US Sources Question French Intervention Strategy In Mali

Sometimes the most interesting nugget in a story comes buried all the way at the end; that is the case here with this story on Reuters about France's sudden involvement in the slow-burning civil war in Mali. Near the end of the Reuters piece is this comment from the infamous “anonymous source”, identified by Reuters as a US military official, who asks: “I don't know what the French endgame is for this. What is their goal? It reminds me of our initial move into Afghanistan.”

Before we unpack that statement, a little background on the current situation in Mali. Until last year, Mali had been considered one of the more successful states in West Africa, though a state that still dealt with a long-simmering issue of civil unrest in the northern part of the country where separatists hoped to carve out their own homeland. In one of the great examples of the law of unintended consequences, this bid received a massive shot in the arm from the US/French/British-led campaign to support the rebels in Libya in their bid to oust Moammar Gadhafi. His overthrow meant the return of thousands of Tuareg mercenaries, formerly employed by Gadhafi, to their homelands in northern Mali, where they teamed up with al-Qadea-leaning militias and turned a minor bit of civil unrest into a full-blown civil war.

The Malian army, not happy with the way the war was being run, staged a coup, overthrowing Mali's president (The Guardian's Glenn Greenwald notes this is a double-irony for the West since the coup was led by a US-trained army captain). With no functioning military, the Tuareg/al-Qaeda alliance took control over half of the country before having their own setback when the Islamist militias turned on their Tuareg allies. 2012 ended with the situation in Mali an utter mess and Mali's neighbors pleading for assistance to prevent Mali from turning into a failed state haven for al-Qaeda-linked groups.

The US has been promoting a strategy built on the “Somali model”, at least the most recent version of foreign intervention in Somalia, which has been the most successful in the past 20 years. In practice, this means providing funding and logistical support to troops from neighboring African nations who will do the actual fighting. In Somalia this, has been a mix of primarily Ugandan, Kenyan, Ethiopian troops who have managed to largely defeat Somalia's homegrown Islamist militia, al-Shabaab, and restore some semblance of a functioning government to Somalia.

That was the plan, at least for Mali as well, until last week when the French began spearheading their own much more direct intervention, which started with airstrikes against Islamist positions, most notably surrounding the city of Gao. There are now also reports of French special forces troops on the ground in Mali. Why France decided to launch their Mali mission is a topic that is actively being discussed, though it could likely be because the force of 2,000-3,000 peacekeepers from a collection of West African nations would not have been ready to deploy for several months, perhaps not until September, and perhaps not even then.

And that brings us back to our unnamed US military source.  He/she goes on to add: “Air strikes are fine. But pretty soon you run out of easy targets. Then what do you do? What do you do when they [the  militias] head up into the mountains?”  Sadly, since he/she is anonymous, it is impossible to know if they asked these same important questions when the US went stumbling into Afghanistan and Iraq. Perhaps they are offering up these comments as a sort of advice, hard-won knowledge from the foibles of those two US interventions. But it is hard not to read these comments as being both hypocritical and condescending given the past decade of US foreign involvement, our continued questionable presence in Afghanistan and the calls by the DC warhawks, particularly those of the neoconservative stripe, for a US campaign against Iran, yet another military mission that is unlikely to achieve its tactical goal – elimination of Iran's nuclear program – while possessing a high likelihood of spurring a whole chain of unexpected and unintended consequences.

The “Somali model” idea pushed by the United States sounds good on paper, the problem is that while Somalia had several neighbors with large populations – Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia – to supply troops, the would-be ECOWAS force for Mali is being drawn from a collection of fairly small states like Ghana and Sierra Leone, not countries known for having large and robust armies. Nigeria is the one large neighbor that is pledging troops, but Nigeria is also dealing with their own separatist movement (MEND – the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta) and their own Islamist uprising (Boko Harum), so it is hard to understand why the Nigerians would then suddenly have such better luck when operating in Mali when they have struggled so much against these two groups at home. The proposed Malian peacekeeping force is also made up of only 2,000-3,000 soldiers; by contrast, the Ugandans alone contributed up to 16,000 troops to the ANISOM mission in Somalia. 

