Politics and Press

The interaction of the press and politics; public diplomacy, and daily absurdities.

Archives for October 2006

When North Korea Falls

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Thanks to our Kiwi correspondent for alerting us to the above titled article in the October Atlantic Monthly by Robert Kaplan.

Kaplan is always interesting writing about soldiers and soldiering and his insights into the military provide a particular prism through which to view the situation in North Korea. Note that it is titled “When” North Korea Falls, not “If” North Korea Falls. He is persuasive in concluding that the winner when N. Korea falls will likely be China and that the U.S.’s influence in the region will be diminished. The article provides some fresh insight into a situation which seems burdened in the press with relatively unsophisticated – even jingoistic – perspectives. Read it at the Atlantic Monthly’s website.

Christine Amanpour:The Press in War in 2006

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A recent interview with Christine Amanpour describes the challenges of reporting in Iraq in 2006. The challenges come from two directions: the Bush administration constantly calling reality into question and the insurgents threatening death on reporters. The interview appeared on the website for Campus Progress and was carried out at Harvard. An interesting discussion by one of our best journalists.

Winning Islamic Hearts and Minds?

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See the front page story in today’s Boston Globe – the third in a series, “Exporting Faith,” – for a comprehensive look at a result of Bush’s funding of ‘faith-based initiatives.’

It describes a Christian hospital (run by a Christian group called World Witness) in Sahiwal, Pakistan, where its U.S. government assisted funding is described as visible all over the institution (e.g., a USAID sticker on the “top-of-the-line medical equipment”including “the X-ray machine, the blood bank refrigerator, the auditorium for medical lectures, and the radiology computer…”). The story goes on to say that the neediest Pakistani patients can’t afford the services. So, there exists a hospital, identified as Christian, sporting clear U.S. government support, which the locals can’t afford. Doesn’t go far to ‘winning hearts and minds’, does it?

David Frum’s Axis of Ego

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On today’s NY Times Op Ed page David Frum gives us a terrific example of the nuttiness that gave us the Iraq War. Frum is the former White House speechwriter who helped to coin the phrase “Axis of Evil” a phrase that nicely captures the areas where the Bush foreign policy strategy has so miserably failed. No need to remind anyone of the Iraq fiasco, but Iran and North Korea remain to be totally screwed up and Frum is the right guy to advise on just how to continue doing that.

In a typically dishonest maneuver Frum comments in his opening paragraph that over the past dozen years of American policy Pakistan and North Korea have developed nuclear weapons. That would put the timeframe solidly in the Clinton years while N. Korea’s nuclear plans reached its current level entirely during Bush Junior’s tenure. Pakistan developed its program beginning in the mid 1970’s and in October 1990, then-President Bush (senior) announced that he could no longer provide Congress with Pressler Amendment certification that Pakistan did not possess a nuclear weapon. Also on today’s Times Op Ed page Nicholas Kristof reminds us that N. Korea obtained zero plutonium during Clinton’s presidency while under the current administration they obtained “…enough plutonium for about eight nuclear weapons”. For background information on the development of weapons of mass destruction around the world see the Federation of American Scientists website.
Frum’s recommendations avoid placing any responsibility for the current state with the Bush administration and outlines a series of “four swift” actions for the U.S. to take that are uniformly unrealistic.

One: “Step up the development and deployment of existing missile defense systems”. He admits that these systems “are not perfect – but they are something.” What they are is unreliable.

Two: “End humanitarian aid to N. Korea and pressure S. Korea to do the same.” Frum says that this would serve to punish both N. Korea and China and perhaps he is right. But S. Korea is highly unlikely to “swiftly” agree to move away from its “sunshine” policy simply because we tell them to do so. End of the day S. Korea is the country most immediately at risk and China, after all, can return any favor of punishment we might choose to give to them via its economic clout.

