New START Treaty: a Win for the US and the World

The United States Senate agreed to the New START Treaty today. The bilateral nuclear arms treaty passed with bipartisan support by a 71 to 26 margin. Today's rollcall vote came after months of highly partisan debate and despite a packed Senate schedule.

Adoption of this treaty demonstrates a commitment to responsible and cooperative U.S. global engagement. President Obama, Vice-President Biden, and Senators Kerry, Lugar, and Reid deserve special praise for their vision and leadership. New START's approval is also testament to the courageous 13 Republicans who placed national security above obstructive partisan politics.

A November CNN poll noted that 82% of Americans supported ratification. Before the Senate vote, tens of thousands of Americans weighed in. Citizens for Global Solutions National Outreach Director Anu Joshi said, "I want to thank the thousands of Citizens for Global Solutions supporters who called, wrote to and met with their Senators to support ratification of New START. Their voices were a key part of this victory."

The New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) is a bilateral nuclear arms reduction treaty between the United States and Russia. It reduces the number of nuclear warheads to level not seen since I was born in 1954. The treaty requires that both parties limit their nuclear arsenals to 1,550 strategic warheads and 700 launchers each, a two-thirds reduction from the original 1991 START treaty which expired in December 2009. New START institutes a new inspection and verification process.

The treaty garnered strong support from U.S. military leadership and numerous former secretaries of defense and state. The bi-partisan supporters of New START have all explicitly stated that the treaty will make the U.S. safer. Full Senate consideration came after more than 20 hearings and hundreds of questions to the administration.

New START is not just a step forward in reducing the unique destructive threat of nuclear weapons; it is a testament to the power of great cooperation on the global stage.

The Senate has not passed a major multilateral treaty since the Chemical Weapons Convention was ratified 1997. While consideration of New START is the most important arms control treaty to come before the Senate in more than a decade, other treaties including the Law of the Sea and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) have yet to be considered. Now that the Senate has shown it can rise above the partisan bickering and pursue an agenda that benefits all Americans, and the world, it should set its sights on also adopting these important agreements to benefit our nation's economy, security, sustainability and credibility.

Don Kraus | December 22nd, 2010
Topics: Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), Nuclear Disarmament, Prevent War

http://globalsolutions.org/blog/2010/12/new-start-treaty-win-us-and-world?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+cgsblog+(Citizens+for+Global+Solutions+Blog)

2 tacks to combat piracy

Year's end finds 2 countries setting different courses to combat the recent spate of pirate attacks in the Gulf of Aden off the coast of Somalia.

In the United States, just before Thanksgiving, a federal jury in Virginia returned convictions for piracy and other offenses against 4 Somali defendants. (credit for detail from 2010 courtroom sketch by Alba Bragoli/AP) The verdict came one month after the judge in the case,United States v. Hasan, sustained a charge brought under 18 U.S.C. § 1651. The statute provides, in language dating to 1819:

Whoever, on the high seas, commits the crime of piracy as defined by the law of nations, and is afterwards brought into or found in the United States, shall be imprisoned for life.

Yet in the same courthouse a few months earlier, a different federal judge, in the case of United States v. Said, had dismissed a piracy chargebrought against 6 other Somali men. Tripping the latter judge up was Congress' reference in § 1651 to "the law of nations."

The opposite rulings reflect uncertainties about whether an old legal framework presents the proper way to proceed against 21st C. pirates. It's a puzzle addressed in this discussion by our OJ colleagues, and in manyIntLawGrrls posts available here.

In the United States, the discrepancy next awaits consideration by the Virginia-based Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit.

France, meanwhile, has taken another tack.

France also has been involved in policing piracy in the Gulf of Aden.(credit for March 2010 of French naval vessel, with "Somali pirate skiffs" in foreground) France also has found that its old laws fell short -- and so it's opted for a legislative fix.

Shortly before Christmas, the Sénatvoted unanimously in favor of the Loi de lutte contre la piraterie et d'exercice des pouvoirs de police de l'Etat en mer -- a bill to ease the pursuit and punishment of pirates that the legislature's lower house already had approved.

