State Department » Undiplomatic

26 February 2010 Charles J. Brown
12:49 pm

Surprise: Washington Post Mangles Story on Religion and Foreign Policy

I’ve been meaning to get to a report in Wednesday’s Washington Post headlined “‘God gap’ impedes U.S. foreign policy, experts say.” The story, by Post reporter David Waters, well… let me just quote it rather than try to explain it:

American foreign policy is handicapped by a narrow, ill-informed and “uncompromising Western secularism” that feeds religious extremism, threatens traditional cultures and fails to encourage religious groups that promote peace and human rights, according to a two-year study by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.

When I read this, I was surprised — The Chicago Council on Global Affairs is a well-regarded and -respected organization, and its reports have made valuable contributions to the debate on the scope and direction of U.S. foreign policy. How in the world could they be associated with a report that suggest that religion should be a core tenet of our foreign policy?

Then I went to their website and read the report. The first thing I discovered was that the phrase “God gap” doesn’t appear anywhere in either the executive summary or the full report. The second thing I discovered is that “narrow” is used in the report, but not exactly in the way Waters suggests:

The United States should avoid actions that use or appear to use religion instrumentally, i.e., the United States should not try or be widely perceived as trying to manipulate religion in pursuit of narrowly drawn interests.

and…

The greater visibility of religion and religious actors in international politics has greatly complicated America’s approach to world affairs. A narrow view of religion in the context of terrorism and counterter- rorism strategy will no longer suffice. Instead, religion must be seen as a more profound and encompassing social reality—one that shapes and is shaped by other major transnational phenomena, including violent conflict and war, globalization, and democratization.

What about “ill-informed”? Nope. Nowhere to be found.

And “uncompromising Western secularism”? Yes, that does appear, but I think it’s not exactly what Waters infers:

The United States should build, cultivate, and rely upon networks and partnerships, which will vary in scope and size, with religious communities. . . . Such a strategy will enable the United States to avail itself of opportunities and facilitate the constructive role that religious organizations and leaders play in the world. It also recognizes that the United States cannot reduce the appeal of destructive religious forces by promoting an uncompromising Western secularism. Such a position can have the unintended effect of feeding extremism by further threatening traditional sources of personal, cultural, and religious identity. Instead, engaging religious communities can cre- ate an atmosphere that marginalizes extremists.

So if I understand the report correctly, promoting an “uncompromising Western secularism” could feed extremism. That, of course, may be true, but it’s also true that much of the world could regard past actions by the United States — particularly during the Bush Administration — as having promoted an uncompromising Christian world view. So Waters manages to state a key point — and yet mangle it at the same time.

Then there’s this graph from Waters’s story, which is even more alarming:

The council’s 32-member task force, which included former government officials and scholars representing all major faiths, delivered its report to the White House on Tuesday. The report warns of a serious “capabilities gap” and recommends that President Obama make religion “an integral part of our foreign policy.”

Here’s what the report actually says:

President Obama’s speech in Cairo in June 2009 set the stage for a new departure in U.S. foreign policy toward Muslim communities. This is a vital task and a laudable beginning. However, the scope must be much broader. Engaging Islam is only one very crucial component of a larger challenge—engaging the multitude of religious communities across the world as an integral part of our foreign policy.

Uh, okay. Call me crazy, but I think there is an enormous difference between making “religion” an “integral part of our foreign policy” and making “engaging the multitude of religious communities” an “integral part of foreign policy.” There is a kinda sorta pretty much completely obvious distinction there. But Waters doesn’t seem to notice it.

In seeking a response to the report Waters quotes Chris Seiple, the President of the Institute for Global Engagement:

“It’s a hot topic,” said Chris Seiple, president of the Institute for Global Engagement in Arlington County and a Council on Foreign Relations member. “It’s the elephant in the room. You’re taught not to talk about religion and politics, but the bummer is that it’s at the nexus of national security. The truth is the academy has been run by secular fundamentalists for a long time, people who believe religion is not a legitimate component of realpolitik.”

I don’t know Chris Seiple, so I won’t make any assumptions here. But I do know his dad, Robert Seiple, who was the first U.S. Ambassador for International Religious Freedom in the Clinton Administration. It’s a little odd, don’t you think, that his son would think that religion isn’t part of U.S. foreign policy when his dad’s former job was to make sure that the U.S. addressed religious freedom issues as part of its foreign policy. Even more troubling is the fact that Waters doesn’t appear to have even thought about using the Googles to make the connection.

Maybe Waters read the report. But it sure doesn’t look like it. And as a result, a serious effort to address the question of how U.S. foreign policy should address the challenge of engaging religious communities becomes, in Waters’ story, an “ill-informed” screed calling for an end of separation of church and state in U.S. foreign policy.

To put it another way, the report attempts to put forward a nuanced argument in favor of broader U.S. engagement with religious groups around the world, and approvingly cites President Obama’s speech in Cairo as an important first step. And it’s not exactly news that engagement with religious communities is a component of U.S. foreign policy. Last I checked, we had diplomatic relations with the Vatican, the President regularly receives religious leaders — most recently the Dalai Lama — at the White House, and the State Department issues an annual report on religious freedom around the world.

Waters’ story, in contrast, adopts a sensationalistic tone that breathlessly implies that the report thinks Obama should to name God to be his next Secretary of State.

In fairness, Waters isn’t the only one who didn’t read the report. Bloggers from across the political spectrum seized on his story, using it to reinforce their own arguments. They might want to sit down and read the 100-page report, or at least the executive summary. As I’ve said, I don’t agree with many of the report’s conclusions. But I do think that it deserves a better fate than the Waters’ inept pastiche.

This is exactly the kind of shoddy journalism that the Washington Post used to abhor. Shame on them for allowing such a terrible piece of reporting to grace their pages.

Image: josephpetepickle via Flikr, using a CC BY 2.0 license

| posted in American foreign policy, media, politics | 2 Comments

25 November 2009 Charles J. Brown
12:22 pm

Inside Baseball: Embassy Beijing’s Public Diplomacy 0.0

While (and I use this term quite loosely) researching my previous post on Obama, China, and the vast media conspiracy against media’s poor coverage of his recent trip, I ran across the U.S. Embassy/Beijing’s website. Take a look at this screenshot of the English-language version of the home page:

This is sad — I know grade school kids who could produce better code than this (full disclosure: I sure as hell couldn’t). More importantly, reading this is likely to convince Chinese that the United States is hopelessly boring and backwards.

To be fair, I’m not sure if this is true of the Mandarin version of this site, given that I don’t read Mandarin. But given the fact that its looks to be different, I’m guessing — given the Great Firewall — it’s even more anodyne. And as far as I can tell, there’s no Cantonese version. I guess the assumption is that everyone reads Mandarin.

Let me offer one example. There was a lot of snarky commentary in the U.S. media about the Shanghai town hall and the fact that it wasn’t shown throughout China. Well guess where else Chinese can’t see it? Yep. The Embassy Beijing site has no video. No link to video. Not even a photo. Only the text.

Sometime the page is so bad that it borders on the comical (and potentially, at least to the prickly Chinese, offensive). Here’s a shot of one small part of the English-language version of the home page — it’s part of a list of “warden messages,” which basically are travel warnings for U.S. citizens:

Whoops.

There are supposed to be two separate travel warnings — one on security measures in the lead-up to the 60th anniversary of the founding of the PRC and one on concerns about reports of pneumonic plague. But somehow somebody conflated them. So now October 1 is the National Day Holiday Plague.

Please explain this to me. Shouldn’t we want to make the United States look interesting and exciting? And make the presentation of that information eye-catching? It’s great that the State Department website is all glam and web 2.0 and everything, but if this is what our embassy in Beijing is doing, then the main targets of our public diplomacy — the Chinese people — aren’t really getting the message.

For what it’s worth, Embassy Beijing site appears to be the exception, not the rule. Home pages for the U.S. embassies in Italy, India, and even Papua New Guinea have better content, are better designed, and incorporate social media. In fact, even the Shanghai consulate has a better site (including photos and links to the video of the Shanghai town hall meeting).

The new U.S. Ambassador to China, Jon Huntsman seems to understand the importance of the intertubes — it was he, after all, who posed the Great Firewall question to Obama during the Shanghai town hall. here’s hoping that he takes a minute to tell his staff to fix this mess.

(By the way, I also checked out the English-language home page for the Chinese Embassy in D.C., and it’s just as bad. But that’s certainly no excuse for the USG’s terrible presentation and content.)

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30 July 2009 Charles J. Brown
07:03 pm

Obama the Politics of Ambassadorial Appointments

Via Jason Zengerle over at TNR, it looks like there’s a tempest brewing over Obama’s use of political appointees to fill ambassadorships. The first story cropped up about three weeks ago in The Washington Times:

The White House, unaware of historic norms, had been on track to give more than the usual 30 percent of ambassadorial jobs to political appointees until objections from career diplomats forced it to reconsider, administration officials say. . . .

The decision to uphold the historic ratio of 30 percent political appointees and 70 percent career diplomats came only after members of the Foreign Service protested to White House staff and Mrs. Clinton’s chief of staff, Cheryl D. Mills, officials said.

“There was some question about how sacrosanct the 30 percent was,” the senior administration official said.

Although the 30-70 ratio is not official, “all administrations have adhered fairly closely to it in the last several decades,” said Steven B. Kashkett, acting president of the American Foreign Service Association (AFSA), the diplomats’ union.The U.S. has 175 ambassadorial posts.

Mr. Obama ran on a pledge to emphasize diplomacy and transparency but appeared to be well on his way to inflating the number of political appointees as ambassadors until the Foreign Service intervened.

“Why is ours the only profession where it’s considered acceptable to appoint someone without any experience?” Mr. Kashkett said. “Would you appoint someone to head a hospital without medical experience?”

Even if the White House respects the 30-70 ratio, “we still have concerns,” Mr. Kashkett said. “Thirty percent is not a comfortable number. We feel very strongly about the importance of appointing primarily professional diplomats as ambassadors.”

Dennis Jett, described in The Daily Beast as a “former diplomat” (by which I presume they meant that he’s a retired foreign service officer) added his voice earlier this week:

Despite the obvious damage, this corrupt exercise is repeated every four years—and there seems to be no hope that it is going to change under President Obama. The “system,” of course, is the awarding of plum ambassadorial postings to major campaign donors—cash for cachet. . . .

In his first six months, Obama forwarded to the Senate 58 nominations for ambassadors. Of those 32, or 55 percent of the total, were political appointees. In the same time period, his five predecessors made more nominations—an average of 67—but the number of those who were political was lower at 47 percent. . . .

The failed states and economic basket cases are left to the career officers. The industrialized democracies of Europe and Asia and the island nations of the Caribbean are the destinations of the political appointees.

Scott Horton over at Harper’s joins in:

The process cheapens our diplomatic relations and sends a bad message to the states to which these ambassadors are sent. And it’s getting cruder and greedier. A cynic studying the latest batch of nominees might conclude that the price of an ambassadorship has soared from roughly $200,000 under the Rovian regime to $500,000 under Rahm Emanuel. Under Barack Obama, the process of political payoff through ambassadorial appointments has matched and appears poised to exceed the already extremely abusive system that Karl Rove put in place under the Bush Administration. . . .

