Allies everywhere feeling snubbed by President Obama

[ajtr]

US foreign policy: Waiting on a sun king

For better or for worse, Washington has grown used to the fact that Barack Obama runs the most centralised – or “White House-centric” – administration since Richard Nixon. When Nixon wanted foreign policy advice, everyone knew where he got it from: Henry Kissinger, variously his national security adviser and secretary of state.

In contrast, Mr Obama has no big foreign policy strategist. Even insiders give different answers when asked to whom he turns for advice on the big international questions. But almost all agree with the following observation. “The truth is that President Obama is his own Henry Kissinger – no one else plays that role,” says a senior official. “Every administration reflects the personality of the president. This president wants all the trains routed through the Oval Office.”

Fifteen months after he took office, the character and structure of Mr Obama’s foreign policy machinery is still evolving. But from interviews with dozens of insiders and outsiders, including senior officials both authorised and unauthorised to speak, and three former national security advisers, it is clear the buck not only stops with, but often floats for quite a long time around, Mr Obama himself.

Foreigners have complained about the tendency of his domestic agenda to crowd out the international one – the passage last week of healthcare reform was greeted with an audible sigh of relief among US allies. But within foreign policy itself, his centralised structure can also result in many issues being left on the back burner awaiting presidential attention, say critics.

“On the positive side, we have a very conscientious president who takes advice widely,” says the official. “On the debit side, for all the president’s intelligence, Barack Obama came to office with very little experience. He just doesn’t have much depth on some issues.”

The core of Mr Obama’s foreign policy machinery is in the White House-based National Security Council, which advises the president and co-ordinates activities across an increasingly complex alphabet soup of Washington departments, military commands and intelligence agencies. The most widely questioned link in the chain is Jim Jones, whom, to many people’s surprise, Mr Obama brought in as his national security adviser.

Only briefly acquainted with Mr Obama beforehand, General Jones, a retired four-star marine corps general, shows little interest in running the “inter-agency” process – a key part of the job. Somewhat unconventionally, Gen Jones travels frequently and is thus often out of town. Unusually, it is Mr Obama himself who usually chairs the weekly National Security Council, known as the “principals meeting”, not Gen Jones.

Rahm Emanuel, Mr Obama’s chief of staff, is also a key part of it. “If you were to ask me who the real national security adviser is, I would say there were three or four, of whom Rahm is one and of which Gen Jones is probably the least important,” says another official.

Anyone who has dealt with Gen Jones speaks highly of his matter-of-factness, his geniality and the respect many foreign governments have for him – Pakistan and Israel among them. But as he himself admitted rather disarmingly last year, he does not have a taste for bureaucracy. Speaking at the Atlantic Council, a think-tank where he previously worked, Gen Jones provoked laughter when he said: “I fondly remember [the Atlantic Council] as a place where people actually did what you asked them to do. In my new role I’m finding out that an order is a basis for negotiation.”

The lack of a strong national security adviser has created recurring difficulties. Perhaps the best example is the Arab-Israeli peace process, which Mr Obama launched on his second day in office when he appointed George Mitchell as his envoy. Three months later, Mr Obama insisted Benjamin Netanyahu freeze all settlements activity in order to boost Arab confidence in the talks.

In a heated showdown in the Oval Office last May, in which Mr Netanyahu refused to accede to Mr Obama’s demand, the only officials present were Mr Emanuel and David Axelrod, senior adviser to Mr Obama in office and during the campaign. Gen Jones was not there. The fallout put the talks in abeyance and damped high Arab hopes for Mr Obama.

“The question is, which bright spark advised the president to demand a settlements freeze without working out what the next step should be when Netanyahu inevitably said ‘No’?” says Leslie Gelb, an official in the Carter administration and former head of the Council on Foreign Relations. “Why wasn’t George Mitchell in the room? Where was Jones?”

Mr Obama’s character is also stamped on the inter-agency process, set up and managed by Tom Donilon, deputy national security adviser. The nitty-gritty of foreign policy-making is done at these frequent “deputies’ meetings”, which can sometimes consume four to six hours a day.

Described by one insider as “the most powerful man in the White House whose name isn’t widely known”, Mr Donilon, who was an official in the Clinton administration, is the man who keeps Mr Obama’s trains running on time. And there are a lot of trains. Last year, Mr Donilon held 270 deputies meetings – a workload described as “clinically insane” by a former senior diplomat under Bill Clinton.

But as time goes on, it is becoming streamlined – now taking up roughly two to three hours a day, say officials. “People forget that we inherited two wars, terrorism threats, and perhaps the biggest single eight-year decline [George W. Bush’s two terms] in America’s power and reputation in our history,” says a senior official. “It took time to put in place a process that could deal with the very complex decisions we had to take.”

