Politik: Inom säkerhetspolitiken är Clinton en hök!

VAL 2016 | Clinton vill gärna lyfta fram sina erfarenheter som bl.a. utrikesminister i valrörelsen för att visa på skillnaden mellan henne och Donald Trump.

Vad som är mindre känt är att hon ständig låg till höger om president Barack Obama i säkerhetspolitiska frågor när hon var hans Secretary of State.

Även om hon har gått åt vänster i år för att inte tappa väljare till Bernie Sanders kommer hon sannolikt lita mer på USA:s militära makt som president än vad Obama gjort.

Jack Sullivan, en av hennes kampanjrådgivare och tidigare medarbetare under hennes tid som utrikesminister, tror att hennes mer aggressiva framtoning i säkerhetspolitiska frågor ligger rätt i tiden.

Enligt Sullivan går hennes strategi i valrörelsen ut på att visa för väljarna att hon har en klar och tydlig plan för att konfrontera terrorismen från islamisterna samtidigt som hon tänker utmåla Trump som en person utan några kvalifikationer överhuvudtaget när det gäller att hantera USA:s nationella säkerhet.

Mark Landler kallar t.o.m. Clinton för hök när han skrev i The New York Times Magazine om Clintons instinkt på det utrikes- och säkerhetspolitiska området.

Det är en bild som säkert kommer att överraska många av Clintons många beundrare runt om i världen, inte minst i Sverige.

“Hillary is very much a member of the traditional American foreign-policy establishment,” says Vali Nasr, a foreign-policy strategist who advised her on Pakistan and Afghanistan at the State Department. “She believes, like presidents going back to the Reagan or Kennedy years, in the importance of the military — in solving terrorism, in asserting American influence. The shift with Obama is that he went from reliance on the military to the intelligence agencies. Their position was, ‘All you need to deal with terrorism is N.S.A. and C.I.A., drones and special ops.’ So the C.I.A. gave Obama an angle, if you will, to be simultaneously hawkish and shun using the military.”

[…]

Jack Keane is one of the intellectual architects of the Iraq surge; he is also perhaps the greatest single influence on the way Hillary Clinton thinks about military issues. A bear of a man with a jowly, careworn face and Brylcreem-slicked hair, Keane exudes the supreme self-confidence you would expect of a retired four-star general.

[…]

Though he is one of a parade of cable-TV generals, Keane is the resident hawk on Fox News, where he appears regularly to call for the United States to use greater military force in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan. He doesn’t shrink from putting boots on the ground and has little use for civilian leaders, like Obama, who do.

Keane first got to know Clinton in the fall of 2001, when she was a freshman senator and he was the Army’s second in command, with a distinguished combat and command record in Vietnam, Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia and Kosovo. He had expected her to be intelligent, hard-working and politically astute, but he was not prepared for the respect she showed for the Army as an institution, or her sympathy for the sacrifices made by soldiers and their families. Keane was confident he could smell a phony politician a mile away, and he didn’t get that whiff from her.

“I read people; that’s one of my strengths,” he told me. “It’s not that I can’t be fooled, but I’m not fooled often.”

[…]

He and Clinton continued to talk, even after Obama was elected and she became secretary of state. More often than not, they found themselves in sync. Keane, like Clinton, favored more robust intervention in Syria than Obama did. In April 2015, the week before she announced her candidacy, Clinton asked him for a briefing on military options for dealing with the fighters of the Islamic State. Bringing along three young female analysts from the Institute for the Study of War, Keane gave her a 2-hour-20-minute presentation. Among other steps, he advocated imposing a no-fly zone over parts of Syria that would neutralize the air power of the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, with a goal of forcing him into a political settlement with opposition groups. Six months later, Clinton publicly adopted this position, further distancing herself from Obama.

“I’m convinced this president, no matter what the circumstances, will never put any boots on the ground to do anything, even when it’s compelling,” Keane told me.

[…]

“One of the problems the president has, which weakens his diplomatic efforts, is that leaders don’t believe he would use military power. That’s an issue that would separate the president from Hillary Clinton rather dramatically. She would look at military force as another realistic option, but only where there is no other option.”

