Editors' Note: U.S.-Israeli relations have taken a hit in recent years as the United States has become increasingly frustrated with the Netanyahu government's lack of initiative on advancing a peace process with the Palestinians. Tamara Wittes examines the domestic Israeli and American trends poised to further strain relations if the countries' leaders do not address these challenges head on. This article originally appeared in Haaretz on December 3, 2015—before the annual Saban Forum.

The past year brought unprecedented tensions in the U.S.-Israeli relationship, with many arguments and counterarguments about who is to blame. Beyond the tactical debates—about personality clashes, or the propriety of Israel parachuting into arguments between Congress and the U.S. president—are deeper challenges facing these two close allies. Last weekend, the Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings convened the Saban Forum in Washington to address these issues and to understand the future trajectory of the U.S.-Israeli relationship.

The first question that needs to be asked is why a bilateral relationship that for so long was kept above politics has now become a subject of bitter partisanship—in Israel, as well as in the United States. How did distasteful personal rhetoric become politically acceptable in a relationship that used to be carefully protected? Why did politicians lose their self-restraint about using the U.S.-Israel relationship as a wedge issue against their opponents? Why were opponents of the Iran nuclear deal, in Israel and in the United States, prepared to drag the American Jewish community and Democratic friends of Israel into the fray and force them to choose between supporting Israel and supporting their president?

Some argue that these trends result from differing levels of public support for Israel among Democratic and Republican voters. Polls show that Democratic voters are less supportive of the current Israeli government’s policies than Republican voters. If voters in the United States are splitting on partisan lines, the theory goes, then their elected representatives should follow. But polls that ask simplistic questions produce crude results.

A more detailed survey by my colleague Shibley Telhami shows us something deeper: the lenses Americans use to evaluate Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians have changed over time. Today, Americans increasingly look at the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through the lens of human rights—and this is especially true for younger Americans, African Americans and Hispanic Americans. This makes them sensitive to the suffering of Palestinian civilians, and to heavy handed Israeli counter-terrorism policies. These groups form a larger proportion of the voting public than they have in past, and a growing proportion of the Democratic Party’s core constituency. Likewise, American Evangelical Christians look at Israel through a lens of prophetic fulfillment, which combined with their conservative political preferences puts them squarely on the side of more hawkish Israeli policies. And Evangelicals are a core constituency for the Republican Party. These underlying changes in attitudes have shifted the calculus for American politicians. But that doesn’t mean a partisan split on “support for Israel” is inevitable. It does point to specific aspects of Israeli policy that affect how Israel is viewed. As American society becomes “majority-minority,” where no group, including Americans of European origin, constitutes a majority of the population, Israelis should keep these underlying lenses in mind.

[T]he lenses Americans use to evaluate Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians have changed over time.

A second issue to examine is Israelis’ combination of vulnerability and national pride. Even in a post-9/11 era, Americans have a hard time appreciating the sense of vulnerability and fear that Israelis face from ongoing terrorism and rocket fire. The Gaza War last year brought this vulnerability into sharp focus—the war went on longer than any in Israel’s history other than War of Independence, and the rocket threat affected most of the country’s civilian population. The large numbers of Palestinians killed and wounded led some in America to question Israeli tactics.  U.S.-Israeli cooperation on Iron Dome produced impressive results and was trumpeted in the American media—but when you are walking outside and an air raid siren goes off, your faith in Iron Dome does not erase your sharp sense of fear.

Israelis’ sense of vulnerability is compounded by the asymmetric nature of the threats Israel is facing, and by the sense among many Israelis that their effort to reach a resolution of their conflict with the Palestinians has reached a dead end. The fear of another war and a sense that the neighborhood has turned deeply hostile, weigh heavily, in a way Americans have trouble understanding. Israelis become all the more anxious when they sense that their most important international ally might not see their security threats the same way they do.

Paradoxically, though, this sense of vulnerability coexists for Israelis with a sense of greater self-confidence about Israel’s military strength, its economic dynamism, and its wider relationships with the world. Particularly on the Israeli political right, there is today a stronger strain of nationalism and national pride (as evidenced in the “No Apologies” slogan of the Jewish Home Party in the last elections). In many countries around the world, including U.S. allies, the rise of right-wing nationalism is marked in part by politicians thumbing their nose at the global superpower: the United States. Israel, it appears, is no longer an exception to that rule.

Israelis become all the more anxious when they sense that their most important international ally might not see their security threats the same way they do.