Our unnamed source is asking some good and important questions, but they are questions that highlight the problem with the international community since 9/11: there is now a far greater motivation to intervene in troubled nations (especially when supposed “al-Qaeda” forces are involved) and to intervene right away!  But these proposed interventions are launched without clear military objectives in mind, and more importantly, without a plan for the “day after” the initial military campaign is launched, or in other words, without an exit strategy.  The United States has spent 12 years trying to find a way out of Afghanistan, you have to wonder if France will now find that it was very easy to get into Mali, but that it will be very hard to get out.

Divac, Eagleburger And Non-Intervention

What can you learn about non-interventionist foreign policy from a former NBA player? Surprisingly, a good bit. This past weekend I happened to watch another installment of ESPN's excellent documentary series 30 for 30, the subject of “Once Brothers” were Vlade Divac and Drazen Petrovic. The two were stars of Yugoslavia's national basketball team and were both trying to break into the NBA in the early 1990s at the same time as their country was coming apart. Divac, a Serbian and Petrovic, a Croatian, had been extremely close, but their relationship ended as Serbian-led Yugoslavia went to war with Croatia and Slovenia after the two former republics declared their independence from Yugoslavia. Divac inadvertently became Public Enemy #1 in Croatia for refusing to take a Croatian flag during a post-victory celebration for the Yugoslav national team a few months earlier, an act that would help to drive him and Petrovic apart. Petrovic's untimely death in a car accident ended any chance of reconciliation between the two former friends. “Once Brothers” featured the story of Divac's first trip back to Croatia in 20 years to visit Petrovic's parents.

The Yugoslav War also came up in discussions about the legacy of recently-deceased former Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger. Though he no longer served in government, the jowly, bespectacled Eagleburger was a frequent guest on the news-talk circuit, speaking on issues of US Foreign Policy. In the 1990s, Eagleburger had been adamant about the US not intervening in the Yugoslav conflicts. From a humanitarian standpoint it was a tough call. The Yugoslav War was the worst conflict in Europe since the end of World War II, civilians bore the brunt of the fighting, and thanks to advances in satellite technology and the birth of 24-hour news outlets like CNN, images of the war were beamed into homes around the world. But Eagleburger argued that Yugoslavia wasn't America's fight and that we would be quickly drawn into a conflict that would last for years. The United States stayed out of the conflict – for awhile at least; by 1995 the US-led peace talks resulted in the Dayton Accords that ended fighting in Bosnia, the United States was also later the driving force in a NATO bombing campaign that brought about an end to the last stage of the Yugoslav conflicts, the fighting between Serbia and its breakaway region, Kosovo in 1999.

You could probably write a series of novels on what might have happened if the US hadn't followed Eagleburger's advice and had intervened in Yugoslavia in the early 1990s. If current examples are any indication, we'd likely still be engaged in the region in a big way. Eight years after the start of Gulf War II, the United States is still in Iraq and is arguing to stay for awhile longer to support the fragile Iraqi government; ten years after going into Afghanistan to get Osama bin Laden, the US is still there as well, fighting the insurgent Taliban even after the death of OBL and with plans to stay until 2014, at least; and coalition forces seem to be getting more deeply involved in Libya, with NATO stepping up airstrikes against Gadhafi's regime. This last one is probably the best analogy to what could have happened in Yugoslavia – it is easy to see the US (and maybe a reluctant coalition of European nations like France and Great Britain) going in to set up “safety zones” for civilians and quickly being drawn into the fighting on the side of the Croats/Slovenians against the Soviet/Russian-backed Serbs, just as NATO is now supporting the Libyan rebels against Gadhafi in that supposedly “humanitarian” intervention.

It's no doubt that the fighting in Yugoslavia was bloody, resulting in far too many civilian deaths, but the countries that emerged seem to be doing pretty well today: Slovenia is a member of the European Union and a prosperous and popular tourist destination; Croatia too is doing well after recovering from the war and is in the final stages of becoming an EU member; even Serbia is emerging from almost two decades of largely self-imposed isolation from Europe, thanks to the policies of nationalist leaders like Slobodan Milosevic, and is now looking towards a future in the EU. Conversely Bosnia, where the warring Bosnian, Croat and Serb factions were wrestled into a peace deal in the Dayton Accords 15 years earlier, remains a deeply divided state; about once a month an op-ed will appear with a dire warning about Bosnia's impending collapse. Kosovo meanwhile is fairing little better – its independence is still not recognized by more than half of the members of the United Nations and their government is alleged to have more in common with the Sopranos than the Founding Fathers.

