Democracy Now

Steve Clemons on Democracy Now | 'A Debate on Sen. Joe Biden’s Foreign Policy Record'

Communications — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 13:56:00 -0400

New America in the News:

Much of the focus of Sen. Obama’s selection of Biden to be his running mate has centered on his foreign policy experience. Biden serves as the chairman of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee. In 2002, he helped push through a Senate resolution authorizing the invasion of Iraq. He has since become a persistent critic of President Bush’s policies in Iraq and the so-called troop surge.

Featured Guests:

Steve Clemons, Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation, where he directs the American Strategy Program. He runs the popular blog TheWashingtonNote.com

Stephen Zunes, Professor of Politics and International Studies at the University of San Francisco, where he chairs the program in Middle Eastern Studies. He is a senior policy analyst for the “‘Foreign Policy in Focus’” project of the Institute for Policy Studies. His most recent article is titled "Biden, Iraq, and Obama's Betrayal"

LINK to video and audio

William Hartung on Democracy Now | 'Tensions High as NATO Suspends Formal Contacts with Russia Over Georgia Conflict'

Communications — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 12:51:00 -0400

New America in the News:
Tensions are high between the United States and Russia over the ongoing conflict in Georgia. On Wednesday, soon after NATO foreign ministers decided to cut formal ties with Russia until it withdrew all its troops from Georgia, President Bush vowed to continue to support Georgia. We speak with William Hartung, director of the Arms and Security Initiative at the New America Foundation. LINK to video and audio

Steven Clemons on Democracy Now! | 'Obama's Wall Speech Should Have Been About Israel, Not Berlin'

Communications — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 15:32:00 -0400

New America in the News:
(Democracy Now!)--Barack Obama spoke before an audience of over 200,000 people in Berlin, Germany on Thursday in the largest rally held by any presidential candidate this year. In his address, Obama discussed the importance of the Berlin Wall being torn down. We speak with Steve Clemons of the New America Foundation, who writes, “Had he given those remarks in Israel, at any of the checkpoints that have been added since the Annapolis process began, or at the large dividing wall Israel has constructed, or just about anywhere frankly in Israel or Palestine—it would have been a ‘game-changing speech.’” We also speak with author and journalist Tim Shorrock about his article, “Hawks Behind the Dove: Who Makes Obama’s Foreign Policy?”...

AMY GOODMAN: To talk more about Senator Barack Obama’s tour of the Middle East and Europe, I’m joined by Steven Clemons in Washington. He’s the director of the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation, runs the popular blog thewashingtonnote.com.

Your thoughts on, well, this historic presidential candidate address? I don’t know if any other has ever gathered that many people outside the United States, not president, like John F. Kennedy, but presidential candidate, Barack Obama in Berlin. Steven Clemons?

STEVEN CLEMONS: Well, good morning, Amy. This speech and Barack Obama’s tour have been mesmerizing to watch and to see. It’s very strange in American politics when you see the need that a candidate feels he has, in this case, to connect with so many foreign citizens beyond our borders as a way to prove to American citizens that their future in foreign policy and national security issues will be different than what they’ve seen under President Bush. And I think Barack Obama delivered that on this tour, and he punctuated it with his speech yesterday. What—it was a terrific oratory, and I think that he should be given enormous applause for it.

What I found a little disappointing in his call for a world without walls, however, was that this speech nonetheless was still a safe speech. It was given in a safe place. If he had given this kind of speech in Israel or Palestine and talked about a different sort of walls and a divided society, it would have been even a greater game changer in that environment. So, on one hand, I certainly applaud Barack Obama for this speech and what he’s been able to achieve, and I think it shows—it’s a real foil to the kind of world we’re living in under the George W. Bush administration. But it also reminds us that the Middle East, which I think is the defining challenge for America in this era, remains quite complicated with walls and settlements and a divided society that is echoing and ricocheting through the Middle East and creating, I think, an enormous hemorrhage in the region and for us that his speech might have addressed there, rather than in the safe venue of Berlin.

AMY GOODMAN: You mean tearing down the walls in the West Bank, in—

STEVEN CLEMONS: Well, between—yeah, in the West Bank and really—you know, the most powerful part of the speech was the part calling for walls between Christians and Muslims and Jews to come down. And to some degree, I think that’s what we need to see in a lot of the Middle East.

