The United Nations says there was a dramatic worsening of the situation in Afghanistan in 2007. Some 8000 people were killed in the continuing conflict with the Taliban, 1500 of them civilians. That is the highest death toll recorded in the six years the United Nations has kept tabs on the international effort to reclaim the country from the harsh rule of the Taliban.
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has reported to the UN Security Council that there were, on average, 566 incidents per month. There were 160 suicide attacks; the deadliest of them was on 17 February 2008 in Kandahar Province when more than 67 people were killed in a single blast. Taliban insurgents killed the most civilians, but US and NATO forces also took many innocent lives in indiscriminate bombing and artillery attacks.
There have been increasing attacks on aid workers: over 130 incidents in 2007, involving the murder of 40 and the abduction of 89, of whom seven were later killed.
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Rocky Road for UN Peacekeeping
It's the best of times and the worst of times for United Nations peacekeeping. With 20 missions and nearly 130,000 authorized military, police and civilian personnel, it is obvious that the UN's "blue helmets" are much in demand; but strangely, there seems to be waning support for peacekeeping in important ways. There seems to be growing reluctance among key States to support operations seen as too politically unsavory or dangerous; and some of the supposed beneficiaries of peacekeeping seem to be not grateful at all.
Jean-Marie Guéhenno, Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations, warned the General Assembly's Special Committee on Peacekeeping Operations yesterday that the faltering support could mean big trouble for UN authorized operations in the Sudan, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Afghanistan and Eritrea.
Even as he spoke, some 700 UN troops from Eritrea were headed home to Jordan and India. Frustrated by the Eritrean government's blockage of fuel and food supplies to UN peacekeepers, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon had tried to temporarily relocate them to the Ethiopian side of the disputed border, but finding that effort blocked too, resorted to a complete pull-out. He said in a report to the toothless Security Council that the Eritrean government's obstructions had put peacekeepers in an "untenable position."
Jean-Marie Guéhenno, Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations, warned the General Assembly's Special Committee on Peacekeeping Operations yesterday that the faltering support could mean big trouble for UN authorized operations in the Sudan, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Afghanistan and Eritrea.
Even as he spoke, some 700 UN troops from Eritrea were headed home to Jordan and India. Frustrated by the Eritrean government's blockage of fuel and food supplies to UN peacekeepers, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon had tried to temporarily relocate them to the Ethiopian side of the disputed border, but finding that effort blocked too, resorted to a complete pull-out. He said in a report to the toothless Security Council that the Eritrean government's obstructions had put peacekeepers in an "untenable position."
Guéhenno, who is reported to be leaving his post because Ban, under pressure from Washington, "reformed" his department by taking away its logistics capabilities and putting it under a new Under-Secretary, warned that a "serious failure in one of our missions would be enough to put at risk the credibility of the whole of peacekeeping, which we have worked so hard to restore over the past few years."
What he meant by "credibility" is a mystery, for UN peacekeeping has a record of grand failures that includes Palestine (where the first UN mission was mandated in 1948), Rwanda (where a force was pulled out even as the 1994 genocide was in progress), and Bosnia (where peacekeepers stood by as the "safe area" the Security Council had declared in Srebrenica was overrun and subjected to mass murder and rape).
In the Sudan, where the savageries of Darfur were not even acknowledged by the Security Council till a solitary UN official quit his job to publicize the Organization's embarrassing inaction, the Kharatoum regime has stalled deployment of a 26,000 UN-African Union force. At present, the Darfur force consists of little more than the 9,000 or so African Union troops who have been there ineffectually for over a year.
In other crisis spots UN peacekeepers have gone into the field never to return: they have been stuck in Cyprus and the India-Pakistan border for decades. Where they have succeeded -- including Liberia. Sierra Leone, Côte d’Ivoire and Timor-Leste, all in the last decade -- it is because the outside Powers which sustained conflict (and that includes not just States but mining companies), achieved their ends or decided to call it quits.
In Afghanistan, where the murky geopolitics of resource-rich Central Asia collide with the trade in heroin and "extremist Islam" (represented by the Taliban and rogue elements of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence), "peacekeeping" is hardly the word for what is going on. The UN has subcontracted its pacific role to NATO, which has tried in recent months to overshadow the Karzai government on the grounds that it is politically incompetent and logistically inefficient. The high point of that effort was the unsuccessful effort to place a British spy turned politician in combined charge of the UN, NATO and EU operations in Afghanistan (see February 10 post "Why Karzai Nixed Paddy Ashdown").
