Monday in Washington, November 14, 2016

POLICY CHALLENGES FOR THE NEW US PRESIDENT. 11/14, 8:30am, Breakfast. Sponsor: Economists for Peace and Security. Speakers: Richard Kaufman, Bethesda Research Institute; Mark Weisbrot, Center for Economic and Policy Research; Matias Vernengo, Bucknell University, Carl Conetta, Project on Defense Alternatives; Bill Goodfellow, Center for International Policy; Sherle Schwenninger, New America; Josh Bivens, Economic Policy Institute; Nancy Altman, Social Security Works; Pavlina Tcherneva, Levy Economics Institute; Stephanie Kelton, University of Missouri, Kansas City; James K. Galbraith, Economists for Peace & Security; Jeremy Richardson, Union of Concerned Scientists; David Colt, Efficient Resource Management; Eban Goodstein, Bard Center for Environmental Policy.

US CORPORATE TAX REFORM AND ITS IMPLICATIONS FOR THE INTERNATIONAL SYSTEM. 11/14, 9:00am-Noon. Sponsor: American Enterprise Institute (AEI); International Monetary Fund (IMF). Speakers: Vitor Gaspar, IMF; Kevin A. Hassett, AEI; Edward Kleinbard, University of Southern California; Thornton Matheson, IMF; Eric Toder, Urban Institute; Barbara Angus, House Committee on Ways and Means; Robert Stack, US Treasury; Michael Devereaux, Oxford University Centre for Business Taxation; Michael Keen, IMF.

TWO-WAY STREET–25 YEARS OF US-CHINA DIRECT INVESTMENT. 11/14, 10:00am - Noon. Sponsor: Sigur Center for Asian Studies, Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University (GWU). Speakers: Thilo Hanemann, Author, Director, Rhodium Group; Daniel H. Rosen, Author, Founding Partner, Rhodium Group; Stephen A. Orlins, President, National Committee on U.S.-China Relations.

21ST CENTURY TECH TALENT AND THE AMERICAN ECONOMIC EDGE. 11/14, 10:00am-12:15pm, Breakfast. Sponsor: Scholl Chair in International Business, Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS); Smeal College of Business, Penn State University. Speakers: Charles Whiteman, Dean, Smeal College of Business, Penn State University; Fariborz Ghadar, Senior Adviser, CSIS, William A. Schreyer Professor of Global Management, Policies and Planning, Penn State University; Jim Boland, Chairman, Jobs Ohio, Vice Chairman Emeritus, Ernst & Young; Laura Kohler, Senior VP, Human Resources and Stewardship, The Kohler Co.; David Cranmer, Deputy Director, Hollings Manufacturing Extension Partnership, NIST; Scott Miller, Senior Adviser and Scholl Chair in International Business, CSIS; Laura Dawson, Director of the Canada Institute, Wilson Center; Camille Mirshokrai, Managing Director, Accenture PLC; Alex Nowrahsteh, Immigration Policy Analyst, Cato Institute.

AMERICA’S NATIONAL SECURITY ARCHITECTURE: REBUILDING THE FOUNDATION. 11/14, 10:00am-12:15pm. Sponsor: Aspen Strategy Group. Speakers: Zoë Baird, CEO, President, Markle Foundation; Nicholas Burns, Goodman Family Professor of Diplomacy and International Relations, Harvard University; Michèle Flournoy, Co-Founder, Center for A New American Security; Steve Hadley, Former National Security Advisor for President George W. Bush; Jane Holl Lute, Under Secretary General, United Nations; Joseph Nye, University Distinguished Service Professor, Harvard University.

THE WAY FORWARD FOR TRADE. 11/14, 11:00am-12:30pm. Sponsor: Cato Institute. Speakers: Ambassador Mickey Kantor, Partner, Mayer Brown, Former U.S. Trade Representative (1993–1996); Ambassador Susan Schwab, Professor, University of Maryland School of Public Policy, Former U.S. Trade Representative (2006–2009). Moderator: Daniel Pearson, Senior Fellow, Herbert A. Stiefel Center for Trade Policy Studies, Cato Institute.

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THE ART OF PEACE: ENGAGING A COMPLEX WORLD. 11/14, Noon-1:00pm. Sponsor: Heritage Foundation. Speakers: Author Juliana Geran Pilon, Senior Fellow, Alexander Hamilton Institute for the Study of Western Civilization; Colonel Michael R. Eastman, Executive Officer to the Commanding Officer of the Army Cyber Command; Helle C. Dale, Senior Fellow for Public Diplomacy, Heritage Foundation.