Political appointees are not per se objectionable. In fact, some of the most distinguished ambassadorial appointees in recent decades have been political appointees—not career diplomats. Think of Mike Mansfield, Walter Mondale, and Howard Baker, each serving ably in Japan, or Pamela Harriman and Felix Rohatyn, who served in France. Each of these appointees was a prominent figure on the Washington stage whose appointment added luster to Washington’s relationship with the nation to which he or she was sent. But the Obama political appointees are of a different caliber. What distinguishes them is not a career in public service or finance, much less foreign relations or foreign area expertise, but rather something far grubbier: raising substantial sums of money for the Obama campaign. . . .

The point here is not that any of these picks are unworthy individuals, but rather that the main criterion by which they seem to have been chosen is their fundraising savvy for Democratic causes. That creates the impression around the world that these posts are political trinkets, which seriously degrades the post and stands as a barrier to Obama’s efforts to reassert American leadership.

It’s clear that none of these nominees came out of the State Department.

Not to sound cynical, but my initial reaction here was. . .you’re surprised? That Obama has appointed some donors as Ambassadors? Captain Renault, white courtesy phone please:

My intent here is not to defend the current system — which is flawed — nor to defend specific individuals named by Horton as examples of the donor-to-diplo racket (although, as Zengerle notes, the individuals he names have more going for them than merely their ability to bundle money). Instead, I want to point out one small but inconvenient fact: the arguments made by AFSA’s Kashkett (in the Times story), Jett, and Horton all contain a syllogism that would make Aristotle blush.

A substantial number of Obama’s ambassadorial nominees are political appointees (rather than foreign service officers).

Some of Obama’s appointees are major donors.

Therefore all of Obama’s political appointees are major donors.

Uh, no they’re not. In fact, some of those appointed by the Obama Administration are foreign policy experts who have a long history of working on the countries and/or issues in question.

I don’t have the luxury of reviewing the entire list of Obama appointees, but permit me to name just three individuals who I happen to know personally.

Lee Feinstein is nominated to serve as U.S. Ambassador to Poland. Feinstein served in State as Deputy Director of Policy Planning during the Clinton Administration and has spent time at Brookings, Council on Foreign Relations, and Carnegie.

David Killion is nominated to serve as U.S. Ambassador to UNESCO. Killion also served in the Clinton Administration and more recently was a senior policy advisor on international institutions to the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

Bonnie Jenkins is nominated to serve as Coordinator for Threat Reduction Programs, with the rank of Ambassador. Jenkins was a senior program officer at the Ford Foundation and a Naval reservist who took leave from her duties at Ford to go on active duty.

Did these individuals give money to the Obama campaign? I’m sure they did. But they’re not major donors or bundlers. I don’t know whether people with similarly impressive professional credentials and small checking accounts also received nominations at the start of the Bush and Clinton Administrations. I’m sure some did — but I’m guessing that they were fewer and further between.

Horton bemoans the lack of “prominent figure[s] on the national stage,” yet fails to acknowledge the inclusion of Jon Huntsman, the former Governor of Utah, to serve as U.S. Ambassador to China, and Tim Roemer, a former Congressman and member of the 9/11 Commission to serve as U.S. Ambassador to India. (And one other thing, Mr. Horton — Pamela Harriman and Felix Rohatyn may have been prominent figures, but they also were major donors.)

To its credit, the Washington Times story does not make this assumption, noting elsewhere in the story that some of the political appointments are going/will go to Obama, Biden, and Clinton foreign policy advisors, and speculating that complaints from the foreign service were likely to prevent some of them from getting their posts (and by inference, not having an impact on appointments of the money men and women).

The foreign service does an outstanding (and largely unheralded) job of representing U.S. interests overseas. Its members deserve not merely our respect but our admiration. That’s why the list of Obama ambassadorial picks includes a number of distinguished members of the foreign service.

The reality here is that AFSA, which represents the interests of the foreign service, is worried that the foreign service is not getting its traditional share of the pie. They said the same things eight years ago when Bush came to office and sixteen years ago when Clinton got elected. It’s a time-honored Washington ritual.

I am sure that other foreign service officerss of equal or greater talent will be nominated when all is said and done. Some, to use Jett’s lovely turn of phrase, will go to “failed states and economic basket cases,”** but some won’t.

The reality is that AFSA (to its credit) is doing what any good union should do: defend its members’ hard-won privileges. They have every right to do that, but their arguments would be far more credible if they at least acknowledge that some of Obama’s nominees have credentials as good as members of the senior foreign service.

**I wonder how the governments of these supposed swamp pits will feel when they discover that foreign service officers named to be ambassadors don’t want to serve in their countries. That’s not exactly diplomacy in action.

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24 June 2009 Charles J. Brown
01:56 pm

More Detail on the Koh Cloture Vote

Final vote, per my earlier post, was 65-31. Eight Republicans (Alexander, Collins, Gregg, Hatch, Lugar, Martinez, Snowe, Voinovich voted to close debate, along with every Democrat present (Kennedy and Byrd were too ill to attend).

The two on this list that I did not expect were Lamar Alexander and Orrin Hatch. I suspect that they will vote against him once the Republicans’ current thirty hours of fake “discussion” and time-wasting quorum calls finally comes to a close, but that certainly is their right, and I give them credit for helping to end a filibuster that was more about show than principle.

There has been some sspeculation that Gregg, Martinez, and Voinovich voted in large part because they’re retiring, but I don’t think that’s entirely true. Voinovich was a prominent critic of John Bolton (at least the first time around), and Koh has long and deep ties to Florida’s Cuban and Haitian communities as a result of his work on the pre-9/11 round of Guantanamo detentions.

As Dave Weigel notes, thirteen Republicans, including John McCain, voted against cloture even though they voted to confirm Koh as Assistant Secretary for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor back in 1998.

With luck, this will help break the logjam on current and future sub-Cabinet nominations. The next test is Dawn Johnsen, who faces a tougher battle as a result of her past work for the National Abortion Rights Action League. Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE) already has made it clear he will oppose her, and Arlen Specter (Whatever Gets Me Elected-PA) has said that he will vote for cloture but against her nomination.

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23 June 2009 Charles J. Brown
03:51 pm

A Conservative Argument for Confirming Harold Koh

As Dave Weigel and Lara Rozen have already reported, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) yesterday filed for cloture, moving Harold Koh’s nomination to serve as State Department Legal Advisor to the floor of the Senate. Although the timing depends on other Senate business, the vote is likely to take place as soon as tomorrow.

For those unfamiliar with the Senate’s mysterious ways, the Majority Leader routinely asks unanimous consent to close debate on a given issue and move to a vote. If any Senator refuses, then “debate” remains open and cannot be closed without a sixty-vote super-majority. This is what used to be known as a filibuster, back in the day when Senators opposing cloture actually had to stay on the Senate floor and speak.

These days, anyone can put a hold on any bill or confirmation and prevent a vote from taking place. The end result is that the Majority Leader has to round up sixty votes for cloture before a regular vote (requiring only a simple majority) on the bill or individual can go forward.

In Koh’s case, two Senators — John Cornyn and David Vitter — refused to agree to a vote. Reid’s decision to move forward means that he thinks he has the votes. What we do know is that Richard Lugar (R-IN) has endorsed Koh, which brings the number to 60, assuming that all Democrats support Koh — and that they all show up, which is perhaps the biggest problem.

That means that it’s important that other moderate Republicans — particularly Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins, George Voinovich, and Mel Martinez — need to be brought on board. If you live in their states (Maine, Ohio, Florida), I urge you to call their offices and urge them to vote for cloture (and preferably to confirm him as well). If you live in Nebraska or Pennsylvania, I’d make sure that Ben Nelson and Arlen Specter are on board.

In addition, if you live in any state with a Republican Senator — even if that Senator has been a vocal opponent of Koh’s nomination — I would urge you to call his/her office and make the following point.

Conservative Republicans have, over the past week or so, accused President Obama of failing to take a strong enough stand on the crisis in Iran. I have argued in the context of other human rights issues (such as the anniversary of the Tiananmen Massacre) that one of the reasons Obama (and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton) have failed to make stronger statements in support of human rights is the dearth of human rights experts at State and NSC — individuals with the heft necessary to push for stronger assertions on behalf of the victims of human rights abuses.

If conservative Republicans truly want to see a stronger response by Obama to Iran (and China), they should want to do everything possible to expedite the confirmation of genuine human rights experts who can make strong arguments capable of countering those in (primarly) Foggy Bottom who would ignore such issues. As a former Assistant Secretary for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (a position for which he was confirmed by a unanimous Senate vote), Koh has the knowledge to raise such concerns within the bureaucracy. And as a veteran of the clearance wars, Koh knows how to fight the fight.

To be clear, I think Obama’s approach to Iran has been the right one (and I would guess that Koh would say the same thing). That said, I remain concerned about the fact that no one appears to be managing U.S. human rights policy at the moment. If Republicans want stronger human rights language from the Administration, it would help if they stopped blocking those who have the knowledge and ability to ensure that human rights issues remain a paramount component of U.S. foreign policy.

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3 June 2009 Charles J. Brown
07:15 pm

Some Thoughts on Obama’s Speech

When I announced two weeks ago that I would not be blogging as much thanks to my new full-time job status, little did I know just how accurate that would be. I’ve been dealing with a very important and urgent deadline, which has now passed. Now that I’ve resurfaced, I can go back to posting, albeit with greater irregularity.

As I’m sure you know, Obama is speaking at Cairo University tomorrow, fulfilling a campaign promise to give a major speech in a Muslim-majority country within his first few months of office. Washington Post:

More than any other president in a generation, Obama enjoys a reservoir of goodwill in the region. His father was Muslim. His outreach in an interview with an Arabic satellite channel, a speech to Turkey’s parliament and an address to Iranians on the Persian New Year have inclined many to listen. Just as important, he is not George W. Bush.

But Obama will still encounter a landscape in which two realities often seem to be at work, shaped by those symbols. There is America’s version of its policy toward Israel and the Palestinians, Iraq and Afghanistan, and Islamist movements such as Hamas and Hezbollah, defined in recent years by the legacy of the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. There is another reality, from hardscrabble quarters of Beirut and Cairo to war-wrecked neighborhoods of Baghdad, where distrust of the United States runs so deep that almost anything it pronounces, however eloquent, lacks credibility, imposing a burden on Obama to deliver something far more than the unfulfilled pledges of Bush’s speeches.

Former Bush Speechwriter Michael Gerson suggests that it’s not just about Iraq and Israel:

President Obama is entering a nation and a region where [persecution by the government] is the normal price of political courage. His Cairo University speech will send a large diplomatic signal: Does Obama honor and support such courage, or de-emphasize and dismiss it in the “realist” pursuit of other ends?

One hopes that Obama and his speechwriters have consulted “The Next Founders: Voices of Democracy in the Middle East,” an important new book by Joshua Muravchik. The book profiles seven men and women — six Arab, one Iranian — taking impossible risks in the cause of human rights and self-government. They include a Saudi woman protesting the treatment of women as chattel and an Egyptian publisher trying to bring a free, responsible press to an authoritarian society. Most of these reformers have suffered imprisonment or faced threats to their lives and families.

Many of these dissidents, Muravchik told me in an interview, felt “betrayed” during the last few years of the Bush administration, when the containment of Iran and the Israeli-Palestinian peace process seemed to take precedence over democracy promotion (except in Iraq). Reformers in the region generally greeted Obama’s election with enthusiasm. But Muravchik says dissidents are becoming “disquieted about the administration’s apparent indifference to democracy and human rights abuses.”

