Good Reads: Politics of withdrawal, fossil fuels, and media freedom in South Africa

Politics of withdrawal

This week, when President Obama marked the anniversary of the killing of Osama bin Laden, US Sen. John McCain took him to task for “politicizing” that event. When President Obama flew out to Afghanistan to praise US soldiers for their efforts over the past decade, and to sign a security pact with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, Senator McCain said that Obama's trip was a “good thing,” because it involved long-term US national security interests.

For Americans, this should be fair warning: Every act by the president this year will be examined and deemed political or not, often depending more on political viewpoint than objective reality. But for the rest of the world, actions of the US president are too important to be seen in purely political terms.

Consider the Economist magazine’s article this week about the US-Afghan Strategic Partnership Agreement (SPA), which Mr. Obama and Mr. Karzai signed on May 2. The Economist admits that little is known but the broad outlines of the agreement, including the expected continued presence of at least some US troops in Afghanistan beyond the announced end of US combat operations in Afghanistan in 2014. This, the Economist says, is good news.   

Ever since Mr. Obama first announced when American troops would begin to withdraw, many Afghans have been stalked by the fear of a return to the early 1990s, when the world abandoned them and the country imploded under the pressures of ethnic tensions and scheming neighbours. The result was a gruesome civil war and the rise of the Taliban. 

The SPA is an attempt to tell both Afghans and their neighbours that this will not happen again.

Vice presidents and foreign policy

Last week, Sen. Marco Rubio gave a speech on foreign policy at the Brookings Institute, which the Monitor’s Dan Murphy and others saw as Senator Rubio’s coming-out party as the likely vice-presidential candidate on Republican Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign ticket.

The press has assessed Rubio, and found him to be thoughtful and not overly hawkish. While Rubio is by no means likely to push for a return to the “with us or against us” unilateralism of the Bush administration, his speech signaled that he believes the US should lead international organizations from the front, rather than seeking consensus and compromise, writes Mario Loyola in this week's National Review.

… in Rubio’s view, diplomacy doesn’t mean bowing to international organizations where the lowest common denominator can kill collective action. Diplomacy means American leadership. ‘Effective international coalitions don’t form themselves,’ Rubio said. ‘They need to be instigated and led, and more often than not, they can only be instigated and led by us.’

Oil and politics

Americans might be surprised at what the citizens of other countries think about them. In many countries of Africa, for instance, it is thought that the only reason the American government does anything these days is to get control of oil.

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