Guest Blogger

A guest post from Foreign Policy contributor and human-rights activist Rebecca Hamilton.

Last week, the State Department partnered with two U.S.-based advocacy organizations (Save Darfur and STAND) to launch AskUS -- a web 2.0 initiative to connect the Obama administration with citizen activists.

More than 500 citizens emailed and used the Twitter hashtag #AskUS to submit questions on Sudan policy that they wanted Save Darfur to ask; students around the country voted online for the questions they wanted answered. The exercise culminated yesterday with a meeting, web-streamed live and cross-posted on the State Department's Facebook page. Leaders from Save Darfur and STAND asked a selection of the citizens' questions to U.S. Special Envoy for Sudan Scott Gration and Director of Multilateral Affairs at the National Security Council Samantha Power.

The event was not quite as "live" as its billing implied. Advocates had to give the administration their questions in advance. One former State Department official I interviewed referred to Darfur activists as "noise we had to manage" -- and I feared that AskUS would be nothing more than a web 2.0 opportunity for the administration to "manage" a vocal and often critical advocacy movement.

As it turned out, the shoe was on the other foot. Activists were given the opportunity to ask follow-up questions, and they pursued that avenue with such vigor that any fear of them being co-opted by their well-publicized access to the White House ceased to be a concern. What was a concern was the administration's inability to provide concrete answers to the advocates' questions.

During the session, Gration explained that there are some aspects of policy that cannot be shared publicly, and presumably no one would disagree that the need to keep some material confidential is inherent in any nation's diplomatic activities. But Gration's backtracking caused confusion among advocates who had eagerly tuned in: Despite the AskUS initiative being promoted as a forum for open dialogue, the administration was cagey on some fairly rudimentary points about its new Sudan policy.

Indeed, the Obama administration's Sudan strategy, rolled out on October 19, focuses on calibrating pressures and incentives on the basis of "verifiable changes in conditions on the ground." Yet during yesterday's meeting, advocates were told that the benchmarks for measuring progress were "a process we're working through."

The best summation of the State Department's first foray into citizen engagement 2.0 is, appropriately enough, encapsulated in a tweet by TechPresident blogger Micah Sifry. Responding to the frustration advocates were expressing in real-time to the vagueness of the administration's answers, he wrote, "Whatever you may think about substance of Gration/Power's answers, State Dept just raised the bar on admin transparency efforts." Indeed. 

It's not by chance that AskUS was launched around an issue that has such a strong U.S.-based constituency. Let's hope the next meeting sees activists on Congo, Burma, Sri Lanka, or any of the other many neglected crises, get an invite to the White House.

AFP/Getty Images

In his speech in Cairo today, Barack Obama addressed the militant group and political party Hamas directly, acknowledging the support it receives from many Palestinians, but urging it to “put an end to violence, recognize past agreements, and recognize Israel's right to exist.”

Shortly after the speech, Hamas’s political leader Khaled Meshaal shared his reactions with freelance journalist Helena Cobban in Damascus. It's reprinted here with her permission:

Of course I listened to the speech. The words are different from those used by Bush. The speech was cleverly written in the way it addressed the Muslim world-- using phrases from the Holy Kor'an, and referring to some historical events. And also, in the way it showed respect to the Muslim heritage. But I think it's not enough!

What's needed are deeds, actions on the ground, and a change of policies.

For example, if the Palestinians today don't find a real change from the situation of siege in Gaza, there's no point; the speech by itself doesn't help them. What they're looking for is an end to the siege and an end to occupation.

We want to see practical steps by the United States such as ending Israel's settlement activity, putting an end to Israel's confiscation of Palestinian land and its campaign to Judaize Jerusalem; an end to its demolitions of Palestinian homes; and the removal of the 600 checkpoints that are stifling normal life in the West Bank.

Rather than sweet words from President Obama on democratization, we'd rather see the United States start to respect the results of democratic elections that have already been held. And rather than talk about democratization and human rights in the Arab world, we'd rather see the removal of General Dayton, who's building a police state there in the West Bank.

In the speech, Obama talked about the Palestinian state, but not its borders. He didn't mention whether it should comprise all the Palestinian land that was occupied in 1967, or just part of it, as Israel demands.

He made no mention of Jerusalem or the Right of Return.

Yes, he spoke of an end to settlement activity; but can he really get them to stop?

Without addressing these issues, the speech remains rhetoric, not so very different from his predecessor's.

