The View from Right Field

“Root Causes” Are Easy. Solutions for Today Are Hard,

When Vice President Kamala Harris went to El Paso last week, she talked a lot about the need to address the “root causes” of illegal immigration

“My trip to Guatemala and Mexico was about addressing the root causes.  The stories that I heard and the interactions that we had today reinforce the nature of those root causes: a lack of economic opportunity; very often violence, corruption, and food insecurity; and basic needs not being met, including a fear of cartels and gang violence.”

Which sounds a lot like how Democrats talk about the increase in crime: We have to deal with the “root causes” of the problem.  And it may be that dealing with these root causes, whether of illegal immigration or crime, will address the problem – ten years from now.  But talking about root causes doesn’t tell you what we need to do to address the problem now.  

Biden Got the G7, NATO, and EU to Say What He Wanted. But Will They Follow Through?

With Joe Biden back from his “If it’s Tuesday, it must be NATO” tour of Europe, the question is: What did it accomplish?  President Biden told the G7: “America is back at the table.  America is back leading the world.”¹  The communiques and statements issued by the G7, NATO, and the meeting with the EU were reasonably strong.  They mentioned China, human rights, Russia, etc.  The NATO statement said that China posed “systemic challenges” to the rules-based international order.²  According to President Biden. while the G7 didn’t mention China in 2019, this year they did, “explicitly agree[ing] to call out human rights abuses in Xinjiang and Hong Kong.”  On Russia, the NATO statement said that in appropriate cases, co-ordinate cyber attacks could be a justification to invoke the collective defense provisions of Article 5 of the NATO agreement.³

The question is what countries will do now that the meetings are over and they are back to day-to-day considerations of politics and national interest.