Here is another stunning example of a completely one-sided report by VOA on U.S.-Russian relations. There is not a single sentence in this report about Congressional or any other U.S. domestic or international criticism of President Obama’s approach to managing relations with the Kremlin.

In my entire career with VOA spanning more than two decades, I’ve never seen such government PR being presented as thought-provoking, objective and balanced news and information. Not a word about critical comments by Senator John McCain, Senator George Voinovich, Senator Jim DeMint, or Senator Mitch McConnell. There is no mention of numerous American and international experts who have raised serious doubts about President Obama’s “reset” of relations with the Kremlin, including some reports by U.S. diplomats in Moscow — all of this information easily available to sophisticated news consumers abroad.

This particular Voice of America news analysis reminds me of Soviet-style radio reporting about the USSR’s everlasting commitment to peace, disarmament, and international cooperation.

The damage from such unbalanced Voice of America reporting is not limited to the English Service. It is multiplied worldwide as many understaffed VOA language services translate and use these reports, including VOA’s Russian Service. Американо-российские отношения: итоги года

I could not imagine more boring reporting unless it came directly from the Kremlin or the Obama White House. Even Voice of Russia (the old Radio Moscow) commentaries are more fun to hear, for those who can appreciate this type of humor, because of the inability of most Russian state-employed journalists and government officials to refrain from taking cheap shots at the United States.

I invite everyone to read the Voice of America English Service report and judge it for yourself.

2010 Productive Year for US-Russian Relations

André de Nesnera | Washington, DC 27 December 2010

The highlight was the U.S. Senate’s ratification in late December of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty – or New START.

Vice President Joe Biden, in his capacity as president of the Senate, read out the final tally.

“71 yeahs, 26 nays, two-thirds of the Senate present having voted in the affirmative, the resolution of ratification is agreed to,” said Biden.

Shortly after Senate ratification, President Barack Obama addressed reporters.

“This is the most significant arms control agreement in nearly two decades and it will make us safer and reduce our nuclear arsenals along with Russia’s,” the president said.

The Senate action represented a major victory for President Obama, who has made better relations with Moscow a cornerstone of his foreign policy.

The New START treaty sets a limit of 1,550 deployed strategic – or long-range – nuclear warheads. It also limits to 700 the number of operationally deployed strategic nuclear delivery systems such as long-range launchers and heavy bombers. The accord also provides for what the Obama administration calls strong verification measures – provisions that ensure each side complies with its treaty obligations.

The treaty now has to be ratified by the Russian parliament – or Duma – and by the Federation Council, Russia’s highest legislative body. Experts say passage is virtually guaranteed.

John Parker with the National Defense University [expressing his personal views], says the New START treaty is as important to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev as it is to President Obama.

“Since he [Medvedev] was intimately involved in negotiating it person-to-person with President Obama, it’s important. He invested a lot of time in it and when it’s ratified [by the Duma/Federation Council] he will, I’m sure, take a lot of political credit for it. So it’s important,” said Parker.

Many experts are now looking at what might be the next step in arms negotiations between Washington and Moscow. One of those is Steven Pifer with the Brookings Institution.

“When he signed the New START Treaty back in April, President Obama made clear that he would like to continue and in the next negotiation, address not only deployed strategic forces but address non-deployed strategic warheads – for example those nuclear warheads that are sitting in storage areas – and also address non-strategic or tactical nuclear weapons,” said

“And that opens up for the first time that the United States and Russia might be negotiating limits on all of their nuclear arsenals with the exception of those weapons that are in the dismantlement queue,” Pifer continued. “That’s going to be a hard negotiation because the sides will get into questions that they haven’t had to address before.”

Many analysts say the START negotiations and ratification process overshadowed other positive developments in US-Russia relations.

Robert Legvold of Columbia University says one of those was Moscow’s increased cooperation in Afghanistan.

“The most important element has been supporting transit of military equipment to Afghanistan. In the past, the U.S. has been more than two-thirds dependent on supply lines that cross the western border of Pakistan and that are vulnerable both to the insurgency in the area and at times the Pakistan government, when they protest American military actions,” said Legvold.

“So the fact that the Russians now enable both on land and air the transit of both non-lethal and lethal – that is military equipment to Afghanistan – is a critical element in sustaining the military U.S. and NATO effort within Afghanistan.”

