China’s Big Designs On Small And Strategic Laos

Hillary Clinton’s historic visit this week to Laos highlights the reality on the ground: China’s influence grows bigger with each passing day. There are decidedly mixed opinions about what Beijing will bring.

Click on the link to get more news and video from original source: 
http://www.worldcrunch.com/chinas-big-designs-small-and-strategic-laos/5865

Chinese stores line a village in Luang Namtha province (Prince Roy)

By Bruno Philip
LE MONDE/Worldcrunch

LUANG NAMTHA – Hillary Clinton’s visit to Laos this past week, as was well noted, marks the first appearance here by a U.S. Secretary of State since 1955. Clearly, it has also been noted –- particularly in Washington — that Laos is a country under the powerful influence of Beijing.

The Chinese government has already invested $4 billion in Laos, joining Vietnam and Thailand as the country’s main partners. In fact in 2011, China replaced Vietnam as the top foreign investor in the Lao People’s Democratic Republic, as Laos is officially known. The country’s single-party, Communist government has been in power since the victory of the “revolutionaries” in 1975.

The heightened Chinese presence brings with it a certain amount of mistrust not to say out-and-out hostility in Laos. This is typical of the ambiguity marking relations between China and southeast Asian countries, split as the latter are between the necessity of trading with the People’s Republic and a natural reflex of distrust at its cumbersome proximity.

China weighs especially heavily on the shoulders of ethnically-diverse Laos, which is landlocked and under-populated. In the capital, Vientiane, an intellectual who is no fan of China says: “When the Chinese piss in the Mekong, we’re the ones that drown…”

A major – and highly controversial – project involving the Chinese is the construction of a railroad line for a high-speed train that would link Kunming, the capital of the Chinese province of Yunnan, with Bangkok via Laos. The line would ensure rapid access to Malaysia and Singapore from southwestern China.

The Laotian part of the massive project is slated to be 70% financed by the Chinese, to the tune of $7 billion. The train tracks will cover a distance of 480 kilometers (298 miles), of which 200 km (124 miles) are tunnels and bridges.

In 2011, however, the project was postponed indefinitely by the Laotian government. Chinese demands may explain the postponement: they were asking for use of the land – several hundred meters worth, sometimes as much as 10 km (6 miles) — on either side of the tracks.

A changed landscape

By using the land for farming and real estate development, the Chinese would be reimbursing themselves, and would additionally be providing jobs for thousands of Chinese workers who would descend on the suburbs of Luang Namtha, the capital of one of the provinces along the Chinese border.

Area farmers already understand what would await them once construction starts. “The railway line will cross straight through my village, then that road over there before entering a tunnel built into the mountain,” says “Uncle” Kumpan, making a sweeping gesture with his arm that encompasses an asphalt road and surrounding hills and jungle-covered mountains. “And since it will run through our village, we will have to move out.”

A member of the minority Kmou tribe, Kumpan is a small, frail man of 66. He lives in Ban Guen, a village in a valley where the population earns a living from salt mining. “We were told that we would be relocated over there, behind the mountain. I’m fine with that, because it means I finally get to live in a proper house with my family,” says Kumpan optimistically.

In Luang Namtha, many Chinese merchants run businesses in a part of the market located near a large main street that looks like the Far Eastern version of an outpost in an American Western film. Shop-fronts with Chinese lettering are increasing all over the region. “A lot of merchants selling electrical home appliances, TVs, computers and mobile phones have come over,” says Thip, a Laotian woman who is watching television in the tiny shop where she sells T-shirts.

In the “Chinese” part of the market dozens of electronics shops are huddled together. A man who gives his name as Mr. Liu says he comes from Hunan province in western China. In a mixture of Chinese and the Hunan dialect – and a bit wary of a foreigner asking him questions – he says: “Business is okay, yes…”

“The Chinese come here and buy everything we have to sell, and we buy the low-priced Chinese things they sell. The Chinese are bringing us prosperity,” says Sen, a 31-year-old Hmong woman who owns 1,000 rubber trees in the neighboring hills.

