Tag: Libya
Peace picks this week
A light week after the Inauguration, with back-to-back discussions Thursday of the Israeli elections:
1. Legacies of a Lost Empire: Unresolved Territorial and Identity Problems in the Post-Soviet Era
Date and Time: Tuesday, January 22 / 12:00pm – 1:00pm
Address: Woodrow Wilson Center
1300 Pennsylvania Ave., NW, Washington, D.C. 20004
Speaker: Pilar Bonet (Chief Correspondent in Moscow, in charge of the Russian Federation, CIS countries, and Georgia, El País)
Description: More than twenty years after the collapse of the USSR, a number of frozen conflicts dating from the collapse persist to this day. They endure as hostages to geostrategic thinking, and are fueled by ethnic and identity contestation on the ground. Pilar Bonet, Chief Correspondent, Moscow, El Pais, former Title VIII-supported Research Scholar and Wilson Center Public Policy Scholar has covered many of these conflicts, and will concentrate her discussion on the cases of Transnistria, Abkhazia, and South Ossetia.
Register for this event here: http://www.wilsoncenter.org/event/legacies-lost-empire-unresolved-territorial-and-identity-problems-the-post-soviet-era
2. Libya: A State in Search of Itself
Date and Time: Thursday, January 24, 2013
6:30 PM – 7:45 PM
Address: Lindner Family Commons, Room 602 , 1957 E Street NW
Speakers: Mary-Jane Deeb (Chief, African and Middle Eastern Division, Library of Congress), Karim Mezran (Senior Fellow, Rafiq Hariri Center for the Middle East, Atlantic Council)
Moderator: Ambassador Edward Skip Gnehm, Director, Middle East Policy Forum
Description: Despite successful parliamentary elections in July 2012, Libya faces numerous obstacles to state development. Rife with internal divisions and regional tensions, Libya struggles to achieve national cohesion and advance the political process. Moreover, the country’s fractious and divisive political environment inhibits institution building and complicates efforts to restore internal security. In light of Libya’s institutional and security challenges, the panelists will discuss current developments and prospects for Libya’s political future.
Register for this event here: https://docs.google.com/a/aucegypt.edu/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dFJiRVdla1I1R2k2NE53NUYyaEhnc0E6MQ
3. The Israeli Elections: What Do They Mean for the United States?
Date and Time: January 24, 2013, 10:00 AM – 11:30 AM
Address: Brookings Institution, Saul/Zilkha Rooms
1775 Massachusetts Avenue NW
Speakers: Martin S. Indyk and Natan B. Sachs
Moderated by: Daniel L. Byman
Description: Israelis head to the polls next week, just one day after President Barack Obama’s second inauguration as the peace process remains stalled and changes sweeping the Arab world introduce new challenges for Israel. The tense relationship between President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu, the projected winner of next week’s elections, raises questions as to how the two countries will cooperate in dealing with these challenges, and others, including Iran’s nuclear program. What do the election results tell us about Israel’s trajectory in the coming years? How will the United States and the region react to a new Israeli government? On January 24, the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings will host a discussion on the election outcomes and their meaning for Israeli domestic and foreign policy and for the incoming Israeli government’s relationship with the United States. Panelists will include Brookings Fellow Natan Sachs, who has spent the last four weeks in Israel observing the election campaign, and Vice President Martin Indyk, director of Foreign Policy at Brookings and former U.S. ambassador to Israel. Senior Fellow Daniel Byman, Saban Center Research Director, will provide introductory remarks and moderate the discussion.
Register for this event through sending an email to: events@brookings.edu
5. Elections in Israel
Date and Tme: Thursday, January 24, 2013 12:00 PM – 2:00 PM
Address: Lindner Family Commons, Room 602 1957 E Street NW
Speakers:Yoram Peri (Abraham S. and Jack Kay Chair in Israel Studies, University of Maryland) , Ilan Peleg (Charles A. Dana Professor of Government & Law, Lafayette College) , Gershon Shafir (Professor of Sociology, University of California, San Diego), Jonathan Rynhold (Schusterman Visiting Professor in Israel Studies, GW)
Moderated by: Marc Lynch
Description: Three leading political scientists will discuss the outcomes and implications of Israel’s January 2013 parliamentary elections.
