| 29.01.2009 |
|
||||||||
| Recent weeks have brought an influx in reporting about the lobbying efforts of Indians, all of which is worth checking out. The Cable kicked things off with its report on the appointment of Richard Holbrooke to a South Asia envoy post. "But the omission of India from his title, and from [Hillary] Clinton's official remarks introducing the new diplomatic push in the region was no accident -- not to mention a sharp departure from Obama's own previously stated approach of engaging India, as well as Pakistan and Afghanistan, in a regional dialogue. Multiple sources told The Cable that India vigorously -- and successfully -- lobbied the Obama transition team to make sure that neither India nor Kashmir was included in Holbrooke's official brief." They followed up on that later here. Time magazine took a step back and examined the issue as a whole here, and the idea is that India doesn't want the U.S. butting in to Kashmir, and views the limited Holbrooke portfolio as a success in Washington. But the Obama team is saying lobbying had nothing to do with it; they'd always intended to leave India out of his portfolio, but that doesn't mean the administration won't be active on Kashmir. Meanwhile, Indian-American groups have been getting involved, too, according to my CQ colleague Caitlin Webber, with a coalition of groups hitting the Hill this week to "urge lawmakers to make U.S. military aid to Pakistan conditional on cooperation with investigations of November’s terrorist attack in Mumbai." And a group of Pakistani-Americans have been lobbying against such an idea. Why's this all happening all at once? Well, what happened in Mumbai has ramifications for the U.S. -- on its domestic counterterrorism policies, on its agenda hunting terrorists on the Afghanistan border, and so forth. But on a larger level less driven by a single recent news event, one of the people affiliated with the Pakistani-American lobbying effort said: “I think we are all going through a moment of transition. The U.S. is going through its own moment of transition, trying to find its voice, its soul, its destiny, and so is Pakistan and so is India.” |
||||||||
|
||||||||
| 29.01.2009 |
|
||||||||
| That's what new Senate Foreign Relations Chairman John Kerry said Wednesday at a hearing where his remarks did not go entirely unnoticed but were overshadowed by the testimony of Al Gore. But it may have deserved to be the headline (and obviously it's what I went with). I already wrote just yesterday that energy/climate change will be one of the top three foreign policy issues of the year, at least on the congressional agenda. It was a matter of both words and deeds. Wrote Time: "The fact that Kerry chose to make global warming the subject of his first hearing as chairman of the committee signals that in President Barack Obama's Washington at least, Gore's views on the severity of climate change and the need for action are gaining clout — and not just for environmental reasons." The reason is not immediately obvious to anyone who hasn't thought about it much. But Kerry himself explained: "We are here today for the same reason our top military leaders and intelligence officials have been sounding the alarms. They describe climate change as a threat multiplier and they are warning that the cost of ignoring this issue will be more famine, more drought, more widespread pandemics, more natural disasters, more resource scarcity and human displacement on a massive scale." |
||||||||
|
||||||||
| 28.01.2009 |
|
||||||||
| I gave a speech today, as a CQ reporter, on the security agenda for the new Congress. It was an interesting exercise, to step back and look at it as a whole, and to look forward. What I realized was that there's a lot more there than I expected for a Democratic Congress that will almost surely end up largely supporting a new Democratic president. I don't think there will be the kind of acquiescence to any and all executive branch proposals that marked the immediate post-9/11 environment, nor the kind of outright feuding on fundamental differences over the "how" of battling terrorism that has marked the last couple years. But I do expect there to be border skirmishes over the specifics. Here's the list as I saw it, assembled with the assistance of some of my colleagues. Space will keep me from elaborating much, but these are topics I'll surely return to in this space repeatedly. FOREIGN POLICY --Nuclear proliferation (START treaty, test ban treaty, the UAE) --Energy (climate change, energy demand) --"Smart" power (reviving diplomacy, shifting roles from Pentagon to State) DEFENSE --Budget (debate over cuts at some point, likely for weapons makers, but supplementals until then) --Iraq and Afghanistan (reviewing agreements with the Iraqi government, shifting the focus to Afghanistan) --Veterans (increased care for Iraq ilnesses and lower-priority veterans, DOD/VA health care infrastructure) INTELLIGENCE --Interrogation (Guantanamo closure, whether to codify interrogation tactics, examination of past practices) --Surveillance (court case outcomes, Patriot Act reauthorization) --Authorization bill (cybersecurity, shape of the intelligence community) HOMELAND SECURITY --Chemical plant security (legislation/regulation expiring) --FEMA as part of the Department of Homeland Security (Janet Napolitano non-committal) --Department oversight (Authorization bill, attention to border security, interoperatbility, surface transportation) |
||||||||
|
||||||||
| 27.01.2009 |
|
||||||||