They should be, in the Middle East and elsewhere. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has bluntly admitted that concern about Chinese human rights abuses “can’t interfere with the global economic crisis” — meaning we can’t afford to offend dictators who buy our bonds. The administration talks of reviewing sanctions on Burma’s junta. And Egypt’s ambassador to the United States enthuses that America has stopped making “human rights, democracy and religious and general freedoms” conditions for better relations.

In this environment, the message of Obama’s Cairo speech will be amplified. His Middle East advisers have probably urged him to focus (as they always do) on Israeli-Palestinian peace — the “real” concern of the region — instead of discredited democratic idealism. In fact, this sort of realism both reflects and strengthens the strategy that Middle Eastern dictators have pursued for decades — the strategy of heaping attention on Israel and the Palestinians to draw attention away from their own oppression and economic failure. There is no reason Obama cannot emphasize both a two-state solution and the need for responsible and representative states across the Middle East.

It is also likely that Obama has been counseled to avoid the “d” word — “democracy” — in his Cairo remarks. Middle East experts sometimes contend that promoting “justice” and “good governance” is more culturally sensitive than employing such Westernized concepts as “democracy” and “freedom.” The argument is common — and uninformed. “Justice,” in this context, implies human rights as the gift of a wise emir or enlightened dictator. But, as Nour and others have discovered, such gifts can be withdrawn on a whim. The next founders in the Middle East are not merely begging for more rights from autocrats; they are seeking freedom from autocracy. They want more than for tyrants to open the door of reform a crack; they want to open the door themselves.

Any presidential speech abroad has multiple audiences. One of them, in this case, is the Egyptian government, whose cooperation is needed on issues that range from proliferation to peace. But another audience will be dissidents and reformers in Egypt and beyond. And a president who does not speak boldly for their political rights — their democratic rights — has little useful to say to them.

I don’t often agree with Gerson, or with prominent neoconservative and Iraq war defender Joshua Muravchik (though I am interested in reading the latter’s new book), but I think they get it about right here.

The sad reality is that, as both Gerson and Muravchik acknowledge, the Bush Administration failed to live up to its promises on democracy and human rights, particularly in Egypt. What they fail to acknowledge is that the war in Iraq was a major factor not only in weaking Bush’s commitment to promoting democracy elsewhere, but also in discrediting broader U.S. efforts to promote democratic governance and human rights.

That said, we are more than four months into an Obama Administration, and as of today, not one of the key democracy and human rights positions is occupied by someone the President appointed. It’s not entirely the Administration’s fault: Samantha Power is at the NSC, but she’s currently on maternity leave, and troglo-conservatives in the Senate are holding up Harold Koh’s nomination to be legal advisor. But other key posts — most notably the position of Assistant Secretary for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor — remain vacant. The reality is that neither Obama or Hillary currently have anyone who can argue that human rights and democracy should be given prominent attention in Obama’s speech.

I continue to believe, perhaps naively, that statements by Hillary about human rights not playing as central a role in U.S. foreign policy as in past Administrations reflects not her opinion as much as a tilt in favor of those in the Department of State who do not like to talk about democracy and human rights (which, for those unfamiliar with the Department, means those line officers whose main responsibility is maintaining good relations with the country in question). And I will reserve final judgment about the Administration’s human rights policies until Power, Koh, and others are in a position to balance those who suggest that promoting human rights and democracy is neither convenient nor realistic.

It’s also worth noting that, according to rumors I’ve heard, the U.S. Embassy in Cairo has pushed State and USAID to cut back their funding of democracy- and human rights-oriented projects, particularly those that have earned the disfavor of the Mubarak regime.

About a year ago, I was asked by Freedom House to go to Cairo to give a speech to a group of younger democracy activists, including some of those who had used Facebook to organize a general strike against the Mubarak regime. Most were determined to continue their work to open up Egyptian civil society and promote democratic reform, but some were discouraged by constant government harassment. In fact, when the government found out about the meeting at which I was scheduled to speak, they prevented it from happening. So I spent most of the next few days talking to the activists, going to their offices, and learning more about their work.

It was, needless to say, inspiring. I hope that the President meets with these folks, and that he acknowledges their courageous work. Somehow, however — particularly given the fact that one of the programs to be cut is Freedom House’s efforts to help these young activists — I doubt that he will.

Here’s hoping I’m wrong.

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29 April 2009 Charles J. Brown
04:07 pm

Schwartz and Jenkins: Two More Great Appointments

I’ve been remiss on this, but two more friends have been nominated by President Obama: Eric Schwartz as Assistant Secretary of State for Population, Refugees, and Migration and Bonnie Jenkins as Coordinator for Threat Reduction Programs (which is an Ambassadorial-rank position). I’ve known both for years, and it was my pleasure to have Eric guest-blog here last summer.

Congrats to both, and congratulations to President Obama and Secretary Clinton for adding two more incredibly capable people to their foreign policy team. Here are the official White House bios:

Eric P. Schwartz, Assistant Secretary for Population, Refugees and Migration

Eric P. Schwartz is Executive Director of the Connect U.S. Fund, a foundation/NGO initiative focused on foreign and international affairs, and Visiting Lecturer of Public and International Affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University. Between 2005 and 2007, he served as UN Deputy Special Envoy for Tsunami Recovery, working to promote coordination, accountability to donors and beneficiaries, and best practices in the recovery effort. Prior to that, he served as lead expert on conflict prevention and reconstruction for the Congressionally mandated Task Force on United Nations Reform, and as a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. Between 1993 and 2001, Schwartz served at the National Security Council, ultimately as Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs and Senior Director for Multilateral and Humanitarian Affairs. For eight years, he was the NSC official responsible for refugee issues, and managed Administration policy responses on the rescue of Kurdish refugees from Northern Iraq, the resettlement of Vietnamese boat people, and safe haven for Haitian refugees and Kosovars. Prior to that, he served at the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Asian and Pacific Affairs, where he was responsible for most of the Committee’s work on Asian refugee issues, including Vietnamese boat people, Laotian refugees and the U.S. immigration issues relating to the transfer of sovereignty in Hong Kong.

Bonnie D. Jenkins, Coordinator for Threat Reduction Programs (with the Rank of Ambassador)

Dr. Jenkins is the Program Officer for U.S. Foreign and Security policy at the Ford Foundation. Her grant making seeks to strengthen public engagement in US foreign and security policy debate and formulation in order to promote support for multilateralism, the peaceful resolution of disputes, and the rule of international law. Prior to joining the Foundation, Jenkins served on the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (”9-11 Commission”), as counsel. She was the lead Commission staff member on counterterrorism policy in the Office of the Secretary of Defense and on U.S. military plans to go after Al Qaeda prior to 9-11. She wrote part of the 9/11 report, which has since become a national bestseller. Jenkins also served as General Counsel to the U.S. Commission to assess the organization of the federal government to combat proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and as a consultant to the 2000 National Commission on Terrorism. She also worked at the RAND Corporation in their National Security Division. She recently served as a Lieutenant Commander in the US Naval Reserves and completed a year of deployment at CENTCOM. Jenkins has worked in the U.S. Department of State’s Office of Policy Planning as a consultant of the Kosovo History Project. An expert on arms control and nonproliferation of weapons of mass destruction, Jenkins also served for nine years as legal advisor to U.S. Ambassadors and delegations negotiating arms control and nonproliferation treaties during her time as a Legal Advisor in the Office of General Council at the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. She began her years in government when appointed as a Presidential Management Fellow. Jenkins is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the International Institute for Strategic Studies, and the American Bar Association. She received a Ph.D. in international relations from the University of Virginia; an LL.M. in international and comparative law from the Georgetown University Law Center; an MPA from the State University of New York at Albany; a J.D. from Albany Law School; and a BA from Amherst College. She also attended The Hague Academy for International Law.

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15 April 2009 Charles J. Brown
09:26 pm

Harold Koh: The Company You Keep

Back in the 1960s, when my dad was the editor of The Ypsilanti Press, the city held a referendum on whether to fluoridate the water supply. My dad decided to publish an editorial listing those in favor of and those opposed to the measure. Supporters included doctors, dentists, businesses, union locals, civic organizations — basically almost everyone in town. Three groups opposed the proposal: an organization that believed that fluoridation was a Communist plot; the John Birch Society; and the Ku Klux Klan.

The measure passed overwhelmingly.

In the spirit of my father’s editorial, I offer the following lists of those supporting and those opposing President Obama’s nomination of Harold Hongju Koh to serve as Legal Adviser in the Department of State.

Here is a partial list of those who have spoken out in support of Koh’s nomination:

John Bellinger, former Legal Adviser, Department of State (Bush Administration).
Brian G. Cartwright, former General Counsel, Securities and Exchange Commission (Bush Administration).
W. Cole Durham, Jr., a Professor of Law at Bringham Young University.
David D. Hiller, former Associate Deputy Attorney General and Special Assistant to the Attorney General (Reagan Administration) and former Publisher of The Chicago Tribune and The Los Angeles Times.
Rear Admiral (ret.) John Hutson, former Judge Advocate General of the U.S. Navy and currently Dean of the Franklin Pierce Law Center.
Frank Jimenez, former Acting General Counsel, Governor Jeb Bush; former General Counsel, U.S. Navy; former Chief of Staff, Department of Housing and Urban Development (last two positions during the Bush Administration).
Marcos Daniel Jimenez, former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida (Bush Administration).
Roberto Martinez, former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida (G.H.W. Bush Administration) and Special Counsel to (then-) Florida Attorney-General Charlie Crist.
Theodore Olson, former Solicitor-General (Bush Administration).
Norman Ornstein, Resident Scholar, American Enterprise Institute.
Kenneth Starr, former Solicitor General (G.H.W. Bush Administration) and Dean of the Pepperdine University School of Law.
Alan Charles Raul, former Associate Counsel to President Reagan, among other positions.
Nicholas Rostow, former Special Assistant for National Security to Presidents Reagan and G.H.W. Bush, among other positions.
William H. Taft IV, former Legal Adviser, Department of State (Bush Administration).
Michael Young, former Chairman, U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, and President of the University of Utah.

Here is a list of those who have spoken out in opposition to Koh’s nomination:

Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann (R-MN)
Stephen M. Bainbridge, Professor of Law, UCLA School of Law.
Glenn Beck, host of “The Glenn Beck Show” on Fox News.
John Bolton, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations (Bush Administration).
Meghan Clyne, former speechwriter (Bush Administration) and freelance journalist.
“Conservative Old Hippie,” pseudonymous blogger.
John Fonte, Director, Center for American Common Culture, Hudson Institute.
Frank Gaffney, President, Center for Security Policy.
Cliff Kinkaid, Editor, Accuracy in Media and President of America’s Survival.
David Limbaugh, whose biography identifies him as the “brother of Rush Limbaugh” and a columnist.
Jay Sekulow, Chief Counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice.
Former U.S. Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA).
“Van Helsing,” pseudonymous blogger; contributor to Right Wing News and Moonbattery.
Ed Whelan, former Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney-General, Office of Legal Counsel, Department of Justice (Bush Administration); blogger, National Review Online; and President of the Center for Ethics and Public Policy.

