Tag: United States
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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Kosovo gets an army and a special court
With the kind permission of Belgrade daily Danas, here is the report on its interview, published Monday under the headline “Prishtina is creating an army and is not afraid of a special court,” with Kosovo Deputy Foreign Minister Petrit Selimi. I have made minor editorial changes to the English version, supplied by Petrit:
Our international partners have already met key Kosovo demands regarding the investigations of Special Prosecutor Clint Williamson into the Dick Marty Report. Unfortunately, Serbia has tried all propaganda means to use Dick Marty to re-write the history of Kosovo war and also to return the issue of Kosovo under the UN. There were more than 10 formal requests by Serbia to the UN to deal with allegations from the Dick Marty Report, but now it’s clear that these allegations will be investigated by a Kosovo court, within Kosovo’s law and Constitution, with international legal staff supporting our Special Court – stated today for Danas Petrit Selimi, Kosovo’s Deputy Foreign Minister, who Pristina media regard as the person who is leading public relations efforts in the cabinet of PM Hashim Thaci.
Selimi says that “because Kosovo wants a credible and transparent process that will close once and for all this chapter,” a special chamber will be set up in a European country, with a bilateral agreement between Kosovo and that country, in order to enable international judges and prosecutors to conclude any process that might arise from the EULEX investigation.
“Now it’s clear that no UN court but rather a Kosovo court with international staff will work to deal with any accusations made against any Kosovo citizen. Kosovo setting up a Special Court will also ensure to distance the liberation and independence movement in Kosovo from any individuals that might have engaged in criminal activities.” – stated Selimi for the Danas interview.
Danas: Will the allegations made against senior members of the Kosovo government have an impact on the election agenda in Kosovo? It’s known that Marty also accused Prime Minister Thaci of organ harvesting?
Selimi: A major part of the allegations are science fiction and this will be proven by the investigations. But some allegations are very serious, and Kosovo will open a Special Court to deal with these. As we will apply for membership tothe Council of Europe in near future, it’s also important for Kosovo’s society and state to show it can deal with it’s own rotten apples. We know that even Nelson Mandela’s ANC had its own criminals. Unfortunately any guerrilla resistance can attract bad people with bad intentions. That is why it’s important that Kosovo parliament approves the creation of Special Court and the President extends the EULEX mandate for the final two years: to silence once and for all those keen to systematically attack Kosovo’s reputation. NATO intervention in Kosovo and the KLA uprising marked the single most successful Western intervention, which helped both Serbia and Kosovo move towards European future. The Special Court dealing with the Dick Marty allegations will cement Kosovo’s legitimacy as a modern, European state. We should not fear but rather fully embrace the creation of the court, knowing that the families of civilian victims on both sides, not only Albanian, need answers about their beloved ones.
Danas: Do you expect that the principle of the “reserved places” in the Parliament will be preserved?
Selimi: The Ahtisaari Plan asked for Kosovo to have “reserved seats” for two mandates for minorities, which gave them up to 1/4 of all seats in Kosovo Parliament, despite having only 5% of the population. This type of positive discrimination was needed to ensure Kosovo Serb leaders would join Kosovo institutions after independence. This formula is now automatically transformed into “guaranteed seats” which enable Serbs to have minimum 10 MP seats. The extension of the old formula is possible and is being supported by Prime Minister Thaci and the international community, but right now there is simply no 2/3 majority in the Parliament to support this extension of “reserved seats.”
Danas: Do you think it is feasible to form the Kosovo’s armed forces soon?
Selimi: The Kosovo Armed Foces have already been formed, as a result of recent National Security Strategy, written with the support of the US and other NATO allies. Parliament will confirm this decision soon, but during the next year we will see creation of dynamic, defensive force that will provide Kosovo with an important element of the security architecture in the Balkans. The Kosovo Parliament was also been accepted as an observer in the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, hence we will move firmly towards NATO integration. So Kosovo’s multi-ethnic army is not only feasible, but it’s a reality of a fundamental and irreversible state-building project that is unfolding every day.
Danas: The President of Serbia Tomislav Nikolic mentioned the possibility of the creation of a new resolution on Kosovo that would be adopted by the Serbian Parliament. In your opinion, what would be the significance of such a document?
Selimi: Any documents, resolutions, constitutions approved by Serbian institutions since 1999 have no bearing on Kosovo. The Serbian Parliament can declare that Mars is part of Serbia, but the reality on the ground and the historic Brussels Agreement between Kosovo and Serbia prove that there is a state called Kosovo, it’s a neighbor of Serbia, and we both must normalize relations if we want to become members of EU.
Danas: What should be the main topics in the next phase of the Brussels dialogue?
Selimi: We must implement all agreements, including complete closure of all justice and police institutions of Serbia in north Kosovo and full integration into the Kosovo constitutional system. All new agreements will slowly but surely cement the separate roads of Kosovo and Serbia towards EU membership, which in the end will only be possible when both countries recognize each other’s existence. This will be sine qua non of our future political dialogue.
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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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