Lawrence B. Wilkerson

Administration's Foreign Policy Includes Heavy Dose of Humility | USA Today

Cecille Isidro — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 22:37:00 -0400

Lawrence Wilkerson, who was chief of staff to secretary of State Colin Powell and is a frequent critic of the George W. Bush administration, said Obama and Clinton were delivering long-overdue candor. "What a refreshing moment it is to have a president ...

First Step in a Cuban Dance | Global Post

Cecille Isidro — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 18:27:00 -0400

"It's idiocy" to retain a counter-productive Cold War policy, said Lawrence Wilkerson, who served as former Secretary of State Colin Powell's chief of staff, and now leads a Cuban policy initiative for the New America Foundation. ...

Discard the Mythology of 'the Israel Lobby', the Reality is Bad Enough | The Guardian

Cecille Isidro — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 19:18:00 -0400

But as Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Colin Powell, and others have explained, Israel's leaders in fact repeatedly warned against an attack on Saddam, fearing it would distract from, and embolden, what it regarded as the real threat, ...

Will Obama Shift Policy on Cuba? | BBC News

Communications — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 06:38:00 -0500

... in American foreign policy," write Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief-of-staff to Colin Powell, and Patrick Doherty, from the New America Foundation. ...

An Obama Policy for Cuba

Cecille Isidro — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 14:05:00 -0500

With his national security team in place, President-elect Barack Obama's foreign policy principals will be immediately struck by how many complex and expensive challenges they will face. Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Israel-Palestine and Russia, will all require enormous energy, all the tools in our foreign policy toolbox, and will all take years to resolve, if they can be resolved. None of these crises will allow President Obama to signal swiftly to the world the kind of changes he proposes in American foreign policy. In contrast,

Lawrence Wilkerson in Foreign Policy | 'Seven Questions for Larry Wilkerson'

Cecille Isidro — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 10:46:00 -0400

Foreign Policy: What do you see as the strengths and weaknesses of each of the candidates in foreign policy? Col. Lawrence Wilkerson: Both have strengths. I’m not quite sure what I would describe as Obama’s weaknesses, not because I’m trying to say that he’s perfect but because he’s so unflappable and so far his pronouncements have been so solid. I’m not happy with his reluctance to be more forward on U.S.-Cuba policy. I’m not happy with the need to be more nuanced in Afghanistan; the answer is simply more troops. I’m not that content so far on the economic crisis; there are some things that need to be done and said to the American people, who are carrying on average 13 credit cards, 2-3 maxed out to the hilt. American people bear some responsibility for this crisis. With McCain, I’m alarmed by the lack of sophistication on issues such as Iran; the bomb Iran [idea] seemed to come out of [McCain’s] passion more than his judgment. I’m alarmed by the people around him; [many] are radicals. They are just like the Wolfowitzes and the Pearls of the world. Calling them conservatives offends the title. I have grave difficulty… more

Cuba's October Surprise

Cecille Isidro — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 10:55:00 -0400

If you live in Galveston, Texas, Hurricane Ike will be remembered for its destruction. But history may remember the ninth named storm of the 2008 season for swinging the 2008 presidential campaign.

That's because Ike devastated a little island off Florida named Cuba. In fact, Cuba sustained damage from four hurricanes: Fay, Gustav, Hanna and Ike. Gustav hit the Western end of Cuba as a Category 4 storm. Ike entered the east of Cuba as a strong Category 3 then shredded the full length of the island for three days. There were reports of walls of water 50 feet high hitting the north shore.

In a country of more than 11 million people, 2.7 million evacuated their homes when Ike came through. Today, 444,000 homes in Cuba are damaged, meaning up to 2.2 million Cubans are living dangerously or wondering when it will be safe to go home.

Food supplies on the island are nearly exhausted. The crops and livestock for domestic consumption and cash crops like tobacco and sugar cane, necessary for the hard currency to import food - are devastated. The island's electrical grid is severely damaged and in some places non-existent. Communication towers are down across the country. Roads are blocked with rubble from collapsed buildings, trees, or just washed away. Schools, hospitals, and clinics have suffered extensive damage or are non-functioning.

And it will only get worse. With at least $5 billion of damage done to a nation where the average monthly salary is $17, the economy will not be able to support the Cuban population for quite some time. Even the Cuban military is on short-rations with perhaps a week left. With food shelves empty, hoarding and black market price gouging will quickly squeeze all families, displaced or not, with little to no income and no subsistence agriculture to fall back on. As the vast majority of Cubans become malnourished and post-disaster diseases increase in prevalence, the political situation is likely to become much more volatile within Cuba.

All this could occur within the next six weeks. Faced with a displaced, hungry and frustrated population, Havana could do what it has done in the past: allow a mass migration to head north. In 1980, responding to unrest triggered by economic downturn, Havana launched the Mariel boatlift that brought 125,000 Cuban immigrants over a five-month period to South Florida. In 1994, facing another economic catastrophe, the Castro government allowed at least 35,000 Cubans to leave the island - an episode that cost the U.S. Treasury more than $500 million.

