Diplomatic Connections January-February 2015 Issue by Diplomatic Connections

A Business, Diplomacy & Foreign Policy Publication

January - February 2015 • $7.95

BUSINESS • POLITICS • Travel • ENTERTAINMENT • MILITARY & DEFENSE • CONGRESS

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We start this issue partially where we left off last time — in the former Eastern Bloc. We check in with the Ambassador of the Czech Republic Petr Gandalovicˇ. He explains how his country is a nation of skeptics who never stop questioning, including the unfolding situation in the Ukraine and his country’s destiny to join the euro. We move from the former Eastern Bloc to East Africa for an insightful conversation with Tanzania’s Ambassador Liberata Mulamula. Not shy to share what is on her mind, Ambassador Mulamula frankly discusses the conundrum her country faces with the United States — that America doesn’t always partner with Tanzania when needed but then gets perturbed when the African nation partners with other countries (read: China). Next we take a look at the link between UNICEF and actress Téa Leoni’s work on and off the screen. A UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador since 2001, Leoni is deeply committed to her responsibility which gives “a voice to those that don’t have a voice in the world.” She’s also gracing our televisions as “Madam Secretary” and earning accolades along the way. But having travelled the world on behalf of UNICEF, it is clear that will remain one of the most prominent roles in her life. Washington has been treated to a bit of the British royal touch lately. First Princess Anne, also known as the Princess Royal, came to town for a Library of Congress exhibition of the Magna Carta, one of her country’s most treasured documents. “Nearly 800 years ago, the Magna Carta gave us our first concept of a society governed by the rule of law — a major step,” she said. The world has changed considerably in the past eight centuries, but Princess Anne makes a strong point and reinforces the link between the U.S. and the UK. Prince William and his wife Catherine, a.k.a. the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, made a quick visit to the East Coast and, in true royal form, seemed to never be out of the media spotlight. From meeting with President Obama to spending time with children in Harlem to being the main attraction at a university fundraising bash (and of course leaving in time to campaign for anti-poaching measures on a Washington, D.C. side trip to the World Bank), these two young energetic royals really didn’t waste a minute. President Obama recently travelled to Asia for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Summits. We delve into the happenings of his meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, a highly significant discussion considering the need for America and China to stay in each other’s good graces. At ASEAN, President Obama traveled to Myanmar/Burma, a nation on the cusp of leaving its 25-year military dictatorship behind in favor of democracy. The nation is holding national elections in 2015, which will be a milestone in the country’s modern history we will eagerly watch. As part of our dedication to always bringing you reliable information on trusted services, we are launching two new directories in this issue. The first is a medical section (pages 90 - 93) to ensure you receive the most attentive care and the second is for apartments/housing (pages 54 - 57). The staff and I at Diplomatic Connections wish you and your families a wonderful 2015 — may it be your best year yet!

Warmest regards, Dawn Parker Publisher & Founder Diplomatic Connections 10

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Diplomatic EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Dawn Parker AssistantS to the Editor Ashley Gatewood, Pamela Landis, Andrew Meggs BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT Executives Washington, D.C., Evan Strianese and Bill Stanton; New York, Mongoose Atlantic, Inc. - Stephen Channon, Julia Bucciero and Kathryn Latham DESIGN & CREATIVE KDG Advertising, Design & Marketing msocha@kdgadvertising.com DIPLOMATIC CORRESPONDENTS and CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Roland Flamini, James Winship, PhD, Mike Mosettig, Monica Frim, F. Bristol Lewis, Mark Kennedy

To contact an advertising executive CALL: 202.536.4810 EMAIL: info@diplomaticconnections.com DIPLOMATIC CONNECTIONS WEBSITE DESIGN & DEVELOPMENT IMS (Inquiry Management Systems) 304 Park Avenue South, 11th Floor New York, NY 10010 Marc Highbloom, Vice President marc@ims.ca Maria D’Urso, Project Manager Mariad@ims.ca CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHY Paula Morrison, Joey Oliver, Embassy of the Czech Republic and U.S. Fund for UNICEF To order photos from the events go to: www.diplomaticconnections.com Send any name or address changes in writing to: Diplomatic Connections 4410 Massachusetts Avenue / #200 Washington, DC 20016 Diplomatic Connections Business Edition is published bi-monthly. Diplomatic Connections does not endorse any of the goods or services offered herein this publication. Copyright 2015 by Diplomatic Connections All rights reserved.

Cover photo credits: VP Biden and Czech Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka, Embassy of the Czech Republic; Prince William and World Bank President Jim Yong Kim, Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images; Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping, How Hwee Young - Pool/Getty Images; Tea Leoni, U.S. Fund for UNICEF; The Cast Of ‘Madame Secretary’ Ring The New York Stock Exchange Closing Bell, Brad Barket/Getty Images; Johns Hopkins Physicians, Johns Hopkins Medicine International

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H.E. Petr GandalovicË&#x2021; Ambassador of the Czech Republic to the United States

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By Roland Flamini of the Charter 77 dissident group and one of the patron saints of the anti-Soviet protest movement in Eastern Europe — was the Czech Republic’s first post-Soviet president and the guiding force in the country’s transition to a democratic society. Last month, a bust of Havel was unveiled in the statuary hall of the U.S. Congress next to the bust of Winston Churchill, bringing together the man who defined the Iron Curtain and the man who helped bring it down. Diplomatic Connections: Let me begin with a question about the Czech Republic’s position on two crisis fronts, the IS in the Middle East and the situation in Ukraine. The Czech Republic is sending a large shipment of weapons to reinforce the moderate insurgents in Syria, but when it comes to dealing with fallout from the Ukraine, the Czech defense minister has spoken against the proposal for deploying troops of the North Atlantic Alliance in the Czech Republic as part of the Obama administration’s call for a “unified response.” Ambassador Gandalovic: What the minister of defense said was that he thinks the Czech public may have a problem with foreign troops on Czech soil. He was just trying to elaborate why this would be so, and the reason is that we are not a frontier state [with Ukraine]. In this respect, Czechs may not feel they really need troops; it’s not a question of not welcoming or wanting such a deployment, but of “do we need it?” Czechs perhaps feel secure. Look, we have been in Afghanistan for the whole period. Our troops never had any caveats [some units were permitted to fire only in selfdefense] and they always went to the most dangerous places. In this respect, we have always walked the walk. As far as talking the talk, Ukraine is not an easy or black-and-white situation. There are many debates, and as with every debate there

The classic route to becoming a foreign ambassador in Washington is via the diplomatic promotion ladder of increasingly senior posts, but that was hardly the path followed by Czech Republic Ambassador Petr Gandalovicˇ. True, he was his country’s consul-general in New York 16 years ago. But he had previously been, in turn, math and science teacher, member of the Federal Assembly that drafted the Czechs’ post-Soviet constitution and the mayor of his hometown Ústí nad Labem. This was before entering the rough and tumble world of Czech politics as a member of the Czech Parliament and minister of agriculture — all the while putting his diplomatic career on hold. He believes his multi-layered professional life has given him a more down-to-earth approach to his present job than a classic diplomatic career. But in a recent wide-ranging interview in his office, he was diplomatic in addressing some of the issues facing the Czech Republic. He stressed his country’s strong belief in a united Europe, but hinted that Prague was in no hurry to fulfill its commitment to join the troubled eurozone — and would take about six more years to get there. The tall, dapper, well-spoken ambassador also suggested that Russian President Putin’s Crimean land grab had sent a frisson of anxiety through the former Soviet satellites. It was resulting in some hard thinking in East European capitals about the wisdom of relying totally on the North Atlantic Alliance for their defense, and the need to invest more in their own security. In January, Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka formed a centrist government ending months of political vacuum that followed the resignation of his predecessor, Petr Necˇas, in a spying and bribery scandal. What was once Czechoslovakia split into two sovereign states following the collapse of the Soviet Empire in 1989. Vaclav Havel — playwright, founder

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discuss the scope and effect of these sanctions? Yes, we will. I think it’s perfectly legitimate to discuss to what extent existing sanctions are proving to be effective. Diplomatic Connections: What has been the impact of sanctions so far in the Czech Republic? Ambassador Gandalovic: So far, the economic impact has been in the hundreds of millions of dollars, at the most. But the reciprocal sanctions imposed by Putin on Czech exports have had a significantly bigger impact because they affect agriculture and the food industry. For instance, the long-term effect on the fruit growers, who are living on the edge of the economy in the sense that they operate on small

is always a danger of something being taken out of context. I would like to strongly argue that when it comes to deeds, the Czechs have never actually balked at action. When it comes to discussion, we are a nation of skeptics. If someone says “A,” we ask, “What about B?” and that starts a discussion. Diplomatic Connections: Has the Czech Republic put in place the European Union sanctions against Russia? Ambassador Gandalovic: The Czech Republic has implemented all the sanctions which have been approved by the European Union, and I think I can safely state that if there will be a need for more sanctions, the Czech Republic will not be the one to block this European effort. Will we

liberties. But also in the diplomacy we represent the United States in Syria; we have hosted the U.S. interest section for more than two years now, since the situation in Syria forced the U.S. to close its own embassy. In Afghanistan, we may have a small contribution in numbers, but per capita we are one of the biggest contributors. Our bi-lateral trade has almost doubled in the past three or four years to $3.5 billion, but still there are so many opportunities for our businesses in the U.S. as well as for American investors and exporters in our country.

