic action to close them down. The celebration of anti-knowledge, the denial of science, the treatment of advanced education as a mark of ignominy rather than the building block of American innovation and citizenship—these are as grave a threat to America’s future as any I can identify. So I’m sympathetic to the Obama administration’s desire to take a bludgeon to climate deniers. But is “national security” the right stick to move the naysayers forward? 

The Danger of Overstating for Effect

The White House’s report on the national security implications of climate change is actually pretty measured and largely avoids waving red flags, but it overstates for effect, as do the President’s remarks to the Coast Guard Academy. 

The report gets right the notion that climate change will hit hardest where governance is weakest and that this will exacerbate the challenge of weak states; but it’s a pre-existing challenge and almost all weak states are already embroiled in forms of internal war—climate change may exacerbate this problem, but it certainly won’t create it. The White House report also asserts a link to terrorist havens, and of course there are risks here—but it’s far from a 1:1 relationship, and there’s little evidence that the countries where climate will hit governance worst are the places where the terrorism problem is most serious. 

The report also highlights the Arctic as a region most dramatically effected by climate change, and that is true—but so far what we’re seeing in the Arctic is that receding ice is triggering commercial competition and governance cooperation; not conflict. The security challenge from the Arctic is modest: the climate challenge of melting ice caps and potential release of trapped greenhouse gases is potential very serious indeed. 

Then there are the domestic effects. The report highlights that the armed services may be drawn in more to dealing with coastal flooding and similar crises, and that’s a fair point—though it’s a National Guard point more than its an armed forces point. That is to say, it’s about the question of whether we have enough domestic disaster response capacity: an important question, not obviously a national security question. And it oddly passes over what’s likely to be the most important consequence of climate change in the United States, namely declining agricultural productivity in the American heartland. America’s farmers, not just its coastal cities, are in the front lines here. 

All of these are real issues and the U.S. government will have to plan for lots of them, including in the armed services; all fair. But is national security really the right way to frame this? Is linking it directly to the capacities needed for America’s armed services the right way to mobilize support for more serious action on climate change? 

Of course the term “security” has been evolving, and has long since extended beyond the limited purview of nuclear risks and great power conflict. Civil wars and weak governance and rising sea leaves are certainly a security issue to somebody, and we’re sure to be involved—whether it’s in dealing with refugee flows, or more acute crises where severe impacts overlay on pre-existing tensions. These are global security issues for someone, to be sure; I’m not sure they are “immediate risks to our national security.

Words Matter

Why does the rhetoric matter? Am I glad that we have a President who cares about climate change? Yes. Do I want the Obama administration to be focusing on mobilizing the American public on this? Yes. So why does it bother me if they use a national security lens? A national security framework implicitly does several things: it invokes a sense of direct threat, which I think distorts the nature of the challenge; it puts military responses front forward, which is the wrong emphasis; and although the report doesn’t get into this question, if the President highlights the immediate national security risk from climate, it displaces other security threats that we confront and truly require U.S. strategic planning, preparedness, and resources. None of this is totally wrong, but surely there are other ways to mobilize the American public to an erosion of our natural and agricultural environment than to invoke the security frame? 

Every piece of evidence I’ve seen about the state of temperature change; the real pathway we are on in terms of carbon-based fuels consumption (despite optimistic pledges in the lead up to the Paris climate conference); realistic projections of growth in renewable energies; and demand growth in the developing world (especially India) tells me that we’re rapidly blowing past the two degree target for limiting the rise in average global temperatures, and we’re well on our way to a four degree shift. 

We need urgently to pivot our scientific establishment away from the now well-trod field of predicting temperature shift to getting a much more granular understanding about the ways in which changing temperature will affect water sources, agricultural productivity, biodiversity, and dramatic weather events. And we need to treat those who willfully deny science—in climate and other areas—as a serious threat to our nation’s  future. I’m just not convinced that national security is the right or best way to frame the arguments and mobilize the America public’s will around this critically important issue.

