Amid the blizzard of coverage following the bombing on Benazir Bhutto’s convoy in Karachi last week, two pieces that are worth a look:
First, for a big picture view of worries in the Beltway about Pakistan, see this excellent news analysis article from yesterday’s New York Times. While David Sanger and David Rohde found the usual expressions of confidence in Musharraf from White House officials, other “current and former officials” warned that US leverage over Pakistan is now limited – and Musharraf himself weakened, following failed attempts at conciliation in tribal areas, ineffectual military action against the Taliban and Al Qaeda
Almost every major terror attack since 9/11 has been traced back to Pakistani territory, leading many who work in intelligence to believe that Pakistan, not Iraq, is the place Mr. Bush should consider the “central front” in the battle against terrorism. It was also the source of the greatest leakage of nuclear arms technology in modern times.
After years of compromises and trade-offs, there are questions inside and outside the administration about whether Mr. Bush has invested too heavily in a single Pakistani leader, an over-reliance that may have prevented the United States from examining other long-term strategies. “It never stitched together,” said Daniel Markey, a State Department official who dealt with Pakistan until he left government earlier this year. “At every step, there was more risk aversion — because of the risk of rocking the boat seemed so high — than there was a real strategic vision.”
[snip]
“We have to remember that the U.S. doesn’t have very much capability to affect internal developments” in Pakistan, said Robert D. Blackwill, the former American ambassador to India and a senior official in the National Security Council during Mr. Bush’s first term.
“What I am struck by are the trends we see today: the North-West Province is ungovernable and a sanctuary for terrorists,” he said. “The politics are fractured and deeply unstable, Musharraf is weaker, and the army is uncertain which way it will go.”
Second, see this Sunday Times article by Christina Lamb, who was on Bhutto’s bus when the bomb went off (she knows Bhutto and various of her aides from way back when, and they invited her on board for the procession after spotting her in the crowd of journos at the airport). Her account of the bomb blast is predictably harrowing, but what’s especially noteworth here is her access to Bhutto’s team, and Bhutto herself, both before and immediately after the blast. For instance:
…this was a US-brokered deal that had involved frequent meetings with Richard Boucher, the US assistant secretary of state for south and central Asia, as well as 2am phone calls from Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state, to break deadlocks.
Britain had also played its part, and Jack Straw was credited with bringing Bhutto in from the cold when he was foreign secretary.
“As long as Washington and Whitehall are wedded to keeping Musharraf in power for their war on terror, she had no choice but to come back like this,” said [Bhutto’s security adviser] Malik, who led the negotiations on her side.
Much sniggering on the US right as shock jock Rush Limbaugh executes an expert piece of political aikido on his political opponents. The story goes like this:
After Limbaugh referred to Iraq war veterans criticial of the war as “phony soldiers”, 41 infuriated Democrat Senators sent him a stiff letter of complaint. “Although Americans of good will debate the merits of this war, we can all agree that those who serve with such great courage deserve our deepest respect and gratitude. That is why Rush Limbaugh’s recent characterization of troops who oppose the war as ‘phony soldiers’ is such an outrage,” they thundered.
1-0 to the Dems? Not so fast! Undeterred, Limbaugh announced on his show that he was going to auction the letter for charity on eBay. And, he’d match the price dollar for dollar. So – what did it fetch? A thousand? Ten thousand? A hundred thousand? Not even close. Here it is: two point one million dollars – the largest amount ever paid on eBay for an item being sold for charity. Ouch – 2-1 to Limbaugh!
And where will be money be going? To the Marine Corps – Law Enforcement Foundation Inc. (of which he’s a director), to give scholarships and aid to families of marines and cops killed in the line of duty. 3-1! (Limbaugh: “this is more fun than I’ve ever had in my life”.)
But it gets worse for the Democrats. In a statement of the floor of the Senate on Friday, Democrat majority leader Harry Reid actually praised the auction (choking all the way, presumably): “I strongly believe that when we can put our differences aside, even Harry Reid and Rush Limbaugh, we should do that and try to accomplish good things for the American people”. 10-1!
What can one say to a drubbing like that? “The horror, the horror…”
Who’d have thought it? UNCLOS – the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, hardly the sexiest multilateral environmental agreement around – has become a cause celebre for both the the progressive end of the US blogosphere and the Pentagon. What gives?
Here’s the story so far. UNCLOS, which covers issues like defining maritime zones, protecting the marine environment and preserving freedom of navigation, came into force in 1994. The US has signed it, but the Senate – where a band of diehards led by Sen. James Inhofe wants to block the treaty- has not yet ratified it. So far, so predictable.