Also the organiser of Mr Obama’s 9.30am national security briefing, Mr Donilon reinstated the paper trails needed to prevent intra-governmental anarchy, using the model de vised by Brent Scowcroft, national se curity adviser to George Bush senior and Gerald Ford. Vice-president Joe Biden’s team was also incorporated to prevent the kind of “parallel process” **** Cheney used to circumvent the bureaucracy under George W. Bush.

“If you look for the 2002 or 2003 meeting where the decision to go to war in Iraq was taken, you cannot find it,” says the senior official. “By getting the process right, we are improving the quality of decisions.”

The deputies’ ties go back years. For example, the families of Mr Donilon and Jim Steinberg, deputy secretary of state, often go on holiday together. Mr Donilon’s wife, Cathy Russell, is chief of staff to Jill Biden, the vice-president’s wife. Mr Steinberg’s wife, Sherburne Abbott, is deputy to John Holdren, Mr Obama’s chief scientific adviser.

All those who regularly attend, including Michèle Flournoy, a senior Pentagon official, and Susan Rice, the US ambassador to the United Nations, have known each other since at least 1993, when they started off in the Clinton administration. This is just as well, since they spend half their lives together: “A lot of work gets done in that group,” says Ms Flournoy. “Sometimes it feels like shovelling coal to keep the fires going.”

The refurbished machinery was perhaps most in evidence during the build-up to Mr Obama’s decision in December to send another 30,000 US troops to Afghanistan – a journey that took four months and involved him in 40 hours of Oval Office meetings.

But the very diligence of the process crowded out Mr Obama’s time to focus on other crises – of which there are many. “Time is the most precious commodity a president has,” says a for mer national security ad viser. “On average he is only going to have 45 minutes a day for foreign policy, so you want to make sure it is well spent.”

The widely expected departure of Gen Jones before the end of the year has also created rivalries within the engine room. Those who are thought to have ambitions to replace him include Mr Steinberg, Ms Rice, Mr Donilon and Denis McDonough, NSC chief of staff and the foreign policy official who is personally closest to Mr Obama. Although all are widely respected, none is considered a big strategic thinker in the Kissinger or Scowcroft mould.

Described by Mr Gelb as Mr Obama’s “Lord High Executioner”, Mr McDonough “has appended himself to the Chicago crowd”, says another official. Mr McDonough’s widely feared role highlights some of the contradictions of Mr Obama’s foreign policy apparatus.

Once an adviser to former Senate majority leader Tom Daschle, Mr McDonough was frequently at Mr Obama’s side during the campaign. Insiders describe him as the “en forcer” and as the keeper of “message discipline”, a key element of any campaign but something that can drastically slow the wheels of government.

“McDonough is the guy from the campaign and the one who plays basketball with the president – they’re very close,” says an official. “Instead of Jim Jones telling McDonough what the president thinks, it is the other way round.”

Indeed, if Mr Obama’s highly centralised foreign policy machine had a face, it would be Mr McDonough’s. “Donilon has been perceived to make the process inclusive and give everyone a seat at the table,” says David Rothkopf, a former Clinton official and scholar on the NSC. “Fairly or not, McDonough has been perceived as representing a process that was taking place in another room, among the inner circle, at a table to which most weren’t invited.”

Mr Obama has built a machine in which all roads lead to and from him. On the minus side, that means a lot of lower-level meetings without decisions. It also means neglecting issues that cannot be squeezed into his diary, such as trade policy, which continues to drift; or relations with India, which are unnecessarily tense.

And it means that the fingerprints of Mr Obama’s political inner circle are detected by the rumour mill even when they are absent, such as on the president’s decision to begin the troop withdrawal from Afghanistan in July 2011 – a recommendation that came from Robert Gates, secretary of defence.

On the plus side, Mr Obama has a sharp learning curve, which means his administration continues to evolve. On the plus side also, if it has to be White House-centric, it is perhaps better with him as the Sun King than, say, Nixon or George W. Bush.

“At the end of each meeting, the president summarises what everyone has said and the arguments each has made with a real lawyer’s clarity,” says a participant to the NSC principals meeting, which includes Mr Gates and Mrs Clinton. “When the president finally makes a decision, it is with the full facts and usually shows a high calibre of judgment.”

When Mr Obama makes a decision, that is.

 

[VersusAllOdds]

I'm seriously surprised to see that there are people outside USA that honestly believe that US presidents are the ones that make decisions. And that it matters whether it's a Republican or a Democrat.

It is those who finance their campaigns, and upon which entire American establishment and world domination (particularly the economic) that make the decisions. Even though they don't gather in dark rooms and plot the world destiny, US economy, and therefore world influence lie on efficiency of their big corporations (Oil, retail, military industry, banks, motor industry).

Therefore, Obama can make a decision here and there, but I think those decisions are of little significance. The US strategic allignment and their allies will stay the same as long as something dramatic in geopolitical sense doesn't happen. Those impressions of periodic worsening and improvin of their relations are just minor aesthetics.

