Perry Backs Full Israeli Control Over Jerusalem – NYTimes.com

If you wonder what “pro-Israel” means to the fullest extent possible–although some Jewish analysts blanch at such a position of a candidate who believes he’s on a mission from God:

UPDATE 2:30 p.m.: Gov. Rick Perry of Texas on Tuesday came down firmly on the side of the more conservative supporters of Israel, denouncing what he called an Obama administration policy of “appeasement” that had gravely weakened Israel and declaring unambiguously that Jerusalem should be fully under the control of the Israeli government.

Mr. Perry, who is leading in the polls for the Republican presidential nomination, strongly suggested that if he were elected president, he would move the American embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv. He told a news conference in New York that “if you want to work for the State Department, you will be working in Jerusalem.”

He described Mr. Obama’s Middle East policy as “naive, arrogant, misguided and dangerous,” and he asserted that White House efforts to extract concessions from Israel had weakened Israel’s negotiating clout and emboldened the Palestinian leadership into refusing to directly negotiate and instead take their bid for statehood directly to the United Nations. Mr. Perry also appeared to back the continued expansion of Israeli settlements.

via Perry Backs Full Israeli Control Over Jerusalem – NYTimes.com.

What is Tea Party foreign policy?

Views from Walter Russell Meade, Jon Basil Utley at The American Conservative, Drezner’s FP blog, and the classic Republican humorist P.J. O’Rourke on what a Tea Party foreign policy would resemble.  (Also, don’t miss Ron Paul‘s August 2010 article in FP, as well.)  I had hoped Elizabeth Bumiller would have addressed this topic on her visit to BYU this semester but alas, China trumps all.

Mead makes a similar observation, but argues that passionate minorities can still wield veto power in American politics, and that eventually, “the contest in the Tea Party between what might be called its Palinite and its Paulite wings will likely end in a victory for the Palinities.”  This implies the status quo of different elements of the Tea Party movement holding contradictory views cannot hold — and I see no reason why it cant.  The simplest fact about the Tea Party is that, by and large, they dont care about foreign policy.

via Why I dont care about the Tea Partys foreign policy worldview | Daniel W. Drezner.

Drezner muses presciently that “the only issues where I suspect the Tea Party will really matter going forward” are “immigration and anti-Muslim concerns.”  See The Week’s compilation–which does a better job than me to outline the threads in this discussion.

US Elections and How Foreign Policy Shifts

Lots to read on the election breakdown, strategy, and impacts, for starters. Even further–if you have the time–the Bipartisan Policy Center’s report for a foreign policy that should unite across the isle to further U.S. interests.

CFR focuses on the realities ahead for U.S. foreign policy:

Republicans looking to cut spending will target foreign aid, even though any savings will be minuscule relative to a $1.3 trillion deficit. The $750 billion defense budget offers more potential savings. But the deficit-cutting imperative will wilt when faced with the competing Republican urge to support the military, not to mention the political interests that will defend programs targeted for cuts.

via New Congress: How Foreign Policy Shifts – Council on Foreign Relations.

Grading the GA

Commentary from The Lede gives some fodder to try and determine what it means when the UN is used as a forum for one Israeli politician to contradict another:

Avigdor Lieberman, used an address to the United Nations General Assembly to directly contradict his prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, by saying that peace with the Palestinians “could take a few decades” to achieve, rather than one year

via Parsing the Israeli Foreign Minister’s U.N. Speech – NYTimes.com.

That political situation is almost as rough as Rothkopf’s panning of President Obama’s GA speech.  How would you grade him?

Barack Obama’s speech to the U.N. General Assembly today was the geopolitical equivalent of muzak — familiar themes, pleasantly rearranged into a kind of inoffensive but utterly unnoteworthy drone.

via The president puts the ‘UN’ back in un-newsworthy | David Rothkopf.

On a more elevated note, thanks to Drew for passing along this gem which will give you a little more hope in the future (and the GA speechifying) as well as a shout out to moderate, Muslim Malaysia:

For the moment, a notable speech yesterday at the United Nations General Assembly from Najib Tun Razak, the Prime Minister of Malaysia, about the need for members and leaders of the world’s major faiths to censure and reject their own extremists and jointly support a “movement of moderates.”

via A “Global Movement of Moderates”: Speech of a Muslim Prime Minister – James Fallows – International – The Atlantic.