The net result of all this is that the moral authority of the United Nations (which it retains mainly by default, there being no other institution to represent the universal hope for peace), is being undermined. That would be undesirable at the best of times; when the world is entering a period of major instability caused by a tectonic shift of economic and political power to asia, it could be disastrous.
What he meant by "credibility" is a mystery, for UN peacekeeping has a record of grand failures that includes Palestine (where the first UN mission was mandated in 1948), Rwanda (where a force was pulled out even as the 1994 genocide was in progress), and Bosnia (where peacekeepers stood by as the "safe area" the Security Council had declared in Srebrenica was overrun and subjected to mass murder and rape).
In the Sudan, where the savageries of Darfur were not even acknowledged by the Security Council till a solitary UN official quit his job to publicize the Organization's embarrassing inaction, the Kharatoum regime has stalled deployment of a 26,000 UN-African Union force. At present, the Darfur force consists of little more than the 9,000 or so African Union troops who have been there ineffectually for over a year.
In other crisis spots UN peacekeepers have gone into the field never to return: they have been stuck in Cyprus and the India-Pakistan border for decades. Where they have succeeded -- including Liberia. Sierra Leone, Côte d’Ivoire and Timor-Leste, all in the last decade -- it is because the outside Powers which sustained conflict (and that includes not just States but mining companies), achieved their ends or decided to call it quits.
In Afghanistan, where the murky geopolitics of resource-rich Central Asia collide with the trade in heroin and "extremist Islam" (represented by the Taliban and rogue elements of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence), "peacekeeping" is hardly the word for what is going on. The UN has subcontracted its pacific role to NATO, which has tried in recent months to overshadow the Karzai government on the grounds that it is politically incompetent and logistically inefficient. The high point of that effort was the unsuccessful effort to place a British spy turned politician in combined charge of the UN, NATO and EU operations in Afghanistan (see February 10 post "Why Karzai Nixed Paddy Ashdown").
The net result of all this is that the moral authority of the United Nations (which it retains mainly by default, there being no other institution to represent the universal hope for peace), is being undermined. That would be undesirable at the best of times; when the world is entering a period of major instability caused by a tectonic shift of economic and political power to asia, it could be disastrous.
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Monday, March 10, 2008
International Women's Day
Saturday, 8 March, was International Women's Day. It was observed on Friday in many places because not many working people today are willing to give up part of their weekend for an official observance, no matter how worthy. But that itself is cause for celebration, for it was not that long ago that Saturdays were working days for women -- and children and men. -- even in affluent countries.
There are various explanations of how IWD came to be on 8 March. The most popular is that it is tied to an 1857 demonstration by women garment workers in New York city to press for better working conditions. Their peaceful march was broken up by club-wielding police. A half century later (51 years, to be exact), another demonstration was held on 8 March to commemorate the 1857 event; in addition to demanding improved working conditions, it pressed also for universal suffrage and an end to child labor. As at the earlier event, the New York city police made their presence felt.
In 1910, at the Second International Conference of Socialist Women in Copenhagen, Clara Zetkin of Germany -- “the most dangerous sorceress in the empire," the Kaiser called her -- proposed the date for an annual observance to honor working women. It remained a socialist observance till the United Nations, in organizing International Women's Year and the first World Conference on Women (Mexico City, 1975), decided to make the Day a universal observance. (By the way, the official UN book on the conference, Meeting in Mexico, has an interesting back story. The head of the UN Center for Economic and Social Information, a man who regularly got too happy at lunch, got into conversation with the woman driving his post-prandial taxi to the UN, and on the strength of her claim to be "a writer," gave her a consultancy to produce the book. I had to completely rewrite the ragtag manuscript that emerged some $15,000 later.)
- The International Labour Organization said in a new report that more women are working than ever before – 1.2 billion in 2007 -- but they continue to do low-paid jobs.