Diplomatic Connections: So then why isn’t bi-lateral trade bigger? Ambassador Gandalovic: After the collapse of the Eastern Bloc, we

Czech President Miloš Zeman (L) and Czech Minister of Defence Martin Stropnický review a guard of honour during a ceremony at Vítkov Hill on June 24, 2014, in Prague, marking the 100th anniversary of the beginning of WWI.

profit margins, could be devastating. Diplomatic Connections: What is your assessment of bi-lateral relations with the United States? Ambassador Gandalovic: I would be a bad ambassador if I said they are not good. But at the same time I would be a bad ambassador if I didn’t see many opportunities which we both had not used. The relationship of the United States with the Czech Republic and vice versa is above the weight of our country’s size and population. In the area of shared values and human rights we have always supported non-government organizations which defend human

Michal Cizek/AFP/Getty Images

focused mostly on European Union member states, and the EU now represents almost 80 percent of our external trade — which means that now we have to look beyond EU countries. Given the situation with Russia, we really need to explore our opportunities in the U.S. I don’t want to do a commercial, but I do want to point out that as the Czech Republic carries out planned increases in the defense budget, it will be an opportunity for U.S. exporters. On the other side we think the Czechs have a lot to offer in different layers of defense material to the U.S. Diplomatic Connections: Does the embassy stay in touch with the

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NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen (L) speaks during a joint press conference with Czech Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka at the Czech Government Headquarters in Prague to discuss the Ukraine crisis.

something I devote a lot of my time to. I travel a lot to visit these communities; they’re almost everywhere in America, each with a different story. There are strong Czech-American communities in the Midwest, where Czechs have been settled since the 19th century. There’s a strong Czech-American presence in Chicago. In the early 20th century, Chicago was said to be the largest Czech city after Prague, which might have been exaggerated, but the evidence to the fact is that in the 1920s there was a Czech mayor in Chicago, Anton Cermak. He was assassinated in Miami by a bullet some believe was meant for President Roosevelt. Many Czechoslovak Jews emigrated to America fleeing from the Nazis before World War II, and many Czechs fled to the U.S. from the communists after the war. They came in search of freedom and settled everywhere, even in Alaska. Diplomatic Connections: How is Russia viewed in the Czech Republic, especially since the crisis in the Ukraine? Ambassador Gandalovic: We in the East had thought that Russia was going to be a more or less normal democracy, a country that would still be a little difficult but would be on a sustained path to democratic values. I think that the same view was shared by successive American administrations, always with the hope that Russia would become a partner rather than a foe. Ukraine was firstly a grave mistake by President Putin because it caused so many opportunities to be lost. And it served as a wake-up call on, for example, the importance of the North Atlantic Alliance, the importance of cohesion in the Western democratic world to which we belong. It was a reminder that we need to take more care of our own defense. So many things have changed during this year.

Diplomatic Connections: How so? Ambassador Gandalovic: Our preoccupation in the last couple of years was actually to learn how to be a normal member state of the European Union, which is not easy. The European architecture is by no means final and it’s a moving target, a developing story. Eastern European countries were really busy with our re-integration into the European Union. Now we realize that it is not a finished business and we have to be responsible for defending our Western values and our Western democracy — our freedom. We had felt it was necessary to keep expanding our democracy Eastward, which is why, together with Poland and Sweden, we formed the Eastern Partnership Program aimed at former Soviet republics — to assist them on their way towards democracy. The Eastern Partnership was meant have a free trade agreement with the Ukraine. You know how that ended. Diplomatic Connections: Given the current uncertainty in the eurozone, does Prague have second thoughts about joining the euro? And if there are no second thoughts, shouldn’t there be?

Ambassador Gandalovic: It’s one of my priorities, and

Czech-American community?

Ambassador Gandalovic: Technically, as part of our accession [to the EU], and according to a referendum in our country, we are committed to adopting the euro some time when conditions will allow. So the question is not if, but when. But there is very little support in the political sphere, as well as among economists and the general public for rushing into the eurozone. Had it not been for the eurozone crisis, we would now be on our way to entering the eurozone. This was the plan presented in 2006 when the economy was still growing at about 5 percent. But in 2008 the economic crisis hit. In 2009 it was clear that our economy was going to be in a deep recession — we lost between 3 and 5 percent of our

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Lubomir Kotek/AFP/Getty Images

Below: Young Czechoslovak students shout on November 22, 1989, in support of Václav Havel for presidency during a protest rally at Wenceslas Square in Prague. Czechoslovak students were asking for more democracy, demanding the end of Communist Party rule and free multiparty elections. A strong dissident protest movement led to the fall of communism on December 10, 1989, and the formation of a non-communist government in Czechoslovakia 10 days after the beginning of a summit in Malta where Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev and U.S. counterpart George Bush set a new era, ending the Cold War. The Communist Party capitulated in the bloodless Velvet Revolution and formed a coalition government with the Civic Forum. Havel was elected president on December 29, 1989.

Lubomir Kotek/AFP/Getty Images

Left: Václav Havel, a dissident playwright and leading member of the Czechoslovak opposition Civic Forum, who drafted large parts of Charter 77 (the declaration which helped attract international attention to the civil rights abuses in the then-Czechoslovakia), waves on December 10, 1989, to the crowd of thousands of demonstrators gathered on Prague’s Wenceslas Square. They were celebrating the communist capitulation and nomination of the new government formed by Marián Cˇalfa from Slovak dissident movement The Public Against Violence. At the end of 1989, Havel was elected as the first president of the then-Czechoslovakia when the state-communist system crumbled in the Velvet Revolution.

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Far right: Kotek/AFP/Getty Images

Above: Czech Republic President Václav Havel (R) shown in an undated file photo posing with his family; (L – R) His brother Ivan, his wife Olga, and his father and mother. It is believed to have been taken circa January 1, 1970.

Robert Michael/AFP/Getty Images

Václav Havel

Below: Mourners follow a hearse carrying the coffin of former Czech President Václav Havel across the Charles Bridge on its way to Prague Castle on December 21, 2011, in Prague, Czech Republic. Thousands gathered in Prague’s historic city centre as three days of national mourning began to bid farewell to 1989 Velvet Revolution icon Havel, who died on December 17, 2011, aged 75.

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Embassy of the Czech Republic

Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka met with U.S. Vice President Joe Biden at the White House on November 18, 2014.

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the policy was one of austerity and restraint — pretty much the German line. But Prime Minister Sobotka has said he wants to change this. How far is he with the change, and will it work? Ambassador Gandalovic: We have had this debate across the Atlantic. While the U.S. preferred a monetary expansionist policy with the aim that at the end of the day it will help domestic spending and lead to growth, in Europe the situation wasn’t as easy. America accumulated more and more national debt but nobody was worried about the rating, or about the future of the economy. Well, maybe the rating agencies were, but definitely not the markets. While in Europe, at every sign of relaxation of fiscal policies, the markets would punish with exorbitant interest rates. Then you end up spending more on the interest than you would have spent on new highways or new hospitals. The previous [conservative] government emphasized the conservative fiscal policy. Today’s government is in a better position in the general macro-economic situation because, actually, the national debt is around 43 percent of GDP, inflation is about 3 percent, unemployment has gone down to 7 percent. Czechs are skeptics, but at the same time Czechs are also prudent. It’s not a matter of left or right; even the left will not bring our economy to indebtedness. What we’re talking about is a debate about a tenth of

GDP — so nobody was arguing in favor of any speedy introduction of the euro. And then in 2010 – 2011 the eurozone crisis began which even further complicated the wisdom of such a project among our public. At the same time, we are an export-based economy — about 70 percent of our GDP actually originates from foreign trade — and most of our trading partners are in the eurozone. There isn’t much support for it, and we’re not going to join in any rushed way — but sooner or later as part of our commitment we will have to. There isn’t any official date, and frankly, what we’re talking now is anything between five or six years. Diplomatic Connections: At the same time the skepticism about the European Union has boosted right-wing political groups, who are often outside the political mainstream. Isn’t that so in the Czech Republic? Ambassador Gandalovic: As I said, the Czechs are skeptics by nature. We do not need right-wing extremists to create that debate. We debate across the entire political spectrum. The presence of right-wing political parties is much lower than in neighboring countries. In the Czech Republic there is very little support for extremist or “brownish” movements — luckily, of course. Diplomatic Connections: In the economy, until recently,

Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images

The meeting, held as part of the Prime Minister’s visit to the United States, was also attended by the Chairman of the Chamber of Deputies of the Parliament of the Czech Republic, Jan Hamáˇcek.

(L – R) President Andris Berzinš of Latvia; President Toomas Hendrik Ilves of Estonia; President Ivo Josipovi´c of Croatia; U.S. President Barack Obama; Polish President Bronisław Komorowski; President Rosen Plevneliev of Bulgaria and President Miloš Zeman of the Czech Republic pose for a family photo following meetings at the Presidential Palace in Warsaw, Poland. Obama launched a major tour of Europe last summer by attending the 25th anniversary celebration of the first free elections in Poland — a seminal event that propelled Eastern Europe out of Moscow’s orbit and toward democracy and free-market growth. D I P L O M A T I C C O N N E C T I O N S B U S I N E S S edition | J anua r y - F eb r ua r y 2 0 1 5

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Petr Gandalovicˇ, the then mayor of Ústí nad Labem, Northern Bohemia, unveils on July 31, 2005, at Edvard Beneš Bridge in Usti Nad Labem, the memorial plaque to Sudeten German victims from Ústí nad Labem in July 1945. Exactly 60 years earlier on July 31, 1945, the German men, women and children, who lived in the town in the north of what was then Czechoslovakia, were attacked, beaten and thrown into the river. Gandalovicˇ emphasized that the victims had been innocent people killed after the end of the war. Some 2.5 million Sudeten Germans were transferred from what was then Czechoslovakia after the war under the decrees which then Czechoslovak President Edvard Beneš issued and which the victorious powers approved at the Potsdam Conference.

