Obama has made his first speech on climate, via video to US governors…
He had this message for those who will shortly be heading to Poznan:
Let me also say a special word to the delegates from around the world who will gather in Poland next month: your work is vital to the planet. While I won’t be President at the time of your meeting and while the United States has only one President at a time, I’ve asked Members of Congress who are attending the conference as observers to report back to me on what they learn there. Once I take office, you can be sure that the United States will once again engage vigorously in these negotiations and help lead the world toward a new era of global cooperation on climate change. Now’s the time to confront this challenge once and for all. Delay is no longer an option, Denial is no longer an acceptable response. The stakes are too high; the consequences too serious.
In the last couple of weeks there has been more attention heaped on little Bosnia than has been the case for years. First, Paddy Ashdown and Richard Hoolbroke argued in The Guardian that the situation was deteriorating rapidly. Immediately afterwards, William Hague travelled to Sarajevo to see things for himself followed by Foreign Secretary David Milliband.
Now the NATO Deputy Secretary-General is touring Bosnia-Herzegovina while the EU’s two foreign policy supremos -– Enlargement Commissioner Oli Rehn and Javier Solana, the foreign policy “czar” — have issued a document that underlines the bloc’s determination to “sort out the situation in Bosnia-Hercegovina,“ while double-hatting EU Miroslav Laj?ak as head of the European Commission office too.
Though this renwed attention on Bosnia is welcome, a new report (pdf) by the Democratization Policy Council makes clear more will have to be done to put Bosnia back on the right track.
The rumour that Barack Obama may appoint Hilary Clinton as his top diplomat has filled the Sunday papers. Personally, I think she would be a better Defense Secretary or a nominee to the Supreme Court, although she is bound to do well as Secretary of State too.
If she were given the State Department, she is more likely to follow Colin Powell’s management style -– which a place like Foggy Bottom sorely needs –- than emulate Condi Rice’s neglect of the department. At the same time, she is likely to play a key role in foreign policy, unlike General Powell, as President Obama is compelled to focus on the economy.
It is just that I think Senator Clinton would do better at the Pentagon. She supported the Iraq War, which will make her better at coaxing the military into a draw-down of forces and a shift of focus onto Afghanistan. Though the officers and soldiers will accept the democratic transition from Bush to Obama, a military that has gone to war twice, suffered both casualties and reputationally, and seen itself as the sharp end of U.S foreign policy for eight years will need to be helped to make the switch by someone they trust. With her hawkish views, time on the Senate Armed Services Committee, and work on Unified Action, a large U.S military exercise, the New York senator is well placed to take this role on.
The web-comic Shooting Wars, hit people’s screens in May 2006. It followed a young journalist named Jimmy Burns, who found himself video-blogging across the front lines of Iraq in the year 2011. At the time of its release, only a handful of people were ready to believe US forces would be in the country for much longer. In 2006 sectarian violence was spilling across streets and districts in Iraqi cities. Infighting, both between Iraqis and the coalition forces occurred with depressing regularity. Most notably, a British Brigadier attacked America’s ‘Hollywood’ generals in April, while later in the year, the Iraq Study Group “strongly urged” a large pull back of American troops in Iraq in a private note leaked to the media. The Independent’s Middle East journalist Patrick Cockburn summed up the hopelessness of the conflict at the end of 2006:
The sense of Iraqi identity may have been damaged beyond repair. But, more than most states, Iraq is dominated by its capital and Shia and Sunni will continue to fight to rule Baghdad until they either win or know there is no hope of victory.
In an email exchange with George Packer, David Kilcullen sounds a pessimistic note about prospects in Afghanistan. The situation is ‘dire’ but there’s a chance to win it around.
He’s even more downbeat about Pakistan:
Pakistan is extremely important; indeed, Pakistan (rather than either Afghanistan or Iraq) is the central front of world terrorism. The problem is time frame: it takes six to nine months to plan an attack of the scale of 9/11, so we need a “counter-sanctuary” strategy that delivers over that time frame, to prevent al Qaeda from using its Pakistan safe haven to mount another attack on the West. This means that building an effective nation-state in Pakistan, though an important and noble objective, cannot be our sole solution—nation-building in Pakistan is a twenty to thirty year project, minimum, if indeed it proves possible at all—i.e. nation-building doesn’t deliver in the time frame we need. So we need a short-term counter-sanctuary program, a long-term nation-building program to ultimately resolve the problem, and a medium-term “bridging” strategy (five to ten years)—counterinsurgency, in essence—that gets us from here to there. That middle part is the weakest link right now. All of that boils down to a policy of:
(a) encouraging and supporting Pakistan to step up and effectively govern its entire territory including the FATA [Federally Administered Tribal Areas], and to resolve the current Baluch and Pashtun insurgency, while
(b) assisting wherever possible in the long-term process of state-building and governance, but
(c) reserving the right to strike, as a last resort, at al Qaeda-linked terrorist targets that threaten the international community, if (and only if) they are operating in areas that lie outside effective Pakistani sovereignty.