- Unicef reported that "one in four pregnant women currently receives no antenatal care, and that more than 40 per cent give birth without the assistance of a skilled attendant
- Louise Arbour, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, noted that while rape was almost universally recognized as a crime, it was often not punished because legislation was lacking or local customs prevented laws from being enforced. “In addition, at least 53 States still do not outlaw rape within marriage, and men frequently enjoy total impunity for physical as well as sexual violence against their wives.”
- Joanne Sandler, Executive Director of the UN Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), announced a fund-raising partnership with the Avon Foundation that will involve its "global ambassador," the actress Reese Witherspoon, publicizing the "hidden pandemic" of violence against women. Avon will sell a "new fund-raising product" -- the Women’s Empowerment Bracelet –- the profits from which will go to an "Empowerment Fund" managed by Unifem, to "support initiatives to improve implementation of laws and policies focused on violence against women." Witherspoon, whose stardom in Legally Blonde makes her a natural to straddle the worlds of cosmetics and law, modeled the bracelet at a UN Press conference.
- Inez Murray, Vice-President of Women’s World Banking, said at a UN Press briefing that her network of microfinance providers had given loans averaging $491 to 11 million people, 73 per cent of them women.
- Thoraya Ahmed Obaid, Executive Director of the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), noted that without a greater investment in women, the UN's Millennium Development Goals could not be met. Investment was particularly important, she said, in improving "reproductive health;” that would help reduce poverty, slow the spread of HIV/AIDS, and "meet the need for family planning."
- Over one hundred representatives of non-governmental organizations from forty countries met at a seminar in Geneva organized by the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF). In a joint statement they noted that the combined budgets of UN bodies working on women's issues is $65 million, 0.005% of world military expenditures. Of $20 billion in bilateral aid in 2001-2005, only $5 billion was allocated to projects promoting gender empowerment,"the cost of approximately 2 weeks of the occupation of Iraq." The statement said: "We need to examine the relationship between masculinity and war as much as the relationship between women and peace. Men and women experience war very differently, from war-making to peace-building and everything in between. In any given army, 90 percent of the soldiers are men while in any given refugee camp, 80 percent of the adults are women."
Saturday, March 8, 2008
Top Human Rights Official Calls it Quits
Under strong pressure from Washington, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Louise Arbour of Canada, has decided to step down in June, at the end of her first four-year term. That makes it an unbroken record for those who have held the office: none has lasted more than a single term. Sergio Vieira de Mello of Brazil, Arbour's predecessor, lasted less than a year: he was appointed on 12 September 2002 and killed in Baghdad on 19 August 2003.
De Mello was in Baghdad at the request of his long-time friend, Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who had asked him to put aside the Human Rights job temporarily and go as his Special Representative to post-invasion Iraq. In Baghdad, de Mello ran afoul of J. Paul Bremer III, the retired diplomat (and ex-Kissinger Associates executive), who had also been hastily sent to Iraq to take charge of the occupation. De Mello refused an office in the hermetically secure "Green Zone" where the American top brass held court, ignored advice not to have his office fronting a busy street, and spent his time establishing contacts with a wide range of Iraqis. On 19 August, as he was nearing the end of his short-term assignment, a truck bomb destroyed the office and killed him, along with 22 others.
De Mello's predecessor, Mary Robinson of Ireland, lived out her term (1997--2002), but also left under American pressure. Her office had helped organize the 2001 World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa, from which the United States and Israel walked out, complaining that it had been hijacked by the Arab-Islamic States.
The first High Commissioner for Human rights, Jose Ayala-Lasso of Ecuador, who spent his time establishing the office and making a series of low key visits to world capitals, left after one term because he was judged a disappointment; Western countries wanted someone in the post who would rock boats and confront bad guys. It did him no good to point out that when the June 1993 World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna agreed on the post, it was on the explicit understanding that human rights would no longer be the political football it was during the "Cold War." The conference had acted on the assumption that the whole UN approach to promoting human rights would change; there would be no more finger-pointing at offending countries; the High Commissioner would lead the effort to deal quietly and concretely with problems.
It should probably be clear by now that there is no hope of realizing that aim. For the foreseeable future, we should expect -- indeed we should hope -- that those appointed to the job will displease everyone. Not to do so would imply a lack of integrity.
