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It has been a decade since I first met Chuck Hagel, the senior senator from Nebraska. In all that time his moral and strategic compass has never changed directions. He fought in Vietnam as a rifleman, right up front where bullets fly and the nasty business of war is all too evident.  He and his brother were almost killed there, next to each other. Is it any wonder that when he speaks about war and strategy, and the miserably flawed American policy in Iraq, everyone listens. Even those who don’t agree with him, stop and listen.

Senator Hagel’s new book has just been released. Buy it.  Here are some quotes from one of my favorite chapters,

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As a political leader, you can never predict how war will turn out, only that it will be worse than you thought or planned for. You better be damned sure of  your reasons for getting into it…That’s why, years later, I asked so many questions before we went into Iraq and why I continued to raise them. Why are we going to war? Is Saddam really a threat to America?…What does this have to do with terrorism?…In my mind, patriotism is about asking the tough questions, not avoiding them. It is unpatriotic not to question a government’s policies before the first life is lost…And if the people’s elected representatives don’t have, or won’t find, the courage to probe war policy, then who will?

Who will speak up for the rifleman?

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Senator Hagel took some time to speak with me about his book; I hope you enjoy my conversation with this wonderful man and a great American.

America: Our Next Chapter, with Senator Chuck Hagel

This week, Global Currents speaks with Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, who discusses his new book “America: Our Next Chapter: Tough Questions, Straight Answers.” Hagel, who sits on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, highlights the need for America to “reintroduce itself to the world” and offers his insight into the future of U.S. foreign policy.Hagel call for greater bipartisanship in the creation of U.S. foreign policy and the need to move beyond the squabbles that have helped create negative perceptions of the U.S. around the globe.

Listen to the MP3 Audio

French president Nicholas Sarkozy appears to have withdrawn his support for former UK prime minister Tony Blair’s bid to become the first EU president when that post is created in 2009. The move came after Sarkozy met with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. The BBC reports that the reasons include Blair’s backing for the Iraq war (unacceptable to most Europeans), the UK’s continuing “NO” to adopting the euro, and the Schengen zone of passport free travel.

In my opinion, the U.S. should be silent on this development, with a diplomatic “that is an internal EU matter” response if asked for comment. And then be the first country to congratulate whoever is selected for this important new position. 

Going forward, the U.S. must move away from crafting foreign policy towards Europe with anglo-tinted glasses. The trans-Atlantic alliance is far too important for the twenty-first century’s challenges, and the alliance’s dire strait cannot be re-negotiated without a “special-relationship” between the US and the EU. The change in European sentiments with respect to  choosing the EU’s first president next year is a unique opportunity for America to connect strongly with the EU.

In a Washingtonpost.com article, April 7, 2008,  titled “The Three Revolutions“Dr. Henry Kissinger writes :

 The disagreement over the use of NATO forces in Afghanistan is a case in point. In the aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001, the North Atlantic Council, acting without any request by the United States, invoked Article 5 of the NATO treaty, calling for mutual assistance.

 True enough. It was in fact the first time Article 5 had ever been invoked by NATO. This is the Article that states an attack on any NATO country will be treated as an attack on all the members. It was a magnanimous gesture by NATO calculated to hold out a helping hand to the US after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001

However,  Dr. Kissinger then writes:

But when NATO set about to assume military responsibilities, domestic constraints obliged many of the allies to limit the number of troops provided and to constrict the missions for which lives could be risked.

This is totally incorrect.

NATO wanted to join the 2001 American invasion of Afghanistan, but America pooh-poohed this idea and told NATO to cool its heels. NATO was judged by the US to be incapable of fighting a real war. All those billions of dollars and political capital later, the US refused NATO’s offer to fight alongside the US. 

 Dr. Kissinger continues, 

As a result, the Atlantic alliance is in the process of evolving a two-tiered system — an alliance a la carte whose capability for common action does not match its general obligations. Over time, one of two adaptations must take place: either a redefinition of the general obligations or a formal elaboration of a two-tiered system in which political obligations and military capabilities are harmonized through some system of alliances of the willing.