Key components:

► An 1825 French antipiracy law having been abrogated in 2007, the newly adopted law reintroduces into the penal code the crime of piracy -- a crime may be pursued via universal jurisdiction. The new law applies to acts of piracy "within the meaning of" the 1982 U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, "committed ... on the high seas," "in maritime spaces outside any state's jurisdiction," and "when international law permits, in a state's territorial waters." That Convention is an artifact of the law of nations to which France has been a state party since 1996, but to which, as posted, the United States does not belong.

► The new statute further establishes a legal regime for detaining suspects onboard French naval vessels while they are being transported to judicial authorities. These Mesures prises à l'encontre des personnes à bord des navires respond to a March 2010 judgment, Affaire Medvedyev et Autres c. France, in which the European Court of Human Rights held that France had violated the guarantee of liberty and security of person in Article 5 of Europe's human rights convention by its high-seas detention in 2002 of members of a ship's crew who were suspected of trafficking in drugs.

(Deep thanks for invaluable assistance with this post to University of California-Davis LL.M. student Johann Morri, on leave this year from his post as a French administrative law judge.)

Sovereigntism in a Nutshell

http://opiniojuris.org/2010/12/21/sovereigntism-in-a-nutshell/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+opiniojurisfeed+(Opinio+Juris)

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by Peter Spiro

From a new pamphlet, Why Does Sovereignty Matter to America? Merry Christmas from the folks at the Heritage Foundation:

[T]oday, our sovereignty faces new threats. International organizations and courts seek to reshape the international system. Nations are to give up their sovereignty and be governed by a “global consensus.” Independent, sovereign nations will be replaced by “transnational” organizations that reject national sovereignty.

The demand that the United States bow to this “global consensus” does not respect American sovereignty. The offenses the Founders complained of in the Declaration of Independence now have an international flavor. This new project is filled with examples of institutions, courts, and “taxes” that violate the spirit of the Declaration:

• In 1998 the International Criminal Court was established. It is empowered to subject American soldiers to criminal prosecution in Holland for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity. The Founders rejected trying Americans outside American courts.

• In Kyoto, Japan, in 1997, and Copenhagen, Denmark, in 2010, an international conference drafted a global treaty to regulate energy use in the United States. An international bureaucracy would monitorcompliance with the treaty’s terms. The Founders rejected subjecting Americans to “a Jurisdiction foreign to our Constitution.”

• In recent years, international organizations and foreign leaders have proposed “international taxes” on airline tickets and financial transactions—taxes that would be borne by American citizens and businesses. The revenues collected would be spent by unaccountable international organizations. The Founders rejected taxation without representation.

Hang on to your wallets, the international taxman cometh! This is clearly intended for mass distribution, at a level that even school children might understand. I think this is a waning sentiment unlikely to descend to the next generation, as even conservatives find something to like about international law, but so deeply entrenched a mindset won’t go easily

U.S. Now Supports the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples

http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/international_law/2010/12/indigenous-peoples.html

December 17, 2010

U.S. Now Supports the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples

President Barack Obama announced that the United States supports the Declaration on the RIghts of Indigenous Peoples. When the U.N. General Assembly adopted the Declaration in September 2007, the United States was only one of four countries (along with Canada, Australia and New Zealand) that voted against it.

With the announcement this week, the United States has now joined the other three countries in endorsing the non-binding text that sets out the individual and collective rights of an estimated 370 million indigenous peoples, as well as their rights to culture, identity, language, employment, health, education and other issues.

The UN Special Rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples, James Anaya, issued a statement saying he is “elated” at the US announcement, calling it a “groundbreaking development” for Native Americans and all those who seek greater protection for human rights across the globe. “With its endorsement of the Declaration, the United States strengthens it stated commitment to improve the conditions of Native Americans and to address broken promises. Indigenous peoples can now look to the Declaration as a means of holding the United States to that commitment,” said Mr. Anaya, who reports to the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council in an independent and unpaid capacity.

