Tag Archives: diplomacy

Russia, United States

Low-key Kislyak lies at the heart of Trump’s ongoing Russia mystery

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Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak lies at the heart of the mysteries surrounding ties between the Kremlin and the Trump campaign. (Sputnik)

He’s served as the Kremlin’s man in Washington since 2008.

But only now has Sergey Kislyak, the low-key Russian ambassador to the United States, started making headlines as the person no one in the Trump administration seems to remember meeting.

It’s not a crime for a sitting US senator to meet with the ambassador of a country that sits on the UN security council, even one that’s sometimes , like Russia. It might not even, as a technical matter, be perjury, that US attorney general Jeff Sessions ‘forgot’ about the two conversations he is now reported to have had with Kislyak in 2016 at the height of the presidential election campaign.

So who is the old Russian hand at the center of a controversy that’s already claimed the resignation of Mike Flynn, the retired general who is no longer national security advisor, and might claim Sessions as well?

Kislyak is a longtime career diplomat who speaks fluent English and French. In contrast to Russia’s long-serving foreign minister Sergey Lavrov, the burlier and less polished Kislyak mostly avoids the spotlight. If reports are true, Kislyak is already a lame-duck ambassador — Moscow is reportedly readying a more hard-line figure, deputy prime minister Anatoly Antonov, to replace Kislyak.

One of the mysteries of the current brouhaha over the Trump campaign’s ties to Kremlin officials is the disconnect in December between Kislyak’s initial anger over the outgoing Obama administration’s additional sanctions (related to increasing indications that Russia attempted to use cybertricks to interfere with the US election) and the Kremlin’s more relaxed response a day later — after nearly a half-dozen calls between Flynn and Kislyak:

The concerns about the contacts were cemented by a series of phone calls between Mr. Kislyak and Michael T. Flynn, who had been poised to become Mr. Trump’s national security adviser. The calls began on Dec. 29, shortly after Mr. Kislyak was summoned to the State Department and informed that, in retaliation for Russian election meddling, the United States was expelling 35 suspected Russian intelligence operatives and imposing other sanctions. Mr. Kislyak was irate and threatened a forceful Russia response, according to people familiar with the exchange.

But a day later, Mr. Putin said his government would not retaliate, prompting a Twitter post from Mr. Trump praising the Russian president — and puzzling Obama White House officials. On Jan. 2, administration officials learned that Mr. Kislyak — after leaving the State Department meeting — called Mr. Flynn, and that the two talked multiple times in the 36 hours that followed. American intelligence agencies routinely wiretap the phones of Russian diplomats, and transcripts of the calls showed that Mr. Flynn urged the Russians not to respond, saying relations would improve once Mr. Trump was in office, according to multiple current and former officials.

So who is Kislyak and how did he come to be the Kremlin’s envoy to Washington for a decade?

Continue reading Low-key Kislyak lies at the heart of Trump’s ongoing Russia mystery →

United States

Handicapping the race to become the next top diplomat of the United States

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Regardless of whether U.S. president Barack Obama or former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney wins next Tuesday’s presidential election, the United States — and the world — will nonetheless be preparing for new leadership at Foggy Bottom. 

Although Suffragio focuses on the politics of countries outside the United States, the U.S. secretary of state is the chief U.S. diplomat and historically — from George Marshall to Dean Acheson to Henry Kissinger to Madeleine Albright to Condoleezza Rice — the secretary of state has played a major role in setting U.S. foreign policy.  As such, the decision will have an immeasurable effect on U.S. foreign policy and, accordingly, world politics.

Obama’s current secretary of state, former New York senator Hillary Clinton, a former presidential candidate and wife of former U.S. president Bill Clinton, has said she will step down after four years, even if Obama wins reelection (perhaps in advance of another presidential campaign in 2016), though there’s an unlikely chance she’ll remain at State for a few months longer due to the recent attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi.

In those four years, the United States withdrew troops from Iraq, set a timetable for withdrawing troops from Afghanistan, has engaged an ever-more-powerful China, and adjusted to rapidly changing conditions in the Middle East after the ‘Arab Spring’ tumult, including assisting in the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi in Libya.

U.S. senator John Kerry (pictured above, middle) and the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice (pictured above, top) are routinely thought to be the top two choices in a second Obama term.  Former World Bank president Robert Zoellick (pictured above, bottom) is likewise the favorite in a Romney administration.  In some ways, Romney will have a broader choice — whether to signal in his secretary of state a more establishment, realist, moderate Republican foreign policy or a more hawkish neoconservative foreign policy.

So who’s likely to get the job under either Obama or Romney?  And more importantly, how would each potential candidate guide foreign policy?

Continue reading Handicapping the race to become the next top diplomat of the United States →

Egypt

Egyptian president Morsi caught in the crossfire in embassy riots kerfuffle

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Egyptian president Mohammed Morsi today in Brussels made his most detailed comments yet on the Sept. 11 protests/attacks that took place at the U.S. embassy in Cairo (and the more deadly assault on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi in Libya):

“Muslims and Christians in Egypt are equal citizens and have the same rights… We are cautious about those principles and human values, also respecting visitors and respecting tourists… and respecting and protecting diplomatic delegations and private and public properties, and not attacking them.

“Freedom, and ensuring safety of self, and protecting this freedom and people and preserving property is the responsibility of the Egyptian nation.”

He continued: “The Egyptian nation is capable now of protecting people’s opinions and allowing them breathing room, as well as protecting diplomatic delegations and all foreigners, visitors, tourists, embassies and consulates in Egypt.”

