International Relations -- New Era Of Engagement

March 9, 2009

by Faiz Shakir, Amanda Terkel, Satyam Khanna, Matt Corley, Benjamin Armbruster, Ali Frick, and Ryan Powers

INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

New Era Of Engagement

Over the weekend, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton returned from a five-country, seven-day tour of the Middle East and Europe. The Los Angeles Times wrote that while it was "[b]illed as no more than a modest 'listening tour,' Clinton's trip offered the most complete picture yet of how the new administration hopes to overhaul American relations with the world." A State Department spokesperson explained before the trip that Clinton hoped to "reconnect" the U.S. with Europe and the Middle East in an effort to consolidate "some of this enormous political goodwill on both sides of the Atlantic, harnessing it to a common agenda -- not an American agenda, but a common transatlantic agenda." The trip was significant because it demonstrated that President Obama and his administration are committed to making good on a number of key campaign promises, including engaging in "vigorous diplomacy" with sometimes hostile regimes like Iran, devoting significant resources to negotiating a "comprehensive peace" in the Arab-Israeli conflict, and working closely with other world powers, like Russia, to reduce the risk of such threats as nuclear proliferation.

ENGAGING IRAN: During her trip, Clinton met with a group of NATO foreign ministers in Brussels to discuss, among other things, the war in Afghanistan. Clinton called the conflict "NATO's biggest military challenge." As part of addressing this challenge, Clinton called for a "high-level conference on Afghanistan at the end of March" and specifically asked that Iran be involved in such an effort. "If we move forward with such a meeting, it is expected that Iran would be invited as a neighbor of Afghanistan," Clinton said. Despite Iran's recent unwillingness to participate in French-led talks in Paris, Iran and NATO have several common interests in reducing the level of violence in Afghanistan. The West and "Shi'ite Iran share a common dislike for the hardline Sunni Taliban." As Clinton pointed out last week, both the U.S. and Iran "want to see an end to opium and heroin production in Afghanistan; Washington because it helps fund the Taliban and Tehran because the drugs are smuggled across the border and feed the habits of up to 2 million Iranians." Despite the Obama administration's willingness to engage Iran on specific regional issues, direct talks with Iran in the near future seem unlikely. According to Politico, administration officials have seen "little indication that Iran is willing to make even token steps, to ease back on either its nuclear program or its support for terror groups." But by "keeping the possibility of direct talks on the table and collaborating at forums like the upcoming Afghanistan conference, the administration thinks it can undercut the reluctance of its allies and Moscow to move forward" with tougher economic sanctions if Iran continues its nuclear program. "There's a great deal of concern about Iran in the entire region," Clinton explained. "It is clear that Iran intends to interfere in the internal affairs of all these people and try to continue their efforts to fund terrorism, whether it is Hezbollah or Hamas or other proxies."

COMPREHENSIVE MIDDLE EAST PEACE: Speaking at the international Gaza reconstruction conference in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, Clinton reaffirmed the U.S. commitment to "a comprehensive peace between Israel and its Arab neighbors." To this end, Clinton pledged $900 million dollars in "assistance to the people of Gaza and the West Bank." The U.S. contribution will include "$300 million in U.S. humanitarian aid for the war-torn Gaza Strip, plus about $600 million in assistance to the Palestinian Authority." Further, while she appeared to recognize Israel's right to link opening the Gaza border to a cease-fire agreement with Hamas, Clinton stressed that the U.S. expected Israel to allow "humanitarian aid to get into Gaza in sufficient amounts to alleviate the suffering of the people." Further demonstrating U.S. commitment to a two-state solution, Clinton referred to Israel's plans to "demolish Palestinian homes in Arab East Jerusalem" as "unhelpful" and called the Palestinian Authority "the only legitimate government of the Palestinian people." Finally, demonstrating that the Obama administration is committed to acting on its commitment to "comprehensive peace," Clinton dispatched Jeffrey Feltman, the assistant secretary of state, and Daniel Shapiro, the top Mideast official at the National Security Council, to Syria, where they met for more than three hours with Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem and Bouthaina Shaaban, an adviser to President Bashar al-Assad. While Feltman advised that observers should "keep expectations in check," he also said the talks were "constructive" and that there was much "common ground." During the meeting, the U.S. urged Syria "to stop interfering in Lebanon, to stop supporting terrorist groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas and to control the flow of insurgents crossing its border into Iraq," while Syria asked that the U.S. "take a more active role in Israel-Syria peace talks." Addressing the Israel-Syria talks, Clinton said that the importance of the Syrian "track of the peace effort cannot be overstated."

