U.S./Top News from Just Foreign Policy 5.28.2013
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Peace is real!
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Peace is real!
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Summary:
1) There ought to be agreement that the United States, a would-be benefactor, shouldn't get pushed around or have its diplomacy subverted by Syrian rebels, who are the supplicants for U.S. aid, writes CIA veteran Paul Pillar at The National Interest. Yet that becomes a possibility when we hear the head of the rebel Syrian National Coalition throw cold water on the peace conference that Secretary of State Kerry and his Russian counterpart agreed to arrange and say that his group will withhold agreement to attend until it sees who from the Assad regime might be coming. It would be hard to label as peace talks any process in which that regime was not fully at the table in the form of representatives of its own choice, Pillar says. U.S. aid to the rebels should be contingent on the willingness of the rebels to negotiate seriously.
2) President Obama says he will place new restrictions on the targeting of terrorists with missiles fired from drones, the Los Angeles Times reports. Before any strike is undertaken, "there must be a near-certainty that no civilians will be killed or injured," said a senior administration official. Strikes against foreign militants will be conducted under the same standard as those against U.S. citizens who have joined forces with Al Qaeda, the official said.
3) One of the big outstanding questions is just how transparent the Obama administration will be about drone strikes in the future, writes Mark Mazzetti for the New York Times. Will administration officials begin to publicly confirm strikes after they happen? It seems quite certain that past operations in Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere are not going to be declassified anytime soon, Mazzetti writes. Moving operations from the C.I.A. to the Pentagon does not automatically mean that the strikes will be publicly discussed, Mazzetti says. The Pentagon is carrying out a secret drone program in Yemen right now, and it is very difficult to get information about those operations.
4) A presidential directive in advance of Obama's speech says the Pentagon, rather than the CIA, should "have the lead for the use of force" – not just in Afghanistan, but also in other countries where the US is fighting against Al Qaeda and other terrorist networks, the Christian Science Monitor reports. The hope among NGOs is that this move will result in greater transparency.
The public has every reason to expect that the Pentagon will shed more light on America's secret wars than has the CIA, says Sarah Holewinski of the Center for Civilians in Conflict. But as the Pentagon takes over greater responsibilities for drone operations, "there is no obligation of the military to report before or after any drone strikes," says Bruce Fein, deputy attorney general under President Reagan.
5) President Obama stated clearly and unequivocally that the state of perpetual warfare that began nearly 12 years ago is unsustainable for a democracy and must come to an end in the not-too-distant future, writes the New York Times in an editorial. Obama said the 2001 AUMF must be must be replaced to avoid keeping "America on a perpetual wartime footing." The editorial celebrates that "from now on" the CIA and the military will no longer engage in "signature strikes" [this seems to overstate the case; it seems that signature strikes may continue in Pakistan while there are U.S. combat troops in Afghanistan - JFP.]
Obama should pledge an accounting for the civilian deaths caused by drone strikes, and some form of reparations, the Times says; and an unclassified version of the targeting rules should be published.
6) UN rapporteur Ben Emmerson, the lawyer leading a UN drone inquiry, has praised Obama's speech as a "significant step towards increased transparency," the BBC reports. Emmerson said Obama's speech had broken new ground on a number of issues. "It sets out more clearly and more authoritatively than ever before the administration's legal justifications for targeted killing, and the constraints that it operates under," he said. "The publication of the procedural guidelines for the use of force in counter-terrorism operations is a significant step towards increased transparency and accountability."
A senior official from Nawaz Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League told the BBC the party is disappointed that Obama gave no indication he would consult the Pakistan government about the continued use of drone attacks. He said the question of the Americans bombing Pakistani territory without permission is the biggest foreign policy issue facing the new administration.
Syria
7) Analysts said the U.S. call for peace talks in Syria represents a change in U.S. policy by not insisting that Assad agree to vacate his position immediately, USA Today reports. "The U.S. is acting now because it's afraid that war could expand into regional war," said Fawaz Gerges, director of the Middle East Center at the London School of Economics.
8) No one is winning the war in Syria, reports Patrick Cockburn in the London Review of Books. Over the last year a military stalemate has prevailed, with each side launching offensives in the areas where they are strongest. A justification for the British and French argument that the EU embargo on arms deliveries to the rebels should be lifted is that these extra weapons will finally tip the balance decisively against Assad. The evidence from Syria itself is that more weapons will simply mean more dead and wounded.