Daniel Freifeld of NYU's Center for Law and Security attended Barack Obama's speech in Prague yesterday and was kind enough to write up an account of the event for us:

Here at President Obama's first public speech abroad since being elected President, I found two actors from the hit HBO show "The Wire" standing in the VIP section.  Tristan Wilds, who played the heart rending part of Michael Lee, and Andre Royo  who played recovering drug addict Reginald "Bubbles" Cousins (seen here with his daughter). They, along with a handful of other actors on location in Prague to film the forthcoming movie about the Tuskegee Airmen, "Red Tails," took some time off to catch the speech (Lee explained that although the film is set in Italy, director George Lucas chose Prague because it more closely resembles the Italy of World War II than Italy itself does today).

Warm-up music for Obama included a live performance by Druhá Tráva, a Czech bluegrass band, and recorded music by U2, Earth, Wind and Fire, and Kanye West (whose music I doubt would have ever been used to warm up a George W. Bush crowd).  

Hanging out off to the side was Obama foreign policy adviser Denis McDonough and senior adviser David Axelrod:

Another interesting note: disparate cheers were heard in the crowd when Obama said "The Czech Republic and Poland have been courageous in agreeing to host a defense against [potential Iranian nuclear and ballistic missile activity]," a statement he immediately hedged by setting Iranian "persistence" as a condition precedent for following through with the proposed radar installations.  Recent opinion polls suggest the Czechs are becoming increasingly worried that the installation would unnecessarily antagonize Russia and make Europe less secure, not more.  Judging by that tepid response following Obama's statement, the crowd seemed to be a fair reflection of where Czech opinion is heading on this issue.  

Daniel Freifeld is the Director of International Programs at the NYU Center on Law and Security 

Many of Passport's readers are college students who are looking to launch careers in foreign policy. As it's job-huntin' season on campus, here's a timely guest post from Peter W. Singer, a military expert at the Brookings Institution and the author of Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry, on how to become a foreign-policy wonk.

We hope you find it helpful.

Frequently, I get e-mails from young students who want to know how to crack into the world of foreign policy. Below are the most frequent questions and my answers, which FP thought actually might be of use or at least amusement. Please judge their worth by the amount of money that you paid for them.

How did you decide to get into the foreign-policy world?

I've been interested in these issues since as long as I can remember. I was the weird kid in elementary school, who for book reports would choose Soviet Military Power (the Pentagon's somewhat overhyped annual report on the Red menace) rather than Sweet Valley High or The Boxcar Kids. Yes, it was totally nerdy. Guilty as charged. By the time I got to college, I applied to the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs as my major. If I didn't get in, my backup plan was to go into the history field. Fortunately, I did, and thoroughly enjoyed it. When it came time to figure out a job afterwards, I flirted a bit with the idea of becoming a management consultant. My thinking was that I could feed the beast by getting subscriptions to various political magazines to read in my off time, while I made scads of money merely for using words like "synergy," "leverage," or "optimize." But I soon realized that I didn't know what those words actually meant and I would shoot myself after a few months. So, I went into the foreign-policy business instead.

[If you're reading this from the main page, read on after the break]

STAN HONDA/AFP/Getty Images

On Sunday, Tony Blair, in his new job as Middle East peace envoy, spelled out plans for getting an Israeli-Palestinian peace process moving again. He is to work on building up Palestinian institutions and nudging Israel to ease impediments to the economy in the West Bank, in the hope that this will boost Fatah’s Mahmoud Abbas and weaken support for Hamas in Gaza. He is supposed to leave the big political issues to Israeli and Palestinian leaders to hash out in advance of a November summit—though nobody seriously expects him to stay away from them. But can he do better than James Wolfensohn, the last Quartet envoy, who ultimately failed to make headway with an even more limited mandate? Gideon Lichfield, Jerusalem correspondent for The Economist and blogger on fugitivepeace.com, offers him some practical advice.

