From: Washington Times
Unaware that a microphone was recording him, President Obama asked outgoing Russian President Dmitry Medvedev Monday for breathing room until after Mr. Obama’s re-election campaign to negotiate on missile defense.
“On all these issues, but particularly missile defense, this, this can be solved, but it’s important for him to give me space,” Mr. Obama told Mr. Medvedev at the end of their 90-minute meeting, apparently referring to incoming Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Mr. Medvedev replied, “Yeah, I understand. I understand your message about space. Space for you…”
“This is my last election,” Mr. Obama said. “After my election, I have more flexibility.”
The Russian leader responded, “I understand. I transmit this information to Vladimir.”
The exchange was picked up by microphone of a Russian reporter as journalists were allowed into the meeting room for remarks by the two leaders. It was first reported by ABC News, which said it verified the conversation. A Washington Times reporter heard a portion of the tape that begins with Mr. Obama saying, “This is my last election.”
The two leaders are in Seoul for a nuclear security summit involving the heads of more than 50 nations. Mr. Obama and Mr. Medvedev were huddling close together in their respective chairs when the conversation took place.
White House deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes, who attended the meeting, at first said he didn’t hear the exchange and couldn’t comment on it. Within an hour, however, Mr. Rhodes issued a statement via email that said the U.S. “is committed to implementing our missile defense system, which we’ve repeatedly said is not aimed at Russia.”
“However, given the longstanding difference between the U.S. and Russia on this issue, it will take time and technical work before we can try to reach an agreement,” Mr. Rhodes said. “Since 2012 is an election year in both countries, with an election and leadership transition in Russia and an election in the United States, it is clearly not a year in which we are going to achieve a breakthrough. Therefore, President Obama and President Medvedev agreed that it was best to instruct our technical experts to do the work of better understanding our respective positions, providing space for continued discussions on missile defense cooperation going forward.”
The image of Mr. Obama putting off a difficult national security question due to re-election concerns is the opposite of what the White House intended for this trip. Mr. Obama’s first event upon landing in Korea on Sunday was to visit the Demilitarized Zone separating North and South Korea for a photo-op of him gazing across no-man’s land at a forward Army observation post.
Mr. Medvedev told reporters that he believes missile defense talks between the two countries “could be more active.”
“I believe we still have time; time hasn’t run out,” Mr. Medvedev said. “And now we need to discuss and cooperate on various aspects on European missile defense. Now, in my view, time has come for discussions between technical aspects and, of course, we remain at our own positions, both the United States and Russian Federation.”
When he knew he was speaking for the microphones, Mr. Obama said only, “We’ve got more work to do between our two countries. Dmitry identified some areas of continued friction — missile defense being an example. And what we’ve agreed to is to make sure that our teams, at a technical level, are in discussions about how some of these issues can be resolved.”
The U.S. and its NATO allies are pursuing a missile defense shield, while Russia objects that it would compromise its security. Mr. Rhodes said the U.S. has continuously told the Russians that the shield is not being developed as a defense against Russia, and that the two nations should move forward on a broad range of nuclear weapons issues rather than bog down over the shield issue.
Showing posts with label Dimitri Medvedev. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dimitri Medvedev. Show all posts
Monday, March 26, 2012
Wednesday, December 07, 2011
Israel rift roils Democratic ranks
From: Politico
Two of the Democratic Party’s core institutions are challenging a bipartisan consensus on Israel and Palestine that has dominated American foreign policy for more than a decade.
The Center for American Progress, the party’s key hub of ideas and strategy, and Media Matters, a central messaging organization, have emerged as vocal critics of their party’s staunchly pro-Israel congressional leadership and have been at odds, at times, with Barack Obama’s White House, which has acted as a reluctant ally to Benjamin Netanyahu’s Israeli government.
The differences are ones of tone – but also of bright lines of principle – and while they have haven’t yet made any visible impact on Democratic policy, they’ve shaken up the Washington foreign policy conversation and broadened the space for discussing a heretical and often critical stance on Israel heretofore confined to the political margins.
The daily battle is waged in Media Matters’ emails, on CAP’s blogs, Middle East Progress and ThinkProgress and most of all on Twitter, where a Media Mattters official, MJ Rosenberg, regularly heaps vitriol on those who disagree as “Iraq war neocon liar” (the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg) or having “dual loyalties” to the U.S. and Israel (the Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin). And while the Center for American Progress tends to walk a more careful line, warm words for Israel can be hard to find on its blogs.
