THE DIPLOMATIC TIMES REVIEW

A Good Roundup of Opinion on Ambassador John Huntsman

U.S. President Barack Obama’s May 16, 2009, announcement that he had appointed John Huntsman, Jr., Utah’s Republican governor, ambassador to China generated a diversity of opinion from bloggers. The Blogometer, “a daily report from The Hotline taking the temperature of the political blogosphere,” has a good roundup of opinion offered by liberal and conservative bloggers  See “5/18: Huntsman Goes To China.”

Technorati Tags: The Blogometer,The Hotline,John Huntsman,Bloggers,Barack Obama

The British Foreign Secretary’s May 13 Session With U.S. Bloggers

Adele Stan, a columnist for The American Prospect Online, had a May 13, 2009, column at the Guardian’s informative Comment is Free America blog headlined “David Miliband meets the bloggers.”

“It was billed as a newfangled sort of event: a news conference between US bloggers and Britain's blogging foreign secretary at the New America Foundation, a Washington DC think tank,” she wrote.

It was a nice blend of gossip, reportage, technology and politics. The kind of post I find quite appealing.

Note: This post is cross-posted at The Blogging Journalist and The Opinion Post.

Technorati Tags: David Miliband,Comment is Free America,Adele Stan,The American Prospect,U.S. Bloggers

The Fragile State of the Global Nuclear-nonproliferation Regime

Back on April 20, 2009, Think Tank blogger Steve Coll, author of the authoritative “Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, From the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001, suggested in a commentary in The New Yorker:

Along with two unfinished wars and economic freefall, President Barack Obama has inherited a less visible crisis, which may, in time, trump the others: the deterioration of the global nuclear-nonproliferation regime, which has lately reached its most fragile state of disrepair since the nineteen-eighties. At that time, South Africa became an undeclared nuclear-weapons power, and other newly industrialized nations (Taiwan, South Korea, Brazil, and Argentina, among them) quietly pursued hedging strategies that would allow them to build their own atomic weapons quickly, if they saw the need.

Mr. Coll said, “Today, a similar but more dangerous competition—not yet an open nuclear-arms race, but a race for nuclear options—is gaining momentum in the Middle East.” For more, see “No Nukes."

Questions: Why don’t U.S. Administrations ever talk publicly about Israel’s nuclear weapons?  Israel is the leading proponent of bombing Iran’s nuclear reactor. While the U.S. looked the other way, Israel bombed a nuclear reactor in Iraq in 1981 and one in Syria in 2007.

A good book on Israel’s development of nuclear weapons is Professor Avner Cohen’s 1998 book “Israel and the Bomb.”

Technorati Tags: Steve Coll,The New Yorker,No Nukes,Middle East Nuclear Proliferation

What Are Africa’s Expectations From Obama?

“Will President Barack Obama be able to deliver in accordance with the super-hero status that Africans are bestowing on him?”

That question is addressed in Centre for International Governance Innovation senior researcher Hany Besada  in a May 6, 2009, “open editorial” in The Zimbabwe Guardian. The editorial say, in part:

In the coming months, Obama will be expected to address Africa’s most pressing crises: Sudan’s six-year conflict in Darfur continues unabated with UN forces being woefully understaffed and underfunded, despite former President Bush labeling it as “genocide”; Somalia has now been without a central government for 18 years and has lost more than one million people to civil conflict and famine; and the Democratic Republic of the Congo is struggling to end a five-year conflict with a death toll deemed the world’s highest since World War II.

“And,” the editorial adds, “of course, there are the longstanding issues across the continent of food security, corruption, access to clean water and basic health care, and the looming threat of climate change.”

If you want to read the entire editorial, please see “Africa’s Expectations from Obama.” Also see Mr. Obama’s Africa policy outline.

Note: This item can also be found at The Opinion Post.

Technorati Tags: President Barack Obama,Africa,Zimbabe Guardian

Some Candor, Please, About the Taliban in Pakistan

 (Editor’s Note: The article below was published in The International News of Pakistan on Saturday, May 02, 2009.  The Diplomatic Times Review is publishing it with the permission of the author, a Harvard educated lawyer and practicing attorney based in Islamabad, Pakistan.)

