Diplomats as Political Appointees

Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy (L) and U.S. Ambassador to France Charles Rivkin (R).

One of the unique features of the U.S. Foreign Service that it’s highest ranking personnel are not generally professional diplomats. Sure, for some posts—mostly places people don’t want to spend a lot of time—they are. But for many posts, including in many important U.S. allies, the ambassador is a political appointee who raised a lot of money for the winner of the presidential election.

When President Barack Obama was elected, 32 of the 58 ambassadorial appointments he made were to large campaign contributors. And less you think that Obama is an anomalies, he was simply following a longstanding tradition. Fifty of Preside George W. Bush’s ambassadors were each responsible for campaign donations of at least $100,000. Since the Eisenhower administration, approximately 30 percent of all ambassadorial appointments have been to campaign donors. That is an exceedingly high figure when you think that the United States has embassies in approximately 198 countries around the world.

Perhaps not surprisingly, this process can create problems. As one blogger put it,

American political appointee Ambassadors are usually neophytes – all too often innocents abroad – as opposed to career people who have worked their way up the ranks of the all too hierarchical U.S. foreign service and have had extensive exposure to the country, language and culture to which they are being assigned – e.g. the professionals usually know something about the country of their posting, or if not, know how to make an Embassy function, the policies of whatever the administration is in the White House and how to deliver them as well as basic Ambassadorial does and don’ts.

But a recent story in The Atlantic suggests that the use of political appointees as ambassadors is not necessarily a bad thing. Profiling Charles Rivkin, the U.S. Ambassador to France, The Atlantic argues that political appointees can carry greater connections to the White House, often bring a fresh perspective on relations and issues between the two countries, and frequently possess significant management and leadership skills developed during their time in the business world.

What do you think? Does the appointment of campaign donors to key posts in the U.S. Diplomatic Corps undermine U.S. foreign policy and national security? Or can business leaders make effective diplomats? Take the poll or leave a comment below and let us know what you think.

The Politics of Multilateral Peacekeeping

French Soldiers Deployed in Mali

The French government last week called on West African leaders to “pick up the baton” and support military operations against Islamic insurgents in Mali. France has already deployed more than 2,000 soldiers and is currently conducting air and ground operations authorized by a United Nations Security Council resolution. Other governments, including Chad, Nigeria, Senegal, Burkina Faso, Niger, Togo, Benin, Ghana, and Guinea have committed to sending soldiers, and Britain, Denmark, and Belgium are providing material support. The United States has offered to provide communications support, but has declined so far to commit soldiers or air support.

It is clear that France has already moved beyond the original UN-backed strategy, which called for Western governments to provide training and material in support of an African-led military intervention. Rather, French forces appear to be taking the lead in operations, with other governments in the region responding more slowly.

The politics of military coalitions are always interesting. Basic behavioral economics suggest that there is little incentive for a government to pay for something it can get for free. In game theory, this is referred to as the free-rider dilemma. In global politics, more powerful countries (often the hegemon) pay a disproportionate cost. The United States, for example, has borne the lion’s share of the costs associated with interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But recent developments in Libya and Mali suggest a slightly different strategy at play. In both cases, the United States appeared willing to let others—France in the case of Mali, and the European Union in the case of Libya—take the leading role.

Does this represent a shift in American military thinking? Likely, the answer is no. While the Obama administration expresses a stronger commitment to multilateralism than the Bush administration did, it has already shown a willingness to undertake unilateral action when it perceives the national interest is at stake. The ongoing drone strikes in Pakistan are case in point.

However, where it sees the US national interest is less at play, the Obama administration appears far more willing to let other states pursue policies that align with US interests abroad.

Greece, France, and the Perils of State Sovereignty

President-elect Francois Hollande will become France’s first Socialist president in nearly two decades.

Sunday’s elections in Greece and France have sent shockwaves through Europe. The election of candidates who reject austerity (tax increases and painful spending cuts) as the path out of Europe’s financial crisis will affect Greece’s ability to make good on the conditions of its bailout and herald a clash between German leader and austerity champion Angela Merkel and the newly elected French president, Francois Hollande.

There is even talk of Greece leaving the eurozone. As reported in the LA Times today, Alexis Tsipras of the Radical Left Coalition, or Syriza, “called on other political forces in the country to ‘end the agreements of subservience’ threatening more job cuts in the coming weeks. ‘The bailout parties no longer have a majority in Parliament to vote for measures that plunder the country,’ Tsipras told reporters in Athens after laying out a five-point plan for a new government he hopes to form with other leftist forces. It includes ‘immediate cancellation’ of further public spending cuts and a moratorium on debt servicing…Those cancellations would include the 150,000 state job cuts and $14 billion in new austerity measures expected next month in order for Greece to get the latest tranche of a bailout deal reached last year.”

