Obama and Brown: So long, and thanks for all the DVDs

There is perhaps no stronger indictment of UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown's recent visit to the White House and Congress than this morning's slow-news-day-controversy over President Obama's gift to the PM. Brown's presents for the new president were carefully considered, symbolic offerings- a pen holder carved from the oak of HMS Gannet, which took part in anti-slavery operations (and whose sister ship became the Oval Office's desk), and a first edition Churchill biography. Obama, on the other hand, gave Brown some DVDs- the diplomatic equivalent of Marks & Spencer vouchers. Brown's visit to Washington wasn't a failure, but it was about as meaningful and thought-provoking as that DVD boxset.

Some are suggesting that Brown was snubbed by Obama, pointing to the brevity of their meeting as well as the lack of a formal dinner and the cancellation of a joint press conference. The truth is that the Obama administration, up to its eyeballs in economic and foreign policy crises, has no use for a lame duck British Prime Minister with close ties to the Bush-loving Tony Blair. Like an unwanted if generally affable houseguest, Brown was politely greeted, dispatched, and forgotten about.

Much the same happened at Congress. If you have a spare 34 minutes you can watch Brown's address:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6W-AJRo5G4I[/youtube]

If you don't, let me summarise: "America is wonderful!" (applause). "We're knighting Ted Kennedy!" (applause). "America was a staunch ally in World War 2!" (applause). "We stood together after 9/11" (muted applause). "Terrorism and Iran are grave threats!" (applause). Then, the riskier content- "The economy and the environment must be fixed" (cautious applause). "America landed on the moon!" (baffled applause). "End the dictatorship of oil and tackle climate change!" (silence). Brown closed with a linkage between the Rwandan genocide, African poverty and- weirdly- "expensively funded madrassas teaching innocent children to hate us." Not Rwandan children, surely? No explanation was offered, but neither was one required. And Brown signed off (applause), ending what could be his last official visit to the US.

Mr Obama's War: The Spin is...It's Not Afghanistan. It's Pakistan.

Related Post: Pakistan Military, Prime Minister Act Against Zardari

We've found an intriguing article in Time, "The Afghanistan Problem: Can Obama Avoid a Quagmire?", valuable not as much for Joe Klein's analysis as for the inside information fed to him.

The immediate impression is of an Administration effort to build up the urgency of the Afghanistan crisis. So we get a glance at the first, "pretty alarming" meeting on the country, held three days after Obama's Inauguration. Of course, the President "was extremely cool and in control", rather than screaming wildly or crying in the corner, "but some people, especially political aides like Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod who hadn't been briefed on the situation, walked out of that meeting stunned". To sum up, from another participant, "Holy s***."

No spin surprises there, but then we get good stuff. Such as that General David Petraeus, the mastermind heading US Central Command, is pissed off he didn't get his way on policy. Trashing Obama's decision not to accept the recommendations from Petraeus' review, one of the General's acolytes complains about the meetings, "You had people from the Department of Agriculture weighing in. There were too many cooks. The end result was lowest-common-denominator stuff. The usual Petraeus acuity wasn't there."

Obama's people threw the criticism right back at Petraeus, praising instead another study by General Douglas Lute, the Bush Administration's "war czar", which was "very skeptical about the Pakistani army's willingness to fight the Taliban and equally critical of the Karzai government in Afghanistan" They added, however, that the report "didn't provide much detail about what to do next".

So the President has commissioned another review, headed by US envoy Richard Holbrooke and Bruce Riedel, who was his campaign advisor on South Asia and is now outside the Administration in the Brookings Institution.

And here's the stinger. Even though that review isn't due until end of review, its conclusions (or what Obama's officials will spin as its conclusions) are already being leaked:

Afghanistan pales in comparison to the problems in Pakistan. Our primary goal has to be to shut down the al-Qaeda and Taliban safe havens on the Pakistan side of the border. If that can be accomplished, then the insurgency in Afghanistan becomes manageable.

Klein gets a bit fuzzy at this point, primarily because the Administration is still fuzzy on what a Pakistan-first effort means. It can throw in the $1.5 billion/year authorised by Congress, running over five years, in economic aid, but officials are unsure how to distribute the money to have any effect. (It is irrelevant, of course, that Pakistan has a President who was charged/convicted in various countries with corruption.)

So what to do? This paragraph offers the most enlightening, but most disturbing, scenario:

"We have to re-establish close personal relationships with the army," said a senior member of the National Security Council, who was involved in an intense series of meetings with the Pakistani military leadership during the first week of March. "We have to be sure they're on the same page as we are. Based on what I saw, they aren't yet."

So, does this mean that the Pakistani military is kicking up a fuss about the US missile strikes and proposed American strategy in the Northwest Frontier Provinces? Or does this farther, with Washington envisaging a Pakistani military running Islamabad's policy, either behind the scenes or quite openly after toppling President Zardari?

Watch this space.

In response

Persian Letters: Iran, Missile Defense, and a Clinton Power Play?

Related Post: Ms Clinton’s Wild Ride - Iran is Still Very, Very Dangerous
Related Post: Ms Clinton’s Wild Ride - A US “Grand Strategy” on Israel-Palestine-Iran?

If Hillary Clinton's proclamations this week do signal a new American approach on Iran, the initiative is already coming a bit unstuck.

On Tuesday, we noted the Obama Administration's leak to The New York Times of a letter to Russian President Dmitri Medvedev, sent in January, reportedly offering to trade US missile defence plans for Moscow's abandonment of Iranian nuclear warheads and ballistic missiles. We predicted the manoeuvre was a non-starter: "The Russians have no desire to link their relations with the US to a change in their position on Iran."

