U.S. Diplomacy

According to Robin Wright and Glenn Kessler, the release of intelligence on the Syrian nuclear site at al-Kibar, has had adverse effects on the negotiations with North Korea. Unfortunately, this development came at time when significant progress was being made.

Blake Hounshell of FP Passport rightly points out evidence of North Korea actively aiding Syria while negotiating agreements with the United States, will provide ample evidence for lawmakers seeking a tougher stance with North Korea.
Back to Wright and Kessler’s article. Regarding the diplomatic track with Syria an unnamed administration official said,”‘You need to comply with your international obligations, stop aiding foreign fighters going into Iraq, stop disrupting the situation in Lebanon, stop supporting Hezbollah and Hamas, stop repressing your own people, and stop this nuclear activity.’ And telling them we would look at military options but we wanted to take the diplomatic track first. But all of our political discussions became moot when Israel acted.”

Let’s say Israel did not destroy the facility at al-Kibar, do actions in the above statement sound diplomatic? It seems to me that this administration official has diplomacy confused with demands. Successful diplomatic initiatives like the talks with North Korea involve a key element, concessions. Apparently, that is a point missed with the unnamed official. Apologies for the rant.

Harvard professor Joseph Nye and former Assistant Secretary of State Richard Armitage
briefed the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week on their Smart Power initiative.

Joe Nye has been writing about smart power and its earlier version soft power since … The “smart power” concept was first introduced to the Senate Foreign Relations committee by Admiral Leighton Smith and General Tony Zinni back in March. The purpose of this particular hearing was to give Congress an executable plan for “modernizing our civilian tools of national power and increase the emphasis of these tools in our global strategy.”

In a nutshell, they told the Senators, smart power is based on the three main principles:

-First, America’s standing in the world matters to our security and prosperity.

-Second, today’s challenges can only be addressed with capable and willing allies and partners.

-Third, civilian tools can increase the legitimacy, effectiveness, and sustainability of U.S. Government policies.

Nye and Armitage go on to explain: “Smart Power is a framework for guiding the development of an integrated strategy, resource base and tool kit to achieve U.S. objectives, drawing on both hard and soft power. It underscores the necessity of a strong military, but also invests heavily in alliances, partnerships, and institutions at all levels to expand American influence and establish the legitimacy of American action.

The United States can become a smarter power by investing in the global good—providing services and polices that people and governments want but cannot attain in the absence of American leadership. This means support for international institutions, aligning our country with international development, promoting public health, increasing interactions of our civil society with others, maintaining an open international economy, and dealing seriously with climate change and energy insecurity.”

The pair emphasized that while the US military plays a vital role in implementing soft power, its civilian services do not have the resources to perform the functions vital to soft power.

“The U.S. Government is still struggling to develop its soft power instruments outside of the military. Civilian institutions are not staffed or resourced properly, especially for extraordinary missions. Civilian tools are neglected in part because of the difficulty of demonstrating their short-term impact on critical challenges. Stovepiped institutional cultures inhibit joint action… There is little capacity for making tradeoffs at a strategic level. The United States spends about 500 times more on the military than we do on broadcasting and exchanges. How would we know if this is the right proportion, and how would we go about making tradeoffs?”

They step back and make an important point about the bigger picture: “Distinguished Members of the Committee, we developed Smart Power in large part as a reaction to the global war on terror, a concept that we consider to be wrongheaded as an organizing premise of U.S. foreign policy. America is too great of a nation to allow our central narrative and purpose to be held captive to so narrow an idea as defeating al Qaeda. We were twice victimized by September 11—first by the attackers, and then by our own hands when we lost our national confidence and optimism and began to see the world only through the lens of terrorism.”

“…When our words do not match our actions, we demean our character and moral standing and diminish our influence. We cannot lecture others about democracy while we back dictators. We cannot denounce torture and waterboarding in other countries and condone it at home. We cannot allow Guantanamo Bay or Abu Ghraib to become symbols of American power.”

They conclude with a ten-point implementation plan, some of whose highlights include: creating a cabinet-level position for global development, encouraging greater effectiveness for U.S. public diplomacy, and providing more training and professional development for civilian agencies. This testimony is an important call for reforming America’s approach to global leadership that I hope Members of Congress will heed.

Today is the sixteenth anniversary of the Soviet defeat in Afghanistan. As Ghosts of Alexander reminds us the United States finds itself battling the radical sentiment it helped proliferate to fight the Soviets.

Pakistan’s President Musharraf, addressing the 88^th National Management Course, noted the growing extremism , which he fears “the spread of Talibansation beyond the Tribal Areas.” The threat to the security of Afghanistan couldn’t be more evident than the assassination attempt on President Karzai earlier today.

