International Crisis Group

For the U.S. and China, a Test of Diplomacy on South Sudan | Somini Sengupta

UNITED NATIONS — The United States may have midwifed the birth of South Sudan, the world’s youngest nation. But China has quickly become among its most important patrons, building its roads and pumping its oil.

Now, more than a year after South Sudan’s leaders plunged their country into a nasty civil war, the nation has become something of a test of diplomacy between the United States and China, raising the question: Can Washington and Beijing turn their mutual interests in South Sudan into a shared strategy to stop the bloodshed?

To pressure the warring sides toward peace, the United States has circulated a draft Security Council resolution, dangling the threat of sanctions and setting up the possibility of an arms embargo somewhere down the road. The measure could come up for a vote as early as Tuesday.

FULL ARTICLE (via the New York Times)

Photo: UN Photo/Paul Banks

Cuba and the U.S.: Turning the Page | Javier Ciurlizza & Mark Schneider

The dramatic improvement this week in U.S.-Cuban relations, and the possibility of an end to the decades-long U.S. embargo of the island, is set to transform political relations in the entire hemisphere. In the three posts below, the director of Crisis Group’s Latin America and Caribbean program, Javier Ciurlizza, and our vice president and special adviser on Latin America, Mark Schneider, look ahead to how the U.S. and Cuban moves could transform the wider region.

Ending the “Hemispheric Anomaly”

The announcements made by presidents Obama and Castro were enthusiastically welcomed across Latin America, from Mexico to Argentina, and in at least some quarters of Venezuela. Although there is a great deal to be done before any true normalisation of relations between the two countries, the announcements do at least represent the end of 60 years of Cuba as a “hemispheric anomaly”.

The U.S. embargo of Cuba, in place since 1961, was only the most explicit of several sanctions and decisions that effectively isolated Cuba from the rest of the continent. Expelled from the Organisation of American States (OAS) and excluded from summits, the Caribbean nation was caught up more than most in the maneuverings of the Cold War’s protagonists. Latin American countries aligned themselves with the United States during the 1960s and ’70s. In the 1980s they started to move toward a growing solidarity with their secluded neighbour.

In the past 20 years, a period marked by both a return to democracy and, in many Latin American countries, a marked shift to the left, the Cuba question was no longer taboo. It was continually pushed onto the regional political agenda even by nations ideologically distant from Havana. In fact, rejection of the embargo was one of the few things on which politicians, from the Rio Grande to Patagonia, could agree.

FULL COMMENTARY (In Pursuit of Peace - Crisis Group Blog)

Photo: Reuters/Kai Pfaffenbach

Meet America’s Next Ambassador to Cuba | Eleanor Clift

Resuming diplomatic relations with Cuba means a promotion for Jeffrey DeLaurentis, the career foreign-service officer currently serving as chief of mission in the U.S. interest section in Havana. He will become charge d’affaires, which confers much the same status as ambassador. Once President Obama’s critics quiet down, and concede however grudgingly that he’s acting in the country’s best interest by taking this great leap forward with Cuba, DeLaurentis could well be the president’s choice for the historic posting of a U.S. ambassador to the island nation after a 54-year hiatus.

The Senate confirmed him once before, in 2011, for a posting to the UN. And he has served in Havana twice before, once in the early ’90s, soon after beginning his career after graduating from Georgetown University School of Foreign Service, and again from 1998 to 2002. He’s a highly regarded professional, says Ted Piccone, a senior fellow at Brookings and a Latin scholar, who was in Cuba Wednesday for the simultaneous historic announcements from the presidents in Havana and Washington.

“He is exceptionally well qualified to manage this historic and positive change in relations for the foreseeable future,” Piccone said in an email that praised Obama’s actions and noted that Secretary of State John Kerry’s announcement that he intends to visit Cuba in 2015 is “another very strong sign of the deep commitment to move this agenda forward, with or without congressional support.”

Implementing Obama’s decision to normalize relations is not for the faint-hearted. “This will take a lot of solid negotiating,” says Mark Schneider of the International Crisis Group. He cited among other factors narcotics, environmental issues, and counterterrorism, areas that require the skill of a career foreign-service officer like DeLaurentis. “He’s a smart guy, very committed, always concerned about issues of democracy, and he’s very professional, level-headed. He thinks through issues.” Schneider points out that DeLaurentis has been in his post in Cuba since the summer, so he’s been in on all the pre-planning that’s gone on unbeknownst to much of Washington for some time. “He’s smart, he’s serious, he’ll do an exceptional job,” says Schneider, a former director of the Peace Corps and a veteran of many international aid and development programs.

