Us politics

Monday

Daniel Korski

Gay America rejoices

This week will give Barack Obama’s liberal credentials a significant boost. On December 18th, the Senate had a  successful cloture vote in favour of a bill to repeal “Don’t ask, don’t tell”. DADT as it is commonly known restricts the US military from trying to discover or reveal closeted gay, lesbian, and bisexual service members, while it bars those who are openly gay, lesbian, or bisexual from military service. The bill has now passed in both Houses of Congress and it only awaits President Obama’s signature. As my friend R. Clarke Cooper, Executive Director of the Log Cabin Republicans, and one of several prominent ex-officers to lead the fight against

Tuesday

Daniel Korski

Holbrooke’s war ends

He was known as brash and abrasive. A gale force wind. The “bulldozer” some called him based on his time bullying Slobodan Milosevic during the Dayton negotiations to end the Bosnian War in the 1990s. However, veteran US diplomat Richard Holbrooke, who died last night, had a far greater register. When he visited London before assuming his latest post, as President Obama’s AfPak envoy, he surprised the US embassy staff by travelling alone, with no bag-carrying entourage, and exhibiting none of the airs he was expected to have. His first experience of the Balkans was not as the all-mighty diplomatic trouble-shooter, but as a normal citizen eager to highlight the

Monday

Daniel Korski

US Middle East initiative takes early holiday

When the Obama administration started its latest Middle East initiative, it was amid great fanfare. I blogged – sceptically — about the optimism exuding from the State Department at the time. Now, however, the US government has given up its push for a freeze in Jewish settlement construction as quietly as possible. As Martin Indyk of the Brookings Institution puts it: “The Middle East peace process just died, but nobody seems to be in mourning. Twenty months of U.S. efforts to freeze Israeli settlement activity to create a conducive environment for negotiations have produced only deadlock.” Keen for the demise of the latest US effort to be seen favourably, Hillary

Monday

Daniel Korski

Wiki-danger

Now the Wikileaks are beginning to become dangerous. Before, the leaks contained high-level tittle-tattle, confirmation of existing analyses and embarrassingly accurate portraits of world leaders. I still thought it wrong to regurgitate this data, as it will lead to more secrecy, bilateral problems and potentially even conflicts – the things that Julian Assange claims he is seeking to avoid. Yet I told NPR that the idea of prosecuting the Wikileaks founder for treason was far-fetched; he is not a US citizen and it was not clear to me what kind of charges could be brought against him in the US courts. Now, however, with the publication of data which will

Daniel Korski

Will the US become more isolationist in the years to come?

Isolationist sentiment seems to be on the rise in the United States. At an annual foreign policy event in Halifax in Canada, US Senator Lindsay Graham warned about the risk of an “unholy alliance” developing between the far left and far right that calls for greater US retrenchment from the world – and, potentially, a new era of isolationism. Or neo-isolationism. Such an inward focus is likely sound meet with the approval of an increasingly domestically-occupied public. Last year, 49 percent of Americans told Pew Research that they believed the US should “mind its own business” and let other nations get along on their own.  That was up from 30

Wednesday

Peter Hoskin

Leaked embassy cable: what the Americans thought of Thatcher

Forget the children of Thatcher, here’s what the Americans were saying about the Iron Lady herself when she became Tory party leader. The source is a confidential cable from the American Embassy in London to the US State Department, dated 16 February 1975, and referenced in Claire Berlinski’s book There is No Alternative: Subject: Margaret Thatcher: Some First Impressions 1. We understand Department is providing Secretary with biographic data on Margaret Thatcher prior to his meeting with her February 18, Here are our initial impressions of Britain’s newest political star. 2. Margaret Thatcher has blazed into national prominence almost literally from out of nowhere.  When she first indicated that she