In the capital, Vientiane, the increasing Chinese presence is also making waves. In 2007, the government signed an agreement with a consortium of three Chinese companies. They were to build a luxury residential complex that included a shopping mall and restaurants around a swampy area near the famous Pha That Luang Buddhist stupa, a symbol of the nation. Because some of the land belonged to party members, this caused an uproar – even in a country where the right to demonstrate doesn’t exist. The upshot was that the government canceled the project in 2009.

“Some people have started to say that certain party members are selling the country down the river to the Chinese,” says a Laotian businessman. “When people heard there was going to be a Chinatown in Vientiane, they didn’t like it. They didn’t like it at all!” laughs a high-level official. “But we’ll get the project up and running again. Only this time we won’t call it Chinatown!”

photo – Prince Roy

Read more from Le Monde in French

All rights reserved ©Worldcrunch – in partnership with Le Monde

July 14th, 2012 – 12:07

Hillary Clinton makes historic Laos visit

Click on the link to get more news and video from original source: 
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/laos/9394069/Hillary-Clinton-makes-historic-Laos-visit.html

Decades after the US gave Laos a horrific distinction as the world’s most heavily bombed nation, Hillary Clinton, the Secretary of State, has pledged to help get rid of millions of unexploded bombs that still pockmark the impoverished country.

US Secratry of State Hillary Cline greets Lao Foreign Minister Thongloun Sisoulit Photo: AFP/Getty Images

7:22AM BST 12 Jul 2012

The US dropped more than 2 million tons of bombs on the North Vietnamese ally during its “secret war” between 1964 and 1973 – about a ton of ordnance for each Laotian man, woman and child. That exceeded the amount dropped on Germany and Japan together in World War II.

Four decades later, American weapons are still claiming lives. When the war ended, about a third of some 270 million cluster bombs dropped on Laos had failed to detonate. More than 20,000 people have been killed in Laos since then by ordnance, according to Laos’ government, and agricultural development has been stymied.

Mrs Clinton, gauging whether the nation can evolve into a new foothold of American influence in Asia, met with the prime minister and foreign minister, part of a weeklong diplomatic tour of southeast Asia. The goal is to bolster America’s standing in some of the fastest growing markets of the world, and counter China’s expanding economic, diplomatic and military dominance of the region.

Mrs Clinton said she and Laotian leaders “traced the arc of our relationship from addressing the tragic legacies of the past to finding a way to being partners of the future.”

Laos is the latest test case of the Obama administration’s efforts to “pivot” US foreign policy away from the long wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The efforts follow a long period of estrangement between Washington and a former Cold War-era foe, and come as US relations also warm with countries such as Burma and Vietnam.

In her meetings, Mrs Clinton discussed environmental concerns over a proposed dam on the Mekong River as well as investment opportunities and the joint efforts to clean up the unexploded bombs dropped across Laos over what was once called the Ho Chi Minh trail. Greater American support for programs in these fields will be included in a multimillion-dollar initiative for Southeast Asia to be announced later this week.

Mrs Clinton visited a Buddhist temple and a US-funded prosthetic centre for victims of American munitions. There, she met a man named Phongsavath Souliyalat, who told her how he had lost both his hands and his eyesight from a cluster bomb on his 16th birthday, four years ago.

“We have to do more,” Mrs Clinton told him. “That’s one of the reasons I wanted to come here today, so that we can tell more people about the work that we should be doing together.” Although the US bombed Laos to loosen its alliance with the North Vietnamese, the current Vietnamese government focuses its efforts in Laos on recovering its own dead, more than cleaning up unexploded bombs.

Cleanup has been excruciatingly slow. The Washington-based Legacies of War says only 1 per cent of contaminated lands have been cleared and has called on Washington to provide far greater assistance. The State Department has provided $47 million since 1997, though a larger effort could make Laos “bomb-free in our lifetimes,” California Rep. Mike Honda argued Wednesday.

“Let us mend the wounds of the past together so that Laos can begin a new legacy of peace,” he said.

The US is spending $9 million this year on cleanup operations for unexploded ordnance in Laos and is likely to offer more in the coming days.

It is part of a larger Obama administration effort to reorient the direction of US diplomacy and commercial policy as the world’s most populous continent becomes the centre of the global economy over the next century. It is also a reaction to China’s expanding influence.

