Review: “Capital of the World” by Charlene Mires

You might wonder why anyone would pick any city other than New York City for the headquarters of the United Nations (UN). It embodies all the qualities one would want for a “world capital”: known to everyone, bustling, multicultural, central, influential. But leading up to the UN’s selection of NYC for their headquarters in December 1946, dozens, if not hundreds, if not thousands, of cities and towns across the U.S. lobbied to be picked. Charlene Mires has documented that competition well in her book Capital of the World: The Race to Host the United Nations.

Seeing as the story took place in the less globalized mid-1940s, that the headquarters would be in either Europe or the U.S. was a foregone conclusion. Were the UN in the process of selecting a headquarters in 2013, one wouldn’t be surprised to see Shanghai, Mumbai or São Paulo in fierce competition with NYC. But with Europe just beginning to recover from World War II, all eyes were on the U.S. (Canada? Don’t make me laugh.)

Interestingly, a large number of top UN diplomats were opposed to having headquarters in a large city proper, worried that it would become “subsumed into the metropolis.” They didn’t just want a headquarters – they wanted an honest-to-goodness “capital of the world,” a global center for international diplomacy. Today, the Hague is as close to such a city as they’ve gotten, even if NYC is more popular. But then, civic boosters seemed more than happy to let their metropolises, such as they were, become subsumed by the UN.

Mires focuses on a few cities with particularly extensive booster campaigns – Boston, Detroit, Philadelphia, San Francisco – and suburbs abutting them that would have been more appealing to city-averse diplomats. One relatable character who opens the book is Paul Bellamy, who, spurred by the memory of his late son (an Air Force pilot killed in action), promoted his hometown of Rapid City, South Dakota, as a peaceful and prosperous UN site. It may seem laughable, but he and scores of other boosters knew at least some of what the UN wanted to hear.

Ultimately, though, they did settle for NYC. A pricey land donation from the Rockefeller family was helpful, even essential, in their decision. But with most of the diplomats setting their sights on personal residences in the city, it came down to the practical consideration of commuting. Not ideal for a UN-brand “world capital,” but NYC embodied all the necessary qualities of such a city with or without the UN.

This book is as much a history of the UN headquarters as a series of case studies in civic boosterism, which makes it required reading for anyone who studies urban issues. I would have broken it up into chapters by city instead of by chronology, but Mires’s pacing is solid and her anecdotes were chosen well. I deem this book shelf-worthy.

The State Department is a hot mess

Was anything made any clearer than before during Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee? In one of her final appearances in her current role, she answered questions from the committee’s Republicans about what she knew of the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, on September 11 of last year. As you can expect, she was able to remove herself from the entire timeline while still accepting full responsibility, because, after all, that’s just what Cabinet heads do.

The goal for the Republicans was twofold: 1. Prove that U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice was ordered to go on the Sunday talk shows to offer misleading information, intentionally, about the nature of the attack. 2. Prove that Clinton saw the pre-attack requests from the consulate to send more security and ignored them, or knew of their existence and chose not to read them. So far, those goals have gone unmet.

There’s a problem with the first question. Within the Obama administration, Rice’s position is Cabinet-level. (Its status changes under every president, but neither President Bush gave it that status.) That means Rice reports to President Obama, not Clinton. Asking her if she was the one to dispatch Rice may have been pointless; however, it’s bad form for her not to know or admit who did. Expect more testimonies on that one.

As for the other charges: I find it very hard to believe that America’s top diplomat would not have been informed about a request for additional security at an American diplomatic facility. Read Clinton’s response to Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) about this. Take note of how many other involved federal bodies she mentions, and how many other concerns there were at the time. The intended takeaway is “the fog of war.” It didn’t convince the Senate Republicans then, and it didn’t yesterday.

At best, the communication breakdowns in the days immediately after the attack resulted from hopeless bureaucratic entanglements between the White House, the State Department, the CIA and whoever else. At worst, the administration did lie about the nature of the attack. They would have had something to gain from such a lie; it wouldn’t fit into their pre-Mali narrative of al-Qaeda being “decimated.” (The Benghazi attackers were part of an al-Qaeda affiliate.) But this testimony did not expose any lies.

If Senate Republicans have any hope of doing this, they’ll have to find some bureaucrats willing to supply evidence that their accusations are true, since the bureaucrats got the brunt of the blame from Clinton. In the meantime, she could have done a better job of demonstrating that State “learned from the mistakes” by outlining any recent efforts to streamline reporting processes. That could have helped her save a little more face than she managed to save yesterday. But the crying helped.