De Mello was in Baghdad at the request of his long-time friend, Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who had asked him to put aside the Human Rights job temporarily and go as his Special Representative to post-invasion Iraq. In Baghdad, de Mello ran afoul of J. Paul Bremer III, the retired diplomat (and ex-Kissinger Associates executive), who had also been hastily sent to Iraq to take charge of the occupation. De Mello refused an office in the hermetically secure "Green Zone" where the American top brass held court, ignored advice not to have his office fronting a busy street, and spent his time establishing contacts with a wide range of Iraqis. On 19 August, as he was nearing the end of his short-term assignment, a truck bomb destroyed the office and killed him, along with 22 others.
De Mello's predecessor, Mary Robinson of Ireland, lived out her term (1997--2002), but also left under American pressure. Her office had helped organize the 2001 World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa, from which the United States and Israel walked out, complaining that it had been hijacked by the Arab-Islamic States.
The first High Commissioner for Human rights, Jose Ayala-Lasso of Ecuador, who spent his time establishing the office and making a series of low key visits to world capitals, left after one term because he was judged a disappointment; Western countries wanted someone in the post who would rock boats and confront bad guys. It did him no good to point out that when the June 1993 World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna agreed on the post, it was on the explicit understanding that human rights would no longer be the political football it was during the "Cold War." The conference had acted on the assumption that the whole UN approach to promoting human rights would change; there would be no more finger-pointing at offending countries; the High Commissioner would lead the effort to deal quietly and concretely with problems.
It should probably be clear by now that there is no hope of realizing that aim. For the foreseeable future, we should expect -- indeed we should hope -- that those appointed to the job will displease everyone. Not to do so would imply a lack of integrity.
Lament for Iraq
This simple but powerful lament for what has happened to Iraq is in Malayalam, my mother tongue (which I can scarcely claim to know anymore, having been away from Kerala for so long). But it is worth seeing even if you do not understand the words. The images tell it all.
The refrain about Baghdad is the same throughout: "This is Baghdad now, that my mother used to tell about in her tales of Arabia."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djxRkl8iTdE
The refrain about Baghdad is the same throughout: "This is Baghdad now, that my mother used to tell about in her tales of Arabia."
http://www.youtube.
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
Foreign Affairs Editor at Columbia J-School
James F. Hoge, who has been editor of Foreign Affairs since 1992, looks like Kirk Douglas and, at 72, has the same rock-like affect. He is trimly suited, silver-maned, entirely comfortable before an audience that has left a wide swathe of seats unoccupied in front.
Hoge began his career at the Chicago Sun-Times, where he worked for over a quarter century and was successively, Washington correspondent, editor and publisher. He went to the New York Daily News as publisher in 1984, and in 1992 was the unlikely pick of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) to edit Foreign Affairs, long the gray and solemn voice of the "Eastern Establishment." Picking a journalist from the world of tabloids to edit the most important policy journal of international diplomacy was a daring move by CFR. It worked, for the circulation of the magazine has gone up by about 60 per cent since Hoge took over, and now stands at 160,000 (ABC figures for December 2007).
The Council was founded in 1921, in the wake of the First World War; Foreign Affairs began publication a year later. Americans discovered there was a "lethal world out there" which had to be engaged. CFR is no longer the voice of the "Eastern Establishment" Hoge says; "that doesn't exist any more; it's national now." He does not go into the exclusive nature of CFR membership (it is open only to American nationals) , but the Foreign Affairs web site boasts about its elite cachet:
The magazine is nonpartisan, self-funding and editorially independent, Hoge says. It has a small staff, no more than himself, a managing editor (now Gideon Rose), and support staff. As a "contributor magazine," Foreign Affairs is a forum for a wide range of opinion. "I spend a lot of time traveling, attending conferences ... finding out what people think." About a third of the articles are commissioned. Others "come in over the transom ... I wonder why we say that when we don't have transoms any more."
The magazine's primary aim is to educate people on foreign policy issues; there is also a "think tank aspect" in that it seeks to influence policy makers. "Every so often, we'll have a direct impact." George Kennan's anonymous article on "The Sources of Soviet Conduct" (signed by X) in the July 1947 issue outlined the need to contain the Soviet Union. "That was the basis of American foreign policy for 50 years."
Another influential article was by Samuel Huntington on the "Clash of Civilizations," in the Summer 1993 issue. There have also been cases when articles in Foreign Affairs had no impact: one such was a piece by Bernard Lewis warning about Osama bin Laden that appeared well before the 1993 bombing at the World Trade Center. It went completely unheeded.