Event Information

Over the last couple of years, a number of crucial political and policy-related developments have unfolded in India, as well as in U.S.-India relations. These developments have emerged as the next generation of Indian politicians, born after the country’s independence, is coming to the fore—including in parliament.

On October 7, The India Project at Brookings hosted a delegation of Indian parliamentarians to discuss the current state of Indian policy and politics. The panel featuring MPs from different political parties and states in India explored the state of the Indian economy and foreign policy, federalism, the role of regional parties, coalition politics, the role of the media and technology, and U.S.-India relations.

Join the conversation on Twitter using #IndianPolitics

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• India today: A conversation with Indian members of parliament

Transcript

• Uncorrected Transcript (.pdf)

Event Materials

• 20151007_india_today_transcript

The U.S. military will carry out a major modernization of its strategic nuclear forces in the 2020s.

It will cover all three legs of the strategic triad.

Much of the planned program makes sense. The long-range standoff (LRSO) — a new nuclear-armed cruise missile to outfit strategic bombers — does not.

The primary reason for the modernization program is that many US strategic weapons systems are aging out, and American policy is that, as long as there are nuclear weapons, the United States will maintain a safe, secure and robust nuclear deterrent.

The Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines will begin to hit the end of their service life in the late 2020s, and the Navy will need new submarines. Submarines and submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) make up the most survivable leg of the triad, and they carry the bulk of deployed US strategic warheads.

The service life of the Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) runs out in 2030. The Air Force seeks a replacement ICBM. At a minimum, keeping an ICBM leg of the triad would require another life extension program for existing Minuteman III missiles.

As for the air-breathing leg of the triad, the Air Force wants to procure 80 to 100 B-21 bombers. Plans are shrouded in secrecy but reportedly will incorporate stealth features and advanced electronic warfare capabilities to allow the aircraft to penetrate contested air space. The Air Force is also modernizing the B61 nuclear gravity bomb for use on strategic bombers.

It is not clear why the United States will need to replace 400 deployed ICBMs on a one-for-one basis, particularly as the Air Force several years ago was prepared to go down to 300. A force of 200-300 ICBMs would suffice and result in significant cost savings. Likewise, one can challenge the requirement for 12 new ballistic missile submarines, as opposed to nine or 10.

The biggest question, however, arises over the LRSO, with a projected cost of $20 billion to $30 billion. The Air Force originally developed nuclear-armed air-launched cruise missiles (ALCMs) in the 1970s because the B-52 — then the mainstay of the strategic bomber fleet — presented a big target for adversary radars. That would make it hard for the aircraft to penetrate air defenses. A B-52 armed with ALCMs could remain outside of radar range and release its cruise missiles.

The B-2, with its stealth features, was designed to restore a penetrating capability. The Air Force plans to use stealth and electronic warfare capabilities to give the B-21 a penetrating capability as well. If these bombers can defeat and penetrate air defenses, that makes the LRSO redundant. (Moreover, unlike in the 1970s, the Air Force today has very capable long-range conventionally armed cruise missiles that provide a standoff capability for bombers.)

If, on the other hand, the stealth of the B-21 will be compromised in the not-too-distant future, then one has to question the wisdom of spending $60 billion to $80 billion — and perhaps more — to procure the B-21. If we believe the B-21 would soon encounter problems penetrating air defenses, scrap that program. Buy instead modified Boeing 767s, a variant of which will serve as the Air Force’s new aerial tanker, and arm them with the LRSO.

The Air Force’s evident attachment to the B-21 suggests, however, that it believes that the aircraft will be able to defeat adversary air defenses for some time to come. That means that the LRSO would add little capability to the US strategic force mix.

If one were to argue for the redundant capability provided by the LRSO, the number of new ALCMs that the Pentagon proposes to purchase — 1,000 to 1,100 — is difficult to understand. Even allowing for extra cruise missiles for test purposes, the number seems excessively high.