The last US secretary of state to visit Laos was John Foster Dulles in 1955. His plane landed after a water buffalo was cleared from the tarmac.

At that time, the mountainous, sparsely populated nation was near the centre of US foreign policy. On leaving office, President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned his successor, John F. Kennedy, that if Laos fell to the communists, all Southeast Asia could be lost as well.

While Vietnam ended up the focal point of America’s “domino theory” foreign policy, Laos was drawn deeply into the conflict as the U.S. helped support its anti-communist forces and bombed North Vietnamese supply lines and bases.

Landlocked and impoverished Laos offers fewer resources than its far larger neighbours and has lagged in Asia’s economic boom. It remains one of the poorest countries in Asia, even as it hopes to boost its development with accession soon to the World Trade Organisation.

In recent years, China has stepped up as Laos’ principal source of assistance, with loans and grants of up to $350 million over the past two decades. But like many others in its region, Laos’ government is wary of Beijing’s intentions. And it has kept an envious eye on neighbouring Vietnam’s 40 per cent surge in commercial trade with the United States over the past two years, as well as the sudden rapprochement between the U.S. and nearby Burma.

Persistent human rights issues stand in the way of closer relations with Washington. The US remains concerned about the plight of the ethnic Hmong minority, most of whom fled the country after fighting for a US-backed guerrilla army during the Vietnam War. Nearly 250,000 resettled in the United States. The US has pressed Laos to respect the rights of returnees from neighbouring countries.

Washington also has been seeking greater co-operation from Laos on the search for US soldiers missing in action since the Vietnam War. More than 300 Americans remain unaccounted for in Laos.

And the US is pressing the Laotian government to hold off on a proposed $3.5 billion dam project across the Mekong River. The dam would be the first across the river’s mainstream and has sparked a barrage of opposition from neighbouring countries and environmental groups, which warn that tens of millions of livelihoods could be at stake.

The project is currently on hold, and Washington hopes to stall it further with the promise of funds for new environmental studies.

Source: agencies

Related Articles

• Clinton Urges Further Studies on Laos‘ Divisive Xayaburi Dam …‎ OOSKA News
• Vietnam War’s Legacy Is Vivid as Clinton Visits Laos  New York Time
• Clinton visits Laos, country US pummeled with bombs during …‎ msnbc.com (blog)
• Clinton makes historic visit to Laos as US looks to expand its …‎ Washington Post
• Laos holds first gay pride event  27 Jun 2012
• UN food advisor says let them eat insects  01 May 2011
• Laos accused of starting work on controversial Mekong dam  20 Apr 2011

Clinton Presses Laos for More Studies on Mekong Dam in Visit

Click on the link to get more news and video from original source: 
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-07-11/clinton-lands-in-laos-to-discuss-mekong-dam-war-legacy.html

By Daniel Ten Kate and Nicole Gaouette – Jul 11, 2012 5:30 AM ET

Hillary Clinton pushed Laos for more studies on a $3.6 billion hydropower dam on the Mekong River opposed by neighboring countries in the first visit by a U.S. Secretary of State in 57 years.

The trip is part of a broader sweep Clinton is making through Asia as the U.S. increases its engagement with the world’s fastest growing economies, in part to counter China’s growing clout. Laos, a landlocked nation of 6 million people bordering China, plans to expand its generating capacity and sell electricity to its neighbors.

Laotian Prime Minister Thongsing Thammavong assured Clinton that the Xayaburi power project wouldn’t proceed without approval from neighboring countries, according to a State Department official who wasn’t authorized to speak on the record. Laos plans to hold an international conference about the project to ease concerns, the official said.

The dam remains an area of contention as the U.S. seeks to broaden its engagement with Laos, which is still struggling with unexploded ordnance left over from the Vietnam War. Clinton discussed cooperation on the deadly material as well as accounting for U.S. personnel who remain missing, according to a joint statement. Laos is the smallest economy among members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

Dam Studies

The Xayaburi dam’s approval may pave the way for seven others that Laos plans to build on the Mekong. The government has aimed to convince its neighbors by showing them studies it commissioned from Compagnie Nationale du Rhône and Switzerland- based Poyry Energy AG.