Register for this event here: http://tinyurl.com/cqzscq3
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Frugal superpower puts on airs
With Senate hearings scheduled for January 24 for former Senator John Kerry as Secretary of State and January 31 for former Senator Charles Hagel as Secretary of Defense, the American press is wondering what their nominations portend. Will there be big changes in policy? Or will there be more continuity?
At least one of my colleagues worries that Hagel’s nomination will be seen as undermining President Obama’s commitment to preventing Iran from getting nuclear weapons, but Hagel will also have a great deal of credibility the day he tells the Iranians the deal they’ve been offered is the very best they can expect. Even on Iran, I anticipate more continuity in attitude than abrupt change in direction. That is partly because Obama is still in charge. Hagel will not only conform what he says to the Administration’s policy, he will also want to maximize the chances for success in blocking Iran from getting nuclear weapons. That necessarily means making the military option credible, even if in private life he was inclined against it.
But for other issues circumstances may not remain constant. In particular the budget challenge is likely to be greater than in the past. The government ran on continuing resolutions throughout Obama’s first term, to the dismay of conservatives. That gives government departments relatively decent financing, compared to what they would get if Congress triggers the sequester or if the House Republicans get the dollar cut in expenditures for every dollar increase in the budget ceiling that they are demanding. If instead of continuing current expenditure levels, we head in the direction of big cuts, both Defense and State are likely to get hammered.
Defense, bloated after years of doubling its budget even without counting Iraq and Afghanistan war spending, can afford it better than State, though State (and USAID) are relatively flush as well. The problem is that both institutions have far-flung capital commitments to bases and embassies that are essentially fixed costs. Even if you cut back on personnel presence overseas, you can’t turn off the heat and electricity. It will take time and effort to de-accesssion unneeded facilities. Bureaucrats at both State and Defense will be more inclined to keep the heat and lights on, hoping for budget increases in the future.
Senator Kerry visited Rome once when I was Charge’ d’affaires ad interim there. He wondered why we needed 800 people in the diplomatic mission to Italy. I said we didn’t, but that 36 different agencies of the U.S. government had made separate decisions that put them there. He threatened to cut the Embassy budget. I noted that would leave more than 90% of the staff still screaming for State Department services–their salaries and benefits were paid by the mostly domestic agencies that put people in Rome.
None of this will be discussed in the confirmation hearings, which are conducted by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (SFRC). It has no budgetary responsibility–that is the purview of the appropriations subcommittees in both House and Senate. SFRC will focus not on budget and overseas presence but rather on “policy” issues. Right now that likely means the Benghazi murder of U.S. diplomatic personnel (Hillary Clinton will appear in Congress a day before Kerry’s hearing to testify on that unforgiving subject), the Al Qaeda push in Mali, the hostage crisis in Algeria, Iran’s nuclear program, maybe a bit of Syria and Egypt and a quick look at Asia (rising China, nuclear North Korea, America’s treaty obligations). My order of priority might be different, but that’s because I’ve got a 3-5 year time frame. The Congress has more like a one week-one year time frame.
There is little doubt that Hagel and Kerry will be confirmed. The question is how far they will have to go to satisfy Congressional critics in committing the United States to military action in Iran, Syria and Mali. The President seems determined to keep his powder dry for Iran, but there is a good deal of agitation for more military support to the Syrian opposition and for assisting the French intervention in Mali. Neither budgets nor domestic politics will warrant much more than that, even if the Senators give eloquent speeches advocating it. We are in the era of the frugal superpower, but you won’t know it from the upcoming hearings.
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Prevent what?
Most of us who work on international affairs think it would be much better to use diplomacy to prevent bad things from happening rather than waiting until the aftermath and then cleaning up after the elephants, which all too often involves expensive military action. But what precisely would that mean? What do we need to prevent?
The Council on Foreign Relations survey of prevention priorities for 2013 was published last week, just in time to be forgotten in the Christmas rush and New Year’s lull. It deserves notice, as it is one of the few nonpartisan attempts to define American national security priorities. This year’s edition was in part crowd-sourced and categorizes contingencies on two dimensions: impact on U.S. interests (high, medium, low) and likelihood (likely, plausible, unlikely).
Syria comes out on top in both dimensions. That’s a no-brainer for likelihood, as the civil war has already reached catastrophic dimensions and is affecting the broader region. Judging from Paul Stares’ video introduction to the survey, U.S. interests are ranked high in part because of the risk of use or loss of chemical weapons stocks. I’d have ranked them high because of the importance of depriving Iran of its one truly reliable ally and bridge to Hizbollah, but that’s a quibble.
