Carnegie Endowment - End of Brief Affair? US and Iran
Engage Iran, please?: Daniel Brumberg says we need to get Iran on our side. "Some security issues call for the threat of sticks, but the United States must also seek to engage Iran by offering it carrots-cooperation in Afghanistan and an end to economic sanctions, in return for a commitment by Iran's leaders to cease support for terrorism and back a two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict."If only Brumberg could come up with a way of making those Iranian commitments stick.
Human Rights Watch: Clifford Bob writes in Foreign Policy this month on how international NGOs "that reach the global limelight often do so at dear cost—by distorting their principles and alienating their constituencies for the sake of appealing to self-interested donors in rich nations." A sidebar to his article, with an excerpt from Human Rights Watch’s World Report 2001, helps explain why they care only about one side and not the other...
The failure to include a particular country or issue often reflects no more than staffing limitations and should not be taken as commentary on the significance of the problem. There are many serious human rights violations that Human Rights Watch simply lacks the capacity to address. Other factors affecting the focus of our work … include the severity of abuses, access to the country and the availability of information about it, the susceptibility of abusive forces to outside influence, the importance of addressing certain thematic concerns, and the need to maintain a balance in the work of Human Rights Watch across various political divides.
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