UNLIKE US, Iran Is In It To Win It In Iraq.
Both America and Iran are involved in the effort to drive ISIS back and support the government in Baghdad. As such, there is a tacit alliance—but it is not one of equals. As the old saying goes, it’s like a ham and egg sandwich: the chicken is involved, but the pig is really committed. Today, unlike 10 years ago, Iran is the pig.
This is proving increasingly problematic as, as The Washington Post reports, American officials are beginning to contemplate the scale of the Iranian backed militias in Iraq, which may now equal the regular army (which also leans Shi’a) in total size. If and when ISIS is subdued, this will present another large headache for Washington. Though all other issues with Iran have currently been put on the back burner to make way for the nuclear negotiations, look for this one to fester.
That’s okay, we’ve got Smart Diplomacy on the job.
Posted at by Glenn Reynolds on Dec 30, 2014 at 10:30 am Link
26 Comments.
“SMART DIPLOMACY” UPDATE: Anti-ISIS coalition to meet next week. “Foreign dignitaries from around 60 countries that make up the international coalition against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) will meet for the first time next week, the State Department announced Wednesday. Secretary of State John Kerry will chair the first ministerial meeting on Dec. 3 at NATO headquarters in Brussels. The ministers plan to ‘discuss the political mechanism for our joint efforts to degrade and defeat’ ISIS, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said in a statement.”
I’m not super-optimistic about this.
Posted at by Glenn Reynolds on Nov 28, 2014 at 8:00 am Link
29 Comments.
THE HILL: Top Dem ‘shocked’ by ‘chickens—’ remark.
Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.), the ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, hit the Obama administration on Wednesday over an official calling the Israeli prime minister a “chickenshit.”
“I was shocked and disappointed on reading the comments in The Atlantic,” Engel said in a statement. “I call upon the Administration to reassert the importance of the relationship between the United States and Israel, and to reaffirm that the bonds between our two countries are unbreakable.
“I realize that two allies, such as the United States and Israel, are not going to agree on everything, but I think it is counterproductive and unprofessional for Administration officials to air their dirty laundry in such a public way,” he added. “I am getting tired of hearing about the leaks and denials. This ought to be the last time we hear of such talk because it is getting to a point where nobody believes the denials anymore.”
Engel is responding to an article in The Atlantic detailing the Obama administration’s frustration with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations. The article quotes a senior Obama administration official as calling Netanyahu a “chickenshit.”
The statement from Engel, known as a strong supporter of Israel, adds a Democratic voice to Speaker John Boehner’s (R-Ohio) criticism of the comments.
Just more “smart diplomacy” from our JV administration.
Posted at by Glenn Reynolds on Oct 30, 2014 at 7:30 am Link
32 Comments.
YEAH, THAT “SMART DIPLOMACY” STUFF ISN’T LOOKING SO GOOD: Becoming secretary of state could be Hillary’s biggest political mistake. “Hillary Clinton enjoyed remarkably high approval ratings during her time as secretary of state under President Obama, but those numbers have evaporated as the Middle East burns and Moscow continues its expansion westward — leaving her legacy in tatters. This development is occurring at a terrible time for Clinton, months before she is expected to announce her 2016 presidential ambitions.”
Posted at by Glenn Reynolds on Sep 11, 2014 at 8:30 am Link
47 Comments.
ANNALS OF “SMART DIPLOMACY:” America’s confused foreign policy in the post-Soviet sphere.
Washington seems to have developed an imperative to engage when it is too late, if at all, in reaction to Moscow’s assertive actions and has excelled in sending mixed messages. Azerbaijan is arguably the most pivotal nation in Eurasia today. It is a key transit point for NATO operations in Afghanistan, the only nation bordering both Russia and Iran, and one of the very few secular and tolerant Muslim societies in the world. Yet instead of intensively reaching out to Azerbaijan, Washington constantly criticizes or alternately ignores Baku.
In contrast to Russia and Iran, which both frequently send top level delegations to convince Baku to turn away from its pro-Western course, Washington has been MIA, with Hillary Clinton being the last high-level Administration official visiting in 2012. Compare this to the Moscow: Putin personally visited Baku just before the presidential elections in 2013 to court Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev. Now consider this through the prism of regional perceptions and the global outcry about the lack of American leadership.