CFR ranks another six contingencies as high impact on U.S. interests and only plausible rather than likely. This isn’t so useful, but Paul’s video comes to the rescue: an Israeli military strike on Iran that would “embroil” the U.S. and conflict with China in the East or South China seas are his picks to talk about. I find it peculiar that CFR does not treat what I would regard as certainly a plausible if not a likely contingency: a U.S. attack on Iran. There are few more important decisions President Obama will need to make than whether to use force to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Certainly it is a far more challenging decision than whether to go to war against China in the territorial disputes it is generating with U.S. allies in Pacific. I don’t know any foreign policy experts who would advise him to go in that direction.
It is striking that few of the other “plausible” and high-impact contingencies are amenable to purely military responses:
- a highly disruptive cyberattack on U.S. critical infrastructure
- a mass casualty attack on the U.S. homeland or on a treaty ally
- severe internal instability in Pakistan, triggered by a civil-military crisis or terror attack
It is not easy to determine the origin of cyberattacks, and not clear that a military response would be appropriate or effective. The same is also sometimes true of mass casualty attacks; our military response to 9/11 in Afghanistan has enmired the United States in its longest war to date, one where force is proving inadequate as a solution. It is hard to imagine any military response to internal instability in Pakistan, though CFR offers as an additional low probability contingency a possible U.S. military confrontation with Islamabad “triggered by a terror attack or U.S. counterterror operations.”
In the “moderate” impact on U.S. interests, CFR ranks as highly likely “a major erosion of security in Afghanistan resulting from coalition drawdown.” I’d certainly have put that in high impact category, as we’ve still got 100,000 troops in Afghanistan and a significant portion of them will still be there at the end of 2013. In the “moderate” impact but merely plausible category CFR ranks:
- a severe Indo-Pakistan crisis that carries risk of military escalation, triggered by a major terror attack
- a severe North Korean crisis caused by another military provocation, internal political instability, or threatening nuclear weapons/ICBM-related activities
- a significant increase in drug trafficking violence in Mexico that spills over into the United States
- continuing political instability and emergence of a terrorist safe haven in Libya
Again there are limits to what we can do about most of these contingencies by conventional military means. Only a North Korea crisis caused by military provocation or threats would rank be susceptible to a primarily military response. The others call for diplomatic and civilian responses in at least a measure equal to the possible military ones.
CFR lets two “moderate” impact contingencies languish in the low probability category that I don’t think belong there:
- political instability in Saudi Arabia that endangers global oil supplies
- renewed unrest in the Kurdish dominated regions of Turkey and the Middle East
There is a very real possibility in Riyadh of a succession crisis, as the monarchy on the death of the king will likely move to a next generation of contenders. Kurdish irredentist aspirations are already a big issue in Iraq and Syria. It is hard to imagine this will not affect Iran and Turkey before the year is out. Neither is amenable to a purely military response.
Most of the contingencies with “low” impact on U.S. interests are in Africa:
- a deepening of violence in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo that involves military intervention from its neighbors
- growing popular unrest and political instability in Sudan
- military conflict between Sudan and South Sudan
- renewed ethnic violence in Kenya surrounding March 2013 presidential election
- widespread unrest in Zimbabwe surrounding the electoral process and/or the death of Robert Mugabe
- failure of a multilateral intervention to push out Islamist groups from Mali’s north
This may tell us more about CFR and the United States than about the world. Africa has little purchase on American sentiments, despite our half-Kenyan president. All of these contingencies merit diplomatic attention, but none is likely to excite U.S. military responses of more than a purely emergency character, except for Mali. If you’ve got a few Islamist terrorists, you can get some attention even if you are in Africa.
What’s missing from this list? CFR mentions
…a third Palestinian intifada, a widespread popular unrest in China, escalation of a U.S.-Iran naval clash in the Persian Gulf, a Sino-Indian border crisis, onset of elections-related instability and violence in Ethiopia, unrest in Cuba following the death of Fidel Castro and/or incapacitation of Raul Castro, and widespread political unrest in Venezuela triggered by the death or incapacitation of Hugo Chavez.
I’d add intensification of the global economic slowdown (high probability, high impact), failure to do more about global warming (also high probability, delayed impact), demographic or financial implosion in Europe or Japan (and possibly even the U.S.), Russian crackdown on dissent, and resurgent Islamist extremism in Somalia. But the first three of these are not one-year “contingencies,” which shows one limit of the CFR exercise.
