World Times Online

The C.E.O. in Politics

2012-01-14T02:42:00.000-08:00

January 12, 2012

There are two questions concerning Mitt Romney’s service at the private equity firm Bain Capital. The narrower question is: Did Bain help ailing companies and add value to the economy or did it plunder dying firms? The larger question is: Does Romney’s success in business tell us anything about whether he would be a successful president?
Let’s tackle the bigger question here.
At first blush, business success would seem to be good preparation for political success. A C.E.O. learns to set priorities, manage organizations and hone analytic skills. But these traits are more transferable to being a mayor, which is more administrative, than to being president.
Moreover, for every Michael Bloomberg who successfully moves from business to politics, there is a Jon Corzine, Donald Rumsfeld, Donald Regan, Meg Whitman or Carly Fiorina — former executives who were either unsuccessful in political office or who couldn’t get elected in the first place. If you look back over history, you see that while business success can sensitize a politician to the realities other executives face, there’s little correlation between business success and political success.
The traits that actually correlate with successful presidencies have deeper roots.
First, successful presidents tend to be emotionally secure. They have none of the social resentments and desperate needs that plagued men like Richard Nixon. Instead they were raised, often in an aristocratic family, with a sense that they were the natural leaders of the nation. They were infused, often at an elite prep school, with a sense of obligation and responsibility to perform public service.
Whether it is a George Washington, a Franklin or Theodore Roosevelt or a John F. Kennedy, this sort of president enters the White House with ease and confidence, is relatively unscathed by the criticism of the crowd, is able to separate the mask he must wear for public display from the real honest self he knows himself to be.
This sense of emotional security can also be found in great military leaders, like Dwight Eisenhower, and in serenely successful movie stars, like Ronald Reagan.
Second, great presidents tend to have superb political judgment. In his essay on this subject, Isaiah Berlin defines political judgment as “a capacity for integrating a vast amalgam of constantly changing, multicolored, evanescent perpetually overlapping data.”
A president with political judgment has a subtle feel for the texture of his circumstance. He has a feel for where opportunities lie, what will go together and what will never go together. This implicit knowledge is developed slowly in people like Harry Truman or Lyndon Johnson who have spent decades as political insiders and who have a rich repertoire of experiences to draw on.
It also comes from voracious social contact. It comes to leaders who have a compulsive desire to be around people and who can harvest from a million social encounters a sense of what people want and can deliver.
Third, great leaders have often experienced crushing personal setbacks. This experience, whether it’s Lincoln’s depression or F.D.R.’s polio, not only gives them a sense of sympathy for those who are suffering, but a personal contact with frailty. They are resilient when things go wrong. They know how dependent they are on others, how prone they are to overconfidence. They are both modest, because they have felt weakness, and aggressive, because they know how hard it is to change anything.
Finally, great leaders tend to have an instrumental mentality. They do not feel the office is about them. They are just God’s temporary instrument in service of a larger cause. Lincoln felt he was God’s instrument in preserving the union. F.D.R. felt he was an instrument to help the common man and defeat fascism.
This sense of being an instrument gives them an organizing purpose. It gives them a longer perspective, so they don’t get distracted by ephemera. It means their administration marches in one direction, even though it is flexible and willing to accept incremental gains along the way.
In sum, great presidents are often aristocrats and experienced political insiders. They experience great setbacks. They feel the presence of God’s hand on their every move.
Unfortunately, we’re not allowed to talk about these things openly these days. We disdain elitism, political experience and explicit God-talk. Great failure is considered “baggage” in today’s campaign lingo.
Today’s candidates have to invent bogus story lines to explain their qualifications to be president — that they are innocent outsiders or business whizzes. In reality, Romney’s Bain success is largely irrelevant to the question of whether he could be a good president. The real question is whether he has picked up traits like emotional security, political judgment and an instrumental mind-set from his upbringing and the deeper experiences of life.
We’ll learn more about that as he confronts brutal attacks that now besiege him.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/13/opinion/brooks-the-ceo-in-politics.html?ref=general&src=me&pagewanted=print

