The Dreyfuss Report

Chongqing: Socialism in One City

By Robert Dreyfuss

I'm writing today from Chongqing, a vast city in central China that is China's gateway to its western regions. By some accounts, Chongqing is the largest city in the world, a muncipality of 32 million people, but that, I've learned, is misleading, since that number includes the population of a handful of satellite cities and a rural population of 20 million. A few years ago, however, China carved Chongqing and its 32 million people out of Szechuan province and made it a municipality of its own, and today the Chongqing is a pilot project for the most important thing happening in China, and perhaps the world: the urbanization of as many as half a billion people from rural farms and villages into newly constructed cities. "Chongqinq," says Wen Tianping, the city's spokesman, "is a microcosm of China itself."

The scale of the enterprise is staggering. In Chongqing, each year for the indefinite future, the plan is to move 500,000 people from rural to urban life. That means that Chongqinq must plan, ready, and construct the equivalent of a city the size of Atlanta, Georgia, every year, providing jobs, roads, housing, infrastructure, schools, hospitals and more. It's a project that has been going on in China for the past 20 years, during which 200 million people have already been urbanized, and over the next generation another 200 to 300 million people will follow in their footsteps.

"We have plans, timetables, goals," says Qian Lee, the director of Chongqing's comprehensive business promotion project. "You can't have a plan for everything. But we don't make plans to be abandoned. We make plans to be accomplished. You do it scientifically, as we always say in China."

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November 18, 2009

The View from China

By Robert Dreyfuss

When Yiang Jiemian, president of the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies, gets together with his brother, Yang Jiechi, China's minister of foreign affairs, they don't talk strategy or politics. "We talk about our grandfather," he says, with a smile.

We're sitting in a conference room at SIIS, though, and Yang Jiemian is talking strategy with a few visiting journalists. I ask Dr. Yang about China's view of US policy in the Middle East and central Asia. What, exactly, is his opinion of the notion that the United States is seeking to control that crucial region, including its oil and natural gas reserves, as part of a strategy of containing China? President Obama has just left Shanghai, the sprawling city of 19 million people, and he told China that the United States does not want to contain or limit China's influence in Asia or the world. Yet the United States and China don't always agree on Iran, Afghanistan, and other questions.

"There might be a slight difference of understanding between our two cultures, our two languages," says Yang, who is flanked by a team of strategists and area specialists. ""When America talks about strategy, it implies military, security, confrontation. In China, we have a much broader view of the idea of 'strategy.' We mean something that is long-term and systematic."

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November 17, 2009

Dobbs for President?

By Robert Dreyfuss

Parsing the Lou Dobbs bombshell, I can't help wondering if the pudgy populist is planning a run for president in 2012. My guess: yes. And if he does, I'll bet he'll do so as a Peron-style, would-be Ross Perot. It could be America's first truly fascist electoral effort.

Okay, I know I'm jumping the gun. Maybe his quitting is just so he can move over to Fox, though that would probably push Geraldo Rivera out. I'm not saying Dobbs would necessarily get much traction, but I wouldn't be surprised if he tries to raise money from wealthy right-wingers and set up a third party effort aimed at capturing tea baggers, anti-immigrant fanatics, and assorted other nutballs.

In his statement last night, which you can read here and watch here, Dobbs said:

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November 12, 2009

Abbas' Shock Treatment

By Robert Dreyfuss

The crisis in US diplomacy with Israel and Palestine was the subject of an important discuss yesterday at the annual conference of the Middle East Institute. And the mood was decidedly pessimistic.

Khalil Shikaki, a Brandeis University professor who has conducted more than 100 polls among Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, focused on the decision by Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, not to run for reelection in 2010. The decision by Abbas, which stunned the political universe in the Middle East, is a sign that the Obama administration's Middle East diplomacy has run out of gas. It's a surface indicator of the deep anger and unhappiness that is brewing throughout the Arab world over the administration's seeming unwillingness or inability to force Israel to the table with serious concessions.

Shikaki said that the Abbas' decision not to run is a "major turning point" in Palestinian history. "He decided to destabilize the situation as a way of moving forward," he said.

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November 11, 2009

The Deal with Iran

By Robert Dreyfuss

President Obama's meeting today with Israel's prime minister, Bibi Netanyahu, won't be focused exclusively on Israel's stubborn refusal to move forward on a deal with the Palestinians. Also on the table will be the issue of Iran. And the president ought to tell the prime minister: "We're handling this, so sit down and shut up." The last thing Obama needs is more Israeli bluster about taking out Iran's nukes militarily at such a sensitive moment in the talks. Why? Because Israeli bombast makes it a lot harder for Iranian leaders to follow through on a deal that is controversial within Iranian politics, since the Israeli bombast makes it look like they are capitulating to the "Zionist entity" if they accept the deal.

The deal, you'll remember, reached Oct. 1, would provide for Iran to ship most of its stockpile of low-enriched uranium to Russia and France for reprocessing for a medical-use reactor. As the deal became a political soccer ball in Iran, Tehran stalled -- and new proposals surfaced. One, reportedly by Iran, would have Iran maintain control of the fuel under International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards on its own terrritory, but that's a nonstarter. Another, brokered by IAEA, would allow Iran to ship its uranium to neighboring Turkey, while Russia would substitute reprocessed fuel of its own.