The reason why the European Union, the International Monetary Fund, and other International Governmental Organizations (IGOs) cannot just impose their will on member states and force them to abide by their commitments is the continued dominance of state sovereignty in world politics. Sovereignty has been a bedrock principle of the international system since the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, and it allows states’ governments to rule as the ultimate authority within their borders. While sovereignty protects states’ independence and helps to minimize external interference, it plays havoc with attempts to create authoritative supranational rules and bodies to deal with issues including human rights, trade, and arms control.

What do you think? Does the public rejection of austerity measures in Greece, France, and elsewhere make the end of the 17-member eurozone inevitable? Take the poll below and let us know your thoughts.

International Women’s Day at the Status of Female Politicians

Marine LePen, Leader of the French National Front.

Yesterday marked the 100th annual International Women’s Day. There was much coverage of the importance of the day in the blogosphere, including some very good coverage by the Guardian,  Oxfam’s Duncan Green  and lots of discussion of the ongoing pay gap between men and women globally.

But two sites really stood out to me. First, the Women in World Parliaments website (maintained by the Inter-Parliamentary Union) offered some updated data on the status of female representation globally. It notes that regionally, the Nordic countries lead the world in equality of representation for women, with the national parliaments comprised of 41.6 percent women, nearly twice the average the next closest region (the Americas at 22.6%), and nearly four times as high as the last-placed region (Arab States, at 11.7%). The comparative data at the national level is also very interesting. Looking only at the lower houses, we find that women are best-represented in Rwanda, with 56.3 percent of the lower house comprised of women. The top ten (with some interesting surprises) are as follows:

1. Rwanda (56.3%)
2. Sweden (45.0%)
3. South Africa (44.5%)
4. Cuba (43.2%)
5. Iceland (42.9%)
6. The Netherlands (40.7%)
7. Finland (40.0%)
8. Norway (39.6%)
9. Belgium (39.3%)
10. Mozambique (39.2%) 

Rounding out the bottom, ten states tied for last place, with no women in the national parliaments: Belize, Micronesia, Nauru, Oman, Palau, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the Solomon Islands, Tonga, and Tuvalu.

The second very interesting coverage was offered by Gideon Rachman, blogging at the Financial Times. Exploring the most recent polling data from France, he notes that Marine LePen, the daughter of Jean-Marie LePen and head of the far-right National Party, appears to be polling at the top of preferred presidential candidates. In 2002, Marine LePen’s father, Jean-Marie LePen, won the first round of the French presidential ballot, only to be soundly defeated by Jacques Chirac. France’s presidential election system requires that the winner be elected with a majority of votes cast. Because multiple parties contest the election, a runoff election between the top two vote getters in the first round is the norm.

In the 2002 elections, Le Pen’s radical views placed him far outside the mainstream of the French electorate. LePen had been accused of xenophobia and anti-Semitism. During the 2002 campaign, he was dogged by statements he had previously made, including advocating the forced isolation of people infected with HIV and accusing his rival, Jacques Chirac, of being on the payroll of Jewish organizations.

As the According to Rachman, Marine LePen presents a similar far-right worldview but lacks the divisive baggage of her father. A victory in round one of the Frecnch presidential elections appears possible. However, a round two defeat to whoever is chosen to run against LePen appears equally probable, and given the current state of the French economy, it could be Socialist Martine Aubry that wins the national election. Either way, it’s a female president for France in 2012.

The Challenge of a Two-Speed Europe

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy at the Summit of EU Heads of State.

The recent spate of crises in the European Union has once again raised questions about the future of the European Union. As Greece and Ireland struggle to rebuild their economies, the debate over the future of the European Union is once again on the stage. At one extreme, Germany and France continue to push for further integration, particularly within the eurozone, the group of seventeen countries using the euro as their unified currency. At the other end, euroskeptics in the European Parliament continue to debate the need for the EU in the first place. Governments in the United Kingdom and many of the former Soviet-bloc countries appear to be hesitant about further economic integration.

