WhirledView

Clinton Style Bodes Well for the Obama Message

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

This is the new face of American foreign policy:  Hillary Clinton in China (top) and in Indonesia (bottom). We know she’s smart.  We know she’s tough.  We know she’s well informed and articulate.  These are the essential qualities for a Secretary of State.  But the woman in these news photos looks radiant, confident, exuberant, optimistic, friendly, energetic and unafraid of close contact with real people.  She looks to be everything that Americans are traditionally supposed to be, everything that used to make us attractive.  In this presence you could imagine audiences being hopeful about the future of the world.  You could imagine them thinking, “Hey! America’s back!”  Body language counts, and Hillary is on the right track. 

Condoleeza Rice was smart, tough, articulate and well informed, too, but her characteristic expression was the off putting school marmish frown, except when she was dealing with Israeli officialdom.  Then she relaxed and beamed.  Such happy smiles!  Everywhere else it was icy self-containment and jaw-clenching faux smiles for the camera, nothing that appeared to have any connection with the heart, if indeed she had one. 

The mode of the message has changed, too.  Remember how Condi and her boss lectured the world?  You should!  You must!  Or to the woodshed with you!  It was absolutely the worst strategy if cooperation was desired, which of course was not the case.  The Bush administration wanted dictatorial power at home and abroad. 

When Clinton speaks for the Obama administration the pronouns are very different.  We have common interests and common problems, she says.  We can do good things for both of us, for all of us, she says.  Let’s sit down and work it out together.  There’s a big difference between invitations and commands, between leadership and coercion.  What gets done tends to be more durable.  Needless to say, the power’s still there in the background. 

Turmoil In Swat

By Bill Stewart

Pakistan is in a downward spiral. It is not yet a failed state, as is Afghanistan, but it is lurching in that direction. Last week, the government of Pakistan caved in to the Taliban forces in the Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP), on the Afghanistan border. As part of a peace deal with the Taliban, the NWFP government agreed to the imposition of Islamic Sharia law in Swat, one of the three former princely states that compose the Malakand division of the Northwest Frontier Province. In general, Pakistan is accustomed to English common law procedures alongside local, tribal and customary law. So Sharia is well known in the country. It is its imposition by the government at the demand of the Taliban, that is so disturbing. Just who governs the Northwest Frontier Province? And what can, or should the US do, whose forces are fighting Taliban and al Qaeda militants just across the border in Afghanistan?

Swat is a mountainous part of the NWFP famous for its scenery and was once a prime tourist destination. No longer. Taliban militants have been active in the area for several years, intimidating local officials and often beheading civilians who don't comply with Taliban directives. The people of Swat have been terrorized by the Taliban, including devout Muslims who agree with some of what the Taliban is trying to do. The government of Pakistan, as well as its formidable armed forces, seem unable to either curb or stamp out the Taliban. Some refugees from Swat say the Pakistani army has in fact supported the Taliban in the region. The Pakistani army certainly helped to bring the Taliban to power in Afghanistan at the end of the 1990s, and elements in Pakistan's army are said to favor the medieval Islamist views of the Taliban.

More than seven years after 9/11, the US has declared the Afghan-Pakistan border area to be the new frontline in its war on terror. It is a point of view underscored by President Barack Obama, who has just ordered the dispatch of an additional 17,000 US troops to Afghanistan. That will bring the total number of American troops in that devastated country to some 55,000. To what purpose? We know that a fundamental review of our stance in Afghanistan is underway in Washington. Even Greg Mortensen, the subject of the best-selling "Three Cups of Tea," is on the list of those to be consulted by Gen David Petraeus and senior US intelligence officials. That's a good sign, as it shows an open-mindedness long absent from Pentagon and State Department thinking.

Whoo-Hoo! Atoms of Fissionable Material Everywhere! - Updated 2/22/09

by Cheryl Rofer

As I put the tea water on to boil and turned on the tv this morning, I was assaulted by the claim that seems to be everywhere. Maybe you've seen it in the New York Times, or the Los Angeles Times, or heard the same CBS report that I did, or even read it on Kevin Drum.

It's a lie.

Much as I hate to do so, because psychology tells us that repetition will help to fix the erroneous message in our minds, I will quote the most egregious statement of this "news."

Iran has enriched sufficient uranium to amass a nuclear bomb – a third more than previously thought – the United Nations announced yesterday.

Ah yes. And if you live in Boulder, Colorado, or in Connecticut, or New York City, you have enough U-235 under your house (or perhaps block) to amass a nuclear bomb! Or, Kevin, all that sea water lapping up against the California coast has uranium in it too! I have a call in to the IAEA to inspect your homes!

