Avuncular American

Ambassador for America Despite Herself: Barbara Hendricks

Barbara Hendricks, in Brussels recently for three concerts, made time for a discussion with the editorial team of Le Soir, Belgium's leading French-language daily.  Renaissance woman par excellence, Hendricks expounded on themes ranging from her expatriate status (she's been living in Sweden for the last thirty years) to the "Hollywood-isation" of humanitarianism.  But here's the thing: Hendricks, who makes it very clear that she is a Swedish citizen and has no love for the current US administration, is given full page treatment as the ideal American.

I remain American, but what does that mean?  That I wear an American flag on my jacket?  Or is it rather that I defend the principles of the Constitution?  I no longer have US citizenship, but I still feel American.

For the last twenty years, Hendricks has been a Goodwill Ambassador for the UN High Commissioner on Refugees - indeed, she was the first celebrity to be accorded that role.  But she is bothered by the trendiness of humanitarianism among the beautiful people: "Every starlet now has a 'cause.'  I'm not doubting their sincerity, but whether celebrity or young volunteer, these missions abroad are often primarily vacations.  To really be effective, you need serious professionals."  Citing the controversy over the French group under arrest in Chad, "l'Arche de Zoe," Hendricks said "you can't improvise in humanitarian affairs; it's not a hobby."

Nor is working to dig "Brand America" out of its current trench.  But Bush loyalist Karen Hughes is leaving her communications undersecretary-ship at the State Department and returning to Texas, declaring victory - or at least success in "transforming public diplomacy."  As former State Department Director of Media Affairs Price Floyd says in today's Los Angeles Times, "Public diplomacy is not PR; US foreign policy, not Karen Hughes, is the reason we're losing the world."

Barbara Hendricks, though clearly happy to be living in Sweden and contributing to the cause of refugees, remains not only American at heart, but is clearly doing more to burnish the tarnished image of the United States than any number of "transformational" diplomacy initiatives.   But she remains a realist about her native country: whoever is elected in 2008 (and she declares for John Edwards), "there will be a change in tone, less arrogance, even if the next president is a Republican.  But many other things will not change."  Maybe the next president can try to convince this exemplary American Swede to become a goodwill ambassador for post-Bush America; we'll need all the help we can get.

Happy St. Hubert's - And a Good Day for National Unity

Well, actually St. Hubert Day was celebrated on various days throughout Belgium, France, and Luxembourg this autumn, but it was our commune's turn this glorious Sunday afternoon.  It's great fun, with red-coated musicians playing hunting horns, and dozens of dogs gathered for the priest's blessing.  Our mayor (bourgmestre) was supposed to have presided, but since he also serves as the President of the Belgian Senate, he's been asked by the King to help broker a deal between the parties of the putative coalition.  Today, his duties included receiving a petition signed by 150,000 people calling for national unity.  On the streets, 35,000 people of all persuasions marched in the same cause, and there were more flags draped from balconies to quietly express solidarity with the notion of Belgium.  All of which was orchestrated by a Belgian matron, Marie-Claire Houard, who was extremely pleased with the turnout.

Back to the dogs (and horses; this time there were no cats, birds, rabbits, etc., though that has been known to happen).  There was a demonstration by the police and several of their German shepherds of techniques for catching baddies.  People and their pets lined up for individual blessings and - probably just as much a drawing card - coupons for dog food from a popular pet store.  It was all very autumnal, and a welcome counterpoint to the political fervor.

St. Hubert is the patron saint of hunters.  Now why would animals show up to be blessed by the patron saint of the guys with the guns?  Well, the blessed are mostly dogs and horses, and therefore usually not in season.  And hunters - appearances and uninformed non-hunter prejudices to the contrary - pride themselves as the original environmentalists and friends of nature.

In France for the last several presidential elections, there has been a candidate from the CPNT Party ("Chasse, Peche, Nature, et Tradition"), the party of hunters and fishermen.  Amazingly, it got as much as a million votes in the 2002 primary elections.  Belgium, to my knowledge, has no such party, nor does it need one: things are complicated enough as they are.

