Keystone Pipeline

The Keystone pipeline is mostly out of the news now, but it's still an important issue.  Romney brings it up occasionally; Obama tries to hide it under the rug.  Obama is wrong on this issue.  The real debate is about use of fossil fuels, not possible pollution from the pipeline. The pipeline itself will have little environmental impact. There are many pipelines crisscrossing America. Most don't leak, and if they do, it's not the end of the world.

The complaints about possible pollution of Nebraska's aquifer is a red herring. Environmentalists just want to break America's dependence on oil.  Because they pipeline makes oil cheap and easy to use, they want to stop it, not because the pipeline itself will pollute.  Environmentalists argue it would be easier and safer to build a pipeline to the Pacific and ship the oil to China.  If the Chinese burn the oil, the world gets the same pollution, but America gets none of the benefits.

It's fine to have a debate about the use of fossil fuels, but it should be a straightforward debate, not one obscured by fake, legalistic arguments about an environmental impact statement for an oil pipeline. 

Congressional Email re Foreign Service

I hope that in the light of the killing of Amb. Christopher Stevens and the attacks on the American diplomatic missions in Libya, Egypt and Yemen, you will stand up for the Foreign Service.  Gov. Romney and the Republicans have been very critical of the Foreign Service, and actually seemed to imply that Foreign Service officers deserve to die because they are wimps.  This attitude was illustrated by former Sen. Norm Coleman, Romney's surrogate on the PBS NewsHour last night, who strongly criticized the statement issued by Embassy Cairo, which PBS said, "appeared aimed at calming tensions in Egypt over an anti-Muslim film made in California."  Fortunately Amb. Nicolas Burns defended the Foreign Service, saying that Romney should not have attacked Embassy Cairo for "the actions of an embassy under siege, under great tension." (See PBS report at - http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2012/09/candidates-spar-over-foreign-policy-following-attacks-in-libya-egypt.html)

When I was in the Foreign Service many years ago, Republican Sen. Jesse Helms hated it, and would have done almost anything to eliminate it, starting with cutting the State Department budget as deeply as possible.  I worry that this same attitude persists in Washington today. 
I hope that you will stand up for the Foreign Service and not put the lives of Foreign Service officers needlessly at risk.  The Foreign Service was already under great stress because of the burden of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars; now the general increase of tensions in Middle East appears likely to increase that burden and the dangers that FSOs face.  Please support them. 

Sen. Mitch McConnell Is the Problem

One of the biggest problems facing America today is Senate Minority leader Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell.  Speaker of the House John Boehner is also a problem, but he legitimately has a Republican majority in the House.  McConnell does not have a majority but through misuse of the the filibuster, he has been able to require 60 votes to pass any meaningful legislation, and since the Democrats do not have 60 votes, he has been able to block any meaningful work by the Senate.  McConnell was a draft dodger during the Vietnam War, apparently escaping service because his mentor, Sen. John Sherman Cooper of Kentucky, intervened on his behalf with his draft board or with the Army.  If McConnell loved America he would have answered his country's call during war, and he would be willing to work to salvage his country's dire fiscal situation.

The Republicans' veto power in the Senate has been particularly harmful in dealing with the country's financial crisis, and is a major concern in the run-up to the "fiscal cliff" of automatic budget cuts at the end of the year. On fiscal issues, the Republicans and the Democrats are at loggerheads, and there appears to be no path to a bipartisan solution or to one-party rule.  Meanwhile, the country continues to run up huge budget deficits.  Clinton's balanced budgets were due in large part to pressure from Newt Gingrich and his Republican majority, but today a similar scenario seems impossible.  The Republicans blame Obama, and he deserves some of it, but I think the main responsibility for the deadlock lies with the Republicans.

McConnell famously said in October 2010, "The single most important thing we want to achieve is for Obama to be a one-term president."  It would appear that the Republicans are ready to allow terrible things to happen to the US in order to defeat Obama.  Partisanship trumps patriotism   In that case, the Republicans appear to unlikely to act responsibly when we hit the "fiscal cliff."  Even now, by refusing to compromise on raising taxes along with budget cuts, the deficit and the national debt just get bigger.

A starting point for a solution already exists in the bipartisan Simpson-Bowles report.  Obama is partly responsible for not pushing harder to do something with the report, but the House and the Senate are also responsible.  The most intransigent position is the Republican opposition to any tax increases.  It has made negotiation impossible.

