On Being a Woman & a Diplomat

Further to our discussion of Madame la Secrétaire Générale... (here and here), a link to an irreverent talk by former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright on politics and diplomacy. She makes the case that women's issues deserve a place at the center of foreign policy.

Far from being a "soft" issue, she says, women's issues are often the very hardest ones, dealing directly with life and death.

On January 3

On this day in ...
... 1961 (50 years ago today), the United States broke off diplomatic relations with Cuba, and thus closed the U.S. embassy in Havana. Taking this action was President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who would leave office later in the month. The break reflected tensions that had been mounting since Fidel Castro, whom U.S. officials deemed "too anti-American to be trusted," had become Cuba's leader 2 years earlier. Diplomatic relations between the 2 countries have not since been restored.

(Prior January 3 posts are here, here, and here.)

On December 10

On this day in ...
... 1945 (65 years ago today), Gabriela Mistral addressed a banquet at City Hall in Stockholm, where earlier in the day she'd been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. She stressed the bonds between Sweden and her own country:

As a daughter of Chilean democracy, I am moved to have before me a representative of the Swedish democratic tradition, a tradition whose originality consists in perpetually renewing itself within the framework of the most valuable creations of society. ...
At this moment, by an undeserved stroke of fortune, I am the direct voice of the poets of my race and the indirect voice for the noble Spanish and Portuguese tongues. Both rejoice to have been invited to this festival of Nordic life with its tradition of centuries of folklore and poetry.

Mistral (prior posts), who'd been born Lucila Godoy y Alcayaga 56 years earlier, was not only a renowned poet, but also a diplomat, serving on League of Nations cultural committee and as a Chilean consul in Italy, Spain, and Portugal. (credit for photo of 5,000-peso note honoring her) She's the transnational foremother of IntLawGrrl Naomi Roht-Arriaza.

(Prior December 10 posts are here, here, and here.)

International Law & WikiLeaks

(Delighted to welcome back alumna Mary Ellen O’Connell (below right), who contributes this guest post on release of classified documents by WikiLeaks, an issue on which alumna Patricia M. Wald posted yesterday)

I generally share Judge Wald’s critical view of WikiLeaks’ action.
In thinking about the matter from the perspective of international law, so far I see three areas of special interest:

1. Prosecution
State Department Legal Adviser Harold Koh, Attorney General Eric Holder, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and others have all discussed prosecuting “those responsible” for the document dump. The main figure associated with WikiLeaks is the Australian, Julian Assange. He is thought to be in hiding somewhere in Europe. Interpol has issued an international arrest warrant for Assange, to send him to Sweden to face questioning. I have seen no reports of a U.S. request for an international arrest warrant. (credit for logo of Interpol Red Notice)
My first thoughts in this episode have concerned on what basis Assange could be brought to the U.S. for prosecution. If he comes into Swedish custody, for example, and the United States then requests his extradition, NPR is reporting that the basis of criminal prosecution would likely be the Espionage Act. (See, e.g., 18 U.S.C. sec. 798 “Disclosure of Classified Information”.)
The Espionage Act seems to be narrowly drafted and to contain details that might well make it difficult to meet the requirements of U.S. extradition treaties.

2. Terrorism
Perhaps for the issues raised in Point 1, U.S. Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) is calling for WikiLeaks to be declared a terrorist organization? I wonder if Rep. King believes that declaring WikiLeaks a terrorist organization means that the U.S. will treat Assange as an “enemy combatant?” International law has no authority to support such assertions. We can hope that the administration will definitive reject them, and even reconsider other cases where criminal suspects are currently being treated as “enemy combatants.” (See my soon-to-be forthcoming article, “The Choice of Law Against Terrorism.”)

3. Diplomacy
We can further hope that this case will wake up governments around the world to greater vigilance on behalf of international law.
We should all be very concerned that certain Middle Eastern governments want to see military force used against Iran. There is no right to use military force against a state for the possession of even unlawful weapons. (See my “The Ban on the Bomb and Bombing, Iran, the U.S., and the International Law of Self-Defense”.) This is only one example. The documents are full of issues we in international law should be bringing to public awareness.
Ironically, in some cases involving the United States and non-compliance with international law, I wonder if governments are going to read the unflattering documents and either end cooperation or pressure the United States into ending non-compliant conduct? I have written about U.S. uses of military force in Yemen that conflict with international law. Is Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh going to continue to cooperate in this after what has been said about him?
And, of course, all of us in international law need to be concerned about the attempt to steal private information concerning the Secretary-General of the United Nations.
The gratuitous gossip in some of the communications is also striking — it made me think of the Rolling Stone interview with General Stanley McChrystal. (prior IntLawGrrls post)
The WikiLeaks decision to release this material was reprehensible. Hopefully the right lessons will be learned from it with respect to the conduct of diplomacy and the goals of U.S. foreign policy.