Befriending Keane wasn’t just about cultivating a single adviser. It gave Clinton instant entree to his informal network of active-duty and retired generals.

[…]

Just as Clinton benefited from her alliance with the military commanders, she gave them political cover. “Here’s the dirty little secret,” says Tom Nides, her former deputy secretary of state for management and resources. “They all knew they wanted her on their side. They knew that if they walked into the Situation Room and they had her, it made a huge difference in the dynamics. When she opened her mouth, she could change the momentum in the room.”

David Axelrod recalls one meeting where Clinton “kicked the thing off and pretty much articulated their opinion; I’m sure that’s one that they remember. There’s no doubt that she wanted to give them every troop that McChrystal was asking for.” Still, Clinton didn’t prevail on every argument. After agreeing to send the troops, Obama added a condition of his own: that the soldiers be deployed as quickly as possible and pulled out again, starting in the summer of 2011 — a deadline that proved more fateful in the long run than a difference of 10,000 troops. Clinton opposed setting a public deadline for withdrawal, arguing that it would tip America’s hand to the Taliban and encourage them to wait out the United States — which, in fact, was exactly what happened.

[…]

To thwart the progressive insurgency of Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Clinton carefully calibrated her message during the Democratic primaries to align herself closely with Barack Obama and his racially diverse coalition. But as she pivots to the general election, that balancing act with Obama will become trickier. “There’s going to be a huge amount of interest in the press to score-keep,” Sullivan says. “It just so easily can become a sport that distracts from her ability to make an affirmative case.”

In showing her stripes as a prospective commander in chief, Clinton will no doubt draw heavily upon her State Department experience — filtering the lessons she learned in Libya, Syria and Iraq into the sinewy worldview she has held since childhood. Last fall, in a series of policy speeches, Clinton began limning distinctions with the president on national security. She said the United States should consider sending more special-operations troops to Iraq than Obama had committed, to help the Iraqis and Kurds fight the Islamic State. She came out in favor of a partial no-fly zone over Syria. And she described the threat posed by ISIS to Americans in starker terms than he did. As is often the case with Clinton and Obama, the differences were less about direction than degree. She wasn’t calling for ground troops in the Middle East, any more than he was. Clinton insisted her plan was not a break with his, merely an “intensification and acceleration” of it.

It’s an open question how well Clinton’s hawkish instincts match the country’s mood. Americans are weary of war and remain suspicious of foreign entanglements. And yet, after the retrenchment of the Obama years, there is polling evidence that they are equally dissatisfied with a portrait of their country as a spent force, managing its decline amid a world of rising powers like China, resurgent empires like Vladimir Putin’s Russia and lethal new forces like the Islamic State. If Obama’s minimalist approach was a necessary reaction to the maximalist style of his predecessor, then perhaps what Americans yearn for is something in between — the kind of steel-belted pragmatism that Clinton has spent a lifetime honing.

Tidskriftsomslag: The New York Times Magazine den 24 april 2016.

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Politik: Barack Obamas utrikespolitiska doktrin!

USA | Barack Obamas utrikespolitik har uppfattats av många som både motsägelsefull och otydlig. Någon röd tråd har varit svår att se.

Jeffrey Goldberg, nationell korrespondent för The Atlantic, har träffat presidenten vid ett flertal sedan det första intervjutillfället 2006 när han träffade den dåvarande senatorn från Illinois.

Under Goldbergs senaste möte med presidenten i Vita huset redogjorde Obama bl.a. för hur han ser på USA:s roll i världen och vilken utrikes- och säkerhetspolitisk skola han anser sig ligga närmast.

Något förvånande är att Obama är en stor anhängare till den doktrin som i akademiska kretsar brukar kallas den realistiska skolan. Det är en inriktning som präglade president Richard Nixon och Henry Kissinger under deras tid i Vita huset.

I Obamas fall lär det dock mest vara Brent Scowcroft, nationell säkerhetsrådgivare till president George H. W. Bush, som stått för inspirationen.