This tension, which has long been known as the problem of a two-speed Europe, has become more pronounced in light of recent economic crises and the pressure placed on the euro by the collapse of the Greek and Irish economies. Blogging at the Finanical Times, Philip Stephens points out  that the euro has to date been maintained largely by the sheer will of the German government and its willingness to devote considerable resources (not to mention foreign policy clout) to support the euro and prop up several of the weaker European economies.  Euroskepticism, in other words, has not reached the German Länder. This is not to suggest that German magnanimity is the basis of the euro…Germany clearly benefits as well, as its exports to the rest of the eurozone indicate. But what happens if Germany decides that the euro is no longer a core part of its foreign policy vision?

Or more to the point, is the euro in danger? There is good reason to believe that future crises are in store for the eurozone. The economies of Portugal, Italy, and Spain leave considerable room for concern.

A far more likely scenario, however, would be the continued development of a two speed Europe, with France and Germany leading the charge for a more integrated economic policy within the eurozone, while Britain, the Scandinavian states, and many of the former Soviet-bloc countries, standing on the sidelines of economic integration while moving forward with political union. Certainly some interesting things to consider.

The French Burka Ban

A French Muslim woman wears a niqab.

The French National Assembly last week approved by a vote of 355 to 1 a measure which would ban women from wearing the burka and the niqab in public places. France is home to an estimated 5 million Muslims, or 6 percent of the population. An estimated 2,000 French Muslims wear the niqab. The less-restricted hijab, or headscarf, was banned from public schools in 2004.

Violation of the new ban would be punished by a fine of €150 ($190) and a mandatory citizenship course. Forcing a woman to wear a niqab or burka would be punishable by a year in prison or a €15,000 ($19,000) fine. A spokesperson for the government described the religious garb as “a new form of enslavement that the [French] Republic cannot accept on its soil.”

The ban enjoys considerable support among the French public, which approved of the measure by an 82 to 17 percent majority. Polls indicate that strong majorities support similar measures in Germany, Britain, and Spain. Two-thirds of Americans oppose such a measure.

Although the French measure still must be approved by the upper house and will likely face a constitutional challenge, the ban has already provoked considerable discussion. Blogging at Big Think, David Hirschman argued that claims that the measure was intended to protect women  may actually wind up intensifying discrimination against Muslim women and further isolate and alienate French Muslims. In a rare moment supporting the French, Peter Worthington blogging at the conservative Frum Forum strongly supports the measure on the grounds of national security.

But among the most interesting has been Gideon Rachman’s blog at the Financial Times. For Rachman, the ban evokes questions of liberty that transcend both sides of the debate. For the ban’s supporters, the measure represents an effort to ensure the liberty of women, striking a blow for “republican values” like equity. For those who oppose the ban, the measure infringes on the individual liberty of women who choose to wear the niqab. Rachman’s solution is to develop a compromise in which face-covering veils in state-run locations like schools and government buildings. Like most compromises, however, Rachman’s solution is likely to displease all parties in the controversy.

So does the French ban protect or violate the civil liberties of the women it affects?

Updates to Recent Stories

Two quick updates on recent stories:

Two interesting developments on the situation in Haiti occurred late last week. First, the Obama administration announced it would grant Temporary Protected Status in the United States. This has the effect of temporary suspending deportation proceedings against the estimated 30,0000 Haitians currently pending in the United States. A number of groups have been campaigning for TPS for Haiti.

The International Monetary Fund announced it would make available $100 million in credit for the government of Haiti to fund relief efforts. While the government could certainly use assistance, the debt forgiveness group Jubilee has condemned the use of long-term loans to finance relief efforts, arguing that this will only exacerbate Haiti’s debt problems.

Finally, with respect to the French identity debates, Time magazine on Monday published a story on the problem many French citizens now face in proving their citizenship. According to the story, many people born to French parents abroad are having difficulty proving their citizenship under strict new rules designed restrict the ability of foreigners to obtain French citizenship. Some French citizens have been asked to prove the nationality of their parents and grandparents, providing original birth certificates to support their claims. The policy has been condemned, however, as running the risk of creating new populations of stateless persons.

The Politics of Nationalism and Identity

A fascinating discussion on the politics of citizenship in Africa is taking place on the SSRC’s African Arguments blog. As described by Sebastian Kohn,

Millions of people in Africa are stateless. Some because their births were never recorded, others because they belong to the ‘wrong’ ethnic group. Civil conflicts in Cote d’Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of Congo and numerous other countries have been fuelled if not created by pernicious citizenship policies that sever the link between certain parts of the population and the state. The politics of statelessness and citizenship discrimination in Africa are complex and potentially explosive.

