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2012, Gales Ahead for A House Divided Called the United Kingdom

By John C. Dyer, UK Correspondent

2 Jan 2012. London. 

David Cameron became the latest European leader to warn his country that this coming year will be severely challenging.  Last week fellow Conservatives Nicholas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel preceded Cameron with similar messages. 

Cameron defended his government’s policies as necessary, but pledged to "do whatever it takes” to pull Britain out of the difficulties ahead.  Cameron was short on the specifics of "whatever." Is this more than words meant to reassure restive UK businessmen? Does he mean something different or just more of the same? Cameron did pledge to tackle bank regulation, although, again, he mentioned no how. 

Cameron at least invoked hope for future improvement, just not in 2012.  Unlike Sarkozy, Cameron did not call for stoicism, precisely. But Cameron, like the Queen in her annual address the week prior, called upon the British public to “suck it up” or “dig deep” as it would be called in the United States. Both called up the British to summon their famed emotional strength in time of adversity to deal with the unnamed difficulties ahead.  While nonspecific, both speeches succeeded at conveying the aura of a Churchillian wartime address (albeit without the fine turn of phase). 

Perhaps the two clearest messages in Cameron’s speech were nonverbal.  The first message was conveyed in his face. His lips curled as if sucking a lemon. I have seen this expression before at moments of real political crisis for the Prime Minister.   The second message was the fact that Cameron delivered such a message at all. It was only last year he predicted the country would emerge from its difficulties in 2012.  My how time flies. . .   

Looking at the polls and British history one might wonder why Cameron displayed nervousness.

I will suggest the answer may lie in the intangibles of the character of David Cameron and in the dangers of separatist movements, but first a bit of background is required.

The electorate – those who say they will vote in the next election - appear to be in a frame of mind that would accept the Prime Minister’s message.    Polls have shown for months, that the majority of those intending to vote in the next parliamentary election believe the Prime Minister’s approach is necessary. This is so even though a separate composite figure shows a majority believe the approach hurts the economy.  A third composite majority continue to believe that Labour is more at fault for Britain’s situation than the Coalition.

The polls are not refined enough to tell the degree of overlap between these three composite majorities. However, understanding the nuances of those intending to vote may not require a PhD.

(Don’t) Ask a Policeman—Sigh!

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

Good news!  Crime in New York City is way down. 

But wait!  Maybe not.  The statistics have been fiddled with.  Meaning: crimes are going unreported.  It seems that the police in many precincts are refusing to accept complaints.  They won’t automatically file reports that someone’s wallet has been filched or that a car window has been smashed. 

So New Yorkers are learning to adapt.  They’ve stopped reporting the petty crimes that will go unnoted (except by the worldly wise victim) if unrecorded.  Result: police statistics in the Big Apple have become unreliable, but the police look good.  Their jobs are safe. 

Making Crime Disappear

Under-recording happens all the time in many countries. South Asian women who are raped know better than to go to the police, who don’t take violence against women seriously.  The blame-the-victim syndrome is alive and well in India and Pakistan.  Other crimes also go “unreported,” unless a little financial encouragement is forthcoming.  So far I haven’t heard of such instances in the U.S.    But if the official stats are corrupted these days, can bribery be far behind?

I used to be so naive!  When I first joined the Foreign Service, I’d tell people who were coming to the U.S. that they should ask a policeman for directions if they got lost in some unfamiliar big city. “You can trust the police in America.”  I actually said that.  And I believed it.  Today I’d tell my Muslim or non-White contacts to use the gps function on their cell phones—and not just because the technology is now available.

White-Washing

Yes, I was brought up to think of the police as friends. Many times over the years, on foot and from my car, I’ve asked for directions and got the help I needed from a cheerful and accommodating man with a badge.  I’ve also received many well-deserved tickets for driving too fast, although I’ve usually been able to talk down the offending speed, to protect my auto insurance rate. 

I’m white, you see, and I’ve got very blue eyes.  I’ve never had to worry about anti-DWB (driving while Black) operations on the New Jersey turnpike.  And no one’s going to haul me in for being an illegal (i.e. undocumented Mexican) in Arizona.  But I’m a card-carrying member of the A.C.L.U., which defends the victims of unlawful arrest. I’m not oblivious.

Sadism Rules

Moreover, gradually, I began to register a certain commonplace use of excessive violence in apprehending those who’d violated the law in the U.S.  There was the dreadful Rodney King case, which happened when I was working in Pakistan. That was a hard one to explain. 

Nor, it seemed, was  it only on TV police dramas that arrestees were thrown violently against cars or walls for frisking.  The humiliations of shackled shambling and bright orange prison garb also seemed to indicate something deeply wrong with law enforcement in the U.S.  Increasingly, or so it appeared, the agents of the law indulged themselves in brutal, sadistic embellishments to coercive necessity—and this abuse of power seemed to have become routine most everywhere in the U.S.   The word systemic came to mind. 

Is this what today's police academies in the U.S. were teaching the recruits to a law enforcement career?   