Events of recent years such as GOP attacks on Obama as insufficiently loyal to Israel, Israel’s controversial raid on a Turkish ship bound for Gaza and debates over the Iranian nuclear program have deepened the divide between some on the Democratic left and the party’s mainstream foreign policy apparatus.
“Like segregation in the American South, the siege of Gaza (and the entire Israeli occupation, for that matter) is a moral abomination that should be intolerable to anyone claiming progressive values,” wrote Matt Duss, a CAP policy analyst and the director of Middle East Progress, last year, after an Israeli raid on a flotilla challenging the blockade of Gaza turned violent.
The two groups’ push is part of a larger revival of the liberal American Israel lobby, though one that has yet to make a policy impact. Stalwarts of the anti-settlement movement like Peace Now have new, more politically engaged counterparts like J Street and see their views reflected increasingly in the party’s central institutions. They represent – they hope – the Democratic Party’s future, if not its present, and have taken heart from recent criticism of Israel by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
The shift is vividly reflected in the current debate over how the U.S. should handle the fledgling Iranian nuclear program. With both Obama and congressional Democrats working to increase pressure on what they view as alarming Iranian nuclear efforts, the Center for American Progress and Media Matters have made the case that both Iran’s belligerence and its level nuclear sophistication have been overstated – in some cases attacking hawkish hyperbole or Republican rhetoric, in others going after claims by the administration.
In one recent item, for instance, ThinkProgress National Security reporter Eli Clifton took issue with a Quinnipiac University poll that made reference to Iran’s “nuclear program.” The belief that such a program exists undergirds the Obama administration’s drive for sanctions, and was recently bolstered by a report from the International Atomic Energy Agency, which wrote of “increasing” concerns, though not definitive evidence.
“Such assertions, and the resulting polling statistics, serve to tilt public opinion toward preemptive military action when intelligence reports paint a far more complex picture of Iran’s nuclear program and the extremely risky outcomes of an Israeli and/or U.S. airstrike,” Clifton wrote.
Another recent column on the CAP website, one of several to prompt behind-the-scenes outrage from the powerful pro-Israel group AIPAC, featured Eric Alterman accusing AIPAC of campaigning for war in Iran, which Alterman described as its “big prize.”
Over at Media Matters, Rosenberg, a former AIPAC staffer turned apostate, labels American Israel hawks “Israel-firsters” and recently blasted Rep. Brad Sherman, a California Democrat, for pushing a sanctions on Iranian civilian aviation that would be “the most ugly expression yet of this country’s almost bizarre obsession with punishing Iran, its people along with its government.” (Sherman spokesman Ben Fishel, a former Media Matters staffer, said the organization “would agree with” Sherman if it understood how civilian planes were being used to ferry arms to the Syrian government.)
ThinkProgress also scrambled to call into question an alleged Iranian plot to assassinate Saudi diplomats in the United States, though the charges were leveled by Attorney General Eric Holder, a longtime Democratic Party stalwart. “With analysts and the media still scratching their heads over what to make of a convoluted plot alleged to have been hatched by an Iranian American in collusion with Mexican drug cartels,” Clifton wrote, “[conservative think tanks] – along with their friends in Congress — are quickly declaring the end of diplomatic strategies to curb Iran’s nuclear program and regional ambitions.”
The villain: AIPAC. “It would appear that AIPAC is now using the same escalating measures against Iran that were used before the invasion of Iraq,” Clifton wrote in August.
Clifton’s post and others like it, two sources said, drew a furious reaction from the pro-Israel group, whose executives called CAP chairman John Podesta and other senior officials at the organization to complain.
“There’s two explanations here – either the inmates are running the asylum or the Center for American Progress has made a decision to be anti-Israel,” said Josh Block, a former spokesman for AIPAC who is now a fellow at the center-left Progressive Policy Institute. “Either they can allow people to say borderline anti-Semitic stuff” – a reference to what he described as conspiracy theorizing in the Alterman column – “and to say things that are antithetical to the fundamental values of the Democratic party, or they can fire them and stop it.” (Alterman called the charge "ludicrous" and "character assassination," noted that he writes for Jewish publications, and described himself as a "proud, pro-Zionist Jew.")
An AIPAC spokesman, Ari Goldberg, declined to comment on CAP’s views. But the suggestion that AIPAC is leading an Iraq-style drive for war with Iran also angered leading Jewish Democrats, many of whom are close to AIPAC.