Experts say Moscow also toughened its position on Iran, voting in favor of a United Nations Security Council resolution imposing new, tougher sanctions on Tehran – although the text was apparently watered down by Russia and China. Russia also canceled the delivery to Iran of S-300 anti-aircraft missiles – a deal dating back to 2007.

Russia also changed its position on missile defense. After strongly criticizing for many years U.S. plans for such an endeavor, Moscow agreed to cooperate in a NATO-led missile defense system.

Once again John Parker with the National Defense University.

“Politically it’s very important. [Russian President Dmitry] Medvedev signaled a readiness to cooperate in discussions with NATO on European missile defense. What it will eventually turn out to be it’s pretty hard to tell, but at least the two sides are going to be talking. So they are going to talk about how this cooperation might work out,” said Parker. “The important thing for the Russians is that they are in on the ground floor on all of this and not just handed a plan and asked to sign up to it.”

Looking ahead, experts say Moscow and Washington should build on the progress made in 2010. A key event in 2011 will be the expected review of Moscow’s application to become a member of the World Trade Organization – an application supported by the Obama administration.

Американо-российские отношения: итоги года

Андре де Нешнера Понедельник, 27 декабря 2010

Русская служба «Голоса Америки» – итоги года

Пожалуй, ключевым событием в американо-российских отношениях стала ратификация Сенатом США в конце декабря нового соглашения о сокращении стратегических наступательных вооружений.

Вице-президент США Джо Байден в качестве председателя Сената Соединенных Штатов зачитал результаты голосования:

«71 голос «За», 26 – «Против». Две третьих из числа присутствующих сенаторов проголосовали «За» – договор ратифицирован».

Вскоре после ратификации договора в Сенате президент США Барак Обама обратился к журналистам со словами:

«Это самое важное за двадцать лет соглашение о контроле над вооружениями, и этот договор сделает мир более безопасным и позволит сократить ядерные арсеналы США и России».

Ратификация договора Сенатом США стала важнейшей победой президента Обамы, который сделал задачу улучшения отношений с Россией краеугольным камнем внешней политики своей администрации.

По новому договору СНВ предполагается сократить количество ядерных боеголовок баллистических ракет до 1550 единиц с каждой стороны. Договор предусматривает сократить количество носителей ядерного оружия – пусковых установок баллистических ракет и дальних бомбардировщиков – до 700 единиц и у США, и у России. В американо-российском договоре также прописаны, как называет это администрация президента Обамы, четкие меры по проверке выполнения условий данного соглашения каждой из сторон.

Договор теперь должен быть ратифицирован Государственной Думой России и Советом Федерации. Эксперты говорят, что российский парламент практически гарантированно ратифицирует это соглашение.

Джон Паркер из Университета национальной обороны, выражая свое личное мнение, заявил, что новый договор о СНВ одинаково важен и для Президента РФ Дмитрия Медведева, и для президента США Барака Обамы:

«Учитывая, что президент Медведев непосредственно включился в обсуждение нового договора СНВ с президентом Обамой, то это соглашение имеет важное значение. Медведев потратил массу времени для достижения этого договора. И когда СНВ-3 будет ратифицирован парламентом России, я уверен, что президент Медведев получит политические дивиденды. Поэтому так важен договор СНВ», – отметил эксперт.

Многие эксперты сейчас пытаются представить, какую тему могут затронуть на следующих переговорах по контролю над вооружениями США и Россия. Вот что думает по этому поводу Стивен Пайфер из Брукингского института:

«Когда в апреле президент Обама подписывал новый договор о СНВ, он дал ясно понять, что хотел бы продолжить на следующих американо-российских переговорах обсуждение не только развернутых стратегических ядерных сил, но неразвернутых ядерных боеголовок, например, ядерных боеголовок, хранящихся на складах, а также провести переговоры по тактическому ядерному оружию. И это впервые открывает возможность для США и России начать переговоры об ограничении всего ядерного арсенала двух стран, исключая лишь ядерные вооружения, предназначенные для демонтажа. Это будут трудные переговоры, потому что стороны должны будут обсуждать вопросы, которых они до этого даже не касались»

Многие эксперты считают, что обсуждение нового договора по СНВ и процесс его ратификации оставили в тени другие позитивные сдвиги в американо-российских отношениях.

