American foreign policy » Undiplomatic

20 January 2010 Charles J. Brown
04:01 pm

Obama One Year On: A Foreign Policy Report Card

Over at Care2, my other blog home, I have an analysis of Obama’s first year as foreign policymaker-in-chief. A highlight:

In no area is this more true than in foreign policy, where Obama has managed to change the way the United States engages the rest of the world. In contrast to the Bush Administration, which tried to dictate terms, Obama has recognized the limits of American power and the potential of American leadership. Or as he put it in his inaugural address, “we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals.”. . .

What Obama has done is pursue a foreign policy based on sound strategic principles and coherent tactics. It has emphasized both innovation and results, rewarding creativity and encouraging critical thinking. Realism has trumped ideology, and principles have trumped “interests.” Call it pragmatic idealism, if you must apply a label.

This approach is not unprecedented in American history. It. . .reflects the creativity and flexibility of the postwar Truman Administration, which, under the leadership of men like George Marshall and Dean Acheson, had to build new foreign policy and national security institutions virtually from scratch.

It therefore is possible that, to use Acheson’s famous phrase, we are once again “present at the creation” of a new paradigm, one that focuses on what the United States can do for the world, not what the world can do for the United States. Thanks to the financial crisis, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and now Haiti, it will take more time than originally envisioned. But in the end, Obama has the opportunity to remake the way the United States pursues its interests in the world.

You can find the whole thing, including my grades on issues ranging from Afghanistan to nukes, here.

Guest Post: A Marshall Plan for Haiti?

The following guest post was written by Jacob Francois, an entrepreneur with over eighteen years experience in the financial services industry, and owner of Lakay Financial International, Inc. in addition to reaching out to the Haitian and Haitian-American communities via appearances on radio and television, Mr. François has served 7 years as a board member and two years as president of the Haitian-American Community Association (HACA) located in Chicago. He is also founder of Project 2000 International, a non-profit organization dedicated to providing assistance to Haitian children. The organization is responsible for securing donations in-kind, as well as monetary donations to purchase whatever is necessary to facilitate the education (school supplies, uniforms, shoes, etc.) of these youngsters whose families would otherwise be unable to provide these necessities for them. For more information about these organizations, please follow the above links.

Haiti has been struck by a terrible catastrophe far beyond its economic capacity. Immediate humanitarian assistance is essential, but Haiti will need more that just relief if it is to rebuild and prosper. For this reason, we at the Haitian Priorities Project propose a “Marshall Plan” for Haiti:

$5 billion to help the Haitian people rebuild their livelihood
$2 billion earmarked for the private sector
$1 billion for a 1500-megawatt electrical plant
$1.5 billion to rebuild various government compounds in the 10 departments
$1 billion for a communication system capable of providing at least 1 million land lines
$3 billion to rebuild 5,000 km of roads, connectors, sewers and provide garbage collection
$1 billion for 10 national airports in 10 departments
$1 billion for the agricultural sector
$2 billion for the school sector
$2.5 billion for economic development programs
$700 million for heavy machinery

In all, $20.7 billion per year for three years could put Haiti back on the path to becoming a modern nation. If we put this amount is the context of the United States GDP for 2009, the amount is less than 1/100th of 1 percent of the United States GDP.

The Marshall Plan from its inception, was known as the European Recovery Program, (ERP). The first phase of the program started in 1948 and ran through 1952. The United States implemented the ERP as a tool for rebuilding and creating a stronger economic foundation for countries in Western Europe.

Given the destruction of its infrastructure, Haiti would benefit from a similar plan, which could be dubbed the Haiti Recovery Plan (HRP), and without which Haiti may never be a viable nation.

Haiti is the most impoverished country in the Western Hemisphere with 80 percent of the population living under the poverty line and 54 percent in abject poverty. Two-thirds of all Haitians depend on the agricultural sector, mainly small-scale subsistence farming, and remain vulnerable to damage from frequent natural disasters, exacerbated by the country’s widespread deforestation.

The economy has shown some signs of recovery in recent years, registering positive growth since 2005 after the ravages of hurricane Jeanne in 2004. Several hurricanes damaged the entire system in 2008 as well as the transportation infrastructure and agricultural sector. Haiti has enough natural resources to build a viable nation, although capital investment is lacking and some natural resources possessed by Haiti are deemed strategic reserves to the United States. Haiti has bauxite, copper, calcium carbonate, gold, marble, hydropower and oil.

US economic engagement under the Haitian Hemispheric Opportunity through Partnership Encouragement (HOPE) Act, passed in December 2006, has boosted apparel exports and investment by providing tariff-free access to the US. HOPE II, passed in October 2008, has further improved the export environment for the apparel sector by extending most favored nation preferences to 2018; the apparel sector accounts for two-thirds of Haitian exports and about 8 percent of GDP. Remittances are the primary source of foreign exchange, equaling more than 15 percent of GDP and about twice the earnings from exports.

Haiti suffers from high inflation, a lack of investment, limited infrastructure, and a severe trade deficit. In 2005, Haiti paid its arrears to the World Bank, paving the way for reengagement with the Bank. Haiti has received debt forgiveness for about $525 million of its debt through the Highly-Indebted Poor Country (HIPC) initiative by mid-2009. The government relies on formal international economic assistance for fiscal sustainability.

The United States and France have a moral obligation to correct the wrongs against Haiti dating back to 1824, four years after the Monroe Doctrine was initiated. In 1824, France sent 65 ships to Haitian ports threatening to take the country back to slavery if an agreement was not signed to start paying 100 million francs to France on a yearly basis. At the time, Haiti had to shut down all government services including all the schools. This action had a profound impact on Haiti’s development and on all subsequent government efforts to build viable institutions.

Without substantial new investment, Haiti will never come out of its terrible position. A government operating with less than $2 billion a year, of which 60% is from bilateral aid, will never be able to respond to the needs of a population of 10 million people.

The United States has in particular been helpful. At this juncture, however, if substantial investment is not made in Haiti, the epidemic of boat people to Florida will continue for a long time.

Our plea is to appeal to the humane compassion we know to exist in the Unites States, France, Canada, Venezuela, and all other countries to make their investments in the framework that was stated above in a length of time not to exceed three years. Otherwise, the spiral of misery will continue in Haiti for another two hundred years.

Photo: UNDP Flickr Photostream using a CC 2.0 license

Haiti: Devastation Beyond Comprehension

Imagine, for a moment, that 9/11 or Hurricane Katrina had devastated not merely New York/Arlington or New Orleans but the entire country. That’s what the people of Haiti face today: a tragedy almost beyond comprehension, one that may dwarf any other recent natural disaster.

If some reports are accurate, hundreds of thousands may be dead as many may be missing today because a devastating 7.0 earthquake rocked Port-au-Prince and most of the country on Tuesday. The loss of life, widespread devastation, and collapse of government and society on a national level is nearly complete. Those who could have responded to this tragedy — including the UN Mission to Haiti and international relief NGOs — are among its victims.

Such devastation is almost beyond our comprehension, especially in a place like Haiti, a star-crossed island country of sheer misery and destitution on a good day. The world is now responding with a massive outpouring of emergency aid, rescue teams, and mobile hospitals. They must move quickly to rescue thousands who are alive but trapped in the rubble, and do so when almost all infrastructure has disappeared.

President Barack Obama announced yesterday morning that the U.S. government will provide its full support to the people of Haiti in assisting in rescue and recovery of hundreds of thousands of people and provide food, water and medicine immediately. Using the Joint Southern Command to manage logistics, USAID, led by its new administrator, Dr. Rajiv Shah, will lead and coordinate the USG’s humanitarian response.

Hillary Clinton, who had just left for a week-long trip to the Pacific rim, cancelled her trip, but not before heading to a military base in Honolulu to coordinate the State Department’s response. She soberly remarked that Haiti had just come through some terrible events of “biblical proportions” in recent years, including hurricanes and mudslides, only to be victimized again by another unimaginable and devastating natural disaster.

President Rene Preval, the president of Haiti, now homeless himself, was able to notify his ambassador to the U.S. reporting that he and his family were alive, but he was unable to contact his cabinet members. Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince has been described as virtual dust, with the Presidential palace in total collapse, as well as most of the government buildings. Preval described the macabre scene in an interview with the Miami Herald:

“Parliament has collapsed. The tax office has collapsed. Schools have collapsed. Hospitals have collapsed,” he said. “There are a lot of schools that have a lot of dead people in them.” He said the Roman Catholic archbishop of Port-au-Prince is among the dead and that the head of the U.N. peacekeeping mission, Tunisian diplomat Hedi Annabi, is missing.”