Amidst Eco-Gloom, Cause for Optimism

It's easy enough, with our collective ADD and the 24 hour news cycle, to forget that the end of the world is nigh.  Yesterday the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), meeting in Valencia, Spain in preparation for the December meeting in Bali, released yet another devastating report on the need for immediate action to stave off disaster.  For the few who even bother to listen/watch/read the news, this dire headline quickly gets swept away by the latest juicy news on a celebrity or presidential candidate.

Usually dollars-and-cents arguments have a better chance of appealing to skeptics who see environmentalism as a brake to ever greater growth and return on investment.  The UK government put out a useful antidote to this ostrich-like view last year, when it calculated the costs of waiting until things are really really bad, compared to the relatively inexpensive (compared to, say, the costs of the Iraq war so far) approach of starting to stem climate change now.

Sniffing out business opportunity, the Belgian electricity provider Electrabel and the French utility EDF have come to see the benefits of green sources of energy.  "Le Soir," Belgium's leading French-language daily, reports that Europe's electricity utilities have been investing heavily in what previously had been derided as "'Quixotic" windmills.  To people who have passed near these giants, they bear little resemblance to the quaint Cervantes era structures that are prized tourist attractions.  They are industrial-strength, but mostly silent dynamos.  They are capable, when clustered into hilltop parks or arrayed offshore, of capturing the wind and turning it into profit.

Europe's energy companies have seen the handwriting on the wall, and have begun to sink hundreds of millions of euros into these energy sources of the future.  The European Union has set a goal of 20% of renewable energy by 2020.  Meanwhile, in the waning months of the Bush Administration, climate change denial is still the order of the day.  "‘Dangerous’ Warming Still Undefinable to White House," writes the NYT "Dot Earth" blogger Andrew Revkin, detailing an interview with White House official James Connaughton.  I'm so glad that I'm not a member of the US negotiating team on climate change:  "US delegates say dangers of climate change unclear."  What do they want: sea water lapping at the White House portico?

Okay, now for the optimistic part of this post.  In addition to the European energy utilities seeing green, we have the image of the Belgian Green Parties ("Groen" for the Dutch-speaking north; "Les Verts" for the francophone south) meeting this weekend.  Unique in language-ridden and regionalist-reft Belgium, the Greens form a country-wide political party.  The youth wings of the two communities met, speaking each other's languages, in a picture of the kind of cooperation that the so-called adults of the other parties would do well to emulate as they dicker over the political minutia of forming a coalition.

One young green activist said "what's the point of all this focus on the trivia of linguistic borders etc., when the really important question - for Belgians but also for the rest of the world - is how to work to save our planet?"  Hear, hear.  In our own family, we are very proud that our son and daughter have studied and worked in key sectors of the future, respectively agriculture and energy/environment.

The other day I fabricated a subject "tag" for this blog, to capture what I think needs to be the central focus of the chanceries of the future: "eco-security."  A couple of hundred years ago, America's second president, John Adams, wrote

I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.

If Adams were writing today, I suspect that he would drop the part about tapestry and porcelain and substitute agricultural engineering and environmental planning.  This trajectory - from fathers and mothers who studied politics and war to sons and daughters who will help get us to a safer future - is what I would wish for other families.  As the young Green party worker said - all the rest is trivia.

Venting on the American Way with the Elderly

First, I would appreciate if readers could first take the time to read Peter Schaufele's article about his father.  Then you can come back to this post if you want.

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I spotted Schaufele's article in a review devoted to things diplomatic, but I realize that although his father was an accomplished career Foreign Service Officer and eventual ambassador, this story has little to do with foreign affairs.  That's okay, because I can also relate to his predicament thanks to my own parents' final years.

In my parents' case, they had just sold their little retirement house in South Florida when my mother suffered a serious stroke.  The stroke came when my parents were visiting us in suburban Washington, and our battles with their Florida Medicare HMO were covered in "The HMO Maze: How Medicare Fails Seniors" in the Ft. Lauderdale Sun Sentinel. 

This five-part series exposed scores of patient deaths and injuries allegedly caused by HMOs for the elderly that scrimped on providing health care to members; it also disclosed financial irregularities that have cost taxpayers millions of dollars. The series won the 1993 George Polk Award for medical writing and the 1994 Gerald Loeb Award, a top business journalism award. Schulte put U.S. Department of Health and Human Services HMO complaint data to good use for this series.