These issues—Americans’ perceptions of Israeli policy toward the Palestinians, and Israelis’ combination of fear and self-confidence—go beyond the personalities of leaders or the choices of politicians. To bridge these gaps, the U.S.-Israel dialogue must reach beyond government meetings and Israel-Diaspora engagement— instead, Israelis and Americans must commit to understanding one another’s societies better than we do today.

Finally, and unavoidably, there is a policy problem driving U.S.-Israeli tensions—but it’s not what you might think. The Israeli and American governments are both struggling to deal with the disintegration of a twenty-year-old framework for settling the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. After the Oslo Declaration was signed in September, 1993, Americans, Israelis and Palestinians shared an approach to settling the conflict: direct bilateral negotiations mediated by the United States. But after the failure of the Kerry talks last spring, the two leaders in Jerusalem and Ramallah have no inclination to return to direct bilateral talks, and each of them in their own way emerged from the latest effort with questions about the role of the United States.

In the international community and the region, meanwhile, the loss of faith in the U.S.-led bilateral process has led to experiments with other modes of shaping the conflict, from economic pressure on Israel to new proposals for action by the UN Security Council. Netanyahu’s controversial words before Election Day last spring— that there would be no Palestinian state under his watch—were less of a unilateral declaration than a recognition of reality. The White House now more-or-less agrees, with Obama aides telling reporters that they did not expect peace on Obama’s watch. The longstanding, bilateral negotiating process was Washington’s main leverage in pushing back against other international efforts—and now that the negotiating process has ended, these efforts will inevitably escalate. Without U.S.-Israeli agreement on a way forward, further policy gaps are likely.

The Israeli and American governments are both struggling to deal with the disintegration of a twenty-year-old framework for settling the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

This begs a question many American officials and analysts are asking: If there is no prospect for renewed bilateral talks toward a two-state solution, what is Israel’s Plan B? Does the Israeli government have a clear vision for its future relationship with the Palestinians? Israel expects American understanding as it takes steps it deems necessary to protect its citizens and ensure their future security. But American patience with Israel’s control over the West Bank is predicated on that control being temporary. There is impatience in Washington that Israel’s leadership has not tried to articulate a path forward beyond the immediate crisis—indeed, my colleague Natan Sachs argues that the current Israeli leadership has embraced “anti-solutionism” as a strategy. That's a very difficult position for any American administration to support.

If their modern history is any guide, Israelis will not remain passive before the forces now reshaping the Middle East; instead, they will insist on charting their own path into the future. When Israelis finally do develop a clear view of their chosen road, their first stop to explain it and seek support will inevitably be Washington. But Washington may not wait forever—especially as the stalemate is generating sustained violence. The time is now to lay the foundations for that crucial policy discussion, by updating American and Israeli understandings of one another’s dynamic societies, and by building on the Saban Forum and similar platforms to enrich our bilateral dialogue.

First it was the Europeans who sought an escape from the tragic realities of power that had bloodied their 20th century. At the end of the Cold War, they began to disarm themselves in the hopeful belief that arms and traditional measures of power no longer mattered. A new international system of laws and institutions would replace the old system of power; the world would model itself on the European Union—and if not, the U.S. would still be there to provide security the old-fashioned way.

But now, in the wake of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, it is the U.S. that seems to be yearning for an escape from the burdens of power and a reprieve from the tragic realities of human existence.

Until recent events at least, a majority of Americans (and of the American political and intellectual classes) seem to have come close to concluding not only that war is horrible but also that it is ineffective in our modern, globalized world. "There is an evolving international order with new global norms making war and conquest increasingly rare," wrote Fareed Zakaria of CNN, borrowing from Steven Pinker of Harvard, practically on the eve of Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the Islamic State's march across Syria and Iraq. Best-selling histories of World War I teach that nations don't willingly go to war but only "sleepwalk" into them due to tragic miscalculations or downright silliness.

For a quarter-century, Americans have been told that at the end of history lies boredom rather than great conflict, that nations with McDonald's never fight one another, that economic interdependence and nuclear weapons make war among great powers unlikely if not impossible. Recently added to these nostrums has been the mantra of futility. "There is no military solution" is the constant refrain of Western statesmen regarding conflicts from Syria to Ukraine; indeed, military action only makes problems worse. Power itself isn't even what it used to be, argued the columnist Moisés Naím in a widely praised recent book.

History has a way of answering such claims. The desire to escape from power is certainly not new; it has been the constant aspiration of Enlightenment liberalism for more than two centuries.

