Cordially invites you to a
Ceremony and Reception on Monday, 17 November 2014 at 6pm
hosted by
United Nations Correspondents’ Association (UNCA),
United Nations Secretariat Building, Room S-310
for the

2014 International Achievement Award for Nuclear Disarmament

sponsored by

Cordially invites you to a
Ceremony and Reception on Monday, 17 November 2014 at 6pm
hosted by
United Nations Correspondents’ Association (UNCA),
United Nations Secretariat Building, Room S-310
for the

2014 International Achievement Award for Nuclear Disarmament

sponsored by

Soka Gakkai International (SGI)

to be presented to

JAYANTHA DHANAPALA
Under Secretary General for Disarmament Affairs (1998–2003)
for championing a world free of nuclear weapons

Regrets only: ipsnoram@ips.org

Cordially invites you to a
FORUM ON GLOBAL CITIZENSHIP
on 18 November 2014 from 09:00-13:30
Venue:
Permanent Mission [...]]]> In cooperation with the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC)
The Permanent Mission of Sri Lanka to the UN
and
Soka Gakkai International (SGI)

Cordially invites you to a
FORUM ON GLOBAL CITIZENSHIP
on 18 November 2014 from 09:00-13:30
Venue:
Permanent Mission of Sri Lanka to the United Nations
820 Second Avenue (btw 43 & 44 St), 2nd Floor, New York, NY 10017
Chair: Ambassador Anwarul K. Chowdhury
Former Under-Secretary-General and High Representative of the UN
_______________________________________________________________________________________

BACKGROUND
As the world becomes increasingly interdependent and interconnected, we face global challenges that require global solutions. At the Global Citizen Festival on 28 September 2014, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called upon the audience of more than 60,000 people, many of them youth: “A better world is around the corner. As united nations – as united global citizens – let’s commit to get there together!”

In this process, our individual identities, too, begin to transcend national boundaries. What is required is that we develop a sense of ‘global citizenship’. Though it is a common terminology, which suggests people’s increased interests in and awareness on the concept, the definition of a global citizen can be broad and diverse. This presents an excellent opportunity to explore the concept and come to a deeper understanding of global citizenship, together with multiple stakeholders such as member states, the UN offices and agencies, and civil society.

Opening Session: 09:00-10:00

Chair opens the Forum
Welcoming remarks: IPS DG Ramesh Jaura
Message from Federico Mayor, former IPS Chair

Keynote speakers:
UNAOC High Representative Ambassador Nassir Abdulaziz Al-Nasser, former IPS Chair
Ambassador Walther Lichem, IPS Vice Chair

Special contributions by:
Ambassador Palitha Kohona, Sri Lankan Permanent Representative to the UN
Maher Nasser, OIC, DPI, United Nations
Hiro Sakurai, SGI representative to UN

Discussions in two panels 10:15 to 13:15
Panel I: Global Citizenship as a Pathway to the Culture of Peace
Panel II: Integrating Global Citizenship in International Relations

I’m going to guess you’ve heard of the People’s Climate March by now. It’s been all over Facebook, the blogosphere, buses, and subway cars—it’s even shown up on network news, which has been something of a black hole for climate activism.

But in case you’re just getting [...]]]> By Janet Redman

I’m going to guess you’ve heard of the People’s Climate March by now. It’s been all over Facebook, the blogosphere, buses, and subway cars—it’s even shown up on network news, which has been something of a black hole for climate activism.

But in case you’re just getting back from vacation (or a cave), here’s the deal: on Sunday, September 21^st, tens of thousands of people are expected to flood the streets of New York City to call on global leaders to take action on climate change.

What’s been somewhat forgotten in the truly herculean effort to make this the biggest climate mobilization ever is what global leaders are doing in town in the first place.

The truth is, they’ve been called to New York by United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki Moon to meet in an unofficial capacity, because formal negotiations for a global treaty to stabilize the climate aren’t going so well.

Circular Debates

In fact, little more than a year out from the December 2015 deadline for signing a deal, countries can’t even agree on a fundamental approach to curbing heat-trapping greenhouse emissions.

One option is a binding treaty that mandates a clear target for reducing overall emissions and assigns each country a fair share of the work. The second option is a nonbinding “pledge and review” process by which each nation records what pollution cuts it thinks it can make. According to this plan, we’d add up those pledges, hope they’re enough to avoid climate chaos, and come back in a few years to see how governments have done.

The United States is the primary proponent of the latter option, for the record.

But emissions cuts are not the only hang-up.

If there’s frighteningly little political will to take common-sense action in the face of devastating ecological disruption—i.e., to stop burning fossil fuels and put clean renewable energy in place as fast as possible—there is even less appetite to pay for it.

At the Copenhagen climate talks in 2009, industrialized countries promised to create a “Green Climate Fund” to channel money to poorer countries to support their shift to clean energy and climate-resilient development. Since the global North made much of its wealth polluting the planet, it seemed only fair that it would pick up part of the tab to help the South grapple with the result.

But five years later, the fund lies conspicuously empty.

Rich countries say that in order to muster political support for climate finance, they need to see developing countries going out of their way to earn it. Poor countries wonder how they’re supposed to act first when many of them are on the front lines of climate chaos largely caused by pollution from rich countries.

Making Space for Polluters

These debates are nothing new. They’re repeated every year at the UN climate convention.

What’s different about the upcoming New York climate summit is its unofficial nature, which is meant to provide a “neutral” space where heads of state can have a more productive conversation. But by holding the summit outside of official negotiations, the secretary general has set a table where corporations and banks are on equal footing with governments. Literally.

The one-day climate summit will feature a high-level private sector luncheon where businesses will share actions they are taking “to demonstrate leadership on climate change and measures that governments can take to enable the private sector to develop long-term climate change solutions.”

The guest list includes global oil and gas company Royal Dutch Shell, international coal financier Barclays Bank, and South Africa’s power utility Eskom, which is currently building one of the world’s largest coal-fired power plants with funding from the World Bank. They’ll be joined by more than 130 other companies and banks.

That means our leaders aren’t just dithering at the edges while the planet burns—they’re actively inviting the very companies that are causing this crisis to help fix it.

The Bottom Line

“So what?” you might wonder. “Don’t companies have a role to play?”

Of course they do. But there’s no solution to climate change that doesn’t threaten the bottom line of companies that currently profit from dirty energy. That doesn’t mean that their interests never line up with what’s good for the climate. But when they don’t, it’s tough luck for people and the planet.

Unfortunately, governments have been abetting this “tough luck” for years. Look no further than the Green Climate Fund.

At the behest of governments—mainly from developed countries, where most multinational corporations are headquartered—the private sector has played a central role in the institution from the beginning. There is a special facility specifically to support the private sector, a private sector advisory group that makes policy recommendations on all aspects of the fund, and two private sector observers that comment on the proceedings of the fund’s board.

Ironically enough, one of these observer seats is filled by Bank of America, whose shareholders have pushed back against its financing of the coal industry.

Unsurprisingly, corporate influence is threatening the very purpose of the fund. The rules governing investment and what institutions can receive funding are being written with the express purpose of making the Green Climate Fund as attractive as possible to financial investors.

In a board discussion about whether to exclude oil, coal, and gas projects from receiving money from the green fund, for example, one private sector observer argued that “ruling out technologies” would tie the hands of governments trying to address climate change.

But wasn’t financing a transition away from these “technologies” the point of the fund to begin with?

Outflanked

At this point the small group of social movements and non-profit organizations trying to keep corporate influence in check at the fund are severely outflanked.

So while turning out in big numbers in the Big Apple is critical, it will take more than marching to compel governments to stop supporting the fossil fuel industry and start regulating and reducing climate pollution.

