Diplomacy's Back Posted by Derek Chollet

We spend a lot of space here at DA beating up the current Administration on this or that – because, well, they deserve it, and because that’s what being in the loyal opposition is all about.

But I think what distinguishes constructive criticism from mere carping is giving the Bush team credit when they do something right (especially when it’s along the lines of what we recommended!)

For example, Secretary of State Rice’s trip to Europe last week was rightfully consumed by the controversy over CIA “black sites” and questions about what to do next in Iraq.

But these bitter debates obscure a surprising -- and for some, hard to swallow -- fact: the U.S. approach toward many of the world’s toughest challenges has undergone a dramatic, if quiet, transformation.  After five years in office, the Bush team has belatedly discovered what it once derided -- the art of diplomacy (a version of what follows appeared in yesterday’s Baltimore Sun).

Language Training Posted by Michael Signer

Ross Chanin has a smart and fresh Huffington Post up on how we as a nation need to get way, way up to speed on our foreign language training -- particularly in Arabic and Mandarin.  This graf says it all:

While I am not out to underestimate the clear cultural value of studying French (the world’s number #11 most widely spoken language) and German (#10), when American high school students still do not have the opportunity to take Advanced Placement (AP) exams in Mandarin (#1) and Arabic (#4) we have a problem.

Tastes like Chicken Posted by Michael Signer

Amid news today that Canada is trying to quell public concern after finding three pigeons with avian flu antibodies, while there's a counterreaction among the press to the Bush Administration's panic-mongering, I'd like to sound a wholly uneducated cautionary note -- while at the same time making the improbable tesseract from this issue to the Administration's foreign policy (bear with me). 

So.  Let's begin at the beginning.  We've been told this is a crisis where millions of Americans could perish, if the virus leaps from birds to humans (which has happened) and mutates into a form transmittable between humans (which has not).  The government recently held a briefing where Representatives and their staff were told:

"This is a nation-busting event!" warned Tara O'Toole, CEO of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center's Center for Biosecurity. Speculating that 40 million Americans could die -- that's about one in eight -- she warned: "We must act now."

Yet one expert writes in WaPo:

Despite all the hysteria, there isn't a shred of evidence that a pandemic is actually on the way.

Given the disagreement, it's the politics of all this that's most interesting.  As the WaPo commentator notes, the Administration has used the flu to bolster its case that Posse Comitatus should be overruled:

The administration seems to want this epidemic-risk to capture the public's imagination, and to provide useful fodder for the repeal of the "posse comitatus" doctrine, which prevents the use of troops as domestic police. Bush has announced that, in effect, he wants troops to carry out the mass-slaughter and cleaning of most of the U.S. factory-farm bird population.

The reason to be skeptical -- even worried -- about the politicization of the flu is that it dizzyingly parallels in hubris and chutzpah the Administration's similar manufacture of crises in the past.  The evidence for their claims is quite simply poultry.  Consider:

1)  The Orange Alerts Crisis in 2004 (wherein the threat level to the country was jacked up repeatedly in advance of the Presidential general election)

2)  The Flu Vaccine Crisis in 2004 (wherein the President overheatedly announced a life-threatening shortage in flu vaccine, mysteriously strengthening his father-in-charge image at a time when he seemed to need it most -- though there never was a shortage).

3)  The Social Security Crisis in 2005 (wherein the President suggested that Social Security was in "crisis" -- though any fiscal problem was actually three to four decades away).

The Administration, as I have noted here, takes a strange, shameless pride in blurring the lines between ordinary and outrageous political conduct.  It's like they're playing chicken with the media! 

Bush Official of the Week Posted by Heather Hurlburt

Michael Signer takes me gently to task below for having been too kind to Karen Hughes -- and I acknowledge that the publicity coming out of her initial trip is rather worse than I would have given her credit for.   Who the heck is staffing her?  Are the folks who understand Arab and Muslim public opinion at State just ignoring her and hoping she'll go away?

