Senate Gives Disability Rights Treaty the Thumbs Down

Senate efforts to ratify the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which played out this summer and fall, went on entirely under the radar. Few in Washington or in the media even knew the treaty was under consideration. Until, that is, Republicans succeeded in blocking ratification of the treaty -- a pact more than 120 other nations around the world have already approved -- by a slim five vote margin last week.

The news was in the fact that treaty ratification failed. The treaty was so non-controversial, to most minds at least, that its approval would not have created much of a stir. Senate Democrats already gave up on ratifying another treaty due to GOP objections, but in the disability rights treaty they anticipated relatively smooth sailing. That even this treaty, which calls on signatories to bring their standards for disability rights up to standards already enshrined here in the United States by the Americans with Disabilities Act, says something about the state of the Senate and the Republican party.

For many, it was eye-opening, a revelation about just how much sway conservatives have in the party and how deep those conservatives' antipathy is for international bodies like the U.N. For those of us who cover these types of things closely, it was not nearly as surprising ($).

I discussed some of the back story on the treaty vote and its failure with C-SPAN last week. 

The Real Questions After Benghazi

The end of election season has done little to tamp down members of Congress -- and particularly Republicans' -- quest for answers concerning the terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi in September. But the reality is the parameters of the attack are largely known at this point, thanks to a raft of briefings and explanations in the press.

Sure, there are questions about which specific U.S. officials knew which piece of intelligence about the assault when and why they characterized it one way as opposed to another in their public comments. But if lawmakers are really serious about "preventing another Benghazi," a goal they repeatedly invoke, then those are not the right questions to be asking.

The deeper issues are related to the level of risk the U.S. ought to subjects its diplomats, soldiers and spies to, and how best to deploy them in unstable parts of the globe. The United States is also due for a reassessment of its overall footprint and engagement strategy for the MENA region -- the Middle East and North Africa -- home to many of those unstable, and strategically important, locales.

Thus far those questions have been relegated largely to the sidelines, both by politicians and the mainstream press. It will be a test of their intentions to see if members of Congress take them up.

The Treasury Wonks Behind Our Iran Sanctions

For much of the Obama administration, it's been Congress who has been out in front when it comes to pushing ever tighter U.S. sanctions against Iran. But much of the intelligence and strategy for targeting the Iranian economy actually comes from inside the Treasury Department, and specifically from a bureau created after Sept. 11, 2001 to house U.S. efforts to counter international financial networks that support terror.

The obscure Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence and its leaders have been behind the gradual program to ramp up international economic pressure on Iran, which has culminated in the collapse of Iran's currency in recent months. In a piece I wrote for this month's Fortune Magazine, I look at some of the longtime Treasury officials who helped craft this policy under former Under Secretary Stuart Levey, and are now taking it to a whole new level, thanks in good measure to pressure from Congress and Israel.

That pressure is unlikely to subside, even as the White House now seeks to restart diplomatic engagement with Tehran.

Capitol Hill Takes on the Military's Problem with Sexual Assault

Over the summer, Marine Corps Commandant Gen. James F. Amos hosted a dinner with a handful of lawmakers to discuss a hidden epidemic of violence in the military: 19,000 servicemembers are estimated to be victims of rape or sexual assault each year.

The high-level gathering was a signal of how seriously the military brass is now taking the problem of sexual assaults. But the dinner guests were quickly reminded of just how taboo the subject remains for much of the armed forces. Someone mentioned the low reporting rates — only 2,723 military victims came forward to formally disclose assaults in 2011. Amos’ wife turned to a high-ranking female officer at the table and asked what she would do if she were assaulted. Would she report the crime?

“With the commandant present and [three] members of Congress, she honestly answered no,” recalls Ohio Republican Michael R. Turner, a member of the House Armed Services Committee. Women “perceive that it can affect someone’s career in the military negatively if they report they’re the victim of the crime,” Turner says. “And that’s just wrong.”

Turner’s outrage is widely shared in the Pentagon and on Capitol Hill. That consensus breaks down, however, over how best to legislate and implement a sweeping cultural change in an institution as large and complex as the U.S. military.

The debate rests on the question of whether the armed forces — where loyalty and fraternity are deeply ingrained values and resistance to outside interference is the norm — can remake itself and, most important, police itself on matters of sexual violence. Both sides acknowledge that it isn’t yet clear whether the military is at a true tipping point such that a change in culture is systematically spreading down through the services’ ranks.