Wald on WikiLeaks

(Honored to welcome back alumna Patricia M. Wald, former federal and international judge, and former member of Presidential commission on U.S. intelligence, who contributes her thoughts on the unauthorized WikiLeaks release of U.S. diplomatic cables and military documents, some of which have been published in The New York Times, the Guardian, Le Monde, El Pais, and other media)

I think that freelancers do have some duty not to do things that will inevitably result in making any rational course of foreign relations more difficult.
Though it may be difficult to draw a precise line, I do see a difference between publishing the Pentagon Papers (after the fact), which disclosed the perfidy of the Vietnam War, and just dumping all sorts of personal calumny about foreign leaders – though part of these “dumps” may well have been motivated, like the Pentagon Papers, to show the futility of our sojourn in Afghanistan. (It seems almost impossible that the dumps aren’t violative of all sorts of laws.)
The episode also illustrates how our courtship with technology can be ruinous, by making it so easy to gain access to and disseminate so much classified material through young and immature intelligence operators.

'Nuff said

(Taking context-optional note of thought-provoking quotes)

Diplomacy has long been the backbone of U.S. foreign policy. It remains so today. The vast majority of my work at the State Department consists of engaging in diplomacy to address major global and regional challenges, such as confronting Iran's nuclear ambitions, facilitating negotatiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians, enhancing stability on the Korean Peninsula, and working with other governments to bring emergency relief to Haiti, And President Barack Obama and I certainly relied on old-fashioned diplomatic elbow grease to hammer out a last-minute accord at the Copenhagen conference on climate change last December.

-- U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in "Leading Through Civilian Power: Redefining American Diplomacy and Development." (credit for October 2010 photo) Clinton develops her wide-ranging exposition of the global work at State and myriad other agencies around the theme of her own initiative, "the first Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review (QDDR), a wholesale review of the State Department and USAID." The article appears in the November/December 2010 Foreign Affairs, a "special issue" on the topic of "The World Ahead." Some of the other articles are of interest, but the lineup as a whole discomfits: if it weren't for Secretaries of State (Clinton and her predecessor, Madeleine Albright), there'd be virtually no women authors in the entire issue. We, too, think deeply about the world to come.

Brooking no apology

Show me a land known by multiple names, and I'll show you a dispute over territory.
And so it is with the East China Sea islands called Diaoyutai in Chinese and Senkaku in Japanese. (map credit)

'The Senkaku islands are Japan's own territory,'

reports yesterday quoted Japan's Naoto Kan (right), Prime Minister of the country since June.
At about the same time, this statement from Jiang Yu (below left) (credit), spokesperson for China's Foreign Ministry:

She reiterated that the Diaoyu Islands have been integral part of China's territory since ancient times.

The current dispute over this ancient standoff stems from a collision earlier this month in the waters near the islands. After a Japanese Coast Guard vessel and a Chinese trawler collided, the former seized the latter and detained the 14 fishing folk aboard. Sanctions that China was considering were reported to range from export and tourist curtailment to military exercises. Yesterday Japan released the trawler's captain, a decision that a prosecutor told the Tokyo newspaper Asahi Shimbun was related to "'the effects on the people of Japan and the future of Japan-China relations.'"
China still wants an apology.
Japan still says no.
What's at stake here?
Internal politics seem at play; for example, factions in Japan complain that it's backing down too much to China.
Power politics between the once-dominant Japan and the now-resurgent China surely matter.
No surprise that energy resources also figure in the mix. It's reported that the islands are located "near natural gas fields, and that "China and Japan have yet to implement an agreement signed in 2008 to jointly develop the fields."

'Nuff said

(Taking context-optional note of thought-provoking quotes)

International organizations are often disparaged as talking shops. That, among other things, is what they are and requires no apology.