“Both the reports of Poyry and CNR indicated that the project has created a negligible impact in respect of environmental and social considerations,” Xaypaseuth Phomsoupha, director-general of Laos’s Ministry of Energy and Mines, told reporters in Bangkok on June 20.

While Laos is building access roads and other infrastructure around the dam site, construction on the river itself won’t start “in the absence of the sign-off from our neighbors,” he said.

Vietnam has recommended a 10-year delay for all hydropower projects over environmental concerns on the river, which winds through Myanmar, Thailand and Cambodia from its source in China’s Tibetan plateau. About 60 million people along the Mekong depend on the river and its tributaries for food, water and transportation.

Thai Financiers

In 2010, Thailand made an initial agreement to buy 95 percent of the electricity from the Xayaburi plant, which will have a capacity of 1,285 megawatts.

Ch. Karnchang Pcl (CK), Thailand’s third-biggest construction company by market value, owns a 57.5 percent stake in the Xayaburi project. PTT Pcl (PTT), Thailand’s biggest company, has a 25 percent stake and Electricity Generating Pcl (EGCO) owns 12.5 percent.

In her meetings with Thongsing and Deputy Prime Minister Thongloun Sisoulith, Clinton discussed environmental protection, Laos’s entry to the World Trade Organization and the reintegration of ethnic minority Hmong people who fled to Thailand in 2009, according to the statement. The U.S. resettled 130,000 Hmong who fled to Thailand from 1975 to 1996, according to the State Department.

Unauthorized by Congress, U.S. planes dropped the equivalent of one plane-load of bombs over Laos every eight minutes, 24 hours a day, between 1964 and 1973, according to the non-profit Virginia-based advocacy group, Legacies of War.

Unexploded Bombs

Intended to stop communist ground incursions and disrupt North Vietnamese traffic along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, the bombings left Laos the most heavily bombed country per capita in history. One ton of bombs was dropped for every man, woman, and child in Laos at the time.

Today, an estimated one third of land remains unusable because of unexploded ordnance, making it unavailable for food production or development, according to Legacies of War. In the 40 years since the war ended, 20,000 people have been killed or maimed by dormant explosives hidden in the soil.

Clinton’s visit demonstrates that she “recognizes that bringing along the less developed countries of the lower Mekong region is key for stability and development in the region,” Brett Dakin, head of Legacies of War’s board of directors, said in an e-mail. “However,” he said, “Laos will not reach its full potential as long as much of its land is still contaminated with unexploded bombs.”

To contact the reporters on this story: Nicole Gaouette in Washington at ngaouette@bloomberg.net; Daniel Ten Kate in Phnom Penh at dtenkate@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: John Brinsley at jbrinsley@bloomberg.net

Disarmament activists and former US ambassadors are urging Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to increase US aid to Laos

US urged to hike Laos bomb-clearing aid

Click on the link to get more news and video from original source: 
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/NG11Ae02.html

‎By Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON – Disarmament activists and former US ambassadors are urging Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to increase US aid to Laos to clear millions of tonnes of unexploded ordinance (UXO) left by US bombers on its territory during the Indochina War during her brief visit to the country Wednesday. The visit, scheduled to last only a few hours on a hectic eight-nation tour by Clinton designed in part to underline the Barack Obama administration’s “pivot” from the Middle East to Asia, will nonetheless be historic. No sitting US secretary of state has visited Laos since 1955.

Sources here said Clinton is considering a US$100 million aid commitment to support bomb-clearing efforts over a 10-year period. Such a commitment would more than double the nearly $47 million Washington has provided in UXO assistance since 1997 when it first began funding UXO programs in Laos.

“While Secretary Clinton’s visit celebrates a promising future for US-Lao relations,” said Ambassador Douglas Hartwick, who served as Washington’s envoy in Vientiane from 2001 to 2004, “I hope she also affirms to the Lao people America’s steadfast commitment to help Laos and the international community to resolve this legacy once and for all by clearing Lao land of deadly bombs.”

Hartwick was one of six former ambassadors to Laos who last year publicly urged Clinton to travel to Laos and adopt the 10-year, $100 million UXO proposal – originally put forward by a Washington-based organization, Legacies of War – on her way from last year’s Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit in Bali, Indonesia.