But, with golden fall sunlight bathing my little Michigan town on a Friday afternoon, I'd like to say something nice about Donald Rumsfeld -- he appears to be trying to squash the idea of amending or eliminating the posse comitatus act to allow the military to take a bigger role in disasters.

In fact, reading this piece suggests to me that everybody relevant -- the military, its civilian leadership, the military "cardinals" of the Senate like John Warner, civil liberties and states' rights experts -- is against such a move.  Everybody except George W. Bush and a few chickenhawks?

International Freedom Center: RIP Posted by Suzanne Nossel

As predicted, the International Freedom Center planned for Ground Zero got booted from the site by NY Governor George Pataki.  Organizers say no other location will do (underscoring some of the comments in our debate here a few days ago.  For DA analysis and reaction to what went wrong with this effort by a group of high-minded progressive New Yorkers, read here.

Commander in Chief Posted by Heather Hurlburt

Yep, so I watched it.  If you want a snapshot of how much America has changed, consider this:  West Wing was on the air for years before the show featured a national security adviser or much intimation that a president deals with issues outside the US.  In 2005, what's VP Geena Davis's first move when the president is incapacitated by a stroke?  She moves carrier groups around.  In fact, there was scarcely a domestic policy issue mentioned the entire hour.  We got "would Islamic leaders respect a woman president?" and "would a woman president allow the sharia-law based execution of a woman convicted of adultery" as issues. 

The teaser for next week promises a wholly domestic agenda, don't worry.  But the underlying frame here is interesting, and not reassuring.  One entire segment was a long joke at Hillary Clinton's expense ("Mrs. Clinton did X.  It didn't work out...")  And what does ABC think a woman president would do first?  Send in the Marines to rescue said Nigerian woman convicted of adultery under sharia law.  A weird scene in which a male American general (and the audience) gets way too much pleasure out of telling the Nigerian ambassador how effectively we can violate his sovereignty.

So we alternate the "Presidency-as-naked-exercise-of-power" fantasy with tender family scenes in which the new prez deals with a recalcitrant daughter and demotes her husband from chief of staff to first lady.  I'd say this show qualifies as the stuff of moderate Republican fantasy.  Yeah, like Governor Huckabee is gonna pick a woman university chancellor (Condi??) as his VP, run, win and die, clearing the way for slightly "hormonal" yet reassuringly tough moderation.

Oh, this is funny.  ABC has built a website which is kind of a fake medialog following Mackenzie/Geena's presidency.

As tv goes, not bad.  But couldn't they do a better job on the West Wing sets?

Lecturing China Posted by Suzanne Nossel

I am sure the Chinese will love reading the set of guidelines for their behavior set out by US Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick in a speech given last night in New York.   According to the Washington Post's account, Zoellick said the Chinese had created a "cauldron of anxiety" about their intentions, and pressed Beijing to:

• Openly explain its defense spending, intentions, doctrine and military exercises to ease concerns about its rapid military buildup.
• Cease its efforts to direct rather than open markets and to "lock up" energy supplies.
• End its tolerance for intellectual property theft.
• Allow its currency to adjust more to market rates.
• Alter its foreign policy to focus less on national interest and more on sustaining peaceful prosperity, through non-proliferation efforts in North Korea and Iraq and by  pledging more money to Afghanistan and Iraq.   Zoellick also decried China's relationships with Sudan and Burma.

It's not that Zoellick's points aren't well taken; most are legitimate.   But I can only imagine if the tables were turned and the Chinese laid out a comprehensive plan for how the U.S. ought to change its behavior.   From what I know, the Chinese hate having positions dictated to them, particularly by the U.S.   

This may go down well with the tough-on-China crowd at home, but its hard to imagine it will have a positive influence on Beijing (so far the Chinese are doing little more than "taking note" of Zoellick's remarks.  But I doubt it will stop at that).