Failing to offer a credible security commitment to their allies in the post-Soviet space, the United States and Europe are unable to address their most immediate and present threats. Offering some vague European prospects peppered by heavy criticism and diluted by the constant bickering and lack of leadership among the Europeans, the West comes across as weak in the face of Russia’s decisive, instant and brutal force. The much touted EU Association agreement doesn’t even offer clear support to Azerbaijan for its territorial integrity, unlike the other candidates. This is a sign of strategic confusion in the European ranks.
When you elect feckless leaders, you get feckless leadership.
Posted at by Glenn Reynolds on Sep 05, 2014 at 8:30 am Link
48 Comments.
SMART DIPLOMACY: Russia invades Ukraine, Obama expresses ‘concern.’ “There is no better example of the ruinous Obama foreign policy than Ukraine. The president has issued empty threats, diminished sanctions and refused to allow Ukraine to protect itself. If you are the leader of a Baltic state, you’re probably and justifiably panicked. The president will no doubt issue more empty threats. But that doesn’t do Ukraine any good, and it surely won’t protect other potential victims. Hillary Clinton‘s reset policy, it seems, has been a complete failure. Or is she going to blame others for this one as well?” If I were the Poles, I’d be trying to obtain nuclear weapons.
Posted at by Glenn Reynolds on Aug 28, 2014 at 1:37 pm Link
81 Comments.
HOW’S THAT “SMART DIPLOMACY” WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): Obama’s plan to stop ISIS panned by both sides of aisle. Hillary’s first to plunge in the knife:
“Great nations need organizing principles, and ‘Don’t do stupid stuff’ is not an organizing principle,” said Clinton, who served as Obama’s first secretary of state.
She made the comment to The Atlantic in response to a question about one of the administration’s blunt mantras to observe caution – an approach critics say has led to disengagement as events exploded in the Middle East.
Clinton, in a new interview with Jeffrey Goldberg in the magazine, blasted the administration’s failure to arm Syrian rebels in the early phase of their uprising against President Bashar al Assad – a policy she tried to change.
“The failure to help build up a credible fighting force of the people who were the originators of the protests against Assad—there were Islamists, there were secularists, there was everything in the middle—the failure to do that left a big vacuum, which the jihadists have now filled,” Clinton said.
Her strategy appears to be to run against Obama the way Obama ran against Bush. Maybe a bit awkward that she was in charge of his foreign policy for most of the time.
Posted at by Glenn Reynolds on Aug 10, 2014 at 6:44 pm Link
51 Comments.
“SMART DIPLOMACY:” Inviting a continent to dinner insults African reformers.
The African leaders summit in Washington and the coverage thereof perpetuated a number of unhelpful myths about the countries that attended.
Most visibly, when Vice President Joe Biden uttered his gaffe about the “nation of Africa,” it demonstrated the compulsion to treat the continent as one undifferentiated mass. Miriem Bensalah Chaqroun, executive director of the Oulmes Water Co. and president of the Moroccan Confederation of Businesses, told me, “Perception is important. These are 54 countries and each one has specific [characteristics]. You can’t address an entire continent.” But that is precisely what Biden and President Obama did, speaking as if the same prescriptions apply everywhere. . . .
We don’t treat “Asia” as one entity, nor do we invite “South America” for dinner at the White House. It is vaguely demeaning and certainly misguided to treat African countries any differently and to, in effect, send the message that these leaders are interchangeable.
Yes, Africa is huge, and very diverse. Then there’s the dictator-friendliness of the thing:
The guest list featured some of Africa’s nastiest tyrants, including autocrats such as Angola’s Jose Eduardo dos Santos and Equatorial Guinea’s Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, who traveled to Washington for the summit, which included an official dinner at the White House.
Usually, leaders with such dismal records on democracy and human rights aren’t welcomed at White House galas. This time, however, Obama excluded only four of the continent’s leaders (Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe along with the leaders of Eritrea, Sudan and the Central African Republic).
That left some of Africa’s most admirable democratic presidents, such as Ghana’s John Dramani Mahama and Tanzania’s Jakaya Kikwete, having to compete for attention with some of its most authoritarian. Obiang, for example, who recently celebrated the 35th anniversary of the military coup that brought him to power in 1979, has jailed or killed virtually all of his political opponents.
Indeed.
Posted at by Glenn Reynolds on Aug 07, 2014 at 10:23 am Link
24 Comments.
WHAT HAPPENS TO OIL PRICES when ISIS takes Baghdad? “As of today it is at least theoretically possible to scenarize a world oil shock at least equal to the so-called ‘Arab oil embargo’ of 1973-74 in terms of oil export supply cuts from several key regions and producer states – Russia, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen and possibly the GCC Arab Gulf exporters.” Whether you buy this or not, it’s certainly an argument to push domestic production as quickly as possible. I suppose opening federal lands for exploration is out of the question, though . . . .