Administration policymakers, however, evidently decided to put off the trip until this year’s regional summit in Cambodia, Laos’s next-door neighbor.

Over the past year, Washington has intensified its courtship of China’s southern neighbors, notably Myanmar, with which relations have improved dramatically since Clinton’s visit there – also the first by a secretary of state since 1955 – last December. Before arriving in Phnom Penh late Wednesday, she spent Tuesday in Hanoi before traveling on to Vientiane.

Between 1964 and 1973, more than 2.5 million tonnes of US munitions were dropped on Laos – more than was dropped on Germany and Japan combined during World War II – making what was then the poorest country in Southeast Asia the most heavily bombed nation per capita in history.

With some 2.5 million inhabitants at the time, an average of one tonne of bombs was dropped for every man, woman and child in Laos.

Up to 30% of the bombs failed to detonate. Their remnants not only cause several hundred casualties a year, but also effectively prevent Laotian farmers from cultivating hundreds of thousands of hectares of fertile land.

Some 20,000 people have been killed or maimed by UXO over the past 40 years, according to Legacies of War. An estimated one-third of Lao land is still littered with the deadly ordinance.

Unlike with Vietnam and Cambodia, Washington never severed diplomatic relations with the communist government that eventually took power in 1975. It nonetheless took 17 years – until 1992 – for the US, whose top priority initially was to account for the nearly 600 US servicemen killed or missing in action in Laos, to fully normalize ties. Normal trade relations were formalized only seven years ago.

Washington first provided funding for UXO clearance in 1997 under president Bill Clinton and maintained aid at an average annual rate of about $2.6 million. In 2009, it rose to $3.5 million and then to $5 million in 2010. Led by Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy and Republican Senator Richard Lugar, Congress approved $9 million for this year.

The Senate Appropriations Committee has recommended that $10 million be approved for 2013, but that amount could be a harder sell in the Republican-led House of Representatives.

Proponents of the aid are hoping that a public commitment by Clinton will enhance the chances for Congressional approval for the $10 million and a longer-term commitment which they believe will be necessary to leverage additional resources from other donor countries and agencies.

“The people who continue to suffer from the bombings are ordinary Lao villagers,” said Channapha Khamvongsa, Legacies’ executive director. “We are hopeful that after witnessing the human impact of UXO in Laos first-hand, the secretary will re-affirm the US commitment to helping Laos solve this problem once and for all.”

The challenge remains formidable. While more than 1 million UXO are estimated to have been destroyed or cleared to date, it is believed that nearly 80 million are still scattered across the country.

“UXO/mine action is the absolute pre-condition for the socio-economic development of [Laos],” according to a two-year-old study by the UN Development Programme, which has worked with the government of Prime Minister Thongsing Thammavong to develop a plan to focus clearance efforts on high-priority areas.

“[E]conomic opportunities in tourism, hydroelectric power, mining, forestry and many other areas of activity considered main engines of growth for the Lao [Peoples Democratic Republic] are restricted, complicated and made more expensive,” according to the UNDP, which has estimated the funding needs to significantly reduce the UXO problem in Laos at $30 million a year sustained over a 10-year period.

While the US is the single largest donor to the UXO program, others, notably Japan, the European Commission, Ireland, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Germany, and Australia, as well as UN agencies, have also contributed to the program.

Led chiefly by the UXO funding, Washington’s total bilateral aid program to Laos has grown from to $12 million for the current year from about $5 million in 2007. In addition to the $9 million for the UXO program, Washington has focused aid on the health sector and counter-narcotics.

In a related development on Monday, Human Rights Watch (HRW) urged Clinton to halt all aid to the Somsanga drug detention center until the Lao government conducts a full and independent investigation into human-rights abuses allegedly committed against detainees there, including children.

In March, 12 UN agencies also called for Somsanga and other drug detention centers in Laos to be closed.

“The Lao government and the US State Department claim that Somsanga is a modern healthcare center,” said Joe Amon, HRW’s health and human-rights director. “But a decade of US funding hasn’t changed the fact that it’s a brutal and inhumane detention center where the Lao government puts undesirable’ people.”

