Hard to believe that these talks are conducted in secret behind closed door. It is quite clear the some of the proposals are strictly designed to serve powerful interest groups. Great work by Wikileaks to put this in the public arena.
The basic idea of diplomatic negotiations being secret is that it's not appropriate to publicize your strategy for defending Belgium in case the Germans roll through on the way to France.
Unfortunately, in this situation, diplomatic negotiations are being used to end-run around the domestic legislative process. This is the intrinsic downside of allowing diplomatic cooperation to extend beyond its traditional domain of war and peace.[1] In liberal democracies, the organs of foreign policy are designed to be opaque and non-responsive to the public. In the United States, this is by design--stemming from the framers' worry that a democracy wouldn't be able to speak with the required single voice when it came to issues of foreign policy. But the flexibility of the process militates towards keeping it restricted to a narrow domain.
[1] There is something fundamentally undemocratic about using the diplomatic process to normalize law between countries. Yes it makes business easier, but it undermines democratic control over law. The law of a country should be an expression of the will of its voters, and only its voters. Some egghead in the UK has no business weighing in on what America's laws should be, and vice versa.
>it's not appropriate to publicize your strategy for defending Belgium in case the Germans roll through on the way to France.
The strategy for defending Belgium in both world wars and the strategy for defending the average citizen against corporate interests seem to be the same in this case: Do nothing, leave them to the wolves.
Don't these kind of deals need congressional approval eventually? The idea of dealing behind the scene is that it allows you to talk more openly about what is and isn't on the table without having anything on the record.
Ex: Say they were negotiating with Israel. Publicly Israel has very uncompromising policies. But maybe in private, in return for some things they are willing to give up some of their demands. Maybe some of their concessions end up not in the deal, or the whole deal falls through. They don't want to have to then be "accountable" for the things they put on the table.
> Don't these kind of deals need congressional approval eventually?
Yes, but I believe the argument goes something like this: "We cannot possibly renegotiate the deal because (1) we've already spent considerable time and funds to reach an agreement and (2) it represents the best deal we can get." So Congress gives a ceremonial rubber stamp on a deal that would otherwise never have been reached (and conveniently stuffed with as much lobbyist pork as possible -- originating from who-knows-where since all "negotiating" occurred behind closed doors).
Please note the difference here between the US and the EU. In the EU, foreign treaties DO NOT require parliament approval (this is required by the EU treaty), and as such mean that effectively
1) No member of the EU has separation of powers, a very important part of the legislative power is vested in the (equivalent of) the ministry of foreign affairs.
2) Since the EU commission can unilaterally impose treaties even without approval of that ministry that have legislative authority, no EU member country can be said to be a sovereign nation. There is only the EU (which is further illustrated, for example, in that the EU has it's own embassies and hosts it's own embassies in for example China).
Sources please. I'm pretty sure none of what you said is accurate. There is no such thing as EU law because there is no EU consitution, the EU itself is just a set of a treaties and thereby always subservient to national laws. Any member state can quit the EU at any time, but they would also lose the considerable benefits, which is why even vehement anti-EU governments like the UK choose to be part of the EU. All laws in europe are national laws and must be approved by the respective parliaments. EU directives must be transcribed into national law before they go into effect, and all EU directives must be voted by the EU parliament before they go to the national parliaments (although the vote isn't always binding, that part is a bit complicated). The EU commission has no lawmaking powers to my knowledge, they are allowed to draft proposals, but they cannot bring them into law.
The European Court of Human Rights (for example) has frequently overruled national law and their rulings stand, even in the face of national opposition.
Lisbon Treaty is an EU Consitution. They needed to change the name from Constitution to Treaty once French and Dutch voted no. That's how much they respect democratic process. They hate democracy, they call it 'populism'. Nobody can quit EU - look at Greece! They are not allowed to. They have to suffer in Euro prison forever, till the German banks will be repaid each and every euro-cent! And even if someone quits then - looking at the EU history - they will be voting every year to re-join till they eventually say 'yes'. Again, no respect for democratic process. Any vote that's not in alignment with the EU unelected officials like Barroso (Marxist) or Van Rumpoy is called 'populism', 'nazism', 'anti-democratic'. Go to hell with your Marxism, stop spreading this cancer on this beautiful continent.
Just because you've decided to call it a constitution doesn't make it so. Even the greeks could quit the EU at any time, but they cannot quit their debts which they entered into as a sovereign nation. Greece lied, for years, about their ability to repay loans, to get more loans than they could handle, and they even went so far as to ask big american financial companies to help them cook their books, which shows it wasn't just a lapse in judgment. Now, in the defense of greece, all the other EU countries knew they were lying from the beginning, and they pretended they didn't because they wanted to prove people like you wrong and show the EU could bring prosperity to all including the greece. In the line of bad ideas, that only comes second to the german notion that greece must repay their loans in full, even if it bankrupts them. So, yeah, everybody messed up gloriously.