According to a chronicler of legendary muckrakers, "journalists Fred Schulte and Jenni Bergal inspired more state legislative reforms than some Florida lawmakers themselves."  In our case, the only good guys - who eventually forced the HMO to fulfill its Medicare responsibilities - were the HHS regional watchdogs.

My parents had already decided to move in with my sister and brother-in-law, who had prepared a "granny flat" in their house.  So there they were, my mother released from hospital, with only their savings from a lifetime of manual labor, plus the proceeds from the sale of their house.  Like Peter Schaufele's parents, not rich by any means, but with some available cash.

My mother lived for some six more years, unable to walk, and needed assistance for "activities of daily living."  For that, my father - himself in his eighties - needed help, and hired home nursing aides.  By the time my mother died, he had pretty much depleted all his savings.  But at least my parents had been able to remain in their daughter's home.

Dad tried living with us overseas after Mom died, but returned to the States and settled into an assisted living facility.  Luckily, through a similar combination of Medicaid and his children chipping in, we were able to "manage."  Unlike Peter Schaufele's father, Dad stayed in relative good health until his last months of life.

I share Peter Schaufele's rage, however, when I contemplate the cavalier attitude of those politicians who just don't get it.  Those who think that being without health insurance is easy, "just walk into a hospital emergency room," as George W. Bush recently put it.  Or those (often the same crew) who, not content with the current $2,000,000 estate tax exclusion (or even the $3.5 million "compromise" proposal), want to shield all inherited wealth from the dreaded "death tax."  Only the 0.5% of Americans whose wealth exceeds this can find the time to worry about such niceties.  The rest are like Peter Schaufele, wondering whether they too will one day have to sell everything just to stay off the street.   

Street Cats of Brussels (and Respects to "Political Animal")

I promise not to even try to mimic Kevin Drum of the Washington Monthly, who has given his blog "Political Animal" deeper meaning with his legendary "Friday Cat Blogging" posts.  But every time I walk down my street in Brussels, to get fresh bread or the newspaper, I look forward to a cat encounter with one of the semi-strays (or are they just house cats taking the city air?) along the way.

A few years ago, when we still had cats of our own (special cross-breed Algerian alley cats, may they RIP), we arrived back in suburban Washington and settled into a rental house for a couple of years, on a calm and leafy street.  We hadn't had the cats for long, and in Algeria they were used to a life of freedom, running around the enclosed US Consulate garden.  Anyway, our new Washington neighbors saved us from a run in with the local cat-catchers, warning us that it could cost us dear if our cat were caught exploring around the front yard.  They also saved the cats from a run in with a car.  On that day, our cats' days of freedom ended, but they lived to a ripe old age stuck in the house.

So when I see these guys, I am amazed that they have lasted so long on our sometimes busy cobblestone street.  As I say, not sure if they are true strays, but I think they're too clean to be true street cats.

Eco-security: A New Tag, a Nice Link, and an Absolute Necessity

Oops, actually "Eco Security" looks like it's a burglar alarm company.  Don't Google that.

Well, my understanding of the tag I've just added is that all the national security-ism (NSC, CIA, NATO, MAD, NPT - the alphabet soup of the national security priesthood) of the last half century is useless unless we come to grips with the perfect storm of climate change, peak oil, and overpopulation.  And now there's a nice site to illustrate that concept, thanks to the good people at the Center for Defense Information and the World Security Institute.  Here's eco-security in a nifty world map, chock full of credible scenarios.  (You should wait a couple of seconds for the interactive mouse-over to work).

I think they've done some interesting homework on the scenarios.  Here's the one on Algeria:

ALGERIA

Islamic militants adapt to agricultural declines by providing free public services. They gain sufficient public support to reinvigorate revolutionary movement.

That's pretty close to what the Islamists actually did back in the early nineties, when they won - overwhelmingly - Algeria's only free elections since independence, before the army canceled everything.  Hearts and minds, the way to success at the ballot box.  And it's a classic approach, used in other places where political Islam has made headway.