The impossibility of war was conventional wisdom in the years before World War I, and it became conventional wisdom again—at least in Britain and the U.S.—practically the day after the war ended. Then as now, Americans and Britons solipsistically believed that everyone shared their disillusionment with war. They imagined that because war was horrible and irrational, as the Great War had surely demonstrated, no sane people would choose it.

What happened next, as the peaceful 1920s descended into the violent and savage 1930s, may be instructive for our own time. Back then, the desire to avoid war—combined with the surety that no nation could rationally seek it—led logically and naturally to policies of appeasement.

The countries threatening aggression, after all, had grievances, as most countries almost always do. They were "have-not" powers in a world dominated by the rich and powerful Anglo-Saxon nations, and they demanded a fairer distribution of the goods. In the case of Germany, resentment over the Versailles peace settlement smoldered because territories and populations once under Germany's control had been taken away to provide security for Germany's neighbors. In the case of Japan, the island power with the overflowing population needed control of the Asian mainland to survive and prosper in competition with the other great powers.

So the liberal powers tried to reason with them, to understand and even accept their grievances and seek to assuage them, even if this meant sacrificing others—the Chinese and the Czechs, for instance—to their rule. It seemed a reasonable price, unfortunate though it might be, to avoid another catastrophic war. This was the realism of the 1930s.

Eventually, however, the liberal powers discovered that the grievances of the "have-not" powers went beyond what even the most generous and conflict-averse could satisfy. The most fundamental grievance, it turned out, was that of being forced to live in a world shaped by others—to be German or Japanese in a world dominated by Anglo-Saxons.

To satisfy this grievance would require more than marginal territorial or economic adjustments or even the sacrifice of a small and weak state here or there. It would require allowing the "have-not" powers to reshape the international political and economic order to suit their needs. More than that, it would require letting those powers become strong enough to dictate the terms of international order—for how else could they emerge from their unjust oppression?

Finally, it became clear that more was going on than rational demands for justice, at least as the Enlightenment mind understood the term. It turned out that the aggressors' policies were the product not only of material grievances but of desires that transcended mere materialism and rationality.

Their leaders, and to a great extent their publics, rejected liberal notions of progress and reason. They were moved instead by romantic yearnings for past glories or past orders and rejected Enlightenment notions of modernity. Their predatory or paranoid rulers either fatalistically accepted (in the case of Japan) or positively welcomed (in the case of Germany) armed conflict as the natural state of human affairs.

By the time all this became unmistakably obvious to the liberal powers, by the time they realized that they were dealing with people who didn't think as they did, by the time they grasped that nothing short of surrender would avoid conflict and that giving the aggressors even part of what they demanded—Manchuria, Indochina, Czechoslovakia—only strengthened them without satisfying them, it was too late to avoid precisely the world war that Britain, France, the U.S. and others had desperately tried to prevent.

This searing experience—not just World War II but also the failed effort to satisfy those who couldn't be satisfied—shaped U.S. policy in the postwar era. For the generations that shared this experience, it imposed a new and different sense of realism about the nature of humankind and the international system. Hopes for a new era of peace were tempered.

American leaders and the American public generally if regretfully accepted the inescapable and tragic reality of power. They adopted the posture of armed liberalism. They built unimaginably destructive weapons by the thousands. They deployed hundreds of thousands of troops overseas, in the heart of Europe and along the rim of East Asia, to serve as forward deterrents to aggression. They fought wars in distant and largely unknown lands, sometimes foolishly and sometimes ineffectively but always with the idea—almost certainly correct—that failure to act against aggressors would only invite further aggression.

In general, except for a brief bout of fatalism under President Richard Nixon and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, they were disinclined to assuage or even acknowledge the grievances of those who opposed them. (President Harry Truman and Secretary of State Dean Acheson, the architects of armed liberalism, never had much interest in bargaining with the Soviets, while President Ronald Reagan was interested chiefly in bargaining over the terms of their surrender.)

Behind the actions of the U.S. architects of containment lay the belief, based on hard experience, that other peoples couldn't always be counted on to value what the liberal world valued—prosperity, human rights or even peace—and therefore the liberal world had to be constantly on its guard, well-armed and well-prepared against the next stirring of the non-liberal, atavistic urges that were a permanent feature of humankind.

How much easier it was to maintain this tragic vigilance while the illiberal, conflict-based ideology of communism reigned across more than half of the Eurasian continent—and how much harder has it been to sustain that vigilance since the fall of communism seemingly ushered in a new era of universal liberalism, and with it the prospect, finally, of a Kantian peace in a world dominated by democracy.