I den nitton sidor långa essän i The Atlantic skrev Goldberg bl.a. följande:

Obama, unlike liberal interventionists, is an admirer of the foreign-policy realism of President George H. W. Bush and, in particular, of Bush’s national-security adviser, Brent Scowcroft (“I love that guy,” Obama once told me). Bush and Scowcroft removed Saddam Hussein’s army from Kuwait in 1991, and they deftly managed the disintegration of the Soviet Union; Scowcroft also, on Bush’s behalf, toasted the leaders of China shortly after the slaughter in Tiananmen Square. As Obama was writing his campaign manifesto, The Audacity of Hope, in 2006, Susan Rice, then an informal adviser, felt it necessary to remind him to include at least one line of praise for the foreign policy of President Bill Clinton, to partially balance the praise he showered on Bush and Scowcroft.

[…]

One day, over lunch in the Oval Office dining room, I asked the president how he thought his foreign policy might be understood by historians. He started by describing for me a four-box grid representing the main schools of American foreign-policy thought. One box he called isolationism, which he dismissed out of hand. “The world is ever-shrinking,” he said. “Withdrawal is untenable.” The other boxes he labeled realism, liberal interventionism, and internationalism. “I suppose you could call me a realist in believing we can’t, at any given moment, relieve all the world’s misery,” he said. “We have to choose where we can make a real impact.” He also noted that he was quite obviously an internationalist, devoted as he is to strengthening multilateral organizations and international norms.

I told him my impression was that the various traumas of the past seven years have, if anything, intensified his commitment to realist-driven restraint. Had nearly two full terms in the White House soured him on interventionism?

“For all of our warts, the United States has clearly been a force for good in the world,” he said. “If you compare us to previous superpowers, we act less on the basis of naked self-interest, and have been interested in establishing norms that benefit everyone. If it is possible to do good at a bearable cost, to save lives, we will do it.”

If a crisis, or a humanitarian catastrophe, does not meet his stringent standard for what constitutes a direct national-security threat, Obama said, he doesn’t believe that he should be forced into silence. He is not so much the realist, he suggested, that he won’t pass judgment on other leaders. Though he has so far ruled out the use of direct American power to depose Assad, he was not wrong, he argued, to call on Assad to go. “Oftentimes when you get critics of our Syria policy, one of the things that they’ll point out is ‘You called for Assad to go, but you didn’t force him to go. You did not invade.’ And the notion is that if you weren’t going to overthrow the regime, you shouldn’t have said anything. That’s a weird argument to me, the notion that if we use our moral authority to say ‘This is a brutal regime, and this is not how a leader should treat his people,’ once you do that, you are obliged to invade the country and install a government you prefer.”

“I am very much the internationalist,” Obama said in a later conversation. “And I am also an idealist insofar as I believe that we should be promoting values, like democracy and human rights and norms and values, because not only do they serve our interests the more people adopt values that we share—in the same way that, economically, if people adopt rule of law and property rights and so forth, that is to our advantage—but because it makes the world a better place. And I’m willing to say that in a very corny way, and in a way that probably Brent Scowcroft would not say.

“Having said that,” he continued, “I also believe that the world is a tough, complicated, messy, mean place, and full of hardship and tragedy. And in order to advance both our security interests and those ideals and values that we care about, we’ve got to be hardheaded at the same time as we’re bighearted, and pick and choose our spots, and recognize that there are going to be times where the best that we can do is to shine a spotlight on something that’s terrible, but not believe that we can automatically solve it. There are going to be times where our security interests conflict with our concerns about human rights. There are going to be times where we can do something about innocent people being killed, but there are going to be times where we can’t.”

Tidskriftsomslag: The Atlantic, april 2016.

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Politik: Långläsning om Obamas utrikesproblem!

USA | Inrikespolitiskt kan Barack Obamas skylla sina problem på republikanerna. Inom utrikespolitiken går det inte lika lätt att skylla på oviljan att kompromissa.

”Obama’s Iran Gamble” av Michael Crowley, Time

Obama’s vision didn’t change the world overnight. For much of his first term, his critics claimed vindication, particularly when it came to Iran, which rejected his early olive branch and marched steadily toward nuclear weapons capability. But Obama’s new nuclear deal with Tehran undermines that narrative. His biggest foreign policy gamble has achieved a success — a tentative and fragile one, to be sure — in a presidency desperately in need of forward momentum.