Most hospitals are believed to be non-functioning, and water and electricity are virtually non-existent, according to media reports. Injured persons and other survivors are said to be lying in the streets, afraid of returning to their homes, due to strong after shocks, while others have been digging people out by hand to rescue those trapped in the rubble. Police, medical personnel and ambulances have been noticeable by their marked absence on the streets.

The European Union is sending 3 million euros in relief aid; China is providing search teams and the Swiss Red Cross is sending one million Swiss francs. Canada, France and Germany are contributing search teams and money. Hundreds of non-governmental relief agencies from around the world are responding to the crisis.

The Fairfax County, Virginia Fire Department was one of the first responders to fly into Haiti. Fortunately, the airport is functional, but the road between Port au Prince and the airport is still unpassable. U.S. Army engineers will be attending to the airport damage, minimal in comparison to the overall devastation. I know the Army engineers will provide some relief to the Haitian people who are existing in one of the most desperate situations on Earth.

If you haven’t taken action yet, please do what you can. CBS has put together a comprehensive list of agencies you can support.

Photo: UNDP Flickr photostream using CC 2.0

Thought for the Day

I have to say that I’d never see a president talk about just war theory in a major address.

Happy Human Rights Day. Apologies for the dearth of posting lately — life is, as you know, complicated.

Reading between the Lines: Obama’s Sotto Voce Message to Pakistan

One other observation — one that I don’t think I’ve seen elsewhere. Twice in the speech, Obama talked about the danger of nuclear weapons. The first was during his arguments on why this is a necessary war:

The people and governments of both Afghanistan and Pakistan are endangered. And the stakes are even higher within a nuclear-armed Pakistan, because we know that al Qaeda and other extremists seek nuclear weapons, and we have every reason to believe that they would use them.

The second was toward the end, when he made a brief reference to his campaign to reduce the world’s stockpile of nuclear weapons:

We will have to take away the tools of mass destruction. That is why I have made it a central pillar of my foreign policy to secure loose nuclear materials from terrorists; to stop the spread of nuclear weapons; and to pursue the goal of a world without them. Because every nation must understand that true security will never come from an endless race for ever-more destructive weapons — true security will come for those who reject them.

You can bet that our friends in Islamabad heard the implied message here: we will not let your nukes fall into the hands of extremists, and if I have my way, we will do everything we can to ensure that you don’t get to keep your nukes no matter who is in charge.

The Pakistani military is, I’m sure, really really unhappy about this. Keep in mind that they view everything through the lens of what they see as India’s existential threat to Pakistan. They already regard U.S. policy in Afghanistan as nothing less than a covert attempt to help India encircle Pakistan (really — I’m not making this up). And now Obama has made it clear he’s going to do what he can to take away their toys.

This is not going to help the Zadari Administration, which already has lost all credibility with the military because of its close relationship with the U.S.

Photo: US Department of Energy archives.

The Speech

My thoughts on the speech are up over at Care2, my other blog home. An excerpt:

[Obama] laid out a clear strategy, refuted the key arguments against his approach, and reminded everyone of why this is a war we must fight. Equally importantly, he served notice to both Kabul and Islamabad that Bush’s blank check strategy is over. And he did not pull punches when it came to acknowledging both governments’ corruption and ineptitude. . .

Of course, the speech was the (relatively) easy part. The much harder part — actually implementing the strategy as outlined, but also doing it successfully — will take years, and no matter how good Obama’s intentions, may ultimately fail. This is now Obama’s war. It doesn’t matter that Bush got us into it. It only matters how (and when) the President manages to get us out.

You can read the whole thing here.

Afghanistan: The Right’s Alternate Reality

It’s a good thing that Republicans are so appalled at Obama’s decision to send 34,000 additional troops to Afghanistan. After all, it’s smaller not as big as insignificant compared to significantly larger than the Bush surge of 21,000 troops in Iraq.

Maybe they’ll have the chance to fix it someday. After all, as Dick Cheney reminded us today, it’s not like it’s their fault or anything.

In a 90-minute interview at his suburban Washington house, Cheney said the president’s “agonizing” about Afghanistan strategy “has consequences for your forces in the field.”

“I begin to get nervous when I see the commander in chief making decisions apparently for what I would describe as small ‘p’ political reasons, where he’s trying to balance off different competing groups in society,” Cheney said.

“Every time he delays, defers, debates, changes his position, it begins to raise questions: Is the commander in chief really behind what they’ve been asked to do?”

. . .But Cheney rejected any suggestion that Obama had to decide on a new strategy for Afghanistan because the one employed by the previous administration failed.

Cheney was asked if he thinks the Bush administration bears any responsibility for the disintegration of Afghanistan because of the attention and resources that were diverted to Iraq. “I basically don’t,” he replied without elaborating.

These guys really have entered an Orwellian alternate reality, where torture is the rule of law and failure is success.

Vote Republican — it’s all for the double plus good.

Photo: Two guys who have absolutely no responsibility for the mess in Afghanistan. Really. We swear. Via Wikipedia

Obama, China, and the Media’s Noob Kremlinologists

Over at the Atlantic, the always perceptive Jim Fallows has done a series of posts (1 — 2 — 3 — 4 — 5) on the utter failure of the traveling press to report accurately on Obama’s China trip. Fallows main point is that the MSM “manufactured” the perception that the trip was a disaster when in fact it was a relative success. As Fallows notes, the media focused on two elements of the trip — its visuals (e.g. Obama bowing to the Emperor and the joint Hu-Obama press conference where Obama didn’t take questions) and the final joint U.S.-China communique (in which Obama failed to secure any “concessions”) — that are almost never favorable to a U.S. president.

I think that the first reason for this — and one that Fallows doesn’t raise — is that MSM (and for that matter new media) coverage of summits is not unlike the now-dead art of Kremlinology: its practitioners are attempting to parse out trends and conclusions from a very limited data set. If all you have to work with is a series of photo ops and official communiques, then it’s awfully hard to make anything more than the most superficial observations. And given the fact that you’re largely guessing, chances are that you’re going to get it wrong a big part of the time. The one difference between today’s media and yesterday’s Soviet experts is that the media is doing it constantly and near instantly. As a result, its reading of the tea leaves is even less accurate than those now-discredited Kremlin parade-watchers.

Fallows quotes U.S. Ambassador Jon Huntsman’s reaction to tthe coverage:

I attended all those meetings that President Obama had with Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao,” Huntsman said, referring to the Chinese president and premier. “I’ve got to say some of the reporting I saw afterward was off the mark. I saw sweeping comments about things that apparently weren’t talked about, when they were discussed in great detail in the meetings,” he said.

The problem for the media, of course, is that they’re not in those meetings. (If they were, it would have produced the exact outcome they so blithely reported as reality.) So reporters are stuck — they can tell the truth (”we have no idea what happened”) and look like noobs, or they can speculate (as most did in this case) and try to look wise.

Moral of the story: given the choice between looking like a noob and looking like a reporter, almost every White House reporter is going to choose the latter, even if s/he doesn’t know what s/he’s talking about.

The second reason is, as both Fallows and Howard French note, is that the press now covers the White House as if everything it does is a campaign event. Now on one level, this is true, but sometimes — particularly when it comes to foreign policy summits — it isn’t. But given the habits and tendencies of the media to regard everything as political, it’s almost impossible for them to change their frame of reference. French calls it “instant scorekeeping,” noting that “[e]verything [the press writes] is shot through this prism of short-term political calculation as opposed to thinking seriously about stuff.”

I think that part of the problem is not especially China-related but strikes me as a reflection of something that’s happening in the culture, particularly in the news culture, partially in response to the habits of television coverage and the increased pressures that come from digital media. There’s a growing reflex of instant punditry and reflexive reaction that works counter to more meaningful analysis. We’re in a state where we’re very often privileging the gut or the knee, as in knee-jerk, rather than thinking more meaningfully about things.

I think French (and Fallows) hit the nail on the head, but they miss one thing here: one of the reasons the White House press corps uses the campaign frame is that almost every news outlet now assigns its most able campaign reporters to cover the White House (Chuck Todd, white courtesy phone please). As one White House insider put it to Fallows (on background, of course),

I don’t care if someone criticizes us, I just would like it to be accurate and in context. I fear I am learning that is not the skill of some in the White House Press corps. They are experts on horse races, and so that is the way everything is cast.

