Obama’s First 100 Days — Stephen Schlesinger: The UN
Stephen Schlesinger’s article “A New Administration and the UN” appeared in the winter “Dear Mr. President” issue of World Policy Journal. His grade for the new administration’s first 100 days follows this update.
President Barack Obama has dramatically re-established American relations with the United Nations in his first 100 days. His acclaimed multilateral outlook on international relations, his willingness to listen to foreign leaders rather than lecture them, his admission of “mistakes” by the United States on issues like torture, the economy, the Iraq war, and other global matters—and his general popularity around the world—have created an entirely new atmosphere in the United Nations building.
In the seventh week of his administration, he held his first meeting with Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon at the White House, a cordial and highly supportive event. Then, with several specific steps, Obama made crystal clear his re-engagement with the world body:
First, he approved the United States joining the newly created Human Rights Council rather than staying outside of it, in order to reorient the body toward its goal of enforcing the essential civil rights for citizens in all states.
Second, he asked Congress to appropriate $836 million to pay up our peacekeeping obligations which we have shamefully refused in the past to fulfill.
Third, he made a new commitment to helping stop climate change—a key issue at the UN these days.
Fourth, he reversed by executive order the Bush administration policy of denying U.S. funds to family planning programs at the UN’s Population Fund.
Fifth, he renewed and expanded funding to both UNICEF and UNESCO, both organizations long neglected by Washington in the past.
Sixth, he publicly endorsed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, among other crucial UN treaties, and pledged to participate vigorously in the UN’s upcoming 2010 review conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the latter of which the previous administration disparaged.
Seventh, he publicly embraced the Millennium Development goals, which Bush viewed with disdain.
Obama, however, did duck out of the Durban conference on racism and he has so far not said much about the International Criminal Court. Additionally, he has not been heavily proactive on the Darfur crisis, as of yet.
But, in my view, for his first 100 days, he deserves a grade of…
Jonathan Power: Can Obama Better Ronald Reagan on Nuclear Arms Control?
A 50 percent reduction in the nuclear arsenal of Russia and the United States was proposed by President Barack Obama this past weekend. And President Dmitry Medvedev seems to be receptive. What neither have mentioned is that we have been here before—with presidents Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev.
But, in a bit of infrequently told history, this earlier attempt at a grand disarmament was undermined by a key adviser on the American side and short sightedness on the Soviet side.
Although Russia and the United States keep their missiles on hair-trigger alert, there is almost nobody in the higher reaches of policy making on either side who thinks they would ever be used. Indeed, this has been so for years.
Doubts about the reasoning for the vast number of nuclear weapons in America’s stockpile go back a long way. President Dwight Eisenhower, the former World War II commander in chief, observed that, “military statements of nuclear weapons requirements were grossly inflated.”
Indeed, nuclear stockpiles seem to have always been governed by a calculus of confusion. Robert McNamara, the former defense secretary for Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, once replied to a question posed by Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Richard Rhodes (whose latest book, Arsenal of Folly, is the best single read on the subject) by saying, “Each individual decision to increase the number of nuclear weapons seemed rational at the time but the result was insane.”
Even Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, certainly no dove, while negotiating with the Soviet Union in Moscow, said at a press conference, “One of the questions we have to ask ourselves as a country is what in the name of God is nuclear strategic superiority?”
Ronald Reagan was the first American president to break through the murk and horror of the nuclear weapons debate. Many have judged Reagan as a bit of a simpleton. But now, thanks in part to good biographies on him, we may have a more nuanced view. Yes, he wasn’t an intellectual, but his political instincts were fine-tuned and turned out to be right more often than the counsels of his experts. Within his administration it was he who felt the strongest about nuclear abolition. Jack Matlock, Jr., who served as Reagan’s principal adviser on Soviet affairs, said in one interview that he “suspected that Reagan would not retaliate in the event of a Soviet nuclear attack.”
Samuel F. Mueller: Turkey’s Disappearing Opposition
Since the religiously-rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP) came to power in Turkey in 2002, Islam and secularism have become particularly controversial topics.
Political and academic debates are now more often than not framed by questions such as whether a religiously-based party can seriously support a secular democratic order, or even whether Turkey might become a second Iran.