But now the fun starts. First, why is the Administration – including the Pentagon, and indeed the President himself – telling the Senate to get a move on and ratify? Since when does the Pentagon care about this sort of thing? And second, why is the progressive blogosphere right alongside them in this endeavour?
Let’s take the bloggers first. They’re interested in the treaty not because of its environmental benefits (though those are fine by them too), but primarily because they think they can use it tactically to marginalise their enemies. Here’s Scott Paul at the Washington Note:
…the opposition to the Bolton nomination was a battle well chosen. It was very important on its merits: it successfully weakened and then partially removed an extremely negative element from the administration. But just as important was its execution. Thanks to some smart group decisions on strategy and message, the Bolton campaign is making current battles against pugnacious nationalism more winnable than before.
The effort to ratify the Law of the Sea convention is a campaign that matters for similar reasons. Yes, the Law of the Sea is compelling on its face. The armed forces rightly wants its navigational and overflight rights protected. Environmentalists rightly want the U.S. to join and add to global ocean stewardship efforts. And U.S. companies should have a chance to compete with foreign firms for offshore resources…
All of these are good reasons for the U.S. to accede to the Law of the Sea, but none of them alone or even in combination would necessarily make it important for the progressive agenda. So why is the Law of the Sea significant? Simple: our absence from the Law of the Sea is the outer wall of Fortress America. Winning the ratification battle would seriously de-fang the same pugnacious nationalists who are on the opposite side of almost every important foreign policy issue facing the U.S.
Without being able to pass the very basic Law of the Sea treaty, there is no way we will ever get a treaty through on global warming, create the space to internationalize the Iraq mess, or work with allies abroad in any coherent manner. Fortunately, this is extremely winnable. All it will take is some floor time from Reid, and we’ll win, embarrass, and marginalize the hyper-nationalists.
Note also the messaging strategies that progressive bloggers are using. Take this post by Taylor Marsh, for instance, which employs the derisive term “black helicopter crowd” no less than seven times to describe Sen. Inhofe’s band. It’s a pretty smart marginalising strategy, especially given that the national security tribe want the treaty.
Which leads us on to our other question. What does the Pentagon care? And what makes UNCLOS such a big deal that President Bush himself should endorse it? Essentially, the answer has to with securing access to international waters for the US Navy. The military worries that without being a party to the treaty, states might arbitrarily restrict access to US ships.
Well, fine, but that doesn’t altogether explain the urgency. This is hardly a new concern, is it? Well, actually, it is: step forward the emerging spat over the Northwest Passage, which in a warmer world becomes navigable by normal ships rather than just icebreakers. Canadian PM Stephen Harper is trying to make the case that the Passage lies within Canada’s waters – and hence that Canada gets to choose who sails through it. And if the US ratifies UNCLOS, it gains an important new tool in its kit for contesting Canada’s claim. QED!
So that, my friends, is the story of how the Pentagon, the netroots, President Bush and the Natural Resources Defense Council all got into bed with each other. Say what you like about climate change, it sure can trigger some curious political realignments…
The BBC’s Roger Harrabin has an alarming story this morning, picking up on a new 10 year long study from the University of East Anglia. The headline: the amount of carbon dioxide soaked up by the world’s oceans halved between the mid 1990s and 2000-2005.
This is really bad news. Prior to the period covered by this study, we were able to rely on natural carbon ‘sinks’ like the ocean or forest cover soaking up much of the CO2 that we emitted through burning fossil fuels – about 60 per cent of it. If, as the UEA study suggests, natural sinks are now becoming saturated, then that means we have much less of a buffer – and that in order to keep CO2 levels beneath any given ceiling, we’ll have to reduce emissions by a lot more than would have been the case if sinks were still working properly. Everything just becomes more urgent, in other words.
Unfortunately, the news is not a total surprise either. Until a few years back, CO2 levels in the atmosphere were increasing at a rate of about 1 part per million each year (CO2 concentration levels were 280ppm in pre-industrial times, and are 384ppm today). Now, that rate of increase is somewhere between 1.5 and 2.5ppm a year. While global emissions have increased a lot over the last decade, not least because of rapid growth in emerging economies like China, there’s no way that emissions growth alone could have accounted for such a steep increase in the rate of concentration growth. Sink failure looked like the obvious culprit – and the UEA study provides evidence for just that conclusion.