HITTING THE 'RESET BUTTON' WITH RUSSIA AND THE WORLD: In Geneva, Clinton met her Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, for the first time. Clinton attempted to renew U.S.-Russia relations after the Bush administration and NATO isolated Russia in response to its invasion of Georgia last summer. She presented Lavrov with a "reset button" that was meant to, as Clinton put it, represent "what President Obama and Vice President Biden and I have been saying and that is, 'We want to reset our relationship.' And so we will do it together." Clinton explained that the U.S. would need to cooperate with Russia in a number of areas including the war in Afghanistan, ensuring Iran does not obtain a nuclear weapon, and nuclear disarmament. In particular, Clinton signaled the Obama administration's willingness to compromise on a controversial Bush-era plan to construct a missile defense shield in Eastern Europe. "We believe that Russia and the United States have the opportunity to cooperate on missile defense, to do joint research and joint development and even eventually, assuming we can reach such an agreement, joint deployment," Clinton said. Clinton's sentiments echoed what Obama said in a letter to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in which he explained that, "to the extent that we are lessening Iran's commitment to nuclear weapons, then that reduces the pressure or the need for a missile-defense system." More broadly, Clinton tried to hit the reset button on the perception of the U.S. abroad by appearing on several popular television shows in Palestine and Turkey, as well as meeting with "young professionals in Belgium," and women's leaders in Israel.

ENVIRONMENT -- CLIMATE DENIERS GATHER FOR INDUSTRY-SPONSORED CONFERENCE: Last night, a conference billed as "the world's largest-ever gathering of global warming skeptics" convened in New York City, with more than 600 skeptics including "political figures, conservative campaigners, scientists, an Apollo astronaut and the president of the Czech Republic, Vaclav Klaus." In a keynote address last night, Klaus compared climate change believers to communists who refused to allow diversity of opinion: "It reminds me of the frustration people like me felt in the communist era." He also accused European governments of being "alarmist" on the subject of climate change, saying that their "true plans and ambitions" are "to stop economic development and return mankind several centuries back." Though the New York Times noted "internal rifts" within the denier community -- some say humans are not causing global warming, some say warming isn't occurring at all, and some even say warming would be beneficial -- they are united in their efforts to stop climate change legislation. In fact, the pollution industry dominates climate change lobbying; nearly 2,000 lobbyists are working to halt climate legislation. Desmogblog, which has reporters attending the conference, talked to New Yorkers just outside the conference hall about their real concerns about the disastrous effects of climate change.

SCIENCE -- REPUBLICANS CLAIM ENDING STEM CELL BAN IS A DISTRACTION FROM THE ECONOMY: President Obama today will rescind restrictions on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research. Obama is reversing an order that former President Bush signed in August 2001, banning federal funds from going to embryonic stem cell research except for a few dozen lines that were grandfathered in. He will also issue a presidential memorandum that is "aimed at insulating scientific decisions across the federal government from political influence." Scientists believe that research into stem cells "could lead to new therapies for many diseases, including diabetes, Parkinson's disease and paralysis." But Republicans are attacking the move by raising more than just moral objections to stem cell research. Instead, they are claiming that Obama is issuing the order now in order to distract the public from the country's economic problems. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich described Obama's presidential order as an "ideological sideshow" used to take the country's focus off of the economy. Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) echoed Gingrich during an appearance on CNN yesterday, asking rhetorically, "Why are we going and distracting ourselves from the economy?" "This is job No. 1," Cantor said. "Let's focus on what needs to be done." In a conference call with reporters yesterday, White House domestic policy adviser Melody Barnes rejected such criticism, saying that "advances with regard to science and technology help advance our overall national goals around economic growth and job creation."

