by David Steven | Jun 13, 2008 | Conflict and security, North America
I have nothing against John McCain. The man is a war hero. He has carved out a distinctive career as a political maverick. And his support for the surge in Iraq showed a willingness to stake out a position that, at the time, seemed politically suicidal.
But McCain keeps saying stupid things. In March, he wasn’t clear whether condoms prevent HIV (they don’t – but that’s another story), while ten days ago, when Obama finally slayed Grendel’s wife, he gave the worst speech I have ever seen. (Fox’s reaction was priceless, while you can watch McCain’s ‘lime green’ speech here if you missed it.)
This week, McCain has been in trouble for his assertion that bringing American troops home from Iraq was “not too important.” Here’s the full quote:
Interviewer: And a lot of people say the surge is now working.
McCain: Anybody who knows the facts on the ground will say that.
Interviewer: If it’s working Senator, do you now have a better estimate of when American forces can come home from Iraq?
McCain: No. (Shrug.) But that’s not too important. What’s important are the casualties in Iraq. Americans are in South Korea. Americans are in Japan. American troops are in Germany. That’s all fine.
All this echoes his remarks from January, when in response to a question, he advocated keeping troops in Iraq for 100 years if casualties could be eliminated – a way of controlling “a very volatile part of the world where Al Qaeda is training and equipping and recruiting and motivating people every single day.”
Again, McCain took US troop presence in Korea and Japan as yardstick for what the US could achieve in Iraq, echoing the Bush administration’s desire for a network of permanent bases in the country.
What’s the problem with this vision? Apart from its improbability, there’s the evidence that suggests that an enduring US presence would be highly likely to provoke an equally enduring campaign of suicide bombing.
Someone should therefore ask McCain – how many suicide attacks does he want?
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by Alex Evans | Jun 12, 2008 | Global system, Influence and networks
If you pick up this week’s Economist and leaf through the classified ads, you’ll find this one: a job advert for the position of UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. But just a second… surely the UN’s jobs website is here – rather than here, as linked to in the advert?
Ah, those cheeky scoundrels at Avaaz. The New York Times picks up the story:
The online advertisement that appeared Monday on The Economist magazine’s Web site seemed straightforward enough, seeking candidates for the position of United Nations high commissioner for human rights.
The advertisement, however, was a fake, a protest paid for by Avaaz.org, an online advocacy group. The organization is among a number of human rights organizations, United Nations diplomats and other watchdog groups critical of what they call the lack of transparency in selecting the next commissioner, one of the highest-profile and most delicate jobs in the United Nations hierarchy.
“It is a general problem that top appointments in the United Nations system are often made in back rooms behind closed doors where candidates who meet the lowest common denominator win,” said Ricken Patel, a Canadian who is the executive director of Avaaz.org. “A more open process requires bad candidates to face the test of public scrutiny.” The advertisement, which cost about $10,000, also ran in this week’s print edition of the magazine and carried a disclaimer identifying it as having been written and paid for by the group.
The UN isn’t happy:
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – The United Nations rejected on Tuesday as “absurd” and “offensive” allegations that it was being secretive in selecting a successor to its outspoken human rights chief, Louise Arbour.
by David Steven | Jun 12, 2008 | Global system, South Asia
Last week, I gave a talk at the Defence Academy on the new public diplomacy, focusing in particular on its implications for Afghanistan.
The full text is after the jump or read it as a pdf.
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by Daniel Korski | Jun 9, 2008 | Conflict and security, Influence and networks
Simon Jenkins has a good piece in the Sunday Times about the decreasing willingness to contemplate humanitarian intervention. The humanitarian creed, he says:
can no longer override considerations of state sovereignty and the natural caution of diplomats and generals.
While opposing every intervention known to man, Jenkins goes on to lament:
This noble cause has vanished in the wind. Almost before it is put to the test it is gone. The failure to intervene in Darfur and the deference shown to the dictators of Burma and Zimbabwe indicate a pendulum swinging fast in the other direction.
It is not hard to see why the negativity. The West has failed to intervene in Burma and ships are now being forced to return after waiting in vain. The EU military mission in Chad was originally conceived by French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner as a repeat of the U.S safe zone created in the Kurdish areas in Iraq. But instead of a mandate to go into Sudan, it has had to sit on the Chadian side of the border. Problems, of course, plague missions in Iraq and Afghanistan while Kosovo refuses to solve itself.
But Ivo Daalder and Robert Kagan argued against this pessimism in the Washington Post last year.
America has frequently used force on behalf of principles and tangible interests, and that is not likely to change.
The duo behind the League of Democracies, remind readers that the U.S has intervened between 1989 and 2001 with significant military force on eight occasions — once every 18 months. This interventionism, they go on, has been bipartisan — four interventions were launched by Republican administrations, four by Democratic administrations. The implication: interventionism is here to stay. It is as much a part of international politics as state sovereignty.
I have to say I agree with Daalder and Kagan. The West is only temporarily numbed by recent failures, as well as being logistically constrained because of troop overstretch. True, in Europe few governments seem willing to spend the necessary funds on the required military and civilian capability. True, the U.S electorate is in a particularly sour mood, to the extent that more Europeans now support democracy-promotion than Americans.
But this will pass. And once a new U.S president begins a draw-down in Iraq – a policy I expect from both Senators McCain and Obama – and surge in Afghanistan – again something to expect form both – the balance of sentiment will be re-calibrated in favour of intervention.
However, we need a re-definition of interventionism, a Chicago speech for the new post-Iraq millennium. And David Milliband is the man to give it, in my view.
by David Steven | Jun 7, 2008 | Conflict and security, South Asia
We all know the theory behind counter-insurgency – cultural sensitivity, force as a last resort, the patient exertion of influence etc – but the reality is often very different as this first-person account from Afghanistan shows.
Canadian columnist, Rosie Dimanno found herself stuck behind an American convoy that was blocking a road into Kabul. She was asked to help an ambulance that desperately needed to pass:
Hands in the air, dangling my media credentials from my fingers, I forced one foot in front of the other. Clearly the troops should be able to see I was Western, wearing jeans and a T-shirt, not hiding a weapon or a suicide vest.
Fifty metres away, the air gunner in the rear vehicle lowered his machine gun at me threateningly.
“Don’t shoot!” I croaked. “Just let the ambulance pass!”
The doors opened and two soldiers got out, clearly angry.
“You!” he hollered, pointing at me. “Get back where you were.”
Then, stomping up to my Afghan colleague, the senior soldier got right in his face. “We’ve got a problem here,” he spat out. “And you are creating an even bigger problem. Now go back to your car or we will have one REALLY REALLY BIG PROBLEM.”
I felt the Afghan’s humiliation and saw red.
“Don’t you f—-g talk to him like that. And don’t you f—-g talk to me like that. This is his country. Not yours, not mine.”
The second soldier, a younger fellow who looked intensely embarrassed, whispered to me: “I’m sorry ma’am. It’s just been a long day.”
Back in the car, her driver – a NATO fan – is bitter:
This is why Afghans have come to hate Americans. Afghanistan is not our country any more. They are our bosses. They treat us sometimes as if we are trespassing on our own land.
As Dimanno reflects:
I suspect some more enemies were made on this afternoon, adding incrementally to the hostility that is rapidly replacing the warm welcome that most Afghans had originally given their “liberators.”
The Americans did not have to be so aggressive. They did not have to treat Afghan men like boys.