The deal could still go badly wrong, and the critics may yet be proved right. The U.S. and Iran are not friends, and serious people from Israel to Washington warn that Obama may find himself outfoxed by hard-liners in Tehran who still condone chants of ”Death to America.” It’s also possible that the document signed by Secretary of State John Kerry in Geneva on Nov. 24 is the first step toward a legacymaking accomplishment, one that leaves the U.S. safer and the world more peaceful and meets that early promise of transformation through communication.

The agreement, which trades temporary relief for Iran from international economic sanctions in return for limits on its nuclear program, lets Tehran off easy, Republican and even some Democrats complain. “We have just rewarded very bad and dangerous behavior,” House Intelligence Committee chairman Mike Rogers told CNN.

“The man who used to walk on water”, The Economist

When a president speaks, the world listens. That is why Barack Obama’s credibility matters. If people do not believe what he says, his power to shape events withers. And recent events have seriously shaken people’s belief in Mr Obama. At home, the chaos of his health reform has made it harder for him to get anything else done. Abroad, he is seen as weak and disengaged, to the frustration of America’s allies.

[…]

Abroad, he has cool relations with foreign heads of government. The leaders of allies such as Israel and Saudi Arabia scorn him. Europeans grumble that they are ignored when they want to be heard and spied on when they want to be left alone. Latin Americans feel neglected. Mr Obama’s “pivot” to Asia has made China feel threatened, without reassuring other Asians that America will be there in a crisis. Many doubt Mr Obama’s word—remember his “red line” over the use of chemical weapons in Syria?—and lament his inability to get things done.

At home, he seldom schmoozes with his political opponents—or even with his own side. Past presidents put in far more effort to charm and bully lawmakers, business moguls and anyone who could help them. Lyndon Johnson was famous for blackmailing congressmen to do the right thing, which is a hard art to practise if you barely know them. Mr Obama remains aloof—he has no regular breakfast or lunch even with the main Democrats in Congress. You cannot slap backs and twist arms if you are not in the same room.

”Asia’s Obama Problem” av Michael Crowley, Time

He was supposed to be on the island paradise of Bali, rubbing elbows with Asian heads of state and showing China that America is serious about being a Pacific power. Instead, on Oct. 8, Barack Obama was in the White House’s cramped briefing room, embarrassed and apologetic. Managing the shutdown of the U.S. government had forced Obama to scratch his long-planned trip to a pair of Asian summits that he’d been touting as critical venues for a display of renewed American leadership in the region. Now he was telling reporters at a White House press conference that his grounding was a setback for the country. ”It creates a sense of concern on the part of other leaders,” Obama said. ”It’s almost like me not showing up for my own party.”

Happy to console the disappointed heads of state in Bali was China’s President, Xi Jinping, who was the unchallenged heavyweight among the gathered Asian leaders. Xi, gloated the Hong Kong-based Communist Party newspaper Ta Kuang Pao, “has became the brightest political star on the Asian diplomatic platform. In contrast, America has lost an important chance to perform … The influence of the U.S. is questioned more and more.”

A potshot, perhaps. But Obama’s no-show fanned smoldering doubts about whether America has the will and the resources to meet the challenge of a rising and potentially aggressive China. Obama officials have even given the policy for doing so a name — the ”rebalance” to Asia, although insiders call it the Asia ”pivot,” conveying a crisp turn of direction for U.S. foreign policy.

”Fight this war, not the last one”, The Economist

Syria is not Iraq. The evidence that the regime has committed atrocities is clear beyond doubt. Even if Mr Assad defies America after a strike by unleashing yet more sarin, Mr Obama is not about to invade.

The arguments for intervening in Syria are narrower and less Utopian than they were in Iraq. First is the calculation of American interests. The international arena is inherently anarchic. Only laws and treaties that are enforced impose any order. By being the world’s policeman, America can shape the rules according to its own interests and tastes. The more America steps back, the more other powers will step in. If it is unwilling to act as enforcer, its own norms will fray. If it is even thought to be reluctant, then they will be tested. China already prods at America; Vladimir Putin’s Russia has begun to confront it—and not only over Syria. Whether Syria was a vital American interest before this attack was debatable, but not after Mr Assad’s direct challenge to Mr Obama’s authority.