Iran’s not going to be ignored, Dennis

Here’s retiring Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) explaining why he voted against freshman Rep. Jeff Duncan’s (R-SC) Countering Iran in the Western Hemisphere Act:

Instead of taking a cue from other nations who are trying to open up relationships with Iran, we are trying to limit other nations’ ability to develop relationships.

Awww. He actually thinks Duncan opposes Iran’s efforts at diplomacy on principle! He thinks Iran’s intentions are just as honorable as any other country seeking overseas relationships! Isn’t that adorable?!

OK, sarcasm over. The bill tasks the State Department with assessing possible threats to the U.S. by Iran’s presence in the Western Hemisphere, primarily in Latin American countries whose leaders also have a history of heavily anti-American rhetoric. That would include a description of exactly which Iranian and Iran-allied entities are present and operating there, including Hezbollah, plus their business relations and which law enforcement organizations could be used against them. Border security and energy supplies are two particular areas of concern to Duncan, as they should be.

The bill passed both chambers as of this week, with a 386-6 vote in the House on Tuesday; besides Kucinich, five House Republicans, Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) and four of his disciples, voted against. This is somewhat curious, as on foreign policy matters, they’re known more for their opposition to interventionism and nation-building that does not affect U.S. interests. Meanwhile, the bill specifically mentions the attempted assassination of the Saudi ambassador to the U.S., which involved one Iranian and one Iranian-American seeking the help of a Mexican in the drug trade to carry it out. The proximity alone requires special attention.

Remember that this bill calls for a strategy, which is different than authorizing any new cross-border operations. That would come up after the strategy has been written up and presented to Congress (in classified form, thanks to the Senate vote) three months after enactment. Kucinich and Paul are both retiring and won’t be around to read it. Had that not been the case, they might have been able to react to what the U.S. will actually do.

Until the other four find out what that is, it’s irresponsible to say the U.S. doesn’t need a strategy, especially considering the continuing oil trade between them and Venezuela, led by a well-known Iranian ally. Yes, energy independence would help mitigate that factor, and indeed it is helping. But it’s not going to go away in three months, nor are the well-documented activities of Hezbollah and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. What, aside from short-term cost savings, would the U.S. gain by ignoring all this?

Disposal Day #152: Dealings with despots

STORY #1: SJGR

So far, the U.S. has stayed out of the conflict in Syria except to tell President Bashar Assad to stand down. But now that word has it that his military is planning to use chemical weapons, including sarin gas, against the rebels, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has started to speak of “consequences.” More specifically, according to Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), that would amount to “securing these weapons caches that have weapons of mass destruction in them.”

So firearms, tanks and rockets don’t merit that kind of U.S. involvement, but sarin gas does? Who in Aleppo cares which weapons are being used, as long as they know their own government might kill them in a minute? And shouldn’t Syria’s access to weapons of mass destruction have become common knowledge long before now? If U.S. intervention was always on the table, they should have been consistent and started it months ago. And what’s up with the continued absence of a no-fly zone? Warheads containing sarin bomblets are typically dropped from planes, you know.

STORY #2: ¡Cuba sí!

Just after the below story happened, Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-CO) decided to take up a new cause: normalized trade relations with Cuba:

Another out-of-date policy from the Cold War is the trade embargo on Cuba. The world has changed, and it is long past time that we change our policies with Cuba. . . . It does not make our country safer and it does no good to the people of Cuba. That regime has survived 50 years of sanctions. Old age and ill health will end [the Castros'] rule rather than the embargo. A better approach is building relationships between the people and businesses here and the people and businesses in Cuba.

If they can establish trade with Cuba and maintain leverage on human rights reforms, they should. See below for an example of a good starting point.

STORY #3: Needs improvement

On the one hand, legislation to grant Russia permanent normal trade relations (PNTR) passed both chambers of Congress with broad bipartisan support; it does have enormous potential for American exports and, consequently, American jobs; and it includes languages that punishes Russian human rights violators. On the other hand, another version of the same bill included language that would punish purveyors of similar human rights violations worldwide. That’s the reason four senators voted against this one. Which one of them will draft the “Punishing Human Rights Violators Everywhere Act of 2013″? Imagine combining that with a bill to lift the Cuba embargo. It could actually pass!

