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Obama Foreign Policy Tag

Posted by William A. Jacobson on May 06, 2015 5 Comments
When the Israeli elections were held in March, the result widely was seen as a huge win for Benjamin Netanyahu, because his Likud Party outperformed. But that was Part 1. The second part has taken several weeks to play out -- the formation of a governing coalition of at least 61 seats in the 120-seat Knesset (parliament). That took time, and almost didn't happen. Late last night Israel time Netanyahu put the final piece together, as reported in The Times of Israel:
Less than two hours before his deadline was set to expire on Wednesday night, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hammered out a deal with Jewish Home party leader Naftali Bennett, allowing him to inform President Reuven Rivlin that he had successfully cobbled together a 61-seat coalition — the narrowest of Knesset majorities.... In a meeting with Bennett in the Knesset Wednesday night, Netanyahu thanked the Jewish Home party leader for his “efforts during the negotiations and throughout these last weeks.” He also asserted that Israel would have a “strong, stable government,” which he hoped would exceed 61 seats by Wednesday. “’61 seats is a good number. 61-plus is a better number. But it starts with 61, and we will begin with that,” Netanyahu said. “We have a lot of work ahead of us. Good luck to us and to the Israeli nation.” “We support you,” Bennett told Netanyahu. “We will assist you with all of our strength for the sake of the country and the government, because we have no other land. This government can complete its term in office. We will work hard to make sure of that.” Bennett said that the two parties’ negotiating teams would “work all night” in order to finalize the fine points of the deal. Netanyahu was understood to have capitulated to the demands of the Orthodox-nationalist Jewish Home, the final recalcitrant coalition partner, and agreed to appoint Bennett as education minister, MK Ayelet Shaked as justice minister, and another Jewish Home member, Uri Ariel, as agriculture minister.
David Horvitz, Editor-in-Chief of The Times of Israel, notes the disappointment at such a thin margin:

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on May 04, 2015 24 Comments
While the official U.S. policy has long been that we don't pay ransom to terrorists who kidnap American citizens, the Obama administration is working to find a way around this long-standing and eminently sensible stance. The idea is to allow the family of hostages held by terrorists to pay ransoms to terrorists and avoid prosecution for aiding terrorist organizations.  ABC News reports:
Families of American hostages who communicate with foreign kidnappers or raise money and pay ransoms will no longer have to fear prosecution for aiding terrorist groups, a White House-ordered advisory group on U.S. hostage policy is expected to recommend, senior officials told ABC News last week. "There will be absolutely zero chance of any family member of an American held hostage overseas ever facing jail themselves, or even the threat of prosecution, for trying to free their loved ones," said one of three senior officials familiar with the hostage policy team's ongoing review.
It appears that in the matter of the families versus the government, both get their way.  The families, understandably, want to save their family members (though paying ransom is no guarantee), and this government prefers to negotiate with, rather than defeat terrorists.

Posted by David Gerstman on April 27, 2015 9 Comments
Yesterday afternoon Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon warned Iran not to arm Hezbollah.
“Iran continues to try and arm Hezbollah and it is striving to arm the Lebanese terror group with advanced weapons in every way it can, and by using every avenue,” Ya’alon said in a speech at Israel’s military headquarters in Tel Aviv. “We will not allow the transfer of sophisticated weapons to terror groups, and in particular Hezbollah.” “We know how to reach [Hezbollah] and those who direct it, at any time and any place,” Ya’alon continued. “We will not allow Hezbollah to establish a terror infrastructure on our borders with Syria, and we know how to lay our hands on anyone who threatens Israeli citizens, along our borders or even far from them.”
It wasn't clear if Ya'alon was referring to airstrikes targeting weapons depots in Syria, attributed to Israel, that occurred Wednesday and Saturday last week, or if he was threatening future action. Subsequent to Ya'alon's talk it appeared that he may have intended both.

