Avuncular American

Condi's NATO Farewell: An Orphan Named MAP

[In Georgia] citizens have come to identify MAP as synonymous with their future in NATO.  Georgian Prime Minister Grigol Mgaloblishvili said Monday that he had met a man in the mountains of his country who had named his newborn son, Map.

AFP/France 24, Lome Cook, 3 December 2008

I shouldn't exaggerate: little "Map" obviously has a loving father, though he may himself be a daddy by the time the real MAP leads to Georgian membership in NATO.  The same AFP article reminds us that Georgia (and Ukraine) "must complete political, democratic and military reforms, as well as have good relations with their neighbors."  Sounds like a task that could take generations when the principal neighbor is Russia, their former imperial master.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice must have really been in a hurry to fly on to India, since she cut short by a whole day her attendance at the NATO Foreign Ministers meeting (photo), even missing the meeting of the NATO-Georgia Commission, which she was so intent on pushing to her NATO colleagues.  Someone will have to stand in for her during the group photo.

While her parting comments tried to put a gloss on the compromise, today's Independent (London) calls it for what it is: "Setback for Georgia after NATO rejection."  Simply put, NATO allies were not convinced that Georgia merited NATO's Article V protections.  As Michael Ohanlon of the Brookings Institution points out

But in fact, Article V does not require a military response, and wily characters like Mr. Putin and Mr. Medvedev would likely figure that out. Even if they did not want to challenge us blatantly by overthrowing Mr. Saakashvili in the future, they could quite likely pick future fights with him over borders, or the treatment of minorities, or other such issues -- calculating that American and other alliance leaders would not risk nuclear war over small parts of central Eurasia that few Americans had ever heard of. And they would probably be right.

Ohanlon has a point.  Opening up NATO membership to countries for whom member states would be reluctant to fight would diminish the value of Article V ("The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all...").  Article V was only invoked once in the Alliance's history, by the United States on September 12, 2001.

So, a relatively bad day for Georgia, and a rather good one for Russia: not only did NATO re-activate the NATO-Russia Council, but the EU unfroze high level talks with Russia on the strategic relationship.

Back in the Georgian mountains, little Map and his father shouldn't take it too personally: the real orphan of the NATO ministerial meeting is the Bush Administration.  Memo to NATO: next time a foreign ministerial meeting is scheduled during the lame duck period of an American administration, just postpone it by a couple of months and save lots of airfare.

Bush: The Dog Ate My Intelligence Failure

I don't know -- the biggest regret of all the presidency has to have been the intelligence failure in Iraq. A lot of people put their reputations on the line and said the weapons of mass destruction is a reason to remove Saddam Hussein. It wasn't just people in my administration; a lot of members in Congress, prior to my arrival in Washington D.C., during the debate on Iraq, a lot of leaders of nations around the world were all looking at the same intelligence. And, you know, that's not a do-over, but I wish the intelligence had been different, I guess.

George W. Bush, President of the United States, January 20, 2001 - January 20, 2009
(Interview with ABC News Charlie Gibson, December 1, 2008)

"...But I wish the intelligence had been different, I guess."  Gibson then asks Bush "If the intelligence had been right [i.e., that Saddam had no WMD], would there still have been an Iraq war?"   Bush demurs: "it's hard for me to speculate."  Whereas we all know that Saddam was toast no matter what: WMD or no, Bush was going to invade Iraq.

Compare Bush's "regrets" over faulty information on WMD to this from Paul Wolfowitz, Deputy Defense Secretary in the first term, who said right after the invasion that Saddam's supposed possession of WMD was simply "the one reason everyone could agree on" and was chosen as the main justification for "bureaucratic reasons."

As Greg Sargent puts it in TPM Election Central

For Bush to blame the failure of intel for his decision to invade is not a concession at all, and it is not an admission of failure on his part. Rather, it is the opposite of these things. It is an evasion of responsibility for what happened.

I think the good people at CartoonStock should come up with a Bush version of "The Dog Ate My Homework."  And the US mainstream media should cease and desist from granting self-serving interviews to a man who appears to have nothing better to do, while the edifice that he took charge of crumbles around him in his last 50 days.

Security Blanket: Obama Cabinet

In French, they refer to the head coach as the sélectionneur - much more than a talent scout, it's the person who selects team members.  If you're looking for hints on how President-Elect Obama will conduct his Presidency, look no further than yesterday's announcement of his selections for key members of the national security team (photo source: Change.gov).  He gets the top talent.

We knew already that Obama ran a world-class election campaign.  Now, we have a series of moves during the transition designed to instill confidence in a badly shaken country.  The champagne glasses from the post-election parties had barely been put away when he held a series of press conferences to unveil his economic team and outline elements of his stimulus plan.

Fixing the economy still has to be Priority Number One for the incoming administration.  So it's all the more reassuring that the people he has put in place in the foreign affairs, defense, and domestic security positions are powerful, intelligent players.  While this will not absolve him of international duties, it will give him a freer hand in focusing first and foremost on shoring up the domestic economic and societal pillars of US national security.

Much of the focus has been on Senator Hillary Clinton's nomination as Secretary of State.  It should be clear that she will be the central player in US foreign policy - itself a clear break from the Bush years, where Cheney and Rumsfeld succeeded in militarizing US engagement with the world.

Nor is there any doubt that Hillary Clinton will bring, as her biographer Carl Bernstein puts it, "star power" to Foggy Bottom.  While that is fine in terms of visibility in the world arena, how much of an institution-builder will Hillary Clinton be as Secretary of State?  Only two "SecStates" in recent decades were recognized within the building as institution-builders: George Schultz and Colin Powell.

The moment is ripe: both Defense Secretary Robert Gates and National Security Adviser-Designate James Jones are favorable to a realignment of power, away from reliance on military force and for reinforcing America's powers of persuasion - diplomacy in all its forms.  Clinton has allies in key places.

I know next to nothing about Governor of Arizona, Janet Napolitano, slated to head the huge Department of Homeland Security, but this Time Magazine profile is illuminating.  This is what she said of proposals to build a wall across her state and the rest of the US-Mexican border: "If you build a 50-foot-high wall, somebody will find a 51-foot ladder."  It's refreshing to hear that kind of candor.

The Attorney General-designate, Eric Holder, will head the Department of Justice, which includes a key national security agency, the FBI.  But many of us will be looking to Holder to put "Justice" back in the DOJ, after the Bush years of trampling on the Constitution.  Quite apart from the important role of tracking and prosecuting the bad guys will be a return to the special independent status of the Attorney General, discussed here by attorney/blogger Glen Greenwald in Salon.com.

It does look like Barack Obama has - fulfilling a campaign promise - chosen a bipartisan "best and brightest" national security team for his administration.  It's good to have the security blanket that they can provide.

But as if to steal the limelight from the foreign affairs fest - or to underline that it's still the economy, stupid - the day ended on two real economic downers: (1) the US economy has been in recession for the past year, officially and (2) California, the country's largest and wealthiest state and sometimes called the "world's fifth largest economy," declared a financial emergency and is essentially bankrupt.

I'm glad Obama can call on all the talent in the above picture for the national security crises, of which there will be no shortage.  But we really need the next President to fix the dire economic situation in the "homeland."  No security without economic health and vigor on Main Street.