U.S. Diplomacy

The Washington Post reports: “More than 100 countries reached agreement Wednesday to ban cluster bombs, controversial weapons that human rights groups deplore but that the United States, which did not join the ban, calls an integral, legitimate part of its arsenal.

…Advocates of the ban said they hope the agreement, which was supported by rich nations and poor from Scandinavia to Africa, will have the same effect as the 1997 ban on land mines, reducing use even among non-signatory countries.”

Also opposing the treaty and absent from the summit are Israel, Pakistan, India, Russia and China, who together produce 99% of the world’s supply of cluster bombs.

The White House opposes the ban because they say these bombs have a military utility. The United States has defended its non-attendance, saying it was “deeply concerned” about the humanitarian impact of cluster bombs and all weapons of war, despite “disagreements” about the best way forward.

Though, the Post reports that “the controversy over cluster bombs has led the United States to stop exporting them for now — a law that went into force this year bars the foreign sale of cluster bombs that have less than a 99 percent detonation or disabling rate, conditions that current versions of the weapons do not meet.”

To listen to Public Radio International’s program “The World” discuss the treaty, and explain how cluster bombs work  click here. Or view their diagram below.

Frida Berrigan, a Senior Program Associate at the New America Foundation’s Arms and Security Initiative, authored a scathing endictment of the military buildup that occurred during George W. Bush’s presidency.

In the section called “The Pentagon as Diplomat,” Berrigan argues:

“… the White House’s foreign policy agenda has increasingly been directed through the military. With a military budget more than 30 times that of all State Department operations and non-military foreign aid put together, the Pentagon has marched into State’s two traditional strongholds — diplomacy and development — duplicating or replacing much of its work, often by refocusing Washington’s diplomacy around military-to-military, rather than diplomat-to-diplomat, relations.

She relates: “Since the late eighteenth century, the U.S. ambassador in any country has been considered the president’s personal representative, responsible for ensuring that foreign policy goals are met. As one ambassador explained; “The rule is: if you’re in country, you work for the ambassador. If you don’t work for the ambassador, you don’t get country clearance.”

In the Bush era, the Pentagon has overturned this model. According to a 2006 Congressional report by Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN), Embassies as Command Posts in the Anti-Terror Campaign, civilian personnel in many embassies now feel occupied by, outnumbered by, and subordinated to military personnel. They see themselves as the second team when it comes to decision-making.”

Given the last post on this blog, it’s interesting to note that Berrigan quotes Defense Secretary Gates as saying there are “only about 6,600 professional Foreign Service officers — less than the manning for one aircraft carrier strike group,” while adding “don’t get me wrong, I’ll be asking for yet more money for Defense next year.”

Berrigan notes that “another ambassador lamented that his foreign counterparts are “following the money” and developing relationships with U.S. military personnel rather than cultivating contacts with their State Department counterparts.”

Berrigan concludes this section by describing a recent phenomenon in which Defense encourages “interagnecy cooperation,” between itself and other government agencies as a way to insert a military component into activities where it didn’ t traditionally or doesn’t necessarily belong.

According to Berrigan: “The Pentagon has generally followed this pattern globally since 2001. But what does [interagency] “cooperation” mean when one entity dwarfs all others in personnel, resources, and access to decision-makers, while increasingly controlling the very definition of the “threats” to be dealt with.”

Ron Nessen, a journalist in residence at the Washington-based Brookings Institution, reported on what he calls a “rare event” in Washington.  His article, titled “A Defense Secretary Says Something Nice About a Secretary of State,” relates the remaks  Secretary of Defense Robert Gates made at a recent Brookings Board of Trustees meeting.

“Verbal battles, turf fights, and policy arguments between Secretaries of State and Secretaries of Defense are commonplace in American history. Think: Don Rumsfeld vs. Colin Powell earlier in the George W. Bush administration….

…That’s why it was such a rare occasion when the current Defense Secretary, Robert Gateshad this to say about his respect for and working relationship with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice:

“The fact that our respective bureaucracies know that Condi Rice and I get along goes a long way towards making sure that serious attempts are made to reconcile differences and coordinate policy.”

Gates acknowledged that such friendship and mutual respect between the heads of the two Cabinet departments have not always been the case in the past few decades.