As Crisis Festers, Pakistani Government Plans Confidence Vote

2012-01-14T02:35:00.000-08:00

January 13, 2012

By DECLAN WALSH

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Threatened with prosecution by a hostile judiciary and fearing an intervention by powerful generals, Pakistan’s embattled government turned Friday to its last bastion of strength, the national Parliament, in a bid to stall the momentum of a crisis that threatens to engulf the governing party.
Addressing Parliament, Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani announced that he would ask for a vote Monday on a resolution seeking “full confidence and trust” in his coalition government. It was his latest gambit in a complex power struggle set off by the American raid that killed Osama bin Laden in May.
Pakistan’s fractious politicians must choose between “democracy and dictatorship,” Mr. Gilani said, speaking hours after President Asif Ali Zardari returned from a brief trip to Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, that reignited rumors of an impending military coup.
Pakistani analysts and Western diplomats believe that the prospects of a coup are receding, for now. But the situation remains volatile as the country’s most powerful figures — senior judges, generals and politicians — engage in a bare-knuckle and unusually public bout of power games in which the United States finds itself sidelined.
At heart, the governing Pakistan Peoples Party and the military, led by Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, are struggling for control of national security policy, including the right to direct the strained relationship with the United States. A strident judiciary and the possibility of elections as early as this summer add complicating factors.
The beginning of the struggle came in the fall, when an American businessman of Pakistani origin, Mansoor Ijaz, made a startling claim: that in the acrid aftermath of the Bin Laden raid on May 2, he had been asked to take a secret letter to the Americans seeking protection for Mr. Zardari’s government from a possible military coup. In exchange, it offered to dismantle part of the country’s powerful spy agency.
Pakistan’s military angrily demanded an investigation into the unsigned memo and embraced Mr. Ijaz’s assertion that it had been dictated by Husain Haqqani, Pakistan’s ambassador to Washington. Mr. Haqqani, since recalled to Pakistan, has denied that account.
However, the military ignored a later statement by Mr. Ijaz that Lt. Gen Ahmed Shuja Pasha, the head of the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, or ISI, visited the Persian Gulf region during the same period to seek support for a coup.
A three-judge bench of the Supreme Court is investigating what the Pakistani news outlets call “Memogate” and is scheduled to make its finding by month’s end. Meanwhile Mr. Haqqani, who could face treason charges, has confined himself to Mr. Gilani’s house in Islamabad, telling reporters that he fears for his life.
The true target of the inquiry may be Mr. Haqqani’s boss: Mr. Zardari, leader of the Pakistan Peoples Party. The P.P.P. and the military have a deep mutual mistrust going back three decades. Many generals barely disguise their loathing for the president, who came to power in 2008, in elections after the assassination of his wife, Benazir Bhutto, and who has struggled to shake off a reputation of irredeemable corruption.
For most of 2011, his government sought to ease the tension by defending the embattled generals, particularly against withering domestic criticism after the Bin Laden raid from a public distrustful of the United States and fiercely protective of their nation’s sovereignty. But the rising emotions over the Memogate crisis swept any unity away.
In December, Mr. Gilani said he would not tolerate a “state within a state”; this week he fired the senior bureaucrat in the Defense Ministry, a retired three-star general. That day, the military issued a warning that the government’s statements could have “very serious ramifications with potentially grievous consequences for the country.”
One analyst saw two rationales for the military’s furious stance over the memo. First, it could be using the Supreme Court to “get Zardari out,” said Najam Sethi, editor of The Friday Times and a senior analyst with Geo, the country’s largest television news network. Second, he said, “Kayani and Pasha have both been considerably weakened by the actions of the Americans.”
“They are having to act extra tough to appease their own ranks,” Mr. Sethi said.
The conflict shows that the military “is rigid and uncompromising and not prepared to concede an inch of its turf,” he added. “It wants to run foreign policy, it wants to be able to do whatever it wants, and doesn’t want any accountability at all.”
In the past, the military has ended frustrations with civilian governments with coups, in 1958, 1969, 1977 and 1999.
This time, analysts say, the military has little incentive for such a move. The economy is in a parlous state, a homegrown Taliban insurgency bubbles in the northwest, and the generals are still smarting from the damage to their reputation from the unpopular nine-year-rule of Pervez Musharraf, which began in the most recent coup and ended in 2008.
In addition, there is unprecedented, real-time scrutiny from a vociferous electronic news media. And the generals can no longer count on the Supreme Court to rubber-stamp a takeover — although the judiciary led by Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry appears to have its own antipathy for Mr. Zardari and the P.P.P.
As the scandal raged, the court upped the stakes by renewing its order that the government cooperate with a Swiss corruption investigation against Mr. Zardari. The court accused Mr. Gilani of “willful disobedience” for not doing so, and gave the government until Monday to comply. Failure could lead to Mr. Gilani’s losing his office, it has warned, offering the prospect of a disastrous clash of institutions.
Whether Mr. Chaudhry would risk such a standoff is unclear.
The likelihood of early elections is far greater. As power drains from Mr. Zardari’s government, few believe it will last until the Parliament’s term ends in February 2013. The question is when the vote would take place, and on whose terms.
The government’s objective is to survive until Senate elections, which are to be held before March. Senators are elected by the national and provincial assemblies, and the election will probably give the P.P.P. a majority of seats and control of the upper house for six years.
But a major opposition leader, Nawaz Sharif, favors early general elections — to avert such a Senate outcome and to stem the threat from a new rival, the former cricket star turned politician Imran Khan. Mr. Khan is a wild card, drawing huge crowds at recent rallies in Lahore and Karachi and threatening Mr. Sharif’s base in Punjab Province. Critics accuse him of enjoying the tacit support of the ISI.
“I don’t think the army will mount a coup because they don’t need one when they have Imran Khan,” said C. Christine Fair, an assistant professor at Georgetown University.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/14/world/asia/amid-crisis-parliament-in-pakistan-to-vote-on-affirming-civilian-rule.html?sq=pakistan&st=cse&scp=3&pagewanted=print