Those on both lists have one thing in common: they describe themselves as conservatives. In addition, many — almost all of Koh’s supporters and even a couple of his opponents — have served in Republican administrations.

George Washington once said, “Associate with men of good quality if you esteem your own reputation; for it is better to be alone than in bad company.”

Judge for yourself which group you find more credible.

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10 April 2009 Charles J. Brown
03:55 pm

Messaging 101: Don’t Let the Other Side Define Your Message

Both Jeffrey Toobin at The New Yorker and Publius at Obsidian Wings are worrying that Harold Hongju Koh’s nomination is in trouble. I don’t mean to dismiss their concerns, but the problem with such speculation is that it leads to headlines like “Is Koh in Trouble?” — which, as anyone who has taken messaging 101 can tell you, leads people to conclude that Koh’s nomination is in trouble.

I see no evidence of that.

Let’s review the facts here. Conservative critics have accused Koh of a variety of alleged sins, at least one of which has proven to be transparently false. Once the initial hysteria over that now-disproven charge passed, the attacks have from three fronts: Ed Whelan, John Bolton, and the Coalition to Preserve American Sovereignty — a Frank Gaffney-organized group that, until recently, was spending all of its time arguing that the UN Convention on Law of the Sea was a significant national security threat. We’re talking about a very small and self-selecting group of ultra-neoconservative lawyers closely associated with or supportive of the Bush Administration’s torture and detention policies.

To be crystal clear here, I’m not suggesting that the left should ignore these attacks, nor am I suggesting that other conservatives won’t jump on the neocon train. Engaging the opposition in the arena of ideas is important, especially when the other side is selective in its portrayal of the facts. And I agree with Publius’s assertion that Obama needs to stand up to these bullies.

But let’s not make the mistake of suggesting that Koh is in trouble — not only because it isn’t true, but also because that’s exactly what the other side wants us to start saying.

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10 April 2009 Charles J. Brown
02:45 pm

A Crew without a Captain and a Captain without a Crew

Michael Cohen over at Democracy Arsenal has a great post noting that we’re eighty days into the Obama Administration and it still hasn’t appointed a USAID Administrator:

Quite simply, if you are going to have an national development agency - and you are going to take it seriously - then you need to make its ability to do its job a priority. In our recent report on improving democracy promotion and fixing the foreign assistance bureaucracy, we call for AID to be made a cabinet-level agency - and with the lack of attention that the Obama Administration is paying to this issue that is something that will have to be emanate from Congress and a potential re-write of the foreign assistance act. But not surprisingly, my confidence is not high.

But in the meantime, if the Obama Administration is really interested in making its rhetoric about development and democracy promotion being a priority in US foreign policy - they need to put somebody in charge of AID. And they need to do it immediately.

Cohen is absolutely right. Whether it is because of the extended vetting or other reasons, the pace of appointments at State can’t even be described as a crawl anymore. According to WaPo, of forty-three posts requiring confirmation, only thirteen have been nominated (of which nine have been confirmed). Only two of the six undersecretary positions have people in place, and both are foreign service holdovers in the Bush Administration.

And those figures exclude USAID, where the numbers are worse: ten slots, zero nominations.

I have heard a rumor that the White House is holding off on appointing a USAID Administrator until Deputy Secretary of State for Management Jacob Lew is conducting a top-to-bottom review of foreign assistance, and any USAID nominations are on hold until that’s done.

I have no problem with such a review — the current foreign aid bureaucracy (including but not limited USAID) is not designed to maximise return on the taxpayers’ investment. (In fact I’m going to spend part of my weekend reading Cohen’s new report on the challenge.) But if the Administration can conduct a comprehensive review of AfPak policy in sixty days, and is supposedly on target to evaluate the fiscal soundness of the nation’s twenty largest banks in ninety days, you’d think that they could pull this off as well.

Furthermore, unlike every other senior position, I’ve seen no rumors — zero — of who’s being considered. That isn’t a good sign.

But this isn’t merely a USAID problem — the whole foreign policy bureacracy is frozen right now. As a friend inside the building noted to me, almost every bureau is currently being headed by an Acting Assistant Secretary, most of whom are talented senior foreign service officers who want to make sure they don’t do anything that will screw up their next assignment. And nobody is even acting in the case of the vacant undersecretary positions.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: no matter how talented Secretary Clinton may be, it’s awfully hard to manage a large bureau without senior-level support. If USAID is a crew without a captain, then Hillary is a captain without a crew.

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2 April 2009 Charles J. Brown
11:47 am

The Smear Campaign against Harold Koh

In case you haven’t seen it, the extreme right has mounted a massive smear campaign against my good friend and former boss, Harold Hongju Koh. As Dahlia Lithwick notes in Slate, it’s all based on an allegation by Meghan Clyne that Harold once said that Sharia law could apply in U.S. courts. The right has gone nuts with this. Fox is running it regularly, Glenn Beck is foaming at the mouth, and numerous conservative blogs are screaming.

Clyne’s allegation, which is based on a claim by a single individual that he heard Koh say such a thing at a dinner, has been debunked by the individuals who put on the dinner. But as Lithwick notes, this isn’t about the truth: the extremists are now latched on to this story like a dog in heat.

What really angers me is that once again, the right has put us in a position of denying a smear by repeating it. Every time Lithwick, the NYT, I, or anyone else talks about the campaign against him, we repeat the allegation. And as the Times story demonstrates, the MSM’s obsession with portraying “both sides” of the story means that the allegations don’t just get repeated, but analyzed, dissected, and offered up for comment by others, who then proceed to talk about them in order to debunk them.

And as any messaging strategist (and Jason Zengerle at TNR) can tell you, every time you repeat a lie, the public is more likely to think it’s true. As conservative messaging evil genius Frank Luntz put it, it’s not what say, it’s what people hear.

Chances are the sharia smear won’t stick. As even Ed Whelan over at NRO admits, it’s an incredibly thin reed upon which to fight a nomination. But as Whelan also warns, the right is now going to start poring through everything Harold has written in hopes of digging up something else. In fact, Whelan appears to be on a one-man campaign to do it himself.

There’s a pretty simple way to avoid all of this: schedule a hearing, and schedule it as quickly as possible. Invite Harold to appear and answer and and all questions about his alleged positions. Take as much time as necessary to clear the air. But make sure you also ask Harold about his support for the nomination of Ted Olson as Solicitor General under Dubya. Be sure to ask him about his tenure at the Department of Justice under Reagan. Be sure to ask about his championing of the rights of Cuban refugees who were being detained at Guantanamo by the Clinton Adminstration. And be sure to learn that his position on the illegality of torture is no different from that of Senator John McCain.

I know I’m biased. Harold was the finest boss I’ve ever had, and the most extraordinary champion for human rights I’ve ever met. But as I noted in my post celebrating his nomination, it would be a mistake to assume he’s only interested in human rights. I’ve rarely met anyone who has such an encyclopedic grasp of legal issues (keeping in mind I’m not a lawyer).

But this isn’t (just) personal anger at outrageous attacks against a good and decent man. This is pure outrage that the wingnuts think these unscrupulous, despicable and indecent slash and burn tactics could still work. To paraphrase Joseph Welch’s famous confrontration with Senator Joseph McCarthy, they have no sense of decency, none at all.

I don’t even have to ask.

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24 March 2009 Charles J. Brown
10:11 am

Harold Hongju Koh

Last night, President Obama formally nominated my old friend Harold Hongju Koh to be the Legal Advisor at State. It’s a great choice. I had the honor and privilege of serving as Harold’s chief of staff during his tenure as Assistant Secretary for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. It was most challenging, exciting, and enjoyable job I’ve ever had — as I once said to Harold, it was the most fun I ever had being miserable.

Harold has an extraordinary legal mind, and he is absolutely devoted to the cause of human rights. If confirmed, he will play a central role in the inter-agency efforts to deconstruct the Bush Administration’s torture and detention regime. Here’s something Harold wrote earlier this year that gives a sense of where he is coming from:

Eight years ago, as the assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights, and labor, I testified to a United Nations committee in Geneva that the United States is “unalterably committed to a world without torture.” I continued: “Torture is prohibited by law throughout the United States. It is categorically denounced as a matter of policy and as a tool of state authority. In every instance, torture is a criminal offense. No official of the government—federal, state, or local, civilian or military—is authorized to commit or to instruct anyone else to commit torture. Nor may any official condone or tolerate torture in any form. No exceptional circumstances may be invoked as a justification for torture.”

That unequivocal statement was not asserted casually—it had been previously agreed to by dozens of government officials. None of us dreamed that within a decade, our government would openly practice torture and other forms of cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment, and that many Americans would defend the policy. . . .

As a professor of law, I was therefore sickened by the Justice Department’s August 2002 “torture opinion,” which concluded that U.S. officials can order the torture of suspected terrorists with impunity. I have worked in both Democratic and Republican administrations, including as an attorney in the office of the Justice Department that drafted that opinion. I understand the tremendous pressures that government lawyers labor under. Nevertheless, I considered this opinion to be a disgrace, not only to that office, but to the entire legal profession.. . .

The administration withdrew the memo in 2004, and has since retreated from some of its most extreme legal assertions. However, despite these gestures, it has still not backed down from the claim that torture in the shadows must remain an essential part of our antiterrorism policies. The Bush administration still argues that Congress has no power to regulate interrogation procedures, that past acts of waterboarding were legal, and that lawyers who object to the use of waterboarding are engaged in unpatriotic “lawfare.” . . .

America is a country founded on human rights. Human rights define who we are as a nation and as a people. A ban against official cruelty is one of our most sacred values. If we condone it, we gain nothing, and lose our identity.

It would be a mistake, however, to infer that he’s only interested in human rights. I’ve rarely met anyone who has such an encyclopedic grasp of legal issues (keeping in mind I’m not a lawyer). My favorite example of this is the first time he met my wife Molly, who is a reporter focusing on a section of the U.S. tax code known as transfer pricing. Much to her delight, he immediately engaged her in a conversation about it.

Perhaps as important as his legal skills is the fact that he is both relentless and fearless. When he led DRL, he helped make it a player in the building, in part because he never hesitated to stick to first principles, in part because he learned the game quickly and played it as well as anyone I’ve ever seen, and in part because he never allowed his determination to trump his decency.

At the risk of gushing (more), he is one of the most honorable and decent people I’ve ever known. Congratulations to Harold — and to Hillary for making such a fine choice.

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11 March 2009 Charles J. Brown
01:05 pm

The Bottleneck at State

Inside the State Department, you can’t know who does what without a scorecard. Every position/bureau has a one- to three-letter abbreviation — even the Secretary, whose office is called “S” inside the building.

There are six undersecretaries, each of which also has a single letter abbreviation: Political Affairs (P); Management (M); Democracy and Global Affairs (G); Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs (R); Arms Control and International Security (T); and Economic Affairs (E). These are the most senior positions in State other than the Secretary and two Deputy Secretaries, and each supervises somewhere between six and fifteen bureaus and offices. Think of the undersecretaries as the government equivalent of a business with Vice Presidents who oversee a number of offices.

So why am I telling you all this? Because nearly six weeks into the Administration (and four months since the Obama transition team started work), four of the six positions — G, R, E, and T — all remain unfilled.

So what’s going on? Part of it is the most stringent vetting ever undertaken by an Administration. Part of it is the fact that the recent contretemps over Daschle, Geitner, et. al. has slowed down the process even further.