1. Don't underestimate the Palestinian street’s distrust of you. Not because you supported the Iraq war—Palestinians care much more about their own problems. But most of them assume that you are here to recreate a pro-Western Palestinian client state in the best case (which is essentially true), and cooperate with Israel to ensure that an independent Palestine never arises in the worst case.
2. Don't underestimate the extent to which Palestinian leaders will undermine the national interest to protect their personal ones. Learn all the rivalries—those within Fatah especially—and assume that they take precedence over good sense and decency, unless you see evidence to the contrary.
3. Don't underestimate the incompetence and backstabbing at senior levels in the Palestinian institutions, including Abbas's office. Improving equipment for the Palestinian police or training for mid-level bureaucrats is easy. The stumbling blocks to progress will be individual officials with privileges and influence who want to hold on to them.
4. Don’t rely too much on Abbas to make changes. He is timid and non-confrontational. He has got to where he is by making his peace with some of the most corrupt and obstructionist Fatah leaders. His reluctance to remove difficult people, create enemies and upset political balances will be one of your main constraints.
5. Similarly, don't overestimate Israeli leaders' ability to deliver on promises. One reason is political: Ehud Olmert’s coalition government looks solid at the moment, but the winds can shift and allies can become opponents with astonishing rapidity. The other reason is operational. Even if the government orders something, its authority can quickly peter out on the ground in the West Bank, where settlement leaders and local army commanders are used to a high degree of autonomy, and sympathetic bureaucrats often help them find ways around the law.
6. At the same time, don’t buy all the Israelis’ excuses. Olmert knows better than anyone how to use coalition politics to his advantage—including to make it look like he’s hemmed in when he isn’t.
7. Be wary of the support of other Arab leaders. Having them on board for the November summit and beyond is essential to this process's credibility, and yours. But each has his own agenda on the Palestinian question, which depends on how it affects his internal domestic issues. You'll need to find a balance between having them involved and keeping them at arms’ length.
8. For all these reasons, try to create a clear and public plan with identifiable goals. If you don’t set goals, the street will distrust your motives and the leaders will exploit uncertainties to their own ends. Setting goals may set you up for failure, but at least then you’ll be able to pin blame on those who deserve it.
9. Don’t take your eye off the long term. It’s tempting to focus on what's immediately achievable—some checkpoints removed here, better policing there, more funding for schools, more ties between Israeli and Palestinian businesses. These are good, but they will make no difference to Palestinians' opinions of Fatah—or of you—unless they perceive them as stepping stones in a longer-term plan with statehood at the end. Israel wants to keep this timetable vague; you need to find something that can give Palestinians hope.
10. Resist the urge simply to forget about Gaza "for the time being". It’s a natural temptation; indeed, your mandate pretty much requires it. Hamas is in charge there; it hates Israel; Israel and America hate it; Fatah hates it even more. Surely the best thing is to leave Gaza to fester so Hamas loses popularity. But watch out: The more Hamas weakens, the more Gaza’s clan chieftains will take over. Every clan contain members of both parties, and their clan loyalty comes first. Once Gaza is run by warlords, imposing any sort of political order there will be extremely hard. Even though it’s not part of your mandate, start thinking about the mechanism for the eventual transition, otherwise your efforts will be worthless.

The following are excerpts from reports on military plans of the Taliban that were aired on Al Jazeera TV on February 21 and 22, 2007:

This bizarre animated film aired on Tehran TV on February 21, 2007. It shows the completion of nuclear plants in several Iranian cities by the year 2023. In Tehran TV's view of the future, the United States, encouraged by Israel, mobilizes the international community to stop Iran's efforts, but fails. 

The United Kingdom has only one way to deliver its nuclear weapons: U.S.-built submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) called Tridents, which are carried on British Vanguard-class subs. These subs are aging and due to be decommissioned in 2024. Since the British government estimates it will take 17 years to design and build a new submarine, a decision looms and an unusual debate has arisen: should the U.K. even bother maintaining its own nuclear deterrent?

Britain's answer will almost certainly be yes, but the fact that there is a real debate at all is interesting. Detractors of Prime Minister Tony Blair's plan to extend the lifetime of the U.K.'s nuclear forces attack it from several different angles. Nearly everyone cites the expense: roughly £20 billion (~$39 billion) that they say could be better spent. Some maintain that Britain should set an example by giving up its own weapons—as they are obligated to do under Article VI of the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Other opponents say deterrence is an "unproven theory" that is "essentially flawed." Churches across the country have decried nuclear weapons as immoral.

But most of Blair's Labour party and the opposition Conservatives support the prime minister's plan, and together they have more than enough votes to push the proposal through. They argue that nuclear weapons are the "ultimate insurance" against unseen future threats, especially when the number of nuclear states seems set to increase. Plus, none of the other nuclear states show any sign of giving up their own nuclear weapons. So why should Britain?

Then there are the implicit concerns, mostly unsaid. If Britain gave up its nuclear weapons, France would be the only European country to retain them. And many politicians in Britain, just like elsewhere, believe that nuclear weapons are their ticket to keeping a seat at the great-power table. At least for now, it seems, nukes are almost impossible to give up.