Imagine the collective power we could bring to bear if the 1,400-plus organizations endorsing the climate march—representing the labor movement, people of faith, youth, immigrant rights activists, and of course, environmentalists—pulled out all the stops and poured their resources into an uncompromising, coordinated “no more dirty energy” campaign: ne that forced governments to cut taxpayer subsidies to the fossil fuel industry, put our bodies in the way of fossil fuel extraction and transport, and moved money quickly to community-centered renewable technologies that already exist.

In the meantime, we can and should keep flexing our political muscle. One way is to “flood Wall Street,” as activists staying on in New York are planning to do after the climate march.

Kicking corporations and big banks—and their government enablers—out of the Green Climate Fund is another.

This post was originally published by Foreign Policy In Focus

Janet Redman directs the Climate Policy Program at the Institute for Policy Studies.

As readers of this blog know, I’m not a big fan of the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board, which pretty much defines neo-conservative foreign-policy orthodoxy and is probably the movement’s single-most influential and effective proponent in the elite U.S. media. If you accept certain of its assumptions — sometimes explicit, sometimes [...]]]>   by Jim Lobe

As readers of this blog know, I’m not a big fan of the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board, which pretty much defines neo-conservative foreign-policy orthodoxy and is probably the movement’s single-most influential and effective proponent in the elite U.S. media. If you accept certain of its assumptions — sometimes explicit, sometimes implicit — the editorials, columns, and op-eds the Journal  produces usually make the most coherent case for a neo-conservative position, especially as regards anything having to do with Israel and its ruling Likud Party, as any other publication, including the Weekly Standard, the National Review, and Commentary’s Contentions blog. As tendentious and bizarre as these pieces often are, they also usually offer some degree of intellectual integrity.

In that respect, the “Wonderland” column published last Thursday by the Journal‘s deputy editor of the editorial page Daniel Henninger struck me as particularly lacking. I don’t read Henninger’s column very frequently; on foreign policy, he seems to be a lightweight compared to his colleague Bret Stephens, who writes the Tuesday “Global View” column. But I read this one, entitled “Rand Paul’s Reagan,” because its title raised a favorite interest of mine — the ongoing battle between the neo-con/aggressive nationalist and the paleo-con/libertarian wings of the Republican Party.

Of course, you should read the whole thing, but the part that really jumped out at me was his juxtaposition of the “Weinberger Doctrine” and his confident depiction of Ronald Reagan as a staunch and unflinching advocate of a hawkish foreign policy:

While there was never a formal Reagan Doctrine, Ronald Reagan himself said enough and did enough to know where he stood. In his 1985 State of the Union, Reagan said, “We cannot play innocents abroad in a world that’s not innocent.”

Ronald Reagan called the Soviet Union an “evil empire,” aligned his own policy toward Soviet Communism with the idea of “rollback,” stood at the Brandenburg Gate and cried, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall,” increased U.S. defense spending, deployed Pershing 2 ballistic missiles and cruise missiles in Europe amid world-wide protests in 1983, invaded Grenada the same year, and gave U.S. support to anticommunist movements in Afghanistan, Cambodia, Angola and Latin America—with many congressional Democrats in a towering rage of eight-year opposition to nearly all of it. The words Reagan used most to support all this were “freedom” and “democracy.” He ended four decades of Cold War.

Well, aside from the fact that Henninger seems to take great pride in U.S. support for such “anticommunist” and freedom-loving movements represented by the mujahadin (and future Taliban) in Afghanistan, the Khmer Rouge (de facto) in Cambodia, the witch-burning Jonas Savimbi in Angola, and the Somocista-led contras in Nicaragua (not to mention the murderous armies and security forces of El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala — the three main sources of all those children on the southern border now — in Central America), I find this litany of “where (Reagan) stood” in the context of any discussion of the Weinberger Doctrine quite remarkable for what it omits. More precisely, Henninger fails to devote a single word to the events that gave rise to Weinberger’s enunciation of the doctrine that bears his name: the disastrous deployment of U.S. marines at the Beirut airport and the Oct 23, 1983, bombing of their barracks in which 241 servicemen were killed.

Of course, what is relevant here was Reagan’s reaction. You would think from Henninger’s depiction of “The Gipper” that he not only would have shrugged off what was the worst one-day loss of life of U.S. servicemen since World War II. He would also have spared no effort to hunt down the perpetrators*, bombed the hell out of their suspected sponsors wherever they were to be found, and then quadrupled the number of troops deployed to Lebanon in order to demonstrate to all the world his determination to “stand” his ground in the face of terrorist threats and outrages, and defeat them.

In fact, however, Reagan did nothing of the kind. Two days after the disaster, his administration launched the invasion of tiny Grenada partly, no doubt, to divert the public’s attention from Beirut. Meanwhile, most of the surviving marines were immediately deployed offshore, and by February, they had been withdrawn entirely from Lebanon, albeit not before the USS New Jersey fired off dozens of VW Bug-sized shells at Druze and Syrian positions east of Beirut. (Neither is believed to have had anything to do with the bombing.) Weinberger, who had opposed the original deployment and had wanted to lay out the principal lessons that he thought should be learned from the debacle shortly after the withdrawal, waited until November 1984 to devote a speech to the subject. One year later, that same tough-guy Reagan, who, as Henninger recalls, warned against playing “innocents abroad,” authorized the arms-for-hostages deal that formed the basis of the Iran-Contra scandal …and then claimed that he had no idea that he was indeed trading arms for hostages. This is Henninger’s Reagan.

I should stress right away that, unlike both Paul and Henninger, I’m definitely not a defender of Ronald Reagan whose presidency, I believe, was an unmitigated disaster for the country (exceeded only by George W. Bush’s, of course), not to mention the many tens of thousands of innocent people who died or were killed by the application of the “Reagan Doctrine” in Central America, southern Africa (remember, Reagan’s support for apartheid South Africa), and Indochina. And, while I agree with Henninger that “Ron Paul’s Reagan” is not an entirely accurate rendition of the 40th president’s foreign policy, Henninger’s depiction is no less flawed. In fact, I believe it is fundamentally dishonest. After all, if you’re going to attack Paul’s central point about Reagan’s alleged adoption of the Weinberger Doctrine, the very least you can do is mention the events that gave rise to it: the ill-thought-out commitment of U.S. troops into a civil-war situation and their subsequent ignominious withdrawal. As noted by none other than Reagan’s own Secretary of the Navy, John Lehman (also a member of the 9/11 Commission), ”There’s no question it [Reagan's withdrawal] was a major cause of 9/11. We told the world that terrorism succeeds.” Of course, that particular Reagan obviously doesn’t exactly fit Henninger’s idealized and highly misleading version.

* One of the great ironies is that an alleged key planner of the 1983 barracks bombing, as well as other attacks against U.S. officials in that period, was an Iranian intelligence officer, Ali Reza Asgari, who, according to Kai Bird’s recent biography of Robert Ames (the CIA officer who was killed in the suicide bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut six months before), was granted asylum in the U.S. during the George W. Bush administration in 2007 in exchange for sharing his knowledge of Iran’s nuclear program. According to Bird, Asgari has been living here under the CIA’s protection since his defection. You can find Augustus Richard Norton’s review of Bird’s book for LobeLog here.

Photo: Caspar Weinberger meeting in 1982 with then-Israeli Minister of Defense, Ariel Sharon Credit: public domain

]]> https://www.ips.org/blog/ips/wsjs-daniel-henningers-reagan/feed/ 0 https://www.ips.org/blog/ips/top-israel-lobby-group-loses-battle-on-iran-but-war-not-over/ https://www.ips.org/blog/ips/top-israel-lobby-group-loses-battle-on-iran-but-war-not-over/#comments Fri, 24 Jan 2014 02:39:39 +0000 admin http://www.ips.org/blog/ips/top-israel-lobby-group-loses-battle-on-iran-but-war-not-over/ by Jim Lobe

via IPS News

Eight years ago, Stephen Rosen, then a top official at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and well-known around Washington for his aggressiveness, hawkish views, and political smarts, was asked by Jeffrey Goldberg of the New Yorker magazine whether some recent negative publicity had harmed the [...]]]> by Jim Lobe

via IPS News

Eight years ago, Stephen Rosen, then a top official at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and well-known around Washington for his aggressiveness, hawkish views, and political smarts, was asked by Jeffrey Goldberg of the New Yorker magazine whether some recent negative publicity had harmed the lobby group’s legendary clout in Washington.

