After years of listening to US government officials complaining about Chinese hackers, there's more than a little hypocrisy going on here.
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On a completely different note, from the Phnom Penh Post:
US lawmakers yesterday called for direct aid to Cambodia to be cut if the July 28 election is not judged “free and fair”, signalling growing frustration that US aid dollars have not led to increased democratisation in the Kingdom.
Arguably this is long overdue given the tremendous human rights abuses and corruption that the Cambodian government has been able to get away with--with usually little to no international reprocussions.
On the other hand, I wonder if a carrot and stick approach might work better here. Rather than ask the Cambodian government to completely transform itself overnight (everyone knows that the July 28 elections will not be free and fair), why not target more specific behavior, set reasonable goals, and then make funding dependent on that? For example, threaten to cut funding if the Cambodian government continues stealing land from peasants, and see if we can get them to clean up they're act on a couple of issues rather then just cut off funding completely.
US Representative Eni Faleomavaega, a Democrat, also slammed proposals to cut aid, advocating instead that debt accrued during the US-supported Lon Nol regime – now totalling with interest close to $460 million – to be forgiven.
This is also not a bad idea. I didn't even know the US was still continuing to collect debt from the Lon Nol regime, but since we created, funded, and directed that regime, we should probably forgive the debt from it now.
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On a completely different note, from the Phnom Penh Post:
US lawmakers yesterday called for direct aid to Cambodia to be cut if the July 28 election is not judged “free and fair”, signalling growing frustration that US aid dollars have not led to increased democratisation in the Kingdom.
Arguably this is long overdue given the tremendous human rights abuses and corruption that the Cambodian government has been able to get away with--with usually little to no international reprocussions.
On the other hand, I wonder if a carrot and stick approach might work better here. Rather than ask the Cambodian government to completely transform itself overnight (everyone knows that the July 28 elections will not be free and fair), why not target more specific behavior, set reasonable goals, and then make funding dependent on that? For example, threaten to cut funding if the Cambodian government continues stealing land from peasants, and see if we can get them to clean up they're act on a couple of issues rather then just cut off funding completely.
US Representative Eni Faleomavaega, a Democrat, also slammed proposals to cut aid, advocating instead that debt accrued during the US-supported Lon Nol regime – now totalling with interest close to $460 million – to be forgiven.
This is also not a bad idea. I didn't even know the US was still continuing to collect debt from the Lon Nol regime, but since we created, funded, and directed that regime, we should probably forgive the debt from it now.
While I understand why Snowden would want to expose the USA's shortcomings, I think that the effect of his defection is a net negative, because it builds a moral equivalence between the PRC and the USA, as if the vices of the US system are anywhere near as bad as the utterly authoritarian Chinese state.
ReplyDeleteHere's who I see it: if you're going to make a moral hierarchy, there's no question the PRC is much worse, and much more oppressive, than the USA, across a range of issues.
ReplyDeleteBut that's the broad view.
I think on an issue by issue stance, there is a moral equivalency in the sense that you get judged by the same standards for the same acts. So if the USA is hacking China, that's morally equivalent to China hacking the USA. It doesn't mean the PRC and the USA are morally equivalent across every issue, but I think we ought to hold the same standards for the same actions