Non-Resident Indians Get Voting Rights

2012-01-12T01:02:00.000-08:00

By IANS, Sunday, 08 January 2012, 19:14 Hrs

Jaipur: Fulfilling the long-standing demand of its diaspora, India Sunday said it would allow Non-resident Indians (NRIs) to vote and participate in the election process."Pursuant to the law that was enacted to enable Non-resident Indians to vote in our national elections, the government has issued notifications for registration of overseas electors under the Representation of People Act, 1950," Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said.

"This constitutes the first major step to enable Indian residents abroad to participate in our election process," the prime minister said while addressing the annual diaspora meet here.

He said diaspora plays an important role in the growth and development of the country and the government recognises it and was committed to address their concerns and fulfil their demands.

"The government and people of India recognise and value the important role being played by Indian communities living abroad. We believe that Indian diaspora has much more to contribute to the building of modern India," the prime minister said.

"We propose to facilitate, encourage and promote this engagement. Over the past year, we have taken a number of steps towards this end," he added.

The prime minister formally inaugurated the 10th annual diaspora meet called the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas (PBD) here.

Minister of Overseas Indian Affairs Vayalar Ravi said nearly 1,900 delegates from almost 60 countries were participating in the annual conclave.
http://www.siliconindia.com/shownews/NonResident_Indians_Get_Voting_Rights_-nid-102481-cid-1.html?utm_campaign=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_source=l1

2012-01-07T21:58:00.000-08:00

Saturday, January 7, 2012

China convenes Fourth National Financial Work Conference

The conference has been held every five years since 1997, and is widely seen to be setting the tone for financial reform in China.

Israel and US to stage major defense drill

The Israeli military says it is gearing up with U.S. forces for a major missile defense exercise. The announcement comes as tension between Iran and the West escalates.

Italy PM urges EU to work together on debt crisis

Grim economic news from across Europe greeted the leaders of France and Italy as they sat down for a discussion in Paris on Friday over the continent?? spiraling debt crisis.

