Politics and Press

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

International Broadcasting

Rice’s Bungled Attempt to Bring Democracy to Iran

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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

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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?

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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.

Ukraine 1 Russia 0

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In Canada the only sport that counts is hockey, in the USA it is (increasingly) American football, but in Europe it is beyond a doubt, the other kind of football, actually played with the feet, which Americans call soccer. It is also the only sport taken seriously almost everywhere, although baseball has real strength in Latin America and Japan, and basketball has taken on an increasingly international flair. But there is no doubt that the major international soccer tournaments, along with the Olympics, are the most widely followed sports event, and that world and European soccer championships have an impassioned audience with real political clout in both the positive and negative sense. Thus the awarding of venues for the Olympics, the world soccer championships and the European soccer championships, all of which take place every fourth year, is a major economic, political and prestige event. Some of the decisions of late have been surprising and controversial. Beijing and Vancouver were awarded the next 2 Olympic venues after lengthy and expensive presentations. For China next summer’s Olympics are an event of the utmost political importance and a chance to display its economic, industrial and athletic power to the world. Last summer’s world soccer championship in Germany had the kind of success that China is hoping for. South Africa is the host of the next one, and billions of fans are hoping that the most prospering country in Africa will be able to provide the infrastructure and the splendidly serene month-long atmosphere that characterized the tournament in Germany.
The European soccer championships have traditionally been held in the large European soccer powerhouse countries, that were already equipped with more than adequate venues – Italy, Spain, Germany, the UK. On occasion, smaller soccer countries – the Netherlands and Belgium, for instance – would jointly sponsor the tournament. Since Italy, the reigning world champion, had applied to host the next available games, it was assumed that they were a shoo-in. But it didn’t happen that way. Heavily tarnished by proof of corruption, fixing and hooligan violence in the Italian league, the world champion was rejected by the venue panel, and suddenly a most unlikely joint partnership was named – Poland and Ukraine. The former is in the EU, a member of NATO, a neighbour of Germany, and a functioning, if somewhat erratic, democracy. The latter is not wanted in the EU, nor in NATO, shares a relatively short border with Poland and a very large one with Russia, and its attempts at democracy make operetta plots seem realistic. Its greatest fear is that the eastward expansion of the EU will draw down a new kind of iron curtain at the Ukrainian border and its dependance on its immense eastern neighbour will become overwhelming.
Now it seems that Ukraine had first approached Russia with the idea of a joint hosting proposal and this was summarily, and somehat arrogantly rejected by Moscow, who pointed out that they could do this on their own. Since Ukraine has a better soccer team than Russia in any case, it seems only appropriate that they have won this one in the backrooms of soccer power. Instead of staging an event that would inevitably have suggested to Europe that Russia and Ukraine are natural allies, Russian arrogance has given Ukraine the chance to convince Europe that its natural place in the world is west of the EU curtain, in the same general area, as its co-host, Slavic Poland. The announcement led to a universal cheer in Ukraine, welding together, for the only time in memory, the bitter enemies of eastern and western Ukraine. It also seems very likely that the games themselves will lead to a sense of unityin Ukraine that has been dramatically missing since 1990. An own-goal by Russia may save the day.