“Not even the most enlightened or well-crafted interagency structure will work,” Gates declared to the Brookings audience, “if the Secretaries of State and Defense can’t stand each other and won’t work together, as too often has been the case during the seven presidencies in which I have served.”

Nessen continues:

“The Defense chief, who might have been expected to devote a large portion of his talk to the need for increasing the Pentagon budget to meet modern international challenges, instead devoted a large portion of his speech to the need for increasing Condi Rice’s State Department budget to meet modern international challenges.

“America’s civilian instruments of power, in particular the State Department, have suffered from chronic under funding for decades, and were virtually gutted in the 1990’s,” Gates declared. “Today, the entire Foreign Service – 6600 men and women – would not be enough to crew one aircraft carrier strike group.”

When Defense can publicly recognize the State Department’s financial deficiencies, you know the conditions are dire.

Nessen goes on: “The Pentagon secretary told his audience that there is “strong support” in the military services to build up the State Department’s capacity. He noted that at another Brookings event last year, then-Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Mike Mullen said he’d be willing to give part of the Navy’s budget to the State Department, if it was spent properly.”

Wow, that’s quite generous of Admiral Mullen! It’s too bad that there’s such a Congressional stigma attached to the idea of “stealing” from our national security infrastructure to “feed” our diplomacy infrastructure. 

A note on Nessen: he served as Press Secretary to President Ford. Here’s a 2006 Washington Post article in which he relates a bit about the character of Ford’s presidency.

(Secretary Rice and Secretary Milliband in Silicon Valley)

Britain’s Foreign Secretary David Milliband continued his US tour last week by conducting an interview with Public Radio International’s “The World” program. You can listen to the interview here.

On the controversial issue about whether Iran–and every country on earth–has the right to develop nuclear power for civilian purposes, Milliband tells The World’s Anchor Marco Werman that:

 ”I certainly believe that Iran has a right to nuclear power if it exercises its responsibilities… Until a country either breaches international negotiations or does things which undermines the confidence in the civilian nature of a nuclear program, then its reasonable for international cooperation to go ahead.”

On the US-UK relations, Milliband underscored that “We are bound together by our hisory,” but also by our values that “we try to project around the world.” None of the big problems can be solved without the US. “We do need strong American leadership.”

Having studied in the US, Werman asked Milliband about his view of the nation. Milliband responded: ”America is the least cynical country in the world… This is a country that permanently renews itself… this is an ethic the rest of the world can learn from.”

British Foreign Secretary David Milliband spoke at the Center for Strategic and International Studies yesterday. He is quite an exceptional foreign leader: he is 41 years old and has been in politics for only 10 years, and at very high levels at that.

CSIS invited Milliband as part of their “Smart Power” program, which studies new public diplomacy strategies.  But the State Secretary did not talk about that, or about the transatlantic relationship. The talk was titled “Dilemmas of Democracy: Work in Progress in Afghanistan and Pakistan.” Secretary Milliband explained that he wished to speak about these two countries because they are number one priorities for Britain.

He further emphasized this point by saying: ”Why am I speakingabout this subject to Washington and not London? Because your decisions are critical for the future of Pakistan and Afghanistan and therefor critical to us… The current situation in both countries demands our attention.”

Milliband opened the discussion with a plea to the audience that we hang on to our belief in democracy. Aside from being morally right, he emphasized that a commitment to spreading and nurturing democracy is also in our self-interest.

I highly recomend you give his talk a listen. His case for decisive attention to the needs of the Afghans and the Pakistanis is compelling.

Since Afghanistan and Pakistan are such high priorities for theUK and the US, it makes perfect sense that Secretary Rice and Secretary Milliband are going to travel to California today to holda “fireside chat” with Google employees. Huh? My guess is that Secretary Milliband just wants to dine at Google’s famed five-star cafeteria. It’s a far cry from Sheppard’s pie and mushy peas.

Before they left, though, the two State Secretaries did meet to discuss about more “serious” matters, and afterwards held a press conference.

Here’s one last resource related to President Bush’s recent trip to the Middle East. Brookings Institution scholar Martin Indyk, a former Ambassador to Israel, speaks with ABC’s Martha Raddatz about Bush’s attempts at achieving peace in the Middle East. He also addresses, more broadly, the policy options at the next US President’s disposal for dealing with the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.