-- Brian Urquhart (right), who began his U.N. career in 1945 and served as Undersecretary-General from 1972 until his retirement in 1986. (photo credit) The quote appears in "Finding the Hidden UN," his well-worth-reading New York Review of Books essay about recent volumes about the United Nations -- including the ones here and here.

On August 30

On this day in ...
... 1924, the Permanent Court of International Justice, headquartered at the Peace Palace in The Hague (right), issued its judment on jursdiction in Mavrommatis Palestine Concessions Case (Greece v. United Kingdom). One passage read:

By taking up the case of one of its subjects and resorting to diplomatic action or international judicial proceedings on his behalf, a State is in reality asserting its own right — its right to ensure, in the person of its subjects, respect for the rules of international law.

Decades later the statement came under attack, in the First report on diplomatic protection, presented at a 2000 session of the International Law Commission. Special Rapporteur John R. Dugard characterized the passage as a "judicial blessing" of a legal "fiction," one that inter alia "provided a justification for military intervention or gunboat diplomacy."

(Prior August 30 posts are here, here, and here.)

On July 11

On this day in ...
... 1995 (15 years ago today), "the one-time student protester" against the Vietnam War, who'd become the United States' leader 2-1/2 years earlier had become the leader of the United States, established full diplomatic relations with Vietnam. President Bill Clinton hearkened to words once used by Abraham Lincoln, President during the Civil War a century earlier, when he said in remarks delivered at a ceremony in Washington:

This moment offers us the opportunity to bind up our own wounds. They have resisted time for too long. We can now move onto common ground.

The move came more than 2 decades after U.S. troops abandoned what was then the capital city of South Vietnam. Today it's known as Ho Chi Minh City, part of the single country of Vietnam depicted above right. In 2000, as depicted in these BBC photos (credit), the President and the 1st Lady -- today, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton -- would make the 1st official visit to Vietnam in a quarter-century.

(Prior July 11 posts are here, here, and here.)

On June 3

On this day in ...
... 1862, the United States gave official recognition to the Republic of Liberia (flag at left), the western Africa coastal territory, and onetime U.S. colony, which had declared its independence in 1847. On this day a U.S.-Liberia treaty of commerce and navigation was signed, and formal diplomatic relations were established.

(Prior June 3 posts are here, here, and here.)

Soccer diplomacy meets ICC

(Another in IntLawGrrls' series of Kampala Conference posts)

With World Cup fever abubble here in my California home (I've got USA in the family pool, my husband's keen on Argentina, and my son's gaga for Ghana), could not let pass this news from the site of the International Criminal Court Review Conference.
In a Sunday prelude to the 2-week conference that began yesterday, the United Nations played a friendly against Uganda Dignity at a stadium in Kampala.
Above, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, center, makes a play for a ball controlled by Uganda President Yoweri Museveni, left. (credit for photo by Stephen Wandera, courtesy of Uganda's Daily Monitor) The 2 arrived for a "six-minute cameo" toward the end of the charity contest, dubbed the "War Victims Day Football Game" and sponsored by the Uganda Victims Foundation and the Africa Youth Initiative Network aided by the NGO No Peace Without Justice.
The U.N. side lost one-nil. Scoring the lone and winning goal was a "Darfur war victim, Abdallah Lasanusi."
The photo's smiles-all-around exemplifies this month's theme of diplomacy, globalization, and soccer -- er, football -- popularized in books like this and this.

On May 12

On this day in ...
... 1975 (35 years ago today), naval gunboats of Khmer Rouge-controlled Cambodia seized the American freighter Mayaguez and its 39 crew members. U.S. President Gerald R. Ford (left) called the capture "an 'act of piracy' and promised swift action to rescue the captured Americans." Two days later, he sent Marines to the island where the crew was being held and ordered the port bombed; Cambodia "was already in the process of releasing the crew of the Mayaguez and the ship," and 41 "Americans died, most of them in an accidental explosion during the attack." A later congressional inquiry criticized the administration for failing to exhaust diplomatic channels before using force; nevertheless, as indicated by the Time cover above, the rescue effort won popular support in the United States.


(Prior May 12 posts are here, here, and here)

Read On! Unlikely Allies

(Read On! ... occasional posts on writing worth reading)

Is she or isn't he?