Who Will Make Our Foreign Policy? Posted by Heather Hurlburt

In which we take time out from the heady issues of the day to consider where we are going to get a next generation of soldiers and diplomats, when the New York Times is telling us that 50 percent of the candiates will just stay home and breed, so they needn't be hired or even educated.

So let's see:  government and business alike can't hire enough linguists and area specialists.  The Army, Reserves and Marines can't meet their recruitment quotas -- and the Marines say specifically they don't have enough women to guard and search women in sex-segregated societies like Afghanistan and Iraq.

No question that national security is still a pretty male preserve, but it looks lots better than it did when I was in college.  Potential role models boiled down to Jeane Kirkpatrick, who somehow failed to inspire me.

And by the way, what was the first bureau of the State Department to recruit, train and promote women in quantity, while the Service as a whole was still throwing you out when you got married?  (Until 1970)?  Near East.

Now Presidents Clinton and Bush 43 are first and second, respectively, in numbers of women appointed to Cabinet positions.  The Foreign Service is almost 50 percent female, though only 25 percent at ambassadorial level.

In short, the foreign affairs establishment can't afford a future in which the best-educated women believe they can't work, while lower-income women have no choice but to work.  This looks pretty rotten for society as a whole, to my mind.

But is the culture telling us that?  No.  Is anyone suggesting that maybe men have a role to play here, too?  (I found them quite useful in several fundamental aspects of parenthood, myself.) 

Well, this blog is doing both those things.  Herewith, the honor roll of cool mama foreign policy bloggers:  our own Suzanne Nossel and myself, Laura Rosen of warandpiece, and Juliette Kayyem of America Abroad.

Please, if you're reading this and you fit the demographic, or have a daughter -- or son -- who does, combining work and family is an ongoing negotiation, not a once-for-all choice.  Pass it on.

 

Oink for Oil Posted by Heather Hurlburt

Michael, your post, and Ron Utt's idea, is great.  I'd like to see some of our wealthy progressive friends re-framing the tax cut issue as them giving their tax cuts back.  (I did see Hillary Clinton do this on the morning shows, actually.)

But more relevant to our national security website, how about we also ask the energy industry to give back some of the more outrageous goodies it got in the recent energy bill?  For starters, the one that guarantees a profit to anyone who wants to open up a nuclear power plant, even if it never produces a kilowatt?  The money could even go into rebuilding and diversifying our energy infrastructure, so energy companies would still have a shot at getting the money -- they'd just have to do something to earn it.

Free-Fall and the Court Posted by Michael Signer

A new Pew poll's out today.  The President's in trouble:

Two-in-three Americans (67 percent) believe he could have done more to speed up relief efforts, while just 28 percent think he did all he could to get them going quickly. At the same time, Bush’s overall job approval rating has slipped to 40 percent and his disapproval rating has climbed to 52 percent, among the highest for his presidency. Uncharacteristically, the president’s ratings have slipped most among his core constituents – Republicans and conservatives.

Wow.  40%.  That's low.  And it means the President is going to be on the defense, politically, not just about the hurricane, but about everything political, for a good while.  Which means Democrats may have an opportunity not only to work on productive legislation here -- they may be in a better position than they thought re. the Supreme Court.

My pet theory about all of this is that, prior to Katrina, the President had already lavishly squandered his political capital (when he said he'd spend it, no kidding, it's spent).  His approval rating was already in the low-40's, pre-hurricane.  Now, he's likely to free-fall even farther, and faster (my high school physics notwithstanding -- would he actually fall at the same rate???).

To turn from the aching pain of New Orleans to the soothingly anodyne topic of the Supreme Court, I think this means that the President is going to have a more difficult time replacing Justice O'Connor with an extreme right-winger.

Unless, of course, John Roberts is a Manchurian Candidate, or something like it, as some of our more charmingly suspicious friends seem to suspect. 

He does have that weirdly saccharine grin, and that perma-tan, after all...

Hmmm...