NEW AVENUES TO GOVERN CROSS-BORDER INFORMATION FLOWS. 11/14, Noon-2:00pm. Sponsor: Institute for International Economic Policy, Elliot School of International Affairs, George Washington University (GWU). Speakers: Sam Dupont, Director for Digital Trade, USTR; Michael Joseph Ferrantino, World Bank; Carl Schonander, Senior Director International Policy, SIIA; Deborah James, Director, International Programs, Center for Economic and Policy Research. Moderator: Susan Aaronson, Research Professor, Cross-disciplinary Fellow, GWU.

FREEDOM ON THE NET 2016. 11/14, 12:30-1:30pm, Lunch. Sponsor: Freedom House. Speakers: Sanja Kelly, Director, Freedom on the Net, Freedom House; Darya Luganskaya, Moscow-based Tech Journalist; 'Gbenga Sesan. Executive Director, Paradigm Initiative Nigeria; Sally Shipman Wentworth, Vice President of Global Policy, Internet Society. Moderator: Daniel Calingaert, Acting President, Freedom House.

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BORDERLESS WARS: A LIVE GRAY ZONE PATH GAME. 11/14, 1:00-2:30pm. Sponsor: Atlantic Council. Speakers: Author Antonia Chayes, Professor of Practice of International Politics and Law, Fletcher School, Tufts University; Scott DePasquale, Senior Fellow, Brent Scowcroft Center on International Security, Atlantic Council; Brian Michelson, US Army Senior Fellow, Brent Scowcroft Center on International Security, Atlantic Council. Moderator: Ali Watkins, National Security Correspondent, BuzzFeed.

INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION: WHAT PLACE IN U.S. DIPLOMACY. 11/14, 2:00-4:00pm. Sponsor: U.S. Institute for Peace. Speakers: William B. Taylor, Executive Vice President, U.S. Institute of Peace; Jill Welch, Deputy Executive Director, Public Policy, NAFSA; Amb. Richard LeBaron, Nonresident Senior Fellow, Atlantic Council; Waidehi Gokhale, Chief Executive Officer, Soliya; Maria J. Stephan, Senior Policy Fellow, USIP; Daniel L. Buccino, Professor, Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Clinical Supervisor, Student Coordinator, Clinical Director, Mood Disorders Clinic, Bayview, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Hopkins Civility Initiative, Johns Hopkins University; Jeff Helsing, Associate Vice President, Applied Conflict Transformation, U. S. Institute of Peace.

A CONVERSATION WITH UN DEPUTY SECRETARY GENERAL JAN ELIASSON. 11/14, 5:00-6:00pm. Sponsor: Carnegie. Speakers: Jan Eliasson; Deputy Secretary General, United Nations; William J. Burns, President, Carnegie.

ENERGY AND CLIMATE POLICY PROPOSALS FOR THE NEXT ADMINISTRATION. 11/14, 5:00-7:00pm. Sponsor: SAIS, Johns Hopkins. Speakers: David Goldwyn, President, Goldwyn Global Strategies; Robert McNally, President, Rapidan Group; Roberton C. Williams III, Senior Fellow and Director, Academic Programs, Resources for the Future and Professor, University of Maryland, College Park; Ben Longstreth, Senior Attorney, Climate and Clean Air Program, Natural Resources Defense Council.

PRISONERS OF WAR. 11/14, 6:45-8:45pm. Sponsor: Smithsonian Connections. Speaker: Judge Evan J. Wallach, an expert on war crimes and the law of war, Circuit Judge at the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, fee.

Japan Scores Tragic Own Goal with UNESCO Stance

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Tokyo’s position is damaging its international reputation and playing into China’s hands

By Edward Vickers, Professor of Comparative Education at Kyushu University, Japan. He is a member of the War Memoryscapes in Asia Partnership (WARMAP), funded by the Leverhulme Trust and coordinated by Mark Frost of Essex University. He has published extensively on the history and politics of education in contemporary China, and on representations of history in public culture. His latest book, “Education and Society in Post-Mao China,” will be published by Routledge in 2017

First published in The Diplomat, October 21, 2016

On October 13, Japan announced the suspension of its payments to UNESCO, to which it is (after America) the second largest contributor. This was ostensibly done in belated protest at the decision a year ago to enshrine Nanjing Massacre documentation in UNESCO’s “Memory of the World Register.” However, it comes as the Japanese government attempts to ratchet up pressure on the international body as it considers a related application for registration of documents on the comfort women system of sex slavery operated by the Japanese military. 

While UNESCO’s decision on that application is pending, in Nanjing itself a Comfort Women Memorial Hall, opened last December, has become the newest feature of the local landscape of war commemoration. Located in the restored buildings of a former comfort station (military brothel), it is the first major Chinese museum dedicated to the issue. It provides some insight into the official position on this issue, while begging the question: why is it only very recently that the comfort women have attracted significant attention from the Chinese authorities?