“A half smile appeared on his face, and he pushed a napkin across the table,” wrote Goldberg about the interview. “’You see this napkin?’ [the official] said. In twenty-four hours, we could have the signatures of seventy senators on this napkin.”

Eight years later, the same official, Stephen Rosen, who was forced to resign from AIPAC after his indictment — later dismissed — for allegedly spying for Israel, told a Ron Kampeas of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) that AIPAC needed to retreat from its confrontation with President Barack Obama after getting only 59 senators — all but 16 of them Republicans — to co-sponsor a new sanctions bill aimed at derailing nuclear negotiations between Iran and the so-called P5+1 (U.S., Britain, France, Russia, China plus Germany).

“They don’t want to be seen as backing down… I don’t believe this is sustainable, the confrontational posture,” he said.

If AIPAC had succeeded in getting 70 signatures on the bill, which the administration argued would have violated a Nov. 24 interim agreement between Iran and the P5+1 that essentially freezes Tehran’s nuclear programme in exchange for easing some existing sanctions for a renewable six-month period, that would have been three more than needed to overcome a promised Obama veto.

But, after quickly gathering the 59 co-sponsors over the Christmas recess, AIPAC and the bill’s major sponsors, Republican Sen. Mark Kirk and Democratic Sen. Robert Menendez, appeared to hit a solid wall of resistance led by 10 Democratic Committee chairs and backed by an uncharacteristically determined White House with an uncharacteristically stern message.

“If certain members of Congress want the United States to take military action, they should be up front with the American public and say so,” said Bernadette Meehan, a spokeswoman for the National Security Council. “Otherwise, it’s not clear why any member of Congress would support a bill that possibly closes the door on diplomacy and makes it more likely that the United States will have to choose between military options or allowing Iran’s nuclear program to proceed.”

Combined with a grassroots lobbying campaign carried out by nearly 70 grassroots religious, anti-war, and civic-action groups that flooded the offices of nervous Democratic senators with thousands of emails, petitions, and phone calls, as well as endorsements of the administration’s position by major national and regional newspapers and virtually all but the neo-conservative faction of the U.S. foreign policy elite, the White House won a clear victory over AIPAC and thus raised anew the question of just how powerful the group really is.

AIPAC’s inability to muster more support among Democrats, in particular, came on top of two other setbacks to its fearsome reputation over the past year.

Although they never took a public position on his nomination a year ago, the group’s leaders were known to have quietly lobbied against former Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel for Defence Secretary due his generally critical attitude toward Israel’s influence on U.S. policy in the Middle East.

Several groups and individuals closely aligned with AIPAC, notably the American Jewish Committee and the Anti-Defamation League’s (ADL) – both of which have joined AIPAC in lobbying for the new Iran sanctions bill – questioned or opposed Hagel. Ultimately, however, he won confirmation by a 58-41 margin in which the great majority of Democrats voted for him.

Eight months later, AIPAC and other right-wing Jewish groups lobbied Congress in favour of a resolution to authorise the use of force against Syria — this time, however, at Obama’s request, although clearly also with the approval of Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.

But the popular groundswell against Washington’s military intervention in yet another Middle Eastern conflict — as well as the reflexive aversion by far-right Republicans to virtually any Obama initiative — doomed the effort.

Neither Hagel nor Syria, however, has approached the importance AIPAC has accorded to Iran and its nuclear programme which have dominated the group’s foreign-policy agenda for more than a decade. During that time, it has become used to marshalling overwhelming  majorities of lawmakers from both parties behind sanctions and other legislation designed to increase tensions — and preclude any rapprochement — between Tehran and Washington.

Last July, for example, the House of Representatives voted by a 400-20 margin in favour of sanctions legislation designed to halt all Iranian oil exports from Iran. The measure was approved just four days before Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s inauguration.

Throughout the fall, AIPAC worked hard — but ultimately unsuccessfully — to get the same bill through the Senate.

Now, two months later and unable to muster even a filibuster-proof 60 votes in the Senate, AIPAC appears to have shelved the Kirk-Menendez bill, which, among other provisions, would have imposed sanctions if Tehran violated the Nov. 24 agreement or failed to reach a comprehensive accord with the P5+1 on its nuclear programme within a year.

“Clearly, the ground has shifted, dealing a huge defeat to AIPAC and other groups who have been aggressively lobbying for [the new sanctions bill],” wrote Lara Friedman, a lobbyist for Americans for Peace Now in her widely-read weekly Legislative Round-up, while other commentators, including Rosen, warned that overwhelming Republican support for the bill put AIPAC’s carefully cultivated bipartisan image at risk with Democratic lawmakers and key Democratic donors.

“They definitely lost this round and that has cost them a huge amount of political capital with the administration and with a lot of Democrats,” said one veteran Capitol Hill observer who also noted AIPAC faced “an almost perfect storm” of an administration willing to fight for a policy that also enjoyed strong support from the foreign-policy elite and an engaged activist community that could exert grassroots pressure on their elected representatives. “Senate offices were getting a couple of calls in favour [of the bill] and hundreds against. That certainly has to make a difference.”

“AIPAC and other hard-line groups remain a potent force in guaranteeing generous U.S. aid to Israel and hamstringing U.S. efforts to achieve a two-state solution, but their clout declines when they advocate a course of action that could lead to another Middle East war,” Stephen Walt, co-author of “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy,” told IPS in an email exchange.

“The neoconservatives were able to push Bush & Co. to invade Iraq in 2003, but their success required an unusual set of circumstances and the American public learned a lot from that disastrous experience,” according to the influential Harvard international relations scholar.

No one, however, believes that AIPAC and its allies have given up. If the P5+1 negotiations should falter, the Kirk-Menendez bill is likely to be quickly re-introduced; indeed, one influential Republican senator said it should be put on the calendar for July, six months from Jan. 20 the date that Nov. 24 interim accord formally went into effect.

“It seems likely that advocates [of the bill] are getting ready to shift to some form of ‘Plan B’ [which], …one can guess, will look a lot like Plan A, but, instead of focusing on derailing negotiations with new sanctions, [it] will likely focus on imposing conditions on any final agreement — conditions that are impossible to meet and will thus kill any possibility of a deal,” according to Friedman.

That could include conditioning the lifting of sanctions on an agreement that includes a ban on any uranium enrichment on Iranian soil — a condition favoured by Netanyahu that Tehran has repeatedly rejected and that most experts believe would be a deal-breaker.

via IPS News

As the administration of President Barack Obama continues wrestling with how to react to the military coup in Egypt and its bloody aftermath, officials and independent analysts are increasingly worried about the crisis’s effect on U.S. ties with Saudi Arabia.

The oil-rich kingdom’s strong support [...]]]> by Jim Lobe

via IPS News

As the administration of President Barack Obama continues wrestling with how to react to the military coup in Egypt and its bloody aftermath, officials and independent analysts are increasingly worried about the crisis’s effect on U.S. ties with Saudi Arabia.

The oil-rich kingdom’s strong support for the coup is seen here as having encouraged Cairo’s defence minister Gen. Abdul Fattah al-Sisi to crack down on the Muslim Brotherhood and resist western pressure to take a conciliatory approach that would be less likely to radicalise the Brotherhood’s followers and push them into taking up arms.

Along with the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait, Saudi Arabia did not just pledge immediately after the Jul. 3 coup that ousted President Mohamed Morsi to provide a combined 12 billion dollars in financial assistance, but it has also promised to make up for any western aid – including the 1.5 billion dollars with which Washington supplies Cairo annually in mostly military assistance – that may be withheld as a result of the coup and the ongoing crackdown in which about 1,000 protestors are believed to have been killed to date.

