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Commentary Week in Review
By Guy Taylor
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08 Jun 2007
The Commentary Week in Review is posted on the blog every Friday. Drawing from more than two dozen English-language news outlets worldwide, the column highlights a handful of the week's notable op-eds.
Bargaining With Russia to Contain Iran
Claiming "relations between the United States and Russia have hit their lowest point since the Cold War," Joseph S. Nye Jr. asserted in the June 8 Boston Globe that the "growing tension has real and dangerous implications for US security: Washington is struggling to get Russia's help in sanctioning Iran for its nuclear program."
"The latest International Atomic Energy Agency report paints a bleak picture: Iran is making faster progress than expected toward uranium enrichment. And our options are limited," wrote Nye. "Diplomatic efforts to tighten UN sanctions on Iran's nuclear program can only succeed if Russia agrees not to wield its veto in the Security Council. Russia is torn between its interests in non proliferation, its commercial interests in trade (including equipment for nuclear reactors), and its irritation with the United States."
He went to argue that the recent Russian-U.S. tensions "create an opportunity" for the United States, which "should offer Russia a grand bargain: We would delay our plans for missile defense in Eastern Europe, while the Russians would agree to back stronger sanctions against Iran."
Why China Won't Save Darfur
In a June Web Exclusive posted this week by Foreign Policy, Morton Abramowitz and Jonathan Kolieb noted how China -- with its oil ties to the Sudanese regime and its resistance to U.N. Security Council resolutions condemning Khartoum -- is a convenient "whipping boy" for critics observing the Darfur crisis.
"Hollywood heavyweights Steven Spielberg, Mia Farrow, and George Clooney have come out in recent weeks to criticize the Chinese government for not responding to the cries of Darfur's people, zeroing in on the 2008 Beijing Olympics," wrote Abramowitz and Kolieb.
"But threatening a 'Genocide Olympics' alone will not bring peace (or peacekeepers) to that troubled region," the two argued, asserting that "no amount of criticism will convince Beijing to pursue a coercive strategy and a nonconsensual deployment of U.N. peacekeepers that Khartoum rejects."
The reason, they claimed, is that "China's multibillion dollar investments in Sudan's petroleum industry are a much-needed source of energy for its mushrooming economy. Beijing may make tactical moves to pressure Sudan, but it will not choose human rights over oil, a matter of paramount national interest."
U.S. and India to Cut Behind-the-Scenes G-8 Deal
While a long-anticipated and potentially controversial deal between the United States and India to share nuclear materials is stalled, Manik Mehta claimed in a June 6 World Politics Review commentary that both countries "appear hopeful that the issue is going to get a renewed push from the highest political level this week when Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and U.S. President George W. Bush meet on the sidelines of the Group of 8 summit."
Mehta argued that both sides want an agreement, since for the Bush administration, "the deal will be a visible achievement in an otherwise scant foreign policy record, as it galvanizes a strategic partnership with India" and "for India, the deal opens the door to the world's exclusive nuclear club, to which it had been denied entry despite its de facto nuclear status."
Chávez No Enemy of Free Speech
Bart Jones asserted in the June 4 Christian Science Monitor that while Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez's refusal to renew the license of Radio Caracas Televisión (RCTV) might seem to justify fears that he's on a crusade to crush free speech, in reality, the "case of RCTV -- like most things involving Chávez -- has been caught up in a web of misinformation."
"While one side of the story is getting headlines around the world, the other is barely heard," wrote Jones, explaining that after Chávez was elected president in 1998, RCTV management, consisting of members of the country's "fabulously wealthy oligarchy," became focused on "ousting a democratically elected leader from office."
Jones offered a bit of recent history that, he claimed, is largely being ignored by the mainstream media's coverage of RCTV's closure by Chávez's government:
RCTV's most infamous effort to topple Chávez came during the April 11, 2002, coup attempt against him. For two days before the putsch, RCTV preempted regular programming and ran wall-to-wall coverage of a general strike aimed at ousting Chávez. A stream of commentators spewed vitriolic attacks against him - while permitting no response from the government. Then RCTV ran ads encouraging people to attend a march on April 11 aimed at toppling Chávez and broadcast blanket coverage of the event. When the march ended in violence, RCTV and Globovisión ran manipulated video blaming Chávez supporters for scores of deaths and injuries.
Legal Mess at Guantanamo
Homing in on what she termed the latest "major setback" to the Bush administration's push to try Guantanamo Bay prisoners via a special U.S. military-run war crimes tribunal, Rosa Brooks asserted in the June 8 Los Angeles Times that behind the recent dismissal of two cases before the tribunal "lies a major dispute about the status of the Guantanamo detainees."
Brooks explained:
When Congress passed the Military Commissions Act of 2006, it only gave the commissions jurisdiction over "alien unlawful enemy combatants." The two suspected Al Qaeda members whose cases were at issue this week, Omar Khadr and Salim Ahmed Hamdan, had previously gone before Guantanamo's Combatant Status Review Tribunals, but those tribunals had merely determined that they were "enemy combatants," not "unlawful" enemy combatants. As a result, declared Army Col. Peter E. Brownback III and Navy Capt. Keith Allred, the military commissions lacked jurisdiction over them.
"In 2001, the administration made a fateful decision to treat terrorism suspects as 'enemy combatants' in the 'war on terror' rather than trying them as criminals in civilian courts," claimed Brooks. "This decision led to the current military commission meltdown."
She went on to assert that the "Bush administration has long been fond of tossing around the phrase [unlawful enemy combatant], but until the 2006 military commissions law, it had zero legal meaning."
The Commentary Week In Review draws from links aggregated every weekday morning in WPR's Media Roundup, which you can receive by email for free by registering now.