That conundrum's central to a new diplomatic history of Franco-American relations during the late 18th century revolution by which erstwhile colonists drove Britain out and established the United States of America. As told by our colleague Joel Richard Paul (below left), the tale is rich, and not just for its rich insights into how states form, and how they conform (or not) to international law. The title, Unlikely Allies: How a Merchant, a Playwright, and a Spy Saved the American Revolution (2009), promises much -- and Joel, who's Professor of Law and Associate Dean for International and Graduate Programs at the University of California Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco, delivers on that promise.

► The spy is the s/he of the story: Charles-Geneviève-Louis-Auguste-André-Timothée d'Eon, a Captain of the Dragoons who helped King Louis XVI keep confidential some of her/his father's embarrassing state secrets. Successful completion of that task led, by twists and turns, to d'Eon's secret dealings with others -- dealings that laid groundwork by which the French eventually provided the American rebellion money, arms, and troops that were essential to its ultimate success. Without spoiling the ending, suffice it to say that the story of this spy -- known at various times and places as the Chevalier or the Chevalière, d'Eon -- is a rollicking yarn.

Equally captivating are the book's portraits of 2 others whose derring-do set the stage for a diplomatic coup typically attributed to Benjamin Franklin. (Taking implicit issue with articles like the one here, Joel demonstrates that Franklin did not arrive in Paris until after much of the hard work had been done.) The 2 are:

► Silas Deane, a Connecticut merchant sent to Paris even before the Declaration of Independence was signed. Deane was instructed to use trade as cover for his true task of persuading France to aid the Americans.

► Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais, the writer of Le Barbier de Seville and other comédies, who, with the covert OK of official France, provided munitions to the rebels.

These character studies not only enrich understanding of the times, but also serve as an important reminder that happenstance and idiosyncrasy often affect the course of history.

Also significant are the many passages in Unlikely Allies that provoke thought on issues still current in international affairs. For example:

► The long reluctance of the French sovereign to aid independence abroad, lest the rebel spirit be roused at home (as, indeed, it soon was, in a Revolution that cost Louis XVI his head);

► The duplicity and intrigue that underlie much of the information that's branded "intelligence";

► The consequences of a terrorist attack committed upon the initiative of an anti-British pyromaniac; and

► The French Foreign Minister's refusal of an invitation to join Spain in attacking Portugal, about which Joel writes:

A preemptive war would 'soil oneself with a notorious injustice, which would be invincibly repugnant to the feelings and principles of the two monarchs.' ... The argument for preemptive war was as tempting as it was dangerous. A wise leader would never commit his country to a foreign war in the name of preemption when no imminent threat existed.

(pp. 113-14) The passage resounds with echoes of post-9/11 debates about the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, a fact that underscores the contemporary significance of this superb historical account.

On January 5

On this day in ...
... 1809, at what is now Çanakkale, Turkey, delegates from Britain and the Ottoman Empire signed Treaty of Peace, Commerce, and Secret Alliance commonly known as the Treaty of the Dardanelles, named after the Turkish strait depicted at right. Ratifications would be exchanged in July of the same year. The pact provided inter alia for an end to hostilities between the 2 powers, restoration of seized property, establishment of diplomatic and trade relations, and a British promise to support the Ottomans in the event of an attack by France. A point of treaty-drafting interest:

[T]he treaty is of particular interest because of its language. Normally, treaties are drawn in the language of the parties negotiating them. Because the Ottomans had a limited knowledge of English, however, they insisted that the treaty be drawn in Turkish and French, with which they were much more comfortable. This was a matter of some discussion in the foreign office, but the Ottoman position prevailed.

(Prior January 5 posts are here and here.)

On January 1

On this day in ...
... 1979, following years of negotiations (prior post), the United States and the People's Republic of China entered into full diplomatic relations. U.S. President Jimmy Carter and Chinese Prime Minister Hua Kuo-feng, as well as their foreign ministers and other leaders and diplomats, marked the milestone with toasts.

(Prior January 1 posts are here and here.)

On December 21

On this day in ...
... 1973, in Switzerland, diplomats from Egypt, Israel, and Jordan launched face-to-face negotiations. (A place was set for Syria, though it did not attend.) Noting that the peace talks had begun just 6 years after Arab leaders meeting in Khartoum, Sudan, had renounced all negotiation with Israel, The New York Times wrote:

Not for a quarter of a century--the entire history of modern Israel's existence--have the belligerents of the Middle East entered upon a solemn and direct encounter such as is now about to open in Geneva.