Posted by Amy Miller on April 24, 2015 6 Comments
During the unraveling of the Ottoman Empire, the embattled leadership ordered the forced deportation of ethnic Armenians from the region. Nobody has ever been able to say for certain how many people were slaughtered in the years following the order, but experts estimate that somewhere between 300,000 and 1.5 million ethnic Armenians lay dead when all was said and done. Armenia's "Great Catastrophe" was, in the eyes of much of the world, the first genocide of the 20th century. Ceremonies were held today in both Turkey and Armenia commemorating the massacres, yet even in the face of such a solemn anniversary, Turkish officials continued to deny that ethnic cleansing was the motivation for the forced deportations and murders. Calling what happened to ethnic Armenians is a consistent point of contention even amongst the world's most powerful governments. The EU Parliament, and even the pope, have used the word "genocide" to describe what happened, but the United States continues to lag behind. President Barack Obama has come under fire in recent days for offering official statements that omit the use of the word "genocide" to describe the "Great Catastrophe," and many see this as the breaking of a major campaign promise.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 18, 2015 23 Comments
One of my early posts at Legal Insurrection, on November 11, 2008, was Is It Time For Conservatives To Sit Down In The Snow?. The post analogized what conservatives were about to experience in the aftermath of Obama's first victory to the experience of Soviet Jewish Refusenik Anatoly (Nathan) Sharansky. I related the story of Sharansky's release from the Soviet gulag, and how he resisted to the very last moment of his release:
Sharansky spend almost a decade in Soviet prison because of his activities on behalf of Jews who wanted to emigrate to Israel. Sharansky was subjected to torture and other indignities, but never lost his spirit.Sharansky notoriously refused to obey even the most mundane orders from his captors. Sharansky understood that to compromise even a little would lead to compromising a lot. Throughout his ordeal, Sharansky kept his spirits alive by reading a small book of psalms. As Sharansky was being led to the airplane that would take him from the Soviet Union to East Germany for the exchange, the Soviets confiscated his book of psalms.It would have been easy for Sharansky simply to keep walking towards the plane and freedom. But Sharansky understood that the Soviets confiscated his book of psalms not because they wanted the book, but because they wanted to show that even in this last moment, they were in control.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 17, 2015 20 Comments
“This is the new America. We had better get used to it.” Those were the words of an Israeli TV analyst upon learning that Obama is open to negotiating an immediate lifting of sanctions on Iran as part of a nuclear deal -- the exact opposite of what he and others in the administration have been saying. https://youtu.be/CqXrW_-pzR4?t=1m17s The Times of Israel reports on the development, Obama says US open to talks with Iran on immediately lifting sanctions:
President Barack Obama on Friday left open the door to “creative negotiations” in response to Iran’s demand that punishing sanctions be immediately lifted as part of a nuclear deal, even though the initial agreement calls for the penalties to be removed over time.... “How sanctions are lessened, how we snap back sanctions if there’s a violation, there are a lot of different mechanisms and ways to do that,” Obama said. He said part of the job for Secretary of State John Kerry and the representatives of five other nations working to reach a final deal with Iran by June 30 “is to sometimes find formulas that get to our main concerns while allowing the other side to make a presentation to their body politic that is more acceptable.”

Posted by David Gerstman on April 15, 2015 10 Comments
There have been a number of reactions to the Corker-Menendez bill, which provides for Congressional oversight of whatever nuclear deal the administration makes with Iran. It passed out of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee yesterday with a 19-0 vote. J. E. Dyer at Liberty Unyielding looks at the numbers and sees the bill as a loss.
If Congress rejects the Iran deal, and the president vetoes its legislation, Congress will have the balance of a 52-day period to override the veto. If the Senate finds itself unable to act, at some point in this process, Obama’s deal can be implemented without assent from the Senate. To override a veto, of course, opponents will need 67 votes. To uphold a veto, Obama just has to make sure there are 34 votes for his deal. He doesn’t have to have even 51 votes to implement it. With 34, he’s got a major win. The beauty of this for Obama is that he still gets a win if the Senate at any point can’t bring a floor vote. His deal just gets implemented because the Senate failed to act. So it won’t matter if the president has 34 votes for the Iran deal, but not enough to bring the deal to a vote. The win for Obama is merely less photogenic in that case. The effect is the same.

Posted by David Gerstman on April 09, 2015 9 Comments
I visited the State Department's website earlier this week and I was greeted by an item hailing the 45th anniversary of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT). After hailing the treaty the article goes on to say more explicitly, "[i]f we didn’t already have the NPT, we would desperately need it today." A couple of paragraphs later the article boasts about the latest efforts to strengthen the NPT.
The United States is committed to strengthening the nonproliferation regime and the authority of the International Atomic Energy Agency to implement nuclear safeguards -- a set of measures to verify that nuclear materials are used for peaceful purposes. The Treaty provides the foundation and context to resolve outstanding challenges to the nuclear nonproliferation regime. The ongoing negotiations with Iran provide the best diplomatic path forward for Iran to return to full compliance with the NPT. The IAEA instills confidence among all NPT parties that a state’s civil nuclear energy is not being diverted into a nefarious weapons program. In New York, the United States will promote the IAEA Additional Protocol, now recognized as the foremost international standard for safeguards that provides the IAEA with the authority to ensure that all nuclear material is used for peaceful purposes, in accordance with the NPT.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 09, 2015 21 Comments
Within hours of the White House celebrating a supposed Iran nuclear framework "deal," it became apparent that the various sides -- the U.S., the Iranians and the Europeans -- had very different understandings of the deal. Those competing narratives now have moved to the stage of open declarations by senior Iranian officials that the White House is lying and that key elements in a White House Fact Sheet never were agreed upon and are unacceptable. Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, has taken to Twitter to call the Obama administration a bunch of untrustworthy liars: https://twitter.com/khamenei_ir/status/586113075809558528

