Chasing The Flame

Facing the West from East Africa

I'm writing this blog in ballpoint pen on a piece of paper (the back of my e-ticket) as I sit in Frankfurt Airport.  This is the first of several attempts that I will make in the coming weeks to sort out my jet-happy summer in Ethiopia, Kenya, and Egypt.  I'm a grad student at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, and this summer, I did an internship at the U.S. Mission to the African Union in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia before traveling to Kenya to visit a friend and then going to Cairo, Egypt, where my family has lived for just over a decade.  Though I tried to write blogs during the trip, I found that I needed time to digest the experiences that I was having before I could write them down.

Topic #1
Views of Obama and the West in Ethiopia.  I was surprised to discover a much more mixed reaction to Obama's presidential win in Addis Ababa than I had expected.  I mean, sure, pass out picture-laden biography pamphlets about Obama's life at the African Union and be ready to run out of them before even half of all your other handouts are gone.  Drive down the street in Addis in an official U.S. vehicle with its distinctive license plates and be ready at any time to hear someone shout "Obama!" in your direction.  These were reactions that had I expected of the first black, half-East-African President of the United States.

However, I didn't expect some of the other comments that I heard from Ethiopian peers between ordering meals in traditional restaurants or sitting in cozy coffee joints while we waited for the violent weather to calm down during Ethiopia's rainiest season.  One Sunday afternoon, in particular, I was out with a group of new friends, all between their mid twenties and very early thirties.  Sitting inside Kaldi's, a coffee chain almost identical to Starbucks, the subject of our conversation turned rather abruptly to American politics. 

"Barack Obama is a Democrat!" one of my new friends blurted, surprising me with his accusing tone.

"Yes," I said.  No brainer.  But the guy that I was talking to was clearly disgusted and had no time for jokes.  Democrats, he said, support abortion and gay marriage.  Republicans, on the other hand, he countered, have morals.

Darfur: Are we willing to hold our elected officials responsible for inaction?

This week’s congressional hearings on Darfur and the quest for peace in Sudan could provide the necessary momentum for a shift in the Obama administration’s policy on the region which is currently under review.  Witnesses at the hearings included UN Ambassador Susan Rice, former U.S. Envoy to Sudan Richard Williamson,  Roger Winter, former special representative for Sudan to the deputy secretary of State, and John Prendergast and John Norris of Enough.

Winter, Williamson and Prendergast, who have been working on or in Sudan for decades, urged Congress to take a leadership position, to stand up and stand for the principles that they and many in the Obama administration upheld as they campaigned for their current positions.  They also argued that Congress had a critical role to play as the Obama administration struggled to translate the signals coming from Khartoum.  Winter, Williamson and Prendergast urged the representatives to not be fooled by these signals and to better understand how Khartoum has effectively used the international community as it has continued to wreak havoc on the people of Darfuran d the wider region.  They also urged Congress to take a leadership role in demanding a comprehensive plan for the region, to recognize that the stop, start, piecemeal work was not only not working but was playing into Khartoum’s hands.

It seems clear that the Obama administration is split on its interpretation of events in Sudan and on the best course of action to take in the region.  U.S. Special Envoy Scott Gration continues to argue for incentives (carrots) and to question whether in fact genocide is taking place in Darfur. UN Ambassador Rice takes a much firmer stand on Sudan believing, like many of the other witnesses, that sticks should be used instead and that Sudan has not earned any incentives. She also did not publicly question the legitimacy of the genocide charge. As more of these internal debates come to light, so did the stumbling of the Obama administration’s spokespeople.  If Samantha Power were to update "A Problem from Hell," there is little doubt that she would include the exchange between the press and Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs PJ Crowley. Watch it here, and, as you do, reflect on this exchange between the press and State Department Spokesperson Christine Shelley shown in the first few seconds of this clip. .

This infamous exchange has now appeared in books, articles, and documentaries.  It was this response to Rwanda that set the world on fire years later---as they read Philip Gourevitch’s "We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We Will be Killed with Our Families," Samantha Power’s "A Problem from Hell," and watched Frontline’s Triumph of Evil, Greg Barker’s "Ghosts of Rwanda," and Terry George’s feature film, "Hotel Rwanda."  It was the shock, sadness, shame and desire to not stand by while innocent people were raped, murdered and forced from their homes that inspired thousands of people — and many men and women running for office — to dare to say, “never again, not on my watch.”  Indeed, it was their belief that something could and should be done that inspired them, us, to say it.  Power was correct in her analysis: there is no political cost for standing by, for doing little or nothing, but there should be. There should be more than a moral cost, there should be a political one. But, that is up to us, the voters, and this is where the need for leadership comes in again---it's not just that Congressional leaders need to emerge and speak out, that leaders within the National Security Council need to emerge and speak out, leaders within the Obama administration need to emerge and speak out, it’s that we do.  The only cost that will matter is a political cost and that only matters if we are willing to demand payment.

