Diplomacy

Its detractors should note: the L'Aquila conference did move vital climate change legislation forward.

By Andrew Light

If you believe recent media reports, the two international climate change meetings held last week in L'Aquila, Italy, at best failed to do anything and at worst signal that no serious progress will be made on a global climate agreement this year.

If true, this is bad news. According to the byzantine rules of the Kyoto Protocol, set to expire in 2012, a successor to that treaty must be decided this December at the U.N. climate summit in Copenhagen.

The good news is that many of the assessments of these meetings are incomplete, if not inaccurate. A New York Times editorial on Friday, for instance, based its argument in language from a draft of a declaration -- not from the document itself. The Times described the recognition by the world's major carbon emitters that temperatures should not increase more than 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels as an "aspirational" goal. They concluded that "with global climate talks in Copenhagen only five months away, aspirational goals won't carry things very far." But this weakened, "aspirational" language was struck in the final version of the document, rendering this claim obsolete.

All in all, the twin declarations emerging from the G-8 and the Major Economies Forum (MEF) indicate that progress has been made on the road to Copenhagen. So why the rush to publish such dour reports from Italy, whether accurate or not? It's simple: Invested parties had unrealistic expectations of meetings, which have no binding impact on the upcoming U.N. summit.

There were, of course, disappointments. Developed countries in the G-8 failed to agree on the medium-term goal of reducing reductions targets by 2020. Developing nations, especially China and India, refused to embrace the long-term goal of halving global emissions by 2050, a cap most of the world's leading scientists believe is essential to avoiding the worst impacts of climate change.

But if we only focus on what did not happen, we miss seeing the achievements made in a very short amount of time. When the United States rejoined the global discussion on a new climate treaty in January, it triggered an 11-month countdown to solve the most complicated problem humanity has ever faced. For the 16 countries responsible for 80 percent of carbon emissions to recognize even one marker of failure -- a rise in temperature over 2 degrees Celcius -- is fantastically impressive. A week before the Italy meetings, negotiators doubted that this language would make the final cut.

Some will argue that it's easy to agree on an abstract target like limiting planetary warming. But the G-8 struck an appropriate balance in creating objectives that are both ambitious and achievable. Industrialized countries finally determined their fair share of long-term emissions cuts: 80 percent by 2050. Plus, U.S. President Barack Obama prudently hedged on setting a 2020 emissions target. The Markey-Waxman climate change bill, which includes emissions cuts, is working its way through Congress. While it does, the president should not signal that he will preempt or undercut the legislature.

What about China and India's apparent intransigence to halving emissions by 2050? The fact is that the United States cannot criticize their behavior. If a Chinese leader had promised to join the world eight years ago in reducing carbon dioxide emissions, and then reversed course -- as former President George W. Bush did in 2001 -- the United States would hardly agree to his demands now. So it is with China and India. It will take incentives, diplomacy, and, most of all, time to bring about world-saving targets from them.

Ultimately, the most promising parts of last week's agreements received only marginal coverage. The MEF announced that developed countries will double clean-energy funding for developing nations -- putting pressure on those countries to commit to emissions reductions in exchange, as agreed upon at the Bali summit in 2007. Additionally, the participating countries agreed to determine how they will finance their plans by the G-20 meeting in September.

The countries assembled last week didn't get everything settled on the first go around. But in light of their accomplishments, we should hold off on our rush to proclaim failure.

Andrew Light is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress in Washington, D.C., and director of the Center for Global Ethics at George Mason University.

Photo: Flickr user AmiCalmant

As violence escalates again in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, the world must recognize the need for sustained attention and intervention.

By Colin Thomas-Jensen and Rebecca Feeley

This winter, the militaries of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda -- much to our surprise, given their historical antipathy -- joined forces in an offensive against a rebel group based in eastern Congo: the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, or the FDLR. Led by the architects of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, the FDLR has terrorized Congolese civilians for nearly 15 years. The group's presence has also served as a pretext for Rwandan intervention that has frequently worsened an already grim humanitarian situation in eastern Congo.