For a time in the 1990s, while the generations of World War II and the early Cold War survived, the old lessons still guided policy. President George H.W. Bush and his national security adviser, Brent Scowcroft, sent half a million American troops to fight thousands of miles away for no other reason than to thwart aggression and restore a desert kingdom that had been invaded by its tyrant neighbor. Kuwait enjoyed no security guarantee with the U.S.; the oil wells on its lands would have been equally available to the West if operated by Iraq; and the 30-year-old emirate ruled by the al-Sabah family had less claim to sovereign nationhood than Ukraine has today. Nevertheless, as Mr. Bush later recalled, "I wanted no appeasement."

A little more than a decade later, however, the U.S. is a changed country. Because of the experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan, to suggest sending even a few thousand troops to fight anywhere for any reason is almost unthinkable. The most hawkish members of Congress don't think it safe to argue for a ground attack on the Islamic State or for a NATO troop presence in Ukraine. There is no serious discussion of reversing the cuts in the defense budget, even though the strategic requirements of defending U.S. allies in Europe, Asia and the Middle East have rarely been more manifest while America's ability to do so has rarely been more in doubt.

But Americans, their president and their elected representatives have accepted this gap between strategy and capability with little comment—except by those who would abandon the strategy. It is as if, once again, Americans believe their disillusionment with the use of force somehow means that force is no longer a factor in international affairs.

In the 1930s, this illusion was dispelled by Germany and Japan, whose leaders and publics very much believed in the utility of military power. Today, as the U.S. seems to seek its escape from power, others are stepping forward, as if on cue, to demonstrate just how effective raw power really can be.

Once again, they are people who never accepted the liberal world's definition of progress and modernity and who don't share its hierarchy of values. They are not driven primarily by economic considerations. They have never put their faith in the power of soft power, never believed that world opinion (no matter how outraged) could prevent successful conquest by a determined military. They are undeterred by their McDonald's. They still believe in the old-fashioned verities of hard power, at home and abroad. And if they are not met by a sufficient hard-power response, they will prove that, yes, there is such a thing as a military solution.

This lesson won't be lost on others who wield increasing power in other parts of the world and who, like Vladimir Putin's autocratic Russia and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi's fanatical Islamic State, have grievances of their own. In the 1930s, when things began to go bad, they went very bad very quickly. Japan's invasion of Manchuria in 1931 exposed the hollow shell that was the League of Nations—a lesson acted upon by Hitler and Mussolini in the four years that followed. Then Germany's military successes in Europe emboldened Japan to make its move in East Asia on the not unreasonable assumption that Britain and the U.S. would be too distracted and overstretched to respond. The successive assaults of the illiberal aggressors, and the successive failures of the liberal powers, thus led to a cascade of disasters.

The wise men and women of our own time insist that this history is irrelevant. They tell us, when they are not announcing America's irrevocable decline, that our adversaries are too weak to pose a real threat, even as they pile victory upon victory. Russia is a declining power, they argue. But then, Russia has been declining for 400 years. Can declining powers not wreak havoc? Does it help us to know that, in retrospect, Japan lacked the wealth and power to win the war it started in 1941?

Let us hope that those who urge calm are right, but it is hard to avoid the impression that we have already had our 1931. As we head deeper into our version of the 1930s, we may be quite shocked, just as our forebears were, at how quickly things fall apart.

This piece was originally published by Wall Street Journal.

This week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke at a joint meeting of Congress. His address sparked an intense debate among U.S. and Israeli lawmakers over the protocol issues raised by the invitation to speak, which came from the Republican speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives without consultation with the Obama White House, as well as the substance of the address — a broadside against Obama’s Iran policy — and its timing during the final days of a closely contested Israeli election.

Brookings scholars weighed in on the debate, through blog posts, op-eds and the media. These include:

Fellow Natan Sachs explained why Netanyahu’s speech was so controversial.  "Israelis, by and large, don't like it when their prime minister quarrels with the United States," Sachs told Vox. "For most voters, especially in the core base on the right and I think center right, here's Bibi doing something that opposition leaders cannot do: speak the way he does with his English and this reception from Americans.” Also read Sachs' blog post on the electoral implications of the speech as well as his Haaretz op-ed with recommendations for Israeli and American strategy toward the Iran nuclear talks.