"The Disease of Misrule and Corruption"

The UN Security Council met early this week in New York, where discussion turned to the situation in Zimbabwe. Since August, a cholera epidemic has ravaged the region, killing 978 people and infecting more than 18,000. Notwithstanding the seriousness of this outbreak, this epidemic is only a symptom of the massive institutional problems facing the country today.

According to British Foreign Secretary David Miliband, it seems that "the disease of misrule and corruption" lies at the bottom of Zimbabwe's current crises.

In more general terms, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon pointed to the lack of effective leadership as the reason for Zimbabwe’s continued woes. "We continue to witness a failure of the leadership in Zimbabwe to address the political, economic, human rights and humanitarian crisis that is confronting the country and to do what is best for the people of Zimbabwe," he said.

One of the most apparent failures has been the lack of a peaceful and equitable leadership transition.  President Mugabe lost the first round of the March presidential election to opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai; but following brutal attacks on his supporters, Tsvangirai withdrew from the run-off round. Both leaders agreed to a power-sharing arrangement in September but have since failed to form a government. Some say this is because Mugabe refuses to relinquish key ministries to his opponent. 

The AP reports that this political impasse has paralyzed public services, including water, sanitation and health systems. While the lack of clean water and sanitation fuels the cholera epidemic, a virtually collapsed health-care system can do little to contain it. Without medicine, equipment or wages for staff, most hospitals have been forced to close. According to the NYT's Celia Duggar, "The capital's two largest hospitals, sprawling facilities that once would have provided sophisticated care in just such a crisis, had largely shut down weeks earlier after doctors and nurses, their salaries rendered virtually worthless by the nation's crippling hyperinflation, simply stopped coming to work."

The Southern African Development Community (SADC) has been charged with mediating this tense situation, but neither SADC nor the Zimbabwean government sees a role for the UN in this process.  Nevertheless, Ban’s remarks to the Council implored SADC to act quickly and with stronger unity in order to end the political crisis.The talks ended without any motion to censure Mugabe, which according to BBC News was due to opposition from South Africa.

This goes to show that the lack of accountable leadership in the halls of government can have far-reaching, and in this case deadly, effects on the ground. Hopefully, South African leaders will emerge from these talks with a renewed commitment to Zimbabweans and the basic need for good health and better government.

Unilateralism in Darfur?

Sunday's New York Times Magazine included an interesting Q & A with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.  (One of the gems is Ambassador Chris Hill's advice that Americans consider how our advice is taken globally, particularly with respect to democracy promotion.)  The Q & A is worth a full read, but one thing struck me, and I'd be grateful if anyone could shed some light on what Rice had in mind.  She is quoted as saying, "I have regrets about Darfur, real regrets. I don’t know that there were other answers. The president considered trying to do something unilaterally — very difficult to do."  I have done a little bit of searching to figure out just what unilateral act(s) the president considered, and I've come up empty.  Military?  Economic?  If you understand the reference, please respond in the comments.  And how serious was the consideration of doing something unilaterally?

Meanwhile, see former SYG Kofi Annan's remarks in today's IHT, which concludes thus:

Responding to a claim by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, for example, who said Washington had worked "day and night" to end human rights violations in Darfur, Annan smiled before remarking: "I don't know about day and night. It depends how long your days and your nights are."

"The world could not give them 18 helicopters," he said. "We could have done more - and should."

Interdependence in the air

Gulliver, The Economist's travel webzine, recently put up a "video simulation of 24 hours of air transport over the Earth." (See a higher resolution version here.) If you've ever pondered a busy freeway system from an airplane view, this is what you would have looked like to the once more removed observer. It's a remarkable effect, particularly because there are no roadways; air traffic moves over the planet exactly toward its destination, making it easy to see which parts of the globe are closely connected with a frequent exchange of people, and which are not.

Sitting in a plane is not like driving on the freeway; you rarely get a sense of other flights passing along the way. But clearly there is a lot of traffic in the air at a given time. On the one hand, that's something I'm glad of: more air traffic implies more unmediated interactions between people and cultures around the world. This is the sort of citizen diplomacy that creates constituencies for informed engagement with the rest of the world. On the other hand, think of the massive carbon footprint that constant global air traffic puts out. Certainly, it's not possible to turn that back now. But I find myself thinking of Thomas Friedman's latest book, Hot, Flat, and Crowded, (again): here is yet another opportunity for governments and companies to seize the competitive and ethical advantage, providing clean air travel to a busy, interconnected world.