“I see in Egypt and the Arab and Islamic world a severe anger toward the violations made by a very small number of individuals. They have insulted the prophet Mohammed, peace be upon him. We stand very strongly against this. We don’t agree with or approve this, and we stand against anyone who tries to raise such false slogans and create these disturbances, tension and hatred between populations.”

“Those [people] are not accepted, not by people in Egypt nor other Arab and Islamic countries, nor by their own people. I affirm that the American people reject this and I’ve called on them to declare their rejection of them, at the same time with our rejection of those bad practices that bring harm and not benefit.”

Got all that?  To me, those sound like the words of a president terrified at the thought of losing any side over this week’s crisis — and the sides are too numerous to count.

At home, he certainly can’t be seen as standing weak in defense of Islam, but he also can’t be seen in the United States as condoning violent attacks on the U.S. embassy.

It’s hard to believe that Morsi has been in office for only about 10 weeks — he won (narrowly) Egypt’s presidential runoff on June 24 against former air force commander and Mubarak-era prime minister Ahmed Shafiq.

Remember, too, that it’s been just six months since Morsi has appointed his prime minister, Hisham Qandil, and less than a month since Morsi pulled off his more-or-less successful political coup in retiring the military’s chief, Hussein Tantawi, who had served as Egypt’s defense minister since 1991, thereby making Morsi the indisputable head of state.

It’s clear that the U.S. president Barack Obama is none too pleased with Morsi’s reticence in condemning the attacks, especially given the unqualified condemnation offered up across the board by Libya’s political elite yesterday.  The U.S. administration, with Obama up for reelection within 60 days, might be justifiably short on patience with the Middle East these days, given the dual crises in Libya and Egypt following the embassy riots, and an Israeli prime minister who is publicly attacking the Obama administration at every turn over Iran’s nuclear weapons program (and despite Morsi’s visit to Tehran, the first of an Egyptian leader since the 1979 Iranian revolution, there’s no love lost in Cairo for Iran).

Above all, Morsi was set to meet with Obama in Washington in October — if that meeting still happens, you better believe it’s going to be incredibly tense.  U.S. public opinion has now sharply condemned Morsi, and even the Cairo embassy has taken to snarking at the Muslim Brotherhood via Twitter for talking out of both sides of its mouth (one Arabic, the other English).

Morsi cannot lose the United States and the United States naturally wants to give him the benefit of the doubt — despite the Obama administration’s unease with an Islamist president, Morsi was elected democratically, and the U.S. will want to see the positive outcome of the Arab Spring that it so vociferously trumpeted since the early days of the protests in Tahrir Square back in February 2011.  So it’s still in the best interests of the United States to maintain a constructive relationship with Egypt.  But Morsi needs U.S. support even more — not just in luring tourists, but in encouraging the foreign investment necessary to revitalize a stagnated, bloated and state-heavy economy, including a much-needed loan from the International Monetary Foundation. Continue reading Egyptian president Morsi caught in the crossfire in embassy riots kerfuffle →

Ecuador, United Kingdom

Correa reelection in Ecuador a key motive in Assange asylum incident

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One of the most fascinating aspects of the latest turn in the Julian Assange drama is why Ecuador — of all places — is so keen on offering Assange asylum. 

Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, made public a huge trove of classified cables from the U.S. State Department, starting in February 2010.  Assange has also been charged on a warrant by Sweden for sexual assault and voluntarily entered English custody in December 2010.

Assange claims that in Sweden (unlike in the Great Britain), he will be subject to extradition or illegal rendition to the United States, where he also claims he will be charged with espionage and other crimes in relation to the release of the U.S. classified cables.  I will leave aside the issue of whether that’s a valid concern or paranoid delusion, but given the global attention now on Assange, it seems certain that the United States would face massive criticism and a significant soft-power blow, even among its allies, for such a move.

In any event, on June 19, Assange fled to the Ecuadorian embassy in London, and Ecuador granted asylum to Assange on August 16.  The United Kingdom, for its part, refuses to guarantee the safe passage of Assange, who now faces the puzzle of getting from Ecuador’s embassy out of the country.  The United Kingdom apparently sent a letter last week to the Ecuadorian embassy that seemed to threaten invasion of Ecuador’s embassy to reclaim Assange — that would appear to be  a fairly significant break with the international law that governs diplomatic relations, which is one of the few areas of international law that countries take seriously as law.

Besides, the idea of UK foreign minister William Hague ordering a military siege in posh Knightsbridge to capture Assange is so outrageous (and hilarious) that I doubt the British government would ever stoop to something like that.  Far better to wait it out until Assange tries to flee, or simply strip Ecuador of its diplomatic status by cutting off ties.

Assange raised the temperature even more Sunday with a scathing denunciation of the United States from the balcony of the Ecuadorian embassy.

But why would Ecuador even bother to step into such a fraught battle of international intrigue that has already become a headache for the United Kingdom, the United States, Sweden and Assange’s native country of Australia?

Max Fisher at The Atlantic makes the case that Ecuadorian president Rafael Correa is angling to pick a fight with a stalwart of Western government:

Though we can’t know the Ecuadorian government’s motivation for sure, engineering a high-profile and possibly protracted confrontation with a Western government would actually be quite consistent with Correa’s practice of using excessively confrontational foreign policy in a way that helps cement his populist credibility at home.  It would also be consistent with his habit of using foreign embassies as proxies for these showdowns — possibly because they tend to generate lots of Western outrage with little risk of unendurable consequences.

That seems just about right, and it doesn’t hurt that South American ally Argentina already detests the United Kingdom over the status of the Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas) since the 1982 war and before.

But there’s a vital element missing from this narrative: Correa faces reelection in February 2013.

Continue reading Correa reelection in Ecuador a key motive in Assange asylum incident →