That still doesn't change a thing to the fact that the EU process has brought peace to half a billion people for the first time since never, and with peace has come prosperity for most (sadly not all though). The current Europe is however still better for its people than any Europe in history, despite its many flaws.
I know europe-bashing is popular in many regions in europe right now because things are bad and it's an easy scape-goat for inept or incapable national governments and an easy target for jingoistic parties hoping to channel frustration and fear into votes ('populism'), but no rational analysis can say that europe is the cause of the current economic woes, except perhaps for the greeks. I see only two paths out of this situation: (1) less EU, nationalism and protectionism, and (2) more EU, moving democracy up to the EU level by giving true power to the EU parliament. The first path takes us back to the europe that was, a continent rife with war and poverty. I'll take option 2 thank you very much.
>Just because you've decided to call it a constitution doesn't make it so.
Lisbon Treaty is almost exactly the same document as the one they called the EU Constitution. Because the Constitution was voted no, instead of changing the content and addressing the issue the people of France and Netherlands had with it, they introduced a trick. Repackaged everything into a "treaty", so it doesn't need people's approval in referendum anymore. It can be just voted into existence at parliamentary level. And that's what happened. To have their constitution they had to change it's name and give up on the idea of referendums for it. Again, they disrespected democracy and their arrogance towards regular folk on the street is staggering.
>Even the greeks could quit the EU at any time, but they cannot quit their debts which they entered into as a sovereign nation.
Of course they can. Any sovereign nation can simply stop repaying its debts. That's how nations go bankrupt. Nation is not a business. You screw up with a nation for too long, people loose patience and ooopppssss… neo-nazi Golden Dawn at 22% support in Greece. But for some people the most important thing in the world is bankster bonus. Neo-nazis governing Greece? Who cares as long as the Euro currency and bankster bonuses can continue!
>Greece lied, for years, about their ability to repay loans, to get more loans than they could handle, and they even went so far as to ask big american financial companies to help them cook their books, which shows it wasn't just a lapse in judgment.
Let me give you example. I'm an investor. I invest in bonds, equities, commodities, stock, you name it. I understand - as a simple investor - that my investments may go bad. I understand that bonds or stock I bought may go 20% up, may go 20% down, or may go all the way down to zero. I understand that. I accept that risk. So, if I buy Greek debt (bonds) in 2000-2007 I understand there is a risk there. They may go to zero. Like Russian bonds did in 1997. Like debt of Iceland in 2008. Like debt of over 5,000 other countries in the history of the world that went bankrupt. But Greece in 2008? Oh Nein! It can't go bankrupt! It needs to repay German banksters!!! That's how EU works. And the reason why neo-nazis are at 22% in the polls in Greece now? Because they said they would cancel the so-called debt in Greece with a stroke of a pen. As it should have been done long time ago. German, Greek, or other tax payers shouldn't be hold hostage to incompetence of German banksters who can't do their job of risk assessment properly. What the fuck is it? Socialism for German banksters and capitalism for everybody else? Is that how your EU works?? And if taxes aren't enough for bankster bonus we will steal your bank deposit too! Yep, that's how EU works! Just fucking awesome!
>That still doesn't change a thing to the fact that the EU process has brought peace to half a billion people for the first time since never, and with peace has come prosperity for most (sadly not all though).
Ever heard of NATO? You really think that Putin's Red Army would give a fuck about you and your stupid EU if the US Army and NATO weren't stationed on this continent? Dude, NATO is the only reason for peace in Europe since 1945. The Yugoslavia war in 1990s hasn't been stopped by EU Marxists too. It's been stopped by NATO. Next thing I hear from you probably will be that we'll have a sunrise tomorrow thanks to the EU. The EU did something else recently. Germans hate Greeks, Greeks hate Germans. Division between Northern and Southern Europe. That's EU at works!
> The current Europe is however still better for its people than any Europe in history, despite its many flaws.
Right, like paying taxes to make sure German banksters get their bonus. Like over 60% unemployment rate for young in Spain, Portugal and Greece. Like nationalism and neo-nazis raising their heads all over Europe now in reaction to the EU craziness. Great Job! Just congratulate yourself!