China prepares for Spring Festival travel rush

Fragments of Russia´s Mars probe may fall on Earth on Jan. 15

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US Navy rescues 13 Iranians held by pirates

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Landslide in Southern Philippines kills at least 28

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Beijing releases PM 2.5 monitoring data

Beijing?? environmental protection bureau has released monitoring data that measures particles of 2.5 micrometers or less, known as PM 2.5.

China broadens cooperation with Africa

Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi has reaffirmed China?? commitment to African concerns and interests as he wraps up his three-nation tour of the continent.

Beijing receives 2012 first snow, flights delayed

The first snow for 2012 falling down in China´s capital late Friday night continued into Saturday morning, with roads slippery and some flights delayed.

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28th Harbin Int´l Ice and Snow Festival kicks off

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Titanic artifacts to be auctioned

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Death toll rises to 26 in Damascus bombing

A suicide bombing killed 26 people and wounded 63 others in Damascus on Friday. Syria?? Interior Minister has vowed a tough response to the carnage, in the heart of the Syrian capital, after similar attacks two weeks ago.

Argentinean President to be discharged following surgery

Argentinean President Cristina Fernandez is set to be discharged on Saturday following cancer surgery.

Iran plans more naval exercises in Hormuz strait

Iran has announced plans for new military exercises in the world?? most important oil shipping lane. This is its latest gesture towards the West, as new sanctions threaten Tehran?? oil exports.

Business »

French and Italian leaders meet on Eurozone crisis

Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti has met with French President Nicolas Sarkozy in Paris, in a New Year campaign to reassure his European Parners that his technocrat government can boost the ailing Italian economy.

IMF chief qualifies negative global outlook

The International Monetary Fund chief has said that it will downgrade predictions for global economic growth to lower than 4.0% later this month, due to the effects of a widening Eurozone crisis.

2012 1st week: US stocks end mixed

U.S. stocks have ended mixed in the first week of 2012, as traders weighed the debt problems in Europe contrasted with improving jobs market in the United States.

Macro regulations on China´s economy in past 5 years

Macro regulations has become indispensable to China economy. In the past five years, with the volatile world economy, China?? macro regulations have guaranteed the economy?? stable development, by adopting flexible and prudent policies.

U.S. defense strategy: A smaller, sweeter Army | Times 247

2012-01-06T21:28:00.000-08:00

U.S. defense strategy: A smaller, sweeter Army | Times 247

2012-01-06T21:17:00.000-08:00

U.S. defense strategy: A smaller, sweeter Army | Times 247

Memogate: stop insulting our honourable judges

2012-01-04T21:47:00.000-08:00

Memogate: stop insulting our honourable judges

2012-01-04T01:03:00.000-08:00

Enter the year of the Taliban By M K Bhadrakumar
No matter what the Chinese may say about 2012 being the year of the dragon, this is going to be the year of the Taliban so far as the United States is concerned.

The New Year began with an exciting media "leak" by senior United States officials in Washington that the Barack Obama administration was considering the transfer to Afghan custody of a senior Taliban official, Mullah Mohammed Fazl, who has been detained at the US facility at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba for the past nine years.

The officials claimed Fazl might be released (or transferred to Qatar) in response to a longstanding request by Kabul as a "confidence-building measure" intended to underscore to the Taliban the US's seriousness in engaging them.

To be sure, the Obama administration is raring to go. Just about four months are left for the summit meeting of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in Chicago, an event showcasing Obama's leadership of the Western alliance - and that he can lead from the front - embedded within his unpredictable re-election bid. The summit is expected to focus world attention on the Afghan situation.

With the Europeans caught in existential angst due to their grave economic crisis, Obama needs to use all his charm on his NATO colleagues not to ditch him in Afghanistan. For that, he needs to convince them that he is leading them to the end of the dark tunnel. The Chicago summit cannot afford to fail, as happened with the two events leading to it - the Istanbul meet on November 2 and the Bonn Conference II on December 2.

But the mood in the region surrounding Afghanistan is turning ugly.

Moscow has dealt a devastating blow to the game plan drawn up by the US and NATO secretary general Anders Fogh Rasmussen eyeing Central Asia tactically as the backyard for Afghan operations if push comes to shove in the US's relations with Pakistan - and strategically as a platform for the great game toward Russia, China and Iran.