Not an UN-necessary treaty

When the inventor of the World Wide Web says there are good reasons for the United Nations (UN) to stay out of regulating the Internet, and that regulation is a legitimate prospect, it’s worth thinking about. But that doesn’t mean every UN proposal made thereafter will be excessively regulatory – especially when similar regulations already exist nationally. In short: The Senate should not have rejected signing the UN Convention on the Rights with Persons with Disabilities.

The signature went down in a 61-38 vote, five votes short of a two-thirds requirement for passage, despite having been previously signed by President Obama in 2009 and then-President George W. Bush in 2006. Eight Republicans voted for it, notably including Sens. John McCain (R-AZ) and Kelly Ayotte (R-NH). Opponents predictably raised the specter of a threat to U.S. sovereignty. Supporters said, rightfully, the treaty would not change U.S. law.

Read the text of the treaty and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and consider the following examples of their similarity:

Treaty: Article 5 prohibits “all discrimination on the basis of disability.”
ADA: Objective is “a . . . comprehensive national mandate for the elimination of discrimination” against the disabled.

Treaty: Paragraph 1 of Article 9 calls for measures to increase accessibility to “buildings, roads, transportation and other outdoor facilities.”
ADA: Part B of Subchapter II requires new vehicles purchased for the purpose of public fixed-route transportation to be accessible to disabled persons.

Treaty: Article 20 on personal mobility and Article 24 on education require reasonable accommodation such as Braille, hearing aids, wheelchairs, etc. to those who need them.
ADA: Repeatedly requires “auxiliary aids and services” for disabled persons.

And unlike the treaty, the ADA is legally binding. There is nothing to suggest that disabled children who are home-schooled would need to be treated differently, as Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) inferred, or that it would “create new abortion rights,” as other Republicans feared. On that note, Article 25 on health requires disabled persons to have access to the same “sexual and reproductive health” care and programs as their fellow citizens. Again, non-discrimination.

So why sign the treaty if the ADA covers disability rights? The real question is, why not sign? If the ADA is solid, no U.S. politician should worry about UN monitors flying in to criticize them, which is the worst that would happen. Besides, as Sen. John Kerry (D-PA) pointed out, it would lend the U.S. some extra leverage when advocating for disabled Americans living or traveling abroad. There simply aren’t enough cons for the vote to have gone the way it did.

What’s the point in nominating Rice?

Nobody spent a lot of time thinking about Susan Rice, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations (UN), until the attacks on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya. That’s not the kind of starting point anyone would want for an outside-the-Beltway reputation. But that’s what’s come to define her ever since her name started being mentioned in the same breath as “next Secretary of State.” Even though she can’t be held personally accountable for much, if anything, surrounding the attack, there’s no way her nomination would be worth fighting for now.

Naturally, President Obama is putting the best face on her record, assuring everyone that she has done an “extraordinary” job as UN ambassador. Senate Republicans, on the other hand, have been torn between outright opposition to her nomination and, in the case of Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-GA), blaming the rest of the administration for making her look bad. That’s nice of him.

The central sticking point is her early contention that the Benghazi attack resulted from protests over that stupid anti-Muslim video. Rice has since disavowed claims that the video had anything to do with the attack. She and her supporters have chalked up her earlier statements to “the fog of war,” which isn’t unreasonable, but sounds an awful lot like buck-passing for someone who may be in line for one of the most responsible positions in the free world.

Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), for her part, was reminded of 1998 attacks on U.S. embassies in Africa; Rice was Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs at the time, and told Collins she was “not directly involved” with the decision not to send additional security to those embassies. Sound familiar? And, as Collins pointed out, Rice had been in a position to offer rebuttals to the decision that was eventually made. In the case of Benghazi, Collins said, Rice could have qualified tying the attack to the video by bringing up the fact that some were tying it to organized terror.

In both cases, Rice has been established as someone who either doesn’t think before speaking, or doesn’t speak at all. These may only be two examples out of a lifetime of work in international relations, but they’re some pretty big examples. Her biggest accomplishment as Obama’s UN ambassador, on the other hand, is convincing then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates that it was in the nation’s best interests to vote for a no-fly zone over Libya during its civil war. And she certainly didn’t do that alone.

Obama’s next Secretary of State will need to be someone who is not only more judicious with what they tell the media, of all parties, but someone with more global stature than Rice. Hillary Clinton was a sure thing. Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) would be a sure thing. Rice is not – and that’s assuming she could even make it past Senate confirmation.

