Results tagged “americas”

Writing on RealClearWorld, A. Wess Mitchell and Robert Kron of the Center for European Policy Analysis argue that NATO giving Central Europe the cold shoulder will have far-reaching costs, and that measures of reassurance must be made.

First, it fuels division in NATO and the EU, as the absence of a convincing security guarantee in Central Europe may act as a stimulus to intra-European strategic divergence and political disunity. Insecure members are more likely to focus exclusively on the pursuit of hard power guarantees at the expense of the "normal" politics of integration. The less these needs are met, the wider the rift between "older" and "newer" member states will become.

Sometime in early 2010 it was made official:  Russia officially became the largest supplier of arms to Latin America.  Maybe that's because the U.S. started getting more picky about their arms customers.  Here goes a brief note from Mac Margolis at Newsweek on the $5.8 billion in recent deals Russia has made with various Latin countries:

Ironically, one reason for the budding East-West axis may be Washington's own rigid security agenda. The U.S. has imposed restrictions on arms sales to many nations suspected of being soft on terrorism or roiled by internal conflict. So, many on that watch list have turned to Moscow, which asks no questions. Venezuela's Hugo Chávez, for example, has snapped up some $4 billion in Russian weapons in recent years. This isn't the start of a new Cold War, but the flood of weapons into a region where political turmoil is still common should be enough to make the hemisphere's ranking power pay attention.

Something is weird here though ... we have a "flood of weapons" to Latin America which should raise concerns, however this is partly caused by Washington's "rigid security agenda" which drives arms customers into the arms of the Kremlin.  But wouldn't these purchases have been made whether or not it was the Russians or Americans selling the arms?  Demand is demand, right?  I think it is more a question of how easily, how quickly, and how cheaply such instruments of warfare are now available, free of conditions, in today's world.

Michael Weiss has an interesting comment on the Obama administration's reset diplomacy posted over at Pajamas Media.

"Reset" in hindsight has claimed one extraordinary achievement for the administration: it has wiped out what once seemed a permanent memory with respect to U.S.-Russian relations. As Vladimir Kara-Murza, the Washington bureau chief of RTVi television network and a former advisor to Russian presidential candidate Vladimir Bukovsky, has written recently, there is no surprise in the fact that the avalanche of American concessions to the Kremlin has not precipitated a similar outpouring of generosity and good will by the latter, only smirking satisfaction. "Repressive regimes view concessions as a sign of weakness," wrote Kara-Murza, "not a cause for reciprocity. Why would a government that is dishonest and aggressive to its own citizens behave like a noble and trustworthy partner on the world stage?"

This is lesson that should have been learned twenty years ago, after Reagan successfully put pressure on Gorbachev about Soviet political prisoners while also getting down to business on nonproliferation and arms reduction. It is not an indication of statesmanship or geopolitical maturity, pace Michael McFaul, to be unable to hold these two separate concepts in one's head at the same time. The administration's failure is only heightened by historical circumstance. There is no ideological superstructure or totalitarian stranglehold on culture in today's Russia. Why, then, should Putin and his improvisatory siloviki find themselves the easy beneficiaries of a fire sale of Western principles that managed to make it through a far more challenging epoch?

Writing in the Moscow Times today, David Firestein of the EastWest Institute argues that the Democrat's loss of the Massachusetts senatorial seat to Republican Scott Brown will make 2010 a very tough year for President Barack Obama to pursue his Russia agenda, as some lawmakers may be tempted to block the ratification of a replacement for the START and the test ban treaties.  Not that it will matter too much - it seems like Vladimir Putin is also determined to block or at least delay a new treaty despite Medvedev's willingness.

The upshot is that START ratification is going to be an uphill battle for the Obama administration. Substantively, many Republicans, and some Democrats, have concerns about key provisions of the accord, particularly, those pertaining to verification provisions. In addition, many senators have expressed concerns that START shouldn't be ratified unless they can secure guarantees that the reduced U.S. nuclear arsenal will be sufficiently modernized. Politically, the Republicans, emboldened by strong state-wide victories in recent months in Virginia, New Jersey and now Massachusetts, will be disinclined to hand Obama a significant foreign policy achievement in advance of midterm elections in the fall.

Though Sen. John McCain was recently in Georgia to receive an award for his outspoken support both during and after the 2008 Russian invasion, his reputation in Ukraine might be a bit tarnished among the pro-democracy liberals once Viktor Yanukovych takes over with a victory int eh polls.

