Americas
As Iraqi election officials tally the votes from Sunday’s parliamentary elections, the Obama administration faces some difficult choices in the weeks and months ahead. Despite the apparent success of the election and the limited violence associated with it, there is the potential for uncertainty in the coming months as Iraqi parties wrangle for control of a new governing coalition.
The Obama administration appears tempted to claim political credit and move on. Last month, Vice President Biden said that Iraq “could be one of the great achievements of this administration.” President Obama, in his Rose Garden remarks after voting ended on Sunday, said that “the future of Iraq belongs to the people of Iraq,” and repeated previous promises that by the end of next year, all U.S. troops would be out of Iraq.
This comes as some question whether the United States should renegotiate, or at a minimum extend, the 2008 Status of Forces Agreement that mandated this U.S. withdrawal from the country and instead allow for a continued U.S. presence in Iraq beyond 2011. There has been a marked improvement in the security situation in Iraq, but Iraq’s future remains uncertain, especially if the U.S. moves out of Iraq too quickly. It will be interesting to see whether the administration is willing to take such action if conditions on the ground deteriorate and if so, how it will reconcile this real world need with the desires of a Democratic base that was promised an end to the war in Iraq by a candidate who ran touting his opposition to the war.
In Sunday’s Washington Post, there was a hint that even if Iraq does not progress as quickly as many hope, the administration may not display the political courage it showed last year when President Obama decided to send additional troops to Afghanistan, contravening the wishes of his base. Karen DeYoung, quoting an unidentified senior administration official, wrote:
"If Iraq were to fall backward into some kind of chaos," the administration official said, "in the first instance it would be bad for the Iraqis." "Given the huge investment that was made in troops and treasure over the years, I imagine some would say we need to do something to prevent it," he said, adding that there are contingency plans for slowing or reconfiguring the U.S. withdrawal. "But I don't think there'd be any great appetite for going back in."
This is a troubling sign that “one of the great achievements of this administration” might be squandered if the going gets tough in Iraq. This seems shortsighted given the thousands of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars the United States has sacrificed in setting Iraq on the path to a secure democratic future. Even setting aside the scale of the U.S. commitment thus far, the United States has a strategic interest in ensuring Iraq’s success and in continuing to remain involved in Iraq’s security.
If President Obama and Vice President Biden are serious about preserving their supposed accomplishment, the Obama administration should begin to lay the groundwork for an extended U.S. presence in Iraq, rather than continuing to focus on a withdrawal timeline driven solely by politics.
Willy Lam writes: China's ongoing tussles with the United States over issues including Taiwan, Tibet and trade are in a sense nothing new. For more than two decades, Sino-US relations have periodically gone through rough patches over these and related causes of disagreement. What is new is China's much-enhanced global clout in the wake of the world financial crisis, which is coupled with a marked decline in America's hard and soft power. More importantly, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leadership is gunning for a paradigm shift in geopolitics, namely, new rules of the game whereby the fast-rising quasi-superpower will be playing a more forceful role. In particular, Beijing has served notice that it won't be shy about playing hardball to safeguard what it claims to be "core national interests". – Jamestown Foundation
Jackson Diehl writes: Over the years U.S. envoys from Baker to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice have learned that the trick is to sidestep such broadsides, expressing disapproval without allowing the toxic settlement issue to take center stage and derail peace negotiations. After all, most Israeli settlement announcements, including this one, are pure symbolism: No ground will be broken anytime soon, and even if the homes are eventually constructed they won’t stand in the way of a Palestinian state. By that measure, Biden flunked. Interrupted in the middle of what was supposed to be a day of love-bombing Israelis with speeches and other demonstrations of U.S. support, he kept Netanyahu and his wife waiting for 90 minutes into a scheduled dinner before issuing a statement that harshly criticized the interior ministry’s announcement. Biden chose to use a word -- “condemn” -- that is very rarely employed in U.S. statements about Israel, even though he and his staff knew that Netanyahu himself had been blindsided by the settlement announcement. So much for love bombs. - PostPartisan
Arab League chief Amr Moussa said on Wednesday that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas had told him he would not enter indirect talks with Israel, only days after the Palestinian side had agreed to the contacts. The about-turn puts on hold U.S. efforts to bring together Israel and the Palestinians in so-called proximity talks. The proposed talks, the Palestinian chief negotiator said this week, were a "last chance" to keep the Middle East peace process alive. The decision came after Israel announced on Tuesday it would erect 1,600 settler homes in an area of the occupied West Bank it annexed to Jerusalem. Abbas had only agreed to the talks on condition that Israel imposed a Jewish settlement freeze. "The Palestinian president decided he will not enter into those negotiations now ... the Palestinian side is not ready to negotiate under the present circumstances," Moussa told a news conference following an urgent meeting of Arab delegates at the Arab League headquarters in Cairo. - Reuters