Perhaps even more worrisome to some experts here has been the exceptionally tough language directed against Washington’s own condemnation of the coup by top Saudi officials, including King Abdullah, who declared Friday that “[t]he kingdom stands …against all those who try to interfere with its domestic affairs” and charged that criticism of the army crackdown amounted to helping the “terrorists”.

Bruce Riedel, a former top CIA Middle East analyst who has advised the Obama administration, called the comments “unprecedented” even if the king did not identify the United States by name.

Chas Freeman, a highly decorated retired foreign service officer who served as U.S. ambassador to Riyadh during the Gulf War, agreed with that assessment.

“I cannot recall any statement as bluntly critical as that,” he told IPS, adding that it marked the culmination of two decades of growing Saudi exasperation with U.S. policy – from Washington’s failure to restrain Israeli military adventures and the occupation of Palestinian territory to its empowering the Shia majority in Iraq after its 2003 invasion and its abandonment of former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and its backing of democratic movements during the “Arab awakening”.

“For most of the past seven decades, the Saudis have looked to Americans as their patrons to handle the strategic challenges of their region,” Freeman said. “But now the Al-Saud partnership with the United States has not only lost most of its charm and utility; it has from Riyadh’s perspective become in almost all respects counterproductive.”

The result, according to Freeman, has been a “lurch into active unilateral defence of its regional interests”, a move that could portend major geo-strategic shifts in the region. “Saudi Arabia does not consider the U.S. a reliable protector, thinks it’s on its own, and is acting accordingly.”

A number of analysts, including Freeman, have pointed to a Jul. 31 meeting in Moscow between Russian President Vladimir Putin and the head of the Riyadh’s national security council and intelligence service, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, as one potentially significant “straw in the wind” regarding the Saudi’s changing calculations.

According to a Reuters report, Bandar, who served as Riyadh’s ambassador to Washington for more than two decades, offered to buy up to 15 billion dollars in Russian arms and coordinate energy policy – specifically to prevent Qatar from exporting its natural gas to Europe at Moscow’s expense – in exchange for dropping or substantially reducing Moscow’s support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

While Putin, under whom Moscow’s relations with Washington appear to have a hit a post-Cold War low recently, was non-committal, Bandar left Moscow encouraged by the possibilities for greater strategic co-operation, according to press reports that drew worried comments from some here.

“[T]he United States is apparently standing on the sidelines – despite being Riyadh’s close diplomatic partner for decades, principally in the hitherto successful policy of blocking Russia’s influence in the Middle East,” wrote Simon Henderson, an analyst at the pro-Israel Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP).

“It would be optimistic to believe that the Moscow meeting will significantly reduce Russian support for the Assad regime,” he noted. “But meanwhile Putin will have pried open a gap between Riyadh and Washington.”

As suggested by Abdullah’s remarks, that gap has only widened in the wake of the Egyptian military’s bloody crackdown on the Brotherhood this month and steps by Washington to date, including the delay in the scheduled shipment of F-16 fighter jets and the cancellation of joint U.S.-Egyptian military exercises next month, to show disapproval.

U.S. officials have told reporters that Washington is also likely to suspend a shipment of Apache attack helicopters to Cairo unless the regime quickly reverses course.

Meanwhile Moscow, even as it joined the West in appealing for restraint and non-violent solutions to the Egyptian crisis, has also refrained from criticising the military, while the chairman of Foreign Affairs Committee of the Duma’s upper house blamed the United States and the European Union for supporting the Muslim Brotherhood.

“It is clear that Russia and Saudi Arabia prefer stability in Egypt, and both are betting on the Egyptian military prevailing in the current standoff, and are already acting on that assumption,” according to an op-ed that laid out the two countries’ common interests throughout the Middle East and was published Sunday by Alarabiya.net, the news channel majority-owned by the Saudi Middle East Broadcasting Centre (MBC).

Some observers argue that Russia and Saudi Arabia have a shared interest in containing Iran; reducing Turkish influence; co-operating on energy issues; and bolstering autocratic regimes, including Egypt’s, at the expense of popular Islamist parties, notably the Brotherhood and its affiliates, across the region.

“There’s a certain logic to all that, but it’s too early to say whether such an understanding can be reached,” said Freeman, who noted that Bandar “wrote the book on outreach to former ideological and geo-strategic enemies”, including China, and that his visit to Moscow “looks like classic Saudi breakout diplomacy”.

But reaching a deal on Syria would be particularly challenging. While Riyadh assigns higher priority to reducing Iran’s regional influence than to removing Assad, some analysts believe there are ways an agreement that would retain him as president could be struck, as Moscow insists, while reducing his power over the opposition-controlled part of the country and weakening his ties to Tehran and Hezbollah.

But Mark N. Katz, an expert on Russian Middle East policy at George Mason University, is sceptical about the prospects for a Russian-Saudi entente, noting that Bandar has pursued such a relationship in the past without success.

“I’m not saying it can’t work, but this has been his hobby horse,” he told IPS. “Whatever happens in Saudi-American relations, however, the Saudis don’t trust the Russians and don’t want them meddling in the region. Everything about the Russians ticks them off.”

He added that Abdullah’s harsh criticism was intended more as a “wake-up call” and the fact that “the Saudis are on the same side [in supporting the Egyptian military] as the Israelis has emboldened them”.

Photo Credit: Analysts worry about the effect of Egypt’s ongoing crisis on U.S.-Saudi relations. Above, CNO Adm. Jonathan Greenert and Saudi Crown Prince Salman bin Abdulaziz in February. Credit: Official U.S. Navy Imagery/CC by 2.0 

by Jim Lobe

For Taiwan that is. Our alumnus, Eli Clifton, makes a pretty good case below in his piece this week for The Nation, which we reprint with permission of the magazine.

Two quick points about the article:

1) For lack of space, Eli wasn’t able to expand [...]]]> via LobeLog

by Jim Lobe

For Taiwan that is. Our alumnus, Eli Clifton, makes a pretty good case below in his piece this week for The Nation, which we reprint with permission of the magazine.

Two quick points about the article:

1) For lack of space, Eli wasn’t able to expand on Paul Wolfowitz’s status as both a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and as the chairman of the U.S.-Taiwan Business Council since 2008. The Business Council, like AEI, has, of course, been a major proponent of F-16 sales to Taiwan. At the time when I first noted Wolfowitz’s chairmanship of the group, the Council’s president, Rupert Hammond-Chambers, assured me that the Wolfowitz was not receiving any compensation from the Council in his new post. While I have no reason to doubt him, Eli’s investigation suggests that the government of Taiwan may be expressing its appreciation for Wolfowitz’s work in other ways or through other channels. In any event, neither AEI nor Wolfowitz is currently registered under FARA, the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

2) AEI’s advocacy of F-16 sales to Taiwan and the substantial financial support it has received from Taiwan’s unofficial/official embassy here, TECRO, is perhaps a particularly crass example of lobbying activity by a think tank, but AEI is by no means alone among think tanks in accepting funds from foreign governments, as well as, for that matter, U.S.-based corporations that then expect the “scholars” or “fellows” at these institutions to speak out or write in ways that may be favorable to their interests. Indeed, in one recent New Republic article, entitled “Meet the Think Tank Scholars Who Are Also Beltway Lobbyists,” Brooke Williams and the venerable Ken Silverstein offered several notable examples. Read also Ken’s Nation article from last month entitled “The Secret Donors Behind the Center for American Progress and Other Think Tanks.” Not that some valuable research isn’t done at these institutions. But consumers of their work need always to be asking who’s paying the fiddler. And those think tanks that accept funding from foreign interests and then pursue policy work that could be seen as promoting those interests really should be required to register under FARA, just to keep things transparent, a concept which Wolfowitz was, rhetorically at least, promoted heavily during his aborted presidency of the World Bank.

In any event, here’s Eli’s article which was first published by The Nation.