And anyway, we’ve got Smart DiplomacyTM on the job, so no worries!
UPDATE: Richard Fernandez asks: “Whose side is Obama on?”
ANOTHER UPDATE: ISIS Advances As Kurds Run Out Of Ammunition.
Posted at by Glenn Reynolds on Aug 04, 2014 at 12:29 pm Link
63 Comments.
GIVEN THE WAY OUR “SMART DIPLOMACY” IS GOING, BOTH COUNTRIES MIGHT BE BETTER OFF IF WE DID: John Kerry Just Visited. But Should We Just Forget About India? “So low is the bar in U.S.-India relations right now that the best thing that can be said about John Kerry’s two-day hop-over to New Delhi was that he went there at all. A relationship that burst into true blossom under George W. Bush, one that held for many Americans the promise of a mold-breaking alliance for the 21st century, lies shabbily dormant. Indeed, the only memorable episode in Kerry’s visit was his scolding by India’s foreign minister, Sushma Swaraj, for the NSA’s spying on her political party.”
Posted at by Glenn Reynolds on Aug 03, 2014 at 9:08 pm Link
31 Comments.
ON THIS POST BY ROGER SIMON, AN INTERESTING COMMENT:
A person I trust posted the following on a local Jewish e-board in NJ. She advised that it is from an IDF solider presently serving in Gaza:
“What’s happening here in the staging area [area where soldiers prepare to enter Gaza] is beyond comprehension, not rationally, not emotionally and begs the imagination.
Almost every hour a car shows up overflowing with food, snacks, cold drinks, socks, underwear, undershirts, hygiene supplies, wipes, cigarettes, backgammon and more. They’re coming from the North and the Center, from manufacturers, from companies and private businesses, from prisons, Chareidim and Settlers, from Tel Aviv and even Saviyon.
Every intersection on they way down here we get stopped, not by the police, but be residents giving out food. What is amazing is that the entire situation wasn’t organized and everyone is coming on their own without coordination between the folks coming.
They’re writing letters and blessings, how they’re thinking of us all the time. There are those who spent hours making sandwiches, so they’re as perfect and comforting as possible.
Of course representatives of Chabad are here to help soldiers put on Tefillin and distributing Cha’Ta’Ts (Chumash, Tehillim, Tanya) for every troop transport and Breslov are showing up to the border and dancing with the soldiers with great joy.
The Chareidim are coming from their yeshivot to ask the names of the soldiers with their mothers’ names so that the whole yeshiva can pray for them. It should be mentioned that all of this is done under the threat of the terrorist tunnels and rockets in the area.
Soroka Hospital (in Be’er Sheva) today looks like a 5 star hotel. A wounded friend who was recently discharged told us how the MasterChef truck is parked outside and is preparing food for the wounded.
It goes without saying the amount of prayer services that are going on. On the religious front as well, there are lectures and Torah classes, all the food is obviously Kosher. Shachrit, Mincha, and Maariv with Sifrei Torah. They’re giving out tzitzit and Tehilim by the hundreds. It’s become the new fashion! The Rabbi of Maglan [Special Forces unit] told me that almost the entire unit has started wearing them, because the Army Rabbinate has been giving out tzitzit that wick away sweat. They’re gaining both a Mitzva and a high quality undershirt. We’ve started calling them “Shachpatzitzti” (a portmanteau of the Hebrew term for body armor and tzitzit). We’re having deep conversations late into the night without arguments, without fights and we find ourselves agreeing on most stuff.
We’re making lots of jokes at Hamas’s expensive and without politics. There’s lots more to add but my battery is running low and the staff has been requesting someone give a class on Likutei MoharaN (Breslov).
How happy is the nation that is like this.”
Well, to be fair, they have a leader who believes in the country he leads.
UPDATE: Question: Come a real confrontation with Obama — which seems possible — could the Israelis flip and ally with Putin? The Soviets backed the Israelis pre-1967, and right now Putin’s siding with Assad against the Islamists. Israel would be a game-changing ally for Russia in the Middle East, especially with all the traditional Arab powers looking shaky — not only in terms of military assets, but more significantly in terms of intelligence assets.