“Once Brothers” ended with Divac traveling to Zagreb, Croatia. Many of the Croats recognized him, but few approached, still apparently harboring ill-feelings towards him from two decades earlier. But the streets themselves were peaceful and well-kept, and Divac himself was warmly greeted by Petrovic's parents. A post-script to the story said that he was slowly rebuilding his former friendships with other Croats from the former Yugoslav national team like former NBA-er Toni Kukoc. Perhaps the message here is that intervention, however well-intentioned it may be, in the long run isn't the best course of action and that warring people need to find their own ways to peace.

Arab League Doubles Down

While Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and UN Ambassador Susan Rice are said to have led the charge within the American government to intervene for humanitarian grounds in Libya, the act that seems to have spurred the global community to action was the Arab League's call for a no-fly zone. Within a few days of the Arab League's announcement, which amounted to their symbolically turning their backs on one of their more famous members, Col. Moammar Gadhafi, aircraft from the United States, Great Britain and France were patrolling the skies over Libya.

Now the Arab League is calling for another no-fly zone, this time over the Gaza Strip. That call is spurred by an increase in fighting between the Gazans and Israel over the past week, which has seen rocket attacks launched from Gaza met by Israeli airstrikes. So far the casualty totals are one wounded in Israel and 19 dead in Gaza. That statistic has the Arab League calling Israel's actions “brutal” and asking that the UN Security Council “consider the Israeli aggression in the Gaza Strip on an urgent basis to stop its siege and impose a no-fly rule on the Israeli military to protect civilians in the Gaza Strip,” according to the League's formal statement. Not surprisingly, the Israelis responded by telling the Arab League that instead of UN resolutions, they should focus on getting the folks in Gaza to stop launching missiles into Israel.

The Arab League's call for a no-fly zone over Gaza won't fly (forgive the pun) if for no other reason than a resolution authorizing it will be vetoed by the United States within the Security Council as are any resolutions that are perceived to interfere with Israel's security stance. But the fact that the Arab League is publicly calling for a no-fly zone in the first place is yet one more bit of tension in an already tense region. Meanwhile, both the Gazans and the Israelis say they are willing to abide by a cease-fire, so long as the other side stops shooting first. As to why there has been a flare up in attacks between Israel and Gaza after a period of relative calm (relative to the region at least), a couple of factors are likely at play: a recent attempt at rapprochement between the Hamas-led government in Gaza and the Palestinian Authority government in the West Bank, as well as Palestine's potential unilateral declaration of statehood that could happen later this year, both factor that would drastically change the current Israel-Palestine equation.

A Nobel Stand Against China

Congratulations are in order for Liu Xiaobo for being the recipient of this year's Nobel Peace Prize, though it's unlikely that Liu himself knows about the honor since he's currently serving a decade-long stretch in a Chinese labor camp for the crime of advocating for human rights in China. Liu is regarded as China's best-known political prisoner; his life as a dissident goes back to the infamous student-led Tienanmen Square protests of 1989. Arrested and released several times since for his political activities, he has been in jail since December 2008 for his role in authoring a call to the Chinese government to respect basic human rights.