In its 2010 annual report to Congress on implementation of the Strategic Offensive Arms Reduction Treaty (SORT), the State Department advised that, as of Dec. 31, 2009, the United States had 1,968 operationally deployed strategic nuclear warheads. That figure captured the actual number of nuclear warheads atop SLBMs and ICBMs plus the number of nuclear bombs and ALCMs at air bases for use by bombers.

On June 1, 2011, a State Department fact sheet showed the number of deployed US strategic warheads as 1,800 as of Feb. 5, 2011, when the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) went into force. A Dec. 1, 2011, fact sheet provided a more detailed breakdown of US strategic forces. It stated that, as of Sept. 1, 2011, the United States had 1,790 deployed strategic warheads and 125 deployed strategic bombers. Like SORT, New START counts each warhead on a deployed ballistic missile as a deployed warhead. But New START counts bomber weapons differently from SORT. New START attributes each deployed bomber as one warhead, regardless of the number that it can carry or the number of weapons that may be at bomber bases.

The 125 deployed bombers on Sept. 1, 2011, would have counted as 125 under New START’s deployed strategic warhead total. Reducing 1,790 by 125 yields 1,665 — the number of deployed warheads then on US SLBMs and ICBMs.

Comparing the SORT and New START numbers is a bit of an apples-and-oranges comparison, but it gives some idea of the number of bomber weapons at US strategic bomber bases. Unless there was a dramatic increase in the number of warheads on ICBMs and SLBMs between the end of 2009 and September 2011 — and there is no reason to think that there was — comparing SORT’s 1,968 figure (end of 2009) to the 1,665 deployed warheads on ICBMs and SLBMs (under New START counting rules in September 2011) suggests some 300 nuclear bombs and ALCMs were at bomber bases. The B-2s would have been armed with bombs, which indicates a maximum of 200-250 ALCMs. The Federation of American Scientists (FAS) also estimates that there are about 300 nuclear weapons at strategic bomber bases, of which 200 are nuclear-armed ALCMs. FAS believes an additional 375 ALCM airframes are held in reserve.

This comparison raises the question: Why would 1,000-1,100 ALCM airframes be needed to support a couple of hundred deployed ALCMs?

The United States should sensibly modernize its strategic deterrent, particularly in a time of tight defense budgets. The case for the LRSO is demonstrably weak, especially for the planned size of the program. The LRSO should be shelved.

This piece was originally published in Defense News.

At the time that the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with Iran was being debated here in Washington, I felt that the terms of the deal were far less consequential than how the United States responded to Iranian regional behavior after a deal was signed. I see the events of the past 12 months as largely having borne out that analysis. While both sides have accused the other of "cheating" on the deal in both letter and spirit, it has so far largely held and neither Tehran nor Washington (nor any of the other signatories) have shown a determination to abrogate the deal or flagrantly circumvent its terms. However, as many of my colleagues have noted, the real frictions have arisen from the U.S. geostrategic response to the deal.

I continue to believe that the Obama administration was ultimately correct that signing the JCPOA was better than any of the realistic alternatives—even if I also continue to believe that a better deal was possible, had the administration handled the negotiations differently. However, its regional approach since then has left a fair amount to be desired:

• The president gratuitously insulted the Saudis and other U.S. allies in his various interviews with Jeff Goldberg of The Atlantic. 
• After several alarming Iranian-Saudi dust-ups, administration officials have none-too-privately condemned Riyadh and excused Tehran in circumstances where both were culpable. 
• Washington has continued to just about ignore all manner of Iranian transgressions from human rights abuses to missile tests, and senior administration officials have turned themselves into metaphorical pretzels to insist that the United States is doing everything it can to assist the Iranian economy. 
• And the overt component of the administration's Syria policy remains stubbornly focused on ISIS, not the Bashar Assad regime or its Iranian allies, while the covert side focused on the regime remains very limited—far smaller than America's traditional Middle Eastern allies have sought. 

