02 Diplomacy – Page 25 – Public Intelligence Blog

2011/03/262011/03/26

Russia Returns Heavy-Hitter to Afghanistan

02 Diplomacy, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 06 Russia, 08 Wild Cards, Advanced Cyber/IO, Ethics, Government, InfoOps (IO), IO Multinational, IO Sense-Making, Peace Intelligence, Strategy

Highlights a classic failure of US intel and State…..no experts with the
depth or contacts necessary to conduct statecraft…….

Mullah Omar gets a Russian visitor

By M K Bhadrakumar

Asia Times, Mar 24, 2011

EXTRACT: The executive order makes the customary reference to the new appointee's worthy credentials as “an experienced diplomat and Orientalist”. And then, out of the blue, it adds that Kabulov “repeatedly held talks on the release of Russian pilots with the leadership of the Taliban in Kandahar, including [Taliban leader] Mohammed Omar”. There was no real need to have said that. It almost seems jarring to single out one mission in a distinguished diplomat's checkered career. But it said all that needed to be said.

By the language of the sport of cricket, one would shout from the crease in the heat of the moment: “Howzaat!” Is there an umpire nearby who could annotate the trajectory of Russian thinking? Not much ingenuity is needed to comprehend that Moscow is opening a line to the Taliban leadership and sending into the Hindu Kush someone who can meaningfully converse with the Quetta shura (council). Pakistanis know Kabulov, Iranians know him and Mullah Omar knows him. Afghan President Hamid Karzai knows him, too.

EXTRACT: Kabulov's mind is an open book – as far as a diplomat's mind can be. While serving in Kabul, he was an easily accessible ambassador and even American military commanders used to drop by to pick his brains. Kabulov's main complaint, though, was that the Americans were good listeners, but not good learners.

He kept harping on that the United States was repeating the same mistakes that the Soviet Union made in Afghanistan during its occupation in the 1980s, and to complicate matters, American policies have been innovating on Soviet mistakes by inventing original mistakes of their own for which as he once told John Burns of the New York Times, “We [Russia] do not own the copyright.”

Read full article….

Phi Beta Iota: The article is a reference work, worth keeping, worthy of war colleges and those who aspire to be great leaders.

2011/03/232011/03/23

U.S. Lacks Plan for Dealing With Chaos in Yemen Despite Dire Warnings

02 Diplomacy, 03 Economy, 05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Multinational, Military, Peace Intelligence

Although it is Fox News and arch-critic Lindsey Graham pointing fingers, the fact is they are right! US Government seems trapped in a time warp and completely unprepared to contemplate a world in which our military is relatively useless (as well as unaffordable) and we actually need to have a deep capacity for nation-building. P

The Obama administration, after helping to orchestrate a U.N.-backed military intervention in Libya, is facing pressure to do more to prepare for the potential collapse of the government in another Mideast country, Yemen — but U.S. officials admit they are doing little more than watching at this point.

. . . . . . .

Yemen is a central ally of the U.S. government against Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. The group, along with its operational planner, the American Anwar al-Awlaki, the first American on the CIA's kill or capture list, are now considered a greater threat than Usama bin Laden's network in Pakistan. And one U.S. lawmaker suggests that chaos in Yemen could result in a worse terrorist breeding ground than Afghanistan.

But Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ admission in Cairo that the administration had not focused on a future without Yemen's president was startling.

Read full article….

2011/03/222011/03/22

Blocking the French, Too Little Too Late No Strategy

02 Diplomacy, 05 Energy, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, Government, IO Sense-Making, Military, Peace Intelligence

Libya, appears to me to be a US-UK venture, having little to do with Gaddafy. Rather, in significant part it is driven by the goal of squelching potential and logical French influence in the in the Middle East and its leadership in accommodating (establishing the terms of integration) Islam in Europe and the West.

Mr Malloch-Brown is one of the few legitimate contenders to Anglo statesmanship in this era. But I find the following to be misleading in trying to make the case that this was a worthy mission, but too hard to bring off diplomatically. I believe these to be talking points.

Mark Malloch-Brown: Diplomatic ‘triumph' at the UN is unravelling already

The Council might have begun by contemplating two clear political alternatives and then developing a military strategy that flowed from that choice

Independent UK, Tuesday 22 March 2011 Read article…

Phi Beta Iota: The sweeping public movements across North Africa and the Middle East are if anything an indictment of what one author calls the “fifty-year wound” and a validation of what another author calls the “unconquerable world.” Vastly more benevolent strategic imperatives, such as Ambassador Mark Palmer's vision for providing all 44 dictators with an exit strategy (42 of them “best pals” of the USA at this time), have been ignored.

2011/03/202011/03/20

Russian TV: West is Lying About Libya…

02 Diplomacy, 06 Russia, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, Cultural Intelligence, IO Multinational

Provocatively entitled “The Fight for Reality” Russian Television (a very effective counterpart to Voice of America) is on the air in a very pro-Gaddafi series that accuses Western media of lying and hyping the situation with blatant mis-information.

russia libya two — Press Lying About Libya and Gaddafi- Removed from YouTube

russia libya one — Russia Confirms NO LIBYAN AIR ATTACKS Have Taken Place At All

In other news, one of Gaddafi's sons is saying that Libya financed the election of the “clown” that is now President and they want their money back.

