I wanted to follow up today on Raj’s two recent posts on Darfur.  Raj highlighted Google’s recent efforts to draw attention to the conflict in Darfur and also Joe Biden’s call for US troops being sent to Darfur.

What I found particularly striking recently was a story of how Mia Farrow and Steven Spielberg have been placing pressure on the Chinese government to use its influence to help end the suffering.  So, you might be asking why the Chinese government would care what these two hollywood celebrities have to say about the Darfur conflict, particularly after numerous efforts have been made to convince the Chinese to help end the conflict.  Well, I was struck by how these celebrities recognized the right pressure point to get the Chinese to step up to the plate – the upcoming Olympics taking place in Beijing.  It was really quite brilliant that Spielberg, who is an artistic adviser to Beijing for the Olympics, realized that although Beijing places a high priority on their access to oil, they might place an even higher priority on the upcoming Olympics going off without a hitch. 

On a trip last summer to Beijing I saw firsthand the efforts China is going to, to get Beijing in shape for these Olympic games.  Construction cranes are everywhere and whole neighborhoods are being torn down and rebuilt (that’s a whole different issue that merits another blog post).  The amount of effort and money that China is putting into the Olympics is tremendous.  It is clear that the Chinese see the Beijing summer games as a coming out event that will elevate their status in the world and help position them as a global leader.  (more…)

I’ll be traveling to Davenport, Iowa, and Chicago, Illinois, tomorrow and Wednesday, and I only have a few minutes to write, but I wanted to call attention to three different items. 

First, thanks to generous support from the Ploughshares Fund, Cato scholars are speaking around the country to make the case for engagement with Iran. The program was designed with Iran’s nuclear program in mind, but our work also touches on the importance of including Iran in any discussions on the future of Iraq. I believe I have mentioned the relevant papers by Ted Galen Carpenter and Justin Logan before, but all of Cato’s work on Iran can be found here. I’ll be speaking to the Quad Cities World Affairs Council tomorrow evening, along with my Cato colleague Leon Hadar. Leon continues on to Peoria, while I’m traveling to Chicago to speak to Americans for Informed Democracy chapters at Northwestern and the University of Chicago. Thanks to everyone who has helped out with these events, including felllow blogger Seth Green. Other cities that we will visit as part of this tour include San Francisco, Seattle, Dallas, Denver, and Corpus Christi.

Second, Cato has just published a paper by Daryl Press, a professor of political science at Dartmouth College, and fellow Across the Aisle blogger Eugene Gholz of the LBJ School at the University of Texas-Austin. As Eugene is probably too modest to promote his own stuff, I’m going to do it for him. For starters, let me just say it is a terrific paper. (Yes, I’m biased.) (more…)

Hmm, strange, but there was a rare commonsense question on Fox News Sunday:

WALLACE: Let’s talk about the situation on the ground in Iraq. Senator Graham, you just came back from a trip there, where you said you had seen some, and you were somewhat coached in this, some signs of progress from the surge. The New York Times reported this week, and let’s put it on the screen. In the first seven weeks of the surge, 116 U.S. soldiers were killed. That’s actually up slightly from 113 who were killed in the seven weeks preceding the surge.

And AP reports that the number of Iraqi civilians who have been killed over these seven weeks is down in Baghdad, but actually up dramatically in the rest of the country. And of course, we’ve just seen more carnage this weekend. Bombings in Karballah, and again, just today in Baghdad.  

So, Senator Graham, where’s the progress?

GRAHAM: The progress is on political, economic and military fronts. I went to Anbar Province, the western part of Iraq. Sixteen of 21 tribal sheiks have now joined with the coalition forces and rejected al Qaeda. The sheiks made a call to join the police force. Seven hundred people had to be turned away in Anbar to join the Iraqi police force. There are part of Sadr City that we’ve never gone into before. The mayor of Sadr City joined with us to try to clean that place out. Al-Sadr’s on the run. There’s a rule of law program in place where Sunni Shi’a were tried on the same day for killing different people. The Shi’a police captain was tried for torturing Sunnis. A Sunni insurgent was tried for randomly killing civilians.  

