Thomas M. Hill at The Brookings Institution ("a nonprofit public policy organization") is thinking about State Department's reorganization plan.
Money quote(s):
"A second rumored reform to fold State’s Bureau of Consular Affairs and Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration into the Department of Homeland Security came under attack from Senators Ben Cardin (D-Md.) and Chris Coons (D-Del.) as well as House Democrats. Senator Cardin stated, “I firmly believe the State Department should remain the face of America to the world and the entry point for foreigners traveling here, for consular activities and refugee resettlement.”"
It's fine for all options to be on the table and to give consideration to major changes. It's not necessarily a bad thing to have to stop and consider why things are being done a certain way or why things are a certain way. If nothing else, Sec. Tillerson and others now have a firmer grasp of why it makes sense for State to be the "front end" of the visa and other consular services, even where there are shared and even overlapping responsibilities with DHS.
"The opposition to these rumored reforms was so significant that Secretary Tillerson felt compelled to include a slide in the reorganization plan preview titled “what redesign is not” and saying, “there is no intention by State or USAID to undertake the following actions at this time: moving Consular Affairs to DHS… Dismantling State or USAID…”"
Glad that's settled then.
Friday, September 29, 2017
RFERL - Tefft: U.S. Move To Suspend Nonimmigrant Visas In Russia ‘Not Vindictive’
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty ("Free Media In Unfree Societies") reported on Amb. (to Russia) Tefft's remarks.
Money quote(s):
"Russian President Vladimir Putin last month directed the United States to cut 755 out of about 1,200 employees at the U.S. Embassy and consulates in Russia, after the U.S. Congress passed a tough new law cementing sanctions against Moscow over its aggression in Ukraine and for allegedly meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-tefft-nonimmigrant-visas-not-vindictive-ambassador/28692902.html
Money quote(s):
"Russian President Vladimir Putin last month directed the United States to cut 755 out of about 1,200 employees at the U.S. Embassy and consulates in Russia, after the U.S. Congress passed a tough new law cementing sanctions against Moscow over its aggression in Ukraine and for allegedly meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
The U.S. Embassy in Moscow said on August 21 that it was suspending "all nonimmigrant visa operations" at U.S. missions across Russia as of August 23 due to the Russian-imposed cap on U.S. diplomatic staff.
The embassy said operations will resume in Moscow on September 1, but they will “remain suspended indefinitely” at U.S. consulates in St. Petersburg, Yekaterinburg, and Vladivostok.
“It's unfortunate, but we don't have any choice, because we have a lot of responsibilities here,” the ambassador told TASS."https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-tefft-nonimmigrant-visas-not-vindictive-ambassador/28692902.html
Tuesday, September 26, 2017
Slate - How worried should we be about the military’s takeover of American foreign policy?
Isaac Chotiner at Slate ("a daily magazine on the web") interviewed a military scholar.
Money quote(s):
"The sort of substantive throughline is that we barely have a foreign policy. This gets closer to my book’s themes. We essentially have a military policy. The military policy is being carried out with reasonable consistency and coherence in a sort of technocratic sense.
But we don’t have much other than military policy because the State Department under Trump and Secretary Tillerson is all but paralyzed by a combination of hiring freezes, threatened budget cuts, lack of personnel in key positions, and the fact that the White House fairly consistently shuts them out of anything important. Much of the sort of traditional U.S. diplomacy is either on hold or has sort of pulled back."
This is certainly what one would understand from major media reporting; from the inside it's not quite so drastic although there is at least partial truths for each of these listed factors.
"I think there’s a really strong sense in the Defense Department that, in an ideal world, the State Department is a vital counterpart to the military. I think there’s an equally strong sense in the military at the moment that there is nobody home in the State Department, and that’s been to some extent true for the last decade or more but now dramatically exacerbated in the Trump–Tillerson era.
I think you will continue to hear people like Jim Mattis and the service chiefs say very strongly that diplomacy is important. Development is important. Our job, you know, we can’t do our job without those things. I think you’ll continue to hear that, but there’s only a limited degree to which the actors at the Pentagon have any ability to create that out of thin air or to get Donald Trump to create it."
The "nobody home in the State Department" seems more true nowadays due to the number of "acting" officials throughout the Department, but the interviewee conflates this lower-level rudderlessness with the previous Administrations focus on international irrelevancies.
"The oft-cited line that there are more members in the military marching bands than there are foreign service officers is in fact true, even though I always thought it had to be apocryphal. This was a huge issue in Afghanistan during the Obama years, that the constant promises of a civilian surge just never materialized because the personnel just weren’t there."