The Secret Foreign Donor Behind the American Enterprise Institute

Eli Clifton | June 25, 2013

The American Enterprise Institute (AEI) has emerged as one of the Beltway’s most consistent advocates for the sale of advanced fighter jets to Taiwan. Previously undisclosed tax filings reveal that while issuing research reports and publishing articles on US-Taiwan relations, AEI received a $550,000 contribution from the government of Taiwan, a source of funding the think tank has never publicly acknowledged.

In 2009, AEI, a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization, received the contribution from the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office (TECRO), Taiwan’s equivalent to an embassy.

The think tank couches its hard-nosed advocacy of arms sales and trade agreements with Taiwan as a strategic necessity for the United States. “Withholding needed arms from Taiwan in the present makes a future conflict—and US intervention therein—more likely,” wrote AEI senior research associate Michael Mazza in an October 2011 article [1] in The Diplomat.

But AEI’s undisclosed source of foreign funding raises ethical and legal questions about AEI’s Taiwan-policy work.

“Any organization that’s trying to influence public policy should disclose its donors so the public can know who the money behind these institutions is,” said Bill Allison, a senior fellow at the Sunlight Foundation, a Washington-based organization that advocates for increased transparency and accountability in government. “It’s critical for the public to know this.”

AEI’s “schedule of contributors [2],” a form typically not intended for public disclosure but acquired through a filing error, names TECRO as the organization’s fourth-largest contributor during the 2009 tax year, following Donors Capital Fund ($2,000,000), Paul Singer ($1,100,000) and the Kern Family Foundation ($1,071,912). The US Chamber of Commerce contributed $473,000, making it AEI’s seventh-largest donor.

When asked about the contribution, TECRO spokesperson Lishan Chang acknowledged the transaction and explained that TECRO was helping to facilitate a Taiwanese university’s donation to AEI.

“The contribution was given by the Institute of International Relations of the National Chengchi University to AEI’s Asian Studies Program,” said Chang. “It was therefore an act of scholarly cooperation between the two research organizations with the goal of promoting academic exchanges and research on issues concerning Asia.”

The Institute of International Relations at National Chengchi University, a top public university in Taiwan, did not respond to a request for comment.

What “scholarly cooperation” was undertaken by AEI remains unexplained by either AEI or the university, but Taiwan’s president, Ma Ying-jeou, made no secret of his government’s warm relationship with AEI during a February 2009 meeting with AEI president Arthur Brooks and former AEI president Christopher DeMuth.

“[Ma] noted that the AEI has deep ties with the ROC [Republic of China] and has long supported the various policy stances of the ROC government,” said a TECRO press release [3].

“AEI President Brooks expressed his appreciation to President Ma for taking time out of his busy schedule to meet with him and his predecessor,” the release noted. “He added that the AEI is delighted to maintain relations with Taiwan given the values of democracy, peace and freedom that are shared by the two. He said he looks forward to continuing the friendship in the future and engaging in further cooperation.”

In 2009, the same year in which Ma hosted the delegation from AEI and the think tank reported the $550,000 contribution from TECRO, AEI employees issued a number of written products praising Taiwan’s government and urging the White House to approve arms sales to the island state.

In a November 3, 2009, article [4] for ForeignPolicy.com, AEI resident fellow Daniel Blumenthal, the current director of the think tank’s Asian Studies group, slammed the Obama administration’s Asia policy for “the absence of any agenda on Taiwan.”

Blumenthal accused the White House of failing to uphold an “implicit bargain” in which Ma would “ease tensions with the Mainland” in exchange for Washington’s “strengthen[ing] Ma’s hand by strengthening our ties to Taiwan.”

“The Obama team is not helping Ma,” wrote Blumenthal. “We have not sold any arms to Taiwan even as China has continued its arms buildup across the Strait. And Obama has no plans of yet to deepen economic ties as Taiwan goes forward with a China [free trade agreement].”

In a November 18, 2009, article [5] for ForeignPolicy.com, Blumenthal continued his push for arms sales. “China has built a military capable of destroying the island if America does not assist Taiwan. Though obligated by law, the Obama administration has not sold a single weapon system to Taiwan,” a reference to the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act [6], which requires the United States “to provide Taiwan with arms of a defensive character.”

And Gary Schmitt, an AEI resident fellow, warned about the consequences of the Obama administration’s diplomacy with China (“an approach in which China is seen as a strategic interlocutor with the United States with something approaching equal status”) in an October 2009 AEI “National Security Outlook” paper [7].

“This of course will have an impact on U.S.-Taiwan relations. At a minimum, it will make the diplomatic hurdle of supplying needed, high-quality military systems and supplies—such as F-16s—even more difficult. (Remember, by this time in the Bush administration, the decision had already been made to make available $30 billion worth of arms and services to Taiwan.),” wrote Schmitt.

Even in 2011, after the White House agreed to upgrade the avionics systems of Taiwan’s aging F-16 fleet, the AEI’s Mazza accused the administration of making a “split the baby” decision by refusing to “sell Taiwan the 66 new F-16 C/D aircraft that Taipei has been requesting,” in an October 2011 article [1] in The Diplomat.

When contacted for comment, AEI declined to address questions about the independence of its Taiwan policy analysis or its funding from the Taiwanese government. “We do not discuss details of contributions beyond what is publicly available through our Form 990 and our Annual Report. AEI is an educational, non-partisan, non-profit, and operates in good standing and in compliance to the fullest letter of the law,” wrote Judy Mayka, AEI’s director of media relations.

While AEI insists its actions were lawful, legal and ethical questions still remain about the TECRO funding.

The Foreign Agent Registration Act is a 1938 federal law requiring the agents representing the interests of a foreign country in a “political or quasi-political capacity to make periodic public disclosure of their relationship with the foreign principal.”

“Maybe this money [from TECRO] goes solely toward academic research and none of [the TECRO-funded research] is ever presented to a member of Congress, but for a Washington think tank that would be shocking,” said Allison. “Clearly AEI should disclose the contribution and probably should register under FARA.”

Most FARA registrants are law firms, public relations agencies and lobbyists representing foreign countries. When asked if a nonprofit think tank could have an obligation to register under FARA, Justice Department spokesperson Andrew Ames responded that “it is possible.”

“As with any organization or individual, we would look at the specific elements and facts to determine whether organizations are required to file,” said Ames. “Without all the facts, it is impossible to determine. The department has no record of [AEI] filing with the FARA unit.”

AEI has a track record of providing an institutional base for individuals who are supportive of Taiwan.

Former Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz joined AEI as a “visiting scholar” in 2007 and, in 2008, was named chairman of the US-Taiwan Business Council.

James Lilley, the US Ambassador to China from 1989 to 1991, received a fellowship at AEI after his retirement in 1991.

Lilley, who served as director of the American Institute in Taiwan, the unofficial US diplomatic mission in Taiwan, from 1981 to 1984, famously clashed with the State Department when US diplomats attempted to set a cutoff date for arms sales to Taiwan. He died on November 12, 2009.

“[President Ma Ying-jeou] said Ambassador Lilley was a strong supporter of freedom, democracy, prosperity and security throughout his life, and in his diplomatic and scholarly work he was extremely friendly to Taiwan,” said a press release [9] from the Taiwanese president’s office, following a January 2010 meeting with an AEI delegation.

Joseph Sandler, a FARA expert and former Democratic National Committee staff counsel, explained that the legality of AEI’s FARA compliance hinges on whether the think tank’s staff took direction from the government of Taiwan.

“Presumably AEI has been supportive of Taiwan. The question is: To what extent have they consulted with the Taiwanese government?”

Sandler added, “If they in fact were taking some sort of direction or honoring requests in any way on behalf of the Taiwanese government, it would not only raise FARA questions but also questions about the academic integrity of their work.”

