Posted on Wednesday, July 30th, 2008 by campaign2008
Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) and Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) both had discussions Tuesday with the visiting Pakistani prime minister. Obama said he had a “productive and wide-ranging discussion,” in which he and Gilani discussed “how to more effectively deal with the central front in the war on terrorism—the threat from al-Qaeda and the Taliban originating from the Pakistani tribal areas—which threatens the United States, Pakistan, and Afghanistan.”
Gilani and McCain had a twenty-minute phone conversation (Pakistan Daily Mail) in which Gilani reportedly stressed the importance of a long-term strategic relationship between the United States and Pakistan.
NASA: In a statement on the fiftieth anniversary of NASA, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) said he would “make sure that the NASA constellation program has the resources it needs so that we can begin a new era of human space exploration.”
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Posted on Tuesday, July 29th, 2008 by campaign2008
After touring a California oil field on Monday, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) again called for offshore drilling (WashPost). He disputed claims that offshore drilling might not yield benefits for years, saying some oil producers told him there are some cases in which oil could be available “within a matter of months.” He said the timeframe would depend “on the location and whether you use existing rigs or have to install new rigs.”
In an interview with Larry King on Monday night, McCain discussed his views on Iraq, and clarified a statement last week that Sen. Barack Obama’s (D-IL) proposed sixteen-month timetable for withdrawal from Iraq seemed “pretty good” (ChiTrib). He said that sixteen-month goal should not be “hard and fast,” but rather should be “condition-based.”
Obama will meet (MSNBC) with Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani on Tuesday in Washington, D.C.
Posted in Energy Policy, General Election, Iraq, Morning Update, Pakistan | 0 Comments »
Posted on Monday, July 28th, 2008 by campaign2008
In an interview with NBC’s Meet the Press, Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) said too much U.S. financial assistance to Pakistan has been military aid, and “not enough of it has been in the form of building schools and building infrastructure in the country to help develop and give opportunity to the Pakistani people.” He also discussed Afghanistan and the troop surge in Iraq.
On ABC’s This Week, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) stressed the importance of basing Iraq policy on the “conditions on the ground.” He also discussed the economy, calling Wall Street “the villain” in the sub-prime mortgage crisis.
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Posted on Tuesday, July 1st, 2008 by campaign2008
Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) leaves today on his trip to Colombia, where he says he will work to promote free trade. Upon arriving in Cartagena this evening, McCain will meet with President Alvaro Uribe and several other leaders.
From Colombia, McCain will travel to Mexico. Speaking to reporters Monday, McCain said he would urge Mexican leaders to implement economic reforms (TIME) and curb the flow of illegal immigrants to the United States.
The New York Times looks at the reasoning behind candidates’ trips abroad during the campaign season.
Obama foreign policy advisers Bruce Riedel and Susan Rice held a conference call on Monday in response to reports of al-Qaeda’s proliferation in Pakistan. Full audio of the conference call is available here.
Posted in General Election, Immigration, Latin America, Morning Update, Pakistan | 0 Comments »
Posted on Friday, March 7th, 2008 by Robert McMahon
Top foreign policy advisers to the presidential campaigns of Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL), Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY), and Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) sat down at the Council on Foreign Relations on Friday to discuss their candidates’ global policies. At times the rhetoric of the Clinton-Obama contest spilled over into the discussion involving Clinton adviser Mara Rudman and Obama adviser Susan Rice. McCain adviser Randy Scheunemann sparred gently with each of them on issues ranging from NATO expansion to NAFTA.
A transcript of the discussion can be viewed here. Here’s a rundown of a few main issues discussed:
NAFTA and Trade: Rice and Rudman repeated calls for a fresh look at U.S. trade deals, with Rice reiterating the need for NAFTA to be “amended” to address labor and environmental conditions. They clashed on the issue of Obama’s sincerity as a fair trader, continuing the dispute that took place before the Ohio and Texas primaries in which Clinton aides alleged Obama economic adviser Austan Goolsbee privately assured Canadian officials that he does not really intend to alter NAFTA. Rice repeated denials, saying Canadian officials have affirmed that Goolsbee’s comments were consistent with the campaign position on NAFTA. Scheunemann dismissed talk of reopening trade agreements, especially ones like NAFTA negotiated with bipartisan support. He jokingly questioned which party was guilty of “cowboy diplomacy.”