Another factor is that the leading candidate for E, Lael Brainard, was just announced as Undersecretary of Treasury for International Affairs. What I’m hearing is that given the financial crisis and the fact that no one under Geithner had yet been appointed, the Administration is recruiting talent originally slotted to take positions in other departments.

Although the Brainard “transfer” clarifies the delay on E, it doesn’t explain G, R, or T. And from what I hear, all the Assistant Secretary positions — even those whose vetting is finished — are being held up as a result of the four vacancies.

In case you’re wondering about the other two Undersecretary Positions — Political Affairs and Management — they are both filled by career foreign service officers who were originally appointed by the Bush Administration. That’s normal — career FSOs serve specific terms (two, sometimes three years), even in senior positions (though they still serve at the pleasure of the President and still must be confirmed by the Senate).

That means that the current score is career FSO positions 2, political appointments 0. The Administration needs to get its act together to resolve this, either by finding appropriate political appointees or naming talented FSOs to fill the slots. Although these vacancies may not be as critical as the positions at Treasury, it’s awfully hard to steer the ship if you’ve only got a captain and two mates.

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10 March 2009 Charles J. Brown
10:48 am

Press Release of the Day

This would be hilarious if it wasn’t such a serious issue. From the State Department (emphasis mine):

Taken Question

India: Meeting of Secretary Clinton and [Indian] Foreign Secretary Menon

Robert Wood

Acting Department Spokesman, Office of the Spokesman

Bureau of Public Affairs

Washington, DC

March 9, 2009

Question: Did Special Representative Holbrooke attend the meeting?

Answer: No.

This is what is known as a “taken question,” one where the spokesman is asked a question during the daily briefing to which s/he doesn’t know the answer. This may be the shortest answer to a taken question I’ve ever seen.

It also reinforces reports that the Indians pushed very hard to exclude Kashmir from Holbrooke’s brief, which tantamount to excluding Syria from George Mitchell’s. As Steve Coll’s brilliant piece in last week’s New Yorker makes clear, Kashmir is in many ways the key to solving the Afghanistan and Pakistan crises.

I don’t necessarily believe that it makes sense for Holbrooke to get involved in Kashmir — as Coll notes, neither the Indians or the Pakistanis want outside mediation in what have been somewhat productive back-channel talks. But the Obama Administration’s decision to accede to the Indian demand almost certainly has given the Pakistanis the impression that the United States favors India. Should a time come when the parties seek outside mediation, that may come back to limit the American role.

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4 March 2009 Charles J. Brown
01:40 pm

Bashir Indicted

Department of Too Much Information

I have a man crush on Peter Orszag. At least I am not the only one.

One other thing: I wish Orszag, who yesterday became the first senior Administration official ever to have his own blog (and by that I mean he is actually writing posts), would take some time to visit our friends over at the State Department and explain the difference between their sincere but dismal efforts and real social media.

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26 February 2009 Charles J. Brown
02:20 pm

Hillary and Human Rights: “I am Looking for Results”

Here are Clinton and Stewart’s remarks in full from yesterday’s briefing on the release of the Country Reports on Human Rights Practices:

Hillary’s answer (albeit indirectly) to the criticism of her statement on the U.S.-China dialogue:

I am looking for results. I am looking for changes that actually improve the lives of the greatest numbers of people. Hopefully over time, we will be judged by the success of these efforts. . . . Some of our work will be conducted through official meetings and dialogues. That’s important to advancing our cause.

But I believe, strongly, that we must rely on more than one approach as we strive to overcome tyranny and subjugation that weakens the human spirit, limits human possibility, and undermines human progress. We will make this a global effort, that reaches beyond governments alone.

That’s a pretty good answer to those who question her earlier statement: stop focusing on form and start focusing on outcomes. Having been in more than one meeting (including some on the U.S.-China “dialogue” on human rights), I can tell you that a tremendous amount of time is spent arguing over things like who will sit where. There’s something to be said for a results-focused human rights policy, particularly if it involves significant additional funding of (and outspoken support for) frontline human rights activists.

In the end, however, the final judgment on Hillary’s record as a human rights advocate will be, as she herself says, not what she says but rather the success of her tenure. We can only hope that it turns out as well as she promises in these remarks.

Still, it’s too bad that her statement yesterday got absolutely zero coverage in either the MSM or the blogs. Hate to say it, but that’s not a surprise — controversy always plays better than positive statements. It’s also no coincidence that Hillary left the briefing without taking any questions, but it’s important to know why — not because she was ducking the China issue (though she may have been), but because this is the way it’s always done with the human rights report (and other reports as well): the Secretary comes in, makes a strong statement in support, and then leaves as the Assistant Secretary makes a statement and answers questions.

I was surprised that so few questions concerned Hillary’s statement last week — only the first two questions. Then again, most of the press in that room are international media who focus on particular countries — hence the relative parochialism of the questions. (Also, few if any of the reporters there actually bothered to read all or part of the report.)

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26 February 2009 Charles J. Brown
01:31 pm

Mike Posner to DRL?

According to WaPo’s Al Kamen, Mike Posner, who for many years has served first as Executive Director and now President of Human Rights First (which used to be known as the Lawyers’ Committee for Human Rights), will be the next Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor.

If true, this would be great news. Here are some excerpts from the bio currently up at HRF (where he’s still listed as President).

Michael Posner, President of Human Rights First, has been at the forefront of the international human rights movement for nearly 30 years. As its Executive Director he helped the organization earn a reputation for leadership in the areas of refugee protection, advancing a rights-based approach to national security, challenging crimes against humanity, and combating discrimination. . . .In January 2006, Michael stepped down as Executive Director to become the President of Human Rights First. In this new position, he will focus more on public outreach, writing, and public advocacy, to advance the organization’s core mission. . . .

In 1980, Michael played a key role in proposing and campaigning for the first U.S. law providing for political asylum, which became part of the Refugee Act of 1980. Human Rights First runs the largest program providing volunteer legal representation to asylum seekers in the U.S., representing more than 1,000 clients from more than 80 countries. . . . Michael proposed, drafted, and campaigned for the Torture Victim Protection Act (TVPA) – a U.S. federal statute that was designed to give victims of the most serious human rights crimes anywhere in the world a remedy in U.S. courts. The TVPA was adopted by Congress and signed into law in 1992. . . .

Michael has also been a prominent voice in support of fair, decent, and humane working conditions in factories throughout the global supply chain. As a member of the White House Apparel Industry Partnership Task Force, he helped found the Fair Labor Association (FLA), an organization that brings together corporations, local leaders, universities, and NGOs to promote corporate accountability for working conditions in the apparel industry. He continues to sit on the FLA’s Board.

In 2004, Human Rights First launched its End Torture Now Campaign, a public education and advocacy effort that challenges the framework of U.S. policy and practice that allows coercive interrogation techniques and unlimited, secret detention of those in U.S. custody in violation of U.S. and international law. As part of the campaign, Human Rights First led the advocacy efforts in support of the McCain Amendment which bans U.S. soldiers and officials from engaging in cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment. Human Rights First organized a group of retired admirals and generals to speak out publicly on this issue. The McCain Amendment won broad congressional support and was signed into law in December 2005.

Clearly he has the chops for the job. I’ve known Mike for a number of years, and he’s both a great guy and one of the smartest human rights lawyers out there. He’s built HRF into a powerhouse that now rivals Amnesty and Human Rights Watch. Its focus on results rather than criticism has made it particularly effective. Here, for example, is a video they released recently in response to Dick Cheney’s suggestion that Guantanamo should not be closed:

HRF also was responsible for organizing the flag officers who called on Obama to close Guantanamo — those were the folks standing behind Obama when he signed the order.

So is Kamen’s report true? I don’t know — I’ve had a number of people email to ask, but none of my sources have yet confirmed it. As regular readers of my blog know, I had reported that Posner was a finalist. And there are two developments I’ve heard/noticed that I find interesting. The first is that the HRF DC staff were called to NY this morning for an all-staff meeting. The initial word was that it was about layoffs (which is certainly a possibility given the collapse of the JEHT Foundation, one of the largest donors to the human rights community and a victim of the Madoff scandal). But it also could have been an announcement that Mike is leaving. Then again, it could have been both.

The second is that a perusal of recent HRF statements on USG policy show that HRF executive director Elisa Massimino, rather than Posner, has been speaking for the organization. Just yesterday, HRF put out a statement on the new Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, and Posner is not quoted. Two weeks ago, HRF sent a letter (pdf) to Secretary Clinton on China and Indonesia that was signed by Massimino. These doesn’t necessarily mean anything — Massimino, after all, is now the day-to-day CEO — but it also is possible that Mike has recused himself from such statements.

So what will this mean for human rights? There is considerable speculation that Hillary’s recent statement on the U.S.-China human rights dialogue (which, by the way, prevented neither a strongly critical Country Report nor a sharp Chinese response), combined with reports that DRL will be kicked out of main State (not to mention out of the inner sanctum known as the seventh floor), mean that human rights won’t be a priority.

It’s too early to say whether that’s true. But as I’ve noted before, Hillary’s Kinsley gaffe represents a moment of candor, not a change in policy. I also would note that Posner’s reported appointment, in conjunction with two other reported appointments — Harold Hongju Koh as Hillary’s Legal Advisor and Eric Schwartz as Assistant Secretary for Population, Refugees, and Migration — means that State will have three prominent human rights advocates rather than just one. That should strengthen Posner’s hand, and help ensure that human rights remains a priority.

Image: Human Rights First

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25 February 2009 Charles J. Brown
01:49 pm

Human Rights Report Released

You can find the whole thing here.

An excerpt from the introduction:

As we publish these reports, the Department of State remains mindful of both domestic and international scrutiny of the United States’ record. As President Obama recently made clear, “we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals.”

We do not consider views about our performance voiced by others in the international community–whether by other governments or nongovernmental actors–to be interference in our internal affairs, nor should other governments regard expressions about their performance as such. We and all other sovereign nations have international obligations to respect the universal human rights and freedoms of our citizens, and it is the responsibility of others to speak out when they believe those obligations are not being fulfilled.

The U.S. government will continue to hear and reply forthrightly to concerns about our own practices. We will continue to submit reports to international bodies in accordance with our obligations under various human rights treaties to which we are a party. United States laws, policies, and practices have evolved considerably in recent years, and will continue to do so. For example, on January 22, 2009, President Obama signed three executive orders to close the detention facilities at Guantanamo and review U.S. government policies on detention and interrogation.

In other words, stick with us — we’re trying to change here.

Here’s what the introduction says about China (this is just a summary — the full China report can be found here):

The government of China’s human rights record remained poor and worsened in some areas. The government continued to limit citizens’ privacy rights and tightly controlled freedom of speech, the press (including the Internet), assembly, movement, and association. Authorities committed extrajudicial killings and torture, coerced confessions of prisoners, and used forced labor. In addition, the Chinese government increased detention and harassment of dissidents, petitioners, human rights defenders, and defense lawyers.Local and international NGOs continued to face intense scrutiny and restrictions.

China’s human rights record worsened in some areas, including severe cultural and religious repression of ethnic minorities in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region and Tibet. Abuses peaked around high-profile events, such as the Olympic Games and the unrest in Tibet. At the end of the year, the government harassed signatories of Charter ‘08 who called for respect for universal human rights and reform and arrested writer Liu Xiaobo for his participation in the drafting of the Charter. In October, the government made permanent temporary Olympic Games-related regulations granting foreign journalists greater freedoms.