I would also note that the world is arguably in better shape at the end of 2012 than ever before in history. As The Spectator puts it:
Never has there been less hunger, less disease or more prosperity. The West remains in the economic doldrums, but most developing countries are charging ahead, and people are being lifted out of poverty at the fastest rate ever recorded. The death toll inflicted by war and natural disasters is also mercifully low. We are living in a golden age.
May it last.
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There is no safe
It was State’s fault. That’s the journalistic version of the Accountability and Review Board (ARB) unclassified report on the killing of Ambassador Stevens and three of his colleagues in Benghazi last September. State has been quick to react: Hillary Clinton accepts the report and is asking Congress to transfer $1.3 billion from funds that had been allocated for spending in Iraq. This includes $553 million for additional Marine security guards; $130 million for diplomatic security personnel; and $691 million for improving security at installations abroad.
I accept without question the ARB’s conclusions about the Benghazi incident. They know better than I do when they say officials in Benghazi and Tripoli reacted appropriately and bravely, the facility had inadequate physical security (including a minimal guard force), there was no intelligence suggesting an attack was imminent, and different parts of the State Department failed to provide leadership and collaborate in providing the resources required.
It is on the broader issue of how to protect American diplomats (and other civilians who work abroad on behalf of the United States government) that I would fault this report. The Board recognized the basic problem:
…the ARB has examined the terrorist attacks in Benghazi with an eye towards how we can better advance American interests and protect our personnel in an increasingly complex and dangerous world….the United States cannot retreat in the face of such challenges, we must work more rigorously and adeptly to address them…American diplomats and security professionals, like their military colleagues, serve the nation in an inherently risky profession. Risk mitigation involves two imperatives – engagement and security – which require wise leadership, good intelligence and evaluation, proper defense and strong preparedness and, at times, downsizing, indirect access and even withdrawal. There is no one paradigm. Experienced leadership, close coordination and agility, timely informed decision making, and adequate funding and personnel resources are essential.
But that is the last we hear of the need for agility. The paradigm reflected in the report, and in the State Department’s quick reaction, is to pile on more of the same, not to change the way we do things.
Mine is a hard argument to make. Arguably, Ambassador Stevens was doing exactly what I think is often safer: moving without too much security, engaging in ways that gave him intimate knowledge of the local situation and not building up a high profile of fixed security investment that makes so many of our facilities obvious targets and limits the mobility and engagement of our diplomats. The ARB notes:
The Ambassador did not see a direct threat of an attack of this nature and scale on the U.S. Mission in the overall negative trendline of security incidents from spring to summer 2012. His status as the leading U.S. government advocate on Libya policy, and his expertise on Benghazi in particular, caused Washington to give unusual deference to his judgments.
Ambassador Stevens was handling things the way he thought best. It did not make him safe.
But that is just the point. There is no “safe.” The Ambassador retreated, in accordance with State Department practice, to a hardened “safe haven.” It wasn’t safe because the attackers set the building in which it was located on fire. I’ll get in trouble for this, but the Arabic-speaking Chris Stevens might have been safer walking out the back door of the compound and knocking on the first Libyan door he came to. The odds are 99 in 100 that he would have been welcomed and made comfortable while he awaited rescue.
I do know something about the environment in Benghazi, which I have visited twice since Qaddafi fell. It is profoundly friendly towards Americans, who are credited with saving the city from a massacre. I have run along the harbor in Tripoli. I have driven through demonstrations outside the court-house in Benghazi repeatedly at a snail’s pace, revolutionary flags draped over the windshield and happy Libyans giving the obvious foreigners the thumbs’ up sign.
But there are bad guys in Benghazi as well, and no serious police force, as the ARB report notes. That’s why the Benghazi facility depended on a militia group for its guard force (with which however the Americans were in a labor dispute, according to the ARB). Chris Stevens knew all about both the militia and the radicals, as he talked with a Libyan the morning he was killed who had recounted to me a two months earlier the order of battle of extremist groups in Derna, a hotbed of radicalism to the east. He would certainly have asked his interlocutor (that’s diplomatese for the person you talk to) about extremist groups and the militias.