I’m only surprised that this official is surprised. If you’re a reporter, and you’ve splent the past year/months/decade covering campaigns, then you’re going to look at everything as a campaign. It’s a manifestation of cynicism, and while unhelpful, it certainly is obvious to anyone able to step back and look at the broader question of how the media covers everything.

The third reason is related to the media’s role as a collective expression of a more generalized national uneasiness about the perceived decline in America’s role in the world. French, again:

The piece that really relates directly to China, I think, and the signals I get from this coverage are equally distressing. The unstated element for me in all of this coverage of Obama’s visit is a kind of hysterical insecurity in the American mind about the possibility—or reality, depending on how you look at it—of American decline. China being the most obvious and immediate symbol of American vulnerability and decline. You put these two things together, the hysterical insta-pundit on the one hand and the hysterical anxiety on the other hand, you end up with this kind of coverage that says essentially that Obama goes to China and doesn’t get instant, public, overt gratification on issues A through Zed and therefore it was a failed trip, or we’re losing ground to China or we have no more standing or we have no more clout or the Chinese moment is upon us—any number of variations on this decline-related theme. . . .

That leads us to the fourth and final reason: the MSM’s long slow slide into parochialism. French again:

To the extent that the American media embarks on this trip with some version of this very familiar storyline—that Obama, this great celebrity, this great speaker, this media star, this grand personality, is going to stroll through China and win the day—to the extent that they bought into that storyline and expected it to function, at any meaningful levels shows an extraordinary misunderstanding of China. You can fault that storyline on many other levels, but it shows a total misunderstanding of China. The Chinese doesn’t want to be part of our storyline.

The reality is that the MSM views everything through the prism of the United States. Their coverage of Obama’s trip reminds me of an old National Lampoon parody of local newspapers (be sure to read the sub-head on the story “Two Dacron Women Feared Missing in Volcanic Disaster”):

John Judis at the New Republic demonstrates just how bad this has become in his commentary on the South Korea leg of Obama’s trip (apologies for quoting at length, but I think it’s worth it):

If you are like me, you can’t name the second largest city in South Korea, you’re not within five or ten million of how many people live there, and you’re not sure how South Korea is currently getting on with China and Japan. So you need help. Both the Post and the Times focus not on South Korea per se, but on Obama’s taking a “stern tone” toward North Korea in his discussions with the South Koreans. The Post suggests that the two sides have agreed to a “new approach,” which will reject “endless, inconclusive disarmament negotiations” with the North. OK, pardon me if I yawn. Haven’t I read this story about forty-two times since 1995 or so. Having read the two stories I came away with exactly nothing.

Now let’s look at the Financial Times story by Christian Oliver and Edward Luce, which is about one-third the size of the other pieces. The headline reads, “Seoul trades on better ties with Beijing than Washington.” Hmm. That’s interesting and says something important about the balance of power in Asia and the world. Now here are the opening paragraphs:

When George Bush senior visited Seoul as US president 20 years ago, things were simple – the US was the undisputed main ally and trade partner. Astonishingly, there was only one weekly flight from South Korea to China, the communist foe.

Barack Obama on Wednesday visits a South Korea where the US is no longer the only show in town. China is now the main trade partner, with 642 flights each week. While the US is still the chief political ally, Mr. Obama’s cheery soundbites on Korean issues are not convincing Seoul that Washington is dedicating enough thought to the peninsula.

One flight versus 642 flights – that’s a small detail that tells a large story about South Korea and China. And what of the rest of the story? In the other newspapers, I learned that the U.S. is going to “satisfy” the demand of the North to send a “high-level” envoy by dispatching Stephen Bosworth to Pyongyang. But in the Financial Times, I learn that China is sending its premier Wen Jiabao and that diplomats in Seoul are not convinced that Bosworth, “a part-time diplomat, keeping a university teaching job in the US,” is the “right man for the job.”. . .

All in all, you get in one-third the length three times more interesting information than in the Times and Post articles, and it’s epitomized in the lead paragraphs comparing the number of flights that now run weekly between China and South Korea.

I’d even take it a step further: the FT reported on how South Korea had changed in the last twenty years (a story you rarely see — the media reserves that particular frame for its coverage of China), while the NYT and WaPo reported on how the U.S. position on North Korea hasn’t changed in the past twenty weeks.

Journalism used to be the first draft of history. Now it’s little more than a post-it note.

(An aside about Photo 1: Is the White House embarrassed about the trip? I could not find a single photo showing Obama with Hu Jintao or speaking to students in Shanghai. The only photos were of the students themselves, Obama at the Forbidden City, and Obama’s motorcade (???) heading to the Great Wall. I had to get this crappy shot from our friends at Dipnote.)

Guinea: Murder, Rape, and Chinese Investment

Unless you follow international news closely, you may have missed the tragic recent events in Guinea. From a September 29 NYT report:

Streets were deserted and shops were shut tight Tuesday in Conakry, Guinea, a day after government troops went on a brutal rampage at an opposition rally, shooting, stabbing, raping and assaulting dozens of men and women in a packed stadium.

Hospitals in the city were full of the wounded from what opponents of the military government here termed a massacre, and human rights groups continued to revise upward the number of dead, saying Tuesday that about 157 people are known to have been killed. Over a thousand victims had suffered gunshot wounds or other injuries, the groups said.

[A] precise death toll was impossible to ascertain because the army had removed bodies from the stadium where as many as 50,000 had gathered to protest the ruling military junta. . . .Witnesses said women were raped in public by the soldiers and sexually assaulted with their guns; the military fired repeated volleys on unarmed civilians at point-blank range, human rights officials said.

The most brutal soldiers were identified as belonging to the elite, red-beret-wearing presidential guard.

Capt. Moussa Dadis Camara, who took power in a coup d’etat last December after the death of Guinea’s previous dictator, has vehemently denied any responsibility for his soldiers’ brutality.

The government reported 56 dead, saying many persons had been trampled, while human rights advocates have documented at least 150 murders and at least 1,000 injured, substantiated by photographs of countless dead bodies that had been shot. Many of these photos were provided to various news organizations, including the New York Times.

Numerous reports have emerged describing brutal rapes of women and children, including a cellphone photo, also provided to the New York Times that shows soldiers surrounding a woman on the ground. Other media reports from the IRIN Africa news service on the “Aftermath of Rape” in Guinea elaborates in explicit terms:

At an 8 October gathering of Guinean women beaten or raped during the recent military attack on demonstrators, all wept as one young woman presented torn clothes soldiers had ripped off of her.

“We all collapsed in tears. It is unspeakably painful what happened here in Guinea,” Aïssata Daffe of the Union des Forces Républicaines political party.

The gathering was part of an ongoing effort by local NGOs and civil society organizations to collect information about the sexual violence during the 28 September military crackdown in order to appeal for assistance and justice. NGOs are still trying to determine how many women and girls were raped. For now 33 cases have been documented, according to local and international aid agencies.

In response, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton issued a statement to reporters in Washington, D.C. saying the “events [in Guinea] cannot be allowed to continue” and that “It was criminality of the greatest degree, and those who committed such acts should not be given any reason to expect that they will escape justice.” Clinton quickly dispatched Deputy Assistant Secretary of State William Fitzgerald, who met Camara yesterday and “us[ed] strong language” in a tense discussion that reportedly lasted for more than two hours.

Fitzgerald urged Camara not to run for re-election (Camara’s decision to run after promising not to is what prompted the peaceful opposition demonstration) and told the President that the events of Sept. 28th were directly tied to him. Later this month, Patricia N. Moller, currently U.S. Ambassador to Burundi, should arrive in Conakry to serve as the new U.S. Ambassador. We can only hope that she is able to maintain pressure on Camara.

Most Western diplomats have concluded the violence has undercut any shed of credbility that Camara had once possessed, and do not forsee him continuing as head of the National Council for Democracy and Development (CNDD), the 32 senior and middle ranking military officers (and a few civilians) behind last December’s coup.

Bernard Kouchner, the Foreign Minister of France, announced the suspension of military aid to Guinea, declaring that France could no longer work with Camara and urging intervention by the international community. France is supporting the initiative by the Commission of the African Union to send President Blaise Compaoré of Burkina Faso as mediator to address the Guinea crisis, and has encouraged the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the African Union, and the UN Commission on Human Rights to set up an international commission of inquiry.