Source URL: http://www.thenation.com/article/174980/secret-foreign-donor-behind-american-enterprise-institute

Links:
[1] http://thediplomat.com/china-power/dangerous-imbalance-on-taiwan/
[2] http://thenation.s3.amazonaws.com/pdf/AEI_2009_schedule.pdf
[3] http://www.taiwanembassy.org/US/MKC/fp.asp?xItem=79576&ctNode=2761&mp=47
[4] http://shadow.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/11/03/the_one_year_review_obamas_asia_policies
[5] http://shadow.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/11/18/obamas_asia_trip_a_series_of_unfortunate_events
[6] http://www.taiwandocuments.org/tra01.htm
[7] http://www.aei.org/outlook/foreign-and-defense-policy/regional/asia/the-obama-administrations-approach-to-asia-early-signals/
[9] http://english.president.gov.tw/Default.aspx?tabid=491&itemid=20047

by Jim Lobe

Exactly three weeks ago, a confident Dennis Ross, President Barack Obama’s top Iran policy-maker for most of his first term, made the following assessments and predictions in an op-ed entitled, ironically, “Don’t Discount the Iranian Election:”

So now Ayatollah Khamenei has decided not to leave anything [...]]]> via LobeLog

by Jim Lobe

Exactly three weeks ago, a confident Dennis Ross, President Barack Obama’s top Iran policy-maker for most of his first term, made the following assessments and predictions in an op-ed entitled, ironically, “Don’t Discount the Iranian Election:”

So now Ayatollah Khamenei has decided not to leave anything to chance. …If there had been any hope that Iran’s presidential election might offer a pathway to different policy approaches on dealing with the United States, he has now made it clear that will not be the case. His action should be seen for what it is: a desire to prevent greater liberalization internally and accommodation externally.”

…Clearly, the Supreme Leader wanted to avoid the kind of excitement that Rafsanjani would have stirred up had he continued making public statements, as he has over the last two years, about Iran’s need to fix the economy and reduce Iran’s isolation internationally (a theme he has emphasized in recent years). But the exclusion of Rafsanjani from the election is also an important signal to anyone concerned about Iran’s nuclear program. If the Supreme Leader had been interested in doing a deal with the West on the Iranian nuclear program, he would have wanted [former President Akbar Hashemi] Rafsanjani to be president.

I say that …because if the Supreme Leader were interested in an agreement, he would probably want to create an image of broad acceptability of it in advance. Rather than having only his fingerprints on it, he would want to widen the circle of decision-making to share the responsibility. And he would set the stage by having someone like Rafsanjani lead a group that would make the case for reaching an understanding. Rafsanjani’s pedigree as Khomeini associate and former president, with ties to the Revolutionary Guard and to the elite more generally, would all argue for him to play this role.

…(T)he fact that the Iranian media is lavishing attention on [Saeed] Jalili certainly suggests that he is Khamenei’s preference, even though he has the thinnest credentials of the lot.

If Jalili does end up becoming the Iranian president, it will be hard to avoid the conclusion that the Supreme Leader has little interest in reaching an understanding with the United States on the Iranian nuclear program.”

Three weeks later, we know not only that Jalili did not win the election, but that the candidate backed with enthusiasm by both Rafsanjani and former reformist president Mohammad Khatami — Hassan Rouhani — did. Moreover, during his campaign, Rouhani did exactly what, in Ross’s assessment, made Rafsanjani’s candidacy unacceptable to Ali Khamenei: he spoke “about Iran’s need to fix the economy and reduce Iran’s isolation internationally…” — themes which he repeated in his 90-minute post-election press conference. In addition, Rouhani — given his 15 years on the Supreme National Security Council — appears to be an excellent vehicle for creating “an image of broad acceptability of [an agreement on Iran's nuclear program] in advance” if Khamenei were interested in such an accord. And, although he isn’t a former president like Rafsanjani, Rouhani’s reputed ability to bridge differences between conservatives, pragmatists and reformists would help Khamenei “widen the circle of decision-making to share the responsibility” of a deal. He would also be well placed to “lead a group that would make the case for reaching an understanding.”

Thus, if we assume, as Ross did three weeks ago, that Khamenei leaves nothing to chance and has the power to do so — a very questionable assumption among actual Iran experts (see here and here for examples) — then we might also see Jalili’s defeat and Rouhani’s surprise victory on what was essentially Rafsanjani’s platform as clear signals that Khamenei is indeed “interested in doing a deal on the Iranian nuclear program.” The only missing element in this scenario was Rafsanjani who, as noted above, strongly backed Rouhani and helped rally the centrists and reformists behind him. In light of Ross’s previous assessments regarding how the supreme leader signals his intentions on nuclear negotiations, would it be unreasonable to expect that Ross would not only be somewhat humbler with respect to his understanding of Iranian politics, but also rather hopeful about prospects for a real deal?

On the question of humility, the answer is not really, at least judging by his latest analysis, entitled “Talk to Iran’s New President. Warily.” Ross doesn’t even mention Jalili, Khamenei’s previously presumed chosen one. And while Ross seems genuinely puzzled by why Khamenei “allowed Mr. Rowhani to win the election,” particularly in light of the fact that the president-elect had “run against current [Khamenei-approved] Iranian policies,” he still sees the supreme leader as all-powerful, implying that Rouhani would not have won had Khamenei not approved of his victory.

As to the meaning of Khamenei’s permitting Rouhani to win, Ross floats four possible options, none of which, however, admits the possibility that Khamenei is prepared “to do a deal” acceptable to the West (a possibility for which Ross, just three weeks before, believed could have been signaled by the Guardian Council’s approval of Rafsanjani’s candidacy). He does entertain the possibility that Rouhani gained Khamenei’s approval for reasons related to the nuclear issue, but strictly for tactical purposes — not to reach a final accord that would preclude Iran’s attaining “breakout capability” (as would presumably have been possible if Rafsanjani had won the presidency):

He [Khamenei] believes that Mr. Rowhani, a president with a moderate face, might be able to seek an open-ended agreement on Iran’s nuclear program that would reduce tensions and ease sanctions now, while leaving Iran room for development of nuclear weapons at some point in the future.

He believes that Mr. Rowhani might be able to start talks that would simply serve as a cover while Iran continued its nuclear program.

Ross, who has been arguing for several months now that Washington needs to drop its approach of seeking incremental confidence-building accords with Iran in favor of making a final ultimatum-like offer (backed up by ever-tougher sanctions and ever-more credible threats of military action) that would permit Tehran to enrich uranium up to five percent (subject to the strictest possible international oversight in exchange for a gradual easing of sanctions), goes on to reject any let-up in pressure on Tehran.

Even if he were given the power to negotiate, Mr. Rowhani would have to produce a deal the supreme leader would accept. So it is far too early to consider backing off sanctions as a gesture to Mr. Rowhani.

We should, instead, keep in mind that the outside world’s pressure on Iran to change course on its nuclear program may well have produced his election. So it would be foolish to think that lifting the pressure now would improve the chances that he would be allowed to offer us what we need: an agreement, or credible Iranian steps toward one, under which Iran would comply with its international obligations on the nuclear issue.”[Emphasis added.]

Now, I, for one, find this reasoning difficult to understand. Ross may be right that external pressure was responsible for Rouhani’s election, but I suspect that it was a good deal more complicated than that, and, in any event, one of the last people I would seek out for an explanation as to why Rouhani won would be Ross, given his assessments of Iranian politics just three weeks ago. But to assert that easing pressure on Iran once Rouhani takes office (as a goodwill gesture) would somehow reduce the chances that Rouhani would be allowed to make concessions on the nuclear issue just doesn’t make much sense, if, for no other reason, virtually all Iran experts agree that Khamenei (and presumably hard-liners in and around his office) don’t believe Washington really wants an agreement because its ultimate goal is regime change. (Just today, Khamenei, while insisting that “resolving the nuclear issue would be simple” if hostile powers put aside their stubbornness, noted, “Of course, the enemies say in their words and letters that they do not want to change the regime, but their approaches are contrary to these words.”) If Khamenei is to be persuaded otherwise, Washington should work to bolster Rouhani and the forces that supported him in the election.