Congratulations too are in order for the Nobel Committee and the government of Norway for not caving into the bullying tactics of the People's Republic – Chinese officials protested vehemently against the campaign to honor Liu with the Nobel Peace Prize and warned the Norway that if he won the award Chinese-Norwegian relations would likely suffer as a result. But as Nobel Committee Chairman Thorbjoern Jagland explained: “we have to speak when others cannot speak. As China is rising, we should have the right to criticize ... We want to advance those forces that want China to become more democratic.” Or in other words, if China wants to be treated like one of the leading nations in the world, then that role comes with certain responsibilities, among them are not jailing people for saying things the government doesn't like, not oppressing certain domestic groups based on their ethnicity, and not using your economic clout to bully your neighbors like China recently tried to do with Japan. (For a full explanation of the recent China-Japan diplomatic spat and China's attempt at playing the “resource card” against Japan, check out my most recent post at The Mantle.) It's a simple and worthwhile message, yet one that few governments or organizations seem to be willing to press against China, downplaying any criticism of Beijing in order to maintain access to China's billion-plus consumers, and in the case of the United States, also so that China will continue to buy up American debt. Of course the result of these inactions is an ever more-powerful China that feels it can flaunt the norms of international behavior without fear of repercussions.

Along with Liu himself, it's unlikely on Friday that many other Chinese knew of the honor given to one of their countrymen either – the satellite feeds of the BBC and CNN, which were carrying the Nobel presentation ceremony live, reportedly went dark in China just as Liu's name was being announced.

Peace At Last! World War I Finally Ends

Some great news out of Europe – the First World War, a conflict so horrible it was known as the “war to end all wars” is finally officially ending 96 years after it began.

And no, you didn't miss 90 years of history, the fighting actually did end in 1918 and the conflict officially came to a halt in 1919 with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles.  But that treaty also stipulated that Germany pay war reparations, primarily to Belgium and France; on Sunday Germany will make the last of those payments with a sum of approximately $93 million, finally satisfying the conditions of the Treaty of Versailles and “officially” ending the war.

As a condition to the treaty, France and Belgium demanded enormous sums of money as reparations from Germany, about 226 billion Reichmarks in 1919.  John Maynard Keynes, Britain's top negotiator at the time, was so outraged at the sum that he walked away from the peace negotiations and warned that Germany wouldn't be able to properly recover from the war themselves if they had to payout so much of their national treasury to France and Belgium, a condition Keynes said would lead to future problems.  Those future problems turned out to be World War II.  The huge debt payments did, as Keynes predicted, bankrupt the German state in the 1920s; which led to the rise of Hitler and the Nazi Party.  The rest, as they say, is history.

The German payment will go towards paying off bonds issued after the end of the conflict against the payments Germany owed to the Allied nations, most of those bonds today are held individuals or organizations like pension funds.  And in case you’re wondering, officially World War II isn’t over either – at least as far as Russia and Japan are concerned, the two sides have never signed a peace treaty due to a dispute over the Kuril Islands, which Russia occupied from Japan in the final days of the war and continue to hold to this day.  North and South Korea have also never signed a peace treaty to formally end the Korean War either.

Bill Clinton, Russia And The Settlements

The current round of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks are once again slouching towards failure and much of the blame, at least on the part of the Palestinians, is falling on Israel's failure to maintain a freeze on settlement building within the West Bank. The “settlements”, in case you haven't been keeping up on the details of the negotiations, are Israeli-only housing projects built on the land the Palestinians hope will one day become their homeland; settlement blocks are ringed by security zones and linked by private roads, causing a map of the West Bank to bear a striking resemblance to a piece of Swiss cheese. The Israeli government meanwhile insists the settlements aren't a real issue but merely an excuse used by the Palestinians to sink the latest round of talks.

Now Bill Clinton has weighed in on the issue, laying the blame for the fragile state of the peace talks not only on the settlement issue, but on Israel's Russian-born immigrant population in particular. Clinton describes the Russian Jews who emigrated to Israel in huge numbers following the end of the Soviet Union in 1991 as the hardest of the hardline segments in Israel. Russian Jews moved to the settlement blocks in large numbers and now that they are there, they don't want to leave, providing a major obstacle to a negotiated Israel-Palestine settlement in the process.

It's certainly an interesting theory on Clinton's part, and it points to a demographic reality that isn't discussed much outside of Israel. It is estimated that one in six Israelis today were born in the former Soviet Union; in Israel's fractious political system, there are several parties that cater especially to Russian-speaking Israelis. And if Israel's current Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, originally from the former Soviet Republic of Moldova is any indication, Clinton may be onto something as far as the political attitudes of Russian-born Jews; Lieberman has a long history of supporting aggressive policies towards the Palestinians, including in the past endorsing the idea of mass deportations of Palestinians from the West Bank.