| The European Union tiptoe toward being willing to accept some Guantanamo detainees points to one major difference between the Bush administration and the Obama administration: Bush evoked hostility from many traditional U.S. allies, while Obama has something of a clean slate, thanks to not having offended anyone yet and his generally more welcoming attitude toward international cooperation. Now, some of the groundwork toward countries being willing to accept Gitmo detainees may have indeed been put in place by Bush's team. But even then, the sense was that buddying up to the new administration was the major goal, not doing favors for the outgoing team. There is no huge cry for Gitmo detainees to be returned to the United States. The stray Democratic congressman says he'd be fine with them being in his district, but several lawmakers, albeit Republicans, have made a big fuss about the idea. Karl Rove predicts that Gitmo will not be closed in a year. There are plenty of reasons to be skeptical of whether Obama can deliver on his plan. But if the international community gets on board, it will absolutely be significantly easier. |
||||||||
|
||||||||
| 25.01.2009 |
|
||||||||
| This AP analysis article has some interesting insights about the new Obama/Clinton foreign policy, but I was most taken by one section. "[Clinton} intends to make more use of special diplomatic envoys, in part to move the U.S. away from its recent practice of increasing the power of military commanders to interact with foreign leaders. 'I believe that special envoys, particularly (as compared to) military commands, have a lot to recommend in order to make sure that we've got the civilian presence well represented,' she told senators." It's not just that Obama and Clinton prefer diplomacy. The Pentagon under Bush increasingly took on roles that were once the exclusive province of the military. And in many ways, they still are doing those things. One wonders what Robert Gates thinks of Clinton's plans, not that conflict between Defense and State would be anything new. |
||||||||
|
||||||||
| 22.01.2009 |
|
||||||||
| Sticking with reaction to Tuesday's inaugural speech, some interesting ideological types have dissected the foreign policy remarks of President Obama and their relative liberal or conservative qualities. For the most part, both this Heritage piece and this U.S. News piece get it right. For instance, the Heritage author said that by referring to a "war" on a terror network, Obama seconded Bush (although Obama used "network" as opposed to "terrorism" itself, a slight but important distinction that nonetheless leaves the assessment basically accurate); by addressing foreign leaders to whom the United States will "extend a hand" to those who "unclench your fist," Obama was putting forward an opposite course. At the same time, there was some hopefulness in the Heritage piece that Obama wouldn't turn too far away from Bush: "...how far world events will allow the Obama foreign policy to diverge from that of the Bush years remains to be seen." The U.S. News author was correct to take issue with conservatives who somehow saw something new in Obama's desire to "defeat" terrorists, as though Democrats hadn't wanted to do so before: "The national Democrats who don't want to defeat our terrorist enemies only exist in the fevered mirror universe of GOP talking points." |
||||||||
|
||||||||
| 21.01.2009 |
|
||||||||
| David Nather tackles President Obama's message to the world. Caitlin Webber tackles how world leaders reacted to the inauguration. BBC Monitoring tackles world media reaction. |
||||||||
|
||||||||
| 20.01.2009 |
|
||||||||
| Multiple news reports make abundantly clear that as soon as President-elect Obama officially becomes president, he will hit foreign policy hard, tackling issues such as the Iraq War and Guantanamo. Where the reports differ is on what Obama will do on the conflict in Gaza, short of naming a Middle East envoy, which has been reported most everywhere. The Post: "Incoming officials were still debating yesterday how involvement in the Israeli-Palestinian crisis should proceed during the first week. With a fragile Gaza cease-fire in place, the new administration plans to tread gingerly, working behind the scenes while allowing Egyptian and European initiatives to play out before taking a highly visible role." The Hill: "After weeks of delivering speeches on the nation’s economic crisis, Obama is scheduled to meet with the Joints Chiefs of Staff and other high-ranking military officers on Wednesday and has promised to 'have plenty to say' about the conflict in Gaza after he is sworn in." I suspect CNN's account reflects the differing sources some of the publications might have: "The Obama aides also revealed the Mideast crisis has shot to the top of the immediate agenda. The aides said Obama has been pushing behind the scenes for quick, decisive action, overriding the advice of some aides who believe getting active instantly may raise unrealistic expectations for Mideast peace." |
||||||||
|
||||||||
| 18.01.2009 |
|
||||||||
| It's probably too early to call it a trend, but when one blogger on the left notices it and a magazine on the right notices it, it's at least interesting. DanK at TPM notes a reported Obama hire on Russia who has an intervention-oriented mindset. The American Conservative notes the same hire, plus another potential pick at the State Department, as being part of the same intervention-oriented strain. Something to consider. |
||||||||
|
||||||||
| 16.01.2009 |
|
||||||||