The issue here is concentration. Mining uranium concentrates it from the ore. Purification and conversion to UF6 concentrates it further. The purpose of the enrichment centrifuges is to concentrate the fissionable U-235.

Concentration is not that hard to understand, but in our science-challenged society (yes, we all hated chemistry, where it was discussed in the first week), it seems not to be a consideration. See also this post from earlier this week.

The concentration of U-235 is 3.49% in the enriched uranium that the Natanz plant is turning out. The IAEA has found no evidence (Download Iran 0902) that any higher enrichment is being produced. 3.49% is not enough to make a bomb. Iran is not in a position to make a bomb, unless there is a bunch of hidden stuff that nobody has found, involving big buildings that can be seen by satellite surveillance.

It would take a reconfiguration of the Natanz facility that the inspectors would notice to produce bomb-grade uranium (concentration of U-235 of 90%). The inspectors also take environmental samples to verify the concentration of U-235. They would have to be kicked out of the facility and their video cameras taken down for Iran to do this.

There are a number of other things in that IAEA report that the media aren't bothering to report, like that the pace of enrichment has slowed. That doesn't support the idea that Iran is racing toward a bomb, so it's not relevant, I guess.

Bloggers who are trying to hold back this tsunami of misleading non-science:

Sean Paul Kelley

Cernig

Firedoglake

Wampum

Arms Control Wonk

Cocktail Party Physics

Update (2/22/09): Douglas Saunders of the Toronto Globe and Mail has asked me some questions and tells me he has used WhirledView as a source of material for this article.  Many thanks to Doug for quoting me.

Reinventing America's Public Diplomacy 2009: Step By Step

By Patricia H. Kushlis

Over the January 31-February 1 weekend, the Howard Gilman Foundation and Meridian International cosponsored a conference at the White Oak Conference Center as one of a series of off-site conferences on elements of recreating America's "smart power." The conference was based on widely held views that America's public diplomacy apparatus - a major key to the implementation of "smart power" as it is now configured does not work.

The result was a one and one-half page document entitled “The White Oak Recommendations on Public Diplomacy” which has just been released to the media. The press release was preceded by an on-the-record Bloggers Roundtable in which I was privileged to participate. The Roundtable was chaired by Doug Wilson, member of the board of the Gilman Foundation, former Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs and former Congressional and Intergovernmental Affairs Director, USIA, and Robert Coonrod, President of the Public Diplomacy Council and former CEO of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Both the recommendations and the names of the 67 individuals from different segments of the US public and private sectors that participated in the conference and who publicly endorsed the recommendations in their individual capacities have been posted on Matt Armstrong’s blog Mountain Runner. The recommendations and the list of endorsers are well worth reading and reflecting upon.

First Steps First

If I’ve got it right, the overarching conference goal was to create a consensus that would provide a coherent and concise road-map – as opposed to the innumerable piece-meal recommendations and 30 plus lengthy reports representing various views and interests - for presentation to Congress and the new administration. What resulted from White Oak is a short, readable document that highlights significant fundamental problems that need to be dealt with if the US is to again restore – or reinvent – a sustained institutional approach to restoring America’s image abroad. It also recommends ways to begin to deal with them.

Documents drafted by committees – ipso facto – reflect the least common denominator of the participants. As a consequence, these recommendations should be seen in that light. What makes them important, however, is that they are common sense, they are holistic, and they should be short enough to draw the attention of people in both the administration and the Congress who will be making the decisions on how to improve America’s “smart power” over the coming years.

Furthermore, as Wilson and Coonrod both stressed in the Roundtable, the White Oak recommendations carry the weight of consensus. This is particularly significant because over the past several years especially since the dissolution of the US Information Agency, the public diplomacy community has fragmented badly in its demands and its recommendations thereby making it far less effective than what once was a coherent whole. If nothing more this attempt to apply centripetal force is a crucial first step.

Honey, I Shrunk the Detergent!

by Cheryl Rofer

Look at the shelves of laundry products in your local supermarket. The containers for the liquid products are shrinking.

Some years back, the manufacturers concentrated their liquid products. It's silly to ship lots of water around as part of these products; larger containers are required, using more plastic, and they may be put into boxes, requiring more paper; fewer can be shipped per truckload, and the greater weight uses more gas in transport.

However, consumers were accustomed to using a particular amount of product (detergent, color enhancer, softener) per wash, and they couldn't be convinced that using a smaller volume, even though it contained the same amount of useful product, would work. So manufacturers went back to the old water content, with all the downsides but one: consumers wanted it.