By Babar Sattar

Email: sattar@post.harvard.edu

ARGUMENT ONE: PAKISTIAN IS FIGHTING AN ALIEN WAR

Those propagating a policy of pusillanimity and appeasement toward the Taliban make at least two flawed arguments. One, that Pakistan is fighting an alien war in FATA [Federally Administered Tribal Areas] as a mercenary of the United States and the drone attacks and the hatred against US imperialistic agenda somehow justifies the Taliban insurgency against the state and people of Pakistan. Instead of fighting ‘our own people’ to please the US, we must negotiate with them and stand together against imperialists. Two, where there is popular local support for a political agenda, the army cannot attack such agenda or those articulating and promoting it. Thus, it is fine for the state and the army to act as a neutral arbiter when it comes to a disagreement between the Taliban and the rest of the citizens of Swat or Buner for example, and act as a facilitator to promote reconciliation between the Taliban (as the dominant local group) and the state through peace deals.

HATRED FOR THE U.S.

Let us address our hatred for the US first. There are two sets of truths that fuel this hatred. One, that the US has pursued a shamelessly selfish foreign policy that is bereft of principles. And two, our successive political and military elites have not had the spine to enunciate a policy that squarely focuses on promoting and protecting Pakistan’s national interest where such approach might be at odds with the US foreign agenda. Together, these truths leave the people of Pakistan indignant, and the slavish disposition of incumbent rulers toward the US shames and angers us by exposing the gulf between our self-perception as a sovereign people and our reality of being led by a self-serving elite beholden to foreign masters.

It is understandable that there is some cheering and support for anyone who takes on a bully. We saw that during the first Gulf war when many in Pakistan (and in the Muslim world more generally) rooted for Saddam Hussain and Iraq, despite the fact that Saddam’s Iraq had never been a friend to Pakistan. Similarly the Hugo Chavez ‘the-devil-was-just-here’ speech against George Bush in the UN a couple of years back attracted loud cheers from all around. But amidst this understandable opposition to US foreign policy, must we cut our nose to spite the face when it comes to the Taliban and their insurgency within Pakistan?

That the Taliban have couched their domestic political agenda in anti-American terms and a majority of Pakistanis are angry with the US for its drone attacks and resentful over its foolishly apparent stick-and-carrot policy doesn’t automatically align the interests of a majority of Pakistanis with those of the Taliban.

It is indeed marvellous that even people like Imran Khan (forget Jamat-e-Islami) are oblivious to the fact that in their opposition to the US agenda they have emerged as apologists for the Taliban. We must not act against the Taliban because the US wants us to. But we must neither underplay the genuine threat posed by creeping Talibanization to democracy, civil liberties and constitutionalism in Pakistan, nor embrace the Taliban in order to spite the US. There is no need to root our national agenda in anti-Americanism. So long as we are committed to upholding and implementing the Constitution across the four corners of Pakistan, opposition to both, drone attacks and the Taliban-leashed barbarism creates no paradox.

ARGUMENT 2: THE STATE AND ARMY MUST NOT FIGHT ITS OWN PEOPLE

The second argument supporting inaction against the Taliban concludes that the state and the army must not fight its own people by making two subtle assumptions. One, the Taliban and those that they wish to impose their edicts over are in the middle of a political disagreement and the state and the army should not take sides. Two, the state should never use coercion or violence against its own people irrespective of their actions. Both these assumptions are misconceived. Let us remind ourselves that the Taliban are a product of Pakistan’s Afghan policy. The state created, supported and sustained madressas that propagated a brand of religious ideology that encouraged non-state actors to become agents of violence under the banner of jihad. The leaders of such madressas also had a penchant for a medieval society that shuns modernity and all things associated with the west.

The jihadi project didn’t only create mercenaries driven by religious zeal, but also imbibed them with the ancillary objective of creating a backward society once the jihad against infidels succeeds. The state cared little about such collateral effect of a deliberate state policy to recruit jihadis to promote its geo-strategic interests. Unfortunately, the more esoteric calling of the militants – of creating an obscurantist society – has now merged with the primary objective of fighting the infidels, as they see the rest of Pakistan as one big agent of the infidels. It is then farcical for the state to act as if we are witnessing a difference of agreement between different political groups in Swat, Buner, Dir and FATA that needs to be sorted out by these groups themselves. The state destroyed the level playing field between citizen groups when it transformed one group into professional merchants of violence.

