Tag: Yemen
Freedom of the press in 2014
Today is World Press Freedom Day. So here is an appropriate post:
Thursday morning Freedom House released Freedom of the Press 2014, its annual report assessing media freedom around the world. The event featured a panel discussion with Karin Karlekar (Freedom of the Press project director), Scott Shane (New York Times national security reporter), and Sue Turton (Al Jazeera correspondent). Jim Sciutto, CNN chief national security correspondent, moderated.
Jim Sciutto asked panelists why they thought global press freedom has fallen in the past year. Karin Karlekar said that technology can be a source for good that enables a large audience to publish and access information. However in many countries, particularly ones with authoritarian governments, governments are increasingly cracking down. In some cases governments have used new tactics. In others, their methods are just an extension of the traditional media censorship methods they have used in the past. Governments are using tools that are supposed to empower people to track and follow them instead.
In China, some of the search engines and social media outlets employ more people to censor them than they do to produce them. They have a large, widespread mechanism for controlling online content. But even governments that don’t have that technological capability have found ways to clamp down online. They pursue people after the material has been produced. That has been the case in some countries like Ethiopia, where they just imprisoned 6 bloggers.
Sciutto asked Scott Shane to put into context leaks and prosecutions. How much of that is a threat to freedom of exchange in the US and how the White House is covered?
Scott commended Freedom House for being objective on the issue of press freedom. It saddened him to see the US downgraded from 21 points last year to 18 points in this year’s report. This has to do with the fact that in all of American history until 2009, there were three government officials prosecuted for leaking classified information to the press. We are now up to eight with Obama. This affects the willingness of government officials to talk even on unclassified but sensitive issues. It affects the reporting that national security journalists do. The US is now ranked lower in press freedom than Estonia and the Czech Republic.
Sciutto: Has it reached a point where our leaders are not under the same level of oversight we expect them to be or that they were ten or twenty years ago?
Shane: In 1971 the New York Times Washington bureau chief Max Frankel wrote a memorandum about the Pentagon Papers arguing that covering secret, classified information is critical to informing the public. Some people take the attitude that it is secret; therefore, it should not be talked about. But that would make the White House and diplomacy impossible to write about.
As an example Shane mentioned how in 2011 the US deliberately hunted down and killed an American citizen in Yemen, the Yemeni-American cleric Anwar al Awlaki. There was a long legal opinion justifying the unilateral killing of an American citizen. That was classified opinion, so Shane made a Freedom of Information Act request for that document in 2010. Four years later, after filing a lawsuit, an appeals court ordered the government to release it. If he is lucky, Shane says he might receive a redacted form of this legal opinion 5 years later. When the president has the right to order the killing of an American citizen is a fairly fundamental question. Americans, Shane argues, have the right to know the legal basis.
Torton explained that she is being tried in absentia for aiding and abetting the Muslim Brotherhood. She left Cairo on November 6, which was a month and a half before the Muslim Brotherhood was accused of terrorism. Her Al Jazeera colleagues were arrested three days after the Muslim Brotherhood was proscribed a terrorist organization. They have been in jail for 126 days. Originally, she believed that the three judges were independent of the state and that they would see the situation for what it is. It is a politically motivated trial and she hoped they would throw the case out. As the sessions go on, however, and the judges refuse bail, she is frightened of the outcome.
Sciutto: Did the Arab Spring fail on the issue of freedom of information?
Turton: Each country has its own situation and different outcomes. Broadly speaking, the Arab Spring did not deliver what Western governments were probably hoping it was going to, which was perfectly packaged democracy. Access to information and the media is freer in some countries. Tunisia has had a sophisticated reaction to the Arab Spring. Libya is still a mess. At the beginning, optimism was enormous and the situation improved, but since then Libya has backtracked. But Egypt has failed. Talking to people on the ground, you get a sense that conditions are worse than under Mubarak.
Sciutto: How much of its moral high ground in terms of pushing for internet freedom has the US lost with the existence of the NSA and other interference on the internet?
Karlekar: I think it is affecting our moral high ground. Many governments use surveillance and other repressive tactics. The US used to be able to say that they should not be doing that. Now it is becoming much more difficult to say that. It is particularly ironic because the US government is trying to sell itself as an open, transparent government, but it is not.