Yesterday in Abuja, Nigeria, ECOWAS issued a Final Communique on the Guinea situation, stipulating that Guinea take a number of specific actions, including a pledge by Samara and other members of the junta that they would not stand for elections. The communique itself is written in quite blunt and uncharacteristically direct language, according to a retired State Department official who has worked extensively in West Africa. The official said that the quantity of strong documentary evidence of the violence was a significant contributing factor to the language — such as saying that “raped men, be treated and released from the hospital” — which is quite unusual and speaks to the chaos and anarchy that must have occurred on the ground.

Amid the disintegration of Guinea society, the junta announced a $7 billion infrastructure mining and oil deal with China. Guinea has the largest bauxite deposits in the world and is one of the poorest nations in Africa where people live on less than $1 per day.

Stay classy, Hu Jintao.

Liz Cheney is Here to Save the Day

According to Ben Smith over at Politico, Liz Cheney, best known as a former Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs daughter of Mr. Potter Dick, will head a new 501(c)4 organization to be known as “Keep America Safe.”

Former Vice President Dick Cheney’s eldest daughter Liz will launch a new group aimed at rallying opposition to the “radical” foreign policy of the Obama administration which it says has succeeded only in undermining the nation’s security.

The new group, Keep America Safe, will make the case against President Barack Obama’s moves to wrench America away from Bush era foreign policy on issues from detaining alleged terrorists at Guantanamo Bay to building a missile shield in Eastern Europe.

“The policies being proposed by the Obama administration are so radical across the board,” Cheney said. “Whether you’re a Republican or a Democrat, you want the nation to be strong and so many steps this president is taking are making the nation weaker.”

The new group will add institutional heft to a scathing critique of Obama articulated first and loudest by Liz Cheney’s father, and fills a void left by a Republican Party made skittish by the Iraq War, and apparently more eager to engage the president on domestic issues like health care.

Keeping America Safe plans to release memos from the Bush era demonstrating that torture was a good thing and not, uh, torture:

The Keep America Safe website, she said, would feature memos by Bush Administration lawyers justifying waterboarding and other practices to make the case that they aren’t torture.

Supporters “can read the memos on enhanced interrogation instead of reading them through the lens of the media where they’re called ‘Torture memos’ when, actually, they’re lawyers talking about an anti-torture statute and how not to violate it,” she said.

Here’s the thing — those memos aren’t about how not to violate Section 2340 of the U.S. Criminal Code — they’re about framing language so as to ensure that the Bush Administration’s actions could be justified as not violating the statute.

Maybe Ms. Cheney should consider changing her new group’s name to reflect its real purpose.

Something along the lines of “Keeping Daddy Safe from Prosecution.”

More Thoughts on Obama’s Peace Prize

When the Norwegian Nobel Committee announced this morning that it was awarding President Barack Obama the Peace Prize for “his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples,” Obama became only the third sitting president to receive the honor. The other two were Woodrow Wilson, who received the honor in 1920 for his futile efforts to establish the League of Nations, and to Theodore Roosevelt in 1905 for his negotiating peace between Russia and Japan.

Only nine months into his administration, Obama apparently won the Prize for his tone in reaching out to Muslims, exemplified in his ground breaking speech delivered in Cairo earlier this year; his urging to the international community to address pressing global problems such as climate change and the reduction of nuclear weapons, when he recently addressed the UN General Assembly.

But those are as much aspirations as achievements; no one can argue that Obama won because of anything he’s done. In fact, as Charlie noted on Twitter, it would be a mistake to think Obama got it just because he wasn’t Bush (though let’s not kid ourselves — that most definitely was part of Committee’s thinking). It’s more accurate to say that Obama is being honored for turning the supertanker, so to speak — moving the United States away from the disruptive role it played in world politics and back toward its more traditional role as leader and partner.

Now, as the old saying goes, the proof will be in the pudding. The pressure on Obama to deliver on Afghanistan, Iraq, Middle East peace, climate change, and nonproliferation has just gotten significantly — perhaps exponentially — greater. And then there is that sticky issue of human rights, which seems to have taken a back seat to realism in this administration. More to come on that last point later.

Obama’s Peace Prize and the Right’s Lack of Patriotism

Tanya is going to have some thoughts shortly, so I’ll limit my own to the following.

If I understand conservative/tea party/troglodyte reaction correctly, they are happy the United States lost the Olympics and angry that Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize.

USA! USA! USA!

Bet they’ll be really pissed if we win the next FIFA World Cup.

Afghanistan: Avoiding That 3 a.m Phone Call

My latest post at Care2 discusses the time that the Obama Administration is taking to review its Afghanistan and Pakistan strategy:

The problem with Bush’s team wasn’t that they wouldn’t be there at 3 a.m. — I mean there’s a phone next to the President’s bed, for crying out loud (and as The West Wing showed on many an occasion, a situation room in the White House that monitors such things 24/7). Nor was the problem that you don’t want Bush (or Obama or McCain or Clinton) answering the phone when it does ring.

The real problem is that bad planning, bad intelligence, and (in particular) bad decision-making are exactly what usually causes the phone to ring at 3 a.m.

The Obama team has been portrayed by Republicans as spending too much time making such an essential decision — as if knee-jerk, unthoughtful, and usually hastily arrived-at decisions got the Bush Administration anywhere.

You can read the whole thing here.

Street Theatre and The Coarsening of Political Discourse

The current debate over the war in Afghanistan is profoundly important and deeply serious. I see merit on both sides (and all those in-between) — from those who see victory as essential, even if it requires significant additional boots on the ground, to those who object to the war and want to see the U.S. pull out as quickly and expeditiously as possible. (And for the record, my sympathies trend more toward the former than the latter.)

Yesterday, those believing most strongly in ending the war held a protest outside the White House. I respect their efforts and recognize the sincerity of their position — even if I don’t agree with it. But somebody has to explain to these folks that mimes and tamborines not the most efficacious approach to demonstrating the seriousness of their cause.

This was The Washington Post’s coverage, for crying out loud. Imagine what Fox will do with this.

Yes, this was one guy. And the protest’s organizers can’t (necessarily) be responsible for the foolishness of one individual. But if you look at the Post’s full set of photos, many involve other protesters playing dress-up.

This is not a uniquely liberal phenomenon. There were idiots at the 9/12 tea party protests as well. And much as was the case yesterday, the media focused on the nuttiest folks in the crowd.

So is the media to blame for this? Well, certainly they play a role. But our coarsened culture, where everyone is encouraged to make a fool of themselves in order to get their 15 seconds of fame, doesn’t help either.

Take a moment to compare the nonsense above (as well as any collection of photos from 9/12) and compare it to this:

Sure, this isn’t entirely fair. But the genius of King and the other civil rights movement leaders was in recognizing that dignity and seriousness were an important part of their message. If they didn’t look like they should be taken seriously, they wouldn’t be taken seriously. That’s why almost every photo of civil rights demonstrators shows them in business attire.

Somewhere along the way, grassroots movements forgot that, as both George Lakoff and Frank Luntz have noted, accurate messaging is the key to successful advocacy. Posters showing Obama as The Joker or Hitler and mimes performing street theatre simply don’t convey the gravity that issues like health care reform and Afghanistan merit. They also do nothing to advance the ideas behind the idiotic presentation.

I’m not sure what to do about this problem, but I think that until we can find a way to ensure that the nature of our protests match the seriousness of our debates, it’s going to be awfully difficult to get out of the mess we’re in.

Photo of mime: Sarah Voisin, The Washington Post, used under the doctrine of fair use.

Photo of 1964 March on Washington: Life Magazine, via Google Photo, with permission to use for non-commercial purposes.

Afghanistan: Fail to the Redskins

Heh:

In a surprise move, the administration today named Washington Redskins owner Dan Snyder to head up the war effort in Afghanistan. The former advertising moghul [sic] and renaissance man will assume full control immediately. He held a rare press conference in Ashburn, Virginia.

“With my Redskins on the way to victory I can give something back to my country by leading it to victory, too. Managerial skills are all the same,” Snyder insisted. “If you can run a successful telemarketing business like I did, you can win a war – it’s not that hard. And I’m going to do to Afghanistan what I’ve done to the Redskins.” The boisterous sports aficionados fell silent. They knew he could do it.

I’ll get grief from my DC friends, but God do I hate the Redskins. I hate their owner. I hate their name and logo. And I can’t stand the religious devotion of their fan base — who take their worship to a level far beyond any other NFL city (well, except maybe Dallas and Philadelphia). Redskins fans are to the NFL as Opus Dei is to the Catholic Church.