In a geopolitical coup, the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) summit in Moscow on December 20 took a momentous decision that for the setting up of foreign military bases on CSTO territory, there had to be approval by all member states of the Moscow-led alliance that also includes Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Kazakhstan President Nurusultan Nazarbayev announced with a straight face:

The most important outcome of our meeting was an agreement on the coordination of military infrastructure deployment by non-members of CSTO on the territory of CSTO member states. Now, in order to deploy a military base of a third country on the territory of a CST.O member state, it will be necessary to obtain official approval of all CSTO member states. I think this is a clear sign of the organization's unity and its members' utmost loyalty to allied relations

The last sentence was dripping with irony since the Obama administration had just recently taken a decision to provide military assistance to Uzbekistan in a policy turnaround with the intent to hijack the key Central Asian country to undermine the CSTO. To Washington's dismay, Uzbek President Islam Karimov not only attended the CSTO summit in Moscow, but went on to voice his support of the alliance's decision.

With this, Moscow signaled to Washington that its monopoly of conflict-resolution in Afghanistan has to end. The US has a choice to crawl back into Pakistan's favor and persuade Islamabad to reopen the transit routes that have been shut down for a month already or, alternatively, fall back on the Northern Distribution Network for supplying NATO troops and for taking the men and materials out as the troop drawdown picks momentum through 2011.

The CSTO decision hangs like a sword of Damocles on the US base in Manas near Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan, which is a strategic hub for air transportation.

There is no evidence so far that Russia and Pakistan have begun acting in tandem - although, in his statement anticipating Russia's foreign policy priorities for 2012, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov did single out Pakistan.

As the crow flies ...

Amid all this, Fazl's possible release from Guantanamo comes as a masterstroke by Washington aimed at scattering the growing regional bonhomie over the Afghan situation. The Obama administration hopes to release a fox into the chicken pen. Fazl is one of the most experienced Taliban commanders who has been with Taliban leader Mullah Omar almost from day one and he held key positions commanding the Taliban army.

He would have been a favorite of both Mullah Omar and Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and his "homecoming" ought to bring joy to both. On the other hand, he was also culpable for the massacre of thousands of Hazara Shi'ites during 1998-2001 and was possibly accountable for the execution of eight Iranian diplomats in the northern Afghan city of Mazar-i-Sharif.

Fazl inspires visceral hatred in the Iranian mind and could create misunderstandings in Pakistan-Iran relations (which have been on an upswing in recent years) and put Islamabad on the horns of a dilemma vis-a-vis Mullah Omar.

Fazl is also a notorious personality from the Central Asian and Russian viewpoint insofar as he used to be the Taliban's point person for al-Qaeda and its regional affiliates such as the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) and Chechen rebels. He was also in charge of the strategic Kunduz region bordering the "soft underbelly" of Central Asia where he was based with IMU chief Juma Namangani at the time of the US intervention in October 2011.

Fazl belongs to the "pre-Haqqani clan" era. Will the Haqqani network - a key component of the Taliban-led insurgency from its base in Pakistan's tribal areas - accept Fazl's "seniority" and give way to him? Pakistan may have to prioritize its "strategic assets"; it is a veritable minefield.

Enter Qatar, which is increasingly emerging as the US's closest ally in the Middle East next only to Israel. The Obama administration feels impressed by the skill Qatar displayed in theaters as diverse as Libya, Egypt and Syria in finessing the Muslim Brotherhood and other seemingly intractable Islamist groups and helping the US to catap ult itself to the "right side of history" in the Middle East.

The Obama administration is optimistic that if Fazl could be left to able Qatari hands, he could be recycled as an Islamist politician for a democratic era.

Fazl does have the credentials to bring Mullah Omar on board for launching formal peace talks. Fazl enjoys credibility among the Taliban militia and they would be inclined to emulate his reincarnation. His bonding with Islamist forces in Pakistan and the ISI could be useful channels of communication with Islamabad, which will come under pressure to cooperate with the US-led peace talks, or at the very least refrain from undercutting them.