Second is a reaffirmation of Western values. America’s potency comes not just from its capacity to project force, but also from the enduring appeal of the values invoked by its founders. Those are stronger than Mr Obama seems to think. With China’s economy slowing and its political corruption evident, the Beijing consensus will seem ever less enticing to citizens of the emerging world. Mr Bush tainted America’s values with inept invasion, prisoner abuse and imperial overstretch. Meeting Mr Assad’s atrocities with appropriate force will help to rebuild American moral authority in the world. If Congress must be involved, it should send that message just as loud and clear as it can—and so should Mr Obama’s allies.

Tidskriftsomslag: Time den 9 december 2013 (europeiska utgåvan), The Economist den 23 november 2013, Time den 21 oktober 2013 (europeiska utgåvan) och The Economist den 7-13 september 2013.

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Krishantering: Obamas alla utrikesproblem!

UTRIKESPOLITIK | President Barack Obamas verkar inte ha ett lika stort intresse för utrikespolitik som för inrikespolitik. Och detta skadar honom inrikespolitiskt.

Detta är i och för sig inget nytt för en amerikansk president. Vare sig Bill Clinton eller George W. Bush blev primärt valda för sina utrikespolitiska ståndpunkter.

Annat var det under kalla kriget när det förväntades att presidentkandidaterna kunde visa upp en gedigen förståelse för hur världen fungerar.

Till skillnad från väljare i många andra demokratier har amerikanarna varit mycket väl medvetna om att amerikanska presidenten har en unik position i världspolitiken.

Detta inte minst för att presidenten aldrig är långt ifrån avfyrningskoderna till landets kärnvapen.

Men vad som verkar vara unikt för Obama är att kritiken inte bara kommer från republikanerna i USA.

Som Michael Crowley påminner om i Time så hoppades t.o.m. president Assad i en tidningsartikel 2009 att Obama skulle ta aktiv del i utvecklingen i Mellanöstern.

Assad påpekade att det i realiteten inte fanns något substitut för USA i världspolitiken.

Some of Obama’s problems have a familiar ring. Early in his first term, Bill Clinton–who, like Obama, focused on domestic matters–also faced charges of timidity and weakness. ”We simply don’t have the leverage, we don’t have the influence [or] the inclination to use military force,” a senior State Department official complained in 1993. And much as Obama is facing pressure at home and abroad over Syria, Clinton was castigated for not intervening in the Balkan wars. ”The position of leader of the free world is vacant,” French President Jacques Chirac lamented in 1995.

Obama has likewise developed a strangely broad coalition of critics: humanitarians who want to stop the war in Syria; hawks who want a bolder U.S. foreign policy; democracy and human-rights advocates appalled that Obama isn’t tougher on Egypt’s generals. Meanwhile, U.S. allies in Europe complain that America isn’t showing leadership, and a senior Arab government official tells TIME that friendly states in the region don’t feel they can count on the U.S. ”There’s no perception that we’re engaged in issues in the Middle East right now,” says Christopher Hill, a veteran diplomat who served as Obama’s ambassador to Iraq.

Obama’s defenders say he has done the best with a poisoned inheritance–from anti-Americanism abroad to tight budgets and rising isolationism at home. And his White House predecessors have often heard cries from overseas that the U.S.’s will to power was faltering. But it’s also true that the public is tired of paying in blood and treasure to solve faraway problems that often look unsolvable. ”At the end of the day, the U.S. cannot impose its will on every problem in the world,” says Adam Smith, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee.

The blunt instrument of military power may be especially useless when it comes to untangling the Arab Spring’s social upheavals. ”Frankly, the U.S. is not good at resolving another country’s political implosion,” says Mieke Eoyang, a national-security analyst at Third Way, a Washington think tank. ”It may be that the U.S. just doesn’t have the tools.”

[…]

But to his critics, Obama does hesitate, and trouble follows as a result. With more than three years left in his presidency, he has the opportunity to reverse that impression. Success in Syria and then Iran could vindicate him, and failure could be crushing. ”The risk is that, if things in the Middle East continue to spiral, that will become his legacy,” says Brian Katulis, a former Obama campaign adviser now with the Center for American Progress.