The style and content of the exhibition at the new memorial contrast markedly with those of most Chinese war museums. For example, the nearby Nanjing Massacre Memorial (NMM) last year experienced a makeover to mark the 70th anniversary of the end of the Second World War. A huge new annex opened, celebrating the contribution of China, and especially its Communist Party, to victory in the global Anti-Fascist War. The effect is to further eclipse the original conception of the NMM as a shrine to peace modeled largely on the Hiroshima and Nagasaki memorials. The overwhelming emphasis of the new annex is on triumphalist celebration of Chinese moral and military force.

At the Comfort Women Memorial, however, triumphalism and strident nationalism are notably absent. Instead, the exhibition focuses primarily on the comfort women themselves, and their stories. The mundane possessions of women who worked in this brothel are displayed in the rooms where they were incarcerated. These underline the grinding poverty that was the fate of most survivors. To foster sympathy for them, the exhibition prominently displays images of frail elderly victims – including, at one point, a bronze bust of an old lady actually shedding tears. Visitors are invited to wipe these away (towels are provided). Indeed, tears are the symbol of the museum.

The emphasis on evoking sympathy here needs to be understood in the context of the lack of it experienced by most Chinese former comfort women. The Director of the new Memorial Hall, Su Zhiliang, a history professor at Shanghai Normal University, has spent 25 years researching the comfort women system and campaigning on behalf of victims. In the 1990s, he says, “the government thought this was no good, or there was no need for it, and I couldn’t get research funding.” But all this changed since 2010, as Sino-Japanese tensions over the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands flared. And since Abe Shinzo became Prime Minister in 2012, relations with the Xi regime have been frosty at best. Alongside real Chinese anger at Abe’s historical revisionism, there is a sense that, in relations with the old wartime enemy, the tables have well and truly turned. Hence the new willingness to weaponize wartime heritage for diplomatic purposes.

But official attitudes towards comfort women remain distinctly ambivalent. It was in fact Professor Su’s home city of Shanghai, not Nanjing, which was central to the network of comfort stations in wartime China. The very first comfort station, the Dai-ichi Salon (“First Salon”), was recently identified. However, the Shanghai authorities have shown little interest in publicly commemorating comfort women. And as the destruction of older districts continues apace, traces of the wartime past are fast disappearing. Su recently succeeded in halting demolition of another former comfort station, the Umi no Ie (“Home of the Ocean”), but suspects that it is doomed anyway. As for the Dai-ichi Salon, it “won’t be demolished, but it won’t be preserved either,” he says.

Shanghai’s authorities like to celebrate their city’s heritage as an open, cosmopolitan metropolis. Commemoration of its wartime role as a haven for Jewish refugees has recently attracted lavish municipal sponsorship. But perhaps in part because the comfort women issue touches on the city’s past and present role as a major center for (illicit) commercial sex, and hence also the trafficking of women, it is not something to which the local government wishes to draw attention. In the early 2000s, a retired sociology professor, Liu Dalin, decided that Shanghai would be the ideal location for a Museum of Ancient Chinese Sex Culture; but after tensions with the local authorities, in 2004 he was forced to relocate to the small town of Tongli, 80 km away. As of this month, Shanghai does have an exhibition dedicated to the comfort women, but this is tucked away on the campus of Su’s university.

The opening of that exhibit was brought forward to coincide with the planned visit to Shanghai earlier this month of a UNESCO delegation. Last year, Su was prominently involved in a Chinese application to have comfort women documents placed on the Memory of the World Register. That bid, which coincided with the Nanjing Massacre-related application, was rejected by the UNESCO Committee after intensive behind-the-scenes lobbying from Japan. But the rejection was not outright: the committee recommended that, since the comfort women system extended across Japanese-occupied East Asia, an application to include related documents on the Memory of the World Register ought to come from several affected societies, rather than just one.

The current application to UNESCO therefore comes from a consortium of groups from Taiwan and East Timor to Holland and the UK (the Imperial War Museum holds a number of related photographs in its archives). Formally, it is led by the Korean academic Heisoo Shin – the bid initially enjoyed generous financial support from the Korean Government. But that abruptly ceased following a Korea-Japan agreement on December 28, whereby the Koreans agreed to adopt an “amicable” approach to settling the comfort women issue in return for a Japanese donation to a fund for supporting survivors. One result was the decision to host the UNESCO delegation in Shanghai earlier this month. For Su, securing government funding is relatively easy these days.

