Do not miss Vikram Singh’s WPR piece on the applicability of the Surge to Afghanistan. It’s a balanced, insightful, and revealing treatment of what is increasingly becoming the common wisdom consensus. While Singh is far from a pessimist on the current situation in Afghanistan or on the chances for a successful outcome there, he very ably points out the limits of the current discussion, and what needs to be included to make it more relevant.
To follow up a bit on Barack Obama’s Berlin speech, Nikolas Gvosdev flags something that caught my eye as well: [Obama] lays out an ambitious agenda for cooperation, including on dealing with climate change, but no real sense of the burden sharing and, more importantly, on leadership questions. Is the implication that U.S. and European positions will naturally converge? Or does this presage that an Obama administration would be more comfortable accepting European initatives. . .? Here’s the passage in question from the speech (transcript here): . . .True partnership and true progress requires constant work and sustained sacrifice. They […]
“Obama Addresses 200,000 in Berlin” — thus ran the AP headline the day after Barack Obama’s much-hyped speech in front of Berlin’s Siegessäule or “Victory Column.” This 200,000 figure has quickly become the standard estimate of the crowd for Obama’s speech in both the American and the German media: so standard indeed that it is for the most part not even treated as an estimate. The estimates given by German public television ZDF actually during the event, however, were as little as one-tenth ofthat number. ZDF began its special “Obama in Berlin” coverage [German video] at 6:45 p.m. Central European […]
I admit that I got chills up my spine when I heard that 200,000 people showed up to hear Barack Obama speak in Berlin. I don’t know what it feels like to have almost a quarter of a million living, breathing human beings, spread out in front of you off into the distance, hanging on your every word. For that matter, there probably aren’t too many people alive who know what that feels like. But I imagine it’s not you’re ordinary, everyday kind of adrenaline rush. (The only video I found so far of the event is kind of anti-climactic, […]
It hasn’t exactly been a great month for nuclear energy here in France, with no less than four incidents involving radioactive leaks and exposures. The most recent one involved 100 employees exposed to apparently minor levels of radioactive particles, but it was the second incident at the plant in question, where earlier this month water containing unenriched uranium leaked from an underground pipe. In investigating that leak, authorities found levels of radioactivity that couldn’t be explained by the quantities involved. (Cue scary music.) So what better time to announce the planned construction of France’s second European Pressurized Reactor (EPR), as […]
In case you hadn’t heard, that unofficial meeting between a visiting delegation of Syrian officials in Washington in a “private capacity” and a State Department “player to be named later” was abruptly cancelled yesterday. State Dept. spokesman Gonzalo Gallegos wins today’s Diplospeak Quote of the Day award with his explanation for why: My understanding at that time was that they had requested it, that we had looked at the meeting, and we were going to meet with them. Today, conditions have changed, and we’re not going to be meeting with them. Gonzalo will also be the second addition to my […]
In the midst of this article on France’s efforts to improve security and defense ties with Turkey (damaged by France’s opposition to Turkey’s EU bid, and by a law passed by the French legislature recognizing the Armenian genocide), the question arises of whether or not France’s bid to reintegrate NATO’s command structure would need approval. The article cites unconfirmed reports in the Turkish press that Ankara was using the threat of a veto for some leverage on EU accession, while the French denied both that approval would be necessary or that Turkey would be interested in opposing the reintegration. Not […]
Yesterday Marc Lynch over at Abu Aardvark advised us to “keep an eye on those kurds” (sic), who walked out on the Iraqi parliament’s vote on the provincial elections law to protest the provisions dealing with the status of Kirkuk, and the use of a secret ballot to pass them. Today comes news that the Iraqi presidential council, headed by President Jalal Talabani (himself a Kurd) but joined by Shiite Vice-President Adel Abdul-Mahdi, vetoed the law, sending it back to parliament for reworking (via today’s WPR Media Roundup). That effectively rules out any elections before next year, dealing a setback […]
If you’d like an alternative take on the latest round of Iran nuclear talks, try Flynt Leverett’s and Hillary Mann Leverett’s corrective in the National Interest. They condemn the rush to impose what they call an artificial deadline on Iran to accept our pre-conditions, even if those are more generously defined. Instead, they put the negotiations in the context of consistent Iranian efforts to use issue-specific cooperation as a way to engage a “comprehensive diplomatic agenda,” efforts consistently disappointed by this and previous American administrations. The Leverett’s suggest that recent shifts in American posture have created a receptive climate in […]