We and many other observers predicted at the time that the joint offensive would lead FDLR rebels to conduct reprisal attacks upon civilians. So, we weren't surprised to hear that atrocities against civilians have escalated dramatically in recent weeks. In one instance, the United Nations peacekeeping mission in the Congo, MONUC, reported that the FDLR had massacred more than 60 people in the village of Busurungi. Local officials tell us that the FDLR killed nearly twice that number, after clashes with the notoriously inept Congolese Army.

While human rights groups catalog atrocities and advocacy groups sound the alarm, U.N. officials tell us that the situation in eastern Congo is "tense but under control." The gap between the rosy assessments we frequently hear from MONUC and the grim accounts we hear from Congolese affected by the conflict is outrageous and infuriating. And as the Congolese government launches a new offensive this summer, we think the worst is ahead.

Doing research and advocacy to help end the crisis in the Great Lakes region around Congo can feel like screaming into an empty room. The region has been so violent for so long that the United Nations, donor governments, and the press have become numb. But there is a cure to even the worst cases of "conflict fatigue": an understanding that solutions are within reach if we just have the will to pursue them -- solutions that can prevent thousands of senseless deaths.

With greater operational capacity, firmer direction from the U.N. Security Council, and decisive leadership on the ground, MONUC could provide greater protection for civilians.

With high-level multilateral diplomacy led by the United States and the European Union, the Congolese and Rwandan governments could go beyond their current uneasy military cooperation and achieve lasting political solutions to the regional conflict. With bigger incentives for disarming, an emphasis on civilian protection, and tactical support from Western militaries, a regional counterinsurgency strategy could succeed against the FDLR.

With greater coordination among donors, conditioned support to the Congolese government could begin to end impunity, professionalize the Army, and improve governance. And with corporate due diligence in the mining sector, the Congolese could begin to benefit from their country's immense natural resources while drying up the trade in conflict minerals that remain a lifeblood for predatory militias.

That's a laundry list of "coulds," but in a place like Congo -- a desperately poor country where nearly 6 million people have died from 13 years of chronic conflict -- the world has a lot of work to do. Anyone advocating for an end to the conflict must be content with slow and steady progress and not expect a quick fix. In fact, this is true of most conflicts. Conflict fatigue only takes root when we forget that.

Colin Thomas-Jensen is policy advisor to Enough, the Center for American Progress's project to end genocide and crimes against humanity. Rebecca Feeley is Enough's former field researcher based in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo.  

UN Photo/Marie Frechon

That pesky little detail about "democracy"...

By Lino Gutierrez

On September 11, 2001, minutes after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, representatives of the Organization of American States (OAS) in Lima, Peru, signed the Inter-American Democratic Charter, a document that established that only democracies could be members of the organization. Last week, representatives of the same organization, which expelled Cuba in 1962, rescinded Cuba's expulsion and invited the hemisphere's lone Marxist dictatorship to return.

What happened in eight years? For one thing, the regional dynamics have shifted. After September 11, many believed that the United States, occupied elsewhere in the world, was paying little attention to its own backyard. Latin American countries, moreover, were never comfortable with the Iraq war. Even Chile and Mexico, usually staunch Washington allies, failed to provide needed votes when the United States sought the U.N. Security Council's approval to take Baghdad. Abu Ghraib, reports of civilian casualties, and George W. Bush's personal unpopularity all contributed to a precipitous drop in the U.S. image across the region.

Things changed for Cuba, too. Once a feared, Soviet-backed promoter of worldwide revolution, the Castro regime got new support thanks to the election of populist leaders like Venezuela's Hugo Chávez, Bolivia's Evo Morales, and Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega -- all of whom are admirers of Fidel. Suddenly, it is politically correct to welcome Cuba back to the family like a prodigal son. Under the leadership of Brazil's President Luiz Inácio "Lula" da Silva, the Rio Group, a collection of Latin American democracies, asked Cuba to join its ranks late last year (Cuba accepted). At least eight hemisphere presidents have visited the island of late, all getting the requisite picture with the ailing Fidel in his track suit (none of these official visitors asks about or visits Cuba's brave dissidents).