Posted by Amy Miller on April 08, 2015 21 Comments
Will 2016 be the year of the foreign policy presidential cycle? It might be, if President Obama keeps up his march to mediocrity. The President's time in the White House has been plagued with an apparent desire to make America look as weak (I'm sure he would say "humbled") as possible. Challenges to the idea that the U.S. should be taking a backseat are met with borderline frenzied opposition. Blame for vulnerabilities on the international stage is quickly placed on other players. Questions about goals and direction are shuffled to the side in favor of domestic pop culture outreach. If we know what's good for us, we'll encourage the brave fools throwing their hats in for the 2016 Republican primary to do something different---focus on foreign policy. Normally, this isn't something we like our candidates to focus on because the knowledge base required to speak intelligently about international relations is significantly broader and more nuanced than that required for domestic issues. Still it won't be that hard to at the very least start a conversation about America's role in the world. On a recent episode of the Hugh Hewitt show, former Vice President Dick Cheney managed it in a 30 second soundbite: Listen:

Posted by New Neo on April 08, 2015 15 Comments
Remember this? It's one of the few papers that Obama wrote while in college or law school that is still available, a 1983 article that appeared in the Columbia campus paper. The article is mostly straight reportage and quotes about the Nuclear Freeze Movement, featuring organizations called "Arms Race Alternatives" (ARA) and "Students Against Militarism" (SAM). But Obama reveals his own attitude in a few comments such as, "Generally, the narrow focus of the Freeze movement as well as academic discussions of first versus second strike capabilities, suit the military-industrial interests, as they continue adding to their billion-dollar erector sets." Note the superior tone and the contempt for the military, already present in Obama at a relatively young age. To him, the "military-industrial interests" are just boys playing with expensive toys. Obama quotes one activist as saying "everyone's asking for peace, but no one's asking for justice," which (in Obama's words), causes "one...to wonder whether disarmament or arms control issues, severed from economic and political issues, might be another instance of focusing on the symptoms of a problem rather than the disease itself." To Obama, the real problems appear to be economic and political issues involving a lack of justice, and the arms race is a mere symptom of that deeper concern (shades of this far more recent policy statement).

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 01, 2015 9 Comments
I just booked my plane tickets to visit Israel in May. Maybe I'll call it an Apology Tour. I'll let Israelis know that the current administration, with its childish chickens**t taunting treatment of Israel, does not represent the American people, who overwhelmingly support Israel. (Will this violate the Logan Act?) Fortunately, I have the speech already written for me:
In recent years we've allowed our Alliance to drift. I know that there have been honest disagreements over policy, but we also know that there's something more that has crept into our relationship. In America, there's a failure to appreciate [Israeli's] leading role in the world. Instead of celebrating your dynamic [nation] and seeking to partner with you to meet common challenges, there have been times where America has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive.

Posted by David Gerstman on March 23, 2015 9 Comments
The nuclear negotiations between the West and Iran may have reached an impasse over the timing of Iran getting relief from sanctions. This is how The Guardian broke down the differences between the United States and the French on Friday:
Diplomats say the French foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, telephoned the French delegation in Lausanne to ensure it did not make further concessions, and to insist that the bulk of UN sanctions could only be lifted if Iran gave a full explanation of evidence suggesting it may have done development work on nuclear warhead design in the past.  ... The US offer on sanctions is to lift UN sanctions in layers in return each “irreversible” step Iran makes to scale down and limit its nuclear programme. There would be mechanisms in place by which sanctions would “spring back” if Iran violated the agreement, without the need for consensus in the UN security council. It is broadly supported by the UK and Germany, while Russia and China, the other members of the six-nation group, would offer more generous terms. Tehran is reluctant to accept sanctions relief based on milestones, but diplomats say the French position would be a complete deal-breaker. They say the Iranians would be very unlikely to admit past weapons work, which if revealed would demonstrate that the country’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, had misled the world. Better, US diplomats argue, to focus on limiting the current Iranian programme and worry about allegations about the past a few years down the road.
Focus on the current issues and leave the allegations for the future? Are they crazy? Let's take a couple of paragraphs from United Nations Security Council Resolution 1696, which was passed in July 2006 and was the first of six resolutions passed against Iran for its violations of the Nuclear Nonproliferation treaty.
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