Jim Lobe‘s blog on US foreign policy can be read at http://www.lobelog.com.

Obama’s Risky Path in Egypt

Cached: 
http://www.newsweek.com/2011/01/30/obama-s-risky-path-in-egypt.html

EGYPT

by Leslie H. Gelb, January 30, 2011

Obama administration officials say they are not taking sides between President Hosni Mubarak, America’s key ally in the Arab world, and the street protesters who purportedly represent a path to democracy in authoritarian Egypt. These officials might even believe what they’re saying. But the very assertion of “not taking sides” is itself a tilt away from the all-out support traditionally given by Washington to this Egyptian strongman in recent decades.

The administration’s move is a slide toward the unknown. Senior officials have no idea of exactly who these street protesters are, whether the protesters are simply a mob force incapable of organized political action and rule, or if more sinister groups hover in the shadows, waiting to grab power and turn Egypt into an anti-Western, anti-Israeli bastion. The White House has called upon its intelligence agents and diplomats to provide answers, but only best guesses are forthcoming. No one, no matter how well informed about Egypt, can divine what will happen to power within Egypt if the protesters compel concessions from the Mubarak regime or, on the other hand, if Mubarak hangs onto power by using brutal force.

So, some administration officials are thinking that for all the risks of losing a good ally in Mubarak, it might well be better to get “on the right side of history.” Some U.S. diplomats and intelligence officers have long harbored the view that corrupt, inept, and inefficient Arab friends simply cannot retain power forever. They believe President Carter should have trusted his initial instincts and pushed the Shah of Iran toward reforms. In this way, the shah might have become viable, or failing that, Washington could have allied with moderates who might have succeeded him.

But those officials who think this way forget their history. When President George W. Bush made his push for democracy in Arab lands, he ended up with Hamas terrorists winning a democratic election and ruling the Gaza Strip. And this “democratic” thinking also overlooks that Bush’s pressing for democracy in Lebanon helped open the doors to power for the radical Hezbollah group. And yes, the anti-shah revolution in 1979 started out with moderates in power, only to be pushed aside by the clerical radicals who still rule today. In rotten regimes that fall to street mobs, the historical pattern has been moderates followed by new dictators. Just remember the model of the Bolsheviks, a tiny group of extremely well-organized communists, wresting control away from the great majority of discontented and disorganized Russians in 1917.

Judge for yourself whether the Obama team is leaning toward the protesters. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs reiterated that Egypt remains “a strong ally,” but then stressed support for the “universal rights” of the Egyptian people. “This isn’t about support or opposition to leaders,” he said, “it’s about support for universal rights of assembly and expression. We criticize actions that restrict those values,” Gibbs told ABC News.

Also on Wednesday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told reporters: “We support the universal rights of the Egyptian people including the rights to freedom of expression, association, and assembly. And we urge the Egyptian authorities not to prevent peaceful protests or block communications, including on social media sites.” She continued: “We believe strongly that the Egyptian government has an important opportunity at this moment in time, to implement political, economic, and social reforms to respond to the legitimate needs and interests of the Egyptian people.”

In sum, she and the administration are saying to Mubarak: Don’t use brute power and force to stop the protesters, and don’t interfere with the protesters doing their protesting. This message is flat contrary to the position of the Mubarak government, which has outlawed such protests and appears to be blocking Twitter, Facebook, and other social media tools. In other words, the Obama team is urging conciliation and, de facto, concessions to those who may well end up advocating far more than simple political and economic reforms.

The stakes are sky high. Egypt is the linchpin to peace in the Middle East. So long as Egypt refrains from warring against Israel, other Arab states cannot take military action by themselves. So long as Cairo remains pro-Western, it serves as an anchor for other such friendly governments. It occupies a central economic position in the region and a vital transportation hub through the Suez Canal. Most certainly, most Arab governments friendly to Washington need to make reforms. But to do so at a moment of weakness, to be seen as bending to mobs, however peaceful and moderate they look now, could open up the floodgates—in Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and elsewhere.

The overriding point is that no knowledgeable diplomat, no secret agent or Harvard professor can speak with confidence about where turmoil will lead in poor and repressed countries like Egypt. This White House will have to be forgiven for not knowing whether to ride the tiger or help put him back in a cage—for a brief time at least.