In the United States, too, some members of Congress are calling for an end to the 47-year-old trade embargo and travel ban. Although President Barack Obama has affirmed that libertad (freedom) will be the cornerstone of his Cuba policy, he has called for a new approach. Obama fulfilled his campaign promise to lift the Bush administration controls on remittances and travel by Cuban-Americans to visit their relatives in Cuba -- a measure that will mean additional foreign exchange for Cuba. Now, the U.S. president has called for Cuba to reciprocate.

The OAS would have been a great chance for Cuba to do just that. But Cuba won't rejoin the organization, which Fidel Castro once called a "Yankee bordello," anytime soon. The island's leaders did hail the OAS's invitation as a great victory, of course. But becoming an OAS member would subject Cuba to the kind of international scrutiny it has avoided for the past half century. The invitation calls for Cuba to rejoin the organization and commit to its established norms -- including the Democratic Charter. And while Venezuela and its allies would gladly give Cuba a pass, the United States, Canada, and others would require that Cuba at least begin a process that leads toward democracy.

That is a process that Cuba will not undertake so long as the Castro brothers are in charge. Though Fidel is no longer on stage, he continues to influence decisions behind the scenes. Brother Raúl seems to be open to more dialogue with the United States, and many Cubans hoped he was a closet reformer. But after announcing some modest economic reforms in 2008 (Cubans can now stay in tourist hotels), the regime seems to have retrenched and closed ranks, as the recent firing of reform-minded economist Carlos Lage and Foreign Minister Felipe Pérez Roque seems to indicate. Both Fidel and Raul have said that, while they're willing to talk to the United States, the revolution's principles are non-negotiable.

Curiously, the variable in the present equation is none other than Obama. Despite Fidel's boast of having outlasted 10 U.S. presidents, neither he nor Raúl have dared take on the popular U.S. president. Cubans are fascinated with Obama, having been told by the Castros for years that blacks were second-class citizens and that no African-American could ever hope to be in a position of power in the United States. In a country that is 60 percent Afro-Cuban, Obama's very election has sparked new hope among many that things could at last get better. How and when this will happen remains to be seen -- but at least for now, Cuba's future won't be in the OAS.

Lino Gutierrez was the U.S. ambassador to Argentina from 2003 to 2006.

Photo: ADALBERTO ROQUE/AFP/Getty Images

By Joshua W. Walker

The internal politics behind the country's strange recent behavior.

As U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrives in Ankara on Saturday, foreign-policy wonks are asking, "What's going on with Turkey?" Uncharacteristically, Turkey has been generating its share of headlines lately -- and not in a good way.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's dramatic walkout at the World Economic Forum in Davos after an emotionally charged panel on the Gaza crisis, his call for Israel to be removed from the United Nations, and his posturing against an IMF agreement to help Turkey weather the economic crisis have left experts scratching their heads. With Turks heading to the polls for local elections in late March, Erdogan's "bring it on" attitude toward the West may be smart domestic politics, but it could have catastrophic repercussions for both Turkey and its long-time ally, the United States.

After leading the country through six years of unprecedented economic growth and undertaking far-reaching political reforms that have moved Turkey closer to realizing its dream of joining the European Union, Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) seem to be going astray. Turkey's European reform program is bogged down, the massacre of Armenians under the Ottoman Empire remains the third rail of Turkish politics, there has been little letup in the military's battles with the terrorists of the Kurdistan Workers Party, and strategic relations with Israel have virtually collapsed. The nexus of these problems is producing a nasty strain of Turkish nationalism, of which anti-Semitism -- a phenomenon largely alien to Turkey -- seems to be a central component.

Since Israel's December-January invasion of Gaza, a wave of anti-Semitism seems to have engulfed Turkey's political discourse. Even while emphasizing the difference between legitimate criticism of Israel and anti-Jewish sentiment, the Turks have engaged in a crude form of what can only be called Jew baiting. For example, Erdogan averred that Americans did not see what was really happening in Gaza because "Jews control the media." Reports of threats made to Jewish-owned businesses in Istanbul and Izmir as well as the appearance of billboards plastered with anti-Semitic messages have alarmed Turkey's 27,000-strong Jews, whose ancestors escaped the Inquisition for the safety of the Ottoman Empire. Sylvio Ovadya, the leader of the Jewish community -- which generally keeps a low profile -- recently asked President Abdullah Gül to make anti-Semitism a crime.