Роберт Легволд из Колумбийского университета говорит, что одним из таких позитивных моментов стало то, что Москва расширила сотрудничество по Афганистану:

«Самым важным элементом такого сотрудничество стало разрешение России осуществлять транзит военных грузов в Афганистан. В прошлом США для доставки двух третьих всех грузов в эту страну зависели от транспортных маршрутов в Афганистан, проходящих через западную границу Пакистана. И эти маршруты уязвимы и для ударов боевиков, действующих в этом регионе, и периодически для действий пакистанского правительства, когда оно протестует против некоторых операций американских военных. Поэтому тот факт, что русские разрешили транзит военных грузов по своей территории и по воздуху, имеет решающее значение для снабжения американских войск и контингента НАТО в Афганистане», – отметил Легволд.

Эксперты говорят, что Москва также ужесточила свою позицию по Ирану, проголосовав за резолюцию Совета Безопасности ООН о введении новых более жестких санкций против Тегерана, хотя Россия и Китай явно сумели смягчить окончательный текст данной резолюции. Россия также отменила поставку Ирану систем ПВО С-300 (договор о продаже Россией батарей С-300 Ирану был заключен еще в 2007 году).

Россия также изменила свою позицию по ПРО. Многие годы Россия резко критиковала планы США по развертыванию системы ПРО, но потом Москва согласилась на сотрудничество с НАТО в вопросе создания системы ПРО.

Джон Паркер из Университета национальной обороны считает:

«В политическом отношении, это очень важно. Президент России Дмитрий Медведев сигнализировал о готовности к сотрудничеству в ходе переговоров с НАТО по созданию системы ПРО над Европой. Во что это выльется, сейчас довольно трудно сказать, но по меньшей мере обе стороны продолжат переговоры о том, в какой форме это сотрудничество может развиваться. Для русских важно то, что им не просто вручили план и попросили его подписать, а они вовлечены в обсуждение этих планов»

Заглядывая вперед, эксперты говорят, что Москве и Вашингтону необходимо развивать успех, достигнутый в 2010 году. Ключевым событием в 2011 году станет давно ожидаемое рассмотрение заявки России на вступление во Всемирную торговую организацию. Эту заявку поддержала администрация президента Обамы.
Послать статью Распечатать Комментарии

Комментарии (5)
28-12-2010
К сожалению,чудовищная коррупция в России не даст нормально развиваться этим отношениям.Для того,чтобы ее победить президент Д.А.Медведев должен принять беспрецендентные меры
28-12-2010гоша (россия)
Медведев? меры?какие меры,Вы о чём говорите! евросоюзу и америке пора задуматься о построении железного занавеса но только с той стороны,а иначе наша псевдодемократия и у вас приживётся
28-12-2010
В реальности – если у России вырастет экономика, исчезнет коррупция, улучшатся дипотношения с близкими и далекими странами — Это будет самое огромное горе для США. Политический парадокс!
28-12-2010гоша (россия)
С такими как Медведев и Путин вобще разговаривать неочем…. можно “потерять лицо”
28-12-2010wwwert (ykr)
да я соглашаюсь, что будет рассмотрен план дальше. глубже. сколько же можно замораживать друг друга и держать мир в недоумении.

Related posts:

1. Misleading foreign audiences – America.gov or America.STATE – U.S. Senate Ratifies New START Treaty
2. Voice of America English programs go the way of Voice of Russia, says former VOA journalist
3. Independent US Bloggers Beat Voice of America and Radio Liberty in Delivering Uncensored News to Russia
4. Why U.S. Public Diplomacy No Longer Works and Can It Be Fixed?
5. Voice of America Report Shows Confusion and Divisions Over Obama’s Policy Toward Russia

 Sourced from: TedLipien.com

The interment took place at the Cemetery at the Shrine of Our Lady of Czestochowa in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, on Saturday Sept. 11. Zofia Korbonska was burried next to her husband, Stefan Korbonski, who was the Polish Government-in-Exile’s delegate and director of the Directorate of Civil Resistance, which coordinated non-military resistance efforts by the Polish populace against the German occupying forces. Zofia and Stefan gathered information from the extensive network of the Polish Underground Resistance, and Zofia was the cipher clerk who encoded the messages for transmission to Great Britain. Among the news first reaching the West by this route were: information about medical experiments on women prisoners in the Nazi German concentration camp at Auschwitz; the location of Hitler’s command bunker in East Prussia; the outbreak of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943; daily reports on the fighting during the three weeks of that Uprising; the final deportation of ghetto residents and destruction of the ghetto; tests of V-1 and V-2 weapons on Polish territory; daily reports on the fighting during the 63 days of the Warsaw Rising which began on August 1, 1944; the “liberation” by the Soviets which marked the beginning of the next occupation of Poland.