Three: “Invite Japan, S. Korea, Australia, New Zealand and Singapore to join NATO…” I am hoping that our Kiwi correspondent will comment on the likelihood of New Zealand running to join NATO. I will simply comment that anyone thinking that NATO would do that “swiftly” lives on a different planet.

Four: “Encourage Japan to renounce the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and create its own nuclear deterrent.” He likes this idea partially because it would also punish those evil Chinese. (who would not respond in any way, like cashing in their U.S. debt chips, for instance).

There is much that is striking in Frum’s piece but perhaps most striking is its resolute inability to place any responsibility on the administration within which he once served. The Bush administration has resolutely refused to negotiate directly with N. Korea or Iran so Frum’s comment to the effect that diplomacy has not worked ignores the fact that real diplomacy has not been tried. A very good piece on the lack of a coherent U.S. policy towards N. Korea by Stephen Bosworth and Morton Abramowitz, published in the Financial Times in February 2005, is available on Bosworth’s website.

What seems apparent is that the world has become significantly more dangerious on the watch of Mr. Frum’s former employers.

Darfur campaign cuts Sudan money

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There is an active effort to put pressure on Sudan over its policies in Darfur which is exemplified by California’s passing laws limiting investment with Sudan’s government.

I have always been concerned that sanctions end up punishing the people who most need help but this effort to reduce investment in Sudan – investment that never finds its way to the people – is worthwhile.
Governor Schwarzenegger of California signed the Darfur Peace and Accountability Act last week; the bill requires the state’s pension funds to sell their investments in companies trading with Sudan. The Governor urged President Bush to follow the same path.

“With a stroke of your pen, you can do far more than any one state to ease the suffering of millions in this war-torn region,” he wrote.

To learn more about how you might influence investment go to this link.

Chechen War Reporter Found Dead

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Our Kiwi correspondent forwards this story that is at the heart of the relationship of politics and the press in Russia:
As the url for this blog suggests, the focus here is often the intersection of policy and journalism. In some parts of the world that intersection too frequently produces carnage. This is surely case with the murder of Anna Politkovskaya, the woman who the head of Russia’s journalism union has “described as the conscience of the country’s journalism.” It seems appropriate to draw readers’ attention to this report from the NY Times on her life and death.

Anne Applebaum has published a remembrance and an analysis of the situation for independent journalists in Russia for Slate. It is not pretty, but is worth reading to remind us of the courage that many journalists have and the price that some of them pay. And we are certainly not talking about Bill O’Reilly.

Thanksgiving in the Great White North

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It’s Thanksgiving weekend, and Canadian newspapers are full of stories about how grateful we should be to farmers and how the Nova Scotia giant pumpkin contest once again had a bumper crop. Such folksy stories must reemerge so that they can be resurrected again next year at this time. There’s also a lot of non-fluffy material about the miserable state of relations between Canada and the US. “U.S. gives up claim that Canadian lumber is subsidized”, “Canada to protest Arar, PM tells Bush”, “Thousands on terror watch lists by mistake”, “Passports could be required sooner: U.S.”, “Boundary commission can’t see border for the trees”, “Deserter who fled to Canada released from prison” (all from pp. 1-6 of the Saturday. Oct. 7 Vancouver Sun).
The question is whether such intense dislike of the attempt by the Bush administration to put up a seamless barrier around US territory will be forgotten quickly up here once a new government comes to power in Washington and presumably begins to remove the most flagrant attacks on its largest trading partner and neighbour. It comes at a time when Western and most Central European countries have virtually eliminated the last remnants of defended national boundaries. Canadians who cross the U.S. border now with non-North American friends and colleagues are shocked to see them being fingerprinted and photographed in a separate lineup. Canadian citizens won’t cross the border as often as they once did if they are to be fingerprinted, and many don’t even own passports, having found North America big enough for their travel.
In today’s Sunday paper there is another border story: “B.C. pair survives high-seas sinking”. A U.S.Coast Guard helicopter heard the distress call of a Canadian fishing boat sinking 200 kilometers off the Washington coast as it was answered by Canadian Coast Guard in Tofino on the central coast of Vancouver Island. It sent its own rescue helicopter, already airborne on a training mission, out from Astoria, Oregon. After returning to base to refuel and pick up a rescue swimmer, the crew was the first to reach the life raft of the fishermen, who came from Vancouver Island and Newfoundland, and plucked them out of the freezing water. A rescue plane from Sacramento and a cutter were also on their way. So there is evidence that there still exists in some quarters a code of conduct that transcends borders and is based on mutual respect, civility and, in this case, courage.