In a recent feature for CQ's weekly magazine, my colleague, Megan Scully, and I looked at the measures Congress has passed in recent years that lawmakers hope will trigger just that sort of cultural change in the military, and whether they might need to go still further.

Fight Night

The final presidential debate -- on everyone's favorite subject, foreign policy! -- has been sliced and diced a-plenty in the last 48-hours.

But if you're dying to rehash President Obama's sharp one-liners -- the 80s called and, well, nevermind -- or Mitt Romney's discipline in staying above the fray -- a strategy his advisers clearly thought would help improve his chances of winning the war, even though he lost the battle -- then I present you my colleague Steve Dennis' and my take on the evening for Roll Call.

I said (er, Tweeted) it at the time and I'll say it again, despite all the chatter leading up to the debate that Romney would be moderating his position on foreign affairs the same way he pivoted towards the center on domestic policy in the previous two debates, I still found myself a bit startled that he passed on a clear chance to take the president on about the attacks on the consulate in Benghazi. Yes, he muffed it in the second debate, but I'm sure his debate coaches could have come up with a line nailing Obama for the security situation in Libya, if not the White House's descriptions of the attack afterwards, where there doesn't seem to me much "there" there.

It may be wise, however, to leave the task to surrogates -- like congressional Republicans, who continue to hammer the administration on a daily basis for what they knew and when. That appears to be taking a toll on the president and his ratings on international affairs and terrorism, according to the latest polls.

The biggest news out of the debate for Washington was the president's confident prediction that there will be no sequester. Preventing those draconian budget cuts -- particularly on the military side -- has been the obsession inside the Beltway for the last year. How Obama makes that a reality remains to be seen.

The Sunset of the Reset

The news this week that Russia was booting USAID -- the U.S. government's international development arm -- out of the country confirms something I wrote about earlier this month: President Obama's much-hyped reset with Moscow is over.

That's not the same thing as saying the reset was a failure, the election year argument that Republicans have been making. Those claims overlook some very substantial diplomatic and security gains the Obama administration made vis-a-vis Russia between 2009 and 2011 -- the New START bilateral nuclear arms reduction treaty, the 2010 U.N. Security Council resolution against Iran, the agreement that secured transit routes out of Afghanistan, to name the most prominent.

It's simply that, with Vladimir Putin's return to the presidency, shifting domestic politics in both countries and the rise of new conflicts like Syria, that feel-good phase of bilateral relations has run its course, gone the way of President Medvedev. In it's place is a new, more confrontational era in the U.S.-Russia relationship, but not one that promises to be entirely bereft of cooperation. Afghanistan, Iran even Asia are regions where Washington and Moscow have incentives to work together.

Sen. Dick Lugar, who has a decades-long perspective on the bilateral relationship, acknowledged that both countries seemed inclined to continue "kicking each other in the shins" these days. "The problem is, if there is too much kicking in the shins and so forth, people become unhappy with each other." For both our countries sake, he said, "we better move past that."  

Glimmers of Bipartisanship on Foreign Policy

Who says Congress can't get anything done during an election year? Granted, lawmakers may not be addressing the country's urgent fiscal challenges, but they do appear poised to further tighten the economic vise on Iran as punishment for the mullahs' continued intransigence on nuclear enrichment.

The European Union's oil embargo and United States sanctions barring transactions with the Central Bank of Iran have only been in force for a few weeks, but members on both sides of the aisles are already itching to go further. The House and Senate are now trying to hash out the final details of a consensus piece of sanctions legislation, based on bills the House passed in December and the Senate in May. New measures under consideration would effectively cut off Tehran's energy and financial sectors from the rest of the world.

Those involved in the current negotiations -- half a dozen or so offices in addition to the lead negotiators Sen. Tim Johnson, D-SD, and Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-FL -- are optimistic a compromise bill is going to be ready for a vote next week. And Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has signaled he's prepared to make floor time for it. Ros-Lehtinen has even suggested it could move by voice vote in the House, a sign of just how broad the support is in the chamber.

Congress may also succeed in passing legislation granting Russia permanent normalized trade relations in time for Moscow's formal accession to the World Trade Organization in August. Without it, U.S. companies cannot get preferential access to Russia's newly opened markets under the WTO framework. The legislation has the support of leading Republicans and Democrats in both chambers (CQ subscription required), but Moscow's surly behavior on the world stage in recent months -- its stance vis-a-vis Syria being the most glaring example -- hasn't won it any friends on Capitol Hill, and passage in both chambers is still something of a wild card.