After every issue "there's usually someone protesting." The most recent notable flap was the "Lavrov affair." Sergey Lavrov, the Russian Foreign Minister (former UN ambassador), had submitted an article which needed to be edited. After he had signed off on the edit, just as the magazine was about to go to the printer, he called a press conference in Moscow and accused us of grossly distorting his article. "It was just to get on Putin's good side." No harm was done; when Lavrov was next in New York, he called and he was once again the smooth UN diplomat.
Much more unpleasant was the Kissinger affair. He objected to what an article on Chile said about his role there in the 1970s, threatened to resign from the Council, wanted Hoge fired. Also unpleasant was the fallout from an article detailing the "unethical maneuvering" of Zbigniew Brzezinski in pushing for the American recognition of China before the signing of the first US-Soviet Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT), which Cyrus Vance had labored over. Brzezinski too threatened to resign from the Council. As editor, Hoge said, "you've got to be prepared to take the heat."
Then there are the "expose pieces."
In 2001 Foreign Affairs printed the "politbureau transcripts" -- a record of the discussions of China's top leaders at the time of Tienanmen. "There were doubts about its authenticity, but we printed most of it." Authentification came when the Chinese didn't make a big fuss about it, and had a low-level spokesman dismiss it as a fabrication. They banned the issue, but it was widely available on the Internet. "There was no firewall then."
Another notable expose came from the thousands of secret documents the US Army discovered in Baghdad after the fall of Saddam Hussein. "We devoted most of an issue to them. They made blood-curdling reading." Saddam's view of reality was remarkably distorted. Even as he could hear the rumbling of American tanks approaching his bunker, he believed that Iraqi forces were winning.
Hoge considers the situation in Afghanistan the "most dangerous" today. More broadly, there is danger in the fundamental shift of power from West to East with the rise of Asia. The last time such a shift occurred, when Germany and Japan tried to find place in the imperial European world order, it led to war. Properly managed, such a power shift need not cause conflict.
The Worldwide Web was not expected to make much difference for a magazine with 5,000-word essays, but it had a radical impact. It opened up an "enormous international audience." Hoge and his staff now spend "as much time enriching the web site as on the print magazine." The period after the end of the Cold War has also seen "an explosion of content." And Foreign Affairs is becoming a truly global publication. It is preparing to put out an edition in Chinese, and another in India. There are already versions of the magazine in Japanese, Russian and Spanish.
Foreign Affairs is now fully archived on the Web. (Hoge did not mention this, but subscribers to the magazine can access only a year of content.) The electronic archiving makes it possible to produce customized books for classroom use, instant books tailored to events. After 9/11 they ran off an instant best-seller titled "How Did This Happen?" which is still selling.
The circulation of Foreign Affairs has grown "dramatically" in the last ten years; in readership it is in a "league by itself." Other policy magazines like Foreign Policy (which was founded to remedy perceived shortcomings in the public discourse during the Viet Nam war), and World Policy Journal (intended to give the "thinking left" a voice), only have small circulations (below 20,000). Foreign Policy would not even be financially viable without a foundation to support it. The New York Review of Books, The Nation, The New Yorker and The Economist also dealt with policy issues, but there was no "head to head competitor" for Foreign Affairs.
Questions range widely. Is he was aware of his own political biases? (Yes) Does the magazine have a position on the Iraq war? (It has carried articles pro and con.) How do you edit big-name writers? ("We call them big foot writers; I talk to them before editing.") Do you ever look back and say, "Man! I can't believe we ran that! (Yes, but nothing specific comes to mind right now.) Did Ronald Reagan read Foreign Affairs? (He read a lot but not FA. Other presidents did. Kennedy, Carter and Clinton were especially close readers.) Would you like Condi Rice as a reader or 4 million ordinary Americans? (I'll take the 4 million; that will make Condi pay attention.) If John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt had offered their article on The Israel Lobby to Foreign Affairs, would you have published it? (I was mad that they didn't.) But would you have Published it? (With another balancing article, with some editing.) So you wouldn't have!
