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November 20, 2009
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This Week's WPR Video Highlights

Posted By Kari Lipschutz 20 Nov 2009 Here are a few of this week's highlights from WPR's video section:
 
President Barack Obama held one of his now-classic town hall meetings in Shanghai with Chinese students. The twist? Carefully picked attendees and questions.

In this video, Jim Lehrer interviews human rights experts who say the Internet, a topic Obama made sure to mention in his talk with the students, is the key to human rights in China.

Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger says the Obama administration has made great gains for U.S.-Russian relations in this interview with Russia Today.

Iraqi Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi has brought a much anticipate election in Iraq to a halt. In this Al Jazeera interview, the leader explains his rationale for vetoing a key election law.

Our video section is updated daily. I'll highlight videos we post there from time to time on this blog. Got a tip for where we can find embeddable videos of interest to WPR readers? Send it to video[at]worldpoliticsreview.com.

Off the Radar News Roundup

Posted By Judah Grunstein 20 Nov 2009 - China's foreign minister visits Japan for the first time since the DPJ took power.

- China and Vietnam agree to boost economic ties.

- China and Burma agree to establish railroad and banking links to facilitate resource flow.

- Remarks by President Barack Obama in Korea reflect how the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have transformed U.S. forces stationed there -- like the Army reserves back home -- into an operational, as opposed to a strategic, reserve.

- The leader of the Hurriyat, a Kashmir political coalition advocating for self-determination, declared his support for the U.S.-China joint declaration regarding India-Pakistan relations, and said that China has a stake in the resolution of the Kashmir conflict. Again, whoever in the State Department okayed the declaration's language was a bit tone-deaf to Indian concerns.

- Maoist revolutionaries are still blowing things up in India. I found it a bit odd that there were three Maoist candidates in the first round of France's last presidential election. So needless to say, Maoist bombers in 2009 is a hard concept to fathom.

- Turkey's new domestic Kurdish initiative has the added advantage of cementing much-improved relations with Iraqi Kurdistan.

- Ankara is not worried by new EU Council President Herman Van Rompuy's past opposition to Turkey's EU accession.

- Turkey officially scraps its flawed tender for a nuclear energy reactor. Apparently the Middle East nuclear arms race will be a bit more difficult than foreseen.

- Israel's trade minister will travel to Turkey for the first such visit since the Gaza war last January.

- Sparked by U.S. concerns, South Africa is investigating charges of South African mercenaries training forces of Guinea's ruling junta.

- Restrictions on opposition parties and ongoing human rights abuses mark the run-up to Ethiopia's 2010 elections.

- A new draft law in Kenya would explicitly define the powers of the president and prime minister under the power-sharing agreement arrived following the country's last disputed elections.

- Russian President Dmitry Medvedev fired a Putin-era Kremlin appointee, the first such move of his presidency.

Researched by Kari Lipschutz.

Raul's Cuba Shows Little Improvement on Personal Freedoms

Posted By Juliette Terzieff 20 Nov 2009 Raúl Castro has failed to improve Cuba's respect for individual freedoms, Human Rights Watch charges in a new report. Rights advocates had hoped that Raúl would improve the island nation's rights posture after taking over from his brother, Fidel. But that has not been the case.

"In his three years in power, Raúl Castro has been just as brutal as his brother. Cubans who dare to criticize the government live in perpetual fear, knowing they could wind up in prison for merely expressing their views," Jose Miguel Vivanco, HRW's Americas director said in a press release.

According to the report, "New Castro, Same Cuba," the younger Castro has relied heavily on a Cuban law that allows authorities to detain individuals in anticipation of criminal activity. Raúl has also refused to release dozens of people imprisoned in 2003 during a crackdown on dissidents, contributing to a widespread climate of fear among the dissident community.

Detained dissidents are subject to systemic due process violations, beatings, denial of legal representation and procedurally questionable trials. Once imprisoned, prisoners face abysmal conditions, including overcrowding, insufficient food and water, and denial of medical treatment.

Cuban authorities rejected the report's findings. "HRW is an organization that analyzes this issue from a discriminatory, selective and above all politicized perspective. Its evaluation of human rights in Cuba is illegitimate and illegal," Alberto Gonzalez of the Cuban diplomatic mission in Washington said in statement.

