Politics and Press

Canada, Obama and the Northwest Passage

Things have started out well with regard to relations between the new Obama regime in Washington and the old Harper one in Ottawa. It has been announced that Obama will make his first foreign visit to Ottawa – apparently it is his first visit to Canada – as had long been the tradition before George Bush decided to go to Mexico City first. This first apparently trivial but symbolically weighty step led to 8 years of poor relations between the supposedly friendly neighbours when Bush failed to mention Canada in his public thanks to many countries for aid after the attack on New York. He later went on to explain that he sort of considered Canada to be part of the US so it didn’t need any special mention. That hardly helped matters and nothing he did later did, either, although his views on such an important matter as free trade seem to be closer to Canada’s than Obama’s have been at times.

Now Hilary Clinton, who had much experience in Canada as first lady, went out of her way to point out to the Senate committee considering her nomination as Secretary of State that she intended to work hard on improving relations with Canada which happened to be the US’ leading trade partner and one of the very few countries that was punching way above its weight in Afghanistan, while most US allies preferred watching from the bleachers.
That is all promising particularly since the new secretary of state is so much better informed than her clueless predecessor. But Bush threw out one more mine into troubled waters just as he was abandoning ship. In his last week in office he proclaimed the US position on sovereignty in the Arctic in such a way that no Canadian government can accept it, saying that the US had the right and even the obligation to extend military control over Arctic waters, including the northwest passage, that Canada considers to be internal Canadian waters between Canadian islands. Harper has announced plans to increase the presence of the Canadian Armed Forces on northern islands exponentially along with the strength of icebreakers and arctic warships. The two proposals do not mesh and the topic will inevitably come up during the upcoming meetings in Ottawa. It is clear what Canada’s position will be, and that will likely be even more forceful if Michael Ignatief, who has many former Harvard colleagues among Obama’s closest advisors, becomes Prime Minister, so it will be up to Obama to comment on Bush’s view of the north. It is an areas where Obama has little or no experience and his response could be an interesting clue on how he will attempt to guide his ship of state through troubled waters where he has never sailed before.

The Trivialization of Public Diplomacy

When Edmund Gullion, Dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, coined the term “public diplomacy” in the mid sixties it’s unlikely he thought the best way to carry out such a program would be to send American sports figures around the world. But that is how it has seemed to have evolved during the Bush presidency.

The United States’ practice of public diplomacy preceded the coining of the phrase with serious and effective cultural and educational programs including Voice of America, and the many cultural and arts programs of the United States Information Agency (USIA). While on one level America’s public diplomacy has traditionally been a governmental effort to promote American interests by informing foreign audiences, on another level it has included efforts by private individuals and groups to develop and maintain civil, educational dialogues among people throughout the world. These non-governmental efforts took on increased importance while the government’s efforts have veeered toward the trivial over the past eight years. In addition, surrogate broadcasting efforts like Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty provided domestic news to countries with state monopolized media.

In the age that gave us rendition, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and the Iraq War a strong public diplomacy program was an oxymoron, but as we come out of the Dark Ages the government can do better.

While there is nothing wrong with sending athletes like Cal Ripkin, Jr and Nancy Kwan out into the world, it is not enough to rely on sports figures and/or minor league actresses to be “public diplomacy envoys”. Furthermore, the recent use of Twitter as a public diplomacy tool is simply a victory of style over substance. Surely we are at a point where we can begin to rebuild the cultural, educational and artistic exchanges and programs that over the years have slipped into disuse.

Hopefully the Obama transition team is considering the range of possibilities that together form our “soft power” and will make the kind of long-term investment that can pay off over time. The current state of our image in the Arab world reminds us of the need both to match policy with our traditional values and to make the investment to clarify those values to the outside world.

The chickens come home to roost in Georgia

It did not take long for the chickens of Kosovo to find a splendid first roosting place in Georgia. When the topic of independence for Kosovo came up only a few short months ago, red warning flags were flying in many quarters from those with knowledge and experience of ethnic conflicts in the powder kegs of the Balkans and the Caucasus Mountains. Many countries, like Canada, took a long time before agreeing to recognize an independent Kosovo fostered by the United States, and a fair number still don’t, because they see the danger to their own national boundaries. A periphery province of a legally established national state with internationally recognized borders was declaring its independence from the much larger state to which it legally belonged. What would happen in France, Spain, Italy or the United States if such a situation arose at home? Not to mention China.