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lomatic career on hold with a leave of absence. It’s very useful to see things from the perspective of daily mayoral responsibilities — even chores, I would say. So that you do not just scratch the surface, but you really get to know how difficult it is to run even a city, to communicate with a constituency. Diplomatic Connections: Then you entered national politics… Ambassador Gandalovic: After four years as a mayor, I ran for national office and became a parliamentarian, and then served for two-and-a-half years as a member of the cabinet. I was minister of agriculture. When I talk to a governor or mayor here in the United States, we have a lot of things to talk about. When I explain something about my country, I speak from direct experience, rather than sterile diplomatic talk. Diplomatic Connections: Would you advise ambassadors to spend some time as elected officials? Ambassador Gandalovic: I wouldn’t go that far. I would say that as a mathematician and a physicist and a former mayor, I have some things that my colleagues don’t have. At the same time I respect the traditional diplomatic education and experience. Diplomatic Connections: Talk a little about your impressions of working as an ambassador in Washington. Ambassador Gandalovic: I love America. They say that a diplomat sooner or later is affected by the host country syndrome, that you begin to represent the host country rather than your own. Having spent five years in New York and now three in Washington, I am addicted to the host country but at the same time keep in mind that I represent my own country, and I have strong feelings about that. n

a percentage point of spending. Diplomatic Connections: Are you saying that you were under pressure from Washington to ease up on austerity measures? Ambassador Gandalovic: I wouldn’t say it was between Washington and Prague. It was between Washington and Brussels. There was a discussion to what extent Brussels should allow the Europeans to apply austerity as a formula for recovery. We did not play any active part; we just tried to keep our domestic finances in order, and today we have our household reasonably in order. It allows our government to relax on some of the spending, including the defense spending, so that in 10 years defense spending should reach 2 percent. Diplomatic Connections: Your career has seemed to go back and forth between politics and diplomacy. Do you find the transition easy? Ambassador Gandalovic: I initially won a seat in the Federal Assembly. This was a very exciting time between 1990 – 1992 when we first drafted the new Czech constitution and the bill of rights. Then we needed to reform almost the entire legal system and pave the way for extensive privatization of property. When the Federal Assembly had done its work, it abolished itself in order to make way for free elections. Then I joined the diplomatic service and I was the consul-general in New York. And in New York I saw [Mayor Rudy] Giuliani turning around the city. It was also exciting seeing New York becoming a friendly place to live. I was so privileged to be close to that and it caused me to think of becoming a mayor myself. So when the offer came I accepted. I ran and I won the election in my hometown, putting my dip-

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H.E. Liberata Mulamula Ambassador of Tanzania to the United States

A Diplomatic Connections Interview By Roland Flamini

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ike much of sub-Saharan Africa today, Tanzania is a

Diplomatic Connections: In August, 50 African leaders

country of contradictions. Tanzania’s economy has been

came to Washington for the U.S.-African Leaders Summit. What, in your view, did that gathering accomplish? Ambassador Mulamula: It had never before happened that the President of the United States convenes his fellow leaders from Africa and brings them to Washington. It was high time that the African leaders got to engage, one on one, with the U.S. president. The main objective was how best to engage the U.S. administration, but also the U.S. business community, and this is what happened. They came up with an agenda that was quite good for Africa. It focused on investing in the future for Africa with the focus which our leaders had sought. It was a summit in two segments, one with President Obama, but also engagement with the CEOs of big, top-notch companies. There was a business forum, and it gave an opportunity to showcase our countries. Diplomatic Connections: What did your country gain from the summit? Ambassador Mulamula: We had a whole day session on doing business in Tanzania. There were a number of initiatives that President Obama had launched during his visit to Africa in the summer of 2013. So after he launched the Power Africa initiative [getting access to electricity], or the Trade for Africa initiative and the Partnership for Growth, the issue was how were they going to be implemented because there was no mechanism in place to manage the funding that was pledged. By coming here the takeaway was firstly setting up the implementation of Power Africa so we can get started.

growing by an average of seven percent for more than a decade, yet it remains one of the poorest countries in the world. More than a quarter of the population cannot read; life expectancy is 58, per capita GDP is $1,700 (The United States’ is $52,800), and 36 percent of Tanzanians have access to electricity — but that last is the good news, said the United Republic of Tanzania’s ambassador to Washington, Liberata Mulamula, to Diplomatic Connections in a recent interview; last year the literacy rate was only 20 percent. A country in the Great Lakes region of East Africa (population 49.6 million), Tanzania comprises a mainland that was colonial Tanganyika plus the island of Zanzibar. Almost a third of Tanzania’s land surface has been set aside as wildlife protected areas, which is three times the global average, including the Serengeti National Park and Mount Kilimanjaro, Africa’s highest mountain.

The Obama administration is helping the Tanzanian government

combat widespread killing of elephants by poachers for their ivory tusks. The fact that the country’s elephant population has declined from 316,000 in 1979 to 50,000 in 2013 is both a wildlife conservancy problem and an economic threat — 15 percent of Tanzania’s economy is from tourism. In other respects, says Ambassador Mulamula, the United States has failed to recognize Africa’s potential, and is lagging behind other nations, including China, in both aid and investment. This, the ambassador said, was the main message of African leaders who attended the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit in Washington in August 2014. Tanzania’s original left-wing, one party political system under its first president Julius Nyerere has evolved into a multi-party

system. It has a new draft constitution, which among other changes goes a long way to improving the situation of women and addresses Tanzania’s problem of young girls in domestic servitude — the country’s largest human trafficking problem, according to the CIA country profile — is due to be submitted to a referendum by 2015.

But also, we have been in negotiations to extend the Africa Growth Opportunity Act [AGOA] that was launched by President Clinton in 2000 granting preferential treatment to African products to find markets in the U.S. without tariffs. AGOA is due to expire in 2015, and we have been lobbying

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the Congress to get it extended before it expires. This summit helped us to make a case and we hope the Congress will now have it on its agenda. Diplomatic Connections: Wasn’t security also high on the agenda? Ambassador Mulamula: Our message to the U.S. government was: help us build the capacity for Africa to be able to maintain its own peace, and to continue deploying peacekeeping missions. We said, you cannot do it for us, but you can do it with us. So President Obama committed funding to help us build the capacity for peacekeeping operations in Africa. Tanzania has been quite active in deploying peacekeeping forces. We’ve been in the Congo, where we joined forces with the UN Peacekeeping operation to weed out the rebel forces; we are in Darfur and Lebanon. They wanted us everywhere, but we don’t have that capacity, and we’re asking for help to increase that capacity. It’s not just training the forces, but we also need the equipment, including communication equipment.

Diplomatic Connections: Africa has six of the fastest growing economies in the world — Tanzania has a seven percent growth — and yet in the public perception Africa is still thought of as a desperate charity case. Why do you think this is? Ambassador Mulamula: That is the mindset and the 34

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perception we need to change. Unfortunately, we have had that history of a continent which is known for conflict, for misery. When we are progressing Ebola hits us, so that is what makes news in the West. We need to change the narrative. It’s historical because most of the countries in Africa are only 50plus years old; it’s still a young continent, but it’s a continent that was colonized. Some of the countries inherited absolutely nothing. So this has been the challenge: to build the states, the infrastructure and the communities. I hope that in time the American public will be able to be told what is the reality on the ground. Because it has changed. Three-quarters of the countries of Africa have recorded economic growth; there are natural resources. The continent has a lot to offer. Diplomatic Connections: But one still thinks of it as the whole — as Africa, and less as a group of individual, separate countries developing at their own pace. How does a country extricate itself from this collective perception and manage to project itself as a separate country with a separate identity? Ambassador Mulamula: When people ask me about Africa, I say it would take me almost four months to talk about because they’re different countries. We are grouped together because of our history, and the way it was partitioned. But each country is unique. Tanzania now is known as a model in terms of good governance, stability, and in terms of being the most peaceful country, and the best economic opportunities.

Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images

President Obama speaks with President Dr. Jakaya Mrisho Kikwete of Tanzania (R) as they attend a leaders’ session at the U.S. - Africa Leaders Summit at the U.S. Department of State in Washington, D.C., on August 6, 2014.

But, of course, we have also some similarities. Diplomatic Connections: I understand Tanzania is preparing a new constitution to be introduced in 2015. Why was there need for a new constitution, and what makes it different from the old constitution? Ambassador Mulamula: The constitution we had when we became independent was amended several times, so it was no longer a coherent constitution. We initially had the constitution of a single political party, which became a national constitution, but it was not a process that involved all the citizens. But in 1992, we introduced a multi-party system, and it was time to have a constitution that would take into account the transformation of the country, but would also involve all the citizens to participate in its making. The constitution is now ready to go to a referendum next year. When it’s adopted by the majority, it will become the new constitution. Diplomatic Connections: What, in your view, are the major challenges facing your country today? Ambassador Mulamula: Despite all these impressive statistics on economic growth, the country is still one of the poorest. The poverty level is still high, so the challenge is how do we alleviate it? We’ve been working with financial institutions: the World Bank, the U.S. government, the United Nations. We’re saying we won’t make headway against poverty if we don’t invest where people are, which is in the rural areas. We have to invest in agriculture, to modernize it so that the majority of the people can go beyond subsistence. Diplomatic Connections: Is there any urbanization? Ambassador Mulamula: There is a lot of urbanization, but if we’re able to bring development to those poorer areas, call it urban, call it a rural transformation, this is how we’ll be able to get out of poverty, by providing the facilities that are needed: electricity, access to roads infrastructure, health facilities, that every ordinary Tanzanian can have. Diplomatic Connections: You mentioned electricity. Is that still a problem? Ambassador Mulamula: Still a problem, but we are seeing another evolution. Last year, only 20 percent of the

population had access to electricity. Our target was that by 2015 it should be 30 percent with electricity. But by this year, because of this effort I’m talking about, 36 percent of the population now has electricity. It’s still very small, but we’re hoping that by 2025 almost maybe the whole country will have access to electrical power. There’s no way that a country can develop when it is in darkness. You cannot have industrialization if you have no energy.