The Declaration emphasizes the rights of indigenous peoples to maintain and strengthen their own institutions, cultures and traditions and to pursue their development in keeping with their own needs and aspirations. It also prohibits discrimination against indigenous peoples and promotes their full and effective participation in all matters that concern them, and their right to remain distinct and to pursue their own visions of economic and social development.

(Adapted from a UN Press Release)

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Why protecting indigenous people?

I would say "waiting for barbarian"

The International Criminal Court: A Time of Reckoning for Kenya and Africa

http://www.brookings.edu/opinions/2010/1217_africa_crime_kimenyi.aspx?rssid=international+organizations&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+BrookingsRSS/topics/internationalorganizations+(Brookings:+Topics+-+International+Organizations)#

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DECEMBER 17, 2010 —

For a continent where numerous hideous crimes have for long gone unpunished, the establishment of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in 2002 was a major turning point to ending impunity in Africa. Many African states supported the Rome Statute with high expectations that the perpetrators of atrocities imparted on Africans would never again go unpunished. Then secretary general of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, praised the establishment of the court as an important step toward ending impunity.

Today, however, support of the ICC among Africans has waned considerably. An increasing segment of Africans no longer consider ICC a credible institution to adjudicate in cases of crimes against humanity and its activities are viewed with suspicion if not outright disdain. President Paul Kagame of Rwanda has referred to the ICC as an imperialist institution that was established to solely deal with African countries. The African Union President Jean Ping has criticized the ICC for purely judging Africans.

The scathing criticisms against the ICC are unfortunate. Recent episodes of civil conflict in the Ivory Coast, Liberia and Sierra Leone have involved wide-scale atrocities that fall under the ICC’s mandate. Atrocities of untold magnitude are still ongoing in Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo and the perpetrators are unlikely to be held responsible without international justice. But with limited capacity and a lack of political will to punish the perpetrators in their home countries, the ICC could play a pivotal role as an essential complement to local institutions. This is how the recent activities of the ICC in Kenya should be viewed.

On December 15, the ICC’s prosecutor, Louis Moremo-Ocampo, announced the names of six Kenyans who he intends to charge with crimes against humanity in connection to the 2007 post-election violence in Kenya. They include notable personalities, such as the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Uhuru Kenyatta, the Minister for Industrialization Henry Kosgey, former Minister of Higher Education William Ruto, the former Police Commissioner Major General Hussein Ali, the Head of the Civil Service and Secretary to the Cabinet Francis Muthaura and journalist Joshua Sang. The six will be charged for crimes ranging from murder, rape and deportation. The main allegation is that they participated in inciting violence or failing to prevent it.

While it is too early to tell, the indictments are likely to have major implications on the Kenya’s politics and ethnic relations. All the more significant is that some of the indicted command broad support in their communities and were expected to be leading candidates for the 2012 presidential elections. With the announcement, the political fortunes of these individuals may have all but furnished.

The post-election violence in Kenya claimed over 1,000 lives, left scores of injured people and over 600,000 displaced from their homes and farms. It was the most severe conflict that Kenya has experienced since independence. There were other relatively minor conflicts around the 1992 and 1997 general elections that were largely politically motivated but these perpetrators were never held accountable. The action by the ICC is therefore seen as the only hope to ending impunity. Failure to deal with those who have in the past incited and engaged in violence against other ethnic groups could be disastrous as the country prepares to hold general elections in 2012 under a new constitution.

But for the ICC process to advance peace and unity in Kenya, it must be fair or else it is likely to increase polarization among the ethnic groups in the country. Already, large segments of Kenyans consider the process to be political rather than judicial. There is a feeling that selection of these six culprits has been largely arbitrary and others who may have had a more prominent role in the violence have not been touched. There is some credibility to these claims.