The reason was simple; after long standing violent conflicts between the two ethnic groups of that breakaway state, powerful outside nations took the side of the ethnic group that it felt was under almost genocidal attack by the mother state, which they then bombed unmercifully. This was Serbia in the late 1990s as NATO troops punished it for its atrocities against the Albanian ethic group of Kosovo. But it is also way too close for comfort for the situation in Georgia and its illegal breakaway republics with a large Russian majority, the Georgians having decided it was safer to leave. But this time, it was the US-sponsored Georgian army that took on the role of the Serbian aggressor, as it attacked the breakaway provinces. And who should come rushing to the defence of the poor threatened minority ethnic group but Tsar Putin, who must have thought he was dreaming when he saw that his increasingly dopey rivals had presented him with the opportunity to defend Russians (since he had given most of them Russian passports) under attack while at the same time squashing a tiny annoying tick on the skin of the Russian bear. So that of course is what happened. Poor Condoleeza Rice, sent out on a Don Quixote mission to chastise (and absurdly threaten?) the Russians for doing exactly what the US had done in Serbia less than ten years before, must be wishing her next job involves dealing with fractious faculty clubs, because she has served an extraordinarily foolish master for too long to retain her own dignity. Wasn’t she early on in her diplomatic career supposed to be an expert on Russia? How could anyone mess up the Russian desk in only 8 years as much as she has?

The result is a clear demonstration of renewed Russian power (and threat) along all its borders, a completely crushed and bankrupt exotic ally of the US which somehow misinterpreted US bluster for true support, and a really serious impediment to the free flow of essential Asian natural gas and oil to European consumers. Now we can wait to see if all of those countries who pushed for an independent Kosovo are as quick to recognize the new state of South Ossetia. Wanna bet?

Canada goes to war

Sixty-six Canadian soldiers have died in Afghanistan. The death of each one of them has received front-page coverage in leading Canadian papers, and the CBC runs the risk of becoming repetitive with its films of funerals and returning coffins. Sixty times as many US soldiers have died in Iraq, but in total their stories have probably not been told as prominently, movingly and dramatically as have those of the dead Canadian soldiers in their home media.
The US effort in Iraq now surely seems doomed to catastrophic failure, at least partly because, as Senator Joe Biden recently put it, Americans have lost any desire to keep sending their kids to their deaths in the meat grinder of Iraq. At the same time the Canadian armed forces are having no trouble finding record numbers of recruits, despite the daily scenes of violence and death in Afghanistan. There is certainly some opposition to the war in Afghanistan. The socialist NDP Party wants the troops brought home immediately, the opposition Liberal Party wants a withdrawal at the end of the current mandate in 2009. But in general there is a perhaps surprising amount of general public support for the sudden display of Canadian military strength in what is considered a just cause.
Prime Minister Harper announced this week that Canada would design and build, at a cost of 3-4 billion dollars, 6-8 frigates with moderate ice-breaking capabilities to patrol Canada’s increasingly threatened Arctic water routes, particularly the Northwest Passage. For the first time, a Canadian submarine will be present in the Arctic this summer and Harper has promised to build a deepwater port in the Arctic. Critics of Harper’s announcements demanded more not less for the Arctic, including the 3 full icebreakers he had claimed he would build. These are enormous expenses for the world’s second-largest country, with one-tenth the US population, caught in the Arctic between the first and third largest, both of whom have shown they can afford nuclear ice breakers. But it seems to be an expense that Canadian citizens are willing to pay and that’s at least partly because the Canadian military has managed to begin to regain something of the stature it once enjoyed as a result of its powerful presence in both the First and Second World Wars. It may not yet be punching above its weight, as it did back then, but it seems at least to be returning to the weight class to which it rightfully belongs

The Catastrophic Near Miss

Italian prime Minister Romano Prodi called the compromise solution to the European Union’s attempt to settle its endless bureaucratic wrangling over national and European-wide powers a step backwards. Europe, he suggested, had fallen into a situation in which some countries put their own national interests first while others presented those of Europe, whatever that now may mean. There is no question about who he meant by the former. Poland had made its intentions to play the spoiler clear for the last couple of months, and Great Britain, with Tony Blair leading it for the last time, once again in the end played an anti-Europe card which left mainland Europe wondering if the island kingdom really ever considered itself part of Europe.

In the end all 27 countries signed onto a compromise (otherwise there would be no rules of order for the EU today) which many, like former German foreign minister Joschka Fischer, felt “hardly avoided a total catastrophe.” If there was anyone who came out of this event looking good, it was German Kanzlerin Angela Merkel, who piloted the leaking ship of state with more patience and expertise than most would have imagined not long ago, and managed to sail it into some kind of safe harbour for the time being. Unfortunately for the EU, her term of office as president of the EU runs out on July 1, and her successor will have to have the patience of Job and the wisdom of Solomon to get that ship back on a stable course.

