For a diplomatic meet-and-greet, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s weekend visit to Beijing produced a surprising number of developments. They all seemed to fall in the category of things which are known but not usually said, especially by diplomats. As I wrote on Saturday, Clinton signaled ahead of her arrival that she wasn’t going to let human rights, long a bilateral bugaboo, interfere with advancing progress between the U.S. and China on issues like the global economy. On Sunday she encouraged China to continue buying U.S. Treasury bonds. I guess you could argue one naturally follows the other. It’s hard to make a pitch for buying U.S. debt at the same time you’re railing about China’s human rights record. At the same time, it’s not as if China has many other good options for investing that money, so perhaps Clinton didn’t need to make so desperate a pitch. At Daiyutai on Saturday Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi said Beijing would continue putting its exchange reserves in investments that are safe, liquid and offer good value. He stopped short of saying China will continue buying U.S. Treasuries with the same enthusiasm of the past, but it’s hard to see where else it could go.
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Obama’s Afghanistan Problem: Neither Karzai Nor the Taliban Like the ‘Reconciliation’ Script
President Barack Obama huddled with President Hamid Karzai in Chicago on Sunday, urging Afghanistan’s leader to accelerate negotiations with the Taliban over a political solution to the longest war in America’s history. But the prospect for Karzai negotiating successfully with the insurgents is clouded by a question raised by Josef Stalin, on the eve of World War II, in response to the suggestion that he offer concessions to the Pope: “How many divisions does he have?” The Taliban now ask the same question about Karzai. And should the Afghan leader also ask himself the question, he might reach a similarly dispiriting conclusion. Karzai’s independent power base is minimal, as is his ability to influence the outcome of his country’s civil war absent direct U.S. involvement. And that gives neither Karzai nor the Taliban much incentive to cut a deal with the other.
Must-Reads from Around the World, May 21, 2012
Spillover - Lebanon’s Daily Star reports on escalating violence inside the country after soldiers shot dead a prominent anti-Bashar al-Assad Muslim preacher Sunday. “The gravity of the incident… prompted leaders on both sides of the political divide to call for calm and restraint to prevent the country from sliding into sectarian strife as a result of a spillover of the 15-month-old uprising in neighboring Syria,” it says.
A Royal Party: Britain Celebrates 60 Years of Queen Elizabeth II
From parades to concerts, and even tea with commoners, 86 year-old Queen Elizabeth II is traversing the United Kingdom to commemorate her Diamond Jubilee.
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