I want to ask why Foreign Affairs is so relentlessly committed to manipulative politics, whether he sees any hope for a world in which (according to the latest issue), a "Clash of Peoples" is to be laid over the "clash of civilizations." But I hold my peace. I know it will come out wrong. Americans of a certain age and background get very uptight at questions like that. But after the presentation, I go up and ask Hoge when the Indian edition of Foreign Affairs will be out. It's already out, he says. It's called "India and the World." Can I get a copy in New York? He shakes his head. Who is the publisher in India? He shakes his head again. It is very strange. I pose the question on the discussion forum of the South Asian Journalists Association, and find out that the Sakaal Group in Pune has the contract to publish the magazine in India, with former Times Of India editor Dilip Padgaonkar in charge; the content will come from New York. Hoge's reluctance to tell me that is mystifying. The inscrutable West.
One final note of interest: Warren Hoge, the UN correspondent of the New York Times, is the younger brother of James.
Hoge began his career at the Chicago Sun-Times, where he worked for over a quarter century and was successively, Washington correspondent, editor and publisher. He went to the New York Daily News as publisher in 1984, and in 1992 was the unlikely pick of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) to edit Foreign Affairs, long the gray and solemn voice of the "Eastern Establishment." Picking a journalist from the world of tabloids to edit the most important policy journal of international diplomacy was a daring move by CFR. It worked, for the circulation of the magazine has gone up by about 60 per cent since Hoge took over, and now stands at 160,000 (ABC figures for December 2007).
The Council was founded in 1921, in the wake of the First World War; Foreign Affairs began publication a year later. Americans discovered there was a "lethal world out there" which had to be engaged. CFR is no longer the voice of the "Eastern Establishment" Hoge says; "that doesn't exist any more; it's national now." He does not go into the exclusive nature of CFR membership (it is open only to American nationals) , but the Foreign Affairs web site boasts about its elite cachet:
"Its 3,400 members include nearly all past and present Presidents, Secretaries of State, Defense and Treasury, other senior U.S. government officials, renowned scholars, and major leaders of business, media, human rights, and other non-governmental groups. Each year the Council sponsors several hundred meetings including televised debates and other media events, and publishes Foreign Affairs, the preeminent journal in the field, as well as dozens of other reports and books by noted experts.
Since 1922, the Council has published Foreign Affairs, America's most influential publication on international affairs and foreign policy. It is more than a magazine — it is the international forum of choice for the most important new ideas, analysis, and debate on the most significant issues in the world. Inevitably, articles published in Foreign Affairs shape the political dialogue for months and years to come."
That is not hype. The magazine's reputation for heralding the agenda of American foreign policy has made it required reading for generations of diplomats.The magazine is nonpartisan, self-funding and editorially independent, Hoge says. It has a small staff, no more than himself, a managing editor (now Gideon Rose), and support staff. As a "contributor magazine," Foreign Affairs is a forum for a wide range of opinion. "I spend a lot of time traveling, attending conferences ... finding out what people think." About a third of the articles are commissioned. Others "come in over the transom ... I wonder why we say that when we don't have transoms any more."
The magazine's primary aim is to educate people on foreign policy issues; there is also a "think tank aspect" in that it seeks to influence policy makers. "Every so often, we'll have a direct impact." George Kennan's anonymous article on "The Sources of Soviet Conduct" (signed by X) in the July 1947 issue outlined the need to contain the Soviet Union. "That was the basis of American foreign policy for 50 years."
Another influential article was by Samuel Huntington on the "Clash of Civilizations," in the Summer 1993 issue. There have also been cases when articles in Foreign Affairs had no impact: one such was a piece by Bernard Lewis warning about Osama bin Laden that appeared well before the 1993 bombing at the World Trade Center. It went completely unheeded.
After every issue "there's usually someone protesting." The most recent notable flap was the "Lavrov affair." Sergey Lavrov, the Russian Foreign Minister (former UN ambassador), had submitted an article which needed to be edited. After he had signed off on the edit, just as the magazine was about to go to the printer, he called a press conference in Moscow and accused us of grossly distorting his article. "It was just to get on Putin's good side." No harm was done; when Lavrov was next in New York, he called and he was once again the smooth UN diplomat.