Two weeks before the 2007 Kenyan general election, a team from Oxford University and I conducted a nationally representative survey of likely voters. The focus was on violence and specifically whether local political representatives were advocating for violence against members of other ethnic groups. Twenty-nine percent of respondents indicated that their local representatives were either somewhat, much or extremely supportive of violence. Similar results were obtained in a post-election survey that we conducted in August 2008. From our surveys results, it is clear that there are many more perpetrators of violence out there, which creates a perception that Ocampo is not after the worst offenders but instead looking for some quick wins.

Therefore, for credibility, the prosecutor should seek to demonstrate that those indicted by the ICC were not just marginal players but had a major role in perpetuating violence. This is necessary to prevent claims that the ICC process is being used to remove certain individuals from contention in the 2012 presidential elections. Likewise, the ICC should expand its focus to other regions outside of Africa so that it sheds the growing perception that the court was established primarily to deal with Africans.

The long-run success in fighting impunity in Africa must be the responsibility of Africans themselves through their local institutions. Besides cases of genocide, African governments must seek to establish credible judicial processes to deal with crimes such as murder, rape and violence within their own countries or even regionally. In countries with weak judiciaries, there should be support from the international community to establish local tribunals. The Kenyan government failed to establish a local tribunal in connection to the post-election violence promoting the prosecutor to request ICC judges to grant him authority to open formal investigations in line with the principle of complementarity—the idea that ICC should only act where states are not able or unwilling to prosecute crimes under the ICC’s jurisdiction. This was a major blunder on the part of Kenya’s government and Parliament and it is likely to be very costly with regard to the country’s ethnic relations. To have the ICC deal with crimes that could have been adequately dealt with locally is clear evidence of state failure, a label that Africans must try to shed

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both are required: international justice and political will in their home country

ICC's neutrality, (not politically motivated) to harness support from local gov. and people

Winning & losing (mostly losing) in Cancun

http://intlawgrrls.blogspot.com/2010/12/winning-losing-mostly-losing-in-cancun.html

There is good news and bad news from theUN Climate Change Conference that just ended in Cancun, Mexico.

First the good news.
The conference produced some important steps forward:
► With one lone dissent, by Bolivia, the other 193 participants overwhelmingly endorsed the final agreement, which formalized the status of the Copenhagen Accord. That accord, about which IntLawGrrls posted here and here, thus has been officially integrated into the United Nations process.

► There was an agreement on preserving tropical forests (REDD+) that provides for compensation payments to tropical countries that reduce deforestation.

► There was also an agreement setting up a Green Climate Fund to provide financial assistance to help developing countries restrain their emissions and cope with the impacts of climate change.
These are important steps.

Given last year's failed Copenhagen meeting, expectations were very low for the Cancun meeting. So, the conference’s modest success was encouraging in that it restored faith in the possibilities of the multilateral United Nations process as a forum where climate progress can be made. Mexican Foreign Minister Patricia Espinosa (right) earned wide praise for her transparent and deft handling of the negotiations.

Now for the bad news. . . .
The talks failed to produce any agreement ensuring reduced carbon emissions. Without drastic cuts in carbon emissions, the world will soon run out of time to avert catastrophic climate change.

The scientific evidence is clear — human activities linked to burning fossil fuel are increasing carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. The resultant buildup of carbon dioxide is likely to warm the planet by several degrees Centigrade in the next half-century. International efforts have identified keeping that warming below 2 degrees Celsius (about 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) as the goal.
The effects of global warming are already clearly visible in the Arctic, wheredrastically reduced summer sea ice threatens the continued existence of ice-dependent animals like Pacific walrus and polar bears, whilemelting permafrost jeopardizes the safety and livelihoods of Arctic residents. Coral reefs are bleaching and dying at an alarming rate.
Extreme weather events around the world, including floods and droughts are a harbinger of things to come. As the planet warms and the climate changes, we can expect disease, species extinction, water shortages, rising sea levels, and the disappearance of small island states.

In short, climate change is likely to cause conflict and dislocations around the globe.

In the face of this looming catastrophe, we need bold action. What we got is at most a modest step forward.