As we reported a few years ago on this blog, McCain's campaign manager Rick Davis and his partner Paul Manafort have been retained by Yanukovych and the Party of Regions for several years now to manage their campaigns domestically and assist in lobbying Washington (which would of course kick into high gear with a Yanukovych victory).  At the time, they had not registered themselves as representatives of foreign interests:  "My own anecdotal conversations with people who run in the Russia and Eastern Europe circles indicate that Rick Davis was a fixture and a well-known advocate for Yanukovich. What's interesting was that Davis never filed under the Foreign Agents Registration Act that he did work for Yanukovich and today denied he ever did it," Moira Whelan wrote at the time. 

Actually, it's pretty easy to track down just three registered contracts through FARA, exceeding $60,000 in fees and disbursements from Yanukovych's party to Davis Manafort in 2007 ... Drop a comment if there is further registration info that I have missed.

The name of the two campaign managers slash lobbyists also pop up again in an AP report today about how all the Ukraine candidates have hired out for high powered U.S. campaign managers.  So while McCain's connection to Yanukovych is indirect and probably meaningless, it is still interesting how these relationships (such as the tie to Deripaska) fly in the face of public statements on Russia and countries of the former USSR.

As I am sure all of you know, it has been a very terrible day for the country of Haiti, where thousands are believed to have been killed in an earthquake in Port-au-Prince.  I urge all readers to consider donating to the emergency relief effort through Doctors without Borders or Wyclef Jean's Yele Haiti Foundation.  They need all the help they can get, and it's a good time for all of us to show a common shared value for such a humanitarian cause.

I am thinking of the people of Haiti tonight, and I hope you are too.

From an interview with Madeleine Albright in the FT:

FT: Secretary Albright, you are now a business woman as well as everything else. What parts of the world are your clients most interested in right now as business opportunities?

MA: Well, we are - particularly my firm focuses primarily on emerging markets, and part of it has to do with the fact that I have been fascinated by what is going on outside of, as a foreign policy person, outside of the United States and what the whole role of emerging markets in emerging countries are. And I think that what we specialise in is actually helping in terms of how American companies and other multinational companies can operate within emerging markets, and we see a whole lot of opportunities in the whole emerging markets.

FT: Name the top three.

MA: Well, obviously we talk about the Bric countries. I mean we spend a lot of time in China and India, Brazil, but also -

Below is from a Wall Street Journal editorial, one of many, about the new 2009 Freedom in the World report by Freedom House.  They see Obama's "principled pragamaticism" as a major weakness which contributed to the trend observed in the report.

If in the days of Jack Kennedy or Ronald Reagan, we worked to fashion the world into a better place guided by the belief that the urge to live in freedom is universal, today we act as if we are resigned to taking the world as it is. We used to nudge countries toward liberal democracy. Now we assume the price of nudging is too high.

Maybe more than Washington seeing the "price of nudging" as being too high, they see the profits of looking the other way to be irresistible (after all, U.S. government debt to China precludes any serious human rights criticism from either Dem or Rep admins).  Besides, can we really say that when democracy promotion was all the rage during the George W. Bush administration, with invasions, occupations, and nation building, that the state of freedom was somehow better?  That's a tough case to make.

The political and economic mechanisms that keep the world's dictators in power are somewhat more complicated than these kinds of annual lists are able to capture.

So what is the conventional thinking behind the new U.S. administration pursuing the "reset" of relations with Russia?  We are likely to hear well-intentioned words about opening up a new chapter in bilateral relations, and improving frayed ties for the good of both nations, but at the end of the day there are of course interests.  First, Obama expected to be able to sign a major arms accord with Russia before 2009 ended, such as the replacement for the START treaty.  Second, they thought that canceling plans for a missile shield in Eastern Europe would buy them Russian cooperation on Iran sanctions.  Though positive gestures have been made in this direction, neither political objective has been achieved by the reset.  Writing in the New York Times about the diplomatic exchanges over arms control, Ariel Cohen points out a few reasons why the reset isn't panning out...

Preoccupation with the Start follow-on treaty is a major part of Mr. Obama's effort to "reset" relations with Russia. The completion of the Start follow-on, as well as the ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty by Congress, are seen as a key stepping stone of "getting to zero" -- achieving a world without nuclear weapons.

The Russians, however, quietly scoff at Mr. Obama's goal. While the Russian government publicly champions the U.S. nuclear disarmament effort, Russia's military and security elite deride it. "Russia will develop offensive weapons -- because without them there is no other way to defend our country," Mr. Medvedev said in the recent TV interview.