Tamara Cofman Wittes, director of the Center for Middle East Policy (CMEP) at Brookings, appeared on Charlie Rose following the speech, and said, “I think the speech was very effective, as a speech, particularly at the end when Netanyahu was really playing to his domestic audience and political base more than anyone…I think that’s probably the video clip the Likud will be playing in  ads as the campaign winds down.”

Nonresident Senior Fellow Shibley Telhami looked at poll results examined U.S. public opinion related to Netanyahu’s speech. "Among Democrats, those holding favorable views of the Israeli prime minister declined from 25 percent in November to 16 percent in February, and among Independents from 21 percent to 14 percent. Correspondingly, unfavorable views increased from 22 to 26 percent among Democrats, and from 14 to 21 percent among Independents," he wrote in Foreign Policy.

A New York Times editorial examining Netanyahu's speech discussed American public opinion on the Iran nuclear deal, and cited Telhami’s poll results “show[ing] that a clear majority of Americans — including 61 percent of Republicans and 66 percent of Democrats — favor an agreement.” Telhami also organized and moderated the annual Sadat Forum earlier this week, featuring a discussion on the Iranian nuclear issue and the Netanyahu speech with Brookings Distinguished Fellow Ambassador Thomas Pickering, former president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Jessica Matthews, and CMEP Senior Fellow Suzanne Maloney.

According to Ambassador Martin Indyk, who has served as director of the Foreign Policy program and was just named Brookings Executive Vice President, Netanyahu remained against any agreement. “He was pretty clear about his opposition to the deal,” Indyk told Foreign Policy. “I believe he wants to sink it, not modify it.”

Prior to the speech, Robert Einhorn, senior fellow in the Center for 21st Century Intelligence and Security and the Arms Control and Nonproliferation Initiative, wrote an op-ed published in the International New York Times discussing Netanyahu’s angle on the Iran talks. After Netanyahu’s speech, Einhorn appeared on Christiane Amanpour and argued that the deal was “not an ideal deal, but it’s a good deal, and one that’s better than any realistic alternative.” Einhorn, who formerly participated in the negotiations with Iran as a senior State Department official, was quoted in coverage of the speech published in the Washington Post and Politico, among others.

In an op-ed on U.S. News and World Report, Maloney argued that when it comes to a deal with Iran, “The ever-present illusion of a more perfect deal is not worth risking an imperfect, but minimally sufficient, bargain.”

With the prospect of a nuclear deal between Iran and the P5+1 looking increasingly likely and with the caveat that, “as always, Iran’s future behavior is hard to predict because its motives going into the nuclear negotiations are unclear and its decision-making is always opaque,” Senior Fellow Kenneth M. Pollack examined the possible scenarios and offered his thoughts on whether a nuclear deal would likely make Iran more or less aggressive — or neither. 

Bruce Riedel, senior fellow and director of the Brookings Intelligence Project, wrote about Netanyahu’s address in contrast to Saudi Arabia’s diplomacy. “As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu plays center stage at the Congress this week to slam the Iran deal-in-the-making, the Saudis are playing a more subtle game,” Riedel wrote. “Iran is priority number one. It's more than just the nuclear issue.” The pot was also quoted in a Bloomberg News analysis of Gulf reaction to the state of play on Iran.

Last week, William Galston, who holds Brookings' Ezra K. Zilkha Chair in Governance Studies, wrote about the implications of Netanyahu’s speech, warning that “[t]he last thing he should want is a negative reception in the United States that fuels Israeli swing voters’ doubts about his capacity to manage Israel’s most important relationship.” And in his Washington Post column last week, Senior Fellow Robert Kagan argued that “there is no doubt that the precedent being set is a bad one” and regretted that “bringing a foreign leader before Congress to challenge a U.S. president’s policies…will be just another weapon in our bitter partisan struggle.”

And finally, for anyone wanting to see what our scholars were tweeting during Netanyahu’s speech, and reaction afterward, here’s a round-up.

Critics of the nation's retirement system regularly complain that the system is in crisis. Too many private companies fail to offer their employees a retirement plan. Many employees who are covered by a plan fail to make contributions to it. Those who do make contributions may contribute too little or invest their savings unwisely. The end result: Many of us will reach retirement age with miniscule pensions or too little savings to enjoy a comfortable old age.

The argument that our retirement system has gaping holes is well founded. The notion that it faces an imminent "crisis" is nonsense. If the system currently faces a crisis, it has faced the same one for the past 40 years. While elderly Americans have seen their incomes and living standards improve in recent decades, the median working-age family has experienced little improvement in its real income. Nonelderly families that depend solely on the earnings of breadwinners who have below-average schooling saw a drop in their incomes.