A Tale of Two Treaties

Ratifying treaties is one of the few direct levers of influence Congress -- specifically the Senate -- has over U.S. foreign policy. So it's interesting to see how members have approached that duty in recent years.

Whereas 30 years ago controversy over treaties was the exception, now it seems to be the rule. One of the main reasons for that is the strong segment of the Republican party that is unabashedly skeptical of any international pact that could subject the United States to foreign standards or regulation. So even something like the Law of the Sea Treaty (CQ subscription required) -- a United Nations convention that has been ratified by more than 160 countries and has the backing of traditional GOP constituencies like the oil industry and the Chamber of Commerce -- is facing serious headwinds (CQ subscription required) in the current Congress.

Two-thirds of the Senate have to vote to approve ratification of a treaty for the U.S. to move forward with it, and 31 Republicans have already signaled their opposition to the Law of the Sea, which would regulate countries' and companies' use of the deep seas. Essentially, opponents do not like the prospect that U.S. would be accountable to an international panel for its deep sea exploration and navigation. Many of the same Republicans voted against ratification of the New START arms reduction treaty with Russia in 2010, though the Senate ultimately approved that pact by a narrow margin.

One treaty, however, looks poised to buck the trend of air-tight votes. The U.N. Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities -- which would raise international standards for the treatment of the disabled -- has a bipartisan group of senators backing it, from conservatives who have opposed most other treaties to liberal members of the Senate Democratic leadership. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee's hearing on the treaty was a relatively innocuous affair and the committee has now scheduled a vote on Thursday July 19. It could actually win Senate approval by July 26, the disability advocates because it marks the 22nd anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act. That would be lightning quick by the standard of today's Congress.

UPDATE, 7/17:

Three more Republican senators announced their opposition to the treaty, pushing the total that have expressed public objections to 34 -- just enough to block ratification (CQ subscription required) should it come to a vote.

McGurked

President Obama's nominee to be the next ambassador to Iraq withdrew his name from consideration Monday afternoon, after it became clear that support for him had cratered (CQ subscription required) in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The New York Times has the letter,which alludes to the adultery scandal -- conveniently preserved on National Security Council emails -- that swept up Brett McGurk and his now wife (then mistress), a former Wall Street Journal reporter.

In the immediate aftermath, I saw some on Twitter comment that McGurk was a victim of the overly intense media scrutiny of political figures' personal lives. In general, I'd agree that the MSM obsession with political sex scandals borders on the pathological, exaggerating beyond all reasonable sense of scope and scale the import of any given incident.

In this particular case, however, I don't think that's the issue. McGurk's nomination MAY have survived had someone not leaked a trove of unfortunately worded emails online, but it was never going to be an easy road. As I reported at the beginning of the month (CQ subsciption required), a number of lawmakers had serious doubts about McGurk, both based on his policy choices and his qualifications.

Rumors about his personal life had also been floating around, but the publication of the emails only played into the notion, already embraced by some, that McGurk did not have the judgement or maturity or gravitas to head up the United States' biggest diplomatic footprint overseas. 

Ground May be Shifting on Syria in Congress

White House officials may be in agreement on the question of military intervention in Syria -- they're against it, for now -- but there is no such consensus on Capitol Hill.

The split between the hawks, led by Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain, and skeptics like Republican Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee and Democratic Sen. Jim Webb of Virginia, has been evident for months. But now some of those in the middle, who have mostly kept their heads down up to this point, are starting to stir. And in the wake of the Houla massacre over the weekend, they are suggesting that a more proactive U.S. stance may be necessary.

Michigan Democrat Carl Levin, the chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, is the most prominent voice to publicly muse about future intervention in Syria, which he says will have to be led by Turkey. Sen. Ben Nelson, a Democratic moderate from Nebraska, also issued a release this week saying that unless Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad leaves power voluntarily (doubtful), "military intervention is inevitable.”

It will be interesting to see, when both chambers are back at work next week, whether this indicates the start of a groundswell amongst the plurality of members who have staid on the fence on Syria up until now.

Another Casualty of the Culture Wars

It's hard to find anyone who disagrees with the notion that modern day slavery or "human trafficking" is an awful practice, even on Capitol Hill, where members disagree about pretty much everything. That's why a law to help combat the practice has been such a novelty over the last decade -- every time it comes up for re-authorization, it sails through Congress with unanimous backing.