This entry is cross-posted on The Switchblog.

Is Humanitarian Intervention Dead?

Be sure to check out Samantha's review of Gary Bass's latest, Freedom's Battle, posted on Slate this week. An excerpt:

Historically informed caution certainly seems the right antidote to Bush-era recklessness. An ethnic, national, or religious group must be in immediate danger of being massacred on a large scale; a credible multilateral body must support the intervention. The countries intervening must forswear up front the pursuit of commercial or strategic interests in the region. They must commit to remaining for a finite period and in numbers befitting their limited mandates (though, as Bass notes, it's important to be careful not to allow the killers to wait out the intervention and to deploy a force sizable enough to protect civilians). Finally, the countries entering a foreign land must have done so on the basis of the good-faith calculation that the benefits of such action would outweigh the costs—to the victims, the region, and the intervening parties.

While instituting such requirements should reduce the risks of cynical or counterproductive interventions, the conditions are in fact so stringent that it is not obvious how or when, in today's world, such conditions might be met. Countries are hardly rushing to contribute troops to the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Darfur. And since China and Russia frown on external interferences that aren't of their own making, multilateral consensus is likely to be elusive. On this score, Henry Kissinger seems increasingly correct that "a doctrine of common intervention can furnish a more useful tool to frustrate action than the doctrine of non-interference."

With a few noteworthy exceptions (e.g. Iraq 2003), the United States has acted with inaction when it comes to so-called humanitarian intervention. Will this change? Can it? Should it? History shows that the answers are complex. We all know, however, that the ramifications are often bloody.

What five Secretaries of State have to say: think regions, energy and economics

As Madeleine Albright, James Baker, Warren Christopher, Henry Kissinger and Colin Powell raced through (the discussion was, alas, far too short) a litany of foreign policy challenges, it became clear that there are a few areas in which progress would improve our foreign policy prospects in almost every instance. A better handle on these issues would give us new avenues to solve old disagreements and challenges pertaining to Iran, Iraq, Russia, Afghanistan, Syria, sub-Saharan Africa, India, China and others:

• Albright came back again and again to the idea that we must tackle problems--particularly Iran, Afghanistan, Iraq and Palestine--regionally and cooperatively. It's much more effective to deal with Afghanistan when you bring India and Pakistan into the picture; much easier to negotiate with the Syrians than between Hamas and Fatah (the Israelis have been doing this for almost a year, recognizing that Syria would like to join the Sunni world of Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan rather than being aligned with Shiite Iran, says Baker); it's easier to exit Iraq with Syria's help; better to forestall conflict in the Horn of Africa when everyone is at the table, etc. All agreed (save, perhaps, Kissinger) that direct dialogue should be happening at the Secretary of State level with these countries and within these regions.

What five Secretaries of State have to say: first, restore respect

This blog is of course premised on the legacy of Sergio Vieira de Mello, someone who took unusual leadership on the global stage. A legacy like this instructs leaders facing the challenges of the here and now: how does one address the many problem--areas in the foreign policy landscape while maintaining core principles throughout?

The legacies of five former U.S. Secretaries of State enriched a discussion about the future of U.S. foreign policy on Monday, when I had the chance to see Madeleine Albright, James Baker, Warren Christopher, Henry Kissinger and Colin Powell sit down together and chat about the foreign policy challenges our next president will face. (You can see this conversation, taped at George Washington University, yourself on CNN at 9pm on September 20.) It's not often one hears five former Secretaries of State chat about U.S. foreign policy. It's still armchair quarterbacking, but these are the people who have actually been on the field, so to speak, and shaped U.S. foreign policy. It's more than punditry; even a former Secretary of State can't get away with reckless or shortsighted advice to the next president when there are four other such alums sitting right there waiting to poke holes. All that to say such a conversation has an usual dynamic--a highly-informed conversation among peers with built-in checks and balances--that one is hard pressed to find in often-esoteric discussions about foreign policy.

So what did they say? Well, with the exception of Henry Kissinger, who was predictably circumspect about almost every topic, all of the discussants agreed that American influence and power is waning abroad and that this constitutes a problem not so much because America is unpopular but rather because we are no longer respected.