I bought some concentrated detergent a month or so ago, and today some color enhancer (brightener, whatever). Both had smaller measuring caps. The color enhancer had a plastic wrapper around the cap, repeating that the smaller volume contained the same amount of product. "2X" was repeated multiple times, with explanations. So the manufacturers may have learned from that failed introduction of several years back. What may also help is that we've gotten accustomed to using those measuring caps instead of standard cups, so perhaps some folks won't even notice.

However, I tried to pull the wrapper off, thinking it was a seal. I suspect that it is a last minute add-on, in response to consumer questions about the smaller volumes.

The manufacturers are more likely to stick with it this time; they are cutting costs in the bad economy to survive. The decreased use of water, plastic and gas will benefit the environment, too.

Now we can wonder if they will pass some of the savings along to us. I haven't kept track of prices, so I can't provide any insight on that.

Israeli Elections

By Bill Stewart

Once again Israeli politics are in gridlock. This week’s national elections gave the ruling Kadima party 28 seats in the 120-seat Knesset, or parliament, with the nationalist Likud party only a hairbreadth’s behind with 27 seats. Neither one has anywhere near the 61 seats it needs to form a parliamentary majority and thus a government. To complicate matters, a new party, the ultranationalist Yisrael Beitenu, finished third with 15 seats, making it a key power broker. The old, leftwing Labor party came in fourth with 13 seats. Although Kadima is centrist, the Likud and Yisrael Beitenu votes means the Israeli electorate tilted significantly to the right.

There is nothing new in Israeli gridlock. It has been this way throughout Israel’s 61-year history. The problem –and it is a problem – lies in Israel’s purist form of proportional representation. In Israel, voters choose a party rather than a candidate. Seats in the Knesset are then allocated on the basis of the percentage of the vote each party wins. The parties themselves, through internal ballots, decide which candidates will actually sit in parliament. Thus Israeli voters do not directly choose the people who represent them.

Israel has an enormously diverse population. Jews from all over the world come to Israel and are automatically citizens. The right of return means the right to vote. Then there are Israeli born Arabs, who form at least 20 percent of the population. These are the people –or their descendants – who did not flee Israel at the time of its birth in 1948 or later during the 1967 Six-Day war. They too have the right to vote. There are a host of small and medium sized parties that represent this diverse population. Under current law, these parties get seats if they only represent two percent of the vote. This is why no single party has ever held a majority in the Knesset. And it is why every Israeli election is followed by intense negotiations by the leading parties to form a government at the request of the president of Israel.

The most important task of any Israeli president, largely a ceremonial figure, is to decide which political leader to ask to form a government. In this case, the president is Shimon Peres, a former Labor party prime minister, Nobel Peace Prize winner, and a charter member of the country’s political old guard. He’s been around a long time and is a master of the system. Strictly speaking, the president should offer the job to the leader best able to form a government. At a guess, I’d say his first choice would be Tzipi Livni, current foreign minister and now leader of the centrist Kadima party that won more seats than any other party. He and Livni are ideologically in sync. He would also be in sympathy with Labor party leader Ehud Barak, the current defense minister and former prime minister, whose party came in fourth.

The problem, however, is the startling rise of Yisrael Beitenu, the ultranationalist party under the leadership of Avigdor Lieberman, a rightwing Russian immigrant. Yisrael Beitenu came in third place, which means that along with the Likud party, which came in second, the country has moved significantly to the right. This is why Likud party leader Binyamin Netanyahu, a former prime minister, now is claiming victory, asserting that the country as a whole has moved towards the nationalist parties. Which way does Peres move? The struggle is on and the stakes are high.

American Art should be seen – not?

By Patricia H. Kushlis

Lawrence Fodor, "Pegasus," Paloma Fodor Collection.

I attended a reception to open the exhibit of Lawrence Fodor’s latest paintings called Koan Boxes at The Lannan Foundation in Santa Fe on January 31. Now there’s nothing terribly remarkable about an invitation to an exhibit opening in Santa Fe – except that this was an exhibit at a nifty nonprofit foundation, not a commercial gallery, so the objects on display were not for sale.

I’m not an art critic so I will leave the critiques of Fodor’s current work up to the critics. But what I did discover while at the reception was that Pegasus, a large earlier painting of Fodor’s, had been included in a special collection of American art entitled “Greek Contributions to Mankind – An Exhibition of Contemporary Art” on display at the residence of the then American Ambassador to Greece Thomas and Mrs. Miller prior to the 2004 Olympics.

With help from Linda Durham Contemporary Art in Santa Fe who represents Fodor, I obtained a photograph of the painting which begins this post. I also include two photos – again thanks to Linda - of Fodor’s most recent work – to give you a chance to see a sample up-close of what is on display at The Lannan Foundation until March 15, 2009.

Now I think it’s exciting that Fodor’s work was well enough thought of nationally to be included in the collection at the residence of the then US Ambassador to Greece.