Software Being Developed to Monitor Opinions of U.S.

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See NY Times

This comment from our Kiwi Correspondent:
Foreign journalists will be particularly charmed to learn that their sentiments about the US are being computer-synthesized into simple positive or negative digitized conclusions. A thing observed is a thing changed, as the axiom has it. The thing in this case is infinitesimal : high opinion of America. It is likely to be changed. Negatively.

Admitting at the outset that this initiative —if focused on the US press— would be of questionable legality and unquestioned impropriety, the project’s leaders have announced that it is only the foreign media that will be monitored. The demeaning arrogance in that may be lost only on those doing the study. The rest of the world
will be understandably offended. Might not that offense reasonably be expected to adversely affect the opinions held of the US?

But, ok, say the project produces a sort of relief map of global regard for America, what does the existence of that mapping data imply? One implication of quantifying and locating low opinion is that corrective action could be targeted. If that meant Congress and US politicians responded by considering the substance and rationale
behind the opinion, then maybe some positive response could be fashioned. US policy could be informed and shaped to take account of other potentially useful perspectives. Alternatively the way policies were being presented could be adjusted to address perceived
short comings. By design, however, this project appears to eliminate those possibilities by cutting out of the equation any rationale supporting the opinion. The initiative is structured only to measure opinion not substance, conclusion not argument. So what sort of “corrective action” will flow from the compilation of that data?

As it creates data that identifies and claims to quantify “a problem “it will also create pressures to “solve” that alleged problem. The methodology of the initiative actually precludes development of internal solutions and thereby makes “external” solutions more likely. Fashioning external solutions here means finding ways of silencing critics rather than refuting them. Defeating them rather than considering them. Reacting rather than listening.

The foreseeable result of this un-needed, self-defeating, and divisive initiative will include pressures for disinformation campaigns, for buying off corruptible journalists and interdicting a free press in the very places we are urging policies of enlightened democratic transformation.

Romney Goes against his church on Stem Cell Research

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The Utah delegation to Congress all voted for continued stem cell research because they know the majority of Utahns, who are Mormons like Romney, support continued scientific stem cell research but Mitt Romney decided to take an extreme right wing turn. He is off the farm now and needs to explain his position because it does not square with his church.

Romney’s pandering to the religious extremes is odd because evangelicals are his largest opposition. I can’t figure out what he is thinking. He turned his back on his own people, the Mormons, to appeal to the anti-Mormons, go figure.

Is it guts, nuts or confused?

N. Korea’s “Threat”

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This just in from our Oceania Bureau Chief who watches Asia, Australia and Oceania for us. We asked for his thoughts on what is going on in North Korea; are they continuing to try to get Bush to negotiate one-on-one?

“I think they want to indirectly pressure the US by scaring its “allies” and want to give China a reason/need to return to the US with pressure for 1 on 1 talks. But I see the test threat as sort of reassuring in that they wouldn’t say they were going to test if they could test and were planning to do so imminently. Pakistan and India have not tested since the late 90’s. I think they can’t yet test but are feeling hungry going into winter and desperate as Iraq, Darfur, Iran and Mid-east seem to be the world’s focus. It isn’t beyond Kim Jong Il — the Michael Jackson of geopolitics– to act up now just to rain on S. Korea’s UN Sect.Gen parade. That really may play into the timing. Hell, they chose the 4th of July to shoot 6 missiles over Japan. Director Kim watches the calendar and the camera.”