Diplomatic Connections: But I understand that you have now found liquid gas in your country. Ambassador Mulamula: A massive discovery of gas, 50 trillion sq feet both off-shore and on land. Already the infrastructure is in place; we have a pipeline from the south to the commercial capital Dar es Salaam in the north, which is about 576 kilometers of pipeline. The government is gearing up to take advantage of this new discovery. We’re training our own people, and one thing we managed to arrange during the summit was for 20 Tanzanians to come here for training in various universities. Diplomatic Connections: What is the state of bi-lateral trade with the United States? Ambassador Mulamula: It’s good, but more one-way with the American side sending machinery and food to Tanzania. From 2008 – 2012 U.S. exports to Tanzania grew from $55.1 million to $115.6 million. Diplomatic Connections: But to put it in perspective, your trade with China was $2.7 billion last year. China has expanded its role significantly in Africa, particularly in your country. After all, it was in your country that the Chinese built their first railway back in the 1970s. China has established itself while the U.S. was focusing on other problems — Afghanistan, Iraq. Do you think the U.S. needs to push more aggressively in Africa? Ambassador Mulamula: This has been our message [to the U.S. government]: you’re being left behind, and this is what the Americans have also realized. They needed to engage Africa because I don’t think there’s any other continent that has such big potential as Africa. This is what we’ve been

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telling the Americans. We say, you don’t blame the Chinese. The Chinese are going where the opportunities are, where the resources are. We call the Chinese all weather friends. They were in Tanzania during the most difficult times. They were there when everybody was abandoning us. The Americans abandoned us. They didn’t want to do business with us because they thought we were going communist. So for China, it’s not today. They already had a big footprint in Tanzania, politically, economically, socially. Even so, when you go by the statistics, China’s not number one — that’s the UK. The British have invested enormously in this gas exploration. China’s not even second. You have the South Africans, the Kenyans, the Germans, the Dutch. The Americans never wanted to allow the pipeline, so the Chinese gave us a loan of $1.2 billion to build it. And now the Americans say, oh, the Chinese. If you don’t do it for us, and you don’t want us to use the Chinese, what do we do? For us it’s not either China or the U.S. — we want both. During President Bush’s administration, the U.S. put in $608 million to develop infrastruc36

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John Lukuwi/AFP/Getty Images

(L to R) Tanzania’s First Lady Salma Kikwete, Chinese President Xi Jinping, Tanzanian President Dr. Jakaya Kikwete and China’s First Lady Peng Liyuan pose at State House in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania.

ture, roads, energy, the water supply. It was the biggest grant [Washington] had given to any country; this was big money. Not a single American company put in a bid for any of the projects, but the Chinese and the Dutch bid. And it was a very transparent bidding process. Diplomatic Connections: So far Tanzania has escaped the Ebola epidemic, although there has been a report from Oxford University that basically says Tanzania and other African countries are still in danger from the infection. What preventive measures has Tanzania taken to prevent Ebola from crossing your border? Ambassador Mulamula: The Ebola started in West Africa. This gave us time to prepare, and to put preventive mechanisms in place. At the airport there is screening of arriving passengers, and some medical facilities for treating Ebola patients have been put in place. We are prepared. Diplomatic Connections: Is Tanzania still a member of the British Commonwealth, and if so what does that mean in the 21st century?

broad spectrum of different countries.

Ambassador Mulamula: Exactly. Now countries that are

Ambassador Mulamula: For years, the agenda of every Commonwealth summit used to include the question, “Is the Commonwealth still relevant?” But they have finally found out it is relevant because it’s one of the few organizations that brings together developed and less developed countries, from the west, the east, the south; so it’s still a good family of nations that has held together and still has a lot to share. There’s a new agenda for development, for good governance, for democracy. It’s a peer group that has gone beyond the symbolic nature of meeting the queen and then that’s it. Now, the Commonwealth is working on very fundamental issues that will define the nations of tomorrow. Diplomatic Connections: And it does actually include a 38

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not former British colonies want to join, and are being admitted, like Mozambique and Rwanda. They want to speak more English. These days if you don’t speak English you don’t get anywhere. Diplomatic Connections: One of the commitments that President Obama made, I believe when he was visiting your country, was to support the fight against wildlife trafficking by sophisticated poaching syndicates that kill elephants and rhinoceroses in order to sell their tusks and horns. Has that commitment been put into operation? Ambassador Mulamula: Oh yes, in fact, another of the takeaways from the U.S. summit was a special session on wildlife and poaching, chaired by the Secretary of Interior. He engaged all the countries with the problem: Gabon, Tanzania, Botswana, South Africa, Benin — all of them, and then bringing in interested parties of the U.S. government. I didn’t know that the U.S. had a department concerned with wildlife, fisheries, scouting, all in one. Quite different from the responsibilities of our Ministry of the Interior, which is concerned with police and security. The meeting helped us to realize that this was the American partner we should engage. The U.S. is also helping us to get the Chinese to stop the market. Poachers use very sophisticated weapons, so it has become a security issue as well as a criminal issue. We have to work together, including using the technology that the U.S. has. We want to use drones because the areas are so vast, and drones will be able to see where these poachers are. Diplomatic Connections: Are you using drones already? Ambassador Mulamula: No, but we are talking about it. These are not military drones, and we don’t want very sophisticated ones, but ones that we can easily adapt for our use. Diplomatic Connections: What is it like working as an ambassador in Washington, D.C.? Ambassador Mulamula: It’s one of the most privileged positions for any ambassador. When you’re an ambassador here the leader who sent you to Washington in the first place has high expectations. But this country is so big, so how is one able to deliver, to reach and be effective — to be able to have a voice among so many voices? There are more than 200 countries represented here and everyone is trying to get attention, and everyone is targeting almost the same people, the same institutions. So it’s how competitive you are, which is why I seize every opportunity where I could be able to have my voice heard. n

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he plays a former CIA analyst thrust into the role of Secretary of State upon the death of her predecessor in an unexplained plane crash. But Téa Leoni, a stage name adapted from her full name Elizabeth Téa Pantaleoni, was experienced in real life humanitarian diplomacy long before she became the fictional diplomat Elizabeth “Bess” McCord. Named a Goodwill Ambassador for UNICEF in 2001, Leoni is the third generation of her family to become deeply involved in the work of UNICEF — the United Nations Children’s Fund. Her paternal grandmother, Helenka Adamowska Pantaleoni, has been called the “founding spirit of UNICEF.” Created 40

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at the first session of the United Nations General Assembly in 1946, UNICEF was born out of the recognition that, “There are no enemy children,” and that the needs of the world’s children would not go away even though World War II had been brought to an end. From its founding, UNICEF has been directed to provide its aid “without discrimination because of race, creed, nationality, status or political belief.” Initially funded with monies remaining from the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, UNICEF has always been heavily dependent on voluntary contributions for the bulk of its budget. Helenka Pantaleoni served as the

Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images; Inset photos: U.S. Fund for UNICEF

Goodwill Ambassador for UNICEF TĂŠa Leoni at the 2014 UNICEF Ball in Beverly Hills, California. D I P L O M A T I C C O N N E C T I O N S B U S I N E S S edition | J anua r y - F eb r ua r y 2 0 1 5

U.S. Fund for Unicef

Leoni pointed out that â&#x20AC;&#x153;getting kids back in In Ethiopia

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Téa Leoni in Honduras

school is urgent”

In Ethiopia

President of the U.S. Committee for UNICEF for 25 years, helping to raise over $113 million to aid the world’s children. Her son (Téa’s father), Anthony Pantaleoni, has served as Chairman of the Board for the U.S. Committee, and Téa herself was named to the board of the U.S. Committee in 2006. What began with Helenka Pantaleoni’s groundbreaking work founding the Paderewski Fund for Polish Relief in 1941, and then nurturing the birth of UNICEF just as the fledgling United Nations began its work, has become the family heritage. Named as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador in 2001, Téa Leoni has spent time in the field visiting projects in Honduras, Vietnam, Brazil, Ethiopia, Haiti and most recently Jordan. Honoring her grandmother’s commitment, she has worked continuously to aid the work of UNICEF fundraising. “Anything that is UNICEF,” she noted at the 2014 UNICEF Ball presented by Baccarat in Los Angeles in January, “I’m going to try to be there. I serve on the board of the U.S. Committee for UNICEF and as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador, and they are definitely two different gigs,” she noted. “As an Ambassador my job is to be the voice for those who don’t have a voice in the world.” “UNICEF,” Leoni has said “can help more children on a greater scale than any other organization. We are in more than 150 countries around the world. When you have a crisis, or a conflict, or a natural disaster, UNICEF is already there working on the ground. It puts us in a beautiful position to help organize the relief efforts with our partners.” To see the impact of the on-going conflict in Syria on families and children first-hand, Leoni recently visited the Za’atari Refugee Camp in Jordan. UNICEF reports that the Syrian conflict “has affected 5.5 million Syrian children, including 1.4 million children living as refugees in the surrounding countries of Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq and Egypt.” Impacted by not only the displacement of people but by the levels of anger and the sense of abandonment she encountered among the children and teenagers in the camp, Leoni pointed out that “getting kids back in school is urgent. There has to be a safe place for children. We are looking at the potential for a lost generation. These children may grow up without a country.” Transitioning from her real life role as UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador to her fictional television role as Secretary of State Elizabeth McCord has been a natural fit for the assertive, husky-voiced, yet inescapably feminine Téa Leoni. With what has been described as her “chic, Yankee, man style” and predilection for oxford cloth shirts with rolled up sleeves combined with elegant long satin evening skirts, Leoni is often compared to Katherine Hepburn or Lauren Bacall. It is the perfect trademark for a Secretary of State who can out-drive a skeptical Senate committee chair on the golf course, out-charm a suave and polygamous African head of state by greeting all of his wives by name and out-deceive a sexist Balkan henchman proud of his cruelty and duplicity. Center photo: Paul Palazzolo, Téa Leoni and Caryl M. Stern announcing The Eliminate Project