 

[nrj]

Obama has not ditched India, say US officials

Obama has not ditched India, say US officials​

WASHINGTON: Countering the growing perception that the Obama administration is jettisoning the US policy of deeper engagement with New Delhi in favor of seeking Pakistan’s help in its Afghan strategy, a key US official on Thursday urged Islamabad to finish the job on its home-grown terror groups and settle differences with India over Kashmir and water in a bilateral context.

Briefing journalists after a trip through the region, Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia Robert Blake challenged the view from the Indian commentariat that the Obama administration’s softening line on Pakistan is fuelling its belligerence and its indifference to New Delhi’s requests in the David Headley case has resulted in US-India ties heading south.

While praising Islamabad for its success against the Taliban on its western front, Blake left no doubt that the US expected Pakistan to finish off the Punjab-based terror groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed which, he said, posed a danger to India, the United States, and Pakistan itself. He paraphrased India’s requirements from Pakistan – with the implication that it needs to be fulfilled -- as follows: continued prosecution of Mumbai Terror attack suspects and progress in curtailing cross-border infiltration from Pakistan into India.

More pertinently, Blake reasserted the familiar US policy of non-intervention in Indo-Pak bilateral issues – aside from the usual encouragement to engage – and said Pakistan should settle its differences with India directly.

If Pakistan had genuine issues with India on water, then it can always resort to a dispute resolution mechanism at the World Bank afforded by the Indus Water Treaty, he said, in what appeared to be a rebuke to Islamabad for toxifying an emotive issue. The US would not mediate in this matter except to help Pakistan better utilize its existing water resources, he added.

On the issue of Kashmir, Blake referred to the broad status quo-based settlement that the two sides had agreed on in the 2004-2007 period and said they could pursue that anytime. ''There is a sort of blueprint, if they choose to endorse that,'' he said, adding ''but again that it's really up to India and Pakistan to decide how to move forward on that.''

Blake remained sanguine on matters bedeviling US-India ties and said he did not feel any sense of growing anti-Americanism in India, including on the David Headley access issue. But he declined to pledge access to the LeT terrorist, saying that while the United States was "fully committed" to sharing information gleaned from Headley, no decision had been made on the issue of direct access. He did not elaborate on the reason for US withholding access.

The US pointman for the sub-continent also said it was up to New Delhi to figure out how to move forward on the civil nuclear liability legislation that has become a political hot potato in India.

"I don't see that as a sticking point," he said, when asked about opposition to the bill in India. "In all of our conversations with the Indian government, they have consistently said that they remain committed to fulfilling this commitment under the civil nuclear deal. It will be up to the government of India to figure out how to move forward on this."

Blake also urged both Pakistan and India to refrain from dealing with Iran on the gas pipeline matter because of the ongoing issues over Tehran’s nuclear program, saying, ''We do not think it is the right time for doing this kind of transaction with Iran.''

 

[ajtr]

The U.S. is stuck in the Cold War

America is following security and trade policies that made sense just after World War II, but are disastrous now


What does America's deepening war in Afghanistan have to do with the American trade deficit? Answer: Both are the results of Cold War policies that made sense at one time but are now harmful to the United States.

During World War II, the Roosevelt administration planned for a postwar world in which the wartime cooperation of the Big Three -- the United States, Britain and the Soviet Union -- would continue indefinitely. The Bretton Woods system was designed to allow countries to pursue domestic policies of full employment and to avert the kind of trade wars and beggar-thy-neighbor currency revaluations that had wrecked the global economy in the interwar years.

But the Cold War divided much of the world between rival blocs, symbolized by the division of four countries -- Germany, China, Korea and Vietnam -- into communist and non-communist states.

During and after the Korean War, the U.S. rebuilt its military and stationed troops along "tripwires" from Central Europe to East Asia. The U.S. encouraged the formation of the European Common Market (now the European Union) in part to provide the West Germans with markets. In Asia, Mao Zedong's victory in China cut off Japan's China market, so the U.S. offered the American market to Japanese exporters, which initially were not considered a threat to American businesses.

Thus began the Grand Bargain at the heart of U.S. Cold War strategy toward West Germany and Japan, the "markets-for-bases" swap. In return for giving up an independent foreign policy to their protector, the United States, the West Germans and Japanese would be granted access to American markets (and, in the case of the Germans, access to Western European markets).

By the 1970s, it was clear that the markets-for-bases swap was a better deal for West Germany and Japan than for the U.S. They recovered from the devastation of World War II and won growing shares of global markets in automobiles and, in the case of Japan, consumer electronics.

Japan did so by boldly unfair "mercantilist" measures, like non-tariff barriers that kept U.S. imports out of Japan, and interlocking corporate ownership patterns that froze American and other foreign investors out of Japanese multinationals. When American manufacturers complained about this double standard, however, the Pentagon and State Department warned that to crack down on unfair Japanese trade practices would endanger the markets-for-bases swap at the heart of Cold War strategy.