Pakistan: Rice said the recent election results that went against Islamic fundamentalists as well as President Pervez Musharraf offered an opportunity for the United States to demonstrate support for democratic forces and civil society in Pakistan. Rudman said Clinton was pleased at the results and was eager for the U.S. to strengthen economic and democratic conditions in Pakistan. She also pointed to Clinton’s call a year ago to appoint a special U.S. envoy to deal with Pakistan’s political crisis. Scheunemann noted the two Pakistani parties that scored well in the elections had previously headed up governments with weak track records. He raised questions about their ability to pursue al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups based on Pakistani soil.
Middle East: A questioner evoked the “3 a.m. phone call” ads of the Clinton campaign to ask how the candidates would handle a late-breaking crisis involved an Israeli invasion of Gaza. All three advisers supported Israel’s right to defend itself against attacks from Hamas forces based in Gaza. Rice said a prolonged Israeli occupation would complicate the peace process underway and an Obama administration would try to ensure talks could be resumed as quickly as possible. Rudman called for more vigorous U.S. diplomacy in the region to head off the likelihood of an Israeli invasion and make sure “Hamas and the extremists are not controlling the debate.” She stressed that Clinton did not support negotiations with Hamas. Scheunemann called for Arab governments to do more to try to improve the situation in Gaza, both in humanitarian terms and to help avoid further conflict between Gaza-based forces and Israel.
Climate change: Asked about how candidates’ climate proposals differ from current proposals in Congress, Rice said Obama proposes capping greenhouse gas emissions at a 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050. Obama’s plan, she said, would require emissions permits to be auctioned, “so that the polluter pays.” Scheunemann emphasized that McCain’s approach was market based, focusing on an “entrepreneurial spirit” rather than a centrally based government approach that taxes companies. Climate legislation McCain sponsored with Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) would have put a mandatory cap on the amount of greenhouse gas emissions from the U.S. electricity generation, transportation, industrial, and commercial sectors. Rudman said she was not well briefed on the issue and couldn’t provide an answer.
Posted in Climate Change, General Election, Pakistan, Trade | 0 Comments »
Posted on Wednesday, February 27th, 2008 by campaign2008
In what has been billed as the most important debate of the campaign so far, the final two Democratic candidates met Tuesday night in Ohio to hash out disagreements on issues like NAFTA, foreign policy expertise, and health care. Countering Sen. Barack Obama’s contention, Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) said she has “been a critic of NAFTA from the very beginning,” but that she did not make her objections to it in public in the 1990s because “I was part of the administration.” Obama rejected Clinton’s claim, saying “it is inaccurate for Senator Clinton to say that she’s always opposed NAFTA. In her campaign for Senate, she said that NAFTA, on balance, had been good for New York and good for America.” Both candidates said they would renegotiate NAFTA to ensure more labor and environmental protections.
Pakistan: Attempting to highlight what she says is a lack of foreign policy experience on Obama’s part, Clinton said Obama “threatened to bomb Pakistan” last summer. That, she said, was not “a particularly wise position to take.” Obama denied the accusation. “I never said I would bomb Pakistan,” he said. Rather, he said, “if we have actionable intelligence against bin Laden or other key al Qaeda officials– and Pakistan is unable or unwilling to strike against them, we should.”
Russia: Obama and Clinton both expressed skepticism about Russian President Vladimir Putin’s likely successor, Dmitri Medvedev. Clinton said Medvedev is “being installed by Putin” and will have “very little independence.” Obama agreed, and criticized President Bush for neglecting U.S.-Russian relations.