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U.S. Fund for Unicef

Téa Leoni in Ethiopia

“There has to be a safe place for children” Explaining to McCord why he has asked her to become his Secretary of State, President Conrad, played by Keith Carradine, observes that, “You don’t think outside the box; you don’t even know there is a box!” In many ways, “Madam Secretary” aspires to be more like the acclaimed “West Wing” than like the equally acclaimed “Homeland.” There are somber moral challenges facing the United States and serious personal dilemmas for the Secretary of State and her family as well as her personal staff at Foggy Bottom. There is even an on-going tale of political intrigue as Secretary McCord quietly tries to unravel the questionable circumstances surrounding the death of her predecessor. But there is far less of the existential trauma and apocalyptic threat pattern that has come to typify many of the other Washington-based political thrillers. Instead, “Madam Secretary” is part homage to the three women — Madeleine Albright appointed by President Clinton, Condoleezza Rice appointed by President George W. Bush and Hillary Clinton appointed by President Obama — who have served as Secretary of State; part exploration of the behind-the-scenes nuances of foreign policy decisionmaking and execution; and part examination of the impact 44

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of diplomatic power, compartmented secrecy, and political intrigue on a marriage of talented husband and wife and their three expectantly maturing children all trying to maintain a semblance of affectionate normalcy. “Madam Secretary” is executive produced by Barbara Hall, Lori McCreary and Morgan Freeman. Hall recalls that Freeman hatched the idea for the drama while watching Secretary of State Hillary Clinton testify during the Benghazi hearings before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Freeman was impressed by the sentence that came immediately after Secretary Clinton’s oft quoted and repeatedly criticized, “What difference at this point does it make?” response — “It is our job to figure out what happened and do everything we can to prevent it from ever happening again, Senator.” That, thought Freeman, was the reality of being Secretary of State. “He called me and said, ‘What did she go home to, what does she talk about?’ We all wanted to show a woman whose personal life wasn’t falling apart or experiencing scandalous events; she’s doing what she thinks is right, in government and at home.” Political critics and talk-show pundits have derided “Madam Secretary” as a thinly veiled attempt to promote the

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potential presidential candidacy of Hillary Clinton in 2016, a charge the executive producers insist was never their intention. Instead, says Morgan Freeman, “We weren’t trying to do a show about politics. We have had three outstanding and very different women as Secretary of State. What we are trying to do is to craft a show about a strong woman talking about her job and reflecting on her challenges. It’s not as if we threw the three women into a blender and came out with a homogenized THEM. Instead, we’ve tried to learn from all three and emerge with our own vision of what a woman Secretary of State could be like. The show is all of them, and none of them.” Perhaps the most important thing we learn about Secretary of State McCord is that she is a realistic moralist trying to live responsibly and effectively in the amoral world of diplomacy and national security. We repeatedly see her wrestling with the moral conundrums of diplomacy and of family life. She comes from the intelligence community, but she repeatedly wrestles with the recognition that intelligence priorities risk undermining essential diplomatic initiatives. She has three children, each of whom is differently impacted by her official life. The eldest child drops out of college because classmates make her the fulcrum of their disagreements with American policy. The middle daughter struggles with high school and adolescence complicated by a mother who has to bring her security detail to soccer games. And the youngest child, a son, is the resident anarchist in the house nursing an articulate case of elite conspiracy theory. All of these dilemmas and dramas within a drama are catalyzed by Secretary McCord’s husband, Dr. Henry McCord. Conveniently for the storyline, he is an ex-fighter pilot who became a Professor of Religion and Ethics now based at Georgetown University. He is at one and the same time parental anchor for the family, moral conscience for the policy dilemmas confronting his wife and plotline foil when he is pulled into a super-secret intelligence mission because of his contacts with religious leaders around the world.

To its credit, “Madam Secretary” draws heavily on real world events to pose the dilemmas confronting the Secretary of State. Issues as real as the Benghazi attacks that resulted in the death of U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, or the Bhopal chemical leak disaster in India, or the genocide in Rwanda have been fictionalized in order to provide enough distance to explore crucial questions like embassy security, the sometimes conflicting demands of American commercial diplomacy and the welfare of host countries, as well as the complex requirements of humanitarian interventions. And therein lies perhaps the most serious criticism of “Madam Secretary” — the inevitable time compression that is required by one-hour entertainment television. Events that unfold in the real world over years, even centuries, of historic continue to page 53

Téa Leoni in Vietnam

(L-R) “Madam Secretary” cast member Erich Bergen, producer Sam Hoffman, executive producer Lori McCreary, cast members Bebe Neuwirth, Tim Daly, Zeljko Ivanek, Keith Carradine and executive producer/creator Barbara Hall ring the closing bell at the New York Stock Exchange on September 15, 2014, in New York City.

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“Madame Secretary” producer Sam Hoffman, executive producer/creator Barbara Hall, executive producer Lori McCreary and cast members Bebe Neuwirth, Tim Daly, Erich Bergen, Zeljko Ivanek and Keith Carradine pose for pictures after ringing the closing bell at the New York Stock Exchange on September 15, 2014, in New York City.

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Former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright (C) poses with the cast and producers during the premiere of the new television series â&#x20AC;&#x153;Madam Secretaryâ&#x20AC;? in Washington, D.C., on September 18, 2014.

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President and CEO at U.S. Fund for UNICEF Caryl Stern, Téa Leoni, Nikki James, President of Bergdorf Goodman Joshua Schulman and Senior Vice President of Bergdorf Goodman Linda Fargo light the UNICEF Snowflake following the Bergdorf Goodman 2014 Holiday Window Unveiling on November 17, 2014, in New York City.

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President and CEO of the U.S. Fund for UNICEF Caryl Stern, Dena Kaye and Téa Leoni attend the Bergdorf Goodman Holiday Window Unveiling & UNICEF Snowflake Lighting Ceremony on November 17, 2014, in New York City.

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West Duchovny (daughter) and UNICEF Ambassador Téa Leoni in New York City.

Téa Leoni and her father, Anthony Pantaleoni, in New York City.

Perhaps we should call “Madam Secretary” a “dilemmarama” background unfold in minutes and often without the full range of nuance that makes foreign policy decision-making difficult and dangerous. Even more serious, for the sake of dramatic resolution, the denouement of the week’s storyline emerges too quickly and too neatly. Rarely do policy plans emerge unscathed from the acids of multifaceted political realities. Rarely are foreign policy outcomes — even those that are successful — without blowback and unanticipated consequences. And, inevitably, there are foreign policy failures with real costs in human lives, lost diplomatic momentum, and embittered friends and foes alike. “Madam Secretary” started broadcast life on Sunday evenings where it has been repeatedly impacted by NFL football broadcasts running long and playing havoc with the television schedule. Still the program is attracting a loyal and growing audience and appears set for a full network run of episodes. It has delivered solid ratings in the 18 – 49 and 25 – 54 demographics plus has become the most watched scripted broadcast on Sunday evening, out-scoring CBS’ hit series “The Good Wife.” The People’s Choice Awards have included

“Madam Secretary” among the nominees for Favorite New TV Drama, and Téa Leoni is among the nominees for Favorite TV Actress in a New Series. Téa Leoni recalls that when she was a little girl she often played a word game called “Artification” with her father. “I’d make up a word and drop it in a sentence. Then I’d see if he could guess what it meant. One of my words was ‘awepathetic’ . . . when you are so in awe of somebody it’s pathetic.” It is a game of artifice useful in high stakes Scrabble matches when it’s worth points to sneak a neologism by. Useful too, perhaps, even in a fictionalized world of diplomacy where creative word-smithing and even more creative policy initiatives are the stuff of accomplishment . . . and often enough, misdirection. The game was good preparation for television drama, political theater and the ambiguities of diplomatic life. To “artificate” for a moment about Téa Leoni’s intriguing world of televised diplomacy, perhaps we should call “Madam Secretary” a “dilemmarama” — a drama that explores the dilemmas of real world diplomacy and the human realities that confront those who seek to craft policy. n

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H.R.H. The Princess Royal, Princess Anne, speaks during the opening of an exhibition celebrating the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., on November 6, 2014. The exhibition, which lasted 10 weeks, featured the Lincoln Cathedral Magna Carta, one of only four surviving copies of the original issue in 1215.

In November, the Magna Carta, the historic document forced on England’s King John by rebellious barons in the year 1215 to curb his despotic power, was brought to the United States as the main focus of a Library of Congress exhibition called “Magna Carta: Muse and Mentor.” The exhibition was inaugurated by a current English royal, Princess Anne, who is Queen Elizabeth’s only daughter and is known as the Princess Royal. 60

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Her Royal Highness The Princess Royal, Princess Anne, sits alongside her husband, Sir Timothy Laurence, during the opening of an exhibition celebrating the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., on November 6, 2014.

The exhibition is the overture to a year-long celebration in Britain and the U.S. marking the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta, the Great Charter, whereby all the people of England, including the monarch, were for the first time declared subject to, and protected by, the rule of law. The barons forced King John to sign it at Runnymede, on the banks of the River Thames near Windsor. “We take so much for granted in terms of our freedoms

and expectations of freedoms and independence. Anniversaries such as this really are reminders of how far we have come in safeguarding our liberties,” Princess Anne declared in a speech in the ornate Great Hall of the Jefferson Library. “Nearly 800 years ago, the Magna Carta gave us our first concept of a society governed by the rule of law — a major step.” King John broke his commitment almost immediately, but the Magna Carta has resonated throughout history,

and the theme of the current exhibition is the document’s influence on the Founding Fathers in drafting the American Constitution. The extremely rare parchment on display in Washington, written in Latin, was one of four surviving copies of the Great Charter and has for the past eight centuries been kept in the Lincoln Cathedral in the English Midlands. Princess Anne, who was accompanied by her husband, Rear Admiral Sir Timothy Laurence, cut the tape to open the

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Photos by Joey Oliver of Diplomatic Connections Her Royal Highness The Princess Royal, Princess Anne, honoring servicemen and women from both the United Kingdom and United States Armed Forces at Arlington National Cemetery on November 6, 2014.