All too often analysts, myself included, suggest the solution lies in convincing our allies to provide more troops. Recognizing the numerous difficulties Secretary Rice, Secretary Gates, and President Bush have encountered over this very issue leads one to conclude that solution is a pipe dream. Even if this delusion were to become reality, a significant stumbling block hampering the NATO effort stems from the lack of command control, according to the Christian Science Monitor. Such an assertion makes this blogger wonder why six years after the initial invasion there remain questions over authority. Without undisputed orders any “silver bullet” incorporating coalition support bears concern.

The Washington, DC-based Brookings Institute and the University of Bern’s Project on on Internal Displacement has released an interesting report focusing on how to fuse human rights with US foreign policy. The author is Roberta Cohen, who, among her impressive credentials in the field of human rights, was Deputy Assistant Secretary for Human Rights at the Department of State and Senior Adviser to US Delegation to the UN.

Here’s her main premise:  

“…What the United States is known and appreciated for around the world is not just its strong economy and military capability. It is its democratic way of life and commitment to the observance of human rights. Our nation defines itself by the Constitution and Bill of Rights, the ending of slavery and segregation, the promotion of equal rights for women, the struggle to end racial and minority discrimination, and the defense of free speech, press, and civil liberties. In its dealings with foreign governments and countries, it must necessarily reflect this identity. Whether it is well expressed will depend upon the nature and strength of its human rights policy and the dedication and skill of its diplomatic corps in the implementation of this policy.”

Cohen identifies three challenges to injecting a regard for human rights into US foreign policy.

The first challenge is “how to address human rights and democracy without unduly straining relations with governments and undermining overall US foreign policy.” The US relationship with Pakistan is a prime example. The report queries: “Will the overthrow of Musharraf produce an extremist Islamic government hostile to the US as in Iran? Or will it lead to a more democratic alternative, as in Chile, the Philippines and South Korea?”

The second challenge is “dealing with competing priorities, that is, the political, military and economic interests that conflict with action on human rights.” More often than not, these types of interests override action on human rights. For example during the Reagan Administration, the author says “strategic interests overshadowed human rights concerns with South Africa, and a policy of ‘constructive engagement’ was introduced to gain South Africa’s cooperation in reducing Soviet and Cuban influence in southern Africa.” A more current example can be found in the use of torture to get intelligence that could be used to fight the war on terror.

Finally, Cohen notes that “the intelligence community often pursues policies at variance with a human rights policy.” In sum, there is a trade off between foreign policy implementation and prudent practice of human rights policy. Based on Cohen’s historical observations it doesn’t appear that any Presidential administration has quite hit the nail on the head in regards to human rights.

Jimmy Carter’s controversial visit with Hamas has yielded an unexpected offer to Israel. Hamas’ leading strategist, Khaled Meshaal has publicly announced a ten year “hudna” (truce), as recognition of Israel in exchange for a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza. Of course, this offer is met with cynicism here in the United States:

“It is pretty clear to us that there is no acceptance on the part of Hamas of any kind of negotiated settlement,” offered Deputy Spokesman of the State Department, Tom Casey.

When Carter first announced his intentions to meet with Hamas, he was criticized around the world and in the United States for being naïve. Although the naïve accusation seems unwarranted after Meshal’s truce offer, as always, there are signs to undermine notions of peace. Hamas spokesman, Abu Jandal suggested that an escalation of hostilities between Hamas and Israel is near. “Abu Jandal described the recent attacks as a walk in the park and said upcoming attacks would be harsher.” Could it be that Abu Jandal was speaking without knowledge of or prior to Meshaal’s announcement? It is possible, but Hamas has a record of doublespeak.

Retired Israeli General Danny Rothschild senses “a rise in the capabilities of Hamas and a rise in the motivation.” In addition, he expects “an increase in the level of assistance that Hamas is getting from Iran and Hezbollah.”

With this muddled context, it is hard to expect Meshaal’s offer to make any headway amongst Israeli and American leaders, especially when acknowledging that his offer is nothing new:

“Khaled Meshaal, the political leader of the Palestinian militant group Hamas, said Wednesday that a long-term truce with Israel would be possible, if it accepted conditions including a return to its 1967 borders.” – February 8, 2006

Just as the brand new US Embassy in Iraq has finally been cleared to open for business, bad news from HR.

“The State Department is warning U.S. diplomats they may be forced to serve in Iraq next year and says it will soon start identifying prime candidates for jobs at the Baghdad embassy and outlying provinces, according to a cable obtained by The Associated Press.

‘We face a growing challenge of supply and demand in the 2009 staffing cycle,’ the cable said, noting that more than 20 percent of the nearly 12,000 foreign service officers have already worked in the two major hardship posts — Iraq and Afghanistan — and a growing number have done tours in both countries.

As a result, the unclassified April 8 cable says, ‘the prime candidate exercise will be repeated’ next year, meaning the State Department will begin identifying U.S. diplomats qualified to serve in Iraq and who could be forced to work there if they don’t volunteer—”The Associated Press.