Then again, who says FP.com can’t compete with Style?  Turtle Bay runway?

Modes of Diplomatic Communication

Sometimes diplomacy occurs among counterparts who are neither diplomatic nor in multilateral venues.  As an emerging power, China warrants its on mailbox to file key issues–and its own troubleshooter–as well as a person to conduct back channel diplomacy:

So somewhat belatedly, President Obama decided he needed what every American president since Nixon had had: A direct back channel of communications to the Chinese leadership, a way to head off trouble or create an opening without going through the formal diplomatic exchanges.

“Think Kissinger, Scowcroft, Brzezinski, Berger,” one of Mr. Obama’s senior national security aides said the other day, ticking off the names of national security advisers who cultivated off-line access to the Chinese leadership. “We had not done this, and it was overdue,” the administration official said, although Mr. Obama and Hu Jintao, China’s president, have met a half dozen times since early last year.

via White House Memo – U.S., Caught Off Guard by New Tensions With China, Cultivates Back-Channel Ties – NYTimes.com.

For its part, China can also talk back in many ways.  Such is a starting point for understanding Nye’s soft power metaphor of diplomacy as three-dimensional chess.  For example, China’s representatives can be a bully, a schmoozer, or a classic realist–just like many other powerful countries can.

In one sense, there’s nothing surprising about a rising power finding subtle ways to handle complex problems. But before China’s breakout from poverty to arguably the world’s No. 2 economy, its default position on foreign policy was to restate the principle of non-interference in other nations’ affairs and focus largely on its neighborhood.

via Three Faces of the New China – NYTimes.com

An insider’s account of what Africom is all about

Today at the Kennedy Center Major Greg Weisler proffered an overview of Africa the continent as well as a bird’s eye view of the major conflicts that trouble the region.  At the same time, the situation continues to evolve in Somalia as reported in the NYT today.

Coincidentally, military affairs commentator Thomas Barnett offered a summary of Robert Moeller’s account of Africom–what it is, and what it isn’t.

Of course, the subtitle must exclaim, “we’re not trying to take over Africa!” because everybody thinks we can pull it off with 10,000 troops or so, but after that crushing that silly straw man, the piece settles into a no-hype description of the new command, with some dissembling required.

Here are the five main points:

Lesson 1: Africom does not create policy.

Lesson 2: Africom must work hand in hand with the diplomatic corps.

Lesson 3: Keep our footprint in Africa limited.

Lesson 4: Africom is most effective when it listens to the concerns of its African partners.

Lesson 5: Don’t expect instant results.

via Thomas P.M. Barnett’s Globlogization – Thomas P.M. Barnett’s Globlogization – An insider’s account of what Africom is all about.

Thomas Friedman on the Economics of U.S. Foreign Policy

Friedman hits stride explaining his foreign policy intellectual chairman, Michael Mandelbaum’s argument that a “Superbroke, Superfrugal, Superpower” will not bode well for global governance.  Its not that America doesn’t want the job (on good days).  Rather, the new world order will be a little more messy without someone to pay for the “global public goods” of peace and security, relatively speaking:

After all, Europe is rich but wimpy. China is rich nationally but still dirt poor on a per capita basis and, therefore, will be compelled to remain focused inwardly and regionally. Russia, drunk on oil, can cause trouble but not project power. “Therefore, the world will be a more disorderly and dangerous place,” Mandelbaum predicts.

via Op-Ed Columnist – Superbroke, Superfrugal, Superpower? – NYTimes.com.

Even as some debate whether to bomb Iran, Friedman explains that its time to pay the pauper.

America is about to learn a very hard lesson: You can borrow your way to prosperity over the short run but not to geopolitical power over the long run. That requires a real and growing economic engine. And, for us, the short run is now over. There was a time when thinking seriously about American foreign policy did not require thinking seriously about economic policy. That time is also over.

In Aspen, Rice, Albright map out the world’s challenges | AspenTimes.com

Unique forum for discussion.  Its a lot easier to imagine solutions when you don’t have to make it all happen.