| A surprising fact: In a 2008 presidential campaign where foreign policy by all appearances took a backseat to the economy, President-elect Obama made more campaign promises on foreign policy than any other subject. That's according to Politifact, which compiled all of his promises (510 in all) and segregated them by category (87 on foreign policy). The plan is to follow all of his promises and see which one he fulfills. You can check out all the foreign policy pledges here, and go ahead and expect "no action" on some of them from now until 2012 or even 2016 -- Vice President-elect Biden said during the campaign that the economic crisis meant that some of the pledges to vastly increase foreign aid probably would go down the drain. |
||||||||
|
||||||||
| 15.01.2009 |
|
||||||||
| There's a very deep pool of reporting right now that is looking back at the Bush administration's foreign policy and national security legacy, but I want to drill a little deeper on one specific issue: interrogation and detention policy. Journalist and author Bob Woodward said the following in a recent roundtable: "If there had been other attacks, large attacks, many attacks, quite frankly -- and this doesn't speak well to the country -- probably these things wouldn't have been an issue, people would have accepted it and the dark side would have been okay." Woodward's statements came on the same day he reported that a top Bush administration official said a terror case had to be thrown out because a suspect was tortured. And I think that just hints at why Woodward's prediction is somewhat false. There are a great many reasons that "the dark side" may have ran afoul of the general populace even if there were additional terror attacks. --It obviously can complicate terror prosecutions, making it harder to jail people who are guilty, and surely a segment of the electorate might have come to question it on those grounds. --There is a considerable body of study questioning whether some of the tactics the Bush administration has acknowledged using produce good intelligence, since people enduring harsh treatment have been known to lie simply to escape said harsh treatment. Trained interrogators, psychologists and anyone with a pragmatic streak would have eventually spoken out about this no matter the number of attacks, I imagine. --There would always have been a segment of the population that would have moral objections to the U.S. government embracing "the dark side." --And, as a foreign policy "realist" argued Tuesday, waterboarding/torture has had, and would continually have had even had their been additional attacks, ramifications for the United States internationally; there is a plausible argument that the revelations of the United States' harsh treatment pushed more people toward becoming terrorists. If the tactics used to fight terrorists create new terrorists, surely at least a segment of the population would have wondered whether the tactics were effective. And that doesn't even factor in to the discussion any of the fallout all of this has led to for the United States' allies, whose help would still hypothetically be handy for fighting terrorists. I'm not personally arguing for or against any specific interrogation/detention regime. I'm only arguing with the premise of Woodward's statement. I'm guessing that if there had been more terror attacks, it might have taken longer for the Bush administration's methods in the "war on terror" to have come under the kind of scrutiny they're under now. But they would have eventually. |
||||||||
|
||||||||
| 13.01.2009 |
|
||||||||
| President-elect Obama and congressional Democrats have been a bit out of sync on intelligence issues. First he angered some congressional liberals who opposed a candidate for the CIA director's job, John Brennan, because they feared his views on interrogation and surveillance policies were too closely in line with the Bush administration's. Then, the candidate he did pick, Leon Panetta, drew some fire from a couple senior Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee who were angry they hadn't been informed and had concerns about his thin intelligence resume. Those concerns now appear to have died down. The next intelligence-related issue on which Congress and Obama may be out of sync is whether to merge the White House Homeland Security Council into the National Security Council. On the surface, it sounds like an easy decision -- why would you need a separate homeland security council when it's as much of a component of national security as anything else that falls under the NSC's purview? But the leaders of the House and Senate committees with oversight of homeland security are skeptical about the idea, because they fear it could lead to homeland security getting thrown onto the backburner. One's a Democrat and the other's an independent, and both say they're "open" to the merger, with some caveats. The top Republican on the Senate panel has similar concerns. Read more in my CQ story here (although you won't find the House chairman's point of view in that story, expressed to me but not published in the piece). |
||||||||
|
||||||||
| 11.01.2009 |
|
||||||||