I’m sure the crack Smart DiplomacyTM team at the State Department has considered this.
Posted at by Glenn Reynolds on Jul 28, 2014 at 10:48 pm Link
77 Comments.
BECOMING? Walter Russell Mead: As Libya Implodes, “Smart Diplomacy” Becoming a Punch Line.
Throw in the resulting civil war in Mali and the scattering of insurgents and weapons to the four winds, and you have a classic exhibition of reckless incompetence—of American arrogance, ignorance, carelessness and moralism combining in a toxic stew to sink a fragile country we never understood.
Luckily for America’s self-esteem, it was liberal Democrats that produced this particular shambles. If Republicans had done this, the media would be on the administration non-stop, perhaps comparing Samantha Power to Paul Wolfowitz—a well-meaning humanitarian way over her head who wrecked a country out of misguided ideology. There might also be some pointed questions for future presidential candidates who supported this fiasco. But since both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have their fingerprints all over Libya, there isn’t a lot of press hunger for a detailed, unsparing autopsy into this stinking corpse of policy flub.
If Obama were a Republican, the press and the weekly news shows would be ringing with hyperbolic, apocalyptic denunciations of the clueless incumbent who had failed to learn the most basic lessons of Iraq. Indeed, the MSM right now would be howling that Obama was stupider than Bush. Bush, our Journolist friends would now be saying ad nauseam, at least had the excuse that he didn’t know what happens when you overthrow a paranoid, genocidal, economically incompetent Arab tyrant in an artificial post-colonial state. But Obama did—or, the press would nastily say, he would have done if he’d been doing his job instead of hitting the golf course or yakking it up with his glitzy pals at late night bull sessions. The ad hominem attacks would never stop, and all the tangled threads of incompetence and failure would be endlessly and expertly picked at in long New Yorker articles, NYT thumbsuckers, and chin-strokings on all the Sabbath gasbag shows.
Why, the ever-admirable tribunes of a free and unbiased press would be asking non-stop, didn’t this poor excuse for a President learn from what happened in Iraq? When you upend an insane and murderous dictator who has crushed his people for decades under an incompetent and quirky regime, you’d better realize that there is no effective state or civil society under the hard shell of dictatorial rule. Remove the dictator and you get chaos and anarchy. Wasn’t this President paying attention during the last ten years?
Some of the criticism would be exaggerated and unfair; the Monday morning quarterbacks never really understand just how complicated and tragic this poor world really is, not to mention how hard it is to make life and death decisions in real time in the center of the non-stop political firestorm that is Washington today. And the MSM attracts more than its share of deeply inexperienced but entitled, self-regarding blowhards who love to pontificate about how stupid all those poor fools who have actual jobs and responsibilities actually are.
But luckily for Team Obama, the mainstream press would rather die than subject liberal Democrats to the critiques it reserves for the GOP.
This is why, if you want accountable government, you should always vote Republican.
Posted at by Glenn Reynolds on Jul 27, 2014 at 10:30 am Link
59 Comments.
ED KLEIN ON THE WAGES OF “SMART DIPLOMACY:” How Our World Fell Apart. These people are constantly telling us how smart they are, but from diplomatic disasters to “speak-o” incidents, the evidence suggests otherwise.
Posted at by Glenn Reynolds on Jul 26, 2014 at 1:40 pm Link
28 Comments.
WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: Have We Gone From a Post-War to a Pre-War World?
In 1914, Germany was the rising power, the U.K. the weary hegemon and the Balkans was the powder keg. In 2014, China is rising, the United States is staggering under the burden of world leadership and the Middle East is the powder keg.
Only a few years ago, most western observers believed that the age of geopolitical rivalry and great power war was over. Today, with Russian forces in Ukraine, religious wars exploding across the Middle East, and territorial disputes leading to one crisis after another in the East and South China seas, the outlook is darker. Serious people now ask whether we have moved from a post-war into a pre-war world. Could some incident somewhere in the world spark another global war? . . .
Despite worries about the rise of China, the place of the United States at the pinnacle of world power is more secure today than Britain’s was 100 years ago. The U.S. economy is a larger share of GDP, the U.S. military advantage is qualitatively greater than anything Britain ever enjoyed, and none of its political problems are as polarizing as the Irish question or the rise of a socialist working class party were for the U.K. in 1914.
Even so, it is possible that other powers may not be sure how committed the United States is to defending its allies or its interests around the world, and that can make bold or even rash moves look attractive.