Pakistan has all the ingredients of a diplomatic “migraine” for America while the unstable situation in Iran actually could present an opportunity for improvement in the next few years, two former U.S. Secretaries of State told an Aspen audience Friday.

Madeleine Albright and Condoleezza Rice provided lightning-quick assessments of top diplomatic challenges to about 750 people at a presentation hosted by the Aspen Institute. Albright became the first female Secretary of State when she was appointed by President Bill Clinton in 1997; Rice served as national security adviser to President George Bush and then was appointed Secretary of State in 2005.

Both women pointedly said they would not critique President Barack Obama’s handling of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq or other diplomatic issues, but they mapped out the current state of the world.

via In Aspen, Rice, Albright map out the world’s challenges | AspenTimes.com.

Who is Ahmet Davutoglu?

UPDATE | …and should he receive a prize from the U.S. taxpayers?  A little bit of controversy from the Woodrow Wilson Center and Lee Hamilton. As Congressman Gary Ackerton (D-NY) writes:

“Turkey’s foreign policy under Foreign Minister Davutoglu’s leadership is rife with illegality, irresponsibility and hypocrisy,” he wrote, citing Turkey’s denial of the Armenian genocide, its occupation of northern Cyprus, Turkey’s vote against new Iran sanctions, and what Ackerman described as the ongoing “demonizing” of Israel as exhibited during the flotilla crisis.

“A foreign leader who represents and defends this kind of foreign policy, one who has championed Turkey’s most odious efforts to deny to others the human dignity that Turkey rightly expects for its own people, is not a worthy recipient of the WWC Public Service Award,” Ackerman wrote.

Davutoglu has been called Turkey’s Henry Kissinger.  His essential work, Strategic Depth, advocates a path for Turkey’s return to a key role in foreign affairs.

The feeling of flow in history is what excites him most and accordingly losing that feeling is what he fears most. An innate ability to stop warring parties is what he desires in a super power. There is no virtue without modesty, no honor without self-confidence and greatness. If we have the ability to realize a problem, we have the ability to solve it as well

via Ahmet Davutoglu: The Man behind Turkey’s Assertive Foreign Policy – The Jamestown Foundation.

One concern has been Turkey’s new closeness and defense of Iran, its neighbor. When asked by Newsweek whose side Turkey is on, Davutoglu responded:

In order to answer this question, you have to understand the geography and the history of Turkey. We are a European country and we are an Asian country. We have direct access to the Balkans, the Caucasus, and the Middle East. So Turkish foreign policy has to be multiregional, multidimensional. We are also part of European history. But at the same time, the history of more than 20 [Middle Eastern and Balkan] countries could be written only using Turkish archives. We have more Bosnians in Turkey than in Bosnia itself, more Albanians than in Albania, as well as Kurds and Arabs. Because of these historic connections, all these countries have certain expectations from us.

via Newsweek

News Analysis – Obama Puts His Own Mark on Foreign Policy Issues – NYTimes.com

Looking at how Obama fp is shaping up.  (Hint: It’s harder than it looks.)

For most new presidents, foreign policy is a learning experience, and it can take months, if not years, to feel comfortable in the role of world leader. Advisers said Mr. Obama, like his predecessors, had grown more confident in managing international relations over time.

But he has learned hard lessons along the way about the limits of his powers of persuasion.

He has acknowledged that he underestimated, for instance, just how hard it would be to bring Israelis and Palestinians together, and his engagement with Iran yielded no more cooperation than Mr. Bush’s approach.

Feeling nostalgic for W?  Apparently Obama has been a surprise for even Republicans as he continues too look more like 43′s familial predecessor, employing realpolitik for his international relations approach:

Stephen G. Rademaker, a former official in the George W. Bush administration, said: “For a president coming out of the liberal wing of the Democratic Party, it’s remarkable how much he has pursued a great power strategy. It’s almost Kissingerian. It’s not very sentimental. Issues of human rights do not loom large in his foreign policy, and issues of democracy promotion, he’s been almost dismissive of.”

via News Analysis – Obama Puts His Own Mark on Foreign Policy Issues – NYTimes.com.