MEDIA -- CHRIS WALLACE DEFENDS LIMBAUGH: 'HE WASN'T SAYING I WANT THE PRESIDENT TO FAIL': Yesterday on Fox News Sunday, host Chris Wallace asked DNC chair Gov. Tim Kaine (D-VA) if "going after Rush Limbaugh" is a "perfect example of the stale ideology and petty partisanship" that President Obama discussed recently regarding divisions over the stimulus bill. "We wouldn't even be talking about Rush Limbaugh at all had he not said he wanted the president to fail," Kaine replied, adding, "At a time of crisis in this nation, nobody should be rooting for this president to fail." But Wallace quickly came to Limbaugh's defense. "I think if you read what he says, he wasn't saying I want the president to fail. He was saying I want his policies, his agenda to fail and that he disagreed with them and thought they were bad for America," he said. Yet, while Limbaugh has indeed expressed desire that Obama's policies fail, he has also specifically called for Obama himself to fail. "'I hope he fails," Limbaugh said shortly before Obama's inauguration. Just last month, Limbaugh expressed similar sentiments. "The dirty little secret...is that every Republican in this country wants Obama to fail but none of them have the guts to say so; I am willing to say it. We want him to fail because we want to preserve our country as we found it. We do not want to see a successful attack on capitalism."

Nobel-prize-winning economist Paul Krugman worries that "the White House has decided to muddle through on the financial front, relying on economic recovery to rescue the banks rather than the other way around." "Sooner or later, the administration will realize that more must be done," Krugman writes. "But when it comes back for more money, will Congress go along?"

Economists at the World Bank warned yesterday that "the world is falling into the first global recession since World War II," and it is confronting developing countries with "massive financial shortfalls that could turn back the clock on poverty reduction." The new World Bank report said the crisis "began with junk mortgages" in the U.S.

Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) has changed his tune on Barack Obama. "He's shown real leadership," Lieberman told the AP in an interview. "Bottom line: I think Barack Obama, president of the United States, is off to a very good start."

Improvised explosive device (IED) attacks in Afghanistan "killed three times as many coalition troops in the first two months of 2009 compared with the same period last year. The increase points to a strengthening insurgency and potentially more violence as warmer weather arrives along with intensified fighting." During the same period, "96 troops were wounded, a 146% increase from the 39 early last year."

The White House announced yesterday that it would pull out 12,000 troops from Iraq by September, the first step toward removing all troops by 2010. Ali al-Dabbagh, an Iraqi government spokesman, emphasized the status of forces agreement requiring the end of the U.S. occupation by 2011. "The Iraqi government has no intention to accept the presence of any foreign troops or bases after 2011," he said.

In his Sunday column, Tom Friedman writes that the growth the U.S. has experienced for the past 50 years is "simply unsustainable economically and ecologically." "We created a way of raising standards of living that we can't possibly pass on to our children," said ClimateProgress's Joe Romm.

On CNBC this morning, billionaire Warren Buffet said that the economy has "fallen off a cliff" over the past six months and that "not only has the economy slowed down a lot, but people have really changed their habits like I haven't seen." Buffet added that he thinks unemployment "will likely climb a lot higher before the recession is done," but that "everything will be all right" eventually.

McClatchy newspapers will cut 1,600 jobs, or 15 percent of its work force. "As with other newspaper companies, McClatchy is suffering as readers and advertisers shift away from newspapers." The economic downturn is "particularly painful for McClatchy" since it has "large newspapers in areas hit hard by the real-estate meltdown."

And finally: President Obama led a chorus of "Happy Birthday" for 77-year old Sen. Ted Kennedy last night at the Kennedy center. The Massachusetts senator was awarded the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award. Referring to her short-lived attempt to seek former New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's Senate seat, Caroline Kennedy joked, "I never thought I'd be in a room with so many senators."

President Obama "will sign an executive order today lifting limits on human embryonic stem cell research and will direct federal agencies to 'restore scientific integrity' to decision-making."

THINK PROGRESS: Newt Gingrich strikes back at Rush Limbaugh: "You're irrational if you don't want the president to succeed."

WONK ROOM: Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) explains why nationalization "is an option," "needs to be put on the table."

YGLESIAS: Jobs situation now worse than '81-'82 recession.

POLITICAL ANIMAL: Putting the right-wing's hyperventilation over President Obama's tax plans in context.

OHIO: State budget cuts are hurting veterans groups.

ILLINOIS: A bill to allow civil unions moved out of a state House committee last week.

TEXAS: Twitter is making a noticeable impact at the Texas Capitol.

"We do need earmark reform...I wish [the president] would veto the bill, we'd get back together and come up with the earmark reform process."
-- Sen. Linsdey Graham (R-SC), 03/08/09

VERSUS

"I voted to take all earmarks out, but I will come back in the new process and put that back in...I think I should have the ability as a United States senator to direct money back to my state."
-- Graham, 03/08/09

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