The markets-for-bases deal should have been scrapped when the Cold War ended and there was no longer any need to favor American allies with one-way trade privileges in return for their support of U.S. military objectives in their regions. Unfortunately, the Cold War lasted long enough for two completely separate American foreign policy establishments -- the security establishment and the economic establishment -- to develop and take separate paths.

The American security establishment, dominating both parties, wanted the U.S. to expand its overseas commitments after the Cold War, not reduce them. Under both Clinton and Bush the U.S. expanded NATO to the borders of the Soviet Union, consolidated America's position as the hegemon of the Persian Gulf, maintained America's bases in Japan and South Korea, and encircled China and Russia with new bases in Central Asia, whose strategic usefulness was not limited to the war against a small number of jihadists.

Meanwhile, in a different part of the building, the economic establishment was living in a fantasy world, ignoring the markets-for-bases swap and pretending that every country in the world believed in Chicago School free-market fundamentalism. A version of the markets-for-bases deal was extended to China, which, it was hoped, would acquiesce in U.S. military hegemony in its own neighborhood, in return for unlimited access to American consumers.

George W. Bush made the deal explicit in his 2002 West Point address: "America has, and intends to keep, military strengths beyond challenge -- thereby making the destabilizing arms races of other eras pointless and limiting rivalries to trade other pursuits of peace." U.S. to other great powers: We make wars, you make cars.

China, like West Germany (now Germany) and Japan before it, took the U.S. up on the offer. In seeking to persuade multinationals to close down production in the U.S. and make things in China, the Chinese government cheated in various ways, confident perhaps that the U.S. foreign policy establishment, invoking diplomatic and national-security considerations, would intervene on its behalf against American manufacturers and workers. Like postwar Japan and Germany, China has accepted the terms of the bargain America's elites offered, focusing on economic growth while the U.S. wasted blood and treasure on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But now the markets-for-bases deal has broken down, because American consumers are tapped out. The bargain nearly broke down in the 1990s, when a Japanese-American trade war was averted only by the economic collapse of Japan.

In the 2000s, debt-fueled consumption in the U.S. kept the system going for a while. China kept its currency low by using its huge dollar surpluses to buy U.S. federal debt, thereby keeping interest rates low and allowing Americans to borrow to pay for Chinese imports. But like all Ponzi schemes, this collapsed, leaving China with overbuilt export capacity and not enough customers either in the U.S. or at home, where the consumption of the Chinese people has been ruthlessly suppressed.

A similar Ponzi scheme has broken down in Europe, where Germany ran perpetual trade surpluses with the other EU nations, in the way that first Japan and then China have run perpetual surpluses with the U.S.

For half a century America's economic establishment, turning a blind eye to Asia's crude and Germany's subtle mercantilism, pretended that American protectionism was the greatest threat to the world economy. It is gradually dawning even on former free-trade fundamentalists that you cannot have a liberal global trading system in which three of the four largest industrial capitalist countries -- China, Japan and Germany -- pursue policies that permit them to enjoy perpetual trade surpluses, which require perpetual trade deficits by the U.S. and other countries.

Meanwhile, the security half of America's global strategy is headed for a crash as well. Since the end of the Cold War, the U.S. has mindlessly sought to fill every power vacuum from the Balkans to the Persian Gulf to Central Asia, while spending far less on the military than it did in the Cold War. The U.S. has gone into debt to finance the Iraq and Afghan wars. You don't have to be a grand strategist to figure out that extending territorial commitments without commensurately expanding funding and troop levels is a formula for strategic and perhaps national bankruptcy.

By declaring that the new deficit commission would not consider any cuts in military spending, only in entitlement spending, President Obama reflected the preferences of America's policy elite. Its members would gladly cut Social Security and Medicare in order to pay for bases and "nation-building" abroad. In the same way, for half a century, America's foreign-policy elite tolerated the targeted deindustrialization of America by Asian mercantilist states, as long as those countries did not challenge America's global military hegemony.

There are signs, however, that the American people and their representatives in Congress, if not the White House, are ready to reject a Cold War system under which the U.S. gives away its industries while wasting taxes and the lives of its soldiers on quixotic crusades in the lands of the former British empire.

Members of Congress are threatening to use tariffs to punish China for its unfair currency manipulation policies if the Obama administration does not name China as a currency manipulator on April 15. And while the public has acquiesced in escalation of the war in Afghanistan, if the choice comes down to balancing the budget by slashing the Pentagon or slashing Social Security, it is not clear that the Pentagon will win. After all, massive post-Cold War cuts in Pentagon spending, along with tax revenues raised by the tech stock bubble, permitted the budget to be balanced under Clinton.

For the time being, however, America's out-of-touch foreign policy establishment continues to favor the policy of expanding America's geopolitical frontiers while allowing our self-interested industrial rivals to hollow out the American economy. Policies that made sense in the early years of the Cold War emergency continue to be followed out of inertia, when their original strategic rationale has long since vanished. In the words of the philosopher George Santayana, "Fanaticism consists in redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim."