The Mac Pack strikes back

Well, it’s over. Eight days of cross-border fighting between Israel and the Gaza Strip that, when you think about it, was merely an exacerbated version of existing tensions. Despite seemingly putting most of the blame on Israel just five days ago, Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi was the one to broker the ceasefire, signaling that his relationship with Israel won’t be completely contention-free, but will at least be civil. Apparently it also signals that American leadership is weak and dumb. Wait, what?

That’s the opinion of Sens. John McCain (R-AZ), Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Kelly Ayotte (R-NH), “the president’s staunchest foreign policy critics in the Senate,” who said the following in a statement:

. . . the recent fighting in Gaza underscores that this is a moment in history when the future of the Middle East has never been less certain – and when the actions or inaction of the United States will be critical to determining what path this vital region takes. From the worsening civil war in Syria to the security vacuum in Libya, and from Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons to heightened tensions in Iraq, what happens in the Middle East will impact America’s vital national security interests for the foreseeable future, and stronger, smarter American leadership is desperately needed. There is no pivoting away from that fact.

If they’re referring to a weak economy undercutting the U.S.’s ability to lead on an international scale the way it used to, no, there is no pivoting away from that fact. But if they’re merely angry that Morsi was the one to get the ceasefire done and not President Obama, they doth protest too much, methinks.

It’s true that Obama didn’t do much during the crisis, besides some statements and well-placed phone calls to Morsi. But if that’s all he needed to do, he should be getting kudos. Evidently a more hands-on approach from him wasn’t necessary. Unless the Mac Pack (see what I did there?) expected Obama to press some kind of diplomatic button and end the rocket fire in one second, looks like Morsi handled it as well as he could. Did they expect a lasting peace agreement?

They’re right that the Middle East is critical for American interests. But Morsi has demonstrated that not all issues there require direct U.S. involvement, and they can even solve their own problems sometimes. Their statement throws in Syria’s civil war, weak leadership in Libya, nuclear development in Iran and “heightened tensions in Iraq,” as if they’re all America’s problem. Admittedly, I’d rather have the U.S. take the lead on those than Russia or China, but I’d also rather have NATO or some such group (not the UN) take the lead than the U.S.

No, the statement doesn’t mention Obama directly, but it doesn’t have to. “American leadership” can only refer to one person.

The 14-year-old should have gotten it

It’s time once again for The Future American’s FAIL OF THE WEEK! Every Saturday, I name a person or group who has spent the past seven days behaving in a particularly idiotic way. Since it’s my belief that idiocy knows no politics, nobody is safe.

This week’s fail was brought to you by the Nobel Committee. Actually, in a lot of ways, I feel sorry for them because the pickings for this year’s Nobel Peace Prize were clearly very slim. But pity doesn’t excuse their decision to award the prize to the European Union (EU). Commentators are out in full force, theorizing why they receive it; the general consensus is that they’ve been so busy trying to stay afloat (or return to afloat status at best) economically that they haven’t bothered getting into any wars, least of all with each other.

Seriously? That’s the threshold these days? Avoid going to war for a year and you’re the world’s champion of peace? Despite the fact that non-relief military intervention around the world might have been on the table if you could afford it? That’s even sadder than President Obama winning because, essentially, he wasn’t threatening to invade anyone in his first year as president. (I remember struggling to justify that and giving up because justifying that is nigh impossible.) But I guess they were still coming off their “Bush low” that year.

Here’s Nobel chairman Thorbjørn Jagland with more on this:

The EU is currently undergoing grave economic difficulties and considerable social unrest. The Norwegian Nobel Committee wishes to focus on what it sees as the EU’s most important result: the successful struggle for peace and reconciliation and for democracy and human rights.

When? Efforts at peace and reconciliation within the EU had largely been completed long before this year:

Jagland praised the EU for rebuilding Europe from the devastation of World War Two and for its role in spreading stability after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

New wars between any two or more countries within the bloc would cripple the entire thing, and it’s already crippled enough. The EU maintains regional stability because they literally have no choice, not because they’re trying to say “Look how peaceful we are!” They are not a beacon of hope for the world. They are a laughingstock. And now the Nobel Committee has unwittingly brought itself along for the awful, awful ride.

You know who deserves the Nobel Peace Prize, and would have deserved it even if many of us hadn’t just found out about her this week? This girl. She has more guts than the entire EU put together.