To sit back and watch citizens with opposing points of view stake it out and develop a consensus in the tribal belt simply amounts to allowing the Taliban to make minced meat out of those opposed to their agenda and diktat. The state led by the army created this Frankenstein and it now shoulders the responsibility of confronting and neutralizing it. It is also incorrect that the state never uses violence against citizens. The state monopolizes the means of violence and uses it on an everyday basis against those who do not abide by the compact between the citizen and the state. We call it the penal justice system. Militant groups slaughtering fellow citizens, annexing their property and robbing them of their fundamental rights and liberties might be culpable of a higher crime against the state itself, but they are also guilty of murder, homicide, robbery, extortion etc. as defined by our justice system.

WE CANNOT AMUSE AND APPEASE MILITANT GROUPS

As a matter of principle, we cannot appease and humour them in the name of peace and reconciliation just because enforcing the law is harder against this group of citizens in comparison to other criminals across Pakistan that are less organized and trained. Pakistan has been ambivalent about extending constitutional rights and obligations to the people of the tribal areas merely because we got comfortable with the colonial legacy and bought into the logic of not trying to fix what is not broken. Notwithstanding the past, now that the tribal belt is up in flames we have no option but to bring it within the realm of the Constitution. Would allowing Sufi Mohammad and the Taliban to run a system of governance that falls foul of our Constitutional structure and principles not amount to the state facilitating its own balkanization? If such separatism is acceptable in Swat, then why not in Balochistan and Sindh where people have been similarly disgruntled with the state?

There is urgent need to inject honesty and candour in our discourse on the Taliban. Let’s admit that the Taliban are not barbaric because the US is bad. The Taliban are barbaric because they believe in a brutish approach to life and religion. If the US was to stop drone attacks in Pakistan or even quit Afghanistan, Muslim Khan is unlikely to go back to painting houses. The Taliban must be dealt with urgently and resolutely as an existential problem that is questioning and threatening the foundational principles on which our country is founded.

POLITICIANS MUST GIVE UP DOUBLE SPEAK

Further, our politicos must give up double-speak. Let the PML-N [Pakistan Muslim League] say that it fears speaking against the Taliban because who knows they might prevail tomorrow and so this centre-right party wishes to keep its options open. Let the ANP [Awami National Party] plainly state that they had ‘no option’ but to surrender their writ to the Taliban because of the dithering resolve of the army to fight armed militias in their province. And let the PPP [Pakistan Peoples Party] acknowledge that in trying to second-guess what every other power broker wants from Pakistan, this mainstream liberal party has lost all ability to support a thought-process of its own.

THE PAKISTAN ARMY

The Pakistan Army’s will and capability to confront the Taliban is under question because the masters of our security doctrine are confused about the future role and utility of the Taliban. The lack of capability of the army to fight a guerrilla war in the tribal areas is predominantly a consequence of lack of will to develop such a capability. Unless there is frank admission that the Afghan policy of the 1980 and 90s and the jihadi project conceived as a result was flawed and has had terrible consequences for Pakistan, the approach toward confronting Taliban will continue to be of the ineffectual fire-fighting variety that we have witnessed in Bajaur, Kohat, Swat, Dir and Buner over the last year or so. Once the army reformulates its defence doctrine wherein (i) Afghanistan is no longer a strategic hinterland but a friendly neighbour that should have a sustainable government representing the plural Afghan society, and (ii) jihadis have no further role in promoting Pakistani state’s geo-strategic interests, the need to keep options open with the Taliban will automatically subside. Only then will we begin to meaningfully address the root-causes of religious intolerance and violence in our society.

Technorati Tags: Babar Sattar,The Taliban,Pakistan,Pakistan-Taliban War,U.S.-Pakistan Relations

U.S., Cuban Diplomats Hold Second Round of Talks

During the April 27, 2009, Daily Press Briefing at the U.S. Department of State, spokesman Robert Wood, Acting  Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs , took questions from reporters about U.S.-Cuba relations, among other things. U. S. and Cuban diplomats  held talks on April 27. The first meeting between Cuban diplomats and U.S. diplomats representing the Obama Administration took place on April 14, 2009. Below are questions State Department correspondents posed about Cuba:

MR. WOOD: Okay, good afternoon, everybody. Welcome to the briefing. Happy Monday. I don’t have anything, so we can go right to your questions.

