Obama explains his Iran policy. Laura Rozen quotes from yesterday’s White House briefing:
THE PRESIDENT: But what’s clear is, is that they have not said yes to an agreement that Russia, China, Germany, France, Great Britain and the United States all said was a good deal, and that the director of the IAEA said was the right thing to do and that Iran should accept. That indicates to us that, despite their posturing that their nuclear power is only for civilian use, that they in fact continue to pursue a course that would lead to weaponization. And that is not acceptable to the international community, not just to the United States. So what we’ve said from the start was we’re moving on dual tracks. If you want to accept the kinds of agreements with the international community that lead you down a path of being a member of good standing, then we welcome you. If not, then the next step is sanctions. They have made their choice so far, although the door is still open. And what we are going to be working on over the next several weeks is developing a significant regime of sanctions that will indicate to them how isolated they are from the international community as a whole.
Q What do you mean by “regime of sanctions”?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, meaning that there’s going to be a –
Q Some will be U.N. and some will be –
THE PRESIDENT: We are going to be looking at a variety of ways in which countries indicate to Iran that their approach is unacceptable. And the U.N. will be one aspect of that broader effort.
Q China will be there? You’re confident?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, the — we are confident right now that the international community is unified around Iran’s misbehavior in this area. How China operates at the Security Council as we pursue sanctions is something that we’re going to have to see. One thing I’m pleased about is to see how forward-leaning the Russians have been on this issue.
Michael Adler has more background on efforts to bring the Chinese on board for sanctions: here.
Israeli-Palestinien peace would neutralize Iranian threat for Israel, says A.B. Yehoshua in a Haaretz op-ed:
No one can promise that the sanctions planned by the international community will persuade Iran to desist from its race for nuclear weapons, yet an attempt to destroy its nuclear potential militarily is liable to drag Israel into a drawn-out, exhausting war against the Iranian nation and its regional allies. But there is another way to neutralize the Iranian threat, one that is both more appropriate and more moral – a peace agreement with the Palestinians. Last month, the Palestinian minister of the Waqf religious trust, Mahmoud Habash, made a speech that inspired hope at a public prayer session in Ramallah. In the presence of the Palestinian Authority’s senior leaders, he lambasted Iran’s involvement in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Essentially, what he said was this: What do you have to do with us? We don’t need your patronage. You are only making the conflict worse, instead of helping us and the Israelis solve it via the method now accepted worldwide – two states for two peoples. By encouraging Hamas’ extremism, you merely provoke a harsh response from Israel and thereby distance the solution for which we all yearn. (…)
Peace between Israel and Palestine would neutralize the poisonous sting of Iran’s hatred for Israel and shatter the political-imaginative mechanism that makes it see Israel as “the little Satan” that must be destroyed at all costs. A joint peace front by Israelis and Palestinians could cause the Iranian people to recoil from the madness that has taken over the religious leadership of this great and honored nation. Therefore, the end of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would have a much greater impact than any Israeli or American military operation. That would only perpetuate this region’s pain and suffering.
Georgia protests sale of French warship to Russia. Eurasianet reports:
Jacques de Lajugie, a top official at the French arms agency, or DGA, has confirmed that French President Nicolas Sarkozy has approved the sale to Moscow of one 23,100-ton Mistral helicopter-and-armor carrier, French media outlets have reported. Davit Darchiashvili, the chair of the Georgian parliament’s Committee for European Integration, hinted that France — which acted as a peace-broker during the 2008 war fought between Georgia and Russia — was stabbing Tbilisi in the back. “It is totally unacceptable when an ally takes a decision that deviates from contributing to security in the region,” Darchiashvili, said during a February 9 parliamentary session. (…)
In addition to Georgia, the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, all currently European Union members, criticized the deal. (…)
In the face of strong opposition to the sale, President Sarkozy dismissed concerns that Russia might be tempted to use the assault ship to intimidate its neighbors, including Georgia. “One cannot expect Russia to behave as a partner if we don’t treat it as one,” the official Russian news agency, RIA-Novosti, quoted Sarkozy as saying on February 8.