The Last Polish Joke Show

The European Union, currently celebrating its fiftieth birthday, is about to display its farcical administrative side, and simultaneously demonstrate its inability to function if faced with controversial decisions. There are now 27 members, ranging in size and power from France, Germany and the UK to Malta, Latvia and Cyprus, resulting in a linguistic chaos at its meetings in Brussels as the frantic search goes on to find a Finno-Maltese translator. This is farce, although, it’s an incredibly expensive and cumbersome production, but that is nothing compared to the fact that its constitution demands unanimity for anything to be agreed upon. Every country, no matter how small, has the right to veto.

Now, at this year’s EU summit meeting, it is about to face the music for this anachronistic rule that was passed when there was a small core group. All but one of the 27 nations is in total agreement that something must be done about the way that the number of votes has been assigned to each country. In Nice in 2000, after an all night session, bleary-eyed representatives passed a temporary measure on vote distribution that resulted in the still-prevailing situation in which the largest financial contributor to the EU. Germany, with a population of 85 million, received 29 voting representatives while Poland, the largest recipient of EU funds with a population of 38 million, received 27. Afterwards, the sleep-deprived voters could scarcely remember why they had ever reached such a strange result other than that it was the only way they could get unanimity.

Now the time has finally come to agree to a constitution that distributes the votes more reasonably, and even the UK and Malta agree that a referendum to that effect must be approved at the EU summit. But Poland doesn’t and the Polish Prime Minister, Lech Kaczynski, has ignored personally-delivered lectures by the prime ministers of France, Spain, the Czech Republic, and Germany in the last week and continues to say that he will not compromise but will veto. German analysts speculate this is because Poland does not want Germany to have the honour of solving the vote-distribution problem of the EU during its term as President. Instead Kaczynsky has proposed a reckoning by what he calls “rectangular roots” that has even mathematicians struggling for comprehension.

The Germans have lost their sense of humour on this latest example of odd behaviour by the reigning Polish government. The liberal Süddeutsche Zeitung finished its editorial on the topic as follows: “If Europe should really slide into the greatest crisis imaginable after the failure of its constitutional referendum, then the Germany may be accused of having underestimated the size of Polish ignorance of Europe for months on end. But Poland itself will bear responsibility on its own for everything else. It is going to have to pay a price for that.” This is not the way the German liberal press normally talks about Poland, and it does not bode well for future Polish-German relations.

Al Hurra: Fair and Balanced News?

Al Hurra is America’s Arabic language TV station and it is performing with typical Bush administration competence. Intended to bring trustworthy news to the Arab world as an antidote to anti-American media in the region and by so doing, to serve as a tool of American foreign policy, the station has managed to turn itself into a propaganda conduit for the other side.

In an incredibly naïve strategy to build credibility among potential viewers the station has – on several occasions – broadcast speeches, rants, and statements from leaders of Hezbollah and Hamas, many of which have been rabidly anti-American and all intended to present reality through the prism of terrorist rationales.

Al Hurra has been a disaster since its inception and bringing in Larry Register last fall from – of all places, CNN – to run the operation has proven to be a major mistake. CNN is – like most of the major broadcast news media – committed to pretending to be objective by giving time to even the most ridiculous points of view on major issues.  It fills time and God knows we would not want a news organization to accept facts as they are and simply report them. So we have endless programs with all sorts of weird views presented because – well, someone believes them and we need to give them a chance to peddle their snake oil.

Apparently Register thought it important to provide a soapbox for some of the most destructive characters in the Middle East as proof of our “objectivity”.  This is reminiscent of the decision VOA made after the attacks of 9/11 to broadcast – in its entirely and without challenge – a mind-bending speech by Mullah Omar, the head of the Taliban.

Should American international broadcasting ignore the statements of leaders of groups like Hezbollah, Hamas and the Taliban? Of course not, but the way to do that is to invite them on to either be interviewed by a tough, knowledgeable interviewer or invite them to participate in a round table with a variety of points of view represented. They would in all likelihood decline the invitation but then that refusal can be reported.

Finally, for those moderate voices in the Arab world – those seeking peaceful change in the region – the broadcast of unchallenged speeches from leaders of terrorist groups for them simply destroys the credibility that Al Hurra needs to be effective. Imagine Radio Liberty broadcasting Stalin’s speeches during the Cold War. Their audience would no longer trust them and no longer listen to them.

The Arab world’s moderates and reformers are the ones that we most need to support and Al Hurra, if managed well, could provide some of that support by broadcasting honest news without pandering to the fringe elements. The expected resignation of Larry Register in the next week or so is a good first step.

Rice’s Bungled Attempt to Bring Democracy to Iran

A few years ago, after reporting on the Abu Ghraib prison torture scandal, Seymour Hersh commented that he viewed Condoleezza Rice as the most incompetent of all National Security Advisors in the history of that position. Obviously there was competition for that title (e.g. H. Kissinger) but new evidence indicates that Ms. Rice has taken her incompetence to new levels as Secretary of State.