In the latest indication that the Bush administration has abandoned its “see none, hear none” approach to the Axis of Evil, a delegation of Syrian diplomats will meet with a State Department official in Washington later this week. A State Department spokesman specified that the group, in town for a Brookings Institution event, would be visiting in their “private capacity,” which means that the meeting is not an “official” one. But since the group initially included the Syrian’s lead negotiator in their mediated peace talks with Israel (he’s reportedly since been kept back in Damascus), that’s just diplospeak for, “Whatever […]
Turkish FM Ali Babacan was in New York lobbying for Turkey’s candidacy for a rotating seat on the UN Security Council. There are a lot of compelling arguments in favor of it, and I think Sedat Laçiner, a Turkish foreign policy expert quoted by Today’s Zaman, sums them up pretty well: “The number of Turkey’s friends is increasing. Countries that don’t love each other love Turkey,” Laçiner said, referring to ongoing Turkish mediation between Syria and Israel as an example of how enemy countries can both have good ties with Ankara. “Turkey has a special talent in this respect. The […]
Just a few days after rumors spread of Russia basing its strategic bombers in Cuba, Hugo Chavez shows up in Moscow trumpeting a strategic partnership to defend against American aggression, while his “friend Vladimir” declares that he wants to strengthen the two countries’ “military and technical” ties. But behind the headlines, the Russians are more motivated to develop an energy partnership with Venezuela, as is demonstrated by the fact that Chavez left Moscow with a handful of energy deals, but no military hardware. The weapons purchases are still in the works, but according to this Kommersant article, Chavez’s ties to […]
It looks like Indian PM Manmohan Singh has handily won today’s “trust vote” in the Indian Parliament. The vote was triggered by the departure from the governing coalition of the Left Party following Singh’s decision to present the U.S.-India Nuclear deal to the IAEA for its seal of approval. Singh now has a governing majority, but no guarantee that the IAEA and Nuclear Suppliers Group will sign off on the deal in time for it to be ratified by the U.S. Congress. Nevertheless, the vote does clear him to pursue those groups’ approval, which will be essential for any subsequent […]
In an interview with the Council on Foreign Relations, Iran hand Gary Sick discusses one potential Iranian response to an Israeli airstrike that Sam Roggeveen forgot to mention yesterday: . . .Clearly, one quick strike like the bombing of the Osirak nuclear reactor in Iraq in 1981 cannot do it. Iran has spread these [sites] around over a wide range of territory and buried many of them deep underground. . . And it’s hard to believe that Israel could carry out multiple bombing raids, even if they decided to try to do it without U.S. assistance. Then what do you […]
Some more detail from Elaine Sciolino of the NY Times on a “None Paper” (sic) that Iran distributed at Saturday’s talks in Geneva. (A .pdf version of the document is available here.) The paper’s amateurish style is apparently in stark contrast with Iran’s previous negotiating team (made up of career diplomats), and according to Sciolino’s sources, even the Russian deputy foreign minister couldn’t suppress a laugh upon reading it. The lack of seriousness in Iran’s position, which did not specifically address the P5+1’s initial “freeze for freeze” proposal, is obviously the talking point upon which the EU3 and the U.S. […]
I’m not going to wade too deep into the arrest of Bosnian Serb war criminal Radovan Karadzic, because there’s not a whole lot of nuance here. The short version is that this is very good news. More broadly, it vindicates in many ways the sheer weight of the EU’s soft power, as the new Serbian government’s desire to join is by all accounts what played the decisive role in the long-delayed effort to bring Karadzic to justice. Notwithstanding all of the Union’s institutional drawbacks and dysfunction, membership has its privileges. In that, the EU reminds me of a Dallas movie […]
So what would Iran actually do to respond to an Israeli military strike on its nuclear facilities? Sam Roggeveen over at The Interpreter gives the range of possible responses the once-over and comes away unimpressed. He makes a pretty compelling case. If someone had said that Israel would carry out an airstrike on Syria that not only had no regional repercussions, but were followed less than a year afterwards by backchannel peace negotiations between the two countries, most people would have thought he was crazy. So maybe Sam’s got a point.