It’s possible, for example, that some people in the Chinese leadership look at President Obama’s mixed messages about his “red lines” in Syria and wonder how seriously to take American red lines in the Pacific. Would the U.S. really go to war over a handful of uninhabited rocks scattered through the East and South China seas? Would we take stronger steps against an invasion of Taiwan than we have against Russia’s conquest of the Crimea? Russia and Iran may be asking themselves similar questions and looking for places where they can push against what they see as weak spots in the U.S. alliance system. At the same time, countries that depend on U.S. guarantees (like Israel and Japan) may become more aggressive to deter potential adversaries.
I’m sure “smart diplomacy” will take care of everything.
Posted at by Glenn Reynolds on Jul 09, 2014 at 10:30 am Link
77 Comments.
MICHAEL TOTTEN: The Consequences Of Syria. “The Syrian civil war is no longer the Syrian civil war. It’s a regional war that started in Syria, has expanded into Lebanon and Iraq, and has drawn in the Iranians and to a lesser extent the Kurds and the Israelis. Wars in North Africa tend to stay local, but wars in the Levant spill over and suck in the neighbors. There’s no reason to believe this war has finished expanding or that an end is in sight.”
Fortunately, we have Smart Diplomacy, implemented by Top Men and Top Women.
Posted at by Glenn Reynolds on Jun 23, 2014 at 8:59 am Link
28 Comments.
“SMART DIPLOMACY” UPDATE: Former Obama Ambassador Blasts Syria Policy Failures.
President Obama’s former Ambassador to Syria, Robert Ford, publicly lambasted the Administration yesterday, stating that its Syria policy was a failure, and that he resigned because he could no longer support it. He further argued that timely intervention could have empowered moderates and prevented violent jihadists from gaining the upper hand in the Syrian resistance. Instead, new terrorist threats are now emerging, not just in Syria but in the U.S. and Europe. . . .
Obama personally selected Ford as his Ambassador to Syria, going so far as to give him a recess appointment in the teeth of Republican resistance. Ford now joins the ranks of former Secretaries of Defense Robert Gates and Leon Panetta and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in criticizing their old boss’s Syria strategy. Ford made it crystal clear that “it’s on record now that the State Department, for a long time, has advocated doing much more to help the moderates in the Syrian opposition.” Such blunt comments from an ex-official make it clear that America’s inaction was a personal decision of the President, made against the counsel of his advisers.
As an example of his security concerns, Ford cited Moner Mohammad Abu-Salha, an American citizen and Florida native who drove a truck full of explosives into a Syrian Army outpost in a suicide attack on behalf of Jabhat al-Nusra, an al-Qaeda affiliate. Abu-Salha’s case exemplifies a much wider failure. Not only have we renounced control of the Syria situation; the U.S. can’t even gather enough intelligence to keep track of what’s going on there.
Deploy the hashtags!
Posted at by Glenn Reynolds on Jun 05, 2014 at 10:27 am Link
17 Comments.
Posted at by Glenn Reynolds on Jun 02, 2014 at 12:07 pm Link
5 Comments.
HER APPEAL IS BECOMING MORE SELECTIVE: Tickets to Hillary Speech On Sale, 66% Off. “Hillary Clinton will be speaking at the 1STBANK Center next week in Broomfield, Colorado. But it appears event organizers are having a hard time selling out: tickets to the event have been put on sale, and are now selling for 66 percent cheaper than the original sale price.”
Or maybe the problem is with the sales pitch:
Hillary Rodham Clinton served as the 67th US Secretary of State from 2009 until 2013, after nearly four decades in public service. Her “smart power” approach to foreign policy repositioned American diplomacy and development for the 21st century.
Yeah, how’s that workin’ out for us?
Posted at by Glenn Reynolds on May 29, 2014 at 8:42 am Link
57 Comments.
SMART DIPLOMACY UPDATE: Are U.S. Sanctions Isolating NASA Instead of Russia? “At an economic forum in Russia, European, Russian and Indian space industry leaders plead to keep international tensions from scuttling joint programs and business arrangements. Missing? NASA and U.S. space companies.”
Posted at by Glenn Reynolds on May 27, 2014 at 1:30 pm Link
10 Comments.
HOW’S THAT “SMART DIPLOMACY” WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): In Syria, Tehran Declares Victory. Enough is enough: Hashtag ‘em!
UPDATE: Eliot Cohen: A Selfie-Taking, Hashtagging Teenage Administration: The Obama crowd too often responds to critics and to world affairs like self-absorbed adolescents.