American Attitudes Toward International Cooperation

Some new research from the UN Foundation and their Better World Campaign provides some new insights into what's on the minds of Americans when it comes to international issues. As both Matthew Yglesias and Mark Leon Goldberg point out, key among the findings from the six months of polling is an increased concern over America's "dependence on foreign oil" - up 34% from a similar poll from a year ago. The researchers also point to the fact that 74% of respondents think the next U.S. president should have "the right balance of toughness and diplomacy in working with other countries around the world" (slide #11). That result isn't particularly shocking, but it does raise some interesting questions. How do Americans feel about diplomacy itself? How do they define it, and, perhaps most importantly - do they see it as important when compared to other foreign policy "tools" (e.g. toughness)?

Anyway, using the arrow navigation on the lower left of this slideshow, you'll see some more numbers - some with immediate significance to our conversations here. Take a look and let us know what you think.

Holbrooke and Kagan in Foreign Affairs

We spend so much time these days focusing on the grave errors of this Administration that we sometimes neglect the broader picture of where we should be headed come January 2009. Luckily, Foreign Affairs, the eminent journal of the Council on Foreign Relations, has published two pieces in its current edition that deserve to be read together and subjected to serious debate. 

The first is by Richard Holbrooke, who must be on a very short list of potential secretaries of state. Holbrooke, an often brilliant writer and memoirist, is interested in “restor[ing] the United States to its proper world leadership role,” beginning with repairing “the domestic economy and the United States’ reputation in the world.”  He rightly places closing the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, at the top of the agenda, calling its closure “not just desirable but imperative.”  He then goes through an impressive tour d’horizon of problem areas that deserve major and immediate American policy commitment. One may quibble with Holbrooke’s ordering of these priorities, but he is surely right about the depth of troubling decisions facing the next president.

Robert Kagan, well-known for his 2003 book, Of Paradise and Power, and commonly considered one of the leading neocon thinkers and early supporters of the war to oust Saddam Hussein, largely puts aside detailed policy prescription. Kagan remains a classic realist, one who sees “a world of selfish states and selfish peoples – which is to say, the world that exists.” Given this background, one might expect a riposte to Holbrooke with a defense of the Bush years and perhaps a post-Bush agenda that adheres to the goals of exporting liberal democratic traditions worldwide. That is there in his article, and yet Kagan resists caricature. His piece steers away from grand calls for renewed American leadership and instead, more descriptively than prescriptively, presents an argument for sobriety about the limits of America’s power to get what it wants.  Given what you may know of Kagan, the following excerpt (with my italics) may surprise you:

Comics and Comedy: Innovating U.S.-Muslim World Diplomacy

As Sergio Vieira de Mello could attest, diplomacy is hard. Any point of common understanding can be crucial to making progress. In no relationship is this more true than in the United States' efforts to create better ties to the Muslim World.

Any well-represented, frank discussion about U.S.-Muslim relations will turn up substantive disagreement about policy. These disagreements are rendered far more difficult to grapple with by the heated emotional response they provoke, a response exacerbated by the lens that colors views of the issues on both sides. In the United States, there is a real lack of knowledge about Islam and mainstream Muslim life. In the Muslim world, there is a perception that the does not respect Islam or Muslims. A discussion that attempts to make progress on deep-seated policy disagreements without addressing these cultural roadblocks is unlikely to succeed. And in any case, while it is clearly important to address the issues that arose out of 9/11, the discussion must and should move beyond terrorism as the U.S. relationship with the Muslim world matures.

Lately, I've been intrigued by a range of new diplomatic tools s that innovate both the approaches and players in the diplomatic space between the United States and the Islamic World. Call it citizen diplomacy if you will, but we're not talking about a bunch of rowdy college students running amok overseas. These are thoughtful, experienced interlocutors digging into what makes Muslim societies tick and engaging all kinds of people both in the U.S. and Muslim World contexts.

The Importance of Intelligent Empathy

By Jonathan Prentice

The lesson we might try to take from Sergio's life (note he is a passive actor in this; we each extract from him, and magnify, that which we want), is the paramount importance of empathy, of attempting truly to understand how others might feel in a given situation. As important as this capacity is individually, I am talking about professional empathy – empathy as intrinsic to engaging in "smarter foreign policy".

This is not necessarily the most apparent quality to draw from a man who could appear quite patrician. But is there any more stark counterpoint to the rose-strewn-streets-of-Baghdad-naivety than Sergio's quietly visceral comment that he would hate – elementally so – to see foreign tanks on the streets of his hometown, Rio, irrespective of how they came to be there? In that comment there is a subtle understanding of others – of appreciating that how certain people feel might be in stark contrast to the "logical" assumptions drawn by others – that merits more than a little reflection.