To be fair, the administration has been quite supportive of the Gulf Cooperation Council war effort in Yemen—far more so than most Americans realize—but even there, still much less than the Saudis, Emiratis, and other Sunni states would like. 

To be blunt, the perspective of America's traditional Sunni Arab allies (and to some extent, Turkey and Israel) is that they are waging an all-out war against Iran and its (Shiite) allies across the region. They have wanted the United States, their traditional protector, to lead that fight. And they feared that the JCPOA would result in one of two different opposite approaches: either that the United States would use the JCPOA as an excuse to further disengage from the geopolitical competition in the region, or even worse, that Washington would use it to switch sides and join the Iranian coalition. Unfortunately, their reading of events has been that this is precisely what has happened, although they continue to debate whether the United States is merely withdrawing or actively changing sides. And as both Bruce Reidel and I have both stressed, this perception is causing the GCC states to act more aggressively, provoking more crises and worsening proxy warfare with Iran that will inevitably aggravate an already dangerously-unstable Middle East and raises the risk of escalation to something even worse.

U.S. President Barack Obama walks with Saudi King Salman at Erga Palace upon his arrival for a summit meeting in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia April 20, 2016. Photo credit: Reuters/Kevin Lamarque.

Looking to year two

All that said, I wanted to use the first anniversary of the JCPOA to think about where we may be on its second anniversary. By then, we will have a new president. Donald Trump has not laid out anything close to a coherent approach to the Middle East, nor does he have any prior experience with the region, so I do not believe we can say anything reasonable about how he might handle the region if he somehow became president. Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, has had considerable experience with the region—as first lady, senator, and secretary of state—and she and her senior aides have discussed the region to a much greater extent, making it possible to speculate on at least the broad contours of her initial Middle East policy. 

In particular, Clinton has been at pains to emphasize a willingness to commit more resources to deal with the problems of the Middle East and a fervent desire to rebuild the strained ties with America's traditional Middle Eastern allies. From my perspective, that is all to the good because an important (but hardly the only) factor in the chaos consuming the Middle East has been the Obama administration's determination to disengage from the geopolitical events of the region and distance itself from America's traditional allies. The problem here is not that the United States always does the right thing or that our allies are saints. Hardly. It is that the region desperately needs the United States to help it solve the massive problems of state failure and civil war that are simply beyond the capacity of regional actors to handle on their own. The only way to stop our allies from acting aggressively and provocatively is for the United States to lead them in a different, more constructive direction. In the Middle East in particular, you can't beat something with nothing, and while the United States cannot be the only answer to the region's problems, there is no answer to the region's problems without the United States.

My best guess is that our traditional allies will enthusiastically welcome a Hillary Clinton presidency, and the new president will do all that she can to reassure them that she plans to be more engaged, more of a leader, more willing to commit American resources to Middle Eastern problems, more willing to help the region address its problems (and not just the problems that affect the United States directly, like ISIS). I think all of that rhetorical good will and a sense (on both sides) of putting the bad days of Obama behind them will produce a honeymoon period. 

[T]he second anniversary of the JCPOA could prove even more fraught for America and the Middle East than the first.

But I suspect that that honeymoon will come to an end after 6 to 18 months, perhaps beginning with the second anniversary of the JCPOA and occasioned by it. I suspect that at that point, America's traditional allies—the Sunni Arab States, Israel, and Turkey—will begin to look for President Clinton to turn her words into action, and from their perspective, that is probably going to mean doing much more than President Obama. I suspect that they will still want the United States to join and/or lead them in a region-wide war against Iran and its allies. And while I think that a President Clinton will want to do more than President Obama, I see no sign that she is interested in doing that much more. 