The Cancun Agreement calls on countries to take “urgent action” to keep global temperatures from increasing more than 2 degrees Centigrade above pre-industrial levels. It does not, however, specify what those actions should be. States have made no binding commitments to do anything. The Agreement does nothing to about the gaping chasm between the current voluntary emissions-reduction commitments that states have set for themselves under the Copenhagen Accord, and the kinds of reductions needed to meet this goal.

Alden Meyer of the Union of Concerned Scientists said it best:

World leaders must significantly raise their game if we're to meet the challenge of climate change. Time is running out, and the atmosphere doesn't negotiate with politicians.

Kimberley Process & Zimbabwe diamonds

http://intlawgrrls.blogspot.com/2010/12/kimberley-process-zimbabwe-diamonds.html

The opening and expansion of global markets has created and exacerbated resource curses, the phenomenon in which natural resource abundance creates governance problems.

Yet international legal scholarship has been slow to recognize the relationship between freer trade and the financing of internal conflicts. My recent article, "Regulating Resource Curses: Institutional Design and Evolution of the Blood Diamond Regime," published earlier this year in the Cardozo Law Review, looks closely at a recent effort to address the global trade in so-called blood diamonds as a potential model for resource curses more generally.

I develop a case study of the Kimberley Process, an international diamond tracking regime (prior IntLawGrrls post), by investigating both the scope of the institution’s regulatory reach as well as the mechanisms by which members promulgate and enforce those regulations.

The article focuses on the unique coalition of nongovernmental organizations, corporations, and states, and on the unusual international arrangement upon which they agreed.
Evidence from the evolution of that institution suggests that although designers may indeed seek to maximize their own interests, what determines whether an institution can regulate effectively, and when it may move beyond the designers’ original interests, are legalization elements of that international institution.

These include:
► The obligations the regime creates;
► The precision with which those obligations are defined; and
► The possible delegation of interpretive and enforcement efforts.
In accumulating and assessing this evidence, my article contends that while skeptics may correctly identify the Kimberley Process’s initial alignment with state and corporate interests, this lightly legalized regime provides an opportunity for substantial progress on human rights. Although the Kimberley Process might appear as an attempt to whitewash state and corporate abuses, over time, the institution can -- even though it need not necessarily -- evolve to address both the rebel-induced and state-inflicted human rights violations related to the diamond trade.

The article acknowledges 2 factors:
► The importance and potential stickiness of initial design choices; and
► The fact that institutional evolution in favor of issue expansion and greater enforcement is merely feasible rather than inevitable.

Thus, this article demonstrates some of the possibilities and limitations of looking to the Kimberley Process as a model for resource curses, and more generally for other areas in which NGOs seek to align state, corporate, and human rights interests.
Developments which occurred after my article went to press suggest that the Kimberley Process has in fact tried to address state-initiated human rights abuses. In so doing, it is facing some substantial state resistance:

► In 2009, the Kimberley Process sanctioned Zimbabwe for bad behavior in the newly discovered Marange diamond fields. Rather than expel Zimbabwe, members suspended its exports. By November 2009, Zimbabwe agreed to a joint work plan to restore compliance by eliminating smuggling, allowing greater monitoring, and reducing military abuses against civilian miners. Despite these promises, Human Rights Watch reported that as late as September of 2010, soldiers still control large portions of these Zimbabwe fields and continue to violate the human rights of the local miners. (credit for 2006 photo by Tsvangiray Mukwazhi/Associated Press of women and men miners at Marange)

► A November 2010 Kimberley Process meeting failed to reach agreement on whether to lift all export limitations, and thus kept the suspension in place. Zimbabwe’s monitor responded by unilaterally certifying millions of diamonds which are already beginning to make their way to market.

►Many speculate that a December 2010 WikiLeaks posting will influence an ongoing Kimberley Process meeting on the Zimbabwe export question. The 2008 U.S. government cable states:

'In a country filled with corrupt schemes, the diamond business in Zimbawbe is one of the dirtiest.'

► Meanwhile, NGOs such as Global Witness and World Vision have stopped short of calling a boycott, but asked consumers and retailers to act more vigilantly in ensuring that diamonds purchased over the holiday season have not funded violence.

