Diplomacy Archives

Ramadan goes Jesus

February 13, 2007 08:25 AM

Yet another auto-martyrdom from professional Euro-Muslim Tariq Ramadan.

I believe the administration refuses me entry into the United States because of my criticism of its Middle East policy and America's unconditional support for Israel, which has led it to acquiesce in flouting Palestinian rights. And undeniably, some American groups that strongly support Israel and will allow no criticism of American foreign policy toward it have been highly critical of me. But academics, intellectuals, and organizations that have supported me — like the American Civil Liberties Union, the American Academy of Religion (I presented a keynote address to its annual meeting late last year by videoconference, since the administration would not let me enter the country to speak in person), the American Association of University Professors, and the PEN American Center — have understood that the real issue is my freedom of speech, and they have continued to lend their weight to my legal appeal of the decision.

I am not the only person concerned. The "fear of ideas" that has taken root in the United States since September 11, 2001, with the refusal to grant visas to a number of academics and intellectuals, most of whom are Muslims, strikes at the very heart of American democracy. The muffling of critical opinion should be of immediate concern to all freethinking individuals. To accept such a state of affairs is to accept that the United States, in the name of the "global war on terror" and national security, requires all citizens to think the same way.

"Fear of ideas" - indeed. Criticism of Israel? Never heard of it. O when will America ever live up to the democratic example of Saudi Arabia - or maybe Syria - where Jews piously lecture the benighted yokels about the menace of their foreign policy?

We're all dreaming along with you, Tariq.

Link · Diplomacy | Islam | Israel | Middle East | War on Terror

Diplomacy Archives

Day Zero for NATO

January 15, 2007 04:18 AM

Various pro-Russia forces here in Ukraine are hoping to compel a referendum on NATO membership this year, on the assumption that voters will overwhelmingly reject entry. They've already got the signatures they need to put the issue on the ballot. Luckily for president Viktor Yushchenko and others who support entry, the decision on scheduling the vote may rest in the hands of a government body that no longer exists.

Another expert quoted by Segodnya ["Today"], former parliament deputy speaker Viktor Musiyaka, pointed to a discrepancy between the constitution and the 1991 law on referenda, which obliges parliament’s presidium -- a body scrapped more than a decade ago -- rather than the president to set the date for a referendum.

The way the politics are moving here, that presidium could be back sooner than anyone expects.

Link · Diplomacy | Europe | NATO | Russia

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The Devil's Advocate

November 27, 2006 02:44 AM

Always available to vouchsafe a tyrant, Pat Buchanan acquits Vladimir Putin in the murder of Sasha Litvinenko in London last week.

What benefit could Putin conceivably realize from the London killing of an enemy of his regime, who had just become a British citizen? Why would the Russian president, at the peak of his popularity, with his regime awash in oil revenue and himself playing a strong hand in world politics, risk a breach with every Western nation by ordering the public murder of a man who was more of a nuisance than a threat to his regime?

How quaint. Putin jails his critics, silences the free press, bullies his Western-leaning neighbors, supplies Iran with missiles, prevents sanctions against North Korea and blocks efforts to stop the genocide in Darfur - and Pat wonders why he would now risk a "breach" with the West! And just when things were going so smoothly....

Well, I would never presume to challenge Pat's expertise on the authoritarian mindset, but it seems to me that he's over-estimated Putin's desire to ingratiate himself with Europe. He's also overlooked the obvious Kremlin windfall from the murder: Even if Putin's goons weren't responsible, Putin's critics will get the message. How better to intimidate opponents than to demonstrate that there is no safe haven safe for them? The inscrutability of the act only enhances the effect.

Yet Pat considers it more plausible that the Kremlin's enemies - Litvinenko's friends - cooked up this entire scheme in an effort to "embarrass" Putin, the former KGB man, who comes across here as a Chaplinesque figure, charmingly oblivious as his opponents are murdered around him. Uh huh.

It is fitting here to mention a book review posted recently on the CIA's Web site. The volume explores the KGB files (translated memos, actually - the files were destroyed) on Andrei Sakharov, the late dissident. It sheds light on the absurdity and paranoia that once governed the KGB [Hat tip: aldaily.com].