Israel/Palestine - Why Now?

The big foreign policy news from Friday is that apparently the US has brought the Israelis and Palestinians kicking and screaming back to the negotiating table to try to hammer out some sort of lasting peace agreement. The big question is why?

Finding an end to the intractable Israel-Palestine problem has been something of a mania for the past several presidents; sadly it has also proved to be a fool’s errand. There's no reason to think this time will be any different: there has been no substantive change on the ground, if anything the two sides are less suited for talks than they were when the last round of negotiations fell apart under George W. Bush – the Israeli government is even more right-wing and hawkish than it was previously, while Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is even weaker than he once was (not to mention that his term of office actually ended a year and a half ago...). And if the two sides were just waiting for George W. to leave the scene before starting negotiations again, then talks would have started long ago, not more than a year and a half into the presidency of Barack Obama.

Given all that, I can't see why anyone in Washington can believe these talks will be anything more than yet another Mid-East fail. The government of Benjamin Netanyahu is steadfast in their refusal to put a full and binding halt to Israeli settlement construction; the key irritant to the Palestinian side (they raise a good point – how can they be expected to have a country when Israeli settlements are swallowing it up bit by bit?) Meanwhile Israel refuses to negotiate with Hamas, who hold half the cards in Palestine as the ruling party in Gaza.

Both Israel and the United States consider Hamas a terrorist organization, and both maintain that they won't negotiate with terrorists, which is true, except when it's not... The United States does negotiate with terrorists, and does so quite frequently in fact. The success of the much-ballyhooed “surge” in Iraq was based in large part on negotiating with “terrorists”, particularly Sunni tribes, who following the 2003 invasion became allied with al-Qaeda militants in the country. The US negotiated with, and eventually won over, many Sunni militias, rechristening them the “Sons of Iraq” who were not dedicated to rebuilding their country. Now, as we try to replicate the surge strategy in Afghanistan, a key facet is identifying and negotiating with “more moderate” elements of the Taliban – another group the US considers to be terrorists. And it's worth noting that the successful peace process in Northern Ireland came about after the British began negotiating with a group they considered terrorists, the Irish Republican Army.

The simple truth is that peace negotiations mean sitting down with people you hate. Or as the great Israeli statesman Yitzhak Rabin is often quoted as saying: “you don't make peace with your friends. You make it with very unsavory enemies.” Excluding Hamas from the talks alone is a clear indication that no one is serious about this process actually yielding results. After a couple of weeks the talks will likely end after Palestinian militants launch one of their home-made rockets into Israel, or a hawkish member of the Israeli government (looking at you Avigdor Lieberman) makes another ill-timed announcement about the further expansion of Israeli settlements; or both. As other nations around the world make a bid to be big-time players on the world stage, playing moderator for the Israel-Palestine peace process is a role the United States should gladly relinquish.

Questioning Peacekeeping

Interesting piece from Foreign Policy’s website about Nigeria, Somalia and peacekeeping; on the surface the story is about the international community’s efforts to enlist Nigeria in peacekeeping efforts in Somalia. As Africa’s most-populous country and one of the continent’s economic powerhouses, it’s believed that Nigeria’s involvement in peacekeeping efforts would be a huge boost to a mission that is at best under-resourced and at worst in danger of outright failure. But Nigeria has so far refused, and for a very valid reason – they say that it’s foolish to send “peacekeepers” to a place where peace does not exist in the first place.

It’s hard to argue the Nigerians point. Peacekeeping missions, particularly UN-led peacekeeping missions, have gotten a pretty bad rap in the past twenty or so years (basically the post-Cold War period), marked by some tragic failures: Rwanda in 1994, Bosnia in 1995 and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which continues to this day. In Rwanda and Bosnia in particular, it’s widely acknowledged that UN peacekeeping troops stood by while mass slaughters of civilians took place basically under their noses. The UN argument is that the peacekeepers – essentially policemen in fancy uniforms – weren’t equipped to engage in combat with armed militias. Of course there is a good counter-argument to make that irregular militias are brutal when it comes to slaughtering women and children, but pretty quickly lose their nerve when someone actually starts shooting back at them, and that even a small number of lightly armed troops could have made a critical difference, though the UN will dispute this and will say they can’t put their peacekeepers into harm’s way.

