WhirledView

Another Bold Proposal

by CKR

Stephen M. Walt has a good article in the Boston Review. It is a Realist look at what American foreign policy might be. It focuses partly on public diplomacy, but it notes, as PLS has here, that public diplomacy needs a good product to sell.

And Walt makes a couple of bold proposals. Maybe bold proposals are coming into fashion.

...the United States should 1) press for the revision of Article IV of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which currently gives all signatories access to the full nuclear fuel cycle, 2) support an even more ambitious “proliferation-security initiative” to intercept illegal shipments of nuclear materials and missile technology, and 3) make a coordinated, multilateral effort—using both carrots and sticks—to persuade Iran, North Korea, and other likely proliferators to abandon their nuclear ambitions.

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In exchange for a more reliable nonproliferation regime (accompanied by an aggressive effort to secure existing stockpiles of loose nuclear materials) and the verifiable abandonment of nuclear ambitions by countries like Iran and North Korea, the United States would simultaneously agree to 1) abandon current plans to build a new generation of nuclear weapons, 2) significantly reduce its own nuclear arsenal (while retaining a few hundred warheads as a deterrent against direct attacks on the United States), and 3) take concrete steps to reduce the threat that it presents to so-called rogue states, including a willingness to sign some sort of nonaggression agreement with them.

Victory Day in the Former Soviet Union

By CKR

Events in the Baltic States (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania) seldom get international attention. Part of a continuing story surfaced in the Washington Post today.

Valdas Adamkus has a problem. The 79-year-old president of Lithuania has been invited -- personally, persistently, even threateningly -- by Russian President Vladimir Putin to an event that he really, really doesn't think he should attend: the May 9 celebrations in Moscow marking the 60th anniversary of the Soviet Union's victory over Adolf Hitler. It's a real A-list affair: President Bush, Tony Blair, Jacques Chirac, Gerhard Schroeder, Silvio Berlusconi, the presidents of other former Soviet republics, and a cast of thousands.

The op-ed piece then continued on the issue of Russia's behavior. The internet version is illustrated with a photo of Vladimir Putin and George Bush, neither of whom is part of a Baltic government.

Some background is needed here. The history of World War II's eastern European front is hardly known in the United States, perhaps slightly more in other parts of "the West." (I put that in quotes because I'm not sure where that entity ends any more.)

The FBI Data Base

by CKR

Just a quick I-told-you-so before I head out for the day.

From today's Washington Post:

Mr. Fine's report notes serious management weaknesses early in the project: The bureau lacked "specific design requirements for each of the project components," for example. And since November 2001, the bureau has had five chief information officers and "10 individuals serving as project managers for various aspects of Trilogy."

From WhirledView, 19 January:

Let me speculate on the FBI’s problem, on the basis of projects I’ve seen.

The FBI decided that it needed a database different from any on the market. This database needed to be particularly secure, to have several levels of access, and to be searchable in special ways, like using graphics for photos or fingerprints. A committee was convened to develop a set of requirements, but the committee didn’t include people who would use or manage the database. After several months of meetings that strained everyone’s patience, the committee came up with a requirements document.

The contractors who bid were those who were accustomed to dealing with the contracting officers and vice versa, probably not Microsoft or Oracle or Google. SAIC won the contract. The database requirements then changed as the people who would be using and managing the database got wind of them and hollered that they wouldn’t work. Frequently they were right. Everybody’s frustration rose as SAIC was unable to deliver a product. Shouting broke out and contracting officers changed, sometimes because of organizational changes and sometimes because they were removed.

Natan Sharansky in His Own Words

by CKR

I’ve been wondering about Natan Sharansky and his book’s reported influence on George Bush’s inauguration speech and foreign policy. So I did some googling and found several interviews, portions of which I share with you here in chronological order. I include questions (italicized) to provide context where that seemed necessary. I focus on comments relating to the idea that nations must become democratic for peace to prevail.

Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zones: A Bold Proposal

by CKR

Going beyond the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, several groups of nations have gotten together to ban nuclear weapons in their parts of the world. The value of additions like this to the NPT include that regional alliances can provide for mutual security as well as policing of the stated aim to remain without nuclear weapons. These groups have tended to be ignored in current discussions of how to prevent proliferation.

The Treaty of Tlatelolco (1967) makes Latin America a nuclear-weapon-free zone from Mexico to Tierra del Fuego. (For lists of countries, see the end of this post.)

The Treaty of Rarotonga (1985) sets up a nuclear-weapons-free zone in the South Pacific.

The Treaty of Bangkok (1997) makes Southeast Asia nuclear weapons free.

The Treaty of Pelindaba (1998) covers mainland Africa and nearby islands.

Mongolia and Austria have both declared their nuclear weapon free status through enacting domestic legislation, Austria in 1999 and Mongolia in 2000.

