Blog

Kerry’s Confirmation Hearing: “Foreign Policy is Economic Policy”

By Anna Jensen-Clem

Senator John Kerry spoke of a broad-based US foreign policy in his Senate confirmation hearings on Wednesday. In his opening remarks, Kerry, a 28-year veteran of the Senate and longtime chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, advocated for a continued policy of economic development and humanitarian aid, often in place of military intervention. He indicated that he would continue Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s policies and expand the State Department’s role in climate change, energy policy, and economic policies both domestically and abroad:

“American foreign policy is also defined by food security and energy security, humanitarian assistance, the fight against disease and the push for development, as much as it is by any single counterterrorism initiative. It is defined by leadership on life-threatening issues like climate change, or fighting to lift up millions of lives by promoting freedom and democracy from Africa to the Americas or speaking out for the prisoners of gulags in North Korea or millions of refugees and displaced persons and victims of human trafficking. It is defined by keeping faith with all that our troops have sacrificed to secure for Afghanistan. America lives up to her values when we give voice to the voiceless.”

Senator Kerry’s confirmation hearing was relatively painless, and he is expected to succeed Secretary Clinton after she steps down next month. His ascension from chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to Secretary of State would be the first since 1897, the New York Times noted this morning.

Update: Kerry was confirmed in a 94-3 Senate vote on Tuesday, January 29th.

Mali: An Early Test of U.S. Military Policy in 2013

By Anna Jensen-Clem

In keeping with this week’s theme of President Obama’s second term military policies, we turn to a brief analysis of the situation in Mali. Humanosphere has a list of resources for those of you who aren’t familiar with the current political turmoil happening there. Essentially, in conjunction with a coup in March 2012, several terrorist and rebel groups overtook the northern (desert) part of the country; al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb has been active in North Africa (Mali, Algeria, Niger, and Libya, among others) for several years. After the coup, AQIM pushed out existing Tuareg rebel groups and took over most of the northern territory. They have since moved south and imposed their own interpretation of sharia law, causing a massive human rights and refugee crisis. In late August, PBS ran a brief story about human rights abuses perpetrated by AQIM, and many of these practices continue today.

The situation is extremely confusing; the New York Times reported Wednesday that “officials in Washington still have only an impressionistic understanding of the militant groups . . . and they are divided about whether some of these groups even pose a threat to the United States.” French troops arrived earlier this month to assist government forces and eliminate the terrorist threat, but so far the United States hasn’t committed any troops, nor has it expressed any intention of doing so. In fact, when he was asked about a response to the situation, the top U.S. general in Africa said only, “now what?”

Now, what does this all mean from a policy perspective? Why am I writing about this at all? In short, because the U.S.’s response to this problem is a microcosm of the Obama Administration’s handling of military power. Although it seems unlikely that the United States will commit large numbers of ground forces, as it did in Iraq and Afghanistan, the military has made use of its existing intelligence networks in Mali to assist French forces. Relying on small groups of highly-trained special forces, large-scale established intelligence networks, and a 21^st-century version of Kennan’s containment policy, the Obama Administration has been slow to take direct military action against AQIM forces in West Africa. In fact, the Washington Post reported last year that special forces “have played an outsize role in the Obama administration’s national security strategy, [and] are working clandestinely all over the globe, not just in war zones.” A large-scale ground war would be extremely costly, both financially and in terms of lives lost; Mali is larger in area than France and the desert in the north is barren and treacherous. Al-Qaeda and Tuareg forces know the area intimately, and sending in ground troops could prove disastrous.

It remains to be seen whether those groups pose a direct threat to U.S. security, but their actions have already precipitated a large-scale health and refugee crisis. Whichever road the Obama Administration chooses, humanitarian aid should play a major role, not only in Mali, but in neighboring countries who are absorbing thousands of refugees despite their own political and economic instabilities. It is this confluence of small, highly-trained military forces, extensive intelligence networks, and humanitarian aid in lieu of a massive ground assault that should and will guide the United States’ interactions in the Sahel over the coming months.

Senator Richard Lugar Wins 2012 Commitment to Development Award

Senator Richard Lugar, long-time champion of US engagement with global development issues, is the 2012 winner of the Commitment to Development “Ideas in Action” Award, sponsored by the Center for Global Development and The FP Group, the publishers of Foreign Policy. The Commitment to Development “Ideas in Action” Award honors an individual or organization that has made a significant contribution to changing the attitudes, policies, and/or practices of the rich world toward the developing world. Members of the selection committee will present this year’s award to Senator Lugar during a public event January 29^th, 2013.

“For four decades Senator Lugar has deployed his remarkable statesmanship to overcome partisan divides and enact smart US policies that support widely shared global prosperity,” said CGD president Nancy Birdsall.

Most recently, through his work on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Lugar helped create the foundation for a strong US development strategy, introducing legislation that promotes accountability and transparency in US foreign assistance programs.

Senator Lugar championed US efforts against global hunger, sponsoring legislation that would re-orient US foreign assistance programs to focus on promoting food security and rural development in countries with large, chronically hungry populations.  He has also dedicated his time and energy to understanding how the international financial institutions could reform to better meet the needs and evolving standards of the post-financial crisis world.

Senator Lugar is the senior senator from Indiana and currently the most senior Republican in the Senate, having served for six terms. Prior to serving in the senate, Senator Lugar served in the US Navy, on the Indianapolis Board of School Commissioners, and as mayor of Indianapolis. He was defeated in the GOP primary this year and will step down from the US Senate in January 2013.

Previous winners of the Commitment to Development Award include: the European ministers of international development who constitute the Utstein Group (2003); Oxfam’s Make Trade Fair Campaign (2004); then-Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown (2005), then-U.S. Congressman Jim Kolbe (R-AZ) (2006), Global Witness (2007), the ONE Campaign (2008), Diego Hidalgo Schnur (2009), Publish What You Pay (2010), and former president of the International Center for Research on Women Geeta Rao Gupta (2011).