The U.S. government is now offering Cuba a $1.5 million package of temporary shelter for 10,000 families and household items for 8,000 with an additional $3.5 million conditional on the survey of a U.S. disaster assessment team.(1) In contrast, Haiti, which was hit by three storms, has already received $19 million in aid from the U.S. government. Even Burma, which has a military dictatorship more repressive than Cuba's and was ravaged by Cyclone Fargis, received $50 million in aid.

Indeed, an increase in funding for traditional humanitarian items is not what Cuba needs or wants from the United States. Their government believes that there would be no prospect of a crisis if the U.S. economic embargo were not blocking them from purchasing the needed supplies on the open market. It can get food from other countries in the region. Rather, Cuba's infrastructure needs repair. They need electrical components like poles, cable, and transformers. They need heavy-duty construction equipment and materials. The only market that can respond fast enough is the United States.

Without those supplies, the boats could very well sail before November. Americans with family in Cuba will be furious with the Bush administration for placing politics over saving lives. Cuban refugees who make it onto U.S. soil will benefit from the wet-foot/dry-foot policy that other Latino immigrants - a key demographic this cycle - view with considerable hostility. South Florida is already reeling from the domestic economic recession and a new load of low-skilled immigrants will put downward pressures on wages and exclusion will risk increased levels of criminal activity. At a minimum, CNN will be showing pictures of thousands of malnourished and water-logged Cubans being picked up on the high seas and then sent to the notorious U.S. Naval Station at Guantanamo, only to be repatriated to a growing catastrophe.

It is now time to lift the embargo, let Cuba buy what it needs and move on. The U.S. policy of isolation to bring about regime change has failed to achieve its goals for fifty years. Fidel has grown old and retired. Cuba is no longer sponsoring revolution overseas but exporting doctors and nurses instead. And by giving Havana a ready-made excuse for economic failure, the embargo has the perverse effect of supporting the Castro regime rather than weakening it.

The Bush administration is between a rock and a hard place. If it continues with business as usual, Havana may very well decide the outcome of the U.S. elections. If it moves to end the embargo and Cuba purchases the supplies it needs to rebuild, it will have prevented the disaster that it foresaw but Cuba will cease to be an electoral goldmine for the GOP.

America needs to put politics aside. It is time to do the right thing. Protect the lives of innocent Cubans, protect our electoral process, end a 50-year-old failed policy, and be good Samaritans after all.

Lawrence Wilkerson testimony in United Press International | 'Witness: Cheney Probably Knew of Torture'

Communications — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 11:17:00 -0400

A former U.S. military official says U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney may have known military personnel were using torture techniques on Iraqi detainees.

Col. Lawrence Wilkerson told a House panel he thought leadership failed "at the highest levels of the Pentagon, in the vice president's office and perhaps even in the Oval Office," The Washington Times reported Thursday.

Wilkerson's testimony followed a report by a human rights group that detainees in U.S. military facilities at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba., Iraq and Afghanistan were subjected to beatings and other aggressive interrogation techniques... LINK

Lawrence Wilkerson in the Atlantic | ''Disgrace', Ctd.'

Communications — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 08:37:00 -0400

[The Daily Dish:]...Larry Wilkerson, Colin Powell's former chief of staff explains what this means in terms any morally responsible person would understand:

"As I compiled my dossier for Secretary Powell, as I did further research, and as my views grew firmer and firmer, I needed frequently to reread that memo. I needed to balance, in my own mind, the overwhelming evidence that my own government had sanctioned abuse and torture which, at its worst, had led to the murder of 25 detainees in a total of at least a 100 detainee deaths. Death, Mr. Chairman, seems to me to be the ultimate torture, indisputable and final. We had murdered 25 or more people in detention; that was the clear low point of the evidence..." LINK

Steve Clemons and Lawrence Wilkerson in Financial Times | 'A Family Business'

Communications — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 16:15:00 -0500

'A Family Business' (Finanical Times Analysis Online)

To the generation of Cuban exiles that has spent almost half a century dreaming of the day Fidel Castro left power, last week came as a cruel disappointment.

While the legendary revolutionary leader finally stepped down as head of state, the communist government he set up maintains its grip on a calm and stable Cuba. With no sign of a fundamental policy shift in Havana, Washington is also continuing the economic embargo introduced by John F. Kennedy. ...

“I don’t believe this administration, with its tin ear, is going to be productive in any way,” says Col Lawrence Wilkerson, formerly Colin Powell’s chief of staff at the State department, speaking about Mr Castro’s resignation. “But I do believe this might spark the two Democratic [presidential] candidates and perhaps the Republican candidate to begin a policy review,” he adds, saying that such a move could lead to the end of restrictions on visiting the country and an easing of the embargo.

Steven Clemons, a foreign policy expert at the Washington-based New America Foundation, says loosening trade and travel restrictions with Cuba would be the most effective and low-cost means for the next US president to signal… more