The fact of the matter is NATO no longer has any mission left. It was set up to defend Europe against the Soviet Union. When the Soviet Union collapsed it left NATO without a mission. Yes there is talk of an “out of area” NATO, but that is a mission on which there is no agreement by NATO countries, it appears to be something America wants NATO to do, under US leadership. Why should NATO countries oblige? After being brushed off when they wanted to support the US, I think NATO countries now question why they should salvage American interests in Afghanistan.

In fact, I’m not certain the US trusts NATO at all. Look at the US Marine Expeditionary Force now deploying in Southern Afghanistan. It is meant to relieve pressure on NATO, but is it under NATO’s command? Absolutely not. Two different armies, under two different commands, fighting the same war! How much sense does that make?

I am not impressed with the rest of this article either. Dr. Kissinger, whom I hugely respect seems to have lost his grasp of geopolitics in this piece.

 Recently, I was privileged to lead an ILEAD (pronounced like Homer’s “Iliad,” and an acronym of the  Institute of Lifelong Education at Dartmouth) course around my book America and Europe After 9/11 and Iraq: The Great Divide. 

 It was a hugely satisfying experience for me, both with respect to the engaged and well informed participants, but also the stimulating discussion that filled each session.As a final exercise the participants in this course were asked to recommend specific actions to the incoming United States President for improving transatlantic alliance relations.

With the participants’ permission, and without any attribution to ensure confidentiality, I’d like to share their recommendations on my blog.  The recommendations reflect the participants’ opinion, and do not, in any way, reflect the views of ILEAD or Dartmouth.

Upon assuming office in January 2009, the President of the United States should:

Rivals: A conversation with Bill Emmott

In this edition of Global Currents, host Sarwar Kashmeri speaks with Bill Emmott, Asia expert and former editor in chief of The Economist, about his new book, Rivals: How the Power Struggle Between China, India and Japan Will Shape our Next Decade.

The interview is part of the ongoing examination of the rise of Asia on to the world stage, which Emmott calls “the biggest story of our times.”

Listen to the interview

This is the first of a number of “Global Currents” programs with which the Foreign Policy Association intends to explore the widely projected shift of the world’s economic and political center of gravity to Asia over the next two to four decades.  Do you believe this shift will take place? If not, why not? If so, how quickly, and what will be its impact? 

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The New Asian Hemisphere with Kishore Mahbubani

Global Currents host Sarwar Kashmeri speaks with Singapore’s former Ambassador to the United Nations and author of The New Asian Hemisphere: The Irresistible Shift of Global Power to the East, Kishore Mahbubani, about the rise of Asia as an economic and political powerhouse.

With a special focus on China and India, the two discuss challenges facing the rising powers, as well as the potential for collaboration and confrontation with the Western countries.

Listen to the MP3 podcast    

Scatter the Chatter or filter the noise, are important principles of strategic communications.  A basic skill that executives, analysts, and all the rest of us should develop is to sift through the mounds of information to pluck out the really meaningful signals.

For the last two weeks the media has been full of information about the real meaning of the NATO summit in Bucharest, Romania; and the Putin/Bush tete-a-tete in Russia re American plans to inject missiles into the EU right at Russia’s doorstep.

Here is my take on what’s revealed once the volumes of media chatter or noise is filtered out.

• Inspite of dire warnings from the likes of the Heritage Foundation, the Washington DC think tank, to never bless the EU’s plans for an independant military force, “President George W. Bush on Wednesday, April 2, 2008, signalled a softening of long-standing US resistance to stronger European Union defense capabilities, suggesting for the first time this could help rather than weaken NATO. The signal came in a speech ahead of Wednesday’s NATO summit in Bucharest, in which Mr. Bush said European governments should spend more on defense, but suggested it did not matter whether it was to support NATO or EU operations,” according to the April 3, Financial Times. The neocons lost a big one with Mr. Bush’s statement.

• Old Europe (Germany, France, Italy…) rose in unison and shot down the Bush Administration plans to begin the process of admitting Ukraine and Georgia into NATO. Is this a surprise? After all, the Europeans have to live over there, eye ball to eye ball with Russia. Not across the Atlantic, behind the Potomac.