So watching them struggle against genuinely crappy teams (including my sorry Buccaneers) has been one long delightful schadenfreude moment.

Sadly, Snyder is not the worst owner in Washington. That distinction goes to the Lerners, who have managed to thoroughly mismanage my beloved Nationals, or as they mistakenly called them earlier this season, the Natinals. There’s nothing like back-to-back 100 loss seasons to make a fan miserable.

Oh, and go Tigers. It’s not just that I grew up in Detroit. It’s also that the Twins were the original Senators, who broke DC’s heart

Photo: Publicresource.org via Flickr using a CC BY 2.0 license

Obama, Tibet, and “Inconsistency” in U.S. Foreign Policy

David Rothkopf makes an off-hand observation:

The problem with U.S. foreign policy is that more often than not the true Secretary of State of the United States is yesterday’s newspaper. That’s what determines what today’s policy will be. We achieve balance in complex relationships through cyclical inconsistency. Slam China on tires … tiptoe around them on Tibet … hope that gives you some room to make nice with Taiwan on arms transfers. Too often the countervailing measures are out of whack in terms of real importance to us or to them.

I think this can be true, but not in this particular case. Obama’s decision to avoid a meeting with the Dalai Lama is not the direct result of the decision to ratchet up tariffs on tires, but rather part of a broader strategy of “constructive engagement” with China that, the Administration hopes, will encourage China to work with the U.S. on a range of issues (including not only the economy but also Iran, North Korea, and Pakistan).

In accusing the Administration of “inconsistency,” Rothkopf is pretty selective — how is this Administration acting any less consistently than President Bush, who met with the Dalai Lama and yet also gave the Chinese carte blanche to abuse human rights in Xinjiang? In fact, I would argue that the outlier here is the tire tariff — every other Administration statement on China has sought to emphasize common interests.

I think the President was mistaken in not welcoming His Holiness to the White House. I’ve been deeply disappointed by his Administration’s downgrading of human rights as a foreign policy priority. But given the Obama Administration’s past statements on China and human rights, the decision was hardly inconsistent.

The Power Blog

In all the hustle of the United Nations and G20 coverage last week, I failed to call your attention to this tidbit.

While at U.N .headquarters, President Obama paid tribute to the blue helmeted U.N. peacekeepers with a wreath and a meeting with top donors of peacekeeping troops. All well and good–and as it should be with 113,000 peacekeepers putting their lives on the line everyday.

But this isn’t what caught my attention (nor Charlie’s).

We were intrigued by the White House blog post about the event. More specifically, the author of the post was both appropriate and unusual.

Few know more about genocide, and efforts to prevent genocide, worldwide than Samantha Power, author of Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide and Chasing the Flame: Sergio Vieira de Mello and the Fight to Save the World. In those books, Power raised many questions and critiques of both U.S. policy and U.N. operations.

But today, Power is a senior director on the National Security Council, a perch which usually allows for only limited appearances and few publications. Yet here she is on an official blog giving us the inside scoop on a meeting of the president with other heads of state.

To me, this looks like a great example of the transparency and accessibility we hoped for with this Administration. Let’s hope we see even more of it.

Thought for the Day: Today’s Big Story Trumps Monday’s Big Story

I’m not saying this is why President Obama did it, but it does occur to me that today’s joint statement on Iran means that everyone (except Spencer) forgot that Gen. Stanley McCrystal sent his troop and resource request to the Pentagon earlier this afternoon.

Mahmoud and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Week

Please check out my latest Care2 post, which looks what a really, really, really crappy week Mahmoud Ahmedinejad just had. Here’s a taste:

Now [the second nuclear facility] is not merely a small building in the desert. Nope. It’s a Dr.-Evil’s-secret-complex-in-the-mountain kind of facility. And the Administration went public at least in part to demonstrate to the Iranians that it had the intelligence capacity to find out about such stuff. In response, Ahmadinejad canceled subsequent media appearances, including a press conference scheduled to take place this afternoon.

Maybe Ahmadinejad can convince the West that it’s an amusement park ride.

You can read the whole thing here.

If you’re curious where the photo comes from, check out my post from last summer about Iran’s secret missile photoshop project.

Obama the Communitarian

Apologies for the delay in getting this up, but I wanted to give priority to Tanya’s very important post on the events in Belgrade and Keith’s commentary on the G-20.

Yesterday, I posted over at Care2, offering my thoughts on Obama’s UN speech. I urge you to go read the whole thing, but I wanted to highlight one point:

[In his UN speech,] Obama used language consistent with communitarianism, a political philosophy that believes that individual rights must be balanced by the needs and interests of the community. Communitarians argue that each community is shaped by its culture, but also believe that a strong civil society is a prerequisite for a strong community.

Now take a look at some of what Obama said during the speech:

“We can only reach [a future of peace an dprosperity] if we recognize that all nations have rights, but all nations have responsibilities as well. That is the bargain that makes [the world] work. That must be the guiding principle of international cooperation. . . .The United States stands ready to begin a new chapter of international cooperation — one that recognizes the rights and responsibilities of all nations. And so with confidence in our cause, and with a commitment to our values, we call on all nations to join us in building the future that our people so richly deserve.”

As I noted in my post, it’s all there — the focus on balancing rights and responsibilities, the emphasis on needing to work together to achieve common goals, the challenge to other nations to the burden of solving the world’s most pressing problems. Obama went out of his way to call on every nation live up to the UN’s founding vision — what he called “the wisdom that nations could advance their interests by acting together instead of splitting apart.”

It’s an interesting way to approach foreign policy. The danger, of course is that communitarianism by its very nature requires consent, which other countries — including America’s partners and allies — may not want to grant. Without it, it will be much harder to accomplish Obama’s vision.

That said, I think it’s a smart move by Obama, essentially giving the world a vision reasserts American leadership while acknowledging past American mistakes. John Bolton may not like it (surprise!), but we’ve seen more progress on nukes in the past 72 hours than we had seen over the past nine years.

The first major test of Obama’s new approach will be Iran — especially after this morning’s news. Obama has laid the groundwork, and others — particularly the Russians — appear willing to go along.

So far.

Turning the Tide on Nuclear Security

The most tangible and urgent danger facing the developed world today is arguably the threat of terrorists obtaining nuclear material. Highly enriched uranium could be used to craft a crude fission device of significant magnitude. Plutonium or low enriched uranium could be used for a “dirty bomb” spreading radiation and panic.

The possibility of so-called “loose nuclear material” falling into almost anyone’s hands was driven home by this piece in the Washington Post earlier this week. And, thank goodness, it is a threat taken seriously by the Obama Administration which has made securing all of this material over the next four years a top priority.

Loose nuclear material, nuclear nonproliferation, and overall disarmament are on the agenda today as 15 heads-of-state meet at the United Nations Security Council. U.S. President Barack Obama chairs the historic meeting which is expected to pass a meaningful resolution. (UPDATE: The resolution passed unanimously. Full text here.)

Today’s action is just one step in a long path to lower nuclear dangers around the world. The U.S. decision to drop a missile defense plan to be based in eastern Europe has already lowered tensions. (One wag said we are getting a good deal of benefit for giving up a failed system intended to defend us against a threat which no longer existed.)

This new atmosphere will likely be beneficial to talks between the United States and Russia to drastically cut their strategic nuclear arsenals. Something both sides desperately want to do, but in the real world can only accomplish in tandem.

And if a U.S.-Russia deal can really be reached, watch out. Big global change could be in store.

All the other nuclear powers in the world, when asked why they won’t reduce their arsenals or cooperate more on nonproliferation, say, “Why should we when the U.S. and Russia won’t reduce theirs?” Well if that roadblock is cleared, all kinds of new agreements and arrangements will be on the table.

Imagine the possibilities if this is the context for the global summit on nuclear security being held by President Obama in Washington, DC next March. We may very well look back on September of 2009 as the moment when the nuclear tide finally began to turn.

(More from the Stanley Foundation on nuclear security here.)

UN General Assembly Opens

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will deliver opening remarks to the General Assembly in New York beginning at approximately 9 a.m. ET this morning.

United States President Barack Obama will speak at approximately 9:45 a.m. ET

You can view live coverage online at: www.un.org/webcast

Update: President Obama said, “Those who used to chastise America for acting alone in the world cannot now stand by and wait for America to solve the world’s problems alone.” His full remarks are here.

Update 2: Muammar Qaddafi’s scheduled 15 minute speech ran for 100 minutes. Joshua Keating at ForeignPolicy.com has an insightful summary.