After Zofia Korbonska and her husband escaped from Poland in 1947 to avoid arrest by the communist regime, former U.S. ambassador to Warsaw Arthur Bliss Lane urged Zofia to apply for a job at VOA’s Polish Service. A friend of the Korbonskis, Ambassador Bliss Lane was aware that during World War II the person in charge of U.S. radio broadcasts to Poland was a Polish communist who after the war returned to Poland and became one of the Polish Communist Party’s chief anti-American propagandists.

Ambassador Bliss Lane, who had resigned from the State Department in 1947 in protest against the Yalta Agreements and the lack of sufficient U.S. response to communist repression in Poland, was hoping that Zofia Korbonska would help to change the pro-Moscow tone of U.S. radio programs to Poland. She and other Polish journalists hired after the war helped to restore accuracy and balance in VOA Polish broadcasts. In his book I Saw Poland Betrayed, Ambassador Bliss Lane described the Soviet domination of Poland and the crushing of the democratic opposition to the Soviet-imposed communist government. He was also critical of U.S. radio broadcasts to Poland during the Roosevelt and Truman Administrations prior to the hiring of Zofia Korbonska and other pro-democratic Polish journalists and writers.

Zofia Korbonska described her work at the Voice of America as “the continuation of the struggle in which she had engaged as a member of the Polish Underground, this time waged from the West against the Soviet Union, the new occupying power in Poland.” She viewed VOA’s mission at that time as corresponding to what she and her husband wanted work for: “the restoration of freedom and independence to the nations in Central and Eastern Europe under the Soviet domination.”

Zofia Korbonska received hundreds of letters and even presents from listeners in Poland. The letters were sent surreptitiously from Poland at some danger to those who sent them. The gifts included an effigy of the Soviet Marshal Konstantin Rokossovsky who on Stalin’s orders was put in charge of the Polish communist armed forces. In attacking Zofia Korbonska’s work at the Voice of America, a communist media commentator in Poland called her “a nightingale in a golden birdcage of American warmongers,” but she and other VOA Polish Service broadcasters had millions of faithful listeners.

At the Voice of America, she originated such regular programs as “Life in Warsaw Under Communist Rule,” “Democratic Institutions in the United States;” “Young Club of Independent Thought;” and “Women in America.” She said, however, that she was most proud of her news reports during critical historical moments: the Polish workers unrest in 1956, the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, and her live reporting after the assassination of President Kennedy, which she described as one of the most dramatic moments of her radio career.

When I worked with her at VOA in the 1970s and the early 1980s, I remember most vividly Mrs. Korbonski’s constant frustration as a news editor with various attempts by American academics, journalists and some U.S. government officials to whitewash history by promoting such ideas as convergence between Soviet communism and Western democracy or the Sonnenfeldt Doctrine, which urged the Soviets and the Eastern Europeans to seek a more “organic” relationship. She would say that a few days in a Soviet prison might cure them of such silly and dangerous notions.

Zofia Korbonska rejoiced when Ronald Reagan was elected president. With her sharp sense of humor, she made fun of several USIA officials, still employed at the time at VOA in executive positions, who were horrified by some of President Reagan’s blunt statements about the Soviet Union. In a 2001 interview, she described her work at the Voice of America as “a beautiful period in [her professional life]” and as “a contribution to the victory over the Evil Empire.”

After the death of her husband in 1989, Zofia Korbonska founded the Stefan Korbonski Foundation in Washington, with a chapter in Warsaw; its “goals and aims are to clarify and preserve the memory of the true facts of the recent history of Poland, and most specifically of the Polish Underground State in the years 1939-45, of the contribution of Poland to the Allied victory in World War II and of the role in that fight of the Directorate for Civil Resistance, headed by Stefan Korboński.”