 

[ajtr]

Anglo-Saxons disunited

S Rajagopalan

A former Indian premier, IK Gujral, had famously rebuffed Britain as a ‘fourth rate power’. This week, Hillary Clinton hit the old lion where it hurts most — Malvinas! A Saturday Special focus on the passing of the great ‘special relationship’


Guess which is the latest country to complain of Uncle Sam’s ‘self-interest-oriented’ foreign policy? Britain. The most unlikely foreign policy development in living memory has happened. The United States’ steadfast, loyal-to-a-fault ally has cried foul and that too in the open. So cosy have been the two trans-Atlantic allies since World War II that nobody possibly anticipated the day when British MPs, cutting across party lines, would actually be demanding an end to their country’s “special relationship” with America.

That is precisely what has happened in London over the past week. The House of Commons’ Foreign Affairs Select Committee has ordained that the term “special relationship” is “potentially misleading”, and recommended that its use be “avoided”. It went so far as to say: “The perception that the British government was a subservient ‘poodle’ to the US administration leading up to the period of the invasion of Iraq and its aftermath is widespread both among the British public and overseas. This perception, whatever its relation to reality, is deeply damaging to the reputation and interests of the UK.”

It was Winston Churchill who originally coined the “special relationship” phrase back in 1946 to cast Britain’s ties with the US in a new mould after WW II. Most prime ministers thereafter have tried to live up to that formulation by developing a close rapport with successive occupants of the White House, notably Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair. Harold Wilson and Edward Heath are regarded as notable exceptions.

Given this historical perspective, the question arises why this sudden discovery by British politicians that their country is being viewed as America’s “poodle”. Wrote the American columnist Michael Tomasky: “My first reaction to reading the Guardian’s article about the group of MPs calling for an end to the special relationship was — you’re seven years late.” The dig at Tony Blair, who gave a carte blanche to former President George W Bush ahead of the Iraq invasion in 2003, is obvious.

While no explanation has been offered for the volte face by the British political establishment, if not the British government itself as of now, the reasons are not far to seek. In the roiling months ahead of the general election many issues are up in the air. At least two of them are regarded as courtesy Washington.

For the ruling Labour Party, an issue that could hurt a great deal is its blind support of and participation in the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 which is now the subject of a public enquiry chaired by former civil servant John Chilkot. The testimony so far has brought to light how the US often ignored British advice and excluded British diplomats and military commanders from key discussions. But the one issue that is currently bothering the British leadership and public opinion vis-à-vis the US is the Washington’s failure to side with Britain in its long-standing dispute with Argentina over the Falkland Islands. The issue over which Britain went to war with Argentina in 1982 is back on the centre-stage. What has stoked the controversy now is British firm Desire Petroleum’s dispatch of a rig in February to drill oil 60 miles north of the Falklands.

Emotions are running high in Argentina, 300 miles away from Falklands. The Argentine government lost little time in tabling a UN resolution condemning the British move. It has also mobilised support from 32 South American nations over its assertion that Britain has occupied the Falklands illegally since 1833. Argentina calls the islands by a different name: Malvinas.

Tensions over Falklands have continued to rage off and on since 1982, when Argentina invaded it and Britain went to war to regain possession of the islands. The three-month war claimed the lives of 649 Argentine and 255 British soldiers.

Washington, compelled as it is to do a balancing act, insists that it is maintaining a neutral position on the latest row over oil drilling. That, however, does not enthuse the British politicians one bit. Their contention is that Falklands is a British dependency and there is nothing to discuss about it.

When Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited Buenos Aires on March 1, Argentine President Christina Fernández de Kirchner went public with her request for US help in holding talks with the UK on the issue of sovereignty over Malvinas, taking into account the interests of the inhabitants of the islands in accordance with UN resolutions. Asked by a journalist if the US would mediate on the issue, Clinton said: “We would like to see Argentina and the United Kingdom sit down and resolve the issues between them across the table in a peaceful, productive way.”

Although she skirted round the issue of US mediation, Clinton did say: “We want very much to encourage both countries to sit down. Now, we cannot make either one do so, but we think it is the right way to proceed. So we will be saying this publicly, as I have been, and we will continue to encourage exactly the kind of discussion across the table that needs to take place.”

For Britain, all this is a no-no. Prime Minister Gordon Brown quickly dismissed any suggestion of help or facilitation from Washington. His official spokesman curtly said: “We don’t think that’s necessary. We welcome her (Clinton’s) support in terms of ensuring that we continue to keep diplomatic channels open but there is no need for that (direct involvement).”

And Foreign Secretary David Miliband told MPs: “There can be no negotiations on the sovereignty of the Falkland Islands unless and until such time as the Falkland Islanders so wish it and they have made clear they have no such wish. The (oil drilling) companies are acting wholly within their rights and wholly within the legality of international law.”