Leslie H. Gelb, a former New York Times columnist and senior government official, is author of Power Rules: How Common Sense Can Rescue American Foreign Policy (HarperCollins 2009), a book that shows how to think about and use power in the 21st century. He is president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations.

This originally appeared on the DailyBeast

–

–

Inside the White House’s Egypt Scramble

As protests erupted in Egypt, Washington struggled desperately to find the right response to the crisis.

Pete Souza / The White House. President Obama being briefed on the events in Egypt by his national security team in a meeting in the Situation Room of the White House.

EGYPT

by John BarryJanuary 30, 2011

For three days straight, as the Cairo crisis gathered momentum, they had hardly left their desks. Now, huddled in the big office of their boss—one of the administration policy-makers trying to calibrate the U.S. response to the unfolding drama—the advisers watched Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s first statement. Two television sets were running, one showing CNN and the other a satellite feed from Al Jazeera. Someone had popped popcorn in a microwave. In the old days, their boss reflected, he would have ordered in pizza, but since 9/11 the ever-expanding security precautions had shut down deliveries of take-out.

The mood was buoyant, as revealed by interviews with several officials involved in the ongoing administration debate that provide at least a preliminary glimpse of their concerns as Egypt spiraled toward chaos.

Had there been an office pool, the boss thought, the favored bet would have been that Mubarak was about to “do an LBJ” and repeat what President Lyndon Johnson did in 1968 in the face of a wave of protests: announce he would not stand in the upcoming presidential election. Certainly, Mubarak’s departure would present the U.S. with a new set of daunting challenges, but at least it would quiet the Egyptian streets and buy some time for mediation.

But as the Egyptian president spoke—a couple of the Arabic speakers in the room providing translation—the optimism died. Mubarak announced he was dismissing his government; he talked of reforms. But he also made clear his determination to stay on. There were groans, shaking of heads. This wasn’t going to be enough to halt the tumult in half of Egypt’s cities, and, more disconcertingly, Mubarak’s assertion that the demonstrations were “part of a bigger plot to shake the stability” of Egypt sounded ominous. The Egyptian president had called out the Army on Friday; now his speech sounded as if he was preparing to use it. President Obama’s Middle East advisers believed that if Egyptian security forces opened fire on demonstrators, the country would likely explode. As Mubarak ended his address, someone in the room voiced the thought on everyone’s mind: “Well, what do we do now?”

In the White House, that judgment was swiftly made. Mubarak’s speech was a climactic moment: It was time for President Obama to act.

Throughout the week, as the crisis gathered storm in Egypt, the administration had otherwise been slow to react, seemingly always one step behind events. This was partly because neither the U.S. intelligence community nor diplomats on the ground foresaw how swiftly the protests in Egypt would gather momentum—even if everyone realized that virtually the entire Arab world is a tinder box of pent-up frustration, with despotic regimes unable to meet the needs of, especially, their youth. As Secretary of State Hillary Clinton herself put it last month, in a speech in Doha that now seems uncannily prescient, Arab leaders would face growing unrest, extremism, and even rebellion unless they reformed “corrupt institutions and a stagnant political order.” It was the starkest warning ever delivered by a senior American official, and a message brought home a few days later when Tunisia erupted in revolt.

Yet, when it came to Egypt, the tone was different, and as the protests in Cairo gathered momentum, Clinton’s initial public comments were a mixture of fact and hopeful fiction. “Our assessment is that the Egyptian government is stable and is looking for ways to respond to the legitimate needs and interests of the Egyptian people,” she said, an assessment that didn’t take long to be overtaken by events.

Whether Mubarak indeed was committed to responding to “the legitimate needs and interests of the Egyptian people” remained an open question. Clinton’s statement, however, had been carefully calibrated, coming after the first round of what proved to be an exhausting week of discussions by President Obama and his top officials.

From the start, according to sources privy to the discussions, talks revolved around two objectives: how to cajole Mubarak to respond to the demonstrations, while, at the same time, not saying anything publicly that could be taken as American approval of the forcible overthrow of Arab regimes. But as the demonstrations grew in intensity, that balance became increasingly fraught. The demonstrators were, after all, demanding human and political rights to which the United States is committed, but which Mubarak showed no sign of granting.