Largely critical, though that last sentence sounds tacked-on — as if the China Desk said, “hey, we need to say something nice!”

Still waiting on transcript of the briefing.

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6 February 2009 Charles J. Brown
03:54 pm

Diplomatic License (to Drive Badly)

If you live in the DC or NY metropolitan areas, you’re familiar with that lovely group of parking ticket scofflaws men and women known as the “diplomatic community” — the people who represent other governments in Washington and the UN. You also may know that they get a special license plate, issued by the State Department, designating them as diplomats. (Most US diplomats get the same courtesy when serving overseas.)

Over the years there have been several mini-controversies over missions — particluarly those assigned to the UN in NY — failing to pay parking and moving violation tickets. For good or for ill, many East Coasters regard Diplomatic plates as the equivalent of a big flashing neon sign that says “forget about ever getting your car fixed if I hit you.”

Until recently, Diplomatic plates looked like this:

A couple of years ago, they changed the design into something a bit more aesthetically pleasing. A few years before that, the two letter codes were changed after it was revealed that many were inside jokes: the code for the Soviet Union, for example, was FC, which supposedly meant “f-ing commies.” (There is some dispute as to whether this is true or merely an urban legend).

So why am I mentioning this now? Not because I got hit by a diplomat. But one did park next to me today, and I noticed that another change had been made. While the new, curvy and visually appealing color scheme and design remained, the word “diplomat” no longer appears anywhere on the plate — only fine print noting that State was the issuer.

I have no idea what this means. If I were to speculate (and when have I not been known to do that?), I would suggest one of two possibilities: a) State had credible evidence that diplos were targets as a result of the plates; or b) diplos complained that they had become the targets of angry motorists tired of getting cut off in traffic.

I know, not the most consequential news of the day. But hey, it’s my blog and I’m just enough of a diplogeek to find this interesting.

| posted in world events | 1 Comment

5 February 2009 Charles J. Brown
02:32 pm

Rumor of the Day

You might have seen this about a certain close friend and former boss of mine. As is the case with other good friends rumored to be taking positions in State and elsewhere, I’ve not raised this with him, nor will I speculate here.

I will say that he was an amazing boss, a passionate and unbelievably effective advocate for the causes he believes in, and a great friend. If he were to take this or any other position, he’d be a formidable advocate for justice and the rule of law. Hillary would be very fortunate to have him on her team.

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3 February 2009 Charles J. Brown
01:42 pm

Upstairs Downstairs

Another brief take on a recent story: last week, Carolyn O’Hara at Madame Secretary reported that a shuffle of offices on the seventh floor has caused some grumbling in the foreign service:

Bill Burns, State’s widely admired No. 3, has been bumped from his offices to make way for Jacob Lew, one of Hillary’s two new deputies, sources say. Lew, who was director of the OMB in the Clinton White House, has been tasked with getting State more cash.

Proximity to the Secretary is everything on the 7th floor of the State Department building, and we hear that the much-respected Burns, the under secretary for political affairs (or “P”), and his staff have been bumped from the relatively central office suite normally reserved for P and unceremoniously reassigned to the less-desirable “G” suites down the hall.

The folks in the G offices (normally for the under secretary for global affairs) are apparently being bumped even farther down the hall to the “R” offices, normally occupied by the under secretary for public diplomacy. Where the R folks are going is anyone’s guess, but it’s presumably the far-from-coveted 6th floor — hardly a good message to send about the importance of public diplomacy under a new administration.

We hear rank-and-file foreign service officers (FSOs) are none too happy with the move, which is considered a slight to Burns, a career diplomat who is the highest-ranking FSO in the country.

First of all, the foreign service — or at least those FSOs whining to O’Hara — need to get over themselves. Yes, proximity is power, and yes it’s nice to be close. But it’s far more important to have the ability to influence power than it is to have the office next to it. There are plenty of Undersecretaries over the years who have had seventh floor suites and first floor access. Burns will be no more or less influential because he’s moved down the hall.

I’ve heard a few things along these lines (and my sources largely confirm O’Hara’s report), some contradictory. One is that R will move into the space now occupied by the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, (DRL) one of two Bureaus still on the 7th Floor (the other is the Bureau of Oceans, Science and Environment, or OES). DRL will then move out of the building to space in the Red Cross building two blocks away. I presume that OES will face a similar fate, but I’ve not heard that for sure.

Another rumor is that all Assistant Secretaries will have offices on the seventh floor. That doesn’t make sense, in part because there are too many A/S positions to fit them all there and in part because separating bureau leaders from their troops seems like a bad idea.

If it turns out that the seventh floor becomes Undersecretaryland, I’m not that concerned. What worries me a lot more is the decision to move DRL out of the building. For far too long, DRL has been regarded as the “NGO inside the building,” particularly by the regional bureaus. To exile DRL to a building whose owner is an NGO would send a signal to the rest of the Department that it no longer matters. And given the dramatic decline of DRL during the Bush Administration (who wants to hear about human rights in an administration dedicated to violating them?), this could mean complete obscurity.

Now it’s very possible that all of these moves are a product not of politics but of the incredibly slow renovation of the Department that has been underway for almost a decade. One of the reasons DRL has to move is that its corner of the building is slated to be renovated next. If this is a temporary relocation, then I don’t think that it’s a concern. But if the renovation is used as a pretext for exile, then there are serious problems. (And for the record, a similar argument could be made about OES, given the priority the Administration has given to addressing climate change.)

What I hear is that David Kramer, who was the last Bush-era Assistant Secretary for DRL, was under tremendous pressure to relocate — pressure coming not just from the building, but also from those parts of his own bureau already outside the building (mainly that part of DRL responsible for producing the annual Country Reports on Human Rights Practices). Kramer’s decision to cave agree to the move was one of the last decisions of his tenure, and has seriously damaged morale in the bureau.

When I was at State, one of my responsibilities was to manage what is known as press guidance — the talking points produced each day for the spokesman. I learned early on that press guidance was policy — that if you got the spokesman to say something, then it was the official policy of the U.S. government. We thus became far more aggressive in our efforts to play a role in press guidance, and were able to change a number of statements that otherwise would not have taken human rights issues into consideration.

I raise that now because office space also is policy. Those working at State call themselves “the building,” demonstrating just how seriously location is taken — and the degree to which those laboring at one of a dozen annexes are regarded as second-class citizens. The reality is that not everybody can be on the seventh floor, or even in the main building, but Hillary needs to be careful that her (or more likely her advisors’) decisions about who sits where does not end up having a very real impact on policy.

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3 February 2009 Charles J. Brown
12:45 pm

A Power-less State

A few short hits today, as I try to catch up on the news.

Let’s start with word last week that Obama plans to appoint Samantha Power to serve as Senior Director for Multilateral Affairs in the National Security Council. To no one’s surprise, the MSM focused not on her abilities or scholarship, but on “monstergate,” the moment last year when Power’s criticism of Hillary went a little over the top.

That’s too bad, because Power brings an impressive resume to an important job. The Senior Director for Multilateral Affairs, no matter what the usually brilliant Charlie over at Abu Muqawama may believe, is a crucial job, particularly in an administration dedicated to reversing the Bush Administration’s disastrous unilateralism. Power will oversee a portfolio that includes not only U.S.-UN relations, but also human rights, democracy, humanitarian relief, peacekeeping, and refugees. It’s a big job, as demonstrated by the fact that past Administrations have appointed similarly senior people (Mort Halperin, Eric Schwartz, and Elliott Abrams — who, no matter how despicable you may find him, was a key player during his time at NSC).

I have a passing acquaintance with Power — she served on (and contributed to) the foreign policy team I co-directed for the Kerry campaign — but I don’t know her well. She is, by any measurement, an impressive and important thinker, and deserves to be taken much more seriously than the gossipy coverage she’s gotten over the past year. Her most recent books are A Problem from Hell, which is a history of U.S. policy toward genocide (and which won the Pulitzer Prize) and Chasing the Flame, which is a biography of Sergio Vielo de Mello, who died in the bombing of the UN compound in Iraq. She has headed the Carr Center for Human Rights at Harvard and has been a regular contributor to The New Yorker.

Power is one of the few academics out there who can bring experience working on both the U.S.-U.N. relations and U.S. human rights policy. Most importantly of all, she’s close to Obama, having served as one of his earliest foreign policy advisors. In fact, her decision to take a leave of absence from Harvard to work in Obama’s Senate office was for me an early sign that he was thinking beyond the Senate.

You can count on her to play an important role in reversing Bush-era policies, from Guantanamo to torture to Boltonist views of the U.N.

Much of the press coverage has breathlessly suggested that Power will have “close contact and potential travel with Clinton.” Uh, no. In all fairness to Power, her new position is not that high up the food chain. Hillary will deal with James Jones, Power’s boss’s boss, not Power. Her counterparts at State will be the Assistant Secretaries for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor (DRL); Population, Refugees and Migration; and International Organization Affairs. She’ll also liaise with USAID and those sections of State and DOD that work on peacekeeping issues. She may be in meetings with Clinton, and may from time to time brief her. But even if Power is on the plane, she’s likely to be one of many, not one-on-one with Clinton.

And speaking of DRL, Power’s appointment to the NSC takes out of the running the most obvious candidate to lead my old bureau. From what I hear, there are currently three serious candidates, two from the human rights community and one from a think tank. No word on when one of them will get the nod.

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2 February 2009 Charles J. Brown
04:18 pm

Ping Pong is to U.S.-China Relations as. . .

. . .Badminton is to U.S.-Iran relations?

Badminton? Really?

Yes, really:

The U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs will send a delegation of 12 Americans, including eight female athletes, coaches, and managers representing USA Badminton, to Tehran, Iran, from February 3-9th. The team will compete in the Fajr International Badminton Tournament at the invitation of the Iranian Badminton Federation.

Celebrating its 19th year, the Fajr Tournament is a respected international badminton event and an opportunity to compete against talented teams from many countries, including Iran. Teams representing 16 countries plan to compete in the Iranian tournament, scheduled for February 5-8th. The Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs and USA Badminton look forward to hosting the Iranian Badminton Federation for the U.S. Open in July.

This visit is part of our people-to-people exchanges with Iran. Since 2006, the U.S. Department of State has included Iranians in a range of educational, professional, and cultural exchange programs. In the past two years, over 250 Iranians, including artists, athletes, and medical professionals, have participated in exchange programs in the United States. Through its Sports United program, the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs has brought the Iranian National Teams for Basketball, Water Polo, Weightlifting, and members of the men’s and women’s National Table Tennis teams to the United States. The U.S. Department of State also sent 20 members of USA Wrestling to Iran to compete in the prestigious Takhti Cup in January 2007.

Okay, maybe not. Before you get all excited, keep in mind a couple of things.

First, this has to have been in development for a while. It’s just too soon after the start of the Obama Administration for Hillary’s team to have put this together. And as the release itself notes, the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (which is part of what’s left from the destruction of USIA by Jesse Helms) has been putting these kinds of trips together for a while now.

Second, Iran is not China in the final throes of the Cultural Revolution. No matter what you may think of the Iranian government, civil society does exist, and media have reported extensively on conditions inside the country.

Third, this is not going to get the kind of rapturous media coverage that “ping pong diplomacy” received nearly forty years ago. If they’re lucky, it may get a late-night slot on ESPN6.

