Not surprisingly, Tuesday morning’s Early Alert also focused primarily on Egypt. We divided our cover of Egypt into three sections: commentary on what the protests might mean for Israel (the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty being a core component of Israel’s defense policy), perceptions of the nascent transition in Egypt, in which the opposition lacks a clear leader and Mubarak remains entrenched in power, and of the continued upheaval across the Arab world. I also wrote a section on South Sudan, the world’s newest country after an overwhelming majority of the predominantly-Christian south voted in favor of a referendum on independence from the predominantly-Muslim north. While I was working on the Early Alert, other employees in the office were interviewing Ambassador Philip L. Verveer, the United States Coordinator for International Communications & Information Policy. Prior to the interview I helped research the Ambassador’s background and brainstorm possible questions to ask during the interview.
Wednesday was easily the busiest day of the week. For starters, because one of the two officials who works on the Early Alert had been gone since Monday helping to brief and train officials in Oslo, and since the other Early Alert employee normally does not work on Wednesdays, I was tasked with doing the Early Alert on my own. Luckily, however, the director of the Media Hub was available for some guidance – in particular recommending to me to devote a section of the report to Wael Ghonim, a 30-year-old Google executive who had been arrested by Mubarak. “The revolt now has a hero” hailed Spain’s El Pais, a call echoed by many other European papers. The other section I wrote on Egypt dealt more generally with discussions of Egypt’s inevitable transition from Mubarak. Like Tuesday, I wrote again on the European perception of South Sudan’s future, which largely focused on the highly complicated questions the two Sudans would have to agree on (most controversial: how to divide the large oil fields that lie near or across the uncertain border). The last section I wrote was on the Moscow airport bombing. The bombing itself wasn’t news – it occurred on January 24th – but many European papers had photos of Doku Umarov, a leader of one faction of Chechen terrorists who claimed responsibility for the bombing (though, many papers noted, “Umarov is known for assuming responsibility for any miseries befalling Russia”).
After lunch, I headed out with the Media Hub director and one of the interns to the 2011 French Institute of International Relations (IFRI) conference on energy, titled “Speed Bumps on the Road to Sustainability” with a focus on energy technology and geopolitics. We went there to try to interview some of the participants in attendance – including Juho Lipponen, who heads the carbon capture and storage unit of the International Energy Agency, and Barbara Buchner, director of the Climate Policy Initiative Venice office. It was quite interesting to be at the conference and getting a chance to talk to various officials there, though unfortunately our team was a bit disorganized, since the director of the Media Hub had to leave abruptly to join a conference call. Eventually, however, the administrative assistant from our office came out to the conference to help me and the other intern find people to interview. I helped brainstorm with the intern what questions to ask a few of the people we interviewed, but otherwise I was pretty useless other than carrying equipment. Still, it was nice to get a chance to see what much of the rest of the office is up to.
While the other Media Hub employees/interns returned to the office after the IFRI conference, I went directly to a conference put together by the EU interns (or as they are called here, “stagiaires”) about European Foreign Policy. Titled “European Foreign Policy: Pulling Europe’s weight on the global stage,” it consisted of a roundtable by a number of speakers:
- Mr Michael Emerson, Associate Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS)
- Ms Paula Abreu Marques, European Commission, DG Energy, Head of Unit International Relations and Enlargement
- Mr Elmar Brok, Member of the European Parliament and its rapporteur on the EEAS
- Mr Christopher Davis, Minister-Counsellor for Political Affairs at the United States Mission to the EU
- Mr Álvaro de Vasconcelos, Director of the European Union Institute for Security Studies (EUISS)
- Mr Andrey Panyukhov, Senior counsellor for political affairs at the Permanent Mission of the Russian Federation to the EU
Some were definitely more interesting than others, but overall it was an interesting presentation. In particular, I thought Christopher Davis’s overview of US-EU relations was quite interesting: he talked in broad terms about the similarities between the United States and the European Union – both being entities founded on ideas. Just as the founding fathers of the US envisioned the new nation’s ‘Manifest Destiny’ to expand across the continent, the founding fathers of the EU envisioned that the Coal and Steel Community they set up between Germany, France, etc would expand both in membership and in integration. In any case, Davis remarked something along the lines of that the promise of EU membership is the most powerful foreign policy in the world – and given the vast multitude of reforms an applicant country has to make before joining, I’d say that sounds right to me. He and some of the other speakers addressed and were asked questions about the EU’s lack of any significant or decisive response to the events in Egypt – in particular, the weak response of Catherine Ashton, the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy (essentially the same position as Secretary of State in the US, except that Ashton has far, far less power or responsibilities than does Hilary Clinton). Basically the response of all the speakers was that Ashton is going to be weaker on issues than some member-states because she has to seek and representative the consensus of all 27-members of the EU... that said, not all EU interns sounded convinced.