Sciutto asked, are your Al Jazeera colleagues more scared now when they work?
Turton: We have had to change how we operate. This is not just Al Jazeera; it is the media in general. In Egypt it is not just journalists being thrown in jail, but anyone with opposing views.
Sciutto: When you get into issues like coverage of leaks and you worry about your sources and your own legal situation, does that affect the overall quality of reporting?
Shane: I think it has chilled reporting on national security. What is interesting is the crackdown under Obama. There seems to be a random quality to it. All of the cases have involved electronic trails; emails or Internet chat logs. In the past the FBI would say that they would like to investigate this leak, but there are 1,000 people with security clearance. They had no good way of finding out who was responsible. Now, they can go into the government email system and find out exactly who has been talking to the reporter whose byline is on that story.
In fairness, technology is driving leakers as well. Two of the cases, Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden, are unique in American history. The volume of classified information out there is unprecedented. If our government is tracking leaks to the press in the US, it is obviously happening on an exponentially greater scale in countries like China or Russia.
Karlekar: The fear is that these issues will lead to self-censorship. What stories are not getting covered out of fear?
The entire Freedom House report can be viewed here.
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Battlefield to conference room
Today’s US/EU/Russia/Ukraine Joint Diplomatic Statement aims to de-escalate a conflict that has been spiraling for weeks. The steps it proposes are straightforward:
All sides must refrain from any violence, intimidation or provocative actions. The participants strongly condemned and rejected all expressions of extremism, racism and religious intolerance, including anti-Semitism.
All illegal armed groups must be disarmed; all illegally seized buildings must be returned to legitimate owners; all illegally occupied streets, squares and other public places in Ukrainian cities and towns must be vacated.
Amnesty will be granted to protesters and to those who have left buildings and other public places and surrendered weapons, with the exception of those found guilty of capital crimes.
The Organization for Cooperation and Security in Europe (OSCE) is to provide monitors, as had been hoped in Crimea (but Russia did not permit it, preferring to annex the peninsula).
Like many diplomatic statements, this one is well-intentioned but riddled with ways to wriggle out. There will always be violence, intimidation or provocation on which one side can base its own violence intimidation or provocation against the other. Disarmament of armed groups generally requires a superior force to undertake the task. Which building and other seizures are illegal is in the eye of the beholder. Where are those who allegedly committed capital crimes to be tried and by whom?
Whether the statement is a turning point will depend on political will. It is difficult for me to imagine that President Putin is ready to de-escalate. He has been on a winning wicket both in Ukraine and in Syria. Why would he want to stop now? The statement presumably forestalls further EU and US sanctions, but he knows as well as everyone in the DC and Brussels press corps that agreement on those was going to be difficult. Ukrainian military and police action to counter Russian-sponsored takeovers in the east has so far failed. I suppose Putin knows even better than this morning’s New York Times that Russia’s economy was on the rocks even before the Ukraine crisis. It will get worse, but since when did Putin or Putinism worry about the economy? Oil prices around $100/barrel are all he has needed to get Russia up off its knees. Crisis helps keep the oil price up.
So I’ll be surprised if this agreement holds, or even begins to change the perilous direction Ukraine is heading in. But the statement includes an important bit that should not be ignored:
The announced constitutional process will be inclusive, transparent and accountable. It will include the immediate establishment of a broad national dialogue, with outreach to all of Ukraine’s regions and political constituencies, and allow for the consideration of public comments and proposed amendments.
The Ukraine crisis, like the Syrian one, is fundamentally a political crisis: it is more about perceptions of legitimacy and distribution of power than about who military balance or who speaks which language. We’ve seen in Libya, Egypt and Syria the results of failure to conduct an inclusive and transparent discussion of the kind of state their people want and how its leadership will be held accountable. It is very difficult to move from violence to the negotiating table unless one side is defeated or both sides recognize they will not gain from further violence. Tunisia and Yemen have done it, but they are the exceptions, not the rule.
The odds of successfully moving from the battlefield to the conference room in Ukraine are low. But that is the challenge our diplomats now face, along with the OSCE monitors. I can only wish them success, no matter how unlikely that may be.
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Passover wandering
Like 70% of American Jews, I spent last night at a Seder, celebrating the story of liberation from pharaoh. Here are some of the thoughts that were on my mind.