Update 3: Full text of all UNGA opening session speeches are available here.

President Obama’s Global Governance Tour

President Obama will, in the space of 48 hours this week, address the opening session of the United Nations General Assembly, chair a rare “heads-of-state” level meeting of the United Nations Security Council, and host a meeting of the G20 leading nations in Pittsburgh.

At the General Assembly on Wednesday, I expect a cross between the president’s April speech in Prague and the one given by US Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice last month at New York University. If nothing else, the image of Barack Obama behind that green marble podium, representing the United States of America in front of all the other world leaders, will send an unmistakable message about the nature of our democracy.

Of course the most newsworthy items at the UNGA will likely be President Obama’s Tuesday meeting and photo with the Israeli prime minister and the president of the Palestinian Authority… and his efforts to avoid crossing paths with President Ahmadinejad of Iran and Libyan leader, Muammar Gaddafi.

As for the Security Council, the topic will be nuclear arms control. And the president has been quite forceful on this issue. He campaigned on deep strategic arms cuts with the Russians and a plan to secure all loose nuclear material (the stuff terrorists can get) within the next four years. Reports say the president rejected the first revised nuclear arms plan from the Pentagon because it didn’t go far enough to reduce our arsenal. And last week’s announcement scrapping the missile defense shield in eastern Europe could open the door for the broadest global cooperation on nukes in a generation. Thursday’s Security Council meeting will be the first indicator. A draft resolution to be debated at the session has been leaked.

Finally, Air Force One leaves New York Thursday for Pittsburgh and the G20 summit. Note that this is the fourth global summit in 10 months. We had the G20 in Washington in November and then again in London in April. July was the G8 (which actually had about 30 countries in attendance) in Italy. There is a very real case of summit fatigue in major global capitals.

Some have already set low expectations for this G20 session. Protectionism is on the rise and bonus pay (a populist issue with no real impact on the global economy) may steal the spotlight. But I will be reading other tea leaves in the Pittsburgh confab.

The G meetings have become the red hot center of 21st century global governance.

These rotating, informal gatherings have the flexibility needed for today’s fluid policy environment. The G8 is moving to include more of the world’s rising powers, and the G20 has proven nimble in the face of a global financial crisis. The real tests will therefore be a) can these bodies continue to show leadership even after the current crisis fades, b) can the Gs find ways to keep moving beyond photo-ops into further accountability for their pledges, and c) can they find meaningful ways to interface with the legitimate, universal institutions (like the United Nations) to implement and lock in real international cooperation?

I plan to write more on all of this as the week unfolds.

Missile Congeniality

This post is jointly authored by Tanya and Charlie.

Unless you’ve been living in a cave with Osama, you probably know by now that President Obama announced on Thursday that he was ending the so-called “missilie shield” plan devised by his predecessor.

Timing is everything in life, but it looks like the Pentagon and the White House had a meeting of minds. Updated intelligence made it pretty clear that Iran will not soon have the capacity to launch inter-continental ballistic missiles on the U.S.

This was Obama’s first major national security decision outside of Afghanistan and Iraq, and it further reinforced the widespread perception that he is a hard-headed realist when it comes to foreign policy. That was further reinforced by the fact that Brent Scowcroft, Bush 41’s national security advisor and the most eminent realist in either party, quickly praised the decision:

I strongly approve of President Obama’s decision regarding missile defense deployments in Europe. I believe it advances U.S. national security interests, supports our allies, and better meets the threats we face.

Setting aside the lovely press release-ease for a moment, Scowcroft couldn’t have done much more to help Obama at a time when most conservatives were accusing him of appeasement (more on that later).

But if Scowcroft liked it, the Russians liked it even more. In response, they announced that it would not deploy its Iskander tactical missiles in Kaliningrad — which happens to be just a short flight to Berlin and other popular tourist destinations.Russian President Dmitri Medvedev said he “valued” the U.S. decision; Prime Minister-for-life Vladimir Putin was equally celebratory, saying that he hoped that Obama’s “correct and brave decision [would] be be followed by others.”

The Obama team is not abandoning missile defense altogether; it remains concerned about Iran’s short- and medium-range missile capacity. The White House argues that its new approach will be “stronger, swifter, smarter,” with plans to start deploying existing SM-3 interceptors using the sea-based Aegis system in 2011. An improved version will follow in 2015, using both ship- and land-based systems.

Turkey is one possible home for the 2015 deployment. It remains a strategic player within NATO but it also is friendly with Iran. Coincidentally, Turkey happens to be shopping for long range missile defense systems at the moment, which I’m sure has absolutely nothing to do with their candidacy. Unless, of course, it does.

(One brief aside: does anyone else note the irony here? Back in 1962 during the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Soviet Union deployed missiles to Cuba in part because the United States had deployed missiles in Turkey. Ultimately, the crisis was resolved when the two countries agreed on a quid pro quo withdrawal while denying publicly that they were doing any such thing. Now, nearly fifty years later, the Russians are happy to see missiles redeployed to Turkey. Somewhere, Khrushchev and Kennedy are laughing.)

The one surprise is that Albania — yes Albania — is a candidate to host some of the missiles. Not only is Albania now a member of NATO (something that somehow escaped the notice of almost everyone but Albanians), it has 362 kilometers of coastline and four cities with the capacity to host American cruiser and destroyers.

Albania is eager to join the EU , hoping that its membership in NATO will help it make its case (not that that has helped Turkey, which has been a member of NATO since 1952 and is nowhere near EU membership). Sali Berisha, Albania’s ambitious prime minister (and a former communist), no doubt would be delighted to host NATO ships in its ports to shipborne Aegis systems.

The only person not happy is Polish President Lech Kaczynski, who faces a tough reelection battle next year and who had trumpeted the missile shield as evidence of his administration’s ability to defend Poland against Russia. Fakt, a right-wing Polish tabloid sympathetic to Kacynski, screamed “Betrayal! The USA has sold us to the Russians and stabbed us in the back.” Unfortunately for Kaczynski, the Polish people don’t seem to share such sentiments — a new poll released Saturday shows that 48 percent of respondents thought that the Administration’s decision was good for Poland, and only 31 percent disagreed.

The Czechs — the other supposed beneficiaries — were largely indifferent to the news that they would not have a missile shield. This may be in part because the decision to deploy missiles to the Czech Republic was largely designed to reinforce the Bush claim that the system wasn’t aimed at the Russians.

One of the best parts of the White House’s decision was its work behind the scenes to coordinate the decision with NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen. Shortly after the U.S. announcement, Rasmussen called for a new strategic partnership that would entail a “joint review” with Moscow of global security challenges within the NATO framework:

Mr. Rasmussen called on Moscow for a “genuine new beginning in our relationship, in our own interests and that of the entire international community”. Referring to the US missile defense rethink, he said “the new plans will make capabilities ready sooner than the previous plans and will provide us with broader coverage.”

“There is no reason to fear [that] these plans will weaken the defense of any ally. “Improved relations between NATO and Russia will also be to the benefit of our eastern allies,” he said.

Meanwhile, back in Teapartystan, neoconservatives and 9/12 activists came together in a rare show of unity to denounce the White House decision as appeasement. Bloggers and politicians alike dragged out the increasingly hoary Munich metaphor, accusing Obama of caving to both the Russians and the Iranians.

John McCain — the same man who, one year ago, was willing to use U.S. force to prop up a corrupt regime in Georgia — wasn’t much better. He called Obama’s plan “untested” (as opposed to the vaporware that the Bushies were pushing) despite the fact that it is the same Aegis missile technology currently being used on the — wait for it — USS John McCain.

In the end, Obama chose pragmatism, deciding to abandon a fantastic scheme in favor of engagement with Russia — and at the same time, sustaining efforts to contain Iran’s missile capacity. To put it another way, Obama understood the distinction between strategy –building a stable relationship with Russia — and tactics — countering the threat of Iranian medium- and short-range missiles. That’s something the Bush Administration never really got the hang of in its eight years.

Photo: Public domain via Wikipedia

Saturday Surprise: A Breakthrough in the Middle East?

Not to put too fine a point on it: Holy Crap.

Via the apparently sleepless and time-off-less Laura Rozen:

THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
__________________________________________________________________
For Immediate Release September 19, 2009

Statement from White House press secretary Robert Gibbs

On Tuesday, September 22, President Obama will host a trilateral meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. The trilateral meeting will be immediately preceded by bilateral meetings between President Obama and the two leaders. These meetings will continue the efforts of President Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and Special Envoy George Mitchell to lay the groundwork for the relaunch of negotiations, and to create a positive context for those negotiations so that they can succeed.