There simply is not and has never been deployment-ready diplomatic brigade sitting on a stateside base awaiting orders to go nation-build somewhere. Sec. Powell tried to bake some surge-capacity into the cake with the Diplomatic Readiness Initiative (DRI) but increases in worldwide workload have eaten away at that for years. And with the continuing hiring-freeze, hollowing-out, and possible 30 percent downsizing, it only gets worse going forward.
"It’s also important to remember that Mattis and Kelly have retired. They are civilians now. They are not active. McMaster is the exception. He is obviously still active-duty military, but I don’t quite get the fixation on oh my God the military has taken over."
Money quote(s):
"The sort of substantive throughline is that we barely have a foreign policy. This gets closer to my book’s themes. We essentially have a military policy. The military policy is being carried out with reasonable consistency and coherence in a sort of technocratic sense.
But we don’t have much other than military policy because the State Department under Trump and Secretary Tillerson is all but paralyzed by a combination of hiring freezes, threatened budget cuts, lack of personnel in key positions, and the fact that the White House fairly consistently shuts them out of anything important. Much of the sort of traditional U.S. diplomacy is either on hold or has sort of pulled back."
This is certainly what one would understand from major media reporting; from the inside it's not quite so drastic although there is at least partial truths for each of these listed factors.
"I think there’s a really strong sense in the Defense Department that, in an ideal world, the State Department is a vital counterpart to the military. I think there’s an equally strong sense in the military at the moment that there is nobody home in the State Department, and that’s been to some extent true for the last decade or more but now dramatically exacerbated in the Trump–Tillerson era.
I think you will continue to hear people like Jim Mattis and the service chiefs say very strongly that diplomacy is important. Development is important. Our job, you know, we can’t do our job without those things. I think you’ll continue to hear that, but there’s only a limited degree to which the actors at the Pentagon have any ability to create that out of thin air or to get Donald Trump to create it."
The "nobody home in the State Department" seems more true nowadays due to the number of "acting" officials throughout the Department, but the interviewee conflates this lower-level rudderlessness with the previous Administrations focus on international irrelevancies.
"The oft-cited line that there are more members in the military marching bands than there are foreign service officers is in fact true, even though I always thought it had to be apocryphal. This was a huge issue in Afghanistan during the Obama years, that the constant promises of a civilian surge just never materialized because the personnel just weren’t there."
There simply is not and has never been deployment-ready diplomatic brigade sitting on a stateside base awaiting orders to go nation-build somewhere. Sec. Powell tried to bake some surge-capacity into the cake with the Diplomatic Readiness Initiative (DRI) but increases in worldwide workload have eaten away at that for years. And with the continuing hiring-freeze, hollowing-out, and possible 30 percent downsizing, it only gets worse going forward.
"It’s also important to remember that Mattis and Kelly have retired. They are civilians now. They are not active. McMaster is the exception. He is obviously still active-duty military, but I don’t quite get the fixation on oh my God the military has taken over."
USN&WR - DHS Seeks Sanctions on Countries that Refuse Deportees
Alan Neuhauser at U.S. News & World Report (" a multi-platform publisher of news and information") did a nice job of laying this out:
Money quote(s):
"immigration authorities have been forced to release people who are in the U.S. illegally because their home countries declined to issue the necessary travel documents for their return"
CAA commented on another article that was more specific but this one does a better job explaining the whys and hows.
"Lapan would not identify which nations are facing sanctions, but they are among a list of 12 so-called "recalcitrant countries" identified by DHS: Burma, Cambodia, China, Cuba, Eritrea, Guinea, Hong Kong, Iran, Laos, Morocco, South Sudan and Vietnam.
The letter from DHS could effectively suspend travel to the U.S. from the four designated countries. Section 243(d) of the Immigration and Nationality Act requires the State Department to stop granting travel visas in recalcitrant countries when it such a request to do so from the Homeland Security secretary."
CAA gathers there's quite a bit of back and forth between DOS and DHS as to precisely how each country's visa sanction will shape-up in practice, tailoring it to the circumstances.
"Countries can get removed from the list if they cooperate with U.S. efforts. Iraq, for example, was on a list of some 22 countries considered recalcitrant, but it was removed after high-level government negotiations led to an agreement to again begin accepting deported nationals, Lapan said."
It's unfortunate when you have to use a club like this to leverage another country into action, but if you get a record and a reputation for doing it from time to time, simply the threat will come to suffice as a motivator. Inaction on the part of these countries was a product of their years of experience in us not acting.