Questions about the relationship between religion and politics and the ideology of the AKP are surely important, and many AKP policies must be seriously critiqued. However, these debates do not address the key issues in Turkey’s democratization process.
The basic and most crucial problem for Turkish democracy is not political Islam, but the lack of a serious political opposition—a must for every democracy. The recent local elections on March 29 brought no substantial change to the dangerously unsettled balance of power.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, head of the AKP, is a goal-oriented pragmatist who knows how to use religious political language to reach the masses. Islamic symbolism frames Erdogan’s politics—he abstains from alcoholic beverages at state receptions, for example.
However, Erdogan’s strength is that he has long been aware that while populist gestures win plaudits, sound policies win votes. When Erdogan was mayor of Istanbul in the mid 1990s his popular support rested not on his attempts to introduce, for example, gender-separated seating arrangements in public transit, but on his efforts to improve urban infrastructure.
Today, the AKP scores points with a neo-liberal economic approach and international-focused policies. Islam is thereby a means of communication and an articulation of specific political interests. This religious symbolic frame should not be confused with an attempt to turn Turkey in a theocracy. An Islamic state in Turkey is not a political goal in itself and therefore not something we need to worry about—at least not now.
However, the balance of political power is a major concern. The AKP has become so powerful that we must worry about the democratic culture of Turkey’s party system. Currently, the AKP holds 338 of the 545 seats in parliament. The Republican People’s Party (CHP) holds the second biggest bloc, though only 98 seats. On the local level, though the AKP lost some votes in the recent elections to the CHP and missed its target of 47 percent, it remains basically unchallenged.
Apart from the CHP, there is no one else to challenge the AKP’s predominance. But why does the main opposition party lack any real chance at unseating the reigning power?
Peter Kang: North Korea’s Missile Launch—Is Obama Repeating Bush’s Failed Policy?
The legacy of policy missteps on Pyongyang is long and tortured. Behind all the disturbing failures of President Bush’s North Korea policy—including the inability to prevent North Korea’s nuclear test in 2006 and the removal of Pyongyang from the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism in 2008—run two themes that President Obama would do well to avoid.
Bush turned to engagement policy based on the false expectation that North Korea would eventually give up its nuclear program and weapons, when, in fact, Pyongyang was using negotiations as a deception strategy to gain time to pursue its nuclear ambitions. In the meantime, it extracted economic gains and other benefits, such as a peace treaty, to make the dictatorship more secure.
Second, despite his occasional use of tough verbiage, Bush was never able to translate his words into effective action due to fear of the North’s constant threats of war. Whenever Bush tried to exert serious (non-military) pressure, Pyongyang blocked it by invoking military brinkmanship, often calling Bush’s attempt a “declaration of war.” Each time Bush retreated, Washington encouraged the North to repeat the same scare tactics.
These two strategies—a diplomatic delaying game and military brinkmanship—have been the backbone of North Korea’s success in manipulating and weakening the U.S. government’s efforts.
In what promises to be the first major test of the Obama administration, Pyongyang is gearing up for the test launch of a long-range rocket scheduled to go off sometime between April 4 and April 8. Although Pyongyang claims it is a communications satellite, both U.S. and South Korean intelligence sources believe it to be a disguised test launch of the Taepodong-2 ballistic missile that could potentially reach Alaska, Hawaii, and the west coast of the United States.
The action, if successful, would be a crucial milestone for North Korea’s military advancement and substantially raise its offensive capability, its proliferation potential, and its leverage for future dealings with adversaries. The United States is very anxious to avert this provocative action, as are South Korea and Japan. But President Obama has said very little about North Korea, in relation to the missile launch or anything else. In fact, other top officials in the administration have not been of much help either.
Secretary of State Clinton initially described the North’s missile test as “unhelpful.” She later said the rocket launch would “violate the UN Security Council resolution 1718,” but failed to specify how the North will be penalized if it violates the decree. Asked what the United States might do if the missile launch takes place, she said, “I don’t want to talk about the hypothetical. We are still working to try to dissuade the North Koreans.”
The Obama administration’s special envoy for North Korea, Stephen Bosworth, has used equally hollow turns of phrase: “We hope North Korea refrains from the provocation of firing a missile, and…if that [launch] does happen, then obviously we’ll have to…decide how to respond.”