In failing health, she became house-bound for the last several years of her life. Her significance to the recent history of Poland was recognized by Polish President Lech Kaczynski, who bestowed on her the high decoration of Grand Cross of Polonia Restituta. During his visit to the United States in February 2006, since she was unable to leave her house, the President came to her humble apartment in Washington to personally present this high honor.

Zofia Korbońska

ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI

10 IX 2010 r.

“Miłość żąda ofiary” – te trzy słowa są dla mnie streszczeniem esencji życia Zofii Korbońskiej.

Pochodzą z drugiej wojny światowej – z Polski walczącej.

Ale miłości czego? I jakiej ofiary?

Milość czegoś większego od siebie, czegoś nadrzędnego, czemu się oddać należy całkowicie bez wahania…i nawet czasem bez wzajemności.

A ofiara bezgraniczna – bo własnego nawet życia.

Zofia Korbońska, urodzona trzy lata przed odzyskaniem niepodległości, pochodzi z pokolenia które dosłownie żyło Polską, upajało się Polską, przeżywało jako osobisty sukces każde osiągnięcie odrodzonego państwa.

Ktokolwiek żył jako dziecko w niepodleglej Polsce, to również przeżywał – upojenie zwycięską armią, budowa Gdyni – najbardziej nowoczesnego portu nad Baltykiem, COP – to namacalne poczucie osobistej dumy – sam to pamiętam.

I nagle ta upojna rzeczywistość Polski wolnej padła w ruiny, w poniżeniu i w przemocy.

Zofia Korbonska miała wtedy 24 lata – świt dojrzałości, na progu kariery, pełności życia osobistego we własnym kraju, poznania miłości – ale zamiast tego następne 6 lat to lata wojny i całkowitego poświęcenia się sprawie odzyskania niepodległości – to konspiracja, to służba w podziemnym radio Polski Walczącej – to wspólna praca z mężem Stefanem, kierownikiem Walki Cywilnej Polski Walczącej.

Miłość ządająca ofiary – to dzień po dniu, godzina po godzinie, narażanie własnego życia w służbie dla Polski – to straty sobie bliskich – to niepokój o swoich najbliższych, i o siebie samego, mając jednocześnie świadomość, że areszt to nie tylko śmierć, ale wpierw okrutne tortury by wymusić zdradę tajemnic Polski Walczącej.

Ale również i chwile uniesienia i nawet euforii – wielki zryw Powstania Warszawskiego.

Chorągwie biało-czerwone znów nad Warszawą – zbrojne wystapienie AK – młodzież z bronią tylko ręczną szturmuje bunkry okupanta.

Ale po dwóch krwawych miesiącach znowu klęska – Powstanie samotne, opuszczone, i zdradzone – wygasa.

I nowa okupacja ze Wschodu. I znów poniżenie i przemoc – sąd w Moskwie porwanych dowodców Polski Walczącej.

A potem – walka prawie że samotna, nawet kompromisowa, o uratowanie choćby częsci niepodległości w zniszczonej Polsce – i wkrótce by uniknąć śmierci w kazamatach UB, jeszcze większa ofiara miłości – przymusowa emigracja Zofii i Stefana Korbońskich – zdala od kraju, ale zawsze duchem w kraju.

Zagranicą – praca trwała i ciężka, o niepodleglość i o wolność dla Polski – przez kilkadziesiąt lat – walka wymagająca poświęcenia i cierpliwosci oraz i głębokiej wiary – ale poświęcenie, cierpliwość, i wiara – to są cechy prawdziwie trwałej miłości.

Każdy kto znał Zofię Korbońską wie z jakim oddaniem, a jednoczesnie z osobistą skromnością i wybitną mądrością polityczną, ona tej wielkiej sprawie niezłomnie służyła – aż do samego końca.

I – dzięki Bogu – dożyła chwili wielkiego zwycięstwa, odzyskania wolności i niepodległości przez naród, który przetrwal bo był przesiągnięty tradycją i duchem AK – Polski Walczacej – Polski Podziemnej, i na emigracji, Polski suwerennej – Polski pokolenia Zofii Korbońskiej.

Naród zwyciężył bo był wierny zasadzie, że milość żąda ofiary.
Ale jednocześnie Solidarność wygrała bo była świadoma, że miłość również wymaga rozwagi.