• Finally, Mr. Putin succeeded in pushing the decision to install missiles on Russia’s doorstep (and potentially open another cleavage in EU ranks by co-opting Poland and the Czech Republic) into committee where the idea of US/Russian cooperation in missile-defense will be studied for recommendations to Mr. Bush’s and Mr. Putin’s successors. “”Our fundamental attitude toward the American plan has not changed,” Putin said.  As Fox News put it: Moscow and Washington would work together closely in the future on missile defense and other difficult issues.

Oh yes, there were some presents for the US side also. A few hundred (?) French troops for Afghanistan (note, they will replace American soldiers in the more peaceful Eastern Afghan regions, thus “freeing” US troops for where all the fighting is being done.) And, Albania and Croatia were given NATO membership. But all that is part of the noise.

That is my take. What’s yours?

In Britain, Germany, and Spain, the US is seen as the greatest threat to global stability,ahead of China, Iran, and North Korea according to a recent Harris Poll for the Financial Times.

Worsening this picture were the results of a transatlantic relations poll just conducted by the British Council. The poll results were were so dismal that The Council’s head, Lord Kinnock observed, “Growing Hostility in Europe towards the US could cause lasting damage” to transatlantic relations.  Note the phrase: lasting damage.

With this in mind, the March 18, 2008 op-ed in the Financial Times titled “America must be a good role model” by the US Republican Party’s  presidential nominee, Senator John McCain was hugely welcome. Senator McCain, a strong advocate of US-European relations is to be commended for the message this op-ed conveyed re reversing the damage done to the transatlantic alliance by the Bush administration’s unilateral, “we know best”,  “you are with us or against us,” policies.

Senator McCain’s op-ed was a good first step. But his understanding of EU reality, as it will impact future transatlantic ties, also has some serious flaws that must be corrected if his heartfelt longing for a renewed transatlantic alliance is go anywhere.

First, the kudos:

“The key word is together,” McCain said, adding, “…we need to strenghten our transatlantic alliance as the core of a new global compact… At the heart of this new compact must be mutual respect and trust.” Then, “We need to listen to the views and respect the collective will of our democratic allies.” Three cheers for the Senator.

In his speech, Senator McCain used the phrase ”radical religious fanatics,” which is quite a change for him. Previously, he has made it a point to use Islamophobic phrases such as “Islamo-Fascists” a mainstay of the extreme-right-neocon groups in America. Whether the Senator’s change was for European sensitivities or signifies a recognition of the damage that phrases such as “Islamo-Fascists” do to American-Muslim relations remains to be seen.

“We cannot torture or treat inhumanely the suspected terrorists that we have captured. We must close the detention facility at Guantanamo…” Bravo!  I’d have preferred to see “Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, and all the global detention centers whose purpose it is to avoid American laws against torture,” but this is a great beginning.

“The risks of global warming have no borders….” A terrific sentiment reflective of how most Americans feel and common ground on which to engage the EU.

Now to the improvements needed in the Senator’s future EU-US addresses:

Senator McCain’s phrase “When we believe that international action is necessary, whether military, economic, or diplomatic…” continues to support European feelings that the US leads with force instead of negotiations.  Suggestion: use “military” at the end, as in “diplomatic, economic, and military…”

Much more important:

“The nations of the NATO alliance and the European Union…must have the ability and will to act in defence of freedom…”  and later, “A strong EU, a strong NATO and a true strategic partnership between them is profoundly in our interest.” Wrong! The strategic partnership needed is one between the EU and the US. A NATO/EU partnership may, and I repeat, may, somehow come to pass, but that will only happen after the EU and the US have rebuilt a new transatlantic alliance.

NATO is an American led security alliance that was set up to defend Europe against the Soviet Union, it (NATO) is trying to find out what to do next. In this it is failing miserably, as the bloody and inconclusive 7 year war in Afghanistan shows. Also, NATO is a US led military alliance, and American leadership is no longer acceptable to the Europeans. 

It is important to figure out what to do with NATO because Europeans and Americans respect the idea of NATO and, with luck, a role acceptable to both Europeans and Americans will be found for it. But its future (if there will be any) must be negotiated by the EU and the US.  As one of her, or his, first acts, the new American president should announce that the American Secretary of State will commence discussions with the EU’s High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy to figure out what to do with NATO.