Iraq: Though she has declined to apologize for her 2002 vote in favor of the Iraq war, Clinton said she regrets the vote and said if the United States had not been in Iraq in the last several years, it instead could have “talked about the retreat from democracy” in Latin America or the “failure to end the genocide in Darfur.”
Posted in General Election, Iraq, Pakistan, Russia | 0 Comments »
Posted on Friday, February 22nd, 2008 by campaign2008
The Democratic candidates participated in a CNN/Univision debate in Austin, Texas Wednesday night, where Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) tried to stop the Obama campaign’s seeming momentum after his eleven straight victories (NYT) in the recent weeks of the primary season. In their first debate in three weeks, Clinton said she would not meet with Cuban leader Raul Castro unless there is evidence that he is freeing political prisoners, ending “some of the oppressive practices on the press,” and “opening up the economy.”
Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL), on the other hand, said he would be willing to meet with the new Castro government “without preconditions” to push a human rights agenda. He also said he would loosen restrictions on remittances to Cuba from family members in the United States as a “show of good faith” that the United States is “interested in pursuing potentially a new relationship.”
Immigration: Clinton said she would “consider” stopping ICE raids “except in egregious situations.” She also said she would introduce legislation containing a path to legalization for illegal immigrants in the first hundred days of her presidency.
Clinton and Obama seemed to agree that a border fence may be appropriate in some areas, but that, as Obama said, “the key is to consult with local communities, whether it’s on the commercial interests or the environmental stakes of creating any kind of barrier.”
Experience: Citing instability in the Balkans, Pakistan and Cuba, Clinton again stressed that she is “ready on day one to be commander in chief,” implying that Obama is unprepared to face international challenges.
Obama responded, saying Clinton was “wrong in her judgments” on Iraq. He also said it was a “mistake” to “put all our eggs in the Musharraf basket” in Pakistan. “We should be going after al Qaeda and making sure that Pakistan is serious about hunting down terrorists as well as expanding democracy, and I was right about that,” he said.
Surge: Clinton said the troop surge has not achieved its purported goal of political progress in Iraq. The Iraqi government “has slowly inched toward making a few of the decisions in a less than complete way, but it hasn’t taken advantage of the sacrifice and the losses of life and billions of dollars that have occurred since the surge began,” she said.Obama called the surge a “tactical victory imposed upon a huge strategic blunder,” and said it is “indisputable that we’ve seen violence reduced in Iraq.” He said in the general election versus a Republican candidate, “it is going to be much easier for the candidate who was opposed to the concept of invading Iraq in the first place to have a debate about the wisdom of that decision.”Obama also said the war in Iraq has diverted the United States from focusing on policy toward Latin America and China. U.S. neglect has caused Venezuela and China to “move into the void,” Obama said.
Posted in Cuba, General Election, Iraq, Latin America, Morning Update, Pakistan | 0 Comments »
Posted on Thursday, February 21st, 2008 by campaign2008
Reader William deB. Mills writes:
It is time for the U.S. to put its relations with Moslem societies on a more professional and less emotional basis…and to put relations with each in the broader context. Pakistan and Iran are the two critical cases in point.
The foreign policies of both Iran and Pakistan over the past half century have incorporated repeated challenges to the international system that suggest profound dissatisfaction on the parts of the ruling elites in each state going far deeper than individual personalities, parties, or ideologies. This in turn suggests that such frequently recommended (in the West) solutions as “regime change,” creating “democracy,” or taking political power from the military and passing it to civilians will not by themselves resolve this dissatisfaction.
One issue is security. Each state has typically perceived itself as facing significant security threats. Iran has repeatedly been threatened by the U.S.: the U.S. overthrew Iran’s first attempt at a democratic government in the early 1950’s, supported Saddam’s invasion. Today, the chaos in Iraq resulting from the U.S. invasion concerns Iran. Other ongoing concerns include Baluchi unrest in Pakistan, Persian Gulf security, Afghanistan (first from the Soviets, then the Taliban, and now both U.S. military bases and narcotics). A more recent security threat of course comes from Tel Aviv. Pakistani security concerns revolve around a perceived Indian threat and domestic unrest, which has been greatly exacerbated in the tribal areas by external pressures to apply military force.
