International Affairs

The International Campaign for Tibet reports: “News has reached ICT from Kirti monks in exile in India of the self-immolation today [Feb. 11] of an 18-year-old Tibetan nun, at around 6 p.m. in Ngaba. This is the third Tibetan nun to set fire to herself since the wave of self-immolations began inside Tibet in February 2009, and the second from her nunnery.”

It brings heartfelt response from Gyalwang Karmapa, Ogyen Frinley Dorje, known to Tibetan Buddhists as the 17th Karmapa. Karmapa is a sublime young man who is said by some to fill the shoes of the Dalai Lama when he passes on. As Xi Jinping expects to soon become China’s top leader, these two go together. His comments from the International Campaign for Tibet:

U.S. relations with Egypt have sunk to a new low in a row between the Egyptian military rulers and foreign pro-democracy NGOs accused of fomenting instability in the country. Unfortunately, both sides have mishandled things and the crisis is escalating.

I’m in Cairo, where Egyptian activists say that the military authorities should have acted earlier to enforce a 2002 law providing for the registration of NGOs. But while Egyptian authorities contend that the NGOs failed to register, the NGOs say they had taken steps to do so and fear that the registration is just a pretext for the crackdown.

Facing serious economic and political constraints, how can the United States effectively engage Arab countries in the midst of transition and help support Arab voices for dignity, opportunity and greater inclusion? At the Institute for Education’s first session of its 21st INFO season, Undersecretary of State for Economic, Energy, and Agricultural Affairs Robert Hormats weighed in on this critical question, and Indonesia’s ambassador to the United States, Dino Djalal, pointed to the power of example in Indonesia’s experience with democracy.

Fresh from a trip to the Middle East, where he met with students in Tahrir Square, Secretary Hormats argued that the United States cannot — and should not — try to micromanage transitions in the Arab world or dictate what democracy should look like in each Arab nation trying to find its way.

The United States has advocated democratic and liberal reforms in the Middle East for over half a century. Sometimes it has worked behind the scenes. Other times, it has been out in front, trying to catalyze change.

Whatever the strategy, U.S. policymakers have repeatedly found their efforts stymied by the grip of longstanding authoritarian regimes, the persistence of deeply rooted cultures and social norms, and hostility to Western “meddling.” How ironic, then, that, when change finally arrived in the Middle East, the United States was taken by surprise — just like everyone else watching from the outside — and left scrambling to keep up as the situation on the ground changed on almost a daily basis. Even more ironic, now that the historic transition that the United States has long supported is finally under way, American policymakers — like their counterparts in Europe — are hardly in a position to lend the Arab world much support.

Why must I, a cold-country New Englander and a solitary mountain dweller with a broken foot, be the only American to write about the upcoming election in Israel for leadership in the Likud, as critical to Israel’s destiny and to American interests in Israel as the fateful primary in South Carolina?

The Israeli paper Arutz Sheva reports that Moshe Feiglin, who is challenging Benjamin Netanyahu for leadership of Likud in the party's primaries two weeks from now, cited a favorable poll Tuesday morning as evidence that his chances of seriously embarrassing Netanyahu are high, and that a victory by Netanyahu is not a complete certainty: “In a poll conducted by polling company Ma’agar Mochot, about 26 percent of Likud members not affiliated with Feiglin's faction agreed that ‘it is important to vote for Moshe Feiglin in the upcoming primaries, even though it is clear that Binyamin Netanyahu will win, just so that the right wing inside Likud will gain strength.’ "

A story that should certainly have your immediate attention is slowly developing in Iran. Over the past several months five Iranian nuclear scientist have been assassinated, the latest one being yesterday, when two motorcyclists attached a magnetic bomb to a car fender and rode away while detonating the device.

No one has claimed responsibility, and the Iranian government is accusing Israel and the United States of the assassinations (in which both vehemently denied any involvement).

Israel, in its current incarnation, can be seen in its post-war generations; warriors like Moshe Dayan, old-world kibbutzniks like Golda Meir, Carter, Clinton and Bush allies, and these are characterizations shared by American sympathizers and Jewish Israelis alike. But in 2012 it is safe to say that these generations are passing into history and when former New York Mayer Ed Koch slanders Ron Paul in classic ’60s hyperbole it simply registers as rude and confusing. Gary Bauer, a Christian evangelical leader, with support from Weekly Standard founder William Kristol and the Emergency Committee for Israel, also warns that Paul is an enemy of Israel. But with what legitimacy do these speak for Israel today? The idea of Israel as an American pseudo-state becomes preposterous as more immigrants arrive from Russia and elsewhere, and as more children are born in Israel to first- and second-generation Americans and Europeans who have made aliyah or sacred passage. Moshe Feiglin, who challenges Netanyahu for leadership in the Likud this month, says there are more Jews today in Israel than there are outside: The exile is over. In this new situation, America’s demands and expectations on Israel can seem as ill-advised and illegitimate as China’s over Tibet.

In August 2007, at the end of a series of war games uniting China and Russia, the Russians planted their flag at the North Pole, that singular place on earth where the world’s axis seems to align itself with the North Star. The planting of the flag was a Sputnik moment, but underwater. Its purpose was to territorialize our northern regions as surely as a dog of war would pee on the frozen tundra to ward off Canadian coyotes. It should have been, but President George W. Bush, his imagination full of visions of Armageddon in the Holy Land conjured by Appalachian mountain preachers, missed it. Presidential hopefuls, Mitt Romney and Rick Perry in particular, should not. Until recently, threats to America via the splendid isolation of the Arctic seemed absurd. But now it is reported that Russia intends to send a combat brigade.

I have written often about the extraordinary and wonderful role of women in Egypt, throughout the Arab Spring, and worldwide, in what I have called the "female century.”

The barbaric beatings of Egyptian women in recent hours is an outrage that must be condemned throughout the civilized world, must be aggressively prosecuted by Egyptian authorities and must be honestly shown on Egyptian state television as it has been shown on satellite broadcasts.

Ron Paul surging in Iowa, just as we learn Kim Jong Il is dead and his 20-something-year-old son is taking over as the heir to the crazy dictator, is unnerving. The first thing the son, Kim Jong Un, does on Monday morning to make his mark and give us a clue who he is and what he's about, is to test-fire a short-range missile. North Korea then, with a straight face, claims it was routine and completely unrelated to the death of their dictator and the need to flex a military muscle or two. This, just weeks after we learn North Korea is now in possession of mobile Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) that can constantly be on the move so that they aren't easily detected or tracked. North Korea has nukes and can strike before Ron Paul even has the chance to take his head out of the sand.