In almost any other country in the world, it would be a scandalous outrage and national obsession.  In Venezuela, where the speed of absurdist political theater zips along a such a fast pace - from war with Colombia to an attack on golf to presidential advice on the proper duration of a shower - such an event simply passes by relatively undistinguished from the daily grind of creeping dictatorship.

The outrageous event I am referring to is that of the imprisoned Control Court Judge María Lourdes Afiuni, who over the weekend suffered not the first, but the second attempt made on her life.  According to reports, on Sunday, Jan. 3, Judge Afiuni was attacked by a large group of inmates, armed with chuzos (shanks), and wearing the standard prison battle dress of headbands and legbands made of bright tape symbolizing "war" and "mutiny."  Before she was rescued by guards and moved to the staff sick bay, her attackers poured gasoline into her holding area and shouted threats that they would "burn her alive."

These were the events strongly denounced in a recent statement from the NGO Justicia y Proceso Venezuela (JUYPRO), signed by the lawyers Theresly Malavé Wadsker and José Luís Rodríguez, which places direct blame on the Chávez administration and the Public Ministry, both of whom have direct knowledge of the specific risks to Judge Afiuni's life in this facility.

In addition to that article on Brazil by Susan Kaufman Purcell published in the Wall Street Journal today, Gideon Rachman's latest column in the Financial Times (see excerpts below) is the second time in one day we've the Obama Administration catch some criticism for its lapse in global leadership.  Whether we are talking about Washington being caught off-guard with Lula entertaining Ahmadinejad, or the even greater embarrassment of Obama getting snubbed at Copenhagen for meetings with the leaders of India and China, America's lack of leadership and lack of awareness of changing geopolitical circumstances is really starting to get noticed.

In light of RA's recent article on Brazil and Venezuela, I thought I would excerpt from this opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal by Susan Kaufman Purcell of the University of Miami, which adds to the discussion on global multilateralism and international institutions.  Similarly we often hear the Russian leadership express their vision of a new multipolar world, and other things like "multi-vector" foreign policy, so some of these issues are also relevant.

In short, Washington is no longer calling all the shots in global affairs, and emerging regional titans like the BRICs are establishing independent, direct relationships with whomever they choose.  Far from a tragedy for those who pine for the halcyon days of American supremacy and all its abuses, this should be a positive development which can contribute to the institutional, rule-based system regulating peaceful relations among nations (at least in my humble opinion).  But the new multipolar leaders aren't quite yet over the novelty of it all, nor does there seem to be much of an idea of what to do with this influence.  When everybody is all done thumbing their noses and settling their grudges, when does the leadership start delivering solutions?

Read the WSJ bit on Brazil's focus on appearance after the jump.

I can't tell you how pleased I am to see Eligio Cedeño enjoying the holidays with his family in this photo.  After two years, ten months, and an endless sentence without trial facing him in Venezuela, it is a reminder that even within authoritarian systems lacking fair courts, justice can still occur thanks to the bravery of the individuals involved.  We wish him and his family a happy new year, while the fight continues onward for the rest of the political prisoners of Venezuela and beyond.

Robert Amsterdam has just published a translation of an opinion article from O Estado de São Paulo on The Huffington Post.

There is great merit in Brazil's ability to maintain friendly relations with so many different nations of different values. The South-South diplomacy, pioneered by the Lula government, should continue long into the future, and help to redefine a multipolar approach to global affairs. This tactic, however, has its limits. When taken to an extreme, there are high costs.

Brazil is better than that, and deserves much more. Its ambitious view toward the future is not compatible with the tolerance of outright tyranny on her borders. It's decision time: one can't have a foot in the 21st century while maintaining retrograde views.

My client Eligio Cedeño, who up until Dec. 10 was one of Venezuela's most well known political prisoners, released his first statement on Christmas Day afternoon since being legally admitted and processed into his new residence in the United States.  In the statement Cedeño explains why he was forced to flee Venezuela, and the circumstances which led to his conditional release and subsequent jailing of the judge who issued the order.

Eligio's statement is an exceptional declaration of principles, a counter-attack against all the lies and indignity he and the other political prisoners have suffered at the hands of the Hugo Chávez kleptocracy, and a call for rationalism and basic respect for rule of law.