The United States has been funding efforts to support a movement toward democratization in Iran for many years. Radio Azadi was started by Radio Free Europe in that late 90s and it became a successful broadcaster of solid news, analysis and culture into Iran with a significant audience among the elites in the reform movement. This effort was emasculated shortly after the Bush election when it was changed to Radio Farda, and turned into a broadcaster of American rock and roll. This was representative of the dumbing down of American culture and was based on the belief that a larger audience of teenagers listening to music was somehow more important than an audience of mature members of the reform movement listening to serious and credible news.

Add to that the recent report that the U.S. has committed $75 million to promote democracy in Iran and that Secretary Rice has announced this to some fanfare in the U.S. and considerable angst in Iran. The problem is not that the money is being spent – it is that Ms. Rice was not smart enough to understand that by announcing it – in the context of Bush’s “axis of evil” and “regime change” blathering – she would put all possible recipients of support from the U.S. in jeopardy. It is the kind of program that you play close to the chest with the hope that your support can facilitate reformers in their pro-democracy efforts. Rice’s play for publicity has had the opposite effect with Iranian intellectuals, writers, journalists, human rights activists, etc. in increased jeopardy.

According to a Washington Post piece on April 28:

“…The money is a persistent focus during interrogations, say Iranians who have been questioned or detained. “If you look at the crackdown on non-government organizations and human rights defenders over the past six months, one common facet is that they were all suspected of receiving foreign funds,” said Zahir Janmohamed, Amnesty International USA’s advocacy director for the Middle East. “It’s not just the funding but the rhetoric around the funding about ‘regime change’ and the ‘axis of evil.’ ”

The National Iranian American Council said it had warned the State Department “that the mere idea of sending money with this language would make the work of pro-democracy activists in Iran all the more difficult. It has turned out to be worse than what many people feared. The mere fact that the United States has been talking about using NGOs has made Iran’s thriving civil society a main suspect of trying to do change inside Iran,” said the council president, Trita Parsi….”

Iceland’s new guardians – Denmark and Norway

Since the end of World War Two, the USA has invaded a number of countries that were considered to be involved in threatening political developments – Korea, Vietnam, Iraq are only the most prominent – but there is one allied contry, and NATO member, that didn’t have to be invaded or occupied to have US troops in strength presnt on its soil for more than half a century – Iceland. After the war, and despite a great deal of opposition, Iceland agreed to have US troops stay on to protect a country without armed forces from aggression. In 2006, against the will of the Icelandic government, the US withdrew its troops from its substantial air force base in Keflavik, leaving the 300,000 Icelanders without a military presence. Now the lands from which Viking colonialists sailed forth to settle the uninhabited island more than a thousand years ago – Norway and Denmark – will sign a military agreement with Iceland in Oslo on Thursday. Norway will station military planes in Keflavik and Denmark will augment the civilian Icelandic Coast Guard – which defeated the UK in the famous Cod War – with Danish military ships. Only in case of a real invasion would the US get involved, as would all NATO countries according to the NATO Charter.

The Return of the Evil Empire?

There were many factors that contributed to the dissolution of the Soviet Union, including a nutty economic system made even nuttier by corruption and incompetence among the leadership. But more important to many was the brutality of a regime that allowed very little in the way of what we consider commonplace freedoms. Perhaps chief among these was freedom of the press,

Throughout the Cold War America’s Radio Liberty served as a surrogate Russian radio station, providing news, analysis and cultural programs that – for over forty years – made Radio Liberty the most responsible source available in Russia for both domestic and international news. The Russian Service of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) suffered a serious blow in 1993 when freshman senator Russell Feingold made a strong effort to close the radios because “the Cold War was over”. Feingold lacked any real understanding of international broadcasting and the role it has always played as a tool of foreign policy and a mode of public diplomacy and so the Radios survived in a much-diminished status with a budget reduced by 70% and the Russian broadcast service took much of the hit.

Well yes, the cold War is over but what do we have in its place? A Russia in which journalists critical of the government are routinely murdered, a TV and radio scene in which all the important networks are state-run, and a population more interested in consumer goods than civil liberties.

Over the weekend it was reported that state-run radio in Russia has been handed a new set of rules – 50% of news about Russia must be “positive”, there is to be absolutely no mention of opponents to the government by name, and the United States is to be labeled the “enemy”. So we are back to the 70’s and early 80’s with no more “Glasnost” and a powerful former KGB director as president – with the possibility on the horizon of a change in Russian laws that would provide the opportunity for President Putin to continue in office beyond his term.

It is well past time for a renewal of our commitment to an active public diplomacy that includes provision of serious news and analysis to those citizens of Russia (and other countries) that hunger for the truth. Feingold never understood the importance of that effort and did serious damage to our public diplomacy effort.