Tag: United States
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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Triage, not retreat
I spent yesterday morning at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) annual shindig on the Middle East, “Allies, Adversaries and Enemies.” It began with a big-think panel on American foreign policy since 9/11: Robert Kagan, Walter Russell Mead and Leon Wieseltier. FDD President Cliff May moderated. The luminaries skipped any serious discussion of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Nor did they mention the drone wars in Pakistan and Yemen. The consensus was plainly and vigorously anti-Obama: he is shy of using force and leading an American retreat from the world that will get us into deeper trouble in the future. Congressman McKeon (R-CA) makes a similar argument in today’s Washington Post.
This is not my natural habitat, so I’ll try to give an account of the local fauna before launching into a tirade against them.
The panel hit President Obama hard and fast. Wieseltier criticized him for portraying all the alternatives to his policies everywhere as war. Spooked by Iraq, he trumps up phony dichotomies. The truth is he is looking for ways to pull the US out of overseas engagements, especially in the Middle East. As a result, all our friends need reassurance. His policy is one of introversion and absence. The President doesn’t see US power as a good thing and doesn’t recognize that even multilateralism requires US leadership. He wants no more land wars and is trying to ensure that with cuts at the Pentagon, an idea he admittedly inherited from Donald Rumsfeld.
Dissenting sardonically from the view that Obama is a Kenyan socialist, Mead offered a slightly more generous appraisal: Obama believes that as the US withdraws a balance of power will emerge, one that costs the US less than at present. This is a 1930s-style policy close to what most Americans want. But it won’t work, even if the limits of public opinion are real. We’ll get clobbered somehow. The president should harness pro-engagement sentiment and lead more forcefully. Only a balance of power under US hegemony can be stable and reliable.
Kagan concurred, remarking that Americans (unfortunately) have a high tolerance for a collapsing world. But the issue really is military power and America’s willingness to use force. We are on a slippery slope. The Obama doctrine is simply to avoid using force, which is undermining the world’s confidence in our ability and willingness to defend the liberal world order. That is the key objective for American foreign policy. We lost Iraq when Obama withdrew the American troops. The same thing could happen in Afghanistan. Nuclear Iran will be a big problem, but not a threat to the liberal world order, which is more threatened by the waxing military dictatorship in Egypt and the rebellion it will trigger in the future.
Doutbts about whether the US would attack Iran, or let Israel do it, wafted through the room. General Michael Hayden in the next session threw cold water on the idea that Israel either could or should undertake a military strike on its own. No one bothered to consider what would happen in the aftermath of a massive US strike on Iran. Would that stop or accelerate their nuclear program?
The only part of the panel presentations I would happily agree with is the well-established reluctance of the American public to be overly engaged abroad. It was notable that the panel offered not one example of something they thought Obama should do now to respond to the crises in Ukraine, Syria, Libya, Egypt or lots of other places. They were full of examples of what he should have done in the past, and absolutely certain he would not do the right things in the future, including decisive military action against the Iranian nuclear program.
Time and energy don’t allow me to respond to all of the points above. Let me comment on three countries I know well: Iraq, Ukraine and Syria.
The notion that it was President Obama who decided to withdraw troops from Iraq is simply wrong. Here is a first-person account from Bob Loftis, who led the failed negotiations on the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA):
[The decision to withdraw US troops] happened in mid-2008 [during the Bush Administration]. My team and I were instructed to work on an agreement that would allow a long term US military presence. At no time did the issue of withdrawal arise, even when the term “SOFA” became politically toxic in Baghdad. SOFA talks were suspended in May 2008, with the focus placed on negotiating the Strategic Framework Agreement (which would have some vague references to “pre-existing arrangements” (i.e. certain parts of CPA17). I then heard in September 2008 that…there were new SOFA talks which were about withdrawal. The “Agreement Between the United States of America and the Republic of Iraq On the Withdrawal of United States Forces from Iraq and the Organization of Their Activities during Their Temporary Presence in Iraq” was signed on 17 November 2008 by Ryan Crocker: Article 24 (1) states “All the United States Forces shall withdraw from all Iraqi territory no later than December 31, 2011.”
People will tell you that President Bush thought the agreement would be revised in the succeeding administration to allow the Americans to stay in some limited number. But that doesn’t change the fact that it was Bush, not Obama, who decided on US withdrawal. Once in office, Obama did try to negotiate permission for the Americans to stay. Prime Minister Maliki didn’t want to give up jurisdiction over crimes committed by US troops. Hard for me to fault the President for not yielding on that point, especially in light of the arbitrary arrests and detentions Maliki has indulged in since. Nor do I think US troops in the mess that is today’s Iraq would be either safe or useful.