Indeed, most Iran specialists whose work I read argue that Rouhani’s election has really put the “ball in President Obama’s court”, as the International Crisis Group’s Ali Vaez wrote this week. They say that the response should not only be goodwill gestures, such as a congratulatory letter on his inauguration, but far more generous offers than what has been put on the table to date. Vali Nasr, for example, made the point last week when he argued that Rouhani “will likely wait for a signal of American willingness to make serious concessions before he risks compromise.”

For the past eight years, U.S. policy has relied on pressure — threats of war and international economic sanctions — rather than incentives to change Iran’s calculus. Continuing with that approach will be counterproductive. It will not provide Rowhani with the cover for a fresh approach to nuclear talks, and it could undermine the reformists generally by showing they cannot do better than conservatives on the nuclear issue.

…There is now both the opportunity and the expectation that Washington will adopt a new approach to strengthen reformists and give Rowhani the opening that he needs if he is to successfully argue the case for a deal with the P5+1.”

Paul Pillar made a similar point in the National Interest last week:

Rouhani’s election presents the United States and its partners with a test — of our intentions and seriousness about reaching an agreement. Failure of the test will confirm suspicions in Tehran that we do not want a deal and instead are stringing along negotiations while waiting for the sanctions to wreak more damage. …Passage of the test …means not making any proposal an ultimatum that is coupled with threats of military force, which only feed Iranian suspicions that for the West the negotiations are a box-checking prelude to war and regime change.”

“The Iranian electorate has in effect said to the United States and its Western partners, “We’ve done all we can. Among the options that the Guardian Council gave us, we have chosen the one that offers to get us closest to accommodation, agreement and understanding with the West. Your move, America.”

And, in contrast to Ross, who believes that time is fast running out and the “multilateral step-by-step approach …has outlived its usefulness,” the Brookings Institution’s Suzanne Maloney argued in Foreign Affairs that

To overcome the deep-seated (and not entirely unjustified) paranoia of its ultimate decision-maker, the United States will need to be patient. It will need to understand, for example, that Rouhani will need to demonstrate to Iranians that he can produce tangible rewards for diplomatic overtures. That means that Washington should be prepared to offer significant sanctions relief in exchange for any concessions on the nuclear issue. Washington will also have to understand that Rouhani may face real constraints in seeking to solve the nuclear dispute without exacerbating the mistrust of hard-liners.

In spite of this advice, things are moving in the opposite direction. On July 1, tough new sanctions to which Obama has already committed himself will take effect. Among other provisions, they will penalise companies that deal in rials or with Iran’s automotive sector. The Republican-led House is expected to pass legislation by the end of next month (that is, on the eve of Rouhani’s inauguration) that would sharply curb or eliminate the president’s authority to waive sanctions on countries and companies doing any business with Iran, thus imposing a virtual trade embargo on Iran. Other sanctions measures, including an anticipated effort by Republican Sen. Lindsay Graham to get an Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) resolution passed by the Senate after the August recess, are lined up.

It would be good to learn what Ross, who is co-chairing the new Iran task force of the ultra-hawkish Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, thinks of these new and pending forms of pressure and whether they are likely to improve the chances that Rouhani will be able to deliver a deal.

via IPS News

Despite Thursday’s announcement that President Barack Obama has decided to provide direct military assistance to Syrian rebels, what precisely the administration has in mind remains unclear.

Analysts here are also questioning whether the decision is part of a deliberate strategy – and, if so, what that strategy [...]]]> by Jim Lobe

via IPS News

Despite Thursday’s announcement that President Barack Obama has decided to provide direct military assistance to Syrian rebels, what precisely the administration has in mind remains unclear.

Analysts here are also questioning whether the decision is part of a deliberate strategy – and, if so, what that strategy is – or whether it is instead another in a series of efforts to relieve growing pressure from its allies in Europe and the Gulf and hawks at home to take stronger military measures designed to shift the 27-month-old civil war decisively in favour of the opposition.

“When Julius Caesar actually crossed the [Rubicon], he proceeded rapidly to mission accomplishment in accordance with a sound strategy,” noted retired Ambassador Frederic Hof, a Syria specialist at the Atlantic Council who has long called for stronger U.S. military intervention.

“Although the administration’s crossing [decision] is significant, welcome, and long overdue, it is far from certain whether this particular legion will move smartly toward an objective or simply mill around the river bank.”

The White House tied the decision to escalate the “scope and scale” of military aid to the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and the Syrian Military Council (SMC) to the U.S. intelligence community’s determination that the Syrian forces had used chemical weapons – albeit “on a small scale” – against rebel forces in multiple battles over the past year.

It also cited the deepening involvement of Iran and Hezbollah militants from Lebanon in support of the regime of President Bashar Al-Assad, whose departure from office Obama has repeatedly demanded since hostilities first broke out more than two years ago.

The announcement, however, followed a series of intensive internal meetings over the past two weeks, as it became clear that the regime’s forces had made a series of battlefield advances – most importantly by capturing, with Hezbollah’s help, the strategic western town of Al-Qusayr close to the Lebanese border – that threatened to tip the war decisively in Assad’s favour.

With pro-government forces and Hezbollah fighters reportedly preparing a major assaults on the key city of Aleppo and other “moderate” opposition leaders appealing desperately for weapons, the administration has found itself under pressure from both its allies abroad and hawks here to “do something” that could halt, if not reverse, the regime’s momentum and restore the “strategic stalemate” that Washington considers essential to any prospect for a political settlement.

But what precisely that “something” is or will be remains unclear. In a briefing for reporters Thursday evening, deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes repeatedly avoided answering the question, insisting, however, that Washington will increase “the scope and scale” of direct aid to the SMC which so far has received mainly humanitarian and “non-lethal” assistance.

According to various published reports, Obama has indeed decided to provide small arms and ammunition but still pending are decisions on rebel requests for anti-tank weapons and shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles. Washington had previously ruled out the latter, in part due to Israel’s concerns that they could be used against its aircraft, particularly if they fall into the hands of radical Islamist factions among the anti-Assad forces.

But hawks here have argued that small arms and even anti-tank weapons are at this point insufficient to redress the rapidly tilting balance of power on the ground.

“The president must rally an international coalition to take military actions to degrade Assad’s ability to use airpower and ballistic missiles and to move and resupply his forces around the battlefield by air,” declared Congress’s most visible interventionists, Republican Senators John McCain and Lindsay Graham late Thursday. “We must take more decisive actions now to turn the tide of the conflict in Syria.”

They and others have called for Washington to create “no-fly zones” along Syria’s Turkish and Jordanian borders that would both safe havens for refugees and rebels and permit the latter to be trained, armed and supplied for operations against government forces inside Syria.

Hof has urged that such a zone also be used protect a rebel government that could gain formal recognition from the United States and other allies, request heavier weapons and eventually go to peace talks as diplomatic, as well as military, equals of the Assad government.

While Rhodes told reporters that Obama has “not made any decision to pursue a military operations such as a no-fly zone”, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that a Pentagon proposal still under consideration calls for a limited “no-fighting” zone extending up to 40 kilometres inside Syria that would be enforced by U.S. and allied aircraft operating from Jordanian airspace.

In recent months, Washington has set up Patriot air-defence batteries and sent fighter jets to bases inside Jordan, where it has also been secretly training rebel and Jordanian forces on securing chemical-weapons facilities and weapons in the event the Assad regime collapses, according to some reports.

Some analysts who have opposed escalating U.S. involvement in the civil war agree that directly supplying arms to the rebels would be unlikely to turn the military tide, certainly in the short term, and could carry additional risks.