But again, that’s exactly the Nigerians point – how can you keep a peace that doesn’t exist? Sending UN blue helmets (UN peacekeepers wear blue helmets to designate them as a UN-mandated force, hence the nickname) into a situation where armed militias are known to be operating and where civilians are at-risk, without the means to adequately defend the civilians or themselves makes them worse than useless; it not only leaves the civilians at the mercy of armed thugs, it undermines the legitimacy of the UN as an organization. Frankly, what’s needed in a situation like Bosnia, Rwanda the DRC or Somalia are not peacekeepers, but peacemakers – troops with enough firepower, and the mandate to use it, to restore some sense of order to a lawless place and to take civilian lives out of immediate danger (important to note here that the current Somali peacekeeping mission is under the authority of the African Union, not the UN, but the scenario is the same). But putting your nation’s young men and women at risk of dying for a notion as esoteric as saving the lives of some people halfway around the world is a tough sell in most places, which, as the Nigerians point out, has lead to the spate of under-resourced and ultimately ineffective peacekeeping missions we’ve seen in recent years.

For their part, the Nigerians are saying count them out, for now. They don’t intend to put their troops on the line until the international community gets a whole lot more serious about dedicating the time, troops and resources necessary to bring about a lasting solution to Somalia’s two-decades of strife. Hopefully it is a position that will spark a meaningful debate on the role of peacekeepers and peacekeeping missions around the world.

Obama's Nobel Prize? (and an honor for Bill Clinton too)

I'll admit, I was pretty surprised to wake up this morning to hear that President Obama had won the Nobel Peace Prize. It's nice to know that he was pretty surprised himself.

Don't get me wrong, I think Obama, in broad terms, is on the right path in International Affairs: his multilateral approach to world affairs is correct - no single power dominates the world and future cooperation will depend on building coalitions to tackle global problems; I agree with his calls in Ghana and at the United Nations for countries to work together on common problems and for people around the world to hold their governments accountable fpr their actions (or inactions); he's right to try to "reset" relations with Russia; and while I think trying to rid the world of nuclear weapons is a pipe-dream, the goal at least is a nice one.

But I have to wonder what the Nobel Committee was thinking - Obama has great promise (their rationale in giving him the Prize), but little concrete success so far. Historically the Nobel Peace Prize has gone to people or groups in recognition of a past success, like when Menachem Begin and Mohamed Anwar Al-Sadat won in 1978 for signing the historic peace deal between Israel and Egypt, not to people for what they may do in the future.

And as Obama was getting his Nobel Peace Prize, former President Bill Clinton was getting an award of his own - a giant statue of himself to be unveiled in Pristina, the capital of Kosovo. The Kosovars hail Clinton as the man who convinced NATO to launch an aerial bombing campaign against Serbia, bringing to an end what the Kosovars say was a Serbian genocide against them and eventually setting the stage for them to declare independence from Serbia.

No word yet on whether Clinton will travel to Kosovo to see his likeness unveiled.

Two More Perspectives On Africa

While the TV outlets did a generally poor job of following Secretary Clinton's African trip (see above), there has been some good reporting from the news weeklies, including these two stories:

Before her trip began, Time magazine ran this piece about "blood computers", a play off the term "blood diamonds" - illegally-mined / illegally-sold rocks that helped fund the bloody, decades-long civil wars in Sierra Leone and Liberia. Now, according to Time, there's a new illicit trade in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (one of Sec. Clinton's stops) in rare minerals used in the manufacture of all the electronic goods we think we can't live without (cell phones, laptops, etc.). Building these devices requires some extremely rare minerals (found in big deposits in the DRC), so illegal mining operations of them are very lucrative, and an underlying cause of the fighting that has wracked the Congo for the past decade.