“There’s a great difference between the widespread concern for Iran within the Democratic and Jewish communities versus the far right. Some extreme right-wingers may be beating the drums for war, but the vast mainstream — certainly including AIPAC — is most definitely not,” said David Harris, the CEO of the National Jewish Democratic Council, when asked about the AIPAC’s statements. He noted that even liberal, pro-Israel groups like Peace Now and J Street shy away from putting AIPAC at the heart of a pro-war cabal.
CAP officials have told angry allies that the bloggers don’t speak for the organization, and senior fellow Brian Katulis – whose work is more standard Clinton-Democrat fare – stressed that in an email.
“I think there are different voices on the Think Progress blog and some individual analysts - and some of that work, especially the blog, is I think aimed at reporting on and reflecting one aspect of the diversity of the views among the broad progressive community,” he said. “But what one blogger or analyst may write isn’t necessarily indicative of what our policy recommendations are for the administration or Congress when I’m doing meetings with our friends in government.”
The director of CAP’s national security program, Ken Gude, also drew a distinction between the blog, which is CAP’s loudest megaphone, and its less confrontational policy work.
“There’s a distinction here that we have between the policy work that we do and the blogging work that we do,” he said. Middle East Progress “is clearly a progressive blog and it does respond to arguments that are made most forcefully by conservatives and it responds in that way.”
Gude also said the Center’s experts view the allegations of an Iranian assassination plot as credible, despite initial doubts, and said he wasn’t sure whether that perspective had been reflected on its blogs, or why not.
In interviews, several ThinkProgress officials described the Center’s goals differently. Two of them suggested that criticizing the Israeli government and raising doubts about allegations against Iran serve a useful political purpose: They open political space on Obama’s left, and give the president room to maneuver.
Gude denied that motive.
“There is no decision on the part of the Center for American Progress to push any line that would be to the left of [the Administration],” he said.
AIPAC and its allies have not been satisfied by those explanations. “To suggest that the organization is not responsible for people who are ‘just bloggers’ is ludicrous and insulting to people’s intelligence,” Block said. But CAP has refused to give ground, and while CAP’s top officials didn’t respond directly to POLITICO, Gude said he was unaware of Jewish Democrats’ concerns.
The seams sometimes show in the organization, however. Podesta, who recently stepped down from his longtime position as CAP’s president, “always wanted to stay out of Israel stuff from the beginning, because it’s a no-win issue for them,” a liberal Israel policy thinker and CAP ally said. “They’re obviously a progressive place, but if you want to attract a mainstream Clinton, New Democrat milieu, you can’t really do real progressive Israel stuff.”
Two of the Democratic Party’s core institutions are challenging a bipartisan consensus on Israel and Palestine that has dominated American foreign policy for more than a decade.
The Center for American Progress, the party’s key hub of ideas and strategy, and Media Matters, a central messaging organization, have emerged as vocal critics of their party’s staunchly pro-Israel congressional leadership and have been at odds, at times, with Barack Obama’s White House, which has acted as a reluctant ally to Benjamin Netanyahu’s Israeli government.
The differences are ones of tone – but also of bright lines of principle – and while they have haven’t yet made any visible impact on Democratic policy, they’ve shaken up the Washington foreign policy conversation and broadened the space for discussing a heretical and often critical stance on Israel heretofore confined to the political margins.
The daily battle is waged in Media Matters’ emails, on CAP’s blogs, Middle East Progress and ThinkProgress and most of all on Twitter, where a Media Mattters official, MJ Rosenberg, regularly heaps vitriol on those who disagree as “Iraq war neocon liar” (the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg) or having “dual loyalties” to the U.S. and Israel (the Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin). And while the Center for American Progress tends to walk a more careful line, warm words for Israel can be hard to find on its blogs.
Events of recent years such as GOP attacks on Obama as insufficiently loyal to Israel, Israel’s controversial raid on a Turkish ship bound for Gaza and debates over the Iranian nuclear program have deepened the divide between some on the Democratic left and the party’s mainstream foreign policy apparatus.
“Like segregation in the American South, the siege of Gaza (and the entire Israeli occupation, for that matter) is a moral abomination that should be intolerable to anyone claiming progressive values,” wrote Matt Duss, a CAP policy analyst and the director of Middle East Progress, last year, after an Israeli raid on a flotilla challenging the blockade of Gaza turned violent.
