Foreign Policy

A concerted conservative campaign against Chuck Hagel, U.S. President Barack Obama’s nominee for Secretary of Defense, practically guarantees that his confirmation hearing this week will receive the lion’s share of the media attention regarding Obama’s proposed national security team.

But the back and forth about Hagel’s positions, including his perceived independence from Israel, has obscured a more important question: What signals do Obama’s new foreign policy picks send about the kind of America the rest of the world, and particularly the Middle East, can expect? At present, depending on where you sit, the implications of the Obama nominations could arouse fear (Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Yemen,) interest (Iran,) or indifference (the Palestinians.)

On Thursday, a private delegation of Argentines will visit the U.S. Capitol to recount to members of Congress their personal experience of living with the Argentine government’s refusal to honor its debts for more than a decade. In addition to conducting a series of meetings with Congressional staffers, the pensioners will be part of a Capital Hill briefing co-hosted by Freedom House and American Task Force Argentina (ATFA) that will explore the erosion of civil liberties in Latin America's second largest economy.

During WWII, Winston Churchill famously opined that, “You can always count on the Americans to do the right thing---after they’ve tried everything else!” Today, those very words aptly describe U.S. policy towards Iran.

While engagement has only emboldened Tehran, and sanctions have proven to be insufficient, military action risks Armageddon. As the president begins his second term, he should be convinced that “everything else” has already been tried; it is now time to do “the right thing,” when it comes to Iran policy.
Last October’s, albeit belated, administration decision to remove the principal Iranian opposition movement, the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), from an unjustified State Department blacklist -- was clearly the first step in the right direction.

One year ago, ahead of the European Data Protection Day 2012, the European Commission proposed a root and branch reform of the EU’s data protection rules to make them fit for the 21st century. One year after the reform proposals, it’s easy to see why clear and modernized rules are needed.

New rules are needed which both protect citizens’ rights and facilitate business in the digital age. The Lisbon Treaty provides a legal basis for strengthened data protection safeguards for citizens. A key objective of the reform proposals therefore is to increase individuals’ control over their personal data, thereby boosting confidence and trust in the digital economy. We must ensure that data protection standards keep pace with emerging technologies and new business models.

We live in a digital world in which personal data has enormous economic value. Just look at the figures: while in 1993 the Internet carried only 1 percent of all telecommunicated information, by 2007, this figure was more than 97 percent. In 2011 the European market for cloud computing services had a value of €3.5 billion for software products and €1.1 billion for hardware products. Estimates for 2014 predict that this market will grow to €11 billion. This is exponential growth. With more than 1 billion people worldwide connected to smartphones, an increasing variety of data can now be linked to individual identities. The insights that can be derived from linking previously separate bits of data have become essential for business and for innovation.

Europe needs to take advantage of this new computing and information-sharing landscape. We need rules that don't penalize companies for working cross-border. We need a solid legislative framework that will protect citizens and at the same time allow companies to take advantage of Europe's digital single market, with 500 million potential customers. Some estimates show that EU GDP could grow by a further 4% by 2020 if the EU takes the necessary steps to create a modern digital single market.

This past Wednesday, Secretary Hillary Clinton appeared, for what is likely her final time as Secretary of State, before the House Foreign Affairs Committee regarding the September 11, 2012, terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya. Although I am grateful for Secretary Clinton’s testimony and her service to our nation, the American people still have many questions and countless security concerns that remain unanswered.

The Pentagon announced on Wednesday that the U.S. military services will drop the long-standing prohibition on women in combat, a move that came as a surprise to many of us. So far, the new policy has been met with acclaim from the media, the president and some members of Congress. But are they jumping the gun in celebrating this development?
 
As an infantry officer who served in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay, I have led men in combat and trained them on tactics and strategy. The mission of the infantry is to "close with, and destroy, the enemy." Our job, in a direct way, is to fight and win wars. These are tasks alone are difficult enough. Systematically introducing women to combat arms positions — where they would be tasked with offensive operations on a daily basis — complicates the core mission of our war fighters.

President Obama’s inauguration finally trumped, if only temporarily, the bad news coming out of Mali and Algeria. From the front pages of U.S. newspapers, Americans have been getting a crash course in North Africa’s desolate Sahel region and our fight against an alphabet soup of terrorist organizations intent on establishing a new safe haven from which to launch deadly attacks on regional, European, and U.S. interests.

A look at the map brings into focus what military analysts are calling Africa’s “Arc of Instability.” It stretches across the middle of Africa from the Gulf of Aden to the Atlantic, and has given al-Qaeda and its allies a clear path to extend their center of activity from Afghanistan into Africa. The principal terrorist group now dominating northern Mali is al-Qaeda’s regional affiliate, al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), and it is not a newcomer to the Sahel. Beginning in 1991, it focused on attempts to overthrow the government of Algeria.

As soon as President Obama began his first term, he issued an executive order that banned the use of torture as an interrogation technique. Putting an end to the violations of international law that were explicitly authorized by the Bush administration was a good start. However, ending the use of torture by members of the U.S. military and intelligence communities does not alone satisfy our obligations under the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment.

On the day rebel fighters seized the large town of Goma in the Democratic Republic of Congo I couldn’t stop shaking. I have no relatives there, but my sisters were — and still are — in the path of advancing rebel forces.

These sisters, who have become like family, are 200+ grassroots women leaders who have been using their own homegrown Internet café to report out on life in their war-torn region. For weeks, they have been flooding the wires with their signals of distress: “Please pray for us,” they cry. “Enough is enough.”

Ten years ago this week, Sen. John Kerry said during a speech at Georgetown University: “America now stands as the world’s foremost power. We should be proud. Not since the age of the Romans have one people achieved such preeminence. But we are not Romans; we do not seek an empire. We are Americans, trustees of a vision and a heritage that commit us to the values of democracy and the universal cause of human rights.”
 
In the past ten years, the United States has seen three presidential elections, the surge and wind down of two wars, transformative protests in the Middle East, technology that has globalized the flow of information, including into repressive societies, and a new generation of human rights defenders who have confidence and vision that history is on their side. Kerry’s proposition on American leadership is as relevant today as it was when he posed it. As he prepares for his confirmation hearing to be Secretary of State in the second Obama administration, Kerry should expand on that vision of America and articulate how he plans to assume its heritage and continue Secretary Clinton’s legacy that put U.S. leadership on human rights at the center of its diplomacy.