In recent research with Brookings colleagues, I tracked the real incomes of families headed by aged and nonaged Americans. In the 34 years ending in 2012, the median real income of working-age families climbed a little more than 2 percent (in other words, by less than one-tenth of a percentage point per year). The median real income of families headed by someone past 62 increased a little more than 40 percent. The numbers suggest our retirement system is doing a decent job improving the living standards of the aged. Unfortunately, the labor market is doing a much worse job boosting the living standards of middle-class wage earners.

Critics of the retirement system might worry that it succeeds in protecting the incomes of the middle class elderly but fails to protect the incomes of the poor -- a concern not supported by the evidence. Income inequality has gone up among the elderly as it has among the nonelderly. But older low-income Americans have fared much better than low-income working-age adults. In the late 1950s, by far the highest poverty rate of any age group was that for people over 65. Even in the late 1980s, the elderly had a higher poverty rate than adults between 18-64. Since the middle of the last decade, however, the elderly have had the lowest poverty rate of any age group.

People who warn us of a retirement "crisis" are nonetheless correct in pointing to sizeable holes in the current system. Too few companies, especially small ones, offer their workers a retirement plan. According to recent government estimates, only about half of workers in companies with fewer than 100 employees are offered a retirement plan. Offer rates are higher in bigger companies and in government agencies, but about 30 percent of all employees are not offered any pension or retirement savings plan where they work. When retirement plans are offered, however, workers are very likely to participate in them -- even if they must make a voluntary contribution out of their pretax wages.

What is crucial for a retirement savings plan's success is automatic payroll withholding. Dollars that are withheld from workers' paychecks are harder for workers to spend on something other than retirement savings. A crucial improvement in our current system would be to require all employers to establish automatic payroll withholding for voluntary retirement savings in an IRA (individual retirement account). Companies that already offer a qualified pension or retirement savings plan should be exempt from any extra obligation.

The harshest critics of the current retirement system would go much further than this. Many want to bring back traditional retirement plans that guaranteed workers a specific monthly pension linked to their job tenure, final pay, and age at retirement. The advantages of such a plan for workers are that their employer is typically responsible for funding the plan and for ensuring that pensions are paid, regardless of the ups and downs of financial markets. A big disadvantage is that the promised benefits are not worth much if the worker's career with a company is cut short, either because of a layoff or quitting.

People who are nostalgic for old-fashioned pensions may be right that workers would prefer to be covered by such a plan, despite their disadvantages for short-tenure workers. I'm less persuaded that traditional pensions offer better protection to typical workers than modern 401(k)-type plans. Regardless of the pros and cons of the two kinds of plan, it is wildly unrealistic to think small employers or new employers will want to take on the risks and administrative burdens connected with an old-fashioned pension plan.

All U.S. workers are covered by a traditional, defined-benefit pension: it's called Social Security. It has worked well over the past four decades in protecting and even lifting the incomes of the retired elderly. It may not work as well in the future if benefits are cut substantially to keep the program solvent. Boosting workplace retirement savings is a sensible way to insure future retirees will have adequate incomes, even if Social Security benefits have to be trimmed. An essential first step to boosting savings is to require companies to put a retirement savings plan in every workplace.

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

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The issue of Armenia enters the Turkish foreign policy agenda almost exclusively in the context of Western attempts at legislating genocide resolutions. The result is often a reactive nationalist defense.

In less than two years, by 2015, Turkey will find itself in a similar dilemma. Once again, it will be external dynamics that will drive the domestic and foreign policy debate, and quite predictably Turkey will react with anger and resentment to Western attempts at commemorating the centennial of the Armenian genocide. In order to avoid such an ordeal, Ankara needs to think about Armenian-Turkish relations now, before Western pressure builds up. The fact that Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu visited Yerevan last week is a step in the right direction and needs to be congratulated. Instead of panicking shortly before 2015, the Turkish government needs to pursue a multidimensional strategy, starting now. The first dimension of the strategy should be the opening of the border and the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries.

As it is well known, shortly after the signature of the two protocols aiming at achieving these two goals in 2009, Ankara decided to index the ratifications of the protocols to the resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Linking the normalization of relations to a “frozen conflict” had the impact of freezing the protocols as well. It also showed that Turkey had no empathy for the Armenian political leadership, which took a lot of heat from the diaspora for dropping genocide recognition as a precondition for the normalization of relations with Ankara.