In other words, we need to think afresh of ways to get serious about our rhetorical commitment to victims and marginalised groups – to empathise with them in a way that is meaningful and to hold ourselves accountable before their judgement.

Five Years Later

By Samantha Power

We launched this site on the five year anniversary of Sergio’s death because it didn’t seem adequate to light yet another candle, to reminisce about his successes and failures in the field, or to celebrate the remarkable A Team that was killed or wounded with him in Baghdad. This year, five years after the attack, with Russian troops having invaded Georgia, humanitarian workers being targeted in Afghanistan, and so few of the lessons of Sergio’s life heeded in geopolitical circles, it seemed a good moment to try to generate a debate on how dignity and security could best be promoted in foreign policy today.

While alive, Sergio was known as the “go to guy,” and these days the absence of such a go-to person is felt daily. The United States and Europe are speaking with multiple voices on the Russian invasion. Rivalry and differences among China, Russia and the United States have greatly undermined the Security Council and its capacity to meet this and other threats to international peace and security.

Here in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, there are few events commemorating the murder of Sergio, a Brazilian, on August 19, 2003. This was a suicide bomb that not only took 22 lives, but that shattered the old school faith of humanitarians that their good intentions would shield them from being targeted in the field. Born in Brazil, Sergio Vieira de Mello was the son of a diplomat, so travelled a great deal as a child. Then he became a peripatetic trouble-shooter himself, working in the UN for 34 years in relief, refugee protection, peacekeeping and what became known as nation-building. As a result, most Brazilians got to know Sergio in death rather than in life, and they still know him largely in silhouette. That said, university and graduate students in particular seem hungry to reclaim Sergio as one of Brazil’s own. In addition, as Brazil asserts itself on the international stage, Sergio’s life seems one that more Brazilian diplomats are intent on accessing for wisdom in settling regional and international disputes, and also for an understanding of the sources of violence and extremism, ills that plague this country’s own cities as well as danger zones abroad.

Americans have themselves found it hard to “place” Sergio. Although world leaders and citizens have talked at length the last decade about globalization, global terrorism, global warming, global poverty, etc., we still read history books that introduce us to statist figures. We rarely get to walk in the footsteps of a person who moved with the world’s challenges – across borders. His achievements aren’t those we are used to celebrating (or even noticing) – orchestrating the return of hundreds of thousands of refugees, negotiating demobilization agreements, helping draft constitutions or plan elections, and even shepherding a tiny country (East Timor) to independence. People also have trouble placing Sergio because his life is one of trade-offs and moral incommensurables in negotiations; he offers no black and white formulas for peace or even coexistence; he inhabited the grey zones of the global system.

Hopefully this site will be a space where people from all walks can come to debate how the United States and other countries can better navigate those grey zones in the years ahead. In the meantime, we join in remembrance of the 22 innocent lives that were taken five years ago today in Baghdad.

• Saad Hermiz Abona, 45, Iraq, Canal Hotel cafeteria worker
• Reham al-Farra, Jordan, 29, spokesperson
• Emaad Ahmed Salman al-Jobory, 45, Iraq, electrician
• Raid Shaker Mustafa al-Mahdawi, 32, Iraq, electrician
• Omar Kahtan Mohamed al-Orfali, 34, Iraq, driver/interpreter, Christian Children's Fund
• Leen Assad al-Qadi, 32, Iraq, information assistant
• Ranillo Buenaventura, 47, Philippines, secretary
• Gillian Clark, 47, Canada, child protection workers, Christian Children's Fund
• Arthur Helton, 54, United States, director of peace and conflict studies at the Council on Foreign Relations
• Richard 'Rick' Hooper, 40, United States, political officer
• Reza Hosseini, 43, Iran, humanitarian affairs officer
• Ihsan Taha Husein, 26, Iraq, driver
• Jean-Sélim Kanaan, 33, Egypt, Italy, and France
• Chris Klein-Beekman, 32, Canada, program coordinator for UN Children Fund (UNICEF)
• Manuel Martín-Oar Fernandez-Heredia, 56, Spain, assistant to the Spanish special ambassador to Iraq
• Khidir Saleem Sahir, Iraq, driver
• Dr. Alya Sousa, 54, Iraq, consultant to the World Bank Iraq Team
• Martha Teas, 47, United States, manager of the UN humanitarian information center
• Basim Mahmoud Utaiwi, 40, Iraq, security guard, security guard
• Sérgio Vieira de Mello, 55, Brazil, UN Special Representative of the Secretary-General
• Fiona Watson, 35, United Kingdom, political affairs officer
• Nadia Younes, 57, Egypt, Chief of Staff