Three years ago I wrote with enthusiasm about the Passover of Arab liberation. Two years ago Syria seemed already in the midst of ten plagues and ruled by a pharaoh who wouldn’t let his people go. Last year I thought things in the Middle East better than expected.
This year I’ve got to confess things are a mess, not only in the Middle East but also in Ukraine.
The war in Syria rages on. Israel/Palestine peace negotiations are stalled. Both sides are pursuing unilateral options. Egypt is restoring military autocracy. Libya is chaotic. Parts of Iraq are worse. The only whisper of good news is from Morocco, Yemen and Tunisia, where something like more or less democratic transitions are progressing, and Iran, where the Islamic Republic is pressing anxiously for a nuclear deal, albeit one that still seems far off.
In Ukraine, Russia is using surrogates and forces that don’t bother wearing insignia to take over eastern and southern cities where Russian speakers predominate. It looks as if military invasion won’t be necessary. Kiev has been reduced to asking for UN peacekeeping troops. NATO can do nothing. Strategic patience, and refusal to recognize Russian sovereignty over Crimea and any other parts of Ukraine it might absorb, seems the best of a rotten bunch of options.
This is discouraging, but no one ever promised continuous progress. Even the Israelites wandered in the desert. Everyone forgets the part about getting stuck in one lousy oasis for 38 of those years. Freedom is not a one-time thing. It requires constant effort. There are setbacks. And there are breakthroughs.
Americans face their own liberation challenges. While the past year has seen giant strides in acceptance of gay marriage, there have been setbacks to the right to vote. Money is now speech and corporations are people, according to the Supreme Court. I’ll believe that when a corporation gets sent to prison and banks start accepting what I say as a deposit. The right to bear arms continues to expand, but not my right to be safe from those who do, except by arming myself. In Kansas City Sunday a white supremacist and anti-Semite allegedly shot and killed three people at Jewish facilities, all Christians.
The plain fact is that liberation, as Moses discovered, is hard. It requires persistence. There are no guarantees of success. The only directions history takes are the ones that people compel it to take. Some of those people are genuinely good. Others are evil. Sometimes they are both, as son Adam’s piece on LBJ this week suggests. There may be a right side and a wrong side of history, but it seems difficult for many people to tell the difference.
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Things are not going well
Things are not going well in many parts of the world:
- The Syrian peace talks ended at an impasse over the agenda. The regime wants to talk terrorism. The opposition wants to talk transition. The US is looking for options.
- Ukraine’s peaceful protests are ending in an explosion of violence. Russia is financing and encouraging the government. The US is ineffectually urging restraint.
- The UN has documented crimes against humanity in North Korea. No one has the foggiest notion what to do about a regime that has now starved, tortured and murdered its citizens for more than six decades.
- Egypt is heading back to military rule. The popular General Sisi is jailing both his Muslim Brotherhood and secularist oppositions. Terrorism is on an upswing.
- Libya’s parliament has decided to overstay its mandate. A new constitution-writing assembly will be chosen in elections tomorrow, but in the meanwhile violence is on the increase and oil production down.
- Yemen’s president has short-circuited the constitutional process altogether. He announced a Federal structure that divides the South, whose secessionists reject the idea.
- Afghanistan’s President Karzai is putting at risk relations with the US, because he is trying despite the odds to negotiate a political settlement with the Taliban.
- Nationalism is heating up in Japan, South Korea and China. Decades of peace in Asia are at risk as various countries spar over ocean expanse and the resources thought to lie underneath.
- Nuclear talks with Iran are facing an uphill slog. The interim agreement is being implemented, but prospects for a comprehensive and permanent solution are dim.
- Israel/Palestine negotiations on a framework agreement seem to be going nowhere. Israel is expanding settlements and increasing its demands. Palestine is still divided (between Gaza and the West Bank) and unable to deliver even if an agreement can be reached.