However, what I was most looking forward to was meeting some of the EU interns. Initially I chatted with one of the event organizers, from who I learned that the term of the current group of EU interns ends at the end of the month. Later, after finding a seat in the conference hall, I was joined by an intern from Britain who works in the EuropeAid Development and Co-operation Directorate-General (basically the equivalent of USAID). During Q and A, she asked the roundtable an interesting question. Earlier, Michael Emerson talked about the problem of duplication in Europe – specifically, how many of the EU member-states maintain separate embassies to different countries around the world. Emerson emphasized that, in the 'age of austerity' in Europe, cutting down on this duplication by having joint European delegations is a way to save money. The intern, however, questioned whether the public really would appreciate such a move, monetary savings notwithstanding. The roundtable then took several more questions before taking turns giving answers, and for whatever reason no one wound up addressing her question. So after the conference ended and everyone went out into the main hall for refreshments, she and I went to ask her question directly to Emerson. The two of them went back and forth on the question, with the intern emphasizing how, in her view, many Europeans would much rather have consular officials of their own country abroad, rather than just officials working for the EU. Eventually the two seemed to reach an understanding, since it turned out that Emerson was primarily thinking along the lines of, for instance, the lack of a need for Portugal and Finland, fellow EU member-states, to have embassies to one another. In the course of their debate, however, we were joined by a Belgian intern who works for the Directorate-General for External Relations, and the three of us stuck around for a few minutes to chat after finishing talking to Mr Emerson.
Thursday’s Early Alert again centered on events in Egypt. In particular: the renewed protests that were now spreading from Cairo to other cities in the country, the fact that protestors see negotiations with the Mubarak regime as “a ruse to gain time,” and several commentaries on the subject of the Western powers’ role in the protests. To a lesser extent I also wrote about the reaction in Europe to the newly released 2011 US National Military Strategy report – mainly disagreements in the Russian media as to whether it was a sign that relations are improving between the two countries or whether US strategy threatens Russia. Otherwise the day was comparatively not all that eventful. However, towards the end of the day I heard continued rumors that Mubarak would be stepping down that night, and it was announced that in several hours he was going to address to nation. Ultimately, that did not happen: instead, Mubarak was defiant, and reiterated that he would remain in power until a "peaceful transition" that would take place in September.
Needless to say, this did not placate that protestors, and thus on Friday we ran a two-page special of the Early Alert, covering the reaction to Mubarak’s speech and the question of what would happen in what many said would be “the explosion of the people.” We also looked at aftermath of Obama’s speech – Mubarak’s declaration that he ‘would not bow to international pressure’ and his general defiant attitude was taken to be a “direct snub to the US president”. We also explored commentary on whether the Egyptian Army is “the brake or the accelerator of the transition” in Egypt, and of the potential domino effect of protests spreading across North Africa and the Middle East. Friday afternoon I had my much-anticipated ‘courtesy call’ – i.e. meeting one-on-one – with Ambassador William E. Kennard. Everyone around the office had a high impression of him, and certainly my impression from his questions and comments during and after the presentation on Monday was that he clearly earned his position and knows what he is talking about. At the meeting I introduced myself and we discussed my motivations and expectations for the internship and how I am settling in to Brussels so far. The Ambassador also discussed his background and offered his assistance should I need it in the future.
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