Obama’s Foreign Engagement Scorecard

STATESMAN President Obama brokered a climate agreement in Copenhagen Friday.




He must have the skill and personality needed for brokering compromises. Much of the world does look to the US for leadership, but it is a challenge to translate that to practical results.

If there is a one-word handle that fits the conduct of foreign relations in Barack Obama’s first year as president, it is “engagement.” The Obama administration has engaged with Iran, Russia, Burma, Sudan, North Korea. “Engagement” sounds harmless — something any sensible administration would do (though the Bush administration apparently did far less of it).

But what, in fact, does President Obama have to show for “engagement” itself? And how do you keep score? He has just emerged from Copenhagen having brokered an agreement, however modest, on climate change. Does that count?

There is difficulty in measuring progress, yet less than a year has passed since he took office. It seems very early to make judgments. Of course, that does not stop pundits from doing so.

To some conservatives, engagement thus sounds like a euphemism for “appeasement.” Max Boot, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, argues, “There is a perception around the world that Obama is proceeding on bended knee to our enemies, and they’re rebuffing us contemptuously.”

How does this pundit know what perceptions there are "around the world"?

Iran is both the most important, and the most passionately disputed, case. Engagement here would seem to have been a failure — but only if you take the policy wholly at face value. One senior administration official who was not authorized to speak on the record says that while the offer of engagement was “never just an instrument or a ploy,” and remains on the table, the very public effort to exhaust all available means of persuasion has helped move Europe, Russia and China toward a tougher stance.

Perhaps, then, the ultimate measure of the success of the engagement policy will be the extent to which the good will President Obama has generated will tip the balance in the hard bargaining before his administration — over assistance from allies in Afghanistan, over new approaches to the Middle East and the international economic structure, and, most immediately, in the struggle to reach a meaningful agreement on how to slow global warming — an issue where the global good collides with the most basic questions of national interest. The credit Mr. Obama has earned will have to stretch a very long way.

Bubba does it again

Conservative right wingers are already criticizing the actions of ex-President Bill Clinton, of course (the WSJ editorial supposes worst-case scenarios), but this is a coup for both him and the Administration. Pictures and words tell a story of diplomatic triumph for ex-President Clinton.





A private plane carrying former President Bill Clinton and two journalists, Laura Ling, 32, and Euna Lee, 36, landed early Wednesday morning in Burbank, just outside Los Angeles. During Mr. Clinton's dramatic 20-hour visit to North Korea, he won the freedom of the American journalists, opened a diplomatic channel to North Korea's reclusive government and dined with the North's ailing leader, Kim Jong-il.

Administration officials said Mr. Clinton went to North Korea as a private citizen, did not carry a message from Mr. Obama for Mr. Kim and had the authority to negotiate only for the women's release.

They're not going to admit it; diplomacy doesn't work that way.

The North Korean government, which in June sentenced the women to 12 years of hard labor for illegally entering North Korean territory, announced hours before the jet's departure from North Korea that it had pardoned the women after Mr. Clinton apologized to Mr. Kim for their actions.

One of the North Koreans who met President Clinton at the airport was a top nuclear negotiator. Useful for internal consumption.

Mr. Clinton’s wife, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, said Wednesday that the administration was “extremely excited” that the women would be reunited with their families. But she denied that her husband had apologized.

Internal consumption. O, and the New York Post's headline at the bottom of page 1: Bubba gets the chicks. Real style, no? Inside, and its website, the headline was BILL CAN STILL GET THE WOMEN.

The negotiations catapulted Mr. Clinton back on to the global stage, on behalf of a president who defeated Mrs. Clinton in a bitter primary campaign last year, and who later asked her to be his secretary of state.

And for journalists who work for the firm founded by his Vice-President. O, he's gotta be loving this.

