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we respond to security challenges in an era of financial distress at home and reordering of political power abroad? For some time now, it has been clear
Obama doctrine, Vol. 1
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by Samuel R. Berger
resident Obama’s national se- curity strategy, released by the White House on Thurs- day, tackles a delicate but un- avoidable question: How do
that U.S. national security strategy needs rethinking. The Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the global economic crisis, cy- ber-terror threats and even the envi- ronmental catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico underscore that the challenges America faces in 2010 have changed, even from just a decade ago. And while U.S. military supremacy
is certainly not at risk, new interna- tional arrangements — such as the shift in focus from the G-8 club of pow- erful nations to the G-20, which incor- porates emerging countries such as China and Brazil — are needed so that the costs and benefits of a stable inter- national order are shared. The United States cannot solve most global threats without help, nor should we bear the burden alone. Enter the national security strategy.
These congressionally mandated docu- ments can easily become laborious and impenetrable, or mere compendiums of bureaucratic pleading from various parts of the government. (Make sure you do right by Japan! Don’t step on the Pentagon!) The challenge, which President Bill Clinton impressed upon me and his other advisers, is to provide a strategic framework that clarifies our stance to the rest of the world and in- forms administration decision-makers up and down the line. It’s not a blue- print for action but a means to convey the president’s principles and priori- ties. In Obama’s case, his sober and com- prehensive 52-page strategy incorpo- rates the new realities and breaks with past strategies in several key respects. But it also reflects an understanding that we face enduring challenges — nuclear proliferation, terrorism and regional conflicts — for which the best response is a return to fundamentals. One such fundamental is economic
strength. At a time when the financial crisis and the fiscal burden of two long wars have raised fears of an overex- tended America, the administration makes a case for economic and techno- logical renewal as a crucial underpin- ning of U.S. security. Obama also ar- gued this point in a West Point speech last weekend. “At no time in human history,” he said, “has a nation of di- minished economic vitality main- tained its military and political prima- cy.”
Another fundamental challenge is arms control and nuclear prolifera- tion. By seeking strategic arms cuts with Russia, the president has re- turned to a long bipartisan tradition that languished during the prior ad- ministration. And by convening an
GARY HERSHORN/REUTERS
In 1993, President Bill Clinton presided as Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, left, and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat signed a peace accord. Clinton saw the national security strategy as conveying U.S. principles to the world.
T
working mothers Myths about
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by Naomi Cahn and June Carbone
oday, the notion of a mother holding a job outside the home is so commonplace, so unremarkable, that the phrase “working
mother” seems redundant. Nearly two-thirds of women with children under age 18 now have jobs outside the home — more than three times the rate in 1960. But while the numbers have shifted rapidly, many of our beliefs about juggling work and family haven’t quite caught up.
Mothers today spend much less time caring for children than did their parents and grandparents.
CHARLES DHARAPAK/ASSOCIATED PRESS
President George W. Bush saluted Gen. David Petraeus, left, and Adm. William Fallon during a surprise visit to Iraq in 2007. In his 2002 national security strategy, Bush outlined the rationale of preemptive war.
gion — Islam,” the new strategy says. “We are at war with a specific network, al-Qaeda, and its terrorist affiliates.” This sharper focus avoids alienating
many in the Muslim world, ensures the support of key allies who never accept- ed the broader construct and prevents the overreactions that led us to forsake the fight against al-Qaeda in Afghani- stan and turn our efforts to the un- related threat from Saddam Hussein. In perhaps the most dramatic depar- ture from the strategy of its predeces- sor, the Obama administration has re- stored a less provocative policy on the use of military force. In the 2002 na- tional security strategy, Bush articulat- ed the rationale for preemptive war just weeks before seeking a U.N. reso- lution to invade Iraq. The new strategy endorses the principles that have guid- ed administrations for decades: The use of force should be a last resort, should weigh all the costs and benefits and should have as much international
For the Obama administration, many of the true tests of this strategy lie ahead.
international summit on securing nu- clear material this spring, Obama has given new urgency and global pur- chase to the effort started in 1991 when Sens. Sam Nunn and Richard Lugar initiated a program to lock down nu- clear materials.