> I know europe-bashing is popular in many regions in europe right now because things are bad and it's an easy scape-goat for inept or incapable national governments and an easy target for jingoistic parties hoping to channel frustration and fear into votes ('populism'), but no rational analysis can say that europe is the cause of the current economic woes, except perhaps for the greeks. I see only two paths out of this situation: (1) less EU, nationalism and protectionism, and (2) more EU, moving democracy up to the EU level by giving true power to the EU parliament. The first path takes us back to the europe that was, a continent rife with war and poverty. I'll take option 2 thank you very much.
Btw, marxism, really? You're trolling, right?
And what about third way? Trust democracy. Don't ignore people's vote. Sounds good? EU is Anti-Democratic. They have proven it again, and again, and again. They keep ignoring democratic vote, if they don't like it. And they - Barroso, Van Rumpoy - who voted these clowns in? You? Me? Who? What democracy are you talking about? Democracy where we will vote till we say 'yes'? Fuck that!!!
Ireland rejected both the Nice Treaty originally[1] and the Lisbon Treaty[2].
Our considerate government had the stupid, uneducated electorate have a second attempt at both referendums until we came up with the "right" answer. Talking about being undemocratic.
My own view is that if you put most issues to a popular referendum, people would vote no. It's the assholes in national governments and in Brussels who ram through stuff that only the elite wants.
This is mostly wrong. It's true that EU member states don't have a separation of legislature and executive but so what? Separation of powers sounds great in theory but the benefits are grossly oversold.
One could technically argue that the ministry of foreign affairs has some legislative power by virtue of its role in negotiating treaties but it's a very misleading description. Treaties are Big Deals™ and require at the very least ratification by the Cabinet. This is one of the benefits of parliamentary government is that trying to do something appallingly stupid or unpopular can lead to an immediate change of government by a vote of no confidence. The closest equivalent for presidential systems is impeachment, which the US has never actually done, yes?
2) is just pure horseshit. Sovereignty is ultimately decided by men with guns and the EU doesn't have any. As a legal matter it's also horseshit but this comment is long enough for a phone already.
Treaties must be ratified by the Senate (with no involvement of the House), and executive agreements (which are more limited) may be entered into by the President alone.
In both cases, the involvement of Congress is far more limited than for domestic legislation. Domestic law is the product of a "single, finely wrought and exhaustively considered, procedure" (Clinton v. City of New York) which is presentment: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presentment_Clause. Bills are introduced in Congress, and must be passed in identical form by both the House and the Senate, and then the President must approve.
Presentment makes legislation a very public spectacle. Bills get publicity when they are introduced in one or the other house. The back and forth and amendments are done in public. The reconciliation between the House and Senate versions are done in public. The President's approval and signature is a public act. There is time to lobby, there is time to contact Congresspeople, there is time to research and develop counterarguments and alternative proposals.
The treaty process short-circuits all that. The treaty is negotiated in secret. By the time the Senate is given a treaty to ratify, the language is more or less final and there is no time to build up opposition.
There is something fundamentally undemocratic about using the diplomatic process to normalize law between countries. Yes it makes business easier, but it undermines democratic control over law.
Easier than what, though? In the absence of international agreements, how do you improve the business climate at all, even in ways that are universally beneficial?
Your point about democracy is a fair one, but it's predicated on the idea that the only pools of people who matter are divided up into individual countries that vote for their own governments in isolation. If we're going to deal with global issues, whether it's trade or transportation or the Internet or chasing bad people across national borders, maybe it's time to consider whether there is a better way forward than trying to do everything legislative at a national level?
I'm not talking about some sort of global senate and worldwide voting here, but the idea that nations could send representatives to negotiate things according to their desires and everyone's voters then have to accept the results before their nation signs up to the finished agreement isn't absurd. It seems like a reasonable way of ensuring that only transparently reasonable, least-common-denominator style agreements get made within any given set of nations, and that might be a better policy than what happens today, where international agreements are frequently used as excuses to implement policy that wouldn't pass electoral muster back home.
> In the absence of international agreements, how do you improve the business climate at all, even in ways that are universally beneficial?
If businesses want legislation that improves the business climate, they should lobby the relevant governments for such legislation. If such changes really are "universally beneficial" this should not be a hurdle. As a practical matter, the business world worked just fine prior to say 1995, when the WTO was established.
> it's predicated on the idea that the only pools of people who matter are divided up into individual countries that vote for their own governments in isolation.
It's predicated on that idea because that is the essence of the world we live in. Americans vote for their government, and that government's sole legitimate purpose is to ensure American prosperity. The same is true for the Swedes in Sweden and the Germans in Germany, etc. International cooperation results in governments trading off the prosperity of their people for the prosperity of people who are not party to the same social contract, and in doing so subvert and compromise their democracy.