But while nationalism and realpolitik undoubtedly inform official Chinese support for the UNESCO bid, many of the researchers and activists involved are by no means the inveterate Japan-haters of Japanese media stereotype. At the Comfort Women Memorial in Nanjing, the exhibition text – largely drafted by Su Zhiliang – emphasizes that it was Japanese scholars, notably Nishino Rumiko and Yoshimi Yoshiaki, who first investigated the history of wartime sex slavery, drawing attention to the issue within Japan itself and overseas. Su himself first became aware of it during a spell as a visiting scholar at Tokyo University in the early 1990s. He counts many Japanese researchers among his friends.

This underlines the tragedy of the Japanese government’s stance. The fact that Japanese researchers have always been at the forefront of those campaigning for recognition for the victims of the wartime system of military sex slavery is testament to the relative openness of Japanese society. China’s recent history is replete with atrocities that Chinese scholars mention only at great personal risk. Japan is different. But rather than celebrate that difference, the Abe regime and its supporters have energetically sought to suppress open debate over difficult history both at home and abroad. In doing so, they sully Japan’s international reputation and play right into the hands of China’s propagandists.

Trump, China's new friend

China Just Won The U.S. Election

China’s leaders are looking forward to a President Trump who offers less resistance and more hypocrisy. But Beijing's triumph may cost it in the end.

BY JAMES PALMER

First appeared Foreign Policy, November 9, 2016

The election of Donald Trump will be a disaster for anyone who cares about human rights, U.S. global leadership, and media freedom. That means it’s a victory for Beijing, where as I write, the Chinese leaders near me in the palatial complex of Zhongnanhai are surely cracking open the drinks and making mean jokes.

There are four major victories for the Chinese leadership here, tempered by one possible fear. The first victory is the obvious one, the geopolitical victory; China no longer faces the prospect of Hillary Clinton, a tough, experienced opponent with a record of standing up to bullies. Instead, it faces a know-nothing reality TV star who barely seems aware that China has nuclear weapons, has promised to extort money from U.S. allies around China like South Korea and Japan, and has repeatedly undercut U.S. credibility as a defense partner. Trump is also exactly the kind of businessman who is most easily taken in by China — credulous, focused on the externalities of wealth, and massively susceptible to flattery. A single trip, with Chinese laying on the charm, could leave him as fond of China’s strongmen as he is of Russia’s Putin.

Countries like Vietnam, Myanmar, and the Philippines, uncertain about who to back in the contest for power in the Pacific, will swing massively China’s way, preferring a country that keeps its promises to one that can turn on the pull of an electoral lever. The strongest U.S. allies, Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan, no longer confident in the U.S. nuclear umbrella, will begin seriously considering other alternatives — like acquiring their own nuclear deterrent, prompting new tensions with China.

Generally, these developments will only embolden China. After the 2008 financial crisis, Beijing was convinced the world was going its way, resulting in a spate of overconfident military moves in southeast Asia which pushed some countries more firmly into the U.S. camp. Now China’s confidence will return, and few in the region will have confidence in Washington’s ability to provide shelter from China’s nascent hegemony. Taiwan, already facing tough mainland rhetoric after electing anti-Beijing leader Tsai Ing-wen, will feel completely isolated — and perhaps be vulnerable to actual invasion — without the firm promise of U.S. protection.

The second victory is in the contest between authoritarianism and democracy. From a Chinese point of view, an electoral system that produces somebody like Trump — utterly inexperienced in governance but a skilled demagogue — is an absurdity, the equivalent of picking a major company’s CEO through a horse race. In China, leaders need to be carefully chosen, groomed, and pushed, gaining experience at every level of the Communist Party system before being anointed for the top job. (That comes amid a flurry of brutally nasty and corrupt internal struggles at each level, mind you.)

China aspires toward the Singaporean model of carefully controlled elitism, a country in which Trump represents, in the words of one writer, everything they were taught to fear about democracy. The crudity of Trump’s triumphant campaign gives credence to Chinese media’s criticisms of a “chaotic political farce.” The likely split between the popular vote and the Electoral College will only further the often-made case that U.S. democracy is a sham.

Trump himself has given every sign of governing like the authoritarian leaders China has favored from Myanmar to Zimbabwe. Every piece of paranoid security theater he has threatened, from a ban on Muslim immigration to the wall with Mexico, will be used by Beijing to justify its own myriad oppressions.