For the benefit of my Balkans readers, I’ll add: Read more
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Peace Picks February 10-14
1. Iran’s Tumultuous Revolution: 35 Years Later
Monday, February 10 | 11am – 12:30pm
6th Floor, Woodrow Wilson Center; 1300 Pennsylvania Ave NW
Presented by The Middle East Program of the Woodrow Wilson Center and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
PARTICIPANTS
Shaul Bakhash
Clarence J. Robinson: Professor of History, George Mason University
Mehdi Khalaji
Senior Fellow, Washington Institute for Near East Policy
John Limbert
Distinguished Professor of International Affairs, United States Naval Academy
Karim Sadjadpour
Senior Associate, Middle East Program, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Moderator:
Haleh Esfandiari
Director, Middle East Program, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
There will be a live webcast of this event.
2. Aghanistan Development Goals: 2014 and Beyond
Monday, February 10 | 12:15pm – 1:45pm
New America Foundation, 1899 L Street NW Suite 400
The drawdown of American troops in Afghanistan, together with the forming of a new Government of Afghanistan following the upcoming elections scheduled for this April, will present new challenges for the United States in how it can most effectively deliver assistance in Afghanistan.
What are the challenges and how will the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) approach them? How will USAID build on the successes it has achieved over the past ten years? Furthermore, as USAID assistance transitions to longer-term development with a focus on health, education, gender, and economic growth led by agriculture, how will the agency continue to conduct effective oversight and monitoring in an ever evolving environment to ensure that U.S. taxpayers’ funds are used effectively?
One of the people that can help address those concerns is Donald “Larry” Sampler Jr., who was recently sworn in as the Assistant to the Administrator for USAID’s Office of Afghanistan and Pakistan Affairs, officially taking over responsibility for two countries with the largest USAID budgets. Mr. Sampler will make remarks regarding these issues, which will be followed by a panel discussion to explore these and other questions further. For the discussion, Mr. Sampler will be joined by the U.S. State Department’s Deputy Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Jarrett Blanc, who works on international partnership, reconciliation, and political transition issues.
The New America Foundation is pleased to host this dialogue about the U.S. government’s development goals in Afghanistan both in 2014, a year of many transitions in the country, and beyond.
PARTICIPANTS
Donald “Larry” Sampler, Jr.
Assistant to the Administrator, Office of Afghanistan and Pakistan Affairs, U.S. Agency for International Development
Jarrett Blanc
Deputy Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, U.S. Department of State
Moderator:
Omar Samad
Senior Central Asia Fellow, New America Foundation
Former Afghan Ambassador to Canada and France
There will be a live webcast of this event here.
3. Champions for Justice: Bahrain’s Prisoners of Conscience
Hosted by Americans for Democracy and Human Rights in Bahrain and Creative Peace Initiatives
Tuesday, February 11 | 11am – 1pm
Abramson Founders Room, SIS Building, American University; 4400 Massachusetts Ave NW
To RSVP, please e-mail events@adhrb.org
PARTICIPANTS
Moderator:
Dr. Jeff Bachman, SIS Professor and Director of Ethics, Peace, and Global Affairs Program
11 – 11:30am – Q&A segment featuring:
Matar Ebrahim Matar
Political activist, Former Opposition Leader and Member of the Bahraini Parliament
11:45 – 1pm – Panel featuring:
Joshh Colangelo-Bryan, Pro Bono Attorney for Imprisoned Human Rights Activist Nabeel Raja, Consultant for Human Rights Watch
Brian Dooley, Director of Human Rights Defenders Programs at Human Rights First
Dr. Shadi Mokhtari, SIS Professor focused on Human Rights, Middle East Politics, and Political Islam
4. Understanding the Continuing Violence in Iraq
Tuesday, February 11 | 12pm
Hayek Auditorium, Cato Institute; 1000 Massachusetts Ave NW
More than three years after the departure of U.S. combat troops from Iraq, a determined insurgency rages against the government led by Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. Violence has claimed thousands of lives. Some question whether the Iraqi government can maintain control of several major cities, including Fallujah, the scene of some of the toughest fighting during the eight-year-long U.S. war in Iraq. Some of Maliki’s critics accuse him of stoking the unrest by refusing to make concessions to minority groups in Iraq, in particular Iraq’s Sunni Arab community. Others say that the prime minister should firmly reassert his authority by going after violent extremism and deterring others from supporting the insurgency. The panelists will consider several questions, including: What explains the continuing violence in Iraq? Can Iraq’s disparate communities unite behind a strong central government? And what role, if any, should the United States play?