There are extremist groups just about everywhere these days. So the State Department reaction is understandable: raise the barriers to successful penetration of our facilities. The trouble is there is no guarantee that makes you any safer, and it certainly inhibits engagement. There is always some level of force that can overcome defenses. Only a fully capable and committed host government can make a diplomatic facility relatively safe. An embassy or diplomatic office in a conflict zone soon after a revolution cannot be 100% safe. Once we have acknowledged that, we should have a serious discussion about what makes it “safer,” and less safe.
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This week’s peace picks
Slowing for the holidays, but still some interesting events.
1. The World in 2013 – Admiral Mike Mullen and Jessica Matthews, Monday December 17, 12:30 PM – 2:00 PM, U.S. Carnegie Endowment
Venue: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1779 Massachusetts Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20036
Speakers: Mike Mullen and Jessica Matthews
How will President Obama use American power in 2013? Will the United States ever restore its fiscal health? And how can Obama ensure the U.S. rebalance toward Asia succeeds? Join us for an in-depth conversation between Admiral Mike Mullen and Carnegie’s Jessica T. Mathews as they discuss the foreign policy landscape confronting the president in 2013.
Register for this event here.
2. Book Event: U.S.-China Relations After the Two Leadership Transitions: Change or Continuity?, Monday December 17, 4:00 PM – 6:00 PM, CSIS
Venue: CSIS, 1800 K Street NW, Washington DC, 20006, B1 Conference Room
Speakers: Andrew J. Nathan, Andrew Scobell, David M. Lampton, Randy G. Schriver, Bonnie S. Glaser
Leadership transitions have brought new leaders to office in China while confirming President Obama in a second term: do these events portend change or continuity in U.S.-China relations? In their new book, China’s Search for Security, Andrew J. Nathan and Andrew Scobell argue that the key to understanding China’s foreign policy is to grasp its geostrategic challenges: despite its impressive size and population, economic vitality, and drive to upgrade its military capabilities, China remains a vulnerable nation surrounded by powerful rivals and potential foes. Even as the country grows and comes to dominate its neighbors, challenges remain, foremost among them, in the eyes of China’s leaders, the United States. The Obama administration, for its part, looks set to continue its policy pivot to Asia. The authors will discuss their book, analyzing China’s security concerns and how the U.S. can protect its interests in Asia without triggering a confrontation with China.
Register for this event here.
3. What is in Store for a Post-Asad Syria?, Tuesday December 18, 12:00 PM – 1:00 PM, Center for National Policy
Venue: Center for National Policy, One Massachusetts Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20001, Suite 333
Speakers: Gregory Aftandilian, Mona Yacoubian, Joseph Holliday
With the end finally nearing for the Assad regime, the question of what type of government will emerge in Syria looms over the horizon. Will it be inclusive and tolerant of minority groups? Will it prevent retribution killings of Alawites? Will the Syrian state remain whole or will some minority groups like the Kurds and the Alawites try to carve out separate statelets? Join CNP’s Senior Fellow for the Middle East, Gregory Aftandilian, and a panel of experts to discuss these timely issues.
Register for this event here.
4. Is Peace Possible?, Wednesday December 19, 10:00 AM – 11:30 AM, New America Foundation
Venue: New America Foundation, 1899 L Street NW, Washington, DC 20036, Suite 400
Speakers: James Zogby, Lara Friedman, Yousef Munayyer, Peter Beinart
The Arab American Institute and the New America Foundation’s Middle East Task Force invite you to the launch of a critical public opinion survey on what Palestinians and Israelis want in a peace deal and their thoughts about the prospects for achieving it.
During the month of September, 2012, Zogby Research Services conducted a comprehensive, unprecedented survey of Israeli Jews and Arabs; Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem; Palestinian refugees in Lebanon and Jordan; and the American Jewish community. The poll was conducted for the Sir Bani Yas Forum in the UAE. Join us for the survey’s public release and a discussion of what Palestinians and Israelis really think about peace.
Register for this event here.
5. Strengthening the Global Partnership Against the Spread of WMD, Thursday December 20, 10:00 AM – 11:30 AM, Hudson Institute
Venue: Hudson Institute, 1015 15th Street NW, Washington, DC 20005, 6th Floor
Speakers: Ambassador Bonnie Jenkins, Andrew Semmel, Richard Weitz
Recent years have seen several nuclear smuggling incidents and revelations regarding the extensive scope of past illicit WMD proliferation activities. An effective international nuclear security strategy requires a broad network of stakeholders to gather knowledge and secure nuclear weapons-related materials and technologies; prevent their misuse; and reduce the risks caused by their availability.