While there has been no official word in Washington on the subject, The Times, London reported that British diplomats have expressed serious concerns to the State Department at least three times over its response to the latest dispute. In telephone calls and meetings, senior diplomats and specialists have reiterated British sovereignty over the islands and sought clarification of the US position after a State Department spokesman in February answered a question about the Falklands by saying: “Or the Malvinas, depending on how you see it.”

Given this backdrop, a section of the American media has speculated whether there is still time to save the “special relationship”. The distinguished magazine, Foreign Policy, comments: “If this is intended to help Labour in the upcoming elections, it is just silly. But if this in fact heralds a substantive change in UK policy, it is both troubling and foolish. Without the United States, the United Kingdom’s only other viable option for a distinctive international partner is the European Union. Yet Brussels will continue punching way below its bureaucratic weight in foreign and defense policy — if it can even develop a coherent foreign and defense policy.”

But the Commons panel’s report is emphatic that Britain, even while working closely alongside the US, needs to be “less deferential and more willing to say no where our interests diverge”. British media reports quote Sir David Manning, the former Ambassador to the US, as suggesting that President Obama is “less sentimental” about the historic links between the two allies, so Britain needs to use “sharp elbows” in its dealings with Washington.

 

[ajtr]

An era ends in diplomatic history

Reginald Dale

As more and more non-Caucasians (a category to which Barack Obama belongs) grab the centre-stage of American politics, Britain matters less and less. Nothing explains the end of the London-Washington ‘special relationship’ better

The British media love to announce the end of the “special relationship” between the United States and Britain, and now they have been joined by a UK Parliamentary Committee, which recommends that the phrase, first coined by Winston Churchill, be abandoned. Britain should put its own interests first and stop showing so much deference to Washington, according to the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, which argues that British influence on the
United States will in any case continue to decline.

There can be little arguing that the influence of London on US policy has taken a nosedive under President Barack Obama, who is much more interested in new, emerging nations than in old colonial ones. The same applies to all the other major European governments, including those in Paris and Berlin. It is equally true that few Americans have heard of the phrase “special relationship,” which emerged from the World War II alliance that defeated Nazi Germany. For decades, however, the phrase has bandied about by the British media, usually in stories triumphantly stating that it has been severely damaged or no longer exists.

The British media almost invariably overlook the multi-layered nature of Anglo-American relations and focus narrowly on how well or badly the current occupants of the White House and Number 10 Downing Street happen to get along with each other. That strand of the relationship reflects the news of the day, the latest ebb and flow of foreign and security policies, and changes in personal chemistry between the two countries’ leaders.

It is also a gift that never stops giving for the British media: a dependable source of unending “snubs” to British leaders by US Presidents. Some are real, such as Obama’s famous offering to Prime Minister Gordon Brown of a box of DVDs of “best American movies” — the kind available at Walmart for $29.99 — that did not work in England. In the absence of such obvious slights, Fleet Street sometimes falls back on making them up.

This superficial perspective on the relationship, however, ignores its more profound elements: a compound mixture of historical, cultural, linguistic, and political ties that is relatively unaffected by ups and downs in intergovernmental relations. Many Americans are Anglophiles and admire the way British troops are more likely than those of any other countries to be found fighting alongside US forces — although one might generalise that Republicans tend to be more Anglophile than Democrats.

Even in today’s globalised, “multipolar” world, British and Americans are almost certain to agree on what is right or wrong on the international scene, and usually want to do something about it. Anglo-Saxons are more interested in action than theory. They also share similar senses of humour and tend to trust one another in a way that does not always extend to other nationalities. These are important building blocks of a relationship founded on a long history of shared interests and common values.

Needless to say, the cultural and historic aspects of the relationship were ignored by media reports on the findings of the Parliamentary Committee, which delighted journalists by using the word “poodle” in one of its comments. Former Prime Minister Tony Blair was mockingly described as “Bush’s poodle” during the early stages of the Iraq War. Thus The Telegraph, in a report entitled “Special Relationship” with the US is Over, MPs Claim, swallowed the bait in its second sentence: Instead of seeing a significant partnership, the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Commons said that many people, at home and abroad, saw Britain as the “poodle” of American interests.

That is somewhat dishonest, as the Committee specifically used the poodle word to refer to the years around 2003, even though it got its grammar wrong. “The perception that the British Government was a subservient ‘poodle’ to the US administration leading up to the period of the invasion of Iraq and its aftermath is widespread both among the British public and overseas,” the Committee’s report said. “This perception, whatever its relation to reality, is deeply damaging to the reputation and interests of the UK.”

The Committee clearly didn’t mean “leading up to the period of the invasion,” but “in the period leading up to the invasion.” No matter. Members of Parliament must have known that the media would jump on the reference, reminding everyone of the faults of Blair, from whom Brown is happy to distance himself as he conducts a difficult re-election campaign. The Committee is chaired by an MP from Brown’s (and formerly Blair’s) Labour Party.