The cognitive dissonance over this outbreak of anti-Jewish sentiment is particularly jarring because Erdogan is no anti-Semite. After all, he spoke eloquently and forcefully in defense of Turkey's Jewish community after al-Qa'ida attacked two of Istanbul's synagogues in November 2003, is on record calling anti-Semitism a crime against humanity, and participated in the OSCE's 2004 Conference on Anti-Semitism that committed his government to combat anti-Semitism in all its forms.

But while anti-Semitism is cause for grave concern, the central problem in Turkey is a political system that one party -- arguably one personality, Erdogan -- thoroughly dominates. As polls point toward a resounding AKP victory in upcoming local elections, the party's domestic critics are increasingly concerned about the chilling effects of power left virtually unchecked. Turkey, they believe, has reached a critical juncture in its political development and they do not like the trajectory AKP has chosen.

The consolidation of AKP's political power has eliminated many of the traditional fault-lines in Turkey's perennial Kulturkampf. Few Turkey watchers would have ever believed that the military establishment and an Islamist-rooted political party could make common cause. Yet, the AKP is now riding a wave of popular sentiment that accommodates a previously irreconcilable mix of religious and secular nationalism. Oddly, Turkey has become more European, more democratic, more Islamic, and increasingly more nationalist simultaneously. In this complex political environment, the AKP has resorted to the lowest common denominators of economic and political populism to ensure its appeal among a large swath of the Turkish electorate that is angry at the EU, the United States, and Israel.

The prevailing mood in Turkey has come at the worst possible time for U.S.-Turkish relations. Proponents of a non-binding Congressional resolution recognizing the massacres of 1.5 million Armenians in 1915 as genocide have already begun soliciting support among their colleagues. There is, of course, a moral imperative to address one of the darkest episodes of the last century, yet should the resolution pass, we can expect a sharp Turkish backlash. Ankara would likely close or strictly limit use of Incirlik airbase, which is a main logistics hub for the United States in Iraq and Afghanistan. With Turks already largely alienated from Europe, the combination of Erdogan's current posturing and the possibility that Congress will pass an Armenian genocide resolution could cause long-term damage to U.S.-Turkish relations, leaving Ankara without an anchor in the West and Washington without a strategic partner in southeastern Europe and the Middle East.

The U.S.-Turkish alliance has undergone periods of great strain during the previous six decades. Shared interest in containing the Soviet threat was always sufficient to carry the bilateral relations during periods of tension. Yet, in the almost 20 years since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Turkey's importance has not diminished. In fact, Ankara remains as critical an ally as ever as the Turks sit literally at the center of Washington's most pressing foreign-policy priorities in the Middle East, Central Asia, the Caucuses, Balkans, and Europe. As a result, the United States cannot afford to discount Turkey's regional role or internal instability.

Secretary Clinton will find the Turkey of today very different from the country she visited in 1999. It is not just "Islamist" political power, or the palpable buzz of Istanbul, which is on the verge of becoming a truly global city, or the sense that Turkey, with its newly minted seat on the U.N. Security Council, is a "player." It is all of these things. For years, Turks struggled with a debilitating sense of insecurity about their place in the world because they were, in the words of Turkey's founder Ataturk, trying to raise Turkey to "the level of civilization" -- i.e. Western civilization. Yet, the Turks have thus far been unable to crack the Western code, which above all else the European Union has come to represent. Europe, for its part, does not seem to want a country of 74 million Turkish Muslims. A whopping 81 percent of Austrians, for example, oppose Turkey's EU membership bid. Faced with the prospects of knocking on the gates of Vienna indefinitely, Turkey may simply look elsewhere.

Now, six years after the AKP came to power, Turkey's identity and survival are not entirely bound up in the West. Without abandoning its EU ambitions, Ankara has engaged its neighbors to the south and east, including Syria and Iran, and garnered the Turks newfound regional prestige after a long period of alienation from the Middle East.