From an early stage in the Syrian uprising the US, NATO, Israel and the Sunni Arab states openly exulted at the blow that would soon be dealt to Iran and to Hezbollah in Lebanon: Assad's imminent fall would deprive them of their most important ally in the Arab world, Cockburn writes. Sunni leaders saw the uprising not as a triumph of democracy but as the beginning of a campaign directed at Shia or Shia-dominated states. Hezbollah and Iran believe they have no alternative but to fight and that it's better to get on with it while they still have friends in power in Damascus.
'If the enemy attacks us,' Hossein Taeb, a high-ranking intelligence officer in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, recently said, 'and seeks to take over Syria or Khuzestan' – an Iranian province – 'the priority is to maintain Syria, because if we maintain Syria we can take back Khuzestan. But if we lose Syria we won't be able to hold Tehran.'
'It probably is unrealistic to expect Lebanese actors to take a step back,' a study by the International Crisis Group concludes. 'Syria's fate, they feel, is their own, and the stakes are too high for them to keep to the sideline.'
Israel/Palestine
9) According to UN figures, Gaza's exports dropped 97 percent from 2007-12 under the Israeli blockade, the Christian Science Monitor reports. Gazans need "trade not aid," says Mahfouz Kabariti, part of the "Gaza's Ark" international steering committee. The blockade has put the kibosh on exporting anything from Gaza by sea, and only very limited exports are allowed by land through the Israeli-controlled Kerem Shalom crossing, stymieing Gaza's manufacturing potential. Kabariti and others argue that the restrictions on exports not only deprive Gazan entrepreneurs of their livelihoods, but also deprive them of the basic dignity of providing for oneself and one's family.
Colombia
10) The Colombian government and FARC rebels have announced a major breakthrough in peace talks aimed at ending nearly half a century of conflict, heralding a "radical transformation" of the war-ravaged countryside, the Guardian reports. The two sides said in a joint communiqué that they had reached an agreement on land and rural development issues. Today 52% of farms are in the hands of just over 1% of landowners, according to the UN Development Program, giving Colombia one of the most unequal land distributions in the world. As part of the deal, Colombia would create a land bank through which farmland would be redistributed. Farmers would receive loans, technical assistance and marketing advice as well as legal and police protection.
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Just Foreign Policy is a membership organization devoted to reforming US foreign policy so it reflects the values and interests of the majority of Americans. The archive of the Just 'Foreign Policy News is here:
http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/blog/dailynews
1) There ought to be agreement that the United States, a would-be benefactor, shouldn't get pushed around or have its diplomacy subverted by Syrian rebels, who are the supplicants for U.S. aid, writes CIA veteran Paul Pillar at The National Interest. Yet that becomes a possibility when we hear the head of the rebel Syrian National Coalition throw cold water on the peace conference that Secretary of State Kerry and his Russian counterpart agreed to arrange and say that his group will withhold agreement to attend until it sees who from the Assad regime might be coming. It would be hard to label as peace talks any process in which that regime was not fully at the table in the form of representatives of its own choice, Pillar says. U.S. aid to the rebels should be contingent on the willingness of the rebels to negotiate seriously.
2) President Obama says he will place new restrictions on the targeting of terrorists with missiles fired from drones, the Los Angeles Times reports. Before any strike is undertaken, "there must be a near-certainty that no civilians will be killed or injured," said a senior administration official. Strikes against foreign militants will be conducted under the same standard as those against U.S. citizens who have joined forces with Al Qaeda, the official said.
3) One of the big outstanding questions is just how transparent the Obama administration will be about drone strikes in the future, writes Mark Mazzetti for the New York Times. Will administration officials begin to publicly confirm strikes after they happen? It seems quite certain that past operations in Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere are not going to be declassified anytime soon, Mazzetti writes. Moving operations from the C.I.A. to the Pentagon does not automatically mean that the strikes will be publicly discussed, Mazzetti says. The Pentagon is carrying out a secret drone program in Yemen right now, and it is very difficult to get information about those operations.
4) A presidential directive in advance of Obama's speech says the Pentagon, rather than the CIA, should "have the lead for the use of force" – not just in Afghanistan, but also in other countries where the US is fighting against Al Qaeda and other terrorist networks, the Christian Science Monitor reports. The hope among NGOs is that this move will result in greater transparency.
The public has every reason to expect that the Pentagon will shed more light on America's secret wars than has the CIA, says Sarah Holewinski of the Center for Civilians in Conflict. But as the Pentagon takes over greater responsibilities for drone operations, "there is no obligation of the military to report before or after any drone strikes," says Bruce Fein, deputy attorney general under President Reagan.