Meet the Romney Doctrine

I’ll give former Gov. Mitt Romney (R-MA) for one thing: When you close your mind, he looks and sounds authoritative on foreign policy. But while reading the full text of his speech on the subject to the Virginia Military Institute, one quote jumped out at me: “The president has not signed one new free trade agreement in the past four years.” That’s odd, I thought. Didn’t he sign new agreements with Colombia, Panama and South Korea? Yes. I believe that would be a LIEon Romney’s part. Or maybe he just forgot.

Then there was the bit about President Obama desiring “daylight” between the U.S. and Israel. You can find his exact quote here. Most analysts believe he was expressing concern about the effect of American and Israeli policies being exactly alike, which is reasonable enough. But the way Romney used the word in his speech, you’d think Obama desired weaker diplomatic ties with Israel. Should we take this to mean that Romney does want American and Israeli policies to be exactly alike?

I’ve screamed about Congress being to blame for automatic defense spending cuts for weeks now, and I’m not about to do it again. Of course, Romney’s speech would leave you with the impression that it’s all Obama’s fault. That, and continued strife in Syria, their growing war with Turkey, the consulate attack in Libya, and the stalling of statehood talks between Israel and Palestine. Of those, we could blame Obama’s State Department for taking their eye off the ball when the embassy requested improved security.

But how could we tie him to anything else on that list? He didn’t intervene in the Syrian civil war, he isn’t intervening in their battles with Turkey, and he isn’t doing much to broker Israeli-Palestinian talks. In short, Obama isn’t flexing America’s foreign policy muscle enough. I’ll admit that it would help, albeit symbolically, if he were to be clearer on exactly who he supports whenever tension erupts elsewhere in the world. But that’s not enough for Romney.

If this speech was meant to be a complete summation of his approach to global affairs, we can expect a foreign policy doctrine from Romney that embodies the worst stereotype of everyone else’s doctrines: America as the world’s corpulent, sweaty policeman. Nothing about streamlining the military to be more effective. Nothing about mitigating the influence of Russia and China. Not anti-diplomacy, thankfully, but decidedly pessimistic about its potential. He gets points for saying recipients of foreign aid should live up to certain responsibilities. Otherwise, this was amateur hour.

We know how low Romney’s credibility is when it comes to spending; he won’t entertain even the possibility of defense cutbacks. What are the chances that he’ll entertain the possibility of nation-building cutbacks? Or at least bullshit cutbacks?

Disposal Day #141: Safe assumptions

STORY #1: Aim high, fall short

That’s exactly what the U.S. might be doing in light of a wave of attacks by Afghan troops on the NATO forces training them to take over their own security. The general worry is that this will result in a) NATO troops pulling out too soon, for the sake of saving more lives, or b) those same troops pulling out too slowly as they “pause” to deal with this. But White House Press Secretary Jay Carney isn’t worried; in fact, his exact words were “It doesn’t affect the timeline.”

For now, maybe it doesn’t. But if this isn’t handled properly (have they considered that the Afghans might have collective PTSD?), it certainly will, and Carney – and, by extension, the entire White House – will look like chumps. Here’s what I would have said: “While we hope that actions taken to stop these attacks will not affect our withdrawal timeline, we must accept the possibility of delays.” That way, if things do go well, they look like they examined the issue seriously and didn’t just dismiss some very legitimate concerns over infighting with large firearms.

STORY #2: A funnier dismissal

That came from Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, seeking to assuage the worries of Chinese officials that the U.S.’s new geopolitical focus on the Asia-Pacific region had “too much emphasis on China’s military build-up rather than economic or diplomatic efforts.” Now why would that be, Chinese officials? Are you worried that they might find something disagreeable about your military build-up? Hmmm?

Of course the focus is “aimed to contain China,” per the headline of the above-linked article. But that containment doesn’t have to be on a military front. That’s a red herring for both sides. We’re all well aware of how much muscle China can flex by virtue of how much foreign debt it holds, and how many trade relationships it has. That’s not a ball off of which you’d want to take your eye.

STORY #3: Shit just got (Is)real

Iran has insisted for at least a year that Israel and the U.S. were behind covert attacks on its nuclear program – as if any other country were a suspect. This week, an official disclosed that power lines leading to two of their centrifuging facilities had been blown up, leading to speculation that those fighting Iran’s nuclear program are actually in Iran. I ask you: If you had the choice between a group of American soldiers and a group of Israeli ones, which do you suppose would be less difficult to tell apart from any Iranian? And which has one of the deadliest spy services on the planet? And which has a head of state that keeps talking about Iran getting a nuke real soon? (None of this is a bad thing, by the way. This is better than sending in the ground troops.)