Not this year. In a piece I wrote for last week's CQ Weekly magazine, I look at how the bipartisan consensus that has supported the bill's passage in the past crumbled last fall thanks to a dust-up between Obama administration officials at the Department of Health and Human Services and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. For five years, the Bishops Conference had overseen a grant program to assist trafficking victims in the United States. HHS decided not to renew the grant in late September because the group refused to reimburse subcontractors for reproductive health services that conflicted with the Catholic faith -- i.e. birth control and abortion.

In the midst of all the election year politicking and posturing, the talk of wars on women and religion, it doesn't take much more than the mention of the a-word to get politicians twisted in knots. Suffice to say, House Republicans are now completely at odds with Senate Democrats, and even some Senate Republicans, over how to proceed on the bill. That does not bode well for its passage given all the other legislative issues competing for floor time.

Rubio Does Diplomacy

Freshman Sen. Marco Rubio has been carving out a niche in foreign policy since he joined the chamber last year (something I blogged about last fall). But the Florida Republican -- and a top GOP vice presidential contender -- hadn't done any high-profile overseas diplomacy until last weekend, when he made a trip to Cartagena, Colombia for the sixth annual Summit of the Americas, a gathering of the leaders of the Western Hemisphere.

The trip was natural enough from a policy standpoint for the senator -- a bilingual Cuban-American and the ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere. But the politics of the visit are also unmistakeable, as I wrote about for Roll Call this week. Much of Rubio's cache as a potential VP pick for presumptive GOP presidential Mitt Romney stems from his appeal to Latino-American voters. But it turns out that outside of Florida and D.C., he is an unknown quantity to much of that constituency. Vice presidential nominees are also often looked to to bring national security and foreign affairs chops to the ticket, a particular plus in this case since Romney has focused on his business and management acumen.

Rubio smartly focused most of his media outreach in Cartagena to the Spanish-speaking outlets. So combined with the Secret Service prostitution scandal, which dominated the English-language news coverage out of the Summit, his trip flew almost entirely under the radar in Washington. But it demonstrates that, as much as he may deny it, he and his advisors are pursuing a savvy strategy to raise his profile and his gravitas within key political spheres, maybe for 2012, maybe beyond.

Afghanistan Unraveling

Things have gotten ugly in Afghanistan in the past week. The worst setback, by far, was the massacre of Afghan civilians by a rogue U.S. soldier, but new demands from Afghan President Hamid Karzai, the Taliban's withdrawal from peace talks and a would-be-attack during Defense Secretary Leon Panetta's visit on Wednesday didn't make the picture any rosier.

The latest developments will only make it harder for the Obama administration to sell their long-term vision for Afghanistan on Capitol Hill. As a colleague and I reported in Congressional Quarterly's magazine on Monday, there is already serious resistance in Congress to several pillars of Obama's strategy for stabilizing Afghanistan as foreign troops withdraw. 

In interviews this week senators on both sides of the aisle expressly avoided  knee jerk reactions (CQ, subscription required) to the civilian killings, and there were few signals that anyone was changing their stance about the pace of troop withdrawals between now and 2014. But these events will inevitably reinforce security concerns for American advisers and diplomats and play into the argument that the international presence has worn out its welcome in Afghanistan. And that throws into doubt future Hill support -- and dollars -- for the counterterror/training/development footprint the administration has envisioned maintaining after security responsibility is shifted to the Afghans.

Bullying by Another Name

There aren't too many occasions for profanity-laced tirades with press staff on the foreign affairs beat (thank goodness), but I still get my hackles up reading this WaPo story about the verbal abuse the White House press shop metes out to reporters for stories it doesn't like.

I've never understood this practice. As far as I'm concerned, screaming and cursing at people by phone or e-mail is unprofessional, unproductive and just plain rude. Arguing that this is "how it's always been done," as White House spox Jay Carney seems to imply in the WaPo piece, is no excuse. When you are in a professional setting, discussing the way people are handling their professional duties, there are plenty of ways to hash out disagreements or correct potential errors without resorting to name calling, f-bombs and threats. It isn't a question of whether the White House press corp can "take it," it's a question of whether that approach is the best way to improve the journalism. I doubt it.

I was shocked starting out as a young 20-something reporter in Washington that this was how middle-aged press flacks sought to handle their business. It struck me as entirely juvenile.

I haven't changed my opinion since then, but I've also learned that more than that, it's a strategy to brow-beat and intimidate reporters who portray these flacks' bosses in an unfavorable light. Young press aides pick up these tactics from their seniors, and the cycle churns on. That shouldn't make it accepted practice.