After much discussion, it was decided that President Obama would not try to speak directly to Mubarak. According to an informed source, the assessment was that president-to-president intervention should be held in reserve as a last recourse. Besides, any exchange with Mubarak would require Obama to say whether he supported Mubarak’s continued rule. And the president was in a bind: He couldn’t bluntly say no. On the other hand, Egyptian authorities would instantly broadcast any expression of support as proof that Washington was backing Mubarak’s hold on power. (Shown this article for review, the White House said: “There’s nothing we’d comment on here at the moment.”)

So the administration tried to reach Mubarak by other means. The Cairo embassy reached out to his advisers. Other Arab leaders were enlisted. Across the region, the events in Cairo were viewed with mounting concern by other governments. The longer their television screens were filled with those scenes of protest, the likelier they were to trigger comparable uprisings in other capitals. The administration’s message was clear: for your own sake, persuade Mubarak he has to quell the revolt by offering concessions.

By Thursday, though, the Cairo embassy was reporting that Mubarak was mobilizing the Army. Everyone knew that Friday, the Muslim day of prayer, would see the biggest demonstrations yet. Mubarak’s mobilization of the military could only mean that he was set on suppression. There was a real risk of bloodshed—and the judgment both of analysts in Washington and of Arab leaders in other capitals was that killings on any scale could ignite a firestorm—not only in Egypt but across the region.

Taking advantage of a pre-arranged Q&A session on YouTube, Obama warned: “The government has to be careful about not resorting to violence.” Mubarak, he said, needed to be “moving ahead on reform—political reform, economic reform”.

Whether Obama’s warning influenced Mubarak’s actions is unclear. The Army did roll into the streets of Cairo and other cities on Friday. But it did not shoot; and, on Friday evening, Mubarak appeared on television for the first time in the crisis.

Meanwhile at the Pentagon, a high-powered delegation of Egyptian military leaders, including the armed forces Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Sami Hafez Enan, cut short a scheduled week-long visit after only a few hours, departing instead for the airport. Their Pentagon hosts wished them well, with careful expressions of hope that a peaceful resolution of the crisis in Egypt would permit the continuation of the U.S. military’s long-standing relationship with Egypt’s armed forces. (Since the U.S. funds the Egyptian military to the tune of $1.3 billion a year, the message was clear.)

Administration officials suspect—or, at any rate, hope—that Obama’s blunt declaration forced Mubarak’s hand, prompting the Egyptian president to address his nation. What Mubarak offered in his televised speech, however, was “too little, too late,” as someone at that popcorn-eating gathering said. There was no prospect, Obama’s advisers believed, that Mubarak’s vague promises of reform would pacify the streets.

At a meeting on Friday afternoon, Obama and his top officials, including Clinton, Vice President Joe Biden, and National Security Adviser Tom Donilon among them, concluded that the time had come for Obama to talk directly to Mubarak. And Mubarak’s address to the Egyptian people had given Obama the opening he wanted. The White House organized the call.

It was an intervention that dramatically—and publicly—escalated the American involvement in the Egyptian crisis. In an address from the White House, Obama outlined what he had told Mubarak, putting the administration unequivocally behind the demonstrators’ demands. “The people of Egypt have rights that are universal,” Obama said in his speech. “And the United States will stand up for them everywhere.” The president also warned both sides against violence but his message was clear: “When President Mubarak addressed the Egyptian people tonight, he pledged a better democracy and greater economic opportunity. I just spoke to him after his speech, and I told him he has a responsibility to give meaning to those words, to take concrete steps and actions that deliver on that promise.” And, said Obama, “we are committed to working with the Egyptian government and the Egyptian people—all quarters—to achieve” those goals.

It was a breath-taking pledge, with Obama coming close to making the U.S. the guarantor that Mubarak will act. In Egypt, his reference to “all quarters” will be taken to suggest that the U.S. will even reach out to the Muslim Brotherhood, an unprecedented step.

In the last week, the administration has come a long way.

This originally appeared on the Daily Beast.