That leads to the third victory, on human rights. Every year, the United States puts out a report on China’s human rights calamities — and every year China responds with its own report, a mixture of indignant bluster and genuine poking at American sore spots, from police treatment of minorities to the gender gap in pay. But under President Trump, Beijing’s stockpiled ammunition against U.S. hypocrisy on human rights looks set only to grow, given his close ties to white nationalist groups, the likely gutting of civil rights, and his — and his supporters’ — attacks on the notion of press freedom. Any Western attempts to call out China’s reassertion of traditional patriarchy, from the arrest of the Feminist Five to the Communist Party’s absence of female leaders, can be countered with any number of references to the new groper-in-chief. Resurgent Republican homophobia will be a gut blow to China’s gay rights movement. Calls for transparency in China’s military spending and local government budgets can be met by pointing out the victory of a candidate who never even bothered to release his tax records. Racist violence, judging by the experience of Brexit and the composition of the Trump base and rhetoric, may see horrifying new peaks, which would give a brutal new credibility to the old Soviet whataboutism whenever they were challenged on the gulag: “But in America, you lynch Negroes.”

That’s assuming a Trump administration would even press China on human rights at all. Given Trump’s often-expressed admiration for dictators ranging from Saddam Hussein to Vladimir Putin, and his call for isolationism in foreign affairs, China might find itself with a reliably quiet White House that would turn a blind eye to crackdowns in Xinjiang — or even Hong Kong.

And finally, the fourth victory is on media credibility. The almost unanimous condemnation of Trump by newspapers from across the political spectrum — to tragically little effect on the voters — will strengthen the case made by Chinese state media that Western media is biased and elitist.

When China wants to bash Trump, on the other hand, they’ll point to the failure of TV news to call out his myriad failings.

Those are contradictory criticisms of Western media, of course, but Chinese state media has never balked at hypocrisy, so expect both points to sometimes be made in the same article. (China has been quite happy bashing both the shortsightedness of referenda and the corruption of the EU over Brexit, for instance.) Secondly, the failure by pollsters — even Nate Silver, though laudably uncertain compared to others, had Clinton as two-to-one favorite — will be used by China to cast doubt on the claims of experts across Western newspapers.

But there’s one major worry that may mute the celebrations in Zhongnanhai. Although China regularly trashes the US, the country’s growth has been dependent, ironically enough, on a strong, stable and prosperous United States willing to trade with the world. Globalization, as Chinese authors have repeatedly argued in the last few months, is vital for a country that needs the markets of others to keep pushing its population into the middle class and achieve the dream of being a “moderately prosperous” country by 2020.

If Trump actually follows through on his protectionist plans, and his decisions have the same effect on the United States as they have on his many failed businesses, China’s own economy, already quivering, will start to shake. Beijing’s ambitious plans to develop other global trade networks through the “One Road, One Belt” scheme may be able to compensate for that — or may prove just as unstable in a rudderless world. China and the United States have often been compared to the two wings of the global economy; if one goes, they spiral down together.

The UN's gender problem

How Will António Guterres Tackle UN’s Gender Problem?

By Ms. Ourania S. Yancopoulos

UN's Wonder Woman Ambassador

a United Nations intern in 2015, earned her Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and Statistics from Columbia College at Columbia University this May. Follow her on twitter @niayancopoulos.

This article was originally published on November 4 at OpenDemocracy and is available by clicking here. 

Can António Guterres make good on his promises to advance gender equality as UN Secretary-General, or will “politics trump gender” once again in an organization established to stand for all the world’s people?

Throughout the Secretary-General selection process, António Guterres publically committed to achieving a gender-balanced United Nations. “The UN must be at the forefront of the global movement towards gender equality,” he wrote in his vision statement dated February 2016, “Given that previous commitments to gender parity were not fulfilled, the SG should present and implement a road map for gender parity.”

The occasion of Guterres’s appointment on 13 October 2016, served as yet another visible reminder of just how far the United Nations needs to come. Despite remarks by both the General Assembly President, Peter Thomson, and current Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on women’s empowerment and their historic role in this year’s selection process, only one woman crossed the stage to welcome Guterres to his new position.

However, the UN’s only woman Permanent Representative serving on the current Security Council – US Ambassador, Samantha Power – took the opportunity to deliver a hopeful message, “[W]hile being a woman is not among Mr. Guterres’s many qualifications, he has pledged gender parity at all levels of the United Nations, with clear benchmarks and timeframes.”

As the work of his transition team gets well under way expectations are high for Guterres to make good on his pledges. UN Women’s former Chief Advisor on Peace and Security, Anne-Marie Goetz told openDemocracy, “Mr. Guterres has been careful to mention gender issues in recent public statements. But now is the time to send a convincing message about his intentions, a confidence-building indication of the steps he will take to strengthen the UN’s flagging work on gender equality and to build women’s leadership.”

The UN has an obvious and complex gender problem – and it’s up to Guterres to provide clear indication that he will move the United Nations in the right direction. And quickly.

The United Nations was founded seventy-one years ago. Since then, 28 women have chaired one of the UN’s six main committees (compared to 424 men); 3 women have served as General-Assembly President (compared to 68 men); and zero have ever held the position of Secretary-General.