This is déjà vu all over again for most Foreign Services Officers, as the Department warned this past fall that diplomats would be forced to take up the hardship post if not enough volunteered to fill the required slots. The Associated Press described a “town hall meeting” held last fall among several hundred foreign service officers to discuss the Department’s mandated service order. Some questioned the ethics of sending people against their will to a war zone, with one calling the forced assignments a “potential death sentence” to loud applause. In the end, enough officers leapt to the cause and all the slots were filled.

If only Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice could only win her battle with Congress to appropriate more funds to hire the 1,110 new diplomats she’s requesting for FY 2009, the already strained Foreign Service might not get further squeezed by the largest US embassy ever, that just built in Baghdad.

The US embassy in Baghdad itself is the center of controversy. First is the sheer size of the complex. About 104 acres, the embassy is roughly the same size as the Vacation City in Rome, six times larger than the United Nations compound in New York, and two-thirds the size of Washington, DC’s National Mall. It will provide working and living quarters for more than 1,000 U.S. diplomats and military personnel and includes a shopping complex, cinema, gym and “extensive” sporting facilities.

The second point of controversy is the embassy’s cost. The complex began costing $592 dollars to construct. That’s a lot of money considering how starved this particular government agency is for funding. But, as one would expect of the embassy of the future, poor construction resulted in serious infrastructure problems, which pushed the cost up by an additional $144 million.

Then there’s the symbolic repercussions. The International Crisis Group, a European-based conflict prevention group, argues that: “The presence of a massive U.S. embassy — by far the largest in the world — co-located in the Green Zone with the Iraqi government is seen by Iraqis as an indication of who actually exercises power in their country.”

Another AP dispatch points out that: “The complex quickly could become a white elephant if the U.S. scales back its presence and ambitions in Iraq. Although the U.S. probably will have forces in Iraq for years to come, it is not clear how much of the traditional work of diplomacy can proceed amid the violence and what the future holds for Iraq’s government.

Edward Peck, a former top U.S. diplomat in Iraq, explained to the AP: “What you have is a situation in which they are building an embassy without really thinking about what its functions are. What kind of embassy is it when everybody lives inside and it’s blast-proof, and people are running around with helmets and crouching behind sandbags?”

And the embassy is, in fact, a giant, uber expensive, sitting duck. Embassy officials ordered its staff to wear flak jackets and helmets while outdoors or in unprotected buildings. In this field of dreams off the Tigris, “if you build it” the diplomats will come—with enough wrangling, hardship pay, and body armor.

The Kojo Nnamdi show, an NPR station based in Washington, DC, hosted a group of foreign policy experts and practitioners in a discussion about the future of the US Foreign Service (FS). (Listen to the show).

All of Kojo’s guests pointed out that the central barrier to a bright future for the FS was the perpetual lack of funding from Congress.

Steven Kashkett, Vice President of the American Foreign Service Association, a lobby organization and labor union for members of the FS, emphasized that the staffing authorizations from Congress failed to suit the needs of the Foreign Service. Because of the lack of funding, the State Department just doesn’t have the people to do the job they need to do. Kojo mentioned that there are less diplomats employed in the FS than there are musicians employed by the Department of Defense.

The guests pointed out that, even when President Bush says he wants to provide the funding to double size of diplomatic corps in the next 10 years, it takes pressure from the Administration on Congress to get those funds fully appropriated. This pressure has not been forcefully applied.

A central issue to funding the FS is: How do you get Members of Congress to care about their needs? As Kashkett explained, “there is no natural constituency.”

Particularly damaging to funding requests is what the guests called a persistent image of US diplomats as “cookie-pushers,” or debutantes living a cushy life on the cocktail circuit. Kaskett emphasized: “Our diplomats have a hard life. Most of us don’t even own a tuxedo.”

Steven Kelly seconded that point. He pointed out that roughly 70% of US diplomats serving abroad are serving in what are called “hardship posts,” posts that present “unusually difficult or unhealthful conditions or severe physical hardships.” Kelly is now a member of the Senior Foreign Service, but when joined the FS in 1982 he said there were “no where near those numbers” of diplomats serving in hardship posts.On top of the lack of funding, former Ambassador and Brookings Institution Vice President Carlos Pascual pointed out that the tasks that the FS undertakes around the world have only gotten harder. Our increasingly interdependent world has changes in the nature of the threats we face. Pascual cited the example of the threats that emanate from failed states like Afghanistan, in addition to threats such as terrorism, nuclear proliferation, narco-traffickers. To confront these threats diplomats need to be on the frontline, and this is no longer in state capitols, the traditional geographic targets of FS operations.