> nations could send representatives to negotiate things according to their desires and everyone's voters then have to accept the results before their nation signs up to the finished agreement isn't absurd
The problem with this approach is that it results in "take it or leave it" sorts of agreements. As the framers of the U.S. Constitution realized, it's not just voting that's important, but the whole process by which legislation is proposed, tweaked, and then voted upon. That process must happen subject to democratic pressures. An acceptable approach would be for nations to send representatives to negotiate shared principles, and then introduce implementation of those principles as ordinary legislation, subject to the same changes and tweaking as ordinary legislation.
It's predicated on that idea because that is the essence of the world we live in. Americans vote for their government, and that government's sole legitimate purpose is to ensure American prosperity. The same is true for the Swedes in Sweden and the Germans in Germany, etc.
If you take this as an immutable truth, I think you've already created a game where the only winning move is not to play, a tragedy of the commons on a global scale.
There is nothing magical about the border between, say, Germany and France. No natural phenomenon exists to create a necessary boundary there. It is an accident of history, and the idea that people either side of the boundary should behave according to their own clan's interest at the expense of all others would seem absurd to us if we hadn't grown up with the notion that we all come from a home country.
International cooperation results in governments trading off the prosperity of their people for the prosperity of people who are not party to the same social contract, and in doing so subvert and compromise their democracy.
Only if their own people don't accept the trade-off, perhaps because they feel it is in their own long-term interest, or perhaps merely because they feel it is the right thing to do.
Here in the UK, every now and then there is a story about how we're still giving aid money to some relatively advanced country, maybe one that now has far greater financial power than we do, and often people find that inappropriate. On the other hand, we also send aid to countries that have been hit by a tornado or tsunami or earthquake, and I've never heard a single person object, even though it's ultimately their tax money that was taken involuntarily and spent on their behalf to help someone else. Intent matters.
The problem with this approach is that it results in "take it or leave it" sorts of agreements.
Maybe it does, for a while. You'd probably get the same thing if you enacted a power of recall for elected representatives who their voters didn't feel were living up to their promises during their term in office.
But after a while, people would learn that compromise is necessary to get things done, and that if everyone sticks to their guns then nothing gets done and we all lose. And then what used to be take it or leave it changes more into what's the basic foundation we can all agree with, or at least some of us can agree with for mutual benefit with the others free to walk away with no hard feelings. And then we'd be getting somewhere.
I can't express how grateful I am for each and every whistleblower. They often take tremendous risks and with their actions show us that we should act responsibly and humanely whenever we can ourselves.
I wonder about that. Obama during his candidacy was the most opposed to this cloak and dagger stuff, and then he got elected and became one of the most secretive presidents ever. If he had the policies he campaigned on, it would be a radically different government. How can voters influence outcomes when regardless of the principles and/or promises of who gets elected they end up getting the same policies?
I always get this impression that the first day in office of a new president some guy in a black suit comes into the oval office, sits down across from the president, and then says "You know those campaign promises you made? There's a few things i need to explain to you before you go ahead with those..."
> Obama during his candidacy was the most opposed to this cloak and dagger stuff
Were you watching the same campaign I was? Obama's response to "what would you have done differently than Bush?" was "I would have hit Afghanistan harder." He campaigned on a policy of essentially turning back the clock to the Clinton era, curbing some of the worst aspects but not on fundamentally scaling back the whole operation.
And where were you for the second campaign? He campaigned as "the guy who killed Osama." The guy who sent troops into Pakistan without Pakistan's permission and shot Osama in the head in a midnight raid. And people bought it up. They made a movie out of it. And then pressured him to go bomb Syria.
> How can voters influence outcomes when regardless of the principles and/or promises of who gets elected they end up getting the same policies?
By and large, voters get what they voted for. If people wanted a real scaling back of the military industrial complex in the U.S., they'd vote for candidates who propose to do that. But very few people really do. They might oppose this or that specific program, they might support a 10% budget cut here and there, but the mainstream of the voting populace is simply not willing to give up on the idea that the U.S. should maintain total military supremacy over the world. The cloak and dagger stuff is part and parcel of all that.
> I always get this impression that the first day in office of a new president some guy in a black suit comes into the oval office, sits down across from the president
It's really more an issue of incentives and priorities. At the end of the day, almost nobody who voted for Obama in Round 1 changed their vote in Round 2 on the basis of his failure to close down Guantanamo. But Republicans gave him absolute hell over Benghazi. That's the incentive that American voters create for the President. Even if they support some anti-war or anti-spying policy in the abstract, when the rubber hits the road and Americans get killed, the blame will fall squarely on the feet of the President, and the question will always be: what could we have done to prevent this?