The “poodle” remark was also picked up by the Associated Press, although much lower in its report. The AP story began with the unchallengeable statement: “The ‘special relationship’ is not so special any more,” basing its lead on the Committee’s recommendation that the phrase be dropped from current usage and be used only in a historical sense in future.

In The Guardian, Ewen MacAskill reported from Washington: “There is a major problem with the Commons committee calling on British politicians and diplomats to drop the phrase ‘special relationship’: it is about five decades too late.” But once again, he was referring to relations between the leaders of the two countries rather than between the countries themselves.

Of course, the country-to-country links will progressively diminish as more non-Caucasians (most notably Obama himself) make up the US population, memories of World War II fade ever further and the history taught in American schools emphasises native cultures and anti-colonialism. Hollywood contributes its bit, with heavy doses of treacherous and/or idiotic English villains. But in the cultural and historical sense, the relationship is still likely to remain special for a while longer.

The writer is Director, Transatlantic Media Network and Senior Fellow, Europe Program of Centre for Strategic and International Studies, Washington DC.

 

[Armand2REP]

This talk about the end of the Anglo special relationship is prepping the two countries for the drastic budget cuts that are coming with the SDR. They are facing an £80 billion black hole in defence spending. The talk includes reducing the Afghanistan contribution by half, cutting CVF and JSF, ending Typhoon procurement and scrapping FCS. Trident replacement seems safe from cuts but has zero bearing on international contributions.

 

[youngindian]

Why Obama and Sarkozy can never truly be friends

Saturday, April 3, 2010

THE PRESIDENTS stood at twin lecterns in the East Room of the White House. They could not have looked more mismatched, but they professed near identical views. Both wanted the UN Security Council to pass tough sanctions against Iran, quickly. Both want Israel to stop colonising the West Bank. And both say that winning in Afghanistan is crucial to the security of the West.

“Rarely in the history of our two countries has the community of views been so identical between the United States of America and France,” President Nicolas Sarkozy crowed.

How could two men espousing the same policies convey such different impressions? The healthcare victory has put a new spring into Barack Obama’s step, even if his opinion poll results lack bounce. Sarkozy’s party just lost regional elections, and his approval rating is at an all-time low of 30 per cent.

Sarkozy appeared tense and distracted throughout their 22-minute press conference. While Obama spoke, Sarkozy’s eyes darted about the reception room, as if he expected someone to lob a grenade at him. When Sarkozy spoke, Obama turned politely towards him and listened.

Sarkozy related the most telling anecdote. In what looked like another act of Obama-mimicry, Sarkozy had taken his wife, Carla Bruni, to Ben’s Chili Bowl for lunch. (In January 2009, Obama lunched at the U Street diner with Washington mayor Adrian Fenty.) “When I walked in, I saw a huge photograph of President Obama,” Sarkozy said. “And I’m afraid that when you go back to that restaurant, you may see a smaller photograph of the French president.”

Sarkozy was vain enough to bestow his picture upon a Washington restaurant, in the hope it would hang beside Obama’s.

No other head of state has been invited, with his wife, to dine à quatre with Barack and Michelle in their private dining room, the Élysée kept saying. Sarkozy needed Obama to burnish his image.

And strange as it may seem, the world’s most popular politician, the star whom other heads of state and government vie to befriend – indeed serve – has been faulted for having no buddies among world leaders. Obama has tried to circumvent governments, to reach out directly to world populations. But his domestic critics say his global populism is hurting US interests.

At the White House press briefing on the day of Sarkozy’s visit, the questions were more informative than the answers. Was the White House trying to “make up with the French president?” a correspondent asked. Robert Gibbs, the press secretary, feigned ignorance. “There have been perceptions that there was a snub, that didn’t get quite the treatment that he thought he should get in their prior visits together,” the journalist explained.

Sarkozy is often his own worst enemy. At Columbia University, he commented on the healthcare Bill, saying, “We solved the problem 50 years ago . . . Welcome to the club of states that don’t dump sick people.”

“He said it in French, but you could hear the smirk,” commented Chris Matthews of MSNBC television.

Sarkozy also told the US it needed to “reflect on what it means to be the world’s No 1 power” and to be a country “that listens”. The New York Times told him to stop lecturing, and to send more troops to Afghanistan.

Despite the intimate dinner, you couldn’t help but notice that the White House did the bare minimum. Dinner started at 6.30 and lasted less than two hours. There were no photographers allowed in the Oval office during the bilateral meeting – a courtesy accorded to more honoured guests.

Obama has befriended leaders – just not the Europeans traditionally cosseted by US presidents. He’s reserved his warmest hospitality for the Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh, who enjoyed the first state dinner of the Obama presidency, and Taoiseach Brian Cowen, guest of honour at the White House St Patrick’s Day reception for 500 guests. On these occasions, Obama mentioned the “oppression” endured by the US, India and Ireland. The adjective “British” was understood.