The EU Chooses Continuity

Posted By Judah Grunstein 20 Nov 2009 A couple quick thoughts on the "unknowns" named yesterday to the new Lisbon-created EU positions. To begin with, despite all the talk the last few months about the "EU president," it's clear that the EU heads of state decided to stick with the language of the treaty and name a president of the European Council. The same holds true for the post referred to as the EU foreign minister, but whose official title is EU high representative for common foreign and security policy.

Both of the appointees, Belgian Prime Minister Herman Van Rompuy as EU president and Britain's EU Trade Commisioner Catherine Ashton as EU foreign minister, are more administrators than executives. Despite their respective titles, the more significant impact will probably be felt in Ashton's case, since her term is five years, as opposed to 30 months for Van Rompuy. More importantly, she will be heading up a new institution with actual personnel and a budget. So a "bigger" personality would have been able to shape it more dramatically. Significantly, her appointment must still be approved by the EU parliament, so there could be some drama left in the process.

The initial media reaction is one of disappointment (Der Spiegel here, Le Monde's roundup here.). But I'd argue that the initial media reaction is misguided. And I say that as someone who has high hopes for the further emergence of the EU as a global actor.

The problem is that it's hard to square yesterday's criticisms of the undemocratic selection process with today's criticisms of the continuity reflected by the appointments. And that holds even more when you consider that the passage of the Lisbon Treaty itself was problematic from a democratic point of view. The only country to hold a referendum on the treaty had to vote twice to get it passed. And the decision to pass it by legislative vote in the other 26 countries was driven by the French and Dutch having voted down the EU constitutional referendum in 2005.

In other words, as of now, a popular mandate for "more Europe" doesn't really exist. So as much as bold appointments would have satisfied those -- including myself -- who hope to see a more supranational EU enter the global stage, we are a minority right now. Better to transition more modestly, letting the transformative potential emerge more organically.

As the Spiegel article points out, both Van Rompuy and Ashton are already experienced as "caretakers," having taken over their current posts in mid-term from their predecessors. And in many ways, that's what they will be functioning as in the new ones. If demand for more Europe is truly there, it will emerge as these two "unknowns" clarify the limits and possibilities of the positions over time.

Off the Radar News Roundup

Posted By Judah Grunstein 19 Nov 2009 - China plays both sides of the DMZ, hosting the speaker of the ROK Parliament and a high-level DPRK military envoy at the same time.

- New Zealand's Prime Minister John Key has refused to meet with the Dalai Lama, explaining, "The reason simply is I've decided that I wouldn't get a lot out of that particular meeting.I've seen him in the past, I may see him in the future." If there's a foreign policy equivalent of Maslow's pyramid of needs, defending human rights would figure on the high end. That's why the Dalai Lama will have an easier time getting meetings during times of prosperity than in times of hardship.

- Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou said he's in no rush to reach a final political settlement with China, citing the removal of Chinese missiles aimed at Taiwan as one condiiton for final talks.

- Ukraine is dipping into IMF loan money to fend of a repeat of last winter's "gas wars."

- Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan stated that Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu does not trust Turkey in the way that former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert did. The interesting thing here is the way identifying the problem as Netanyahu, and not Israel, in some ways downgrades it to a personal issue, as opposed to an affair of state. Erdogan also judged a French mediation role as unlikely to pass muster in Damascus.

Researched by Kari Lipschutz.

EU President: The Knives Come Out

Posted By Judah Grunstein 19 Nov 2009 The knives are coming out in the EU president sweepstakes, which will be decided this evening at an EU heads of state meeting. Already today I've seen a piece describing a whisper campaign against Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt, who as the current occupant of the pre-Lisbon rotating EU presidency is in charge of organizing the selection process. Reinfeldt has been demanding a shortlist of two names enjoying the potential for unanimous consensus. Given how hard it is to meet that qualification, and how opaque the deliberations are, there's a lot of room for arbitrary interference. (I've lost the link somehow, but will update when I track it back down.)