There should be a way to combine the word energy with eco-security, but in many ways, it's just a subset of the ecological whole.  We can dig up all the expensive-to-find and non-renewable carbon fuel we want, but it won't do us any long term good - in fact, it will only do us harm - until we find sustainable ways to live on this planet.  That should be the new (inter)national security "paradigm."

The School of Bad Ideas: "Send the State Dept. to War"

Thanks, as Dave Barry used to say, to an "alert reader" (in this case, my first boss in the Foreign Service, who is still an inspiration) who called my attention to yesterday's guest column in the NYT by Max Boot.  Forgive me, but someone needs to give Max the boot before he joins President Bush in imagining how we can achieve victory in Iraq by following our own example in ...Vietnam.

The piece is so full of military jargon (Phase Zero, kinetic) that you know he's been spending too much time with Robert Kaplan. I love this bit: 

"Even with increased participation from civilian branches of government, the armed forces will still have a major role to play in what President Bush calls the “Long War.” But not necessarily a kinetic role. If we can train and advise foreign militaries, they can fight our battles for us. This model was demonstrated as long ago as the 1950s when Edward Lansdale and other advisers helped the Philippines put down a Marxist uprising, and has been repeated more recently in Somalia and the Phillipines" (sic)

"Repeated more recently in Somalia and the Philippines?" I don't know about the latter (perhaps not exactly a paragon of stability) - but Somalia?  A country occupied by a land-hungry (or even more important, landlocked) country looking for a port, a country divided into at least three distinct areas, two of which are self-governing breakaway statelets, a country where it took Islamic fundamentalists to chase away warlords, who in turn were chased away by US surrogates?  This is Max Boot's "model?"

And then there's his citing of Edward Lansdale, the inspiration for the "QuietAmerican" (but also the "Ugly American") - both metaphors for bungling innocents (or maybe not so innocent) in the Vietnam disaster.

No, Boot's repackaging of Condoleeza Rice's "expeditionary diplomacy" would result in the same kind of confusion of roles that has psychologists overseeing "enhanced interrogation" sessions.  Once a psychologist or other medical/psychiatric personnel enable torture, what good are they in other situations where they are expected to apply the Hippocratic oath?

And what good are diplomats - who in Iraq are supposed to help run an occupation - for later assignments in the 191 other countries of the world that the US does not occupy?   Once you get a taste for issuing CPA "orders," how do you deal with sovereign states?  No, instead of "sending the State Department to war," let's make sure that there's still a government department that does not regard the world as a combat zone, places where immunity can be guaranteed by your own edicts.  There will be an "apres Iraq," and the State Department will need to keep its diplomatic skills honed for the next president's approach to the world.

Mr. Blumenthal Signs Off Salon - And On To Hillary

Today in Salon.com, former Clinton staffer Sidney Blumenthal writes his last weekly column, and it's a winner.  He also announces that he's joining the presidential campaign of Senator Hillary Clinton.

Blumenthal has been consistently on target in his critiques of the Bush presidency, and his former White House insider savvy has made him better able than most to focus on the telling detail.  Today I learned that when VP Cheney was President Gerald Ford's Chief of Staff, the Secret Service detail nicknamed him "Backseat" given his reputation for running things behind the scenes.

Here's the best line from Blumenthal's last blast:

"When the President takes measures incompatible with the expressed or implied will of Congress, his power is at its lowest ebb. Presidential claim to a power at once so conclusive and preclusive must be scrutinized with caution, for what is at stake is the equilibrium established by our constitutional system."

Only it's not Blumenthal speaking of Bush, it's Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson stating the constitutional principle in the 1952 Youngstown Steel case, when Harry Truman was still in the White House.  Readers should note that Justice Jackson was the chief US prosecutor at the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal, and had developed some clear ideas about the use of torture and the limits of executive power.