Some Democratic Presidents have been crippled by foreign policy: Carter by Iran, Lyndon Johnson by Vietnam. But there is another model. Clinton doused the fires in the Balkans and demonstrated the nobility of American intervention. Obama has time to find a path through the current chaos to a successful legacy abroad.

As he charts his course, he might consider a thought from an unlikely source. In a 2009 British newspaper interview that struck a moderate tone, Assad said he hoped Obama would take an active role in the Middle East peace process because only Washington could broker a lasting solution. He said, ”There is no substitute for the United States.”

Tidskriftsomslag: Time den 9 september 2013.

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Politik: Reinfeldt köper Håkan Juholts politik!

KONFLIKTEN mellan regeringen och Socialdemokraterna kring Libyeninsatsen verkar vara över. Plötsligt har Fredrik Reinfeldt närmat sig Håkan Juholt.

Politiska förlorare är Miljöpartiet, Vänsterpartiet och Sverigedemokraterna som har försökt dra nytta av den förvirring som uppstod när Håkan Juholt plötsligt sa nej till en förlängning av uppdraget för de åtta svenska Gripenplanen.

Med anledning av att Nato nu ber Sverige om fortsatt hjälp i Libyen har Reinfeldt plötsligt lagt sig så nära Juholt att man inte ens kan få in ett flugpapper mellan dem.

Även Reinfeldt talar nu om en vidare svensk uppgift än bara åtta Gripenplan. Detta var kärnan i den kritik som Juholt riktade mot regeringen.

Fredrik Reinfeldt:

Det har talats för mycket om bara flygplan. Vi har ett läge där vi kanske i närtid har en vapenvila och då måste vi prata mer om humanitära insatser, befrielsen av det libyska folket och att bygga upp en utveckling mot en demokrati. Det är viktigt för Håkan Juholt och Socialdemokraterna och det är också viktigt för regeringen.

Och naturligtvis har Socialdemokraterna nappat på inviten.

Urban Ahlin (S), utrikespolitiske talesman, säger att Natos nya önskemål kan komma att påverka deras vilja att kompromissa med regeringen.

Det är klart att det blir mycket enklare för oss att nå en överenskommelse nu när det är uppenbart att Nato frågar inte bara efter åtta Gripenplan, utan också efter sådant vi har pekat på, till exempel vapenembargo, marina insatser och bordning av större fartyg.

Plötsligt är regeringen och Socialdemokraterna återigen på samma linje internationellt.

Och både Moderaterna och Socialdemokraterna kan nu också kommunicera att man är statsmannamässiga när man tar ansvar för svensk utrikespolitik.

Dessutom slipper båda bli beroende av Sverigedemokraterna i en utrikespolitisk fråga. Något som bara skulle minska deras egen – och regeringens –  prestige och öka Sverigedemokraternas.

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Kommunikation: Carl Bildts försvar imponerar inte!

EGYPTEN: Utrikesminister Carl Bildt (M) har fått hård kritik för att han inte tydligt och klart krävde Egyptens president Hosni Mubaraks avgång.

”Vi låg före USA. Att Mubarak skulle avgå var bara en tidsfråga. Vi ställde krav på fria val och en rättsstat, och det är fortfarande inte uppfyllt”, var Bildts försvar.

Men Bildts försvar imponerar inte med tanke på den förvirring som har präglat president Barack Obamas hantering av krisen i Mellanöstern.

Omslaget till vänster säger allt om hur man nu i USA ser på adminstrationens agerande.

”The result has been a foreign-policy debacle”, skriver historikern Niall Ferguson.

This failure was not the result of bad luck. It was the predictable consequence of the Obama administration’s lack of any kind of coherent grand strategy, a deficit about which more than a few veterans of U.S. foreign policy making have long worried.

[…]

These were [Barack Obamas] words back in June 2009:

America and Islam are not exclusive and need not be in competition. Instead, they overlap, and share common principles—principles of justice and progress; tolerance and the dignity of all human beings.

