The Foreign Service Journal, November 2010

8 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 0 Has the Moment Passed? Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton declared in a Sept. 8 speech to the Council on Foreign Relations that “a new American moment” has arrived in international relations —“a moment when our global leadership is essential, even if we must lead in new ways” ( www.cfr.org/ ). Energetically defending the Obama administration’s foreign policy record, Sec. Clinton employed a sturdy meta- phor: “Architecture is the art and sci- ence of designing structures that serve our common purposes, built to last and to withstand stress. And that is what we seek to build: a network of alliances and partnerships, regional organizations and global institutions, that is durable and dynamic enough to help us meet today's challenges and adapt to threats that we cannot even conceive of, just as our parents never dreamt of melting glaciers or dirty bombs.” Foreign reaction to the speech was curiously muted. Reporting for AFP (formerly known as Agence France- Presse), State Department correspon- dent Lachlan Carmic was positive, but ended his story with these cautionary words from Council on Foreign Rela- tions analyst Stewart Patrick: “It re- mains unclear whether a diminished U.S. superpower — widely perceived to be in relative decline, its global brand tarnished, its fiscal situation per- ilous, its body politic internally divided and exhausted from two wars — can still aspire to lead” ( www.afp.com/ afpcom/en ). An uncredited Asian News Interna- tional journalist offered a much more upbeat analysis of Sec. Clinton’s mes- sage in an article headlined “U.S. ready to take lead in facing global challenges: Clinton” ( http://news.oneindia ) . But it is perhaps noteworthy that two weeks after the story was posted, not a single reader had commented online. Back in the U.S., Freedom’s Chal- lenge, which bills itself as “A Private Blog Devoted to Foreign Policy and the Secretary of State,” was wildly en- thusiastic: “It is clear that the speech has been lauded and given high marks by commentators, foreign policy wonks and the media” ( http://secretary clinton.wordpress.com/ ) . But in the Sept. 13 edition of The New Republic , Andrew Bacevich was harshly dismis- sive: “Hillary Clinton’s ‘American Mo- ment’ Was Nothing but American Blather.” In his view: “It came. It went. It vanished without a trace.” Bacevich continues: “The tempta- tion to pass quietly over Clinton’s per- formance and move on is strong—but should be resisted. To read the speech carefully is to confront the central problem bedeviling American diplo- macy: Infested with people who (like Clinton) are infatuated with power, Washington has increasingly become a city devoid of people who actually understand power” ( www.tnr.com/ blog/foreign-policy ). “Game On!” In its Aug. 6 edition, Newsweek pro- files 26-year-old California software designer Austin Heap, who may have found a silver bullet for combating censorship around the world ( www. newsweek.com/ ). Heap does not consider himself particularly political. As he tells News- week , “I am for human rights [and] the Internet, and I check out from there.” But when he logged on to his Twitter account on June 14, 2009, Heap read about the growing number of Iranians protesting against President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s regime for censoring C YBERNOTES W hat does the current law say about marches? You must receive permission from local authorities. If you received it, go and demonstrate. If not, you don’t have the right. If you come out without the right, you will be beaten on your skull with a truncheon. And that’s that. — Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, commenting in an Aug. 31 interview with the newspaper Kommersant on the arrests in Moscow of hun- dreds of human rights demon- strators; http://politicom. moldova.org/news/