On terrorism, the strategy builds on the past but breaks with it where nec- essary. Presidents Clinton, George W. Bush and Obama each have deployed many of America’s tools: military pow- er, homeland defense, law enforce- ment, sanctions, intelligence and vig- orous efforts to cut off terrorist financ- ing. But the critical difference in the Obama strategy is its rejection of the “global war on terror” lens through which the prior administration viewed the challenge. “This is not a global war against a tactic — terrorism — or a reli-
.
support as possible. The administra- tion reserves the right to act unilater- ally — against al-Qaeda and its allies, for example — but resurrects the prin- ciple that Clinton described as “togeth- er when possible, alone when neces- sary.”
Obama’s critics have focused on his diplomatic engagement with hostile states such as Iran and North Korea. In the strategy, the president sets forth his rationale: to “create opportunities to resolve differences, strengthen the international community’s support for our actions, learn about the intentions and nature of closed regimes, and plainly demonstrate to the publics within those nations that their govern- ments are to blame for their isolation.” In the case of Iran, Washington’s outstretched hand has not resulted in
compliance. But attempts to engage have helped ensure that the world’s at- tention is focused on Iran’s intransi- gence rather than Washington’s refusal to negotiate.
Without a doubt, there are gaps be-
tween principle and practice. Despite the administration’s goal of doubling exports in the next five years, it has not put its muscle behind trade agree- ments with South Korea, Panama and Colombia. And its call to respect hu- man rights has at times been muted in the face of tough realities. Sixteen months into this administration, there has been much progress, but many of the true tests of this strategy lie ahead.
n the strategy’s conclusions, the ad- ministration invokes an even earli- er era, calling for both political par- ties to restore the cooperation and common purpose so crucial to our suc- cess during the dark days of the Cold War. Despite the intense debates at the time over nuclear arms control, Cen- tral America and detente, nearly all Americans supported the containment of communism. In that same spirit, the administra-
I
tion’s framework deserves bipartisan support. We can and should argue our differences over the detention of pris- oners, methods to disarm dangerous states, how hard to push for demo- cratic rights and the costs of climate- change legislation. But at the same time, we can rally around the overrid- ing foreign policy goals spelled out in the strategy: renewing our economy at home to ensure leadership abroad, de- feating al-Qaeda, succeeding in Af- ghanistan, preventing nuclear prolif- eration, curbing climate change and promoting an international order of enlightened self-interest, economic prosperity and the fundamental values upon which America is based.
Samuel R. Berger, chair of the Albright Stonebridge Group, a global strategy firm, served as national security adviser to President Bill Clinton from 1997 to 2001.
they are less likely than parents in earlier eras to send their kids out to play on their own or to put them to work inside or outside the home. According to a 2006 study by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, fathers in 1965 spent a little more than one hour per week on child care — meaning hands-on tending such as feeding, reading aloud, helping with homework, changing diapers or rocking to sleep — compared with more than three hours per week in 2003. Meanwhile, working mothers, who spent just under three hours per week on child care in 1965, had nearly doubled that number by 2003. Over the same period, the time households spent on house work, including cooking and indoor chores such as cleaning and laundry, plummeted by 6.4 hours per week.
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Women’s jobs interfere with family life more than men’s.
Amato, approximately 45 percent of husbands in a nationally representative survey conducted in 2000 believed their job interfered with family life; about 35 percent of working wives felt that way about their own employment. This was a big shift from 1980, when around 23 percent of both husbands and wives thought that their own jobs interfered with family life. Part of this change may be because fathers today expect to be more involved in family life than they did a few decades ago. Amato found that attitudes toward
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women’s work have also changed, with both men and women holding more liberal opinions in 2000 than they did in 1980. By 2000, 74 percent of wives and 59 percent of husbands said that a working mother could be as close to her children as a nonworking mother, a substantial increase from 20 years earlier. Generally, Latinos and whites have relatively liberal beliefs about maternal employment, while African Americans have more conservative attitudes — even though black mothers are more likely to work outside the home than white mothers.
Mothers with college degrees are more likely than other women to opt out of the workforce.
3
What’s the
big idea?
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o the short list of life’s certainties (death, taxes), William Galston wants to add one more: voting.
In a report to be released Tuesday, the Brookings Institution scholar argues that to combat the nation’s growing political polarization, a few willing states should experiment with compulsory voting. Meaning, if you don’t vote, you pay. How, exactly, is the threat of a fine supposed to make our cranky electorate less divided? Right now, Galston asserts, those who are motivated to vote tend to be disproportionately discontented and, not coincidentally, disproportionately partisan. Meanwhile, those who are less angry (read: more moderate) don’t feel they are well represented by the system, so they stay home. But the more they stay home, the less attention politicians pay to them. What if we could break this vicious circle by nudging these people — those who are less moved by anger and loathing — to vote? For one thing, Galston writes, politicians’ habit of “continually tossing red meat to the party faithful might become a little less pervasive.”