Recent revelations about the organization’s failures to empower women within its senior staff show that the roots of gender bias run deep. Moreover, the UN’s selection last month of comic-book character Wonder Woman as its first honorary ambassador for women and girls’ empowerment is a graphic reminder of the UN’s failure to take gender issues seriously. Protests by UN staff erupted immediately. One of the protest organizers who spoke to openDemocracy on the basis of anonymity explained,“[F]or something that is this important, you need a woman or a man who can speak, who can travel, who can champion these rights.” “If you’re looking for a woman with long black hair, toned arms, […] great legs- pick Michelle Obama,” she exclaimed. “She’s out of a job on the first of January – and she kicks ass!”

For another protester, Cass DuRant, what Wonder Woman stands for goes completely against the core values of the UN, “She is a warrior and those are male values. The UN is not about going in and fighting to resolve issues, it is about talking and compromising and agreeing, so on every imaginable level we think she is a poor choice.”

The nearly 30,000 people who have signed the online petition, started by U.N. staffers, agree. The petition reads, “The message the United Nations is sending to the world with this appointment is extremely disappointing.”

Wonder Woman’s appointment is a reminder that in an organization that has made gender equality a stated “top priority,” today, women make up just twenty percent of Permanent Representatives, twenty-one percent of Senior Managers, six percent of military experts, and three percent of military troops.

It could not be more obvious—from reports of sexual violence by UN Peacekeepers, to the persistent gender imbalance in the UN’s senior management, and now the seemingly tone-deaf appointment of Wonder Woman—that the United Nations desperately needs an overhaul in its attitudes about women.

That task will fall to António Guterres.

The work Guterres has performed in the areas of gender parity and women’s empowerment both as a politician in Portugal and as an official in the UN is well recognized. But while he has a laudable feminist record, there are aspects to his career that give gender equality advocates pause.

Even before becoming Portugal’s Prime Minister in 1995, Guterres was committed to gender equality. In an email to openDemocracy earlier this fall, Guterres reflected on his early exposure to gender issues, “I became aware of these issues as a teenager doing volunteer work in poor neighborhoods of Lisbon. I witnessed the extra burden that weighed upon women living under precarious conditions, doing menial jobs and still carrying the responsibility for keeping extended families, often on their own. I wanted to help change this and other harsh realities in my country. That is why I went into politics—to effect change.”

As leader of Portugal’s Socialist Party he enacted a quota system to impose a minimum threshold of representation of women in party offices. The thirty percent quota was far from parity but still quite impressive almost two decades ago in a country that had only recently transitioned to democracy.

Such change did not come easily. In the email exchange, Guterres noted, “Reactions … ranged from harshly opposed to mildly indifferent. We had to go the extra mile to convince people that this was important and this was the right way to go.”

At the same time, however, Guterres publicly opposed a referendum on Portugal’s strict law against abortion, instead favoring a law that mandated jail time for Portuguese women who performed the procedure. According to the New York Times, while a majority of the Socialist Party favored the move to reform abortion laws, Guterres opposed it based on his Catholic faith.

While his stance on abortion may call into question his stance on gender equality, Guterres’s commitment to women’s empowerment did not waiver when he became the UN’s tenth High Commissioner for Refugees in 2005. During his tenure, he worked to shift UNHCR’s focus from perceiving refugee women and girls as vulnerable victims, to promoting their empowerment.

The successes of Guterres’s programs during this time abound. In Pakistan, UNHCR arranged for mass information campaigns to ensure women are aware of individual registration to guarantee their security, access to essential services, and political rights. In Liberia, guidelines on refugee election procedures now ensure that fifty percent of the camp leadership is women. To advance gender equality in food security in Afghanistan, women are now prioritized for food distribution. And in Jordan, separate pick-up areas and times for food distribution are designated for women.

Not only did Guterres work to advance a different narrative about women and girls on the ground, but he also worked to achieve gender parity at all levels of institutional leadership. When Guterres came into office in 2005, women made up not even thirty percent of the UNHCR’s senior positions. According to UNHCR records, gender parity was fully met within his Senior Management Committee by the end of his tenure—with ten women and ten men—and rose to forty-two percent among all senior leadership positions. “If I had to choose just one measure during my years at UNHCR that really had an impact and triggered substantive change I would say parity at the Senior Management Committee,” said Guterres in an email to openDemocracy. He does regret however, that during his tenure the proportion of women among junior levels staff appeared to drop.

Now, Guterres has committed to achieving full gender parity in the United Nations. In an interview with openDemocracy in early September, he provided more detail, saying he would start with the UN’s most senior levels—a tactic he believes will have the greatest and swiftest impact.