NATO enlargement main danger for Russia, according to the new Russian military doctrine. Roger McDermott writes at the Eurasian Daily Monitor:
After several delays, the long-awaited new Russian military doctrine was finally approved by President Dmitry Medvedev on February 5. The document did not include the rumored lowering of the nuclear threshold, despite recent public comments on the issue to the contrary made by the Secretary and Deputy Secretary respectively of the Security Council, Nikolai Patrushev and Yuri Baluyevskiy (EDM, February 8). However, it defined NATO’s eastward enlargement as the main external military danger facing Russia: “The efforts to impart global functions, which are implemented in violation of the norms of international law, to the force potential of the North-Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), bring the military infrastructure of NATO member countries closer to the Russian borders, including by way of the bloc’s enlargement,” adding that US ballistic missile defense plans might undermine global stability, as well as referring to the militarization of space and the deployment of non-nuclear high-precision weapons. “Territorial claims to the Russian Federation and its allies, as well as interference in their internal affairs,” are also listed among military threats to Russia.
Message to Yanukovich. The US and the EU should send a joint message to Kiev, says Steven Pifer in the NY Times:
Mr. Yanukovich’s victory on Sunday rings with irony. After all, the Orange Revolution threw out his tainted election. But the Ukrainian electorate has given him a new chance. He now has an opportunity — and the responsibility — to show he can provide the decisive leadership his country needs. (…)
The United States and European Union should jointly send a message to Kiev containing three key points:
First, the West welcomes Mr. Yanukovich as the democratically elected leader of Ukraine. However, a reversal of the democratic progress that Kiev has made in the past five years would have profoundly negative consequences for relations with the West.
Second, the West understands that Mr. Yanukovich’s foreign policy may differ from his predecessor’s. The doors to integration and cooperation with institutions such as the European Union and NATO nevertheless will remain open; Kiev should indicate how far and how fast it wishes to proceed.
Third, the West will assess his seriousness by the seriousness of his policies. The West cannot want Ukraine to succeed more than Ukrainians do. Should Mr. Yanukovich avoid crucial actions such as energy sector reform, that is his choice — even an understandable one given the tough politics that surround the issue. The West will still seek good relations. But Washington and Brussels should make clear that in such circumstances, Kiev should not expect the West to extend itself by intervening, for example, with the International Monetary Fund to cut Ukraine slack on meeting its loan obligations.
The goal should be to encourage Kiev to take steps that will make Ukraine more democratic, more stable and more capable of fending for itself. That will advance the country’s interests and make it a better partner for Europe.
No free lunch. Judy Dempsey reports that “the German government’s effort to remove the remaining American nuclear weapons on its soil has been sharply criticized by a former leader of NATO”:
In a report to be published Tuesday by the Center for European Reform, in London, George Robertson, who served as NATO secretary general from 1999 to 2004, says Germany cannot remove the missiles and still expect to enjoy the protection of U.S. nuclear forces. “For Germany to want to remain under the nuclear umbrella while exporting to others the obligation of maintaining it, is irresponsible,” the report says. (…)
Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle, leader of the Free Democrats, had insisted that the withdrawal of the remaining nuclear weapons from Germany be included in the coalition agreement. It states that “we will, both in the Alliance and toward the American allies, pursue the withdrawal of the remaining nuclear weapons from Germany.” At the Munich Security Conference last weekend, Mr. Westerwelle said the last remaining nuclear weapons in Germany were “a relic of the Cold War. They no longer serve a military purpose.”
Previous German governments adopted much more discreet stances in their efforts to reduce the American nuclear arsenal. (…)
If Berlin pursues this new stance, the Center for European Reform report argues, it will allow Germany to “have its cake and eat it.” Germany would be contributing to President Barack Obama’s quest for nuclear disarmament, the report says, but could still rely on the NATO countries that deploy the remaining 180 U.S. weapons — Belgium, Italy, the Netherlands and Turkey — to provide it with a security umbrella.