Mrs. Clinton was deeply involved in the case, too. She proposed sending various people to Pyongyang — including Mr. Gore — to lobby for the release of the women, before Mr. Clinton emerged as the preferred choice of the North Koreans, people briefed on the talks said. About 10 days ago, these people said, Mr. Gore called Mr. Clinton to ask him to undertake the trip. Mr. Clinton agreed, as long as the Obama administration did not object. In an interview Wednesday with NBC’s “Today” show in Nairobi, Kenya, Mrs. Clinton said the final request to Mr. Clinton had come from the White House.


Mr. Clinton embraced his former vice president, Mr. Gore. Given Mr. Clinton's stature and his long interest in the North Korean nuclear issue, experts said it was likely that his discussions in North Korea ranged well beyond obtaining the release of Ms. Ling and Ms. Lee.

The riveting tableau, of a former president jetting into a diplomatic crisis while his wife was embarking on a tour of Africa in her role as the nation’s chief diplomat, underscored the unique and enduring role of the Clintons, even in the Obama era.

They are not going away.

Mr. Clinton has sought to find the right place in the Obama era, eager to play a role without stepping on the toes of the new president or, certainly, the secretary of state.

The last time the two had spoken, said the White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, was in March, when Mr. Obama invited Mr. Clinton to a ceremony in Washington for signing legislation expanding the AmeriCorps program created by Mr. Clinton.

In interviews last spring, Mr. Clinton said that he would be happy to do anything Mr. Obama asked him to do, but that “I try to stay out of their way.”

Mr. Clinton’s mission may be less of an issue for Mr. Obama than for Mrs. Clinton. The same day he landed in North Korea, she arrived in Kenya, beginning an 11-day journey through Africa — a visit now largely eclipsed by her husband’s travels.

Bill and Kim's excellent adventure

This image taken from video footage shows former President Bill Clinton and North Korean leader Kim Jong-il posing for a picture in Pyongyang on Tuesday.


This is what North Koreans wanted: recognition, attention.

Former President Bill Clinton met on Tuesday with Kim Jong-il, the reclusive and ailing leader of North Korea, while on a visit to negotiate the release of two imprisoned American television journalists, North Korean state media reported.

The high-level meeting, along with welcoming gestures from the regime, added to speculation among analysts in Seoul that North Korea, after months of raising tensions and hostile rhetoric towards Washington, may be ready to return to dialogue with Washington.

That notion was reinforced by North Korea’s Central TV, which reported that Mr. Kim and Mr. Clinton “exchanged a broad range of opinions on issues of mutual interest.” Tensions have been high since a nuclear test by the North on May 25 and the subsequent American-led effort to impose international sanctions against the North.

Mr. Clinton relayed a “verbal message” from President Obama to Mr. Kim, the report said, without revealing its content. Mr. Kim welcomed Mr. Clinton and thanked him for carrying the Obama message before the two engaged in “sincere discussions,” it added. However, the White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, denied that any such message had been relayed.

Clinton warns on N. Korea and Iran

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton during a meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Phuket, Thailand on Wednesday.



July 23, 2009
Clinton Issues Warnings on North Korea and Iran
By MARK LANDLER

PHUKET, Thailand — Stiffening the American line against two nuclear-minded countries, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton warned Wednesday that the United States would not offer North Korea any sweeteners to return to talks and would consider extending a “defense umbrella” over the Middle East if Iran does not heed calls to halt its nuclear weapons program.

Mrs. Clinton clarified later that her comments on Iran, delivered in advance of a regional meeting here, did not represent a change in the Obama administration’s policy, which is to prevent Tehran from obtaining a bomb. But her words suggested that the administration is at least contemplating how to cope with a nuclear-armed Iran, should all efforts at negotiation fail.

After meeting the foreign ministers of China, Russia, Japan and South Korea, Mrs. Clinton said they were united in demanding that North Korea undertake a “complete and irreversible denuclearization” before receiving any economic or political incentives from these countries.

She did not detail the steps that would be part of such a process, though she confirmed they could include the disabling of the Yongbyon nuclear facility, where the North Koreans are reprocessing fuel rods to recover plutonium, and the surrender of its plutonium stockpile.