Much more unpleasant was the Kissinger affair. He objected to what an article on Chile said about his role there in the 1970s, threatened to resign from the Council, wanted Hoge fired. Also unpleasant was the fallout from an article detailing the "unethical maneuvering" of Zbigniew Brzezinski in pushing for the American recognition of China before the signing of the first US-Soviet Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT), which Cyrus Vance had labored over. Brzezinski too threatened to resign from the Council. As editor, Hoge said, "you've got to be prepared to take the heat."
Then there are the "expose pieces."
In 2001 Foreign Affairs printed the "politbureau transcripts" -- a record of the discussions of China's top leaders at the time of Tienanmen. "There were doubts about its authenticity, but we printed most of it." Authentification came when the Chinese didn't make a big fuss about it, and had a low-level spokesman dismiss it as a fabrication. They banned the issue, but it was widely available on the Internet. "There was no firewall then."
Another notable expose came from the thousands of secret documents the US Army discovered in Baghdad after the fall of Saddam Hussein. "We devoted most of an issue to them. They made blood-curdling reading." Saddam's view of reality was remarkably distorted. Even as he could hear the rumbling of American tanks approaching his bunker, he believed that Iraqi forces were winning.
Hoge considers the situation in Afghanistan the "most dangerous" today. More broadly, there is danger in the fundamental shift of power from West to East with the rise of Asia. The last time such a shift occurred, when Germany and Japan tried to find place in the imperial European world order, it led to war. Properly managed, such a power shift need not cause conflict.
The Worldwide Web was not expected to make much difference for a magazine with 5,000-word essays, but it had a radical impact. It opened up an "enormous international audience." Hoge and his staff now spend "as much time enriching the web site as on the print magazine." The period after the end of the Cold War has also seen "an explosion of content." And Foreign Affairs is becoming a truly global publication. It is preparing to put out an edition in Chinese, and another in India. There are already versions of the magazine in Japanese, Russian and Spanish.
Foreign Affairs is now fully archived on the Web. (Hoge did not mention this, but subscribers to the magazine can access only a year of content.) The electronic archiving makes it possible to produce customized books for classroom use, instant books tailored to events. After 9/11 they ran off an instant best-seller titled "How Did This Happen?" which is still selling.
The circulation of Foreign Affairs has grown "dramatically" in the last ten years; in readership it is in a "league by itself." Other policy magazines like Foreign Policy (which was founded to remedy perceived shortcomings in the public discourse during the Viet Nam war), and World Policy Journal (intended to give the "thinking left" a voice), only have small circulations (below 20,000). Foreign Policy would not even be financially viable without a foundation to support it. The New York Review of Books, The Nation, The New Yorker and The Economist also dealt with policy issues, but there was no "head to head competitor" for Foreign Affairs.
Questions range widely. Is he was aware of his own political biases? (Yes) Does the magazine have a position on the Iraq war? (It has carried articles pro and con.) How do you edit big-name writers? ("We call them big foot writers; I talk to them before editing.") Do you ever look back and say, "Man! I can't believe we ran that! (Yes, but nothing specific comes to mind right now.) Did Ronald Reagan read Foreign Affairs? (He read a lot but not FA. Other presidents did. Kennedy, Carter and Clinton were especially close readers.) Would you like Condi Rice as a reader or 4 million ordinary Americans? (I'll take the 4 million; that will make Condi pay attention.) If John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt had offered their article on The Israel Lobby to Foreign Affairs, would you have published it? (I was mad that they didn't.) But would you have Published it? (With another balancing article, with some editing.) So you wouldn't have!
I want to ask why Foreign Affairs is so relentlessly committed to manipulative politics, whether he sees any hope for a world in which (according to the latest issue), a "Clash of Peoples" is to be laid over the "clash of civilizations." But I hold my peace. I know it will come out wrong. Americans of a certain age and background get very uptight at questions like that. But after the presentation, I go up and ask Hoge when the Indian edition of Foreign Affairs will be out. It's already out, he says. It's called "India and the World." Can I get a copy in New York? He shakes his head. Who is the publisher in India? He shakes his head again. It is very strange. I pose the question on the discussion forum of the South Asian Journalists Association, and find out that the Sakaal Group in Pune has the contract to publish the magazine in India, with former Times Of India editor Dilip Padgaonkar in charge; the content will come from New York. Hoge's reluctance to tell me that is mystifying. The inscrutable West.
One final note of interest: Warren Hoge, the UN correspondent of the New York Times, is the younger brother of James.