But some gender-parity advocates worry that these rhetorical commitments are empty, and that promises of a feminist agenda from a male Secretary-General may not amount to much. In a recent interview with openDemocracy, Shazia Rafi, UN Expert and former Secretary-General of Parliamentarians for Global Action, said, “[Men] have had their chance for seventy years, they have not created a more equal or peaceful world, they have not kept their commitments on gender equality made over twenty years ago at the Beijing Conference 1995; I was there, I helped write the words. There is no reason to believe the men will do so now.” After the appointment of Mr. Guterres, Rafi says her views have not changed per se. “But, I am open to them doing something completely different from the pattern of the last 70 years,” she wrote in an email on 3 November.

The UN has committed itself to fifty-fifty gender parity in top senior managerial posts since February 1996. The closest it ever got in those twenty years was twenty-four percent in 2012. In fact, if the current trend continues, the UN will favor men in its senior positions for the next 110 years.

The UN’s gender problem is much more than just staffing issues.

Gender equality activist groups such as the United Nations Feminist Network, and the International Center for Research on Women, have outlined clear, concrete proposals for the next SG. These feminist agendas include targets from achieving gender parity to preventing and addressing sexual harassment, and even repurposing the UN’s Commission on the Status of Women.

Changes in staffing, however, can be delivered almost immediately.

On the occasion of the appointment of a new Secretary-General, all high-level employees submit letters of resignation. This gives Guterres the chance to take bold action toward parity. If Guterres appoints a gender-equal Senior Management Group—just as Canada’s Justin Trudeau appointed a gender-equal Cabinet upon taking office in 2015—the move would be a brave step forward toward a gender-equal UN. He might next consider sending seventy-five-year-old Wonder Woman back into retirement.

Why veterans are underrepresented in Congress

By Gary Schmitt and Rebecca Burgess, respectively, director and program manager of AEI’s Program on American Citizenship. Data used in this piece comes from a forthcoming AEI report on the status of veterans in American legislatures.

The Hill, October 28, 2016

George Washington’s assertion that “When we assumed the Soldier, we did not lay aside the Citizen” is justly famous for capturing the traditional attitude of the American citizen-soldier. While the nation at times has requested or required that citizens fulfill the highest form of civic duty, there have always been individuals who have voluntarily donned its uniform. Viewing military service as a form of public service, many, not surprisingly, have followed their days in the military by pursuing other forms of civic service, notably in the halls of government.

Although American democracy demands a military-civilian divide in regard to political power, voters have shown they are comfortable with electing officials with military service on their resume. Indeed, despite the colonists’ Revolutionary-era complaints about the British conflating military and political power, of the first 25 men to become president, 21 had military experience.

Nevertheless, for well-on 30 years military veterans have been a decreasing presence in Congress. In 1971, veterans made up 72 percent of the House of Representatives and 78 percent of the Senate. In 1991, the Congress that approved the use of force against Iraq in Operation Desert Storm had only slightly more veterans than non-veterans. In today’s Congress, veterans hold 20 percent of Senate seats, while 18 percent of House members are veterans. And regardless of who wins the presidency this time around, three of four recent presidents will not have served in the military, and the one who did had no combat experience.

At first blush, the decline of veterans in public office appears to be the natural consequence of the diminishing number of veterans in the overall population. With cuts in force levels following the end of the Cold War, the draft gone, and the All-Volunteer Force in place for four decades, veterans now comprise just 9 percent of the total population. Yet, when veterans made up over 70 percent of Congress in the 1970s, they were a little less than 14 percent of the total population. The decline of veterans in public office has been sharper than the decline of veterans within the general population. Why?

Perhaps the most significant reason is the current cost of running for Congress. The price tag for a Senate campaign stands near $10.5 million, the House near $1.6 million. Both political parties are likely to recruit candidates who have existing fundraising networks and abilities, with personal wealth often to boot. The high cost of political campaigns and highly restrictive campaign finance laws, which bind political parties, favor the incumbent and disadvantage the military veteran, whose earnings and savings is typically quite modest, as is his immediate circle of friends and associates.

Any reversal of the declining trend in veterans in the halls of Congress will probably begin with the one tried-and-true way to gain legislative experience, build name recognition, and increase access to a fundraising network—election to a state legislature. State legislative office is a traditional steppingstone to federal office, with 50 percent of the 114th Congress, for example, composed of former state legislators.

From this perspective, the good news is that no fewer than 1,039 out of 7,383 state legislators have military experience—14 percent. While the clear majority, as in the US Congress, lean Republican, female veterans in the House, Senate, and state offices tend to break more evenly along partisan lines. And, as one might expect given the respective size of each of the services, Army veterans, from the active component, the Guard, and the Reserves, account for a majority of state and federal office holders. But each of the services, along with the Coast Guard, has veterans currently serving in the state legislatures.