Indeed, he is the perfect antidote to Iran's influence in Afghanistan. Once Qatar is through with him, Fazl becomes just the right partner for Washington in the great game if the Arab Spring were to appear in Central Asia, holding prospects of regime change and the rise of "Islamic democracies" in the steppes. Fazl can be trusted to persuade Taliban not to make such a terrible issue out of the US plans to establish military bases in Afghanistan.

However, will the plan work?

Pakistan may have fired the first salvo of the New Year to demolish the US plan when Foreign Ministry spokesman Abdul Basit said in Islamabad on Monday:

Establishing sustainable security and stability in Afghanistan is impossible without Iran's role. To establish security and reinvigorate Afghanistan, Iran must be given due attention and must be trusted, because pushing the trend of peace and establishing durable security and stability without Iran's partnership is impossible.

Basit was speaking within earshot of the whirring sound of the Iranian cruise missile with the ferocious name Qader (Mighty) fired from an undisclosed location unambiguously demonstrating Tehran's capability to enforce a blockade of the strategic Strait of Hormuz.

An accomplished diplomat, he certainly knows Doha lies just 547 kilometers away as the flies from the Strait of Hormuz. Fazl won't be safe in Doha.

Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar was a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service. His assignments included the Soviet Union, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Germany, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kuwait and Turkey.

Pakistan, US assume less cooperation in future

2012-01-03T22:11:00.000-08:00

Pakistan, US assume less cooperation in future

Total Travel

2012-01-02T09:48:00.000-08:00

Total Travel

Personal Optimism Prevails for 2012; Nationally and Globally, Less So - Yahoo! News

2012-01-02T09:23:00.000-08:00

Personal Optimism Prevails for 2012; Nationally and Globally, Less So - Yahoo! News

Be Part of Challenge of Change in Pakistan

2011-12-28T12:00:00.000-08:00

Good Governance Forum, founded in March 2007 as Pakistan's First and Only Interactive Think Tank on Governance, has the unique distinction of launching the first-ever online campaign through emailing, blogging and posting comments on international media including The Washington Post, The New York Times, USAToday against the dictatorship of then President Pervez Musharraf.

Good Governance Forum has the unique distinction of being invited to the United Nations' MDG Summit in New York in 2010 as delegate and speaker on the world forum.

Good Governance Forum has the unique distinction of being registered from Pakistan as a civil society organization by the Dept of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations.

Good Governance Forum has the unique distinction of being the first and only think tank in Pakistan to file petitions in the Supreme Court of Pakistan and the High Courts on major national issues for relief to the people of Pakistan.

Good Governance Forum categorizes its supporters into Patrons, Advisers and Contributors. These are defined as under:

Patrons: Citizens who donate Rs 50,000 and above in a year.

Advisers: Citizens who provide their professional expertise on specific subjects without charge to the forum.

Contributors: Citizens who donate Rs 5,000 and above but less than Rs 50,000 in a year.

Patrons and Advisers can carry their titles on their visiting cards and represent the forum on specific platforms in and out of Pakistan with prior approval of the Chairman of the Good Governance Forum.

Patrons and Advisers can avail the resources of the Good Governance Forum for pleading any issue at any public forum or at the level of the federal or any of the provincial governments relating to themselves, their organizations or general public.

Contributors can avail the Forum's data bank on specific issues for their writings or participation in the issue-related public debates.

Good Governance Forum plans to nominate ladies and gentlemen from amongst its Patrons, Advisers and Contributors to work with major political parties, NGOs and government departments to help improve governance in the country.

Good Governance Forum comprises 3000+ members from almost all walks of life including the business community, civil services, diplomats, educationists, military, news agencies, NGOs, politicians, print and electronic media, professionals.

For further details, please visit http://ggovernance.blogspot.com or email to good.governance@gmail.com.