Blumenthal ends his article with a brief explanation of his reasons for responding to Hillary Clinton's call.  I wish him well, for he truly has been a voice of patriotic reason during these dark years.  Personally, I haven't made up my mind on which Democratic candidate to support for the party nomination.  I guess, if I had $2,300 to spare, I could travel to London this coming weekend to attend the

HILLARY FUNDRAISER IN LONDON FEATURING PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON

President Clinton is returning to London for another fundraiser for the Hillary campaign.  It will be from 6:00-8:00pm GMT on Sunday 18 November at the home of Ruth Rogers (owner of the River Cafe and married to architect Lord Richard Rogers).  The cost is 2300 US dollars per person, which includes a picture with President Clinton.  There are also a limited number of tickets at 1000 US dollars. The event is only open to US citizens and resident Green Card holders.

I don't know: my father, may he rest in peace, was proud of his signed photo of President Clinton, and I know he didn't give more than a couple of dollars from his Social Security pittance.  Anyway, if I could round up about 100 friends who each chipped in the entrance fee, I could become a Pioneer!  No, wait a minute, that's the George W. Bush category for $100,000 and up "bundlers."  Hillary Clinton's people are "Hillraisers."

Here's my problem (aside from not having $1,000 or $2,300 to spare): as a former career diplomat, I don't want "Hillraisers" representing the United States as political appointee ambassadors any more than I wanted "Pioneers" or "Rangers" (inflation of bundling in the Bush 2004 campaign had raised the stakes for entry into the diplomatic club for Bush contributors).

At one of the innumerable Debates, there was a momentary flurry when Barack Obama and John Edwards made a pledge not to accept "lobbyist" money for their campaigns.  Hillary Clinton, memorably, did not, defending lobbyists as "representing real Americans."  While that may be true, it does not follow that bundling a $100,000 dollar contribution - whether you're a coal industry lobbyist or an animal rights campaigner - qualifies you to be an ambassador of the United States.

The US Army used to have officers who "bought" their commissions, but that was found to be a bad idea when they realized that a modicum of professionalism would help win battles.  So how is it that more than 100 years since abandoning "purchased" generalships - and after numerous reforms of the US Foreign Service and US Civil Service, all with a view to weeding out favoritism, nepotism, and corruption - that America's representatives to key nations can still "contribute" their way into these jobs?

Could Sidney Blumenthal, honorable man that he is, persuade his new boss (and possible next President of the US) to take the pledge and only appoint US ambassadors from the Foreign Service officer corps?  By the way, in all the sturm und drang over "directing" State Department FSOs to Iraq, I'm not sure whether it was noted that the choicest assignments (Paris, London, etc.) are almost always reserved for friends-of-the-president (whichever party holds the White House).  No directing or forcing needed.

Sticks & Stones - The F, N, and T-Words

"...will break my bones, but names will never hurt me."  Try telling that to Spanish King Juan Carlos and Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, who jumped to the defense of their fellow Spaniard, former PM Jose Maria Aznar, when he was dissed as a "fascist" by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez at the recent Ibero-American Summit.

Now, this particular "F-word" has been overused of late, though maybe not as much as that other F-word.  For example, type in the words "fascist" and "Bush" in Google, and you'll get over 2 million hits.  We can say what we like about George W. Bush and his peculiar world view, but I don't think Mussolini would have let him into the Fascist Club.  No, the F-word has been overused to the point of meaning "I don't agree with you," or "your policies are to the right of"... and fill in your favorite nasty (Attilla the Hun is a favorite).

Interesting that Chavez' loose use of the word should be applied to a Spanish politician.  But there is still lots of historical baggage around in Latin America, ever since the Conquistadors, so it is not surprising that the Bolivarian Socialist president (soon, president-for-life?) should take on the former colonials.  Meanwhile, within Spain, the F-word is no historical matter, what with the recent beatification of pro-Franco (now, there was a fascist) Roman Catholic martyrs by the Vatican.

Recently another hyphenated word hit the news, when the Los Angeles City Council formally banned the N-word.  Now, I'm not sure what practical effect this will have on the streets of Los Angeles, or even in certain hip hop recording studios.  A friend of mine recently took issue with the use of the N-word among African Americans, and was way ahead of the Los Angelenos.

Finally, the T-word.  This one is more complicated, since we're talking about taxes.  In some circles (for example, the US Republican Party), taxes are things that are supposed only to be cut.  Today's NYT has a great Thomas Friedman op-ed, where he returns to a familiar theme, that of energy independence.  Friedman has consistently fought the good fight for energy conservation, even when Cheney's Energy Task Force called it tantamount to a dirty word.  And that was when oil was less than $25 a barrel.