FULL ARTICLE (The Daily Beast)

Photo: Ed Yourdon/flickr

Hagel Leaves Successor With Two Wars Obama Pledged to End | David Lerman, Eltaf Najafizada and Aziz Alwan

Departing U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel will hand his successor two intractable wars that President Barack Obama had promised to end.

The battles against Islamic State in Syria and Iraq and against the Taliban and its allies in Afghanistan show no sign of abating, much less ending, as Obama announced today that he’s nominating Ashton Carter, who spent more than two years as the Pentagon’s No. 2 civilian leader, as his next defense chief.

In Afghanistan, now America’s longest war, the capital city of Kabul has become a battleground for daily bombings. At least 10 attacks late last month killed scores of victims and led to the resignation of the city’s police chief. Obama has quietly authorized a continuation of offensive air and ground operations in 2015 to protect U.S. forces.

In Iraq, the war Obama thought he had ended in 2011, the rise of Islamic State terrorists has forced the president to authorize a renewed air war over Iraq and Syria and the return of a growing number of American troops on the ground.

A number of U.S. officials, who discussed policy disputes on condition of anonymity, say that’s not enough. So do outside analysts such as Anthony Cordesman.

“The Obama administration has yet to demonstrate that it has a successful strategy or plan for dealing with any of these wars,” Cordesman, a military analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, wrote in a report this week titled, “The Obama Administration: From Ending Two Wars to Engagement in Five – with the Risk of a Sixth.”

FULL ARTICLE (Bloomberg)

Photo: DOD Photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Chad J. McNeeley/Chuck Hagel/flickr

What Obama Doesn’t Understand About Syria | Noah Bonsey

The U.S. policy to defeat the Islamic State is doomed to failure. Here’s how to fix it.

The current U.S. strategy to destroy the Islamic State is likely doomed to fail. In fact, it risks doing just the opposite of its intended goal: strengthening the jihadis’ appeal in Syria, Iraq, and far beyond, while leaving the door open for the Islamic State to expand into new areas.

This is in large part because the United States so far has addressed the problem of the Islamic State in isolation from other aspects of the trans-border conflict in Syria and Iraq. Unless Barack Obama’s administration takes a broader view, it will be unable to respond effectively to the deteriorating situation on the ground.

The good news is that the White House can still change course – and indeed, President Obama has reportedly requested a review of his administration’s strategy in Syria. In crafting a new way forward, the White House needs to understand three points about the Islamic State and the military landscape in which it operates.

FULL COMMENTARY (Foreign Policy)

Photo: Official White House Photo/Pete Souza

Iran Nuclear Talks Extended Through June 30 | Al Pessin

VIENNA—International powers and Iran extended talks on a comprehensive deal over Iran’s nuclear program, with new deadlines reaching into next year.  

More than a year of intensive talks and the direct involvement of seven foreign ministers for the last several days failed to settle differences over how much nuclear enrichment capability Iran will be allowed to have, and how quickly economic sanctions will be lifted. 

The goal is to ensure Iran cannot quickly produce a nuclear weapon, if its leaders decide to do so, and to have inspectors in place to detect any such move.

FULL ARTICLE (VOA)

Photo: U.S. Embassy Vienna/flickr

Iran nuclear talks: Now or never for a deal? | Michael Pizzi

With the deadline less than a week away for a deal to resolve the standoff over Iran’s nuclear program, talks between world powers and Tehran resume this week with renewed urgency. The window of opportunity for an historic compromise could be closing as naysayers in Washington and Tehran — not to mention U.S. allies such as Israel, the Gulf Arab states and even possibly France — demand a harder line from their respective sides.

The recent Republican takeover of the Senate could hamstring President Barack Obama’s ability to deliver on promised sanctions relief — the key incentive for Iran to cede to Western demands and curtail its nuclear enrichment program beyond what’s required by the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Hawkish U.S. lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have threatened to revive a proposal that would impose additional sanctions on Iran if negotiations produce a deal they deem unsatisfactory, citing the existential fear that Iran could furtively divert its nuclear enrichment programs towards more nefarious purposes — namely, a nuclear bomb. These threats from Congress could potentially unravel the delicately constructed nuclear cooperation framework between the West and Iran that has already born fruit. (The provisional agreement that expires on Monday has seen Iran, over the past year, voluntarily halt enrichment to the more worrisome level of 20 percent, and accept further caps and curbs on its nuclear work to reassure Western powers of the program’s non-military intent).

Despite the cooperation of the past year, the technical and political gaps between the negotiators meeting in Vienna remain wide. But according to Ali Vaez, a scientist and Iran analyst with the International Crisis Group, “the reality is that both sides want a deal, and no time is better for clinching it than right now.”

FULL ARTICLE (Al Jazeera)

Photo: European External Action Service/flickr