The CER report “Germany opens Pandora’s box” can be downloaded here.
European Parliament approves new Commission. Yesterday Parliament has given green light to the second Barroso Commission. But there was sharp criticism of Catherine Ashton. The EU Observer reports:
European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso and his 26-member college received 488 votes in favour, 137 against while 72 MEPs abstained. The centre-right European People’s Party (EPP), the largest group in the parliament, and the Liberal group pledged their support for Mr Barroso and his team ahead of the ballot. The Socialists, after some internal debate, also said they would vote in favour. The Greens and the far left voted against while the anti-federalist ECR – citing democracy grounds – abstained. (…)
While the new college – with 14 returning faces – failed to produce great enthusiasm among MEPs across the political spectrum, deputies by and large declined to single out individual commissioners for criticism.
The main exception was the EU’s foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton. The Briton, in the job since 1 December, attracted opprobrium from several MEPs for not coming forward with new ideas and for, so far, failing to put her stamp on the new post. EPP chief Joseph Daul said: “From Haiti to Iran, from Afghanistan to Yemen, from Cuba to transatlantic relations, the European voice has not, to date, met our expectations.” “We expect more from a High Representative than we have seen until now,” said Liberal leader Guy Verhofstadt.
EU suffers from lack of vision. Outgoing Commissioner Günter Verheugen talks to Spiegel about his views of the EU:
SPIEGEL ONLINE: The new European Commission was approved Tuesday, thereby ending your 10 years as a commissioner in Brussels. Is the EU still an alliance of nations on the way to an ever-closer union, or is it just a bigger club with the same old problems?
Günter Verheugen: With the 27 members that it has today, compared to the 15 that it had back then, the EU has obviously changed dramatically. We have achieved much in those 10 years, but a few fundamental questions remain open: There seems to be no vision within the Union of where we are heading. There is no consensus over where the borders of the EU should lie in the future, and there is no consensus over how we should define our role in the world.
Europe’s voice missing in Munich. The ECFR’s Ulrike Guérot was not impressed with European contributions to the Munich Security Conference:
The Chinese were intellectually present, the Russian sharp and clear on their security needs, the Americans largely running the agenda on NATO reform and ‘Global Zero’. But Europe’s voice was again missing.
Guido Westerwelles’s rather romantic pledge of a ‘European Army’ trailed away like dust in the discussion; Cathy Ashton’s performance was received poorly, and she ran away from the questions of the audience; Spanish Foreign Minister Moratinos claimed that NATO must be reformed, which was not an idea that broke much innovative ground. On the Lisbon Treaty and whether that would change Europe’s impact on security policy: no mention. A clear conception how to combine values and interests in foreign and security policy: not the European way to think. Interesting talk remained pretty much an American or Russian exercise (…)
The EU, as an institution with ambition, power, the capability to build a new European security architecture, and a partner for an expectant US, was simply not present. There was no European with a strong approach to questions of Europe’s international responsibility and potential. There was no clear European voice on what the European security vision is, especially on the vexing question of how a new relationship with Russia could be built.
The Europe of this Munich conference was voiceless, squeezed between Washington and Moscow, and too overwhelmed to make a critical contribution to the hot-spot themes of Afghanistan, Middle East, Iran and ‘Global Zero’.”
Solana joins Brookings. Laura Rozen has the news:
Washington will have an important new resource as it moves into the tough pressure stage of its Iran policy. The top European nuclear negotiator with Iran for the past several years, Javier Solana, is joining the Brookings Institution as a distinguished senior fellow. Solana, former NATO Secretary General and EU high rep for foreign and security policy, will advise Brookings’ Foreign Policy program, headed by Martin Indyk, and the Global Economy and Development program, headed by former UNDP chief Kemal Dervish.
From today’s EU Agenda. Parliament has a full foreign policy plate today: 2009 progress reports on Croatia, on the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, on Turkey; recent earthquake in Haiti; Situation in Iran, in Yemen; outcome of the Copenhagen Climate summit. Agenda here, watch live here.
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