As American foreign policy continues its long string of failures—not a series of singles and doubles, as President Obama asserted in a recent news conference, but rather season upon season of fouls and strikes—the question becomes: Why?
Why does the Economist magazine put a tethered eagle on its cover, with the plaintive question, “What would America fight for?” Why do Washington Post columnists sympathetic to the administration write pieces like one last week headlined, “Obama tends to create his own foreign policy headaches”? . . .
Often, members of the Obama administration speak and, worse, think and act, like a bunch of teenagers. When officials roll their eyes at Vladimir Putin’s seizure of Crimea with the line that this is “19th-century behavior,” the tone is not that different from a disdainful remark about a hairstyle being “so 1980s.” When administration members find themselves judged not on utopian aspirations or the purity of their motives—from offering “hope and change” to stopping global warming—but on their actual accomplishments, they turn sulky. As teenagers will, they throw a few taunts (the president last month said the GOP was offering economic policies that amount to a “stinkburger” or a “meanwich”) and stomp off, refusing to exchange a civil word with those of opposing views.
In a searing memoir published in January, former Defense Secretary Robert Gates describes with disdain the trash talk about the Bush administration that characterized meetings in the Obama White House. Like self-obsessed teenagers, the staffers and their superiors seemed to forget that there were other people in the room who might take offense, or merely see the world differently. Teenagers expect to be judged by intentions and promise instead of by accomplishment, and their style can be encouraged by irresponsible adults (see: the Nobel Prize committee) who give awards for perkiness and promise rather than achievement.
If the United States today looks weak, hesitant and in retreat, it is in part because its leaders and their staff do not carry themselves like adults.
Indeed. Related:
Obama doesn’t act presidential. Presidents act presidential not because they’re stuffy or out-of-touch, but because experience shows that when you don’t act presidential, it often winds up handing opponents a club to beat you with. Obama might know this if he had had significant experience in national politics before running for President, but he didn’t. His staff, alas, is taking its cues from him, instead of remedying his deficiencies.
Which are becoming increasingly apparent.
Posted at by Glenn Reynolds on May 13, 2014 at 10:22 am Link
18 Comments.
JAMES TARANTO: Schindler’s List, And Hillary’s.
Obama’s “remarkable title” is itself an example of the power of story telling. It is a commonplace that he rose to prominence almost entirely on the strength of his biography (which Bill Clinton once disparaged as a “fairy tale”). In 2011, when he was at one of his political low points, critics on the left insisted his failure was one not of leadership or of policy but of story telling.
Now here he is telling a story–a story about telling stories. The moral of this story is that leadership is a matter of telling stories. That is partly true–we do not mean to gainsay the hortatory and informative elements of political leadership–but Obama seems to be citing the power of stories as an excuse for inaction.
Also, Hillary’s inaction:
What Clinton didn’t mention was that her own State Department refused to place Boko Haram on the list of foreign terrorist organizations in 2011, after the group bombed the U.N. headquarters in Abuja. The refusal came despite the urging of the Justice Department, the FBI, the CIA, and over a dozen senators and congressmen. . . .
In May 2012, then-Justice Department official Lisa Monaco (now at the White House) wrote to the State Department to urge Clinton to designate Boko Haram as a terrorist organization. The following month, Gen. Carter Ham, the chief of U.S. Africa Command, said that Boko Haram “are likely sharing funds, training, and explosive materials” with al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. And yet, Hillary Clinton’s State Department still declined to place Boko Haram on its official terrorist roster.
Smart diplomacy!
Posted at by Glenn Reynolds on May 12, 2014 at 8:30 am Link
17 Comments.
SMART DIPLOMACY:
One bitter American official told [Nahum Barnea, a prominent columnist from Israel’s best-selling daily Yedioth Aharonoth] “I guess we need another intifada to create the circumstances that would allow progress.”
The country’s in the very best of hands, to coin an Insta-phrase.
Posted at by Ed Driscoll on May 03, 2014 at 5:14 pm Link
3 Comments.
“SMART DIPLOMACY” UPDATE: John F. Kerry’s Israeli gaffe a diplomatic nightmare. I think they gave him this job so Hillary’s tenure would look good by comparison, but for the first time in his life he’s over-performing.