In spite of alarmist reports about Iran's foot-dragging on the nuclear talks, the Obama administration seems to be handling the talks professionally and intelligently. Glyn Davies, the US representative to the IAEA told Reuters:

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November 9, 2009

Obama Fails in Middle East

By Robert Dreyfuss

The announcement by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas that he will not run for reelection is the exclamation point on the utter collapse of the Obama adminstration's Middle East policy. Launched to great expectations -- the appointment of George Mitchell, Obama's Cairo declaration that the plight of the Palestinians is intolerable -- it is now in complete disarray. It is, without doubt, the first major defeat for Obama's hope-and-change foreign policy.

Here's how it unraveled. First, Obama began a test of strength with Israel over that country's policy of illegal settlements, an expansion of its occupation of the West Bank driven by extremist, right-wing settlers who are fanatical, Bible-believing cultists who think that Israel has some God-given right to that territory. The settler-kooks -- indeed, one of their past leaders was named Rabbi Kook -- are supported by ultra-hardliners in Israel's security establishment, who see the West Bank as strategic depth in Israel's defense posture. What happened after Obama told Israel it had to stop settlements? Nothing. Score: Netanyahu 1, Obama 0.

Next, the Obama adminstration capitulated, refusing to insist on any penalty for Israel's defiant intransigence. Not even a hint of any retaliation by the United States to enforce what it had called the path to a peace deal. No talk of reducing US aid to Israel, or cutting back on US-Israeli military cooperation, or anything. Score: Netanyahu 2, Obama 0.

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November 6, 2009

Patience with Iran

By Robert Dreyfuss

The Green Movement opposition flexed its muscles again in Iran this week, taking advantage of anti-American protests on the anniversary of the 1979 seizure of the US embassy in Tehran (aka "the nest of spies") to rally thousands of anti-Ahmadinejad protestors into the streets.

Unfortunately, the Green resurgence in Iran is causing some Iran watchers to fall into the same old trap: threatening to halt US-Iran negotiations in favor of support for democracy, or some semblance of it, in Iran. The latest to make this mistake is Ray Takeyh, a former adviser to the Obama-era State Department, whose op-ed in today's Washington Post essentially suggests that America should cut off its negotiating nose to spite its pro-democracy face. He writes:

"Iran's hard-liners need to know that should they launch their much-advertised crackdown, the price for such conduct may be termination of any dialogue with the West."

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November 5, 2009

Looking Past Karzai

By Robert Dreyfuss

Is the White House thinking about getting out of Afghanistan?

Just as Hamlet's mother and his murderous uncle rushed to marry with unseemly haste, even before his slain father's body was cold, the United States is hastily pretending that the Afghan election is over and done with. It was, President Obama admits, "messy." Now it's time to look ahead, and to deal with the reelected President Karzai, warts and all, they say.

But the United States, and the world community, is going to have to look past Karzai.

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November 4, 2009

Iran Split on Nukes

By Robert Dreyfuss

One thing I heard over and over again during my visit to Tehran in June was that the two sides in Iran's political divide were intent on sabotaging any US-Iran deal concluded by the other side. If President Ahmadinejad moves toward an agreement with the West over Iran's nuclear program, anaylsts told me, the centrist-reformist opposition would denounce it and work to unravel it. On the other hand, if former Prime Minister Mir Hossein Mousavi won the election, reformists told me, he would move toward exactly such a deal -- and the right-wing, including Ahmadinejad, would howl and oppose it.

Well, Ahmadinejad won, Mousavi lost -- at least, that's how the story goes -- and voila! the prediction has come true. Ahmadinejad wants a deal, and Mousavi is trying to wreck it.

Yesterday, on his web site, Mousavi issued a militant criticism of Ahmadinejad's diplomacy. Mousavi bitterly denounced the plan, supported by Ahmadinejad, to ship the bulk of Iran's enriched uranium to Russia and France for use in fabricating fuel for a medical-use reactor. That accord, announced October 1, in the first US-Iran talks in thirty years, was widely seen as a breakthrough. But Mousavi is having none of it. He said:

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October 30, 2009

J Street, Obama, and Israel

By Robert Dreyfuss

I spent yesterday afternoon at the J Street conference, the meeting of the "pro-Israel, pro-peace" lobbying group that was founded last year. (A piece that I'd written on J Street and AIPAC appeared in Mother Jones in August.)

The conference was very well attended, with something like 1,500 people taking part. Many of them were liberal, mainstream Jewish activists who would appear to be J Street's real target audience. The J Street philosophy is that there is a kind of "silent majority" of US Jews who aren't happy with Israel's expansionist polices and intransigence, and who don't believe they're represented properly by right-leaning groups such as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Milling around, I spoke to a number of those in attendance. A couple of rabbis, from Massachusetts and California, said that the conference was an opportunity to meet with like-minded, liberal, pro-peace Jews. "When I stand up in my pulpit, with any kind of criticism of Israel, over settlements, Gaza, to say anything other than, 'Go, bomb them when you want,' it's considered anti-Israel," saud Rabbi Joshua Levine-Grater from Pasadena. "So it's thrilling to be here, to say, 'We love Israel, we believe in Israel's security, but the status quo isn't acceptable."

That about sums up J Street's message. But it isn't enough to get even grudging support from Israel itself. Michael Oren, the American who serves as Israel's ambassador to the United States, rebuffed a J Street invite to attend or speak, saying that he was upset about "certain policies that caused concerns, aroused concerns," telling the Jerusalem Post: "I conveyed these concerns to J Street," but adding that his concerns were not "sufficiently allayed."

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October 28, 2009