Only belatedly, in late March, after the rocket was mounted on the launch pad, did representatives of the United States, South Korea, and Japan get together to issue a warning about bringing the matter to the UN Security Council. Yet they refrained from mentioning any strong, specific penalties.
Pyongyang, of course, quickly reacted by warning that a UN action to punish North Korea will be regarded as a “blatant hostile act.” Further, they warned, should Washington bring the matter to the Security Council it will cause the Six-Party Talks to break down, critically hurting the process of denuclearization. A pro-Pyongyang newspaper in Japan hinted that North Korea might resort to a second nuclear test in response to a UN sanction.
Meanwhile, the U.S. and Japanese defense departments have been talking about plans to shoot down the missile. But, when there’s still time to issue a stiff warning in order to block the missile launch, planning such an attack—however defensive in nature—is more likely to provoke and encourage North Korea to carry out the test. (Fortunately, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has backed away in recent interviews from U.S. plans to shoot down the North Korean missile.)
The stakes are high: a missile launch would highlight Washington’s weakness. The Obama administration seems unwilling to exert strong pressure on Pyongyang against the launch because of its desire to continue the nuclear talks (with the lingering expectation that negotiation might succeed somehow) and perhaps also due to fear of violent reactions from the North Korean regime. These are the exactly same reasons that informed the failed policies of the Bush era.
In the long run, Obama’s approach, which emphasizes more engagement with, and acceptance of, Pyongyang than the policies pursued by Bush, is likely to grant even more precious time to the North.
In the end, the Obama administration may be writing the final chapter of America’s failed North Korea policy by bringing about a devastating U.S. surrender: abandoning the denuclearization effort, accepting the monstrous tyranny as a member of the world nuclear club, and opening the gateway for the North to take over the South.
Jonathan Power: To Help Afghan War, Talk to India
Today Pakistan is probably the most dangerous country in the world. But it is India, not Afghanistan and Al Qaeda, that now bears much of the responsibility for this and arguably is the country that holds the key to the beginnings of a solution.
More the pity that President Barack Obama backed straight down when India protested at the mandate he wanted for his sharpshooting diplomat, Richard Holbrooke—including India, as well as Pakistan and Afghanistan. So Holbrooke is reduced to dealing with only two sides of the triangle of madness.
Of course, it is an over simplification to finger India first. It ignores history, not least the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, which left behind a raging civil war in Afghanistan, enabling the rise of the dogmatic Taliban, who in turn gave a home to Osama bin Laden.
In 1986 I visited Peshawar, capital of the North-West Frontier Province in northern Pakistan, at the eastern end of the Khyber pass. The town, even then, was full of armed encampments in its outer suburbs settled by Pashtun chiefs who had escaped from the Afghanistan war with their people, building huge, well-defended compounds to house the refugees from their kin group. It was clear then that the hospitality Pakistan felt it had to extend to the displaced Pashtuns would cause trouble up ahead. Two million such refugees bred violence and extremism.
Jodi Liss: China, Rio Tinto, and The Future of Diplomacy
“Help is the sunny side of control.”—Saying among social workers
Consider the following bit of news: two weeks ago, Chinalco, a Chinese state-owned aluminum mining company, invested more than $19 billion in faltering international mining giant, Rio Tinto.
They paid $124 million above market value for what they got.
While everyone knows oil has cratered to less than $40/bbl, mining of all sorts is equally calamitous. Copper, for example, has plunged 60 percent. Mining giants like southern Africa’s Anglo American, Freeport McMoRan and BHP Billiton, the world’s largest mining company, have laid off tens of thousands of workers and closed mines everywhere. Rio Tinto, Fortescue, and others are desperately seeking investors to stay afloat. The investor they see on the horizon is China.
And that is just the private sector. In the past week, China offered cash-strapped Russian oil company Rosneft and Russian pipeline giant Transneft $25 billion in exchange for 15 million tons of oil a year for twenty years. China has lent Brazil’s state-owned oil company Petrobras $10 billion in exchange for a long-term oil relationship. Venezuela has borrowed another $6 billion from them.