Snow White, one dwarf, a giant and an oil rush

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Up north above the top of Europe, a moment of history is slouching towards some kind of climax. Europe’s last untapped oil and gas fields are being readied for exploitation, and have become a source of irritation between two of Europe’s most unlikely neighbours. Norway and Russia share the most remote of all European borders, east and south of Nordkap, where Europe stops reaching north, and the cold Norwegian settlement of Kirkenes stands on guard at the point where western and eastern European cultures meet most dramatically. The Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Støre began 2007 with a visit to his most remote outpost as a singal for the importance of Kirkanes in Norway’s future ecoomic developments. For the last couple of decades, Norway has used its oil reserves in the North Sea to guarantee one of the world’s richest societies, and its pension fund is now big enough to buy the island of Manhattan. But the last Norwegian oil field is about to be tapped and soon Norway’s pension fund will have to run on its own. Norway’s main problem, however, is the ecological catastrophe threatening the Barent Sea by the decaying Russian nuclear submarine fleet west of Murmansk, and the general Russian disinterest in the ecology of the Arctic.
Snow White, the first natural gas field in the Barents Sea, is about to be developed by the Norwegians, and after that there are only the potential fields in the disputed waters north of the Russian-Norwegian border and the Shtokman gas field in Russian waters. The Russians so far have refused to co-operate with the Norwegians, who have the most experience in drilling in difficult Arctic waters. They also refused Norwegian aid in saving the crew of their sunken submarine the Karsk.
The Norwegians fear more ecological disasters will spill over into their waters. Norway has made it clear it would like help from the European Union, to which it does not belong, but whose members would certainly prefer to buy their energy from Norway than from Russia. Finally there is Svalbard, the island group that represnts the northernmost inhabited territory in Europe on the main island Spitzbergen. In 1920 Norway was granted territorial rights to the islands, but mineral rights were ceded to all the signers of the treaty, now numbering 40, as the probability of oil and gas reserves has arisen. The treaty was originally aimed at coal deposits, and both Russians and Norwegians have mined there, but it is now unclear whether offshore oil and gas are also covered.
As the ice in Arctic waters begins to melt and both Northwest and Northeast Passages open up, conflicts about Arctic waters are destined to keep growing. Norway and Russia, who have never been particularly friendly, are perhaps predictable, if uneven, rivals in this area, but the main event may play out between traditional friends Canada and the US, as the US government refuses to recognize Canada’s claims to the waters between its Arctic islands.

New Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty President

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The Board of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty has selected Jeffrey Gedmin as RFE/RL’s new president. Since 2001 Gedmin has served as Director of the Aspen institute in Berlin and prior to that served for five years as Executive Director of the New Atlantic Initiative.

Looking at his background and some recent writings Gedmin appears to be a strong choice for what is a challenging position. His work is cut out for him. Radio Liberty’s Russian Broadcast Service has had some difficulties with President Putin’s government and to his credit Gedmin has been critical of the undemocratic (and worse) directions that Putin has taken Russia. In so doing he has taken a stronger stance for freedom and democracy in Russia than the U.S. government. Also, the Radio’s successful Persian Service was turned into a shadow of itself a few years ago when the Board of Broadcast Governors forced it to join with VOA’s service and to move from providing substantive news, analysis and culture aimed at Iran’s influential elites to a popular music format aimed at people with little influence and perhaps even interest in the issues of freedom and democracy within Iran. Given the current state of Iran-U.S. relations this is an issue that Gedmin might usefully put at the top of his “to do” list.

Canada and France, Round five

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So the French have managed to do it yet again. The magnificently named socialist presidential candidate Segolene Royal announced in Paris to visiting separatist Parti Quebecois leader André Boisclair that she favours “the sovereignty and liberty” of Quebec. Mme Royal, who declined an invitation by the provincial government to visit Quebec and apparently has never been there, received thundering blasts from both the premier of Quebec, Jean Charest, and the new federal Liberal Party leader Stephane Dion, telling her to mind her own business. The tone of these responses should give her some idea of how France’s relationship would be with her NATO ally should she become president. Dion, a dual Canadian/French citizen with an honours PhD from France’s most elite graduate institute, reminded Mme. Royal of historical developments she seems to have overlooked, and didn’t even mention the liberation of France in 1944 by, among others, Canadian troops.

“The problem with her declaration” said Dion from Quebec City in his native French, “is that we have been free longer than the French because we had responsible government while they were still in the midst of debating empires and revolutions. So Canada is a pioneer of freedom and always will be…. I don’t understand. We do not interfere in the affairs of a friend country”.

After Charles de Gaulle trumpeted his infamous “Vive le Quebec libre” in Montreal forty years ago, he was ordered out of the country. Mme. Royal may find she has trouble getting a visa to even enter.

The State of U.S. Broadcasting to Iran

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International broadcasting, a major component of America’s public diplomacy program, has fallen on hard times. This is due partly to major misunderstandings about the nature and value of surrogate broadcasting versus a recent emphasis on building listenership numbers by following a strategy of “dumbing down” the content, most notably in major changes made to Radio Free Europe’s Persian broadcast service and Iraq broadcast service. These services were originally funded by the Congress in the late nineties to provide the kind of surrogate broadcasts that Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty provided to the Soviet Union and the Eastern European bloc during the Cold War: programming of domestic and international news and analysis, cultural developments and interviews and panel discussions with émigrés.

