Safe Democracy Foundation - Safe Democracy

Matthew Kaminski
12/22/2010

The surge in Afghanistan is a wager that we can make the country a less violent and more stable base for America. Kaminski notes that America’s forces aren’t leaving anytime soon and probably not in this lifetime. Where the US military has gone in robustly, the Taliban has folded. The Afghan government’s shortcomings feed the insurgency. President Karzai squandered nine years, but the Taliban is hated. Only a tenth of Afghans tell pollsters they prefer them, and their sympathy is often as much practical as ideological. Afghans want the state to protect and serve them. In the many places it fails, the Taliban steps into the gap. Kaminski argues that giving up prematurely on our Afghan surge could make the fantasy of failure real.

Kaminski is a member of the Journal’s editorial board.

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Eliot A. Cohen
12/22/2010

During Vietnam, a number of elite universities removed ROTC programs from their campuses, citing the military’s stance on homosexuals as their excuse. Now, however, the social, political, and military climate is different, and there is support among both political parties to bring ROTC back. However, academia (traditionally liberal) and the military (traditionally conservative) have been at odds for many years, and bringing them together is not without difficulties. But these differences, says Cohen, are all the more reason to mingle the two groups. Students at elite universities are intelligent and hardworking, and as America’s future businessmen and women, they “should share the burden of national defense.”

The writer teaches at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies and received his commission through Army ROTC.

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John Lee
12/22/2010

As social unrest rises exponentially each year throughout China, the Communist Party remains as insecure as it has ever been. A regime that is awkward in its own skin and uncomfortable among its own people is always in danger. Beijing sees Liu Xiaobo’s Nobel Peace Prize as part of an international strategy to contain China’s rise. Chinese leaders observe that awarding the prize to past winners like Poland’s Lech Walesa, Burma’s Aung San Suu Kyi, and Iran’s Shirin Ebadi weakened the legitimacy of authoritarian regimes in those countries. Lee notes that Beijing’s official line has always been that reforms will only occur “when the time is right.” It had better democratize soon or domestic discontent will destabilize it.

Lee is a foreign policy fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies in Sydney and at the Hudson Institute in Washington, DC.

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