Odwaga historyczna i rozwaga strategiczna – to była myśl przewodnia narodu zjednoczonego w solidarności – że zwycięstwo bezkrwawe może być jeszcze większym triumfem niż zwycięstwo krwawo wywalczone.

Zofia Korbońska – bohatersko odważna w walce, rozważna na politycznej emigracji – była przykładem na czym polega oddana i udana służba w wielkiej sprawie.

I dlatego też mamy prawo oczekiwać szczególnie od rodaków w kraju –w znów wolnej Polsce dziś żyjących, w Polsce która jest sojusznikiem Stanow Zjednoczonych i integralną częścią jednoczącej się Europy – że swą kulturą polityczną i umiarem w demokratycznym rządzeniu udowodnią, że są godnymi następcami pokolenia Zofii Korbonskiej.

Pokolenia, które pokazało, w najtrudniejszych latach w historii Polski, że bezgraniczna miłość dla kraju może być jednocześnie mądra i zwycięska.

View Dr. Brzezinski’s speech as Word document

View Dr. Brzezinski’s speech as PDF document

Photo of Zofia Korbonska’s interment at the Cemetery at the Shrine of Our Lady of Czestochowa in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, on Saturday Sept. 11, 2010 was provided by Marek Walicki. Zofia Korbonska was burried next to her husband, Stefan Korbonski, who was the Polish Government-in-Exile’s delegate and director of the Directorate of Civil Resistance, which coordinated non-military resistance efforts by the Polish populace against the German occupying forces.

U.S. Consular Officers at the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria, the U.S. Ambassador to Nigeria Robin R. Sanders, and Foreign Service Officers responsible for security had a professional duty to immediately cancel Mr. Abdulmutallab’s U.S. visa after his father warned the Embassy officials of his son’s likely radicalization.

No dots with the vague CIA information from Yemen on Mr. Abdulmutallab needed to be connected by anti-terrorism experts. The whole problem could have been easily averted at the U.S. Embassy in Abuja, Nigeria, if American diplomats had simply used common sense that most Americans would use in a similar situation.

These highly paid U.S. officials should have erred on the side of caution, not on the side of protecting the rights of individuals who are not U.S. citizens and have no automatic right to a U.S. visa.

After being told of the father’s concerns about his son, the first question from Ambassador Sanders should have been: does he have a U.S. visa? And if he does, let’s cancel it immediately.

Any of the Foreign Service Officers and other officials at the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria who knew about the case should have asked the same question. They are some of the best paid U.S. government employees and supposed to be some of the smartest.

We wish the latter were really true. If they were as smart and dedicated as they should be, Americans could feel safe about their borders being protected and there would be no need to spend extra billions of dollars on airport security. Unfortunately, a culture of careerism and political correctness makes it impossible for most U.S. Foreign Service Officers to think and act primarily in the interest of the American people.

U.S. diplomats in Nigeria did nothing to prevent the most recent incident because that would have required them to make a difficult decision that could have been viewed by their bosses at the State Department in Washington as a violation of Mr. Abdulmitallab’s rights. A decision to cancel his visa might have also exposed them to criticism of engaging in profiling and undermining President Obama’s new policy of reaching out to the Muslim world.

Let’s not forget that all of the 9/11 terrorists also received American visas from U.S. Foreign Service Officers.

Each U.S. diplomat stationed abroad costs U.S. taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars each year. But today’s U.S. Foreign Service Officers are mostly interested in protecting their considerable salaries and perks. They lack both status and courage to challenge official policies and behavior, often dictated by misguided political correctness.

It does not help that the standards for recruiting Foreign Service Officers have greatly declined over the last few decades. A U.S. diplomat who dares to make a difficult decision that could ruin his chances for career advancement is a rare exception.

If U.S. Foreign Service Officers used the right judgement and did their professional duty of protecting U.S. citizens rather than pleasing the political correctness crowd at the State Department and the White House, the 9/11 terror attack and the attempted airplane bombing over Detroit could have been prevented.

The CIA is also not off the hook. As with Foreign Service Officers, keeping a single CIA officer abroad also costs U.S. taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in salary, free housing, free education for children and freequent free travel to the U.S. The CIA station chief in Nigeria should have insisted that a Consular Officer at the Embassy or the Ambassador herself cancel Mr. Abdulmutallab’s U.S. visa. Without a U.S. visa, he would not have been able to get on the plane.