Fourth and most importantly, as my wife Molly would note, badminton seriously kicks ping pong’s ass.

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27 January 2009 Charles J. Brown
11:06 am

The Other Don’t Ask Don’t Tell

When I was at the State Department, I had the opportunity to work closely with a terrific group of foreign service officers who were memberw of Gays and Lesbians in Foreign Affairs Agencies, who were fighting to get recognition for same sex spouses.

Although benefits were a big part of what they were fighting for, an equally important issue was how their spouses were treated overseas. The reality is that unlike a number of European countries, American gay and lesbian spouses do not enjoy the same status overseas as their heterosexual colleagues. That means, among other things, that they do not have the rights, privileges, and protection that other spouses do. As former Ambassador Michael Guest put it back in 2007 when he resigned from the foreign service over the treatment of his partner, the foreign service (and by extension the U.S. Government) forced him to choose

between obligations to my partner, who is my family, and service to my country,” which he called “a shame for this institution and our country.

Back when I was in the Clinton Administration, gay spouses did not have even the most basic rights and privileges. To its credit, the Bush Administration changed some of the rules — permitting partners/spouses to attend security and other introductory seminars — but not much more.

Yesterday, GLIFAA released to the press a copy of a letter sent last week to incoming Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton:

We, the undersigned and representing the diversity of the foreign affairs agencies. . .are troubled that our families are not all treated equally and with the same respect. We are concerned that access to the federal health care insurance program is denied to same-sex partners of employees serving in Third World countries with substandard medical care.

We question the logic of leaving same-sex partners to fend for themselves during an emergency evacuation of a high danger post. We are embarrassed when the Department will reimburse a variety of moving expenses, including the cost of transporting a pet, when an employee is assigned overseas, but will not do the same for a same-sex partner.

We are saddened that individual and community safety are put at risk because full language instruction is not available to same-sex partners. We are uncomfortable that same-sex partners receive less compensation and fewer benefits for performing exactly the same job inside the mission as an opposite-sex spouse, that is, when same-sex partners are given a chance to work.

An order from your office designating same-sex partners as Eligible Family Members (EFMs) could remedy many of the inequalities that these families face. Other remedies will require coordination between the Executive and Legislative branches.

Madam Secretary, we believe that no colleague of ours is a second-class colleague, and no colleague’s family is a second-class family. Given your commitment to protecting the safety and promoting the welfare of all Foreign Service families, we ask for your full consideration of our concerns and we hope that a dialogue aimed at ending this unequal treatment can be started.

This is what I mean by the other don’t ask don’t tell. It’s not as discriminatory as what happens in the military: gays and lesbians no longer are drummed out of the foreign service as a result of their sexual orientation. But they are asked to pretend that they are not second-class citizens.

To put it another way, they’re being told “don’t tell us we’re not treating you fairly and we won’t ask why that’s a problem.”

That’s ridiculous, and shameful. As the GLIFAA letter notes, there’s a simple solution here: designate partners as Eligible Family Members, which would “give” them the rights and privileges (and protection) enjoyed by all other family members. (Of course the notion that the government has the ability to “give” fundamental human rights to people is, in itself, offensive, but we’ll set that aside for the moment.)

You want to know how ridiculous this is? If a foreign service officer is married to the love of her life, and her spouse brings into the marriage a daughter, and the foreign service officer adopts that daughter, the daughter is an Eligible Family Member, but her own birth mother is not.

During Hillary’s confirmation hearing, Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) asked her about this issue:

FEINGOLD: What would you do as secretary of state to address these concerns? Will you support changes to existing personnel policy in order to ensure that LGBT staff at State and USAID receive equal benefits and support?

CLINTON: Senator, this issue was brought to my attention during the transition. I’ve asked to have more briefing on it because I think that we should take a hard look at the existing policy. As I understand it, but don’t hold me to it because I don’t have the full briefing material, but my understanding is other nations have moved to extend that partnership benefit. And we will come back to you to inform you of decisions we make going forward.

This is both good news and bad news. It’s good news because Secretary Clinton demonstrated a willingness to “take a hard look” at the issue. It’s bad news because she did not promise to change policy. That is a politicians’ caution — perhaps understandable given her husband’s experiences — but this isn’t 1992. Public attitudes about and understanding of these issues has changed significantly: although there remains no consensus on marriage, most Americans support both civil unions and partner benefits.

So why didn’t Clinton commit? I can only speculate. First, the federal bureaucracy may be hesitant to allow State to take the lead on this. I think that’s ridiculous — given the fact that one part of the government (the military) already has a separate discriminatory policy, I don’t see why another part of the government having a separate progressive policy should be a problem.

Second, some folks at State may nervous about “granting” full rights and privileges to same sex spouses because they’re afraid of how some countries — particularly the Vatican, most African states, and Muslim-majority states — may react. You could call it the Anglican church precedent: rock the boat and you create problems. That’s a fallacy, of course — it hasn’t been the case for other countries that have given same-sex spouses full rights and benefits — and it’s allowing diplomacy to mask discrimination.

Lest you think that these are a minor issues, remember this: until the Clinton Administration, one of the questions on the security clearance questionnaire was whether you had ever engaged in “homosexual activity.” Some very talented people over the years have been excluded from the foreign service or drummed out simply because they were gay. Don’t forget that the red hunts of the 1950s were also used to fire gay foreign service officers because they were viewed as somehow more “susceptible” to recruitment.

But even after that terrible practice stopped, diplomatic security found other ways to make the lives of gays and lesbians miserable. I’ll never forget a meeting I had during my time at State when a foreign service officer told how diplomatic security gave him a choice: forget about a foreign service career or out himself to his parents, who did not know he was gay. Another was actually outed to his parents by diplomatic security.

Here’s hoping that Secretary Clinton does the right thing, and does it quickly.

Then we can turn to the bigger problem in that other agency.

| posted in American foreign policy, politics | 5 Comments

23 January 2009 Charles J. Brown
04:29 pm

Whoopsie

The RSS feed for remarks by the Secretary of State is still entitled “Secretary Rice Remarks.”

Ah, the joys of a transition.

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14 January 2009 Charles J. Brown
10:10 pm

The Panic over Political Appointments

So the hot topic around Washington these days, at least in the foreign policy community is. . .

Israel/Gaza? Uh-uh.

Russia/Ukraine pipeline issues? Nope.

Hillary’s confirmation? Well, that’s getting a lot of attention, but even that isn’t at the top of the list.

No, story number one with a bullet is Laura Rozen’s post that many Obamanistas in the foreign policy community are not happy with the transition:

[S]ome Obama campaign foreign policy volunteer advisors – many of whom put in long hours for no pay, taking career risks no doubt in part with the hope that should the long-shot junior Senator win, their hard work might eventually be rewarded – are finding themselves on the outside looking in, and not sure where they should knock.

In conversations over the past couple weeks, sources have told The Cable that something has definitely changed about their relationship to Obamaland since the campaign ended. The transition’s inner circle has become excessively secretive, closed, and far from transparent with them about the process for appointing people to jobs.

I’m not surprised — after all, this is what I wrote two months ago:

[I]t’s already pretty clear that Obama foreign policy types, particularly those who chose to support him back when he was far from a sure thing, are not at all happy with [the choice of Hillary as SecState]. . . .

They are wondering why they stuck their neck out twenty months ago only to see Hillary’s supporters get the plum foreign policy jobs. At the time, they supported Obama not to get a job (after all, Hillary looked like a near-lock then) but because they sincerely believed that Obama represented a new and fresh approach. Most knew that they were taking a big chance — after all, they had been warned of the consequences were they not to support Hillary. (And again, I believe that most of those who supported Hillary did so because they thought she was the best person for the job.)

My friends would be less than human if they did not want some reward for the chance they took. Now, they feel, their payoff is to see the key jobs at State go to those who played it safe. Although it’s true that Hillary might appoint some Obama loyalists to her team, most of my friends don’t think that’s going to happen.

So at least to me, Rozen’s report is not that surprising. That said, I’m sympathetic with those of my colleagues who feel like they’re not being heard or “rewarded.” I was on one of the foreign policy teams and I haven’t heard anything back either. And I think there is some truth to the suggestion in Rozen’s story that the nature of email communication has limited the type of networking that in the past has given those advising the campaign a leg up.

But come on, people. It’s not even the middle of January. No transition in history has started appointing positions below Undersecretary in January. And unlike past transitions, this one has focused not just on personnel, but also on fixing what everyone regards as a broken system. Since those recommendations just went to Secretary-Designate Clinton in the past week or two, it’s awfully hard for people to get appointments for positions that may be eliminated in a reorganization.

In addition, I’m guessing that the foreign policy transition process probably wasn’t helped by the fact that two of those managing it — Mona Sutphen and Susan Rice — received early appointments that may have had an impact on personnel review. In particular, Sutphen’s appointment to one of the Deputy White House Chief of Staff jobs may really have created a bottleneck. As the email quoted in full by Rozen notes, she originally was going to coordinate personnel side of the foreign policy transition:

Please also feel free to copy Mona Sutphen who will be tracking your applications at: [redacted], with any resumes and materials you submit in the official channel.

Furthermore, while the process has not been transparent, that’s typical, not unusual — both the Clinton and the Bush process were just as opaque. There are good reasons for that: you don’t want people to know who the other candidates for a given job are, and you want to make sure that the process is designed in a way to limit favortism, not reward it.

To be clear, I would love it if my friends and contacts on the transition teams were to tell me I was a lock for a job. But then they not only would be disingenuous, they also would exceed their authority.

And the notion that Hillary and Biden loyalists are getting all the good jobs simply isn’t true. Most of the rumors reported by both Rozen and WaPo’s Al Kamen include Obama loyalists, Hillary supporters, and those who did not take sides in the primary.

The very idea of a scorecard is nothing more than the latest media version of the supposed Hillary-Barack throwdown. Folks seem to forget that in the general, everybody worked for Obama. For example, I know several people who were part of team whose members got up each morning at 4:00 am to put together a summary of that day’s big foreign policy stories. Some were Obama supporters and some were Hillary supporters. Do the former now think the latter somehow worked less or got up later?

This story is in some ways an extension of the media’s obsession with the NYT’s story this summer about Obam’s supposedly huge foreign policy team (more than 300!). The problem is that the original piece was predicated on the belief that Obama had created something new and different. Here’s what I said at the time (apologies in advance for quoting at length):

I have absolutely no illusions about this. We are not Barack Obama’s “mini State Department,” as the Times claims. In fact, one of the main purposes of these teams is… to keep us out of the way of the people actually making the decisions.

You see, every four years, every presidential campaign is inundated with officeseekerwannabes, some idealistic, some not so much. There are newbies who have never before been involved in a campaign, worker bees who have served in mid-level policy positions in previous administrations, and Prominent People who don’t have much time but want to help where they can. All of them have some sort of expertise on a given issue. All of them want the candidate to win. And almost all of them know that if you want a job in the next administration, you have to put in your time.

So what is a campaign to do? You can’t have three hundred people advising a candidate, no matter what the Times may think. If a campaign is smart (and that certainly is true of the Obama campaign) they do what any sensible organization does: they form committees. Except they call them “foreign policy advisory teams,” invite all the officeseekerwannabes to join, and then (for the most part)… ignore them.

Am I being cynical here? A little. But my disdain is for the Times’s breathless reporting, not the process.