Here is a policy paper he co-authored with fellow Brookings scholar Tamara Cofman-Wittes. It offers “A New Strategy” for the next US President to engage with the Middle East.  They reccomend that the next President support policies that include these specific elements:

• “a renewed effort at Arab-Israeli reconciliation that might also split the Syrian regime from Iran containment of the spillover effects of civil war in Iraq
• negotiations with Iran to attempt to head off its nuclear ambitions, including bilateral engagement to address broader concerns
• regional security arrangements to contain the Iranian threat and prevent a Middle East nuclear arms race, if necessary, sheltering our allies under a nuclear umbrella
• a political and economic reform agenda that helps create a new social contract between Arab governments and their citizens
• in less secure countries, an emphasis on building democratic institutions more than holding democratic elections”

I thought I’d add to last week’s post about President Bush’s trip to the Middle East, by pointing out two new analyses.

First, the Washington Post’s White House correspondent Michael Abramowitz wrote in great detail about the various steps of Bush’s mideast trip.

Second, the Center for American Progress in their daily “Progress Report” published a thorough analysis of Bush’s trip.

It’s worth noting that President Bush did meet with Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas this weekend, after critics cited Bush’s “insensitivity” to the Palestinian cause.

Earlier this month the American Foreign Service Association held its annual ceremony honoring the Foreign Servicemen and women who lost their lives in the line of duty. Their names are eched into memorial plaques on the wall near the entrance to the State Depatment.

This year sadly saw two more names etched onto the memorial wall: Steven Thomas Stefani, IV and John Michael Granville. “Tom” Stefani, a U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service employee, on voluntary assignment with the Foreign Agricultural Service in Afghanistan, was serving as an agricultural adviser on a Provincial Reconstruction Team when he was killed in an explosion on October 4^th, 2007 in Ghazni Province.

While serving as a Democracy and Governance Officer with USAID in Sudan, John Michael Granville was killed in Khartoum on January 1^st, 2008, along with his Sudanese driver, Abdelrahman Abbas Rahama, when their vehicle came under fire.

At the ceremony Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte read some of the remarks of one of Mr. Granville’s Cameroonian friends made at his funeral:

“One of John’s Cameroonian friends said this at John’s funeral, and I quote: “John did not stand from a distance to watch us. He was one of us. He spoke our language, ate our food, observed and practiced our traditions, respected our ways, and worked with us, even when he disagreed with us. He always placed himself in the shoes of the people he worked and lived with. He tried to see the world through our eyes, through their personal experiences.”

President Bush sent along some kind words:

“I send greetings to those gathered for Foreign Affairs Day at the Department of State. Those who serve in the Foreign Service and the Civil Service and as Foreign Service nationals are performing their duties during a defining moment in our country’s history. Through hard work and determination they advance America’s founding ideals. As emissaries to the world, these fine individuals bring pride to our nation and help extend hope around the world…”

The ceremony also conferred awards for outstanding leadership by Foreign Service Officers. For a list of those honored, click here.

(AP)

President Bush has travelled to Israel to celebrate the nation’s 60th anniversary. He met with both Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert (above,  the full text of their remarks can be read here) and the President Shimon Peres. He addressed the Knesset(the Israeli Parliament) and a large conference with celebrity guests Henry Kissinger and Elie Wiesel.

Every step of the way Bush has emphasized America’s unwavering friendship with Israel.

Meanwhile, for the Palestinians this day marks the 60th anniversary of the “nabka,” or ”catastrophe,” as Irsael’s creation forced hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to flee Israel. President Bush was criticised for his failure to directly address to the Palestinian side of the Middle East peace equation.

The Christian Science Monitor published an interesting analysis of what some commentators consider a lack of vision for resolving the conflict between Israel and Palestine. The Associated Press, in an article titled “Bush leaves it to Olmert to push Mideast peace,” reported:

“President Bush gently urged Mideast leaders to “make the hard choices necessary for peace,” leaving it to embattled Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to stand before a divided parliament Thursday and forcefully declare that this war-weary nation is ready for a historic agreement with Palestinians.”

To give a historical vantage point, Public Radio International’s news program The Worldinterviewed former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Richard Holbrooke about President Harry Truman’s decision to recognize Israel back in 1948.

He talks about how the entire foreign policy establishment of that time advised Truman against recognizing Israel. It’s an interesting to listen: http://www.theworld.org/?q=node/18058.

A consistent theme running throughout this blog has been the Defense Department’s slow and steady encroachment on activities traditionally performed by our diplomatic bureau, the State Department.