If Zimbabwe continues on its current path of non-compliance, or pulls out of the process entirely, many fear the diamond industry will return to the bad practices of the 1990s, in which widespread human rights abuses were common.

Others suggest, however, that targeted pressure campaigns could convince industry networks to reject working with those that trade in these blood diamonds and persuade individual consumers not to purchase them.
Only time will tell. But this article illuminates the institutional mechanisms that will facilitate success or failure on the Zimbabwe problem

Injunction Extended on Oklahoma Amendment

http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/international_law/2010/11/injunction-extended-on-oklahoma-amendment.html

November 23, 2010

Injunction Extended on Oklahoma Amendment

The federal district court in Oklahoma has extended until November 29, 2010 its order blocking an amendment to the Oklahoma State Constitution that would prohibit state court judges from considering international or Islamic law when deciding cases.

The amendment contravenes the provisions of article VI of the U.S. Constitution, which makes treaties the supreme law of the land. The provisions on Islamic law were apparently included merely as an election year gimmick -- there had been not even a single reported case of any Oklahoma court considering any application of Islamic law.

UN Security Council Extends Mandate to Fight Pirates

The United Nations Security Council this week renewed for another 12 months the authorizations granted to States and regional organizations cooperating with Somalia’s transitional government to fight piracy off the country’s coast.

The resolution authorizes States and regional organizations to enter Somalia’s territorial waters and use “all necessary means” –- such as deploying naval vessels and military aircraft, as well as seizing and disposing of boats, vessels, arms and related equipment used for piracy. In the resolution adopted this week, the 15-member Security Council reiterated its condemnation of all acts of piracy and armed robbery against vessels in the waters off the Somali coast.

According to figures by the International Maritime Organization (IMO), over 438 seafarers and passengers and 20 ships are held by pirates as of 4 November – an increase of almost 100 kidnapped victims in less than a month.

(Adapted from a UN Press Release)

Security Council Extends Terms of ICTY and ICTR

http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/international_law/2010/12/security-council-extends-terms-of-icty-and-ictr-.html

December 14, 2010

Security Council Extends Terms of ICTY and ICTR

The Security Council today extended the terms of several judges serving on the United Nations tribunals working to bring to justice the perpetrators of the worst crimes committed during the Balkans conflict of the 1990s and the 1994 genocide in Rwanda so that they can complete the cases on which they are working.

The Council took that action in two separate resolutions, one on the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the other on the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), both of which were adopted unanimously.

In doing so, the 15-member body took note of the assessments by both courts that they will not be able to complete all their work in 2010, as had been expected under their respective Completion Strategies.

It urged both tribunals to “take all possible measures” to complete their work expeditiously.

Since its inception 17 years ago, the ICTY, which is based in The Hague, has indicted 161 persons for war crimes committed on the territory of the former Yugoslavia. The proceedings against 125 individuals have been completed. Only two indictees remain at large – Ratko Mladic and Goran Hadžic.

Meanwhile, ten fugitives wanted by the ICTR, which is based in the Tanzanian town of Arusha, still remain at large. The Tribunal was created in November 1994 prosecute people responsible for genocide and other serious violations of international humanitarian law committed in Rwanda that year. Some 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were murdered, mostly by machete, in just 100 days.

(UN Press Release)

Holbrooke the dove

http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/12/14/holbrooke_the_dove

Posted By Blake Hounshell Tuesday, December 14, 2010 - 2:35 AM Share

The last words of Richard C. Holbrooke, a lion of U.S. diplomacy, were "You've got to stop this war in Afghanistan" -- a sentence worth pondering as the United States heads into a fresh round of debate over a conflict that has ground on for more than 9 years, steadily escalating from a sideshow to a nightmare that threatens to consume Barack Obama's presidency.

What did Holbrooke mean? Did he oppose the war? [UPDATE: The Washington Post has a fuller account of Holbrooke's last comment, and one person I've spoken with who was at the hospital last night says it was taken out of context.]