No Republican candidate would ever espouse Friedman's proposal for a gasoline tax to fund programs to make the US less dependent on imported oil (from the Chavez-Ahmedinajad Club).  Whether any Democratic candidate will have the gumption to tackle this national security priority is anyone's guess.

Historical note: rummaging through my papers, I find a old (early '70s) college paper "Economic Implications of the Energy Crisis" (I got an A, so I guess that's why I kept it).  Anyway, I wrote that "some independent oil companies were reported paying $15/bbl for Nigerian oil."  Imagine.  Shocking.  Elsewhere in the paper, I cited some "embarrassingly high" oil profits from the November 11, 1973 New York Times: Shell, 274%; Exxon, 80% etc. Plus ca change...

But here's where my Pollyannaish naivete shows: my conclusion (again, I was a college senior, so give me some slack) was that the "US will attempt to find alternate sources of fuel, so as not to be dependent on the whims of foreign suppliers again."  Wow, did I get that one wrong.

Ceci n'est pas une nation - Status Report on Belgium

Apologies to Rene Magritte, and thanks to The Guardian's Jon Henley for his clear summary in today's paper of the incredibly complex political situation in Belgium.  Just like NATO, which has been headquartered here since France's withdrawal from its military command in 1967, the imminent demise of the organization and its host country are hardy perennials in the world of journalism.  Somehow, both NATO and Belgium have so far managed to muddle through, despite seemingly existential crises.

But Henley puts his finger on why the outside world might care about "whither Belgium:"

Should we feel remotely concerned by this? If you dislike unfeasibly potent beer, naff statues of permanently peeing boys, mayonnaise with your chips, and Tintin, maybe you will not. If, on the other hand, you feel a vague sentimental attachment to the idea of a country whose very existence, in the absence of anything resembling a national language, a national culture or much more than a century-and-a half of national history, depends on the virtues of goodwill, understanding and compromise, then you should.

Europe has seen other recent examples of the collapse of nations whose existence had long been taken for granted: Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia in the late twentieth century, though the terms of divorce differed considerably.   In the aftermath of World War I, empires were sundered, and the consequences of the splitting of ethnic groups - or the stitching together of disparate communities - laid the foundations for the irredentism, nationalism, and fundamentalism that still plague countries as distant as Iraq.

But I stray from Belgium.  Read Henley, who does a much better job than I did last week in the initial heat over Belgium's worrisome new stage in its puzzling politics.  And then consider another reason why Belgians should care: despite its complex (some would say crazy) proliferation of layers of government, it has somehow managed to be the number 4 country in the world in foreign direct investment.  Belgium's FDI has doubled to $72 billion, behind the US, the UK, and France - not bad for a country of only 10 million people.  No wonder the country's chambers of commerce and industry leaders have started to tell the politicians: enough is enough, you've played your political games for long enough now, now let's get on with the serious business of running an economy.  They have reminded the politicians that foreign investors will put decisions on hold - and could very well decide to put their money elsewhere - while Belgium dithers.  Already, the American manufacturer of Monopoly, Hasbro has held off on its Belgian national edition - and is studying whether it should produce versions for Flanders, Wallonia, and Brussels, the country's three regions - and potentially separate political entities.

And how about that other Belgian-based institution - NATO - that is always in danger of demise?  Well, it is due to begin construction of a new (actually, its first permanent) headquarters in 2008.  When it's completed in 2012, will it be in Brussels, Belgium - or Brussels "DC?"  The city-state or European option is taken very seriously by Belgians - especially among the francophone residents of Brussels.  As long as the residents of "Brussels, D.C. get a better deal on "taxation without representation" than the citizens of that other D.C., it might not be so bad an option.  But we are not there... yet.

Stay tuned for future posts on the role Brussels (the city, not the euphemism for the European Union) plays in the "whither Belgium" question, and why I think that "Brand Brussels" should be a key consideration in whatever solution emerges from the pouting politicians of the polders (sorry, couldn't help myself).