5) President Obama stated clearly and unequivocally that the state of perpetual warfare that began nearly 12 years ago is unsustainable for a democracy and must come to an end in the not-too-distant future, writes the New York Times in an editorial. Obama said the 2001 AUMF must be must be replaced to avoid keeping "America on a perpetual wartime footing." The editorial celebrates that "from now on" the CIA and the military will no longer engage in "signature strikes" [this seems to overstate the case; it seems that signature strikes may continue in Pakistan while there are U.S. combat troops in Afghanistan - JFP.]
Obama should pledge an accounting for the civilian deaths caused by drone strikes, and some form of reparations, the Times says; and an unclassified version of the targeting rules should be published.
6) UN rapporteur Ben Emmerson, the lawyer leading a UN drone inquiry, has praised Obama's speech as a "significant step towards increased transparency," the BBC reports. Emmerson said Obama's speech had broken new ground on a number of issues. "It sets out more clearly and more authoritatively than ever before the administration's legal justifications for targeted killing, and the constraints that it operates under," he said. "The publication of the procedural guidelines for the use of force in counter-terrorism operations is a significant step towards increased transparency and accountability."
A senior official from Nawaz Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League told the BBC the party is disappointed that Obama gave no indication he would consult the Pakistan government about the continued use of drone attacks. He said the question of the Americans bombing Pakistani territory without permission is the biggest foreign policy issue facing the new administration.
Syria
7) Analysts said the U.S. call for peace talks in Syria represents a change in U.S. policy by not insisting that Assad agree to vacate his position immediately, USA Today reports. "The U.S. is acting now because it's afraid that war could expand into regional war," said Fawaz Gerges, director of the Middle East Center at the London School of Economics.
8) No one is winning the war in Syria, reports Patrick Cockburn in the London Review of Books. Over the last year a military stalemate has prevailed, with each side launching offensives in the areas where they are strongest. A justification for the British and French argument that the EU embargo on arms deliveries to the rebels should be lifted is that these extra weapons will finally tip the balance decisively against Assad. The evidence from Syria itself is that more weapons will simply mean more dead and wounded.
From an early stage in the Syrian uprising the US, NATO, Israel and the Sunni Arab states openly exulted at the blow that would soon be dealt to Iran and to Hezbollah in Lebanon: Assad's imminent fall would deprive them of their most important ally in the Arab world, Cockburn writes. Sunni leaders saw the uprising not as a triumph of democracy but as the beginning of a campaign directed at Shia or Shia-dominated states. Hezbollah and Iran believe they have no alternative but to fight and that it's better to get on with it while they still have friends in power in Damascus.
'If the enemy attacks us,' Hossein Taeb, a high-ranking intelligence officer in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, recently said, 'and seeks to take over Syria or Khuzestan' – an Iranian province – 'the priority is to maintain Syria, because if we maintain Syria we can take back Khuzestan. But if we lose Syria we won't be able to hold Tehran.'
'It probably is unrealistic to expect Lebanese actors to take a step back,' a study by the International Crisis Group concludes. 'Syria's fate, they feel, is their own, and the stakes are too high for them to keep to the sideline.'
Israel/Palestine
9) According to UN figures, Gaza's exports dropped 97 percent from 2007-12 under the Israeli blockade, the Christian Science Monitor reports. Gazans need "trade not aid," says Mahfouz Kabariti, part of the "Gaza's Ark" international steering committee. The blockade has put the kibosh on exporting anything from Gaza by sea, and only very limited exports are allowed by land through the Israeli-controlled Kerem Shalom crossing, stymieing Gaza's manufacturing potential. Kabariti and others argue that the restrictions on exports not only deprive Gazan entrepreneurs of their livelihoods, but also deprive them of the basic dignity of providing for oneself and one's family.
Colombia
10) The Colombian government and FARC rebels have announced a major breakthrough in peace talks aimed at ending nearly half a century of conflict, heralding a "radical transformation" of the war-ravaged countryside, the Guardian reports. The two sides said in a joint communiqué that they had reached an agreement on land and rural development issues. Today 52% of farms are in the hands of just over 1% of landowners, according to the UN Development Program, giving Colombia one of the most unequal land distributions in the world. As part of the deal, Colombia would create a land bank through which farmland would be redistributed. Farmers would receive loans, technical assistance and marketing advice as well as legal and police protection.
-
Just Foreign Policy is a membership organization devoted to reforming US foreign policy so it reflects the values and interests of the majority of Americans. The archive of the Just 'Foreign Policy News is here:
http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/blog/dailynews
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