Ultimately, however, it’s not the CIA but the U.S. Ambassador who is responsible for what goes on at a U.S. embassy.

It is unlikely that the quality of U.S. Foreign Service Officers can be quickly improved in the current political environment in Washington. Intensive retraining of U.S. ambassadors, political officers, and consular officials at U.S. embassies might offer some help in the future if it is done correctly. But such retraining would certainly clash with the Obama administration’s policy assumptions about the world and the Foreign Service culture that promotes conformism.

Of course, much of the blame goes directly to President Obama and his administration’s top officials who have set the political agenda of granting people suspected of terrorism the benefit of the doubt in an naive hope that by being nice to them they would be nice to us. U.S. diplomats in Nigeria should have shown their respect for the local customs and culture by taking seriously the concerns expressed to them by Mr. Abdulmutallab’s father. They should have been nice to him. Instead, they behaved like typical Americans, assuming that the young man had the right to do what he wanted. Perhaps they thought that if they had cancelled his U.S. visa he might become anti-American and turn into a terrorist. That, after all, seems to be the essence of President Obama’s approach to the problem of terrorism.

U.S. diplomats in Nigeria were more than eager to implement this misguided agenda. The attempted airplane bombing over Detroit was a major failure of both the Obama administration and the culture of the U.S. diplomatic service. The American people deserve better than that.

 Sourced from: TedLipien.com

First, President Obama made public his strong desire to “reset” relations with Moscow, based apparently on a naive assumption that Russian leaders would help him deal with nuclear Iran, as if helping the U.S. could ever advance their own authoritarian ambitions. He later declined the Polish government’s invitation to attend the 70th anniversary commemoration of the outbreak of World War II, which was held in Gdansk, the birthplace of Solidarnosc, on September 1, a date of great historical importance to the Poles. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was there along with other foreign dignitaries.

This American diplomatic snub, combined with the fact that the White House and the State Department were silent during the summer, as various Russian government officials and Kremlin supporters defended Stalin and his pre-World War II pact with Hitler, did not escape the attention of Polish leaders and the Polish public. The Hitler-Stalin pact resulted in Poland’s partition by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, with the Soviet attack launched on September 17, 1939.

The final blow came when President Obama made his decision to cancel U.S. plans to build the anti-ballistic missile system in Poland and the Czech Republic, and chose to announce it on the very day the Poles were commemorating the tragic anniversary of the Soviet invasion of their country. Countless public diplomacy experts in the White House and the State Department, including President Obama’s future ambassador to Poland, did nothing to prevent this completely avoidable insult. Wired headline said it all: Dear Poland, Happy Soviet Invasion Day. Love Uncle Sam.

Alarmed by naive foreign policy statements coming from Washington, Lech Walesa, Vaclav Havel and other Central European leaders had sent a letter to President Obama in July 2009, warning him of the Kremlin’s aggressive behavior toward Russia’s neighbors. The mishandling of the ballistic missile defense (BMD) issue and subsequent events have shown that their alarm was justified, but their warnings have been ignored.

Finally, after an outcry of media criticism following the September 17 missile shield cancellation announcement, the White House hastily dispatched Vice President Joe Biden on a face-saving mission to Central Europe. While visiting Poland, Romania and the Czech Republic, Mr. Biden praised the courage of pro-democracy demonstrators who toppled communist regimes in 1989 while facing tanks and occasional gunfire.

But these Central Europeans, who easily saw through communist propaganda and like to match actions with words, could not fail to notice that only a few days earlier Mr. Biden’s boss had refused to meet in Washington with the revered Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama. This was apparently out of fear of offending the aging Chinese communist leaders, who were not brandishing guns but merely frowning at him thousands of miles away from the White House. U.S. NATO allies in Central Europe also learned from news reports that, citing scheduling conflicts, President Obama had canceled his plans to attend the 20th anniversary observances in Germany of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will represent the U.S. Hoping to score a public diplomacy coup, Russia’s President Dmitri Medvedev later announced that he would attend along with French President Nicolas Sarkozy, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and a score of other heads of state.

Mr. Obama is too busy to go to Berlin to honor those who fought against communism in Eastern and Central Europe. The White House did say that he would meet the Dalai Lama, but only after his official presidential visit to China. Reacting to this news, former Czech president and human rights activist Vaclav Havel sadly observed that “these minor compromises start the big and dangerous ones.”