Money quote(s):
"immigration authorities have been forced to release people who are in the U.S. illegally because their home countries declined to issue the necessary travel documents for their return"
CAA commented on another article that was more specific but this one does a better job explaining the whys and hows.
"Lapan would not identify which nations are facing sanctions, but they are among a list of 12 so-called "recalcitrant countries" identified by DHS: Burma, Cambodia, China, Cuba, Eritrea, Guinea, Hong Kong, Iran, Laos, Morocco, South Sudan and Vietnam.
CAA gathers there's quite a bit of back and forth between DOS and DHS as to precisely how each country's visa sanction will shape-up in practice, tailoring it to the circumstances.
"Countries can get removed from the list if they cooperate with U.S. efforts. Iraq, for example, was on a list of some 22 countries considered recalcitrant, but it was removed after high-level government negotiations led to an agreement to again begin accepting deported nationals, Lapan said."
It's unfortunate when you have to use a club like this to leverage another country into action, but if you get a record and a reputation for doing it from time to time, simply the threat will come to suffice as a motivator. Inaction on the part of these countries was a product of their years of experience in us not acting.
Friday, September 15, 2017
WT - Trump punishes sanctuary countries, halts visas for nations that refuse to cooperate on deportations
Stephen Dinan at The Washington Times ("hard-hitting news and fearless journalism") explained recent visa sanctions against four countries.
Money quote(s):
"Sanctions have been triggered only twice before — once in 2001 against Guyana and again late last year against Gambia. In both instances, they produced quick results. Guyana moved within months to issue travel documents to take back 112 of the 113 deportees stuck in a backlog."
Limiting the ability of foreign officials and their families' ability to visit the U.S. is what CAA likes to call "The Miami Sanction."
For much of Central America and the Caribbean, Miami provides Third World countries with a First World "capital city." It's where they send their wives to shop and their kids to school. Los Angeles and New York City fill similar roles for different regions as London and Paris do for much of the developing world in that hemisphere. There are direct air-links to those cities from many Third World countries.
The "Miami Sanction" puts an exquisite pressure on foreign government officials.
"State Department officials said the sanctions begin Wednesday, halting issuance of at least some categories of visas to would-be travelers from Cambodia, Guinea, Sierra Leone and Eritrea.
Interestingly, the visa sanctions against the four countries show a graduated, even nuanced, set of penalties:
Eritrea - no B1/B2 visas for anyone, no how, no way;
Guinea - no B1/B2, F, or J visas for government officials and their families;
Sierra Leone - no B1/B2 visas for either diplomats or immigration officials;
Cambodia - no B1B2 visas for top diplomats and their families.
(CAA would love to know what factors resulted in this range of sanctions, but it's the kind of inside-baseball that only comes to light decades later in some diplomat's small-batch memoir.)
Money quote(s):
"Sanctions have been triggered only twice before — once in 2001 against Guyana and again late last year against Gambia. In both instances, they produced quick results. Guyana moved within months to issue travel documents to take back 112 of the 113 deportees stuck in a backlog."
Limiting the ability of foreign officials and their families' ability to visit the U.S. is what CAA likes to call "The Miami Sanction."
For much of Central America and the Caribbean, Miami provides Third World countries with a First World "capital city." It's where they send their wives to shop and their kids to school. Los Angeles and New York City fill similar roles for different regions as London and Paris do for much of the developing world in that hemisphere. There are direct air-links to those cities from many Third World countries.
The "Miami Sanction" puts an exquisite pressure on foreign government officials.
"State Department officials said the sanctions begin Wednesday, halting issuance of at least some categories of visas to would-be travelers from Cambodia, Guinea, Sierra Leone and Eritrea.
“The Secretary of State has ordered consular officers in Eritrea, Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Cambodia to implement visa restrictions effective September 13, 2017,” the department said in a statement provided to The Washington Times. “The Secretary determined the categories of visa applicants subject to these restrictions on a country-by-country basis.”
The law allows for all visas to be halted to any country that refuses cooperation, but the department decided to impose less-draconian penalties in each of the four cases.
In Cambodia, only top diplomats and their families will be denied temporary tourism or business visas. In Eritrea, the U.S. Embassy will stop issuing business and tourist visas to all citizens.
In Guinea, government officials and family members will be denied business, tourist, and student and exchange program visas. In Sierra Leone, the government’s diplomats and immigration officials will be denied business and tourist visas."Interestingly, the visa sanctions against the four countries show a graduated, even nuanced, set of penalties:
Eritrea - no B1/B2 visas for anyone, no how, no way;
Guinea - no B1/B2, F, or J visas for government officials and their families;
Sierra Leone - no B1/B2 visas for either diplomats or immigration officials;
Cambodia - no B1B2 visas for top diplomats and their families.