The seabed beyond a 12-mile coastal zone, outer space, and Antarctica have been declared off-limits to nuclear weapons.

A commentary in the 25 November Nature (subscription only) by C. Paul Robinson, the director of Sandia National Laboratories, advocates formation of NATO-like entities as part of a strategy to control proliferation.

Seems like it might be a good idea to begin with the nuclear-weapons-free zones. Addition of security guarantees by the nuclear weapons powers to these treaties would be a way of implementing Robinson’s suggestion.

The treaties on nuclear-weapons-free zones cover much of the world except North America, most of Europe, north Asia, and southwest Asia. Since bold actions seem to be the current fashion in US foreign policy, let me suggest one: make southwestern Asia a nuclear-weapons-free zone.

The Oboe and I – A life long love affair

By Patricia H. Kushlis

I admit it. I play – or more accurately – play at the oboe. Yes, it’s a quirky woodwind that can sound like a squeaky duck – or a sonorous wooden organ pipe - depending upon who plays it. But I fell in love with this instrument in my pre-teens because it looked like far more fun – and presented much more of a challenge - to play than the too pretty flute to which I had been consigned by my father – a former music teacher and trombonist – and my elementary school band teacher. Besides I liked the oboe’s nonconformist sound and, for that matter its repertoire. I also liked the fact that it didn’t belong in marching band.

I had to beg my parents for an oboe – but finally a music teacher uncle snuck me one on loan from his high school’s unused musical instrument closet. Another music teacher – and professional oboist gave me my first lessons. They stuck. A year later, my mother bought me an oboe. Then there was the matter of more lessons – far too intermittent - but I’m there once again. In fact, after a hiatus of some thirty years, last year I went back to where I had left off before graduate school, Foreign Service career and kid took control of my life.

Although I’m now working on some easy baroque – which turns out to be not so easy after all because of improvisational possibilities – my true loves lead me toward the Russian and French: Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Rimsky-Korsakov, Mussorgsky, Borodin, Saint-Saens, Berlioz, Ravel and Debussy.

Think of Prokofiev’s ill-fated, jaunty, quacking, waddling duck in Peter in the Wolf or Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Story of the Kalandar Prince” in the seductive Scheherazade. Who but the oboe? No other instrument could produce these funny, beautiful and distinctive sounds.

A Tragic Valentine from the Twelfth Century

by CKR

Cristina Nehring reviews several books on Heloise and Abelard for the New York Times.

Heloise and Abelard are the Valentine's story, of sorts, of the twelfth century, which contains a number of fascinating parallels to the twenty-first. Strong women, like Matilda, Eleanor and Heloise can still speak to us today. While Heloise and Abelard were going through their Calamitas, the world around them was unsettled, with civil war in England that reverberated through France. By the end of the century, stability, increasing prosperity and leisure had arrived in western Europe, enough for imaginings of a new world in which some of the everyday oppressions could be lifted. Those hopes were dashed by the turning of the Crusades from infidels in the Holy Land to other Christians, first at Constantinople and then in the south of France.

There's a lot more to the twelfth century, and maybe one of these days I'll blog it. But for this Valentine weekend, take a look at Heloise and Abelard and discover how lasting the highs and lows of love can be.

Motorola, France, the Good Life and the Bush Budget

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

Yes, we can live the good life....if we go to France, says Motorola’s Chairman Ed Zander in a full page ad in the New York Times on Feb. 10. “Is France a popular posting for your US personnel? You bet it is! Great food, great wine. If you had to pick a country to go and live in, France has got to be up there at the top, right?”

There are many other good reasons to live in France, it seems to me. The standard work week is only 35 hours—and practically everyone has a month-long vacation in August. Did I mention a good national health plan and the fact that government-supported creches for children of working mothers are the norm? Evidently you can earn a good living and still be a human being with a life of your own in France.

Ed Zander is really enthusiastic about the French. He’s investing in France, he says. “They’ve got great schools, good scientists and engineers....We need the education system, we need innovation, we need all that stuff....Today at Motorola we have over 3000 people working for us in France. We like to go where the smart people are.”

Taxes in France are much higher, of course, to pay for all that education and for the social services that allow people to work without distracting worries about what will happen when someone in the family gets catastrophically sick. (Most individual bankruptcies in the U.S. stem from medical bills that wipe out family finances.) Blame it on taxes, too, if gas costs more than double the U.S. price, but there’s an upside to the high cost of running a car in France and elsewhere in Europe. Public transport is infinitely superior. While President Bush pushes to eliminate government support for Amtrak, the French have no qualms about investing in the ultra modern TGV train. It’s so fast it makes the Acela between New York and Washington, DC seem like a stodgy old steam puffer.

Meanwhile, back in the good old U.S.A., business is putting the squeeze on workers from top to bottom.