However, early in this decade the Broadcasting Board of Governors were sold on the concept of building an audience of the young by providing a kind of “radio lite”: rock and roll music and brief, light news updates. A serious discussion of the weakness of this approach has recently begun in Washington.

Former CIA Director James Woolsey testified on the Iran broadcasts to the House Committee for Foreign Affairs on January 11, that: “We should … engage in ways similar to those techniques we used in the 1980’s to engage with the Polish people and Solidarity — by communicating directly, now via the Web and modern communications technology, with Iranian student groups, labor unions, and other potential sources of resistance. … We should abandon the approaches of Radio Farda and the Farsi Service of VOA and return to the approach that served us so well in the Cold War. Ion Pacepa, the most senior Soviet Bloc intelligence officer to defect during the Cold War (when he was Acting Director of Romanian Intelligence) recently wrote that two missiles brought down the Soviet Union: Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty. Our current broadcasting does not inform Iranians about what is happening in Iran, as RFE and RL did about matters in the Bloc.”

Earlier, Enders Wimbush, a former Director of Radio Liberty published a lengthy article on the need to change the current approach in the December 18 issue of the Weekly Standard; a follow-up discussion by Edward Kaufman, a member of the Board and Wimbush followed in the January 15 issue of the Weekly Standard. Both are worth reading for insight into the issue

From Russia, With Love

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There was much glee in the West in 1989 as the Soviet Union imploded and the Cold War came to its supposed end. There was considerable optimism a few years later regarding the future of democracy in Russia when Boris Yeltsin stood on a tank and successfully resisted a takeover by old-style communist apparatchiks. The conversion appeared complete to President Bush when he looked into Putin’s eyes and saw his soul. His strange friendship – or is it a kinship? – with Putin continues in the face of clear evidence that Russia is heading down a far different road than we had once hoped.

Journalists critical of the Putin regime are attacked and not infrequently murdered (42 journalists have been killed in Russia since 1992), foreign–based NGOs are restricted by obscure licensing requirements, Radio Liberty and Voice of America are being forced out of long-standing re-broadcast agreements with Russian radio stations, and the Russian press has been cowed into a quiet acquiescence;  or risk an unfortunate accidental death by poison or gunshot.

The apparent murder of Alexander Litvinenko, the former KGB spy, in London is only the latest in a series of alarming events. The Committee for the Protection of Journalists has reported that 42 journalists have been murdered in Russia since 1992 but this apparent murder has implications of  future nuclear terrorism.

Meanwhile the Bush administration shows no interest in supporting international broadcasting into Russia at a time when its people depend on outside sources for its news. The budget for Radio Liberty, the premier American Russian language broadcaster has been seriously reduced which serves Mr. Putin’s interests. Since the money is a small issue perhaps the kinship between gut-level authoritarian leaders calls the shots.

International Broadcasting News

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Al Jazeera International (AJI) begins broadcasting in English from studios in Washington, DC today with a staff that includes former “Nightline” anchor Dave Marash.  It is unlikely that AJI will attract a large listenership in the U.S. for reasons both ideological and practical.  The station will not be carried in the U.S. by cable giant Comcast and, in fact, it is difficult to find out just who will carry it. This is unfortunate since it seems worthwhile for Americans to have an opportunity to assess the network on its own merits and to learn something about the Arab world and its views on events. The U.S. administration, especially the Defense Department has been highly critical of its Arabic broadcasts and for its willingness to broadcast Osama Bin Laden videotapes. But a country that can put up with Rush Limbaugh and the O’Reilly Factor ought to be able to listen to Al Jazeera without losing its collective marbles.

In an unrelated story…President Bush has renominated Ken Tomlinson as Chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors and for a term on the Board expiring in 10 months.  The Board oversees Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia, Radio and TV Marti and several emerging broadcast initiatives in the Middle East. Tomlinson has been criticized for financial irregularities, but most likely these are in part a smokescreen for more substantive issues related to the declining quality of U.S. international broadcasting. More on the general topic of U.S. international broadcasting later.