After all, wasn't is President Obama who called for an "adult conversation" in Washington?

The War's Over, Stephen

As the Washington Post noted this morning, it's been an understated end (yes, REAL end, not that "we're starting the drawdown" 2010 announcement or the administration's "we couldn't reach an agreement to keep troops here any longer" revelation earlier this fall) to what for years was the most politically explosive of American military operations. Of the commentary and reaction that has been circulating over the last 24 hours on Iraq, this Stephen Colbert's show with Gen. Ray Odierno Wednesday night struck me as one of the more fitting ways to mark the withdrawal of the final U.S. troops from Iraq.

Remember, it was Colbert who took his whole show to Baghdad when American attention to the conflict was waning in 2009.

Click here to see Ray & Stephen (sort-of) harmonize on "I'll be Home for Christmas." 

GOP Attacks Obama's Foreign Policy Cred

Given Obama's polling on foreign policy and national security issues -- definitely his strong suit these days, particularly when compared to his ratings on jobs and the economy -- this line of attack does not seem like the wisest general election strategy to me.

Appealing to the GOP primary base is another story ...

Iran Back on Washington's Front Burner

The mullahs in Tehran have got to be starting to feel the heat, with an IAEA report slated for release on Wednesday expected to detail Iran's advances in building a nuclear weapon and chatter growing in Israel about a preemptive strike.

The rhetoric is ramping up in Congress, as well, and the IAEA report will likely only strengthen the hawks on Capitol Hill. Already, the revelation last month of an Iranian plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States have prompted calls for punitive measures, as my colleague Tim Starks and I reported at the time.

Since then, the House Foreign Affairs Committee has marked up and passed an aggressive bipartisan sanctions bill that would force the administration to pursue a wide array of international companies doing business with Tehran. The Senate outlook for the bill is hazy at the moment (CQ, $) -- different blocs of senators are pursuing different tracks which makes action this year unlikely. But freshman Sen. Mark Kirk, R-IL, is now threatening to try and enact one of the toughest measures in the House bill -- sanctioning companies doing business with Iran's Central Bank -- through an amendment to pending appropriations legislation.

That no doubt is making the Obama administration uneasy. However, it's going to be difficult for the White House to resist the drumbeat for stiff countermeasures against an ever-defiant Iran. What remains unclear is whether any amount of international pressure can shift Iran's calculations at this point. It has not looked promising up to this point.

Mullen's Comments on Pakistan Changed Everything ... and Nothing

Every few months, it seems, relations between the United States and Pakistan reach a new low --just this week, in fact, former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf said told an audience at the Carnegie Endowment they had reached their lowest point yet. And yet, behind the scenes, officials with both government continue to communicate and cooperate on a number of different fronts.

Retiring Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen’s testimony to Congress last month that one of the region’s most notorious militant groups was a “veritable arm” of Pakistani intelligence is likely to make that dialogue more difficult. In a piece for this week's CQ Weekly magazine, I looked into the ways that Mullen's remarks strengthen the hardliners on Pakistan in Congress, and the likelihood they will force cuts in aid to Islamabad.

What still remains in question whether just some or all of the approximately $5 billion aid requested for fiscal year 2012 will be cut, and whether policymakers will try to go further, perhaps pushing for inclusion of the Haqqani network on the State Department's list of foreign terrorist organizations, among other measures. Such moves would increase the pressure on elements inside Pakistan, but they also are bound to make it more difficult to build a cooperative, regional solution to the war across the border in Afghanistan. Because there's still no getting around the fact, experts say, that Islamabad will need to play an integral part in any such settlement.

Is the GOP trying to starve the United Nations into submission?

House Foreign Affairs Chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.) -- and longtime United Nations critics -- has been drawing a lot of press for a bill she says would force major reforms at the UN, but which critics say would undermine the entire institution.

In a piece I wrote for Foreign Policy that ran on their web site this week, I explain how Ros-Lehtinen's bill is unlikely to get through Congress, but the U.N. and their backers still have plenty to worry about from Republicans on Capitol Hill.

Rubio Rising

Is it possible to have one foot in the Tea Party and one in U.S. foreign policy's most fervent camp of hawks? Florida Sen. Marco Rubio is going to find out

Rubio's speech Tuesday in North Carolina on America's role in the world -- he's calling for a robust one -- is just the Republican freshman's latest effort to burnish his credentials on international affairs, even as he toes a staunch fiscal conservative line at home.