PARTICIPANTS
Douglas Ollivant, Senior National Security Fellow, the New America Foundation
Harith Hasan, Author of Imagining the Nation: Nationalism, Sectarianism and Socio-political Conflict in Iraq
Christopher Preble, Vice President for Defense and Foreign Policy Studies, Cato Institute
Moderated by
Justin Logan, Director of Foreign Policy Studies, Cato Institute.
Watch this event online at http://www.cato.org/live
Luncheon to follow this event.
5. Achieving Greater Inclusion in post-Arab Spring Countries
Tuesday, February 11 | 2pm – 3:30pm
Saul/Zilkha Rooms, Brookings Institution; 1775 Massachusetts Ave NW
The Arab Spring was about political and economic inclusiveness. Three years later, the outcomes of the revolutions have been mixed. In Morocco, the king responded by revising the constitution, carrying out free parliamentary elections and letting the winning party form a new government. In Tunisia, political parties debated on a new constitution for nearly three years and now a neutral government has been appointed to supervise elections. Meanwhile, in Egypt, the struggle between Islamists and secular-nationalists has turned violent, weakening economic growth and increasing unemployment.
On February 11, Global Economy and Development at Brookings will host a discussion on inclusive growth in the post-Arab Spring countries. The discussion will be based on a series of papers on the political economy of the Arab transitions and efforts to foster inclusive growth in the region. The papers are authored by Brookings scholars and their colleagues from the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) and present case studies from Egypt, Jordan and Tunisia.
PARTICIPANTS
Kemal Derviş
Vice President and Director, Global Economy and Development and The Edward M. Bernstein Scholar
Hafez Ghanem
Senior Fellow, Global Economy and Development
Daniela Gressani
Deputy Director, Middle East and Central Asia International Monetary Fund
Akihiko Koenuma
Director-General, Middle East and Europe Department Japan International Cooperation Agency
6. Inside Aleppo: New Tools for Understanding the Syrian Conflict
Thursday, February 13 | 8:30am – 9:30am
American Security Project, 1100 New York Ave NW
REGISTER by Wednesday, February 12th
The American Security Project will host Dr. David Kilcullen and Mr. Nate Rosenblatt of Caerus Associates who will provide a briefing on findings from what may be the most detailed, publicly available assessment of the ongoing conflict in Syria to date.
Findings will be based on four months of in-depth, time-series research from within Aleppo, Syria’s largest, most diverse, and most economically relevant city. Today, Aleppo is one of the most divided cities in the country. Tomorrow, its future may resemble that of other, large, non-capital cities in post-conflict Middle Eastern states such as Libya’s Benghazi or Iraq’s Mosul.
The presentation will examine research findings that suggest that while the national picture in Syria looks bleak, important insights gained at the city-level can help policymakers and scholars think of new ways of examining the trajectory of Syria’s conflict. In addition to findings specific to Syria, the presenters will be joined by Mr. Matt McNabb of First Mile Geo, who will discuss how innovative technologies can be leveraged for collecting, visualizing, and analyzing high-fidelity data from the first mile of conflict affected parts of the world.
Moderated by Stephen A. Cheney, Brigadier General USMC (Ret.)
Breakfast snacks and refreshments will be served at 8:00am
7. Soft Power in Countering Extremism from the Horn of Africa to the Western Sahel
Thursday, February 13 | 9am – 11am
Lindner Commons (Room 602), The Elliot School of International Affairs; 1957 E Sreett NW
The rise of radical Islamism and its ideological force have migrated from Somalia in the early 1990s westward through the northern part of Africa known as the Sahel. Crises related to religious extremism, including jihadism and the application of Shar’ia law, have spread rapidly from Somalia to Kenya and across the Sahel to Nigeria, Mali and Algeria with evidence of propagating radicalizing even diaspora populations living in the West.
The panelists, all experts in the role of communication and soft power in countering radicalization, will discuss and debate the strategic influence of Western powers, in particular the US and the UK, in changing the narrative toward stability, tolerance, and democratization.
About the Panelists
Sir Robert Fry is chairman of Albany Associates and former Deputy Commanding General of Coalition Forces in Iraq of the Royal Marines. He is involved in a number of boards and advisory roles to companies in the security and banking sectors throughout Europe, North America, and the Middle East. Currently, he is a visiting professor at Reading University and a visiting fellow at Oxford University.