Ronald Asmus has a good editorial on the evolving security dynamic between Russia and the European Union and United States published in the Washington Post:

Europe's bloody history illustrated that spheres of influence do not produce real security, that compelling nations to align with countries against their will is a recipe for conflict and that changing borders by force only sows the seeds for future conflicts. We wrote those clauses to protect small states from the predatory behavior of more powerful ones. We were convinced that democratic integration was the best foundation for future peace on the continent. Perhaps we should also recognize that Russia's failure to align with the West may be less about our lack of will or imagination in embracing Moscow and more about Russia's own choice not to take advantage of the partnerships we offered, and its inability to respect the sovereignty of its neighbors or to honor its commitments from the past 20 years.

President Obama is right to try to "reset" relations with Moscow. Dealing with a revisionist Russia requires engagement. But we must first be clear about which Russian interests we consider legitimate and which we do not. Moscow has a right to equal security and to ensure that no new threat appears on its borders. It does not have the right to interfere in the affairs of its neighbors, to seek to topple their governments or to deny their foreign policy aspirations. On those issues our position must also be clear. Resetting relations with Moscow must include the Kremlin returning to the principles of the Charter of Paris.

"Well, it's one louder, isn't it? It's not ten. You see, most blokes, you know, will be playing at ten. You're on ten here, all the way up, all the way up, all the way up, you're on ten on your guitar. Where can you go from there? Where? Nowhere. Exactly. What we do, is if we need that extra push over the cliff, you know what we do? Eleven. Exactly. One louder." - Nigel Tufnel

I hate top 10 lists. Really, I do. I didn't always. But really, it's so over. These days, whenever I see anyone put out a top 10 list, I think "well there's another unthinking lemming just following the herd who should probably be paying David Letterman some kind of royalty fee."

So without further adieu, following is my top ELEVEN list of nonsensical top 10 lists. I'm not going to concur with or object to any of the specific rankings or exclusions on any of these top 10 lists or even rank the lists themselves because, frankly, I'm above that. Here we go:

I realize that my blog has been a bit sparse on the content lately, and that is mostly due to the urgent events happening with my client Eligio Cedeño, a Venezuelan political prisoner who was released a few weeks ago from his unlawful pre-trial detention, only to have the judge who made the order arrested and have his life threatened with a dead-or-alive capture order from President Hugo Chávez.  Facing the onslaught of frightening personal attacks, slander, and lies from the president on daily television, Cedeño was forced to flee the country, arriving in the United States on Dec. 19.

I am happy to report that after several days of processing, the U.S. government completed the required paperwork concerning Eligio Cedeño's status as a politically persecuted individual. He has now been officially admitted to the United States, where he enjoys complete freedom and the protections of its laws, and will be able to establish residence. Eligio has already made his way to an undisclosed residence in South Florida, where he will be able to spend the first Christmas in nearly three years with his family.

This is a tremendously positive occasion, though we acknowledge that a mountain of legal challenges remain, dozens of political prisoners continue to suffer under Chávez, and numerous actions are still being prepared to defend their rights.  But for now, I appreciate your patience for a while on my Russia postings -- we will be back to our regularly scheduled programming very soon.

The following is the latest press release on the Eligio Cedeño case, whom Hugo Chávez mentioned just now in a national television address. It is not true that Cedeño has been arrested.

Former Venezuelan Political Prisoner Eligio Cedeño Submits Himself to United States Jurisdiction

Dec. 21, Miami, Fla. - Lawyers acting on behalf of Eligio Cedeño, a Venezuelan businessman who had been unlawfully jailed without trial for almost three years, confirm that he legally entered the United States on Dec. 19th to voluntarily submit himself to U.S. jurisdiction. Cedeño was released from detention in Venezuela on Dec. 10th, and subsequently the judge who issued the release order, María Lourdes Afiuni, was imprisoned and personally denounced on state television by Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez.

The author and project leader of ArcticNet, Michael Byers, has an optimistic piece published in the Globe and Mail today arguing for a renewed effort of cooperation between the Canadian and Russian governments on mutual recognition of arctic sovereignty.  The tone of the piece is unusual for most of the material out there on this subject, which, to put it lightly, is usually much more antagonistic, suspicious, and pessimistic about agreement over this area of the world.

In 1982, Russian and Canadian diplomats teamed up to ensure that the UN Convention provides enhanced pollution prevention rights to coastal states in ice-covered waters within 200 miles of shore. It's time, now, to negotiate a protocol providing enhanced protection in the areas beyond.

It's also time to negotiate a treaty on search and rescue. With hundreds of cruise ships and thousands of commercial airliners traversing the Arctic each year, a major accident is inevitable. When it happens, hundreds of lives will depend on information and assets being deployed without regard for international boundaries or national pride.