Meanwhile, Newsweek asked if South Africa had gone from a beacon of democracy to a 'rogue state'. Their story centered on the actions of President Jacob Zuma - his support for the oppressive regime of Robert Mugabe in neighboring Zimbabwe along with weapons sales to a host of questionable governments around the world. Newsweek goes on to ask if the US should really continue to seek a close relationship with South Africa, so long as Zuma seems to stray further and further from the path of respect for democracy and human rights laid down by former President Nelson Mandela.

Make Friends, Influence People - Hillary In Africa

It looks like reports of the political demise of the Clinton machine have been greatly exaggerated. This morning former President Bill Clinton capped off his mission to North Korea with the tearful reunion of two imprisoned US journalists with their overjoyed families, meanwhile current Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had a more low-key start to her seven-nation mission to Africa. And while her arrival may have lacked the live TV coverage of Bill’s return, it holds a lot of importance to America’s future.

Her trip is a sign of the importance the continent will play in the coming years to the United States’ foreign and energy policies, and is an admission that right now, the US is trailing China, and to a lesser degree the European Union, Russia and India in making friends in the region. Secretary Clinton is going to try to build on the good feelings that President Obama spread last month during his visit to Ghana, but her trip will include a few doses of tough love as well.

Clinton is (again) prodding the ever-squabbling leaders of Kenya to set aside their differences and get down to the business of actually running their country. Following the disputed presidential election at the end of 2007, Prime Minister Raila Odinga and President Mwai Kibaki have shared power, but have gotten little done in the country, preferring to let their respective sides snipe at each other (she said in Nairobi earlier today that she is disappointed the two men have not set up a tribunal to investigate the violence that rocked the country for weeks following the 2007 election). Clinton will also push South Africa to try to exert some influence on their neighbor, Zimbabwe, to move forward on promised democratic and economic reforms in that country as well.

Other stops on the itinerary include the oil-rich states of Angola and Nigeria (the why there is pretty self-explanatory), the war-torn Democratic Republic of the Congo and a stop in at the Cape Verde islands off the West Coast of Africa, which like Ghana, the Obama Administration is hoping to promote as a model of democracy and stability for the rest of Africa.

But what remains to be seen is how well Africa takes to the new American attention. The Kenyans were upset that Obama passed them up (his father, of course, was born in Kenya) for his first visit to sub-Saharan Africa; meanwhile other countries, most notably China, have been throwing money around in Africa without strings – like expecting the recipient countries to respect human rights or the rule of law – attached. So you have to wonder if some of Africa’s more dubious regimes (Zimbabwe for one) will take the American call to reform when they know there are countries out there willing to do business with them no matter how heinously they behave.

Carter Decries Gaza Situation (and cries)

Former President Jimmy Carter visited Gaza on Tuesday and slammed Israel for their treatment of the territory’s 1.5 million residents. Since their conflict with Hamas, who controls the territory last January, Israel has maintained a strict blockade on the Gaza Strip. But this has prevented many Gazans from repairing the thousands of buildings damaged or destroyed by the fighting. The Israeli blockade has been so tight that some Gazans have resorted to using mud to repair their damaged homes (mud historically has been used as a building material in the region so the idea's not all that crazy, we just don't usually think to build mud buildings in the middle of urban areas in the 21st century).

While the Washington Post said that Carter "decried" the Gaza destruction and the Israeli blockade, other media reports said that conditions on the ground moved him to tears. The former president didn't hold back in his criticism saying that the Gazans were being treated "more like animals than human beings", and that "never before in history has a large community been savaged by bombs and missiles and then deprived of the means to repair itself." Carter went on to say that the Israeli blockade has caused many Gazans to rely on smugglers, who use tunnels under the border from Egypt, to survive.

One interesting development - Carter said that Hamas' exiled leader Khaled Meshal, whom Carter met in Syria, told him that Hamas would accept a peace agreement with Israel if the Palestinians approved the measure in a referendum, and if Israel returned to its 1967 borders - leaving the West Bank and Gaza - this now puts Hamas in-line with the pan-Arab peace deal put forward by the Saudis in 2002.

Meanwhile a group of 40 humanitarian organizations, including the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), Oxfam International and CARE all called for Israel to lift its blockade to allow desperately needed humanitarian aid into Gaza.

Netanyahu Makes History (or maybe not)

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave a major speech yesterday on Israel's relations with the Palestinians where he for the first time endorsed the idea of a Palestinian state.