In retrospect, the Turkish decision to establish a precondition for normalization with Armenia was shortsighted because it practically gave Azerbaijan de facto veto power over Turkish-Armenian normalization. Instead, what Turkey should have done was to establish diplomatic and economic relations with Armenia with the hope that such a policy of engagement would in time create positive momentum and leverage in favor of a resolution in Nagorno-Karabakh. It remains unclear whether a breakthrough in this frozen conflict can be achieved in the absence of Turkey gaining more leverage in relations with Armenia. It looks like sequencing is the main problem here. The Turkish side is reportedly ready to open the border, establish diplomatic relations and even provide financial support to Armenia in return for an Armenian withdrawal from two of the seven occupied regions surrounding Nagorno-Karabakh. This proposal looks like the same one Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan made a few years ago to his Armenian counterpart at the time, Robert Kocharyan. Kocharyan had refused the Turkish demand on the grounds that there should be no linkage between Nagorno-Karabakh and normalization with Turkey. It is hard to see why today the Armenian reaction to a very similar Turkish proposal would be any different.

Therefore, this most recent Turkish attempt at rapprochement with Armenia is also likely to fail in the absence of a unilateral Turkish gesture such as the opening of the border without preconditions. On the other hand, since Turkey is always in some kind of election season, it is almost impossible to see the Justice and Development Party (AKP) invest serious political capital in rapprochement by taking such a courageous step. Under such circumstances, it is not surprising that the Armenian media saw Davutoğlu's Yerevan visit as nothing more than a public relations campaign. If Turkey is really serious about normalizing relations with Armenia, it will have to take some risks in relations with Azerbaijan. The key will be to convince Baku that only the normalization of Turkish-Armenian relations will create positive momentum in solving the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute. Turkey needs to open the border first and expect its diplomatic and economic engagement policy with Armenia to pay off in the long run. The alternative is to continue with the current policy. The current Turkish policy has produced no change in Nagorno-Karabakh in the last 20 years. It is time to think more creatively.

During debates in Congress and in the legal battles testing its constitutionality, critics of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 imagined a host of unanticipated and debilitating consequences. The law's ban on party soft money and the regulation of electioneering advertising would, they warned, produce a parade of horribles: A decline in political speech protected by the First Amendment, the demise of political parties, and the dominance of interest groups in federal election campaigns.

The forecast that attracted the most believers — among politicians, journalists, political consultants, election-law attorneys and scholars — was the claim that Democrats would be unable to compete against Republicans under the new rules, primarily because the Democrats' relative ability to raise funds would be severely crippled. One year ago, Seth Gitell in The Atlantic Monthly summarized this view and went so far as to call the new law "The Democratic Party Suicide Bill." Gitell quoted a leading Democratic Party attorney, who expressed his private view of the law as "a fascist monstrosity." He continued, "It is grossly offensive ... and on a fundamental level it's horrible public policy, because it emasculates the parties to the benefit of narrow-focus special-interest groups. And it's a disaster for the Democrats. Other than that, it's great."

The core argument was straightforward. Democratic Party committees were more dependent on soft money — unlimited contributions from corporations, unions and individuals — than were the Republicans. While they managed to match Republicans in soft-money contributions, they trailed badly in federally limited hard-money contributions. Hence, the abolition of soft money would put the Democrats at a severe disadvantage in presidential and Congressional elections.

In addition, the argument went, by increasing the amount an individual could give to a candidate from $1,000 to $2,000, the law would provide a big financial boost to President Bush, who would double the $100 million he raised in 2000 and vastly outspend his Democratic challenger. Finally, the ban on soft money would weaken the Democratic Party's get-out-the-vote efforts, particularly in minority communities, while the regulation of "issue ads" would remove a potent electoral weapon from the arsenal of labor unions, the party's most critical supporter.

After 18 months of experience under the law, the fundraising patterns in this year's election suggest that these concerns were greatly exaggerated. Money is flowing freely in the campaign, and many voices are being heard. The political parties have adapted well to an all-hard-money world and have suffered no decline in total revenues. And interest groups are playing a secondary role to that of the candidates and parties.

The financial position of the Democratic party is strikingly improved from what was imagined a year ago. Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), who opted out of public funding before the Iowa caucuses, will raise more than $200 million before he accepts his party's nomination in Boston. The unusual unity and energy in Democrats' ranks have fueled an extraordinary flood of small donations to the Kerry campaign, mainly over the Internet. These have been complemented by a series of successful events courting $1,000 and $2,000 donors.

