David B. Rivkin Jr. and Carlos Ramos-Mrosovsky
12/9/2010

International law classifies pirates as “enemies” of all mankind, but developed countries have been reticent to try and convict pirates, choosing instead to funnel suspects to Kenya for legal action. But the Kenyan government is running out of funding for the large number of prosecutions, and the international community needs to develop a comprehensive framework for dealing with piracy. The authors suggest an international tribunal by the United Nations as a long-term solution, and they believe that Washington should be a legal and military leader in the effort to secure the freedom of the seas.

Rivkin, a Washington lawyer, served in the Justice Department and the White House counsel’s office in the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations. Ramos-Mrosovsky is a New York-based attorney whose practice focuses on international and federal litigation.

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George F. Will
12/9/2010

Tea Partyers and social conservatives are urging Republican Rep. Mike Pence to run for president in 2012. The author says it is unlikely that Pence will run, but given the congressman’s voting history and family-oriented personal life, conservative support for his candidacy is understandable. Pence voted no on both versions of the TARP legislation, and he also voted no on President Bush’s proposed addition to Medicare in the form of a prescription drug entitlement. Pence’s dedication to his family and participation in wholesome Americana is a common thread that runs throughout his political career and is attractive to social conservatives.

Will is a twice-weekly columnist for The Post, writing about foreign and domestic politics and policy.

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Jamie F. Metzl
12/9/2010

Wherever human rights are massively abused today, China is the main protector of the abusing government, writes Metzl. Beijing is promoting a world-wide rejection of postwar international norms. This is in part because China’s concept of sovereignty stands in sharp contrast to the norms of the human rights system. And China’s rise poses challenges to the international community’s ability to effectively confront rights abusers. Metzl concludes that those unlucky souls around the world who find their rights massively abused by their own governments can, thanks largely to China, expect little or no help from foreign states.

Metzl, the executive vice president of Asia Society, served in the State Department during the Clinton administration and as a United Nations human rights officer in Cambodia.

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John H. Cochrane
12/2/2010

Cochrane considers the lessons to be learned from Europe’s recent bailouts. He argues that restructuring short-term debt as long-term debt would hardly be the end of the world. Our governments have also guaranteed trillions of dollars of debt–everything from mortgages to student loans, to say nothing of implicit guarantees to banks and state and local governments. These guarantees don’t show up anywhere on the books, but investors could start adding them up very quickly. Remember that Ireland got into trouble by guaranteeing bank debt. US government debt is also remarkably tilted to short maturities, with the majority being rolled over every year. The Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing will tilt us further to shorter debt.

Cochrane is a professor of finance at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

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Elliott Abrams
12/1/2010

The WikiLeaks disclosures make interesting reading in London, Ottawa, and Tokyo, but in the capitals of some weak and undemocratic American allies (such as Yemen and Bahrain) they are a very unpleasant surprise. We can easily denounce the gap between private and public discourse in such countries and the lack of real public debate on key security issues, but when we consider the identities of some of the people they fear–the ayatollahs in Tehran, terrorists in Hamas and Hezbollah, al Qaeda itself–we see that the WikiLeaks disclosures are less likely to promote more open government than to give aid and comfort to the enemy.

Abrams served as an assistant secretary of state from 1981 to 1989 and as a deputy national security adviser from 2005 to 2009.

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Dana Milbank
12/2/2010

Republicans led by Bob Bishop and Eric Cantor are introducing a constitutional amendment that would allow states to reject and repeal federal laws that they find objectionable. Improbably, the party brought to power by virtue of the Tea Party’s brand of constitutional originalism is making its first order of business a rather severe edit of the same. The mechanics of the bill would allow the smallest 33 states with a third of the nation’s population to nullify federal law for the 17 largest, comprising two thirds.

Milbank writes about political theater in the nation’s capital.

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Jamie Whyte
11/30/2010

Whyte criticizes British PM David Cameron’s request that the Office of National Statistics construct a survey-based measure of the country’s general well-being. They will publish their first findings in the summer of 2012. If “happy” means only that you have satisfied your desires, then it is trivially true that people seek only happiness, notes Whyte. Cameron claims to reject governmental interference in favor of individual liberty. His taste for industrial policy, nationalized health care, compulsory charity, and population control make some doubt him. Whyte concludes that no one with a shred of liberal principle could think it the state’s proper job to specify the nature of “the good life” and then design policies that get people to live it.

Whyte is a management consultant and author of “Crimes Against Logic” (McGraw Hill, 2004).

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Edward Luttwak
11/30/2010

Luttwak considers the means by which the government in Pyongyang survives. China props up the Kim regime, South Korea is feckless, and the US is tied down militarily. He argues that nothing is achieved with the North by issuing solemn warnings and indignant declarations; mere words do not impress the hard-bitten North Korean regime. But former President Carter has done us a great service. As usual, we need only do the exact opposite of what he recommends, this time by rejecting talks with the Kim dictatorship until (at a minimum) it makes full amends for its most recent crimes. Nothing will be lost since all past negotiations have proven futile, and the US will avoid rewarding North Korean aggression.

Luttwak, a senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, is the author of “Strategy: The Logic of War and Peace” (Belknap, 2002).

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