Pakistanti journalist Ahmed Rashid is an analyst I have a lot of time for. I am in the process of getting his latest book on Afghanistan – Decent into Chaos – and just came across this article re: a lecture he gave at SOAS. This comment from the jumped out at me:

Rashid argued for a new diplomatic initiative and an end to competition in Afghanistan. The new US president should apply pressure on India and Pakistan to find solutions to their long-standing problems, so that Pakistan can confidently take its armed resources away from the border with India and put them to better use fighting the Taliban. 

Rashid knows Pakistan better than most and I am reluctant to question him. However, I was recently speaking to a Pakistani foreign affairs analyst who noted that it may not be the right time to push the two parties together – this individual felt that pushing for a resolution to the Kashmir situation may be counter productive as both sides are slowly learning to trust each other.

This is certainly a question the next Administration needs to tackle – does it help or hurt stability to push for a resolution to the Kashmir crisis?

Many of us have spent the last few years hoping that the 2008 Presidential elections would result in the election of a U.S. President willing and able to systematically work to address the range of foreign policy challenges facing our country.

The good news is that we have such a President – the bad news is that the list of urgent issues still seems to be growing. With that reality in mind, I have spent the last few days thinking about the foreign policy/ national security team President elect Obama is starting to put together and have come to the conclusion that there is a strong case to be made for the inclusion of Gov. Bill Richardson in that team as Sec. State.

At this stage let me be clear about one thing, I am not looking to make a case against any other prospective candidate. President elect Obama is spoilt for choice in this area. From Senator Lugar to Senator Kerry to Senator Hagel, the number of talented individuals willing to serve a President committed to restoring U.S. leadership in the world is long and distinguished. The case I want to briefly lay out today is a positive one – it is the case for Bill Richardson. 

When candidate for President Obama chose Joe Biden for VP I was impressed. His foreign policy strengths are clear and known to all. If we add Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel to the foreign policy team (and yes I do believe he will play a role in foreign policy – specifically the Middle East) and assume that Defense Secretary Gates will remain at the Pentagon for at least a year, we start to see the growth of a team that is very strong and capable of addressing the top tier crises facing the country (the Middle East including Iraq/Iran and Afghanistan/Pakistan). 

With that in mind, I believe that the next Secretary of State needs to be able to check three boxes. He or she needs to be able to hold their own on these top tier issues while bringing a complimentary skill to the table – a “value added” – to help advance the U.S. agenda in the arc from the Mideast to South Asia.

On these two issues Richardson scores highly, he is very familiar with this region and, crucially, as an individual who has honed a reputation as a trouble shooting diplomat, he can add value to the team President elect Obama is building. Thirdly, and perhaps crucially, Gov. Richardson will also strengthen the Foreign Policy team in areas where it is not as strong – he has a keen understanding of issues in the Western Hemisphere, a region virtually ignored by the Bush Administration, and has engaged in important diplomatic missions in trouble spots from North Korea to Sudan (re: Darfur). Additionally, he understands the energy issue and the clear link between energy and foreign policy. It is for all of these reasons that I believe he is the right choice for Sec. State.

For the record, I should state that I have never worked for, spoke to or met the Gov, have never contributed to his campaigns and did not support him for the Dem nomination. Having said that – I do think he would be a terrific choice for Sec. State and hope he is given serious consideration.

The likely probability, as I noted in my last post, of Sen. Obama becoming president is now reality.

And though I normally shy away from using words like “historic” because it is such a cliché I think this may be a time when it can validly be used. If, for no other reason than, as a recent Defense Science Board report noted, “It has been more than two generations since the presidency transitioned with American troops engaged in significant combat operations—a deployment begun in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks.”

So now Americans get to indulge in one of their favorite perennial activities; telling him what he should do. Deal with the financial meltdown, close Guantanamo Bay prison, make Africa a greater priority, declare a moratorium on new “free-trade” deals, reaffirm U.S. commitment to international laws, treaties, the United Nations, and multilateral responses to violations of international peace, work for a comprehensive nonproliferation policy, institute a cap and trade policy for carbon emissions, et cetera.

Looking at all the things people want him to work on you would think we elected Superman as president instead of a mere mortal.

Yet let’s not be naive. Even though he has yet to assume office his victory is already starting to create change. For example, as the Washington Post reported , Iraqi officials, who see President-elect Obama’s views on the timing of a U.S. withdrawal as consonant with their own, appear to be leveraging his election to pressure the Bush administration to make last-minute concessions.

Indeed, the Wall Street Journal reported last Friday that the U.S. notified Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki it has accepted many of the changes proposed last week by the Iraqi cabinet in a draft security agreement between the two countries.