QUESTION: Can I ask you about Cuba and the meeting today with the Cuban representative? And could you give a little detail on how often this happens, who initiates it, and what the purpose is?

MR. WOOD: Well, you know, Bob, over the years we have had periodic contact with representatives of the Cuban Interests Section. And this afternoon, Assistant Secretary Tom Shannon is going to meet with the head of the Cuba Interests Section for a meeting at a mutually convenient location. I think the last time they met was April 13 here at the State Department building.

QUESTION: This year?

MR. WOOD: Yes. I believe --

QUESTION: At what level?

MR. WOOD: This was, I think, Assistant Secretary Shannon and the head of the Cuban Interests Section. And so these  meetings happen periodically, and as I said, there’s going to be one tonight.

QUESTION: Should it be seen as an effort by the Administration to expand communication with the Cubans in the – as a follow-up to the actions the President has taken?

MR. WOOD: As I said, this is one of, you know, a number of meetings that have taken place, you know, over the years with representatives of the Cuban Interests Section. So I’m not trying to make more or less of it. I’m just, you know, giving you the facts as they are.

QUESTION: So it’s not an expansion of communication as a part of a plan to --

MR. WOOD: Well, I think, the President has spoken and has, as you know, made it easier for, you know, Cuban Americans to travel to Cuba and has also taken action on remittances. So those are steps that the President has taken to further engage the Cuban people. And we will have to see what else comes in the future. But an important thing is is that we have some very serious concerns about the lack of democracy in Cuba, and we want to see steps taken to improve the situation there. But I don’t have anything more than what I’ve just outlined in terms of --

QUESTION: And just one more follow-up. Sorry. Is it still the Administration’s position that you would not take additional steps beyond those the President recently announced until the Cubans reciprocate in some form?

MR. WOOD: Well, we want to see the Cuban Government reciprocate. We’d like to see a release of political prisoners. There are host of steps that the Cuban Government can take and we’d like to see. I’m not going to put conditionality on things. But clearly, you know, there are some steps that the Cuban Government needs to do with regard to its own people, allowing the Cuban people to have some of the freedoms that are enjoyed in other countries in the hemisphere.

So, yes.

QUESTION: So are you – in this particular meeting today, are you going with a list of just – a list of things that you think they need to do before you can go further than the President went?

MR. WOOD: Well, they’re going to have a meeting. Again, as I said, representatives from the State Department have had discussions with representatives of the Cuban Interests Section before to follow up on issues. I’m sure that in the course of the conversation that Assistant Secretary Shannon has with the head of the Cuban Interests Section, they’ll touch on some of the issues of concern that we have. But I’m not going to get – there’s no list prepared that we’re going into the meeting with. We have concerns about Cuban policies. We’ll be raising them. You know, I’m sure that there will be a discussion of the President’s steps that he announced recently. But beyond that, I don’t have much of an agenda.

QUESTION: But are you looking for a more definitive explanation or response from the Cuban Government over the President’s, you know, overtures? Is that what you’re looking for?

MR. WOOD: No. I think what we’re looking for – again, our overall policy objective is to improve the political situation in Cuba for the Cuban people. And the steps the President took recently are in line with that policy: to try to promote more democracy in Cuba. And that’s going to be the nexus of our policy going forward. We’re certainly willing to engage, but there need to be reciprocal steps. And these are not – okay, go ahead.

QUESTION: No, go on.

MR. WOOD: No, no.

QUESTION: No, no. (Laughter.) You were just getting to the good part, so please go on.

MR. WOOD: All you want is the good part? No, you go ahead and finish.

QUESTION: On the reciprocal steps --

MR. WOOD: Yeah, what was --

QUESTION: On the reciprocal steps, what are you hoping? Are you laying out sort of a timetable of the kind of steps --

MR. WOOD: We’re not laying out a timetable or anything like that at this point. What we’d like to see are some steps to give the Cuban people some of the freedoms that are enjoyed by other peoples in the hemisphere, as I just mentioned in response to Bob’s question. So we’ll just have to see how the Cuban Government decides to respond.