Increasing the demands on the FS is their boss’ own mandate. Condoleezza Rice began her tenure as Secretary of State by declaring the goal of the US diplomatic corps to be none other than “transformational diplomacy,” a term that has come to mean that the FS should come to play a role in the inner workings of foreign societies—transforming totalitarian states into democracies, impoverished nations into productive, healthy societies, etc. As one of the guests pointed out, this type of diplomacy requires different kind of diplomatic skill set.

(Rice gives her “transformational diplomacy” speech January 2006 at Georgetown University.)

In sum, the future of the FS looks grim if it can’t get the funding it needs to perform its vital role as America’s “first line of defense.” And if you believe what you read in The Economist, the future of American foreign policy as a whole looks even grimmer. This article published last month argues that a new US President, despite his or her campaign promises, will create little actual change in the conduct of US foreign policy.

Perhaps, as Kojo’s distinguished guests suggest, it isn’t so much the President that is the barrier to a fully-resourced FS, rather it is the Congress. But perhaps the Congress doesn’t have the will to fund the FS because the people the represent do not press for such expenditures. It seems like the American people must also call for a change if we are to ensure a brighter future for the US Foreign Service.

Former Undersecretary of State Thomas Pickering tells the Independent the United States and Iran have been holding back channel talks over its nuclear program for several years.

Last month Pickering, along with William Leurs and James Walsh, authored an editorial in the International Herald Tribune regarding stagnation in the United States’ policy towards Iran. They note a “growing number of American leaders calling for direct talks with Iran.” However, the authors acknowledge “not one has yet made a concrete proposal on what to say to the Iranians other than to tell them to stop enrichment.”

In the absence of public officials discussing and working through such a proposal, Pickering and a number of other American “former diplomats and experts” are fleshing through details on “wide ranging issues” that could lead to an agreement between the two nations. The Iranian group includes “academics and policy advisors.” Two institutions have aided the group in its organization, the UN Association of the USA and the International Peace Research Institute.

It’s difficult to judge if the group’s work has any influence in discussions within the administration concerning a policy alternative. Pickering did mention, “the Bush administration ‘did not discourage us.’”

Despite this recent development, the United States raised its level of rhetoric against Iran. Regarding its influence in Iraq, Iranian analyst Nader Uskowi viewed General Patreaus’ comments during his Congressional testimony last week as evidence of the United States drawing a line, with potential consequences:

“Any assertion of tactical command role played by Iran in armed clashes, like what happened in Basra last week, could have immense consequences on US relations with Iran. It would renew concern that such assertions could be precursor to a military attack on Iran, even though the mathematics involving the availability of US troops to open a new front against Iran is highly questionable.”

Meanwhile, Iran recently installed 3,000 new centrifuges in Natanz.

The Financial Times reports the United States has reached a compromise with North Korea over declaration of its nuclear activities.  The United States has agreed Pyongyang does not need to publicly state a complete declaration of its nuclear activities.  The compromise would allow for a “secret side-agreement” in which North Korea would acknowledge concerns over proliferation and uranium enrichment, but a public document would include a complete declaration of its plutonium program.

Further details still need to be worked out before its granted the President’s approval.  Also, “US officials are preparing to return to Pyongyang… to assess claims that North Korea only harvested 30kg of plutonium. Japan is also insisting North Korea account for Japanese citizens who were abducted by North Korea over several decades.”

Check out the article.

If you are at all interested in the field of journalism you might enjoy reading this interview with David Marash in the Columbia Journalism Review.

But his story is one that appeals to us followers of US foreign policy as well. Marash, formerly a ”Nightline” correspondent, took a job in 2006 with Al Jazera English, the English-language version of the Doha, Qatar-based and controversial Al Jazeera network, which broadcasts in Arabic throughout the Middle East.

Marash took some flack for taking the job, at a time when the broadcaster couldn’t find a cable provider in the US to broadcast their channel. One year later Marash quit, and his CJR interview details his reasons why.

His candid remarks may interest us foreign policy-watchers because they provide a window into the politics of information–on a global scale. Ye who defines what is news, how events transpired, the character of things large and small holds the power to define the narratives through which we understand the state of the world. Particularly insightful is Marash’ narrative of how his job was effected by a change in political relations between the Middle East and the US.

Marash explained that network executives coaxed him into joining the network (thus lending it a huge amount of credibility, given Marash’s clout in the American journalism world) by outline an Al Jazeera English that would be, in Marash’s words: 

“Cosmopolitan—the whole world covered from many points of view representing the whole world. That was the logic of having four news centers in Doha, London, Washington, and Kuala Lumpur. All four were supposed to be autonomous, to initiate their own assignment decisions and lineup priorities. And the sum total of the four points of view was to put a truly cosmopolitan, multipolar gloss on the world.”

His interviewer what changed in the editorial structure of the network to make him want to leave his position. Here’s his response.

(more…)