Syria is one example. The GCC wants the United States to commit to a strategy that will destroy the Assad regime (and secondarily, eliminate ISIS and the Nusra Front). Clinton has said she was in favor of a beefed-up covert campaign against the Assad regime and that she is in favor of imposing a no-fly zone over the country. If, as president, she enacts both, this would be a much more aggressive policy than Obama's, but as I have written elsewhere, neither is likely to eliminate the Assad regime, let alone stabilize Syria and end the civil war—the two real threats to both the United States and our regional allies (and our European allies). 

Even more to the point, I cannot imagine a Hillary Clinton administration abrogating the JCPOA, imposing significant new economic sanctions on Iran, or otherwise acting in ways that it would fear could provoke Tehran to break the deal, overtly or covertly. That may look to our traditional allies like Washington is trying to remain on the fence, which will infuriate them. After Obama, and after Clinton's rhetoric, they expect the United States to stand openly and resolutely with them. At the very least, such American restraint will place further limits on the willingness of a Clinton administration to adopt the kind of confrontational policy toward Tehran that our regional allies want, and that her rhetoric has led them to expect. 

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton (C) speaks with Jordan's Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh (L) and United Arab Emirates Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Anwar Gargash as they participate in the Libya Contact Group family photo at the Emirates Palace Hotel in Abu Dhabi June 9, 2011. Photo credit: Reuters/Susan Walsh.

Reconcile, or agree to disagree?

Let me be clear, I am not suggesting that the United States should adopt the GCC analysis of what is going on in the region wholeheartedly. I think that it overstates Iran's role as the source of the region's problems and so distracts from what I see as the region's real problems—state failure and civil wars—even if the Iranians have played a role in exacerbating both. 

Instead, my intent is simply to highlight that there are some important strategic differences between the United States and its regional allies, differences that are not all Barack Obama's fault but reflect important differences that have emerged between the two sides. If this analysis is correct, then the second anniversary of the JCPOA could prove even more fraught for America and the Middle East than the first. The honeymoon will be over, and both sides may recognize that goodwill and rousing words alone cannot cover fundamental divergences in both our diagnosis of what ails the region and our proposed treatment of those maladies. If that is the case, then both may need to make much bigger adjustments than they currently contemplate. Otherwise, the United States may find that its traditional allies are no longer as willing to follow our lead, and our allies may discover that the United States is no longer interested in leading them on the path they want to follow.

Few issues are closer to President Obama’s vision of the global future than his convictions about reducing the role of nuclear weapons in U.S. national security strategy. Less than three months after entering office, in a major speech in Prague, he put forward an ambitious nuclear agenda, declaring that the United States (as the only state ever to employ nuclear weapons in warfare) had a “moral responsibility…to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.”

Seven years later, despite the administration’s having advanced other goals in non-proliferation policy, the larger vision of a nuclear-free world remains very much unfulfilled. But President Obama apparently hasn’t given up. In late May, he became the first American president to visit Hiroshima, where the United States first employed a nuclear weapon in warfare. In his speech, the president declared that “nations like my own that hold nuclear stockpiles…must have the courage to escape the logic of fear and pursue a world without them.” Moreover, as President Obama approaches his final six months in office, senior officials are purportedly deliberating additional policy changes that they believe could be undertaken without congressional approval. As Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes said in a June 6 speech at the Arms Control Association, the president remains intent on advancing his “Prague agenda” before leaving office.

According to recent press reports, the policy options under consideration include U.S. enunciation of a nuclear “no first use” doctrine. Such a step would represent a profound shift in U.S. policy. Non-nuclear states living in the shadow of nuclear-armed adversaries have long relied on U.S. security guarantees, specifically the declared commitment to employ nuclear weapons should our allies be subject to aggression with conventional forces. They have based their own national security strategies on that pledge, including their willingness to forego indigenous development of nuclear weapons.

Northeast Asia presents a clear contradiction between President Obama’s non-nuclear aspirations and existing circumstances.