There is progress. It is a fight on our hands. Baghdad is the central fight. We’re gaining ground in Baghdad, and the insurgents are moving out of Baghdad. Only three of the five brigades are in place. Now’s the time to pour it on, politically, economically, and militarily, and build on this momentum.

(more…)

Google are trying to do their bit to stop the killing.

Senate Foreign Relations Chair and Democratic Presidential candidate Joe Biden has just called for a U.S. military force to be sent to Darfur. “I think it’s time to put force on the table and use it.” said Biden at a recent Committee hearing on Darfur.

I saw this comment and could not help but wonder whether this was a serious statement or a Presidential cycle posture by Biden.

As a practical matter I don’t believe that the Bush Administration would even consider sending several thousand U.S. troops to Darfur – firstly because they probably don’t believe they have the troops to spare and secondly I don’t think Darfur is a big priority for them. (This is – of course – unacceptable but is the content for a different post.)
However, beyond that fact – I think that there is also a broader question to consider re: whether it is wise for a U.S. military force to engage in Sudan at a time when U.S.-Muslim world relations are so strained.

Joe Biden is a smart guy who must be aware of such risks and so I would encourage him and others who want to do more on Darfur to seriously explore different ways they can get more African troops to the theatre of operations. One thing worth considering – the U.S. could fully fund a large AU force that would be requested by Chad to police its border with Sudan to prevent the militias raiding the camps as they did this week.
A broader agenda worh considering can be found here.

Most of what was on the talk shows was the usual back and forth blather re Iraq war spending, supporting the troops, withdrawing the troops, blah, blah. If you have heard it once you’ve heard it a hundred times. 

But there was one priceless moment on Fox News Sunday, oddly enough,  where host Chris Wallace had this exchange with former Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich. The context was House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Syria last week. 

I think this exchange brilliantly illustrates the utter brazenness and hypocrisy that many politicians display when commenting on the affairs of the day. In a phrase, their attitude is, far too often, do as I say, not as I do. But see for yourself.  

WALLACE: Let me bring in Speaker Gingrich. Speaker, in fairness, when you were speaker, you made a number of foreign trips, you expressed opinions when you were overseas. So have other speakers. Is the outrage here basically political?

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Undoubtedly the best line in the 1986 Australian comedy film Crocodile Dundee was when the protagonist Mick Dundee is approached by a mugger carrying a switchblade. Mick says, “That’s not a knife, mate”, then draws a very large bowie knife and continues “This is a knife”.
 
I thought of that line as I read Climate Change 2007: Climate Change Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability. This report, released last Friday, actually the summary of Working Group II Contribution to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Fourth Assessment Report, lays out in very clear and direct terms what the future holds. As Jeff Goldblum said, in another 1986 movie the Fly, “Be afraid, be very afraid.”
 
And therein is the problem. Not nearly enough people are afraid, or even concerned. And we should be screaming our lungs out about what is our future is bringing. Note I did not write may bring or might bring. I am writing about what is coming. Forget about terrorism or nuclear proliferation. We are talking about wrenching global catastrophe unprecedented in human history. One is going to have to go back nearly 250 million years in time to find something comparable; the Permian mass extinction,  which was the greatest mass extinction ever recorded in earth history.
 
For those who think that this is hyperbole see the new book, Under A Green Sky, by biology professor Peter D. Ward. He discovered that the near-total devastation at the end of the Permian period was caused by rising levels of carbon dioxide leading to climate change.
 
Let’s look at what the report’s authors wrote. Scientists, unlike politicians, don’t try to sway people’s minds with dire predictions, preferring to let the facts speak for themselves. But they really don’t need to do anything more than that.

(more…)

In my past several posts I’ve written on Iraq.  So, today, I thought I would digress a bit and highlight an op-ed today that I saw in the Washington Post on Burma by Mort Abramowitz and Jonathan Kolieb:  A Lifeline for the Burmese.  This article argued that in dealing with Burma we too often forget about the situation of the people on the ground when we follow strategies of either engagement or diplomatic and economic pressure.  The authors argue that the situation in Burma is sufficently dire that our first priority must be a much larger infusion of international aid. 