Therein, I suspect, lies the biggest difference between Sarkozy’s and Obama’s world views. Before Sarkozy became president, his UMP party attempted to pass a law requiring French schools to teach “the positive role” of French colonialism.

Three times in 22 minutes, Sarkozy mentioned the transatlantic directorate formed by himself, Angela Merkel, Gordon Brown and Barack Obama. Obama looked uneasy.

Each time Obama is perceived to snub a former colonial power, I recall the passage in Dreams from my Father where the US President imagined the experiences of his grandfather, Hussein Onyango, who worked as a servant to British officers in Kenya. “He still hears the clipped voice of a British captain, explaining for the third and last time the correct proportion of tonic to gin.”

Sarkozy hero-worships les Anglo-Saxons. One of Obama’s first acts as president was to send a bronze bust of Winston Churchill (that George W Bush had borrowed for the Oval Office) back to the British ambassador.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2010/0403/1224267622493.html

 

[ajtr]

Charles Krauthammer: No way to treat America's friends


What is it like to be a foreign ally of Barack Obama's America?

If you're a Brit, your head is spinning. It's not just the personal slights to Prime Minister Gordon Brown - the ridiculous 25-DVD gift, the <I>five</I> refusals before Brown was granted a one-on-one with The One.

Nor is it just the symbolism of Obama returning the Churchill bust that was in the Oval Office. Query: If it absolutely had to be out of Obama's sight, could it not have been housed somewhere else on U.S. soil rather than ostentatiously repatriated?

Perhaps it was the State Department official who last year denied there even was a special relationship between the U.S. and Britain, a relationship cultivated by every U.S. president since Franklin Roosevelt.

And then there was Hillary Clinton's astonishing, nearly unreported (in the U.S.) performance in Argentina last month. She called for Britain to negotiate with Argentina over the Falklands.

For those who know no history - or who believe that it began on Jan. 20, 2009 - and therefore don't know why this was an out-of-the-blue slap at Britain, here's the back story:

In 1982, Argentina's military junta invaded the (British) Falkland Islands. The generals thought the British, having long lost their taste for foreign lands, would let it pass. Besides, the Falklands have uncountably more sheep than people. They underestimated Margaret Thatcher (the Argentines, that is, not the sheep). She was not about to permit the conquest of a people whose political allegiance and ethnic ties are to Britain. She dispatched the navy. Britannia took it back.

Afterward, neither Thatcher nor her successors have countenanced negotiations. Britain doesn't covet foreign dominion and has no shortage of sheep. But it does believe in self-determination and will negotiate nothing until and unless the Falkland Islanders indicate their desire to be ruled by a chronically unstable, endemically corrupt polity with a rich history of dictatorship, economic mismanagement and the occasional political lunacy (see: the Evita cult).

Not surprisingly, the Falkland Islanders have given no such indication. Yet inexplicably, Clinton sought to reopen a question that had been settled for almost 30 years, not just pointlessly stirring the embers but even taking the Argentine side (re: negotiations) against Britain - a nation that has fought and bled with us for the past decade, and that today has about 10,000 troops, far more than any other ally, fighting alongside America in Afghanistan.

Of course, given how the administration has treated other allies, perhaps we shouldn't be so surprised.

Obama visits China and soon Indonesia, skipping India, our natural and rising ally in the region - common language, common heritage, common democracy, common jihadist enemy. Indeed, in his enthusiasm for China, Obama suggests a <I>Chinese</I> interest in peace and stability in South Asia, a gratuitous denigration of Indian power and legitimacy in favor of a regional rival with hegemonic ambitions.

Poland and the Czech Republic have their legs cut out from under them when Obama unilaterally revokes a missile defense agreement, acquiescing to pressure from Russia with its dreams of regional hegemony over Eastern Europe.

The Hondurans still can't figure out why the United States supported a Hugo Chavez ally seeking illegal extension of his presidency against the pillars of civil society - its Congress, Supreme Court, church and army - that had deposed him consistent with Article 239 of their own constitution.

But the Brits, our most venerable, most reliable ally, are the most disoriented. "We British not only speak the same language. We tend to think in the same way. We are more likely than anyone else to provide tea, sympathy and troops," writes Bruce Anderson in London's Independent, summarizing with admirable concision the fundamental basis of the U.S.-British special relationship.

Well, said David Manning, a former British ambassador to the U.S., to a House of Commons committee reporting on that very relationship: "He (Obama) is an American who grew up in Hawaii, whose foreign experience was of Indonesia and who had a Kenyan father. The sentimental reflexes, if you like, are not there."

I'm not personally inclined to neuropsychiatric diagnoses, but Manning's guess is as good as anyone's. How <I>can</I> you explain a policy toward Britain that makes no strategic or moral sense? And even if you can, how do you explain the gratuitous slaps to the Czechs, Poles, Indians and others? Perhaps when an Obama Doctrine is finally worked out, we shall learn whether it was pique, principle or mere carelessness.