At the time of Sakharov’s first public expression of dissent—the publication in the West in 1968 of his essay “Reflections on Progress, Coexistence, and Intellectual Freedom”—the KGB did not know what to make of him. Sakharov was, after all, one of the Soviet Union’s leading physicists, and he had been showered with honors. The KGB, not realizing that Sakharov’s essay was the result of a gradual disillusionment with Soviet society rather than an impulsive act, at first hoped to bring him back to orthodoxy. “To prevent him from committing politically harmful acts, we believe it would make sense of one of the secretaries of the Central Committee to receive Sakharov and conduct an appropriate conversation with him,” recommended KGB Chairman Yuriy Andropov in June 1968. (90)

The reluctance to condemn Sakharov, however, brought problems of its own, as the KGB noted that “government circles in the USA” might misread the Kremlin’s silence as an endorsement of his views and wrongly assume that Soviet foreign policy was shifting. (94) In 1970, with Sakharov becoming more radical and building contacts with other dissidents, Andropov recommended the installation of listening devices in his apartment to “discover the contacts inciting him to commit hostile acts” and prevent “individuals hostile to the Soviet state” from exploiting his name. The monitoring, which eventually included physical surveillance, break-ins and thefts, and reporting by informers, continued until Sakharov’s death in 1999. (99)[3]

The KGB, continually unable to comprehend Sakharov’s dissent, could only view his actions through the prism of its Bolshevik and Chekist past. As a result, KGB officials not only saw him as the tool of foreign conspiracies but often managed to detect multiple plots working together. In December 1975, Andropov reported that “bourgeois propaganda is actively exploiting [Sakharov’s statements] for purposes of subversive activities against the Soviet Union and other socialist countries.” (207) Soviet anti-Semitism reinforced these themes, as when Andropov declared in 1973 that Sakharov and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn were “offering their services to reactionary imperialist and especially Zionist circles.” (166) Shortly after President Jimmy Carter sent a letter of support to Sakharov, Andropov claimed that “ideological centers and Zionist organizations have involved the new Carter administration” in Sakharov’s subversion. (223) The KGB also often ascribed Sakharov’s dissent to the malign influence of Elena Bonner. Her views, wrote Andropov in 1980, “not only are based on her hostile attitude toward the Soviet system but also conform to the recommendation of intelligence services in the USA.”

This is the universe Putin emerged from.

Link · Diplomacy | Europe | Putin | Putin | Russia

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Kim and the Bogeyman

October 27, 2006 09:28 AM

From a BBC documentary on North Korea last night, I learned that North Korea is a thoroughly totalitarian state ruled over by an arbitrary and erratic regime that has starved millions of its people and enslaved the minds of the rest - but really wouldn't be much of a threat without George W. Bush. The "Axis of Evil" speech is depicted as a sudden interruption in the positive direction of relations between the two countries. The report notes that Bush also once referred to Kim Jong-Il as a "pygmy" - an occurrance which, even if true (and unhelpful), is hardly a legitimate excuse to detonate a nuclear device. Alas, this is all par for the course at the Beeb.

Link · Diplomacy | News Media | North Korea | Nukes | War on Terror

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Secretary of Dense

October 11, 2006 08:17 AM

In the Washington Post, former Defense Sec. William Perry reminds us that we haven't properly thanked the Clinton administration for the "major delay" it caused in North Korea's nuclear program.

The most important such limit would have been on reprocessing spent fuel from North Korea's reactor to make plutonium. The Clinton administration declared in 1994 that if North Korea reprocessed, it would be crossing a "red line," and it threatened military action if that line was crossed. The North Koreans responded to that pressure and began negotiations that led to the Agreed Framework. The Agreed Framework did not end North Korea's aspirations for nuclear weapons, but it did result in a major delay. For more than eight years, under the Agreed Framework, the spent fuel was kept in a storage pond under international supervision.

Then in 2002, the Bush administration discovered the existence of a covert program in uranium, evidently an attempt to evade the Agreed Framework. This program, while potentially serious, would have led to a bomb at a very slow rate, compared with the more mature plutonium program. Nevertheless, the administration unwisely stopped compliance with the Agreed Framework. In response the North Koreans sent the inspectors home and announced their intention to reprocess. The administration deplored the action but set no "red line." North Korea made the plutonium. [My italics]

Oy. Maybe, in 1994, one could believe that the threat of "military action" drew the North Koreans to the bargaining table. But really: At what point does it become seriously delusional to believe the ensuing talks were an example of successful bilateral diplomacy, and not a rather crafty diversionary tactic by a rogue regime that never had any intention of halting its nuclear program and played the U.S. government for fools?

I say 2002 is the cut-off point.

P.S. A "red line" is only a red line if a plausible military option exists on the other side of it. Show us that Clinton "military" plan! I could use a good laugh.

Link · American Politics | Diplomacy | North Korea | Nukes | Nukes