Normalizing Torture

Then came the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush, for whom I am happy to say I did not vote.  He allowed torture to be legalized and normalized.  First, there was the Abu Graib cover up, to say nothing of some deaths under torture in Afghanistan.  By that time, fortunately, I was no longer responsible for explaining U.S. policy to the foreign press.  Happily for me, I did not have to whitewash the abuses at the purpose-built prison at Guantanamo—and all along, as we Americans who treasured America’s reputation for advancing civil liberties gradually came to know, victims were being “renditioned” to black holes in compliant countries to be broken in body and spirit with the connivance of shadowy U.S. figures. The ticking time bomb justified all, we were told.

Even today there are Americans who defend these atrocities and who also support policies of indefinite detention, punishment without trial and the suspension of habeas corpus in cases involving accusations of  “terrorism.”  Barack Obama, for whom I did vote, seems disinclined to prosecute the torturers and equally reluctant to restore historic civil liberties.  If I was alienated before, I am more so now.  I could never be a spokesperson for U.S. anti-terrorism policy today.

Police Occupation

Flash forward to America under economic stress. Whatever one’s judgement of the goals or efficacy of the Occupy Wall Street phenomenon, and I admit to having been largely sympathetic, it’s hard not to be shocked by the uniforms and tactics of the agents of municipal roll back.  As a memory refresher, I suggest you picture today’s American policeman geared up for a riot.  He’s a black-clad spawn of Darth Varder advancing in shield-fronted phalanx, hooded, bullet-proofed, and bristling with riot gear—batons, canisters, firearms.   Then picture the objects of riot police action: an unarmed miscellany of the dedicated, the deluded and the deprived, armed only with signs and sass.

Which, might I ask, poses the greater threat to our safety? 

US Public Diplomacy Advisory Commission Crashed: Another Nail in America’s Public Diplomacy Coffin

By Patricia H. Kushlis

On December 16 – with barely a whimper – the US Public Diplomacy Advisory Commission disappeared with the flick of the wrist of a single Republican Senator as its funds and staff suddenly evaporated overnight. The Commission closed its doors and shuttered its windows because this legislator, or perhaps two, thought that it, like America’s Tea Tasting Board which had lived on well past its due date served no worthwhile purpose.  I agree that tea tasters no longer perform the useful function they did in the 18^th century.  But defunding the Public Diplomacy Advisory Commission to the annual tune of only $135,000 really needs to be reconsidered.

I might argue differently if the US Information Agency still existed and the US had a coherent, coordinated, adequately funded and professionally staffed civilian federal government entity charged with implementation of America’s image-building efforts abroad.  But that organization was eliminated in 1999 when American government officials on both sides of the aisle were still under the illusion that the US was loved throughout the world. 

I’m not sure what that disappearing act and the ensuing fragmentation saved the US taxpayer financially but its disappearance certainly did not help address America’s tattered image abroad when just two years later the US needed to cope with the aftermath of the worst terrorist attacks on US soil in its history instigated by a small band of militant foreigners who hated the country and what it stood for.

The US government’s public diplomacy efforts more than a decade later are still more reminiscent of an old pair of jeans with a few new patches sewn over the worst tears in the fabric than anything else.

So why should the US Public Diplomacy Advisory Commission continue to operate?  Who needs it?

Well, there are any number of reasons why and the lack of a coherent, coordinated agency dedicated to tending America’s image abroad is among them.

An effective Public Diplomacy Advisory Commission is the single bipartisan governmental entity that reports to both the executive and legislative branches about what the US could and should do to improve the country’s image abroad. Given the fragmentation of US public diplomacy activities since USIA’s demise, this country is more than ever in need of an independent watch-dog body tasked with putting the jig-saw pieces together enough, at least, to see, report on and critique the most critical parts - now flung across a multitude of departments and agencies.  

 Here’s how the Advisory Commission’s Charter describes its purpose:

The Public Diplomacy Advisory Commission is to appraise US Government activities that intend to understand, inform, and influence foreign publics, and to advocate for those same activities.

Simple, Clear, Concise, and potentially powerful.

As a result the Commission has access to information from inside secretive bureaucracies that those of us on the outside do not. Furthermore, the Commission is tasked with using that information to critique and advise the bureaucrats involved in the design and implementation of public diplomacy programs – political appointees and career officers alike - on the efficacy of their activities. 

At the same time, the Commission is charged with advocating for those same activities – which, in my book means 1) maintaining robust Congressional relations and 2) informing the American public about how its public diplomacy dollars are spent – something the bureaucracy because of special legislative restrictions – cannot.

Now whether the Advisory Commission has lived up to its charter in the post-Cold War era is, from my perspective, debatable. To do so, however, it had recently expanded its investigative reach well beyond the State Department.  Whether the Commission’s advice has been accepted and implemented by the bureaucracy –in particular at State now supposedly first among equals in promulgating America’s image abroad – is also questionable.  The Commission can recommend, cajole and shed light on both the effective and the ineffective but the Commission cannot ensure that those recommendations are implemented.  

Nevertheless throwing the baby out with the bathwater in these turbulent times seems as ill-advised to me as was the demise of USIA in 1999.  Both have happened for the all the wrong reasons.  Instead, the Public Diplomacy Advisory Commission should be greatly strengthened and its activities enhanced so that its bipartisan nongovernmental members and tiny executive staff can actually begin to handle the tasks it was originally assigned to accomplish – not the other way around.  This is a tall order in and of itself.  It’s really not all that hard:  a flick of the pen from the right person on the Hill would be enough to begin the resurrection.