“It is another sign of the President’s deep commitment to comprehensive peace that he wants to personally engage at this juncture, as we continue our efforts to encourage all sides to take responsibility for peace and to create a positive context for the resumption of negotiations,” said Special Envoy Mitchell.

Wow. Talk about close-hold. I don anyone sawcoming. Just earlier this week there were several articles suggesting that the negotiations were stalled and that nothing was going to happen soon (sorry — posting quickly; will try to get the links up later). So much for that theory.

If George Mitchell actually is the one pulling this off (and assuming that it actually leads to something more than another faux deal), think about what that means: he will go down as one great — if not the greatest — peacemakers of our time. First Northern Ireland, and now this. And with little fanfare and even less attention.

9/11: Democratic Martyrs and the American Idea

This is partly a repost from last year, with some new observations added at the end. Two days after I put this up, David Foster Wallace committed suicide. I still think his short essay represents one of the most lucid distillations of what it means to live in our crazy, troubled, and wonderful country. Let us not forget those who died that day, nor those who, like Wallace, who have/had the courage of their convictions to demand better of all of us in the years since that tragic, terrible day.

About a year ago, The Atlantic asked a number of prominent thinkers to write, in 300 words or less, what they thought was “The Future of the American Idea.”

This is what novelist David Foster Wallace had to say in response.

Just Asking

Are some things still worth dying for?

Is the American idea one such thing?

Are you up for a thought experiment?

What if we chose to regard the 2,973 innocents killed in the atrocities of 9/11 not as victims but as democratic martyrs, “sacrifices on the altar of freedom”?

In other words, what if we decided that a certain baseline vulnerability to terrorism is part of the price of the American idea? And, thus, that ours is a generation of Americans called to make great sacrifices in order to preserve our democratic way of life—sacrifices not just of our soldiers and money but of our personal safety and comfort?

In still other words, what if we chose to accept the fact that every few years, despite all reasonable precautions, some hundreds or thousands of us may die in the sort of ghastly terrorist attack that a democratic republic cannot 100-percent protect itself from without subverting the very principles that make it worth protecting?

Is this thought experiment monstrous? Would it be monstrous to refer to the 40,000-plus domestic highway deaths we accept each year because the mobility and autonomy of the car are evidently worth that high price?

Is monstrousness why no serious public figure now will speak of the delusory trade-off of liberty for safety that Ben Franklin warned about more than 200 years ago? What exactly has changed between Franklin’s time and ours? Why now can we not have a serious national conversation about sacrifice, the inevitability of sacrifice—either of (a) some portion of safety or (b) some portion of the rights and protections that make the American idea so incalculably precious?

In the absence of such a conversation, can we trust our elected leaders to value and protect the American idea as they act to secure the homeland? What are the effects on the American idea of Guantánamo, Abu Ghraib, Patriot Acts I and II, warrantless surveillance, Executive Order 13233, corporate contractors performing military functions, the Military Commissions Act, NSPD 51, etc., etc.? Assume for a moment that some of these measures really have helped make our persons and property safer—are they worth it?

Where and when was the public debate on whether they’re worth it? Was there no such debate because we’re not capable of having or demanding one? Why not? Have we actually become so selfish and scared that we don’t even want to consider whether some things trump safety? What kind of future does that augur?

I would add, from the perspective of 2009, that even under a new Administration, this debate has not yet occurred. Rejecting the failed policies of the previous Administration is not the same as making a principled argument as to why our values matter, why we must reject such extremism, and why we must embrace the better angels of our nature, no matter what we face.

Tuesday night, President Obama told Congress, “we did not come here to fear the future, we came here to shape it.” We cannot shape the past, but neither should we fear it.

Afghanistan: Get Stuffed

The UN sponsored Independent Election Commission of Afghanistan announced today that it is ordering a partial recount of votes cast during the August 20 presidential elections. The Commission based its decision on ”clear and convincing fraud” in a number of polling stations, even though election officials have declared that President Hamid Karzai had won a plurality of the votes.

The results are likely to be delayed well beyond the original September 19 deadline. According to the latest count with 91.6 percent of the polling stations tallied, Karzai has 54.1 percent of the vote, while Dr. Abdullah Abdullah has dropped to 28.3 percent. If avoiding a run-off election.

These fraud reports break new ground, and not in a good way: unnamed Western officials indicate that supporters of President Hamid Karzai set up approximately 800 fake polling sites that garnered thousands of fraudulent votes. Investigations also report that Karzai supporters took over another 800 polling stations and used them to cast thousands of ineligible votes for the incumbent.

This is beyond anything I’ve observed. Indeed, it even beats anything I observed in the Balkans, including fifteen to twenty busloads of Serbian voters pulling up at polling stations just inside Bosnia in 1996. We also recorded more voters than people registered in that discredited election. In Nepal I witnessed this gentleman “assisting” every woman in his village to vote for his preferred party, akin to reports of families voting together in Afghanistan.

Unfortunately these reports only add to the pressure that the Obama Administration has to be feeling about its policy in Afghanistan. But what is more disturbing is the the fact that American soldiers are dying to sustain the rule of a man who increasingly appears to be uninterested in free and fair elections.

The real numbers are anyone’s guess. Karzai’s supporters have stuffed so many ballot boxes that in some cases, there are more voters than people. Such fraudulent activities do not bode well for a successful democracy or another Karzai led government. Obama and his advisors have plenty to do in Afghanistan, but waiting for the Independent Election Commission to sort out this troubling situation is just another burden the administration doesn’t need.

Afghanistan: See EU Later?

Yesterday, the Financial Times reported that Gordon Brown, prime minister of the UK, Angela Merkel, chancellor of Germany and Nicholas Sarkozy, president of France have sent a letter to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, asking the UN to sponsor a meeting of allies engaged in the war in Afghanistan to discuss coordinating resources and support for the U.S.-led effort, once the next government is formed.

Brown and Merkel face considerable opposition at home for their armies’ participation in the Afghanistan war. Britain and German military forces are the second and third largest of NATO participants in the Afghanistan operation. It is not merely Americans who are dying in Afghanistan. Fifty British soldiers have died over the last four months; as a result, Brown faces increased opposition not only from the Tories but also within his own party — one junior minister already has resigned in protest.

The NATO airstrike called by a German general officer last Friday has generated considerable outrage in Germany. Speaking before the German Bundestag today, Merkel strongly defended the German military who called in the airstrike resulting in approximately 70 to 100 persons killed, while urging patience and called for a full investigation saying that “any innocent life lost in Afghanistan is one too many.”

The Financial Times also reported that

Ms Merkel on Sunday came under fire from opposition parties over her government’s military deployment in Afghanistan, which is opposed by most Germans. Gregor Gysi, parliamentary head of the radical Left party, criticised the air strike against hijacked tankers ordered by German troops in Kunduz province on Friday. Mr Gysi called the resulting deaths of civilians “unjustified and inexcusable.”

No doubt the Social Democrats and Greens also will make the NATO air strike an issue in the upcoming parliamentary elections.

Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan has assigned Canadian Maj. Gen. C. S. Sullivan to lead the formal investigation along with an U.S. Air Force Officer and a German legal advisor. Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the former Prime Minister of Denmark, who assumed the NATO secretary general position last month, also called for an investigation.

The timing of the Europeans’ announcement is no coincidence. U.S. allies in Europe want to know what the Obama Administration’s plans are to “fix” Afghanistan, and will continue to withhold their full support until they have an answer. Meanwhile, the Administration is weighing a new report from McChrystal that in all likelihood includes a request for more troops. Although Obama will be focusing on health care over the next few weeks, Afghanistan is also likely to remain on the front burner, especially given the reported disagreements within Obama’s national security team.

As Merkel and Brown continue to face growing domestic opposition to continued participation in ISAF, they will continue to push the Obama Administration to make its priorities clear and chart a way forward that will benefit the Afghan people — and in the process, make it easier for U.S. allies to convince their electorate of the need for continued engagement.

Afghanistan: Blast from the Past

Kimberly Marten, a professor of political scientist at Barnard College and Columbia University is researching the role of war lords in Afghanistan and Pakistan, had a piece last week in the International Herald Tribune and the New York Times asserting that the Obama Administration and Afghan government had adopted a policy to pay tribal militias to maintain security during the elections, but now wrongfully plan to make it permanent.