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H.R.H. The Princess Royal, Princess Anne, paying formal respects to the sacrifice of America’s veterans in foreign wars by placing a wreath before the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery on November 6, 2014.

exhibition. They then attended an elegant inauguration ceremony at which her arrival was heralded by a trumpet fanfare by U.S. Army trumpeters. A red-robed, all-male choir from the Temple Church in London sang George Frederic Handel’s anthem “Zadok the Priest,” composed for the coronation of the British King George II in 1727 (and performed in every coronation since), and also some clauses of the Magna Carta that had been set to music. Referring to the Magna Carta’s continued relevance, Princess Anne said, “It is imperative that we instill these values, this understanding, in the next generation.” In addition to opening the exhibition, Princess Anne’s engagements included braving an afternoon downpour to place a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery and unveiling a plaque commemorating members of the U.S. military in World War I — the so-called Great War — who were awarded the Victoria Cross, Britain’s highest military decoration for valor. At the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, she stood for a few moments alone in the rain, holding an umbrella, and then made a gesture of respect and walked slowly away. The princess’ 48-hour visit was her first to Washington since 1994. The Magna Carta’s most recent “visit” was in 2009, when it was exhibited at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California. But the Magna Carta also has an earlier American history. In 1939, the historic document was brought to the United States for exhibition at the New York World Fair. Still in America at the outbreak of World War II, it was considered too precious to risk returning to Britain, and, at the request of the British government, was stored in Fort Knox for safekeeping for the duration of the conflict. n

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H.R.H. Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, meets with President Obama in the Oval Office of the White House on December 8, 2014, in Washington, D.C.

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here will be “a little bit of royalty at the White House today,” spokesman Josh Earnest told the press one day in December. That little bit was 6 foot 2 inches tall and answered to the name of Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, third in line to the British throne. The prince was on a lightening visit to Washington that included meeting President Obama. The two of them discussed wildlife poaching, especially the illegal ivory trade that is decimating the world’s elephant population, a subject close to Prince William’s heart, the ISIS threat, other global issues — and babies. Well, one particular baby, the duke’s firstborn son Prince George. The duke revealed that George’s birth was so chaotic that he forgot to ask if the baby was a boy or girl — a gem of inside information that future biographers will cherish. Babies were also the topic of conversation between the prince’s wife, the Duchess of Cambridge, and former Secretary of State D I P L O M A T I C C O N N E C T I O N S B U S I N E S S edition | J anua r y - F eb r ua r y 2 0 1 5

Prince William, The Duke of Cambridge, (4th L) sits during a luncheon after delivering a speech during an International Corruption Hunters Alliance event at the World Bank on December 8, 2014, in Washington, D.C. After meeting with U.S. President Barack Obama earlier in the day, Prince William addressed the conference, calling “the trade in elephants’ tusks, rhino horns and other animal parts as one of the most insidious forms of corruption and criminality in the world today.” Prince William is flanked by The Duke of Westminster and Sir David Manning.

Hillary Clinton, with the woman who may well become the next American president dispensing advice on the benefits of singing to babies. And still on the subject of babies, the Duchess of Cambridge, known simply as Kate to millions of people, is herself pregnant and expecting her second child in April. The royal couple was on a three-day visit to New York, including Prince William’s quick side-trip to Washington — his first. Kensington Palace (now the Cambridges’ residence) had originally announced that the duke would attend a conference on corruption at the World Bank in Washington, at which he was expected to highlight the links between wildlife 66

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poaching and money laundering. The information that he would also call on the president at the White House was added on the eve of the couple’s arrival — either for security reasons, or because the White House took its time confirming the visit (not an unusual occurrence). The Duke of Cambridge is now confronting the unique challenge of being a monarch in waiting: What to do until his turn comes around? Earlier this year, he stopped being an active member of the British Armed Forces (he is a fully qualified RAF search-and-rescue helicopter pilot) and will devote more time to his charities and causes, including the Tusk Trust, United for Wildlife, and the Royal Foundation of the Duke and

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Duchess of Cambridge and Prince Harry, which is active with children, young people, veterans and serving members of the armed forces (Prince Harry remains a serving army officer). Members of the Cambridges’ household privately admit that this is a transitional year for the second in line to the throne while he considers what are officially described as “a number of options for public service.” Meanwhile, says Kensington Palace, “He will continue to support the work of the Queen and the royal family through a program of official engagements, both at home and overseas, with the Duchess of Cambridge.” The trip to New York and Washington was undertaken in the context of official engagements by the duke and duchess. The White House mentioned, not once, but twice, that the Duke of Cambridge’s visit “underscores the special relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom.” The focus on wildlife conservation was a winner with the White House because the Obama administration had already addressed the problem in August as part of the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit’s agenda. It promised African states with game reserves increased help in combating poaching.

Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, and World Bank President Jim Yong Kim (L) attend the third Biennial Meeting of the International Corruption Hunters Alliance (ICHA) at the World Bank Headquarters in Washington, D.C., on December 8, 2014. The group brought together more than 300 corruption experts and agency heads from more than 120 countries in an effort to curb illicit financial flows, end transnational bribery, and prevent corruption and wildlife crime.

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Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, and Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, walk past the “Hall of Faces,” which contains photos of those who died in the September 11 terrorist attacks, during a tour to the National September 11 Memorial & Museum on December 09, 2014, in New York City. The couple, who travelled without their son Prince George, were on a three-day U.S. East Coast visit. This was the Duke and Duchess’ first official visit to New York City.

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Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, and Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, leave the St. Andrews 600th Anniversary Dinner at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on December 9, 2014, in New York City. The event was created to support scholarships and bursaries for students from under-privileged communities and investment in the universityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s media and science faculties, sports centers and lectureship in American literature. D I P L O M A T I C C O N N E C T I O N S B U S I N E S S edition | J anua r y - F eb r ua r y 2 0 1 5

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Prince William, Duke of Cambridge and Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge pose with Global Ambassador Dikembe Mutombo (L), NBA Commissioner Adam Silver (2nd R) and Sr. Vice President, Community & Player Programs Kathleen Behrens as they attend the Cleveland Cavaliers vs. Brooklyn Nets game at Barclays Center on December 8, 2014, in the Brooklyn borough of New York City.

Some African governments even asked for surveillance drones to patrol their wildlife areas. The Duke of Cambridge stayed on message even in New York, where, addressing a reception, he said, “I’m pretty exercised, to put it mildly, about the plight of some of the world’s most iconic species. These species are being illegally butchered in the name of trinkets and medicine.” He went on, “It’s easy to blame others for the problem — demand in Southeast Asia, not enough protection on the ground and so on. But, if I may say, we could start with looking closer to home. Our own nations still have thriving black markets in these products, and we have to raise the game at home as well as abroad. But it’s not all doom and gloom. You’re the lights at the end of the tunnel. What all of us in this room represent, and tens of thousands of people out there, is solid purpose — a determination not to let our generation be the one that let this catastrophe occur.” While her husband was in Washington, Duchess Kate had her own program, visiting the Northside Center for Child Development in Harlem, where the children thought she was the princess from the Disney cartoon “Frozen.” Accompanied by Chirlane McCray, wife of New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, the Duchess helped wrap Christmas gifts and joined young children in decorating picture frames, crouching down to talk to them at their level in a manner reminiscent of her husband’s late mother Princess Diana. On a sombre, rainy December morning the couple also laid a wreath at New York’s 9/11 Memorial (with a card written by the duchess herself) and toured the museum. But on the lighter side, their schedule included a visit to the Empire State Building, and their first ever experience at a professional basketball game. They watched the Cleveland Cavaliers wipe out the Brooklyn Nets 110 – 88 at the Barclays Center. After that came a pre-arranged, center-court meeting with American royalty — Beyoncé and her rapper husband Jay-Z, an encounter bathed in the flashes of hundreds of fans’ cell phones. Their visit ended with a $6,000-a-head black-tie fundraiser at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for the couple’s alma mater, the University of St. Andrews, the Scottish institution where William and Kate first met. Prince William and actor Tom Hanks, whose daughter attended the school, spoke at the event. Conversing with William and Kate at the Barclays Center, Cleveland Cavaliers star LeBron James asked the prince his shoe size. “Half the size of yours,” replied the prince. Stepping into someone else’s shoes is something the Duke of Cambridge knows all about. n D I P L O M A T I C C O N N E C T I O N S B U S I N E S S edition | J anua r y - F eb r ua r y 2 0 1 5

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U.S. Vice President Joe Biden and Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski talk beside the Solidarity trade union flag in the presidential palace in Warsaw, Poland.

By Roland Flamini What has a cowboy got to do with Poland? On a sunny November afternoon in Warsaw’s Old Town, a group of puzzled schoolchildren gaze at a giant poster of a tall, black-clad sheriff from the American West. Next to the star on his chest he is wearing a badge that says Solidarnosc (Solidarity), and in his right hand is an election ballot. The poster’s caption reads: “June 4th, 1989. High Noon.” The group’s young teacher explains that the cowboy is movie star Gary Cooper in the role of sheriff Will Kane in the 1950s movie “High Noon,” and what they are looking at is an enlarged version of the famous campaign poster used by Solidarity, Lech Wałçsa’s independent labor union, in 1989 in the first free elections in Poland in 40 years. The result of those elections was an overwhelming victory for Solidarity, and the beginning of the end of Soviet control in Eastern Europe and the Baltic. The poster had been reissued to mark the 25th anniversary of that seismic tremor in the historical surface — the end of the Cold War. But in Poland, its imagery of confrontation had a special significance as the Russians threatened Ukraine next door. In the movie, Kane kills the bad guys in a climactic final gunfight. For younger generations of Poles (a quarter of the population of 38.5 million is under 25) such narratives as Solidarity’s struggle against the Communist regime are becoming as remote as the Vietnam War is to young Americans — and the horrors of World War II even more so. Hence such excursions to expose them to the institutional memory — and bring alive the pages of history. One important stop is the so-called Royal Castle in the Polish capital’s Old Town. The palace from which Polish monarchs once ruled the country is a symbol of the Polish nation — and of a people’s resilience, resourcefulness and determination. It is hard to believe that the massive stucco Baroque structure opened in 1984 was re-built literally from the ground up. The occupying Germans had destroyed it in reprisal for the abortive Polish uprising in 1944. All that was left was a blackened fragment of wall three stories high with holes where the windows used to be. For three decades it