“We do not intend to reward North Korea just for returning to the table, nor do we intend to reward them for actions they have already committed to taking and then reneged on,” Mrs. Clinton said at a news conference in this island resort, where Asian and other countries are meeting.

The United States has had an uncharacteristically visible presence at this gathering of the Association of South East Nations, or Asean. It signed a friendship treaty with Asean’s 10 members and called on one country, Myanmar, to release the imprisoned pro-democracy leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi.

But nuclear tensions overshadowed talk of human rights and climate change. Mrs. Clinton’s reference to a defense umbrella in the Middle East, which came during a televised town hall meeting in Bangkok, raised some eyebrows because it could be interpreted as an implicit acknowledgment that the international efforts to stop Iran from developing a bomb may fail.

Mrs. Clinton’s invocation of a defense umbrella is reminiscent of the so-called nuclear umbrella that Washington extends to its Asian allies — implicitly, the promise of an American reprisal if its allies are attacked by nuclear weapons. But she did not use the term nuclear, and a senior State Department official cautioned that her remarks should not be interpreted to mean that.

Israel’s minister of intelligence and atomic energy, Dan Meridor, told Israeli army radio, “I was not thrilled to hear the American statement from yesterday that they will protect their allies with a nuclear umbrella, as if they have already come to terms with a nuclear Iran. I think that’s a mistake.”

Mrs. Clinton, however, denied she was signaling any change in the American position. Rather, she said, she was trying to make even starker the choice that Iran faces if it does not agree to abandon its program.

Speaking to an audience at a former royal palace, Mrs. Clinton said, “We want Iran to calculate what I think is a fair assessment that if the U.S. extends a defense umbrella over the region, if we do even more to support the military capacity of those in the Gulf, it’s unlikely that Iran will be any stronger or safer, because they won’t be able to intimidate and dominate, as they apparently believe they can, once they have a nuclear weapon.”

The administration has talked about bolstering the military capacity of Iran’s neighbors in the Persian Gulf so they could better meet the threat of a heavily armed Iran. It has also defended the proposed missile defense system in Eastern Europe as a potential shield against Iran.

“It faces the prospect, if it pursues nuclear weapons, of sparking an arms race in the region,” Mrs. Clinton said. “That should affect the calculation of what Iran intends to do, and what it believes is in its national security interest.”

The administration has said little, if anything, publicly about a defense umbrella, though Dennis B. Ross, a senior White House adviser on Iran and the Gulf region, endorsed the concept of a nuclear umbrella before he joined the administration. As a presidential candidate, Mrs. Clinton called for a security umbrella to be extended over Israel and Persian Gulf nations.

On North Korea, Mrs. Clinton tried to project a united front, saying that China, Russia, Japan and South Korea had pledged to carry out the United Nations sanctions adopted against the North after its recent nuclear and missile tests. These include banning arms shipments and squeezing North Korea’s financing for nuclear and missile technology.

Mrs. Clinton also reiterated concerns that North Korea may be transferring nuclear technology to Myanmar, which American officials refer to by its former name, Burma. North Korea sent representatives to this meeting, but American officials declined to say whether they had any contact with them.

Mrs. Clinton is to deliver a statement on North Korea on Thursday. In an excerpt provided to reporters, the tone remained unyielding, but the United States pledged to give North Korea “significant economic and energy assistance” if it undertakes a verifiable denuclearization.

Mrs. Clinton was stern at the foreign ministers’ meeting, where she demanded that Myanmar release Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi, who faces the possibility of years of prison time on charges that she violated her house arrest.

After Mrs. Clinton finished, a senior official said, she fixed the representative from Myanmar with a long gaze.

“It’s so critical that she be released from this persecution that she has been under,” she said later at the news conference. “If she were released, that would open up opportunities, at least for my country, to expand our relationship with Burma, including investments in Burma.”