Army’s constitutional role | Opinion Maker

2011-12-28T05:26:00.000-08:00

Army’s constitutional role | Opinion Maker

Book Review: How Pakistan Negotiates With the United States | Arts & Culture | Newsline

2011-12-20T04:22:00.000-08:00

Book Review: How Pakistan Negotiates With the United States | Arts & Culture | Newsline

100 Women Who Shake Pakistan

2011-12-17T04:14:00.000-08:00

100 Women Who Shake Pakistan

Despite Crises, Pakistan Is the Bravest Nation - The Daily Beast

2011-12-17T04:11:00.000-08:00

Despite Crises, Pakistan Is the Bravest Nation - The Daily Beast

Asif Ali Zardari - 'We Are Fighting to Save Pakistan'

2011-12-17T04:08:00.000-08:00

Asif Ali Zardari - 'We Are Fighting to Save Pakistan'

2011-12-17T04:07:00.001-08:00

Asif Ali Zardari - 'We Are Fighting to Save Pakistan'

The Peril Of Pakistan

2011-12-17T04:07:00.000-08:00

The Peril Of Pakistan

Afghans moot Saudi, Turkey for Taliban office

2011-12-16T21:20:00.000-08:00

Afghans moot Saudi, Turkey for Taliban office

Why the Pakistani army is bolstering opposition to its most important alliance? | The Best Defense

2011-12-14T20:47:00.000-08:00

Why the Pakistani army is bolstering opposition to its most important alliance? | The Best Defense

AlterNet: Details of Secret Pact Emerge: Troops Stuck in Afghanistan Until 2024

2011-12-14T09:07:00.000-08:00

AlterNet: Details of Secret Pact Emerge: Troops Stuck in Afghanistan Until 2024

2011-12-11T21:30:00.000-08:00

Arab uprisings reshape map of US influence

By BRIAN MURPHY | AP – 10 hrs ago

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — About 18 months before the Egyptian uprising that would doom Hosni Mubarak, a U.S. diplomatic cable was sent from Cairo. It described Mubarak as the likely president-for-life and said his regime's ability to intimidate critics and rig elections was as solid as ever.

Around the same time, another dispatch to the State Department came from the American Embassy in Tunisia. In a precise foreshadowing of the revolts to come, it said the country's longtime leader, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, had "lost touch" and faced escalating anger from the streets, according to once-classified memos posted by Wikileaks.

So what was it? Was America blindsided or bunkered down for the Arab Spring?

The case is often made that Washington was caught flatfooted and now must adapt to diminished influence in a Middle East with new priorities. But there is an alternative narrative: that the epic events of 2011 are an opportunity to enhance Washington's role in a region hungry for democracy and innovation, and to form new strategic alliances.

There is no doubt that Washington was jolted by the downfall of its Egyptian and Tunisian allies. The revolutions blew apart the regimes' ossified relationships with the U.S. and cleared the way for long-suppressed Islamist groups that eye the West with suspicion.

But declaring a twilight for America in the Mideast ignores a big caveat: The Persian Gulf. There are deep U.S. connections among the small but economically powerful and diplomatically adept monarchies, emirates and sheikdoms, which so far have ridden out the upheavals and are increasingly flexing their political clout around the Arab world.

The Gulf Arabs and America are, in many ways, foreign policy soul mates. Both share grave misgivings about Iran's expanding military ambitions and its nuclear program. The Gulf hosts crucial U.S. military bases — including the Navy's 5th Fleet headquarters in Bahrain — and is an essential part of the Pentagon's strategic blueprint for the Mideast after this year's U.S. withdrawal from Iraq.

In summary: America's influence took blows from the Arab Spring, but also remains hitched to the rising stars in the Gulf.

"America has lost the predictability of friends like Mubarak," said Sami Alfaraj, director of the Kuwait Center for Strategic Studies. "But, at the same time, its allies in the Gulf are on the rise. So I would call it a shuffle for America. Maybe a step back in some places, but not in others."
Led by hyper-wealthy Saudi Arabia and Qatar, the Gulf rulers have stepped up their games in various ways as the region's political center of gravity drifts in their direction.

NATO's airstrikes in Libya got important Arab credibility from warplane contributions by Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. The Gulf's six-nation political bloc also has tried to negotiate an exit for Yemen's protest-battered president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, and has taken the lead in Arab pressures on Syria's Bashar Assad, one of Iran's most crucial partners.