What steps can the United States and other countries take to strengthen nuclear material security in coming years? Please join us to discuss the lessons learned, critical challenges, and the path forward for the G8 Global Partnership in the 21st century.
Register for this event here.
6. The Future of U.S.-Taiwan Relations: Impressions from CNP’s 2012 Scholars Delegation, Thursday December 20, 12:00 PM – 1:15 PM, Center for National Policy
Venue: Center for National Policy, One Massachusetts Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20001, Suite 333
Speakers: Malou Innocent, Jacqueline N. Deal, Michael Breen, Scott Bates, Anthony Woods, John Garafano, Michael Auslin, Andrew Lavigne
Less than a month after the November reelection of President Obama, CNP sent a U.S. Scholars Delegation comprised of current and next generation policy experts and decision makers to meet with Taiwanese officials, trade experts and academics, to examine the future of U.S.-Taiwan relations. Join CNP President Scott Bates and members of the delegation as they offer views on their recent visit to Taipei.
Register for this event here.
7. Benghazi Attack, Part II: The Report of the Accountability Review Board, Thursday December 20, 1:00 PM, House Committee on Foreign Affairs
Venue: House Committee on Foreign Affairs, 2170 Rayburn House Office Building, Washington, DC 20515
Speaker: Hillary Rodham Clinton
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Sins venal and cardinal
The Republican effort to block UN Ambassador Susan Rice from becoming Secretary of State is unseemly at best. Not because Susan is without fault. She should not have uncritically used talking points from the intelligence community–does she not remember what those jokers did to embarrass Secretary of State Powell with talking points about biological weapons in Iraq? And she should have known better than to put forward a narrative about the Benghazi attack that lacked verisimilitude. A simple statement that we were still investigating what happened and would report to the American people as soon as we reached definitive conclusions would have sufficed, even in the heat of the election campaign.
The truth is there are still uncertainties. How many attackers were there and what weapons did they use? Why were at least some of the consulate guard force unarmed? Was it wise for the Ambassador to go to the safe haven? Why did he leave it? How did he get separated from his security detail? We won’t likely have a complete picture until the Accountability Review Board reports, if then.
But Susan’s sins were venal, soon forgotten if not forgiven in the rush of Washington events. Anyone with serious responsibilities will make a few of these boo-boos per week. The Senate Republicans are committing cardinal sins: not by trying to block a nominee, but by doing it for blatant political advantage (gluttony, greed, wrath, envy).
They want John Kerry to become Secretary of State, so they get another crack at a Massachusetts Senate seat. They could be in for a nasty surprise there: Elizabeth Warren beat Scott Brown by 8 percentage points. But the Democrats will not want to take the risk. They may well think Chuck Hagel or Jon Huntsman, either of whom would make a good Secretary of State. President Obama would enjoy nominating someone Republicans think of as a RINO (Republican in name only). They won’t be able to oppose him. The two I’ve mentioned are all too clearly qualified, and former senators to boot. Honor among you-know-whats.
The irony is that today Susan Rice will like suffer a defeat today at the United Nations General Assembly, which will confer on Palestine the status of non-member state (like the Vatican). Unless there are last-minute changes that allow the United States and Israel to vote in favor, it will pass easily over their objections. Few in Congress will criticize her for this. So long as we do what Israel wants, there is no domestic political risk.
But the foreign policy merits of the case, depending on the specific wording, may well point in the direction of abstention or even a vote in favor. General Assembly resolutions are like preseason football games. They may be well played, but they don’t count in the standings. Palestine doesn’t become a state because of a General Assembly vote. It is already recognized as such by about 130 countries, which is good enough reason for the United States to hesitate to allow itself a defeat on Palestine becoming a non-member state. Without a positive recommendation by the Security Council, it cannot become a UNGA member, which is the gold token of sovereignty. And Palestine, though in some ways a state, lacks a vital attribute of sovereignty: fixed borders and a monopoly over the legitimate means of violence.
Be that as it may, I prefer to remember Susan not for today’s defeat but rather for her yeoman efforts and real success in gaining UNSC approval for protection of civilians in Libya and for sanctions on Iran and Syria. Those were real diplomatic achievements. It is a cardinal sin to forget them.
PS: I admit Jon Stewart said some of this better, though he missed the part about John Kerry:
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