(CAA would love to know what factors resulted in this range of sanctions, but it's the kind of inside-baseball that only comes to light decades later in some diplomat's small-batch memoir.)
Slate - The Blob Ate Donald Trump
Joshua Keating at Slate ("a daily magazine on the web") reassured the unsettled.
Money quote(s):
"Rex Tillerson’s ongoing reorganization of the State Department, seemingly purposely designed to sideline and scale back the work of career diplomats, is definitely a concerning shift that could have lasting impacts on U.S. diplomacy around the world. But in the absence of leadership, it appears American foreign policy can just kind of run itself for a while. I don’t know how long that can continue before it slips off the rails."
Money quote(s):
"Rex Tillerson’s ongoing reorganization of the State Department, seemingly purposely designed to sideline and scale back the work of career diplomats, is definitely a concerning shift that could have lasting impacts on U.S. diplomacy around the world. But in the absence of leadership, it appears American foreign policy can just kind of run itself for a while. I don’t know how long that can continue before it slips off the rails."
Monday, September 11, 2017
re: "September 11"
The DiploMad at The DiploMad 2.0 ("long time US Foreign Service Officer; now retired") speaks to some basic truths many are unwilling to face.
Money quote(s):
"We in the West refuse to understand that simple fact, to wit, when Islam says it seeks to conquer us, it means it."
&
"It seems from the limited reporting on it, that we are successfully pursuing a policy of turning large numbers of AQ, ISIS, Al Shabab, etc., into bloody jelly. As we have always known, the Islamists are good at torturing and killing flight attendants and other unarmed civilians, but they don't do well when confronted by Western military know-how employed as it's meant to be employed."
Money quote(s):
"We in the West refuse to understand that simple fact, to wit, when Islam says it seeks to conquer us, it means it."
&
"It seems from the limited reporting on it, that we are successfully pursuing a policy of turning large numbers of AQ, ISIS, Al Shabab, etc., into bloody jelly. As we have always known, the Islamists are good at torturing and killing flight attendants and other unarmed civilians, but they don't do well when confronted by Western military know-how employed as it's meant to be employed."
re: "Dreamers"
Sad news that Dr. Jerry Pournelle has passed away peacefully in his sleep.
In his most recent post at Chaos Manor ("The Original Blog and Daybook"), he offered a solution to the problem of the "DREAMers."
"The news is full of the Dreamers. The Constitution says the President must take care to see that the laws are faithfully enforced. Mr. Trump didn’t want to deport the “Dreamers”, particularly those who have integrated into the society, but the law gives him no leeway, and the Presidential Order Obama signed giving them amnesty is unconstitutional. He solved that dilemma by giving it back to Congress who created it. We’ll now see what happens.
Aside from one or two occasions when we crossed paths in various comment threads, I did not know the man personally. I did have the good fortune to hear him speak at the (posthumous) Smithsonian Institution presentation to Robert Heinlein's widow (Virginia Heinlein) of NASA's Distinguished Public Service Medal on October 8, 1988. He was a gentleman and a thinker and an inspiration to many. He will be missed.
In his most recent post at Chaos Manor ("The Original Blog and Daybook"), he offered a solution to the problem of the "DREAMers."
"The news is full of the Dreamers. The Constitution says the President must take care to see that the laws are faithfully enforced. Mr. Trump didn’t want to deport the “Dreamers”, particularly those who have integrated into the society, but the law gives him no leeway, and the Presidential Order Obama signed giving them amnesty is unconstitutional. He solved that dilemma by giving it back to Congress who created it. We’ll now see what happens.
I can solve part of the problem. Any volunteer of any age who serves 7 years overseas in Army or Marines gets a Green Card and an application to apply for Citizenship along with his honorable discharge. The Citizenship application and test need not be very difficult and I would expect all who applied to pass it. The swearing should be public and conducted by an officer of rank Colonel or above.
As to girls, we can think of something similar or suitable; they need not join the combat arms. Surgical Assistant comes instantly to mind.
Their parents are a more difficult problem, and it will take ingenuity to find a path that does not offend the legal immigrants who obeyed the law."Aside from one or two occasions when we crossed paths in various comment threads, I did not know the man personally. I did have the good fortune to hear him speak at the (posthumous) Smithsonian Institution presentation to Robert Heinlein's widow (Virginia Heinlein) of NASA's Distinguished Public Service Medal on October 8, 1988. He was a gentleman and a thinker and an inspiration to many. He will be missed.
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