As one might expect with the aging of the Vietnam-era cohort, Post-Cold War veterans make up an increasing share of all veteran state legislators. Post-9/11 veterans alone now total 20 percent of all congressional and state-level veteran legislators. And, strikingly, 41 percent of veterans running for Congress this year served after 9/11 (128 of 316).
The annual Military Family Lifestyle Survey released by Blue Star families in 2015 revealed that, when asked about their motivation for having joined the military, 95 percent of service members answered, “to serve my country.” Similarly, in a 2015 poll taken by Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, the veteran population proved highly engaged and civic-minded: 93 percent were registered to vote, 80 percent reported voting in the 2014 election, and nearly 40 percent indicated they have considered running for public office.

Military veterans in American legislatures will not reach again the high levels of the 1970s. We fight our wars differently, requiring no massive, nation-wide conscription cutting across all the strata of society such as produced the diverse World War II and Korea veteran cohorts in the first place. But the rise of post-9/11 veterans pursuing public office demonstrates that, even with the high costs of entry, their commitment to public service endures.

Human Trafficking in the Party Platforms - Too similar

Combatting human trafficking is generally a bi-partisan political issue. It is considered such a serious crime that both the Republican and Democratic Party platforms devote a section each to how they address this international problem.

Human trafficking or modern day slavery is a dark business that claims more than 20 million victims worldwide, garners the perpetrators profits of over $150 billion annually, and is one of the fastest growing criminal enterprises in the United States. In 2000, both the UN General Assembly and the U.S. Government adopted protocols to monitor and combat this abuse of human rights.

On October 24^th, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry chaired the second meeting this year (the first January 6^th) of the President’s Interagency Task Force to Monitor and Combat Trafficking inPersons (PITF) at the White House. The gathering, which was supposed to be held only once a year, is the fourth during Secretary Kerry’s tenure as Chair and the seventh of the Obama Administration. It serves as an opportunity to coordinate government-wide efforts and discuss new initiatives. And it is a platform to promote and distinguish the Administration's good work.

Secretary Kerry summed up the critical importance of Administration policy

Human trafficking is one of the few issues that we face, all of us, on a day-to-day basis in governing where there’s no – unlike a lot of other issues that are clouded by nuance or a kind of complexity – this is not complex except in the execution of the things we know we have to achieve. And there certainly is no nuance whatsoever. There’s a moral clarity here that’s as firm as you could have on any kind of issue. And needless to say, the notion of modern-day slavery is one that touches everybody’s conscience and it is one of just fundamental, basic human decency....

This not simply a question of right versus wrong. It’s in our strategic interest as well to ensure that this fight is a priority of our foreign policy. And the fact is that human trafficking is a multi-billion-dollar criminal enterprise. It’s assault on human rights and is – it’s a threat to global stability. It undermines the rule of law, it breeds corruption, it spreads disease, it widens the gap between the haves and the have-nots, and it tears whole families apart. 

There is little in Kerry's remarks that would be disputed by the Republican opposition. The issue is so bi-partisan that the 2016 Democratic Party platform prose on human trafficking is nearly identical to the prose in the 2012 Republican platform.

In the 2012 Republican Party Platform in the Chapter on "American Exceptionalism" the subsection on Combatting Human Trafficking (page 46) includes the following:

We will use the full force of the law against those who engage in modern-day forms of slavery, including the commercial sexual exploitation of children and the forced labor of men, women, and children. Building on the accomplishments of the last Republican Administration in implementing the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000, we call for increased diplomatic efforts with foreign governments to root out complicit public officials who facilitate or perpetrate this evil.

The 2016 Democratic Platform in the Chapter on “Protect our Values,” has a subsection on Trafficking and Modern Slavery (page 46) composed simply of the following paragraph:

We will use the full force of the law against those who engage in modern-day forms of slavery, including the commercial sexual exploitation of children and the forced labor of men, women, and children. Building on the accomplishments of the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000, we call for increased diplomatic efforts with foreign governments to root out complicit public officials who facilitate or perpetrate this evil.

Missing is merely the obvious "of the last Republican Administration in implementing."

Speaking of omissions, the 2016 Republican Platform's section on human trafficking "Liberty to Captives: Combatting Human Trafficking" (page 53) in its Chapter on "America Resurgent" substantially changed the 2012's magnanimous, humanitarian tone and prose. 

It specifically notes "The goal of our domestic antitrafficking programs should be the rescue and safe return of victims to their homes, not creating a longterm dependency upon public support." Most important, the 2016 platform no longer contains the following:

We affirm our country’s historic tradition of welcoming refugees from troubled lands. In some cases, they are people who stood with us during dangerous times, and they have first call on our hospitality.