Those lines will come back to haunt Obama if, as cannot be ruled out, the ultimate beneficiary of his bungling in Egypt is the Muslim Brotherhood, which remains by far the best organized opposition force in the country—and wholly committed to the restoration of the caliphate and the strict application of Sharia. Would such an outcome advance “tolerance and the dignity of all human beings” in Egypt? Somehow, I don’t think so.

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Kommunikation: Talibansk terror och svenska politiker!

MEDIA: Bilden föreställer Aisha som är 18 år. Talibanerna skar av henne näsa och öron eftersom hon försökte fly från släktingar som började utnyttja henne efter hennes giftemål.  

 

“What Happens if We Leave Afghanistan” är en relevant rubrik även för svensk inrikesdebatt. Aishas historia ställer två frågor på sin spets. 

1) När kommer man i svensk debatt att ställa de politiker och partier mot väggen som kräver att allierad och svenska trupp lämnar över Afghanistan till talibanernas islamistiska diktatur? 

Ofta är det exakt samma politiker som är de ivrigaste feministerna som också vill lämna över Aisha och andra afghanska kvinnor (och män) till den talibanska ”rättvisan”.   

2) Och när får vi se svensk media våga använda denna typ av vinkling i rapporteringen från Afghanistan?

Läs mer: Omslaget är Time den 9 augusti 2010.

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Politik: David Camerons ”liberalkonservatism”!

IMAGE: Inför premiärminister David Camerons resa till USA intervjuade Time magazine honom.

Cameron vill bygga vidare på den s.k. speciella relationen mellan de två länderna men också se till att den bygger på ”a realism about who we are, what we can achive and what we need to do”.

”That means ‘less grand diplomatic talk’ and an injection of ‘a sort of gritty, commercial, businesslike realism to British foreign policy.'”

”He says he’s a ‘liberal Conservative’ in foreign policy terms, and the phrase is telling. ‘A liberal because I support the spread of democracy, freedom, human rights around the world … but Conservative because I’m skeptical and questioning and practical about how possible it is to remake the world.'”

Denna artikel är låst för icke-prenumeranter men Catherine Mayer, Time London bureau chief, som skrev artikeln har också gjort en videointervju med Cameron som kan ses här.

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Politik: (S) lämnar walkover i utrikespolitiken!

VAL 2010: Inom utrikes- och säkerhetspolitiken verkar Socialdemokraterna ha lämnat över ledarrollen till Vänsterpartiet.

Man brukar ofta säga att man inte vinner val på utrikes- och säkerhetspolitiska frågor. Men det är samma sak som att man inte skulle kunna förlora ett val på frågorna.

Socialdemokraterna har genom åren ofta lyckats sätta bilden av de borgerliga partierna som ”äventyrliga” på det säkerhets- och utrikespolitiska området. Därmed har samtidigt också lyckats kommunicera att det är det egna partiet som är det statsbärande och seriösa.

Detta har nu i ett enda svep förändrats i och med de rödgrönas utrikespolitiska plattform. Vad har hänt? Och varför verkar plattformen vara mer vänsterpartistisk än socialdemokratisk?

Så här skriver Svenska Dagbadet:

Det rödgröna kravet innebär en reträtt av 300000 amerikanska militärer, men har hittills inte uppmärksammats. För socialdemokratin är det en rejäl kursändring. Regeringen Persson deklarerade valåret 2006: ”För regeringen är det centralt att utveckla den transatlantiska länken och Sveriges samarbete med Förenta staterna”. Med en regering ledd av Mona Sahlin 2010 blir det en annorlunda politik:

”En rödgrön regering kommer att kräva att USA avvecklar sina kärnvapen och militärbaser utanför landets gränser”.

Detta entydiga besked ges i programmet ”En rödgrön politik för Sveriges relationer med världens länder” från 17 februari. Dokumentet är godkänt av de tre partiernas ledare.

–Det är en svensk position gentemot USA. De ska avveckla alla baser utanför landets gränser, säger Hans Linde, Vänsterpartiet.

Det finns åtminstone fyra olika förklaringar till varför Socialdemokraterna har intagit en sådan extrem och ”äventyrlig” position tillsammans med Vänsterpartiet och Miljöpartiet. Men ingen av förklaringarna ger en speciellt smickrande bild av Socialdemokraterna.