These issues bear directly on the credibility of U.S. guarantees to allies in Europe and Asia, with particular relevance in Northeast Asia. Since the end of the Cold War, the content of the U.S. extended nuclear deterrence pledge has already narrowed. Washington has long deemed any use of nuclear weapons a matter of absolute last resort. Since the early 1990s, Washington has also enunciated an unambiguous distinction between employment of conventional and nuclear weapons, including the unilateral withdrawal of all tactical nuclear weapons deployed on the Korean peninsula. 

The Obama administration itself has also moved closer to limiting nuclear weapons use exclusively to deter another state’s first use of such a weapon against the United States, its allies, and partners—in fact, the 2010 Nuclear Posture Review declared that this was a “fundamental role” of the American nuclear arsenal. At that time, it also pledged to “work to establish conditions” under which it was safe to adopt universally a policy where the “sole purpose” of U.S. nuclear weapons was to deter a nuclear attack by an adversary. The implication of such a “sole purpose” policy would be that North Korea need not fear American nuclear retaliation if it mounted only a conventional attack against South Korea. 

Whether it is “no first use” or “sole purpose use,” Northeast Asia presents a clear contradiction between President Obama’s non-nuclear aspirations and existing circumstances. The Republic of Korea and Japan (the only state ever subject to nuclear attack) confront the reality of a nuclear-armed North Korea. Pyongyang continues to enhance its weapons inventory and the means to deliver them. It also regularly threatens Seoul and Tokyo with missile attack, potentially armed with nuclear weapons. 

[A]ny indications that the United States might be wavering from its nuclear guarantees would trigger worst-case fears that the United States, above all, would not want to stimulate.

Both U.S. allies are therefore strongly opposed to a U.S. "no first use" pledge, and would likely have deep concerns about a sole purpose commitment. Though the United States possesses a wide array of non-nuclear strike options in the event of a North Korean attack directed against South Korea or Japan, any indications that the United States might be wavering from its nuclear guarantees would trigger worst-case fears that the United States, above all, would not want to stimulate. At the same time, choosing not to issue a "no first use" pledge should not in any way suggest that the United States favors nuclear use, which would play directly into North Korean propaganda strategy. Rather, the United States should not preemptively remove the nuclear option, especially when North Korea is in overt defiance of its non-proliferation obligations and is single-mindedly intent on a building a nuclear weapons capability.

The Obama administration must therefore balance its clear desire to advance a non-nuclear legacy with Northeast Asia’s inescapable realities. Enunciating a "no first use" doctrine or a sole purpose commitment in the administration’s waning months in office is a bridge too far. Though the United States can and should engage South Korea and Japan in much deeper consultations about extended deterrence, it cannot put at risk the security of allies directly threatened by attack from a nuclear-armed adversary. 

The next U.S. president will have to square this circle. In the meantime, the Obama administration should do all that it can to plan for the road ahead, even if it means policy pledges that might not be as visionary as it would prefer. 

Donald Trump has made waves during this year’s election cycle by taking a hard line on illegal immigration. This, however, builds on years of heated debate among policymakers. It is also an enduring hot-button issue in Arizona, which has passed several immigration laws over the years.  In 2010, the passage of SB 1070 brought national attention to this debate.  Deemed the strictest immigration law to date, SB 1070 sought to achieve “attrition [of illegal immigrants] through enforcement” by requiring law enforcement to detain any person whom they believed to be residing in the country illegally. Although SB 1070’s effects on individuals and families have been well documented, little is known about its impact on students and schools. To this end, we sought to estimate the relationship between the passage of SB 1070 and school-level student achievement.