Mr. Obama extended a ban on American investments in Myanmar in May, but an official said the president could rescind it.

Axis of evil hackers

North Korean hackers blamed for sweeping cyber attack on US networks - A series of attacks on computer networks in South Korea and the US was apparently the work of North Korean hackers, several news agencies are reporting today.

They're that good?

Can't he do everything?

Obama under pressure: There will always be a fly in the ointment for Obama
by Susan Nielsen, The Oregonian Sunday June 21, 2009, 12:03 am

You can hear a faint buzz of dismay any time President Obama falls to behave precisely like a liberal superhero.

Leave it to a fatly buzzing fly to embody the peskiest part of President Obama's job: No matter what the president does, the media will overplay it and someone will find fault with it.

I agree with this columnist, entirely. I've been feeling much the same way recently: now that the president has been in office for five months, liberals are complaining that he isn't doing what they expect of him, the way they expect him to do it. How quickly some forget how it was to have a righ-wing republican in office instead of middle-to-left moderate-liberal, the latter much more likely to do things that will please liberals than the former ever was or would be.

This leaves self-described independents, who now make up the majority of the electorate, with the tough job of assessing Obama fairly as politics heat up and expectations for an economic recovery intensify.

First, a quick recap of Flygate. The cable news network CNBC interrupted its more serious coverage last week to air a long clip of Obama killing a bothersome fly with a single dispassionate slap. Along the bottom of the screen crawled this headline: "BREAKING NEWS: PRES. OBAMA SWATS FLY DURING CNBC INTERVIEW AT WHITE HOUSE."

Is there any doubt that media outlets concentrate on the trivial?

The group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals swiftly reproached the president. While conceding Obama's impeccable record on animal rights, the activists said he should set a better example and vowed to send him a Katcha Bug Humane Bug Catcher.

Oy.

Picture the laughs heard 'round the world if Obama strapped a bug catcher to his belt, next to his Blackberry. Now imagine the snorts of derision if the president -- the same man trying to be tough on North Korea -- couldn't manage a show of force against a fly.

The fly incident is only the silliest example of backbiting. Civil rights groups glower that Obama isn't in lockstep with them on Guantanamo detainees. Gay-rights groups fume that Obama did not include health benefits last week when he extended, by executive order, partnership benefits to gay federal workers.

They want their way, and only their way.

Never mind that Obama's trying to untangle a mess at Guantanamo without making new ones. Never mind that he supports extending these health benefits; he simply believes the change should happen through Congress rather than by executive fiat.

Which is the correct way to do it, contrary to what the previous administration was wont to do.

So Obama gives 90 percent and gets chided for falling short of 110. That's politics.

Dummies. They should consider the alternative.

Meanwhile, critics on the right pin the entire federal deficit on Obama, capitalizing on voters' growing concerns about government debt. The critics buzz around, complaining about turtle tunnels in Florida and other pork projects in the stimulus bill. They grouse that Obama has been too busy nationalizing the auto industry to do much to create or save jobs.

Double dummies. All the right wing is doing is pointing to what isn't happening, gnawing at the margins, and trying to create issues, knowing how to play to the media (the same outfits that covered Flygate).

Again, it's fair to call up the truth squad.

Just think how desperate Oregon and Washington would be without the federal stimulus money, which Obama got through Congress within a few weeks of taking office. Picture unemployment and poverty rising yet higher if countless additional teachers and other state workers had lost their jobs.

As bad as things are now, they're a picnic compared to life without the extra stimulus money, aka deficit spending. This money is keeping us from spiraling into a second Great Depression.

Speaking of deficits, The New York Times recently analyzed the $2trillion swing from the Clinton-era surpluses to today's deficits, using budget numbers and official projections from 2001 through 2012. The recession itself accounts for more than one-third of the shift. Policies from the Bush era, including tax cuts, new Medicare drug coverage, the Iraq war and the bank bailout, account for more than half of the shift.

The stimulus bill accounts for just 7 percent.