A recent article from the USA Today reveals a new aspect of this phenomenon:

“The Pentagon is setting up a global network of foreign-language news websites, including an Arabic site for Iraqis, and hiring local journalists to write current events stories and other content that promote U.S. interests and counter insurgent messages.

The news sites are part of a Pentagon initiative to expand “Information Operations” on the Internet. Neither the initiative nor the Iraqi site, www.Mawtani.com, has been disclosed publicly. “

I highly recommend reading the full article, which discusses these programs in more detail and some of the history behind them.

Engaging foreign audiences is, of course, a laudable activity. But I have three major concerns with this new initiative.

First, and fundamentally, why is the Defense Department the government agency administering this program? What’s wrong with the State Department’s Public Diplomacy bureau? The Pentagon’s initiative clearly falls into one of this bureau’s specific goals: to “isolate and marginalize the violent extremists; confront their ideology of tyranny and hate. Undermine their efforts to portray the west as in conflict with Islam by empowering mainstream voices and demonstrating respect for Muslim cultures and contributions.”

Sure public diplomacy, as administered by State under the Bush administration’s direction, has taken criticism for not healing the US’ tarnished image or effectively combating violent extremism. But why would this activity work any better if the Defense Department does it? 

I see two plausible answers to my own question (and please chime in if you have other ideas). First, these programs will get more funding if they are placed under the control of the Defense Department—a much better-funded agency overall. State’s bare-boned budget makes it difficult enough to carry out its primary diplomatic functions, let alone shoulder the burden of new initiatives.

Second, in the age of the “global war on terror,” some forms of strategic international communication are coming to be categorized as “counter-terrorism” measures, severed from the larger portfolio of public diplomacy, and plugged in to more specialized agencies.

It appears that, after some key congressional testimonies by Defense (House Armed Services Committee 11/15/2007), State and intelligence officials alike, legislators have come to recognize that Islamic extremists are utilizing the Internet as a tool for recruitment and the transmission of ideology better than we can utilize it to counteract them. As the nominee for Undersecretary for Public Diplomacy James Glassman told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee: “Our enemies are eating our lunch in terms of getting the word out in digital technology,”

[A recently-released Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs report, which draws heavily from the testimony of key intelligence and defense officials, focuses specifically on “how violent Islamist terrorist groups like al-Qaeda are using the Internet to enlist followers into the global violent Islamist terrorist movement and to increase support for the movement, ranging from ideological support, to fundraising, and ultimately to planning and executing terrorist attacks.”]

Still, the State Department has its own counter-terrorism bureau, why not have that bureau partner with the bureau of Public Diplomacy to implement this strategy?

This leads me to the second of my three major concerns: there is something fundamentally wrong with the military assuming the responsibility of communicating internationally on behalf of the US. This is a civilian-lead country, people in other countries should deal with our civilian collective self.

I can see why Defense would want to cut out the “middle man.” This way, editorial decisions can go directly up the chain of command, and news reporting can take on a hard, rather than a soft, power tone. Call it military news bias, similar to its liberal and conservative incarnations. But let’s be honest, the US military is the last place we should look to produce objective news.

My third concern stems from my second. By paying local journalists to write flattering stories about the US in local news media the department is asking foreign journalists to violate their code of ethics. 

How would we like it if the Pakistani military were paying American journalists to write positive stories about Pakistan in our news media? An American journalist would say, ”no way, I am not taking money to write biased stories.” But if you were a struggling journalist living in a developing country–or even a failed state–with widespread violence  (just like the countries that Defense is targeting)-if you needed the money to feed your family I bet you’d sacrifice your journalistic integrity too.

Back in 2005 when the Defense Department contracted a PR firm to place favorable news stories in the Iraqi press, Members of Congress reportedly chastised the Pentagon, saying the practice could “erode the independence of Iraqi media” (Republican John Warner), and the Pentagon stopped the program. That might be a good idea–again.

In the end, do these programs really get to the root of the problem? Yes, the Internet makes it possible for extremist ideology to spread like wildfire. But it also poses the same opportunity for good news about the US to leap across borders.

Rather than pay off journalists to create some false sense of popularity among foreign audiences, why not put the emphasis on implementing real policies that help raise people’s standards of living, increase stability in their region, and, overall, give reporters some good news involving the US to write about?