Indeed, since Kerry emerged as the prospective nominee in March, he has raised more than twice as much as Bush and has matched the Bush campaign's unprecedented media buys in battleground states, while also profiting from tens of millions of dollars in broadcast ads run by independent groups that are operating largely outside the strictures of federal election law.

The Democratic national party committees have adjusted to the ban on soft money much more successfully than insiders had thought possible. Instead of relying on large soft-money gifts for half of their funding, Democrats have shown a renewed commitment to small donors and have relied on grassroots supporters to fill their campaign coffers. After the 2000 election, the Democratic National Committee had 400,000 direct-mail donors; today the committee has more than 1.5 million, and hundreds of thousands more who contribute over the Internet.

By the end of June, the three Democratic committees had already raised $230 million in hard money alone, compared to $227 million in hard and soft money combined at this point in the 2000 election cycle. They have demonstrated their ability to replace the soft money they received in previous elections with new contributions from individual donors.

Democrats are also showing financial momentum as the election nears, and thus have been gradually reducing the Republican financial advantage in both receipts and cash on hand. In 2003, Democrats trailed Republicans by a large margin, raising only $95 million, compared to $206 million for the GOP. But in the first quarter of this year, Democrats began to close the gap, raising $50 million, compared to $82 million for Republicans. In the most recent quarter, they narrowed the gap even further, raising $85 million, compared to the Republicans' $96 million.

Democrats are now certain to have ample funds for the fall campaigns. Although they had less than $20 million in the bank (minus debts) at the beginning of this year, they have now banked $92 million. In the past three months, Democrats actually beat Republicans in generating cash — $47 million, compared to $31 million for the GOP.

The party, therefore, has the means to finance a strong coordinated and/or independent-spending campaign on behalf of the presidential ticket, while Congressional committees have the resources they need to play in every competitive Senate and House race, thanks in part to the fundraising support they have received from Members of Congress.

Moreover, FEC reports through June confirm that Democratic candidates in those competitive Senate and House races are more than holding their own in fundraising. They will be aided by a number of Democratic-leaning groups that have committed substantial resources to identify and turn out Democratic voters on Election Day.

Democrats are highly motivated to defeat Bush and regain control of one or both houses of Congress. BCRA has not frustrated these efforts. Democrats are financially competitive with Republicans, which means the outcome will not be determined by a disparity of resources. Put simply, the doomsday scenario conjured up by critics of the new campaign finance law has not come to pass.

On March 4, President Obama submitted to Congress his 2015 budget request. Keeping with the spending cap deal agreed last December with Congress, the level of federal R&D will remain flat; and, when discounted by inflation, it is slightly lower. The requested R&D amount for 2015 is $135.4 billion, only $1.7 billion greater than 2014. If we discount from this 1.2% increase the expected inflation of 1.7% we are confronting a 0.5% decline in real terms.

Reaction of the Research Community

The litany of complaints has started. The President’s Science and Technology Advisor, John Holdren said to AAAS: “This budget required a lot of tough choices. All of us would have preferred more." The Association of American Universities, representing 60 top research universities, put out a statement declaring that this budget does “disappointingly little to close the nation’s innovation deficit,” so defined by the gap between the appropriate level of R&D investment and current spending.

What’s more, compared to 2014, the budget request has kept funding for scientific research roughly even but it has reallocated about $250 million from basic to applied research (see Table 1). Advocates of science have voiced their discontent. Take for instance the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology that has called the request a “disappointment to the research community” because the President’s budget came $2.5 billion short of their recommendations.

The President’s Research and Development Budget 2015

Source: OMB Budget 2015

These complaints are fully expected and even justified: each interest group must defend their share of tax-revenues. Sadly, in times of austerity, these protestations are toothless. If they were to have any traction in claiming a bigger piece of the federal discretionary pie, advocates would have to make a comparative case showing what budget lines must go down to make room for more R&D. But that line of argumentation could mean suicide for the scientific community because it would throw it into direct political contest with other interests and such contests are rarely decided by the merits of the cause but by the relative political power of interest groups. The science lobby is better off issuing innocuous hortatory pronouncements rather than picking up political fights that it cannot win.

Thus, the R&D slice is to remain pegged to the size of the total budget, which is not expected to grow, in the coming years, more than bonsai. The political accident of budget constraints is bound to change the scientific enterprise from within, not only in terms of the articulation of merits—which means more precise and compelling explanations for the relative importance of disciplines and programs—but also in terms of a shrewd political contest among science factions.