All in all it was a pretty mild endorsement, he only used the term "Palestinian state" three times and just one of those was in reference to an actual homeland for the Palestinians. And there were a few strings attached: the Palestinians would have to recognize Israel as a nation itself, give up claims to Jerusalem, give up claims of the "right of return" for Palestinians displaced by Israel's founding in 1948, not form a military, not control their own airspace, not form military agreements with other countries, and had to accept the continued growth of Israeli settlements in their territory. But they can have their own flag and anthem. (The full text of the Netanyahu speech is here).

So really it's not a very historic speech after all since the Palestinians will never accept the conditions Netanyahu is putting on them (in fact they've already rejected his offer). In many ways, the speech really was another round in an ongoing battle between Netanyahu and Barack Obama over the issue of Israeli settlements inside what the Palestinians hope one-day will be Palestine.

There are two problems with Israel and its settlements: first they're illegal under international law - an occupying country (Israel) can't just move its citizens into occupied lands. Second, Israel agreed to halt "all settlement activity" as part of the 2003 'Roadmap to Peace' with the Palestinians. Now the Bush Administration let Israel slide with a wink and a nod, not protesting as they continued to build and expand settlements in violation both of international law and their 2003 pledge. Netanyahu mentioned his handshake deal with Bush to Obama after he was sworn in as President, Obama in turn told him it’s a new day and a new administration and that the settlement activity had to stop.

Netanyahu has agreed, sort of - Israel won't build any new settlements, but they insist on 'natural growth' of the existing ones, meaning the settlements should be allowed to expand as their populations grow. There are about 500,000 Israelis living in settlements, which makes for a lot of growth...So far it's not an argument the Obama Administration is buying.

The problem for the two leaders is that neither one of them can afford to back down on the settlement issue. Obama recently gave his own major speech in Cairo, the Muslim world (a lousy term for such a diverse collection of countries and cultures, but an easy bit of shorthand to reference a big chunk of the globe) is looking for a different policy from America, and they're interested in concrete action, not just moving speeches. If Obama gives in on the settlements, it will likely be taken as a sign by the Muslim world that nothing's really changed as far as American policy. Netanyahu, meanwhile, is catching flak from members of his own ruling coalition for even suggesting there might be a Palestinian state and for putting any limits on the settlements.

But something has to give. The status quo has gone on too long. The Saudis earlier in the year said that their own peace proposal - peace between Israel and all the Arab states if Israel leaves the Occupied Territories - wouldn’t stay on the table much longer. Meanwhile Obama either has to take a hard-line with Netanyahu over the settlements or risk seeing his plans for a new relationship with the Muslim world fall apart. And Sunday's speech aside, Netanyahu is hoping not for history, but more of the same.

NK: lessons of war and peace

So as things seem to go from bad to worse on the Korean peninsula following North Korea's apparent nuclear test on Monday, the threat of military action is looming larger, driven both by the wild belligerence of the North Koreans, and foreign policy critics who insist that more sanctions against the 'Hermit Kingdom' are just a waste of time.

On Wednesday a North Korean official said that their country was no longer bound by the armistice that stopped the Korean War in 1953, after the United States and South Korea announced plans to search ships bound for the North that they suspected could be carrying material for their nuclear weapons or ballistic missile programs. At the same time, commentators - many from the neoconservative school of international relations - are popping up on TV urging Pres. Obama to take a 'harder line' (i.e. military action) against North Korea.

But Wired.com's Danger Room blog notes that not only would winning a war against North Korea be a long, brutal process, but also that winning the eventual peace would make Afghanistan and Iraq look like a walk in the park by comparison. Keep in mind that North Korea already has millions of people on the brink of starvation, a situation that would become far worse after a war. And North Korea is the world's only Stalinist state - its citizens have suffered under a brutally oppressive regime for six decades, one that dealt with any opposition, real or imagined, by sending the offender to a labor camp (or just shooting them), making North Korea not very fertile ground for a quick switch to democracy.

So while diplomacy with North Korea may seem like a pointless exercise, going to war doesn't seem like a viable option either.