Most people interested in geopolitics prefer to spend countless hours analyzing the power politics and security aspects of it all. But since the end of the Cold War, geopolitics has changed radically because the relationship in the developing world between money and power has profoundly changed. No longer can developing countries line up for cash behind a chosen sponsor, the United States or Russia. In many places, the economy is heavily dependent on commodities. He who owns the commodity (the money) has the political power; the commodity is the source of the power. The two are inextricably intertwined.
Jonathan Power: The Great Khan of Pakistan’s Nukes?
Whenever I introduced Munir Khan to a friend I would say light-heartedly “and this is the father of Pakistan’s nuclear bomb”—just to enjoy the pleasure of watching the reaction. Khan himself would give a self-deprecatory smile. As Hans Blix, the former director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the world’s nuclear policeman, once put it to me, Khan was “a cheerful soul.”
The world has been told over and over again that the father of the Pakistani bomb was A. Q. (Qadeer) Khan, the famous metallurgist. But he, in fact, ran only one part of the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission, which Munir Khan chaired. More correctly, we have been told that Qadeer Khan secretly set up an international network to supply the likes of North Korea, Libya, and Iran with blueprints and materials for the manufacture of their own nuclear weapons. This was done for his private profit.
Just over one week ago, after five years of house arrest for this offense, Pakistan’s top court restored his freedom.
Khan and Khan. Too many got the two men muddled. This worked in Qadeer’s favor. He was a man who had no compunction about claiming every bit of credit for himself and who loved to woo gullible journalists and parliamentarians with his tales of achievement. No wonder that when he was finally exposed as a nuclear racketeer five years ago, President Pervez Musharraf couldn’t have him formally arrested and tried. Musharraf, in fact, pardoned him for his alleged crimes. Qadeer—a popular icon in Pakistan—was untouchable.
Shaun Randol: And the Ox it Rode in On — China’s Charter 08
This year is shaping up to be a remarkable one for the Middle Kingdom. Protests and civil unrest are on the rise, and chatter surrounding the pro-democracy petition called “Charter 08” is making waves across the country. What began with 303 signatories, many of whom are the usual suspects (i.e. human rights lawyers, professors, etc.), and who promptly received complementary state surveillance for participating—has grown into a percolating movement bringing more and more “everyday” citizens into the fold.
At just over 8,100 signatures (and counting), Charter 08 appears to be the first promising movement in support of democratic reform since the tragic Tiananmen Square Massacre on June 4, 1989. Released on the sixtieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in December 2008, Charter 08 calls for rewriting the Chinese constitution to allow for more democratic freedoms and an end to one-party rule. The document extols the value of freedom, announcing:
“Freedom is at the core of universal human values. Freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, freedom of association, freedom in where to live, and the freedoms to strike, to demonstrate, and to protest, among others, are the forms that freedom takes. Without freedom, China will always remain far from civilized ideals.”
Charter 08 warns that if fundamental changes are not installed system-wide, violent and militant unrest cannot be stopped.
Since China opened its doors to the wider world, Beijing has maintained a shaky agreement with its citizens, exchanging economic freedom for political liberty: feel free to rise as high and as far as you want economically—but if you complain about a lack of political rights, consider the deal kaput.
Lately, however, Beijing has been unable to promise the stable economic environment that allows for unfettered economic freedom. Whereas recent U.S. jobless claims are reported in tens of thousands, in China they come in millions.
Chinese economic growth shrank to 6.8 percent in the last quarter of 2008, the slowest pace in seven years and far below the estimated 8 percent needed to sustain new entries into the employment ranks and stave off mass unrest. Some economists predict China’s growth rate will contract even further, down to somewhere between 3 percent and 5 percent, in 2009. According Beijing, exports plummeted 17.5 percent in January, compared to the same time last year (imports fell off a precipice, dropping by a whopping 43 percent over the same time).
The official urban unemployment rate stands at 4.2 percent, up from 4 percent last year (Beijing does not keep official statistics of the rural jobless). But currently, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences estimates the nationwide unemployment rate to be around 9.5 percent—a number expected to rise through the year. Upwards of 15 million workers may join the ranks of the unemployed this year.
In just the past few months, we have witnessed a widespread reverse internal migration—poor urban workers are now returning, by the millions, back to the rural lands from whence they came.