Ukraine loomed large over this discussion. No one on the panel had a specific suggestion for what to do there, except that Kagan demurred from the President’s assertion that we have no military option. Of course we do, he said. We have absolute air superiority over Ukraine if we want it. That may be true. But it would require the use of US bases in Europe and Turkey. How long does Kagan think US leadership and the liberal world order would last after war between the US and Russia?
On Syria, I dissent from the President’s policy as much as any of the panelists. But I have specific suggestions for what he should at least consider doing: recognize the Syrian Opposition Coalition (SOC) as the legitimate government of Syria, overtly arm its affiliated fighters and destroy as much of the Syrian air force and missile inventories as possible. I suppose big thinkers like Wieseltier, Kagan and Mead don’t trade in such small beer, but those of us who treasure concreteness think they should.
It seems to me what the President is up to is not retreat but triage: he is focusing on Iran’s nuclear weapons and the Asia Pacific because he thinks the issues there threaten vital US interests. Syria for him falls below the line. For me it is above: the threat to neighboring states in the Levant and the growth of extremism put it there. But that simple and entirely understandable distinction would not inspire the kind of disdain that the panelists indulged in and the audience applauded at yesterday’s event.
PS, May 6: For the skeptical masochists among you, here is video of the event, which arrived today:
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Obama’s foreign policy can still surprise
Monday President Obama defended his foreign policy by emphasizing his reluctance to use force, except as a last resort. Here is the press conference at which he spoke in the Philippines (the relevant remarks begin about minute 33 and go on for six more):
Knowledgeable defenders are also out in force: Steven Cook and Michael Brooks absolve him of responsibility for what ails the Middle East, while Heather Hurlburt ponders his legacy.
I think it is too early to make definitive judgments about Obama’s foreign policy. As we know only too well from the history of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, early judgments of success or failure are often premature. The President is right to emphasize that foreign policy requires lots of singles and doubles (not to mention walks) as well as home runs. It also takes the full nine innnings. Certainly on Ukraine it will be a decade or more to see how things work out. Ditto Egypt.
But that doesn’t mean I’m prepared to suspend judgment when the Administration strikes out. That’s what is happening in Syria. Somehow the President sees no viable options there besides American boots on the ground and arming the opposition. The former he correctly rules out as unacceptable to virtually everyone. The latter he pooh-poohs, but there are ample signs he is doing it, or at least more of it, than in the past.
But that does not exhaust the options in Syria. As Fred Hof points out, we could recognize the Syrian Opposition Coalition as the legitimate government of Syria and provide the resources required to help it govern. We could play a stronger role in coordinating and marshalling international assistance. We could also ground the Syrian air force, which is a major factor in preventing liberated areas from governing effectively.
In Egypt, too, the Administration is swinging and missing. It continues to pretend that there is a democratic transition in progress. That is far from true. Egypt’s election next month will coronate Field Marshall Sisi as president, restoring the military autocracy. His secular and Islamist opponents are jailed, hundreds condemned to death in one-day trials for which “show” would be a compliment. The media is under his control. The election, while “free and fair” at the polls, will be conducted in an atmosphere that does not allow open political competition. The Administration needs to find a way to acknowledge reality, even if it thinks continuing aid to Egypt is necessary for national security reasons.
The much-predicted failure of John Kerry’s efforts to revive the Israel/Palestine peace process does not, in my way of thinking, count heavily against the Administration. He was right to try. The stars were not well aligned on either side: the split between Hamas and the Palestinian authority as well as the heavy representation of settler and other right-wing interests in Netanyahu’s coalition militated against an agreement from the first. The supposed unity coalition on the Palestinian side–yet to emerge–will not improve the situation, so long as Hamas refuses to recognize Israel and Netanyahu insists that the recognition be of an explicitly “Jewish” state.
One key to Obama’s foreign policy legacy lies in the talks with Iran. If he is able to push Tehran back from nuclear weapons, putting at least a year between a decision to make them and an actual bomb, that will be a big achievement, provided there is iron-clad verification. Whether the Congress will go along with lifting sanctions in exchange is still a big question.
Another big piece of Obama’s foreign policy legacy could come from an unexpected direction: trade talks. In his first term, the president contented himself with ratification of free trade pacts that had been negotiated by his predecessor (with the Republic of Korea, Colombia and Panama). That was small beer compared to the two massive free trade negotiations he has pursued in the second term: the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). Dwarfing even the North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement, these are giant trade deals, involving dozens of countries with potentially big impacts on trade, economic growth, and international relations.