So, muted but well deserved applause for Senator McCain. Fingers crossed that he will continue to give high priority to a new transatlantic alliance.

The Polish people are polite and well- mannered. They are loath to flatly turn down the ill-concieved plan by the United States to base anti-missile interceptors on Polish soil. That would be rude. Many Poles vividly remember America’s support for the Poles in their fight againts communism and totalitarianism. There is an emotional bond between the two countries. But this bond is now being strained to breaking point.

I see the pressure from the American side as being triply damaging:

• It is a continuation of the Rumsfeld/Neocon idea of splitting off the smaller European Union states towards an American foreign policy orbit to weaken the European Union. The Old Europe/New Europe gambit that Mr. Rumsfeld invented. This part of the American political order does not believe the EU is in America’s best interest. So do everything to create fractures in it.  Trouble is, it won’t work. Ultimately the Poles know they are a part of the EU, and they have just signed off on the Reform treaty that aims at an integrated EU foreign and security policy. Basing American interceptors on its soil is not EU policy.
• The Russians detest the idea of having American missiles so close to their borders. (In fact the Polish Prime Minister Donald Trusk told reporters ahead of today’s Washington, D.C. meeting with President Bush the US anti-missile system, which has angered Russia, would reduce Poland’s security.)

The Russians will do anything they can to prevent this from happening. With a significant part of Europe’s energy supplied by Russia, the EU will face a prolonged period of uncertainty if the American plan continues. The pressure on Poland from Russia will be unremitting. This will create unstability on the border of the European Union and Russia. Does the U.S. really want to pursue such a policy?

• My final point is, were the Europeans to be threatened by missiles from Iran (or where ever they are supposed to come from) they would take action themselves to protect their homeland. There is no sign that any such insecurity exists in the EU. In any case such a significant foreign and security policy move by the U.S. ought to have begun life with a telephone call to the the office of the EU High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy, Mr. Javier Solana.

The Poles are not blameless here, the BBC reports: “It [Poland] wants anti-aircraft missiles - such as the US Patriot, which was used to shoot down Iraqi Scud missiles in the 1991 Gulf War - in return [for allowing the U.S. Interceptors on its soil.]

This is not going to end well for the the U.S. , or for the transatlantic alliance. Sooner or later Poland will head back into the EU’s fold, and American will be left with egg on its face, another failed foreign policy blunder, and will have further weakened European-American relations. 

Speaking at an election rally in Houston, Texas last night (February 19, 2008) Senator Barack Obama used the word “Houston” repeatedly. As in, “Let me tell you Houston…”, or “Will you help me Houston.” Incredibly, few if any television journalists (or newspaper journalists the next day) picked up on the elegant relevance of his phraseology: Mr. Obama was defining his ground-breaking candidacy (potentially the first black president of the U.S.) in terms of all the historic manned space flights from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) Mission Control Center in Houston Texas. All communication to and from Mission Control is addressed to and from….Houston.

Remember that emotional moment, August 12, 1969 (1000 U.S. CDT) when humans (Americans) first  landed on the moon? What were astronaut Neil Armstrong’s  words (he is on the left in the picture of the crew below. Edwin Aldrin and Michael Collins are to his right)  when the lunar lander module safely touched down on the moon’s surface? “Houston, Tranquility Base here, the Eagle has landed.” 

The imagery crafted by Senator Obama’s speech-writer is nothing short of brilliant.  What were Neil Armstrong’s first words when he stepped off the lunar module onto the moon? “That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.” How close is that, I ask you, to the lines built into many of Senator Obama’s speeches: that his historic candidacy will send a message to the world?

The imagery continues: the Democratic Convention at which Senator Obama expects to be chosen as the Democrat contender for the American presidency is during — August! The month of the moon landing.

I could go on, but you get the message.  Hats off to the communications person who connected Senator Obama’s historic candidacy to one of the most recognized historic events of all time.

Now, if I may be so bold,  here are your words Senator Obama when you are nominated at the Democratic Convention: “Thank you Houston, the Eagle just landed.” To be followed by,  “That’s one small step for this man, a giant step for America, and a leap for all mankind.”