Even if it were more, it is what is needed to be done.

Obama's agenda on health care, climate change and education? Just 3 percent. (That's assuming Congress finds ways to pay for most new programs, always a big "if" no matter who's in charge.)

Obama's approval ratings remain high. The guy doesn't need defending. The public still trusts him enough to be patient, even as the job outlook stays bleak.

Still, our patience will wear thin eventually. As the debts of the past come due, we'll be tempted to blame Obama for the entire cost rather than admit complicity over the years.

Then we'll start needling Obama to fix the deficit without cutting any programs, raising taxes or touching entitlement spending. Meanwhile, we'll expect the president to solve North Korea, Iran and Afghanistan in his spare time.

Whatever the task, the eye of the camera will never go away.

Neither will the irritable buzz of the nearest and smallest fly.

-- Associate Editor Susan Nielsen, The Oregonian; susannielsen@news.oregonian.com

Clinton Scores Points

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke during a press conference in Santo Domingo, on Friday.







SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic — It has become a recurring theme of Hillary Rodham Clinton’s early travels as the chief diplomat of the United States: she says that American policy on a given issue has failed, and her foreign listeners fall all over themselves in gratitude.

On Friday, Mrs. Clinton said here that the uncompromising policy of the Bush administration toward Cuba had not worked. That, she said, is why President Obama decided earlier this week to lift restrictions on travel and financial transfers for United States residents with relatives in Cuba.

Like other leaders around the world, Mrs. Clinton’s host, the president of the Dominican Republic, Leonel Fernández, responded effusively on Friday, hailing the secretary and her boss, Mr. Obama, for their view on Cuban policy, which he said took “great courage” and could utterly transform the political landscape of Latin America.

A new diplomacy, a new diplomat, a new administration.

“President Obama is paving a new road,” he said. “It is recognition of the fact that previous policies have failed. Fifty years of a policy that has not generated the originally sought purposes can be called a failure.”

Nice metaphor: paving a new road.

For a senior American official — someone who almost became president — to declare that the United States had erred, makes a major impact on foreign audiences.

There are holdouts, of course: North Korea has greeted the Obama administration by testing a missile, ratcheting up its language and threatening to pull out of multiparty talks on its nuclear program. Mrs. Clinton, in turn, has had few warm words for North Korea’s reclusive leader, Kim Jong-il.

But in many countries, her statements have elicited an almost palpable sense of relief. And she suggested that the Obama administration’s drive for warmer relations with old foes was just getting started.

Asked whether the United States would build bridges to hostile Latin American leaders, like Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, Mrs. Clinton said, “Let’s put ideology aside; that is so yesterday.”

Pakistan Frees Nuclear Scientist

This is the man who sold nuclear secrets to Iran, North Korea and Libya.

Switzerland Frees Suspected Smuggling Nuclear Technology

Swiss authorities have released from jail a man suspected of smuggling atomic technology to Libya and Iran as part of the nuclear black market of Abdul Qadeer Khan, officials and family members said Monday.

Khan is the one who sold atomic secrets to Iran, and was, in turn, pardoned by Musharraf. I never have understood why that story disappeared from the public radar.

The suspect, Urs Tinner, was freed Dec. 22 after more than four years in investigative detention, Swiss officials said. They added that his brother Marco remained in jail because of worries that he still had access to nuclear-weapons secrets.

Spying seems to be a family business: The developments were a new phase in Switzerland’s long efforts to prosecute the family of Swiss engineers, including the Tinner patriarch, Friedrich. All three are suspected of criminal export violations. The father was released from jail in 2006 pending legal action.

In May, the president of Switzerland confirmed that the government had destroyed a trove of computer files and other material documenting the family’s business dealings. He said that the action was taken to keep plans for nuclear arms and technologies from ever falling into terrorist hands. But in interviews last summer with The New York Times, American officials said they had urged the destruction less to thwart terrorists than to hide evidence of a secret relationship between the Tinners and the C.I.A. They said that the family provided a unique lens on the secret activities of Libya, Iran and Dr. Khan.