2011/03/202011/03/20

US Intelligence a Clipping Agency–A Bad One

02 Diplomacy, 03 Economy, 04 Education, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Budgets & Funding, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Cyberscams, malware, spam, Government, Intelligence (government), IO Impotency, Military, Officers Call

Dr. Stephen Blank, one of America's top experts on Russia and the former satellites of the USSR, likens US Intelligence to a clipping service, a very bad one. He itemizes the recent failures of US Intelligence and observes that anyone in the audience he was addressing in NYC could have written a better threat estimate than that presented by the Director of National Intelligence recently to Congress. Includes video of his full answer to the question about US Intelligence.

Army college expert likens US intelligence to ‘clipping agency’

By Asia Society Mar 18, 2011 5:30PM UTC

asiancorrespondent.com

Continue reading “US Intelligence a Clipping Agency–A Bad One”

2011/02/232011/02/23

How Neocon Central Worked for Muammar Qadhafi

02 Diplomacy, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government

editor spinney time — Chuck Spinney Sounds Off....

Among Libya's lobbyists

Laura Rozen, Politico, 21 February 2011

As several Libyan diplomats Monday denounced their country’s four-decade ruler Col. Muammar Qadhafi for unleashing the army against anti-government protesters, U.S. consultancies that have worked to burnish Libya’s and Qadhafi’s U.S. image were laying low.

Several consulting, law and lobbying firms have moved in to advise the Libyan government and energy interests since U.S. sanctions were lifted on Libya in 2004, some of which have since canceled their contracts, according to Justice Department records.

Fahmy Hudome International canceled its contract with the Libyan government in 2007. The Livingston Group canceled its $360,000-per-year lobbying contract with the Libyan government as well as one with an associated Qadhafi charity in September 2009, following the hero’s welcome Libyan leaders gave for the convicted Lockerbie bomber upon his release in August 2009 from a Scottish prison on humanitarian grounds. Justice Department records indicate the law firm White & Case LLP has been registered since 2008 to represent Libya regarding a litigation matter.

One of the more unlikely figures to have advised a firm which has worked to burnish Libya's image and grow its economy is not registered with the Justice Department. Prominent neoconservative Richard Perle, the former Reagan-era Defense Department official and George W. Bush-era chairman of the Defense Policy Board, traveled to Libya twice in 2006 to meet with Qadhafi, and afterward briefed Vice President Dick Cheney on his visits, according to documents released by a Libyan opposition group in 2009.

Perle traveled to Libya as a paid adviser to the Monitor Group, a prestigious Boston-based consulting firm with close ties to leading professors at the Harvard Business School. The firm named Perle a senior adviser in 2006.

The Monitor Group described Perle’s travel to Libya and the recruitment of several other prominent thinkers and former officials to burnish Libya’s and Qadhafi’s image in a series of documents obtained and released by a Libyan opposition group, the National Conference of the Libyan Opposition, in 2009.

Read rest of article….

Phi Beta Iota: In fairness to the Neocons, there is no real difference between the two parties that vie for control of the public purse to favor private ends. US Government support for dictators, criminal gangs, and selected terrorist groups has always been “bi-partisan” and completely devoid of any public benefit.

2011/02/202011/02/20

NIGHTWATCH Comment on US Mid-East Policy

02 Diplomacy, 07 Other Atrocities

Special comment. Readers are watching the crumbling of the US policy architecture in the Middle East during the past four decades which stressed regional stability over all other considerations. That policy did not restrain Israel but did help limit conflicts, It also had many negative consequences for devout Muslims and supporters of the Palestinians.

The 2011 uprisings do not invalidate that policy relative to its effectiveness in earlier times, but show how legacy policies can atrophy, if not updated and refreshed skillfully. Three months ago, leaders who have been ousted or are now under stress were lauded by the US media as allies in the fight against Islamist terrorists. Suddenly in the US press, there is no threat of terrorism any longer, only of suppression of “universal human right”s by regimes that had US backing.

Readers, it is an astonishing coincidence that former allies are now labeled dictators and that the dictators are almost all US allies. The leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah, as dictatorial as any, face no uprisings. Nor does Asad in Syria or Bashir in Sudan. All are military-backed regimes in one sense or another. What are the probabilities of Arab turbulence only in countries friendly to the US, from Senegal to Djibouti?

As for the rising tide of human rights , apparently in the Middle East that is a male phenomenon. Women protest in public at great personal risk. It also seems targeted only at leaders, not at government systems. It is shallow as well as misogynist.

A final point is that the uprisings are different country-by-country. Like diseases that mimic each others' symtoms, they look and sometimes sound alike but are not in underlying impulses or ultimate goals. That means that one policy will not fit all.

Continue reading “NIGHTWATCH Comment on US Mid-East Policy”