And now, at the eleventh hour, a speech given by one of the front-runners for the job, Belgian Prime Minister Herman Van Rompuy, back in 2004 has resurfaced. In it, Van Rompuy flatly rejects Turkey's claim to EU membership, based solely on Turkey's Islamic character being in opposition to the "Christian values" of Europe.

Meanwhile, the calls for a woman to be appointed to at least one of the two remaining posts are growing, as is criticism of the undemocratic nature of the process. I mentioned both yesterday, but I think it bears pointing out that the real promise of Lisbon is not immediate. It's only natural that the current selection process (as opposed to election process) reflects the EU's current technocratic/bureaucratic nature, as well as its current tension between supranational and governmental authority. So, opaque and undemocratic.

The real promise of Lisbon lies in its transformative potential. The first EU president might very well surprise us. But I think it's the second or third, aided by the growing role of the EU parliament in the intervening years, who will really have the chance to shake things up and make the process more democratic. In other words, to be continued . . .

Karzai vs. the Security Contractors

Posted By Judah Grunstein 19 Nov 2009 In his inauguration speech yesterday, Afghan President Hamid Karzai set a five-year timeline for Afghan security forces to take the lead in securing the country. The Times (UK) misleadingly headlined that, "Karzai: Foreign troops out of Afghanistan in five years."

But more interesting, because more realistic, he also set a two-year deadline for national and international security contractors to end their operations in the country. And by calling on national Afghan security forces to take over their roles, he leaves it a bit unclear whether when he refers to Afghan security contractors, he means "arm the tribes"-type militias. Here's the relevant quote, from the Times (UK):

"The goal of a powerful national government can be realized by the stronger presence of national security forces in all parts of the country," he told dignitaries in his inauguration speech. "Within the next two years we want operations by all private national and international security firms to be ended and their duties delegated to the Afghan security forces."

Tea leaf reading, perhaps, but intriguing, especially when it comes time to put paid on that check.

An End to the 'Banana Wars'

Posted By Judah Grunstein 19 Nov 2009 Thanks to stubborn and persisent negotiations, the longest-running trade dispute in the history of the WTO is close to being resolved. This lends support to the flagging notion of negotiated settlements, and banishes the possibility of a banana-centric counterinsurgency doctrine from seeing the light of day.

Pushing India toward Iran

Posted By Judah Grunstein 19 Nov 2009 One of the consequences of the U.S. dependence on Pakistan to achieve its goals in Afghanistan is the way in which it drives India and Iran closer. That's because their interests in Afghanistan largely converge, in opposition to those of Pakistan. It's also obvious that U.S. interests in Afghanistan more closely align with those of India and Iran than with those of Pakistan. But to actually operationalize that would essentially turn the Afghanistan war into the Pakistan war.

Clearly, the ideal solution would be for India and Pakistan to resolve their differences, and for the U.S. and Iran to do the same. At that point, a coordinated effort between the four would have a lot greater chance of successfully stabilizing Afghanistan. In the meantime, everyone's hedging against everyone else. Which probably helps explain why officials from India and Iran discussed increasing cooperation between the two countries' militaries during Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki's visit to New Delhi earlier this week.

Eastern Europe and CIA Black Sites

Posted By Judah Grunstein 19 Nov 2009 More creepy allegations about former CIA black sites, this time in Lithuania. This is something to keep in mind regarding Eastern European concerns over U.S. commitment to the region, which is most often linked to the Obama administration's missile defense policy shift. But I suspect it also has to do with the very different apporach the Obama administration has taken toward counterterrorism compared to the Bush administration. You really get the sense of the shoe getting ready to drop here:

Hammarberg visited Vilnius last month and said he personally urged Lithuanian officials to take the issue more seriously. "I told them it is quite likely that further information might leak from the United States, so they should hurry up and do their own investigation now," he said.

A lot of the relationship developed under the Bush administration with Eastern Europe involved integrating these countries into an American national security scheme in roles they might have done better to refuse. After all, talking about the importance of supporting democratic friends against autocratic neighbors doesn't sit very well with simultaneously offering up former Soviet-era prisons for use as rendition black sites.

That deal is now off, and the question is, What replaces it? With the Obama administration obviously focused on improving relations with Russia and walking back the excesses of the Bush adminsitration's war on terror, the answer for now seems to be, Not much.