UPDATE: Kerry Echoes His Boss. “John Kerry is attempting to walk back his smear of Israel as an “apartheid” state. That the current secretary of state is a clownish figure has been well known for decades. But what should not be lost in the latest gaffe is that it is not a gaffe. In what he foolishly thought was a safe place to let his hair down, Kerry merely gave voice to what the Obama administration thinks. . . . Forget Kerry. This was made explicit in Obama’s 2009 Cairo speech—for anyone who didn’t infer it already from Obama’s friendships with notorious Israel bashers like Rashid Khalidi and Bill Ayers (see P. David Hornik’s FPM report on Ayers joining his fellow tenured radicals in a 2010 petition accusing Israel of — all together now — apartheid policies).”
Related: John Kerry’s Jewish Best Friends.
Posted at by Glenn Reynolds on Apr 29, 2014 at 10:39 am Link
41 Comments.
JAMES TARANTO: Mutually Assured Derision: The State Department makes a hash of diplomacy.
Wait, it gets worse. Some of Foggy Bottom’s tweeters are deadly earnest, making them totally defenseless against post-Soviet sarcasm. On March 26 Jen Psaki, State’s top spokesman, tweeted this: “To echo @BarackObama today-proud to stand #UnitedForUkraine World should stand together with one voice.” In an accompanying photo, a smiling Psaki gave a left-handed thumbs-up while holding up in her right hand a sign with the #UnitedForUkraine hashtag and her Twitter handle, @statedeptspox.
Yesterday, National Review Online’s Patrick Brennan reports, the Russian Foreign Ministry’s official Twitter account started including the hashtag in its tweets on the subject. Example: “[Foreign Minister Sergey] #Lavrov: Our US counterparts must compel the acting officials in Kiev to bear responsibility for the current situation #UnitedForUkraine.”
Barack Obama’s political operation frequently sees its Twitter hashtags “hijacked” by conservative antagonists. Remember #WHYouth? But in domestic politics, mutually assured derision is just good clean fun. Partisan politics thrives on antagonism. If the purpose of the domestic hashtags is to motivate Democratic base voters, conservative mockery is a help rather than a hindrance.
At Foggy Bottom, however, they seem utterly clueless as to what the Russians are up to.
And to think we were promised Smart DiplomacyTM back when Obama was new!
Posted at by Glenn Reynolds on Apr 26, 2014 at 8:30 am Link
24 Comments.
Posted at by Glenn Reynolds on Mar 31, 2014 at 8:30 am Link
3 Comments.
Posted at by Glenn Reynolds on Mar 08, 2014 at 6:03 pm Link
4 Comments.
Posted at by Glenn Reynolds on Mar 02, 2014 at 10:22 pm Link
8 Comments.
CHARLES KING: Ukraine After Yanukovych: Crimea On Edge.
One of the results of the fall of Viktor Yanukovych’s government has been the rising specter of the break-up of Ukraine and the secession of Crimea. The interim president, Olexander Turchynov, spoke recently about the dark prospect of “separatism” in his country, while early reports of the whereabouts of Yanukovych placed him in Crimea itself. Is Crimea likely to become the ex-president’s redoubt, and if so, would Russia intervene to support the secessionist region?
Both scenarios are unlikely. Yanukovych’s support is limited across the country as a whole, and if the new government is able to act calmly and deliberately, there will be little incentive to push toward a strategically risky—and potentially devastating—separation, either by Crimeans or by other Ukrainian citizens in areas of the country with sizable Russian-speaking communities.
Stay tuned. And don’t worry — we’ve got Smart DiplomacyTM on the job!
Posted at by Glenn Reynolds on Feb 27, 2014 at 10:30 am Link
24 Comments.
DON’T WORRY, WE’VE GOT SMART DIPLOMACYTM ON THE JOB! Russia Seeks Several Military Bases Abroad – Defense Minister.
Russia is planning to expand its permanent military presence outside its borders by placing military bases in a number of foreign countries, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said Wednesday.
Shoigu said the list includes Vietnam, Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, the Seychelles, Singapore and several other countries.
I wonder where this fits on John Kerry’s priority list?
UPDATE: From the comments: “Remember: ROMNEY was the idiot for suggesting that Russia was our primary adversary in foreign policy.”