Holbrooke, who until last week was running the civilian side of the Afghan war, had expressed few public doubts about the wisdom of U.S. efforts there. Despite constant sniping at him in the press (and some unkind words in Bob Woodward's latest), he remained officially upbeat about what he was doing, touting U.S. aid efforts in Pakistan, highlighting agricultural programs in Afghanistan, and trying valiantly to broker some sort of modus vivendi between the two South Asian neighbors.

But he clearly had grave doubts about the war. He is quoted in Woodward's book saying that "If there are 10 possible outcomes in Afghanistan, nine of them are bad." Through Woodward, he also criticizes the approach urged by Bruce Riedel, who led the president's first major strategy review in the spring of 2009. It's worth quoting Woodward at length:

The war -- or the American role in the war -- would not end in a military victory, but nearly all the focus had been on the military. There had been little discussion of reconciliation -- how the warring parties could be brought together diplomatically. That might be far off, but it had to be planned. How could the Taliban insurgents be lured off the field? Maybe it was a fantasy. But they had to sincerely try.

The Saudis were already acting as secret intermediaries with elements of the Taliban, but the White House was not seriously engaging the issue. This was the only end for the war in Holbrooke's estimation. How could they not at least consider it?

Holbrooke largely agreed with Biden. He saw the vice president emerging as the adminisration's George Ball, the deputy secretary of state who had opposed the Vietnam escalation. But the length of Bidens's presentation undermined his message, Holbrooke told others.

Like Biden, Holbooke believed that even if the Taliban retook large parts of Afghanistan, al Qaeda would not come with them. That might be "the single most important intellectual insight of the year," Holbrooke remarked hours after the first meeting. Al Qaeda was much safer in Pakistan. Why go back to Afghanistan, where there were nearly 68,000 U.S. troops and 30,000 from other NATO countries? And in Afghanistan, the U.S. had all the intelligence and surveillance capability, plus the capability to dispatch massive ground forces, not just Special Operations Forces but batallions of regular troops and the CIA's 3,000-man pursuit teams.

Astonishingly to Holbrooke, that key insight had neither been in Riedel's report, nor had it been discussed that Sunday morning. Where was the no-holds-barred debate? The president had told them not to bite their tongues. Holbrooke had to bite his because he worked for the secretary of state, who was unsure of what course to recommend. But where were the others?

In another part of the book, Holbrooke is quoted saying that the strategy "can't work." Elsewhere, he expresses doubt that the United States can "defeat" the Taliban, complains about the Afghan police ("the weak link") and says provocatively that the U.S. presence itself "is the corrupting force" in Afghanistan. During the fall 2009 strategy review, he told Clinton privately that he supported sending 20,000 troops, but not the full 40,000 the military had requested. But he also opposed the July 2011 deadline to begin withdrawing U.S. troops and said flatly at one point, "We're not leaving," urging that the U.S. presence be put on a more sustainable long-term footing.

Holbrooke's relations with the military weren't always smooth. When an aide to Gen. Stanley McChrystal dissed Holbrooke to Rolling Stone as "a wounded animal," he laughed it off, telling reporters, "Worse things have been said about me."

He also had fraught interactions with former national security advisor Jim Jones, whom he clearly viewed as a lightweight (and who in return tended to see Holbrooke's ideas as impractical), and with Jones's deputy, Tom Donilon.

But Holbrooke's biggest problem was with Obama, who in Woodward's estimation "didn't care for" him. The two men just didn't connect. In one painful anecdote, Holbrooke approaches him and asks to be called "Richard," rather than "Dick," because his wife preferred the former.

"Later, the president told others that he found the request highly unusual and even strange," Woodward writes. "Holbrooke was horrified when he learned that his request -- which he had repeated to no one -- had been circulated by the president."

Though we'll get the administration's formal assessment later this week, it's still too early to tell how the new "surge" in Afghanistan is going. But one has to wonder: If Holbrooke and Obama had gotten along better, or if Clinton had been less guarded in her own views, would history be playing out differently?