I agree with Marten. She makes a strong case that this policy, initially promoted by David Kilcullen (an Australian who was the senior counterinsurgency advisor to Gen. David Petraeus), is a return to the British colonial military practice of paying Pashtun tribal members in the geographical areas that would later become Pakistan (although Pashtuns live on both sides of an arbitrary colonial-era border between Afghanistan and Pakistan).

Marten argues that by injecting outside money into Pashtun tribal politics, the British disrupted not only local Pashtun tribal politics, but also undermined equality of all Pashtun men, which had been embraced for centuries. British intelligence officers charted sub-tribes and leaders, known as “maliks” and paid them more. This practice became entrenched for decades, thus upon independence in 1947, Pakistan not only continued it, but enshrined it in the Pakistan constitution. The Pakistanis feared the maliks, who were threatening to secede and establish an independent Pashtunistan.

In these Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan, which buttress Afghanistan’s porous southern boundary, the maliks work with federal agents, control budgets, set priorities, administer laws and dispense patronage. According to Marten, corruption abounds and until recently, only maliks could vote. Astonishingly, the British colonial punishment system remains in effect.

Marten notes that those who have been left outside of the malik system (and have not benefited from its patronage) have become a breeding ground for al Qaeda and support for the Taliban. Poverty-stricken young people, with no prospect for jobs or educational opportunities, have found jihad to be the only outlet available. It is no coincidence that this is now al Qaeda’s home base, creating a major security headache not only for Islamabad, but also Kabul and Washington.

I can think of two other good reasons for not paying the maliks in Afghanistan. Marten believes that the Afghanistan National Army is the one Afghani institution that instills pride and a healthy sense of nationalism. Why pay maliks $150 per month when the U.S. objective is to build strong security institutions, enabling Afghanis to eventually assume these responsibilities from ISAF? Let’s put our money to its most effective use in what is already a too costly eight-year war.

Second, Marten argues that Gen. David Petraeus pursuit of the Sunni Awakening in Iraq was based upon Kilcullen’s hypothesis that the best practice in any tribal situation is to recruit local leaders to enforce the community’s laws and practices. This is how Petraeus worked with the Sunni sheiks in central Iraq: by paying them, creating the equivalent of another malik system. Due to the rise of sectarian violence in Iraq and reported targeting of these leaders by the Shiites, it remains to be seen if this practice has indeed been successful.

Why start up another such system in Afghanistan when the evidence of such practices in Pakistan are clearly problematic and the jury remains out on whether the Iraq policy has effectively worked?

Marten is right when she argues that sustainable economic growth is not possible without a stable and secure environment. Most expatriates I know in Afghanistan, work in compounds, going from compound to compound and having simply not enough direct contact with Afghanis because the security situation is so unstable. By paying militia, the U.S. recreates a British colonial military policy that undermines its efforts to build an effective Army and police forces, This policy only reinforces the power of regional war lords, who have long been part of the problem and not the solution in advancing a stable Afghanistan.

Afghanistan: Between a Rock and a Hard Reality

President Barack Obama and his team of advisors are stuck between a rock and a hard place in unforgiving Afghanistan: The August 20 elections appear to have been riddled with fraudulent activities, allegedly directed by President Hamid Karzai. Karzai is currently leading with 46 percent, besting his closest rival Dr. Abullah Abdullah, who has about 35 percent, as the count continues. Abdullah flew down to Kandahar Tuesday to receive the endorsement of the Bariz leaders, a southern tribe who have accused Karzai and his advisors of stuffing 23,900 ballots, a notably brazen act.

But the endorsement of Abdullah never happened. Aides to Mr. Karzai’s brother, Ahmed Wali, seized all the ballots in the Shorabak District on election day and shipped them to Kabul; reportedly every ballot was marked for Karzai. The Afghan Electoral Complaints Commission has received 2,729 complaints of electoral irregularities to date.

No one expected this election to be without challenges. There is not a single country in democratic transition that doesn’t have technical problems. But with each passing day, Karzai, who tried (with out much success) to convince the United States and, more importantly, the Afghan people that the election would not be fraudulent, looks weaker and weaker — and at a time when the Taliban has become far more sophisticated in its strategy and tactics. Meanwhile, July saw 43 American soldiers die — the greatest single monthly tally since the war began.

Not only does the administration have this situation to ponder, but Tuesday’s morning news greeted us with a Taliban proclaimed assassination of Abdullah Laghmani, the deputy director of Afghanistan’s intelligence bureau, who had been investigating Taliban for criminal network activities. Meanwhile, Lt. Gen. Stanley Chrystal, commander of NATO troops in Afghanistan has presented a new strategy to the Pentagon that included a request for more troops (rumored to be up to 40,000 additional soldiers equaling to two Army divisions) to get Afghanistan back on track.

As Obama’s approval numbers hover at 50 percent approval (mostly due to the health care debate) Americans’ enthusiasm for a sustained Afghanistan war could also decrease. Apparently White House staff are also concerned whether Americans have an appetite for expanding the war, especially given the continued engagement in Iraq and a sputtering economy to contend with at home. In fact, if anything should grab the president’s eye it should be that 56 percent of Americans believe the country is on the wrong track, according to a recent poll on Pollster.com. The sagging economy has to be a contributing drag on those numbers.

First out of the gate to criticize Obama’s Afghan war, was George Will, the conservative columnist who wrote in the Washington Post:

U.S. forces are being increased by 21,000, to 68,000, bringing the coalition total to 110,000. About 9,000 are from Britain, where support for the war is waning. Counterinsurgency theory concerning the time and the ratio of forces required to protect the population indicates that, nationwide, Afghanistan would need hundreds of thousands of coalition troops, perhaps for a decade or more. That is inconceivable.

So, instead, forces should be substantially reduced to serve a comprehensively revised policy: America should do only what can be done from offshore, using intelligence, drones, cruise missiles, airstrikes and small, potent Special Forces units, concentrating on the porous 1,500-mile border with Pakistan, a nation that actually matters.

Genius, said de Gaulle, recalling Bismarck’s decision to halt German forces short of Paris in 1870, sometimes consists of knowing (his italics) when to stop.

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the joint chiefs, conducted a joint press briefing this afternoon strongly defending President Obama’s March war strategy, but Mullen candidly admitted that “there was a sense of urgency” and time was not on their side. Mullen underscored the urgency of the mission by saying he believed they had to reverse the security situation “over the next 12 to 18 months.”

Gates discussed Lt. Gen. McChrystal’s secret report indicating that he had received it two days ago and informally sent it to the president for his review. Gates also said that he would be meeting with President Obama next week to discuss the report’s security assessment with him and members of the National Security Council. But he pointedly said that all decisions about additional resources would not be made until that review process was completed, including the Joint Chiefs, as well as General Petreus, the commander of Southern Command.

Both men were emphatic that the main objective of the March strategy was to protect the Afghani people and to build up Afghani security forces over time. Reporters challenged Mullen as this strategy being “very manpower intensive.” But Mullen explained McChrystal’s tactical strategy to be “very direct, very face-to-face”and has made that tactical strategy the number one priority for U.S. forces.

While noting that not all of the 21,000 troops approved by the President in March had yet arrived to Afghanistan, Gates said he was concerned about the U.S. forces’ footprint becoming overly intrusive, based upon the history of a country which has reflected in the past that ”a tipping point can be reached when outside forces become part of the problem than rather the solution.”

Gates is wise to point out the history of Afghanistan as its militias have demonstrated countless times that it is none too intimidated by great powers and tossed out the British Empire, not once, but twice in the 19th century, followed by the Soviet Empire in the 20th century.

As the President takes a break from the pressures of the Oval office at Camp David over the weekend, it is the time for him to consider a number of sobering critiques by those outside the Administration. The following questions should be considered:

What are the objectives of the Afghanistan war? If we are not nation building, then what are the outcomes the Administration intends to achieve and to what end?
How many lives is the Administration willing to lose? 5,000, 10,000, 15,000, or 20,000 casualties? How long will the American public support such an operation without jeopardizing the president’s ability to effectively govern at home and in the world?
Given the fact that the U.S. cut two active Army divisions in the 1990s and the troop withdrawal in Iraq will take time, where are the soldiers going to come from? The active Army components, as well as the reservists and guardsmen, are contributing well above what can be expected.
How much more money can the U.S. government spend on this war, in view of a troubled economy?

Until we see answers, it’s going to be hard for the Administration to win not only the war over there, but the battle for public opinion at home.

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