While certainly important in the context of the struggle for political power and resources, this debate is certainly not unique to the African continent. The French government is currently in the midst of a three-month series of meetings to “reaffirm the values of national identity and pride in being French.” The discussions were prompted by the rise of the far-right French nationalists, who objected to the increasing multiculturalism of French society.

Citizenship (and national identity more generally) has long been a contested political concept. Identity politics can be used in a progressive, inclusive sense. But far more often identity politics are used to exclude certain members of the polity from participating in the body politic. In the context of post-colonial Africa, this is particularly problematic because the borders of state [glossary] and nation [glossary] bear little historical connection to the actual on the ground identities of the people. The creation of artificial states as a result of colonialism has been a problem recognized since the early days of African independence. Indeed, many of Africa’s most celebrated leaders—Patrice Lumumba, Kwame Nkrumah, Julius Nyerere, to name but a few—rose to prominence preaching a message of inclusion. For them, the only solution to the divisions created by colonialism was to establish a new, Pan-African political identity, essentially transcending the political divisions of statehood to create a unified African community.

This vision never materialized. Instead, the politics of identity came to be characterized by exclusion and hierarchy, frequently motivating political violence: Hutus vs. Tutsis in Rwanda, Yoruba vs. Igbo in Nigeria, Xhosas vs. Zulus in South Africa, Shona vs. Ndebele in Zimbabwe, and so on. But rethinking the nature of citizenship and constructing a politics of inclusiveness may represent an important step towards national reconciliation and development. The Truth and Reconcilliation Commission in South Africa sought to address the injustices of apartheid by brining the violence of the apartheid system to public light. Similarly, efforts at national reconciliation following the Rwandan genocide centered on overcoming the divisive politics of ethnicity that characterized the genocide.

Contributing to the discussion on the African Arguments blog, Bronwen Manby offers a powerful conclusion, describing citizenship as “the most important right of all.”  Manby writing,

“Give us our identity cards and we hand over our Kalashnikovs”, said the leader of the rebel forces in Côte d’Ivoire. Those who have never been deprived of official papers may find it hard to imagine the powerlessness that results: powerlessness that can and does lead people to take up arms. Even in the poorest countries, a passport or identity card does not just provide the right to travel, but forms the basis of the right to almost everything else.

Five Stories You Might Have Missed

With the Congress in recess, the U.S. political scene has been dominated by coverage of town hall debates over health care reform. In the debate, the British National Health System (NHS) has been trotted out as representative of the dangers of government-run health care, charges to which the British government has responded. The Financial Times on Friday offered a balanced comparison of the U.S. and British health care systems, which debunks the selective use of statistics in the current debate.

In news from outside the U.S. health care debate last week:

1. The Taliban has stepped up attacks in Afghanistan ahead of nation-wide elections scheduled for Thursday. On Saturday, the Taliban launched a suicide bomb attack against NATO’s heavily fortified Afghanistan headquarters in Kabul, killing eight and wounding nearly 100 people. With observers already worried about the ability of the Afghan government and international elections monitors to conduct a nation-wide poll in the country, observers fear that the Taliban may attempt to disrupt the elections. The relative period of peace which had preceded Saturday’s attack had led some to believe that the Taliban would allow the elections to take place.

Thursday’s poll will pit incumbent President Hamid Karzai against former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah. Although many observers believed Karzai’s campaign enjoyed an insurmountable advantage, Abdullah’s campaign has managed to close the gap, and some are now forecasting the need for a run-off election in October. A runoff would be necessary if neither candidate manages to secure an absolute majority of the vote.
 
2. Palestinian authorities in Gaza engaged in a series of small battles against Jund Ansar Allah, on Friday. The shootouts resulted in at least 13 deaths and dozens wounded. The battles represented the latest—and perhaps most serious—challenge to the Hamas-led government in Gaza. Jund Ansar Allah is one of several small extremist groups pushing for the introduction of strict Sharia law in Gaza. Jund Ansar Allah, which claims ties to al-Qaeda, had labeled Gaza an Islamic emirate subject to theocratic law, a claim which Hamas rejects. For its part, the Hamas government has dismissed challenges to its leadership as “Zionist propaganda” sponsored by the Israeli government.