The two groups’ push is part of a larger revival of the liberal American Israel lobby, though one that has yet to make a policy impact. Stalwarts of the anti-settlement movement like Peace Now have new, more politically engaged counterparts like J Street and see their views reflected increasingly in the party’s central institutions. They represent – they hope – the Democratic Party’s future, if not its present, and have taken heart from recent criticism of Israel by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
The shift is vividly reflected in the current debate over how the U.S. should handle the fledgling Iranian nuclear program. With both Obama and congressional Democrats working to increase pressure on what they view as alarming Iranian nuclear efforts, the Center for American Progress and Media Matters have made the case that both Iran’s belligerence and its level nuclear sophistication have been overstated – in some cases attacking hawkish hyperbole or Republican rhetoric, in others going after claims by the administration.
In one recent item, for instance, ThinkProgress National Security reporter Eli Clifton took issue with a Quinnipiac University poll that made reference to Iran’s “nuclear program.” The belief that such a program exists undergirds the Obama administration’s drive for sanctions, and was recently bolstered by a report from the International Atomic Energy Agency, which wrote of “increasing” concerns, though not definitive evidence.
“Such assertions, and the resulting polling statistics, serve to tilt public opinion toward preemptive military action when intelligence reports paint a far more complex picture of Iran’s nuclear program and the extremely risky outcomes of an Israeli and/or U.S. airstrike,” Clifton wrote.
Another recent column on the CAP website, one of several to prompt behind-the-scenes outrage from the powerful pro-Israel group AIPAC, featured Eric Alterman accusing AIPAC of campaigning for war in Iran, which Alterman described as its “big prize.”
Over at Media Matters, Rosenberg, a former AIPAC staffer turned apostate, labels American Israel hawks “Israel-firsters” and recently blasted Rep. Brad Sherman, a California Democrat, for pushing a sanctions on Iranian civilian aviation that would be “the most ugly expression yet of this country’s almost bizarre obsession with punishing Iran, its people along with its government.” (Sherman spokesman Ben Fishel, a former Media Matters staffer, said the organization “would agree with” Sherman if it understood how civilian planes were being used to ferry arms to the Syrian government.)
ThinkProgress also scrambled to call into question an alleged Iranian plot to assassinate Saudi diplomats in the United States, though the charges were leveled by Attorney General Eric Holder, a longtime Democratic Party stalwart. “With analysts and the media still scratching their heads over what to make of a convoluted plot alleged to have been hatched by an Iranian American in collusion with Mexican drug cartels,” Clifton wrote, “[conservative think tanks] – along with their friends in Congress — are quickly declaring the end of diplomatic strategies to curb Iran’s nuclear program and regional ambitions.”
The villain: AIPAC. “It would appear that AIPAC is now using the same escalating measures against Iran that were used before the invasion of Iraq,” Clifton wrote in August.
Clifton’s post and others like it, two sources said, drew a furious reaction from the pro-Israel group, whose executives called CAP chairman John Podesta and other senior officials at the organization to complain.
“There’s two explanations here – either the inmates are running the asylum or the Center for American Progress has made a decision to be anti-Israel,” said Josh Block, a former spokesman for AIPAC who is now a fellow at the center-left Progressive Policy Institute. “Either they can allow people to say borderline anti-Semitic stuff” – a reference to what he described as conspiracy theorizing in the Alterman column – “and to say things that are antithetical to the fundamental values of the Democratic party, or they can fire them and stop it.” (Alterman called the charge "ludicrous" and "character assassination," noted that he writes for Jewish publications, and described himself as a "proud, pro-Zionist Jew.")
An AIPAC spokesman, Ari Goldberg, declined to comment on CAP’s views. But the suggestion that AIPAC is leading an Iraq-style drive for war with Iran also angered leading Jewish Democrats, many of whom are close to AIPAC.
“There’s a great difference between the widespread concern for Iran within the Democratic and Jewish communities versus the far right. Some extreme right-wingers may be beating the drums for war, but the vast mainstream — certainly including AIPAC — is most definitely not,” said David Harris, the CEO of the National Jewish Democratic Council, when asked about the AIPAC’s statements. He noted that even liberal, pro-Israel groups like Peace Now and J Street shy away from putting AIPAC at the heart of a pro-war cabal.