| President-elect Barack Obama is going the opposite route of President Bush right away on one early foreign policy decision: A visit to Canada. Bush, you see, went to Mexico as his first foreign policy trip, breaking a rather long tradition of new presidents visiting Canada first, one that Obama plans to restore, according to both the Obama team and Canadian officials. As you might expect, they're happy about this in Canada, where it's something of a symbolic victory about the importance of their country. But that doesn't mean Obama won't have some contentious business to attend to once there. Per the Vancouver Sun: "The meeting between [Prime Minister Stephen] Harper and Obama is certain to focus heavily on several key topics — the war in Afghanistan, climate change and the impact the global recession is having on the North American auto industry and Canada-U.S. bilateral trade." |
||||||||
|
||||||||
| 08.01.2009 |
|
||||||||
| On Gaza and other foreign matters, President-elect Barack Obama's team has repeatedly refused to weigh in on the principle that there is only "one president at a time." But on the economic front, Obama has stepped over that line. It's hard to reconcile the two, just using one's brain. The closest Obama has come to explaining the difference is to say on Monday, per Politico, “I will continue to insist that, when it comes to foreign affairs, it is particularly important to emphasize that there is one president at a time... There are delicate negotiations taking place right now and we can't have two voices coming out of the United States when you have so much at stake.” I suppose it's defensible, then, if President Bush isn't proposing his own economic plan, therefore meaning there isn't any interference in negotiations. Because is there really any reason there should be just one face representing the executive branch abroad as opposed to with Congress? |
||||||||
|
||||||||
| 08.01.2009 |
|
||||||||
| Were you aware that Barack Obama had made his "first big foreign policy mistake?" And that it was a statement about Kashmir? The press in India and Pakistan is going bonkers about it, but it's not getting much ink in the United States. Perhaps that's because the statement was made months ago, on the campaign trail -- which would make it difficult to qualify as Obama's "first big foreign policy mistake," since it was made before he was even elected, let alone inaugurated. Obviously, Obama's stance on Kashmir has its detractors, as you might have read back in November, when the remarks were first published. But if this warrants big headlines, now, in India and Pakistan, clearly there's a great hunger for any shred of U.S.-related news in that region of the world, because this one's a big reach. Nonetheless, if you want to get caught up on this tempest in a teapot, you can read the Washington Times piece that started it all here. (And by the way, if the author of the piece was somehow alleging this was the "first big foreign policy mistake" Obama has ever made, in his whole life, or as a candidate for president, I'm sure Obama's critics and even his allies could find bigger so-called "mistake[s].") |
||||||||
|
||||||||
| 06.01.2009 |
|
||||||||
| From the Department of Stupidly Promoting Others comes this recommendation that you check out all the major, major new features over at Foreign Policy magazine's website, which has added like a gazillion foreign policy blogs, all of which show promise. But if you're anything like me, you won't stop reading the (hopefully) good work we do here at Across the Pond, because this is an opportunity to supplement, not replace, with yet more good foreign policy analysis. They hit foreign policy from every angle at each of the new blogs, and I won't link to every single one of them today; there are nine in all, and I recommend exploring. But I can tell you I'm personally looking forward to regularly visiting The Cable, written by the excellent foreign policy/national security writer Laura Rozen; The Best Defense, penned by Tom Ricks, the Washington Post defense writer who does great work; and Madam Secretary, which promises to "obsessive" about Hillary Clinton. There are some other heavyweights that just got hired -- go check it out. And if this doesn't sound enough like a press release, here's the actual press release. |
||||||||
|
||||||||
| 05.01.2009 |
|
||||||||
| On Sunday, Bill Richardson withdrew as President-elect Obama's choice to head up the Commerce Department, removing a voice from his cabinet who represents a more pro-free trade position. Considering that Obama's pick for U.S. trade representative, Rep. Xavier Becerra, is seen as more skeptical of free trade (or, rather, more in favor of fair trade -- the dispute over wording here makes writing about this difficult), Richardson's departure leaves Rahm Emmanuel, Obama's pick for White House chief of staff, as the biggest counterbalance representing that stance. One wonders if Obama's team will replace Richardson with someone who reflects Richardson's point of view on trade. |
||||||||
|
||||||||
| 02.01.2009 |
|
||||||||
| If you're interested in following the Senate's march of nominees for hearings and confirmations, two locations of note: 1. This New York Times piece that lays out the current schedule. 2. This CQPolitics.com blog that posts new hearing dates as they happen. Few of the nominees of interest to this blog -- i.e., those with foreign relations roles -- or much of any of the nominees, in fact, are expected to encounter any real resistance from Democrats who control Congress. But it's an opportunity to stop relying on speculation and get from the horse's mouth the incoming administration's views on Afghanistan and the like. Per the times: "The confirmation calendar, at this juncture, promises to be manna for policy wonks as everyone gets a glimpse of the incoming administration’s plans and its collective (or not so) thinking." |
||||||||
|
||||||||