As I read the op-ed, I could just almost hear my fellow blogger, Eugene Gholz, cry out in exasperation.  Eugene has written before on his skepticism regarding the effectiveness of foreign aid.  In this article, I though that it was useful that the authors concluded by saying that the purpose of this aid is not necessarily to prompt policy changes (ie. “engagement”), but rather simply it is a humanitarian necessity in a country in such a desperate situation.  It seems that the authors of this op-ed accept that a portion of this aid may simply end up in the hands of a corrupt regime. 

A critic might argue, if foreign aid is a limited commodity, then why should we be providing this limited resource to countries where much of it will be siphoned off by corrupt leaders?  There are plenty of countries that could put the same dollars to more effective use.  Shouldn’t we only target those countries where we get the most bang for our buck? This is the approach of the Millenium Challenge Account that only provides aid to countries that meet specific minimum criteria in terms of their adherence to the rule of law, sound financial practices, anti corruption, etc. 

Yes, in a pure utilitarian sense, this is a valid argument.  However, dealing with life and death in a purely utilitarian manner is unrealistic and some would say immoral.  The person who just happened to be born in Burma is no less worthy of assistance than the person born into a poor, but well run country.  It is true that assistance to the Burmese might result in further enrichment of a corrupt regime.  However, there are ways to work around this.  They are not always easy, and they sometimes do not work.  But, we should be careful about justifying inaction based on corruption or ineffective governance of a country.   Such an approach is essentially a death sentence for inhabitants who just happened to be born into an unfortunate circumstance. Although this approach may be quite faulty from a utilitarian point of view, there is a greater moral imperative that compels us to act. 

This does not mean that at the same time we should not be using the different foreign policy tools at our disposal to push for reform in such countries.  However, we must be careful not to allow the desire for reform infringe upon our humanitarian responsibility to those who live in such desperate circumstances.  Yes, at times money will be wasted.  At times corrupt rulers will be propped up.   But, at the same time, some who might have died, will be saved.  This should be reason enough for our support. 

Frequent readers of this blog will note that I have been posting about Pakistan a fair bit in recent weeks. I am continuing that trend by flagging an important op-ed in the Dawn paper titled “The Creeping Coup.” A close friend who is currently visiting Pakistan passed it on and added a comment that the situation on the ground is a lot worse than we could possibly imagine. In the op-ed linked above, the author notes that within Pakistan it “may take a while for the decision-makers to understand how dire the situation has become. In the meantime, the creeping coup by the Pakistani Taliban will continue unchecked to challenge the writ of the government and the state. And perhaps alter the country’s social fabric to an extent that it is rendered unrecognisable.”

And tell me why Pakistan is not a front burner U.S. foreign policy issue?

Many outrageous claims have been made by the Bush Administration over the past few years but perhaps none has been more laughable than their belief that it is sufficient to secure “diplomatic assurances” that a national being transferred back to his home country by the U.S. will not be tortured.

HRW once again blows the Administration line out of the water this time by releasing a report titled: “Stamp of Guantanamo: The Story of Seven Men Betrayed by Russia’s Diplomatic Assurances to the United States.”

It shows clearly that Guantanamo “war on terror” detainees who were sent home to Russia in 2004 experienced torture and other abuse despite the Putin government’s pledge to the Bush Administration that these prisoners that they would be treated humanely.

Key Quote from the Summary:

“The US government has triply wronged these men: first by detaining them without due process, second by returning them to Russia in violation of international law, and third by failing to follow and protest their mistreatment by Russian authorities after their return. In this last aspect, the Russian government of course bears the greatest and most immediate responsibility. But by branding these seven men “terrorist suspects,” the US government certainly rendered them more vulnerable targets for Russian abuse. In this sad post-Guantanamo tale, both the US and Russian governments have a great deal to answer for.”