We anticipated that anti-immigration policies would primarily affect children from the families of undocumented immigrants. Such effects could be observed in different ways. For instance, the emotional and psychological distress of these children could result in a decline in average test scores at the school-level. On the other hand, students might have left the country or the state under the threat of being deported in which case school-level test scores would rise (since these students often perform below their peers). To this end, we considered three scenarios: 

1. Immigrant children remain in the state but experience higher levels of stress.  As a result, average school-level test scores will drop while Hispanic enrollment remains the same.
2. Children of undocumented immigrants leave the state, which results in a drop in Hispanic enrollment accompanied by an increase in school-level test scores.
3. Or, the first two scenarios occur simultaneously and we do not observe any change in test scores since the two effects would cancel each other, but note a slight decrease in Hispanic enrollment.

In order to see which of these hypothetical scenarios is supported by the data, we first estimated the relationship between the passage of SB 1070 and average school-level reading test scores. We then attempted to unpack the mechanism through which such an effect might have taken place. To this end, we used publicly available data on school-level achievement and enrollment collected by the Arizona Department of Education (ADE). Given the targeted nature of the policy and the demographics of immigrants in Arizona, the majority of whom are of Hispanic or Mexican descent, we focused on schools that traditionally enroll large proportions of Hispanic students. We identified schools with high (more than 75 percent) shares of Hispanic students as those whose average achievement and student composition are most likely to be affected by immigration reform. We contrasted changes in school-level achievement and enrollment in those schools with schools that enroll less than 25 percent Hispanic students, as these schools are less likely to experience any changes as a result of tightening immigration laws.

Figures 1 and 2 show trends in the average percentage of students passing the state reading test and average Hispanic enrollment at these schools between 2006-2007 and 2011-2012.           

Figure 1. Average Percent of Students Passing AIMS Reading

Figure 2. Average Hispanic Student Enrollment

Clearly, the rate of growth in school-level reading scores was much higher for high Hispanic schools after the passage of SB 1070 in 2010 (Figure 1). At the same time, there was a significant decrease in Hispanic enrollment in these schools (Figure 2). Thus, it appears the second scenario is likely driving the patterns we observe.

The data also suggest that the trends for high Hispanic and low Hispanic schools started diverging before the passage of SB 1070 - after the 2007-2008 school year.  This happens to be the year that Arizona passed an even more restrictive, though less controversial, immigration law – the Legal Arizona Workers Act (LAWA). LAWA required Arizona business owners to verify the legal status of their employees using E-Verify, an online tool managed by the federal government. Although LAWA used a different mechanism, similar to SB 1070 it sought to achieve the attrition of undocumented immigrants from the state. 

We then would anticipate both laws to have similar effects on school-level achievement and Hispanic enrollment. Indeed, we estimated that LAWA likely led to an average increase of roughly 4 percent of students passing the state reading test at high Hispanic schools. This was accompanied by an average loss of 38 Hispanic students per school. Because the passage of SB 1070 was preceded by the passage LAWA as well as a language policy that would have affected treatment schools, disentangling the effects of these two policies is not straightforward. However, based on our analysis, we estimate that SB 1070 is associated with an average increase of between 1.5 percent and 4.5 percent of students passing the state reading test at the school-level accompanied by an average loss of between 14 and 40 Hispanic students. 

Despite the fact that we cannot pin down the exact magnitude of SB 1070’s effect on school-level achievement, our analysis shows that when Arizona passed restrictive immigration laws in 2008 and 2010, it looked as if the state’s lowest performing schools were improving rapidly. This, however, likely had more to do with the changing composition of schools as an indirect though anticipated effect of immigration policies than with policies aimed at improving student achievement. 

Despite this, the Arizona Department of Education took credit for these gains. Similarly, Arizona was recently recognized as one of the nation’s leaders in growth on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) over the last ten years. Although wrongly attributing these gains may seem harmless at first glance, it is important to remember that Arizona is viewed by many as a model for controversial education reforms like school choice and high-stakes accountability. It is easy to imagine how policymakers might look at increasing test scores in Arizona and wrongly attribute them to these kinds of reforms. That’s not to say that these policies don’t have merit. However, if other states adopt education policy reforms under the assumption that they worked in Arizona, then they might find that these policies fail to deliver.