We should have taken that bet straight to the bookies. Within hours of the Times revelation, Medvedev was telling reporters that "any swaps...would not be productive". Obama scrambled for cover, “What I said in the letter was that obviously to the extent that we are lessening Iran’s commitment to nuclear weapons, then that reduces the pressure for, or the need for, a missile defense system."

But, with the text of the letter still secret, here's the key question: did it actually link a US pullback on missile defense to a Russian concession on Iran or did someone, possibly in Clinton's circle, make that up as part of the grand scheme she unfolded in the Middle East?

Here was the initial response from Medvedev's office: "Obama's letter contains various proposals and assessments of the current situation. But the message did not contain any specific proposals or mutually binding initiatives." That is in accord with the US President's statement, which suggests either that this is close to the truth.

We have already the US military spin furiously against the White House to push their plans on Iraq and Afghanistan. I would be far from surprised if a bloc in the State Department is doing the same here: today's New York Times drinks the Hillary Kool-Aid again, "Iran Looms Over Clinton’s Mideast Trip", making it seem as if she is merely reacting to an unexpected wave of concern from those she is meeting: "After three days of meetings in Egypt, Israel and the West Bank, Mrs. Clinton said she was struck by the depth of fear about Iran and the extent to which officials say it meddles in their affairs."

Clinton made no comment on the letter to Moscow, a wise move given Obama's reaction to the leak, but she kept up the general drumbeat: "It is important to make the case that I, and others, have been making, that we think Iran poses a threat to Europe and Russia."

So we now have the prospect that in trying to play one diplomatic hand --- mobilising support against Iran --- Clinton or someone else influential in the State Department has jeopardised another effort, the US rapprochement with Russia. In which case....

Can anyone get me in the White House when Barack welcomes Hillary back from her journey?

The Inaugural Enduring America Award for Global Irrelevancy

John Bolton.

Latest Irrelevancy: Bolton informs Sean Hannity of Fox News that Obama is "anti-Reaganesque" on missile defence.

Latest Made-Up "Fact": Iran can nuclear-weaponise "within 6 to 9 months".

Ms Clinton's Wild Ride: Is Dennis Ross in the Saddle on Iran?

Related Post: Ms Clinton’s Wild Ride - A US “Grand Strategy” on Israel-Palestine-Iran?

In our analysis today of a possible US "grand strategy" linking its approach on Israel and Palestine to a change in policy on Iran, we speculated, "One explanation for this shift is the long-awaited entry of Dennis Ross, who has long advocated “Diplomacy Then Pressure”, into the State Department." Jim Lobe takes up the theme:

Ross Is Clearly a Major Player

Since Secretary of State Clinton set out for the Middle East over the weekend, it has seemed increasingly clear to me that Dennis Ross, contrary to my earlier speculation, pretty much got the job that he and WINEP [the Washington Institute for Near East Policy] were hoping for. Not only has he claimed an office on the coveted seventh floor, but Obama’s conspicuous placement of Ross’ name between those of Mitchell and Holbrooke in his speech on Iraq at Camp Lejeune last week strongly suggested that he considers Ross to be of the same rank and importance as the other two.

More to the point is what Clinton and those around her have been saying during the trip, including, most remarkably, the report by an unnamed “senior State Department official” that she told the foreign minister of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) that she was “very doubtful” that diplomacy would persuade Iran to abandon its alleged quest for nuclear weapons. This, of course, very much reflects Ross’ own view (as well that of neo-conservatives) and will no doubt bolster hard-liners in Tehran who believe that Obama’s talk of engagement is simply designed to marshal more international support for eventual military action, be it a bombing campaign or a blockade to cut gasoline imports. That Obama essentially confirmed today’s New York Times report about a proposed deal with Moscow whereby it would go along with increasing sanctions against Iran in exchange for Washington’s non-deployment of anti-missile defenses in Poland and the Czech Republic only adds to the impression that some version of the Bipartisan Policy Center’s September ‘08 report on Iran strategy (drafted by hard-line neo-cons Michael Rubin and Michael Makovsky and signed by Ross), which I wrote about here, is in the process of being implemented. (I was going to write about this later this week, but the Moon of Alabama beat me to the punch. See also Stephen Walt’s analysis of Clinton’s scepticism on his Foreign Policy blog).

Adding to my growing sense that Ross occupies a critical role in policy-making, at least in the State Department, are what Clinton has had to say so far on her trip about Gaza, Hamas, and the Palestinian Authority. As Marc Lynch reports in his truly excellent blog, also on the Foreign Policy website, “her remarks suggest that rather than seize on the possibility of Palestinian reconciliation, Clinton prefers to double-down on the shopworn ‘West Bank first, Fatah only’ policy” strongly advocated by Ross. In that respect, you should definitely read Tuesday’s extended colloquy between Lynch, Brookings’ Tamara Wittes (who is more optimistic), and Carnegie’s Nathan Brown, who shares Lynch’s “disappointment” about Clinton’s performance. As Lynch notes, it seems that Clinton is stuck “in a bit of time-warp” regarding Hamas’ power in Gaza, the Palestinian Authority’s abject failure to enhance its legitimacy, and the Arab League’s renewed efforts to both unify itself and to reconstruct a Palestinian government of national unity. This insensitivity to Palestinian and Arab public opinion bears all the hallmarks of Ross’ failed Mideast diplomacy during the 1990’s.

I also have the impression that Ross and the so-called “Israel Lobby” whose interests he represents believe that enhancing conditions on the West Bank, combined with diplomatic engagement with Syria, will somehow be sufficient for Washington to regain its credibility in the region and rally the Sunni Arab states — along with the European Union, Russia, China, etc. — behind a policy of confrontation with Iran.