Trade folks agree that President Obama has not yet demonstrated the kind of strong commitment to these negotiations that will be required to complete them and get them approved in Congress. But if he wants to have a serious legacy, he will turn to them as soon as the mid-term elections are over in November and try to conclude at least TTIP well before campaigning starts for the 2016 presidential contest. That would shore up America’s alliance with Europe (among other things by facilitating US energy exports), make the TTP more likely to happen, and align most of the world with the US as challenges arise from Russia and China.
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Peace picks April 28 – May 2
1. American Energy Prowess in a Strategic Foreign Policy Perspective
Monday, April 28 | 12 – 4:30pm
12th floor, The Atlantic Council; 1030 15th Street NW
The Atlantic Council and the Hungarian Presidency of the Visegrad Group invite you to an upcoming two-day conference titled American Energy Prowess in a Strategic Foreign Policy Perspective. The aim of the conference is to discuss and debate the strategic foreign policy aspects of the American shale gas revolution and its effect on the transatlantic relationship and the Central and Eastern European region. The Ukraine crisis has brought European energy security back into the forefront. The conference will bring together leaders from the US government, Central and Eastern Europe, and the energy industry to determine ways to strengthen European energy security and the transatlantic alliance through reinforced energy ties.
The conference begins with a luncheon discussion on Monday, April 28 at the Atlantic Council. The following day, participants will continue over breakfast on Capitol Hill to engage with key congressional decision-makers.
A full agenda of the event can be found here
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Lucky Afghanistan
I have been hesitating to write about the April 5 Afghan presidential election, whose outcome is still unclear. Views of its significance among people I respect are wildly varied. Sarah Chayes thinks it means nothing. Andrew Wilder, who observed the election, thought the Afghans had–with strong turnout–sent a clear message of rejection to the Taliban.
I’m less impressed than some with the process, as it appears that there may have been widespread fraud. The number of complaints, including apparently serious ones, is up from four years ago. The Afghans are inclined toward stuffing ballot boxes on an industrial scale. I won’t be surprised to find that the relative peacefulness of election day ends up less emblematic of this election than post-election disqualification of large numbers of votes, as happened last time around.
The interesting thing is that it hardly matters if you are worried about the results. It is looking as if Abdullah Abdullah, who came in second to Hamid Karzai in the last election, and Ashraf Ghani, a former World Bank official and Finance Minister well known for his academic work on state-building, will be the clear front runners. If neither gets more than 50%, which is likely, they will face each other in a second round. The internationals worry that there could be controversy about the ultimate result, so that the election confers legitimacy. But any country on earth would be blessed to have either Abdullah or Ashraf as president. These are two people of notable intelligence and distinction. That they would emerge in Afghanistan, of all places, after Karzai’s erratic performance, seems almost too good to believe.
But it is symptomatic of something interesting about Afghanistan. While most of its population is illiterate and its physical infrastructure ravaged by war, it boasts a thin layer of extraordinarily well-educated and capable people. Ghani I am told spent the last year managing the security transition–from US lead to Afghan lead–throughout the country. Abdullah, a former Foreign Minister, has led the parliamentary opposition to Karzai. Both have said they would sign the bilateral security agreement with the United States that will allow thousands, but perhaps not many thousands, of American troops to remain in Afghanistan for training and counterterrorism purposes.
Neither is likely to be any less critical of American mistakes in killing Afghan civilians than Karzai. Ghani has a particularly acerbic and sharp tongue. I’ve heard him use it as a private citizen on US contractors and government officials. I wouldn’t want to be at the receiving end if he becomes president. Abdullah I don’t know, but he has been sharp and effective in his public critiques of Karzai.
So after all the sound and fury of Karzai’s railing against the Americans for the last year and more, Afghanistan is likely to see its first peaceful alternation of power without any dramatic change in its political direction. But the much improved Afghan security forces are far more costly than the Afghan government can afford without international help. Whoever he is, the next president will want to focus major attention on growing the country’s economy while maintaining the relationships that allow major international military and financial assistance to flow. Continuity, hopefully with improvement, will characterize the transition, not a sharp change in direction.
The big question is whether the aid flow will be sustainable in the US Congress and elsewhere around the world. Annoyed with Karzai, Congress voted in January to halve US assistance. That and the further reduction of US troops will be major blows to an economy already feeling the impact of drawdown. Ghani or Abdullah will have major challenges ahead. Whichever it is, Washington should count itself as lucky.
PS: There are concerns about Abdul Rashid Dostum, Ghani’s warlord running mate, and Eng Mohammed Khan, Abdullah’s Islamist running mate. The amazing thing is that Abdullah and Ghani are heading their tickets and both entering the second round.