CAP officials have told angry allies that the bloggers don’t speak for the organization, and senior fellow Brian Katulis – whose work is more standard Clinton-Democrat fare – stressed that in an email.
“I think there are different voices on the Think Progress blog and some individual analysts - and some of that work, especially the blog, is I think aimed at reporting on and reflecting one aspect of the diversity of the views among the broad progressive community,” he said. “But what one blogger or analyst may write isn’t necessarily indicative of what our policy recommendations are for the administration or Congress when I’m doing meetings with our friends in government.”
The director of CAP’s national security program, Ken Gude, also drew a distinction between the blog, which is CAP’s loudest megaphone, and its less confrontational policy work.
“There’s a distinction here that we have between the policy work that we do and the blogging work that we do,” he said. Middle East Progress “is clearly a progressive blog and it does respond to arguments that are made most forcefully by conservatives and it responds in that way.”
Gude also said the Center’s experts view the allegations of an Iranian assassination plot as credible, despite initial doubts, and said he wasn’t sure whether that perspective had been reflected on its blogs, or why not.
In interviews, several ThinkProgress officials described the Center’s goals differently. Two of them suggested that criticizing the Israeli government and raising doubts about allegations against Iran serve a useful political purpose: They open political space on Obama’s left, and give the president room to maneuver.
Gude denied that motive.
“There is no decision on the part of the Center for American Progress to push any line that would be to the left of [the Administration],” he said.
AIPAC and its allies have not been satisfied by those explanations. “To suggest that the organization is not responsible for people who are ‘just bloggers’ is ludicrous and insulting to people’s intelligence,” Block said. But CAP has refused to give ground, and while CAP’s top officials didn’t respond directly to POLITICO, Gude said he was unaware of Jewish Democrats’ concerns.
The seams sometimes show in the organization, however. Podesta, who recently stepped down from his longtime position as CAP’s president, “always wanted to stay out of Israel stuff from the beginning, because it’s a no-win issue for them,” a liberal Israel policy thinker and CAP ally said. “They’re obviously a progressive place, but if you want to attract a mainstream Clinton, New Democrat milieu, you can’t really do real progressive Israel stuff.”
Monday, May 23, 2011
PUTIN vs. MEDVEDEV
From: National Review Online
Over the past half year, Medvedev and Prime Minister Putin have “announced” competing platforms for the presidential “campaign.” It’s a bit different from an American political campaign. Russia’s 2012 presidential election will be resolved behind closed doors in a byzantine process that no outsider can understand. There will emerge one candidate, who will run against token opposition, and who will be Russia’s president for the next four years.
Neither Medvedev nor Putin has declared his candidacy or openly presented his political platform. Both instead use imagery, veiled language, and other indirect communications with the public, their supporters and their opponents alike. Both Putin and Medvedev transmit symbolic messages. Putin pilots helicopters, treks through rugged terrain, hurls judo opponents to the floor, and generally shows that he is a tough guy despite his Napoleonic height. Medvedev wears business suits, travels to Silicon Valley, and speaks in lawyerly tones about the rule of law and increasing foreign investment. In one respect, though, Medvedev has become rather brazen: He has taken to wearing a bomber jacket emblazoned with the words “Russia’s Commander-in-Chief.” Among the commander-in-chief’s powers is the power to fire the prime minister.
President Medvedev chose the futuristic Skolkovo Business School campus outside of Moscow for his first-ever televised question-and-answer session last Wednesday. He was greeted by applause from the eight hundred journalists in attendance. They were hoping for the announcement. It did not come, but Medvedev did not pass up the opportunity to indirectly advance the case that he should be reelected president in 2012.
Putin’s camp was less subtle. Over the weekend, “sources close to Putin” disclosed that he intended to run in the 2012 presidential election.
Neither Medvedev nor Putin has declared his candidacy or openly presented his political platform. Both instead use imagery, veiled language, and other indirect communications with the public, their supporters and their opponents alike. Both Putin and Medvedev transmit symbolic messages. Putin pilots helicopters, treks through rugged terrain, hurls judo opponents to the floor, and generally shows that he is a tough guy despite his Napoleonic height. Medvedev wears business suits, travels to Silicon Valley, and speaks in lawyerly tones about the rule of law and increasing foreign investment. In one respect, though, Medvedev has become rather brazen: He has taken to wearing a bomber jacket emblazoned with the words “Russia’s Commander-in-Chief.” Among the commander-in-chief’s powers is the power to fire the prime minister.
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