3. The French Minister for Urban Regeneration, Fadela Amara, sparked a national debate last week when she called for a nation-wide ban on wearing the burka in France. Amara, a French national of Algerian decent, said that the burka represents “the oppression of women, their enslavement, their humiliation.” Banning the burka, she said, must be part of a broader effort to welcome moderate Islam while fighting the “gangrene, the cancer of radical Islam which completely distorts the message of Islam.” Amara’s comments are part of a broader debate in France. The national parliament in July established a committee to determine whether the wearing of the burka is “compatible with France’s republican tradition of equality between men and women,” and French President Nicolas Sarkozy in June said the burka “will not be welcome on the territory of the republic.” An estimated 5-10 percent of the French population is Muslim, though only a few thousand wear the burka.

4. South Korean President Lee Myung-bak last week attempted to re-open talks with North Korea, offering to negotiate troop reductions along the border between the two countries. The border between North and South Korea is among the most militarized in the world, with more than one million troops, including 30,000 U.S. troops, based in the area. However, in his offer, Lee reiterated the South Korean position that a comprehensive peace deal between the two countries would be predicated on North Korea abandoning its nuclear efforts, a proposition with the North has consistently rejected in the past.

5. Continuing her Africa tour with visits to Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of the Congo last week, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke out on several of the continent’s hot spots. Last week, she urged political reconciliation in Kenya and offered support for Somali efforts to fight piracy and Islamic extremism, During her tour, she has not shied away from provoking controversy. In Nigeria, she criticized “the lack of transparency and accountability [which] has eroded the legitimacy of the government.” She also called for African governments to toughen their stance on Robert Mugabe’s government in Zimbabwe.

Five Stories You Might Have Missed

The turmoil over last week’s Iranian elections continued into this week, with thousands of people defying a statement  by the country’s spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and orders by President Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad and the country’s Revolutionary Guard banning such protests. Over the weekend, hundreds of supporters of Mir-Hossein Moussavi were arrested during protests. Moussavi’s supporters believe the election was rigged, but international observers and foreign governments have so far refused to comment.

In other news from the previous week:

1. The World Bank issued a statement urging the developed world to focus on the global economy in their recovery efforts. The collapse of global credit markets over the last year, the Bank noted, had led to a dramatic decline in private capital flows, with investment in developing countries declining from $1,200 billion in 2007 to an estimated $363 billion this year. Meanwhile, announcement of the new stimulus package by the Chinese government led the World Bank to increase its forecasts for the Chinese economy this year. But the decision of the Chinese government to include a ‘Buy China’ policy in its stimulus package has led to increasing tensions over the specter of protectionism in the global recovery effort.

2. French President Nicolas Sarkozy gave a rare address to the country’s parliament at the Palace of Versailles this week. For more than 130 years, the French President had been constitutionally prohibited from entering parliament—an attempt to ensure legislative independence. But after the constitution was amended last year—in the name of increasingly parliamentary oversight—the restriction was removed. French Green and Communist parties boycotted the speech in protest of what they see as an attempt to increase the power of the French presidency. Sarkozy used the opportunity to outline measures intended to address the problem of rapidly detiorating public finances, sparked by the global economic crisis. In the speech, Sarkozy rejected the introduction of austerity measures, instead focusing on the need to protect jobs.

3. The situation in Iraq deteriorated over the past week, as the number of bombings as increased. On Saturday, a large truck bomb exploded outside a Shi’ite mosque in the Kurdish town of Kirkuk. The attack, the deadliest single attack in more than a year, killed 73 people. Meanwhile, a series of smaller attacks in Baghdad killed 15 people on Monday. The declining security situation comes as the United States prepares to begin its withdrawal from Iraqi towns, handing responsibility for day-to-day security over to Iraqi police by the end of June.

4. The speaker of the parliament in Somalia has issued a call for neighboring countries to send in troops to help prop up the country’s fragile government. The security situation in Somalia remains grim. On Thursday, the government’s security minister, Omar Hashi Aden, and more than 20 others were killed in a suicide attack by Islamic militants known as al-Shabaab. Al-Shabaab seeks to overthrow the country’s western-backed government and impose its vision of strict sharia law in Somalia. So far, international assistance has been limited, and al-Shabaab has confined the influence of the government to the country’s capital, Mogadishu. Meanwhile, according to United Nations estimates, some 122,000 civilians have been forced to flee as a result of fighting which began in early May.

5. Tensions between the government of Hugo Chávez and the anti-government television station Globovisión have increased in Venezuela in recent days. Chávez accuses the station of “media terrorism” as a result of its critical coverage of his government, particularly following a minor earthquake which hit the capital, Caracdas, in early May. According to observers, the station makes an easy target for Chávez, who has stepped up his efforts to transform Venezuelan society and economy in recent months.