The Foreign Service Journal, May 2006

ria to deny membership to human rights violators. It remains to be seen whether the council can establish a new legitimacy for human rights concerns ( http:// hrw.org/english/docs/2006/03/16/ global13053.htm ). New members are to be elected May 9 by the General Assembly, with the council’s first meeting set for June 19. The Bush administration has announced that the U.S. will not seek a seat on the council this year. Seven seats are reserved for Western gov- ernments. Apart from the council’s own Web site, there are a number of good online resources for following the unfolding developments, among them the Human Rights Watch Web site ( http://hrw.org/doc/?t=united_na tions ). — Susan Maitra Special Ops Crowding Out Diplomacy? A March 8 report in the New York Times that did not get wider media coverage points to an issue that is no doubt giving many ambassadors and DCMs pause ( http://www.inform ationclearinghouse.info/article 12253.htm ). According to the report, military officials acknowledge that small teams of special operations troops have been placed in more than a dozen emb- assies in Africa, Southeast Asia and South America, where terrorists are thought to be operating. However, Special Operations Command offi- cials insist that every team’s placement is contingent on approval by the local U.S. ambassador and that the soldiers are trained to avoid high-profile mis- steps. Defense Secretary Donald Rums- feld’s effort to establish a covert mili- tary human intelligence operation with complete independence of action as part of the war on terrorism has surfaced in the press off and on over the past several years. But to date, SOCOM had not publicly acknowledged the so-called Military Liaison Elements. “MLEs play a key role in enhanc- ing military, interagency and host nation coordination and planning,” SOCOM spokesman Kenneth S. Mc- Graw told New York Times reporters Thom Shanker and Scott Shane, adding that the special ops personnel work “with the U.S. ambassador and country team’s knowledge to plan and coordinate activities.” The focus is on intelligence and planning and not on conducting combat missions, officials say. Although the 9/11 Commission had recommended that defense be given lead responsibility in the war on terrorism (a change codified in the Unified Command Plan signed by President Bush in 2004), the SOCOM program has run afoul of the CIA and office of the Director of National Intelligence, both of whom are side- lined in the process. It has also presented real problems for the State Department. As 9/11 Commission Chairman Lee Hamilton adds, the embassy program raises a different issue. “If you have two or three DOD guys wandering around a country, it could certainly cause some problems,” Mr. Hamilton said. Indeed, the kind of thing that gives ambassadors nightmares occurred in October 2004 in Paraguay, when members of an MLE team shot and killed a would-be robber on a down- town street. It turned out that the U.S. ambassador had not been in- formed of their presence in the coun- try, leading to embarrassment for the embassy and its senior officials. Earlier in 2004, reports of tension between State and DOD over ambassadors attempting to limit SOCOM-directed activities at embassies in Africa sur- faced. If the March 8 report is to be believed, however, the problem is a thing of the past. “We don’t have any issue with DOD concerning this,” an unnamed State Department official told The New York Times , adding that the MLE program was set up so that “authority is preserved” for the ambas- sador or the head of the embassy. A political adviser on full-time assign- ment from the State Department joined SOCOM commander Gen. Bryan D. Brown earlier this year for a world tour to explain the program to CIA and FBI officials based at embassies. — Susan Maitra National Security Strategy 2006: A Step Forward? The Bush Administration recently published its updated National Secur- ity Strategy for 2006 ( www.white house.gov/nsc/nss/2006 /index.ht ml ). The document has drawn mixed reactions from pundits. With democ- ratization and multilateralism as its two primary pillars, it places more emphasis on soft power than its 2002 counterpart. During a March 16 speech at the United States Institute of Peace, National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley remarked that the goal of the new NSS is to “seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world” ( http://www.usip.org/events/2006/ M A Y 2 0 0 6 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 13 C Y B E R N O T E S u