Posted at by Glenn Reynolds on Feb 27, 2014 at 8:30 am Link
41 Comments.
IN UKRAINE “scorched earth” tactics. “The violence, which will resonate for weeks, months or even years around this fragile and bitterly divided former Soviet republic of 46 million, exposed the impotence, in this dispute, of the United States and the European Union, which had engaged in a week of fruitless efforts to mediate a peaceful settlement. It also shredded doubts about the influential reach of Russia, which had portrayed the protesters as American-backed ‘terrorists’ and, in thinly coded messages from the Kremlin, urged Mr. Yanukovych to crack down.” More of that “Smart Diplomacy” paying off, I guess.
Posted at by Glenn Reynolds on Feb 19, 2014 at 6:44 am Link
38 Comments.
SMART DIPLOMACY: The Syria Debacle: Slaughter in the Cities, Ineffectual Mumbling in the White House.
The President can only count his one remaining blessing: the press is still busy trying to shield itself from understanding the full damage this administration’s painfully inept Syria policy has done. Our Syria response has harmed America’s position, our alliances in the Middle East, and our relationships around the world — to say nothing of the humanitarian disaster we’ve implicated ourselves in.
To bluster heroically about how ‘Assad must go’, then do nothing as he stays; to epically proclaim grandiose red lines and make military threats that fall humiliatingly flat; to grasp with pathetic eagerness an obviously bogus Russian negotiating ploy; to sputter ineffectually as the talks collapse…it is rare that American diplomacy is conducted this poorly for so long a period of time.
To some degree we sympathize with those in the mainstream media who turn their eyes from the sight. It’s not just the decomposing corpse of Obama’s Syria/Russia policy that’s stinking up the joint. The comforting assumptions and diplomatic ideas of a whole generation of ambitious Washington foreign policy wonks are being discredited. They thought to build a new Democratic consensus foreign policy on the tomb of George W. Bush’s failures, but “smart diplomacy” turns out to be deeply flawed. The left is moving toward the kind of meltdown moment that many neocons had as the Bush foreign policy went off the rails.
Bush rallied with the Surge, and left Iraq in good shape for Obama. Obama then blew the status of forces negotiations there and it’s gone downhill. I’m discerning a theme, here.
Related: John McCain wants Obama to ‘acknowledge failure’ in Syria. Who says Obama thinks he’s failed?
Posted at by Glenn Reynolds on Feb 17, 2014 at 8:30 am Link
33 Comments.
“SMART DIPLOMACY” UPDATE: Is Syria Now a Direct Threat to the United States? The militancy nurtured by the civil war appears to be spreading—just as diplomacy falters. “Over the last two weeks, Obama administration officials have signaled—sometimes intentionally, sometimes not—that a worst-case scenario is emerging in Syria. Peace talks are at a virtual standstill. An emboldened President Bashar al-Assad has missed two deadlines to turn over his deadliest chemical weapons. And radical extremists who have fought in Syria are carrying out attacks in Egypt and allegedly aspire to strike the United States as well.” As I’ve noted before, John Kerry’s role is to make Hillary Clinton’s unimpressive tenure at State look better by comparison. So far, he’s fulfilling it perfectly.
Posted at by Glenn Reynolds on Feb 10, 2014 at 10:00 am Link
16 Comments.
“SMART DIPLOMACY:” The Emperor Has No Clothes. “The problems over the Ukraine come almost as a caboose to a long train of disasters, with a disconsolate State Department pulling along a whole string of derelicts: Libya, Syria, Iran, the Arab Spring and growing tension in the Western Pacific, so that the troubles with Russia pass almost unnoticed as the last car in the series. . . . Under his watch the 70 year old Pax Americana has fallen apart. Al-Qaeda has flourished. President Benigno Aquino of the Philippines caught the tone of rising concern when he warned, in an interview with the New York Times that China was doing to Southeast Asia what Nazi Germany did to Central Europe in the late 1930s. . . . Barack Obama is in trouble and so are we all. It’s time to stop the Happy Talk and for Republicans and Democrats to face the facts. The emperor has no clothes.”
Posted at by Glenn Reynolds on Feb 07, 2014 at 2:49 pm Link
51 Comments.
MORE OF THAT SMART DIPLOMACY WE’RE ALWAYS HEARING ABOUT:
The top U.S. diplomat for Europe apologized Thursday for comments about the European Union that were — to put it lightly — undiplomatic.
“F— the E.U.,” Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland said in a private telephone call that was intercepted and leaked online. . . . State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki acknowledged that the recording was authentic and said Nuland had apologized to E.U. officials.
Well, I have to say that her analysis seems pretty spot-on.
Posted at by Glenn Reynolds on Feb 07, 2014 at 8:17 am Link
29 Comments.