1. Mona Sahlin och Socialdemokraterna vill verkligen vrida partiet långt åt vänster i försvars- och utrikesfrågor. Dokumentet speglar därför korrekt både socialdemokraternas och de rödgrönas utrikespolitiska inriktning vid en valseger.

2. I alla typer av arbetsgrupper brukar det utkristallisera sig en ledare som utifrån sin auktoritet och/eller kunskap får stort inflytande på slutprodukten. (Detta många gånger i kombination med att övriga i gruppen inte känner att man lika väl behärskar ämnesområdet. Man litar helt enkelt på ”ledaren”).

Om detta antagande är korrekt så är det Hans Lind från Vänsterpartiet som är ”ledaren”. Socialdemokraternas utrikespolitiske talesperson Urban Ahlin har helt enkelt inte lyckats stå emot personer som Linde, Ulla Hoffmann (V) och Per Gahrton (MP).

3. En tredje förklaring är helt enkelt att partiledarna och arbetsgruppen inte har läst igen vad man själva har skrivit under.

Några politisk sekreterare har processat fram dokumentet som ansvariga politiker sedan skrivit under utan att bry sig allt för mycket om innehållet.

4. En fjärde förklaring som Urban Ahlin själv har använt sig av är att helt enkelt skylla på Alliansen. Det är Alliansen som medvetet missförstått innehållet.

Men den förklaringen förklarar å andra sidan inte formuleringarna i själva dokumentet.

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Politik: Vad har Alliansen uppnått?

ANALYS: Claes Lönegård på nyhetsmagasinet Fokus har gått igenom Alliansens politik på elva sakpolitiska områden.

Tidningen drar slutsatsen att ”Regeringen har hållit majoriteten av sina vallöften, men politiken har inte fått den utlovade effekten”. Och ”sämst har det gått med jobben, bäst på området offentliga finanser”.

Sammanfattning;

1. Klimatet.

Regeringen har gjort större insatser mot klimathotet än utlovat och enats om att bygga ny kärnkraft. (…)

2. Integriteten

Statens övervakning har vuxit, trots löften om att skydda den personliga integriteten. (…)

3. Skatterna och bidragen

Skatterna sänktes för många – höginkomsttagare gynnades mest. Sjukförsäkringen blev tuffare och social­bidragen ökade. (…)

4. Familj och jämställdhet

Vallöftena, som inte var så omfattande, har genomförts. Men jämställdheten har inte ökat. (…)

5. Utrikes

Carl Bildt gjorde comeback. I både bistånds- och försvarspolitiken gick regeringen längre än utlovat. Två svenska soldater avled i strid. (…)

6. Brott och straff

Fler poliser och hårdare tag – men inte mindre brottslighet. (…)

7. Migration och integration

Stramare flyktingpolitik, generösare regler för arbetskraftsinvandring och fortsatta integrationsproblem. (…)

8. Vården

Minskade köer och fler privata alternativ. Regeringen har uppfyllt nästan alla löften från valrörelsen. (…)

9. Offentliga finanserna

Regeringen lyckades hantera den ekonomiska krisen bättre än många andra europeiska länder. Trots att tillväxten varit negativ är de offentliga finanserna jämförelsevis starka. (…)

10. Skolan

Stora delar av de ambitiösa löftena har uppfyllts, men resultaten i skolan har ännu inte förbättrats särskilt mycket. (…)

11. Jobben

Med några få undantag genomförde regeringen sitt omfattande program för fler jobb. Men resultatet blev inte det önskade. (…)

I realiteten är det detta resultat – både det positiva och det negativa – som både Alliansen och de Rödgröna nu kommer att kommunicera till väljarna. 

Kommer det att spela någon roll att en majoritet av löftena har uppfyllts eller är det de negativa sidorna som väljarna kommer att ta fasta på?

En erfarenhet när det gäller politisk kommunikation är att man inte kan leva på vad man har gjort utan en regering måste kunna visa vad man tänker göra framöver under kommande mandatperiod. Eller utryckt på annat sätt: oppositionen vinner aldrig val, det är snarare regeringar som förlorar val.

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