Repeated diplomatic blunders of the Obama administration embolden dictators who now see the U.S. president as a weak and ineffective leader. They are likely to act upon this perception by further restricting human rights and press freedoms in their countries, while also threatening their smaller neighbors. This is bad news for America and the spirit of freedom that sustained the 1989 peaceful overthrow of communism in Eastern Europe.

The White House would like everyone to believe that bad translators and hostile media are misinterpreting President Obama’s foreign policy initiatives. The State Department recently blamed a Polish translator for undiplomatic remarks by President Obama’s new ambassador in Warsaw, Lee A. Feinstein, who hinted in a television interview that Poland plans to increase its engagement in Afghanistan.

While the hint was believed to be accurate, Polish government officials were furious that it was made public before foreign minister Sikorski’s scheduled visit to Washington. They did not want the Polish public to learn about it from the U.S. ambassador while sensitive negotiations were still being conducted. To make things worse, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton cancelled her meeting with Sikorski when she decided to extend her trip to the Middle East.

The latest diplomatic crises with Poland show a new level of incompetence as well as arrogance of the new Obama administration foreign policy team. The real problem with Obama diplomacy are not bad translators and journalists, but naive assumptions, surprising arrogance and dangerous incompetence. The world needs a U.S. president whose diplomacy is not lost in confusion.

Ted Lipien was in charge of Voice of America radio broadcasts to Poland during the Solidarity movement’s successful struggle for democracy. He now runs a media freedom nonprofit in San Francisco, CA.

 Sourced from: TedLipien.com

Subscribe to Opinia.US

Your email:

 Sourced from: Opinia.US

Ted Lipien was formerly acting VOA associate director and helped to place BBG-funded radio and TV programs on stations in Russia, Ukraine, Georgia, Bosnia, Afghanistan, Iraq and in other countries in the region. 

He is the author of a book about Pope John Paul II and new feminism, in which he discussed the attempts by the Polish communist secret police and the KGB to spy on the Polish pontiff and feed disinformation to Western journalists. He also described how communist agents tried to infiltrate U.S. radio stations broadcasting to audiences behind the Iron Curtain. He points out in his book that the main targets of the communist secret police blackmail and recruitment efforts were journalists, intellectuals, extremists of all types, and priests. 

He worked in Washington, D.C. and spent eight years as a regional  media marketing director for the BBG based at the RFE/RL headquarters in Prague.

Wojtyla’s Women: How Women, History and Polish Traditions Shaped the Life of Pope John Paul II and Changed the Catholic Church
Ted Lipien has written an incisive and penetrating book on the role remarkable women, played in shaping John Paul II’s outlook on important and controversial issues that defined his papacy. One of them was the Albanian-born nun and Nobel laureate Mother Teresa. Much of the ground that Lipien covers in his meticulously documented book is not familiar to students of John Paul II’s papacy. He presents new information on the Pope’s enduring relationships with women who had an enormous impact on his life, offers original interpretations, and makes a significant contribution in advancing the theoretical discussion on John Paul II’s papacy. The greatest strength of “Wojtyla’s Women” lies in the author’s impassioned analysis of astonishingly complex issues and events. Lipien’s landmark book opens new paths for other scholars and is essential reading for specialists as well as the wider public.
Dr. Elez Biberaj, author of Albania in Transition: The Rocky Road to Democracy

Extremely detailed research into a heretofore unexamined aspect of the beloved Pope John Paul II’s life. This book is worthwhile reading for anyone interested in the personal network of highly influential women who shaped John Paul II’s attitudes, particularly on the debate of women’s roles.
Dr. Nancy Snow, author of Information War

An important book. Few persons are as qualified as Ted Lipien to enlighten readers about Pope John Paul II’s Polish roots — and the impact that they had on his views on women. Lipien provides a stimulating analysis of the Pope’s ideas on gender roles and how John Paul believed the Church should deal with sexual issues. While he does not agree with many of the Pope’s stands on women, Lipien makes a laudatory effort to understand — and explain — them. This book is a must-read for anyone interested in the relationship between feminism and Catholicism, a key issue of our times.
Dr. John H. Brown, former U.S. diplomat in Poland, editor of Public Diplomacy Press Review