President Obama’s State of the Union address this week primarily addressed economic issues, briefly touching on foreign policy. Interestingly, with the unemployment rate still incredibly high, the president did not focus as much on an economic action plan to deal with the state of the economy, but rather addressed the significant income disparities within the state. It’s an interesting topic of choice, considering the widespread Occupy protests across not only the United States, but Canada as well. Obama stated that that those who make over $1 million a year (or as the Wall Street protesters call it, “the 1%”) should be paying a tax rate of at least 30%, and should be forgoing unneeded tax deductions.
For any of you who read my post on SOPA last week, I discuss the surprising power of protest. I never got fully on board with the Occupy protests, as I found them too vaguely targeted to understand how they would affect anything at all. While Obama’s inclusion of the idea in his speech was surely politically motivated more than ideologically so, it’s interesting to see political protest having much of an impact at all.
President Obama’s brief address of foreign policy included the plan to use $200 billion of the peace dividend to pay for the construction of much-needed infrastructure in Afghanistan and Iraq in their post-war states. I’ll be interested to follow this further for the purpose of democratic analysis, as so-called “transitioning” democracies have been argued to be incredibly unstable and dangerous.
I too am interested in future events in Afghanistan and Iraq; it seems like the focus on building infrastructure is good planning, as case studies have shown that regions (including those with newly democratic regimes) are less likely to be affected by civil war if they have well developed infrastructure. The argument is that when there are sufficiently well maintained roads and other routes of transport that provide access to a region, there is less likelihood of rebel forces being able to organize efficiently; furthermore the official government (provided they have sufficient military power) is more easily able to reach any strongholds and prevent mobilization.