I don't personally know how to handle total intransigence.  I encountered it at the State Department in dealing with Reagan's Defense Department.  Richard Perle and his office were usually opposed to whatever we at State were trying to do regarding stopping missile proliferation.  They wanted an absolute guarantee from other nations on the issue, i.e., the US had to be absolutely sure that other nations would not violate the agreement, but this is impossible when dealing with human beings or other nations.  We have laws against murder, but people still commit murder.  We have laws against speeding, but people still speed.  Refusing to outlaw murder because murder will still happen seems silly to me, but that was the Republican position.  I couldn't figure out how to deal with it.  Although some other people eventually got a Missile Technology Control Regime agreement after I quit working on it because I was assigned to the embassy in Bangkok, Thailand.  I'm guessing they somehow figured out how to cut Richard Perle out of the loop.  But he showed how successful complete intransigence can be in stopping the government from working.

Tour at US Embassy in Rome

My short tour as head of the Science Section at the American Embassy in Rome was not very pleasant.

My previous tour as Science Counselor at the embassy in Warsaw was under a cloud because Washington under the Gingrich Republican Congress had cut off funding for science cooperation that was supposed to go on for several more years.  An unexpected call from Washington offered me the job in Rome.

When I arrived in Rome, the State Department was being sued by several environmental groups upset at how the Italians were fishing for swordfish.  The United Nations had put a limit on how long Italian driftnets could be, and these groups sued the State Department to force it to enforce the UN mandate.  The Justice Department argued the case that the State Department did not need court oversight, but lost.  At the time I was not clear what leverage the environmental groups had on the State Department, but as this court decision shows, the leverage was Italian exports to the US.  The environmental groups would force the Commerce Department to withdraw its certification of Italian exports of fish to the US unless Italy was in compliance with the UN resolution.  As a result, a Federal judge ended up in charge of US fishery policy in Italy.

Who really ended up in charge of American fishery policy toward Italy was Greenpeace Italy.  The environmental groups could decide whether any US agreement with Italy on driftnets warranted allowing the Commerce Department decision to stand.  Any US proposal would be run by the US environmental groups; they would then ask Greenpeace Italy for its recommendation before replying to the court.  The Greenpeace Italy swordfish staff was basically one person who spent full time monitoring swordfish fishing boat, and who always smelled strongly of fish when we met with him.  The court decision cites Greenpeace reports in several places in its decision. 

We had a huge meeting in Rome with many representatives of interested parties in the US and Italy.  They came to a resolution, negotiated mainly by my assistant, who had handled fishery matters during a previous tour in Venezuela, and a staff assistant to the Italian director of the fishery office of the Italian Agriculture Ministry.  Under the agreement, the Italian Agriculture Ministry agreed to toughen up its enforcement practices.  A few months later, however, the Agriculture Minister requested a meeting with the Ambassador on the matter.  He said that because his ministry's enforcement officers had stepped up their efforts against illegal driftnet use, the Italian fishermen in Sicily, where most of them were located, had taken out hit contracts with the Mafia on the ministry's enforcement personnel.  The Minister felt that some of his employees were in genuine danger and requested that the agreement be watered down somewhat.  Meanwhile, other fishermen were demonstrating outside the Agriculture Ministry in downtown Rome and creating huge traffic jams.  My assistant who had negotiated the agreement was sick, and I had to go with the Ambassador to meet with the Minister.  The Ambassador was very upset when I told him that he did not have much negotiating room because any change would have to be approved by a federal judge, which meant essentially that it would have to be approved by Greenpeace Italy.  As a result, my last full day on the job in the Foreign Service was spent on the telephone negotiating some "happy-to-glad" changes in the language of the agreement and getting preliminary approval from Washington . 

I had forgotten the terms of the agreement, but they were summarized in the court opinion as:

First, Italy announced its intention to submit a voluntary rationalization and conversion plan to provide for the cancellation of all driftnet fishing licenses, accompanied by a surrender of the driftnets, between 1997 and 1999.

Second, Italy committed to introduce a ban on the use of Sardinian ports by driftnet vessels from other ports. The Sardinian port ban subsequently passed.

Third, Italy announced its intention to pass a law with an escalation of sanctions for fishing with illegal driftnets.

This appears to be one of the decisions that affected our office's work; however, the date of the decision is well after I had already retired from the Foreign Service.

A 2008 study of the driftnet problem showed that not much had changed over the 10 years following my retirement.