Yet the Gulf rulers' desire for change stops at their own borders. In March, they authorized a Saudi-led military force to help their neighbor, Bahrain, defend its 200-year-old unelected Sunni dynasty against pro-reform protests by the island's Shiite majority.

And here lies one of the paradoxes for U.S. statecraft in the Middle East: to align with rulers who are firmly vested in the status quo, but not be cast as the spoilers of the Arab uprisings.

"No one is immune from the waves of change," said Nicholas Burns, a former No. 3 official at the State Department. "There's certainly an effort to advise the Gulf Arabs to continue to get on the side of reform."

Burns believes the Arab Spring has taught U.S. diplomats valuable lessons in patience and perspective.

"We are witnessing something that is transformative and whose full impact will play out over years, maybe decades, ahead," said Burns, a professor of diplomacy and international politics at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. "Here is one of those times when the U.S. has to not overact and overreact."

But when events move fast, that may not be the easiest advice to follow. Mubarak was a loyal guardian of Egypt's groundbreaking 1979 peace treaty with Israel, and there is no certainty that whoever succeeds him will do likewise. Meanwhile, the Palestinians have overridden U.S. objections and asked the U.N. for statehood.

"Our ability to influence is limited today more than at any time in the last 35 years," said Graeme Bannerman, a former State Department analyst on Mideast affairs, at a conference in November co-sponsored by the United States Institute of Peace.

That assessment may have some traction in places such as in Tunisia or Egypt, where the U.S. is widely viewed as tainted by its long alliance with Mubarak.

But ask about America's pull in other Mideast points — the free-spending Gulf, the new proto-state in Libya, even slow-healing Iraq and its Iran-friendly government — and the conversation is different. It is more measured about how the U.S. fits into the new Mideast. There is more talk about the arc of history rather than the latest sound bite.

"It's too early to tell whether U.S. influence has diminished or indeed any change will happen because the Arab Spring is still in process," said Nawaf Tell, former director of the University of Jordan Strategic Studies Center.
Tell sees the Arab Spring as the death rattle of the Arab revolutions and coups defined by the all-powerful state and embodied by winner-take-all leaders: Egypt's Gamal Abdel-Nasser (1954), Libya's Moammar Gadhafi (1969), the 1970 putsch in Syria that brought Hafez Assad to power in Syria and now a dynasty-in-peril under his son, Bashar, and so on.
"These regimes have exhausted their revolutionary credibility and have seen their legitimacy go bankrupt," Tell said. And as with any big unraveling, there are new rules in the aftermath."
This may mean a less privileged position for U.S. interests and more legwork for Washington's envoys, said Morris Reid, managing director of the Washington-based BGR Group, which works often in liaison roles between Mideast officials and U.S. companies.
The U.S. approach to the region "will be better," he said. "Not necessarily stronger."

"The U.S. will have to work harder for intelligence, diplomatic relations, commercial deals," said Reid after meetings in mid-November at the Dubai Airshow, where Boeing Co. made a slew of deals including a record $18 billion order from the fast-growing air carrier Emirates. "The U.S. will now have to prove their value as allies."

A showcase for that in the coming year is likely to be Iraq, and the contest for influence between neighboring Iran and the U.S. after U.S. military forces are gone. That rivalry in turn is influenced by events in Syria, Iran's main Arab ally, and the concerns of emirates and sheikdoms that lie just across the Persian Gulf from Iran.

"Look at it this way: If you accept that the Arab Spring is a once in a four- or five-generations moment, then, of course, it will reorder the entire game of influence and politics by the big powers," said Salman Shaikh, director of The Brookings Doha Center in Qatar.

"U.S. leadership does matter," he continued. "It's naive to say it will become irrelevant. But it's also wrong not to notice that America's era as the region's diplomatic superpower is coming to an end. The Arab Spring has brought much more independent-minded diplomacy by nations and a new empowerment among Arab people. America is a big player, but no longer Big Brother."

___

Associated Press writer Dale Gavlak in Amman, Jordan, contributed to this report.

http://news.yahoo.com/arab-uprisings-reshape-map-us-influence-154202855.html

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