Simon Haselock is co-founder and chief operating officer of Albany Associates. From 1995-96, he served as the NATO spokesman in Sarajevo and later as Media Commissioner in Kosovo. He went on to lead the Foreign and Commonwealth Office for Media Development in Iraq.
Alberto Fernandez is the coordinator of the Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications at the U.S. State Department. Previously, he served as U.S. ambassador to Equatorial Guinea and chargé d’affaires to Sudan. His other posts include senior level public diplomacy positions at the embassies in Afghanistan, Jordan, and Syria. A veteran of the U.S. Army, Fernandez speaks fluent Spanish and Arabic through his training at the Defense Language Institute.
Todd Haskell is the director for Press and Public Diplomacy in the Bureau of African Affairs at the State Department. Previously, he served as a Public Affairs Officer in Santo Domingo, Johannesburg, and Ouagadougou. Other overseas assignments include Pakistan, the Philippines, Israel, and Mexico. He is a graduate of Georgetown University.
8. A Mixed Picture: the Political and Economic Future of the Arab Transitions
Thursday, February 13 | 3:30pm – 5pm
12th Floor, Atlantic Council; 1030 15th Street NW
The last few tumultuous years in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, and Yemen present a complex picture of progress and setbacks. Three years after Egyptians successfully toppled a thirty-year old dictatorship, there are fears of a return to military-backed rule. In contrast to the bleaker picture from Cairo, Tunisians have successfully navigated political deadlock and approved a new constitution. Yemenis have concluded an inclusive National Dialogue process, and Libyans are gearing up to elect a constitution-drafting body and initiate their own national dialogue. While there are significant challenges ahead and security issues are paramount, citizens of all four countries are unlikely to continue to tolerate the corruption, mismanagement, and exclusion that characterized the pre-revolution era. Given this dynamic, what are we likely to see in the next few years?
Lina Khatib will describe key political trends that will shape the next phase of these transitions and Mohsin Khan will discuss the economic state of affairs and how these economies will fare moving forward. Placing the Arab awakening within the global context, Ellen Laipson will compare the Arab transitions to other previous cases of political and social upheaval.
This event also marks the release of two major Hariri Center publications: Mohsin Khan‘s Issue Brief, “The Economic Consequences of the Arab Spring,” and a report on “The State of the Arab Transitions” by Mirette F. Mabrouk and Stefanie Hausheer.
PARTICIPANTS
Lina Khatib
Director
Carnegie Middle East Center
Ellen Laipson
President and CEO
Stimson Center
Mohsin Khan
Senior Fellow, Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East
Atlantic Council
Moderated by
Mirette F. Mabrouk
Deputy Director for Regional Programs, Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East
Atlantic Council
Please use the West Tower elevators when you arrive.
The event will be followed by a wine & cheese reception.
A live webcast of the event can be seen here.
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The Cory Remsburg metaphor
The President’s State of the Union speech last night broke little new ground on foreign policy. He is pleased to be finishing two wars and will resist getting the United States involved in other open-ended conflicts. He may leave a few troops in Afghanistan to train Afghans and attack terrorists. Al Qaeda central is largely defeated but its franchises are spreading in Yemen, Somalia, Iraq and Mali. He will limit the use of drones, reform surveillance policies and get us off a permanent war footing. He wants to close Guantanamo, as always, and fix immigration, as always.
He will use diplomacy, especially in trying to block Iran verifiably from obtaining a nuclear weapons and in resolving the Israel/Palestine conflict, but also in destroying Syria’s chemical weapons capability. He will support the moderate Syrian opposition. He will veto new Iran sanctions in order to give diplomacy a chance to work, maintain the alliance with Europe, support democracy in Ukraine, development in Africa, and trade and investment across the Pacific. America is exceptional both because of what it does and because of its ideals.
The President didn’t mention Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Pakistan, Russia or Japan. He skipped North Korea too. His mother must have taught him that when you don’t have anything nice to say you shouldn’t say anything at all. Those countries might merit mention, but all have in one way or another been doing things that we prefer they not do. He mentioned China, but only as an economic rival, not a military one. He skipped the pivot to Asia as well as Latin America. For my Balkans readers: you are not even on his screen. Read more
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