Doubtlessly U.S. military officials will advise President-elect Obama to adjust his campaign pledge to withdraw all U.S. combat troops from Iraq by mid-2010. Remember that while promising a 16-month timetable for getting all U.S. fighting forces out, Obama repeatedly insisted on what he calls a “responsible” withdrawal.

And, in truth, if the United States wants to take back the majority of its equipment from all the bases, major and minor it has in Iraq, it will take more than 16 months.

Like all administrations, Obama needs to take stock of the world. Eight years of Bush foreign and national security policies, plus ongoing globalization, emergence of new powers makes the world a very different place. (more…)

In the last month, two very different speeches on nuclear weapons and disarmament were given by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon and Defense Secretary Robert Gates. The two speeches took place days apart in different cities, but when read together they sound like a particularly unsatisfying conversation.

Secretary-General Ban essentially took the nuclear weapons states to task for not working harder to achieve complete disarmament. Meanwhile, Secretary Gates used the old standby that the U.S. cannot disarm while other countries maintain a nuclear arsenal. Both men were on message – not a lot new here.

For true champions of disarmament, this is a problem. But it is not necessarily the U.S. talking points that need to change. In order to accomplish any real progress on disarmament, it is the UN that needs to develop a new strategy. Dare I say, it is time for the UN to become more diplomatic on this issue.

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There have been numerous stories since November 4th about the international outpouring of support for Barack Obama’s election.  After spending the past year knocking on doors throughout the country for the president elect, my eyes also teared up during Obama’s election night address that emphasized for me the potential of a truly transformational president who has the potential to reach across the aisle more so than many of his predecessors.  As everyone acknowledges, the challenges are immense.  However, as Rick Barton pointed out, it is times of immense adversity that can provide opportunity for important changes that can garner broad public support. 

However, the election of Barack Obama has also caused me to step back and consider the symbolism of this electoral process for other developing democracies around the world.  Beyond considering the impact of Obama’s foreign policy, the act of his election can serve to help other developing democracies examine their own systems.  Ever since the 2000 Florida fiasco, there has been an increased skepticism of the American electoral system that has caused many foreigners to seriously question the American example.  I expect that Obama’s election could play a small role in rebuilding foreign understanding of some of the important qualities of our democratic processes. 

Of course, the election of an African American president to a position that for 229 years has been governed by white males sends a truly dramatic message to democratic activists around world.  In so many countries, politics is identity based.  Frequently, a politician’s public support is based largely on his/her belonging to a particular ethnic group.  The idea that a minority candidate could win the support of the majority of Americans not based on his race, but rather, based on the power of his ideas, is a powerful model.  Most foreigners know all too well the plight of African Americans in the United States.  The election of a member of this historically oppressed group, shows democrats around the world that the power of ideas can trump ethnic loyalty.  In my evaluation, that’s a very a good thing.  Interestingly, Kenyans are now faced with the realization that Obama, whose father comes from the minority Luo group was able to win the US presidency before a Luo was able to win the Kenyan presidency.  This is a truly a powerful message to those around the world whose political allegiances are based primarily on a common ethnic heritage rather than a broader commitment to the common public good.  (more…)

In July of this year, the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) took a significant step forward for international criminal law in requesting a warrant of arrest for the President of Sudan, Omar Hassan Al-Bashir. Typically, under the complementarity doctrine the ICC only instigates criminal proceedings when the underlying criminal conduct has not been meaningfully addressed by a nation subject to the court’s jurisdiction. And so, the warrant request says two things at once: first, Al-Bashir ought to be brought to justice, and second, Sudan isn’t doing enough to make that happen.

Although the Prosecutor’s action has been (somewhat prematurely) heralded as a triumph for human rights and accountability for crimes against humanity, other responses to Al-Bashir’s potential indictment (including notably those from within Sudan itself) have taken a more wary approach, demonstrating that the prosecution of a head of state will always be fraught with political and practical difficulties and will demand more than a simple consideration of legal capacity to prosecute.

The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court states in no uncertain terms that official capacity, including as a head of state or government, does not exempt a person from criminal responsibility before the Court or constitute a ground for reduction of sentence. In doing so, the Statute chafes against the grain of international law, which has traditionally accorded heads of state virtually unqualified immunity from prosecution.