“Selective arms shipments could [spur] clashes between rival rebel groups. Extremist elements might attack more moderate rebel units receiving better arms, driven by need, resentment or both,” according to Wayne White, the former deputy director of the State Department intelligence unit on the Near East, who noted that this could actually strengthen the regime. Indeed, he added, the “rebel military vanguard” for some time has been the “radical Islamist in character – even Al-Qaeda affiliated”.

He also expressed scepticism about the effectiveness of a no-fly zone, noting that it would risk swift escalation. “The rebels would remain at the mercy of the regime’s other heavy weapons on the ground, thus tempting those establishing any sort of no-fly zone to attack regime ground targets as well.”

“The first step on the slippery slope is always easy, but it’s much harder to actually resolve a conflict or to find a way out of a quagmire,” wrote Marc Lynch, a Middle East expert at George Washington University, on the eve of the White House announcement.

For Lynch, who has long urged Obama to resist calls to escalate Washington’s intervention, the key issue is what U.S. policy ultimately aims to achieve and whether providing military aid or taking more aggressive measures will help achieve them.

“Should Syria be viewed as a front in a broad regional cold war against Iran and its allies or as a humanitarian catastrophe that must be resolved?” he asked, noting that very different strategies should be followed depending on the answer to that question.

At the moment, according to Lynch, “advocates of arming the rebels switch between making the case that it would strike a blow against the Iranians (and Hezbollah) and that it would improve the prospects for a negotiated solution.”

While the White House clearly framed its decision this week in the latter terms, it may nonetheless add momentum to those who tend to view the Syrian conflict more as part of the larger conflict against Tehran the model for which, according to Lynch, “would presumably be the jihad against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan – a long-term insurgency coordinated through neighbouring countries, fuelled by Gulf money, and popularised by Islamist and sectarian propaganda”.

via IPS News

In a reshuffle of top foreign policy posts in his second term, U.S. President Barack Obama Wednesday announced that his controversial and blunt-spoken U.N. ambassador, Susan Rice, will replace Tom Donilon as his national security adviser.

He also announced that another longtime aide on the [...]]]> by Jim Lobe

via IPS News

In a reshuffle of top foreign policy posts in his second term, U.S. President Barack Obama Wednesday announced that his controversial and blunt-spoken U.N. ambassador, Susan Rice, will replace Tom Donilon as his national security adviser.

He also announced that another longtime aide on the National Security Council staff who began working with Obama when he was still a freshman senator from Illinois, Samantha Power, will replace Rice as Washington’s U.N. envoy, a cabinet position.

The moves, which had been anticipated but whose precise timing was uncertain, are considered unlikely to signal major changes in U.S. policy, despite the fact that both Power and Rice have been associated with the more-interventionist tendencies within the Democratic Party.

“I don’t think this change in personnel marks a turning point in policy,” said Charles Kupchan, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

“From the get-go, foreign policy under Obama has been run from the (White House) Oval Office, and Obama’s brain trust has included primarily a small inner circle of folks that cut their teeth on the (2008 presidential) campaign. Susan Rice and Samantha Power have been part of that inner circle all along.”

“I see the move as a confident second-term president promoting people who will be more visible,” noted Heather Hurlburt, director of the National Security Network (NSN), a think tank considered close to the administration.

“Donilon’s great strength was his managerial skill and willingness to work behind the scenes. Rice’s public persona is one of her great strengths, and I’m sure the White House will use it.”

“Power will be one of the people most knowledgeable about the UN that the U.S. has ever sent to represent us there, and that’s quite a statement about the U.S. commitment to that organisation’s potential,” she added, noting that Power’s knowledge is based on her years as a journalist and author covering the world body and some of its most controversial and difficult missions.

Late last year, Rice was considered Obama’s first choice to replace Hillary Clinton as secretary of state but withdrew from consideration after Republicans accused her of deliberately misleading the public about events surrounding the killing of the U.S. ambassador to Libya and three other U.S. personnel in last September in Benghazi.

She will be Obama’s third national security adviser. Unlike secretary of state or U.N. ambassador, the national security adviser is not subject to Senate confirmation.

Unlike Rice, Donilon, or Power, the first national security, Gen. James Jones (ret.), was never close to Obama and tended to see his work primarily as coordinating the advice of the other top national-security officials, notably the secretaries of defence and state and the director of national intelligence.

After two years, Donilon, Jones’ deputy and a Democratic political heavyweight, replaced him, moving quickly to concentrate foreign policy making in the White House and greatly increasing the size and workload of the NSC staff.

A top aide to Secretary of State Warren Christopher during President Bill Clinton’s first term, Donilon is given credit for a number of major strategic initiatives – most recently, promoting this week’s informal and potentially historic California summit between Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Indeed, one prominent NSC historian, David Rothkopf, wrote on foreignpolicy.com Wednesday that his “greatest contribution was his strategic mindset” that led to “…a restoration of balance to the U.S. national security agenda, a move away from the conflict-dominated view of the years right after 9/11 to one that is more global and has room to consider opportunities, new alliances, and new challenges more effectively.”

If Donilon was more inclined to the more non-interventionist stance of his mentor, Christopher, Rice is best seen as the protégée of Clinton’s second-term and more-interventionist Madeleine Albright whom she has known since childhood and served as assistant secretary of state for African Affairs.

Haunted by Washington’s refusal to act during the 1994 Rwandan genocide (when she worked on Clinton’s NSC), Rice, as well as Power, has been a leading exponent of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P), the doctrine that the international community has a responsibility to intervene in order to prevent genocide or mass atrocities if the otherwise sovereign state is unwilling or unable to do so.

“Power and Rice are smart, tough, and experienced. But both are firmly in the interventionist consensus that has guided U.S. foreign policy for many years, and neither is going to go outside the mainstream on any controversial issues,” Stephen Walt, a prominent international-relations professor at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, told IPS in an email message.

Citing R2P, both Rice and Power reportedly played an important role in persuading Obama to intervene in the civil war in Libya, although, significantly, Rice sided with Donilon against other cabinet officials and CIA director Gen. David Petraeus who recommended a limited military intervention on behalf of rebels in the Syrian civil war late last year, according to numerous published reports.

“Everyone knows there have been disagreements on the team, and the person who resolves them is Barack Hussein Obama. People debate this as if Obama had no opinions on these issues,” noted Hurlburt. “But second-term presidents evolve and get more active (in foreign policy). If that happens, that will be primarily because Obama wants to go there.”

One area in which there could be a major difference is managerial. While concentrating power in the White House, Donilon, a high-priced lawyer outside government, consistently ensured that relevant cabinet secretaries were continually consulted and their policy recommendations presented to the president.

Known for driving his staff particularly hard and making little secret of his unhappiness if in his judgement they failed to perform, he also maintained a deliberately low profile and a carefully calculated demeanour.

While a loyal team player – and the graceful manner in which she withdrew from consideration as secretary of state gained wide admiration and no doubt clinched her claim to her new post – Rice is flamboyant and impulsive by comparison, particularly in her preference for blunt, if colourful — sometimes even scatological — language, a habit that many of her U.N. colleagues found off-putting or difficult to get used to.

“She can be quite charming and likeable, and she is awfully smart,” CFR’s emeritus president Leslie Gelb wrote in the Daily Beast Wednesday. “And unlike Donilon, she often rushes to judgment, and then digs in. She’ll have to learn to count to 100, I mean 1000, before making up her mind, and meantime, listen to different views carefully.” He also noted that “she has a temper that needs tempering.”

Indeed, some sources who asked not to be named predicted that she faced major challenges in working out collegial relationships with Pentagon chief Chuck Hagel and Secretary of State John Kerry – both of whom are also new to their jobs and would be expected to make life difficult for her if they felt she was hogging the media spotlight or failing to consult adequately with their departments in formulating options for the president.

“No shrinking violet is she,” one insider told IPS.

In that respect, according to Rothkopf, she could be greatly aided by Donilon’s former deputy and Obama’s new chief of staff, Denis McDonough, a foreign policy wonk in his own right and one of the very few people who are considered as personally close to Obama as Rice herself.