Of the 31 countries that have compulsory voting laws, Galston is most inspired by Australia, where anyone who doesn’t vote is fined $20 or even $50 — and where the turnout rate hovers around 95 percent. If Australia (a country “not all that different from the United States in its freewheeling spirit, in its love of individual liberty” and, as Galston delicately put it to me, “not known for compliance or respectful attitudes toward authority”) can get with such a program, maybe there’s hope for us. Which states might be persuaded to spearhead this admittedly radical experiment? For starters, those of the upper Midwest. “I can imagine the good citizens of Wisconsin saying, ‘We’ll give this a shot,’ ” Galston told me, “and maybe Minnesota, since they have a pretty robust independent third-party tradition, anyway. And I can even imagine a place like my home state of Connecticut giving it a whirl.” Where would it flop? “Somehow,” he admits, “I think this would go down less well in the more libertarian parts of the Sunbelt.”
— Kate Julian
juliank@washpost.com
Have a contender for the Big Idea? Let us know at
outlook@washpost.com.
Despite a rash of media reports several years ago heralding an “opt-out”
revolution among college-educated women, such women are not abandoning the workplace. In a 2005 paper, economist Heather Boushey reported that the “child penalty” — the extent to which having a child decreases a woman’s odds of having a job — is greater for women with less education. According to 2007 Census Bureau data, only about 26 percent of mothers with a college degree stay home, while more than 40 percent of mothers lacking high school diplomas are at home. College-educated women are more successful in combining work and family than other groups in part because they tend to have the resources to pay for child care and other help.
At least for mothers of young children, the educational divide is relatively new. According to Princeton sociologist Sara McLanahan, in 1970, 18 percent of the most educated mothers and 12 percent of the least educated mothers with young children worked outside
If anything, it is men’s work that gets in the way. According to Penn State sociologist Paul
Today’s mothers and fathers both devote more time than ever to their children, in part because
the home. By 2000, 65 percent of the more educated group worked, but only 30 percent of the least educated mothers had joined them in the labor market.
Women who work are less likely to have successful marriages.
the wife works. In particular, Penn State’s Amato finds that egalitarian attitudes (seen in shared decision-making, chores and child care) are linked to higher levels of marital well-being. Amato says the happiest couples are upper-middle-class, two-career couples. They report three times the marital contentment of the next happiest group — working- and middle-class families who favor a traditional division of labor and have only one breadwinner. Which families are the least happy? Young, dual-wage, working-class couples — particularly those who believe that a husband should be the breadwinner but who both work out of financial necessity — have the highest levels of conflict and are three times more divorce-prone than any other group. However, even dual-income families with egalitarian beliefs become less stable if the wife works more than 45 hours a week outside the home.
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Parents don’t experience discrimination in the workplace.
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This is half-true: Although fathers can receive a bonus in the form of more money and
better job prospects compared with childless men, the “motherhood penalty” is alive and well. When sociologist Shelley Correll and her colleagues sent out more than 1,200 fake résumés to employers in a large Northeastern city, mothers were significantly less likely than either childless women or fathers with identical qualifications to get interviews. This effect seems to extend even to the political arena: A 2008 study (before Sarah Palin’s run for vice president) found Republicans much less likely to vote for a mother with young children than for a father with young children. Fathers don’t always get off free, though: According to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, employers who provide family leave sometimes deny men the same time off they give women, even though it’s illegal to do so. Speaking of time off, while the
Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 allows eligible workers to take unpaid, job-protected leave to care for a new child or a family member with a serious medical condition, only slightly more than half of all employees work in businesses covered by the law, according to an estimate that the Labor Department published in 2000. And while federal law protects workers from discrimination based on sex or pregnancy status, it doesn’t protect against discrimination based on caregiving responsibilities — so some state and local governments have begun to pass laws that do. Researchers at the University of California’s Hastings College of the Law report that the number of lawsuits claiming discrimination based on caregiving responsibilities has increased almost 400 percent over the past decade.
ncahn@law.gwu.edu carbonej@umkc.edu
Naomi Cahn is a law professor at George Washington University, and June Carbone is a law professor at the University of Missouri at Kansas City. They are the co-authors of “Red Families v. Blue Families: Legal Polarization and the Creation of Culture.”
It depends. A couple’s values are better predictors of a stable marriage than whether
SUNDAY,MAY 30, 2010
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