QUESTION: And where are they meeting? You said it’s a mutually agreeable place or whatever? Where is it? Is this in a restaurant, a meeting --

MR. WOOD: A mutually convenient location.

QUESTION: Is it in a restaurant, under a cherry blossom tree? I mean, where is it? (Laughter.)

MR. WOOD: At a mutually convenient location.

Yes.

QUESTION: Robert, I’m trying to get a better sense of the frequency of these meetings. You said that the last one was April 13^th. I don’t think it would be fair to assume that these happen every two or three weeks. Could you give us a sense if this is – how frequently, you know, these happen, especially before this – the recent overtures from the Administration?

MR. WOOD: Well, I mean, they’ve happened over time. They’re more – they’re basically driven by issues and our interests. I don’t have a – you know, I can’t give you a schedule of when these meetings took place. I gave you the most recent. But they happen when we have issues that we need to raise with the Cuban Government and if, you know, the Interests Section has some issues that they need to raise with us. But there’s no pattern here. It’s when we feel it’s appropriate or they request a meeting when they happen.

QUESTION: Well, was the April 13^th meeting the first one during the Obama Administration?

MR. WOOD: I don’t know. I can’t rule that out. I’m not sure. I mean, we have lots of --

STAFF: Yes, it was.

MR. WOOD: Oh, it was? Okay, it was the first.

QUESTION: What was the answer?

MR. WOOD: Yes, that was the first meeting during the Obama Administration with representatives of the Cuban Interests --

QUESTION: And that was requested by which side?

MR. WOOD: I don’t know. I mean, I don’t have those details.

QUESTION: And then do you have any sort of sense of the frequency under the previous administration?

MR. WOOD: I don’t have that.

Technorati Tags: U.S.-Cuban Relations,State Dept. Spokesman Robert Woood,Obama Administration

Rep. Barbara Lee: "’Our Current Policy Towards Cuba Just Hasn’t Worked’

“By any objective standard, our current policy toward Cuba just hasn’t worked,” writes U.S. Representative Barbara Lee of California’s Ninth Congressional District in an April 27, 2009, post at Politico. “It was clear to me when I first traveled to Cuba in the mid-1970s as a congressional staffer, and it is even clearer to me now, more than three decades later,” she asserts.

To read why, please see “U.S. and Cuba must begin new chapter.”

Technorati Tags: U.S.-Cuba Relations,Rep. Barbara Lee,Politico

Emanthi NewsBlog Offers Good Coverage on Sri Lanka

Are you interested in what goes on in Sri Lanka, an island nation in the Indian Ocean whose long and bloody civil war seems to be winding down in favor of the the government? If so, I recommend Sri Lanka journalist Emanthi Marambe's informative Emanthi NewsBlog. She wrote to me a few weeks ago, which prompted me to take a look at her blog.

Peter Galbraith: President Obama Has the ‘Luxury of Being Pragmatic…’

Peter W. Galbraith, United Nations Deputy Special Representative for Afghanistan and former U.S. ambassador to Croatia, offers an assessment of President Barack Obama’s foreign policy initiatives in an interview with foreign affairs columnist and global educator John C. Bersia. See “Commentary: Former ambassador Peter Galbraith on Obama's foreign policy.”

Mr. Galbraith is author of "The End of Iraq and Unintended Consequences: How War in Iraq Strengthened America's Enemies.”

Technorati Tags: Peter W. Galbriath,Preisent Obama's Foreign Policy

‘Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent’

Uruguayan journalist, writer and novelist Eduardo Hughes Galeano’s book Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent, which President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela gave to U.S. President Barack Obama as a gesture of friendship and a history lesson during the Summit of the Americas, is no longer obscure. According to some reports it is becoming a best seller.

Mr. Obama has been criticized in some quarters for taking the book, and for being cordial to Mr. Chavez. He told journalist April 19, 2009: "I thought it was a nice gesture to give me that book. I'm a reader."

Because of Mr. Obama’s gesture, Venezuela has decided to return its ambassador to Washington.

Technorati Tags: Barack Obama,Hugo Chavez,Eduardo Hughes Galeano