Peter Hoskin

Pakistan’s double game comes under the spotlight once again

The leak that keeps on leaking has one or two embarrassing titbits about our domestic policymakers this morning. Yet far more noteworthy are the documents on Pakistan. While they don’t tell us too much that is surprising – being mostly about the duplicitous game that country is playing with the West – they do highlight some potentially worrying trends. Chief among them is the growing influence of General Ashfaq Pervez Kiyani, the head of Pakistan’s army. His name is littered generously throughout the US briefings, and it is often connected with dangerous conspiracy and double-dealing. One document, for instance, suggests that Kiyani was prepared to overthrow the Pakistani President, Asif

Tuesday

David Blackburn

Palin versus Romney

The GOP is ambling towards the start of the 2012 nominations race. Two probable candidates are busy pitching their media tents. Sarah Palin is on a coast to coast tour, flogging her latest book; she has also been cheering on her daughter on Dancing with the Stars and she recently gutted a halibut on her Alaskan reality TV show. It’s all action and personality from the Mamma Grissly. By contrast, the cerebral Mitt Romney has agreed to appear on…Jay Leno’s Tonight Show. Leno makes Parky look almost vital. As one Democrat strategist observed: “On the hipness scale, this is far from Bristol Palin on ‘Dancing with the Stars.’ It’s more

David Blackburn

Chinese burns

The latest cache of Wikileaks has done America no end of good. The Saudis urged the US to bomb Iran – a sign that the Arab world can make common cause with the States and Israel. It has also emerged that North Korea has sold the Iranians long range rockets – Moscow, Berlin and Istanbul are all within the Ayatollah’s range. But the most important revelation is that China has tired of North Korea’s lunatic machinations, recognising that the rogue state is an impediment to global and regional security. China is also convinced that the country will not survive Kim Jung-il’s death and favours a union of the two Koreas,

Monday

Daniel Korski

Julian Assange: the new face of anti-Americanism

Like everyone else, I have poured over the latest cache of Wikileaks – the publication of which I find irresponsible and destructive. There are several pieces of information now in the public domain that will cause the US diplomatic embarrassment or worse may even help the regimes in Tehran, Pyongyang and Moscow. Just ask yourself a few questions. Will the West be safer if the Saudi leader cannot trust that a conversation he has with a US envoy will remain secret? Will that help or hinder Iran’s nuclear prpgramme? Will US-German links be improved by the knowledge that US diplomats are sceptical of Angela Merkel’s policies? Will that aid G20

Friday

James Forsyth

The search for peace leads Britain to pay a Taliban impostor

That the British government paid a substantial sums of money and attention to someone who they thought was Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour, a Taliban leader who was the civil aviation minister in the Taliban government, but who turned out to be a shopkeeper from Pakistan shows just how eager Britain is for some kind of political deal that would make it possible for British troops to leave by 2015, the deadline that David Cameron has set. The Washington Post’s piece on the matter, has the Afghan government blaming the mistake on British ‘haste’ for a political settlement.  In The Times the recently retired US representative in Kandahar, reflects that “senior

Tuesday

Daniel Korski

The end of the Wall Street world

Over the last decade, Wall Street has become an important foreign policy actor in its own right, almost as important as the lobbyists on K-Street and the White House on Pensylvania Avenue. The ebb and flow of capital has been a decisive international force in determining the fate of nations – most recently illustrated in the cases of Greece and Ireland. As an aide to President Clinton once said: in a second life he would like to come back as the bond market. But Wall Street has influenced foreign policy in a deeper way too: by changing the way that successive US administrations see the world. Not by focusing on

Daniel Korski

The mad hermit strikes

North Korea has again put itself at the centre of international relations. As the US pushed for a start to six-party talks, Pyongyang lifted the veil on a hitherto secret uranium-enrichment facility and launched an artillery barrage on a South Korean island,  injuring four soldiers, and damaging several buildings. The South Korean military scrambled fighter jets and returned fire and the situations remains tense. Conflict with nuclear-armed North Korea has intensified in recent years. North Korea launched nuclear and missile tests last year and sank a South Korean warship in March this year, killing 46 sailors. But the first ground-to-ground assault across the DMZ represents a new escalation in the

Wednesday

Daniel Korski

Will there be peace in the Middle East in time for X-mas?