Now that's interesting: a secret relationship between the Tinners, who sold atomic secrets to North Korea, Iran and Libya, and the CIA. A way to monitor illicit activity, it is said, yet a facilitation of behavior that the US government denounced publicly.

North Korean Plane Was Grounded at U.S. Request

India blocked a North Korean plane from delivering cargo to Iran in August, responding to a U.S. request based on fears about the spread of weapons of mass destruction.

I still want to know where North Korea got its nuclear material; I believe it was from Pakistan and its rogue nuclear scientist, Abdul Qadeer Khan.

An NY Times profile: Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan is a Pakistani metallurgist and the father of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program. In Pakistan, Dr. Khan is considered a national hero despite his admission in 2004 that he said he sold nuclear technology to several countries. To the United States and nuclear investigators around the world, he is a rogue scientist who has failed to reveal the true extent of the dangers posed by the shadowy network he created.

I do not believe he could have carried out his smuggling without the knowledge of the Pakistani government. And Musharraf pardoned him.

In the U.S. presidential race, Democrat Barack Obama has publicly supported the Bush administration's diplomatic process with North Korea, while his Republican opponent, John McCain, has voiced skepticism.

Rate of Nuclear Thefts

Mohamed ElBaradei, the chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said in a speech on Monday that the number of reports of nuclear or radioactive material stolen around the world last year was “disturbingly high.”

Just when one thought things were stabilizing some, this comes along. What the hell is disturbingly high? This is nuclear material. Stolen. Who got it? Who had it?

nearly 250 such thefts were reported in the year ending in June.

Members of Dr. ElBaradei’s staff and outside experts cautioned that the amount of missing material remained relatively small. If all the stolen material were lumped together, it would not be enough to build even one nuclear device, they said.

Maybe not one conventional nuclear device, but what if the thiefs, or those who bought the stuff from the thiefs, put it to use other ways?

Is Kim Ill?

Is North Korea's leader ill? If he is, who will take over? And what will that mean?

North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il may have suffered serious health problems including a stroke in the past month, U.S. officials believe, raising worries about the stability of the U.S. nemesis and negotiations to dismantle its nuclear arsenal.

Most of all, I like this picture of female North Korean soldiers; they look tough, no? Nice goose step, too. Alas, this picture is too small to show that the soldier in center has three metal taps on her show, and the one behind her holding the Kalishnikov has two metal taps on hers.

North Korea Destroys Reactor Tower

This is an article from www.wsj.com:

YONGBYON, North Korea -- North Korea destroyed the most visible symbol of its nuclear weapons program Friday in a sign of its commitment to stop making plutonium for atomic bombs.

Watch as North Korea blows up a cooling tower at a controversial nuclear plant. The move was largely symbolic, as the U.S. ratcheted down sanctions against the country. (June 27)

The demolition of the 60-foot-tall cooling tower at the North's main reactor complex is a response to U.S. concessions after the North delivered a declaration Thursday of its nuclear programs to be dismantled.

The tower exploded in a single blast, sending a puff of gray smoke into the air, according to video footage filmed by broadcaster APTN at the site.

The symbolic explosion came just 20 months after Pyongyang shocked the world by detonating a nuclear bomb in an underground test to confirm its status as an atomic power. The nuclear blast spurred an about-face in the U.S. hard-line policy against Pyongyang, leading to the North's first steps to scale back its nuclear weapons development since the reactor became operational in 1986.

North Korea Helped Syria's Nuclear Program

And wherefrom did North Korea get its nuclear capacity? From the Pakistani scientist that Musharraf pardoned after the fact. Nice going, W.

Associated Press

This two picture combo shows two satellite images made available by DigitalGlobe show a suspected nuclear facility site, on Aug. 5, 2007 (left) and Oct. 24, 2007, before and after an Israeli airstrike.