Here’s the thing. Four years ago, I co-coordinated one of these groups for the Kerry campaign. I was one of two people who designated roles, set deadlines, assigned responsibility for drafting, and held conference calls. Lots and lots of conference calls. It was our job to get stuff done when the campaign needed it. I wrote two of the five “core” position papers as well as a few smaller ones and the relevant sections of the platform and the debate prep book.

I’m not trying to brag — I just want to give you a feel for what was (and is) involved. There were plenty of other people who did even more.

Did we have any influence on the Kerry campaign? I have no idea. I know that the people managing foreign policy for Kerry — Rand Beers, Dan Feldman, and Susan Rice, among others — did a good job of making us feel like we were being heard — just like I was trying to do with the people on my team. But I never actually heard a talking point I wrote come out of Kerry’s mouth.

Our team had 50 people on it. There were 20 teams. Now think about that for a moment. Do the math.

So why weren’t there reporters covering the number of people on the Kerry team four years ago?

Oh. Wait. There. Were. Took me five minutes on the Google to find the stories. Except back then, we were called a “mini-NSC” instead of a “mini-State:”

“I’ve put together for Kerry a small group of mostly younger foreign policy advisers, a sort of mini-NSC,” says [Dan] Feldman, 36. Feldman says he helped pick the group by the expertise of its members to mirror the various directorates within the National Security Council, including experts on areas like the Middle East or Africa and on topics such as counter-terrorism or weapons of mass destruction. “We have a weekly conference call, write position papers, and do opposition research on the Bush administration,” says Feldman.

Nice going Times. You just ran a front-page story that is virtually the same as one reported by you and others four years ago.

Yet despite all of this, some folks continue to think that the sheer number of Obama’s foreign policy advisors is the problem. Take Jason Zengerle over at TNR, for example:

I think there’s one explanation for their being left out in the cold that Laura Rozen–who recorded their discontent–ignores: Obama may have had more foreign policy advisors during the campaign than he now has foreign policy jobs to fill. . . .Now, obviously, the real State Department–not to mention the Pentagon and the NSC–employ more than 300 people. (Here’s the ‘Plum Book’ list of State Department jobs that can be filled via political appointments.) But I don’t know how many of Obama’s foreign policy advisors would want to leave their tenured professorships to be, say, the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Oceans.

There are several problems here. To begin with, there are more than 300 jobs on the Plum Book list Zengerle cites (11 pages, roughly 50-60 jobs listed per page). Some are designated for “career incumbents” (meaning foreign service officers) and others, such as most of the ambassadorships, will go to senior FSOs even though they technically are political appointees. But even if you take out those, there are at least 350 to 400 jobs there. And that doesn’t even include the jobs in NSC, Defense and DHS, not to mention the fact that Obama has pledged that Ambassadorships will go to talented experts rather than wealthy donors — and not all of those are going to be career FSOs.

Perhaps most importantly, there are a lot more political jobs at State today than there were sixteen years ago when Clinton had just as large (if not larger) team. And I don’t remember any of those folks going wanting. Think I’m wrong? Here’s my list of some of State Department political appointments that are new since Clinton first took office (some created under Clinton and some under Bush):

Deputy Secretary for Administration;
Undersecretary for Global Affairs;
Undersecretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs;
Undersecretary for Arms Control;
A handful of Assistant Secretaries and Deputy Assistant Secretaries (some of which have gone and will continue to go to senior foreign service officers);
Numerous Ambassadors at Large, Special Representatives, and Coordinators (for example, Religious Freedom, War Crimes Issues, and Afghanistan);
All the new Iraq and Afghanistan positions (the Iraq “desk” now takes up a huge chunk of the second floor at Foggy Bottom);
New positions mandated by the White House, Secretary of State, or Congress (for example, trafficking in persons, PEPFAR, conflict response and stabililty).

It’s likely that any reorganization will lead to the elimination of some of these jobs, as well as a few that predate the Clinton Administration. But it’s equally likely that any such effort also will create new positions. For example, one rumor going around the building is that the various undersecretaries will have more resources and responsibilities, which probably means more staff positions. In fact, if you listen to the foreign service gossip, those positions are being created in order to find more jobs for those aspiring to a political appointment.

There’s one other thing Zengerle gets wrong: almost every single one of the people who volunteered for the Obama campaign would be delighted to be Deputy Assistant Secretary for Oceans — because that would mean they got offered a job in the Obama Administration.

The bottom line? It’s way, way, way too early to panic. I suggest everyone take a deep breath and stop worrying about whether they’re going to get the job they want — or, in their more frantic moments, whether they’re going to get any job at all.

At least that’s what I’m telling myself.

P.S. Thanks for your patience while I coped with life. It’s good to be back.

| posted in American foreign policy, politics | 1 Comment

13 January 2009 Midwest McGarry
06:30 pm

Clinton Takes Command

In the 2008 primaries I first supported John Edwards. His focus on poverty in this country truly moved me, and the issue is even more relevant now in the midst of a worldwide financial crisis.

I was always inspired by Barack Obama, and I easily switched allegiance to him when the time came. But I and many Americans came out of that season with a much deeper respect for Senator Hillary Clinton. If she can shed herself of pit bulls like the loathsome Terry McAuliffe, I can now say I would genuinely like to her to be president of the United States at some point in the future.

And that opinion was reinforced by her performance today in front of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. She was confident and in control. She had a command of the issues, and I was impressed to hear arms control has been resurrected from the Bush-era trash bin as a vital task. She made my heart sing when she said:

America cannot solve the most pressing problems on our own, and the world cannot solve them without America. The best way to advance America’s interest in reducing global threats and seizing global opportunities is to design and implement global solutions. This isn’t a philosophical point. This is our reality.

I don’t know if you have seen the new Madame Secretary blog over at Foreign Policy, but today was their Super Bowl. Among several great posts, let me highlight three:

| posted in American foreign policy, politics | 2 Comments

18 December 2008 Charles J. Brown
02:41 pm

Rumor of the Day

State Department (non-Obama transition) sources are reporting that the big rumor inside the building is that the Obama Agency Review Team will recommend a major reorganization of the Department, including the elimination of certain bureaus and the consolidation of others.

Not a lot of substance to what I’ve heard, so it’s not clear whether this is grounded in reality or merely fear.

I will say that the Department could benefit from a significant reorganization of both its regional and thematic bureaus.

Anyone else hearing anything?

| posted in American foreign policy, politics | 0 Comments

10 December 2008 Charles J. Brown
09:20 pm

Dipnote Follies: Twitter TMI, Nukes, and Human Rights

Our friends at Dipnote haven’t had a very good week.

The good news is that they’re trying some new things, including Twitter. The bad news is that they’ve let Deputy Assistant Secretary for Public Diplomacy Colleen Graffy tweet her vacation diplomatic mission to Iceland and Croatia. As Al Kamen noted in WaPo today, Graffy has sounded more like an ugly American than a government official. Here are a few of Graffy’s greatest tweets:

in Boston now boarding flight to Iceland! forgot gym clothes, forgot bathing suit (possible Blue Lagoon visit).advice: don’t pack in 30 min 7:51 PM Dec 6th from web

Arrived at Reflavik airport–beautiful! Clever–u can buy duty free AFTER landing–big shop open while u wait for luggage. quel marketing! 4:04 AM Dec 7th from web

Renting a bathing suit and getting ready to take the plunge into the geothermal hot springs and smear silica mud on my face 11:53 AM Dec 7th from mobile web

Small world–ran into DCM Neil Klopfenstein just before plunge into Blue Lagoon. Bathing suit not my sartorial choice for first meet! Ack! 4:42 PM Dec 7th from web

I’ve been accused of TMI/oversharing:http://tinyurl.com/5vektk (scroll down 4 my response) shld diplomats stick to policy twitter & cens …… about 12 hours ago from web

Ya think? Sheesh.

For most of today, Graffy has been tweeting on the fallout from the Kamen piece.

@matthewburton thx for encouraging words. however, have u seen al kamen WaPo today? this is why diplomats stay off the record and boring. about 4 hours ago from web in reply to matthewburton

@nancyscola u can say “drop the Al Kamen’s of the world from the equation, not openness” but I couldn’t possibly. 21 minutes ago from web in reply to nancyscola

don’t laugh, just discovered @Replies. Belated thx 4 all yr replies on diplo-twittering. Conclusion: “Al Kamen doesn’t get twittering.” 26 minutes ago from web

In fairness to Graffy, she is doing what I have argued Dipnote needs to be: more spontaneous. As she notes, “this is why diplomats stay off the record and boring.”

That’s true, but there’s a big difference between tweeting about your rented swimsuit and going on the record to discuss U.S. policy. At no point does Graffy do more that describe what she’s doing. Yes, that’s part of what Twitter is about, but it’s also about sharing opinions. Graffy never makes a policy statement — in fact, she doesn’t even explain why she made the trip in the first place.

If that wasn’t bad enough, the Dipnote blog hasn’t been having a good run of it either. A few days ago, they actually asked the following question:

In recent months, there has been talk of Iran’s nuclear capability. So much of our diplomacy centers on the acquisition of nuclear technology.

Do nuclear weapons make the world more or less safe?

Dr. Strangelove, white courtesy phone, please.

I know part of the reason for Dipnote is to provoke dialogue. And blogs should encourage debate. But isn’t this kind of, sort of, just maybe, AN INCREDIBLY STOOOOPID QUESTION? Setting aside the insane notion that nuclear weapons somehow might make us safer, do we really want others to infer that the United States government thinks that nuclear weapons might make the world safer?

And what were they thinking when they wrote that U.S. diplomacy “centers on the acquisition of nuclear technology”? I think they just might of meant preventing others from acquiring nukes. At least I hope they did.

You have to wonder where the vetters were for that one.

Maybe they were too busy with this post, from David J. Kramer, the current Assistant Secretary for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, which obviously has been carefully edited to completely squeeze it of all spirit.

Today is International Human Rights Day, the date sixty years ago when the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. I have the privilege of serving as the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, so this occasion is especially meaningful to me and to the men and women in my office. We see it as an opportunity to reflect on and rededicate ourselves to the work of protecting and promoting the rights enshrined in the Declaration. President Bush and Secretary Rice have made the promotion of human rights a priority not just for my bureau, but for the entire State Department and our embassies around the world.

Note the careful parsing here: Dubya and The Condi have made human rights a priority — for DRL, State, and embassies. But not, apparently, in the United States or facilities under its control.

In other words, go out to other countries and talk about their human rights record. But for god sakes, whatever you do, don’t mention torture. Or rendition. Or interrogation. Or indefinite detention. Oh wait — that’s wrong. You can mention them, just don’t bring up our own policies.

I have not had the opportunity to meet Kramer, but I do feel bad for him. From what I’ve heard, he’s a good guy trying to do a job that is tough even in normal times. And under Bush, he has to go out and preach the gospel of human rights to people who believe that America has no moral standing.

It’s not his fault the Administration he currently serves is run by individuals who may have committed war crimes. It’s not his fault that many around the world view the United States as part of the problem and not part of the solution. It’s not his fault that he must go out and tell other countries to “do as we say and not as we do.” And it isn’t his fault that he still must pretend that none of that is true.

Look on the bright side, though. At least he didn’t write about his swim attire.

| posted in American foreign policy, pop culture, world events | 0 Comments

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