Two years into her term, and after carefully avoiding any success-free issues, Hillary Clinton has finally launched herself into the Middle East peace process. According to Roger Cohen in the New York Times, “The heavy lifting is now in Clinton’s hands”. As evidence of Clinton’s new role, Cohen lists a video conference with the Palestinian prime minister, where the US secretary of state announced $150 million in US aid to the Palestinian Authority and said the Obama administration was “deeply disappointed” by recent Israeli behaviour. Mrs Clinton’s foray into the Middle Eastern quagmire  is interesting. It shows that the Obama administration is not going to give up and will, despite

Tuesday

Peter Hoskin

The curious case of the Guantanamo Bay pay-outs

What to make of the out-of-court settlement that has been paid to around a dozen former detainees of Guantanamo Bay? According to unofficial reports, taxpayers might have to shoulder £10 million as a result. One of the men is thought to be receiving £1 million. The explanations seeping out of Westminster are understandable enough. Security chiefs, we’re told, were keen to avoid a lengthy process – not just because it could mean more cost for the taxpayer, but because it would drag the practices of our intelligence services out into the public realm. David Cameron, speaking on the matter in July, highlighted that Mi5 and Mi6’s time could be spent

Monday

Peter Hoskin

ConservativeHome goes global

A post about the blogosphere, I know – but I thought CoffeeHousers might appreciate a link to the new ConservativeHome USA site that launched in the past hour. It is, of course, a sister site to the UK’s very own ConservativeHome which, under the thoughtful editorship of Tim Montgomerie, has done so much to clarify the often hazy ground between the internet, politics and grassroots activism. Tim will, of course, be involved with the American project, but it’s also got its own editorial team in the form of Ryan Streeter and Natalie Gonnella. The posts on Day One gives us a good sense of what we can expect in future:

Saturday

Daniel Korski

The new Cold War?

In his recent cover story for The Spectator, the Financial Times’ Gideon Rachman talked about how, in the United States, China was beginning to take on the appearance of a new Cold War-style foe. Many Americans accuse China of stealing US jobs, of keeping the its currency undervalued, of exporting deflation by selling its products abroad at unfair prices, and of failing to meet its commitments to the World Trade Organisation. Two months ago, a poll from WSJ/CNBC showed that the majority of Tea Party activists oppose free trade – seeing China as the sole beneficiary of a free trade policy. But it is not only the Tea Party that

Thursday

Gideon Rachman

Playing with fire | 11 November 2010

As the G20 summit begins in Seoul, the emphasis in much of the papers is on the economic hostility between America and China. The FT’s Gideon Rachman wrote a cover piece on this matter for The Spectator two weeks ago, which we’ve reprinted here for the benefit of CoffeeHousers: In a couple of weeks’ time, David Cameron and George Osborne will arrive in China and witness at first hand an economic boom that is shaking the world. The British duo will doubtless receive a polite and outwardly respectful reception. But, as I discovered on a visit to Shanghai last week, Chinese diplomats and academics have noted the deep cuts in

Wednesday

Peter Hoskin

Ten more highlights from the Bush serialisation

You know the drill: the second part of the Times’s Bush serialisation (£) is out today, so here are ten more highlights from their coverage. The book is also out today, so we can, as the former President suggests, draw our own conclusions. 1) Watching the towers collapse. “I caught enough fleeting glimpses of the coverage to understand the horror of what the American people were watching. Stranded people were jumping to their deaths from the World Trade Center towers. I felt their agony and despair. I had the most powerful job in the world, yet I felt powerless to help them. At one point, the television signal held steady

Tuesday

Daniel Korski

Stop dreaming of Leo McGarry

The West Wing has an amazing hold over Fleet Street. The TV series has not only taught a generation of British reporters about US politics but even influenced the way that they see the workings of Westminster. Every time centre-right writers think David Cameron is seen as having made a mistake – mistreated his back-benchers, hired a personal photographer or made a foreign policy gaffe – they trot out the same refrain: No 10 needs a powerful Leo McGarry-type chief of staff who can bring the various parts of the operation together from Steve Hilton’s work to Andy Coulson’ operation. An enforcer, a puller-togetherer. I have three arguments against a