brooded over a vast open space in the center of Warsaw. But with Hitler’s army at their gates, the Poles had already emptied the castle of its more important paintings, furniture and other valuable objects and carried them to safety. And when the Germans, before destroying it, declared the castle a no-go area, curators risked their lives to sneak into the building to collect sections of paneling, stucco friezes, draperies, chimney pieces and anything that could be stripped or pried free (One man actually was killed on such an expedition). Successive Communist leaders were not enthusiastic about encouraging the re-creation of a national monument, but gradually the work inched forward, sometimes secretly and always miraculously. It wasn’t until the late 1980s that all 72 salons, rooms, galleries and halls on five floors had been recreated in their former neo-classic opulence with the aid of old photographs, sketches, the saved scraps of material and wood panels — and 50 pounds of gold leaf. For the outside structure, a dozen 18th century paintings of the façade from different angles and its surroundings by the Venetian artist Bernardo Bellotto, Canaletto’s nephew, became a valuable source. The paintings are now in the castle in a room of their own. Another venue of the collective memory, and always crowded with young visitors, is the Museum of the Warsaw Uprising in 1944, which vividly tracks events in the insurrection against the German forces in the late stages of the war. It has a “little insurgents” room honoring the role played by young people in the uprising, a replica of the Warsaw sewers (minus the dirt) used by the insurgents to get about the city undetected plus a room of printing presses on which the underground bulletins and newspapers were printed. In the main hall hangs a full-size U.S. Air Force B-24 longrange bomber like the ones that (infrequently) reached Warsaw and dropped bombs on German targets. There’s also a section on the atrocities of the German occupation, and the brutal retaliation that followed when the uprising was suppressed. Moscow discouraged the building of monuments to heroic resistance in its satellites to avoid giving dissidents ideas. It wasn’t until 2004, well after the fall of communism in

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NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen (C), Polish Defence Minister Tomasz Siemoniak (L) and Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski in Warsaw, Poland.

Poland, that the Museum of the Warsaw Uprising was opened. Besides, the museum is an indictment of both the Nazis and the Soviets. Stalin ordered his advancing forces to halt at the Polish border, letting the Poles fight alone. The museum has a section focusing on music during the fighting. One photo shows the Polish conductor Andrezj Markowski giving a piano recital for the insurgents. It’s an indication of the degree to which music is part of the Polish national consciousness: the Polish Prime Minister Ignacy Jan Paderewski was a virtuoso pianist turned politician; Warsaw’s airport is named after the composer Frederic Chopin; and the composer’s heart is enshrined in a marble column in the Holy Cross Church in Krakowskie Przedmie´scie, one of the main avenues in the capital. So it was somehow fitting that music was added on the margins of the 25th anniversary of Poland’s return to democracy in 2014. Two concerts were staged in Warsaw. One was of music by the American composers Aaron Copland, Charles Ives and Lowell Liebermann performed by a Polish orchestra conducted by American Kenneth Slowik, the artistic director of the Smithsonian Chamber Music Society. The other was of Polish compositions under the baton of the Polish conductor Marek Mos. In the latter concert, the American cellist Steven 76

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Honigberg was the soloist in Andrzej Panufnik’s purotechnic concerto for cello and orchestra. The concerts were organized jointly by the Andrzej Markowski Foundation, headed by the conductor’s daughter Malgorzata Markowska and the Smithsonian Institution. To the Poles the collaboration that made it possible for a Washingtonian to conduct iconic American compositions like “The Appalachian Spring” orchestral suite in a performance by Polish musicians in Poland’s capital fitted nicely as a symbolic representation of what was certainly not possible 25 years ago, but is possible now. By coincidence, another important gap in the Polish collective memory received belated attention the same week at the two concerts when the Museum of the History of Polish Jews was formally opened in what was once Warsaw Ghetto. The museum goes beyond the Holocaust to portray the history of the Jewish presence in Polish life that begins in the Middle Ages and continues into the present day. Speaking at the inauguration of the glass, light-filled structure by the Finnish architect Rainer Mahlamäki, Israel’s President Reuven Rivlin said, “Although Jews were torn away from Poland, it is difficult, or even impossible to tear Poland away from Jews. It is impossible to erase history so rich, so full and so extremely painful.” n

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By James A. Winship, Ph.D. Pictured front L to R: Vietnam’s President Truong Tan Sang Angélica Rivera and husband; Mexico’s President Enrique Peña Nieto; Chile’s President Michelle Bachelet; Brunei’s Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah; Philippine President Benigno Aquino; Russia’s President Vladimir Putin; China’s President Xi Jinping and his wife Peng Liyuan; Indonesia’s President Joko Widodo and his wife Iriana Widodo; U.S. President Barack Obama; South Korea’s President Park Geun-Hye; Peru’s President Ollanta Humala; Thailand’s Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha and his wife Naraporn; (and pictured second row, L to R) Hong Kong’s Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying; Bronagh Key and her husband New Zealand’s Prime Minister John Key; Akie Abe and her husband Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe; Laureen Harper and her husband Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper; Australia’s Prime Minister Tony Abbott; Malaysia’s Prime Minister Najib Razak and his wife Rosmah Mansor; Papua New Guinea’s Prime Minister Peter O’Neill and his wife Lynda May Babao; Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and his wife Ho Ching; Taiwanese envoy to APEC Summit Vincent Siew and his wife Susan Chu pose for for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) grouping for a ‘family photo’ at the Beijing National Aquatics Center in the Chinese capital on November 10, 2014. Top leaders and ministers of the 21-member APEC met for the summit from November 7 to 11, 2014.

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President Obama (L) and China’s President Xi Jinping shake hands following a bilateral meeting at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on November 12, 2014. Obama began a one-day state visit after the closing of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit.

resident Barack Obama’s recent weeklong trip to Asia was a whirlwind exercise in summitry that represented a fascinating case study in multilateral diplomacy combined with high-level bilateral meetings. This journey was a classic example of what might be called “two-fer” diplomacy. In Beijing, Obama attended the APEC Summit hosted by China and met with Chinese leader Xi Jinping. In Nay Pyi Taw, he attended the ASEAN Summit and met with Myanmar’s President Thein Sein before moving on to Yangon to meet with opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi. In Brisbane, he attended the G-20 Summit, and continued meetings with Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott that began in Beijing. The trip also put two quite different diplomatic tracks on display. On the one hand, the series of multilateral meetings represented the culmination of the work of Sherpas — high-level diplomatic representatives of the heads of government — and supporting staff members whose day-to-day work is the often invisible muscle and sinew of 21st century diplomacy. A 80

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look at the extensive agendas of the APEC, ASEAN and G-20 meetings underscores the enormous amount of staff work that goes into prepping these summits, where the heads of government gather to ratify months of detailed behind-thescenes negotiations. On the other hand, Obama’s series of bilateral meetings with key leaders represented efforts to midwife a new postpost-Cold War international system struggling to be born. Even as the world celebrates the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War, the brief and mirage-like flirtation with unipolar American global hegemony has dissolved to be replaced by the search for a new international system. Whatever that new system may be, it must take into account both the rebirth of localism rending the fabric of nation-states and the inevitability of emergent global issues such as climate change that transcend the nation-state. At the same time, Obama’s agenda had to grapple with the realities of an ascendant China anxiously elbowing its way toward Great Power status and a renascent Russia attempting to reclaim Great Power relevance.

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Beijing: A Confluence of Interests and Traces of Conflict

that the United States and China are going to bump heads in the China Seas and the airspace above them as China asserts a regional presence and the United States underscores its continuing commitment to friends and allies in the region. For all the diplomatic niceties of the Obama-Xi meetings, there were moments where tensions leaked out. As President Xi noted, he had “a constructive and productive” discussion

The headline news out of the meetings between President Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping involved the joint announcement of new commitments to slow, reduce and control carbon emissions by their countries. The United States intends to reduce its carbon emissions by 26 – 28 percent below its 2005 level by 2025. China Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping attend a bilateral meeting at the Diaoyutai State intends to peak its CO2 emissions Guesthouse during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit on November 9, 2014, in Beijing, China. around 2030 and to dramatically 2014 APEC Economic Leaders’ Meetings and APEC Summit were held at Beijing’s outskirt Yanqi Lake. increase the share of non-fossil fuels in primary energy consumption to 20 percent by 2030. Note, however, that this event was described as a “joint announcement” not a “joint agreement.” There are no enforceable provisions here. Critics were quick to reject this joint announcement as meaningless, but that may be an overly cynical reaction. This formula of parallel joint statements is a staple of U.S.-China relations dating back to the Shanghai Communiqué. It is a mechanism for the two sides to recognize a concern, state their differences and agree to continue working together. The Chinese and American leaders also announced a revealing list of additional actions to which they had agreed, ranging from trade and monetary concerns to extended length visas; to cooperation on terrorism-related issues; to nonproliferation questions “including a unique bilateral mechanism to address priority proliferation threats” (Read: North Korea); to a trilateral U.S.-China-Afghanistan dialogue; and including — tellingly — an agreement to pursue “militaryto-military confidence-building mechanisms” intended to “increase transparency and predictability and reduce unintended incidents.” This is a gentle way of acknowledging D I P L O M A T I C C O N N E C T I O N S B U S I N E S S edition | J anua r y - F eb r ua r y 2 0 1 5

with President Obama that included a “sincere and in-depth exchange of views.” Notably, he observed, “We agreed to continue to advance the development of a new model of major-country relations between China and the United States.” Obama added that the two presidents have a “common understanding” about how the relationship between China and the United States can move forward. “We agree that we can expand our cooperation where our interests overlap or align. When we have disagreements, we will be candid and clear about our intentions, and we will work to narrow those differences where possible.” Those differences quickly appeared in the same joint press conference when President Xi used part of his final response to return to an earlier question about access for the foreign press and press freedom in China. “China protects our citizens’ freedom of expression and the normal rights and interests of media organizations in accordance with law,” Xi insisted. “On the other hand, media outlets need to obey China’s laws and regulations.” Any chilling effect of his statement was apparently fully intended.