A second issue, connected to but distinct from security, is status. Iran wants regional status befitting its history and size. It also sees acquisition of regional status as a means of breaking out of isolation and enhancing its security. Geographically, Pakistani elites aspire to regional leadership in, at a minimum, Kashmir and Afghanistan, in great part to gain buffer zones against India. Ideologically, Pakistani elites want close ties to Saudi Arabia and over the past three decades have opened the doors ever wider to Saudi cultural, educational, and religious influence at the same time that Saudi money has flowed to Pakistan in return for Pakistani nuclear knowledge.
In brief, both for reasons of national security and regional status, which in itself enhances security, Iran and Pakistan have consistently focused their foreign policy over the last half century on enhancing both security and regional status. Although Washington may see these two states in terms of U.S.-Iranian or U.S.-Pakistani relations, that relationship has never been the foundation of Iranian or Pakistani foreign policy. This misperception may have much to do with the difficulties Washington has had in eliciting the type of behavior it desires from those two countries: in brief, the carrots and sticks employed by Washington have not been those most relevant to the primary concerns of Pakistan and Iran. If Washington indeed wants Iran and Pakistan to moderate–not to mention renounce—the development of nuclear arms, nuclear proliferation, and support of insurgencies, then Washington will have to pay more attention to Iranian and Pakistani core concerns. It will have to show Iran and Pakistan that they can achieve progress on their core concerns by working within the system rather than by challenging it.
–William deB. Mills
Blog: shadowedforest.blogspot.com
Posted in Inbox, Iran, Pakistan | 0 Comments »
Posted on Thursday, February 21st, 2008 by campaign2008
Speaking at New York City’s Hunter College on Wednesday, Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) highlighted distinctions between herself and Sen. Barack Obama, (D-IL) and between herself and Sen. John McCain (R-AZ). McCain is willing to “continue the war in Iraq for a hundred years,” she said. Clinton said she will “start bringing our troops home within sixty days.” McCain has sought to clarify his comment about a long-term engagement in Iraq by comparing it to 60-year U.S. deployments in Europe and Asia.
Attempting to paint Obama as ill-equipped for the foreign policy challenges facing the next president, Clinton said, “One of us is ready to be Commander in Chief in a dangerous world,” citing political transitions in Cuba and Pakistan.
McCain called Obama “naïve” on foreign policy Wednesday, a day after criticizing Obama for suggested he would “invade our ally, Pakistan.” Obama campaign foreign policy adviser Susan Rice responded in a conference call, saying McCain had misrepresented Obama’s position on Pakistan. Obama “never suggested bombing an ally,” Rice said. The dispute took place in regards to Obama’s statements last summer that he would pursue al-Qaeda in Pakistan if Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf would not cooperate.
Posted in General Election, Iraq, Morning Update, Pakistan | 1 Comment »
Posted on Tuesday, February 12th, 2008 by campaign2008
Pakistan’s disturbing internal situation has occasionally bobbed to the surface of foreign policy debates among presidential contenders and is likely to get fresh attention with the February 18 elections. CFR’s Max Boot writes today for the Commentary magazine blog, Contentions, that U.S. policymakers would be wise to recognize the plummeting domestic support for Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf.
Boot writes: “Two new surveys of public opinion in Pakistan deliver generally good news about the future of that country—and bad news for the future of administration policy, which has been tied so closely to President Pervez Musharraf. That policy seems increasingly untenable, with a new poll sponsored by the International Republican Institute finding that 75 percent favor his resignation and only 16 percent are opposed.”
Keep reading here.
For all the candidates’ positions on U.S. policy toward Pakistan, see CFR.org’s Campaign Issue Tracker on the subject.
Posted in General Election, Pakistan | 1 Comment »