Turkey today is a rising power in its region, a shift the United States should both acknowledge and leverage to its advantage. After all, Washington was initially critical of Ankara's growing ties with Damascus until it was revealed that the Turks were sponsoring indirect peace talks between Israel and Syria. As Secretary Clinton gets down to business with her Turkish counterparts, it will become obvious that U.S. and Turkish interests actually converge across a range of thorny regional problems. Take northern Iraq, where the continued improvement of Kurdish-Turkish relations is critical to PKK terrorist camps. Or Iran, where Turkey has a direct interest in seeing that its neighbor and regional rival does not acquire nuclear weapons. Ankara's growing economic and diplomatic ties with Tehran should be seen as a leading edge for Washington as it seeks ways to influence Iranian behavior for the better.

Yes, the trend in Turkey's domestic politics may be troubling. But despite the problems associated with AKP's accumulation of unrivalled political power, Turkey is still clearly a vital partner for the United States. An Armenian genocide resolution or efforts to punish Turkey based on a simplistic view of Erdo?an and his party as being "Islamist" or instinctively anti-Semitic or anti-Western will likely backfire. Secretary Clinton will have to find a way to make this key alliance work.

Joshua W. Walker was a guest fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations during the summer of 2008 and is a Ph.D. candidate at Princeton University.

FABRICE COFFRINI/AFP/Getty Images

Why is the United States waging the battle of ideas with one hand tied behind its back?

By Richard G. Lugar

When people the world over want to learn French, they typically go to the local Alliance Française, a French language and culture center run by the government of France. To explore Germany's rich culture and take some German classes, they might stop by one of the German government's Goethe-Instituts. But for English, where do they go? They usually head to an outpost of the British Council, not to a U.S.-sponsored cultural center.

Why? Because nearly all of the popular "American Centers" that spanned the globe, attracting throngs of students and young people who immersed themselves in American publications and ideas, have been closed or drastically downsized and restructured thanks to policy decisions, security concerns, and budget constraints. The unintended result is that in the global contest for ideas, the United States is playing short-handed.

Winning that competition has been a top goal for U.S. policymakers since September 11, 2001, but it hasn't been easy. A recent poll in 21 countries showed that 43 percent of respondents had a negative view of the United States. Late last year, the U.S. Government Accountability Office listed "improving the U.S. image abroad" as one of the most urgent priorities facing the new Congress and administration. When publics feel unfriendly toward the United States, the seeds of anti-American extremism can more easily sprout.

Reaching out to the man or woman on the streets of Jakarta or Caracas or Cairo is the practice of public diplomacy, and the United States does it in a number of ways, from the Peace Corps to the Voice of America to the Fulbright program. But the United States doesn't have a worldwide equivalent to what Britain and France have, namely, facilities in major world cities with libraries, reading rooms, outreach programs, unfiltered Internet access, film series, lectures, and English classes that enable people to meet with Americans of all walks of life and hold two-way conversations on issues of mutual interest.

Not just America's friends, but America's opponents, too, are wielding this public diplomacy tool: Iran has spread a broad network of cultural centers, including many in the same Muslim countries that the United States is trying to reach.

The old American Centers had a good record of success. They attracted young people as well as community leaders, journalists, and policy experts who were the opinion shapers and future leaders of their countries.

But after the Cold War, the United States prematurely declared victory in the battle for hearts and minds, terminating the U.S. Information Agency, which ran the centers, and cutting the State Department's public diplomacy budget. Many thought the Internet and global satellite TV would render irrelevant the people-to-people exchanges fostered by the centers.

Separately, U.S. diplomatic facilities overseas became more isolated. Following the 1998 bombings by Al Qaeda of two U.S. embassies in Africa that killed 12 Americans and more than 200 Tanzanians and Kenyans, the United States embarked upon a major construction program to build new embassies protected against terrorist attacks. Many embassies are now far from city centers and impose time-consuming security procedures upon all visitors. Additionally, most U.S. civilian employees are required to work within the embassy perimeter.

Those security upgrades were necessary, but the result has been less day-to-day interaction between U.S. diplomats and locals. Stripped-down outreach facilities, now called Information Resource Centers (IRCs), are often located within embassy compounds and open to the public by appointment only. State Department statistics show that IRCs within embassy walls in the Middle East received only one sixth as many visitors as those off-compound. Clearly, reaching a wider audience will require creative adjustments to the United States' security approach, keeping in mind that the safety of U.S. personnel must be paramount.

