Must Reads
In Republican 2012 presidential race, Rick Santorum roars back (Alexander Burns, Politico)
Just in case the 2012 Republican primary race hasn’t already had enough twists and turns — welcome back, Rick Santorum. After winning Tuesday’s nonbinding contests in Missouri and Minnesota by thumping margins, upending Mitt Romney in the Colorado caucuses and proving again that the GOP base isn’t ready to embrace their national front-runner, the former Pennsylvania senator has dramatically resuscitated a campaign that was bordering on irrelevant. Santorum, who faded quickly after his narrow win in Iowa last month, now has his best and almost certainly last chance to show that he can compete at the same level as Romney and Newt Gingrich.
Empowering Burma’s voices of change (Sen. John F. Kerry, Politico)
Congress historically has set the terms of our Burma policy. Strong oversight, control over spending and comprehensive sanctions give us significant influence. Changing Congress’s long-held views on Burma, or Myanmar, as its leaders call the country, can’t happen overnight. But if the government continues to make progress, we are prepared, as we’ve done with past governments in transition — including Vietnam — to work to improve our relationship. For that to happen, we will need to see free elections, with impartial international observers. If these elections go well, after consulting closely with Aung San Suu Kyi, other Burmese democrats, and our friends overseas, we are willing to consider easing some sanctions as part of a gradual process that encourages reform and improves the lives of the Burmese people. Upgrading our diplomatic presence could allow us to more effectively monitor events, advocate for human rights and advance U.S. interests and values. It could strengthen the hand of civil society reformers and shed light on the exertions of Democrats of various stripes and ethnicities.
A U.N. — but for good guys (Jonah Goldberg, Los Angeles Times)
The Security Council isn’t a democratic entity; it’s based on brute force. Russia and China were made part of the permanent five members when they were totalitarian dictatorships. They have seats because they are powerful, not because they are decent or wise or democratic. And the same is true for us. Our seat was bought with might, not right. There’s nothing in the U.N. Charter — at least nothing that has any binding power — that says a government has to be democratic or even care for the welfare of its people. A permanent global clubhouse for democracies based on shared principles would make aiding growing movements easier and offer a nice incentive for nations to earn membership in a club with loftier standards than mere existence.
Architect of Egypt’s NGO crackdown is Mubarak holdover(Ernesto Londoño, Washington Post)
The architect of Egypt’s crackdown on U.S.-funded pro-democracy organizations is a holdover from the cabinet of former president Hosni Mubarak who has tried for years to stymie the groups’ activities. Faiza Abou el-Naga, the minister who coordinates international aid and long the most powerful woman in the Egyptian government, has survived a series of cabinet purges and weathered the groundswell of anger toward remnants of Mubarak’s regime. But her intensifying campaign against the civil society groups offers clear proof, her critics say, that some elements of the old guard remain entrenched and are trying to block the rise of new political leadership in the country. “Mubarak is still ruling in some ways and is still blocking the emergence of a new regime in Egypt,” said Abdullah al-Ashaal, a former deputy foreign minister. “Faiza Abou el-Naga is one of the tools in that.”
U.S. Planning to Slash Iraq Embassy Staff by Half (Tim Arango, New York Times)
Less than two months after American troops left, the State Department is preparing to slash by as much as half the enormous diplomatic presence it had planned for Iraq, a sharp sign of declining American influence in the country. Officials in Baghdad and Washington said that Ambassador James F. Jeffrey and other senior State Department officials were reconsidering the size and scope of the embassy, where the staff has swelled to nearly 16,000 people, mostly contractors. The expansive diplomatic operation and the $750 million embassy building, the largest of its kind in the world, were billed as necessary to nurture a postwar Iraq on its shaky path to democracy and establish normal relations between two countries linked by blood and mutual suspicion. But the Americans have been frustrated by what they see as Iraqi obstructionism and are now largely confined to the embassy because of security concerns, unable to interact enough with ordinary Iraqis to justify the $6 billion annual price tag.
Freedom at 4 Below (Thomas Freidman, New York Times)
You can’t have a democracy without citizens, and you can’t have citizens without trust — without trust that everyone will be treated with equality under the law, no matter who is in power, and without trust in a shared vision of what kind of society people are trying to build. America has that kind of trust because our country started with a shared idea that attracted the people. The borders came later. In most of the Arab states awakening today, the borders came first, drawn by foreign powers, and now the people trapped within them are trying to find a shared set of ideas to live by and trust each other with as equal citizens. We often forget how unusual America is as a self-governing, pluralistic society. We elected a black man whose grandfather was a Muslim as president at a time of deep economic crisis, and now we’re considering replacing him with a Mormon. Who in the world does that? Not many, especially in the Middle East. Yet, clearly, many people there now deeply long to be citizens — not all, but many. If that region has any hope of a stable future, we need to bet on them.
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