Haitian President René Préval pleaded Wednesday for U.S. help plugging a multimillion-dollar budget gap caused by the Jan. 12 earthquake but said he got a cool reception from congressional leaders wary of handing over cash. Préval, who arrived in Washington on Monday night, said that his government's revenue plunged 80 percent after the earthquake and that the losses would blast a $350 million hole in Haiti's budget this year. "We are facing some urgency now. We are 1 million people living in the street," Préval told reporters and editors at The Washington Post. The earthquake was the worst natural disaster in the Western Hemisphere in decades, killing more than 230,000 people and destroying much of Port-au-Prince, Haiti's capital and home to one-third of the country's 9 million people. The U.S. government has pledged more than $700 million in disaster aid, part of a flood of international assistance. Préval said little of that money has gone to his government. For years, the United States and many other donors have preferred to channel funds through the United Nations and other nongovernmental organizations, citing concerns about corruption and bureaucratic dysfunction. – Washington Post
Tom Donnelly writes: [T]he likelihood is that the NPR, maybe even more than the recently completed Quadrennial Defense Review, will be a wet noodle. The point of balance where the White House’s nuclear abolitionist sentiments meet the Pentagon’s practical assessment of strategic reality is predictable: it would be shocking if there were truly deep cuts below the 1500-warhead level forecast for the Geneva arms control talks with the Russians. And the media yammering about adjustments to the prospects of a “no first use” doctrine — a secondary issue and a policy that, even if embraced by the White House, could be reversed in the future — suggests an attempt to create a story where there isn’t much else to talk about. The larger story about the review, alas, is that, rather than looking at the very different and certainly more dangerous nuclear future in view, the administration is looking in the rearview mirror, looking at unresolved Cold-War business. – Center for Defense Studies
FPI Executive Director Jamie Fly writes: There is a powerful group of disarmament advocates in Washington that has been opposed to missile defense for years and now includes some of the chief proponents of the president’s disarmament agenda. Currently leading this group is missile-defense skeptic Joseph Cirincione of the Ploughshares Fund, which is bankrolling a media offensive using other organizations — such as the Glover Park Group, Think Progress, and the National Security Network — to advance the administration’s agenda on Capitol Hill and in the press. It seems that “getting to zero” isn’t cheap. Another prominent missile-defense skeptic is Philip E. Coyle, III, a former Pentagon official who has criticized just about every aspect of U.S. missile-defense policy over the last decade. Mr. Coyle has been nominated by President Obama to serve as associate director for National Security and International Affairs in the Office of Science and Technology Policy at the White House. – The Corner
Nearly fifty retired four- and three-star generals and flag officers called on Congress [yesterday] to fully fund President Obama’s International Affairs Budget request in a letter released by the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition’s (USGLC) National Security Advisory Council (NSAC). Among the letter’s signatories are the NSAC Co-Chairs, General Michael W. Hagee, USMC (Ret.), Commandant, U.S. Marine Corps (‘03-‘06); and Admiral James M. Loy, USCG (Ret.), Commandant, U.S. Coast Guard (‘98-’02). “Our military works hand-in-hand with diplomats and development experts in meeting the challenges and responsibilities we face around the world,” said General Hagee. “It is critical that our civilian agencies are properly resourced so they can lead key elements of our national security strategy.”…In the letter, the 48 military leaders say the International Affairs Budget is “a fundamental pillar of U.S. national security and foreign policy.” – US Global Leadership Coalition
James K. Glassman writes: Much of the public diplomacy effort in the past has focused on America's own image, on how Americans are seen by others. But today, in the war of ideas, our core task is not how to fix foreigners' perceptions of the United States but how to isolate and reduce the threat of violent extremism. In other words, it's not about us…A better way to communicate is through the generation of a wide and deep conversation. The U.S. role in that conversation is as facilitator and convener. We generate this conversation in the belief that our views will be heard -- even if U.S. government actors are not always the authors of those views. – Foreign Policy
The State Department plans to create seven new senior positions to ensure that a public-diplomacy perspective is always "incorporated" in policymaking around the world, as well as to respond quickly to negative coverage of the United States in foreign media. In an ambitious strategy that goes beyond any previous efforts to reach out to other countries, the Obama administration "seeks to become woven into the fabric of the daily lives of people" there, its top public-diplomacy official said Wednesday. "We must do a better job of listening, learn how people in other countries and cultures listen to us, understand their desires and aspirations, and provide them with information and services of value to them," said Judith A. McHale, undersecretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs. Ms. McHale presented the administration's strategy, which emerged from an eight-month review of the government's programs in the field, at a hearing of a Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee. She repeatedly used the word "narrative" to describe how the United States is being depicted overseas. "In this information-saturated age, we must do a better job of framing our national narrative. We must become more proactive and less reactive," she said. "Increasingly, our opponents and adversaries are developing sophisticated media strategies to spread disinformation and rumors, which ignite hatred and spur acts of terror and destruction. We must be ever-vigilant and respond rapidly to their attacks against us," she added. – Washington Times
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