Although the legal position regarding the prosecution of Al-Bashir as a head of state is clear, and an intuitive response is to see the prosecution as laudable from the point of view of human rights, the request for a warrant of arrest for Al-Bashir has been met with serious and considered debate as to whether the Prosecutor should, as a practical and political matter, have sought to indict Al-Bashir. At the forefront of critics’ concerns is the fear that the prosecution of Al-Bashir will lead to greater political instability, with the people of Sudan ultimately bearing the consequences of the Prosecutor’s decision. The spectre of retaliatory politics and resulting disorder places the global community in the unenviable position of facing a trade-off between peace and justice – a problem that has similarly plagued post-conflict rehabilitation in East Timor, Cambodia and Sierra Leone. The vastly different experiences of these countries reveals that any resolution of a post-conflict situation must be carefully tailored to the particular country’s needs, and that prosecution for international crimes must always be seen as only one of a number of options for facilitating the transition to a peaceful and stable government.

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Yesterday was an historic day for Americans and for the world. As countless intrepid foreign correspondents have reported over the past few months, it was not just Americans, but millions of people from the capitals of Europe to remote African villages, who waited with bated breath to see the election of Barack Obama as 44^th President of the United States. It was indeed a tremendous day, and I am grateful to have been around just to watch.

But I am also scared. No — not because the infamous e-mail forwards convinced me that Obama is secretly a terrorist sympathizer, a closet Muslim fundamentalist, or a socialist. Like the over 60 million Americans who voted him into office yesterday, I am quite sure Barack Obama is an American, through and through. Obama, I am convinced, will be an American President in the best (and worst) tradition of our great leaders of the past. While I expect him to do many great things, and to say many more wonderful things, I don’t expect him to do anything far out of line from what other great American Presidents have done and will do. But I’m very, very worried that Obama’s millions (perhaps hundreds of millions) of fans around the planet don’t get that.

You see, there is something fundamentally different about international Obama-mania from anything I’ve seen in America’s modern history. There have been internationally popular American Presidents in the past, to be sure. But never before have so many, across such a wide swath of the globe, identified so closely with a single American leader. That identification, in my view, is about much more than the concrete benefits foreign countries might expect from a Democratic Presidency. It is certainly more than just relief over the guaranteed exit of President Bush (after all, a President-elect McCain or Clinton would have promised the same result). In fact, my sense is that many of the millions of Obama fans around the globe see him as their candidate, and now their President. Obama (by dint of what? His skin color? His birth? His message?) belongs not just to America, but to the world, or so the adoring crowds seem to feel. Yesterday was not just the Obama’s victory, or the Democrats’ victory, or America’s victory, they believe-it was the world’s victory.

And that’s where the trouble starts.

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1. Essential wisdom and insight reside on both sides of the aisle.
In 1992, Senators Sam Nunn (D-GA) and Richard Lugar (R-IN) reached across partisan lines to pass the law that created the Cooperative Threat Reduction program, which has been instrumental in helping Russia secure Soviet-era nuclear material and disarm older nuclear weapons. The Nunn-Lugar bill is a prime example of how bipartisan cooperation can yield significant results. This piece of legislation continues to inform many of our nonproliferation efforts today. The bill was a success due to the credibility and expertise Senators Nunn and Lugar brought to the process; it endures because of their ability to demonstrate to their colleagues that this was a truly bipartisan effort.

2. Our major challenges are too big for partisan solutions.
Both parties agree that there must be change in U.S. energy policies. We remain addicted to oil, sending billions of dollars every year to countries that do not share our values. To really enact meaningful change, and to finally break our dependence on foreign oil, Democrats and Republicans will have to work together on a strategy to develop clean, domestic energy supplies to power America into the 21st century. If the parties do not work together on energy independence, and similar significant challenges, then any gains will be bitterly fought and subject to changes in the political winds. We cannot afford temporary partisan solutions that are tossed out with every shift in power. We require long-term, effective solutions that have broad support within both parties and among the American people.

3. We are more effective when we speak with one voice in the world.
America’s standing in the eyes of the international community is at one of the lowest points it has been at in years. Only by presenting a unified voice to the world, will we be able to rebuild our reputation in the global community. After eight years of divisive and partisan politics, Americans need to work together to repair our public image. A strong, unified voice will allow the U.S. to show the world that we are ready to lead the way to solve the biggest problems facing the world. This starts with the rhetoric and actions of our elected leaders.

4. Congress must be united to reassert its Constitutional role.
The Legislative Branch has seen its Constitutional powers significantly eroded over the last eight years. In order to reassert itself, both Democrats and Republicans must work together to turn back the tide of what has been an unprecedented use of Executive privilege. The integrity of the institution and the importance of separation of powers should trump partisan disagreements.

5. Political Power is a Double-Edged Sword.
Every period in which one party has held power and been excessively partisan has eventually led to ineffective policies, corruption, low approval ratings, and an eventual landslide kicking them out of power. Bipartisanship is the antidote.