But nonetheless, I had Mustafa Barghouti in Washington yesterday, one of the former presidential aspirants for Palestine and a good guy, a secularist who’s trying to move forward an internal issue in Palestine, and he shared with me—he says, you know, Barack Obama was in Ramallah for forty-five minutes and in Israel for about thirty hours. And had he given that kind of speech—a lot of Muslims listened to that speech yesterday—they would have loved to have heard any comment of that sort in Israel. And again, I’m not highly critical of Barack Obama. This is an election season, and you need to stage a lot of visuals. But his speech was so powerful, so important, that it was sad that echoes of it did not play in Israel.

AMY GOODMAN: You also talk, Steven Clemons, in your pieces about, well, where, yes, Barack Obama is going, has gone, and where he’s not going in Europe.

STEVEN CLEMONS: Yeah, exactly. You know, one of the things I found interesting is in his—really, I mean, I think he’s checked off a lot of countries, and I think it was great to get him out on the international stage and not to be shy about it. But at the same time, Europe is vital to us as a place. It is becoming, I think, increasingly important in showing other societies around the world what civil liberty creation and civil society creation can look like as Europe expands.

But Europe’s institutional heart is no longer Berlin or Paris or London. While those are power centers, Brussels is. And so, when you’re reaching out to 500 million people and trying to show what the promises tomorrow of what Europe is struggling to become, not to spend a couple of hours and check off that Brussels box, I think, was a big mistake.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to Steve Clemons, director of American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation. Now, Barack Obama has an interesting position in the Senate. He’s chair of the European Subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Explain its significance.

STEVEN CLEMONS: That’s right.

AMY GOODMAN: Explain its significance.

STEVEN CLEMONS: Well, any committee in the United States Senate has very important subcommittees that deal with various topics. And when the Democrats came into the majority in the Senate, Barack Obama became chairman of the European Subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. This same subcommittee was the one that Joseph Biden used to chair in the past.

And I wrote a piece once where I was trying to look at the executive skills of legislators and comparing, at the time, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. I had assumed that Hillary Clinton hadn’t had much time for these and that Barack Obama, who was relatively new to the Senate, would have been drilling into some of the policy issues by chairing committees and hearing them. And I found somewhat the opposite. It wasn’t an effort to try and undermine Obama, but I was astonished that he had never chaired a policy hearing in the subcommittee.

And when I dug deeper, I talked to Senator Obama’s advisers; they said, “You know, Steve, you realize we have to get permission from the chairman”—meaning Joe Biden—“to hold these committees.” And I dug into it. Senator Biden would have been happy to provide any of that permission. So, the important thing is, this subcommittee could have talked about anything dealing with Europe, or Europe or NATO’s responsibilities. And most importantly, those responsibilities, in the near term, had been Afghanistan.

And I think that it was just a part of Barack Obama’s profile that he hadn’t filled out yet. And I think he responded honestly. He said when he got his campaign going, he didn’t have a lot of time and didn’t do it. But I think it’s very important, and I think the Obama team realizes it’s important, that when they have responsibilities of that sort, they need to run in a lot of parallel tracks, particularly given his Senate responsibilities and his government responsibilities, to—you can’t just focus on one area and then neglect a portion of your key responsibility as chair, which I think, unfortunately, was the case.

But I think this has been a little bit overplayed in the press. I do think that he knows quite a bit about Europe. And I suspect that before the year’s out, even before he runs, you’ll find a subcommittee hearing this next season.... LINK to full transcript and online media

Steve Clemons on Democracy Now | 'Obama's Berlin Speech'

Communications — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 08:55:00 -0400

New America in the News:
Steven Clemons, director of the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation, discusses presidential candidate Barack Obama's recent tour of the Middle East and Europe. LINK to video and transcript

Nir Rosen Interviews with Amy Goodman of Democracy Now!

Communications — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 03:33:00 -0400

New America in the News:

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk further about the refugee crisis? Again, lay out the numbers that we’re talking about inside Iraq and outside.

NIR ROSEN: Outside Iraq, we’re approaching three million refugees who have left since 2003. There were, of course, refugees who left before then, due to Saddam and other factors. Inside, I think you have a similar number of internally displaced Iraqis fleeing their homes in mixed areas and going to more homogenous areas. Sunnis from Basra are heading to Sunni neighborhoods, Baghdad, or all the way up to Kurdistan. Shias from Diyala province are going to safer areas for Shias. Kurds from Mosul going up to Kurdistan, as well. And a family like the one we just saw on the show is never going to go back to their home again, actually, it seems.

AMY GOODMAN: Why?