What I don’t think is exciting is that I have to wonder whether anyone besides the Millers and a small A-list of guests to the residence had a chance to see Pegasus – or the works by any of the other contemporary American artists included in the collection at the time.

(Photo Left) Lawrence Fodor, Stochastic Red-Orange/Yellow oil, wax, alkyd on canvas,26 x 25 inches. (Photo Right) Koan Box Blue-Green/Blue/Red,oil, wax, alkyd & gold leaf on cigar box 10.5 x 8.25 inches. Photos courtesy of Linda Durham Contemporary Art.

Sorry, guys and gals, I know all too well how the State Department’s Art in Embassies program works and not just in Athens. It’s a terrific way for Ambassadors and their spouses to sport an expensive collection of quality American art at their residences wherever they may be.

That's OK, in and of itself. It is not, however, a terrific way to have the works seen by people off the Ambassadorial cocktail, dinner, lunch or reception circuit. This means that 99.99 percent of Athenians likely missed out on seeing “Greek Contributions to Mankind.”

What is the problem?

Valentine Thoughts: The Unconditional Love Trap

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

I’ve just seen Nina Paley’s very clever multi-media feature film Sita Sings the Blues, the perfect antidote for those who think unconditional love is a good thing.  Sita is the wife of Rama, king of Ayodhya and incarnation of Vishnu.  She has been abducted by Ravana, the demon king of Lanka, and Ram must bring her back, if only to protect his own honor.   Rescued, an ecstatic Sita declares that she has been—um—loyal to Ram.  Still, Ram will not take her back to wife, even after an apparently redemptive trial by fire, because the people continue to doubt her—um—loyalty. 

Needless to say, the Ramayana, not my favorite Indian epic.

Paley’s clever (I should say jazzy) concept is that Sita should express the pain of rejection by singing torch songs about her love and longing for the man who done her wrong. This juxtaposition ennobles the torch singer and humanizes the Indian icon. Either way the film shows very clearly who usually benefits from unconditional love in traditional societies.  Men can do no wrong.  Women must forgive and forgive and forgive. And if they die, so much the better.

As I left the cinema, I got to thinking of the unconditional love cliché that’s thrown around so glibly these days.  "Look at a dog," people say.  "A dog loves its master/mistress no matter what.  Why can’t we people love that way?  Why do we humans always put conditions on love?" 

Ahem.  Have you ever seen an unloved dog licking the hand that refused to pet it?  Have you seen a maltreated dog skulking around the house or yard with its tail between its legs—and I don’t mean a homeless stray here?  Have you seen the confusion and fear in its eyes, the way it stands with its head bowed begging for a sign of affection?

This is what happens with some abused women.  They apologize for “earning” a beating.  Offered a way out, they cling to abusive partners.  “But I love him,” they say.  

Now that has got to be unconditional love, and who wants it?  Who wants to be Sita?

“Ah,” says someone, “the key is mutuality.  When unconditional love is mutual, it’s fine.”  Yes, such love would be fine, but it wouldn’t be unconditional if mutuality is required.

“Well,” says someone else, “how about a mother’s love for her children.  Surely that’s unconditional or should be.”   Hmmmm. What about the elderly  mother whose son or daughter never visits?  What a painful love that must be. Should it be clung to?  What about the indulgent parental love that turns a kid into a selfish, egotistical, spoiled, tyrannical brat?  Psychologists make a distinction between condemning the person and condemning the behavior.  But what if the ugly behavior never stops?  We might, of course, blame the mother—or the father.  Better parenting might have produced a nicer child or adult.  Yet many other factors play a role in shaping character and personality.  The cause and effect equation isn’t so neat.  Is there ever a time when a parent can be forgiven for “disinheriting” a child on any level?  At some point, are mutuality and mutual obligation between the generations required if love is to continue?   When does deep generous love become stupid love?

Meanwhile, parenting, if  not all powerful, is also not inconsequential.  Maybe if parents had been a bit less unconditional about loving their offspring over these many permissive decades, the egoists who have ruined our economy might have run their companies responsibly and shared the wealth with their employees instead of buying $50,000,000 mansions and other such gewgaws for themselves.  These guys should have been slapped down a long time ago, but the regulators and those who wrote the regulations were overly permissive parents, too.

This is no time for an exhaustive treatise on love, but let me raise one more example of unconditional love that frequently gets out of hand.  It’s love of country.  Patriotism.  The my-country-right-or-wrong syndrome.  The nice thing about democracy is that you don’t have to settle for love, loyalty and singing the blues.  You can change things, right the wrongs, make the country worth loving again.  I hope that Barak Obama remembers that the country fell in love with him because he promised change,  not endless bipartisan love without mutuality.