The United States should not abandon this part of the public diplomacy field to others. Iran, for instance, has opened some 60 Iranian cultural centers in Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and Europe that offer Persian language courses and extensive library resources-and a platform for anti-American propaganda.

As part of a broader overhaul of its public diplomacy effort, the United States should reinvigorate the old American Centers concept-putting, when possible, new ones that are safe but accessible in vibrant downtown areas-support active cultural programming, and resume the teaching of English by American or U.S.-trained teachers hired directly by embassies. That would help draw people to the centers and ensure that students got some American perspective along with their grammar.

America's best players in public diplomacy have always been its people and its ideas. The United States should get them back into the game instead of standing on the sidelines.

Richard G. Lugar is a U.S. senator representing Indiana.

Why it's far too early to label the U.S. secretary of state a failure.

By Kenneth Weisbrode

Hillary Clinton's trip to Asia marks her first venture into the "vast external realm" as secretary of state. She is spending this week in Japan, South Korea, Indonesia, and China in order to give and gain what most likely will be salient first impressions.

The trip already has been met with mixed commentary. The New York Times pointed out that she's the first secretary since Dean Rusk (a notable Euroskeptic of his time) to visit Asia first. Does this mean other parts of the word -- particularly Europe and the Western Hemisphere, not to mention Africa and the Middle East -- are lower on her priority list? Has Clinton returned to the Republican roots of her youth and become an Asia-firster?

Her husband's one-time political confidant, Dick Morris, suggested that the trip, coming on the heels of the appointment of high-level diplomatic envoys for Afghanistan and the Middle East and a resurgent National Security Council, means nothing less than an "incredibly shrinking role" for Clinton in the Obama administration. In this interpretation, East Asia was a consolation prize.

Time will only tell if any of the predictions are correct. For now, they are absurdly premature. And they overlook two critical points.

The first is that where a secretary, or a president, for that matter, goes first doesn't necessarily mean much in the long run. All manner of pressures and events will intercede from now on. Nobody's priority list is fixed on day one. President Nixon's first trip abroad was, in fact, to Europe. It was followed by one of the darkest periods in trans-Atlantic relations.

In any case, it's only comparably recently that secretaries of state or presidents traveled very much at all. Franklin Roosevelt's secretary, Cordell Hull, whose tenure in the job was the longest, spent a great deal of time in the hospital, as did John Foster Dulles toward the end of his term. They traveled abroad for the occasional diplomatic conference but left most of the "fact finding" to their men and women on the ground, that is, America's ambassadors.

Dulles's predecessor, Dean Acheson, however, noted the strange trend in government whereby routine diplomatic activity appeared to move up the totem pole of power in the 20th century. First there were ministers, then ambassadors, then secretaries of state, and soon presidents themselves were drafting talking points and engaging in what Henry Kissinger made famous as "shuttle diplomacy."

Acheson had a point. Once upon a time diplomats proposed and politicians disposed. Now, politicians appear to have a monopoly on both. But there's nothing natural or preordained about it, or about the symbolism of destinations. Colin Powell came into office determined to cut back on the amount of time he spent in airplanes. Nobody recalls now where he went first as secretary or whether the volume of his travel was a critical factor. Condoleezza Rice reversed the practice and traveled a great deal, but it is hard to say now whether that made much of a difference in her effectiveness; her relationships back home with the president and other members of the administration were probably more important.

The second critical thing to remember is that the success or failure of a secretary of state -- indeed of an administration's diplomacy -- is not wrapped up entirely in its handling of the crises of the moment. In this respect, Clinton may be thankful that the biggest possible pitfalls now have other people's names written on them.

Rather, the stewardship, or cultivation -- which George Marshall and George Shultz described as akin to gardening -- of America's relationships with the other major powers and regions of the world is vital. It grabs fewer headlines and tends to be neglected, as it was badly in the past two administrations. But it matters tremendously. Whoever is giving Clinton advice has probably made this point. And it is a good one. Bon voyage.

Kenneth Weisbrode is the Vincent Wright fellow in history at the Robert Schuman Center for Advanced Studies, European University Institute, Italy.