NIR ROSEN: Iraq has been changed irrevocably, I think. I don’t think Iraq even -- you can say it exists anymore. There has been a very effective, systematic ethnic cleansing of Sunnis from Baghdad, of Shias -- from areas that are now mostly Shia. But the Sunnis especially have been a target, as have mixed families like the one we just saw. With a name like Omar, he’s distinctly Sunni -- it’s a very Sunni name. You can be executed for having the name Omar alone. And Baghdad is now firmly in the hands of sectarian Shiite militias, and they’re never going to let it go.

AMY GOODMAN: What do you think of Senator Levin calling for the Maliki and the whole government to disband?

NIR ROSEN: Well, it’s stupid for several reasons. First of all, the Iraqi government doesn’t matter. It has no power. And it doesn’t matter who you put in there. He’s not going to have any power. Baghdad doesn’t really matter, except for Baghdad. Baghdad used to be the most important city in Iraq, and whoever controlled Baghdad controlled Iraq. These days, you have a collection of city states: Mosul, Basra, Baghdad, Kirkuk, Irbil, Sulaymaniyah. Each one is virtually independent, and they have their own warlords and their own militias. And what happens in Baghdad makes no difference. So that’s the first point. Second of all, who can he put in instead? What does he think he’s going to put in? Allawi or some secular candidate? There was a democratic election, and the majority of Iraqis selected the sectarian Shiite group Dawa, Supreme Council of Islamic Revolution, the Sadr Movement. These are movements that are popular among the majority of Shias, who are the majority of Iraq. So it doesn’t matter who you put in there. And people in the Green Zone have never had any power. Americans, whether in the government or journalists, have been focused on the Green Zone from the beginning of the war, and it’s never really mattered. It’s been who has power on the street, the various different militias, depending on where you are -- Sunni, Shia, tribal, religious, criminal. So it just reflects the same misunderstanding of Iraqi politics. The government doesn’t do anything, doesn’t provide any services, whether security, electricity, health or otherwise. Various militias control various ministries, and they use it as their fiefdoms. Ministries attack other ministries

AMY GOODMAN: Which is the most powerful militia?

NIR ROSEN: Well, the various Shia ones, such as the Mahdi Army, the Badr Corps, the police, the Iraqi police, the Iraqi army. Of course, the American army is also another militia, and it’s a very powerful militia in Iraq -- maybe not the most powerful. But the Mahdi Army basically controls the police and the Iraqi army. Of course, in the north the police are more in the hands of various Kurdish militias, and the army is in the hands of Kurdish militias. So it sort of depends where you are...

For the complete interview, please click on the link below or visit Democracy Now!'s web site.

Democracy Now! Interviews Nir Rosen on Latest Developments in Iraq

Communications — Tue, 28 Nov 2006 03:31:00 -0500

New America in the News:

Freelance journalist and author Nir Rosen joins us to discuss the latest developments in Iraq and the Middle East. Rosen says, "[The U.S.] destroyed Iraq. There was no civil war in Iraq until we got there and took certain steps to pit Sunni against Shia. We need to know that we are responsible.”

In his latest article, "Anatomy of a Civil War: Iraq's Descent Into Chaos", Rosen writes, "Shia religious parties such as the Iran-supported Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (its name a sufficient statement of its intentions), or SCIRI, controlled the country, and Shia militias had become the Iraqi police and the Iraqi army, running their own secret prisons, arresting, torturing, and executing Sunnis in what was clearly a civil war. And the Americans were merely one more militia among the many, watching, occasionally intervening, and in the end only making things worse. Iraqis' hopes for a better future after Saddam had been betrayed..."

To listen to the interview, please visit the Democracy Now! website.

Anatol Lieven on U.S.-Russian Relations for Democracy Now Radio

Communications — Mon, 17 Jul 2006 06:00:00 -0400

New America in the News:

We turn now to the annual G8 summit that ends today. The summit was held in St. Petersburg Russia over the weekend. Leaders of the world's industrialized nations gathered for their annual meeting where host Russian President Vladimir Putin, had hoped to focus on energy security, fighting infectious disease and education.

But much of the talks centered on the Israeli air strikes in Lebanon. In a statement, G-8 leaders called for the return of the kidnapped soldiers and an end to the shelling as well as a halt to Israeli military operations. In addition, the statement also called for an early withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza and the release of detained Palestinian ministers and parliamentarians.

On Saturday, Putin and President Bush gave a joint news conference that highlighted their differences over Israel's actions in Lebanon, the state of Russian democracy and Iraq.

For a full transcript and audio clip of the interview, please visit the Democracy Now web site.