From APEC to ASEAN: “America is a Thoroughly Pacific Nation” Though the bilateral meetings with Chinese President Xi dominated the press coverage, President Obama also participated in the APEC Economic Leaders Meeting while in Beijing. There he reiterated a message at once simple and always excruciatingly in process of definition. “Despite the responsibilities of American leadership around the world, despite our attention to getting our economy growing, there should be no doubt that the United States of America remains entirely committed when it comes to Asia.” President Obama noted the new directions that free trade questions are moving in the region. The United States has been pushing to finalize what it calls a “Trans-Pacific Partnership” between itself and 11 other nations on both sides of the Pacific. At the same time, he acknowledged, China has been moving toward realization of the “Free Trade Area of the Pacific.” Obama seemed to say that these two initiatives are potentially compatible, but it is also clear that there are tensions over whether the center of gravity of such 82

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trade agreements is in Washington, Beijing — or both. The themes were much the same at the ASEAN Summit in Nay Pyi Taw, Myanmar’s new administrative capital that was a greenfield city 10 years ago and is now that country’s third largest urban center. Obama stressed that, “The United States is committed to strengthening ASEAN, both as an institution and as a community of nations.” While much of the ASEAN Summit was focused on trade issues, particularly reciprocal trade missions and development, there was also an emphasis on regional security issues, particularly maritime security issues. These included anti-piracy efforts and the tensions created by conflicting territorial claims in the adjacent seas as well as cybersecurity and cybercrime concerns.

What’s in a Name: Myanmar or Burma? Because Myanmar/Burma is a country delicately in the midst of political transition from control by a ruling military clique toward a nascent, if tentative, democracy, President Obama walked a Wallenda-like tightrope between the current government of Myanmar in Nay Pyi Taw and Burma’s political opposition leadership in Yangon/Rangoon. Using the name Myanmar, adopted by the military regime in 1989, indicates rejection of the country’s colonial past. Using the name Burma, by contrast, implies non-recognition of the military junta. Strikingly, United States diplomacy uses both terms depending on whether it is dealing with the government or the opposition. President Obama had one consistent and overarching goal during his visit — to nurture the emergence of democracy and to assure free and fair process in the national elections scheduled for 2015. With this goal in mind, Obama met with President Thein Sein and held a roundtable discussion with parliamentary leaders in Nay Pyi Taw, which included opposition leader and member of parliament Aung San Suu Kyi. There, he underscored the importance of the transition process — “consolidating the gains that have already been made, but also pushing further to institute a genuine democracy that can serve the needs of all the people.” Moving from Nay Pyi Taw to Yangon/Rangoon, the different names for the country’s former capital reflect the requirements of the military’s “Adaptation of Expression Law,” Obama met not only with Aung San Suu Kyi but also with a cross-section of civil society organization leaders and with the Young Southeast Asian Leaders Initiative in a town hall format.

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Chinese President Xi Jinping (C) gestures as President Obama (L) and Russian President Vladimir Putin (R) look on at the end of a group photo of leaders of Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) economies at Yanqi Lake, north of Beijing on November 11, 2014. Behind are Malaysiaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Prime Minister Najib Razak (L), New Zealand Prime Minister John Key (C) and Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong. Top leaders and ministers of the 21-member APEC grouping met in Beijing from November 7 to 11, 2014.

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President Obama (L) speaks during a bilateral meeting with Myanmar’s President Thein Sein at the Presidential Palace in Naypyidaw, Myanmar, on November 13, 2014. The United States called for Myanmar to allow stateless Rohingya Muslims to become citizens, after President Obama said he was “deeply concerned” about the marginalized group. Obama, who was in Myanmar’s capital to attend the East Asia Summit, pushed to ensure the “fundamental universal rights” of all those in the nation, a White House official said.

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President Obama and Myanmar’s opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi speak during a press conference at her residence in Yangon on November 14, 2014. Obama began talks with Suu Kyi in a show of support for the opposition leader as the nation turns towards elections next year with uncertainty over the direction of reforms.

After meeting with Aung San Suu Kyi, Obama noted that they talked about “the need for stronger rule of law, elections that are free, fair and inclusive, and for continued constitutional changes that will move Burma more fully toward a civilian government.” These words both emphasized America’s desire to “facilitate and bolster Burma’s political transition” and prodded the government to remove constitutional provisions that block Aung San Suu Kyi from being a candidate for president. President Obama offered encouragement to the young leaders with whom he met. “We’re betting on this country [Burma], but we’re also betting on this region,” he told them, “because we see young people of different nations and religions and ethnicities who are eager to come together and address all the challengers that are out there. The future of this region, your region, is not going to be determined by dictators or by armies. It’s going to be determined by entrepreneurs and inventors and people who are doing things in the community.

And you are going to be the leaders who make it happen.”

To Brisbane: Strengthening Alliances and Rebuilding Economies Because President Obama’s schedule was so full, his bilateral meeting with Australia’s Prime Minister Tony Abbott actually took place in Beijing during the APEC gathering rather than in Brisbane at the G-20 Summit. Both leaders emphasized “the incredibly strong bilateral alliance and relationship between our peoples,” and that closeness provided the basis for a more sharply honed discussion of global and regional issues. Obama noted that Australia “consistently shares values, ideals, a sense of global responsibility that is unparalleled” and thanked the Prime Minister for “the extraordinary security partnership that we have,” noting Australia’s participation in the coalition to stabilize Afghanistan and in the coalition attempting to deal with ISIL in Iraq. The leaders also discussed events in Hong Kong, emphasizing that they wished to see violence avoided “as

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Andrew Taylor/G20 Australia via Getty Images

(Front row L-R) Russia’s President Vladimir Putin; South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma; France’s President François Hollande; Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel; Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe; Australia’s Prime Minister Tony Abbott; China’s President Xi Jinping; U.S. President Barack Obama; Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff; Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Salman bin Abdulaziz; Turkey’s Prime Minister Ahmet Davutogˇlu; (middle row L-R) Mexico’s President Enrique Peña Nieto; Spain’s President of the Government Mariano Rajoy Brey; European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker; Republic of Korea’s President Park Geun-hye; Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper; Indonesia’s President Joko Widodo; U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron; India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi; Italy’s Prime Minister Matteo Renzi; European Council President Herman Van Rompuy; Argentina’s Minister of Economy Axel Kicillof; (back row L-R) FSB Chairman Mark Carney; International Labour Organization Director General Guy Ryder; IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde; OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurria; Senegal’s President Macky Sall; Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong; New Zealand’s Prime Minister John Key; Mauritania’s President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz; Myanmar’s President U Thein Sein; World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim; WTO Director-General Roberto Azevedo and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon pose for a group photo during the G-20 Leaders Summit on November 15, 2014, in Brisbane, Australia. World leaders gathered in Brisbane for the annual G-20 Summit and discussed economic growth, free trade and climate change as well as pressing issues including the situation in Ukraine and the Ebola crisis. D I P L O M A T I C C O N N E C T I O N S B U S I N E S S edition | J anua r y - F eb r ua r y 2 0 1 5

the people of Hong Kong try to sort through what the next phase of their relationship is to the mainland [China].” China’s initiatives to build new international institutions in Asia — a free trade area, an Infrastructure Investment Bank and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization — were also a topic of discussion. President Obama said that the United States is not opposed to these efforts and wants to encourage China’s efforts to make contributions to the international order, but, “It is important for China to uphold international rules and norms as it expands its influence both regionally and around the world.” The G-20 Leaders Meeting was largely focused on the issues of economic growth, trade, infrastructure investment and debt. Layers of technical discussions and supporting documents emphasized the need to build a stronger, more resilient global economy and generated new mechanisms intended to pursue these goals. The United States was chided for its failure to ratify the International Monetary Fund quota and governance reforms agreed to in 2010. And all participants agreed that strengthening the global trading system and increasing collaboration on global energy supplies and efficiency must be top priorities. Despite the G-20’s economic focus, it was relations with

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Russia and reports that President Putin left the G-20 meeting in annoyance after a “barrage of criticism” that generated the headlines coming out of Brisbane. In the post-summit press conference, a reporter noted that, “Some of your fellow G-20 leaders took an in-your-face approach with President Putin,” and asked President Obama how confrontational his dealings with President Putin had been. Characterizing his interactions with Putin as “businesslike and blunt,” Obama continued, “It is not our preference to see Russia isolated the way it is. We would prefer a Russia that is fully integrated with the global economy; that is thriving on behalf of its people; that can once again engage in cooperative efforts around global challenges. But we’re also very firm on the need to uphold core international principles. And, one of those principles is that you don’t invade other countries or finance proxies and support them in ways that break up a country that has mechanisms for democratic elections.”

Diplomacy of the Moment Gives Way to a Vision of the Future Though much of the press coverage of President Obama’s trip was overshadowed by the continuing story of his party’s midterm election losses and the policy consequences of an incoming Congress where Republicans will control both the House of Representatives and the Senate, this was one of the President’s most consequential diplomatic forays. It took him beyond the realm of dealing with immediate foreign policy crises, though these were part of the agenda, and into the realm of shaping an evolving international system that recognizes and incorporates new realities while sustaining and rethinking core principles as basic as the nature of sovereignty and the judicious uses of power. Perhaps the deepest, most hopeful message of Obama’s Asia foray can be summed up in an admonition he gave to the Young Southeast Asian Leaders Initiative in Rangoon as he reminded them of the task before them. “Progress,” he observed, “is not inevitable. History does not always march forward. History can travel sideways and sometimes backwards. Building trust after years of conflict takes time. Being able to look past the scars of violence takes courage. Securing the gains of freedom and democracy requires good faith and strength of will, and tolerance and respect for diversity, and it requires vigilance from all citizens.” The very same things might be said about the task of shaping a new international system for the 21st century. That is a message that Americans, Europeans, Russians and Chinese alike need to hear. n

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