Right now, half the country is up in arms that Obama shook hands with Ramon Castro. They are a lot more pissed off about that than the other half is about Guantanamo still being open or NSA spying. That's the incentives and priorities right there.
America is a republic and not a direct democracy. Sometimes the professional makes better decisions then millions of less informed armchair quarterbacks that consider the issues for minutes each year--and of course it's impossible to please everyone. Unfortunately, these professionals must pander to the mob every so often to get elected.
The problem with that approach is that it presumes the "professionals" are making well-considered decisions in the public interest, rather than simply pandering to incumbent elites.
> I always get this impression that the first day in office of a new president some guy in a black suit comes into the oval office...
If you remember that one of the pre-Snowden whistleblowers stated in an interview that Obama was among the people under targeted surveillance, then you know that all future Presidents (and some past ones probably too) are nothing more than puppets being manipulated by the real powers (which we don't see). So it's really no surprise that "promises will always be broken" - unless we understand that very profound changes in our systems are the only real solution, long-term.
OK, so let's see how this applies to Obama specifically. The argument, so far as I understand it, goes like this.
1. Before Obama was president, his phone was tapped.
2. He must have said, or been party to, some incriminating things, because that happens to basically everyone.
3. Therefore, he could be blackmailed.
4. Therefore, he has been blackmailed.
5. Therefore, he is now doing exactly what whoever blackmailed him wants.
I have no trouble believing #1.
#2 is doubtless true for some senses of "incriminating". I think he admitted (it's ridiculous for this to be an admission, but never mind) that he smoked some cannabis as a student. He went to a church whose leader said some kinda dumb things. He must surely have said some kinda dumb things. But ... the subset of these "incriminating" things that got out during his election campaign wasn't enough to lose him the primary or the presidential election. There'd need to be something quite a lot worse to provide enough blackmail material to (e.g.) kick him out of the job or put him in prison. Richlieu notwithstanding, six randomly chosen lines do not generally suffice to hang someone in the present-day USA.
Now, of course it's possible that he really did do something bad enough to provide real blackmail leverage. But I wouldn't want to bet on it.
#3 might follow if #2 were right for a sufficiently serious sense of "incriminating". But (see above) I don't think it is.
#4 wouldn't follow from #3 in any case. It does, astonishingly, sometimes happen that people who could be blackmailed aren't. Blackmail is a high-risk strategy; if you try it and your victim isn't playing, it can get awfully embarrassing for the would-be blackmailer. And it's not as if the President of the United States of America lacks the resources to make things difficult for someone trying to blackmail him.
(He might lack the resources if he were somehow being blackmailed by the entirety of his staff, or an all-powerful conspiracy that could frustrate everything he might try to do to expose them. But that would require a size and scale of conspiracy that (a) is improbable a priori, (b) is more improbable given that no insider has ever felt guilty enough to blow it open, and (c) hasn't had all the people claiming such conspiracies mysteriously silenced.)
#5 doesn't follow from #4. Push a blackmailee too hard and they'll stop cooperating.
So: I still don't see how "is a puppet" is supposed to follow from "has been under surveillance". Too many gaps.
I assume the worry is they'll do what J. Edgar Hoover did and amass secret dossiers they can use for blackmail (or to tip off the press to get rid of) their political opponents.
Even if the president himself is a saint with nothing to hide or blackmail him over, he has many friends and allies.
With that said, any control would have to be limited enough that those controlled went along with it instead of fighting it - a relationship of complete puppetry would be difficult, as they might decide to go down and take you with them.
You can't have the voters knowing anything that would reliably give them a reason to ignore the marketing campaigns that constitute political campaigns. That is, it would help citizens exercise independent thought, which campaign managers, donors, and candidates themselves hate.
Are treaties normally negotiated in public? I don't recall Obama live tweeting any closed door talks with Putin--it's just not a good idea. You can't be frank when you have to worry about covering your ass to prevent attacks from every nutjob special interest group at home.
No. Every recent trade deal done by the US was initially negotiated in private. It is totally normal.
Initial negotiations are always private, even for domestic legislation. Just look at the $85 billion funding package that was just announced. Only two people--Patty Murray and Paul Ryan--worked on that, in private, before it was introduced to the rest of Congress.
People who are concerned about the substance of the TPP are campaigning against the very basics of the process itself. This is a bad tactic. Over time it will be very corrosive to the government's ability to do anything.
As much as I appreciate Wikileak's efforts to put this out in the open, I feel like this deal fell through over much more 'fundamental' issues than copyright, like food security and such.