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Where humanitarian and strategic interests intersect
Thursday afternoon, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy hosted a policy discussion about US strategic interests and the humanitarian disaster in Syria. Featured speakers were former UK foreign secretary David Miliband, president of the International Rescue Committee, and Robert Ford, a US diplomat retiring after serving as ambassador to Syria (he left there in October 2011). Andrew Tabler, senior fellow at the Washington Institute, moderated.
Though it engulfs a large part of the Middle East, many people no longer want to talk about the Syrian crisis, Miliband said. It has become the defining humanitarian crisis of our time for all the wrong reasons. The humanitarian community has failed to rise to the challenge posed by dictatorship, sectarianism, and geopolitics.
Massive humanitarian efforts have failed because they don’t meet the needs. About 9.5 million people have been displaced from their homes. The UN says about 3.5 million Syrians are cut off from aid. Inside Syria the idea of “civilian” is lost. Everyone is treated as a combatant, which contravenes international law.
Neighboring countries are overwhelmed. Lebanon now has more than a million refugees. Jordan has 650, 000 registered refugees and an equal number of unregistered refugees. The refugees have been displaced multiple times within Syria before escaping. Currently there are 88,000 Syrian children in Lebanon going to school. This leaves 300, 000 Syrian children who have had no education for the last three years. The UN has appealed for $5.5 billion but only $1 billion has been committed.
With the political process stalled, the humanitarian situation is worsening. It took three years to get a UN Security Council resolution on humanitarian aid. Government restrictions on the UN and non-governmental organizations working in Syria have hampered aid to at least 12 of 14 governorates. With the winter over, the IRC is concerned with spring and summer, when infectious disease could become rampant. Lack of access and the humanitarian crisis are not an unfortunate byproduct of a war without law. They are the strategic result of a war without law.
Miliband urges every member of the UN Security Council and other interested countries to name a humanitarian envoy, a diplomat of distinction with support from the head of a government, to broker a ceasefire. Governments should also undertake cross-border humanitarian operations. If he had told an audience three years ago that 160,000 Syrians would die, several million would be displaced, and a large number would be tortured by their government, the response would have been, “We must do something.” We need make sure that our senses aren’t dulled.
Ford emphasized that the US government is hugely concerned about the crisis. It is the largest single donor to Syrian relief efforts, having committed $1.7 billion. Additional money is being provided to local communities where the regime has lost control. The US is providing rescue equipment and food, and now it is paying salaries of some teachers and police.
The situation is nevertheless deteriorating. People in refugee camps are the lucky ones. The ones that are really suffering are still inside Syria and under blockade. According to the latest UN estimates, Syrian government forces have 175, 000 civilians under blockade. They are located primarily in the Damascus suburbs. Blockading aid convoys contravenes the Geneva Convention. It is illegal and outrageous. The regime is starving people into ceasefires and eventually surrender. In return for armed opposition forces giving up heavy weaponry, the civilians are granted access to food. The blockades are a regime tactic that will continue as long as the regime is fighting for its life.
Some argue that both sides are blockading civilians. The opposition has wrongly blockaded some small towns, but those are not airtight blockades. The opposition does not fully control access. For example, food supplies come in from the north to pro-regime Kurdish areas. The opposition blockades are in no way justified, but they do not compare with the much more vigorous and extensive regime blockades.
If the fighting goes on for another three years, what kind of crisis will we face? What will the implications be for humanitarian assistance, state structures in the Levant, and the prevalence of extremists?
Miliband replied that the Syrian refugees he has spoken to know Assad will not be toppled tomorrow. They see the war lengthening. No one is expecting a quick resolution. Ideas about reconstruction have not really been developed. The dangers of communicable diseases will rise over time if the crisis continues. Public health risks are massive even with sufficient food supplies. There are obvious dangers of a humanitarian and political explosion in neighboring countries. What is Lebanon’s capacity? There is an influx of 750 refugees a day into Lebanon. Lebanese asking themselves, what gives? But there is no incentive for the regime to make necessary compromises. It is a very bleak situation.
Ford thought in 2012 that the regime’s days were numbered. What changed was assistance to the regime. Who could have imagined Hezbollah would send 5-6,000 soldiers? Russia has increased assistance as well. This has enabled the regime to take and hold the area from Damascus up to Homs and over to Latakia. In the short or medium term, the armed opposition will not be able to change that. The country is being cantonized. Different factions of armed groups control different territories. There are six opposition groups that divide control in Abu Qamal.
The war of attrition inside Syria is between minority and majority. But it is also a war of attrition regionally between Sunni and Shia states. Assad is not the majority on either side of those divides. Ultimately, he will lose. But in the meanwhile the war leaves vast spaces governed by no one in particular or by bad guys. If the moderates don’t prevail against extremists, we will see a much more serious problem, as we have seen in the past in Afghanistan.
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