The meeting did not end in any agreement. (credit for photo of December 24, 1973, session) But it is viewed here as a forerunner to later, bilateral pacts.

(Prior December 21 posts are here and here.)

On October 12

On this day in ...
... 1906, the San Francisco Board of Education ordered that Japanese children be be taught in racially segregated public schools, and so touched off "a diplomatic crisis between Japan and the United States." President Theodore Roosevelt sent native Californian Victor Metcalf, the Secretary of Commerce and Labor, to urge school officials to rescind the order. Metcalf is depicted in the cartoon at right, begging a white schoolchild,

'For heaven's sake do not embarrass the Administration!'

while a Japanese mother and son look on. (credit) In a December speech to Congress, Roosevelt denounced the schools' order as a "'wicked absurdity,' asked Congress to grant citizenship to those Japanese immigrants who wanted it, and vowed to protect the rights of all Japanese residents in the United States." His request was not popular. A 1907 "Gentlemen's Agreement" was entered, by which the united States informally agreed not to restrict Japanese immigration or schooling and Japan agreed not to permit further migration from Japan to the United States.


(Prior October 12 posts are here and here.)

Peace 2009

"Peace 2009" is the label that the Norwegian Nobel Committee has given to its on-the-web information on today's announcement, reprinted below in full, that U.S. President Barack Obama is the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize "for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples," with special attention paid "to Obama's vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons."
The news comes exactly 45 years after the same committee awarded the same prize to another American, the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Today's news is a most welcome endorsement of the efforts of all in the new administration -- the President, of course, but also many of our colleagues and many others -- who are doing the very hard work of reinforcing the United States' position as a leader in the global community. Obama himself said as much today:

Let me be clear: I do not view it as a recognition of my own accomplishments, but rather as an affirmation of American leadership on behalf of aspirations held by people in all nations.

It is a vision of leadership that seeks to maintain U.S. superpower status, yet accepts the messiness of genuine engagement with our diverse world. Indeed engagement -- even to the extent of risking an occasional loss, as with the failed Olympics bid, or the inevitability of criticism -- is seen in this vision as a sign of strength, a marker that the U.S. role is well earned.
Some are questioning the decision to give this award a scant 9 months after the onset of this Presidency. Such questions ignore just how much Obama and his administration in fact have accomplished in that short time. By way of a few examples, they have:

► Immediately upon taking office, ordered the closure of the detention camp at Guantánamo, and labored since then to make this happen;

► Simultaneously ordered an end to unlawful interrogation practices;

► Reiterated a vision for a nuclear-free world and pressed for nuclear arms reduction through U.S. ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, strengthening of the existing nonproliferation framework, and negotiation of a new U.S.-Russia treaty (prior posts here and here);

► Taken part in the 1st high-level face-to-face talks with Iran in 3 decades (prior post);

► Pledged U.S. contribution to global combat against climate change; and

► Joined the Human Rights Council of the United Nations.

Much, of course, remains to be done. Guantánamo is still open, and the ultimate fate of it and other post-9/11 programs is still unclear. The securing of ratification of the test ban and other treaties -- the Women's Convention and the Convention on the Law of the Sea, to name 2 on which we 'Grrls have posted -- has yet to occur. Policy on the International Criminal Court, subject of the forthcoming 2010 review conference in Uganda, remains to be set. Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan pose a host of problems, as do lower-intensity efforts in countries like Pakistan.

Let's hope the administration continues to work to resolve such issues consistent with the "new climate in international politics" that inspired today's award of the Nobel Peace Prize.

(Cross-posted at The HuffingtonPost)

On October 5

On this day in ...
... 1614 (395 years ago today), a fleet of Japanese ships carrying Ambassador Hasekura Tsunenaga arrived in Spain, at the port of Sanlúcar de Barrameda. Hasekura's mission, known as the Keichō Embassy, had begun the prior year and already included Spanish ports of call in North America. Hasekura was the "first Japanese political envoy to visit the American continent." He tried to negotiate trade agreements in Madrid, where he converted to Roman Catholicism, and eventually traveled to the Vatican to meet with the Pope (above) (credit). Having failed to secure trade pacts, Hasekura returned to Japan and died from illness. No Japanese embassy would return to Europe for 200 years.

(Prior October 5 posts are here and here.)